I ll “ GO AND SEE TH E CO A L S ”
asleep and its streets as weed-grown as ever, although the café
was open. My idea is the sleepiness of the place infected the
café and took all the go put of it. But again it may have
been that the inhabitants were too well guarded against its
evil influence, for there are on the island fifty-two white laymen,
and fifty-four priests to take charge of them1— the extra
two being, I presume, to look after the Governor’s conduct,
although this worthy man made a most spirited protest
against this view when I suggested it to him ; and in addition
to the priests there are several missionaries of the Methodist
mission, and also a white gentleman who has invented
a new religion. Anyhow, the café smoulders like a damp
squib.
When you spend the day on shore and when, having exhausted
the charms of the town,— a thing that usually takes
from between ten minutes to a quarter of an hour,— you apply
to an inhabitant for advice as to the disposal of the rest o f
your shore leave, you are told to “ go and see the coals.’"
You say you have not come to tropical islands to see a coal
heap, and applying elsewhere for advice you probably get the
same. So, as you were told to “ go and see the coals ” when
you left your ship, you do as you are bid. These coals, the
remnant of the store that was kept here for the English
men-of-war, were left here when the naval station was-
removed. The Spaniards at first thought of using them, and
ran a tram-way from Clarence to them. But when the tramway
was finished, their activity had run out too, and to this
day there the coals remain. Now and again some one has-
the idea that they are quite good, and can be used for a steamer,,
and some people who have tried them say they are all right,
and others say they are all wrong. And so the end of it will
be that some few thousand years hence there will be a serious-
quarrel among geologists on the strange pocket of coal on
Fernando Po, and they will run up continents, and raise and
lower oceans to explain them, and they will doubtless get:
1 I am informed that the allowance made to these priests exceeds by
some pounds the. revenues Spain obtains from the Island. In Spanish
possessions alone is a supporting allowance made to missionaries though.
I m all the other colonies they obtain a government grant.
E 2