West African studies Part 5

In much the same way, and with much the same risks, the Bristol Coast trade goes on now, only there is little of it left, owing to the French system of suppressing trade. Palm oil is the modern equivalent to slaves, and just as in old days the former were trans.h.i.+pped from the coasting Guineamen to the transatlantic slavers, so now the palm oil is s.h.i.+pped off on to the homeward bound African steamers, while, as for the joys and sorrows, century-change affects them not. So long as Western Africa remains the deadliest region on earth there will be joy over those who come up out of it; heartache and anxiety over those who are down there fighting as men fought of old for those things worth the fighting, G.o.d, Glory and Gold; and grief over those who are dead among all of us at home who are ill-advised enough to really care for men who have the pluck to go there.

During the smoke season when dense fogs hang over the Bight of Benin, the Bristol s.h.i.+ps get very considerably sworn at by the steamers. They have letters for them, and they want oil off them; between ourselves, they want oil off every created thing, and the Bristol boat is not easy to find. So the steamer goes dodging and fumbling about after her, swearing softly about wasting coal all the time, and more harshly still when he finds he has picked up the wrong Guineaman, only modified if she has stuff to send home, stuff which he conjures the Bristol captain by the love he bears him to keep, and s.h.i.+p by him when he is on his way home from windward ports, or to let him have forthwith.

Sometimes the Bristolman will signal to a pa.s.sing steamer for a doctor.

The doctors of the African and British African boats are much thought of all down the Coast, and are only second in importance to the doctor on board a telegraph s.h.i.+p, who, being a rare specimen, is regarded as, _ipso facto_, more gifted, so that people will save up their ailments for the telegraph s.h.i.+p's medical man, which is not a bad practice, as it leads commonly to their getting over those ailments one way or the other by the time the telegraph s.h.i.+p arrives. It is reported that one day one of the Bristolmen ran up an urgent signal to a pa.s.sing mail steamer for a doctor, and the captain thereof ran up a signal of a.s.sent, and the doctor went below to get his medicines ready. Meanwhile, instead of displaying a patient grat.i.tude, the Bristolman signalled "Repeat signal." "Give it 'em again," said the steamboat captain, "those Bristolmen ain't got no Board schools." Still the Bristolman kept bothering, running up her original signal, and in due course off went the doctor to her in the gig. When he returned his captain asked him, saying, "Pills, are they all mad on board that vessel or merely drunk as usual?" "Well," says the doctor, "that's curious, for it's the very same question Captain N. has asked me about you. He is very anxious about your mental health, and wants to know why you keep on signalling 'Haul to, or I will fire into you,'" and the story goes that an investigation of the code and the steamer's signal supported the Bristolman's reading, and the subject was dropped in steam circles.

Although the Bristolmen do not carry doctors, they are provided with grand medicine chests, the supply of medicines in West Africa being frequently in the inverse ratio with the ability to administer them advantageously.

Inside the lid of these medicine chests is a printed paper of instructions, each drug having a number before its name, and a hint as to the proper dose after it. Thus, we will say, for example, 1 was jalap; 2, calomel; 3, croton oil; and 4, quinine. Once upon a time there was a Bristol captain, as good a man as need be and with a fine head on him for figures. Some of his crew were smitten with fever when he was out of number 4, so he argues that 2 and 2 are 4 all the world over, but being short of 2, it being a popular drug, he further argues 3 and 1 make 4 as well, and the dose of 4 being so much he makes that dose up out of jalap and croton oil. Some of the patients survived; at least, a man I met claimed to have done so. His report is not altogether reproducible in full, but, on the whole, the results of the treatment went more towards demonstrating the danger of importing raw abstract truths into everyday affairs than to encouraging one to repeat the experiment of arithmetical therapeutics.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] No connection with the Colony of Lagos.

CHAPTER IV

FIs.h.i.+NG IN WEST AFRICA.

There is one distinctive charm about fis.h.i.+ng--its fascinations will stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial river, with the surrounding atmosphere 45 per cent. mosquito, and if you are fis.h.i.+ng you will enjoy yourself; and what is more important than this enjoyment, is that you will not embitter your present, nor endanger your future, by going home in a bad temper, whether you have caught anything or not, provided always that you are a true fisherman.

