The changes of temperature at Efulen being very sudden, and immediately felt within the thin walls of our house, we had need of fire, and we made a fireplace by a simple device for which we claimed joint credit. We cut a hole in the floor and built the ground up from below to the level of the floor. There was no chimney, not even a hole for the smoke to escape; but it got out easily enough through the opening (the width of the rafters) between the walls and the roof. Usually we found it very pleasant to sit around a good fire in such a fireplace, and the smoke troubled us but very little. Often however by reason of some sudden change of wind, or passing whirlwind, the smoke was seized with panic and spread in a black cloud through the room, so enveloping us and suffocating our senses that the fire itself was wholly inferential, on the principle that where there was so much smoke there must be some fire. Many a thought of siderial sublimity, in the moment of its utterance, was thus strangled in a mouthful of smoke and ashes.
The whole house was twenty-four feet long and sixteen feet wide. There were five rooms in all. The partitions were of bark and did not reach to the roof but were eight feet high. We had greatly improved our furniture. Those who admire mission furniture ought to have seen ours. Instead of the first table, which was a solid piece of log turned on end, Dr. Good and I sawed a cut six inches wide out of that same log, and Mr. Kerr put rustic legs into it. The chairs were made exactly the same way but cut from smaller logs.
In such a house, seated upon such chairs and around such a table we sat each evening after supper, indulging in a social hour. And while the votaries of the simple life in the far-away homeland were absorbed in the discussion of such questions as How to Avoid Luxuries, the subject of our discussion was frequently How to Obtain Comforts.
We were not always idle as we talked; for the evening brought its own duties, often of a strictly domestic nature Sometimes, as we sat around the table, Dr. Good was engaged in darning his socks, Mr. Kerr was mending his shoes, while in a state of despair I was trying to put a neat patch on a pair of trousers.
This magnificent house was regarded by the Bulu, not as a private house, but as a public place, equivalent to their palaver-houses. They sometimes showed resentment when we insisted upon the personal view of it and required them to ask admission before coming in, which they were disposed to do in crowds and at all times, even when we were eating. We were always willing to show them through it in groups, though it took considerable time. Some of them expressed their astonishment in vociferous yells, but others, deeply impressed, looked around them with a reverential air, like people in church. They came up the steps of the porch on their hands and knees, as Africans always do at first. The women and children seemed afraid of the height of it and it would not have been possible to get them to stand near the edge and look down from the dizzy height of nearly six feet. This timidity which at first I could not understand and which later disappeared, I imagine was not due so much to the height of the house above the ground but to their doubt regarding the safety of the floor. They had never walked on any floor but the solid ground, and they stepped upon ours as if they fully expected that it would break and let them through.
We had hoped that the climate of Efulen would be more healthful than that of the coast; but the health record since the station was established in 1893, has not been better than that of some other stations. Personally I believe that without doubt Efulen is more healthful than the immediate coast at Batanga; but I do not regard it as more healthful than Gaboon. It is certainly cooler and owing to its elevation of two thousand feet the air is not so humid and is more exhilarating. But the changes of temperature are very sudden and one becomes sensitive even to slight changes after being in the tropics a few years. In the light of similar experiments made elsewhere in West Africa it seems likely that less fever but more dysentery will prevail in those localities that have the higher altitudes, and less dysentery and more fever at the coast. To some persons fever is more dangerous; to others, dysentery; one may take his choice. At Efulen the sand-flies are very bad, morning and evening; but they cease their activity in the bright sunshine and also in the darkness of night.
