Chapter II

I DO NOT BECOME “FAST FRIENDS” WITH LAGOS.

On Nov. 29, 1863, I embarked on board H.M.S.S. Antelope, Lieut.-Commander Allingham. A red ensign at the fore, manned yards, and a salute of 17 guns, banished from my brain all traces of Buena Vista and the Bubé. Our cruise was eventless. We of course fell in with a tornado off Cape Formoso, the gentle projection in the hypothenuse of the Nigerian Delta. The good old iron paddle-wheeler, however, though no “skimmer of the seas,” advanced at ease through the impotent blast. On Dec. 2, we found ourselves rolling in the roads of pestilential Lagos, our lullaby the sullen distant roar, whilst a dusky white gleam smoking over the deadly bar in the darkening horizon threatened us with a disagreeable landing at the last, the youngest, and the most rachitic of Great Britain’s large but now exceedingly neglected family of colonies.

H.M.S.S. Investigator was signalled for on the next day; the Handy being as usual “unhandy”—broken down. The acting commander of the former, Mr. Adlam, kindly gave me an in-passage to ship the presents sent by the Foreign Office for the King of Dahome.

The town, however, and the townspeople as well, wore a new and greatly improved appearance, the work of the great benefactor of West African cities, “General Conflagration.” Three fires had followed one another in regular succession through November, December, and January, 1863; and the fire god will continue to “rule the roast” till men adopt some more sensible style of roofing than thatch and “Calabar mats.” There was also a distinct improvement in local morals since the days when the charming English spinster landed here, and was obliged by the excited and _non- culottées_ natives to be escorted back to her papa’s ship by two gentlemen with drawn swords.

Nudity has been made penal. Where impaled corpses of men and dogs scandalized eye and nose, and where a foul mass of hovel crowded down to the beach, now runs a broad road, a Marine Parade, the work of the first governor, Mr. Coskry, during his short but useful reign. Finally, Sydney Smith’s highest idea of civil government, a street constable, everywhere gladdens the Britisher’s sight. In France we should have seen the _piou- piou_; in England they prefer the “peeler;” and the peeler-governed scoff and wag the head at the piou-piou-ruled, and _vice versâ_. I confess to holding that British Prætorian, the policeman, to be like the beefsteak, and like Professor Holloway’s pill—a bore, a world-wide nuisance: the “meteor flag of England” never seems to set upon him. Camoëns might have addressed him as another Sebastian:—

Thou being dread! upon whose glorious sway

The orient sun first pours his quick’ning beam,

And views thee from the heaven’s middle way,

And lights thee smiling with his latest gleam.

et cætera.

On the other hand, nothing could be worse than the animus between white and black and white-black; it was systematically aggravated by the bad prints of the coast, and by the extra-philanthropic portion of the fourth estate at home. The place is also, I have said, pestilential; out of a grand total of seventy Europeans, not fewer than nine have lately died in thirteen days; others are expected to follow, and no man is safe at Lagos for a week. Breathing such an air, with such an earth below them, with such a sun above them, and with such waters within them, it is hardly to be wondered at that the Lagoonist’s temper is the reverse of mild.

Thus we arrived at an evil hour; all stood in armed peace, alert for war; and the hapless Investigator put the last strain on the back of Patience. Startled by the display of fight, I hastily collected the presents, whilst Mr. John Cruikshank, the Assistant-Surgeon, R.N., detailed on duty to Dahome, obliged me by laying in a few stores. On December 4th we hurried from the City of Wrath. The bar showed blinders only; we would have crossed it had the breakers risen mountains high.

On Saturday, December 5th, we anchored off notorious Whydah, a few hours too late to catch the last glimpse of the Rattlesnake’s top-gear. This was unlucky. Commodore Wilmot, commanding the West Coast of Africa, who, taking the warmest interest in the mission, had adopted every possible measure to forward its success, after vainly awaiting my coming for nearly a fortnight, was compelled by circumstances to steam Northward. Thus it was my fate to miss the only officer on the coast who knew anything about Dahome, and thus collation of opinion became impossible.