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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #54400 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54400)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alone in West Africa, by Mary Gaunt
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Alone in West Africa
-       Illustrated
-
-Author: Mary Gaunt
-
-Release Date: March 21, 2017 [EBook #54400]
-Last Updated: March 12, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE IN WEST AFRICA ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-ALONE IN WEST AFRICA
-
-By Mary Gaunt
-
-Author Of “The Uncounted Cost,” Etc.
-
-Charles Scribner's Sons London: T. Werner Laurie
-
-1911
-
-
-
-
-DEDICATION
-
-To those who have helped me I dedicate this record of my travels in West
-Africa. Without their help I could have done nothing; it was always most
-graciously and kindly given and I know not how to show my appreciation
-of it. “Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor,” is all I can give
-in return, unless some of them will take this book in very inadequate
-payment. Sir Charles Lucas, the head of the Colonial Office, gave me
-letters of introduction, Elder Dempster and Co. gave me a free passage,
-their captains and their officers put themselves out to help me, Sir
-George Denton welcomed me to West Africa, and after these comes a long
-string of people who each and all contributed so much to my welfare that
-I feel myself ungracious not to mention them all by name. I must thank
-Messrs Swanzy and Co., who helped me up the Volta and across the unknown
-country on the German border, and I were churl indeed if I did not
-remember those men and women of another nation, who received me out of
-the unknown, fed me, welcomed me, and smoothed my way for me. To each
-and all then, with this dedication, I offer my most grateful thanks.
-
-
-
-
-
-ALONE IN WEST AFRICA
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I--SONS OF THE SEA WIFE
-
-_Hereditary taste for wandering--A first adventure--“Little girls
-you must not be tired”--How Carlo was captured by savages in
-West Africa--Life in Ballarat--Nothing for a woman to do but
-marry--Marriage--Plans for wandering twenty years hence--Life in
-Warrnambool--Widowhood--May as well travel now there is nothing
-left--London for an aspirant in literature--Stony streets and drizzling
-rain--Scanty purse--Visit to the home of a rich African trader--Small
-successes--At last, at last on board s.s. Gando bound for the Gambia._
-
-               “There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate,
-
-                   And a wealthy wife is she;
-
-               She breeds a breed o' rovin' men,
-
-                   And casts them over sea.”
-
-
-Sometimes when people ask me with wonder why I went to West Africa, why
-I wanted to go, I feel as if that wife must have grown old and feeble
-and will bear no more men to send across the sea. I hope not. I trust
-not. More than ninety years ago she sent my mother's father into the
-Honourable East India Co.'s service, and then, in later years with his
-ten children to colonise Van Diemen's Land. Nearly sixty years ago she
-sent my father, a slim young lad, out to the goldfields in Australia,
-and she breathed her spirit over the five boys and two girls who grew
-up in the new land. I cannot remember when any one of us would not have
-gone anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. It would not have been
-any good pointing out the dangers, because dangers at a distance are
-only an incentive. There is something in the thought of danger that must
-be overcome, that you yourself can help to overcome, that quickens the
-blood and gives an added zest to life.
-
-I can remember as a small girl going with my sister to stay with an
-uncle who had a station, Mannerim, behind Geelong. The house had been
-built in the old days of slabs with a bark roof, very inflammable
-material. I loved the place then because it spoke of the strenuous old
-days of the Colony. I love the memory of it now for old times' sake, and
-because there happened the first really exciting incident in my life.
-
-It was a January morning, the sky overcast with smoke and a furious
-hot wind blowing from the north. The men of the household looked out
-anxiously, but I sat and read a story-book. It was the tale of a boy
-named Carlo who was wrecked on the coast of West Africa--nice vague
-location; he climbed a cocoa-nut tree--I can see him now with a rope
-round his waist and his legs dangling in an impossible attitude--and he
-was taken by savages. His further adventures I do not know, because
-a man came riding in shouting that the calf paddock was on fire and
-everyone must turn out. Everyone did turn out except my aunt who stayed
-behind to prepare cool drinks, and those drinks my little sister and I,
-as being useless for beating out the flames, were sent to carry to the
-workers in jugs and “billies.”
-
-“Now little girls,” said my aunt who was tenderness and kindness itself,
-“remember you are not to get tired.”
-
-It was the first lesson I really remember in the stern realities of
-life. We had hailed the bushfire as something new and exciting; now we
-were to be taught that much excitement brings its strenuous hard labour.
-The fire did not reach the house, and the men and women got their drink,
-but it was two very weary, dirty, smoke-grimed and triumphant little
-girls who bathed and went to bed that night. I never finished the
-story of Carlo. Where he went to I can't imagine, but I can't think the
-savages ate him else his story would never have been written; and from
-that moment dated my deep interest in West Africa.
-
-We grew up and the boys of the family went a-roving to other lands. One
-was a soldier, two were sailors, and the two youngest were going to be
-lawyers, whereby they might make money and go to the other ends of the
-world if they liked. When we were young we generally regarded money as a
-means of locomotion. We have hardly got over the habit yet. Only for us
-two girls was there no prospect. Our world was bounded by our father's
-lawns and the young men who came to see us and made up picnic parties to
-the wildest bush round Ballarat for our amusement. It was not bad. Even
-now I acknowledge to something of delight to be found in a box-seat of a
-four-in-hand, a glorious moonlight night, and four horses going at full
-speed; something delightful in scrambles over the ranges and a luncheon
-in the shade by a waterhole, with romantic stories for a seasoning, and
-the right man with a certain admiration in his eyes to listen. It was
-not bad, but it was not as good a life as the boys of the family were
-having, and it was giving me no chance of visiting the land Carlo had
-gone to that had been in my mind at intervals ever since the days of my
-childish bushfire.
-
-There was really nothing for a woman but to marry, and accordingly we
-both married and I forgot in my entrance into that world, which is so
-old and yet always so new, my vague longings after savage lands.
-
-I wonder sometimes would I have been contented to lead the ordinary
-woman's life, the life of the woman who looks after her husband and
-children. I think so, because it grew to be the life I ardently yearned
-for. The wander desire was just pushed a little into the back-ground
-and was to come off twenty years hence when we had made our fortune. And
-twenty years looked such a long long while then. It even looks a long
-time now, for it has not passed, and I seem to have lived a hundred
-years and many lives since the days in the little Victorian town of
-Warrnambool when my handsome young husband and I planned out our future
-life. But I was nearer to Carlo's land than I thought even then, and
-if I could have peeped into the future I would only have shrunk with
-unspeakable dread from the path I must walk, the path that was to lead
-me to the consummation of my childish hopes. In a very few years the
-home life I had entered into with such gladness was over, my husband was
-dead, and I was penniless, homeless, and alone. Of course I might have
-gone back to my father's house, my parents would have welcomed me,
-but can any woman go back and take a subordinate position when she has
-ruled? I think not; besides it would only have been putting off the evil
-day. When my father died, and in the course of nature he must die before
-me, there would be but a pittance, and I should have to start out once
-more handicapped with the added years. Again, and I think this thought
-was latent beneath all the misery and hopelessness that made me say I
-did not care what became of me, was I not free, free to wander where I
-pleased, to seek those adventures that had held such a glamour for me
-in my girlhood. True, I had not much money with which to seek them. When
-everything was settled up I found if I stayed quietly in Australia I had
-exactly thirty pounds a year to call my own. Thirty pounds a year, and I
-reckoned I could make perhaps fifty pounds by my pen. My mother pointed
-out to me that if I lived with my parents it would not be so bad. But it
-was not to be thought of for a moment. The chance had come, through
-seas of trouble, but still it had come, and I would go and see the
-great world for myself. I thought I had lived my life, that no sorrow
-or gladness could ever touch me keenly again; but I knew, it was in my
-blood, that I should like to see strange places and visit unknown lands.
-But on thirty pounds a year one can do nothing, so I took a hundred
-pounds out of my capital and came to London determined to make money by
-my pen in the heart of the world.
-
-Oh, the hopes of the aspirant for literary fame, and oh, the dreariness
-and the weariness of life for a woman poor and unknown in London! I
-lodged in two rooms in a dull and stony street. I had no one to speak to
-from morning to night, and I wrote and wrote and wrote stories that all
-came back to me, and I am bound to say the editors who sent them back
-were quite right. They were poor stuff, but how could anyone do good
-work who was sick and miserable, cold and lonely, with all the life
-crushed out of her by the grey skies and the drizzling rain? I found
-London a terrible place in those days; I longed with all my heart for
-my own country, my own little home in Warrnambool where the sun shone
-always, the roses yellow and pink climbed over the wall, the white
-pittosporum blossoms filled the air with their fragrance, and the great
-trees stood up tall and straight against the dark-blue sky. I did not go
-back to my father, because my pride would not allow me to own myself a
-failure and because all the traditions of my family were against giving
-in. But I was very near it, very near it indeed.
-
-Then after six months of hopelessness there came to see me from
-Liverpool a friend of one of my sailor brothers, and she, good
-Samaritan, suggested I should spend my Christmas with her.
-
-I went. She and her daughters were rich people and the husband and
-father had been an African trader. So here it was again presented to me,
-the land to which I had resolved to go when I was a little child, and
-everything in the house spoke to me of it. In the garden under a cedar
-tree was the great figurehead of an old sailing ship; in the corridor
-upstairs was the model of a factory, trees, boats, people, houses all
-complete; in the rooms were pictures of the rivers and swamps and the
-hulks where trade was carried on. To their owners these possessions were
-familiar as household words that meant nothing; to me they reopened a
-new world of desire or rather an old desire in a new setting--the vague
-was taking concrete form. I determined quite definitely that I would go
-to West Africa. The thing that amazed me was that everybody with money
-in their pockets was not equally desirous of going there.
-
-About this time, too, I discovered that it was simply hopeless for me to
-think of writing stories about English life. The regular, conventional
-life did not appeal to me; I could only write adventure stories, and the
-scene of adventure stories was best laid in savage lands. West Africa
-was not at all a bad place in which to set them. Its savagery called
-me. There and then I started to write stories about it. Looking back, I
-smile when I think of the difficulties that lay in my path. Even after
-I had carefully read every book of travel I could lay my hands on, I
-was still in deepest ignorance, because every traveller left so much
-undescribed and told nothing of the thousand and one little trifles
-that make ignorant eyes see the life that is so different from that in a
-civilised land. But if you will only look for a thing it is astonishing
-how you will find it often in the most unlikely places; if you set your
-heart on something it is astonishing how often you will get your heart's
-desire. I sought for information about West Africa and I found it, not
-easily; every story I wrote cost me a world of trouble and research and
-anxiety, and I fear me the friends I was beginning to make a world of
-trouble too. But they were kind and long-suffering; this man gave me
-a little information here, that one there, and I can laugh now when
-I think of the scenes that had to be written and rewritten before a
-hammock could be taken a couple of miles, before a man could sit down to
-his early-morning tea in the bush. It took years to do it, but at last
-it was done to some purpose; the book I had written with great effort
-caught on, and I had the money for the trip I had planned many years
-before when I was a small girl reading about those distant lands. I
-hesitated not a moment. The day I had sufficient money to make such
-a thing possible I went up to the City to see about a passage to West
-Africa.
-
-And now a wonderful thing happened. Such a piece of good luck as I had
-not in my wildest dreams contemplated. Elder Dempster, instigated by the
-kind offices of Sir Charles Lucas, the permanent head of the Colonial
-Office, who knew how keen was my desire, offered me a ticket along the
-Coast, so that I actually had all the money I had earned to put into
-land travel, and Mr Laurie, my publisher, fired by my enthusiasm,
-commissioned a book about the wonderful old forts that I knew lay
-neglected and crumbling to decay all along the shores of the Gold Coast.
-
-As I look back it seems as if surely the fairy godmother who had omitted
-to take my youth in charge was now showering me with good gifts, or
-maybe, most probably, the good gifts had been offered all along and I
-had never recognised them. We, some of us, drive in a gorgeous coach and
-never see anything but the pumpkin.
-
-At least I was not making that mistake now. I was wild with delight and
-excitement when, on a cold November day, when London was wrapped in
-fog, I started from Euston for Liverpool. One of the brothers who I had
-envied in my youth, a post captain in the Navy now (how the years fly),
-happened to be in London and came down to the station to see me and my
-heaped impedimenta off.
-
-He understood my delight in the realisation of my dream.
-
-“Have you any directions for the disposal of your remains?” he asked
-chaffingly, as we groped our way through the London fog.
-
-“Oh, that will all be settled,” said I, “long before you hear anything
-about it”; and we both laughed. We did not think, either of us, my
-adventure was going to end disastrously. It would have been against all
-the traditions of the family to think any such thing.
-
-He told me how once he had gone into action with interest because he
-wanted to see what it would be like to be under fire, and whether
-he would be frightened. He didn't have much time to contemplate the
-situation, for presently he was so badly wounded that it took him six
-months to crawl off his bed, but it brought him a cross of honour from
-Italy. “And now,” says he, with a certain satisfaction, “I know.” So
-he sympathised. He felt that whatever happened I would have the
-satisfaction of knowing.
-
-It is hardly necessary to describe to an English reader Liverpool on
-a cold, grey morning in November. There is the grey sky and the grey
-streets and the grey houses, and the well-to-do shivering in their
-wraps, and the poor shivering in their rags, all the colourless English
-world, that is not really colourless for those who know how to look at
-it, but which had driven me to sunnier lands; and there was the ship
-with her wet decks, her busy officers in comforters and sea-boots, her
-bare-footed sailors, and her gangways crowded with cargo, baggage, and
-numbers of bewildered passengers themselves.
-
-And I think as we crowded into the smoking-room for warmth I was the
-only enthusiastic person among them. The majority of the passengers on
-board s.s. _Gando_ actually didn't want to go to West Africa.
-
-It seems strange, but so it was; the greater part of them, if they
-could have afforded to stay at home, would actually have stayed. I was
-inclined to be impatient with them. Now I forgive them. They know not
-what they do. It is a pity, but it can be remedied.
-
-The _Gando_ was not a mail boat. I had chosen her because she called
-at Dakar, and I thought I would like to go if possible to the first
-settlement on the Coast, and I wanted to see how the French did things.
-I may say here I never got to Dakar--still it is something to be looked
-forward to in the future, to be done when next I write a book that
-pays--for on board the _Gando_ was Sir George Denton, the Governor of
-the Gambia, surely the nicest governor ever lucky colony had, and for
-such an important person the ship went a little out of her way and
-called first at Bathurst, port and capital of the Gambia colony.
-
-Now, I had a letter of introduction to Sir George and I presented it,
-and he promptly asked me to come ashore with him. I had never thought
-of staying in the Gambia beyond the day or two the ship would take to
-discharge her cargo--“a potty little colony,” as I had heard it called,
-and it hardly seemed worth while to waste my time in a miniature Thames.
-How the Governor laughed when he found out my appalling ignorance, and
-how ashamed I was when I found it out!
-
-“The Thames,” said he; “well, we only hold the mouth of the river about
-four hundred miles up, but the Gambia is at least a thousand miles in
-extent, and may be longer for all I know.”
-
-I apologised to the Gambia.
-
-“But could I see the river?”
-
-“Why, of course; we'll send you up in the _Mansikillah_, the Government
-steamer”; and I accepted his invitation with alacrity and with
-gratitude.
-
-Truly, my fairy godmother was more than waving her wand. I hadn't left
-English shores a week, and here was an invitation to go four hundred
-miles into the interior of the continent of my dreams.
-
-We went first to the Canary Islands, the islands of the blest of
-the ancients, but the Canaries were as nothing to me; they have been
-civilised too long. They were only a stepping-stone to that other land,
-the land of romance, that I was nearing at last.
-
-And now I have an apology to make, an apology which very few people
-will understand, but those few will, and to them it is a matter of such
-importance that I must make it. I went to see a savage land. I went to
-seek material for the only sort of story I can write, and to tell of the
-prowess of the men who had gone before and left their traces in great
-stone forts all along three hundred miles of coast. I found a savage
-land, in some parts a very wild land indeed, but I found what I had
-never expected, a land of immense possibilities, a land overflowing with
-wealth, a land of corn and wine and oil. I expected swamp and miasma,
-heat, fever, and mosquitoes. I found these truly, but I found, too, a
-lovely land, an entrancingly lovely land in places; I found gorgeous
-nights and divine mornings, and I found that the great interest of West
-Africa lay not in the opportunity it gave for vivid descriptions of
-heroes who fought and suffered and conquered, or fought and suffered
-and died, but in showing its immense value to the English crown in
-describing a land where every tropical product may be grown, a land with
-a teeming population and a generous soil, a land in fact that, properly
-managed, should supply raw material for half the workshops in England,
-a land that may be made to give some of its sunlight to keep alight the
-fires on English hearths in December, a land that as yet only the wiser
-heads amongst us realise the value of.
-
-“A man comes to West Africa,” said a Swiss to me once, “because he can
-make in ten years as much as he could make in thirty in England.”
-
-That is the land I found, and I apologise if I have ever written or
-thought of it in any other way.
-
-“The White Man's Grave,” say many still. But even the all-powerful white
-man must have a grave in the end. Live wisely and discreetly and it is,
-I think with wise old Zachary Macauley who ruled Sierra Leone at the end
-of the eighteenth century, no more likely to be in West Africa than in
-any other place.
-
-And the ship sailed on, and one morning early, before daylight, we heard
-the bell buoy that marks the mouth of the Gambia before lazy eyes can
-see there is a river, and knew that we had arrived at our destination.
-At last, at last I was on the very threshold of the land I had dreamed
-of years before.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II--THE GROUNDNUT COLONY
-
-_Rejoicing-, half-eastern and wholly tropical, on arrival of the
-Governor--Colonies governed and held as the Romans held their colonies
-of Britain--Great g-ulf between the black and the white--The barrier of
-sex--Received as a brother but declined as a brother-in-law--Lonely
-Fort St James--The strenuous lives led by the men of the past--Crinted
-walls--The pilot's wife--Up the river in the Mungo Park--The river
-devil's toll--“Pass friend and all's well.”_
-
-
-When I was a little girl the Queen held something the same place in
-my mind as the Almighty. The ruler of the nation hardly had any
-personality. She was there, of course, and people talked about her as
-conferring great benefits upon us; but so we also talked about God in
-church and when we said our prayers at night. As a family, we objected
-to saying prayers in the morning. They were not supposed to be necessary
-till you had arrived at mature years, say, five, and by then, I suppose,
-we had imbibed the idea that we could really take care of ourselves very
-well during the day-time. So the Queen, too, was in the same category as
-God and Heaven, that distinctly dull place, which was to be the reward
-of good works on earth, and His Excellency the Governor took her place
-in the minds of all young colonials. Of course, as I grew older, I
-realised that the Governor was a man like unto other men, that he could
-be talked to like an ordinary man, could ask you to dinner, and even
-take a polite interest in your future; but, still, some of the rags of
-the childish vagueness and glory clung round him, and so I was quite
-pleased to find myself on board a steamer with a real live Governor.
-More, I sat next him at table; we discussed the simple commonplace
-doings of ship-board life together, and as we arrived at the buoy
-I shared in the little fuss and bustle which the landing of such an
-exalted personage always makes. And he wasn't really such a very exalted
-personage in his own opinion. There was a merry twinkle in his nice
-brown eyes as he admitted that his gold-laced coat, made to be worn on
-state occasions such as this, was a great deal too hot for the Tropics,
-and that its donning must be left to the very last moment; and so I
-stood on the flag-dressed deck by myself and watched the land of my
-dreams come into view.
-
-A long, low shore is the Gambia--a jutting point, with palms upon it,
-running out into a glassy sea, from which is reflected the glare of the
-tropical sun. There was a little denser clump of greenery that marked
-the site of Bathurst, the capital; and, as we drew closer, we could see
-the roofs of the houses peeping out, bright specks of colour that were
-the flags, and the long line of red on the wharf, the soldiers turned
-out to welcome the returning Governor.
-
-This is the only place along that line of surf-bound coast where a ship
-may come up to the wharf and land her passengers dry-shod; but, to-day,
-because the captain was in a hurry, he dropped us over the side in
-boats, and we landed to all the glory of a welcome that was half-eastern
-and wholly and emotionally tropical. The principal street of Bathurst,
-the only street worth mentioning, runs all along the river-side, with
-houses on one side and the wharfs and piers on the other; and the whole
-place was thronged with the black inhabitants. The men shouted and
-tossed their hats and caps when they had any; and the women, the
-mammies, as I learned to call them later, flung their gaily coloured
-cloths from their shoulders for their dearly loved Governor to walk
-over; and the handful of whites--there are twenty-five English and some
-French and Swiss--came forward and solemnly shook hands. He had come
-back to them, the man who had ruled over them for the last ten years,
-and white and black loved him, and were glad to do him honour.
-
-In the midst of great rejoicing, a good omen for me, I set my foot on
-African shore. I began my journeying, and I looked round to try and
-realise what manner of country was this I had come to--what manner of
-life I was to be part and parcel of.
-
-These colonies on the West-African coast are as unlike as possible to
-the colony in which I first saw the light, that my people have helped to
-build up. I fancy, perhaps, the Roman proconsul and the officials in
-his train, who came out to rule over Britain in the first century before
-Christ, must have led lives somewhat resembling those of the Britons
-who nowadays go out to West Africa. One thing is certain, those Italians
-must have grumbled perpetually about the inclemency and unhealthiness of
-the climate of these northern isles; they probably had a great deal
-to say about the fever and ague that was rife. They were accustomed to
-certain luxuries that civilisation had made into necessities, and they
-came to a land where all the people were traders and agriculturists of
-a most primitive sort. They were exiles in a cold, grey land, and they
-felt it bitterly. They came to replenish their purses, and when those
-purses were fairly full they returned to their own land gladly. The
-position describes three-quarters of the Englishmen in West Africa
-to-day; but between the Roman and the savage Piet of Caledonia was
-never the gulf, the great gulf, which is fixed between even the educated
-African and the white man of whatever nationality. It is no good trying
-to hide the fact; between the white man and the black lies not only the
-culture and the knowledge of the west--that gulf might, and sometimes is
-bridged--but that other great bar, the barrier of sex. Tall, stalwart,
-handsome as is many a negro, no white woman may take a black man for
-her husband and be respected by her own people; no white man may take a
-black girl, though her dark eyes be soft and tender, though her skin
-be as satin and her figure like that of the Venus of Milo, and hope to
-introduce her among his friends as his wife. Even the missionaries who
-preach that the black man is a brother decline emphatically to receive
-him as a brother-in-law. And so we get, beginning here in the little
-colony of the Gambia, the handful of the ruling race set among a subject
-people; so the white man has always ruled the black; so, I think, he
-must always rule. It will be a bad day for the white when the black man
-rules. That there should be any mingling of the races is unthinkable; so
-I hope that the white man will always rule Africa with a strong hand.
-
-The Gambia is the beginning of the English colonies on the Coast, and,
-the pity of it, a very small beginning.
-
-In the old days, when Charles the Second was king, the English held none
-of the banks of the river at all, but contented themselves with a barren
-little island about seventeen miles from where Bathurst now stands.
-One bank was held by the French, the other by the Portuguese; and the
-English built on the island Fort St James to protect their interest in
-the great trade in palm oil, slaves, and ivory that came down the river.
-Even then the Gambia was rich. It is richer far to-day, but the French
-hold the greater part of it. The colony of the Gambia is at the mouth
-of the river, twelve miles broad by four hundred long, a narrow strip of
-land bordering the mouth of a river set in the heart of the great French
-colony of Senegal--a veritable Naboth's vineyard that our friends
-the other side of the Channel may well envy us. It brings us in about
-£80,000 annually, but to them it would be of incalculable value as an
-outlet for the majority of their rich trade.
-
-At first I hardly thought about these things. I was absorbed in the
-wonder of the new life. I stayed at Government House with the Governor,
-and was caught up in the little whirl of gaieties that greeted his
-return. The house was tropical, with big, lofty, airy rooms and great
-wide verandahs that as a rule serve also as passageways to pass from one
-room to another; for Government House, Bathurst, is built as a tropical
-house should be--must be--built, if the builder have any regard for the
-health of its inmates. There were no rooms that the prevailing breeze
-could not sweep right through. There was a drawingroom and a dining-room
-on the ground floor, but I do not think either Sir George or I, or his
-private secretary, ever used the drawing-room unless there were guests
-to be entertained. The verandahs were so much more inviting, and my
-bedroom was a delightful place. It ran right across the house. There
-was no carpet, and, as was only right, only just such furniture as I
-absolutely needed. The bed was enclosed in another small mosquito-proof
-room of wirenetting, and it was the only thing I did not like about the
-house. There, and at that season, perhaps it did not very much matter,
-for a strong Harmattan wind, the cool wind of the cold, dry season, was
-blowing, and it kept the air behind the stout wire-netting fresh
-and clean; but I must here put on record my firm belief that no
-inconsiderable number of lives in Africa must be lost owing to some
-doctor's prejudice in favour of mosquito-proof netting. A mosquito-proof
-netting is very stout indeed, and not only excludes the mosquito, but,
-and this far more effectually, the fresh air as well. The man who has
-plenty of fresh air, day and night, will be in better health, and far
-more likely to resist infection if he does happen to get bitten by a
-fever-bearing mosquito, than he who must perforce spend at least a third
-of his time in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room. This I did not
-realise at Government House, Bathurst, or if I did, but dimly, for
-there in December the strong Harmattan would have forced its way through
-anything. I spent most of my time on the verandah outside my own room,
-where I had a view not only of the road that ran to to the centre of
-the town but right away across the river. Here I had my breakfast and my
-afternoon tea, and here I did all my writing.
-
-In Africa your own servant takes charge of your room, gets your bath,
-and brings you your early-morning tea; and here in Bathurst in this
-womanless house my servant was to get my breakfast and my afternoon tea
-as well, so the first thing to be done was to look out for a boy.
-He appeared in the shape of Ansumanah Grant, a Mohammedan boy of
-three-and-twenty, a Vai tribesman, who had been brought up by the
-Wesleyan missionaries at Cape Mount in Liberia. When I engaged him he
-wore a pink pyjama coat, a pair of moleskin breeches, and red carpet
-slippers; and, when this was rectified--at my expense--he appeared in a
-white shirt, khaki knicker-bockers, a red cummerbund, and bare feet, and
-made a very respectable member of society and a very good servant to me
-during the whole of my stay in Africa.
-
-[Illustration: 0043]
-
-I always made it a practice to rise early in West Africa, because the
-early morning is the most delightful time, and he who stays in bed till
-halfpast seven or eight is missing one of the pure delights of life.
-When I had had my early breakfast, I went to inspect the town. The
-market lies but a stone's throw from Government House, and here all the
-natives were to be found, and the white men's servants buying provisions
-for the day. To me, before I went to Africa, a negro was a negro, and
-I imagined them all of one race. My mind was speedily disabused of that
-error. The negro has quite as many nationalities, is quite as distinct
-as the European. Here in this little colony was a most cosmopolitan
-gathering, for the south and north meet, and Yorubas from Lagos, Gas
-from Accra, mongrel Creoles from Sierra Leone meet the Senegalese from
-the north, the Hausas from away farther east; and the natives themselves
-are the Mohammedan Jolloff, who is an expert river-man, the Mandingo,
-and the heathen Jolah, who as yet is low down in the scale of
-civilisation, and wears but scanty rags. And all these people were to
-be found in the market in the early morning. It is enclosed with a high
-wall, the interior is cemented, and gutters made to carry off moisture,
-and it is all divided into stalls, and really not at all unlike the
-alfresco markets you may see on Saturdays in the poorer quarters of
-London. Here they sell meat, most uninviting looking, but few butchers'
-shops look inviting; fish--very strange denizens come out of the sea in
-the Gambia; native peppers, red and green; any amount of rice, which is
-the staple food of the people, and all the tropical fruits, paws-paws,
-pine-apples, and dark-green Coast oranges, which are very sweet;
-bananas, yellow and pink, and great bunches of green plantains. They are
-supposed to sell only on the stalls, for which they pay a small, a very
-small rental; but, like true natives, they overflow on to the ground,
-and as you walk you must be careful not to tread on neat little piles of
-peppers, enamelled iron-ware basins full of native rice, or little heaps
-of purple kola-nuts--that great sustaining stimulant of Africa.
-
-There were about half a dozen white women in Bathurst when I was there,
-including one who had ostracised herself by marrying a black man;
-but none ever came to the market, therefore my arrival created great
-excitement, and one good lady, in a are held, half the houses are owned
-by rich negroes, Africans they very naturally prefer to be called, but
-the poorer people live all crowded together in Jolloff town, whither
-my guide led me, and introduced me to her yard. A Jolloff never speaks
-about his house, but about his “yard.” Even Government House he knows as
-“Governor's Yard.”
-
-[Illustration: 0047]
-
-Jolloff town looks as if if were made of basket-work; they call it here
-“crinting,” and all the walls of the houses and of the compounds are
-made of this split bamboo neatly woven together. For Bathurst is but a
-strip of sand-bank just rescued from the mangrove swamp round, and these
-crinted walls serve excellently to keep it together when the strong
-Harmattan threatens to blow the whole place bodily into the swamp
-behind. My friend's home was a very nice specimen of its class, the
-first barbaric home I had ever seen. The compound was surrounded by the
-crinted walls, and inside again were two or three huts, also built of
-crinting, with a thatched roof. As a rule I am afraid the Jolloff is not
-clean, but my pilot's wife had a neat little home. There were no windows
-in it, but the strong sunlight came through the crinted walls, and made
-a subdued light and a pattern of the basket-work on the white, sanded
-floor; there were three long seats of wood, neatly covered with white
-napkins edged with red, a table, a looking-glass, and a basket of
-bread, for it appeared she was a trader in a small way. It was all
-very suitable and charming. Outside in the compound ran about chickens,
-goats, a dog or two, and some small children, another woman's children,
-alas, for she told me mournfully she had none.
-
-It is easy enough to make a friend; the difficulty is to know where to
-stop. I am afraid I had soon exhausted all my interest in my Jolloff
-woman, while to her I was a great source of pride, and she wanted me to
-come and see her every day. At first she told me she “fear too much”
- to come to “Governor's Yard,” but latterly, I regret to state, that
-wholesome fear wore off, and she called to see me every day, and I found
-suitable conversation a most difficult thing to provide, so that I grew
-to look very anxiously indeed for the steamer that was to take me up the
-river.
-
-[Illustration: 0049]
-
-The Government steamer, the _Mansikillah_, had broken down. She was
-old, and it was, I was told, her chronic state, but I was bitterly
-disappointed till the Governor told me he had made arrangements for me
-to go in the French Company's steamer, the _Mungo Park_. She was going
-up the river with general cargo; she was coming down again with some
-of the groundnut crop, little nuts that grow on the root of a trefoil
-plant, nuts the Americans call pea-nuts, and the English monkey-nuts.
-
-I had to wait a little till there came a messenger one day to say that
-the steamer was ready at last, and would start that afternoon. So I went
-down to the little wharf with my servant, my baggage, and the travelling
-Commissioner, who was also going up the river.
-
-The _Mungo Park_ was a stern-wheeler of 150 tons, drawing six feet
-of water, and when first I saw her you could hardly tell steamer from
-wharf, so alive were they both with crowded, shrieking people, all
-either wanting to get on, or to get off, which was apparently not quite
-clear. After a little wait, out of chaos came a courteous French trader
-and a gangway. The gangway took us on board, and the trader, whose
-English was as good as mine, explained that he, too, was going up the
-river to look after the houses belonging to his company along the banks.
-Then he showed me my quarters, and I was initiated into the mysteries of
-travelling in the interior of Africa. There was but one cabin on board
-the _Mungo Park_, a place about eighteen feet square amidship; in it
-were two bunks, a table, a couple of long seats, a cupboard, and washing
-arrangements. The sides were all of Venetian shutters, which could
-be taken away when not wanted. It was all right in a way, but I must
-confess for a moment I wondered how on earth two men and a woman were to
-stow away there. Then the trader explained. I should have the cabin to
-sleep in, and we all three would have our meals there together, while
-arrangements might be made by which we could all in turn bathe and wash.
-I learned my first lesson: you accept extraordinary and unconventional
-situations, if you are wise, with a smile and without a blush in Africa.
-The Commissioner and the trader, I found on further inquiry, would
-sleep on the top of the cabin, which was also what one might call the
-promenade deck. I arranged my simple belongings, and went up on deck to
-look, and I found that it was reached by way of the boiler, across which
-some steps and a little, coaly hand-rail led. It would have been nice in
-the Arctic regions, but on a tropical afternoon it had its drawbacks. On
-the deck I was met by a vociferous black man, who was much too busy
-to do more than give an obsequious welcome, for it appeared he was
-the captain. I shall always regret I did not take his photograph as he
-leaned over the railing, shouting and gesticulating to his men, and to
-the would-be passengers, and to the men who were struggling to get the
-cargo on board. He cursed them, I should think, all impartially. The
-French trader said he was an excellent captain, and he remains in my
-mind as the most unique specimen of the genus I have ever seen. He wore
-a khaki coat and very elderly tweed trousers, split behind; his feet
-were bare; he did not pander to that vitiated taste which demands
-underlinen, or at least a shirt, but, seeing it was the cold weather, he
-adorned his black skull with a woolly cap with ear-flaps, such as Nansen
-probably took on his North-Pole expedition.
-
-There was a great deal of cargo--cotton goods, sugar, salt, coffee,
-dates; things that the French company were taking up to supply
-their factories on the river, and long before it was stowed the deck
-passengers began crowding on board. Apparently there was no provision
-whatever made for them; they stowed on top of the cargo, just wherever
-they could find a place, and every passenger--there were over ninety of
-them--had apparently something to say as to the accommodation, or the
-want of accommodation, and he or she said it at the very top of his
-or her voice in Jolloff or Mandingo or that bastard English which is
-a _lingua franca_ all along the Coast. Not that it mattered much what
-language they said it in, because no one paid the least attention; such
-a babel have I never before heard. And such a crowd as they were. The
-steamer provided water carriage only for the deck passengers, so that
-they had their cooking apparatus, their bedding, their food, their
-babies, their chickens (unfortunate wretches tied by one leg), and, if
-they could evade the eagle eye of the French trader, their goats. The
-scene was bedlam let loose to my unaccustomed eyes. We were to tow
-six lighters as well, and each of them also had a certain number of
-passengers. As we started it seemed likely we should sweep away a few
-dozen who were hanging on in the most dangerous places to the frailest
-supports. Possibly they wouldn't have been missed. I began to understand
-why the old slaver was callous. It was impossible to feel humane in
-the midst of such a shrieking, howling mob. The siren gave wild and
-ear-piercing shrieks; there were yells from the wharf, more heartrending
-yells from the steamer, a minor accompaniment from the lighters,
-bleating of goats, cackling of protesting fowls, crying of children, and
-we were off without casualty, and things began to settle down.
-
-I had thought my quarters cramped, but looking at the deck passengers,
-crowding fore and aft over the coals and on top of the boiler, I
-realised that everything goes by comparison, and that they were simply
-palatial. I had eighteen feet square of room all to myself to sleep in.
-It had one drawback. There was £5000 worth of silver stowed under
-the seats, and therefore the trader requested me to lock the doors and
-fasten the shutters lest some of the passengers should take a fancy to
-it. His view was that plenty of air would come through the laths of the
-shutters. I did not agree with the French trader, and watched with keen
-interest those boxes of silver depart all too slowly. I would gladly
-have changed places and let him and the Commissioner have my cabin if
-only I might have taken their place on the deck above. But on the deck
-was the wheel, presided over by the black captain, or the equally black
-and more ragged mate, so it was not to be thought of.
-
-And that deck was something to remember. There were the large
-water-bottles there and the filter, the trader's bed in a neat little
-roll, the Commissioner's bed, draped with blue mosquito curtains,
-the hencoops with the unhappy fowls that served us for food, the
-Commissioner's washing apparatus on top of one of the coops, for he was
-a young man of resource, the rest of his kit, his rifle, his bath, his
-cartridge-belt, his dog, a few plates and cups and basins, a couple of
-sieves for rice, two or three stools, the elderly black kettle, out of
-the spout of which the skipper and the mate sucked refreshment as if
-they had been a couple of snipe, and last, but not least, there was
-the French company's mails for their employees up river. I was told the
-correspondence always arrived safely, and so it is evident that in some
-things we take too much trouble. The captain attended to the sorting of
-the mails when he had time to spare from his other duties. I have seen
-him with a much-troubled brow sorting letters at night by the light of a
-flickering candle, and, when the mails overflowed the deal box, parcels
-were stacked against the railing, newspapers leaned for support against
-the wheel, and letters collogued in friendly fashion on the deck with
-the black kettle.
-
-For the first seventeen miles the little ship, towing her lighters
-behind and alongside, went up a river that was like a sea, so far away
-were the mangrove swamps that are on either side. Then we reached Fort
-St James, and the river narrows. Very pathetic are the ruins of Fort St
-James. No one lives there now; no one has lived there for many a long
-day, but you see as you pass and look at the crumbling stones of the old
-fort why West Africa gained in the minds of men so evil a reputation.
-The place is but a rocky islet, with but a few scanty trees upon it;
-above is the brazen sky, below the baked earth, on which the tropical
-sun pours down with all the added heat gathered from the glare of the
-river. They must have died shut up in Fort St James in those far-away
-days. Tradition, too, says that the gentlemen of the company of soldiers
-who were stationed there were for ever fighting duels, and that the many
-vacancies in the ranks were not always due to the climate. But the heat
-and the monotony would conduce to irritability, and when a hasty word
-had to be upheld at the sword's point, it is no wonder if they cursed
-the Coast with a bitterness that is only given to the land of regrets.
-But all honour to those dead-and-gone Englishmen. They upheld the might
-of Britain, and her rights in the trade in palm oil and slaves and ivory
-that even then came down the river. And if they died--now, now at
-last, after many weary years, their descendants are beginning dimly to
-realise, as they never did, the value of the land for which they gave
-their lives.
-
-It is the custom to speak with contempt of a mangrove swamp, as if in it
-no beauty could lie, as if it were only waste land--dreary, depressing,
-ugly. Each of those epithets may be true--I cannot say--except the last,
-and that is most certainly a falsehood. What my impressions would be
-if I lived in the midst of it day after day I cannot say, but to a
-passer-by the mangrove swamp has a beauty of its own.
-
-When first I saw the Gambia I was fascinated, and found no words too
-strong for its beauty; and, having gone farther, I would take back not
-one word of that admiration. But I am like the lover who is faithless to
-his first mistress--he acknowledges her charm, but he has seen someone
-else; so now, as I sit down to write, I am reminded that the Volta is
-more ravishingly lovely, and that if I use up all my adjectives on the
-Gambia I shall have no words to describe my new mistress. Therefore must
-I modify my transports, and so it seems to me I am unfair.
-
-As we moved up the river we could plainly see the shore on either side,
-the dense mangrove swamp, doubled by its reflection, green and beautiful
-against its setting of blue sky and clear river. Crocodiles lay basking
-in the golden sunshine on the mud-banks, white egrets flew slowly from
-tree to tree, a brown jolah-king, an ibis debased for some sin in
-the youth of the world, sailed slowly across the water, a white
-fishing-eagle poised himself on high, looking for his prey, a slate-blue
-crane came across our bows, a young pelican just ahead was taking
-his first lesson in swimming, and closer to the bank we could see
-king-fishers, bright spots of colour against the dark green of the
-mangrove.
-
-“The wonder of the Tropics”--the river seemed to be whispering at first,
-and then fairly shouted--“can you deny beauty to this river?” and I,
-with the cool Harmattan blowing across the water to put the touch of
-moisture in the air it needed, was constrained to answer that voice,
-which none of the others seemed to hear, “Truly I cannot.”
-
-It would be impossible to describe in detail all the little wharves at
-which we stopped; besides, they all bore a strong family resemblance to
-one another, differing only when they were in the upper or lower river.
-Long before I could see any signs of human habitation the steamer's
-skipper was wildly agitated over the mails, wrinkling up his brows
-and pawing them over with his dirty black hands--mine were dirtier, at
-least, they showed more, and the way to the deck was so coaly it was
-impossible to keep clean. Then he would hang on to a string, which
-resulted in the most heartrending wails from the steamer's siren; a
-corrugated-iron roof would show up among the surrounding greenery, and a
-little wharf, or “tenda,” as they call them here, would jut out into
-the stream. These tendas are frail-looking structures built of the split
-poles of the rhon palm. There seem to be as many varieties of palm as
-there are of eucalyptus, all much alike to the uninitiated eye.
-
-The tendas look as if they were only meant to be walked on by bare
-feet--certainly very few of the feet rise beyond a loose slipper; and
-whether it was blazing noonday or pitchy darkness only made visible by a
-couple of hurricane lanterns of one candle-power, the tenda was
-crowded with people come to see the arrival of the steamer, which is
-a White-Star liner or a Cunarder to them--people in cast-off European
-clothing and the ubiquitous tourist cap, Moslems in fez and flowing
-white or blue robes, mammies with gaily coloured handkerchiefs bound
-round their heads and still gayer skirts and cloths, little children
-clad in one garment or no garments at all, beautiful grey donkeys that
-carry the groundnuts or the trade goods, fawn-coloured country cattle,
-and goats and sheep, black, white, and brown--and every living creature
-upon that tenda did his little best towards the raising of a most unholy
-din. And the steamer was not to be beaten. Jolloff and Man-dingo too was
-shrieked; the captain took a point of vantage, shook his black fist
-at intervals, and added his quota of curses in Jolloff, Mandingo,
-Senegalese, and broken French and English, and the cargo was unloaded
-with a clatter, clatter, punctuated by earpiercing yells that made one
-wonder if the slaving days had not come back, and these lumpers were not
-shrieking in agony.
-
-But, when I could understand, the remarks were harmless enough. What the
-black man says to his friends and acquaintances when he speaks in his
-own tongue I cannot say, but when he addresses them in English I can
-vouch for it his conversation is banal to the last degree. In the
-general din I catch some words I understand, and I listen.
-
-“Ah, Mr Jonsing, dat you, sah? How you do, sah?” Mr Jonsing's health is
-quite satisfactory; and Mrs Jonsing, and Miss Mabel, and Miss Gladys,
-and Mr Edward were all apparently in perfect health, for they were
-inquired after one by one at the top of the interested friend's voice.
-Then there were many wishes for the continuance of the interesting
-family in this happy state, and afterwards there was an excursion into
-wider realms of thought.
-
-“You 'member dat t'ing you deny las' mont', sah?” The question comes
-tentatively.
-
-“I deny it dis mont', sah,” Mr Jonsing answers promptly, which is, so
-far, satisfactory, as showing that Mr Jonsing has at least a mind of
-his own, and is not to be bounced into lightly changing it. I might have
-heard more, and so gleaned some information into the inner life of these
-people, but unfortunately Mr Jonsing now got in the way of the stalwart
-captain, and being assisted somewhat ungently by the collar of his
-ragged shirt to the tenda, he launched out into curses that were rude,
-to put it mildly, and my knowledge of his family affairs came to an
-abrupt conclusion.
-
-In the breaks in the mangrove, Balanghar is one of them, there is,
-of course, a little hard earth--the great shady _ficus elasticus_,
-beautiful silk-cotton trees, and cocoa-nut palms grow; the traders'
-yards have white stone posts at the four corners marking the extent of
-their leaseholds, and in these enclosures are the trading-houses, the
-round huts of the native helpers, and the little crinted yards, in which
-are poured the groundnuts, which are the occasion of all this clatter.
-
-One hundred and fifty miles up we came to McCarthy Island, five miles
-long by a mile wide, and markedly noticeable because here the great
-river changes its character entirely, the mangrove swamps are left
-behind, and open bush of mahogany, palm, and many another tree and
-creeper, to me nameless, takes its place. On McCarthy Island is a busy
-settlement, with the town marked into streets, lined with native shops
-and trading-houses. There are great groundnut stores along the river
-front, seven, or perhaps eight white people, a church, a hospital,
-obsolete guns, and an old powder magazine, that shows that in days gone
-by this island was only held by force of arms.
-
-They tell me that McCarthy Island is one of the hottest places in the
-world, though that morning the river had been veiled in white mist, the
-thermometer was down to between 50 deg. and 60 deg., and my boy had
-brought in my early-morning tea with his head tied up in a pocket
-handkerchief like an old woman; and at midday it was but little over 90
-deg., but this was December, the coolest season of the year. I discussed
-the question with a negro lady with her head bound up in a red-silk
-handkerchief. She was one of our passengers, and had come up trading in
-kola-nuts. Kola-nuts are hard, corner-shaped nuts that grow on a very
-handsome tree about the size of an oak, which means a small tree in
-Africa. They are much esteemed for their stimulating and sustaining
-properties. I have tried them, and I found them only bitter, so perhaps
-I do not want stimulating. A tremendous trade is done in them, and all
-along the coast you meet the traders, very often, as in this case,
-women. I had seen it in her eye for some time that she wanted to
-exchange ideas with me, and at last the opportunity came. She told me
-she came from Sierra Leone.
-
-“You know Freetown?” That is the capital. I said I had heard it was the
-hottest place in the world.
-
-“Pooh!” She tossed her head in scorn. “You wait two mont's; it be fool
-to M'Cart'y! You gat no rest, no sleep”; and she showed her white teeth
-and stretched out her black hands as if to say that no words of hers
-could do justice to this island.
-
-Truly, I think the sun must pour down here in the hot season, judging by
-my experience in the cool. The hot season is not in June, as one might
-expect, for then come the rains, when no white man, and, indeed, I think
-no black man foreign to the place, stays up the river, but in March and
-April. I do not propose to visit McCarthy in the hot season. In the cool
-the blazing sun overhead, and the reflected glare from the water, played
-havoc with my complexion. I did not think about it till the District
-Commissioner brought the fact forcibly home to me. He was a nice young
-fellow, but the sort of man who is ruin to England as a colonising
-nation, because he makes it so patent to everyone that he bitterly
-resents colonising on his own account, and will allow no good in the
-country wherein lies his work.
-
-I asked him if he did not think of bringing out his wife.
-
-He looked at me a moment, seeking words to show his opinion of a woman
-who insisted upon going where he thought no white woman was needed.
-
-“My wife,” he said, with emphasis that marked his surprise; “my wife?
-Why, my wife has such a delicate complexion that she has to wash her
-face always in distilled water.”
-
-It was sufficient. I understood when I looked in the glass that night
-the reproof intended to be conveyed. In all probability the lady was
-not quite such a fool as her husband intimated; but one thing is quite
-certain, she was buying her complexion at a very heavy cost if she were
-going to allow it to deprive her of the joy of seeing new countries.
-
-McCarthy was very busy; dainty cutters, frail canoes, and grimy steamers
-crowded the wharves, and to and fro across the great river, 500 yards
-wide here, the ferry, a great canoe, went backwards and forwards the
-livelong day, and I could just see gathered together herds of the pretty
-cattle of the country that looked not unlike Alderneys.
-
-When we left the island the river was narrower, so that we seemed to
-glide along between green walls, where the birds were singing and the
-monkeys barking and crying and whimpering like children. Again and
-again we passed trees full of them, sometimes little grey monkeys, and
-sometimes great dog-faced fellows that rumour says would tear you to
-pieces if you offended them and had the misfortune to fall into their
-hands. Now and then a hippopotamus rose, a reminder of an age that has
-gone by, and always on the mud-banks were the great crocodiles. And the
-trading-stations were, I think, more solitary and more picturesque.
-The little tendas were even more frail, just rickety little structures
-covered with a mat of crinting, for the river rises here very high, and
-these wharves are sure to be carried away in the rainy season. And then
-come hills, iron-stone hills, and tall, dry grass ten and twelve feet
-high. Sometimes we stopped where there was not even the frailest of
-tendas, and one night, just as the swift darkness was falling, the
-steamer drew up at a little muddy landing-stage, where there was a break
-in the trees, and three dugouts were drawrn up. Here she became wildly
-hysterical, and I began to think something would give way, until all
-shrieks died down as a tall black man, draped in blue, and with a long
-Dane gun across his shoulder, stalked out of the bush. Savage Africa
-personified. We had stopped to land a passenger, a mammy with her
-head tied up in a handkerchief, and a motley array of boxes, bundles,
-calabashes, chairs, saucepans, and fowls that made a small boat-load.
-She waved a farewell to the French trader as her friends congregated
-upon the shore and examined her baggage.
-
-“She is an important woman,” said he; “the wife of a black trader in the
-town behind there. He's a Christian.”
-
-“He's got a dozen wives,” said the Commissioner.
-
-“His official wife, then. Oh, you know the sort. I guarantee she keeps
-order in the compound.”
-
-At Fatta Tenda, which is quite a busy centre, from which you may start
-for the Niger and Timbuctoo, we gave a dinner-party, a dinner-party
-under difficulties. Our cook was excellent. How he turned out such
-dainties in a tiny galley three feet by six, and most of that taken
-up by the stove, I do not pretend to understand, but he did, so our
-difficulties lay not there, but with the lamp. What was the matter with
-it I do not know, but it gave a shocking light, and the night before our
-dinner-party it went out, and left us to finish our dinner in darkness.
-Then, next day, word went round that the mate was going to trim the
-lamp, and when we, with two men from the French factory, went
-into dinner, an unwonted light shed its brilliancy over the scene.
-Unfortunately, there was also a strong scent of kerosene, which is not
-usually considered a very alluring fragrance. But we consoled ourselves;
-the mate had trimmed the lamp. He had. He had also distributed most of
-the oil over the dinner-table--the cloth was soaked in it, and, worse
-than that, the salt, pepper, and mustard were full of it; and then, as
-we sat down to soup, there came in through the open windows a flight, I
-should say several flights, of flying ants. They died in crowds in the
-soup, they filled up the glasses, they distributed themselves over the
-kerosene-soaked table, till at last we gave them best and fled to the
-deck. Finally the servants reduced things to a modified state of order,
-but whenever I smell a strong smell of kerosene I am irresistibly
-reminded of the day we tried to foregather with our kind, and be
-hospitable up the Gambia.
-
-[Illustration: 0065]
-
-There were some Mandingo chiefs here. Bala, Chief of Kantora, and
-Jimbermang Jowlah, the local Chief, came to call. Bala dashed up on
-horseback, with a large following, to complain that there was trouble on
-the Border, for the French had come in and said that his town should
-pay a poll tax of 500 dollars. He ranged all his horses, with their high
-cantled saddles and their heavy iron stirrups, on the steep, red bank,
-and he and his chief man came on board the little steamer to talk to
-the Commissioner. They made a quaint picture--the fair, good-looking
-Commissioner, with his boyish face grave, as suited the occasion,
-and the Chief, a warrior and a gentleman, as unlike Mr Jonsing in
-his tourist cap as the Gambia is unlike the Thames at Wapping. The
-Commissioner wore a blue-striped shirt and riding breeches, and the
-Chief was clad all in blue of different shades; there was a sort of
-underskirt to his knees of dark-blue cotton patterned in white, over
-that was a pale-blue tunic, through which came his bare arms, and over
-that again a voluminous dark-blue cotton garment, caught in at the
-waist with a girdle, from which depended a very handsome sporran of red
-leather picked out in yellow; on his bare feet were strapped spurs, a
-spur with a single point to it like a nail. He had a handsome, clean-cut
-face, his shaven head was bared out of courtesy, and at his feet lay his
-headgear, a blue-velvet cap, with a golden star and crescent embroidered
-upon it, and a great round straw hat adorned with red leather such as
-the Hausas farther east make. He was a chief, every inch of him. And his
-manners were those of a courtly gentleman too. He did not screech and
-howl like the men on the wharf, though he was manifestly troubled and
-desperately in earnest; but, sitting there on the deck of the little
-steamer, with the various odds and ends of life scattered around him,
-he stated his case, through an interpreter, to the young Commissioner
-seated on the hen-coop and taking down every word. When it was done he
-was assured that the Governor should be told all about it, and now rose
-with an air of intense relief. He had thrown his burden on responsible
-shoulders, and had time to think about the white woman who was looking
-on. He had seen white men before, quite a number, but never had he seen
-a white woman, and so he turned and looked at me gravely, with not half
-the rude curiosity with which I felt I had been steadily regarding him.
-I should like to have been a white woman worth looking at, instead of
-which I was horribly conscious that the coal dust was in my hair, that
-my hands had but recently grasped the greasy handrail of those steps
-across the boiler, and that my skirts had picked up most of the
-multifarious messes that were to be gathered there and on the unclean
-deck. There is no doubt skirts should not come much below the knees in
-the bush.
-
-“He wishes to make his compliments to you,” said the interpreter, and
-the grave and silent Chief, with a little, low murmur, took my hand in
-both his delicate, cold, black ones, held it for a moment with his
-head just a little bent, and then went his way, and I felt I had been
-complimented indeed.
-
-The chief of Kantora, having done all he came to do, swam his horses
-across the river, trusting, I suppose, to the noise made by his numerous
-followers to scare away the crocodiles, and we went up the river to
-Kossun, which is within two miles of Yarba Tenda, where the British
-river ends. At Kossun there is a French factory only, and that managed
-by a black man, and here are the very beginnings of the groundnut trade.
-All around was vivid green--green on the bank, green reflected in the
-clear waters of the river; the sun was only just rising, the air was
-cool, and grey mists like a bridal veil rent with golden beams lay
-across the water; only by the factory was a patch of brown, enhancing
-the greenery that was all around it.
-
-[Illustration: 0069]
-
-The groundnut grows on a vine, and behind the factory this was all
-garnered into great heaps, and surrounded by crinted fences until time
-should be found to comb out the nuts. In the empty fields shy women,
-who dared not lift their faces to look at the strange, white woman, were
-gleaning, and the little, naked children were frankly afraid, and ran
-shrieking from the horrid sight. And just behind the factory were little
-enclosures of neatly plaited straw, and each of these contained a man's
-crop ready waiting to be valued and bought by the trader. Kossun was
-the only place where I saw the nuts as they belonged to the grower. All
-along the river there were heaps of them, looking like young mountains,
-but all these heaps were trader's property. At Nianimaroo, on the lower
-river, I saw a heap, which the pleased proprietor told me was worth
-£1000. He apparently had finished his heap, and was waiting to send it
-down the river, but everywhere else men, picturesque in fluttering rags
-or grotesque in cast-off European garments, were bringing calabashes and
-sacks of groundnuts to add to the heaps; and, since they cannot walk on
-the yielding nuts, which are like so many pebbles under their bare feet,
-little board ladders or steps of filled sacks were placed for them to
-run up. And no sooner were the heaps piled up than they had to be dug
-out again.
-
-At Fatta Tenda, on the way down, having got rid of her cargo and her
-deck passengers, the _Mungo Park_ began to load again with groundnuts;
-and men were busy through all the burning hot midday digging into the
-groundnut heap, filling up sacks, and as the sacks were filled stalwart,
-half-naked black men, like a line of ants, tramped laden down the steep
-bank and poured their loads into the steamer's hold in a cloud of gritty
-dust that penetrated everywhere. The trader told me that when he wanted
-labourers he appealed to one of the principal men who live in the town
-a mile or so behind the wharf, and he sent in his “family,” who are paid
-at the rate of a shilling a day. It is very, very doubtful whether much
-of that shilling ever reaches the man who actually does the hard work.
-Things move slowly in the Gambia as in all Africa, and “family” is
-probably a euphonious term for household slave. After all, it is
-possibly only like the system of serfdom that existed in Europe in days
-gone by and will not exist very long here, for knowledge is coming,
-though it comes slowly, and with wealth pouring into the country and
-a Commissioner to appeal to in cases of oppression the black man
-will presently free himself. Even the women are already beginning to
-understand the difference. The morals of the country, be it remembered,
-are the primitive morals of a primitive people. A man may have four
-legal wives by Mohammedan law. He may have ever so many concubines, who
-add to his dignity; and then, if he is a big man--this was vouched
-for by the official native interpreter, who joined his Commissioner at
-M'Carthy--he has ever so many more women in his household, and these he
-expects to have children.
-
-It is their business and he sees that they do it, and the children
-belong to him no matter who is the father. Children, it will be seen,
-are an asset, and the woman is now beginning to understand that the
-children are hers alone, and again and again a troubled woman, angry and
-tearful, walks miles to appeal to the travelling Commissioner, such and
-such a man, her master has taken away her children and she has heard
-that the great white master will restore them to her. And in most cases
-the great white master, who has probably a laughing, round, boyish
-face, fancies he has not a desire above good shooting, and speaks of
-the country as “poisonous,” does all that is expected of him and often a
-good deal more also.
-
-[Illustration: 0073]
-
-And yet, only ten years ago, they were very doubtful still about the
-white man's protectorate in the Gambia, as graves in the Bathurst
-cemetery testify. Then was the last rising, when the district of
-San-nian Kunta was very disaffected, and two Commissioners, Mr Sitwell
-and Mr Silva, were sent with twelve native police to put matters
-straight. After the wont of the English, they despised their enemy and
-marched into a hostile village with the ammunition boxes screwed down,
-sat themselves down under a tree, and called on the Chief and village
-elders to come up before them. But the chief and elders did no such
-thing. Hidden in the surrounding bush, they replied with a volley
-from their long Danes, killing both the Commissioners and most of the
-policemen, but one escaping got away to the next Commissioner, a young
-fellow named Price. Now, Mr Price had only four policemen, but he was by
-no means sure of the death of his comrades, so promptly he sent off to
-headquarters for help, and without delay marched back to the disaffected
-village. The white men were dead and shockingly mutilated, but with his
-four faithful policemen he brought their remains back for decent burial.
-He did not know what moment he might not be attacked. He had before him
-as object lessons in savage warfare the dead bodies of his comrades. He
-had to march through thick bush, and they say at the end of that day's
-work young Mr Price's hair turned white. Punishment came, of course.
-Six months later the new Governor, Sir George Denton, with a company
-of W.A.F.F.'s--West African Field Force--marched to that disaffected
-village; the chief was deposed and exiled, and peace has reigned ever
-since.
-
-And now much farther away from Bathurst a woman may go through the
-country by herself in perfect safety. All the towns are still from one
-to four miles back from the tenda, away in the bush, from the old-time
-notion I suppose that there was danger to be dreaded by the great
-waterway, and early in the morning I used to take the narrow track
-through the long grass which was many feet above my head, and go and see
-primitive native life.
-
-Up at the head of the river our steamer filled rapidly. When our holds
-were full the groundnuts were put in sacks and piled on the decks fore
-and aft, half-way up the masts, almost to the tops of the funnels, and
-the only place that was not groundnuts was the little cabin and the deck
-on top. There were £600 worth of groundnuts on board the _Mungo Park_,
-and we stowed on top of them passengers, men and women, and all their
-multifarious belongings, and then proceeded to pick up lighters also
-laden with groundnuts bound down the river.
-
-Towards the evening of the second day of our homeward journey we came to
-a big creek down which was being poled by six men a red lighter, deep in
-the water and laden to the very brim with groundnuts. This the steamer
-was to tow behind. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The heavily
-laden lighter drifted first to one side and then to the other and
-threatened to fill, and the Commissioner's interpreter, sitting on deck,
-told me a long story of how here in the river there is a devil that will
-not allow a steamer or a cutter to go past unless the owner dances to
-placate him. If he do not care to dance himself he must pay someone else
-to dance for him. Unless someone dances, the engines may work, the sails
-may fill, but that vessel will not go ahead till the river devil has
-his toll. No one danced on board the _Mungo Park_, unless the black
-captain's prancing about and shaking his fist and shouting what sounded
-like blood-curdling threats at the skipper of the lighter might be
-construed into dancing. If so, it had not the desired effect, for the
-heavy lighter wouldn't steer, and presently the captain decided to tow
-it alongside. The darkness fell; all around us was the wide, weird, dark
-river, with the green starboard light just falling upon the mast of the
-lighter alongside, and for a few brief moments there was silence and
-peace, for the lighter was towing all right at last. Then the mast bent
-forward suddenly, there was a stifled, strangled cry, the captain gave a
-wild yell, the engines were stopped, and there was no more lighter, only
-the smooth dark water was rough with floating groundnuts and the river
-devil had taken his toll. Five of the crew had jumped for the _Mungo
-Park_ and reached her, but the sixth, a tall Man-dingo, wrapped in a
-blue cloth, had gone down a prey for the wicked crocodiles or the cruel,
-strong undercurrents. They launched a boat and we felt our impotence and
-the vastness of the river, for they only had a hurricane lantern and it
-looked but a tiny speck on the waste of dark waters. The boat went up
-and down flashing its feeble light. Here was a patch of groundnuts,
-here a floating calabash, here a cloth, but the lighter and the man were
-gone, and we went on our way, easily enough now, because, of course, the
-steamer had paid toll.
-
-There are the beginnings, it seems to me, in the groundnut trade of the
-Gambia, of what may be in the future a very great industry. True, the
-value of the groundnut is regulated by the price of cotton-seed oil,
-for which the oil pressed from the groundnut makes a very excellent
-substitute. Last year the Gambia's groundnuts, the harvest of the
-simplest, most ignorant peasants but one remove from savagery, was worth
-between £500,000 and £600,000, and not one-twentieth of the soil was
-cultivated, but the colony's existence was fairly justified. The greater
-part of this crop goes into French hands and is exported to Marseilles,
-where it is made into the finer sorts of soap. What wonder then if the
-French cast longing eyes upon the mighty river, for not only is the land
-around it rich, but they have spent large sums upon railways for their
-great colony of Senegal, and had they the Gambia as well they would
-have water carriage for both their imports and exports even in the dry
-season, and in the rains they could bring their heavy goods far far
-inland.
-
-I realised all this as I came back to Bathurst with the dust from the
-groundnuts in my hair and eyes and nostrils, and dresses that had not
-been worn an hour before they were shrieking for the washtub. But what
-did a little discomfort matter?
-
-I returned in time for the Christmas and New-Year festivities. On
-Christmas night all the English in the colony dined at Government House
-to celebrate the festival. Exiles all, they would have said. I have been
-told that I judge the English in West Africa a little hardly, and of
-course I realise all the bitterness of divided homes, especially at this
-season that should be one of family reunions. But after all the English
-make their life in West Africa far harder than they need. Dimly I saw
-this on my visit to the Gambia; slowly the feeling grew upon me till,
-when I left the Coast eight months later, I was fully convinced that if
-England is to hold her pride of place as a colonising nation with the
-French and Germans, she must make less of this exile theory and more of
-a home in these outlands. The doctors tell me this is impossible, and
-of course I must bow to the doctors' opinion, but it is saying in
-effect--which I will not allow for a moment--that the French and
-Germans--and especially the French and German women--are far better than
-the English.
-
-Here in the Gambia I began to think it, and the fact was driven in more
-emphatically as I went down the Coast. The Englishman makes great moan,
-but after all he holds a position in West Africa the like of which he
-could not dream of in England. He is the superior, the ruler; men bow
-down before him and rush to do his bidding--he who would have a suburban
-house and two maid-servants in the old country, lives in barbaric
-splendour. Of course it is quite possible he prefers the suburban house
-and two maid-servants and his wife. And there, of course, the crux of
-the matter lies. Why, I know not, but English women are regarded as
-heroines and martyrs who go out to West Africa with their husbands.
-Possibly it is because I am an Australian and have had a harder
-bringing-up that I resent very much the supposition that a woman cannot
-go where a man can. From the time I was a little girl I have seen women
-go as a matter of course to the back-blocks with their husbands, and if,
-barring a few exceptions, they did not stay there, we all supposed not
-that it was the country that did not agree with them, but the husband.
-We all know there are husbands and wives who do not agree. And I can
-assure you, for I know both, life in the back-blocks in Australia,
-life in many of the towns of Australia, with its heat and its want of
-service, is far harder for a woman than it is in West Africa. Yet here
-in the Gambia and all along the Coast was the same eternal cry wherever
-there was a woman, “How long can she stay?”
-
-The difference between the French and the English views on this vexed
-question was exemplified by the Commissioner's view and the French
-trader's. I have already given the former. Said the latter, “Of course
-my wife will come out. Why should she not. She is just waiting till
-the baby is a month old. What is the good of a wife to me in Paris? The
-rains? Of course she will stay the rains. It is only the English who are
-afraid of the rainy season.” And I was sorry for the little contempt
-he put into his voice when he spoke of the English fear. I know this
-opinion of mine will bring down upon my devoted head a storm of wrath
-from West-Coast officials, but whether the Coast is healthy or not there
-is no denying the fact that the nation who takes its women is far more
-likely to hold a country, and in that the French and Germans are beating
-us hands down.
-
-But this I only realised dimly during my stay in the Gambia. I was
-to leave on New Year's Day and on New Year's Eve we all went to the
-barracks of the W.A.F.F.'s to see the New Year in. And then in the soft,
-warm night the Governor and I went back to Government House. The stars
-were like points of gold, the sky was like dark-blue velvet, and against
-it the graceful palms stood out like splashes of ink, the water washed
-softly against the shore, there was the ceaseless hum of insects in the
-air, and from the native town behind came a beating of tom-toms subdued
-by the distance. The sentry started out of the shadow at the gate as the
-rickshaws arrived, and there came his guttural hail, “Who goes dere?”
-
-“Friend,” said the Governor's voice. It was commonplace, everyday to
-him.
-
-“Pass friend and all's well,” came the answer, and we went in and up the
-steps; but surely, I thought, it was a very good omen, a very good omen
-indeed. “Pass friend and all's well.” I was leaving that day that had
-not yet dawned; I was going down the Coast and all should be well.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III--THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVE?
-
-_The origin of Sierra Leone--The difficulties of disposing of freed
-slaves--One of the beauty-spots of the earth--Is it possible that in
-the future, like Jamaica, it may be a health-resort?--Zachary Macauley's
-views--Few women in Freetown--Sanitary matters taken out of the hands of
-the Town Council and vested in a sanitary officer--Marked improvement
-in cleanliness and health of the town--A remarkable man of
-colour--Extraordinary language of the Creole--Want of taste in dress
-when they ape the European--Mrs Abraham Freeman at home._
-
-I had no intention of going to Sierra Leone, but in West Africa as yet
-you make your way from one place to another along the sea-board, and
-not only did Sierra Leone lie directly on my way, but the steamer, the
-_Zaria_, in which I was travelling, stayed there for four days.
-
-In the old days, a little over one hundred years ago, England,
-successfully policing the world, was putting down the iniquitous
-slave-trade all along the coasts of Africa, and found herself with
-numbers of black and helpless men, women, and children upon her hands.
-They had been collected from all parts of the Coast; they themselves
-often did not know where their homes lay, and the problem--quite
-a difficult one--was to know what to do with them. To land them
-promiscuously on the Coast was to seal their fate; either they would be
-killed or at the very best they would at once relapse into the condition
-from which they had been rescued. In this dilemma England did perhaps
-the only thing she could do. She bought from the chiefs a strip of land
-round the mouth of a river and landed there her somewhat troublesome
-charges to make for themselves, if they could, a home. Of course she
-did not leave them to their own devices; to do that would have been to
-insure their destruction at the hands of the Mendi and Timini war-boys,
-but she planted there a Governor and some soldiers, and made such
-provision as she could for the future of these forlorn people. Then the
-colony was but a little strip of land. It is but a small place still,
-but the British Protectorate now takes in those warlike Timinis and
-Mendis, and extends some hundreds of miles inland and as far south as
-the negro republic of Liberia, which I was on my way to visit.
-
-[Illustration: 0083]
-
-I don't know who chose Sierra Leone, but whoever he was the choice does
-him infinite credit. It is the most beautiful spot on all the west coast
-of Africa. I have seen many of the beautiful harbours of the world,
-Sydney, and Dunedin, and Hobart, which to my mind is the most beautiful
-of them all, Cape Town, and Naples, and Vigo, Genoa, Palermo, Messina,
-and lovely Taormina, which after all is not a harbour. I know them
-intimately, and with any of these Sierra Leone can hold her own. We
-entered the mouth of the river, passed the lighthouse, a tall, white
-building nestling among the palms, and all along the shore were
-entrancing little green bays, with green lawns. They looked like lawns
-from the ship, shaded by over-hanging trees. The blue sea met softly the
-golden sands, and the hills behind were veiled in a most alluring mist.
-It lifted and closed down and lifted again, like a bride longing yet
-fearing to disclose her loveliness to her lord. Here it seemed to me
-that a man might, when the feverish heat of youth is passed, build
-himself a home and pass the evening of his days resting from his
-labours; but I am bound to say I was the only person on board who did
-think so. One and all were determined to impress upon me the fact that
-Sierra Leone was known as the White Man's Grave, and that it deserved
-the name. And yet Zachary Macauley, who ruled over it in the end of the
-eighteenth century, staunchly upheld its advantages. I do not know that
-he exactly recommends it as a health-resort, but something very near
-to it, and he is very angry when anyone reviles the country. Zachary
-Macauley was probably right. If a man is not prepared to stand a certain
-amount of heat he must not go to the Coast at all; and if he does go he
-must be prepared so to guide his life that it is possible to conform
-to the rules of health demanded of the white man in the Tropics. If
-he looks for the pleasures and delights of England and her temperate
-climate, he will find himself bitterly disappointed, but if he seeks for
-what Africa can give, and give with lavish hand, he will probably find
-that the country will treat him well.
-
-We cast anchor opposite the town appropriately named Freetown, and I
-landed, presented my letter, and was asked by the kindly Governor to
-stay for a few days at Government House.
-
-The majority of the Europeans, with the exception of the Governor, do
-not live in Freetown. They have wisely built their bungalows on the
-healthier hillsides, and I suppose as the colony increases in importance
-the Governor will go too; but I am glad when I was there he was still at
-Fort Thornton.
-
-[Illustration: 0087]
-
-Of the history of the fort I know nothing. The bungalow is raised on
-thick stone walls, and you go up steps to the dwelling-house, past great
-rooms that are railed off with iron bars. There are ornamental plants
-there now, but there is no disguising the fact these are evidently
-relics of old slave days; I presume the barracoons of the slaves. But
-behind the one-time courtyard is filled up and sown with Bahama grass
-kept close-cropped and green, so that croquet and bowls may be played
-upon it. The bastions are now embowered in all manner of tropical
-greenery, and the great guns, the guns that Zachary Macauley used
-against the French privateers, peep out from a tangle of purple
-bougainvillea, scarlet hibiscus, fragrant frangipanni, and glorious
-white moon flowers.
-
-There are white women in Freetown, not very many, but still fifteen or
-sixteen--the wives of the soldiers, of the political officers, medical
-officers, and the traders, and their number is growing, so that when the
-Governor gives a garden-party, the lawn that was once the courtyard of
-the fort is gay with bright muslin dresses, ribbons, and flowers. They
-seemed to like it too, those to whom I spoke, and there is no doubt that
-the place is improving from a health point of view. Until within the
-last two or three years the management of sanitary affairs was in the
-hands of the Town Council, of whom a large number were negroes, and the
-average negro is extremely careless about things sanitary; at last, so
-evil a reputation did the most beautiful town on the Coast get that
-it was found necessary to vest all power in the hands of a strong and
-capable medical officer, and make him responsible for the cleanliness
-of the town. The result, I believe, has more than justified all hopes.
-Perhaps some day the town may be as healthy as it is beautiful.
-
-But I really know very little about Sierra Leone. I intended to come
-back and go up the railway that goes a couple of hundred miles up
-country, but as yet I have not had time, and all I can speak about
-with authority is its exceeding beauty. The streets are wide and rather
-grass-grown, for it is difficult to keep down vegetation in a moist and
-tropical climate, and I am glad to say there are, though the town is by
-no means well-planted, some beautiful trees to be seen. Government House
-is embowered in verdure, and the first station on the railway that runs
-up to the hill-top is “Cotton-tree.”
-
-And the dwellers in this earthly paradise? Knowing their pathetic and
-curious history I was anxious to see this people sprung from men and
-women gathered from all corners of Africa, unfortunate and unhappy.
-
-Frankly, I share with the majority of Coasters a certain dislike to the
-educated negro. But many of the men I like best, the men whose opinion
-I have found well worth taking about things West-African, tell me I am
-wrong. You cannot expect to come up from savagery in a few decades, and
-the thing I dislike so in the negro clerk is but a phase that will pass.
-Here in Sierra Leone I met one man who made me feel that it would
-pass, that the time will come when the colour of the skin will make no
-difference, and that is the African known to all the world as Dr Blyden.
-He is an old man now and he was ill, so I went to see him; and as I sat
-and talked to him one still, hot evening, looking down the busy street
-where men and women in all stages of dress and undress were passing to
-and fro, carrying burdens on their heads, shrieking and shouting at one
-another in the unintelligible jargon they call English, had I not looked
-and seen for myself that his complexion was the shadowed livery of the
-burnished sun, I should have thought I was talking to some professor of
-one of the older Universities of England. His speech was measured and
-cultivated and there was no trace in it of that indescribable pompous
-intonation which seems peculiar to the educated black man. He gave me
-good advice, too.
-
-[Illustration: 0091]
-
-“What shall I write about?” I asked, and halfexpected him to enter into
-a long dissertation upon the possibilities that lay latent in his race.
-But I might have known this man, who had conquered more difficulties on
-his way upwards than ever I had dreamed about, better than that.
-
-“Write about what you see,” said he. “And if you do not understand what
-you see then ask until you do.”
-
-So I have taken his advice and I write about what I have seen, and
-though afterwards I found reason to like much the peasant peoples of
-West Africa, I did not like the Creoles, as these descendants of freed
-slaves call themselves. Do I judge them hardly, I wonder? If so, I
-judge only as all the West Coast judges. They are a singularly arrogant
-people, blatant and self-satisfied, and much disliked along the Coast
-from the Gambia to San Paul de Loando. But they have taken advantage of
-the peace which England has ensured to them, and are prosperous. Traders
-and town-dwellers are they if they can manage it, and they pursue their
-avocations up and down the Coast. A curious thing about them is their
-language. If you ask them they would tell you it is English, and they
-would tell you they know no other; and English it is, as to the words,
-but such an extraordinary jargon it is quite as difficult to understand
-as any unknown tongue. Yet it is the peculiar bastard tongue that
-is spoken all over the Coast. Many who speak it as the only means of
-communication between them and their boys must have wondered how such a
-jargon ever came into existence, and it was not till Mr Migeod wrote his
-book on the languages of West Africa that anyone in fact ever thought
-of classing it as a separate language. But once pointed out, the fact
-is undoubted. Sierra Leonese is simply English spoken with a negro
-construction.
-
-Listening very carefully, it took a great deal of persuasion to make
-me believe the words were English. When I bought bananas from a woman
-sitting under the shade of a spreading cotton tree and the man behind
-her came forward and held out his hand, saying: “Make you gi'e me heen
-ooman coppa all,” I grasped the fact that he intended to have the money
-long before I understood that he had said, in the only English, the only
-tongue he knew: “Give me her money,” even though I did know that “coppa”
- stood for money. Some of the words, of course, become commonplaces of
-everyday life, and I am sure the next time I call on a friend, who is
-rich enough to have a man-servant, association of ideas will take me
-back, and I shall ask quite naturally, “Massa lib?” instead of the
-customary “Is Mrs Jones at home?” Of course, in the case of Mrs Jones it
-would be “Missus,” but it was generally a master I was inquiring for in
-Africa.
-
-Sunday or some high holiday is the day to see Freetown in its best
-clothes. Then the black gentleman appears in all the glory of a tall,
-black-silk hat, a frock coat, a highly starched waistcoat, the gayest
-of ties, scarlet or pink, the palest of dove-coloured trousers, and
-bright-yellow kid gloves; and the negro woman hides her fine figure with
-ill-fitting corsets, over which she wears an open-work muslin blouse,
-through which her dark skin shows a dull purple. Of all the places in
-Africa to transgress the laws of beauty and art Freetown is the very
-worst, and if ever a people tried their best to hide their own charms
-it is the Creoles of Sierra Leone. It would be comic if it were not
-pathetic. And yet, that these clothes are not part and parcel of the
-lives of these children near bred to the sun is promptly seen if a
-shower of rain comes on. In a lightning flash I saw a damsel, who might
-have come out of Fulham Road, or, at the very least, Edgeware Road,
-strip off the most perishable of her precious finery, do them up in a
-neat parcel that would carry easily under her umbrella, and serenely and
-unembarrassed march home in her white chemise and red petticoat. And she
-seemed to think as she passed me smiling she was doing the only right
-and proper thing to be done; as indeed she was.
-
-I was a seeker after knowledge while I was in Freetown, and was always
-anxious to go anywhere and everywhere if a reason could be possibly
-contrived, so it happened that on one occasion I went to Lumley in
-search of fish. Lumley is a little village in the environ of Freetown,
-and the fish was to be bought from one Abraham Freeman, who dwelt at the
-side of the lagoon there. I went in a hammock, of course, and the way
-was lovely, up hill and down dale, through country that looked like a
-gigantic greenhouse run wild. The village was mostly built of mud with
-thatched roofs, but sometimes the houses were of wood, and the upper
-parts very wisely of trellis-work so as to insure a free current of air.
-When I arrived I looked round and told my hammock-boys to set me down at
-a cottage where a negro clad in a white shirt and trousers was lolling
-in a hammock. He did not scream at the scenery. He was rather suitably
-clad, I thought. It seemed he was the schoolmaster and a person of
-authority in the place.
-
-“Can you tell me where Abraham Freeman lives?” I asked.
-
-He corrected me gently but decidedly in his pompous English.
-
-“Mr Freeman's abode is a little farther on by the lagoon. I believe
-Mr Freeman is absent in his boat, but Mrs Freeman is at home and will
-receive you.”
-
-So we went on a little farther through the tangle of greenery till the
-waters of the lagoon showed up. A dried mud-shack, thatched with palm
-leaves, stood between the row of cocoa-nut palms that fringed the lagoon
-and the roadway, and there my hammock-boys set me down.
-
-“Dis Abraham Freeman's?” They were Timini and did not waste their breath
-on titles for a Creole, whom they would have eaten up save for the
-presence of the white man.
-
-I got out and a tall, skinny black woman clad in a narrow strip of blue
-cloth round her hips came forward to meet me. Nothing was left to the
-imagination, and all her charms had long since departed. She hadn't even
-a handkerchief round her head, and the negro woman has lost all sense
-of vanity when she leaves her wool uncovered. Mrs Abraham Freeman was
-at home! My boys found a box for me to sit upon, and I contemplated
-Mrs Freeman and her family. Rebecca Freeman, about fifteen, was like a
-bronze statue so beautifully moulded was she; she really did not need
-anything beyond the narrow cloth at her hips, and being very justifiably
-vain she wore a gaily coloured silk turban. Elkanah Freeman, when he
-took off his coat to shin up a cocoa-nut palm, wore no shirt, was built
-like a Greek god; and “my little gran'-darter, Deborah,” stark but for
-a string of green beads round her middle, was a delightful little
-cuddlesome thing, but “my sistah Esther an' Mistah Freeman's sistah
-Elizabeth” were hideous, skinny, and withered old hags, and the little
-strips of cloth they wore did not hide much. Each had a stone between
-her bony knees, and on it was breaking up some small sort of shell-fish
-like periwinkles. I got Mrs Freeman to show me the inside of her house.
-It was just four windowless rooms with openings under the eaves for
-air, with walls of dried clay, and for all furniture two wooden couches
-heaped up with rags. Outside on three stones a pot was boiling, and
-I asked her what was in it and could not make out her answer till she
-pointed out three skinny pigs rooting among the unsavoury refuse of the
-yard, then I grasped she was saying “hog,” and I was thankful I was not
-going to have any of that dinner. She begged from me on the score of
-her poverty, and in pity I gave her a shilling, and then the little
-grand-daughter was so winsome, she had to have a penny, and then the two
-poor old souls, cracking shell-fish and apparently done with all that
-makes life good for a woman, begged so piteously that they had to have
-something; so, on the whole, it was rather an expensive visit, but it
-was well worth it to see Mrs Freeman “at home.”
-
-But I don't know Sierra Leone. I speak of all the West Coast as a
-passer-by speaks of it; but I know less of Sierra Leone than any other
-place I visited. Only it charmed me--I am going back some day soon if I
-can afford it--and I went on with regret to the negro republic.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV--WHERE THE BLACK MAN RULES
-
-_America's experiment in the way of nation-making--Exiles in
-their mothers' land--The forlorn little company on Providence
-Island--Difficulties of landing and finding accommodation--British
-Consul to the rescue--The path to the British Consulate and the Liberian
-College--An outrageously ill-kept town--“Lovely little homes up the
-river”--A stickler for propriety--Dress and want of dress--The little
-ignorant missionary girl--At prayer in Lower Buchanan--The failure of a
-race._
-
-No one on board the _Zaria_ really believed I would land in Liberia.
-When I heard them talk I hardly believed it myself, and yet being there
-it seemed a pity not to see all I could see. The captain and officers
-were strongly of opinion there was absolutely nothing to see whatever.
-If it was madness for a woman to come alone to the Coast, it
-was stark-staring madness that almost needed restraining in a
-strait-waistcoat to think of landing in Liberia, for Liberia of all
-the countries along the Guinea Coast is the one most disliked by the
-sailors, most despised, and since I have been there I am inclined to say
-not without reason. For of course I did land; I should have been ashamed
-of myself if I had not, and I spent the best part of a fortnight there,
-and thanks to the kindness of His Britannic Majesty's Consul spent it
-very comfortably indeed.
-
-Liberia is America's experiment in the way of nation-making even as
-Sierra Leone is Great Britain's, and if I cannot praise the Creole of
-Sierra Leone I have still less admiration for his American cousin.
-
-In the second decade of the last century philanthropists began to
-consider the future of the freed slave in the United States, and it was
-decided that it would be wisdom to transport him back to the continent
-from which his forefathers came, and let him try there to put into
-practice the lessons he had learned in the art of civilisation. Bitter
-is the slur of black blood in the States; bitter, bitter was it ninety
-years ago when the forlorn little company who were to found a civilised
-negro state first set foot on their mothers' land. America was but young
-among the nations in 1822, so she took no responsibility, made no effort
-to launch these forlorn people in their new venture, or to help them
-once they were launched. Their leader was a quadroon with a fine face
-if one may judge from the picture in Executive Mansion, Monrovia, and he
-dreamed I suppose of wiping away the slur, the unmerited slur which lay
-across him and all like him with dark blood in their veins. With the
-chain and with the lash had America enforced the stern law that by
-the sweat of his brow shall man live, and she had seen to it that the
-personal toil of the negro and all with negro blood in their veins
-profited them only after their taskmasters had been satisfied. They
-belonged to a degraded subject race; no wonder they came back gladly,
-hopefully to the land from which certainly all their mothers had sprung.
-But it was no easy task they had before them. For a strong, hopeful,
-virile people it would have been difficult; to a people burdened with
-the degradation of centuries of servitude it has proved a task well-nigh
-beyond their capabilities. And before we condemn as do all the men along
-the Coast, as very often I do myself, it is only fair to remember the
-past.
-
-[Illustration: 0101]
-
-It must have been a very forlorn little company of people who landed on
-a small island at the mouth of that unknown river in 1822. They called
-the island Providence Island, and there they were cooped up for some
-weeks, for the people on the shore, warlike savages who brooked no
-master, objected to the newcomers, and it was some little time before
-they could set foot on the mainland and found their principal town of
-Monrovia. That was nearly ninety years ago, but very far inland they
-have never been able to go, for though Liberia takes up quite a large
-space on the map it is only Liberia in name. The hinterland is held by
-fighting tribes who resent any interference with their vested rights,
-and make the fact particularly clear.
-
-The outlines of the history of Liberia I had known vaguely for many a
-long day even to the name of Monrovia their capital, so called after
-President Munro, and it seemed to give point to the story to sit on the
-deck of the ship that swung at her anchors just beyond the surf of the
-river mouth. At least they had chosen a very beautiful place. Blue sky,
-blue sea, snow-white surf breaking on the bar, and a hillside clothed in
-dense greenery with palms cutting the sky line and the roofs of houses
-peeping out from among the verdure, that is what I saw, and the captain
-was emphatic I had seen the best of it. I did not doubt his word then,
-and having been ashore I am bound to confess he was right.
-
-But the difficulty was to get ashore. I had a letter to the British
-Consul, but I had not sampled the kindliness of British Consuls as I had
-that of the Governors, and I did not know exactly what he would say. “I
-wonder if there is an hotel,” I said doubtfully to the captain, and he
-sniffed.
-
-“You couldn't stay in a negro hotel.”
-
-I sent off my letter to the Consul and waited, and a little cloud came
-up out of the sea and spread over all the sky, and it rained, and it
-rained, and it rained, and it rained. The sky was dark and forbidding,
-the sea was leaden-coloured, the waves just tipped with angry, white
-foam, and the green hills were blotted out, the decks were awash, the
-awnings were sopping and wept coaly tears, and the captain said as if
-that settled it, “There, you can't possibly go ashore.” But I was by no
-means sure. Still there was no letter from His Majesty's Consul. Morning
-passed on to afternoon, and afternoon waned towards evening and still
-there was no letter. A ship on a pouring wet day is just about as
-uncomfortable a place as one can be in, but still I was inclined to
-accept the captain's opinion that Monrovia without someone to act as
-guide, philosopher, and friend would be a worse place.
-
-No letter, and the captain came along.
-
-“I must get away before dark.” He spoke as if that settled it, and he
-was right, but not the way he expected.
-
-I felt I simply could not go without seeing this place, and I decided.
-“Then I'll go ashore.”
-
-“You can't possibly.”
-
-“Oh yes, I can. They won't eat me.”
-
-I don't know though that I was quite comfortable as I was dropped over
-the side in a mammy chair into a surf boat that was half-full of water.
-The rain had stopped at last but everything in that boat was wet, and my
-gear made a splash as it was dropped down.
-
-My soldier brother had lent me his camp-kit for the expedition.
-
-“Can't possibly hurt it,” said he good-naturedly. “It's been through two
-campaigns. If you spoil it, it shall be my contribution; but you won't.”
-
-I accepted, but I thought as I sat on the bedding-roll at the bottom of
-that very wet boat, with my head not coming above the gunwale, that he
-did not know Africa. I hoped I should not have to sleep on that bed that
-night, because it was borne in on me it would be more than damp.
-
-Luckily I didn't. We crossed the bar, and the ragged, half-naked Kroo
-boys, than whom there are surely no better boatmen in the world, begged
-a dash, “because we no splash you,” as if a bucket or two of salt water
-would have made much difference, and I gave it and was so absorbed in
-the wonder as to what was to become of me that I gave hardly any heed to
-the shore that was approaching. When I did it was to notice that all
-the beauty I had seen from the deck was vanishing. Man's handiwork was
-tumble-down, dirty, dilapidated, unfinished. I stepped from the boat to
-a narrow causeway of stone; it is difficult to get out of a boat five
-feet deep with grace, more especially when your skirts are sopping, and
-I stepped from the causeway, it was not above a foot wide, into yellow
-mud, and saw I was surrounded by dilapidated buildings such as one might
-see in any poor, penniless little port. There were negroes in all stages
-of rags round me, and then out from amongst them stepped a white man, a
-neat and spick-and-span white man with soldier written all over him, the
-soldier of the new type, learned, thoughtful, well-read.
-
-“Mrs Gaunt?”
-
-I said “Yes” with a little gasp, because his immaculate spruceness made
-me feel I was too much in keeping with the buildings and the people
-around us.
-
-“Did you get my note? I am sorry I only got yours a couple of hours
-ago.”
-
-Oh, I understood by now that in Africa it is impossible for a note to
-reach its destination quickly, and I said so, and he went on to arrange
-for my accommodation.
-
-“If you will stay at the Consulate I will be delighted, but it is a
-mile and a half from the town, and I have no wife; or there is a
-boarding-house in the town, not too uncomfortable I am told.”
-
-There could be but one answer to that. Of course I accepted his
-invitation; there are but few conventions and no Mrs Grundy in
-out-of-the-way spots, thank heaven, and in the growing darkness we set
-off for the Consulate. It was broken to me regretfully that I would have
-to walk; there is no other means of progression in the negro republic.
-
-Such a walk as it was. Never have I met such a road. It was steep, and
-it was rough, and it was stony as a mountain torrent; now after the
-rain it was wet and slippery and the branches of the overhanging trees
-showered us with water as we passed. It was lonely as a forest path in
-Ashanti, and the jungle was thick on either hand, the night birds cried,
-the birds that loved the sun made sleepy noises, the ceaseless insects
-roused to activity by the rain made the darkness shrill with their
-clamour, and there were mysterious rustlings as small animals forced
-their way through the bush or fled before us. My host offered me
-his stick to pull me over the steepest rocks, and also supplied the
-interesting information that round the Consulate the deer came down to
-lick the salt from the rocks, and the panthers, tigers they called them
-there, came down and killed the deer. I made a mental note not to walk
-in that path by night; indeed I made a note not to walk in it ever
-again, as drenched and dripping with perspiration we emerged into a
-clearing and saw looming up before us a tropical bungalow and beyond the
-sea. It is an exquisite situation but is desperately lonely.
-
-[Illustration: 0108]
-
-My gear came on men's heads and the Consul's note was delivered to me
-in the bush. Neither he nor I understood why it had come by such
-a roundabout path. One of his servants also met us half-way with a
-lantern, and since I had heard by then about the “tigers” I confess to
-thinking it was a wise precaution.
-
-The Consulate is a fine two-storied building with wide verandahs and a
-large hall where we generally sat, and that hall was very inadequately
-lighted by some excellent lamps. The Consul didn't understand them and
-the negro servants didn't understand them, and darkness was just visible
-and I determined as soon as I knew my host well enough to ask him to let
-me have a turn at his lamps. Such is the power of a little knowledge;
-when I left the Consulate it was lighted as it should be, but that first
-night we spent in a dim, religious light, and I felt I was going to
-enjoy myself hugely, for here at last was something new. The Gambia and
-Sierra Leone had been too much regulation Tropics; all that I had seen
-and done I had at least read of before, but this was something quite
-different. This had all the glamour of the unknown and the unexpected. I
-am bound to say that His Majesty's Consul did not look at things with
-the same eyes. He didn't like Liberia, and he said frankly that things
-might be unexpected in a measure but he always knew they would be
-unpleasant. But I went to bed that night with the feeling I was really
-entering into the land of romance.
-
-Next morning I told my host I would go and see the town.
-
-“But I shan't go by the short cut,” I added emphatically.
-
-“What short cut?”
-
-“The way we came last night.”
-
-“That's not a short cut,” said he, and he smiled pitifully at my
-ignorance of what was before me. “That's the main road.”
-
-And so it was. Afterwards I tried to photograph it, but in addition to
-the difficulty of getting an accurate picture of a steep slope, I had
-the misfortune to shake the camera, and so my most remarkable picture
-was spoiled. I give a picture of the road, but I always felt when I
-came to that part the worst was left behind. And yet on this road is
-the Liberian College where the youth of Liberia, male and female, are
-educated. It is a big building built of brick and corrugated iron, in a
-style that seems wholly unsuited to the Liberian climate, though viewed
-from a distance it looks imposing in its setting of greenery. They
-teach the children algebra and euclid, or profess to do so--evil-tongued
-rumour has it that the majority of the Liberian women can neither read
-nor write--but to attain that, to them a useless edge, they have to
-scramble over without exception the very worst road I have ever met.
-
-But the road only matches the rest of the place. Monrovia is not only an
-ill-kept town, it is an outrageously ill-kept town.
-
-[Illustration: 0112]
-
-Many towns have I seen in the world, many, many towns along this west
-coast of Africa, so I am in a position to compare, and never have I
-seen such hopelessly miserable places as Monrovia and the other smaller
-Liberian towns along the Coast. The streets look pretty enough in a
-photograph; they are pretty enough in reality because of the kindly
-hand of Nature and the tropical climate which makes vegetation grow up
-everywhere. There is no wheeled traffic, no possibility of getting about
-except on your own feet, and in consequence the roadways are generally
-knee-deep in weeds, with just a track meandering through them here and
-there, and between the roadway and the side walk is a rough gutter, or
-at least waterway, about two feet deep, and of uncertain width, usually
-hidden by the veiling weeds. Occasionally they have little gimcrack
-bridges apparently built of gin cases across these chasms, but, as a
-rule, if I could not jump as the wandering goats did, I had to make my
-way round, even though it involved a detour of at least a quarter of a
-mile.
-
-And the houses in the streets were unlike the houses to be seen anywhere
-else on the West Coast, and, to my mind at least, are quite unsuited to
-a tropical climate. They are built of wood, brick, or, and this is the
-most common, of corrugated iron, are three or four stories high, steep
-and narrow, with high-pitched roofs, and narrow balconies, and many
-windows which are made with sashes after the fashion of more temperate
-climes. The Executive Mansion, as they call the official residence of
-the President, is perhaps as good a specimen as any and is in as good
-repair, though even it is woefully shabby, and the day I called there,
-for of course I paid my respects, clothes were drying on the weeds
-and grass of the roadway just in front of the main entrance. Two doors
-farther down was a tall, rather pretentious redbrick house which must
-have cost money to build, but the windows were broken and boarded up,
-and one end of the balcony was just a ragged fringe of torn and rotting
-wood. So desolate was the place I thought it must be deserted, but
-no. On looking up I saw that on the other end of the balcony were
-contentedly lolling a couple of half-dressed women and a man, naked to
-the waist, who were watching with curiosity the white woman strolling
-down the street.
-
-A great deal of the Liberian's life must be spent on his balcony, for
-the houses must be very stuffy in such a climate, and they are by no
-means furnished suitably; of course it is entirely a matter of taste,
-but for West Africa I infinitely preferred the sanded, earthen floor of
-my friend the Jolloff pilot's wife to the blue Brussels-carpet on
-the drawing-room floor of the wife of the President of the Liberian
-republic. But, as I have said, this is a matter of taste, and I may be
-wrong. I know many houses in London, the furniture of which appears to
-me anything but suitable.
-
-It was quaint to me, me an Australian with strong feelings on the
-question of colour, to be entertained by the President's wife, a kindly
-black lady in a purple dress and with a strong American accent. She had
-never been out of Africa, she told me, and she had great faith in the
-future of Liberia. The President had been to England twice. And the
-President's sad eyes seemed to say, though he hinted no such thing, that
-he did not share his wife's optimism.
-
-[Illustration: 0116]
-
-“We have lovely little homes up the river,” she said as she shifted
-the array of bibles and hymn-books that covered the centre-table in the
-drawingroom to make room for the tray on which was ginger-beer for my
-refreshment, “and if you will go up, we will make you very welcome.”
-
-She would not let me take her photograph as I desired to do; possibly
-she had met the amateur photographer before and distrusted the species.
-I could not convince her I could produce a nice picture.
-
-I never saw those “lovely little homes” either. They certainly were not
-to be found in my meaning of the words in Monrovia or any of the Coast
-towns, and up country I did not go; there was no way of doing so, save
-on my own feet, and I felt then I could not walk in such a hot climate.
-There may be such homes, I do not know, for between this good, kindly
-woman and me was the great unbridgeable gulf fixed, and our modes of
-thought were not the same. In judging things Liberian I try to remember
-that. Every day it was brought home to me.
-
-The civilised black man, for instance, is often a great stickler for
-propriety, and I have known one who felt himself obliged to board up
-his front verandah because the white man who lived opposite was wont to
-stroll on _his_ balcony in the early morning clad only in his pyjamas,
-and yet often passing along the street and looking up I saw men and
-women in the scantiest of attire lounging on their balconies doing
-nothing, unless they were thinking, which is doubtful.
-
-Dress or want of dress, I find, strikes one curiously. I have times
-without number seen a black man working in a loin cloth or bathing as
-Nature made him, and not been conscious of anything wrong. He seemed
-fitly and suitably clad; he lacked nothing. But looking on those men in
-the balconies in only a pair of trousers, or women in a skirt pure
-and simple, among surroundings that to a certain extent spoke of
-civilisation, there was a wrong note struck. They were not so
-much barbaric as indecent. It was as if a corner of the veil of
-respectability had been lifted, the thin veneer of civilisation torn
-off, and you saw if you dared to look the possibilities that lie behind.
-I believed all the horrible stories of Vaudooism of America and the West
-Indies when I saw the naked chest and shoulders of a black man
-leaning over a balcony in Monrovia, and yet I have been only moved to
-friendliness when the fetish man of an Ashanti village, with greasy
-curls flying, with all his weird ornaments jingling, tom-toms beating,
-and excited people shouting, came dancing towards me and pranced round
-me with pointing fingers that I hope and believe meant a blessing. Can
-anyone tell me why this was? Was it because the fetish man was giving
-of his very best, while the half-civilised man was sinking back into
-barbarism and looking at the white woman gave her thoughts she would
-deeply have resented? Was it just an example of the thought-reading
-we are subconsciously doing every day and all day long without exactly
-realising it ourselves?
