CHAPTER XIII. — FROM SÁ LEONE TO CAPE PALMAS.
Frowsy old Sá Leone bestowed on us a parting smile. After a roaring tornado at night and its terminal deluge, the morning of January 19 broke clear and fine. We could easily trace, amongst the curious series of volcanic cones, the three several sanitary steps on the Leicester or Lioness Hill. These are, first the hospice of the French Jesuits, now officers' quarters; then a long white shed, the soldiers' hospital; and highest (1,700 feet) the box which lodges their commandant. Even the seldom-seen 'Sugarloaf' was fairly outlined against the mild blue vault. Although the withering hand of summer was on the scene, the old charnel-house looked lovely; even the low lines of the Bullom shore borrowed a kind of beauty from the air. The hues were those of Heligoland set in frames of lapis lazuli above and of sapphire below; golden sand, green strand of silky Bermuda-grass, and red land showing chiefly in banks and thready paths. Again we admired the dainty and delicate beauties of the shore about Pirate Bay and other ill-named sites. Then bidding adieu to the white man's Red Grave and steering south-west, we gave a wide berth to the redoubted 'Carpenter,' upon which the waves played; to the shoals of St. Anne, and to a multitude of others which line the coast as far as that treacherous False Cape and lumpy Cape Shelling or Shilling, whose prolongation is the Banana group.
Sherbro, fifty miles distant, was passed at night. Then (sixty miles) came the Gallinas River, a great centre of export, which has not forgotten Pedro Blanco. This prince of slavers, whose establishment appears on the charts of 1836-38, imported no goods; he bought cargoes offered to him and he paid them by bills on England, drawing, says the Coast scandal, upon two Quaker brothers at Liverpool. Not a little curious that our country supplied the money both to carry on the traite and to put it down. Three miles south of the Gallinas the Sulaymá River flows in. Here the scenery suggests a child's first attempt at colouring in horizontal lines; a dangerous surf ever foams white upon the yellow shore, bearing an eternal growth of green. Two holes in the bush and a few thatched roofs, separated by a few miles, showed the Harris factories, which caused frequent teapot-storms between 1865 and 1878. The authorities of Liberia, model claimants with a touch of savage mendicancy, demanded the land and back-dues from time immemorial. 'Palaver' was at last 'set' by the late lamented David Hopkins, consul for the Bights, in the presence of a British cruiser and two American ships of war.
The weather resumed its old mood, a mixture in equal parts of 'Smokes' and of Harmatan or Scirocco. At noon next day we steamed by Cape Mount, the northernmost boundary of Liberia, [Footnote: The 'liberateds' of Liberia, who lose nothing by not asking, claim the shore from the Sam Pedro River southwards to the Jong, an affluent of the Shebar or Sherbro stream, 90 miles north of Cape Mount. We admit their pretensions as far only as the Sugary River, four miles above the Máfá (Mafaw), or Cape Mount stream.] a noble landmark and a place with a future. Approaching it, we first see the dwarf bar of the Máfá, draining a huge lagoon ('Fisherman's Lake'). On the banks and streams are sundry little villages, Kru Town and Port Robert, the American mission-ground. The harbour is held to be the first of five, the others being Monrovia; Grand Bassá (Bassaw), with Edina; Sinou, and Cape Palmas.
The Mount is an isolated rocky tongue rising suddenly like an island from the low levels, and trending north-west to south-east. The site is perfectly healthy; the ground is gravel, not clay, and the stone is basalt. The upper heights are forested and full of game; the lower are cleared and await the colonist. With the pure and keen Atlantic breeze ever blowing over it, the Mount is a ready-made sanatorium. Its youth has been disreputable. Here Captain Canot, [Footnote: Wanderings in West Africa, vol. i. chap. v.] the Franco-Italian lieutenant of Pedro Blanco, sold the coast till compelled by H.M. cruisers to fall back upon honest trade. His name survives in 'Canot's Tree,' under whose shade he held his palavers. Let us hope that the respectable middle age of Cape Mount will be devoted to curing the sick coaster.
