Travels in West Africa | Page 3

hope every reader of this work will remember
that I am speaking of that last zone, the zone wherein white races
cannot colonise in a true sense of the word, but which is nevertheless a
vitally important region to a great manufacturing country like England,
for therein are vast undeveloped markets wherein she can sell her
manufactured goods and purchase raw material for her manufactures at
a reasonable rate.
Having a rooted, natural, feminine hatred for politics I have no
inclination to become diffuse on them, as I have on the errors of other
people's cooking or ideas on decoration. I know I am held to be too
partial to France in West Africa; too fond of pointing out her brilliant
achievements there, too fond of saying the native is as happy, and
possibly happier, under her rule than under ours; and also that I am
given to a great admiration for Germans; but this is just like any

common-sense Englishwoman. Of course I am devoted to my own
John; but still Monsieur is brave, bright, and fascinating; Mein Herr is
possessed of courage and commercial ability in the highest degree, and,
besides, he takes such a lot of trouble to know the real truth about
things, and tells them to you so calmly and carefully--and our own
John--well, of course, he is everything that's good and great, but he
makes a shocking fool of himself at times, particularly in West Africa.
I should enjoy holding what one of my justly irritated expurgators used
to call one of my little thanksgiving services here, but I will not; for,
after all, it would be impossible for me to satisfactorily thank those
people who, since my publication of this book, have given me help and
information on the subject of West Africa. Chief amongst them have
been Mr. A. L. Jones, Sir. R. B. N. Walker, Mr. Irvine, and Mr. John
Holt. I have not added to this book any information I have received
since I wrote it, as it does not seem to me fair to do so. My only regret
regarding it is that I have not dwelt sufficiently on the charm of West
Africa; it is so difficult to explain such things; but I am sure there are
amongst my readers people who know by experience the charm some
countries exercise over men--countries very different from each other
and from West Africa. The charm of West Africa is a painful one: it
gives you pleasure when you are out there, but when you are back here
it gives you pain by calling you. It sends up before your eyes a vision
of a wall of dancing white, rainbow-gemmed surf playing on a shore of
yellow sand before an audience of stately coco palms; or of a great
mangrove- watered bronze river; or of a vast aisle in some forest
cathedral: and you hear, nearer to you than the voices of the people
round, nearer than the roar of the city traffic, the sound of the surf that
is breaking on the shore down there, and the sound of the wind talking
on the hard palm leaves and the thump of the natives' tom- toms; or the
cry of the parrots passing over the mangrove swamps in the evening
time; or the sweet, long, mellow whistle of the plantain warblers calling
up the dawn; and everything that is round you grows poor and thin in
the face of the vision, and you want to go back to the Coast that is
calling you, saying, as the African says to the departing soul of his
dying friend, "Come back, come back, this is your home."
M. H. KINGSLEY. October, 1897.

[NOTE.--The following chapters of the first edition are not included in
this edition: --Chap. ii., The Gold Coast; Chap. iv., Lagos Bar; Chap. v.,
Voyage down Coast; Chap. vi., Libreville and Glass; Chap. viii.,
Talagouga; Chap. xvi., Congo Francais; Chap. xvii., The Log of the
Lafayette; Chap. xviii., From Corisco to Gaboon; Chap. xxviii., The
Islands in the Bay of Amboises; Appendix ii., Disease in West Africa;
Appendix iii., Dr. A. Gunther on Reptiles and Fishes; Appendix iv.,
Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, and Hemiptera.]

INTRODUCTION.

Relateth the various causes which impelled the author to embark upon
the voyage.
It was in 1893 that, for the first time in my life, I found myself in
possession of five or six months which were not heavily forestalled,
and feeling like a boy with a new half-crown, I lay about in my mind,
as Mr. Bunyan would say, as to what to do with them. "Go and learn
your tropics," said Science. Where on earth am I to go? I wondered, for
tropics are tropics wherever found, so I got down an atlas and saw that