Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/450

 band of forest that runs behind the bright yellow sands of the sea shore, which are again bordered to seaward by the white wall of surf. The mountains forming it are distinct in outline and fantastic in form, notably the one behind Batanga, which seen from seaward takes the exact form of a kneeling elephant. Its height is 1707 feet and I am told there is another one of almost identical shape in the same parallel of latitude on the East African Coast. It was first ascended by Sir Richard Burton, since then Mr. Newberry of Batanga has been up it. He tells me the view from the summit to the cast is into a mountainous country as far as eye can see. Several of the other peaks of this range that have been measured, and are visible from the sea, are higher than the Elephant. The Mitre, inland from Cape St. John, is 3940 feet; the highest of a stretch of hills called the Seven Hills, but belonging to one range, is 2786 feet. Mount Alouette is 3415 feet but none are so striking in form as Mount Elephant.

Behind Corisco Bay the range takes a trend inland, in a direction nearly at right angles to the shore, going inland to the south-east by south; but the details of its peaks are not known, this district being little explored. The range seems to turn more eastward still behind Cape Esterias, and runs towards, and unites with, that part of the Sierra del Cristal that cuts the course of the Ogowé some 170 miles from the sea at Talagouga; only a few isolated bubble-shaped hills, like Mount Sangatao, being in the Ogowé delta region. The position of this range when I struck its western flank, coming across from the Ogowé to the Rembwé, was some 140 to 150 miles inland, the main chain of this part lying to the eastward of where I was. The Rembwé cuts through a portion of it just above Agonjo, but the Rembwé itself rises in the range. The 'Como, which it joins with at 'Como Point to form the Gaboon estuary, is said to rise inlands behind this range, and is formed like the Muni by several streams uniting. Obanjo told me, when I was at Ajongo, that the range was going from there in a north by east direction, but of the upper part of the 'Como little or nothing is personally known by white men.

The inhabitants of the shores and hinterland of Corisco Bay are a wild set of savages of several tribes. The Benga were once