To the reader.—What this book wants is
not a simple Preface but an apology, and a very brilliant
and convincing one at that. Recognising this
fully, and feeling quite incompetent to write such
a masterpiece, I have asked several literary friends
to write one for me, but they have kindly but firmly
declined, stating that it is impossible satisfactorily
to apologise for my liberties with Lindley Murray
and the Queen’s English. I am therefore
left to make a feeble apology for this book myself,
and all I can personally say is that it would have
been much worse than it is had it not been for Dr.
Henry Guillemard, who has not edited it, or of course
the whole affair would have been better, but who has
most kindly gone through the proof sheets, lassoing
prepositions which were straying outside their sentence
stockade, taking my eye off the water cask and fixing
it on the scenery where I meant it to be, saying firmly
in pencil on margins “No you don’t,”
when I was committing some more than usually heinous
literary crime, and so on. In cases where his
activities in these things may seem to the reader
to have been wanting, I beg to state that they really
were not. It is I who have declined to ascend
to a higher level of lucidity and correctness of diction
than I am fitted for. I cannot forbear from
mentioning my gratitude to Mr. George Macmillan for
his patience and kindness with me,—a mere
jungle of information on West Africa. Whether
you my reader will share my gratitude is, I fear,
doubtful, for if it had not been for him I should
never have attempted to write a book at all, and in
order to excuse his having induced me to try I beg
to state that I have written only on things that I
know from personal experience and very careful observation.
I have never accepted an explanation of a native
custom from one person alone, nor have I set down things
as being prevalent customs from having seen a single
instance. I have endeavoured to give you an
honest account of the general state and manner of
life in Lower Guinea and some description of the various
types of country there. In reading this section
you must make allowances for my love of this sort
of country, with its great forests and rivers and
its animistic-minded inhabitants, and for my ability
to be more comfortable there than in England.
Your superior culture-instincts may militate against
your enjoying West Africa, but if you go there you
will find things as I have said.
January, 1897.
PREFACE TO THE ABRIDGED EDITION OF TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA.