This is not the case with other sports; I have been a.s.sured by experienced men that it "makes one feel awfully bad" when, after carrying for hours a very heavy elephant gun, for example, through a tangled forest you have got a wretched bad chance of a shot at an elephant; and as for football, cricket, &c., well, I need hardly speak of the unchristian feelings they engender in the mind towards umpires and successful opponents.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BATANGA CANOES. _To face page 89._]

Being, as above demonstrated, a humble, but enthusiastic, devotee of fis.h.i.+ng--I dare not say, as my great predecessor Dame Juliana Berners says, "with an angle," because my conscience tells me I am a born poacher,--I need hardly remark that when I heard, from a reliable authority at Gaboon, that there were lakes in the centre of the island of Corisco, and that these fresh-water lakes were fished annually by representative ladies from the villages on this island, and that their annual fis.h.i.+ng was just about due, I decided that I must go there forthwith. Now, although Corisco is not more than twenty miles out to sea from the Continent, it is not a particularly easy place to get at nowadays, no vessels ever calling there; so I got, through the kindness of Dr. Na.s.sau, a little schooner and a black crew, and, forgetting my solemn resolve, formed from the fruits of previous experiences, never to go on to an Atlantic island again, off I sailed. I will not go into the adventures of that voyage here. My reputation as a navigator was great before I left Gaboon. I had a record of having once driven my bowsprit through a conservatory, and once taken all the paint off one side of a smallpox hospital, to say nothing of repeatedly having made attempts to climb trees in boats I commanded, but when I returned, I had surpa.s.sed these things by having successfully got my main-mast jammed up a tap, and I had done sufficient work in discovering new sandbanks, rock shoals, &c., in Coris...o...b..y, and round Cape Esterias, to necessitate, or call for, a new edition of _The West African Pilot_.

Corisco Island is about three miles long by 1-3/4 wide: its lat.i.tude 056 N., long. 920-1/2 E. Mr. Winwood Reade was about the last traveller to give a description of Corisco, and a very interesting description it is. He was there in the early sixties, and was evidently too fully engaged with a drunken captain and a mad Malay cook to go inland. In his days small trading vessels used to call at Corisco for cargo, but they do so no longer, all the trade in the Bay now being carried on at Messrs. Holt's factory on Little Eloby Island (an island nearer in sh.o.r.e), and on the mainland at Coco Beach, belonging to Messrs. Hatton and Cookson.

In Winwood Reade's days, too, there was a settlement of the American Presbyterian Society on Corisco, with a staff of white men. This has been abandoned to a native minister, because the Society found that facts did not support their theory that the island would be more healthy than the mainland, the mortality being quite as great as at any continental station, so they moved on to the continent to be nearer their work. The only white people that are now on Corisco are two Spanish priests and three nuns; but of these good people I saw little or nothing, as my headquarters were with the Presbyterian native minister, Mr. Ibea, and there was war between him and the priests.

The natives are Benga, a coast tribe now rapidly dying out. They were once a great tribe, and in the old days, when the slavers and the whalers haunted Coris...o...b..y, these Benga were much in demand as crew men, in spite of the reputation they bore for ferocity. Nowadays the grown men get their living by going as travelling agents for the white merchants into the hinterland behind Coris...o...b..y, amongst the very dangerous and savage tribes there, and when one of them has made enough money by this trading, he comes back to Corisco, and rests, and luxuriates in the ample bosom of his family until he has spent his money--then he gets trust from the white trader, and goes to the Bush again, pretty frequently meeting there the sad fate of the pitcher that went too often to the well, and getting killed by the hinterlanders.

On arriving at Corisco Island, I "soothed with a gift, and greeted with a smile" the dusky inhabitants. "Have you got any tobacco?" said they.

