At Wora I found that my host had returned to his station near Talamacco. So I returned to Talamacco by boat; the earthquake had been very violent there, and had caused the greatest damage, and I heard that all the new houses of the Messrs. Thomas at Hog Harbour had been ruined.
Times had been troublous in other respects at Talamacco; the natives, especially the Christians, were fighting, and one Sunday they were all ready, looking very fierce, to attack each other with clubs and other weapons, only neither side dared to begin. I asked them to do the fighting out in the open, so that I could take a picture of it, and this cooled them down considerably. They sat down and began a long palaver, which ended in nothing at all, and, indeed, no one really knew what had started the excitement.
In spite of the supercargo's announcement that the steamer would arrive on the twentieth, she did not come till the first of the following month. This kept me constantly on the look out and ready for departure, and unable to do anything of importance. At last we sailed, touching the Banks Islands on our route; and after enjoying a few days of civilization on board, I went ashore at Tassimaloun, on the south-west corner of Santo, where I had the pleasure of being Mr. C.'s guest. My object there was to follow the traces of the pygmy population, but as the natives mostly live inland, and only rarely come to the coast, I had to go in search of them. At that time I was often ill with fever, and could not do as much as I could have wished. Once I tried to reach the highest mountain of the islands, Santo Peak, but my guides from the mission village of Vualappa led me for ten days through most uninteresting country and an unfriendly population without even bringing me to the foot of the mountain. I had several unpleasant encounters with the natives, during one of which I fully expected to be murdered, and when our provisions were exhausted we had to return to the coast. But every time I saw the tall pyramid of Santo Peak rising above the lower hills I longed to be the first European to set foot on it, and I tried it at last from the Tassiriki side.
After long consultations with the natives, I at last found two men who were willing to guide me to the mountain. I decided to give up all other plans, and to take nothing with me but what was strictly necessary. On the second day we climbed a hill which my guides insisted was the Peak, the highest point of the island. I pointed out a higher summit, but they said that we would never get up there before noon, and, indeed, they did everything they could to delay our advance, by following wrong trails and being very slow about clearing the way. Still, after an hour's hard work, we were on the point in question, and from there I could see the real Santo Peak, separated from us by only one deep valley, as far as I could judge in the tangle of forest that covered everything. The guides again pretended that we were standing on the highest mountain then, and that it would take at least a fortnight to reach the real Peak. I assured them that I meant to be on its top by noon, and when they showed no inclination whatever to go on, I left them and went on with my boys. We had to dive into a deep ravine, where we found a little water and refilled our bottles. Then we had to ascend the other side, which was trying, as we had lost the trail and had to climb over rocks and through the thickest bush I ever met. The ground was covered with a dense network of moss-grown trunks that were mouldering there, through which we often fell up to our shoulders, while vines and ferns wound round our bodies, so that we did our climbing more with our arms than with our feet. After a while one of the guides joined us, but he did not know the way; at last we found it, but there were many ups and downs before we attained the summit. The weather now changed, and we were suddenly surrounded by the thick fog that always covers the Peak before noon. The great humidity and the altitude combine to create a peculiar vegetation in this region; the tree-ferns are tremendously developed, and the natives pretend that a peculiar species of pigeon lives here.