Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/186

 strong wooden framework on which is hung the bell, and then to the right of this structure, is another which is a roof supported by bare poles. At its lower end there is a little daïs on which stands a table and a chair, the yellow clay floor slopes abruptly up hill and the pews consist of round, none too thick, poles, neatly mounted on stumps, some ten inches from the ground. I should have thought those pews were quite perfection for an African congregation; but they tell me I am wrong and that even Elders go off sound asleep on them, quite comfortably, I suppose like bats; I don't mean upside down, you understand, but merely by an allied form of muscular action, the legs clinching on to the pole-pew during sleep. Beyond the church, the hillside is cut by a ravine, and out of the dense forest that grows in it runs a beautiful, clear stream. It has been dammed back above, for it is harnessed to M. Gacon's saw-mill. The building of this dam, the erection of the two big water-wheels, the saw, and the shed that covers it, indeed all the work connected with the affair, has been done by M. Gacon with his own hands, and not only has he dammed back the water, and put up his saw-mill, but he still works hard at it daily, cutting hundreds of fine red-wood planks for the service of the mission, shipping them by the Éclaireur, in flighty little canoes in this risky bit of river, and keeping a big store of them under his house—a bamboo structure, once Talagouga church—and all this with no other assistance but unskilled native labour. What this means you might understand a little if I were to write details from June to January, and then you were to come out here and take a turn at some such job yourself, to finish off your education. Across the other side of the ravine and high up, is perched the house which Dr. Nassau built, when he first established mission work on the Upper Ogowé. The house is now in ruins; but in front of it, as an illustration of the transitory nature of European life in West Africa, is the grave of Mrs. Nassau, among the great white blocks of quartz rock, its plain stone looking the one firm, permanent, human-made-thing about the place; below it, down the hill, are some houses inhabited by the native employés on the station: and passing these, still going down towards the river, you come to a wooden bridge spanning