Chapter I.

Landing at the Rio Gabao (Gaboon River).--le Plateau, the French
Colony.



I remember with lively pleasure my first glance at the classic
stream of the "Portingal Captains" and the "Zeeland interlopers."
The ten-mile breadth of the noble Gaboon estuary somewhat dwarfed
the features of either shore as we rattled past Cape Santa Clara,
a venerable name, "'verted" to Joinville. The bold northern head,
though not "very high land," makes some display, because we see
it in a better light; and its environs are set off by a line of
scattered villages. The vis-a-vis of Louis Philippe Peninsula on
the starboard bow (Zuidhoeck), "Sandy Point" or Sandhoeck, by the
natives called Pongara, and by the French Peninsule de Marie-
Amelie, shows a mere fringe of dark bristle, which is tree, based
upon a broad red-yellow streak, which is land. As we pass through
the slightly overhung mouth, we can hardly complain with a late
traveller of the Gaboon's "sluggish waters;" during the ebb they
run like a mild mill-race, and when the current, setting to the
north-west, meets a strong sea-breeze from the west, there is a
criss-cross, a tide-rip, contemptible enough to a cruizer, but
quite capable of filling cock-boats. And, nearing the end of our
voyage, we rejoice to see that the dull down-pourings and the
sharp storms of Fernando Po have apparently not yet migrated so
far south. Dancing blue wavelets, under the soft azure sky, plash
and cream upon the pure clean sand that projects here and there
black lines of porous ironstone waiting to become piers; and the