IITHE COAST
But the pleasure of the voyage depends largely upon the season. The wet and the dry seasons are distinctly divided. There is a long wet season of four months and a short wet season of two months each year, and corresponding long and short dry seasons. The rains generally follow the course of the sun as it moves between the northern and southern solstice. The regularity of the seasons is modified by local influences such as the proximity of mountains. The seasons at Batanga, for instance, are not so distinctly divided as at Gaboon. I am most familiar with the climate of Gaboon, which is practically at the equator. The long wet season begins in September, when the sun is coursing from the equator towards the southern solstice, and continues nearly four months. The long dry season begins in May and continues for four months. Those are the delightful months of the year. We are accustomed to associate a dry spell with heat and glaring sunshine. But there the brightest sunshine is in the wet season between the showers. The dry season is both cool and shady; so cool that the natives find it uncomfortable, while the sun is sometimes not seen for a week. It always seems to be just about to rain. A stranger to the climate would not risk going half a mile without taking an umbrella. But he is perfectly safe. There is not the least danger of rain between May and September. Often in the dry season I have travelled through the midday hours in a canoe, lying full length on a travelling rug with my face towards the sky; for thereis no glare: the mellow light has the quality of moonlight.
But a strong wind prevails during the dry months, and it is the season when the surf rages wildly on the open coast; when surf boats with cargo are often broken on the beach and the native crews lose their limbs and sometimes their lives. The ground though very dry does not become parched. The rustling of the palms or of the thatch roof at the close of the season is like the heavy pattering of rain, so much so that sometimes one is deceived in spite of himself. The dry season is healthiest for white men, but not for the native. They are not sufficiently protected against the wind, and pneumonia is common. However much we prefer the dry season, yet we weary of it towards the close, and like the natives we fairly shout for joy at the first shower.
The wet season is very disagreeable. The rain falls in streams, and, as Miss Kingsley says, “does not go into details with drops.” There are several torrential downpours each day and night. In the intervals during the day the sky is swept clear of clouds and the sun shines the strongest. The atmosphere is extremely humid and sultry. With the least exertion, or with no exertion, one perspires profusely, and there is no evaporation. One ought to change his clothing several times a day; but most of us cannot afford to devote so much time to comfort. Frequent tornadoes often cool the air in the evening.
The most uncomfortable of all places during the rain is on shipboard. The rain will at length find its way through any thickness of awning, and the delightful deck must be deserted for the stifling saloon. Our paradise is transformed to a purgatory. The rain is accompanied by a heavy mist and as it dashes upon the surface of the sea it lifts a cloud of spray that hides the water beneath andwe seem to be drifting courseless through cloudland, with our horizon immediately around us. As it continues day after day everybody becomes depressed; and as for the captain, it is scarcely safe to speak to him. One day when I was travelling in the wet season, the captain lost a whole day prowling up and down the coast looking for a place which was completely hidden in the rain and mist. He was angry; and an angry captain is a fearsome object. He is accustomed to being obeyed, and is master of everything else but the fourth element, which occasionally thwarts his plans and derides his authority. At a moment when the rain slackened from a torrent to a heavy shower, a passenger put his head out on deck and remarked: “It’s not raining, Captain.”
“Well, if that is not rain,” thundered the disgusted captain, “it is the best imitation of rain that I have ever seen.”
The subject upon which conversation dwells longest and to which it ever returns with gruesome interest is the African fever. The news that is brought on board at each port is like a death bulletin. To the new comer it is all very trying and very tragical. But he cannot escape from it; for the Old Coaster (and a man who has been out once before is an Old Coaster) assumes the grave responsibility of impressing deeply upon the mind of the tenderfoot the serious conditions which he is about to confront. It is impressed upon him that the fever is inevitable, and that the young and healthy die first; that temperate habits instead of being a defense are a snare, and that not to drink is simply suicide. Missionaries die like flies. But then of course it comes to the same thing in the end; there is no escape; and to worry about it, or to expect it, will bring on a fever in two days. Exposure to the sun is sure to induce fever; and yet none die so quickly as those who carry umbrellas. Quinine is uselessexcept to brace the mind of those who believe in it; but it isn’t any good. And when you get fever, you can’t escape, by leaving the coast in a hurry, even if there should be a steamer in port, which is very unlikely; for a man going aboard with fever is sure to die. Perhaps it is the horror of being buried at sea that kills him.
