WESTERN LIBERIA 85

I enjoyed the first day's trek into the Republic
because everythuig was new: the sense of racing the
dark, even the taste of warm boiled water, the smell
of the carriers; it wasn't an unpleasant smell, sweet
or sour; it was bitter, and reminded me of a breakfast
food I had as a child after pleurisy, something vigor-
ous and body-building which I disliked. This bitter
taint was mixed with the rich plummy smell of the
kola nuts the carriers picked from the ground and
chewed, with an occasional flower scent one couldn't
trace in the thick untidy greenery. All the smells
were drawn out, as the heat increased, like vapour
from moist ground. The carriers walked naked except
for loin-cloths, the sweat leaving marks like snails on
their black polished skins. They didn't look strong,
they hadn't the ugly muscular development of a
boxer; their legs were as thin as a woman's, but they
ended in typical carrier's feet, flat like enormous
empty gloves, spreading on the earth pancake-wise as
if the weights they carried had pressed them out in a
peine forte et dure. Even their arms were childishly
thin, and when they raised the fifty-pound cases a few
inches to ease their skulls, the muscles hardly swelled,
were no thicker than whipcord.

We were on the edge of the immense forest which
covers the Republic to within a few miles of the coast;
we climbed steeply from the frontier post at Foya
and from the first village we came to we could see
the bush below the huts, falling away, a ragged
cascade, towards the sea, lifting and falling and sweat-
ing into green plains; hundreds of miles of them, tall
palms sticking out above the rest like the
of chimney sweeps. The huts here, and in