Travels in West Africa | Page 8

I omitted mention of the help I received, but--well,
there was a German gentleman once who evolved a camel out of his
inner consciousness. It was a wonderful thing; still, you know, it was
not a good camel, only a thing which people personally unacquainted
with camels could believe in. Now I am ambitious to make a picture, if
I make one at all, that people who do know the original can believe
in--even if they criticise its points--and so I give you details a more
showy artist would omit.

CHAPTER I.
LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE AND THE GOLD COAST.

Setting forth how the voyager departs from England in a stout vessel

and in good company, and reaches in due course the Island of the
Grand Canary, and then the Port of Sierra Leone: to which is added
some account of this latter place and the comeliness of its women.
Wherein also some description of Cape Coast and Accra is given, to
which are added divers observations on supplies to be obtained there.
The West Coast of Africa is like the Arctic regions in one particular,
and that is that when you have once visited it you want to go back there
again; and, now I come to think of it, there is another particular in
which it is like them, and that is that the chances you have of returning
from it at all are small, for it is a Belle Dame sans merci.
I succumbed to the charm of the Coast as soon as I left Sierra Leone on
my first voyage out, and I saw more than enough during that voyage to
make me recognise that there was any amount of work for me worth
doing down there. So I warned the Coast I was coming back again and
the Coast did not believe me; and on my return to it a second time
displayed a genuine surprise, and formed an even higher opinion of my
folly than it had formed on our first acquaintance, which is saying a
good deal.
During this voyage in 1893, I had been to Old Calabar, and its
Governor, Sir Claude MacDonald, had heard me expatiating on the
absorbing interest of the Antarctic drift, and the importance of the
collection of fresh-water fishes and so on. So when Lady MacDonald
heroically decided to go out to him in Calabar, they most kindly asked
me if I would join her, and make my time fit hers for starting on my
second journey. This I most willingly did. But I fear that very sweet
and gracious lady suffered a great deal of apprehension at the prospect
of spending a month on board ship with a person so devoted to science
as to go down the West Coast in its pursuit. During the earlier days of
our voyage she would attract my attention to all sorts of marine objects
overboard, so as to amuse me. I used to look at them, and think it
would be the death of me if I had to work like this, explaining
meanwhile aloud that "they were very interesting, but Haeckel had
done them, and I was out after fresh- water fishes from a river north of
the Congo this time," fearing all the while that she felt me
unenthusiastic for not flying over into the ocean to secure the
specimens.
However, my scientific qualities, whatever they may amount to, did not

blind this lady long to the fact of my being after all a very ordinary
individual, and she told me so--not in these crude words, indeed, but
nicely and kindly--whereupon, in a burst of gratitude to her for
understanding me, I appointed myself her honorary aide-de- camp on
the spot, and her sincere admirer I shall remain for ever, fully
recognising that her courage in going to the Coast was far greater than
my own, for she had more to lose had fever claimed her, and she was in
those days by no means under the spell of Africa. But this is
anticipating.
It was on the 23rd of December, 1894, that we left Liverpool in the
Batanga, commanded by my old friend Captain Murray, under whose
care I had made my first voyage. On the 30th we sighted the Peak of
Teneriffe early in the afternoon. It displayed itself, as usual, as an
entirely celestial phenomenon. A great many people miss seeing it.
Suffering under the delusion that El Pico is a terrestrial affair, they look
in vain somewhere about the level of their own eyes, which are striving
to penetrate the dense masses of mist that usually enshroud its slopes
by day, and then a friend comes along, and gaily points out to the
newcomer the glittering white triangle somewhere near the zenith. On