Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/56

 cemetery now in use, and I remember well my first visit to it under the guidance of a gloomy Government official, who said he always walked there every afternoon, "so as to get used to the place before staying permanently in it,"—a rank waste of time and energy, by the way, as subsequent events proved, for he is now safe off the Gold Coast for good and all.

He took me across the well-kept grass to two newly dug graves, each covered with wooden hoods in a most business-like way. Evidently those hoods were regular parts of the cemetery's outfit. He said nothing, but waved his hand with a "take-your-choice,-they-are-both-quite-ready" style. "Why?" I queried laconically. "Oh! we always keep two graves ready dug for Europeans. We have to bury very quickly here, you know," he answered. I turned at bay. I had had already a very heavy dose of details of this sort that afternoon and was disinclined to believe another thing. So I said, "It's exceedingly wrong to do a thing like that, you only frighten people to death. You can't want new-dug graves daily. There are not enough white men in the whole place to keep the institution up." "We do," he replied, "at any rate at this season. Why, the other day we had two white men to bury before twelve o'clock, and at four, another dropped in on a steamer."

"At 4.30," said a companion, an exceedingly accurate member of the staff, "How you fellows do exaggerate! Subsequent knowledge of the Gold Coast has convinced me fully that the extra funeral being placed half-an-hour sooner than it occurred is the usual percentage of exaggeration you will be able to find in stories relating to the local mortality. And at Accra, after I left it, and all along the Gold Coast, came one of those dreadful epidemic outbursts sweeping away more than half the white population in a few weeks. It is customary for the Government authorities to pooh-pooh the mortality, or to allege that it is owing to the bad habits of the white men; but this latter statement is far more untrue than any fever story an old coaster will tell you. The authorities at home, both of merchant firms and mission societies, follow suit and make the same statements. The true statistics