Setting forth how the Voyager for a second time reaches the S.E.
crater, with some account of the pleasures incidental to camping out
in the said crater.
September 24th.--Lovely morning, the grey-white mist in the forest
makes it like a dream of Fairyland, each moss-grown tree stem
heavily gemmed with dewdrops. At 5.30 I stir the boys, for Sasu,
the sergeant, says he must go back to his military duties. The men
think we are all going back with him as he is our only guide, but I
send three of them down with orders to go back to Victoria--two
being of the original set I started with. They are surprised and
disgusted at being sent home, but they have got "hot foot," and
something wrong in the usual seat of African internal disturbances,
their "tummicks," and I am not thinking of starting a sanatorium for
abdominally-afflicted Africans in that crater plain above. Black
boy is the other boy returned, I do not want another of his attacks.
They go, and this leaves me in the forest camp with Kefalla, Xenia,
and Cook, and we start expecting the water sent for by Monrovia boy
yesterday forenoon. There are an abominable lot of bees about; they
do not give one a moment's peace, getting beneath the waterproof
sheets over the bed. The ground, bestrewn with leaves and dried
wood, is a mass of large flies rather like our common house-fly, but
both butterflies and beetles seem scarce; and I confess I do not
feel up to hunting much after yesterday's work, and deem it
advisable to rest. My face and particularly my lips are a misery to
me, having been blistered all over by yesterday's sun, and last
night I inadvertently whipped the skin all off one cheek with the
blanket, and it keeps on bleeding, and, horror of horrors, there is
no tea until that water comes. I wish I had got the mountaineering
spirit, for then I could say, "I'll never come to this sort of place
again, for you can get all you want in the Alps." I have been told
this by my mountaineering friends--I have never been there--and that
you can go and do all sorts of stupendous things all day, and come
back in the evening to table d'hote at an hotel; but as I have not
got the mountaineering spirit, I suppose I shall come fooling into
some such place as this as soon as I get the next chance.
About 8.30, to our delight, the gallant Monrovia boy comes through
the bush with a demijohn of water, and I get my tea, and give the
men the only half-pound of rice I have and a tin of meat, and they
eat, become merry, and chat over their absent companions in a
scornful, scandalous way. Who cares for hotels now? When one is in
a delightful place like this, one must work, so off I go to the
north into the forest, after giving the rest of the demijohn of
water into the Monrovia boy's charge with strict orders it is not to
be opened till my return. Quantities of beetles.
A little after two o'clock I return to camp, after having wandered
about in the forest and found three very deep holes, down which I
heaved rocks and in no case heard a splash. In one I did not hear
the rocks strike, owing to the great depth. I hate holes, and
especially do I hate these African ones, for I am frequently
falling, more or less, into them, and they will be my end.
The other demijohns of water have not arrived yet, and we are
getting anxious again because the men's food has not come up, and
they have been so exceedingly thirsty that they have drunk most of
the water--not, however, since it has been in Monrovia's charge; but
at 3.15 another boy comes through the bush with another demijohn of
water. We receive him gladly, and ask him about the chop. He knows
nothing about it. At 3.45 another boy comes through the bush with
another demijohn of water; we receive him kindly; HE does not know
anything about the chop. At 4.10 another boy comes through the bush
with another demijohn of water, and knowing nothing about the chop,
we are civil to him, and that's all.
A terrific tornado which has been lurking growling about then sits
down in the forest and bursts, wrapping us up in a lively kind of
fog, with its thunder, lightning, and rain. It was impossible to
hear, or make one's self heard at the distance of even a few paces,
because of the shrill squeal of the wind, the roar of the thunder,
and the rush of the rain on the trees round us. It was not like
having a storm burst over you in the least; you felt you were in the
middle of its engine-room when it had broken down badly. After half
an hour or so the thunder seemed to lift itself off the ground, and
the lightning came in sheets, instead of in great forks that flew
like flights of spears among the forest trees. The thunder,
however, had not settled things amicably with the mountain; it
roared its rage at Mungo, and Mungo answered back, quivering with a
rage as great, under our feet. One feels here as if one were
constantly dropping, unasked and unregarded, among painful and
violent discussions between the elemental powers of the Universe.
