The next day was one of rest. M. Mann botanized in the woody region, and

I visited some caves which the Judge had reported to be three miles off;

actual measurement placed them at 3400 feet. It was a beautiful morning

after a stormy night and a misty dawn; clouds like a congeries of white

balloons lay against the blue empyrean, and caught the radiance of the

golden shower from the east. The path lay to the west, along Earthwork

Crater; and presently it plunged into a perfumed wood spangled with the

yellow marigolds of the senecio, the pretty heath _Blæria spicata_, one

of the seventeen plants already found to be absolutely peculiar to

Abyssinia and Fernando Po, a red and yellow seed-casting impatiens,[91]

somewhat like a ‘lady’s slipper,’ and a honeysuckle-like plant unknown

to the herbalist. A clearing in the forest showed us a hunter’s old hut,

with evidence of modern tenure; and a little beyond it we found, in a

hollow tree, a deserted bee-hive. Presently we saw the caves: two holes

under a heap of lava, in a little barranca, a segment of one of those

arched tunnels or galleries found under lava currents in Iceland,

Bourbon, and elsewhere. The direction of the larger is from N. to S.,

and the dimensions are 24 feet long by 7 broad, and 2½ high. Water

deeply deposited in the soil trickles into it from above; the drops fall

with a ceaseless tinkle upon a slimy floor, into which the water

apparently sinks, and thus—perhaps a Cueva de Yelo may eventually be

found—it may become useful to settlers.

Monday, the 27th January—exactly a month from the day of my accident—was

appointed for our final ascent, and for the ceremony of taking

possession. The party consisted of M. Mann and myself, Selim and half a

dozen Krumen carrying water, provisions, and sleeping tackle. We started

at seven o’clock on a fine clear morning, soon emerged from the weald,

and sighted, beyond the ascending foreground of dry white clover,

spangled with gentian, dwarf heaths, little white bells (a

Wahlenbergia?), and a sechorium not unlike the wild aster of the Western

Prairies, Mount Helen, our Carmel. From that point we pursued a more

direct course than we had yet made, passed to the left of Mount Selim,

and after a short tough pull we reached the first nighting place, a deep

grassy hollow in the northern counterslope of Mount Isabel. The Krumen

straggled in long afterwards, pretending that they had missed the way:

as they had not turned a hair, it is more probable that they had sat

down and anathematized us in some quiet corner.

On the topmost lip of Mount Isabel we now lingered long to enjoy the

view behind us, which, though not so grand, was fully as peculiar as

that before us. Use, which lessens marvel, now enabled us to keep our

eyes off the Pico Grande. The southern horizon was a broken line of

numerous cones, each grisly with its own crater, some acute hills,

others truncated hillocks—the smallest thing of the lot was named Mount

‘Wood’—all gashed and broken in every direction, mostly grassy, but in

some places showing tufts and scatters of trees in their hollows on

their lee side: and they rose from a manner of plain, whose crevasses

showed it to be an old bed of degraded lava. After sketching this

subrange of the main line, we ascended Mount Isabel, and found another

‘vacuity obscure,’ whose north-western rim formed an excellent position

for a surveying pole: here we took a round of angles. On the north the

main spiracle of the great central fire rose splendid, steely blue and

sun-gilt; the strong east wind, sweeping the right side, kept clear the

deep azure against which its form stood sharply out. On the west of the

cone, the mist clouds,[92] gathering thick and heavy, melting away, but,

immediately renewed, as if spread by the hands of genii, formed by their

lightness and mobility a charming contrast with the fixed gigantesque

forms below.

Long before sunset we were forced to vacate our eyrie, which was nearly

the height of Fernando Po Peak. The thermometer showed only 45°, but the

cold dry gusts cut our hands. We retired before dark to our more genial

resting-place, where food and fire, and waterproofs, and hanging rocks

of basalt and conglomerate helped us through the evening and the dreary

night. From Mount Helen to Mount Isabel the tape showed 8648 feet, and

the total distance from camp was 16,462 feet. The crater in which we

slept was 10,187 feet, and the summit 10,590 feet above sea-level.

The next morning broke red, dull, and raw, with a high and gusty east

wind, which was an inducement to activity. At 7·30 A.M., after passing

the Gateway, we crossed Lava Bed No. 3 to a grassy crater, which Mr.

Saker had named Mount Leopold. We walked along its side, and then

resumed the passage of the stream of extinguished fire till we reached

the eastern base of a similar formation, Arthur Crater. As experience on

Mount Etna, at Madeira, and at other places proves, decomposed lava

makes a fruitful soil; it is, however, of slow growth, rarely attaining

any depth before 2000 years.[93] Altitude and latitude would greatly

modify calculations; excessive humidity and fierce sunshine would, of

course, accelerate the operation. In the dry atmosphere of Tenerife,

above the lower clouds there is little decay. The black cascades of

stones on the more northern Peak, though probably outpoured before the

age of man, appear to be the exudations of yesterday: the contrary must

be the case here. This bed, then, must be very modern; in the artery,

green with small mosses, and in the sheltered nooks and clefts were

found stunted ferns, thyme, a lovely red mint, large yellow immortelles,

and the delicate blue _Veronica Mannii_.

Not feeling disposed to tempt the cold hollow under Mount Hooker, where

Messrs. Calvo and Mann had passed the night, we left this lava-bed and

turned to the right, rounding the eastern selvage of Mount Arthur, which

in this direction is greatly elongated. We then crossed another lava-

stream, which encircles the cone, and anastomozes with No. 3: it is

composed of a soft green artery, rather more rugged than the former, and

a hard black vein. The unlovely surface was lit up with the red bloom of

the viscid _Blæria spicata_, and a chrysanthemum (?) with large golden

flowers and long glaucous leaves doubled with silvery white. The chief

arborescent plants were the leucothoë and monica, which attained a

height of twenty feet, but grew only in sheltered bottoms. There was a

beautiful gorse-like cytisus,[94] covered with yellow bloom, or short

black pods: it brought to mind the old lines:

Non me pascente capellæ,

Florentem cytisum et salices carpetis amaras.

Here it is a stiff, round-topped tree, not more than six feet high; the

last shrub found in the midst of the main cone had been dwarfed to six

inches. The hypericum also occurred only as a shrub, not taller than

eight feet.

After a two hours’ march, during which we had accomplished 6937 feet,

‘Black Beggar,’ who had accompanied Mr. Saker, pointed out to us a kind

of form in which the reverend gentleman had passed the night: we called

it Saker’s Camp. The position is a natural fosse between the slope of

Mount Arthur, which defends it from the angry north-easter, and the last

traversed lava-bed, which can supply a modicum of fuel. By B. P.

thermometer the height proved to be 10,595 above sea-level, about the

altitude of Mount Isabel’s summit, and five hundred feet more elevated

than Mount Etna.

The main cone rose temptingly near; we breakfasted hurriedly, and,

sending back three Krumen for water and other stores, we set out at 11

A.M. towards the south-eastern ridge of Victoria Mountain. Forty-five

minutes of stumbling over the rough lava placed us at the base of the

mighty spiracle, and in the depression forming a grassy rim round the

foundation we boiled the thermometer, and found that it showed 10,530

feet. We then impatiently resumed the path, thinking that, as the Pico

of Tenerife is not three geographical miles in circumference, we might

easily encompass the head of Camaroons, and obtain a view of a new

country towards the north. M. Mann pressed forwards from S.E. to E., and

through a gap in the clouds now fast rolling up the side he caught sight

of the lower platform, which he described as a ridge trending to the

N.E., and looking like a plain patched with white and dark green. I

espied a way northwards towards a dark chasm which afterwards proved to

be the mouth of Victoria Crater. Selim and Seabreeze had remained in

rear packing up the B. P. We were now scattered, and hallooing was of no

avail.

After making another tack, and walking over a true Mal Passo of lava

ridge and loose scoriæ, I reached Victoria Crater at 2 P.M., and sat

down to await the gathering of the party, which would inevitably be

attracted by the aspect of the spot. The position upon the highest crest

reminded me of the Chinese poet who celebrated the cataract of Leu

Shan:—

I am like a white bird among the clouds;

I insult the winds and invade the profound abyss.

Northwards was the dividing ridge separating Victoria from Albert

Crater. Southwards the former was burst by an eruption of once fiery

matter, whose greenish course ‘like a river manifold’ swept down the

cone’s side towards the wooded region below. The site was broken and

uneven, cumbered with huge _débris_, and at the point of efflux stood a

‘Lot’s Wife,’ a solitary pillar of honeycombed black basalt conspicuous

from the camp below. At 3 P.M. we met in the crater, and after remaining

for some time in the mist—unhappily I had no hygrometer—we hastened down

the south-western slope, reached the foot of Mount Milnes at 4 P.M., and

after another hour found ourselves in camp.

Over-eagerness had spoilt this day’s work. M. Mann had found the eastern

side more interesting than the western; it was more or less covered with

vegetation up to the crater, though completely exposed to the north-east

wind. He brought a few shrubs, ericanella, cytisus, the helichrysum, a

senecio which he was kind enough to name _S. Burtoni_, an anthospermum,

and a ‘petty rerect lycopodium,’ whose flowers, red in the lower

regions, here became a light pink. I added to my collection only some

specimens of the coarse quartzose stone before seen in Victoria

Mountains. We had both seen traces of deer, which seem to visit the

highest regions; but our guns had not once occasion to break the

silence.

The night was raw, the clouds threatening; and although the hill-

shoulder defended us from the cutting squalls, the hoar-frost bit our

hands and faces. At 2 P.M. the thermometer showed 37° (Fah.), and the

aspect was that of a thunderstorm, which, combined with snow, would not

have been pleasant to hutless men. Towards morning a gradual improvement

took place, and we enjoyed a wonderful dawn. The tall black Piton,

partially white, and powdered with congealed dew, rose sharply in the

dull morning air with a peculiarly ghostly effect. The atmosphere

kindled with a beautiful glow, soon quenching the stars and widening the

horizon, which half an hour before seemed to be closing upon us. Then a

flood of ruddy light poured over the eastern side of the Mount of

Heaven, leaving the other still cold and grey, and lastly the large red

sun arose, bringing in his train a bevy of rushing white clouds. The

appearance was that of a dry day, for which we had reason to be

grateful.

We started early. M. Mann had agreed to ascend Victoria Mountain by the

long south-eastern ridge, which forms a natural road. I undertook the

steely-blue slope of burnt scoriæ between Victoria and Albert Mountains:

all had deemed the passage not feasible, but ‘_è impossibile,

signorino_’ had in early youth sent me over the crumbling natural arch

at Sorrento. After an hour’s slow walking we—factotum Selim and three

Kruboys—had crossed at 8 A.M. the 4000 feet of broken lava and rugged

ground separating us from Mount Milnes. Here we halted for breakfast,

lit our fire, and leisurely prepared for work. A measurement from the

base to the apex of Victoria Mountain gave 3300 feet along the slope,

not quite the dimensions of Stromboli; the perpendicular height by B. P.

was 2166 feet.[95]

After forty-five minutes we resumed our march, working towards the

‘Half-way Rocks’ that rose from the slope of Victoria Mountain. Here,

after measuring a base, I halted to impress upon my mind the features of

the wild scene. Looking southwards no great extent of country was

visible from this point, and the breadth of the plateau shut out the sea

from sight: the atmosphere, however, was so clear that all the minutiæ

of scenery rose vivid and distinct. There was a perfect view of the

first or loftiest range—a Puy de Dôme highly magnified, and the vast

torrent of black lava surging and re-surging, winding, dividing, and

joining again between and around a ‘_plaine bombée_’ of cinder cones and

vent-hills, tall and short, naked and grass-clothed, perfect and

truncated, buttressing ridges, pit-craters, high flues, chimney-pots and

mamelons, Monteneros, Maladettas, Campi Phlegræi and clinker-fields—in

fact a compilation of volcanoes the slow growth of countless ages, that

fell off in long perspective towards the horizon, appeared for the first

time to flow from, not towards, my feet. The shape of the ‘Katakaumen’

before us seemed to be an immense Plutonic triangle whose apex was the

majestic Mount Isabel—in this direction it appeared pierced with many a

crater—which here completely shut out the view of the sub-ranges. On the

right, or westward, was a ledge, with a clean cut, as if made by the

hand of man, and beyond it nothing showed but clouds surging up from the

void below, giving it the appearance of resting on air. On the left

Mount Eliza and the Three Sisters proved themselves by blurred outline

and green tinge a connecting link between the Mal Pais and the Regione

Culta of the lesser altitudes. The further distance exposed undulations

of the fire torrent, rivers of black and green lava, and plains, here

black and bare, there untouched by oxidating influence, there tawny with

shrubs, mosses, and lichens, which flourish in 70° N. lat. in Europe.

The immediate foreground was worthy of the rest,—a rapid slope of black

scoriæ, loose, finely powdered, reeking in the fiery sun, exposing under

every footstep an under-crust of greyish ashes, and in rare places held

together by a block of lava or a bunch of lichens.

Viewed from this point the whole platform ground between Mount Isabel

and the Pico Grande resembles the vast and far older ‘Crater of

Elevation’—according to the _soulèvement_ theory of the great

‘upheavalists’ Baron von Buch and M. Elie de Beaumont, or submarine

according to Mr. Jukes—eight miles in diameter, with walls like giant

mountain ranges, and 7000 feet above sea-level, which characterizes the

Pico do Teyde. If such be the case, the central cone or crater of

eruption does not stand in the midst of the ‘cirque,’ but has last

broken out at the northern edge of the plateau. Thus the present Peak

would be the Vesuvian as opposed to the ancient Monte Somma cone.

