Preliminary: Trieste to Lisbon.
The glory of an explorer, I need hardly say, results
not so much from the extent, or the marvels of his
explorations, as from the consequences to which they
lead. Judged by this test, my little list of
discoveries has not been unfavoured of fortune.
Where two purblind fever-stricken men plodded painfully
through fetid swamp and fiery thorn-bush over the
Zanzibar-Tanganyika track, mission-houses and schools
may now be numbered by the dozen. Missionaries
bring consuls, and consuls bring commerce and colonisation.
On the Gold Coast of Western Africa, whence came the
good old ‘guinea,’ not a washing-cradle,
not a pound of quicksilver was to be found in 1862;
in 1882 five mining companies are at work; and in
1892 there will be as many score.
I had long and curiously watched from afar the movement
of the Golden Land, our long-neglected El Dorado,
before the opportunity of a revisit presented itself.
At last, in the autumn of 1881, Mr. James Irvine, of
Liverpool, formerly of the West African ‘Oil-rivers,’
and now a large mine-owner in the Gulf of Guinea,
proposed to me a tour with the object of inspecting
his concessions, and I proposed to myself a journey
of exploration inland. The Foreign Office liberally
gave me leave to escape the winter of Trieste, where
the ferocious Bora (nor’-nor’-easter) wages
eternal war with the depressing and distressing Scirocco,
or south-easter. Some One marvelled aloud and
said, ’You are certainly the first that ever
applied to seek health in the “genial and congenial
climate” of the West African Coast.’
But then Some One had not realised the horrors of
January and February at the storm-beaten head of the
ever unquiet Adriatic.
Thus it happened that on November 18,1881, after many
adieux and au revoirs, I found myself on board
the Cunard s.s. Demerara (Captain C. Jones),
bound for ‘Gib.’ My wife was to accompany
me as far as Hungarian Fiume.
The Cunard route to ‘Gib’ is decidedly
roundabout. We began with a run to Venice, usually
six hours from the Vice-Queen of the Adriatic:
it was prolonged to double by the thick and clinging
mist-fog. The sea-city was enjoying her usual
lethargy of repose after the excitement of the ‘geographical
Carnival,’ as we called the farcical Congress
of last September. She is essentially a summering
place. Her winter is miserable, neither city
nor houses being built for any but the finest of fine
weather; her ’society’-season lasts only
four months from St. Stephen’s Day; her traveller-seasons
are spring and autumn. We found all our friends
either in bed with bad colds, or on the wing for England
and elsewhere; we inhaled a quant. suff. of
choking vapour, even in the comfortable Britannia
Hotel; and, on the morning of the 23rd, we awoke to
find ourselves moored alongside of the new warehouses
on the new port of Hungarian, or rather Croatian,
Fiume.
