Volume Ii Part 2 (1/2)
It was dark when we climbed up the stiff Jacob's ladder along the landward side of the white Kinsembo bluff. There are three ramps: the outermost is fit only for unshod feet; the central is better for those who can squeeze through the rocky crevices, and the furthest is tolerably easy; but it can be reached only by canoeing across the stream. Mr. Hunter of Messrs. Tobin's house received us in the usual factory of the South Coast, a ground- floor of wicker-work, windowless, and thatched after native fas.h.i.+on. The chief agent, who shall be nameless, was drunk arid disorderly: it is astonis.h.i.+ng that men of business can trust their money to such irresponsible beings; he had come out to Blackland a teetotaller, and presently his condition became a living lecture upon geographical morality.
The night gave us a fine study of the Kinsembo mosquito, a large brown dipter, celebrated even upon this coast. A barrel of water will act as nursery; at times the plagues are said to extinguish a lantern, and to lie an inch deep at the bottom. I would back them against a man's life after two nights of full exposure: the Brazilian ”Marimbondo” is not worse. At 7 A.M. on the next day we descended the easiest of the ramps, which are common upon this coast, and were paddled over the Kinsembo River. Eleven miles off, it issues from ma.s.ses of high ground, and at this season it spreads out like the Ambriz in broad stagnant sheets, bordered with reeds and gra.s.s supplying fish and crabs, wild ducks and mosquitoes. Presently, when the Cacimbo ends in stormy rains and horrid rollers, its increased volume and impetus will burst the sand-strip which confines it, and the washed-away material will recruit the terrible bar.
Leaving the ferry, wre mounted the ”tipoias,” which Englishmen call ”hammocks” after the Caribs of Jamaica, and I found a strange contrast between the men of Kinsembo and of So Paulo.
The former are admirable bearers, like their brethren of Ambrizette, famed as the cream of the coast: four of them carried us at the rate of at least six miles an hour; apparently they cannot go slowly, and they are untireable as black ants. Like the Bahian cadeira-men, they use shoulder-pads, and forked sticks to act as levers when s.h.i.+fting; the bamboo-pole has ivory pegs, to prevent the hammock-clews slipping, and the sensation is somewhat that of being tossed in a blanket.
Quitting the creeper-bound sand, we crossed a black and fetid mire, and struck inland to a higher and drier level. The vegetation was that of the Calumbo road, but not so utterly sunburnt: there were dwarf fields of Manioc and Thur (Caja.n.u.s indicus), and the large wild cotton shrubs showed b.a.l.l.s of shortish fibre. As we pa.s.sed a euphorbia-hedged settlement, Kizuli ya Mu, ”Seabeach Village,” a troop of women and girls, noisy as those of Ugogo, charged us at full gallop: a few silver bits caused prodigious excitement in the liberal display of charms agitated by hard exercise. The men were far less intrusive, they are said not to be jealous of European rivals, but madly so amongst themselves: even on suspicion of injury, the husband may kill his wife and her lover.
At Kilwanika, the next hamlet, there was a ”king;” and it would not have been decent to pa.s.s the palace unvisited. Outside the huts stood a bamboo-girt ”compound,” which we visited whilst H.M.
was making his toilette, and where, contrary to Congo usage, the women entered with us. Twenty-two boys aged nine or ten showed, by faces whitened with ashes, that they had undergone circ.u.mcision, a ceremony which lasts three months: we shall find these Jinkimba in a far wilder state up the Congo. The rival house is the Casa das Tinta, where nubile girls are decorated by the Nganga, or medicine-man, with a greasy crimson-purple pigment and, preparatory to entering the holy state of matrimony, receive an exhaustive lecture upon its physical phases. Father Merolla tells us that the Congoese girls are locked up in pairs for two or three months out of the sight of man, bathing several times a day, and applying ”taculla,” the moistened dust of a red wood; without this ”casket of water” or ”of fire,” as they call it, barrenness would be their lot. After betrothal the bride was painted red by the ”man-witch” for one month, to declare her engagement, and the mask was washed off before nuptials. Hence the ”Paint House” was a very abomination to the good Fathers.
Amongst the Timni tribe, near Sierra Leone, the Semo, or initiation for girls, begins with a great dance, called Colungee (Kolangi), and the bride is ”instructed formally in such circ.u.mstances as most immediately concern women.”
