Alone in West Africa

CONTENTS

To those who have helped me I dedicate this record of my travels in West Africa. Without their help I could have done nothing; it was always most graciously and kindly given and I know not how to show my appreciation of it. “Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor,” is all I can give in return, unless some of them will take this book in very inadequate payment. Sir Charles Lucas, the head of the Colonial Office, gave me letters of introduction, Elder Dempster and Co. gave me a free passage, their captains and their officers put themselves out to help me, Sir George Denton welcomed me to West Africa, and after these comes a long string of people who each and all contributed so much to my welfare that I feel myself ungracious not to mention them all by name. I must thank Messrs Swanzy and Co., who helped me up the Volta and across the unknown country on the German border, and I were churl indeed if I did not remember those men and women of another nation, who received me out of the unknown, fed me, welcomed me, and smoothed my way for me. To each and all then, with this dedication, I offer my most grateful thanks.


Hereditary taste for wandering—A first adventure—“Little girls you must not be tired”—How Carlo was captured by savages in West Africa—Life in Ballarat—Nothing for a woman to do but marry—Marriage—Plans for wandering twenty years hence—Life in Warrnambool—Widowhood—May as well travel now there is nothing left—London for an aspirant in literature—Stony streets and drizzling rain—Scanty purse—Visit to the home of a rich African trader—Small successes—At last, at last on board s.s. Gando bound for the Gambia.
“There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate,
And a wealthy wife is she;
She breeds a breed o' rovin' men,
And casts them over sea.”
Sometimes when people ask me with wonder why I went to West Africa, why I wanted to go, I feel as if that wife must have grown old and feeble and will bear no more men to send across the sea. I hope not. I trust not. More than ninety years ago she sent my mother's father into the Honourable East India Co.'s service, and then, in later years with his ten children to colonise Van Diemen's Land. Nearly sixty years ago she sent my father, a slim young lad, out to the goldfields in Australia, and she breathed her spirit over the five boys and two girls who grew up in the new land. I cannot remember when any one of us would not have gone anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. It would not have been any good pointing out the dangers, because dangers at a distance are only an incentive. There is something in the thought of danger that must be overcome, that you yourself can help to overcome, that quickens the blood and gives an added zest to life.