Viewing page 16 of 83

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-10-

with large cool rooms and windows opening down to the floor. 
Half a dozen black house boys brought our luggage to our room, and then served drinks in the big living room. Mr. and Mrs Silas Johnson had been invited to dinner, but they were late in arriving, and it was about ten o'clock when we sat down to a dinner consisting of barracuda and chevrotain. George had been fishing earlier in the day and had caught a 48 pound barracuda. In the West Indies barracuda is considered poisonous, but this fish, whether it is the same thing or not, is delicious. The meat of the chevrotain is as white as chicken. 

March 11 - 
I awoke early, and looked out the window where a big red hibiscus blossom nodded, into the rubber trees whose fragrance filled the room. On a nearby palm a bright little green and yellow weaver bird was busy shredding himself threads of palm fibre and flying off to make them into a nest. Half a dozen boys were cutting the grass with scythes, and some little black beetles, small enough to come through the fine screen at the window, were deserting the grass for the sheets on my bed. In fact, it had been their tickling that had wakened me so early. 
At eight o'clock "Circus Echoes" blared forth on the phonograph, and George called in to see if that had awakened us. He told us that he had an appointment with the President in Monrovia, and that he would take Bill along if he wanted to go. Of course Bill did, and they left soon afterwards, to be gone all day.
I kept busy with unpacking and getting settled, and in the late afternoon Bernice and I went for a walk. Hearing strange music we stopped to find a little group of natives clustered around a man who sat on the ground playing a sort of xyllophone, made of wood apparently, which he tapped with two sticks to produce quite a pretty tune. Bernice asked if it were a Liberian instrument, and was told "No, it came from France." That means one of the neighboring French colonies. It reminded us both of the gamelong in the East Indies. 
The Captain and the Chief Engineer from the Kebar had promised to come out to the plantation this trip, and they came in with the Campbells for drinks before dinner. 

March 12 - 
In the morning we saw the customs house, where our luggage arrived bit by bit, being brought up the river on lighters from Marshall; went to the Johnsons to see what animals they had for us, and found nothing of interest except two baby chimps and two fine harnessed antelope; inspected a rice shed, which George said could be made into animal quarters for us; and saw the Company store, where there is a good stock of canned goods for camping, and a small room marked "Firestone Employees Only" where one sits around tables and drinks beer. 

[[end page]]