 Preface and introduction of travels in West Africa. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Travels in West Africa by Mary H. Kingsley. Preface and introduction to the reader. What this book wants is not a simple preface, but an apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that. Recognizing this fully and feeling quite incompetent to write such a masterpiece, I have asked several literary friends to write one for me, but they have kindly but firmly declined, stating that it is impossible satisfactorily to apologize for my liberties with Lindley, Mary, and the Queen's English. I am therefore left to make a feeble apology for this book, myself, and all I can personally say is that it would have been much worse than it is had it not been for Dr. Henry Gullimard, who has not edited it, or of course the whole affair would have been better. But who has most kindly gone through the proof sheets, lassoing prepositions which were straying outside their sentence stockade, taking my eye off the water cask, and fixing it on the scenery where I meant it to be, saying firmly in pencil on margins, no you don't, when I was committing some more than usually heinous literary crime and so on. In cases where his activities in these things may seem to the reader to have been wanting, I beg to state that they really were not. It is I who have declined to ascend to a higher level of lucidity and correctness of diction than I am fitted for. I cannot forbear for mentioning my gratitude to Mr. George Macmillan for his patience and kindness with me, a mere jungle of information on West Africa. Whether you, my reader, will share my gratitude is, I fear doubtful, for if it had not been for him I should never have attempted to write a book at all, and in order to excuse his having induced me to try, I beg to state that I have written only on things that I know from personal experience and a very careful observation. I have never accepted an explanation of a native custom from one person alone, nor have I set down things as being prevalent costumes from having seen a single instance. I have endeavored to give you an honest account of the general state and manner of life in Lower Guinea and some description of the various types of country there. In reading this section you must make allowances for my love of this sort of country, with its great forests and rivers and its animistic-minded inhabitants and for my ability to be more comfortable there than in England. Your superior culture instincts may militate against your enjoying West Africa, but if you go there you will find things, as I have said. January 1897. Preface to the abridged edition of travels in West Africa. When on my return to England for my second sojourn in West Africa, I discovered to my alarm that I was, by a freak of fate the sea serpent of the season, I published in order to escape from this reputation a very condensed, much abridged version of my experience in Lower Guinea, and I thought that I need never explain about myself or Lower Guinea again. This was one of my errors. I have been explaining ever since and, though not reconciled to so doing, I am more or less resigned to it because it gives me pleasure to see that English people can take an interest in that land they have neglected. Nevertheless, it was a shock to me when the publisher said more explanation was required. I am thankful to say the explanation they required was merely on what plan the abridgment of my first account had been made. I can manage that explanation easily. It has been done by removing from it certain sections whole and leaving the rest very much as it first stood. Of course it would have been better if I had totally reformed and rewritten the book in pellicit English, but that is beyond me and I feel at any rate this book must be better than it was, for there is less of it and I dimly hope critics will now see that there is a saving grace in disconnectedness for owing to that disconnectedness whole chapters have come out without leaving holes. As for the part that is left in, I have already apologized for its form and I cannot help it for Lower Guineas like what I have said it is. No one who knows it has sent home contradictions of my description of it or its natives or their manners or customs and they have had by now ample time and opportunity. The only complaints I have had regarding my account from my fellow West Coasters have been that I might have said more. I trust my forbearance will send a thrill of gratitude through readers of the 736-page edition. There is, however, one section that I reprint regarding which I must say a few words. It is that on the trade and labour problem in West Africa, particularly the opinion therein expressed regarding the liquor traffic. This part has brought down on me much criticism from the missionary societies and their friends and I beg gratefully to acknowledge the honourable fairness with which the controversy has been carried on by the great Wesleyan Methodist mission to the Gold Coast and the Baptist mission to the Congo. It has not ended in our agreement on this point but it has raised my esteem of missionary societies considerably and anyone interested in this matter I beg to refer to the Baptist magazine for October 1897. Therein will be found my answer and the comments on it by a competent missionary authority for the rest of this matter I beg all readers of this book to bear in mind that I confine myself to speaking only of the bit of Africa I know West Africa. During this past summer I attended a meeting at which Sir George Tobin Goldie spoke and was much struck with the truth of what he said on the basis of different African regions. He divided Africa into three zones. Firstly, that region where white races could colonise in the true sense of the word and form a great native born white population namely the region of the Cape. Secondly, a region where the white race could colonise but to a less extent, an extent analogous to that in India, namely the highlands of Central East Africa and parts of Northern Africa. Thirdly, a region where the white races cannot colonise in a true sense of the word namely the West African region and in those regions he pointed out one of the main elements of prosperity and advance is the native African population. I am quoting his words from memory, possibly imperfectly, but there is very little reliable printed matter to go on when dealing with Sir George Tobin Goldie which is regrettable because he himself is an experienced and reliable authority. I am however quite convinced that these aforesaid distinct regions are regions that the practical politician dealing with Africa must recognise and keep constantly in mind when attempting to solve the many difficulties that that great continent presents. And sincerely hope every reader of this work will remember that I am speaking of that last zone, the zone wherein white races cannot colonise in a true sense of the word but which is nevertheless a vitally important region to a great manufacturing country like England for therein are vast undeveloped markets wherein she can sell her manufactured goods and it purchase raw material for her manufacturers at a reasonable rate. Having a rooted natural feminine hatred for politics I have no inclination to become diffuse on them as I have on the errors of other people's cooking or ideas and decoration. I know I am held to be too partial to France and West Africa, too fond of pointing out her brilliant achievements there, too fond of saying the native is as happy and possibly happier under her rule than under ours and also that I am given to a great admiration for Germans but this is just like any common sense English woman. Of course I am devoted to my own John but still Monjour is brave, bright and fascinating. Mein Herr is possessed of courage and commercial ability in the highest degree and besides he takes such a lot of trouble to know the real truth about things and tells them to you so calmly and carefully and our own John well of course he is everything that's good and great but he makes a shocking full of himself at times particularly in West Africa. I should enjoy holding what one of my justly irritated spurgators used to call one of my little thanksgiving services here but I will not for after all it would be impossible for me to satisfactorily thank those people who since my publication of this book have given me help and information on the subject of West Africa. Chief amongst them have been