Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/145

 uniformly nine feet, and it must have cost a lot of money to make. It was made with the intention of being used for waggons drawn by oxen, which were to bring down all the produce of the coffee plantation, and the timber that might be cut down in the clearing for it, to Gaboon for shipment. A large house was erected and a quantity of coffee planted, and then the enterprise was abandoned by Messrs. Woermann, and the whole affair, coffee, road, and all is rapidly sinking back into the bush.

There is a considerable-sized Fan village just at the entrance to the farm in which is a big silk-cotton tree. It struck me as strange, after coming from Calabar where these trees are frequently smothered round the roots with fetish objects, to see nothing on this one save a framed and glazed image of the Virgin and Child. Just beyond the Fan town there is a little river.

When we get so far it is too late to proceed further, and nothing but this consideration, backed by the memory of one night when he was compelled to walk to Glass from the farm, prevents Mr. Fildes, I believe, from crossing to Corisco Bay.

So round we turn, and return in the same order we came in, Mr. Fildes lashing along first, I behind him, going like a clock, which was my one chance. When at last we reached the "Boulevard" he wanted to reverse this order, but remembering the awful state that the back of my blouse got in at Fernando Po from a black boot-lace I was reduced to employ as a stay-lace, I refuse to go in front, without explaining why.

27th.—Went up among the grass to see if there was anything to be got; ticks were, and there were any quantity of ants and flocks of very small birds, little finch-like people, with a soft, dull, gray-brown plumage, relieved by a shading of dark green on the back, and little crimson bills; they have a pretty twittering note, and are little bigger than butterflies; butterflies themselves are rare now. I see the small boys catch these birds with flake rubber as with birdlime. Down in the wooded hollows there are numbers of other birds, plantain-eaters, and the bird with the long, soft, rich, thrush-