Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, vol 1 | Page 3

but slightly forwarded the cause of humanity, and
that upon the whole it has proved a remarkable failure.
We can be wise in time.
Richard F. Burton.
P.S.--Since these pages were written, a name which frequently occurs
in them has become a memory to his friends--I allude to W. Winwood
Reade, and I deplore his loss. The highest type of Englishman, brave
and fearless as he was gentle and loving, his short life of thirty-seven
years shows how much may be done by the honest, thorough worker.
He had emphatically the courage of his opinions, and he towered a
cubit above the crowd by telling not only the truth, as most of us do,
but the whole truth, which so few can afford to do. His personal
courage in battle during the Ashanti campaign, where the author of
"Savage Africa" became correspondent of the "Times," is a matter of

history. His noble candour in publishing the "Martyrdom of Man" is an
example and a model to us who survive him. And he died calmly and
courageously as he lived, died in harness, died as he had resolved to die,
like the good and gallant gentleman of ancient lineage that he was.

Contents of Vol. I.
Chapter I.
Landing at the Rio Gabão (Gaboon River).--le Plateau, the French
Colony
Chapter II.
The Departure.--the Tornado.--arrival at "The Bush"
Chapter III.
Geography of the Gaboon
Chapter IV.
The Minor Tribes and the Mpongwe
Chapter V.
To Sánga-Tánga and Back
Chapter VI.
Village Life in Pongo-Land
Chapter VII.
Return to the River

Chapter VIII.
Up the Gaboon River
Chapter IX.
A Specimen Day with the Fán Cannibals
Chapter X.
To the Mbíka (Hill); the Sources of the Gaboon.-- Return to the Plateau
Chapter. XI. Mr., Mrs., and Master Gorilla
Chapter XII.
Corisco.--"Home" to Fernando Po


PART I.
The Gaboon River and Gorilla Land.

"It was my hint to speak, such was my process; And of the cannibals
that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow
beneath their Shoulders."–Othello.


Part I.
Trip to Gorilla Land.

Chapter I.
Landing at the Rio Gabão (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 Pongára, and by the French
Péninsule de Marie- Amélie, 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 water-line is backed by swelling ridges, here
open and green- grassed, there spotted with islets of close and shady
trees. Mangrove, that horror of the African voyager, shines by its
absence; and the soil is not mud, but humus based on gravels or on
ruddy clays, stiff and retentive. The formation, in fact, is everywhere
that of Eyo or Yoruba, the goodly region lying west of the lower Niger,
and its fertility must result from the abundant water supply of the
equatorial belt.
The charts are fearful to look upon. The embouchure, well known to

old traders, has been scientifically surveyed in our day by Lieutenant
Alph. Fleuriot de Langle, of La Malouine (1845), and the chart was
corrected from a survey ordered by Capitaine Bouët- Willaumez (1849);
in the latter year it was again revised by M. Charles Floix, of the
French navy, and, with additions by the officers of Her Britannic
Majesty's service, it becomes our No. 1877. The surface is a labyrinth
of banks, rocks, and shoals, "Ely," "Nisus," "Alligator," and "Caraibe."
In such surroundings as these, when the water shallows apace, the pilot
must not