I always made it a practice to rise early in West Africa, because the early morning is the most delightful time, and he who stays in bed till halfpast seven or eight is missing one of the pure delights of life. When I had had my early breakfast, I went to inspect the town. The market lies but a stone's throw from Government House, and here all the natives were to be found, and the white men's servants buying provisions for the day. To me, before I went to Africa, a negro was a negro, and I imagined them all of one race. My mind was speedily disabused of that error. The negro has quite as many nationalities, is quite as distinct as the European. Here in this little colony was a most cosmopolitan gathering, for the south and north meet, and Yorubas from Lagos, Gas from Accra, mongrel Creoles from Sierra Leone meet the Senegalese from the north, the Hausas from away farther east; and the natives themselves are the Mohammedan Jolloff, who is an expert river-man, the Mandingo, and the heathen Jolah, who as yet is low down in the scale of civilisation, and wears but scanty rags. And all these people were to be found in the market in the early morning. It is enclosed with a high wall, the interior is cemented, and gutters made to carry off moisture, and it is all divided into stalls, and really not at all unlike the alfresco markets you may see on Saturdays in the poorer quarters of London. Here they sell meat, most uninviting looking, but few butchers' shops look inviting; fish—very strange denizens come out of the sea in the Gambia; native peppers, red and green; any amount of rice, which is the staple food of the people, and all the tropical fruits, paws-paws, pine-apples, and dark-green Coast oranges, which are very sweet; bananas, yellow and pink, and great bunches of green plantains. They are supposed to sell only on the stalls, for which they pay a small, a very small rental; but, like true natives, they overflow on to the ground, and as you walk you must be careful not to tread on neat little piles of peppers, enamelled iron-ware basins full of native rice, or little heaps of purple kola-nuts—that great sustaining stimulant of Africa.

There were about half a dozen white women in Bathurst when I was there, including one who had ostracised herself by marrying a black man; but none ever came to the market, therefore my arrival created great excitement, and one good lady, in a are held, half the houses are owned by rich negroes, Africans they very naturally prefer to be called, but the poorer people live all crowded together in Jolloff town, whither my guide led me, and introduced me to her yard. A Jolloff never speaks about his house, but about his “yard.” Even Government House he knows as “Governor's Yard.”

Jolloff town looks as if if were made of basket-work; they call it here “crinting,” and all the walls of the houses and of the compounds are made of this split bamboo neatly woven together. For Bathurst is but a strip of sand-bank just rescued from the mangrove swamp round, and these crinted walls serve excellently to keep it together when the strong Harmattan threatens to blow the whole place bodily into the swamp behind. My friend's home was a very nice specimen of its class, the first barbaric home I had ever seen. The compound was surrounded by the crinted walls, and inside again were two or three huts, also built of crinting, with a thatched roof. As a rule I am afraid the Jolloff is not clean, but my pilot's wife had a neat little home. There were no windows in it, but the strong sunlight came through the crinted walls, and made a subdued light and a pattern of the basket-work on the white, sanded floor; there were three long seats of wood, neatly covered with white napkins edged with red, a table, a looking-glass, and a basket of bread, for it appeared she was a trader in a small way. It was all very suitable and charming. Outside in the compound ran about chickens, goats, a dog or two, and some small children, another woman's children, alas, for she told me mournfully she had none.

It is easy enough to make a friend; the difficulty is to know where to stop. I am afraid I had soon exhausted all my interest in my Jolloff woman, while to her I was a great source of pride, and she wanted me to come and see her every day. At first she told me she “fear too much” to come to “Governor's Yard,” but latterly, I regret to state, that wholesome fear wore off, and she called to see me every day, and I found suitable conversation a most difficult thing to provide, so that I grew to look very anxiously indeed for the steamer that was to take me up the river.

The Government steamer, the Mansikillah, had broken down. She was old, and it was, I was told, her chronic state, but I was bitterly disappointed till the Governor told me he had made arrangements for me to go in the French Company's steamer, the Mungo Park. She was going up the river with general cargo; she was coming down again with some of the groundnut crop, little nuts that grow on the root of a trefoil plant, nuts the Americans call pea-nuts, and the English monkey-nuts.

I had to wait a little till there came a messenger one day to say that the steamer was ready at last, and would start that afternoon. So I went down to the little wharf with my servant, my baggage, and the travelling Commissioner, who was also going up the river.