“How is that new clerk whom I brought out for you last voyage?” asks the captain, of a trader who has come aboard for breakfast.
“Poor chap!” says the trader, “he didn’t live two weeks. Another came on the next steamer, and he pegged out in three weeks. They ought to be sent out two at a time.”
“You remember so-and-so,” says another; “well, poor chap! (and as soon as he says “poor chap” we know the rest) he was found dead in bed one morning since you were here. They had used up all the lumber that they had laid away for coffins, so they took half the partition out of his house, to make a coffin; and then they didn’t get it long enough. The next fellow is now living alone in that same house with half the partition gone, and of course he can’t help reflecting that there is just enough left to make another coffin; and, indeed, to judge by the way he was looking when I saw him last they may have used it by this time.”
“Have you heard about the poor chap that so-and-so sent up country? Well, he died a few weeks ago. He was all alone except for the native workmen, and as soon as he died they ran away in fear. The agent got word of it and started up country immediately; but the rats had found him first.”
It is only when one reflects that all these “poor chaps” were somebody’s sons, and somebody’s brothers, that one realizes the tragedy of the coast. These little conversationson board seem like the final obsequies performed for those who are dead.
“Do men ever die of anything except fever?” asks a new comer.
“O yes,” says the Old Coaster. “Let me see: there’s dysentery,—poor C died of that last week; and there’s enlarged spleen, abscesses, pneumonia, consumption (one falls into consumption here very quickly, and often when he least expects it), kraw-kraw and smallpox (smallpox has just broken out at Fernando Po: that’s our next port), not to speak of seven or eight varieties of itch, which some men have all the time; but itch doesn’t kill. By the way, I suppose you know that in this climate it is necessary that bodies be buried a few hours after death.”
In the speech of the coast there is no such thing as reticence, and soon enough we all learn to speak with brutal bluntness. The only comfort held out to the new comer is the hope that he will receive, as a sort of obituary, the kindly designation, “Poor Chap.”
I have never argued for the salubrity of the African climate; nor am I disposed to protest the general opinion that it is “the worst climate in the world.” The white man never becomes acclimatized, and never will until he develops another kind of blood. One lives face to face with the constant and proximate possibility of death as long as he is on the coast. It is an unnatural consciousness, which, when prolonged through years, tends to become fixed and permanent even when one has removed from the circumstances that were its occasion. And yet, the conversation of the Old Coaster is liable to make an exaggerated impression. In the first place, the impression is natural that the climate being so unhealthful must also be uncomfortable. But, in reality, while several months of the year are extremely uncomfortable, thegreater part of the year is tolerably comfortable and there are several months of exceedingly pleasant weather. Neither is the heat so great as is generally supposed. With the greatest effort on my part, I never succeeded in disabusing my friends of the notion that I was slowly roasting to death in Africa. With every hot spell in America, when the thermometer was standing at 100°, their thoughts turned towards me in profound sympathy. While I have at times suffered with the heat and there have been times on the river, between high banks, cut off from the breeze, when I nearly fainted, and one occasion upon which I was quite overcome, yet as a rule I lived comfortably by day; and the nights are always cool. The maximum temperature on the coast is from 86° to 88°, Fahrenheit, and even such a temperature is rare. One ought to add, however, that owing to the extreme humidity this temperature in Africa is incomparably hotter than the same temperature in America. It is the sultriness of the hottest weather that makes it insufferable. West Africa is heated by steam and without the medium of radiators. The uniformity of the climate is pleasurable, and is very strange to us of northern latitudes. One may reckon upon the weather to a certainty. Within the limits of a given season there is scarcely any variation from day to day.
