Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/138

 statement which gives me the opportunity I have long desired of meeting Dr. Nassau, the great pioneer explorer of these regions and one of the greatest authorities on native subjects in all their bearings.

Although he has been out here, engaged in mission work, since 1851 he is an exceedingly active man, and has a strangely gracious, refined, courteous manner.

22nd.—Uninterrupted sea-shore investigations.

23rd.— M. Pichault conducts Mr. Huyghens and me into the town of Libreville to be registered.

The road from Glass to Libreville is, at moments, very lovely, and a fine piece of work for the country and the climate. Round Glass the land is swampy, a thing that probably induced the English to settle here when they came to Gaboon, for the English love, above all things, settling in, or as near as possible to, a good reeking, stinking swamp. We pass first along a made piece of road with the swamp on the left hand, and on the other, a sandy bush-grown piece of land with native houses on it, beyond which lies the sea-shore, and whenever the swamp chooses to go down to the edge of the shore there is an iron viaduct thrown across it. The making of this road cost the lives of seventy out of one hundred of the Tonkinese convicts engaged in its construction. After this swampy piece the road runs through sandy land, virtually the shore, with low hills on the one hand and the beach on the other.

A line of cocoanut palms has been planted along either side of the road for most of the way, looking beautiful but behaving badly, for there is a telephone wire running along it from Libreville to Glass, and these gossiping palms—the most inveterate chatterer in the vegetable kingdom is a cocoanut palm—talk to each other with their hard leaves on the wire, just as they did at Fernando Po, so that mere human beings can hardly get a word in edgeways. This irritates the human atom, and of course it uses bad words to the wire, and I fancy these are seventy-five per cent. of all the words that get through the palm leaves' patter.

Two and a half miles' walk brings us to the office of the Directeur de l'Administration de l'Intérieur, and we hang about