-
-The people of Monrovia, there are over 4000 of them, seem always
-lounging and idling, and the place looks as if it were no one's business
-to knock in a nail or replace a board. It is falling into decay. It is
-not deserted, for the people are there, and presumably they live. They
-exist waiting for their houses to tumble about their ears. There is a
-market-place down in Waterside, the poorest, most miserable
-market-place on all the African coast. The road here, just close to the
-landing-place, is not made, but just trodden hard by the passing of many
-feet. Here and there the native rocks crop up, and no effort has been
-made to smooth them down. Above all, the stench is sickening, for the
-Coast negro, without the kindly, sometimes the stern guidance of the
-white man, is often intolerably dirty, and if my eyes did not recognise
-it, my nose would. In all the town, city they call it, there is not one
-garden or attempt at a garden. The houses are set wide enough apart; any
-fences that have been put up are as a rule broken-down, invariably in
-need of repair, and in between those houses is much wild growth. The
-scarlet hibiscus covers a broken fence; an oleander grows bushy and
-covered with pink roselike flowers; stately cocoa-nut palms, shapely
-mangoes are to be seen, and all over the streets and roadway in the
-month of January, I was there, as if it would veil man's neglect as far
-as possible, grew a creeping convolvulus with masses of pink cup-shaped
-flowers--in the morning hopeful and fresh and full of dew, in the
-evening wilted and shut up tightly as if they had given up the effort
-in hopeless despair. Never have I seen such a dreary, neglected town.
-It would be pitiful anywhere in the world. It is ten times more so here,
-where one feels that it marks the failure of a race, that it almost
-justifies the infamous traffic of our forefathers. It was all shoddy
-from the very beginning. It is now shoddy come to its inevitable end.
-
-For all the great mark on the map, as I have said, the settlements at
-Monrovia do not extend more than thirty miles up the river; elsewhere
-the civilised negroes barely hold the sea-board. They are eternally at
-war with the tribesmen behind, and here in Monrovia I met half a dozen
-of the prisoners, dressed in rags, chained two and two with iron collars
-round their necks, and their guard, a blatant, self-satisfied person,
-was just about as ragged a scarecrow as they were. Not that the victory
-is by any means always to the Liberians, for a trader, an Englishman,
-who had been seeking fresh openings in the hinterland where no Liberian
-would dare to go, told me that though the tribes are not as a rule
-cannibals, they do make a practice of eating their best-hated enemies,
-and he had come across the hands and feet of not a few of the Liberian
-Mendi soldiery in pickle for future use.
-
-To keep these tribesmen in check, the Liberian, who is essentially a man
-of peace--a slave--has been obliged to raise an army from the Mendis who
-inhabit the British protectorate to the west, and so he has laid upon
-himself a great burden. For, unfortunately, there is not always money in
-the treasury to satisfy this army of mercenaries when they get tired of
-taking out their pay in trade gin or tobacco. Poor Liberians, threatened
-with a double danger. If they have no soldiers the tribesmen within
-their borders eat them up, and if they have soldiers, war they must
-have, to provide an outlet for energies that otherwise might be
-misdirected.
-
-I left my kind host with many regrets and Monrovia without any, and
-I went on board the _Chama_ which was to call at Grand Bassa and Cape
-Palmas, and if I did not intend to view them entirely from the ship's
-deck, at least I felt after my visit to Monrovia it would hardly be
-necessary for me to stay in either of these towns.
-
-[Illustration: 0122]
-
-They bear a strong family resemblance to the capital, only they
-are “more so.” The tribes see to it, I believe, that there is no
-communication with the capital except by sea, and the little communities
-with their pretensions to civilisation are far less ininteresting than
-the people of an Ashanti village who have seldom or never seen a white
-man.
-
-I landed at Lower Buchanan, Grand Bassa, early one morning. The beach
-simply reeked of human occupancy. They do not trouble about sanitation
-in Liberia, and the town itself looked as if the houses had been set
-down promiscuously in the primeval bush. Perhaps there were more signs
-of wealth than in Monrovia, for I did see three cows and at least half
-a dozen hairy, razor-backed pigs on the track that was by courtesy
-the principal street, and it must require something to support all the
-churches.
-
-I suppose it is the emotional character of the negro that makes him take
-so largely to religion, or rather, I think I may say, the observances of
-religion. The question of the missionaries is a vexed one, and on board
-the _Chama_ was a missionary who made me think. She was a pretty young
-girl who had left home and father and mother and sisters and brothers
-and lover--ah, the lover was evidently hard where all had been hard--to
-minister to the spiritual needs of the people who dwelt behind Cape
-Palmas. She was sweetly ignorant of the world, of everything that did
-not apply to the little home in Canada that she had left with such
-reluctance, and was evidently immensely surprised to find the captain
-and officers of the ship kindly, honest gentlemen who treated her as
-tenderly and deferentially as they might have treated one of their own
-young sisters.
-
-“I thought all sailors were bad men,” she said wonderingly. “I have
-always been led to believe they were bad.”
-
-Now, what could such a nice, ignorant little girl as that teach the
-negro? And yet she had curiously hard ideas on some subjects. She talked
-about the missionary and his wife to whom she was going for five long
-years and to whom she was bringing out clothes for their baby.
-
-“If it is alive,” she added naively.
-
-“Oh, I hope it will live,” said I, the heathen who doubted the use of
-missionaries and all their works.
-
-“Well, I don't know”--and the cynicism sat curiously on the sweet, young
-face--“poor little kiddie, perhaps it is better dead. What sort of a
-life could it have out there, and what sort of an upbringing? Its mother
-has other work to do.”
-
-And I tried to show her that one white child was worth a thousand
-problematical souls of negroes, and I tried in vain.
-
-But if ever I saw the wrong side of Christianity I saw it here in
-Liberia. Monrovia had many churches, all more or less unfinished, all
-more or less in decay, and here in Lower Buchanan three corrugated-iron
-churches within a stone's throw of one another constituted one of the
-chief features of the town. It was early on a Tuesday morning, the best
-time for work in a tropical climate, if work is going to be done at all.
-On the beach the Kroo boys were bringing from surf boats the piassava,
-the fibre that grows in the swamps and constitutes a large part of the
-Liberian export, but in Lower Buchanan itself the greater part of the
-inhabitants that I saw were in church. I entered that church.
-
-[Illustration: 0126]
-
-Such a tatterdemalion crew! God forbid that I should scoff at any man's
-faith, but here cleanliness is practically divorced from godliness, and
-I can honestly say that never in my life have I seen dirtier bundles of
-rags than that congregation. A woman in a costume a scarecrow would have
-despised, her head adorned with a baby's hat, the dirty white ribbons
-fluttering down behind, was praying aloud with much unction, shouting
-that she was a miserable sinner, and calling upon the Lord to forgive
-her. The negro loves the sound of his own voice, and again I must claim
-that I do not scorn any man's sincere faith, but that negro lady was
-thoroughly enjoying herself, absolutely sure of her own importance.
-The ragged scarecrows who listened punctuated the prayer with groans of
-delight, and the only decent one amongst them was a small girl, whose
-nakedness was hidden by a simple blue-and-white cloth, and she was
-probably a household slave. For these descendants of a slave people make
-slaves in their turn, perhaps not men slaves, but women are saleable
-commodities among a savage nation, and for a trifling consideration,
-a bottle of trade gin or a few sticks of trade tobacco, they will hand
-over a girl-child who, taken into the household without pay, holds the
-position of a servant and is therefore to all intents and purposes a
-slave. This is really not as bad as it sounds; her position is probably
-quite as good as it would be in her own tribe, and as she grows older
-she either marries or forms some sort of alliance with a Liberian. Loose
-connections and divorce are both so common that she is no worse off than
-the ordinary Liberian woman, and the admixture of good, strong virile
-blood may possibly help the future race. At least that is what I thought
-as I watched the congregation at prayer. They sang hymn choruses so
-beautifully as to bring tears to my eyes, and then they came outside and
-abused me because I wanted to photograph them. Had I been they, I should
-have objected to going out to the world as specimens of their people,
-but they need not have reviled me in the blatant, coarse manner of the
-negro who has just seen enough of civilisation to think he rules
-the universe. I did not press the matter, because I felt it would be
-ungracious to make a picture of them against their will. But clearly the
-lovely little homes were not in Lower Buchanan. Nor were they in Cape
-Palmas.
-
-Far be it from me to say that plantations of some useful description do
-not exist. They may; I can only say I have seen no evidences of them in
-three of their towns or near those towns. I will put it on record that
-I did see some cabbage stalks behind some broken railings opposite the
-President's house in Monrovia, but that was absolutely the only thing
-in the shape of a garden, vegetable, fruit, or flower, that I did see
-in the environs of the towns. You can buy no fruit in Monrovia, no
-chickens, no eggs. Bananas and limes have to be imported. Meat is only
-to be had at rare intervals, and living is so frightfully dear that
-when the British Consul had, during my stay, to provide for a distressed
-British subject who had been unfortunate enough to get adrift in the
-land, he had to pay six shillings and sixpence a day for his board and
-lodging--a bare room, not over-clean, with a rough bed in it, and board
-that did not include meat, but consisted chiefly of manioc or cassava
-which is what the majority of the Liberians live on themselves.
-
-The country as a matter of fact lives on the Custom's dues which reach
-about £70,000 a year and are levied not only on the goods that they
-themselves use but on those the unfortunate natives of the hinterland
-require. No Liberian is a craftsman even of the humblest sort. The Kroo
-men are fishermen and boatmen; men from Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast,
-and Lagos, with an occasional Vai tribesman thrown in, are painters,
-smiths, and carpenters. The Liberian, the descendant of the freed slave,
-despises these things; he aspires to be a gentleman of leisure, to serve
-in the Government Service, or in the Church, to walk about in a black
-suit with a high collar and a silver-mounted cane. Then apparently he
-is happy even if he come out of the most dilapidated house in
-Monrovia. There are, I believe, exceptions. I wonder, considering their
-antecedents and the conditions under which they have had to exist,
-whether one could expect more. Possibly it should be counted to them
-for great righteousness if any good men be found among them at all.
-But taken as a whole the Liberians after close on ninety years of
-self-government must strike the stranger as an effete race, blatant
-and arrogant of speech, an arrogance that is only equalled by their
-appalling ignorance, a race that compares shockingly with the Mandingo
-or Jolloff of the Gambia, the stately Ashanti, a warrior with reserve
-power, or the busy agricultural Yoruba. These men are gentlemen in their
-own simple, untutored way, courteous and dignified. The Liberian is only
-a travesty of the European, arrogant without proper dignity, boastful
-with absolutely nothing in the world to boast about unless it be the
-amazing wealth of the country he mismanages so shamefully. For Liberia
-is a rich country; it has a soil of surpassing fertility, and it seems
-to me that almost anything in the way of tropical products might be
-produced there. That nothing is produced is due to the ignorance and
-idleness of these descendants of slaves who rule or misrule the land.
-Since the days of the iniquitous trade, that first brought her into
-touch with civilisation, West Africa has been exploited for the sake of
-the nations of the western world. No one till this present generation
-seems to have recognised that she had any rights. Now we realise that
-the black man must be considered at least as much as the white man, who
-has made himself his master. Now most settlements along the Coast
-are busy, prosperous, and, above all, sanitary. Only in Liberia, the
-civilised black man's own country, does a different state of things
-prevail; only here has the movement been retrograde.
-
-An end must come, but who can say what this end will be.
-
-The missionary girl who had given up all she held most dear, who had
-joined the noble band of martyrs and heroes for Africa, said she had
-done so because she had seen a letter from a black man just mentioning
-a chapter and verse of the New Testament. She had looked it up and read
-the prayer of the Macedonians. Strange, strange are the workings of
-the Unseen, cruel sometimes the penalties poor human nature takes upon
-itself. Who shall say that a Guiding Hand had not made that girl choose
-wisely for the development of her own character, and who shall say
-that some ultimate good may not yet come for beautiful, wealthy,
-poverty-stricken Liberia. That the civilised nations, sinking their own
-jealousies, may step in and save her despite herself, I think, is the
-only hope. But it must be as Paul would have saved, not as the pitiful
-Christ. For the pendulum has swung too far back; the fathers have eaten
-sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. She does not know
-it herself, she will resent bitterly the imputation, but to me Liberia
-seems to be stretching out her hands crying dumbly to the white man
-the cry that came across the water of old, the cry the missionary girl
-listened to, the cry of Macedonia, “Come over and help us.”
-
-But I was one who only heard the cry in passing, who felt that I at
-least could not help. I went on in the _Chama_ to Axim, interested with
-what I had seen, but forgetting much in what I thought was to be my
-first hammock-trip alone. For I wanted to go to Half Assinie, and
-since no one may be sure of landing all their gear in safety on that
-surf-bound coast, I had to land at Axim and go back overland the fifty
-miles to the French border, and I thought I should have to do it alone.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V--THE GUINEA COAST
-
-_Every man's duty--“Three deaths in two days”--An old Portuguese
-settlement--A troubled District Commissioner--What to do with a
-wandering white woman--The Judge's quarters--The kindly medical officer
-and his wife--A West-African town--“My outside wife”--Dangers
-ahead--The man who was never afterwards heard of--The Forestry officer's
-carriers--“Good man, bad man, fool man”--First night in the wilds--Hair
-in the soup._
-
-A great German philosopher has remarked that you very seldom get a
-human being who has all the qualities of his own sex without a trace
-of the characteristics of the other. Such a being would be hardly
-attractive. At least I consoled myself with that reflection when I found
-stirring within me a very masculine desire to be out of leading strings
-and to be allowed to take care of myself. It is pleasant to be taken
-care of, but it is decidedly uncomfortable to feel that you are a burden
-upon men upon whom you have no claim whatever. They were looking after
-me because they were emphatically sure that the Coast is no place for
-a lone woman. At the bottom of my heart, grateful as I was to the
-individuals, I didn't like it. I thought my freedom was coming at Axim,
-but it didn't.
-
-Every man felt it his duty to impress upon me the unhealthiness of the
-Coast, and every man did his duty manfully, forgetting that I have
-a very excellent pair of eyes and an inquiring mind. The hot, still
-morning we arrived at Axim the captain, having discussed matters with
-the Custom officer, came to me solemnly shaking his head.
-
-“A terrible place, Mrs Gaunt, a terrible place. Three deaths in Axim in
-the last two days.”
-
-It was quite a correct Coast speech, and for the moment I was shocked,
-though not afraid, because naturally it never occurs to me that I will
-die, at least not just yet, and not because the people round me are
-dying. The captain was gloomily happy as having vindicated the evil
-reputation of the country, and I looked ashore and wondered what was
-wrong with so attractive a place.
-
-The Portuguese, those mariners of long ago, chose the site and, as they
-always did, chose wisely. A promontory, on which is the white fort,
-juts out into the sea, and behind is all the luxuriant greenery of the
-Tropics, for the land rises just sufficiently to give beauty to the
-scene. I wondered why those three people had died, and I inquired. The
-whole incident is so characteristic of the loose talk that builds up
-an evil reputation for a country. Those deaths were held up to me as
-a warning. It would have been quite as much to the point if they had
-warned me against getting frost-bitten or falling into a cauldron of
-boiling sugar. One man died of a disease he had contracted twenty years
-before, and was exceedingly lucky to have lived so long, another had
-died of drink, and the third was a woman. She, poor thing, was the wife
-of a missionary from Sierra Leone, and had not been in a cooler climate
-for two years. There was a baby coming, and instead of going home she
-had come to Axim, had a bad go of blackwater, and when the baby came,
-her constitution could not stand the double strain, and she died. Only
-her death was directly attributable to the climate, and the exercise of
-a little common sense would have saved her.
-
-So I landed and was not afraid.
-
-But my arrival was a cause of tribulation to the District Commissioner.
-There was no hotel, so I appealed to him for quarters. It really was
-a little hard on him. He sighed and did his best, and the only time I
-really saw him look happy was about three weeks later when he saw
-me safely in a surf boat bound for the out-going steamer. But when I
-landed, the need for shelter was pressing, and he gave me a room in the
-Judge's quarters where it seems they bestow all homeless white
-strangers in Axim. Already the Forestry officer was there, and he had
-a sitting-room and a bedroom, so that I could only have a bedroom and a
-bathroom. Now, with a verandah and such a large room at my disposal, I
-could make myself more than comfortable; then, because I did not know
-African ways, I accepted the very kind invitation of the medical officer
-and his wife, the only white woman in Axim, to “chop” with them.
-
-African ways are very convenient when you come to think of it. Here was
-a big empty room with a wardrobe and a little cane furniture in it. I
-went in with my brother's kit and set up my camp-bed, my bath, laid down
-my ground sheet and put up my table and chair, and I had all that was
-really necessary. Outside was the ragged garden, haunted they said,
-though I never saw the ghost, and because it was usually empty the big
-rats scrambled up the stairs, and the birds sat in the oleander bushes
-and called “Be quick, be quick” continually.
-
-I couldn't take their advice because it is impossible to hurry things on
-the Coast and I must wait for the carriers.
-
-The first night I had dinner--chop--with the medical officer and his
-wife and went to bed reflecting a little regretfully I had made no
-preparations for my early-morning tea. However, I concluded it might
-be good discipline to do without it. But it is a great thing to have
-a capable boy. Just as it began to get light Grant appeared outside my
-mosquito curtains as usual with a cup of tea and some fruit. The cup and
-teapot were my own; he had stolen all the materials from the Forestry
-officer next door, and I was much beholden to that young man when, on
-apologising, he smiled and said it was all right, he was glad I liked
-his tea.
-
-Axim is a pretty little town with the usual handful of whites and the
-negroes semi-civilised with that curious civilisation which has probably
-persisted for centuries, which is not what we would call civilisation
-and yet is not savagery. It is hardly even barbarism. These Coast towns
-are not crowded with naked savages as many a stay-at-home Briton seems
-to imagine; they are peopled with artisans, clerks, traders, labourers,
-people like in many ways to those in the same social scale in other
-countries, and differing only when the marked characteristics of the
-negro come in. All along in these Coast towns the negroes are much
-the same. To their own place they are suitable; only when they try to
-conform too much to the European lines of thought do they strike one as
-_outré_ or objectionable. I suppose that is what jars in the Christian
-negro. It is not the Christianity, it is the striving after something
-eminently unsuited to him. Left to himself though, he naturally goes
-back to the mode of life that was his forefathers', and sometimes he
-has the courage to own it. I remember a man who called in the medical
-officer about his wife. The ordinary negro has as many wives as he can
-afford, but the Christian is by way of only having one, and as this
-man was clothed in the ordinary garb of the European, unnecessary coat,
-shirt, and hat, I naturally set him down as a Christian.
-
-“I Christian,” he told me. “Mission-teacher once.”
-
-“Not now?”
-
-“No, Swanzy's agent now. You savey my wife; she get well?”
-
-I said I had no doubt she would, and I rejoiced in this sign of marital
-affection, when he dashed it all to the ground.
-
-“She not my real wife; she my outside wife,” said he as one who would
-explain their exact relations.
-
-My views on negro homes received a shock, but after all if the women
-don't object, what matter? It is the custom of the country.
-
-I looked round the town and took photographs, wasted many plates trying
-to develop in too hot a place, and declared my intention of going west
-just as soon as ever I could get carriers. I didn't quite know how I
-should manage, but I concluded I should learn by experience.
-
-Even now, though I have travelled since then close on 700 miles in a
-hammock, I cannot make up my mind whether it would have been safe for
-me to go alone. Undoubtedly I should have made many mistakes, and in
-a country where the white man holds his position by his prestige it
-is perhaps just as well that a woman of his colour should not make
-mistakes.
-
-“Not suitable,” said one who objected strongly to the presence of any
-white women on the Coast.
-
-“Hardly safe,” said another.
-
-“Not safe,” said a third emphatically, and then they told a story. Axim
-has been settled and civilised many years, and yet only last year a man
-disappeared. He was one of a party dining with his friends. After dinner
-they started a game of cards, and up the verandah steps came this man's
-house-steward. His master was wanted. The company protested, but he left
-declaring he would return immediately. He did not return and from that
-day to this neither he nor his house-boy have been seen by mortal eyes.
-The story sounds fearsome enough. It sounded worse to me preparing to
-go along the Coast by myself, but now, thinking it over calmly, I see
-flaws. Investigated, I wonder if it would turn out like the story of the
-three people dead in two days; true, but admitting of quite a different
-construction being put upon it than that presented for my edification.
-One thing I do know and that is that I would feel very much safer in an
-Ashanti village that has only been conquered in the last ten years
-than I would alone in any of those little towns along the Guinea Coast,
-between Axim and Half Assinie, that have been in contact with the white
-man for the last three hundred years.
-
-Anyhow, Axim decided for me I should not go alone, and the Forestry
-officer, like the chivalrous, gracious gentleman he was, came forward
-and pretended he had business at Half Assinie and that it would be a
-great pleasure to have a companion on the road. And so well did he play
-his part that it was not till we were bound back from the Border that I
-discovered he had simply come to look after me.
-
-Then I was initiated into the difficulties of carriers. The Omahin, that
-is to say the Chief of Beyin, had sent me twenty men and women, and
-the Forestry officer had two separate lots of Kroo boys and Mendis, and
-early one morning in January we made preparations for a start. We didn't
-start early. It seems to me how ever carefully you lay your plans,
-you never do. First no carriers turned up; then some of the Forestry
-officer's men condescended to appear. Then the orderly, a man from the
-north with his face cut with a knife into a permanent sardonic grin,
-strolled up. He was sent out to seek carriers, and presently drove
-before him two or three women, one with a baby on her back, and these it
-appeared were the advance contingent of my gang. A Beyin woman-carrier
-or indeed any woman along the Coast generally wears a printed-cotton
-cloth of a dark colour round her by way of a skirt, and one of the
-little loose blouses that the missionaries introduced on to the Coast
-over a hundred years ago because they regarded it as indecent for a
-woman to have her bosom uncovered. Now her shoulders are often covered
-by the blouse, but that many a time is of such skimpy proportions that
-it does not reach very far, the skirt invariably slips, and there is
-a gap, in which case--well, shall we say the result is not all the
-originators desired. A woman can carry anything but a hammock, but these
-carriers of mine were not very good specimens of the class. They
-looked at the loads, they went away, they came back, they altered, they
-grumbled, and at last about two hours late we started, I going ahead,
-the Forestry officer fetching up the rear to round in all stragglers,
-and in between came our motley array of goods. There is a family
-resemblance among all travellers on the Gold Coast. They all try to
-reduce their loads to a minimum and they all find that there are certain
-necessaries of life which they must have, and certain other things which
-may be luxuries but which they cannot do without, and certain other
-little things which it would be a sin not to take as it makes all the
-difference between comfort and savagery. So the procession comes along,
-a roll of bedding, a chop box, a kitchen box with pots and pans, a bath,
-a chair, a table, the servant's box, a load of water, a certain amount
-of drink, whisky, gin, and if the traveller is very luxurious (I wasn't)
-some claret, a uniform case with clothes, a smaller one containing the
-heavier things such as boots and the various goods that pertain to the
-European's presence there. Before the Commissioner goes his orderly,
-carrying his silver-topped stick, the insignia of his rank. I had a
-camera and a lot of heavy plates but I don't think the Forestry officer
-had anything special except a tent which took three men to carry and
-which we could never set up because we found on the first night that the
-ridge poles had been left behind. It is not supposed to be well to sleep
-in native houses, but it did us no harm.
-
-The carrier divides the masters he serves into three divisions. “He be
-good man,” “he be bad man,” and “he be fool man.” My carriers decided
-I was a fool man and they were not far wrong. Less than an hour after
-leaving Axim, distance as yet is always counted by time in Africa, we
-came to the Ancobra River and my first difficulty arose. My hammock had
-not yet been brought across and I, walking on a little way, came to a
-swampy bit which it was difficult to negotiate without wetting my feet
-above the ankles. My headman stooped and offered a brawny, bare back
-for my acceptance. I hesitated. My clothes were not built for riding
-pick-a-back. I looked back; there was no hammock, neither, thank heaven,
-was there any sign of the Forestry officer. I tried to show them how to
-cross their hands and carry me as in a chair, but no, they would have
-none of my methods, and then I gave in hastily lest my travelling
-companion should appear, accepted the back, rode across most
-ungracefully, and was set down triumphantly on the other side. And then
-they, began to take advantage of me.
-
-“Missus,” explained one, “you walk small. If man tote hammock, plenty
-broken bottle cut feet.”
-
-And so I walked all through the outskirts of that little river-side
-village. It was the hottest part of a very hot day, the sand made the
-going heavy, and the sun poured down mercilessly out of a cloudless
-sky. I was soon exceedingly tired, but I was filled with pity for the
-unfortunates who had to carry me. They walked beside me happily enough
-or dawdled behind scorning the fool woman who employed them. I may say
-when I came back my men carried me over every foot of the path, but they
-set me down a dozen times that day, and when my companion came up and
-found me sitting under a cocoa-nut palm, as he did pretty frequently, he
-remonstrated with me and remonstrated with my men, but the thing rested
-with me. It took me all day long to learn that the men must do the work
-they had undertaken to do, and until I was convinced of it in my own
-mind they certainly were not. We had luncheon in the house of the
-headman of a fishing village; at afternoon tea-time we were sitting on
-the sand waiting for the tide to run out so that we might cross the Twin
-Rivers, and we waited nearly two hours, and at last as the darkness was
-falling we arrived at a village where we must stop the night. My first
-night in the wilds.
-
-It was a small fishing village on the sands of the seashore, built of
-the stalks of the raffia palm which here the people call bamboo. The
-Chief had a compound cleared out for us, and I do not know now whether
-that compound was clean. In my mind it remains as clean, because till
-then I had always expected a native house to be most uninhabitable, and
-was surprised to find any simple comforts at all. The floors were of
-sand, the walls of the stalks of the raffia, and the thatch of the
-fronds. I prefer palm to mud for a wall; for one thing, it is nice and
-airy, the wind can blow right through it and you might almost be in the
-open air, but then again, you must make your toilet and have your bath
-in the dark, for if you have a light everything is as clearly visible to
-the outside world as if you had been placed in a cage for their special
-benefit. However, my bed was put up, my bath and toilet things set out,
-and I managed to dress and come outside for dinner which we had in
-the open. The grey sand was our carpet, the blue-black sky dotted with
-twinkling diamonds our canopy, and the flickering, chimneyless
-Hinkson lamp lighted our dinner-table. I was more than content. It was
-delightful, and then the serpent entered into our paradise.
-
-“Kwesi,” said the Forestry officer angrily, “there's a hair in the
-soup.”
-
-Kwesi had only brought the soup from the kitchen to the table, so it
-was hardly fair to blame him, but the average man, if his wife is not
-present, is apt to consider the nearest servant is always responsible
-for his little discomforts, and he does not change his character in
-Africa I find. Kwesi accepted the situation.
-
-“It not ploper hair, sah,” he protested as apologetically as if he had
-sought diligently for a hair without success and been obliged to do the
-best he could with negro wool.
-
-I, not being a wife and therefore not responsible, was equal to
-suggesting that it probably came off the flour bag and he might as well
-have his dinner in peace, but he was not easily soothed.
-
-That first night, absolutely in the open, everything took on a glamour
-which comes back to me whenever I think of it. A glorious night out
-in the open in the Tropics is one of the pure delights of life. A fire
-flickered in the centre of the compound; to the right in a palm-thatched
-hut we could see the cook at work, and we had _hors d'oeuvre_, which
-here they call small chop, and the soup which my companion complained
-of, and fish and chicken and sweets and fruit as good as if we had been
-in a London restaurant. Better, for the day's hammocking on the beach
-with the salt spray wetting our faces and the roar of the turbulent
-West-Coast surf in our ears had given us an appetite that required no
-tempting. The hair was but an incident; the sort of contrast that always
-marks West Africa. We dined luxuriously.
-
-Around us were strewn our camp outfit, all the thousand and one things
-that are required to make two people comfortable. It had taken
-sixteen men to carry us twenty miles in our hammocks; it had taken
-five-and-twenty more to minister to our comfort. The headman of the
-village regarded us as honoured guests. He provided a house, or rather
-several houses in a compound, he told the carriers where they could
-get wood and water, he sold us chickens at exorbitant prices, but still
-chickens, and plantains and kenky and groundnuts for the men. And so we
-dined in comfort and talked over the incidents of the day.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI--THE KING'S HIGHWAY
-
-_The burying of the village dead--For Ju-ju--The glory of the
-morning--The catastrophes by the way--The cook is condemned to
-death--Redeemed for two shillings--The thunderous surf--The charm of the
-shore--Traces of white blood--A great negro town--Our quarters--Water
-that would induce a virulent typhus in any but a negro community--The
-lonely German trader--Difficulties of entertaining a negro
-potentate--The lair of the hunted._
-
-The King's Highway is along the shore here easy enough going when the
-tide is out and the golden sand is hard; very heavy indeed when the
-roaring waves break almost at the foot of the cocoa-nut palms that stand
-in phalanxes tall and stately, or bending somewhat towards the sea that
-is their life, all the way from Axim to Half Assinie, and beyond again
-to the French border. There is no other way than this way along the
-shore. Occasionally, if the “sea be too full,” as the carriers say, they
-may go up to a rough path among the cocoa-nut palms, but it is a very
-rough path. Husks of the cocoa-nuts lie there, palm fronds drying and
-withering in the sun, a great creeping bean flings its wandering
-stalks across the path as a trap to the unwary, and when there is other
-greenery it stands up and stretches out thorny branches to clutch at
-the passer-by. Besides, the villagers--and there are many villages--bury
-their dead here, and they consider two feet a deep enough grave, so that
-the odour of decay rises on the hot air. All along the shore, which
-is the highway, just under the cocoa-nut palms, I saw tiny miniature
-sloping thatches over some pots--a sign that someone has been buried
-there. At first I was touched to think so many of the living mourned the
-dead; but my sentimental feelings are always receiving rude shocks, and
-I found that these thatches had not been raised in tender remembrance,
-but to placate the ghosts of the dead and to prevent them from haunting
-the living. They must be rather foolish ghosts, too, and easily taken
-in; for I observed that a bunch of cock's feathers evidently simulated
-a chicken, and the pots were nearly always rather elderly and often
-broken. There were more gruesome signs of Ju-ju too; a crow suspended
-with outspread wings, a kid with drooping head and hanging legs. I hope
-these things were not put up while they were alive and left to suffer
-in the tropical sunshine, but I fear, I fear. The negro is diabolically
-cruel.
-
-When we were children we always ate the things we liked least first,
-bread and butter, and then cake; and there is much to be said for the
-plan. Afterwards I found it was much easier and nicer travelling in the
-bush, but on that first journey travelling along the shore had great
-charms for me. In the early morning a whitish mist hangs over the sea
-and veils the cocoa-nut palms, and there is a little chill in the air
-which makes travelling pleasant. We always got up before dawn. At the
-first streak of light we were having our breakfast, porridge and
-eggs and marmalade and fruit, bananas, pines, or oranges, quite as
-comfortably as if we were in civilised lands, though the servants were
-waiting to pack our breakfast equipage, and we watched our beds and
-boxes and baths borne away on men's heads as we drank our coffee. There
-were catastrophes sometimes, of course.
-
-There was the morning when the coffee had been made on top of the
-early-morning tea, and the evening when the peaches were agreeably
-flavoured with household soap; the day when some unknown hand had
-conveyed native peppers, which are the hottest things in creation
-outside the infernal regions, into the sparklet bottle; and the day when
-the drinking water gave out altogether, and was replaced by the village
-water, black and greasy, and sufficient to induce in any but a negro
-community a virulent typhus. But all disasters paled before the day when
-neither the dinner nor the cook were forthcoming at Beyin.
-
-The Forestry officer, in the kindness and hospitality of his heart, had
-asked me to be his guest, so that we always had chop together, and I
-gained experience without any trouble to myself.
-
-I was sorry there was no dinner, because it seemed a long time since we
-had had tea, but otherwise I was not troubled.
-
-“Where be cook, Kwesi?” asked the Forestry officer of his immediate
-attendant.
-
-Kwesi spluttered and stammered; he was so full of news. Round at a
-little distance stood the people of the town of Beyin--men in cloths;
-women, some with a handkerchief round their heads, but some with a
-coiffure that suggested the wearer had been permanently surprised,
-and her hair had stood up on end and stayed there ever since; little
-children, who shyly poked their heads round their mothers' legs to look
-at the strange white woman. The truth was hardly to be told in Kwesi's
-agitated pigeon English. It was awful. The cook had marched into the
-town on business bent and demanded chickens for the white master and
-the white missus, and the inhabitants, with a view to raising the market
-price, had declared there was not a chicken within miles of the place,
-and they had not seen such a thing for years. Cook was aggravated,
-for the chickens were walking about under his very eyes, not perhaps
-well-bred Dorkings or Buff Orpingtons, but the miserable little runt
-about the size of a self-respecting pigeon that is known as a chicken
-all over West Africa, and the sight was too much for him. He seized one
-of those chickens and proceeded to pluck and dress it, and before he
-was half-through the Omahin's men had come down and hauled him off to
-durance vile, for he had committed the iniquitous offence of stealing
-one of the Omahin's guard's chickens, and public opinion was almost
-agreed that only death could expiate so grievous a crime. Of course,
-there was the white woman to be considered, an unknown quantity, for
-many of them had never seen a white woman before; and there was the
-Forestry officer, by no means an unknown quantity, for it was pretty
-certain he would resent any harm to his cook. Finally, with much yelling
-and shouting and tremendous gesticulation, the case was laid before him
-and the demand made that his cook should be handed over to the powers
-he had offended. I am bound to say that young man held the scales of
-justice with a niceness that is only to be properly appreciated when we
-remember that it was his dinner that was not forthcoming and his cook
-whose life was threatened. He listened to both sides, and then decreed
-that the cook was to be redeemed by the payment of two shillings, that
-the crowd was to disperse, and dinner to come up forthwith.
-
-“Two shillings,” said the next white man we met, the preventive officer
-at Half Assinie, close to the Border, “two shillings! I should think so
-indeed. The price of a chicken is sixpence, and it's dear at that.”
-
-They are such arrant savages, these people of the King's Highway; often
-enough they are stark save for a loin cloth, and I have seen men without
-even the proverbial fig leaf. The very decencies of life seem unknown to
-them, and yet they calculate in sixpences and shillings, even as the man
-in the streets in England does.
-
-They have touched the fringe of civilisation for so many hundred years;
-for this is the Coast of the great days of the slave trade, and
-along this seashore, by this roaring surf, beneath the shade of these
-cocoa-nut palms, have marched those weary companies of slaves, whose
-descendants make the problem of America nowadays. It must have been the
-same shore, the very same. Here is the golden sand and the thunderous
-surf that only the men of the Coast will dare, and between Axim and the
-French Ivory Coast not always they. The white scallop shells are tossed
-aside by the feet of the carriers; the jellyfish that twinkle like lumps
-of glass in the strong sunshine must be avoided, for they sting; plover
-and little wading birds like snipe dart into the receding wave, or race
-back from its oncoming; and the little crabs, like brown pincushions on
-stilts, run to hide themselves in the water. Here are crows, too, with
-neat black coats and immaculate white waistcoats and white collars,
-who fly cawing round the villages. We saw an occasional vulture, like a
-ragged and very dissipated turkey, tearing at the carcass of a goat
-or sheep. Such is the shore now. So was it four hundred years ago. The
-people must have changed a little, but very, very little in this western
-portion of the Gold Coast, which is given over to the mahogany cutters,
-the gold-seekers, and the men who seek mineral oil. And the people are
-born, and live, and die, and know very, very little more than their
-forefathers, who lived in fear of the trader who would one day tear them
-from their homes, and force civilisation upon them with the cat and with
-the branding iron. In the old days they got much of their sustenance
-from the sea, and so do they get it still; and when the surf was not too
-bad we saw the dark men launching their great surf boats, struggling
-to get them into the surf, struggling to keep them afloat till they got
-beyond it, when they were things of life. And when the surf was too
-bad, as it was on many days, they contented themselves with throwing in
-hand-nets, racing back as the sea washed over them, racing forward as it
-receded; and the women and children gathered shell-fish just where sand
-and surf met, carrying in their hands calabashes, or cocoa-nut shells,
-or those enamelled iron-ware basins which are as common now on the Coast
-as they are in London town. It seems to me that enamelled iron ware is
-one of the great differences between now and the days when the English
-and Dutch and Portuguese adventurers came first to this coast trading
-for gold and ivory and slaves.
-
-There are other traces of them, too, though they only built forts and
-dared hardly go beyond the shelter of their walls. Not infrequently the
-skin of the man who bore me was lightened to copper colour; every now
-and then I saw straight features and thin lips, though the skin was
-black, and I remembered, I must perforce remember, that these traders
-of old time made the dark women minister to their passions, and that the
-dark women bore them children with pride, even as they do to-day.
-
-Beyin is one of the biggest purely negro towns along the Coast. It is
-close on the shore, a mass of negro compounds huddled close together;
-the walls of the compounds and of houses are alike made of raffia palm,
-and the roofs are thatched with the fronds, looking not unlike peasant
-cottages in Somerset or Brittany.
-
-And the people who live in them are simple savages. They chatter and
-shriek, talking at the top of their voices about--God knows what; for it
-seems as if nothing in the nature of news could have happened since the
-long-ago slave-raiding days. In the street they pressed me close; only
-when I noticed any particular one, especially a woman or a child, that
-one fled shrieking to hide behind its neighbour. We sent our orderly
-forward to tell the Omahin we proposed to honour them with our
-presence for two days, and to ask for a house to live in. The house was
-forthcoming, a great two-storied house, built of swish, and whitewashed.
-It was right in the centre of the town, so closely surrounded by the
-smaller houses that, standing on the balcony, I could drop things easily
-on to the roofs below; but it had this advantage, that unless the people
-climbed on their roofs--they did as a matter of fact--we could not be
-overlooked. We had three rooms: an enormous centre room that someone
-had begun to paint blue, got tired, and finished off with splashes
-of whitewash, the council chamber of the town; and two side-rooms for
-bedrooms. And words fail me to describe those bedrooms. There were iron
-beds with mattresses, mattresses that looked as if they had been rescued
-from the refuse heap specially to accommodate us, and tables covered
-with dirt and the most wonderful collection of odds and ends it has ever
-been my fortune to come across. They were mostly the cheapest glass and
-china ornaments, broken-down lamps that in their palmy days must have
-been useless, and one of those big gaily painted china sitting hens that
-humble households sometimes serve up their breakfast eggs under. The
-first thing was to issue strict orders that not even the ground sheet
-was to touch that bed; the next was to clear away the ornaments, wipe
-down the table, cover it with clean paper and a towel, sweep the floor,
-lay down the ground sheet, put up the bed, and decide whether I would
-wash in sea water or in the black and greasy liquid which comes from a
-mile away across the swamp, and which was the only alternative. I
-may say I tried them both, and found them both unsatisfactory; and I
-finished with the sea water because I knew that, however uncomfortable,
-it was at least clean.
-
-Here we used the last of our drinking water and had to beg a little
-from the only white trader in the town, who gave generously of his
-small store, as white men do help each other beyond civilisation. He
-was German, and somewhat difficult to understand at times when he grew
-excited; but he stood on the same side of the gulf as we other two,
-while the black people, those who served us, and those who stared at us,
-were apart on the other side. A weary, dreary life is the trader's. He
-had a house just on the edge of the surf. His “factory” was below it.
-His only companions were a beautiful green-crested clock-bird and a
-little old-man monkey with a white beard. The ghastly loneliness of it!
-Nothing to do but to sell cotton stuffs and enamel ware and gin to the
-native, and count the days till it was time to tramp to Axim and take
-the steamer that should bear him back to the Fatherland and all the joys
-of wife and children.
-
-“I saw the homeward-bound steamer to-day,” he said pathetically, though
-he did not know he was pathetic. “I always look for it.”
-
-“The steamer! I did not know it came close enough in.”
-
-“It doesn't. Of course it was only the smoke on the horizon.”
-
-Surely, surely, the tragedy of the exile's life lay in those words.
-
-We had sent our orderly forward to say we were going to visit the
-Omahin, and soon after our arrival we called upon him. His palace is a
-collection of swish huts with palm-thatched roofs, built round a sanded
-compound; and we were ushered into a cramped, whitewashed room--his
-court. The population packed themselves into the body of the court to
-stare at the white people and native royalty; and the Omahin and his
-councillors were crowded up in the corner, whence, I presume, justice
-is dispensed. The exalted personage was clad in a dark robe of
-many-coloured silks, with a band of the same material round his
-black head. Round his neck was a great, heavy gold chain, on his arms
-bracelets of the same metal, and on his fingers heavy gold rings. Some
-of his councillors were also dressed in native robes, and they carried
-great horns of gold and the sticks that mark his rank with gold devices
-on top of them. The incongruity was provided by the “scholars” among
-his following--the linguists, the registrar, and other minor officials.
-These functionaries were clad in the most elderly of cast-off European
-garments, frock coats green with age, shirts that simply shrieked for
-the washtub, and trousers that a London unemployed would have disdained.
-However, they interpreted for us, and we explained to the Chief how
-pleased the white lady was with his country and how much she wished to
-visit the lake village, which was three hours away on the trade route
-to the back-country. He expressed his willingness to give us a guide
-through the swamp that lay behind the town, and then with a great deal
-of solemnity we took our leave and retired to our own somewhat delayed
-afternoon tea.
-
-We were mistaken if we thought we were going to be allowed to have it
-in peace. We had not sat down a moment, the Forestry officer, the German
-trader, and I, when the ragged travesty of a Gold Coast policeman, who
-was the Omahin's messenger, came dawdling upstairs to announce that the
-Omahin was coming to return our call; and he and his councillors and
-linguists followed close on his heels. The linguist explained that it
-was the custom to return a ceremonial call at once, and custom rules the
-roost in West Africa. That might be, but our conversational powers had
-been exhausted a quarter of an hour before, and not the most energetic
-ransacking of our brains could find anything to say to this negro
-potentate, who sat stolidly in a chair surrounded by an ever increasing
-group of attendants. I asked him if he would have tea. No. Cake,
-suggested the Forestry officer frantically. No. Toast and butter we
-both offered in a breath. No; he had no use for toast and butter, or
-for biscuits or oranges, which exhausted our tea-table. And then
-the Forestry officer had a brilliant idea: “You offer him a
-whisky-and-soda.” I did, and the dusky monarch weighed the matter a
-moment. Then he agreed, and a glass of whisky-and-soda was given him.
-We did not offer any refreshment to his followers. It would have left us
-bankrupt, and then not supplied them all. For a moment the Omahin looked
-at his whisky-and-sparklet, then he held out the glass, and aman stepped
-forward, and, bending low, took a sip; again he held out the glass,
-choosing his man apparently quite promiscuously from among the crowd,
-and again the man bent low and sipped. It was done over and over again.
-I did not realise that a glass could have held so much liquid as
-one after another, the chosen of the company, among whom was my most
-troublesome hammock-boy, sipped. At last there was but a teaspoonful
-left, and the Omahin put it to his own lips and drank with gusto, handed
-it to one of his attendants, took it back, and, tipping it up, drained
-the very last dregs; then, solemnly holding out a very hard and horny
-hand, shook hands with us and departed.
-
-The next day we visited Lake Nuba. Beyin stands upon a narrow neck
-of land between the sea and a swamp that in the rainy season is only
-passable in canoes, but when I was there in the middle of the dry season
-a winding path took us through the dense swamp grasses to the place that
-is neither land nor water, and it is difficult to say whether a hammock
-or a canoe is the least dangerous mode of progression. Be it understood
-that this is a trade route. Rotting canoes lay among the grasses; and
-there passed to and fro quite an array of people laden with all manner
-of goods, plantains, and cassava, stink-fish (which certainly does
-not belie its name), piles of cotton goods for the interior, and great
-enamelled-ware basins piled with loam to make swish houses in Beyin.
-Most often these heavily laden folks are women who stalk along with a
-child up on their backs, or suckling it under their arms. They stared
-with wonder at the white woman in the hammock and moved into the swamp
-to let her pass, but I should think they no more envied me than I
-envy the Queen of England driving in the Park. Presently the way was
-ankle-deep in water, knee-deep in mud. Raffia palm, creepers, and all
-manner of swamp grasses grew so close that the hammock could barely
-be forced through, and only two men could carry it. We went up perhaps
-twenty feet in squelching, slippery mud. We came down again, and
-the greenery opened out into an expanse of water, where starry-white
-water-lilies opened cups to the sky above, and the great leaves looked
-like green rafts on the surface of the water. There were holes hidden by
-that water, but it is the trade route north all the same; and has been
-the trade route for hundreds of years since the Omahins of Beyin raided
-that way, and brought down their strings of slaves, carrying the tiny
-children lest they should be drowned, to the Dutch and Portuguese
-and English traders on the Coast. Presently we came to a more marked
-waterway, and here were canoes waiting for us. I draw a veil over the
-disembarking out of a hammock into an extremely crank and wet canoe. I
-was up to my knees in water, but the Forestry officer expressed himself
-as delighted. I held up a dripping skirt, and he made his men paddle
-over, and inspected. It was, of course, as we might have expected; the
-natives had seen that the most important person in their eyes, the man,
-got the only fairly dry canoe, and my kindly guardian was shocked, and
-insisted on an immediate change being made. And if it is necessary
-to draw a veil over the disembarking from a hammock to a canoe it is
-certainly necessary to draw one over the changing from one crank canoe
-to another. I can assure you it cannot be done gracefully. Even a
-mermaid who had no fear of being drowned could hardly accomplish that
-with elegance. But it was done at last, and we set off up the long and
-picturesque waterway fringed with lilies and palms and swamp grasses
-that led to Lake Nuba. And sometimes the waterway was deep, sometimes
-shallow. The canoe was aground, and every man had to jump overboard to
-help push it over the obstruction, but more than one man went over his
-head in slime and water. At each accident the lucky ones who had escaped
-roared and yelled with laughter as if it were the best of jokes. Perhaps
-it was. It was so hot that it could have been no hardship to have a
-bath, and they had nothing on to spoil. But at last we got out on the
-lake. It looked a huge sheet of water from the little canoe, and it took
-a good hour's paddling till we came to the lake village.
-
-This is the lair of the hunted, though it does lie on the trade route.
-Behind it lies the swamp which is neither land nor water in the dry
-season, and it looks just a tangle of raffia palm and swamp grass, and
-all manner of tropical greenery. The huts, like the huts of Beyin are,
-are built of raffia palm, but they go one better than Beyin and the
-fishing villages, even the flooring is of the stems; and the whole
-village is raised on stakes, so that it hangs over the water, and the
-houses can only be reached by a framework of poles.
-
-“If you _will_ go exploring,” said the Forestry officer, as I gathered
-up my skirts and essayed the frail ladder.
-
-I here put it on record that I think savage life can by no manner of
-means be recommended, save and except for its airiness. There is plenty
-of air. It is easy enough to see through those lightly built walls of
-raffia palm, and the doings of the occupants must be fairly open to
-the public. Also, except in one room, where a hearth had been laid down
-about six feet by three in extent, the flooring is so frail that in
-trying to walk on it I slipped through, and was nipped tightly by the
-ankles. I couldn't rescue myself. I was held as in a vice till the
-grinning King's messenger and a Kroo-boy carrier got me out, wherefore I
-conclude the inhabitants of those villages must spend the most of their
-time on their backs. In the dry season there is a little bit of hard
-earth underneath the huts. In the wet season there is nothing but water
-and the raffia palm flooring or a crank canoe for a resting-place. No
-wonder even the tiny children seem as much at home in a canoe as I am in
-an easy chair. And yet the village is growing, so there must be a charm
-about it as a dwelling-place. We had “chop” on the verandah of the
-Chiefs house. The Chief had apparently quite recently buried one of
-his household, for at the end of the platform close against the
-dwelling-chambers was erected one of the miniature sloping roofs with
-offerings of cock's feathers, shells, and pots to placate the ghost. It
-was quite a new erection, too, for the palm-leaf thatch was still green;
-but where the dead body was I do not know, probably sunk in the swamp
-underneath, and why so close I do not know either, since the people
-evidently feared his ghost. However, even if we were lunching over a
-grave, it did not trouble us half so much as the fate of the toast which
-was being brought across from another hut in a particularly crank canoe,
-and was naturally an object of much curiosity.
-
-[Illustration: 0160]
-
-The people were very courteous. It seems to me that the farther you get
-from civilisation the more courteous the population. Village children
-eager to see the lions in a circus could not have been more keen than
-the people of this lake village to see the white woman, but they did not
-even come and look till our linguist went forth and announced that the
-white people had had their chop, and were ready to receive the headman.
-He came, bringing his little daughter--a rough-looking, bearded old man,
-who squatted down in front of me and rammed the tail of his cloth into
-his mouth; and immediately there followed in his train, I should think,
-the entire village, men, women, and children, and ranged themselves in
-rows on the bamboo flooring, and looked their fill. Rows of eyes staring
-at one are embarrassing; I don't care whether they be those of a
-cultured people or of savages clad in scanty garments. If you stand up
-before an audience in a civilised land you know what you are there for,
-and you either succeed or fail, so the thing marches and comes to an
-end. But sitting before a subdued crowd clad in Manchester cotton or
-simply a smile, with all eyes centred on you, I at least feel that my
-rôle is somewhat more difficult. What on earth am I to do? If I move
-they chatter; if I single one out to be touched, he moves away, and
-substitutes a neighbour, who is equally anxious to substitute someone
-else, and the production of a camera causes a stampede. Looking back, I
-cannot consider that my behaviour at the lake village reflected any
-particular credit upon me. I felt I ought really to have produced more
-impression upon a people who had, many of them, never in their lives set
-eyes on a white woman before. They tell me, those who know, that for
-these people, whose lives move on in the same groove from the cradle to
-the grave, the coming of the Forestry officer and the white woman was a
-great event, and that all things will bear date from the day when the
-white missus and the white master had chop on the Chief's verandah.
-
-Before we left Beyin, I promised to take the Omahin's photograph. Early
-in the morning, when we had sent on our carriers, we wended our way to
-his house, where an eager crowd awaited us. They kept us waiting, of
-course; I do not suppose it would be consistent with an African chief's
-dignity to show himself in any hurry. When I grew tired of waiting and
-was turning away, the linguist came out to know if I would promise a
-picture when it was taken. I agreed. Certainly. More waiting, and then
-out came the linguist with a dirty scrap of paper and a lead pencil in
-his hand, and demanded of the Forestry officer his name and address.
-
-“Why?” asked the astonished young man.
-
-“So we can write to you when pictures no come.” It was lucky I was
-pretty sure of my own powers, but it was a little rough to make the
-Forestry officer responsible for any accident that might happen. It
-was a great relief to my mind when there came back to me from Messrs
-Sinclair a perfect picture of the Omahin and his following and his
-little son. I sent them the picture enlarged, but I never heard from
-that respectable linguist what they thought of it.
-
-[Illustration: 0164]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII--ON THE FRENCH BORDER
-
-_Very heavy going---Half Assinie--The preventive service station--The
-energetic officer--Dislike of Africa--The Tano River--The enterprising
-crocodiles--The mahogany logs--Wicked waste--Gentlemen adventurers--A
-primitive dinner-party--Forced labour--The lost carrier--“Make die and
-chopped”--A negro Good Samaritan--A matrimonial squabble--The wife who
-would earn her own living--Dissatisfied carriers._
-
-We were bound to Half Assinie and the French border and the way was
-all along the shore, which is a narrow strip of land between the roaring
-surf and a mangrove-fringed lagoon, and on this strip are the palm-built
-fishing villages and the cocoa-nut groves that are so typical of the
-Coast. The last day out from Half Assinie the way was very heavy going
-indeed. We had our midday meal in the street of a village with the eyes
-of the villagers upon us, and by the afternoon the “sea was too full,”
- the sun was scorching, and the loose sand was cruel heavy going for
-the carriers and the hammock-boys. The sun went down, the cool of the
-evening came, but the bearers were staggering like drunken men before a
-shout went up. We had reached Half Assinie, the last important town in
-the Gold Coast Colony.
-
-Half Assinie is just like any other Western Province Gold Coast town,
-built close down to the roaring, almost impassable surf, because
-the people draw much of their livelihood from the sea, and built of
-raffia-palm bamboo, because there is nothing else to build it of. Only
-there is this difference, that here is a preventive station, with a
-white man in command. There is a great cleared square, which is all sand
-and cocoa-nut palms, men in neat dark-blue uniforms pass to and fro, and
-bugle calls are heard the livelong day. We arrived long before the rest
-of our following, and we marched straight up to the preventive officer's
-house only to find that he was down with fever. But he was hospitable.
-All white men are in West Africa. The house was ours. It consisted of
-a square of sun-dried, white-washed mud, divided into three rooms with
-square openings for windows, mud floor and no ceiling, but high above
-the walls the palm-thatched roof is raised and carried far out beyond
-them to form a verandah where we could sit and eat and entertain
-visitors. It was big enough, never less than twelve and often quite
-eighteen feet wide, and could be made quite a comfortable living-room
-were a woman there, but Englishmen and the English Government do not
-encourage wives. The rooms assigned to the guests were of necessity
-empty, for men cannot carry furniture about in West Africa, and our host
-being sick and our gear not yet arrived, the Forestry officer and I,
-comforted with whisky-and-soda, took two chairs and sat out in the
-compound under the stars and watched for the coming of our carriers. The
-going had been so hard they straggled in one by one, bath and bed and
-chairs and tables and boxes, and it was nine o'clock before we were
-washed and dressed and in our right minds, and waiting “chop” at a
-table on the big verandah that the faithful Kwesi, who had been properly
-instructed, had decorated with yellow cannas from the garden.
-
-There is something about Half Assinie that gives the impression of being
-at the end of the world. Of course I have been in places much farther
-from civilisation, but nowhere has the tragedy of the Englishman's life
-in West Africa so struck me as it did here, and again I must say I think
-it is the conditions of the life and not the climate that is responsible
-for that tragedy. The young man who ran that preventive station was
-cheerful enough; he got up from his bed of fever when he could hardly
-stagger across the room to entertain his visitors. When he could barely
-crawl, he was organising a game of cricket between some white men who
-had unexpectedly landed and the “scholars” among the black inhabitants;
-and he was energetic and good-tempered and proud of his men, but he
-hated the country and had no hesitation in saying so. He had no use for
-West Africa; he counted the days till he should go home. He would not
-have dreamt of bringing his wife out even if she had wished to come. He
-was, in fact, a perfect specimen of the nice, pleasant Englishman who
-is going the way that allows France and Germany to beat us in colonising
-all along the line. It was his strong convictions, many of them
-unspoken, that impressed me, his realisation of his own discontent and
-discomfort and hopelessness that have tinged my recollections of the
-place.
-
-It should be a place of great importance, for it is but a short distance
-from the Tano River, and down the Tano River, far from the interior,
-come the great mahogany logs that rival the logs of Honduras and Belize
-and all Central America in value. They are cut far away in the forests
-of the interior; they are floated down the Tano River, paying toll to
-the natives who guide them over the falls and rapids; they come between
-tall, silk-cotton trees and fan palms and raffia palms, where the
-chimpanzee hides himself and the dog-faced monkeys whimper and cry, the
-crocodile suns himself on the mud-banks, and great, bell-shaped, yellow
-flowers lighten the greenery. They come past the French preventive
-station, that the natives call France, a station thriftily decorated
-with a tiny flag that might have come out of a cracker, past the English
-station built of raffia palm like the lake village, for this ground is
-flooded in the rains, through a saving canal, for the Tano River enters
-the sea in French territory, into a lagoon behind Half Assinie. The
-lagoon is surrounded by swamp, and the crocodiles, they say, abound, and
-are so fierce and fearless they have been known to take the paddler's
-arm as he stoops to his stroke. I did not know of their evil reputation
-as I sat on a box in the frail canoe, that seemed to place me in
-the midst of a waste of waters, rising up to the greenery in the far
-distance, and the blue-white sky above shut down on us like a lid. I was
-even inclined to be vexed with the men's reluctance to jump out and push
-when we ran ashore on a sand-bank. They should be able to grow rice in
-these swamps at the mouth of the Tano River and behind Beyin, and so
-raise up a new industry that shall save Half Assinie when the mahogany
-trade is a thing of the past.
-
-[Illustration: 0170]
-
-From the lagoon to Half Assinie, a couple of miles away, the logs are
-brought on a tramway line, and where they land the men are squaring
-them, cutting off the butts where the journey down the river has split
-and marred them, and making them ready to be moved down to the beach by
-the toilsome application of many hands. It reminded me of the way they
-must have built the pyramids as I watched the half-naked men toil and
-sweat and push and shriek, and apparently accomplish so little. Yet all
-in good time the beach is strewn with the logs, great square-cut baulks
-of red timber with their owners' marks upon their butts and covered
-generally with a thatch of cocoa-nut palm fronds to keep them from the
-all-powerful sun. The steamer will call for them some day, but it is
-no easy thing to get them through the surf, and steamer after steamer
-calls, whistles, decides that the surf is too heavy to embark such
-timber, and passes on. And where they have been cut and trimmed, the
-mammies come with baskets to gather pieces of the priceless wood to
-build their fires. It seems to me that the trimming is done wastefully.
-The average savage and the ignorant white is always wasteful where there
-is plenty, and it is nothing to them that the mahogany tree does not
-come to maturity for something like two hundred and fifty years, and
-that the cutters have denuded the country far, far beyond the sea coast.
-
-There are other phases of life in Half Assinie. Usually there is but one
-white man there, the preventive officer, but when I visited it actually
-ten white people sat down one night to dinner. For there had landed some
-white people bound on some errand which, as has been the custom from
-time immemorial in Africa, was veiled in mystery. They were seeking
-gold; they hoped to find diamonds; their ultimate aim was to trade with
-the natives, and cut out every other trading-house along the Coast.
-Frankly, I do not know what they had landed for--their leader talked of
-his wealth and how he grew bananas and pines and coffee, and created a
-tropical paradise in Devonshire, and meanwhile in Africa conferred the
-inimitable benefits of innumerable gramophones and plenty of work upon
-the guileless savage--but I only gathered he was there for the purpose
-of filling his pockets, how, I have not the faintest idea. His dinner
-suggested Africa in the primitive days of the first adventurers and
-rough plenty. Soup in a large bowl, from which we helped ourselves, a
-dozen tins of sardines flung on a plate, a huge tongue from a Gargantuan
-ox, and dishes piled with slices of pine-apple. The table decorations
-consisted of beer bottles, distributed at intervals down the table
-between the kerosene lamps; the boys who waited yelled and shrieked and
-shouted, like the untamed savages they were, and some of the white men
-were unshaven and in their shirt sleeves, and the shirts, to put it
-mildly, needed washing.
-
-“Gentlemen adventurers,” said I to my companion under my breath,
-thinking of the days of old and the men who had landed on these shores.
-
-“Would you say gentlemen?” said he.
-
-And I decided that one epithet would be sufficient.
-
-How the bugles called. Every hour almost a man clad in the dark-blue
-preventive service uniform stood out in the square with his bugle and
-called to the surf and the sky and the sand and the cocoa-nut palms and
-the natives beyond, saying to them that here was the representative of
-His Britannic Majesty, here was the white man powerful above all
-others who kept the Borders, who was come as the forerunner of law and
-cleanliness and order. For these things do not come naturally to the
-native. He clears the land when he needs it and then he leaves it to
-itself and the quickly encroaching bush. The mosquito troubles him not.
-Dirt and filth and evil smells are not worth counting weighed in the
-balance against a comfortable afternoon's sleep, and so it came that
-when I commented on the neatness of Half Assinie, the preventive officer
-laughed.
-
-[Illustration: 0174]
-
-“Forced labour,” said he. “The place was in a frightful state a month
-ago and I couldn't get anybody to do anything, so I just turned out my
-men, put a cordon round, and forced everyone to do an hour's labour,
-men, mammies, and half-grown children, till we got the place clear. It
-wasn't hard on anyone, and you see.” He was right. Sometimes in Africa,
-nay, as a rule, the powers of a dictator are needed by the white man.
-If he is a wise and clever dictator so much the better, but one thing
-is certain, he must not be a man who splits hairs. Justice, yes, rough
-crude justice he must give--must have the sort of mind that sees black
-and white and does not trouble about the varying shades in between.
-
-We came back from the Border by the road that we had gone, the road that
-is the King's Highway, and an incident happened that shows how very,
-very easily a wrong impression of a people may be gathered.
-
-When we were in Beyin on our way out, the two headmen who were eternally
-at war with each other suddenly appeared in accord leading between them
-a man by the hands.
-
-“This man be very sick.”
-
-This man certainly was very sick, and it seemed to the Forestry officer
-that the simplest thing would be to leave him behind at Beyin and pick
-him up on our return journey. He thought his decision would be received
-with gratitude. Not at all. The sick carrier protested that all he
-wanted was to be relieved of his load and allowed to go on. The men of
-Beyin were bad people; if he stayed they would kill him and chop him.
-The Forestry officer was inclined to laugh. Murder of an unoffending
-stranger and cannibalism on a coast that had been in touch with
-civilisation for the last four hundred years; the idea was not to be
-thought of. But the frightened sick man stuck to his point and his
-brother flung down his load and declared if he were left behind he
-should stay with him. There was nothing for it then but to agree to
-their wishes. He was relieved of his load and he started, and he and his
-brother arrived at Half Assinie long after all the other carriers had
-got in. The gentlemen adventurers numbered among them a doctor, and he
-was called in and prescribed for the sick man. After the little rest
-there he was better, and started back for Axim, his brother, who was
-carrying the Forestry officer's bath, in close attendance. By and by
-we passed the bath abandoned on the beach, and its owner perforce put
-another man on to carry it.
-
-That night there were no signs of the missing men, but next morning the
-brother, the man who ought to have carried the bath, turned up. His face
-was sodden with crying. A negro is intensely emotional, but this man had
-some cause for his grief. He had missed his brother, abandoned the bath,
-and gone right back to Half Assinie to look for him. The way was by the
-seashore, there is no way to wander from it; on one side is the roaring
-surf that no man alone may dare, and on the other, just beyond the line
-of cocoa-nut palms, a mangrove-fringed lagoon, and beyond that a bush,
-containing perhaps a few native farms to be reached by narrow tracks,
-but a bush that no stranger would lightly dare. But no trace of his
-brother could this man find. What had become of the sick carrier? That
-was the question we asked ourselves, and to that no answer could we find
-except the sinister verdict pronounced by his fellows, “Make die and
-chopped.” And that I believed for many months, till just before I left
-the Coast the Forestry officer and I met again and he told me the end of
-the story. He had made every inquiry, telegraphed up and down the Coast,
-and given the man up for lost, and then after four or five weeks a
-miserable skeleton came crawling into Axim. The lost carrier. He had
-felt faint by the wayside, crawled into the shade of a bush and become
-insensible, and there had been found by some man, a native of the
-country and a total stranger to him. And this Good Samaritan instead of
-falling upon him and making him die as he fully expected, took him to
-his own house, fed and succoured him, and when he was well enough set
-him on his way. So he and I and all his fellows had wronged these men of
-the shore. Greater kindness he could not have found in a Christian land,
-and in all probability he might easily have found much less.
-
-But Beyin too furnished another lesson for me, not quite so pleasant.
-All my carriers had come from here, and on our way back they struck. In
-plain words they wanted to see the colour of my money. Said the Forestry
-officer, “Don't pay them, else they'll all run away and you will have
-no one to carry your things into Axim.” That was a contingency not to be
-thought of, so the ultimatum went forth--no pay until they had completed
-their contract. That night I regret to state there was a row in the
-house, a matrimonial quarrel carried on in the approved matrimonial
-style all the world over, with the mother-in-law for chorus and general
-backer-up. There was a tremendous racket and the principal people
-concerned seemed to be one of my women-carriers and the Omahin's
-registrar in whose house we were lodged. Then because Fanti is one of
-the Twi languages, and an Ashanti can understand it quite well, Kwesi
-interpreted for me. This woman, it appeared, was one of the registrar's
-wives, and he disapproved of her going on the road as a common carrier.
-It was not consistent with his dignity as an official of the court, he
-said at the top of his voice; he had given her a good home and she had
-no need to demean herself. She shrilly declared he had done no such
-thing, and if he had, had shamefully neglected her for that last hussy
-he had married, and her mother backed her and several other female
-friends joined in, and whether they settled the dispute or not to their
-own satisfaction I do not know, but the gentleman cuffed the lady and
-the lady had the extreme satisfaction of scattering several handfuls of
-his wool to the winds.
-
-Next morning none of my carriers turned up; there lay the loads under
-a tree in front of the house with the orderly looking at them with his
-sardonic grin, but never a carrier. It was cool with the coolness of
-early morning. We had our breakfast in the great room, we discussed the
-disturbance of the night before, the things were all washed up, still
-no carriers; at last, just as it was getting hot and our tempers were
-giving out, came a message. The carriers would not go unless they were
-paid.
-
-“And it's a foregone conclusion they won't go if they are paid,” sighed
-the Forestry officer as he set off to interview the Omahin and tell him
-our decision. If the carriers did not come in at once, it ran, we would
-leave all the loads, making him, the Omahin, responsible for their
-safety, and we would push on with the Mendi and Kroo-boy carriers in
-the Forestry officer's employ. Those left behind not having carried out
-their contract of course would then get no pay at all, and this would
-happen unless they returned to work within a quarter of an hour.
-The effect was marvellous. The Omahin, of course, did not grasp how
-exceedingly uncomfortable it would have been for us to leave our gear
-behind us, and as we had sixteen Kroo boys and Mendi boys the feat was
-quite feasible, and promptly those Beyin people returned to work and
-were as eager to get their loads as they had before been to leave them.
-So I learned another lesson in the management of carriers, and we made
-our way without further incident back to Axim.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII--ALONE IN WEST AFRICA
-
-_Cinderella--A troubled Commissioner--Few people along the Coast--No
-hotels--Nursing Sister to the rescue--Sekondi--A little log-rolling--A
-harassed hedge--Carriers--Difficulties of the way--A funeral
-palaver--No dinner and no ligjit--First night alone--Unruly carriers--No
-breakfast--Crossing the Prah--A drink from a marmalade pot--“We no be
-fit, Ma”--The evolution of Grant--Along the Coast in the dark--Elmina at
-last--A sympathetic medical officer--“I have kicked your policeman.”_
-
-West Africa is Cinderella among the colonies. No one goes there for
-pleasure, and of those who gain their livelihood from the country
-three-fourths regard themselves as martyrs and heroes, counting the days
-till the steamer shall take them home again for that long leave that
-makes a position there so desirable. The other quarter perhaps, some I
-know for certain, find much good in the country, many possibilities, but
-as yet their voice is not heard by the general public above that chorus
-that drowns its protest. That any man should come to the Gold Coast for
-pleasure would be surprising; that a woman should come when she had no
-husband there, and that she should want to go overland all along the
-sea-board, passed belief. “Why? why?” asked everyone. “A tourist on
-the Coast,” a surprised ship's captain called me, and I disclaimed it
-promptly. My publisher had commissioned a book and I was there to
-write it. And then they could not make up their minds whether I or my
-publisher were the greater fool, for but very few among that little
-company saw anything to write about in the country.
-
-In Axim the troubled Commissioner set his foot down. I had been to Half
-Assinie and he felt that ought to satisfy the most exacting woman; but
-since I was anxious to do more he stretched a point and took me as far
-as Prince's, an abandoned Branden-burgher fort that is tumbling into
-ruins, with a native farm in the courtyard, but no farther could I go.
-Carriers he could not get me, and for the first time I saw a smile on
-his face, a real relieved smile, when he saw me into the boat that took
-me to the steamer bound for Sekondi.
-
-No one goes along the Coast except an occasional Public Works Department
-man or a School Inspector; nobody wants to, and it is not easy of
-accomplishment.
-
-Even in the towns it is difficult for the stranger. I do not know
-what would happen if that stranger had not friends and letters of
-introduction, for though there are one or two hotels, as yet no one
-who is not absolutely driven to it by stern necessity stays in a
-West-African hotel. In Sekondi it is almost impossible, for at this town
-is the Coast terminus of the railway that runs to the mines at Tarkwa
-and Kumasi, and the miner both coming and returning seems to require
-so much liquid refreshment that he is anything but a desirable
-fellow-housemate, wherefore was I deeply grateful when Miss Oram,
-the nursing Sister at the Sekondi Hospital, asked me to stay in her
-quarters.
-
-Sekondi straggles up and down many hills, and by and by if some definite
-plan of beautifying be followed may be made rather a pretty place.
-Even now at night, from some of the bungalows on the hillsides when the
-darkness gently veils the ugly scars that man's handiwork leaves behind,
-with its great sweep of beach, its sloping hillsides dotted with lights,
-the stars above and the lights in the craft on the water that lie just
-outside the surf, it has a wonderful charm and beauty that there is no
-denying. And yet there is no doubt Sekondi should not be there. Who
-is responsible for it I do not know, but there must have been some
-atrocious piece of log-rolling before Elmina and Cape Coast were
-deprived of the benefit of the railway to the north. At Sekondi is no
-harbour. It is but an open roadstead where in days gone past both the
-Dutch and English held small forts for the benefit of their trade.
-At Sekondi was no town. At the end of the last century the two little
-fishing villages marked the Dutch and English forts. Now the English
-fort is gone, Fort Orange is used as a prison, and a town has sprung
-into existence that has taken the trade from Cape Coast and Elmina. It
-is a town that looks like all the English towns, as if no one cared
-for it and as if everyone lives there because perforce he must. In the
-European town the roads are made, and down their sides are huge gutters
-to carry off the storm waters; the Englishman, let it be counted to
-him for grace, is great on making great cemented gutters that look like
-young rivers when it rains, and one enterprising Commissioner planted an
-avenue or two of trees which promise well, only here and there someone
-has seen fit to cut a tree or two down, and the gap has never been
-replaced. Some of the bungalows are fairly comfortable, but though
-purple bougainvillia, flame-coloured flamboyant trees, and dainty
-pink corrallitis will grow like weeds, decent gardens are few and far
-between. Instead of giving an impression of tropical verdure as it
-easily might, Sekondi looks somewhat hot and barren. This, it is
-only fair to say, I did not notice so much till I had visited German
-territory and seen what really could be done with the most unpromising
-material in a tropical climate. But German territory is the beloved
-child, planned and cared for and thought much of; English territory is
-the foster-child, received into the household because of the profit it
-will bring, and most of the towns of the Gold Coast shore bear these
-marks plain for everyone to read. They suffer, and suffer severely from
-the iniquitous system that is for ever changing those in authority over
-them in almost every department.
-
-Sekondi Hospital for instance is rather a nice-looking building but it
-is horribly bare-looking and lacks sadly a garden and greenery. There
-is, of course, a large reserve all round it where are the houses of the
-medical officers and nursing Sisters, and in this reserve many things
-are growing, but the general impression is of something just beginning.
-This I hardly understood, since the place has been in existence for the
-last ten years, till I found out that in the last eight months there
-had been four different doctors head of that hospital, and each of those
-doctors had had different views as to how the grounds should be laid
-out. So round the medical officer's bungalow the hedge had been three
-times planted and three times dug up. Just as I left, the fourth
-unfortunate hedge was being put in. That, as I write, is nearly six
-weeks ago, so in all probability they are now considering some new plan.
-If only someone with knowledge would take in hand the beautifying of
-these West-African towns and insist on the plans being adhered to! In
-one of the principal streets of Sekondi is a tamarind tree standing
-alone, a pleasant green spot in the general glare and heat, a reminder
-of how well the old Dutch did, a reproach that we who are a great people
-do not do better. It seems to me it would want so little to make these
-towns beautiful places, the moral effect would be so great if they were.
-
-But I had come to go along the Coast, and the question was carriers;
-I appealed to the transport. My friend, Mr Migeod, the head of the
-transport, was on leave, and his second in command shook his head
-doubtfully. The troops in the north were out on manoeuvres and they had
-taken almost very carrier he could lay his hands on; but he would see
-what he could do. How few could I do with? Seventeen, I decided, with
-two servants, was the very fewest I could move with, and he said he
-would do his best. I wanted to start on the following Monday, and I
-chose the hour of ten; also because this was my first essay entirely
-alone I decided I would not go farther than Chama, nine miles along the
-Coast to the east.
-
-So, on a Monday morning early in March, behold me with all my goods and
-chattels, neatly done up into loads not weighing over 60 lbs., laid out
-in a row in the Sister's compound, and waiting for the carriers. I had
-begged a policeman for dignity, or protection, I hardly know which, and
-he came first and ensconced himself under the house, and I sat on the
-verandah and waited. Presently the carriers came and began gingerly
-turning over the loads and looking at me doubtfully. They were Mendis
-and Timinis, not the regular Government carriers, but a scratch lot
-picked up to fill up gaps in the ranks. I didn't like the looks of them
-much, but there was nothing else to be done so I prepared to accept
-them. But it always takes two to make a bargain, and apparently those
-carriers liked me less than I liked them, for presently they one and all
-departed, and I began a somewhat heated discussion across the telephone
-with the head of the transport. Looking back, I don't see what he could
-have done more than he did. It is impossible to evolve carriers out
-of nothing, but then I didn't see it quite in that light. I wanted
-carriers; I was looking to him to produce them, and I hadn't got them.
-He gave me to understand he thought I was unreasonable, and we weren't
-quite as nice to each other as we might have been. The men, he said,
-were frightened, and I thought that was unreasonable, for there was
-nothing really terrifying about me.
-
-At three o'clock another gang arrived with a note from the transport
-officer. They were subsisted for sixteen days, and I might start there
-and then for Accra.
-
-I should have preferred to have subsisted my men myself; that is, given
-them each threepence daily, as I had on the way to the French border,
-seeing that they were not regular Government men; but as the thing was
-done there was nothing for it but to make the best of it, and I went
-down, hunted up my policeman, and saw the loads on to the men's heads.
-I saw them start out in a long string, and then the thing that always
-happens in Africa happened. Both my servants were missing.
-
-Zacco, a boy with a scarred face from the north, did not much matter,
-but Grant knew my ways and I could trust him. Clearly, out in the wilds
-by myself with strange carriers and without even a servant, I should be
-very badly off, and I hesitated. Not for long though. If I were going to
-let little things connected with personal comfort stand in my way I knew
-I should never get to Accra, so I decided to start; my servants might
-catch me up, and if they did not, I would rely on the ministrations of
-the hammock-boys. If the worst came to the worst, I supposed I could
-put my dignity in my pocket and cook myself something, or live on tinned
-meat and biscuits; and so, leaving directions with my hostess that those
-boys were to be severely reprimanded when they turned up, I got into my
-hammock and started.
-
-The road to Accra from Sekondi is along the seashore, and so, to be
-very Irish, there is no road. Of a truth, very few people there are who
-choose to go by land, as it is so much easier to go by steamer, and the
-way, generally speaking, is along the sand. Just outside Sekondi the
-beach is broken by huge rocks that run out into the sea, apparently
-barring the way effectually, and those rocks had to be negotiated. My
-hammock-boys stopped, and I got out and watched my men with the loads
-scrambling over the rocks, and one thing I was sure of, on my own feet
-I could not go that way. I mentioned that to my demurring men, and
-insisted that over those rocks they had to get me somehow, if it took
-the eight hammock-boys to do it. And over those rocks I was got without
-setting foot out of my hammock, and I fairly purred with pride, most
-unjustly setting it down to my own prowess and feeling it marked a
-distinct stage on my journey eastwards. We were, all of us, pleased
-as we went on again in all the glare of a tropical afternoon, and I
-mentally sniffed at the men who had hinted I was not able to manage
-carriers. There was not a more uplifted woman in all Africa than I
-was for about the space of half an hour. It is trite to say pride goes
-before a fall. We have all heard it from our cradles and I ought to have
-remembered it, but I didn't. Presently we came to a village, or rather
-two villages, with a stream dividing them, and there was a tremendous
-tom-toming going on, and the monotonous sound of natives chanting.
-The place was surrounded by thick greenery, only there was a broad way
-between the houses, a brown road with great waterways and holes in it,
-and the occasional shade-tree, under which the village rests in the heat
-of the day, and holds its little markets and its little councils and
-even does a stray job of cooking. The tom-toming went on, and men
-appeared blowing horns. They were evidently very excited, and I remember
-still, with a shudder, the staring, bloodshot eyes of two who passed my
-hammock braying on horns. Most of my men could speak a little English,
-so I asked not without some little anxiety, “What is the matter?”
-
-“It be funeral palaver, Ma.”
-
-Oh, well, a funeral palaver was no great matter, surely. I had never
-heard of these Coast natives doing anything more than drink palm wine
-to celebrate the occasion. Some of those we passed had evidently drunk
-copiously already, and I was thankful we were passing. We came to the
-little river, we crossed the ford, and then we stopped.
-
-“We go drink water, Ma,” said my men.
-
-I ought to have said “No,” but it was a very hot afternoon, and the
-request was not unreasonable. They had had to work hard carrying me
-over those rocks so I got out and let them go. And then, as I might have
-known, I waited. I grew cross, but it is no good losing your temper when
-there is no one to be made uneasy by it, and then I grew frightened;
-but, if it is foolish to lose one's temper, it is the height of folly to
-be afraid when there is no help possible. I was standing on the bank of
-the little river that we had just forded, my hammock was at my feet,
-all around was greenery, tropical greenery of palm and creeper, not very
-dense compared to other bush I have seen, but dense enough to prevent
-one's stepping off the road; before me was the village, with its mud
-walls and its thatched roofs, and behind me were the groves of trees on
-the other side of the water that hid the village, from which came the
-sound of savage revelry. Never have I felt more alone, and yet Sekondi
-was a bare five miles away. I comforted myself with the reflection that
-nothing would be likely to happen, but the thought of those half-naked
-men with the bloodshot, staring eyes was most unpleasantly prominent
-in my mind. Some little naked boys came and bathed and stared at me;
-I didn't know whether to welcome them as companions or not. They
-understood no English, and when asked where were my men only stared the
-harder. I tried to take a photograph, but the policeman, who carried my
-stand, was also absent at the funeral, and I fear my hand shook, for
-I have never seen that picture. Then, at last, when I was absolutely
-despairing, a hammock-boy turned up. He was a most ragged ruffian, with
-a printed cloth by way of trousers, a very openwork singlet, all torn
-away at one arm, a billycock hat in the last stages of dilapidation, and
-a large red woollen comforter with a border of black, blue, and yellow.
-That comforter fascinated me, and I looked at it as I talked to him, and
-wondered where it had been made. It had been knitted, and many of the
-stitches had been dropped, and I pictured to myself the sewing-party
-sitting round the fire doing useful work, while someone read aloud one
-of Father Benson's books. My hammock-boy looked at me as if he wondered
-how I was taking it, and wiped his mouth with the tail of the comforter,
-where they had used up the odd bits of wool. He flung it across his
-shoulder and a long, dropped red stitch caught over his ear.
-
-“Where be the men?” I was very angry indeed, which was very rough on
-the only one of the crowd who had turned up. He was very humble, and I
-suggested he should go and look for them, and tell them that if “they
-no come quick, they get no pay.” He departed on his errand, and I waited
-with a sinking heart. Even if there was no danger, and I was by no means
-sure of that, with that tom-toming and that chant in my ears, I could
-not afford to go back and announce that I had failed. All my outlay had
-been for nothing. Another long wait, and more little boys to look at me.
-The evening was coming; here in the hollow, down among the trees, the
-gloom was already gathering, and I began to think that neither Chama
-nor Sekondi would see me that night. I wondered what it would be like to
-spend the night under the trees, and whether there were any beasts that
-might molest me.
-
-“Toom, toom, toom,” went the village drum, as if to remind me there
-might be worse things than spending the night under the trees, and
-then my friend with the comforter appeared, leading two of the other
-hammock-boys; one wore a crocheted, red tam-o'-shanter that fell over
-his face--probably made at the same sewing-party. It was the same wool.
-
-I talked to those three men. Considering they were the best behaved
-of the lot, it comes back to me now that I was rather hard on them. I
-pointed out the dire pains and penalties that befell hammock-boys who
-did not pay proper attention to their duties, and I trusted that the
-fact that I was utterly incapable of inflicting those penalties was not
-as patent to them as it was to me, and then I decreed that my friend
-with the comforter should go back and try and retrieve a fourth man
-while the other two stayed with me. After another long wait he got that
-fourth man and we started off, I dignifiedly wrathful--at least I hope
-I was dignified; there was no doubt about the wrath--and they bearing
-evident marks of having consumed a certain quantity of the funeral palm
-wine.
-
-It was dark when we reached Chama, at least as dark as it ever is on a
-bright, starlight night in the Tropics, and we came out of the gloom
-of the trees to find a dark bungalow raised high on stilts on a cement
-platform, looming up against the star-spangled sky, and then another
-surprise, a comforting surprise, awaited me: on that cement platform
-were two white spots, and those white spots rose up to greet me,
-shamefaced, humble, contrite, my servants. They had evidently slunk past
-me without being seen, and I was immensely relieved. But naturally I
-did not say so. I mentioned that I was very angry with them, and that it
-would take a long course of faithful service to make up for so serious
-a lapse, and they received my reproof very humbly, and apparently never
-realised that I was just about as lonely a woman as there was in
-the world at that moment, and would gladly have bartered all my wild
-aspirations after fame and fortune for the comfortable certainty that I
-was going to spend a safe night. It certainly does not jump with my firm
-faith in thought transference that none of those men apparently ever
-discovered I was afraid. I should have thought it was written all over
-me, but also, afraid as I was, it never occurred to me to turn back; so,
-if the one thought impressed them, perhaps the other did too.
-
-Then I waited on that dark verandah. There was some scanty Government
-furniture in the rest-house, and my repentant servant fetched me out a
-chair, and I sat and waited. I looked out; there was the clearing round
-the house, the gloom of the dense greenery that grew up between the
-house and the seashore, while east ran the road to the town of Chama,
-about a ten minutes' walk distant, and on the west a narrow track hardly
-discernible in the gloom came out of the greenery. Up that I had come
-and up that I expected my men. And it seemed I might expect them. No one
-was going to deny me that privilege. Still, I began to feel distinctly
-better. At least I had arrived at Chama, and four hammock-boys and two
-servants were very humbly at my service. I wasn't going to spend the
-night in the open at the mercy of the trees and the unknown beasts, and
-I laughed at the idea of being afraid of the trees, though to my mind
-African trees have a distinct personality of their own. Well, there
-was nothing to be done but wait, and I waited in the dark, for as no
-carriers had come in there was no possibility of a light, or of dinner
-either for that matter. Grant was extremely sympathetic and most
-properly shocked at the behaviour of the carriers. No punishment could
-be too great for men who could treat his missus in such an outrageous
-manner. In the excitement and bustle of getting off I had eaten very
-little that day, so I was very hungry now; it added to my woes and
-decreased my fear. Nothing surely could be going to happen to a woman
-who was so very commonplacely hungry. At last, about ten o'clock, I saw
-my loads come straggling out of the gloom of the trees on to the little
-path up to the platform, and then, before I quite realised what was
-happening, the verandah was full of carriers, drunk and hilarious, and
-not at all inclined to recognise the enormity of their crime. Something
-had to be done, I knew. It would be the very worst of policies to allow
-my verandah to be turned into pandemonium. The headman had lighted a
-lantern, that I made Grant take, and by its flickering light I singled
-out my policeman, cheerfully happy, but still, thank goodness, holding
-on to the sticks of my camera. Him I tackled angrily. How dared he
-allow drunken carriers on my verandah, or anywhere near me? Everyone, on
-putting down his load, was to go downstairs immediately. How we cleared
-that verandah I'm sure I don't know. The four virtuous haminock-boys
-and Grant and Zacco, I suppose, all took a hand, backed by their stern
-missus, and presently I and my servants had it to ourselves with a
-humble and repentant policeman sitting on the top of the steps, and
-Grant set about getting my dinner. It was too late, I decided, to cook
-anything beyond a little coffee, so I had tinned tongues and tinned
-apricots this my first night alone in Africa. Then came the question
-of going to bed. There were several rooms in the rest-house, but the
-verandah seemed to me a pleasanter place where to sleep on a hot night.
-Of course, I was alone, and would it be safer inside? The doors and
-windows were frail enough, besides it would be impossible to sleep
-with them shut, so I, to my boy's intense astonishment, decided for the
-verandah, and there I set up my bed, just an ordinary camp-bed, with
-mosquito curtains over it, and I went to bed and wondered if I could
-sleep.
-
-First I found myself listening, listening intently, and I heard a
-thousand noises, the night birds calling, the skirl of the untiring
-insects, a faint tom-toming and sounds of revelry from the village,
-which gave things an unpleasant air of savagery, the crash of the
-ceaseless surf on the beach. I decided I was too frightened to sleep and
-I heartily wished myself back in England, writing mystery stories for a
-livelihood, and then I began to think that I was most desperately
-tired, that the mosquito curtains were a great protection, and before
-I realised I was sleepy was sound asleep and remembered no more till I
-awakened wondering where I was, and saw the first streaks of light in
-the east. Before the first faint streaks of light and sunrise is but a
-short time in the Tropics, and now I knew that everything depended upon
-me, so I flew out of bed and dressed with great promptitude, and there
-was Grant with early-morning tea and then breakfast. But no carriers;
-and I had given orders we were to start at half-past five. It was long
-past that; six o'clock, no carriers, half-past. I sent Zacco for the
-headman and he like the raven from the ark was no more seen. I sent
-Grant and he returned, not with an olive branch but with the policeman.
-
-“Where are the carriers?” I demanded.
-
-“They chop,” said he nonchalantly, as if it were no affair of his.
-
-“Chop! At this hour in the morning?” It was close on seven.
-
-He signified that they did.
-
-“Bring the headman.” And I was a very angry white missus indeed. Since
-I had got through the night all right I felt I was bound to do somthing
-today and I was not nearly so afraid as I had been.
-
-The headman wept palm-wine tears. “They chop,” he said and he sobbed and
-gulped and wiped his face with the back of his hand like a discomfited
-Somersetshire laburer. His condition immensely improved my courage. I
-was the white woman all over dealing with the inferior race, and I had
-not a doubt as to what should be done.
-
-“Policeman, you follow me.”
-
-He did not like it much, my little Fanti policeman, because he feared
-these Mendis and Timinis who could have eaten him alive, but he followed
-me however reluctantly. I wanted him as representing law and order. The
-thinking I intended to do myself.
-
-We walked down to the village and there in the middle of the road were
-my carriers in two parties, each seated round a large enamelled-iron
-basin full of fish and rice. They did chop. They looked up at me with a
-grin, but I had quite made up my mind.
-
-“Policeman,” I said, “no man chops so late. Throw away the chop.”
-
-He hesitated. He could not make up his mind which he was most afraid of,
-me or the men. Finally he decided that I was the most terrifying person
-and he gingerly picked up one of those basins and carefully put it down
-under a shrub.
-
-“Policeman,” I said, and I was emphatic, “that's not the way to throw
-away chop. Scatter it round,” and with one glance at me to see if I
-meant what I said, he scattered it on the ground. What surprised me was
-that the men let him. Certainly those round the second dish seized it
-and fled up towards the rest-house, and we came after them. When we
-arrived the men were still eating, but there was still some rice in
-the dish, and I made the policeman seize it and fling it away, and then
-every one of those men came back meekly to work, picked up their loads
-or waited round the hammock for me.
-
-I saw the loads off with the headman, and told him to get across the
-Prah River if he could and on to Kommenda, where I proposed to have my
-luncheon, and then I stayed behind to take some photographs of the old
-fort. It took me some time to take my pictures. The heat was intense,
-and beyond the fort, which is quaintly old-world, there is not much to
-see. The town is the usual Coast village built of clay, which they call
-swish, with thatched roofs; the streets between the houses are hot and
-dry and bare, and little naked children disport themselves there with
-the goats, sheep, pigs, and chickens. There are the holes from which
-the earth has been taken to make the swish--man-traps in the night,
-mosquitobreeding places at all times--and there are men and women
-standing gossiping in the street, wondering at the unusual sight of a
-white woman, just for all the world as they might do in a remote Cornish
-village if a particularly smart motor passed by. They are fishing
-villages, these villages along the Coast, living by the fishing,
-and growing just a little maize and plantains and yams for their own
-immediate needs; and it is a curious thing to say, but they give one the
-same sleepy, out-of-the-world feeling that a small village in Cornwall
-does. There is not in them the go and the promise there is in an Ashanti
-village, the dormant wealth waiting to be awakened one feels there is
-along the Volta. No, these places were exploited hundreds of years ago
-by the men who built the fort that frowns over them still, and they are
-content to live on from day to day with just enough to keep them going,
-with the certain knowledge that no man can die of starvation, and when a
-young man wants distraction I suppose he goes to the bigger towns. So
-I found nothing of particular interest in Chama, and I went on till I
-reached the Prah River, just where it breaks out across the sands and
-rushes to meet the ocean.
-
-I wondered in that journey to Accra many times whether my face was set
-hard, whether my lips were not one firm, stern line that could never
-unbend and look kindly again. My small camp mirror that I consulted was
-exceedingly unflattering, but if I had not before been certain that no
-half-measures were of any use I should have been certain of it when
-I reached the river. There lay my loads, and sitting down solemnly
-watching them like so many crows, rather dissipated crows, were my men.
-They rose up as my hammock came into view.
-
-“Missus, men want drink water. It be hot.”
-
-It was hot, very hot, and the river it seemed was salt; moreover, the
-only house in sight, and that was a good way off, was the hut apparently
-belonging to the ferryman. I looked at them, and my spirits rose; it was
-borne in on me that I had them well in hand, for there was no reason why
-they should not have gone off in a body to get that much-needed water.
-
-But I gave the order, “One man go fetch water.”
-
-Why they obeyed me I don't know now, and why they didn't take the
-bucket I don't know now. I ought to have sent one man with a bucket;
-but experience always has to be bought, and I only realised that I was
-master of the situation, and must not spoil it by undue haste. So I
-solemnly stood there under my sun umbrella and watched those men have a
-drink one by one out of an empty marmalade pot. Whenever, in the future,
-I see one of those golden tins, it will call up to my memory a blazing
-hot day, a waste of sand and coarse grass, a wide river flowing through
-it, and a row of loads with a ragged company of black men sitting
-solemnly beside them waiting while one of their number brought them
-a drink. That drink was a tremendous piece of business, but we were
-through with it at last, and though I was rather weary and very hot I
-was inclined to be triumphant. I felt I had the men fairly well in hand.
-
-Still, they weren't all that I could have desired. The road was very,
-very bad indeed, sometimes it was down on the heavy sand, sometimes the
-rocks were too rough--the hammock had to be engineered up and down the
-bank by devious and uncomfortable ways, sometimes we stopped to buy
-fruit in a village, and sometimes the men stopped and declared: “Missus,
-oder hammock-boy, he no come.”
-
-Then I was hard. I knew it was no good being anything else.
-
-“If hammock-boy no come you go on. I no stop.”
-
-And they went, very slowly and reluctantly, but they went. It seemed
-cruel, but I soon grasped the fact that if I once allowed them to wait
-for the relief men who lingered there always would be lingerers, and we
-should crawl to Accra at the rate of five miles a day.
-
-They sang songs as they went, and this my first day out the song took a
-most personal turn.
-
-“If man no get chop,” they intoned in monotonous recitative, “he go die.
-Missus frow away our chop-----”
-
-The deduction was obvious and I answered it at once. “All right, you go
-die. I no care. If men no come to work they may die.”
-
-But they went very badly indeed, and it was after two o'clock in the
-afternoon before we arrived at Kommenda on the seashore, where there is
-a village and a couple of old forts falling into decay. Here, inside the
-courtyard of one of them, which is Ju-ju, I had my table and chair put
-out and my luncheon served. The feeling of triumph was still upon me.
-Already I was nearer Elmina than Sekondi and I felt in all probability,
-bad as they were, the men would go on. But, before I had finished my
-luncheon, my serenity received another shock. Of course no one dared
-disturb so terrible a person at her chop, but, after I had finished,
-while I was endeavouring to instruct Zacco in the way in which a kettle
-might be induced to boil without letting all the smoke go down the
-spout--I wanted some coffee--Grant came up with a perturbed countenance
-and said the headman wanted to speak to me. I sent for him.
-
-“Missus,” he began propitiatingly, “man be tired too much. You stop here
-to-night; we take you Cape Coast to-morrow.”
-
-[Illustration: 0200]
-
-For the moment I was very properly wrathful. Then I reflected--the white
-men did not understand, the majority of them, my desire to see Elmina,
-the most important castle on the Coast, how then should these black men
-understand. There was a tiny rest-house built on the bastion of the fort
-here, and looking at it I decided it was just the last place I should
-like to spend the night in. I did not expect to meet a white man at
-Elmina, but at least it must be far nearer civilisation than this.
-
-I looked at my headman more in sorrow than in anger. He was a
-much-troubled person, and evidently looked upon me as a specimen of the
-genus “Massa.” I said:
-
-“That is a very beautiful idea, headman, and does you credit. The
-only drawback I see to it is that I do not want to go to Cape Coast
-to-morrow, and I do want to go to Elmina to-night.”
-
-He scratched his head in a bewildered fashion, transferring a very
-elderly tourist cap from one hand to the other in order that he might
-give both sides a proper chance.
-
-“Man no be fit,” he got out at last.
-
-“Oh, they no be fit. Send for the Chief,” and I turned away and went on
-with Zacco's instructions in the art of making coffee. Still, in my
-own mind, I was very troubled. That rest-house on the bastion was
-a horrid-looking hole, and I had heard it whispered that the men of
-Kommenda were very truculent. If I had been far from a white man at
-Chama, I was certainly farther still now at Kommenda. Still, my common
-sense told me I must not allow I was dismayed.
-
-Presently I was told the Chief had arrived, and I went outside and
-interviewed him. He wasn't a very big chief, and his stick of office
-only had a silver top to it with the name of the village written on it
-in large letters. He could speak no English, but with my headman and
-his linguist he soon grasped the fact that I wanted more carriers, and
-agreed to supply them. Then I went back inside the fort and he joined
-the group outside who had come to look at the white woman, and who, I
-am glad to say, all kept respectfully outside. I seated myself again and
-sent for the headman.
-
-“Headman, you bring in man who no be fit.”
-
-The headman went outside and presently returned with the downcast,
-ragged scarecrow who had been carrying my bed.
-
-“You no be fit?”
-
-“No, Ma.”
-
-I pointed out a place against the wall.
-
-“You go sit there. You go back to Sekondi. I get 'nother man. Headman,
-fetch in other man who no be fit.”
-
-The culprit sat himself down most reluctantly, afraid, whether of me or
-the Ju-ju that was supposed to reign over the place, I know not, and the
-headman brought in another man.
-
-“You no be fit?”
-
-“No, Ma”; but it was a very reluctant no.
-
-“Sit down over there. Another man, headman,” but somehow I did not think
-there would be many more. And for once my intuitions were right. The
-headman came back reporting the rest were fit. I felt triumphant.
-Then the unfortunate scare-crows against the wall rose up humbly and
-protested eagerly: “we be fit.”
-
-But I was brutally stern. It cost me dear in the end, but it might have
-cost me dearer if I had taken them on. However, I had no intention of
-doing any such thing. They had declared themselves of their own free
-will “no fit.” I was determined they should remain “no fit” whatever
-it cost me to fill their places. I must rule this caravan, and I must
-decide where we should halt. I engaged two Kommenda men to carry the
-loads, and when I had taken photographs of the fort--how thankful I was
-that they turned out well, for Kommenda is one of the most unget-at-able
-places I know, and before a decent photographer gets there again I don't
-suppose there will be one stone left on another--I started after my men
-to Elmina.
-
-The carriers who were “no fit” came with us. Why, I hardly know, but
-they were very, very repentant.
-
-It was four o'clock before we left Kommenda, and since we had twelve
-miles to go I hardly expected to arrive before dark, but I did think we
-might arrive about seven. I reckoned without my host, or rather without
-my carriers. There was more than a modicum of truth in the statement
-that they were no fit. The dissipation of the day before, and the
-lack of chop to-day--carriers always make a big meal early in the
-morning--were beginning to tell; besides they were very bad specimens
-of their class, and they lingered and halted and crawled till I began
-to think we should be very lucky indeed if we got into Elmina before
-midnight. The darkness fell, and in the little villages the lights
-began to appear--these Coast villagers use a cheap, a very cheap sort
-of kerosene lamp--and more than once my headman appealed to me. “We stop
-here, Ma.”
-
-I was very tired myself, now, very tired, indeed, and gladly would I
-have stopped, but those negro houses seen by the light of a flickering,
-evil-smelling lamp were impossible; besides I realised it would be
-very bad to give in to my men. Finally we left the last little village
-behind, and before us lay a long, crescent-shaped bay, with a twinkling
-point of light at the farther horn--Elmina, I guessed. It was quite dark
-now, sea and sky mingled, a line of white marked the breakers where
-the water met the sands, and on my left was the low shore hardly
-rising twenty feet above the sea-level, and covered with short, wiry
-sea-grasses, small shrubs, and the creeping bean. The men who were
-carrying me staggered along, stumbling over every inequality of the
-ground, and I remembered my youthful reading in “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” and
-felt I very much resembled Legree. There was, too, a modicum of sympathy
-growing up in my mind for Legree and all slave-drivers. Perhaps there
-was something to be said for them; they certainly must have had a
-good deal to put up with. Presently my men dropped the hammock, and I
-scrambled out and looked at them angrily. The carriers were behind, the
-policeman--my protection and my dignity--was nowhere to be seen, my two
-servants were just behind, where they ought to have been, and my four
-hammock-boys looked at me in sullen misery.
