JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

men of the white colony shot with a pistol at bottles
perched above the beach at the edge of the British
Legation ground. That custom had been going on
for years, every Saturday evening until the light
was too bad to see. One advantage their isolation
had: it killed snobbery. Charge d'Affaires and shop
assistant, Consul-General's wife and storekeeper's
wife were equal in Monrovia. It was the democracy
of men and women wrecked together on a deserted
coast, and to the casual visitor social life there
seemed more human and kindly than in an English
colony, in spite of the scandals and the tiny com-
mercial and diplomatic intrigues and the fever,
always the fever. I was only in Monrovia for ten days
during the most healthy season of the year, but eight
of the tiny population of whites went down with
fever while I was there.

One couldn't expect them to do anything else but
drink, beginning after breakfast with beer at each
other's houses and ending with whisky at four in the
morning. But what was worst was the iced cr&me de
menthe. It was served everywhere automatically
after lunch and dinner: it would have been thought
eccentric not to like the sweet nauseating stuff, as it
would have been thought curious not to enjoy at sun-
down, in the damp heat of the evening, while the
backs of the hands and the armpits sweated all the
time, the heavy cloying Tokay the Hungarian doctor
kept. They had every reason to drink; you couldn't
read much in a climate which rotted your books; you
couldn't even deceive yourself that you were there
for some good, ruling the natives, for it was the
natives in this case who ruled you and presented, so