The worst feature of journalism in West Africa is that fair play is unknown to it. The negroes may thoroughly identify themselves with England, claim a share in her greatness, and display abundant lip-loyalty; yet there is the racial aversion to Englishmen in the concrete, and to this is added the natural jealousy of seeing strangers monopolise the best appointments. The Sá Leonite openly declares that he and his can rule the land much better and more economically than the sickly foreigner, who spends half his service-time on board the steamers and at home. 'Dere goes another white raskel to his grave!' they will exclaim at the sight of a funeral. 'Wish dey all go and leave colony to US.' And as the reading and paying public is mainly composed of Nigers, the papers must sooner or later cater for their needs, and lose no opportunity of casting obloquy and ridicule upon the authorities and Albus in general. We can hardly blame them. I have shown that the worst and most scandalous display of journalism comes from London.
After the church, the school, and the newspaper, the most important civilising institution is the market. Sá Leone is favourably situated for collecting the interior trade, and yet seven-tenths of the revenue is derived from articles passing through the Loko and Rokel rivers; the rest is levied from wines, spirits, and tobacco, and in the form of preposterous harbour-dues. The export duties are light, but the exports do not seem to have increased as rapidly as they should have done during the last twenty years; this, too, despite missions into the interior and the hospitable reception of native chiefs and their messengers. There are no assessed or house taxes. The revenue and expenditure of the past five years have averaged, respectively, 63,869l. and 59,283l., leaving a surplus of 4,586l., which might profitably be expended upon roads. But the liabilities of the colony early in 1881 still amounted to 50,637l., being the balance of a debt resulting principally from the harbour-works.
The present population of the original settlement—including British Kwiáh (Quiah), an early annexation—is 53,862. The dependencies, Isles de Los, Tasso, Kikonkeh, and British Sherbro, according to the census of 1881, add 6,684, a figure which experts would increase by 4,000. The total, therefore, in round numbers, would be nearly 65,000. At the last census only 163 were resident whites; the crews and passengers of ships in port added 108.
On the whole the Sá Leonite cannot be called a success. Servants in shoals present themselves on board the steamers, begging 'ma'sr' to take them down coast. In vain. The fellow is handier than his southern brother: he can mend a wheel, make a coffin, or cut your hair. Yet none, save the veriest greenhorn, will engage him in any capacity. As regards civility and respectfulness he is far inferior to the emancipado of Cuba or the Brazil; with a superior development of 'sass,' he is often an inveterate thief. He has fits of drinking, when he becomes mad as a Malay. He gambles, he overdresses himself, and he indulges in love-intrigues till he has exhausted his means, and then he makes 'boss' pay for all. With a terrible love of summonsing, and a thorough enjoyment of a law-court, he enters into the spirit of the thing like an attorney's clerk. He soon wearies of the less exciting life in the wilder settlements, where orgies and debauchery are not fully developed; home-sickness seizes him, and he deserts his post; probably robbing house or till.
Even a black who has once visited Sá Leone is considered spoilt for life, as if he had spent a year in England. Hence the eccentric Captain Phil. Beaver declared that he 'would rather carry a rattlesnake than a negro who has been in London.' I have met with some ugly developments of home-education. One was a yellow Dan Lambert, the son of a small shopkeeper, who was returning—dubbed a 'Templar'—from the Land of Liberty. He was not a pleasant companion. His face was that of a porker half-translated; he yelped the regular Tom Coffee laugh; and when asked why Sá Leone had not contributed to the Crimean Widow Fund, he uttered the benevolent wish that 'the damned —— and their brats might all starve like their husbands.' Another was a full-blooded negro, a petty huckster at the 'Red Grave,' who, in his last 'homeward' voyage, had met at Madeira the Dean and Deaness of Oxbridge. The lady resolved to keep up the creditable acquaintanceship: so strong is feminine love for the 'black lion.' Shortly afterwards Niger paid his promised visit, which he described graphically and sans sense of shame—how he had been met at the station by a tall gentleman in uniform and gold-laced hat, how he was invited to enter a carriage, and how great was his astonishment when the 'officer' preferred standing in the open air behind to accompanying him inside. After this naïve début he showed tact. Mr. Dean wished to know if anything could be done towards advancing the interesting guest in his 'profession'—not trade. We talk of an English school-master, but a mulatto or a negro becomes a 'professor.' Niger whispered 'No,' which, ladylike, meant a distinct 'Yes.' He ended by graciously accepting an introduction to a Manchester firm, and soon relieved it of 16,000l.
