Travels in West Africa: Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

There is another classification that must be grasped. The English boats being divided into, firstly, a line having its terminus at Sierra Leone and calling at the Isles do Los; secondly, a line having its terminus at Akassa; thirdly, a line having its terminus at Old Calabar; fourthly, a line having its terminus at San Paul de Loanda, and in addition, a direct line from Antwerp to the Congo, chartered by the Congo Free State Government. Division 4, the South-westers, are the quickest vessels as far as Lagos, for they only call at the Canaries, Sierra Leone, off the Kru Coast, at Accra, and off Lagos; then they run straight from Lagos into Cameroons, without touching the Rivers, reaching Cameroons in twenty-seven days from Liverpool. After Cameroons they cross to Fernando Po and run into Victoria, and then work their way steadily down coast to their destination. Thence up again, doing all they know to extract cargo, but never succeeding as they would wish, and so being hungry in the hold when they get back to the Bight of Benin, they are liable to smell cargo and go in after it, and therefore are not necessarily the quickest boats home.

Two French companies run to the French possessions, subsidised by their Government (as the German line is, and as our lines are not) - the Chargeurs Réunis and the Fraissinet. The South-west Coast liners of these companies run to Gaboon and then to Koutonu, up near Lagos, then back to Gaboon, and down as far as Loango, calling on their way home at the other ports in Congo Français. They are mainly carriers of import goods, because they run to time, and on the South-west Coast unless Time has an ameliorating touch of Eternity in it you cannot get export goods off.

Below the Congo the rivals of the English and German lines are the vessels of the Portuguese line, Empreza Naçional. These run from Lisbon to the Cape Verde Islands, thence to San Thomé and Principe, then to the ports of Angola (Loanda, Benguella, Mossamedes, Ambrizette, etc.), and they carry the bulk of the Angola trade at present, because of the preferential dues on goods shipped in Portuguese bottoms.

The service of English vessels to the West Coast is weekly; to the Rivers fortnightly; to the South-west Coast monthly; and it is the chief thing in West Coast trade enterprise that England has to be proud of.

Any one of the English boats will go anywhere that mortal boat can go; and their captains’ local knowledge is a thing England at large should be proud of and the rest of the civilised world regard with awe-stricken admiration. That they leave no room for further development of ocean carriage has been several times demonstrated by the collapse of lines that have attempted to rival them - the Prince line and more recently the General Steam Navigation.

But although the West Coast trader has at his disposal these vessels, he has by no means an easy time, or cheap methods, of getting his stuff on board, save at Sierra Leone and in the Oil Rivers. Of the Gold Coast surf, and Lagos bar I have already spoken, and the Calemma as we call the South-west Coast surf is nearly, if not quite as bad as that on the Gold Coast. Indeed I hold it is worse, but then I have had more experience of it, and it has frequently to be worked in native dugouts, and not in the well-made surf boats used on the Gold Coast. But although these surf-boats are more safe they are also more expensive than canoes, as a fine £40 or £60 surf-boat’s average duration of life is only two years in the Gold Coast surf, so there is little to choose from a commercial standpoint between the two surfs when all is done.

As regards interior transport, the difficulty is greater, but in the majority of the West Coast possessions of European powers there exist great facilities for transport in the network of waterways near the coast and the great rivers running far into the interior.

