Highly gratified by the honour, but somewhat overpowered by the presence and by that vile scourge the sandfly, I retired after the first review, leaving the song, the drum, and the dance to continue till midnight.  Accustomed to the frantic noises of African village-life in general, my ears here recognized an excess of bawl and shout, and subsequent experience did not efface the impression.  But, in the savage and the barbarian, noise, like curiosity, is a healthy sign; the lowest tribes are moping and apathetic as sick children; they will hardly look at anything, however strange to them.

The rest of my day and week was devoted to the study of this quaint people, and the following are the results.  Those who have dealings with the Fan universally prefer them in point of honesty and manliness to the Mpongwe and Coast races; they have not had time to become thoroughly corrupt, to lose all the lesser without gaining anything of the greater virtues.  They boast, like John Tod, that they ne’er feared the French, and have scant respect for (white) persons; indeed, their independence sometimes takes the form of insolence.  We were obliged to release by force the boy Nyongo, and two of Mr. Tippet’s women who had been put “in log”—­Anglice, in the stocks.  They were wanted as hostages during the coming war, and this rude contrivance was adopted to insure their presence.

Chastity is still known amongst the Fan.  The marriage tie has some significance, the women will not go astray except with the husband’s leave, which is not often granted.  The men wax wroth if their mothers be abused.  It is an insult to call one of them a liar or a coward; the coast-tribes would merely smile at the soft impeachment; and assure you that none but fools—­yourself included by implication—­are anything else.  Their bravery is the bravery of the savage, whose first object in battle is to preserve his only good, his life:  to the civilized man, therefore, they appear but moderately courageous.  They are fond of intoxication, but are not yet broken to ardent spirits:  I have seen a single glass of trade rum cause a man to roll upon the ground and convulsively bite the yellow clay like one in the agonies of the death-thirst.  They would do wisely to decline intercourse with Europeans; but this, of course, is impossible—­ there is a manifest destiny for them as for their predecessors.  The vile practice of the white or West Coast is to supply savages with alcohol, arms, and ammunition; to live upon the lives of those they serve.  The more honourable Moslems of the eastern shores do not disgrace themselves by such greed of gain.