And beside clothes in the native shops are hurricane lanterns, ordinary cheap kerosene lamps, and sewing machines which the men work far more often then the women, accordions, mouth harmoniums, and cotton goods in the strange and weird patterns that Manchester thinks most likely to attract the native eye. I have seen brooms and brushes and dustpans printed in brilliant purple on a blue ground, and I have seen the outspread fingers of a great hand in scarlet on a black ground. But mostly there is nothing of very great interest in these shops, just European goods of the commonest, cheapest description supplied apparently with the view of educating the native eye in all that is ugliest and most reprehensible in civilisation.
There are horses in Kumasi, for the forest and undergrowth have been cleared away sufficiently to destroy the tsetse fly, and so most evenings, when the heat of the day has passed, the Chief Commissioner and his wife go for a ride, and on occasions many of the soldiermen play polo and hold race-meetings, but as yet there is no wheeled traffic in the streets. Most of the goods are carried on men's heads, and the roadways are crowded. There are women with loads on their heads and generally children on their backs, walking as if the world belonged to them, though in truth they are little better than their husbands' slaves. There are soldiers all in khaki, with little green caps like condensed fezes, lor the place is a great military camp and the black soldier swaggers through the street; there are policemen in blue uniforms with red fezes, their feet bare like those of the soldiers, and their legs bound in dark-blue putties; and there are black men from all corners of West Africa. There are the Kroo boys, those labourers of the Coast, with the dark-blue freedom mark tattooed on their foreheads, never carrying anything on their heads, but pushing and pulling heavily laden carts, in gangs that vary from four to a dozen, and their clothing is the cast-off clothing of the white man; there are Hausas and Wangaras, than whom no man can carry heavier loads, and they wear not a flowing cloth like the Ashanti, but a long, shirt-like garment not unlike the smock of the country labourer. It is narrower and longer, but is usually decorated with the same elaborate needlework about the neck and shoulders; if their legs are not bare they wear Arab trousers, full above and tight about their feet, and the flapping of their heelless slippers makes a clack-clack as they walk. There are Yorubas, dressed much the same, only with little caps like a child's Dutch bonnet, and there are even men from the far north, with blue turbans and the lower part of their faces veiled. Far beyond the dense forest lies their home, away possibly in French territory, but the trade is coming to this new city of the Batouri, and they wander down with the cattle or horses. For all the cattle and horses come down through the forest, driven hastily and fast because of the deadly tsetse, and many must perish by the way. A herd of the humped, long-horned cattle come wearily through the streets. Whatever they may have been once, there is no spirit left in them now, for they have come down that long road from the north; they have fed sparely by the way, and they are destined for the feeding of the population that are swarming into Kumasi to work the mines in the south.
Three towns are here in Kumasi: the European quarter, the Ashanti town, and the Mohammedan town or zonga. Here all the carrying trade that is not done by Government is arranged for—by a woman. Here the houses are small and unattractive, nondescript native huts built by people who are only sojourners in the land, come but to make money, ready to return to their own land in the north the moment it is made. And they sit by the roadside with little things to sell. Food-stuffs often, balls of kenki white as snow, yams and cassada, which is the root of which we make tapioca, cobs of Indian corn, and, of course, stink-fish that comes all the way from the Coast and is highly prized as a food, and does not appear to induce ptomaine poisoning in African stomachs. Some of these dainties are set out on brass trays made in Birmingham; others on wooden platters and on plates delicately woven in various patterns of grass dyed in many colours. But most things they have they are ready to sell, for the negro has great trading instincts, and that trading instinct it is that has made him so easy to hold once he is conquered.
Kumasi is peaceful enough now, and the only reminder of the bad days of ten years back is the fort just above the native town, but it looks down now across a smooth green lawn, on which are some great, shady trees, where chiefs assembled whom I photographed. One was a great fetish chief with gold ornaments upon his head and upon his feet, and knowledge of enough magic, had this been the fifteenth century instead of the twentieth, to drive the white man and all his following back to the sea from whence he came; but it is the twentieth, and he is wise enough to know it, and he flings all the weight of his authority into the scales with the British raj. But at the gate of the fort still stands a guard of black soldiers in all the glory of scarlet and yellow which stands for gold, for the Chief Commissioner lives here, and in a land where a chief is of such importance it is necessary to keep up a certain amount of state, and the Chief Commissioner ruling over this country and receiving obeisance from the chiefs, clad in their gorgeous silken cloths, laden with golden jewellery, men looked up to by their followers as half-divine, must feel something like a Roman proconsul of old carrying the eagles into savage lands, and yet allowing those savages as far as possible to govern themselves by their own laws. Africa has always been the unknown land, but now at last the light is being let into dark places, the French have regenerated Dahomey, and the railway comes to Kumasi. I sat on that verandah and thought of the old days that were only ten years back, and learned much from the Commissioner, and I felt that civilisation was coming by leaps and bounds to Ashanti, and if it be true, as old tradition has it, that a house to be firmly built must have a living man beneath its foundation stone, then must the future of Kumasi be assured, for its foundations were well and truly laid in rivers of human blood.
