The Majority Of The
Village Had A Slight Acquaintance Already With This Interesting
Animal, Being, I Found, Adoomas.
They had made a settlement on
Kembe Island some two years or so ago.
Then the Fans came and
attacked them, and killed and ate several. The Adoomas left and
fled to the French authority at Njole and remained under its
guarding shadow until the French came up and chastised the Fans and
burnt their village; and the Adoomas - when things had quieted down
again and the Fans had gone off to build themselves a new village
for their burnt one - came back to Kembe Island and their plantain
patch. They had only done this a few months before my arrival and
had not had time to rebuild, hence the dilapidated state of the
village. They are, I am told, a Congo region tribe, whose country
lies south-west of Franceville, and, as I have already said, are the
tribe used by the French authorities to take convoys up and down the
Ogowe to Franceville, more to keep this route open than for
transport purposes; the rapids rendering it impracticable to take
heavy stores this way, and making it a thirty-six days' journey from
Njole with good luck. The practical route is via Loango and
Brazzaville. The Adoomas told us the convoy which had gone up with
the vivacious Government official had had trouble with the rapids
and had spent five days on Kondo Kondo, dragging up the canoes empty
by means of ropes and chains, carrying the cargo that was in them
along on land until they had passed the worst rapid and then
repacking. They added the information that the rapids were at their
worst just now, and entertained us with reminiscences of a poor
young French official who had been drowned in them last year - indeed
they were just as cheering as my white friends. As soon as my
dinner arrived they politely cleared out, and I heard the devout
M'bo holding a service for them, with hymns, in the street, and this
being over they returned to their drum and dance, keeping things up
distinctly late, for it was 11.10 P.M. when we first entered the
village.
While the men were getting their food I mounted guard over our
little possessions, and when they turned up to make things tidy in
my hut, I walked off down to the shore by a path, which we had
elaborately avoided when coming to the village, a very vertically
inclined, slippery little path, but still the one whereby the
natives went up and down to their canoes, which were kept tied up
amongst the rocks. The moon was rising, illumining the sky, but not
yet sending down her light on the foaming, flying Ogowe in its deep
ravine. The scene was divinely lovely; on every side out of the
formless gloom rose the peaks of the Sierra del Cristal. Lomba-
ngawku on the further side of the river surrounded by his companion
peaks, looked his grandest, silhouetted hard against the sky.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 83 of 371
Words from 43198 to 43710
of 194943
