patricians publicly and without shame. But even then it must have been regarded as a vice; while, not only in savage Africa, but in semi-civilized Sierra Leone, this disgraceful commerce is at the very root of their social institutions.

Adultery is regarded by the Africans as a kind of theft. It is a vice, therefore, and so common that one might write a Decameron of native tales like those of Boccaccio. And what in Boccaccio is more poignant and more vicious than this song of the Benga, which I have often heard them sing, young men and women together, when no old men were present?

The old men young girls married.

The young girls made the old men fools,

For they loved to kiss the young men in the dark,

Or beneath the green leaves of the plantain-tree.

The old men then threatened the young men,

And said, you make us look like fools;

But we will stab you with our knives till your blood runs forth!

Oh stab us, stab us, cried the young men, gladly,

For then your wives will fasten up our wounds.

Such is the child of nature! Such the noble savage! Such the primitive condition of man, which philosophers, who had never studied it, have dared to hold up to our example!

What is it, then, that they would have us imitate? Must we instruct our children in vice at the tenderest possible age, and sell them for marriage as soon as they arrive at puberty? Must we make our wives mothers when they are scarcely girls; treat them as slaves when they are women, and kill them when they are old? Must we place no restraints upon our passions, but abandon our youth to dissipation and debauchery, that we may have gray hairs on young heads, and all the foul diseases which spring from the diet and habits of a bruté? For so does man in an uncivilized condition. The savage lives a life without a future or a past, without hope or regret, and dies the death of a coward and a dog, for whom the grave brings darkness, and nothing more.

CHAPTER XXI.

VOLCANIC FLOWER-GARDENS.

Prince's Island.-African Champagne.-Mulatto Politeness. - St. Thomas.-The Dutchman's Church-yard.—Senhor Pereira.—I become a Spy.

THAT night, Saturday, June 2, I slept between sheets, in all the dignity of civilization. The next day I gave up to a Sabbath repose, which I had, for once in my life, fairly earned, and which I devoutly enjoyed.

The morning after, at daybreak, my labors began again. That day I was to leave Equatorial Africa. In a few hours all my preparations must be made. So I called my men together, culled a few necessaries from my outfit, stowed them in a couple of stout bullock-trunks, cleaned my rifle and locked it up in a leather case, and packed up my very modest toilet apparatus, with my precious MSS., in a small valise.

The rest of my property, less valuable than voluminous, I left with my good friends, who offered to sell that which was salable, and to send the rest home for me. In the middle of the day the time came for me to go, and I bade them farewell, hoping that which I scarcely dared to hope, that we might meet again.

The barque "Guilford" was bound for Fernando Po. It was my intention to go to that island, where I should find a man-ofwar come there to meet the mails, and to beg a passage to the South Coast.

It happened, however, that a Mr. Sparrhawk, a very intelligent American trader, discovered before we sailed that he had left behind him a box of important papers at the Ilha da Princa, from which he had come a few days previously. Mr. Knight, agent of the firm (Messrs. Hutton and Cookson) to which the barque be longed, consented to touch there, as it was but little out of the way, and as fair winds at this time of the year can always be depended on going north.

In less than twenty-four hours we "rose" the island, and by evening we laid at anchor in its harbor. There was a schooner

lying near us, a beautiful, wicked-looking jewel of a craft, with rakish tapering masts, and a fluttering top-sail like a white bonnet. Ships have their physiognomies, and this seemed a lorette of the ocean- -a traviata of the high seas. I fell in love with her on the spot, and asked what her name was, and where she was bound, in the same way that I would have inquired the name and address of a handsome girl who had suddenly inspired me with "the divine passion." When I heard that she was the Mondego, bound for San Thomé, I felt an irresistible inclination to offer her my company. From San Thomé I could go by a Portuguese line of steamers to Loanda. Mr. Sparrhawk, who knew the captain, said that the matter could be easily arranged; the schooner would sail in four days' time; the passage would take about four days, and I should have to pay about four pounds. He would introduce me to a gentleman at whose house I could reside while I remained in the island.

Accordingly, at 10 P.M., I found myself standing on Portuguese land. A light was glimmering in the distance, growing smaller and smaller, till it became a twinkling speck and disappeared. This was the "Guilford" sailing before the wind, and bound for Fernando Po. I then remembered that I had only £20 in cash; that I could not speak Portuguese; that I had letters for no one in Loanda; that, in short, having with me no creden tials of any kind, an amount of luggage which was not imposing, and very indifferent wearing apparel, there was nothing in the world to distinguish me from a chevalier d'industrie. However, reflecting that it was useless to waste thought on such trifles, I took my companion's arm, returned to his house, and soon forgot my little difficulties.

