If I liked to try he would get me a canoe to go up the river in, and give me letters to their black agents, for I must not expect to meet any white men. And again he looked doubtful.
If I liked; of course I liked. I am always ready to plunge in and take any risks in the future, provided the initial steps are not too difficult, and once he found I wanted to go, Mr Rowe made the initial steps very easy indeed.
First he very nobly lent me twenty-five pounds in threepenny bits, for I had got beyond the region of banks before I realised it, and had only two pounds in hand; he engaged a canoe and six men for me; he gave me letters to all Swanzy's agents in the back-country; and finally, when I had said goodbye to the D.C. and his wife, he gave me luncheon and had me rolled down on a trolley by the little hand railway, if I may coin a word, that runs through the swamp and connects Akuse with its port Amedika on the Volta.
This was a new mode of progression rather pleasant than otherwise, for as it was down-hill to the river it couldn't have been hard on the men who were pushing. I had come from the Commissioner's to the town on a cart, proudly sitting on top of my gear, and drawn by half a dozen Kroo boys; now my luggage went before me on another trolley, and my way was punctuated by the number of parcels that fell off. My clothes were in a tin uniform case supposed, mistakenly, I afterwards found, to be air-tight and watertight, and I did not want this to fall off and break open, because in it I had stowed all my money—twenty-five pounds all in threepenny bits is somewhat of a care, I find. It escaped, but my bedding went, making a nice cushion for the typewriter which followed it.
The port Amedika, as may be seen from the picture, is very primitive, and though twice a week the little mail steamer comes up coaly and black as her own captain, on the occasion of my departure there were only canoes in the harbour.
My canoe was one of the most ordinary structures, with a shelter in the middle under which I had my chair put up. My gear was stowed fore and aft, and six canoe-men took charge.