Page:The land of fetish.pdf/125

 even seem in a measure to enjoy their existence—one can hardly call it life.

Wherever any dry land is found on the banks of these rivers, there are established native towns; and opposite these are moored the hulks in which the traders live. Some of these hulks have been fine vessels in their day, and all are very comfortably fitted up and roofed over: the finest is that of the African Steamship Company, the "Adriatic," which formerly belonged to the White Star Company, and is now moored in Bonny river. Morning after morning the Europeans doomed to a wretched existence in these floating prisons wake up with a feeling of weariness and depression, and look out daily on the same muddy river with its banks of reeking ooze and interminable mangrove swamps. At night time the miasma creeps up from every creek and gradually enfolds all objects in a damp white shroud; while the croaking of the bull-frogs, the cry of a night-bird, and the lapping of the restless tide against the sides of the hulk, are the only sounds that break the oppressive silence. If ever a man were justified in seeking consolation from the flowing bowl it would be in these rivers, which used to be the habitat of the Palm Oil Ruffian, a creature that would not have been tolerated even in Alsatia; but the genus is now