pleasure of a visit from Messrs. Hogg and Kirkwood, who were in
charge of the English factories at Glass Town and Olomi; they
came down stream at once, and kindly acted as ciceroni around Le
Plateau. The landing is good; a reef has been converted into a
jetty and little breakwater; behind this segment of a circle we
disembarked without any danger of being washed out of the boat,
as at S'a Leone, Cape Coast Castle, and Accra. Unfortunately just
above this pier there is a Dutch-like jardin d'ete--beds of dirty
weeds bordering a foul and stagnant swamp, while below the
settlement appears a huge coal-shed: the expensive mineral is
always dangerous when exposed in the tropics, and some thirty per
cent. would be saved by sending out a hulk. The next point is the
Hotel and Restaurant Fischer--pronounced Fi-cherre, belonging to
an energetic German-Swiss widow, who during six years' exile had
amassed some 65,000 francs. In an evil hour she sent a thieving
servant before the "commissaire de police;" the negress escaped
punishment, but the verandah with its appurtenances caught fire,
and everything, even the unpacked billiard-table, was burnt to
ashes. Still, Madame the Brave never lost heart. She applied
herself valiantly as a white ant to repairing her broken home,
and, wonderful to relate in this land of no labour, ruled by the
maxim "festina lente," all had been restored within six months.
We shall dine at her table d'hote.

Our guide led up and along the river bank, where there is almost
a kilometre of road facing six or seven kilometres of nature's
highway--the stream. The swampy jungle is not cleared off from
about the Comptoir, and presently the perfume of the fat, rank
weeds; and the wretched bridges, a few planks spanning black and
fetid mud, drove us northwards or inland, towards the neat house