172 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

cobra in her garden. The cobra she fed with a live
chicken every day; she had always meant to watch it
as it swallowed the chicken, but somehow, though
she guessed it would be interesting, she had never
thought to watch through the lid of the hutch at
the right time. She said enigmatically, "I'd have
sent you an invite to dinner, but I'm going home in
six months," an excuse which became even more diffi-
cult to understand when later in the evening, learning
that we were leaving next day, she said: "Oh, if I'd
known you were going that soon, I'd have sent you an
invite,"

That evening I had a conference at her house. She
had advised me to cut across the corner of French
Guinea to Ganta, making my first stay at Bamakama.
As usual the carriers said it was too far. So I took
Amah down to her, as the spokesmen of the men,
and Vande slid in at the door with a dour silent
carrier who always trailed at his heels. They sat on
stools and the baby crawled about their feet and Mrs.
Croup stoked up a roaring fire in the tiny stuffy tropic
room lined with photographs in Oxford frames,

But as Mrs. Croup talked, I became more and
more doubtful whether she really knew anything
about the route. She always travelled in a hammock
specially made to carry her weight, with eighteen
hammock-carriers. She drove them hard: a ten-hour
trek was nothing to her. She sent out for a man who
knew the route, but he had never been farther than
Bamakama and then he had taken two days over the
journey; he believed there was a short way by Jbaiay,
but he wasn't sure whether it was passable, whether
£he chiefs had mended the bridges since the last rains.