hat, in the hill
region to the north, gold digging was carried on to a considerable
extent. "The pits," he says, "varying from two to three feet in
diameter, and from twelve to fifty feet deep, are often so near the
roads that loss of life has been the result. Shoring up being little
known, the miners are not infrequently buried alive.... This Ophir, this
California, where every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock
a gold-field--does not contain a cradle, a puddling-machine, a quartz
crusher, a pound of mercury." That a land apparently so wealthy should
be entirely neglected by British capitalists caused Burton infinite
surprise, but he felt certain that it had a wonderful future. His
thoughts often reverted thither, and we shall find him later in life
taking part in an expedition sent out to report upon certain of its gold
fields. [193]

By September 26th the "Blackbird" lay in Clarence Cove, Fernando Po; and
the first night he spent on shore, Burton, whose spirits fell, wondered
whether he was to find a grave there like that other great African
traveller, the Cornish Richard Lander. [194]

44. Anecdotes.

Fernando Po, [195] he tells us, is an island in which man finds it hard
to live and very easy to die. It has two aspects. About Christmas time
it is "in a state deeper than rest":

"A kind of sleepy Venus seemed Dudu."

But from May to November it is the rainy season. The rain comes down
"a sheet of solid water, and often there is lightning accompanied by
deafening peals of thunder." The capital, Sta. Isabel, nee Clarence,
did not prepossess him. Pallid men--chiefly Spaniards--sat or lolled
languidly in their verandahs, or crawled about the baking-hot streets.
Strangers fled the place like a pestilence. Fortunately the Spanish
colony were just establishing a Sanitarium--Sta. Cecilia--400 metres
above sea level; consequently health was within reach of those who
would take the trouble to seek it; and Burton was not slow to make a
sanitarium of his own even higher up. To the genuine natives or Bubes
he was distinctly attracted. They lived in sheds without walls, and wore
nothing except a hat, which prevented the tree snakes from falling
on them. The impudence of the negroes, however, who would persist in
treating the white man not even as an equal, but as an inferior, he
found to be intolerable. Shortly after his arrival "a nigger dandy"
swaggered into the consulate, slapped him on the back i