I Visit a Graveyard and Meet a Blind Man

I do not know whether in the preceding pages I have made the reader understand what manner of place Quittáh is. Probably I have not, and a few words of description may be useful before proceeding further.

Quittáh, then, is one of a row of towns or villages dotted along a narrow tongue of sand which stretches from the mouth of the river Volta with a few interruptions to the Niger Delta. On one side of this isthmus is the ocean and on the other a chain of large lagoons, and so narrow is the space separating sea and lagoon that, in many places, travellers proceeding along the latter in canoes can not only hear the boom of the surf upon the beach outside, but can see the white crests of the waves over the low-lying shore.

Thus from the peculiarity of its position Quittáh was very much like a small island. From the sea one was cut off by the dangerous surf; from the adjacent villages of Jella-Koffi and Voja by the loose, shifting sand which it was almost impossible to walk upon, while between us and the mainland the lagoon spread out like an inland sea, right away to the horizon.

This mainland, of which I heard occasional reports from native traders, became to me a source of continually increasing curiosity. From the lagoon-side market, where I often stood watching the fleets of canoes unloading their little freights of produce on to the “hard,” it was, as I have said, invisible, and the lagoon stretched, an unbroken waste of water as far as the eye could see. But from our verandah a few palms could be seen upon the other side, their heads just standing above the horizon, while on very clear days one could discern the dim and shadowy shape of the Adáklu—a solitary mountain some seventy miles distant in the interior.

It happened one evening that as I stood on the verandah, telescope in hand, dividing my attention between the cloudlike mountain and the fleet of canoes returning homewards from the market, Pereira came out, and flinging himself into a squeaking Madeira chair, began to roll a cigarette, regarding me meanwhile with an indulgent smile.

“I often wonder, Englefield,” he said presently, “what it is that you are continually spying at through that telescope. Surely the lagoon and the canoes and the palms and the pelicans are pretty commonplace objects by this time, and I think they comprise the entire landscape.”

“Certainly,” I replied, “the outlook is a little monotonous; but yet somehow it attracts me, and I find myself continually wondering what there is behind the horizon there.”

“Then wonder no longer, my friend,” said Pereira, “but come with me to-morrow and see for yourself. I have to go to Anyáko to visit a branch store that I have there, and as to-morrow is Sunday I propose that we make my business visit into a picnic. But don’t imagine that there is anything to see. Conceive Quittáh with pink clay instead of grey sand, with ant hills in place of sand dunes; add to the cocoa-nut palms a few gum trees and baobabs, and substitute a slightly different stink, and there is Anyáko.”

“Any white people?” I inquired.

“Not now,” answered Pereira. “There was a mission station there once, but the missionaries died off as fast as they were sent out, so the station was abandoned. You’ll see the graves and the remains of the chapel to-morrow.”

On the following morning I met Pereira by the lagoon-side just as the sun was rising, but early as was the hour, all the necessary preparations for the journey were completed. Half a dozen of the long flat-bottomed canoes (each fashioned from a single log of silk-cotton-wood) such as the natives use, were drawn up by the “hard” or landing-place, and of these the largest was evidently set apart for our use, for it contained two Madeira chairs, and even as I approached I observed Aochi, Pereira’s servant, stowing in the bows a green gin case from which protruded the necks of two claret bottles.