ABSTRACT
If I remember correctly, there were six such funerals before we reached "the trades"; but this was not unusual, for it must be borne in mind that the majority of both Government officersand traders are very determined men. They have been sick so often that they accept fever as a matter of course, and if it comes upon them when trade is brisk at the factory or there is trouble brewing in the bush, hold on grimly, trusting they may overcome the weakness as they have done before. Thus many of them only yield too late, even if they yield at all, and are carried in lurching hammocks through the bush to the nearest beach, or slide down the muddy rivers in canoes, worn-out skeletons, or, as sometimes happens, raving mad. This explains part of the mortality at the coastwise settlements or on shipboard; and turning over consular papers in the Government offices at Freetown, I saw that two previous steamers had buried respectively eleven and thirteen men. There was also a big Belgian mail-boat came up astern of us homeward bound from the Congo, and her course for a thousand miles was marked by the rolls of weighted canvas that went overboard. "They died with us all the way like rotten sheep," so her officers said.
