Such was Akassa, where throbbed with undying energy the busy current of British commercial life. With our arrival in the river my days of ease were over, and prompt action and stern work became the order of the day. No one knew where Flegel was, or where he might turn up. With his minute knowledge of the river, he was a rival not to be despised. It behoved me, therefore, to waste no time, and accordingly, having collected such stores as were necessary, I started on my voyage in the steam launch _Français_ two days after reaching Akassa. For the first hour we steamed up the rapidly narrowing creek till we found ourselves confronted by a dense barrier of mangrove. For an instant we seemed to be insanely heading to wreck and disaster, when all at once the wall of vegetation presented a narrow opening, and we were engulfed in its leafy depths. Could this be the Niger--the mighty river which drained the quarter of a continent--only a stream thirty yards in breadth, and some five in depth, lazily flowing seaward? That stream was formed of Niger water, but it was not the Niger. Up this insignificant winding waterway our course now lay. First there was mangrove and nothing else simulating the appearance of dry land, alternately exposed as pestilential mud or covered by water, according to the state of the tide. After a time land appeared on the level of the highest tides--the swamp vegetation began to exhibit a less vigorous growth, and was intermingled with other trees and bushes. Each mile made the transformation more marked. The land rose higher and higher; the mangrove trees grew more stunted and fewer in number; terrene plants took their place, and grew in size, in beauty, and in majesty, till the ideal tropical forest spread its romantic depths before our admiring eyes. Coincidently other developments of the panorama were taking place. The river gathered together its various branches and increased in breadth and depth, till in its full majestic unity it sunned its broad bosom in the tropic glare--a magnificent stream from a mile to a mile and a half broad. With the gathering together of the various branches and the improvement in the physical conditions, evidences of human occupation began to show themselves. For the first eight hours not the faintest trace of man had been discernible. Then appeared a deserted fishing weir, next an old plantation, by-and-by a new clearing, and immediately after a canoe propelled by two women, which was seen creeping slowly along under the river’s banks. At last, towards sunset, a couple of villages were sighted, and thenceforward man proclaimed his sway over the land, giving animation to the scene, with now and then a picturesque effect.