Though the gold mines lay all round, gold was not the essential requirement. A bottle of English beer, placed on a post by a bungalow or graveyard, would make a dead white man sit up and grasp it. Missionaries had been on the Gold Coast for years trying to reform the natives, who many of them had embraced Christianity. They often asked us mysterious questions about the white man’s land, as though they were puzzled and could not fathom the meaning of it all. They had a faint idea that England was a land of some beautiful Golden Age, where sin was unknown; otherwise, why did the white men come across the seas to preach to them when the natives were so contented with their lot, and wished the missionaries to hell? So spoke King Lobenguela. He was a powerful fellow and when he walked looked very majestic, as he trailed his heavy blanket behind him. He lived in a palatial kraal and had a multitude of slaves, who washed his feet continually. He had embraced Christianity, and went off across the jungle to the mission room three times daily, and all day on Sunday. He was a typical specimen of African aristocrat and spoke fairly good English. His one intense wish was to see English royalty, and confer some honourable degree upon them for bringing to his dominion salvation and Sacramental rum, which he drank by the barrel. The one ambition of the chiefs seemed to be to take the Sacrament. There they are out there, with all the old instincts very much the same, notwithstanding the introduction of Christianity. When the white races have educated them, and equipped them with scientific weapons of warfare, who knows? They may assert their individuality, and strive to get their stolen countries back again. The truth is often spoken in earnest! It is as well to remember that in those vast African territories many millions of fine native men dwell, with a muscular power and patriotism equal to that of the peoples of civilised lands. The moving finger of Destiny has always suddenly pointed to the hour of mighty events, with an ironical grin at our unprepared consternation.
The West African bush-land is the wildest under the sun. Nothing but short bush jungle and vast forests meets your gaze as you wander on from sky-line to sky-line in your caravan, and, as a ship passes islands on the trackless South Seas, often you pass a native village and hear the tom-toms beating away at their mysterious sound codes.
In those isolated villages, far beyond the outposts of civilisation, you will sometimes come across a white man who dwells alone with his memories. Sunk to a semi-barbarian state, they live with the natives, who have a deep reverence for them and their superior knowledge. They live on mealie broth and nut milk, and dress in the native style. When the white stranger from far off is seen approaching the native village he is carefully scanned through a telescope by the white exile ere the latter shows himself outside the native kraals.
Men of the civilised Western cities do not dream of the sad dramas of life that are hidden away from their knowledge far beyond the outposts of advanced civilisation. London audiences cheer and weep in the theatres as the curtain drops before the footlights over the mock-hero’s grief. But oh! if they knew of the great unknown, the sorrowful dramas behind the awful curtain of reality.
While I was on the coast I made the acquaintance of an elderly tourist who was gathering material for a book of experiences. He was extremely fond of music, cheerful, and a keen observer of character. When he proposed to me that I should accompany him on his travels I was very delighted and at once agreed. We went by boat round the coast—he paid all my expenses—and visited a host of villages, finally going as far as Bamban and Krue, and many places whose names I have now forgotten.
I remember many incidents of those early days, especially a white-whiskered old chief whose name was Tamban. He was about seventy years of age, and had a wrinkled, wise-looking face and a bald pate. He loved to sit by his kraal, wrapped in his big brown blanket, and speak native wisdom.
He was dead against the white men, and at heart was a genuine old heathen, and no fool either. Though he professed to have embraced Christianity, and possessed a Bible, he had sold many square miles of his dominion to white men, over and over again signing the documentary deeds, with many expressions of loyalty and blessings on the great white Queen. It was afterwards found out that he had sold the same land to scores of different white speculators, who opened syndicates in London and sold shares to the unwary.
When he was in liquor he would reveal the true thoughts that burnt silently within him and longed for utterance. “Heathen, me! forsooth, ah! ah! measly, white-faced goat!” he would shout when the missionary approached him. “Bring forth the mealie broth and rum, that I may toast these white skunks speedily to their hell!” And saying that he would turn his dark, wrinkled face to the blue tropical sky and lift his war-club, and off rushed his womenkind from the kraal to do his bidding.
Then he would turn to the white missionary, who stood with his broad-brimmed Panama hat tilted forward to hide the grin on his lips, and thunder forth, his big black lips fairly flopping with drunken passion: “Who is this white God that you prate about? Liar! Show me this one shadow that is better than my fifty gods! Show me Him, and I will crush Him as I do this struggling flea!” and saying this he pulled his dirty blanket the tighter round him and then held up to our gaze a flea between his thumb and forefinger. Then, with a sneer on his lips and much blasphemy, he would continue: “Give up my fifty gods and trust to one indeed!” and then down he would crash his club, as all his old wives, squatting by the kraal, quivered in their skins. “Ah! ah!” he said, and his bright eyes winked humorously at the harem queen, a dusky beauty as black and bare as starlit night swathed in a wisp of vapour; “pass me the bowl full, filled to the rim, mind you.” Then he would smack his big lips together and mutter: “Tribesmen, the white man’s rum speaks more truth than his God of lies.” The foregoing gives a pretty fair example of the real character of those old native chiefs and kings, who still cling to their old beliefs and yet profess Christianity in much the same manner as they do in the islands of the South Seas.
My friend and I were always on the move, sometimes riding and at other times walking. We tramped along jungle track for many miles and often passed natives who came by us in their primitive caravans. We would wave our hands to them and watch them go out of sight; for the tracks wind along by deep gullies, swamps and impenetrable forest lands.