But Many A
Canoe Was Found With A Dead Kruboy Or So In It; And Many A One
Which, Floating Bottom Upwards, Graphically Spoke Of Madness Caused
By Hunger, Thirst, And Despair Having Driven Its Occupants Overboard
To The Sharks.
My Portuguese friends assure me that there was never thought of
permanently detaining the boys, and that they were only just keeping
them until other labourers arrived to take their place on the
plantations.
I quite believe them, for I have seen too much of the
Portuguese in Africa to believe that they would, in a wholesale way,
be cruel to natives. But I am not in the least surprised that the
poor Krumen took the Portuguese logo and amanha for Eternity itself,
for I have frequently done so.
The greatest length of the island lies N.E. and S.W., and amounts to
thirty-three miles; the mean breadth is seventeen miles. The port,
Clarence Cove, now called Santa Isabel by the Spaniards - who have
been giving Spanish names to all the English-named places without
any one taking much notice of them - is a very remarkable place, and
except perhaps Gaboon the finest harbour on the West Coast. The
point that brings Gaboon anchorage up in line with Clarence Cove is
its superior healthiness; for Clarence is a section of a circle, and
its shores are steep rocky cliffs from 100 to 200 feet high, and the
place, to put it very mildly, exceedingly hot and stuffy. The cove
is evidently a partly submerged crater, the submerged rim of the
crater is almost a perfect semi-circle seawards - having on it 4, 5,
7, 8, and 10 fathoms of water save almost in the centre of the arc
where there is a passage with 12 to 14 fathoms. Inside, in the
crater, there is deeper water, running in places from 30 to 45
fathoms, and outside the submerged rim there is deeper water again,
but rocky shoals abound. On the top of the shore cliffs stands the
dilapidated little town of Clarence, on a plateau that falls away
slightly towards the mountain for about a mile, when the ground
commences to rise into the slopes of the Cordillera. On the narrow
beach, tucked close against the cliffs, are a few stores belonging
to the merchants, where goods are placed on landing, and there is a
little pier too, but as it is usually having something done to its
head, or else is closed by the authorities because they intend doing
something by and by, the chances are against its being available for
use. Hence it usually comes about that you have to land on the
beach, and when you have done this you make your way up a very steep
path, cut in the cliffside, to the town. When you get there you
find yourself in the very dullest town I know on the Coast. I
remember when I first landed in Clarence I found its society in a
flutter of expectation and alarm not untinged with horror.
Clarence, nay, the whole of Fernando Po, was about to become so
rackety and dissipated as to put Paris and Monte Carlo to the blush.
Clarence was going to have a cafe; and what was going to go on in
that cafe I shrink from reciting.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 30 of 371
Words from 15148 to 15703
of 194943
