Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE
The West Coast of Africa is like the Arctic regions in one particular, and that is that when you have once visited it you want to go back there again; and, now I come to think of it, there is another particular in which it is like them, and that is that the chances you have of returning from it at all are small, for it is a Belle Dame sans merci.
I know that from many who know the Coast, there will be a chorus of dissent from the first part of my sentence, and a chorus of assent to the second. But if you were to take many of the men who most energetically assert that they wish they were home in England, "and see if they would ever come to the etc., etc., place again," and if you were to bring them home, and let them stay there a little while, I am pretty sure that—in the absence of attractions other than those of merely being home in England, notwithstanding its glorious joys of omnibuses, underground railways, and evening newspapers—these same men, in terms varying with individual cases, will be found sneaking back apologetically to the Coast.
I succumbed to the charm of the Coast as soon as I left Sierra Leone on my first voyage out, and I saw more than enough during that voyage to make me recognise that there was any amount of work for me worth doing down there. So I warned the Coast I was coming back again and the Coast did not believe me; and on my return to it a second time displayed a genuine surprise, and formed an even higher opinion of my folly than it had formed on our first acquaintance, which is saying a good deal.
During this voyage in 1893, I had been to Old Calabar, and its Governor, Sir Claude MacDonald, had heard me expatiating on the absorbing interest of the Antarctic drift, and the importance of the collection of fresh-water fishes and so on. So when Lady MacDonald heroically decided to go out to him in Calabar, they most kindly asked me if I would join her, and make my time fit hers for starting on my second journey. This I most willingly did, but I fear that very sweet and gracious lady suffered a great deal of apprehension at the prospect of spending a month on board ship with a person so devoted to science as to go down the West Coast in its pursuit. During the earlier days of our voyage she would attract my attention to all sorts of marine objects overboard, so as to amuse me. I used to look at them, and think it would be the death of me if I had to work like this, explaining meanwhile aloud that "they were very interesting, but Haeckel had done them, and I was out after fresh-water fishes from a river north of the Congo this time," fearing all the while that she felt me unenthusiastic for not flying over into the ocean to secure the specimens.
However, my scientific qualities, whatever they may amount to, did not blind this lady long to the fact of my being after all a very ordinary individual, and she told me so—not in these crude words, indeed, but nicely and kindly—whereupon, in a burst of gratitude to her for understanding me, I appointed myself her honorary aide-de-camp on the spot, and her sincere admirer I shall remain for ever, fully recognising that her courage in going to the Coast was far greater than my own, for she had more to lose had fever claimed her, and she was in those days by no means under the spell of Africa. But this is anticipating.
It was on the 23rd of December, 1894, that we left Liverpool in the Batanga, commanded by my old friend Captain Murray, under whose care I had made my first voyage. We ought to have left on the 22nd, but this we could not do, for it came on to blow a bit, such a considerable bit indeed, that even the mighty Cunard liner Lucania could not leave the Mersey; moreover the Batanga could not have left even if she had wanted to, for the dock gates that shut her in could not be opened, so fierce was the gale. So it was Sunday the 23rd then, as I have said, that we got off, with no further misadventure save that, owing to the weather, the Batanga could not take her powder on board, a loss that nearly broke the carpenter's heart, as it robbed him of the pleasure of making that terrific bang with which a West Coaster salutes her ports of call.
On the 30th we sighted the Peak of Teneriffe early in the afternoon. It displayed itself, as usual, as an entirely celestial phenomenon. A great many people miss seeing it. Suffering under the delusion that El Pico is a terrestrial affair, they look in vain somewhere about the level of their own eyes, which are striving to penetrate the dense masses of mist that usually enshroud its slopes by day, and then a friend comes along, and gaily points out to the newcomer the glittering white triangle somewhere near the zenith. On some days the Peak stands out clear from ocean to summit, looking every inch and more of its 12,080 ft.; and this is said by the Canary fishermen to be a certain sign of rain, or fine weather, or a gale of wind; but whenever and however it may be seen, soft and dream-like in the sunshine, or melodramatic and bizarre in the moonlight, it is one of the most beautiful things the eye of man may see.