These waterways are utilised by the natives, being virtually roads; in many districts practically the only roads existing for the transport of goods in bulk, or in the present state of the trade required to exist. But there is room for more white enterprise in the matter of river navigation; and my own opinion is that if English capital were to be employed in the direction of small suitably-built river steamers, it would be found more repaying than lines of railway. Waterways that might be developed in this manner exist in the Cross River, the Volta, and the Ancobra. I do not say that there will be any immediate dividend on these river steamboat lines, but I do not think that there will be any dividend, immediate or remote, on railways in West Africa. This question of transport is at present regarded as a burning one throughout the Continent; and for the well-being of certain parts of the West Coast railways are essential, such as at Lagos, and on the Gold Coast. Of Lagos I do not pretend to speak. I have never been ashore there. Of the Gold Coast I have seen a little, and heard a great deal more, and I think I may safely say that railway making would not be difficult on it, for it is good hard land, not stretches of rotten swamp. The great difficulty in making railroads here will consist in landing the material through the surf. This difficulty cannot be got over, except at enormous expense, by making piers, but it might be surmounted by sending the plant ashore on small bar boats that could get up the Volta or Ancobra. When up the Volta it may be said, “it would be nowhere when any one wanted it,” but the cast-iron idea that goods must go ashore at places where there are Government headquarters like Accra and Cape Coast, places where the surf is about at its worst, seems to me an erroneous one. The landing place at Cape Coast might be made safe and easy by the expenditure of a few thousands in “developing” that rock which at present gives shelter when you get round the lee side of it, but this would only make things safer for surf-boats. No other craft could work this bit of beach; and there is plenty of room for developing the Volta, as it is a waterway which a vessel drawing six feet can ascend fifty miles from July till November, and thirty miles during the rest of the year. The worst point about the Volta is the badness of its bar - a great semicircular sweep with heavy breakers - too bad a bar for boats to cross; but a steamer on the Lagos bar boat plan might manage it, as the Bull Frog reported in 1884 nineteen to twenty-one feet on it, one hour before high water. The absence of this bar boat, and the impossibility of sending goods out in surf-boats across the bar, causes the goods from Adda (Riverside), the chief town on the Volta, situated about six miles up the river from its mouth, to be carried across the spit of land to Beach Town, and then brought out through the shore surf - the worst bit of surf on the whole Gold Coast. The Ancobra is a river which penetrates the interior, through a district very rich in gold and timber and more than suspected of containing petroleum. It is from eighty to one hundred yards wide up as far as Akanko, and during the rains carries three and a half to four and a half fathoms, and boats are taken up to Tomento about forty miles from its mouth with goods to the Wassaw gold mines. But the bar of the Ancobra is shallow, only giving six feet, although it is firm and settled, not like that of the Volta and Lagos; and the Portuguese, in the sixteenth century, used to get up this river, and work the country to a better profit than we do nowadays.

The other chief Gold Coast river, the Bosum Prah, that enters the sea at Chama, is no use for navigation from the sea, being obstructed with rock and rapids, and its bar only carrying two feet; but whether these rivers are used or not for the landing of railroad plant, it is certain that that plant must be landed, and the railways made, for if ever a district required them the Gold Coast does. It is to be hoped it will soon enter into the phase of construction, for it is a return to the trade (from which it draws its entire revenue) that the local government owes, and owes heavily; and if our new acquisition of Ashantee is to be developed, it must have a railway bringing it in touch with the Coast trade, not necessarily running into Coomassie, but near enough to Coomassie to enable goods to be sold there at but a small advance on Coast prices.

It is an error, easily fallen into, to imagine that the natives in the interior are willing to give much higher prices than the sea-coast natives for goods. Be it granted that they are compelled now to give say on an average seventy-five per cent. higher prices to the sea-coast natives who at present act as middlemen between them and the white trader, but if the white trader goes into the interior, he has to face, first, the difficulty of getting his goods there safely; secondly, the opposition of the native traders who can, and will drive him out of the market, unless he is backed by easy and cheap means of transport. Take the case of Coomassie now. A merchant, let us say, wants to take up from the Coast to Coomassie £3,000 worth of goods to trade with. To transport this he has to employ 1,300 carriers at one shilling and three pence per day a head. The time taken is eight days there, and eight days back, = sixteen days, which figures out at £1,300, without allowing for loss and damage. In order to buy produce with these goods that will cover this, and all shipping expenses, etc., he would have to sell at a far higher figure in Coomassie than he would on the sea-coast, and the native traders would easily oust him from the market. Moreover so long as a district is in the hands of native traders there is no advance made, and no development goes forward; and it would be a grave error to allow this to take place at Coomassie, now that we have at last done what we should have done in 1874 and taken actual possession, for Coomassie is a grand position that, if properly managed for a few years, will become a great interior market, attracting to itself the routes of interior trade. It is not now a great centre; because of the oppression and usury which the Kings of Ashantee have inflicted on all in their power, and which have caused Coomassie mainly to attract one form of trade, viz., slaves; who were used in their constant human sacrifices, and for whom a higher price was procurable here than from the Mohammedan tribes to the north under French sway. And as for the other trade stuffs, they have naturally for years drained into the markets of the French Soudan; instead of through such a country as Ashantee, into the markets of the English Gold Coast; and so unless we run a railroad up to encourage the white traders to go inland, and make a market that will attract these trade routes into Coomassie, we shall be a few years hence singing out “What’s the good of Ashantee?” and so forth, as is our foolish wont, never realising that the West Coast is not good unless it is made so by white effort.