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 a mutual friendship arising between us. I admire him sincercly. His personal appearance, his grand manner, the regular way in which he orders his life, going down regularly on to one particular stone at the river's brink to make his toilet; attending every meal during the day; and going to roost on one particular door-top, commands admiration and respect. But to me he behaved cruelly. He bullied me out of food at meal times, always winding up with a fight, holding on to my finger with his beak like a vice. I know he regards me as a defeated slave and took as mere due service my many rescues of him from behind a mirror, which hung tilted from the wall and behind which he used constantly to fall, dazzled by the vision of his own beauty as he flew up in front of the glass. There is another low-down pigeon domesticated at Talagouga, but he was a nobody, and Monsieur let him know it, in spite of several rebellions on his part. And there were also two very small, very black kittens which were being carefully, but alas unavailingly nursed, for their mother had abandoned them.

M. Forget did not think I should have much chance of getting fish for specimens, because he said, although the Fans catch plenty, they do not care to sell them, as they are the main article of food in this foodless region, still he would try and persuade them to bring them to me, and so successful were his efforts that that afternoon several Fans turned up with specimens. For these I gave, as usual when opening a trade in a district, fancy prices, a ruse that proved so successful here that I was soon at my wits' end for bottles and spirit—trade gin I might have got, but there is not sufficient alcohol in trade gin to preserve specimens in. Again M. Forget came to the rescue and let me have a bottle of alcohol out of the dispensary.

I got a fearful fright during my second night at Talagouga. I went to bed quite lulled into a sense of security by the mosquitolessness of the previous night. I was aroused between 2 and 3 o'clock. by acute pain from punctured wounds on the chest and the mosquito curtain completely down and smothering me. My first fear was that I had brought a mosquito or so of the Lembarene strain up to


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 Talagouga with me, who had just recovered from the journey and were having their evening meal. I fought my way out of the mosquito-curtain and trod on a cold flabby thing which kindly said "Croak"—introducing itself as a harmless frog, and dispelling fear number two, namely that it was a snake. I then had a sporting hunt for matches in the inky dark—upset half the room before I found them, but when this was done, and I got the candle alight, I found a big black cat sitting smiling on my bed, and conjecturing she was the bereaved mother of those afflicted, deserted, kittens, I got her off, and tied up the mosquito-bar to the ceiling again, and then took her in with me under it to finish my night's rest; for I feared if I left her outside she would cause another tender awakening of memories of those Lembarene mosquitoes. The frog, having got his wind again, flip-flapped about the floor all night, croak, croaking to his outdoor relations about the unprovoked outrage that had been committed on him.

I spent the succeeding days in buying fish from the natives, who brought it in quantities, mostly of two sorts, and of course wanted enormous prices for it; but I confess I rather enjoy the give-and-take fun of bartering against their extortion, and my trading with them introduced us to each other so that when we met in the course of the long climbing walks I used to take beetle-hunting in the bush behind the mission station, we knew about each other, and did not get much shocked or frightened.

That forest round Talagouga was one of the most difficult bits of country to get about in I ever came across, for it was dense and there were no bush paths. No Fan village wants to walk to another Fan village for social civilities, and all their trade goes up and down the river in canoes. No doubt some miles inland there are bush paths, but I never struck one, so they must be pretty far away. Neither did I come across any villages in the forest, they seem all to be on the river bank round here.

The views from the summits of the abruptly shaped hills round Talagouga are exceedingly grand, and give one a good idea of the trend of the Sierra del Cristal range in this district; to the east, the higher portions of the ranges showed, just

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 foundation of civilized life must be laid down.

The territorial readjustment of Eastern Europe will, as a rule, be carried out according to the principle of nationality; but in each case due regard must also be paid to present economic conditions, and to historical peculiarities. The great complexity of the national problem makes each concrete national question a distinct political problem of its own.

(10) Belgium must be completely restored; Germany must make compensation for the losses caused by its perfidious attack and occupation.

(11) The non-German nations of Prussia, Germany, must be liberated. In the first place, Alsace-Lorraine; though the majority of the population is German, they desire to be united with France, or at least to break away from Germany. Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to Germany in 1871 against the will of the people, and has never become reconciled to the annexation; on that occasion the representatives of the Czech nation alone protested officially against this deed of violence. True, the German Socialists of those days had enough courage to protest also.

The Danes in Schleswig must be united with Denmark, the Poles in Prussian Silesia and in Posnania with Danzig must be united with their countrymen of Russia and Austria. Eastern Prussia will thus become a German enclave having direct connection with Prussia by the sea.

The Lusatians, should they so wish, may be joined to Bohemia, the Lithuanians of East Prussia (with i few Letts) would be attached to Lithuania. Czechs in Prussian Silesia will be exchanged for German territory of the Austrian Silesia. Prussia and Germany would in that way become united nationally, something that the Pangermans themselves desire; that is no injury to the German nation, for it would merely compel the Germans to limit themselves to their own national resources, and give up exploiting non-German nations.

I have not the least doubt that the Pangermans will reject with the greatest indignation such a solution of the Prussian question—to free the Lusatians? To have within cannon shot of Berlin a free Slav territory? Yes—that would be a victory of justice and Nemesis: if the Allies win, a solution of the Prussian question in a democratic and truly national sense is possible and necessary.

The Germans will object to leaving Danzig to the Poles; they already proposed to give the Poles a free acceess to Danzig. The Polish population reaches to the gates of Danzig and the sea shore; the forcible, in human Germanization of the Slavs justifies such German losses.

(12) The entire Polish nation, in Russia, Austria, and Prussia, must be united into an independent state. It will have the access to the seas through its own territory (Danzig).

(13) The Bohemian Lands (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia) with the Slovaks of Northern Hungary must form an independent state. The boundaries of the Bohemian Lands are given, for the Bohemian state is by law independent the so-called German territory in Bohemia (Moravia and Silesia) has many Czech inhabitants, therefore, it is just that the renewed state keep it; it would be unjust and inhuman to sacrifice hundred thousands of Bohemians to the furor teutonicus; as late as 1861 the Germans in Bohemia were one with the Czechs in demanding the coronation of Francis Joseph as King of Bohemia—no doubt, after this war the Germans in Bohemia will abandon the national fury into which they have been driven by the brutal Pan German agitation. Many Germans themselves more than once protested against the Pangerman policy of severing North and West of Bohemia and trying to establish a new capital in one of the German towns.

Respecting the Magyar minority, it must be emphasized that there are no Magyars in Slovakia, only Magyar-speaking individuals; the Magyars closed the Slovak schools, suppresed the Slovak literature, and are trying by all means to denationalize the Slovaks. It is only just to stop this brutal,


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 beyond Njole, a closely set series of strangely shaped summits beautifully purple-blue, running away indefinitely to the N.N.W. and S.E.; and when the day was clear, one could see the mountains of Achangoland away to the S.S.E., from their shape evidently the same formation, but not following the same direction as the range of the Sierra del Cristal. The hills I had personally to deal with were western flanking hills of the Sierra—all masses of hard black rock with veins and blocks of crystalline quartz. Between the interstices of the rocks, was the rich vegetable mould made by hundreds of thousands of years of falling leaves and timber. The undergrowth was very dense and tangled among the great gray-white columns of the high trees; the young shoots of this undergrowth were interesting, not so often rose-coloured as those round Lembarene, but usually in the denser parts a pale creamy-white, or a deep blue. I was fool enough to fancy that a soft, delicate-leaved, white-shoot-bearing plant had, on its own account, a most fragrant scent, but I soon found the scent came from the civet cats, which abound here, and seem to affect this shrub particularly. It is very quaint the intense aversion the Africans have to this scent, and the grimaces and spitting that goes on when they come across it; their aversion is shared by the elephants. I once saw an elephant put his trunk against one of these scented bushes, have it up in a second, and fly off into the forest with an Oh lor! burn-some-brown-paper! pocket-handkerchief-please expression all over him. The natives, knowing this, use civet in hunting elephants, as I will some day describe. The high trees were of various kinds—acacias, red-wood, African oak, a little ebony, and odeaka, and many other kinds I know not even the native names of to this day. One which I know well by sight gives, when cut, a vividly yellow wood of great beauty. Now and again on exposed parts of the hillside, one comes across great falls of timber which have been thrown down by tornadoes either flat on to the ground—in which case under and among them are snakes and scorpions, and getting over them is slippery work; or thrown sideways and hanging against their fellows, all covered with gorgeous drapery of climbing, flowering plants—in which case they present to the human atom


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 inhuman policy and to force the Magyars to rely on their own national forces.

It was reported, that the Hungarian Ukrainians (the Uhro-Rusins and the Carpatho-Russians) wish to be incorporated as an autonomous unit in the Czecho-Slovak state. And it was also proposed to connect Slovakia with Jugoslavia by a kind of a corridor starting at Presburg and stretching south along the boundaries of Lower Austria and Styria to the River Mura; this area takes in Hungarian territory, but is inhabted by Germans, not Magyars, with Croatian colonies and a Slovene minority.

(14) The Ukrainians (in Galicia, Bukovina, Hungary) will become a part of the Russian Ukraine.

(15) The Magyar nation forms an independent state.

