Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/151

 prise, I do not think will ever be solved by importing foreign labour. Nor is it advisable that it should be, for our European Government puts a stop to the action of those causes which used to keep the native population down, intertribal wars, sacrifices, &c., &c.; and to the deportation of surplus population in the form of slaves, and so unless means of support are devised for "the indigenous ones," as Mrs. Gault calls them, Africa will have us to thank for some smart attacks of famine, for the natives, left to their own devices, will never cultivate the soil sufficiently to support a large population, and moreover a vast percentage of the West African soil is very poor, sour stuff, that will grow nothing but equally valueless vegetation. From this discourse you will argue I did get home at last.

June 2nd.—Nubia in, but she will not call at Batanga, so Mrs. Gault is stranded until some other steamer calls. Nubia has lost all her heavy anchors down south, where she reports the Calemma extra bad this year.

3rd.—Went alone for a long walk to the bend of the mangrove-swamp river to the east. It stank severely, but was most interesting, giving one the conditions of life in a mangrove-swamp in what you might call a pocket edition. Leaving this, I made my way north-west along native paths across stretches of grass growing on rolling hills and down through wooded valleys, each of which had a little stream in it, or a patch of swamp, with enormous arums and other water plants growing, and along through Fan villages, each with just one straight street, having a club-house at the alternate ends. I met in the forest a hunter, carrying home a deer he had shot; in addition to his musket, he carried a couple of long tufted spears, archaic in type. He was very chatty, and I gave him tobacco, and we talked sport, and on parting I gave him some more tobacco, because he kindly gave me a charm to enable me to see things in the forest. He was gratified, and said, "You ver nice," "Good-bye," "Good-day," "So long," "Good-night," which was very nice of him, as these phrases were evidently all the amiable greetings in English that he knew. The "So long" you often hear the natives in Gaboon say: it always sounds exceedingly quaint. They have of course