-
-“We no be fit.”
-
-The case was beyond all words at my command, and I set my face to the
-east, and began to walk in the direction of the feeble little light I
-could see twinkling in the far distance, and which I concluded rightly,
-as it turned out, must be Elmina.
-
-My servants overtook me, and Grant, who had been a most humble person
-when first I engaged him, who had been crushed with a sense of his own
-unworthiness the night before, now felt it incumbent upon himself to
-protest.
-
-“You no walk, Ma. It no be fit.”
-
-How sick I was of that “no be fit.”
-
-“Grant,” I said with dignity, at least I hope it was with dignity,
-abandoning pigeon English, “there is no other way. Tell those boys if I
-walk to Elmina they get no pay,” and I stalked on, wishing at the bottom
-of my heart I knew something of the manners and customs of the African
-snake. In my own country I should have objected strongly to walking in
-such grass, when I could not see my way, and it just shows the natural
-selfishness of humanity that this thought had never occurred to me while
-my hammock-boys were carrying me. I don't suppose I had gone half a mile
-when Grant and the boys overtook me.
-
-“Ma,” said Grant with importance, the way he achieved importance that
-day was amazing, “you get in. They carry you now.”
-
-“They no be fit.”
-
-“They carry you,” declared he emphatically.
-
-“We try, Ma,” came a humble murmur from the boys, and I got in once more
-and we staggered along.
-
-How I hated it all, and what a brute I felt. I thought to offer a little
-encouragement, so I said after a little time, when I thought the light
-was getting appreciably larger: “Grant, which of these men carry me
-best?” and thought I would offer a suitable reward.
-
-“They all carry you very badly, Ma,” came back Grant's stern reply;
-“that one,” and he pointed to the unfortunate who bore the lefthand
-front end of the hammock, “carry you worst.”
-
-Now, here was a dilemma. The light wasn't very far away now, and I could
-see against the sky the loom of a great building.
-
-“Very well,” I said, “each of the other three shall have threepence
-extra,” and the lefthand front man dropped his end of the hammock with
-something very like a sob, and left the other three to struggle on as
-best they might. We were close to Elmina now. There was a row of palms
-on our right between us and the surf, and I could see houses with tiny
-lights in them, and so could the men.
-
-“I will walk,” I said.
-
-But the three remaining were very eager. “No, Ma; no, Ma, we carry you.”
-
-Then there appeared a man in European clothes, and him I stopped and
-interviewed.
-
-“Is that the Castle of Elmina?”
-
-“Yes,” said he, evidently mightily surprised at being interviewed by a
-white woman.
-
-“Who is in charge?” and I expected to hear some negro post office or
-Custom official.
-
-“Dr Dove,” said the stranger in the slurring tones of the negro.
-
-“A white man?”
-
-“Yes, a white man.”
-
-For all my weariness, I could have shouted for joy. Such an unexpected
-piece of good luck! I had not expected to meet a white man this side
-of Cape Coast. I had thought the great Castle here was abandoned to the
-tender mercies of the negro official.
-
-“You can get in,” went on my new friend; “the drawbridge is not down
-yet.”
-
-A drawbridge! How mediaeval it sounded, quite in keeping with the day I
-had spent, the day that had begun in Chama fifty years ago.
-
-We staggered along the causeway, the causeway made so many hundreds
-of years ago by the old Portuguese adventurers; the sentry rose up in
-astonishment, and we staggered across it into the old courtyard; I got
-out of my hammock at the foot of a flight of broad stone steps, built
-when men built generously, and a policeman, not mine, raced up
-before me. All was in darkness in the great hall, and then I heard an
-unmistakable white man's voice in tones of surprise and unbelief.
-
-“A missus, a------”
-
-I stepped forward in the pitchy darkness, wondering what pitfalls there
-might be by the way.
-
-“I am a white woman,” I said uncertainly, for I was very weary, and I
-had an uneasy feeling that this white man, like so many others I had
-met, might think I had no business to be there, and I didn't feel quite
-equal to asserting my rights just at that moment, and then I met an
-outstretched hand. It needed no more. I knew at once. It was a kindly,
-friendly, helpful hand. Young or old, pretty or plain, ragged, smart,
-or disreputable, whatever I was, I felt the owner of that hand would
-be good to me. Dr Duff, for the negro had pronounced his name after his
-kind, led me upstairs through the darkness, with many apologies for the
-want of light, into a big room, dimly lighted by a kerosene lamp, and
-then we looked at each other.
-
-“God bless my soul! Where on earth did you come from?” said he.
-
-“No one told me there was a white man in Elmina,” said I; “and the
-relief of finding one was immense.”
-
-But not till I was washed and bathed, dressed, fed, and in my right
-mind did we compare notes, and then we sat up till midnight discussing
-things.
-
-It seemed to me I had sounded the depths, I had mastered the
-difficulties of African travel. My new friend listened sympathetically
-as he drank his whisky-and-soda, and then he flattered my little
-vanities as they had never been flattered since I had set out on my
-journeyings.
-
-“Not one woman in ten thousand would have got through.”
-
-I liked it, but I think he was wrong. Any woman who had once started
-would have got through simply and solely because there was absolutely
-nothing else to be done. It is a great thing in life to find there is
-only one way.
-
-Then Dr Duff descended to commonplace matters.
-
-“I hope you don't mind,” said he; “I've kicked your policeman.”
-
-“That,” said I, “is a thing he has been asking someone to do ever since
-we left Sekondi a thousand years ago.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX--AN OLD DUTCH TOWN
-
-_But one man of the ruling race--Overlooked Elmina--Deadly fever--The
-reason why--Magnificent position--Ideal for a capital--Absence of
-tsetse--Loyal to their Dutch masters--Difficulty in understanding
-incorruptibility of English officials--Reported gold in Elmina--The
-stranded school-inspector--“Potable water”--Preferred the chance of
-guinea-worm to trouble--Stern German head-teacher--Cape Coast--Wonderful
-native telegraphy--Haunted Castle--Truculent people._
-
-Elmina means, of course, the mine, and the reason for the name is lost
-in the mist of ages. Certain it is there is no mine nearer than those at
-Tarkwa, at least two days' journey away, but in the old Portuguese
-and Dutch days Elmina was a rich port. It is a port still, though an
-abandoned one, and you may land from a boat comfortably on to great
-stone steps, as you may land in no other place along the Guinea Coast.
-On the 17th of May in this year of our Lord, 1911, there raged along the
-Coast a hurricane such as there has not been for many a long day, and
-the aftermath of that hurricane was found in a terrific surf, which
-for several days made landing at any port difficult, in some cases
-impossible. The mail steamer found she could land no mails at Cape
-Coast, and then was forgotten, neglected Elmina remembered, and the
-mails were landed there, eight miles to the west, and carried overland
-to their destination.
-
-Yet is there but one man of the ruling race in Elmina, and the fine old
-Castle, where the Portuguese and Dutch governors of Guinea reigned, is
-almost abandoned to the desecrating hand of the negro officials--Custom
-and post office men! Why, when the Gold Coast was looking for a capital,
-they overlooked Elmina is explained usually by the declaration that
-yellow fever was very bad there; and I conclude it was for the same
-reason that they passed it by when they wanted a seaport for the inland
-railway. Somehow it seems an inadequate reason. It would have been
-cheaper surely to search for the cause of the ill-health than to abandon
-so promising a site. The reason lies deeper than that. It is to be found
-in that strong feeling in the Englishman--that feeling which is going to
-ruin him as a colonising nation now that rivals are in the field, unless
-he looks to his ways--that one place in “such a poisonous country” is
-as good or as bad as another, and therefore if people die in one place,
-“let's try another beastly hole.” Die they certainly did in Elmina.
-It was taken over from the Dutch in 1874, and in 1895 the records make
-ghastly reading. “Yellow fever, died,” you read, not once but over and
-over again. Young and strong and hopeful, and always the record is the
-same, and now, looking at it with seeing eyes and an understanding mind,
-the explanation is so simple, the cure so easy.
-
-Round this great Castle is a double line of moats, each broad and deep
-and about half a mile in extent, and these moats were full to the brim
-of water, stagnant water, an ideal breeding place for that entirely
-domesticated animal, the yellow-fever mosquito--_stegmia_, I believe, is
-the correct term. Get but one yellow-fever patient, let him get bitten
-by a mosquito or two, and the thing was done. But sixteen years ago they
-were not content with such simple ways as that. It seems there was a
-general sort of feeling then along the Coast, it has not quite gone yet,
-that chill was a thing greatly to be dreaded, and so instead of taking
-advantage of the magnificent position so wisely chosen by the Portuguese
-mariners, where the fresh air from the ocean might blow night and day,
-they mewed themselves up in quarters on the landward side of the Castle,
-so built that it is almost impossible to get a thorough draught of air
-through them. The result in such a climate is languor and weariness, an
-ideal breeding ground for malaria or yellow fever. And so they died,
-God rest their souls; some of them were gallant gentlemen, but they died
-like flies, and Elmina, for no fault of its own, was abandoned.
-
-[Illustration: 0212]
-
-And yet the old Portuguese were right. It is an ideal site for a
-capital. The Castle is on a promontory which juts out into the sea, and
-is almost surrounded by water, for the Sweetwater River, which was very
-salt when I was there, runs into the sea in such a fashion as to leave
-but a narrow neck of land between the Castle and the mainland. The land
-rises behind the town, it is clear of scrub and undergrowth, so that
-horses and cattle may live, as there is no harbour for that curse of
-West Africa, the tsetse fly; there is sufficient open space for the
-building of a large town, and it is nearer to Kumasi, whence comes all
-the trade from the north, than Sekondi, which was chosen, instead of it,
-as a railway terminus. A grievous pity! It is England's proud boast that
-she lets the man on the spot have a free hand, knowing that he must
-be the better judge of local conditions and needs; it is West Africa's
-misfortune that she had so evil a reputation that the best and wisest
-men did not go there; and hence these grave mistakes.
-
-I had always believed that every coloured man was yearning to come under
-the British flag, therefore was I much astonished to hear that in 1874,
-when Britain took over this part of the Coast, the natives resented
-the change of masters very bitterly. They would not submit, and the big
-village to the west of the fort, old Elmina native town, was in open
-rebellion. At last the guns from the fort were turned upon it, the
-inhabitants evacuated it hastily, it was bombarded, and the order went
-forth that no one should come back to it.
-
-Even now, thirty-seven years later, the old law which prohibits the
-native from digging on the site of the old town is still in force, and
-since the natives were in the habit of burying their wealth beneath
-their huts, great store of gold dust is supposed to be hidden there.
-Again and again the solitary official in charge of Elmina has been
-approached by someone asking permission to dig there, generally with the
-intimation that if only the permission be granted, a large percentage
-of the hidden treasure shall find its way into the pockets of that
-official.
-
-“It is hard,” said Dr Duff, “for the native mind to grasp the fact that
-the English official is incorruptible, and the law must be kept--but I
-confess,” he added, “I should like to know if there really is gold in
-old Elmina.”
-
-The town has been a fine town once. The houses are substantially built
-of stone, they are approached by fine flights of stone steps, there are
-the ruins of an old casino, and picturesque in its desolation is an old
-Dutch garden. If I were to describe the magnificent old Castle, I should
-fill half the book; it is so well worth writing about. I walked up
-the hill behind the Castle where they have built up the roadway with
-discarded cannon, and there I took photographs and wished I had a little
-more time to spare for the place, and vowed that when I reached England
-the British Museum should help me to find out all there is to be known
-about this magnificent place and the men who have gone before.
-
-[Illustration: 0216]
-
-For the man of the present it must be a little difficult to live in, if
-it is only for the intense loneliness. It must be lonely to live in the
-bush with the eternal forest surrounding you, but at least there a
-man is an outpost of Empire, the trade is coming to him, he may find
-interest and amusement in the breaking of a road or the planning of
-a garden, while the making of a town would fill all his time, but in
-Elmina there are no such consolations. The place is dead, slain by the
-English; the young men go away following the trade, and the old mammies
-with wrinkled faces and withered breasts lounge about the streets and
-talk of departed glories.
-
-I had not expected to find one white man here, and I found two, the
-other being a school-inspector who was on his way along the Coast
-inspecting the native schools. He was in a fix, for he had sent on his
-carriers and stores and could get no hammock-boys. They had promised
-to send them from Cape Coast and they had not come. The medical officer
-made both us strangers hospitably welcome, but stores are precious
-things on the Coast and one does not like to trespass, so he was a
-troubled school-inspector.
-
-“I think I'll walk on to Kommenda,” said he.
-
-“I wouldn't,” said I, the only one who knew that undesirable spot.
-
-We made a queer little party of three in that old-world Castle, in the
-old Dutch rooms that are haunted by the ghosts of the dead-and-gone men
-and women of a past generation. At least, I said they were haunted, the
-school-inspector was neutral, and the medical officer declared no ghosts
-had ever troubled him. I don't know whether it was ghosts that troubled
-me, but the fact remains that I, who could sleep calmly by myself in
-the bush with all my carriers drunk, could not sleep easily now that my
-troubles were over, and I set it down to the haunting unhappy thoughts
-of the people who had gone before me, who were dead, but who had lived
-and suffered in those rooms; and yet in the day-time we were happy
-enough, and the two men instructed me as one who had a right to know in
-things African. The school-inspector was very funny on the education
-of the native. His great difficulty apparently was to make the rising
-generation grasp the fact that grandiloquent words of which they did not
-understand the meaning were not proofs of deep knowledge. The negro is
-like the Hindoo Baboo dear to the heart of Mr Punch. He dearly loves a
-long word. Hygiene is a subject the Government insist upon being
-taught, only it seems to me they would do more wisely to teach it in the
-vernacular so that it might be understood by the common people. As it
-is, said my school-inspector, the pupils are very pat; and when solemnly
-asked by the teacher what are the constituents of drinking water, rap
-out a list of Latin adjectives the only one of which he can understand
-is “potable.”
-
-“Tut, tut,” said the inspector, “run along, Kudjo, and bring me a glass
-of drinking water”; and then it was only too evident that that youthful
-scion of the Fanti race who had been so glib with his adjectives did not
-understand what “potable” meant.
-
-[Illustration: 0220]
-
-Afterwards in the eastern portion of the Colony I was told of other
-difficulties and snares that lie in the way of the unlucky schoolmaster.
-In Africa it is specially necessary to be careful of your water, as in
-addition to many other unpleasant results common in other lands there
-is here a certain sort of worm whose eggs may apparently be swallowed in
-the water. They have an unpleasant habit of hatching internally and
-then working their way out to the outer air, discommoding greatly their
-unwilling host. Therefore twice a week in every English school the
-qualities of good water and the way to insure it are insisted upon by
-the teacher. But does that teacher practise what he preaches? He doesn't
-like guinea-worm, but neither does he like trouble, wherefore he chooses
-the line of least resistance and chances his water. If the worst come
-to the worst and he has guinea-worm, a paternal Government will pay his
-salary while he is ill.
-
-At least up till lately it always has. But a change is coming over the
-spirit of the dream. The other day there arose in Keta, a town in
-the Eastern Province, a German head-teacher who got very tired of
-subordinates who were perpetually being incapacitated by guinea-worm,
-a perfectly preventable disease, and, as the Germans are nothing if
-not practical, there went forth in his school the cruel order that any
-teacher having guinea-worm should have no salary during his illness.
-There is going to be one more case of guinea-worm in that school, then
-there is going to be a sad and sorry man fallen from his high estate and
-dependent on his relatives, and then the teachers will possibly learn
-wisdom and practise what they preach. But in Elmina my school-inspector
-seemed to think the Golden Age was yet a long way off.
-
-I left him and the medical officer with many hopes for a future meeting,
-and one afternoon took up my loads and having sent a telegram to the
-Provincial Commissioner--how easy it seemed now--set out for Cape Coast
-eight miles along the shore.
-
-There is very little difference in the scenery all along the shore here.
-The surf thunders to the right, and to the left the land goes back low
-and sandy, covered with coarse grass and low-growing shrubs, while here
-and there are fishing villages with groves of cocoa-nuts around them,
-only the houses instead of being built of the raffia palm are built
-of swish, that is mud, and as you go east dirtier and dirtier grow the
-villages.
-
-It took us barely two hours and a half to reach Cape Coast, one of the
-oldest if not the oldest English settlement on the Coast. It was the
-original Capo Corso of the Portuguese, but the English have held it
-since early in the seventeenth century, and the natives, of course, bear
-English names--in Elmina they have Dutch names--and remember no other
-masters.
-
-Cape Coast is a great straggling untidy town with rather an eastern look
-about it which comes, I think, from the fact that many of the houses
-have flat roofs. But it is a drab-looking town without any of the
-gorgeous colouring of the east. The Castle is built down on the
-seashore behind great walls and bastions, and here are the Customs, the
-Commissioner's Court, the Post Office, all the mechanism required for
-the Government of a people, but the old cannon are still there, piles of
-shot and shell and great mortars, and in the courtyards are the graves
-of the men and women who have gone before, the honoured dead. Here lies
-the lady whom the early nineteenth century reckoned a poet, L. E.
-L., Laetitia Landor, the wife of Captain Maclean who perished by some
-unexplainable misadventure while she was little more than a bride, and
-here lies Captain Maclean himself, the wise Governor whom the African
-merchants put in when England, in one of her periodic fits of thriftless
-economy, would have abandoned the Gold Coast, and here are other unknown
-names Dutch and English, and oh, curious commentary on the hygiene of
-the time, in the same courtyard is the well whence the little company
-of whites, generally surrounded by a people often hostile, must needs in
-time of siege or stress always draw their water.
-
-They say Cape Coast like Elmina is haunted, and men have told me tales
-of unaccountable noises, of footsteps that crossed the floor, of voices
-in conversation, of sighs and groans and shrieks for help that were
-unexplained and unexplainable. One man who had been D.C. there told me
-he could keep no servant in the Castle at night they were so terrified,
-but as I only paid flying visits to take photographs I cannot say of my
-own knowledge whether there is anything uncanny about it. There ought to
-be, for there are deep dungeons underground, dark and uncanny, where
-in old days they possibly kept their slaves and certainly their
-prisoners-of-war. There was no light in them then, there is very little
-now, only occasionally someone has knocked away a stone from the thick
-walls, and you may see a round of dancing sunlight in the gloom and hear
-the sound of the ceaseless surf. An officer in the Gold Coast regiment
-told me he wanted to have a free hand to dig in the earth here, for he
-was sure the pirates who owned it in the old days must have buried much
-treasure here and forgotten all about it, but he was a hopeful young man
-and looked forward to the days when the Ashantis should come down
-and besiege Cape Coast again as they had done in the old days, and he
-pointed out the particular gun on the bastion that in case of such an
-event he should train on the Kumasi road and blow those savages into the
-next world. I have seen those fighting men of Ashanti since then and I
-do not think they are ever coming to Cape Coast, at least as enemies,
-which perhaps is just as well, for the gun which that gay young
-lieutenant slapped so affectionately and called “Old Girl” is pretty
-elderly and I fancy might do more damage to those loading than to those
-at the other end of her muzzle.
-
-But I did not lodge at the fort. The medical officer, it was always the
-medical officer to the rescue, very kindly took charge and I was
-very comfortably lodged in the hospital. And here I had proof of the
-wonderful manner in which news is carried by the birds of the air in
-West Africa. I had thought that the Provincial Commissioner was going to
-put me up, and I instructed my boys to that effect.
-
-“Ask way to Government House,” which I thought lay to the west of the
-town. As we passed the first houses a man sprang up.
-
-“Dis way, Ma, I show you,” and off he went, we following, and I thought
-my men had asked the question. Clearly Government House was not to the
-west, for we went on through the town and up a hill and up to a large
-bungalow which I was very sure was not Government House, unless we had
-arrived at the back.
-
-I got out protesting, but my boys were very sure and so was our guide.
-
-“Dis be bungalow, Ma. Missus come.”
-
-Then I knew they were wrong, for I knew the Commissioner had no wife.
-But they weren't after all, for down the steps breathing kindly welcome
-came the medical officer's wife, a pretty bride of a couple of months,
-and she smilingly explained that the Commissioner had asked her to take
-me in because it would be so much more comfortable for me where there
-was another woman. “I suppose he sent you on,” said she.
-
-But not only had he not sent me on, but he knew nothing of my coming,
-and was waiting in Government House for my arrival. The town, then, knew
-of my expected coming and his intentions with regard to me almost before
-he had formulated them himself. At any rate, it was none of his doing
-or his servants' doings that I went straight to the hospital, and the
-telegram stating my intention had only been sent that morning. So much
-for native telegraphy.
-
-Round Cape Coast, in my mind, hangs a mist of romance which will always
-sharply divide it from the town as I saw it. When I think of it I have
-to remind myself that I have seen Cape Coast and that, apart from kindly
-recollections of the hospitality with which I was received, I do not
-like it. The people are truculent and abominably ill-mannered, and I do
-not think I would ever venture to walk in the streets again without the
-protection of a policeman.
-
-There were two white women there, so they had hardly the excuse of
-curiosity, as we must have been familiar sights, yet they mobbed me
-in the streets, and when I tried to take photographs of the quaint,
-old-world streets, hustled and crowded me to such an extent that it was
-quite out of the question. And they did this even when I was accompanied
-by my two servants and my hammock-boys.
-
-“These Fanti people catch no sense,” said Grant angrily, when after a
-wild struggle I had succeeded in photographing a couple of men playing
-draughts, and utterly failed to get a very nice picture of a man making
-a net. I quite agreed with Grant; these Fanti people do catch no sense,
-and I got no photographs, for which I was sorry, for there are corners
-in that old town picturesque and quaint and not unlike corners in the
-towns along the Sicilian coast. What they said of me I do not know, but
-I am afraid it was insulting, and if ever my friends the Ashantis like
-to go through Cape Coast again I shall give them a certain amount of
-sympathy. At least it would give me infinite satisfaction to hear of
-some of them getting that beating I left without being able to inflict.
-
-I do not think a white woman would be safe alone in Cape Coast, and this
-I am the more sorry for because it has belonged so long to the English.
-Perhaps Dr Blyden is right when he says, and I think he spoke very
-impartially when speaking of his own people, that the French have
-succeeded best in dealing with the negro, I beg his pardon, the African.
-They have succeeded in civilising him, so says Dr Blyden, with dignity.
-The English certainly have not.
-
-[Illustration: 0228]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X--IN THE PATHS OF THE MEN OF OLD
-
-_The glory of the morning--The men who have passed along this road--The
-strong views of the African pig--An old-world Castle--Thieving
-carriers--The superiority of the white man--Annamabu--A perfect specimen
-of a fort--A forlorn rest-house--A notable Coast Chief--Tired-out
-mammies--The medical officer at Salt Ponds--The capable German
-women--The reason of the ill-health of the English women--Kroo boys as
-carriers--Tantum--A loyal rest-house--Filthy Appam--A possible origin
-for the yellow fever at Accra--Winne-bah--A check--The luckless
-ferryman--Good-bye to the road._
-
-The carriers from Kommenda were only to come as far as Cape Coast, so
-here I had to find fresh men or rather women to replace them. I know
-nothing more aggravating than engaging carriers. Apparently it was a
-little break in the monotony of life as lived in an African town to come
-and engage as a carrier with the white missus, come when she was about
-to start, an hour late was the correct thing, look at the loads, turn
-them over, try to lift them, say “We no be fit,” and then sit down and
-see what would happen next. The usual programme, of course, was gone
-through at Cape Coast, the mammies I had engaged smiling and laughing
-as if it were the best joke in the world, and I only kept my temper by
-reflecting that since I could not beat them, which I dearly longed to
-do, it was no good losing it. They had had three days to contemplate
-those loads and they only found “we no be fit” as I wanted to start.
-Of course the men who had come on from Sekondi with me were now most
-virtuous; they bore me no ill-will for my harsh treatment, indeed they
-respected me for it, and they regarded themselves as my prop and my
-stay, as indeed they were.
-
-With infinite difficulty I got off at last, taking three new carriers,
-mammies, where two had sufficed before.
-
-Travelling in the early morning is glorious. The dew is on all the
-grass; it catches and reflects the sunbeams like diamonds, and there is
-a freshness in the air which is lost as the day advances. I loved going
-along that coast too.
-
-I was thrown upon myself for companionship, for my followers could only
-speak a little pigeon English, and of course we had nothing in common,
-but the men and women who had gone before walked beside me and whispered
-to me tales of the strenuous days of old. Perhaps the Phoenicians had
-been here, possibly those old sea rovers, the Normans, and certainly the
-Portuguese; they had marched along this shore, even as I was marching
-along, only their own homes were worlds away and the bush behind was
-peopled for them with unknown monsters, such as I would not dream of.
-They had feared as they walked, and now I, a woman, could come alone and
-unarmed.
-
-Leaving Cape Coast that still, warm, tropical morning, we passed the
-people coming into town to the markets with their wares upon their
-heads, all carried in long crates, chickens and fowls and unhappy pigs
-strapped tightly down, for the African pig, like the pig in other lands,
-has a mind of his own; he will not walk to his own destruction, he has
-to be carried. These traders were women usually, and they looked at
-me with interest and no little astonishment, for I believe that never
-before had a white woman by herself gone alone along this path.
-
-[Illustration: 0232]
-
-My carriers had been instructed to go to Accra and to Accra they went by
-the nearest way, sometimes cutting off little promontories, and thus
-it happened that, looking up on one of these detours, I saw on a hill,
-between me and the sea, a ruined fort. Of course I stopped the hammock
-and got out. I had come to see these forts, and here I was passing one.
-I wanted to go back. My headman demurred. Had I not distinctly said I
-wanted to go to Accra, and were we not on the direct road to Accra? To
-get to that old fort, which he did not think worth looking at, we
-should have to go back an hour's journey, and the men “no be fit.” I
-am regretful now that I only saw that fort from a distance. It was very
-very hot, and I don't think I felt very fit myself; at any rate, the
-thought of two hours extra in the hammock dismayed me and I decided to
-take a long-distance photograph from where I stood. It was an old Dutch
-fort--Fort Mori--and was built on high ground overlooking a little bay.
-I think now it would have been easier for me to do that two hours than
-to climb as I did, with the assistance of Grant and my headman, to
-the highest point on the roadside, through long grass, scrub, and
-undergrowth, there to poise myself uneasily to get a photograph of
-the ruins. An ideal place, whispered the men of old, for a fort in the
-bygone days, for it overlooked all the surrounding country, there was
-no possibility of surprise, and at its feet was a little sheltered bay.
-Now, on the yellow sands, in the glare of the sunshine, I could see the
-great canoes that dared the surf drawn up, the thatched roofs of the
-native town that drew its sustenance from the sea and in old times owed
-a certain loyalty to the fort and derived a certain prestige from the
-presence of the white men.
-
-Regretfully I have only that distant memory of Fort Mori, and I went on.
-Those men who were “no fit” to take me back behaved abominably. Whenever
-they neared a village they endeavoured to steal from the inhabitants--a
-piece of suger-cane, a ball of kenky, or a few bananas--and again and
-again a quarrel called me to intervene. It is very curious how soon one
-gets an idea of one's own importance. In England, if I came across a
-crowd of shouting, furious, angry men, I should certainly pass by on the
-other side, but here in Africa when I was by myself I felt it my bounden
-duty to interfere and inquire what was the matter. It was most likely
-some trouble connected with my carriers. I disliked very much making
-enemies as I passed, and I endeavoured to catch them and make them pay
-for what they had stolen. And now I understood at last how it is white
-people living among a subject race are so often overwhelmed in a sudden
-rising. It is hard to believe that these people whom you count your
-inferiors will really rise against you. Here was I, alone, unarmed, only
-a woman, and yet immediately I heard a commotion I attended at once
-and dispensed justice to the very best of my ability. I fully expected
-village elders to bow to my decision, and I am bound to say they
-generally did.
-
-Most of the villages along the Coast bore a strong family resemblance to
-the one in which I had spent an unhappy hour while my men attended
-the funeral palaver, and all the shore is much alike. Between Axim and
-Sekondi is some rough, rugged, and pretty country, but east and west of
-those points the shore is flat, and the farther east you go the flatter
-it becomes, till at the mouth of the Volta and beyond it is all sand
-and swamp. The first day out from Cape Coast it was somewhat monotonous,
-possibly if I went over it again I should feel that more; but there was
-growing up in me a feeling of satisfaction with myself--I do trust it
-was not smug--because I was getting on. I was doing the thing so many
-men had said I could not possibly do, and I was doing it fairly
-easily. Of course, I was helped, helped tremendously by the freehanded
-hospitality of the people in the towns through which I passed, for which
-kindness I can never be sufficiently grateful, but here with my carriers
-I was on my own, and I began to regard them as the captures of my
-bow and spear, and therefore I at least did not find the country
-uninteresting. Who ever found the land he had conquered dull?
-
-In due course I arrived at Annamabu, an old English fort that the
-authorities on the Gold Coast hardly think worth preserving, and have
-given over to the tender mercies of the negro Custom and post office
-officials. Like Elmina, I could write a book about Annamabu alone, and I
-was the more interested in it because it is the most perfect specimen
-of the entirely English fort on the Coast, and is built at the head of a
-little bay, where is the best landing on the Coast for miles round.
-
-There is a curious difference between the sites chosen by the different
-nations. The other nations apparently always chose some bold, commanding
-position, while the English evidently liked, as in this instance, the
-head of a little bay and a good landing.
-
-Annamabu is quite a big native town, ruled over, I believe, by a
-cultured African, a man who is well read and makes a point of collecting
-all books about the Coast, and has, so they say, some rare old editions.
-I tried to see him and went to his house, a mud-built, two-storied
-building, where I sat in a covered courtyard and watched various members
-of his family go up and down a rickety staircase that led to the upper
-stories, but the Chief was away on his farm, and even though I waited
-long he never made his appearance. I should like to have seen the inside
-of his house, seen his books; all I did see was the courtyard, all
-dull-mud colour, untidy and unkempt, with a couple of kitchen chairs in
-it, a goat or two, some broken-down boxes and casks, and the drums of
-state that marked his high office piled up outside the door.
-
-In the fort itself is the rest-house on the bastion, as untidy and dirty
-as the Chiefs courtyard. There are three rooms opening one into
-the other, and in the sitting-room, a great high room with big
-windows--those men of old knew how to build--there is a table, some
-chairs, a cupboard, and a filter, on which is written that it is for the
-use of Europeans only, and behind in the bedroom is the forlornest wreck
-of a bed, and some remnants of crockery that may have been washed about
-the time when Mrs Noah held the first spring cleaning in the ark, but
-apparently have never been touched since. It is only fair to say that
-every traveller, they are like snow in summer, carries his own bedding,
-and in fact all he needs, so that all that is really wanted for these
-rest-houses along the shore is a good broom and a good stout arm to
-wield it, and if a place is left without human occupancy the dirt is
-only clean dust, for the clean air along these coasts is divine.
-
-But at Annamabu the usual difficulties came in my way; my old men were
-well broken-in now, but my new mammies were--well--even though I am a
-woman, and so by custom not permitted to use bad language, I must say
-they were the very devil. They carried on with the men and then
-they complained of the men's conduct, and when they arrived at
-Annamabu--late, of course, and one of them had the chop box--they sent
-in word to say they “no be fit” to go any farther, and there and then
-they wanted to go back to Cape Coast.
-
-I said by all means they might go back to Cape Coast, but the loads
-would have to be left here and sent for from Salt Ponds, and therefore,
-as they had not completed their contract, they should be paid nothing.
-
-They came and lay down before me in attitudes of intense weariness
-calculated to move the heart of a sphinx, but I came to the conclusion I
-must be a hard-hearted brute, for I was adamant, and those weeping women
-decided they would go on to Salt Ponds.
-
-At Salt Ponds there is a little company of white people, and, so says
-report, the very worst surf on the Coast, with perhaps the exception
-of Half Assinie. The D.C. was away, so the Provincial Commissioner had
-telegraphed to the medical officer asking him to get me quarters. I
-arrived about three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, when the place was
-apparently wrapped in slumber; the doctor's bungalow was pointed out
-to me, built on stilts on a cement foundation, and on that foundation I
-established myself and my loads, and made my way upstairs. A ragged and
-blasphemous parrot, with a very nice flow of language, was in charge,
-and he did not encourage me to stop, nor did he even hint at favours to
-come, so I went down again and waited. Apparently I might wait; towards
-evening I made my way--I was homeless--towards another bungalow, where a
-white man received me with astonishment, gave me the nicest cup of tea
-I have ever drunk, and sent for the medical officer, who had lunched
-off groundnut soup and had gone into the country to sleep it off. We all
-know groundnut soup is heavy.
-
-The medical officer remains in my mind as a man with a grievance; he was
-kind after his fashion, but he did hate the country. If I had listened
-to him, I should have believed it was unfit for human habitation, and I
-couldn't help wondering why he had honoured it with his presence. In his
-opinion it was exceedingly unbecoming in a woman to be making her way
-along the Coast alone. To drive in these facts he found me house-room
-with the only white woman in the place, the charmingly hospitable wife
-of the German trader who had been on the Coast for a couple of years,
-who was perfectly well, healthy, and happy, who always did her own
-cooking, and who gave me some of the most delicious meals I have ever
-tasted. Thus I was introduced to the German element in West Africa, and
-began to realise for the first time that efficiency in little things
-which is going to carry the Germans so far. This fair-haired, plump
-young woman, with the smiling young face, was one of a type, and I could
-not help feeling sorry there were not more English women like her. I do
-not think I have ever met an English woman, with the exception of the
-nursing Sisters, who has spent a year on the Coast. The accepted theory
-is they cannot stand it, and in the majority of cases they certainly
-can't. They get sick. With my own countrywomen it is different; the
-Australian stays, so does the German, so does the French woman. At first
-I could not understand it at all, but at last the explanation slowly
-dawned upon me.
-
-“_Haus-fraus_,” said many a woman, and man, too, scornfully, when I
-praised those capable German women who make a home wherever you find
-them, and it is this _haus-frau_ element in them that saves them. A
-German woman's pride and glory is her house, therefore, wherever she is
-she has to her hand an object of intense interest that fills her mind
-and keeps her well. An Australian does not take so keen an interest in
-her house, perhaps, but she has had no soft and easy upbringing; from
-the time she was a little girl she has got her own hot water, helped
-with the cooking, washing, and all the multifarious duties of a houshold
-where a servant is a rarity, therefore, when she comes to a land where
-servants are plentiful, if they are rough and untaught, she comes to
-a land of comfort and luxury. Besides, it is the custom of the country
-that a woman should stand beside her husband; she has not married for
-a livelihood, men are plentiful enough and she has chosen her mate,
-wherefore it is her pleasure and her joy to help him in every way. She
-is as she ought to be, his comrade and his friend, a true helpmate. God
-forbid that I should say there are not English women like that, because
-I know there are, but the conditions in England are also very different.
-The girl who has been brought up in an English household, even if it be
-a poor one, is not only brought up in luxury, but is the victim of many
-conventions. Any ruffled rose leaf makes her unhappy. The servants that
-to the Australian are a luxury to be revelled in are very bad indeed to
-her. Whenever I saw one of these complaining English women, I used to
-think of the Princess of my youth. We all remember her. She was
-wandering about lost, as royalty naturally has a habit of doing, and she
-came to a little house and asked the inmates to give her shelter because
-she was a princess. They took her in, but being just a trifle doubtful
-of her story--when I was a little girl I always felt that was rather a
-slur upon those dwellers in the little house--they put on the bed a pea
-and then they put over it fourteen hair mattresses and fourteen feather
-beds--it doesn't seem to have strained the household to provide so much
-bedding--and then they invited the princess to go to bed, which she did.
-In my own mind I drew the not unnatural conclusion that princesses were
-accustomed to sleeping in high beds. Next morning they asked her how she
-slept. She, most rudely, I always thought, said she had not been able to
-sleep at all, because there was such a hard lump in the bed. And so they
-knew that her story was true, and she was a real princess. Now, the
-English women in West Africa always seem to me real princesses of this
-order. Certain difficulties there always are for the white race in a
-tropical climate, there always will be, but there is really no need to
-find out the peas under twenty-eight mattresses. In a manless country
-like England, many a woman marries not because the man who asks her is
-the man she would have chosen had she free right of choice, but because
-to live she must marry somebody, and he is the first who has come along.
-He may be the last. Her African house interests her not, her husband
-does not absorb her, she has no one to whom to show off her newly wedded
-state, no calls to pay, no afternoon teas, no _matinées_, in fact she
-has no interest, she is bored to death; she is very much afraid of
-“chill,” so she shuts out the fresh, cool night air, and, as a natural
-result, she goes home at the end of seven months a wreck, and once more
-the poor African climate gets the credit.
-
-No, if a woman goes to West Africa there is a great deal to be said for
-the German _haus-frau_. At least they always seem to make a home, and I
-have seen many English women there who cannot.
-
-At Salt Ponds one of my carriers came to me saying he was sick and
-wanting medicine, and I regret to say, instead of sending him at once to
-the doctor, I casually offered him half a dozen cascara tabloids, all
-of which to my dismay he swallowed at one gulp. The next morning he was
-worse, which did not surprise me, but I called in the medical officer
-and found he was suffering from pneumonia--cascara it appears is not the
-correct remedy--and I was forced to leave him behind. The mammies I had
-engaged at Cape Coast also declined to go any farther, so I had to look
-around me for more carriers, and carriers are by no means easy to come
-by. Finally the Boating Company came to the rescue with four Kroo boys,
-and then my troubles began.
-
-I set out and hoped for the best, but Kroo boys are bad carriers at
-all times. These were worse than usual. One of my hammock-boys hurt his
-foot, or said he had, and had for the time to be replaced by a Kroo boy,
-and we staggered along in such a fashion that once more I felt like a
-slave-driver of the most brutal order. Again and again we stopped for
-him to rest, and my hammock-boys remarked by way of comforting me:
-
-“Kroo boy no can tote hammock.”
-
-“Why can Kroo boy no tote hammock?”
-
-“We no know, Ma. We no be Kroo boy.”
-
-We scrambled along somehow, out of one village into another, and at
-every opportunity half the carriers ran away and had to be rounded up
-by the other half. In eight hours we had only done fifteen miles. I felt
-very cheap, very hungry, very thirsty, and most utterly thankful when we
-arrived late in the afternoon at a dirty native town called Tantum. The
-carriers straggled in one by one, and last of all came my chop box, so
-that, for this occasion only, luncheon, afternoon tea, and dinner were
-all rolled into one about six o'clock in the evening.
-
-The rest-house was a two-storied house, built of swish and white-washed,
-and was inside a native compound, where both in the evening and in the
-morning the women were most industriously engaged in crushing the corn,
-rolling it on a hard stone with a heavy wooden roller.
-
-And the rest-house, though very loyal, there were four coloured
-oleographs of Queen Alexandra round the walls of the sitting-room and
-two at the top of the stairs, all exactly alike, was abominably dirty.
-It had a little furniture--two mirrors, well calculated to keep one in
-a subdued and humble frame of mind, a decrepid bed that I was a little
-afraid to be in the same room with lest its occupants would require no
-invitation to get up and walk towards me, a table, and some broken-down
-chairs. Also on the wall was a notice that two shillings must be paid
-by anyone occupying this rest-house. Someone had crossed this out and
-substituted two shillings and sixpence, and that in its turn had been
-erased, so, as the sum went on increasing at each erasure, at last
-eighteen shillings and sixpence had been fixed as the price of a night's
-lodging in this charming abode. I decided in my own mind that two
-shillings would be ample, and that if the people were civil I should
-give them an extra threepence by way of a dash.
-
-I photographed Tantum with the interested assistance of a gentleman clad
-in a blue cloth and a tourist cap. He seemed to consider he belonged to
-me, so at last I asked him who he was.
-
-“P'lice,” said he with a grin, and then I recognised my policeman in
-unofficial dress.
-
-I didn't like that village. The people may have been all right, but I
-didn't like their looks and I made my “p'lice” sleep outside my door.
-My bedroom had the saving grace of two large windows, and I put my bed
-underneath one of them in the gorgeous moonlight; but a negro town
-is very noisy on a moonlight night and the tom-toms kept waking me. I
-always had to be the first astir else my following would have cheerfully
-slumbered most of the day, but on this occasion so bright was the
-moonlight, so noisy the town, that I proceeded to get up at two o'clock,
-and it was only when I looked at my travelling clock, with a view to
-reproaching Grant with being so long with my tea, that I discovered my
-error and went back to bed and a troubled rest again.
-
-Two shillings was accepted with a smile by the good lady of the house,
-who was a stout, middle-aged woman with only one eye, a dark cloth about
-her middle, and a bright handkerchief over her head. She gave me the
-impression that she had never seen so much money in her life before.
-Possibly she had only recently gone into the rest-house business, say a
-year or two back, and I was her first traveller with any money to
-spend. We parted with mutual compliments, and I bestowed on her little
-grand-daughter the munificent dash of threepence.
-
-There is a story told of a man who went out to India, and as he liked
-sunshine used to rise up each morning and say to his wife with emphasis,
-“Another fine day, my dear.”
-
-Now, she, good woman, had been torn from her happy home in England,
-and loved the cool grey skies, so at last much aggravated she lost her
-temper, and asked: “What on earth else do you expect in this beastly
-country?”
-
-So, along the Guinea Coast in the month of March, the hottest season,
-there is really nothing else to expect but still, hot weather: divine
-mornings, glorious evenings, but in between fierce hot sunshine. And of
-course it was not always possible to travel in the coolest part of the
-day. To sit still by the roadside in the glare of the sunshine, or even
-under a tree, with a large crowd looking on, was more than I could have
-managed. So I started as early as I could possibly induce my men to
-start--one determined woman can do a good deal--and then went straight
-on if possible without a stop to my next point. I would always, when I
-am by myself, rather be an hour or two late for luncheon than bother to
-stop to have it on the way, and if a breakfast at half-past five or six
-and a morning in the open air induces hunger by eleven, it is easily
-stayed by carrying a little fruit or biscuits or chocolate to eat by the
-way.
-
-It was fiercest noonday when I came to a town called Appam, where once
-upon a time was an old Dutch lodge worth keeping, if only to show what
-a tiny place men held garrisoned in the old days. It is hardly necessary
-to say that the Gold Coast Government do not think so, and have handed
-this old-time relic over to negro Custom and post office officials;
-and, judging by the condition of the rest of the town, much has not been
-required of them, for Appam is the very filthiest town I have ever seen.
-The old lodge is on the top of a hill overlooking the sea, splendidly
-situated, but you arrive at it by a steep and narrow path winding
-between a mass of thatched houses, and it stands out white among the
-dark roofs. As a passer-by, I should say the only thing for Appam is to
-put a fire-stick in the place; nothing else but fire could cleanse it.
-Many of the young people and children were covered with an outbreak of
-sores that looked as if nasty-looking earth had been scattered over
-them and had bred and festered, and they told me the children here were
-reported to be suffering and dying from some disease that baffled the
-doctors, what doctors I do not know, for there is no white man in Appam.
-It seems to me it is hardly necessary to give a name to the disease. I
-should think it was bred of filth pure and simple, and my remedy of the
-fire-stick would go far towards curing it. But there is a graver side to
-it than merely the dying of these negro children. Appam is not very far
-from Accra; communication by surf boat must go on weekly, if not
-daily, and Appam must be an ideal breeding ground for the yellow-fever
-mosquito. I know nothing about matters medical, but I must say, when I
-heard Accra was quarantined for yellow fever, I was not surprised. I had
-come all along the Coast, and filthier villages it would be difficult to
-find anywhere, and of these filthy villages Appam, a large town, takes
-the palm. I left it without regret, and though I should like to see that
-little Dutch lodge again, I doubt if I ever shall.
-
-My carriers were virtue itself now. The Kroo boys were giving so much
-trouble that they posed as angels. I must admit they were a cheery,
-good-tempered lot, and it was impossible to bear malice towards them.
-They had forgotten that I had ever been wrathful, and behaved as if they
-were old and much-trusted servants. Munk-wady, a Ju-ju hill on the shore
-between Appam and Winnebah, is steep and the highest point for many
-miles along the Coast, and over its flank, where there was but a
-pretence at a road, we had to go.
-
-“You no fear, Ma; you no fear,” said the men cheerily, “we tote you
-safe”; and so they did, and took me right across the swamp that lay at
-the other side and right into the yard of the Basel Mission Factory at
-Winnebah, where a much-astonished manager made me most kindly welcome.
-It amused me the astonishment I created along the road. No one could
-imagine how I could get through, and yet it was the simplest matter. It
-merely resolved itself into putting one foot before the other and seeing
-that my following did likewise. Of course, there lay the difficulty.
-“Patience and perseverance,” runs the old saw, “made a Pope of his
-reverence”; and so a little patience and perseverance got me to Accra,
-though I am sometimes inclined to wonder if it wasn't blind folly that
-took me beyond it.
-
-[Illustration: 0248]
-
-But at Winnebah I received a check. Those Kroo boys gave out, and it was
-plain to be seen they could travel no longer with loads on their heads.
-I had no use for their company without loads. There were white men in
-Winnebah, but none of them could help me, for the cocoa harvest in the
-country behind was in full swing, and carriers there were not. The only
-suggestion was that there was a ship in the roadstead, and that I
-should embark on her for Accra. There seemed nothing else for it, and,
-regretful as I was, I felt I must take their advice. The aggravating
-part was that it was only a long day's journey from Winnebah to Accra,
-but as I had no men to carry my loads I could not do it. One thing I was
-determined to do, however, and that was to visit an old Dutch fort there
-was at a place called Berraku, about half-way to Accra. I could do it by
-taking my hammock-boys and my luncheon, and that I did.
-
-That day's journey is simply remarkable for the frolicsomeness of my
-men and for the extreme filth of the fishing villages through which we
-passed. They rivalled Appam. As for the fort, it was built of brick,
-there was a rest-house upon the bastion for infrequent travellers,
-and it was tumbling into disrepair. There will be no fort at Berraku
-presently, for the people of the town will have taken away the bricks
-one by one to build up their own houses. But it must have been a big
-place once, and there is in the town a square stone tomb, a relic of the
-past. The inscription is undecipherable, but it was evidently erected in
-memory of some important person who left his bones in Africa, and lies
-there now forgotten.
-
-There was a river to cross just outside the town of Winnebah, and
-crossing a river is a big undertaking in West Africa, even when you have
-only one load. I'm afraid I must plead guilty to not knowing my men by
-sight; for a long time a black man was a black man to me, and he had no
-individuality about him. Now they all crowded into the boat to cross the
-river, and it was evident to my mind that we were too many; then as
-no one seemed inclined to be left behind, I exercised my authority
-and pointed out the man who was to get out, and out he got, very
-reluctantly, but cheerily helped by his unfeeling fellows. It took us
-about a quarter of an hour to cross that river, for it was wide and we
-had to work up-stream, and once across they all proceeded to go on their
-way without a thought for the man left behind. And then I discovered
-what I had done. I had thrown the ægis of my authority over, putting the
-unfortunate ferryman out of his own boat, and to add injury to insult my
-men were quite prepared to leave him on one side of the stream and his
-boat on the other. When I discovered it was the ferryman I had put out
-I declared they must go back for him, and my decision was received with
-immense surprise.
-
-“You want him, Ma?” as if such a desire should be utterly impossible;
-but when they found I really did, and, moreover, intended to pay him,
-two of them took the boat and he was brought to me with shouts of
-laughter, and comforted with an extra dash, which was more than he had
-expected after my high-handed conduct.
-
-One could not help liking these peasant peoples; they were such
-children, so easily pleased, so anxious to show off before the white
-woman. Here all along the beach the people were engaged in fishing, and
-again and again I saw a little crowd of men launching a boat, or hauling
-it in and distributing their catch upon the beach. I always got out and
-inspected the catch, and they always made way to let me look when they
-saw I was interested. Of course, we could not speak to each other, but
-they spread out the denizens of the deep and pointed out anything they
-thought might be specially curious. I can see now one flat fish that was
-pulled out for my benefit. One man, who was acting as showman, caught
-him by the tail and held him out at arm's length. He was only a small
-fish about the size, I suppose, of a large dish, but that thorny tail
-went high over the man's head while the body of the fish was still
-flapping about on the sand, and the lookers-on all laughed and shouted
-as if they had succeeded in showing the stranger a most curious sight,
-as indeed they had.
-
-[Illustration: 0252]
-
-I was sorry to turn my back on the road, sorry to go back to
-Winnebah--Winnebah of the evil reputation, where they say if a white man
-is not pleasing to the people the fetish men poison him--sorry to pay
-off my men and send them back, sorry to take ship for Accra; but I could
-not get carriers, there was nothing else for it, and by steamer I had to
-go, and very lucky indeed was I to find a steamer ready to take me, so I
-said good-bye to the road for some considerable time and went to Accra.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI--THE CAPITAL OF THE GOLD COAST COLONY
-
-_The pains and penalties of landing in Accra--Negro officials, blatant,
-pompous, inefficient--Christiansborg Castle--The ghost of the man
-with eyes like bright stones--The importance of fresh air--Beautiful
-situation of Accra--Its want of shade-trees--The fences of Accra--The
-temptation of the cooks--Picturesque native population--Striking
-coiffure--The expensive breakwater--To commemorate the opening of the
-waterworks--The forlorn Danish graveyard--A meddlesome missionary--Away
-to the east._
-
-I don't like landing in Accra. There is a good deal of unpleasantness
-connected with it. For one thing, the ships must lie a long way off
-for the surf is bad, and the only way to land is to be put into a
-mammy-chair, dropped into a surf boat, and be rowed ashore by a set of
-most excellent boatmen, who require to be paid exorbitantly for their
-services. I don't know what other people pay, but I have never landed on
-Accra beach under a ten-shilling dash to the boat boys, and then I had
-to pay something like sixpence a load to have my things taken up to the
-Custom house. In addition to that you get the half-civilised negro in
-all his glory, blatant, self-satisfied, loquacious, deadly slow, and
-very inefficient. As well as landing my goods from the steamer, I
-wanted to inquire into the fate of other goods that I had, with what I
-considered much forethought, sent on from Sekondi by a previous steamer,
-and here I found myself in a sea of trouble, for, the negro mind having
-grasped the fact that a troublesome woman was looking for boxes that had
-probably been lost a couple of months ago, each official passed me on
-from one department to another with complacency. Accra is hot, and Accra
-is sandy, and Accra as yet does not understand the meaning of the text,
-“the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land,” so for a couple of
-hours I was hustled about from pillar to post, finding traces of luggage
-everywhere, and no luggage. Then, a little way from the port office, a
-large placard in blue and white, announcing “Post and Telegraph Office”
- caught my eye, so I thought I would by way of refreshment and interlude
-send a telegram telling of my safe arrival to my friends in Sekondi,
-and, in all the heat of a tropical morning, I toiled down one flight
-of steps and up another and at last found that the telegraph office,
-in spite of that big placard, was not at the port at all but at
-Victoriaborg, about a couple of miles away. I could not believe it, but
-so it was. Whether that placard is previous, or hints at past greatness,
-I cannot tell. I also found later on that you cannot send a telegram
-after four o'clock in the afternoon in the Gold Coast. Government takes
-a most paternal care of its negro subordinates and sees that the
-poor things are not worked too hard, but when I found they closed for
-luncheon as well, I was apt to inquire why it should be so hard-hearted
-as ever to require them to open at all. I think this matter should be
-inquired into by someone who has the welfare of the negro race at heart.
-
-[Illustration: 0256]
-
-When my temper was worn to rags, and I was thoroughly hot and unhappy,
-wishing myself with all my heart out in the open again with only
-carriers who “no be fit” to deal with, at last a surprised white man
-found me, straightened things out in a moment, and assured me that I
-should have evening dresses to wear at Government House.
-
-The Acting Governor and his wife put me up for a day or two, and then
-found me quarters, and I hereby put it on record that I really think
-it was noble of the Acting Governor, for he had no sympathy with my
-mission, and I think, though he was too polite to say so, was inclined
-to regard a travelling woman as a pernicious nuisance. I am sure it
-would have been more convenient for him if I had gone straight on, but
-I did not want to do the capital of the Colony like an American tourist,
-and so protested that I must have somewhere where I could rest and
-arrange my impressions.
-
-Government House is old-world. It is Christiansborg Castle, which was
-bought from the Danes, I think, some time in the seventies, when a
-general rearrangement of the Coast took place. It is one of the nicest
-castles on the Coast, bar, of course, Elmina, which none can touch, and
-has passed through various vicissitudes. I met at Kumasi the medical
-officer who had charge of it some years back, when it was a lunatic
-asylum.
-
-“Such a pity,” said he, “to make such a fine place a lunatic asylum. But
-it was a terrible care to me. I was so afraid some of the lunatics would
-smash those fine old stained-glass windows.”
-
-I stared. Stained-glass windows on the Coast! But there is not a trace
-of them now, nor have I ever met anyone else who knew of them. I suppose
-they are some of those things no one thought worth caring about.
-
-[Illustration: 0260]
-
-There are ghosts at Christiansborg too. It used to be Government House,
-and then, because some Governor did not like it, a lunatic asylum, and
-Government House again. A man once told me how, visiting it while it was
-a lunatic asylum, he spoke to the warder in charge and said, “You must
-have an easy time here.”
-
-“No, sah; no, sah,” said the man earnestly, “it no be good.”
-
-“Why?” asked my curious friend.
-
-And then the negro said that as soon as the place was locked up quiet
-for the night, and he knew there could not possibly be any white men
-within the walls, two white men, he described them, one had eyes like
-bright stones, walked up and down that long corridor. And the strange
-part of the story, said my friend, was that he described unmistakably
-two dead-and-gone English Governors, men who have died in recent years,
-one, I think, in the West Indies, and the other on the way home from
-West Africa!
-
-Christiansborg Castle is close down on the seashore, so close that the
-surf tosses its spray against its windows, and thus it came about that I
-learned what seems to me the secret of health in West Africa.
-
-All along the Coast I had wondered; sometimes I felt in the rudest
-health, as if nothing could touch me, sometimes so weary and languid it
-was an effort to rouse myself to make half a dozen steps, and here in
-Christiansborg Castle I was prepared to agree with all the evil that had
-ever been said about the climate.
-
-“In the morning thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were even,' and at even
-thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were morning.'”
-
-That just about expressed my feelings while I was staying at
-Christiansborg Castle. My room, owing to the exigencies of space was
-an inside one, and though the doors were large, wide, and always open,
-still it had no direct communication with the open air. All the windows
-along the sea side of the Castle were tight closed, for the Acting
-Governor's wife did not like her pretty things to be spoiled by the damp
-sea breeze, so she stirred her air by a punkah. But at night of course
-there was no punkah going and I spent nights of misery. The heat was so
-oppressive I could not sleep, and I used to get up and wander about the
-verandah, where the air was cool enough, but I could not sleep there
-as it was by way of being a public passage-way. After a day or two
-they very kindly gave me for my abode a tumble-down old bungalow, just
-outside the Castle walls. It was like a little fort, and probably had
-been built for defence in the days that were passed and gone. There was
-a thick stone wall round the front of a strongly built stone house, that
-was loopholed for defence, and here lodged some of the Government House
-servants and their families, but on top of this stone house had been
-built a wooden bungalow, now rapidly falling into decay. Here were two
-big rooms and wide verandahs with a little furniture, and here I lodged,
-engaging a cook, and running my own establishment, greatly to my own
-satisfaction. The bungalow was as close to the seashore as the Castle,
-and I opened all the windows wide, and let the cool, health-giving fresh
-air blow over me day and night.
-
-After the first night the languor and weariness at once disappeared and
-I felt most wonderfully well, a feeling that I kept always up so long
-as I could sleep in the uninterrupted fresh air. Put me to sleep in a
-closed-in room with no possibility of a direct draught and I was tired
-at once, wherefore I believe and believe firmly that to insure good
-health in West Africa you must have plenty of fresh air. I go further
-and would advise everybody to sleep as much in the open as possible, or,
-at the very least, in a good, strong draught. After that experience, I
-began to notice. I had a habit of getting up very early in the morning
-and going out for walks and rides in my cart, and as I went down the
-streets of towns like Sekondi, Tarkwa, and Accra, it was surprising the
-number of shutters I saw fast closed against the health-giving air.
-I concluded the people behind were foolishly afraid of chills and
-preferred to be slowly poisoned, and I looked too later on in the day at
-the pallid, white-faced men and women who came out of those houses. For
-myself, West Africa agreed with me. I have never in my life enjoyed such
-rude health as I found I had there.
-
-I set the reason down to the care I took to live always in the open.
-The conclusion I draw is this--of course I may be wrong--the margin of
-health in West Africa is narrow and therefore you cannot do without a
-supply of the invigorating elixir supplied by Nature herself. Could I
-live in England as I did there it is quite likely my health would
-be still better. Now, when I hear a man is ill in West Africa, I ask
-several questions before I condemn the place. First, of course, there
-is the unlucky man who would be ill in any climate, then there is the
-dissipated man who brings his ailments upon himself, and, while in
-Africa men set his illness down to the right cause, when they are this
-side of the water they are only too ready to add another nail to their
-cross and pity the poor devil who has succumbed to the terrible climate
-they have to face. Next comes the man who, while not exactly dissipated,
-does himself too well, burns the candle at both ends, and puts upon his
-constitution a strain it certainly could not stand in a cooler climate,
-and then, when all these eliminated, there is to my mind the man and the
-woman, for the women are still greater offenders, who will sleep in too
-sheltered a spot, and spend their sleeping hours in the vitiated air of
-a mosquito-proof room.
-
-[Illustration: 0264]
-
-Of course other things tend to ill-health--loneliness, want of
-occupation for the mind, that perpetual strain that is engendered when a
-man is not contented with his surroundings and is for ever counting the
-slowly moving days till he shall go home; but that must come in any
-land where a man counts himself an exile, and I finally came to the
-conclusion that pretty nearly half the ill-health of West Africa would
-be cured if men would but arrange their sleeping-quarters wisely.
-
-At any rate, in this old tumble-down bungalow I was more than happy. I
-engaged a cart and boys, and I used to start off at six o'clock in the
-morning, or as near to it as I could get those wretches of Kroo boys to
-come, and wander over the town.
-
-Accra, which is the principal town of the Ga people, must have been for
-some centuries counted a town of great importance, for three nations had
-forts here. The English had James Fort, now used as a prison, the
-Dutch had Fort Crêvecoeur, now called Vssher Fort and used as a police
-barracks, and the Danes had Christiansborg Castle close to the big
-lagoon and three miles away from the town of Accra. And in addition to
-these forts all along the shore are ruins of great buildings. Till I
-went to Ashanti, between Christiansborg and Accra was the only bit
-of good road I had seen on the English coast of Guinea, and that was
-probably made by the Danes, for there is along part of it an avenue of
-fine old tamarind trees, which only this careful people would take the
-trouble to plant. They are slow-growing trees, I believe, and must be
-planted for shelter between other trees which may be cut down when the
-beautiful tamarinds grow old enough to take care of themselves. Some of
-the trees are gone and no one has taken the trouble to fill in the gaps,
-but still with their delicate greenery they are things of beauty in hot,
-sun-stricken Accra. For if ever a town needed trees and their shade it
-is this capital of the Gold Coast.
-
-[Illustration: 0268]
-
-Accra might be a beautiful city. The coast is not very high, but raised
-considerably above sea-level, and it is broken into sweeping bays; the
-country behind gradually rises so that the bungalows at the back of the
-town get all the breeze that comes in from the ocean and all that sweeps
-down from the hills. In consequence, Accra, for a town that lies within
-a few degrees of the Equator, may be counted comparatively cool. The
-only heat is between nine o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in
-the afternoon; at night, when I was there, the hottest time of the year,
-March and the beginning of April, there was always a cool sea breeze. A
-place is always bearable when the nights are cool.
-
-But on landing, Accra gives the impression of fierce heat. Shade-giving
-trees are almost entirely absent, the sun blazes down on hot, yellow
-sands, on hot, red streets lined with bare, white houses, and the very
-glare makes one pant. In the roadways, here and there, are channels worn
-by the heavy rainfall, the streets are not very regular, and many of the
-houses are ill-kept, shabby, and sadly in need of a coat of paint; when
-they belong to white men one sees written all over them that they are
-the dwellings of men who have no permanent abiding place here, but are
-“just making it do,” and as for the native houses, every native under
-English rule has yet to learn the lesson that cleanliness and neatness
-make for beauty. When in the course of my morning's drive I looked at
-the gardens of Accra, for there are a good many ill-kept gardens, I
-fancied myself stepping with Alice into Wonderland. The picket fences
-are made of the curved staves that are imported for the making of
-barrels, and therefore they are all curved like an “S,” and I do not
-think there is one whole fence in all the town; sometimes even the posts
-and rails are gone, but invariably some of the pickets are missing.
-
-“All the good cooks in Accra,” said a man to me with a sigh, “are in
-prison for stealing fences.”
-
-“Not all,” said his chum; “ours went for stealing the post office, you
-remember. He'd burnt most of it before they discovered what was
-becoming of it.” They say they are importing iron railings for Accra
-to circumvent the negro; for the negro, be it understood, does not
-mind going to prison. He is well-fed, well-sheltered, and the only
-deprivation he suffers is being deprived of his women; and when he comes
-out he feels it no disgrace, his friends greet him and make much of him,
-much as we should one who had suffered an illness through no fault of
-his own, therefore the cook who has pocketed the money his master has
-given him to buy wood, and stolen his neighbour's fence, begins again
-immediately he comes out of prison, and hopes he will not be so unlucky
-as to be found out this time.
-
-[Illustration: 0272]
-
-This is the capital of a rich colony, so in business hours I found the
-streets thronged, and even early in the morning they were by no means
-empty, for the negro very wisely goes about his business while yet it
-is cool. Here, away from the forest, is no tsetse fly, so horses may be
-seen in buggies or drawing produce, but since man's labour can be bought
-for a shilling a day, it is cheaper, and so many people, like I was, are
-drawn by men. I, so as to feel less like a slave-driver, bought peace
-of mind in one way and much aggravation in another by having three, but
-many men I saw with only two, and many negroes, who are much harder on
-those beneath them than the white men, had only one. Produce too is very
-often taken from the factory to the harbour in carts drawn by eight or
-a dozen men, and goods are brought up from the sea by the same sweating,
-toiling, shouting Kroo boys.
-
-They are broad-shouldered, sinewy men, clad generally in the most
-elderly of European garments cast off by some richer man, but always
-they are to be known from the surrounding Ga people by the broad
-vertical band of blue tattooing on their foreheads, the freedom mark
-that shows they have never been slaves. In Accra the white people are
-something under two hundred, the Governor and his staff, officials,
-teachers, merchants, clerks, missionaries, and artisans, and there are
-less than thirty white women, so that in comparison the white faces are
-very few in the streets. They are thronged with the dark people who call
-this place home. Clad in their own costumes they are very picturesque,
-the men in toga-like cloths fastened on one shoulder, the women with
-their cloths fastened under the arms, sometimes to show the breasts,
-sometimes to cover them, and on their head is usually a bright kerchief
-which hides an elaborate coiffure.
-
-When I was strolling about Christiansborg one day I saw a coiffure which
-it was certainly quite beyond the power of the wearer to hide under a
-handkerchief. She was engaged in washing operations under a tree, and
-so I asked and obtained permission to photograph her. It will be seen
-by the result that, in spite of her peculiar notions on the subject
-of hair-dressing, she is not at all ungraceful. Indeed, in their own
-clothes, the Africans always show good taste. However gaudy the colours
-chosen, never it seems do natives make a mistake--they blend into the
-picture, they suit the garish sunshine, the bright-blue sky, the
-yellow beach, the cobalt sea, or the white foam of the surf breaking
-ceaselessly on the shore; only when the man and woman put on European
-clothes do they look grotesque. There is something in the tight-fitting
-clothes of civilisation that is utterly unsuited to these sons and
-daughters of the Tropics, and the man who is a splendid specimen of
-manhood when he is stark but for a loin cloth, who is dignified in his
-flowing robe, sinks into commonplaceness when he puts on a shirt and
-trousers, becomes a caricature when he parts his wool and comes out in a
-coat and high white collar.
-
-Money is spent in Accra as it is spent nowhere else in the Colony. Of
-course I do not know much about these matters, therefore I suppose I
-should not judge, but I may say that after I had seen German results, I
-came to the conclusion that money was not always exactly wisely spent.
-Most certainly the people who had the beautifying of the town were not
-very artistic, and sometimes I cannot but feel they have lacked the
-saving grace of a sense of humour.
-
-[Illustration: 0276]
-
-The landing here was shockingly bad; it is so still, I think, for the
-last time I left I was drenched to the skin, so the powers that be set
-to work at enormous cost to build a breakwater behind which the boats
-might land in comparative safety. Only comparative, for still the moment
-the boat touches the shore the boatmen seize the passenger and carry him
-as swiftly as possible, and quite regardless of his dignity, beyond the
-reach of the next breaking wave.
-
-“Ah,” said a high official, looking with pride at the breakwater, “how
-I have watched that go up. Every day I have said to myself, 'something
-accomplished, something done'”; and he said it with such heartfelt pride
-that I had not the heart to point out the sand pump, working at the
-rate of sixty tons a minute, that this same costly breakwater had
-necessitated, for the harbour without it would fill up behind the
-breakwater; not exactly, I fancy, what the authorities intended. The
-breakwater isn't finished yet, but the harbour is filling fast; by the
-time it is finished I should doubt whether there will be any water at
-all behind it.
-
-I did Accra thoroughly. I lived in that little bungalow beside the fort,
-and I went up and down the streets in my cart and I saw all I think
-there was to be seen. But for one good friend, a medical officer I had
-known before, the lady who was head of the girls' school, a thoroughly
-capable, practical young woman, and the one or two friends they brought
-to see me, I knew nobody, and so I was enabled to form my opinions
-untrammelled, and I'm afraid I had the audacity to sit in judgment on
-that little tropical capital and say to myself that things might really
-be very much better done. The Club may be a cheerful place if you know
-anyone, but it is very doleful and depressing if the only other women
-look sidelong at you over the tops of their papers as if you were some
-curious specimen that it might perhaps be safer to avoid, and I found
-the outside of the bungalows, with their untidy, forlorn gardens, the
-houses of sojourners who are not dwellers in the land, anything but
-promising. Yet money is spent too--witness the breakwater--and in my
-wanderings I came across a tombstone-like erection close to James Fort,
-which I stopped and inspected. Indeed it is in a conspicuous place, with
-an inscription which he who runs may read. At least he might have read a
-little while ago, but the climate is taking it in hand. The stone is of
-polished granite, which must have cost a considerable amount of money,
-and by the aid of that inscription I discovered that it was a fountain
-erected to commemorate the opening of the waterworks in Accra. Oh
-Africa! Already it is difficult to read that inscription; the unfinished
-fountain is falling into decay, and the water has not yet been brought
-to the town! When future generations dig on the site of the old Gold
-Coast town, I am dreadfully afraid that tombstone will give quite a
-wrong impression. Now it is one of the most desolate things I know, more
-desolate even than the forlorn Danish graveyard which lies, overgrown
-and forgotten, but a stone's throw from my bungalow at Christiansborg. A
-heavy brick wall had been built round it once, but it was broken down
-in places so that the people of Christiansborg might pasture their goats
-and sheep upon it, and I climbed through the gap, risking the snakes,
-and read the inscriptions. They had died, apparently most of them,
-in the early years of the nineteenth century, men and women, victims
-probably to their want of knowledge, and all so pitifully young. I could
-wish that the Government that makes so much fuss about educating the
-young negro in the way he should go, could spare, say ten shillings a
-year to keep these graves just with a little respect. It would want so
-little, so very little. Those Danes of ninety years ago I dare say sleep
-sound enough lulled by the surf, but it would be a graceful act to keep
-their graves in order, and would not be a bad object-lesson for the
-Africans we are so bent on improving.
-
-[Illustration: 0280]
-
-Behind the town are great buildings--technical schools put up with this
-object in view. They are very ugly buildings, very bare and barren and
-hot-looking. Evidently the powers who insist so strongly upon hand and
-eye training think it is sufficient to let the young scholars get their
-ideas of beauty and form by sewing coloured wools through perforated
-cards or working them out in coloured chalks on white paper; they
-have certainly not given them a practical lesson in beauty with these
-buildings. They may be exceedingly well-fitted for the use to which they
-are intended, but it seems to me a little far-fetched to house young
-negroes in such buildings when in such a climate a roof over a cement
-floor would answer all purposes.
-
-If I had longed to beat my hammock-boys, my feelings towards them were
-mild when compared with those I had towards my cart-boys. They were
-terriblelooking ruffians, clad in the forlornest rags, and they dragged
-me about at a snail's pace. What they wanted of course was a master who
-would beat them, and as they did not get it, they took advantage of me.
-It is surprising how one's opinions are moulded by circumstances. Once
-I would have said that the man who hit an unoffending black man was a
-brute, and I suppose in my calmer moments I would say so still, but I
-distinctly remember seeing one of my cart-boys who had been on an errand
-to get himself a drink, or satisfy some of his manifold wants, strolling
-towards me in that leisurely fashion which invariably set me longing for
-the slave-driver's whip to hasten his steps. In his path was a white man
-who for some reason bore a grudge against the negro, and, without saying
-a word, caught him by the shoulder and kicked him on one side, twisted
-him round, and kicked him on the other side, and I, somewhat to my
-own horror, found myself applauding in my heart. Here was one of my
-cart-boys getting his deserts at last. The majority of white men were
-much of my way of thinking, but of course I came across the other sort.
-I met a missionary and his wife who were travelling down to inquire into
-the conditions of the workers in the cocoa plantations in Ferdinando Po.
-I confess I thought them meddlesome. What should we think if Portugal
-sent a couple of missionaries to inquire into the conditions of the
-tailoring trade in the East End of London, or the people in the knife
-trade in Sheffield? I have seen both these peoples and seen just as
-a passer-by far more open misery than ever I saw on the coast of West
-Africa. The misery may be there, but I have not seen it, as I may see it
-advertising itself between Hyde Park Corner and South Kensington any day
-of the week. Since I was a tiny child I have heard the poor heathen
-talked of glibly enough, but I have never in savage lands come across
-him.
-
-[Illustration: 0284]
-
-After nearly a month at Accra I decided I must go on, and then I found
-it was impossible to get carriers to go along the beach eastward; the
-best I could do was to go up by the Basel Mission motor lorry to a place
-called Dodowah, and here the Acting Governor had kindly arranged with
-the Provincial Commissioner at Akuse to send across carriers to meet me
-and take me to the Volta.
-
-So one still, hot morning in April I packed up bag and baggage in my
-nice little bungalow, had one final wrangle with my cart-boys, a parting
-breakfast with the Basel Mission Factory people whose women-kind are
-ideal for a place like West Africa and make a home wherever you find
-them, and started in the lorry north for Dodowah in the heart of the
-cocoa district.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII--BLOOD FETISH OF KROBO HILL
-
-_To Dodowah by motor lorry--Orchard-bush country--Negro tortures--The
-Basel Mission factor--A personally conducted tour--Great hospitality--A
-dinner by moonlight--Plan a night journey--The roadway by
-moonlight--Barbarous hymns--Carriers who “no be fit” once more--Honesty
-of the African carrier--Extraordinary obedience--The leopard that
-cried at Akway Pool--A hard-hearted slave-driver--Krobo Hill--Blood
-fetishes--Terror of the carriers--Story of the hill--The dawning of a
-new day--Unexplained disappearances--Akuse at last--The arrival of a
-whirlwind--The fire on Krobo Hill._
-
-Inland from Accra the country is what they call orchard bush, that is
-to say, it was rather flat country sloping in gradual gradation to the
-hills behind, covered now, in the end of the dry season, with yellow
-grass and dotted all over with trees, not close together as in the
-forest country but just far enough apart to give it a pleasant,
-park-like look. There were great tall ant heaps too, or rather the homes
-of the termite, the white ant which is not an ant at all I believe, and
-these reminded me of the ghastly form of torture sometimes perpetrated
-by the negroes. A Provincial Commissioner once told me that he had
-several times come across on these hills, which are often ten or twelve
-or twenty feet high, the skeleton of a man who had undoubtedly been
-fastened there while he was alive; and another went one better and
-told me how another form of torture was to place a man on the ant heap
-without any fastening whatever and then to surround it with men and
-women with knives, so that when he tried to escape he was promptly
-driven back. In this last case I am glad to think that the torturers
-are bound to have run their share of risk, and must have received many
-a good hard nip. But the negro mind seems to rather revel in secret
-societies, trial by ordeal, and tortures. Christianity, the religion of
-love and pity, has been preached on the Coast for many a long day now,
-and yet in this year of our Lord 1911 there is behind the Church of
-England in Accra, down on the sea beach, a rock which is generally
-known as Sacrifice Rock, and here those who know declare that every
-yam festival, which takes place just after the rains in September, they
-sacrifice a girl in order that the crops may not fail.
-
-[Illustration: 0291]
-
-Riding in a lorry I had plenty of time to consider these matters. My
-kind Basel Mission Factory _haus-frau_ had provided me with luncheon to
-eat by the way, and I knew that all my goods and chattels would arrive
-safely at their destination without my having to worry about them. Grant
-was the only servant I had left. I had dismissed the cook, and Zacco had
-quarrelled with Grant and dismissed himself, and so while I sat on the
-front seat of the lorry alongside the negro driver, Grant and my goods
-and chattels were packed away in odd corners on top of the merchandise
-that was going to Dodowah. The road was bad, deeply cut by the passing
-of these lorries, but I arrived there about midday and was cordially
-received by a Basel Mission Factory man who told me my carriers had
-arrived, and suggested I should come to his house and have luncheon.
-
-He was a kindly, fair-haired young German who had been in the Colony
-about a month and was learning English on Kroo-boy lines. The result was
-a little startling, but as it was our only means of communication I was
-obliged to make the best of it.
-
-My carriers had been here waiting for me since Friday; this was Monday,
-and they wanted “sissy” money. I paid up and declared I should start the
-moment they had broken their fast. Meanwhile my German friend undertook
-to show me the sights.
-
-Dodowah is a very pretty little place at the foot of the hills; it is
-embowered in palm trees and is the centre of the cocoa industry. In the
-yard of the factory the cocoa was lying drying in the blazing sun,
-and when I had been duly instructed in its various qualities, my host
-suggested I should “walk small.”
-
-“I take you my house.”
-
-It was very kind of him, but I was cautious. I do not like walking in
-the blazing noonday.
-
-“How far is it?” I asked.
-
-“Small, small,” said he, with conviction.
-
-Grant was a very different person now from the boy in a pink pyjama
-coat, meek and mild and bullied by Kwesi, whom I had engaged in the
-distant past. He was my body servant; evidently supposed by everyone
-else who came in contact with me to hold a position of high trust, and
-thinking no end of himself. So to him I gave strict instructions. All
-the loads were to start at once, the hammock-boys were to follow me to
-the factor's house, and he was to go on with the carriers. We had left
-the protection of the “p'lice” behind, and on the whole I thought I
-could do just as well without.
-
-So I set out with my new friend and accompanied by my new headman who
-evidently thought it his duty to follow in my wake, though he could
-understand no English and I could understand not one word of his tongue.
-That walk remains in my mind as one long nightmare; I only did one
-worse, and then I thought I must be going to die. We left the plain
-country and plunged uphill, it was blazing noonday in April, and though
-there were palms and much growth on either side of the road, on the road
-itself was not a particle of shade. Still we went up and up and up.
-
-“I show you, I show you,” said my friend.
-
-Frankly I wished he wouldn't. It was a splendid view from that hillside,
-with the town nestling embowered in palms at our feet, but a personally
-conducted walking-tour on the Coast at midday on an April day was the
-very last thing I desired.
-
-I was dripping with perspiration, I was panting and breathless before
-we had been on that road five minutes; in the next five I would have
-bartered all my prospects in Africa for a glass of iced water, and then
-my companion turned. “You like go through bushway, short cut.” It looked
-cooler, so I feebly assented and we turned into the bush which was so
-thin it did not shut out the sun, and the walking was very much rougher.
-I had given up all hopes of ever coming to the end when my companion
-stopped, flung up his head like a young war-horse, and said cheerfully,
-“Oh I tink I go lookum road.”
-
-I sank down on a log; my new headman, an awful-looking ruffian, stood
-beside me, and that aggressively active young German went plunging about
-the bush till he returned still cheerful and remarking, “I tink we lose
-way. We go back.”
-
-I draw a veil over the remainder of that walk. We did arrive at his
-house finally after two and a half hours' march over very rough country,
-and then he gave me wine to drink and fed me and was good to me, but I
-was utterly tired out and didn't care for the moment what became of me.
-He showed me a bedroom and I lay down and slept, rose up and had a bath,
-and felt as if I might perhaps face the world again. At half-past four
-we had some tea and I contemplated all my new hammock-boys sitting in
-a row under some palm trees on the other side of the road. They looked
-strapping, big, strong men, and I was thankful, for Akuse they said was
-twenty-seven miles away and I had to do it in one march. The question
-was, when I should start?
-
-“If you start now,” said the factor, “you get there one--half-past one
-in the morning--very good time.”
-
-Now I really could not agree with him. To launch yourself on totally
-unknown people at halfpast one in the morning and ask them to take you
-in is not, I think, calculated to place you in a favourable light, and
-I demurred. But what was I to do? I did not want to inflict myself any
-longer on this hospitable young man, and already I had paid my carriers
-for four days while they did nothing. It was a full moon. Last night had
-been gorgeous; this night promised to be as fine. I asked the question,
-why could I not travel all night?
-
-“Oh yes, moon be fine too much”; and then he went on to tell me a
-long story about his Kroo boys being frightened to travel that road by
-themselves. “But it all be foolishness.” It took me so long to discover
-the meaning of the words that I really paid no attention to the gist of
-what he was saying, besides I could not see that a Kroo boy being afraid
-was any reason why I should be. Finally we figured it out that I should
-start at nine o'clock, which would bring me to Akuse at a little after
-six in the morning. This did not seem so bad, and I agreed and cordially
-thanked the kindness which made him plan a nice little dinner in the
-moonlight on the verandah. It comes back to me as one of the most unique
-dinners I ever had; we had no other light but that of the moon, the
-gorgeous moonlight of the Tropics. It shone silver on the fronds of the
-palms, the mountains loomed dimly mysterious like mountains in a dream,
-and the road that ran past the house lay clear and still and warm in the
-white light.
-
-My host asked leave to dine in a cap; he said the moon gave him a
-headache, and strongly advised me to do likewise, but though I have
-heard other people say the moon affects them in that manner, it never
-troubles me and I declined. And he translated his German grace into
-English for my benefit, and I could not even smile so kindly was the
-intention; and we ate fruit on the verandah, and nine o'clock came and I
-had the top taken off my hammock and started.
-
-“Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho,” cried the hammock-boys, clapping their hands
-as they went at a fast trot, far faster than the ordinary man could walk
-without any burden on his head, and we were off to Akuse and the Volta.
-The night was as light as day, and it never occurred to me that there
-was any danger in the path. We went through the town, and here and there
-a gleam of fire showed, and here and there was a yellow light in one
-of the window places, and the people were in groups in the streets,
-dancing, singing, or merely looking on. Generally they sang, and no one
-knows how truly barbaric a hymn can sound sung by a line of lightly clad
-people keeping time with hands and feet to the music. It might have been
-a war song, it might have been a wail for those about to die; it was,
-I realised with a start, “Jesu, lover of my soul,” in the vernacular. I
-suppose the missionaries know best, but it always seems to me that the
-latest music-hall favourite would do better for negro purposes than
-these hymns that have been endeared to most of us by old association.
-These new men were splendid hammock-men; they stopped for no man, and
-the groups melted before them.
-
-A happy peasant people were these, apparently with just that touch of
-mysterious sadness about them that is with all peasant peoples. Their
-own sorrows they must have, of course, but they are not forced upon the
-passer-by as are the sordid sorrows of the great cities of the civilised
-world. At the outside ring of these dancers hung no mean and hungry
-wretches having neither part nor parcel with the singers.
-
-Through the town and out into the open country we went, and the trees
-made shadows clear-cut on the road like splashes of ink, or, where the
-foliage was less dense, the leaves barely moving in the still night air
-made a tracery as of lace work on the road beneath, and there was
-the soft, sleepy murmur of the birds, and the ceaseless skirl of the
-insects. Occasionally came another sound, penetrating, weird, rather
-awe-inspiring, the cry of the leopard, but the hammock-boys took no
-heed--it was moonlight and there were eight of them.
-
-“Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho.” They clapped their hands and sang choruses,
-and by the time we arrived at the big village of Angomeda, a couple of
-hours out, I was fairly purring with satisfaction. I have noticed that
-when things were going well with me I was always somewhat inclined to
-give all the credit to my perfect management; when they went wrong
-I laid the blame on Providence, my headman, or any other responsible
-person within reach. Now my self-satisfaction received a nasty shock.
-
-The village of Angomeda was lying asleep in the moonlight. The brown
-thatch glistened with moisture, the gates of the compounds and the doors
-of the houses were fast shut; only from under the dark shadow of a
-great shade-tree in the centre of the village came something white which
-resolved itself into Grant apologetic and aggrieved.
-
-“Carriers go sleep here, Ma. They say they no fit go by night.”
-
-My fine new carriers “no fit.” How are the mighty fallen! And I had
-imagined them pretty nearly at Akuse by now! Clearly, they could not be
-allowed to stay here. I have done a good many unpleasant things, but
-I really did not feel I could arrive at Akuse at six o'clock in the
-morning without a change of clothing.
-
-But I restrained myself for the moment.
-
-“Why?”
-
-“I not knowing, Ma.”
-
-I debated a moment. I realised the situation. I was a woman miles from
-any white man, and I could not speak one word of the language. Still,
-I had sent those carriers to Akuse and I could not afford to be defied,
-therefore I alighted.
-
-“Where are those carriers?”
-
-Nine pointing fingers indicated the house. Evidently the hammock-boys
-had been here before, and one of them pushed open a door in the wall.
-Black shadows and silver-white light was that compound. Heaped in the
-middle, not to be mistaken, were my loads, and from under the deeper
-shadows beneath the surrounding sheds came tumbling black figures which
-might or might not have been my erring carriers. I did not know them
-from the people about them, neither did I know one word of their
-language, and only one of my hammock-boys spoke any pigeon English. But
-that consideration did not stay me. I singled out my headman, and him
-I addressed at length and gave him to understand that I was pained and
-surprised at such conduct. Never in the course of a long career had I
-come across carriers who slept when they should have been on the
-road, and before I was half-way through the harangue those sleepy and
-reluctant men and women were picking up the loads. I confess I had been
-doubtful. Why should these carriers pay any attention to me? Now that I
-know what they risked by their obedience I have no words to express my
-astonishment. I did not know the carriers, but I did know the loads, and
-before I got into my hammock I stood at the gate and counted them all
-out. I need not have worried. The African carrier is the most honest man
-I have ever met. Never have I lost the smallest trifle entrusted to him.
-When my goods were well on the road I got into my hammock and started
-again.
-
-Oh, such a night! On such a night as this Romeo wooed Juliet, on such a
-night came the Queen of the Fairies to see charm even in the frolicsome
-Bottom.
-
-All the glories of the ages, all the delights of the world were in that
-night. The song of the carriers took on a softness and a richness
-born of the open spaces of the earth and the glorious night, and for
-accompaniment was the pad-pad of their feet in the dust of the roadway,
-and in one long, musical monotonous cadence the cheep of the insects,
-and again a sharper note, the cry of a bat or night bird.
-
-It was orchard-bush country that lay outspread in the white light, with
-here and there a cocoa plantation. Here a tree cast a dark shadow across
-the road, and there was a watercourse through which the feet of the
-men splashed--only in German West Africa may you always count on a
-bridge--and, again, the trees would grow close and tunnel-like over the
-road with only an occasional gleam of moonlight breaking through. But
-always the hammock-boys kept steadily on, and the carriers kept up as
-never before in two hundred miles of travel had carriers kept up. We
-went through sleeping villages with whitewashed mud walls and thatched
-roofs gleaming wetly, and even the dogs and the goats were asleep.
-
-It was midnight. It was long after midnight; the moon was still high and
-bright, like a great globe of silver, but there had come over the night
-that subtle change that comes when night and morning meet. It was night
-no longer; nothing tangible had changed, but it was morning. The twitter
-of the birds, the cry of the insects, had something of activity in it;
-the night had passed, another day had come, though the dawning was hours
-away. And still the men went steadily on.
-
-A great square hill rose up on the horizon, and we came to a clump of
-trees where the moonlight was shut out altogether; we passed through
-water, and it was pitch-dark, with just a gleam of moonlight here and
-there to show how dense was that darkness. It was Akway Pool, and a
-leopard was crying in the thick bush close beside it. It was uncanny,
-it was weird; all the terror that I had missed till now in Africa came
-creeping over me, and the men were singing no longer. Very carefully
-they stepped, and the pool was so deep that lying strung up in the
-hammock I could still have touched the water with my hand. Could it be
-only a leopard that was crying so? Might it not be something even worse,
-something born of the deep, dark pool, and the night? Slowly we went up
-out of the water, and we stood a moment under the shade of the trees,
-but with the white light within reach, and Krobo Hill loomed up ahead
-against the dark horizon. The only hammock-boy who could make himself
-understood came up.
-
-“Mammy, man be tired. We stop here small.”
-
-It was a reasonable request, but the leopard was crying still, and the
-gloom and fear of the pool was upon me.
-
-“No, go on.” They might have defied me, but they went on, and to my
-surprise, my very great surprise, the carriers were still with us.
-Presently we were out in the moonlight again; I had got the better of my
-fears and repented me. “Wait small now.”
-
-“No, Mammy,” came the answer, “this be bad place,” and they went on
-swiftly, singing and shouting as if to keep their courage up, or, as
-I gathered afterwards, to give the impression of a great company. Only
-afterwards did I know what I had done that night. Krobo Hill grew larger
-and larger at every step, and on Krobo Hill was one of the worst, if not
-the worst blood fetish in West Africa. Every Krobo youth before he
-could become a man and choose a wife had to kill a man, and he did it
-generally on Krobo Hill. There the fetish priests held great orgies, and
-for their ghastly ceremonies and initiations they caught any stranger
-who was reckless enough to pass the hill. How they killed him was a
-mystery; some said with tortures, some that only his head was cut off.
-But the fear in the country grew, and at the end of the last century the
-British Government interfered; they took Krobo Hill and scattered the
-fetish priests and their abominations, and they declared the country
-safe. But the negro revels in mystery and horror, and the fear of the
-hill still lingers in the minds of the people; every now and then a man
-disappears and the fear is justified. Only three years ago a negro
-clerk on his bicycle was traced to that hill and no further trace of him
-found. His hat was in the road, and the Krobos declared that the great
-white baboons that infest the hill had taken him, but it is hardly
-reasonable to suppose that the baboons would have any use for a bicycle,
-whereas he, strong and young, and his bicycle, together emblems of
-strength and swiftness, made a very fitting offering to accompany to
-his last resting-place the dead chief whose obsequies the Krobos were
-celebrating at the time. Always there are rumours of disappearances,
-less known men and women than a Government clerk and scholar, and always
-the people know there is need of men and women for the sacrifices,
-sacrifices to ensure a plenteous harvest, a good fishing, brave men, and
-fruitful women.
-
-My men were afraid--even I, who could not understand the reason, grasped
-that fact; very naturally afraid, for it was quite within the bounds of
-possibility that a straggler might be cut off.
-
-“Would they have touched me?” I asked afterwards.
-
-“Not with your men round you. Some might escape, and the vengeance would
-have been terrible.”
-
-“But if I had been by myself?”
-
-“Ah, then they might have said that the baboons had taken you; but you
-would not have been by yourself.”
-
-No, it was extremely unlikely I should be here by myself, but here were
-my men, sixteen strong and afraid. Akway Pool had been the last water
-within a safe distance from the hill, and I had not let them halt; now
-they dared not. A light appeared on the hill, just a point of flickering
-fire on the ridge, above us now, and I hailed it as a nice friendly
-gleam telling of human habitation and home, but the men sang and shouted
-louder than ever. I offered to stop, but the answer was always the same:
-“This be bad place, Mammy. We go.”
-
-At last, without asking my leave, they put down the hammock, and the
-carriers flung themselves down panting.
-
-“We stop small, Mammy”; and I sat on my box and watched the great,
-sinewy men with strapping shoulders as they lay on the ground resting.
-They had been afraid I was sure, and I knew no reason for their fear.
-
-But the night was past and it was morning, morning now though it was
-only half-past three and the sun would not be up till close on six
-o'clock. On again. The moon had swung low to the dawn, and the gathering
-clouds made it darker than it had yet been, while the stars that peeped
-between the clouds were like flakes of newly washed silver. People began
-to pass us, ghostlike figures in the gloom. Greetings were exchanged,
-news was shouted from one party to the other, and I, in spite of the
-discomfort of the hammock, was dead with sleep, and kept dropping into
-oblivion and waking with a start to the wonder and strangeness of my
-surroundings. Deeper and deeper grew the oblivion in the darkness that
-precedes the dawn, till I wakened suddenly to find myself underneath a
-European bungalow, and knew that for the first time in my experience of
-African travel I had arrived nearly two hours before I expected to.
-
-My people were wild with delight and triumph. I had forced them to come
-through the Krobo country by night, but my authority did not suffice to
-keep them quiet now they had come through in safety. They chattered and
-shouted and yelled, and a policeman who was doing sentry outside the
-Provincial Commissioner's bungalow started to race upstairs. I tried to
-stop him, and might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind. Indeed, when
-I heard him hammering on the door I was strongly of opinion that the
-Commissioner would think that the whirlwind had arrived. But presently
-down those steps came a very big Scotchman in a dressing-gown, with his
-hair on end, just roused from his sleep, and he resolved himself into
-one of those courteous, kindly gentlemen England is blessed with as
-representatives in the dark corners of the earth.
-
-Did he reproach me? Not at all. He perjured himself so far as to say he
-was glad to see me, and he took me upstairs and gave me whisky-and-soda
-because it was so late, and then tea and fruit because it was so early.
-And then in the dawning I looked out over Krobo Hill, and my host told
-me its story.
-
-“I cleared them out years ago. I have no doubt they have their blood
-sacrifices somewhere, but not on Krobo Hill. But the people are still
-afraid.”
-
-“I saw a fire there last night.”
-
-He shook his head unbelieving.
-
-“Impossible; there is a fine of fifty pounds for anyone found on Krobo
-Hill.”
-
-The dawn had come and the sun was rising rosy and golden. The night lay
-behind in the west.
-
-I looked out of the window at the way I had come and wondered. I am
-always looking back in life and wondering. Perhaps it would be a dull
-life where there are no pitfalls to be passed, no rocks to climb over.
-
-“I see smoke there now.” In the clear morning air it was going up in a
-long spiral; but again my host shook his head.
-
-“Only a cloud.”
-
-But there were glasses lying on the table, and I looked through them and
-there was smoke on Krobo Hill.
-
-So I think my men were right to fear, and I am lost in wonder when I
-remember they obeyed me and came on when they feared.
-
-And then when the sun had risen and another hot day fairly begun, I went
-over to the D.C.'s house; he had a wife, and they were kindly putting
-me up, and I had breakfast and a bath and went to bed and slept I really
-think more soundly than I have ever in my life slept before.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII--THE FEAR THAT SKULKED BENEATH THE MANGO TREE
-
-_Up the Volta--Svvanzy's trusting agent at Akuse--Amedika, the port of
-Akuse on the Volta--The trials of a trolley ride--My canoe--Paddling
-up-river--Rapids that raise the river thirty-four feet--Dangers of
-the river--Entrancingly lovely scenery--A wealthy land--The curious
-preventive service--Fears--Leaving the river--Labolabo--A notable black
-man--The British Cotton-growing Experimental Farm--The lonely white
-man--The fear that was catching--The lonely man's walk._
-
-At Akuse I changed my plans. I had intended to come here, drop down the
-Volta in the little river steamers that run twice a week to Addah, and
-then pursue my way along the coast to Keta where there was an old Danish
-castle, and possibly get across the German border and see Lome, their
-capital. But there is this charm or drawback--which ever way you like to
-look at it--about Africa: no one knows anything about the country beyond
-his immediate district. The Provincial Commissioner had gone to Addah,
-and I discussed my further progress with the D.C. and his wife as we
-sat on the verandah that night and looked over the country bathed in the
-most gorgeous moonlight. The D.C.'s wife, a pretty little woman who had
-only been out a couple of months, was of opinion that the vile country
-was killing her and her husband, that it was simply a waste of life to
-live here, and she could not get over her surprise that I should find
-anything of interest in it. The D.C. thought it wouldn't be half bad
-if only the Government brought you back to the same place, so that you
-might see some result for your labours, and he strongly advised me to go
-a day or two up the river in a canoe just to see the country.
-
-“It is quite worth seeing,” said he, and his wife smiled. She had seen
-all she intended to see of the country at Akuse, and did not want to go
-farther in.
-
-The next day I went into the town, the official quarters are some
-distance away, and called on a couple of the principal merchants.
-
-The factor at Miller Bros, put a new idea into my head.
-
-“Oh yes, go up the Volta,” said he; “you can get up as far as Labolabo,
-then cut across-country and come out at Ho in German territory. You can
-get to Palime from there, and that is rail-head, so you can easily make
-your way down to Lome.”
-
-It sounded rather an attractive programme.
-
-“You go and see Rowe about it,” he suggested.
-
-So I went and called upon Swanzy's agent, a nice young fellow, who first
-laughed, then looked me up and down doubtfully, and finally said it
-could be done. Mr Grey, one of their principals, had come across that
-way the other day, but it was very rough going indeed. No one else that
-he knew of had ever ventured it.
-
-[Illustration: 0309]
-
-If I liked to try he would get me a canoe to go up the river in, and
-give me letters to their black agents, for I must not expect to meet any
-white men. And again he looked doubtful.
-
-If I liked; of course I liked. I am always ready to plunge in and
-take any risks in the future, provided the initial steps are not too
-difficult, and once he found I wanted to go, Mr Rowe made the initial
-steps very easy indeed.
-
-First he very nobly lent me twenty-five pounds in threepenny bits, for
-I had got beyond the region of banks before I realised it, and had only
-two pounds in hand; he engaged a canoe and six men for me; he gave me
-letters to all Swanzy's agents in the back-country; and finally, when I
-had said goodbye to the D.C. and his wife, he gave me luncheon and had
-me rolled down on a trolley by the little hand railway, if I may coin
-a word, that runs through the swamp and connects Akuse with its port
-Amedika on the Volta.
-
-This was a new mode of progression rather pleasant than otherwise, for
-as it was down-hill to the river it couldn't have been hard on the men
-who were pushing. I had come from the Commissioner's to the town on a
-cart, proudly sitting on top of my gear, and drawn by half a dozen Kroo
-boys; now my luggage went before me on another trolley, and my way was
-punctuated by the number of parcels that fell off. My clothes were in
-a tin uniform case supposed, mistakenly, I afterwards found, to be
-air-tight and watertight, and I did not want this to fall off and break
-open, because in it I had stowed all my money--twenty-five pounds all
-in threepenny bits is somewhat of a care, I find. It escaped, but my
-bedding went, making a nice cushion for the typewriter which followed
-it.
-
-The port Amedika, as may be seen from the picture, is very primitive,
-and though twice a week the little mail steamer comes up coaly and black
-as her own captain, on the occasion of my departure there were only
-canoes in the harbour.
-
-My canoe was one of the most ordinary structures, with a shelter in the
-middle under which I had my chair put up. My gear was stowed fore and
-aft, and six canoe-men took charge.
-
-[Illustration: 0309]
-
-Starting always seems to be a difficulty in Africa, and when I was weary
-of the hot sun and the glare from the water, and was wondering why we
-did not start, the canoe-men, true to their kind, found they had no
-chop, and they had to wait till one of their number went back and got
-it. But it was got at last and I was fairly afloat on the Volta.
-
-To be paddled up a river is perhaps a very slow mode of progression, but
-in no other way could I have seen the country so well; in no other way
-could I have grasped its vast wealth, its wonderful resources. It is
-something of an adventure to go up the Volta too, for as soon as we
-started its smooth, wide reaches were broken by belts of rock that made
-it seem well-nigh impassable. Again and again from the low seat in the
-canoe it looked as if a rocky barrier barred all further progress, but
-here and there the water rushed down the narrow chasm as in a mill-race.
