At Last We Anchor For The Night Just Inside Nazareth Bay, For
Nazareth Bay Wants Daylight To Deal With, Being Rich In Low Islands
And Sand Shoals.
We crossed the Equator this afternoon.
June 6th. - Off at daybreak into Nazareth Bay. Anxiety displayed by
navigators, sounding taken on both sides of the bows with long
bamboo poles painted in stripes, and we go "slow ahead" and "hard
astern" successfully, until we get round a good-sized island, and
there we stick until four o'clock, high water, when we come off all
right, and steam triumphantly but cautiously into the Ogowe. The
shores of Nazareth Bay are fringed with mangroves, but once in the
river the scenery soon changes, and the waters are walled on either
side with a forest rich in bamboo, oil and wine-palms. These forest
cliffs seem to rise right up out of the mirror-like brown water.
Many of the highest trees are covered with clusters of brown-pink
young shoots that look like flowers, and others are decorated by my
old enemy the climbing palm, now bearing clusters of bright crimson
berries. Climbing plants of other kinds are wreathing everything,
some blossoming with mauve, some with yellow, some with white
flowers, and every now and then a soft sweet heavy breath of
fragrance comes out to us as we pass by. There is a native village
on the north bank, embowered along its plantations with some very
tall cocoa-palms rising high above them.
The river winds so that it seems to close in behind us, opening out
in front fresh vistas of superb forest beauty, with the great brown
river stretching away unbroken ahead like a broad road of burnished
bronze. Astern, it has a streak of frosted silver let into it by
the Move's screw. Just about six o'clock, we run up to the Fallaba,
the Move's predecessor in working the Ogowe, now a hulk, used as a
depot by Hatton and Cookson. She is anchored at the entrance of a
creek that runs through to the Fernan Vaz; some say it is six hours'
run, others that it is eight hours for a canoe; all agree that there
are plenty of mosquitoes.
The Fallaba looks grimly picturesque, and about the last spot in
which a person of a nervous disposition would care to spend the
night. One half of her deck is dedicated to fuel logs, on the other
half are plank stores for the goods, and a room for the black sub-
trader in charge of them. I know that there must be scorpions which
come out of those logs and stroll into the living room, and goodness
only knows what one might not fancy would come up the creek or rise
out of the floating grass, or the limitless-looking forest. I am
told she was a fine steamer in her day, but those who had charge of
her did not make allowances for the very rapid rotting action of the
Ogowe water, so her hull rusted through before her engines were a
quarter worn out; and there was nothing to be done with her then,
but put a lot of concrete in, and make her a depot, in which state
of life she is very useful, for during the height of the dry season,
the Move cannot get through the creek to supply the firm's Fernan
Vaz factories.
Subsequently I heard much of the Fallaba, which seems to have been a
celebrated, or rather notorious, vessel. Every one declared her
engines to have been of immense power, but this I believe to have
been a mere local superstition; because in the same breath, the man
who referred to them, as if it would have been quite unnecessary for
new engines to have been made for H.M.S. Victorious if those
Fallaba engines could have been sent to Chatham dockyard, would
mention that "you could not get any pace up on her"; and all who
knew her sadly owned "she wouldn't steer," so naturally she spent
the greater part of her time on the Ogowe on a sand-bank, or in the
bush. All West African steamers have a mania for bush, and the
delusion that they are required to climb trees. The Fallaba had the
complaint severely, because of her defective steering powers, and
the temptation the magnificent forest, and the rapid currents, and
the sharp turns of the creek district, offered her; she failed, of
course - they all fail - but it is not for want of practice. I have
seen many West Coast vessels up trees, but never more than fifteen
feet or so.
The trade of this lower part of the Ogowe, from the mouth to
Lembarene, a matter of 130 miles, is almost nil. Above Lembarene,
you are in touch with the rubber and ivory trade.
This Fallaba creek is noted for mosquitoes, and the black passengers
made great and showy preparations in the evening time to receive
their onslaught, by tying up their strong chintz mosquito bars to
the stanchions and the cook-house. Their arrangements being
constantly interrupted by the white engineer making alarums and
excursions amongst them; because when too many of them get on one
side the Move takes a list and burns her boilers. Conversation and
atmosphere are full of mosquitoes. The decision of widely
experienced sufferers amongst us is, that next to the lower Ogowe,
New Orleans is the worst place for them in this world.
The day closed with a magnificent dramatic beauty. Dead ahead of
us, up through a bank of dun-coloured mist rose the moon, a great
orb of crimson, spreading down the oil-like, still river, a streak
of blood-red reflection. Right astern, the sun sank down into the
mist, a vaster orb of crimson, and when he had gone out of view,
sent up flushes of amethyst, gold, carmine and serpent-green, before
he left the moon in undisputed possession of the black purple sky.
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