I Am Also Aware That The
Corrugated-Iron Roof Is An Advantage In Enabling You To Collect And
Store Rain-
Water, which is the safest kind of water you can get on
the Coast, always supposing you have not painted
The aforesaid roof
with red oxide an 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 alternations
of temperature more sudden: mornings and evenings they are cold and
clammy; draughty they are always, thereby giving you chill which
means fever, and fever in West Africa means more than it does in
most places.
Going on shore at Accra with Lady MacDonald 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 the 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. Tackie
(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 Tackie.
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 breeches, and crimson cummerbunds yards long, bound round
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 marvellous, and you need have no further
anxiety on its behalf. Therefore it was but natural that the
governmental cummerbunds, being new, should come off their wearers
several times in the course of our two mile trip, and as they wound
riskily round the legs of their running wearers, we had to make
halts while one end of the cummerbund 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 20 of 371
Words from 9912 to 10416
of 194943