Soon after sighting Teneriffe, Lanzarote showed, and then the Grand Canary. Teneriffe is perhaps the most beautiful, but it is hard to judge between it and Grand Canary as seen from the sea. The superb cone this afternoon stood out a deep purple against a serpent-green sky, separated from the brilliant blue ocean by a girdle of pink and gold cumulus, while Grand Canary and Lanzarote looked as if they were formed from fantastic-shaped sunset cloud-banks that by some spell had been solidified. The general colour of the mountains of Grand Canary, which rise peak after peak until they culminate in the Pico de las Nieves, some 6,000 feet high, is a yellowish red, and the air which lies among their rocky crevices and swathes their softer sides is a lovely lustrous blue. I used to fancy that if I could only have collected some of it in a bottle, and taken it home to show my friends, it would have come out as a fair blue-violet cloud in the gray air of Cambridge.
Just before the sudden dark came down, and when the sun was taking a curve out of the horizon of sea, all the clouds gathered round the three islands, leaving the sky a pure amethyst pink, and as a good-night to them the sun outlined them with rims of shining gold, and made the snow-clad Peak of Teneriffe blaze with star-white light. In a few minutes came the dusk, and as we neared Grand Canary, out of its cloud-bank gleamed the red flash of the lighthouse on the Isleta, and in a few more minutes, along the sea level, sparkled the five miles of irregularly distributed lights of Puerto de la Luz and the city of Las Palmas.
I will not here go into the subject of the Canary Islands, because it is one upon which I foresee a liability to become diffuse. I have visited them now five times; four times merely calling there on my way up and down to the Coast, but on the other occasion spending many weeks on them; and if I once start on the subject of their beauties, their trade, and their industries, why, who knows to what size this volume may not grow?
We reached Sierra Leone at 9 A.M. on the 7th of January, and as the place is hardly so much in touch with the general public as the Canaries are[1] I may perhaps venture to go more into details regarding it. The harbour is formed by the long low strip of land to the north called the Bullam shore, and to the south by the peninsula terminating in Cape Sierra Leone, a sandy promontory at the end of which is situated a lighthouse of irregular habits. Low hills covered with tropical forest growth rise from the sandy shores of the Cape, and along its face are three creeks or bays, deep inlets showing through their narrow entrances smooth beaches of yellow sand, fenced inland by the forest of cotton-woods and palms, with here and there an elephantine baobab.
The first of these bays is called Pirate Bay, the next English Bay, and the third Kru Bay. The wooded hills of the Cape rise after passing Kru Bay, and become spurs of the mountain, 2,500 feet in height, which is the Sierra Leone itself. There are, however, several mountains here besides the Sierra Leone, the most conspicuous of them being the peak known as Sugar Loaf, and when seen from the sea they are very lovely, for their form is noble, and a wealth of tropical vegetation covers them, which, unbroken in its continuity, but endless in its variety, seems to sweep over their sides down to the shore like a sea, breaking here and there into a surf of flowers.
It is the general opinion, indeed, of those who ought to know that Sierra Leone appears at its best when seen from the sea, particularly when you are leaving the harbour homeward bound; and that here its charms, artistic, moral, and residential, end. But, from the experience I have gained of it, I have no hesitation in saying that it is one of the best places for getting luncheon in that I have ever happened on, and that a more pleasant and varied way of spending an afternoon than going about its capital, Free Town, with a certain Irish purser, who is as well known as he is respected among the leviathan old negro ladies, it would be hard to find. Still it must be admitted it is rather hot.
Free Town is situated on the northern base of the mountain, and extends along the sea-front with most business-like wharves, quays, and warehouses. Viewed from the harbour, "The Liverpool of West Africa,"[2] as it is called, looks as if it were built of gray stone, which it is not. When you get ashore, you will find that most of the stores and houses—the majority of which, it may be remarked, are in a state of acute dilapidation—are of painted wood, with corrugated iron roofs. Here and there, though, you will see a thatched house, its thatch covered with creeping plants, and inhabited by colonies of creeping insects.
