at Boa-Vista; and we went on comfortably enough till sunset, when the wind, as if to apologize for its absence on the previous occasion, blew hard in our teeth. A wave entering into the cabin at midnight announced this fact to me. The next morning we were both in a miserably drenched condition; but a steaming Irish stew being brought to me, my heart revived, and I stirred it gayly round. As I was in the act of dipping my spoon into its solid fragrance, I heard a shout; the schooner shuddered, and a huge wave plumped in among us, and completely spoiled my breakfast. Great waves always go in trinities; the second put out the fire in the caboose; the third carried away our jib-boom. We had to put into Boa-Vista.

We received a visite in the due form, as I saw to my disgust. I had not expected to find custom-house officers, captains of the port, and such abominations among these minor islands, and I had not taken a passport. However, you can imagine the feelings of a man who has been rolling about for hours in a small vessel, who has had no breakfast, and who sees little prospect of a dinner. The harbor was merely a large bay, in which the sea was tolerably, or rather intolerably high, and I could not think of remaining there for twenty-four hours. I went down into the boat. The officer asked me for my passport. I replied calmly that I had none. Then followed an interesting colloquy, which they little thought that I could understand.

"Is it worth while to take him ashore ?"

"Yes, I think so," said the Frenchman (who had a few hours before sworn eternal friendship); "I fancy that he's a fool, with plenty of money."

"Has he any luggage?"

"Oh yes, he has luggage."

"I think, senhor, you had better stay aboard," said one of the sailors in English, putting his head over the side.

The custom-house officer guessed the meaning of this remark, and told him savagely to mind his own business, and shut up. Then he smiled upon me in a most benignant manner, and, taking my hand in his, drew me to his side—the viper-with every demonstration of friendship and esteem.

The governor was on the quay when we landed, and it was arranged between them that the Frenchman should say that I had come ashore for a walk, and that I was a friend of his. The Frenchman gave me a bed that night; the officers came in, chat

ted about the passport in Portuguese to my host, and paid me a few compliments in bad French. The next morning I was officially summoned before the mayor, and was condemned to pay 10s. only for being without a passport; but the skipper was fined the amount of £4 for taking a passenger who had none; and as I had to settle this too (he being a poor man, and the fault being mine), I paid pretty dearly for having landed at so disagreeable an island. As I was going down to the boat in the evening I saw the mayor, the custom-house officer, and the captain of the port in close confabulation, and apparently dividing money. I had not, therefore, the satisfaction of believing that my modest contribution had been added to revenues which so much require augmentation.

The next day I landed and spent a night at Sal, an island which, like Boa-Vista, has been a good deal frequented for its salttrade. I went to see the salt-marsh at the latter island. It is a small plain covered with salt, which, in various stages of formation, looked like ice powdered with snow. Art had been made to assist nature by small square pits, which had been dug in the plain. These, when filled by water, were pumped on to the land, where it evaporated, leaving its residue of salt. The pumps had sails like those of a wind-mill; and, what is still more rare and curious, cars were sailed upon an iron tramway from the marsh to the port, being provided with canvas wings of the same kind. This contrivance is said to have been invented by a Dutchman in the sixteenth century, and to have been applied to public vehicles.

Sal and Boa-Vista are mere insular deposits of sand and stone. As sometimes years pass without their tasting a drop of rain, nothing can be done in the way of cultivation. There is also a scarcity of firewood, which is supplied from the Gambia in exchange for salt.

I had the pleasure of meeting in Sal the judge of these islands, who was then on circuit. He lent me some numbers of Le Revue de deux Mondes. How I devoured them, and what a long healthy chat we had about German, French, and English literature, with all of which he was well acquainted! I could not but pity the isolation of such a man from the world of intellect. His family I knew well by name: it is one of the oldest in Portugal; but the entail system has not passed away in that country, as it has passed away in France, and is passing away in Spain; and the judge was a younger son. "But I am very happy," he said. "I have a

U

young wife; and I have money enough for my necessities. I do not hanker for that life of excitement which is not unknown to me, and to which you will soon return. I have my own tranquil pleasures, which now, perhaps, you are unable to understand; but they resemble those which invalids and old men enjoy when a tender wife or a loving daughter wait upon them, and read all their wishes in their eyes.