The Mungo Park was a stern-wheeler of 150 tons, drawing six feet of water, and when first I saw her you could hardly tell steamer from wharf, so alive were they both with crowded, shrieking people, all either wanting to get on, or to get off, which was apparently not quite clear. After a little wait, out of chaos came a courteous French trader and a gangway. The gangway took us on board, and the trader, whose English was as good as mine, explained that he, too, was going up the river to look after the houses belonging to his company along the banks. Then he showed me my quarters, and I was initiated into the mysteries of travelling in the interior of Africa. There was but one cabin on board the Mungo Park, a place about eighteen feet square amidship; in it were two bunks, a table, a couple of long seats, a cupboard, and washing arrangements. The sides were all of Venetian shutters, which could be taken away when not wanted. It was all right in a way, but I must confess for a moment I wondered how on earth two men and a woman were to stow away there. Then the trader explained. I should have the cabin to sleep in, and we all three would have our meals there together, while arrangements might be made by which we could all in turn bathe and wash. I learned my first lesson: you accept extraordinary and unconventional situations, if you are wise, with a smile and without a blush in Africa. The Commissioner and the trader, I found on further inquiry, would sleep on the top of the cabin, which was also what one might call the promenade deck. I arranged my simple belongings, and went up on deck to look, and I found that it was reached by way of the boiler, across which some steps and a little, coaly hand-rail led. It would have been nice in the Arctic regions, but on a tropical afternoon it had its drawbacks. On the deck I was met by a vociferous black man, who was much too busy to do more than give an obsequious welcome, for it appeared he was the captain. I shall always regret I did not take his photograph as he leaned over the railing, shouting and gesticulating to his men, and to the would-be passengers, and to the men who were struggling to get the cargo on board. He cursed them, I should think, all impartially. The French trader said he was an excellent captain, and he remains in my mind as the most unique specimen of the genus I have ever seen. He wore a khaki coat and very elderly tweed trousers, split behind; his feet were bare; he did not pander to that vitiated taste which demands underlinen, or at least a shirt, but, seeing it was the cold weather, he adorned his black skull with a woolly cap with ear-flaps, such as Nansen probably took on his North-Pole expedition.

There was a great deal of cargo—cotton goods, sugar, salt, coffee, dates; things that the French company were taking up to supply their factories on the river, and long before it was stowed the deck passengers began crowding on board. Apparently there was no provision whatever made for them; they stowed on top of the cargo, just wherever they could find a place, and every passenger—there were over ninety of them—had apparently something to say as to the accommodation, or the want of accommodation, and he or she said it at the very top of his or her voice in Jolloff or Mandingo or that bastard English which is a lingua franca all along the Coast. Not that it mattered much what language they said it in, because no one paid the least attention; such a babel have I never before heard. And such a crowd as they were. The steamer provided water carriage only for the deck passengers, so that they had their cooking apparatus, their bedding, their food, their babies, their chickens (unfortunate wretches tied by one leg), and, if they could evade the eagle eye of the French trader, their goats. The scene was bedlam let loose to my unaccustomed eyes. We were to tow six lighters as well, and each of them also had a certain number of passengers. As we started it seemed likely we should sweep away a few dozen who were hanging on in the most dangerous places to the frailest supports. Possibly they wouldn't have been missed. I began to understand why the old slaver was callous. It was impossible to feel humane in the midst of such a shrieking, howling mob. The siren gave wild and ear-piercing shrieks; there were yells from the wharf, more heartrending yells from the steamer, a minor accompaniment from the lighters, bleating of goats, cackling of protesting fowls, crying of children, and we were off without casualty, and things began to settle down.

I had thought my quarters cramped, but looking at the deck passengers, crowding fore and aft over the coals and on top of the boiler, I realised that everything goes by comparison, and that they were simply palatial. I had eighteen feet square of room all to myself to sleep in. It had one drawback. There was £5000 worth of silver stowed under the seats, and therefore the trader requested me to lock the doors and fasten the shutters lest some of the passengers should take a fancy to it. His view was that plenty of air would come through the laths of the shutters. I did not agree with the French trader, and watched with keen interest those boxes of silver depart all too slowly. I would gladly have changed places and let him and the Commissioner have my cabin if only I might have taken their place on the deck above. But on the deck was the wheel, presided over by the black captain, or the equally black and more ragged mate, so it was not to be thought of.

And that deck was something to remember. There were the large water-bottles there and the filter, the trader's bed in a neat little roll, the Commissioner's bed, draped with blue mosquito curtains, the hencoops with the unhappy fowls that served us for food, the Commissioner's washing apparatus on top of one of the coops, for he was a young man of resource, the rest of his kit, his rifle, his bath, his cartridge-belt, his dog, a few plates and cups and basins, a couple of sieves for rice, two or three stools, the elderly black kettle, out of the spout of which the skipper and the mate sucked refreshment as if they had been a couple of snipe, and last, but not least, there was the French company's mails for their employees up river. I was told the correspondence always arrived safely, and so it is evident that in some things we take too much trouble. The captain attended to the sorting of the mails when he had time to spare from his other duties. I have seen him with a much-troubled brow sorting letters at night by the light of a flickering candle, and, when the mails overflowed the deal box, parcels were stacked against the railing, newspapers leaned for support against the wheel, and letters collogued in friendly fashion on the deck with the black kettle.

