West African studies

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

The passengers were all at the tail end of their spirits, for Sierra Leone is the definite beginning of the Coast to the out-goer. You are down there when you leave it outward bound; it is indeed, the complement of Canary. Those going up out of West Africa begin to get excited at Sierra Leone; those going down into West Africa, particularly when it is the wet season, begin to get depressed. It did not, however, operate in this manner on me. I had survived Sierra Leone, I had enjoyed it; why, therefore, not survive other places, and enjoy them? Moreover, my scientific training, combined with close study of the proper method of carrying on the local conversation, had by now enabled me to understand its true spirit,—never contradict, and, if you can, help it onward. When going on deck about 6 o’clock that evening, I was alarmed to see our gallant captain in red velvet slippers. A few minutes later the chief officer burst on my affrighted gaze in red velvet slippers too. On my way hurriedly to the saloon I encountered the third officer similarly shod. When I recovered from these successive shocks, I carried out my mission of alarming the rest of the passengers, who were in the saloon enjoying themselves peacefully, and reported what I had seen. The old coasters, even including the silent ones, agreed with me that we were as good as lost so far as this world went; and the deaf gentleman went hurriedly on deck, we think “to take the sun,”—it was a way he had at any time of day, because “he had been studying about how to fix points for the Government—and wished to keep himself in practice.”

My fellow new-comers were perplexed; and one of them, a man who always made a point of resisting education, and who thought nothing of calling some of our instructor’s best information “Tommy Rot!” said, “I don’t see what can happen; we’re right out at sea, and it’s as calm as a millpond.”

“Don’t you, my young friend? don’t you?” sadly said an old Coaster. “Well, I’ll just tell you there’s precious little that can’t happen, for we’re among the shoals of St. Ann.”

The new-comers went on deck “just to look round;” and as there was nothing to be seen but a superb specimen of damp darkness, they returned to the saloon, one of them bearing an old chart sheet which he had borrowed from the authorities. Now that chart was not reassuring; the thing looked like an exhibition pattern of a prize shot gun, with the quantity of rocks marked down on it.

“Look here,” said an anxious inquirer; “why are some of these rocks named after the Company’s ships?”

“Think,” said the calm old Coaster.

“Oh, I say! hang it all, you don’t mean to say they’ve been wrecked here? Anyhow, if they have they got off all right. How is it the ‘Yoruba Rock’ and the ‘Gambia Rock?’ The ‘Yoruba’ and the ‘Gambia’ are running now.”

“Those,” explains the old Coaster kindly, “were the old ‘Yoruba’ and ‘Gambia.’ The ‘Bonny’ that runs now isn’t the old ‘Bonny.’ It’s the way with most of them, isn’t it?” he says, turning to a fellow old Coaster. “Naturally,” says his friend. “But this is the old original, you know, and it’s just about time she wrote up her name on one of these tombstones.” “You don’t save ships,” he continues, for the instruction of the new-comers, attentive enough now; “that go on the Kru coast, and if you get ashore you don’t save the things you stand up in—the natives strip you.”

“Cannibals!” I suggest.

“Oh, of course they are cannibals; they are all cannibals, are natives down here when they get the chance. But, that does not matter; you see what I object to is being brought on board the next steamer that happens to call crowded with all sorts of people you know, and with a lady missionary or so among them, just with nothing on one but a flyaway native cloth. [You remember D——?”] “Well,” says his friend. Strengthened by this support, he takes his turn at instructing the young critic, saying soothingly, “there, don’t you worry; have a good dinner.” (It was just being laid.) “For if you do get ashore the food is something beastly. But, after all, what with the sharks and the surf and the cannibals, you know the chances are a thousand to one that the worst will come to the worst and you live to miss your trousers.”