The insalubrity is due to the deadly malaria of the reeking, mosquito-infested swamps. Mr. Henry Savage Landor, after a journey across Africa, announces to the world that he is a strong disbeliever in the mosquito theory of malaria. But, that the mosquito is the agent of the malaria bacillus, medical science no longer regards as theory, but as fact, a fact established by the most elaborate and painstaking series of experiments ever conducted in the interest of medical science. Mr. Landor also tells us that he and his men were frequently attackedby malarial fever, becoming so weak that they could not raise their hands; but in every case a dose of castor-oil effected a cure in a few hours. He is therefore a strong advocate of castor-oil, but disbelieves in quinine. The use of castor-oil is no new discovery. Every man who has had any experience in West Africa takes it at the approach of a fever. But there is no substitute for quinine. And the medical men of the coast will agree in saying that life depends always upon the judicious use of it.
In recent years there has been such progress in the knowledge of malaria, and how to meet malarial conditions, that the record of West Africa is continually improving. Then again, missionary societies, following the example of the various European governments, have ceased to make war upon the inevitable and have greatly reduced the term of service. In American missions the term is generally three years; in English missions it is a year and a half or two years; and in the government service the term is usually much shorter than in the missions. My first experience in Africa was not a fair test of the climate. We were engaged in opening a new mission station in the bush, and the conditions were the most unhealthful. Our food was the coarsest,—it was several mouths before we tasted bread; our accommodations were the poorest,—part of the time we lived in a tent that did not protect us against the heavy rains; and besides there were forced journeys to the coast in the wet season with incidental hardships. After a succession of fevers and sensational recoveries I fled from the coast with broken health at the end of a year and a half.
But the second time, when I lived at Gaboon, I stayed five and a half years,—far too long. During the first three years at Gaboon T had fever once every two or three months. I became very familiar with its precedingsymptoms—physical exhaustion for several days, such that the least effort induced painful weariness and a frequent heavy sigh; aching of head and limbs; chills alternating rapidly with feverish heat, and a terrible temper. At the end of the third year I had a very severe fever which, instead of yielding to quinine the third day, became much worse, and the natives carried me in a hammock to the French hospital. There I remained for five weeks. But after that I had no more fever, not even once, though I remained in Africa more than two years longer, which would have been absolutely impossible if the fevers had continued. The difference was in my use of quinine. At first I took quinine only with the attacks of fever, and then I took an enormous quantity. But in the later period I kept myself immune by taking it daily whether I was ill or not. I took five grains every night for those several years. People are usually greatly surprised at this and ask if such an amount of quinine was not a terrible strain upon the constitution. It was, without doubt; but not so great a strain as malarious blood, and frequent fevers, and the shock of very large doses of quinine at such times. If I had not been in greatly reduced health before I began to take it regularly it is not likely that I should have required nearly so much. But this is anticipating; for we are still on the outward voyage.
In general the coast of West Africa is not beautiful; although it has a weird fascination for those who have once lived on it. It is low-lying, straight and monotonous: a gleaming line of white surf, a golden strip of sandy beach, a dark green line of forest—and that is all, for days and days and days, and for some two thousand miles, only broken at long intervals by the great estuary that is a peculiar characteristic of African rivers, and by low hills far away on the horizon. Many of the traders are living, not in the white settlements, but in single trading-housesand far apart along this lonely shore. They like it or they hate it. To some it is an idle dream-life that they enjoy, and to others it is a nightmare that they abhor. Some of those who came aboard looked like haunted men. Each day is exactly like all the others, and the natural surroundings never vary however far they may wander along the beach—three endless lines of colour stretching away to eternity, the dull green forest front, the yellow strip of sand, the white surge of the foaming surf, and beyond it the boundless sea. Even in the darkest night the forest still shows as a blacker rim against the darkness, and the surf-line is white with a whiteness that no night can obscure. The unceasing sound of it is like low thunder, and unless one loves it he must often think what a relief it would be if it would stop but for one brief moment, and how the silence would “sink like music on his heart.”
