Every man I met here pointed out to me the evils of life in Africa.
“You make the very worst of it,” said I, and proceeded to tell the story of a bridge party in a Coast town that began at three o'clock on Friday afternoon and ended up at ten o'clock on Monday morning.
“And if those men have fever,” said I, feeling I had clinched my argument, “they will set it down to the beastly climate.”
“So it is,” said my opponent emphatically; “we could always do that sort of thing in Buluwayo.”
I thereby got the deepest respect for the climate of Buluwayo, and a most doubtful estimate of the character of the pioneer Englishman. Perhaps I look on these things with a woman's narrow outlook, but I'm not a bit sorry for the men who cannot dissipate without paying for it in Africa. I heartily wish them plenty of fever.
The manager took me on a trolley along one of these little lines, right away into the hills. This was a new form of progression. A seat for two people was fixed on a platform and pushed along the line, uphill or on the flat, by three or four negroes, and fairly flew by its own weight downhill. It was a delightful mode of progression, and as we flew along, Xi my host, while pointing out the sights, endeavoured to convert me, not to the faith that West Africa was unfit for the white woman, that would have been impossible, but that the mining industry was a very great one and most useful to the Colony. And here he succeeded.
I admired the forests and regretted their going, but he showed me the farms that had taken their place. Bananas and maize and cassada, said he truly enough, were far more valuable to the people than the great, dark forests they had cleared away—ten people could live now where one had lived before; and so we rolled on till we came to the Justice mine, where all the hillside seemed to be worked, a mine that has been paying £10,000 a month for the last three years. Truly, it is a wonderful place, that Obuasi mine with its nine shafts, an industry in the heart of savage Africa. They pay £11,000 a week in wages, and when I was thinking how closely in touch it was with civilisation, the manager told me how the chiefs had just raised a great agitation against the mine because it worked on Friday, their sacred day. They complained that the snails were so shocked at this act of sacrilege that they were actually leaving the district. Now the snails in Ashanti are very important people, boundaries are always calculated with reference to them, and if a chief can prove that his men are in the habit of gathering snails over a certain area, it is proof positive that he holds jurisdiction over that land. That the snails should leave the district shocked would be a national calamity. The African snail looks like an enormous whelk, he haunts the Ashanti forest, and is at his best just at the commencement of the rains, when he begins to grow fat and succulent, but is not yet too gross and slimy. He is hunted for assiduously, and all along the forest paths may be seen men, laden with sticks on which are impaled snails drawn from their shells, dried, and smoked. Luckily also these African snails appear to be very sensible, and when it was put to them that the mines could not possibly stop working on a Friday, but a small monetary tribute would be paid to them regularly through the principal chief, they amiably consented at once to stay and meet their final end, as a self-respecting snail should, by impalement on a stick.