The Teraba Valley
From Dakka the boundary line follows the Kam for about a dozen miles, and then, leaving the river, it runs over a block of hills which form the fringe of a vast unknown tract of the Cameroon country. Here the hill-top villages are few, the inhabitants are wilder and more squalid than the Dakka natives, and the land is the haunt of the elephant, the lion, the bush-cow and the leopard. From these hills the boundary descends into the valley of the River Lumen, which runs for twenty or thirty miles under a dark arch of overhanging trees. The water of the Lumen is very cold, even in the heat of the day, and the sands of the river are full of iron. The line crosses the Lumen and mounts a high ridge, called Shina, to descend again into the vast plain of the River Teraba. Along the banks of the Teraba are numerous Hausa and Jukum villages, situated on important trade roads between Northern Nigeria and Cameroon, the principal trade being in rubber, kola nuts, sheep, and goats. There are no cattle, as many kinds of biting fly, including the tsetse, have their breeding places in this area. As the Teraba is typical of all the great southern tributaries of the Benue, the following short description, which Captain Nugent gives of one of the upper reaches, will be read with interest:—
“Fifteen miles above Karbabi the river bends sharply at right angles, forming noisy rapids. Above the rapids the bed is rocky with deep pools. Under the tall trees along the banks are open glades like an English beech wood, entirely free from undergrowth, the ground being carpeted with soft moss. There are the feeding-grounds of huge herds of hippopotami, who live in the pools in the daytime. The river is here 200 to 300 yards wide, with high banks; the channel winds among huge boulders, forming a chain of pools, but leaving a narrow deep waterway among the larger rocks. The pools are like dark mirrors, silent and stagnant, yet bright and clear, reflecting the trees on the opposite bank in full detail. Wild geese and ibis fly overhead, whilst large alligators move about like torpedoes, with their noses out of the water, leaving long trails of bubbles on the surface.
“There is no village within many miles of this place, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that we could obtain guides, as there are no tracks except those made by the larger game. The inhabitants of the pools were thoroughly startled at our approach. There seemed to be a sort of collusion between the different birds and beasts. The shrieking ibis warned the alligators asleep on the rocks in the sun, they, in alarm, slid into the water and warned the river-horse that something was amiss; the river-horse in his turn went pounding up-stream, under water, coming up to breathe at intervals behind the rocks and branches. The snorting was terrific. We estimated that there were between thirty and forty hippopotami in the largest pool. I have never seen a wilder-looking place; it seemed to be alive with everything except humanity.