In such places, and in the bush, the traders sometimes wear only pajamas, by day as well as night. There are natives enough around, and there is always noise enough; but it is the noise that only emphasizes solitude. And one were better to live entirely alone than to be subjected to the influence of African degradation without the moral restraints of home and the society of equals, unless his religious belief be something more than a mere acceptance of tradition, and his principles something more than conventional morality. There is a better class of natives whose society might relieve loneliness, but the trader, as a rule, does not gather this class around him.
Some are pleased to say very hard things about the traders. But he who would judge justly must have a mind well attempered to the claims of morality on the one hand, and on the other, to the allowance due to the frailty of human nature when placed in circumstances of unparalleled temptation. No man ever realizes the moralrestraints of good society until they are all withdrawn; nor how insidious the influence even of the most repulsive vices when they have become so common to our eyes that they cease to shock: the moral safety of most men is in being shocked. Of course there are bad men among the traders, and someverybad; and the rumshop which, wherever the white man has penetrated, rises like a death-spectre in the landscape, is an abomination to which it would be difficult to do injustice. But it is not chiefly the trader who is responsible for the rum traffic. Many of them would be thankful if the various governments would entirely prohibit its importation. Moreover, they sell a thousand things besides rum,—as many useful things, and necessary to civilization, as the native is willing to buy. The traders are all men of courage—we can at least admire them for that—and many are honest and many are kind; and it were far better to refrain from condemning the dissolute than that in so doing one should soil the reputation of an honest man.
We called at Cape Coast Castle, Accra, Lagos, Monrovia and several other places where there are no harbours, and where the surf is so violent that passengers rarely go ashore unless these places are their destination. The longest stop on the voyage was at Old Calabar, sixty miles up the Calabar River, where we stayed five days. Old Calabar when I was there first was the English capital of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, which afterwards became a part of Nigeria. The heat was insufferable; for, while it is possible to keep cool on the hills where the white men live, it is not possible in the low channel of the river, and especially in the cabin of a steamer. The nameOld Calabarhas a fine far-away sound, likeCairoorBagdad, and suggests a place of romantic and legendary interest. And indeed the tales of theArabian Nightsscarcely surpass the real history of the native despots thathave ruled at Old Calabar even down to the death of King Duke in our own times, when, despite the presence of the English, it is said that five hundred natives were stealthily put to death to furnish the king a seemly retinue in the other world.
The run up the Calabar River is a pleasant variety after the long weeks on the sea. Here we first saw the crocodile, which abounds in all the largest rivers of Africa. It is the ugliest beast in the world. Lying on a bank of mud, its head always towards the water, and among old logs and roots, it looks itself like some gnarled and slimy log, and is difficult to discern. But at the sound of a gun or the near approach of the steamer it slides down into the water quick as a flash. Most of the passengers get their guns and take a few shots at them. In every case the passenger declares that he has shot the crocodile without a doubt; and as the creature disappears into the water there is of course no way of disproving the statement. But when we were coming down the river there seemed to be as many as ever.
The Spanish Island of Fernando Po is the most beautiful place in West Africa. Seen from the harbour in the early morning light or in the soft glow of the evening it is a fairy-land of tropical beauty. The bottom of the semicircular harbour is the crater of an extinct volcano and is very deep. The bank is covered down to the water with a lavish growth of ferns, and trailing vines, and flowers of many colours; while above the palm tree is abundant—the most graceful of all trees, and the billowy bamboo tosses in the breeze. In the middle and extending backwards is the white town of Saint Isabel, and behind the town stands a great solitary mountain of green, which rises to a height of ten thousand feet. Like other fairy-lands it requires the illusion of distance. It appears best from the harbour, and that is true of mosttropical beauty. The soil is the most fertile in West Africa. I have seen plantains there full twice as large as any that I have seen elsewhere. For some years it has been producing large quantities of cocoa, most of which is shipped to Spain and thence over the world in the form of chocolate.
