2 
From Fernando Po 
H. M. Steamship “ Torch” steamed into Clarence 
Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered 
me a passage down south. To hear was to 
accept. Two days afterwards (July 29, 1863) I 
bade a temporary “ adios ” to the enemy. 
The bitterness of death remained behind as we 
passed out of the baneful Bights. Wind and wave 
were dead against us, yet I greatly enjoyed the 
gradual emerging of the sun through his shroud 
of “ smokes the increasing consciousness that a 
moon and stars really exist; the soft blue haze 
of the sky, and the coolness of 73 0 F. at 6 a.m. in 
the captain’s cabin. I had also time to enjoy these 
charms. The “Torch” was not provided with 
“ despatch-boilers : ” she was profoundly worm- 
eaten, and a yard of copper, occasionally clapped 
on, did not prevent her making some four feet of 
water a day. So we rolled leisurely along the 
well-known Gaboon shore, and faintly sighted from 
afar Capes Lopez and St. Catherine, and the 
fringing ranges of Mayumba-land, a blue line of 
heights based upon gently rising banks, ruddy and 
white, probably of shaly clay. The seventh day 
(August 5) placed us off the well-known “ red 
hills ” of Loango-land. 
The country looks high and bold after the 
desperate flatness of the Bights, and we note with 
pleasure that we have left behind us the “ impervi¬ 
ous luxuriance of vegetation which crowns the low- 