(16) The Roumanians of Austria, Hungary, Russia, will be united with Roumanians.

(17) Jugoslavs form an independent federation, led politically by Serbia. Montenegro will decide, through its parliament, whether it any longer wishes to be independent or united with Serbia.

(18) Bulgaria will be recognized within its boundaries before the war; it may be given part of Turkish territory.

(19) Albania will remain free. It has been proposed that she may federate with Serbia or Greece or Italy—but that must be decided by the Albanians themselves. Albania cannot have a German ruler or any prince connected with Austria or Germany.

(20) Turkey must no longer be allowed to keep any territory in Europe, the Allies agreed on this point in their Note to President Wilson. Constantinople and the Dardanelles will probably be administered by a commission of the Allies; a definite disposition will be made as experiences of the new states will be acquired.

The Turkish movement, known as Neo-Turanian, a very close analogy of PrussanPrussian [sic] Pangermanism and Austrian Imperialism, deserves sharp condemnation; the Neo-Turanians appeal to the memory of Djengis-Khan. In every encyclopedia you will find that this barbarian imperialist put to death five million people, a horrible figure, but still smaller than the number of victims of the two Pangermans, William and Francis Joseph.

(21) The Greek question (or rather questions) require a careful consideration; it would not be unjust to restore Constantinople and the Dardanelles to Greece—to some degree it is a question of finances, a question whether Greece could afford the cost of maintenance. There are many Greek cities, and scattered territories in Asia Minor; they should be restored to Greece.

(22) Italy will receive the Italian territories of Austria; Trieste will proablyprobably [sic] be a free city and port.

Italy points to the fact that her eastern coast in the Adriatic, is, owing to its straight shores, in a great disadvantage as against the many excellent harbors of Istria and Dalmatia; this fact and the fact that there is a small Italian minority in Dalmatia are adduced as reasons for annexing a great part of Dalmatia and the islands. Dalmatia would be dangerous to Italy in the hands of Austria led by Germany; it will not be dangerous in the hands of Serbia and the Jugoslavs, because they have no navy and will not be rich enough to build up a dangerous navy; neither have they any aggressive plans. Trieste and Pola will suffice to secure for Italy the supremacy of the Adriatic; Italy’s right to these was conceded by Serbia (Pašiči’s London Declaration); the main problem that Italy will have to solve is and will be problem of population and finances. Italy very soon will out-distance France with regard to population; if Italy develops its industries and increases its wealth, it will exercise a decisive influence on the Adriatic and the Balkans through its economic strength. [sic]The eventual closing of the Adriatic in the Straits of Otranto depends mainly upon the size and efficiency of the navy. The disposition of the occupied islands in the Aegean Sea must be made by agreement at the Conference.

(23) The German provinces of Austria will become an independent state; they will decide whether or no they will join the German federation.


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 a wall made up of strong tendrils and climbing grasses, through which the said atom has to cut its way with a matchette and push into the crack so made, getting, the while covered with red driver-ants, and such like, and having sensational meetings with blue-green snakes, dirty green snakes with triangular horned heads, black cobras, and boa constrictors. I never came back to the station without having been frightened half out of my wits, and with one or two of my smaller terrifiers in cleft sticks to bottle. When you get into the way, catching a snake in a cleft stick is perfectly simple. Only mind you have the proper kind of stick, split far enough up, and keep your attention on the snake's head, that's his business end, and the tail which is whisking and winding round your wrist does not matter: there was one snake, by the way, of which it was impossible to tell, in the forest, which was his head. The natives swear he has one at each end; so you had better "Lef 'em," even though you know the British Museum would love to have him, for he is very venomous, and one of the few cases of death from snake-bite I have seen, was from this species.

Several times, when further in the forest, I came across a trail of flattened undergrowth, for fifty or sixty yards, with a horrid musky smell that demonstrated it had been the path of a boa constrictor, and nothing more.

It gave me more trouble and terror to get to the top of those Talagouga hillsides than it gave me to go twenty miles in the forests of Old Calabar, and that is saying a good deal, but when you got to the summit there was the glorious view of the rest of the mountains, stretching away, interrupted only by Mount Talagouga to the S.E. by E. and the great, grim, dark forest, under the lowering gray sky common during the dry season on the Equator. No glimpse or hint did one have of the Ogowé up here, so deep down in its ravine does it flow. A person coming to the hill tops close to Talagouga from the N. or N.N.W. and turning back in his track from here might be utterly unconscious that one of the great rivers of the world was flowing, full and strong, within some 800 feet of him. There is a strange sense of secretiveness about all these West African forests; but I never saw it so marked as in these that


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 shroud the Sierra del Cristal. I very rarely met any natives in this part; those that I did were hunters, big, lithe men with all their toilet attention concentrated on their hair. On two occasions I ran some risk from having been stalked in mistake for game by these hunters. "Hoots toots, mon, a verra pretty thing it would hae been for an Englishwoman to hae been shot in mistake for a gorilla by a cannibal Fan of all folks," was a Scotch friend's commentary. I escaped, however, because these men get as close as they can to their prey before firing; and when they found out their mistake they were not such cockney sportsmen as to kill me because I was something queer, and we stood and stared at each other, said a few words in our respective languages, and parted. One thing that struck me very much in these forests was the absence of signs of fetish worship which are so much in evidence in Calabar, where you constantly come across trees worshipped as the residences of spirits, and little huts put up over offerings to bush souls.

Thanks to the kindness of M. Forget, I had an opportunity of visiting Talagouga Island—a grant of which has been made by the French Government to the Mission Évangélique, who, owing to the inconveniences of being hitched precariously on a hillside, intend shortly removing from their present situation, and settling on the island.

Talagouga Island is situated in the middle of the river, about halfway between the present mission beach and Njole. It is a mile long and averages about a quarter of a mile wide; the up-river end of it is a rocky low hill, and it tapers down river from this, ending in a pretty little white sandbank. At the upper end there is a reef of black rocks against which the Ogowé strikes, its brown face turning white with agitation at being interrupted, when it is in such a tearing hurry to get to the South Atlantic. When going up river to it in a canoe, creeping up along by the bank, I had more chance of seeing details than when on the Éclaireur with her amusing distractions. The first object of interest was Talagouga rock; seen at close quarters, it rises a gray, rough, weathered head, much water-worn, some twenty feet above the dry season level of the water. Goodness knows how far it is down


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 (24) Russia will organize itself in accordance with the principle of the self-determination of nations into a federation of nations. In this federation there could in the west (outside of the Poles) be the Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians; the Ukraine will be an autonomous part of Russia—their attempt to be entirely independent could sufficiently convince the Ukrainians that separation from Russia will turn them into slaves of the Germans.

The various small nations of the Caucasus and of other parts of Russia and Russian Asia will enjoy national autonomy in accordance with their degree of education, national consciousness and number. The Prussian part of Lithuanians (with a few Letts) will be united to Lithuania. The Roumanian part of Bessarabia will be joined to Roumania. Finland may be independent, if it reaches an agreement to that effect with Russia.

(25) In the Far East of Asia political supremacy belongs to the cultural nations of the Mongolian race; Western Asia has in fact been a part of Europe and will be organized by the agreement of Russia, France, England and Italy. Russian Asia will remain united to Russia, English and French colonies will continue to be English and French; nations under European rule will be secured, in accordance with their cultural development and their number, national autonomy and participation in the government.

(26) Africa will remain substantially under the rule of England and France; Germany may receive back its western colony, Italy will agree with England and France as to the increase of the colonial domain.

(27) America (Northern, Central and Southern) will not permit Germany to establish autonomous German colonies.

(28) With regard to colonies, their administration must have regard for the needs of the native peoples and educate them and extend to them self-government gradually.

(29) The German colonies in Polynesia will be given to England and Holland.

(30) The Jews among all nations will enjoy the same rights as other citizens; their national and Zionistic aims will receive after the example of England all possible support.

(31) The Congress will adopt a law with international guarantees securing to national minorities cultural and administrative self-government.

(32) Ethnographic rectifications of state boundaries may, with the consent of the nations concerned, be carried out from time to time according to the growth of national consciousness and experience. The Congress must urge an exact census of the population according to nationality, for the existing statistics are very partial and insufficient.

(33) The Congress should provide leading principles for eugenic supervision, secured from the point of view of hygiene, of be of great importance after war in all the states; policy in regard to population will be of great impartance after war in all the countries. Alcoholism, for instance, must be suppressed internationally.

(34) To secure the execution of the principles and decisions reached by the Congress of Peace, the Congress will transform itself into an international tribunal, controlling the cultural development of nations and the organization of international reciprocity. (League of Nations).

The leading principle of all decisions must be the endeavor to facilitate the international organization of all nations of Europe, and to bring them nearer to the nations of Asia, Africa, and America. If necessary, some closer unions of nations can be formed.

