Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/314

 by securing Mr. MacTaggart's head they would do this, and also remove him from his then sphere of activity, the prevention of gin smuggling. Their plan seems excellent in theory; but I would not stake any money on its having succeeded, even if they had been able to get him well away on that door, which owing to his companions they were not. It is almost as risky to be notoriously brave among a West African tribe, as it is to be notoriously holy in the East. I know another case in which they desired to collect the head of a gentleman for their Ju Ju house. It showed in this case a lofty devotion on their part, for it would have caused them grave domestic inconvenience to have removed, at one fell swoop, their entire set of tradesmen. Still more did it show an artistic feeling of a high order; for the head is a very handsome one. Though they command my respect as a fellow collector by the care they took in the attempt to collect it by shooting the specimen in the legs, from other standpoints I am very glad they have failed. This idea of the advantage of having a big man's head is somewhat like the Eastern one that I remember reading of in one of Richard Burton's memoirs. He was once among some very pious Easterns disguised as a dervish and enjoying such an amount of admiration from them that he felt safe and content, until one day a native friend came to him, secretly, and advised him to fly, "because the people of this city are desirous of having the shrine of a very holy man among them both because of the spiritual advantages it bestows, and the temporal ones arising from pilgrims coming to the town from other places to visit it, and they have decided that you are so very holy, and wise, and learned in the Koran that you will do." Burton left.

But to return to that gorilla-land forest. All the rivers we crossed on the first, second, and third day I was told went into one or other of the branches of the Ogowé, showing that the long slope of land between the Ogowé and the Rembwé is towards the Ogowé. The stone of which the mountains were composed was that same hard black rock that I had found on the Sierra del Cristal, by the Ogowé rapids; only hereabouts there was not amongst it those great masses of white quartz,