Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/142

 until you have caught the legs, as they hover and swing to and fro over some mass of decaying wood stuff. At first I thought they were spiders hanging from some invisible thread, so strangely did they move in circumscribed spaces: but we swept our hands over them and found no thread, and then we went for the legs in sheer desperation, and found a tiny fly body belonging to them and not a tiny spider body.

We then made our way on to the slightly higher land fringing the swamp. There was at the river end of the swamp a belt of palms, and beyond this a belt of red-woods, acacias, and other trees, and passing through these, we were out on an open grass-covered country, with low, rolling hills, looking strangely English, with clumps of trees here and there, and running between the hills, in all directions, densely-wooded valleys—a pleasant, homely-looking country.

We wandered through a considerable lot of grass, wherein I silently observed there were millions of ticks, and we made for a group of hut-homesteads and chatted with the inhabitants, until Mr. Fildes' conscience smote him with the fact that he had not given out cook's stores for the mid-day meal. Then we made a short cut to the boat, which involved us in a lot of mud-hopping, and so home to 12 o'clock breakfast.

At breakfast I find Mr. Fildes regards it as his duty to do more scientific work, for he asks me to go to Woermann's farm, and I, not knowing where it is, say yes; inwardly trusting that the place may not be far away, and situated in a reasonably dry country, for I have lost all sense of reliance in Mr. Fildes' instinct of self-preservation—an instinct usually strong enough to keep a West Coaster from walking a mile. Along the windward coast, and in the Rivers, I have always been accustomed to be regarded as insane for my walking ways, but this gentleman is worth six of me any day, and worth sixty for Sundays, it's clear.

At 3 o'clock off we go, turning down the "Boulevard" towards Libreville, and then up a road to the right opposite Woermann's beach, and follow it through miles of grass over low hills. Here and there are huts new to me, and quite unlike the mud ones of the West Coast, or the grass ones of the Congo and Angola districts. They are far inferior to the