equal mixture of rock and mud, but they are not evenly distributed.
Plantations full of weeds show up on either side o f
us, and we are evidently now on the top of a foot-hill. I
suspect a fine view of the sea could be obtained from here, if
you have an atmosphere that is less than 99f per cent, of water.
As it is, a white sheet— or more properly speaking, considering
its soft, stuffy woolliness, a white blanket— is stretched across-
the landscape to the south-west, where the sea would show.
We go down-hill now, the water rushing into the back of my
shoes for a change. The path is fringed by high, sugar-canelike
grass which hangs across it in a lackadaisical way,
swishing you in the face and cutting like a knife whenever you
catch its edge, and pouring continually insidious rills of water
down one’s neck. It does not matter. The whole Atlantic
could not get more water on to me than I have already got.
Ever and again I stop and wring out some of it from my
skirts, for it is weighty. One would not imagine that anything
could come down in the way of water thicker than the rain,
but it can. When one is on the top of the hills, a cold breeze
comes through the mist chilling one to the bone, and bending
the heads of the palm trees, sends down from them water by
the bucketful with a slap ; hitting or missing you as the case
may be.
Both myself and my men are by now getting anxious for
our “ chop,” and they tell me, “ We look them big hut soon.”
Soon we do look them big hut, but with faces of undisguised
horror, for the big hut consists of a few charred roof-mats, &c.,
lying on the ground. There has been a fire in that simple
savage home. Our path here is cut by one that goes east
and west, and after a consultation between my men and
the Bakwiri, we take the path going east, down a steep
slope between weedy plantations, and shortly on the left
shows a steep little hill-side with a long low hut on the
top. We go up to it and I find it is the habitation of a Basel
Mission black Bible-reader. He comes out and speaks English
well, and I tell him I want a house for myself and my
men, and he says we had better come and stay in this one,
It is divided into two chambers, one in which thè children who
attend the mission-school stay, and wherein there is a fire,
and one evidently the abode of the teacher. I thank the
Bible-reader and say that I will pay him for the house, and I
and the men go in streaming, and my teeth chatter with cold
as the breeze chills my saturated garment while I give out t
rations of beef, rum, blankets, and tobacco to the rnen. Then
I clear my apartment out and attempt to get dry, operations
which are interrupted by Kefalla coming for tobacco
to buy firewood off the mission teacher to cook our food by.
Presently my excellent little cook brings in my food, and
in with it come two mission teachers— our first acquaintance,
the one with a white jacket, and another wit a ue.
They lounge about and spit in all directions, and en c
commence to arrive with their families complete, and t y
sidle into the apartment and ostentatiously ogle the demijohn
of rum. ,___________ :__
They are, as usual, a nuisance, sitting about on evoythi g.
No sooner have I taken an unclean-looking chief off the woo
sofa, than I observe another one has silently seated himself
in the middle of my open portmanteau. Removing him and
shutting it up, I see another one has settled on the men s beef
and rice sack. , ,_
It is now about three o’clock and I am still chilled to the
b o n e i n spite of tea. The weather is as bad as ever. The
men say that the rest of the road to Buea is far worse than
that which we have so far come along, and that we should
never get there before dark, and “ for sure’ should not get
there afterwards, because by the time the dark came down we
should be in “ bad place too much.” Therefore to their great
relief, I say I will stay at this place— Buana—for the night,
and go on in the morning time up to Buea ; and just for the
present I think I will wrap myself up in a blanket and try and
get the chill out of me, so I give the chiefs a glass of rum
each plenty of head tobacco, and my best thanks for their
kind call, and then turn them and the expectorating mission
teachers out. I have not been lying down five minutes on the
plank that serves for a sofa by day and a bed by night when
Charles comes knocking at the door. He wants tobacco.
“ Missionary man no fit to let we Rave firewood unless we buy