Some of the stores and churches are, it is true, built of stone, but this does not look like stone at a distance, being red in colour—unhewn blocks of the red stone of the locality. In the crannies of these buildings trailing plants covered with pretty mauve or yellow flowers take root, and everywhere, along the tops of the walls, and in the cracks of the houses, are ferns and flowering plants. They must get a good deal of their nourishment from the rich, thick air, which seems composed of 85 per cent. of warm water, and the remainder of the odours of Frangipani, orange flowers, magnolias, oleanders, and roses, combined with others that demonstrate that the inhabitants do not regard sanitary matters with the smallest degree of interest.
There is one central street, and the others are neatly planned out at right angles to it. None of them are in any way paved or metalled. They are covered in much prettier fashion, and in a way more suitable for naked feet, by green Bahama grass, save and except those which are so nearly perpendicular that they have got every bit of earth and grass cleared off them down to the red bed-rock, by the heavy rain of the wet season.
The shops, which fringe these streets in an uneven line, are like rooms with one side taken out, for shop-fronts, as we call them, are here unknown. Their floors are generally raised on a bed of stone a little above street level, but except when newly laid, these stones do not show, for the grass grows over them, making them into green banks. Inside, the shops are lined with shelves, on which are placed bundles of gay-coloured Manchester cottons and shawls, Swiss clocks, and rough but vividly coloured china; or—what makes a brave show—brass, copper, and iron cooking-pots. Here and there you come across a baker's, with trays of banana fritters of tempting odour; and there is no lack of barbers and chemists. Within all the shops are usually to be seen the proprietor and his family with a few friends, all exceedingly plump and happy, having a social shout together: a chat I cannot call it.
There is usually a counter across the middle, over which customers and casual callers alike love to loll. Some brutal tradesmen, notably chemists, who presumably regard this as unprofessional, affix tremendous nails, with their points outwards, to the fronts of their counter tops, in order to keep their visitors at a respectful distance.
In every direction natives are walking at a brisk pace, their naked feet making no sound on the springy turf of the streets, carrying on their heads huge burdens which are usually crowned by the hat of the bearer, a large limpet-shaped affair made of palm leaves. While some carry these enormous bundles, others bear logs or planks of wood, blocks of building stone, vessels containing palm-oil, baskets of vegetables, or tin tea-trays on which are folded shawls. As the great majority of the native inhabitants of Sierra Leone pay no attention whatever to where they are going, either in this world or the next, the confusion and noise are out of all proportion to the size of the town; and when, as frequently happens, a section of actively perambulating burden-bearers charge recklessly into a sedentary section, the members of which have dismounted their loads and squatted themselves down beside them, right in the middle of the fair way, to have a friendly yell with some acquaintances, the row becomes terrific.
In among these crowds of country people walk stately Mohammedans, Mandingoes, Akers, and Fulahs of the Arabised tribes of the Western Soudan. These are lithe, well-made men, and walk with a peculiarly fine, elastic carriage. Their graceful garb consists of a long white loose-sleeved shirt, over which they wear either a long black mohair or silk gown, or a deep bright blue affair, not altogether unlike a University gown, only with more stuff in it and more folds. They are undoubtedly the gentlemen of the Sierra Leone native population, and they are becoming an increasing faction in the town, by no means to the pleasure of the Christians. For, although Bishop Ingram admits that they are always ready to side with the missionaries against the drink traffic, here their co-operation ceases, and he complains that they exercise a great influence over the native Christian flock. He says, "We are disposed to believe that the words of their Koran are only a fetish and a charm to the rank and file of their adherents, and that great superstition prevails among them, and is propagated by them,"[3] but how the Bishop can see a difference in this matter between the use of the Koran and the Bible by the negro of Sierra Leone, it is difficult to understand; and judged by the criterion of every-day conduct, the Mohammedan is in nine cases in ten, the best man in West Africa. But he is, I grieve to say, not thoroughly orthodox. The Koran I have seen many of them using consists merely of extracts and prayers. written in Maghribi characters; and I have grave doubts whether they could read this any better than I could without a dictionary. I have also frequently seen them playing warry, and another game, the name whereof I know not, but it is played with little sticks of wood stuck in the ground, and "something on the rub," or what corresponds to it; although they must be aware that, by this indulgence in the pleasures of gambling, they will undoubtedly incur the penalty of having donkeys graze upon their graves—yea, even on the graves of their parents. They should think of this, for when all's said and done, is a desperately dull game.
