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.
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