West Africa is notorious in all the world for its paucity of harbours, and its heavy surf, which at certain seasons rages like a battle, the roar of it like many voices defying the white man that would approach its shores. The surf at one place where we called was so bad that we were seven days discharging one day’s cargo. The sea rolled in with a tremendous swell—the calemma—like a wall of water that looked three stories high, which, as it approached the land, burst into a succession of breakers that raced towards the shore, and striking with the boom of cannon, tossed the white surf high into the air. One always feels, in going through it, that he is fighting a personal foe; there is even something human in the sound of it. The Kruboy says it is full of spirits. Savage spirits, they must be, and drunken, which leap and tumble and shout in mad carousal. At each place the first venture in the surf-boats was watched eagerly from the ship. Three or four boats set out together with a light cargo. Near the surf they stop, landing one at a time, and waiting for the right moment. They wait perhaps as long as half an hour. Then, in the first boat, at the word of the headman, they throw their weight on the paddles and pull for their lives, not looking to either side, nor speaking a word. Now they are in the breakers, borne forward upon the racing waves with violent speed, a roaring monster before them and another more ferocious one pursuing. At this moment the safety of all depends upon the skill of the headman in keeping the boat placed right to the wave. And in any case, if the boat, upon reaching the beach, strike the ground at a moment when the water has receded, the breaker following will be upon it before they can drag it up the beach, and catching it up will perhaps stand it straight on end, and hurl it backward upon the beach; or, if it be not straight to the wave, it will be whirled about and flung up the beach, rolling over and over, with all its freight of boxes and barrels, the boys escaping I know not how—but not always escaping.