charnel-house, a "dark and dismal tomb of Europeans." The yellow
fever of the last year, which wiped out in two months one-third
of the white colony--more exactly, 78 out of 250--had not
reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly
favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime,
the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs
almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was
meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed
into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a
passage down south. To hear was to accept. Two days afterwards
(July 29, 1863) I bade a temporary "adios" to the enemy.

The bitterness of death remained behind as we passed out of the
baneful Bights. Wind and wave were dead against us, yet I greatly
enjoyed the gradual emerging of the sun through his shroud of
"smokes;" the increasing consciousness that a moon and stars
really exist; the soft blue haze of the sky, and the coolness of
73deg. F. at 6 A.M. in the captain's cabin. I had also time to enjoy
these charms. The "Torch" was not provided with "despatch-
boilers:" she was profoundly worm-eaten, and a yard of copper,
occasionally clapped on, did not prevent her making some four
feet of water a day. So we rolled leisurely along the well-known
Gaboon shore, and faintly sighted from afar Capes Lopez and St.
Catherine, and the fringing ranges of Mayumba-land, a blue line
of heights based upon gently rising banks, ruddy and white,
probably of shaly clay. The seventh day (August 5) placed us off
the well-known "red hills" of Loango-land.

The country looks high and bold after the desperate flatness of
the Bights, and we note with pleasure that we have left behind us