The political innovations proposed in this theme are neither many nor surprising. They are in harmony with the development of nations and their just demand of political freedom and unification. De facto only two independent states would be new, the Polish and Czecho-Slovak; Bohemia and Poland are not new states, for they had been free, their freedom will be merely restored. Bohemia is legally independent, Austria and Hungary oppressed it by force. The other states will remain, some en-


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 to its bed on the river bottom. Up to a few years ago it was regarded as the mark between the regions of Gaboon and Congo Français, but this division is now done away with, and there is no Gaboon, but the whole province is Congo Français. So Talagouga rock gets no official position, and is left to the veneration it is held in, as the dwelling-place of an Ombuiri. On the edge on the top of the bank, adjacent to Talagouga rock, is a small swamp, and by the side of it stands another gigantic monolith which, judging the height of Talagouga rock above water to be twenty feet, must be between fifty and sixty feet high. It does not get any veneration at all; but if that great Stonehenge-like thing were in the Rivers, it would be a great ju-ju, and be covered round its base with bits of white calico, and have bottles of gin set in front of it, and calabashes of hard-boiled eggs and goodness knows what. That rock is thrown away on these Bantu; that comes of being magnificent at the wrong time and place. Opposite to Talagouga rock, on the other bank, is perched on top of a dwarf clay cliff the village of Talagouga (Fan) with Hatton and Cookson's sub-factory in it, presided over by a Sierra Leonian. On the north bank, a little higher up, M. Forget pointed out to me a place in the forest where, a year or two ago, the strange dwarf people had a village; there are none of them there now, as they wander to and fro in the forest, never remaining many months in one spot. They are diffused, in small communities, all over the forest of Congo Français; but their chief haunt seems to be among the Bakele tribe in Achangoland. We crossed the river and then landed, clambering up a steep bank on to the lower end of the island. M. Forget stated that a path ran up to the upper end, which had been cut when the island was surveyed before being registered to the mission. I did not think much of it as a path, nor did M. Forget, I fancy, after ten minutes' experience of it, for it had considerably grown up: and although this island is not quite so densely timbered as the mainland, nor made in such acute angles, still it has these attributes to a considerable extent, as it is a real island of a rocky nature, and not a glorified sandbank that has grabbed its earth and vegetation from shipwrecked pieces of the


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 main bank and dead trees, like those islands round and below Lembarene. However, scratched but safe we got to the upper end; and M. Forget went off to see after the orange, lime, banana, and plantain trees that had been planted on the upper end of the island where the mission houses are to be built. I wandered about seeing things, among others an encampment of Fans who are cutting down the timber to make room for the building, which is not yet commenced; and some wonderful tiny bays in the bank, along the southern side, where the current is less strong, or rather, I suppose, deflected against the mainland bank by the rock reef. These bays are filled in the dry season by banks of white sand in which sparkle fragments of mica, and when you walk on them they give out a musical, soft hum in a strange way. "Unfortunately," M. Forget says, so far no spring water has been found on the island. I say unfortunately in notes of quotation as I do not agree with him that the absence of spring water is a misfortune, but regard it as a blessing in disguise, for, to my way of thinking, the Ogowé water, exposed to the air, with its swift current, is safer stuff to drink than decoc terræ Africano—spring water, I mean.

While we are waiting for the return of the canoe which has gone to the mainland to deposit an Evangelist in a village, M. Forget has a palaver with the Fans, who are very slowly shaving the trees from the top of the hill. They agreed to do this thing for the wood, but it has since occurred to them that they would like to be paid wages as well. They are sweet unsophisticated children of nature, these West African tribes; little thoughts like these are constantly arising in their minds, and on all hands—missionary, governmental and trading—I am told these Fans are exceedingly treacherous and you can never trust them to hold to a bargain. I will say this is not the case with other African tribes I have come across. In the Rivers, for example, when a jam is made, it's made, and they will stick to it all, save the time clause, more honourably than twenty per cent. of white men would. Our canoe returns before "palaver done set"; and we go off home, the blue mists rising among the trees and reflecting in the Ogowé a deeper and more intense blue, adding


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 another element to a wonderfully lovely scene that is well accompanied by the elaborate songs of the canoe crew and the sound of their paddles. We are down again at Talagouga beach in a far shorter time than it took us to come up.

All the balance of the time I was at Talagouga I spent in trying to find means to get up into the rapids above Njole, for my heart got more and more set on them now that I saw the strange forms of the Talagouga fishes, and the differences between them and the fishes at Lembarene. For some time no one whom I could get hold of regarded it as a feasible scheme, but, at last, M. Gacon thought it might be managed; I said I would give a reward of 100 francs to any one who would lend me a canoe and a crew, and would pay the working expenses, food, wages, &c. M. Gacon had a good canoe and could spare me two English-speaking Igalwas, one of whom had been part of the way with MM. Allégret and Teisserès, when they made their journey up to Franceville and then across to Brazzaville and down the Congo two years ago. He also thought we could get six Fans to complete the crew. I was delighted, packed my small portmanteau with a few things, got some trade goods, wound up my watch, ascertained the date of the day of the month, and borrowed three hairpins from Mme. Forget, then down came disappointment. On my return from the bush that evening, Mme. Forget said M. Gacon said "it was impossible," the Fans round Talagouga wouldn't go at any price above Njole, because they were certain they would be killed and eaten by the up-river Fans, Internally consigning the entire tribe to regions where they will get a rise in temperature, even on this climate, I went with Mme. Forget to M. Gacon, and we talked it over; finally, M. Gacon thought he could let me have two more Igalwas from Hatton and Cookson's beach across the river. Sending across there we found this could be done, so I now felt I was in for it, and screwed my courage to the sticking point—no easy matter after all the information I had got into my mind regarding the rapids of the River Ogowé.


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92

“Whate’er thou wilt command me, I cannot say thee nay!

For love of that fair maiden I’ll do what thou dost say.

How could I aught deny her, who owns my heart alone?

For her sake that thou askest is all as good as done.”

“Go then and tell my mother, Uté, the noble queen,

That we anent this journey in joyous mood have been;

And let the kings, my brothers, know each how we did fare;

And all our friends must also the happy tidings hear.

“And from my beauteous sister, I pray thee naught reserve;

But say that I and Brunhild will her right gladly serve.

And tell unto the court-folk and all my serving-men,

That what my heart had yearn’d for, full well did I attain!

“And tell to gallant Ortwein, that nephew dear of mine,

That he have seats erected by Worms upon the Rhine.

And all my other kinsmen, they also should be told

That I, with Queen Brunhilda, high festival will hold.

“And tell unto my sister (as soon as she hath learn’d

How, with my guests so shortly I shall be home return’d)

That she to my betroth’d one a welcome good must give:—

So shall I to Kriemhilda for aye beholden live.”

Then did the noble Siegfried a courteous farewell

Take of the Lady Brunhild, as did beseem him well,—

And of her courtiers likewise; then to the Rhine rode he.

No messenger were better in all the world than he.


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I establish myself on my portmanteau comfortably in the canoe, my back is against the trade box, and behind that is the usual mound of pillows, sleeping mats, and mosquito-bars of the Igalwa crew; the whole surmounted by the French flag flying from an indifferent stick.

M. and Mme. Forget provide me with everything I can possibly require, and say, that the blood of half my crew is half alcohol; on the whole it is patent they don't expect to see me again, and I forgive them, because they don't seem cheerful over it; but still it is not reassuring—nothing is about this affair, and it's going to rain. It does, as we go up the river to Njole, where there is another risk of the affair collapsing, by the French authorities declining to allow me to proceed. On we paddled, M'bo the head man standing in the bows of the canoe in front of me, to steer, then I, then the baggage, then the able-bodied seamen, including the cook also standing and paddling; and at the other extremity of the canoe—it grieves me to speak of it in this unseamanlike way, but in these canoes both ends are alike, and chance alone ordains which is bow and which is stern—stands Pierre, the first officer, also steering; the paddles used are all of the long-handled, leaf-shaped Igalwa type. We get up just past Talagouga Island and then tie up against the bank of M. Gazenget's plantation, and make a piratical raid on its bush for poles. A gang of his men


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 come down to us, but only to chat. One of them, I notice, has had something happen severely to one side of his face. I ask M'bo what's the matter, and he answers, with a derisive laugh, "He be fool man, he go for tief plantain and done got shot." M'bo does not make it clear where the sin in this affair is exactly located; I expect it is in being "fool man." Having got our supply of long stout poles we push off and paddle on again. Before we reach Njole I recognise my crew have got the grumbles, and at once inquire into the reason. M'bo sadly informs me that "they no got chop," having been provided only with plantain, and no meat or fish to eat with it. I promise to get them plenty at Njole, and contentment settles on the crew, and they sing. After about three hours we reach Njole, and I proceed to interview the authorities. Dr. Pélessier is away down river, and the two gentlemen in charge don't understand English; but Pierre translates, and the letter which M. Forget has kindly written for me explains things, and so the palaver ends satisfactorily, after a long talk. First, the official says he does not like to take the responsibility of allowing me to endanger myself in those rapids. I explain I will not hold any one responsible but myself, and I urge that a lady has been up before, a Mme. Quinee. He says "Yes, that is true, but Madame had with her a husband and many men, whereas I am alone and have only eight Igalwas and not Adoomas, the proper crew for the rapids, and they are away up river now with the convoy." "True, oh King!" I answer, "but Madame Quinee went right up to Lestourville, whereas I only want to go sufficiently high up the rapids to get typical fish. And these Igalwas are great men at canoe work, and can go in a canoe anywhere that any mortal man can go"—this to cheer up my Igalwa interpreter—"and as for the husband, neither the Royal Geographical Society's list, in their 'Hints to Travellers,' nor Messrs. Silver, in their elaborate lists of articles necessary for a traveller in tropical climates, make mention of husbands." If they did, by the by, they would say he was to be green, but they don't say a word about one. However, the official ultimately says Yes, I may go, and parts with me as with one bent on self-destruction. This affair being settled I start off, like an


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IX.]

