By permission of
Maj. H. Schomburgk, F.R.G.S.
Section of Old Native Iron Furnace
The portrait is that of the Chief of Banjeli, the seat of the native iron industry of Togo. In these furnaces the iron ore, after being laboriously dug out of the mountain side by native slave women, is smelted, and afterwards made into axes, knives, spear and arrow-heads, hoes, and so forth.
Well, this plan had been carried out on several occasions with our carriers, and we found that it worked excellently. So Schomburgk decided to try its effect upon our boys, and that afternoon the seven "beauties" were lined up in the middle of the camp, each with a 60lb. load on his head. Also, as they had laid the blame on the poor innocent monkey, he was fastened by a chain to the right leg of our "washerwoman"—he of the ginger-beer-bottle fists—who had been the last one to hold out in the lie about him. At first the culprits treated the whole affair as a huge joke, laughing and chattering amongst themselves. But little by little, as the afternoon wore away, their faces grew longer and longer; the laughter and chatter grew less, and finally died away altogether; they started shifting their loads from the head, first to one shoulder, then to the other, until, eventually, after Schomburgk had gone out with the camera, a benighted appeal for mercy reached my ears. I was seated inside my tent at the time, and for a little while I pretended to take no notice. But the cries of "Little mother! Little mother! Have pity on your poor tired children!" redoubled in intensity, so as Schomburgk had told me, before quitting camp, to let them go when I thought fit, I gave them their "ticket of leave."
Prior to our arrival at Banjeli, Schomburgk had made arrangements with the chief there to film the iron industry, of which I wrote earlier in this chapter. He was a nice old man, and, having met Schomburgk on his previous visit, he had now promised in advance to have everything ready for us. This promise he faithfully kept, and to the letter, an attribute very rare in a native. Next morning we took the pictures. First of all we started off at 6 A.M. to the mountain where the iron ore is mined. We rode the first stage of the journey, accompanied by our two ostriches, who seemed to imagine that we were going on trek again, and intended giving them the slip. It was very comical to watch them, especially after we dismounted, and started to climb the last part of the journey to the top of the hill where the mine is situated, about 1600 feet up. Eventually, however, we had to send them back, for fear they might injure themselves.
The ore is mined by women, strong, but dirty-looking, with more of the masculine element about them than the feminine. It was pitiful to see some of them, with babes at their breasts, digging out the ore with a curious kind of hoe-shaped tool. Besides being a hard occupation, it is also a dangerous one. Only a day or so before our visit one of the miners had been killed, owing to a shaft falling in. On inquiry, I learnt that the women were slaves. I was assured that it was only a mild form of slavery, a system of indentured labour, and that even if liberated they would not go away. Still, I didn't like the idea, and the sight impressed me the least favourably of anything that I had seen in Togoland.
The other operations that centred round the iron industry, however, interested me greatly. Here is a handicraft that is usually associated with a more or less advanced degree of civilisation—the bronze age everywhere preceded the iron age amongst primitive man—being carried on by nude, or nearly nude, savages, in a fashion which, although it has many points in common with our own methods of mining, smelting, and so on, bears, nevertheless, unmistakable signs of being of purely indigenous origin.
Taking it altogether, I am inclined to think that this film, which was one of the last we took, was also one of the best, if not the very best, of the lot, and when I came to see it screened later on in London, I was amazed at its fidelity to life. First the women miners are seen getting the ore out of the mines, as narrated above. The next scene we filmed shows a long string of them carrying it in baskets on their heads down the mountain-side to the primitive native furnace, which the men load with wood, charcoal, and ore. We showed, too, the method of regulating the ventilation of the furnaces by means of holes round the bottoms, these being stopped by clay stoppers, very ingeniously constructed, and which can be inserted and withdrawn at pleasure by means of a wooden stick, embedded in the centre of the clay stopper when it is first made. These furnaces, after being lighted, burn for three days, when the pig-iron is taken out and carried to the market at Bassari, where it is bought by the native blacksmiths. These craftsmen, working with a round boulder for a sledge-hammer, and curious hand-worked bellows, somewhat resembling bag-pipes in appearance, forge the iron into axes, knives, spear and arrow heads, hoes, and so forth, not forgetting the curious iron rattles mentioned in a previous chapter, and which form a valued part and parcel of every Konkombwa warrior's equipment. Speaking in regard to these industrial films in general, a certain eminent scientist who presided at a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, remarked that he did not think that at the present time any very great good was accomplished by getting to the north or south pole, because both these very interesting spots would be there five thousand years hence; but the men who went out into the wild places of the earth in order to try and obtain records of the out-dying customs of native tribes in these remote regions, deserved the greatest praise. Even an ordinary written record (he continued) is of acknowledged value. What, then, must be the value of living pictures, such as these, showing every stage in processes of primitive native industries which, from the nature of things, must, in the not far distant future, become superseded, and so lost to us forever. Similar views, I may add, were expressed in letters written to Major Schomburgk after having viewed the films, by Mr. Atho Joyce, of the British Museum, and by Sir Harry Johnston, the famous explorer.