To the Mbíka (Hill) ; the Sources of the Gaboon.----return to the
Plateau.
Not yet despairing of a shot at or of capturing a "poor
relation," I persuaded Mr. Tippet to assemble the lieges and
offer them double what was proposed at Mbátá. No one, however,
appeared sanguine of success, the anthropoid keeps his distance
from the Fán. A trip to the interior was suggested, first up the
Mbokwe, and finally arranged for the Londo River. Information
about the country was, as usual, vague; one man made the stream
head two days off, the other a few hours, and Mr. Tippet's mind
fluctuated between fifty and one hundred miles.
The party was easily assembled, and we set out at 7 A.M. on April
14th. I and Selim had the dignity of a "dingy" to ourselves: Mr.
Tippet out of a little harem of twenty-five had chosen two wives
and sundry Abigails, his canoe, laden with some fifteen souls,
was nearly flush with the water. The beauties were somewhat
surly, they complained, like the sluggard, of too early waking
and swore that they would do nothing in the way of work, industry
being essentially servile Anne Coombe (Ankombe, daughter of Qua
ben), was a short, stout, good humoured lass, "'Lizer" (Eliza), I
regret to say, would not make the least exertion, and, when
called, always turned her back.
After dropping three miles down the Mbokwe River, we entered the
Londo influent: some three miles further on it fines down from a
width of eighty feet to a mere ditch, barred with trees, which
stop navigation. We landed on the left bank and walked into the
palaver-house of Fakanjok or Pakanjok, the village of a Fán head
man, called by Mr. Tippet "John Matoko." It was old, dirty and
tattered, showing signs of approaching removal. Out of the crowd
of men and women who nearly sat upon us, I had no difficulty in
hiring eight porters, thereby increasing our party to twenty-five
souls. These people carry on the shoulder, not as Africans always
should do, on the head: they even cross the fallen trunks which
act as rickety bridges, with one side of the body thus heavier
than the other.
The bush-path began by wheeling westward, as though we were
returning to Anenge-nenge; thence it struck south-eastwards, a
rhumb from which it rarely deviated. Though we were approaching
the sub-ranges of the Sierra del Crystal, the country was very
like that about Mbátá; streamlets flowing to the Mbokwe, wet
yellow soil forming slippery muds, unhealthy as unpleasant in the
morning sunshine; old and new clearings and plantations, mostly
of bananas, mere spots in the wide expanse of bush, and deserted
or half-inhabited villages. Shortly after noon we came to a
battle-field, where the heroes of Tippet-town had chanced to fall
in with their foes of Autá, a settlement distant eight or nine
miles. Both armies at once "tree'd" themselves behind trunks, and
worked at long bowls, the "bushmen," having only one gun and two
charges, lost four of their men, and the victors, who had no time
to carry off the slain, contented themselves with an arm or two
by way of gigot.
Probably the memory of this affair, which is still to be settled,
unfavourably impressed my escort. After a total of some two hours
(six miles) we arrived at a large "Oláko" or breakwind, a half-
face of leafy branches, and all insisted upon a long rest. I
objected, and then "palaver came up." We were at last frankly
told that the villages ahead were hostile, that we could not
proceed further in this direction, and that the people of
Fakanjok had thought my only object was to sight from afar a
golden prairie and a blue range beyond. The latter is known to
the French as "Tem," from a hillock crowned with a huge red-
trunked tree of that name.
Opposition was useless, so we turned back some twenty minutes to
a junction, and took the south-eastern instead of the eastern
line. Here the country was higher and drier, more hilly and
gravelly, the aneroid showing some 900 feet (29.11); it would be
exceptionally healthy in any but the rainy season. Before the
afternoon had well set in, a camping ground had been chosen in
the tall, thin forest, near the confluence of two dwarf streams,
whose vitreous waters, flowing over fine sand and quartz pebbles,
were no small recommendation. As the cooking proceeded, frowning
brows relaxed, and huge fires put to flight ill temper and the
sandfly. I had proposed lashing my hammock to one of the tree-
stumps, which are here some ten feet tall, the people, who swing
themselves for the purpose of felling, declare the upper wood to
be softer than below. "Public opinion," however, overruled me,
and made it fast to two old trunks. The night was a succession of
violent tornadoes, and during one of the most outrageous the
upper half of a "triste lignum," falling alongside of and grazing
my hammock, awoke me with its crash.
Next morning, when the rain had somewhat abated, I set out, by a
path whose makers were probably the ape and the squirrel-hunter,
in the direction of a rise, which the people called Mbika --The
hill. After a total of some two miles and a half, we found a
clearing upon the summit, but, although I climbed up a tree, the
bush was dense enough to conceal most of the surroundings.
According to the Fán, the Nkomo rises on the seaward or western
face of this Mbíká, whilst the Mbokwe, springing from its eastern
counterslope, runs south-west of the Massif and joins the former.
The one-tree hill known as "Tem" appeared a little to the north
of west: to the north-east we could see a river-fork, but none
knew its name.
