Frankly, my sympathies are not as a rule with the missionaries, certainly not with African missionaries. I have not learned to understand spiritual misery, and of material misery there is none in Africa to be compared with the unutterable woe one meets at every turn in an English city. But one thing I admire in these Swiss and German teachers is the way they have improved the land they have taken possession of. Their women, too, make here their homes and bear their children. “A home,” I said as I stepped on to the wide verandah of the Mission Station at Anum; “a home,” as I went into the rooms decorated with texts in German and Twi; “a home,” as I sat down to the very excellent luncheon provided by the good lady whom most English women would have designated a little scornfully as a haus-frau. Most emphatically “a home” when I looked out over the beautiful gardens that were nicely planted with mangoes, bananas, palms, and all manner of pretty shrubs and bright-foliaged trees. It seems to me almost a pity to teach the little negro since he is so much nicer in his untutored state, but since they feel it must be done these Basel Mission people are going the very best way about it by beautifying their own surroundings.
From their verandah over the scented frangipanni and fragrant orange trees you may see far far away the winding Volta like a silver thread at the bottom of the valley, and the great hills that control his course standing up on either side. It is an old station, for in the late sixties the Ashantis raided it, captured the missionary, Mr Ramseyer, his wife and child, and held them in captivity for several years. But times are changed now. The native, even the fierce Ashanti warrior, has learned that it is well for him that the white man should be here, and up in the rest-house on the other side of the mountain a white woman may stay alone in safety.
Why do the powers that be overlook Anum mountain? The rest-house to which my kind friend from Labolabo escorted me after we had lunched at the Basel Mission was shabby and desolate with that desolation that comes where a white man has been and is no longer. No one has ever tried to make a garden, though the larger trees and shrubs have been cleared from about the house and in their stead weeds have sprung up, and the vigour of their growth shows the possibilities, while the beauty of the situation is not to be denied. Away to the north, where not even a native dwells, spreads out the wide extent of the Afram plain, a very paradise for the sportsman, for there are to be found numberless hartebeests, leopards, lions, and even the elephant himself. It lies hundreds, possibly thousands of feet below, and across it winds the narrow streak of the Volta, while to the north the hills stretch out as if they would keep the mighty river for England, barring its passage to the east and to German territory.
And here my friend from Labolabo left me—left me, I think, with some misgivings.
“Come back,” he said; “you know I'll be glad to see you. Mind you come back. I know you can't get through.”
But I had my own opinion about that.
“What about the carriers Mr Olympia is going to send me to-morrow morning?”
And he laughed. “Those carriers! don't you wish you may get them? I know those carriers black men promise. Why, the missionary said you needn't expect them.”
The Basel missionary had said I might get through if I was prepared to wait, and as I said good-bye I was prepared to wait.
The rest-house was on top of a mountain in the clouds, far away from any sign of habitation. The rooms were large, empty, and desolate with a desolation there is no describing. There was a man in charge living in a little house some way off, the dispenser at the empty hospital which was close to the rest-house, and the Basel missionary spoke of him with scorn.