some observations on the natural history of mariners never before published; to which is added some description of the habits and nature of the ant and other insects, to the end that the new-comer be informed concerning these things before he lands in Afrik.

There are some people who will tell you that the labour problem is the most difficult affair that Africa presents to the student; others give the first place to the influence of civilisation on native races, or to the interaction of the interests of the various white Powers on that continent, or to the successful sanitation of the said continent, or some other high-sounding thing; but I, who have an acquaintance with all these matters, and think them well enough, as intellectual exercises, yet look upon them as slight compared to the problem of the West Coast Boat.

Now life on board a West Coast steamer is an important factor in West African affairs, and its influence is far reaching. It is, indeed, akin to what the Press is in England, in that it forms an immense amount of public opinion. It is on board the steamer that men from one part of West Africa meet men from another part of West Africa—parts of West Africa are different. These men talk things over together without explaining them, and the consequence is confusion in idea and the darkening of counsel from the ideas so formed being handed over to people at home who practically know no part of the West Coast whatsoever.

I had an example of this the other day, when a lady said to me in an aggrieved tone, after I had been saying a few words on swamps, “Oh, Miss Kingsley, but I thought it was wrong to talk about swamps nowadays, and that Africa was really quite dry. I have a cousin who has been to Accra and he says,” &c. That’s the way the formation of an erroneous opinion on West Africa gets started. Many a time have I with a scientific interest watched those erroneous opinions coming out of the egg on a West Coast boat. Say, for example, a Gold Coaster meets on the boat a River-man. River-man in course of conversation, states how, “hearing a fillaloo in the yard one night I got up and found the watchman going to sleep on the top of the ladder had just lost a leg by means of one crocodile, while another crocodile was kicking up a deuce of a row climbing up the crane.” Gold Coaster says, “Tell that to the Marines.” River-man says, “Perfect fact, Sir, my place swarms with crocodiles. Why, once, when I was,” &c., &c. Anyhow it ends in a row. The Gold Coaster says, “Sir, I have been 7 years” (or 13 or some impressive number of years) “on the West Coast of Africa, Sir, and I have never seen a crocodile.” River-man makes remarks on the existence of a toxic state wherein a man can’t see the holes in a ladder, for he knows he’s seen hundreds of crocodiles.

I know Gold Coasters say in a trying way when any terrific account of anything comes before them, “Oh, that was down in the Rivers,” and one knows what they mean. But don’t you go away with the idea that a Gold Coaster cannot turn out a very decent tale; indeed, considering the paucity of their material, they often display the artistic spirit to a most noteworthy degree, but the net result of the conversation on a West African steamboat is error. Parts of it, like the curate’s egg, are quite excellent, but unless you have an acquaintance with the various regions of the Coast to which your various informants refer, you cannot know which is which. Take the above case and analyse it, and you will find it is almost all, on both sides, quite true. I won’t go bail for the crocodile up the crane, but for the watchman’s leg and the watchman being asleep on the top of the ladder I will, for watchmen will sleep anywhere; and once when I was, &c., I myself saw certainly not less than 70 crocodiles at one time, let alone smelling them, for they do swarm in places and stink always. But on the other hand the Gold Coaster might have remained 7, 13, or any other number of centuries instead of years, in a teetotal state, and yet have never seen a crocodile.

It may seem a reckless thing to say, but I believe that the great percentage of steamboat talk is true; only you must remember that it is not stuff that you can in any way use or rely on unless you know yourself the district from which the information comes, and it must, like all information—like all specimens of any kind—be very carefully ticketed, then and there, as to its giver and its district. In this it is again like the English Press, wherein you may see a statement one day that everything is quite satisfactory, say in Uganda, and in the next issue that there has been a massacre or some unpleasantness. The two statements have in them the connecting thread of truth, that truth that, according to Fichte, is in all things. The first shows that it is the desire in the official mind that everything should be quite satisfactory to every one; the second, that practically this blessed state has not yet arrived—that is all.

I need not, however, further dwell on this complex phase, and will turn to the high educational value of the West African steamboat to the young Coaster, holding that on the conditions under which the Coaster makes his first voyage out to West Africa largely depends whether or no he takes to the Coast. Strange as it is to me, who love West Africa, there are people who have really been there who have not even liked it in the least. These people, I fancy, have not been properly brought up in a suitable academy as I was.

Doubtless a P. & O. is a good preparatory school for India, or a Union, or Castle liner for the Cape, or an Empereza Nacioñal simply superb for a Portuguese West Coast Possession, but for the Bights, especially for the terrible Bight of Benin, “where for one that comes out there are forty stay in,” I have no hesitation in recommending the West Coast cargo boat. Not one of the best ships in the fleet, mind you; they are well enough to come home in, and so on, but you must go on a steamer that has her saloon aft on your first trip out or you will never understand West Africa.

It was on such a steamer that I made my first voyage out in ’93, when, acting under the advice of most eminent men, before whose names European Science trembles, I resolved that the best place to study early religion and law, and collect fishes, was the West Coast of Africa.

On reaching Liverpool, where I knew no one and of which I knew nothing in ’93, I found the boat I was to go by was a veteran of the fleet. She had her saloon aft, and I am bound to say her appearance was anything but reassuring to the uninitiated and alarmed young Coaster, depressed by the direful prophecies of deserted friends concerning all things West African. Dirt and greed were that vessel’s most obvious attributes. The dirt rapidly disappeared, and by the time she reached the end of her trip out, at Loanda, she was as neat as a new pin, for during the voyage every inch of paint work was scraped and re-painted, from the red below her Plimsoll mark to the uttermost top of her black funnel. But on the day when first we met these things were yet to be. As for her greed, her owners had evidently then done all they could to satisfy her. She was heavily laden, her holds more full than many a better ship’s; but no, she was not content, she did not even pretend to be, and shamelessly whistled and squarked for more. So, evidently just to gratify her, they sent her a lighter laden with kegs of gunpowder, and she grunted contentedly as she saw it come alongside. But she was not really entirely content even then, or satisfied. I don’t suppose, between ourselves, any South West Coast boat ever is, and during the whole time I was on her, devoted to her as I rapidly became, I saw only too clearly that