The Opening Sentence In The Latter Was,
"Help, I Am Drowning." Then Came The Inquiry, "If A Man Is Not
A
thief?" and then another cry, "The boat is upset." "Get up, you
lazy scamps," is the next exclamation, followed
Almost immediately
by the question, "Why has not this man been buried?" "It is fetish
that has killed him, and he must lie here exposed with nothing on
him until only the bones remain," is the cheerful answer. This
sounded discouraging to a person whose occupation would necessitate
going about considerably in boats, and whose fixed desire was to
study fetish. So with a feeling of foreboding gloom I left London
for Liverpool - none the more cheerful for the matter-of-fact manner
in which the steamboat agents had informed me that they did not
issue return tickets by the West African lines of steamers. I will
not go into the details of that voyage here, much as I am given to
discursiveness. They are more amusing than instructive, for on my
first voyage out I did not know the Coast, and the Coast did not
know me and we mutually terrified each other. I fully expected to
get killed by the local nobility and gentry; they thought I was
connected with the World's Women's Temperance Association, and
collecting shocking details for subsequent magic-lantern lectures on
the liquor traffic; so fearful misunderstandings arose, but we
gradually educated each other, and I had the best of the affair; for
all I had got to teach them was that I was only a beetle and fetish
hunter, and so forth, while they had to teach me a new world, and a
very fascinating course of study I found it.
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