Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/550

 Mr. Harris denied this on the spot with the vehemence of injured innocence. The chief shook his head and spat profusely and sorrowfully.

"You no sabe him clock you done sell me?" said he. "When I look him clock it no be to-day, it be to-morrow." Mr. Harris took the clock back, to see what was the cause of this strange state of affairs. Of course it arose from his having been too liberal in the amount of spoon in the weight, and this being altered, the chief was not hurried onward to his grave at such a rattling pace; "but," said Mr. Harris, "that clock was a flyer to the last."

Phrases in the native languages often point to a power of imagery; for example the Effik word for both stars and fire-flies is Ntan-ta fiong, and if one takes the translation some authorities give of this, namely "moon dust," it is pretty, but other authorities say it means "made of the same stuff as the moon," which reduces it to simple idiocy. The name for butterflies, meaning "the cloth of the spirit," has no detractors; nor has that for the pretty little gecko lizard that haunts the houses and is now learning to walk on ceilings, "the spirit of the child," and so on. But I will not go into the subject of African languages here, but only remark of them that although they are elaborate enough to produce, for their users, nearly every shade of erroneous statement, they are not, save perhaps M'pongwe, elaborate enough to enable a native to state his exact thought. Some of them are very dependent on gesture. When I was with the Fans they frequently said, "We will go to the fire so that we can see what they say," when any question had to be decided after dark, and the inhabitants of Fernando Po, the Bubis, are quite unable to converse with each other unless they have sufficient light to see the accompanying gestures of the conversation. In all cases I feel sure the African's intelligence is far ahead of his language.

The African is usually great at dreams, and has them very noisily; but he does not seem to me to attach immense importance to them, certainly not so much as the Red Indian does. I doubt whether there is much real ground for supposing that from dreams came man's first conception of the spirit world,