With four and twenty horsemen he into Worms did ride.

“Without the king he cometh!” was heard on every side;

And all the folk lamented, and stirr’d were with the dread

Lest in that foreign country they’d left their master dead!

They from their steeds dismounted: right happy was their mood;

And Giselher hasten’d to them, the youthful king and good,

And eke his brother Gernot: how eagerly spake he,

When he the kingly Gunther did not with Siegfried see!

“Be welcome, Siegfried,” cried he, “but, pray you let me know

Where you have left my brother, who forth with you did go?

If Queen Brunhilda’s prowess have robbed us of our king,

Methinks your high-aim’d wooing hath been an evil thing!”

“Forego your fears!” quoth Siegfried, “my noble comrade sends

His loyal love and greeting to you and all his friends.

In rare good health I left him: I came at his command

To bring you, as his envoy, tidings to this your land.

“You must see to it quickly, however it may be,

That I the good queen-mother and your fair sister see;—

For they must hear the message, which I was bade to tell,

From Gunther and Brunhilda: with both of whom ’tis well,”

Then Giselher the lad said: “Go then to her you’ve won,

Since for my sister’s favour, such service you have done!

Great trouble doth she suffer about my brother’s fate,

The maid will see you gladly, I’ll warrant me of that!”


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 old hen with a brood of chickens to provide for, to get chop for my men, and go first to Hatton and Cookson's factory. I find its white Agent is down river after stores, and John Holt's Agent says he has got no beef nor fish, and is precious short of provisions for himself; so I go back to Dumas', where I find a most amiable French gentleman, who says he will let me have as much fish or beef as I want, and to this supply he adds some delightful bread biscuits. M'bo and the crew beam with satisfaction; mine is clouded by finding, when they have carried off the booty to the canoe, that the Frenchman will not let me pay for it. Therefore taking the opportunity of his back being turned for a few minutes, I buy and pay for, across the store counter, some trade things, knives, cloth, &c. Then I say good-bye to the Agent. "Adieu, Mademoiselle," says he in a for-ever tone of voice. Indeed I am sure I have caught from these kind people a very pretty and becoming mournful manner, and there's not another white station for 500 miles where I can show it off. Away we go, still damp from the rain we have come through, but drying nicely with the day, and cheerful about the chop.

The Ogowé is broad at Njole and its banks not mountainous, as at Talagouga; but as we go on it soon narrows, the current runs more rapidly than ever, and we are soon again surrounded by the mountain range. Great masses of black rock show among the trees on the hillsides, and under the fringe of fallen trees that hang from the steep banks. Two hours after leaving Njole we are facing our first rapid. Great gray-black masses of smoothed rock rise up out of the whirling water in all directions. These rocks have a peculiar appearance which puzzle me at the time, but in subsequently getting used to it I accepted it quietly and admired. When the sun shines on them they have a soft light blue haze round them, like a halo. The effect produced by this, with the forested hillsides and the little beaches of glistening white sand was one of the most perfect things I have ever seen.

We kept along close to the right-hand bank, dodging out of the way of the swiftest current as much as possible. Ever and again we were unable to force our way round projecting parts of the bank, so we then got up just as far as we could to the


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 of the play itself, and give your impressions concerning it. Never mind their being silly. They will be all the better for that. Silly remarks are generally more interesting than sensible ones."

"But what is the use of saying anything about it at all?" I urge. "The merest schoolboy must know all about the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play by this time."

"What has that to do with you?" answers B. "You are not writing for cultured schoolboys. You are writing for mere simple men and women. They will be glad of a little information on the subject, and then when the schoolboy comes home for his holiday they will be able, so far as this topic, at all events, is concerned, to converse with him on his own level and not appear stupid.

"Come," he says, kindly, trying to lead me on, "what did you think about it?"

"Well," I reply, after musing for a while, "I think that a play of eighteen acts and some forty scenes, which commences at eight o'clock in the morning, and continues, with an interval of an hour and a half for dinner, until six o'clock in the evening, is too long. I think the piece wants cutting. About a third of it is impressive and moving, and what the earnest student of the drama at home is for ever demanding that a play should be—namely, elevating; but I consider that the other two-thirds are tiresome."

"Quite so," answers B. "But then we must remember that the performance is not intended as an entertainment, but as a religious service. To criticise any part of it as uninteresting, is like saying that half the Bible might very well have been omitted, and that the whole story could have been told in a third of the space."


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94

The noble Siegfried answer’d: “An I can serve the maid,

Right faithfully and gladly that service shall be paid.

Now who will tell these ladies that them I fain would see?”

’Twas Giselher the comely his messenger would be.

Swift Giselher the tidings unto his mother told,

And eke unto his sister, when he did them behold:

“To us the hero Siegfried of Netherland hath come;

Him hath my brother Gunther here to the Rhine sent home.

“He bringeth us full tidings of how the king doth fare.

Now must ye give permission that he to court repair;

From Iceland brings he hither a true report, I trow.”—

Yet soon these noble ladies much sorrow were to know.

To get their robes they hasten’d, and did themselves array;

And then they summon’d Siegfried to come to court straightway,—

Which did he, willing-hearted, too happy her to see:

The noble maid Kriemhilda spake to him graciously.

“Be welcome, my lord Siegfried, thou worthy knight!” she cried;

“Where doth my brother Gunther, the noble king, abide?

Of him, by Brunhild’s prowess, I ween we are forlorn!

O woe is me, poor maiden, that ever I was born!”

Then spake the gallant hero: “Now pay me herald’s fee!

For know, O beanteous ladies, no need to weep have ye.

In lusty health I left him, of that ye may be sure;—

To te! you both these tidings he sent me on before.


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 It is to be well conſidered, of what great value the wiſe and happie gouernement of his Maieſtie hath been; his enemies being conſtrained to confeſſe, that it is to be wondered at, and vntill this time vnknowen, hauing in leſſe than two moneths trauailed eight-ſcore leagues, with ſuch a great Armie at his, troubled with a great deale of Ordinaunce, manie Switzers, and other ſtrange Nations; and in this time taking the Suburbes of Paris, made fiue or ſixe notable ſieges, taken fourteene or fifteene notable towns, hauing cleared the Prouinces of Vandoſme, Tourain, Aniou, and Maine, of all that his enemies helde: and not onelie recouered the Townes, but the hearts and affections of thoſe that moſt hated him. All his exploites being done by the force of his armes, and preſence, and terror of the ſame; without practiſes of treaſons, murders, monopoles, or fraudes: leauing thoſe guiles, vnto thoſe that deale with vniuſt actions, aſſuring himſelfe his cauſe to bee ſo iuſt, that it was able to ſupport it ſelfe without the helpe of anie thing of a contrarie nature, hauing alwaies this commendable maxime in regard, that euil can neuer ſerue to anie good purpoſe.

Is it poſsible that GOD hath ſo condemned the poore inhabitants of Towns, that he wil ſuffer them anie longer to be ſo blinded in ſpirit and bodie, as not to conſider of the miſchiefes wherin they haue plunged themſelues, and how thoſe vnto whome they giue themſelues ouer, and receiue for friendes, become immediatelie the cruelleſt enemies they can haue: who after they haue ſucked from them al that they can drawe, while they are with them, and by


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 point in question, yelling and shouting at the tops of our voices. M'bo said "Jump for bank, sar," and I "up and jumped," followed by half the crew. Such banks! sheets, and walls, and rubbish heaps of rock, mixed up with trees fallen and standing. One appalling corner I shall not forget, for I had to jump at a rock wall, and hang on to it in a manner more befitting an insect than an insect-hunter, and then scramble up it into a close-set forest, heavily burdened with boulders of all sizes. I wonder whether the rocks or the trees were there first? there is evidence both ways, for in one place you will see a rock on the top of a tree, the tree creeping out from underneath it, and in another place you will see a tree on the top of a rock, clasping it with a network of roots and getting its nourishment, goodness knows how, for these are by no means tender, digestible sand-stones, but uncommon hard gneiss and quartz which has no idea of breaking up into friable small stuff, and which only takes on a high polish when it is vigorously sanded and canvassed by the Ogowé. While I was engaged in climbing across these promontories, the crew would be busy shouting and hauling the canoe round the point by means of the strong chain provided for such emergencies fixed on to the bow. When this was done, in we got again and paddled away until we met our next affliction.

M'bo had advised that we should spend our first night at the same village that M. Allégret did: but when we reached it, a large village on the north bank, we seemed to have a lot of daylight still in hand, and thought it would be better to stay at one a little higher up, so as to make a shorter day's work for to-morrow, when we wanted to reach Kondo Kondo; so we went against the bank just to ask about the situation and character of the up-river villages. The row of low, bark huts was long, and extended its main frontage close to the edge of the river bank. The inhabitants had been watching us as we came, and when they saw we intended calling that afternoon, they charged down to the river edge hopeful of excitement. They had a great deal to say, and so had we. After compliments, as they say, in excerpts of diplomatic communications, three of their men took charge of the conversation on their side, and M'bo did ours. To M'bo's questions they gave a


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 except in so far as it was calculated to minister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon."