After Half-Way Rocks it was necessary to cross the blue slide of

comminuted scoriæ stretching between Victoria and Albert mountains; and

this was done by treading on the edges of our feet, at times

condescending to crawl when the mass under us appeared, from its

extremity of steepness, likely to slide down to the base. This occupied

but a few minutes, and we all reached in safety the slope of Albert

Mountain, where a tolerably regular ridge-line of blocks and boulders

formed stepping-stones, and pointed out a stable path to the summit of

the Ash cone. Having measured a second base, we began the ascent

seriously. Again I noticed the utter absence of all suffering from the

subtilty of the air. The height is considerable, though not sufficient

of course to cause the effusion of blood which according to Humboldt

burst from his ears and lips on the Andes, or the sufferings of M. Gay-

Lussac in his balloon. The effects of sudden change from an equatorial

climate to an altitude which showed many of the features of Hecla, were

however mitigated probably by the high east wind. In half an hour after

leaving Half-Way Rocks I sat down upon the terrepleine to await the

arrival of the Krumen.

The Regione Deserta had a wild and weird aspect. Due north of the

boulder upon which I reposed rose a V-shaped dyke of close-textured grey

stone, apparently a jaspidified or altered schist, piled in cyclopean

blocks, as large as the Titanic stones in the unfinished quarries of

Baalbak, to the height of about twenty-five feet above ground. It

separated like a wall Victoria from Albert Crater; the longer or western

arm descended from the high rim of the latter, and the shorter bordered

the margin of the former. When the party reassembled our first visit was

to a smaller ‘_caldera_,’ which when seen from below looked like a chink

or gash in the neck of the cone, whose apex is the wall behind Albert

Crater. This escape-valve by which the ‘topping process’ was effected,

was found to be a deep and precipitous cavity opening southwards, and

separated from its E.N.E. neighbour, Albert Crater, by a thin rugged

wall of black trachyte. The next visit was to Albert Crater, a bowl

about 1000 feet in circumference, and whose greatest depth, viewed from

the S.E., is fifty yards: it also discharged to the south, and on the

N.E. and E. it is bounded by the V-shaped dyke before alluded to. The

form is a regular inverted cone, with a slope varying from 45° to

perpendicularity: the colours are red, white, and yellow where stone

occupies the surface, a deep metallic blue shows the slides of scoriæ,

and the sole is a floor of lamp-black. The north-western wall rises high

above the lower rim of the bowl, and when the eye is acquainted with the

details of the scene, it easily distinguishes from below this hog-shaped

back which is the loftiest portion of the Camaroons Mountain. Albert

Crater is at first view recognized as a more modern formation than

Victoria: whilst the latter, though exposed to the furious N.E. wind,

which everywhere renders vegetation poorer and scantier, has an abundant

growth of cryptogams, the former is almost bare. As in Stromboli, the

main axis of the cone’s ellipse appears to have been shifted, here,

however, the mountain has grown by subsequent eruptions, not by

accumulated ejections upon the north-eastern flank.

Meanwhile M. Mann had ascended this ‘Furnster Punkte,’ and found to his

regret one of the self-registering thermometers hanging only on one

hook, with the bulb uppermost. The wind had broken down the frail stand,

and thus the result of a month was lost. The spirit also had changed

from the usual red to a pale straw-yellow. Having re-arranged it and

enjoyed a good view of the unvisited mountain-chain to the N.E., he met

us below. We turned to the E.S.E. and ascended the tufty slope leading

to the head of Victoria Mountain. The distance was short, and we

presently gazed into the depths where brooded

Nox omnibus nigrior densiorque.

Having thus reached our goal, Selim hoisted on the ‘very lip of the

volcanic lion’ the Union Jack, and our last bottle of champagne was

emptied in honour of the day. As a token of our visit we left a slip of

sheet-lead upon which our names were roughly cut, and two sixpences in

an empty bottle—rather a bright idea, not emanating from my pericranium.

Mongo ma Loba, Theon Ochema is now ours. The B. P. showed Victoria

Mountain to be 12,700 feet above sea-level.[96]

After the ceremony we separated. M. Mann determined to return to camp,

collecting specimens on the way. I was by no means satisfied with what

had been done, and still felt that restlessness with which the good

Genius should inspire his _protégé_. So, leaving one Kruman to rest, and

taking with me Selim and Seabreeze, I climbed without difficulty the

V-shaped dyke which runs up the background of Albert Mountain, narrowing

and diminishing in height as it ascends. Then striking due north, we

fell into a kind of depression between the outer walls of the two

craters, a short, smooth valley of scoriæ, scantily dotted with stunted

herbage, and with dun-coloured butterflies, whose ill-fated bodies the

violent oblique wind had urged up from below. I have read of such things

in ascents of Mont Blanc; Richard Lander found these lepidopters

exceptionally numerous in the Nigerian regions; and in the ‘Elevation

Crater,’ Tenerife, Mr. Piazzi Smyth found drowned butterflies

(_Polyommatus Webbianus_) like floating spots of purple in a little

pool. A walk of about a quarter of a mile placed us at the further end

of the gorge; the cold mist-clouds had cleared away, and the unknown

land lay before me like a mappamondo. I felt as joyful as if my eyes had

gazed upon ‘all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.’ An

inverted arch of volcanic substance formed our foreground; on the right

it was striated with lines of green; on the left the slope showed barren

strata, hardly tinged with verdure. Over the key of the arch, and at the

base of the Peak upon which we stood, rose a small hillock, a parasite

showing verdant spots in the dreary waste of brown. Beyond it, on the

further side of a deep but gradual fall, began the background,

stretching far to the N.E., from 50° to 75°, bounded by a quoin-shaped

range of hill bluff to the eastward, and falling, with serrated back, to

the west. The lowlands at its base were white-yellow with dark streaks,

like the formation which we had seen looking southwards from Mount

Isabel, and the extreme distance of the hilly background might have been

five miles—in these misty regions the near appears far. Such was my

first glance at the ‘Rumbi Hills;’ they did not, as has been shown,

appear at all ‘towering in rude and rugged masses, like the tombstones

of a past earthquake.’[97] The counter-slope northwards was a perfect

copy of that over which we had passed to ascend the Peak. But Capt. Owen

saw them from a distance of many miles at sea, and the same phenomenon

appears to the voyager as he coasts along the Gaboon shores, whilst the

traveller in the interior finds the mountains assume entirely different

forms.

Finding an offset to this gorge from the north-west, we resumed our way,

winding through the hills, and were encouraged to persevere by the sight

of deep cracks and longitudinal fissures, with corresponding

indentations in the rock. These evidences, on a small scale, of modern

volcanic action, which are usually considered the preliminaries to the

formation of a crater,[98] were from one to two feet broad and from four

to five feet deep, with a clean cut hardly weathered; they proved,

however, to be extinct, nor could I detect in them any empyreumatic

odour. At this place, too, appeared extensive deposits of a fresh lava,

and curiously ropy filamentous basalt—Mr. Scrope compares it to barley-

sugar—which appeared at first sight, from its long vesicular grain, to

be the remains of a fossilized or imperfectly petrified forest. The

colour was sometimes ochreish by oxidation, more often a dull black with

the slightest admixture of green. In this form of lava exudation

Professor Smyth discovered obsidian on the Peak of Tenerife. Somewhat

disappointed by finding no vapour in the fissures, I crossed them, and,

bending round to the S.S.E., ascended the slope upon whose crest M. Mann

had placed his thermometers. It was about half a mile due north of the

Victoria Mountain, and the B. P. thermometers showed 180°·2 (Fah.),

temp. 62° = 13,129 feet, or 435 feet higher than Victoria Mountain.[99]

The summit of Camaroons is thus eighteen statute miles of indirect, and

thirteen geographical miles of direct, distance from Victoria.[100]

Assuming its altitude in round numbers at 13,000 feet, it is 3000 feet

higher than Etna, the highest volcano in Europe, and 3300 feet below

Mont Blanc, the highest European mountain. Situated in 4° N. lat., it is

3000 feet below the line of perpetual congelation, which, between the

equator and 10° of N. or S. lat., is usually laid down at 16,000 feet.

It must be observed that African mountains, like those of North America,

are stunted in comparison with the gigantic size of the continent, and

of its other geographical features—rivers, cataracts, lakes, and

prairies. The peaks of Abyssinia, once so grossly exaggerated, have been

reduced to 13,000 feet; and Miltsin, the loftiest of the Atlas, is now

assumed at 11,400. According to those who distribute mountains into ten

classes according to their heights—25,000 to 30,000 feet being No. 1,

and 1000 to 3000 being No. 10—Camaroons Mountain occupies the sixth

place, viz. those ranging from 12,000 to 14,000, as the Peak of Tenerife

(12,180), the Jungfrau (13,730), and Ophir in Sumatra (13,840). Finally

its phase is paroxysmal, neither permanently eruptive nor in a condition

of moderate activity.

Meanwhile Selim continued his course to the N.E., attracted by the

glaring colours of the neighbourhood, a tricolor of white, red, and

yellow, disposed in streaks along the perpendicular faces of dwarf

cliffs, and conspicuous in the brown and russet hues of its entourage.

As my B. P. observation was ended, he appeared in hot haste, as he had

seen something which justified even our risking a night, without any to

assist in ‘a finding,’ in the open. Hurriedly I descended the chasm,

climbed up the gay-tinted cliffs, and, turning a little eastward,

emerged upon a Solfatara in full action.

The site is on the northern counterslope of the high wall above Albert

Crater—unfortunately the B. P. apparatus struck work for want of

candle—a few feet below the summit, and in sight of the lower regions to

the N.E. The surface of the _soufrière_ is a convexity striated with

alternate bands of bright green moss, white lime, and sulphurous marl,

red and yellow. It was soft and yielding to the tread, and regular lines

of smoke-jets and puffs rose in rings and curls from the stripes,

somewhat like the Steamboat Springs in the Californian Sierra Nevada, or

the vapour from the ‘narix’ of the Pico de Teyde. The flues smelled

strongly of sulphur, and, though the wind blew cold and hard from the

north-east, the thermometer, raised four feet above the ground, showed

52°, and many small birds, attracted by the genial heat, were hopping

upon the green ground.[101] When there is much moisture in the

atmosphere the vapour must raise its fitful breaths in considerable

volumes, and perhaps exhibit at night flashes of lambent flame.

Here, then, was a discovery. Camaroons Mountain is so far _banale_ that

it follows the rule of other volcanoes in action, and rises in immediate

proximity to the sea. On the other hand, it has the high distinction of

being the only mountain on the body of the great continent whose fires

have not wholly been extinguished, which still

Spirat inexhaustum flagranti pectore sulphur.

Nor is there any cause to doubt that it will in some future time break

out again. Though it lacks its pristine vigour of destructiveness, the

vital principle is not extinct. It knows as yet none of those varieties

of form and character which denote permanently-burnt out, or even of

temporarily-quiescent volcanoes.[102]

This Burning Field, with its escapes of volcanic breath, explains many a

doubtful point. ‘From the present condition of the mountain’s surface,’

says Capt. W. Allen,[103] writing in 1842, ‘it must have been for ages

in a condition of repose, though there is reason to think it sometimes

betrays its latent fires. Mr. Lilley, a trader who resides near the

Camaroons River, says that he has seen flames near the summit. This

might have been accounted for by the practice of the natives, who set

fire to the grass in the dry season for the purpose of catching wild

animals; but several of the principal natives of Bimbia declare that,

about the year 1838, “fire came out of the ground.” They said “God made

it,” in contradistinction from that caused by the burning of the

grass.[104] They all saw it, and at Mongo they felt the earth shake like

a steamboat. The people feared that it would kill them all.’

Africa suffers sadly from want of all classic associations; like

America, she is yet sadly prosaic. No poet has sung the glories of this

‘pillared prop of heaven;’ no Proserpine has wandered over the Ennian

fields below; Vulcan has no temple here, where he and his associates—

Brontesque Steropesque et nudus arma Pyracmon,—

are revered by man; no Ennosigæus shakes earth with infernal force; no

Enceladus confined by Jupiter

Interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis,

Erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras,

Cum gemitu glomerat fundoque exæstuat imo.

Neither Plato nor Pliny ever visited our grand volcano, and the ‘fears

and reverence of ages’ have yet to be expressed. It is not, however,

wholly barbarous, having an antiquity of its own; and it is something

for us to boast that we have carried out a discovery, initiated, I

believe, by Hanno the Carthaginian in B.C. 600, and neglected until the

present day.

The following are the words of the Periplus (chap. xvi.):—Τέτταρας

δ’ἡμέρας φερόμενοι, νυκτὸς τὴν γῆν ἀφεωρῶμεν φλογὸς μεστήν. Ἐν μέσῳ δ’ἦν

ἠλιβατόν τι πῦρ τῶν ἄλλων μεῖζον ἁπτόμενον, ὡς ἐδόκει, τῶν ἄστρων. Τοῦτο

δ’ἡμέρας ὅρος ἐφαίνετο μέγιστον θεῶν ὄχημα καλούμενον. ‘After a run of

four days, by night we saw the land full of flame. And in the midst of

it was a kind of lofty fire, bigger than the rest, touching, it

appeared, the stars. This by day showed itself a very high mountain,

called Theon Ochema’—_i.e._ the Vahana, or Vehicle of the Gods. There is

absolutely no other mountain on the West Coast of Africa between Capes

Spartel and Good Hope that suits this description, and, despite the

discrepancy of the distance and the number of days which it occupied,

the proximity of the Gorilla country determines the spot.

