LITMIR.BIZ

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a surf boat that was half-full of water. The rain had stopped at last but everything in that boat was wet, and my gear made a splash as it was dropped down.

      My soldier brother had lent me his camp-kit for the expedition.

      “Can't possibly hurt it,” said he good-naturedly. “It's been through two campaigns. If you spoil it, it shall be my contribution; but you won't.”

      I accepted, but I thought as I sat on the bedding-roll at the bottom of that very wet boat, with my head not coming above the gunwale, that he did not know Africa. I hoped I should not have to sleep on that bed that night, because it was borne in on me it would be more than damp.

      Luckily I didn't. We crossed the bar, and the ragged, half-naked Kroo boys, than whom there are surely no better boatmen in the world, begged a dash, “because we no splash you,” as if a bucket or two of salt water would have made much difference, and I gave it and was so absorbed in the wonder as to what was to become of me that I gave hardly any heed to the shore that was approaching. When I did it was to notice that all the beauty I had seen from the deck was vanishing. Man's handiwork was tumble-down, dirty, dilapidated, unfinished. I stepped from the boat to a narrow causeway of stone; it is difficult to get out of a boat five feet deep with grace, more especially when your skirts are sopping, and I stepped from the causeway, it was not above a foot wide, into yellow mud, and saw I was surrounded by dilapidated buildings such as one might see in any poor, penniless little port. There were negroes in all stages of rags round me, and then out from amongst them stepped a white man, a neat and spick-and-span white man with soldier written all over him, the soldier of the new type, learned, thoughtful, well-read.

      “Mrs. Gaunt?”

      I said “Yes” with a little gasp, because his immaculate spruceness made me feel I was too much in keeping with the buildings and the people around us.

      “Did you get my note? I am sorry I only got yours a couple of hours ago.”

      Oh, I understood by now that in Africa it is impossible for a note to reach its destination quickly, and I said so, and he went on to arrange for my accommodation.

      “If you will stay at the Consulate I will be delighted, but it is a mile and a half from the town, and I have no wife; or there is a boarding-house in the town, not too uncomfortable I am told.”

      There could be but one answer to that. Of course I accepted his invitation; there are but few conventions and no Mrs. Grundy in out-of-the-way spots, thank heaven, and in the growing darkness we set off for the Consulate. It was broken to me regretfully that I would have to walk; there is no other means of progression in the negro republic.

      Such a walk as it was. Never have I met such a road. It was steep, and it was rough, and it was stony as a mountain torrent; now after the rain it was wet and slippery and the branches of the overhanging trees showered us with water as we passed. It was lonely as a forest path in Ashanti, and the jungle was thick on either hand, the night birds cried, the birds that loved the sun made sleepy noises, the ceaseless insects roused to activity by the rain made the darkness shrill with their clamour, and there were mysterious rustlings as small animals forced their way through the bush or fled before us. My host offered me his stick to pull me over the steepest rocks, and also supplied the interesting information that round the Consulate the deer came down to lick the salt from the rocks, and the panthers, tigers they called them there, came down and killed the deer. I made a mental note not to walk in that path by night; indeed I made a note not to walk in it ever again, as drenched and dripping with perspiration we emerged into a clearing and saw looming up before us a tropical bungalow and beyond the sea. It is an exquisite situation but is desperately lonely.

      

      My gear came on men's heads and the Consul's note was delivered to me in the bush. Neither he nor I understood why it had come by such a roundabout path. One of his servants also met us half-way with a lantern, and since I had heard by then about the “tigers” I confess to thinking it was a wise precaution.

      The Consulate is a fine two-storied building with wide verandahs and a large hall where we generally sat, and that hall was very inadequately lighted by some excellent lamps. The Consul didn't understand them and the negro servants didn't understand them, and darkness was just visible and I determined as soon as I knew my host well enough to ask him to let me have a turn at his lamps. Such is the power of a little knowledge; when I left the Consulate it was lighted as it should be, but that first night we spent in a dim, religious light, and I felt I was going to enjoy myself hugely, for here at last was something new. The Gambia and Sierra Leone had been too much regulation Tropics; all that I had seen and done I had at least read of before, but this was something quite different. This had all the glamour of the unknown and the unexpected. I am bound to say that His Majesty's Consul did not look at things with the same eyes. He didn't like Liberia, and he said frankly that things might be unexpected in a measure but he always knew they would be unpleasant. But I went to bed that night with the feeling I was really entering into the land of romance.

      Next morning I told my host I would go and see the town.

      “But I shan't go by the short cut,” I added emphatically.

      “What short cut?”

      “The way we came last night.”

      “That's not a short cut,” said he, and he smiled pitifully at my ignorance of what was before me. “That's the main road.”

      And so it was. Afterwards I tried to photograph it, but in addition to the difficulty of getting an accurate picture of a steep slope, I had the misfortune to shake the camera, and so my most remarkable picture was spoiled. I give a picture of the road, but I always felt when I came to that part the worst was left behind. And yet on this road is the Liberian College where the youth of Liberia, male and female, are educated. It is a big building built of brick and corrugated iron, in a style that seems wholly unsuited to the Liberian climate, though viewed from a distance it looks imposing in its setting of greenery. They teach the children algebra and euclid, or profess to do so—evil-tongued rumour has it that the majority of the Liberian women can neither read nor write—but to attain that, to them a useless edge, they have to scramble over without exception the very worst road I have ever met.

      But the road only matches the rest of the place. Monrovia is not only an ill-kept town, it is an outrageously ill-kept town.

      

      Many towns have I seen in the world, many, many towns along this west coast of Africa, so I am in a position to compare, and never have I seen such hopelessly miserable places as Monrovia and the other smaller Liberian towns along the Coast. The streets look pretty enough in a photograph; they are pretty enough in reality because of the kindly hand of Nature and the tropical climate which makes vegetation grow up everywhere. There is no wheeled traffic, no possibility of getting about except on your own feet, and in consequence the roadways are generally knee-deep in weeds, with just a track meandering through them here and there, and between the roadway and the side walk is a rough gutter, or at least waterway, about two feet deep, and of uncertain width, usually hidden by the veiling weeds. Occasionally they have little gimcrack bridges apparently built of gin cases across these chasms, but, as a rule, if I could not jump as the wandering goats did, I had to make my way round, even though it involved a detour of at least a quarter of a mile.

      And the houses in the streets were unlike the houses to be seen anywhere else on the West Coast, and, to my mind at least, are quite unsuited to a tropical climate. They are built of wood, brick, or, and this is the most common, of corrugated iron,

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