The next morning I had leisure to look about me. I was in the town of San Antonio. Its bay is the arena of the loveliest amphitheatre one can conceive. Tier over tier of forest trees form the sides, and a volcanic peak, also covered with trees, might be regarded as a kind of gallery. The continuous rustling of the leaves in the wind, and the dull moan of the waters falling on the beach, reminded me of the hum of human crowds.

My host was a mulatto; a fact to be recognized not only by his skin and hair, but also by his curiosity respecting my relatives, his reiteration of the same remarks, and the pompous nature of his hospitality. He kept a small shop, and had two plantations, with about seventy slaves. This enabled him to live on the prod

uce of his farm. He drank his own coffee, of which and of cocoa he sold sufficient to buy him clothes and other necessaries. He ate baked yams as a substitute for bread; also great quantities of farinha, a flour made from cassada or manioc, and which closely resembles sawdust. His farm afforded him fowls, sheep, and pigs in no great quantity; but the food of the poor people is principally vegetable

For beef is rare within these ox-less isles, etc.

I found only six white men on this island, three of whom were government officials. The houses of the town are well built, but execrably furnished: bare, ghastly rooms, with an isolated chair or sofa sprinkled here and there, and looking as if they never had been sat upon, nor were meant to be. On the unpapered walls hung some of those solemn portraits which one meets in England in the dining-rooms of the middle classes, and which are said to be striking likenesses of individuals, but bear little resemblance to human beings generally.

There was a profusion of churches, and it was curious to see the black priests walking about in their bombazine gowns and lace collars. They have a school, in which they teach the small negroes to read and write; those who are intended for the Church are also instructed in dog-Latin. Many novices are sent forth from this island (but more still from San Thome) as missionaries to various parts of the Coast, and so contribute their mite to the great work of civilization.

It is true that these priests, from all that I have heard, are not models of virtue, but this may partly be owing to the charming laxity of public manners. Plato has been much blamed because in his Republic he made the wives common. In this little island I had an opportunity of studying this system, which there exists and flourishes.

I have certainly never seen so many happy people in Africa as I saw upon Prince's Island, nor so many pretty girls. A very large proportion are slaves; but they are required to do but little work, for the fertile soil requires small assistance; and the domes tic slaves are more numerous, idle, and tyrannical in a merchant's house in Princa than the servants in Belgravia. All day long one may see those fascinating creatures tripping about in the streets in long flowing cotton robes, with handkerchiefs bound elegantly round their heads; when they see one, they give a smile

which would bewitch a saint (imagine the effect upon a sinner!), and prattle away to you with such gushes of girlish laughter that one's heart, which Africa has already a little deadened, warms and flushes into life. Then other black eyes shine upon you, and soft hands play at hide and seek in your European hair; and then you sit beneath some noble palm, as says Linnæus, a prince of the vegetable kingdom; and there one may sit and drink cocoa-nut milk, and take lessons in Portuguese patois, and enjoy one's noonday siesta, feeling almost inclined at times to turn one's back on ambition and the passions of the world, and there to dream, dream, dream one's life away.

Having led a life of extreme self-denial for some little time, I suddenly fancied a bottle of Champagne; so I went into my host's shop, and asked him if he had any. He replied that he had, and, opening a Champagne bottle, poured me out a tumbler of a still, very sweet, dark brown wine, which I immediately recognized as a viño branco of the lowest order. To all my arguments that this wine was not Champagne, nor any thing like it, he replied by showing me the label on the bottle; and although, providentially, he could not compel me to drink it, I had to pay for it, and as dearly as if I had bought it at Cremorne.

Great men are never discouraged by difficulties. I had made the acquaintance of a young man named Francisco, who spoke English remarkably well, and whom I paid a dollar a day to act as my interpreter and general informant. He had taken me to several coffee and cocoa plantations, and had shown me the churches and the cemetery, the barracks and the fort. I asked him if it was possible to obtain a bottle of Champagne in the island. He said he did not think that it could be bought, but that his friend the collector of customs had some, and, if I went to see him, would be sure to offer some. Accordingly, we walked through the town, crossed a stream by means of stepping-stones, passed through a grove of cocoa-nut-trees, ascended a hill-path skirted by plantations, and entered the picturesque dwelling of the Collector of Customs.

He was a good-natured little mulatto, and was celebrated in the island as the possessor of an opera-glass. The view from his house was worthy of the glass, and appeared doubly beautiful to one who had passed five months among the dreary forests of the continent. These islands of Princa and San Thomé may be called volcanic flower-gardens. With Annobom, they seem to belong to