The Corisco branch of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions was established by the Rev. James S. Mackey in 1850.  It made as much progress as could be expected, and in 1862 it numbered 110 scholars and 65 communicants; the total of those baptized was 80, and 15 had been suspended.  The members applied themselves, as the list of their publications shows, with peculiar ardour to the language, and they did not neglect natural history and short explorations of the adjoining interior.  They had sent home specimens of the six reptilia, the six snails and land shells, the seventy-five sea shells, and the 110 fishes, all known by name, which they collected upon the island and in the bay.  It is to be presumed that careful dredging will bring to light many more:  the pools are said to produce a small black fish, local as the Proteus anguineus of the Styrian caves, to mention no other.

I was curious to hear from Mr. Mackey some details about the Muni River, where he travelled in company with M. du Chaillu.  It still keeps the troublous reputation for petty wars which made the old traders dignify it with the name of “Danger.”  The nearest Falls are about thirty miles from Olobe Island, and the most distant may be sixty-five.  Of course we had a laugh over the famous Omamba or Anaconda, whose breath can be felt against the face before it is seen.

Late in April 24th I returned the books kindly lent to me from the mission library, shook hands with my kind and hospitable entertainers at the mission house, mentally wishing them speedy deliverance from Corisco, and embarked on board the “Griffon.”  We quickly covered the “great water desert” of 160 miles between the Gorilla Island and Fernando Po, and at noon on the next day I found myself once more “at home.”

[FN#1] Paul B. du Chaillu, Chap.  III.  “Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa.”  London:  Murray, 1861.

[FN#2] Rev. J. Leighton Wilson of the Presbyterian Mission, eighteen years in Africa, “Western Africa,” &c.  New York.  Harpers, 1856.

[FN#3] Barbot, book iv. chap. 9.

[FN#4] This word is the Muzungu of the Zanzibar coast, and contracted to Utanga and even Tanga it is found useful in expressing foreign wares; Utangani’s devil-fire, for instance, is a lucifer match.

[FN#5] “Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains,” vol. ii. chap. i.  London:  Tinsleys, 1863.

[FN#6] See “Zanzibar City, Island, and Coast,” vol. i. chap. v sect. 2.

[FN#7] “Observations on the Fevers of the West African Coast.”  New York:  Jenkins, 1856.  A more valuable work is the “Medical Topography, &c. of West Africa,” by the late W.F.  Daniell, M.D., 1849.  Finally, Mr. Consul Hutchinson offered valuable suggestions in his work on the Niger Expedition of 1854-5 (Longmans, 1855, and republished in the “Traveller’s Library").

[FN#8] M. du Chaillu ends his chapter i. with an “illustration of a Mpongwe woman,” copied without acknowledgment from Mr. Wilson’s “Portrait of Yanawaz, a Gaboon Princess.”