142 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



beyond that gateway, traverse those paths which 

 lead into the mysterious interior, come back 

 fever-laden, weary and w^asted, and Chinde seems 

 to be the hinges on which a great portal swings, 

 shutting out the sunlight from life, a portcullis 

 which guards the road to delirium and death. 



For this is the Golgotha of the East Coast, 

 and the lands beyond are the Gethsemane of 

 those to whom Africa calls. That call is only 

 heard by certain ears, and when the invitation 

 comes it seldom brooks a refusal. 



Time speeds by, and he who has responded 

 to the beckoning, wends his way seawards. 

 Many a traveller returning to Chinde has smelt 

 the salt breeze which blows across the estuary, 

 and drawn it deep into his nostrils as the elixir 

 of life. But it is often a draught of death. 

 There is something fatal in that blending of the 

 hot winds drawn from the sea and the mangrove 

 swamps of the coast which mixes a potent 

 philtre that has sent scores of worn wanderers 

 to their last sleep. 



There are two burial-grounds in Chinde, the 

 new cemetery and an old graveyard. It is in 

 the latter place of skulls that the remains of 

 Stairs, who dared the darkness of the Congo 

 forests with Stanley, were laid to rest. Here, 

 too, Monteith Fotheringham, and many another 

 pioneer and explorer have sought the sanctuary 

 of the tomb unhonoured and unsung. 



By right of endeavour and achievement such 

 spirits are entitled to a crypt in those great piles 

 where England buries her most revered dead. 

 But they were men who would have scorned 

 the limitations of the most titanic abbeys the 

 world has ever built. And so it is that their 

 wasted frames were buried deep in the sands 



