Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/653

 I cannot help thinking how very perfectly Kipling’s observations on the 'Oont fit the African carrier, for like the commissariat camel

also

Volumes upon volumes all illustrated with instantancous photographs, and stiff with statistics, couldn't give you a truer account of him. For instance there are those two who strayed down that other path this afternoon, just coming down the slide in front of us, thank goodness! for I was making up my mind it was my pater-maternal duty to go and find them.

Herr Liebert gives me some interesting details about the first establishment of the station here and a bother he had with the plantations. Only a short time ago the soldiers brought him in some black wood spikes, which they had found with their feet, set into the path leading to the station’s koko plantations, to the end of laming the men. On further investigation there were also found pits, carefully concealed with sticks and leaves, and the bottoms lined with bad thorns, also with malicious intent. The local Bakwiri chiefs were called in and asked to explain these phenomena existing in a country where peace had been concluded, and the chiefs said it was quite a mistake, those things had not been put there to kill soldiers, but only to attract their attention, to kill and injure their own fellow-tribesmen who had been stealing from plantations latterly. That's the West African's way entirely all along the Coast; the "child-like" native will turn out and shoot you with a gun to attract your attention to the fact that a tribe you never heard of has been and stolen one of his ladies, whom you never saw. It’s the sweet infant's way of "rousing up popular opinion," but I do not admire or approve of it. If I