^ JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

ment There is a dashing quality about it; it shows a
vigorous imagination. Where the English map is con-
tent to leave a blank space, the American in large
letters fills it with the word 'Cannibals'. It has no
use for dotted lines and confessions of ignorance; it is
so inaccurate that it would be useless, perhaps even
dangerous, to follow it, though there is something
Elizabethan in its imagination. 'Dense Forest'; 'Can-
nibals'; rivers which don't exist, at any rate anywhere
near where they are put; one expects to find Eldorado,
two-headed men and fabulous beasts represented in
little pictures in the Gola Forest

But this was where Mr. D., the elderly Kruman,
could help; he knew the Republic.

Mr. D. lived in Krutown. Krutown is one of the
few parts of Freetown with any beauty; the Krus, the
great sailors of the coast, whose boast it is that they
have never been slaves and have never dealt in slaves,
have escaped Anglicanisation. The native huts still
stand among the palm trees on the way to Lumley
Beach, the women sitting outside with their long
hanging breasts uncovered. Mr. D.'s house was in
the only Europeanised street. A bare wooden stair
led into a room with wooden walls on which were
hung a few religious pictures in Oxford frames. There
were four rickety chairs and an occasional table with
a potted plant on it Crudely painted Mothers of God
bore the agony of seven swords with indifference,
Christ just above his head exposed a heart the colour
of raw liver. Insects hopped about on the wooden
floor and Mr. D. gently instructed me how to reach
the frontier. A little way over the border there was
an American mission, the Order of the Holy Cross at