Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/188

 able. It must be a melancholy place to live in, the very air lies heavy and silent. I never saw the trees stirred by a breeze the whole time I was there, even the broad plantain leaves seemed to stand sleeping day out and day in, motionless. This is because the mountains shelter it back and front; and on either side, promontories, running out from both banks, make a narrow winding gorge for the river channel. The only sign of motion you get is in the Ogowé; if you look at it you see, in spite of its dark quiet face, that it is sweeping past at a terrific pace. One great gray rock sticks up through it just below the mission beach, and from that lies ever a silver streak from the hindrance it gives the current. Every now and again you will notice a canoe full of wild, naked, or nearly naked savages, silent because they are Fans, and don't sing like Igalwas or M'pongwe when in canoes. They are either paddling very hard and creeping very slowly upwards, against one of the banks, or just keeping her head straight and going rapidly down. Now and again you will hear the laboured beat of the engines of either the Mové or Éclaireur, before you see the vessel and hear the warning shriek of their whistles; and you can watch her as she comes up fighting her way to Njole, or see her as she comes down, slipping past like a dream in a few seconds, and that is all. My first afternoon sufficed to allow of my seeing the station. M. Jacot reports it to have thirty-two buildings on it, but he is a slave to truth, and counts all the cook-houses, &c. Houses deserving of the name there are but three—the Gacons', the girls' and the Forgets'.

Mme. Forget took no end of care of me, and I look at my clean, tidy, comfortable room with terror, until I find a built out bath-room wherein I shall be able to make awful messes with fish, &c., without disgracing myself and country; and joy inexpressible! "no mosquitoes," yet still curtain. I told you before I had heard they ended at O Soamokita, but when I see people putting up mosquito-curtains over their beds I always have doubts; besides, along here you always find people deny having mosquitoes, if they can, without committing violent per-