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.
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