ABSTRACT
ONE hot afternoon in May, together with two British companions whose faces bore the unmistakable stamp the fever-land sets upon most Europeans, I lounged upon a time-worn stone bench which stands in a certain avenue of oleanders close by the bullring at Santa Cruz, Teneriffe. Behind us the volcanic cordillera, a titan wall of fused red earth and jetty lava, seamed and rent by subterranean fire, lifted its splintered crest against the crystalline azure. Heavy-scented crimson blossoms hung above our heads, and below, seen through openings in the white sheen of orange flowers, lay a sloping reach of pale-green bananas, rustling maize, a few tall palms, and then the clustering red roofs and white walls of the old-world Spanish city rising out of glossy leaves. Farther yet, the sapphire A.tlantic seethed in a long line of foam upon black lava beach and scoriee crag, and there the low,
yellow-funnelled steamer which was to carry us to the Niger lay rolling from rail to rail on the sunlit swell. The rush of the trade breeze shook down the oleander petals upon our heads, and the saltness of the sea was tempered by the fragrance of many flowers. It was a fair prospect, and there was life and health in every breath of the glorious" trades" -a contrast to the pestilential steam of the swamps and the sweltering heat of the equatorial forest which was S0011 to be our lot.
