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A brisk and matter-of-fact Victorian traveller is in a canoe, in the country that is now Gabon, trying to negotiate the waterways and the estuary. She has just met "a fine confused set of marine and fluvial phenomena. Far away to the north the 'Como and the Boqué and two other lesser, but considerable streams were, with the Rembwé, pouring down their waters in swirling, intermingling, interclashing currents; and up against them, to make confusion worse confounded, came the tide, and the tide up the Gaboon is a swift, strong thing, and irregular, and has a rise of eight feet at the springs, two-and-a-half at the neaps," Mary Kingsley writes in Travels in West Africa (1897).
"The wind lulled too, it being evening time. In this country it is customary for the wind to blow from the land from 8pm to 8am, from the south-west to the east. Then comes a lull, either an utter dead hot brooding calm, or light baffling winds and draughts that breathe a few hot panting breaths into your sails and then die," she reports. "Fortunately for us we arrived off the head of the Gaboon estuary in this calm, for had we wind to deal with we should have come to an end."
A wandering puff of wind blew away her makeshift sail, "as much as to say 'Here, I've had enough of this sailing. I'll be a counterpane again.' We did a great deal of fine varied, spirited navigation, details of which however I will not dwell upon, because it was successful."