Mr. A. L. Jones, Sir R. B. N. Walker, Mr. Irvin and John Holt. I have not added to this book any information I have received since I wrote it as it does not seem to me fair to do so. My only regret regarding it is that I have not dwelt sufficiently on the charm of West Africa. It is so difficult to explain such things but I am sure there are amongst my readers people who know by experience the charm some countries exercise over men countries very different from each other and from West Africa. The charm of West Africa is a painful one. It gives you pleasure when you are out there. But when you are back here it gives you pain by calling you. It sends up before your eyes a vision of a wall of dancing white rainbow gem to surf playing on a shore of yellow sand before an audience of stately cocoa palms or of a great mangrove watered bronze river or of a vast isle in some forest cathedral and you hear nearer to you than the voice of the people around nearer than the roar of the city traffic the sound of the surf that is breaking on the shore down there and the sound of the wind talking on the hard palm leaves in the thump of the natives' tum-toms or the cry of the parrots passing over the mangrove swamps in the evening time or the sweet long mellow whistle of the plantain warblers calling up the dawn and everything that is round you grows poor and thin in the face of the vision and you want to go back to the coast that is calling you saying as the African says to the departing soul of his dying friend come back come back this is your home. M. H. Kingsley, October 1897. End of Preface. Introduction. Related to various causes which impelled the authors to embark upon the voyage. It was in 1893 that for the first time in my life I found myself in possession of five or six months which were not heavily forestalled and feeling like a boy with a new half-crown body I lay about in my mind as Mr. Bunyan would say as to what to do with them. Go and learn your tropics and science. Where on earth am I to go? I wandered for tropics or tropics were ever found so I got down an atlas and saw that either South America or West Africa must be my destination for the Malayan region was too far off and too expensive. Then I got Wallace's geographical distribution and after that master's article on the Ethiopian region I hardened my heart and closed with West Africa. I did this the more readily because while I knew nothing of the practical condition of it I knew a good deal both by tradition and report of Southeast America and remember that Yellowjack was endemic and that a certain naturalist, my superior physically and mentally had come very near getting starved to death in the depressing society of an expedition slowly perishing of want and miscellaneous fevers of the Parana. My ignorance regarding West Africa was soon removed and although the vast cavity in my mind that it occupied is not even yet half filled up there is a great deal of very curious information in its place. I used the word curious advisedly for I think many seemed to translate my request for practical hints and advice into an advertisement that rubbish may be shot here. The same information is in a state of great confusion still although I have made heroic efforts to codify it. I find however that it can almost all be got in under the following different headings namely and to wit the dangers of West Africa, the disagreeables of West Africa, the diseases of West Africa, the things you must take to West Africa, the things you find most handy in West Africa, the worst possible things you can do in West Africa. I inquired of all my friends as a beginning what they knew of West Africa. The majority knew nothing. A percentage said, oh, you can't possibly go there, that's where Sarah Leon is the white man's grave, you know. If these were pressed further one occasionally found that they had had relations who had gone out there after having been sad trials but on consideration of their having left not only West Africa but this world were now forgiven and forgotten. I next turned my attention to cross-examining the doctors. Deadliest spot on earth they said cheerfully and showed me maps of the geographical distribution of disease. Now I do not say that a country looks inviting when it is colored in shields green or a bilious yellow but these colors may arise from lack of artistic gift in the cartographer. There is no mistaking what he means by black, however, and black you'll find they color West Africa from above Sarah Leon to below the Congo. I wouldn't go there if I were you, said my medical friends. You'll catch something but if you must go and you're as obstinate as a mule, just bring me. And then followed a list of commissions from here to New York, any one of which, but I only found that afterwards. All my informants referred me to the missionaries. There were, they said, in an airy way lots of them down there and had been for many years. So to missionary literature I addressed myself with great ardor, alas, only to find that these good people wrote their reports not to tell you how the country they resided in was but how it was getting on towards being what it ought to be and how necessary it was that their readers should subscribe more freely and not to get any foolishness into their heads about obtaining an inadequate supply of souls for their money. I also found a fearful confirmation of my medical friend's statement about its unhealthiness and various details of the distribution of cotton shirts over which I did not linger. From the missionaries it was, however, that I got my first idea about the social condition of West Africa. I gathered that there existed there, firstly, the native human beings, the raw material as it were, and that these were led either to good or bad respectively by the missionary and by the trader. There were also the government representatives, whose chief business it was to strengthen and consolidate the missionaries' work, a function they carried on but indifferently well. But as for those traders, well, I put them down under the dangers of West Africa at once. Subsequently I came across the good old coast yarn of Hal. When a trader from that region went thence, it goes without saying where the fallen angel without a moment's hesitation vacated the infernal throne, Milton, in his favor. This, I beg to note, is the marine form of the legend. When it occurs terrestrially, the trader becomes a Liverpool mate, but of course no one need to believe it either way. It is not a missionary story. Naturally, while my higher intelligence was taking up with attending to these statements, my mind got set on going and I had to go. Fortunately I could number among my acquaintances one individual who had lived on the coast for seven years. Not it is true in that part of it which I was bound for. Still his advice was preeminently worth attention because in spite of his long residence in the deadliest spot of the region he was still in fair going order. I told him I intended going to West Africa and he said, When you have made up your mind to go to West Africa, the very best thing you can do is to get it unmade again and go to Scotland instead. But if your intelligence is not strong enough to do so, abstain from exposing yourself to the direct rays of the sun, take four grains of quina in every day for a fortnight before you reach the rivers, and get some introductions to the Wesleyans. They are the only people on the coast who have got a hearse with feathers. My attention was next turn to getting ready things to take with me. Having opened upon myself the slew skates of advice I rapidly became distracted. My friends and their friends alike seemed to labour under the delusion that I intended to charter a steamer and was a person of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. This not being the case the only thing to do was to gratefully listen and let things drift. Not only do the things you have got to take but the things you have got to take them in. Present a fine series of problems to the young traveller. Crowds of witnesses testified to the forms of baggage holders they had found invaluable and these it is unnecessary to say were all different in form and material. With all this, I was too distracted to buy anything new in the way of baggage except a long waterproof sack neatly closed at the top with a bar and handle. Into this I put blanket, boots, books, in fact anything that would not go into my portmanteau or black bag. From the first I was haunted by a