After halting for half an hour, ringed by a fence of blacks, we were summoned to the presence, where we found a small boy backed by a semi-circle of elders, and adorned with an old livery coat, made for a full-grown ”Jeames.” With immense dignity, and without deigning to look at us, he extended a small black paw like a Chimpanzee's, and received in return a promise of rum--the sole cause of our detention. And, as we departed through the euphorbia avenue, we were followed by the fastest trotters, the Flora Temples and the Ethan Allens, of the village.
Beyond Kilwanika the land became rougher and drier, whilst the swamps between the ground-waves were deeper and stickier, the higher ridges bearing natural Stonehenges, of African, not English, proportions At last we dismounted, ascended a rise, the most northerly of these ”Aravat Hills,” and stood at the base of the ”Lumba” The Pillar of Kmsembo is composed of two huge blocks, not basaltic, but of coa.r.s.e-grained reddish granite the base measures twenty and the shaft forty feet high. With a little tr.i.m.m.i.n.g it might be converted into a superior Pompey's Pillar: we shall see many of these monoliths in different parts of the Congo country.
The heat of the day was pa.s.sed in the shade of the Lumba, enjoying the sea-breeze and the novel view. It was debated whether we should return via Masera, a well-known slaving village, whose barrac.o.o.ns were still standing. But the bearers dissuaded us, declaring that they might be seized as ”dash,”
unless the white men paid heavy ”comey” like those who s.h.i.+pped black cargoes: they cannot shake off this old practice of claiming transit money. So we returned without a halt, covering some twelve of the roughest miles in two hours and a quarter.
The morning of the 26th showed an ugly sight from the tall Kinsembo cliff. As far as the eye could reach long green-black lines, fronted and feathered with frosted foam, hurried up to the war with loud merciless roars, and dashed themselves in white destruction against the reefs and rock-walls. We did not escape till the next day.
Kinsembo does not appear upon the old maps, and our earliest hydrographic charts place it six miles wrong.[FN#5] The station was created in 1857-61 by the mistaken policy of Loanda, which determined to increase the customs three per cent, and talked of exacting duties at Ambriz, not according to invoice prices, but upon the value which imported goods represented amongst the natives. It was at once spread abroad that the object was to drive the wax and ivory trade to So Paulo, and to leave Ambriz open to slavers. The irrepressible Briton transferred himself to Kinsembo, and agreed to pay the king 9 in kind, after ”country fas.h.i.+on,” for every s.h.i.+p. In 1857 the building of the new factories was opposed by the Portuguese, and was supported by English naval officers, till the two governments came to an arrangement. In February, 1860, the Kinsembo people seized an English factory, and foully murdered a Congo prince and Portuguese subject, D. Nicolao de Agua Rosada, employed in the Treasury Department, Ambriz. Thereupon the Governor-General sent up two vessels, with thirty guns and troops; crossed the Loge River, now a casus belli; and, on March 3rd, burned down the inland town of Kinsembo. On the return march the column debouched upon the foreign factories. About one mile in front of the point, Captain Brerit, U.S. Navy, and Commander A. G. Fitzroy, R.N., had drawn up 120 of their men by way of guard. Leave was asked by the Portuguese to refresh their troops, and to house six or seven wounded men. The foreign agents, headed by a disreputable M--M--, now dead, protested, and, after receiving this unsoldierlike refusal, the Portuguese, hara.s.sed by the enemy, continued their return march to Ambriz. The natives of this country have an insane hate for their former conquerors, and can hardly explain why: probably the cruelties of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not peculiar to the Lusitanians, have rankled in the national memory. A stray Portuguese would infallibly be put to death, and it will, I fear, be long before M. Valdez sees ”spontaneous declarations of va.s.salage on the part of the King of Molembo (Malemba) and others.”
In 1860 the trade of Kinsembo amounted to some 50,000, divided amongst four houses, two English, one American, and one Rotterdam (Pencoff and Kerdyk). The Ca.s.sange war greatly benefited the new station by diverting coffee and other produce of the interior from Loanda. There are apochryphal tales of giant tusks brought from a five months' journey, say 500 miles, inland. I was shown two species of copal (gum anime) of which the best is said to come from the Mosul country up the Ambriz River: one bore the goose-skin of Zanzibar, and I was a.s.sured that it does not viscidize in the potash-wash. The other was smooth as if it had freshly fallen from the tree. It was impossible to obtain any information; no one had been up country to see the diggings, and yet all declared that the interior was open; that it would be easy to strike the Coango (Quango) before it joins the Congo River, and that 150 miles, which we may perhaps reduce by a third, would lodge the traveller in the unknown lands of ”Hnga.”
