i8o 
Return to the River. 
wrestling after the fashion of Hindostan, as I 
attempted in my youth, on “ native ” sweetmeats 
and sugared milk, will be blind with “ melan¬ 
cholia ” in a week. The diet of the negro is the 
greasiest possible, witness his “palm-oil chop” 
and “ palaver sauce ; ” his craving for meat, espe¬ 
cially fat meat, is a feeling unknown to Europe. 
And how simple the reason. Damp heat de¬ 
mands almost as much carbon as damp or dry 
cold. 
Return we to the Baraka Mission. The name 
is a corruption of “ barracoon; ” in the palmy 
days of the trade slave-pens occupied the ground 
now covered by the chapel, the schoolroom, and 
the dwelling-house, and extended over the site of 
the factory to the river-bank. The place is well 
chosen. Immediately beyond the shore the land 
swells up to a little rounded hill, clean and grassy 
like that about Sanga-Tanga. The soil appears 
poor, and yet around the mission-house there are 
some fine wild figs, one a huge tree, although not 
a score of years old; the bamboo clump is magni¬ 
ficent, and the cocoas, oranges, and mangoes are 
surrounded by thick, fragrant, and luxuriant 
quickset hedges of well-trimmed lime. 
A few words concerning the banana of this 
coast, which we find so flourishing at Baraka. 
An immense god-send to the Gaboon, it is well 
known to be the most productive of all food, ioo 
