Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/133

 African forest, and as far as the forest goes, starve me or kill me if you can."

As it is with the forest, so it is with the minds of the natives. Unless you live alone among the natives, you never get to know them; if you do this you gradually get a light into the true state of their mind-forest. At first you see nothing but a confused stupidity and crime; but when you get to see—well! as in the other forest,—you see things worth seeing. But it is beyond me to describe the process, so we will pass on to Congo Français.

My reasons for going to this wildest and most dangerous part of the West African regions were perfectly simple and reasonable. I had not found many fish in the Oil Rivers, and, as I have said, my one chance of getting a collection of fishes from a river north of the Congo lay in the attitude Mr. C. G. Hudson might see fit to assume towards ichthyology. Mr. Hudson I had met in 1893 at Kabinda, when he rescued me from dire dilemmas, and proved himself so reliable, that I had no hesitation in depending on his advice. Since those Kabinda days he had become a sort of commercial Bishop, i.e., an Agent-General for Messrs. Hatton and Cookson in Congo Français, and in this capacity had the power to let me get up the Ogowé river, the greatest river between the Niger and the Congo. This river is mainly known in England from the works of Mr. Du Chaillu, who, however, had the misfortune on both his expeditions to miss actually discovering it. Still, he knew it was there, and said so; and from his reports other explorers went out to look for it and duly found it; but of them hereafter. It has been in the possession of France nearly forty years now, and the French authorities keep quite as much order as one can expect along its navigable water way, considering that the density of the forest around it harbours and protects a set of notoriously savage tribes, chief among which are the Fans. These Fans are a great tribe that have, in the memory of living men, made their appearance in the regions known to white men, in a state of migration seawards, and are a bright, active, energetic sort of African, who by their pugnacious and predatory conduct do much to make one cease to regret and deplore the sloth and