They are, moreover, by no means strict teetotallers, and some individuals from Accra, whom I once met, shocked me deeply by saying Mohammedans were divided into two classes, Marabuts who do not drink, and Sonniki who do. I do not know where they can have picked up this idea; but I observed my acquaintances were "hard-shelled" Sonniki. Again, the Sierra Leone and Lagos Mohammedans regard working in leather and iron as quite respectable occupations, which is not in accordance with views held in high Mohammedan circles. Very good leather-work they certainly turn out—bags, sheaths for daggers, and such like, to say nothing of the quaint hats, made of the most brilliant yellow, blue, and red leather strips plaited together: very heavy, and very ugly, but useful. Quite "rational dress" hats in fact, for their broad brims hang down and shade the neck, and they also shelter the eyes to such an extent that the wearer can't see without bending up the front brim pretty frequently;—but then I notice there always is something wrong with a rational article of dress. Then the bulbous dome top keeps off the sun from the head, rain runs off the whole affair easily, and bush does not catch in it. If I had sufficient strength of mind I would wear one myself, but even if I decorated it with cat-tails, or antelope hair, as is usually done, I do not feel I could face Piccadilly in one; and you have no right to go about Africa in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home.
The leather-work that meets with the severest criticism from the Christian party is the talisman or gri-gri bags, and it must be admitted that an immense number of them are sold. I have, however, opened at hazard some eighty-seven of these, and always found in them that which can do no man harm, be he black, white, or yellow, to wear over his heart; namely, the beautiful 113th Sura of the Koran, the "Sura of the Day-break," which says:—"I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the Day-break, that He may deliver me from the evil of those things which He has created; from the evil of the night when it cometh on; and from the evil of blowers upon knots, and from the evil of the envious when he envieth." This is written on a piece of paper, rolled or folded up tightly, and enclosed in a leathern case which is suspended round the neck. The talismans the Mohammedans make do not, however, amount to a tenth part of those worn, the number whereof is enormous. I have never seen a negro in national costume without some, both round his neck, and round his leg, just under the knee; and I dare say if the subject were gone into, and the clothes taken off the more fully-draped coloured gentlemen, you would hardly find one without an amulet of some kind. The great majority of these other charms are supplied by the ju-ju priests, or some enterprising heathen who has a Suhman, or private devil, of his own.
But to the casual visitor at Sierra Leone the Mohammedan is a mere passing sensation. You neither feel a burning desire to laugh with, or at him, as in the case of the country folks, nor do you wish to punch his head, and split his coat up his back—things you yearn to do to that perfect flower of Sierra Leone culture, who yells your bald name across the street at you, condescendingly informs you that you can go and get letters that are waiting for you, while he smokes his cigar and lolls in the shade, or in some similar way displays his second-hand rubbishy white culture—a culture far lower and less dignified than that of either the stately Mandingo or the bush chief. I do not think that the Sierra Leone dandy really means half as much insolence as he shows; but the truth is he feels too insecure of his own real position, in spite of all the "side" he puts on, and so he dare not be courteous like the Mandingo or the bush Fan.
It is the costume of the people in Free Town and its harbour that will first attract the attention of the new-comer, notwith-standing the fact that the noise, the smell, and the heat are simultaneously making desperate bids for that favour. The ordinary man in the street wears anything he may have been able to acquire, anyhow, and he does not fasten it on securely. I fancy it must be capillary attraction, or some other partially-understood force, that takes part in the matter. It is certainly neither braces nor buttons. There are, of course, some articles which from their very structure are fairly secure, such as an umbrella with the stick and ribs removed, or a shirt. This last-mentioned treasure, which usually becomes the property of the ordinary man from a female relative or admirer taking in white men's washing, is always worn flowing free, and has such a charm in itself that the happy possessor cares little what he continues his costume with—trousers, loin cloth, red flannel petticoat, or rice-bag drawers, being, as he would put it, "all same for one" to him.
