On the long voyage of five weeks from Liverpool to Libreville I had been duly prepared for the worst by the Old Coasters on board, who deem it their duty to instruct all newcomers in regard to the evils of the climate and the certainty of an early death. This duty constitutes a daily exercise during the entire voyage and is discharged faithfully and conscientiously. Each morning at the breakfast-table the young missionary is told that the African fever is inevitable, and to expect it will bring it on in two days. The healthy die first. “Missionaries die like flies.” The abnormal mortality among missionaries is due to several persistent delusions; chief among them, the temperance delusion, and the quinine delusion. According to the Old Coaster, everybody whose mind is open to conviction knows that temperate habits are no defense and that total abstinence is a quick method of suicide. Quinine only aggravates the fever; everybody knows that also; but missionaries will not admit it. Then there is the minor delusion of the umbrella. All those people who regularly carried umbrellas are dead. Those who didn’t carry them are dead too, but they lived longer. The dreadful racking pain of the fever is adequately described, and then there is added the consoling thought that a man may sometimes escape having it _fatally_ by having it _frequently_. “Fatally, or frequently:” the poets among them dwell fondly on the alliteration. After we have begun to call at the African ports this elementary instruction is reinforced by a circumstantial and realistic account of the death of the “poor chaps” who have “pegged out” since the last voyage. The number is large: I did not know there were so many white men on the coast. Many among them were of my particular build, complexion and general appearance—I was told. It is not that the Old Coaster is indulging a barbarous sense of humour in trying to frighten the newcomer, but he has become fairly obsessed with the thought of the climate. Sooner or later this morbid distemper seizes upon most of those who live for any length of time in West Africa. After such an unappetizing conversation at the breakfast-table, a certain young missionary escaped to the upper deck where he was soon joined by an Old Coaster who asked him if he happened to have a prayer-book. Delighted that the conversation had taken a turn (and such a _good_ turn) he replied that he hadn’t a prayer-book, not being an Anglican, but that he might procure one from a fellow passenger. “I’d be ever so much obliged,” says the Old Coaster, “if you would; for I want to write down the burial service. You see, no matter how a man may have lived, it’s a comfort to him out here on the coast to think that he’ll have a decent burial; so we’re neighbourly, and we read the service for one another.”