CHAPTER VI 
LUMBERMEN AND RAFTSMEN IN THE 
PRIMEVAL FOREST 
Cape Lopez, July 2^th-2gth, 1914. 
An abscess, for the opening of which the help of the 
military doctor at Cape Lopez seemed to be necessary, 
compelled me about this time to go down to the coast, 
but we had scarcely got there when it fortunately 
burst, and the risk of further complications was avoided. 
My wife and I were kindly entertained at the house of 
a factory employee called Fourier, whose wife had 
spent two months that summer at Lambarene, awaiting 
her confinement at our house. Monsieur Fourier is a 
grandson of the French philosopher Fourier (1772 — 
1837), in whose social theories I was much interested 
when a student in Paris. Now one of his great- 
grandchildren has entered the world under our roof ! 
I cannot yet move about, so spend the whole day in 
an armchair on the verandah with my wife, looking 
out over the sea and inhaling with enjoyment the fresh 
sea breezes. That there is a breeze at all is a delight 
to us, for in Lambarene there is never any wind except 
during the short storms, which are known as tornadoes. 
This time of leisure I will employ in writing something 
about the life of the lumbermen and the raftsmen on 
the Ogowe. 
