Now If Some Of These Good People I Know Would Only Go And
Distinguish Themselves, I Might Write A Sort Of County Family
History Of These Parts; But They Don't, And I Fancy Won't. For
Example, The Entrance - Or Should I Say The Exit?
- Of a broadish
little river is just away on the south bank.
If you go up this
river - it runs S.E. - you get to a good-sized lake; in this lake
there is an island called Adole; then out of the other side of the
lake there is another river which falls into the Ogowe main stream -
but that is not the point of the story, which is that on that island
of Adole, Ngouta, the interpreter, first saw the light. Why he ever
did - there or anywhere - Heaven only knows! I know I shall never
want to write his biography.
On the western bank end of that river going to Adole, there is an
Igalwa town, notable for a large quantity of fine white ducks and a
clump of Indian bamboo. My informants say, "No white man ever live
for this place," so I suppose the ducks and bamboo have been
imported by some black trader whose natal spot this is. The name of
this village is Wanderegwoma. Stuck on sandbank - I flew out and
shoved behind, leaving Ngouta to do the balancing performances in
the stern. This O'Rembo Vongo divides up just below here, I am
told, when we have re-embarked, into three streams. One goes into
the main Ogowe opposite Ayshouka in Nkami country - Nkami country
commences at Ayshouka and goes to the sea - one into the Ngumbi, and
one into the Nunghi - all in the Ouroungou country. Ayzingo now lies
N.E. according to Gray Shirt's arm. On our river there is here
another broad low island with its gold-coloured banks shining out,
seemingly barring the entire channel, but there is really a canoe
channel along by both banks.
We turn at this point into a river on the north bank that runs north
and south - the current is running very swift to the north. We run
down into it, and then, it being more than time enough for chop, we
push the canoe on to a sandbank in our new river, which I am told is
the Karkola. I, after having had my tea, wander off, and find
behind our high sandbank, which like all the other sandbanks above
water now, is getting grown over with hippo grass - a fine light
green grass, the beloved food of both hippo and manatee - a forest,
and entering this I notice a succession of strange mounds or heaps,
made up of branches, twigs, and leaves, and dead flowers. Many of
these heaps are recent, while others have fallen into decay.
Investigation shows they are burial places. Among the debris of an
old one there are human bones, and out from one of the new ones
comes a stench and a hurrying, exceedingly busy line of ants,
demonstrating what is going on. I own I thought these mounds were
some kind of bird's or animal's nest. They look entirely unhuman in
this desolate reach of forest. Leaving these, I go down to the
water edge of the sand, and find in it a quantity of pools of
varying breadth and expanse, but each surrounded by a rim of dark
red-brown deposit, which you can lift off the sand in a skin. On
the top of the water is a film of exquisite iridescent colours like
those on a soap bubble, only darker and brighter. In the river
alongside the sand, there are thousands of those beautiful little
fish with a black line each side of their tails. They are perfectly
tame, and I feed them with crumbs in my hand. After making every
effort to terrify the unknown object containing the food - gallant
bulls, quite two inches long, sidling up and snapping at my fingers-
-they come and feed right in the palm, so that I could have caught
them by the handful had I wished. There are also a lot of those
weird, semi-transparent, yellow, spotted little sandfish with cup-
shaped pectoral fins, which I see they use to enable them to make
their astoundingly long leaps. These fish are of a more nervous and
distrustful disposition, and hover round my hand but will not come
into it. Indeed I do not believe the other cheeky little fellows
would allow them to.
The men, having had their rest and their pipes, shout for me, and
off we go again. The Karkola {181} soon widens to about 100 feet;
it is evidently very deep here; the right bank (the east) is
forested, the left, low and shrubbed, one patch looking as if it
were being cleared for a plantation, but no village showing. A big
rock shows up on the right bank, which is a change from the clay and
sand, and soon the whole character of the landscape changes. We
come to a sharp turn in the river, from north and south to east and
west - the current very swift. The river channel dodges round
against a big bank of sword grass, and then widens out to the
breadth of the Thames at Putney. I am told that a river runs out of
it here to the west to Ouroungou country, and so I imagine this
Karkola falls ultimately into the Nazareth. We skirt the eastern
banks, which are covered with low grass with a scanty lot of trees
along the top. High land shows in the distance to the S.S.W. and
S.W., and then we suddenly turn up into a broad river or straith,
shaping our course N.N.E. On the opposite bank, on a high dwarf
cliff, is a Fan town. "All Fan now," says Singlet in anything but a
gratified tone of voice.
It is a strange, wild, lonely bit of the world we are now in,
apparently a lake or broad - full of sandbanks, some bare and some in
the course of developing into permanent islands by the growth on
them of that floating coarse grass, any joint of which being torn
off either by the current, a passing canoe, or hippos, floats down
and grows wherever it settles.
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