I Have Little Hesitation Now In Saying This Alarm Was A False One.
When I Next Arrived In Clarence It Was Just As Sound Asleep And Its
Streets As Weed-Grown As Ever, Although The Cafe Was Open.
My idea
is that the sleepiness of the place infected the cafe and took all
the go out of it.
But again it may have been that the inhabitants
were too well guarded against its evil influence, for there are on
the island fifty-two white laymen, and fifty-four priests to take
charge of them {44} - the extra two being, I presume, to look after
the Governor's conduct, although this worthy man made a most
spirited protest against this view when I suggested it to him; and
in addition to the priests there are several missionaries of the
Methodist mission, and also a white gentleman who has invented a new
religion. Anyhow, the cafe smoulders like a damp squib.
When you spend the day on shore and when, having exhausted the
charms of the town, - a thing that usually takes from between ten
minutes to a quarter of an hour, - you apply to an inhabitant for
advice as to the disposal of the rest of your shore leave, you are
told to "go and see the coals." You say you have not come to
tropical islands to see a coal heap, and applying elsewhere for
advice you probably get the same. So, as you were told to "go and
see the coals" when you left your ship, you do as you are bid.
These coals, the remnant of the store that was kept here for the
English men-of-war, were left here when the naval station was
removed. The Spaniards at first thought of using them, and ran a
tram-way from Clarence to them. But when the tramway was finished,
their activity had run out too, and to this day there the coals
remain. Now and again some one has the idea that they are quite
good, and can be used for a steamer, and some people who have tried
them say they are all right, and others say they are all wrong. And
so the end of it will be that some few thousand years hence there
will be a serious quarrel among geologists on the strange pocket of
coal on Fernando Po, and they will run up continents, and raise and
lower oceans to explain them, and they will doubtless get more
excitement and pleasure out of them than you can nowadays.
The history of the English occupation of Fernando Po seems often
misunderstood, and now and then one hears our Government reviled for
handing it over to the Spaniards. But this was unavoidable, for we
had it as a loan from Spain in 1827 as a naval station for our
ships, at that time energetically commencing to suppress the slave
trade in the Bights; the idea being that this island would afford a
more healthy and convenient spot for a naval depot than any port on
the coast itself.
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