Our specimen was strung with thin cords made from the fibre of a
lliana; I was shown this growth, which looked much like a
convolvulus. The people have a long list of instruments, and
their music, though monotonous, is soft and plaintive: Bowdich
gives a specimen of it ("Sketch of Gaboon," p. 449), and of a
bard who seems to have been somewhat more frenzied than most
poets. Captain Allen (iii. 398) speaks of a harp at Bimbia
(Camarones) tightly strung with the hard fibre of some creeping
plant. The Bakele harp (M. du Chaillu, chap, xvi.) is called
Ngombi; the handle opposite the bow often has a carved face, and
it might be a beginning of the article used by civilized Europe--
Wales for instance.
The path plunged westward into the bush, spanned a dirty and
grass-grown plantation of bananas, dived under thorn tunnels and
arches of bush, and crossed six nullahs, Neropotamoi, then dry,
but full of water on our return. The ant-nests were those of
Yoruba and the Mendi country; not the tall, steepled edifices
built by the termites with yellow clay, as in Eastern Africa, but
an eruption of blue-black, hard-dried mud and mucus, resembling
the miniature pagodas, policeman's lanterns, mushrooms, or
umbrellas one or two feet high, here single, there double, common
in Ashanti and Congo-land.
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