But my arrival was a cause of tribulation to the District Commissioner. There was no hotel, so I appealed to him for quarters. It really was a little hard on him. He sighed and did his best, and the only time I really saw him look happy was about three weeks later when he saw me safely in a surf boat bound for the out-going steamer. But when I landed, the need for shelter was pressing, and he gave me a room in the Judge's quarters where it seems they bestow all homeless white strangers in Axim. Already the Forestry officer was there, and he had a sitting-room and a bedroom, so that I could only have a bedroom and a bathroom. Now, with a verandah and such a large room at my disposal, I could make myself more than comfortable; then, because I did not know African ways, I accepted the very kind invitation of the medical officer and his wife, the only white woman in Axim, to “chop” with them.
African ways are very convenient when you come to think of it. Here was a big empty room with a wardrobe and a little cane furniture in it. I went in with my brother's kit and set up my camp-bed, my bath, laid down my ground sheet and put up my table and chair, and I had all that was really necessary. Outside was the ragged garden, haunted they said, though I never saw the ghost, and because it was usually empty the big rats scrambled up the stairs, and the birds sat in the oleander bushes and called “Be quick, be quick” continually.
I couldn't take their advice because it is impossible to hurry things on the Coast and I must wait for the carriers.
The first night I had dinner--chop--with the medical officer and his wife and went to bed reflecting a little regretfully I had made no preparations for my early-morning tea. However, I concluded it might be good discipline to do without it. But it is a great thing to have a capable boy. Just as it began to get light Grant appeared outside my mosquito curtains as usual with a cup of tea and some fruit. The cup and teapot were my own; he had stolen all the materials from the Forestry officer next door, and I was much beholden to that young man when, on apologising, he smiled and said it was all right, he was glad I liked his tea.
Axim is a pretty little town with the usual handful of whites and the negroes semi-civilised with that curious civilisation which has probably persisted for centuries, which is not what we would call civilisation and yet is not savagery. It is hardly even barbarism. These Coast towns are not crowded with naked savages as many a stay-at-home Briton seems to imagine; they are peopled with artisans, clerks, traders, labourers, people like in many ways to those in the same social scale in other countries, and differing only when the marked characteristics of the negro come in. All along in these Coast towns the negroes are much the same. To their own place they are suitable; only when they try to conform too much to the European lines of thought do they strike one as _outré_ or objectionable. I suppose that is what jars in the Christian negro. It is not the Christianity, it is the striving after something eminently unsuited to him. Left to himself though, he naturally goes back to the mode of life that was his forefathers', and sometimes he has the courage to own it. I remember a man who called in the medical officer about his wife. The ordinary negro has as many wives as he can afford, but the Christian is by way of only having one, and as this man was clothed in the ordinary garb of the European, unnecessary coat, shirt, and hat, I naturally set him down as a Christian.