At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused to go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I take to have been the devil, drew near and questioned me about our journey. In the fulness of my heart, I laid bare our plans before him. He said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to mention that, at this season of the year, we should find the Oise quite dry? "Get into a train, my little young man," said he, "and go you away home to your parents." I was so astounded at the man's malice, that I could only stare at him in silence. A tree would never have spoken to me like this. At last, I got out with some words. We had


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 little and little made them ſubiects to the ſimpleſt ſoldiers of their troupes, if there bee anie brute of the Kings Armie comming, in ſtead of preparing to preſerue the people, vſe no other induſtrie, but to burne halfe their Townes, and the greateſt part of the Villages within two miles round about, then making them to trauaile daye and night in making rampiers and retrenchments: and yet when they are beſieged, if they doo but ſee the Cannon, thinke themſelues excuſed of their honour, in making their compoſition to depart with their liues and baggage ſaued; leauing no token behinde them of their protection, but one halfe of the Townes in aſhes, & the peopel with a halter about their neckes: ſo that if the Prince they haue to deale with were not mercifull, a whole forreſt could not furniſh for gallowes that would be employed.

Is it poſsible that they ſee not nor know not (that thoſe which haue beene ſo readie to mooue vp theſe ſeditions, are now ſo audacious & malicious as to maintaine them? and that his Maieſtie defending his kingdome againſt tyrannie, his people againſt ſtrangers, and iuſtice againſt iniquitie) the ſucceſſe of his enterpriſes, muſt needes be correſpondent to the equitie of his cauſe; that ineuitable deſtruction will come vpon them that reſiſt him, if the word of God (as it is) be true. For our parts, we moſt humblie beſeech God, to make them able to conſider and acknowledge it, and aboue all things, that it woulde pleaſe God to preſerue his Maieſtie, from al miſhaps that might happen vnto his perſon, and prolong his life: for ſo great need haue we of France of his


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 come from Antwerp already, I told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest in spite of him. Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not. The pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to my canoe, and marched off, waggling his head.

I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows, who imagined I was the Cigarette's servant, on a comparison, I suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's mackintosh, and asked me many questions about my place and my master's character. I said he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head. "O no, no," said one, "you must not say that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him." I believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again. It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old


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 dramatic entertainment as answer, after the manner of these brisk, excitable Fans. One chief, however, soon settled down to definite details, prefacing his remarks with the silence-commanding "Azuna! Azuna!" and his companions grunted approbation of his observations. He took a piece of plantain leaf and tore it up into five different-sized bits. These he laid along the edge of our canoe at different intervals of space, while he told M'bo things, mainly scandalous, about the characters of the villages these bits of leaf represented, save of course about bit A, which represented his own. The interval between the bits was proportional to the interval between the villages, and the size of the bits was proportional to the size of the village. Village number four was the only one he should recommend our going to. When all was said, I gave our kindly informants some heads of tobacco and many thanks. Then M'bo sang them a hymn, with the assistance of Pierre, half a line behind him in a different key, but every bit as flat. The Fans seemed impressed, but any crowd would be by the hymn-singing of my crew, unless they were inmates of deaf and dumb asylums. Then we took our farewell, and thanked the village elaborately for its kind invitation to spend the night there on our way home, shoved off and paddled away in great style just to show those Fans what Igalwas could do.

We hadn't gone 200 yards before we met a current coming round the end of a rock reef that was too strong for us to hold our own in, let alone progress. On to the bank I was ordered and went; it was a low slip of rugged confused boulders and fragments of rocks, carelessly arranged, and evidently under water in the wet season. I scrambled along, the men yelled and shouted and hauled the canoe, and the inhabitants of the village, seeing we were becoming amusing again, came, legging it like lamp-lighters, after us, young and old, male and female, to say nothing of the dogs. Some good souls helped the men haul, while I did my best to amuse the others by diving headlong from a large rock on to which I had elaborately climbed, into a thick clump of willow-leaved shrubs. They applauded my performance vociferously, and then assisted my efforts to extricate my


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 man's insinuations, as if they were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman, and have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young men.

When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, "they must have a curious idea of how English servants behave," says he, dryly, "for you treated me like a brute beast at the lock."

I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a fact.


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, that the ordinarie courſe of the longeſt liuers would be but too ſhort.


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Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-jugs with real water in them, and dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sunshine. There was an English fruiterer at dinner, travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the café, we watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at corks; and I don't know why, but this pleased us.

It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected; for the weather next


text: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 8

title: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 8


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 self, and during the rest of my scramble they kept close to me, with keen competition for the front row, in hopes that I would do something like it again. But I refused the encore, because, bashful as I am, I could not but feel that my last performance was carried out with all the superb reckless abandon of a Sarah Bernhardt, and a display of art of this order should satisfy any African village for a year at least. At last I got across the rocks on to a lovely little beach of white sand, and stood there talking, surrounded by my audience, until the canoe got over its difficulties and arrived almost as scratched as I; and then we again said farewell and paddled away, to the great grief of the natives, for they don't get a circus up above Njole every week, poor dears.

Now there is no doubt that that chief's plantain-leaf chart was an ingenious idea and a credit to him. There is also no doubt that the Fan mile is a bit Irish, a matter of nine or so of those of ordinary mortals, but I am bound to say I don't think, even allowing for this, that he put those pieces far enough apart. On we paddled a long way before we picked up village number one, mentioned in that chart. On again, still longer, till we came to village number two. Village number three hove in sight high up on a mountain side soon after, but it was getting dark and the water worse, and the hill-sides growing higher and higher into nobly shaped mountains, forming, with their forest-graced steep sides, a ravine that, in the gathering gloom, looked like an alley-way made of iron, for the foaming Ogowé. Village number four we anxiously looked for; village number four we never saw; for round us came the dark, seeming to come out on to the river from the forests and the side ravines, where for some hours we had seen it sleeping, like a sailor with his clothes on in bad weather. On we paddled, looking for signs of village fires, and seeing them not. The Erd-geist knew we wanted something, and seeing how we personally lacked it, thought it was beauty; and being in a kindly mood, gave it us, sending the lovely lingering flushes of his afterglow across the sky, which, dying, left it that divine deep purple velvet which no one has dared to paint. Out in it came the great stars blazing high above us, and the dark round us was be-gemmed with fire-flies: but


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184

change our places every moment, in order to escape being scorched or burnt. The storm now encreased to such a violence, that we could hardly stand on this barren spot; and therefore it was resolved, for our own and the boat's greater safety, to cross the cove, and take up our night's quarters in the woods immediately under the lee of the high mountains. Every one of us seized a firebrand and stepped into the boat, where we made a formidable appearance, as if we were bound on some desperate expedition. To our great disappointment the woods were almost worse than the rock we had left, being so wet that it was with the utmost difficulty our fire would burn; we had no shelter from the heavy rains which came down upon us in double portions from the leaves; and the wind not allowing the smoke to ascend, we were almost stifled with it. Here we lay down on the moist ground, wrapped in wet cloaks thoroughly soaked and cold, supperless, and tormented with rheumatic pains; and, notwithstanding all these inconveniencies, fell asleep for a few moments, being entirely exhausted with fatigue. But about two o'clock we were roused by a loud thunder-clap. The storm was now at its height, and blew a perfect hurricane. The roar of the waves at a distance was tremendous, and only overcome at times by the agitation of the forests, and the crashing fall of huge timber-trees around us. We went to look after our boat, and at that instant a dreadful


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 day was simply bedlamite. It is not the place one would have chosen for a day's rest; for it consists almost entirely of fortifications. Within the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, and a church, figure, with what countenance they may, as the town. There seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper from whom I bought a sixpenny flint and steel, was so much affected, that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the bargain. The only public buildings that had any interest for us, were the hotel and the café. But we visited the church. There lies Marshal Clarke. But as neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude.

In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and réveilles, and such like, make a fine romantic interlude in civic business. Bugles, and drums, and fifes, are of themselves most excellent things in nature; and when they carry the mind to


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 marching armies, and the picturesque vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in the heart. But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little else moving, these points of war made a proportionate commotion. Indeed, they were the only things to remember. It was just the place to hear the round going by at night. in the darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. It reminded you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns.

The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological effect, nay even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise. And if it be true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with asses' skin, what a picturesque


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 larged, some diminished, or their independence will be strengthened (Finland, Hungary). Of course, Austria-Hungary will be radically changed, and so will Russia and partly Prussia. It is just the transformation of Eastern Europe which furnishes the strongest proof that the world war will end far differently then Pangermanism expected.

