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The native villages, exactly resembling those of the Gaboon, are all built near the strip of fine white sand which forms the shore, and upon the sweet water channels which cut deep into the limestones.
According to the best authorities, the whole of the West African coast north of Sierra Leone might be ceded with advantage to the French on condition of our occupying the Gaboon and the regions, coast and islands, south of it, except where the land belongs to the Portuguese and the Spaniards.
Now this "Camma" country is situated about a degree and a-half south of the Equator, while a few miles to the north of the line lies the Gaboon, and a degree or so north of that, the Money River both well known to modern naturalists as localities where the largest of man-like Apes has been obtained.
FURTHER it has been shown that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person. Among the M'Bengas in Western Africa, about the Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind and dance round them.
In 1842 the first stragglers who had crossed the Sierra del Crystal are said to have been seen upon the head waters of the Gaboon. Mr. W. Winwood Reade suspects them to be an offshoot of the great Fulah race, and there is nothing in point of dialect to disprove what we must at present consider a pure conjecture.
At that bank we wisely stayed for the night, our meeting with the Gaboon so far having resulted in wrecking our sail, making Ngouta sea-sick and me exasperate; for from our noble vessel having during the course of it demonstrated for the first time her cataclysmic kicking power, I had had a time of it with my belongings on the bamboo stage.
It measures some forty miles from north to south by half that depth, and its position causes the rains, which are synchronous with those of the Gaboon, to be much more copious and continuous. They last nine months out of twelve, and in March, 1862, the fall was 25 inches, the heaviest remembered it had filled the little island valleys, and made the paths lines of canal.
Outside the compound lay the lines of the "Zouaves," some forty negroes whom Goree has supplied to the Gaboon; they were accompanied by a number of intelligent mechanics, who loudly complained of having been kidnapped, coolie-fashion.
I would rather drink than fight with any of them yes, far. Setting forth how the Voyager is minded to ascend the mountain called Mungo Mah Lobeh, or the Throne of Thunder, and in due course reaches Buea, situate thereon. After returning from Corisco I remained a few weeks in Gaboon, and then left on the Niger, commanded by Captain Davies.
He offered to allow his faithful servant to depart to join his family on the Gaboon at once, should he wish to do so, but Ostik declared that he would remain with him as long as he stopped in Africa. On Frank's advice, however, he deposited his money, for safe keeping, with Messrs. Swanzy's agent, with orders to transmit it to his family should anything happen to him during the expedition.
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