conviction that its bottom would come out but it never did and in spite of the fact that it had ideas of its own about the arrangement of its contents it served me well throughout my voyage. It was the beginning of August 93 when I first left England for the coast. Preparations of quinine with postage partially paid arrived up to the last moment and a friend hastily sent to newspaper clippings one entitled A Week in a Palm Oil Tub which was supposed to describe the sort of accommodation companions and fauna likely to be met with on a steamer going to West Africa and on which I was to spend seven to the graphic contributors one, the other from the Daily Telegraph reviewing a French book of phrases in common use in Dahomey. The opening sentence in the latter was Help! I am drowning. Then came the inquiry. If a man is not a thief, and then another cry, the boat is upset. Get up you lazy scamps! Is the next exclamation followed almost immediately by the question, Why has not this man been buried? It is fetish that has killed him, and he must lie here exposed with nothing on him until only the bones remain is a cheerful answer. This sounded discouraging to a person whose occupation would necessitate going about considerably in boats and whose fixed desire was to study fetish. So with a feeling of foreboding gloom I left London for Liverpool none the more cheerful for the matter of fact manner in which the steamboat agents had informed me that they did not issue return tickets by the West African lines of steamers. I will not go into the details of that voyage here, much as I am given to discursiveness. They are more amusing than instructive, for on my first voyage out I did not know the coast, and the coast did not know me, and we mutually terrified each other. I fully expected to get killed by the local nobility and gentry. They thought I was connected with the world's women's temperance association and collecting shocking details for subsequent magical lantern lectures on the liquor traffic. So fearful misunderstandings arose, but we gradually educated each other, and I had the best of the affair, for all I had got to teach them was that I was only a beetle and fetish, hunter, and so forth, while they had to teach me a new world and a very fascinating course of study have found it. And whatever the coast may have to say against me, for my continual desire for hairpins and other pins, my intolerable habit of getting into water, the abominations full of ants, that I brought into their houses, or things emitting at unexpectedly short notice, vivid and awful stenches, they cannot but say that I was a diligent pupil, who honestly tried to learn the lessons they taught me so kindly, though some of those lessons were hard to a lesson, who had never previously been even in a tame bit of tropics, and whose life for many years had been an entirely domestic one in a university town. One by one I took my old ideas derived from books and thoughts based on imperfect knowledge and weighed them against the real life around me, and found them either worthless or wanting. The greatest recantation I had to make I made humbly before had been three months on the coast in 1893. It was of my idea of the traders. What I had expected to find them was a very different thing to what I did find them, and of their kindness to me I can never sufficiently speak, for on that voyage I was utterly out of touch with the government circles, and utterly dependent on the traders, and the most useful lesson of all the lessons I learned on the west coast in 1893 was that I could trust them. Had I not learned this very thoroughly I could never have gone out again and carried out the voyage I give you a sketch of in this book. Thanks to the agent I have visited places I could never otherwise have seen, and to the respect and affection in which he is held by the native I owe it that I have done so in safety. When I have arrived off his factory in a steamer or canoe unexpected, unintroduced or turned up equally unheralded out of the bush in a dilapidated state he has always received me with that gracious hospitality which must have given him under coast conditions very real trouble and inconvenience. Things he could have so readily found logical excuses against entailing upon himself for the sake of an individual whom he had never seen before, whom he most likely would never see again, and whom it was no earthly profit to him to see then. He has bestowed himself, Allah only knows where, on his small trading vessel so that I might have his one cabin. He has fished me out of sea and fresh water with boat hooks. He has continually given me good advice which if I had only followed would have enabled me to keep out of water and any other sort of affliction. And although he holds the meanest opinion of my intellect for going to such a place as west Africa for beetles, fishes and fetish, he has given me the greatest assistance in my work. The value of that work I pray you with whole judgment on until I lay it before you in some ten volumes or so mostly in Latin. All I know that is true regarding West African facts. I owe to the traders. The errors are my own. To Dr. Gunther of the British Museum, I am deeply grateful for the kindness and interest he has always shown regarding all the specimens of natural history that I have been able to lay before him, the majority of which must have had very old tales to tell him. Yet his courtesy and attention gave me the thing a worker in any work most wants, the sense that the work was worth doing, and sent me back to work again with the knowledge that if these things interested a man like him, it was a more than sufficient reason for me to go on collecting them. To Mr. W. H. F. Kirby, I am much indebted for his working out my small collection of certain orders of insects, and to Mr. Thomas S. Forshaw, for the great help he has afforded me in revising my notes. It is impossible for me even to catalog my debts of gratitude still outstanding to the west coast. Chiefly am I indebted to Mr. C. G. Hudson, whose kindness and influence enabled me to go up the ogle, and to see as much of Congo Francis as I have seen, and his efforts to take care of me were most ably seconded by Mr. Fildes. The French officials in Congo Francis never hindered me and always treated me with the greatest kindness. You may say there was no reason why they should not, for there is nothing in this fine colony of France that they need to be ashamed of anyone seeing, but I find it is customary for travelers to say the French officials throw obstacles in the way of anyone visiting their possessions, so I merely beg to state this was decidedly not my experience, although my deplorable ignorance of French prevented me from explaining my humble intentions to them. The Reverend Dr. Nassau and Mr. R. E. Dennett have enabled me by placing at my disposal the rich funds of their knowledge of native life, and idea to amplify any deductions from my own observation. Mr. Dennett's work I have not dealt with in this work because it refers to tribes I was not amongst on this journey, but to a tribe I made the acquaintance with in my ninety-three voyage, The Fjord, Dr. Nassau's observations I have referred to. Hervon Luc, Vice Governor of Cameroon, I am indebted to for not only allowing me, but for assisting me by every means in his power to go up to Cameroon's peak and to the Governor of Cameroon, Hervon Putkamer, for his constant help and kindness. Indeed, so great has been the willingness to help me of all these gentlemen that it is a wonder to me when I think of it that their efforts did not project me right across the continent and out at Sanzibar, that this brilliant affair did not come off is owing to my own lack of enterprise, for I did not want to go across the continent, and I do not hanker after Sanzibar, but only to go puddling about obscure districts in West Africa, after raw fetish and freshwater fishes. I owe my ability to have profited by the kindness of these gentlemen on land to a gentleman of the sea, Captain Murray. He was captain of the vessel I went out on in 1893, and he saw, then, that my mind was full of errors that must be eradicated if I was going to deal with the coast successfully. And so he eradicated those errors and replaced them with sound knowledge from his own stores collected during an acquaintance with the West Coast of over thirty years. The education he has given me has been of the greatest value to me, and I sincerely hope to make many more voyages under