Vi PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

now, how unnaturally rosy would my picture be, -for
1 begin to remember mainly the sunsets when all the
laterite paths turned suddenly for a few minutes the
colour of a rose, the old slavers' fort with the cannon
lying in the grass, the abandoned railway track with
the chickens pecking in and out of the little empty
rotting station, the taste of the first pink gin at six
o'clock, I have begun to forget what the visitor
noticed so clearly—the squalor and the unhappiness
and the involuntary injustices of tired men. But as
that picture is true too, I let it stand.

London, November 1946