Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/434

 find the tide too far in for any more beach at all, and strike into an inland path. These Corisco paths require understanding to get on with. They all seem to start merely with the intention of taking you round a headland because the tide happens to be in; but, like all African paths, once they are started Allah or Sheitan only knows where they will go, and their presiding spirits might quote Kipling and sing, "God knows where we shall go, dear lass, and the deuce knows what we shall see," to the wayfarer who follows them. One thing and one thing only you can safely prognosticate of the African path; and that is that it will not follow the shortest line between any two given points. A Corisco one turns up off the beach, springs inland saying to you, "Want to go round that corner, do you? Oh! well; just come and see some of our noted scenery while you are here," and takes you through a miniature forest, small swamp, and a prairie. "It's a pity," says the path, "not to call at So-and-so's village now we are so near it," and off you have to go through a patch of grass and a plantation to the village. "We must hurry up and get back to that beach again. Blessed if I hadn't nearly forgotten what I came out for!" it continues; and back on to the beach it plunges, landing you about fifty yards from the place where you left it on account of the little headland.

At last we reach Alondo, and I give my guides buttons, reels of cotton, pocket-handkerchiefs, fish-hooks, and matches, and we part friends; they to show their treasures in their village, and to give rise to the hope that I may get lost on Corisco again, soon and often, I to tea and talk with Mrs. Ibea. I tell her Eveke had said in the forenoon, when I last saw him, that he was coming home in the evening; but he does not turn up and his mother says she "expects he is courting his mother-in-law." Regarding this as probably a highly interesting piece of native custom, in the interests of Science, I prop open my sleepy eyelids and listen. After all it isn't—but only a piece of strange native morality. His lady-love, it seems, is house-keeper to a man on the mainland who is always talking of leaving the district but doesn't do so, so the marriage gets perpetually postponed. I hope that man won't try the patient