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.
CH A P T ER I
LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE
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.
T h e 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 know that from many who know the Coast, there will be a
chorus of dissent from the first part of my sentence, and a
chorus of assent to the second. But if you were to take
many of the men who most energetically assert that they
wish they were home in England, “ and see if they would
ever come to the etc., etc., place again,” and if you were to
bring them home, and let them stay there a little while, I am
pretty sure that-H-in the absence of attractions other than
those of merely being home in England, notwithstanding its
glorious, joys of omnibuses, underground railways, and
evening newspapers-^these same men, in terms varying with
individual cases, will be found sneaking back apologetically
to the Coast.
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