-Wonderful it was to find that a canoe could be poled up those rocky
-stairways against the rushing water. The rapids before you reach Kpong
-are innumerable; it seems as if the going were one long struggle. But
-the river is wonderfully beautiful; it twists and turns, and first
-on the right hand and then on the left I could see a tall peak,
-verdure-clad to its very summit, Yogaga, the Long Woman. First the sun
-shone on it brilliantly, as if it would emphasise its great beauty, and
-then a tornado swept down, and the mist seemed to rise up and swallow
-it. The Senchi Rapids raise the river thirty-four feet in a furlong or
-two, and the water, white and foaming, boils over the brown rocks like
-the water churned up in the wake of a great ocean steamer. I could
-not believe we were going up there when we faced them, but the expert
-canoe-men, stripped to a loin cloth, with shout and song defying the
-river, poled and pulled and pushed the canoe up to another quiet reach,
-and when they had reached calm water flung themselves down and smoked
-and chattered and looked back over the way we had come. We seemed to go
-up in a series of spasms; either the men were working for dear life or
-they were idling so as to bring down upon them the wrath of Grant who,
-after that trip along the Coast, felt himself qualified to speak, and
-again and again I had to interfere and explain that if anybody was going
-to scold the men it must be me. But indeed they worked so hard they
-needed a spell.
-
-[Illustration: 0313]
-
-Many a time when the canoe was broadside on and the white water was
-boiling up all round her, I thought, “Well, this really looks very
-dangerous,” but nobody had told me it was, so I supposed it was only
-my ignorance, but I heard afterwards that I was right, it is dangerous.
-Many a bag of cotton has gone to the bottom here, and many a barrel of
-oil has been dashed to pieces against the rocks, and if many a white
-man's gear has not gone to the bottom too, it is only because white men
-on this river are few and far between. I had one great advantage, I
-did not realise the danger till we were right in it, and then it was
-pressing, it absorbed every thought till we were in smooth water again,
-with the men lying panting at the bottom of the canoe, so that I really
-had not time to be afraid till it was all over. Frankly, I don't think
-I could enter upon such a journey again so calmy, but I am glad I have
-gone once, for it was such a wonderful and enchanting river. Some day
-they dream the great waterway will be used to reach Tamale, a ten days'
-journey farther north, but money must be spent before that happy end
-is arrived at, though I fancy that if the river were in German hands
-something would be attempted at once, for the country is undoubtedly
-very rich.
-
-“Scratch the earth it laughs a harvest.” Cocoa and palm oil and rubber
-all come to the river or grow within a short distance of its banks, and
-all tropical fruits and native food-stuffs flourish like weeds. Beauty
-is perhaps hardly an asset in West Africa, but the Volta is a most
-beautiful river. The Gambia is interesting, the Congo grand, but the
-Volta is entrancingly lovely. I have heard men rave of the beauty of
-the Thames, and it certainly is a pleasant river, with its smooth, green
-lawns, its shady trees, and its picturesque houses; but to compare it
-to the Volta is to compare a pretty little birch-bark canoe to a
-magnificent sailing ship with all her snowy canvas set, heeling over
-to the breeze. Sometimes its great, wide, quiet reaches are like still,
-deep lakes, in whose clear surface is mirrored the calm, blue sky, the
-fleecy clouds, the verdure-clad banks, and the hills that are clothed in
-the densest green to their very peaks. Sometimes it is a raging torrent,
-fighting its way over the rocks, and beneath the vivid blue sky is the
-gorgeous vegetation of the Tropics, tangled, luxuriant, feathery palms,
-tall and shapely silk-cotton trees bound together with twining creeper
-and trailing vine in one impenetrable mass. A brown patch proclaims a
-village, and here are broad-leaved bananas, handsome mangoes, fragrant
-orange trees, lighter-coloured cocoa patches, and cassada that from the
-distance might be a patch of lucerne. Always there are hills, rising
-high, cutting the sky sharply, ever changing, ever reflected faithfully
-in the river at their feet. There is traffic, of course, men fishing
-from canoes, and canoes laden with barrels of oil or kernels, or cocoa
-going down the river, the boats returning with the gin and the
-cotton cloths for the factories run by the negro agents of the great
-trading-houses; and every three or four hours or so--distance is as
-yet counted by time in West Africa--are the stations of the preventive
-service.
-
-[Illustration: 0317]
-
-This preventive service is rather curious, because both banks of the
-river, in the latter part of its course, are owned by the English, and
-the service is between the two portions of the Colony. But east of
-the Volta, whither I was bound, the country is but little known, and
-apparently the powers that be do not feel themselves equal to cope with
-a very effective preventive service, so they have there the same duties,
-a 4 per cent, one that the Germans have in Togo land, while west of the
-Volta they have a 10 per cent. duty.
-
-I hope there is not much smuggling on the Volta, for with all apologies
-to the white preventive officers, I doubt the likelihood of the men
-doing much to stop it. The stations match the river. They have been
-picturesquely planned--the plans carefully carried out; the houses are
-well kept up, and round them are some of the few gardens, in English
-hands, on the Gold Coast that really look like gardens. Though I did not
-in the course of three days' travel come across him, I felt they marked
-the presence of some careful, capable white man. The credit is certainly
-not due to the negro preventive men. In the presence of their white
-officer they are smart-looking men; seen in his absence they relax their
-efforts and look as untidy and dirty as a railway porter after a hard
-day's struggle with a Bank Holiday crowd. After all one can hardly
-blame the negro for not exerting himself. Nature has given him all he
-absolutely requires; he has but to stretch out his hand and take it,
-using almost as little forethought and exertion as the great black
-cormorants or the little blue-and-white king-fishers that get their
-livelihood from the river.
-
-And I was afraid of those men. I may have wronged them for they were
-quite civil, but I was afraid. Again and again they made me remember, as
-the ordinary peasants never did, that I was a woman alone and very very
-helpless. Nothing would have induced me to stay two nights at one of
-those stations. These men were half-civilised. They had lost all awe of
-a white face, and, I felt, were inclined to be presuming. What could I
-have done if they had forgotten their thin veneer of civilisation, and
-gone back to pure savagery. Nothing--I know it--nothing. At Adjena I had
-to have my camp-bed put up on the verandah, because I found the house
-too stuffy, and the moonlit river was glorious to look upon, but I was
-anything but happy in my own mind; I wondered if I wanted help if my
-canoe-men, who were very decent, respectable savages, would come to my
-help. I wonder still. But the morning brought me a glorious view. The
-sun rose behind Chai Hill, and flung its shadow all across the river,
-and I attempted feebly to reproduce it in a photograph, and gladly and
-thankfully I went on my way up the river, and I vowed in my own mind
-that never if I could help it would I come up here again by myself. If
-any adventurous woman feels desirous of following in my footsteps, I
-have but one piece of advice to give her--“Don't.” I don't think I
-would do it again for all the money in the Bank of England. I may do
-him an injustice, but I do not trust the half-civilised black man. I got
-through, I think, because for a moment he was astonished. Next time he
-will not be taken by surprise, and it will not be safe.
-
-[Illustration: 0321]
-
-At Labolabo I left the river. Dearly I should have loved to have gone
-on, to have made my way up to the Northern Territories, but for one
-thing, my canoe-men were only engaged as far as Labolabo; for another,
-I had not brought enough photographic plates. I really think it was that
-last consideration that stopped me. What was the good of going without
-taking photographs? Curiously enough, the fact that I was afraid did not
-weigh much with me. I suppose we are all built alike, and at moments our
-mental side weights up our emotional side. Now, my mental side very much
-wanted to go up past the Afram plain. I should have had to stay in the
-preventive service houses, which grew farther and farther apart, and I
-was afraid of the preventive service men, afraid of them in the sordid
-way one fears the low-class ruffian of the great cities, but there was
-that in me that whispered that there was a doubt, and therefore it might
-be exceedingly foolish to check my search after knowledge for a fear
-that might only be a causeless fear. But about the photographic plates
-there was no doubt; I had not brought nearly enough with me, and
-therefore I landed very meekly at Labolabo.
-
-There was rather a desolate-looking factory, but it did not look
-inviting enough to induce me to go inside it, so I sat down under a tree
-on the high bank of the river and interviewed the black factor to whom
-Swanzy's agent had given me a letter. He was mightily surprised, but
-I was accustomed to being received with surprise now, and began to
-consider the making of a cup of tea. Then the factor brought another
-man along and introduced him to me as Swanzy's agent at Pekki Blengo,
-Mr Olympia. And once more I feel like apologising to all the African
-peoples for anything I may have said against them. Mr Olympia came
-from French Dahomey. He was extremely good-looking, and had polished,
-courteous manners such as one dreams of in the Spanish hidalgos of old.
-If you searched the wide world over I do not think you could wish to
-find a more charming man than Swanzy's black agent at Pekki Blengo. I
-know very little of him. I only met him casually as I met other black
-men, men outside the pale for me, a white woman, but I felt when I
-looked at him there might be possibilities in the African race; when
-I think of their enormous strength and their wonderful vigour, immense
-possibilities.
-
-I explained to Mr Olympia that I wanted to get to the rest-house at
-Anum, that I had arranged for my canoe-men to carry my kit there, and
-that Mr Rowe had told me that he, Mr Olympia, could get me carriers on
-to Ho. He said certainly, but he thought I ought at least to go up to
-the British Cotton-growing Experimental Farm, about ten minutes' walk
-away from the river. He felt that the white man in charge would be much
-hurt if I did not at least call and see him.
-
-A white man at Labolabo! How surprised I was. Of course I would go, and
-Mr Olympia apologising for the absence of hammock or cart, we set off to
-walk.
-
-Those African ten minutes! It took me a good forty minutes through the
-blazing heat of an African afternoon, and then I was met upon the steps
-of the bungalow by a perfectly amazed white man in his shirt sleeves,
-who hurriedly explained that when he had seen the luggage coming along
-in charge of the faithful Grant, who made the nearest approach to a
-slave-driver I have ever seen, he had asked him, “Who be your master?”
-
-“It be no massa,” said Grant, “it be missus.”
-
-“And then,” said my new friend, “I set him at the end of the avenue and
-told him he was to keep you off till I found a coat. But I couldn't find
-it. I don't know where the blamed thing's got to.”
-
-He went on to inquire where I had come from and how I had come. I told
-him, “Up the river.”
-
-“But,” he protested, “it requires a picked crew of ten preventive
-service men to come up the Volta.”
-
-I assured him, I was ready to take my oath about it, you could do it
-fairly easily with six ordinary, hired men, but he went on shaking his
-head and declared he couldn't imagine what Rowe was thinking of. He
-thought I had really embarked on the maddest journey ever woman dreamt
-of, and while getting me a cool drink, for which I blessed him, went on
-murmuring, “Rowe must have been mad.” I think his surprise brought home
-to me for the first time the fact that I was doing anything unusual.
-Before that it had seemed very natural to be going up the river, to
-be simply wanting to get on and see the great waterway and the country
-behind.
-
-I did not go on to Anum as I had intended. It was Easter Saturday, and
-my new friend suggested I should spend Easter with him. I demurred,
-and he said it would be a charity. He had no words to express his
-loneliness, and as for the canoe-men, who could not stay to carry my
-things to Anum, let them go. He would see about my gear being taken up
-there. And so I stayed, glad to see how a man managed by himself in the
-wilderness.
-
-The British Cotton-growing Experimental Farm at Labolabo is to all
-intents and purposes a failure. It was set there in the midst of
-gorgeously rich country to teach the native to grow cotton, and the
-native seeing that cocoa, with infinitively less exertion, pays him very
-much better, naturally firmly declines to do anything of the sort. So
-here in this beautiful spot lives utterly alone a solitary white man
-who, with four inefficient labourers, tries desperately to keep the
-primeval bush from swallowing up the farm and entirely effacing all
-the hard work that has been done there. This farm should be a valuable
-possession besides being a very beautiful one. The red-roofed bungalow
-is set in a bay of the high, green hills, which stretch out verdure-clad
-arms, threatening every moment to envelop it. The land slopes gently,
-and as I sat on the broad verandah, through the dense foliage of the
-trees I could catch glimpses of the silver Volta a mile and a half away,
-while beyond again the blue hills rose range after range till they were
-lost in the bluer distance. Four years ago this man who was entertaining
-me so hospitably had planted a mile-long avenue to lead up to his
-bungalow, and now the tall grape-fruit and shaddock in front of his
-verandah meet and have regularly to be cut away to keep the path clear.
-I am too ignorant to know what could be grown with profit, only I can
-see that the land is rich and fruitful, and should be, with the river
-so close, a most valuable possession. As it is, it is one of the most
-lonely places in the world. I sympathised deeply with the man living
-there alone. The loneliness grips. If I went to my room I could hear him
-tramping monotonously up and down the verandah. “Tramp, tramp, tramp,”
- and when I went out he smiled queerly.
-
-[Illustration: 0327]
-
-“I can't help doing it,” said he; “it's the lonely man's walk. And when
-I can't see those two lines,” he pointed to two boards in the verandah,
-“I know I'm drunk and I go to bed.”
-
-It was like the story of the man who kept a frog in his pocket and every
-time he had a drink he took it out and looked at it.
-
-“What the dickens do you do that for?” asked a companion.
-
-“Well, when I see two frogs,” said he, “I know I've had enough.”
-
-Now I don't believe my friend at Labolabo did exceed, judging by his
-looks, but if ever man might be excused it was he. He had for servants
-a very old cook and a slave-boy with a much-scarred face; the marks upon
-his face proclaimed his former status, but no man could understand the
-unintelligible jargon he spoke, so no man knew where he came from. It
-was probably north of German territory. At any rate, he flitted about
-the bungalow a most inadequate steward.
-
-And he laid the table in the stone house--or rather the shelter with two
-stone walls, a stone floor, and a broken-down thatch roof, where we had
-our meals. It was perhaps twenty yards from the bungalow, and on the
-garden side grew like a wall great bushes of light-green feathery
-justitia with its yellow, bell-like flowers, while on the other side a
-little grass-grown plain stretched away to the forest-clad hills behind.
-
-Oh, but it was lonely! and fear is a very catching thing.
-
-“There is nothing to be afraid of in Africa,” said my host, “till the
-moment there is something, and then you're done.”
-
-Whether he was right or not I do not know, but I realised as I had never
-done before why men get sick in the bush, worse, why they take to drink
-and why they go mad. I looked out from the verandah, and when I saw
-a black figure slip silently in among the trees I wondered what it
-portended. I looked behind me to see if one might not be coming from
-behind the kitchen. The fool-bird in the bush crying, “Hoo! hoo! hoo!”
- all on one note seemed but crying a suitable dirge. Fear hid on the
-verandah; I could hear him in the creak of a door, in the “pad, pad” of
-the slave-boy's feet; I could almost have sworn I saw him skulking under
-the mango tree where were kept the thermometers; and when on Easter
-Sunday a tornado swept down from the hills, blotting out the vivid
-green in one pall of grey mist, he was in the shrieking wind and in the
-shuddering rain.
-
-Never was I more impersonally sorry to leave a man alone, for if I saw
-my host again I doubt if he would recognise me, but it seemed wicked to
-leave a fellow white man alone in such a place. If there had been any
-real danger, of course I should only have been an embarrassment, but
-at least I was company of his own kind and I kept that haunting fear at
-bay.
-
-I stayed two days and then I felt go I must. I was also faced with my
-own carelessness and the casual manner in which I had dropped into the
-wilderness. Anum mountain was a steep climb of five miles, and beyond
-that again I had, as far as I could gather, several days' journey in the
-wilds before I could hope to reach rail-head in German Togo, and I
-had actually never remembered that I should want a hammock. The
-Cotton-growing Association didn't possess one, and, like Christian in
-the “Pilgrim's Progress,” I “cast about me” what I should do. I could
-not fancy myself walking in the blazing noonday sun. My host smiled. He
-did not think it was a matter of any great consequence because he felt
-sure I could not get through, but he came to my rescue all the same and
-sent up a couple of labourers to the Basel Mission at Anum to see what
-they could suggest. The labourers came back with a hammock--rather a
-dilapidated one--on their heads, and an invitation to luncheon next day.
-
-“It's as far as you'll go,” said my friend, “if nothing else stops you;
-you can't possibly get carriers. Remember, I'll put you up with pleasure
-on your way back.”
-
-But I was not going to face the Volta again by myself, though I did not
-tell him that. Those black men insulted me by making me fear them.
-
-It was a very hot morning when we started to climb up Anum mountain. The
-bush on either side was rather thick, and the road was steep and very
-bad going. It was shaded, luckily, most of the way, and there arose that
-damp, pleasant smell that comes from moist earth, the rich, sensuous,
-insidious scent of an orchid that I could not see, or the mouselike
-smell of the great fruitarian bats that in these daylight hours were
-hidden among the dense greenery of the roadside. It was a toilsome
-journey, and my new friend walked beside me, but at last we reached Anum
-town, a mud-built, native town, bare, hot, dirty, unkempt, and we passed
-beyond it to the grateful shade once more of the Basel Mission grounds.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV--INTO THE WILDS
-
-_Anum Mountain--The Basel Mission--A beautiful spot--An old Ashanti
-raid--A desolate rest-house--Alone and afraid; also hungry--A long
-night--Jakai--Pekki Blengo--The unspeakable Eveto Range--Underpaid
-carriers--A beautiful, a wealthy, and a neglected land--Tsito--The
-churches and the fetish--Difficulties of lodging in a cocoa-store--The
-lonely country between Tsito and the Border--Doubts of the
-hammock-boys--The awful road--Butterflies--The Border._
-
-Frankly, my sympathies are not as a rule with the missionaries,
-certainly not with African missionaries. I have not learned to
-understand spiritual misery, and of material misery there is none in
-Africa to be compared with the unutterable woe one meets at every turn
-in an English city. But one thing I admire in these Swiss and German
-teachers is the way they have improved the land they have taken
-possession of. Their women, too, make here their homes and bear their
-children. “A home,” I said as I stepped on to the wide verandah of the
-Mission Station at Anum; “a home,” as I went into the rooms decorated
-with texts in German and Twi; “a home,” as I sat down to the very
-excellent luncheon provided by the good lady whom most English women
-would have designated a little scornfully as a _haus-frau_. Most
-emphatically “a home” when I looked out over the beautiful gardens that
-were nicely planted with mangoes, bananas, palms, and all manner of
-pretty shrubs and bright-foliaged trees. It seems to me almost a pity to
-teach the little negro since he is so much nicer in his untutored state,
-but since they feel it must be done these Basel Mission people are going
-the very best way about it by beautifying their own surroundings.
-
-From their verandah over the scented frangipanni and fragrant orange
-trees you may see far far away the winding Volta like a silver thread
-at the bottom of the valley, and the great hills that control his
-course standing up on either side. It is an old station, for in the late
-sixties the Ashantis raided it, captured the missionary, Mr Ramseyer,
-his wife and child, and held them in captivity for several years. But
-times are changed now. The native, even the fierce Ashanti warrior, has
-learned that it is well for him that the white man should be here, and
-up in the rest-house on the other side of the mountain a white woman may
-stay alone in safety.
-
-Why do the powers that be overlook Anum mountain? The rest-house to
-which my kind friend from Labolabo escorted me after we had lunched
-at the Basel Mission was shabby and desolate with that desolation that
-comes where a white man has been and is no longer. No one has ever tried
-to make a garden, though the larger trees and shrubs have been cleared
-from about the house and in their stead weeds have sprung up, and the
-vigour of their growth shows the possibilities, while the beauty of
-the situation is not to be denied. Away to the north, where not even a
-native dwells, spreads out the wide extent of the Afram plain, a
-very paradise for the sportsman, for there are to be found numberless
-hartebeests, leopards, lions, and even the elephant himself. It lies
-hundreds, possibly thousands of feet below, and across it winds the
-narrow streak of the Volta, while to the north the hills stretch out as
-if they would keep the mighty river for England, barring its passage to
-the east and to German territory.
-
-And here my friend from Labolabo left me--left me, I think, with some
-misgivings.
-
-“Come back,” he said; “you know I'll be glad to see you. Mind you come
-back. I know you can't get through.”
-
-But I had my own opinion about that.
-
-“What about the carriers Mr Olympia is going to send me to-morrow
-morning?”
-
-And he laughed. “Those carriers! don't you wish you may get them? I know
-those carriers black men promise. Why, the missionary said you needn't
-expect them.”
-
-The Basel missionary had said I might get through if I was prepared to
-wait, and as I said good-bye I was prepared to wait.
-
-The rest-house was on top of a mountain in the clouds, far away from
-any sign of habitation. The rooms were large, empty, and desolate with a
-desolation there is no describing. There was a man in charge living in a
-little house some way off, the dispenser at the empty hospital which
-was close to the rest-house, and the Basel missionary spoke of him with
-scorn.
-
-“He was one of my boys,” he said; “such a fool I sent him away, and why
-the Government have him for dispenser here I do not know.”
-
-Neither do I, but I suspect he was in a place where he could do the very
-minimum of harm, for very few people come to Anum mountain. There is a
-Ju-ju upon it, and my first experience was that I could get no food.
-
-No sooner were we alone than Grant appeared before me mightily
-aggrieved.
-
-“This bush country no good, Ma. I no can get chop.”
-
-I hope I would have felt sorry for him in any case, but it was brought
-home to me by the fact that he could get no chop for me either.
-
-I had come to the end of my stores and there was not a chicken nor an
-egg nor bread nor fruit to be bought in the village down the hill. The
-villagers said they had none, or declined to sell, which came to the
-same thing. I dined frugally off tea and biscuits, and I presume Grant
-helped himself to the biscuits--I told him to--tea he hated--and then as
-the evening drew on I prepared to go to bed.
-
-Oh! but it was lonely, and fear fell upon me. A white mist came softly
-up, so that I could not see beyond the broad, empty verandahs. I knew
-the moon was shining by the white light, but I could not see her and
-I felt shut in and terrified. Where Grant went to I don't know, but he
-disappeared after providing my frugal evening meal, and I could hear
-weird sounds that came out of the mist, and none of the familiar chatter
-and laughter of the carriers to which I had grown accustomed. It was
-against all my principles to shut myself in, so I left doors and windows
-wide open and listened for the various awful things that might come out
-of the bush and up those verandah steps. What I feared I know not, but
-I feared, feared greatly; the fear that had come upon me at Labolabo
-worked his wicked will now that I was alone on Anum mountain, and the
-white mist aided and abetted. I could hear the drip, drip, as of water
-falling somewhere in the silence; I could hear the cry of a bird out in
-the bush, but it was the silence that made every rustle so fraught with
-meaning. It was no good telling myself there was nothing to fear, that
-the kindly missionaries would never have left me alone if there had
-been.
-
-I could only remember that on this mountain had raided those fierce
-Ashanti warriors, that terrible things had been done here, that terrible
-things might be done again, that if anything happened to me there was no
-possibility of help, that I was quite powerless. I wondered if a Savage,
-on these occasions one spells Savage with a very large “S,” did come on
-to the verandah, did come into my bedroom, what should I do. I felt that
-even a bush-cat would be terrifying, and having got so far I realised
-that a rabbit would probably send me into hysterics. At the thought
-of the rabbit my drooping spirits recovered themselves a little, but
-I spent a very unpleasant night, dozing and listening, till my own
-heart-beats drowned all other sounds. But I never thought of going back.
-I don't suppose I should have given up in any case, it is against
-family tradition, but if I had, there was the Volta behind me, and those
-preventive service men made it imperative to go on.
-
-But when morning dawned I felt a little better. True, I did not like the
-thought of tea and biscuits for breakfast, but I thought hopefully of
-the Basel Mission gardens. I was sure, if I had to stay here, those
-hospitable people would give me plenty of fruit, and probably a good
-deal more than that, so I was not quite as depressed as Grant when I
-dressed and stood on the verandah, looking across the mysterious mist
-that still shrouded the valley of the Volta.
-
-And before that mist had cleared away, up the steps of the rest-house
-came the Basel missionary, and at their foot crowded a gang of lightly
-clad, chattering men and women. My carriers! Mr Olympia had been as good
-as his word, the missionary kindly came to interpret, and I set out for
-Pekki Blengo, away in the hills to the east.
-
-It was all hill-country through which we passed; range after range
-of hills, rich in cocoa and palm oil, while along the track, that we
-English called a road, might be seen rubber trees scored with knives, so
-that the milky rubber can be collected. Very little of this rich country
-is under cultivation, the vegetation is dense and close, and the vivid
-green is brightened here and there by scarlet poinsettas and flamboyant
-trees, then at the beginning of the rains one mass of flame-coloured
-blossom. It was a tangle of greenery, like some great, gorgeous
-greenhouse, and the native, when he wants a clearing, burns off a small
-portion and plants cocoa or cassada, yams, bananas, or maize, with
-enough cotton here and there, between the lines of food-stuffs, to give
-him yarn for his immediate needs. When the farmer has used up this land,
-he abandons it to the umbrella trees and other tropical weeds, and with
-the wastefulness of the native takes up another piece of land, burning
-and destroying, quite careless of the value of the trees that go to feed
-the fire. Such reckless destruction is not allowed by the Germans, but
-a few miles to the east. There a native is encouraged to take up a farm,
-but he must improve it year by year. Our thrifty neighbours will have no
-such waste within their borders.
-
-In the course of the morning I arrived at Jakai, and the whole of the
-village turned out to interview me, and I in my turn took a photograph
-of as few as I could manage of the inhabitants under the principal tree.
-That was always the difficulty. When they grasped I was going to take
-a picture, and there was generally some much-travelled man ready to
-instruct the others, they all crowded together in one mass in front of
-the camera--if they did not object altogether, when they ran away--and
-I always had to wait, and perjure myself, and say the picture was taken
-long before it was done. But always they were kindly. If I grew afraid
-at night I always reminded myself of the uniform goodwill of the
-villages through which I passed; their evident desire that I should be
-pleased with my surroundings. And at Jakai Grant, with triumph, bought
-so many eggs that I trembled for my future meals. I foresaw a course of
-“fly” egg, hard-boiled egg, and egg and breadcrumbs, but after all that
-was better than tea and biscuits, and when I saw a pine-apple and a
-bunch of bananas I felt life was going to be endurable again.
-
-At Pekki Blengo, an untidy, disorderly village, where the streets
-are full of holes and hillocks, strewn with litter and scarred with
-waterways, Mr Olympia met me, and conducted me to an empty chiefs house,
-where I might put up for the night. It was a twostoried house of mud,
-with plenty of air, for there were great holes where the doors and
-windows would have been, and I slept peacefully once more with the hum
-of human life all around me again. But I can hardly admire Pekki Blengo.
-It is like all these villages of the English Eastern Province. The
-houses are of mud, the roofs of thatch, and fowls, ducks, pigs, goats,
-and little happy, naked children alike swarm. That is one comfort
-so different from travelling in the older lands--these villagers are
-apparently happy enough. They are kindly and courteous, too, for though
-a white woman was evidently an extraordinary sight equal in interest to
-a circus clown, or even an elephant, and they rushed from all quarters
-to see her, they never pushed or crowded, and they cuffed the children
-if they seemed likely to worry her.
-
-And beyond Pekki Blengo the road reached its worst. Mr Olympia warned
-me I should have to walk across the Eveto Range as no hammock-boys could
-possibly carry me, and I decided therefore that the walking had better
-be done very early in the morning, and arranged to start at half-past
-five, as soon as it was light.
-
-The traveller is always allowed the privilege of arranging in Africa. If
-he does not he will certainly not progress at all, but at the same time
-it is surprising how seldom his well-arranged plans come off. True to
-promise my hammock-boys and carriers turned up some time a little before
-six in the morning, and the carriers, swarming up the verandah, turned
-over the loads, made a great many remarks that I was incapable
-of understanding, and one and all departed. Then the hammock-boys
-apparently urged me to get into the hammock and start, as they were in a
-hurry to be off and earn the four shillings they were to have for taking
-me to Ho in German territory. I pointed out, whether they understood I
-did not know, that I could not stir without my gear, and I went off to
-interview Mr Olympia, who was sweetly slumbering in his house about a
-mile away. He, when he was aroused, said they thought I was not giving
-them enough; that they said they would not carry loads to Ho for one
-shilling and sixpence and two shillings a load. I said that that was the
-sum he had fixed. I was perfectly willing to give more; and he set out
-to interview the Chief, and see if he could get fresh carriers, but he
-was not very hopeful about getting any that day. I retired to my
-chiefs house, grew tired of making mental notes of the people and the
-surrounding country, and got out a pack of cards and solaced myself with
-one-handed bridge, which may be educational, but is not very exciting.
-My hammock-boys again pleaded to be taken on, but I was firm. It was
-useless moving without my gear; and finally when I was about giving
-up hope Mr Olympia returned. He had found eight men and women who
-were bound across the Eveto Range to get loads at Tsito. Sixpence, he
-explained, was the ordinary charge for a load to Tsito, but if I would
-rise to say ninepence for my heavier loads--he hesitated as if such an
-enormous expenditure might not commend itself to my purse. But naturally
-I assented gladly, and off went my loads at sixpence and ninepence
-a head. For a moment I rejoiced, and as usual began to purr over my
-excellent management. Not for long though. It was my turn now, and where
-were my hammock-boys? Inquiry elicited the awful fact that they had gone
-to their farms and could not be prevailed upon to start till next day;
-Mr Olympia was sure I could not hope to move before to-morrow morning.
-
-The situation was anything but comfortable. I had had nothing to eat
-since earliest dawn. I had now not even a chair to sit upon, nor a pack
-of cards to solace the dull hours. I dare not eat and, worse still,
-dare not drink. Then I sent word to Mr Olympia that if he would get me a
-couple of men to carry my hammock I would walk.
-
-I sat on the steps of that house and waited, I walked down the road and
-waited, and the tropical day grew hotter and hotter, the sun poured down
-pitilessly, and I was weary with thirst, but still I would not drink
-the native water. At last, oh triumph, instead of two, eight grinning
-hammock-boys turned up, and about 1.30 on a blazing tropical afternoon
-we started. Ten minutes later I was set down at the foot of the
-unspeakable Eveto Range, and my men gave me to understand by signs they
-could carry me no longer.
-
-I cannot think that the Eveto Range is perpendicular, but it seemed
-pretty nearly so. It was thickly wooded, as is all the country, and the
-road was the merest track between the walls of vegetation, a track that
-twisted and turned out of the way of the larger obstacles, the smaller
-ones we negotiated as best we might, holes, and roots, and rocks, and
-waterways, that made the distance doubly and trebly great. In five
-minutes I felt done; in ten it was brought home to me forcibly that I
-was an unutterable fool ever to attempt to travel in Africa. In addition
-to the roughness there was the steepness of the way to be taken into
-consideration, and the constant strain of going up, up compelled me
-again and again to lie down flat on my back to recover sufficient
-strength and breath to go on. What matter if the view was delightful--it
-was--when I had neither time, nor strength, nor energy to raise my eyes
-from the difficulties that beset my feet. But there was nothing to
-be done except to crawl painfully along with the tropical sun pouring
-pitilessly down, and not a breath of wind stirring.
-
-And I was dead with thirst. We came across a bunch of bananas, laid
-beside the track, and my men offered me one by way of refreshment, but
-I was too done to eat, and I thought what a fool I was not to carry a
-flask. When I had given up all hope of surviving, and really didn't much
-care what became of me so long as I died quickly, we reached the top
-where were native farms with cotton bushes now in full bloom planted
-among the food-stuffs, and I rested a little and gathered together my
-energies for the descent. And if the going up was bad, the going down
-was worse. There were great rocks and boulders that I would never
-have dared in England, and when I could spare time from my own woes I
-reflected that the usual charge for taking a load to Tsito was sixpence,
-and decided between my own gasps it was the most iniquitous piece of
-slave-driving I had ever heard of. Twenty pounds, I felt, would never
-pay me for carrying myself across this awful country, and there were
-those wretched carriers toiling along for a miserable sixpence, or at
-most ninepence. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. And the view was
-beautiful. Before us, in the evening light, lay the wealthy land where
-no white man goes, and the beautiful, verdure-clothed hills dappled with
-shadow and sunshine. The light was going, but, weary as I was, I had to
-stop and look, for never again might I see a more lovely view.
-
-And at last, just as the darkness was falling, we had crossed the range,
-and I thankfully and wearily tumbled into my hammock and was carried
-through the village of Tsito to the trader's store. It was a humble
-store, presided over by a black man who spoke English, and here they
-bought cotton and cocoa, and sold kerosene and trade gin, cotton cloths,
-and the coarsest kinds of tinned fish. I had a letter from Mr Olympia
-to this black man, and he offered me the hospitality of the cocoa-store;
-that is to say, a space was cleared among the cocoa and cotton and
-other impedimenta, my bed and table and bath set up. Grant brought me
-something to eat--hard-boiled eggs, biscuits, and bananas, with tea to
-drink. How thankful I was for that tea! I dined with an admiring crowd
-looking on, and I remembered my repentance on the mountain and sent for
-my carriers and paid them all double. I still think it was too little,
-but in excuse it must be remembered that I was alone and hardly dared
-risk a reputation for immense wealth.
-
-There are difficulties connected with lodging in a cocoa-store,
-especially when you are surrounded by a population who have never seen
-a white woman before. I needed a bath, but how to get it I hardly knew,
-with eyes all over the place, so at last I put out the lights and had it
-in the dark, and I went to bed in the dark, and as I was going to sleep
-I heard the audience dispersing, discussing the show at the top of their
-voices. As I did not understand what they said I did not know whether
-they had found it satisfactory. At least it was cheap, unless Swanzy's
-agent charged them.
-
-I was not afraid now, curiously enough, right away from civilisation,
-entirely at these peoples' mercy. I felt quite safe, and after my hard
-day I slept like the dead. It is mentally very soothing, I notice, to
-say to oneself, “Well done!” and our mental attitude has a great effect
-upon our physical health. At least I found one thing--I had pitied
-myself most unnecessarily. My exertions had done me no harm, and I never
-felt in better health than when I waked up next morning in Swanzy's
-cocoa-room and proceeded to get dressed in the dark. That was necessary,
-because I knew the sound of my stirring would bring an interested
-audience to see how the white woman did things. I really don't think the
-White City rivalled me as a provider of amusement for the people in the
-eastern district of the Volta and the western district of Togo in the
-end of April and beginning of May last.
-
-[Illustration: 0349]
-
-I had picked up a discarded map on the floor of the rest-house at Anum,
-and here I saw that many of the villages were marked with crosses to
-show that there was a church, but I saw no church here in Tsito, though
-I doubt not there was one. What I did see, not only in Tsito but at the
-entrance to every village I passed through, was a low, thatched shed,
-under which were the fetish images of the village. These were generally
-the rough-cut outline in clay or wood of a human figure seated.
-Sometimes the figure had a dirty rag round it, sometimes a small
-offering in front of it, and dearly should I have liked to have had a
-picture, but the people, even Swanzy's agent, objected, and I did not
-like to run counter to local prejudice. And yet Swanzy's agent is by
-way of being a Christian, but I dare say Christianity in these parts of
-Africa, like Christianity in old-time Britain or Gaul, conforms a good
-deal to pagan modes of thought.
-
-I met a picturesque gentleman starting out for his farm, and him I
-photographed after he had been assured that no harm could possibly
-happen to him, though he begged very anxiously that he might be allowed
-to go home and put on his best cloth. I think he is a very nice specimen
-of the African peasant as he is, but I am sure he would be much troubled
-could he know he was going into a book in his farm clothes.
-
-It was just beginning to get hot as I got back to the store after
-wandering round the village, and I found Grant and the carriers with
-all my gear had already started and were nowhere to be seen. It was,
-perhaps, just as well that it never occurred to Grant that I might be
-afraid to be left alone with strange black men. But to-day my strange
-black men were not forthcoming. I had expected them to come gaily
-because, to celebrate the crossing of the Eveto Range, while I had paid
-the carriers double, I had given the hammock-boys, who had had a very
-easy time, a couple of shillings to buy either gin or rum or palm wine,
-whichever they could get. It stamped me as a fool woman, and now, after
-a long delay, they came and stood round the hammock without offering to
-lift it from the ground.
-
-“There is trouble,” said the black agent sententiously.
-
-I had come out into the roadway, prepared to get into the hammock.
-
-“What is the matter?”
-
-“They say Ho be far. Four shillings no be enough money to tote hammock
-to Ho.”
-
-I was furious. They had made the agreement. I had given exactly what
-they asked, but where I had made the mistake was in doing more. Now what
-was to be done? I did not hesitate for a moment. I marched straight back
-to the cocoa-store.
-
-“Tell them,” I said, “they can go home and I will pay them nothing. I
-will walk.”
-
-Now if either the agent or those hammock-boys had given the thing a
-moment's thought, they must have seen this was sheer bluff on my part.
-It would have been a physical impossibility for me to walk, at least I
-think so; besides, I should have been entirely alone and I had not the
-faintest notion of the way. However, my performance of yesterday had
-apparently not impressed them as badly as it had impressed me, and just
-as I was meditating despairingly what on earth I should do, for I felt
-to give in would be fatal, into the store came those men bearing the
-hammock, and it did not need Swanzy's interpreter to tell me, “You get
-in, Mammy. They go quick.”
-
-We were out of the village at once and into the country. It was
-orchard-bush country, thick grass just growing tall with the beginning
-of the rains, and clumps of low-growing trees, with an occasional
-patch of miniature forest that grew so close it shut out the fierce sun
-overhead and gave a welcome and grateful shade. We passed the preventive
-service station on the Border--an untidy, thatched hut, presided over
-by a black man, who looked not unlike a dilapidated, a very dilapidated
-railway porter who had been in store for some time and got a little
-moth-eaten--and I concluded we were at the end of British territory; but
-not yet. The road was bad when we started, and it grew steadily worse
-till here it was very bad indeed. It became a mere track through the
-rough, grass country on either side, a track that admitted of but one
-man walking singly, and my boys dropped the hammock by way of intimating
-that they could carry me no farther. They could not, I could see that
-for myself, for not only was the track narrow, but it twisted and turned
-and doubled on itself, so that a corkscrew is straight in comparison
-with the road to Ho.
-
-And once more fear fell upon me. I was alone with men who could not
-understand a word that I said, who could not speak a word that I could
-understand, and since only in a Gilbertian sense could this track be
-called a road at all, that it could lead to anywhere seemed impossible.
-There were no farms, no villages, not a sign of habitation. A fool-bird
-called cynically, “Hoo! hoo! hoo!” and I hesitated whether I would
-rather these eight men walked in front of me or behind me. I decided
-they should walk in front, and they laughingly obeyed, and we walked
-on through the heat. Many-coloured butterflies, large as small birds,
-flitted across the track. Never have I seen such beautiful butterflies,
-blue as gentian, or as turquoise with a brilliancy the turquoise lacks;
-purple, red, yellow, and white were they, and it was only the utter
-hopelessness of keeping them prevented my making any attempt to catch
-them. Evidently I was not as afraid as I thought I was because I could
-reflect upon the desirability of those butterflies in a collection. But
-I was afraid. Occasionally people, men or women, in twos or threes, came
-along with loads upon their heads, and I tried to speak to them and
-ask them if this really was the road to Ho, but I could make no one
-understand and they passed on, turning to stare with wonder at the
-stranger. There were silk-cotton trees and shea-butter trees and many
-another unknown tree, but it seemed I had come right out into the wilds
-beyond human ken or occupation, and I had to assure myself again and
-again that these carriers were decent peasants, just earning a little,
-something beyond what came from cocoa or palm oil, with wives--probably
-many wives--and children, and the strange white woman was worth a good
-deal more to them safely delivered at her destination than in any way
-else. We came to a river, and by a merciful interposition of Providence
-it was dry, and we were able to ignore the slippery, moss-grown
-tree-trunk that did duty as bridge, and, scrambling down into its bed,
-cross easily to the other side, and there, in the midst of a shady clump
-of trees, was Grant with all the carriers.
-
-So it was the road to Ho after all, and, as usual, I had worried myself
-most unnecessarily. I sat down on my precious black box that contained
-all my money, and Grant got out a tumbler, squeezed the last orange
-I possessed into it, filled it up from the sparklet bottle, and I was
-ready to laugh at my fears and face the world once more.
-
-Again we went along the tortuous path, and then suddenly the Border!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV--CROSSING THE BORDER
-
-_German roads--German villages--The lovely valley of Ho--The kindly
-German welcome--German hospitality--An ideal woman colonist--Pink
-roses--The way it rains in Togo--An unfortunate cripple--Vain
-regrets--Sodden pillows--A German rest-house--A meal under
-difficulties--Travelling by night--The weirdness of it--The sounds of
-the night--The fireflies--A long long journey--Palime by night--More
-German hospitality--Rail-head._
-
-There was nothing to mark the border between the Gold Coast Colony
-and Togo. The country on the one side was as the country on the other,
-orchard-bush country with high grass and clumps of trees and shrubs;
-the lowering sky was the same, the fierce sun the same, only there was a
-road at last.
-
-The Germans make roads as the Romans made them, that their conquering
-legions might pass, and here, in this remote corner of the earth, where
-neither Englishman nor German comes, is a road, the like of which I
-did not find in the Gold Coast Colony. It is hard and smooth as a
-garden-path, it is broad enough for two carts or two hammocks to pass
-abreast, it runs straight as a die, on either side the bushes and grass
-are kept neatly trimmed away, and deep waterways are cut so that the
-heavy rainfall may not spoil the road.
-
-After a short time we came to a preventive station, neat and pretty as
-a station on the Volta, higher praise I cannot give it, and beyond that
-was a village; a village that was a precursor of all the villages that
-were to come. As a Briton I write it with the deepest regret, but the
-difference between an English village and a German village is as the
-difference between the model village of Edensor and the grimy town of
-Hanley in the Black Country. Here, in this first little village on the
-Togo side, all the ground between the houses was smoothed and swept,
-the houses themselves looked trim and neat, great, beautiful, spreading
-shade-trees of the order _ficus elasticus_ were planted at regular
-intervals in the main street, and underneath them were ranged logs, so
-that the people who lounge away the heat of the day in the shade may
-have seats. Even the goats and the sheep had a neater look, which
-perhaps is no wonder, for here is no filthy litter or offal among which
-they may lie.
-
-As I passed on my wonder increased. Here was exactly the same country,
-exactly the same natives, and all the difference between order and
-neatness and slatternly untidiness.
-
-[Illustration: 0357]
-
-I went on through this charming country till I found myself looking
-across a lovely valley at a house set high on a hill, the Commissioner's
-house at Ho at last. I went down into the valley, along a road that was
-bordered with flamboyant trees, all full of flame-coloured blossom, and
-then suddenly the curtain of my hammock was whisked up, and there stood
-before me a bearded white man, dressed in a white duck suit with a
-little red badge in his white helmet--the Commissioner, he told me in
-his halting English, at Ho.
-
-Now I had come into that country without a letter or a credential of any
-sort, a foreigner, speaking not one word of the language, and I wondered
-what sort of reception I should meet with. I tried to explain that I was
-looking for a rest-house, but he waved my remarks aside with a smile,
-made me understand that his wife was up in the house on the hill, and
-that if I would go there she could speak English, and would make me
-welcome. And so I went on through country, lovely as the country
-round Anum mountain, only in the British colony there is this great
-difference--there the land is exactly as Nature made it, bar the little
-spoiling that man has done, innocent of roads, and exceedingly difficult
-to traverse, while here in German territory everything is being carried
-out on some well-thought-out plan. Ho was a station straggling over hill
-and valley, with high hills clothed with greenery near at hand, high
-hills fading into the blue distance, and valleys that cried out to the
-Creator in glad thankfulness that such beauty should be theirs. The road
-up to the Commissioner's bungalow was steep, steep as the Eveto Range,
-but it had been graded so that it was easy of ascent as a path in Hyde
-Park. Every tree had been planted or left standing with thought, not
-only for its own beauty but for the view that lies beyond; flamboyant,
-mango, palm, frangipanni, that the natives call forget-me-not, all have
-a reason for their existence, all add to the beauty and charm of the
-scene. And when I got to the top of the hill I was at the prettiest of
-brown bungalows, and down the steps of the verandah came a rosy-cheeked,
-pretty girl, ready to welcome the stranger.
-
-“Of course you stay with us,” she said in the kindness of her hospitable
-heart, though there was certainly no of course about it.
-
-She took me in and gave me coffee, and as we sat eating cakes, home-made
-German cakes, I asked her, “You have not been out very long?” because of
-the bright colour of her cheeks.
-
-“Oh, not long,” she said, “only a year and two months. But it is so nice
-we are asking the Government to let us stay two years.”
-
-“And you do not find it dull?”
-
-“Oh no, I love it. The time goes so quick, so quick. There is so much to
-do.”
-
-And then her husband came and added his welcome to hers, and paid off
-my carriers in approved German official style, and they took me in to
-“evening bread,” and I found to my intense surprise they had wreathed
-my place at table with pink roses. Never have I had such a pretty
-compliment, or such a pretty welcome, and only the night before I had
-been dining off hard-boiled eggs and biscuits in Swanzy's cocoa-house at
-Tsito.
-
-Bed after dinner, and next morning my hostess took me round, and showed
-me everything there was to be seen, and told me how she passed her time.
-She looked after the house, she saw to the food, she went for rides on
-her bicycle, and she worked in the garden. It was the merry heart that
-went all the day, and I will venture to say that that pretty girl, with
-her bright, smiling face and her bright, charming manners, interested in
-this new country to which she had come, keen on her husband's work, was
-an asset to the nation to which she belonged; worth more to it than a
-dozen fine ladies who pride themselves on not being _haus-frau_. And as
-for the Commissioner, if I may judge, he was not only a strong man, but
-an artist. He had the advantage over an English Commissioner that his
-tour extended over eighteen months, instead of a year, and that he
-always came back to the same place. His bungalow looked a home; round
-it grew up a tropical garden, and behind he had planted a grove of
-broad-leaved teak trees, and already they were so tall the pathway
-through the grove was a leafy tunnel just flecked with golden sunshine,
-that told of the heat outside.
-
-Those Germans were good to me. I feel I can never be grateful enough for
-such a warm welcome, and always, for the sake of those two there in the
-outlands, shall I think kindly of the people of the Fatherland.
-
-They helped me to take photographs; the Commissioner mended my camera
-for me, and he got me more carriers, and told me that they were engaged
-to take me on thirty miles to Palime for the sum of two shillings a
-piece, that it could be done in one day if I chose, indeed it must be
-done in one day unless I stayed in the rest-house at Neve, and he warned
-me that I carried about with me a great sum of money, and asked if I
-were sure of my boy. I did not think it was likely Grant would rob me
-at this stage of the proceedings, but I suddenly realised with a little
-uncomfortable feeling what implicit trust I was putting in him; and then
-they gave fresh instructions for my comfort. It would rain, they said it
-always rained in Togo at this season in the afternoon; and I evidently
-did not realise how it rained, so they tied up my camera in American
-cloth and instructed me to put my Burberry on at the first drop of
-rain. Then with many good wishes we parted, and I set off on the road to
-Palime.
-
-The road was most excellent, and anyone who has travelled for miles
-along a track that is really little better than a hunter's trail can
-understand the delights of smooth and easy going. We passed through
-villages where the villagers all turned up to see the show, but I
-fancied, it may have been only fancy, that the people were not as
-lightheartedly happy as in English territory, and whenever we came to a
-stream my men stopped and begged in pantomime that they might be allowed
-to bathe. I should like to have bathed myself, so I assented cheerfully,
-and the result was that we did not get over the ground very quickly. One
-of them spoke a little, a very little Twi, the language of the Fantis
-and Ashantis, and Grant spoke a little, and that was my only means of
-communication, lost of course when he was not with me, but they were
-most excellent men and went on and on untiringly.
-
-Presently the clouds began to gather, a great relief, because the
-sun had been very hot, a few drops of rain fell, and I, remembering
-instructions, flew out of my hammock and put on my Burberry. By the time
-it was on the few drops were many drops, and by the time I was in my
-hammock again, the water was coming down as if it had been poured out of
-a bucket. Such sheets of rain fairly made me gasp. Now, my hammock was
-old. I had forgotten the need of a hammock when I started up the Volta,
-and finding this elderly one at Anum, marked “P.W.D.” Public Works
-Department, and there being nobody to say me nay, I commandeered it.
-Now, far be it from me to revile a friend who carried me over many a
-weary mile of road, but there is no disguising the fact, the poor old
-hammock was not in the first bloom of youth, and the canopy was about
-as much use against a rainstorm as so much mosquito-netting. The water
-simply poured through it. Now the canvas of which the hammock was made,
-of course, held water, so did the Burberry, the water trickled down my
-neck, and, worse still, carried as I was, with my feet slightly raised,
-trickled down my skirts, and the gallant Burberry held it like a bucket.
-When the water rose up to my waist, icy-cold water, I got out and
-walked.
-
-The sky was heavily overcast, and it was raining as if it had never had
-a chance to rain before, and never expected to have a chance to rain
-again, so I walked on, hatless, because I did not mind about my hair
-getting wet. I thought to myself, “when the sun comes out, it will dry
-me,” and I looked at the string of dejected-looking carriers tailing out
-behind with all their loads covered with banana leaves. And I walked,
-and I walked, and I walked, and there seemed no prospect of the rain
-stopping; apparently it proposed to go on to doomsday, or at least the
-end of the rainy season. An hour passed, two hours, three, my pillows
-were simply sodden masses, my hammock was a wisp of wet canvas, and I
-was weary to death; then a village came into view, a little neat German
-village, and the people came out to look at me with interest, though
-they had certainly seen a white woman before. I always think of that
-village with regret. A man passed along through the mud, working his way
-in a sitting posture, and having on his hands a sort of wooden clog.
-So very very seldom have I seen misery in Africa that I was struck as I
-used to be struck when first I came to England, and I put my hand in my
-pocket for my purse, but all my money with the exception of threepence
-was in my box, and that threepence I bestowed upon him. Now there
-remains with me the regret that I did not give him more, for never have
-I seen such delight on any man's face. He held it out, he called all
-his friends to look, he bowed obeisance before me again and again. I was
-truly ashamed of so much gratitude for so small a gift, and while I
-was debating how I could get at my box to make it a little more,
-he clattered away, as happy apparently as if someone had left him a
-fortune. But I always think of it sadly. Why didn't I manage to give him
-two shillings. It would have meant nothing to me, and so much to him.
-
-But now I was very tired, and when the rest-house was pointed out to
-me, I hailed it with delight. I have seen many weird rest-houses on my
-travels, but that was the most primitive of them all. A mud floor was
-raised a little above the surrounding ground, and over it was a deep
-thatch, a couple of tiny windowless rooms were made with mud walls, and
-just outside them was a table, made by the simple process of sticking
-upright stakes into the ground and laying rough boards across them; two
-chairs alongside the table were also fixtures, but I sat down wearily,
-and Grant promptly produced a pack of cards, and went away to make tea.
-
-Bridge was not a success; I was so wet and cold, but the tea came
-quickly along with a boiled egg and biscuits and mangoes, for the
-Germans it appears, after their thorough fashion, always insist that
-wood and water shall be ready in their rest-houses. I was sorry for the
-carriers, wet and shivering, and I was sorrier for my own servant, for
-the rain was still coming down pitilessly. I suggested he should have
-some tea to warm him, but he did not like tea, and the other egg he
-also rejected, quite rightly I decided when I tried to partake of the
-specimen he brought for me. But the tea was most refreshing, and I was
-prepared to try and understand what the carriers wanted. Briefly, they
-wanted to stop here. Though I could not understand their tongue, I could
-understand that.
-
-“They say Palime be far, Ma,” said Grant.
-
-Yes, I reckoned Palime must be about fifteen miles, but I looked at the
-dismal house and decided it was an impossible place to stay. I would
-rather walk that fifteen miles. I looked at my bedding roll, and decided
-it must be wet through and through, and then I got into that dripping
-and uninviting hammock, among the sodden pillows, and gave the order to
-go on. I was wet through, and I thought I could hold out if we got to
-Palime as quickly as possible, but I knew we could not possibly do it
-under five hours, probably longer. However, it was not as hard on me as
-on the men who had to walk with loads on their heads. Of course I was
-foolish. I ought either to have changed in one of those dismal-looking
-little mud rooms, or to have filled my hot-water bottle--I always
-carried one to be ready for the chill I never got--with hot water
-and wrapped myself up in a rug; but I foolishly forgot all these
-precautions, and my remembrance of that tramp to Palime is of a struggle
-against bitter cold and wet and weariness. It was weird, too, passing
-along the bush in the dark. Grant and the carriers dropped behind, the
-rain stopped, and the hammock-boys lighted a smoky lantern which gleamed
-on the wet road ahead, and was reflected in the pools of water that lay
-there, and made my two front boys throw gigantic shadows on the bush as
-they passed along. Strange sounds, too, came out of the bush; sometimes
-a leopard cried, sometimes one of the great fruitarian bats bewailed
-itself like a woman in pain, there was the splash, splash of the men's
-feet in the roadway, the deep croak of the African bull-frog, there
-was the running of water, a drip, drip from the trees and bushes by the
-roadside, and always other sounds, unexplained, perhaps unexplainable,
-that one hears in the night. Sometimes tom-toms were beating, sometimes
-we passed through a village and a few lights appeared, and my men
-shouted greetings I suppose, but they might have been maledictions.
-It is an experience I shall never forget, that of being carried along,
-practically helpless, and hearing my men, whom I could not understand,
-exchange shouts that I could not understand with people that I could not
-see. It was hot I dare say, but I was wet to the skin and bitter cold,
-and I know the night after the rain was beautiful, but I was too tired
-and too uncomfortable to appreciate it. Then the fireflies came out,
-like glowing sparks, and again and again I thought we were approaching
-the lights of a town only to look again and see they were fireflies.
-
-Such a long journey it was. It seemed years since I had left Ho that
-morning, æons since I had unhappily struggled across the Eveto Range,
-but I remembered with satisfaction I _had_ crossed the Eveto Range,
-and so I concluded in time I should reach Palime, but it seemed a long
-night, and I was very cold.
-
-At last, though it was wrapped in darkness, I saw we had entered a town;
-we passed up a wide roadway, and finally got into a yard, and my men
-began banging on a doorway, and saying over and over again, “Swanzy's.”
-
-The German Commissioner had suggested I should go to Swanzy's; and was
-it possible we had really arrived? It seemed we had.
-
-I can never get over the feeling of shyness when I go up to a total
-stranger's house and practically demand hospitality. True, I had in my
-pocket a telegram from Mr Percy Shaw, one of Swanzy's directors, asking
-his agents to give me that hospitality, but still I felt dreadfully shy
-as I waited there in the yard for some sign of life from out of the dark
-building. It came at last, and in English too.
-
-“Who is dere?” said a voice, and my heart sank. I thought it must be a
-negro, since I knew the agent was a German, and thought he would be sure
-to hail in his own tongue. Somehow I felt I could not have stood a negro
-that night. Prejudices are very strong when one is tired.
-
-But I was wrong. The agent was a German, and down long flights of stairs
-he came in his dressing-gown, welcoming me, and presently was doing all
-he could for my comfort. He roused out an unwilling cook, he got cocoa
-and wine, South-Australian wine to my surprise, and hot cakes, and
-bread, and fruit, and then when I was refreshed, my baggage not yet
-having come in, he solemnly conducted me to my bedroom, and presented me
-with a couple of blankets and a very Brodbignag pair of slippers. I was
-far more tired than when I had'crossed the Eveto Range, and I undressed,
-got into bed, wrapped myself up in those warm blankets, and slept the
-sleep of the woman who knows she has arrived at rail-head, and that her
-difficult travelling is over.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI--ONE OF THE CURSES OF THE DARK CONTINENT
-
-_The neat little town of Palime--The market--The breakfast--A luxury
-for the well-to-do--Mount Klutow--The German Sleeping Sickness Camp--The
-German's consideration for the hammock-boys--Misahohe, a beautiful road,
-well-shaded--A kindly welcome--The little boys that were cured--Dr
-von Raven, a devotee to science--The town of the sleeping sickness
-patients--“Last year strong man, this year finish”--Extreme poverty and
-self-denial--A ghastly, horrible, lingering and insidious disease--Dr
-von Raven's message to the English people._
-
-Palime is the neatest of little towns, set at the foot of some softly
-rounded hills. Not hills clothed with dense bush such as I had come
-across farther west, but hills covered with grass, emerald in the
-brilliant sunshine, with just here and there a tree to give it a
-park-like appearance. And the town, it is hardly necessary to say, was
-spotlessly neat and tidy. All the streets were swept and garnished, and
-all the fences were whole, for if a German puts up a picket fence, he
-intends it for a permanency, and not for a fuel supply for the nearest
-huts. That the streets were neat was perhaps a little surprising, for
-every morning, beginning at dawn, in those streets there was held a
-market in which all manner of goods, native and European, were exposed
-for sale, spread out on the ground or on stalls. I looked with interest
-to see if I could notice any difference between the native under English
-and under German rule in the markets, and I came to the conclusion that
-there was none whatever. Here, at rail-head, both native and European
-goods were bought and sold, and here too the people took their alfresco
-meals. The native of West Africa usually starts the morning with a
-little porridge, made of cassada, which is really the same root from
-which comes our tapioca, but his tapioca is so thin you can drink it,
-and it looks and smells rather like water starch. It was being made and
-served out “all hot” at a copper a gourd, the customer providing his own
-gourd, and the porridge being in a goodsized earthen pot fixed on three
-stones over a little fire of sticks, or else the fire was built inside
-another pot out of which one side and the top had been knocked. Porridge
-of course is not very staying, so a little later on good ladies make
-their appearance who fry maize-meal balls in palm oil, and sell them for
-two a “copper,” the local name for a _pfennig_, which is not copper at
-all, but nickel. Very appetising indeed look these balls. The little
-flat earthenware pan on the fire is full of boiling palm oil, and the
-seller mixes very carefully the maize meal, water, a little salt, and
-some native pepper, till it is smooth like batter, such as a cook would
-make a pancake of, then it is dropped into the boiling oil, and the
-result, in a minute or so, is a round, brown ball, which looks and
-smells delicious. Sometimes trade is brisk, and they are bought straight
-out of the pan, but when it slacks they are taken out and heaped up on a
-calabash. I conclude that it is only the aristocracy who indulge in such
-luxuries, for I am told that the average wage of a labourer in Palime
-here is ninepence a day, but judging by what I saw, there must have been
-a good many of the aristocracy in Palime. After all, the woman from the
-time she is a tiny child is always self-supporting, so in a community
-where every man and woman is self-supporting, I conclude that many
-luxuries are attainable that would not be possible when one man has to
-provide for many.
-
-[Illustration: 0369]
-
-The butchers' shops presided over as they are on the Gold Coast by
-Hausas are not inviting, and tend to induce strong vegetarian views
-in anyone who looks upon them, and the amount of very highly smelling
-stink-fish makes the vegetarian regime very narrow. But there are other
-things beside food-stuffs for sale; from every railing flutter gay
-cloths from Manchester, or its rival on the Coast, Keta, and there were
-several women selling very nice earthenware pots, that attracted me very
-much. They were the commonest household utensils of the native woman;
-she uses the smaller ones as plates and dishes, and the larger ones for
-water, for washing, or for storage. The big ones were terribly expensive
-and cost a whole sixpence, while a penny brought me a big store of small
-ones. I thought how very quaint and pretty my balcony at home would look
-with plants growing in these pots from such a far corner of the earth,
-and so I bought largely, even though I knew I should have to engage a
-couple of extra carriers for them, and my host applauded my taste.
-
-That young German was very kindly. I showed him my telegram, but he
-laughed at it, and gave me to understand that of course I was welcome
-anyhow, though again I can certainly see no of course about it. Why
-should he, in the kindness of his heart, put himself out for me, a total
-stranger, who did not even belong to his nation? Still he did.
-
-I was bent on going on to Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness
-Camp, and he said he had never seen it, though it was only a short
-distance away, so he would get carriers and come with me. Accordingly
-we got carriers, paying them threepence extra because it was Sunday, and
-went up to Mount Klutow. They were very good carriers, but since I have
-heard so much about the German's inconsiderateness to the native, I must
-put it on record that when we came to a steep part of the road, and it
-was very steep, though a most excellent road, that German not only got
-out and walked himself, but expected me to do the same. I did of course,
-but many and many a time have I made my men carry me over far worse
-places, and many an Englishman have I seen doing likewise.
-
-Again I must put it on record that these German roads are most
-excellent. They are smooth and wide, well-rolled and hard, and they
-are shady, a great boon in such a climate. Every native tree that
-is suitable has been allowed to stand, and others have been planted,
-shapely, dark-green mangoes and broad-leaved teak, and since all
-undergrowth has been cleared away, the road seems winding through a
-beautiful park, while there is absolutely no mosquito. During all my
-stay in German territory I never slept under a mosquito curtain, and I
-never saw that abomination, a mosquito-proof room. The Germans evidently
-think it is easier to do away with the mosquito.
-
-Misahohe is a little Government station, set on the side of the mountain
-up which we were climbing. It looks from a distance something like a
-Swiss chalet, and the view from there is as magnificent as that from
-Anum mountain itself, only here there are white men connected, I think,
-with the German medical station to see and appreciate its beauties.
-On and on went the beautiful road; but even the Germans have not yet
-succeeded in getting rid of the tsetse fly, and so though the roads
-are good, there are as yet no horses. We met great carts of trade goods
-going to Kpando, fifteen miles away, and they were drawn and pushed
-their slow, slow journey by panting, struggling Kroo boys. Strongly as I
-should object to carrying a load on my head, I really think it would
-be worse to turn the wheels of a laden cart, spoke by spoke, while you
-slowly worked it up-hill.
-
-At Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness Camp, there is no timber,
-and the first impression is of barrenness. We went up and up, and I,
-who had not yet recovered from my long day's journey to Palime, was
-exceedingly thankful when my escort allowed me to lie in my hammock till
-we arrived at a plateau surrounded by low hills. It was really the top
-of the mountain. There was a poor-looking European bungalow, a very
-German wooden kiosk on the other side of the road, and a winding road,
-with on either side of it little brown native huts built of clay, and
-thatched. It is just a poor-looking native village, with the huts built
-rather farther apart than the native seems to like his huts when he can
-choose, and none of the usual shelter trees which he likes about his
-village. After the magnificent tropical scenery we had just passed
-through it looked dreary in the extreme, but the young man who came
-out of the bungalow and made us most kindly welcome, Dr von Raven, the
-doctor in charge, explained that this barrenness was the very reason of
-its existence. They wanted a place that the cool winds swept, and they
-wanted a place that gave no harbour to the _glossina pal palis_, the
-tsetse fly that conveys the disease. Mount Klutow was ideal.
-
-I had hesitated a little about visiting a doctor and asking him for
-information. I had no claim, no letters of introduction, and I should
-not have been surprised if he had paid no attention to me, but, on the
-contrary, Dr von Raven was kindness itself. He took us to the little
-kiosk and sent for wine and cakes and beer, so that we might be
-refreshed after our hot journey, though it was hardly hot here. The good
-things were brought by two small boys, and the doctor put his hand first
-on one shoulder and then on the other, and turned the little laughing
-black faces for me to see.
-
-“Sleeping sickness,” said he. “Cured,” and he gave them a friendly cuff
-and let them go. He knew very little English, and I knew no German, and
-Mr Fesen's, even though he was agent for an English firm, was of
-the scantiest; so that it was a process of difficulty to collect
-information, and it was only done by the infinite kindness and
-patience of the two Germans. Dr von Raven produced papers and showed me
-statistics, and so by degrees I learned all there is to be known, and
-then he took me round and showed me the patients.
-
-Many men in Africa count themselves exiles, but never saw I more clearly
-the attributes of exile than in Dr von Raven. Comforts he had none, and
-his house was bare almost to poverty. Here he had lived for two and a
-half years without going home, and here he intended to live till some
-experiments he had in hand were complete. A devotee to science truly,
-but a cheerful, intensely interested one, with nothing of the martyr
-about him. Very few white people he must have seen, and he said himself
-he had only been down to the nearest town of Palime three times in two
-years, but he looked far better in health than many a man I have seen
-who has been on the Coast only as many months.
-
-[Illustration: 0375]
-
-From the doctor's house there curves a road about a kilometre in length,
-and off this are the houses of the sleeping sickness patients. Two
-and two they are built, facing each other, two rooms in each house and
-plenty of space between. They are built of mud, with holes for doors and
-windows, and the roofs are of grass--native huts of the most primitive
-description. Each patient has a room, and each is allowed one relative
-to attend him. Thus a husband may have a wife, a mother her daughter,
-and between them they have an allowance of sevenpence a day for food,
-ample in a country where the usual wage for a day labourer is ninepence.
-There are one hundred and fifty-five patients in all, and besides them
-there are a few soldiers for dignity, because the neighbouring chiefs
-would think very lightly of a man who had not evidences of power behind
-him, and so whenever the doctor passes they come tumbling out of the
-guard-room to salute him. There are also a certain number of labourers,
-because though many of the sick are quite capable of waiting on
-themselves, it would never do for them to go beyond the confines of the
-camp, and possibly, or probably, infect the flies that abound just where
-wood and water are to be had.
-
-Of course there is a market where the women meet and chat and buy their
-provisions; there are cookhouses and all the attributes of a rather
-poor native village, but a village where the people are among the
-surroundings to which they have been accustomed all their lives and in
-which they are more thoroughly at home than in a hospital. Part of
-the bareness may be attributed to economy, but the effect is greatly
-heightened by the absence of all vegetation. Anything that might afford
-shelter for the flies or shut out the strong, health-giving breezes
-that blow right across the plateau is strictly forbidden. And here were
-people in all stages of the disease--those who had just come in, who
-to the ordinary eye appeared to have nothing wrong with them, great,
-strong, healthy-looking men, men of thews and sinews who had been
-completely cured, and those who were past all help and were lying
-waiting for death.
-
-“You would like to see them?” asked the doctor.
-
-I said I would, and I would like to take a photograph or two if I might.
-My stock of plates was getting woefully scarce.
-
-“Yes,” he said, and we went down the roadway.
-
-A man was borne out of one of the huts and laid on the ground in the
-brilliant sunshine. He was wasted to skin and bone, his eyes were sunken
-and half-open, showing the whites, his skeleton limbs lay helpless,
-and his head fell forward like a baby's. The doctor pointed to him
-pitifully.
-
-“Last year,” he said, “strong man like this,” indicating the men who
-bore him; “this year--finish.”
-
-“He will die?”
-
-“Oh, he will die--soon.”
-
-[Illustration: 0379]
-
-And the great brawny savages who carried the stretcher, stark but for
-a loin cloth and a necklace, with their hair cut into cock's combs, had
-come there with sleeping sickness and were cured. They brought them
-out of all the huts to show the visitor--women in the last stages after
-epilepsy had set in, with weary eyes, worn faces, and contracted limbs,
-happy little children with swollen glands, a woman with atoxyl blindness
-who was cured, a man with atoxyl blindness who, in spite of all, will
-die. They were there in all stages of the disease, in all stages of
-recovery. Some looked as if there was nothing the matter with them, but
-the enlarged glands in the neck could always be felt. The doctor did not
-seem very hopeful. “We could cure it,” he said; “it is quite curable if
-we could only get the cases early enough. Not 2 per cent, of the flies
-are infected, and of course every man who is bitten by an infected fly
-does not necessarily contract the disease.”
-
-It comes on very insidiously. Three weeks it takes to develop, and
-then the patient has a little fever every evening. In the morning
-his temperature is down again, only to rise once more in the evening.
-Sometimes he will have a day without a rise, sometimes three or four,
-but you would find, were you to look, the parasites in the blood. After
-three or four months the glands of the neck begin to swell, and this is
-the time when the natives recognise the danger and excise the glands.
-But swollen glands are not always caused by sleeping sickness, and, in
-that case, if the wounds heal properly, the patient recovers; but if
-the parasites are in the blood then such rough surgery only causes
-unnecessary suffering without in any way retarding the progress of the
-disease. Slowly it progresses, very slowly. Sometimes it takes three or
-four months before nervous symptoms come on, sometimes it may be twelve
-months, and after that the case is hopeless. Not all the physicians in
-the world in the present state of medical knowledge could cure it.
-In Europeans--and something like sixty Europeans are known to have
-contracted the disease--very often immediately after the bite of the
-fly, symptoms have been noticed on the skin, red swellings, but in the
-black man apparently the skin is not affected.
-
-The treatment is of the simplest, but the doctor only arrived at it
-after careful experiment. After having ascertained by examination of the
-blood that the patient has sleeping sickness he weighs the patient
-and gives him five centigrams per kilogram of his own weight of
-arsenophenylycin. This is divided into two portions and given on two
-consecutive days, and the treatment is finished. Of course the patient
-is carefully watched and his blood tested, and if at the end of ten days
-the parasites are still found, the dose is repeated. Sometimes it is
-found that the toxin has no effect, and then the doctor resorts to
-atoxyl, which he administers the same way every two days, with ten
-days between the doses. This has one grave drawback, for sometimes
-in conjunction with sleeping sickness it causes blindness. Out of
-eighty-five cases that have taken atoxyl since 1908 five have gone
-blind. I saw there one young man cured and stone-blind, and one woman
-also cured and but just able to see men “as trees walking.” Apparently
-there was nothing wrong with their eyes, but the blank look of the blind
-told that they could not see.
-
-At first this camp here up among the hills was looked upon with
-suspicion by the natives, and they resisted all efforts to bring them
-to it. They feared, as they have always feared, all German thoroughgoing
-methods. But gradually, as is only natural, a good thing makes its
-own reputation, and the natives who were before so fearful come long
-distances to seek help where they know only help can be found.
-
-[Illustration: 0383]
-
-After we had walked all round the camp and got well soaked with the
-ordinary Togo afternoon shower, of which none of us took any notice, we
-went back to the kiosk for more refreshment, and here we found waiting
-us one of the Roman Catholic Fathers from Palime. He was a fair-bearded
-man in a white helmet and a long, white-cotton _soutane_, which somehow,
-even in this country of few clothes, gave the appear-ence of extreme
-poverty and self-denial. He had come up on a bicycle and had a great
-deal to say about the sleeping sickness. A day or two before he had been
-travelling two days west of Palime and he was asked by a native if he
-could speak English, and, when he assented, was taken to see a sick man.
-The man was a stranger to the people round and could only make himself
-understood in pigeon English. He told the Father he lived six days away,
-in British territory, and as he talked he perpetually took snuff. “Why,”
- asked the Father, “do you take snuff when you talk to me?” Because,
-the man explained, he had the sickness, and unless he took the strong,
-pungent snuff into his nostrils he could not talk, his head would fall
-forward, and he would become drowsy at once. This, he went on to say,
-was his reason for being here, so far from his home. He had heard there
-was a doctor here who could cure the sickness, and he was journeying to
-him as fast as he could. It is sad to think after such faith that he had
-probably left it too late.
-
-“It is very difficult, indeed,” said the doctor, “to be sure of a cure.”
- The patient is discharged as cured and bound over to come back every
-six months for examination, and if each time his blood is examined it is
-free from parasites, all is well. He is certainly cured. But he has gone
-back to his home in an infected district, and if after six months or
-twelve months the parasite is again found, who is to say whether he has
-been re-infected or whether there has been a recrudescence of the old
-disorder? Occasionally, says the doctor, it is impossible to find the
-parasite in the blood, while the patient undoubtedly dies of sleeping
-sickness; the parasite is in the brain.
-
-Since 1908 there have been four hundred cases through the doctor's
-hands. Of these 19 per cent, have died of sleeping sickness, 67 per
-cent, have been sent away as cured, and about 3 per cent, have died
-of other causes. Only ten of those sent away as cured have failed to
-present themselves for re-examination, and in this land where every
-journey must be made on foot, and food probably carried for the journey,
-it speaks very well, I think, for both doctor and patients that so many
-have come back to him. He is far kinder, probably, than the natives
-would be to each other--too kind for his own convenience, for the
-natives fear his laboratory, and will not come there at night, because
-when a patient is dying and past all other help he has him brought there
-to die. “Why?” I asked. “I may be able to help a little,” he said.
-“But how kind!” He shrugged his shoulders with a little smile. “It is
-nothing, it is doctor,” and he waved the thought aside as if I were
-making too much of it.
-
-The disease comes, so says Dr von Raven, from west to east, and
-was first noticed in the Gambia in 1901. As long ago as 1802 a Dr
-Winterbottom described the sleeping sickness, and in 1850 a slavetrader
-noticed the swelling of the glands and refused to take slaves so
-afflicted. Undoubtedly cases of sleeping sickness must have been
-imported to the West Indies or America, but owing to the absence of the
-_glossina palpalis_ to act as host the disease did not spread. That it
-is a ghastly, horrible, lingering, and insidious disease, that every
-man who has it where the _glossina palpalis_ abounds is a danger to the
-community among whom he dwells, no one can doubt. They say that after a
-certain time the natives of a district may acquire immunity, but as this
-immunity comes only after severe suffering, it is perhaps better to stop
-the spread of the disease. The Germans have no hesitation in restricting
-the movements of the native if he is likely to become a public danger,
-but the British Government is very loath to interfere with a man's
-rights, even though it be the right to spread disease and death. Dr von
-Raven and the English Dr Horne met in conference a few months ago with
-the object of urging upon their respective Governments the absolute
-necessity for allowing no man to cross the Volta unless he have a
-certificate from a medical man that he is free from sleeping sickness.
-They contend, probably rightly, that a little trouble now would ensure
-the non-spread of the disease and assist materially in stamping it out.
-The Volta is a natural barrier; there are only two or three well-known
-crossing places where the people pass to and fro; and here they think a
-man might well be called upon to present his certificate. Against this
-is urged the undoubted fact that large numbers of the people are at
-no time affected, and, therefore, it would be going to a great deal of
-trouble and expense to effect a small thing. But is it a small thing?
-
-“You write,” said the doctor as he bid me farewell; “you write?”
-
-I said I did a little.
-
-“Then tell the English people,” said he, “how necessary it is to stamp
-out this disease while it is yet small.”
-
-And so to the best of my ability I give his message, the message of a
-man who is denying himself all things that go to make life pleasant, for
-the sake of curing this disease, and if that sacrifice is worth while,
-and he says it is well worth while, then I think it should be well worth
-the while of us people, who are responsible for these dark children
-we govern, to put upon them, even at cost to themselves and us, such
-restrictions as may help to save in the future even 2 per cent, of the
-population from a ghastly and lingering death.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII--GERMAN VERSUS ENGLISH METHODS
-
-_Lome, the capital of Togo--A bad situation but the best laid-out town
-on the Coast--Avenues of trees--Promising gardens--The simple plan
-by which the Germans ensure the making of the roads--The prisoner who
-feared being “leff”--The disappointed lifer--The A.D.C.'s kindness--The
-very desirable prison garb--The energetic Englishman--How to make a
-road--Building a reputation._
-
-People who sigh, “I am such a bad traveller,” as if it were something
-to be proud of, and complain of the hardships of a railway journey,
-should come upon the railway after they have had several days in a
-canoe, some hard walking, and some days' hammock journeying, and then
-they would view it in quite a different light. I felt it was the height
-of luxury when I stepped into a first-class railway carriage on the
-little narrow gauge railway, that goes from Palime to Lome, the capital
-of Togo.
-
-My host had insisted on telegraphing to Swanzy's there.
-
-“They meet you. More comfortable.”
-
-Undoubtedly it would be more comfortable, but I wondered what I had done
-that I should merit so much consideration for my comfort from men who
-were not only total strangers, but belonged to a nation that has not the
-reputation for putting itself out for women. I can only say that no one
-has been kinder to me than those Germans of Togo, and for their sakes
-I have a very soft corner in my heart for all their nation, and when
-we English do not like them I can only think it is because of some
-misunderstanding that a little better knowledge on both sides would
-clear away.
-
-You do not see the country well from a railway train even though the
-stoppages are many. I have a far better idea of the country between the
-English border and Palime than of the country between Palime and Lome.
-I was the only first-class passenger; the white men travelled second
-class, and all the coloured people third, that is in big, empty, covered
-trucks where they took their food, their babies, their bedding, their
-baggage, and in fact seemed to make themselves quite as comfortable as
-if they were at home.
-
-And at Lome a young German from Messrs Swanzy's met me with a cart and
-carriers for my gear, and carried me off and installed me at their fine
-house on the sea-front as if I had every right to be there, which I
-certainly had not.
-
-Lome is the most charming town I have seen in West Africa. It is neat
-and tidy and clean, it is beautifully laid out, and the buildings are
-such as would do credit to any nation. Very evident it is that the
-German does not consider himself an exile, but counts himself lucky to
-possess so fine a country, and is bent on making the best of it. For
-Lome has certainly been made the very best of. Only fifteen years ago
-did the Germans move their capital from Little Pope in the east to
-Lome in the west of their colony, not a great distance, for the whole
-sea-board is only thirty-five miles in length, and all that length is, I
-believe, swamp. Lome is almost surrounded by swamp; its very streets
-are rescued from it, but with German thoroughness those streets are
-well-laid-out, the roads well-made and well-kept, and are planted with
-trees, palms, flamboyant, and the handsome _ficus elasticus_. Here is a
-picture of a street in Lome, and the trees are only four years old,
-but already they stretch across the road and make a pleasant shade. The
-gardens and the trees of Lome made a great impression on me. Any fences
-one sees are neat, but as a rule they do not have many fences, only
-round every bungalow is a well-laid-out, well-kept, tropical garden; if
-it is only just made you know it will be good in the future because of
-the promise fulfilled in the garden beside it.
-
-[Illustration: 0393]
-
-All the Government bungalows look like young palaces, and are built to
-hold two families, the higher-class man having the choice of the flats,
-and generally taking the upper. Indeed I could find no words to express
-my admiration for this German capital which compared so very favourably
-with the English capital I had left but a short time before.
-
-When I had talked to the Commissioner at Ho about the magnificent roads,
-I had hinted at the forced labour which is talked of so openly in the
-English colony as being a sin of the Germans. But he denied it.
-
-“How do you make your roads then?” I asked.
-
-“There is a tax of six shillings a head or else a fortnight's labour a
-year. It is right. If we have no roads how can we have trade?” and I,
-thinking of the 25 per cent, of the cocoa harvest left up the Afram
-river because “we no be fit to tote,” quite agreed.
-
-Every English village has some sort of tax by which the roads are kept
-in order, why object if that tax is paid in the most useful sort of
-kind, namely labour.
-
-Very very wisely it seems to me have the Germans laid the foundations of
-their colony, and though it has not paid in the past, it is paying now
-and in the future it will pay well.
-
-But a certain set of people were not quite as happy as those in the
-English towns, and that was the prisoners working in the streets. They
-had iron collars round their necks and were chained together two and
-two, and though they were by no means depressed, they were not as cheery
-as the English prisoners. The English negro prisoner is unique. His
-punishment has been devised by people at home who do not understand the
-negro and his limitations, and the difficulty of adequately punishing is
-one of the difficulties of administration in an English colony.
-
-“How do you keep your villages so neat?” I asked the Germans.
-
-“If they are not neat we fine them.”
-
-“But if they do not pay the fine?”
-
-“Then we beat them.”
-
-And though it may sound rather brutal, I am inclined to think that is
-the form of teaching the negro thoroughly understands. He is not yet
-educated up to understanding the disgrace of going to prison, and
-regards it somewhat in the light of a pleasant change from the ordinary
-routine.
-
-The German prisoner is clad in his own rags, the garb an ordinary
-working-man usually wears. The English prisoner is at the expense of the
-Government clad in a neat white suit ornamented with a broad arrow. He
-can hardly bring himself to believe that this is meant for a disgrace,
-and rather admires himself I fancy in his new costume. Many many are
-the tales told of the prisoner and his non-realisation of the punishment
-meted out to him. Once a party of three or four were coming along a
-street in Freetown, under the charge of a warder, and they stopped to
-talk to someone. Then they went on again, but one of the party lingered
-behind to finish his gossip.
-
-The warder looked back. They were still in earnest conversation.
-
-“No. 14,” he called, warningly.
-
-No. 14 paid no attention.
-
-“No. 14,” a little more peremptorily.
-
-Still No. 14 was interested in his friend.
-
-“No. 14,” called the warder sternly, as one who was threatening the
-worst penalties of the law, “if you no come at once, I leff you, No.
-14.”
-
-And No. 14 with the dire prospect of being “leff” to his own devices,
-shut out of paradise in fact, ran to join the others.
-
-There is another story current in Accra about an unfortunate prisoner
-who got eight months extra. He had been “leff,” and, finding himself
-shut out, promptly broke into prison; what was a poor man to do? At any
-rate, the authorities gave him an extra eight months, so I suspect all
-parties were entirely satisfied.
-
-Then there was the man who was in for life, and was so thoroughly
-well-behaved that after sixteen years the Government commuted his
-sentence and released him. Do you think that prisoner was pleased? He
-was in a most terrible state of mind, and the mournful petition went
-up--What had he done to be so treated? He had served the Government
-faithfully for sixteen years, and now they were turning him away for
-absolutely no fault whatever.
-
-He prayed them to reconsider their decision and restore him to the place
-he had so ably filled!
-
-The fact of the matter is, the negro is very much better for a strong
-hand over him. He is a child, and like a child should have his hours of
-labour and his hours of play apportioned to him. The firm hand is what
-he requires and appreciates. What he may develop into in the future I do
-not know, with his mighty strength, his fine development, and his superb
-health; if he had but a mind to match it he must overrun the earth.
-Luckily for us he has not as yet a mind to match it, he is a child, with
-a child's wild and unrestrained desires, and like a child it is well
-for him that some stronger mind should guide his ways. So he thoroughly
-appreciates prison discipline, but it never occurs to him that it is any
-disgrace. Even when he has reached a higher standing than that of
-the peasant, it is hard to make him understand that there is anything
-disgraceful in going to prison.
-
-Not so very long ago there was a black barrister in one of the
-West-African capitals who had been home to England. He was naturally a
-man of some education and standing. Now the Governor's A.D.C. had been
-for some little time inspector of prisoners. There was a dinner-party at
-Government House, and what was this young man's astonishment to have
-his hand seized and shaken very warmly by the black barrister who was a
-guest.
-
-“I have to thank you,” said he, “for your great kindness to my mother
-while she was in prison, when I was in England last year.”
-
-Clearly, then, it seems that the Germans are on the right track when
-they do not dress their prisoners in any special garb. If you come to
-think of it, a white suit marked with a broad arrow is quite as smart
-and a good deal cheaper than a red cloth marked with a blue broom, and
-the black man naturally feels some pride in swaggering round in it.
-
-A good sound beating is of course the correct thing, and though a good
-sound beating is not legal in English territory, luckily, say I very
-luckily--for the negro does not understand leniency, he regards it as
-a sign of weakness--it is many a time administered _sub rosa_, and the
-inferior respects the kindly man who is his master, who if he do
-wrong will have no hesitation in having him laid out and a round
-dozen administered. If English administration was not hampered by the
-well-meaning foolishness of folks at home, I venture to think that
-native towns would be cleaner and West-African health would be better.
-Because much as I admire the Germans and the wonderful fixed plan on
-which they have built up their colony, I have known Englishmen who
-could get just as good results if their hands had not been tied. And
-occasionally one meets or hears of a man who will not allow his hands to
-be tied.
-
-In a certain district by the Volta there are excellent roads much
-appreciated by the natives. Now these roads were extra vile and likely
-to remain so before Government could be prevailed upon to stir up the
-local chiefs to a sense of their duty. But there was an officer in that
-district who thoroughly understood how to deal with the black man, and
-he was far enough away from headquarters to make sure of a free hand.
-He found the making of those roads simple enough. He bought a few dozen
-native hoes and set a sentry on the road to be made with a rifle over
-his shoulder and a watch upon his wrist. His orders were to stop every
-man who passed, put a hoe into his hand, and force him to work upon that
-road for half an hour by the watch. History sayeth not what happened if
-he rebelled, but of course he did not rebel. Once, so says rumour, this
-mighty coloniser came to a place where the roads were worse than usual,
-which from my experience is saying they were very bad indeed, and he
-sent for the Chief. The Chief said he could not make his people come to
-work--the English had destroyed his power.
-
-“All right,” said the energetic Englishman, “the fine is £5. If they
-are not in in half an hour it'll be £10, and I'll bring 'em in in
-handcuffs.” He began to collect them--with the handcuffs--but the second
-fine was not necessary. They were both illegal, but, as I have said, he
-was far away from headquarters, and he made those roads. The native bore
-no malice. It was exactly the treatment he understood. There was a rude
-justice in it. It was patent to every eye that the road was bad. It was
-common sense that the man who used it should mend it, and as long as
-that official was in the country there were in his district roads
-and bridges as good as any in German Togo; and bridges as a rule
-are conspicuous by their absence in English territory. Also, as the
-Government never sends a man back to the same place, this man's good
-work is all falling back into disrepair, for it is hardly to be expected
-that Government will be lucky enough to get another man who will dare
-set its methods at defiance.
-
-Lome, like Accra, has made an effort to get the better of the fierce
-surf that makes landing so difficult all along the African coast, and
-they, instead of a useless breakwater, have built a great bridge out
-into deep water, and at the end of this bridge a large wharf pier or
-quay, high above the waves, where passengers and goods can be lifted by
-cranes, and the men can walk the half-mile to the shore dry-shod, or the
-goods can be taken by train right to the very doors of the warehouses
-for which they are intended. This cost the much less sum of £100,000.
-It was highly successful, and a great source of pride to all Togo till
-a tremendous hurricane a week or so after I had left, swept away the
-bridge part and left Lome cut off from communication with the rest of
-the coast, for so successful had this great bridge been they had no
-surf boats. Still, in spite of that disaster, I think the Germans have
-managed better than the English, for the bridge even after the necessary
-repairs have been done will have cost scarcely £150,000, much less
-than Accra's breakwater, and of course there is no necessity for the
-sand-pump.
-
-I feel it is ungracious to abuse my own nation and not to recognise
-all they have done for the negro--all they have done in the way of
-colonisation, but after that journey across the little-known part of the
-Gold Coast into the little-known part of German Togo, I can but see that
-there is something much to be admired in the thorough German methods.
-Particularly would I commend the manner in which they conserve the trees
-and preserve the natural beauties of the country. A beauty-spot to them
-is a beauty-spot, whether it be in the Fatherland or in remote West
-Africa, while England seems indifferent if the beautiful place be not
-within the narrow seas. Possibly she has no eyes; possibly she is only
-calm in her self-conceit, certain of her position, while Germany is
-building--building herself a reputation.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII--KETA ON THE SAND
-
-_The safety of the seashore--Why they do not plant trees in English
-territory--The D.C.'s prayer--Quittah or Keta--The Bremen Sisters--The
-value of fresh air as a preventive of fever--A polygamous household--The
-Awuna people--The backsliding clerk of the Bremen Mission--Incongruity
-of antimacassars and polygamy--Naming the child--“Laughing at last”
- and “Not love made you”--Forms of marriage--The cost of a wife--How to
-poison an enemy--Loving and dutiful children--The staple industry of the
-place--Trading women--The heat of Keta._
-
-Having got into Lome the question was how to get out of it. I wanted
-to go to Keta, twenty-seven miles away in British territory, and my idea
-was to go by sea as I could do it in three hours at the very most, and
-Elder Dempster, having very kindly franked me on their steamers, it
-would cost me nothing save the tips to the surf boats that landed me;
-but there was one great thing against that--my hosts told me that very
-often the surf was so bad it was impossible to land at Keta. The head
-of Swanzy's had a man under him at Keta, and when he went to inspect he
-invariably went overland. That decided me. I too must go overland.
-
-But carriers were by no means cheap. I had got hammock-boys to carry
-me the thirty miles from Ho to Palime for two shillings, and here for
-twenty-seven miles along the shore I paid my hammock-boys six shillings
-and sixpence and my carriers five shillings and sixpence, so that my
-pots were adding to their original price considerably.
-
-So on a fine, hot morning in May I was, with my train of carriers, on
-the road once more. First the going was down between groves of palms by
-the Governor's palace, which is a palace indeed, and must have cost a
-small fortune. A very brief walk brought us to the Border, and then
-the contrast was once more marked. The English villages were untidy and
-filthy, with a filth that was emphasised now that I had seen what could
-be done by a little method and orderliness; those Coast villages remain
-in my mind as a mixture of pigs, and children, and stagnant water, and
-all manner of litter and untidiness. One saving grace they had was that
-they were set among the nice clean sand of the seashore that absorbed as
-much as possible all the dirt and moisture, and we passed along through
-groves of cocoa-nut palms that lent a certain charm and picturesqueness
-to the scene. I am never lonely beside the sea; the murmur of its waves
-is company, and I cannot explain it, but I am never afraid. I do not
-know why, but I could not walk in a forest by myself, yet I could walk
-for miles along the seashore and never fear, though I suppose many deeds
-of violence have been done along these shores; but they have been done
-on the sand, and the waters have swept over them, and washed all memory
-of them away.
-
-Soon it was evident that we were travelling along almost as narrow a way
-as that which led along the shore to Half Assinie. There was a lagoon on
-the right hand, and the sea on the left, and the numerous villages drew
-their sustenance from the sea and from the cocoa-nut palms in which they
-were embowered.
-
-All the hot long day we travelled, and at last, towards evening, on
-either side of the road, we came upon fine shade-trees of an order of
-_ficus_, planted, it is hardly needful to say, by the Danes who owned
-this place over thirty years ago. It makes such a wonderful difference,
-this tree-planting, that I have preached it wherever I went. I met
-one young D.C. who agreed with me heartily, but explained to me the
-difficulties of the job in English territory.
-
-I had suggested they might get trees from the agricultural stations
-that Government is beginning to dot over the country, and he said it was
-quite possible. In fact they had planted three hundred the year before.
-The place I was in was rather barren-looking, so I asked where they
-were. He shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the native sheep and
-goats; they are only to be distinguished by their tails, and a certain
-perkiness about the goats.
-
-“But,” said I, surprised, “if you plant trees, you should certainly
-protect them.”
-
-“How?” said he.
-
-“Barbed wire,” was my idea.
-
-“And where are we to get the money for barbed wire? We put cactus all
-round those three hundred trees we planted, and then the medical officer
-got on to us because the cactus held water and became a breeding place
-for mosquitoes, and so we had to take it away, and I don't believe six
-of those trees are alive now. You see it is too disheartening.”
-
-Another thing that is very disheartening is the fact that tours, as they
-call a term of service among the English, last twelve months, and that a
-man at the end of a tour goes away for five months, and very often never
-again returns to the same place, so that he has no permanent interest in
-its welfare.
-
-“Give peace in my time, oh Lord,” they declare is the prayer of the
-West-African D.C., and can we wonder? A man is not likely to stir up
-strife in a place if he is not going to remain long enough to show that
-he has stirred it up in a good cause. Fancy a German D.C. explaining his
-failure to have proper shade-trees by the fact that the native sheep and
-goats had eaten them!
-
-The English have decided that Keta shall be called Quittah, which means
-nothing at all, but the native name is, and I imagine will be for a long
-time to come, Keta, which means “On the sand,” and on the sand the town
-literally is. It is simply built on a narrow sand-bank between the ocean
-and a great lagoon which stretches some days' journey into the interior,
-and at Keta, at its widest, is never more than a quarter of a mile in
-extent.
-
-I appealed to the D.C. for quarters, and he very kindly placed me with
-the Bremen Mission Sisters, and asked me to dinner every night. I feel
-I must have been an awful nuisance to that D.C., and I am most grateful
-for his kindness, and still more grateful for his introduction to those
-kindly mission Sisters.
-
-“Deaconesses” they called themselves; and they had apparently vowed
-themselves to the service of the heathen as absolutely as any nun, and
-wore simple little cotton dresses with white net caps. Sister Minna, who
-had been out for ten long years, going home I think in that time twice,
-spoke the vernacular like a native, and Sister Connie was learning it.
-They kept a girls' school where some three hundred girls, ranging from
-three to thirteen, learned to read, and write, and sew, and sum, and I
-was introduced to quite a new phase of African life, for never before
-had I been able to come so closely in touch with the native.
-
-Again I have to put it on record that I have absolutely no sympathy with
-missionaries. I cannot see the necessity for missions to the heathen;
-as yet there should be no crumbs to fall from the children's table while
-the children of Europe are in such a shameful state as many of them are,
-far worse than any heathen I have ever seen in Africa. But that did not
-prevent me admiring very much these Sisters, especially Sister Minna.
-It was a pity her services were lost to Germany, and given to these
-heathen, who, I am bound to say, loved and respected her deeply.
-
-But Keta was hot. Never in my life have I lived in such a hot place, and
-the first night they put me to sleep in their best bedroom, in which was
-erected a magnificent mosquito-proof room, also the window that looked
-on the back verandah was covered carefully with coloured cretonne to
-ensure privacy. In spite of all their kindness I spent a terrible night;
-the want of air nearly killed me, and I arose in the morning weary to
-death, and begging that I might be allowed to sleep in the garden. There
-there was a little more air, but the ants, tiny ones that could get
-through the meshes of my mosquito curtains, walked over me and made life
-unbearable. Then I put up a prayer that I might be allowed to sleep
-on the verandah. The good Sisters demurred. It was, in their opinion,
-rather public; but what was I to do? Sleep I felt I must get, and so
-every night Grant came over and put up my camp-bed on the verandah,
-or rather balcony, and every night I slept the comfortable, refreshing
-sleep of the fresh-air lover, and if a storm of rain came up, as it did
-not infrequently, this being the beginning of the rainy season, I simply
-arose and dragged my bed inside, and waited till it was over. I admit
-this had its drawbacks, but it was better than sleeping inside. The
-Sisters were perpetually making remarks on my healthy colour, and
-contrasting it with their own pale faces, and their not infrequent
-attacks of fever with my apparent immunity, and they came to the same
-conclusion that I did, that it was insured by my love of fresh air. Why
-they did not do likewise I do not know, but I suspect they thought it
-was not quite proper; not the first time in this world that women have
-suffered from their notions of propriety.
-
-Under the guidance of Sister Minna I began a series of calls, visiting
-first one of the head chiefs, who had about sixty wives. Some dwelt in
-little houses off his compound, some were scattered over the town, and
-some were away in the country. It was the first time I had really been
-introduced into a polygamous household with understanding eyes, and I
-went with interest. It is approaching the vital points of life from an
-entirely different angle.
-
-The Chief received us most graciously. He was a big man, old, with a
-bald head on which was a horrid red scar, got, he explained, in a big
-fight. He said he was very pleased to see me, spoke for a moment to one
-of his attendants, and then presented me with a couple of florins, and
-wished me well. After all, that was certainly a most substantial sign of
-goodwill. Then I called upon his wives, young, old, and middle-aged,
-and I don't even now understand how he managed to have so many without
-interfering seriously with the natural distribution of men and women. Of
-course his descendants are many, and many are the complications, for I
-have seen a married woman, the grand-daughter of the Chief, nursing on
-her knee her little great-aunt, his daughter, and well spanking her too
-if she did not come to school quick enough.
-
-One of his old wives had broken her leg, and we visited her; she had a
-room in his house, and was lying on her bed on the floor, while beside
-her sat another wife who had come to see how she was getting on.
-
-“If I were a wife,” said I, from the outlook of a monogamous country, “I
-should not call upon another wife a man chose to take, even if she were
-sick.”
-
-“I don't know,” said kind-hearted Sister Minna. “I have lived so long in
-a country like this that I think I should. It is only kind.”
-
-And we went from one household to another, and were received most
-graciously, and generally Sister Minna was given some small sum of money
-to entertain me. Sometimes it was sixpence, sometimes it was a shilling,
-sometimes it even rose as high as two shillings, and she was instructed
-to buy chickens and bananas that I might be well fed. Also they can
-never tell a white person's age, and many a time she was asked, because
-I was short, whether I was not a child.
-
-Altogether I was most agreeably struck with these Awuna people, and
-found there was even something to be said for the polygamous system.
-I have always, from my youth upwards, admired the woman who worked and
-made a place for herself in the world, and here were certainly some
-of my ideals carried out, for every woman in this community was
-selfsupporting for the greater part of her life, and not only did she
-support herself, but her children as well. It was in fact not much of
-a catch to marry a chief; of course, being a rich man, he probably gave
-her a little more capital to work upon in the beginning, but she had to
-pay him back, and work all the same.
-
-We visited another household, the home of a clerk in the Bremen Mission
-Factory, a gentleman who wore a tweed suit and a high collar, and who
-once had been a pillar of the mission church. He had four wives, and he
-lived inside a compound with small houses round it, and his house, the
-big house, on one side. Each wife had her own little home, consisting
-of two rooms and a kitchen place; the wife without children was the
-farthest away from him, and the last wife, just married, had a room next
-his. His sitting-room was quite gorgeous, furnished European fashion
-with cane chairs, and settee, coloured cushions, an ordinary lamp with
-a green shade, and a rack, such as one sees on old-fashioned ships, hung
-with red and green wineglasses. I don't know why I should have felt that
-antimacassars and tablecloths were out of place with polygamy, but I
-did, especially as the wives' houses were bare, native houses, where
-the women squatted on the floor, their bedrooms were dark and dismal hot
-places, with any amount of girdle beads hanging against the walls. For
-clothes are but a new fashion in Keta, and the time is not far off when
-a woman went clothed solely in girdle beads, and so still it is the
-fashion to have many different girdle beads, though now that they wear
-cloths over them they are not to be seen except upon the little girls
-who still very wisely are allowed to go stark. Each woman's children,
-not only in this house, but in the Chief's house, ran in and out of the
-other wives' houses in very friendly fashion, and they most of them bore
-English names--Grace, Rosina, and Elizabeth. And the names, when they
-are not English, are very curious and well worth remembering. A couple
-had been married for many years, and at last the longed-for child came.
