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 make you wet and give you a chill; then, as the sun begins to gain power, all kinds of exhalations and noisome vapours rise from the rank and wet vegetation, and various overpowering stenches salute the olfactory nerves, while for the last two hours of your journey you are baked in your hammock. Now none of these things are conducive to health in such a climate as that of West Africa, and they might all be avoided by travelling, say from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., when the sun has been drying the forest all day and drawing up the miasma, while no dew to speak of has begun to fall. Should there be no moon, a native torch, made of dry palm-stems, can be manufactured anywhere in a few minutes; and the only objection I have ever heard urged against choosing this time for journeying is that it is not pleasant to enter a village, and have to choose a hut to sleep in and prepare the evening meal, so late; but this is easily reduced to a minimum by sending on your boys an hour ahead of you to prepare for your arrival. It is not as if there was anything to be seen during a trip to the bush, for few people, who have not experienced it, can understand the loathing with which one regards the endless monotony of the forest, through the dense rank vegetation of which one moves on day after day, as if between two lofty walls of foliage, without seeing a single glade or break