Shortly After Passing Through Another Plantation, We Saw
Brown Huts, And In A Few Minutes Were Standing In The Middle Of A
Ramshackle Village, At The End Of Which, Through A High Stockade,
With Its Gateway Smeared With Blood Which Hung In Gouts, We Saw Our
Much Longed For Rembwe River.
I made for it, taking small notice of
the hubbub our arrival occasioned, and passed through the gateway,
setting its guarding bell ringing violently; I stood on the steep,
black, mud slime bank, surrounded by a noisy crowd.
It is a big
river, but nothing to the Ogowe, either in breadth or beauty; what
beauty it has is of the Niger delta type - black mud-laden water,
with a mangrove swamp fringe to it in all directions. I soon turned
back into the village and asked for Ugumu's factory. "This is it,"
said an exceedingly dirty, good-looking, civil-spoken man in perfect
English, though as pure blooded an African as ever walked. "This is
it, sir," and he pointed to one of the huts on the right-hand side,
indistinguishable in squalor from the rest. "Where's the Agent?"
said I. "I'm the Agent," he answered. You could have knocked me
down with a feather. "Where's John Holt's factory?" said I. "You
have passed it; it is up on the hill." This showed Messrs. Holt's
local factory to be no bigger than Ugumu's. At this point a big,
scraggy, very black man with an irregularly formed face the size of
a tea-tray and looking generally as if he had come out of a
pantomime on the Arabian Nights, dashed through the crowd, shouting,
"I'm for Holty, I'm for Holty." "This is my trade, you go 'way,"
says Agent number one.
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