BLACK   MONXPARNASSE	175
the men reported sick before we started, was paid off
and left behind. The number of carriers had now
almost reached a minimum. My cousin used a ham-
mock and needed four carriers, but I reduced my
hammock-men to three: I hadn't used the hammock
yet and unless I went sick I saw no reason why I
should ever need to use it.
The country was stamped as French from the first
village we stayed in, which was neither Bamakama
nor Jbaiay as I had intended: French in its com-
mercial sense, in its baits which I should have
believed to be intended for tourists, if there had been
any hope of tourists. It was astonishing what a
difference the invisible boundary made. You could
not have mistaken this land for Liberia. Tourists
would have been quite at home here among the
round huts and the scarlet fezzes of the Mandingo
traders. For these traders were indistinguishable,
except that their dignity was less tarnished, from the
men who sell carpets in the Dome and the Rotonde.
The only difference was we had followed them
home. It was as if we had shadowed them all the way
from the Boule Miche, sitting in third-class carriages,
travelling steerage, riding up the long way from
Konakry on horse-back.
In Trance' the trouble with the carriers came to a
head. Their complaints, the phrase 'too far', 'too far',
had got on my nerves. To be deserted altogether, I
began to think, might be preferable to this recurrent
bickering, this pressure to go more slowly than I
could afford. The trouble was I did not know the
extent of my authority and I did not know which
of them I could trust. Vande I suspected; the head-