from Casablanca in Morocco, all the way round by the Cape of
Good Hope to Port Said. But Jaffery, in his lavish way, duplicated these
travel-pictures in articles to _The Daily Gazette_, which, supplemented
by memory, he has already published in book form for all the world to
read. Therefore, if I recorded his impressions of Grand Bassam, Cape
Lopez, Boma, Matadi, Delagoa Bay, Montirana, Mombasa and other
apocalyptic places, I should be merely plagiarising or infringing
copyright, or what-not; and in any case I should be introducing matter
entirely irrelevant to this chronicle. You must just imagine the rusty
_Vesta_ wallowing along, about nine knots an hour, around Africa,
disgorging cotton goods and cheap jewelry at each God-forsaken port, and
making up cargo with whatever raw material could find a European market.
If I had gone this voyage, I would tell you all about it; but you see, I
remained in England. And if I subjected Jaffery's correspondence to
microscopic examination, and read up blue books on the exports and
imports of all the places on the South African coast line, and told you
exactly what was taken out of the _S.S. Vesta_ and what was put into
her, I cannot conceive your being in the slightest degree interested. To
do so, would bore me to death. To me, cargo is just cargo. The
transference of it from ship to shore and from shore to ship is a matter
of awful noise and perspiring confusion. I have travelled, in so-called
comfort, as a first-class passenger to Africa. I know all about it.
Generally, the ship cannot get within quarter of a mile of the shore. On
one side of it lies a fleet of flat-bottomed lighters manned by
glistening and excited negroes. On board is a donkey-engine working a
derrick with a Tophetical clatter. Vast bales and packing cases are
lifted from the holds. A dingily white-suited officer stands by with
greasy invoice sheets, while another at the yawning abyss whence the
cargo emerges makes the tropical day hideous with horrible imprecations.
And the merchandise swings over the side and is received in the lighter,
by black uplifted arms, in the midst of a blood-curdling babel of
unmeaning ferocity. That is all that unloading cargo means to me; and I
cannot imagine that it means any more to any of the sons or daughters of
men who are not intimately concerned in a particular trade. . . . You
must imagine, I say, the _S.S. Vesta_ repeating this monotonous
performance; Jaffery and Liosha and