amounts to thirty-three miles ; the mean breadth is seventeen
miles The port, Clarence Cove, now called Santa Isabel by
the Spaniards— who have been giving Spanish names to all
the English-named places without any one taking much notice
of them is a very remarkable place, and except per aps
Gaboon the finest harbour on the West Coast. The point
that brings Gaboon, anchorage up in line with Clarence Cove
is its superior healthiness ; for Clarence is a section of a circle,
and its shores are steep rocky cliffs from 100 to 200 feet high,
and the place, to put it very mildly, exceedingly hot an
stuffy. The cove is evidently a partly submerged crater, the
submerged rim of the crater is almost a perfect semi-circle
seawards— having on it 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10 fathoms of water
save almost in the centre of the arc where there is a passage
with 12 to 14 fathoms. Inside, in the crater, there is deeper
water, running in places from 30 to 45 fathoms, and outside
the submerged rim there is deeper water again, but rocky shoals
abound. On the top of the shore cliffs stands the dilapidated
little town of Clarence, on a plateau that falls away slightly
towards the mountain for about a mile, when the groimd commences
to rise into the slopes of the Cordillera. On the
narrow beach, tucked close against the cliffs, are a few stores
belonging to the merchants, where goods are placed on landing
and there is a little pier too, but as it is usually having
something done to its head, or else is closed by the authorities
because they intend doing something by and by, the chances
are against its being available for use. Hence it usually comes
about that you have to land on the beach, and when you
have done this you make your way up a very steep path, cut in
the cliff-side, to the town. When you get there you find yourself
in the very dullest town I know on the Coast. I remember
when I first landed in Clarence I found its society in a flutter
of expectation and alarm , not untinged with horror. Clarence,
nay the whole of Fernando Po, was about to become so
rackety and dissipated as to put Paris and Monte Carlo To
the blush. Clarence was going to have a café ; and what
was going to go on in that café I shrink from reciting.,
I have little hesitation now in saying this alarm was a false
When I next arrived in Clarence one. it was just as sound