Beyond this fine headland, a handsome likeness of Holyhead seen from the south, stretch the long, low, dull shores of Liberia, canopied by unclean skies and based on dirty-looking seas. The natives, who, as usual, are new upon the coast, and who preserve curious traditions about their predecessors, are the Vái (not Vei), a Mandengan race still pagan. They call, however, the world 'duniyá,' and the wife 'námúsi,' words which show whence their ideas are derived. Their colour is lighter than the Kruman's; there are pretty faces, especially amongst the girlish boys, and the fine feet and delicate hands are those of 'les Gabons.' And they are interesting on two other counts. Their language combines the three several forms of human speech, the isolating (e.g. 'love'), the agglutinating ('lovely'), and the polysynthetic ('loving,' 'loved'). Furthermore they developed an alphabet, or rather a syllabary, which made much noise amongst missionary 'circles,' and concerning which Lt. Forbes, R.N., Mr. Norris, and Herr Koelle wrote abundant nonsense. Its origin is still unknown. Some attribute it to direct inspiration (whatever that may mean), others to marks traced upon the sand originally by boys stealing palm-wine. My belief is that the suggestion came from the Moslems. Of late years it has been waxing obsolete, and few care to write their letters in it.
The Vái, who extend as far as Little Cape Mount River, are depicted in a contrast of extremes. Mr. H. C. Creswick, [Footnote: Late manager of the 'Gold Coast Mining Company.' Mr. Creswick treated the subject in 'Life amongst the Veys' (Trans. Ethnol. Soc. of London, 1867). He tells at full length the curious legend of their immigration, and notes the same reverence for the crocodile which prevails at Dixcove and prevailed in Egypt.] who long dwelt amongst them, and dealt with them from Cape Mount, gives a high character to those who have not been perverted by civilisation. He found the commonalty civil, kind, and hospitable; active and industrious, to a certain extent. Their palm-oil is the best on the coast, and can be drunk like that of the olive or the cod-liver. The chiefs he describes as gentlemen. The missionaries assert that they are wholly without morals, never punishing the infringement of marital rights; petty thieves, and idle and feckless to the last degree. Certain Monrovia men have laid out farms of coffee and cacáo (chocolate) upon the St. Paul River, which, heading in Mandenga-land, breaks the chord of the bay; but nothing can induce these ex-pets or their congeners, the Golás and the Pesis, to work.
Like most of the coast-races, the Vái seem to be arrant cowards. The headmen salute their visitors Arab-fashion, with flourishes of the sword; but swording ends there. Of late they were attacked by the savages of the interior, Gallinas, Pannis, and Kúsús. The latter, meaning the 'wolves' or the 'wild boars,' is the popular nickname of the Mendi or Mindi tribes, occupying the Sherbro-banks. They did excellent service in the last Ashanti war (1873-74) by flogging forward the fugitive Fantis. Winwood Keade, [Footnote: The Story of the Ashanti Campaign. Smith & Elder, London, 1874. It is a thousand pities that the volume was pruned, to use the mildest term. My friend's memory seems to brighten with the years, doubtless the effect of his heroic honesty in telling what he held to be the truth. His Martyrdom of Man, in which even his publisher did not believe, has reached a fourth edition; it was quoted by Mr. Gladstone, and Mrs. Grundy still buys it, in order to put it behind the fire.] an excellent judge of Africans, declares that they are very courageous, 'keen as mustard' for the fray. On the raid they creep up to and surround the doomed village; they raise the war-cry shortly before sunrise, and, as the villagers fly, they tell them by the touch. If the body feels warm after sleep, unlike their own dew-cooled skins, it soon becomes a corpse. They advance with two long knives, generally matchets, one held between the teeth. They prefer the white arm because 'guns miss fire, but swords are like the chicken's beak, that never fails to hit the grain.' Some 250 of these desperadoes lately drove off 5,000 of the semi-civilised recreants and took about 560 prisoners, including the 'King' of the Vái.
After covering forty-three miles from Cape Mount we anchored (5 P.M.) in the long, monotonous roll under Mount Mesurado. The name was probably Monserrate, given by the early Portuguese. It is entitled the Cradle of Liberia. The idea of restoring to Africa recaptured natives and manumitted slaves was broached in 1770 by the Rev. Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, R.I. The scheme for 'civilising and christianising' the natives assumed organic form at Washington in 1816. In January 1820 the first emigrants embarked from New York for 'Liberia.' The original grant of land was made (April 1822) to the 'American Society for Colonising the Free People of the United States,' by King Peter and sundry chiefs of the Grain Coast, who little knew what they were doing. The place was described in those days as an Inferno, the very head and front of the export trade, the waters swarming with slavers, the shore bearing forty slave-factories, and the whole showing scenes of horror which made the site 'Satan's seat of abominations.' It has now changed its nature with its name, and has become the head-quarters of Dullness, that goddess who, we are assured, never dies.
