find the tide too far in for any more beach at all, and strike
into an inland path. These Corisco paths require understanding
to get on with. They all seem to start merely with
the intention of taking you round a headland because the tide
happens to be in ; but, like all African paths, once they are
started Allah or .Sheitan only knows where they will go,
and their presiding spirits might quote Kipling and sing, “ God
knows where we shall go, dear lass, and the deuce knows what
we shall see,” to the wayfarer who follows them. One thing
and one thing only you can safely prognosticate of the
African path; and that is that it will not follow the shortest
line between any two given points. A Corisco one turns up
off the beach, springs inland saying to you, “Want to go round
that corner, do you ? Oh ! well just come and see some of our
noted scenery while you are here,” and takes you through a
miniature forest, small swamp, and a prairie. “ It’s a pity,”
says the path, “ not to call at So-and-so’s village now we
are so near it,” and off you have to go through a patch o f
grass and a plantation to the village. “ We must hurry up
and get back to that beach again. Blessed if I hadn’t nearly
forgotten what I came out fo r ! ” it continues; and back
on to the beach it plunges, landing you about fifty yards-
from the place where you left it on account of the little
headland.
A t last we reach Alondo, and I give my guides buttons, reels
of cotton, pocket-handkerchiefs, fish-hooks, and matches, and
we part friends ; they to show their treasures in their village,
and to give rise to the hope that I may get lost on Corisco-
again, soon and often, I to tea and talk with Mrs. Ibea. I tell
her Eveke had said in the forenoon, when I last saw him,
that he was coming home in the evening ; but he does not turn
up and his mother says she “ expects he is courting his mother-
in-law.” Regarding this as probably a highly interesting piece
of native custom, in the interests of Science, I prop open my
sleepy eyelids and listen. After all it isn’t— but only a piece
of strange native morality. His lady-love, it seems, is housekeeper
to a man on the mainland who is always talking of
leaving the district but doesn’t do so, so the marriage gets
perpetually postponed. I hope that man won’t try the patient
affection of the engaged pair too long, for I should fancy it
might lead to some internal disorder.
I heard a quantity of details of Corisco family affairs—
one very sad one, of how a young man who was a native
trader for one of the German houses up the Cameroons
River, came to his death a short time ago. The firm had
decided to break factory at the place where he was stationed,
a thing the natives of this country cannot bear ; for having a
factory that has once been established among them removed,
brings them into derision and contempt among their neighbours.
“ You’re a pretty town,” say the scornful. “ You can’t
keep a factory. Yah ! ” Moreover, a factory in a town is an
amusement and a convenience, let alone being lucrative to the
native. Well, this unfortunate young Benga man was left
behind by the white men to see the last of the goods cleared
out and brought down river; and while he was faithfully looking
to these things, the local natives attacked him and killed him
and I cut him up like a fish into small pieces and threw them
into the water,” says Mrs. Ibea. These native sub-traders
have very risky lives of it, travelling undefended, with goods,
amongst the savage tribes on this South-West Coast. They
frequently get killed and robbed, and the only thing that
keeps them from not being so treated still more frequently is
that the commercial instinct of the bush tribes warns them
that it would completely stamp out trade. In Corisco Bay
the river Muni, a name given it by the Portuguese early
navigators from the native word for “ take care,” is notoriously
unsafe— all the more so because there is no settled European
authority over it, France and Spain being at loggerheads about
the ownership of the piece of coast from Cape Esterias to
Batta. This had doubtless a good deal to do with those
children’s conduct this afternoon ; for Corisco Island and Eloby
Islands are Spanish possessions, and are under a Vice-
Governor to the Governor of Fernando Po. I remember
when I was out before, being led to believe that the Vice-
Governorship of Eloby was a sort of pensioning-off place for
Spanish officials who had gone mad, or that it was held by
London County Councillors in disguise. One of the Vice-
Governors was truly great at domestic legislation, and nothing