[Illustration: BATANGA CANOES. _To face page 89._]
Being, as above demonstrated, a humble, but enthusiastic, devotee of fishing--I dare not say, as my great predecessor Dame Juliana Berners says, "with an angle," because my conscience tells me I am a born poacher,--I need hardly remark that when I heard, from a reliable authority at Gaboon, that there were lakes in the centre of the island of Corisco, and that these fresh-water lakes were fished annually by representative ladies from the villages on this island, and that their annual fishing was just about due, I decided that I must go there forthwith. Now, although Corisco is not more than twenty miles out to sea from the Continent, it is not a particularly easy place to get at nowadays, no vessels ever calling there; so I got, through the kindness of Dr. Nassau, a little schooner and a black crew, and, forgetting my solemn resolve, formed from the fruits of previous experiences, never to go on to an Atlantic island again, off I sailed. I will not go into the adventures of that voyage here. My reputation as a navigator was great before I left Gaboon. I had a record of having once driven my bowsprit through a conservatory, and once taken all the paint off one side of a smallpox hospital, to say nothing of repeatedly having made attempts to climb trees in boats I commanded, but when I returned, I had surpassed these things by having successfully got my main-mast jammed up a tap, and I had done sufficient work in discovering new sandbanks, rock shoals, &c., in Corisco Bay, and round Cape Esterias, to necessitate, or call for, a new edition of _The West African Pilot_.
Corisco Island is about three miles long by 1-3/4 wide: its latitude 0°56 N., long. 9°20-1/2 E. Mr. Winwood Reade was about the last traveller to give a description of Corisco, and a very interesting description it is. He was there in the early sixties, and was evidently too fully engaged with a drunken captain and a mad Malay cook to go inland. In his days small trading vessels used to call at Corisco for cargo, but they do so no longer, all the trade in the Bay now being carried on at Messrs. Holt's factory on Little Eloby Island (an island nearer in shore), and on the mainland at Coco Beach, belonging to Messrs. Hatton and Cookson.