Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/448

 top of an extensive shoal, running in most directions for miles, but particularly eastwards and southwards. Mail steamers that come in to call at Messrs. Holt's factory on little Eloby, and off the mouth of the Muni River where Hatton and Cookson have a factory, come into Corisco Bay, from the north, round to the east of the Eloby islands, and leave by the same channel, which averages six fathoms; and go south, if they want to, well outside to the west of all Corisco Bay's banks. I do not know why little Eloby Island should be the inhabited one. Big Eloby is a fine, likely-looking island. I was told by a Benga on Cape Esterias that it was once inhabited, but there was a war and the inhabitants were killed and carried off as slaves, and it has not since been re-colonised.

The northern part of the bay I have had no personal experience in navigating, but, according to the "Pilot" it has its drawbacks, and according to people who have to work it, these drawbacks are by no means down in all their beauty in the charts. It was in this bay that the Benguella struck on a something. I cannot be more definite because some of my friends who ought to know say it was a wreck—the old wreck of the David MacLean; others, who ought to know, say it was rocks; anyhow she tore, then and there, a big wound in herself, and nothing but the fine seamanship of Captain Eversfield ever got her up into Cameroons River and successfully beached her and repaired her there. During her convalescence she was the haven of refuge for the unfortunate white folk of Cameroon while the mutiny of the Dahomeyan soldiers went on ashore in 1894.

There is another wreck not down in the chart, just off Alondo, the south-east point of Corisco Island; it is that of the schooner Elfie, belonging to the American Presbyterian Mission.

This Corisco Bay, when you look at it on the map, seems an ideally formed harbour, and I once heard it strongly recommended as a suitable site for a coaling station; but a glance at its chart will show you it is only a subtly rock-set trap for vessels, imperfect as the chart is. Its width is thirty-five miles south by west and three-quarters west. This line touches the eastern end of Corisco Island, and eastwards of it the bay is fourteen miles deep.