"I have," I responded, and a friendly feeling at once arose. I then explained that I wanted to join the fis.h.i.+ng party. They were quite willing, and said the ladies were just finis.h.i.+ng planting their farms before the tornado season came on, and that they would make the peculiar, necessary baskets at once. They did not do so at once in the English sense of the term, but we all know there is no time south of 40, and so I waited patiently, walking about the island.

Corisco is locally celebrated for its beauty. Winwood Reade says: "It is a little world in miniature, with its miniature forests, miniature prairies, miniature mountains, miniature rivers, and miniature precipices on the sea-sh.o.r.e." In consequence partly of these things, and partly of the inhabitants' rooted idea that the proper way to any place on the island is round by the sea-sh.o.r.e, the paths of Corisco are as strange as several other things are in lat.i.tude 0, and, like the other things, they require understanding to get on with.

They start from the beach with the avowed intention of just going round the next headland because the tide happens to be in too much for you to go along by the beach; but, once started, their presiding genii might sing to the wayfarer Mr. Kipling's "The Lord knows where we shall go, dear la.s.s, and the Deuce knows what we shall see." You go up a path off the beach gladly, because you have been wading in fine white sand over your ankles, and in banks of rotten and rotting seaweed, on which centipedes, and other catamumpuses, crawl in profusion, not to mention sand-flies, &c., and the path makes a plunge inland, as much as to say, "Come and see our noted scenery," and having led you through a miniature swamp, a miniature forest, and a miniature prairie, "It's a pity," says the path, "not to call at So-and-so's village now we are so near it,"

and off it goes to the village through a patch of gra.s.s or plantation.

It wanders through the scattered village calling at houses, for some time, and then says, "Bless me, I had nearly forgotten what I came out for; we must hurry back to that beach," and off it goes through more scenery, landing you ultimately about fifty yards off the place where you first joined it, in consequence of the South Atlantic waves flying in foam and fury against a miniature precipice--the first thing they have met that dared stay their lordly course since they left Cape Horn or the ice walls of the Antarctic.

At last the fis.h.i.+ng baskets were ready, and we set off for the lakes by a path that plunged into a little ravine, crossed a dried swamp, went up a hill, and on to an open prairie, in the course of about twenty minutes. Pa.s.sing over this prairie, and through a wood, we came to another prairie, like most things in Corisco just then (August), dried up, for it was the height of the dry season. On this prairie we waited for some of the representative ladies from other villages to come up; for without their presence our fis.h.i.+ng would not have been legal. When you wait in West Africa it eats into your lifetime to a considerable extent, and we spent half-an-hour or so standing howling, in prolonged, intoned howls, for the absent ladies, notably grievously for On-gou-ta, and when they came not, we threw ourselves down on the soft, fine, golden-brown gra.s.s, in the sun, and all, with the exception of myself, went asleep. After about two and a half hours I was aroused from the contemplation of the domestic habits of some beetles, by hearing a crackle, crackle, interspersed with sounds like small pistols going off, and looking round saw a fog of blue-brown smoke surmounting a rapidly-advancing wall of red fire.

I rose, and spread the news among my companions, who were sleeping, with thumps and kicks. Shouting at a sleeping African is labour lost. And then I made a bee-line for the nearest green forest wall of the prairie, followed by my companions. Yet, in spite of some very creditable sprint performances on their part, three members of the band got scorched.

Fortunately, however, our activity landed us close to the lakes, so the scorched ones spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in mud-holes, comforting themselves with the balmy black slime. The other ladies turned up soon after this, and said that the fire had arisen from some man having set fire to a corner of the prairie some days previously, to make a farm; he had thought the fire was out round his patch, whereas it was not, but smouldering in the tussocks of gra.s.s, and the wind had sprung up that afternoon from a quarter that fanned it up. I said, "People should be very careful of fire," and the scorched ladies profoundly agreed with me, and said things I will not repeat here, regarding "that fool man" and his female ancestors.

The lakes are pools of varying extent and depth, in the bed-rock[6] of the island, and the fact that they are surrounded by thick forests on every side, and that the dry season is the cool season on the Equator, prevents them from drying up.

