WESTERN LIBERIA 89

came more than ever a race against the dark, which
the dark nearly won. It came down on us just as we
left the forest and wound through the banana planta-
tion at the foot of Mosambolahun, and it was quite
dark and cold as we passed between the huts, the old
cook flitting ahead in his long white Mohammedan
robe, carrying a trussed chicken. All the fires had
been lit in the huts and the smoke blew across the
narrow paths stinging the eye; but the little flames
were like home; they were the African equivalent of
the lights behind red blinds in English villages.
There must have been nearly two hundred huts on
Mosambolahun, packed together on a thimble of
rock,- and it stood apart in its remote pagan dirt from
the neat Christianised garden village of Bolahun in
the cleared plain below. A wide flattened path ran
down across the plain to Bolahun and a swaying ham-
mock came up it and a little noisy group of men. The
hammock stopped at my side and an old, old man in
a robe of native cloth with a long white beard put out
a hand. It was the chief of Mosambolahun; ninety
years old he quivered and shook and smiled while
his people chattered round him. He couldn't speak
any English, but a boy with a gun whom I found at
my side told me that the chief was on his way home
from Tailahun, where a brother chief had died. He
was swept away again by his impatient hammock-
bearers, waving his dried old hand, smiling gently,
curiously, quizzically. He was the explanation, I later
learnt, of Mosambolahun's dirt; he .was a puppet of
the younger men, without authority. He had about
two hundred wives, but they would sell him the same
wife over and over a'gain; he was too old to keeg