And may not Dante—who, it will be remembered, distinctly described the

Southern Cross—have borrowed from the Periplus of Hanno? Ulysses when

tired, as might be expected, of the highly respectable but elderly

Penelope, set out once more on his travels to become wiser in the wisdom

of the world, of man’s vices and his virtues. He _passed through the

Pillars of Hercules_, leaving the morning sun right astern; and made

wings of his oars for the idle flight, always gaining upon the left:

_i.e._ he started westward and turned to the south-west. _He beheld all

the stars of the other pole, while their own was so low that it arose

not out of the sea-floor_: _i.e._ he was somewhere near the Equator.

‘Five times,’ he says, ‘the night had arisen underneath the moon, and

five times fallen, since we put forth upon the great deep, _when we

descried a dim mountain in the distance which appeared higher to me than

any I had seen before_.’ We rejoiced, and as soon mourned, for there

sprung a whirlwind from the new land (our N.E. wind?) and struck the

foremost frame of our vessel, and

Tre volte il fè girare con tutte l’acque,

E la quarta levar la poppa in suso,

E la prora ire in giù come altrui piacque,

Infin che ’l mar fra sopra noi richiuso.

Thus the adventurous explorer found himself in the Place paved with Good

Intentions, where doubtless he met many of the confraternity of Master

Shoe-tie.

Before taking final leave of the Solfatara, I sketched the scene

outstretched in wild magnificence, all desert as the burnt-up moon,

before us. Below my feet the counterslope fell rapidly, the angle being

much more abrupt than the slope—hence the difficulty with which Messrs.

Calvo and Mann had ascended it. On the right, looking to the E.N.E., the

horizon was a vast conglomeration of peaks, and waves of ground already

purpling in the obliquer rays of the sun. Beyond, the western end or

left shoulder of this range, showed a long perspective of mountains

rising in the distance; but their intervening depths and distances were

concealed by volumes of fleecy cumulus. At the western foot of the main

range, and far below the summit, rose a remarkable pyramidal formation,

with well-defined faces, which M. Mann afterwards called Mount Dorothy.

The hollow between Pico Grande and this south-western face of the Rumbi

Mountains justifies Captain Owen’s description: ‘a plain, with several

conical hills rising abruptly from the surface, and giving to the scene

a novel and extraordinary appearance.’ And on the extreme left, looking

to the N.W., and distant about half a mile, yawned a tremendous

crevasse, or voragine, not unlike that immense ‘_caldera_’ which in fine

weather appears upon the north-eastern side of Fernando Po Peak, a

little below the clear ground capping the region of forest. Suboval in

shape, it seemed to shelve down rapidly, and in places precipitously,

from the plain in which it was sunk; and clouds issued from the ground

seething and springing from its dark bosom like the smoke of a

conflagration. Having now seen three sides of the Pico Grande, I was

able to make a conjecture touching the local periphery of the

compilation forming the main cone, which may be assumed to be about

equal to that of Pico de Teyde, Tenerife.

But the shadows deepening in the livid air warned us away. We hurried

back to camp: in half an hour we found shelter under the lee of Mount

Milnes, and at 6 P.M. we were seated before a blazing bivouac-fire,

where the immediate adhibition of hot porridge and grog effectually

expelled the cold. M. Mann regretted that his precipitancy had prevented

his seeing the Solfatara; he promised himself, however, a visit to it on

the next day, when ascending the mountain to remove his thermometers. He

probably missed the place, as he says, ‘I visited the chinks[105] to

ascertain the temperature in them, which I found to be _lower_ than

outside; no smoke issuing from them.’ It is hardly necessary to say that

I had collected some of the burning sand and sulphur, of which a

canister full was forwarded to the Geological Museum in Jermyn Street.

The night was cross and noisy. A furious N.E. wind swept round ‘Arthur’s

Seat,’ and in its teeth, quaintly-shaped, ever-varying clouds—England,

flying elephants, sitting children, spectres, saurians, and other

monsters, vomiting many a flash of lightning—rose from the S.W. invading

the sky. I had expected to find unusual whiteness and brilliancy in the

heavenly bodies, to see each star shining like a planet, each planet

like a little moon; on the contrary, they were exceedingly dim, though

earth looked painted with Indian ink, and the peak shot up like a

shadowy silhouette. Presently the umbral mass passed away from above our

heads, and left exposed a canopy of open indigo-blue and black sky, the

fittest for the formation of heavy dew. Our night was excited and

disturbed, despite the soothing influence of ginger and rum. When we

awoke the thermometer showed 32° 50′ (Fah.), and when we arose 37°. The

white blankets were stiff, and our darker travelling rugs showed in

places a thick icy deposit. When it is remembered that our lair was 2500

feet below the summit, it is clear that rain must on the peak often

become snow, and that frost must prevail there all the year round.

On the morning of the 30th January we parted. M. Mann returned in light

marching order to recover his thermometers; I resumed the road to camp,

and took charge of the Krumen, promising to station some of them in

readiness for my companion, with requisite necessaries, at our old

nighting place on Mount Isabel. Setting out at 9 A.M., I occupied two

hours in crossing little more than a mile;[106] so cutting was the lava-

bed, and tedious the operation of taping. After breakfasting on Mount

Isabel we resumed our weary way—the advance on such occasions has its

pleasures, the return is irksome. I had resolved to make a bend

eastwards from Mount Helen, and to ascend the various peaks which range

between that cone and the Three Sisters. But the weather pronounced an

emphatic—No! Hardly had we passed Mount Selim than the storm from the

S.W. was upon us: it broke with heavy thunder, drops the size of my

thumb-nail, a sheet of water when the wind ceased; and lastly, as it

veered round to the north, with hail the size of buckshot, which made us

happy to take refuge under a natural grot of basalt.

It was the worst day we had experienced upon the mountains. The surface

became muddy and soppy, and in the myriad little pits formed between the

grass tussocks, water stood in ankle-deep puddles. After a truly

_mauvais pas_ arriving at Mount Helen, and sorely longing for a ‘sketch’

of ‘something,’ I sought the Kruboys, but did not find them. The

villains had taken leave from the clerk of the weather, and, privileged

by the storm, had bolted for camp. Two-Glass was sent to recall them:

meanwhile, wet—soppy wet,—cold and hungry, I waited vainly for two

hours, and gave up all hopes of further exploration that day. Hardly,

however, had we descended half a mile than the sky cleared, the sun

shone fiery till we perspired, and the face of the country opened with

beautiful distinctness. But it was now too late. Presently my three

recreants were found about half way down the hill, stretched luxuriously

before the hearth of heaven, and probably contrasting their wisdom with

their master’s stupidity. But ah!—let them laugh who win. After an

energetic scene, their lighter loads were placed on those who had not

deserted me, and they were sent back to M. Mann for the night. They

suffered more severely than I had intended. Not meeting M. Mann, and

prevented by darkness from returning, they had passed the night without

fire, and returned in the morning blue as nitrate of silver could have

made them. They shook the head of contrition when asked—What cheer? and

promised not to do it again, which promise they will keep until the very

first opportunity of breaking it.

A hot walk led us to camp: there is nothing more _triste_ than a return

home in Africa. All was foul with a smell of decayed vegetation, which

promised no good. Tom Bushman, the fellow in charge, pleaded sore

feet—he had improved a little hurt till it became serious—for not

sweeping; and the grass huts unexpectedly leaking, all our belongings

were as wet as the forest. As more rain rose from the N.E., Selim and I

lighted a fire. The Krumen sat perseveringly on their ‘hunkers:’ they

were told—‘no work, no food;’ they were hungry, those inexplicable

beings! yet all, except Black Beggar, the cook, went to bed supperless

rather than bring in a few logs of wood.

I was beginning to think that

Satis est requiescere lecto

Si licet et solito membra levare toro

Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem

Et——!

and to feel for M. Mann, when his voice was heard in camp, which he had

prudently preferred to the bivouac in the wilderness. He had removed his

thermometers from Albert Mountain, fixing the maximum temperature 55°,

the minimum 27°; and at the time of his return 35°. He had also boiled

his thermometers at the base and on the summit of Mount Hooker, which he

found to be 10,875 and 11,725—a good check to our altitude-observations

of the Cone. On the exposed N.E. of that mountain he found only a

graminea; the sheltered S.W. side, however, was entirely clothed with

hypericum, ericinella, cytisus, and other shrubs. He had also passed a

place where water stands for nine months in the year—a rare thing in

these anhydrous formations where there is an utter absence of

argillaceous substrata; and he had seen a beautiful white antelope

pacing leisurely away from him at the distance of sixty or seventy

yards.

[Footnote 90: In the Old Calabar and Camaroons Rivers the boys are fond

of eating a greyish clay brought up from under the water; I know not

whether it contains organic remains.]

[Footnote 91: Four species of this herbaceous plant have been found at

Fernando Po. The Proceedings of the Linnæan Society inform us that it is

common in the hill regions of tropical Africa, and that only one species

is known from Abyssinia and one from South Africa.]

[Footnote 92: They must have been upwards of 14,000 feet high.]

[Footnote 93: Observations made on the well-known lava-beds of Mount

Etna give about 1 inch of soil per century, 8 inches in 450 years, and 1

foot in 600.]

[Footnote 94: According to the Proceedings of the Linnæan Society, this

and two other leguminous plants (_Trifolium subrotundum_ and _sinense_)

found by M. Mann on Fernando Po Peak, are all essentially temperate

forms growing upon the Canary Islands, but ‘hitherto unknown in tropical

Africa, and known by one species only in Abyssinia.’]

[Footnote 95: The observation at the base, however, was taken on the

previous day at the very bottom of the cone, a much lower position than

the place from which we taped. Stromboli, the type of a permanently

active volcano, is an elliptical cone of nearly 3000 feet, rising from

deep water with a crater at the summit, breached upon its weakest side;

from this vent a plain steeper than the other sides of the mountain runs

to the sea.]

[Footnote 96: Capt. Owen’s altitude of Camaroons Mountain is 13,760

feet; Mr. Saker’s (46 feet more), 13,806; mine (641 less) 13,119. Mr.

Saker’s boiling point at a place 150 feet below the summit was 188°

(Fah.), temp. 59°. On the summit of Albert Mountain mine showed at

189°·2, temp. 62°. I prefer my own for this reason: M. Mann made the

foot of Mount Hooker 10,875 feet, I the base of the Great Peak 10,530

feet, and taping up the slope found the cone to be 3300 feet long, thus

rendering 13,800 feet too great an altitude. All, however, are mere

approximations.]

[Footnote 97: Capt. Owen, vol. ii. chap. xxviii.]

[Footnote 98: Mr. Scrope (‘Volcanoes,’ Longman and Co., 1862) clearly

explains how these fissures, injected by gas, steam, and lava from

beneath, burst open at the weak points and thus form the circular or

elliptical volcanic vent. The expansion and explosion of the pent-up

steam, when coming in contact with the external air, is like the

ignition of powder in a gun-barrel. The rocks, which are the walls of

the fissure, are broken up and yield by the equal pressure on every

side, and the character of the surface thus becomes approximately

circular and elliptical where the sides of the fissure offer more

resistance than its length.]

[Footnote 99: The regular gradation of the altitude observations speaks

favourably for the correctness of my B. P.]

[Footnote 100: The stages are:—

1. From Victoria to Bosumbo 23,420 feet.

2. „ Bosumbo to Mapanya 17,300 „

3. „ Mapanya to Ridge Camp 6,000 „

4. „ Ridge Camp to Black Crater 14,080 „

5. „ Black Crater to Spring Camp (Earthwork Crater) 9,594 „

6. „ Spring Camp to Mount Helen 7,814 „

7. „ Mount Helen to Mount Isabel 8,648 „

8. „ Mount Isabel to foot of Main Cone 10,232 „

9. „ Foot to summit of Main Cone 3,300 „

-------

Total 100,392 „

This would be a little upwards of 19 statute miles, but it involves a

détour to Saker’s Camp.]

[Footnote 101: Similarly on Tenerife the expiration of steam tempers the

sharpness of the air and attracts a population of swallows, linnets

(_Fringilla Teydensis_), bees, flies, and spiders: ‘a remarkable little

colony,’ says Mr. Piazzi Smyth, ‘an oasis of life and activity in the

midst of an elevated desert of lava.’]

[Footnote 102: Thus Vesuvius in the dormant period between 1139 A.D. and

1306 A.D. showed chestnut groves and standing pools on the sides and at

the bottom of the crater. These hanging woods are also to be seen in the

largest crater of Fernando Po.]

[Footnote 103: Vol. ii. chap. ix.]

[Footnote 104: This accident also often takes place. On the 2nd February

M. Mann saw the north side of the mountain on fire, and the

conflagration became extensive.]

[Footnote 105: As has been seen, there were no chinks in the Solfatara.

M. Mann probably alludes to the deep cracks in the lava-bed, where I had

vainly sought for vapour.]

[Footnote 106: More exactly, 6937 feet.]

CHAPTER VI.

RETURN TO FERNANDO PO.

My Christmas holidays were now done, and time was flying fast; the visit

had been for a fortnight; it had lasted six weeks. After collecting some

bouquets and pipe-sticks I apportioned the loads to the Krumen, who had

been limping about camp like dogs on three legs, and looking as wretched

as Lascars in the snows of London. By way of experiment Selim remarked

audibly that the lame might stay till well with M. Mann, whilst the

others returned to ‘Nanny Po.’ The effect was magical. Every back

straightened; _jarrets tendus_ were the rule; there was a forgotten

elasticity of gait and movement; one would have said they had been

‘gingered’ for the occasion. We laughed at them and _with_ them about

their rascality. The African, whose paralysis of the moral sense seems

to exceed that of the American, will always enjoy, if you do, the

detection of a trick.

