the one thing she really cared for was cargo. It was the criterion by which she measured the importance, nay the very excuse for existence, of a port. If she is ever sold to other owners and sent up the Mediterranean, she will anathematise Malta and scorn Naples. “What! no palm oil!” she’ll say; “no rubber? Call yourself a port!” and tie her whistle string to a stanchion until the authorities bring off her papers and let her clear away. Every one on board her she infected with a commercial spirit. I am not by nature a commercial man myself, yet under her influence I found myself selling paraffin oil in cases in the Bights: and even to missionaries and Government officials travelling on her in between ports, she suggested the advisability of having out churches, houses, &c., in sections carefully marked with her name.

As we ran down the Irish Channel and into the Bay of Biscay, the weather was what the mariners termed “a bit fresh.” Our craft was evidently a wet ship, either because she was nervous and femininely flurried when she saw a large wave coming, or, as I am myself inclined to believe, because of her insatiable mania for shipping cargo. Anyhow, she habitually sat down in the rise of those waves, whereby, from whatever motive, she managed to ship a good deal of the Atlantic Ocean in various sized sections.

Her saloon, as aforesaid, was aft, and I observed it was the duty, in order to keep it dry, of any one near the main door who might notice a ton or so of the fourth element coming aboard, to seize up three cocoa-fibre mats, shut three cabin doors and yell “Bill!” After doing this they were seemingly at full liberty to retire into the saloon and dam the Atlantic Ocean, and remark, “It’s a dog’s life at sea.” I never noticed “Bill” come in answer to this performance, so I was getting to regard “Bill” as an invocation to a weather Ju Ju; but this was hasty, for one night in the Bay I was roused by a new noise, and on going into the saloon to see what it was, found the stewardess similarly engaged; mutually we discovered, in the dim light—she wasn’t the boat to go and throw away money on electric—that it was the piano adrift off its daïs, and we steered for it. Very cleverly we fielded en route a palm in pot complete, but shipped some beer and Worcester sauce bottles that came at us from the rack over the table, whereby we got a bit messy and sticky about the hair and a trifle cut; nevertheless, undaunted we held our course and seized the instrument, instinctively shouting “Bill,” and “Bill” came, in the form of a sandy-haired steward, amiable in nature and striking in costume.

After the first three or four days, a calm despair regarding the fate of my various lost belongings and myself having come on me, and the weather having moderated, I began to make observations on what manner of men my fellow-passengers were. I found only two species of the genus Coaster, the Government official and the trading Agent, were represented; so far we had no Missionaries. I decided to observe those species we had quietly, having heard awful accounts of them before leaving England, but to reserve final judgment on them until they had quite recovered from sea-sickness and had had a night ashore. Some of the Agents soon revived sufficiently to give copious information on the dangers and mortality of West Africa to those on board who were going down Coast for the first time, and the captain and doctor chipped in ever and anon with a particularly convincing tale of horror in support of their statements. This used to be the sort of thing. One of the Agents would look at the Captain during a meal-time, and say, “You remember J., Captain?” “Knew him well,” says the Captain; “why I brought him out his last time, poor chap!” then follows full details of the pegging-out of J., and his funeral, &c. Then a Government official who had been out before, would kindly turn to a colleague out for the first time, and say, “Brought any dress clothes with you?” The unfortunate new comer, scenting an allusion to a more cheerful phase of Coast life, gladly answers in the affirmative.

“That’s right,” says the interlocutor; “you want them to wear at funerals. Do you know,” he remarks, turning to another old Coaster, “my dress trousers did not get mouldy once last wet season.”

“Get along,” says his friend, “you can’t hang a thing up twenty-four hours without its being fit to graze a cow on.”

“Do you get anything else but fever down there?” asks a new comer, nervously.

“Haven’t time as a general rule, but I have known some fellows get kraw kraw.”

“And the Portuguese itch, abscesses, ulcers, the Guinea worm and the smallpox,” observe the chorus calmly.

“Well,” says the first answerer, kindly but regretfully, as if it pained him to admit this wealth of disease was denied his particular locality; “they are mostly on the South-west Coast.” And then a gentleman says parasites are, as far as he knows, everywhere on the Coast, and some of them several yards long. “Do you remember poor C.?” says he to the Captain, who gives his usual answer, “Knew him well. Ah! poor chap, there was quite a quantity of him eaten away, inside and out, with parasites, and a quieter, better living man than C. there never was.” “Never,” says the chorus, sweeping away the hope that by taking care you may keep clear of such things—the new Coaster’s great hope. “Where do you call—?” says a young victim consigned to that port. Some say it is on the South-west, but opinions differ, still the victim is left assured that it is just about the best place on the seaboard of the continent for a man to go to who wants to make himself into a sort of complete hospital course for a set of medical students.

This instruction of the young in the charms of Coast life is the faithfully discharged mission of the old Coasters on steamboats, especially, as aforesaid, at meal times. Desperate victims sometimes determine to keep the conversation off fever, but to no avail. It is in the air you breath, mentally and physically; one will mention a lively and amusing work, some one cuts in and observes “Poor D. was found dead in bed at C. with that book alongside him.” With all subjects it is the same. Keep clear of it in conversation, for even a half hour, you cannot. Far better is it for the young Coaster not to try, but just to collect all the anecdotes and information you can referring to it, and then lie low for a new Coaster of your own to tell them to, and when your own turn comes, as come it will if you haunt the West Coast long enough, to peg out and be poor so and so yourself. For goodness sake die somewhere where they haven’t got the cemetery on a hill, because going up a hill in shirt collars, &c., will cause your mourners to peg out too, at least this is the lesson I was taught in that excellent West Coast school.

When, however, there is no new Coaster to instruct on hand, or he is tired for ten minutes of doing it, the old Coaster discourses with his fellow old Coasters on trade products and insects. Every attention should be given to him on these points. On trade products I will discourse elsewhere; but insects it is well that the new comer should know about before he sets foot on Africa. On some West Coast boats excellent training is afforded by the supply of cockroaches on board, and there is nothing like getting used to cockroaches early when your life is going to be spent on the Coast—but I need not detain you with them now, merely remarking that they have none of the modest reticence of the European variety. They are very companionable, seeking rather than shunning human society,