Mungo growls and swears in thunder at the sky, and sulks in white
mist all the morning, and then the sky answers back, hurling down
lightnings and rivers of water, with total disregard of Mungo's
visitors. The way the water rushes down from the mountain wall
through the watercourses in the jungle just above, and then at the
edge of the forest spreads out into a sheet of water that is an inch
deep, and that flies on past us in miniature cascades, trying the
while to put out our fire and so on, is--quite interesting. (I
exhausted my vocabulary on those boys yesterday.)
As soon as we saw what we were in for, we had thrown dry wood on to
the fire, and it blazed just as the rain came down, so with our
assistance it fought a good fight with its fellow elements, spitting
and hissing like a wild cat. It could have managed the water fairly
well, but the wind came, very nearly putting an end to it by
carrying away its protecting bough house, which settled on
"Professor" Kefalla, who burst out in a lecture on the foolishness
of mountaineering and the quantity of devils in this region. Just
in the midst of these joys another boy came through the bush with
another demijohn of water. We did not receive him even civilly; I
burst out laughing, and the boys went off in a roar, and we shouted
at him, "Where them chop?" "He live for come," said the boy, and we
then gave him a hearty welcome and a tot of rum, and an hour
afterwards two more boys appear, one carrying a sack of rice and
beef for the men, and the other a box for me from Herr Liebert,
containing a luxurious supply of biscuits, candles, tinned meats,
and a bottle of wine and one of beer.
We are now all happy, though exceeding damp, and the boys sit round
the fire, with their big iron pot full of beef and rice, busy
cooking while they talk. Wonderful accounts of our prodigies of
valour I hear given by Xenia, and terrible accounts of what they
have lived through from the others, and the men who have brought up
the demijohns and the chop recount the last news from Buea. James's
wife has run away again.
I have taken possession of two demijohns of water and the rum
demijohn, arranging them round the head of my bed. The worst of it
is those tiresome bees, as soon as the rain is over, come in
hundreds after the rum, and frighten me continually. The worthless
wretches get intoxicated on what they can suck from round the cork,
and then they stagger about on the ground buzzing malevolently.
When the boys have had the chop and a good smoke, we turn to and
make up the loads for to-morrow's start up the mountain, and then,
after more hot tea, I turn in on my camp bed--listening to the soft
sweet murmur of the trees and the pleasant, laughing chatter of the
men.
September 25th.--Rolled off the bed twice last night into the bush.
The rain has washed the ground away from under its off legs, so that
it tilts; and there were quantities of large longicorn beetles about
during the night--the sort with spiny backs; they kept on getting
themselves hitched on to my blankets and when I wanted civilly to
remove them they made a horrid fizzing noise and showed fight--
cocking their horns in a defiant way. I awake finally about 5 A.M.
soaked through to the skin. The waterproof sheet has had a label
sewn to it, so is not waterproof, and it has been raining softly but
amply for hours.
About seven we are off again, with Xenia, Head man, Cook, Monrovia
boy and a labourer from Buea--the water-carriers have gone home
after having had their morning chop.
We make for the face of the wall by a route to the left of that I
took on Monday, and when we are clambering up it, some 600 feet
above the hillocks, swish comes a terrific rain-storm at us
accompanied by a squealing, bitter cold wind. We can hear the roar
of the rain on the forest below, and hoping to get above it we keep
on; hoping, however, is vain. The dense mist that comes with it
prevents our seeing more than two yards in front, and we get too far
to the left. I am behind the band to-day, severely bringing up the
rear, and about 1 o'clock I hear shouts from the vanguard and when I
get up to them I find them sitting on the edge of one of the clefts
or scars in the mountain face.
I do not know how these quarry-like chasms have been formed. They
both look alike from below--the mountain wall comes down vertically
into them--and the bottom of this one slopes forward, so that if we
had had the misfortune when a little lower down to have gone a
little further to the left, we should have got on to the bottom of
it, and should have found ourselves walled in on three sides, and
had to retrace our steps; as it is we have just struck its right-
hand edge. And fortunately, the mist, thick as it is, has not been
sufficiently thick to lead the men to walk over it; for had they
done so they would have got killed, as the cliff arches in under so
that we look straight into the bottom of the scar some 200 or 300
feet below, when there is a split in the mist. The sides and bottom
are made of, and strewn with, white, moss-grown masses of volcanic
cinder rock, and sparsely shrubbed with gnarled trees which have
evidently been under fire--one of my boys tells me from the burning
of this face of the mountain by "the Major from Calabar" during the
previous dry season.