him, for I well know he has still much to teach and died to learn. Last, but not least, I must chronicle my debts to the ladies. First, to those two courteous Portuguese ladies, Donna Anna de Saoça, Cantino He, E, Chichoro, and her sister, Donna Maria de Saoça, Cantinho, who did so much for me in Cangonco in 1893 and have remained, I am proud to say, my firm friends ever since. Lady MacDonald and Miss Mary Slesser I speak of in this book, but only faintly sketch the pleasure and help they have afforded me, nor have I fully expressed my gratitude for the kindness of Madame Hacot of L'Embarene, or Madame Forgette of Talacuga. Then there are a whole list of nuns belonging to the Roman Catholic missions on the southwest coast, Everchiri and charming companions, and Fráuf Len, whom it was a continual pleasure to see in Cameroons, and his course with once again on things that seemed so far of then, art, science, and literature, and Mrs. H. Duggan of Cameroons, too, who used, whenever I came into that port, to rescue me from fearful states of starvation for toilet necessaries, and lend a sympathetic and intelligent ear to the awful sufferings I had gone through, until Cameroons became to me a thing to look forward to. When in the Canaries in 1892, I used to smile, I regretfully own, at the conversation of a gentleman from the gold coast, who was up there recuperating after a bad fever. His conversation consisted largely of anecdotes of friends of his, and nine times in ten he used to say, he's dead now. Alas, my own conversation may be smiled at now for the same cause. Many of my friends mentioned, even in these very recent account of the coast, are dead now. Most of those I learned to know in 1893, chief among these is my old friend, Captain Bowler, of Bonnie, from whom I first learned a certain power of comprehending the African, and his form of thought. I have great reason to be grateful to the Africans themselves, to cultured men and women among them like Charles Umbo, Sanga Glass, Jane Harrington, and her sister at Caboon, and to the Bush natives, but of my experience with them I give further details, so I need not dwell on them here. I apologize to the general reader for giving so much detail on matters that really only affect myself, and I know that the indebtedness which all African travelers have to the white residents in Africa is a matter usually very lightly touched on. No doubt my voyage would seem a grander thing if I omitted mention of the help I received, but, well, there was a German gentleman once who evolved a camel out of his inner consciousness. It was a wonderful thing, still, you know. It was not a good camel, only a thing which people personally, unacquainted with camels, could believe in. Now I am ambitious to make a picture, if I make one at all, that people who do not know the original can believe even if they criticize its points, and so I give you details a more showy artist would omit. End of introduction. Chapter 1 Liverpool to Sarah Leon and the Gold Coast This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Travels in West Africa by Mary H. Kingsley Chapter 1 Liverpool to Sarah Leon and the Gold Coast Setting forth how the Voyager departs from England in a stout vessel and in good company, and reaches in due course the island of the Grand Canary, and then the port of Sarah Leon to which is added some account of this latter place and the calmness of its women, wearing also some description of Cape Coast and Accra is given to a charred added diverse observations on supplies to be obtained there. The West Coast of Africa is like the Arctic regions in one particular, and that is that when you have once visited it, you want to go back there again, and now I come to think of it. There is another particular in which it is like them, and that is that the chances you have of returning from it at all are small, for it is a bella dame sans merci. I succumbed to the charms of the coast as soon as I left Sarah Leon on my first voyage out, and I saw more than enough during that voyage to make me recognize that there was any amount of work for me worth doing down there, so I warned the coast I was coming back again, and the coast did not believe me, and on my return to it a second time displayed a genuine surprise and formed an even higher opinion of my folly than it had formed on our first acquaintance, which is saying a good deal. During this voyage in 1893 I had been to Old Calabar, and its governor, Sir Claude MacDonald, had heard me expatiating on the absorbing interest of the Antarctic Drift and the importance of the collection of freshwater fishes and so on. So when Lady MacDonald heroically decided to go out to him in Calabar, they most kindly asked me if I would join her and make my time fit hers for starting on my second journey. This I most willingly did, but I fear that very sweet and gracious ladies suffered a great deal of apprehension at the prospect of spending a month on board ship with a person so devoted to science as to go down the west coast in its pursuit. During the earlier days of our voyage, she would attract my attention to all sorts of marine objects overboard, so as to amuse me. I used to look at them and think it would be the death of me if I had to work like this, explaining meanwhile aloud that they were very interesting, but Hackel had done them and I was out after freshwater fishes from a river north of the Congo this time, fearing all the while that she felt me unenthusiastic for not flying over into the ocean to secure the specimens. However my scientific qualities, whatever they may amount to, did not blind this lady long to the fact of my being, after all, a very ordinary individual and she told me so. Not in these crude words indeed, but nicely and kindly, were upon in a burst of gratitude to her for understanding me. I appointed myself her honorary aide to camp on the spot, and her sincere admirer I shall remain forever, fully recognizing that her courage in going to the coast was far greater than my own, for she had more to lose had fever acclaimed her, and she was in those days by no means under the spell of Africa. But this is anticipating. It was on the 23rd of December, 1894, that we left Liverpool in the Patanga, commanded by my old friend Captain Murray, under whose care I had made my first voyage. On the 30th we sighted the peak of Tenerife early in the afternoon. It displayed itself as usual as an entirely celestial phenomenon. A great many people miss seeing it. Suffering under the delusion that El Pico is a terrestrial affair, they look in vain somewhere about the level of their own eyes which are striving to penetrate the dense masses of mist that usually enshroud its slopes by day. And then a friend comes along and gaily points out to the newcomer the glittering white triangle somewhere near the zenith. On some days the peak stands out clear from ocean to summit, looking every inch and more of its 12,080 feet. And this is said by the Canary fishermen to be a certain sign of rain, or fine weather, or a gale of wind. But whenever and however it may be seen, soft and dreamlike in the sunshine, or melodramatic and bizarre in the moonlight, it is one of the most beautiful things the eye of man may see. Soon after sighting Tenerife, La Narote showed and then the Grand Canary. Tenerife is perhaps the most beautiful, but it is hard to judge between it and Grand Canary as seen from the sea. The superb cone this afternoon stood out a deep purple against a serpent green sky, separated from the brilliant blue ocean by a girdle of pink and gold cumulus, while Grand Canary and La Narote looked as if they were formed from fantastic shaped sunset cloud banks, that by some spell had been solidified. The general color of the mountains of Grand Canary which rise peak after peak until they culminate in the Pico de las Neves, some 6,000 feet high, is a yellowish red, and the air which lies among their rocky crevices and swaths their softer sides is a lovely lustrous blue. Just before the sudden dark came down, and when the sun was taking a curve out of the horizon of sea, all the clouds gathered round the three islands, leaving the sky a pure amethyst pink, and as a good night to them, the sun outlined them with rims of shining gold, and made the snow cloud peak of Tenerife blazed with star-white light. In a few minutes came the dusk, and as we neared Grand Canary, out of its cloud bank gleamed the red flash of the lighthouse on the Isleta, and in a few more minutes, along the