had surmised occurred. The confluence of these two rivers, as I have already described, is just above Lembarene, some twenty miles from the point this expedition reached. M. Serval, however, after the return of the expedition to Gaboon, made another attempt, and crossed by land from the Gaboon to the Ogowé, reaching Orongo a little above Osoamokita, definitely proving that the Gaboon estuary was not a mouth of the Ogowé and quite disconnected from it. In 1864 another expedition sent by the French Government succeeded in reaching the confluence of the Ngunie with the Ogowé (the Ngouyai with the Okanda of Du Chaillu). From those days, up to the time of de Brazza, the most important worker on the Ogowé has been Mr. R. B. N. Walker, of whose journey I regret to say no full account has been published, for it was a most remarkable one, undertaken before the Fans on the river bank had been overawed by M. de Brazza. Mr. Walker reached Lope, the furthest point attained until de Brazza's 1889 journey, and in addition to this, made many exploring expeditions in the region.[1] Then come the missionary journeys of Dr. Nassau, who was well-established up at Talagouga[2] with his house and church built when de Brazza came by in 1879. Since the latter opened up the district, the only travellers I know of, passing through the region up the Ogowé rapids, are MM. Alegret and Tesseris, who made a journey right up the Ogowé and out on to the Congo with a view to selecting a site for mission stations, and to these gentlemen I am indebted for many photographs of native types on the Upper Ogowé. Financial reasons have, I believe, militated against the establishment of further stations above Talagouga by the Mission Évangélique, to which these gentlemen belong; and this station, and a Roman Catholic Mission
- ↑ Since my return to England, feeling much interested in the travels of Mr. Walker, I have hunted up several papers by him scattered among the transactions of various societies circa 1876, and from them fully recognise the great loss to our knowledge of the actual geography and ethnology of this region, that we suffer from Mr. Walker never having collected and published in book form the results of his travels and residence in Congo Français.
- ↑ The natives sometimes call it Otalamaguga. Aguga means want, privation, hardship.
