BLACK MONTPARNASSE 2OI

steep banks. We crossed by dug-out canoe, and the
spirit of all the carriers lifted on the other side. They
hadn't really liked France, and Mark's enthusiasm as
he stepped on shore, the monkey clinging to his skull,
infected them. <fNow we are in our own land again/'
It was an unexpected example of national feeling, for
they were certainly not among their own tribe; they
were in the land of the Manos, where ritual cannibal-
ism practised on strangers has never been entirely
stamped out. Amah ran up and down the line of
carriers with a load on his head encouraging them
to a longer stride because this was Liberia,

One came to Ganta through a series of leopard
traps, winding maze-like paths between walls of
plaited reed, and then out on to a beaten road, beside
a straggling line of huts across a wide treeless plain,
up the side of a hill and down again, with the Liberian
flag flying above a whitewashed compound and more
people than we had seen for weeks, Mandingos and
soldiers among them. There were stores here, the
first we had seen in Liberia, with the goods laid out
on the ground, but the whole appearance of the place
was as nomadic as a forest market. It looked as if it
had been built up overnight and might be shifted
next morning. It was the plain, I think, which gave
it that air. One was used to villages circumscribed by
a hill-top, with the burial stones and the palaver-
house in the centre, looking as old as the rock itself
and the cracked soil. This ribbon development along
a highway which was being driven north and south
had a raw look. Only the District Commissioner's
compound at one end and the little group of mission
buildings a mile down the road at the other had a