Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/196

 main bank and dead trees, like those islands round and below Lembarene. However, scratched but safe we got to the upper end; and M. Forget went off to see after the orange, lime, banana, and plantain trees that had been planted on the upper end of the island where the mission houses are to be built. I wandered about seeing things, among others an encampment of Fans who are cutting down the timber to make room for the building, which is not yet commenced; and some wonderful tiny bays in the bank, along the southern side, where the current is less strong, or rather, I suppose, deflected against the mainland bank by the rock reef. These bays are filled in the dry season by banks of white sand in which sparkle fragments of mica, and when you walk on them they give out a musical, soft hum in a strange way. "Unfortunately," M. Forget says, so far no spring water has been found on the island. I say unfortunately in notes of quotation as I do not agree with him that the absence of spring water is a misfortune, but regard it as a blessing in disguise, for, to my way of thinking, the Ogowé water, exposed to the air, with its swift current, is safer stuff to drink than decoc terræ Africano—spring water, I mean.

While we are waiting for the return of the canoe which has gone to the mainland to deposit an Evangelist in a village, M. Forget has a palaver with the Fans, who are very slowly shaving the trees from the top of the hill. They agreed to do this thing for the wood, but it has since occurred to them that they would like to be paid wages as well. They are sweet unsophisticated children of nature, these West African tribes; little thoughts like these are constantly arising in their minds, and on all hands—missionary, governmental and trading—I am told these Fans are exceedingly treacherous and you can never trust them to hold to a bargain. I will say this is not the case with other African tribes I have come across. In the Rivers, for example, when a jam is made, it's made, and they will stick to it all, save the time clause, more honourably than twenty per cent. of white men would. Our canoe returns before "palaver done set"; and we go off home, the blue mists rising among the trees and reflecting in the Ogowé a deeper and more intense blue, adding