Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/46

 shortly dies. Some say it is because the natives who get their living by hammock-carrying poison them, others say the tsetse fly finishes them off; and others, and these I believe are right, say that entozoa are the cause. Small, lean, lank, yellow dogs with very erect ears lead an awful existence, afflicted by many things, but beyond all others by the goats, who, rearing their families in the grassy streets choose to think the dogs intend attacking them. Last, but not least, there is the pig—a rich source of practice to the local lawyer.

The lawyer in Sierra Leone flourishes like the green bay-tree. All the West Coast natives, when the fear of the dangers of their own country-fashion law is off them, and they are under European institutions—I very nearly said control, but that would have been going too far—become exceedingly litigious, more litigious naturally in Sierra Leone because they have more European institutions there, among others trial by jury. Any law case, whether he wins it or not, is a pleasure to the African, because it gives him an opportunity of showing off his undoubted powers of rhetoric, and generally displaying himself. But there is no law case that gives the Sierra Leonean that joy that he gets out of summoning a white man, for he can get the white man before a jury of his fellow Sierra Leoneans—what they please to call in that benighted place a jury of his peers—and bully and insult him.

There is usually a summons or so awaiting a West Coast boat, and many a proud vessel has dropped anchor in Free Town harbour with one of her officers in a ventilator and another in a coal bunker. On one vessel by which I was a passenger, it was the second officer who was "wanted." Regaining the ship after a time on shore, we found the deck in an uproar. The centre of affairs was an enormous black lady, bearing a name honoured in English literature, and by profession a laundress, demanding that the body of the second mate in any condition should be rendered over to the hand of the law (represented by four Haussa policemen) on a warrant she held against him for not having discharged his washing-bill last time the steamer was in Sierra Leone. Now this worthy