The Factory (Messrs. Hatton and Cookson) was a poor affair of bamboos and mats, with partition-walls of the same material, and made pestilent by swamps to landward.  Little work was then doing in palm oil, and the copper mines of the interior had ceased to send supplies.  We borrowed hammocks to cross the swamps, and we found French Factory a contrast not very satisfactory to our insular pride.  M. Charles de Gourlet, of the Maison Regis, was living, not in a native hut lacking all the necessaries of civilized man, but in a double-storied stone house, with barracoons, hospital, public room, orchestra, and so forth, intended for the “emigrants.”  Instead of water, the employes had excellent cognac and vermouth, and a succulent cuisine replaced the poor Britishers’ two barrels of flour and biscuit.  No wonder that in our half-starved fellow countrymen we saw little of the “national failing, a love of extravagant adventure.”  The Frenchmen shoot, or at least go out shooting, twice a week, they walk to picnics, learn something of the language, and see something of the country.  They had heard a native tradition of Mr. Gorilla’s “big brother,” but they could give no details.

I will conclude this chapter with a notice of what has taken place on the Loango Coast a decade after my departure.  Although Africa has changed but little, Europe has, and we can hardly envy the German nation its eminence and unexpected triumphs in war when we see the energy and persistency with which they are applying themselves to the arts of peace—­especially of exploration.  And nowhere have they been more active than in this part of the world, where their old rivals, the English, are apparently contented to sit at home in ease, working their factories and counting out their money.

To begin with the beginning.  The year 1872 found the Berlin Geographical Society intent upon “planting a lance in Africa,” and upon extending and connecting the discoveries of Livingstone, Du Chaillu, Schweinfurth, and other travellers.  Delegates from the various associations of Germany met in congress, and organized (April 19, 1873) the Germanic “Afrikanische Gesellschaft.”  Ex-President Dr. Adolf Bastian, a well-known traveller in Siam, Cambodia, China, and the Indian Archipelago, and who, moreover, had visited Ambassi or Salvador do Congo, the old missionary capital, in 1857, was at once sent out as pioneer and vanguard to prospect the coast for a suitable station and a point de depart into the interior—­a scientific step dictated by trained and organized common sense.  The choice of leader fell upon Dr. Gussfeldt, Herr von Hattorf being his second in command, and with them were associated Dr. Falkenstein as zoologist, and Dr. Soyaux as botanist.  A geologist, Dr. Lenz, of Hamburg, was sent to connect the Ogobe and Okanda rivers with, the Loango coast, unless he found a likely northeastern route.  In this case, the Society would take measures to supply him with the necessary equipment.