WEST COAST OF AFRICA.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2662, 2 June 1908, Page 7

WEST COAST OF AFRICA.

"No matter how often one sets out 'for to admire and for to see. for to behold tlv? world so wide.' he never quito gets over being surprised at the erratic manner in which civilisation' distributes itself ; at. the way it ignores one spot upon the earth's surface, and upon another, several thousand miles away, heaps its blessings and its tyrannies," writes Richard Harding Davis in the "Windsor." "Having settled in a place, one might suppose the "influences of civilisation' would first be felt by the people nearest, that place. Inst "ad of which, a number of men go forth in a ship and carp, civilisation as faraway from thai spot as the winds will bear them.

I "Civilisation does not radiate nor j diffuse. It leaps :-and as to where ' it will next strike, it is as independent as forked lightning. During ! hundreds of years it passed over the continvnl of Africa to settle only at J its northern coastline and its most j southern cape: and, to-day, it has j given Culm all of its benefits, and. 'only fourteen hours away, lias left I the equally beautiful island of ITayti ! sunk in fetish worship and brutal igi norance.

"One of the places it has chosen i to ignore is the West Coast of Afrij ca. We are familiar with the Northern Coast and South Africa. We j know all about Morocco and the picturesque Haisuli. Lord Cromer, and I Shepherd's Hotel. The Kimbcrley , Diamond Mines, the Doer War, Jameson's Raid, and Cecil Rhodes have 'made us know South Africa. The j Cape to Cairo Railroad of itself ! would make the East Coast known jto us. But the West ('oast still means that distant shore from whence, 'the 'first families' of Boston, Brisj tol. and New Orleans exported slaves. | Now, for our soap and our salad. ;the West Coast supplies palm oil and i kernel oil, and for automobile lyres, 'rubber. But still to it there cling the mystery, the hazard, the cruelty of those earlier times. It is not of palm oil and rubber one thinks when 'he reads on the ship's itinerary, 'the Cold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the I Right of Benin, and Old Calabar.' '