Here, seven and a quarter miles from the mouth, the stream
measures about twenty yards broad, the _thalweg_ is deep and navigable,
and the water, bitumen-coloured with vegetable matter, tastes brackish.
There is the usual wasteful profusion of growth. Ferns ramp upon the
trees; Cameron counted at Akankon two dozen different species within a few
hundred yards. Orchids bunch the boughs and boles of dead forest-giants;
and llianas, the African 'tie-tie,' varying in growth from a packthread to
a cable, act as cordage to connect the growths.
There is evidently a shorter cut up the river, at whose lagoon-mouth craft
can be hired. Our ferryman with his single canoe wasted a good hour over
the work of a few minutes. We then remounted hammock and struck the 'true
coast,' a charming bit of country, gradually upsloping to the north and
east. The path passed through the plantation-villages, Benya and Arabo,
growing bananas and maize, cassava and groundnuts, peppers and papaws,
cocoas and bamboo-palms (_Raphia vinifera_). The latter not only build the
houses, they also yield wine of two kinds, both, however, inferior to the
produce of the oil-palm (_Elais guineensis_).
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