At 11·50 A.M., on Friday the last of January, 1862, after thirty-nine

days from the 23rd December comfortably enough spent there, I left

Spring Camp, and struck due north through the dense wood that flanked

our late home. Taping delayed us till 3 P.M., and when we reached our

nighting-place the Krumen had again been busy with the water: they were

sent back to refill. In the evening I scaled Black Crater, ascertained

that it was 7328 feet high, and was nearly swept from the summit by the

furious wind. It afforded, however, a good view of the irregular group,

the isolated masses above and around, especially Mount Eliza, one of the

Three Sisters, which at the conjunction of the lava-field from above,

and the forest clothing the mountain-flanks to the sea, was half above

and half in the wood, the southern part and the crater being overgrown

with dense trees. This comparatively open ground to the north would be

highly advantageous for a settlement. Selim and I then revisited the

little plain immediately below the volcanic platform, which had

recommended itself to us as a sanitarium. The sharp wiry tussocks that

covered the colder regions had here disappeared, and the continuous

grass carpet promised a more genial temperature. Having visited the

southern edge of the small plateau, where it bends towards the base of

Little Camaroons, we retraced our steps with a profounder conviction of

the capabilities of the spot. On return we found that the Krumen had

built their fire and had pitched my waterproof tent on the ledge below

Black Crater, where our first hard night in high latitudes had been

passed. The wild easterly gale, dashing itself in little whirlwinds

against the dark cone, and eddying round it in furious gusts, soon saved

them the trouble of striking; and presently we found below a sheltered

spot with a few trees, more proper for a bivouac. The bees swarmed,

probably attracted by the moisture under the cinders and scoriæ. In

these milder regions they are fiercer than at Spring Camp. ‘Where there

are bees there is honey,’ says the Asiatic proverb. We sought, however,

but we did not find.

Shortly after we had turned in the wind fell almost to a calm. Exactly

at 7·29 P.M. a flash passed through the crystal sky, and we saw a fiery

ball crossing the heavens from south to north, leaving behind it a brush

of light like the tail of a comet. Remaining distinctly visible for half

an hour, after which its luminosity faded before the young moon, it

enabled me to measure its angle with a sextant, which gave 30° 20′. It

was the only example of the meteors which attracted Dr. Brydone’s

attention on Mount Etna.

We arose betimes on the next day; there was hard work before us. The dew

was heavy in the ‘nest,’ and in the cool clear dawn the thermometer

showed 46° (Fah.). Setting out at 6·30 A.M., we walked painfully over

2800 feet of the most rugged formation, broken and tossed about in

chaotic masses, immediately at the vent of Black Crater. After passing

the head of the fire current an easier descent began. We recounted six

distinct ridges, breaks in the stream, with ‘drops’ sharper than

elsewhere; but there may be sixty, if viewed from different points. In

some places the torrent, strangled by its banks, was not more than 100

feet; then, with all the accidents of a river, it would widen to 100

yards. The heat overhead became painful, and the black charred wood and

ashes under foot (the Krumen during their various journeys had burnt the

bush) formed an excellent reflecting instrument. Lower down there were

signs of rain in the soppiness of the soil; and the thick warm mists

surging up from the caldron below rendered taking bearings anything but

satisfactory. We crossed the stream, and rested at our old breakfasting

place about 11 A.M. After boiling thermometers at Fern Gate, we bade

adieu to the open fernery and plunged into the dense forest, bending to

the S.S.E. The descent here was detestable: slides of clay, drops and

falls, a cordage of llianas, and a network of tree-roots, made it longer

than the ascent. It was 9·30 before we entered Mapanya.

Old Balmat and the valiant Botani—we called him Sángo á Lobángo, ‘Lord

of Lies’—met us in the grass lane outside the settlement, and seemed not

to know what countenance to assume. I had made up my mind to night

there, but, singer-like, required no end of friendly pressing, which was

duly administered. My consent was given coyly, and only on condition

that provisions, fuel, and water should be supplied reasonably. There

was an attempt to extract cloth by means of firewood from the

Mokárá:[107] this, however, failed, and soon we saw at our feet a fowl,

together with kokos and a large plantain-branch for the Krumen. The hut

formerly occupied supplied us with ‘a refuge and a Bethel’ for the

night. The air was cold, the hens would force their way to the wonted

roosting-place, the hungry sandflies were unendurable to any but a

pachyderm, and the bossy dirty floor caused hours of _insomnie_, which

were devoted to eliminating the idea of a portable bed, chair, and

table, all in one. It is offered gratis to travellers.[108]

On Sunday the 2nd February I left Mapanya early, escorted _honoris

causâ_ by the chief Botani. Our pace was sharp, and after the sun had

risen a spear’s length the air was something between the atmosphere of a

Turkish bath and a London ballroom. The inhabitants of the several

settlements on our way behaved very differently. Tátá, the chief of a

little hamlet below Mapanya, actually ‘dashed’ me a fowl, which was

carried off in triumph for Mrs. Saker at Victoria. At ‘Logo,’ a large

clearing with nine huts near the Turu district, I found the Krumen, who

had preceded us, standing with their loads at the edge of the bush. A

fellow, armed with a musket and a sword, had levelled at them and caused

the halt. His object was of course to make them cast their packs and

fling themselves into the bush, under which circumstances the whole

village would have turned out, and the matter would have become serious.

By this time the Bakwiri had found out the Krumen to be perhaps greater

cowards than themselves. They were, however, disappointed. My gang knew

that the danger of being shot was problematical, but the punishment of

desertion was certain. Selim and I travelled from that place to nearly

the foot of the mountain with cocked revolvers; and whenever a naked

gentleman began to execute a war-dance, or to raise any more than

justifiable clamour, he was easily persuaded to ‘make himself scarce.’

There were greedy looks as the line of bundles defiled past the

settlements, and I thought it necessary to make special arrangements for

M. Mann’s safe descent.[109]

Near Logo we passed on the right a little hut neatly built of new

bamboos, and the doors were adorned with inverted T’s of white chalk. It

was probably a meeting-house or lodge for the Dyengo, an initiation like

the Jengo of the Camaroons River, which admits the Konja, or free-born,

of both sexes.

At 9·45 A.M. we made Bosumbo, where the drunken chief Myombi received us

with a civility bordering upon servility. The water of the rivulet near

this settlement was delicious after the moss-juice of Mapanya, which

tainted even green tea. Resuming our march, we met in the lower

slopes—it was market-day—long lines of women carrying on their backs and

heads panniers and baskets of the produce of the bay, which had a very

ancient and fish-like smell. The atmosphere of the forest became close

and fœtid after the pure æther of the highlands; and the dense

vegetation excluded even the searching ‘doctor,’ as the sea-breeze is

called in these latitudes. The road was strewed with tonto, a red fruit

eaten by monkeys, but not by Krumen. Thence we forded the little river,

and at 2·30 P.M. we passed through the double palisade of tree-trunks

which defends the new colony of Victoria Junior. My first steps were

directed towards the Ethiopic Ocean, where, without the ceremony of

disrobing, I walked straight in, compelling the Krumen to do the same.

Mrs. Saker, who would not leave the place till she had seen us all

return ‘safe and sound,’ received me with her usual kindness, and

provided us with a boat for the Camaroons River. I left Victoria on the

4th February, 1862, with a sigh.

Farewell, Camaroons! Farewell, beautiful heights! where so many calm and

quiet days have sped without sandflies, or mosquitoes, or prickly heat.

Adieu! happy rustic wilds! where I have spent so many pleasant weeks,

even in West Africa. Adieu! and may adieu in this case bear all the

significance of au revoir!

And now Victoria is shut in by the high hill-shoulders, the sentinel

islands fade in the distance, the peaks wax more aërial, less earth-

like,—

Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbræ;

whilst a huge purple mist, belted with a fantastic zone of fleecy white

cloud, drops its mysterious curtain upon the scene of my latest

adventure.

[Footnote 107: Mokara, plur. Bákárá, in the languages of this mountain

and river means white man. May it not be the origin of the American

negro’s Buckra man?]

[Footnote 108: Its form is this: two pieces of usual deal plank 4 feet ×

2—the sleeper’s legs need no care—connected by hinges of canvas, which

are better than leather in these humid lands, with a batten crosswise

under each end to raise it from the ground, and a hollow wooden pillow

at one extremity. Thus placed upon the floor it is chair and bed. When

acting as table it stands upon a strong St. Andrew’s cross, turning on

central pivots and capable of being lashed to the plank when on the

road. Those who object to its hardness as a couch have only to try the

salient points of an African hut floor.]

[Footnote 109: The botanist left Spring Camp for Ridge Camp on the 13th

of February, and at the latter place spent four days, of which two from

heavy rain were lost for collecting. On the 14th thunder lasted from 5

A.M. to 5 P.M., and ‘in the middle of the day it was so dark that the

screech-owls and large bats left their hiding-places and announced their

presence by their unpleasant cries.’ On the afternoon of the 17th, when

descending, he met Messrs. Smith and Johnson, who had kindly ascertained

that Botani had no unfriendly intentions. The next day he found Mapanya

without trouble, reached Victoria at noon, left it on the 24th for

Camaroons River, and returned to Fernando Po safely by the next

steamer.]

CONCLUSION.

The preceding pages will, I believe, have convinced the reader that the

Camaroons Mountain is, unlike Fernando Po, highly adapted for a colony

of liberated Africans, and for the Sanitarium now urgently required by

Lagos and the Bights.[110]

The means of preparing the country for human habitation are ready to our

hands. From the 45,000 refugee negroes in Canada, an ever-increasing

pauperdom, it would be easy and economical to raise 300 or 400 men with

a suitable proportion of families. Instead of sending such persons by

subscriptions to Yoruba, where, the ground being everywhere private

property, they will meet with all disfavour, and where the climate is

deadly, the emigrants can be settled, with equal benefit to themselves

and to the white race, at Camaroons, whose native chiefs, few and far

between, are ever ready to sell ground for reasonable sums.[111]

After long thinking upon the subject and consulting with others, I

venture to lay down—not dogmatically it is hoped—the conditions of

success in such an undertaking.

The classes preferred should be mechanics and artificers, lumberers and

labourers; and even if a small sum per annum were given to each male by

way of salary for the first year or two, the expenditure would not be

wasted. But the best inducement would be a grant of land on the

conditions that fair labour should be expended upon it, and that after

the fifth year of residence and free tenure it should be liable to a

small quit-rent for municipal purposes. The lots should not be

extravagant, as they were in the old days of that Father of Failures,

Sierra Leone. Three acres would suffice for a single man, five for

husband and wife, and seven to ten for a family.

The healthiest season for landing in this part of Western Africa is

about May, at the beginning of the rains. As this would entail enforced

idleness for six months, the colonists might be brought to Victoria

between June and September, and placed in hulks in Ambas Bay, with light

preparatory work during favourable weather till early November, when the

dries are set in, and the labours of bush-clearing and road-making might

begin. Thus it would be possible to avoid the terrible sickness that

destroyed the pioneers at Sierra Leone and Bulama, and which gave to

those places a permanent bad name.

The colonists would require medical comforts and rations—rice and

biscuit, beans and peas, salt pork and beef—for at least nine months:

they would find fish in abundance and sometimes a few vegetables in the

market. The superintendent should be furnished with a stock of cloth and

knives, matchets and tobacco, to pay the natives of the country for

service and supplies. Salt[112] should here, as throughout the Bights of

Benin and Biafra, be made one of the great staples of trade. The sale of

arms and ammunition and the purchase of slaves even for the purpose of

manumission should be forbidden under pain of deportation. And there

should be some limit to the introduction and the consumption of ardent

spirits.

The first work to be done would be to secure shelter ashore. The

mainland contains, as has been shown, stone and wood only too

plentifully, whilst the sea offers coralline and madrepore for lime. But

framehouses should be brought out from Europe or America, or there will

be the same amount of sickness as that caused at Fernando Po by the

refusal of the negroes to lodge the Spanish new-comers.

The best position, I have shown, for the first settlement would be

Mondori Island, at the mouth of Ambas Bay. The second would be Mount

Henry, about two hours’ walk N.N.E. of Victoria Mission

Establishment,[113] and about 1000 feet high. The third and last would

be the clear and grassy country about Black Crater, 5000 to 7000 feet

above sea-level, and distant not more than ten miles. The great

requisite at present is a corduroy road, practicable at all times of the

year—the path is now a mass of swampy mud during the rainy season.

After erecting the first habitations, the bush would be cleared after

the fashion of the aborigines, by cutting down the underwood and

thinning the trees,[114] leaving the largest standing for shade and to

break the force of the winds. Before the rains the clearings would be

burned, and 400 acres roughly prepared for yam and koko, cassava and

sweet potatoes, ground-nuts and Indian corn, bread-fruit and plantains,

which produce after the first year. The palm-oil tree and the cocoa-nut

are found growing wild in the lower altitudes; the only difficulty would

be to protect them. European vegetables will thrive.[115] After a time

cacao might be made a source of wealth to the colony, and prepare the

way for tobacco, coffee, and sugar. Live stock could be purchased in

small quantities for herding purposes from the people, or it might be

sent from England. Bullocks are fine animals upon these mountains, goats

are excellent, sheep are tolerable, and ‘the impure’ abound. Poultry and

pigeons are easily reared. The highlands, above 7000 feet, are capable,

as the footprints of large deer show, of becoming cattle-runs, and above

that altitude they are admirable warrens, awaiting only rabbits. Asses

and mules, when required for the sanitarium, could be procured at a

moderate price from Tenerife.

