Trade Has A Fascination For Me, And Going Transversely Across The
Nine-Mile-Broad Rough Gaboon Estuary In An Unfinished Canoe With An
Inefficient Counterpane Sail Has None; But I Return Duty Bound To
This Unpleasant Subject.
We started very early in the morning.
We
reached the other side entangled in the trailing garments of the
night. I was thankful during that broiling hot day of one thing,
and that was that if Sister Ann was looking out across the river, as
was Sister Ann's invariable way of spending spare moments, Sister
Ann would never think I was in a canoe that made such audaciously
bad tacks, missed stays, got into irons, and in general behaved in a
way that ought to have lost her captain his certificate. Just as
the night came down, however, we reached the northern shore of the
Grand Gaboon at Dongila, just off the mouth of the 'Como, still some
eleven miles east of Konig Island, and further still from Glass, but
on the same side of the river, which seemed good work. The
foreshore here is very rocky, so we could not go close alongside but
anchored out among the rocks. At this place there is a considerable
village and a station of the Roman Catholic Mission. When we
arrived a nun was down on the shore with her school children, who
were busy catching shell-fish and generally merry-making. Obanjo
went ashore in the tender, and the holy sister kindly asked me, by
him, to come ashore and spend the night; but I was dead tired and
felt quite unfit for polite society after the long broiling hot day
and getting soaked by water that had washed on board.
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