Mr. Fothergill Evidently Had Much Knowledge
And Experience Of The Fernan Vaz District And Its Natives.
He had,
I should say, overdone his experiences with the natives, as far as
personal comfort and pleasure at the time went, having been nearly
killed and considerably chivied by them.
Now I do not wish a man,
however much I may deplore his total lack of local knowledge, to go
so far as this. Mr. Fothergill gave his accounts of these incidents
calmly, and in an undecorated way that gave them a power and
convincingness verging on being unpleasant, although useful, to a
person who was going into the district where they had occurred, for
one felt there was no mortal reason why one should not personally
get involved in similar affairs. And I must here acknowledge the
great subsequent service Mr. Fothergill's wonderfully accurate
descriptions of the peculiar characteristics of the Ogowe forests
were to me when I subsequently came to deal with these forests on my
own account, as every district of forest has peculiar
characteristics of its own which you require to know. I should like
here to speak of West Coast dangers because I fear you may think
that I am careless of, or do not believe in them, neither of which
is the case. The more you know of the West Coast of Africa, the
more you realise its dangers. For example, on your first voyage out
you hardly believe the stories of fever told by the old Coasters.
That is because you do not then understand the type of man who is
telling them, a man who goes to his death with a joke in his teeth.
But a short experience of your own, particularly if you happen on a
place having one of its periodic epidemics, soon demonstrates that
the underlying horror of the thing is there, a rotting corpse which
the old Coaster has dusted over with jokes to cover it so that it
hardly shows at a distance, but which, when you come yourself to
live alongside, you soon become cognisant of. Many men, when they
have got ashore and settled, realise this, and let the horror get a
grip on them; a state briefly and locally described as funk, and a
state that usually ends fatally; and you can hardly blame them.
Why, I know of a case myself. A young man who had never been
outside an English country town before in his life, from family
reverses had to take a situation as book-keeper down in the Bights.
The factory he was going to was in an isolated out-of-the-way place
and not in a settlement, and when the ship called off it, he was put
ashore in one of the ship's boats with his belongings, and a case or
so of goods. There were only the firm's beach-boys down at the
surf, and as the steamer was in a hurry the officer from the ship
did not go up to the factory with him, but said good-bye and left
him alone with a set of naked savages as he thought, but really of
good kindly Kru boys on the beach.
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