Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

PART I

I.	—The African “Porter.”
II.	—The Paddler and his Canoe.
III.	—The African Forest.
IV.	—A Medley of Customs:—
	(a) Cicatrization.
	(b) Personal Adornment.
	(c) “The Angel of Death.”
	(d) Peace and Arbitration.
V.	—The Native as a Money Maker.
VI.	—The African Woman.

I
THE AFRICAN “PORTER”

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the part which the African “porter” or carrier, plays in the history of the Dark Continent. The hinterland of the vast tropical regions—a death-trap to every beast of burden—has been opened up by the carrier together with his brother transport worker—the paddler. The heavier burden has, beyond question, been borne by the former, by the countless thousands of hard woolly heads which have sweated under the weight of innumerable bales and cases too often receiving as a reward of their labour an endless stream of abuse. It seemed justifiable to murmur when crossing those swamps and fighting one’s way through impenetrable forest, but at a distance, and with time for calm reflection, there can surely be no other thought in the mind of any African traveller than that of admiration, as he pictures those sons of Africa with heavy and cumbersome loads upon their heads, floundering through swamps, or toiling up steep hills and along stony paths, cutting and blistering the feet, while the fierce rays of the tropical sun scorch every living thing. Yet on that carrier goes, footsore, often foodless, yet ever ready to renew the march of to-morrow.

Railways and bridges, steamboats and bungalows, engines of war, machinery for drilling into the bowels of the earth, lofty windmills, telegraph wires and poles—these and other European conquerors of African air, land and water have by the thousands of tons found themselves hundreds of miles in the interior of Africa owing to the infinite endurance of the African carrier. Abuse him who will, but be sure of one thing, history will yet give him his due.

The railways, bridges and steamboats, would, so we were told, lessen the need for carriers. That they have shortened distances we grant, but so far from the need of the carrier being lessened, economic expansion has increased the demand. The opening up of the country has brought an insatiable civilization into close touch with vast uncultivated tracts of land, with the result that a great impetus has everywhere been given to agricultural development, which in turns calls for an unceasing stream of carriers to feed the railways and steam craft.

THE CARRIER ON THE MARCH

Thirty years ago the British colony of the Gold Coast possessed no railways, nor was there any export of cocoa. To-day she exports annually over a million pounds’ worth of cocoa-beans, requiring in the season over 100,000 carriers to convey the cocoa harvests to the railways. True statesmanship must always aim at releasing labour from the unproductive task of transport, in order that it may till the soil, but it is doubtful whether the African carrier will ever completely disappear.

Their long procession is never without interest; every man has some distinguishing mark upon which the white traveller may meditate as he trudges along, now in front, now in the centre, now again in the rear of a caravan. What a medley yonder man carries upon his head! There is the traveller’s “chop” box or his bundle of bedding, to which perhaps is lashed by means of a piece of forest vine, the sundry goods and chattels of that simple-hearted carrier—an old salmon tin filled with odd little packages of salt, chili peppers, bits of string, possibly a piece of soap, an old knife and the end of a native candle. There is also the “Sunday best,” whose owner, while looking happy enough in that strip of loin cloth held in place by a cheap European strap, yet strides the firmer and prouder because of that old cotton shirt and the patched white trousers so carefully protected by a bundle of forest leaves. Provisions, too, are there, carefully pounded, cooked and flavoured by the good wife at home. Those unsavoury manioca puddings for “her man” are generously accompanied by her catches of fish, smoked and set aside that he might each day have an appetizing morsel for his meal.

A LIGHTHEARTED CARRIER.

THE CANOE SINGER.

Other carriers are distinguished by the wounds and bruises of their calling—one limps along with a sore foot, but on he goes until the journey’s end; others there are with sore skin or nasty wounds, caused by forest thorns or rough stones, others whose chafed shoulders of yesterday now gape and become a resting-place for the torment of flies; yet, with it all, the impatient traveller too frequently falls to scolding and even cursing them for their “laziness”!

No white man should be allowed to travel beyond a day’s journey with a caravan unless he has a few medical aids for such bruised and wounded helpers, and it will repay him if human gratitude can be called a reward. Cuts and wounds are both the inevitable price of African travel, and it is a necessity and a duty to carry a few spare bandages and healing ointments. There is satisfaction too in gathering the sick men round in the evening and giving them a soothing plaster, ointment or a bandage. A little human kindness of this nature helps to make the journey a happier one for all, but alas too often what the Germans call tropenkoller has no conception of a remedy for complaints beyond the whip or the boot.

The carrier is no more an angel than other human beings, no matter whether pink or black; he has all the imperfections and the love of self-preservation of the brother who calls himself white. I remember once having all the loads laid out ready for the start and then giving the order for each man to choose his load. It was evident the carriers had mentally marked the load each would like to seize, for a dash was made for a small box only about 18 inches square and having the appearance of a 20 lb. load—but it was a case of cartridges weighing 80 lbs.! How promptly they all discarded that box and dashed away for the larger but lighter loads!

Strangely enough the carrier seldom “pilfers” on a journey. The white man’s goods may suffer depredations on the steamer or on the train, but on the march there seems to be a sacred community of interest which safeguards the goods of most white men as effectively as if protected by the spirit-haunted herbs and parrot feathers of the witch doctor, but when civilization, in the shape of steamers and railway trains, enters barbarous regions away goes the eighth commandment. There is one respect in which every African traveller invariably suffers—hungry at the mid-day hour, he calls for “chop”; thirsty, he asks for filtered water; or at night, dead tired, he looks for his folding bed; he may call in vain, for either from set purpose with some definite object in view, or from stupidity, these essentials to the white man are generally “miles behind.”

THE CARRIER AND NATURE

Probably the carrier is at his best when travelling through the vast forests, where, shielded from the sun by the interlacing trees overhead, it is delightfully cool and the layers of dried leaves render the path as soft and springy as the richest carpet. Carriers and traveller are in high mood and as conversation flows freely the traveller realizes what great students of nature these sons of Africa are. As they walk along, they will name every tree and almost every plant; they will tell how many moons elapse before the trees begin to bear; they will give descriptions of edible fruits, the birds and animals which each kind of fruit attracts, varying these running comments by periodic dashes through the undergrowth in search of fruits to illustrate the conversation.

How closely, too, they watch the path for the footprints of animal life, never at a fault to identify the prints with their owners, or accurately gauge the time when the creature passed by, begging, if the traces are recent, to be allowed to track the “meat.” As time does not concern the hunter, it is generally wise, if there is any reasonable chance of obtaining food for the caravan, to camp for the night. This knowledge of forest life stands the natives in good stead, for not infrequently provisions run out on the long marches and in the absence of human habitations, the question of feeding the caravan becomes a serious matter.

At one time we had marched for days without any opportunity of obtaining a supply of food and the carriers were all suffering from hunger; in a whole day we seldom found more than a small handful of edible fruit. At last it became almost impossible to push on with the caravan so tired and hungry: I called together a few of the men and asked what we should do, whereupon one made the novel suggestion of “calling the meat.” The proposal was readily taken up and three of us pushed on ahead with guns. Arriving at a quiet spot, one of the men—a very son of the forest—fell on his knees, and, placing the tips of two fingers in his nostrils, emitted a series of calls which made that forest glen echo with, as it were, the joyous cries of a troop of monkeys! How anxiously the tops of trees were watched! After repeating these tactics in several places in the immediate vicinity for about half-an-hour, a man close to me whispered excitedly “here they come”! In the distance we could see the tree tops moving, and in a short time a score of monkeys could be seen skipping from tree to tree towards the inimitable monkey cries of our carrier. New life was infused into the whole caravan when they saw the gun bring down four monkeys for the evening meal; lowering countenances were wreathed with smiles, grumblings and cursings gave place to joyous songs in which even the sick and lame gladly joined. At dinner that night the men were so famished that they could not stop to cook the meat, but contented themselves with merely singeing off the skin and eating the uncooked flesh.

THE VINES OF THE TROPICAL FOREST.

THE CARRIER’S FRIENDS

To emerge from the forest is generally to enter once more into habitable country, and there the carriers, no matter how far from home, generally discover a relative—a brother or a sister, a father or a mother. Their relationships are strangely elastic, many an African laying claim to as many mothers as wives, in point of fact the father’s brothers and the mother’s sisters all rank as the fathers and mothers of the children. The roving British tar may have a wife in every port, but he is surpassed by the African carrier who may have not only a wife but a mother and sometimes a father too in every village!

II
THE PADDLER AND HIS CANOE

Central Africa, the unexplored land of our childhood, is vested with a charm that never ceases to allure, and reveals her deepest secrets only to those who dig deep and risk much to discover them. The rivers with their shifting sandbanks, their treacherous rapids and whirlpools, entice again and again those whom the miasma has threatened to slay, as the rushing current threatens the unwary navigator. The native alone is in any degree immune to the former, and it is he who, with his simple knowledge of the shoals and currents, may venture with his inimitable dug-out where scientific navigation is baffled. Inseparable from the African river is the dug-out, unthinkable are the thousands of miles of navigable waterway without this primitive, though astonishingly effective, craft.

Canoeing in Central Africa may be not unpleasant, providing both canoe and paddlers are amiably inclined. The number of canoes available is so restricted that there is little choice, and comfort aside it is wise always to sacrifice size to reputation, for a canoe with a bad name will dispirit the paddlers. The trimmest and most seasoned craft, capable of holding twenty to twenty-five paddlers, is the traveller’s ideal, but the equipment is incomplete without a small pilot boat for surplus baggage, manned with four or five paddlers, who will keep ahead, but always in sight, forewarning of rocks, snags, or sandbanks, and generally discharging the functions of a scout. No less important is the selection of the crew, and these to complete a harmonious group should be volunteers—the best plan being that of getting three or four cheery spirits to select the remainder from amongst their friends.

THE PADDLER AND MUSIC

The African paddler readily responds to an appeal for a co-operative canoe journey, but he dislikes any such undertaking as a mere hired paddler. Make him part and parcel of the journey and a host of potential difficulties vanish. Erect in the bows of the canoe a tiny rush shelter with a bamboo bed for the white man, and only the two final though most important elements remain—music and provisions—the absence of either being equally fatal. For the latter, an ample supply of dried fish and cassava can be stored in the canoe, while a currency in the shape of beads, salt, cloth, pins and needles will do the rest. Without music the African can neither live nor die, nor yet be buried; walking, riding, eating, digging, paddling or dancing, he must have the rhythm of his music, devoid of charm it may be to the European, but vital to the good spirits of the African. To the accompaniment of an old biscuit tin or a couple of sticks, the gunwale of the canoe, or the leaves of the forest, any or all of which can be made to give forth a sufficiency of barbaric sounds to set in rhythmic motion the voices and bodies of all within range.

With canoe packed, paddlers in position with their long spear-shaped paddles and musicians with their instruments, provisions piled high and carefully covered, the start is made. Farewells are shouted, and blessings pronounced which if measured by their volume should preserve the traveller for all time from hippos and snags, storms and mosquitos, sickness, accident and even death.

CANOE CHARACTERISTICS

One sees in the African canoe characteristics as distinct as those of the paddlers, for with a limited companionship comes a close acquaintance with nature and things inanimate. There is the leviathan among native craft shaped by the chief and his followers from a forest giant and bearing herself with the proud consciousness of regal ownership. In such a craft the passengers need have no fear for she rides majestically with her bows reared high, breasting the waves of the tornado-lashed river or lake, unmoved by the raging of the elements. She is seen at her best as she glides down stream under the combined influence of the current and the swinging impetus of her thirty stout paddlers. There is the rickety old canoe with broken stern and crippled sides, and her leaking bottom stuffed with clay, but there is life in her yet. She ships water fore and aft, and amidships too, soaking the traveller’s blankets and provisions, but her long experience gives her an ease in travel which her younger though stouter relatives cannot rival. Then there is the lumbering ungainly dug-out, with crooked nose and knotty sides, unreliable and ill-balanced, possessing an affinity for every submerged snag. “Hard on” she frequently goes and every effort to free her threatens to drown the occupants. Sandbanks she seeks out too and obstinately refuses to “jump” them. The paddlers will haul her off and curse her roundly for her crooked ways,—but as she was hewn so she will remain. At the other end of the scale is the tiny fishing dug-out of the Niger and the Congo, and their still smaller sister of Batanga in Spanish Guinea, the latter so small that the owner may with ease carry on his shoulder both canoe and fishing tackle, and whilst baiting hooks and catching fish he skilfully sits astride her and paddles with his feet.

MRS. HARRIS CANOEING ON THE ARUWIMI, UPPER CONGO.

A RICKETY DUG-OUT.

Inseparable again from the dug-out is the paddler. Who that travelled with him can forget him? Humorous as the London Jehu of the twentieth century, dexterous as his civilized confrères of the ocean, as adaptable to his surroundings as the clay to the potter’s art; at home everywhere and in all conditions in his native land, swimming or standing, sitting or lying, squatting or reclining, sleeping as soundly on the nose of the canoe or the river bank as we in our downiest of feather beds. He is ready and alert with the earliest peep of dawn, as the mists rise from the surface of the river, presenting the appearance of a huge boiling cauldron. Peeping from beneath your mosquito net you see his figure outlined against the dawning light as he keeps a sharp look-out for the hidden snag, and shivers with the clinging chilly mist. His powers of endurance are unequalled, as the rising sun dispels the mists and mounting higher in the heavens becomes increasingly fierce. He still swings his paddle with steady persistence till his body steams with the effort; then after a little halt and refreshment in the friendly shade of the riverside forest, he will go on until the sun is sinking, and if need be, still on in the moonlight, singing his monotonous boat song, occasionally varied by a running commentary from the leader on the incidents of the journey, the peculiarities of a certain paddler, or the ways of the white occupants of the canoe.

During the whole day long the paddler will pursue his task, I see him now almost unconsciously bending his body with each dip of the paddle, till a sudden slowing down followed by a profound stillness arrests the attention. I can again hear those whispered voices as the gentle lapping of the water against the canoe side ceases, and the boat is still. A monkey has perhaps been seen overhead springing from bough to bough, or sitting nibbling the fruit of some forest tree, or it may be an edible bird with flesh as tough as its plumage is gorgeous, that watches us till the gun booms out and the creature is brought down. For a moment it struggles in the river, then with a sudden splash, a man is swimming with powerful strokes towards the prey which he a moment later lands in the canoe, while the rest look approvingly on at their prospective meal. With spirits heartened, on they go, singing of their capture and the feast which is to follow, till turning a bend in the river the destination is at last in sight.

A CANOE RACE

And how they love a race! Let them but see a competitor ahead bound for the same goal, and despite their long day’s paddle they will redouble their strokes. Caution is thrown to the winds and the canoe springs in a mad gallop, rocking to and fro, pitching and tossing against the current until the rival ahead, scenting a race, enters the competition with keen zest. At such times I have found all warnings are in vain. With a rapid girding up of the loin cloths as the boats proceed, a rearranging of the cargo, children, dogs, fowls, baggage and all—the race begins in real earnest. With much shouting and good-natured banter the one or the other will take advantage of every prospect of an up-current; now out again in midstream to avoid a snag; a paddle breaks in the effort, but is quickly discarded and another seized without lessening the speed—and on they go, each determined to win or sink their rival. The boats ship water, but are made to right themselves with marvellous ingenuity and then both stop to bale out, while the paddlers exchange good-humoured threats, gibes, curses and defiance.

On again they go with little advantage to either side, and the word is passed for the “master stroke.” Madder than ever is the race; the white man may shout but they pay no heed, for young manhood has lost all sense of danger. At last the opportunity occurs for the final advantage for the river must be crossed at yonder point. Often have I tried to avoid this danger, proceeding first to command, then to plead, but in vain. I might as effectively have tried to control a hurricane with a feather! To clear the point with its snags, one canoe must fall behind or cross the rival’s bows—to give up and fall back is impossible. The attempt is generally made by the smaller boat to cross the bows of her more powerful rival and though occasionally successful she is more often struck amidships and disappears completely—canoe, paddlers and all!

A great shout goes up and the victors splash in to the rescue, seizing the mats, baskets, provisions and sundries, which float off in every direction. The crew, as much at home in the water as on land, come up one by one and others dive to seize the stern of the sunken canoe. With vigorous pulling and pushing, the water is swished out till she floats again, and in the vanquished spring, again baling out the remaining water with their feet, till it is once more fit for occupation, and every one is prepared for the last lap of the journey. The men take their beating well, enjoying the laugh against themselves. That night all sleep together in a friendly fishing encampment, while the white man curls up in his canoe, and listens to the merry paddlers as they recount with evident enjoyment the story of their five-mile race.

Who that has found a home and nightly shelter in an African canoe will not, as he quits it after many days, feel that he is leaving an old acquaintance behind him. Through the twenty-four hours of sleeping and waking, the canoe and the traveller have adapted themselves to each other’s limitations, and the recently vacated canoe speaks as eloquently of emptiness as the vacant chair.

III
THE AFRICAN FOREST

There can hardly be any experience more exquisitely luxurious than that of wandering on through the primeval forests of Central Africa. The traveller whose daily round confines him to the great cities of a hustling civilization finds himself in perfect solitude, perhaps for the first time in his life. Every step he takes brings before him some new wonder in nature’s garden; every hour in the day is alive with fresh experiences.

Surely there is no language which aptly befits the transcendent beauty of nature awaking to greet the new-born day. During the night, giant forms have roamed at will through the silent glades and recesses of the forests, but with the peep of day they have retired to their lair. Those feathered sentinels, whose hoarse cry rings through the night hours, have perforce veiled their eyes at the awakening of their comrades who strike the sweeter chords befitting the glad hours of day. Throughout the night the trees made monotonous music by the incessant drip drip of their tears, but with the morning, the warm sun has bidden those tears begone.

