One evening we had rather an interesting experience: among our party we numbered a ‘political agent,’ Ganna by name, and a strict Mahomedan, an interpreter called Daniel, a Christian convert with more zeal than tact or knowledge, and a Senegalese soldier, Braima, who had become a fast friend of mine, marching always beside my pony, and giving me his opinions on things in general, in his queerly pronounced French, while he contentedly munched away at my kola-nuts which I scrupulously shared with him. He had served with the French troops in Dahomey, and his stories of their proceedings were most amusing, if slightly startling! His affection for us became so strong that, before we severed our connexion, he cheerfully offered to desert from the N.N.R. for my benefit, on condition that I would install him as ‘head boy,’ and was quite mournful when shown the impracticability of his suggestion!
In an idle moment, these three men had embarked on a theological discussion, and, like their enlightened and highly civilized white brethren in England, got so heated and furious in their argument that Ganna only averted bloodshed by a happy suggestion that they should all come to us and let us arbitrate.
Daniel had first say. He commenced by a sweeping denunciation of all Mahomedans, and, incidentally, such dogs of heathen as Senegalese and such like. Their hearts and consciences were of the blackest, he informed us; and drew vivid pictures of their final fate and destination. On being sharply pulled up, and told to confine himself to his own creed, he unctuously explained as follows: ‘Well, God is a kind of a scorpion. When man do bad, he turn up him tail—so—and bite him proper! If man do good, then God just lef (leave) him!’ Ganna’s creed was too well known to us to require explaining at length, and the soldier added little to the discussion except furious indignation against Daniel for having stigmatized him as a dog and a heathen. His own ‘views’ were ill-defined, I fancy, except for a strong sense of personal loyalty and affection, and a fatal passion for a row of any kind!
We then set to work to place before them all Christianity pure and simple, untainted by creed or dogma, the plain doctrine of one God and Father of all, Christian and Mahomedan, black and white, and every living creature, whether known as ‘Allah’, ‘God,’ or ‘Le Bon Dieu.’ They seemed curiously astonished at such a pronouncement, Ganna receiving it with deep-voiced ‘Gaskia ne! Gaskia ne! Mahad Allah!’ (True, true, thank God!) Braima, staring into the fire and grunting, ‘C’est ça!’ at intervals; while Daniel sniffed suspiciously and with some contempt. He retired finally with his smug complacency quite unshaken, evidently considering our doctrines milk-and-water affairs compared with his own fiery ultimatums!
This little episode reminded my husband of another, which took place some years ago in Accra, when his ‘boy’, a Christian, having learned to read at school, delighted to read Bible stories aloud to the orderly, and on this occasion selected ‘Jonah and the Whale’ for his instruction. The orderly listened with round eyes and growing incredulity, and at the conclusion remarked emphatically: ‘That be dam lie!’ ‘Dam lie? You say that? Dis be Bible—if you say Bible be lie, you go hell one time!’ ‘Don’t care!’ said the orderly doggedly, ‘P’raps I go hell, I don’t know, but I no fit to believe that story—dam lie!’
The outraged little reader trotted off with his Bible under his arm, and wrath in his heart!
After a few days’ marching through rather uninteresting country, level, sandy and treeless, we climbed on to a sandy ridge which looked exactly as if it must have the sea behind it, and continued our way along the top for nine or ten miles, in deep sand, most fatiguing to men and ponies alike:
Toiling in immeasurable sand