Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/190

 a mutual friendship arising between us. I admire him sincercly. His personal appearance, his grand manner, the regular way in which he orders his life, going down regularly on to one particular stone at the river's brink to make his toilet; attending every meal during the day; and going to roost on one particular door-top, commands admiration and respect. But to me he behaved cruelly. He bullied me out of food at meal times, always winding up with a fight, holding on to my finger with his beak like a vice. I know he regards me as a defeated slave and took as mere due service my many rescues of him from behind a mirror, which hung tilted from the wall and behind which he used constantly to fall, dazzled by the vision of his own beauty as he flew up in front of the glass. There is another low-down pigeon domesticated at Talagouga, but he was a nobody, and Monsieur let him know it, in spite of several rebellions on his part. And there were also two very small, very black kittens which were being carefully, but alas unavailingly nursed, for their mother had abandoned them.

M. Forget did not think I should have much chance of getting fish for specimens, because he said, although the Fans catch plenty, they do not care to sell them, as they are the main article of food in this foodless region, still he would try and persuade them to bring them to me, and so successful were his efforts that that afternoon several Fans turned up with specimens. For these I gave, as usual when opening a trade in a district, fancy prices, a ruse that proved so successful here that I was soon at my wits' end for bottles and spirit—trade gin I might have got, but there is not sufficient alcohol in trade gin to preserve specimens in. Again M. Forget came to the rescue and let me have a bottle of alcohol out of the dispensary.

I got a fearful fright during my second night at Talagouga. I went to bed quite lulled into a sense of security by the mosquitolessness of the previous night. I was aroused between 2 and 3 o'clock. by acute pain from punctured wounds on the chest and the mosquito curtain completely down and smothering me. My first fear was that I had brought a mosquito or so of the Lembarene strain up to