I Encounter a Curious Relic

A couple of days after our excursion to Anyáko I received a letter by the land post from Captain Bithery. It was dated from Axím on the Gold Coast, and in it, after giving me sundry items of news concerning the brig and her crew, the Captain went on to say that he proposed to drop down to the leeward coast in about a fortnight to ship some produce that he hoped to obtain. This produce, consisting chiefly of palm oil, kernels and copra, was to be collected for him by a certain Cæsar Olympio—a Portuguese mulatto who lived at the village of Adena or Elmina Chica, a beach village some twelve miles to leeward—i.e. to the east—of Quittáh; and he proposed that I should proceed to Adena to conduct the purchase and superintend the storage of the produce, leaving my store in Vanderpuye’s charge.

On receiving these instructions I made the necessary arrangements with Pereira, and the same afternoon set out for Adena in a spare hammock which he lent me and which was carried on the heads of four of our labourers.

This was my first experience of this mode of travelling, and very pleasant and even luxurious I found it to recline at full length in the springy, swaying hammock as the barefooted carriers trudged over the soft sand. A canopy of painted canvas protected me from the sun during the daylight and from the dew when the night closed in, and by peering underneath it I could look out at the groves of pattering cocoa-nut palms on the one side, and on the other at the ocean which surged up almost at our feet.

It was about eight o’clock and bright moonlight when the hammock drew up outside the compound of Olympio’s house, and as I scrambled out on to my feet I was saluted by a little yellow-faced man with bright, beady, black eyes and a most persuasive and conciliatory smile.

“You are Mr. Olympio?” I said as I shook his hand.

“Quite right,” he replied in a singularly soft and musical voice, adding, “I bid you welcome to Adena. Will you please to come in?”

I followed him into the house, a mud-built thatched cottage of three rooms, and immediately became aware of an aromatic and savoury odour, and perceived with great content that preparations—of a somewhat primitive nature indeed—had been made for a meal.

I was not the only guest, it appeared, for, as I entered, a native in European dress—what is locally known as a “scholar man”—rose to greet me. He was the very antithesis of Olympio—big, burly, black as the ace of spades, and full of the boisterous humour and high spirits of the typical African; and as he gripped me by the hand and bid me welcome to Adena his joy overflowed in little gurgles of laughter.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Englefield,” he said in a deep buzzing bass. “I hear your name plenty time but never see you. Now I see you very fine gentleman. Ha! ha! ha!” Here he leered at Olympio, who keckled softly and rubbed his hands.

“Mr. Englefield smell de palaver sauce, hey! Olympio?” continued my new friend, whose name, by the way, was David Annan. “You like dis country chop, sah?”

I replied that I had very little acquaintance with African cookery.

“Aha! no! You no get fine country wife like Olympio to make you palaver sauce. Dis yer Olympio he sabby what be good. He sabby fine chop, fine liquor, fine girl. He very bad man, sah, ha! ha!”

He laughed uproariously, and certainly the picture of the little wizened mulatto in the character of a bon vivant and lady-killer was not without its comic side. But these flights of wit were cut short by the appearance of a handsome, light-coloured Fanti woman who carried a deep, black clay dish, and was followed by a procession of small girls and boys each bearing some adjunct to the feast, and soon the little table, with its red and yellow-striped cloth, groaned under a burden of delicacies. The black dish was filled with a gorgeous orange-coloured palm oil stew, while smaller but similar receptacles exhibited such dainties as kiki, or okro stew, rolls of fufu, looking like gelatinous suet puddings, stuffed egg-fruit, large red capsicums and piles of green and red chillis.

That dinner was a series of surprises, of which I experienced the first when I unguardedly swallowed a spoonful of the orange-red “palaver sauce” and was instantly reduced to tears and suffocation. But the most surprising thing of all was the behaviour of Mr. David Annan. He commenced the meal by popping into his mouth and calmly masticating a large scarlet capsicum. He next pinched off a lump of fufu and, indenting it with his thumb, fashioned it into a kind of cup which he filled with the peppery stew and solemnly bolted with closed eyes like a toad swallowing a caterpillar. Finally, he poured out half a tumblerful of Angostura bitters and drained it at a draught. After this my capacity for astonishment was exhausted, and if he had proceeded to quench his thirst with the contents of the paraffin lamp and to swallow the forks it would have seemed quite in character. But he did neither of these things, and the meal dragged on to the end with no further diversion from my sufferings.