Secondee, Cape Coast and Accra are the further ports at which stops are made, and at 7 a.m. on the sixteenth day from leaving Liverpool we are at anchor about four miles off Lagos, the capital of Southern Nigeria. Passengers going up-country tranship to a branch steamer of about eight hundred tons which takes them over the sand-bar, which the liner cannot pass, and across the large lagoon, depositing them at Iddo Wharf, the railway terminus.
CHAPTER II
FROM THE COAST BY TRAIN—THE WEST AFRICAN PULLMAN
Iddo Wharf—Strange sights and thoughts—Umbrellas—“Niggers”—Train luxuries—Liquor permits—The iron-horse at the Niger—Ferry and bridge—Budget details.
Passing the length of the lagoon—a mile wide at its broadest point—leaving the town of Lagos, with its busy wharves and crowded streets, on his right, less than an hour’s steaming from the Roads and the traveller is at Iddo Wharf. The train is drawn up near the water, and passengers walk a few steps from marine to land locomotion.
Strange sights appear to the traveller as he stands at Iddo Wharf. The strangest—or the strangest thought—of all is that there should be a train running in West Africa on which there is every reasonable comfort and luxury, and that this train should be in existence—the first of its kind in this part of the world—a few months after the extension of the line had been opened. First, however, a word or two on the surroundings at the terminus.
The train leaves at 9 p.m. on whatever day the ocean ship arrives. The vessel is due in the morning, but people have not the inconvenience of loafing about a strange town for hours. The boat train is an ark, available all day as a resting-place for the sole of the foot. All its resources for meals can at once be utilised.
By nightfall most of the luggage will have been stowed in the vans. A few late arrivals, perhaps persons who have not come by the ship, will be having their belongings attended to. Black wharf labourers, who have been working late and are going home, put their umbrellas on the ground in order to give a hand in packing the vans. These labourers, whose attire is usually like that of the Wandering Minstrel in “The Mikado,” “a thing of shreds and patches,” almost to a man carry an umbrella as they go home o’ nights—bless you! not for protection against rain, but as an article of adornment. It is as much a matter of course with them as the clay pipe and the cloth cap are with their counterpart in Great Britain. Different countries, different customs.
Nearly all the other officials at Iddo Wharf are also indigenous West Africans—clerks, inspectors, foremen, porters. There are as many grades and degrees of education among any one Coast people as there are with our folks in Europe. Were this fact always recognised and remembered, perhaps a little more tact might be exercised by individuals who regard all black men as “niggers” and suit their actions to the word. I stand as no apologist for the smatteringly-educated native, who dressed in uniform takes up an attitude truculent and offensive towards white men. It is British policy and systems of education which are responsible.
There is also at Iddo Wharf at least one first-class, white railway official on duty to attend to any matter requiring his attention.