Mesurado Mount, with the inverted cataract rushing white up its black rocks, is a picturesque feature. Halfway clearings for coffee-plantations, with a lime-washed bungalow, the President's country-quarters, lead to the feathered and forested crest which bears the 'pharos.' This protection against wreck is worse than nothing; it is lighted with palm-oil every night, and then left to its own sweet will. Consequently the red glimmer, supposed to show at thirteen miles, is rarely visible beyond three. A dotting of white frame-houses and curls of blue smoke betray the capital. It lurks behind the narrow sand-bar which banks the shallow and useless Mesurado River, and few men land without an involuntary ablution in the salt water. Usually the stream mouths by an ugly little bar at some distance from the roadstead; after heavy rains it bursts the sand-strip and discharges in straight line.
We had visitors that evening from the Yankee-Doodle-niggery colony, peopled by citizens who are not 'subjects.' Bishop C. C. Pinnock, absent from his home at Cape Mount, dined with us and told me about the death of an old friend, good Bishop Payne. His successor objects to learning and talking native tongues, and he insists upon teaching English to all the mission-scholars. His reasons are shrewd, if not convincing; for instance, 'most languages,' says the Right Reverend, 'have some term which we translate "love." But "love" in English is not equivalent to its representative in Kru or in Vái. Therefore by using their words I am expressing their ideas; I bring them over to mine by the reverse process.'
We shipped for Grand Bassá two citizens, a lawyer and an attorney. Of course one was an 'Honourable;' [Footnote: Even the Coast English are always confounding the Hon. John A. (son of a peer) with the Hon. Mr. A. (official rank), and I have seen sundry civilians thus mis-sign themselves.] as Mr. H. M. Stanley says, [Footnote: Coomassie and Magdala. New York, Harpers, 1874.] 'mostly every other man is here so styled.' They talked professionally of the 'Whig ticket' and the 'Re-publican party,' but they neither 'guess'd' nor 'kalklated,' and if they wore they did not show revolvers and bowie-knives. They did not say, 'We air a go-ahead people,' they were not given to 'highfalutin',' nor did they chew their tobacco. They were, however, accompanied by an extremely objectionable 'infant,' aged seven, who lost no time in laying hands upon Miss M.'s trinkets, by way of returning civility. Her father restored them, treating the theft as a matter of course.
The citizens gave me sundry details about the 'rubber'-trade, which began in 1877. Monrovia now exports to England and the Continent some 100,000 lbs., which sell at 1s. 4d. each. Gum-elastic is gathered chiefly by the Bassá people, who are, however, too lazy to keep it clean; they store it in grass-bags and transport it in canoes. Liberian coffee is, or rather would be, famous if produced in sufficient quantities to satisfy demand. At present it goes chiefly to the United States, where, like Mocha, it serves to flavour burnt maize. Messieurs Spiers and Pond would buy any quantity of it, and of late years Brazilian coffee-planters have taken shoots to be grown at home. Here it fetches 1s. per lb.; in England the price doubles. This coffee requires keeping for many months, or the infusion is potent enough to cause the 'shakes;' it is the same with Brazilian green tea. The bouquet is excellent, and the flavour pretty good. There is a great difference in the shape of the beans, which range between the broad flat Harar and the small, round, horny Mocha.
I could obtain few details concerning the 'Black Devil Society,' which suggests the old 'Know-nothings.' It has been, they say, somewhat active in flogging strangers, especially Sá Leone men. Most of the latter, however, have been expelled for refusing to change their style from 'subjects' to 'citizens'—a foreign word in English and Anglo-African ears.