Our return was enlivened by the inspection of an elephant-kraal,
where a herd had been trapped, drugged, and shot during the last
season. As the walls were very flimsy, I asked why the animals
did not break loose; the answer was that the Ngán (Mganga or
Fetishman) ran a line of poison vine along its crest, and that
the beasts, however wild, would not attempt to pass through it.
The natives showed me the liana which they described, still lying
on the poles of the broken corral. Mr. Preston, of the Gaboon
Mission, who first noticed it, and Mr. Wilson, who gives an
illustration of the scene (p. 363), declares that the creeper is
drawn around the herd when browsing; that as long as the animals
are unmolested they will not dash through the magic circle, and
that the fence of uprights is constructed outside it. The same
tale is told of all the wild elephant-hunters in the interior,
the Báti the Okáná, the Yefá, and the Sensobá.
Arrived at Tippet-town, I gave my "dashes," chiefly brass and
copper rods, bade an affectionate farewell, and then dropped down
stream without further ceremony. I had been disappointed a second
time in re gorilla, and nothing now remained but a retreat, which
time rendered necessary. The down-stream voyage was an easy
matter, and it need hardly be said far less unpleasant than the
painful toil up. From the Sanjika village on the Gaboon, the
"Tem" hill was seen bearing due east (Mag.) and the Mbíká 92°.
Behind them were glimpses of blue highland, rising in lumpy and
detached masses to the east; these are evidently sub-ranges of
the western Ghats, the Sierra del Crystal, which native
travellers described to me as a serrated broken line of rocky and
barren acicular mountains; tall, gravelly, waterless, and lying
about three days' journey beyond the screen of wooded hill. It is
probably sheltered to some extent from the damp sea-breeze, and
thus to the east there would be a "lee-land," dry, healthy and
elevated, which, corresponding with Ugogo on the Zanzibar-
Tanganyika line, would account for the light complexions of the
people. Early on the morning of Thursday, April 17th, the "Eliza"
was lying off Mr. R. B. N. Walker's factory, and I was again
received with customary hospitality by Mr. Hogg.
These two short trips gave me a just measure of the comparative
difficulties in travelling through Eastern and Western Africa,
and to a certain extent accounted for the huge vacuum which
disfigures the latter, a few miles behind the seaboard. The road
to Unyamwezi, for instance, has been trodden for centuries; the
people have become trained porters; they look forward annually to
visiting the coast, and they are accustomed to the sight of
strangers, Arabs and others. If war or blood-feud chance to close
one line, the general interests of the interior open another. But
in this section of Africa there is no way except from village to
village, and a blood-feud may shut it for months. The people have
not the habit of dealing with the foreigner, whom they look upon
as a portent, a walking ghost, an ill-omened apparition.
Porterage is in embryo, no scale of payment exists; and no dread
of cutting off a communication profitable to both importer and
exporter prevents the greedy barbarian plundering the stranger.
Captain Speke and I were fortunate in being the first whites who
seriously attempted the Lake Region; our only obstacles were the
European merchants at Zanzibar; the murder of M. Maizan, although
a bad example to the people, had been so punished as to render an
immediate repetition of the outrage improbable. I say immediate,
for, shortly after our return, the unfortunate Herr Roscher was
killed at the Hisonguni village, near the Rufuma River, without
apparent reason. [FN#22]
But M. du Chaillu had a very different task, and as far as he
went he did it well. His second expedition, in which an
accidental death raised the country against him, was fortunately
undertaken by a man in the prime of youth and strength; otherwise
he must have succumbed to a nine hours' run, wounded withal. In
East Africa when one of Lieutenant Cameron's "pagazis" happened
to kill a native, the white man was mulcted only in half his
cloth.
On the other hand, I see no reason why these untrodden lines
should be pronounced impossible, as a writer in the "Pall Mall"
has lately done, deterring the explorer from work which every day
would cover new ground. The Gaboon is by no means a bad point de
départ, whence the resolute traveller, with perseverance (Anglicè
time), a knowledge of the coast language, and good luck might
penetrate into the heart (proper) of Africa, and abolish the
white blot which still affronts us. His main difficulty would be
the heavy outlay; "impecuniosity" to him would represent the
scurvy and potted cat of the old Arctic voyager. But if he can
afford to travel regardless of delays and expense, and to place
depots of cloth, beads, and other "country-money" at every
hundred miles, Mpongwe-land would be one of the gateways to the
unknown regions of the Dark Continent. Moreover, every year we
hear some new account of travellers coming from the East.
Unfortunately men with £5,000 to £20,000 a year do not "plant the
lance in Africa," the old heroic days of the Spanish and
Portuguese exploring hidalgos have yet to dawn anew. We must now
look forward to subsidies from economical governments, and whilst
the Germans and Italians, especially the former, are so liberally
supported and adequately rewarded, Englishmen, as in the case of
the gallant Lieutenant Cameron, run the risk of being repudiated,
left penniless in the depths of Negro-land.