When daylight breaks through the tree tops, the boughs sway here and there as the monkeys, springing from tree to tree, gambol with their fellows, only ceasing for a momentary peep at the strange intruders of their sylvan preserve, as the undergrowth crackles beneath the travellers’ feet and the squirrels dart across the pathway seeking a safer retreat. The sight of the white clad figure, moving rapidly through the mass of undergrowth, startles the mother bird from her nest, and off she goes shrieking for her mate and warning her fellows. Yet over all, a silence broods and the traveller falls to constant musing as he wends his way.

For miles the dense forests will shut out the sun, and then perhaps where a lofty giant tree has fallen in decay, a slanting ray of sun will gleam through the leafy roof turning the pathway into a smiling track of iridescent moss and fern. A few yards further and the path descends abruptly into a woodland stream, bridged by rustic logs, only possible of fording in mid-current by creeping warily along the trunk of a tree which some thoughtful passer-by has felled. The logs and trees which lie rotting in all directions are the home of shimmering mosses and tiny fern. Beside the slippery and tottering causeway there shines many a filigree globe of purest opal and cunning design like a fairy’s incandescent light guiding the steps of the unwary traveller. They are but insects’ nests, as fragile as delightsome, crumbling at the touch.

THE BUSY ANTS

The traveller can never proceed many miles on his journey without meeting the dark lines of driver ants. At a distance of fifty yards, all one sees is a uniform brown line, sometimes two inches wide, sometimes as many feet. Drawing nearer they are seen to be well-ordered regiments, thousands strong, with scouts, baggage bearers, captains and field-marshals. Their enemies have fled at their approach and they are masters of the field. On they will march, in faultless array, their countless thousands obediently passing at a double their immovable field-marshals, and as they proceed every living thing flees before them. Now perhaps they disappear through some subterranean passage, tunnelled out by their indomitable energy, to reappear on the surface when it suits their plan. You may scatter them if you dare, but you can daunt them never. Sweep them into heaps, kill them by the hundred, burn them by the thousand, and tens of thousands surge forward, to fill up the ranks, and remove the dead. Then the regiments will grimly move once more on their way—an incentive to higher organisms.

WILD FOREST FRUIT.

The African forests teem with life, for the most part silent; even the great beasts glide along in perfect quietude—not till you are upon them do you realize the proximity of the elephants; then, unless the traveller be a Nimrod, his greatest concern is to avoid a possible encounter. They love most a quiet glen near the forest stream, where they will plough the earth in all directions and everywhere leave the impress of their giant limbs stretched in gymnastics all their own; here and there scattered over their playground lie scores of trees athwart each other, evidence of no woodman’s axe, but of the entwining grip of the monster’s trunk, who in his unrivalled strength delights thus to shew his power in his own domain. Everywhere, too, the great forest apples lie idle after their sport, and the natives tell how they spend hours hurling these great balls at their fellows.

The rivers which everywhere feed the African forest, coupled with the tropical sun, give luxuriance to all nature. Vines are there as much as three feet in circumference, moss-grown and gnarled with age, born perhaps when the parent acorns of our oldest oaks were yet unformed. Sometimes like huge serpents they coil themselves in a tortuous grip round two or three trees, each of which may be ten times their own size.

There is beauty too in these silent forests, when at intervals on the march the traveller, almost unconsciously at first, begins to inhale the fragrant odour of some delicious perfume sent forth by modest blooms that shun the gaze of man. A little searching beneath the undergrowth, or in the tree tops overhead, reveals a bloom upon which the eye gladly lingers—trails of waxen jasmine hanging from the bush in exquisite profusion.

BEAUTY IN DECAY

There is beauty, too, in the forest decay, in the fallen tree trunk, whose rotting bark and ugly torn stump are transformed by tufts of gracefully drooping fern, while tiny rootlets smile from out every crevice. There is beauty, too, in the fungus growths, tinted and white, or the perfection of coral, or blooms whose purple depths suggest some cherished hot-house flower.

The experienced traveller is quick to note signs of a change; the pathway leads uphill and the absence of giant tree trunks denotes that he is treading a once cleared and populated region. That hill, whose summit is capped with foliage, was once a village landmark, beneath it, myriad termites live and pursue their daily toils through tunnels and chambers that they have shaped by their countless thousands. Were man’s three-score years and ten twice told devoted to the study of the ways and purposes of the unheeded occupants of our earth, he had but then begun to learn the alphabet of nature’s infinite resources.

THE “ELEPHANT EAR” IN THE WET SEASON.

WILD FOREST FRUIT.

Close to the termite hills the half-buried foundations of primitive dwellings speak of departed life, and in the Congo, hundreds, yea thousands, of these mark the spot where once the children of nature lived out their simple life, till civilization strode through the land treading ruthlessly down the souls of men. They have gone and their haunts lie deserted, but their monuments remain. The discarded kernels of the housewives’ palm nuts have taken root and now rear their graceful fronds on faultless trunks like capitals of Corinthian pillars in some cathedral aisle. As if by design they ranged themselves thus. In these silent groves the traveller treads reverently upon the grassy floor; no monk is here; there is no echo of the choristers’ song, but nature has reared her temple where myriad voices rejoice and sing their song of praise, unfettered by the forms and creeds of man.

The long day’s tramp is now over; the sun is setting and the birds are carolling their evening song, as the traveller emerges into the open space beside the gleaming river, flowing swiftly onwards with its errand to the sea. The glow of the departing sun tints the clouds with purple and gold outshining in glory the loveliness of the morning. Surely the heavenly regions are not far beyond, and this is a glimpse behind the veil. The afterglow has departed and the world of man falls asleep till the twittering of the birds heralds the approach of another day with another march through the inexhaustible forests of tropical Africa, where verily

“Earth is crammed with Heaven

And every common bush ablaze with God.”

IV
A MEDLEY OF CUSTOMS

A lifetime spent amongst a single African tribe would scarcely exhaust its folklore and customs. Awaiting scientific investigation there is throughout the African continent a wealth of lore and superstition.

To him who would discover the hidden life of the African infinite patience is essential. It is useless to force information; the best plan is to wait until the “spirit moves” the old woman or chief to tell you something of the inner life of the tribe. Perhaps the time and conditions which most contribute to a flow of talk are a moonlight evening around the log fires and cooking pots.

I see them now—these simple Africans, seated around the great earthenware pot awaiting the meal of boiled cassava, pounded leaves or steamed Indian corn. I hear that grey-headed old chief, with low musical voice, passing on the traditions of past generations, so “that the boys may know something of the early history of their race.” All the old stories familiar to civilization are there. They all know that “man first went wrong through woman gathering fruit in the forest,” the only variation is that the kind of fruit differs in different parts of West Africa, but it is always a forest fruit, always the woman tempted the man; always man succumbed! Then the old chief will turn to the oft-told story—the sacrificial efficacy of the young kid. It is remarkable how closely this custom resembles even to-day that institution of the Pentateuch. The young kid must be free from all disease, a perfect animal in every respect. When killed the blood is carefully sprinkled on the lintel and on each door-post. Other familiar sacred institutions are passed under review. Then the animal kingdom comes under discussion, and the whole series of Uncle Remus, with but slight variations, secures the rapt attention of the listeners. It is at such times as these that the student gets beneath the surface of polygamy, burial and marriage dances, cicatrization and the more serious subjects of land tenure, tribal laws, social ties and domestic slavery.

Not all tribes are equally interesting, probably the Baketi tribes on the upper reaches of the Kasai river provide the greatest wealth of interesting customs and folklore. Their grotesque images, carved in wood, grin at the traveller from the door-posts of the houses, and passing through the villages one has to be extremely careful not to tread upon one of the fetishes which are scattered along the walks in great profusion. One day I saw three separate fetishes within a single square yard, and these, the father explained to us in his simple way, he had purchased at, to him, a heavy cost, hoping thereby to restore to health his only daughter. Not only does the Baketi fill his town with fetishes and wooden images, but in the forests which separate village from village, almost every tree along the pathway has rudely carved on its trunk the grinning face of some impossible human being.

THE BAKETI FETISH

The Baketi, too, is probably unique in his memorial grounds. Most African tribes bury the dead in the heart of the forest, but at the same time near the village a memorial ground is set apart on which are erected tiny memorial huts, which the restless spirits of the departed may inhabit if they so choose. There, when the spirit pays such visits—as all good spirits do nightly—he finds his loin cloth ready, the spoon with which he ate his food, the bottle from which he drank, his battle axe and cross bow which played havoc in many an affray; there is generally too a spread of Indian corn or other food, which the thoughtful and sorrowing wives have placed in readiness for his return visit to earth. How safe these memorial tombs are from desecration may be gathered from the fact that very frequently considerable sums of native currency are strewn upon the floor. These little tombs are also surrounded with numerous carved images erected on poles. The Baketi have another custom which is, I believe, quite unique in West Central Africa. Outside every village are large forest clearings covered with grass, and dotted over these meadow-like lands may be seen the strange sight of trees rooted up and planted upside down—the branches having been lopped off or the tree trunk cut through the middle and planted with the roots in the air. The sight of these clearings, involving a considerable expenditure of labour, covered with scores—sometimes hundreds—of these symbolic monuments, is most impressive.

THE “HEALING” FETISH.

THE BAKETI MEMORIAL GROUND. TREES UPROOTED AND PLANTED BRANCHES DOWNWARDS IN MEMORY OF THE DEAD.

The Baketi have elaborate ceremonials at births and marriages. A special house is always built for the birth of a child, the mother being conveyed to the dwelling an hour or so before the expected time, as is likewise the case with a dying person. Another curious custom which prevails amongst these people, and strangely enough we found precisely the same custom a thousand miles north amongst the Ngombe tribes of Bopoto, yet nowhere in the intervening territories, forbids any young woman to definitely enter into marriage relations until one end of the interior of her house is closely packed with neatly cut logs of firewood! This usually means about three hundred logs, measuring eighteen inches in length and two feet in circumference. The idea appears to be that of demonstrating the domestic capacity of the bride-elect.

With every West African tribe there are customs peculiar to the individual community, but they are generally trivial, or variations of customs prevailing amongst the surrounding tribes. Amongst Congo tribes only the Baketi apparently possess customs so completely unique.

(a) Cicatrization

CICATRIZATION

Cicatrizing is practised more or less over the whole of West Central Africa. In some parts like the Bangalla and Equatorial regions of the Congo, the patterns are extremely elaborate and involve much patient labour on the part of the artist and prolonged suffering by the individual.

THE SWASTIKA CICATRICE.

THE OYSTER SHELL CICATRICE.

Cicatrizing is often confounded with tattooing, but the latter process is entirely different, and is of course most largely in vogue amongst the Maoris and seafaring men. The word cicatrization is derived from the French medical term which designates the scars left by a healed wound and implies a raised portion of the flesh, whereas tattooing is an indentation coupled with the insertion of indelible dyes. Strangely enough the Baluba tribes south of the Congo tattoo themselves, and in this respect are unique in West Africa. Both men and women readily subject themselves to the cicatrizing knife, but generally speaking women are more liberally marked than men.

In the Bangalla regions of the Congo, the facial markings resemble the surface of a coarse rasp, whilst the women content themselves with large shell patterns on the lower part of the stomach. Along the main Congo and some of the tributaries, the marking which finds most favour is the “coxcomb” in the centre of the forehead; this is sometimes cut quite deeply. The hinterland tribes of the Equatorial rivers almost without exception adopt the oyster shell pattern just below the temple, but the women, in addition, are prodigally marked with “knobs,” small “oyster shells” and “bead strings” all over the body, particularly on the thighs. Amongst the Batetela, the forearm is usually covered with a pattern identical with the Cornish “one and all” motto, often also with a sunflower pattern running from the navel up to the shoulder, sometimes to the right, but more often to the left. In the Kasai territories there is first the one general cicatrice imposed on the people by the historic northern conqueror Wuta, a “white” chieftain of prodigious valour and energy, who, apparently more than five hundred years ago, swept through the whole region founding new dynasties and placing the tribes under tribute of soldiers and money. This hustling personage, it is said, reached what is now Rhodesia, but so great was, and is, the fear of his spirit that everyone to-day bears his cicatrice. The Bakuba, Bashilele, Baketi, Bushongos and Lulua, all bear their distinctive marks, many of the women having the whole thigh covered with a “herring bone,” and the men carrying a mark similar to the Grecian “key” pattern. In the Portuguese Enclave and the Mayumbe territory of the Congo, the whole of the back is frequently covered by a single pattern and on the back of one woman we found a marking which is clearly the Swastika.

THE ARTIST IN BLOOD

The operation is, of course, distinctly painful. The subject sits on the ground or on a log of wood, whilst the operator cuts deeply into the flesh with the knife held at such an angle that a considerable wound will result. Think of sitting still whilst this crude hand-made piece of native steel is dug into the flesh something like twenty or thirty times within half an hour! Once I was able to watch the process; the woman desired a “lace pattern” made from the shoulder blades to the waist, involving altogether four lines, which meant nearly two hundred cuts. She sat outside her hut, and bending down slightly to stretch the skin, the intended pattern was marked in chalk, and then the operator, taking his small cicatrizing knife in his right hand, proceeded to grasp between the thumb and forefinger of the left successive small portions of flesh, gashing each till the blood flowed freely. Then he started the other side of the body, returning again to cut the third line, and back to the second to link the pattern up with the fourth.

I watched the woman closely, and as the knife dipped into the flesh she made a grimace, but between the cuts, laughingly and with considerable spirit replied to my comments. At the conclusion of the operation, she calmly walked to the nearest tree and gathered a few leaves to wipe up the blood which by this time was streaming down her body. The operator, according to custom, threw over the wounds a handful of powdered camwood which, however, has less antiseptic than drying properties.

CICATRICED WOMEN OF EQUATORVILLE.

THE BANGALLA “RASP” CICATRICE.

It is not easy to light upon such operations, which are generally carried out more or less privately, and in all my years of residence in Africa, this was the only occasion on which I have been able to watch throughout an elaborate cicatrization. It is, however, a familiar sight to meet natives with their bodies newly cut. On the day after the incisions have been made the wounds swell and suppurate, greatly to the delight of the hosts of insect life which swarm everywhere in Central Africa. These surround the wounded body of the native and only by a continuous flicking of grass or twig brushes can the suffering victim obtain even comparative freedom from the tortures which every movement of the body imposes, but in the course of a few months the pattern originally cut in the body stands out firm and clear. In those cases where still more emphatic designs are desired, the cicatrice will be re-opened and raised higher still until the prominence is quite pronounced, in others, after a lapse of a few months, still more lines and still more “knobs” will be added until the age of twenty to thirty. After this the desire for adornment ceases and the body rests from its tortures.

What is it that attracts? What power is it which buoys up the spirit under these painful operations? What is the secret which gives this insatiable desire for fleshy adornment?—a desire firmly rooted in the breast of every section of the community and shared by young and old alike. I well remember an orphan child, of about three summers, standing in the roadway crying bitterly, and upon my asking the cause, she told me that being an orphan no one had enough interest in her to cut a “coxcomb” on her forehead. Secreting a small bottle of red ink, I told her to sit on the table, and by a series of pinchings and finger-nail marks on her forehead, coupled with a smearing of red ink over my white hands, calmed the little mite into the belief that her heart’s desire was being gratified. After about ten minutes she was supremely happy in the thought that she too possessed a “coxcomb.” Her delight was unbounded, until the little mischief caught sight of her natural forehead in a mirror!

MARRIAGE AND TRIBAL MARKINGS

No doubt the principal motive for this passion is the love of personal adornment, of which the African assuredly does not retain a monopoly. Hitherto the hinterland tribes have had no access to those artificial aids to personal adornment, which are laid so temptingly before the youth of civilization. They will tell you they have had no alternative but to “adorn” their only garb—nature’s dusky skin, and none would deny, that there is a certain beauty even in these barbarous forms of embellishment. The critic may observe that the beauty of womanhood is obviously not enhanced by the bold use of the cicatrizing knife, but I would remind that critic that the wife without a body fairly well covered with cicatrization finds but scant favour with the other sex. In Africa the European youths of fashion have their counterpart, and in the direction of the most daintily cicatrized maiden, are cast the most amorous glances, and offers of handsome dowries to the admiring parents for the hand of their captivating daughter.

Other reasons doubtless play a part, among them the question of tribal ownership of wives, and the necessity of placing a distinctive and indelible mark upon the body. Constant internecine warfare, too, demanded a mark which would make easy the task of discriminating the warriors of the respective combatants.

Patriotism, relationship and love of adornment, combine in giving to the African the extraordinary fortitude which this prolonged operation demands, but the disappearance of internal warfare, the increasing importation of cheap jewellery and gaudy clothing, and the advance of Christian civilization, is robbing this custom of its raison d’être, and in another generation the little African boys and girls will only learn from books of this curious custom of their grandfathers and grandmothers, for cicatrization, as practised to-day, will have perished within another twenty-five years.

(b) Personal Adornment

Left to nature, the African, dissatisfied with his personal charms, looks about him for some means for adding adornment to his body. In the absence of finely woven cloths and silks, he covers his person with ornamental markings, and his woolly hair he makes to take the place of head-gear. In two respects only his tastes accord with those of the European—metal ornaments and rouge powder.

Most African tribes wear some cloth. The wild Ngombe on the southern banks of the main Congo, skilled in ironwork but ignorant of weaving, wear a vegetable cloth which they strip from the inner side of the coarse bark of a forest tree. Many of their women content themselves with only a few cicatrized patterns, and this is most noticeable in the hinterland of Bangalla, north of the Congo. A peculiar feature, however, is that all these women, though completely nude, wear a thin piece of string round the loins. When photographing a group, I suggested the removal of these strings, because they seemed to imply that normally a cloth or leaf was thereby suspended; but the women, at this, to me, most innocent suggestion, all became exceedingly angry and threatened to run away. Finally, I managed to restore good relations, and we succeeded in obtaining an excellent photograph. It was evident that some deep significance attached to wearing this almost invisible cord, but what that significance was I could not discover.

