30 III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES 
During the night of April 26th we heard the whistle 
of the steamer and soon learnt that our cases had been 
unloaded at the Catholic mission station, which is on 
the river bank, the captain having refused to venture 
on the, to him, unknown water of our branch stream. 
Fortunately, however, Mr. Champel and Mr. Pelot, 
the industrial missionaries from N’Gomo, had come to 
Lambarene, with ten of their native labourers, to help 
us. I was extremely anxious about the conveyance of 
my piano with pedal attachment, built for the tropics, 
which the Bach Society of Paris had given me, in 
recognition of many years’ service as their organist, so 
that I might keep myself in practice even in Africa. 
It seemed to me impossible that such a piano, in its 
heavy zinc-lined case, could be carried in a hollowed-out 
tree trunk, and yet there are no other boats here ! 
One store, however, possessed a canoe, hewn out of a 
gigantic tree, which could carry up to three tons 
weight, and this they lent me. It would have carried 
five pianos ! 
Soon, by dint of hard work, we got our seventy cases 
across, and to get them up the hill from the river bank 
every sound set of limbs in the station came to help, 
the school children working as zealously as any one. 
It was amusing to see how a case suddenly got a crowd 
of black legs underneath it and two rows of woolly 
heads apparently growing out of its sides, and how, amid 
shouting and shrieking, it thus crept up the hill ! In 
three days everything had been carried up, and the 
N’Gomo helpers were able to go home. We hardly 
knew how to thank them enough, for without their help 
we could not possibly have managed the job. 
Unpacking was a trial, for it was difficult to dispose 