Thus the colonists, leaving the bleak and barren north, would soon be

enabled to dwell under their own roof-trees in their own land. It is

methinks erroneously said that Africa, who sends forth streams of

population, vetoes by the deadliness of her climate the reflux of the

West upon the East. The experiment is, however, worth trying, under

favourable circumstances, and the success of the native establishment

would be followed by a sanitarium equal to that of the Mahabaleshwar or

the Neilgherry Hills in Western India. The colonists would enjoy full

religious liberty and the means of normal education: the head-quarters

of the Camaroons Mission are within an easy day’s boating, and there are

already two native teachers at Victoria. By degrees the mail-steamers

would visit once a month the new settlement—it is directly in their way

between the Calabar and Camaroons Rivers, whereas they must make a

détour to the island of Fernando Po. And, finally, the coal-depôt and

the consulate would be removed from the starving Cove of malarious

Clarence to a place of health and plenty. With which I conclude.

A fin corona la obra.

[Footnote 110: During the winter of 1863 I was permitted by the ‘Times’

to show the advantages of Camaroons Mountain as a convict station, a

Batavia, or a Loanda for English criminals. Here the place will be

considered mainly with a view to a sanitarium.]

[Footnote 111: Above a certain altitude, certainly not exceeding 3500

out of 13,000 feet, the land is uninhabited and uncultivated; though

claimed by King William of Bimbia, it can be bought for a nominal sum.]

[Footnote 112: It is the most licit article of African commerce, its use

causes an additional and increasing demand, and it benefits the people

instead of demoralizing them, as the gunpowder, the muskets, and the

pestilent rum of the trade have ever done.]

[Footnote 113: This settlement should be surrounded by a deep ditch and

a strong palisade like Capt. Phil. Beaver’s at Bulama. The best form of

house is lumber upon stone pillars, which admit a free current of air

under the inhabited rooms.]

[Footnote 114: The present expense of felling a large trunk is 18 pence.

A small and moveable saw-mill worked by steam-engine or water-power

would make plankage worth only the price of labour.]

[Footnote 115: The reader will conceive some idea of the Fernandian

colonists when informed that there is not a kitchen garden—to say

nothing of a flower garden—in the place. Selim, my factotum, found no

difficulty in growing endive, onions, beans, cress, mustard, and a

variety of European vegetables.]

* * * * *

APPENDIX.

* * * * *

APPENDIX I

* * * * *

MR. GRAZILHIER’S DESCRIPTION OF THE AMBOZES COUNTRY.

[Extracted from Barbot, A.D. 1678-1706.]

The territory of Ambozes, which I said before is situated between Rio

del Rey and Rio Camarones, is very remarkable for the immense height of

the mountains it has near the seashore, which the Spaniards call Alta-

Tierra de Ambozi, and reckon them as high as the Peak of Teneriffe. The

coast runs from Rio del Rey to south-east; the little river Camarones

Pequeno[116] lies about five leagues from Rio del Rey; from it to Cape

Camarones, the northern point of Rio Camarones Grande, the coast is low

and woody—much more than it is from Little Camarones to Rio del Rey.

This Little Camarones River is properly a branch of Great Camarones

River,[117] and divides itself coming out from the latter into three

branches, all three running through the lands of the Ambozes, into the

Great Æthiopick Ocean; the principal of which, being the third river

south-east of Rio del Rey, is called Old Camarones by the English. This

third branch divides itself again into two other branches at a distance

from each other, running to S.E. and S.S.E. into the Great Camaroon

River; and thus with the ocean form three islands in the territory of

the Ambozes, wherein are the highest mountains, which extend near to the

north point or head of Great Camarones; and at west and south-west of

Old Camarones River are three round islands off at sea, two or three

leagues[118] from the main, as lofty and high land as the opposite

Ambozes hills. These islands are called by the Portuguese Ilhas Ambozes;

the channel betwixt them and the main is seven fathoms deep, though from

some distance off at sea they seem to touch the opposite continent,

which is properly the effect of the immense altitude of the hills on

either side of the channel; so that the biggest first-rate may sail

through it with safety, the tide there running as the wind sets. The

most northern island of the three lies four leagues from the Pescaria or

fishery of Rio del Rey, and the most southern of them five leagues to

the north of Cape Camarones, being the highest land of them all, and the

largest; the other, which is the smallest, lies betwixt the two former.

Though these little islands look but like large lofty rocks at a

distance, yet they swarm with people,[119] and are so fertile—especially

in palm-wine and oil—that the soil produces enough to subsist the

inhabitants. It is surprising to find there such abundance of palm-

trees, when there is not one to be seen on the opposite continent.[120]

The sea about the islands abounds in many sorts of good fish, which is

of great advantage to the islanders. The road for trading-ships is east

of the most southern island. The inhabitants, for the most part,

understand Portuguese pretty well, but are the worst Blacks of all

Guinea.[121] They form a sort of commonwealth of the three islands,

making continual descents with their canoes on the territory of Ambozes

on the main, and get from thence in their incursions a vast quantity of

provisions, and have no other commerce with those people. The territory

of Ambozes comprehends several villages on the west of Cape Camarones,

amongst which are those of Cesgis, Bodi, and Bodiwa, where there is a

little trade for slaves and for accory.[122] The Hollanders trade there

most of all Europeans, and export slaves for the same sorts of goods

they use to import at Rio del Rey. The Blacks there have the same names

for numbers as those of Camarones—one is ‘mo;’ two, ‘ba;’ three,

‘melella;’ four, ‘meley;’ and five, ‘matau,’ &c.[123]

The country of Ambozes is very fertile in all the sorts of plants and

fruits of Guinea, except palm-trees, of which not one is to be seen, as

I have already hinted; and to supply the defect of palm-wine they make a

liquor for their usual drink of a certain root called Gajanlas, boiled

in water, which is not disagreeable, and is, besides, a remedy for the

cholic. They have great stores of poultry and other eatable animals, for

which reason many European ships take provisions and refreshments

there.[124]

[Footnote 116: Now called the Bimbia River.—R. B.]

[Footnote 117: I doubt this, and believe them to have an independent

origin.—R. B.s]

[Footnote 118: Read miles.—R. B.]

[Footnote 119: Now reduced to some 3000 souls.—R. B.]

[Footnote 120: All this is changed. There are more palm-trees on the

continent than on the islands.—R. B.]

[Footnote 121: The same was said by Bosman of the poor timid Bubes of

Fernando Po, and with equal justice.—R. B.]

[Footnote 122: Aggri or Popo beads?—R. B.]

[Footnote 123: In the Isubu or Camarones dialect one is eoko or yoko;

five, bitanu, subject to an alliterative concord.—R. B.]

[Footnote 124: All this is also changed.—R. B.]

APPENDIX II.

MR. MERRICK’S TOUR IN WEST AFRICA.

[Extracted from the ‘Baptist Magazine’ for 1845.]

Mr. Merrick has lately visited the Camaroons Mountains, exploring a

district of which very little was known, in order to ascertain facts

respecting the state of the country and the condition of the inhabitants

which might be of service in directing future operations. Believing that

his account of his tour will be interesting to many of our readers, we

abridge it but slightly:—

‘Early on Tuesday morning, the 23rd April, Smith and I left our abode

for John King’s Town, from whence we started with our travelling-party

at half-past six for the Bwengga market.[125] Our band consisted of

eleven men and boys as attendants and carriers: Copper, my interpreter;

John King, my principal guide; Smith, and myself.[126] We were to have

walked all the way, but, at the request of John King, I agreed to go as

far as the Bwengga market by sea, with the understanding that, if

spared, we should return by land. The passage to the market lies through

a creek a short distance from King William’s Town, in a north-westerly

direction; and the market is called Bwengga, after the district in which

the people reside whose goods are sold at the market. We arrived at nine

o’clock, and met a number of people from Bimbia and its vicinity. Not

many of the people had yet come down from the interior, but several of

those who had, resorted to the canoe in which I sat, and gazed on me

with wonder and amazement. At twenty minutes to eleven I heard a rush,

and, looking round, saw the people coming down to the market in a body.

They approached with a trot, and hastened down the cliff to the canoes

for the purpose of bartering their goods. The chief article was

plantains, which were brought down in conical baskets fastened to the

back by means of strings round the arms and forehead. I need hardly say

that women were the principal carriers. About 200 came to market, among

whom there were not more than about 20 men who carried loads; and those

who did, had a much smaller proportion than the women. The plantains

were bartered for a few dried shrimps and fishes. Having disposed of

their goods, the people came up the cliff about twenty minutes after

eleven, and, resorting to the spot where I was sitting, viewed me with

perfect amazement. The simplicity of their manner formed a striking

contrast to the proud bearing and mien of the Camaroons and many of the

Bimbia gentlemen. It was with great difficulty that I obtained silence,

which being done, I made known in a few words the object of my intended

visit to the interior. I had spoken only a few sentences when one of the

gentlemen remarked that the majority of the people who had come to

market were very ignorant, that it was useless for me to speak to them,

and that I had better wait till I reached the Bwengga district, and then

speak to the gentlemen, who would listen attentively to all I had to

say. I replied that, if they were ignorant, the good word which I

intended to speak would make them wise. As soon as the poor women heard

this, they manifested their approbation by loud applause, and shortly

after proceeded homeward, while I accompanied John King to his farm,

which is in the vicinity of the Bwengga market. At a quarter after three

our party left John King’s farm for the Bwengga district, and, after

walking a short time along a track, reached the main road. This

path—though walked over every five days by hundreds of people—is very

narrow, and in many parts is a mere track. It runs for the most part

through a thicket by which the clouds are frequently obscured, and as a

walk is entirely devoid of interest. At five minutes before four we

ascended a very steep hill, from which time the country became rather

hilly. Five minutes after four we took a short rest, and proceeding on

our journey ascended another steep hill at half-past four, from which we

had a view of the sea, and, had it hot been for the mist, should, I

understand, have seen Cape Camaroon.[127] At five o’clock we came in

sight of a river, which John King informed me empties itself in the sea

near his town. Here our whole party refreshed themselves with a good

draught of water, which was very cool and pleasant. During our journey

we passed two or three farms near the road, on which plantains are

chiefly cultivated. I was informed by John King that a few people are

living in the bush near the farms.

‘At six o’clock we arrived at a group of houses, called by John King a

town, when I discovered that Bwengga was not a large town or city, as I

had all along imagined, but a district or a sort of county, in which are

many towns.[128] Our party sat down at this town to rest. Soon many of

the children were around me, while some, afraid of a white face,

remained at a distance with their eyes riveted on me.

‘After being regaled with a draught of palm-wine, our party proceeded

onward, and, passing another town which consisted of four or five

houses, arrived at our resting-place for the night at a quarter past

six. The chief or master of this town is called Ebore, and, according to

John King’s account, is his brother; but, during our journey, John

claimed brotherhood to so many that it is difficult to say who are

really related to him.[129] I, however, think that, if not his father’s

or mother’s child, Ebore is a near kinsman. We met Ebore sitting on a

stone near the door of his house, in conversation with one of his wives,

who appears very fond of him, and for whom, I think, Ebore entertains

much affection. Such reciprocal affection between husband and wife was

to me very gratifying, as in my few short tours in Africa I have seldom

seen it exhibited. The women are, for the most part, regarded and

treated as the slaves of their husbands, who possess unlimited power

over them, and do with them just what they please. When I was informed,

on my arrival at Ebore’s town, that he was king of the place, I at first

thought he was the ruler of the whole Bwengga district; but I soon

discovered my mistake, and found that he was only king and ruler over

his own wives and children. The mode of government in this part of

Africa is strictly patriarchal. I was kindly received by Ebore, and,

having seated myself near him, he began to expatiate on the great joy

and pleasure which he experienced in being visited by a white man—an

honour which he never expected, and which his father, though much more

wealthy than he, never enjoyed. He admired also my fearlessness, and

said that my heart must be very big, or I would never have come where a

single white man had never before set foot. Shortly after my arrival I

was saluted by the firing of muskets, not only at Ebore’s place, but at

some distant town whose inhabitants must have concluded that I had

arrived from the report of guns which they heard from Ebore’s town.

‘After dinner—which consisted of palm-oil and fish and plantains, of

which I ate heartily after my unusually long walk—I addressed the

people, and endeavoured to point out as plainly as I could the way of

salvation by Christ. My auditors listened patiently for a long time, and

while I spoke Ebore frequently exclaimed, “Toto—mene! toto—mene!”—“True!

true!” When I alluded to the folly of trusting to charms for deliverance

in times of danger, he remarked that what I said was quite correct, for

several men who had received charms to preserve them from danger and

death had, to his knowledge, been shot, and that God alone could protect

and save. At the close of my address, I sang, “Jesus shall reign,” &c.,

and concluded with prayer. When I was ready to go to bed, I was

conducted to a room about 10 feet long, 5½ feet wide, and 7 feet high to

the top of the roof. As my bed was placed across the room, my head lay

against one side of the wall, while my feet reached the other side; yet

I slept comfortably, and hope I felt grateful to God for having provided

for me a shelter among the heathen.[130] Ebore accompanied me to the

room, and remained while I read a portion of Scripture and prayed, and

during prayer knelt down. On rising from my knees, I told him my reasons

for reading the Word of God and praying to Him before retiring to rest.

As I found Ebore disinclined to leave the room, I undressed myself

before him. He was quite surprised at the number of garments I wore, and

viewed me from head to foot till I got into bed.[131]

‘Wednesday, April 24.

‘As soon as the door of my room was opened this morning, Ebore came to

pay his respects, and addressed me “Sanggwosu”—the term used by servants

when speaking to their masters. Before breakfast I read and explained to

Copper and John King, both of whom speak and understand English, the

second chapter of Matthew. Ebore came in while I was reading, and heard

from John King and Copper what I communicated to them. After explaining

the Scriptures, I showed Ebore the views of our Jamaica chapels, and

told him of the affection which the people of God in Jamaica entertained

for the African race. He listened with much attention and astonishment

when I told him of the vast sums of money subscribed by the Christian

world for the benefit of Africa, and said that if the people of God did

not love them they would never act in that manner.