sea-level, sparkled the five miles of irregularly distributed lights of Puerto de la Luz, and the city of Las Palmas. We reached Sierra León at 9 a.m. on the 7th of January, and as the place is hardly so much in touch with the general public as the Canaries are, I may perhaps venture to go more into details regarding it. The harbor is formed by the long, low strip of land to the north called the Bulam shore, and to the south by the peninsula terminating in Cape Sierra León, a sandy promontory at the end of which is situated a lighthouse of irregular habits. Low hills covered with tropical forest growth rise from the sandy shores of the Cape, and along its face are three creeks or bays, deep inlets showing through their narrow entrances, smooth beaches of yellow sand fenced inland by the forest of cotton woods with here and there an elephantine baobab. The first of these bays is called Pirate Bay, the next English Bay and the third Kudu Bay. The wooded hills of the Cape rise after passing Kudu Bay and become spurs of the mountain, 2,500 feet in height which is a Sierra León itself. There are however several mountains here besides a Sierra León, the most conspicuous of them being the peak known as Sugarloaf, and when seen from the sea they are very lovely, for their form is noble and a wealth of tropical vegetation covers them, which unbroken in its continuity but endless in its variety seems to sweep over their sides down to the shore like a sea breaking here and there into a surf of flowers. It is the general opinion indeed of those who ought to know that Sierra León appears at its best when seen from the sea, particularly when you are leaving the harbour homeward bound and that here its charms, artistic, moral and residential end. But from the experience I have gained of it I have no hesitation in saying that it is one of the best places for getting luncheon in that I have ever happened on and that a more pleasant and varied way of spending an afternoon than going about its capital, free town with a certain Irish purser, who is as well known as he is respected among the Leviathan old negro ladies, it would be hard to find. Still it must be admitted it is rather hot. Free town, its capital is situated on the northern base of the mountain, and extends along the sea front with most business like wharves, quays and warehouses. Viewed from the harbour, the Liverpool of West Africa, as it is called looks as if it were built of grey stone, which it is not. When you get ashore you will find that most of the stores and houses, the majority of which it may be remarked are in a state of acute dilapidation, are of painted wood with corrugated iron roofs. Here and there though you will see a thatched house, its thatch covered with creeping plants, and inhabited by colonies of creeping insects. Some of the stores and churches are it is true built of stone, but this does not look like stone at a distance being red in colour on hewn blocks of the red stone of the locality. In the crannies of these buildings trailing plants covered with pretty mauve or yellow flowers take root, and everywhere along the tops of the walls and in the cracks of the houses are ferns and flowering plants. They must get a good deal of their nourishment from the rich thick air, which seems composed of 85% of warm water, and the remainder of the odours of French penny, orange flowers, magnolias, oleanders and roses combined with others that demonstrate that the inhabitants do not regard sanitary matters with the smallest degree of interest. There is one central street, and the others are neatly planned out at right angles to it. None of them are in any way paved or metal. They are covered in much prettier fashion, and in a way more suitable for naked feet by green Bahama grass save and accept those which are so nearly perpendicular that they have got every bit of earth and grass cleared off them down to the red bedrock by the heavy rain of the wet season. In every direction natives are walking at a brisk pace, their naked feet making no sound on the springy turf of the streets carrying on their heads huge burdens which are usually crowned by the hat of the emperor. A large, limpid shaped affair made of palm leaves. While some carry these enormous bundles, others bear logs or planks of wood, blocks of building stone, vessels containing palm oil, baskets of vegetables or tin tea trays on which are folded shawls. As the great majority of the native inhabitants of Sierra Leone pay no attention whatever to where they are going, either in this world or the next, the confusion and noise are out of all proportion to the size of the town and when as frequently happens, a section of activity preambulating burden bearers charge recklessly into a sedentary section, the members of which have dismounted their loads and squatted themselves down beside them right in the middle of the fairway to have a friendly yell with some acquaintances, the row becomes terrific. In among these crowds of country people walk stately Mohammedans, Mandigos, Akhers and Foulas of the Arabis tribes of the western Sudan. These are lithe, well-made men and walk with a peculiarly fine elastic carriage. Their graceful garb consists of a long white loose sleeved shirt over which they wear either a long black mohair or silk gown or a deep bright blue affair not altogether unlike a university gown only with more stuff in it and more folds. They are undoubtedly the gentlemen of the Sarah-Leon native population and they are becoming an increasing faction in the town by no means to the pleasure of the Christians. But to the casual visitor at Sarah-Leon the Mohammedan is a mere passing sensation. You neither feel a burning desire to laugh with or at him as in the case of the country folks nor do you wish to punch his head and split his coat up his back, things you yearn to do to that perfect flower of Sarah-Leon culture who yells your bald name across the street at you condescendingly informs you that you can go and get letters that are waiting for you while he smokes his cigar and lulls in the shade or in some similar way displays his second hand rubbishy white culture. A culture far lower and less dignified than that of either the stately Mandigo or the bush chief. I do not think that the Sarah-Leon dandy really means half as much insolence as he shows but the truth is he feels too insecure of his own real position in spot of all the aside he puts on and so he dare not be courteous like the Mandigo or the bush fan. It is the costume of the people in free town and its harbor that will first attract the attention of the newcomer notwithstanding the fact that the noise, the smell and the heat are simultaneously making desperate bids for that favor. The ordinary man in the street wears anything he may have been able to acquire anyhow and he does not fasten it on securely. I fancy it must be capillary attraction or some other partially understood force that takes part in the matter. It is certainly neither braces nor buttons. There are of course some articles which from their very structure are fairly secure such as an umbrella with a stick and ribs removed or a shirt. This last mentioned a treasure which usually becomes the property of the ordinary man from a female relative or a demirer taking in white men's washing is always worn flowing free and has such a charm in itself that the happy possessor cares little what he continues his costume with trousers, loincloth, red flannel petticoat or rice bag drawers being as he would put it all same for one to him. The ladies are divided into three classes the young girl you address as titi the young person as sister the more mature charmer as mommy but I do not advise you to employ these terms when you are on your first visit because you might get misunderstood for you see by addressing a mommy as a sister she might think either that you were unconscious of her dignity as a married lady a matter she would soon put you right on or that you were flirting which of course was totally foreign to your intention and would make you uncomfortable my advice is that you rigidly stick to missus or mammy I have seen this done most successfully the ladies are almost as varied in their costume as a gentleman but always neater and cleaner and mighty picturesque they are too and occasionally very pretty a market woman with her jolly brown face and laughing brown eyes eyes all the softer for a touch of antimony her ample form clothed in a lively print overall with a yoke at the shoulders