I pitied him less after he had told me this. I believe that I almost envied him-for a few moments. How charming it must be, I thought, to turn one's back on the strife and struggles of the world, and to enjoy those pure and peaceful pleasures which fame can never bestow! It however occurred to me, after a little deeper reflection, that such contentment is often mere apathy, indolence, and habit; that the horse in his stall, and the pig in his sty, are none the less inferior to man because their lives are more tranquil, and because they are disturbed by fewer passions; and that, if all young men were to turn hermits and philosophers, we should stagnate, sink back into savage life, and end by dining on each other.

CHAPTER XXIX.

UP THE CASEMANCHE.

Return to the Continent.-To the Casemanche in a French Schooner.-Fort Caraban.-The Jolas.-Rice and Palm Wine.-A Shift for a Divorce.-A Scene from the Desert.-A Shot at Antelopes. - Sedhu.-The traveling Marabouts. - The tree Self-Fire.-The Djikijunka.-Journey in Search of it.-Senegambia Scenery-Mandingo Village.-Native Courtesy.—Edible Earth.—The Trumpet-bird. -Missera.-Description of Djikijunka.-The Feast of Lanterns.-A Christmas Breakfast.-An Evening on the Water.

A MONTH in this tropical but comparatively healthy climate. made me a new man, and again I yearned for Continental life. The French line of packets to the Brazils work a small steamer across to Senegambia, and on the 8th of December I left the Cape de Verds. I was now to enter on quite a new field of studies; and I had the satisfaction of knowing that, after I had mingled with the ingenious Mandingoes, with the jet-black Wollofs, and with the powerful Fulas, my tour would have embraced all the types of negro races, and the principal features of negro life; and, having already visited the English and Portuguese settlements, I had only to visit those of the French to add the finishing touch to my colonial experience.

After a voyage of two days I landed at Goree, a small island which in Park's time belonged to the English, and from which he was supplied with men for his last and ill-fated enterprise.

It is now a town the most compact in Western Africa. Its streets are narrow, for there space is precious, but it is well stocked with shops; it is disgraced by no hovels; its fortifications are in fine order; and opposite the governor's palace is a large sand square, ornamented with small trees imprisoned in palisades. These are the ficus religios; and before these, at noon and eve, one may see negroes prostrating themselves, and curiously mingling the rites of the Mohammedan and pagan religions.

Goree is the grand dépôt of French trade in Senegambia. A number of ships are always lying in the harbor, and are as exclusively French as those at Loanda are exclusively Portuguese. At

Dakar, on the main land opposite, a new town is being built, as there is no more building-room on the island.

As soon as I arrived I presented myself at a pension, which in French Africa is something between shop, boarding-house, and tavern. I was shown into a chamber, and an anomalous little being, sex unknown, came in. It had its head clean shaven except a few stray rat's tails on the scalp; it was dressed in a short robe, open at the back, and made a tinkling noise when it ran. It looked at me with intelligent eyes, and then, as I supposed, cleared its throat somewhat coarsely. I afterward understood that it had addressed me in Wollof, the most guttural language in exist

ence.

Then entered a tall grave matron, in turban, sandals, and flowing cotton robes. She made my bed with nonchalance, and regarded me an infidel-with contempt. I felt abashed, and went down into the shop, which was café, haberdasher's, bookseller's, green-grocer's, Italian warehouse, fancy toy, and ready-made clothes' shop, and where, in fact, they seemed to retail every mortal thing. There, one might see at the same time sea-captains drinking absinthe at a little marble table, a young lieutenant trying on a pair of patent leather boots, and a negress choosing, with staring mouth and eyes, some garish pattern in cotton prints.

M. Rapet was a trader in the Casemanche, a French colony which lies to the south of the Gambia. He invited me to accompany him to this river, which he described as a terrestrial paradise; so the day following my arrival at Goree I went aboard his schooner, a vessel of ninety tons, and in the evening we set sail for the south with a fair wind. A voyage of two days brought us to the mouth of our river. We had to beat across the bar, the vessel stirring up the sand with her keel, and leaving a yellow track in our wake. But our progress became so slow that we took to the boat, and after three hours in the sun were landed at Caraban, the fort which commands the entrance of the Casemanche. It is a small island, like Bathurst on the Gambia and St. Louis on the Senegal, and affords to the view a flat surface of sand, with a few cotton-trees, and mangroves in the distance. We paid a series of rapid visits to traders and officials, and found the cold brandy and water of the English colonies was here represented by vermouth and absinthe, and that one was obliged to drink in every house which one entered.

We escaped in the evening, when a light wind bore us up the