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We know too little of the lands lying south-east of the confluence to determine the sequence of the chain, whose counterforts may give rise to the Eastern 'Oil Rivers. It is not connected with the Peak of Camarones, round which Mr. Cumber, of the Baptist Mission, travelled; and which he determined to be an isolated block.
The noble Shinnar-partridge again appeared; an eagle's feather lay on the ground; two white papillons and one yellow butterfly reminded me of the Camarones Mountain; the wild bee and the ladybird-like Ba'uzah stuck to us as though they loved us; and we were pestered by the attentions of the common fly.
The Gaboon country, to retain the now familiar term, although no one knows much about its derivation, is placed, by old travellers in "South Guinea," the tract lying along the Ethiopic, or South Atlantic Ocean, limited by the Camarones Mountain-block in north latitude 4deg., and by Cabo Negro in south latitude 15deg. 40' 7", a sea-line of nearly 1,200 miles.
There he met Father Joachim de Camarones, his confessor and his oldest friend; he acquainted him with his mode of life. What was the astonishment of the good father to learn the existence of Martin Paz. He promised Don Vegal to watch also himself over the young Indian, and to convey to the marquis any intelligence of importance.
The Mpongwe practise a rite so resembling infant baptism that the missionaries have derived it from a corruption of Abyssinian Christianity which, like the flora of the Camarones and Fernandian Highlands, might have travelled across the Dark Continent, where it has now been superseded by El Islam.
The Gaboon proper is included between the Camarones Mountains to the north, and the "Mayumba,"properly the "Yumba" country southwards, in south latitude 3deg. 22', a shore upwards of 400 miles long. The inland depth is undetermined; geographically we should limit it to the Western Ghats, which rarely recede more than 60 miles from the sea, and ethnologically no line can yet be drawn.
Yet it is in full vigour amongst their Ibo neighbours to the north-west, and the Duallas of the Camarones River also number it amongst their "country customs." The Mpongwe, as has been said, will not eat a chimpanzee; the Fan devour their dead enemies.
The palm- wine, here called "Msamba," and on the lower river "Manjewa," is not brought in at dawn, or it would be better. The endogen in general use is the elai's, which is considered to supply a better and more delicate liquor than the raphia. The people do not fell the tree like the Kru-men, but prefer the hoop of "supple-jack" affected by the natives of Fernando Po and Camarones.
The notable feature of the river is now the prawn-basket, a long cone closed at the blunt apex: the Ancobra is a 'Camarones, supplying a first-rate article for curries. This is the work of the uninteresting little villages, scatters of mere crates built in holes worn in the bush; all disappear during the floods, and are rebuilt in the dry season for growing rice and tapping palm-trees.
The Fan houses resemble those of the Mpongwe; in fact, the tribes, beginning at the Camarones River, build in much the same style, but all are by no means so neat and clean as those of the seaboard.
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