Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/411

 have great compensations for this. We have no awful rows with each other in inconvenient places in Africa, or on our return home, and we can say to our critics: "Have you been there? No! Then go there or to whatever place you may happen to believe in! and till then—shut up." Mr. Winwood Reade accepted this sort of answer from Du Chaillu and went down to the regions of the Panavia Bight and Gaboon with a pre-determination to prove Du Chaillu was wrong; and I am bound to say I think he utterly failed. He did not follow Du Chaillu's course throughout by any means, doing little more than going in behind Corisco Bay and up the Gaboon estuary and the 'Como, a very good bit of work, and charmingly described in his Savage Africa, but he was not in the country rich in gorillas in either place.

Du Chaillu's journeys may be divided into two main groups, one of which is described in his first book, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, 1861. During this journey he ascended the Muni River as far as the Osheba country, the 'Como and Boqué as far as the Sierra del Cristal, marched overland from the Gaboon estuary to the rivers of the Delta of the Ogowé, and did a great deal of work in the whole of this great dangerous network; going up and down the N'Poulounay and the O'Rembo and striking the upper waters of the Ngunie, going to and fro among the tribes of the Sierra del Cristal and Achangoland mountains. On his second journey, made in 1864-65, he was entirely in regions south of the Ogowé. He went into Fernan Vaz, followed the O'Rembo for some little distance, and then struck away east by south, crossing the Ngunie at a point south of the spot he had reached on it when he discovered this river in 1858. Thence he went on into the mountains of Achangoland, where he was attacked and had to beat a very hurried retreat to the ocean.

Nearly the whole of Du Chaillu's two journeys were