Africa is a land of extremes. From Fernando Po crossing again to the mainland we went fifteen miles up the Rio del Rey to the ugliest place in the world. I have also been in the Rio del Rey several times on the homeward voyage, when the steamers usually spend a day there taking on palm-oil and rubber,—a coast steamer would go to Hades for palm-oil and take all the passengers along with it. There is no native village here. The three trading houses receive the produce which the natives bring down the river. All around is one vast mangrove swamp, an ideal mosquito-incubator. The trading-houses are erected upon a foundation made with the ashes of passing steamers, which were saved and deposited here.
The foliage of the mangrove is thin, and at a distance resembles our poplar. But the greater part of the mangrove is a solid mass of roots, almost wholly above ground and more nearly vertical than horizontal. The trees seem to be standing on stilts, six or eight feet long, as if they were trying to keep out of the water. There are also aerial roots, long, leafless and straight, depending from all the branches, even the highest, which as they reach the water spread into several fingers. At the high tide the roots are submerged and the ugliness of the swamp concealed for a while. But as the tide ebbs the roots appear dripping and slimy until they are completely exposed: and as the water still recedes long stretches of fœtid mud-bank appear. The smell has been accumulating for ages. A low-lying mist rises from the oozingbanks, and now and then stretches a stealthy arm out over the river, or creeps from root to root. Some one standing near exclaimed: “O heavens, what a place!” I could only wonder at the geographical direction of his thoughts; for my thoughts were of Gehenna and the river Styx. The mangrove swamp is surely the worst that nature has ever been known to do. My feeling of disgust was intensified by many experiences of after years. Sometimes approaching a town at the ebbing tide, a strong native has carried me on his back from the boat to the solid bank, across a waste of sludge, and sometimes he has fallen in the act. Other times, when one could not wade, they have thrown me a line and have dragged me across in a canoe; and I felt that if the canoe should capsize I would sink almost forever; or, perhaps be dug up twenty thousand years hence and exhibited as a pre-historic specimen. “Every prospect pleases,” reads the hymn, “and only man is vile.” But the worst débris of humanity is not half so vile as the prospect of a mangrove swamp at low tide.
The death record of the Rio del Rey is appalling. Every time that I have been there—seven times—the traders that came on board looked like dying men; and often their limbs were bandaged for ulcers or kraw-kraw. I was once on board when an English missionary and his wife debarked at this place, expecting to go on up the river, beyond the swamps, to the mission station in the hills of the interior. The lady was becoming more and more fearful during the voyage, and the effect upon her of this lower river was such that she was almost hysterical. She remained on board all day until we were about to weigh the anchor. The first impression counts for much in the matter of health and resistance to the fever; and the sight of that shrinking woman going ashore in such a place was pitiable; for we all felt that she wasdoomed. After a few months, however, she escaped with her life; but she was never able to return to Africa. The mangrove swamp stretches along the greater part of the coast of West Africa, and along the rivers where the water is salt or brackish because of the flow of the tide from the sea.
The next experience after the Rio del Rey was a greater contrast than ever. We proceeded forty miles southward and called at Victoria, in the German colony of Cameroon. The harbour at Victoria is divided from the sea by a semicircle of islands, some small and some larger. One of these islands, a large barren rock, when seen from a certain part of the beach, bears a singular though grotesque resemblance to Queen Victoria as she appeared when seated upon the throne. It is presumably from this that the place was given the nameVictoria; for the English traders were there before Germany occupied the territory.
Immediately behind the harbour is the great Mount Cameroon, one of the greatest mountains in the world, a solitary peak, which rises immediately from the sea to a height of 13,700 feet; which is twelve hundred feet higher than Teneriffe. It was evening as we approached, and before we had entered the harbour it was night; for in the tropics day darkens quickly into night and there is no twilight. But on the top of the mountain, far above our night, we still saw the rose-red of the lingering day. The moon rose behind the mountain and we steered into the shadow of it closer and closer, for by night it seemed much nearer than it really was. The number of passengers had diminished to a very few, and they were silent; not a voice was heard on the deck. It was the strangest silence I have ever experienced; not the mere negation of sound, but like something positive, and diffused from the mountain itself; a silence more impressive than speech; the silence of an infinite comprehension. Theengines stopped: we were ready to cast the anchor, and I found myself wondering how the captain’s voice would sound when in a moment he would shout: “Let go.”
