Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/291

 African Notes.

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��Castle. We make our way through crowds of naked bushraen, Ashantee and Fantee, with here and there a native trader in European dress. It is the hour of high market, and long lines of bushmen are coming in, each bearing on his head the palm oil, the ivory, the tiger skins, or the gold dust he is to exchange for fish, flour, rum, tobacco, and gaudy prints, all to be taken back to the bush in barter for the next day's cargo. "Ou-ra," " Ou-ra" (Master), is pleasantly giv- en us, as the throng make way for us. Arrived at the water front, we find a " war beach" surf, running seven feet high, with its continuous roar, old as the upraised continent. We sight our vessel just anchored in the rollers a mile from shore, riding easily in perhaps seven fathoms, with ninety fathoms of chain out to relieve the strain of the heavy sea running. We signal her, and the surf-boat shoots away from alongside, propelled shore- ward by ten brawny Kroomen.

The landing of a surf-boat is an art possessed alone by the natives. Traders coming down the coast either touch at Monrovia and take their Kroo-boys (the Kroos constitute the principal native tribe of Liberia), or, omitting to do so, depend upon the Fantee shoremen, said to be equally as good in the surf. But a native cries out, "•0-re-bah," and in truth " He-is-coming." The surf-boat is poised on the top of the "second"

��wave, perhaps one hundred and fifty yards from the beach. The rollers come on shore in triplets, and woe to the man who takes the first or king wave. When the boatswain, steer- ing always with a twenty-foot oar, is as close on as his judgment allows, he rests on his oars, and, with eyes dead astern, he watches his chance. He allows the first and second wave to pass under him, and then, " Ah- tu-ne ! ah-tu-ne !" and the Kroomen give way with a lightning stroke and a propelling force of ten eighteen- foot oars. The boat quivers as she literally flies over the top of the third sea and is swept up the beach until, at the first keel grate, the oars are in by magic, and every Krooman is in the water with a hand on the gunwale, steadying it for the last throe of the next king-wave which shall float her, and assist in carrying her above the reach of the succeeding wave.

" Oh ! me-moog-g3' ! me-muc-e-na- o !" "Or-ra-gog-a-ra !'"' " Jum-a-jum !" " Jum-a-rell ! " A rapid fusilade of Senegal, Kroo, Ashantee, and Fan- tee — tower of Babel palaver — and we dispatch a boy to send back our coach to Elmina, and we are handed into the surf-boat. It is floated and successfully launched, meeting a roll- er that gave us a taste of the spray ; but the next catches us on its crest, and we are spinning towards the " Grace" in safety.

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