Starting always seems to be a difficulty in Africa, and when I was weary of the hot sun and the glare from the water, and was wondering why we did not start, the canoe-men, true to their kind, found they had no chop, and they had to wait till one of their number went back and got it. But it was got at last and I was fairly afloat on the Volta.
To be paddled up a river is perhaps a very slow mode of progression, but in no other way could I have seen the country so well; in no other way could I have grasped its vast wealth, its wonderful resources. It is something of an adventure to go up the Volta too, for as soon as we started its smooth, wide reaches were broken by belts of rock that made it seem well-nigh impassable. Again and again from the low seat in the canoe it looked as if a rocky barrier barred all further progress, but here and there the water rushed down the narrow chasm as in a mill-race. Wonderful it was to find that a canoe could be poled up those rocky stairways against the rushing water. The rapids before you reach Kpong are innumerable; it seems as if the going were one long struggle. But the river is wonderfully beautiful; it twists and turns, and first on the right hand and then on the left I could see a tall peak, verdure-clad to its very summit, Yogaga, the Long Woman. First the sun shone on it brilliantly, as if it would emphasise its great beauty, and then a tornado swept down, and the mist seemed to rise up and swallow it. The Senchi Rapids raise the river thirty-four feet in a furlong or two, and the water, white and foaming, boils over the brown rocks like the water churned up in the wake of a great ocean steamer. I could not believe we were going up there when we faced them, but the expert canoe-men, stripped to a loin cloth, with shout and song defying the river, poled and pulled and pushed the canoe up to another quiet reach, and when they had reached calm water flung themselves down and smoked and chattered and looked back over the way we had come. We seemed to go up in a series of spasms; either the men were working for dear life or they were idling so as to bring down upon them the wrath of Grant who, after that trip along the Coast, felt himself qualified to speak, and again and again I had to interfere and explain that if anybody was going to scold the men it must be me. But indeed they worked so hard they needed a spell.
Many a time when the canoe was broadside on and the white water was boiling up all round her, I thought, “Well, this really looks very dangerous,” but nobody had told me it was, so I supposed it was only my ignorance, but I heard afterwards that I was right, it is dangerous. Many a bag of cotton has gone to the bottom here, and many a barrel of oil has been dashed to pieces against the rocks, and if many a white man's gear has not gone to the bottom too, it is only because white men on this river are few and far between. I had one great advantage, I did not realise the danger till we were right in it, and then it was pressing, it absorbed every thought till we were in smooth water again, with the men lying panting at the bottom of the canoe, so that I really had not time to be afraid till it was all over. Frankly, I don't think I could enter upon such a journey again so calmy, but I am glad I have gone once, for it was such a wonderful and enchanting river. Some day they dream the great waterway will be used to reach Tamale, a ten days' journey farther north, but money must be spent before that happy end is arrived at, though I fancy that if the river were in German hands something would be attempted at once, for the country is undoubtedly very rich.
“Scratch the earth it laughs a harvest.” Cocoa and palm oil and rubber all come to the river or grow within a short distance of its banks, and all tropical fruits and native food-stuffs flourish like weeds. Beauty is perhaps hardly an asset in West Africa, but the Volta is a most beautiful river. The Gambia is interesting, the Congo grand, but the Volta is entrancingly lovely. I have heard men rave of the beauty of the Thames, and it certainly is a pleasant river, with its smooth, green lawns, its shady trees, and its picturesque houses; but to compare it to the Volta is to compare a pretty little birch-bark canoe to a magnificent sailing ship with all her snowy canvas set, heeling over to the breeze. Sometimes its great, wide, quiet reaches are like still, deep lakes, in whose clear surface is mirrored the calm, blue sky, the fleecy clouds, the verdure-clad banks, and the hills that are clothed in the densest green to their very peaks. Sometimes it is a raging torrent, fighting its way over the rocks, and beneath the vivid blue sky is the gorgeous vegetation of the Tropics, tangled, luxuriant, feathery palms, tall and shapely silk-cotton trees bound together with twining creeper and trailing vine in one impenetrable mass. A brown patch proclaims a village, and here are broad-leaved bananas, handsome mangoes, fragrant orange trees, lighter-coloured cocoa patches, and cassada that from the distance might be a patch of lucerne. Always there are hills, rising high, cutting the sky sharply, ever changing, ever reflected faithfully in the river at their feet. There is traffic, of course, men fishing from canoes, and canoes laden with barrels of oil or kernels, or cocoa going down the river, the boats returning with the gin and the cotton cloths for the factories run by the negro agents of the great trading-houses; and every three or four hours or so—distance is as yet counted by time in West Africa—are the stations of the preventive service.
