United States or Guinea-Bissau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Harry Kembe, one of our messengers, is lately dead. 17th. Up, and several people to speak with me, and then comes Mr. Caesar, and then Goodgroome, and, what with one and the other, nothing but musique with me this morning, to my great content; and the more, to see that God Aimighty hath put me into condition to bear the charge of all this.
But we clung to the bank and rocks with hands, poles, and paddle, and did it; really the worst part was not in the gateway but just before it, for here there is a great whirlpool, its centre hollowed some one or two feet below its rim. It is caused, my Kembe islander says, by a great cave opening beneath the water.
The greatest breadth of the river channel we now saw, in the daylight, to be the S.S.W. branch; this was the one we had been swept into, and was almost completely barred by rock. The other one to the N.N.W. was more open, and the river rushed through it, a terrific, swirling mass of water. Had we got caught in this, we should have got past Kembe Island, and gone to Glory.
A bad rapid, called by our ally from Kembe Island "Unfanga," being surmounted, we seem to be in a mountain- walled lake, and keeping along the left bank of this, we get on famously for twenty whole restful minutes, which lulls us all into a false sense of security, and my crew sing M'pongwe songs, descriptive of how they go to their homes to see their wives, and families, and friends, giving chaffing descriptions of their friends' characteristics and of their failings, which cause bursts of laughter from those among us who recognise the allusions, and how they go to their boxes, and take out their clothes, and put them on- -a long bragging inventory of these things is given by each man as a solo, and then the chorus, taken heartily up by his companions, signifies their admiration and astonishment at his wealth and importance and then they sing how, being dissatisfied with that last dollar's worth of goods they got from "Holty's," they have decided to take their next trade to Hatton and Cookson, or vice versa; and then comes the chorus, applauding the wisdom of such a decision, and extolling the excellence of Hatton and Cookson's goods or Holty's.
My Kembe Island man said that just hereabouts were five cave openings, the two that we had seen and another one we had not, on land, and two under the water, one of the sub-fluvial ones being responsible for the whirlpool we met outside the gateway of Boko Boko. The scenery above Boko Boko was exceedingly lovely, the river shut in between its rim of mountains.
Our eyes, now trained to the darkness, observed pretty close to us a big lump of land, looming up out of the river. This we subsequently found out was Kembe Island. The rocks and foam on either side stretched away into the darkness, and high above us against the star-lit sky stood out clearly the summits of the mountains of the Sierra del Cristal.
Harry Kembe, one of our messengers, is lately dead. 17th. Up, and several people to speak with me, and then comes Mr. Caesar, and then Goodgroome, and, what with one and the other, nothing but musique with me this morning, to my great content; and the more, to see that God Aimighty hath put me into condition to bear the charge of all this.
The Adooma from Kembe Island especially drew my attention to this shrub, telling me his people who worked the rapids always regarded it with an affectionate veneration; for he said it was the only thing that helped a man when his canoe got thrown over in the dreaded Alemba, for its long tough branches swimming in, or close to, the water are veritable life lines, and his best chance; a chance which must have failed some poor fellow, whose knife and leopard-skin belt we found wedged in among the rocks on Kondo Kondo.
The Adoomas left and fled to the French authority at Njole and remained under its guarding shadow until the French came up and chastised the Fans and burnt their village; and the Adoomas when things had quieted down again and the Fans had gone off to build themselves a new village for their burnt one came back to Kembe Island and their plantain patch.
Your best way of getting off is to push on in the direction of the current, carefully preparing for the shock of suddenly coming off the cliff end. We left the landing place rocks of Kembe Island about 8, and no sooner had we got afloat, than, in the twinkling of an eye, we were swept, broadside on, right across the river to the north bank, and then engaged in a heavy fight with a severe rapid.
Word Of The Day