We keep on up a steep grass-covered slope, and finally reach the top
of the wall. The immense old crater floor before us is to-day the
site of a seething storm, and the peak itself quite invisible. My
boys are quite demoralised by the cold. I find most of them have
sold the blankets I gave them out at Buana; and those who have not
sold them have left them behind at Buea, from laziness perhaps, but
more possibly from a confidence in their powers to prevent us
getting so far.
I believe if I had collapsed too--the cold tempted me to do so as
nothing else can--they would have lain down and died in the cold
sleety rain.
I sight a clump of gnarled sparsely-foliaged trees bedraped heavily
with lichen, growing in a hollow among the rocks; thither I urge the
men for shelter and they go like storm-bewildered sheep. My bones
are shaking in my skin and my teeth in my head, for after the
experience I had had of the heat here on Monday I dared not clothe
myself heavily.
The men stand helpless under the trees, and I hastily take the load
of blankets Herr Liebert lent us off a boy's back and undo it,
throwing one blanket round each man, and opening my umbrella and
spreading it over the other blankets. Then I give them a tot of rum
apiece, as they sit huddled in their blankets, and tear up a lot of
the brittle, rotten wood from the trees and shrubs, getting horrid
thorns into my hands the while, and set to work getting a fire with
it and the driest of the moss from beneath the rocks. By the aid of
it and Xenia, who soon revived, and a carefully scraped up candle
and a box of matches, the fire soon blazes, Xenia holding a blanket
to shelter it, while I, with a cutlass, chop stakes to fix the
blankets on, so as to make a fire tent.
The other boys now revive, and I hustle them about to make more
fires, no easy work in the drenching rain, but work that has got to
be done. We soon get three well alight, and then I clutch a
blanket--a wringing wet blanket, but a comfort--and wrapping myself
round in it, issue orders for wood to be gathered and stored round
each fire to dry, and then stand over Cook while he makes the men's
already cooked chop hot over our first fire, when this is done
getting him to make me tea, or as it more truly should be called,
soup, for it contains bits of rice and beef, and the general taste
of the affair is wood smoke.
Kefalla by this time is in lecturing form again, so my mind is
relieved about him, although he says, "Oh, ma! It be cold, cold too
much. Too much cold kill we black man, all same for one as too much
sun kill you white man. Oh, ma!. . .," etc. I tell him they have
only got themselves to blame; if they had come up with me on Monday
we should have been hot enough, and missed this storm of rain.
When the boys have had their chop, and are curling themselves up
comfortably round their now blazing fires Xenia must needs start a
theory that there is a better place than this to camp in; he saw it
when he was with an unsuccessful expedition that got as far as this.
Kefalla is fool enough to go off with him to find this place; but
they soon return, chilled through again, and unsuccessful in their
quest. I gather that they have been to find caves. I wish they had
found caves, for I am not thinking of taking out a patent for our
present camp site.
The bitter wind and swishing rain keep on. We are to a certain
extent sheltered from the former, but the latter is of that
insinuating sort that nothing but a granite wall would keep off.
Just at sundown, however, as is usual in this country, the rain
ceases for a while, and I take this opportunity to get out my
seaman's jersey. When I have fought my way into it, I turn to
survey our position, and find I have been carrying on my battle on
the brink of an abysmal hole whose mouth is concealed among the
rocks and scraggly shrubs just above our camp. I heave rocks down
it, as we in Fanland would offer rocks to an Ombwiri, and hear them
go "knickity-knock, like a pebble in Carisbrook well." I think I
detect a far away splash, but it was an awesome way down. This
mountain seems set with these man-traps, and "some day some
gentleman's nigger" will get killed down one.
The mist has now cleared away from the peak, but lies all over the
lower world, and I take bearings of the three highest cones or peaks
carefully. Then I go away over the rocky ground southwards, and as
I stand looking round, the mist sea below is cleft in twain for a
few minutes by some fierce down-draught of wind from the peak, and I
get a strange, clear, sudden view right down to Ambas Bay. It is
just like looking down from one world into another. I think how
Odin hung and looked down into Nifelheim, and then of how hot, how
deliciously hot, it was away down there, and then the mist closes
over it. I shiver and go back to camp, for night is coming on, and
I know my men will require intellectual support in the matter of
procuring firewood.