Bidding kindly adieu to Mr. Hunter and wis.h.i.+ng him speedy deliverance from his dreadful companion, we resumed our travel over the now tranquil main. Always to starboard remained the narrow sea-wall, a length without breadth which we had seen after the lowlands of Cape Lopez, coloured rosy, rusty-red, or white, and sometimes backed by a second sierra of low blue rises, which suggests the sanatorium. Forty miles showed us the tall trees of Point Palmas on the northern side of the Conza River; on the south of the gap-like mouth lies the Ambrizette settlement, with large factories, Portuguese and American, gleaming against the dark verdure, and with Conza Hill for a background. The Cabeca de Cobra, or ”Margate Head,” led to Makula, alias Mangal, or Mangue Grande, lately a clump of trees and a point; now the site of English, American, and Dutch factories. Here the hydrographic charts of 1827 and 1863 greatly vary, and one has countermarched the coast-line some 75 miles: Beginning with the Congo River, it lays down Mangue Pegueno (where Grande should be), Cobra, and Mangue Grande (for Pequeno) close to Ambrizette. Then hard ahead rose Cape Engano, whose ”deceit” is a rufous tint, which causes many to mistake it for Cape or Point Padro. To-morrow, as the dark-green waters tell us, we shall be in the Congo River.
Chapter V.
Into the Congo River.--the Factories.--trip to Shark's Point.-- the Padro and Pinda.
The best preparation for a first glance at the Congo River is to do as all do, to study the quaint description which old Purchas borrowed from the ”Chronica da Companhia de Jesus em Portugal.”
”The Zaire is of such force that no s.h.i.+p can get in against the current but near to the sh.o.r.e; yea, it prevails against the ocean's saltness three-score, and as some say, four-score miles within the sea, before his proud waves yield their full homage, and receive that salt temper in token of subjection. Such is the haughty spirit of that stream, overrunning the low countries as it pa.s.seth, and swollen with conceit of daily conquests and daily supplies, which, in armies of showers, are, by the clouds, sent to his succour, runnes now in a furious rage, thinking even to swallow the ocean, which before he never saw, with his mouth wide gaping eight-and-twenty miles, as Lopez[FN#6] affirmeth, in the opening; but meeting with a more giant-like enemie which lies lurking under the cliffes to receive his a.s.sault, is presently swallowed in that wider womb, yet so as, always being conquered, he never gives over, but in an eternall quarrel, with deeper and indented frownes in his angry face, foaming with disclaine, and filling the aire with noise (with fresh helpe), supplies those forces which the salt sea hath consumed.”
I was disappointed after the Gambia and Gaboon rivers in the approach to the Congo. About eight miles south of the mouth the green sea changed to a clear brown which will be red during the flood. Some three degrees (F. 79 to 82) cooler than the salt tide, the lighter water, which was fresh as rain, feathered out like a fan; a rippling noise was faintly audible, and the clear lines of white foam had not time to melt into the coloured efflux. The flow was diverted into a regular curve northwards by the South Atlantic current; voyagers from Ascension Island to the north-west therefore feel the full throb of the great riverine pulse, and it has been recognized, they say, at a distance of 300 miles. Lopez, Merolla, and Dapper[FN#7] agree that the Congo freshens the water at thirty miles from the mouth, and that it can be distinguished thirty leagues off. The Amazonas tinges the sea along the Guiana coast 200 miles, and the effect of the Ganges extends to about twenty leagues. At this season, of course, we saw none of the floating islands which during the rains sail out sixty to seventy leagues from land. ”Tuckey's Expedition” informs us, that the Hon. Captain Irby, H.M.S.
”Amelia,” when anch.o.r.ed twelve miles from the South Point, in fifteen fathoms, ”observed on the ocean large floating islands covered with trees and bushes, which had been torn from the banks by the violent current.” The Journal of Captain Scobell, H.M.S.
”Thais,” remarks: ”In crossing this stream I met several floating islands or broken ma.s.ses from the banks of that n.o.ble river.” We shall find them higher up the bed, only forming as the inundation begins; I doubt, however, that at any time they equal the meadows which stud the mouth of the Rio Formoso (Benin River).