HAIRDRESSING

Hairdressing ranks almost equal in importance with cicatrization, and practically any day the traveller passing through the villages may see some native stretched lazily upon a mat on the ground, the head resting on the lap of the hairdresser—generally one of the opposite sex. In Spanish Guinea, and on the islands off Batanga, the style of hairdressing is that of long plaits, sometimes a dozen in number, running out in all directions from the top of the head. In French and Belgian Congo the style most favoured is the helmet and in some cases the mitre form; in these the hair is braided up until it adds apparently about five or six inches to the stature. In many parts of the Cameroons, as well as in French and Belgian Congo, the hair thus built up is covered with a mixture of oil and camwood powder, and thus offers a solid protection against the fierce rays of the tropical sun.

BANGALLA CHIEF WITH HEAD TIGHTLY BOUND FROM BIRTH.

BANGALLA BABE WITH HEAD TIGHTLY BOUND.

Amongst the Boela people of Bangalla, the custom prevails of binding the crown of an infant’s head with tough cord soon after birth, and this head-binding is maintained throughout life. The effect is that of an elongated or sugar-loaf skull which is greatly emphasized when the hair is prominently braided around it. We observed men of all ages with their heads bound in this manner, but they did not appear to suffer any discomfort, and the mental powers of the tribe were in no sense below the average.

Rouge finds great favour in the personal adornment of the African. The powder is obtained from the camwood tree, and in almost every well-regulated household in the forest regions may be seen let into the ground a log of wood some eighteen inches in diameter, while a piece of smaller dimensions lies near at hand. The housewife, in order to obtain the colouring, rubs—or more correctly grinds—one piece on the other, which, with the aid of either water or oil, causes a thick red paste to exude, which is then made into cones and placed in the sun. When thoroughly dry, it is either pressed into a powder and sprinkled over the body, or the person is anointed with a mixture of the powder and palm oil; in either case imparting a bright red appearance.

In war times, at festivals, and on feast days, an enormous amount of rouge is used, and the red bodies of the tribes are rendered extremely grotesque by the addition of white clay markings which stand out very clearly on the red background.

A FIVE FOOT BEARD.

STYLES OF ARUWIMI HEAD-DRESS.

For the most part the West African tribes extract all the hair from the body with the exception of the head, the beard and moustache. The task is almost a daily one, and in the case of a man is generally undertaken by one or more of his wives. Little boys and girls submit willingly to the removal of their eyebrows and eyelashes.

Brass anklets and necklaces are much prized by the natives throughout West Africa. The Mongo tribes of the Congo wear anklets weighing sometimes 10 pounds on each ankle, and the whole set of ornaments, including the collar, will turn the scale at 35 pounds. In the Leopoldian régime these valuable ornaments were a contributory cause to the atrocities, for the rubber soldiery would always seek out the women in possession of such anklets and collars, and, as they were welded on the body, would not hesitate to chop off the foot, the hand, or even the head in order to obtain the ornaments.

THE PRICE OF ADORNMENT

I once heard a neat retort from an African woman. The questioner was a white lady who had been pointing out the pain caused by wearing these heavy articles of adornment. The dialogue ran as follows:—

White Woman: Why do you wear anklets which cause you so much pain? African Woman: Beauty is worth pain.

White Woman: Surely you do not suffer such torture in order to appear beautiful?

African Woman: Tell me then, white woman, why do you suffer pain by tying yourself so tightly in the waist, like a woman suffering the pangs of hunger?

How far these simple customs should be checked has always seemed to me a matter of doubt, but in the internal government of missions they cause serious dissensions among the staff. Not a few missionaries, and some government officials, seem to feel called upon to place these old-time customs almost on the level of criminal offences.

In one mission no natives may sit down to Holy Communion with their hair braided and oiled, nor may they enjoy the full privileges of Church membership if they use camwood powder on their bodies; this is the more outrageous when, within a few days’ canoe journey, there is another Christian mission where one lady missionary at least is evidently well acquainted with the use of delicately scented rouge. In another mission, cicatrizing, the extraction of the eyelashes, men dressing the hair of women or vice versâ, are sufficient to warrant suspension from Church membership.

In all conscience there is enough that is evil in humanity, both white and coloured, to make the decalogue sufficiently hard of attainment, without human agencies arbitrarily introducing non-essentials which make it grievous to be borne.

(c) “The Angel of Death”

THE DEATH OF THE AFRICAN

The wildness of the African hinterland, the frequency of bloody feuds, the ever present unhealthiness, almost daily materializes the hand of death. From the moment the traveller touches the coast of Sierra Leone, he is never far from the tragedy of early and violent deaths, accounts of which reach him at every port.

The native’s fear of death is immortalized in his many boat songs, his legends and traditions, as well as in those elaborate systems of fetishism which are used to ward off the imaginary proximity of Death’s angel.

This was the feature of African life which so impressed Du Chaillu on his first visit to West Africa. “Are you ready for death?” he sometimes asked the natives. “No,” would be the hasty reply, “never speak of that,” and then, says Du Chaillu, “a dark cloud settled on the poor fellow’s face; in his sleep that night he had horrid dreams, and for a few days he was suspicious of all about him, fearing for his poor life lest it should be attacked by a wizard.”

Cursing in West Africa, which almost invariably takes the form of invoking death upon some relative, is one of the most frequent causes of trouble. A curse hurled at himself, the African merely resents, and returns the compliment, but let a man invoke death upon another’s mother or sister, and the dagger leaps instantly from its scabbard, or the spear goes hurtling through the air with deadly precision.

“May you die” is the most common form of cursing, which brings the sharp retort, “And you also.” The curses, “May the leopard catch your mother,” “May the crocodile eat your sister,” call forth instant battle. The explanation of this strong resentment and intensity of feeling is found in the fact that the African firmly believes that when a curse is pronounced the unfortunate person is thereby accursed.

No man ever goes on a journey, no matter how short, without a string of charms about his neck, to ward off the grim form of death, which he believes lurks in every forest, along every river, in every home. There is one charm to protect from violent death through wild animals, there is one to protect from death at the hands of strangers, but chiefest of all is that little charm stuffed away in the ram’s horn, which is a perfect safeguard against the death curse of strangers whom the traveller may meet when on his way from village to village.

The traveller cannot escape the sorrow and despair of death which surely is nowhere so marked as at the death of the African. For days, maybe, the sufferer has lain without any perceptible change, either for better or worse; then, perhaps, the watcher observes a sign which shews that the end is not far off, and the word goes round the village that Bomolo cannot live long.

Silently, one after another, the relatives creep into the hut and sit upon cooking pots, mats, stools and logs of wood, until the hut is filled with men and women knit together with a common sorrow. The strong man they have remembered in the sylvan chase, the keen fisherman, or possibly the courageous warrior they have known and admired, and in their beautiful simplicity loved, is stretched upon the hard bamboo bed which his busy hands had made. The watchers can see that it is only a matter of hours and the general weeping is at first silent, occasionally ceasing when the sick one speaks or calls for something. The nearer relatives rub and bathe the limbs which begin to chill; one or two affectionately hold a foot, a hand, or a finger; the favourite wife, as her right and duty, tenderly nurses the head.

In proportion as the weakness increases, the crying becomes more audible; then louder still the women cry, invoking all the spirits of the other world to surrender their grip and restore to life and vigour their beloved tribesman. Some momentarily cease crying and call to Bomolo to “speak words of farewell,” and the fact that the dying man is unable to reply is a signal for louder wailing still. At last comes the dreadful moment when their friend ceases to breathe. For the space of a few seconds, a breathless and awful silence prevails, whilst brother and wife listen to the heart beat; then, with a terrible shriek which rends the air, the wife cries, “He is gone!”

Words fail to describe this scene! How can the pen adequately portray the bursting of the pent-up misery of these scores of relatives as, in their agony, they twist and writhe in the dust. Wildly despairing, they grasp in frenzy the corpse or the bed, and then releasing their hold, they throw up their arms and again roll in the dust, not infrequently into the log fire which smoulders on the floor of the hut, scattering the embers amongst the tumbling and twisting mass of wailing humanity. What matter those burning scars?—the frenzy of a terrible sorrow consumes reason and chases into oblivion the pains of cut, bruised, scalded and burnt bodies.

THE WITCH.

SLAVE GRAVEYARD ON THE ISLAND OF SAN THOMÉ.

An hour later, the storm having spent its fury, the body is washed and prepared for the grave, but the wailing still goes on rising and falling in a monotonous cadence like the moan of a dying gale at sea. There is no escape from that never-ceasing death wail until the body is buried, which, in most villages, is generally within forty-eight hours. Then the tide of weeping turns. A reaction sets in and the weird dancing to drive away the evil spirits continues throughout the night, until mourners and relatives revive sufficiently for the task of partitioning the wives and other worldly goods of the deceased.

The death customs differ with almost every tribe. In the watershed of the Lopori, Aruwimi and Maringa rivers of the Congo towards the Egyptian and Uganda borders, the corpse is frequently hung for weeks over a fire and thoroughly smoke dried. A similar custom prevails in certain parts of the middle and lower Congo. The corpse, however, is dressed in the best clothes and placed for a day or two in a life-like sitting posture—a gruesome and unnerving sight for the passing European. A hut in which a traveller was resting on his journey was seen to have suspended from the roof a deep wicker basket, from which a dark round object protruded. This, on inquiry, he found to be the head of a child whose body, after being smoke-dried, was hung there by the mother that she might look upon the features of her cherished infant. Amongst the Bakwala tribe, the custom prevails of smoking the body of a deceased wife who may be the daughter of a distant tribe, in order that she may be sent home and find burial amongst her own people.

Some of the Bakuba tribes on the Kasai, before life is actually extinct, seize the body, bundle it unceremoniously out of the hut, and then raising it shoulder high rush off to a distant and unoccupied hut that the spirit may there take flight, and not from the home which they believe the spirit would henceforward haunt. It is there prepared for burial, the whole village meanwhile gathering at the house of the deceased to take part in the general wailing.

(d) Peace and Arbitration

Most African tribes set the civilized world an example in their unwritten methods of preventing war, or, after war has been declared, of bringing it to an early termination. If it were possible to exile the Foreign Ministers of the Great Powers of Europe to the hinterland of their respective colonies—Sir Edward Grey to remote Barotseland, Baron von Kilderlen Waechter to the Sanga in German Cameroons, and Monsieur De Sélves to the Ubangi—where they could divide their time between fishing and studying the peace principles of barbarous tribes, I have little doubt they would return to civilization with more practical ideas upon peace than they will ever learn in the despatch encrusted offices of London, Berlin and Paris.

THE “PALAVER”

The African detests war and will make great sacrifices to prevent the outbreak of hostilities. The two principal causes of war are (1) land; (2) wives. Slave raiding does not belong to the African; the Arab imported it. Before war breaks out there is first the “palaver,” which may last many days or weeks. In palaver the debates differ but little from the parliaments of the world, except perhaps that custom keeps womanhood out of general debates, although where the particular interests of women are concerned, I have seen them throw themselves into the debates in a manner no whit less collected and impressive than the men.

THE WITCH DOCTOR WITH HIS CHARMS FOR EVERY ILL.

The African revels in debate, and possibly this accounts to some extent for the admitted passion for litigation which now animates the civilized centres of the African colonies. The orators of the primitive tribes are no less masters of the art than their eloquent compeers at Lagos and Freetown. I was once asked to visit a first-class palaver and found a huge semi-circle of people closely massed together. Soon after my arrival the chief took his seat and one could almost hear the policemen of St. Stephen’s calling out, “Speaker in the chair!” for a similar signal was given for the palaver to commence.

The chief, surrounded by his advisers, called upon the speakers in turn; first to the right, then to the left, so that all sides might be heard. The “palaver” had commenced about nine o’clock, and at mid-day sun only four speakers had been heard. The fifth, who was an orator of some repute, rose from his stool where he had been reclining, drank from the calabash of water handed him by his wife, and then adjusting his loin cloth and picking up his notes—a bundle of twigs as remembrancers of the various points—he stepped forward. With an air of complete mastery of his facts, he sped on quietly for the first quarter of an hour; at the close of every period he turned to his supporters for approving applause, which was given in a chorus of assenting “Oh’s.” From calm and reasoned recital of facts, he then passed on to his deductions, and for another quarter of an hour he drove his points home amid the now increasing interest and applause of his own side and the derisive laughter of the opposition.

At the end of half an hour, excitement was beginning to run high. The orator now threw himself into a final effort; gathering up his facts and deductions, he charged the other side with every species of deception and fraud, and as he did so he danced to and fro with his body bathed in perspiration. Every sentence now was punctuated by the almost frenzied applause of his supporters. In his concluding sentences he made a fervid appeal for justice, all the while moving backward towards his expectant friends and wives. He uttered his concluding sentence with arms waving aloft and then swooned into the arms of half a dozen wives who emptied their calabashes over that quivering perspiring body. This man had never read the trial of Warren Hastings, but I could not help recalling Sheridan as the African orator lay there apparently in a dead swoon—I knew of course that he was inwardly rejoicing in his great feat and in the applause which awoke the echo and re-echo in the great forests immediately behind us.

If this “full dress” palaver fails to secure an amicable settlement, the tribes in the Congo basin do not abandon their efforts. They surround the villages with sentinels and adopt various defensive measures, but before hostilities actually begin, they select a sort of “daysman,” who, to act in this capacity, must be of peculiar relationship to both tribes; that is to say he must be able to claim parentage in both dissentient communities.

The daysman goes forth wearing a fringed and partially dried plantain leaf sash thrown over the shoulder so that the sentinels of both tribes immediately recognize him and his sacred office. It is very seldom this arbitrator fails to secure a peaceful termination of the dispute. If he does fail and hostilities break out causing loss of life, he immediately renews his efforts; indeed he never ceases that constant passing to and fro on his errand of peace and goodwill.

PEACE CONFERENCE

The proposal to sheathe the sword, or, more accurately, to unstring the bows and cleanse the poisoned arrow heads, is followed by another palaver. It was once my good fortune to be invited to act as arbitrator at one of these interesting proceedings.

The drums in all the surrounding country were beaten at cockcrow and immediately the two tribes, under their respective chiefs and headmen, began marching towards the rendezvous—a clearing in the forest outside the village at which we were staying.

I was rather alarmed at the fact that though this was a peace conference, every member of that great concourse carried not only spears, but bows and arrows, and I knew that the slightest indiscretion would precipitate a bloody fight.

All the old history was retailed again through that long and burning hot day. Once or twice a speaker raised the devil in his opponents; spears were gripped and arrows snatched from their quivers, but at last better counsels prevailed and terms were agreed upon. The question at issue was a boundary dispute, but lives had been lost and prisoners taken on both sides. The boundary was readjusted to the apparent satisfaction of both parties, prisoners exchanged and compensation paid for the killed on either side—this latter surely an advance on “civilized” terms of peace by the way!

The ceremony of “signing the peace” is not the least interesting part. First a strip of leopard skin was secured and then a bunch of palm nuts. The skin was pinned to the ground by a dagger, and each chief and headman followed me in driving the dagger deeper into the earth. When it was firmly fixed the leopard skin was drawn first one way, then the other, until it had been completely severed. A half was given to a young chieftain of each tribe, and they were instructed to “haste to the river, young men, throw the separated skins upon the waters that all men may know the quarrel is now cut in pieces (i.e., is destroyed).” This done, the bunch of palm nuts was taken and a spear from each party driven into the head of nuts. Two more men were selected, again from each tribe, and instructed to “Carry that head of nuts carefully, young men, throw them into the river that all men may know that our spear heads are buried, that fighting is over and peace made for ever and for ever.”

In this exceptional case the “for ever and for ever” only lasted three months! but in the great majority of such cases peace though threatened is maintained for many a year.

V
THE NATIVE AS A MONEY MAKER

If the African woman is a prudent banker, the man is the money maker. The range of remuneration they receive for their labour is no less divergent than one finds in Europe. The Sierra Leone native will obligingly row you ashore to Freetown in fifteen minutes “for two bob, Sah”; but his brother paddler on the Chiloango, or the Congo, will paddle for you throughout a week for 5d. a day, coupled with a plump bat or the leg of a monkey by way of rations.

There is one form of money making which is fastening its fell grip ever more firmly upon the middle-class African—money lending. It is extremely difficult to deal with this question in West Africa by legislation, but a good deal can be accomplished in various directions by a watchful administration. One case brought to my notice was that of a cook who was compelled to pay £2 10s. interest on a loan of £4 for six months. Another one was that of a teacher who required a loan of £6, for which he had to pay 12s. per month interest. I was also assured that frequently 10s. a month interest is exacted for small loans of £1. In some parts of the Gold Coast borrowers find themselves in such straits that they are often compelled to pawn their children.

WAGES AND WIVES

The wages of agricultural labourers vary very considerably. In Southern Nigeria labourers working for native employers receive from 15s. to 20s. per month. The contracted labourers on the islands of the Gulf of Guinea—that is Fernando Po, San Thomé and Principe—are all “contracted” at paper wages, varying from 10s. to 15s. per month, but neither under the Spanish or Portuguese Administrations do they receive more than half their pay when it is due, the other half being placed in the hands of the Curador. In German Cameroons the wage is seldom more than 10s. a month, and more often the labourers only receive 8s. In the hinterland of Belgian and French Congo, the unskilled labourer receives from 6s. to 8s. per month. All these wages are exclusive of board and lodging, but generally a certain amount of clothing is supplied freely. In many parts of the various colonies, however, stores are opened by the plantation owners to tempt the labourer into purchasing goods which usually carry a respectable profit.

The hardest work and the poorest pay falls to the carrier; that patient burden bearer rarely gets, in any part of Africa, more than about 9d. per day for his heavy task. The Upper Congo was thrown open to the advance forces of civilization by a continuous stream of carriers, who occupied from a fortnight to three weeks reaching Stanley Pool from Matadi, a journey for which they seldom received more than a sovereign a load. “Big money,” however, is earned by the cocoa carriers of the Gold Coast, but the conditions are entirely abnormal. The cocoa carrying enterprise as at present organized cannot be other than a temporary expedient and the general army of African carriers will have to be content with a wage varying from 4s. 6d. to 7s. a week.