Most of these lakes are encircled by a rim of rock, from which you jump down into knee-deep black slime, and then, if you are a representative lady, you waddle, and squeal, and grunt, and skylark generally on your way to the water in the middle. If it is a large lake you are working, you and your companions drive in two rows of stakes, cutting each other more or less at right angles, more or less in the middle of the lake, so as to divide it up into convenient portions. Then some ladies with their specially shaped baskets form a line, with their backs to the bank, and their faces to the water-s.p.a.ce, in the enclosure, holding the baskets with one rim under water. The others go into the water, and splash with hands, and feet, and sticks, and, needless to say, yell hard all the time. The naturally alarmed fish fly from them, intent on getting into the mud, and are deftly scooped up by the peck by the ladies in their baskets. In little lakes the staking is not necessary, but the rest of the proceedings are the same. Some of the smaller lakes are too deep to be thus fished at all, being, I expect, clefts in the rock, such as you see in other parts of the island, sometimes 30 or 40 feet deep.

The usual result of the day's fis.h.i.+ng is from twelve to fifteen bushels of a common mud-fish,[7] which is very good eating. The spoils are divided among the representative ladies, and they take them back to their respective villages and distribute them. Then ensues, that same evening, a tremendous fish supper, and the fish left over are smoked and carefully kept as a delicacy, to make sauce with, &c., until the next year's fis.h.i.+ng day comes round.

The waters of West Africa, salt, brackish, and fresh abound with fish, and many kinds are, if properly cooked, excellent eating. For culinary purposes you may divide the fish into sea-fish, lagoon-fish and river-fish; the first division, the sea-fish, are excellent eating, and are in enormous quant.i.ties, particularly along the Windward Coast on the Great West African Bank. South of this, at the mouths of the Oil rivers, they fall off, from a culinary standpoint, though scientifically they increase in charm, as you find hereabouts fishes of extremely early types, whose relations have an interesting series of monuments in the shape of fossils, in the sandstone; but if primeval man had to live on them when they were alive together, I am sorry for him, for he might just as well have eaten mud, and better, for then he would not have run the risk of getting choked with bones. On the South-West Coast the culinary value goes up again; there are found quant.i.ties of excellent deep-sea fish, and round the mouths of the rivers, shoals of bream and grey mullet.

The lagoon-fish are not particularly good, being as a rule supremely muddy and bony; they have their uses, however, for I am informed that they indicate to Lagos when it may expect an epidemic; to this end they die, in an adjacent lagoon, and float about upon its surface, wrong side up, until decomposition does its work. Their method of prophecy is a sound one, for it demonstrates (_a_) that the lagoon drinking water is worse than usual; (_b_) if it is not already fatal they will make it so.

The river-fish of the Gold Coast are better than those of the mud-sewers of the Niger Delta, because the Gold Coast rivers are brisk sporting streams, with the exception of the Volta, and at a short distance inland they come down over rocky rapids with a stiff current. The fish of the upper waters of the Delta rivers are better than those down in the mangrove-swamp region; and in the South-West Coast rivers, with which I am personally well acquainted, the up-river fish are excellent in quality, on account of the swift current. I will however leave culinary considerations, because cooking is a subject upon which I am liable to become diffuse, and we will turn to the consideration of the sporting side of fis.h.i.+ng.

Now, there is one thing you will always hear the Gold Coaster (white variety) grumbling about, "There is no sport." He has only got himself to blame. Let him try and introduce the Polynesian practice of swimming about in the surf, without his clothes, and with a suitable large, sharp knife, slaying sharks--there's no end of sharks on the Gold Coast, and no end of surf. The Rivermen have the same complaint, and I may recommend that they should try spearing sting-rays, things that run sometimes to six feet across the wings, and every inch of them wicked, particularly the tail. There is quite enough danger in either sport to satisfy a Sir Samuel Baker; for myself, being a nervous, quiet, rational individual, a large cat-fish in a small canoe supplies sufficient excitement.

