Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/433

 side of the rock, for neither that promising young lady who spat in my face, nor the one who threw sand in my eyes are what they were this morning. There is nothing for it then but the dwarf cliff; so I climb it and get into the bush and try and strike a path. I get into a plantain plantation, which means there is a village close at hand, and on the further side I come into a three-hut one, and find a most amiable old lady sunning herself in the centre of it. Unfortunately she does not know any English, but I shed a box of lucifer matches on her, wishing to show that I mean well, and knowing that one of the great charms of a white man to a black is this habit of shedding things. It is their custom to hang round one in their native wilds in the hope something will be shed, either intentionally or unintentionally. Not, I fancy, for the bald sake of the article itself, but from a sort of sporting interest in what the next thing shed will be. I know it is my chief charm to them, and they hang round wondering whether it will be matches, leaf tobacco, pocket-handkerchiefs, or fish-hooks; and when the phenomena flag they bring me various articles for sale to try to get me into working order again. My present old lady is glad of her matches and they brighten up her intelligence, and she begins to understand I want something. After experimenting on me with a bunch of plantains and a paw-paw unsuccessfully, she goes and fetches a buxom young woman who soon comprehends I want Mrs. Ibea's house, and instantly she and the old lady escort me down a grass path and through some galleries of specimens of physical geography. We are soon joined by two pretty young girls, and wind our way back to the shore again on the further side of the point that had driven me inland. The elders then take themselves off after a mutual interchange of compliments and thanks; the young women come on with me. Mighty pretty pictures they make with their soft dusky skins, lithe, rounded figures, pretty brown eyes, and surf-white teeth showing between their laughing lips as they dance before me; and I cannot help thinking what a comfort they would be to a shipwrecked mariner and how he would enjoy it all.

On we go, climbing round every rocky point until we