(3.) The products of this country are such as are common to the tropics, and are very abundant. Coffee grows spontaneously. India-rubber enough for generations could be easily obtained. Vast areas of timber lands, characterized by trees thirty feet in diameter, with spreading branches sufficient for the shelter of a regiment, abound in the forest belt. Here are found great varieties of dye-woods, and other woods that admit of a beautiful finish. Lumber is in great demand, and the saw-mill belonging to this Association is taxed to its utmost, and quite unable to furnish a supply sufficient for the market near at hand. The export of palm-oil from this locality is very great, and at present is doubtless the leading article of merchandise.
It is quite possible, however, that within a generation the most alluring wealth of the country will be its treasures of gold. This precious metal is found in a belt extending from the Gold Coast inland three hundred and fifty miles. Of the productiveness of the gold mines or pits, as they are called, we can judge but little otherwise than by the meagreness of the facilities of the natives for collecting gold, and by the amount found among the different tribes. From what can be learned I am led to believe that the great enterprise that shall yet stir the thought of the mercantile world in behalf of this region will be that of the gold hunter. In support of this view we have facts before us like the following: The king of the Ashantees is covered with golden ornaments. He is served by his cook with a golden spoon. His spies, to the number of a thousand, wear golden breastplates, his officers carry gold-hilted swords, and his subjects use gold dust for money. The chiefs of the land manufacture golden images to display their wealth, while their attendants are embellished with golden badges. Even on the great plateau, three hundred miles inland, gold is the money of the country. In Bouré the people do nothing but dig up gold, which they exchange for food with the neighboring tribes. The indications certainly are, that if so much gold is secured by native women, who wash out a little surface sand in their simple gourds, mines of wealth must lie beneath awaiting the more powerful machinery of an American civilization.
(4.) We come now to notice the internal improvements projected for opening up this country to commerce and the higher development of its people. Lines of steamers ply from the Senegal to the Niger, and ports are opened where trade is carried on equal in amount to $20,000,000 annually. The Niger and its tributaries afford navigable waters for 3,500 miles, enabling the merchant to proceed with boats from Timbuctoo to the Atlantic. Steamers already ply upon this river and inland trade is rapidly developing.
At present there are many obstacles to overcome, of which the superstition of the natives is not the least. There is, however, a project full of promise for reaching this country. By recent surveys it has been ascertained that opposite the Canary Islands, in latitude 28° north, running five hundred miles south-east in the Great Desert, there is a sink two hundred feet below the level of the Atlantic, extending to within one hundred miles of Timbuctoo, the great city of Central Africa. This sink or depression has a width of one hundred and twenty miles, and contains sixty thousand square miles of land. Explorers agree that a channel once connected its north-western extremity with the Atlantic, where it terminated in a sand-bank, which prevented the waters of the ocean from flowing into its bed. Its mouth is formed between perpendicular rocks, and measures about two and a half miles in width, and is blocked by a sand-bar, three hundred yards across, with a height of thirty feet above the sea. All that is needed is to excavate a ship canal three hundred yards long through the sand-bar, and the inland sea will be speedily formed. When this is accomplished the Mendi country and its neighborhood will be a vast island, approachable from many directions, and a belt of civilization will be closed in until the whole area is blessed with peace and abundance. Then “Afric’s sunny fountains” will “roll down their golden sands” into the lap of the older civilizations, and receive in return the riper and richer results of the heaven-born blessings of the Gospel.
(5.) It is fitting, furthermore, that we consider the character and condition of the people of this domain. As to their physical proportions, we have reason to believe that back of the malarial belt they are well formed, muscular and endowed with powers of great endurance. The tribes of the interior drive down the inhabitants of the forest range into the lowland, where the law of the survival of the unfittest obtains on account of malaria leaving alive the coarse, muscular men of the coast. Of the mental capacity of these people a good illustration was seen in Barnabas Root, a real heathen, who came to this country and was graduated at a Western college and also at the Chicago Theological Seminary, ranking among the best scholars of his class at both institutions.
The capacity of this people is also indicated by some splendid achievements on African soil. A native among the Vey people invented an alphabet with two hundred characters, in which communications could be sent by letter and the language preserved in books. Still another contrived an instrument before the invention of the telegraph, called an eleimbic, for conveying sound, and by means of which messages could be sent for several miles. Native women manufacture cloth, woven in different colors; they also make a species of twine as delicate and useful as any in the world. Clay vessels that hold water, iron axes and implements of utility of native manufacture, also abound.
Timbuctoo, the queen city of the Desert, at the north-eastern boundary of the country we are considering, contains 20,000 inhabitants, and is laid out with regular streets and well-built houses. Here is found a great mosque with nine naves and a tower 286 feet high and 212 wide, while other mosques of great age and importance greet the eyes in this wonderful city. These indications of skill are found among native Africans, even if due, especially in Timbuctoo, to the Mohammedan faith. Cities and towns in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and further along the coast, are the result in part of a foreign civilization, but still in some measure attest the capacity of the real heathen.
These people not only evince capacity for the development of material wealth, but for the science of government. They evidently believe in experiments in governmental civilization. For example, the king of Dahomey selects the most robust of his wives for a body-guard and organizes regiments of amazons. These are said to be most courageous soldiers and absolutely devoted to their calling. He also displays his appreciation of object lessons in temperance reform by keeping a drunkard on rum, that his hideous aspect might deter the people from that vice; while the boys who act as porters on the coast promote the observance of Sunday laws by charging for their services on the Lord’s day sixpence extra for breaking the Sabbath.
The question, however, with which we have chief concern relates to the religious instincts or capabilities of these people. These may be measured in some degree by the sacrifices they make and by the notions they entertain. For example, among the Foula tribe the offerings to the Fetish must be made by a “sinless girl.” Among the Mendi, they believe in a supreme being who made all things, who punishes those who wrong their friends; they thank him for blessings, and blame him for trouble and sickness. The fetishism of the African is based upon religious instincts, and indicates the strength of his aptitude for faith, prayer and self-denial.
We have not at command any comprehensive knowledge of the habits of all the tribes of the Mendi country and its neighborhood. We are able, however, to give some account of the unprejudiced conduct of the Ashantees during a four years’ war, as observed by two German missionaries held as prisoners at Coomassie for that length of time. They narrate a condition of heathendom that ought to inspire us to pray and labor for the enlightenment and redemption of this wretched people.