He Took Me Across The Well-Kept Grass To Two Newly Dug Graves, Each
Covered With Wooden Hoods In A Most 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 keep the institution up."
"We do," he replied, "at any rate at this 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 4.30," said a companion, an exceedingly accurate member of the
staff. "How you fellows DO 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 Accra, 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.
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