For the first seventeen miles the little ship, towing her lighters behind and alongside, went up a river that was like a sea, so far away were the mangrove swamps that are on either side. Then we reached Fort St James, and the river narrows. Very pathetic are the ruins of Fort St James. No one lives there now; no one has lived there for many a long day, but you see as you pass and look at the crumbling stones of the old fort why West Africa gained in the minds of men so evil a reputation. The place is but a rocky islet, with but a few scanty trees upon it; above is the brazen sky, below the baked earth, on which the tropical sun pours down with all the added heat gathered from the glare of the river. They must have died shut up in Fort St James in those far-away days. Tradition, too, says that the gentlemen of the company of soldiers who were stationed there were for ever fighting duels, and that the many vacancies in the ranks were not always due to the climate. But the heat and the monotony would conduce to irritability, and when a hasty word had to be upheld at the sword's point, it is no wonder if they cursed the Coast with a bitterness that is only given to the land of regrets. But all honour to those dead-and-gone Englishmen. They upheld the might of Britain, and her rights in the trade in palm oil and slaves and ivory that even then came down the river. And if they died—now, now at last, after many weary years, their descendants are beginning dimly to realise, as they never did, the value of the land for which they gave their lives.

It is the custom to speak with contempt of a mangrove swamp, as if in it no beauty could lie, as if it were only waste land—dreary, depressing, ugly. Each of those epithets may be true—I cannot say—except the last, and that is most certainly a falsehood. What my impressions would be if I lived in the midst of it day after day I cannot say, but to a passer-by the mangrove swamp has a beauty of its own.

When first I saw the Gambia I was fascinated, and found no words too strong for its beauty; and, having gone farther, I would take back not one word of that admiration. But I am like the lover who is faithless to his first mistress—he acknowledges her charm, but he has seen someone else; so now, as I sit down to write, I am reminded that the Volta is more ravishingly lovely, and that if I use up all my adjectives on the Gambia I shall have no words to describe my new mistress. Therefore must I modify my transports, and so it seems to me I am unfair.

As we moved up the river we could plainly see the shore on either side, the dense mangrove swamp, doubled by its reflection, green and beautiful against its setting of blue sky and clear river. Crocodiles lay basking in the golden sunshine on the mud-banks, white egrets flew slowly from tree to tree, a brown jolah-king, an ibis debased for some sin in the youth of the world, sailed slowly across the water, a white fishing-eagle poised himself on high, looking for his prey, a slate-blue crane came across our bows, a young pelican just ahead was taking his first lesson in swimming, and closer to the bank we could see king-fishers, bright spots of colour against the dark green of the mangrove.

“The wonder of the Tropics”—the river seemed to be whispering at first, and then fairly shouted—“can you deny beauty to this river?” and I, with the cool Harmattan blowing across the water to put the touch of moisture in the air it needed, was constrained to answer that voice, which none of the others seemed to hear, “Truly I cannot.”

It would be impossible to describe in detail all the little wharves at which we stopped; besides, they all bore a strong family resemblance to one another, differing only when they were in the upper or lower river. Long before I could see any signs of human habitation the steamer's skipper was wildly agitated over the mails, wrinkling up his brows and pawing them over with his dirty black hands—mine were dirtier, at least, they showed more, and the way to the deck was so coaly it was impossible to keep clean. Then he would hang on to a string, which resulted in the most heartrending wails from the steamer's siren; a corrugated-iron roof would show up among the surrounding greenery, and a little wharf, or “tenda,” as they call them here, would jut out into the stream. These tendas are frail-looking structures built of the split poles of the rhon palm. There seem to be as many varieties of palm as there are of eucalyptus, all much alike to the uninitiated eye.

