United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The good Tippet declares that he once canoed three miles up the Mbokwe, and then marched eastward for five days, covering a hundred miles which is impossible. He found a line of detached hills, and an elevation where the dews were exceedingly cold; looking towards the utterly unknown Orient, he could see nothing but a thick forest unbroken by streams.
Here the shallows and the banks projecting from different points made the channel dangerous. Entering the Mbokwe branch we were compelled to use sweeps, or the schooner would have been dashed against the sides; as we learned by the trees, the tides raise the surface two to three feet high. After the third hour we passed the "Fan Komba Vina," or village of King Vina.
After a total of some two miles and a half, we found a clearing upon the summit, but, although I climbed up a tree, the bush was dense enough to conceal most of the surroundings. According to the Fan, the Nkomo rises on the seaward or western face of this Mbika, whilst the Mbokwe, springing from its eastern counterslope, runs south-west of the Massif and joins the former.
The "terrible war-axe" is the usual poor little tomahawk, more like a toy than a tool. After a bathe in the muddy Mbokwe, I returned to the village, and found it in a state of ferment.
It is pleasantly situated on the left bank of the Mbokwe River, a streamlet here some 50 feet broad, whose water rises 6 feet 10 inches under the tidal influence. The single street, about half a mile long, is formed by two parallel rows of huts, looking upon a cleared line of yellow clay, and provided with three larger sheds the palaver houses.
Adams and Preston nearly came to grief for bewitching the population with "bad book." Five slow hours from Anenge-nenge finally placed us, about sunset, at Mayyan, or Tippet Town. The depot lies a little above the confluence of the Mbokwe and the Londo, or south-eastern fork of the latter.
Though we were approaching the sub-ranges of the Sierra del Crystal, the country was very like that about Mbata; streamlets flowing to the Mbokwe, wet yellow soil forming slippery muds, unhealthy as unpleasant in the morning sunshine; old and new clearings and plantations, mostly of bananas, mere spots in the wide expanse of bush, and deserted or half-inhabited villages.
No one, however, appeared sanguine of success, the anthropoid keeps his distance from the Fan. A trip to the interior was suggested, first up the Mbokwe, and finally arranged for the Londo River. Information about the country was, as usual, vague; one man made the stream head two days off, the other a few hours, and Mr. Tippet's mind fluctuated between fifty and one hundred miles.
We now reach the confluence of the Nkonio or north-eastern, with the Mbokwe, or eastern branch, which anastomose to form the Gaboon; the latter, being apparently the larger of the two, preserves the title Mpolo. Both still require exploration; my friend M. Braouezzec, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who made charts of the lower bed, utterly failed to make the sources; and the Rev. Mr.
After dropping three miles down the Mbokwe River, we entered the Londo influent: some three miles further on it fines down from a width of eighty feet to a mere ditch, barred with trees, which stop navigation. We landed on the left bank and walked into the palaver-house of Fakanjok or Pakanjok, the village of a Fan head man, called by Mr. Tippet "John Matoko."
Word Of The Day