to hunting much after yesterday’s work, and deem it advisable
to rest.
My face and particularly my lips are a misery to me, having
been blistered all over by yesterday’s sun, and last night I
inadvertently whipped the skin all off one cheek with the
blanket, and it keeps on bleeding, and, horror of horrors, there
is no tea until that water comes.
I wish I had got the mountaineering spirit, for then I could
say, “ I’ll never come to this sort of place again, for you can
get all you want in the Alps.” I have been told this by my
mountaineering friends— I have never been there— and that
you can go and do all sorts of stupendous things all day, and
come back in the evening to table d’hdle at an hotel; but as
I have not got the mountaineering spirit, I suppose I shall
come fooling into some such place as this as soon as I get the
next chance.
About 8.30, to our delight, the gallant Monrovia boy comes
through the bush with a demijohn of water, and I get my tea,
and give the men the only half-pound of rice I have and a
tin of meat, and they eat, become merry, and chat over their
absent companions in a scornful, scandalous way. Who cares
for hotels now ? When one is in a delightful place like this,
one must work, so off I go to the north into the forest, after
giving the rest of the demijohn of water into the Monrovia
boy’s charge with strict orders it is not to be opened till my
return. Quantities of beetles.
A little after two o’clock I return to camp, after having
wandered about in the forest and found three very deep holes,
down which I heaved rocks and in no case heard a splash. In
one I did not hear the rocks strike, owing to the great depth.
I hate holes, and especially do I hate these African ones, for I
am frequently falling, more or less, into them, and they will be
my end. So far I have never fallen down a West Coast
native gold mine, but I know people who have ; but all
the other sorts I have tried, having pitched by day and night
into those, from three to twelve feet deep, made by industrious
indigenous ones, as Mrs. Gault calls them, digging out sand
and earth to make the “ swish ” walls of their simple savage
homes; and also into those from twenty to thirty feet deep
with pointed stakes at the bottom, artfully disposed to impale
the elephant and leopard of the South-West Coast. But
my worst fall was into a disused Portuguese well of unknown
depth at Cabinda. I f feel the place in frosty weather
.still,” though I did not go down all the way, my descent being
arrested by a collection of brushwood and rubbish, which had
been cast into it, and which had hitched far down in the shaft.
When I struck this subterranean wood raft, I thought—-Saved
The next minute it struck me that raft was sinking, and so it
was, slowly and jerkily, but sinking all the same. I clapperclawed
round in the stuffy dark for something at the side to
hang on to, and got some tough bush rope, just as I was con-
winced that my fate was an inglorious and inverted case of
Elijah, and I was being carried off, alive, to Shiol.
The other demijohns of water have not arrived yet, and
we are getting anxious again because the men’s food has
not come up, and they have been so exceedingly thirsty that
they have drunk most of the water— not, however, since it has
been in Monrovia’s charge; but at 3.15 another boy comes
through the bush with another demijohn of water. We
receive him gladly, and ask him about the chop. He knows
nothing, about it. A t '3.45 another boy comes through the
bush with another demijohn of water ; we receive him kindly ;
die does not know anything about the chop. A t 4.10 another
boy comes through the bush with another demijohn of water,
and knowing nothing about the chop, we are civil to him, and
that’s all.
A terrific tornado which has been lurking growling about
then sits down in the forest and bursts, wrapping us up in a
lively kind of fog, with its thunder, lightning, and rain. It
was impossible to hear, or make one’s self heard at the distance
-of even a few paces, because of the shrill squeal of the wind,
the roar of the thunder, and the rush of the rain on. the trees
round us. It was not like having a storm burst over you in
the least; you felt you were in the middle of its engine-room
when it had broken down badly. After half an hour or so the
thunder seemed to lift itself off the ground, and the lightning
came in sheets, instead of in great forks that flew like flights of
spears among the forest trees. The thunder, however, had not