Then we hired a motor-car for a drive up to the Hotel Monte. At least, the chauffeur who drove us called his conveyance a motor-car, but it was the awfullest type of its kind I ever came across. The bumping was terrific, but looking over and under to try to ascertain the reason I discovered to my amazement that one of the wheels was practically destitute of any vestige of a tyre. About every ten minutes, too, we had to stop dead, because the motor got hot, and there was no water available to cool it.
At last, after a thorough shaking-up, the worst I think I ever had in my life, we arrived at the hotel, and had our tea. The view from the summit made amends in part for the disagreeableness of the drive. It was superb. It struck me as being very strange, however, that the one side of the mountain is quite bleak and bare, whilst the other is beautifully green and wooded.
In Las Palmas I saw for the first time women washing the family linen at the sides of the roads in the streams that flow downwards through pebble and shingle. The Las Palmas roads, by the way, are atrocious; but the strongly built mail-coaches, each drawn by six mules, make light of their unevennesses.
At five o'clock we paid a visit to S.M.S. Bremen, which lay in the harbour near the Henny Woermamm. Three officers belonging to her had accompanied us as far as Las Palmas, and we had been great friends with them, and now they invited us to come on board their vessel for a farewell visit. Champagne was produced, and I took a couple of glasses and found they did me good, the heat being very great, and the ride up to the Hotel Monte and back dreadfully dry and dusty.
Our captain had fixed six o'clock as the hour of departure, but we did not actually start until eleven. The ship seemed almost unnaturally quiet now that the naval officers had left her, for they were always bright and jolly, and I must confess that I had got to like "my little boys in blue," as I had christened them, very much indeed. However, I am naturally light-hearted, so I quickly banished sadness, consoling myself with the reflection that there are, after all, heaps of nice men in the world.
At length Lome hove in sight, and while I was being lowered, together with three other passengers, into the boat that was to take us ashore, the band struck up a song that was pretty popular amongst the passengers on board, "Do you think that I love you because I have danced with you?" and on deck stood an army lieutenant who was going to join his regiment in Kamerun, and with whom I had often danced. I was convulsed with laughter, because I knew that it was all his work. After this ditty came "The Girl I Left Behind Me," and looking back from the boat I saw my dear old captain, and an elderly civilian gentleman who had paid me a good deal of attention, standing on deck with a huge bath towel between them, on which they were pretending to dry their tears. It was exceedingly comical.
Landing at Lome is not at all a simple matter. First one has to be lowered into the boat from the deck of the steamer in what is called a "mammy chair"—mammy being a coast term for woman. It is a sort of wooden skip, something like one of the old-fashioned swing-boats one sees at village fairs.
The passage from ship to shore is exciting, and in bad weather it is even considered dangerous, and there is considerable surf; but the sea happened fortunately to be calm when we got there. Otherwise our arrival was inopportune. On the day before a member of the tiny European colony there had died of yellow fever, and all the flags were at half-mast.
This rather cast a damper over our spirits, although nothing could exceed the kindness and courtesy shown us by the Togo officials, from the highest to the lowest. The custom-house officers hurried over the necessary formalities as quickly as possible; and although the governor, H.H. the Duke of Mecklenburg, was unable to receive us, being engaged with Sir Hugh Clifford, Governor of the Gold Coast Colony, who had come to pay him an official visit, he had kindly arranged quarters for us, and done everything in his power to welcome us and make us comfortable.
His adjutant, Lieutenant von Rentzel, who was in hospital at the time, put his house and servants at the disposal of our party, and we had a jolly dinner party there that night, at which I played the part of hostess. He also lent me personally a rickshaw, and a boy to draw it, so that I might be able to see what there was to see in and about the town with the minimum of fatigue and inconvenience.