‘After breakfast John King and Copper, Smith, and I, proceeded to the

town of a man called Futa, and sometimes Madiba—a short distance to the

south-east of Ebore’s place. On our arrival we learnt that he was not at

home, but would soon return. I afterwards discovered that he was at the

back part of his house, and directed John King to tell me he was out,

intending while we walked a little way to dress himself. After a short

walk to another town, where Mundere, the brother of Madiba, resides, we

returned to Madiba’s house, when he made his appearance in a cloth

round-jacket, a pretty wrapper, and a blue gossamer-hat. He was rather

reserved and formal, but listened with attention to the truths which I

declared. From the appearance and mien of Futa, I concluded that he was

a man of influence and generally respected, and have since discovered

that my conclusion was quite correct. Madiba’s town is situated on a

beautiful plain on the top of a hill. One of his houses is a large one

compared with the houses of the other chiefs, and is very well

constructed. He is evidently an ingenious man, and with a little

instruction would make an excellent carpenter.

‘While at Madiba’s house I tendered my hand to a man who refused to

shake it, and, on inquiring the reason, learnt that the man had recently

lost one of his relations, and that the people in the interior never

shake hands with their dearest friends for a certain time after the

death of a near relative. John King asked a question to-day which shows

the necessity of explaining figurative language when employed in

instructing the people. He inquired whether by giving the heart to God I

meant a man was to cut out his heart. He next inquired whether God had a

wife, and while I was speaking of the blessedness of Heaven, he asked

how it could be a “good good” country when the people who lived there

did not eat?[132] I explained to him that the spirit was not supported

by food—that the body alone required food for its sustentation, and that

after death the spirits of those who believed in Christ would live in

the enjoyment of the knowledge and love of God. In returning to Ebore’s

town we walked another way, and passed the town of an old man named

Dume, who appeared very glad to see me. My soul was distressed when I

thought that he would probably die before the Gospel could be fully and

properly explained to him.

‘I saw several women at Ebore’s town engaged in making palm-oil to-day.

The palm-nut, or fruit, is first boiled, after which the part which

contains the oil is separated from the kernel, and rolled up in small

balls, from which the oil is extracted by twisting it with the fingers.

A great deal of oil is left in the husk, which, with suitable machinery,

might be entirely extracted. We were to have proceeded on our journey

to-day, but Ebore would not allow us to do so. In the evening I

conversed again with the people about Christ and his salvation, when

Ebore remarked that he believed God had sent me among them to teach them

good things, and that he would willingly sit up all night to hear me.

Before retiring to rest I made Ebore a present of cloth and other

things, for which he expressed himself very grateful. Ebore is about

forty years of age, of the middle stature, but appears short, in

consequence of a bend in the back. His appearance is not calculated to

command respect, but there is in him a great deal of real kindness,

connected with humility, which cannot fail to excite the affections of

those that may become acquainted with him. There is, I fear, but little

firmness in his character, which would render him an unfit person to

depend upon in times of trouble or danger.

‘Unlike Ebore, Futa seems a man of great firmness and decision of

character. His manner and bearing, though the reverse of pride, are much

calculated to call forth respect, and, with his property (for he is

considered wealthy), will render him influential wherever he goes. Futa

is about the same age as Ebore, perhaps a little older; of the middle

stature, and rather slender, but well made.

‘Thursday, April 25.

‘We were to have proceeded this morning to the Sofo district, but

yesterday evening we heard that an influential and wealthy old man in

the Moriko district, named Manja, had made grand preparations for my

reception, and sent to say he hoped I would not fail to call on him. As

John King thought it prudent for us to visit Manja, we left for his

place at twenty-five minutes after six this morning.

‘Shortly after leaving Ebore’s we passed three small towns, and crossed

a small stream called Waugge, running from the west. Indeed, all the

rivers which we saw and crossed in our journey flowed from the north-

west. At a quarter after seven we crossed a beautiful stream about

thirty yards wide, called Ben-yua, in which a large artificial basin was

formed of stones, for the purpose of securing fishes. Our road at this

point lay through a thick bush, and is evidently an unfrequented path.

At fifteen minutes to eight we entered the Bore-pamba district, and

passed Mbumbo’s town. Three minutes after eight we passed another

stream, called the Ndunggu, and shortly after saw a small farm, on which

maize, cocoa,[133] and peas were growing; passed the towns of Korame,

Mukwure, Malape, and Monyunggo, and entered the Bakuku district; passed

the town of Masu, and at five minutes after nine arrived at Manja’s

town, in the Moriko district,[134] and seated myself under a tree, where

old Manja in a short time came to see me. He was dressed in a large

great-coat, which would have sat much better on a man twice his size.

His hand was quite hidden by his large garment, so that when he

presented it to me I had to shake his sleeve. I had not been seated long

before I was informed that two gentlemen from Bwea,[135] one of the last

districts on the way to the Camaroons Mountains, had come down to see

me, having understood that I had come for the purpose of visiting the

mountain. I exceedingly regretted that, whenever the people asked John

King the object of my visit, he always informed them that I was going to

the mountain, which led them to think I was in quest of treasures.

Indeed John King himself did not believe that the sole object of my

visit was to make known the Gospel of Salvation and find out the most

eligible districts for establishing missionary stations.[136] After a

few minutes’ conversation with Manja he left, but soon returned with a

goat as a present. I directed John King to have it killed for our party,

and began to declare the Gospel to the people who surrounded me; but

they seemed more desirous to gaze upon me and make a noise than to

listen to the solemn truths I was declaring. At breakfast I endeavoured

again to engage the people’s attention, but could not get them to listen

for any length of time. They were, however, quite delighted with an

Isubu lesson, which I took with me for the purpose of teaching the

children as I passed along, and were exceedingly astonished when I

exhibited my watch.

‘Many people from other districts resorted to Manja’s place to see me;

some, I learn, from a distance, to whom I explained the object of my

visit. In the afternoon Copper and I walked to the town of Junge, a

short distance west of Manja’s place, where I conversed for some time

about the Great Salvation, and instructed the people from my Isubu

lesson. They called my watch the moon, and said I was indeed a God-man,

for I had gone up to God, and brought down the moon with me. On my

return from Junge’s place Smith and I took a long walk, and spent a

sweet season in conversation about the universal dominion of Christ.

Since my arrival in Africa, nothing administers more joy to my soul than

reflection or conversation respecting the entire subjugation of the

nations of the earth to our Divine Redeemer. Indeed, if missionaries

would be strengthened for their work, they must at all times keep the

cheering truth before their minds. John King informed me this afternoon

that the men who came from the Bwea district said they would not conduct

me to the town without being well paid; but on finding that I evinced no

anxiety for going thither they left, with promise of meeting me at

Manja’s town early in the morning. African travellers must pay little

attention to the talk and noise of the people, but act with kindness,

firmness, prudence, and justice. Before going to bed I made old Manja a

present of cloth, &c., with which he was quite pleased. I also

distributed some needles among the women and girls, and clothed three of

Manja’s children, who were not a little delighted with their new garb.

‘Both at Ebore’s and Manja’s place I distributed some English peas,

which were kindly sent me by the St. Albans friends. When at Camaroons I

also distributed some of the same peas, and have no doubt that by this

time many of the Diwalla people have reaped a crop.[137]

‘Friday, April 26.

‘We were to have left Manja’s town early this morning, but were detained

by heavy rains till twelve o’clock, when we proceeded on our journey. At

twenty-five minutes after twelve we entered the Bokwei district, and at

the same time passed the town of Mamunde. Shortly after we passed

Morio’s town. At one o’clock the country became very hilly. We arrived

at Dickenye’s town at half-past one, which is situated in the Bwea

district. I was kindly received by Dickenye, who appeared very happy to

see me, and, like Ebore, dwelt for a long time on the great honour

bestowed on him by the visit of a white man. I, however, soon discovered

that great suspicions were entertained respecting my intended visit to

the mountain; and John King, in order to learn the real object of my

visit, took Smith aside, and questioned him closely on the subject.

Shortly after my arrival Dickenye told John King that there were immense

treasures on the mountain; that on the death of any influential person

in the Bwea district they had frequently seen cloths of every

description spread out on the mountain; that there was a great deal of

gunpowder, salt, and dollars on the mountain;[138] and they thanked John

King for bringing me to show them how to obtain the treasures. There was

also a “large water” on the mountain, where a white man was often seen,

and which no black man could pass; that they sometimes heard the report

of guns fired by the white man; that that white was my brother, and I

had come to see him and fetch him down from the mountain.

‘In vain I endeavoured to persuade them that the sole object of my visit

was to impart the knowledge of the true God, and to learn whether they

were willing to receive religious teachers. During the day I embraced

every opportunity of declaring the Gospel, but, like those of Manja’s

town, the Bwea people were more desirous to sing and dance and make a

noise than attend to what I had to say. In the afternoon several chiefs

came to see me. After they had listened to the truth a short time,

Dickenye, who is an incessant talker, began to address the people, after

which he danced about, and endeavoured to appear very great. He was

followed by another man, who wore a sort of tippet made by himself. He

also delivered an address, and, like Dickenye, danced and sung, and

capered about amidst the applause of the surrounding multitude. As

evening approached, John King informed me that all the gentlemen of the

district were to assemble after dark, in order to come to some decision

respecting the charge they were to make for allowing me to visit the

mountain. Accordingly we had a meeting in one of Dickenye’s houses in

the evening, when all the gentlemen strenuously maintained that there

were incalculable treasures on the mountain, and that John King had

brought me to obtain them. I replied that many of them would on the

morrow accompany me to the mountain, and would have an opportunity of

seeing all it contained, and that whatever I might bring down they were

at perfect liberty to retain. During my short life I have met many great

talkers, but never before heard so garrulous a man as Dickenye. He seems

never tired of chatting, and will scarcely allow any one else to speak a

word. None but those who have been engaged in an African palaver[139]

can form a correct idea of its tediousness. When you imagine that the

subject in debate has been brought to a close and about to be settled,

all on a sudden you find yourself at the point from whence you started,

and the objections which you had before answered, again brought forward

as if they were entirely new. This was the ordeal through which I had to

pass at Dickenye’s place; and what rendered it more trying was my

ignorance of the language, and consequent dependence on John King and

Copper for an interpretation of all that was said. The palaver being

closed, I returned to rest, after commending myself and our party to the

Divine protection, and as usual slept well.

‘Saturday, April 27.

‘We were to have started before daylight, but could not manage to get

away before fifteen minutes before seven. It is very difficult to get an

uncivilized African band to travel early. On my arrival at Dickenye’s I

was informed that his town was the nearest to the mountain in the Bwea

district, and I discovered this morning that my information was not

correct. Shortly after leaving Dickenye’s we passed three towns, all

near each other, and arrived at the last town on the way to the mountain

at a quarter after seven. At this time we saw a road to the south, which

I was informed leads to Rumby. At fifteen minutes to eight we arrived at

a river flowing from the north-west, in a south-westerly direction. At

this point there was a sensible change in the atmosphere. I drank of the

water of the river, whose bed was very rocky, and found it delightfully

cool. Near the river is a small abandoned farm, which was formerly

cultivated by some of the Bwea people. Before visiting the interior I

thought the people spent a great deal of their time in agricultural

pursuits, but was surprised during my journey to see so few farms, and

those so much neglected. All the plantain-farms I saw were covered with

grass and bush. Like those on the coast, the people in the country live

a life of almost absolute idleness. They do not set the smallest value

on time, and prefer spending days and weeks in hunting (though they not

unfrequently return home as empty as they went out) to cultivating the

soil. May they soon come under the influence of that Gospel which so

strongly condemns idleness, and inculcates the necessity of industrious

habits! But to resume our narrative. At eight o’clock the Bwea men who

had accompanied me stopped to perform a ceremony called Mosere.[140]

Dickenye’s brother Bunggome, with a mug of water in his hand, delivered

an address to the following effect:—“That the Moriko and Bwengga men

were unwilling that the Bwea people should engage in trade with Bimbia,

but that John King had kindly brought a white man to see them, who he

hoped would open a communication between the coast and the Bwea

district.” After the address a libation was poured out on the ground,

and the remainder of the water in the mug drank by all who had engaged

in the ceremony. I requested John King to say to them that the good word

which I had spoken to them was calculated to unite all people in one

common bond; and if they and the Moriko and Bwengga people attended to

it, instead of opposing each other in trade, they would live as

brethren, and do all in their power to promote the welfare of one

another. They appeared quite pleased with my remarks, and proceeded on

the journey with smiling countenances.

‘A few minutes before the Mosere ceremony was performed we crossed a

fine stream, whose water was very cold. At twenty minutes before ten we

arrived at another river-course, destitute of water, except a small

portion (rain-water, I suppose) in hollows of rocks, and which reminded

me of the pools of rain-water from which the Israelites were wont to

refresh themselves in their journeys to the Holy City. Our whole party

took a long draught of water here, as we were given to understand that

we should meet with no more during the remainder of our journey. Ten

minutes before ten we had an excellent view of the sea. Perhaps it is

necessary to observe that the whole district through which we passed is

very well furnished with hard wood. The wood is so hard that the Bwea

men, not possessing proper axes, are unable to fell the trees for the

purpose of making farms. Eight minutes after ten we passed the last farm

of the Bwea people on the way to the Camaroons Mountains. On this farm

is growing the finest piece of cocoa I have seen since my arrival in

Africa. I was rather surprised that the Bwea people should cultivate

farms so far from their towns, and thought they must have good reason

for doing so; and on inquiry found that they were in the habit of

spending whole weeks in the woods hunting the ngika, or buffalo, and

during that time cultivated the soil in the vicinity of the chase.