-“Laughing at last,” they called it. “Come only” is another name. “A cry
-in my house”--where so long there had been silence. “Every man and his,”
- meaning with pride, “this is mine, I want nothing more.” But they are
-not always pleased. “God gives bad things”--a girl has been born and
-they have been waiting for a boy. “A word is near my heart,” sounds
-rather tender, but “I forgive you” must have another meaning, and the
-child would surely not be as well loved as the one its mother called
-“Sweet thing.” Then again girls do not always marry the man they love
-or would choose, and they will perhaps call their child “Not love made
-you,” but on the whole I think pleasant names predominate, and many a
-child is called “So is God,” “God gives good things,” or merely
-“Thanks.” Often too a child is called after the day of the week upon
-which it is born.
-
-“What day were you born?” asked the Chief of me.
-
-“Wednesday,” I said.
-
-“Then your name is Aquwo,” said he.
-
-Marriage in a country like this has a somewhat different status
-from what it does, say in England. What a woman wants most of all is
-children; motherhood is the ideal, and the unmarried woman with a child
-is a far more enviable person than the married woman without, and
-even in this land, where motherhood is everything, there was in every
-household that I visited an unhappy woman without children, because vice
-has been rampant along the Coast for hundreds of years. You may know
-her at once by her sad face, for not only is she deeply grieved, but
-everyone despises her, as they do not despise the woman who has had a
-child without being married. Of course parents prefer their daughters
-to be chaste, and if a man marries what the Sister described as a “good”
- girl, he will probably give her a pair of handsome bracelets to mark his
-appreciation of the fact, but if on the other hand a daughter, without
-being married, suddenly presents the household with an addition, they
-are not more vexed than if the daughter in civilised lands failed to
-pass her examination, outran her allowance, or perhaps got herself too
-much talked about with the best-looking ineligible in the neighbourhood.
-It is a natural thing for a girl to do, and at any rate a child is
-always an asset.
-
-[Illustration: 0409]
-
-There is one binding form of marriage that is absolutely indissoluble.
-If the man and woman, in the presence of witnesses, drink a drop or two
-of each other's blood, nothing can part them; they are bound for ever, a
-binding which tells more heavily upon the woman than the man, because
-he is always free to marry as many wives as he likes, while she is bound
-only to him, and whatever he does, no one, after such a ceremony, would
-give her shelter should she wish to leave him. All other marriages are
-quite easily dissolved, and very often the partings occasion but little
-heart-burnings on either side. The great desire of everyone is children,
-and once that is attained, the object of the union is accomplished,
-wherefore I fancy it is very seldom couples, or rather women, take the
-trouble to bind themselves so indissolubly. The most respectable form of
-marriage is for a man to take a girl and seclude her with an old woman
-to look after her for from five to nine months after marriage. She does
-no work, but gives herself up to the luxury and enjoyment of the petted,
-spoiled wife. Her brothers and sisters and her friends come and see her,
-but she does not pass outside the threshold, and being thus kept from
-the strong sunlight, she becomes appreciably lighter in colour, and is
-of course so much the more beautiful. He may take several women after
-this fashion, and all the marriages are equally binding, but of course
-this means that he must have a little money. Another kind of marriage is
-when the man simply gives the woman presents of cloths, and provides her
-with a house. It is equally binding but is not considered so respectful;
-there is something of the difference we see between the hasty
-arrangement in a registry office and the solemn ceremony at St George's,
-Hanover Square.
-
-One thing is certain, that when an Awuna man asks a girl to marry him,
-she will most certainly say “No.” Formerly the parents were always
-asked, and they invariably said “No,” and then the man had to ask again
-and again, and to reason away their objections to him as a suitor.
-Now, as women are getting freer under English rule, the girl herself
-is asked, and she makes a practice of saying “No” at least two or three
-times, in order to be able to tell him afterwards she did not want him.
-Even after they are Christians, says Sister Minna, the women find it
-very hard to give up this fiction that they do not want to marry, and
-the girl finds it very difficult to say “Yes” in church.
-
-She likes to pretend that she does not want the man. As a rule this is,
-I believe, true enough. There is no trust or love between the sexes; you
-never see men and women together. A woman only wants a man in order that
-she may have children, and one would do quite as well as another.
-
-After marriage the woman has a free time for a little. She does not have
-to begin cooking her husband's meals at once, and this also holds good
-after the first baby is born. A man is considered by public opinion a
-great churl if he does not get somebody to wait on his wife and fetch
-her water from the well at this time. After the second baby they are
-not so particular, and a woman must just make her own arrangements and
-manage as best she may. It is a woman's pride to bear children, and
-to the man they are a source of wealth, for the boys must work for the
-father for a time at least, and the girls are always sold in marriage,
-for a wife costs at least five or six pounds.
-
-With all due deference to these kindly missionaries, I cannot think that
-Christianity has made much progress, for these Awuna people have the
-reputation of being great poisoners. One of the Chief's wives offered me
-beer, stuff that looked and tasted like thin treacle, and she tasted it
-first to show me, said the Sister, that it was quite safe; but also she
-explained they insert a potent poison under the thumb nail, drink first
-to show that the draft is innocuous, and then offer the gourd to the
-intended victim, having just allowed the tip of the thumb nail to dip
-beneath the liquid.
-
-The early morning is the correct time to do the most important things.
-Thus if a man wants a girl in marriage he appears at her parents' house
-at the uncomfortable hour of four o'clock in the morning, and asks her
-hand. The morning after the Chief had given me a dash, I sent Grant
-round early, not at four o'clock I fear, when in the Tropics it is quite
-dark, with a box of biscuits and two boxes of chocolates and the next
-morning early he sent me his ring as a sign that he had received my dash
-and was pleased. If by any chance they cannot come and thank you in
-the morning, they say, “To-morrow morning, when the cock crows, I shall
-thank you again.” They use rather an amusing proverb for thanking; where
-we should say, “I have not words to thank you,” they say, “The hen does
-not thank the dunghill,” because here in these villages, where they do
-not provide food for the fowls, the dunghill provides everything. Sister
-Minna once received a very large present of ducks and yams from a man,
-so she used this proverb in thanking him, as one he would thoroughly
-understand. Quick came the response, “Oh please do not say so. I am the
-hen, and you are the dunghill,” which does not sound very complimentary
-translated into English.
-
-It was delightful staying here at the Mission House, and seeing quite
-a new side of African life, seeing it as it were from the inside. Every
-day at seven o'clock in the morning the little girls came to school, and
-I could hear the monotonous chant of their learning, as I sat working
-on the verandah. Somewhere about nine school was out and it was time for
-the second breakfast. The second breakfast was provided by the little
-markets that were held in the school grounds, where about a dozen women
-or young girls came with food-stuffs to sell at a farthing, or a copper,
-for they use either English or German money, a portion. They were rather
-appetising I thought, and quite a decent little breakfast could be
-bought for a penny. There were maize-meal balls fried in palm oil,
-a sort of pancake also made of maize meal and eaten with a piece of
-cocoa-nut, bananas, split sections of pine-apple, mangoes, little balls
-of boiled rice served on a plantain leaf, and pieces of the eternal
-stink-fish. Every woman appears to be a born trader, and I have seen a
-little girl coming to school with a platter on her head, on which were
-arranged neatly cut sections of pine-apple, She had managed to acquire
-a copper or two, and began her career as a trader by selling to the
-children for their school breakfast. She will continue that career into
-her married life, and till she is an old old woman past all work, when
-her children will look after her, for they are most dutiful children,
-and Christian or heathen never neglect their parents, especially their
-mother.
-
-Old maids of course you never see, and it is considered much more
-natural, as I suppose it is, that a woman should have a child by a man
-whom she has met just casually, than that she should live an old maid.
-There was a good missionary woman who took a little girl into her
-household and guarded her most carefully. The only time that girl was
-out of her sight was once or twice a week for half an hour when she went
-to fetch water from the well. Presently that girl was the mother to a
-fine, lusty boy, and the missionary's wife was told and believed that
-she did not know the father. He was a man she had met casually going to
-the well.
-
-When they asked me, as they often did, how my husband was, I always
-explained that he was very well, and had gone on a journey; it saved a
-lot of trouble, but it amused me to find that Sister Minna, when she was
-among strangers, always did the same. She explained that once on her way
-to Lome she stopped her hammock and spoke to a woman. This woman brought
-up a man, who asked her how her husband was, and in her innocence she
-explained she had none. The man promptly asked her to marry him, and as
-she demurred, the ten or twelve standing round asked her to choose
-among them which man she would have for a husband. The situation was
-difficult. Finally she got out of it by explaining that she was here to
-care for their children, and if she had to cook her husband's dinner it
-would take up too much of her time. Of course in Keta they now know
-her, and appreciate her, and respect her eccentricities if they do not
-understand them, but if she goes to a strange place she is careful to
-hide the fact that she has not a husband somewhere in the background. It
-is embarrassing to be single.
-
-She is a firm believer in the good that the missions are doing; I am
-only a firm believer in the good that a woman like Sister Minna could
-not help doing in any land.
-
-Keta is the place whence come all the cloths of the Guinea Coast, and
-again and again in a compound, in a little, sheltered dark corner, you
-may come across a man working his little loom, always a man, it is not
-women's work, and often by his side another winding the yarn he will
-use, and the product of their looms goes away, away to far Palime and
-Kpando, and all along the Coast, and up the railway line to Kumasi, and
-into the heart of the rubber country beyond.
-
-But here, being an enterprising people, they are beginning to do their
-own weaving, and have imported, I am told, men from Keta to show them
-the best way.
-
-[Illustration: 0417]
-
-I shall not soon forget Keta. If I shut my eyes I can see it now. The
-bare hot sand with the burning hot sun pouring pitilessly down upon it;
-the graceful cocoa-nut palms; the great _ficus_ trees that stand in rows
-outside the little Danish fort that is so white that it makes your eyes
-blink in the glare; the flamboyant tree, all red blossom, that grows
-beside it. Some Goth of a D.C. took the guns from the walls, and stood
-them upside down in the earth in a row leading down to the beach, and
-subsequent Commissioners, making the best of a bad job, have painted
-them carefully with tar to keep them from rusting. At the wells the
-little naked girls with beads round their middles draw the water, and in
-the streets, making the best of every little patch of shade, though they
-have not initiate enough to plant for themselves, are the women sitting
-always with some trifle to sell, early-morning porridge, or maize-meal
-balls, or portions of pine-apple, or native sweets made from imported
-sugar. Once I went into a chiefs house and wanted to photograph the
-people at work under the shade of the central tree in the courtyard. He
-sent word to say he would like to be photographed too, and as there
-was nothing particularly striking or objectionable about his shirt and
-trousers, I agreed. He kept me waiting till the light was almost gone,
-and then he appeared in a tourist cap, a light-grey coat, a red tie, a
-pink shirt, khaki breeches, violent green socks pulled up over the ends
-of his breeches, and a pair of red-and-yellow carpet slippers. I
-sent the plate home, but have been unable to discover that photograph
-anywhere, and I think in all probability the plate could not stand him.
-So I did not get the people at work. The market is held on a bare piece
-of ground close to the lagoon, and whenever there is a high tide it is
-half under water, and the Chief calls upon the people to bring sand from
-the seashore to raise the ground, and after about six hundred calabashes
-have been spilled, it looks as if someone had scattered a handful of
-sand there. Indeed, though Keta has existed for many years, it looks
-as if at any moment an extra high tide might break away into the lagoon
-behind, and the whole teeming population, for whose being there I can
-see no possible reason, might be swept into the sea.
-
-It was hotter in Keta than any other place I visited along the Coast, as
-there are no cool sea breezes for all they are so close to the sea.
-The sand-bank on which it is built runs almost north and south, and the
-prevailing wind, being from the south, blows always over hot-baked sand
-instead of over the cool sea. But yet I enjoyed life in that Mission
-House very much. It was a new piece of the world to me, and kind Sister
-Minna told me many things about the native mind. When first she came she
-had tried to do without beating the children, tried to explain to them
-that it was a shame that a girl should be beaten, but they would have
-none of her ways. All they thought was that she was afraid of them,
-the children despised her, and the school was pandemonium. Now she has
-thoroughly grasped their limitations, and when a girl does wrong she
-beats her, and they respect and love her, and send their children to her
-to be corrected.
-
-“I have beaten thirty to-day,” she would say with a sigh, as we sat down
-to dinner, or if we were going to the Commissioner's there was generally
-one in prison who had to be released before we could go. Sometimes, if
-she were specially bad, a girl was kept in prison all day and all night,
-in addition to her beating. Once in the compound opposite I saw a little
-stark-naked girl about thirteen stand screaming apparently without any
-cause. The Sisters stood it for about half an hour, then I saw them
-stealing across the road; they entered the compound, and promptly
-captured the small sinner. Her aunt, who was the owner of the compound,
-had apparently given her up as hopeless, and she looked on with
-interest. I had thought the captive's lungs must have given out long
-before, but as they crossed the road she put on a fresh spurt, and she
-yelled still more heartrendingly when she was beaten. But the next
-day she came trippingly along the verandah, confident, and happy, and
-apparently all the better for the correction she had received the day
-before. I do not know what her sin was. Probably she had not obeyed her
-aunt when she told her to rub the beads. Beads are bought in strings
-in Germany or England, and then every bead has to be rubbed smooth with
-water on a stone. It must be a dull job, but the women and children are
-largely occupied in doing it; the stones you see in every compound are
-worn hollow, and the palms of the woman's hands are worn quite hard. But
-it is part of a woman's education and she must do it just as a man must
-do the weaving.
-
-[Illustration: 0421]
-
-The day came at last when I had to go, and I sat on the beach,
-surrounded by my goods and chattels, waiting for the surf boat that was
-to take me to the ship. Grant was bidding regretful farewells to the
-many friends he had made, and I was bidding my kind Sisters good-bye.
-Then I was hustled into a boat in a man's arms, hastily we dashed
-through the surf, and presently I was on board the _Bathurst_ bound for
-Addah at the mouth of the Volta River.
-
-[Illustration: 0425]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX--FACING DEATH
-
-_The Spanish nuns--One of the loneliest settlements in West
-Africa--Hospitality and swamp--A capable English woman--A big future
-in store for Addah--The mosquitoes of Addah--The glorious
-skies--Difficulties of getting away--A tremendous tornado--The bar
-steamer--The boiling bar--“We've had enough!”--Would rather be
-drowned in the open--The dismantled ship--Everybody stark--The gallant
-engineer--On the French steamer bound for Accra._
-
-At Addah, at the mouth of the Volta, a place that exists solely for the
-transport, there is the very worst surf on all this surf-bound coast.
-There is a big native town a few miles up the river, but here at its
-entrance live the handful of Europeans, either right on the beach or on
-the banks of the river, over a mile away, with a great swamp between.
-The river is wide at its mouth, and the miles of swamp lend to the
-country an air at once weird and austere.
-
-“Enter not here,” cries the surf; “enter not here.” But when its dangers
-have been dared, and the white man has set foot on the Dark Continent,
-the swamp takes up the refrain in another key, more sullenly
-threatening.
-
-“In spite of warning you have crossed the outworks. Now, see how you
-like the swamp and the mosquito, the steaming heat and the blazing sun.”
- And men come still, as they came three or four hundred years ago.
-
-But I, for one, did not much like the landing. The Captain of the
-_Bathurst_ explained that he had had no intention of calling at Addah,
-but hearing that there was a white woman on the beach wanting to go, he
-of his courtesy had decided to take her, and he wanted to be off as he
-wished to discharge cargo at Pram-Pram before it grew dark. And here,
-for once, on board an African steamer I found the women passengers
-largely outnumbering the men, for they had on board a number of nuns who
-had been exiled from San Paul de Loanda. They were Spanish, French, and
-German Sisters in the costume of their order; gentle, kindly women with
-faces that bore evident marks of an indoor life in the Tropics, a mark
-that cannot be mistaken. They had been very very frightened at first,
-and they were still very seasick, but the sailormen had made them most
-kindly welcome, for their sakes were staunch Monarchists when Portugal
-was spoken of, and they brought them the captain's cat to play with, and
-looked with deepest admiration on their wonderful embroidery. Never was
-so much sewing before seen on an African steamer.
-
-I unwittingly added to their woes, for the surf was bad at Addah.
-
-“We'll whistle and the bar steamer will come out for you,” said the
-captain, and the steamer gave vent to the most heartrending wails.
-
-In the distance I could see a most furious white surf, a palm or two
-cutting the sky line, and a speck or two that were probably bungalows,
-but it was a typical African shore and I didn't like the look of it at
-all. It is bad enough to go to a place uninvited, not to know where
-you are going to be put up, but when to that is added a bad surf, you
-wish--well, you wish it was well over. The ship rolled sickeningly in
-the swell; the Sisters, first one and then another, disappeared, to come
-back with faces in all shades of green whiteness, and the ruddy-faced
-captain paced the deck with an impatience that he in vain tried to
-control, and I felt an unutterable brute. If I had been seasick it would
-have crowned things; luckily for myself I am not given that way. At
-intervals the _Bathurst_ let off shrieks, plaintive and angry, and we
-went to lunch. I felt I might as well have luncheon, a luncheon to which
-I really had a right.
-
-“You'll have to come on with us to Pram-Pram,” said the captain; “the
-beach is evidently too bad.”
-
-But presently, after luncheon, we saw a surf boat making its way towards
-us, and the captain through the glasses proclaimed, “Custom's boat. No
-white man. The surf is very bad.”
-
-When the boat same alongside, the black Custom officer said the captain
-was right. The surf was bad. They had rather hesitated about coming out,
-but the bar steamer in the river could not come out till to-morrow.
-
-“Will you land,” said the captain, “or shall we take you on?”
-
-It seemed a pity to pass Addah, now I had come so near, and if the
-Customs could get through I did not see why I should not, so I got into
-the mammy-chair and was lowered into the surf boat with my servant and
-my gear. A surf boat is about five feet deep, and this time, as no one
-had expected a white woman to land, no chair had been provided, so I was
-obliged to balance myself on one of the narrow planks that ran
-across the boat and served as seats, and of course my feet dangled
-uncomfortably. Also, as we approached it, the surf looked most
-threatening. We were going straight into a furiously boiling sea with
-white, foam-lashed waves that flung themselves high into the air. I did
-not like the look of it at all, but as we were bound to go through it, I
-whisked myself round on my seat so that I sat with my back to the thing
-I was afraid of. Then the Custom-house officer, a black man, edged his
-way close beside me, and stretching out his hand put it on my arm. I did
-not like it. I object to being touched by black men, so I promptly shook
-it off, and as promptly the boat was apparently flung crash against a
-stone wall; she had really hit the beach, and over I went backwards and
-head first into the bottom of the boat. The man's help had been kindly
-meant; he would have held me in my place. But there is no time for
-apologies when a surf boat reaches the beach. Before I had realised what
-was happening, two Kroo boys had dived to the bottom of the boat, seized
-me without any ceremony whatever, and raced me up to the shore, where
-they put me down in all the blazing sun of an African afternoon, without
-even a helmet or an umbrella to protect my head. Grant followed with the
-helmet, and I endeavoured to smooth my ruffled plumes. At least, I had
-landed in safety, and the thing was now to find the Commissioner and
-see what he would do for me. We were on a beach where apparently was not
-even a boat, only the forlorn remains of the wreck of an iron steamer
-rapidly coming to its last end. The shore, rising to a height of about
-six or eight feet, was all sand with a little sparse, coarse grass
-upon it. We climbed up the yielding bank, and then I saw a native town,
-Beachtown, on my right, and on my left three or four bungalows built
-after the English fashion, on high posts rising out of cement platforms.
-Those bungalows at Beachtown, Addah, are perhaps the forlornest places
-on all the West-African coast. The wild surf is in front of them, the
-coarse grass all around them, and behind is a great swamp. Brave, brave,
-it seemed to me, must be the men and women who lived here and kept their
-health. The strong sea breeze would be healthgiving, but the deadly
-monotony of life must be something too terrible. But here the doctor,
-who was going home by the next steamer, had his wife, and the doctor who
-had just come out had brought his bride; two women, and I was told there
-was a third at the transport station. The Commissioner came forward, and
-I looked at him doubtfully. I had thought I should have known him and I
-didn't.
-
-“You have forgotten me?”
-
-Yes; I certainly ought to know him, but--it came on me with a flash, and
-I spoke my thoughts. “Ah, but you have grown a beard since I met you.”
-
-He laughed and blushed.
-
-“I've just come off trek and I've lost my razors.”
-
-It was so like Africa. The dishevelled woman from the sea met the
-unkempt man from the bush, and we foregathered.
-
-They were awfully good to me. Packed they were already with two more
-people than the bungalows were intended to hold, and so they considered
-what they should do for me, and while they were considering, hearing
-I had had luncheon, they gave me coffee and other drinks and offered
-cigarettes, and then they wrote to the transport company and asked them
-if they would take in a stray woman.
-
-The kindness of these people in Africa! Can I ever repay it? I know, of
-course, I never can. The head of Swanzy's transport and his pretty wife
-sent over to say they would be delighted to have me, and I was to come
-at once and consider myself at home. And, moreover, they had sent a cart
-for me, drawn by three Kroo boys.
-
-I have said many hard things about the English women in West Africa.
-I had begun to think, after my visit to Accra, that only the nursing
-Sisters were worthy of the name of capable women; but, when I went to
-Addah, my drooping hopes revived. For I met there, in Mrs Dyson, the
-transport officer's wife, a woman, charming, pretty, and young, who yet
-thought it not beneath her dignity to look after her husband's house, to
-see that he lived well here in the wilderness, and who enjoyed herself
-and made the very best of life.
-
-And Addah, I must admit, takes a deal of making the best of. It has been
-settled for long years. In Beachtown you may see old guns; in Big Addah,
-a native town six miles up the Volta, you may see more of them lying
-about the rough, uncared-for streets, and you may see here a clump of
-tamarind trees that evidently mark the spot where once the fort has
-been. Not one stone of it remains. The authorities say that these “old
-shells of forts” are not worth preserving, and the natives have taken
-them literally at their word, and incorporated the very stones in their
-own buildings.
-
-I am sorry, for Addah at the mouth of the great river must have been a
-great slaving station once; trade must have come down the river in the
-past, even as it does now, as it will do, doubled and trebled, in the
-future.
-
-The house I stayed in was close on the river, and my bedroom opened
-out on to a verandah that overlooked it. In the shipbuilding yard below
-perpetually rings the clang of iron on the anvil, for always there are
-ships to be built or repaired; and there, grown into a great cotton tree
-in that yard, may be seen the heavy chains that the slavers of oldtime
-used to hold their ships to the shore. The slavers have gone, the past
-is dead; but, knowing that wonderful river, I do not mind prophesying
-that, in spite of that dangerous surf, in spite of those threatening
-swamps, there is a big future in store for that lonely outpost of the
-Empire. That sixty-five miles of unimpeded waterway that lies between
-it and Akuse is not to be lightly disregarded, and the rich country goes
-far beyond that.
-
-But, at present, there is not much to see at Addah. There is the swamp,
-apparently miles of it, there is a great, wide, mangrove-fringed river,
-and there are the never-to-be-forgotten mosquitoes. The mosquitoes of
-Addah are the sort that make you feel you should go about armed, and
-that made me feel for once that a mosquito-proof house was an actual
-necessity. One thing, there is always a strong breeze blowing at Addah,
-and my hostess was always very particular to have her wire-netting swept
-down carefully every day so that every scrap of air that could come in
-did so, and I conclude it was owing to this that I did not feel the air
-so vitiated and oppressive as I have in other houses. I hope one of the
-next public works of the Gold Coast will be to fill in that swamp, and
-so rid the place of those terrible mosquitoes. One solace the white
-people have, if there are mosquitoes, there is no undergrowth, and so
-there are no tsetse flies, and they can keep horses. My hostess's two
-solitary amusements--because she was a smiling, happy-faced girl she
-made the best of them--were to ride along the beach and to play tennis
-after it had grown cool in the evening, as it always does in Africa
-before the sun goes down. And those sunsets across the swamp, too, were
-something to wonder at. Purple and red and gold were they. Every night
-the sun died in a glory over swamp and heath; every morning he rose
-golden and red across the wide river, as if he would say that if Addah
-had naught else to recommend it there was always the eternal beauty of
-the skies.
-
-[Illustration: 0435]
-
-But having got there it was rather difficult to get away.
-
-The _Sapele_, they said, should come and take me back to Sekondi or, at
-least, to Accra, but the _Sapele_ did not come, and if my hosts had not
-been the kindest in the world I should have begun to feel uncomfortable.
-I would gladly have gone overland, but carriers were not, even though
-some of my precious pots had been broken in the surf, and so my loads
-were reduced.
-
-But every day there was no steamer, till at last a German steamer was
-signalled, and the bar steamer, a steamer of 350 tons, which usually
-lay at the little wharf just outside my bedroom window alongside the
-shipbuilding yard, prepared to go out. All my gear was carried down and
-put on board, and then suddenly the captain appeared on the verandah and
-pointed out to us two waiting women a threatening dark cloud that was
-gathering all across the eastern sky.
-
-He shook his head, “I dare not go out till that is over.” And so we stood
-and waited and watched the storm gather.
-
-It was a magnificent sight. The inky sky was reflected in an inky river,
-an ominous hush was over everything, one felt afraid to breathe, and the
-halfnaked workmen in the yard dropped their tools and fled to shelter.
-The household parrot gave one loud shriek, and the harsh sound of his
-call cut into the stillness like a knife.
-
-From the distance we could hear the roaring of the surf, as if it were
-gathering strength, and then the grasses in the swamp to the west bent
-before a puff of air that broke on the stillness. There was another
-puff, another, and then the storm was upon us in all its spendour.
-Never have I seen such a storm. Though it was only four o'clock in
-the afternoon, it was dark as night, and the lightning cut across like
-jagged flame, there came immediately the crash of thunder, and then a
-mighty roaring wind, a wind that swept everything before it, that bent
-the few trees almost to the ground, that stripped them of their leaves
-as if they had been feathers shaken out of a bag, that beat the placid
-river into foam, and tore great sheets of corrugated iron from the roofs
-of the buildings and tossed them about the yard as if they had been so
-many strips of muslin.
-
-The bar steamer's captain had gone at the first sign to see that his
-moorings were safe, and we two women stood on the verandah and watched
-the fury of the elements, while my hostess wondered where her husband
-was, and hoped and prayed he was not out in it. The inky blackness was
-all over the sky now, the wind was shrieking so as to deaden all other
-sounds, and the only thing we could hear above it was the crash of the
-thunder. And then I looked at the horizon away to the south-west. There,
-about a mile away as the crow flies, was the shore, and there against
-the inky darkness of the sky I could see tossed high into the air great
-sheets of foam. The surf on that shore must have been terrific. I would
-have given a good deal to go and see it, but, before I could make up my
-mind to start, down came the rain in torrents, the horizon was blotted
-out, the road through the swamp was running like a mill race, and it
-looked as if it would be no light task to beat my way through wind and
-rain to the shore.
-
-And when the storm was subsiding back came the bar steamer's captain.
-
-“No going out to-day,” said he; “I wouldn't dare risk the bar. Look at
-the surf!” and he pointed across the swamp to where we could again see
-the great white clouds of foam rising against the horizon. “To-morrow,”
- he said, “very early”; and he went away, and my host, soaked through
-and through, came back and told us what the storm had looked like from
-Beachtown.
-
-The next morning was simply glorious. The world was fresh and clean
-and newly washed, and the river, from my window, looked like a brightly
-polished mirror.
-
-“It'll be a bad bar, though,” said my host, shaking his head. “Better
-stay.”
-
-It was very kind of him, but I felt I had trespassed on their kindness
-long enough; besides, there were other parts of the Coast I wished to
-see, and I felt I must take this opportunity of getting out of Addah.
-What was a bad bar? I had faced the surf before. So I bid them farewell,
-with many grateful thanks, and went on board, and in all the glory of
-the morning we set off down the river.
-
-I was the only white passenger on board, and was allowed to stand on the
-bridge beside the wheel. Behind me was a little house wherein I might
-have taken shelter, but I thought I might as well see all there was
-to be seen; besides, I held my camera in my hand and proposed to take
-photographs of this “bad bar.”
-
-The mouth of the Volta is utterly lonely looking. A long sandpit ran out
-on the right hand, whereon grew a solitary bush, blighted, for there was
-not a sign of a leaf upon it, and to the left was also sand, with a
-few scattered palms. I fancy there must have been a native hut or two,
-though I do not remember them, for I remember the captain saying, “We
-have to make our own marks. When you get a hut in line with a certain
-tree you know you are in the channel.” I was glad to hear there was a
-channel, for to my uninitiated eyes we seemed heading for a wild waste
-of boiling water, worse than anything I had ever conceived of, and yet
-I was not unaccustomed to surf, and had faced it before now in a surf
-boat. Never again shall I face surf with equanimity. I tried to carry
-out my programme, but I fear I must have been too upset to withdraw the
-slides, for I got no photographs. Presently we appeared to be right
-in the middle of the swirl. The waves rose up like mountains on either
-side, and towards us would come a great smooth green hill of water which
-towered far above our heads and then, breaking, swept right over us with
-a tremendous crash. I can see now the sunlight on that hill; it made it
-look like green glass, and then, when the foam came, there were all the
-colours of the rainbow. Again and again the two men at the wheel were
-flung off, their cloths seemed to be ripped from them as if they had
-been their shells, and the ship trembled from stem to stern and stood
-still. I thought, “Is this a bad bar? I'm afraid, I'm afraid,” but as
-the captain came scrambling to the wheel to take the place of the men
-who had been thrown off I did not quite like to say anything. It
-is extraordinary how hard it is to make one believe there really is
-anything to fear, and I should hate to be a nuisance at a critical
-moment, so I said to the captain--he and I and the German engineer were
-the only white people on board: “It's magnificent.”
-
-He was holding on to the wheel by my side and a naked black man,
-stripped by the ruthless water, was holding on to it on the other, and I
-could see the moisture on his strained face. Was it sweat or sea water?
-
-“Magnificent!” said he. “Don't you see we can't stand it? We've had
-enough!”
-
-So that was it. We were going down. At least, not exactly going down,
-but the water was battering us to pieces. I learned then that what I
-was afraid of was fear, for now I was not afraid. It had come, then,
-I thought. This was the end of the life where sometimes I had been so
-intensely happy and sometimes I had been so intensely miserable that
-I had wanted to die. Not so very long ago, and now I was going to die.
-Presently those waters that were soaking me through and through would
-wash over me once for all and I was not even afraid. I thought nothing
-for those few moments, except how strange that it was all over. I
-wondered if I had better go into the little house behind me, but no,
-I saw I was not in the way of the men at the wheel. I could hear the
-crashing of broken wood all round me, and I thought if I were to be
-drowned I would rather be drowned in the open. Why I held on to my
-camera I do not know. That, I think, was purely mechanical. The waves
-beat on the ship from all quarters, and so apparently held her steady,
-and I might just as well hold on to the camera as to anything else. I
-certainly never expected to use it again. Crash, crash, crash came the
-tons of water, there was a ripping of broken wood, and a human wail that
-told me that crew and black passengers had realised their danger. Crash,
-crash, crash. It seemed to me the time was going very slowly, and then
-suddenly the ship seemed to give a leap forward, and instead of the
-waves crashing on to us we were riding over them, and the captain seized
-me by the arm.
-
-“Come inside. You're wet to the skin.”
-
-“But------”
-
-“We're all right. But, my God, you'll never be nearer to it.”
-
-And then I looked around me to see the havoc that the bar had wrought.
-The bulwarks were swept away, the boats were smashed, the great
-crane for working cargo was smashed and useless, the galley was
-swept overboard, the top of the engine-house was broken in, and,
-transformation scene, every solitary creature on board that little
-ship, with the exception of the captain and me, was stark. Custom-house
-officers had stripped off their uniforms, clerks who had come to tally
-cargo in all the glory of immaculate shirts and high-starched collars
-were nude, and the black men who worked the ship had got rid of their
-few rags as superfluous. Everyone had made ready to face the surf.
-
-“Much good would it have done 'em,” opined the captain; “no living thing
-could have got ashore in that sea.”
-
-Then up came the chief engineer, a German; his face was scalded and his
-eyes were bloodshot, and it was to him we all owed our lives.
-
-The waves had beaten in the top of the engine-room, and the water had
-poured in till it was flush with the fires; a gauge blew out--I am
-not sure if I express myself quite rightly, but the place was full of
-scalding steam, and all those educated negro engineers fled, but the
-white man stuck to his job.
-
-“I tink it finish,” said he, “when I see the water come close close to
-the fires, but I say, 'well, as well dis vay as any oder,' so I stick to
-do my job, an' I not see, I do it by feel.”
-
-And we all three shook hands, and the captain and engineer had a glass
-of whisky, and though it was so early in the morning, never did I think
-it was more needed. I had been but an onlooker. On them had fallen the
-burden and heat of the day.
-
-And then came boats, bringing on board the captains of the French and
-German steamers that lay in the roadstead, far out, because the surf was
-so bad.
-
-They had been watching us. They thought we were gone, but though they
-had out their boats they confessed they would have been powerless to
-aid. No boat could have lived in such a sea, and the captain declared
-that though he was swept bare of all food nothing would induce him to go
-back. It would be certain death.
-
-We looked a rather forlorn wreck, but the German captain came to the
-rescue with a seaman-like goodwill, lending men to work the cargo in
-place of the broken-down crane, and giving food to the hungry ones. He
-had come from Lome, and he brought news that the hurricane of the night
-before had swept away the bridge that had been the pride and delight of
-the people of Togo, and that never for many a long year had there been
-such a storm along the Guinea Coast. He had been unable to get his
-papers and had come away without them. He would take me if I liked, but
-he must go back to Lome.
-
-But I was rather feeling I had had enough of the sea, and so I turned to
-the Frenchman. He was just as kind and courteous. His ship was small, he
-said, and he was not going to Sekondi, but I might tranship at Accra
-if I liked. The captain of the bar steamer advised my going on board at
-once, for his ship was in a state of confusion, and also he was going to
-tranship cargo.
-
-Then Grant took a hand in the proceedings. Whether he had stripped I
-don't know, for I did not see him, but he presented himself before me in
-a very wet and damp condition.
-
-“Medicine chest gone, Ma.”
-
-Now, the medicine chest was my soldier brother's, the pride of my heart.
-I had proposed to bring it back to him and show him that the only time
-it had been used in this unhealthy climate was when the carrier had
-inadvertantly got cascara for his pneumonia. Well, it was gone, and
-there was nothing more to be said. Its pristine beauty had been lost in
-the rains in Togo. Grant departed, but presently he was on the bridge
-again.
-
-“Pots be all bruck, Ma.”
-
-“Oh, Grant!” I had got them so far only to lose them in the end. Grant
-was like one of Job's comforters. He seemed to take a huge delight in
-announcing to me fresh disasters. My things were all done up small for
-carrying on men's heads, and the sea had played havoc with them. The
-bucket was gone; the kettle, an old and tried servant, was gone; the
-water-bottle was gone, so was the lantern; the chop box had been burst
-open, and the plates and cups smashed; while the knives and forks had
-been washed overboard, and the majority of my boots, for some reason
-or other, had followed. After Grant had made about his tenth journey,
-announcing fresh disasters, I said:
-
-“Oh, never mind, Grant. We must make the best of it; I'm rather
-surprised we are not gone ourselves,” and with a grin he saw to the
-handing of the remains of my goods into the boat, and getting them on
-board the steamer.
-
-That steamer was tiny. I looked at the cabin assigned me, and determined
-if I had to sit up all night I would not occupy it, and then I had my
-precious black box brought on deck, and proceeded to count the damage.
-It was locked and it was supposed to be air-tight and water-tight. I
-can't say about the air-tight, but water-tight it certainly was not, for
-every single thing in that box was soaked through and through. I took
-them out one by one; then, as no one said me nay, I tied them on to
-the taffrail, and let my garments flutter out in the breeze and the
-sunshine. There were four French women on board, bound from the French
-Congo to Konakri, and they took great interest and helped me with
-suggestions and advice, but I must say I was glad that I was bound
-for Sekondi, where my kind friend the nursing Sister was keeping fresh
-garments for me. As for my poor little typewriter, it was so drenched
-with water that, though I stood it out in the sun, I foresaw its career
-in West Africa was over.
-
-As the sun was setting, came on board the captain of the bar steamer to
-bid me God-speed. We had never met till the day before, but that morning
-we had faced death together, and it made a bond.
-
-“Go back to-night?” said he; “not if I know it. Not for a week, if that
-surf doesn't go down. I couldn't face it.”
-
-I wanted him to stay and dine, because I knew he had nothing, but he
-told me how good the German had been, and said he did not like leaving
-his own ship after dark; so we said “good-bye” with, I hope, mutual
-respect, and, after dinner, I began to consider how I should spend the
-night. I knew my own bedding must be rather wet, but I knew, also, the
-camp-bed would be all right, and I told Grant to bring it up on deck and
-make it up with bedding from the Frenchman's bunk.
-
-“They no give you cabin, Ma,” said he, surprised.
-
-Nothing would induce a child of Nature to sleep in the open as long as
-he can find any sort of a cuddy-hole to stew in. I was a little afraid
-of what the French captain might say, but he took my eccentricity calmly
-enough.
-
-“Ah, zat your bed? Ah, zat is good idea”; and left me to a night rolling
-beneath the stars, when I tossed and dreamed and woke with a start,
-thinking that the great green hills of water were about to overwhelm me;
-and as about twenty times more terrified of the dream than I had been of
-the reality.
-
-Next morning found us outside Accra, a long way outside, because the
-surf was bad, and I found to my dismay there was no mail in yet, and I
-must land, for there was no cargo for the _Gergovia_, and she wanted to
-go on her way.
-
-I found the landing terrible. I can frankly say I have never been so
-frightened, and I had no nerve left to stand up against the fear. But it
-was done. I saw my friend in Accra, and again recounted with delight my
-travels. For the first time I began to feel I had done something, and I
-felt it still more when the people in Schenk & Barber's, a great trading
-firm, held up their hands and declared that I had done a wonderful thing
-to cross by Krobo Hill at night. I had done well, then, I kept saying
-to myself, I had accomplished something; but I must admit I was most
-utterly done. When the mail steamer arrived, the port officer made it
-his business to see me off to the ship himself; we were drenched to
-the skin as we rounded the breakwater, and I was so nervous when the
-mammy-chair came dangling overhead from the ship's deck, that I hear he
-reported I was the worst traveller he had ever been on board with. Then,
-in addition to my woes, instead of being able to sit and chat and tell
-my adventures comfortably to the friends I met, I was, for the first
-time for many a long year, most violently seasick.
-
-But, when I went to bed, I slept dreamlessly, and when I awakened we
-were rising to the swell outside Sekondi, and I felt that even if I had
-to face the surf again I should be among friends presently, and there
-was a feeling of satisfaction in the thought that I had at least seen
-something of the most beautiful river in the world, and some unknown
-country in the east of the Colony.
-
-Always there is that in life, for, good or evil, nothing can take
-away what we have done. We have it with us, good or bad, for ever. Not
-Omnipotence can alter the past.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX--WITH A COMPANION
-
-_The kindness of Sekondi--Swanzy's to the rescue--A journey
-to Dixcove--With a nursing Sister--The rainy season and wet
-feet--Engineering a steep hill in the dark--Rains and brilliant
-fireflies--The P.W.D. man's taste in colours--The need of a woman in
-West Africa--Crossing the Whin River--My fresh-air theory confirmed._
-
-Sekondi, from the nursing Sister outwards, was as it always has been,
-awfully good to me, and I felt as if I were come home. I had the kindest
-offers of help from all sides, and the railway company took my damaged
-goods in hand and did their level best to repair damages. I was
-bound for the goldfields and Ashanti, but I had still uneasily in my
-remembrance that little bit of coast to the west of Sekondi that I had
-left unvisited. If I had not written so much already about the carrier
-difficulties, I might really write a book, that to me would be quite
-interesting, about that day's journey to Dixcove. Swanzy's transport
-came to the rescue and provided me with carriers, a most kindly gift,
-for which I am for ever grateful, and I took with me a young nursing
-Sister who was anxious to see something of bush travel.
-
-There is always a fascination about the shore, the palm trees and the
-yellow sand and the blue sky and bluer sea, but now the difficulties
-were being added to daily and hourly, because it was the beginning of
-the rainy season, and all the little rivers had “broken out,” and to
-cross from one bank to another when a river is flooded, even if it is
-only a little one, is as a rule no easy matter. To my great amusement I
-found my companion had a great objection to getting her feet wet. I am
-afraid I laughed most unsympathetically.
-
-[Illustration: 0450]
-
-“You can't,” I decided, and I fear she thought me a brute, “travel in
-the rainy season in Africa and hope to keep dry”; and I exhorted her
-not to mind if the water were up to her ankles, but to wade through. She
-brought home to me difficulties of travel that I had never thought of
-before. It had never occurred to me to worry as to whether I was likely
-to get wet before; a little water or a little discomfort never seemed
-to matter. The seat of the canoe I was sitting in broke and let me down
-into the waist-deep puddle of water in the bottom, and somehow it seemed
-a less thing to me than that her feet should get wet did to her. She
-was a nice, good-looking girl, pleasant and smiling, but I decided that
-never again as long as I lived would I travel with another woman. I know
-my own shortcomings, but I never know where another woman will break
-out.
-
-And we went along that coast, where, two hundred years ago, quaint,
-gossipy old Bosman had found so much of beauty and interest. Tacorady
-Fort was deserted in his day. It is overgrown and forgotten now. Boutry
-is on a high hill, the place of the old fort only marked by a thick
-clump of trees, dark-green against the sky line; but it was getting dark
-when we reached Boutry, there was a river to cross, and I was obsessed
-with a sense of my responsibilities, such as I had never felt when I had
-only my own skin to look after, and I was very thankful that a doctor
-who was going to Dixcove had overtaken us. If I damaged my
-travelling companion in any way, I felt that he at least could share
-responsibility. We crossed the river, and the darkness fell, pitchy,
-black darkness; it rained in a businesslike way as it does in the
-Tropics, and there was a high hill to climb. It was a very steep hill,
-with a very shocking track that did duty as a road, and my companion
-expressed her utter inability to get up it. I was perfectly sure that
-our Kroo hammock-boys could never get us up it, and I was inclined to
-despair; then that doctor came to our aid. He had four Mendi boys,
-the best carriers on the Coast, and we put them on to my companion's
-hammock, and gaily she went off. She knew nothing of the dangers of the
-way. I did, but I did not feel it necessary to enlighten her. I don't
-know what the doctor did, but I put on my Burberry and instructed two of
-my carriers that they must help me over the road. It was a road. When
-I came back over it in the light, three days later, I wondered how
-on earth we had tackled it in the dark; still more did I wonder how a
-heavily laden hammock--for she was a strapping young woman, a good deal
-bigger than I am--had been engineered up and down it. But Mendi carriers
-are wonderful, and there was a certain charm in walking there in the
-night. When the rain stopped, the fireflies came out, and the gloom
-beneath the trees was lightened by thousands of brilliant sparks of
-fire. I don't know whether fireflies are more brilliant after rain,
-but I remember them most distinctly on those two wet nights when I was
-travelling, once on my way to Dixcove and once on the way to Palime.
-
-Up the hill we went and down the hill, along the sands, across the
-shallows of a river just breaking out--and the lantern light gleamed
-wetly on the sand--through little sleepy villages and across more
-hilly country, and at last, just as the moon was rising stormily in the
-clouded sky, we were opposite a long flight of wide steps, and knew we
-had reached Dixcove.
-
-There was one white man, a P.W.D. man, in Dixcove, and a surprised
-man was he. Actually, two women had come out of the night and flung
-themselves upon him. Of course, we had brought servants and provisions
-and beds, so it was only a question of providing quarters. Now I smile
-when I think of it. We crossed the courtyard, we climbed the stairs, we
-entered the modern house that was built on top of the little fort, and
-out of a sort of whirlpool a modified disorder emerged, when we
-found ourselves, two men and two women, by the light of a fluttering,
-chimneyless Hinkson lamp, all assembled in the room that two camp-beds
-proclaimed the women's bedroom, and we all partook of a little whisky to
-warm ourselves while we waited for dinner. The P.W.D. man was fluttered
-and, I think, pleased, for at least our coming broke the monotony, and
-the nursing Sister undertook the commissariat and interviewed his cook.
-Altogether we made a cheerful little week-end party in that romote
-corner of the earth, and when it rained, as rain it did most of the
-time, we played bridge as if we had been in London.
-
-Dixcove is a pretty little place, literally a cove, and the fort is
-built on high ground on a neck of land that forms the head of the cove.
-Round it grow many orange groves, and altogether it is a desirable and
-delightful spot, but it must be very lonely for the only white man who
-was there. He had just repainted the bungalow on top of the fort, and
-whether he had used up the odds and ends of paints, or whether this was
-his taste, or whether he had desired something to cheer him, or whether
-he was actuated by the same spirit that seems to move impressionist
-painters, I do not know, but when I got up next morning and walked on
-the bastion, that bungalow fairly took my breath away. It was painted
-whole-heartedly a violent Reckitt's blue; the uprights and the other
-posts that criss-crossed across it were a bright vivid green, and they
-were all picked out in pink. There was the little white fort set in the
-midst of tropical greenery, everything beautiful, with the bungalow on
-top setting the discordant note. It was pitiful, but at the same time
-the effect was so comic that the nursing Sister and I laughed till we
-cried, and then our host came out and could not understand what we
-were laughing about. We came to the charitable conclusion he must be
-colour-blind.
-
-[Illustration: 0456]
-
-The two men wanted us to stay. They said it was more comfortable, and
-when I compared the luncheon the doctor gave us to the meals we had when
-I provided the eatables and the nursing Sister gave her attention to
-the cuisine, I must say I agreed with them, and resolved once again to
-proclaim the absolute necessity for having women in West Africa. But she
-had to go back to her work, and I had to go on my travels, and so, like
-the general who marched his army up the hill and marched it down again,
-presently I was on my way back. And not a moment too soon. It was
-raining when we started, and our host and the doctor pressed us to stay,
-but I had not been on the Coast all this time without knowing very well
-what that rain would mean. The rivers that had been trickles when we
-set out would be roaring torrents now, and I knew in a little time they
-would be impassable; then the only thing would be to go back to Sekondi
-by surf boat, and I had had enough of the surf to last me for many a
-long day. Besides, our provisions were getting low. We started early; we
-had less to carry, for we had eaten most of the provisions, and we had
-more men, for we brought back most of the doctor's following, but still
-it took us all we knew to get across those rivers, and the Whin River
-was nearly too much for us. It had been bad when we came, now the sea
-was racing across the sands, the flooded, muddy water of the river was
-rushing to meet it, and the two black men who were working a surf
-boat as a ferry came and asked an exorbitant sum to take us across.
-My headman demurred and said we wouldn't go. I left it to him, and the
-bargaining was conducted in the usual slatternly Coast English at the
-top of their voices. I must confess, as my companion and I sat on the
-sand and watched the wild waters, I wondered what we would do if we did
-not cross, for Dixcove was fully fourteen miles behind us. Down came the
-price by slow degrees, in approved fashion, till at last it appeared
-I, my companion, our goods, chattels, hammocks, and our followers,
-numbering fully twenty men, were to be taken across for the sum of two
-shillings and sixpence. I sent the gear first, and then some of the men,
-and finally the nursing Sister and I went. Unfortunately there was not
-room in the boat for the two last men, and I could not help being amused
-when the ferryman came to be paid, and the men all clustered round
-vehemently demanding that I should do no such thing till their two
-companions were also brought over. Not a scrap of faith had they in the
-ferryman keeping his word, so I had to sit down on the sand among the
-short, coarse grass and the long stalks of the wandering bean, and
-wait till those two men were fetched, when I paid up, and we went on to
-Sekondi.
-
-The journey was short; it is hardly worth recording, hardly worth
-remembering, but for those wonderful fireflies, and for another thing
-that bears strongly on my theory regarding health in West Africa.
-
-The nursing Sister I took with me was a tall, goodlooking girl,
-considerably younger than I am, and she looked as if she ought to have
-been very much stronger. She had barely been on the Coast a short three
-months, but she had already had one or two goes of fever, a thing I have
-never had, and she did not like it. She was very careful of herself,
-and she abominated the climate. At night I noticed she shut herself away
-from all chance of draughts, drawing curtains and shutting doors so as
-to insure herself against chill. When we started on our journey she
-was not well, “the climate was not agreeing with her,” and they were
-beginning to think she “could not stand it.” We spent a day in the open
-and we got somewhat wet. When night came we shared a room and she wanted
-to close, at least, a shutter. Partly that was to have privacy and
-partly to keep away draughts. Then I brutally put down my foot.
-
-I considered it dangerous to be shut in in Africa, and as I was
-engineering that expedition I thought I ought to have my way. One thing
-I did not insist upon, I did not have the windows open all round, but
-I had them wide on two sides, so that a thorough draught might blow
-through the room. My bed I put right in it, but I allowed her to put
-hers in the most sheltered part of the room she could find, and, of
-course, I could not prevent her wrapping her head in a blanket.
-
-She put in those two nights in fear and trembling, I know, but she went
-back to Sekondi in far better health than she had left it. That she
-acknowledged herself, but she does not like Africa; the charm of it had
-passed her by, and I wonder very much if she will complete her term of
-service.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI--THE WEST-AFRICAN GOLDFIELDS
-
-_A first adventure--Tarkwa--Once more Swanzy to the rescue--Women
-thoroughly contented, independent, and well-to-do--The agricultural
-wealth of the land--The best bungalow in West Africa--Crusade against
-the trees--Burnt in the furnaces--Prestea--The sick women--A ghastly
-hill--Eduaprim--A capable fellow-countrywoman--“Dollying” for
-gold--Obuasi--Beautiful gardens--75 per cent.--The sensible African
-snail._
-
-I was born and brought up on the goldfields. My first adventure--I
-don't remember it--was when my nurse, a strapping young emigrant from
-the Emerald Isle, lost me and herself upon the ranges, and the camp
-turned out to search, lest the warden's precious baby and her remarkably
-pretty nurse should spend an unhappy night in the bush. As a small
-girl, I watched the men wash the gold in their cradles, and I dirtied
-my pinafore when the rain turned the mullock heaps into slimy mud. As I
-grew older, I escorted strangers from the Old Country who wanted to go
-down the deep mines of Ballarat. I watched, perforce, the fluctuations
-of the share market, and men who knew told me that the rise and fall
-had very often nothing whatever to do with the output of gold; so that
-I grew up with the firmly fixed idea--it is still rather firmly
-fixed--that the most uninteresting industry in the world was goldmining.
-
-Wherefore was I not a bit keen on going to the gold mines of West
-Africa, and I only went to Tarkwa because I felt it would never do to
-come away not having seen an industry which I am told is going up by
-leaps and bounds. The question was, where could I go for quarters?
-There are no hotels as yet, and once more I am deeply indebted to Messrs
-Swanzy and their agent in the mining centre of the Gold Coast. He put me
-up and entertained me right royally, and not only did he show me round
-Tarkwa, but he saw to it that I should have every chance to see some of
-the other mines, Prestea and Eduaprim.
-
-[Illustration: 0464]
-
-Tarkwa is set in what we in Australia should call a gully, and the high
-hills rise up on either side, while the road, along which straggles the
-European town, runs at the bottom of the gully. For there are several
-towns in Tarkwa. There is the European town where are all the stores,
-the railway station, and the houses of the Government officials, and
-in this town there is some attempt at beautifying the place; some trees
-have been planted along the roadside, grass grows on the hillsides,
-whether by the grace of God or the grace of the town council I know not,
-and round most of the bungalows there is generally a sort of garden, and
-notably in one or two, where there are white women who have accompanied
-their husbands, quite promising beginnings of tropical gardens.
-
-There is the native town, bare and ugly, without a scrap of green, just
-streets cutting each other at right angles, and small houses, roofed
-with corrugated iron or thatch, and holding a teeming and mixed
-population that the mines gather together, and then every mine has its
-own village for its workers; for the labour difficulty has reached quite
-an acute stage in the goldfields, and the mines often import labour from
-the north, which they install in little villages, that are known by the
-name of the mine where the men work, and are generally ruled over by a
-white officer appointed by the mine. These villages, too, are about
-as bare and ugly as anything well could be that is surrounded by the
-glorious green hills and has the blue sky of Africa over it.
-
-Tarkwa gives the impression of a busy, thriving centre; trains rush
-along the gully and the hills echo their shrill whistles, the roadways
-are thronged with people, and the stores set out their goods in that
-open fashion that is half-eastern, so that the hesitating buyer may
-hesitate no longer but buy the richest thing in sight. In all my travels
-I never saw such gorgeously arrayed mammies as here. The black ladies'
-cloths, their blouses, and the silken kerchiefs with which they covered
-their heads, all gave the impression of having been carefully studied,
-and my host assured me they had. Many of them are rich, and in this
-comfortable country they are all of them self-supporting wives.
-They sell their wares, or march about the streets, happy, contented,
-important people, very sure of themselves. Let no one run away with the
-impression that these women are in any way down-trodden. They look very
-much the reverse. We may not approve of polygamy, but I am bound to
-say these women of Tarkwa were no down-trodden slaves. They looked like
-women who had exactly what they wanted, and, curiously enough whenever I
-think of thoroughly contented, thoroughly independent, well-to-do women,
-I think of those women in the goldmining centre of West Africa.
-
-My host told me they spent, comparatively speaking, enormous sums on
-their personal adornment, were exceedingly particular as to the shade
-and pattern of their cloths, and were decided that everything, cloth,
-blouse, and head kerchief, should tone properly. They lay in a large
-store of clothes too, and when Mr Crockett wrote the other day of “The
-Lady of the Hundred Dresses,” he might have been thinking of one of
-these Fanti women. The reason of this prosperity is of course easy to
-trace. The negro does not like working underground, for which few people
-I think will blame him, therefore high wages have to be paid, and
-these high wages have to be spent, and are spent lavishly, much to the
-advantage of these women traders.
-
-[Illustration: 0468]
-
-Because Tarkwa is a great centre of industry, Government have very
-wisely made it one of their agricultural stations, and there, set on
-a hill, and running down into rich alluvial flats, are gardens wherein
-grow many of the plants that will in the future contribute largely to
-the industrial development of the Colony. There is a rubber plantation,
-a great grove of dark trees already in bearing, plantations of bananas,
-pine-apples, hemp, and palm trees, and the director, set in his lonely
-little bungalow on the hilltop, rejoices over the wealth and fertility
-of the land, which he declares is not in her gold, but in her
-agricultural products which as yet we are but dimly realising, and then
-he mourns openly because the Government will not let him bring out his
-wife. “She would be ready to start in an hour if I might send for her,”
- he sighed, “and I would want nothing more. But I mayn't. Oh, think of
-the dreary days. And I could work so much better if she were here. I
-should want nothing else.”
-
-And I sympathised. Think of the dreary days for him, and the still more
-dreary days for her, for at least he has his work. It would surely I
-think pay the Government to give a bonus to the woman who proved that
-she could see her year out without complaint, and who was to her husband
-what a woman ought to be, a help and a comfort.
-
-Another thing in Tarkwa I shall never forget is Messrs Swanzy's
-bungalow, where I stayed for nearly a fortnight. My host had
-superintended the building of it himself, and it was ideal for a
-West-African bungalow. It was built of cement raised on arches above the
-ground; floors and walls were of cement. There was a very wide verandah
-that served as a sitting-room and dining-room, and the bedrooms, though
-they were divided from each other by stout walls of cement, were only
-shut off from the verandah by Venetian screens that could be folded
-right away. They did not begin till a foot above the floor, and ended
-six feet above it, consequently there was always a thorough draught of
-air, and Messrs Swanzy's bungalow at Tarkwa is about the only house I
-know in West Africa where one can sleep with as much comfort as if in
-the open air. Needless to say, they are not so foolish as to go in for
-mosquito-proof netting. They keep the mosquitoes down by keeping the
-place round neat and tidy, and though the verandah is enclosed with
-glass, it is done in such fashion that the windows may be thrown right
-open and do not hinder the free passage of air. Flies and mosquitoes
-there were, but that, when I was there, was attributed to the presence
-of the town rubbish tip on the next vacant allotment, and my host hoped
-to get it taken away. Why the Government had a town rubbish tip close to
-the handsomest bungalow in the Colony, I do not pretend to say. It was
-just one of those things that are always striking you as incongruous in
-West Africa. My host used to fret and fume at every evil fly that came
-through his windows, and, when I left, was threatening to stand a gang
-of Hausas round that tip with orders to kick anyone who desired to
-deposit any more rubbish there.
-
-[Illustration: 0472]
-
-It is hardly necessary to say there had been at the same time a great
-crusade against the trees in Tarkwa. But a short time ago the whole
-place had been dense forest, very difficult to work, and after the usual
-fashion of the English everyone set to work to demolish the forest trees
-as if they were the greatest enemies to civilisation. The mines, of
-course, I believe burn something like a hundred trees a day, and the
-softwood trees are no good to them. What their furnaces require are
-the splendid mahogany, the still harder kaku, a beautiful wood that is
-harder than anything but iron, and indeed any good hard-wood tree; the
-worth of the wood is no business of theirs. They consider the wealth of
-Africa lies beneath the soil, and they must get it out; wherefore
-into their furnaces goes everything burnable, even though the figured
-mahogany may be worth £1 a foot, and the tree be worth £1000. It is a
-pity, it is a grievous pity, but Tarkwa is certainly prosperous, and I
-suppose one cannot make omelettes, and look for chickens. Only I cannot
-help remembering that never in our time, nor in our children's time,
-nor their children's time, will the hills of Tarkwa be covered with such
-trees as she has ruthlessly consigned to the flames. Even the soft-wood
-trees such as the cotton, that might have added beauty to the slopes,
-have gone because an energetic doctor waged war upon them as shelterers
-of the mosquito, and the hill-sides lie in the blazing sun for close on
-twelve hours of a tropical day. Oh for a sensible, artistic German to
-come and see to the beautifying of Tarkwa, for never saw I a place that
-could lend itself more readily to the hand of an artist.
-
-But if Tarkwa is being ruthlessly treated, what shall I say of beautiful
-Prestea, which lies but a short railway journey right away in the heart
-of the hills. Prestea is a great mine, so large that the whole of the
-one hundred and eighty white people who make up the white town are
-employed upon it. It is so hilly that there are hardly any paths, and
-the people seem to move about on trolleys, winding in and out of the
-hills, and, it was reported once, one of the unhealthiest places in
-West Africa. The doctor very kindly gave me hospitality, and we promptly
-agreed to disagree on every subject. I hate to be ungracious to people
-who have been kind to me, but with all the will in the world I have to
-keep my own opinion, and my opinion was diametrically opposed to the
-doctor's. The nursing Sister who ran the hospital, a nice-looking,
-capable, sensible Scotch woman, whom it did my heart good to meet, was
-one of the few I have met who put the sickness of the average English
-woman in West Africa down to the same causes as I did.
-
-“They come from a class who have nothing to think of, and when they have
-nothing to do they naturally fall sick,” said she. “Every woman on this
-camp has been sent home this year.”
-
-I debated with her whether I should give my opinion of the climate to
-the world in my book. It meant I was up against every doctor in the
-place, who ought to know better than I, a stranger, and a sojourner.
-
-“If you don't,” said she, “someone else will come along presently and do
-it.”
-
-That decided me. I am doing it.
-
-[Illustration: 0476]
-
-This nursing Sister, while she had to have the hospital mosquito-proof,
-in deference to the doctor's opinion, sternly declined to have any such
-abomination anywhere near her little bungalow, and so the cool, fresh
-night air blew in through her great windows, and we had an extensive
-view of the glorious hillsides, all clothed in emerald green, and if a
-clammy white mist wrapped us close when we waked in the early morning so
-that we could not see beyond our own verandahs, the rolling away of that
-mist was a gorgeous sight, ever to be remembered.
-
-Needless to say, the doctor's house was carefully enclosed in
-mosquito-proof wire, and I dined in an oppressive atmosphere that nearly
-drove me distracted. The bungalow was set high on a hilltop, in the
-middle of a garden that should one day be beautiful, but he has of
-course cut down every native tree, and owing to the mosquito-proof wire
-we got no benefit from the cool breeze that was blowing outside. He took
-me to see the new native village he was building, a place that left an
-impression of corrugated iron and hard-baked clay. Trees, of course, and
-all vegetation were taboo, but I am bound in justice to say that the
-old village, a place teeming with inhabitants, drawn from all corners of
-West Africa, attracted by the lust for gold, was just as bare and ugly,
-and a good deal more unkempt.
-
-He took me out, and pointed out to me the principal hill in the centre
-of Prestea, on which are the mining manager's and other officials'
-houses, and he pointed it out with pride.
-
-“There's a nice clean hill for you.”
-
-The sun glared down fiercely on corrugated-iron roofs, the soil of the
-hill looked like a raw, red scar, and there was not so much as a blade
-of grass to be seen. I did not wonder that the unfortunate women of
-Prestea had gone home sick if they had been compelled to live in such a
-place.
-
-I said, “It's a horrible place. I never saw a beautiful place more
-utterly spoiled.”
-
-He looked at me with surprise, and his surprise was thoroughly genuine.
-“Why, what's the matter? It's nice and clean.”
-
-I pointed to the beautiful hills all round.
-
-“Mosquitoes,” said he, with a little snort for my ignorance.
-
-“But you want some shade?”
-
-He shook his head doubtfully.
-
-“You can't have trees. The boys would leave pots under them. Breeding
-places for mosquitoes.”
-
-He was my host, so I did not like to say all I felt.
-
-“I'd rather die of fever than sunstroke any day,” was the way it finally
-came out.
-
-“My dear lady,” he said judicially, as one who was correcting a
-long-standing error, “no one dies of fever in Africa.”
-
-“Exactly what I always maintain,” said I; “you, with your ghastly hills
-are arranging for them to die of sunstroke.”
-
-But he only reiterated that they could not have the trees, because
-the boys would leave pots and pans under them, and so turn them into
-mosquito traps. Personally, I didn't arrive at the logic of that,
-because it has never seemed to me to require trees for boys to leave
-pots about. The theory was, I suppose, that they would not walk out
-into the hot sun, while they might be tempted to do work and make litter
-under shade-trees. And again I did not wonder that there were no women
-save the nursing Sister in Prestea. To live on that hill and keep one's
-health would have been next door to impossible.
-
-“It doesn't matter,” said the doctor, “we don't want women in West
-Africa. I keep my wife at home. It isn't a white man's country.”
-
-[Illustration: 0480]
-
-But I'm bound to say that they very often arrange it shall not be a
-white man's and emphatically not a white woman's country. It suits
-somebody's plan that the country should have an evil reputation.
-
-Goldfields, too, must never be judged in the same category as one judges
-the ordinary settlements in a country. When I was a tiny child I learned
-to discriminate, and to know that “diggers” must not be judged by
-the rules that guide the conduct of ordinary men. The population of a
-goldfield are a wild and reckless lot, and they lead wild and utterly
-reckless lives, and die in places where other people manage to live
-happily enough.
-
-When the gold first “broke out” in Victoria, my father was Gold
-Commissioner on the Buckland River, among the mountains in the
-north-eastern district, and I have heard him tell how the men used to
-die like flies of “colonial” fever, and the theory was that there was
-some emanation from the dense vegetation that was all around them.
-Nowadays the Buckland is one of the healthiest spots in a very healthy
-country, and no one ever gets fever of any sort there. Now I do not wish
-to say that West Africa is one of the healthiest countries in the world,
-but I do say that men very very often work their own undoing.
-
-“You should see Tarkwa,” said a man to me, who was much of my way of
-thinking, “when an alcoholic wave has passed over it!”
-
-Eduaprim was another mine I went to see from Tarkwa. But it was in
-direct contrast to Prestea, though it too was in the heart of the forest
-country. No railway led to it; I had to go by hammock, and so I got my
-first taste of forest travelling, and enjoyed it immensely.
-
-It is a solitary mine about nine miles from Tarkwa, and I started off
-early in the morning, and noticed as I went that the industry is, for
-good or ill, clearing the forests of West Africa, opening up the dark
-places, even as it did in my country over fifty years ago. Along the
-hillsides we went to Eduaprim, past mines and clearings for mining
-villages; sometimes the road was cut, a narrow track on the side of
-the hill, with the land rising up on one side and falling sheer on the
-other, sometimes a little river had to be bridged, and the road went on
-tunnel-like through the forest that must disappear before the furnaces,
-but at last I arrived at the top of the hill, and on it, commanding
-a wonderful view over the surrounding country, stood a bungalow, in a
-garden that looked over the tops of range upon range of high hills. I
-saw a storm come sweeping across the country, break and divide at the
-hilltop upon which I stood, and pass on, veiling the green hills in
-mist, which rolled away from the hills behind, leaving them smiling and
-washed and clean under a blue sky. If for no other sight than that, that
-journey into the hills was worth making.
-
-[Illustration: 0484]
-
-The wife of the manager of the mine was a fellow-countrywoman of mine.
-She liked West Africa, kept her health there, and felt towards it very
-much as I did. No one likes great heat. The unchanging temperature is
-rather difficult to bear for one unaccustomed to it, but she thought it
-might be managed by a woman interested in her work and her husband, and
-as for the other discomforts--like me, she smiled at them. “The people
-who grumble should live in Australia,” said she, “and do their own
-work, cooking, washing, scrubbing. Do it for a week with the temperature
-averaging 100 degrees in the shade, and they wouldn't grumble at West
-Africa, and wouldn't dream of being sick.” And yet this contented woman
-must have led a very lonely life. Some wandering man connected with the
-mines, or a stray Commissioner, would come to see her occasionally, and
-the news of the world would come on men's heads from Tarkwa. And, of
-course, I suppose there was always the mine, which was her husband's
-livelihood. They took me into the bush behind the bungalow and showed me
-a great mahogany tree they had cut down, and then they showed me what
-I had seen many and many a time in my life before, but never in
-Africa--men washing the sand for gold. They were “dollying” it first,
-that is crushing the hard stone in iron vessels and then washing it, and
-the “show,” I could see for myself, was very good.
-
-I lingered in Eduaprim; the charm of talking with a woman who found joy
-in making a home in the wilderness was not to be lightly foregone, and I
-only went when I remembered that it was the rainy season, the roads were
-bad, and Tarkwa was away over those forbidding hills.
-
-And from Tarkwa I went up the line to Obuasi.
-
-This railway line that runs from Sekondi to Kumasi, the capital of
-Ashanti, is a wonderful specimen of its class. Every day sees some
-improvement made, but, being a reasonable being, I cannot help
-wondering what sort of engineers laid it out. It presents no engineering
-difficulties, but it was extremely costly, and meanders round and round
-like a corkscrew. They are engaged now in straightening it, but still
-they say that when the guard wants a light for his pipe all he has to
-do is to lean out of his van and get it from the engine. It was laid
-through dense forest, but the forest is going rapidly, the trees being
-used up for fuel. In the early days, too, these trees were a menace, for
-again and again, when a fierce tornado swept across the land, the line
-would be blocked by fallen trees, a casualty that grows less and less
-frequent as the forest recedes. When first the line was opened they tell
-me all passengers were notified that they must bring food and
-bedding, as the company could not guarantee their being taken to their
-destination. There is also the story of the distracted but pious negro
-station-master, who telegraphed to headquarters, “Train lost, but by
-God's help hope to find it.” It is a single line of 168 miles, so I
-conclude his trust in the Deity was not misplaced.
-
-Obuasi, on the borders of Ashanti, is the great mine of West Africa,
-a mine that pays, I think, something like 75 per cent, on its original
-shares, and even at their present value pays 12 per cent. It is enough
-to set everyone looking for gold in West Africa.
-
-And like Prestea, Obuasi is the mine, and the mine only. There are,
-I think, between eighty and one hundred white men, all, save the few
-Government officials and storekeepers, in some way or another connected
-with the mine, and the place at night looks like a jewel set in the
-midst of the hills, for it is lighted by electricity. Every comfort of
-civilisation seems to be here, save and except the white woman, who is
-conspicuous by her absence. “We want no white women,” seems to be the
-general opinion; an opinion, I deeply regret to say, warranted by my
-experience of the average English woman who goes to West Africa.
-
-[Illustration: 0488]
-
-The place is all hill and valley, European bungalows built on the hills,
-embowered generally in charming gardens such as one sees seldom in the
-Colony, and the native villages--for there are about five thousand black
-men on the books of the mine--in the valleys. There are miles of little
-tramway railways too, handling about 35,000 tons a month, more, they
-tell me, than the Government railway does, and the mine pays Government
-a royalty of £25,000 a year.
-
-Obuasi is a fascinating, beautiful place; I should have liked to have
-spent a month there, but it is not savagery. It is as civilised in many
-ways as London itself. I stayed in the mining manager's bungalow, and am
-very grateful to him for his hospitality, and the manager's bungalow is
-a most palatial place, set on the top of a high hill in the midst of
-a beautiful garden. Palm and mango and grape-fruit trees, flamboyant,
-palms, dahlias, corallita, crotons, and roses, the most beautiful roses
-in the world, red, white, yellow, pink, everywhere; a perfect glory of
-roses is his garden, and the view from the verandah is delightful. His
-wide and spacious rooms are panelled with the most beautiful native
-woods, and looking at it with the eyes of a passer-by, I could see
-nothing but interest in the life of the man who had put in a year there.
-He will object strongly, I know, to my writing in praise of anything
-West-African, and say what can I know about it in a brief tour. True
-enough, what can I know? But at least I have seen many lands, and I am
-capable of making comparisons.
-
-Every man I met here pointed out to me the evils of life in Africa.
-
-“You make the very worst of it,” said I, and proceeded to tell the story
-of a bridge party in a Coast town that began at three o'clock on Friday
-afternoon and ended up at ten o'clock on Monday morning.
-
-“And if those men have fever,” said I, feeling I had clinched my
-argument, “they will set it down to the beastly climate.”
-
-“So it is,” said my opponent emphatically; “we could always do that sort
-of thing in Buluwayo.”
-
-I thereby got the deepest respect for the climate of Buluwayo, and
-a most doubtful estimate of the character of the pioneer Englishman.
-Perhaps I look on these things with a woman's narrow outlook, but I'm
-not a bit sorry for the men who cannot dissipate without paying for it
-in Africa. I heartily wish them plenty of fever.
-
-The manager took me on a trolley along one of these little lines, right
-away into the hills. This was a new form of progression. A seat for two
-people was fixed on a platform and pushed along the line, uphill or on
-the flat, by three or four negroes, and fairly flew by its own weight
-downhill. It was a delightful mode of progression, and as we flew along,
-Xi my host, while pointing out the sights, endeavoured to convert me,
-not to the faith that West Africa was unfit for the white woman, that
-would have been impossible, but that the mining industry was a very
-great one and most useful to the Colony. And here he succeeded.
-
-[Illustration: 0492]
-
-I admired the forests and regretted their going, but he showed me the
-farms that had taken their place. Bananas and maize and cassada, said he
-truly enough, were far more valuable to the people than the great, dark
-forests they had cleared away--ten people could live now where one had
-lived before; and so we rolled on till we came to the Justice mine,
-where all the hillside seemed to be worked, a mine that has been paying
-£10,000 a month for the last three years. Truly, it is a wonderful
-place, that Obuasi mine with its nine shafts, an industry in the heart
-of savage Africa. They pay £11,000 a week in wages, and when I was
-thinking how closely in touch it was with civilisation, the manager told
-me how the chiefs had just raised a great agitation against the mine
-because it worked on Friday, their sacred day. They complained that the
-snails were so shocked at this act of sacrilege that they were actually
-leaving the district. Now the snails in Ashanti are very important
-people, boundaries are always calculated with reference to them, and if
-a chief can prove that his men are in the habit of gathering snails over
-a certain area, it is proof positive that he holds jurisdiction over
-that land. That the snails should leave the district shocked would be
-a national calamity. The African snail looks like an enormous whelk, he
-haunts the Ashanti forest, and is at his best just at the commencement
-of the rains, when he begins to grow fat and succulent, but is not yet
-too gross and slimy. He is hunted for assiduously, and all along the
-forest paths may be seen men, laden with sticks on which are impaled
-snails drawn from their shells, dried, and smoked. Luckily also these
-African snails appear to be very sensible, and when it was put to them
-that the mines could not possibly stop working on a Friday, but a small
-monetary tribute would be paid to them regularly through the principal
-chief, they amiably consented at once to stay and meet their final end,
-as a self-respecting snail should, by impalement on a stick.
-
-[Illustration: 0497]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII--A NEW TRADING CENTRE
-
-_The siege of Kumasi--The Governor in 1900--The rebellion--The
-friendlies under the walls of the fort--The Ashanti warrior of ten years
-ago and the trader of to-day--The chances of the people in the fort--The
-retreat--The gallant men who conducted it--The men who were left
-behind--The rescue--Kumasi of to-day--The trade that comes to Kumasi as
-the trade of Britain came to London in the days of Augustus--The Chief
-Commissioner--The men needed to rule West Africa._
-
-And when I had been to Obuasi nothing remained but to go up the line
-and see Kumasi and go as far beyond as the time at my disposal would
-allow.
-
-I wonder if English-speaking people have forgotten yet the siege of
-Kumasi. For me, I shall never forget, and it stands out specially in
-my mind because I know some of the actors, and now I have seen the fort
-where the little tragedy took place; for, put it what way you will, it
-was a tragedy, for though the principals escaped, some with well-merited
-honour, the minor actors died, died like flies, and no man knoweth even
-their names.
-
-It was dark when I reached Kumasi and got out on to the platform and was
-met by the kind cantonment magistrate, put into a hammock, and carried
-up to the fort, and was there received by the Chief Commissioner and his
-pretty bride, one of the two white women who make Kumasi their home, I
-had seen many forts, old forts along the Coast, but this fort was put
-up in 1896, and in 1900 its inmates were fighting for their lives. In
-it were shut up the Governor, his wife, two or three unfortunate Basel
-missionary women, a handful of troops, and all the other white people in
-the place. Standing on the verandah overlooking the town to-day, with
-a piano playing soft music and a dining-table within reach set out with
-damask and cut-glass and flowers and silver, it is hard to believe that
-those times are only ten years back. I have heard men talk of those
-days, and they are reticent; there are always things it seems they think
-they had better not tell, and I gather that the then Governor was not
-very much beloved, and that no one put much faith in him. The rebellion
-started somewhere to the north, and by the time it reached Kumasi it was
-too late to fly, for it was a good eight days' hard march to the Coast
-through dense forest. The nearest possible safety outside that fort lay
-beyond the River Prah, at least three or four days' march away. Every
-white man and many of the black who were not Ashantis had taken refuge
-in the fort, which was crowded to suffocation, and outside, in front
-of the fort, camped the friendlies, safe to a certain extent under the
-white man's guns, but dying slowly because the white man could not give
-what he had not got himself--food; and here they died, died of disease
-and hunger and wounds, and the reek of their dying poisoned the air so
-that the white man, starving behind his high walls of cement, was like
-to have his end accelerated by those who stood by him.
-
-And out beyond, where the English town now stands, with broad streets
-planted with palms and mangoes and _ficus_, were the encampments of
-fierce Ashanti warriors, their cloths wound round their middles, their
-hair brushed fiercely back from their foreheads, their powder-flasks and
-bullet-bags slung across their shoulders, and their long Danes in their
-hands, the locks carefully covered with a shield of pigskin. The same
-man, very often the very same individual, walks about the streets of
-Kumasi to-day, and if he wears a tourist cap and a shirt, torn, ragged,
-and dirty, he is at least a peaceful citizen, and ten years hence he
-will probably, like the Creoles in Sierra Leone, be talking of “going
-home.” But it was ghastly in the fort then. It was small and it was
-crowded to suffocation. The nearest help was at Cape Coast, nigh on 200
-miles away, and between lay the dense forest that no man lightly dared.
-The Ashanti too was the warrior of the Coast, and the difficulty was
-even to get carriers who would help to move a force against him. Shut
-up in the fort there they looked out and waited for help and waited for
-death that ever seemed coming closer and closer.
-
-Kumasi is set in a hollow, and round it, pressing in on every side, was
-the great forest. Away to the south went the road to Cape Coast, but it
-was but a track kept open with the greatest difficulty, and hidden in
-the depths of the forest on either hand were these same warriors. Truly
-the chances of the people in the fort seemed small, small indeed. And
-day after day passed and there was no sign of help. Provisions were
-getting low, ammunition was running short, and from the Ashanti no mercy
-could be expected. It was war to the death. Any man or woman who fell
-into their hands could expect nothing but torture. I gather that his
-advisers would have had the Governor start for the Coast at once on the
-outbreak of hostilities, but he could not make up his mind, and lingered
-and lingered, hoping for the help that did not, that could not come.
-No one has ever had a word of praise for that Governor, though very
-gallantly the men under him came out of it. Starvation and death stared
-them all in the face; the gallant little garrison, heavily handicapped
-as it was, could certainly hold out but little longer, and the penalty
-of conquest was death--death, ghastly and horrible.
-
-At last the Governor gave in and they started, a forlorn little company,
-for the River Prah, which had generally set a bound to Ashanti raids.
-The Governor's wife was carried in a hammock, but the Basel missionary
-women, who had escaped with only the clothes they stood up in, walked,
-for the hammock-boys were too weak to carry them, and they had to
-tramp through mud and swamp. The soldiers did their best to protect the
-forlorn company, the friendlies crowded after, a tumultuous, disorderly
-crew fleeing before their enemies, and those same enemies hung on their
-flanks, scrambled through the forest, ruthlessly cut off any stragglers,
-and poured volleys from their long Danes into the retreating company.
-Knowing the forest, I wonder that one man ever escaped alive to tell the
-tale; that the principal actors did, only shows that the Ashanti was
-not the practised warrior the Coast had always counted him. Had those
-Ashantis been the lean Pathan from the hills of northern India, not a
-solitary man would have lived to tell the tale, and the retreat from
-Kumasi would have taken its place with some of those pitiful stories of
-the Afghan Border. But one thing the Ashanti is not, he is not a good
-marksman. He blazes away with his long Dane, content to make a terrific
-row without making quite sure that every bullet has reached its billet.
-And so, thanks to the bad marksmanship of the Ashantis, that little
-company got through.
-
-But let no man think I am in any way disparaging the men who fought
-here, who by their gallantry brought the Governor and his wife through.
-Major Armitage and his comrades were brave men of whom England may well
-be proud, men worthy to take their places beside Blake and Hawkins and
-all the gallant Britons whose names are inscribed on the roll of fame;
-they fought against desperate odds, they were cruelly hampered by the
-helpless people under their care, and they stuck beside them, though by
-so doing they risked not only death, but death by ghastly torture. Some
-of them died, some of them got through--they are with us still, young
-men, men in the prime of life--and when we tell our children tales
-of the way England won her colonies, we may well tell how that little
-company left the fort of Kumasi, every man who was wise with cyanide of
-potassium in his pocket, and fought his way down to the Prah.
-
-But even though they went south they were not going to abandon Kumasi,
-which had been won at the cost of so much blood, and in that fort were
-left behind three white men and a company of native soldiers. All in
-good time the relief must come, and till then they must hold it.
-
-A verandah hangs round the fort nowadays that the piping times of peace
-have come, but still upstairs in the rooms above are the platforms
-for the gun-carriages, and I climbed up on them and walked along the
-verandahs and wondered how those men must have felt who had looked out
-from the self-same place ten years ago. If no help came, if waiting were
-unduly prolonged, they would die, die like rats in a hole, and the men
-in their companies were dying daily. They were faithful, those dark
-soldiers of the Empire, but they were dying, dying of disease and
-hunger, and their officers could not help them, for were they not slowly
-dying themselves? Rumours there were of the relief force, but they were
-only rumours, and the spectres of disease and starvation grew daily.
-Could they hold out? Could they hold out? The tale has been told again
-and again, and will probably be told yet again in English story, and at
-last when they had well-nigh given up to despair they heard the sound
-of English guns, so different from the explosions of the long Danes,
-and presently there was the call of the bugles, and out into the open
-trotted a little fox terrier, the advance guard of the men who had come
-to save Kumasi.
-
-And now the change. Kumasi has a train from the coast port of Sekondi
-every day, it has a population that exceeds that of the capital of the
-Gold Coast itself, every day the forest is receding and in the streets
-are growing up great buildings that mark only the beginning of a trade
-that is already making the wise wonder how it was when wealth lay on the
-ground for the picking up, England, who had it all within her grasp, was
-amiable enough to allow the greater portion of this wonderful land to
-fall to the lot of the French and Germans.
-
-The forest used to close Kumasi in on every side. It is set in a hollow,
-and the tall trees and luxuriant green in the days that I have just
-spoken of threatened to overwhelm it. Now that sensation has passed
-away. Whatever Kumasi may be in the future, to-day it is a busy centre
-of life and trade. Where the fetish tree stood, the ground beneath its
-branches soaked with human blood and strewn with human bones, is now the
-centre of the town where the great buildings of the merchant princes
-of West Africa are rising. They are fine, but they are a blot on the
-landscape for all that. The nation that prides itself on being the
-colonising nation of the earth never makes any preparation for the
-expansion of its territory or the growth of its trade, so here in this
-conquered country, bought at the cost of so much sweat and blood,
-the authorities are allowing to go up, in the very heart of the town
-buildings, very handsome buildings without doubt, so close together that
-in a tropical land where fresh air is life itself they are preparing to
-take toll of the health of the unfortunates who will have to dwell and
-work there. But beyond that one grave mistake Kumasi promises to be a
-very pretty place as well as a very important one. Its wide, red roads,
-smooth and well-kept, are planted with trees, mangoes and palms; its
-bungalows are set well apart, surrounded by trees and shrubs and lawns,
-their red-brown roofs and verandahs toning picturesquely with the
-prevailing green.
-
-[Illustration:0507]
-
-Curious it is when one thinks of its history to see the white painted
-sign-posts on which are recorded the names of the streets. There is
-“Kingsway” for one, and “Stewart-avenue,” after the man who deeply loved
-the country, for another, and there are at least two great roads that
-lead away to the fruitful country in the north, roads that push their
-way through the dense forest and must even compel the admiration of our
-friends the Germans, those champion road-makers. And down those roads
-comes all the wonderful trade of Kumasi, not as the trade of London, of
-course, but as the trade of London was, perhaps, when Augustus ruled at
-Rome. The trade of the world comes to London nowadays, the trade of
-the back-country came to London then, and so does the trade of all the
-country round come to the Ashanti capital. Its streets are thronged with
-all manner of peoples, dark, of course, for the ruling whites are but
-an inconsiderable handful, and only the Chief Commissioner and one
-missionary have been daring enough to bring their wives.
-
-Ashanti is a conquered country, and it seems to me it has got just
-the right sort of Government, a Government most exactly suited to the
-requirements of the negro in his present state of advancement. What a
-negro community requires is a benevolent despotism, but as a rule the
-British Government, with its feeling for the rights of the individual,
-does not see its way to give it such a Government. But Ashanti was
-conquered at great cost, wherefore as yet England has still to think of
-the rights of the white men who dwell there as against the rights of
-the black man, and the result to me, an onlooker, appears to be most
-satisfactory for both white and black. Of course, such a Government
-requires to administrate not only excellent men, not only honest and
-trustworthy men, but men who have the interests of the country at heart,
-and who devote themselves to it, and such men she has got in the Chief
-Commissioner, Mr Fuller, and the subordinates chosen by him. Only an
-onlooker am I, a woman, a passer-by, but as a passer-by I could not but
-be struck by the difference between the feeling in the Gold Coast Colony
-and the feeling in Ashanti. The whole tone of thought was different.
-Everywhere on the Gold Coast men met me with the question, “What did
-I think of this poisonous country? Wasn't it a rotten place?” and they
-seemed bitterly disappointed if I did not confirm their worst blame.
-
-[Illustration: 0511]
-
-But in Ashanti it was different. The very clerks in the mercantile
-houses had some good word to say for the country, and were anxious that
-I should appreciate it and speak well of it, and this I can but set down
-to the example and guidance of such men as the Chief Commissioner and
-the men he chooses to serve under him. Had the rest of West Africa
-always had such broad-minded, clever, interested men at the head of
-affairs, I think we should have heard a great deal less about its
-unhealthiness and a great deal more about the productiveness of the
-country. Since I have seen German methods I am more than thankful that
-I have been to Ashanti and learned that my own country is quite equal
-to doing as well, if not beating them at their own methods. The Ashanti
-himself, the truculent warrior of ten years ago, has under the paternal
-and sympathetic Government of this Chief Commissioner become a man of
-peace. If he has not beaten his long Dane gun into a ploughshare he has
-at least taken very kindly to trade and is pleased, nay eager that the
-white man should dwell in his country. He stalks about Kumasi in his
-brightly coloured, toga-like cloth still, very sure that he is a man
-of great importance among the tribes, and his chiefs march through the
-streets in chairs on men's heads, with tom-toms beating, immense gaily
-coloured umbrellas twirling, their silken' cloths a brilliant spot in
-the brilliant sunshine, their rich gold ornaments marking them off from
-the common herd, and all their people who are not Christian still give
-them unquestioned devotion. But Kumasi, as I said, is the centre of a
-great trade, and the native town, which is alongside but quite apart
-from the European town, is packed with shops, shops that are really very
-much in the nature of stalls, for there are no fronts to them, and the
-goods are exposed to the street, where all manner of things that are
-attractive to the native are set out.
-
-And here one gathers what is attractive to the native. First and
-foremost, perhaps, are the necessities of life, the things that the
-white man has made absolute necessaries. First among them, I think,
-would be kerosene and bread, so everywhere, in market-place and shop, or
-even just outside a house, you may see ordinary wine and whisky bottles
-full of kerosene, and rows and rows of loaves of bread. Then there comes
-men's clothing--hideous shirts and uglier trousers, tourist caps that
-are the last cry in hooliganism, and boots, buttoned and shiny, that
-would make an angel weep. Alas! and alas! The Ashanti in his native
-state, very sure of himself, has a certain dignity about him even as
-must have had the old Roman. You might not have liked the old Roman,
-probably you would not unless he chose to make himself pleasant, but you
-could not but recognise the fact that he was no nonentity, and so it
-is with the Ashanti till he puts on European garments. Then how are the
-mighty fallen! for like all negroes, in the garb of civilisation, he
-is commonplace when he is not grotesque. What they are to wear I cannot
-say, but the better-class among them seem to realise this, for I have
-often heard it said, not only in Ashanti but in other parts of the
-Coast: “The Chief may not wear European clothes.”
-
-[Illustration: 0515]
-
-And beside clothes in the native shops are hurricane lanterns, ordinary
-cheap kerosene lamps, and sewing machines which the men work far more
-often then the women, accordions, mouth harmoniums, and cotton goods
-in the strange and weird patterns that Manchester thinks most likely
-to attract the native eye. I have seen brooms and brushes and dustpans
-printed in brilliant purple on a blue ground, and I have seen the
-outspread fingers of a great hand in scarlet on a black ground. But
-mostly there is nothing of very great interest in these shops,
-just European goods of the commonest, cheapest description supplied
-apparently with the view of educating the native eye in all that is
-ugliest and most reprehensible in civilisation.
-
-There are horses in Kumasi, for the forest and undergrowth have been
-cleared away sufficiently to destroy the tsetse fly, and so most
-evenings, when the heat of the day has passed, the Chief Commissioner
-and his wife go for a ride, and on occasions many of the soldiermen play
-polo and hold race-meetings, but as yet there is no wheeled traffic
-in the streets. Most of the goods are carried on men's heads, and the
-roadways are crowded. There are women with loads on their heads and
-generally children on their backs, walking as if the world belonged
-to them, though in truth they are little better than their husbands'
-slaves. There are soldiers all in khaki, with little green caps like
-condensed fezes, lor the place is a great military camp and the black
-soldier swaggers through the street; there are policemen in blue
-uniforms with red fezes, their feet bare like those of the soldiers, and
-their legs bound in dark-blue putties; and there are black men from all
-corners of West Africa. There are the Kroo boys, those labourers of
-the Coast, with the dark-blue freedom mark tattooed on their foreheads,
-never carrying anything on their heads, but pushing and pulling heavily
-laden carts, in gangs that vary from four to a dozen, and their
-clothing is the cast-off clothing of the white man; there are Hausas and
-Wangaras, than whom no man can carry heavier loads, and they wear not
-a flowing cloth like the Ashanti, but a long, shirt-like garment not
-unlike the smock of the country labourer. It is narrower and longer, but
-is usually decorated with the same elaborate needlework about the neck
-and shoulders; if their legs are not bare they wear Arab trousers, full
-above and tight about their feet, and the flapping of their heelless
-slippers makes a clack-clack as they walk. There are Yorubas, dressed
-much the same, only with little caps like a child's Dutch bonnet, and
-there are even men from the far north, with blue turbans and the lower
-part of their faces veiled. Far beyond the dense forest lies their home,
-away possibly in French territory, but the trade is coming to this new
-city of the Batouri, and they wander down with the cattle or horses. For
-all the cattle and horses come down through the forest, driven hastily
-and fast because of the deadly tsetse, and many must perish by the
-way. A herd of the humped, long-horned cattle come wearily through the
-streets. Whatever they may have been once, there is no spirit left in
-them now, for they have come down that long road from the north; they
-have fed sparely by the way, and they are destined for the feeding of
-the population that are swarming into Kumasi to work the mines in the
-south.
-
-[Illustration: 0519]
-
-Three towns are here in Kumasi: the European quarter, the Ashanti town,
-and the Mohammedan town or _zonga_. Here all the carrying trade that is
-not done by Government is arranged for--by a woman. Here the houses are
-small and unattractive, nondescript native huts built by people who are
-only sojourners in the land, come but to make money, ready to return to
-their own land in the north the moment it is made. And they sit by the
-roadside with little things to sell. Food-stuffs often, balls of kenki
-white as snow, yams and cassada, which is the root of which we make
-tapioca, cobs of Indian corn, and, of course, stink-fish that comes
-all the way from the Coast and is highly prized as a food, and does not
-appear to induce ptomaine poisoning in African stomachs. Some of these
-dainties are set out on brass trays made in Birmingham; others on wooden
-platters and on plates delicately woven in various patterns of grass
-dyed in many colours. But most things they have they are ready to sell,
-for the negro has great trading instincts, and that trading instinct it
-is that has made him so easy to hold once he is conquered.
-
-Kumasi is peaceful enough now, and the only reminder of the bad days of
-ten years back is the fort just above the native town, but it looks down
-now across a smooth green lawn, on which are some great, shady trees,
-where chiefs assembled whom I photographed. One was a great fetish chief
-with gold ornaments upon his head and upon his feet, and knowledge
-of enough magic, had this been the fifteenth century instead of the
-twentieth, to drive the white man and all his following back to the sea
-from whence he came; but it is the twentieth, and he is wise enough to
-know it, and he flings all the weight of his authority into the scales
-with the British raj. But at the gate of the fort still stands a guard
-of black soldiers in all the glory of scarlet and yellow which stands
-for gold, for the Chief Commissioner lives here, and in a land where a
-chief is of such importance it is necessary to keep up a certain amount
-of state, and the Chief Commissioner ruling over this country and
-receiving obeisance from the chiefs, clad in their gorgeous silken
-cloths, laden with golden jewellery, men looked up to by their followers
-as half-divine, must feel something like a Roman proconsul of old
-carrying the eagles into savage lands, and yet allowing those savages
-as far as possible to govern themselves by their own laws. Africa has
-always been the unknown land, but now at last the light is being let
-into dark places, the French have regenerated Dahomey, and the railway
-comes to Kumasi. I sat on that verandah and thought of the old days that
-were only ten years back, and learned much from the Commissioner, and I
-felt that civilisation was coming by leaps and bounds to Ashanti, and
-if it be true, as old tradition has it, that a house to be firmly built
-must have a living man beneath its foundation stone, then must the
-future of Kumasi be assured, for its foundations were well and truly
-laid in rivers of human blood.
-
-[Illustration: 0523]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII--IN THE HEART OF THE RUBBER COUNTRY
-
-_Bound for Sunyani--The awe-inspiring-forest--The road through the
-forest--The people upon that road--Ofinsu and an Ashanti house--Rather a
-public bedroom--Potsikrom--A night of fear--Sandflies--Attractive black
-babies--A great show at Bechem--A most important person--The Hausa
-who went in fear of his life--Coronation night at Tanosu--A teetotal
-party--The medical officer's views on trees--Beyond the road--Sunyani._
-
-I talked to the Commissioner, and those talks with him made me want to
-go somewhere out into the wilds. Kumasi was beginning to look strangely
-civilised to me. It was a great trading-centre, and presently it would
-be as well known, it seemed to me, as Alexandria or Cairo, or at the
-other end of the Continent, Buluwayo. I should like to have gone into
-the Northern Territories, but the rainy season was upon us, and if that
-did not daunt me--and it would not have done so--I had to consider the
-time. I ought to be back in London. I had intended to be away for six
-months, and now it was close on eight since I had come out of the mouth
-of the Mersey.
-
-“Go to Sunyani,” said the Chief Commissioner, “and go on to Odumase,
-where the rising began at the beginning of the century. You will be the
-first white woman to go there, and I think you will find it worth your
-while.”
-
-So I interviewed the head of the transport service, and by his kindness
-was supplied with seventeen carriers, and one hot day in June started
-north.
-
-They had doubts, these kind friends of mine, about my capabilities as a
-traveller, at least they feared that something might happen to me while
-I was in their country, and they told me that a medical officer was
-starting north for Sunyam that day and would go with me.
-
-I looked up the medical officer and found him in the midst of packages
-that he was taking with him beyond civilisation to last for a year. He
-was most courteous, but it seemed to me that he felt the presence of a
-woman a responsibility, and I was so sure of myself, hated to be counted
-a nuisance, that when he said he had intended to go only as far as Sansu
-that night, I expressed my intention of going on to Ofinsu, and hinted
-that he might catch me up next morning if he could.
-
-So by myself I set out into the heart of the rubber country north of
-Kumasi. I was fairly beyond civilisation now. Ten years ago this country
-was in open rebellion against English rule, and even now there are no
-European stores there; there is no bread, no kerosene, no gin--those
-first necessities of an oncoming civilisation; it was simply the wild
-heart of the rubber country, unchanged for hundreds of years. It has
-been known, but it has not been lightly visited. It has been a country
-to be shunned and talked of with bated breath as “the land of darkness.”
- The desert might be dared, the surf might be ventured, the black man
-might be defied, but the gloom of the forest the white man feared and
-entered not except upon compulsion. The Nile has given up its secrets,
-the Sahara yields to cultivation, but still in Africa are there places
-where the all-conquering white man is dwarfed, and one of them is the
-great forest that lies north of the capital of Ashanti.
-
-[Illustration: 0527]
-
-Here we know not the meaning of the word forest. England's forests
-are delightful woods where the deer dwell in peace, where the rabbits
-scutter through the fern and undergrowth, and where the children may go
-for a summer's holiday; in Australia are trees close-growing and tall;
-but in West Africa the forest has a life and being of its own. It is
-not a thing of yesterday or of ten years back or of fifty years. Those
-mighty trees that dwarf all other trees in the world have taken hundreds
-of years to their growth. When a slight young girl came to the throne of
-England, capturing a nation's chivalry by her youth and innocence, the
-mahogany and kaku and odoum trees were old and staid monarchs of the
-forest. When the first of the Georges came over from Hanover, unwelcome,
-but the nation's last hope, they were young and slim but already tall
-trees stretching up their crowns to the brilliant sunlight that is above
-the gloom, and now at last, when the fifth of that name reigns over
-them, at last is their sanctuary invaded and the seclusion that is
-theirs shall be theirs no longer. For already the axe is laid to their
-roots, and through the awe-inspiring forest runs a narrow roadway kept
-clear by what must be almost superhuman labour, and along that roadway,
-the beginning of the end, the sign that marks the peaceful conquest of
-the savage, that marks also the downfall of the forest though it is not
-even whispered among the trees that scorn them yet, flows a perpetual
-stream of traffic, men, women, and children. Backwards and forwards from
-the north to Kumasi and the sea they come, and they bear on their heads,
-going north, corrugated iron and cotton goods, kerosene, and flour, and
-chairs, all the trifles that the advance of civilisation makes absolute
-necessaries; and coming down they bring all in their season, hides, and
-heavy cakes of rubber, and sticks of dried snails, and all the other
-articles of native produce that a certain peace has made marketable
-along the way or in the markets of Kumasi.
