CH A P T E R V
VOYAGE DOWN COAST
Wherein the voyager before leaving the Rivers discourses on dangers, to
which is added some account of Mangrove swamps and the creatures
that abide therein, including the devil of an uncle.
My voyage down coast in the Benguella was a very
pleasant one and full of instruction, for Mr. Fothefgill, who
was her purser, had in former years resided in Congo Français
as a merchant, and to Congo Français I was bound
with an empty, hold as regards local knowledge of the district.
He was one of that class of men, of which you most
frequently find representatives among the merchants, who do
not possess the power so many men along here do possess (a
power that always amazes me), of living for a considerable
time in a district without taking any interest in it, keeping
their whole attention concentrated on the point of how
long it will be before their time comes to get out of it.
Mr. Fothergill evidently had much knowledge and experience
of the Fernan Vaz district and its natives. He had, I should
say, overdone his experiences with the natives, as far as.
personal comfort and pleasure at the time went, having been
nearly killed and considerably chivied by them, i Now I do
not wish a man, however much I may deplore his total lack
of local knowledge, to go so far as this. Mr. Fothergill
gave his accounts of these incidents calmly, and in an undecorated
way that gave them a power and convincingness
verging on being unpleasant, although useful, to a person
who was going into the district where they had occurred, for
one felt there was no mortal reason why one should not personally
get involved in similar affairs. And 1 must here acknowledge
the great subsequent service Mr. Fothergill’s wonderfully
accurate descriptions of the peculiar characteristics of the
Ogowe forests were to me when I subsequently came to deal
with these forests on my own account, as every district of forest
has peculiar characteristics of its own which you require to
know. I should like here to speak of West Coast
dangers because I fear you may think that I am careless of,
or do not believe in them, neither of which is the case.
The more you know of the West Coast of Africa, the more
I you realise its dangers. For example, on your first voyage
‘ out you hardly believe the stories of fever told by the old
I Coasters. That is because you do not then understand the type
of man who is telling them, a man who goes to his death with
a joke in his teeth. But a short experience of your own,
particularly if you happen on a place having one of its
periodic epidemics, soon demonstrates that the underlying
ghorror of the thing is there, a rotting corpse which the old
' Coaster has dusted over with jokes to cover it so that it hardly
shows at a distance, but which, when you come yourself to
live alongside, you soon become cognisant of. Many men,
when they have got ashore and settled, realise this, and let the
horror get a grip on them; a state briefly and locally described
as funk, and a state that usually ends fatally ; and you
can hardly blame them. Why, I know of a case myself. A
young man who had never been outside an English country
town before in his life, from family reverses had to take
a situation as book-keeper down in the Bights. The factory
he was going to was in an isolated out-of-the-way place and
not in a settlement, and when the ship called off it, he was
put ashore in one of the ship’s boats with his belongings, and
a case or so of goods. There were only the firm’s beach-boys
¡down at the surf, and as the steamer was in a hurry the officer
tfrom the ship did not go up to the factory with him, but said
¡good-bye and left him alone with a set of naked savages as
he thought, but really of good kindly Kru boys on the beach,
p ie could not understand what they said, nor they what he
said, and so he walked up to the house and on to the
verandah and tried to find the Agent he had come out to