The packing process interested me greatly; partly, I suppose, because it gave my housewifely instincts full play. It was like making preparations for a glorified picnic on a gigantic scale. Piles of provender, pyramids of stores of all kinds, cumbered the camp, and it fell to my lot to bring order out of chaos.
Necessaries and provisions for a five months' trip had to be packed, and all the "chop boxes," as they are called out there, had to be carefully marked and their contents scheduled. It was also necessary to see that each box weighed precisely 60 lb., neither more nor less, this being what each porter contracts to carry in Togo.
This was my work, and the motto given me for my guidance was "in every box a little of everything." This obviated the bother of opening a separate box for each article wanted on the march, one or two days' supplies being carried in each box, and used as required, after which the empty box could be discarded, and another one opened.
The most important single article amongst the host of stores was the quinine. Over and over again I was urged to look carefully after this. One can do without food in the bush, I was told; one can even do, for a while at all events, without water; but to be without quinine spells death.
Everybody takes it regularly out there, and quite as a matter of course, the usual dose being thirty-five grains or thereabouts each week. I took my little lot in two separate doses on Saturday and Sunday, and I don't mind confessing that, in the words of the popular ditty of the day, "I didn't want to do it." Only I had to. There was no escape. Schomburgk and Hodgson, our operator, who were the only other white people in the party at this stage of the journey, took theirs on the instalment principle, five grains each evening. But I preferred the other way.
At last everything was ready. Our one hundred carriers, collected and sorted with elaborate care from a dozen or more different villages, made a brave show. Altogether, with our personal staff, interpreters, and so forth, we had a retinue of exactly 120 followers; a greater, I reflected, than any I was ever likely to travel with in future, and certainly far in excess of any that I had been honoured with in the past.
On the evening of the 4th of November we entertained to dinner the good Fathers of the Catholic Mission from Atakpame, who had shown us many kindly courtesies during the time we had spent in their neighbourhood, and on the 5th we said good-bye to Kamina, and started on our journey.
Photo by
A. Mocsigay, Hamburg