[Illustration:  Mrs. Davis in a Borrowed “Hammock,” the Local Means
 of Transport on the West Coast.]

After Teneriffe the destination of every one on board is as irrevocably fixed as though the ship were a government transport.  We are all going to the West Coast or to the Congo.  Should you wish to continue on to Cape Town along the South Coast, as they call the vast territory from Lagos to Cape Town, although there is an irregular, a very irregular, service to the Cape, you could as quickly reach it by going on to the Congo, returning all the way to Southampton, and again starting on the direct line south.

It is as though a line of steamers running down our coast to Florida would not continue on along the South Coast to New Orleans and Galveston, and as though no line of steamers came from New Orleans and Galveston to meet the steamers of the East Coast.

In consequence, the West Coast of Africa, cut off by lack of communication from the south, divorced from the north by the Desert of Sahara, lies in the steaming heat of the Equator to-day as it did a thousand years ago, in inaccessible, inhospitable isolation.

Two elements have helped to preserve this isolation:  the fever that rises from its swamps and lagoons, and the surf that thunders upon the shore.  In considering the stunted development of the West Coast, these two elements must be kept in mind—­the sickness that strikes at sunset and by sunrise leaves the victim dead, and the monster waves that rush booming like cannon at the beach, churning the sandy bottom beneath, and hurling aside the great canoes as a man tosses a cigarette.  The clerk who signs the three-year contract to work on the West Coast enlists against a greater chance of death than the soldier who enlists to fight only bullets; and every box, puncheon, or barrel that the trader sends in a canoe through the surf is insured against its never reaching, as the case may be, the shore or the ship’s side.

The surf and the fever are the Minotaurs of the West Coast, and in the year there is not a day passes that they do not claim and receive their tribute in merchandise and human life.  Said an old Coaster to me, pointing at the harbor of Grand Bassam:  “I’ve seen just as much cargo lost overboard in that surf as I’ve seen shipped to Europe.”  One constantly wonders how the Coasters find it good enough.  How, since 1550, when the Portuguese began trading, it has been possible to find men willing to fill the places of those who died.  But, in spite of the early massacres by the natives, in spite of attacks by wild beasts, in spite of pirate raids, of desolating plagues and epidemics, of wars with other white men, of damp heat and sudden sickness, there were men who patiently rebuilt the forts and factories, fought the surf with great breakwaters, cleared breathing spaces in the jungle, and with the aid of quinine for themselves, and bad gin for the natives, have held their own.  Except for the