Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/661

 side. I did not go up, for the day I was taken round it the weather was too rough for us to get to the ledge of rock on which you land. Strangely enough, this rocky and least fertile of all the islands in Ambas Bay is densely inhabited by a quantity of fisher-folk and their wives, families, pigs, and goats, all living together in a village on the top, facing seawards. Facing landwards they have made on the top of a sheer cliff a long bench, on which the fishermen sit in a row most of the day, watching Victoria, while their wives look after the rest of the inhabitants and do odd jobs generally, and I should imagine these good ladies must lead anxious lives for fear of either the children or the live stock falling out of the village into the sea. At night Ambas Bay is dotted all over with the torches of these fishermen, as they seem to do most of their fishing by spearing, and they are obliged to be industrious at their profession because among other inconveniences Bobia has no water, and all the water has to be bought and brought from the mainland and there is no room for a plantation. Besides, the pig population is too heavy to allow of agriculture. I deeply regret not having been able to bring home a Bobia pig. One would have caused a profound sensation at the Royal Agricultural Show. These interesting animals are black in colour, as indeed is common in African pigs, two-thirds head, and after a very small and very flat bit of body, end in an inordinately long tail. Their mental dispositions are lively, frolicsome and extremely nomadic and predatory. The Chief of Bobia, in a burst of affection, gave Herr von Lucke one just before I arrived in Victoria, and a good deal of my time while waiting to start up Mungo, was spent in assisting Idabea and the steward boys in chivying this pig, err von Lucke had given strict orders it was to be kept tied up, and solemnly warned his retainers they were responsible for its safe keeping. But somehow or another it was always slipping its cable and getting away, and I used to meet it away in the Botanical Gardens, and in fact in so many unexpected places that I should not have been surprised to have met it anywhere. After my first few days' experience of it, whenever I met it I used first to try and secure it, and then failing brilliantly, post off uphill and report its