HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT I2J

as they were in Buzie country, striding along the
narrow forest paths, the straight back, the sword
with an ivory handle swinging against the long
native robe, with the anglicised 'educated' blacks of
Sierra Leone, the drill suits and the striped shirts
and the dirty sun-helmets. Every head of a family
in this tribe had his sword and wore it when he left
his village, every young man had his dagger, and
even the tool of the men working on the farms, the
broad-bladed cutlass in its beautifully-worked leather
sheath, had an air of chivalry, of an older civilisation
than the tin shacks on the Coast. Even the poorer
tribes beyond the Buzie country, the Gios and the
Manos, with their loin-cloths and sores, were not
more neglected than were the natives of a Protec-
torate under the care of a single sanitary inspector.

Hospitality in Kpangblamai

His Excellence the President talked for more than
an hour in the little room above the Sunday-stricken
town. He was very courteous, and it went against
the grain to deceive him and give the impression that
Zigita was the farthest extent of the journey I in-
tended to take. The Commissioners in the Western
Province had been warned of my coming, and I
wanted as quickly as possible to slip over into a
province where I was not expected. As quickly as
possible . . . but it was not easy to stem the rolling
tide of the President's hopes, the roads, the aero-
planes, the motor-cars. It was a paradoxical situa-
tion; a black preaching progress to a sceptical white,
but the white had come out of the busy bustling