The surging screws, the puff of steam and clang of machinery, break the impressive stillness of the forest, and fill the tropic air with their unhallowed echoes, driving the hippo from his favourite pool, the crocodile from the yellow sand-bank. Amid such sounds, the shrill scream of the parrot, and the indignant chatter of the monkey, strike upon the ear with a strange sense of incongruity.
Here and there the graceless front of a trading station, with its whitewashed corrugated iron walls and roof of European design, glares forth unblushingly from its bosky niche of palm and silk cotton tree. Thence issues the matter of fact trader—no longer in the picturesque disarray of the “palm oil ruffian,” but resplendent in the dazzling glory of a well-starched shirt and snow white duck trousers—who strolls down to the landing-place through a garden aglow with sunflowers and walks shaded by a canopy of trailing vines and other creepers.
TRADERS’ HOUSE, ABUTSHI.
The natives around the station share in the unromantic changes. They still carry about with them an air of picturesque sansculottic barbarity, but jarring elements have been superadded. The negro has degenerated into that hybrid creature the “nigger,” bids you “good morning” as he asks for a pipe of tobacco or a nip of gin, or calls your attention to his lawn-tennis hat—the latest fashion, and almost his sole dress.
The only circumstance which serves to maintain an air of romance about him is the knowledge we possess that he still loves his neighbour to the extent of becoming at times literally one flesh with him.
Everywhere there is evidence that the trader is in possession. The missionary has accompanied him, eager in the cause of Christ and humanity. Not unfrequently the sweet tones of the church bell may be heard ringing silver clear from the cathedral gloom of the forest. They call, alas! to those who will not hear, though doubtless to the yearning ear of faith those sweetly solemn sounds shape themselves into a prophecy of the coming good destined to re-echo some day through every forest depth and wide waste of jungle.
Meanwhile, whatever be the future of Christianity in these lands, one thing becomes abundantly clear to us as we continue our ascent of the river, namely, that it is not the only religious force which is penetrating the sodden mass of Niger heathenism. Islam, with untiring missionary enterprise, has entered the field and thrown down the gauntlet to the older religion for the possession of the natives. Unhappily so far, as compared with the advancing tide of Mohammedanism, the progress of the Christian faith is practically at a standstill. Half way between the Delta and Lokoja the pioneer Moslem outposts are found wielding a marked and yearly increasing influence on the ideas and habits of the natives. With each mile nearer the Sudan that influence becomes more and more discernible, till before we have reached the confines of Gandu we have altogether left behind the congenial trinity—fetishism, cannibalism, and the gin bottle—and find the erewhile unwashed barbarian in a measure clothed and in his right mind, instinct with religious activity and enthusiasm, and wonderfully far advanced in the arts and industries. Here it is clear that we are in the presence of no assumed veneer, no mere formality, no extraneous influences to bolster up a savage people to the semblance of higher things, but face to face with a force which has taken deep root in the lives of the inhabitants and altogether transformed them.
On nearing Lokoja we bade adieu to the reeking plains and dense forest region, and entered a picturesque section of lofty table-topped and peaked mountains, delighting the eye by their varied shape and rugged aspect—here stern and threatening with bare precipices; there basking under the tropic sun in smiling slopes, beautified and shaded by groups of trees; at other places swelling upwards and towering into fantastic peaks. But however delightful to us as passengers and spectators, this part of the journey was anything but pleasant to our skipper, whose whole thoughts were absorbed by the hidden rocks in the river-bed and the fierce currents which swirled around them.
The passage, however, was safely accomplished on the evening of the 25th, and we anchored off Lokoja just as the last glints of sunshine passed from the hill-tops, and gave place to the sepia shades of evening.