The tendas look as if they were only meant to be walked on by bare feet—certainly very few of the feet rise beyond a loose slipper; and whether it was blazing noonday or pitchy darkness only made visible by a couple of hurricane lanterns of one candle-power, the tenda was crowded with people come to see the arrival of the steamer, which is a White-Star liner or a Cunarder to them—people in cast-off European clothing and the ubiquitous tourist cap, Moslems in fez and flowing white or blue robes, mammies with gaily coloured handkerchiefs bound round their heads and still gayer skirts and cloths, little children clad in one garment or no garments at all, beautiful grey donkeys that carry the groundnuts or the trade goods, fawn-coloured country cattle, and goats and sheep, black, white, and brown—and every living creature upon that tenda did his little best towards the raising of a most unholy din. And the steamer was not to be beaten. Jolloff and Man-dingo too was shrieked; the captain took a point of vantage, shook his black fist at intervals, and added his quota of curses in Jolloff, Mandingo, Senegalese, and broken French and English, and the cargo was unloaded with a clatter, clatter, punctuated by earpiercing yells that made one wonder if the slaving days had not come back, and these lumpers were not shrieking in agony.

But, when I could understand, the remarks were harmless enough. What the black man says to his friends and acquaintances when he speaks in his own tongue I cannot say, but when he addresses them in English I can vouch for it his conversation is banal to the last degree. In the general din I catch some words I understand, and I listen.

“Ah, Mr Jonsing, dat you, sah? How you do, sah?” Mr Jonsing's health is quite satisfactory; and Mrs Jonsing, and Miss Mabel, and Miss Gladys, and Mr Edward were all apparently in perfect health, for they were inquired after one by one at the top of the interested friend's voice. Then there were many wishes for the continuance of the interesting family in this happy state, and afterwards there was an excursion into wider realms of thought.

“You 'member dat t'ing you deny las' mont', sah?” The question comes tentatively.

“I deny it dis mont', sah,” Mr Jonsing answers promptly, which is, so far, satisfactory, as showing that Mr Jonsing has at least a mind of his own, and is not to be bounced into lightly changing it. I might have heard more, and so gleaned some information into the inner life of these people, but unfortunately Mr Jonsing now got in the way of the stalwart captain, and being assisted somewhat ungently by the collar of his ragged shirt to the tenda, he launched out into curses that were rude, to put it mildly, and my knowledge of his family affairs came to an abrupt conclusion.

In the breaks in the mangrove, Balanghar is one of them, there is, of course, a little hard earth—the great shady ficus elasticus, beautiful silk-cotton trees, and cocoa-nut palms grow; the traders' yards have white stone posts at the four corners marking the extent of their leaseholds, and in these enclosures are the trading-houses, the round huts of the native helpers, and the little crinted yards, in which are poured the groundnuts, which are the occasion of all this clatter.

One hundred and fifty miles up we came to McCarthy Island, five miles long by a mile wide, and markedly noticeable because here the great river changes its character entirely, the mangrove swamps are left behind, and open bush of mahogany, palm, and many another tree and creeper, to me nameless, takes its place. On McCarthy Island is a busy settlement, with the town marked into streets, lined with native shops and trading-houses. There are great groundnut stores along the river front, seven, or perhaps eight white people, a church, a hospital, obsolete guns, and an old powder magazine, that shows that in days gone by this island was only held by force of arms.

They tell me that McCarthy Island is one of the hottest places in the world, though that morning the river had been veiled in white mist, the thermometer was down to between 50 deg. and 60 deg., and my boy had brought in my early-morning tea with his head tied up in a pocket handkerchief like an old woman; and at midday it was but little over 90 deg., but this was December, the coolest season of the year. I discussed the question with a negro lady with her head bound up in a red-silk handkerchief. She was one of our passengers, and had come up trading in kola-nuts. Kola-nuts are hard, corner-shaped nuts that grow on a very handsome tree about the size of an oak, which means a small tree in Africa. They are much esteemed for their stimulating and sustaining properties. I have tried them, and I found them only bitter, so perhaps I do not want stimulating. A tremendous trade is done in them, and all along the coast you meet the traders, very often, as in this case, women. I had seen it in her eye for some time that she wanted to exchange ideas with me, and at last the opportunity came. She told me she came from Sierra Leone.

“You know Freetown?” That is the capital. I said I had heard it was the hottest place in the world.

“Pooh!” She tossed her head in scorn. “You wait two mont's; it be fool to M'Cart'y! You gat no rest, no sleep”; and she showed her white teeth and stretched out her black hands as if to say that no words of hers could do justice to this island.

Truly, I think the sun must pour down here in the hot season, judging by my experience in the cool. The hot season is not in June, as one might expect, for then come the rains, when no white man, and, indeed, I think no black man foreign to the place, stays up the river, but in March and April. I do not propose to visit McCarthy in the hot season. In the cool the blazing sun overhead, and the reflected glare from the water, played havoc with my complexion. I did not think about it till the District Commissioner brought the fact forcibly home to me. He was a nice young fellow, but the sort of man who is ruin to England as a colonising nation, because he makes it so patent to everyone that he bitterly resents colonising on his own account, and will allow no good in the country wherein lies his work.

