Travels in West Africa | Page 3

hatred for politics I have no inclination to become diffuse on them, as I have on the errors of other people's cooking or ideas on decoration. I know I am held to be too partial to France in West Africa; too fond of pointing out her brilliant achievements there, too fond of saying the native is as happy, and possibly happier, under her rule than under ours; and also that I am given to a great admiration for Germans; but this is just like any common-sense Englishwoman. Of course I am devoted to my own John; but still Monsieur is brave, bright, and fascinating; Mein Herr is possessed of courage and commercial ability in the highest degree, and, besides, he takes such a lot of trouble to know the real truth about things, and tells them to you so calmly and carefully--and our own John--well, of course, he is everything that's good and great, but he makes a shocking fool of himself at times, particularly in West Africa.
I should enjoy holding what one of my justly irritated expurgators used to call one of my little thanksgiving services here, but I will not; for, after all, it would be impossible for me to satisfactorily thank those people who, since my publication of this book, have given me help and information on the subject of West Africa. Chief amongst them have been Mr. A. L. Jones, Sir. R. B. N. Walker, Mr. Irvine, and Mr. John Holt. I have not added to this book any information I have received since I wrote it, as it does not seem to me fair to do so. My only regret regarding it is that I have not dwelt sufficiently on the charm of West Africa; it is so difficult to explain such things; but I am sure there are amongst my readers people who know by experience the charm some countries exercise over men--countries very different from each other and from West Africa. The charm of West Africa is a painful one: it gives you pleasure when you are out there, but when you are back here it gives you pain by calling you. It sends up before your eyes a vision of a wall of dancing white, rainbow-gemmed surf playing on a shore of yellow sand before an audience of stately coco palms; or of a great mangrove- watered bronze river; or of a vast aisle in some forest cathedral: and you hear, nearer to you than the voices of the people round, nearer than the roar of the city traffic, the sound of the surf that is breaking on the shore down there, and the sound of the wind talking on the hard palm leaves and the thump of the natives' tom- toms; or the cry of the parrots passing over the mangrove swamps in the evening time; or the sweet, long, mellow whistle of the plantain warblers calling up the dawn; and everything that is round you grows poor and thin in the face of the vision, and you want to go back to the Coast that is calling you, saying, as the African says to the departing soul of his dying friend, "Come back, come back, this is your home."
M. H. KINGSLEY. October, 1897.

[NOTE.--The following chapters of the first edition are not included in this edition: --Chap. ii., The Gold Coast; Chap. iv., Lagos Bar; Chap. v., Voyage down Coast; Chap. vi., Libreville and Glass; Chap. viii., Talagouga; Chap. xvi., Congo Francais; Chap. xvii., The Log of the Lafayette; Chap. xviii., From Corisco to Gaboon; Chap. xxviii., The Islands in the Bay of Amboises; Appendix ii., Disease in West Africa; Appendix iii., Dr. A. Gunther on Reptiles and Fishes; Appendix iv., Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, and Hemiptera.]

INTRODUCTION.

Relateth the various causes which impelled the author to embark upon the voyage.
It was in 1893 that, for the first time in my life, I found myself in possession of five or six months which were not heavily forestalled, and feeling like a boy with a new half-crown, I lay about in my mind, as Mr. Bunyan would say, as to what to do with them. "Go and learn your tropics," said Science. Where on earth am I to go? I wondered, for tropics are tropics wherever found, so I got down an atlas and saw that either South America or West Africa must be my destination, for the Malayan region was too far off and too expensive. Then I got Wallace's Geographical Distribution and after reading that master's article on the Ethiopian region I hardened my heart and closed with West Africa. I did this the more readily because while I knew nothing of the practical condition of it, I knew a good deal both by tradition and report of South East America, and remembered that