_The safety of the seashore--Why they do not plant trees in English territory--The D.C.'s prayer--Quittah or Keta--The Bremen Sisters--The value of fresh air as a preventive of fever--A polygamous household--The Awuna people--The backsliding clerk of the Bremen Mission--Incongruity of antimacassars and polygamy--Naming the child--“Laughing at last” and “Not love made you”--Forms of marriage--The cost of a wife--How to poison an enemy--Loving and dutiful children--The staple industry of the place--Trading women--The heat of Keta._
Having got into Lome the question was how to get out of it. I wanted to go to Keta, twenty-seven miles away in British territory, and my idea was to go by sea as I could do it in three hours at the very most, and Elder Dempster, having very kindly franked me on their steamers, it would cost me nothing save the tips to the surf boats that landed me; but there was one great thing against that--my hosts told me that very often the surf was so bad it was impossible to land at Keta. The head of Swanzy's had a man under him at Keta, and when he went to inspect he invariably went overland. That decided me. I too must go overland.
But carriers were by no means cheap. I had got hammock-boys to carry me the thirty miles from Ho to Palime for two shillings, and here for twenty-seven miles along the shore I paid my hammock-boys six shillings and sixpence and my carriers five shillings and sixpence, so that my pots were adding to their original price considerably.
So on a fine, hot morning in May I was, with my train of carriers, on the road once more. First the going was down between groves of palms by the Governor's palace, which is a palace indeed, and must have cost a small fortune. A very brief walk brought us to the Border, and then the contrast was once more marked. The English villages were untidy and filthy, with a filth that was emphasised now that I had seen what could be done by a little method and orderliness; those Coast villages remain in my mind as a mixture of pigs, and children, and stagnant water, and all manner of litter and untidiness. One saving grace they had was that they were set among the nice clean sand of the seashore that absorbed as much as possible all the dirt and moisture, and we passed along through groves of cocoa-nut palms that lent a certain charm and picturesqueness to the scene. I am never lonely beside the sea; the murmur of its waves is company, and I cannot explain it, but I am never afraid. I do not know why, but I could not walk in a forest by myself, yet I could walk for miles along the seashore and never fear, though I suppose many deeds of violence have been done along these shores; but they have been done on the sand, and the waters have swept over them, and washed all memory of them away.