By three in the afternoon the shores of the island we were approaching
--if it really was an island, a point that I never cleared up--were
well in sight, the mountain top that stood some miles inland having
been visible for hours. In fact, through my glasses, I had been able
to make out its configuration almost from the beginning of the voyage.
About five we entered the mouth of a deep bay fringed on either side
with forests, in which were cultivated clearings with small villages
of the ordinary African stamp. I observed from the smaller size of the
trees adjacent to these clearings, that much more land had once been
under cultivation here, probably within the last century, and asked
Komba why this was so.
He answered in an enigmatic sentence which impressed me so much that I
find I entered it verbatim in my notebook.
"When man dies, corn dies. Man is corn, and corn is man."
Under this entry I see that I wrote "Compare the saying, 'Bread is the
staff of life.'"
I could not get any more out of him.
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