Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/428

 one of the many little bays or indentations in the coast-line where the sea is breaking, we clamber up the bank and turn inland, still ankle deep in sand, and go through this museum of physical geography. First a specimen of grass land, then along a lane of thickly pleached bush, then down into a wood with a little (at present) nearly dried up swamp in its recesses; then up out on to an open heath which has recently been burnt and is covered with dead bracken and scorched oil palms; then through a village into grass again, and back to the beach to plough our way through seaweed across another bay; then round some remarkable rocks, up into a wood, then grass, and more bush and more beach, and up among a cluster of coco-palms, more grass; and then a long stretch of path with one side of it a thick hedge which is encroaching in a way that calls for energetic lopping, for the bush leans so across the path that you also have to lean at an angle of nearly 45° towards the other side. I begin to despair, my boots being full of sand, and to fear we shall never get through the specimens before nightfall. There is such an air of elaborate completeness about this museum, and we have not even commenced the glacier or river departments. However, at length we see what seems to be the entrance to an English park, and coming up to this find a beautiful avenue of mango trees.

Corisco evidently feels the dry season severely. The dry sandy soil is thickly strewn with dead leaves. At the end of the avenue there is a pretty wooden house, painted white, with its doors and window-frames painted a bold bright blue. Around it are a cluster of outbuildings like it, each mounted on poles, the little church, the store, and the house for the children in the mission school. A troop of children rush out and greet Eveke effusively. One of them, I am informed, is his brother, and he commences to bubble out conversation in Benga. I send Eveke off to find his mother, thinking he will like to get his greetings with her over unobserved, and after a few minutes she comes forward to greet me,—a pretty, bright-looking lady whom it is hard to believe old enough to be Eveke's mother; and not only Eveke's but the mother of a lot of strapping young women who come forward with her.