and Spain at large felt proud at this dashing bit of enterprise in modern appliance. Alas! the primeval forests of Fernando Po were also charmed with the new toy, and they talked to each other on it with their leaves and branches to such an extent that a human being could not get a word in edgeways. So the Governor had to order the construction of a road along the course of the wire to keep the trees off it, but unfortunately the telephone is still an uncertain means of communication, because another interruption in its usefulness still afflicts it, namely the indigenous natives' habit of stealing bits out of its wire, for they are fully persuaded that they cannot be found out in their depredations provided they take sufficient care that they are not caught in the act. The Governor is thus liable to be cut off at any moment in the middle of a conversation with Clarence, and the amount of "Hellos" "Are you theres?" and "Speak louder, pleases" in Spanish that must at such times be poured out and wasted in the lonely forests before the break is realised and an unfortunate man sent off as a messenger, is terrible to think of.
But nothing would persuade the Governor to come a mile down towards Clarence until the day he should go there to join the vessel that was to take him home, and I am bound to say he looked as if the method was a sound one, for he was an exceedingly healthy, cheery-looking man. Possibly his abstinence from Fernando Po water—a dangerous beverage—and an adherence to a form of light sherry, had something to do with his immunity from fever, for his neighbours, the colonists and priests who are stationed near him, are by no means good advertisements for Basile as a health-resort.
Fernando Po is said to be a comparatively modern island, and not so very long ago to have been connected with the mainland, the strait between them being only nineteen miles across, and not having any deep soundings.[1] I fail to see what grounds there are for these ideas, for though Fernando Po's volcanoes are not yet extinct, but merely have their fires
- ↑ From Point Limbok, the seaward extremity of Cameroons mountain, to Cape Horatio, the most eastern extremity of Fernando Po, the soundings are, from the continent, 13, 17, 20, 23, 27, 29, 30, 34 fathoms; close on to the island, 35 and 29 fathoms.