But the New Man, homo Europaeus, will be the result not merely of external politics, but principally of internal. All nations will be obliged, after the war, to devote all their thought to material and spiritual rebirth. Mutual slaughter is not a great action, the belligerent nations will realize the greatness of this moment, they will create a new historical epoch if they rightly appreciate the horrors of this war, if they overcome the war and orientate themselves as to where and how further development should proceed, and if they decide for permanent peace and for humanity. Democracy must become the faith of all, a world view. In Prussia the Germans organized a forcible germanization of the Poles, and a philosopher was found (Ed. V. Hartmann) who declared in the name of the Prussian ideal the necessity to exterminate the Poles (“ausrotten”); in Hungary the Magyar oligarchy maintained itself by shooting Slovak, Serbian and Roumanian voters and by the suppression of their schools, literature and press; in Austria the Pangermans publicly plotted their schemes of forcibly germanising whole nations; Russian tsarism followed the German example; civilized Europe remained quiet and acquiesced in all these political atrocities, until this war revealed the danger, under which the nations of Eastern Europe were languishing for years and years

The political task of the democratic reconstruction of Europe must be attained and actually made possible by a moral reeducation of the nations—either democracy or dynastic militarism, either Bismarckism or rational and honest politics, either force or humanity, either matter or spirit!

Prussian and Austrian politicians, the German and Austrian Emperors louder than others, emphasize the religious foundation of their policy and their states; but this religion is political religion. Prussia and Austria are survivals of the theocratic, mediaeval imperialism; democracy is the antithesis of theocracy.

Religion will not lose thereby the weight of the authority, on the contrary it will gain, if it is freed from the state and the arbitrary will of deified dynasties: What was right in the medieval theocracy—the idea of catholicity, universality, mankind as an organized whole—will not be lost by democracy. Democracy also hopes and works to the end that there may be one sheepfold and one shepherd.

Caesar or Jesus—that is the watchword of democratic Europe, not Berlin-Bagdad, if Caesar is conceived as Mommsen constructed him, seeing in him the ideal of Pangerman imperialism.

General Bowes, chief of the British military mission attached to the Czechoslovak army, addressed to the Czechoslovak National Council, Russian branch, the following letter:

Omsk, November 19, 1918.

I have been instructed to inform you that His Majesty King George V. has been pleased to confer the high distinction of the Order of the Bath upon Gen. Syrový, Gen. Gajda and Gen. Čeček. His Majesty has also been pleased to distribute among the soldiers of the Czechoslovak army the following decorations: to officers 10 distinguished conduct crosses and 40 military crosses, to men 250 distinguished conduct medals and 250 war medals. I beg that you will communicate this to Generals Syrový, Gajda and Čeček, and to the Czechoslovak forces under their command.

In connection with the order conferring these decorations King George addressed a letter to General Syrovy which reads as follows:

I have followed with admiration the heroic fight led by your armies. Please express to them my warm acknowledgment of the services they have rendered to the common cause of the Allies. The work which is yet to be completed, namely of saving Russia for the Russians and restoring peace and prosperity to the land, is a work of great importance for civilization. This task which was undertaken and is still pursued by the brave Czechoslovak armies places Great Britain under an obligation to Czechoslovakia that shall never be forgotten. I congratulate you all in the name of all our people most heartily; I wish you full success and strength for further labors.


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 irony is there in that! As if this long-suffering animal's hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during life, now by Lyonnese costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after night round the streets of every garrison town in Europe. And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.

Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself,


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/206

 we were not as satisfied with these things as we should have been; what we wanted were fires to cook by and dry ourselves by, and all that sort of thing. The Erd-geist did not understand, and so left us when the afterglow had died away, with only enough starlight to see the flying foam of the rapids ahead and around us, and not enough to see the great trees that had fallen from the bank into the water. These, when the rapids were not too noisy, we could listen for, because the black current rushes through their branches with an impatient "lish, swish"; but when there was a rapid roaring close alongside we ran into those trees, and got ourselves mauled, and had ticklish times getting on our course again. Now and again we ran up against great rocks sticking up in the black water—grim, isolated fellows, who seemed to be standing silently watching their fellow rocks noisily fighting in the arena of the white water. Still on we poled and paddled. About 8. we came to a corner, a bad one; but we were unable to leap on to the bank and haul round, not being able to see either the details or the exact position of the said bank, and we felt, I think naturally, disinclined to spring in the direction of such bits of country as we had had experience of during the afternoon, with nothing but the aid we might have got from a compass hastily viewed by the transitory light of a lucifer match, and even this would not have informed us how many tens of feet of tree fringe lay between us and the land, so we did not attempt it. One must be careful at times, or nasty accidents may follow. We fought our way round that corner, yelling defiance at the water, and dealt with succeeding corners on the vi et armis plan, breaking, ever and anon, a pole. About 9.30 we got into a savage rapid. We fought it inch by inch. The canoe jammed herself on some barely sunken rocks in it. We shoved her off over them. She tilted over and chucked us out. The rocks round being just awash, we survived and got her straight again, and got into her and drove her unmercifully; she struck again and bucked like a broncho, and we fell in heaps upon each other, but stayed inside that time—the men by the aid of their intelligent feet, I by clinching my hands into the bush rope lacing which ran round the rim of the canoe and the meaning of


text: Page:Poems (Crabbe).djvu/70

title: Page:Poems (Crabbe).djvu/70


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/173

IX.]

“They send to you their duty,— he and that bride of his,—

With all true love and kindness, most noble queen; it is

High time to leave off weeping,— for they will soon be here!”

For many a day she had not heard tidings half so dear.

Then with her snow-white kerchief she wiped her lovely eyes

That were all wet with weeping; and in her gracious wise

Began to thank the bearer for the good news he brought.

And so her grief and sorrow were turn’d to pleasant thought.

She bade him to be seated, whereof right glad was he.

Then spake the lovesome maiden: “ Rejoicéd should I be,

Could I for herald’s guerdon give all my gold away!

Too rich for such meed are you,— I’ll be your debtor aye.”

Said he: “If for my portion I thirty kingdoms had,

I would, by your hands given, of any gift be glad!”

“Well!” said the gracious lady, “it shall be given to you.”

Her chamberlain was bidden to fetch the herald’s due.

Full four-and-twenty buckles, set with bright stones and good,

She gave him for his guerdon. And yet the hero’s mood

Allowed him not to keep them;— he handed them around

Unto her nearest ladies that in the room he found.

Her mother gave him greeting, in kind and courtly way.

“I have yet more to tell you,” the valiant man did say,

“Of what the king requireth when to the Rhine comes he;—

If, lady, you will grant it, he’ll aye beholden be.


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/207

 which I did not understand when I left Talagouga. We sorted ourselves out hastily and sent her at it again. Smash went a sorely tried pole and a paddle. Round and round we spun in an exultant whirlpool, which, in a light-hearted, maliciously joking way, hurled us tail first out of it into the current. Now the grand point in these canoes of having both ends alike declared itself; for at this juncture all we had to do was to revolve on our own axis and commence life anew with what had been the bow for the stern. Of course we were defeated, we could not go up any further without the aid of our lost poles and paddles, so we had to go down for shelter somewhere, anywhere, and down at a terrific pace in the white water we went. While hitched among the rocks the arrangement of our crew had been altered, Pierre joining M'bo in the bows; this piece of precaution was frustrated by our getting turned round; so our position was what you might call precarious, until we got into another whirlpool, when we persuaded nature to start us right end on. This was only a matter of minutes, whirlpools being plentiful, and then M'bo and Pierre, provided with our surviving poles, stood in the bows to fend us off rocks, as we shot towards them; while we midship paddles sat, helping to steer, and when occasion arose, which occasion did with lightning rapidity, to whack the whirlpools with the flat of our paddles, to break their force. Cook crouched in the stern concentrating his mind on steering only. A most excellent arrangement in theory and the safest practical one no doubt, but it did not work out what you might call brilliantly well; though each department did its best. We dashed full tilt towards high rocks, things twenty to fifty feet above water. Midship backed and flapped like fury; M'bo and Pierre received the shock on their poles; sometimes we glanced successfully aside and flew on; sometimes we didn't. The shock being too much for M'bo and Pierre they were driven back on me, who got flattened on to the cargo of bundles which, being now firmly tied in, couldn't spread the confusion further aft; but the shock of the canoe's nose against the rock did so in style, and the rest of the crew fell forward on to the bundles, me, and themselves. So shaken up together were we several times that night, that it's a wonder


text: Page:Poems (Crabbe).djvu/71

title: Page:Poems (Crabbe).djvu/71


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/174

96

“The noble guests he bringeth— I heard him this desire—

He wishes you to welcome; and eke he doth require

That you ride forth to meet him, outside Worms, on the strand;

This doth the king, at your hands, in all good faith demand.”

Then spake the lovely lady: “Ready am I alway

Howe’er I can to serve him; I cannot say him nay;

All shall in loyal kindness, as he desires, be done.”

Whereat her cheek, for gladness, a heighten’d colour won.

No prince’s herald ever a better welcome had;

And had she dared to kiss him she would have been right glad . How winsomely the gallant then from the dames withdrew!

As noble Siegfried counsel’d did the Burgundians do.

Sir Sindold and Sir Hunold, and eke Rumold the thane,

To whom the charge was given, must work with might and main

To have the seats made ready, by Worms upon the sands,

One saw the royal stewards there working with their hands!

Ortwein and Gere would not that aught be left undone.

They sent unto their kinsfolk on all sides, every one;

They told them of the wedding which was about to be.

The beauteous maids adorn’d them for the festivity.

