After These Appalling Objects
The Souls Of My Krumen Hungered With A Great Desire.
"NO," said I,
in my severest tone, and after buying other things, we passed on.
Imagine my horror, therefore, hours afterwards and miles away, to
find my precious crew had got a red parasol apiece.
Previous
experience quite justified me in thinking that these had been
stolen; and I pictured to myself my Portuguese friends, whose
territory I was then in, commenting upon the incident, and reviling
me as another instance of how the brutal English go looting through
the land. I found, however, I was wrong, for the parasols had been
"dashed" my rapacious rascals "for top," and the last one connected
with the affair who deserved pity was the trader from whom I had
believed them stolen. It was I, not he, who suffered, for it was
the wet season in West Africa and those red parasols ran. To this
day my scientific soul has never been able to account for the vast
body of crimson dye those miserable cotton things poured out,
plentifully drenching myself and their owners, the Kruboys, and
everything we associated with that day. I am quite prepared to hear
that some subsequent wanderer has found a red trail in Africa itself
like that one so often sees upon the maps. When they do, I hereby
claim that real red trail as mine.
I confess I like the African on the whole, a thing I never expected
to do when I went to the Coast with the idea that he was a degraded,
savage, cruel brute; but that is a trifling error you soon get rid
of when you know him.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 631 of 705
Words from 174039 to 174319
of 194943