I remember one day, when in the outskirts of the town, seeing some country people coming in to market. It was during the wet season, and when they hove in sight, they were, so to speak, under bare poles, having nothing on worth mentioning. But each carried a bundle done up in American cloth, with a closed umbrella tucked into it. They pulled up as soon as they thought it dangerous to proceed further, for fear of meeting some of their town friends, and solemnly dressed, holding umbrellas over each other the while. Then, dignified and decorated, and each sporting his gingham, they marched into the town. Here and there in the street you come across a black man done up in a tweed suit, or in a black coat and tall hat; and here and there a soldier of the West India regiment, smart and tidy-looking in his Zouave costume. These soldiers are said to be the cause of the many barbers' shops sprinkled about the town, as they are not allowed razors of their own, owing to their tendency to employ them too frequently in argument.
The ladies are divided into three classes; the young girl you address as "tee-tee;" the young person as "seester;" the more mature charmer as "mammy;" but I do not advise you to employ these terms when you are on your first visit, because you might get misunderstood. For, you see, by addressing a mammy as seester, she might think either that you were unconscious of her dignity as a married lady—a matter she would soon put you right on—or that you were flirting, which of course was totally foreign to your intention, and would make you uncomfortable. My advice is that you rigidly stick to missus or mammy. I have seen this done most successfully.
The ladies are almost as varied in their costume as the gentlemen; but always neater and cleaner; and mighty picturesque they are too, and occasionally very pretty. A market-woman with her jolly brown face and laughing brown eyes—eyes all the softer for a touch of antimony—her ample form clothed in a lively print overall, made with a yoke at the shoulders, and a full long flounce which is gathered on to the yoke under the arms and falls fully to the feet; with her head done up in a yellow or red handkerchief, and her snowy white teeth gleaming through her vast smiles, is a mighty pleasant thing to see, and to talk to. But, Allah! the circumference of them!
The stone-built, whitewashed market buildings of Free Town have a creditably clean and tidy appearance considering the climate, and the quantity and variety of things exposed for sale—things one wants the pen of a Rabelais to catalogue. Here are all manner of fruits, some which are familiar to you in England; others that soon become so to you in Africa. You take them as a matter of course if you are outward bound, but on your call homeward (if you make it) you will look on them as a blessing and a curiosity. For lower down, particularly in "the Rivers," these things are rarely to be had, and never in such perfection as here; and to see again lettuces, yellow oranges, and tomatoes bigger than marbles is a sensation and a joy. Onions also there are, and if you are wise you will buy them when outward bound. If you are speculative in the bargain you will take as many as you can get, for here you may buy them from four to five shillings the box, and you can sell them below for any sum between twelve shillings and a sovereign.
Here, too, are beads, but for the most part of dull colour and cheap quality. Beans, too, are more than well represented. Horse-eye beans, used for playing warry; vast, pantomime-sized beans, the insides of which being removed, and a few shot put in, make a pleasant rattle to hang at the wrist; and evil Calabar beans, which can serve no good end at all here, and which it seems insolent to sell in open market, in a town where poisoning is said to be so prevalent that its own Bishop declares "small social gatherings are almost unknown from the fear of it."[4]
The piles of capsicums and chillies, the little heaps of Reckitt's Blue, vivid-coloured Berlin wools, pumpkins, pineapples, and alligator pears, give rich and brilliant touches of colour, and relieve the more sombre tones of kola nuts, old iron, antelope horns, monkey skins, porcupine quills, and snails. These snails are a prominent feature in the market in a quiet way: they are used beaten up to help to make the sauce for palm oil chop; and they are shot alive on to the floor in heaps, and are active and nomadic: whereby it falls out that people who buy other things such as vegetables, Berlin wool, or meat, are liable to find one of these massive gastropods mixed up in the affair. Treading on one of them is, for a nervous person, as alarming as the catastrophe of treading on one of the native black babies with which the market floor abounds. There are half a hundred other indescribabilia, and above all hovers the peculiar Sierra Leone smell and the peculiar Sierra Leone noise.
