The glare on the beach was blinding and the heat terrific, for the dry sand was so baked by the sun that the air rose from it all in a tremble, but after a few minutes’ laborious scrambling over the loose shifting surface, we suddenly entered an avenue which, by the abrupt contrast, seemed as dark and cool as a cloister. It was formed by two rows of wild fig trees which, arching overhead, enclosed a species of tunnel, the deep green roof of which was lighted by innumerable shafts of golden sunlight, and from the interlacing branches there hung down great stalactite-like masses of brown aërial roots. As we sauntered up the avenue, gazing around with a seaman’s delight at its umbrageous beauty, we passed numerous groups of native soldiers, barefooted ragamuffins dressed in threadbare blue serge, squatting on the ground, gravely engaged in a kind of primitive chess which they played with large beans on squares scratched upon smooth patches of earth with a pointed stick. The end of the avenue brought us out opposite the front of the crazy, weather-beaten fort, from one bastion of which the tall flagstaff bent and shook in the wind, and at the wide gateway, where a barefooted sentry stood on guard, I left the Captain to pursue his business while I strolled with Vanderpuye into the town. As I walked through the streets (if I can apply so dignified a name to the irregular alleys by which the town was intersected) I stared about at the strange and novel sights that presented themselves on all sides with the wonder and curiosity of the raw country bumpkin that I was; for it is to be remembered that I stepped, as it were, straight from the quiet little English seaport into this strange and remote African town with a transition as abrupt as if I had been transported thither in an instant by some miracle-working jinn. So I walked on like one in a dream by the side of my conductor--who, I may mention, was tastefully attired in a suit of crimson-flowered chintz and wore a white helmet and carpet slippers--under strange broad-leaved trees and rattling cocoa nut palms, past mud-built native hovels and whitewashed stores, pausing now and again to watch the groups of black people under the shady trees and continually questioning the grinning Vanderpuye. We passed several Europeans--pale-faced, depressed-looking men with square-cut beards, evidently Germans--all dressed in white drill, with pipe-clayed helmets and red cummerbunds, who gazed at me with languid curiosity; but of none of them did my guide take any notice until, turning a corner into a broader thoroughfare, we suddenly encountered a white man of quite different appearance, at whom I stared with renewed astonishment.