The other day I went out for a day's fis.h.i.+ng on an African river. I and two black men, in a canoe, in company with a round net, three stout fis.h.i.+ng-lines, three paddles, Dr. Gunther's _Study of Fishes_, some bait in an old Morton's boiled-mutton tin, a little manioc, stinking awfully (as is its wont), a broken calabash baler, a lot of dirty water to sit in, and happy and contented minds. I catalogue these things because they are either essential to, or inseparable from, a good day's sport in West Africa. Yes, even _I_, ask my vict----friends down there, I feel sure they will tell you that they never had such experiences before my arrival. I fear they will go on and say, "Never again!" and that it was all my fault, which it was not. When things go well they ascribe it, and their survival, to Providence or their own precautions; when things are merely usual in horror, it's my fault, which is a rank inversion of the truth, for it is only when circ.u.mstances get beyond my control, and Providence takes charge, that accidents happen. I will demonstrate this by continuing my narrative. We paddled away, far up a mangrove creek, and then went up against the black mud-bank, with its great network of grey-white roots, surmounted by the closely-interlaced black-green foliage. Absolute silence reigned, as it can only reign in Africa in a mangrove swamp. The water-laden air wrapped round us like a warm, wet blanket. The big mangrove flies came silently to feed on us and leave their progeny behind them in the wounds to do likewise. The stink of the mud, strong enough to break a window, mingled fraternally with that of the sour manioc.

I was reading, the negroes, always quiet enough when fis.h.i.+ng, were silently carrying on that great African native industry--scratching themselves--so, with our lines over side, life slid away like a dreamless sleep, until the middle man hooked a cat-fish. It came on board with an awful grunt, right in the middle of us; flop, swish, scurry and yell followed; I tucked the study of fishes in general under my arm and attended to this individual specimen, shouting "Lef em, lef em; hev em for water one time, you sons of unsanctified house lizards,"[8] and such like valuable advice and admonition. The man in the more remote end of the canoe made an awful swipe at the 3 ft.-long, grunting, flopping, yellow-grey, slimy, thing, but never reached it owing to the paddle meeting in mid-air with the flying leg of the man in front of him, drawing blood profusely. I really fancy, about this time, that, barring the cat-fish and myself, the occupants of the canoe were standing on their heads, with a view of removing their lower limbs from the terrible pectoral and dorsal fins, with which our prey made such lively play.

"_Brevi spatio interjecto_," as Caesar says, in the middle of a bad battle, over went the canoe, while the cat-fish went off home with the line and hook. One black man went to the bank, whither, with a blind prescience of our fate, I had flung, a second before, the most valuable occupant of the canoe, _The Study of Fishes_. I went personally to investigate fluvial deposit _in situ_. When I returned to the surface--accompanied by great swirls of mud and great bubbles of the gases of decomposition I had liberated on my visit to the bottom of the river--I observed the canoe floating bottom upwards, accompanied by Morton's tin, the calabash, and the paddles, while on the bank one black man was engaged in hauling the other one out by the legs; fortunately this one's individual G.o.d had seen to it that his toes should become entangled in the net, and this floated, and so indicated to his companion where he was, when he had dived into the mud and got fairly embedded.

Now it's my belief that the most difficult thing in the world is to turn over a round-bottomed canoe that is wrong side up, when you are in the water with the said canoe. The next most difficult thing is to get into the canoe, after accomplis.h.i.+ng triumph number one, and had it not been for my black friends that afternoon, I should not have done these things successfully, and there would be by now another haunted creek in West Africa, with a mud and blood bespattered ghost trying for ever to turn over the ghost of a little canoe. However, all ended happily. We collected all our possessions, except the result of the day's fis.h.i.+ng--the cat-fish--but we had had as much of him as we wanted, and so, adding a thankful mind to our contented ones, went home.

None of us gave a verbatim report of the incident. I held my tongue for fear of not being allowed out fis.h.i.+ng again, and I heard my men giving a fine account of a fearful fight, with accompanying prodigies of valour, that we had had with a witch crocodile. I fancy that must have been just their way of putting it, because it is not good form to be frightened by cat-fish on the West Coast, and I cannot for the life of me remember even having seen a witch crocodile that afternoon.

