The Country Spreads Before Me A Lovely Valley Encompassed
By Purple-Blue Mountains.
Mount Talagouga looks splendid in a soft,
infinitely deep blue, although it is quite close, just the other
side of the river.
The road goes on into the valley, as pleasantly
as ever and more so. How pleasant it would be now, if our
government along the Coast had the enterprise and public spirit of
the French, and made such roads just on the remote chance of stray
travellers dropping in on a steamer once in ten years or so and
wanting a walk. Observe extremely neatly Igalwa built huts, people
sitting on the bright clean ground outside them, making mats and
baskets. "Mboloani," say I. "Ai! Mbolo," say they, and knock off
work to stare. Observe large wired-in enclosures on left-hand side
of road - investigate - find they are tenanted by animals - goats,
sheep, chickens, etc. Clearly this is a jardin d'acclimatation. No
wonder the colony does not pay, if it goes in for this sort of
thing, 206 miles inland, with simply no public to pay gate-money.
While contemplating these things, hear awful hiss. Serpents! No,
geese. Awful fight. Grand things, good, old-fashioned, long skirts
are for Africa! Get through geese and advance in good order, but
somewhat rapidly down road, turn sharply round corner of native
houses. Turkey cock - terrific turn up. Flight on my part forwards
down road, which is still going strong, now in a northerly
direction, apparently indefinitely. Hope to goodness there will be
a turning that I can go down and get back by, without returning
through this ferocious farmyard. Intent on picking up such an
outlet, I go thirty yards or so down the road. Hear shouts coming
from a clump of bananas on my left. Know they are directed at me,
but it does not do to attend to shouts always. Expect it is only
some native with an awful knowledge of English, anxious to get up my
family history - therefore accelerate pace. More shouts, and louder,
of "Madame Gacon! Madame Gacon!" and out of the banana clump comes
a big, plump, pleasant-looking gentleman, clad in a singlet and a
divided skirt. White people must be attended to, so advance
carefully towards him through a plantation of young coffee,
apologising humbly for intruding on his domain. He smiles and bows
beautifully, but - horror! - he knows no English, I no French.
Situation tres inexplicable et tres interessante, as I subsequently
heard him remark; and the worst of it is he is evidently bursting to
know who I am, and what I am doing in the middle of his coffee
plantation, for his it clearly is, as appears from his obsequious
bodyguard of blacks, highly interested in me also. We gaze at each
other, and smile some more, but stiffly, and he stands bareheaded in
the sun in an awful way. It's murder I'm committing, hard all! He,
as is fitting for his superior sex, displays intelligence first and
says, "Interpreter," waving his hand to the south. I say "Yes," in
my best Fan, an enthusiastic, intelligent grunt which any one must
understand. He leads the way back towards those geese - perhaps, by
the by, that is why he wears those divided skirts - and we enter a
beautifully neatly built bamboo house, and sit down opposite to each
other at a table and wait for the interpreter who is being fetched.
The house is low on the ground and of native construction, but most
beautifully kept, and arranged with an air of artistic feeling quite
as unexpected as the rest of my surroundings. I notice upon the
walls sets of pictures of terrific incidents in Algerian campaigns,
and a copy of that superb head of M. de Brazza in Arab headgear.
Soon the black minions who have been sent to find one of the
plantation hands who is supposed to know French and English, return
with the "interpreter." That young man is a fraud. He does not
know English - not even coast English - and all he has got under his
precious wool is an abysmal ignorance darkened by terror; and so,
after one or two futile attempts and some frantic scratching at both
those regions which an African seems to regard as the seats of
intellectual inspiration, he bolts out of the door. Situation
terrible! My host and I smile wildly at each other, and both wonder
in our respective languages what, in the words of Mr. Squeers as
mentioned in the classics - we "shall do in this 'ere most awful go."
We are both going mad with the strain of the situation, when in
walks the engineer's brother from the Eclaireur. He seems intensely
surprised to find me sitting in his friend the planter's parlour
after my grim and retiring conduct on the Eclaireur on my voyage up.
But the planter tells him all, sousing him in torrents of words,
full of the violence of an outbreak of pent-up emotion. I do not
understand what he says, but I catch "tres inexplicable" and things
like that. The calm brother of the engineer sits down at the table,
and I am sure tells the planter something like this: "Calm
yourself, my friend, we picked up this curiosity at Lembarene. It
seems quite harmless." And then the planter calmed, and mopped a
perspiring brow, and so did I, and we smiled more freely, feeling
the mental atmosphere had become less tense and cooler. We both
simply beamed on our deliverer, and the planter gave him lots of
things to drink. I had nothing about me except a head of tobacco in
my pocket, which I did not feel was a suitable offering. Now the
engineer's brother, although he would not own to it, knew English,
so I told him how the beauty of the road had lured me on, and how I
was interested in coffee-planting, and how much I admired the
magnificence of this plantation, and all the enterprise and energy
it represented.
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