“How fit a place,” someone at length remarked, “for the sounding of the last trumpet and the final judgment! before this mountain which has looked down unchanged upon all the generations that have come and passed away since the world began.”
It is not always silent, however, for the natives, with some sense of its majesty, call it the “Throne of Thunder.” Fierce storms wage battle around its middle height, with terrific peals of thunder such as I have never heard elsewhere. Sometimes for many days it wraps itself in clouds and darkness, completely invisible. I was once a whole week at various ports within a few miles of it, and did not catch a glimpse of it. The clouds wrapped it about to the very base, and there was nothing to indicate that it was there except the unusual frequency of storm and thunder. Then, one day when we were at Victoria, the weather brightened so much that we expected soon to see the peak. I asked a native attendant, a young man, to watch for it and tell me if he saw it. At length, while I was sitting on deck watching for it myself, he exclaimed: “The peak! Mr. Milligan, the peak!”
“Where?” I said. “I don’t see it.”
“Look higher,” he exclaimed.
“I am looking as high as I can. I am looking as high as the sky.”
“Look higher than the sky,” he cried, with native simplicity; “the sky is not high.”
I lifted my eyes still higher towards the zenith, and there, through an expanding rift in the heavy cloud, I saw the peak, calm, bright and beautiful, just as it had been all the time, even when hidden by low-hanging clouds. I have often thought of it since. God is higherthan our highest thought, higher than our sky. Our habits of mind and heart, even our theology may hide Him from our sight, until by some unwonted experience these are shattered, and through the rent clouds of our former sky we see the living God.
A short time before I left Africa I spent ten days at a sanitarium of the Basle Mission, on the side of Cameroon, between three and four thousand feet high. I had then been in Africa for years and had tropical blood in my veins, and I suffered much with the cold. There was so much covering on my bed that I was fairly sore with the weight of it, and yet I was cold. The storms raged frequently, hiding the heavens from those below and the earth from us; for we were above the storm-cloud, and dwelt in light and sunshine. The detonation of thunder beneath us was like the muttering rumble of an earthquake.
The German government has built a splendid road from the base of the mountain up to the sanitarium. The road is well graded, and winds upwards like a continuous S, covering a distance of sixteen miles in the ascent. I was delighted when I found that the missionaries would provide me a mule upon which I could ride up to the sanitarium. I am a lover of horses, and often during those years in Africa I had been homesick for the sight of one. The mule, when he appeared, was sleek and strong; I put my arms around his neck and patted him and caressed him as if he were a long-lost friend. Then I mounted him and started up the road, an attendant following behind with another mule and carrying my baggage. The mule which I rode was deeply imbued with Longfellow’s sentiment: “Home-keeping hearts are happiest; to stay at home is best.” He climbed slowly and reluctantly, and by some mysterious operation of the law of gravitation his head had a persistent tendency toturn about and swing down the grade. I soon realized that I could go faster without him, and that the strength which I was expending in keeping him in the path of duty was greater than that which I would require in going my way alone; and I had no strength to spare. Therefore after three or four miles in his company, finding his disposition fixed and unaspiring, I dismounted, and leaving him in the road for the guide, I walked the rest of the sixteen miles.
But ten days later, when I was returning to Victoria, the same mule was again put at my disposal, and I gladly accepted him. For I was much stronger, and I was going in the direction of his own desire; and besides it was down-hill all the way, and I knew that he was too lazy to hold back. The grade was not such that there was any danger to him from running; so I galloped the sixteen miles, and had the ride of my life. I could have shouted with delight. After a few miles I took a severe pain in my side. I dismounted and lay down on the ground. In a little while I was all right again, and taking off a pair of stout suspenders I tied them as tight as possible around my waist with a large clumsy knot at my side. I had already discarded my coat, and my only upper garment was a woolen undershirt with short sleeves. The suspenders around my waist gave me a new accession of strength and I galloped all the rest of the way, with the same pleasure, and entered Victoria where I made something of a sensation. My last association, therefore, with the great mountain, was not an impression of its solemn majesty, but the memory of a jolly good ride.