The African is by nature a trader, and no more honest than many Europeans in his business transactions, and on the whole I am afraid less honest than the reputable business houses of West Africa. It is only fair to say that the native merchants trained under the rigid standard of European firms—particularly the Basel Mission of the Gold Coast—maintain a standard of honest trading which does credit to the firms under which they received their commercial education.

The ambition of most young men on the Upper Congo is focussed upon wives. Without earthly possessions, their only hope of matrimonial bliss is in the death of a relative from whom they may “inherit” a partner, if there is a disparity in age an “exchange” is always possible, subject, of, course, to an additional dowry. But this chance is remote and the waiting time is always long, tedious, and full of social complications. One day a young man in the Congo endowed with more than the usual share of courage and trading instinct, hit upon a plan which has for years found increasing favour. The captains of steamers could only with difficulty work their boats up and down that 2000 miles of waterway between Stanley Pool and the great tributaries of the Upper Congo, for lack of wood fuel from the forests. Here, then, was the chance for the enterprising native. He bargained with the white man upon the following basis. To travel with him to Stanley Pool and back again, a journey occupying four weeks, to cut a square yard of wood every night on the journey, and to be allowed to sleep during the day. The wages for this enterprise to be ten francs payable at Stanley Pool, and the free transport back again of one bag of salt and one box of sundries. This suggestion, sound in its common-sense, giving the white man fuel without trouble, was promptly agreed upon, and with ten others on the same terms the contract was confirmed. The white man went to his bunk that night, happy in the thought that for one journey at least he would be saved the eternal “wooding palaver.” The native youths, too, went to sleep, and possibly dreamed of the wedded bliss which was now so unexpectedly within sight.

Four weeks later the “Stern Wheeler” returned and put the respective wood cutters ashore at their different villages, each with a bag of salt and a few sundries purchased at Stanley Pool with the 10 francs. The eyes of certain comely young African women shone brightly that night as they heard of the brilliant enterprise of their prospective mates. A few days later two or three parties in small canoes pushed away from the banks and started on a ten days’ journey up one of the small tributaries which abound everywhere on the Upper Congo. In each canoe were precious bags of salt and a tiny spoon for retailing the “white powder” to distant tribes. A fortnight later family palavers were held and a sufficient dowry laid at the feet of the damsel’s father. The nightly wood-chopping enterprise had produced 10 francs which had in turn obtained a bag of salt, a hundred common safety pins and a cheap mirror. The salt and pins had disappeared and there lay on the ground in their place the coveted dowry of £2 sterling in native money for the father, and a mirror for the mother of the native bride who now gladly joined her husband for better or for worse. There is your African trading instinct!

Since that day many a young man has followed that example, but with competition dowries have risen and the value of European produce fallen. Nevertheless, to-day, many a native on the Congo waterways is cutting firewood to and from the ports in the hope of raising the wherewithal to obtain his heart’s desire.

It is said of the Indian coolie that anywhere he will make two blades grow to the one blade the white man can produce. In this respect the African follows hard on the heels of his Indian rival. The white man will often select what seems a most promising piece of land, but for some reason his crops fail. The native will choose a little out-of-the-way patch and cultivate it in a style which calls forth a pitying, almost contemptuous smile from the white, but somehow that native has struck fertility and his crops flourish amazingly.

AGRICULTURAL WAGES

In Southern Nigeria I met several successful native farmers, who seem in some respects to outdo their friends in the neighbouring colony of the Gold Coast. One of these had some years ago bought 200 acres of land at 4s. per acre, and soon it was discovered that he had obtained a very fertile patch and he was offered no less than £5 an acre and his crops at valuation, but Mr. X. has a keen business head upon his shoulders and finds it more profitable to cultivate cocoa, palm nuts and rubber than to sell his land even at an enhanced price. Every time he makes a few pounds he extends his plantation, “pulls down his barns and builds greater.” This man has now a turnover of nearly £20,000 a year.

THE KEEN TRADER

There are scattered all down the coast in British colonies native traders pressing on to positions of dominating influence. These men can handle cargoes of four figures and pay at an hour’s notice. They receive regular cable information of the prices of different commodities on the European market, and several of them have branches which connect by telephone. Most of them conduct their business on modern principles with typists, cashiers, messenger boys and so forth. Not a few of them are frequently in a financial position to strike a bargain and settle a transaction before the European firm can get a cable reply from the home directors. They are up-to-date traders in being able to supply anything which may be demanded of them, or if not in stock they will promise it—and keep the promise—on a given day. If an order is specially urgent and has to come from Europe, a messenger will meet the ship, take off the package and deliver it to the client within an hour or two of the ship’s arrival. One of the most interesting transactions I know of occurred in a certain British colony. A chief, for some reason, was in great need of a large elephant’s tusk, and after fruitless endeavours to obtain one, a native trader relieved the old man’s anxiety by offering to deliver a tusk the required size, to cost about £80, within a month. Promptly to time the tusk was delivered—the cute trader had cabled to Europe for it! “Holts,” “Millers,” and other all-wise competitors in that town knew how imperative it was that this old chief should have a big tusk, and I was told they tried their “up country” stores, but it never occurred to them to order from Europe. There again is the African trading instinct, which put a clear £10 note in the trader’s pocket!

A NATIVE PLANTER IN HIS FUNTUMIA PLANTATION, SOUTHERN NIGERIA.

RUBBER COLLECTORS, KASAI RIVER, UPPER CONGO.

The legal profession is beyond question the most lucrative in West Africa, but this does not obtain in Africa alone. The mass of the people have not yet learned to settle their troubles without the aid of the legal community. The fees paid to the coast barristers are surprising. I was informed that in one colony more than one native barrister has an income of close on five figures. I had no reliable evidence upon this and should think it an exaggeration, but the style in which the coast barrister lives and moves must certainly require a substantial income. Certain it is too that none are more generous with their money.

Unlike the medical profession, no colour-bar stands between the barrister and the free exercise of his ability. Surely the position of these medical men calls loudly for redress, the profession which, above all others, is needed in the fever-haunted colonies of Africa, yet between the increase of these men and the countless sufferers there is firmly fixed the detestable colour-bar of prejudice.

Though the native has not yet become convinced of the safety of banking, the sums placed by them on deposit in the three British colonies—Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, are nearly £80,000.

When we reflect upon these natives rising to positions of greater power and influence in British colonies, and when we are prone to criticize British administrations, it will not hurt any of us, either native or European, to remember that less than a century ago these centres were amongst the principal slave markets of the world.

VI
THE AFRICAN WOMAN

There is assuredly no country whose women are more interesting than those of Central Africa. Certainly there can be no place on the habitable globe where women are so continuously industrious. Amongst African women there are no unemployed and no unemployables. In all the hinterland, the women are the agriculturists. In the early morning, often before sunrise, they file out of the village to their plots, perhaps a mile away from the town, where there is always something to do; weeding and planting being almost an integral part of the daily routine. When the gardens have received attention, meals must be considered and the woman proceeds to dig up the manioca tubers, but only to bury them beneath the water in some forest stream or pool to extract the injurious element. In a few days hence the load of sodden tubers will be ready for the native culinary art.

DAILY BREAD

Ten minutes in the forest and the woman has gathered the fuel required for her cooking; then loading her basket with the manioca left to soak six days before, she places a layer of leaves between it and the firewood, and shoulders her burden. She steps out brightly for home, in company with perhaps another twenty matrons.

It is not every day that she is able to finish by noon, for in the planting season the gardens demand her labour for whole days at a stretch. Some weeks before the husband has perhaps started a new field by cutting down at immense labour hundreds of trees, which lie there scattered in all directions till the tropical sun dries up the leaves and smaller branches. Then a torch at one end of the clearing starts the whole area in a blaze.

It is at this stage that the wife comes along with her seeds and cuttings, digging little mounds all over the area and raising the soil by heaping upon it the cinders, dead leaves and ash, which provide the only manure these primitive folk possess. Between the rows of manioca she may plant gourds, Indian corn and ground nuts, and thus secure a general crop all over her cultivated field.

From Sierra Leone right away to the north bank of the Kasai, these domestic crops vary but little, but on arriving at the southern bank of the Kasai, the change becomes very marked, for the extensive fields of manioca and cassava give way to mealies as the staple food.

The field is the first charge, so to speak, upon the time of the African woman, but to her belongs also the major responsibility for providing the daily meals. The primitive African is almost a vegetarian, though he dearly loves meat. Trapping edible fish is by no means frequent, and the wife, knowing with her civilized sister how important it is to feed the man, will often snatch an hour or two from her busy life and run to the nearest stream and catch some “small fry,” with which to make savoury the evening meal of cassava and pottage. In season she will hunt through the forests for the caterpillars which abound on certain trees and which by some tribes are regarded as great delicacies, particularly those tribes inhabiting French and Belgian Congo and the Cameroons. The Gold Coast people substitute large snails, of which they appear inordinately fond.

There are four principal dishes which, with slight variations, prevail throughout Western Africa:—

1. There is the staple food of manioca, which is sometimes boiled and pounded into puddings, resembling a lump of glazier’s putty. Cassava or sweet manioca is never soaked, but cooked fresh from the ground and is much liked by Europeans.

2. The plantain, which is prepared in many forms by roasting, baking, frying and boiling.

3. There is pottage, the body of which is composed of pounded leaves from the manioca plant, closely resembling spinach. In most parts of the tropics, green Indian corn is introduced freely into this dish.

4. There is the palm oil chop, which, as I have shewn in another part of this book, is not a “chop” at all, but anything from a caterpillar or a beetle to the leg of a dog or buffalo.

Perhaps next in importance to the position of agriculturist is that of cook. Give the African woman a clay pot, a pestle and mortar and a few leaves, and she will produce in quick time a meal which even a European can relish. She is a trifle too fond of chili peppers and palm oil for a sensitive palate and fully believes that a fair proportion of earth and other etceteras add to the flavour and digestibility. Her husband, with a natural weakness for chili peppers and oil, and himself not averse to “foreign bodies” in his food, readily consumes nearly two pounds of prepared manioca and pottage at a single meal.

THE WOMAN IN THE HOME

With cockcrow, the woman rises, steps outside the hut and in lieu of washing herself, yawns two or three times, then stretches herself in several directions, and is ready for the day’s work. She will first sweep her hut, open the chicken-house, pluck a few dew-covered leaves to wipe over the faces of the children, and then pick up her basket and set out for the gardens. Returning, she will pull the fire logs together and again shoulder her basket and go off to catch fish, or to hunt caterpillars. Some of the older wives may stay in the village to fashion clay cooking pots, weave baskets and mats, or crack palm kernels.

WOMEN POUNDING OIL PALM NUTS.

About four o’clock, “when the monkeys in the forest begin to chatter,” the women return to their huts and commence preparing for the principal meal of the day. Above the hum of conversation, the passing jest, or the humorous repartee, the clear ringing thud, thud, of pestle and mortar is distinctly heard. Most dishes at some stage or the other are pounded. The boiled manioca, the pottage leaves, the palm nuts, the plantains, all find their way to the mortar, and no doubt the muscular physique of many of the women is largely the result of the perpetual wielding of the heavy wooden pestle.

The African woman is at home with any industry, hardly anything comes strange to those deft fingers and muscular arms. The husband may go on a journey by canoe, and his wife, or wives, will be there paddling amidships and cooking the meals at intervals. The husband, however, always takes the post of danger, which may be bow or stern, according to the weather, the current, or the district through which they may be passing.

Much has been written, backed by little knowledge, about the brutality of man in making the woman carry the loads when on an overland journey. To the uninitiated European, it may seem callous for a strong able-bodied man to walk in front of a line of women every one of whom is struggling along with a 50-pound load on her back. But make them change positions, force the man to take the load, tell the women to walk in front, and before you have gone many yards the women will all have bolted into the bush, for the “Lord Protector” under a load is no longer ready to shield them from the danger which lurks behind every tree and beneath almost every leaf in the African forests. The African knows his business when on a journey, and his first duty, from which no matter what the odds, he never shrinks, is that of protecting his family from the ravages of wild animals no less than the violence of hostile tribes. But to do this he must be unencumbered and alert.

WOMAN A MONEYMAKER

The women of West Africa, by reason of their thrifty natures, are frequently the bankers. To them the husband entrusts the keeping of his worldly goods, and right sacredly they guard anything placed in their keeping. Not only are the women trustworthy bankers, but as moneymakers they are extremely keen. The finest business woman it has been my lot to meet was a farmer woman of Abeokuta. This old lady could tell at sight, almost to a penny, the value of a pile of kernels without weighing them. I fell to discussing with her so technical a question as the possibility of cotton in Southern Nigeria, and she was adamant in her opinion upon this: “Unless they can guarantee me 1d. per pound for unginned cotton and 4½d. per pound for the ginned, I would even prefer to grow yams.” I gathered that on the whole she was not likely to become a shareholder in any cotton producing company.

GRINDING CORN ON THE KASAI, UPPER CONGO.

In the mart the women excel. It may be in the streets of Accra, Abeokuta, Freetown, or in that finest of all marts in West Africa—Loanda, or again in some wayside market of a tributary river in the far distant hinterland. Wherever you find the market, the women are in control and right merrily goes the auction. The din amounts to a pandemonium, the tricks of the trade are to be looked for in every basket of fruit or pile of vegetables. The eggs are probably old ones, carefully washed and possibly doctored; that fowl tied by the legs could not walk from sickness if it were free. Billingsgate, Smithfield, Covent Garden, rolled into one could not be at once more entertaining, more noisy and more novel than those African markets where you may buy almost everything you want, and receive a great deal gratis that is not welcome.

The African Wife

Is there any feature, social, political or religious so important in West Africa as the wife and mother? No “teeming millions” are to be found in the African tropics and every colony is crying out for more native workers as the development of her industries gets beyond the fringe. As a wife the African woman is generally but one of a number. In most coast towns to-day the stress of modern competition has forced up the cost of living, which together with the absorption of civilized ideas has made monogamy—oftentimes, alas, only surface monogamy—the passport into respectable society. But away from the coast towns, though it be only a few miles away, polygamy is prevalent almost throughout West Africa.

Christian converts profess an abhorrence, and in many cases I am satisfied a sincere abhorrence, of polygamy, but the fact remains that this causes more trouble in the Christian Churches in West Africa than all other evils put together. In the purely pagan areas there is no doubt that the woman regards polygamy as a desirable condition; she argues that the position of the husband is gauged by his many possessions—wives and cattle, and that she prefers being the wife of a great man to that of some insignificant fellow who can afford to keep but one! Again she will point out, and with obvious truth, that if a man possesses several wives, the burden of agriculture, of fishing, of kernel-cracking, and the domestic duties spread over four, five or more persons is proportionately lighter upon each individual.

A CHRISTIAN COUPLE RETURNING FROM THE GARDENS TOWARDS SUNSET.

WEAVING CLOTH IN THE KASAI, UPPER CONGO.

Into the sentiment of polygamy there is also the practical consideration of offspring. No matter how plain the daughters, no matter how slightly cicatrized they may be, no matter what imperfections the boys may have, if they are the children of a much married man they are certain to make “good matches.” The sons may be certain of securing the daughters of chiefs no less famous than their father; if a girl, her dowry will not be her intrinsic worth, but will be gauged likewise by the position and possessions of her father.

INHERITED WIVES

It does not seem to be generally recognized that there is both voluntary polygamy and in a very real sense obligatory polygamy. A man inherits wives from his father or uncle, just as he inherits other possessions. In most cases of course he gladly accepts his inheritance. This, I know, is a revolting custom to the European, but to the African not merely desirable but the only honourable future for his father’s wives. His own mother reigns as a sort of dowager Queen in the household and keeps order in the harem of her son. I have often discussed this feature with the women themselves and find that invariably they regard any other course with the utmost repugnance. Why, they say, should they suffer the disgrace of being passed on to other husbands; what evil have they done that their rightful husband should disown them and refuse to accept them as his wives? his father loved and cherished them, and why should the son disgrace his father’s name by refusing to follow in his steps!

In one or two cases Christian men have actually put away wives whom they have inherited in this manner, but the women concerned have always felt that the shadow of disgrace has fallen upon them and that they are outcasts from the social life of the tribe.

This custom, like most extreme polygamous concomitants, finds its fullest development in the upper reaches of the Congo river, but it is also found practically throughout the whole of the Congo basin.

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYGAMY

The general attitude adopted by missionaries in West Africa is that of rigidly excluding the husband of more than one wife from Church membership, and this no doubt accounts for the apparent lack of success which statistics seem at first sight to demonstrate. Almost every missionary, however, will point out to the traveller, man after man who, though not a member of his church is, he declares, with a regretful sigh, “more of a Christian than the majority of our members.” The German Basel Mission in the Cameroons excludes all polygamists from Church membership and they have been fortunate in obtaining King Bell as a monogamist member. In the “oil rivers” of the Niger, the same rigorous position is taken up by the missionaries.

In not a few churches in Southern Nigeria, polygamists are certainly admitted to membership of the churches. These men if not openly polygamous are notoriously so in private life.

The Christian Church has, in polygamy, a problem which at present defies solution; the custom is so much an integral part of African life that a conversion to Christianity involves an abrupt termination of the convert’s former habits, the effects of which reach far beyond the individual most intimately concerned. One of the greatest difficulties is that of the outcast wives. In one Mission in Southern Nigeria if a man becomes a Christian convert he is asked to call his wives together and explain his position, then to select one, put the others away and provide for their maintenance. But even this involves a sense of injustice and is, I am told, fruitful in many cases of deplorable results. The women thus set aside regard themselves not unnaturally as outcasts, as they have lost the affection of their husbands and are therefore in disgrace. In many cases, I am told, these women become either temporarily or permanently the mistresses of other men who do not hesitate to taunt them with the fact that they are outcasts from ordinary native society.