I must, however, own that native methods of fis.h.i.+ng are usually safe, though I fail to see what I had to do in producing the above accident.

The usual method of dealing with a cat-fish is to bang him on the head with a club, and then break the spiny fins off, for they make nasty wounds that are difficult to heal, and very painful.

The native fis.h.i.+ng-craft is the dug-out canoe in its various local forms. The Accra canoe is a very safe and firm canoe for work of any sort except heavy cargo, and it is particularly good for surf; it is, however, slower than many other kinds. The canoe that you can get the greatest pace out of is undoubtedly the Adooma, which is narrow and flat-bottomed, and simply flies over the water. The paddles used vary also with locality, and their form is a mere matter of local fas.h.i.+on, for they all do their work well. There is the leaf-shaped Kru paddle, the trident-shaped Accra, the long-lozenged Niger, and the long-handled, small-headed Igalwa paddle; and with each of these forms the native, to the manner born, will send his canoe flying along with that unbroken sweep I consider the most luxurious and perfect form of motion on earth.

It is when it comes to sailing that the African is inferior. He does not sail half as much as he might, but still pretty frequently. The materials of which the sails are made vary immensely in different places, and the most beautiful are those at Loanda, which are made of small gra.s.s mats, with fringes, sewn together, and are of a warm, rich sand-colour. Next in beauty comes the branch of a palm, or other tree, stuck in the bows, and least in beauty is the fisherman's own damaged waist-cloth. I remember it used to seem very strange to me at first, to see my companion in a canoe take off his clothing and make a sail with it, on a wind springing up behind us. The very strangest sail I ever sailed under was a black man's blue trousers, they were tied waist upwards to a cross-stick, the legs neatly crossed, and secured to the thwarts of the canoe. You cannot well tack, or carry out any neat sailing evolutions with any of the African sails, particularly with the last-named form. The shape of the African sail is almost always in appearance a triangle, and fastened to a cross-stick which is secured to an upright one. It is not the form, however, that prevents it from being handy, but the way it is put up, almost always without sheets, for river and lake work, and it is tied together with tie tie--bush rope. If you should personally be managing one, and trouble threatens, take my advice, and take the mast out one time, and deal with that tie tie palaver at your leisure. Never mind what people say about this method not being seaman-like--you survive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FALLS ON THE TONGUE RIVER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOANDA CANOE WITH MAT SAILS. [_To face page 101._]

The mat sails used for sea-work are spread by a bamboo sprit. There is a single mast, to the head of which the sail is either hoisted by means of a small line run through the mast, or, more frequently, made fast with a seizing. Such a sail is worked by means of a sheet and a brace on the sprit, usually by one man, whose companion steers by a paddle over the stern; sometimes, however, one man performs both duties. Now and again you will find the luff of the sail bowlined out with another stick. This is most common round Sierra Leone.

The appliances for catching fish are, firstly, fish traps, sometimes made of hollow logs of trees, with one end left open and the other closed. One of these is just dropped alongside the bank, left for a week or so, until a fish family makes a home in it, and then it is removed with a jerk. Then there are fish-baskets made from split palm-stems tied together with tie tie; they are circular and conical, resembling our lobster pots and eel baskets, and they are usually baited with lumps of kank soaked in palm-oil. Then there are drag nets made of pineapple fibre, one edge weighted with stones tied in bunches at intervals; as a rule these run ten to twenty-five feet long, but in some places they are much longer. The longest I ever saw was when out fis.h.i.+ng in the lovely harbour of San Paul de Loanda. This was over thirty feet and was weighted with bunches of clam sh.e.l.ls, and made of European yarn, as indeed most nets are when this is procurable by the natives, and it was worked by three canoes which were being poled about, as is usual in Loanda Harbour. Then there is the universal hook and line, the hook either of European make or the simple bent pin of our youth.

