CHAPTER VIII
TALAGOUGA
Mme. Forget received me most kindly and hospitably, she, with her husband and her infant daughter, and M. and Mme. Gacon represent the Mission Évangélique and the white race at Talagouga. Mme. Gacon is the lady the planter took me for; and when I saw her, with her sweet young face and masses of pale gold-coloured hair, I felt highly flattered. Either that planter must be very short-sighted or the colour of my hair must have misled him, not that mine is pale gold, but hay-coloured. I don't know how he did it. Mme. Forget is a perfectly lovely French girl, with a pale transparent skin and the most perfect great dark eyes, with indescribable charm, grace of manner, and vivacity in conversation. It grieves me to think of her, wasted on this savage wilderness surrounded by its deadly fever air. Oranie Forget, otherwise the baby, although I am not a general admirer of babies of her age—a mere matter of months—is also charming; I am not saying this because she flattered me by taking to me—all babies and children do that—but she has great style, and I have no doubt she will grow up to be a beauty too, but she would have made a dead certainty of it, if she had taken after her mother.
The mission station at Talagouga is hitched on to the rocky hillside, which rises so abruptly from the river that there is hardly room for the narrow footpath which runs along the river frontage of it. And when you are on the Forgets' verandah it seems as if you could easily roll right off it into the dark, deep, hurrying Ogowé. I suggest this to Mme. Forget as
