Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/189

 jury; if they cannot deny it, as was the case with Mr. Cockshut at Lembarene, they try and turn the conversation or say other places are worse. Owing to this blissful absence of irritation I slept profoundly my first night at Talagouga, but roused by awful sounds in the morning—time, 5.30—sit straight up in bed "one time." Never noticed mission had donkey yesterday, but they have, and it's off in an epileptic fit. As the sound amplifies and continues a flash of reason succeeds this first impression. It's morning service in the church, and the natives are just singing hymns. In after days the sound always produces the same physical shock, but the mental one dies out crushed under the weight of knowledge of the sound's origin.

I spent my second day talking to Mme. Forget, whose English is perfectly good, although she tells me she resisted education most strenuously in this direction from patriotic motives. I must say I bow down and worship the spirit of patriotic fire in the French, not that I would imply for one moment that I, as an Englishwoman, suffered from it in Congo Français. They always gave me the greatest help in getting about their territory and every kindness of course there was no reason why they should not do so, for they have no reason to be anything but proud of the great things they have done here and the admirable way this noble province of theirs is administered. Congo Français is a very different thing to Congo Belge, a part of the world I shall not wander into again until it becomes Congo Français, and that won't be long. I now salve my pride as an Englishwoman with the knowledge that were a Frenchwoman to travel in any of our West Coast settlements, she would have as warm and helpful a welcome as I get here, and I will be femininely spiteful, and say she would do more harm in the English settlements than ever I did in the French. Think of Mme. Jacot, Mme. Forget, or Mme. Gacon going into Calabar, for example, why there wouldn't be a whole heart left in the place in twenty-four hours!

On the second day I spent at Talagouga I also made the acquaintance of Monsieur Pichon, a very stately, homing, Antwerp pigeon; his French feeling was a hopeless barrier to