We Stayed A Few Minutes This Afternoon At Ashchyouka, Where There
Came Off To Us In A Canoe An Enterprising Young Frenchman Who Has
Planted And Tended A Coffee Plantation In This Out-Of-The-Way
Region, And Which Is Now, I Am Glad To Hear, Just Coming Into
Bearing.
After leaving Ashchyouka, high land showed to the N.E.,
and at 5.15, without evident cause to the uninitiated, the Move took
to whistling like a liner.
A few minutes later a factory shows up
on the hilly north bank, which is Woermann's; then just beyond and
behind it we see the Government Post; then Hatton and Cookson's
factory, all in a line. Opposite Hatton and Cookson's there was a
pretty little stern-wheel steamer nestling against the steep clay
bank of Lembarene Island when we come in sight, but she instantly
swept out from it in a perfect curve, which lay behind her marked in
frosted silver on the water as she dropt down river. I hear now she
was the Eclaireur, the stern-wheeler which runs up and down the
Ogowe in connection with the Chargeurs Reunis Company, subsidised by
the Government, and when the Move whistled, she was just completing
taking on 3,000 billets of wood for fuel. She comes up from the
Cape (Lopez) stoking half wood and half coal as far as Njole and
back to Lembarene; from Lembarene to the sea downwards she does on
wood. In a few minutes we have taken her berth close to the bank,
and tied up to a tree. The white engineer yells to the black
engineer "Tom-Tom: Haul out some of them fire and open them drains
one time," and the stokers, with hooks, pull out the glowing logs on
to the iron deck in front of the furnace door, and throw water over
them, and the Move sends a cloud of oil-laden steam against the
bank, coming perilously near scalding some of her black admirers
assembled there. I dare say she felt vicious because they had been
admiring the Eclaireur.
After a few minutes, I am escorted on to the broad verandah of
Hatton and Cookson's factory, and I sit down under a lamp, prepared
to contemplate, until dinner time, the wild beauty of the scene.
This idea does not get carried out; in the twinkling of an eye I am
stung all round the neck, and recognise there are lots too many
mosquitoes and sandflies in the scenery to permit of contemplation
of any kind. Never have I seen sandflies and mosquitoes in such
appalling quantities. With a wild ping of joy the latter made for
me, and I retired promptly into a dark corner of the verandah,
swearing horribly, but internally, and fought them. Mr. Hudson,
Agent-general, and Mr. Cockshut, Agent for the Ogowe, walk up and
down the beach in front, doubtless talking cargo, apparently
unconscious of mosquitoes; but by and by, while we are having
dinner, they get their share.
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