Ever cheery and charming companions; and Frau Plehn, whom it was a
continual pleasure to see in Cameroons, and discourse with once
again on things that seemed so far off then - art, science, and
literature; and Mrs. H. Duggan, of Cameroons too, who used, whenever
I came into that port to rescue me from fearful states of starvation
for toilet necessaries, and lend a sympathetic and intelligent ear
to the "awful sufferings" I had gone through, until Cameroons became
to me a thing to look forward to.
When in the Canaries in 1892, I used to smile, I regretfully own, at
the conversation of a gentleman from the Gold Coast who was up there
recruiting after a bad fever. His conversation consisted largely of
anecdotes of friends of his, and nine times in ten he used to say,
"He's dead now." Alas! my own conversation may be smiled at now for
the same cause. Many of my friends mentioned even in this very
recent account of the Coast "are dead now." Most of those I learnt
to know in 1893; chief among these is my old friend Captain Boler,
of Bonny, from whom I first learnt a certain power of comprehending
the African and his form of thought.
I have great reason to be grateful to the Africans themselves - to
cultured men and women among them like Charles Owoo, Mbo, Sanga
Glass, Jane Harrington and her sister at Gaboon, and to the bush
natives; but of my experience with them I give further details, so I
need not dwell on them here.
I apologise to the general reader for giving so much detail on
matters that really only affect myself, and I know that the
indebtedness which all African travellers have to the white
residents in Africa is a matter usually very lightly touched on. No
doubt my voyage would seem a grander thing if I omitted mention of
the help I received, but - well, there was a German gentleman once
who evolved a camel out of his inner consciousness. It was a
wonderful thing; still, you know, it was not a good camel, only a
thing which people personally unacquainted with camels could believe
in. Now I am ambitious to make a picture, if I make one at all,
that people who do know the original can believe in - even if they
criticise its points - and so I give you details a more showy artist
would omit.
CHAPTER I. LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE AND THE GOLD COAST.
Setting forth how the voyager departs from England in a stout vessel
and in good company, and reaches in due course the Island of the
Grand Canary, and then the Port of Sierra Leone: to which is added
some account of this latter place and the comeliness of its women.
Wherein also some description of Cape Coast and Accra is given, to
which are added divers observations on supplies to be obtained
there.
The West Coast of Africa is like the Arctic regions in one
particular, and that is that when you have once visited it you want
to go back there again; and, now I come to think of it, there is
another particular in which it is like them, and that is that the
chances you have of returning from it at all are small, for it is a
Belle Dame sans merci.
I succumbed to the charm of the Coast as soon as I left Sierra Leone
on my first voyage out, and I saw more than enough during that
voyage to make me recognise that there was any amount of work for me
worth doing down there. So I warned the Coast I was coming back
again and the Coast did not believe me; and on my return to it a
second time displayed a genuine surprise, and formed an even higher
opinion of my folly than it had formed on our first acquaintance,
which is saying a good deal.
During this voyage in 1893, I had been to Old Calabar, and its
Governor, Sir Claude MacDonald, had heard me expatiating on the
absorbing interest of the Antarctic drift, and the importance of the
collection of fresh-water fishes and so on. So when Lady MacDonald
heroically decided to go out to him in Calabar, they most kindly
asked me if I would join her, and make my time fit hers for starting
on my second journey. This I most willingly did. But I fear that
very sweet and gracious lady suffered a great deal of apprehension
at the prospect of spending a month on board ship with a person so
devoted to science as to go down the West Coast in its pursuit.
During the earlier days of our voyage she would attract my attention
to all sorts of marine objects overboard, so as to amuse me. I used
to look at them, and think it would be the death of me if I had to
work like this, explaining meanwhile aloud that "they were very
interesting, but Haeckel had done them, and I was out after fresh-
water fishes from a river north of the Congo this time," fearing all
the while that she felt me unenthusiastic for not flying over into
the ocean to secure the specimens.
However, my scientific qualities, whatever they may amount to, did
not blind this lady long to the fact of my being after all a very
ordinary individual, and she told me so - not in these crude words,
indeed, but nicely and kindly - whereupon, in a burst of gratitude to
her for understanding me, I appointed myself her honorary aide-de-
camp on the spot, and her sincere admirer I shall remain for ever,
fully recognising that her courage in going to the Coast was far
greater than my own, for she had more to lose had fever claimed her,
and she was in those days by no means under the spell of Africa.
But this is anticipating.
