together. It was always thus with this book, begun in '89 and finished
in '94--with that shortest of all the novels which it was to be my lot
to write. Between its opening exclamation calling Almayer to his dinner
in his wife's voice and Abdullah's (his enemy) mental reference to the
God of Islam--"The Merciful, the Compassionate"--which closes the
book, there were to come several long sea passages, a visit (to use the
elevated phraseology suitable to the occasion) to the scenes (some of
them) of my childhood and the realisation of childhood's vain words,
expressing a light-hearted and romantic whim.

It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking
at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space
then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to
myself with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no
longer in my character now:

"When I grow up I shall go there."

And of course I thought no more about it till after a quarter of a
century or so an opportunity offered to go there--as if the sin of
childish audacity were to be visited on my mature head. Yes. I did go
there: there being the region of Stanley Falls which in '68 was the
blankest of blank spaces on the earth's figured surface. And the MS.
of "Almayer's Folly," carried about me as if it were a talisman or a
treasure, went there too. That it ever came out of there seems a special
dispensation of Providence; because a good many of my other properties,
infinitely more valuable and useful to me, remained behind through
unfortunate accidents of transportation. I call to mind, for instance,
a specially awkward turn of the Congo between Kinchassa and
Leopoldsville--more particularly when one had to take it at night in