No doubt there are exceptional cases where women so put away find mates amongst the bachelor members of the Christian community, but even these young fellows—and more particularly their parents—are not always over anxious to accept as a wife for their son the woman whom another man has set aside.

The Honourable Sapara Williams, one of the ablest men in West Africa, expressed the opinion that it is imperative the Christian Church should find some other solution than exists to-day for this difficulty if it is to maintain and increase its hold upon the native tribes of tropical Africa. We see already a native Christian Community in Southern Nigeria known as the African Church existing avowedly upon a polygamous basis and growing rapidly in membership and influence. This Church is entirely self-supporting and is becoming more and more propagandist. In the course of time it may easily produce what will be called an “African Wesley,” or an “African Spurgeon,” and the result we can foresee. The African en masse is inflammable material and intensely patriotic; let such a man emerge from their ranks and the doctrines he preaches will spread like wildfire.

It is universally recognized that in case of any modification of the attitude now adopted by the European government of Christian Churches, thousands of adherents would be secured in every colony. The heroic attitude hitherto adopted surrenders to Mohammedanism a potent factor in the propagation of its beliefs, hence the extraordinary advance made by the apostles of the prophet.

There is evidence that the position maintained by the Christian Churches as a whole upon this aspect of its work leads to widespread immorality amongst Church members, but wherever it becomes too notorious, the delinquents are, with certain exceptions, excluded from membership. It will be readily seen therefore that should any single Christian denomination once lower its standard in this respect, converts would flock to it in thousands. The African Church does this, and springing from the people themselves, meets the situation. Its members probably represent the Christian natives of the near future in Southern Nigeria, men for the most part commercially successful, boldly solving their own problems, living an easy-going and comfortable life, their religious standard lowered to their own desires. Can we criticize them? If we do, we must beware, for they will tell us that it is more honest to live open polygamous lives than the fraudulent lives of professing Christians—white and black—whose hypocritical attitude, particularly on sex questions, is a by-word on the West Coast of Africa. I fear there is too much truth in this retort. White men, at least, must hold their peace, and there lies the greatest danger!

POLYGAMY AND THE BIRTH RATE

It is generally accepted that polygamy is productive of a high birth rate, and Sir William Muir has given this as one reason for the almost miraculous advance of Mohammedanism. It may have been, and may still be true to-day of Mohammedanism that polygamy produces a high birth rate, but that existing polygamists in tropical Africa to-day produce a greater number of births than monogamists is, I am satisfied, open to serious question. At the same time I think it is clear that prior to European occupation, polygamist Africa maintained a higher birth rate than is possible under modern conditions.

The reason for this is not far to seek, for the chiefs, possessing as they did unrestricted power over the community, could terrorize into complete submission every unit of the tribe. Wherever polygamy existed the wife was kept faithful to the one husband by the knowledge that unchastity was forthwith rewarded by instant death. The young men also knew that a liaison meant either that they were sold into slavery, involving in all probability ultimate sacrifice, or they would be hanged on the nearest tree.

This is so even to-day amongst those tribes beyond the reach of white men. One day, when crossing towards the main Congo river, I suddenly heard wild shrieks from a person evidently in great danger. Rushing to the spot, I found a woman bound hand and foot, and standing over her was a burly young chief with an executioner’s knife raised aloft. In a moment more that woman’s head would have been hacked off had I not promptly gripped the man’s arm. With a terrible oath he attempted to spring upon me, but the headmen of the village, who had also hurried to the scene, fell upon him and wrenched the knife from his hand. For a quarter of an hour nothing would stay the man’s fury; it took six of us to hold him. Ultimately, however, he calmed down and explained to me that his wife had been unfaithful and that she merited the death penalty. I gave him some presents to appease him further and he agreed to forgive the woman if I would “reward him.” As the gift he asked was to me a trivial matter, and the only chance of saving the woman’s life, I gave it to him. The woman herself, in gratitude, at once wrenched from off her wrists a bracelet which she presented to me as a keepsake. I fear, however, that after I left the village, she suffered a cruel death for her unfaithfulness. It will be readily seen that these conditions are only possible in regions where there is no restraining hand.

The question of the birth rate under monogamist and polygamist marriages in West Africa has always been of absorbing interest to me and my diaries are full of jottings bearing upon the subject, but very few are worth a permanent record. Amongst the Christians of Accra many monogamists have considerable families and from personal observation twins appeared to be fairly frequent. In the hinterland, we were informed, that the “baku”—or tenth child—is by no means rare amongst the “Twi” people. The largest family we found amongst the monogamists of the Bangalla region of the Congo was five children, the average appearing to be three. But West Africa is very weak in reliable statistics.

In our recent journeys, I selected four areas and obtained with some accuracy the composition of several groups of villages. It was impossible to accept the figures from some districts because the people, fearing there was some subtle move behind our requests, either gave evasive replies or figures which were obviously inaccurate.

The following six groups, however, are reliable. They were gathered from areas hundreds, and in one case over a thousand miles apart:—

	Men.	Women.	Average woman per man.	Offspring.			Average per man.	Average per woman.
				Boys.	Girls.	Total.
Five Hinterland Villages of the Kasai.
A	241	316	1.315	70	81	151	0.626	0.477
	(201 monogamists)
River-side Villages on the Upper Congo.
B	26	45	1.875	14	15	29	1.115	0.644
C	41	54	1.317	5	4	9	0.222	0.166
D	16	42	2.625	10	6	16	1	0.380
Hinterland Village, Upper Congo.
E	31	69	2.225	23	20	43	1.387	0.623
Remote Hinterland Village, Upper Congo.
F	196	319	1.627	171	148	319	1.627	1

In group “C,” the principal polygamist possessed fifteen wives, but only two children. Sixteen monogamists had no children.

Group “A” is taken from the Kasai, where monogamy most widely prevails, but of the two hundred and one monogamists, one hundred and three had no children. The principal polygamists possessed six, eight and thirteen wives respectively. The two first had no children at all and the chief with thirteen wives had two boys and three girls.

From these figures no deduction is possible as to the advantage of either polygamy or monogamy upon the question of birth rate. One deduction only is clear.

The birth rates in the following order are with estimated distance from effective civilized Government:—

		Average birth-rate per woman.	Distance from effective civilized Government.
Group	C	0.166	10	minutes’	walk
”	D	0.380	30	”	”
”	A	0.477	1	hour’s	”
”	E	0.623	1	”	”
”	B	0.644	1½	”	”
”	F	1	2	days’	”

The birth rate figures are lamentably low, and being selected from areas so widely apart give anything but an encouraging indication for the future of the Congo. The deductions from these figures is unmistakable and only confirms what one hears everywhere, not only in the Congo but all over the West Coast of the utter demoralization which is flooding these territories.

The Congo is by far the worst. Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian atrocities and they were terrible indeed, but what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror—in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes.

THE ONLY HOPE

To-day one sees the havoc which King Leopold created when he let loose upon the Congo tribes the scum of Europe. None have escaped the infection; girls of tender years and even boys not yet in their teens delight in practices of which in the old days the chiefs would have kept them in complete ignorance for another five years. Upon the women the results have been by far the most revolting, for in the Congo the majority of women have lost their womanhood and have fallen into a daily condition from which even the beasts of the forest refrain.

The truth is that in the greater part of West Africa neither monogamy nor polygamy is the prevailing relationship between man and woman. Doctors, administrators and missionaries all know it, and are all powerless at present to bring the situation under control. It is useless for the administration to make laws for practices beneath the surface, the only thing the officials can do, and should do without delay, is to see to it that an ever higher example is set to the natives. This is where the Belgian and French Congo officials have failed so utterly.

The Christian missionary alone touches the evil, and though he is defeated again and again, he plods steadily on preaching a perfect chastity—too lofty a standard for most natives at present—but without doubt gathering round him an ever increasing number not only of men but of women who, apart from occasional lapses, set a bright example to the whole countryside.

MOTHERHOOD

The birth of children is in primitive Africa rarely attended by anything abnormal. If a native nurse is confronted with complications, she immediately throws up the case in despair and appeals to the witch doctor, but normally the birth of children is taken as quite an ordinary part of the daily life. One day we were passing through a native village, and there, lying on a plantain leaf, were two chubby little twin girls but half-an-hour old; the mother was sitting close by “resting.” This picture was so beautifully simple that my wife went with a boy to bring up the camera and plates, but on arriving at the spot in about twenty minutes the woman had picked up her twins and carried them home! That is primitive Africa, but in the coast towns where African womanhood delights in corsets and other European follies, the suffering at childbirth is in many cases almost as acute as that amongst the European community. With several Congo tribes, the belief is firmly rooted and put into practice that in order to change the colostrum flow to that of milk, co-habitation is essential.

With many tribes throughout West Africa, the period of lactation is prolonged; frequently the mother nurses the child until it is two, three, and even four, years old. A case of adultery was brought before the District Commissioner’s Court at Ikorodu in Southern Nigeria in April last year, and in the evidence it came out that the accused woman was suckling a child four years of age. The District Commissioner ordered her to cease nursing the child within three months.

The death rate amongst the young children in West Africa is very high and no doubt arises from the deplorable manner in which they are brought up. There is practically no attention given to diet or cleanliness, with the result that any disease which attacks a family quickly spreads through the community.

Amongst the Dagomba of the Northern territories of the Gold Coast colony, the woman who has given birth to a child leaves her husband’s compound and goes to that of the father-in-law, taking the child with her, where they stay for a year. At the end of this period the wife and child return to the home of the husband and father.

Twins

TWINS

It is a mistake to assume, as some writers do, that the taboo on twins is a prevailing custom amongst West African tribes. The distribution of the taboo is extremely erratic. Twins are unwelcome in the Northern territories of the Gold Coast, yet the reverse is the case amongst the Egbas of Nigeria. In the Congo territories, twins cause the greatest joy to a tribe and the mother is lauded wherever she goes, whilst amongst the tribes of the oil rivers of Nigeria, the birth of twins is regarded as the most fearful calamity which can fall upon the community.

In the Upper Congo regions, the traveller may frequently see two earthenware pots hoisted on forked stakes which have been driven in the ground, one on either side of the path, and these are in honour of twins born in the nearest compound. Every person passing by those pots will religiously pluck two leaves and throw one at the foot of each forked pole as a votive offering to “Bokecu” and “Mboyo,” as all good twins are named.

The tragedy of the oil rivers is one of the most distressing in West Africa. Throughout the Eastern, and to a considerable extent of the Central Province, the cruel custom prevails of putting to death one, sometimes both twins. The British Government spares no pains in the effort to combat and overcome these practices, but though much good has resulted, the custom still holds its own.

Not only are the children killed, but the mother is immediately driven from home for she is no longer regarded as a chaste woman and rapidly becomes an outcast from Society, living upon the proceeds of prostitution. In some districts, however, this custom is less rigorous, and the mothers of twins are allowed to form isolated villages and to engage in trade. Some tribes, again, whilst driving them from the homes of their husbands, permit them to engage in agricultural pursuits upon the husband’s lands.

The missionaries are doing much towards weaning the tribes from this murderous practice. One missionary society working amongst the Ibunos, a tribe of five thousand people, claims that through the conversion to Christianity of a large section of this tribe, the horrible practice of murdering the twins and making the women outcasts has ceased. It is of course difficult to control absolutely a statement of that kind, but it is only the Christian missionary who can hope to deal effectively and permanently with a subterranean evil like twin murder.

“TWIN POTS” HOISTED ON FORKED STICKS EITHER SIDE OF PATHWAY, IN HONOUR OF NEWLY BORN TWINS, BANGALLA, CONGO.

An interesting custom which survives in the Upper Congo is that a man may never see or speak to his mother-in-law, and should he by accident turn a corner in the village compound and meet her face to face, he must at once send a propitiatory offering. If she should come into the house where he is sitting, he will promptly raise a mat and hold it between them, so that they may not see each other.

On the whole the lot of the African woman is a hard one. She has her occasional pleasures it is true, but from childhood hers is a lifelong drudgery with, however, the one sure recompense, that in old age it is the joy and the privilege of the younger generation to support her.

PART II
CIVILIZATION AND THE AFRICAN

I.	—The White Man’s Burden.
II.	—Lightening the White Man’s Burden.
III.	—Governments and Commerce.
IV.	—The Liquor Traffic.
V.	—The Educated Native.
VI.	—Justice and the African.
VII.	—Race Prejudice.

I
THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

There is a type of African traveller who, hurrying to the coast and back again, returns with all the assurance of a long experienced person to pontifically declare that the unhealthiness of West Africa is all moonshine, that if a man dies it is due to his excesses rather than to the climate. There is, of course, a grain of truth in this assertion; cocktails, midnight oil and habits of a worse type, undermine the constitution in a manner which leave little resistance to the climatic diseases. Yet after all, tropical Africa is a death-trap.

Some of these assertive and incredulous persons have themselves been badly punished for their advertised temerity. The story goes of one lady who, after having published much nonsense on this subject, was bundled off home in an ice pack! I know one man who, after a year or two of good health, gave rein to his opinion in the columns of the Times; this good man was no believer in short and effective service, followed by a well-earned period of leave; he advocated long terms of residence as the certain road to immunity; that man spent a single term in Africa, towards the close of which the climate made such inroads upon his constitution, that he was never allowed to return.

Those who feel inclined to trifle with and ridicule the dangers attendant upon life in Africa should spend a solid year in some lonely post directing a staff not always amenable to discipline; should live in that comfortless bungalow; should endeavour to tempt the appetite day after day with something from a tin which, no matter what it is called, invariably has the same taste. Then probably a fever intervenes and the lonely resident goes to bed with limbs racked with pain and a head throbbing like the puffing of an express train. By this time the supercilious writer would be brought to know that after all, the climate of West Africa is not that of the Swiss lakes or the Austrian Tyrol.

THE STORY THE GRAVEYARDS TELL

It may be a melancholy undertaking, but all whites going to West Africa should brace themselves to the duty of visiting the cemeteries. What a story the graveyards of West Africa tell! The fair young lives laid down for the comfort of posterity. Men of all walks in life are there—the official and the trader, pitiably aloof in daily life, now lying side by side; they are there from every profession and trade, the engineer and the miner, the planter and the doctor, the young wife and perhaps the new-born infant. Africa—always cruel—has taken them in the very flower of their manhood and womanhood.

On the Gold Coast I one day walked into the cemetery and standing in one spot recorded the ages inscribed on twenty-seven of the surrounding tombstones; the oldest amongst the deceased was only forty-six years, and amongst the youngest, two had succumbed at the early age of twenty-two. The average was exactly thirty-two years. Not a few had inscribed upon the tombs such information as, “After two days’ illness.” “After only three weeks in the colony.” “After three days’ illness.” “Died on the way to the coast,” and so forth.

One interesting feature about this cemetery is that it is enclosed with a stone wall, about four feet high, and all white men may be buried within the compound, as also respectable natives—respectability, so my native guide informed me, being determined by church-going. Natives, therefore, who were not attendants at church, were buried “outside the wall.” Looking over I could see some scores of graves of natives who, not having attended church in life, were divided in death from the church-goers by a foot of stone wall.

Merchants and missionaries would do well to watch more closely the mortality returns of Government publications, for there alone may be seen recorded the effect of furloughs on the health of Europeans. In the slow moving times of twenty years ago, men went to the coast for long periods, and many a missionary and merchant stayed until he died. Government officials, too, were kept at their posts until death carried them off, or they were invalided beyond the possibility of a return. It is instructive to note that mortality is much lower among Government officials, arising beyond question from the fact that they serve short periods, generally of one year only, and then take a furlough in Europe. For many reasons the figures for the years 1901 and 1910 may be regarded as average records. The death-rates among the whites in the two colonies of the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria, showing a remarkable improvement, are as follows:—

		Southern Nigeria. Death Rate.			Gold Coast. Death Rate.
1901.—	Officials	24	per	1000	34.96	per	1000
	Non Officials	47.1	”	”	56.30	”	”
1910.—	Officials	6	”	”	11.41	”	”
	Non-Officials	(not available)			16.52	”	”

Most merchants argue that they cannot afford to bring their men to Europe for short furloughs every year, but one or two good houses are making the experiment with not a little satisfaction to themselves in more than one direction. In the first place a better type of man offers for a short agreement, and then there is the consideration that by preserving the lives of those they have trained, merchants thus avoid the constant re-equipment of new men, the cost of which is very considerable. Nor is the financial aspect the only feature which is proving satisfactory. These merchants find that they reap great commercial advantages over their competitors by being able to hold more frequent consultations with their men. After all, the incidence of cost in connection with passages to and fro is comparatively insignificant on the whole expenditure of the far-reaching commercial enterprises of West Africa.

To preserve the white man’s life in Africa, other elements are equally essential. The dwelling-house, recreation and provisions are features sadly neglected by the majority of whites.

AN AFRICAN HOME

There is so much monotony, so much to irritate and to depress in West Africa, that everything Governments and merchants can do to brighten the lives of their employés should be done. The prettiest and happiest of homes are without doubt in German and Portuguese colonies. In both cases it is due, to a very large extent, to the fact that these nations give every encouragement to the taking out of white women, whose very presence, flitting to and fro in the essentially light garments of the tropics, give more than a touch of poetry to surroundings already anything but prosaic.

WILD FLOWERS GROWING ON TRUNK OF FOREST TREE.

“THE STORY THE GRAVEYARDS TELL.”

The Portuguese love of a garden adds to the attraction of their homes; grape vines are tastefully grown where the Englishman would throw sardine tins; there is a fernery in one corner of the garden, a rose bower in another, luscious fruits and tempting vegetables grow everywhere in exquisite profusion.

The Germans in Cameroons set aside a colonial fund called the “Widows and Orphans Fund,” and I am told it is from this capital account that men draw subsidies with which to take their wives to West Africa!