MISSION HOUSE AT BATANGA.
MISSION HOUSE AT BATANGA.
MISSION HOUSE AT BATANGA.
I was glad when at last we reached Batanga, and the long voyage was over. Our attention was drawn to the canoes in which men were fishing, and for which Batanga is famous. The quiet morning sea was dotted with themwithin a radius of a mile around us, some of them being two miles from the shore. The Batanga canoe is the smallest on the entire coast. It is almost as light as bark; the men come to the beach in the morning carrying their canoes on their heads. It is quite an entertainment to see them going out through the surf, and I have seen a canoe capsized half a dozen times in the attempt. Later in the day, when the surf is heavier, they cannot get out at all. At sea the man straddles his canoe and lets his legs hang in the water; and in this fashion he sometimes ventures two miles from the shore.
We anchored nearly a mile from the beach and were sent ashore in a surf-boat manned by native Krumen. There is no harbour at Batanga, and the landing in the surf was the most exciting of my African experiences until that time. As we entered the surf the boat stood still for a moment, until caught up on the breast of a breaker, and—“Then, like a pawing horse let go, she made a sudden bound,” and we were carried towards the beach with violent speed that looked like destruction for us all. The crest of the breaker passed under us, however, when we were close to the beach, and immediately the Krumen leaped into the water, and with all their might ran the boat up on the beach far enough to escape the next wave. Then, while most of them placed themselves around the boat to steady it, the rest of them presented their backs to the passengers and yelled at them to jump on and ride ashore.
As the pitching boat was poised for a moment, standing on the gunwale, I seized a Kruman firmly by the hair with both my hands, and leaped upon him, astride his neck with my legs over his shoulders. I had put on a fresh white suit for the occasion, notwithstanding that I had been instructed by the Old Coasters that the Kruman, with his unique sense of humour, makes it a point todrop the new comer into the surf and present him to his friends ashore as much bedraggled and beflustered as possible. I also had on the inevitable cork helmet, so bulky, and drooping over the eyes. Most men unaccustomed to them feel as awkward as they would in a Gainsborough hat. The Kruman, I am glad to report, did not drop me; perhaps because I kept so firm a hold on his hair that he did not know how much of it he might lose by a sudden or unexpected separation from me. It was probably my own fault, and not his, that when he stooped to deposit me, I missed the trick of lighting on my feet, which I afterwards learned. I reached the ground on all fours, in the wet sand. The white helmet fell from my head and rolled off towards the sea and I followed it, running quadrupedal fashion, and snatched it from an approaching wave.
A moment later I was exchanging greetings with a group of missionaries who had gathered on the beach.
At this landing on the beach I observed that we were standing under a cocoa-palm. I looked up, and lo, there was no snake hanging from it. Now, the most vivid impression—in fact the only impression of Africa that I had carried thus far through life, except that of sunny fountains rolling down golden strands, was made by a picture in the old-fashioned geography; in which there were crowded together, with contempt of perspective, an elephant, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, a lion, a leopard, a gorilla, a chimpanzee, several other monkeys, and a python hanging from a tree.
“They are all here,” said some one, in explanation; “but they are not so thick on the ground as you may have supposed.”
REV. A. C. GOOD, Ph.D.Dr. Good died at Efulen at the age of thirty-seven. He was a man of the Livingstone type.
REV. A. C. GOOD, Ph.D.Dr. Good died at Efulen at the age of thirty-seven. He was a man of the Livingstone type.
REV. A. C. GOOD, Ph.D.
Dr. Good died at Efulen at the age of thirty-seven. He was a man of the Livingstone type.