CHAPTER I. LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE 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 Sierra Leone:
To which is added
some account of this latter place and the comeliness of its women.
Wherein also some description of Cape Coast and Accra is given, to
which are added divers 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
Belle Dame sans merci.
I succumbed to the charm of the Coast as soon as I left Sierra Leone
on my first voyage out, and I saw more than enough during that
voyage to make me recognise 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.
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