I asked him if he did not think of bringing out his wife.

He looked at me a moment, seeking words to show his opinion of a woman who insisted upon going where he thought no white woman was needed.

“My wife,” he said, with emphasis that marked his surprise; “my wife? Why, my wife has such a delicate complexion that she has to wash her face always in distilled water.”

It was sufficient. I understood when I looked in the glass that night the reproof intended to be conveyed. In all probability the lady was not quite such a fool as her husband intimated; but one thing is quite certain, she was buying her complexion at a very heavy cost if she were going to allow it to deprive her of the joy of seeing new countries.

McCarthy was very busy; dainty cutters, frail canoes, and grimy steamers crowded the wharves, and to and fro across the great river, 500 yards wide here, the ferry, a great canoe, went backwards and forwards the livelong day, and I could just see gathered together herds of the pretty cattle of the country that looked not unlike Alderneys.

When we left the island the river was narrower, so that we seemed to glide along between green walls, where the birds were singing and the monkeys barking and crying and whimpering like children. Again and again we passed trees full of them, sometimes little grey monkeys, and sometimes great dog-faced fellows that rumour says would tear you to pieces if you offended them and had the misfortune to fall into their hands. Now and then a hippopotamus rose, a reminder of an age that has gone by, and always on the mud-banks were the great crocodiles. And the trading-stations were, I think, more solitary and more picturesque. The little tendas were even more frail, just rickety little structures covered with a mat of crinting, for the river rises here very high, and these wharves are sure to be carried away in the rainy season. And then come hills, iron-stone hills, and tall, dry grass ten and twelve feet high. Sometimes we stopped where there was not even the frailest of tendas, and one night, just as the swift darkness was falling, the steamer drew up at a little muddy landing-stage, where there was a break in the trees, and three dugouts were drawrn up. Here she became wildly hysterical, and I began to think something would give way, until all shrieks died down as a tall black man, draped in blue, and with a long Dane gun across his shoulder, stalked out of the bush. Savage Africa personified. We had stopped to land a passenger, a mammy with her head tied up in a handkerchief, and a motley array of boxes, bundles, calabashes, chairs, saucepans, and fowls that made a small boat-load. She waved a farewell to the French trader as her friends congregated upon the shore and examined her baggage.

“She is an important woman,” said he; “the wife of a black trader in the town behind there. He's a Christian.”

“He's got a dozen wives,” said the Commissioner.

“His official wife, then. Oh, you know the sort. I guarantee she keeps order in the compound.”

At Fatta Tenda, which is quite a busy centre, from which you may start for the Niger and Timbuctoo, we gave a dinner-party, a dinner-party under difficulties. Our cook was excellent. How he turned out such dainties in a tiny galley three feet by six, and most of that taken up by the stove, I do not pretend to understand, but he did, so our difficulties lay not there, but with the lamp. What was the matter with it I do not know, but it gave a shocking light, and the night before our dinner-party it went out, and left us to finish our dinner in darkness. Then, next day, word went round that the mate was going to trim the lamp, and when we, with two men from the French factory, went into dinner, an unwonted light shed its brilliancy over the scene. Unfortunately, there was also a strong scent of kerosene, which is not usually considered a very alluring fragrance. But we consoled ourselves; the mate had trimmed the lamp. He had. He had also distributed most of the oil over the dinner-table—the cloth was soaked in it, and, worse than that, the salt, pepper, and mustard were full of it; and then, as we sat down to soup, there came in through the open windows a flight, I should say several flights, of flying ants. They died in crowds in the soup, they filled up the glasses, they distributed themselves over the kerosene-soaked table, till at last we gave them best and fled to the deck. Finally the servants reduced things to a modified state of order, but whenever I smell a strong smell of kerosene I am irresistibly reminded of the day we tried to foregather with our kind, and be hospitable up the Gambia.