-
-The spell was upon me the moment I left the town. That road is like
-nothing else in the world. The hammock and the carriers were dwarfed by
-the great roots and buttresses of the trees to tiny, crawling ants,
-and overhead was a narrow strip of blue sky where the sunlight might
-be seen, but only at noon did that sunlight reach the roadway below. We
-travelled in a shadow pleasant in that heat; and on either side, close
-on either side, were the great trees. Looking down the road I could see
-them straight as a die, tall pillars, white and brown; ahead of me and
-close at hand the mighty buttresses that supported those pillars rose up
-to the height of perhaps ten men before the tree was fairly started, a
-tall trunk with branches that began to spread, it seemed to me, hundreds
-of feet above the ground. And between those tree-trunks was all manner
-of undergrowth, and all were bound and matted together with thickly
-growing creepers and vines. It was impossible to step an inch from that
-cleared path. There would be no getting lost in the bush, for it would
-be almost impossible for the unpractised hand to get into the bush.
-There is nothing to be seen but the brown, winding roadway, the dense
-green of the undergrowth, and the trunks of the trees tall and straight
-as Nelson's column and brown or white against the prevailing green.
-And there are all shades of green, from that so pale that it is almost
-golden to that so dark it is almost black, but never a flower breaks the
-monotony, the monotony that is not monotony but dignity, and the flowers
-of an English spring or an autumn in Australia would but cheapen the
-forest of the Gold Coast. There must have been orchids, for sometimes
-as I passed their rich, sensuous smell would come to my nostrils, but I
-only knew they were there by my sense of smell just as sometimes I smelt
-a strong smell of mice, and knew, though I could not see them, that
-somewhere in the depths of the gloom were hidden away a great colony of
-fruitarian bats that would not come out into the daylight.
-
-[Illustration: 0531]
-
-When there was a village there was, of course, a clearing, and on the
-first day I passed several villages until at last I came to Ofinsu,
-where I had arranged to spend the night. Ofinsu is on the banks of a
-river, and the road comes out of the forest and passes broadly between
-two rows of mud-walled houses with steeply pitched, high-thatched roofs,
-and my carriers raced along and stopped opposite a small wooden door in
-a mud wall and rapped hard.
-
-For the first time on my travels I had really excellent carriers. They
-were Krepis from beyond the German border, slight, dark men with slim
-wrists and ankles, and crosses cut as tribal marks on each cheek, and
-they were cheerful, smiling, willing. When I remembered my before-time
-tribulations I could hardly believe these were actually carriers who
-were going along so steadily and well, who were always up before me in
-the morning, and in as soon as I was at night, who never lingered, never
-grumbled, never complained, but were simply ideal servants such as I had
-never had before in my life save perhaps for a day, as when I went to
-Palime from Ho, and such as I shall count myself extremely lucky if I
-ever have again.
-
-“We _have_ got good carriers,” the transport officer had said, “though
-you don't seem to believe it”; and he proved his words, for never have
-I travelled more comfortably than I did on that one hundred and sixty
-miles to Sunyani and back.
-
-The knocking at the little door brought a black lady with a shaven head
-and a blue cloth wrapped round her middle. She was a woman past all
-beauty, and very little was left to the imagination, but she threw open
-the door and indicated that we were to enter, and she looked at me very
-curiously. Never before had a white woman come to Ofinsu.
-
-I entered, and this was my first introduction to an Ashanti house, a
-house that seems to me singularly suited to the climate and people. It
-is passing away, they tell me, and I for one am sorry.
-
-We went into a courtyard open to the sky, and round it, raised at least
-two feet from the ground, were the rooms, I suppose I must call them,
-but though there was a roof overhead and walls on three sides, walls
-without windows, the fourth side was open to the central courtyard. When
-I entered the place was crowded; Hausas or Wangaras--I never could
-tell one from the other--were settled down on the platforms, and their
-loads--long bundles made up for carrying on the head--were all over the
-place. I said nothing. I am generally for the superiority of the white
-man and exact all the deference that is my due, but clearly these people
-were here first, and it seemed to me they had it by right, only how I
-was to bathe and sleep in a house where everything was so public among
-such a crowd I did not know.
-
-[Illustration: 0535]
-
-But my hostess had other views. No sooner had I entered than she began
-clearing out the former guests, and in less than a quarter of an hour
-the place that had seemed so crowded was empty, swept and garnished for
-my accommodation. My bed was put up on one platform, my table and
-chair on another. “Get table quick and chair, so can play cards,” Grant
-instructed my headman, and behind, through a little door that may be
-seen in the picture, was a place that answered for a kitchen, and a cup
-of tea was quickly produced for my comfort. It was weird going to sleep
-there in the open, but it was very, very delightful. I rigged up in the
-corner of one of the rooms--I have no other names for them--with ground
-sheet and rugs, a little shelter where I could have my bath in comfort,
-but I undressed without a qualm and went to bed and slept the sleep of
-the woman who has been in the open air the livelong day and who, happily
-for herself, can indulge her taste and sleep in the open air all night.
-
-I took a picture of my open-air bedroom with my valuable headman and
-two small children who belonged to the household I had invaded in the
-foreground. But that was before I went to bed at night. At earliest
-dawn, before the dawn in fact, my headman was at my bedside wanting to
-pack up and start.
-
-That night's lodging cost me one shilling and threepence. The headman
-told me one shilling was enough, so I bestowed the extra threepence as
-a dash on the shaven old woman who had done all for me that my servants
-could not do, and she seemed so delighted that I was left wondering what
-the Wan-garas who had given place to me had paid.
-
-Just as the sun was rising we crossed the Ofin River, and I found there
-assembled the entire population of the village to look at the strange
-sight--a perfectly courteous, polite people who never crushed or crowded
-though they looked their fill. I can only hope I was a success as a
-show, for certainly I attracted a great deal of attention, but of course
-I had no means of knowing whether I came up to expectations. It took
-some time to get my goods and followers across the river in the crank
-canoe which is only used in the rainy season, for usually the Ofin River
-can be waded, and while I waited on the farther shore I looked with
-interest at the other people who were waiting for their loads to be
-ferried across.
-
-The men were Hausas or Wangaras, some wearing turbans, some with shaven
-heads, and clad in long, straight, shirt-like garments, while the women
-excited my deepest compassion. They may have been the men's wives, I
-know not; but by whatever name they were called they were slaves if ever
-I saw slaves. They had very little on besides a dirty, earthen-coloured
-cloth hitched round their loins, their dark faces were brutalised and
-depressed with that speechless depression that hardly realises its own
-woes, and their dusty hair that looked as if it had not been washed for
-years was generally twisted into short, thick, dusty looking plaits
-that were pressed downwards by the weight of the load they one and all
-carried. They carried children, too, on their backs, tiny babies that
-must have been born on the journey, or lusty youngsters that were a
-load in themselves. But a Hausa will carry an enormous load
-himself--sometimes up to 240 lbs.--so it is not likely he will have
-much consideration for his women. It may be, of course, that their looks
-belied them, but it seemed to me that they cared little whether Fate
-drowned them there in the swirling brown waters of the river or brought
-them safely through to the other side to tramp on, footsore, tired,
-weary, heartsick--if these creatures who looked like dumb beasts had
-life enough in them to be heartsick--to their destination three months
-away in the north.
-
-[Illustration: 0539]
-
-They waited there as I passed, and they looked at me dully and without
-interest; presently their loads would be brought across and they would
-be on the march again, and I went on pitying to Potsikrom.
-
-The forest was getting denser and denser. There were fewer towns and
-clearings on this day--nothing but the great trees and the narrow
-ribbon of road with the strip of blue sky far, far away. It was very
-awe-inspiring, the forest. I should have been unspeakably terrified
-to pass through it alone, but my chattering men took away all sense of
-loneliness. There was not much to see, but yet the eternal trees had a
-most wonderful charm. It was like being in some lofty cathedral where
-the very air was pulsating with the thought of great and unseen things
-beyond the comprehension of the puny mortals who dared rashly to venture
-within the precincts. No wonder the Ashanti gave human sacrifices.
-Sacrifice, we all know, is the basis of all faith, and what lesser thing
-than a man could be offered in so great a sanctuary?
-
-And that afternoon we came to Potsikrom, a little village deep in the
-forest.
-
-The rest-house was a mud building with a thatch roof somewhat
-dilapidated, and built not after the comfortable, suitable Ashanti
-fashion, but after the European fashion, possibly in deference to some
-foolish European who probably regarded all the country as “poisonous.”
- That is to say, it was divided into two rooms with holes in the clay,
-very small holes for windows, and, saving grace, a door at each side of
-one of the rooms. In the corner of one of these impossible rooms I saw,
-to my surprise, a camp-bed put up, and for the moment thought it was
-mine. Then I saw a suit of striped pyjamas which certainly were not
-mine, and realised it must belong to the medical officer whom I had
-left at Kumasi the day before. His boys had stolen a march ahead, and,
-thinking to do better than the white woman, had put up his bed in
-what they considered the most desirable place, thinking doubtless that
-possession was nine points of the law.
-
-I certainly didn't desire that corner, but I felt my authority must be
-maintained, and so I asked:
-
-“Who that bed belong to?”
-
-“Massa,” said a grinning boy.
-
-“Take it down,” said I.
-
-Up came the Chief's clerk. All these Ashanti chiefs now have a clerk who
-can write a little English and so communicate for them with Government,
-and the clerk, interested as he was to see a white woman, was very
-certain in his own mind that the white man was the more important
-person. He probably regarded me as his wife come on ahead, and said that
-the Chief had another house for me.
-
-I didn't like that rest-house, but pride has suffered pain since the
-beginning of the world, so I distinctly declared my intention of staying
-there and ordered them to clear out the medical officer's bed forthwith.
-
-My boys were very anxious to assert my superiority and out went that bed
-in the twinkling of an eye, and my men proceeded to put up mine between
-the two doors, and, having had a table set out for tea, I awaited the
-arrival of the medical officer with a quiet mind.
-
-[Illustration: 0543]
-
-Presently he arrived and we laughed together over the struggle for
-supremacy between our men, and pledged our future good fellowship in
-tea. The Chief sent me in eggs and chickens and yams as dash, the people
-came and looked at me, and presently the evening fell and I had my
-evening meal and went to bed.
-
-And when I went to bed I repented me of having stood on my dignity. What
-on earth had I wanted the rest-house for? It was the last house in the
-village, a little apart from the rest, the great solemn forest was all
-around me, and I was all alone, for Grant and the men had retired with
-the darkness to somewhere in the village. My bed stood under a roof
-certainly, but I should not have dared put up the door of the rest-house
-for fear of making it too close, and so it meant, of course, that I was
-sleeping with nothing between me and that awe-inspiring forest. I do not
-know what I was afraid of any more than I know what I feared at Anum,
-but I was afraid of something intangible, born of the weird stillness
-and the gloom. I put a hurricane lantern at the door to scare away any
-wandering pigs and goats--I did not really in my heart think there would
-be any wild beasts--and then I proceeded to put in a most unpleasant
-night. First there was too much light, it fell all over my bed, and
-though I did not like it, I still felt a comfortable sense of safety in
-the light.
-
-Then I began to itch. I twisted and turned and rolled over, and the
-more I moved about the more uncomfortable I became. I thought to myself,
-“There, it serves you right! You are always nursing the fat little black
-babies and now you have got some horrible disease.” The thought was by
-no means consoling, but I was being driven so frantic that I began to
-think that no disease could really advance with such rapidity. Besides,
-all sorts of great insects were banging themselves against my mosquito
-curtains, so I came to the conclusion that probably the tiny sandflies
-were also attracted by the light and were getting through the meshes.
-There was nothing for it but to screw up my courage, get out of bed, and
-take that lantern away. I did it, crept back to bed again, listened
-for a little to the weird noises of the night, was relieved to find
-the appalling irritation showed no signs of increasing, and finally,
-in spite of my fears, dropped off into so sound a sleep that I was only
-awakened by Grant endeavouring to drive away by fair words my energetic
-headman, who was evidently debating whether it was not his bounden duty
-to clear me away, bed and all.
-
-I told the doctor my experiences in the morning, and he confirmed my
-supposition that it was only sandflies and not horrible disease that had
-troubled my slumbers.
-
-Very much relieved was I, for the little black babies are dear little
-round souls, and I should have been loath not to take them when their
-mothers trusted them to me. I should hesitate much before I took a baby
-of the peasant class in this country, but there, in the heart of Africa,
-it is always safe to cuddle the little, round, naked thing that has for
-all clothing a few beads or a charm or two tied to its hair. They are
-always clean and soft and round and chubby, and they do not invariably
-yell with terror at the white woman, though I am bound to say they often
-do.
-
-[Illustration: 0547]
-
-We were in the heart of the forest now. There were but one or two
-villages and only one or two places that could be dignified by the name
-of clearings. At one, as big, perhaps, as a tiny London square, three or
-four huts had been erected, and an old woman was making pots. They were
-all set out in the sun to dry, and the good lady was very nervous when
-I wanted to take her photograph. She consented at last, and sat there
-shivering, in her hand a great snail shell which she used to ornament
-the pots. They were such a lonely little company, so cut off from all
-their kind, and we must have been such wondrous figures breaking in on
-their life and then passing on again. I gave them the last bright new
-pennies I had, and left them wondering.
-
-And so we went on again through the forest, past Insuta, until, as the
-evening was falling, we created immense astonishment by arriving at
-Bechem.
-
-Here again the rest-house was built uncomfortably, European fashion,
-and again my only alternative was to have my bed put up between the
-two doors so that I might get plenty of air. But at Bechem the town was
-full. It was a big town set in the midst of a great clearing, and to-day
-it was swarming with people, for the next day was Coronation Day, and
-the Chief had sent out word that all his sub-chiefs were to come in
-and celebrate. And here was another excitement--a white woman! How many
-chiefs came to see me that day I really would be afraid to say, and the
-Chief sent me in by way of dash a sheep, a couple of chickens, piles
-of plantains, yams, eggs, and all manner of native edibles. It was very
-amusing to stand there in the midst of the swarming people, receiving
-these offerings. Of course they all have to be returned with presents
-of value, and I was thankful they did not think me important enough to
-receive a cow; as it was it cost me a pound to get out of Bechem, but my
-carriers were delighted for I presented them with the sheep. He was an
-elderly ram with long horns, and I think he was the only person who did
-not thoroughly enjoy the entertainment.
-
-The Chief sent in word through his interpreter to say that the people
-had never seen a white woman before; there were many people here because
-of the Coronation, might they come and “look”? Never have I been so
-frankly regarded as a show. There was nothing for it but to go outside
-and let them look, and once more I can only hope they were satisfied. I
-had never seen such crowds of natives before, crowds that had not
-seen much of the white man and as yet were not arrayed in his cast-off
-clothes. All round us long Dane guns were popping off in honour of the
-great occasion, and tom-toms were beating half the night. When I waked
-next morning--I slept in the passage to get plenty of air, but I was
-not afraid because the rest-house was near the centre of the village--I
-found that at the earliest glimpse of dawn long lines of people had
-assembled outside my house and were patiently waiting for me to come
-out. I had my breakfast in the little courtyard behind the house, the
-people peeping through the fence of palm-poles, and when we set out on
-our way the Chief, in all the glory of silken robes and great umbrella,
-came a little way to do us honour.
-
-Never, not even when I was married, have I been such an important
-person. The tom-toms beat, the umbrellas twirled, long Danes went off,
-horns blew, and as far as the eye could see were the villagers trailing
-away behind us.
-
-[Illustration: 0551]
-
-The Chief escorted us for about a mile, we walking in the cool, misty
-morning, and then he turned, slipped his cloth from his left shoulder as
-a mark of respect, shook hands, wished us a prosperous journey, and bid
-us good-bye like the courteous gentleman he was, and we went on into the
-mighty forest again.
-
-It is always cool in the early morning, and very pleasant here among
-the trees, so the medical officer and I walked on chatting about Bechem,
-when we came upon another little party of travellers, who stopped us
-and asked help. It was a Hausa with a couple of women, his wives in all
-probability, and a couple of other men, presumably his slaves. He was a
-tall, strong man in the prime of life, upon whose shaven head were deep
-lines graven by the loads he had carried. Our headman, who could speak
-Hausa, interpreted.
-
-Men were following him from Nkwanta, he said, to kill him. A child had
-died in the town, and they said he “had put bad medicine upon it,” that
-is, had bewitched it, and the penalty was death.
-
-It was rather startling in this twentieth century to be brought face
-to face with the actors in such a tragedy, especially when we were
-powerless to help. We were unarmed and had with us only carriers and
-servants; it was the prestige of the white man that was carrying us
-through. The Hausa was going away from Nkwanta as fast as he possibly
-could, and apparently he did not want to trust himself within its
-bounds, even under the protection of a white man. He declined to come
-back with us, and what could we do? The medical officer, I think, did
-all that he could when he promised to report things to the Commissioner
-at Sunyani, and recommended the Hausa, since he would not avail himself
-of our protection, to get the Chiefs clerk at Bechem to write his
-account of the affair to Sunyani and Kumasi.
-
-And so in the early morning we went our way, and he went his, and
-he disappeared into the gloom of the forest, a much troubled man. I
-wondered how he would ever get back to his home in the north, for there
-is but this one road, and that road leads through Nkwanta. He would only
-dare it, I think, with a large body of his own people, for who is to
-report to Government if a travelling Hausa should disappear?
-
-We put in a long day that day, and in the full heat of the noontide
-arrived at Nkwanta, a most important place, whose Chief rules over a
-large tract of country. We came upon the butchers' stalls first, all
-kept by Hausas or Wangaras. This country, on account of the tsetse fly,
-will allow but few cattle to live, and these men from the north drive
-them down, kill them, and sell them, for the Ashantis are rich, and like
-to buy meat. I had hardly taken a photograph of these stalls, when from
-all sides I saw the people assembling, and presently the Chief appeared.
-He brought offerings, a sheep, fowls, eggs; yams, and plantains; but
-this time I pointed out that I was on a journey, and could not take the
-presents, as I had no means of carrying them. He was very anxious
-indeed we should stay for that night; said he, they were celebrating the
-Coronation, and there would be a big dance. I went into his house and
-took a photograph of the moulded clay that ornaments the walls, and a
-small slave-boy was proud to stand in the corner so as to give life to
-the picture, and I think Nkwanta was sorry we elected to go on. I was a
-little sorry myself afterwards, for as we passed along the forest path
-we met sub-chiefs going in to the Coronation ceremonies, men carried
-high in their hammock-chairs, followed by a motley assemblage of men and
-women, bearing long Danes, horns, drums, household utensils, and all the
-paraphernalia of a barbaric chief.
-
-[Illustration: 0555]
-
-And at last we came to a place where the forest was ruthlessly cleared
-for about a hundred feet on either side of the road, and the tropical
-sun poured down in all its fierceness. I did not like it. The mighty
-monarch s of the forest had simply been murdered and left to lie, and
-already Nature was busily veiling them with curtains of greenery. Why
-those trees had been so slaughtered I do not know. That the forest would
-have been better for thinning, I have no doubt, but why not leave the
-beautiful trees? I am sure the Germans would have done so, but the
-Englishman seems to have no mean. If there are too many trees he cuts
-them all down and makes a desert. The medical officer of course did not
-agree with me.
-
-“Must get rid of the trees,” said he with enthusiasm.
-
-I looked at him. He was a young fellow, pleasant and kindly, sallowed
-by life in the Tropics. He wore a drab-coloured helmet, coming well down
-over his back, which was further protected by having a quilted spinal
-pad fastened down the back of his bush shirt.
-
-“Why,” I said, “do you wear so big a helmet, and a spinal pad?”
-
-He looked at me tolerantly, as if he had always known that woman asked
-silly questions, and I was only confirming a preconceived idea. But he
-was in a way my host, so he was patient with me.
-
-“To keep off the sun, of course,” said he.
-
-“The trees,” I began; and then he felt I really was silly, for every
-medical man knows the proper thing is to get rid of the trees, and have
-some artificial form of shade. At least, that is what I gathered from
-his subsequent explanation. The idea is apparently to cut down all the
-forest trees, and when the place is bare, they can be replaced by fresh
-trees, planted exactly where they ought to grow. Since they are not
-English trees it does not matter how beautiful they are, and that they
-take at least two hundred and fifty years to come to perfection is a
-matter of small moment. So the medical officer and I disagreed, till we
-came to Tanosu, a little town on the Tano River.
-
-The Chief here had just built a new rest-house, thank heaven, on the
-comfortable Ashanti pattern, and I was given it by the courteous medical
-officer, who disapproved of me on trees, while he sought shelter in the
-village.
-
-The people were very curious. The Chief, who it appears is a poor
-man, sent the usual presents, and then the people came and looked, and
-looked, till after about a couple of hours of it I grew weary, and shut
-the doors of the courtyard. Then they applied their eyes to every crank
-and cranny, and I had an uneasy feeling that whatever I did unseen eyes
-were following me. I wanted to rejoice in the Coronation, so I asked the
-doctor to come to dinner and celebrate, but unfortunately my kitchen
-was at least a quarter of a mile away, and there were such terrible long
-waits between the courses that again and again I had to ask my guest if
-he would not go and see what had happened. We finished at last, and I
-wanted to drink the King's health in whisky-and-soda which was the only
-drink I had, but my guest was a teetotaller, so I sent for the servants,
-only to be informed that every one of them refrained from liquor. And as
-a rule I approve so highly of temperance. Only for this once did I find
-it rather depressing. However, we stood up and drank the King's health,
-and I expect the eyes that were watching us wondered what on earth we
-were doing. They performed on tom-toms after that, and I fell asleep in
-the pleasant, damp night air, to a sort of barbaric fantasia on horns
-and drums.
-
-[Illustration: 0559]
-
-We were nearing our journey's end. Early next morning we crossed the
-Tano River, which is full of sacred fish, and the medical officer took
-my photograph in the stream, and I took his, as he crossed on his boy's
-shoulders, and when we crossed to the other side we found we had left
-every vestige of the road, the good road that had so surprised me,
-behind. We went along a track now, a track that wound in and out in the
-dense, tropical forest. Generally the trees met overhead and we marched
-through a tunnel, the ground beneath our feet was often a quagmire, and
-if we could not see the sun often, neither could we feel the rain that
-fell on the foliage above our heads. On either side we could see
-nothing but the great trunks and buttresses of the trees, and the dense
-undergrowth. Possibly to go for days and days through a forest like this
-might give a sense of oppression, but to go as I did, for but a short
-time, was like peeping into a new world. Never a bird or beast I saw,
-nothing but occasionally a long stream of driver ants, winding like a
-band of cut jet across the path. And so we went on and on, through the
-solemn forest, till at last it cleared a little. There was the sky
-above again, and then no forest, but on my left cornfields and the brown
-splash of a native town, and in front a clearing, with the rim of the
-forest again in the distance, and right ahead, on the top of the gently
-sloping rise, the European bungalows of Sunyani. I had arrived, the
-first white woman who had come so far off the beaten track.
-
-[Illustration: 0563]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV--AN OUTPOST
-
-_The white men at Sunyani--Contrast between civilisation and
-barbarism--The little fort--The suffrage movement--“I am as mud in the
-sight of my people!”--The girl who did not wish to marry the King--The
-heavy loads carried by the Hausas--The danger of stubbing a toe--An
-Ashanti welcome--The Chief's soul--The unpleasant duties of the Chief's
-soul--The blood of sheep versus the blood of men--A courteous lady of
-Odumase--The Commissioners of Ashanti--Difficulties of crossing flooded
-streams--One way of carrying fowls--The last night in the wilds._
-
-At Sunyani there are usually six white men, namely a Provincial
-Commissioner, a medical officer--the relief had come up with me--three
-soldiermen, and a non-commissioned officer, and I think my sympathies
-are rather with that colour sergeant. The other men are all of one
-class, but he must be utterly alone. The houses and the men were equally
-delightful. I was taken into a mud-built house with a thatched roof,
-large and spacious. There were, of course, only holes for windows and
-doors, and the floors were of beaten earth, but it was most wonderfully
-comfortable and homelike. The Commissioner was a great gardener, my
-room was a bower of roses, and there were books, the newest books and
-magazines, everywhere. I should like to have stayed a month at Sunyani.
-Think of it! everything had to be carried eighty miles on men's heads,
-through a dense forest, across all manner of watercourses, where the
-white ant refused to allow a bridge to remain more than a fortnight, and
-yet one felt in the midst of civilisation. They told me I was brave
-to come there, but where was the hardship? none, none. It was all
-delightful. But there _was_ another side. Close to the European
-bungalows was a little fort to which the men might retire in case of
-danger. They did not seem to think that they would ever be likely to
-require it, but there it was, and I, who had seen the old-time forts
-along the Coast, looked at this one with interest. It had a ditch round
-it, and walls of mud, and these were further strengthened by pointed
-stakes, bound together with barbed wire. An unpleasant place for a naked
-man to rush would be the little fort at Sunyani. Close against its wall
-so as to shelter the office, and yet outside so as not to embarrass the
-people, is the post and telegraph office, and so fast is civilisation
-coming to that outpost, that they take there for stamps, telegrams, and
-postal orders something like fourteen pounds a week.
-
-I wandered round seeing everything, from the company of Waffs,
-exercising in the morning, to the hospital compound where the wives of
-the dresser and the wives of the patients were busily engaged in making
-fu-fu. For this is a primitive place, and here are no nursing Sisters
-and European comforts, and I must say the patients seem to do very well
-without them.
-
-And only ten years ago, here and behind at Odumase, was the centre
-of the great rebellion against the white man's power; but things are
-moving, moving quickly. Only a week before I went up Messrs Swanzy had
-opened, with a black agent in charge, a store in the native town, and
-the day I arrived the agent brought his takings to the Commissioner for
-safe keeping in the treasury within the fort. It was such a tiny place,
-that store, simply a corrugated-iron shack, wherein were sold cotton
-cloths, odds and ends of cheap fancy goods, such as might be supposed to
-take the eye of the native, and possibly a little gin. Everything had
-to come on men's heads, so the wares were restricted, but the agent was
-well pleased with his enterprise, for that first week he had taken over
-£150, and this from a people who were utterly unaccustomed to buying.
-
-[Illustration: 0567]
-
-“Things are changing, things are changing fast,” said the Commissioner,
-and then he laughed and said that what bothered him most was the advance
-the suffrage movement was making. It wasn't yet militant, but he didn't
-know how it was going to end. The women had actually arrived at some
-idea of their own value to the community, and refused to marry the men
-their fathers had provided, if they did not happen to meet with their
-approval. Again and again a Chief would come to the Commissioner--a girl
-had declined to marry the man chosen for her, her father had appealed
-to the Chief, and the young lady, relying on the support of the British
-Government, had defied them both.
-
-“If this woman do not marry the man I tell her to, then am I as mud in
-the sight of my people!” the Chief would say, flinging out protesting
-hands, and the Commissioner was very often as puzzled as he was.
-
-On one occasion he came down to his court to find sitting there a
-good-looking girl of about seventeen, with a baby on her back. She
-waited patiently all through the sitting of the court, and then, when
-he had time to give attention to her, explained herself. She had a
-complaint to make. The King, or head Chief, had married her. Now the
-Commissioner was puzzled to know why this already much-married man had
-burdened himself with a wife who manifestly did not want him, and why
-the lady objected to a regal alliance. The King was brief and to the
-point. He considered himself a much injured man. The girl's parents had
-betrothed her to a man in her childhood, and when she grew up she did
-not like him, and preferring someone else, had declined to marry
-him. The King had been appealed to, but still she defied them, so,
-willy-nilly, to prevent further trouble, he had married her himself.
-
-How that case ended I do not know. But I asked one question: “Whose
-is the baby?” And the baby it appeared was child to the man whom her
-parents and the King had rejected, so that Nature had settled the matter
-for them all. Whoever had her there was no getting over that baby.
-
-Sunyani is one of the great halting places for the Hausas and Wangaras
-who come down from Wenchi, so on the French border and here I was
-introduced into great compounds, where the men who bring down cattle
-and horses and other goods from the north take up their abode, and
-rest before they start on their wearisome journey through the forest to
-Kumasi. I had come through in five days, but these men generally take
-very much longer. The Hausa carries tremendously heavy loads, so heavy
-that he cannot by himself lift it to his head, and therefore he always
-carries a forked stick, and resting his load on this, rests it also in
-the fork of a tree, and so slips out from underneath it. Again and again
-on our way up had we come across men thus resting their heavy loads. He
-must walk warily too, for they say so heavy is the load that the Hausa
-who stubs his toe breaks his neck. Slowly he goes, for time as yet is
-of no consequence in West Africa. A certain sum he expects to make,
-and whether he takes three months or six months to make it is as yet a
-matter of small moment to the black man, apparently, whatever his race.
-
-[Illustration: 0572]
-
-After I had been all round Sunyani, and dined at the mess, and inspected
-the fort and the hospital, they arranged for me to go to Odumase, five
-miles away.
-
-Odumase is on the extreme northern border of Ashanti, and in fact the
-inhabitants are not Ashanti at all, calling themselves after their own
-town, but it was here that the rising that overwhelmed Kumasi in 1900-1
-was engineered and had its birth. Here, as a beginning, they took sixty
-unfortunate Krepi traders, bound them to a tree, and did them slowly to
-death with all manner of tortures, cutting a finger off one day, a toe
-the next, an arm perhaps the next, and leaving the unfortunate victims
-to suffer by the insects and the sun. And here, when they had taken
-him, they brought back the instigator of that rebellion, and showed him
-captive to his own people. He was no coward, whatever his sins, and he
-stood forth and exhorted his people to rescue him, reviling the white
-men, and spitting upon them. But his people were awed by the white man's
-troops, and they let him be taken down to Kumasi, where he was
-tried, and hanged, not for fighting against the British raj, but for
-cold-blooded murder.
-
-So to Odumase Mr Fell took me, explaining that because I was the first
-white woman to go there, the people would greet me in Ashanti fashion,
-and I was not to be afraid.
-
-It was well he explained. Long before we could see the town, running
-along the forest path came the Ashanti warriors to meet me, and they
-came with yells and shouts, firing off their long Danes, so that
-presently I could see nothing but grey smoke, and I could hear nothing
-much either for the yells and shouts, and blowing of horns, and beating
-of tom-toms. It is just as well to explain an Ashanti welcome, else
-it is apt to be terrifying, for had I not been told I certainly should
-never have realised that a lot of guns pointing at me from every
-conceivable angle and spouting fire and smoke, were emblems of goodwill.
-But they were; and then I was introduced to the chiefs, and took their
-photographs. And now I have an awful confession to make. I have taken so
-many Ashanti chiefs that I do not know t'other from which. They were all
-clad in the most gorgeous silken robes, woven in the country, in them
-all the colours of the rainbow, and they were all profusely decorated
-with golden ornaments. They had great rings like stars and catfish on
-their fingers, they had all manner of gold ornaments on their heads,
-round their necks, round their arms, and on their legs, and they had
-many symbolical staffs with gold heads carried round them. Always, of
-course, they sat under a great umbrella, and their attendants too wore
-gold ornaments. Some of the latter were known as their souls, and the
-Chiefs soul wore on his breast a great plate of gold. What his duties
-are now I do not know, I think he is King's messenger, but in the old
-times, which are about ten years back, his duties were more onerous. He
-was beloved of the Chief, and lived a luxurious life, but he could not
-survive his Chief. When his master died, his sun was set, and he was
-either killed or buried alive with him. Moreover, if the Chief had an
-unpleasant message to a neighbouring chief, he sent his soul to carry
-it, and if that chief did not like the message, and desired war, he
-promptly slew the messenger, put his jaw-bone in a cleft stick and sent
-it back. Altogether the Chiefs soul was by no means sure of a happy
-life, and on the whole I think must infinitely prefer the _pax
-Britannica_.
-
-It takes a little time though before peace is appreciated. The last time
-Mr Fell had been to Nkwanta, the big town I had passed through, he found
-the place swimming in blood, and many stools reeking in it. It was only
-sheep's blood luckily, for Nkwanta had quarrelled with a sub-chief, and
-this was celebrating his reconciliation.
-
-“If the white man not be here,” said Nkwanta through his interpreter,
-“plenty men go die to-day.”
-
-“Oh, sheep are just as good,” said the Provincial Commissioner.
-
-“Well perhaps,” said Nkwanta, but there was no ring of conviction in his
-tones.
-
-Odumase the white men almost razed to the ground as punishment for the
-part it took in the great rebellion, but it is fast going up again. Many
-houses are built, ugly and after the white man's fashion, and many more
-houses are building. We passed one old man diligently making swish, that
-is kneading earth and water into sort of rough bricks for the walls,
-and I promptly took a photograph of him, for it seemed to me rather
-remarkable to see him working when all the rest of the place was looking
-at the white woman. And then I saw an old woman with shaven head and no
-ornaments whatever; she was thin and worn, and I was sorry for her. “No
-one cares for old women here,” I thought, I believe mistakenly, so I
-called her over and bestowed on her the munificent dole of threepence.
-She took my hand in both hers and bowed herself almost to the ground in
-gratitude or thanks, and I felt that comfortable glow that comes over us
-when we have done a good action.
-
-I was a fool. There are no poor in West Africa, and she was quite as
-great a lady as I was, only more courteous. As I left Odumase she came
-forward with a small girl beside her, and from that girl's head she
-took a large platter of most magnificent plantains, ripe and ready for
-eating, which she with deep obeisance laid at my feet. If I could give
-presents so could she, and she did it with much more dignity. Still, I
-flatter myself she _did_ like that threepenny bit I was very very loath
-to leave Sunyani. It was a place on the very outskirts of the Empire,
-and the highest civilisation and barbarism mingled. It must be lonely of
-course, intensely lonely at times, but it must be at the same time most
-interesting to carve a province out of a wilderness, to make roads and
-arrange for a trade that is growing.
-
-They are wonderfully enthusiastic all the Commissioners in Ashanti, and
-when I praise German methods, I always want to exempt Ashanti, for here
-all the Commissioners, following in the footsteps of their Chief,
-seem to work together, and work with love. In the very country
-where roadmaking seems the most difficult, roadmaking goes on. The
-Commissioner at Sunyani had sent to the King of Warn telling him he
-wanted three hundred men to make a road to the Tano River, and the King
-of Warn sent word, “Certainly”; he was sending a thousand, and I left
-the Commissioner wondering what on earth he was to do for tools. So is
-civilisation coming to Ashanti, not by a great upheaval or desperate
-change, but by their own methods, and the wise men who rule over them,
-rule by means of their own chiefs. I have no words strong enough to
-express my admiration for those Ashanti Commissioners and the men I
-met there in the forest. We differed only, I think, on the subject of
-treefelling, and possibly had I had opportunity to learn more about
-things, I might have found excuses even for that.
-
-[Illustration: 0581]
-
-The rainy season was upon us, and it was time for me to go back. The
-medical officer, who had just been relieved, was coming down with me,
-and this medical officer was very sick with a poisoned hand. It was
-my last trek in the bush, and I should have liked to linger, but the
-thought of that bad hand made me go faster, for I would not keep him
-from help longer than I could help. So we retraced our steps exactly,
-doing in four days what I had taken five to do on the way up, and this
-was the more remarkable because now it rained. It rained heavens hard,
-and the little streams that our men had carried us through quite
-easily on the way up, were now great, rushing rivers that sometimes we
-negotiated with a canoe, and sometimes laboriously got over with the aid
-of a log. It really is no joke crossing a flooded African stream on a
-slimy log. I took a picture of one, with the patient Wangara crossing.
-Then my men carried me in my hammock to the log, and with some little
-difficulty I got out of that hammock on to it. I had to scramble to my
-feet, and the man beside me made me understand that I had better not
-fall over, as on the other side the water was deep enough to drown me.
-I walked very gingerly, because the water beneath looked unpleasantly
-muddy, up that tree-trunk, scrambled somehow round the root and down the
-other branch, till at last I got into water shallow enough to allow of
-my being transferred to my hammock and carried to dry land, there to
-sit and watch my goods and chattels coming across the same way. I felt
-a wretch too, for it had taken close on twenty men, more or less, to
-get me across without injury, and yet here were a company of Wangaras
-or Hausas, and the patient women had loads on their heads and babies on
-their backs. No one worried about them.
-
-For perhaps the first time in my life I was more than content with that
-station in life into which it had pleased my God to call me. I do not
-think I could wish my worst enemy a harder fate than to be a Wangara
-woman on trek, unless perhaps I was extra bitter, and wished him to
-taste life as an African fowl. That must be truly a cruel existence. He
-scratches for a living, and every man's hand is against him. I used to
-feel sometimes as if I were aiding and abetting, for I received on this
-journey so many dashes of fowls that neither I nor the medical officer
-could possibly eat them all, and so our servants came in for them. More
-than once I have come across Grant sitting resting by the roadside with
-a couple of unfortunate fowls tied to his toes. In Grant's position I
-should have been anything but happy, but he did not seem to mind, and as
-I never saw the procession _en route_, I was left in doubt as to whether
-he carried them, or insisted on their walking after him. I saw that he
-had rice for them, and told him to give them water, but I dare say he
-did not trouble.
-
-[Illustration: 0585]
-
-The last night out, my last night in the bush I fear me for many a long
-day, we stopped at a village called Fu-fu, and I went to the rest-house,
-which was built European fashion, and was on the edge of the forest, at
-some distance from the village.
-
-I found my men putting up my bed in a room where all the air came
-through rather a small hole in the mud wall, and I objected.
-
-“Where?” said my patient headman, who after nearly a fortnight had
-failed to fathom the white woman's vagaries.
-
-There was a verandah facing the town and a verandah facing the forest,
-and I promptly chose the bush side as lending itself more to privacy.
-Very vehemently that headman protested.
-
-“It no be fit, Ma, it no be fit. Bush close too much”; so at length I
-gave in, and had the bed put up on the verandah facing the town. On the
-other end, I decided, the medical officer and I would chop. For we had
-been most friendly coming down, and had had all our meals together.
-
-Before dinner I think the whole of the women of that village had been
-to see me, and had eaten up the very last of my biscuits, but I did
-not mind, for was it not the end of the journey, and they were so
-interested, and so smiling, and so nice. We had dinner, and we burned up
-the last of the whisky to make a flare over the plum-pudding; and then
-the medical officer wished me good night and wended his way to his house
-somewhere in the town, Grant and the cook betook themselves to another
-hut nearer the town and barricaded the door, and then suddenly I
-realised that I was entirely alone on the edge of this vast, mysterious,
-unexplainable forest. And the headman had said “the bush no be fit.” I
-ought to have remembered Anum Mount and Potsikrom, but I didn't. I crept
-into bed and once more gave myself up to the most unreasoning terror.
-What I expected to come out of that forest I do not know. What I should
-have done had anything come I'm sure I do not know, but never again do I
-want to spend such a night. The patter of the rain on the iron roof
-made me shiver, the sighing of the wind in the branches sent fingers
-clutching at my heart; when I dropped into a doze I waked in deadly
-terror, my hands and face were clammy with sweat, and I dozed and waked,
-and dozed and waked, till, when the dawn came breaking through the
-clouds at last, it seemed as if the night had stretched itself into
-an interminable length. And yet nothing had happened; there had been
-nothing to be afraid of, not even a leopard had cried, but so tired was
-I with my own terrors that I slept in my hammock most of the way into
-Kumasi.
-
-And here my trip practically ended. I stayed a day or two longer,
-wandering round this great, new trading-centre, and then I took train
-to Sekondi, stayed once more with my kind friend, Miss Oram, the nursing
-Sister there, gathered together my goods and chattels, and on a day when
-it was raining as if never again could the sun shine, I went down in the
-transport officer's hammock for the last time; for the last time
-went through the surf, and reached the deck of the _Dakar_, bound for
-England.
-
-[Illustration: 0589]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV--THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES
-
-_The enormous wealth of West Africa--The waste--The need of some settled
-scheme--Competitive examination for the West-African Civil Service--The
-men who come after the pioneers--One industry set against another--The
-climate--The need of women--The dark peoples we govern--The isolation
-of the cultivated black man--The missionaries--The Roman Catholics--The
-Basel missionaries--West Africa the country of raw material--An answer
-to the question, “What shall I do with my son?”--The fascination of
-Africa._
-
-And so I have visited 'the land I had dreamed about as a little child
-in far-away Australia. But no, I have never been to that land. It is a
-wonderful country that lies with the long, long thoughts of childhood,
-with the desires of youth, with the hopes that are in the heart of the
-bride when she draws the curtain on her marriage morning. Beautiful
-hopes, beautiful desires, never to be fulfilled. We know, as we grow
-older, that some of our longings will never be granted exactly in the
-way we have expected them to be granted, but that does not mean that
-good things will not come to us, though not in the guise in which we
-have looked for them. Therefore, though I have never visited Carlo's
-country, and never can visit it, still I have seen a very goodly land,
-a land flowing with milk and honey, a land worthy of a high place in
-the possessions of any nation, and yet, I think, a land that has been
-grievously misjudged.
-
-Why does no one speak of the enormous wealth of West Africa? When
-America was but a faint dream of the adventurous voyager, when Australia
-was not on the maps, the west coast of Africa was exploited by the
-nations growing in civilisation for her wealth of gold, and slaves, and
-ivory, and the wealth that was there in those long-ago days is there
-to-day. There is gold as of yore, gold for the working; slaves, but we
-recognise the rights of man now and use them only as cheap labour; and
-there is surely raw material and vegetable products that should bring
-food and wealth to the struggling millions of the older world. The
-African peasant is passing rich on threepence a day, and within reach
-of his hand grow rubber and palm oil, groundnuts and cotton, cocoa and
-hemp, and cocoa-nuts and all manner of tropical fruits. These things, I
-know, appertain to other lands, but here they are simply flung out with
-a tropical lavishness, and till this century I doubt if they have been
-counted of any particular value. If the English colonies of West Africa
-were cultivated by men with knowledge and patience, bringing to the
-work but a fiftieth of the thought and attention that is given to such
-matters in France, the return would be simply amazing. I have seen
-25 per cent, of an ignorant peasant community's cocoa harvest wasted
-because there were no roads; I have seen cocoa-nut plantations useless,
-“because the place isn't suitable,” when in all probability some
-parasite was killing the palms. I have seen lives and money lost in a
-futile endeavour to teach the native to grow cotton, when the climate
-and conditions cried out that cocoa was the proper product to be
-encouraged.
-
-[Illustration: 0593]
-
-What the portion of West Africa I know well wants is to be worked on
-some settled scheme, a scheme made by some far-seeing mind that shall
-embrace, not the conditions of five years hence, but of fifty years
-hence; the man who works there should be laying the foundations of a
-plan that shall come to fruition in the time of our children's children,
-that should be still in sound working order in their grandchildren's
-time. The wheat of the Canadian harvest-field may bring riches in a
-year, the wool of Australia's plains wealth in two or three, but the
-trees of the African forest have taken hundreds of years to their
-growth, and, when they are grown, are like no other trees in the world.
-With them none may compare. So may these tropical dependencies of
-England be when rightly used, they shall come to their full growth.
-But we must remember they are tropical dependencies. The ordinary
-Englishman, it seems to me, is apt to expect to gather apples from a
-cocoa-nut palm, potatoes from a groundnut vine, and to rail because he
-cannot find those apples and potatoes. He will never find them, and the
-man who expects them is the man in the wrong place.
-
-I hope some day soon to find there is a competitive examination for
-positions in the West-African Civil Service. Does any man grumble who
-has won a place in the Indian Civil Service? I think not. A competitive
-examination may not be the ideal way of choosing your political staff,
-but as yet we have evolved none better. The man who passes high in a
-competitive examination must at least have the qualities of industry and
-self-denial, and who will deny that these are good qualities to bring to
-the governing of a subject people?
-
-It is curious to watch English methods of colonisation, and whether we
-will or no we must sit in judgment upon them. The first men who go out
-are sometimes good, sometimes bad, but all have this saving grace--that
-strong spirit of adventure, that dash and go which made England a
-colonising nation and mistress of the seas. It would be like asking a
-great cricketer to play tiddly-winks to ask one of the men who fought
-for Ashanti to take part in a competitive examination. They have
-competed and passed in a far sterner school. But the men who follow in
-the footsteps of the pioneers are sometimes made of different stuff.
-They are often the restless, discontented ones of the nation, men who
-complain of the land they leave, complain of the land they come to, find
-no good in West Africa, seek for no good, exaggerate its drawbacks, are
-glad to regard themselves as martyrs and to give the country an evil
-name. Such men, I think, a competitive examination would weed out.
-
-There must be continuity of service. That is a foregone conclusion. At
-present England thinks so little of the land that is hers that she puts
-a man in a place but for a year, and the political officer has no chance
-of learning the conditions and needs of the people over whom he rules;
-he is a rolling stone perpetually moving on. Then it is the height of
-folly to set one industry against another. All should surely, in a new
-country, be worked for the common good. For instance, there is a railway
-running between Kumasi and Sekondi, a Government railway, and behind
-Kumasi lies a vast extent of country unexplored and unexploited, with
-hardly a road in it. One would have thought that it would simply be
-wisdom and for the good of the whole community that the railway which
-is Government property should be used for the opening up of the country
-behind. Such is the plan in Canada; such is the practice in Australia.
-But in West Africa Government holds different views. Ashanti wants to
-build a road to the Northern Territories, a road such as the Germans
-have made all over Togo, but Government, instead of using the railway
-to further that project, charge such exorbitant freight on the road
-material, that the road-making has come to a standstill. It is typical
-of the country. Each department is pitted against the other, instead of
-one and all working for the good of the whole. The great mind that shall
-be at liberty to plan, that I fear sometimes lest the Germans and French
-have found, has yet to come.
-
-[Illustration: 0597]
-
-There are many prejudices to break down, and first and foremost is
-the prejudice against the climate. Now I am not going to say that West
-Africa is a health resort, though I went there ill and came away in the
-rudest health. Still I do recognise that a tropical climate is hard
-for a European, more especially, perhaps, for people of these northern
-isles, to dwell in. A man cannot afford to burn the candle at both
-ends there, and if he would keep well he must of necessity live in all
-soberness and temperance. He does not always do that, but at present,
-whatever his illness is due to, it is always set down to the climate,
-and he is always sure of a full measure of pity.
-
-Once I stayed for a short time next to a hospital, and the Europeans in
-the little town were much exercised because that hospital was so full.
-At last it occurred to me to ask what was the matter with the patients.
-I was not told what was the matter with them, but I found that the only
-one for whom anyone had much pity was the gentleman who had D.T. But
-even the worst of them you may be sure would have full measure of pity
-in England. “Poor fellow, that awful climate!”
-
-Doctors tell me fever is rife, and I feel they must know more about it
-than I do, but it has been discovered in England that a life in the
-open air is an almost certain preventive of phthisis, and I cannot help
-thinking that _a sane and sober life in the open air day and night_
-would be a more certain preventive against fever than all the quinine
-and mosquito-proof rooms that were ever dreamt of. Observe, I say, a
-sane and sober life; and a sane and sober life means most emphatically
-that a man does not rush at his work and live habitually at high
-pressure. For this is a temptation that the better-class of man is
-peculiarly liable to in West Africa. “Let us succeed, let us get on, and
-let us get home”; and who, in the present conditions, can blame him
-for such sentiments. They are such as do any man credit, but they very
-often, in a hot climate more especially, spell destruction as surely as
-the wild dissipation of the reckless man who does not care. And there is
-only one cure for that--the cure the French and Germans are providing.
-The women must be encouraged to go out. Every woman who goes and stays
-makes it easier for the woman who follows in her footsteps, and I can
-see no reason why a woman should not stand the climate of West Africa as
-well as she does that of India. Women are the crying need; quiet, brave,
-sensible women who are not daunted because the black cook spoils the
-soup, or the black laundryman ruins the tablecloth, who will take an
-intelligent view of life, and will make what is so much needed--a home
-for their husbands. I know there are men who say that Africa is no
-place for a woman. I have met them again and again. Some of those men
-I respected very much; some I put in quite another category. The first
-evidently regarded a wife as a precious plaything, not as a creature who
-was helpmeet and friend, whose greatest joy must be to keep her marriage
-vows and share her husband's life for good or ill, whose life must of
-necessity be incomplete unless she were allowed to keep those marriage
-vows. The other sort, I am afraid, like the freedom that the absence of
-white women gives them, a freedom that is certainly not for the ultimate
-welfare of a colony, for the mingling of the European and the daughter
-of Ham should be unthinkable. It is good for neither people.
-
-[Illustration: 0601]
-
-And here we come to the great difficulty of a tropical dependency, the
-question that as yet is unanswered and unanswerable. What of the dark
-peoples we govern? They are a peasant people with a peasant people's
-faults and a peasant people's charm, but what of their future? The
-native untouched by the white man has a dignity and a charm that
-there is no denying; it seems a great pity he cannot be kept in that
-condition. The man on the first rung of civilisation has points about
-him, and on the whole one cannot help liking him, but the man who
-has gathered the rudiments of an education, as presented to men in an
-English school on the Coast, is, to my mind, about as disagreeable a
-specimen of humanity as it is possible to meet anywhere. He has lost the
-charming courtesy of the untutored savage, and replaced it by a horrible
-veneer of civilisation that is blatant and pompous; and it is only
-because I have met such men as Dr Blyden and Mr Olympia that I am
-prepared to admit that education can do something beyond spoiling a good
-thing. Between black and white there is that great, unbridgeable gulf
-fixed, and no man may cross it. The black men who attain to the higher
-plane are as yet so few and scattered that each must lead a life of
-utter intolerable loneliness, men centuries before their time, men
-burdened with knowledge like Galileo, men who must suffer like Galileo,
-for none may understand them, and the white man stands and must
-stand--it is inevitable--too far off even for sympathy.
-
-All honour to those men who go before the pioneers; but for them, as far
-as we can see, is only bitterness.
-
-The curious thing is that most people who have visited West Africa
-or any other tropical dependency will recognise these facts, and
-yet England continues to pour into Africa a continuous stream of
-missionaries. Why? For years Christianity has been taught on the Coast,
-and it is now a well-recognised fact that on the Coast dishonesty
-and vice are to be found, while the man from the interior is at least
-honest, healthy, and free from vice. I am not saying that religion
-as taught by the missionary has taught vice, but I am declaring
-emphatically that it has failed to keep the negro from it. Why encourage
-missionaries? As civilisation advances the native must be taught. Very
-well, let him pay for his own teaching, he will value it a great deal
-more; or, since the merchants want clerks and the white rulers want
-artisans, let them pay for the native to be taught. But very, very
-strongly do I feel, when I look at the comfortable, well-fed native of
-West Africa and the wastrel of the English streets, that the English who
-subscribe to missions are taking the bread from the children's table and
-throwing it to the dogs.
-
-[Illustration: 0605]
-
-Hundreds and thousands of people are ready to give to missions, but I
-am very sure not a fraction of them have the very faintest conception of
-what they are giving to. Their idea is that they are giving to the poor
-heathen who are sunk in the deepest misery. Now there is not in all the
-length and breadth of Africa, I will venture to swear, one-quarter of
-the unutterable misery and vice you may see any day in the streets of
-London or any great city of the British Isles. There is not a tribe that
-has not its own system of morals and sees that they are carried
-out; there is not the possibility of a man, woman, or child dying
-of starvation in all West Africa while there is any food among the
-community. Can we say that of any town in England? What then are we
-trying to teach the native? Christianity. But surely a man's god is only
-such as his mind can appreciate; a high-class mind has a high-class
-god, a kindly mind a kindly god, and an evil mind an evil god. No matter
-whether we call that god Christ, or by any other name, he will have the
-attributes the mind that conceives him gives him; wherefore why worry?
-
-Of course I know that a large number of people feel that religion comes
-from without and not from within, and a larger number still say as long
-as a mission is industrial it is a good thing, and to both of these I
-can only point out the streets and alleys and tenement houses of the
-towns of England. It seems to me the most appalling presumption on the
-part of any nation with such ghastly festering sores at its own heart to
-try and impose on any other people a code of morals, a system of ethics,
-a religion, if you will, until its own body is sweet and clean. An
-industrial mission is doubtless a good thing, but until there are no men
-clamouring for the post of sandwich-men in London, no women catering to
-a shameful traffic in Piccadilly, I think we should keep the money for
-our industrial missions at home.
-
-Let us look the thing straight in the face. They talk of human
-sacrifices. Are there no human sacrifices in our own midst? We lie if we
-say there are none. Every day we who pride ourselves upon having been a
-Christian nation for the last thousand years condemn little children to
-a life of utter hopelessness, to a life the very thought of which,
-in connection with our own children, would make us hide our faces in
-shuddering horror. So if any man is appealed to to give to missions,
-I would have him look round and see that everyone in his immediate
-neighbourhood is beyond the need of help, that there are no ghastly
-creatures at his own gate that the heathen he is trying to convert would
-scorn to have at his side. Believe me, if Christianity is to justify
-itself there is not yet one crumb to spare from the children's table for
-the dogs that lie outside.
-
-For the individual missionary I have--in many cases, I must have--a
-great respect. The trouble to my mind is that Christianity presented in
-so many guises must be a little confusing to the heathen. There are the
-Roman Catholics. They are pawns in the great game played by Rome; no
-individual counts. They have given themselves to the missionary service
-to teach the heathen, and they stay until they die or until they are too
-sick to be of further use in the land. Of course they are helpful, any
-life that is oblivious of self and is utterly devoted to others must
-needs be helpful, and they have my deepest respect, because never, never
-have I been called upon to sympathise with a Roman Catholic father or
-sister. They have given their lives, no man can do more, and all I can
-say is, I would prefer they gave it to the civilising of the submerged
-folks of their own nations than to civilising the black man.
-
-[Illustration: 0609]
-
-Then at the other end of the social scale are the Basel Missions.
-They combine business and religion very satisfactorily in a thoroughly
-efficient German spirit, and while the missionaries attend to the souls
-of the heathen and set up schools to teach them not only to read and
-write, but various useful trades as well, the Basel Mission Factories
-do a tremendous trade in all the necessaries of life. These Basel
-missionaries are most kindly, worthy people, and to their kindness I
-owe much. Occasionally I have come across a man of wide reading and with
-clever, observant eyes, but as a rule they are chosen from the lower
-middle classes among the Swiss and Germans; very often the missionary
-spirit runs in the families, and it passes on from father to son, from
-mother to daughter. These people, too, come out if not for life, like
-the Roman Catholics, at least for long periods of years. It is generally
-believed on the Coast, and I have never heard it contradicted, that when
-a man attains a certain standing he is allowed to marry, even though
-he is not due for a holiday in Europe. They have at headquarters
-photographs of all the eligible maidens in training for the mission
-field, and the candidate for matrimony may choose his wife, and she is
-duly forwarded to him, for the heads of the Basel Missions, like me,
-believe in matrimony for Africa. And most excellent wives do these Basel
-missionary women make. They bear their children here in West Africa
-where no English woman thinks she can stay more than six months, and
-their homes are truly homes in the best sense of the word. If example
-is good for the heathen, then he has it in the Basel Missions. Another
-thing, they must make the most excellent nucleus for German interests,
-for no one who has been in a Basel Mission Station or Factory can but
-respect these men and women and little children who make a home and a
-garden in the wilderness. And what I have said about the Basel Missions
-applies to the Bremen Missions, except that these are more pronouncedly
-German. But better women may I never hope to meet in this wide world
-than those in the Bremen Missions. And in between these two extremes are
-missionaries of every class and description. Against the individuals
-I have nothing to say, save and except this--I want to discount the
-admiration given to the “poor missionary.” They are good men I doubt
-not, but they are earning a living just as I who write am earning a
-living, or you who read, and to my mind they are earning a living in the
-halo of sanctity very much more comfortably than the struggling doctor
-or the poor curate in an East-End parish. Whatever their troubles, they
-have never the bitterness of seeing the ghastly want that they cannot
-relieve, and if they do not live in England, they have always the joy of
-making a home in a new country, and that is a joy that those who talk so
-glibly about exile do not seem to realise.
-
-[Illustration:0613]
-
-“But we must have the negroes taught reading and writing and trades,”
- said a man to me once when we were discussing the missionary question;
-and I agree it is necessary, but I do not see why I am to regard the
-teacher as on a higher plane than he who teaches the same in England.
-And as for the religion that is taught, the only comment I have to make
-upon it is that no man that ever I heard of would take a mission boy or
-a Christian for a servant when he could get a decent heathen. Finally,
-considering the amount of destitution and terrible want in the streets
-of England, if I had my way I would put a heavy tax on all money
-contributed for the conversion of the heathen. Before it was allowed to
-go out of the country I would if I could take heavy toll, and with that
-toll give the luckless children of my own colour a start in life in the
-Colonies.
-
-Finally, West Africa is the country of raw material. It should be
-England's duty so to work that country that it be complementary to
-England, the great manufacturing land. The peasant of the Gold Coast
-burning the bush to make his cocoa plantations is absolutely necessary
-to the girl fixing the labels on the finished product; her very
-livelihood depends upon him. The nearer these two are brought together
-in a commercial sense the better for both, and what we say of cocoa we
-may say of palm oil and groundnuts and other vegetable fats, of rubber,
-of hemp, of gold, of tin. This country which produces with tropical
-luxuriance should be, if properly worked, a source of immense wealth to
-the nation that possesses it.
-
-And as we rise in the social scale, think of the openings this country,
-thickly populated, well cultivated, flourishing, would offer for the
-young men of the middle classes seeking a career. A political service
-like the Civil Service of India, officered by men who have won places
-there by strenuous work and high endeavour, who are proud of the
-positions they have won, and a busy mercantile community, serving side
-by side with these political officers, would go some way to answering
-the question on the lips of the middle-class father, “What shall I
-do with my son?” The work of women is widening every day, and I, who
-honestly believe that an ordinary woman may go where an ordinary man
-can, may with profit take up work even as a man may do, see scope for
-the women of the future there too, not only as wives and helpmeets to
-the men, but as heads of independent enterprises of their own.
-
-I have finished my book, ended the task that I have set myself to
-do, and I hope I have been able to convey to my readers some of the
-fascination that Africa has always held for those who have once visited
-her shores. But hitherto it has been the fascination of the mistress,
-never of the wife. She held out no lure, for she was no courtesan. A man
-came to her in his eager youth asking, praying that she would give him
-that which should make all life good; and she trusted and opened her
-arms. What she had to give she gave freely, generously; there was no
-stint, no lack. And he took. Her charm he counted as a matter of course,
-her tenderness was his due, her passion was for his pleasure; but the
-fascination he barely admitted could not keep him. Though she had given
-all she had no rights, and when other desires called he left her, left
-her with words of pity that were an injury, of regret that were an
-insult.
-
-[Illustration: 0617]
-
-But all this is changing. Africa holds. The man who has once known
-Africa longs for her. In the sordid city streets he remembers the might
-and loneliness of her forests, by the rippling brook he remembers the
-wide rivers rushing tumultuous to the sea, in the night when the rain is
-on the roof plashing drearily he remembers the gorgeous tropical nights,
-the sky of velvet far away, the stars like points of gold, the warm
-moonlight that with its deeper shadows made a fairer world. Even the
-languor and the heat he longs for, the white foam of the surf on the
-yellow sand of the beaches, the thick jungle growth densely matted,
-rankly luxuriant, pulsating with the irrepressible life of the Tropics.
-All other places are tame. The fascination that he has denied comes back
-calling to him in after years. Thus “the whirligig of time brings in his
-revenges.” This mistress he will have none of has spoiled him for all
-else. And here the analogy fails. Africa holds, and the man whom she
-holds may yield to the fascination not only without shame, but with
-pride. Before her lies a great future; to the man who knows how to use
-her gifts she offers wealth and prosperity. To be won easily? Well, no.
-These gifts lie there as certainly as there is a sky above us, as that
-the sun will rise to-morrow, but there lie difficulties in the way,
-obstacles to be overcome. Africa offers the opportunities--success is
-for the
-
-     “One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
-
-               Never doubted clouds would break,
-
-     Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would
-
-                        triumph,
-
-          Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
-
-                        Sleep to wake.
-
-               Now at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
-
-                   Greet the unseen with a cheer!
-
-          Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
-
-          'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed--fight on--'”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alone in West Africa, by Mary Gaunt
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
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-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Alone in West Africa
-       Illustrated
-
-Author: Mary Gaunt
-
-Release Date: March 21, 2017 [EBook #54400]
-Last Updated: March 12, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE IN WEST AFRICA ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-    <div style="height: 8em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h1>
-      ALONE IN WEST AFRICA
-    </h1>
-    <h2>
-      By Mary Gaunt
-    </h2>
-    <h3>
-      Author Of &ldquo;The Uncounted Cost,&rdquo; Etc.
-    </h3>
-    <h4>
-      Charles Scribner's Sons London: T. Werner Laurie
-    </h4>
-    <h3>
-      1911
-    </h3>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0002.jpg" alt="0002 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0002.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0008.jpg" alt="0008 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <b>CONTENTS</b>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> DEDICATION </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> ALONE IN WEST AFRICA </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I&mdash;SONS OF THE SEA WIFE </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II&mdash;THE GROUNDNUT COLONY </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III&mdash;THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVE? </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;WHERE THE BLACK MAN RULES </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V&mdash;THE GUINEA COAST </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE KING'S HIGHWAY </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;ON THE FRENCH BORDER </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII&mdash;ALONE IN WEST AFRICA </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX&mdash;AN OLD DUTCH TOWN </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X&mdash;IN THE PATHS OF THE MEN OF OLD
-      </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE CAPITAL OF THE GOLD COAST
-      COLONY </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII&mdash;BLOOD FETISH OF KROBO HILL </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE FEAR THAT SKULKED BENEATH
-      THE MANGO TREE </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV&mdash;INTO THE WILDS </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV&mdash;CROSSING THE BORDER </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI&mdash;ONE OF THE CURSES OF THE DARK
-      CONTINENT </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII&mdash;GERMAN VERSUS ENGLISH METHODS
-      </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII&mdash;KETA ON THE SAND </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX&mdash;FACING DEATH </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX&mdash;WITH A COMPANION </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI&mdash;THE WEST-AFRICAN GOLDFIELDS
-      </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII&mdash;A NEW TRADING CENTRE </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII&mdash;IN THE HEART OF THE RUBBER
-      COUNTRY </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV&mdash;AN OUTPOST </a>
-    </p>
-    <p class="toc">
-      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV&mdash;THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES </a>
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      DEDICATION
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      To those who have helped me I dedicate this record of my travels in West
-      Africa. Without their help I could have done nothing; it was always most
-      graciously and kindly given and I know not how to show my appreciation of
-      it. &ldquo;Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor,&rdquo; is all I can give in
-      return, unless some of them will take this book in very inadequate
-      payment. Sir Charles Lucas, the head of the Colonial Office, gave me
-      letters of introduction, Elder Dempster and Co. gave me a free passage,
-      their captains and their officers put themselves out to help me, Sir
-      George Denton welcomed me to West Africa, and after these comes a long
-      string of people who each and all contributed so much to my welfare that I
-      feel myself ungracious not to mention them all by name. I must thank
-      Messrs Swanzy and Co., who helped me up the Volta and across the unknown
-      country on the German border, and I were churl indeed if I did not
-      remember those men and women of another nation, who received me out of the
-      unknown, fed me, welcomed me, and smoothed my way for me. To each and all
-      then, with this dedication, I offer my most grateful thanks.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h1>
-      ALONE IN WEST AFRICA
-    </h1>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER I&mdash;SONS OF THE SEA WIFE
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Hereditary taste for wandering&mdash;A first adventure&mdash;&ldquo;Little
-      girls you must not be tired&rdquo;&mdash;How Carlo was captured by savages in
-      West Africa&mdash;Life in Ballarat&mdash;Nothing for a woman to do but
-      marry&mdash;Marriage&mdash;Plans for wandering twenty years hence&mdash;Life
-      in Warrnambool&mdash;Widowhood&mdash;May as well travel now there is
-      nothing left&mdash;London for an aspirant in literature&mdash;Stony
-      streets and drizzling rain&mdash;Scanty purse&mdash;Visit to the home of a
-      rich African trader&mdash;Small successes&mdash;At last, at last on board
-      s.s. Gando bound for the Gambia.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent15">
-      &ldquo;There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate,
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent20">
-      And a wealthy wife is she;
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent15">
-      She breeds a breed o' rovin' men,
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent20">
-      And casts them over sea.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br />
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ometimes when
-      people ask me with wonder why I went to West Africa, why I wanted to go, I
-      feel as if that wife must have grown old and feeble and will bear no more
-      men to send across the sea. I hope not. I trust not. More than ninety
-      years ago she sent my mother's father into the Honourable East India Co.'s
-      service, and then, in later years with his ten children to colonise Van
-      Diemen's Land. Nearly sixty years ago she sent my father, a slim young
-      lad, out to the goldfields in Australia, and she breathed her spirit over
-      the five boys and two girls who grew up in the new land. I cannot remember
-      when any one of us would not have gone anywhere in the world at a moment's
-      notice. It would not have been any good pointing out the dangers, because
-      dangers at a distance are only an incentive. There is something in the
-      thought of danger that must be overcome, that you yourself can help to
-      overcome, that quickens the blood and gives an added zest to life.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I can remember as a small girl going with my sister to stay with an uncle
-      who had a station, Mannerim, behind Geelong. The house had been built in
-      the old days of slabs with a bark roof, very inflammable material. I loved
-      the place then because it spoke of the strenuous old days of the Colony. I
-      love the memory of it now for old times' sake, and because there happened
-      the first really exciting incident in my life.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was a January morning, the sky overcast with smoke and a furious hot
-      wind blowing from the north. The men of the household looked out
-      anxiously, but I sat and read a story-book. It was the tale of a boy named
-      Carlo who was wrecked on the coast of West Africa&mdash;nice vague
-      location; he climbed a cocoa-nut tree&mdash;I can see him now with a rope
-      round his waist and his legs dangling in an impossible attitude&mdash;and
-      he was taken by savages. His further adventures I do not know, because a
-      man came riding in shouting that the calf paddock was on fire and everyone
-      must turn out. Everyone did turn out except my aunt who stayed behind to
-      prepare cool drinks, and those drinks my little sister and I, as being
-      useless for beating out the flames, were sent to carry to the workers in
-      jugs and &ldquo;billies.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Now little girls,&rdquo; said my aunt who was tenderness and kindness itself,
-      &ldquo;remember you are not to get tired.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was the first lesson I really remember in the stern realities of life.
-      We had hailed the bushfire as something new and exciting; now we were to
-      be taught that much excitement brings its strenuous hard labour. The fire
-      did not reach the house, and the men and women got their drink, but it was
-      two very weary, dirty, smoke-grimed and triumphant little girls who bathed
-      and went to bed that night. I never finished the story of Carlo. Where he
-      went to I can't imagine, but I can't think the savages ate him else his
-      story would never have been written; and from that moment dated my deep
-      interest in West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We grew up and the boys of the family went a-roving to other lands. One
-      was a soldier, two were sailors, and the two youngest were going to be
-      lawyers, whereby they might make money and go to the other ends of the
-      world if they liked. When we were young we generally regarded money as a
-      means of locomotion. We have hardly got over the habit yet. Only for us
-      two girls was there no prospect. Our world was bounded by our father's
-      lawns and the young men who came to see us and made up picnic parties to
-      the wildest bush round Ballarat for our amusement. It was not bad. Even
-      now I acknowledge to something of delight to be found in a box-seat of a
-      four-in-hand, a glorious moonlight night, and four horses going at full
-      speed; something delightful in scrambles over the ranges and a luncheon in
-      the shade by a waterhole, with romantic stories for a seasoning, and the
-      right man with a certain admiration in his eyes to listen. It was not bad,
-      but it was not as good a life as the boys of the family were having, and
-      it was giving me no chance of visiting the land Carlo had gone to that had
-      been in my mind at intervals ever since the days of my childish bushfire.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There was really nothing for a woman but to marry, and accordingly we both
-      married and I forgot in my entrance into that world, which is so old and
-      yet always so new, my vague longings after savage lands.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I wonder sometimes would I have been contented to lead the ordinary
-      woman's life, the life of the woman who looks after her husband and
-      children. I think so, because it grew to be the life I ardently yearned
-      for. The wander desire was just pushed a little into the back-ground and
-      was to come off twenty years hence when we had made our fortune. And
-      twenty years looked such a long long while then. It even looks a long time
-      now, for it has not passed, and I seem to have lived a hundred years and
-      many lives since the days in the little Victorian town of Warrnambool when
-      my handsome young husband and I planned out our future life. But I was
-      nearer to Carlo's land than I thought even then, and if I could have
-      peeped into the future I would only have shrunk with unspeakable dread
-      from the path I must walk, the path that was to lead me to the
-      consummation of my childish hopes. In a very few years the home life I had
-      entered into with such gladness was over, my husband was dead, and I was
-      penniless, homeless, and alone. Of course I might have gone back to my
-      father's house, my parents would have welcomed me, but can any woman go
-      back and take a subordinate position when she has ruled? I think not;
-      besides it would only have been putting off the evil day. When my father
-      died, and in the course of nature he must die before me, there would be
-      but a pittance, and I should have to start out once more handicapped with
-      the added years. Again, and I think this thought was latent beneath all
-      the misery and hopelessness that made me say I did not care what became of
-      me, was I not free, free to wander where I pleased, to seek those
-      adventures that had held such a glamour for me in my girlhood. True, I had
-      not much money with which to seek them. When everything was settled up I
-      found if I stayed quietly in Australia I had exactly thirty pounds a year
-      to call my own. Thirty pounds a year, and I reckoned I could make perhaps
-      fifty pounds by my pen. My mother pointed out to me that if I lived with
-      my parents it would not be so bad. But it was not to be thought of for a
-      moment. The chance had come, through seas of trouble, but still it had
-      come, and I would go and see the great world for myself. I thought I had
-      lived my life, that no sorrow or gladness could ever touch me keenly
-      again; but I knew, it was in my blood, that I should like to see strange
-      places and visit unknown lands. But on thirty pounds a year one can do
-      nothing, so I took a hundred pounds out of my capital and came to London
-      determined to make money by my pen in the heart of the world.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Oh, the hopes of the aspirant for literary fame, and oh, the dreariness
-      and the weariness of life for a woman poor and unknown in London! I lodged
-      in two rooms in a dull and stony street. I had no one to speak to from
-      morning to night, and I wrote and wrote and wrote stories that all came
-      back to me, and I am bound to say the editors who sent them back were
-      quite right. They were poor stuff, but how could anyone do good work who
-      was sick and miserable, cold and lonely, with all the life crushed out of
-      her by the grey skies and the drizzling rain? I found London a terrible
-      place in those days; I longed with all my heart for my own country, my own
-      little home in Warrnambool where the sun shone always, the roses yellow
-      and pink climbed over the wall, the white pittosporum blossoms filled the
-      air with their fragrance, and the great trees stood up tall and straight
-      against the dark-blue sky. I did not go back to my father, because my
-      pride would not allow me to own myself a failure and because all the
-      traditions of my family were against giving in. But I was very near it,
-      very near it indeed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Then after six months of hopelessness there came to see me from Liverpool
-      a friend of one of my sailor brothers, and she, good Samaritan, suggested
-      I should spend my Christmas with her.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I went. She and her daughters were rich people and the husband and father
-      had been an African trader. So here it was again presented to me, the land
-      to which I had resolved to go when I was a little child, and everything in
-      the house spoke to me of it. In the garden under a cedar tree was the
-      great figurehead of an old sailing ship; in the corridor upstairs was the
-      model of a factory, trees, boats, people, houses all complete; in the
-      rooms were pictures of the rivers and swamps and the hulks where trade was
-      carried on. To their owners these possessions were familiar as household
-      words that meant nothing; to me they reopened a new world of desire or
-      rather an old desire in a new setting&mdash;the vague was taking concrete
-      form. I determined quite definitely that I would go to West Africa. The
-      thing that amazed me was that everybody with money in their pockets was
-      not equally desirous of going there.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      About this time, too, I discovered that it was simply hopeless for me to
-      think of writing stories about English life. The regular, conventional
-      life did not appeal to me; I could only write adventure stories, and the
-      scene of adventure stories was best laid in savage lands. West Africa was
-      not at all a bad place in which to set them. Its savagery called me. There
-      and then I started to write stories about it. Looking back, I smile when I
-      think of the difficulties that lay in my path. Even after I had carefully
-      read every book of travel I could lay my hands on, I was still in deepest
-      ignorance, because every traveller left so much undescribed and told
-      nothing of the thousand and one little trifles that make ignorant eyes see
-      the life that is so different from that in a civilised land. But if you
-      will only look for a thing it is astonishing how you will find it often in
-      the most unlikely places; if you set your heart on something it is
-      astonishing how often you will get your heart's desire. I sought for
-      information about West Africa and I found it, not easily; every story I
-      wrote cost me a world of trouble and research and anxiety, and I fear me
-      the friends I was beginning to make a world of trouble too. But they were
-      kind and long-suffering; this man gave me a little information here, that
-      one there, and I can laugh now when I think of the scenes that had to be
-      written and rewritten before a hammock could be taken a couple of miles,
-      before a man could sit down to his early-morning tea in the bush. It took
-      years to do it, but at last it was done to some purpose; the book I had
-      written with great effort caught on, and I had the money for the trip I
-      had planned many years before when I was a small girl reading about those
-      distant lands. I hesitated not a moment. The day I had sufficient money to
-      make such a thing possible I went up to the City to see about a passage to
-      West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And now a wonderful thing happened. Such a piece of good luck as I had not
-      in my wildest dreams contemplated. Elder Dempster, instigated by the kind
-      offices of Sir Charles Lucas, the permanent head of the Colonial Office,
-      who knew how keen was my desire, offered me a ticket along the Coast, so
-      that I actually had all the money I had earned to put into land travel,
-      and Mr Laurie, my publisher, fired by my enthusiasm, commissioned a book
-      about the wonderful old forts that I knew lay neglected and crumbling to
-      decay all along the shores of the Gold Coast.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      As I look back it seems as if surely the fairy godmother who had omitted
-      to take my youth in charge was now showering me with good gifts, or maybe,
-      most probably, the good gifts had been offered all along and I had never
-      recognised them. We, some of us, drive in a gorgeous coach and never see
-      anything but the pumpkin.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At least I was not making that mistake now. I was wild with delight and
-      excitement when, on a cold November day, when London was wrapped in fog, I
-      started from Euston for Liverpool. One of the brothers who I had envied in
-      my youth, a post captain in the Navy now (how the years fly), happened to
-      be in London and came down to the station to see me and my heaped
-      impedimenta off.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He understood my delight in the realisation of my dream.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Have you any directions for the disposal of your remains?&rdquo; he asked
-      chaffingly, as we groped our way through the London fog.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, that will all be settled,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;long before you hear anything
-      about it&rdquo;; and we both laughed. We did not think, either of us, my
-      adventure was going to end disastrously. It would have been against all
-      the traditions of the family to think any such thing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He told me how once he had gone into action with interest because he
-      wanted to see what it would be like to be under fire, and whether he would
-      be frightened. He didn't have much time to contemplate the situation, for
-      presently he was so badly wounded that it took him six months to crawl off
-      his bed, but it brought him a cross of honour from Italy. &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; says
-      he, with a certain satisfaction, &ldquo;I know.&rdquo; So he sympathised. He felt that
-      whatever happened I would have the satisfaction of knowing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is hardly necessary to describe to an English reader Liverpool on a
-      cold, grey morning in November. There is the grey sky and the grey streets
-      and the grey houses, and the well-to-do shivering in their wraps, and the
-      poor shivering in their rags, all the colourless English world, that is
-      not really colourless for those who know how to look at it, but which had
-      driven me to sunnier lands; and there was the ship with her wet decks, her
-      busy officers in comforters and sea-boots, her bare-footed sailors, and
-      her gangways crowded with cargo, baggage, and numbers of bewildered
-      passengers themselves.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And I think as we crowded into the smoking-room for warmth I was the only
-      enthusiastic person among them. The majority of the passengers on board
-      s.s. <i>Gando</i> actually didn't want to go to West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It seems strange, but so it was; the greater part of them, if they could
-      have afforded to stay at home, would actually have stayed. I was inclined
-      to be impatient with them. Now I forgive them. They know not what they do.
-      It is a pity, but it can be remedied.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The <i>Gando</i> was not a mail boat. I had chosen her because she called
-      at Dakar, and I thought I would like to go if possible to the first
-      settlement on the Coast, and I wanted to see how the French did things. I
-      may say here I never got to Dakar&mdash;still it is something to be looked
-      forward to in the future, to be done when next I write a book that pays&mdash;for
-      on board the <i>Gando</i> was Sir George Denton, the Governor of the
-      Gambia, surely the nicest governor ever lucky colony had, and for such an
-      important person the ship went a little out of her way and called first at
-      Bathurst, port and capital of the Gambia colony.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Now, I had a letter of introduction to Sir George and I presented it, and
-      he promptly asked me to come ashore with him. I had never thought of
-      staying in the Gambia beyond the day or two the ship would take to
-      discharge her cargo&mdash;&ldquo;a potty little colony,&rdquo; as I had heard it
-      called, and it hardly seemed worth while to waste my time in a miniature
-      Thames. How the Governor laughed when he found out my appalling ignorance,
-      and how ashamed I was when I found it out!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;The Thames,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;well, we only hold the mouth of the river about
-      four hundred miles up, but the Gambia is at least a thousand miles in
-      extent, and may be longer for all I know.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I apologised to the Gambia.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But could I see the river?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Why, of course; we'll send you up in the <i>Mansikillah</i>, the
-      Government steamer&rdquo;; and I accepted his invitation with alacrity and with
-      gratitude.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Truly, my fairy godmother was more than waving her wand. I hadn't left
-      English shores a week, and here was an invitation to go four hundred miles
-      into the interior of the continent of my dreams.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We went first to the Canary Islands, the islands of the blest of the
-      ancients, but the Canaries were as nothing to me; they have been civilised
-      too long. They were only a stepping-stone to that other land, the land of
-      romance, that I was nearing at last.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And now I have an apology to make, an apology which very few people will
-      understand, but those few will, and to them it is a matter of such
-      importance that I must make it. I went to see a savage land. I went to
-      seek material for the only sort of story I can write, and to tell of the
-      prowess of the men who had gone before and left their traces in great
-      stone forts all along three hundred miles of coast. I found a savage land,
-      in some parts a very wild land indeed, but I found what I had never
-      expected, a land of immense possibilities, a land overflowing with wealth,
-      a land of corn and wine and oil. I expected swamp and miasma, heat, fever,
-      and mosquitoes. I found these truly, but I found, too, a lovely land, an
-      entrancingly lovely land in places; I found gorgeous nights and divine
-      mornings, and I found that the great interest of West Africa lay not in
-      the opportunity it gave for vivid descriptions of heroes who fought and
-      suffered and conquered, or fought and suffered and died, but in showing
-      its immense value to the English crown in describing a land where every
-      tropical product may be grown, a land with a teeming population and a
-      generous soil, a land in fact that, properly managed, should supply raw
-      material for half the workshops in England, a land that may be made to
-      give some of its sunlight to keep alight the fires on English hearths in
-      December, a land that as yet only the wiser heads amongst us realise the
-      value of.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;A man comes to West Africa,&rdquo; said a Swiss to me once, &ldquo;because he can
-      make in ten years as much as he could make in thirty in England.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      That is the land I found, and I apologise if I have ever written or
-      thought of it in any other way.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;The White Man's Grave,&rdquo; say many still. But even the all-powerful white
-      man must have a grave in the end. Live wisely and discreetly and it is, I
-      think with wise old Zachary Macauley who ruled Sierra Leone at the end of
-      the eighteenth century, no more likely to be in West Africa than in any
-      other place.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And the ship sailed on, and one morning early, before daylight, we heard
-      the bell buoy that marks the mouth of the Gambia before lazy eyes can see
-      there is a river, and knew that we had arrived at our destination. At
-      last, at last I was on the very threshold of the land I had dreamed of
-      years before.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER II&mdash;THE GROUNDNUT COLONY
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Rejoicing-, half-eastern and wholly tropical, on arrival of the
-      Governor&mdash;Colonies governed and held as the Romans held their
-      colonies of Britain&mdash;Great g-ulf between the black and the white&mdash;The
-      barrier of sex&mdash;Received as a brother but declined as a
-      brother-in-law&mdash;Lonely Fort St James&mdash;The strenuous lives led by
-      the men of the past&mdash;Crinted walls&mdash;The pilot's wife&mdash;Up
-      the river in the Mungo Park&mdash;The river devil's toll&mdash;&ldquo;Pass
-      friend and all's well.&rdquo;</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen I was a little
-      girl the Queen held something the same place in my mind as the Almighty.
-      The ruler of the nation hardly had any personality. She was there, of
-      course, and people talked about her as conferring great benefits upon us;
-      but so we also talked about God in church and when we said our prayers at
-      night. As a family, we objected to saying prayers in the morning. They
-      were not supposed to be necessary till you had arrived at mature years,
-      say, five, and by then, I suppose, we had imbibed the idea that we could
-      really take care of ourselves very well during the day-time. So the Queen,
-      too, was in the same category as God and Heaven, that distinctly dull
-      place, which was to be the reward of good works on earth, and His
-      Excellency the Governor took her place in the minds of all young
-      colonials. Of course, as I grew older, I realised that the Governor was a
-      man like unto other men, that he could be talked to like an ordinary man,
-      could ask you to dinner, and even take a polite interest in your future;
-      but, still, some of the rags of the childish vagueness and glory clung
-      round him, and so I was quite pleased to find myself on board a steamer
-      with a real live Governor. More, I sat next him at table; we discussed the
-      simple commonplace doings of ship-board life together, and as we arrived
-      at the buoy I shared in the little fuss and bustle which the landing of
-      such an exalted personage always makes. And he wasn't really such a very
-      exalted personage in his own opinion. There was a merry twinkle in his
-      nice brown eyes as he admitted that his gold-laced coat, made to be worn
-      on state occasions such as this, was a great deal too hot for the Tropics,
-      and that its donning must be left to the very last moment; and so I stood
-      on the flag-dressed deck by myself and watched the land of my dreams come
-      into view.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A long, low shore is the Gambia&mdash;a jutting point, with palms upon it,
-      running out into a glassy sea, from which is reflected the glare of the
-      tropical sun. There was a little denser clump of greenery that marked the
-      site of Bathurst, the capital; and, as we drew closer, we could see the
-      roofs of the houses peeping out, bright specks of colour that were the
-      flags, and the long line of red on the wharf, the soldiers turned out to
-      welcome the returning Governor.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This is the only place along that line of surf-bound coast where a ship
-      may come up to the wharf and land her passengers dry-shod; but, to-day,
-      because the captain was in a hurry, he dropped us over the side in boats,
-      and we landed to all the glory of a welcome that was half-eastern and
-      wholly and emotionally tropical. The principal street of Bathurst, the
-      only street worth mentioning, runs all along the river-side, with houses
-      on one side and the wharfs and piers on the other; and the whole place was
-      thronged with the black inhabitants. The men shouted and tossed their hats
-      and caps when they had any; and the women, the mammies, as I learned to
-      call them later, flung their gaily coloured cloths from their shoulders
-      for their dearly loved Governor to walk over; and the handful of whites&mdash;there
-      are twenty-five English and some French and Swiss&mdash;came forward and
-      solemnly shook hands. He had come back to them, the man who had ruled over
-      them for the last ten years, and white and black loved him, and were glad
-      to do him honour.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the midst of great rejoicing, a good omen for me, I set my foot on
-      African shore. I began my journeying, and I looked round to try and
-      realise what manner of country was this I had come to&mdash;what manner of
-      life I was to be part and parcel of.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      These colonies on the West-African coast are as unlike as possible to the
-      colony in which I first saw the light, that my people have helped to build
-      up. I fancy, perhaps, the Roman proconsul and the officials in his train,
-      who came out to rule over Britain in the first century before Christ, must
-      have led lives somewhat resembling those of the Britons who nowadays go
-      out to West Africa. One thing is certain, those Italians must have
-      grumbled perpetually about the inclemency and unhealthiness of the climate
-      of these northern isles; they probably had a great deal to say about the
-      fever and ague that was rife. They were accustomed to certain luxuries
-      that civilisation had made into necessities, and they came to a land where
-      all the people were traders and agriculturists of a most primitive sort.
-      They were exiles in a cold, grey land, and they felt it bitterly. They
-      came to replenish their purses, and when those purses were fairly full
-      they returned to their own land gladly. The position describes
-      three-quarters of the Englishmen in West Africa to-day; but between the
-      Roman and the savage Piet of Caledonia was never the gulf, the great gulf,
-      which is fixed between even the educated African and the white man of
-      whatever nationality. It is no good trying to hide the fact; between the
-      white man and the black lies not only the culture and the knowledge of the
-      west&mdash;that gulf might, and sometimes is bridged&mdash;but that other
-      great bar, the barrier of sex. Tall, stalwart, handsome as is many a
-      negro, no white woman may take a black man for her husband and be
-      respected by her own people; no white man may take a black girl, though
-      her dark eyes be soft and tender, though her skin be as satin and her
-      figure like that of the Venus of Milo, and hope to introduce her among his
-      friends as his wife. Even the missionaries who preach that the black man
-      is a brother decline emphatically to receive him as a brother-in-law. And
-      so we get, beginning here in the little colony of the Gambia, the handful
-      of the ruling race set among a subject people; so the white man has always
-      ruled the black; so, I think, he must always rule. It will be a bad day
-      for the white when the black man rules. That there should be any mingling
-      of the races is unthinkable; so I hope that the white man will always rule
-      Africa with a strong hand.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Gambia is the beginning of the English colonies on the Coast, and, the
-      pity of it, a very small beginning.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the old days, when Charles the Second was king, the English held none
-      of the banks of the river at all, but contented themselves with a barren
-      little island about seventeen miles from where Bathurst now stands. One
-      bank was held by the French, the other by the Portuguese; and the English
-      built on the island Fort St James to protect their interest in the great
-      trade in palm oil, slaves, and ivory that came down the river. Even then
-      the Gambia was rich. It is richer far to-day, but the French hold the
-      greater part of it. The colony of the Gambia is at the mouth of the river,
-      twelve miles broad by four hundred long, a narrow strip of land bordering
-      the mouth of a river set in the heart of the great French colony of
-      Senegal&mdash;a veritable Naboth's vineyard that our friends the other
-      side of the Channel may well envy us. It brings us in about £80,000
-      annually, but to them it would be of incalculable value as an outlet for
-      the majority of their rich trade.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At first I hardly thought about these things. I was absorbed in the wonder
-      of the new life. I stayed at Government House with the Governor, and was
-      caught up in the little whirl of gaieties that greeted his return. The
-      house was tropical, with big, lofty, airy rooms and great wide verandahs
-      that as a rule serve also as passageways to pass from one room to another;
-      for Government House, Bathurst, is built as a tropical house should be&mdash;must
-      be&mdash;built, if the builder have any regard for the health of its
-      inmates. There were no rooms that the prevailing breeze could not sweep
-      right through. There was a drawingroom and a dining-room on the ground
-      floor, but I do not think either Sir George or I, or his private
-      secretary, ever used the drawing-room unless there were guests to be
-      entertained. The verandahs were so much more inviting, and my bedroom was
-      a delightful place. It ran right across the house. There was no carpet,
-      and, as was only right, only just such furniture as I absolutely needed.
-      The bed was enclosed in another small mosquito-proof room of wirenetting,
-      and it was the only thing I did not like about the house. There, and at
-      that season, perhaps it did not very much matter, for a strong Harmattan
-      wind, the cool wind of the cold, dry season, was blowing, and it kept the
-      air behind the stout wire-netting fresh and clean; but I must here put on
-      record my firm belief that no inconsiderable number of lives in Africa
-      must be lost owing to some doctor's prejudice in favour of mosquito-proof
-      netting. A mosquito-proof netting is very stout indeed, and not only
-      excludes the mosquito, but, and this far more effectually, the fresh air
-      as well. The man who has plenty of fresh air, day and night, will be in
-      better health, and far more likely to resist infection if he does happen
-      to get bitten by a fever-bearing mosquito, than he who must perforce spend
-      at least a third of his time in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room.
-      This I did not realise at Government House, Bathurst, or if I did, but
-      dimly, for there in December the strong Harmattan would have forced its
-      way through anything. I spent most of my time on the verandah outside my
-      own room, where I had a view not only of the road that ran to to the
-      centre of the town but right away across the river. Here I had my
-      breakfast and my afternoon tea, and here I did all my writing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In Africa your own servant takes charge of your room, gets your bath, and
-      brings you your early-morning tea; and here in Bathurst in this womanless
-      house my servant was to get my breakfast and my afternoon tea as well, so
-      the first thing to be done was to look out for a boy. He appeared in the
-      shape of Ansumanah Grant, a Mohammedan boy of three-and-twenty, a Vai
-      tribesman, who had been brought up by the Wesleyan missionaries at Cape
-      Mount in Liberia. When I engaged him he wore a pink pyjama coat, a pair of
-      moleskin breeches, and red carpet slippers; and, when this was rectified&mdash;at
-      my expense&mdash;he appeared in a white shirt, khaki knicker-bockers, a
-      red cummerbund, and bare feet, and made a very respectable member of
-      society and a very good servant to me during the whole of my stay in
-      Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0043.jpg" alt="0043 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0043.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      I always made it a practice to rise early in West Africa, because the
-      early morning is the most delightful time, and he who stays in bed till
-      halfpast seven or eight is missing one of the pure delights of life. When
-      I had had my early breakfast, I went to inspect the town. The market lies
-      but a stone's throw from Government House, and here all the natives were
-      to be found, and the white men's servants buying provisions for the day.
-      To me, before I went to Africa, a negro was a negro, and I imagined them
-      all of one race. My mind was speedily disabused of that error. The negro
-      has quite as many nationalities, is quite as distinct as the European.
-      Here in this little colony was a most cosmopolitan gathering, for the
-      south and north meet, and Yorubas from Lagos, Gas from Accra, mongrel
-      Creoles from Sierra Leone meet the Senegalese from the north, the Hausas
-      from away farther east; and the natives themselves are the Mohammedan
-      Jolloff, who is an expert river-man, the Mandingo, and the heathen Jolah,
-      who as yet is low down in the scale of civilisation, and wears but scanty
-      rags. And all these people were to be found in the market in the early
-      morning. It is enclosed with a high wall, the interior is cemented, and
-      gutters made to carry off moisture, and it is all divided into stalls, and
-      really not at all unlike the alfresco markets you may see on Saturdays in
-      the poorer quarters of London. Here they sell meat, most uninviting
-      looking, but few butchers' shops look inviting; fish&mdash;very strange
-      denizens come out of the sea in the Gambia; native peppers, red and green;
-      any amount of rice, which is the staple food of the people, and all the
-      tropical fruits, paws-paws, pine-apples, and dark-green Coast oranges,
-      which are very sweet; bananas, yellow and pink, and great bunches of green
-      plantains. They are supposed to sell only on the stalls, for which they
-      pay a small, a very small rental; but, like true natives, they overflow on
-      to the ground, and as you walk you must be careful not to tread on neat
-      little piles of peppers, enamelled iron-ware basins full of native rice,
-      or little heaps of purple kola-nuts&mdash;that great sustaining stimulant
-      of Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There were about half a dozen white women in Bathurst when I was there,
-      including one who had ostracised herself by marrying a black man; but none
-      ever came to the market, therefore my arrival created great excitement,
-      and one good lady, in a are held, half the houses are owned by rich
-      negroes, Africans they very naturally prefer to be called, but the poorer
-      people live all crowded together in Jolloff town, whither my guide led me,
-      and introduced me to her yard. A Jolloff never speaks about his house, but
-      about his &ldquo;yard.&rdquo; Even Government House he knows as &ldquo;Governor's Yard.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0047.jpg" alt="0047 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0047.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Jolloff town looks as if if were made of basket-work; they call it here
-      &ldquo;crinting,&rdquo; and all the walls of the houses and of the compounds are made
-      of this split bamboo neatly woven together. For Bathurst is but a strip of
-      sand-bank just rescued from the mangrove swamp round, and these crinted
-      walls serve excellently to keep it together when the strong Harmattan
-      threatens to blow the whole place bodily into the swamp behind. My
-      friend's home was a very nice specimen of its class, the first barbaric
-      home I had ever seen. The compound was surrounded by the crinted walls,
-      and inside again were two or three huts, also built of crinting, with a
-      thatched roof. As a rule I am afraid the Jolloff is not clean, but my
-      pilot's wife had a neat little home. There were no windows in it, but the
-      strong sunlight came through the crinted walls, and made a subdued light
-      and a pattern of the basket-work on the white, sanded floor; there were
-      three long seats of wood, neatly covered with white napkins edged with
-      red, a table, a looking-glass, and a basket of bread, for it appeared she
-      was a trader in a small way. It was all very suitable and charming.
-      Outside in the compound ran about chickens, goats, a dog or two, and some
-      small children, another woman's children, alas, for she told me mournfully
-      she had none.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is easy enough to make a friend; the difficulty is to know where to
-      stop. I am afraid I had soon exhausted all my interest in my Jolloff
-      woman, while to her I was a great source of pride, and she wanted me to
-      come and see her every day. At first she told me she &ldquo;fear too much&rdquo; to
-      come to &ldquo;Governor's Yard,&rdquo; but latterly, I regret to state, that wholesome
-      fear wore off, and she called to see me every day, and I found suitable
-      conversation a most difficult thing to provide, so that I grew to look
-      very anxiously indeed for the steamer that was to take me up the river.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0049.jpg" alt="0049 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0049.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The Government steamer, the <i>Mansikillah</i>, had broken down. She was
-      old, and it was, I was told, her chronic state, but I was bitterly
-      disappointed till the Governor told me he had made arrangements for me to
-      go in the French Company's steamer, the <i>Mungo Park</i>. She was going
-      up the river with general cargo; she was coming down again with some of
-      the groundnut crop, little nuts that grow on the root of a trefoil plant,
-      nuts the Americans call pea-nuts, and the English monkey-nuts.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had to wait a little till there came a messenger one day to say that the
-      steamer was ready at last, and would start that afternoon. So I went down
-      to the little wharf with my servant, my baggage, and the travelling
-      Commissioner, who was also going up the river.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The <i>Mungo Park</i> was a stern-wheeler of 150 tons, drawing six feet of
-      water, and when first I saw her you could hardly tell steamer from wharf,
-      so alive were they both with crowded, shrieking people, all either wanting
-      to get on, or to get off, which was apparently not quite clear. After a
-      little wait, out of chaos came a courteous French trader and a gangway.
-      The gangway took us on board, and the trader, whose English was as good as
-      mine, explained that he, too, was going up the river to look after the
-      houses belonging to his company along the banks. Then he showed me my
-      quarters, and I was initiated into the mysteries of travelling in the
-      interior of Africa. There was but one cabin on board the <i>Mungo Park</i>,
-      a place about eighteen feet square amidship; in it were two bunks, a
-      table, a couple of long seats, a cupboard, and washing arrangements. The
-      sides were all of Venetian shutters, which could be taken away when not
-      wanted. It was all right in a way, but I must confess for a moment I
-      wondered how on earth two men and a woman were to stow away there. Then
-      the trader explained. I should have the cabin to sleep in, and we all
-      three would have our meals there together, while arrangements might be
-      made by which we could all in turn bathe and wash. I learned my first
-      lesson: you accept extraordinary and unconventional situations, if you are
-      wise, with a smile and without a blush in Africa. The Commissioner and the
-      trader, I found on further inquiry, would sleep on the top of the cabin,
-      which was also what one might call the promenade deck. I arranged my
-      simple belongings, and went up on deck to look, and I found that it was
-      reached by way of the boiler, across which some steps and a little, coaly
-      hand-rail led. It would have been nice in the Arctic regions, but on a
-      tropical afternoon it had its drawbacks. On the deck I was met by a
-      vociferous black man, who was much too busy to do more than give an
-      obsequious welcome, for it appeared he was the captain. I shall always
-      regret I did not take his photograph as he leaned over the railing,
-      shouting and gesticulating to his men, and to the would-be passengers, and
-      to the men who were struggling to get the cargo on board. He cursed them,
-      I should think, all impartially. The French trader said he was an
-      excellent captain, and he remains in my mind as the most unique specimen
-      of the genus I have ever seen. He wore a khaki coat and very elderly tweed
-      trousers, split behind; his feet were bare; he did not pander to that
-      vitiated taste which demands underlinen, or at least a shirt, but, seeing
-      it was the cold weather, he adorned his black skull with a woolly cap with
-      ear-flaps, such as Nansen probably took on his North-Pole expedition.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There was a great deal of cargo&mdash;cotton goods, sugar, salt, coffee,
-      dates; things that the French company were taking up to supply their
-      factories on the river, and long before it was stowed the deck passengers
-      began crowding on board. Apparently there was no provision whatever made
-      for them; they stowed on top of the cargo, just wherever they could find a
-      place, and every passenger&mdash;there were over ninety of them&mdash;had
-      apparently something to say as to the accommodation, or the want of
-      accommodation, and he or she said it at the very top of his or her voice
-      in Jolloff or Mandingo or that bastard English which is a <i>lingua franca</i>
-      all along the Coast. Not that it mattered much what language they said it
-      in, because no one paid the least attention; such a babel have I never
-      before heard. And such a crowd as they were. The steamer provided water
-      carriage only for the deck passengers, so that they had their cooking
-      apparatus, their bedding, their food, their babies, their chickens
-      (unfortunate wretches tied by one leg), and, if they could evade the eagle
-      eye of the French trader, their goats. The scene was bedlam let loose to
-      my unaccustomed eyes. We were to tow six lighters as well, and each of
-      them also had a certain number of passengers. As we started it seemed
-      likely we should sweep away a few dozen who were hanging on in the most
-      dangerous places to the frailest supports. Possibly they wouldn't have
-      been missed. I began to understand why the old slaver was callous. It was
-      impossible to feel humane in the midst of such a shrieking, howling mob.