One of the chief features of Free Town are the jack crows. Some writers say they are peculiar to Sierra Leone, others that they are not, but both unite in calling them Picathartes gymnocephalus. To the white people who live in daily contact with them they are turkey-buzzards; to the natives, Yubu. Anyhow they are evil-looking fowl, and no ornament to the roof-ridges they choose to sit on. The native Christians ought to put a row of spikes along the top of their cathedral to keep them off; the beauty of that edifice is very far from great, and it cannot carry off the effect produced by the row of these noisome birds as they sit along its summit, with their wings arranged at all manner of different angles in an "all gone" way. One bird perhaps will have one straight out in front, and the other casually disposed at right-angles, another both straight out in front, and others again with both hanging hopelessly down, but none with them neatly and tidily folded up, as decent birds' wings should be. They all give the impression of having been extremely drunk the previous evening, and of having subsequently fallen into some sticky abomination—into blood for choice. Being the scavengers of Free Town, however, they are respected by the local authorities and preserved; and the natives tell me you never see either a young or a dead one. The latter is a thing you would not expect, for half of them look as if they could not live through the afternoon. They also told me that when you got close to them, they had a "'trong, 'trong 'niff; 'niff too much." I did not try, but I am quite willing to believe this statement.
The other animals most in evidence in the streets are, first and foremost, goats and sheep. I have to lump them together, for it is exceedingly difficult to tell one from the other. All along the Coast the empirical rule is that sheep carry their tails down, and goats carry their tails up; fortunately you need not worry much anyway, for they both "taste rather like the nothing that the world was made of," as Frau Buchholtz says, and own in addition a fibrous texture, and a certain twang. Small cinnamon-coloured cattle are to be got here, but horses there are practically none. Now and again some one who does not see why a horse should not live here as well as at Accra or Lagos imports one, but it always 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 man, tired by his morning labour, working cargo in the stewing heat, and strong in the virtue of an unblemished life here, had gone to sleep in his cabin, out of which he was routed and confronted with his accusatrix and the small frightened man she had got with her, whom she kept on introducing as "my brudah, sah." Unfortunately for the lady, it was not the same gallant officer who held the post of second mate, but another, and our injured innocent, joining in the chorus, returned thanks for his disturbance in language of singular fluency. He is the only man I have ever met whose powers of expression were equal to his feelings, and it is a merciful providence for him it is so, for what that man feels sometimes I think would burst a rock.
The lady and her brother went crestfallen ashore, but the policemen stayed on board until we left, getting exceedingly drunk the while. Looking over the side, I saw one of them fold himself over the gunwale of the boat in which they were going ashore with his head close to the water. His companions heeded not, and I insisted on my friend the quartermaster rescuing the sufferer, and arranging him in the bottom of the boat, for not only was he in danger of drowning, but of acting as an all too tempting live-bait for the sharks, which swarm in the harbour. The quartermaster evidently thought this was foolish weakness on my part, for it "was only a policeman, and what are policemen but a kind of a sort of a custom house officer, and what are custom house officers but the very deuce?"
This, however, was not on the Batanga, but in the days before I was an honorary aide-de-camp, remember. This voyage out on the Batanga not even Sierra Leone could find anything to summon us for.
- ↑ Sierra Leone has been known since the voyage of Hanno of Carthage in the sixth century B.C., but it has not got into general literature to any great extent since Pliny. The only later classic who has noticed it is Milton, who in a very suitable portion of Paradise Lost says of Notus and Afer, "black with thunderous clouds from Sierra Lona." Our occupation of it dates from 1787.
- ↑ Lagos also likes to bear this flattering appellation, and has now-a-days more right to the title.
- ↑ Sierra Leone after a Hundred Years.
- ↑ Sierra Leone after a Hundred Years.