Truly, I think the sun must pour down here in the hot season, judging by my experience in the cool. The hot season is not in June, as one might expect, for then come the rains, when no white man, and, indeed, I think no black man foreign to the place, stays up the river, but in March and April. I do not propose to visit McCarthy in the hot season. In the cool the blazing sun overhead, and the reflected glare from the water, played havoc with my complexion. I did not think about it till the District Commissioner brought the fact forcibly home to me. He was a nice young fellow, but the sort of man who is ruin to England as a colonising nation, because he makes it so patent to everyone that he bitterly resents colonising on his own account, and will allow no good in the country wherein lies his work.
I asked him if he did not think of bringing out his wife.
He looked at me a moment, seeking words to show his opinion of a woman who insisted upon going where he thought no white woman was needed.
“My wife,” he said, with emphasis that marked his surprise; “my wife? Why, my wife has such a delicate complexion that she has to wash her face always in distilled water.”
It was sufficient. I understood when I looked in the glass that night the reproof intended to be conveyed. In all probability the lady was not quite such a fool as her husband intimated; but one thing is quite certain, she was buying her complexion at a very heavy cost if she were going to allow it to deprive her of the joy of seeing new countries.
McCarthy was very busy; dainty cutters, frail canoes, and grimy steamers crowded the wharves, and to and fro across the great river, 500 yards wide here, the ferry, a great canoe, went backwards and forwards the livelong day, and I could just see gathered together herds of the pretty cattle of the country that looked not unlike Alderneys.
When we left the island the river was narrower, so that we seemed to glide along between green walls, where the birds were singing and the monkeys barking and crying and whimpering like children. Again and again we passed trees full of them, sometimes little grey monkeys, and sometimes great dog-faced fellows that rumour says would tear you to pieces if you offended them and had the misfortune to fall into their hands. Now and then a hippopotamus rose, a reminder of an age that has gone by, and always on the mud-banks were the great crocodiles. And the trading-stations were, I think, more solitary and more picturesque. The little tendas were even more frail, just rickety little structures covered with a mat of crinting, for the river rises here very high, and these wharves are sure to be carried away in the rainy season. And then come hills, iron-stone hills, and tall, dry grass ten and twelve feet high. Sometimes we stopped where there was not even the frailest of tendas, and one night, just as the swift darkness was falling, the steamer drew up at a little muddy landing-stage, where there was a break in the trees, and three dugouts were drawrn up. Here she became wildly hysterical, and I began to think something would give way, until all shrieks died down as a tall black man, draped in blue, and with a long Dane gun across his shoulder, stalked out of the bush. Savage Africa personified. We had stopped to land a passenger, a mammy with her head tied up in a handkerchief, and a motley array of boxes, bundles, calabashes, chairs, saucepans, and fowls that made a small boat-load. She waved a farewell to the French trader as her friends congregated upon the shore and examined her baggage.
“She is an important woman,” said he; “the wife of a black trader in the town behind there. He's a Christian.”
“He's got a dozen wives,” said the Commissioner.
“His official wife, then. Oh, you know the sort. I guarantee she keeps order in the compound.”