-      The siren gave wild and ear-piercing shrieks; there were yells from the
-      wharf, more heartrending yells from the steamer, a minor accompaniment
-      from the lighters, bleating of goats, cackling of protesting fowls, crying
-      of children, and we were off without casualty, and things began to settle
-      down.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had thought my quarters cramped, but looking at the deck passengers,
-      crowding fore and aft over the coals and on top of the boiler, I realised
-      that everything goes by comparison, and that they were simply palatial. I
-      had eighteen feet square of room all to myself to sleep in. It had one
-      drawback. There was £5000 worth of silver stowed under the seats, and
-      therefore the trader requested me to lock the doors and fasten the
-      shutters lest some of the passengers should take a fancy to it. His view
-      was that plenty of air would come through the laths of the shutters. I did
-      not agree with the French trader, and watched with keen interest those
-      boxes of silver depart all too slowly. I would gladly have changed places
-      and let him and the Commissioner have my cabin if only I might have taken
-      their place on the deck above. But on the deck was the wheel, presided
-      over by the black captain, or the equally black and more ragged mate, so
-      it was not to be thought of.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And that deck was something to remember. There were the large
-      water-bottles there and the filter, the trader's bed in a neat little
-      roll, the Commissioner's bed, draped with blue mosquito curtains, the
-      hencoops with the unhappy fowls that served us for food, the
-      Commissioner's washing apparatus on top of one of the coops, for he was a
-      young man of resource, the rest of his kit, his rifle, his bath, his
-      cartridge-belt, his dog, a few plates and cups and basins, a couple of
-      sieves for rice, two or three stools, the elderly black kettle, out of the
-      spout of which the skipper and the mate sucked refreshment as if they had
-      been a couple of snipe, and last, but not least, there was the French
-      company's mails for their employees up river. I was told the
-      correspondence always arrived safely, and so it is evident that in some
-      things we take too much trouble. The captain attended to the sorting of
-      the mails when he had time to spare from his other duties. I have seen him
-      with a much-troubled brow sorting letters at night by the light of a
-      flickering candle, and, when the mails overflowed the deal box, parcels
-      were stacked against the railing, newspapers leaned for support against
-      the wheel, and letters collogued in friendly fashion on the deck with the
-      black kettle.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      For the first seventeen miles the little ship, towing her lighters behind
-      and alongside, went up a river that was like a sea, so far away were the
-      mangrove swamps that are on either side. Then we reached Fort St James,
-      and the river narrows. Very pathetic are the ruins of Fort St James. No
-      one lives there now; no one has lived there for many a long day, but you
-      see as you pass and look at the crumbling stones of the old fort why West
-      Africa gained in the minds of men so evil a reputation. The place is but a
-      rocky islet, with but a few scanty trees upon it; above is the brazen sky,
-      below the baked earth, on which the tropical sun pours down with all the
-      added heat gathered from the glare of the river. They must have died shut
-      up in Fort St James in those far-away days. Tradition, too, says that the
-      gentlemen of the company of soldiers who were stationed there were for
-      ever fighting duels, and that the many vacancies in the ranks were not
-      always due to the climate. But the heat and the monotony would conduce to
-      irritability, and when a hasty word had to be upheld at the sword's point,
-      it is no wonder if they cursed the Coast with a bitterness that is only
-      given to the land of regrets. But all honour to those dead-and-gone
-      Englishmen. They upheld the might of Britain, and her rights in the trade
-      in palm oil and slaves and ivory that even then came down the river. And
-      if they died&mdash;now, now at last, after many weary years, their
-      descendants are beginning dimly to realise, as they never did, the value
-      of the land for which they gave their lives.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is the custom to speak with contempt of a mangrove swamp, as if in it
-      no beauty could lie, as if it were only waste land&mdash;dreary,
-      depressing, ugly. Each of those epithets may be true&mdash;I cannot say&mdash;except
-      the last, and that is most certainly a falsehood. What my impressions
-      would be if I lived in the midst of it day after day I cannot say, but to
-      a passer-by the mangrove swamp has a beauty of its own.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When first I saw the Gambia I was fascinated, and found no words too
-      strong for its beauty; and, having gone farther, I would take back not one
-      word of that admiration. But I am like the lover who is faithless to his
-      first mistress&mdash;he acknowledges her charm, but he has seen someone
-      else; so now, as I sit down to write, I am reminded that the Volta is more
-      ravishingly lovely, and that if I use up all my adjectives on the Gambia I
-      shall have no words to describe my new mistress. Therefore must I modify
-      my transports, and so it seems to me I am unfair.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      As we moved up the river we could plainly see the shore on either side,
-      the dense mangrove swamp, doubled by its reflection, green and beautiful
-      against its setting of blue sky and clear river. Crocodiles lay basking in
-      the golden sunshine on the mud-banks, white egrets flew slowly from tree
-      to tree, a brown jolah-king, an ibis debased for some sin in the youth of
-      the world, sailed slowly across the water, a white fishing-eagle poised
-      himself on high, looking for his prey, a slate-blue crane came across our
-      bows, a young pelican just ahead was taking his first lesson in swimming,
-      and closer to the bank we could see king-fishers, bright spots of colour
-      against the dark green of the mangrove.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;The wonder of the Tropics&rdquo;&mdash;the river seemed to be whispering at
-      first, and then fairly shouted&mdash;&ldquo;can you deny beauty to this river?&rdquo;
-       and I, with the cool Harmattan blowing across the water to put the touch
-      of moisture in the air it needed, was constrained to answer that voice,
-      which none of the others seemed to hear, &ldquo;Truly I cannot.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It would be impossible to describe in detail all the little wharves at
-      which we stopped; besides, they all bore a strong family resemblance to
-      one another, differing only when they were in the upper or lower river.
-      Long before I could see any signs of human habitation the steamer's
-      skipper was wildly agitated over the mails, wrinkling up his brows and
-      pawing them over with his dirty black hands&mdash;mine were dirtier, at
-      least, they showed more, and the way to the deck was so coaly it was
-      impossible to keep clean. Then he would hang on to a string, which
-      resulted in the most heartrending wails from the steamer's siren; a
-      corrugated-iron roof would show up among the surrounding greenery, and a
-      little wharf, or &ldquo;tenda,&rdquo; as they call them here, would jut out into the
-      stream. These tendas are frail-looking structures built of the split poles
-      of the rhon palm. There seem to be as many varieties of palm as there are
-      of eucalyptus, all much alike to the uninitiated eye.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The tendas look as if they were only meant to be walked on by bare feet&mdash;certainly
-      very few of the feet rise beyond a loose slipper; and whether it was
-      blazing noonday or pitchy darkness only made visible by a couple of
-      hurricane lanterns of one candle-power, the tenda was crowded with people
-      come to see the arrival of the steamer, which is a White-Star liner or a
-      Cunarder to them&mdash;people in cast-off European clothing and the
-      ubiquitous tourist cap, Moslems in fez and flowing white or blue robes,
-      mammies with gaily coloured handkerchiefs bound round their heads and
-      still gayer skirts and cloths, little children clad in one garment or no
-      garments at all, beautiful grey donkeys that carry the groundnuts or the
-      trade goods, fawn-coloured country cattle, and goats and sheep, black,
-      white, and brown&mdash;and every living creature upon that tenda did his
-      little best towards the raising of a most unholy din. And the steamer was
-      not to be beaten. Jolloff and Man-dingo too was shrieked; the captain took
-      a point of vantage, shook his black fist at intervals, and added his quota
-      of curses in Jolloff, Mandingo, Senegalese, and broken French and English,
-      and the cargo was unloaded with a clatter, clatter, punctuated by
-      earpiercing yells that made one wonder if the slaving days had not come
-      back, and these lumpers were not shrieking in agony.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But, when I could understand, the remarks were harmless enough. What the
-      black man says to his friends and acquaintances when he speaks in his own
-      tongue I cannot say, but when he addresses them in English I can vouch for
-      it his conversation is banal to the last degree. In the general din I
-      catch some words I understand, and I listen.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Ah, Mr Jonsing, dat you, sah? How you do, sah?&rdquo; Mr Jonsing's health is
-      quite satisfactory; and Mrs Jonsing, and Miss Mabel, and Miss Gladys, and
-      Mr Edward were all apparently in perfect health, for they were inquired
-      after one by one at the top of the interested friend's voice. Then there
-      were many wishes for the continuance of the interesting family in this
-      happy state, and afterwards there was an excursion into wider realms of
-      thought.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You 'member dat t'ing you deny las' mont', sah?&rdquo; The question comes
-      tentatively.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I deny it dis mont', sah,&rdquo; Mr Jonsing answers promptly, which is, so far,
-      satisfactory, as showing that Mr Jonsing has at least a mind of his own,
-      and is not to be bounced into lightly changing it. I might have heard
-      more, and so gleaned some information into the inner life of these people,
-      but unfortunately Mr Jonsing now got in the way of the stalwart captain,
-      and being assisted somewhat ungently by the collar of his ragged shirt to
-      the tenda, he launched out into curses that were rude, to put it mildly,
-      and my knowledge of his family affairs came to an abrupt conclusion.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the breaks in the mangrove, Balanghar is one of them, there is, of
-      course, a little hard earth&mdash;the great shady <i>ficus elasticus</i>,
-      beautiful silk-cotton trees, and cocoa-nut palms grow; the traders' yards
-      have white stone posts at the four corners marking the extent of their
-      leaseholds, and in these enclosures are the trading-houses, the round huts
-      of the native helpers, and the little crinted yards, in which are poured
-      the groundnuts, which are the occasion of all this clatter.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      One hundred and fifty miles up we came to McCarthy Island, five miles long
-      by a mile wide, and markedly noticeable because here the great river
-      changes its character entirely, the mangrove swamps are left behind, and
-      open bush of mahogany, palm, and many another tree and creeper, to me
-      nameless, takes its place. On McCarthy Island is a busy settlement, with
-      the town marked into streets, lined with native shops and trading-houses.
-      There are great groundnut stores along the river front, seven, or perhaps
-      eight white people, a church, a hospital, obsolete guns, and an old powder
-      magazine, that shows that in days gone by this island was only held by
-      force of arms.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They tell me that McCarthy Island is one of the hottest places in the
-      world, though that morning the river had been veiled in white mist, the
-      thermometer was down to between 50 deg. and 60 deg., and my boy had
-      brought in my early-morning tea with his head tied up in a pocket
-      handkerchief like an old woman; and at midday it was but little over 90
-      deg., but this was December, the coolest season of the year. I discussed
-      the question with a negro lady with her head bound up in a red-silk
-      handkerchief. She was one of our passengers, and had come up trading in
-      kola-nuts. Kola-nuts are hard, corner-shaped nuts that grow on a very
-      handsome tree about the size of an oak, which means a small tree in
-      Africa. They are much esteemed for their stimulating and sustaining
-      properties. I have tried them, and I found them only bitter, so perhaps I
-      do not want stimulating. A tremendous trade is done in them, and all along
-      the coast you meet the traders, very often, as in this case, women. I had
-      seen it in her eye for some time that she wanted to exchange ideas with
-      me, and at last the opportunity came. She told me she came from Sierra
-      Leone.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You know Freetown?&rdquo; That is the capital. I said I had heard it was the
-      hottest place in the world.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; She tossed her head in scorn. &ldquo;You wait two mont's; it be fool to
-      M'Cart'y! You gat no rest, no sleep&rdquo;; and she showed her white teeth and
-      stretched out her black hands as if to say that no words of hers could do
-      justice to this island.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Truly, I think the sun must pour down here in the hot season, judging by
-      my experience in the cool. The hot season is not in June, as one might
-      expect, for then come the rains, when no white man, and, indeed, I think
-      no black man foreign to the place, stays up the river, but in March and
-      April. I do not propose to visit McCarthy in the hot season. In the cool
-      the blazing sun overhead, and the reflected glare from the water, played
-      havoc with my complexion. I did not think about it till the District
-      Commissioner brought the fact forcibly home to me. He was a nice young
-      fellow, but the sort of man who is ruin to England as a colonising nation,
-      because he makes it so patent to everyone that he bitterly resents
-      colonising on his own account, and will allow no good in the country
-      wherein lies his work.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I asked him if he did not think of bringing out his wife.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He looked at me a moment, seeking words to show his opinion of a woman who
-      insisted upon going where he thought no white woman was needed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;My wife,&rdquo; he said, with emphasis that marked his surprise; &ldquo;my wife? Why,
-      my wife has such a delicate complexion that she has to wash her face
-      always in distilled water.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was sufficient. I understood when I looked in the glass that night the
-      reproof intended to be conveyed. In all probability the lady was not quite
-      such a fool as her husband intimated; but one thing is quite certain, she
-      was buying her complexion at a very heavy cost if she were going to allow
-      it to deprive her of the joy of seeing new countries.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      McCarthy was very busy; dainty cutters, frail canoes, and grimy steamers
-      crowded the wharves, and to and fro across the great river, 500 yards wide
-      here, the ferry, a great canoe, went backwards and forwards the livelong
-      day, and I could just see gathered together herds of the pretty cattle of
-      the country that looked not unlike Alderneys.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When we left the island the river was narrower, so that we seemed to glide
-      along between green walls, where the birds were singing and the monkeys
-      barking and crying and whimpering like children. Again and again we passed
-      trees full of them, sometimes little grey monkeys, and sometimes great
-      dog-faced fellows that rumour says would tear you to pieces if you
-      offended them and had the misfortune to fall into their hands. Now and
-      then a hippopotamus rose, a reminder of an age that has gone by, and
-      always on the mud-banks were the great crocodiles. And the
-      trading-stations were, I think, more solitary and more picturesque. The
-      little tendas were even more frail, just rickety little structures covered
-      with a mat of crinting, for the river rises here very high, and these
-      wharves are sure to be carried away in the rainy season. And then come
-      hills, iron-stone hills, and tall, dry grass ten and twelve feet high.
-      Sometimes we stopped where there was not even the frailest of tendas, and
-      one night, just as the swift darkness was falling, the steamer drew up at
-      a little muddy landing-stage, where there was a break in the trees, and
-      three dugouts were drawrn up. Here she became wildly hysterical, and I
-      began to think something would give way, until all shrieks died down as a
-      tall black man, draped in blue, and with a long Dane gun across his
-      shoulder, stalked out of the bush. Savage Africa personified. We had
-      stopped to land a passenger, a mammy with her head tied up in a
-      handkerchief, and a motley array of boxes, bundles, calabashes, chairs,
-      saucepans, and fowls that made a small boat-load. She waved a farewell to
-      the French trader as her friends congregated upon the shore and examined
-      her baggage.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;She is an important woman,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;the wife of a black trader in the
-      town behind there. He's a Christian.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;He's got a dozen wives,&rdquo; said the Commissioner.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;His official wife, then. Oh, you know the sort. I guarantee she keeps
-      order in the compound.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      At Fatta Tenda, which is quite a busy centre, from which you may start for
-      the Niger and Timbuctoo, we gave a dinner-party, a dinner-party under
-      difficulties. Our cook was excellent. How he turned out such dainties in a
-      tiny galley three feet by six, and most of that taken up by the stove, I
-      do not pretend to understand, but he did, so our difficulties lay not
-      there, but with the lamp. What was the matter with it I do not know, but
-      it gave a shocking light, and the night before our dinner-party it went
-      out, and left us to finish our dinner in darkness. Then, next day, word
-      went round that the mate was going to trim the lamp, and when we, with two
-      men from the French factory, went into dinner, an unwonted light shed its
-      brilliancy over the scene. Unfortunately, there was also a strong scent of
-      kerosene, which is not usually considered a very alluring fragrance. But
-      we consoled ourselves; the mate had trimmed the lamp. He had. He had also
-      distributed most of the oil over the dinner-table&mdash;the cloth was
-      soaked in it, and, worse than that, the salt, pepper, and mustard were
-      full of it; and then, as we sat down to soup, there came in through the
-      open windows a flight, I should say several flights, of flying ants. They
-      died in crowds in the soup, they filled up the glasses, they distributed
-      themselves over the kerosene-soaked table, till at last we gave them best
-      and fled to the deck. Finally the servants reduced things to a modified
-      state of order, but whenever I smell a strong smell of kerosene I am
-      irresistibly reminded of the day we tried to foregather with our kind, and
-      be hospitable up the Gambia.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0065.jpg" alt="0065 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0065.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      There were some Mandingo chiefs here. Bala, Chief of Kantora, and
-      Jimbermang Jowlah, the local Chief, came to call. Bala dashed up on
-      horseback, with a large following, to complain that there was trouble on
-      the Border, for the French had come in and said that his town should pay a
-      poll tax of 500 dollars. He ranged all his horses, with their high cantled
-      saddles and their heavy iron stirrups, on the steep, red bank, and he and
-      his chief man came on board the little steamer to talk to the
-      Commissioner. They made a quaint picture&mdash;the fair, good-looking
-      Commissioner, with his boyish face grave, as suited the occasion, and the
-      Chief, a warrior and a gentleman, as unlike Mr Jonsing in his tourist cap
-      as the Gambia is unlike the Thames at Wapping. The Commissioner wore a
-      blue-striped shirt and riding breeches, and the Chief was clad all in blue
-      of different shades; there was a sort of underskirt to his knees of
-      dark-blue cotton patterned in white, over that was a pale-blue tunic,
-      through which came his bare arms, and over that again a voluminous
-      dark-blue cotton garment, caught in at the waist with a girdle, from which
-      depended a very handsome sporran of red leather picked out in yellow; on
-      his bare feet were strapped spurs, a spur with a single point to it like a
-      nail. He had a handsome, clean-cut face, his shaven head was bared out of
-      courtesy, and at his feet lay his headgear, a blue-velvet cap, with a
-      golden star and crescent embroidered upon it, and a great round straw hat
-      adorned with red leather such as the Hausas farther east make. He was a
-      chief, every inch of him. And his manners were those of a courtly
-      gentleman too. He did not screech and howl like the men on the wharf,
-      though he was manifestly troubled and desperately in earnest; but, sitting
-      there on the deck of the little steamer, with the various odds and ends of
-      life scattered around him, he stated his case, through an interpreter, to
-      the young Commissioner seated on the hen-coop and taking down every word.
-      When it was done he was assured that the Governor should be told all about
-      it, and now rose with an air of intense relief. He had thrown his burden
-      on responsible shoulders, and had time to think about the white woman who
-      was looking on. He had seen white men before, quite a number, but never
-      had he seen a white woman, and so he turned and looked at me gravely, with
-      not half the rude curiosity with which I felt I had been steadily
-      regarding him. I should like to have been a white woman worth looking at,
-      instead of which I was horribly conscious that the coal dust was in my
-      hair, that my hands had but recently grasped the greasy handrail of those
-      steps across the boiler, and that my skirts had picked up most of the
-      multifarious messes that were to be gathered there and on the unclean
-      deck. There is no doubt skirts should not come much below the knees in the
-      bush.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;He wishes to make his compliments to you,&rdquo; said the interpreter, and the
-      grave and silent Chief, with a little, low murmur, took my hand in both
-      his delicate, cold, black ones, held it for a moment with his head just a
-      little bent, and then went his way, and I felt I had been complimented
-      indeed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The chief of Kantora, having done all he came to do, swam his horses
-      across the river, trusting, I suppose, to the noise made by his numerous
-      followers to scare away the crocodiles, and we went up the river to
-      Kossun, which is within two miles of Yarba Tenda, where the British river
-      ends. At Kossun there is a French factory only, and that managed by a
-      black man, and here are the very beginnings of the groundnut trade. All
-      around was vivid green&mdash;green on the bank, green reflected in the
-      clear waters of the river; the sun was only just rising, the air was cool,
-      and grey mists like a bridal veil rent with golden beams lay across the
-      water; only by the factory was a patch of brown, enhancing the greenery
-      that was all around it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0069.jpg" alt="0069 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0069.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The groundnut grows on a vine, and behind the factory this was all
-      garnered into great heaps, and surrounded by crinted fences until time
-      should be found to comb out the nuts. In the empty fields shy women, who
-      dared not lift their faces to look at the strange, white woman, were
-      gleaning, and the little, naked children were frankly afraid, and ran
-      shrieking from the horrid sight. And just behind the factory were little
-      enclosures of neatly plaited straw, and each of these contained a man's
-      crop ready waiting to be valued and bought by the trader. Kossun was the
-      only place where I saw the nuts as they belonged to the grower. All along
-      the river there were heaps of them, looking like young mountains, but all
-      these heaps were trader's property. At Nianimaroo, on the lower river, I
-      saw a heap, which the pleased proprietor told me was worth £1000. He
-      apparently had finished his heap, and was waiting to send it down the
-      river, but everywhere else men, picturesque in fluttering rags or
-      grotesque in cast-off European garments, were bringing calabashes and
-      sacks of groundnuts to add to the heaps; and, since they cannot walk on
-      the yielding nuts, which are like so many pebbles under their bare feet,
-      little board ladders or steps of filled sacks were placed for them to run
-      up. And no sooner were the heaps piled up than they had to be dug out
-      again.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At Fatta Tenda, on the way down, having got rid of her cargo and her deck
-      passengers, the <i>Mungo Park</i> began to load again with groundnuts; and
-      men were busy through all the burning hot midday digging into the
-      groundnut heap, filling up sacks, and as the sacks were filled stalwart,
-      half-naked black men, like a line of ants, tramped laden down the steep
-      bank and poured their loads into the steamer's hold in a cloud of gritty
-      dust that penetrated everywhere. The trader told me that when he wanted
-      labourers he appealed to one of the principal men who live in the town a
-      mile or so behind the wharf, and he sent in his &ldquo;family,&rdquo; who are paid at
-      the rate of a shilling a day. It is very, very doubtful whether much of
-      that shilling ever reaches the man who actually does the hard work. Things
-      move slowly in the Gambia as in all Africa, and &ldquo;family&rdquo; is probably a
-      euphonious term for household slave. After all, it is possibly only like
-      the system of serfdom that existed in Europe in days gone by and will not
-      exist very long here, for knowledge is coming, though it comes slowly, and
-      with wealth pouring into the country and a Commissioner to appeal to in
-      cases of oppression the black man will presently free himself. Even the
-      women are already beginning to understand the difference. The morals of
-      the country, be it remembered, are the primitive morals of a primitive
-      people. A man may have four legal wives by Mohammedan law. He may have
-      ever so many concubines, who add to his dignity; and then, if he is a big
-      man&mdash;this was vouched for by the official native interpreter, who
-      joined his Commissioner at M'Carthy&mdash;he has ever so many more women
-      in his household, and these he expects to have children.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is their business and he sees that they do it, and the children belong
-      to him no matter who is the father. Children, it will be seen, are an
-      asset, and the woman is now beginning to understand that the children are
-      hers alone, and again and again a troubled woman, angry and tearful, walks
-      miles to appeal to the travelling Commissioner, such and such a man, her
-      master has taken away her children and she has heard that the great white
-      master will restore them to her. And in most cases the great white master,
-      who has probably a laughing, round, boyish face, fancies he has not a
-      desire above good shooting, and speaks of the country as &ldquo;poisonous,&rdquo; does
-      all that is expected of him and often a good deal more also.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0073.jpg" alt="0073 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0073.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      And yet, only ten years ago, they were very doubtful still about the white
-      man's protectorate in the Gambia, as graves in the Bathurst cemetery
-      testify. Then was the last rising, when the district of San-nian Kunta was
-      very disaffected, and two Commissioners, Mr Sitwell and Mr Silva, were
-      sent with twelve native police to put matters straight. After the wont of
-      the English, they despised their enemy and marched into a hostile village
-      with the ammunition boxes screwed down, sat themselves down under a tree,
-      and called on the Chief and village elders to come up before them. But the
-      chief and elders did no such thing. Hidden in the surrounding bush, they
-      replied with a volley from their long Danes, killing both the
-      Commissioners and most of the policemen, but one escaping got away to the
-      next Commissioner, a young fellow named Price. Now, Mr Price had only four
-      policemen, but he was by no means sure of the death of his comrades, so
-      promptly he sent off to headquarters for help, and without delay marched
-      back to the disaffected village. The white men were dead and shockingly
-      mutilated, but with his four faithful policemen he brought their remains
-      back for decent burial. He did not know what moment he might not be
-      attacked. He had before him as object lessons in savage warfare the dead
-      bodies of his comrades. He had to march through thick bush, and they say
-      at the end of that day's work young Mr Price's hair turned white.
-      Punishment came, of course. Six months later the new Governor, Sir George
-      Denton, with a company of W.A.F.F.''s&mdash;West African Field Force&mdash;marched
-      to that disaffected village; the chief was deposed and exiled, and peace
-      has reigned ever since.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And now much farther away from Bathurst a woman may go through the country
-      by herself in perfect safety. All the towns are still from one to four
-      miles back from the tenda, away in the bush, from the old-time notion I
-      suppose that there was danger to be dreaded by the great waterway, and
-      early in the morning I used to take the narrow track through the long
-      grass which was many feet above my head, and go and see primitive native
-      life.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Up at the head of the river our steamer filled rapidly. When our holds
-      were full the groundnuts were put in sacks and piled on the decks fore and
-      aft, half-way up the masts, almost to the tops of the funnels, and the
-      only place that was not groundnuts was the little cabin and the deck on
-      top. There were £600 worth of groundnuts on board the <i>Mungo Park</i>,
-      and we stowed on top of them passengers, men and women, and all their
-      multifarious belongings, and then proceeded to pick up lighters also laden
-      with groundnuts bound down the river.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Towards the evening of the second day of our homeward journey we came to a
-      big creek down which was being poled by six men a red lighter, deep in the
-      water and laden to the very brim with groundnuts. This the steamer was to
-      tow behind. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The heavily laden
-      lighter drifted first to one side and then to the other and threatened to
-      fill, and the Commissioner's interpreter, sitting on deck, told me a long
-      story of how here in the river there is a devil that will not allow a
-      steamer or a cutter to go past unless the owner dances to placate him. If
-      he do not care to dance himself he must pay someone else to dance for him.
-      Unless someone dances, the engines may work, the sails may fill, but that
-      vessel will not go ahead till the river devil has his toll. No one danced
-      on board the <i>Mungo Park</i>, unless the black captain's prancing about
-      and shaking his fist and shouting what sounded like blood-curdling threats
-      at the skipper of the lighter might be construed into dancing. If so, it
-      had not the desired effect, for the heavy lighter wouldn't steer, and
-      presently the captain decided to tow it alongside. The darkness fell; all
-      around us was the wide, weird, dark river, with the green starboard light
-      just falling upon the mast of the lighter alongside, and for a few brief
-      moments there was silence and peace, for the lighter was towing all right
-      at last. Then the mast bent forward suddenly, there was a stifled,
-      strangled cry, the captain gave a wild yell, the engines were stopped, and
-      there was no more lighter, only the smooth dark water was rough with
-      floating groundnuts and the river devil had taken his toll. Five of the
-      crew had jumped for the <i>Mungo Park</i> and reached her, but the sixth,
-      a tall Man-dingo, wrapped in a blue cloth, had gone down a prey for the
-      wicked crocodiles or the cruel, strong undercurrents. They launched a boat
-      and we felt our impotence and the vastness of the river, for they only had
-      a hurricane lantern and it looked but a tiny speck on the waste of dark
-      waters. The boat went up and down flashing its feeble light. Here was a
-      patch of groundnuts, here a floating calabash, here a cloth, but the
-      lighter and the man were gone, and we went on our way, easily enough now,
-      because, of course, the steamer had paid toll.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There are the beginnings, it seems to me, in the groundnut trade of the
-      Gambia, of what may be in the future a very great industry. True, the
-      value of the groundnut is regulated by the price of cotton-seed oil, for
-      which the oil pressed from the groundnut makes a very excellent
-      substitute. Last year the Gambia's groundnuts, the harvest of the
-      simplest, most ignorant peasants but one remove from savagery, was worth
-      between £500,000 and £600,000, and not one-twentieth of the soil was
-      cultivated, but the colony's existence was fairly justified. The greater
-      part of this crop goes into French hands and is exported to Marseilles,
-      where it is made into the finer sorts of soap. What wonder then if the
-      French cast longing eyes upon the mighty river, for not only is the land
-      around it rich, but they have spent large sums upon railways for their
-      great colony of Senegal, and had they the Gambia as well they would have
-      water carriage for both their imports and exports even in the dry season,
-      and in the rains they could bring their heavy goods far far inland.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I realised all this as I came back to Bathurst with the dust from the
-      groundnuts in my hair and eyes and nostrils, and dresses that had not been
-      worn an hour before they were shrieking for the washtub. But what did a
-      little discomfort matter?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I returned in time for the Christmas and New-Year festivities. On
-      Christmas night all the English in the colony dined at Government House to
-      celebrate the festival. Exiles all, they would have said. I have been told
-      that I judge the English in West Africa a little hardly, and of course I
-      realise all the bitterness of divided homes, especially at this season
-      that should be one of family reunions. But after all the English make
-      their life in West Africa far harder than they need. Dimly I saw this on
-      my visit to the Gambia; slowly the feeling grew upon me till, when I left
-      the Coast eight months later, I was fully convinced that if England is to
-      hold her pride of place as a colonising nation with the French and
-      Germans, she must make less of this exile theory and more of a home in
-      these outlands. The doctors tell me this is impossible, and of course I
-      must bow to the doctors' opinion, but it is saying in effect&mdash;which I
-      will not allow for a moment&mdash;that the French and Germans&mdash;and
-      especially the French and German women&mdash;are far better than the
-      English.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Here in the Gambia I began to think it, and the fact was driven in more
-      emphatically as I went down the Coast. The Englishman makes great moan,
-      but after all he holds a position in West Africa the like of which he
-      could not dream of in England. He is the superior, the ruler; men bow down
-      before him and rush to do his bidding&mdash;he who would have a suburban
-      house and two maid-servants in the old country, lives in barbaric
-      splendour. Of course it is quite possible he prefers the suburban house
-      and two maid-servants and his wife. And there, of course, the crux of the
-      matter lies. Why, I know not, but English women are regarded as heroines
-      and martyrs who go out to West Africa with their husbands. Possibly it is
-      because I am an Australian and have had a harder bringing-up that I resent
-      very much the supposition that a woman cannot go where a man can. From the
-      time I was a little girl I have seen women go as a matter of course to the
-      back-blocks with their husbands, and if, barring a few exceptions, they
-      did not stay there, we all supposed not that it was the country that did
-      not agree with them, but the husband. We all know there are husbands and
-      wives who do not agree. And I can assure you, for I know both, life in the
-      back-blocks in Australia, life in many of the towns of Australia, with its
-      heat and its want of service, is far harder for a woman than it is in West
-      Africa. Yet here in the Gambia and all along the Coast was the same
-      eternal cry wherever there was a woman, &ldquo;How long can she stay?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The difference between the French and the English views on this vexed
-      question was exemplified by the Commissioner's view and the French
-      trader's. I have already given the former. Said the latter, &ldquo;Of course my
-      wife will come out. Why should she not. She is just waiting till the baby
-      is a month old. What is the good of a wife to me in Paris? The rains? Of
-      course she will stay the rains. It is only the English who are afraid of
-      the rainy season.&rdquo; And I was sorry for the little contempt he put into his
-      voice when he spoke of the English fear. I know this opinion of mine will
-      bring down upon my devoted head a storm of wrath from West-Coast
-      officials, but whether the Coast is healthy or not there is no denying the
-      fact that the nation who takes its women is far more likely to hold a
-      country, and in that the French and Germans are beating us hands down.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But this I only realised dimly during my stay in the Gambia. I was to
-      leave on New Year's Day and on New Year's Eve we all went to the barracks
-      of the W.A.F.F.'s to see the New Year in. And then in the soft, warm night
-      the Governor and I went back to Government House. The stars were like
-      points of gold, the sky was like dark-blue velvet, and against it the
-      graceful palms stood out like splashes of ink, the water washed softly
-      against the shore, there was the ceaseless hum of insects in the air, and
-      from the native town behind came a beating of tom-toms subdued by the
-      distance. The sentry started out of the shadow at the gate as the
-      rickshaws arrived, and there came his guttural hail, &ldquo;Who goes dere?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Friend,&rdquo; said the Governor's voice. It was commonplace, everyday to him.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Pass friend and all's well,&rdquo; came the answer, and we went in and up the
-      steps; but surely, I thought, it was a very good omen, a very good omen
-      indeed. &ldquo;Pass friend and all's well.&rdquo; I was leaving that day that had not
-      yet dawned; I was going down the Coast and all should be well.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER III&mdash;THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVE?
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The origin of Sierra Leone&mdash;The difficulties of disposing of freed
-      slaves&mdash;One of the beauty-spots of the earth&mdash;Is it possible
-      that in the future, like Jamaica, it may be a health-resort?&mdash;Zachary
-      Macauley's views&mdash;Few women in Freetown&mdash;Sanitary matters taken
-      out of the hands of the Town Council and vested in a sanitary officer&mdash;Marked
-      improvement in cleanliness and health of the town&mdash;A remarkable man
-      of colour&mdash;Extraordinary language of the Creole&mdash;Want of taste
-      in dress when they ape the European&mdash;Mrs Abraham Freeman at home.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> had no intention
-      of going to Sierra Leone, but in West Africa as yet you make your way from
-      one place to another along the sea-board, and not only did Sierra Leone
-      lie directly on my way, but the steamer, the <i>Zaria</i>, in which I was
-      travelling, stayed there for four days.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the old days, a little over one hundred years ago, England,
-      successfully policing the world, was putting down the iniquitous
-      slave-trade all along the coasts of Africa, and found herself with numbers
-      of black and helpless men, women, and children upon her hands. They had
-      been collected from all parts of the Coast; they themselves often did not
-      know where their homes lay, and the problem&mdash;quite a difficult one&mdash;was
-      to know what to do with them. To land them promiscuously on the Coast was
-      to seal their fate; either they would be killed or at the very best they
-      would at once relapse into the condition from which they had been rescued.
-      In this dilemma England did perhaps the only thing she could do. She
-      bought from the chiefs a strip of land round the mouth of a river and
-      landed there her somewhat troublesome charges to make for themselves, if
-      they could, a home. Of course she did not leave them to their own devices;
-      to do that would have been to insure their destruction at the hands of the
-      Mendi and Timini war-boys, but she planted there a Governor and some
-      soldiers, and made such provision as she could for the future of these
-      forlorn people. Then the colony was but a little strip of land. It is but
-      a small place still, but the British Protectorate now takes in those
-      warlike Timinis and Mendis, and extends some hundreds of miles inland and
-      as far south as the negro republic of Liberia, which I was on my way to
-      visit.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0083.jpg" alt="0083 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0083.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      I don't know who chose Sierra Leone, but whoever he was the choice does
-      him infinite credit. It is the most beautiful spot on all the west coast
-      of Africa. I have seen many of the beautiful harbours of the world,
-      Sydney, and Dunedin, and Hobart, which to my mind is the most beautiful of
-      them all, Cape Town, and Naples, and Vigo, Genoa, Palermo, Messina, and
-      lovely Taormina, which after all is not a harbour. I know them intimately,
-      and with any of these Sierra Leone can hold her own. We entered the mouth
-      of the river, passed the lighthouse, a tall, white building nestling among
-      the palms, and all along the shore were entrancing little green bays, with
-      green lawns. They looked like lawns from the ship, shaded by over-hanging
-      trees. The blue sea met softly the golden sands, and the hills behind were
-      veiled in a most alluring mist. It lifted and closed down and lifted
-      again, like a bride longing yet fearing to disclose her loveliness to her
-      lord. Here it seemed to me that a man might, when the feverish heat of
-      youth is passed, build himself a home and pass the evening of his days
-      resting from his labours; but I am bound to say I was the only person on
-      board who did think so. One and all were determined to impress upon me the
-      fact that Sierra Leone was known as the White Man's Grave, and that it
-      deserved the name. And yet Zachary Macauley, who ruled over it in the end
-      of the eighteenth century, staunchly upheld its advantages. I do not know
-      that he exactly recommends it as a health-resort, but something very near
-      to it, and he is very angry when anyone reviles the country. Zachary
-      Macauley was probably right. If a man is not prepared to stand a certain
-      amount of heat he must not go to the Coast at all; and if he does go he
-      must be prepared so to guide his life that it is possible to conform to
-      the rules of health demanded of the white man in the Tropics. If he looks
-      for the pleasures and delights of England and her temperate climate, he
-      will find himself bitterly disappointed, but if he seeks for what Africa
-      can give, and give with lavish hand, he will probably find that the
-      country will treat him well.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We cast anchor opposite the town appropriately named Freetown, and I
-      landed, presented my letter, and was asked by the kindly Governor to stay
-      for a few days at Government House.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The majority of the Europeans, with the exception of the Governor, do not
-      live in Freetown. They have wisely built their bungalows on the healthier
-      hillsides, and I suppose as the colony increases in importance the
-      Governor will go too; but I am glad when I was there he was still at Fort
-      Thornton.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0087.jpg" alt="0087 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0087.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Of the history of the fort I know nothing. The bungalow is raised on thick
-      stone walls, and you go up steps to the dwelling-house, past great rooms
-      that are railed off with iron bars. There are ornamental plants there now,
-      but there is no disguising the fact these are evidently relics of old
-      slave days; I presume the barracoons of the slaves. But behind the
-      one-time courtyard is filled up and sown with Bahama grass kept
-      close-cropped and green, so that croquet and bowls may be played upon it.
-      The bastions are now embowered in all manner of tropical greenery, and the
-      great guns, the guns that Zachary Macauley used against the French
-      privateers, peep out from a tangle of purple bougainvillea, scarlet
-      hibiscus, fragrant frangipanni, and glorious white moon flowers.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There are white women in Freetown, not very many, but still fifteen or
-      sixteen&mdash;the wives of the soldiers, of the political officers,
-      medical officers, and the traders, and their number is growing, so that
-      when the Governor gives a garden-party, the lawn that was once the
-      courtyard of the fort is gay with bright muslin dresses, ribbons, and
-      flowers. They seemed to like it too, those to whom I spoke, and there is
-      no doubt that the place is improving from a health point of view. Until
-      within the last two or three years the management of sanitary affairs was
-      in the hands of the Town Council, of whom a large number were negroes, and
-      the average negro is extremely careless about things sanitary; at last, so
-      evil a reputation did the most beautiful town on the Coast get that it was
-      found necessary to vest all power in the hands of a strong and capable
-      medical officer, and make him responsible for the cleanliness of the town.
-      The result, I believe, has more than justified all hopes. Perhaps some day
-      the town may be as healthy as it is beautiful.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I really know very little about Sierra Leone. I intended to come back
-      and go up the railway that goes a couple of hundred miles up country, but
-      as yet I have not had time, and all I can speak about with authority is
-      its exceeding beauty. The streets are wide and rather grass-grown, for it
-      is difficult to keep down vegetation in a moist and tropical climate, and
-      I am glad to say there are, though the town is by no means well-planted,
-      some beautiful trees to be seen. Government House is embowered in verdure,
-      and the first station on the railway that runs up to the hill-top is
-      &ldquo;Cotton-tree.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And the dwellers in this earthly paradise? Knowing their pathetic and
-      curious history I was anxious to see this people sprung from men and women
-      gathered from all corners of Africa, unfortunate and unhappy.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Frankly, I share with the majority of Coasters a certain dislike to the
-      educated negro. But many of the men I like best, the men whose opinion I
-      have found well worth taking about things West-African, tell me I am
-      wrong. You cannot expect to come up from savagery in a few decades, and
-      the thing I dislike so in the negro clerk is but a phase that will pass.
-      Here in Sierra Leone I met one man who made me feel that it would pass,
-      that the time will come when the colour of the skin will make no
-      difference, and that is the African known to all the world as Dr Blyden.
-      He is an old man now and he was ill, so I went to see him; and as I sat
-      and talked to him one still, hot evening, looking down the busy street
-      where men and women in all stages of dress and undress were passing to and
-      fro, carrying burdens on their heads, shrieking and shouting at one
-      another in the unintelligible jargon they call English, had I not looked
-      and seen for myself that his complexion was the shadowed livery of the
-      burnished sun, I should have thought I was talking to some professor of
-      one of the older Universities of England. His speech was measured and
-      cultivated and there was no trace in it of that indescribable pompous
-      intonation which seems peculiar to the educated black man. He gave me good
-      advice, too.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0091.jpg" alt="0091 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0091.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;What shall I write about?&rdquo; I asked, and halfexpected him to enter into a
-      long dissertation upon the possibilities that lay latent in his race. But
-      I might have known this man, who had conquered more difficulties on his
-      way upwards than ever I had dreamed about, better than that.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Write about what you see,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;And if you do not understand what
-      you see then ask until you do.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      So I have taken his advice and I write about what I have seen, and though
-      afterwards I found reason to like much the peasant peoples of West Africa,
-      I did not like the Creoles, as these descendants of freed slaves call
-      themselves. Do I judge them hardly, I wonder? If so, I judge only as all
-      the West Coast judges. They are a singularly arrogant people, blatant and
-      self-satisfied, and much disliked along the Coast from the Gambia to San
-      Paul de Loando. But they have taken advantage of the peace which England
-      has ensured to them, and are prosperous. Traders and town-dwellers are
-      they if they can manage it, and they pursue their avocations up and down
-      the Coast. A curious thing about them is their language. If you ask them
-      they would tell you it is English, and they would tell you they know no
-      other; and English it is, as to the words, but such an extraordinary
-      jargon it is quite as difficult to understand as any unknown tongue. Yet
-      it is the peculiar bastard tongue that is spoken all over the Coast. Many
-      who speak it as the only means of communication between them and their
-      boys must have wondered how such a jargon ever came into existence, and it
-      was not till Mr Migeod wrote his book on the languages of West Africa that
-      anyone in fact ever thought of classing it as a separate language. But
-      once pointed out, the fact is undoubted. Sierra Leonese is simply English
-      spoken with a negro construction.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Listening very carefully, it took a great deal of persuasion to make me
-      believe the words were English. When I bought bananas from a woman sitting
-      under the shade of a spreading cotton tree and the man behind her came
-      forward and held out his hand, saying: &ldquo;Make you gi'e me heen ooman coppa
-      all,&rdquo; I grasped the fact that he intended to have the money long before I
-      understood that he had said, in the only English, the only tongue he knew:
-      &ldquo;Give me her money,&rdquo; even though I did know that &ldquo;coppa&rdquo; stood for money.
-      Some of the words, of course, become commonplaces of everyday life, and I
-      am sure the next time I call on a friend, who is rich enough to have a
-      man-servant, association of ideas will take me back, and I shall ask quite
-      naturally, &ldquo;Massa lib?&rdquo; instead of the customary &ldquo;Is Mrs Jones at home?&rdquo;
-       Of course, in the case of Mrs Jones it would be &ldquo;Missus,&rdquo; but it was
-      generally a master I was inquiring for in Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Sunday or some high holiday is the day to see Freetown in its best
-      clothes. Then the black gentleman appears in all the glory of a tall,
-      black-silk hat, a frock coat, a highly starched waistcoat, the gayest of
-      ties, scarlet or pink, the palest of dove-coloured trousers, and
-      bright-yellow kid gloves; and the negro woman hides her fine figure with
-      ill-fitting corsets, over which she wears an open-work muslin blouse,
-      through which her dark skin shows a dull purple. Of all the places in
-      Africa to transgress the laws of beauty and art Freetown is the very
-      worst, and if ever a people tried their best to hide their own charms it
-      is the Creoles of Sierra Leone. It would be comic if it were not pathetic.
-      And yet, that these clothes are not part and parcel of the lives of these
-      children near bred to the sun is promptly seen if a shower of rain comes
-      on. In a lightning flash I saw a damsel, who might have come out of Fulham
-      Road, or, at the very least, Edgeware Road, strip off the most perishable
-      of her precious finery, do them up in a neat parcel that would carry
-      easily under her umbrella, and serenely and unembarrassed march home in
-      her white chemise and red petticoat. And she seemed to think as she passed
-      me smiling she was doing the only right and proper thing to be done; as
-      indeed she was.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was a seeker after knowledge while I was in Freetown, and was always
-      anxious to go anywhere and everywhere if a reason could be possibly
-      contrived, so it happened that on one occasion I went to Lumley in search
-      of fish. Lumley is a little village in the environ of Freetown, and the
-      fish was to be bought from one Abraham Freeman, who dwelt at the side of
-      the lagoon there. I went in a hammock, of course, and the way was lovely,
-      up hill and down dale, through country that looked like a gigantic
-      greenhouse run wild. The village was mostly built of mud with thatched
-      roofs, but sometimes the houses were of wood, and the upper parts very
-      wisely of trellis-work so as to insure a free current of air. When I
-      arrived I looked round and told my hammock-boys to set me down at a
-      cottage where a negro clad in a white shirt and trousers was lolling in a
-      hammock. He did not scream at the scenery. He was rather suitably clad, I
-      thought. It seemed he was the schoolmaster and a person of authority in
-      the place.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Can you tell me where Abraham Freeman lives?&rdquo; I asked.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He corrected me gently but decidedly in his pompous English.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Mr Freeman's abode is a little farther on by the lagoon. I believe Mr
-      Freeman is absent in his boat, but Mrs Freeman is at home and will receive
-      you.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      So we went on a little farther through the tangle of greenery till the
-      waters of the lagoon showed up. A dried mud-shack, thatched with palm
-      leaves, stood between the row of cocoa-nut palms that fringed the lagoon
-      and the roadway, and there my hammock-boys set me down.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Dis Abraham Freeman's?&rdquo; They were Timini and did not waste their breath
-      on titles for a Creole, whom they would have eaten up save for the
-      presence of the white man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I got out and a tall, skinny black woman clad in a narrow strip of blue
-      cloth round her hips came forward to meet me. Nothing was left to the
-      imagination, and all her charms had long since departed. She hadn't even a
-      handkerchief round her head, and the negro woman has lost all sense of
-      vanity when she leaves her wool uncovered. Mrs Abraham Freeman was at
-      home! My boys found a box for me to sit upon, and I contemplated Mrs
-      Freeman and her family. Rebecca Freeman, about fifteen, was like a bronze
-      statue so beautifully moulded was she; she really did not need anything
-      beyond the narrow cloth at her hips, and being very justifiably vain she
-      wore a gaily coloured silk turban. Elkanah Freeman, when he took off his
-      coat to shin up a cocoa-nut palm, wore no shirt, was built like a Greek
-      god; and &ldquo;my little gran'-darter, Deborah,&rdquo; stark but for a string of
-      green beads round her middle, was a delightful little cuddlesome thing,
-      but &ldquo;my sistah Esther an' Mistah Freeman's sistah Elizabeth&rdquo; were hideous,
-      skinny, and withered old hags, and the little strips of cloth they wore
-      did not hide much. Each had a stone between her bony knees, and on it was
-      breaking up some small sort of shell-fish like periwinkles. I got Mrs
-      Freeman to show me the inside of her house. It was just four windowless
-      rooms with openings under the eaves for air, with walls of dried clay, and
-      for all furniture two wooden couches heaped up with rags. Outside on three
-      stones a pot was boiling, and I asked her what was in it and could not
-      make out her answer till she pointed out three skinny pigs rooting among
-      the unsavoury refuse of the yard, then I grasped she was saying &ldquo;hog,&rdquo; and
-      I was thankful I was not going to have any of that dinner. She begged from
-      me on the score of her poverty, and in pity I gave her a shilling, and
-      then the little grand-daughter was so winsome, she had to have a penny,
-      and then the two poor old souls, cracking shell-fish and apparently done
-      with all that makes life good for a woman, begged so piteously that they
-      had to have something; so, on the whole, it was rather an expensive visit,
-      but it was well worth it to see Mrs Freeman &ldquo;at home.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But I don't know Sierra Leone. I speak of all the West Coast as a
-      passer-by speaks of it; but I know less of Sierra Leone than any other
-      place I visited. Only it charmed me&mdash;I am going back some day soon if
-      I can afford it&mdash;and I went on with regret to the negro republic.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER IV&mdash;WHERE THE BLACK MAN RULES
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>America's experiment in the way of nation-making&mdash;Exiles in their
-      mothers' land&mdash;The forlorn little company on Providence Island&mdash;Difficulties
-      of landing and finding accommodation&mdash;British Consul to the rescue&mdash;The
-      path to the British Consulate and the Liberian College&mdash;An
-      outrageously ill-kept town&mdash;&ldquo;Lovely little homes up the river&rdquo;&mdash;A
-      stickler for propriety&mdash;Dress and want of dress&mdash;The little
-      ignorant missionary girl&mdash;At prayer in Lower Buchanan&mdash;The
-      failure of a race.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>o one on board the
-      <i>Zaria</i> really believed I would land in Liberia. When I heard them
-      talk I hardly believed it myself, and yet being there it seemed a pity not
-      to see all I could see. The captain and officers were strongly of opinion
-      there was absolutely nothing to see whatever. If it was madness for a
-      woman to come alone to the Coast, it was stark-staring madness that almost
-      needed restraining in a strait-waistcoat to think of landing in Liberia,
-      for Liberia of all the countries along the Guinea Coast is the one most
-      disliked by the sailors, most despised, and since I have been there I am
-      inclined to say not without reason. For of course I did land; I should
-      have been ashamed of myself if I had not, and I spent the best part of a
-      fortnight there, and thanks to the kindness of His Britannic Majesty's
-      Consul spent it very comfortably indeed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Liberia is America's experiment in the way of nation-making even as Sierra
-      Leone is Great Britain's, and if I cannot praise the Creole of Sierra
-      Leone I have still less admiration for his American cousin.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the second decade of the last century philanthropists began to consider
-      the future of the freed slave in the United States, and it was decided
-      that it would be wisdom to transport him back to the continent from which
-      his forefathers came, and let him try there to put into practice the
-      lessons he had learned in the art of civilisation. Bitter is the slur of
-      black blood in the States; bitter, bitter was it ninety years ago when the
-      forlorn little company who were to found a civilised negro state first set
-      foot on their mothers' land. America was but young among the nations in
-      1822, so she took no responsibility, made no effort to launch these
-      forlorn people in their new venture, or to help them once they were
-      launched. Their leader was a quadroon with a fine face if one may judge
-      from the picture in Executive Mansion, Monrovia, and he dreamed I suppose
-      of wiping away the slur, the unmerited slur which lay across him and all
-      like him with dark blood in their veins. With the chain and with the lash
-      had America enforced the stern law that by the sweat of his brow shall man
-      live, and she had seen to it that the personal toil of the negro and all
-      with negro blood in their veins profited them only after their taskmasters
-      had been satisfied. They belonged to a degraded subject race; no wonder
-      they came back gladly, hopefully to the land from which certainly all
-      their mothers had sprung. But it was no easy task they had before them.
-      For a strong, hopeful, virile people it would have been difficult; to a
-      people burdened with the degradation of centuries of servitude it has
-      proved a task well-nigh beyond their capabilities. And before we condemn
-      as do all the men along the Coast, as very often I do myself, it is only
-      fair to remember the past.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0101.jpg" alt="0101 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0101.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      It must have been a very forlorn little company of people who landed on a
-      small island at the mouth of that unknown river in 1822. They called the
-      island Providence Island, and there they were cooped up for some weeks,
-      for the people on the shore, warlike savages who brooked no master,
-      objected to the newcomers, and it was some little time before they could
-      set foot on the mainland and found their principal town of Monrovia. That
-      was nearly ninety years ago, but very far inland they have never been able
-      to go, for though Liberia takes up quite a large space on the map it is
-      only Liberia in name. The hinterland is held by fighting tribes who resent
-      any interference with their vested rights, and make the fact particularly
-      clear.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The outlines of the history of Liberia I had known vaguely for many a long
-      day even to the name of Monrovia their capital, so called after President
-      Munro, and it seemed to give point to the story to sit on the deck of the
-      ship that swung at her anchors just beyond the surf of the river mouth. At
-      least they had chosen a very beautiful place. Blue sky, blue sea,
-      snow-white surf breaking on the bar, and a hillside clothed in dense
-      greenery with palms cutting the sky line and the roofs of houses peeping
-      out from among the verdure, that is what I saw, and the captain was
-      emphatic I had seen the best of it. I did not doubt his word then, and
-      having been ashore I am bound to confess he was right.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But the difficulty was to get ashore. I had a letter to the British
-      Consul, but I had not sampled the kindliness of British Consuls as I had
-      that of the Governors, and I did not know exactly what he would say. &ldquo;I
-      wonder if there is an hotel,&rdquo; I said doubtfully to the captain, and he
-      sniffed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You couldn't stay in a negro hotel.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I sent off my letter to the Consul and waited, and a little cloud came up
-      out of the sea and spread over all the sky, and it rained, and it rained,
-      and it rained, and it rained. The sky was dark and forbidding, the sea was
-      leaden-coloured, the waves just tipped with angry, white foam, and the
-      green hills were blotted out, the decks were awash, the awnings were
-      sopping and wept coaly tears, and the captain said as if that settled it,
-      &ldquo;There, you can't possibly go ashore.&rdquo; But I was by no means sure. Still
-      there was no letter from His Majesty's Consul. Morning passed on to
-      afternoon, and afternoon waned towards evening and still there was no
-      letter. A ship on a pouring wet day is just about as uncomfortable a place
-      as one can be in, but still I was inclined to accept the captain's opinion
-      that Monrovia without someone to act as guide, philosopher, and friend
-      would be a worse place.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      No letter, and the captain came along.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I must get away before dark.&rdquo; He spoke as if that settled it, and he was
-      right, but not the way he expected.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I felt I simply could not go without seeing this place, and I decided.
-      &ldquo;Then I'll go ashore.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You can't possibly.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh yes, I can. They won't eat me.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I don't know though that I was quite comfortable as I was dropped over the
-      side in a mammy chair into a surf boat that was half-full of water. The
-      rain had stopped at last but everything in that boat was wet, and my gear
-      made a splash as it was dropped down.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My soldier brother had lent me his camp-kit for the expedition.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Can't possibly hurt it,&rdquo; said he good-naturedly. &ldquo;It's been through two
-      campaigns. If you spoil it, it shall be my contribution; but you won't.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I accepted, but I thought as I sat on the bedding-roll at the bottom of
-      that very wet boat, with my head not coming above the gunwale, that he did
-      not know Africa. I hoped I should not have to sleep on that bed that
-      night, because it was borne in on me it would be more than damp.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Luckily I didn't. We crossed the bar, and the ragged, half-naked Kroo
-      boys, than whom there are surely no better boatmen in the world, begged a
-      dash, &ldquo;because we no splash you,&rdquo; as if a bucket or two of salt water
-      would have made much difference, and I gave it and was so absorbed in the
-      wonder as to what was to become of me that I gave hardly any heed to the
-      shore that was approaching. When I did it was to notice that all the
-      beauty I had seen from the deck was vanishing. Man's handiwork was
-      tumble-down, dirty, dilapidated, unfinished. I stepped from the boat to a
-      narrow causeway of stone; it is difficult to get out of a boat five feet
-      deep with grace, more especially when your skirts are sopping, and I
-      stepped from the causeway, it was not above a foot wide, into yellow mud,
-      and saw I was surrounded by dilapidated buildings such as one might see in
-      any poor, penniless little port. There were negroes in all stages of rags
-      round me, and then out from amongst them stepped a white man, a neat and
-      spick-and-span white man with soldier written all over him, the soldier of
-      the new type, learned, thoughtful, well-read.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Mrs Gaunt?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I said &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; with a little gasp, because his immaculate spruceness made me
-      feel I was too much in keeping with the buildings and the people around
-      us.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Did you get my note? I am sorry I only got yours a couple of hours ago.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Oh, I understood by now that in Africa it is impossible for a note to
-      reach its destination quickly, and I said so, and he went on to arrange
-      for my accommodation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If you will stay at the Consulate I will be delighted, but it is a mile
-      and a half from the town, and I have no wife; or there is a boarding-house
-      in the town, not too uncomfortable I am told.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      There could be but one answer to that. Of course I accepted his
-      invitation; there are but few conventions and no Mrs Grundy in
-      out-of-the-way spots, thank heaven, and in the growing darkness we set off
-      for the Consulate. It was broken to me regretfully that I would have to
-      walk; there is no other means of progression in the negro republic.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Such a walk as it was. Never have I met such a road. It was steep, and it
-      was rough, and it was stony as a mountain torrent; now after the rain it
-      was wet and slippery and the branches of the overhanging trees showered us
-      with water as we passed. It was lonely as a forest path in Ashanti, and
-      the jungle was thick on either hand, the night birds cried, the birds that
-      loved the sun made sleepy noises, the ceaseless insects roused to activity
-      by the rain made the darkness shrill with their clamour, and there were
-      mysterious rustlings as small animals forced their way through the bush or
-      fled before us. My host offered me his stick to pull me over the steepest
-      rocks, and also supplied the interesting information that round the
-      Consulate the deer came down to lick the salt from the rocks, and the
-      panthers, tigers they called them there, came down and killed the deer. I
-      made a mental note not to walk in that path by night; indeed I made a note
-      not to walk in it ever again, as drenched and dripping with perspiration
-      we emerged into a clearing and saw looming up before us a tropical
-      bungalow and beyond the sea. It is an exquisite situation but is
-      desperately lonely.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0108.jpg" alt="0108 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0108.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      My gear came on men's heads and the Consul's note was delivered to me in
-      the bush. Neither he nor I understood why it had come by such a roundabout
-      path. One of his servants also met us half-way with a lantern, and since I
-      had heard by then about the &ldquo;tigers&rdquo; I confess to thinking it was a wise
-      precaution.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Consulate is a fine two-storied building with wide verandahs and a
-      large hall where we generally sat, and that hall was very inadequately
-      lighted by some excellent lamps. The Consul didn't understand them and the
-      negro servants didn't understand them, and darkness was just visible and I
-      determined as soon as I knew my host well enough to ask him to let me have
-      a turn at his lamps. Such is the power of a little knowledge; when I left
-      the Consulate it was lighted as it should be, but that first night we
-      spent in a dim, religious light, and I felt I was going to enjoy myself
-      hugely, for here at last was something new. The Gambia and Sierra Leone
-      had been too much regulation Tropics; all that I had seen and done I had
-      at least read of before, but this was something quite different. This had
-      all the glamour of the unknown and the unexpected. I am bound to say that
-      His Majesty's Consul did not look at things with the same eyes. He didn't
-      like Liberia, and he said frankly that things might be unexpected in a
-      measure but he always knew they would be unpleasant. But I went to bed
-      that night with the feeling I was really entering into the land of
-      romance.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Next morning I told my host I would go and see the town.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But I shan't go by the short cut,&rdquo; I added emphatically.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;What short cut?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;The way we came last night.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;That's not a short cut,&rdquo; said he, and he smiled pitifully at my ignorance
-      of what was before me. &ldquo;That's the main road.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And so it was. Afterwards I tried to photograph it, but in addition to the
-      difficulty of getting an accurate picture of a steep slope, I had the
-      misfortune to shake the camera, and so my most remarkable picture was
-      spoiled. I give a picture of the road, but I always felt when I came to
-      that part the worst was left behind. And yet on this road is the Liberian
-      College where the youth of Liberia, male and female, are educated. It is a
-      big building built of brick and corrugated iron, in a style that seems
-      wholly unsuited to the Liberian climate, though viewed from a distance it
-      looks imposing in its setting of greenery. They teach the children algebra
-      and euclid, or profess to do so&mdash;evil-tongued rumour has it that the
-      majority of the Liberian women can neither read nor write&mdash;but to
-      attain that, to them a useless edge, they have to scramble over without
-      exception the very worst road I have ever met.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But the road only matches the rest of the place. Monrovia is not only an
-      ill-kept town, it is an outrageously ill-kept town.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0112.jpg" alt="0112 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0112.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Many towns have I seen in the world, many, many towns along this west
-      coast of Africa, so I am in a position to compare, and never have I seen
-      such hopelessly miserable places as Monrovia and the other smaller
-      Liberian towns along the Coast. The streets look pretty enough in a
-      photograph; they are pretty enough in reality because of the kindly hand
-      of Nature and the tropical climate which makes vegetation grow up
-      everywhere. There is no wheeled traffic, no possibility of getting about
-      except on your own feet, and in consequence the roadways are generally
-      knee-deep in weeds, with just a track meandering through them here and
-      there, and between the roadway and the side walk is a rough gutter, or at
-      least waterway, about two feet deep, and of uncertain width, usually
-      hidden by the veiling weeds. Occasionally they have little gimcrack
-      bridges apparently built of gin cases across these chasms, but, as a rule,
-      if I could not jump as the wandering goats did, I had to make my way
-      round, even though it involved a detour of at least a quarter of a mile.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And the houses in the streets were unlike the houses to be seen anywhere
-      else on the West Coast, and, to my mind at least, are quite unsuited to a
-      tropical climate. They are built of wood, brick, or, and this is the most
-      common, of corrugated iron, are three or four stories high, steep and
-      narrow, with high-pitched roofs, and narrow balconies, and many windows
-      which are made with sashes after the fashion of more temperate climes. The
-      Executive Mansion, as they call the official residence of the President,
-      is perhaps as good a specimen as any and is in as good repair, though even
-      it is woefully shabby, and the day I called there, for of course I paid my
-      respects, clothes were drying on the weeds and grass of the roadway just
-      in front of the main entrance. Two doors farther down was a tall, rather
-      pretentious redbrick house which must have cost money to build, but the
-      windows were broken and boarded up, and one end of the balcony was just a
-      ragged fringe of torn and rotting wood. So desolate was the place I
-      thought it must be deserted, but no. On looking up I saw that on the other
-      end of the balcony were contentedly lolling a couple of half-dressed women
-      and a man, naked to the waist, who were watching with curiosity the white
-      woman strolling down the street.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A great deal of the Liberian's life must be spent on his balcony, for the
-      houses must be very stuffy in such a climate, and they are by no means
-      furnished suitably; of course it is entirely a matter of taste, but for
-      West Africa I infinitely preferred the sanded, earthen floor of my friend
-      the Jolloff pilot's wife to the blue Brussels-carpet on the drawing-room
-      floor of the wife of the President of the Liberian republic. But, as I
-      have said, this is a matter of taste, and I may be wrong. I know many
-      houses in London, the furniture of which appears to me anything but
-      suitable.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was quaint to me, me an Australian with strong feelings on the question
-      of colour, to be entertained by the President's wife, a kindly black lady
-      in a purple dress and with a strong American accent. She had never been
-      out of Africa, she told me, and she had great faith in the future of
-      Liberia. The President had been to England twice. And the President's sad
-      eyes seemed to say, though he hinted no such thing, that he did not share
-      his wife's optimism.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0116.jpg" alt="0116 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0116.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We have lovely little homes up the river,&rdquo; she said as she shifted the
-      array of bibles and hymn-books that covered the centre-table in the
-      drawingroom to make room for the tray on which was ginger-beer for my
-      refreshment, &ldquo;and if you will go up, we will make you very welcome.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      She would not let me take her photograph as I desired to do; possibly she
-      had met the amateur photographer before and distrusted the species. I
-      could not convince her I could produce a nice picture.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I never saw those &ldquo;lovely little homes&rdquo; either. They certainly were not to
-      be found in my meaning of the words in Monrovia or any of the Coast towns,
-      and up country I did not go; there was no way of doing so, save on my own
-      feet, and I felt then I could not walk in such a hot climate. There may be
-      such homes, I do not know, for between this good, kindly woman and me was
-      the great unbridgeable gulf fixed, and our modes of thought were not the
-      same. In judging things Liberian I try to remember that. Every day it was
-      brought home to me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The civilised black man, for instance, is often a great stickler for
-      propriety, and I have known one who felt himself obliged to board up his
-      front verandah because the white man who lived opposite was wont to stroll
-      on <i>his</i> balcony in the early morning clad only in his pyjamas, and
-      yet often passing along the street and looking up I saw men and women in
-      the scantiest of attire lounging on their balconies doing nothing, unless
-      they were thinking, which is doubtful.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Dress or want of dress, I find, strikes one curiously. I have times
-      without number seen a black man working in a loin cloth or bathing as
-      Nature made him, and not been conscious of anything wrong. He seemed fitly
-      and suitably clad; he lacked nothing. But looking on those men in the
-      balconies in only a pair of trousers, or women in a skirt pure and simple,
-      among surroundings that to a certain extent spoke of civilisation, there
-      was a wrong note struck. They were not so much barbaric as indecent. It
-      was as if a corner of the veil of respectability had been lifted, the thin
-      veneer of civilisation torn off, and you saw if you dared to look the
-      possibilities that lie behind. I believed all the horrible stories of
-      Vaudooism of America and the West Indies when I saw the naked chest and
-      shoulders of a black man leaning over a balcony in Monrovia, and yet I
-      have been only moved to friendliness when the fetish man of an Ashanti
-      village, with greasy curls flying, with all his weird ornaments jingling,
-      tom-toms beating, and excited people shouting, came dancing towards me and
-      pranced round me with pointing fingers that I hope and believe meant a
-      blessing. Can anyone tell me why this was? Was it because the fetish man
-      was giving of his very best, while the half-civilised man was sinking back
-      into barbarism and looking at the white woman gave her thoughts she would
-      deeply have resented? Was it just an example of the thought-reading we are
-      subconsciously doing every day and all day long without exactly realising
-      it ourselves?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The people of Monrovia, there are over 4000 of them, seem always lounging
-      and idling, and the place looks as if it were no one's business to knock
-      in a nail or replace a board. It is falling into decay. It is not
-      deserted, for the people are there, and presumably they live. They exist
-      waiting for their houses to tumble about their ears. There is a
-      market-place down in Waterside, the poorest, most miserable market-place
-      on all the African coast. The road here, just close to the landing-place,
-      is not made, but just trodden hard by the passing of many feet. Here and
-      there the native rocks crop up, and no effort has been made to smooth them
-      down. Above all, the stench is sickening, for the Coast negro, without the
-      kindly, sometimes the stern guidance of the white man, is often
-      intolerably dirty, and if my eyes did not recognise it, my nose would. In
-      all the town, city they call it, there is not one garden or attempt at a
-      garden. The houses are set wide enough apart; any fences that have been
-      put up are as a rule broken-down, invariably in need of repair, and in
-      between those houses is much wild growth. The scarlet hibiscus covers a
-      broken fence; an oleander grows bushy and covered with pink roselike
-      flowers; stately cocoa-nut palms, shapely mangoes are to be seen, and all
-      over the streets and roadway in the month of January, I was there, as if
-      it would veil man's neglect as far as possible, grew a creeping
-      convolvulus with masses of pink cup-shaped flowers&mdash;in the morning
-      hopeful and fresh and full of dew, in the evening wilted and shut up
-      tightly as if they had given up the effort in hopeless despair. Never have
-      I seen such a dreary, neglected town. It would be pitiful anywhere in the
-      world. It is ten times more so here, where one feels that it marks the
-      failure of a race, that it almost justifies the infamous traffic of our
-      forefathers. It was all shoddy from the very beginning. It is now shoddy
-      come to its inevitable end.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      For all the great mark on the map, as I have said, the settlements at
-      Monrovia do not extend more than thirty miles up the river; elsewhere the
-      civilised negroes barely hold the sea-board. They are eternally at war
-      with the tribesmen behind, and here in Monrovia I met half a dozen of the
-      prisoners, dressed in rags, chained two and two with iron collars round
-      their necks, and their guard, a blatant, self-satisfied person, was just
-      about as ragged a scarecrow as they were. Not that the victory is by any
-      means always to the Liberians, for a trader, an Englishman, who had been
-      seeking fresh openings in the hinterland where no Liberian would dare to
-      go, told me that though the tribes are not as a rule cannibals, they do
-      make a practice of eating their best-hated enemies, and he had come across
-      the hands and feet of not a few of the Liberian Mendi soldiery in pickle
-      for future use.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      To keep these tribesmen in check, the Liberian, who is essentially a man
-      of peace&mdash;a slave&mdash;has been obliged to raise an army from the
-      Mendis who inhabit the British protectorate to the west, and so he has
-      laid upon himself a great burden. For, unfortunately, there is not always
-      money in the treasury to satisfy this army of mercenaries when they get
-      tired of taking out their pay in trade gin or tobacco. Poor Liberians,
-      threatened with a double danger. If they have no soldiers the tribesmen
-      within their borders eat them up, and if they have soldiers, war they must
-      have, to provide an outlet for energies that otherwise might be
-      misdirected.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I left my kind host with many regrets and Monrovia without any, and I went
-      on board the <i>Chama</i> which was to call at Grand Bassa and Cape
-      Palmas, and if I did not intend to view them entirely from the ship's
-      deck, at least I felt after my visit to Monrovia it would hardly be
-      necessary for me to stay in either of these towns.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0122.jpg" alt="0122 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0122.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      They bear a strong family resemblance to the capital, only they are &ldquo;more
-      so.&rdquo; The tribes see to it, I believe, that there is no communication with
-      the capital except by sea, and the little communities with their
-      pretensions to civilisation are far less ininteresting than the people of
-      an Ashanti village who have seldom or never seen a white man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I landed at Lower Buchanan, Grand Bassa, early one morning. The beach
-      simply reeked of human occupancy. They do not trouble about sanitation in
-      Liberia, and the town itself looked as if the houses had been set down
-      promiscuously in the primeval bush. Perhaps there were more signs of
-      wealth than in Monrovia, for I did see three cows and at least half a
-      dozen hairy, razor-backed pigs on the track that was by courtesy the
-      principal street, and it must require something to support all the
-      churches.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I suppose it is the emotional character of the negro that makes him take
-      so largely to religion, or rather, I think I may say, the observances of
-      religion. The question of the missionaries is a vexed one, and on board
-      the <i>Chama</i> was a missionary who made me think. She was a pretty
-      young girl who had left home and father and mother and sisters and
-      brothers and lover&mdash;ah, the lover was evidently hard where all had
-      been hard&mdash;to minister to the spiritual needs of the people who dwelt
-      behind Cape Palmas. She was sweetly ignorant of the world, of everything
-      that did not apply to the little home in Canada that she had left with
-      such reluctance, and was evidently immensely surprised to find the captain
-      and officers of the ship kindly, honest gentlemen who treated her as
-      tenderly and deferentially as they might have treated one of their own
-      young sisters.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I thought all sailors were bad men,&rdquo; she said wonderingly. &ldquo;I have always
-      been led to believe they were bad.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Now, what could such a nice, ignorant little girl as that teach the negro?
-      And yet she had curiously hard ideas on some subjects. She talked about
-      the missionary and his wife to whom she was going for five long years and
-      to whom she was bringing out clothes for their baby.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If it is alive,&rdquo; she added naively.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, I hope it will live,&rdquo; said I, the heathen who doubted the use of
-      missionaries and all their works.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Well, I don't know&rdquo;&mdash;and the cynicism sat curiously on the sweet,
-      young face&mdash;&ldquo;poor little kiddie, perhaps it is better dead. What sort
-      of a life could it have out there, and what sort of an upbringing? Its
-      mother has other work to do.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And I tried to show her that one white child was worth a thousand
-      problematical souls of negroes, and I tried in vain.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But if ever I saw the wrong side of Christianity I saw it here in Liberia.
-      Monrovia had many churches, all more or less unfinished, all more or less
-      in decay, and here in Lower Buchanan three corrugated-iron churches within
-      a stone's throw of one another constituted one of the chief features of
-      the town. It was early on a Tuesday morning, the best time for work in a
-      tropical climate, if work is going to be done at all. On the beach the
-      Kroo boys were bringing from surf boats the piassava, the fibre that grows
-      in the swamps and constitutes a large part of the Liberian export, but in
-      Lower Buchanan itself the greater part of the inhabitants that I saw were
-      in church. I entered that church.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0126.jpg" alt="0126 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0126.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Such a tatterdemalion crew! God forbid that I should scoff at any man's
-      faith, but here cleanliness is practically divorced from godliness, and I
-      can honestly say that never in my life have I seen dirtier bundles of rags
-      than that congregation. A woman in a costume a scarecrow would have
-      despised, her head adorned with a baby's hat, the dirty white ribbons
-      fluttering down behind, was praying aloud with much unction, shouting that
-      she was a miserable sinner, and calling upon the Lord to forgive her. The
-      negro loves the sound of his own voice, and again I must claim that I do
-      not scorn any man's sincere faith, but that negro lady was thoroughly
-      enjoying herself, absolutely sure of her own importance. The ragged
-      scarecrows who listened punctuated the prayer with groans of delight, and
-      the only decent one amongst them was a small girl, whose nakedness was
-      hidden by a simple blue-and-white cloth, and she was probably a household
-      slave. For these descendants of a slave people make slaves in their turn,
-      perhaps not men slaves, but women are saleable commodities among a savage
-      nation, and for a trifling consideration, a bottle of trade gin or a few
-      sticks of trade tobacco, they will hand over a girl-child who, taken into
-      the household without pay, holds the position of a servant and is
-      therefore to all intents and purposes a slave. This is really not as bad
-      as it sounds; her position is probably quite as good as it would be in her
-      own tribe, and as she grows older she either marries or forms some sort of
-      alliance with a Liberian. Loose connections and divorce are both so common
-      that she is no worse off than the ordinary Liberian woman, and the
-      admixture of good, strong virile blood may possibly help the future race.
-      At least that is what I thought as I watched the congregation at prayer.
-      They sang hymn choruses so beautifully as to bring tears to my eyes, and
-      then they came outside and abused me because I wanted to photograph them.
-      Had I been they, I should have objected to going out to the world as
-      specimens of their people, but they need not have reviled me in the
-      blatant, coarse manner of the negro who has just seen enough of
-      civilisation to think he rules the universe. I did not press the matter,
-      because I felt it would be ungracious to make a picture of them against
-      their will. But clearly the lovely little homes were not in Lower
-      Buchanan. Nor were they in Cape Palmas.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Far be it from me to say that plantations of some useful description do
-      not exist. They may; I can only say I have seen no evidences of them in
-      three of their towns or near those towns. I will put it on record that I
-      did see some cabbage stalks behind some broken railings opposite the
-      President's house in Monrovia, but that was absolutely the only thing in
-      the shape of a garden, vegetable, fruit, or flower, that I did see in the
-      environs of the towns. You can buy no fruit in Monrovia, no chickens, no
-      eggs. Bananas and limes have to be imported. Meat is only to be had at
-      rare intervals, and living is so frightfully dear that when the British
-      Consul had, during my stay, to provide for a distressed British subject
-      who had been unfortunate enough to get adrift in the land, he had to pay
-      six shillings and sixpence a day for his board and lodging&mdash;a bare
-      room, not over-clean, with a rough bed in it, and board that did not
-      include meat, but consisted chiefly of manioc or cassava which is what the
-      majority of the Liberians live on themselves.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The country as a matter of fact lives on the Custom's dues which reach
-      about £70,000 a year and are levied not only on the goods that they
-      themselves use but on those the unfortunate natives of the hinterland
-      require. No Liberian is a craftsman even of the humblest sort. The Kroo
-      men are fishermen and boatmen; men from Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and
-      Lagos, with an occasional Vai tribesman thrown in, are painters, smiths,
-      and carpenters. The Liberian, the descendant of the freed slave, despises
-      these things; he aspires to be a gentleman of leisure, to serve in the
-      Government Service, or in the Church, to walk about in a black suit with a
-      high collar and a silver-mounted cane. Then apparently he is happy even if
-      he come out of the most dilapidated house in Monrovia. There are, I
-      believe, exceptions. I wonder, considering their antecedents and the
-      conditions under which they have had to exist, whether one could expect
-      more. Possibly it should be counted to them for great righteousness if any
-      good men be found among them at all. But taken as a whole the Liberians
-      after close on ninety years of self-government must strike the stranger as
-      an effete race, blatant and arrogant of speech, an arrogance that is only
-      equalled by their appalling ignorance, a race that compares shockingly
-      with the Mandingo or Jolloff of the Gambia, the stately Ashanti, a warrior
-      with reserve power, or the busy agricultural Yoruba. These men are
-      gentlemen in their own simple, untutored way, courteous and dignified. The
-      Liberian is only a travesty of the European, arrogant without proper
-      dignity, boastful with absolutely nothing in the world to boast about
-      unless it be the amazing wealth of the country he mismanages so
-      shamefully. For Liberia is a rich country; it has a soil of surpassing
-      fertility, and it seems to me that almost anything in the way of tropical
-      products might be produced there. That nothing is produced is due to the
-      ignorance and idleness of these descendants of slaves who rule or misrule
-      the land. Since the days of the iniquitous trade, that first brought her
-      into touch with civilisation, West Africa has been exploited for the sake
-      of the nations of the western world. No one till this present generation
-      seems to have recognised that she had any rights. Now we realise that the
-      black man must be considered at least as much as the white man, who has
-      made himself his master. Now most settlements along the Coast are busy,
-      prosperous, and, above all, sanitary. Only in Liberia, the civilised black
-      man's own country, does a different state of things prevail; only here has
-      the movement been retrograde.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      An end must come, but who can say what this end will be.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The missionary girl who had given up all she held most dear, who had
-      joined the noble band of martyrs and heroes for Africa, said she had done
-      so because she had seen a letter from a black man just mentioning a
-      chapter and verse of the New Testament. She had looked it up and read the
-      prayer of the Macedonians. Strange, strange are the workings of the
-      Unseen, cruel sometimes the penalties poor human nature takes upon itself.
-      Who shall say that a Guiding Hand had not made that girl choose wisely for
-      the development of her own character, and who shall say that some ultimate
-      good may not yet come for beautiful, wealthy, poverty-stricken Liberia.
-      That the civilised nations, sinking their own jealousies, may step in and
-      save her despite herself, I think, is the only hope. But it must be as
-      Paul would have saved, not as the pitiful Christ. For the pendulum has
-      swung too far back; the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's
-      teeth are set on edge. She does not know it herself, she will resent
-      bitterly the imputation, but to me Liberia seems to be stretching out her
-      hands crying dumbly to the white man the cry that came across the water of
-      old, the cry the missionary girl listened to, the cry of Macedonia, &ldquo;Come
-      over and help us.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But I was one who only heard the cry in passing, who felt that I at least
-      could not help. I went on in the <i>Chama</i> to Axim, interested with
-      what I had seen, but forgetting much in what I thought was to be my first
-      hammock-trip alone. For I wanted to go to Half Assinie, and since no one
-      may be sure of landing all their gear in safety on that surf-bound coast,
-      I had to land at Axim and go back overland the fifty miles to the French
-      border, and I thought I should have to do it alone.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER V&mdash;THE GUINEA COAST
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Every man's duty&mdash;&ldquo;Three deaths in two days&rdquo;&mdash;An old
-      Portuguese settlement&mdash;A troubled District Commissioner&mdash;What to
-      do with a wandering white woman&mdash;The Judge's quarters&mdash;The
-      kindly medical officer and his wife&mdash;A West-African town&mdash;&ldquo;My
-      outside wife&rdquo;&mdash;Dangers ahead&mdash;The man who was never afterwards
-      heard of&mdash;The Forestry officer's carriers&mdash;&ldquo;Good man, bad man,
-      fool man&rdquo;&mdash;First night in the wilds&mdash;Hair in the soup.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> great German
-      philosopher has remarked that you very seldom get a human being who has
-      all the qualities of his own sex without a trace of the characteristics of
-      the other. Such a being would be hardly attractive. At least I consoled
-      myself with that reflection when I found stirring within me a very
-      masculine desire to be out of leading strings and to be allowed to take
-      care of myself. It is pleasant to be taken care of, but it is decidedly
-      uncomfortable to feel that you are a burden upon men upon whom you have no
-      claim whatever. They were looking after me because they were emphatically
-      sure that the Coast is no place for a lone woman. At the bottom of my
-      heart, grateful as I was to the individuals, I didn't like it. I thought
-      my freedom was coming at Axim, but it didn't.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Every man felt it his duty to impress upon me the unhealthiness of the
-      Coast, and every man did his duty manfully, forgetting that I have a very
-      excellent pair of eyes and an inquiring mind. The hot, still morning we
-      arrived at Axim the captain, having discussed matters with the Custom
-      officer, came to me solemnly shaking his head.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;A terrible place, Mrs Gaunt, a terrible place. Three deaths in Axim in
-      the last two days.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was quite a correct Coast speech, and for the moment I was shocked,
-      though not afraid, because naturally it never occurs to me that I will
-      die, at least not just yet, and not because the people round me are dying.
-      The captain was gloomily happy as having vindicated the evil reputation of
-      the country, and I looked ashore and wondered what was wrong with so
-      attractive a place.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Portuguese, those mariners of long ago, chose the site and, as they
-      always did, chose wisely. A promontory, on which is the white fort, juts
-      out into the sea, and behind is all the luxuriant greenery of the Tropics,
-      for the land rises just sufficiently to give beauty to the scene. I
-      wondered why those three people had died, and I inquired. The whole
-      incident is so characteristic of the loose talk that builds up an evil
-      reputation for a country. Those deaths were held up to me as a warning. It
-      would have been quite as much to the point if they had warned me against
-      getting frost-bitten or falling into a cauldron of boiling sugar. One man
-      died of a disease he had contracted twenty years before, and was
-      exceedingly lucky to have lived so long, another had died of drink, and
-      the third was a woman. She, poor thing, was the wife of a missionary from
-      Sierra Leone, and had not been in a cooler climate for two years. There
-      was a baby coming, and instead of going home she had come to Axim, had a
-      bad go of blackwater, and when the baby came, her constitution could not
-      stand the double strain, and she died. Only her death was directly
-      attributable to the climate, and the exercise of a little common sense
-      would have saved her.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So I landed and was not afraid.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But my arrival was a cause of tribulation to the District Commissioner.
-      There was no hotel, so I appealed to him for quarters. It really was a
-      little hard on him. He sighed and did his best, and the only time I really
-      saw him look happy was about three weeks later when he saw me safely in a
-      surf boat bound for the out-going steamer. But when I landed, the need for
-      shelter was pressing, and he gave me a room in the Judge's quarters where
-      it seems they bestow all homeless white strangers in Axim. Already the
-      Forestry officer was there, and he had a sitting-room and a bedroom, so
-      that I could only have a bedroom and a bathroom. Now, with a verandah and
-      such a large room at my disposal, I could make myself more than
-      comfortable; then, because I did not know African ways, I accepted the
-      very kind invitation of the medical officer and his wife, the only white
-      woman in Axim, to &ldquo;chop&rdquo; with them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      African ways are very convenient when you come to think of it. Here was a
-      big empty room with a wardrobe and a little cane furniture in it. I went
-      in with my brother's kit and set up my camp-bed, my bath, laid down my
-      ground sheet and put up my table and chair, and I had all that was really
-      necessary. Outside was the ragged garden, haunted they said, though I
-      never saw the ghost, and because it was usually empty the big rats
-      scrambled up the stairs, and the birds sat in the oleander bushes and
-      called &ldquo;Be quick, be quick&rdquo; continually.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I couldn't take their advice because it is impossible to hurry things on
-      the Coast and I must wait for the carriers.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The first night I had dinner&mdash;chop&mdash;with the medical officer and
-      his wife and went to bed reflecting a little regretfully I had made no
-      preparations for my early-morning tea. However, I concluded it might be
-      good discipline to do without it. But it is a great thing to have a
-      capable boy. Just as it began to get light Grant appeared outside my
-      mosquito curtains as usual with a cup of tea and some fruit. The cup and
-      teapot were my own; he had stolen all the materials from the Forestry
-      officer next door, and I was much beholden to that young man when, on
-      apologising, he smiled and said it was all right, he was glad I liked his
-      tea.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Axim is a pretty little town with the usual handful of whites and the
-      negroes semi-civilised with that curious civilisation which has probably
-      persisted for centuries, which is not what we would call civilisation and
-      yet is not savagery. It is hardly even barbarism. These Coast towns are
-      not crowded with naked savages as many a stay-at-home Briton seems to
-      imagine; they are peopled with artisans, clerks, traders, labourers,
-      people like in many ways to those in the same social scale in other
-      countries, and differing only when the marked characteristics of the negro
-      come in. All along in these Coast towns the negroes are much the same. To
-      their own place they are suitable; only when they try to conform too much
-      to the European lines of thought do they strike one as <i>outré</i> or
-      objectionable. I suppose that is what jars in the Christian negro. It is
-      not the Christianity, it is the striving after something eminently
-      unsuited to him. Left to himself though, he naturally goes back to the
-      mode of life that was his forefathers', and sometimes he has the courage
-      to own it. I remember a man who called in the medical officer about his
-      wife. The ordinary negro has as many wives as he can afford, but the
-      Christian is by way of only having one, and as this man was clothed in the
-      ordinary garb of the European, unnecessary coat, shirt, and hat, I
-      naturally set him down as a Christian.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I Christian,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;Mission-teacher once.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Not now?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No, Swanzy's agent now. You savey my wife; she get well?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I said I had no doubt she would, and I rejoiced in this sign of marital
-      affection, when he dashed it all to the ground.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;She not my real wife; she my outside wife,&rdquo; said he as one who would
-      explain their exact relations.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My views on negro homes received a shock, but after all if the women don't
-      object, what matter? It is the custom of the country.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I looked round the town and took photographs, wasted many plates trying to
-      develop in too hot a place, and declared my intention of going west just
-      as soon as ever I could get carriers. I didn't quite know how I should
-      manage, but I concluded I should learn by experience.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Even now, though I have travelled since then close on 700 miles in a
-      hammock, I cannot make up my mind whether it would have been safe for me
-      to go alone. Undoubtedly I should have made many mistakes, and in a
-      country where the white man holds his position by his prestige it is
-      perhaps just as well that a woman of his colour should not make mistakes.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Not suitable,&rdquo; said one who objected strongly to the presence of any
-      white women on the Coast.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Hardly safe,&rdquo; said another.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Not safe,&rdquo; said a third emphatically, and then they told a story. Axim
-      has been settled and civilised many years, and yet only last year a man
-      disappeared. He was one of a party dining with his friends. After dinner
-      they started a game of cards, and up the verandah steps came this man's
-      house-steward. His master was wanted. The company protested, but he left
-      declaring he would return immediately. He did not return and from that day
-      to this neither he nor his house-boy have been seen by mortal eyes. The
-      story sounds fearsome enough. It sounded worse to me preparing to go along
-      the Coast by myself, but now, thinking it over calmly, I see flaws.
-      Investigated, I wonder if it would turn out like the story of the three
-      people dead in two days; true, but admitting of quite a different
-      construction being put upon it than that presented for my edification. One
-      thing I do know and that is that I would feel very much safer in an
-      Ashanti village that has only been conquered in the last ten years than I
-      would alone in any of those little towns along the Guinea Coast, between
-      Axim and Half Assinie, that have been in contact with the white man for
-      the last three hundred years.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Anyhow, Axim decided for me I should not go alone, and the Forestry
-      officer, like the chivalrous, gracious gentleman he was, came forward and
-      pretended he had business at Half Assinie and that it would be a great
-      pleasure to have a companion on the road. And so well did he play his part
-      that it was not till we were bound back from the Border that I discovered
-      he had simply come to look after me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Then I was initiated into the difficulties of carriers. The Omahin, that
-      is to say the Chief of Beyin, had sent me twenty men and women, and the
-      Forestry officer had two separate lots of Kroo boys and Mendis, and early
-      one morning in January we made preparations for a start. We didn't start
-      early. It seems to me how ever carefully you lay your plans, you never do.
-      First no carriers turned up; then some of the Forestry officer's men
-      condescended to appear. Then the orderly, a man from the north with his
-      face cut with a knife into a permanent sardonic grin, strolled up. He was
-      sent out to seek carriers, and presently drove before him two or three
-      women, one with a baby on her back, and these it appeared were the advance
-      contingent of my gang. A Beyin woman-carrier or indeed any woman along the
-      Coast generally wears a printed-cotton cloth of a dark colour round her by
-      way of a skirt, and one of the little loose blouses that the missionaries
-      introduced on to the Coast over a hundred years ago because they regarded
-      it as indecent for a woman to have her bosom uncovered. Now her shoulders
-      are often covered by the blouse, but that many a time is of such skimpy
-      proportions that it does not reach very far, the skirt invariably slips,
-      and there is a gap, in which case&mdash;well, shall we say the result is
-      not all the originators desired. A woman can carry anything but a hammock,
-      but these carriers of mine were not very good specimens of the class. They
-      looked at the loads, they went away, they came back, they altered, they
-      grumbled, and at last about two hours late we started, I going ahead, the
-      Forestry officer fetching up the rear to round in all stragglers, and in
-      between came our motley array of goods. There is a family resemblance
-      among all travellers on the Gold Coast. They all try to reduce their loads
-      to a minimum and they all find that there are certain necessaries of life
-      which they must have, and certain other things which may be luxuries but
-      which they cannot do without, and certain other little things which it
-      would be a sin not to take as it makes all the difference between comfort
-      and savagery. So the procession comes along, a roll of bedding, a chop
-      box, a kitchen box with pots and pans, a bath, a chair, a table, the
-      servant's box, a load of water, a certain amount of drink, whisky, gin,
-      and if the traveller is very luxurious (I wasn't) some claret, a uniform
-      case with clothes, a smaller one containing the heavier things such as
-      boots and the various goods that pertain to the European's presence there.
-      Before the Commissioner goes his orderly, carrying his silver-topped
-      stick, the insignia of his rank. I had a camera and a lot of heavy plates
-      but I don't think the Forestry officer had anything special except a tent
-      which took three men to carry and which we could never set up because we
-      found on the first night that the ridge poles had been left behind. It is
-      not supposed to be well to sleep in native houses, but it did us no harm.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The carrier divides the masters he serves into three divisions. &ldquo;He be
-      good man,&rdquo; &ldquo;he be bad man,&rdquo; and &ldquo;he be fool man.&rdquo; My carriers decided I
-      was a fool man and they were not far wrong. Less than an hour after
-      leaving Axim, distance as yet is always counted by time in Africa, we came
-      to the Ancobra River and my first difficulty arose. My hammock had not yet
-      been brought across and I, walking on a little way, came to a swampy bit
-      which it was difficult to negotiate without wetting my feet above the
-      ankles. My headman stooped and offered a brawny, bare back for my
-      acceptance. I hesitated. My clothes were not built for riding pick-a-back.
-      I looked back; there was no hammock, neither, thank heaven, was there any
-      sign of the Forestry officer. I tried to show them how to cross their
-      hands and carry me as in a chair, but no, they would have none of my
-      methods, and then I gave in hastily lest my travelling companion should
-      appear, accepted the back, rode across most ungracefully, and was set down
-      triumphantly on the other side. And then they, began to take advantage of
-      me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Missus,&rdquo; explained one, &ldquo;you walk small. If man tote hammock, plenty
-      broken bottle cut feet.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And so I walked all through the outskirts of that little river-side
-      village. It was the hottest part of a very hot day, the sand made the
-      going heavy, and the sun poured down mercilessly out of a cloudless sky. I
-      was soon exceedingly tired, but I was filled with pity for the
-      unfortunates who had to carry me. They walked beside me happily enough or
-      dawdled behind scorning the fool woman who employed them. I may say when I
-      came back my men carried me over every foot of the path, but they set me
-      down a dozen times that day, and when my companion came up and found me
-      sitting under a cocoa-nut palm, as he did pretty frequently, he
-      remonstrated with me and remonstrated with my men, but the thing rested
-      with me. It took me all day long to learn that the men must do the work
-      they had undertaken to do, and until I was convinced of it in my own mind
-      they certainly were not. We had luncheon in the house of the headman of a
-      fishing village; at afternoon tea-time we were sitting on the sand waiting
-      for the tide to run out so that we might cross the Twin Rivers, and we
-      waited nearly two hours, and at last as the darkness was falling we
-      arrived at a village where we must stop the night. My first night in the
-      wilds.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was a small fishing village on the sands of the seashore, built of the
-      stalks of the raffia palm which here the people call bamboo. The Chief had
-      a compound cleared out for us, and I do not know now whether that compound
-      was clean. In my mind it remains as clean, because till then I had always
-      expected a native house to be most uninhabitable, and was surprised to
-      find any simple comforts at all. The floors were of sand, the walls of the
-      stalks of the raffia, and the thatch of the fronds. I prefer palm to mud
-      for a wall; for one thing, it is nice and airy, the wind can blow right
-      through it and you might almost be in the open air, but then again, you
-      must make your toilet and have your bath in the dark, for if you have a
-      light everything is as clearly visible to the outside world as if you had
-      been placed in a cage for their special benefit. However, my bed was put
-      up, my bath and toilet things set out, and I managed to dress and come
-      outside for dinner which we had in the open. The grey sand was our carpet,
-      the blue-black sky dotted with twinkling diamonds our canopy, and the
-      flickering, chimneyless Hinkson lamp lighted our dinner-table. I was more
-      than content. It was delightful, and then the serpent entered into our
-      paradise.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Kwesi,&rdquo; said the Forestry officer angrily, &ldquo;there's a hair in the soup.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Kwesi had only brought the soup from the kitchen to the table, so it was
-      hardly fair to blame him, but the average man, if his wife is not present,
-      is apt to consider the nearest servant is always responsible for his
-      little discomforts, and he does not change his character in Africa I find.
-      Kwesi accepted the situation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It not ploper hair, sah,&rdquo; he protested as apologetically as if he had
-      sought diligently for a hair without success and been obliged to do the
-      best he could with negro wool.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I, not being a wife and therefore not responsible, was equal to suggesting
-      that it probably came off the flour bag and he might as well have his
-      dinner in peace, but he was not easily soothed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      That first night, absolutely in the open, everything took on a glamour
-      which comes back to me whenever I think of it. A glorious night out in the
-      open in the Tropics is one of the pure delights of life. A fire flickered
-      in the centre of the compound; to the right in a palm-thatched hut we
-      could see the cook at work, and we had <i>hors d'oeuvre</i>, which here
-      they call small chop, and the soup which my companion complained of, and
-      fish and chicken and sweets and fruit as good as if we had been in a
-      London restaurant. Better, for the day's hammocking on the beach with the
-      salt spray wetting our faces and the roar of the turbulent West-Coast surf
-      in our ears had given us an appetite that required no tempting. The hair
-      was but an incident; the sort of contrast that always marks West Africa.
-      We dined luxuriously.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Around us were strewn our camp outfit, all the thousand and one things
-      that are required to make two people comfortable. It had taken sixteen men
-      to carry us twenty miles in our hammocks; it had taken five-and-twenty
-      more to minister to our comfort. The headman of the village regarded us as
-      honoured guests. He provided a house, or rather several houses in a
-      compound, he told the carriers where they could get wood and water, he
-      sold us chickens at exorbitant prices, but still chickens, and plantains
-      and kenky and groundnuts for the men. And so we dined in comfort and
-      talked over the incidents of the day.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE KING'S HIGHWAY
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The burying of the village dead&mdash;For Ju-ju&mdash;The glory of the
-      morning&mdash;The catastrophes by the way&mdash;The cook is condemned to
-      death&mdash;Redeemed for two shillings&mdash;The thunderous surf&mdash;The
-      charm of the shore&mdash;Traces of white blood&mdash;A great negro town&mdash;Our
-      quarters&mdash;Water that would induce a virulent typhus in any but a
-      negro community&mdash;The lonely German trader&mdash;Difficulties of
-      entertaining a negro potentate&mdash;The lair of the hunted.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he King's Highway
-      is along the shore here easy enough going when the tide is out and the
-      golden sand is hard; very heavy indeed when the roaring waves break almost
-      at the foot of the cocoa-nut palms that stand in phalanxes tall and
-      stately, or bending somewhat towards the sea that is their life, all the
-      way from Axim to Half Assinie, and beyond again to the French border.
-      There is no other way than this way along the shore. Occasionally, if the
-      &ldquo;sea be too full,&rdquo; as the carriers say, they may go up to a rough path
-      among the cocoa-nut palms, but it is a very rough path. Husks of the
-      cocoa-nuts lie there, palm fronds drying and withering in the sun, a great
-      creeping bean flings its wandering stalks across the path as a trap to the
-      unwary, and when there is other greenery it stands up and stretches out
-      thorny branches to clutch at the passer-by. Besides, the villagers&mdash;and
-      there are many villages&mdash;bury their dead here, and they consider two
-      feet a deep enough grave, so that the odour of decay rises on the hot air.