There were some Mandingo chiefs here. Bala, Chief of Kantora, and Jimbermang Jowlah, the local Chief, came to call. Bala dashed up on horseback, with a large following, to complain that there was trouble on the Border, for the French had come in and said that his town should pay a poll tax of 500 dollars. He ranged all his horses, with their high cantled saddles and their heavy iron stirrups, on the steep, red bank, and he and his chief man came on board the little steamer to talk to the Commissioner. They made a quaint picture—the fair, good-looking Commissioner, with his boyish face grave, as suited the occasion, and the Chief, a warrior and a gentleman, as unlike Mr Jonsing in his tourist cap as the Gambia is unlike the Thames at Wapping. The Commissioner wore a blue-striped shirt and riding breeches, and the Chief was clad all in blue of different shades; there was a sort of underskirt to his knees of dark-blue cotton patterned in white, over that was a pale-blue tunic, through which came his bare arms, and over that again a voluminous dark-blue cotton garment, caught in at the waist with a girdle, from which depended a very handsome sporran of red leather picked out in yellow; on his bare feet were strapped spurs, a spur with a single point to it like a nail. He had a handsome, clean-cut face, his shaven head was bared out of courtesy, and at his feet lay his headgear, a blue-velvet cap, with a golden star and crescent embroidered upon it, and a great round straw hat adorned with red leather such as the Hausas farther east make. He was a chief, every inch of him. And his manners were those of a courtly gentleman too. He did not screech and howl like the men on the wharf, though he was manifestly troubled and desperately in earnest; but, sitting there on the deck of the little steamer, with the various odds and ends of life scattered around him, he stated his case, through an interpreter, to the young Commissioner seated on the hen-coop and taking down every word. When it was done he was assured that the Governor should be told all about it, and now rose with an air of intense relief. He had thrown his burden on responsible shoulders, and had time to think about the white woman who was looking on. He had seen white men before, quite a number, but never had he seen a white woman, and so he turned and looked at me gravely, with not half the rude curiosity with which I felt I had been steadily regarding him. I should like to have been a white woman worth looking at, instead of which I was horribly conscious that the coal dust was in my hair, that my hands had but recently grasped the greasy handrail of those steps across the boiler, and that my skirts had picked up most of the multifarious messes that were to be gathered there and on the unclean deck. There is no doubt skirts should not come much below the knees in the bush.

“He wishes to make his compliments to you,” said the interpreter, and the grave and silent Chief, with a little, low murmur, took my hand in both his delicate, cold, black ones, held it for a moment with his head just a little bent, and then went his way, and I felt I had been complimented indeed.

The chief of Kantora, having done all he came to do, swam his horses across the river, trusting, I suppose, to the noise made by his numerous followers to scare away the crocodiles, and we went up the river to Kossun, which is within two miles of Yarba Tenda, where the British river ends. At Kossun there is a French factory only, and that managed by a black man, and here are the very beginnings of the groundnut trade. All around was vivid green—green on the bank, green reflected in the clear waters of the river; the sun was only just rising, the air was cool, and grey mists like a bridal veil rent with golden beams lay across the water; only by the factory was a patch of brown, enhancing the greenery that was all around it.

The groundnut grows on a vine, and behind the factory this was all garnered into great heaps, and surrounded by crinted fences until time should be found to comb out the nuts. In the empty fields shy women, who dared not lift their faces to look at the strange, white woman, were gleaning, and the little, naked children were frankly afraid, and ran shrieking from the horrid sight. And just behind the factory were little enclosures of neatly plaited straw, and each of these contained a man's crop ready waiting to be valued and bought by the trader. Kossun was the only place where I saw the nuts as they belonged to the grower. All along the river there were heaps of them, looking like young mountains, but all these heaps were trader's property. At Nianimaroo, on the lower river, I saw a heap, which the pleased proprietor told me was worth £1000. He apparently had finished his heap, and was waiting to send it down the river, but everywhere else men, picturesque in fluttering rags or grotesque in cast-off European garments, were bringing calabashes and sacks of groundnuts to add to the heaps; and, since they cannot walk on the yielding nuts, which are like so many pebbles under their bare feet, little board ladders or steps of filled sacks were placed for them to run up. And no sooner were the heaps piled up than they had to be dug out again.

At Fatta Tenda, on the way down, having got rid of her cargo and her deck passengers, the Mungo Park began to load again with groundnuts; and men were busy through all the burning hot midday digging into the groundnut heap, filling up sacks, and as the sacks were filled stalwart, half-naked black men, like a line of ants, tramped laden down the steep bank and poured their loads into the steamer's hold in a cloud of gritty dust that penetrated everywhere. The trader told me that when he wanted labourers he appealed to one of the principal men who live in the town a mile or so behind the wharf, and he sent in his “family,” who are paid at the rate of a shilling a day. It is very, very doubtful whether much of that shilling ever reaches the man who actually does the hard work. Things move slowly in the Gambia as in all Africa, and “family” is probably a euphonious term for household slave. After all, it is possibly only like the system of serfdom that existed in Europe in days gone by and will not exist very long here, for knowledge is coming, though it comes slowly, and with wealth pouring into the country and a Commissioner to appeal to in cases of oppression the black man will presently free himself. Even the women are already beginning to understand the difference. The morals of the country, be it remembered, are the primitive morals of a primitive people. A man may have four legal wives by Mohammedan law. He may have ever so many concubines, who add to his dignity; and then, if he is a big man—this was vouched for by the official native interpreter, who joined his Commissioner at M'Carthy—he has ever so many more women in his household, and these he expects to have children.

