That “sweet youth” had begged hard during the last week that I would take him to Fernando Po; carpenters were wanted for her Majesty’s consulate, and he seemed to jump at the monthly pay of seven dollars—­a large sum in these regions.  On the night before departure he had asked me for half a sovereign to leave with his wives, and he made me agree to an arrangement that they should receive two dollars per mensem.  In the morning I had alluded to the natural sorrow which his better semi-halves must feel, although the absence of groaning and weeping was very suspicious, and I had asked in a friendly way, “Them woman he make bob too much?”

“Ye’, sar,” he replied with a full heart, “he cry too much.”

When the last batch had disappeared with the last box I walked up to him, and said, “Now, Andrews, you take hat, we go Gaboon.”

Hotaloya at once assumed the maudlin expression and insipid ricanement of the Hindu charged with “Sharm ki bat” (something shameful).

“Please, mas’r, I no can go—­Nanny Po he be too far—­I no look my fader (the villain had three), them boy he say I no look ’um again!”

The wives had won the day, and words would have been vain.  He promised hard to get leave from his papa and “grand-pap,” and to join me after a last farewell at the Plateau.  His face gave the lie direct to his speech, and his little manoeuvre for keeping the earnest-money failed ignobly.

The swift brown stream carried us at full speed.  “Captain Merrick” pointed out sundry short cuts, but my brain now refused to admit as truth a word coming from a Mpongwe.  We passed some bateaux pecheurs, saw sundry shoals of fish furrowing the water, and after two hours we were bumping on the rocks outlying Mombe Creek and Nenga Oga village.  The passage of the estuary was now a pleasure, and though we grounded upon the shallows of “Voileliay Bay,” the Kru-men soon lifted the heavy boat; the wind was fair, the tide was ebbing, and the strong current was in our favour.  We reached Glass Town before midday, and after five hours, covering some twenty-two direct geographical miles, I found myself with pleasure under the grateful shade of the Factory.  It need hardly be described, as it is the usual “bungalow” of the West African shore.

Twelve days had been expended upon 120 miles, but I did not regret the loss.  A beautiful bit of country had been added to my mental Pinacothek, and I had satisfied my mind to a certain extent upon that quaestio, then vexata, the “Gorilla Book.”  Even before my trip the ethnological part appeared to me trustworthy, and, if not original, at any rate borrowed from the best sources.  My journey assured me, from the specimen narrowly scrutinized, that both country and people are on the whole correctly described.  The dates, however, are all in confusion:  in the preface to the second edition, “October, 1859,” became “October, 1858,” and we are told that the excursions were transposed for the simple