But my favourite method, and the one by which I got most of my fish up rivers or in creeks is the stockade trap. These are constructed by driving in stakes close together, leaving one opening, not in the middle of the stockade, but towards the up river end. In tidal waters these stockades are visited daily, at nearly low tide, for the high tide carries the fish in behind the stockade, and leaves them there on falling. Up river, above tide water, the stockades are left for several days, in order to allow the fish to congregate. Then the opening is closed up, the fisher-women go inside and throw out the water and collect the fish. There is another kind of stockade that gives great sport. During the wet season the terrific rush of water tears off bits of bank in such rivers as the Congo, and Ogowe, where, owing to the continual fierce current of fresh water the brackish tide waters do not come far up the river, so that the banks are not s.h.i.+elded by a great network of mangrove roots. In the Ogowe a good many of the banks are composed of a stout clay, and so the pieces torn off hang together, and often go sailing out to sea, on the current, waving their bushes, and even trees, gallantly in the broad Atlantic, out of sight of land. Bits of the Congo Free State are great at seafaring too, and owing to the terrific stream of the great Zaire, which spreads a belt of fresh water over the surface of the ocean 200 miles from land, s.h.i.+ps fall in with these floating islands, with their trees still flouris.h.i.+ng. The Ogowe is not so big as the Congo, but it is a very respectable stream even for the great continent of rivers, and it pours into the Atlantic, in the wet season, about 1,750,000 cubic feet of fresh water per second, on which float some of these islands. But by no means every island gets out to sea, many of them get into slack water round corners in the Delta region of the Ogowe and remain there, collecting all sorts of _debris_ that comes down on the flood water, getting matted more and more firm by the floating gra.s.s, every joint of which grows on the smallest opportunity. In many places these floating islands are of considerable size; one I heard of was large enough to induce a friend of mine to start a coffee plantation on it; unfortunately the wretched thing came to pieces when he had cut down its trees and turned the soil up. And one I saw in the Karkola river, was a weird affair. It was in the river opposite our camp, and very slowly, but perceptibly it went round and round in an orbit, although it was about half an acre in extent. A good many of these bits of banks do not attain to the honour of becoming islands, but get on to sand-banks in their early youth, near a native town, to the joy of the inhabitants, who forthwith go off to them, and drive round them a stockade of stakes firmly anchoring them. Thousands of fishes then congregate round the little island inside the stockade, for the rich feeding in among the roots and gra.s.s, and the affair is left a certain time. Then the entrance to the stockade is firmly closed up, and the natives go inside and bale out the water, and catch the fish in baskets, tearing the island to pieces, with shouts and squeals of exultation. It's messy, but it is amusing, and you get tremendous catches.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. PAUL DO LOANDA. [_To face page 102._]

A very large percentage of fish traps are dedicated to the capture of shrimp and craw-fish, which the natives value highly when smoked, using them to make a sauce for their kank; among these is the shrimp-basket.

These baskets are tied on sticks laid out in parallel lines of considerable extent. They run about three inches in diameter, and their length varies with the place that is being worked. The stakes are driven into the mud, and to each stake is tied a basket with a line of tie tie, the basket acting as a hat to the stake when the tide is ebbing; as the tide comes in, it lowers the basket into the current and carries into its open end large quant.i.ties of shrimps, which get entangled and packed by the force of the current into the tapering end of the basket, which is sometimes eight or ten feet from the mouth. You can always tell where there is a line of these baskets by seeing the line of attendant sea-gulls all solemnly arranged with their heads to win'ard, sea-gull fas.h.i.+on.

Another device employed in small streams for the capture of either craw-fish or small fish is a line of calabashes, or earthen pots with narrow mouths; these are tied on to a line, I won't say with tie tie, because I have said that irritating word so often, but still you understand they are; this line is tied to a tree with more, and carried across the stream, sufficiently slack to submerge the pots, and then to a tree on the other bank, where it is secured with the same material. A fetish charm is then secured to it that will see to it, that any one who interferes with the trap, save the rightful owner, will "swell up and burst," then the trap is left for the night, the catch being collected in the morning.

Single pots, well baited with bits of fish and with a suitable stone in to keep them steady, are frequently used alongside the bank. These are left for a day or more, and then the owner with great care, crawls along the edge of the bank and claps on a lid and secures the prey.