It is their business and he sees that they do it, and the children belong to him no matter who is the father. Children, it will be seen, are an asset, and the woman is now beginning to understand that the children are hers alone, and again and again a troubled woman, angry and tearful, walks miles to appeal to the travelling Commissioner, such and such a man, her master has taken away her children and she has heard that the great white master will restore them to her. And in most cases the great white master, who has probably a laughing, round, boyish face, fancies he has not a desire above good shooting, and speaks of the country as “poisonous,” does all that is expected of him and often a good deal more also.

And yet, only ten years ago, they were very doubtful still about the white man's protectorate in the Gambia, as graves in the Bathurst cemetery testify. Then was the last rising, when the district of San-nian Kunta was very disaffected, and two Commissioners, Mr Sitwell and Mr Silva, were sent with twelve native police to put matters straight. After the wont of the English, they despised their enemy and marched into a hostile village with the ammunition boxes screwed down, sat themselves down under a tree, and called on the Chief and village elders to come up before them. But the chief and elders did no such thing. Hidden in the surrounding bush, they replied with a volley from their long Danes, killing both the Commissioners and most of the policemen, but one escaping got away to the next Commissioner, a young fellow named Price. Now, Mr Price had only four policemen, but he was by no means sure of the death of his comrades, so promptly he sent off to headquarters for help, and without delay marched back to the disaffected village. The white men were dead and shockingly mutilated, but with his four faithful policemen he brought their remains back for decent burial. He did not know what moment he might not be attacked. He had before him as object lessons in savage warfare the dead bodies of his comrades. He had to march through thick bush, and they say at the end of that day's work young Mr Price's hair turned white. Punishment came, of course. Six months later the new Governor, Sir George Denton, with a company of W.A.F.F.''s—West African Field Force—marched to that disaffected village; the chief was deposed and exiled, and peace has reigned ever since.

And now much farther away from Bathurst a woman may go through the country by herself in perfect safety. All the towns are still from one to four miles back from the tenda, away in the bush, from the old-time notion I suppose that there was danger to be dreaded by the great waterway, and early in the morning I used to take the narrow track through the long grass which was many feet above my head, and go and see primitive native life.

Up at the head of the river our steamer filled rapidly. When our holds were full the groundnuts were put in sacks and piled on the decks fore and aft, half-way up the masts, almost to the tops of the funnels, and the only place that was not groundnuts was the little cabin and the deck on top. There were £600 worth of groundnuts on board the Mungo Park, and we stowed on top of them passengers, men and women, and all their multifarious belongings, and then proceeded to pick up lighters also laden with groundnuts bound down the river.

Towards the evening of the second day of our homeward journey we came to a big creek down which was being poled by six men a red lighter, deep in the water and laden to the very brim with groundnuts. This the steamer was to tow behind. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The heavily laden lighter drifted first to one side and then to the other and threatened to fill, and the Commissioner's interpreter, sitting on deck, told me a long story of how here in the river there is a devil that will not allow a steamer or a cutter to go past unless the owner dances to placate him. If he do not care to dance himself he must pay someone else to dance for him. Unless someone dances, the engines may work, the sails may fill, but that vessel will not go ahead till the river devil has his toll. No one danced on board the Mungo Park, unless the black captain's prancing about and shaking his fist and shouting what sounded like blood-curdling threats at the skipper of the lighter might be construed into dancing. If so, it had not the desired effect, for the heavy lighter wouldn't steer, and presently the captain decided to tow it alongside. The darkness fell; all around us was the wide, weird, dark river, with the green starboard light just falling upon the mast of the lighter alongside, and for a few brief moments there was silence and peace, for the lighter was towing all right at last. Then the mast bent forward suddenly, there was a stifled, strangled cry, the captain gave a wild yell, the engines were stopped, and there was no more lighter, only the smooth dark water was rough with floating groundnuts and the river devil had taken his toll. Five of the crew had jumped for the Mungo Park and reached her, but the sixth, a tall Man-dingo, wrapped in a blue cloth, had gone down a prey for the wicked crocodiles or the cruel, strong undercurrents. They launched a boat and we felt our impotence and the vastness of the river, for they only had a hurricane lantern and it looked but a tiny speck on the waste of dark waters. The boat went up and down flashing its feeble light. Here was a patch of groundnuts, here a floating calabash, here a cloth, but the lighter and the man were gone, and we went on our way, easily enough now, because, of course, the steamer had paid toll.

