This station is evidently on a ledge, for behind it the
ground falls steeply, and you get an uninterrupted
Panoramic view of
the Cameroon estuary and the great stretches of low swamp lands with
the Mungo and the Bimbia rivers, and their many creeks and channels,
and far away east the strange abrupt forms of the Rumby Mountains.
Herr Liebert says you can see Cameroon Government buildings from
here, if only the day is clear, though they are some forty miles
away. This view of them is, save a missionary of the Basel mission,
the only white society available at Buea.
I hear more details about the death of poor Freiherr von
Gravenreuth, whose fine monument of a seated lion I saw in the
Government House grounds in Cameroons the other day. Bush fighting
in these West African forests is dreadfully dangerous work. Hemmed
in by bush, in a narrow path along which you must pass slowly in
single file, you are a target for all and any natives invisibly
hidden in the undergrowth; and the war-hedge of Buea must have made
an additional danger and difficulty here for the attacking party.
The lieutenant and his small band of black soldiers had, after a
stiff fight, succeeded in forcing the entrance to this, when their
ammunition gave out, and they had to fall back. The Bueans,
regarding this as their victory, rallied, and a chance shot killed
the lieutenant instantly. A further expedition was promptly sent up
from Victoria and it wiped the error out of the Buean mind and
several Bueans with it.
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