Historic Point Padrao, the ”Mouta Seca,” or Dry Bush, of the modern Portuguese, showed no signs of hospitality. The fierce rollers of the spumous sea broke and recoiled, foaming upon the sandy beach, which they veiled with a haze of water-dust, almost concealing the smoke that curled from the mangrove-hedged ”King Antonio's Town.” Then, steaming to the north-east, we ran five miles to Turtle Cove, formerly Turtle Corner, a shallow bay, whose nearest point is ”Twitty Twa Bush,” the baptismal effort of some English trader. And now appeared the full gape of the Congo mouth, yawning seven sea-miles wide; the further sh.o.r.e trending to the north-west in a low blue line, where Moanda and Vista, small ”s.h.i.+pping-ports” for slaves, were hardly visible in the hazy air. As we pa.s.sed the projecting tooth of Shark Point, a sandspit garnished with mangroves and dotted with palmyras, the land-squali flocked from their dirty-brown thatches to the beach, where flew the symbolic red flag. Unlike most other settlements, which are so buried in almost impenetrable bush that the traveller may pa.s.s by within a few yards without other sign but the human voice, this den of thieves and wreckers, justly named in more ways than one, flaunts itself in the face of day.
The Congo disclaims a bore, but it has a very distinct bar, the angle pointing up stream, and the legs beginning about Bana.n.a.l Bank (N.) and Alligator River (S.). Here the great depth above and below (145 and 112 fathoms) shallows to 6-9. Despite the five-knot current we were ”courteously received into the embraces of the river;” H.M. Steams.h.i.+p ”Griffon” wanted no ”commanding sea-breeze,” she found none of the difficulties which kept poor Tuckey's ”brute of a transport” drifting and driving for nearly a week before he could anchor off Fuma or Sherwood's Creek, the ”Medusa” of modern charts (?) and which made Shark Point, with its three-mile current, a ”more redoubtable promontory than that of Good Hope was to early navigators.” We stood boldly E.N.E.
towards the high blue clump known as Bulambemba, and, with the dirty yellow breakers of Mwana Mazia Bank far to port, we turned north to French Point, and anch.o.r.ed in a safe bottom of seven fathoms.
Here we at once saw the origin of the popular opinion that the Congo has no delta. On both sides, the old river valley, 32 miles broad, is marked out by gra.s.sy hills rolling about 200 feet high, trending from E.N.E. to W.S.W., and forming on the right bank an acute angle with the Ghats. But, whilst the northern line approaches within five or six miles, the southern bank, which diverges about the place where ”King Plonly's town” appears in charts, sweeps away some seventeen miles down coast, and leaves a wide tract of mangrove swamps. These, according to the Portuguese traders, who have their own plans of the river, extend some seventy miles south to Ambrizette: slavers keep all such details very close, and doubtless for good reasons--”short-cuts” greatly facilitate s.h.i.+pping negroes. The lesser Congo delta is bounded north by the Banana or Malela stream, whose lower fork is ”Pirates' Creek;” and south by the mangrove-clad drains, which subtend the main line: the base measures 12-15 miles. At the highest station, Boma, I shall have something to say about the greater delta. The left bank of the embouchure projects further seaward, making it look ”under hung,” representing in charts a lower jaw, and the projection of Shark Point the teeth, en profile.
My first care was to collect news at the factories. French Point is a long low spit, which supports two establishments where the chart (September 1859) gives ”Emigration Depot.” It is the old Banana Point, and probably the older Palmeirinha Point of James Barbot, who places it in the territory of Goy (Ngoy), now Cabinda. This part has greatly changed since 1859; either the Banana River requires removing two miles to the north, or French Point must be placed an equal distance south. The princ.i.p.al establishment, M. Regis' of Ma.r.s.eilles, is built in his best style; a two-storied and brilliantly ”chunam'd” house, containing a shop and store on the ground-floor, defended by a three- pounder. Behind it a square ”compound,” with high walls, guards the offices and the other requisites of a bar rac.o.o.n. It is fronted by a little village where ”Laptots,” Senegal Moslems, and men-at-arms live with their families and slaves. In the rear stands the far more modest and conscientious establishment of Messrs. Pencoff and Kerdyk: their plank bungalow is full of work, whilst the other lies idle; so virtue here is not, as in books, its own reward.
M. Victor Parrot, the young Swiss agent of M. Regis, hospitably asked us to take up our quarters with him, and promised to start us up stream without delay; his employer fixes the tariff of every article, and no discretion is left to the subordinates. We called upon M. Elkman of the Dutch factory. His is a well-known name on the river, and, though familiar with the people, he has more than once run some personal risk by a.s.sisting our cruizers to make captures. He advised us to lose no time in setting out before the impending rains: I wanted, however, a slight preparation for travel, and determined to see something of the adjoining villages, especially the site of the historic Padro.