displayed a genuine surprise, and formed an even higher
opinion of my folly than it had formed on our first acquaintance,
which is saying a good deal.
During this voyage in 1893, I had been to Old Calabar,
and its Governor, Sir Claude MacDonald, had heard me
expatiating on the absorbing interest of the Antarctic drift,
and the importance of the collection of fresh-water fishes and
so on. So when Lady MacDonald heroically decided to go
out to him in Calabar, they most kindly asked me if I would
join her, and make my time fit hers for starting on my second
journey. This I most willingly did, but I fear that very
sweet and gracious lady suffered a great deal of apprehension
at the prospect of spending a month on board ship with
a person so devoted to science as to go down the West
Coast in its pursuit. During the earlier days of our voyage
she would attract my attention to all sorts of marine objects
overboard, so as to amuse me. I used to look at them, and
think it would be the death of me if I had to work like this,
explaining meanwhile aloud that “ they were very interesting,
but Haeckel had done them, and I was out after fresh-water
fishes from a river north of the Congo this time,” fearing all
the while that she felt me unenthusiastic for not flying over
into the ocean to secure the specimens.
However, my scientific qualities, whatever they may amount
to, did not blind this lady long to the fact of my being
after all a very ordinary individual, and she told me so
not in these crude words, indeed, but nicely and kindly
whereupon, in a burst of gratitude to her for understanding
me, I appointed myself her honorary aide-de-camp on the
spot, and her sincere admirer I shall remain for ever, fully
recognising that her courage in going to the Coast was far
greater than my own, for she had more to lose had fever
claimed her, and-she was in those days by no means under the
spell of Africa. But this is anticipating.
It was on the 23rd of December, 1894, that we left Liverpool
in the Batanga, commanded by my old friend Captain
Murray, under whose care I had made my first voyage.
We ought to have left on the 22nd, but this we could
not do, fof it came on to blow a bit, such a considerable bit
indeed, that even the mighty Cunard liner Lucania could not
leave the Mersey; moreover the Batanga could not have
left even if she had wanted to, for the dock gates that shut
her in could not be opened, so fierce was the gale. So it was
Sunday the 23rd then, as I haive said, that we got off, with no
further misadventure save that, owing to the weather, t e
Batanga could not take her powder on board, a loss that
nearly broke the carpenter’s heart, as it robbed him of the
pleasure of making that terrific bang with which a West
Coaster salutes her ports of call. _
On the 30th we sighted the Peak of Teneriffe early in the
afternoon. It displayed itself, as usual, as an entirely celestia
phenomenon. A great many people miss seeing it. Suffering
under the delusion that El Pico is a terrestrial affair, they
look in vain somewhere about the level of their own eyes,
which are striving to penetrate the dense masses of mist that
usually enshroud its slopes by day, and then a friend comes
along, and gaily points out to the newcomer the glittering
white triangle somewhere near the zenith. On some days
the Peak stands out clear from ocean to summit, looking
every inch and more of its 12,080 f t .; and this is said by the
Canary fishermen to be a certain sign of rain, or fine weather,
or a gale of wind ; but whenever and however it may be seen,
soft and dream-like in the sunshine, or melodramatic and
bizarre in the moonlight, it is one of the most beautiful
things the eye of man may see.
Soon after sighting Teneriffe, Lanzarote showed, and then
the Grand Canary. Teneriffe is perhaps the most beautiful,
but it is hard to judge between it and Grand Canary as seen
from the sea. The superb cone this afternoon stood out a
deep purple against a serpent-green sky, separated from the
brilliant blue ocean by a girdle of pink and gold cumulus,
while Grand Canary and Lanzarote looked as if they were
formed from fantastic-shaped sunset cloud-banks that by some
spell had been solidified. The general colour of the mountains
of Grand Canary, which rise peak after peak until they
culminate in the Pico de las Nieves, some 6,000 feet high, is a
yellowish red, and the air which lies among their rocky
crevices and swathes their softer sides is a lovely lustrous