Naturally, while my higher intelligence was taken up with
attending to these statements, 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. The only thing to do in this
state of affairs was to gratefully listen and let things drift.
They showered on me various preparations of quinine and
other so-called medical comforts, mustard leaves, a patent filter,
a hot-water bottle, and last but not least a large square bottle
purporting to be malt and cod-liver oil, which, rebelling against
an African temperature, arose in its wrath, ejected its cork,
and proclaimed itself an efficient but not too savoury glue.
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
o f 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 on e , 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, “ I f 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 1 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