One of the prettiest incidents I ever saw in West Africa was at Victoria in the German Cameroons. The planter came galloping home from the plantation, and giving a whistle to announce his return, a daintily dressed little matron skipped out lightly to meet him, and arm in arm they walked into a charming little bungalow gay with fern and flower. A few minutes later I passed by the open door and caught a vision of a snowy table cloth, bright with polished silver and glass. I could not help contrasting this with the British factories with their more or less dilapidated dwelling-houses, most of them very dirty, and the general atmosphere in keeping with the slatternly black woman leaning against the cook-house door.

Recreation in some more healthy form than cocktails and billiards is of no less importance than the well-ordered house. In many colonies now there are golf and cricket clubs, but these are only possible in the more civilized towns where there is a considerable congregation of whites. The man who suffers most from fever and despondency is the one stationed at some isolated post of the hinterland. Happy, indeed, is the man with a knowledge of, and love for, a garden; it will keep his mind calm, provide him with healthy exercise, and a supply of fruits and vegetables which will keep him in good form for his daily routine.

Given a good home, sound mental and physical recreation, short periods of service with proportionately shortened furloughs to Europe, the white man’s burden in Africa, to which so many succumb to-day, would be materially lightened, and both white men and women could go forth with a fearlessness which, tempered with care, would largely remove from West Africa the stigma of “the white man’s grave.”

II
LIGHTENING THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

Thanks to Mr. Chamberlain, a great stimulus was given to the work of rendering the burden of West Africa somewhat lighter. At his inspiration men began to study more seriously the question of dwelling houses, the use of medicines, and the supply of fresh food.

Sir Alfred Jones, Messrs. John Holt and Messrs. Burroughs & Wellcome, have each in their respective spheres spent large sums of money experimenting in various directions, in the hope that science applied to the practical side of daily life and travel would ameliorate, if it did not remove, the distressing effects of malaria.

The trader of twenty years ago lived—but more frequently died—in a wattle and daub house. These I know from experience can be made comfortable, but more often than not they are so damp and insanitary that fever may be looked for every few months. Inside two and a half years, I experienced no less than seventeen fevers, the majority of which were I am convinced entirely due to the wretched habitation in which we lived.

To-day few men live on ground floors, for the mud or bamboo house has given place to the airy bungalow fashioned on brick piles, permitting a current of air to pass beneath which keeps the house dry and sanitary. It also has the not inconsiderable advantage that snakes and other reptiles which abound in the tropics do not so readily find a lodging as in the mud and sun-dried brick houses of the earlier days. Another improvement which is yearly growing in favour is that of gauze doors and windows which give some protection from the torment of mosquitos and tsetse flies.

On the island of Principe, the doors and windows of almost every house are fitted with gauze, the object of which is to prevent the spread of sleeping sickness which has of recent years overwhelmed that island. The germ-impregnated fly is nowhere in Africa so numerous and vicious as upon that wretched Portuguese island, where few of a ship’s passengers care to land, for the risk of becoming inoculated with sleeping sickness is a very real one. Whilst on that island we had to keep an extremely vigilant watch upon the terrible tsetse flies which gave us no peace, so anxious were they to taste our blood. The fly, which is found in most parts of West Africa, is most prevalent in the Bangalla region of the Congo and on Principe Island. In the latter place they literally swarm. There is no buzz to warn of their approach, and usually the first intimation the traveller has of their presence is the sharp stab, followed by acute irritation and swelling. In spite of the precautions taken on Principe, there seems very little hope that the population can be saved from this terrible scourge. In one month (June, 1910), out of a population of 4000 souls, no less than fifty-six perished from sleeping sickness; that is at the rate of 168 per 1000 per annum. No wonder the Portuguese population is leaving the doomed island.

MOSQUITO-PROOF SHIPS

An experiment which is being watched with keen interest is that recently made by Messrs. John Holt & Company. The directors of this enterprising firm have recently placed two insect proof ships on the West African sea and river journeys. The first of these, the “Jonathan Holt,” was launched in July, 1910. This vessel was constructed largely under the advice of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the object was that of rendering the passengers and crew immune from the germ carrying mosquito. The “Jonathan Holt,” the first of the type ever built, is about 2500 tons and with a dead weight capacity of 2350 tons. She draws only 17 feet 6 inches of water, which permits navigation on the river Niger and also allows her to reach Dualla, the capital of German Cameroons.

The doorways, portholes, windows, skylights, ventilators and passages are all protected with mosquito gauze frames easily adjustable. Double awnings are provided and everything which human forethought can do to render the ship proof against the mosquito has been done.

To Messrs. Burroughs, Wellcome and Co., every African traveller owes a debt of gratitude. The excellence and portability of their tabloid-preparations have gone a long way to minimize the dangers of tropical adventure. During our travels of over 5000 miles we carried with us a medical outfit which left nothing wanting, either for ourselves or for our paddlers and carriers. For fever, for cuts or bruises, or other inevitable ailments of the tropics everything was at hand; nothing was lacking for the whole caravan and yet the total outfit weighed less than twenty pounds! How great a difference a Burroughs, Wellcome portable outfit would have made to Livingstone’s hard life. We carried another case of “tabloid” photographic materials, and with these developed nearly a thousand plates. The whole outfit, both medical and photographic, was easily carried by one boy.

It may seem strange to the European that African travellers and writers lay so much stress upon the question of food supply. West Africa for years exacted a terrible toll from her white residents, which might have been to a great extent minimized had they been able to provide themselves with palatable fare. The late Sir Alfred Jones determined to do something to make the life of the African merchants and officials more comfortable in this respect. He fitted out a few ships with refrigerators and began in a small way to send some of our staple articles of diet to the leading ports of the coast. Men and women too, sick almost unto death, unable to eat the coarse bread, the tasteless fish, or the tinned mixtures, were then cheered and in numberless cases restored by the timely arrival of an Elder Dempster boat with sterilized fresh milk, eggs, chicken and mutton.

FISH, FLESH, AND FOWL

Only too well do we remember those days, fifteen years ago, when once on board the ship at Liverpool, the travellers said good-bye to European diet. How different the case now! Directly the ship casts anchor, coloured messenger boys, and more often the white men, come on with orders for beef and mutton, eggs and milk, chicken and sausages, even game and fruit. It is a great day when Elder Dempster’s boats steam into port, hurried invitations go out for dinner and luncheon parties, and once a month at least the pale-faced commercial agent or the anæmic government official is able to enjoy a meal or two which puts new life into his tired body.

Over and above the provisions for the passengers on the steamer, each ship will now carry for sale—beef, lamb, mutton and kidneys; pheasants and other game; eggs, sausages, fresh butter and sterilized milk; potatoes, carrots and onions; kippers, bloaters and salmon; grapes, pears and apples—a veritable combination of shops, butcher, dairy, greengrocer, fishmonger and fruiterer!

Usually each ship will carry for sale from 1000 to 2000 lbs. of beef, a couple of thousand eggs, three or four hundred pounds of butter, five hundred blocks of ice and three hundred pints of milk. Festive seasons, too, are not forgotten and Christmas boats carry a large stock of turkeys and geese.

Think for a moment what a blessing the monthly visit of a ship like this is to such foodless places as Boma and Matadi in the Congo, the island of Fernando Po, the isolated merchant houses of Rio del Rey, or the ports of Spanish Guinea;—the drawn and sickly faces of the men who come off for provisions tell their own tale. They can not only buy all they want, but at a reasonable price. The Belgian in the Congo buys beef cheaper than he can in Antwerp, i.e., 10d. a pound. Lamb and steak he can get at 1s. per pound. The Scotch engineer running his steamer up and down the Ogowé can get a whole box of Aberdeen haddies for 5s., or salmon at 2s. a pound. Ice can be purchased at 2s. 6d. a half-hundredweight block. Potatoes and onions at 9s. a case.

This enterprise of Sir Alfred Jones has already developed into the creation of cold storage companies at ports like Lagos, Calabar and Seccondee, and the firm of Elder Dempster has now built chambers on some of their ships capable of carrying twenty tons of European provisions every week to Seccondee alone. The health of West Africa, bad though it is, has greatly improved within recent years, and though, of course, the medical profession has so largely contributed to the change, the house-builder, the merchant and the ship-owner have loyally co-operated in an endeavour to lighten the burden of the white man in West Africa.

III
GOVERNMENTS AND COMMERCE

Nothing in West Africa is more striking than the attitude adopted by the several colonizing Powers towards commerce. At present, Germany is easily in the front rank; her policy towards business men is the most enlightened of any Power, and it is therefore to be the more regretted that her treatment of the natives is not equally far-sighted. Were it so, all students of African questions could view with equanimity her gradual absorption of the whole of Equatorial Africa.

The British merchant knows with absolute certainty that he may rely on receiving a warm welcome and every assistance in German colonies. He knows, too, that none will be given a preference before him. He knows that if “public good”—the stick which governors so frequently wield—demands the removal of his factory, or that a road must be driven through his ground, the German Government will not quibble over doubtful legal points, but will look at the question on broad lines of common-sense policy.

Steam into a German port, and before you cast anchor you may see the customs and health-officers with their launches racing across the intervening stretch of sea. Promptly and smartly the doctor steps up the companion-way, and you begin unloading your cargo without further formalities. Your cargo finished, there is no delay about papers, no irritating objections about the closing time of the customs, or the doctor being at dinner or more likely, tennis. Contrast this with a visit to a French or Portuguese port—you may wait an hour before the health-officer comes on board. His visit over, the ship’s officers and native crew slave throughout the day to unload the cargo, so that they may have the valuable night watches for steaming to the next port, but if the Frenchman can by any quibble keep you tossing at anchor, you may rely upon his doing so.

The German neither likes nor dislikes the British merchant: he is concerned with one thing only—that British capital and British brains are good for his colony; therefore, without any sentimental nonsense, he gives the Britisher a warm welcome, and sees to it that no preference is given to the German merchant, which might make the British firm hesitate to invest further capital in a German colony.

Of course the regulations in German colonies are numerous and enforced with military precision and sternness. The native, centuries behind the white man, does not bear the strain very well. The Britisher, after a time, learns that such regulations are for his good and accepts them. No merchant at first takes kindly to keeping his back-yard free from refuse; if he is in Togoland he resents the first instance upon which he is fined twenty marks for leaving old tins, half-filled up with rain water, lying about the rear of his store, but when in the process of time he is still without fever, he sees the advantage of this anti-mosquito regulation.

MODEL TRANSPORT

In Lome the Germans have an extremely interesting and unique system of transport enterprise. The surf, as in many parts of West Africa, is extremely bad, and for years constituted a source of perpetual loss, not only of valuable cargoes, but of human life. With characteristic thoroughness the German, at great cost, ran a pier out to sea, built a railway line on it and extended this line along the front of the merchant houses—a distance of about 1½ to 2 miles. On the pier the Government erected seven powerful steam cranes. Having laid down this plant, they took the next truly Teutonic step and compelled all the merchants to accept Government transport.

An outward-bound steamer is sighted at sea, cranes are prepared, the health-officer leaves before the ship comes to anchor, papers are examined, cargo is rapidly placed in the surf boats which are towed across to the pier where, in an almost incredibly short space of time, fifty tons of cargo are hauled up on to the pier, put on the train and delivered at the merchants’ doors. A similar method is adopted with a steamer from the south—homeward bound. The moment the look-out ascertains her name and destination, he signals or telephones to the merchants, and shortly afterwards trains are in motion collecting the cargo already prepared for the expected vessel. When she comes to anchor, her surf boats are despatched to the pier, where they are promptly loaded and sent back to the ship.

There is a scientific air about the whole transaction; an absence of fuss; an attention to business quite refreshing in tropical Africa, and above all, there is a sort of “hey presto” promptness in the way these tons of pots and pans, bales of cotton, barrels of oil and bags of corn are handled.

All merchants, of whatever nationality, must accept this transport and pay a fixed rate of 11s. a ton, which covers all costs and insurance against every risk. In return they are saved the expense and trouble which attaches to the upkeep of boats, boat-boys and a large staff of men for handling cargo. I was assured by the merchants that the system works extremely well, saves them much annoyance, and, on the whole, does not work out at much greater expense than the rough-and-ready methods of other colonial ports.

The administration of German colonies is decidedly autocratic, although not more so than in British Crown colonies. In German Cameroons, however, all interests are consulted in a manner which demonstrates the eagerness of the German Government to keep on good terms with the merchant. Twice, sometimes three times a year, the Governor holds an enlarged “Colonial Council,” to the deliberations of which he invites not only the principal merchants, but the leading missionaries. I was informed that at these meetings the Governor welcomed criticism of existing or projected enactments, no matter from what quarter they came, and that the result was that everyone felt himself to be an integral part of the colony.

THE FRENCH ATTITUDE

How different the French Administration! The Entente Cordiale may be all right in the Banqueting Hall, and as a pin-prick for Germany, but it is time the British people questioned its value in things that count. The truth is that in French colonies, merchants of other nationality are not wanted. Wherever you go in French West Africa, the merchant is full of grievances with regard to the petty annoyances of the Government and the officials. Nor does this apply to West Africa alone; the same story is told in Madagascar and the New Hebrides, in both of which places, not only is the merchant entirely de trop, but the Entente Cordiale has not even secured decent treatment for the devoted missionaries. The Entente Cordiale was not brought about for selfish ends by Great Britain, and considering the much advertised generosity of our partner, we have a right to expect at least ordinary civilities in her colonies. The French are so absorbed in themselves that they would have none but Frenchmen on the face of the earth. As Napoleon failed to accomplish this end, the present-day Frenchman will not, if he can help it, have any but his own nationality in French colonies.

The Portuguese want British capital, but they don’t want British merchants; they kill the commerce of British firms by every form of preferential treatment. Their right to do so is, of course, equal to that of a man to cut his own throat. The only British enterprises in Portuguese West Africa are the Lobito-Katanga Railway, the Angola Coaling Company and some electrical works at Catumbella. The first named is the well-known Robert Williams’ project for reaching the Katanga and Northern Rhodesia from the West Coast. The local Portuguese would probably like to strangle this valuable undertaking in its infancy, but they see already how much capital is finding its way into Angola. When Robert Williams gets his railway through to Katanga, the Angola colony will become an asset of considerable value to the Republic.

THE BELGIAN ATTITUDE

The attitude of the Belgian Government towards commerce is again different from that of any other colonial administration. Theoretically, the Belgians are anxious to persuade capital to enter the colony, but the principles of King Leopold’s rule have taken such firm root that in practice the presence of any commercial agents, particularly those of any other nationality, is gall and wormwood to the local Belgians. Nothing, for example, irritates them so much as a reminder that by the Berlin Act they are bound to keep the country open to the free commerce of the world.

Even Belgian merchants complain of the treatment they receive at the hands of the officials of the administration. Recently, when calling at Stanley Pool on board a merchant steamer, we had to pass the customs official. We put our anchor ashore in front of the customs house, where the official himself was standing on the beach smoking a cigar, and, as we thought, waiting to examine our papers. He knew the captain (a Belgian) was pressed for time, yet he deliberately kept the ship at anchor for twenty minutes whilst he finished his cigar! No doubt this conduct was meant to—and, of course, did—impress the crew, but, as the captain remarked, the reason at the back of such action is the desire of Belgian officialdom to monopolize transport, and their hatred of any form of free commerce.

I was present on another occasion which instanced Belgian desire to secure trade in principle, whilst unwilling to put their advertised desires into practice by exhibiting a readiness to render real assistance. There came into Boma a British ship, whose captain was of higher rank than those usually visiting this port; it was in fact the first time this officer had called at a port so insignificant as Boma. He ran his ship alongside the pier, but was amazed to find none of the ordinary preparations for unloading cargo. Instead of sending a ship’s officer for an explanation, he went himself to see the quasi-Government Railway Company.

“Where,” he asked, “are the railway trucks for unloading cargo?”

“There they are,” laconically replied the official.

“But I want them at the ship,” said the captain.

“Well,” answered the official, with genuine courtesy, “you can take them, I don’t object.”

That it was in any sense the man’s responsibility to send these trucks along did not occur to him, and upon the captain asking how he was to get them over the intervening half mile of line to the pier, he was told, again with every courtesy, “send your crew to push them!”

Then might be seen the spectacle of a ship’s officer and a gang of Kroo boys spending hours under a tropical sun straining and tugging at these unwieldy railway trucks, all of which could have been shunted in a few minutes with ease by any one of the idle engines in the sheds. That a ship of 5000 tons was delayed for twenty-four hours by this stupidity was immaterial to the Belgian official. How differently the German would have acted! The empty trucks would have been ready on the pier, a shunting engine with steam up standing by directly the steamer began making her way alongside, but the Belgian is not cast in that mould.

THE BRITISH ATTITUDE

In British West African colonies the relations between Government and Commerce are unique. Alone among the Powers she has developed a caste attitude, until to-day the distinction is not a little embarrassing. The British official is quite a good fellow when you get him alone, but, as a class, they form a distinctly objectionable “set.” This is apparent the first day on board ship, when the “sorting out” commences, and if the weather is good this process provides not a little amusement to an observant passenger. Usually there are but three groups of travellers on a “coast” steamer—the official, the merchant and the missionary. As we have travelled a good deal in these ships, many occasions have presented themselves for watching the arranging and rearranging of this little floating town. The last time we set out from Liverpool was the most entertaining of any. Running down the channel, a youth, who had apparently never travelled before, wished me “Good day,” with the apparent intention of pacing the deck, but upon his discovering that I was neither an official, nor a missionary, he inwardly argued “a trader,” and promptly made off!

Another and yet another pursued the same tactics, until by a process of elimination they “discovered” the officials. “Steward” was then called and all the “official chairs” were placed in a semi-circle in the best part of the deck. That this monopolized the only comfortable section of the upper deck did not appear to concern these gentlemanly youths.

CATARACT REGION BELOW STANLEY POOL, BELGIAN CONGO.

In the dining-saloon the chief steward had placed us at one of the lower tables, but learning from the captain of certain instructions given him by one of the Directors, with whom I was on friendly terms, this man came forward and with profuse apologies asked me to accept an entirely different place in the saloon, saying that he “thought I was a trader!”

