. As she is not often
careless in that respect, it is a surprise to find, in this tiny
tucked-away little island, what you will not see in any of the show
places of the world. They tell in Santa Cruz that one night an
English middy, single-handed, recaptured the captured flags and
carried them triumphantly to his battleship. He expected at the
least a K.C.B., and when the flags, with a squad of British marines
as a guard of honor, were solemnly replaced in the church, and the
middy himself was sent upon a tour of apology to the bishop, the
governor, the commandant of the fortress, the alcalde, the collector
of customs, and the captain of the port, he declared that monarchies
were ungrateful. The other objects of interest in Teneriffe are
camels, which in the interior of the island are common beasts of
burden, and which appearing suddenly around a turn would frighten
any automobile; and the fact that in Teneriffe the fashion in
women's hats never changes. They are very funny, flat straw hats;
like children's sailor hats. They need only "_U.S.S. Iowa_" on the
band to be quite familiar. Their secret is that they are built to
support baskets and buckets of water, and that concealed in each is
a heavy pad.

[Illustration: Mrs. Davis in a Borrowed "Hammock," the Local Means
of Transport on the West Coast.]

After Teneriffe the destination of every one on board is as
irrevocably fixed as though the ship were a government transport. We
are all going to the West Coast or to the Congo. Should you wish to
continue on to Cape Town along the South Coast, as they call the
vast territory from Lagos to Cape Town, although there is an
irregular, a very irregular, service to the Cape, you could as
quickly reach it by going on to the Congo, returning all the way to
Southampton, and again starting on the direct line south.

It is as though a line of steamers running down our coast to Florida
would not continue on along the South Coast to New Orleans and
Galveston, and as though no line of steamers came from New Orleans
and Galveston to meet the steamers of the East Coast.

In consequence, the West Coast of Africa, cut off by lack of
communication from the south, divorced from the north by the Desert
of Sahara, lies in the steaming heat of the Equator to-day as it
did a thousand years ago, in inaccessible, inhospitable isolation.

Two elements have helped to preserve this isolation: the fever that
rises from its swamps and lagoons,