Snow on the Equator

It was a Sunday evening, and it seemed to me that the whole of the European population of Bangui, numbering about three hundred, were assembled on the terrace outside, drinking apéritifs and talking as only Frenchmen can talk. I had forgotten there were so many white people in Africa, and that some of them could be as noisy and as voluble as the natives.

not very eventful journey of 3000 miles across Africa. Satisfaction at getting across was tinged with disappointment at the extraordinary sameness (I had almost said ‘tameness’) of the scenery of the western half of the journey as compared with the variety seen in the eastern; once the central highlands have been crossed and left behind, the monotony of forest and long grass is all-embracing. Neither is there the great diversity of peoples one meets with in East Africa, where the tribes, differing widely in dress, features, customs, and modes of life, combine with the ever-changing scene to make travel in Kenya, Uganda, or Tanganyika a constant delight. But in spite of the complaint of monotony, which might also be levelled at travel in the desert or the Arctic, for that man who travels by his own exertions no day can be dull and no journey without an abiding interest.

A surprise, perhaps another disappointment, was the comparative ease with which the journey had been done. From what has been said, it should be clear that the sole requisite for success was ability to follow the advice of James Pigg to ‘keep tambourine a-roulin.’ This absence of difficulty and danger may be disappointing to others, too, for the tradition of Darkest Africa dies hard. Ten or fifteen years earlier such a ride would have been difficult enough, if not impossible, and even today the road is but a slender thread, and Africa, a vast country in which, away from the road, one can still find the Africa of boyhood’s dreams—the dreams inspired by Rider Haggard, Selous, Stanley.

coast delicacies of palm-oil chop and ground-nut stew. Very excellent dishes they are, too, but in my opinion more suitable for the Arctic than the tropics. As their eating necessitates the revivifying effects of much gin, meals in which they figure are serious affairs. On the coast, the day set aside by custom for their consumption is Sunday, just as at home we in England on the same day celebrate the solemn rites of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.