And now to resume my own more simple narrative.
The barque Princess, which, until we touched at Ascension, had been favoured with singularly fine weather, now encountered strong head-winds. She was driven out of her course, and had to run well in, on the African coast.
After long beating about, on the 2nd of August we saw the great continent on the southern shore of the Gulf of Guinea.
The winds had become light and the weather cloudy. On this day I remember the crew were variously employed, and the carpenters were busy in making two new topgallant masts, to replace those injured in the rough weather we had so recently encountered.
About six P.M. the weather became squally. Captain Baylis ordered the studding-sails to be taken in, and the chain-cables bent to the anchors. At midnight we took in the royals and flying-jib.
At four o'clock on the morning of the 3rd, as we required fresh water, we came to anchor in a little sheltered bay of the Rio Gabon, which lies between the Bight of Benin and Cape Lopez Gonsalvo.
The wondrous transparency of the atmosphere here exceeded all I had seen—even in the pure region of eternal ice; for amid the clear splendour of the heavens, the eye could observe without a telescope many a lesser star unseen in the north; and on this morning when we were coming to anchor, two of the fixed planets shone with a refulgence so brilliant as to cast the shadow of the ships far across the estuary.
By this time, the hot vertical sun of the tropics had peeled all the paint off the blistered sides of the Princess. Her anchors and ironwork had become mere masses of red rust, her once white paint had been turned to orange colour, and her tar to dirty yellow, while the caulking and pitch had boiled out from her planks and seams.
Captain Baylis had no intention of remaining here longer than he could avoid, as the climate is unhealthy. Though the hills which overlook the river are of considerable height, the land between it and them is but a series of swamps, where the gigantic water-weeds of Africa and the wild mangrove-trees flourish in rank luxuriance, and where the hideous crocodile squatters in the slime, or crawls along the sand, where its eggs are hatched by the hot sun, if they are not previously stolen by the ichneumon.
While the chief mate went off in the long-boat to the Pongos—as the little isles at the mouth of the estuary are named—to fill several casks with fresh water, Captain Baylis proposed a visit to a negro village on the coast, for the purpose of procuring some elephants' teeth and leopard skins, and having a palaver with the natives, many of whom, though extremely savage, have picked up a little English by the frequent visits of our ships, particularly those of the African squadron.