Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

THEN AND NOW xv
the blue Atlantic—there, I say, you see the sad and
symbolic story of decadence on the West Coast of
Africa. For the fearful fact must be faced that all
things Europeafi degenerate in Central Africa—Euro-
pean provisions go bad, European fruits, European
dogs degenerate. So, too, European men and women.
:*
And now the wheel comes 7'otind full
INUW circle. Emerging froTn a long shut-in
A.U. 191 2. ij^j.^ ^'^ ^^^ p^^ Interior, one receives quite
a mental jolt on striking the first ''tin town'' of ad-
vancing civilisation. Where are you ? have you struck
the planet Mars ? The long lapse of years makes it
all strangely familiar and familiarly strange. One
opines one has dreamed all this years and years ago.
Can I believe my eyes ? There, jutting out of the grass,
I see two spokes of iron coming up from the South—my
first railway train in twenty-two years I
* 5ff %
Then again. Right across Africa, remember, there
never was a shop, so here it is, while the human tide pours
along, you are all eyes at the seductive shop window of
some little local Selfridges, the tin towns universal pro-
vider. Fascinated as by a basilisk, you gaze stare-struck
at this dream ofpast years—a shop window / There are
crowds of renegade natives from the North down here at
the rail-head : poor specimens these, sucked into the whirl-
pool of gambling and gin boosing. This is the place
ivhere the new arrivalfrom the train can see just enough
of the debased type of African to keep him from the
desire of seeing more.