At the time of our visit the republic was in a parlous state. H.E. Mr. Gardiner, the new President, refused to swear in the Upper House, and the Lower refused to acknowledge the Presidential authority. Consequently business had been at a standstill for six weeks. We were disappointed in our hopes of being accompanied by the Honourable Professor E. W. Blyden, ex-minister to England and afterwards principal of the college. He had travelled with Winwood Reade, and I looked forward to hearing the opinions of an African Arabic scholar touching the progress and future of El-Islam in the Dark Continent. That it advances with giant steps may be proved by these figures. Between 1861 and 1862 I found at most a dozen Moslems at Lagos; in 1865 the number had risen to 1,200, and in 1880, according to my old friend M. Colonna, Agent Consulaire de France, it passes 10,000, requiring twenty-seven mosques.
The latest charts of Liberia show no less than twenty-six parallelograms stretching inland, at various angles with the shore, and stated to have been acquired by 'conquest or purchase' between 1822 and 1827; but the natives, especially the Krumen, complain that after allowing the foreigners to dwell, amongst them they have been despoiled of their possessions, and that, once lords of the soil, they have sunk to mere serfs. Hence the frequent wars and chronic bad blood. Every African traveller knows the meaning of land-purchase in these regions. There are two ideas peculiar to the negro brain, but apparently inadmissible into European heads. The first is the non-alienation of land. Niger never parts with his ground in perpetuity; he has always the mental reservation, while selling it to a stranger, that the soil and its improvements return to him by right after the death or the departure of the purchaser. Should the settler's heirs or assignees desire to remain in loco, they are expected to pay a fresh gratification; the lessor will raise his terms as high as possible, but public opinion will oblige him to remain content with a 'dash,' or present, equivalent to that paid by the original lessee.
The second idea is even more repugnant to European feelings. In Africa a born chattel is a chattel for ever: the native phrase is, ''Pose man once come up slave, he be slave all time.' There is no such thing as absolute manumission: the unsophisticated libertus himself would not dream of claiming it. We have on board a white-headed negro in an old and threadbare Dutch uniform, returning from Java on a yearly pension of fifteen dollars. According to treaty he had been given by the King of Ashanti to the Hollanders, and he had served them so long that he spoke only Low German and Malay. He will be compelled to end his career somewhere within the range of our fort-guns, or his owner's family will claim and carry off their property.
At 8 A.M. we steamed against a fine fresh wind past mount Mesurado en route for Grand Bassá (Bassaw), distant fifty-five miles. To port lies Montserrado County, where the shore-strip looks comparatively high and healthy. The Bassás begin some thirty miles below the Jong River, and now we enter the regions of Grand, Middle, and Little Piccaninny (pequenino), Whole and Half, i.e. half-way. Thus we pass, going south-wards, Bassá, Middle Bassá, Grand Bassá, and Bassá Cove, followed by Cestos and Cess, Settra and Sesters, Whole and Half. The coast is well known, while the interior is almost unexplored. Probably there is no inducement to attract strangers.
We are grateful for small mercies, and note a picturesque view from the open roadstead of Grand Bassá. The flats are knobbed with lumpy mounds; North Saddle Hill, with its central seat; Tall Hill; the blue ridges of the Bassá Hills, and St. John's Hill upon the line of its river. Nothing can be healthier than these sites, which are well populated; and the slopes are admirably fitted for that 'Arabian berry' whose proper home is Africa. But, while hill-coffee has superior flavour lowland-coffee is preferred in commerce, because the grain is larger and heavier.
Grand Bassá is the only tract in Liberia where the Sá Leonite is still admitted. The foreshore of yellow sand, pointed and dotted by lines and falls of black rock, fronts a shallow bay as foul and stony as the coast. Here are three settlements, parted by narrow walls of 'bush.' Edina, the northernmost, is said to do more business than any other port in the republic; she also builds fine, strong surf-boats of German and American type, carrying from one to five tons. The keels are bow-shaped, never straight-lined from stem to stern; and the breakers are well under the craft before their mighty crests toss it aloft and fling it into the deep trough. They are far superior to the boats with weather-boards in the fore which formerly bore us to land. The crew scoop up the water as if digging with the paddle; they vary the exercise by highly eccentric movements, and they sing savage barcarolles the better to keep time.
