The Next Voyage I Made, Which Was On The Next Day, I Decided To Go
By Myself To The Factory, Which Is On The Other Side Of The Island,
And Did So.
I got some goods to buy fish with, and heard from Mr.
Cockshut that the poor boy-agent at Osoamokita, had committed
suicide.
It was a grievous thing. He was, as I have said, a
bright, intelligent young Frenchman; but living in the isolation,
surrounded by savage, tiresome tribes, the strain of his
responsibility had been too much for him. He had had a good deal of
fever, and the very kindly head agent for Woermann's had sent Dr.
Pelessier to see if he had not better be invalided home; but he told
the Doctor he was much better, and as he had no one at home to go to
he begged him not to send him, and the Doctor, to his subsequent
regret, gave in. No one knows, who has not been to West Africa, how
terrible is the life of a white man in one of these out-of-the-way
factories, with no white society, and with nothing to look at, day
out and day in, but the one set of objects - the forest, the river,
and the beach, which in a place like Osoamokita you cannot leave for
months at a time, and of which you soon know every plank and stone.
I felt utterly wretched as I started home again to come up to the
end of the island, and go round it and down to Andande; and paddled
on for some little time, before I noticed that I was making
absolutely no progress. I redoubled my exertions, and crept slowly
up to some rocks projecting above the water; but pass them I could
not, as the main current of the Ogowe flew in hollow swirls round
them against my canoe. Several passing canoefuls of natives gave me
good advice in Igalwa; but facts were facts, and the Ogowe was too
strong for me. After about twenty minutes an old Fan gentleman came
down river in a canoe and gave me good advice in Fan, and I got him
to take me in tow - that is to say, he got into my canoe and I held
on to his and we went back down river. I then saw his intention was
to take me across to that disreputable village, half Fan, half
Bakele, which is situated on the main bank of the river opposite the
island; this I disapproved of, because I had heard that some Senegal
soldiers who had gone over there, had been stripped of every rag
they had on, and maltreated; besides, it was growing very late, and
I wanted to get home to dinner. I communicated my feelings to my
pilot, who did not seem to understand at first, so I feared I should
have to knock them into him with the paddle; but at last he
understood I wanted to be landed on the island and duly landed me,
when he seemed much surprised at the reward I gave him in pocket-
handkerchiefs. Then I got a powerful young Igalwa dandy to paddle
me home.
I did not go to the island next day, but down below Fula, watching
the fish playing in the clear water, and the lizards and birds on
the rocky high banks; but on my next journey round to the factories
I got into another and a worse disaster. I went off there early one
morning; and thinking the only trouble lay in getting back up the
Ogowe, and having developed a theory that this might be minimised by
keeping very close to the island bank, I never gave a thought to
dangers attributive to going down river; so, having by now acquired
pace, my canoe shot out beyond the end rocks of the island into the
main stream. It took me a second to realise what had happened, and
another to find out I could not get the canoe out of the current
without upsetting it, and that I could not force her back up the
current, so there was nothing for it but to keep her head straight
now she had bolted. A group of native ladies, who had followed my
proceedings with much interest, shouted observations which I believe
to have been "Come back, come back; you'll be drowned." "Good-bye,
Susannah, don't you weep for me," I courteously retorted; and flew
past them and the factory beaches and things in general, keenly
watching for my chance to run my canoe up a siding, as it were, off
the current main line. I got it at last - a projecting spit of land
from the island with rocks projecting out of the water in front of
it bothered the current, and after a wild turn round or so, and a
near call from my terrified canoe trying to climb up a rock, I got
into slack water and took a pause in life's pleasures for a few
minutes. Knowing I must be near the end of the island, I went on
pretty close to the bank, finally got round into the Kangwe branch
of the Ogowe by a connecting creek, and after an hour's steady
paddling I fell in with three big canoes going up river; they took
me home as far as Fula, whence a short paddle landed me at Andande
only slightly late for supper, convinced that it was almost as safe
and far more amusing to be born lucky than wise.
Now I have described my circumnavigation of the island, I will
proceed to describe its inhabitants. The up-river end of Lembarene
Island is the most inhabited. A path round the upper part of the
island passes through a succession of Igalwa villages and by the
Roman Catholic missionary station. The slave villages belonging to
these Igalwas are away down the north face of the island, opposite
the Fan town of Fula, which I have mentioned.
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