There are the beginnings, it seems to me, in the groundnut trade of the Gambia, of what may be in the future a very great industry. True, the value of the groundnut is regulated by the price of cotton-seed oil, for which the oil pressed from the groundnut makes a very excellent substitute. Last year the Gambia's groundnuts, the harvest of the simplest, most ignorant peasants but one remove from savagery, was worth between £500,000 and £600,000, and not one-twentieth of the soil was cultivated, but the colony's existence was fairly justified. The greater part of this crop goes into French hands and is exported to Marseilles, where it is made into the finer sorts of soap. What wonder then if the French cast longing eyes upon the mighty river, for not only is the land around it rich, but they have spent large sums upon railways for their great colony of Senegal, and had they the Gambia as well they would have water carriage for both their imports and exports even in the dry season, and in the rains they could bring their heavy goods far far inland.

I realised all this as I came back to Bathurst with the dust from the groundnuts in my hair and eyes and nostrils, and dresses that had not been worn an hour before they were shrieking for the washtub. But what did a little discomfort matter?

I returned in time for the Christmas and New-Year festivities. On Christmas night all the English in the colony dined at Government House to celebrate the festival. Exiles all, they would have said. I have been told that I judge the English in West Africa a little hardly, and of course I realise all the bitterness of divided homes, especially at this season that should be one of family reunions. But after all the English make their life in West Africa far harder than they need. Dimly I saw this on my visit to the Gambia; slowly the feeling grew upon me till, when I left the Coast eight months later, I was fully convinced that if England is to hold her pride of place as a colonising nation with the French and Germans, she must make less of this exile theory and more of a home in these outlands. The doctors tell me this is impossible, and of course I must bow to the doctors' opinion, but it is saying in effect—which I will not allow for a moment—that the French and Germans—and especially the French and German women—are far better than the English.

Here in the Gambia I began to think it, and the fact was driven in more emphatically as I went down the Coast. The Englishman makes great moan, but after all he holds a position in West Africa the like of which he could not dream of in England. He is the superior, the ruler; men bow down before him and rush to do his bidding—he who would have a suburban house and two maid-servants in the old country, lives in barbaric splendour. Of course it is quite possible he prefers the suburban house and two maid-servants and his wife. And there, of course, the crux of the matter lies. Why, I know not, but English women are regarded as heroines and martyrs who go out to West Africa with their husbands. Possibly it is because I am an Australian and have had a harder bringing-up that I resent very much the supposition that a woman cannot go where a man can. From the time I was a little girl I have seen women go as a matter of course to the back-blocks with their husbands, and if, barring a few exceptions, they did not stay there, we all supposed not that it was the country that did not agree with them, but the husband. We all know there are husbands and wives who do not agree. And I can assure you, for I know both, life in the back-blocks in Australia, life in many of the towns of Australia, with its heat and its want of service, is far harder for a woman than it is in West Africa. Yet here in the Gambia and all along the Coast was the same eternal cry wherever there was a woman, “How long can she stay?”

The difference between the French and the English views on this vexed question was exemplified by the Commissioner's view and the French trader's. I have already given the former. Said the latter, “Of course my wife will come out. Why should she not. She is just waiting till the baby is a month old. What is the good of a wife to me in Paris? The rains? Of course she will stay the rains. It is only the English who are afraid of the rainy season.” And I was sorry for the little contempt he put into his voice when he spoke of the English fear. I know this opinion of mine will bring down upon my devoted head a storm of wrath from West-Coast officials, but whether the Coast is healthy or not there is no denying the fact that the nation who takes its women is far more likely to hold a country, and in that the French and Germans are beating us hands down.

But this I only realised dimly during my stay in the Gambia. I was to leave on New Year's Day and on New Year's Eve we all went to the barracks of the W.A.F.F.'s to see the New Year in. And then in the soft, warm night the Governor and I went back to Government House. The stars were like points of gold, the sky was like dark-blue velvet, and against it the graceful palms stood out like splashes of ink, the water washed softly against the shore, there was the ceaseless hum of insects in the air, and from the native town behind came a beating of tom-toms subdued by the distance. The sentry started out of the shadow at the gate as the rickshaws arrived, and there came his guttural hail, “Who goes dere?”

“Friend,” said the Governor's voice. It was commonplace, everyday to him.

“Pass friend and all's well,” came the answer, and we went in and up the steps; but surely, I thought, it was a very good omen, a very good omen indeed. “Pass friend and all's well.” I was leaving that day that had not yet dawned; I was going down the Coast and all should be well.