14 
II. THE JOURNEY 
of West Africa, besides bananas, early potatoes, and 
other vegetables for Europe. 
We weighed anchor about three o’clock, and I stood 
in the bows and watched how the anchor slowly left 
the bottom and came up through the transparent water. 
I watched also, with admiration, what I took for a blue 
bird flying gracefully above the surface of the sea, 
till a sailor told me it was a flying fish. 
Then, as we moved from the coast southwards, there 
rose slowly up behind the island the snow-capped 
summit of its highest mountain, till it lost itself in the 
clouds, while we steamed away over a gently heaving 
sea and admired the entrancing blue of the water. 
It was during this portion of the voyage that we 
found it possible to become acquainted with one 
another. The other passengers were mostly army 
officers and doctors and civil service officials ; it 
surprised me to find so few traders on board. The 
officials, as a rule, are told only where they are to land, 
and not until on shore do they get to know their 
ultimate destination. 
Among those whom we got to know best were a 
lieutenant and a Government official. The latter was 
going to the Middle Congo region and had to leave his 
wife and children for two years. The lieutenant was 
in much the same position, and was expecting to go up 
to Abescher. He had already been in Tonquin, and 
in Madagascar, on the Senegal, the Niger, and the 
Congo, and he was interested in every department of 
colonial affairs. He held crushing views about Mahom- 
medanism as it prevails among the natives, seeing in it 
the greatest danger there is for the future of Africa. 
“ The Mahommedan negro,” he said, " is no longer any 
