Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/150

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community like this of Gaboon," I say, "it's scandalous that roads should be allowed to wander about in this loose way." "That's so for true," she assents; "but, ma, ———" "You must excuse me," I answer, "I am in a great hurry to get in, hope to meet you again. Where do you live? I'll call." She gives me her address, but does not move, and the grass walls either side of the stream road are high and dense. My husband," she says, "was in H, and C.'s; he die now." "Dear me, that's very sad; you must have been very sorry," I answer, sympathetically, thinking I have turned the conversation. "We all were; he had ten wives. "But, ma ———," I am damp and desperate and so pushing into the grass at the side, circumnavigate her portly form successfully, and saying a cheery "good-bye," bolt, and down wind after me comes the uninterrupted question at last; but I do not return to discuss the matter, and soon getting on to drier ground, and seeing a path that goes towards the boulevard, down I go, as quickly as my feet can carry me, and then before I know where I am I find myself in a network of little irrigating canals, running between neatly kept beds of tomatoes, salad, &c., whereon there are working busily a lot of Anamese convicts. The convicts are deported from the French Cochin China possessions and employed by the Public Works Department in various ways. Those who conduct themselves well, and survive, have grants of garden ground given them, which they cultivate in this tidy, carefully minute way, so entirely different from the slummacky African methods of doing things. The produce they sell to the residents in the town, and live very prosperously in this way: but the climate of Western Africa is almost, if not quite, as deadly to the Chinese races as to the white—a fact that has been amply demonstrated not only here; but in Congo Belge, where the railway company carried on a series of experiments with imported labour—a series of experiments that entailed an awful waste of human life—for none of the imported people stood the climate any better than the whites, and you know what that means. This labour question out here, a question that increases daily with the development of plantation enter-