Twenty-five minutes before eleven the brother of Dickenye, perceiving

that we were drawing near the mountain, broke a small bush, and, holding

it in his hand, prayed aloud to his dead father and mother to protect

him from danger in approaching the mountain. I directed John King to

tell him that Obassa Luba[141] (the name by which the Deity is called)

alone could afford him help, and that his petitions should have been

presented to him. On hearing this he began to cry to Obassa Luba for

help. The evident fear of the people as they drew near the mountain led

me to conclude that they had never before travelled so far, though they

wished to make me believe that many of them had before ascended the

mountain. At twenty minutes before eleven, we arrived at a beautiful

plain extending along the base of the mountain a considerable way. This

plain is covered with a fine wing-grass, some of which I brought down as

a memorial of my visit. A quarter before eleven we had an extensive and

splendid view of the sea, rivers, and lowlands from the plain at the

base of the mountain. We saw very distinctly Balimba point and river,

and a little eastward the Bakuku, Munggo, and Bunji rivers and

country.[142] At ten minutes after eleven our band sat down on the

grassy plain to hold a consultation as to whether they should ascend the

mountain, at whose height and majestic aspect they were manifestly

alarmed. While with wonder and awe they gazed upon the grand and lofty

fabric, Smith observed that, if they were so alarmed at beholding the

works of the Almighty, what would be the state of their mind when they

beheld the Almighty himself on the Judgment-day? John King, who had all

along spoken of his determination to go to the very apex of the

mountain, declared that he could not proceed further; while the Bwea men

said it was useless to accompany me if no treasures were to be obtained.

I reminded them that I had agreed to pay them to go with me, and, if

they broke their engagement, they could not expect payment. At length

ten of the Bwea men made up their minds to accompany me, and with Smith,

Copper, and myself, started for the much-dreaded Munggo,[143] as the

mountain is called in the Isubu tongue. With much difficulty we ascended

about a third of the mountain at six minutes after one, where it was so

cold that I judged it unwise to proceed higher with men who had only a

piece of cloth around their loins. This, with other reasons, induced me

to descend the mountain before reaching its apex, though I must confess

I did so very reluctantly. At the elevation on which I stood I

experienced all the sensations produced by an English winter. My

nostrils ran copiously, my eyes were much affected, and my fingers

stiff. The faces of my attendants were covered with a sort of white

incrustation, such as may be seen on the skins of black men in England

during winter. Their eyes were also much affected, and Dickenye’s

brother had a fit of ague, and trembled like an aspen-leaf. The mountain

after a certain height (perhaps from about the sixth of its altitude

from the base) is entirely covered with a fine and beautifully green

grass, with here and there a few shrubs. The soil is composed of small

pieces of soft stone, which have evidently been subject to the action of

fire, and which frequently crumbled or resigned their places as the

weight of our bodies rested upon them in ascending. From the point on

which we stood we had an excellent view of the lowlands and the

different rivers in the Bight of Biafra. We began to descend the

mountain about a quarter after one, and arrived at the grassy plain at

ten minutes before three, from whence, though much fatigued, we

immediately proceeded homeward. When we had nearly reached our resting-

place the Bwea men assembled, and agreed to tell the people on their

arrival that there were immense treasures on the mountain, but that I

had resolved on not taking them till my return, when I would bring

another white man with me. On hearing this I requested John King to

undeceive the people, and let them know the truth. At fifteen minutes

after five we arrived at the last town on the way to the mountain, and

eight minutes after six reached Dickenye’s town, our resting-place. In

returning the Bwea men sang the greater part of the way, and seemed very

glad that no harm had befallen them on their way to the mountain. One of

their songs was to the following effect:—“The white man cut down the

grass,[144] and told it to stand up. The grass replied, How can I stand?

you have cut me down.” My feet ached so much at my long and difficult

journey that I could hardly stir, but a good night’s rest refreshed my

wearied frame, and rendered me strong again for duty.

‘Lord’s day, April 28.

‘I spent a pleasant time this morning in instructing several children

and young people from my Isubu lesson. They exhibited considerable

pleasure in spelling the words of their language, and, though they spent

more than a quarter of an hour at their lesson, did not appear tired.

Finding that the adult people were more inclined to drum and dance than

listen to the Gospel, I left Dickenye’s town after breakfast and,

accompanied by John King, went to see a very old man named Ibungge, who

had been sick for a long time, and intelligence of whose death arrived

at Bimbia a few days ago. I endeavoured to preach salvation by Christ to

him and his people, but fear the old man did not comprehend what was

said to him. I saw a woman this morning with her face besmeared with

dirt, and a band of the fibre of the plantain-tree round her forehead,

which I learn is the usual badge of mourning of the people of the

district. The Bimbia women do not wear the band round their foreheads,

but besmear their faces for several months with a mixture of dirt,

lampblack, and palm-oil.

‘About two o’clock to-day a man from the Boba[145] district came to see

me, and listened very attentively to the truths which I declared to him.

Dickenye introduced him to me, and sat for a short time. I had not,

however, spoken long before he began to interrupt me; but finding that I

would not attend to him, and was determined to go on conversing with the

Boba man, he left the hut, and called away his friend, but he would not

go. As the Boba man defended the practice of polygamy, I dwelt much on

the evils of it, and assured him it was very offensive to God. After the

departure of the poor man I learnt that he had recently shot a man for

seducing one of his wives, and had in consequence to desert his house,

and hide himself in the woods. According to a rule or law, called

Dibumbe, every man from Bimbia to the Camaroons Mountains, and also on

the Mungo and Bunge rivers, and I believe at other places, who commits

murder, is given up by his townspeople to be hanged.[146] While speaking

to the Boba man, little did I think I was pointing out the evils of the

very sin which had compelled him to leave the few comforts of his home

to wander in the woods.

‘As in South Africa, there are men in the Bwea district and in other

parts of the country who profess to be able to produce rain. John King

firmly believes in the pretended power of the rain-makers, and

strenuously maintained that they did possess the power, notwithstanding

all I could say to convince him to the contrary.

‘I understood this afternoon that the chief men of Bwea, and especially

Dickenye, are entertaining large expectations respecting the presents

they are to receive before my departure. They told John King that he,

King William, Dick Merchant, and the other traders of Bimbia, had

received large presents to allow me to visit the interior, and now I had

seen their mountain, John King did not wish me to give them anything.

The covetousness of the people is exceedingly trying and distressing,

and, with vainglory, exhibits itself in almost every word and action. Oh

that the time may speedily come when their selfishness will be subdued,

and their hearts renovated by the Divine Spirit!

‘About three o’clock Smith and I sang a hymn, read a portion of

Scripture, and engaged in prayer, in which we specially implored the

Lord to visit the dark places of the earth with the light of His

glorious Gospel. Smith and I conversed much with Copper to-day about the

necessity of a change of heart. It is very gratifying to me to be able

to state that light seems gradually shining upon this man’s mind. He has

already abandoned a few of his country practices, and will, I hope, be

given to us as the first-fruit of our labours. When I resolved on

visiting the Camaroons Mountains, I fully expected difficulties in the

way. True, I did not entertain the slightest apprehensions of personal

danger, yet I by no means imagined that my path would be a smooth one.

Indeed from the day of my arrival at Bwea, I plainly foresaw that we

should meet with opposition before our departure. It was not to be

expected that Satan would sit quietly and see one of his strongholds

attacked without retaliation. But greater is He that is for us than they

who are against us. The prey of the enemy will yet be plucked from his

teeth, and the kingdom of Christ established where Satan’s empire now

raises its proud and lofty head.

‘Monday, April 29.

‘I arose unusually early on Monday morning, and spent a sweet season in

prayer. My soul was much drawn out in behalf of the heathens in general,

but more particularly for Africa. I felt, while supplicating the Mercy-

seat, that the Lord was preparing my mind and strengthening my spirit

for some trial. When our baggage had been packed up, and we were ready

to leave, I presented Dickenye and three of the chief men at Bwea with

cloth, garments, and other things; but they were quite dissatisfied, and

said they would not allow our boxes to be taken away unless I gave them

more cloth. I knew well that, if I yielded to their unjust exaction,

instead of being satisfied, they would be encouraged to make other

demands, and consequently declined giving anything else. On hearing this

they made a great noise, and seemed determined to detain us. Several of

the men were armed with cutlasses, and during the palaver flourished

them about (not however in a threatening manner), but the Lord

graciously preserved me from fear, and kept my mind in perfect peace. Oh

what a blessedness to be able to rest on the arms of Him who is powerful

to save! Not one of our party had a weapon of any description. On

leaving Bimbia, I strictly enjoined John King not to carry guns, swords,

or cutlasses, assuring him that God, whom I loved and served, and whose

truth I was going to declare, would protect and preserve us; and I have

no doubt that our defenceless state tended more to disarm the Bwea

people than anything else.[147] I do hope that all our missionaries who

may come to Africa will be members of the Peace Society. After a long

and noisy discussion, in which John King, Copper, and a few others of

the men who conducted me, nearly talked themselves out of breath, the

Bwea men withdrew and held a private consultation. At this juncture

Smith became alarmed for our safety, and on my return from the mountain

told Mr. Ducket that he was just waiting to know the result of the

conference of the Bwea men, and, if they had resolved on killing us, he

intended to request them to destroy him first, that he might not endure

the pain of seeing me put to death. Smith’s fears were, however, quite

groundless. I do not think that the people had the remotest intention of

hurting a hair of our heads. All they wanted was the contents of our

boxes, and, not being able to frighten me into submission, they withdrew

to come to some decision respecting the mode of bringing the palaver to

a close. They soon returned, and said that, as I was unwilling to give

them more cloth, they would be satisfied with a book (certificate)

stating that I had visited the mountain from their district, in order

that they might show it to any white man that might come after me. I

very soon furnished the ‘book,’ when our carriers were permitted to

leave, but we had only walked a short distance when one of our people

was stopped by Dickenye’s brothers, because he said he had not received

a shirt. The fact is, this man took a fancy to Smith’s flannel shirt,

and requested me to give him one like it. On leaving I borrowed Smith’s

flannel, and gave it to him, but after receiving it he was quite

dissatisfied, and said he wanted a shirt similar to those the other

chiefs had received, but, as all of that description were distributed, I

could not comply with his request. He was, however, determined to get a

shirt, and therefore followed us after we left his brother’s town, and

stopped one of the boxes; Copper directly drew off his shirt and gave it

to Bunggome, but took good care to secure for himself the flannel shirt,

which is of more value than the one with which he parted.[148] We left

Dickenye’s town at twenty-five minutes before eight, and after passing a

town in the Bwea district entered the Bokwei district at half-past

eight; and after leaving the towns of Morio and Namunde, entered the

Bakuku district at five minutes before nine, and arrived at Junge’s town

at two minutes before nine. We again reached Manja’s place at seven

minutes after nine. The old man appeared happy to see me, and pressed me

to remain over the night, expecting no doubt another present in the

event of my doing so; but I told him I could not by any means stop, as I

was anxious to get down as early as possible.

‘After breakfast our party prepared to leave Manja’s town, but one of

his men, who had accompanied us to Bwea, stopped our boxes, because he

had not in his opinion been sufficiently remunerated for his services.

This man was not at all engaged by us, but, contrary to my desire, was

sent by Manja to accompany us to Bwea. On my return to his town I made

him a suitable present, but he would not allow us to proceed till he had

received some cloth. During my journey I had to protest against people

following me from different towns, who desired to do so, without at all

being required, for the purpose of getting something. Unless the African

traveller is watchful, he will at the end of his different journeys find

many more servants in his employ than he set out with. Manja did all in

his power to prevent Singga from stopping us, but such is the small

influence and power of the old chief that he could not succeed.

‘At twenty minutes before two we left Manja’s town, and, travelling

through the Bakuku district, passed Mokeba’s town at five minutes before

two, and at two crossed a small stream. It is perhaps necessary to note

here that all the streams which we crossed to-day were small. Crossed a

stream at twenty-eight minutes after two. At half-past two left Pende-

Dikoba’s town. Crossed a stream twenty-five minutes before three, and

another at twenty minutes before three, called Wangge, and entered the

Bunjoku district.

‘At five minutes after three passed Ekanye’s town, and shortly after

that of Ebisa. There is a small house a few yards from the latter town.

The road in this district is much better than any I have travelled over

since I left Bimbia.

‘At ten minutes before four entered the Bunjumba district, and passed

the town of Ipike. At three minutes before four passed in sight of

Dibesse’s town, near which is that of Matande.[149] Crossed a stream

called Wende at five minutes after four. At ten minutes after four

passed in sight of Ngake’s town, and entered the Minyarri-Munggo

district. Eighteen minutes after four we passed three towns together.

The names of the chiefs are Dikri and Ngande. A short distance from

these towns we passed in sight of the house of Ekuba-Kuba, and a few

minutes after passed the town of Musio.

‘At half-past four arrived at a town whose chief, Dibutu Lanja, had died

three days ago. The usual funeral ceremonies were being performed when

we arrived, which were exceedingly ill adapted to the occasion. From

five to six hundred people were assembled on an oblong piece of ground,

and, amidst the noise of drums and the greatest confusion, danced up and

down in the most ludicrous manner. A group of ten met together, and

raising up their right hand struck it against the hand of each other

till the ceremony of striking hands had been performed throughout the

whole group.