Once I met a young Sierra Leone merchant, who told me that a certain official in the Protectorate had been taken ill with a bad fever at his factory; that he had nursed him through it with all the care of a relative; that this official, when he was at last able to leave, appeared deeply grateful for all that had been done for him, and the merchant believed he had made a lifelong friend. A few months afterwards business called him to Freetown, and passing along one of the streets, he met two or three officials, one of whom was the friend whom he had so carefully nursed. To his amazement, he only received a curt nod and a plain intimation that further intercourse was undesirable. It is to be hoped that such conduct is rare, but the general attitude of the younger British officials is becoming almost intolerable.

This treatment of the merchant class finds no place in any other colony of West Africa. It is of quite recent growth and monstrously unjust to the merchants, for it should never be forgotten that it is almost entirely to the merchant and missionary communities that Great Britain primarily owes her presence in West Africa. There is another fact our officials would do well to remember, namely, that the natives and the merchants together pay their salaries and pensions.

The younger officials make themselves far more objectionable than the older men, but probably this is due to their inexperience. It is, however, regrettable that the older officials do not set a more pronounced example in the other direction. Within recent years, the British Colonial Office has been sending out, in the capacity of Assistant District Commissioners, many youths of necessarily immature judgment and totally lacking in experience. These lads are by far the worst specimens in their attitude towards the native and merchant communities. Recently, this feature has been impressing itself upon travellers in East as well as in West Africa. Mr. E. N. Bennet, in his book on the Turks in Tripoli, says:—

“Amongst our fellow passengers to Marseilles were eight young men who were on their way to Uganda. Few, if any of them, had ever crossed the Channel before; they wore school colours and did not know an olive tree when they saw one. Nevertheless, they held, and expressed, very decided views—the ideas of the College Debating Society and the London Club—that the ‘man on the spot’ must be the sole arbiter on matters colonial and that kindness was absolutely wasted on black men; the one ethical quality necessary in a representative of Great Britain was firmness.... They also viewed with disfavour the deportation of Mr. Galbraith Cole. One could only hope that when these inexperienced youths grew older they would grow wiser. As it is, an immense amount of harm is done all over our vast Empire by some of our younger soldiers and civil servants, who, utterly devoid of cosmopolitanisme gracieux, treat their non-English fellow subjects with a contempt which would be ridiculous if it were not dangerous.”

The merchant seeking a new field for commerce in West Africa will find the warmest welcome and the fairest treatment in German colonies, and next to Germany, in this respect, the British colonies; there is not much to choose between the Belgian and the Portuguese. None but Frenchmen should go to the colonies of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” for there is little Liberty, less Equality and no Fraternity in the French colonies for white or black.

IV
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC

It is useless to close our eyes to the fact that an evil of fearful potentiality is being introduced and fostered all down the West Coast of Africa. I have not always found it possible to agree with the much-criticized Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee, but it must not be overlooked that some of their critics have made errors, in judgment at least, not one whit less extraordinary than those which have been brought against that Committee of highminded and unselfish men.

The greatest mistake made by people in Europe upon this question is that of comparing it with the European consumption of alcohol. The African is not a drunkard in his primitive state and he detests our ardent spirits; once in an extremity I gave a young man a sip of brandy in water from my medicine case, and he literally howled over it and set his teeth firmly against my trying to give him another dose!

THE MERCHANT AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC

The error to which most people cling so tenaciously is that of the “scoundrelly merchant” theory. They cannot understand—because they do not know Africa—why a merchant should pour gin into West Africa, unless he is making a fortune out of it. As a plain matter of fact the merchant makes less out of the sale of alcohol than he would out of almost any other article of commerce. In a village store on the Gold Coast hinterland, I found rum costing 6s. 9d. a gallon being retailed at 7s. 3d.—a profit of only 6d. per gallon. In another store I visited, the native merchant was retailing gin at 9d. a bottle, for which he was paying 8s. 1½d. per dozen, and 4d. a case for transport to his store. A West African merchant once remarked to me, “If you could stop the demand for intoxicating liquor it would pay me to give you twenty thousand pounds.” The merchant was quite right, because, whilst he could get fifteen and twenty per cent. on the sale of Manchester cotton goods, he was only making a few pence a case on the gin he was shipping to Lagos! The sale of alcohol does not pay the merchant, but we cannot escape from the fact that it is a good revenue producer.

There seems to be a general impression that the British administrations are the worst in this respect, and that their record is not without fault few would deny, but I am confident that the moral sentiment of the British Government and people will save them from falling so low as the French administration—an easy first in almost all that is retrograde in Equatorial Africa. France to-day recognizes the terrible evils which follow in the train of Absinthe-drinking in the homeland, yet she can calmly look on whilst natives stream into the little drink stores of French Congo with their 25 cent pieces to purchase “nips” of what I was assured by the vendor was the worst form of drink in the whole of the African continent. When we were at Gaboon, an official informed me that quite recently two young Europeans had taken to drinking trade Absinthe, and in each case had died in a manner which called for a post-mortem examination, the results of which horrified the examining doctors.

The Portuguese have long been regarded as by far the worst sinners, but it is the fashion in West Africa to place every sin at the door of that not unkindly nation, yet however deeply they may have sinned in the past, there are happily signs of repentance and reform. In Angola the Government has recently decreed the abolition of distilleries throughout the colony, providing, out of their extreme poverty, considerable sums as compensation for the manufacturers.

The Belgians lead the way among the colonizing nations in West Africa, for in their colony they are bringing the prohibition line ever nearer the coast and it is now impossible even in the “open” areas for a native to purchase any intoxicating liquor between Friday night and Monday morning.

“BANKING” SPIRITS

If the natives as a rule dislike alcohol, if the natives of West Africa are less drunken than Europeans, what happens to this ceaseless and increasing flow of spirits into the West African colonies? “Over one million cases of Hamburg spirit are retailed to the natives here by a single firm within a year.” Such was the remark passed by a dispassionate Government official to me when in Southern Nigeria. There are twenty or thirty big merchants in Lagos alone, who handle huge consignments of this spirit by every steamer. Sitting on the banks of the Lagoon, one sees an endless stream of small craft passing to and fro with their loads of gin, going to a hundred different centres, some with only six cases, others with fifty and even one hundred. I visited a farmer up country, who admitted to me that he retailed over £1000 worth of gin and rum every year. The same story met us at Abeokuta, where something like thirty-three per cent. of the imports are spirituous liquors, and the returns published show that in the month of January, 1911, out of a customs revenue of £2644, no less than £2450 came from duty on spirits.

None deny, because they cannot, this prodigious importation of spirits into the Gold Coast and Southern Nigerian territories; but one thing baffles every observer—where does it go? The Egba and Yoruba people of Southern Nigeria are not drunken. We could find very few white people who had seen any appreciable degree of drunkenness; generally it was suggested that drinking took place at night. In order to test this theory, I went several times, at a late hour, quietly through the lowest parts of Lagos town. I saw many things, some of an appalling nature, but no single drunken man or woman could I find, and the statistics for convictions barely show one per thousand of the population.

Yet we cannot escape from the official figures. Over six and a half million gallons of spirituous liquor of European manufacture were imported last year into the British colonies of Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gold Coast.

What happens to this increasing stream of spirits? No one has ever been able to give a satisfactory answer to the question. Some say that being a currency, millions of bottles of gin are “banked,” i.e., stored; some say that large quantities are consumed at festivals; others assert that it disappears in secret drinking. I am inclined to think, however, from visits paid at all hours to the people’s homes, that spirit drinking is spread over a much wider area than has hitherto been thought; that is to say, moderate drinking prevails widely, but that at present few of the natives drink to excess. If the moderate drinking of to-day is leading the people to drunkenness to-morrow, then a catastrophe of first magnitude will fall upon West Africa. Drunkenness is admittedly on the increase in the Gold Coast, and this is so obvious that three years ago the Governor sounded a warning by saying that he recognized drunkenness was becoming one of the most dangerous enemies to Christianity.

What is to be done? Everyone admits that the sale of intoxicating liquor to natives (many would also add—and to whites) in Africa is an evil; all are agreed that the danger is potential rather than actual. But very few seem to have any other remedy than—repression, prohibition, high licenses, heavy duties; these are the methods which find greatest favour to-day.

Prohibition is an extremely difficult proposition for any African colony, and it is well-nigh impossible where the French and German boundary lines march with that of another colony. If, for example, Great Britain proclaimed prohibition for the Gold Coast, what guarantee have we that German native traders would not smuggle spirits across the Volta into the Gold Coast, or the French traders carry it over the Dahomean border into Southern Nigeria?

HIGH LICENSES AND DUTIES

High license and import duties have both been tried, and both failed to check the growth of imports. In some places, it would seem that these very restrictions make matters worse. I was informed by a white doctor on the Gold Coast that chiefs in the hinterland will take out a license sometimes of £50, or even higher value, but will impose a tax of 5s., or more, per head, on the entire community to pay for it. My medical friend, who was a man of long experience and wide knowledge, further said that many of the people resented this tax because they were abstainers, and on that ground complained to the District Commissioner, but the only redress they obtained was, “Call it a loyalty tax then, and pay it!”

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the duty as a prohibitive measure were temporarily removed. I do not think it is altogether clear that it would tend to increase the consumption; one thing is certain, it would cause something like a financial panic amongst those natives who, holding large stores, hope that the agitation in Europe will enhance the local price and thus make possible extremely profitable sales of stocks.

There are two spheres of action entirely untouched to-day. West Africa is a very “dry” place indeed, and the thirsty inhabitants must have some beverage other than water. Palm wine used to be the national beverage, but the demand by Europe for the products of the oil palm is so great that the whole strength of the tree is required for producing vegetable oil.

The other sphere of operation is beyond question the most effective—an internal movement against the consumption of, and trade in, spirits. Repressive measures by Governments are all very well in their place, but without the goodwill of the people those measures cannot be wholly effective. An agitation locally kept up with the vigour that characterizes the campaign in England, would do an enormous amount of good.

For generations past we have been telling the native that he, in his primitive state, is everything that is bad. Certainly the African, modelled upon a combination of the reports of travellers, officials and missionaries, is a creature the devil himself would disown. Unfortunately, the native has, to some extent, come to believe this, and, abandoning his native rôle, has struggled to imitate the whites who, he has been taught to believe, are the highest type of civilization. When, therefore, the white man ships his gin to the African, he considers it the “correct form” of the higher civilization to purchase it, and copy the European to the extent of drinking “gin and bitters,” “gin and water,” “whisky and soda,” “cocktails” and other liver petrifying abominations, forsaking his simple draught of water and his kola nuts for the drinks that help him up to the standard of his inexorable critics and overlords.

THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE

The Governor and his officials can, if they like, do more to stop spirit-drinking than all the prohibitions, taxations and high licenses that the wit of man could impose. Is it impossible for one colony to set an example? I think not, for I believe the British officials, as a whole, in spite of their shortcomings, are capable of making any sacrifice for the good of the colonies. If a governor would “set the fashion” and by his example inspire his subordinate officers with a determination to refuse to drink any intoxicating liquors in public, at any function or ceremony whatever, for a period of three years, and thereby set the fashion against spirit-drinking, I venture to predict that within those three years the import of spirits would decrease by at least one half. The natives, rightly led by the Press, and the movement supported by the officials and by the ministers of the native churches, would take fire, so to speak, until the drinking of spirits would become “incorrect form.”

In the hands of the Government officials is the power to turn the natives by example against the consumption of ardent European spirituous liquors. Will they seize the opportunity?

V
THE EDUCATED NATIVE

The man who would understand the African must get beneath the surface, otherwise he will never know the real sentiments of the native races. By confining himself to the hospitality of the whites, he will learn a great deal about the natives, and will also learn to appreciate the position of the merchant and the administrator, but if he would probe the mind and thought of the African, he will find no better way than that of living with him.

NATIVE HOSPITALITY

It is of course more congenial—to many essential—to accept the hospitality of trader or official, for there are little things a native host and hostess will inevitably forget; but the compensations! What a wealth of affection, courtesy and native lore is poured at the feet of the visitor.

Driven by fierce tornadoes, wet, cold and utterly miserable, I have sought the simple hut of the forest hunter, or the fishing-shed on the banks of an African river. How warm the welcome! How quickly the good wife will bring forward native refreshment! Let a drop of rain find its way through the roof into the hut and on to the white guest, and nothing will stop the impetuous host from dashing outside in the foulest of weather to stop the leakage. Readily, too, he gives up his rough bed and will curl up in the hollow of a tree, or beneath its branches, joyfully enduring any discomfort so long as the white man may be made comfortable.

It is the same at the other end of the scale. Those who discover that terrible disease—negrophobia—creeping over them, often in spite of the better self, will find an infallible cure by staying for a few days with some leading educated native. Their view-point will almost unconsciously change under the genial and enlightened conversation of the dinner-table; their hostility will melt away under the influence of the natural courtesy of the warmhearted host. They will begin to marvel that some things should never have occurred to them before, and, unless race prejudice closes the observant mind to all reason, the guest will forget that his host is an “accursed educated African.”

The “educated negro” is to many only a worse evil than the primitive savage, but what has the educated native done? What terrible crime has he committed? I admit he has imbibed the education European civilization provides, but is that a crime? I admit that he is probably a greater consumer of spirituous liquor than the illiterate native, but if it is wrong for the native to follow in the footsteps of his white exemplars, why does the white man import it? I admit that he is often overdressed in too demonstrative European clothes, but again, if it is wrong for him to wear these things, why does European compete with European in producing the liveliest patterns in clothes and the most outrageous collars and boots? If these are the things which make the educated native unfit to live, why send them to him?

I am not here concerned in condemning the sale of European outfits, importation of spirits, least of all European education, but in fairness to the African, let us brush aside unreasoning and unreasonable prejudice and put ourselves in his place for a moment. Let us at least recognize for example that if grave faults exist in the educational systems we provide for Africa, it is upon us, rather than upon the African, that the responsibility rests.

We all agree that the educated African has his weaknesses, and pretty bad ones too, but though I have met hundreds of them, though I have read volumes of material they have written, I have never met one who claims the perfection in life and conduct that not a few of his critics assume. It seems to be mainly in British colonies that the educated native is such a bugbear, and if our educational system produces such evils, it is done after all under an autocratic and not a representative Government. Surely, therefore, we should lose no time in abolishing, root and branch, the cause of the mischief.

But is it a failure? If so, wherein has the African failed? Take first the elementary curriculum of mission and Government schools. Where would Africa be to-day without its thousands of coloured clerks and Government officials? In Southern Nigeria alone there are 5000 natives in the British Government service, all of them more or less educated. In every colony, too, you meet cultured natives trained at these schools who are now devoting their lives to the education of the rising generation.

EDUCATION AND THE AFRICAN

We are told that the education of the African has been too largely concentrated on a purely literary and spiritual curriculum. Beyond question there is some force in this criticism, but the Missions and Governments are surely more responsible for this than the natives themselves. The Government particularly so, for missionary committees are after all only trustees for the funds placed at their disposal, and such are almost entirely given for purely missionary propaganda. But even this criticism is unjust in ignoring the existence all over West Central Africa of the educated native carpenters, bricklayers, engineers on steamers, engine drivers and guards on railway trains.

Crossing the Kasai territory I met an American Bishop, who had also travelled not a few thousand miles in Central Africa, and this charming old Divine could not cease exclaiming, “Well, the way you English are covering this continent with educated native carpenters, bricklayers and engineers is just marvellous.” Go where you will, you meet these men. In the upland cocoa roças of San Thomé, in the workshops of German Cameroons, in the trading factories of almost every island, you will always find the Accra or Sierra Leone trader and mechanic who has received a fairly liberal general education at the mission schools. A thousand miles north in the Congo, away south towards Rhodesia, you will hear frequently the welcome salutation, “How do you do, sir!” Welcome then indeed is the claim to one Throne one Empire; more welcome still is the kindly assistance with baggage, the clean hut, the generous gifts of fruit and provisions.

“May I pay you for your kindness?”

“No, sir, I am too glad to see you. God bless you, sir. Goodbye.”

The traveller thus refreshed goes on his way and vows that when he gets home he will send a subscription to those missionary societies who are sending forth this stream of men to the distant parts of the dark continent.

The principal openings for the sons of native chiefs are the medical and legal professions. First let it be remembered that the enlightened chiefs fortunately saw that by giving the flower of the race scientific European education the power of the witch doctor, who, throughout African history has been both medical and legal quack, would be broken. Not only so, but the sick and afflicted among the race would receive the best alleviation that science could provide.

Has the coloured barrister failed? If so where? Certainly not in British examinations where brains and energy provide the only standard. I shall probably be told by the critic that he has failed in practice. If this be so, how is it that whenever a Crown case comes along the British Government promptly briefs leading native barristers?

DR. SAPARA OF LAGOS, A MEDICAL MAN IN THE SERVICE OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.

(Dr. Sapara is endeavouring to persuade the natives to adopt attire more suited to Tropical Africa than the frock coat and silk hat of the European.)

Has the doctor failed? Again, where? Not in the English and Scotch hospitals, for he has frequently carried a higher degree than he finds amongst his European colleagues when he returns to the coast. That he is excluded from Government service proves nothing, except perhaps prejudice. It may be asked why in the Gold Coast colony the African medical man is allowed no place in Government service. We are told in reply, because white men, and more particularly their wives, would refuse to receive treatment at the hands of coloured medical men. This argument fails entirely when we remember that the majority of the hospital patients are not white, but coloured, and at present can only receive treatment from white doctors. Moreover, do we not know of white men, who, fearful of that rising temperature, that throbbing pulse, unable any longer to bear the suspense, have sent for a native medical attendant, and under his kindly treatment have recovered, in some cases to remember gladly the skill exhibited, but in others, alas, too easily to forget that they owe their lives to such tender ministrations.