and a full long flounce which is gathered onto the yoke under the arms and falls fully to the feet with her head done up in a yellow or red handkerchief and her snowy white teeth gleaming through her vast smiles is a mighty pleasant thing to see and to talk to but Allah the circumference of them the stone built white washed market buildings of free town have a creditably clean tidy appearance considering the climate and the quantity and variety of things exposed for sale things one wants the pen of a rabbele's to catalog here are all manner of fruits some which are familiar to you in England others that soon becomes so to you in Africa you take them as a matter of course if you are outward bound but on your call homeward if you make it you will look on them as a blessing and a curiosity for lower down particularly in the rivers these things are rarely to be had and never in such perfection is here and to see again lettuces yellow oranges and tomatoes bigger than marbles is a sensation and a joy one of the chief features of free town or the Jack Rose some writers say they are peculiar to Sarah Leon others that they are not but both unite in calling them because that is gymnosophilus to the white people who live in daily contact with them they are turkey buzzards to the natives Yuba anyhow they are evil looking foul and no ornament to the roof ridges they choose to sit on the native Christians ought to put a row of spikes along the top of their cathedral to keep them off the beauty of that edifice is very far from great and it cannot carry off the effect produced by the row of these noise and birds as they sit along its summit with their wings arranged at all manner of different angles in an all gone way one bird perhaps will have one straight out in front and the other casually disposed at right angles another both straight out in front and others again with both hanging hopelessly down but none with them neatly and tidily folded up as decent birds wings should be they all give the impression of having been extremely drunk the previous evening and of having subsequently fallen into some sticky abomination into blood for choice being the scavengers of free town however they are respected by the local authorities and preserved and the natives tell me you never see either a young or a dead one the latter is a thing you would not expect for half of them look as if they could not live through the afternoon they also told me that when you get close to them they had a strong knit-knit too much I did not try but I am quite willing to believe this statement the other animals most in evidence in the streets are first and foremost goats and sheep I have to lump them together for it is exceedingly difficult to tell one from the other all along the coast the empirical rule is that sheep carry their tails down and goats carry their tails up fortunately you need not worry much anyway for they both taste rather like the nothing that the world was made of as Frau Butchholz says and own in addition a fibrous texture and a certain twang small cinnamon colored cattle are to be got here but horses there are practically none now and again someone who does not see why a horse should not live here as well as at Akra or Legos imports one but it always shortly dies some say it is because the natives who get their living by hammock rearing poison them others say that sets if fly finishes them off and others and these I believe are right say that and also are the cause small lean like yellow dogs with very erect ears lead an awful existence afflicted by many things but beyond all others by the goats who rearing their families in the grassy streets choose to think the dogs intend attacking them last but not least there is the pig a rich source of practice to the local lawyer Cape Coast Castle and then Akra were the next places of general interest at which we stopped the former looks well from the roadstead and as if it had very recently been whitewashed it is surrounded by low heavily forested hills which arise almost from the seashore and the fine mass of its old castle does not display its dilapidation at a distance more over the three stone forts of Victoria William and McCarthy situated on separate hills commanding the town add to the general appearance of permanent substantialness so different from their usual ramshackled west coast settlements even when you go ashore and have had time to recover your senses scattered by the surf experience you find these substantialness a true one not a mere visual delusion produced by painted wood as the seeming substantialness of Sierra Leone turns out to be when you get to close quarters with it it causes once a mental effort to grasp the fact that Cape Coast has been in European hands for centuries but it requires a most unmodern power of credence to realize this of any other settlement on the whole western seaboard until you have the pleasure of seeing the beautiful city of San Paul the Luanda far away down south past the Congo my experience of Cape Coast on this occasion was one of the hottest but one of the pleasantest I have ever been through on the Gold Coast the former attribute was due to the climate the ladder to my kind friends Mr. Batty and Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Kemp I was taken round the grand stone built houses with their high stone walled yards and sculpture decorated gateways built by the merchants of the last century and of the century before and through the great rambling stone castle with its water tanks cut in the solid rock beneath it and its commodious accommodation for slaves awaiting shipment now almost as obsolete as the guns it mounts but not quite so for these cool and roomy chambers served to house the native constabulary and their extensive families this being done I was taken up an unmitigated hill on whose summit stands Fort William a pepper pot like structure now used as a lighthouse the view from the top was exceedingly lovely and extensive beneath and between us in the sea lay the town in the blazing sun in among its solid stone buildings patches of native mud built huts huddled together as though they had been shaken down out of a sack into the town to serve as donage then came the snow white surf wall and across it the blue sea with our steamer rolling to and fro on the long regular swell impatiently waiting until Sunday should be over and she should work cargo round us on all the other sides were wooded hills and valleys and away in the distance to the west showed the white town and castle of Elmina and the nine mile road thither skirting the surf bound ashore only broken on its level way by the mouth of the sweet river overall was the brooding silence of the noon day heat broken only by the dulled thunder of the surf after seeing these things we started downstairs and on reaching ground descended yet lower into a sort of stone walled dry moat out of which open clean cool cellar like chambers tunneled into the earth was informed had also been constructed to keep slaves in when they were the staple export of the gold coast they were so refreshingly cool that I lingered looking at them and their massive doors air being marched up to ground level again and down the hill through some singularly awful stenches mostly arising from rubber into the big Wesleyan church in the middle of the town it is a building in the terrible Gothic style but it compares most favorably with the cathedral at Sierra Leon particularly internally wherein indeed it far surpasses that structure and then we return to the mission house and spend a very pleasant evening safe for the knowledge which amounted in me to remorse that had it not been for my edification not one of my friends would have spent the day toiling about the town they knew only too well the west Wesleyan mission on the gold coast of which Mr. Dennis Kemp was at that time chairman is the largest and most influential protestant mission on the west coast of Africa and it is now I am glad to say adding a technical department to its scholastic and religious one the basal mission has done a great deal of good work in giving technical instruction to the natives and practically started this most important branch of their education there is still an almost infinite amount of this work to be done the African being so strangely deficient in mechanical culture infinitely more so indeed in this than in any other particular after leaving Cape Coast our next port was Acre which is one of the five west coast towns that look