It was cheerless and chilly when we emerged from the village on to the narrow woodland track. A dense mist enshrouded the landscape and made the trees look ghostly and unreal. Everything reeked with moisture. The dew pattered down from the trees, the grass and herbage was saturated and the ground sodden with the wet. Five minutes after starting I was soaked to the skin and my teeth were chattering. “You still want a bath, Mr. Englefield?” inquired Annan with a delighted chuckle as he noted my saturated clothing. “I want my breakfast,” I retorted savagely, visions of the steaming “early coffee” at Pereira’s house flitting across my memory. Annan opened his bundle, and taking out a blackened plantain, handed it to me after removing the superfluous ashes by wiping it down the leg of his pyjamas; and despite its repulsive aspect, I chewed it up thankfully, cinders and all, to his undissembled joy and amusement. “You like dis country chop proper,” he remarked, as I licked my fingers and held out my hand for another plantain; but his amusement gave way to apprehension when I proceeded to eat yet a third. We were meantime entering the fringe of the forest, and the scenery appeared to me unspeakably lovely. The trees grew more lofty and umbrageous, and their trunks were clothed in a garment of creepers and ferns. Once we passed through a grove of oil palms, and I was charmed with the delicate grace of this plant, so different from the scraggy cocoa-nut palm of the coast, so soft and feathery and symmetrical, and so beautifully adorned with the long trailing ferns that hang down in lacy streamers from the crown of the stem. Annan’s promise as to the rivers, too, was amply fulfilled, but although they were pleasant enough to look at, they were a great annoyance, as they kept my legs continually wet from wading through them; and I rather envied the carriers, whose scanty clothing made this a matter of less consequence to them. After a couple of hours of steady tramping we entered the large village of Essekúma, where Annan decided to halt for a meal; and it was quite pleasant to sit in the open compound and dry one’s clothing in the sun. A substantial meal of oily and pungent fowl-stew accompanied by a liberal allowance of tenacious plantain fufu, made me inclined to loll at my ease and quietly study the village life and meditate upon the queer sculptured ornaments on the houses; but Annan would hear of no delay, and having cleaned his fingers on the ever-ready pyjamas, gave the word to proceed. These Africans were certainly indefatigable walkers, and their powers of endurance quite remarkable--so remarkable, indeed, that I began to doubt if I should be able to keep up with our carriers, burdened as they were with loads varying from thirty to sixty pounds.