The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

I feel bound to tell the sequel of this incident. The next day the sea was so bad that it seemed useless and foolish to attempt to land. The boys presented themselves in a body before a certain one of the officers and said: “Mastah, them sea he be bad too much. We no be fit for land cargo. S’pose we try, we go loss all cargo, and plenty man’s life. So please excuse to-day, Mastah; for we think to-morrow go be fine.”

The answer they received was a volley of profanity and curses. “Just because one of them was killed they all turn cowards,” said one. “Always thinking of themselves!” said another. With many such shrewd observations, and sundry moral exhortations to bravery, the boats were lowered and they were ordered into them.

But on these same steamers there are brave men and kind-hearted. On this particular morning the purser boldly protested. “If they are cowards,” said he, “what are we? For notwithstanding the demands of business, not one of us has ventured ashore for many days. I’m no coward myself,” he continued, “but I confess that those boys put my bravery to shame. They are the bravest boys in the world. Neither do I believe that they are bound to risk their lives in such a sea as this for a shilling a day.”

While he was speaking some one shouted: “There goes the first boat.”

We ran to the side just in time to see the boat borne down by the first breaker, whirled around and capsized, the boys struggling for their lives, not only with a furious sea, but with heavy boxes and casks and the boat itself, all tossed to and fro in the surging waters. They escaped without serious injury; but no white man could have escaped. About the same time, a few miles up the coast, a steamer had one of its strong surf-boats flung upon the beach with such violence that it was broken in two across the middle. Another steamer had two boys killed.

One day our boys went ashore early in the morning, leaving the ship at half-past five. They were expecting to make the first trip before breakfast, as usual, and therefore had nothing to eat before starting. They had landed the cargo safely at the trading-house; but the sea was so bad that they could not get off to the ship all that day. They made several unsuccessful attempts, and it was almost night when at last they succeeded. Meanwhile, the swell had become so heavy that we had steamed far out for safety, and were anchored seven miles from the shore. The boys reached the ship after dark, and we then learned that the white trader ashore had given them nothing to eat; although the ship would have repaid him. Those boys had battled with the sea weak with hunger, not having had a taste of food all that day. It is only fair to say that on the steamers they are well fed. There are but very few English traders who would do as that man did; though there are many such men of other nationalities.

Only a short time afterwards, one evening at the table, an officer who had been ashore told us a story that was intended to prove the cruelty of the native. A white trader, he said, had caught a young elephant. He went away on a journey to the bush, leaving the care of it to his native workmen. Upon his return, after several months, he found the elephant in very poor health; and a few weeks later it died. There was no doubt that the natives had neglected to feed it in his absence, and this was the cause of its death. Horrible cruelty of the beastly native! Pungent remarks, appropriate to the occasion, were contributed all around the table. For myself—I was thinking of those starved and tired boys battling with a raging sea. But I said not a word. What would be the use?

We need not be sentimental about the native’s wrongs. Though a victim, he is not necessarily innocent. He would do unto others as others do unto him; and his life is perhaps not rendered more miserable by the white man than it was before. But, then, they are savages and we are supposed to be civilized; and the most wretched excuse that the white man can give for his cruelty is that he is only imitating the natives themselves. The white man is always calling the native a devil, and always expecting him to act like an angel, while he himself, so far from being angelic, sets an infernal example.

The truth is that the white man in the tropics is out of his element as much as the diver who works in the deep sea. The atmosphere in which he was produced and in which he developed—the mental, moral, social and physical conditions—are also necessary to his moral and physical maintenance. The climate weakens and depresses him, while at the same time he is not sustained by domestic cheer and the society of equals to which he has been accustomed. He is invariably nervous and as a consequence impatient, while at the same time the circumstances that confront him in the discharge of his daily duties are such as would try the temper of a saint. If he remain long in a climate so unnatural to him and in a strange and uncivilized society the likelihood is that there will be an imperceptible and unconscious lowering of moral standards and accommodation to the standards of the society around him. Cruelty which at first shocked him gradually ceases to shock and at length he becomes indifferent, or perhaps himself capable of barbarous deeds from which he would at first have recoiled with horror.

For the men of whom I have been speaking are not inferior to the average man at home. Your virtues, and the graces of mind and character upon which you pride yourself—your strength and composure, your patience and devotion to duty, your honesty, your justice, your purity—all these belong not only to yourself but to the society which has produced you and of which you are a part. The moral standards which it has erected in the course of its social evolution, the safety with which it has surrounded you, the comforts which this safety has made procurable, the disapprobation by which it punishes any infraction of its laws—to these, not to yourself alone, you owe your moral attainments. None but the highest and most fixed moral standards will bear transportation to a tropical climate and tropical society. Until this fact is clearly recognized the relation of civilization to the uncivilized tropics is likely to be productive of misery and shame. If I did not hate sensationalism I could easily fill this chapter with a record of the misdeeds and barbarities in Africa of men, many of whom belonged to respectable families and to good society and were well-behaved at home.