well from the sea the others don't look well from anywhere first in order of beauty comes San Paul de Luanda then Cape Coast with its satellite then Gabon then Acre with its satellite Christiansborg and lastly Sierra Leone what there is a beauty in Acre is oriental in type seen from the sea Fort St. James on the left and Christiansborg castle on the right both almost on a shore level give with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs a certain air of balance and strength to the town though but for these in the two old castles would be but a poor place and a flimsy for the rest of it is a mass of rubbishy mud and palm leaf huts and corrugated iron dwellings for the Europeans corrugated iron is my abomination I quite understand it has points and I do not attack from an aesthetic standpoint it really looks well enough when it is painted white there is close to Christiansborg castle a patch of bungalows and offices for official dumb and wife that from a distance in the hard bright sunshine looks like an encampment of snow white tents among the cocoa palms and pretty enough with all I am also aware that the corrugated iron roofs is an advantage in enabling you to collect and store rainwater which is the safest kind of water you can get on the coast always supposing you have not painted a four set roof with red oxide in hour or two before so collecting as a friend of mine did once but the heat inside those iron houses is far greater than inside mud walled brick or wooden ones and the alterations of temperature more sudden mornings and evenings they are cold and clammy draughty there are always thereby giving you chill which means fever and fever in West Africa means more than it does in most places going on short Akra with Lady McDonald gave me opportunities and advantages I should not otherwise have enjoyed such as the hospitality of the governor luxurious transport from the landing place to Christiansborg castle a thorough inspection of the cathedral in course of erection and strange and highly interesting function of going to a tea party at a police station to meet a king a real reigning king who kindly attended with his suite and displayed an intelligent interest in photographs tacky that is his majesty's name is an old spare man with a subdued manner his sovereign rights are acknowledged by the government so far as to hold him more or less responsible for any iniquity committed by his people and as the government do not allow him to execute or flagellate the said people earthly pomp is rather a hollow thing to tacky on landing I was taken in charge by an assistant inspector of police and after a scrimmage for my chief's baggage and my own which reminded me of a long ago landing on the distant island of Guernsey the inspector and I got into a rickshaw locally called a go-cart it was pulled in front by two government negroes and pushed behind by another pair all neatly attired in white jackets and knee bridges and crimson cumber buns yards long bound around their middles now it is an ingrained characteristic of the uneducated negro that he cannot keep on a neat and complete garment of any kind it does not matter what that garment may be so long as it is whole off it comes but as soon as that garment becomes a series of holes held together by filaments of rag he keeps it upon him in a manner that is marvelous and you need have no further anxiety on its behalf for it was but natural that the governmental cumber bands being new should come off their wearer several times in the course of our two mile trip and as they wound a riscally round the legs of their running wearers we had to make halts while one end of the cumber band was affixed to a tree trunk and the other end to the man who rapidly wound himself up in it again with a skill that spoke of constant practice the road to christiansburg from Akra which runs parallel to the sea and is broad and well kept is in places pleasantly shaded with pepper trees eucalyptus and palms the first part of it which forms the main street of Akra is remarkable the untidy poverty stricken native houses or huts are no credit to their owners and a constant source of anxiety to a conscientious sanitary inspector almost every one of them is a shop but these does not give rise to the animated commercial life one might imagine owing I presume to the fact that every native inhabitant of Akra who has any money to get rid of is able recklessly to spend it in his own emporium for these shops are of the store nature each after his kind and seemed homogeniously stocked with tin pans loud patterned basins iron pots a few rolls of cloth and bottles of American rum after passing these there are the house aligns a few European houses and the cathedral and when nearly into christiansburg a cemetery on either side of the road that to the right is the old cemetery now closed and when I was there in a disgraceful neglected state a mere jungle of grass infested with snakes opposite to it is a cemetery now in use and I remember well my first visit to it under the guidance of a gloomy government official who said he always walked there every afternoon so as to get used to the place before staying permanently in it a rank waste of time and energy by the way a subsequent events proved for is now safe off the gold coast for good and all he took me across the well kept grass to two newly dug graves each covered with wooden hoods in a most a business like way evidently those hoods were regular parts of the cemetery's outfit he said nothing but waved his hand with a take your choice they are both quite ready style why I queried laconically oh we always keep two graves ready dug for Europeans we have to bury very quickly here you know he answered I turned at bay I had had already a very heavy dose of details of this sort that afternoon and was disinclined to believe another thing so I said it's exceedingly wrong to do a thing like that you only frighten people to death you can't want new dug graves daily there are not enough white men in the whole place to give the institution up we do he replied at any rate at the season why the other day we had two white men to bury before twelve o'clock and at four another dropped in on a steamer at four thirty set a companion and exceedingly accurate member of the staff how you fellows to exaggerate subsequent knowledge of the Gold Coast has convinced me fully that the extra funeral being placed half an hour sooner than it occurred is the usual percentage of exaggeration you will be able to find in stories relating to the local mortality and at Akra after I left it and all along the Gold Coast came one of those dreadful epidemic outbursts sweeping away more than half the white population in a few weeks but to return to our state journey along the Christiansborg road we soon reached the castle and exceedingly roomy and solid edifice built by the Danes and far better fitted for the climate than our modern dwellings in spite of our supposed advance in tropical hygiene we entered by the century guarded great gate into the courtyard on the right hand with the rest of the guard most of them asleep on their mats but a few busy saying decair etc. towards Mecca like the Mohammedans these houses are others winding themselves into their cumberbends on the left hand was Sir Bradford Griffiths hobby a choice and select little garden of lovely you Charis lilies mostly in tubs and rare and beautiful flowers brought by him from his Barbadian home while shading it and the courtyard was a fine specimen of that superb thing of beauty a flamboyant tree glories with its delicate green acacia like leaves and vermilion and yellow flowers and astonishing with its fast beans a flight of stone stairs leads from the courtyard to the upper part of the castle where the living rooms are over the extensive series of cool tunnel like slave barracunes now used to store chambers the upper rooms are high and large and full of a soft pleasant light in the thunder of the everlasting surf breaking on the rocky spit on which the castle is built from the day the castle was built now more than a hundred years ago the surf spray has been swept by the onshore evening breeze into every chink and cranny of the whole building and hence the place is moldy moldy to an extent I with all my experience in that paradise for mold West Africa have never elsewhere seen the matting on the floor took an impression of your foot as a light snowfall would beneath articles of furniture the cryptograms attained a size more in keeping