The palace was made splendid, and deck’d was ev’ry wall

In honour of the guest-folk. King Gunther’s royal hall

Was all right well upholstered by many a foreign man.

And so this mighty wedding right merrily began.


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/208

 to me, considering the hurry, that we sorted ourselves out correctly with our own particular legs and arms. And although we in the middle of the canoe did some very spirited flapping, our whirlpool-breaking was no more successful than M'bo and Pierre's fending off, and many a wild waltz we danced that night with the waters of the River Ogowé.

Unpleasant as going through the rapids was, when circumstances took us into the black current we fared no better. For good all-round inconvenience, give me going full tilt in the dark into the branches of a fallen tree at the pace we were going then—and crash, swish, crackle and there you are, hung up, with a bough pressing against your chest, and your hair being torn out and your clothes ribboned by others, while the wicked river is trying to drag away the canoe from under you. I expect we should have been an amusing spectacle for hard-hearted onlookers; but onlookers there were none, neither could we form a co-operative society for consuming our own ridiculousness as we did when we had light to see it by. After a good hour and more of these experiences, we went hard on to a large black reef of rocks. So firm was the canoe wedged that we in our rather worn-out state couldn't move her so we wisely decided to "lef 'em" and see what could be done towards getting food and a fire for the remainder of the night. 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.

The most interesting question to us now was whether this rock reef communicated sufficiently with the island for us to get to it. Abandoning conjecture; tying very firmly our canoe up to the rocks, a thing that seemed, considering she was jammed hard and immovable, a little unnecessary—but you can never be sufficiently careful in this matter with any kind of boat—off we started among the rock boulders. I would climb up on to a rock table, fall off it on the other side


text: Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/179


text: The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/Let Us Have Peace


text: The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/The Controversy About Teschen


text:
Author:Carroll Lane Fenton

Works

 * Man and His Ancestors
 * The Structure of the Earth
 * Animals of Ancient Seas (1922)
 * Animals of Ancient Lands (1922)
 * The Building of the Earth (1922)
 * A History of Evolution (1922)
 * The Age of Mammals (1923)
 * Darwin and the Theory of Evolution (1923 or 1924)
 * The Stratigraphy and Fauna of the Hackberry Stage of the Upper Devonian (1924)
 * Darwin as a Naturalist (1924)
 * Ernst Haeckel: Evolutionist (1924)
 * Ernst Haeckel: Philosopher-Naturalist (1924)
 * Haeckel's Monistic Philosophy (1924)
 * Records of Evolution (1924)
 * The Evidence for Evolution
 * Embryology and Its Evidence for Evolution (1924)
 * The Environment of Life (1925)
 * The Fitness of Life (1925)
 * Facts You Should Know About Animal life (1925)
 * The Nature of Science
 * Genetics for Beginners (1925)
 * An Introduction to Heredity (1925)
 * More Animals of Ancient Lands (1925)
 * Life Among the Apes and Monkeys (1925)
 * Dwellers of the Ponds (1925)
 * The Lower Invertebrate Animals (1925)

title: Author:Carroll Lane Fenton


text:
Category:Cieszyn

Cieszyn, a town in Poland, which split off from the Silesian town known in Polish as Cieszyn, in Czech Těšín and in German and old English texts Teschen.

title: Category:Cieszyn


text: Category:Cities in Poland

title: Category:Cities in Poland


text:
Page:Thaler v. Hirshfeld.pdf/1

 Pennsylvania courts routinely hold that a vehicle is available for “regular use” when they are “readily obtainable [or] accessible” for use. , No. 03-4575, 2004 WL 603416, at *5–6 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 24, 2004). “Determining whether a vehicle was available for the insured’s ‘regular use’ is a fact-intensive inquiry. However, where the facts are not in dispute, and reasonable minds cannot differ as to the result, the issue of coverage can be decided as a matter of law by the Court.” at *2 (quotation marks and citation omitted).

Here, no material facts concerning Plaintiff’s regular use of the tractor trailer are in dispute. The “regular use” exclusion provision unambiguously states: "We do not provide UnderinsuredUninsured [sic] Motorists Coverage or Underinsured Motorists Coverage for “bodily injury” sustained by you or any “family member” while occupying or when struck by any motor vehicle that you or any “family member” owns; or that is furnished or available for your or any “family member’s” regular use which is not insured for this coverage under this policy…."

(Doc. No. 20 at 3–4.) At his deposition, Plaintiff testified that, at the time of the accident, the tractor trailer was furnished and available for his regular and daily use, used daily by him, and parked nightly at his home. ( Doc. No. 20-5 at 10.) Plaintiff’s statements show the tractor trailer was readily obtainable or accessible for his regular use. Additionally and tellingly, in his Response to Defendant’s Motion, Plaintiff does not deny that the tractor trailer falls within the “regular use” exclusion provision, and he provides no material facts to rebut his deposition testimony. ( Doc. No. 23 at 2–13.) The parties also do not dispute that the Travelers Policy did not insure the tractor trailer involved in Plaintiff’s accident. ( Doc. No. 20 at 2.) For these reasons, reasonable minds cannot differ that the tractor trailer was furnished and available for Plaintiff’s regular use and therefore not insured by the Travelers Policy. Consequently, there is no genuine dispute of material fact for trial, and Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 20) will be granted.

V.CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 20) will be granted. An appropriate Order follows.

title: Page:Thaler v. Hirshfeld.pdf/1


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/209

 on to rocks again, with more or less water on them—then get a patch of singing sand under my feet, then with varying suddenness get into more water, deep or shallow, broad or narrow pools among the rocks; out of that over more rocks, &c., &c., &c.: my companions, from their noises, evidently were going in for the same kind of thing, but we were quite cheerful, because the probability of reaching the land seemed increasing. Most of us arrived into deep channels of water which here and there cut in between this rock reef and the bank, M'bo was the first to find the way into certainty; he was, and I hope still is, a perfect wonder at this sort of work. I kept close to M'bo, and when we got to the shore, the rest of the wanderers being collected, we said "chances are there's a village round here"; and started to find it. After a gay time in a rock-encumbered forest, growing in a tangled, matted way on a rough hillside, at an angle of 45 degrees, M'bo sighted the gleam of fires through the tree stems away to the left, and we bore down on it, listening to its drum. Viewed through the bars of the tree stems the scene was very picturesque. The village was just a collection of palm mat-built huts, very low and squalid. In its tiny street, an affair of some sixty feet long and twenty wide, were a succession of small fires. The villagers themselves, however, were the striking features in the picture. They were painted vermilion all over their nearly naked bodies, and were dancing enthusiastically to the good old rump-a-tump-tump-tump tune, played energetically by an old gentleman on a long, high-standing, white-and-black painted drum. They said that as they had been dancing when we arrived they had failed to hear us. M'bo secured a—well, I don't exactly know what to call it—for my use. It was, I fancy, the remains of the village club-house. It had a certain amount of palm-thatch roof and some of its left-hand side left, the rest of the structure was bare old poles with filaments of palm mat hanging from them here and there; and really if it hadn't been for the roof one wouldn't have known whether one was inside or outside it. The floor was trodden earth and in the middle of it a heap of white ash and the usual two bush lights, laid down with their burning ends propped up off the ground with stones, and emitting, as is


text: Page:Thaler v. Hirshfeld.pdf/2

title: Page:Thaler v. Hirshfeld.pdf/2


text:
Category:Český Těšín

Český Těšín, a town in the Czech Republic, which split off from the Silesian town known in Polish as Cieszyn, in Czech Těšín and in German and old English texts Teschen.

title: Category:Český Těšín


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/175

IX.]

Then all along the highways throughout the countryside

Were seen the three kings’ kinsmen, who bidden were to ride

And wait the guests’ arrival, who soon were to appear.

While from the stores was taken abundance of rich gear.

Erelong was spread the rumour that certain folk had seen

Brunhilda’s friends approaching; at which there did begin

Great stir among the people in the Burgundian land,

Ay me! what gallant warriors were seen on either hand!

Then spake the fair Kriemhilda: “Ye maids attending me,

Who would at this reception fain bear me company,

Go, seek from out my presses the richest robes and best:

That thereby praise and honour we gain from every guest.”

The warriors came shortly,— who ordered to be brought

The saddles nobly-fashioned, with finest gold inwrought,

On which should ride the ladies, at Worms upon the Rhine.

One never saw horse-trappings  more fitting or more fine.

Ha! what a golden gleaming from these gay palfreys shone,

And how the bridles sparkled with many a precious stone!

The footstools eke were golden, on carpets bright and good

Placed for the ladies’ mounting: right joyous was their mood.

The women’s mares were saddled, and in the court did stay

For the young maids of honour,— as I erewhile did say.

Small saddle-bows and silken one saw these palfreys bear:

The finest silk, I warrant, of which you e’er could hear.


