Travels in West Africa | Page 5

my mind got set on going, and I had to go.
Fortunately I could number among my acquaintances one individual
who had lived on the Coast for seven years. Not, it is true, on that part
of it which I was bound for. Still his advice was pre- eminently worth
attention, because, in spite of his long residence in the deadliest spot of
the region, he was still in fair going order. I told him I intended going
to West Africa, and he said, "When you have made up your mind to go
to West Africa the very best thing you can do is to get it unmade again
and go to Scotland instead; but if your intelligence is not strong enough
to do so, abstain from exposing yourself to the direct rays of the sun,
take 4 grains of quinine every day for a fortnight before you reach the
Rivers, and get some introductions to the Wesleyans; they are the only
people on the Coast who have got a hearse with feathers."
My attention was next turned to getting ready things to take with me.
Having opened upon myself the sluice gates of advice, I rapidly
became distracted. My friends and their friends alike seemed to labour
under the delusion that I intended to charter a steamer and was a person
of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. This not being the case, the
only thing to do was to gratefully listen and let things drift.
Not only do the things you have got to take, but the things you have got
to take them in, present a fine series of problems to the young traveller.
Crowds of witnesses testified to the forms of baggage holders they had

found invaluable, and these, it is unnecessary to say, were all different
in form and material.
With all this embarras de choix I was too distracted to buy anything
new in the way of baggage except a long waterproof sack neatly closed
at the top with a bar and handle. Into this I put blankets, boots, books,
in fact anything that would not go into my portmanteau or black bag.
From the first I was haunted by a conviction that its bottom would
come out, but it never did, and in spite of the fact that it had ideas of its
own about the arrangement of its contents, it served me well throughout
my voyage.
It was the beginning of August '93 when I first left England for "the
Coast." Preparations of quinine with postage partially paid arrived up to
the last moment, and a friend hastily sent two newspaper clippings, one
entitled "A Week in a Palm-oil Tub," which was supposed to describe
the sort of accommodation, companions, and fauna likely to be met
with on a steamer going to West Africa, and on which I was to spend
seven to The Graphic contributor's one; the other from The Daily
Telegraph, reviewing a French book of "Phrases in common use" in
Dahomey. The opening sentence in the latter was, "Help, I am
drowning." Then came the inquiry, "If a man is not a thief?" and then
another cry, "The boat is upset." "Get up, you lazy scamps," is the next
exclamation, followed almost immediately by the question, "Why has
not this man been buried?" "It is fetish that has killed him, and he must
lie here exposed with nothing on him until only the bones remain," is
the cheerful answer. This sounded discouraging to a person whose
occupation would necessitate going about considerably in boats, and
whose fixed desire was to study fetish. So with a feeling of foreboding
gloom I left London for Liverpool--none the more cheerful for the
matter-of-fact manner in which the steamboat agents had informed me
that they did not issue return tickets by the West African lines of
steamers. I will not go into the details of that voyage here, much as I
am given to discursiveness. They are more amusing than instructive,
for on my first voyage out I did not know the Coast, and the Coast did
not know me and we mutually terrified each other. I fully expected to
get killed by the local nobility and gentry; they thought I was connected
with the World's Women's Temperance Association, and collecting
shocking details for subsequent magic-lantern lectures on the liquor

traffic; so fearful misunderstandings arose, but we gradually educated
each other, and I had the best of the affair; for all I had got to teach
them was that I was only a beetle and fetish hunter, and so forth, while
they had to teach me a new world, and a very fascinating course of
study I found it. And whatever the Coast may have to say against
me--for my continual desire for hair-pins, and