with the coal period than with the 19th century the gold coast is one of the few places in West Africa that I have never felt it my solemn duty to go and fish in I really cannot say why seen from the sea it is a pleasant looking land the long lines of yellow sandy beach backed by an almost continuous line of blue hills which in some places come close to the beach in other places show in the dim distance it is hard to think that it is so unhealthy as it is from just seeing it as you pass by it has high land and has not those great masses of mangrove swamp one usually at first associates with a bad fever district but which prove an acquaintance to be at any rate no worse than this well elevated open forested gold coast land there are many things to be had here and in Lagos which tend to make life more tolerable that you cannot have elsewhere until you are south of the Congo horses for example do fairly well at Akra though some 12 miles or so behind the town there is a belt of Zetze fly specimens of which I have procured and had identified at the British Museum and it is certain death to a horse I am told to take it to Aburi the food supply although bad and dear is superior to that you get down south goats and sheep are fairly plentiful in addition to fresh meat and tinned you are able to get a quantity of good sea fish for the great West African bank which fringes the coast in the bite of Benin abounds in fish although the native cook very rarely knows how to cook them then too you can get more fruit and vegetables on the gold coast than at most places lower down the plantain not least among them and very good when allowed to become ripe and then cut into longitudinal strips and properly fried the banana which surpasses it when served in the same manner or beaten up and mixed with rice butter and eggs and baked eggs by the way according to the great mass of native testimony are late in this country in a state that makes them more fit for electioneering than culinary purposes and I shall never forget one tribe I was once among who whenever I sat down on one of their benches used to smash eggs round me for juju they meant well but I will nobly resist the temptation to tell egg stories and industriously catalog the sour, sop, guava, grenadilla, aurbidgin or garden egg and sweet potato the sweet potato should be boiled and then buttered and browned in an oven or fried and cooked in either way I am devoted to them but in the way I most frequently come across them I abominate them for they jeopardize my existence both in this world and the next it is this way you were coming home from a long and dangerous beetle hunt in the forest you have battled with mighty beetles the size of pie dishes they have flown at your head, got into your hair and then nipped you smartly you have been also considerably stung and bitten by flies ants etc and are most likely sopping wet with rain or with the wading of streams and you are tired and your feet go low along the ground and it is getting or has got dark with that ever deluding tropical rapidity and then you for your sins get into a piece of ground which last year was a natives farm and placing one foot under the tough vine of a surviving sweet potato concealed by rank herbage you plant your other foot on another portion of the same vine your head you then deposit promptly in some prickly ground crop or against a tree stump and then if there is human blood in you you say damn then there are also alligator pears, limes and oranges there is something about those oranges I should like to have explained they are usually green and swiddish in taste nor have they much white pith but now and again you get a big bright yellow one from those trees that have been imported and these are very healthy and in full possession of the flavor of verjuice they have also got the papa on the coast the Karika papaya of botanists it is an insipid fruit to the newcomer it is a dreadful nuisance for no sooner does an old coaster set eyes on it than he straight away says papas are awfully good for the digestion and even if you just hang a tough fowl or a bit of goat in the tree among the leaves it gets tender in no time for there is an awful lot of pepsin in a paw which there is not papain being its active principle after hearing this hymn of praise to the papa some hundreds of times it pawls and you usually arrive at this tired feeling about the thing by the time you reach the gold coast for it is a most common object and the same man will say the same thing about it a dozen times a day if he gets a chance I got hardly sick of it on my first voyage and rashly determined to check the old coaster in this habit of his preparatory to stamping the practice out it was one of my many failures I soon met an old coaster with a papa fruit inside and before he had time to start I boldly got away with the papa is awfully good for the digestion hoping that this displayed knowledge would impress him and exempt me from hearing the rest of the formula but no right you are said he solemnly it's a powerful thing is a papa why the other day we had a sad case along here you know what I knew since young assistants are bothering about their chop and scorpions in their beds and boots and what not and a half and then when you have pulled them through these and often enough before pegging out with fever going on the fly in the native town did you know poor B well he's dead now had fever and went off like a babe in eight hours though he had been out 14 years for A and D they sent him out a new bookkeeper a tender young thing with a dairy made complexion in the notion he got that indigestion he fidgeted about it something awful one night there was a big papa on the table for evening chop and so B who was an awfully good chap told him about how good it was for the digestion the bookkeeper said his trouble always came on two hours after eating and asked if he might take a bit of this thing to his room certainly says B and as the papa wasn't cut at that meal the bookkeeper quietly took it off whole with him in the morning he did not turn up B just before breakfast went to his room and he wasn't there but he noticed the papa was on the bed and that was all so he thought the bookkeeper must have gone for a walk being as it were a bit too tender to have gone on the flies yet so he just told the store clerk to tell the people to return him to the firm when they found him straying around lost and thought no more about it being as it was mail day and and him busy well fortunately the steward boy put that papa on the table again for twelve o'clock chop if it hadn't been for that not a living soul would have known the going of the bookkeeper for when B cut it open there right inside were nine steel trouser buttons a waterberry watch and the poor young fellow's keys for you see instead of his digesting his dinner with that papa the papa took charge and digested him dinner and all and when B interrupted it was just getting a grip on the steel things there's an awful lot of pepsin in a papa and if you hang etc etc I collapsed feebly murmuring that it was very interesting but sad for the poor young fellow's friends not necessarily said the old coaster so he had the last word and never again will I attempt to alter the ways of the genuine old coaster what you have got to do with them is to be very thankful you have had the honor of knowing him still I think we do overestimate the value of the papal although I certainly did once myself hang the leg of a goat no mortal man could have got tooth into on to a papatory with a bit of string for the night in the morning it was clean gone string and all but whether it was the pepsin the papayin or a purloining pagan that was the cause of its departure there was no evidence to show yet I myself as hands of brightman says still skeptical as to the papa and I dare say you are too but I must forthwith stop writing about the Gold Coast or I shall go on telling you stories and wasting your time not to mention the danger of letting out those which would damage the nerves of the culture of temperate climbs such as those relating to the youth who taught himself French from a six months method book of the man who wore brass buttons the moving story of three leeches and two gentlemen the doctor up a creek and the reason why you should not eat pork along here because all the natives have either got the guinea worm or croc or ulcers and then the pigs go and dear me it was a near thing that time I leave off at once end of chapter one