The evening meal is eaten at 6 P.M. with the setting of the sun, whose regular hours contrast pleasantly with his vagaries in the northern temperates.  And Hesperus brings wine as he did of old.  Drinking sets in seriously after dark, and is known by the violent merriment of the men, and the no less violent quarrelling and “flyting” of the sex which delights in the “harmony of tongues.”  All then retire to their huts, and with chat and song, and peals of uproarious laughter and abundant horseplay, such as throwing minor articles at one another’s heads, smoke and drink till 11 P.M.  The scene is “Dovercourt, all speakers and no hearers.”  The night is still as the grave. and the mewing of a cat, if there were one, would sound like a tiger’s scream.

The mornings and evenings in these plantation-villages would be delightful were it not for what the Brazilians call immundicies.  Sandflies always swarm in places where underwood and tall grasses exclude the draughts, and the only remedy is clearing the land.  Thus at St. Isabel or Clarence, Fernando Po, where the land-wind or the sea-breeze ever blows, the vicious little wretches are hardly known; on the forested background of mountain they are troublesome as at Nigerian Nufe.  The bite burns severely, and presently the skin rises in bosses, lasting for days with a severe itching, which, if unduly resented, may end in inflammatory ulcerations—­I can easily understand a man being laid up by their attacks.  The animalcules act differently upon different constitutions.  While mosquitoes hardly take effect, sand flies have often blinded me for hours by biting the circumorbital parts.  The numbers and minuteness of this insect make it formidable.  The people flap their naked shoulders with cloths or bushy twigs; Nigerian travellers have tried palm oil but with scant success, and spirits of wine applied to the skin somewhat alleviate the itching but has no prophylactic effect.  Sandflies do not venture into the dark huts, and a “smudge” keeps them aloof, but the disease is more tolerable than the remedy of inflaming the eyes with acrid smoke and of sitting in a close box, by courtesy termed a room, when the fine pure air makes one pine to be beyond walls.  After long endurance in hopes of becoming inoculated with the virus, I was compelled to defend myself with thick gloves, stockings and a muslin veil made fast to the hat and tucked in under the shirt.  After sunset the sandflies retire, and the mosquito sounds her hideous trump; as has been said, however, Pongo-land knows how to receive her.

Chapter VII.

Return to the River.

Early on the last morning in March we roused the Kru-men; they were eager as ourselves to leave the “bush,” and there was no delay in loading and the mission-boat.  Forteune, Azizeh, and Asunye were there to bid me God-speed, and Hotaloya did not fail to supply a fine example of Mpongwe irresolution.