BLACK MONIPARNASSE 177

except for two tufts, at the crown and the nape; they
looked like poodles, and a poodle of course is a French
dog. The women in French Guinea, too, lived up
to the standard of a country which provides the
handsomest whores and the most elegant brothels;
their hair was gummed into complicated ringlets
like watch-springs round the ears, they were some-
times painted on the face with blue and ochre, as
well as the usual white stripes, and this gave them
the thick rather unfinished look of a modern
portrait.

It was no good going on after what the chief had
said. He promised a guide for the next day and had
the only square hut in the village swept out. This
was another peculiarity of the French colony, that
every town had to supply a rest-house for travellers.
The idea would have been a better one if travellers
had been more frequent, but these rest-houses
(usually, though not in Koinya, a little outside the
towns in a compound of their own) had almost always
fallen to decay with spiders building across the doors,
the thatch dropped in and the cookhouse a ruin over
the ashes of old fires. In Koinya, perhaps, the inhabi-
tants were far enough from the route of any French
Commissioner to use the rest-house themselves, with
the result that it was clean and well-cared for.

No sooner were we settled in the hut than trade
began. Everything was for sale. There was no such
thing as dashing here. The dash, though it has
become a convenient method of extorting money,
must have originated in a gesture of courtesy and
hospitality, in a generosity rather alien to the modern
Mandingo mind. All the junk of civilisation had