THE NATIVE DOCTOR

Then, too, are there not to-day many white men on the coast who prefer native doctors—whose names I could mention—to the services of European medical men? Have we not heard and known of something still more eloquent—the calling in of native medical men to white women? Many a white merchant and Government official has taken out a delicate and highly-strung wife to assist him in his work, and almost every “coaster” knows how one of these heroic women was stretched upon, apparently, the last bed of sickness; the distracted husband had tried everything, had implored the white doctor to try something—it hardly mattered what—to give back health to the sufferer. Suddenly a thought occurred to him! The native doctor, fully qualified, was sent for and visited the patient, and then in consultation with his white colleague, other treatment was tried. Slowly the sick one fought her way back to life and health, and to this day the husband remembers to whom he owes the restoration of one who to him was everything—and this is no isolated case.

When death’s angel looks in at the window, which is pretty often in West Africa, race prejudice shamefacedly slinks out through the nearest doorway.

The administrator, the missionary, and the native, however, realize that the educational facilities at present at the disposal of the natives are not ideal; the march of progress has shown defects, and these must be remedied. If there is one administrative problem in British colonies important above another, surely it is that of education. In all things colonial, Great Britain has hitherto given a lead; let her maintain that proud tradition by appointing a commission to study the whole question of the education of the African peoples in her Equatorial possessions, with the object of ascertaining how far the Government may be able to secure a more even balance between the literary and technical training of the natives; how far it may be possible to so re-adjust existing systems as to avoid denationalization; how far it may be possible to extend that supremely important but largely neglected branch of education—practical agriculture.

EDUCATIONAL GRANTS

Then there is the question of Government grants. Can anyone defend the antiquated system which prevails in many colonies of giving lump sums of revenue to missions? An excellent departure from this rule has been commenced in the Gold Coast, whereby the missions receive a grant per capita for the finished product, i.e. when a scholar reaches a given standard in literary and technical knowledge, the Government makes a definite grant of from 20s. to 27s. 6d. for each scholar attaining to that standard. This experiment, already fruitful of so much good, might provide a model for other parts of the African continent. A commission could study how far this should be extended and whether it might be wise to lead on to scholarships for an extension of the education by providing grants for the study of agriculture in the botanical gardens and plantations of the tropical world. For example, if facilities were provided certain natives from the Gold Coast would derive great benefit from a study of cocoa plantations in different parts of the British Empire.

If race prejudice were too strong to admit of this procedure within the Empire, then such natives would undoubtedly benefit by a visit to the plantations of other Powers, in particular those of the Portuguese on San Thomé, where, although there is predial slavery, no race prejudice exists which would prevent a close study of one of the finest systems of cocoa production in the world—certainly second to none in West Africa.

Another problem which knocks loudly at the door of the British Colonial Office for consideration is that of Africans seeking a legal and medical education in the Mother Country. We cannot, and have no right to object to their doing so; on the contrary, we ought to welcome the idea, to be proud of the fact that our Administrations are so progressive that they help this movement forward. But we are not; we do not like some of the results which at present attend this practice. Again, I ask, are we not responsible? These young men at a most receptive age come in all their enthusiasm to the Motherland of their dreams; they expect to find a civilization, but one remove from the realms of eternal purity and bliss, and what do they find? No strong and friendly hand is outstretched to help them, no responsible person comes forward to take them by the hand and bring them in touch with the better elements of our national life. Alone in London or Edinburgh they drift into the worst channels and imbibe the most pernicious ideas and practices that float around the parks and parade themselves in the streets of our great cities. What wonder that their lives are fouled? Who can be surprised if the only seeds they carry back to the colonies are those evil ones which produce a crop of tares to the embarrassment of the Government?

THE AFRICAN ALONE IN LONDON

Philanthropy can do much to turn the thoughts of these young men into loftier channels, but philanthropy should not be left to do this work alone. Surely the Colonial Office, if it has no duty in the matter, at least for its own sake could render some assistance in giving these young students a closer knowledge of the men, the aims and the desires that inspire British Administration. In the whole world there is collectively no finer group of officials than those in the service of Downing Street; some seem to think they too closely resemble highly-specialized machinery; some of us know otherwise; some of us know that behind the official mask there are men whose hearts and consciences pulsate with lofty principle and humanitarian sentiment. Yet between this wealth of goodwill and experience, and the African youth amongst us, a great gulf is fixed; there is no medium of friendly intercourse between these noble-minded officials and ex-officials of the Government and the young Africans who are being trained to mould the character of their compatriots and of public opinion in Britain across the seas.

John Bull must wake up to the existence and the needs of these children, must realize that their education, whether in the colony or in the Mother Country, is of supreme importance, and that the friendly and wise oversight of their education is an Imperial responsibility of the highest order. It is more, for all nations have looked to us in the past for the solution of these problems, and upon such facts—rather than upon a colossal navy—rests the real strength of Great Britain.

VI
JUSTICE AND THE AFRICAN

The Powers of Europe—and Great Britain in particular—boast of the “justice” with which they treat native races. Happily the native tribes, as a whole, fully share this complacent belief in European rule, and this no doubt arises from the fact that before the Powers of Europe divided Central Africa between them, justice, as compared with might, had but a small place.

This belief, however, is perceptibly passing away, and in many of the West African colonies the natives are not now prepared to accept, without question, the acts of European administration. To such an extent has this feeling grown within recent years that administrative action sincerely taken in the best interests of the natives is frequently assailed.

BRITISH JUSTICE

No one would deny that blunders are but human; few would deny that the finest Colonial Office in the world—that of Great Britain—has made mistakes which subsequent history condemns. The natives have enough common-sense to make every allowance for such mistakes, but what they do not understand—and in this they are by no means alone—is, why recognition of the mistake is not made promptly, and some reparation made for the error. The plain man asks why there should be some Medo-Persian law which forbids the admission of error and the consequent refusal of reparation. This attitude is accountable for much harm to the prestige of the European in West Africa.

In Government despatches, in speeches, in our schools and from our pulpits, we are never tired of preaching upon those articles of British political faith which know no party. We pride ourselves upon our love of justice and freedom, and yet we do things which we know to be utterly indefensible, which we know to be in entire contradiction to our belauded principles. We have made the blunder and we know it, but we invariably crown it with the further blunder of refusing to admit it.

We know perfectly well that it is indefensible to arrest a man and arbitrarily punish him without trial, but it is done, nevertheless. During our journeys in Central Africa, we visited a grey-haired old chieftain living in a hut on the Gold Coast. The old man was reclining in a cheap deck-chair, he was totally blind and unable to stand. What was his story?

Some thirteen years ago he heard rumours of a rebellion against the British Government in Sierra Leone, and immediately Bai Sherboro sent a message to the District Commissioner that the war boys were bent on attacking Bonthe. This timely information permitted of measures being taken to protect Bonthe. One day a messenger called upon Bai Sherboro and told him the Governor wished to see him. Trustingly the old man picked up his staff and went to the British authorities, when, without trial—and he asserts without being even informed of the charges made against him—he was forthwith exiled to a lonely spot on the shores of the distant British colony, the Gold Coast. In Sierra Leone the old man had a son, who, refusing to allow his father to go forth alone, sold all he had and joined him in solitary exile, and who to this day shares his loneliness and sorrow.

The British Government does not deny the facts, but, apparently acting upon the advice of the “man on the spot,” who has probably never seen any other person than the old chief’s interested accuser, takes up the position that the return of this blind and decrepit old man to his native home, would be dangerous, on the ground that he was believed to be implicated in a rebellion! The Government has all along refused to give the old man a trial, so that he might face his accusers and meet the charges, with the result that he must die in exile. There is something very un-English about such an incident. Strangely enough the old man still holds firmly, after all these years, to his admiration of British rule, and faith in British justice. Again and again he reiterated to us the words, “If only the King of England knew!” “If only the King of England knew!”

This is a passionate loyalty which surely we are unwise to trifle with, unwise to immolate upon the altar of theoretic administrative infallibility. It is folly to bury our heads in the sand so that we may not see these things, for if we fail to look these facts squarely in the face, others are regarding them—our friends with deep concern, our enemies with the keen relish of an insatiable hatred.

Will it be argued that this is only an incident? Possibly, but who knows? This case was unknown to the outside public until the old man’s hair had whitened and until he had lost the use of his limbs during ten years’ exile. Two years of persistent knocking at the door of the Colonial Office has even failed to secure permission for the old man to return to die in his own country.

THE PATERNAL DREAM

Many chiefs and native merchants in British West Africa have but one ideal for their offspring—to send them to England for an education either for the bar or for the medical service. They are pathetic stories which some of these men tell you of how they deny themselves and their families so that they may save enough to send “my eldest” to England. They themselves have only heard of the glories of England, they can never hope to see them, but their determination is that the boy shall. The latter comes and spends his four or five years here in England, possibly more, and during that period the old man is slaving away on his farm, or trading early and late in his store, has watched his savings trickle away until often he has but little left. At last the glad day of home-coming arrives. The lad steps ashore from the boat, a fully fledged “medico,” carrying “no end of big degrees.” How proud the father is! How amply repaid he feels for all his efforts and struggles, as his full-grown son explains to him the degrees he has obtained are higher than those of Dr. Smith, the white medical officer at the hospital.

The young medical man hopefully sends in his request for an appointment in the Government service—an appointment which must be paid largely from native taxation. At a later date he receives an official envelope, which he greedily tears open in the presence of the expectant and admiring family. It is the official form, intimating that his services are not wanted!

We all know the reason, why wrap it up in gentle phraseology, the hideous fact is there—the medical service is the monopoly of the whites. Of what avail are degrees of the highest order? What use is it to argue that native medical officers would be less costly? The colour-bar is thrown across the threshold of opportunity in the Gold Coast. The young man himself understands, possibly he may even come to hate the Administration which appears to hate him, and can we be altogether surprised? The old father does not understand it, he is bewildered—the blow that has fallen upon his hopes is a heavy one, and in spite of himself he wonders what is amiss with British justice.

EXPROPRIATION

The island of Lagos, measuring less than 600 square miles, with a population of nearly 80,000, was always congested, but never so badly as it is to-day. By day, and also by night, I have traversed the native quarters and found overcrowding which before long must produce a grave condition in that hub of West Coast commercial activity. Lagos is always hot, always humid, always malodorous to epidemic point, but Lagos, overcrowded though it was, has within recent years seriously added to its congestion by the forcible expropriation of some hundreds of people from the lands they occupied. No doubt a nicely-laid-out race-course is more pleasing to the eye of many British officials: the brightness and neatness of this fenced park is cheering to those who now have a monopoly of this vicinity, but the price paid for such expropriation is a further alienation of native loyalty and goodwill. Somehow the native does not like being driven from his home, even though “Hobson’s” compensation is provided.

VII
RACE PREJUDICE

RACE PREJUDICE AFLOAT

The most lamentable feature which confronts the traveller in British West African colonies to-day is that with the growth of commerce on the one hand, and with the spread of Christian thought on the other, race prejudice is rapidly increasing its hold not only through an ever widening area, but in an intensity which must before many years have passed precipitate a grave condition in the relationship of the two races. The decks of West African liners provide an incomparable mirror for reflecting white opinion upon the shortcomings of the black man. On shore each man is busy with his own affairs and usually meets only men of his own circle, but on board ship one meets every class; moreover, the conditions of travel tend to facilitate a flow of conversation. One sees stretched upon the deck, in every conceivable attitude of comfort and discomfort, all classes of the coast community: the dapper little colonel; the young district commissioner; the army doctor; dealers in oil, ebony and rubber; the Nimrod going out in search of big game, and the missionary going forth in quest of human souls. These varied interests cooped up on the decks under the enervating influence of the tropical sun will with some exceptions share little in common, but that of an indefinable dislike and contempt for that black man they come out to govern or exploit. To the student of human affairs, the conversation is of absorbing interest, revealing as it does every type of thought and superficiality. The loquacious trader, with the experience of but one term, opines with a lofty air that the “nigger” is the very embodiment of Satan. The “gentle” wife of Britain’s representative suggests that the sum of all evils—the native we have half-educated, should be curbed by measures dear to the heart of the short-sighted statesmen of Russia. The sympathetic doctor, with ten years’ practice, looks on and holds his peace, a silent but eloquent censure. The missionary, with longer experience still, likewise says nothing, but listens with pained interest. The deck below is filled with the usual crowd of natives: the tall Fulani trader; the squat Gold Coaster; the Christian servant from Freetown; the devout Mohammedan merchant going up to Kano, possibly on to Mecca. The mammies, too, are there, dressed in skirts of brilliant Manchester print and gaily coloured blouses, outrageous in fit and style. The piccaninnies play their little games and romp round their admiring mammies. Not infrequently a child stands sadly apart, maybe a girl possessing but little in common with the other children, her little head with its pale face is covered with something half-wool, half-hair; she has a father somewhere, possibly amongst that group on the upper deck, but between upper and lower deck a ladder is fixed, down which the white man may go whenever desire prompts him, but up which neither coloured nor quadroon may climb.

But what are these exceptional sins of the coloured man? What are these terrible shortcomings of which he has the absolute monopoly and which call forth bursts of passionate denunciation from the great men of the earth? “An incurable kleptomaniac”—“unspeakably immoral”—“grossly impudent”—“incorrigibly lazy”—are but a few of the sweeping indictments hurled pell-mell at the reputation of the absent and mainly defenceless “prisoner in the dock.” Civilization, which has never robbed the African of his land or its fruits, never bought and sold him, never violated his daughters, but has ever protected him, has ever set before him a perfect standard of Christian practice, should examine these whirling charges in the light of established facts. It cannot be denied that the African frequently breaks the eighth commandment, but there is some evidence that the Almighty had the Anglo-Saxon race in view rather than the African when He gave Moses the ten commandments on Sinai’s mountain.

The following incident will show the prejudice to which the African is subjected: Our vessel was pitching, tossing and rolling her way down the West Coast, most of her passengers too sea-sick to stir far from the upper deck. A steward shuffled his way along endeavouring to balance cups of chicken-broth to tempt the appetite. One of the passengers helping himself, called attention to the lack of spoons. The steward replied: “We are not allowed to bring them, sir; you see there’s niggers aboard this ship!” Though knowing perfectly well that the Kroo boy may not intrude himself upon the upper deck, even the steward seeks to make him responsible for losses more properly attributable to the members of his own staff.

NATIVE OFFICIALS

The Post Office clerks at Sierra Leone, and Custom House officials at Lagos, are cited as paragons of impudence and “swelled head.” It must be admitted that these men fully realize that they are servants of the British Crown and maintain a dignity not altogether appreciated by the white community. If they can be accused of “swelled head,” may it not be that white example has led them to regard such an attitude as “correct form” for Government officials? Examples of this may too often be seen in British Crown colonies, for between the British official class and the merchant community a great gulf is fixed, across which many officials gaze with unbecoming contempt. Let the subordinate native but ape this attitude, and, in him, it becomes a sin.

With bated breath and eloquent gesture, the frightful immorality of the native is a morsel of scandal dear to the heart of many superior whites. This is a matter, however, upon which students of African social life have some differences of opinion, but none have any such differences of opinion upon the necessity of “Form B,” which so many white officials are prone to forget. An exposure of African immorality cannot, it is true, be long delayed; sooner than most people think that day is coming. Locked in the breasts of governors, doctors, missionaries and educated natives are strange stories and appalling statistics; their volume is daily increasing; facts are being labelled and classified and these only await the opportunity which an increasing virulence of attack upon native immorality—ignoring that of the white race which obtains in every African town—will precipitate.

The chief indictment against the African is that of being incurably lazy. Prejudice has so blinded the eyes of critics that they do not see the fleets of sail and steam craft which the horny black hands send to and from the West Coast laden with produce. Look over a single ship; there are boat-boys, deck-boys, boys for cleaning brass, washing plates and dishes, splicing ropes, hauling rigging and painting ironwork. “Boys” for loading barrels of oil, for towing and loading floats of giant timbers, all of whom, more or less, keep the doctor busy bandaging their crushed fingers and toes or sometimes their broken heads. “Boys,” too, for delivering cargo ashore, through the wild surf in which many lose their lives every year.

Those who have a leaning towards the “lazy nigger” theory would do well to stand for a single hour at the Liverpool docks and watch that unbroken stream of drays heavily laden with tons upon tons of mahogany for our tables; cocoa beans for our chocolates; rubber for our motor cars; palm oil for our soap; kernels which presently will find their oil labelled “fine salad oil,” or “rich margarine.” The sundries, too, are there by the waggon load; hemp and cotton, ground-nuts and skins, ebony and ivory, a veritable river of produce flowing into the heart of the British Empire without intermission. Nothing can check that flow, nothing can stop its increase, for it springs to-day from lands overflowing with forest wealth; lands where natives are inured to the hardships of labour, natives of infinite patience and withal the world’s keenest traders. There is but one danger to this increasing flow—race prejudice—which may, unless checked, give birth to actions which will utterly shatter African confidence in the British race.

THE DAY OF RECKONING OR REFORMS

The critics of the African all agree that he has one good point—“he takes his gruel like a man”—“flog him when he is in the wrong and he won’t resent it; flog him thoroughly whilst you are at it, and he will even thank you for it.” If this doctrine should ever firmly possess the minds of those whose duty it is to administer West African colonies, the Governments will be faced with a danger impossible to exaggerate. To make this opinion an article of administrative faith is to provide the white with a salve for every act of injustice which irritating circumstances and climate so constantly generate. In every colony in West Africa there are some few white men who are wholly trusted by the natives, and their homes and hospitality are at their disposal day and night. Naturally these are the experienced men of the coast, or those of repute amongst the natives; the easy grace with which they move in and out amongst the people at all hours, and in all circumstances, is demonstrative of the confidence they enjoy. Discuss the natives and the problems of administration with such men and the furrowed brow wrinkles still more, and they tell you a change must come soon, or—“Certain white men would be wise to clear.” It is for statesmen at home to recognize the danger in time and choose between a day of reform or a day of reckoning.