Last, but not least, I must chronicle my debts to
the ladies. First to those two courteous Portuguese
ladies, Donna Anna de Sousa Coutinho e Chichorro and
her sister Donna Maria de Sousa Coutinho, who did
so much for me in Kacongo in 1893, and have remained,
I am proud to say, my firm friends ever since.
Lady MacDonald and Miss Mary Slessor I speak of in
this book, but only faintly sketch the pleasure and
help they have afforded me; nor have I fully expressed
my gratitude for the kindness of Madame Jacot of Lembarene,
or Madame Forget of Talagouga. Then there are
a whole list of nuns belonging to the Roman Catholic
Missions on the South West Coast, ever cheery and
charming companions; and Frau Plehn, whom it was a
continual pleasure to see in Cameroons, and discourse
with once again on things that seemed so far off then—art,
science, and literature; and Mrs. H. Duggan, of Cameroons
too, who used, whenever I came into that port to rescue
me from fearful states of starvation for toilet necessaries,
and lend a sympathetic and intelligent ear to the
“awful sufferings” I had gone through,
until Cameroons became to me a thing to look forward
to.
When in the Canaries in 1892, I used to smile, I regretfully
own, at the conversation of a gentleman from the Gold
Coast who was up there recruiting after a bad fever.
His conversation consisted largely of anecdotes of
friends of his, and nine times in ten he used to say,
“He’s dead now.” Alas! my own
conversation may be smiled at now for the same cause.
Many of my friends mentioned even in this very recent
account of the Coast “are dead now.”
Most of those I learnt to know in 1893; chief among
these is my old friend Captain Boler, of Bonny, from
whom I first learnt a certain power of comprehending
the African and his form of thought.
I have great reason to be grateful to the Africans
themselves—to cultured men and women among
them like Charles Owoo, Mbo, Sanga Glass, Jane Harrington
and her sister at Gaboon, and to the bush natives;
but of my experience with them I give further details,
so I need not dwell on them here.
I apologise to the general reader for giving so much
detail on matters that really only affect myself,
and I know that the indebtedness which all African
travellers have to the white residents in Africa is
a matter usually very lightly touched on. No
doubt my voyage would seem a grander thing if I omitted
mention of the help I received, but—well,
there was a German gentleman once who evolved a camel
out of his inner consciousness. It was a wonderful
thing; still, you know, it was not a good camel, only
a thing which people personally unacquainted with
camels could believe in. Now I am ambitious
to make a picture, if I make one at all, that people
who do know the original can believe in—even
if they criticise its points—and so I give
you details a more showy artist would omit.
CHAPTER I. LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE AND THE GOLD COAST.