No one who knows the West African coast will assert that the influence of Sá Leone has been in any way for good. All can certify that this colony, intended as a 'model of policy,' and founded with the object of promoting African improvement, has been the greatest obstacle to progress. She fought to keep every advantage to herself, and she succeeded in securing a monopoly of 'recaptives,' who were more wanted elsewhere. She became an incubus in 1820, when all British possessions from N. Lat. 20º to S. Lat. 20º were made her dependencies. The snake was scotched in 1844 by the Gold Coast achieving her independence. Yet Sá Leone raised herself to a government-general in 1866, and possibly she will do so again.
The Sá Leonite has ever distinguished himself by kicking down, as the phrase is, the ladder which raised him. No man maltreats his wild brother so much as the so-called 'civilised' negro: he never addresses his congener except by 'You jackass!' and tells him ten times a day that he considers such trash like the dirt beneath his feet. Consequently he is hated and despised withal, being of the same colour as, while assuming such excessive superiority over, his former equals. No one also is more hopeless about the civilisation of Africa than the semi-civilised African returning to the 'home of his fathers.' He feels how hard has been his struggle to emerge from savagery; he acknowledges, in his own case, a selection of species; and he foresees no end to the centuries before there can be a nation equal even to himself. Yet in England and in books he will cry up the majesty of African kings,—see, for a specimen, Bishop Crowther's 'Niger Diary.' He will give his fellow-countrymen, whom he thoroughly despises, a thousand grand gifts of morals and industry. I have heard a negro assert, with the unblushing effrontery which animates the Exeter Hall speechifier, that at some African den of thieves men leave their money with impunity in the storehouse or on the highway. I read the assertion of a mulatto, who well knew the contrary, 'A white man who supposes himself respected in Africa, because he is white, is grievously mistaken.' The 'aristocracy of colour' is a notable and salient fact in Africa, where the chiefs are lighter hued and better grown than their subjects; and the reason is patent—they marry the handsomest women.
Finally, the Sá Leonite is the horror of Europeans on the West Coast. He has been formally expelled by his neighbours, the Liberians. At Lagos and Abeokuta he lost no time in returning to his original fetishism, which the 'recaptive' apparently can never throw off. Moreover, he became an inveterate slave-dealer, impudently placing himself under native protection, and renegading the flag that saved the crime-serf from lifelong servitude. These 'insolent, vagabond loafers' were the only men who gave me much trouble in the so-called 'Oil rivers,' where one of them accused a highly respected Scotch missionary of theft. Finally, the Gaboon merchants long preferred forfeiting the benefits of the mail-steamers to seeing themselves invaded by a locust tribe, whose loveliest view is, apparently, that which leads out of Sá Leone.
Some of this demoralisation arose from the over-tenderness of the British Government, in deference to the philanthropist and the missionary. Throughout the Bights of Benin and Biafra, where the chief stalks about with his fetishman and his executioner, there is still some manliness amongst men, some modesty amongst women. There the offending wife fears beheading and 'saucy water;' here she leaves with impunity her husband, who rarely abandons the better half. Consequently the sex has become vicious as in Egypt—worse than the men, bad as these are. Petty larceny is carried on to such an extent that no improvement is possible: as regards property, the peninsula contains the most communistic of communities. The robbers are expert to a degree; they work naked and well greased, and they choose early dawn or the night-hour when the tornado is most violent. The men fight by biting, squeezing, and butting with the head, like the Brazilian capoeira. The women have a truly horrible way of putting out of the world an obnoxious lover. Ask an Aku if an Ibo is capable of poisoning you: he will say emphatically, 'Yes.' Put the same question to an Ibo touching an Aku, and he will not reply, 'No.'
With respect to the relative position of Japhet and Ham—perhaps I should say Ham and Japhet—ultra-philanthropy has granted all the aspirations of the Ethiopian melodist:—