There was a marked improvement in our food after some months, owing to our obtaining a better cook from the coast. The coast men were at first in doubt about their safety among the Bulu, and none of those would go with us who could get a position at the coast. But when a number of their men had come back alive their fear was removed and we obtained better help. Our first cook was a common workman who had never cooked before. It was part of my duty to instruct him. To the objection that I had never cooked anything in my life there was the compensating consideration that the best way in the world to learn anything is to be obliged to teach it to somebody else. The moment that I dreaded most in they course of the day was that in which the cook appeared coming towards me to get the order for dinner. For, with Irish stew, salmon and sausage, what opportunity is there for the exercise of a fine gastronomic imagination? It was the same thing from day to day; and if I derived no other good from the experience, I at least learned for all time to sympathize with housekeepers in the monotonous circularity of the domestic routine. Under my painstaking instructions the cook learned to wash his hands instead of simply wiping them on his hair or his legs, to place a tin of meat on the fire (after punching a hole in the top) and to take it off when I told him to do so; he learned to put plantains into the fire to roast and to take them out any time he happened to think about it. But he had not yet learned the difference between warm water and hot water when he tired of his work and returned to his beloved home, while I began on another candidate for kitchen honours. About the time I had taught him to boil water he also wearied of work and went home. Then I hired a Bulu boy and began to instruct him even with more assurance, for I was now an experienced teacher. The Bulu boy learned fast, though he evinced an incorrigible disposition to carry his dish towel on his head, or tied round his neck. Finally after an experience of trials and tribulations in many chapters I appealed to Mrs. Godduhm of Batanga who trained a cook specially for us; and he proved a saint of the frying-pan. It was this cook Eyambe, who afterwards, as I have told in writing on bush travel, when we were overtaken by night in the forest, insisted that I should take his shirt, and said: “You must take him and wear him please. This bush he no be too bad for we black man; but my heart cry for white man.”
It was several months before we had flour. Meantime, during my long fever, I conceived a desire for bread that became a craving like the hunger of famine as I grew weaker. Dr. Good sent word to Mrs. Good at the coast to send some bread as the carriers were returning immediately. He did not tell me that he had sent for it, lest by some mischance it might not come. But when it arrived and before he opened the package he told me it had come. Then they opened it; there were two loaves—all blue with mould and looking like poison; for it was the wet season and the carriers had been long on the way. The disappointment was too great. I told Dr. Good to cut off the worst part, on the outside, and burn the rest to a black crisp, and I ate the burned bread.
Flour arrived some weeks later when I was again on my feet; and then it occurred to us that none of us knew just what to do with it. For our cook had not yet arrived. One of us modestly confessed that he knew something about making biscuits. It was immediately voted that he take half a day off and exercise his culinary talent. The biscuits were made and appeared that evening on the table. When I surveyed them I suggested that it would be fitting that we should keep them as happy memorials of this first triumph. So saying I took the two that were coming to me and put them in my box of curios under the bed. I have them after all these years. Time works no change upon them.
Some months later I had a severe attack of dysentery and for three days had been allowed no food but the white of an egg. The physician, who happened to be visiting at Efulen at the time, told me one morning, in response to my eager inquiry, that he would allow me something a little heavier than the white of an egg. I immediately applied for a mince pie; for we had minced meat in tins. The proposition was promptly vetoed by the doctor. But a week later, when I was again on my feet, the request was granted. This mince pie was the most pretentious achievement that we had yet undertaken, and the most stupendous failure. If too many cooks spoil a pie, as it is said of some other things, I think that the whole community of Efulen, white and black, must have had a hand in that ill-fated pie, for a few persons could never have made so many mistakes. The oven was a pot set on an outside fire, with another pot turned upside down to cover it. An explosion occurred during the process of cooking. I do not know what caused it—possibly a stone bursting or the overheated pot cracking. At any rate it was a good opportunity for Dr. Good’s wit, who contended that the pie had exploded through the neglect to put air-holes in the top of it. And that night he presented a resolution that hereafter cooks should be obliged to punch air-holes in the top of every pie, lest they should explode, thereby endangering our property and our lives and entailing the loss of the pie itself. I suggested an amendment, that in no case should a cook be allowed to make such pies upon tin plates, lest the plates, not being observed, might be cut up and eaten with the pie. Efulen has now passed the experimental stage. One can get as good cooks and better food there than at the coast.