‘On my arrival I was conducted to the house of a man called Foke, a

short distance from the scene of the funeral ceremonies, lest, as I was

told, my presence should attract the attention of the people, and thus

put an end to their mirth. Many followed me, to whom I showed the

letters of the alphabet, and my Isubu lesson. My watch as usual was

quite an object of wonder and amazement. Unable to obtain a sight of me,

some of the boys, Zaccheus like, climbed on trees to gratify their

curiosity. Being anxious to see the whole of the funeral ceremony, I got

up to walk to the place where the people were dancing, but Foke would

not allow me to go. However, shortly after, Madiba, whose town I visited

before going to the Camaroons Mountains, and to whom I have already

alluded, came up, and, taking me by the hand, conducted me to the scene

of action, and thus afforded me an opportunity of seeing all that was

going on. I had not sat long before the man who was to succeed the

deceased chief made his appearance in a soldier’s coat. A man held an

umbrella over his head, and followed wherever he went. In a stooping

posture the new chief ran among the crowd amidst the caressing of

several young women, striking hands with all who presented theirs to

him.

‘After a great deal of noise and dancing, silence was commanded, when

Madiba, being master of the ceremonies, arose to speak, but before he

commenced his address he picked up a pebble, and spitting upon it,

placed it under his foot, and then walked up and down the avenue,

speaking as he walked along. He said that Dibutu Lanja had died three

days ago, and had left so many pieces of cloth (I do not recollect the

number), pigs, sheep, and goats, and that during his illness two of his

goats had been killed for him. Madiba having finished his address,

several of the people exclaimed, “He, he,” yes, yes; shortly after which

the party began to disperse.

‘I understand that on the death of a chief or master of a town, all his

property, which generally consists of cloth, pigs, goats, and sheep, is

distributed among his relatives and friends, and nothing is thought so

honourable to a man as to be able on his death to leave a great deal of

property for distribution. All the cloth which Dibutu Lanja possessed

was on his death exhibited to the public for inspection, but was taken

in before my arrival. I, however, saw his pigs, sheep, and goats, all of

which were tied to stakes placed in the ground for the purpose.

‘At the close of the ceremonies, Copper, Smith, and I left for Ebore’s

town, where we intended to sleep. Madiba on his way home walked with us

a part of the road, and was very attentive and affectionate. On leaving

us he inquired whether I did not intend to come and see him on the

morrow. I promised to do so, and told him, in Isubu, as I best could,

that I hoped he would love God, and give Him his heart. As I walked

along, I began to think that the kindness and affection manifested by

Madiba that evening (so contrary to his reserve and apparent sullenness

when I visited his town a few days ago), proceeded from God, who I

thought was moving his heart to favour us. I there resolved, if I saw it

my duty, to ask him for some land on which to establish our first

missionary station at Bwengga, which is a well-populated district, and

where the inhabitants are not so widely scattered as in other parts of

the country. The attention of our missionaries, as soon as they settle

in the interior, must be directed to the concentrating of the

population, or their work will be considerably increased. It will of

course be a work of time, but with perseverance will I hope be effected.

‘We left the town of the deceased man at fifteen minutes before six,

and, after crossing a stream and passing three towns, arrived safely at

Ebore’s place at about half-past six. Our dinner consisted of ripe

plantains, palm-oil, and palm-nuts, after which we retired to rest

thoroughly wearied.

‘Tuesday, April 30th.

‘The selection of a place in the Bwengga district for the establishment

of a station pressed much on my mind all the morning. Ebore is very

willing to give land, and would be glad to see a missionary settled at

his place; but his town is situated on an unfrequented spot, and is

therefore ill adapted for a missionary. On the contrary, Madiba’s town

is near the highway which leads to the Bwengga market, and consequently

is the resort of many people.

‘After making Ebore another present, our party left his town at fifteen

minutes before one, and proceeded to Madiba’s. On our way we crossed the

stream which we passed last evening on our return to Ebore’s place. This

stream supplies Madiba’s town and the adjacent ones with water; it is

very small, and I was fearful that during the dry season it ceased to

flow, but Copper informed me that it never dries.

‘I met a very warm reception from Madiba on my arrival, and, after a

short conversation respecting the object of my visit, I gave him an

excellent wrapper and a child’s garment. I then stated that I was

desirous, if agreeable to him, to establish a missionary station near

his town for the purpose of imparting to him and all the people of the

district the knowledge of the true God, for I well knew that unless they

became acquainted with God, and served Him with their hearts, they could

neither be happy in this life nor after death. I then inquired whether

he would give me land on which to build, &c. He most readily assented to

my proposition, and, requesting me to follow him, showed me the land

which he would give when we were ready to settle. I suppose he walked

over ground about the sixth of a mile in length, and, pointing to the

right and left, said, “This is yours—this is yours.” On our return to

Madiba’s house I requested Copper to tell him plainly that he and his

people were not to expect presents from the God-men who might come to

reside at his town—that we did not intend to trade, but that our sole

object was to impart religious instruction. Madiba replied that he heard

what I had said, and would communicate the intelligence to all the

people. Shortly after, he asked John King whether, like some of the

white men who came to Bimbia to trade, I was in the habit of beating

black men; and on being told I was entirely different from such men, he

said he believed so, or I would not have brought them such good news

respecting a future state.

‘With earnest longings for the enlightenment and conversion of Madiba,

we left his town at three minutes before five, and eleven minutes after

five entered the Bunjo district, and passed the towns of Bepingge and

Bomani, which are very near each other. Seventeen minutes after five we

arrived at Mekwalle’s town. This man is the father of Bepingge and

Bomani, and is the most healthy individual in that part of the country.

He is advanced in age, and according to the course of nature cannot be

far from the gates of death. I explained to him the objects of my visit,

and requested him to assemble his people, which he readily promised to

do after dinner. At the appointed time about eighty people assembled,

and listened very patiently to the solemn truths of the Gospel, but

would not at all believe that Christian teachers would in time settle

among them. I am not at all surprised at their incredulity, for,

unacquainted as they are with the benevolence which the Gospel

inculcates, it cannot but appear an anomalous thing that people should

leave their country and come to reside among them, not for the purpose

of gain, but only to do them good.

‘Wednesday, May 1.

‘Early this morning Madiba came to see me, and evinced much affection.

May the Lord move his heart to favour the missionaries who may settle in

his district, and not only so, but renew his mind, and adopt him into

His family!

‘At seven o’clock our party left Mekwalle’s town. Five minutes after

eight we passed a large farm in the Bunjo district. Indeed, from this

time till half-past nine, we passed a number of farms, some of them

rather extensive. The country in this district is well wooded.

‘Ten minutes before nine we entered the Mobeta district. Seeing one of

our carriers with a few plantains, and knowing that he had taken them

from the farm through which we were passing, I mentioned the

circumstance to John King, in order that he might speak to the man about

the impropriety of taking what was not his; but learnt that any person

in passing a farm may, if hungry, take a few plantains, or canes, or any

other edible, without being regarded as a thief.

‘At fifteen minutes before ten we came in sight of a large stream

running in a south-easterly direction, called Kumbe. The river and

country in its vicinity reminded me much of the Bog Walk River in

Jamaica, and induced a few thoughts respecting my dear native country.

Twenty-five minutes before eleven we crossed the stream just alluded to,

which is about forty yards at the fording. A splendid settlement might

be formed on the banks of this river. The country is well wooded, the

soil excellent, and there is abundance of water.

‘Ten minutes after twelve we crossed a stream. Near the fording was a

beautiful waterfall. The fall is about twenty feet, and at the landing

of the water there is a basin about sixty yards in circumference.

‘Twenty-five minutes before one we entered the Gijanga district, and

crossed a small stream called Musunggu. Ten minutes before one we came

in sight of another creek, and crossed a small stream which flows into

the creek. We arrived at Bupe’s town in the Gyangu[150] district at

eight minutes after one. There are three towns near each other in this

district, whose chiefs are called Bupe, Ngeke, and Ekeme. Shortly after

entering the Mobeta district I discovered that John King, in order to

arrive home to-day, had passed through a wood; so that from the time we

left Mokwelle’s town in the morning, we did not see a single person till

we arrived at the Gyangu district, which is situated on the coast, a

short distance north of King William’s town. The sea being too high to

enable us to walk along the beach to Dick Merchant’s town, from whence

there is a road or tract to King William’s place, our party got into a

canoe, and returned home by sea.

‘We arrived safely at King John’s town about half-past four, where I met

Mr. Ducket on his way to Macko’s town to instruct the people, and was

thankful and happy to find him in good health and spirits. On reaching

King William’s town the children ran from all directions to greet me,

and seemed very glad that I had returned in safety. I assembled them in

the house, sung one of their school-songs, and dismissed them with

prayer.

‘Thus, my dear sir, I have endeavoured to furnish a brief, and I fear an

uninteresting, account of my tour. The grand object of my visit has,

however, been attained, and with that I am satisfied. I have discovered

that the way is opened for the introduction of the Gospel from Bimbia to

the Camaroons Mountains, and, I have no doubt, much further in the

interior. Land has been received for the establishment of our first

station, where I hope myself to settle in a short time, and from whence

the glorious Gospel will yet diffuse itself far and wide, not only among

the Isubu tribes, but among other nations of Africa. May the great Head

of the Church qualify us for our work by imparting every necessary grace

and gift! I need hardly tell you that much devolves on our dear friends

in England, Jamaica, and other parts of the world, where they know and

experience the blessedness of the Gospel. Oh, that the Church may always

be found at her post, and daily become more diligent and zealous in this

best of all works! I cannot too strongly press upon the Christian public

the necessity of furnishing garments for distribution in Africa. Our

female friends in England and Scotland have already exerted themselves

nobly in this benevolent work, but I hope they will continue to send

other supplies from time to time.

‘I must not forget to mention that one of the most pleasing facts which

I learnt in my journey was, that there were very few slaves in that part

of the country. When the people were at one time very noisy at Manja’s

place, I requested John King, if possible, to command silence. His reply

was, “Oh, what a pity all the people in the bush are free!—we cannot get

them to be quiet when we like.” The information made my heart leap for

joy, and rendered the noise far less disagreeable than I at first

considered it.

‘The districts I have visited are to the north-west of Bimbia. I

expected before now to have seen several others to the south-west, but

the arrival of dear brother Clarke on the 1st instant, with the house

which was given him by the Jericho people, and which is being erected

here, has hindered me from carrying my intention into effect, my time

being now occupied in looking after the building.’

[Footnote 125: Up the Bimbia or Little Camaroons River, turning to the

left (ascending) on the mountain-side.—R. B.]

[Footnote 126: Every soul dead—after twenty years or so!—R. B.]

[Footnote 127: It is on the left or west of Victoria Bay.—R. B.]

[Footnote 128: The same is the case with Bosumbo, Mapanya, &c.—R. B.]

[Footnote 129: In Africa, as in India, any fellow-tribeman is a

brother.—R. B.]

[Footnote 130: Polite to his hospitable hosts!—R. B.]

[Footnote 131: So the Morocco women say of their European sisters that

they dress in rags.—R. B.]

[Footnote 132: These two questions are most characteristically African.

They can hardly believe in a non-eating or non-marrying being, which to

them becomes a nonentity.—R. B.]

[Footnote 133: I presume the Colocasia esculenta.—R. B.]

[Footnote 134: ‘The Moriko and Bakuku district is the same, but is

called by two names.’ [I much doubt this.—R. B.]]

[Footnote 135: It is high up and to the east of the mountain, which the

Bwea people, who are now on bad terms with those of Mapanya, cross to

the west. M. Mann’s cowardly Krumen ran away probably from a Bwea

man.—R. B.]

[Footnote 136: During our ascent the report was that we were finding

silks, cloth, wire, beads, &c.—gold and silver are unknown here—on the

Camaroons. Thus only could the people explain our visiting it.—R. B.]

[Footnote 137: They probably never took the trouble to sow them.—R. B.]

[Footnote 138: Note by Mr. Merrick.—‘Whenever an Isubu (Bimbia) man

dies, all the cloth he possesses is spread out on the housetop and

exposed to public view. In accordance with this custom the Bwea men

think that the genii of the mountains entertain so much respect for

their chiefs as on their death to exhibit a variety of cloths.’]

[Footnote 139: Conference.]

[Footnote 140: It is a wild custom not known to the Duallas of the

Camaroons River.—R. B.]

[Footnote 141: Obásí, God—plur. Báobásí—á, of; and Lobá, heaven.—R. B.]

[Footnote 142: There are also towns of this name on the east of the

mountain.—R. B.]

[Footnote 143: Prop. Moonggo, plur. Mionggoo.—R. B.]

[Footnote 144: ‘Alluding to the plants which I brought down with

me.’—M.]

[Footnote 145: ‘This district is some distance to the north of

Bwea.’—M.]

[Footnote 146: Dibombe is an Isubu statute, which originated a few years

ago in a dream. One Mfá má Ile, a man of the Ekombi district inland and

north of Bimbia, saw a vision in which many dead men warned him of the

evil of murdering or maiming, and that the bush people were to hang or

wound the criminal only, not his innocent relations. The wholesome law

is now, I fear, in abeyance.—R. B.]

[Footnote 147: Our party found it very different.—R. B.]

[Footnote 148: The shirt is still a favourite present: it makes a

gentleman.—R. B.]

[Footnote 149: This shows the size of the ‘towns.’—R. B.]

[Footnote 150: Generally called Jángí.—R. B.]

APPENDIX III.

* * * * *

ENUMERATION of the MOUNTAIN FLOWERING PLANTS and FERNS collected by M.

GUSTAV MANN, Government Botanist, during his various ascents of the

Camaroons Mountains, of Clarence Peak, Fernando Po, and of the Peak of

San Thomé. By J. D. HOOKER, M.D., F.R.S. and L.S., &c.

The figures denote the elevations at which the species were found.

F. signifies Fernando Po.

C. „ Camaroons Mountains.

S. T. „ Peak of San Thomé.

Clematis simensis, Fres. F. C. 4-8,000

Thalictrum rhyncocarpum, A. R. F. C. 7-10,000

Ranunculus pinnatus, Poir. var. F. 8,000