It is hardly necessary to say there had been at the same time a great crusade against the trees in Tarkwa. But a short time ago the whole place had been dense forest, very difficult to work, and after the usual fashion of the English everyone set to work to demolish the forest trees as if they were the greatest enemies to civilisation. The mines, of course, I believe burn something like a hundred trees a day, and the softwood trees are no good to them. What their furnaces require are the splendid mahogany, the still harder kaku, a beautiful wood that is harder than anything but iron, and indeed any good hard-wood tree; the worth of the wood is no business of theirs. They consider the wealth of Africa lies beneath the soil, and they must get it out; wherefore into their furnaces goes everything burnable, even though the figured mahogany may be worth £1 a foot, and the tree be worth £1000. It is a pity, it is a grievous pity, but Tarkwa is certainly prosperous, and I suppose one cannot make omelettes, and look for chickens. Only I cannot help remembering that never in our time, nor in our children's time, nor their children's time, will the hills of Tarkwa be covered with such trees as she has ruthlessly consigned to the flames. Even the soft-wood trees such as the cotton, that might have added beauty to the slopes, have gone because an energetic doctor waged war upon them as shelterers of the mosquito, and the hill-sides lie in the blazing sun for close on twelve hours of a tropical day. Oh for a sensible, artistic German to come and see to the beautifying of Tarkwa, for never saw I a place that could lend itself more readily to the hand of an artist.
But if Tarkwa is being ruthlessly treated, what shall I say of beautiful Prestea, which lies but a short railway journey right away in the heart of the hills. Prestea is a great mine, so large that the whole of the one hundred and eighty white people who make up the white town are employed upon it. It is so hilly that there are hardly any paths, and the people seem to move about on trolleys, winding in and out of the hills, and, it was reported once, one of the unhealthiest places in West Africa. The doctor very kindly gave me hospitality, and we promptly agreed to disagree on every subject. I hate to be ungracious to people who have been kind to me, but with all the will in the world I have to keep my own opinion, and my opinion was diametrically opposed to the doctor's. The nursing Sister who ran the hospital, a nice-looking, capable, sensible Scotch woman, whom it did my heart good to meet, was one of the few I have met who put the sickness of the average English woman in West Africa down to the same causes as I did.
“They come from a class who have nothing to think of, and when they have nothing to do they naturally fall sick,” said she. “Every woman on this camp has been sent home this year.”
I debated with her whether I should give my opinion of the climate to the world in my book. It meant I was up against every doctor in the place, who ought to know better than I, a stranger, and a sojourner.
“If you don't,” said she, “someone else will come along presently and do it.”
That decided me. I am doing it.
This nursing Sister, while she had to have the hospital mosquito-proof, in deference to the doctor's opinion, sternly declined to have any such abomination anywhere near her little bungalow, and so the cool, fresh night air blew in through her great windows, and we had an extensive view of the glorious hillsides, all clothed in emerald green, and if a clammy white mist wrapped us close when we waked in the early morning so that we could not see beyond our own verandahs, the rolling away of that mist was a gorgeous sight, ever to be remembered.