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/210

 their wont, a rather mawkish, but not altogether unpleasant smell, and volumes of smoke which finds its way out through the thatch, leaving on the inside of it a rich oily varnish of a bright warm brown colour. They give a very good light, provided some one keeps an eye on them and knocks the ash off the end as it burns gray; the bush lights' idea of being snuffed. Against one of the open-work sides hung a drum covered with raw hide, and a long hollow bit of tree trunk, which served as a cupboard for a few small articles. I gathered in all these details as I sat on one of the hard wood benches, waiting for my dinner, which Isaac was preparing outside in the street. The atmosphere of the hut, in spite of its remarkable advantages in the way of ventilation, was oppressive, for the smell of the bush lights, my wet clothes, and the natives who crowded into the hut to look at me, made anything but a pleasant combination. The people were evidently exceedingly poor; clothes they had very little of. The two head men had on old French military coats in rags; but they were quite satisfied with their appearance, and evidently felt through them in touch with European culture, for they lectured to the others on the habits and customs of the white man with great self-confidence and superiority. The majority of the village had a slight acquaintance already with this interesting animal, being, I found, Adoomas. They had made a settlement on Kembe Island some two years or so ago. Then the Fans came and attacked them, and killed and ate several. 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. They had only done this a few months before my arrival and had not had time to rebuild, hence the dilapidated state of the village. They are, I am told, a Congo region tribe, whose country lies south-west of Franceville, and, as I have already said, are the tribe used by the French authorities to take convoys up and down the Ogowé to France-


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/176

98

Then six-and-eighty matrons out of the palace went,

And on their heads were wimples. Towards Kriemhilda bent

Each beauteous dame her footsteps, in garments bright array’d;

And no less well apparell’d, came many a comely maid.

In number four-and-fifty, damsels of Burgundy,

The best they were and fairest that ever eye could see;

One saw their flaxen tresses, with bands of riband bright,

What Gunther had desiréd was done with zeal aright.

The richest stuffs then wore they, the best one e’er could find,

Before the stranger-warriors; good clothes of many a kind,—

So that each sev’ral beauty might have a setting fit.

Whoso were discontented must be of little wit.

Of sable and of ermine was many a costume there,

And many an arm, and hand too, were made to seem more fair

With buckles and with bracelets on the silk stuffs they wore.

Should any try to tell you, his task would ne’er be o’er.

With many a fine-wrought girdle— so rich, and long, and gay,

Hanging o’er shining raiment— the women’s hands did play.

Their skirts of Ferrandine were, and stuff of Araby.

Among those noble maidens was gladsomeness and glee.

In stomacher bejewell’d was many a maiden fair

Most winsomely enlacéd. And sad indeed it were

Did not her bright complexion outshine her dress in hue.

No other king had ever so fair a retinue.


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/211

 ville, more to keep this route open than for transport purposes; the rapids rendering it impracticable to take heavy stores this way, and making it a thirty-six days' journey from Njole with good luck. The practical route is viâ Loango and Brazzaville. The Adoomas told us the convoy which had gone up with the vivacious government official had had trouble with the rapids and had spent five days on Kondo Kondo, dragging up the canoes empty by means of ropes and chains, carrying the cargo that was in them along on land until they had passed the worst rapid and then repacking. They added the information that the rapids were at their worst just now, and entertained us with reminiscences of a poor young French official who had been drowned in them last year—indeed they were just as cheering as my white friends. As soon as my dinner arrived they politely cleared out, and I heard the devout M'bo holding a service for them, with hymnns, in the street, and this being over they returned to their drum and dance, keeping things up distinctly late, for it was 11.10 ., when we first entered the village.

While the men were getting their food I mounted guard over our little possessions, and when they turned up to make things tidy in my hut, I walked off down to the shore by a path, which we had elaborately avoided when coming to the village, a very vertically inclined, slippery little path, but still the one whereby the natives went up and down to their canoes, which were kept tied up amongst the rocks. The moon was rising, illumining the sky, but not yet sending down her light on the foaming, flying Ogowé in its deep ravine. The scene was divinely lovely; on every side out of the formless gloom rose the peaks of the Sierra del Cristal. Tomanjawki, on the further side of the river surrounded by his companion peaks, looked his grandest, silhouetted hard against the sky. In the higher valleys where the dim light shone faintly, one could see wreaths and clouds of silver-gray mist lying, basking lazily or rolling to and fro. Olangi seemed to stretch right across the river, blocking with his great blunt mass all passage; while away to the N.E. a cone-shaped peak showed conspicuous, which I afterwards knew as Kangwe. In the darkness round me flitted thousands of fire-


text: The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/What We Have Accomplished


text: Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/180


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/177

IX.]

As now those lovely ladies in full attire were seen,

The knights who should escort them appear’d upon the scene.

High-couraged warnors were they, of mighty strength and craft;

And each, beside his buckler, did bear an ashen shaft.

Now, on the further Rhine-bank, came with a numerous band

The king and his guests with him, and drew nigh to the strand.

One saw, too, by the rein led, full many a maiden’s steed.

For those who should receive them to wait they had no need.

For when the folk of Iceland unto the ship were led,—

And eke the Niblung people who Siegfried followéd,—

They put across the water, with quick, unwearied hand,

To where, upon the quay-side, they saw the king’s friends stand.

Now hearken to my story! I’ll tell you how the Queen

Uté, the rich queen-mother, was with her maidens seen,

Forth coming from the castle, whence she herself did ride.

Then many an acquaintance ‘twixt knight and maid was tied.

Kriemhilda’s palfrey led was by Gere the Margrave

As far as the fort gateway, where Siegfried, warrior brave,

Must thenceforth wait upon her;— she was a lovely maid!

And he by this fair lady was, later, well repaid.


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/212

 flies and out beyond this pool of utter night flew by unceasingly the white foam of the rapids; sound there was none save their thunder. The majesty and beauty of the scene fascinated me, and I stood leaning with my back against a rock pinnacle watching it. Do not imagine it gave rise, in what I am pleased to call my mind, to those complicated, poetical reflections natural beauty seems to bring out in other people's minds. It never works that way with me; I just lose all sense of human individuality, all memory of human life, with its grief and worry and doubt, and become part of the atmosphere. If I have a heaven, that will be mine, and I verily believe that if I were left alone long enough with such a scene as this or on the deck of an African liner in the Bights, watching her funnel and masts swinging to and fro in the great long leisurely roll against the sky, I should be found soulless and dead; but I never have a chance of that. This night my absent Kras, as my Fanti friends would call them, were sent hurrying home badly scared to their attributive body by a fearful shriek tearing through the voice of the Ogowé up into the silence of the hills. I woke with a shudder and found myself sore and stiff, but made hastily in the direction of the shriek, fancying some of our hosts had been spearing one of the crew—a vain and foolish fancy I apologise for. What had happened was that my men, thinking it wiser to keep an eye on our canoe, had come down and built a fire close to her and put up their mosquito-bars as tents. One of the men, tired out by his day's work, had sat down on one of the three logs, whose ends, pointed to a common centre where the fire is, constitute the universal stove of this region. He was taking a last pipe before turning in, but sleep had taken him, and the wretch of a fire had sneaked along in the log under him and burnt him suddenly. The shriek was his way of mentioning the fact. Having got up these facts I left the victim seated in a remedial cool pool of water and climbed back to the village, whose inhabitants, tired at last, were going to sleep. M'bo, I found, had hung up my mosquito-bar over one of the hard wood benches, and going cautiously under it I lit a night-light and read myself asleep with my damp dilapidated old Horace.


text: Category:Poland in The Czechoslovak Review


text: Category:Poland in periodicals

title: Category:Poland in periodicals


text: The Lay of the Nibelungs/Chapter 9

title: The Lay of the Nibelungs/Chapter 9


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/213

 Woke at 4. lying on the ground among the plantain stems, having by a reckless movement fallen out of the house. Thanks be there are no mosquitoes. I don't know how I escaped the rats which swarm here, running about among the huts and the inhabitants in the evening, with a tameness shocking to see. I turned in again until six o'clock, when we started getting things ready to go up river again, carefully providing ourselves with a new stock of poles, and subsidising a native to come with us and help us to fight the rapids.

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. Whenever the shelter of the spits of land or of the reefs was sufficient to allow the water to lay down its sand, strange shaped sandbanks showed, as regular in form as if they had been smoothed by human hands. They rise above the water in a slope, the low end or tail against the current; the down-stream end terminating in an abrupt miniature cliff, sometimes six and seven feet above the water; that they are the same shape when they have not got their heads above water you will find by sticking on them in a canoe, which I did several times, with a sort of automatic devotion to scientific research peculiar to me. 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. After passing this, the river is fairly uninterrupted by rock for a while, and is silent and swift. When you are ascending such a piece the effect is strange; you see the water flying by the side of your canoe, as you vigorously drive your paddle into it with short rapid strokes, and you forthwith fancy you are travelling at the rate of a North-Western express; but you just raise your eyes, my friend, and


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 who had brought my last property, had left no message for me."

"He denied it, adding, his own words were, "there are the things Mr. Hellfried has lost," and without giving me time to question him any farther, by whom he had been sent, he went away."

"Now I looked at my watch, it wanted fifteen minutes to ten, I fetched my hat and great coat, and walked slowly towards the town gate."

"The night was exceeding fine, the moon shone bright, and was surrounded with millions of sparkling stars. It struck ten when I was already standing on the appointed spot, I mistook every passenger for the stranger, ran towards several of them, and began to speak, but I was always disappointed. It was now forty-five minutes past ten, and I began to be tired, my apprehension that the stranger,