The men are now quite happy; over each fire they have made a tent
with four sticks with a blanket on, a blanket that is too wet to
burn, though I have to make them brace the blankets to windward for
fear of their scorching.
The wood from the shrubs here is of an aromatic and a resinous
nature, which sounds nice, but it isn't; for the volumes of smoke it
gives off when burning are suffocating, and the boys, who sit almost
on the fire, are every few moments scrambling to their feet and
going apart to cough out smoke, like so many novices in training for
the profession of fire-eaters. However, they soon find that if they
roll themselves in their blankets, and lie on the ground to windward
they escape most of the smoke. They have divided up into three
parties: Kefalla and Xenia, who have struck up a great friendship,
take the lower, the most exposed fire. Head man, Cook, and Monrovia
Boy have the upper fire, and the labourer has the middle one--he
being an outcast for medical reasons. They are all steaming away
and smoking comfortably.
I form the noble resolution to keep awake, and rouse up any
gentleman who may catch on fire during the night, and see to wood
being put on the fires, so elaborately settle myself on my wooden
chop-box, wherein I have got all the lucifers which are not in the
soap-box. Owing to there not being a piece of ground the size of a
sixpenny piece level in this place, the arrangement of my box camp
takes time, but at last it is done to my complete satisfaction,
close to a tree trunk, and I think, as I wrap myself up in my two
wet blankets and lean against my tree, what a good thing it is to
know how to make one's self comfortable in a place like this. This
tree stem is perfection, just the right angle to be restful to one's
back, and one can rely all the time on Nature hereabouts not to let
one get thoroughly effete from luxurious comfort, so I lazily watch
and listen to Xenia and Kefalla at their fire hard by.
They begin talking to each other on their different tribal
societies; Kefalla is a Vey, Xenia a Liberian, so in the interests
of Science I give them two heads of tobacco to stimulate their
conversation. They receive them with tragic grief, having no pipe,
so in the interests of Science I undo my blankets and give them two
out of my portmanteau; then do myself up again and pretend to be
asleep. I am rewarded by getting some interesting details, and form
the opinion that both these worthies, in their pursuit of their
particular ju-jus, have come into contact with white prejudices, and
are now fugitives from religious persecution. I also observe they
have both their own ideas of happiness. Kefalla holds it lies in a
warm shirt, Xenia that it abides in warm trousers; and every half-
hour the former takes his shirt off, and holds it in the fire smoke,
and then puts it hastily on; and Xenia, who is the one and only
trouser wearer in our band, spends fifty per cent. of the night on
one leg struggling to get the other in or out of these garments,
when they are either coming off to be warmed, or going on after
warming.
There seem but few insects here. I have only got two moths to-
night--one pretty one with white wings with little red spots on,
like an old-fashioned petticoat such as an early Victorian-age lady
would have worn--the other a sweet thing in silver.
(Later, i.e., 2.15 A.M.). I have been asleep against that
abominable vegetable of a tree. It had its trunk covered with a
soft cushion of moss, and pretended to be a comfort--a right angle
to lean against, and a softly padded protection to the spine from
wind, and all that sort of thing; whereas the whole mortal time it
was nothing in this wretched world but a water-pipe, to conduct an
extra supply of water down my back. The water has simply streamed
down it, and formed a nice little pool in a rocky hollow where I
keep my feet, and I am chilled to the innermost bone, so have to
scramble up and drag my box to the side of Kefalla and Xenia's fire,
feeling sure I have contracted a fatal chill this time. I scrape
the ashes out of the fire into a heap, and put my sodden boots into
them, and they hiss merrily, and I resolve not to go to sleep again.
5 A.M.--Have been to sleep twice, and have fallen off my box bodily
into the fire in my wet blankets, and should for sure have put it
out like a bucket of cold water had not Xenia and Kefalla been
roused up by the smother I occasioned and rescued me--or the fire.
It is not raining now, but it is bitter cold and Cook is getting my
tea. I give the boys a lot of hot tea with a big handful of sugar
in, and they then get their own food hot.