The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

At the outbreak of the war these missionaries had fled to Kummassi, the seat of the English government, and were there when that city was besieged by the natives. The English governor was also in the city. For several months they had lived on half-rations, until they were so reduced in flesh that their friends would not have recognized them. All this time they were waiting and watching for the arrival of reinforcements from the English army. At last, having waited for the expected relief until their supplies were nearly exhausted, they broke through the lines of the enemy and made a desperate effort to reach the coast. The governor escaped at the same time and with his retinue started for the coast by a different road. Along the main road the enemy was strongest so that it was impassable; therefore the missionary party of six persons, three men and their wives, together with their fifty carriers, took a most circuitous road, and indescribably bad. They all walked but Mrs. Ramseyer who was carried in a hammock. Many of their carriers were shot down by the enemy and others died by the way, being exhausted by famine. I think it was only fifteen carriers that reached the coast. One man of the missionary party died when they had been a week on the way. They walked for twenty-five successive days before they reached the coast. One woman, the wife of the man who died on the way, walked all the last day without shoes.

“That day, as well as others,” said Mr. Ramseyer, “we waded in water to our waists, and sometimes almost to the women’s shoulders.”

The collapse came when they reached the coast; at least for all but Mr. Ramseyer, a man of iron constitution. The next day the Volta called and they were brought on board and were laid upon the deck like corpses; all but Mr. Ramseyer.

The captain, whose humour and inexhaustible anecdote were usually an antidote for the tedium and weariness of so long a journey, was overcome by the scene on deck to the extent that I saw him brush a tear away. And then, finding it absolutely necessary to do something, as a vent to his feeling of sympathy, and supposing that the very best thing for the missionary party all round would be a strong stimulant, he stepped to the skylight and shouted: “Whisky! Whisky!” Then, evidently reflecting that if a little whisky were good, more would be better, he circulated about the deck shouting, “Whisky!” at every steward who put his head out of a port-hole.

It sounded like an invocation to some favourite fetish; and for that matter whisky is the fetish of many white men in West Africa. They invoke its aid in all their troubles. If there had been many more stewards around, I am afraid there would have been a serious shortage of whisky for the rest of the voyage, and such an event would have created greater consternation on the coast than the Ashantee war itself.

“Great Scott!” exclaimed a man in the saloon who had been occupied with writing and did not know what was occurring on deck, “where is all that whisky going at this hour of the morning? What’s come on board? the English army?”

“No,” replied the steward, “it’s a party of missionaries.” The man went up the companionway two steps at a time to see the party of missionaries who could drink so much whisky. I do not remember whether the missionaries drank any of the whisky; but it may be taken for granted that it was not wasted.

While they still lay on the deck, Mr. Ramseyer, standing up, told the story of their sufferings to the shocked and eager passengers assembled about him. Until this morning the war had been a kind of a jest to these officers of the army; but now it became a stern reality, and the change in their behaviour was noticeable. One of them, by the way, was shot by a native and instantly killed a few days after landing.

That same evening Mr. Ramseyer told me of the experience of himself and Mrs. Ramseyer in the former Ashantee war, thirty years ago. In that war they were captured by the natives and held for ransom. Five long years, from 1869 to 1874, they were prisoners, carried about from place to place to escape the pursuit of the English. They were told that they would be killed rather than given up. During the first year their feet were put in stocks at night to prevent their escape. But they made friends of their captors, who finally gave them up without ransom. They went to Switzerland for a long rest, and then returned again to their work.