The middle settlement is Upper Buchanan, whose river, the St. John's, owns a bar infamous as that of Lagos for surf and sharks. The southernmost, Lower Buchanan, is defended by a long and broken wall of black reef, but the village is far from smooth water. All these 'towns' occupy holes in a curtain of the densest and tallest greenery. They are composed of groups and scatters of whitewashed houses, half of them looking like chapels and the other like toys. Each has its adjunct of brown huts, the native quarter. These Bassá tribes must not be confounded with their neighbours the Krumen; the languages are quite different, and the latter is of much harsher sound. There is no doubt of this being a good place for engaging labour, and it is hoped that in due time Bassá-hands, who work well, will be engaged for the Gold Coast mines. At present, however, they avoid English ships, call themselves 'Americans,' and willingly serve on board the Yankee craft which load with coffee, cam-wood, and palm-oil.
We steamed along the Cape, River, and Town of Sinou, the very home of the Kráo, or Krumen, strictly speaking a small tribe. Returning homeward-bound, we here landed a host of men from the Oil-rivers, greatly to my delight, as they had cumbered the deck with their leaky powder-kegs, amid which wandered the sailors, smoking unconcernedly. In the 'good old times' this would not have been allowed. At least one poor fellow was drowned, so careful were the relatives to embark the kit, so careless of the owner's person. Next day we sighted the 'Garraway-trees,' silk cottons some 200 feet high, fine marks for clearing the Cape shoals. Then came Fishtown and Rocktown, once celebrated for the exploits of Ashmun and his associates; and at 2.15 P.M. we anchored in the heavy Harmatan roll off
The Cape of Palmas, called from palmy shade.
A score of years ago the A.S.S. steamers lay within half a mile of shore; and, 'barrin'' the ducking, it was easy to land. But the bay is bossed with rocks and skirted with shoals; they lurk treacherously under water, and have brought many a tall ship to grief. As for the obsolete hydrographic charts, they only add to the danger. Two wrecks give us ample warning. One is a German barque lying close to the bar of the fussy little river; the other, a huge mass of rust, is the hapless Yoruba. Years ago, after the fashion of the Nigritia and the Monrovia, she was carelessly lost. Though anchored in a safe place, when swinging round she hit upon a rock and was incontinently ripped up; the injured compartment filled, and the skipper ran her on the beach, wrecking her according to Act of Parliament. They once managed to get her off, but she had not power to stem the seas, and there she still lies high and dry.
Cape Palmas, or Bamnepo, with its outlying islet-reef of black rock, on which breaks an eternal surf, is the theoretical turning-point from the Windward coast, which begins with the Senegal, to the Leeward, and which ends in the Benin Bight. We are entering the region
Unde nigerrimus Auster Nascitur.
Practically and commercially the former is worked by the Bristol barques and the latter commences at Cape Threepoints. The bold headland, a hundred feet tall and half a mile broad by a quarter long, bounded north by its river, has a base of black micaceous granite supporting red argillaceous loam. Everywhere beyond the burning of the billows the land-surface is tapestried with verdure and tufted with cocoas; they still show the traditional clump which gave the name recorded by Camoens. The neck attaching the head to the continent-body is a long, low sand-spit; and the background sweeps northward in the clear grassy stretches which African travellers agree to call 'parks.' These are fronted by screens of tall trees, and backed by the blue tops of little hills, a combination which strongly reminded me of the Gaboon.
The prominent building is still the large white-washed mission-house with its ample windows and shady piazzas: the sons of St. Benedict could not have placed it better. In rear lies the square tower yclept a lighthouse, and manipulated like that of Monrovia; its range is said to be thirteen miles, but it rarely shows beyond five. An adjacent flagstaff bears above the steamer-signal the Liberian arms, stripes and a lone star not unknown to the ages between Assyria and Texas. The body of the settlement lying upon the river is called Harper, after a 'remarkable negro,' and its suburbs lodge the natives. When I last visited it the people were rising to the third stage of their architecture. The first, or nomad, is the hide or mat thrown over a bush or a few standing sticks; then comes the cylinder, the round hovel of the northern and southern regions, with the extinguisher or the oven-shaped thatch-roof; and, lastly, the square or oblong form which marks growing civilisation. The American missionaries laboured strenuously to build St. Mark's Hospital and Church, the latter a very creditable piece of lumber-work, with 500 seats in nave and aisles. But now everything hereabouts is 'down in its luck.' This puerile copy, or rather caricature, of the United States can console itself only by saying, 'Spero meliora.'