My Darling Belle

`We had a very good dinner, stuffed olives, tomato soup, tinned salmon rissoles (no fresh fish came in yesterday), grilled chicken on mashed potatoes, then roast beef, boiled peas and tomatoes and potatoes, sago pudding and stewed tinned fruit and cheese savoury ...' `... this is the fifth murder in five weeks, so you can imagine how thrilling it is to be here.' `Charlie said, "Look out, don't touch it, it's a tarantula spider."' `We next overtook a most weird dugout. One man was standing up behind paddling it and in the very front was a man enveloped in a shiny black mackintosh sitting in the bow ... with alligators all around.' Mary Adelaide (Maida) Roberts married Dr Charles Hunter, a physician with the Colonial Medical Service, in 1907. In September 1908 she sailed with him to Bonthe, a small town on an island off the coast of Sierra Leone. Throughout the next year she wrote frequently to her family and friends in Caernarvon. The letters reproduced here are mostly to her younger sister Beatrice (Belle), and have been edited, with an introduction and postscript, by her daughter and grandson. As well as supporting Charlie in his work, Maida collected samples of local plants which she forwarded to the British Museum, butterflies and birds. She writes of daily life in Bonthe, the local flora and fauna, the fellow colonials who make up her social circle, her servants and pets, encounters with local chiefs and market traders, supper parties, shooting expeditions and trips on the river, the ritual `leopard murders', alarmingly common among the natives, and the mail boats with their regular delivery of cakes from Wales. Open minded, interested in everything, and determined to make a success of the posting, she is an engaging and illuminating correspondent. The illustrations include family photos, maps, old postcards and Maida's own paintings.