-      All along the shore, which is the highway, just under the cocoa-nut palms,
-      I saw tiny miniature sloping thatches over some pots&mdash;a sign that
-      someone has been buried there. At first I was touched to think so many of
-      the living mourned the dead; but my sentimental feelings are always
-      receiving rude shocks, and I found that these thatches had not been raised
-      in tender remembrance, but to placate the ghosts of the dead and to
-      prevent them from haunting the living. They must be rather foolish ghosts,
-      too, and easily taken in; for I observed that a bunch of cock's feathers
-      evidently simulated a chicken, and the pots were nearly always rather
-      elderly and often broken. There were more gruesome signs of Ju-ju too; a
-      crow suspended with outspread wings, a kid with drooping head and hanging
-      legs. I hope these things were not put up while they were alive and left
-      to suffer in the tropical sunshine, but I fear, I fear. The negro is
-      diabolically cruel.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When we were children we always ate the things we liked least first, bread
-      and butter, and then cake; and there is much to be said for the plan.
-      Afterwards I found it was much easier and nicer travelling in the bush,
-      but on that first journey travelling along the shore had great charms for
-      me. In the early morning a whitish mist hangs over the sea and veils the
-      cocoa-nut palms, and there is a little chill in the air which makes
-      travelling pleasant. We always got up before dawn. At the first streak of
-      light we were having our breakfast, porridge and eggs and marmalade and
-      fruit, bananas, pines, or oranges, quite as comfortably as if we were in
-      civilised lands, though the servants were waiting to pack our breakfast
-      equipage, and we watched our beds and boxes and baths borne away on men's
-      heads as we drank our coffee. There were catastrophes sometimes, of
-      course.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There was the morning when the coffee had been made on top of the
-      early-morning tea, and the evening when the peaches were agreeably
-      flavoured with household soap; the day when some unknown hand had conveyed
-      native peppers, which are the hottest things in creation outside the
-      infernal regions, into the sparklet bottle; and the day when the drinking
-      water gave out altogether, and was replaced by the village water, black
-      and greasy, and sufficient to induce in any but a negro community a
-      virulent typhus. But all disasters paled before the day when neither the
-      dinner nor the cook were forthcoming at Beyin.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Forestry officer, in the kindness and hospitality of his heart, had
-      asked me to be his guest, so that we always had chop together, and I
-      gained experience without any trouble to myself.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was sorry there was no dinner, because it seemed a long time since we
-      had had tea, but otherwise I was not troubled.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Where be cook, Kwesi?&rdquo; asked the Forestry officer of his immediate
-      attendant.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Kwesi spluttered and stammered; he was so full of news. Round at a little
-      distance stood the people of the town of Beyin&mdash;men in cloths; women,
-      some with a handkerchief round their heads, but some with a coiffure that
-      suggested the wearer had been permanently surprised, and her hair had
-      stood up on end and stayed there ever since; little children, who shyly
-      poked their heads round their mothers' legs to look at the strange white
-      woman. The truth was hardly to be told in Kwesi's agitated pigeon English.
-      It was awful. The cook had marched into the town on business bent and
-      demanded chickens for the white master and the white missus, and the
-      inhabitants, with a view to raising the market price, had declared there
-      was not a chicken within miles of the place, and they had not seen such a
-      thing for years. Cook was aggravated, for the chickens were walking about
-      under his very eyes, not perhaps well-bred Dorkings or Buff Orpingtons,
-      but the miserable little runt about the size of a self-respecting pigeon
-      that is known as a chicken all over West Africa, and the sight was too
-      much for him. He seized one of those chickens and proceeded to pluck and
-      dress it, and before he was half-through the Omahin's men had come down
-      and hauled him off to durance vile, for he had committed the iniquitous
-      offence of stealing one of the Omahin's guard's chickens, and public
-      opinion was almost agreed that only death could expiate so grievous a
-      crime. Of course, there was the white woman to be considered, an unknown
-      quantity, for many of them had never seen a white woman before; and there
-      was the Forestry officer, by no means an unknown quantity, for it was
-      pretty certain he would resent any harm to his cook. Finally, with much
-      yelling and shouting and tremendous gesticulation, the case was laid
-      before him and the demand made that his cook should be handed over to the
-      powers he had offended. I am bound to say that young man held the scales
-      of justice with a niceness that is only to be properly appreciated when we
-      remember that it was his dinner that was not forthcoming and his cook
-      whose life was threatened. He listened to both sides, and then decreed
-      that the cook was to be redeemed by the payment of two shillings, that the
-      crowd was to disperse, and dinner to come up forthwith.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Two shillings,&rdquo; said the next white man we met, the preventive officer at
-      Half Assinie, close to the Border, &ldquo;two shillings! I should think so
-      indeed. The price of a chicken is sixpence, and it's dear at that.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      They are such arrant savages, these people of the King's Highway; often
-      enough they are stark save for a loin cloth, and I have seen men without
-      even the proverbial fig leaf. The very decencies of life seem unknown to
-      them, and yet they calculate in sixpences and shillings, even as the man
-      in the streets in England does.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They have touched the fringe of civilisation for so many hundred years;
-      for this is the Coast of the great days of the slave trade, and along this
-      seashore, by this roaring surf, beneath the shade of these cocoa-nut
-      palms, have marched those weary companies of slaves, whose descendants
-      make the problem of America nowadays. It must have been the same shore,
-      the very same. Here is the golden sand and the thunderous surf that only
-      the men of the Coast will dare, and between Axim and the French Ivory
-      Coast not always they. The white scallop shells are tossed aside by the
-      feet of the carriers; the jellyfish that twinkle like lumps of glass in
-      the strong sunshine must be avoided, for they sting; plover and little
-      wading birds like snipe dart into the receding wave, or race back from its
-      oncoming; and the little crabs, like brown pincushions on stilts, run to
-      hide themselves in the water. Here are crows, too, with neat black coats
-      and immaculate white waistcoats and white collars, who fly cawing round
-      the villages. We saw an occasional vulture, like a ragged and very
-      dissipated turkey, tearing at the carcass of a goat or sheep. Such is the
-      shore now. So was it four hundred years ago. The people must have changed
-      a little, but very, very little in this western portion of the Gold Coast,
-      which is given over to the mahogany cutters, the gold-seekers, and the men
-      who seek mineral oil. And the people are born, and live, and die, and know
-      very, very little more than their forefathers, who lived in fear of the
-      trader who would one day tear them from their homes, and force
-      civilisation upon them with the cat and with the branding iron. In the old
-      days they got much of their sustenance from the sea, and so do they get it
-      still; and when the surf was not too bad we saw the dark men launching
-      their great surf boats, struggling to get them into the surf, struggling
-      to keep them afloat till they got beyond it, when they were things of
-      life. And when the surf was too bad, as it was on many days, they
-      contented themselves with throwing in hand-nets, racing back as the sea
-      washed over them, racing forward as it receded; and the women and children
-      gathered shell-fish just where sand and surf met, carrying in their hands
-      calabashes, or cocoa-nut shells, or those enamelled iron-ware basins which
-      are as common now on the Coast as they are in London town. It seems to me
-      that enamelled iron ware is one of the great differences between now and
-      the days when the English and Dutch and Portuguese adventurers came first
-      to this coast trading for gold and ivory and slaves.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There are other traces of them, too, though they only built forts and
-      dared hardly go beyond the shelter of their walls. Not infrequently the
-      skin of the man who bore me was lightened to copper colour; every now and
-      then I saw straight features and thin lips, though the skin was black, and
-      I remembered, I must perforce remember, that these traders of old time
-      made the dark women minister to their passions, and that the dark women
-      bore them children with pride, even as they do to-day.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Beyin is one of the biggest purely negro towns along the Coast. It is
-      close on the shore, a mass of negro compounds huddled close together; the
-      walls of the compounds and of houses are alike made of raffia palm, and
-      the roofs are thatched with the fronds, looking not unlike peasant
-      cottages in Somerset or Brittany.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And the people who live in them are simple savages. They chatter and
-      shriek, talking at the top of their voices about&mdash;God knows what; for
-      it seems as if nothing in the nature of news could have happened since the
-      long-ago slave-raiding days. In the street they pressed me close; only
-      when I noticed any particular one, especially a woman or a child, that one
-      fled shrieking to hide behind its neighbour. We sent our orderly forward
-      to tell the Omahin we proposed to honour them with our presence for two
-      days, and to ask for a house to live in. The house was forthcoming, a
-      great two-storied house, built of swish, and whitewashed. It was right in
-      the centre of the town, so closely surrounded by the smaller houses that,
-      standing on the balcony, I could drop things easily on to the roofs below;
-      but it had this advantage, that unless the people climbed on their roofs&mdash;they
-      did as a matter of fact&mdash;we could not be overlooked. We had three
-      rooms: an enormous centre room that someone had begun to paint blue, got
-      tired, and finished off with splashes of whitewash, the council chamber of
-      the town; and two side-rooms for bedrooms. And words fail me to describe
-      those bedrooms. There were iron beds with mattresses, mattresses that
-      looked as if they had been rescued from the refuse heap specially to
-      accommodate us, and tables covered with dirt and the most wonderful
-      collection of odds and ends it has ever been my fortune to come across.
-      They were mostly the cheapest glass and china ornaments, broken-down lamps
-      that in their palmy days must have been useless, and one of those big
-      gaily painted china sitting hens that humble households sometimes serve up
-      their breakfast eggs under. The first thing was to issue strict orders
-      that not even the ground sheet was to touch that bed; the next was to
-      clear away the ornaments, wipe down the table, cover it with clean paper
-      and a towel, sweep the floor, lay down the ground sheet, put up the bed,
-      and decide whether I would wash in sea water or in the black and greasy
-      liquid which comes from a mile away across the swamp, and which was the
-      only alternative. I may say I tried them both, and found them both
-      unsatisfactory; and I finished with the sea water because I knew that,
-      however uncomfortable, it was at least clean.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Here we used the last of our drinking water and had to beg a little from
-      the only white trader in the town, who gave generously of his small store,
-      as white men do help each other beyond civilisation. He was German, and
-      somewhat difficult to understand at times when he grew excited; but he
-      stood on the same side of the gulf as we other two, while the black
-      people, those who served us, and those who stared at us, were apart on the
-      other side. A weary, dreary life is the trader's. He had a house just on
-      the edge of the surf. His &ldquo;factory&rdquo; was below it. His only companions were
-      a beautiful green-crested clock-bird and a little old-man monkey with a
-      white beard. The ghastly loneliness of it! Nothing to do but to sell
-      cotton stuffs and enamel ware and gin to the native, and count the days
-      till it was time to tramp to Axim and take the steamer that should bear
-      him back to the Fatherland and all the joys of wife and children.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I saw the homeward-bound steamer to-day,&rdquo; he said pathetically, though he
-      did not know he was pathetic. &ldquo;I always look for it.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;The steamer! I did not know it came close enough in.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It doesn't. Of course it was only the smoke on the horizon.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Surely, surely, the tragedy of the exile's life lay in those words.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We had sent our orderly forward to say we were going to visit the Omahin,
-      and soon after our arrival we called upon him. His palace is a collection
-      of swish huts with palm-thatched roofs, built round a sanded compound; and
-      we were ushered into a cramped, whitewashed room&mdash;his court. The
-      population packed themselves into the body of the court to stare at the
-      white people and native royalty; and the Omahin and his councillors were
-      crowded up in the corner, whence, I presume, justice is dispensed. The
-      exalted personage was clad in a dark robe of many-coloured silks, with a
-      band of the same material round his black head. Round his neck was a
-      great, heavy gold chain, on his arms bracelets of the same metal, and on
-      his fingers heavy gold rings. Some of his councillors were also dressed in
-      native robes, and they carried great horns of gold and the sticks that
-      mark his rank with gold devices on top of them. The incongruity was
-      provided by the &ldquo;scholars&rdquo; among his following&mdash;the linguists, the
-      registrar, and other minor officials. These functionaries were clad in the
-      most elderly of cast-off European garments, frock coats green with age,
-      shirts that simply shrieked for the washtub, and trousers that a London
-      unemployed would have disdained. However, they interpreted for us, and we
-      explained to the Chief how pleased the white lady was with his country and
-      how much she wished to visit the lake village, which was three hours away
-      on the trade route to the back-country. He expressed his willingness to
-      give us a guide through the swamp that lay behind the town, and then with
-      a great deal of solemnity we took our leave and retired to our own
-      somewhat delayed afternoon tea.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We were mistaken if we thought we were going to be allowed to have it in
-      peace. We had not sat down a moment, the Forestry officer, the German
-      trader, and I, when the ragged travesty of a Gold Coast policeman, who was
-      the Omahin's messenger, came dawdling upstairs to announce that the Omahin
-      was coming to return our call; and he and his councillors and linguists
-      followed close on his heels. The linguist explained that it was the custom
-      to return a ceremonial call at once, and custom rules the roost in West
-      Africa. That might be, but our conversational powers had been exhausted a
-      quarter of an hour before, and not the most energetic ransacking of our
-      brains could find anything to say to this negro potentate, who sat
-      stolidly in a chair surrounded by an ever increasing group of attendants.
-      I asked him if he would have tea. No. Cake, suggested the Forestry officer
-      frantically. No. Toast and butter we both offered in a breath. No; he had
-      no use for toast and butter, or for biscuits or oranges, which exhausted
-      our tea-table. And then the Forestry officer had a brilliant idea: &ldquo;You
-      offer him a whisky-and-soda.&rdquo; I did, and the dusky monarch weighed the
-      matter a moment. Then he agreed, and a glass of whisky-and-soda was given
-      him. We did not offer any refreshment to his followers. It would have left
-      us bankrupt, and then not supplied them all. For a moment the Omahin
-      looked at his whisky-and-sparklet, then he held out the glass, and aman
-      stepped forward, and, bending low, took a sip; again he held out the
-      glass, choosing his man apparently quite promiscuously from among the
-      crowd, and again the man bent low and sipped. It was done over and over
-      again. I did not realise that a glass could have held so much liquid as
-      one after another, the chosen of the company, among whom was my most
-      troublesome hammock-boy, sipped. At last there was but a teaspoonful left,
-      and the Omahin put it to his own lips and drank with gusto, handed it to
-      one of his attendants, took it back, and, tipping it up, drained the very
-      last dregs; then, solemnly holding out a very hard and horny hand, shook
-      hands with us and departed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The next day we visited Lake Nuba. Beyin stands upon a narrow neck of land
-      between the sea and a swamp that in the rainy season is only passable in
-      canoes, but when I was there in the middle of the dry season a winding
-      path took us through the dense swamp grasses to the place that is neither
-      land nor water, and it is difficult to say whether a hammock or a canoe is
-      the least dangerous mode of progression. Be it understood that this is a
-      trade route. Rotting canoes lay among the grasses; and there passed to and
-      fro quite an array of people laden with all manner of goods, plantains,
-      and cassava, stink-fish (which certainly does not belie its name), piles
-      of cotton goods for the interior, and great enamelled-ware basins piled
-      with loam to make swish houses in Beyin. Most often these heavily laden
-      folks are women who stalk along with a child up on their backs, or
-      suckling it under their arms. They stared with wonder at the white woman
-      in the hammock and moved into the swamp to let her pass, but I should
-      think they no more envied me than I envy the Queen of England driving in
-      the Park. Presently the way was ankle-deep in water, knee-deep in mud.
-      Raffia palm, creepers, and all manner of swamp grasses grew so close that
-      the hammock could barely be forced through, and only two men could carry
-      it. We went up perhaps twenty feet in squelching, slippery mud. We came
-      down again, and the greenery opened out into an expanse of water, where
-      starry-white water-lilies opened cups to the sky above, and the great
-      leaves looked like green rafts on the surface of the water. There were
-      holes hidden by that water, but it is the trade route north all the same;
-      and has been the trade route for hundreds of years since the Omahins of
-      Beyin raided that way, and brought down their strings of slaves, carrying
-      the tiny children lest they should be drowned, to the Dutch and Portuguese
-      and English traders on the Coast. Presently we came to a more marked
-      waterway, and here were canoes waiting for us. I draw a veil over the
-      disembarking out of a hammock into an extremely crank and wet canoe. I was
-      up to my knees in water, but the Forestry officer expressed himself as
-      delighted. I held up a dripping skirt, and he made his men paddle over,
-      and inspected. It was, of course, as we might have expected; the natives
-      had seen that the most important person in their eyes, the man, got the
-      only fairly dry canoe, and my kindly guardian was shocked, and insisted on
-      an immediate change being made. And if it is necessary to draw a veil over
-      the disembarking from a hammock to a canoe it is certainly necessary to
-      draw one over the changing from one crank canoe to another. I can assure
-      you it cannot be done gracefully. Even a mermaid who had no fear of being
-      drowned could hardly accomplish that with elegance. But it was done at
-      last, and we set off up the long and picturesque waterway fringed with
-      lilies and palms and swamp grasses that led to Lake Nuba. And sometimes
-      the waterway was deep, sometimes shallow. The canoe was aground, and every
-      man had to jump overboard to help push it over the obstruction, but more
-      than one man went over his head in slime and water. At each accident the
-      lucky ones who had escaped roared and yelled with laughter as if it were
-      the best of jokes. Perhaps it was. It was so hot that it could have been
-      no hardship to have a bath, and they had nothing on to spoil. But at last
-      we got out on the lake. It looked a huge sheet of water from the little
-      canoe, and it took a good hour's paddling till we came to the lake
-      village.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This is the lair of the hunted, though it does lie on the trade route.
-      Behind it lies the swamp which is neither land nor water in the dry
-      season, and it looks just a tangle of raffia palm and swamp grass, and all
-      manner of tropical greenery. The huts, like the huts of Beyin are, are
-      built of raffia palm, but they go one better than Beyin and the fishing
-      villages, even the flooring is of the stems; and the whole village is
-      raised on stakes, so that it hangs over the water, and the houses can only
-      be reached by a framework of poles.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If you <i>will</i> go exploring,&rdquo; said the Forestry officer, as I
-      gathered up my skirts and essayed the frail ladder.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I here put it on record that I think savage life can by no manner of means
-      be recommended, save and except for its airiness. There is plenty of air.
-      It is easy enough to see through those lightly built walls of raffia palm,
-      and the doings of the occupants must be fairly open to the public. Also,
-      except in one room, where a hearth had been laid down about six feet by
-      three in extent, the flooring is so frail that in trying to walk on it I
-      slipped through, and was nipped tightly by the ankles. I couldn't rescue
-      myself. I was held as in a vice till the grinning King's messenger and a
-      Kroo-boy carrier got me out, wherefore I conclude the inhabitants of those
-      villages must spend the most of their time on their backs. In the dry
-      season there is a little bit of hard earth underneath the huts. In the wet
-      season there is nothing but water and the raffia palm flooring or a crank
-      canoe for a resting-place. No wonder even the tiny children seem as much
-      at home in a canoe as I am in an easy chair. And yet the village is
-      growing, so there must be a charm about it as a dwelling-place. We had
-      &ldquo;chop&rdquo; on the verandah of the Chiefs house. The Chief had apparently quite
-      recently buried one of his household, for at the end of the platform close
-      against the dwelling-chambers was erected one of the miniature sloping
-      roofs with offerings of cock's feathers, shells, and pots to placate the
-      ghost. It was quite a new erection, too, for the palm-leaf thatch was
-      still green; but where the dead body was I do not know, probably sunk in
-      the swamp underneath, and why so close I do not know either, since the
-      people evidently feared his ghost. However, even if we were lunching over
-      a grave, it did not trouble us half so much as the fate of the toast which
-      was being brought across from another hut in a particularly crank canoe,
-      and was naturally an object of much curiosity.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0160.jpg" alt="0160 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0160.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The people were very courteous. It seems to me that the farther you get
-      from civilisation the more courteous the population. Village children
-      eager to see the lions in a circus could not have been more keen than the
-      people of this lake village to see the white woman, but they did not even
-      come and look till our linguist went forth and announced that the white
-      people had had their chop, and were ready to receive the headman. He came,
-      bringing his little daughter&mdash;a rough-looking, bearded old man, who
-      squatted down in front of me and rammed the tail of his cloth into his
-      mouth; and immediately there followed in his train, I should think, the
-      entire village, men, women, and children, and ranged themselves in rows on
-      the bamboo flooring, and looked their fill. Rows of eyes staring at one
-      are embarrassing; I don't care whether they be those of a cultured people
-      or of savages clad in scanty garments. If you stand up before an audience
-      in a civilised land you know what you are there for, and you either
-      succeed or fail, so the thing marches and comes to an end. But sitting
-      before a subdued crowd clad in Manchester cotton or simply a smile, with
-      all eyes centred on you, I at least feel that my rôle is somewhat more
-      difficult. What on earth am I to do? If I move they chatter; if I single
-      one out to be touched, he moves away, and substitutes a neighbour, who is
-      equally anxious to substitute someone else, and the production of a camera
-      causes a stampede. Looking back, I cannot consider that my behaviour at
-      the lake village reflected any particular credit upon me. I felt I ought
-      really to have produced more impression upon a people who had, many of
-      them, never in their lives set eyes on a white woman before. They tell me,
-      those who know, that for these people, whose lives move on in the same
-      groove from the cradle to the grave, the coming of the Forestry officer
-      and the white woman was a great event, and that all things will bear date
-      from the day when the white missus and the white master had chop on the
-      Chief's verandah.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Before we left Beyin, I promised to take the Omahin's photograph. Early in
-      the morning, when we had sent on our carriers, we wended our way to his
-      house, where an eager crowd awaited us. They kept us waiting, of course; I
-      do not suppose it would be consistent with an African chief's dignity to
-      show himself in any hurry. When I grew tired of waiting and was turning
-      away, the linguist came out to know if I would promise a picture when it
-      was taken. I agreed. Certainly. More waiting, and then out came the
-      linguist with a dirty scrap of paper and a lead pencil in his hand, and
-      demanded of the Forestry officer his name and address.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked the astonished young man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;So we can write to you when pictures no come.&rdquo; It was lucky I was pretty
-      sure of my own powers, but it was a little rough to make the Forestry
-      officer responsible for any accident that might happen. It was a great
-      relief to my mind when there came back to me from Messrs Sinclair a
-      perfect picture of the Omahin and his following and his little son. I sent
-      them the picture enlarged, but I never heard from that respectable
-      linguist what they thought of it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0164.jpg" alt="0164 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0164.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER VII&mdash;ON THE FRENCH BORDER
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Very heavy going&mdash;-Half Assinie&mdash;The preventive service
-      station&mdash;The energetic officer&mdash;Dislike of Africa&mdash;The Tano
-      River&mdash;The enterprising crocodiles&mdash;The mahogany logs&mdash;Wicked
-      waste&mdash;Gentlemen adventurers&mdash;A primitive dinner-party&mdash;Forced
-      labour&mdash;The lost carrier&mdash;&ldquo;Make die and chopped&rdquo;&mdash;A negro
-      Good Samaritan&mdash;A matrimonial squabble&mdash;The wife who would earn
-      her own living&mdash;Dissatisfied carriers.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e were bound to
-      Half Assinie and the French border and the way was all along the shore,
-      which is a narrow strip of land between the roaring surf and a
-      mangrove-fringed lagoon, and on this strip are the palm-built fishing
-      villages and the cocoa-nut groves that are so typical of the Coast. The
-      last day out from Half Assinie the way was very heavy going indeed. We had
-      our midday meal in the street of a village with the eyes of the villagers
-      upon us, and by the afternoon the &ldquo;sea was too full,&rdquo; the sun was
-      scorching, and the loose sand was cruel heavy going for the carriers and
-      the hammock-boys. The sun went down, the cool of the evening came, but the
-      bearers were staggering like drunken men before a shout went up. We had
-      reached Half Assinie, the last important town in the Gold Coast Colony.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Half Assinie is just like any other Western Province Gold Coast town,
-      built close down to the roaring, almost impassable surf, because the
-      people draw much of their livelihood from the sea, and built of
-      raffia-palm bamboo, because there is nothing else to build it of. Only
-      there is this difference, that here is a preventive station, with a white
-      man in command. There is a great cleared square, which is all sand and
-      cocoa-nut palms, men in neat dark-blue uniforms pass to and fro, and bugle
-      calls are heard the livelong day. We arrived long before the rest of our
-      following, and we marched straight up to the preventive officer's house
-      only to find that he was down with fever. But he was hospitable. All white
-      men are in West Africa. The house was ours. It consisted of a square of
-      sun-dried, white-washed mud, divided into three rooms with square openings
-      for windows, mud floor and no ceiling, but high above the walls the
-      palm-thatched roof is raised and carried far out beyond them to form a
-      verandah where we could sit and eat and entertain visitors. It was big
-      enough, never less than twelve and often quite eighteen feet wide, and
-      could be made quite a comfortable living-room were a woman there, but
-      Englishmen and the English Government do not encourage wives. The rooms
-      assigned to the guests were of necessity empty, for men cannot carry
-      furniture about in West Africa, and our host being sick and our gear not
-      yet arrived, the Forestry officer and I, comforted with whisky-and-soda,
-      took two chairs and sat out in the compound under the stars and watched
-      for the coming of our carriers. The going had been so hard they straggled
-      in one by one, bath and bed and chairs and tables and boxes, and it was
-      nine o'clock before we were washed and dressed and in our right minds, and
-      waiting &ldquo;chop&rdquo; at a table on the big verandah that the faithful Kwesi, who
-      had been properly instructed, had decorated with yellow cannas from the
-      garden.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There is something about Half Assinie that gives the impression of being
-      at the end of the world. Of course I have been in places much farther from
-      civilisation, but nowhere has the tragedy of the Englishman's life in West
-      Africa so struck me as it did here, and again I must say I think it is the
-      conditions of the life and not the climate that is responsible for that
-      tragedy. The young man who ran that preventive station was cheerful
-      enough; he got up from his bed of fever when he could hardly stagger
-      across the room to entertain his visitors. When he could barely crawl, he
-      was organising a game of cricket between some white men who had
-      unexpectedly landed and the &ldquo;scholars&rdquo; among the black inhabitants; and he
-      was energetic and good-tempered and proud of his men, but he hated the
-      country and had no hesitation in saying so. He had no use for West Africa;
-      he counted the days till he should go home. He would not have dreamt of
-      bringing his wife out even if she had wished to come. He was, in fact, a
-      perfect specimen of the nice, pleasant Englishman who is going the way
-      that allows France and Germany to beat us in colonising all along the
-      line. It was his strong convictions, many of them unspoken, that impressed
-      me, his realisation of his own discontent and discomfort and hopelessness
-      that have tinged my recollections of the place.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It should be a place of great importance, for it is but a short distance
-      from the Tano River, and down the Tano River, far from the interior, come
-      the great mahogany logs that rival the logs of Honduras and Belize and all
-      Central America in value. They are cut far away in the forests of the
-      interior; they are floated down the Tano River, paying toll to the natives
-      who guide them over the falls and rapids; they come between tall,
-      silk-cotton trees and fan palms and raffia palms, where the chimpanzee
-      hides himself and the dog-faced monkeys whimper and cry, the crocodile
-      suns himself on the mud-banks, and great, bell-shaped, yellow flowers
-      lighten the greenery. They come past the French preventive station, that
-      the natives call France, a station thriftily decorated with a tiny flag
-      that might have come out of a cracker, past the English station built of
-      raffia palm like the lake village, for this ground is flooded in the
-      rains, through a saving canal, for the Tano River enters the sea in French
-      territory, into a lagoon behind Half Assinie. The lagoon is surrounded by
-      swamp, and the crocodiles, they say, abound, and are so fierce and
-      fearless they have been known to take the paddler's arm as he stoops to
-      his stroke. I did not know of their evil reputation as I sat on a box in
-      the frail canoe, that seemed to place me in the midst of a waste of
-      waters, rising up to the greenery in the far distance, and the blue-white
-      sky above shut down on us like a lid. I was even inclined to be vexed with
-      the men's reluctance to jump out and push when we ran ashore on a
-      sand-bank. They should be able to grow rice in these swamps at the mouth
-      of the Tano River and behind Beyin, and so raise up a new industry that
-      shall save Half Assinie when the mahogany trade is a thing of the past.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0170.jpg" alt="0170 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0170.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      From the lagoon to Half Assinie, a couple of miles away, the logs are
-      brought on a tramway line, and where they land the men are squaring them,
-      cutting off the butts where the journey down the river has split and
-      marred them, and making them ready to be moved down to the beach by the
-      toilsome application of many hands. It reminded me of the way they must
-      have built the pyramids as I watched the half-naked men toil and sweat and
-      push and shriek, and apparently accomplish so little. Yet all in good time
-      the beach is strewn with the logs, great square-cut baulks of red timber
-      with their owners' marks upon their butts and covered generally with a
-      thatch of cocoa-nut palm fronds to keep them from the all-powerful sun.
-      The steamer will call for them some day, but it is no easy thing to get
-      them through the surf, and steamer after steamer calls, whistles, decides
-      that the surf is too heavy to embark such timber, and passes on. And where
-      they have been cut and trimmed, the mammies come with baskets to gather
-      pieces of the priceless wood to build their fires. It seems to me that the
-      trimming is done wastefully. The average savage and the ignorant white is
-      always wasteful where there is plenty, and it is nothing to them that the
-      mahogany tree does not come to maturity for something like two hundred and
-      fifty years, and that the cutters have denuded the country far, far beyond
-      the sea coast.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There are other phases of life in Half Assinie. Usually there is but one
-      white man there, the preventive officer, but when I visited it actually
-      ten white people sat down one night to dinner. For there had landed some
-      white people bound on some errand which, as has been the custom from time
-      immemorial in Africa, was veiled in mystery. They were seeking gold; they
-      hoped to find diamonds; their ultimate aim was to trade with the natives,
-      and cut out every other trading-house along the Coast. Frankly, I do not
-      know what they had landed for&mdash;their leader talked of his wealth and
-      how he grew bananas and pines and coffee, and created a tropical paradise
-      in Devonshire, and meanwhile in Africa conferred the inimitable benefits
-      of innumerable gramophones and plenty of work upon the guileless savage&mdash;but
-      I only gathered he was there for the purpose of filling his pockets, how,
-      I have not the faintest idea. His dinner suggested Africa in the primitive
-      days of the first adventurers and rough plenty. Soup in a large bowl, from
-      which we helped ourselves, a dozen tins of sardines flung on a plate, a
-      huge tongue from a Gargantuan ox, and dishes piled with slices of
-      pine-apple. The table decorations consisted of beer bottles, distributed
-      at intervals down the table between the kerosene lamps; the boys who
-      waited yelled and shrieked and shouted, like the untamed savages they
-      were, and some of the white men were unshaven and in their shirt sleeves,
-      and the shirts, to put it mildly, needed washing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Gentlemen adventurers,&rdquo; said I to my companion under my breath, thinking
-      of the days of old and the men who had landed on these shores.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Would you say gentlemen?&rdquo; said he.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And I decided that one epithet would be sufficient.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      How the bugles called. Every hour almost a man clad in the dark-blue
-      preventive service uniform stood out in the square with his bugle and
-      called to the surf and the sky and the sand and the cocoa-nut palms and
-      the natives beyond, saying to them that here was the representative of His
-      Britannic Majesty, here was the white man powerful above all others who
-      kept the Borders, who was come as the forerunner of law and cleanliness
-      and order. For these things do not come naturally to the native. He clears
-      the land when he needs it and then he leaves it to itself and the quickly
-      encroaching bush. The mosquito troubles him not. Dirt and filth and evil
-      smells are not worth counting weighed in the balance against a comfortable
-      afternoon's sleep, and so it came that when I commented on the neatness of
-      Half Assinie, the preventive officer laughed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0174.jpg" alt="0174 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0174.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Forced labour,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;The place was in a frightful state a month ago
-      and I couldn't get anybody to do anything, so I just turned out my men,
-      put a cordon round, and forced everyone to do an hour's labour, men,
-      mammies, and half-grown children, till we got the place clear. It wasn't
-      hard on anyone, and you see.&rdquo; He was right. Sometimes in Africa, nay, as a
-      rule, the powers of a dictator are needed by the white man. If he is a
-      wise and clever dictator so much the better, but one thing is certain, he
-      must not be a man who splits hairs. Justice, yes, rough crude justice he
-      must give&mdash;must have the sort of mind that sees black and white and
-      does not trouble about the varying shades in between.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We came back from the Border by the road that we had gone, the road that
-      is the King's Highway, and an incident happened that shows how very, very
-      easily a wrong impression of a people may be gathered.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When we were in Beyin on our way out, the two headmen who were eternally
-      at war with each other suddenly appeared in accord leading between them a
-      man by the hands.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;This man be very sick.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      This man certainly was very sick, and it seemed to the Forestry officer
-      that the simplest thing would be to leave him behind at Beyin and pick him
-      up on our return journey. He thought his decision would be received with
-      gratitude. Not at all. The sick carrier protested that all he wanted was
-      to be relieved of his load and allowed to go on. The men of Beyin were bad
-      people; if he stayed they would kill him and chop him. The Forestry
-      officer was inclined to laugh. Murder of an unoffending stranger and
-      cannibalism on a coast that had been in touch with civilisation for the
-      last four hundred years; the idea was not to be thought of. But the
-      frightened sick man stuck to his point and his brother flung down his load
-      and declared if he were left behind he should stay with him. There was
-      nothing for it then but to agree to their wishes. He was relieved of his
-      load and he started, and he and his brother arrived at Half Assinie long
-      after all the other carriers had got in. The gentlemen adventurers
-      numbered among them a doctor, and he was called in and prescribed for the
-      sick man. After the little rest there he was better, and started back for
-      Axim, his brother, who was carrying the Forestry officer's bath, in close
-      attendance. By and by we passed the bath abandoned on the beach, and its
-      owner perforce put another man on to carry it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      That night there were no signs of the missing men, but next morning the
-      brother, the man who ought to have carried the bath, turned up. His face
-      was sodden with crying. A negro is intensely emotional, but this man had
-      some cause for his grief. He had missed his brother, abandoned the bath,
-      and gone right back to Half Assinie to look for him. The way was by the
-      seashore, there is no way to wander from it; on one side is the roaring
-      surf that no man alone may dare, and on the other, just beyond the line of
-      cocoa-nut palms, a mangrove-fringed lagoon, and beyond that a bush,
-      containing perhaps a few native farms to be reached by narrow tracks, but
-      a bush that no stranger would lightly dare. But no trace of his brother
-      could this man find. What had become of the sick carrier? That was the
-      question we asked ourselves, and to that no answer could we find except
-      the sinister verdict pronounced by his fellows, &ldquo;Make die and chopped.&rdquo;
-       And that I believed for many months, till just before I left the Coast the
-      Forestry officer and I met again and he told me the end of the story. He
-      had made every inquiry, telegraphed up and down the Coast, and given the
-      man up for lost, and then after four or five weeks a miserable skeleton
-      came crawling into Axim. The lost carrier. He had felt faint by the
-      wayside, crawled into the shade of a bush and become insensible, and there
-      had been found by some man, a native of the country and a total stranger
-      to him. And this Good Samaritan instead of falling upon him and making him
-      die as he fully expected, took him to his own house, fed and succoured
-      him, and when he was well enough set him on his way. So he and I and all
-      his fellows had wronged these men of the shore. Greater kindness he could
-      not have found in a Christian land, and in all probability he might easily
-      have found much less.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But Beyin too furnished another lesson for me, not quite so pleasant. All
-      my carriers had come from here, and on our way back they struck. In plain
-      words they wanted to see the colour of my money. Said the Forestry
-      officer, &ldquo;Don't pay them, else they'll all run away and you will have no
-      one to carry your things into Axim.&rdquo; That was a contingency not to be
-      thought of, so the ultimatum went forth&mdash;no pay until they had
-      completed their contract. That night I regret to state there was a row in
-      the house, a matrimonial quarrel carried on in the approved matrimonial
-      style all the world over, with the mother-in-law for chorus and general
-      backer-up. There was a tremendous racket and the principal people
-      concerned seemed to be one of my women-carriers and the Omahin's registrar
-      in whose house we were lodged. Then because Fanti is one of the Twi
-      languages, and an Ashanti can understand it quite well, Kwesi interpreted
-      for me. This woman, it appeared, was one of the registrar's wives, and he
-      disapproved of her going on the road as a common carrier. It was not
-      consistent with his dignity as an official of the court, he said at the
-      top of his voice; he had given her a good home and she had no need to
-      demean herself. She shrilly declared he had done no such thing, and if he
-      had, had shamefully neglected her for that last hussy he had married, and
-      her mother backed her and several other female friends joined in, and
-      whether they settled the dispute or not to their own satisfaction I do not
-      know, but the gentleman cuffed the lady and the lady had the extreme
-      satisfaction of scattering several handfuls of his wool to the winds.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Next morning none of my carriers turned up; there lay the loads under a
-      tree in front of the house with the orderly looking at them with his
-      sardonic grin, but never a carrier. It was cool with the coolness of early
-      morning. We had our breakfast in the great room, we discussed the
-      disturbance of the night before, the things were all washed up, still no
-      carriers; at last, just as it was getting hot and our tempers were giving
-      out, came a message. The carriers would not go unless they were paid.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;And it's a foregone conclusion they won't go if they are paid,&rdquo; sighed
-      the Forestry officer as he set off to interview the Omahin and tell him
-      our decision. If the carriers did not come in at once, it ran, we would
-      leave all the loads, making him, the Omahin, responsible for their safety,
-      and we would push on with the Mendi and Kroo-boy carriers in the Forestry
-      officer's employ. Those left behind not having carried out their contract
-      of course would then get no pay at all, and this would happen unless they
-      returned to work within a quarter of an hour. The effect was marvellous.
-      The Omahin, of course, did not grasp how exceedingly uncomfortable it
-      would have been for us to leave our gear behind us, and as we had sixteen
-      Kroo boys and Mendi boys the feat was quite feasible, and promptly those
-      Beyin people returned to work and were as eager to get their loads as they
-      had before been to leave them. So I learned another lesson in the
-      management of carriers, and we made our way without further incident back
-      to Axim.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER VIII&mdash;ALONE IN WEST AFRICA
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Cinderella&mdash;A troubled Commissioner&mdash;Few people along the
-      Coast&mdash;No hotels&mdash;Nursing Sister to the rescue&mdash;Sekondi&mdash;A
-      little log-rolling&mdash;A harassed hedge&mdash;Carriers&mdash;Difficulties
-      of the way&mdash;A funeral palaver&mdash;No dinner and no ligjit&mdash;First
-      night alone&mdash;Unruly carriers&mdash;No breakfast&mdash;Crossing the
-      Prah&mdash;A drink from a marmalade pot&mdash;&ldquo;We no be fit, Ma&rdquo;&mdash;The
-      evolution of Grant&mdash;Along the Coast in the dark&mdash;Elmina at last&mdash;A
-      sympathetic medical officer&mdash;&ldquo;I have kicked your policeman.&rdquo;</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>est Africa is
-      Cinderella among the colonies. No one goes there for pleasure, and of
-      those who gain their livelihood from the country three-fourths regard
-      themselves as martyrs and heroes, counting the days till the steamer shall
-      take them home again for that long leave that makes a position there so
-      desirable. The other quarter perhaps, some I know for certain, find much
-      good in the country, many possibilities, but as yet their voice is not
-      heard by the general public above that chorus that drowns its protest.
-      That any man should come to the Gold Coast for pleasure would be
-      surprising; that a woman should come when she had no husband there, and
-      that she should want to go overland all along the sea-board, passed
-      belief. &ldquo;Why? why?&rdquo; asked everyone. &ldquo;A tourist on the Coast,&rdquo; a surprised
-      ship's captain called me, and I disclaimed it promptly. My publisher had
-      commissioned a book and I was there to write it. And then they could not
-      make up their minds whether I or my publisher were the greater fool, for
-      but very few among that little company saw anything to write about in the
-      country.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In Axim the troubled Commissioner set his foot down. I had been to Half
-      Assinie and he felt that ought to satisfy the most exacting woman; but
-      since I was anxious to do more he stretched a point and took me as far as
-      Prince's, an abandoned Branden-burgher fort that is tumbling into ruins,
-      with a native farm in the courtyard, but no farther could I go. Carriers
-      he could not get me, and for the first time I saw a smile on his face, a
-      real relieved smile, when he saw me into the boat that took me to the
-      steamer bound for Sekondi.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      No one goes along the Coast except an occasional Public Works Department
-      man or a School Inspector; nobody wants to, and it is not easy of
-      accomplishment.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Even in the towns it is difficult for the stranger. I do not know what
-      would happen if that stranger had not friends and letters of introduction,
-      for though there are one or two hotels, as yet no one who is not
-      absolutely driven to it by stern necessity stays in a West-African hotel.
-      In Sekondi it is almost impossible, for at this town is the Coast terminus
-      of the railway that runs to the mines at Tarkwa and Kumasi, and the miner
-      both coming and returning seems to require so much liquid refreshment that
-      he is anything but a desirable fellow-housemate, wherefore was I deeply
-      grateful when Miss Oram, the nursing Sister at the Sekondi Hospital, asked
-      me to stay in her quarters.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Sekondi straggles up and down many hills, and by and by if some definite
-      plan of beautifying be followed may be made rather a pretty place. Even
-      now at night, from some of the bungalows on the hillsides when the
-      darkness gently veils the ugly scars that man's handiwork leaves behind,
-      with its great sweep of beach, its sloping hillsides dotted with lights,
-      the stars above and the lights in the craft on the water that lie just
-      outside the surf, it has a wonderful charm and beauty that there is no
-      denying. And yet there is no doubt Sekondi should not be there. Who is
-      responsible for it I do not know, but there must have been some atrocious
-      piece of log-rolling before Elmina and Cape Coast were deprived of the
-      benefit of the railway to the north. At Sekondi is no harbour. It is but
-      an open roadstead where in days gone past both the Dutch and English held
-      small forts for the benefit of their trade. At Sekondi was no town. At the
-      end of the last century the two little fishing villages marked the Dutch
-      and English forts. Now the English fort is gone, Fort Orange is used as a
-      prison, and a town has sprung into existence that has taken the trade from
-      Cape Coast and Elmina. It is a town that looks like all the English towns,
-      as if no one cared for it and as if everyone lives there because perforce
-      he must. In the European town the roads are made, and down their sides are
-      huge gutters to carry off the storm waters; the Englishman, let it be
-      counted to him for grace, is great on making great cemented gutters that
-      look like young rivers when it rains, and one enterprising Commissioner
-      planted an avenue or two of trees which promise well, only here and there
-      someone has seen fit to cut a tree or two down, and the gap has never been
-      replaced. Some of the bungalows are fairly comfortable, but though purple
-      bougainvillia, flame-coloured flamboyant trees, and dainty pink
-      corrallitis will grow like weeds, decent gardens are few and far between.
-      Instead of giving an impression of tropical verdure as it easily might,
-      Sekondi looks somewhat hot and barren. This, it is only fair to say, I did
-      not notice so much till I had visited German territory and seen what
-      really could be done with the most unpromising material in a tropical
-      climate. But German territory is the beloved child, planned and cared for
-      and thought much of; English territory is the foster-child, received into
-      the household because of the profit it will bring, and most of the towns
-      of the Gold Coast shore bear these marks plain for everyone to read. They
-      suffer, and suffer severely from the iniquitous system that is for ever
-      changing those in authority over them in almost every department.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Sekondi Hospital for instance is rather a nice-looking building but it is
-      horribly bare-looking and lacks sadly a garden and greenery. There is, of
-      course, a large reserve all round it where are the houses of the medical
-      officers and nursing Sisters, and in this reserve many things are growing,
-      but the general impression is of something just beginning. This I hardly
-      understood, since the place has been in existence for the last ten years,
-      till I found out that in the last eight months there had been four
-      different doctors head of that hospital, and each of those doctors had had
-      different views as to how the grounds should be laid out. So round the
-      medical officer's bungalow the hedge had been three times planted and
-      three times dug up. Just as I left, the fourth unfortunate hedge was being
-      put in. That, as I write, is nearly six weeks ago, so in all probability
-      they are now considering some new plan. If only someone with knowledge
-      would take in hand the beautifying of these West-African towns and insist
-      on the plans being adhered to! In one of the principal streets of Sekondi
-      is a tamarind tree standing alone, a pleasant green spot in the general
-      glare and heat, a reminder of how well the old Dutch did, a reproach that
-      we who are a great people do not do better. It seems to me it would want
-      so little to make these towns beautiful places, the moral effect would be
-      so great if they were.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I had come to go along the Coast, and the question was carriers; I
-      appealed to the transport. My friend, Mr Migeod, the head of the
-      transport, was on leave, and his second in command shook his head
-      doubtfully. The troops in the north were out on manoeuvres and they had
-      taken almost very carrier he could lay his hands on; but he would see what
-      he could do. How few could I do with? Seventeen, I decided, with two
-      servants, was the very fewest I could move with, and he said he would do
-      his best. I wanted to start on the following Monday, and I chose the hour
-      of ten; also because this was my first essay entirely alone I decided I
-      would not go farther than Chama, nine miles along the Coast to the east.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So, on a Monday morning early in March, behold me with all my goods and
-      chattels, neatly done up into loads not weighing over 60 lbs., laid out in
-      a row in the Sister's compound, and waiting for the carriers. I had begged
-      a policeman for dignity, or protection, I hardly know which, and he came
-      first and ensconced himself under the house, and I sat on the verandah and
-      waited. Presently the carriers came and began gingerly turning over the
-      loads and looking at me doubtfully. They were Mendis and Timinis, not the
-      regular Government carriers, but a scratch lot picked up to fill up gaps
-      in the ranks. I didn't like the looks of them much, but there was nothing
-      else to be done so I prepared to accept them. But it always takes two to
-      make a bargain, and apparently those carriers liked me less than I liked
-      them, for presently they one and all departed, and I began a somewhat
-      heated discussion across the telephone with the head of the transport.
-      Looking back, I don't see what he could have done more than he did. It is
-      impossible to evolve carriers out of nothing, but then I didn't see it
-      quite in that light. I wanted carriers; I was looking to him to produce
-      them, and I hadn't got them. He gave me to understand he thought I was
-      unreasonable, and we weren't quite as nice to each other as we might have
-      been. The men, he said, were frightened, and I thought that was
-      unreasonable, for there was nothing really terrifying about me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At three o'clock another gang arrived with a note from the transport
-      officer. They were subsisted for sixteen days, and I might start there and
-      then for Accra.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I should have preferred to have subsisted my men myself; that is, given
-      them each threepence daily, as I had on the way to the French border,
-      seeing that they were not regular Government men; but as the thing was
-      done there was nothing for it but to make the best of it, and I went down,
-      hunted up my policeman, and saw the loads on to the men's heads. I saw
-      them start out in a long string, and then the thing that always happens in
-      Africa happened. Both my servants were missing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Zacco, a boy with a scarred face from the north, did not much matter, but
-      Grant knew my ways and I could trust him. Clearly, out in the wilds by
-      myself with strange carriers and without even a servant, I should be very
-      badly off, and I hesitated. Not for long though. If I were going to let
-      little things connected with personal comfort stand in my way I knew I
-      should never get to Accra, so I decided to start; my servants might catch
-      me up, and if they did not, I would rely on the ministrations of the
-      hammock-boys. If the worst came to the worst, I supposed I could put my
-      dignity in my pocket and cook myself something, or live on tinned meat and
-      biscuits; and so, leaving directions with my hostess that those boys were
-      to be severely reprimanded when they turned up, I got into my hammock and
-      started.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The road to Accra from Sekondi is along the seashore, and so, to be very
-      Irish, there is no road. Of a truth, very few people there are who choose
-      to go by land, as it is so much easier to go by steamer, and the way,
-      generally speaking, is along the sand. Just outside Sekondi the beach is
-      broken by huge rocks that run out into the sea, apparently barring the way
-      effectually, and those rocks had to be negotiated. My hammock-boys
-      stopped, and I got out and watched my men with the loads scrambling over
-      the rocks, and one thing I was sure of, on my own feet I could not go that
-      way. I mentioned that to my demurring men, and insisted that over those
-      rocks they had to get me somehow, if it took the eight hammock-boys to do
-      it. And over those rocks I was got without setting foot out of my hammock,
-      and I fairly purred with pride, most unjustly setting it down to my own
-      prowess and feeling it marked a distinct stage on my journey eastwards. We
-      were, all of us, pleased as we went on again in all the glare of a
-      tropical afternoon, and I mentally sniffed at the men who had hinted I was
-      not able to manage carriers. There was not a more uplifted woman in all
-      Africa than I was for about the space of half an hour. It is trite to say
-      pride goes before a fall. We have all heard it from our cradles and I
-      ought to have remembered it, but I didn't. Presently we came to a village,
-      or rather two villages, with a stream dividing them, and there was a
-      tremendous tom-toming going on, and the monotonous sound of natives
-      chanting. The place was surrounded by thick greenery, only there was a
-      broad way between the houses, a brown road with great waterways and holes
-      in it, and the occasional shade-tree, under which the village rests in the
-      heat of the day, and holds its little markets and its little councils and
-      even does a stray job of cooking. The tom-toming went on, and men appeared
-      blowing horns. They were evidently very excited, and I remember still,
-      with a shudder, the staring, bloodshot eyes of two who passed my hammock
-      braying on horns. Most of my men could speak a little English, so I asked
-      not without some little anxiety, &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It be funeral palaver, Ma.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Oh, well, a funeral palaver was no great matter, surely. I had never heard
-      of these Coast natives doing anything more than drink palm wine to
-      celebrate the occasion. Some of those we passed had evidently drunk
-      copiously already, and I was thankful we were passing. We came to the
-      little river, we crossed the ford, and then we stopped.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We go drink water, Ma,&rdquo; said my men.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I ought to have said &ldquo;No,&rdquo; but it was a very hot afternoon, and the
-      request was not unreasonable. They had had to work hard carrying me over
-      those rocks so I got out and let them go. And then, as I might have known,
-      I waited. I grew cross, but it is no good losing your temper when there is
-      no one to be made uneasy by it, and then I grew frightened; but, if it is
-      foolish to lose one's temper, it is the height of folly to be afraid when
-      there is no help possible. I was standing on the bank of the little river
-      that we had just forded, my hammock was at my feet, all around was
-      greenery, tropical greenery of palm and creeper, not very dense compared
-      to other bush I have seen, but dense enough to prevent one's stepping off
-      the road; before me was the village, with its mud walls and its thatched
-      roofs, and behind me were the groves of trees on the other side of the
-      water that hid the village, from which came the sound of savage revelry.
-      Never have I felt more alone, and yet Sekondi was a bare five miles away.
-      I comforted myself with the reflection that nothing would be likely to
-      happen, but the thought of those half-naked men with the bloodshot,
-      staring eyes was most unpleasantly prominent in my mind. Some little naked
-      boys came and bathed and stared at me; I didn't know whether to welcome
-      them as companions or not. They understood no English, and when asked
-      where were my men only stared the harder. I tried to take a photograph,
-      but the policeman, who carried my stand, was also absent at the funeral,
-      and I fear my hand shook, for I have never seen that picture. Then, at
-      last, when I was absolutely despairing, a hammock-boy turned up. He was a
-      most ragged ruffian, with a printed cloth by way of trousers, a very
-      openwork singlet, all torn away at one arm, a billycock hat in the last
-      stages of dilapidation, and a large red woollen comforter with a border of
-      black, blue, and yellow. That comforter fascinated me, and I looked at it
-      as I talked to him, and wondered where it had been made. It had been
-      knitted, and many of the stitches had been dropped, and I pictured to
-      myself the sewing-party sitting round the fire doing useful work, while
-      someone read aloud one of Father Benson's books. My hammock-boy looked at
-      me as if he wondered how I was taking it, and wiped his mouth with the
-      tail of the comforter, where they had used up the odd bits of wool. He
-      flung it across his shoulder and a long, dropped red stitch caught over
-      his ear.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Where be the men?&rdquo; I was very angry indeed, which was very rough on the
-      only one of the crowd who had turned up. He was very humble, and I
-      suggested he should go and look for them, and tell them that if &ldquo;they no
-      come quick, they get no pay.&rdquo; He departed on his errand, and I waited with
-      a sinking heart. Even if there was no danger, and I was by no means sure
-      of that, with that tom-toming and that chant in my ears, I could not
-      afford to go back and announce that I had failed. All my outlay had been
-      for nothing. Another long wait, and more little boys to look at me. The
-      evening was coming; here in the hollow, down among the trees, the gloom
-      was already gathering, and I began to think that neither Chama nor Sekondi
-      would see me that night. I wondered what it would be like to spend the
-      night under the trees, and whether there were any beasts that might molest
-      me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Toom, toom, toom,&rdquo; went the village drum, as if to remind me there might
-      be worse things than spending the night under the trees, and then my
-      friend with the comforter appeared, leading two of the other hammock-boys;
-      one wore a crocheted, red tam-o'-shanter that fell over his face&mdash;probably
-      made at the same sewing-party. It was the same wool.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I talked to those three men. Considering they were the best behaved of the
-      lot, it comes back to me now that I was rather hard on them. I pointed out
-      the dire pains and penalties that befell hammock-boys who did not pay
-      proper attention to their duties, and I trusted that the fact that I was
-      utterly incapable of inflicting those penalties was not as patent to them
-      as it was to me, and then I decreed that my friend with the comforter
-      should go back and try and retrieve a fourth man while the other two
-      stayed with me. After another long wait he got that fourth man and we
-      started off, I dignifiedly wrathful&mdash;at least I hope I was dignified;
-      there was no doubt about the wrath&mdash;and they bearing evident marks of
-      having consumed a certain quantity of the funeral palm wine.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was dark when we reached Chama, at least as dark as it ever is on a
-      bright, starlight night in the Tropics, and we came out of the gloom of
-      the trees to find a dark bungalow raised high on stilts on a cement
-      platform, looming up against the star-spangled sky, and then another
-      surprise, a comforting surprise, awaited me: on that cement platform were
-      two white spots, and those white spots rose up to greet me, shamefaced,
-      humble, contrite, my servants. They had evidently slunk past me without
-      being seen, and I was immensely relieved. But naturally I did not say so.
-      I mentioned that I was very angry with them, and that it would take a long
-      course of faithful service to make up for so serious a lapse, and they
-      received my reproof very humbly, and apparently never realised that I was
-      just about as lonely a woman as there was in the world at that moment, and
-      would gladly have bartered all my wild aspirations after fame and fortune
-      for the comfortable certainty that I was going to spend a safe night. It
-      certainly does not jump with my firm faith in thought transference that
-      none of those men apparently ever discovered I was afraid. I should have
-      thought it was written all over me, but also, afraid as I was, it never
-      occurred to me to turn back; so, if the one thought impressed them,
-      perhaps the other did too.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Then I waited on that dark verandah. There was some scanty Government
-      furniture in the rest-house, and my repentant servant fetched me out a
-      chair, and I sat and waited. I looked out; there was the clearing round
-      the house, the gloom of the dense greenery that grew up between the house
-      and the seashore, while east ran the road to the town of Chama, about a
-      ten minutes' walk distant, and on the west a narrow track hardly
-      discernible in the gloom came out of the greenery. Up that I had come and
-      up that I expected my men. And it seemed I might expect them. No one was
-      going to deny me that privilege. Still, I began to feel distinctly better.
-      At least I had arrived at Chama, and four hammock-boys and two servants
-      were very humbly at my service. I wasn't going to spend the night in the
-      open at the mercy of the trees and the unknown beasts, and I laughed at
-      the idea of being afraid of the trees, though to my mind African trees
-      have a distinct personality of their own. Well, there was nothing to be
-      done but wait, and I waited in the dark, for as no carriers had come in
-      there was no possibility of a light, or of dinner either for that matter.
-      Grant was extremely sympathetic and most properly shocked at the behaviour
-      of the carriers. No punishment could be too great for men who could treat
-      his missus in such an outrageous manner. In the excitement and bustle of
-      getting off I had eaten very little that day, so I was very hungry now; it
-      added to my woes and decreased my fear. Nothing surely could be going to
-      happen to a woman who was so very commonplacely hungry. At last, about ten
-      o'clock, I saw my loads come straggling out of the gloom of the trees on
-      to the little path up to the platform, and then, before I quite realised
-      what was happening, the verandah was full of carriers, drunk and
-      hilarious, and not at all inclined to recognise the enormity of their
-      crime. Something had to be done, I knew. It would be the very worst of
-      policies to allow my verandah to be turned into pandemonium. The headman
-      had lighted a lantern, that I made Grant take, and by its flickering light
-      I singled out my policeman, cheerfully happy, but still, thank goodness,
-      holding on to the sticks of my camera. Him I tackled angrily. How dared he
-      allow drunken carriers on my verandah, or anywhere near me? Everyone, on
-      putting down his load, was to go downstairs immediately. How we cleared
-      that verandah I'm sure I don't know. The four virtuous haminock-boys and
-      Grant and Zacco, I suppose, all took a hand, backed by their stern missus,
-      and presently I and my servants had it to ourselves with a humble and
-      repentant policeman sitting on the top of the steps, and Grant set about
-      getting my dinner. It was too late, I decided, to cook anything beyond a
-      little coffee, so I had tinned tongues and tinned apricots this my first
-      night alone in Africa. Then came the question of going to bed. There were
-      several rooms in the rest-house, but the verandah seemed to me a
-      pleasanter place where to sleep on a hot night. Of course, I was alone,
-      and would it be safer inside? The doors and windows were frail enough,
-      besides it would be impossible to sleep with them shut, so I, to my boy's
-      intense astonishment, decided for the verandah, and there I set up my bed,
-      just an ordinary camp-bed, with mosquito curtains over it, and I went to
-      bed and wondered if I could sleep.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      First I found myself listening, listening intently, and I heard a thousand
-      noises, the night birds calling, the skirl of the untiring insects, a
-      faint tom-toming and sounds of revelry from the village, which gave things
-      an unpleasant air of savagery, the crash of the ceaseless surf on the
-      beach. I decided I was too frightened to sleep and I heartily wished
-      myself back in England, writing mystery stories for a livelihood, and then
-      I began to think that I was most desperately tired, that the mosquito
-      curtains were a great protection, and before I realised I was sleepy was
-      sound asleep and remembered no more till I awakened wondering where I was,
-      and saw the first streaks of light in the east. Before the first faint
-      streaks of light and sunrise is but a short time in the Tropics, and now I
-      knew that everything depended upon me, so I flew out of bed and dressed
-      with great promptitude, and there was Grant with early-morning tea and
-      then breakfast. But no carriers; and I had given orders we were to start
-      at half-past five. It was long past that; six o'clock, no carriers,
-      half-past. I sent Zacco for the headman and he like the raven from the ark
-      was no more seen. I sent Grant and he returned, not with an olive branch
-      but with the policeman.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Where are the carriers?&rdquo; I demanded.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They chop,&rdquo; said he nonchalantly, as if it were no affair of his.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Chop! At this hour in the morning?&rdquo; It was close on seven.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He signified that they did.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Bring the headman.&rdquo; And I was a very angry white missus indeed. Since I
-      had got through the night all right I felt I was bound to do somthing
-      today and I was not nearly so afraid as I had been.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The headman wept palm-wine tears. &ldquo;They chop,&rdquo; he said and he sobbed and
-      gulped and wiped his face with the back of his hand like a discomfited
-      Somersetshire laburer. His condition immensely improved my courage. I was
-      the white woman all over dealing with the inferior race, and I had not a
-      doubt as to what should be done.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Policeman, you follow me.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He did not like it much, my little Fanti policeman, because he feared
-      these Mendis and Timinis who could have eaten him alive, but he followed
-      me however reluctantly. I wanted him as representing law and order. The
-      thinking I intended to do myself.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We walked down to the village and there in the middle of the road were my
-      carriers in two parties, each seated round a large enamelled-iron basin
-      full of fish and rice. They did chop. They looked up at me with a grin,
-      but I had quite made up my mind.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Policeman,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;no man chops so late. Throw away the chop.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He hesitated. He could not make up his mind which he was most afraid of,
-      me or the men. Finally he decided that I was the most terrifying person
-      and he gingerly picked up one of those basins and carefully put it down
-      under a shrub.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Policeman,&rdquo; I said, and I was emphatic, &ldquo;that's not the way to throw away
-      chop. Scatter it round,&rdquo; and with one glance at me to see if I meant what
-      I said, he scattered it on the ground. What surprised me was that the men
-      let him. Certainly those round the second dish seized it and fled up
-      towards the rest-house, and we came after them. When we arrived the men
-      were still eating, but there was still some rice in the dish, and I made
-      the policeman seize it and fling it away, and then every one of those men
-      came back meekly to work, picked up their loads or waited round the
-      hammock for me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I saw the loads off with the headman, and told him to get across the Prah
-      River if he could and on to Kommenda, where I proposed to have my
-      luncheon, and then I stayed behind to take some photographs of the old
-      fort. It took me some time to take my pictures. The heat was intense, and
-      beyond the fort, which is quaintly old-world, there is not much to see.
-      The town is the usual Coast village built of clay, which they call swish,
-      with thatched roofs; the streets between the houses are hot and dry and
-      bare, and little naked children disport themselves there with the goats,
-      sheep, pigs, and chickens. There are the holes from which the earth has
-      been taken to make the swish&mdash;man-traps in the night,
-      mosquitobreeding places at all times&mdash;and there are men and women
-      standing gossiping in the street, wondering at the unusual sight of a
-      white woman, just for all the world as they might do in a remote Cornish
-      village if a particularly smart motor passed by. They are fishing
-      villages, these villages along the Coast, living by the fishing, and
-      growing just a little maize and plantains and yams for their own immediate
-      needs; and it is a curious thing to say, but they give one the same
-      sleepy, out-of-the-world feeling that a small village in Cornwall does.
-      There is not in them the go and the promise there is in an Ashanti
-      village, the dormant wealth waiting to be awakened one feels there is
-      along the Volta. No, these places were exploited hundreds of years ago by
-      the men who built the fort that frowns over them still, and they are
-      content to live on from day to day with just enough to keep them going,
-      with the certain knowledge that no man can die of starvation, and when a
-      young man wants distraction I suppose he goes to the bigger towns. So I
-      found nothing of particular interest in Chama, and I went on till I
-      reached the Prah River, just where it breaks out across the sands and
-      rushes to meet the ocean.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I wondered in that journey to Accra many times whether my face was set
-      hard, whether my lips were not one firm, stern line that could never
-      unbend and look kindly again. My small camp mirror that I consulted was
-      exceedingly unflattering, but if I had not before been certain that no
-      half-measures were of any use I should have been certain of it when I
-      reached the river. There lay my loads, and sitting down solemnly watching
-      them like so many crows, rather dissipated crows, were my men. They rose
-      up as my hammock came into view.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Missus, men want drink water. It be hot.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was hot, very hot, and the river it seemed was salt; moreover, the only
-      house in sight, and that was a good way off, was the hut apparently
-      belonging to the ferryman. I looked at them, and my spirits rose; it was
-      borne in on me that I had them well in hand, for there was no reason why
-      they should not have gone off in a body to get that much-needed water.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I gave the order, &ldquo;One man go fetch water.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Why they obeyed me I don't know now, and why they didn't take the bucket I
-      don't know now. I ought to have sent one man with a bucket; but experience
-      always has to be bought, and I only realised that I was master of the
-      situation, and must not spoil it by undue haste. So I solemnly stood there
-      under my sun umbrella and watched those men have a drink one by one out of
-      an empty marmalade pot. Whenever, in the future, I see one of those golden
-      tins, it will call up to my memory a blazing hot day, a waste of sand and
-      coarse grass, a wide river flowing through it, and a row of loads with a
-      ragged company of black men sitting solemnly beside them waiting while one
-      of their number brought them a drink. That drink was a tremendous piece of
-      business, but we were through with it at last, and though I was rather
-      weary and very hot I was inclined to be triumphant. I felt I had the men
-      fairly well in hand.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Still, they weren't all that I could have desired. The road was very, very
-      bad indeed, sometimes it was down on the heavy sand, sometimes the rocks
-      were too rough&mdash;the hammock had to be engineered up and down the bank
-      by devious and uncomfortable ways, sometimes we stopped to buy fruit in a
-      village, and sometimes the men stopped and declared: &ldquo;Missus, oder
-      hammock-boy, he no come.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Then I was hard. I knew it was no good being anything else.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If hammock-boy no come you go on. I no stop.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And they went, very slowly and reluctantly, but they went. It seemed
-      cruel, but I soon grasped the fact that if I once allowed them to wait for
-      the relief men who lingered there always would be lingerers, and we should
-      crawl to Accra at the rate of five miles a day.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They sang songs as they went, and this my first day out the song took a
-      most personal turn.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If man no get chop,&rdquo; they intoned in monotonous recitative, &ldquo;he go die.
-      Missus frow away our chop&mdash;&mdash;-&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The deduction was obvious and I answered it at once. &ldquo;All right, you go
-      die. I no care. If men no come to work they may die.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But they went very badly indeed, and it was after two o'clock in the
-      afternoon before we arrived at Kommenda on the seashore, where there is a
-      village and a couple of old forts falling into decay. Here, inside the
-      courtyard of one of them, which is Ju-ju, I had my table and chair put out
-      and my luncheon served. The feeling of triumph was still upon me. Already
-      I was nearer Elmina than Sekondi and I felt in all probability, bad as
-      they were, the men would go on. But, before I had finished my luncheon, my
-      serenity received another shock. Of course no one dared disturb so
-      terrible a person at her chop, but, after I had finished, while I was
-      endeavouring to instruct Zacco in the way in which a kettle might be
-      induced to boil without letting all the smoke go down the spout&mdash;I
-      wanted some coffee&mdash;Grant came up with a perturbed countenance and
-      said the headman wanted to speak to me. I sent for him.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Missus,&rdquo; he began propitiatingly, &ldquo;man be tired too much. You stop here
-      to-night; we take you Cape Coast to-morrow.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0200.jpg" alt="0200 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0200.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      For the moment I was very properly wrathful. Then I reflected&mdash;the
-      white men did not understand, the majority of them, my desire to see
-      Elmina, the most important castle on the Coast, how then should these
-      black men understand. There was a tiny rest-house built on the bastion of
-      the fort here, and looking at it I decided it was just the last place I
-      should like to spend the night in. I did not expect to meet a white man at
-      Elmina, but at least it must be far nearer civilisation than this.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I looked at my headman more in sorrow than in anger. He was a
-      much-troubled person, and evidently looked upon me as a specimen of the
-      genus &ldquo;Massa.&rdquo; I said:
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;That is a very beautiful idea, headman, and does you credit. The only
-      drawback I see to it is that I do not want to go to Cape Coast to-morrow,
-      and I do want to go to Elmina to-night.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He scratched his head in a bewildered fashion, transferring a very elderly
-      tourist cap from one hand to the other in order that he might give both
-      sides a proper chance.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Man no be fit,&rdquo; he got out at last.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, they no be fit. Send for the Chief,&rdquo; and I turned away and went on
-      with Zacco's instructions in the art of making coffee. Still, in my own
-      mind, I was very troubled. That rest-house on the bastion was a
-      horrid-looking hole, and I had heard it whispered that the men of Kommenda
-      were very truculent. If I had been far from a white man at Chama, I was
-      certainly farther still now at Kommenda. Still, my common sense told me I
-      must not allow I was dismayed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Presently I was told the Chief had arrived, and I went outside and
-      interviewed him. He wasn't a very big chief, and his stick of office only
-      had a silver top to it with the name of the village written on it in large
-      letters. He could speak no English, but with my headman and his linguist
-      he soon grasped the fact that I wanted more carriers, and agreed to supply
-      them. Then I went back inside the fort and he joined the group outside who
-      had come to look at the white woman, and who, I am glad to say, all kept
-      respectfully outside. I seated myself again and sent for the headman.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Headman, you bring in man who no be fit.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The headman went outside and presently returned with the downcast, ragged
-      scarecrow who had been carrying my bed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You no be fit?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No, Ma.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I pointed out a place against the wall.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You go sit there. You go back to Sekondi. I get 'nother man. Headman,
-      fetch in other man who no be fit.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The culprit sat himself down most reluctantly, afraid, whether of me or
-      the Ju-ju that was supposed to reign over the place, I know not, and the
-      headman brought in another man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You no be fit?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No, Ma&rdquo;; but it was a very reluctant no.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Sit down over there. Another man, headman,&rdquo; but somehow I did not think
-      there would be many more. And for once my intuitions were right. The
-      headman came back reporting the rest were fit. I felt triumphant. Then the
-      unfortunate scare-crows against the wall rose up humbly and protested
-      eagerly: &ldquo;we be fit.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But I was brutally stern. It cost me dear in the end, but it might have
-      cost me dearer if I had taken them on. However, I had no intention of
-      doing any such thing. They had declared themselves of their own free will
-      &ldquo;no fit.&rdquo; I was determined they should remain &ldquo;no fit&rdquo; whatever it cost me
-      to fill their places. I must rule this caravan, and I must decide where we
-      should halt. I engaged two Kommenda men to carry the loads, and when I had
-      taken photographs of the fort&mdash;how thankful I was that they turned
-      out well, for Kommenda is one of the most unget-at-able places I know, and
-      before a decent photographer gets there again I don't suppose there will
-      be one stone left on another&mdash;I started after my men to Elmina.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The carriers who were &ldquo;no fit&rdquo; came with us. Why, I hardly know, but they
-      were very, very repentant.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was four o'clock before we left Kommenda, and since we had twelve miles
-      to go I hardly expected to arrive before dark, but I did think we might
-      arrive about seven. I reckoned without my host, or rather without my
-      carriers. There was more than a modicum of truth in the statement that
-      they were no fit. The dissipation of the day before, and the lack of chop
-      to-day&mdash;carriers always make a big meal early in the morning&mdash;were
-      beginning to tell; besides they were very bad specimens of their class,
-      and they lingered and halted and crawled till I began to think we should
-      be very lucky indeed if we got into Elmina before midnight. The darkness
-      fell, and in the little villages the lights began to appear&mdash;these
-      Coast villagers use a cheap, a very cheap sort of kerosene lamp&mdash;and
-      more than once my headman appealed to me. &ldquo;We stop here, Ma.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I was very tired myself, now, very tired, indeed, and gladly would I have
-      stopped, but those negro houses seen by the light of a flickering,
-      evil-smelling lamp were impossible; besides I realised it would be very
-      bad to give in to my men. Finally we left the last little village behind,
-      and before us lay a long, crescent-shaped bay, with a twinkling point of
-      light at the farther horn&mdash;Elmina, I guessed. It was quite dark now,
-      sea and sky mingled, a line of white marked the breakers where the water
-      met the sands, and on my left was the low shore hardly rising twenty feet
-      above the sea-level, and covered with short, wiry sea-grasses, small
-      shrubs, and the creeping bean. The men who were carrying me staggered
-      along, stumbling over every inequality of the ground, and I remembered my
-      youthful reading in &ldquo;Uncle Tom's Cabin,&rdquo; and felt I very much resembled
-      Legree. There was, too, a modicum of sympathy growing up in my mind for
-      Legree and all slave-drivers. Perhaps there was something to be said for
-      them; they certainly must have had a good deal to put up with. Presently
-      my men dropped the hammock, and I scrambled out and looked at them
-      angrily. The carriers were behind, the policeman&mdash;my protection and
-      my dignity&mdash;was nowhere to be seen, my two servants were just behind,
-      where they ought to have been, and my four hammock-boys looked at me in
-      sullen misery.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We no be fit.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The case was beyond all words at my command, and I set my face to the
-      east, and began to walk in the direction of the feeble little light I
-      could see twinkling in the far distance, and which I concluded rightly, as
-      it turned out, must be Elmina.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My servants overtook me, and Grant, who had been a most humble person when
-      first I engaged him, who had been crushed with a sense of his own
-      unworthiness the night before, now felt it incumbent upon himself to
-      protest.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You no walk, Ma. It no be fit.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      How sick I was of that &ldquo;no be fit.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Grant,&rdquo; I said with dignity, at least I hope it was with dignity,
-      abandoning pigeon English, &ldquo;there is no other way. Tell those boys if I
-      walk to Elmina they get no pay,&rdquo; and I stalked on, wishing at the bottom
-      of my heart I knew something of the manners and customs of the African
-      snake. In my own country I should have objected strongly to walking in
-      such grass, when I could not see my way, and it just shows the natural
-      selfishness of humanity that this thought had never occurred to me while
-      my hammock-boys were carrying me. I don't suppose I had gone half a mile
-      when Grant and the boys overtook me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Ma,&rdquo; said Grant with importance, the way he achieved importance that day
-      was amazing, &ldquo;you get in. They carry you now.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They no be fit.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They carry you,&rdquo; declared he emphatically.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We try, Ma,&rdquo; came a humble murmur from the boys, and I got in once more
-      and we staggered along.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      How I hated it all, and what a brute I felt. I thought to offer a little
-      encouragement, so I said after a little time, when I thought the light was
-      getting appreciably larger: &ldquo;Grant, which of these men carry me best?&rdquo; and
-      thought I would offer a suitable reward.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They all carry you very badly, Ma,&rdquo; came back Grant's stern reply; &ldquo;that
-      one,&rdquo; and he pointed to the unfortunate who bore the lefthand front end of
-      the hammock, &ldquo;carry you worst.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Now, here was a dilemma. The light wasn't very far away now, and I could
-      see against the sky the loom of a great building.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;each of the other three shall have threepence
-      extra,&rdquo; and the lefthand front man dropped his end of the hammock with
-      something very like a sob, and left the other three to struggle on as best
-      they might. We were close to Elmina now. There was a row of palms on our
-      right between us and the surf, and I could see houses with tiny lights in
-      them, and so could the men.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I will walk,&rdquo; I said.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But the three remaining were very eager. &ldquo;No, Ma; no, Ma, we carry you.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Then there appeared a man in European clothes, and him I stopped and
-      interviewed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Is that the Castle of Elmina?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said he, evidently mightily surprised at being interviewed by a
-      white woman.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Who is in charge?&rdquo; and I expected to hear some negro post office or
-      Custom official.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Dr Dove,&rdquo; said the stranger in the slurring tones of the negro.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;A white man?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Yes, a white man.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      For all my weariness, I could have shouted for joy. Such an unexpected
-      piece of good luck! I had not expected to meet a white man this side of
-      Cape Coast. I had thought the great Castle here was abandoned to the
-      tender mercies of the negro official.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You can get in,&rdquo; went on my new friend; &ldquo;the drawbridge is not down yet.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      A drawbridge! How mediaeval it sounded, quite in keeping with the day I
-      had spent, the day that had begun in Chama fifty years ago.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We staggered along the causeway, the causeway made so many hundreds of
-      years ago by the old Portuguese adventurers; the sentry rose up in
-      astonishment, and we staggered across it into the old courtyard; I got out
-      of my hammock at the foot of a flight of broad stone steps, built when men
-      built generously, and a policeman, not mine, raced up before me. All was
-      in darkness in the great hall, and then I heard an unmistakable white
-      man's voice in tones of surprise and unbelief.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;A missus, a&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I stepped forward in the pitchy darkness, wondering what pitfalls there
-      might be by the way.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I am a white woman,&rdquo; I said uncertainly, for I was very weary, and I had
-      an uneasy feeling that this white man, like so many others I had met,
-      might think I had no business to be there, and I didn't feel quite equal
-      to asserting my rights just at that moment, and then I met an outstretched
-      hand. It needed no more. I knew at once. It was a kindly, friendly,
-      helpful hand. Young or old, pretty or plain, ragged, smart, or
-      disreputable, whatever I was, I felt the owner of that hand would be good
-      to me. Dr Duff, for the negro had pronounced his name after his kind, led
-      me upstairs through the darkness, with many apologies for the want of
-      light, into a big room, dimly lighted by a kerosene lamp, and then we
-      looked at each other.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;God bless my soul! Where on earth did you come from?&rdquo; said he.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No one told me there was a white man in Elmina,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;and the relief
-      of finding one was immense.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But not till I was washed and bathed, dressed, fed, and in my right mind
-      did we compare notes, and then we sat up till midnight discussing things.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It seemed to me I had sounded the depths, I had mastered the difficulties
-      of African travel. My new friend listened sympathetically as he drank his
-      whisky-and-soda, and then he flattered my little vanities as they had
-      never been flattered since I had set out on my journeyings.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Not one woman in ten thousand would have got through.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I liked it, but I think he was wrong. Any woman who had once started would
-      have got through simply and solely because there was absolutely nothing
-      else to be done. It is a great thing in life to find there is only one
-      way.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Then Dr Duff descended to commonplace matters.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I hope you don't mind,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I've kicked your policeman.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;is a thing he has been asking someone to do ever since we
-      left Sekondi a thousand years ago.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER IX&mdash;AN OLD DUTCH TOWN
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>But one man of the ruling race&mdash;Overlooked Elmina&mdash;Deadly
-      fever&mdash;The reason why&mdash;Magnificent position&mdash;Ideal for a
-      capital&mdash;Absence of tsetse&mdash;Loyal to their Dutch masters&mdash;Difficulty
-      in understanding incorruptibility of English officials&mdash;Reported gold
-      in Elmina&mdash;The stranded school-inspector&mdash;&ldquo;Potable water&rdquo;&mdash;Preferred
-      the chance of guinea-worm to trouble&mdash;Stern German head-teacher&mdash;Cape
-      Coast&mdash;Wonderful native telegraphy&mdash;Haunted Castle&mdash;Truculent
-      people.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>lmina means, of
-      course, the mine, and the reason for the name is lost in the mist of ages.
-      Certain it is there is no mine nearer than those at Tarkwa, at least two
-      days' journey away, but in the old Portuguese and Dutch days Elmina was a
-      rich port. It is a port still, though an abandoned one, and you may land
-      from a boat comfortably on to great stone steps, as you may land in no
-      other place along the Guinea Coast. On the 17th of May in this year of our
-      Lord, 1911, there raged along the Coast a hurricane such as there has not
-      been for many a long day, and the aftermath of that hurricane was found in
-      a terrific surf, which for several days made landing at any port
-      difficult, in some cases impossible. The mail steamer found she could land
-      no mails at Cape Coast, and then was forgotten, neglected Elmina
-      remembered, and the mails were landed there, eight miles to the west, and
-      carried overland to their destination.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Yet is there but one man of the ruling race in Elmina, and the fine old
-      Castle, where the Portuguese and Dutch governors of Guinea reigned, is
-      almost abandoned to the desecrating hand of the negro officials&mdash;Custom
-      and post office men! Why, when the Gold Coast was looking for a capital,
-      they overlooked Elmina is explained usually by the declaration that yellow
-      fever was very bad there; and I conclude it was for the same reason that
-      they passed it by when they wanted a seaport for the inland railway.
-      Somehow it seems an inadequate reason. It would have been cheaper surely
-      to search for the cause of the ill-health than to abandon so promising a
-      site. The reason lies deeper than that. It is to be found in that strong
-      feeling in the Englishman&mdash;that feeling which is going to ruin him as
-      a colonising nation now that rivals are in the field, unless he looks to
-      his ways&mdash;that one place in &ldquo;such a poisonous country&rdquo; is as good or
-      as bad as another, and therefore if people die in one place, &ldquo;let's try
-      another beastly hole.&rdquo; Die they certainly did in Elmina. It was taken over
-      from the Dutch in 1874, and in 1895 the records make ghastly reading.
-      &ldquo;Yellow fever, died,&rdquo; you read, not once but over and over again. Young
-      and strong and hopeful, and always the record is the same, and now,
-      looking at it with seeing eyes and an understanding mind, the explanation
-      is so simple, the cure so easy.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Round this great Castle is a double line of moats, each broad and deep and
-      about half a mile in extent, and these moats were full to the brim of
-      water, stagnant water, an ideal breeding place for that entirely
-      domesticated animal, the yellow-fever mosquito&mdash;<i>stegmia</i>, I
-      believe, is the correct term. Get but one yellow-fever patient, let him
-      get bitten by a mosquito or two, and the thing was done. But sixteen years
-      ago they were not content with such simple ways as that. It seems there
-      was a general sort of feeling then along the Coast, it has not quite gone
-      yet, that chill was a thing greatly to be dreaded, and so instead of
-      taking advantage of the magnificent position so wisely chosen by the
-      Portuguese mariners, where the fresh air from the ocean might blow night
-      and day, they mewed themselves up in quarters on the landward side of the
-      Castle, so built that it is almost impossible to get a thorough draught of
-      air through them. The result in such a climate is languor and weariness,
-      an ideal breeding ground for malaria or yellow fever. And so they died,
-      God rest their souls; some of them were gallant gentlemen, but they died
-      like flies, and Elmina, for no fault of its own, was abandoned.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0212.jpg" alt="0212 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0212.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      And yet the old Portuguese were right. It is an ideal site for a capital.
-      The Castle is on a promontory which juts out into the sea, and is almost
-      surrounded by water, for the Sweetwater River, which was very salt when I
-      was there, runs into the sea in such a fashion as to leave but a narrow
-      neck of land between the Castle and the mainland. The land rises behind
-      the town, it is clear of scrub and undergrowth, so that horses and cattle
-      may live, as there is no harbour for that curse of West Africa, the tsetse
-      fly; there is sufficient open space for the building of a large town, and
-      it is nearer to Kumasi, whence comes all the trade from the north, than
-      Sekondi, which was chosen, instead of it, as a railway terminus. A
-      grievous pity! It is England's proud boast that she lets the man on the
-      spot have a free hand, knowing that he must be the better judge of local
-      conditions and needs; it is West Africa's misfortune that she had so evil
-      a reputation that the best and wisest men did not go there; and hence
-      these grave mistakes.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had always believed that every coloured man was yearning to come under
-      the British flag, therefore was I much astonished to hear that in 1874,
-      when Britain took over this part of the Coast, the natives resented the
-      change of masters very bitterly. They would not submit, and the big
-      village to the west of the fort, old Elmina native town, was in open
-      rebellion. At last the guns from the fort were turned upon it, the
-      inhabitants evacuated it hastily, it was bombarded, and the order went
-      forth that no one should come back to it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Even now, thirty-seven years later, the old law which prohibits the native
-      from digging on the site of the old town is still in force, and since the
-      natives were in the habit of burying their wealth beneath their huts,
-      great store of gold dust is supposed to be hidden there. Again and again
-      the solitary official in charge of Elmina has been approached by someone
-      asking permission to dig there, generally with the intimation that if only
-      the permission be granted, a large percentage of the hidden treasure shall
-      find its way into the pockets of that official.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It is hard,&rdquo; said Dr Duff, &ldquo;for the native mind to grasp the fact that
-      the English official is incorruptible, and the law must be kept&mdash;but
-      I confess,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I should like to know if there really is gold in
-      old Elmina.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The town has been a fine town once. The houses are substantially built of
-      stone, they are approached by fine flights of stone steps, there are the
-      ruins of an old casino, and picturesque in its desolation is an old Dutch
-      garden. If I were to describe the magnificent old Castle, I should fill
-      half the book; it is so well worth writing about. I walked up the hill
-      behind the Castle where they have built up the roadway with discarded
-      cannon, and there I took photographs and wished I had a little more time
-      to spare for the place, and vowed that when I reached England the British
-      Museum should help me to find out all there is to be known about this
-      magnificent place and the men who have gone before.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0216.jpg" alt="0216 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0216.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      For the man of the present it must be a little difficult to live in, if it
-      is only for the intense loneliness. It must be lonely to live in the bush
-      with the eternal forest surrounding you, but at least there a man is an
-      outpost of Empire, the trade is coming to him, he may find interest and
-      amusement in the breaking of a road or the planning of a garden, while the
-      making of a town would fill all his time, but in Elmina there are no such
-      consolations. The place is dead, slain by the English; the young men go
-      away following the trade, and the old mammies with wrinkled faces and
-      withered breasts lounge about the streets and talk of departed glories.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had not expected to find one white man here, and I found two, the other
-      being a school-inspector who was on his way along the Coast inspecting the
-      native schools. He was in a fix, for he had sent on his carriers and
-      stores and could get no hammock-boys. They had promised to send them from
-      Cape Coast and they had not come. The medical officer made both us
-      strangers hospitably welcome, but stores are precious things on the Coast
-      and one does not like to trespass, so he was a troubled school-inspector.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I think I'll walk on to Kommenda,&rdquo; said he.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I wouldn't,&rdquo; said I, the only one who knew that undesirable spot.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We made a queer little party of three in that old-world Castle, in the old
-      Dutch rooms that are haunted by the ghosts of the dead-and-gone men and
-      women of a past generation. At least, I said they were haunted, the
-      school-inspector was neutral, and the medical officer declared no ghosts
-      had ever troubled him. I don't know whether it was ghosts that troubled
-      me, but the fact remains that I, who could sleep calmly by myself in the
-      bush with all my carriers drunk, could not sleep easily now that my
-      troubles were over, and I set it down to the haunting unhappy thoughts of
-      the people who had gone before me, who were dead, but who had lived and
-      suffered in those rooms; and yet in the day-time we were happy enough, and
-      the two men instructed me as one who had a right to know in things
-      African. The school-inspector was very funny on the education of the
-      native. His great difficulty apparently was to make the rising generation
-      grasp the fact that grandiloquent words of which they did not understand
-      the meaning were not proofs of deep knowledge. The negro is like the
-      Hindoo Baboo dear to the heart of Mr Punch. He dearly loves a long word.
-      Hygiene is a subject the Government insist upon being taught, only it
-      seems to me they would do more wisely to teach it in the vernacular so
-      that it might be understood by the common people. As it is, said my
-      school-inspector, the pupils are very pat; and when solemnly asked by the
-      teacher what are the constituents of drinking water, rap out a list of
-      Latin adjectives the only one of which he can understand is &ldquo;potable.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Tut, tut,&rdquo; said the inspector, &ldquo;run along, Kudjo, and bring me a glass of
-      drinking water&rdquo;; and then it was only too evident that that youthful scion
-      of the Fanti race who had been so glib with his adjectives did not
-      understand what &ldquo;potable&rdquo; meant.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0220.jpg" alt="0220 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0220.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Afterwards in the eastern portion of the Colony I was told of other
-      difficulties and snares that lie in the way of the unlucky schoolmaster.
-      In Africa it is specially necessary to be careful of your water, as in
-      addition to many other unpleasant results common in other lands there is
-      here a certain sort of worm whose eggs may apparently be swallowed in the
-      water. They have an unpleasant habit of hatching internally and then
-      working their way out to the outer air, discommoding greatly their
-      unwilling host. Therefore twice a week in every English school the
-      qualities of good water and the way to insure it are insisted upon by the
-      teacher. But does that teacher practise what he preaches? He doesn't like
-      guinea-worm, but neither does he like trouble, wherefore he chooses the
-      line of least resistance and chances his water. If the worst come to the
-      worst and he has guinea-worm, a paternal Government will pay his salary
-      while he is ill.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At least up till lately it always has. But a change is coming over the
-      spirit of the dream. The other day there arose in Keta, a town in the
-      Eastern Province, a German head-teacher who got very tired of subordinates
-      who were perpetually being incapacitated by guinea-worm, a perfectly
-      preventable disease, and, as the Germans are nothing if not practical,
-      there went forth in his school the cruel order that any teacher having
-      guinea-worm should have no salary during his illness. There is going to be
-      one more case of guinea-worm in that school, then there is going to be a
-      sad and sorry man fallen from his high estate and dependent on his
-      relatives, and then the teachers will possibly learn wisdom and practise
-      what they preach. But in Elmina my school-inspector seemed to think the
-      Golden Age was yet a long way off.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I left him and the medical officer with many hopes for a future meeting,
-      and one afternoon took up my loads and having sent a telegram to the
-      Provincial Commissioner&mdash;how easy it seemed now&mdash;set out for
-      Cape Coast eight miles along the shore.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There is very little difference in the scenery all along the shore here.
-      The surf thunders to the right, and to the left the land goes back low and
-      sandy, covered with coarse grass and low-growing shrubs, while here and
-      there are fishing villages with groves of cocoa-nuts around them, only the
-      houses instead of being built of the raffia palm are built of swish, that
-      is mud, and as you go east dirtier and dirtier grow the villages.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It took us barely two hours and a half to reach Cape Coast, one of the
-      oldest if not the oldest English settlement on the Coast. It was the
-      original Capo Corso of the Portuguese, but the English have held it since
-      early in the seventeenth century, and the natives, of course, bear English
-      names&mdash;in Elmina they have Dutch names&mdash;and remember no other
-      masters.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Cape Coast is a great straggling untidy town with rather an eastern look
-      about it which comes, I think, from the fact that many of the houses have
-      flat roofs. But it is a drab-looking town without any of the gorgeous
-      colouring of the east. The Castle is built down on the seashore behind
-      great walls and bastions, and here are the Customs, the Commissioner's
-      Court, the Post Office, all the mechanism required for the Government of a
-      people, but the old cannon are still there, piles of shot and shell and
-      great mortars, and in the courtyards are the graves of the men and women
-      who have gone before, the honoured dead. Here lies the lady whom the early
-      nineteenth century reckoned a poet, L. E. L., Laetitia Landor, the wife of
-      Captain Maclean who perished by some unexplainable misadventure while she
-      was little more than a bride, and here lies Captain Maclean himself, the
-      wise Governor whom the African merchants put in when England, in one of
-      her periodic fits of thriftless economy, would have abandoned the Gold
-      Coast, and here are other unknown names Dutch and English, and oh, curious
-      commentary on the hygiene of the time, in the same courtyard is the well
-      whence the little company of whites, generally surrounded by a people
-      often hostile, must needs in time of siege or stress always draw their
-      water.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They say Cape Coast like Elmina is haunted, and men have told me tales of
-      unaccountable noises, of footsteps that crossed the floor, of voices in
-      conversation, of sighs and groans and shrieks for help that were
-      unexplained and unexplainable. One man who had been D.C. there told me he
-      could keep no servant in the Castle at night they were so terrified, but
-      as I only paid flying visits to take photographs I cannot say of my own
-      knowledge whether there is anything uncanny about it. There ought to be,
-      for there are deep dungeons underground, dark and uncanny, where in old
-      days they possibly kept their slaves and certainly their prisoners-of-war.
-      There was no light in them then, there is very little now, only
-      occasionally someone has knocked away a stone from the thick walls, and
-      you may see a round of dancing sunlight in the gloom and hear the sound of
-      the ceaseless surf. An officer in the Gold Coast regiment told me he
-      wanted to have a free hand to dig in the earth here, for he was sure the
-      pirates who owned it in the old days must have buried much treasure here
-      and forgotten all about it, but he was a hopeful young man and looked
-      forward to the days when the Ashantis should come down and besiege Cape
-      Coast again as they had done in the old days, and he pointed out the
-      particular gun on the bastion that in case of such an event he should
-      train on the Kumasi road and blow those savages into the next world. I
-      have seen those fighting men of Ashanti since then and I do not think they
-      are ever coming to Cape Coast, at least as enemies, which perhaps is just
-      as well, for the gun which that gay young lieutenant slapped so
-      affectionately and called &ldquo;Old Girl&rdquo; is pretty elderly and I fancy might
-      do more damage to those loading than to those at the other end of her
-      muzzle.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I did not lodge at the fort. The medical officer, it was always the
-      medical officer to the rescue, very kindly took charge and I was very
-      comfortably lodged in the hospital. And here I had proof of the wonderful
-      manner in which news is carried by the birds of the air in West Africa. I
-      had thought that the Provincial Commissioner was going to put me up, and I
-      instructed my boys to that effect.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Ask way to Government House,&rdquo; which I thought lay to the west of the
-      town. As we passed the first houses a man sprang up.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Dis way, Ma, I show you,&rdquo; and off he went, we following, and I thought my
-      men had asked the question. Clearly Government House was not to the west,
-      for we went on through the town and up a hill and up to a large bungalow
-      which I was very sure was not Government House, unless we had arrived at
-      the back.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I got out protesting, but my boys were very sure and so was our guide.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Dis be bungalow, Ma. Missus come.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Then I knew they were wrong, for I knew the Commissioner had no wife. But
-      they weren't after all, for down the steps breathing kindly welcome came
-      the medical officer's wife, a pretty bride of a couple of months, and she
-      smilingly explained that the Commissioner had asked her to take me in
-      because it would be so much more comfortable for me where there was
-      another woman. &ldquo;I suppose he sent you on,&rdquo; said she.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But not only had he not sent me on, but he knew nothing of my coming, and
-      was waiting in Government House for my arrival. The town, then, knew of my
-      expected coming and his intentions with regard to me almost before he had
-      formulated them himself. At any rate, it was none of his doing or his
-      servants' doings that I went straight to the hospital, and the telegram
-      stating my intention had only been sent that morning. So much for native
-      telegraphy.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Round Cape Coast, in my mind, hangs a mist of romance which will always
-      sharply divide it from the town as I saw it. When I think of it I have to
-      remind myself that I have seen Cape Coast and that, apart from kindly
-      recollections of the hospitality with which I was received, I do not like
-      it. The people are truculent and abominably ill-mannered, and I do not
-      think I would ever venture to walk in the streets again without the
-      protection of a policeman.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There were two white women there, so they had hardly the excuse of
-      curiosity, as we must have been familiar sights, yet they mobbed me in the
-      streets, and when I tried to take photographs of the quaint, old-world
-      streets, hustled and crowded me to such an extent that it was quite out of
-      the question. And they did this even when I was accompanied by my two
-      servants and my hammock-boys.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;These Fanti people catch no sense,&rdquo; said Grant angrily, when after a wild
-      struggle I had succeeded in photographing a couple of men playing
-      draughts, and utterly failed to get a very nice picture of a man making a
-      net. I quite agreed with Grant; these Fanti people do catch no sense, and
-      I got no photographs, for which I was sorry, for there are corners in that
-      old town picturesque and quaint and not unlike corners in the towns along
-      the Sicilian coast. What they said of me I do not know, but I am afraid it
-      was insulting, and if ever my friends the Ashantis like to go through Cape
-      Coast again I shall give them a certain amount of sympathy. At least it
-      would give me infinite satisfaction to hear of some of them getting that
-      beating I left without being able to inflict.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I do not think a white woman would be safe alone in Cape Coast, and this I
-      am the more sorry for because it has belonged so long to the English.
-      Perhaps Dr Blyden is right when he says, and I think he spoke very
-      impartially when speaking of his own people, that the French have
-      succeeded best in dealing with the negro, I beg his pardon, the African.
-      They have succeeded in civilising him, so says Dr Blyden, with dignity.
-      The English certainly have not.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0228.jpg" alt="0228 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0228.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER X&mdash;IN THE PATHS OF THE MEN OF OLD
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The glory of the morning&mdash;The men who have passed along this road&mdash;The
-      strong views of the African pig&mdash;An old-world Castle&mdash;Thieving
-      carriers&mdash;The superiority of the white man&mdash;Annamabu&mdash;A
-      perfect specimen of a fort&mdash;A forlorn rest-house&mdash;A notable
-      Coast Chief&mdash;Tired-out mammies&mdash;The medical officer at Salt
-      Ponds&mdash;The capable German women&mdash;The reason of the ill-health of
-      the English women&mdash;Kroo boys as carriers&mdash;Tantum&mdash;A loyal
-      rest-house&mdash;Filthy Appam&mdash;A possible origin for the yellow fever
-      at Accra&mdash;Winne-bah&mdash;A check&mdash;The luckless ferryman&mdash;Good-bye
-      to the road.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he carriers from
-      Kommenda were only to come as far as Cape Coast, so here I had to find
-      fresh men or rather women to replace them. I know nothing more aggravating
-      than engaging carriers. Apparently it was a little break in the monotony
-      of life as lived in an African town to come and engage as a carrier with
-      the white missus, come when she was about to start, an hour late was the
-      correct thing, look at the loads, turn them over, try to lift them, say
-      &ldquo;We no be fit,&rdquo; and then sit down and see what would happen next. The
-      usual programme, of course, was gone through at Cape Coast, the mammies I
-      had engaged smiling and laughing as if it were the best joke in the world,
-      and I only kept my temper by reflecting that since I could not beat them,
-      which I dearly longed to do, it was no good losing it. They had had three
-      days to contemplate those loads and they only found &ldquo;we no be fit&rdquo; as I
-      wanted to start. Of course the men who had come on from Sekondi with me
-      were now most virtuous; they bore me no ill-will for my harsh treatment,
-      indeed they respected me for it, and they regarded themselves as my prop
-      and my stay, as indeed they were.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      With infinite difficulty I got off at last, taking three new carriers,
-      mammies, where two had sufficed before.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Travelling in the early morning is glorious. The dew is on all the grass;
-      it catches and reflects the sunbeams like diamonds, and there is a
-      freshness in the air which is lost as the day advances. I loved going
-      along that coast too.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was thrown upon myself for companionship, for my followers could only
-      speak a little pigeon English, and of course we had nothing in common, but
-      the men and women who had gone before walked beside me and whispered to me
-      tales of the strenuous days of old. Perhaps the Phoenicians had been here,
-      possibly those old sea rovers, the Normans, and certainly the Portuguese;
-      they had marched along this shore, even as I was marching along, only
-      their own homes were worlds away and the bush behind was peopled for them
-      with unknown monsters, such as I would not dream of. They had feared as
-      they walked, and now I, a woman, could come alone and unarmed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Leaving Cape Coast that still, warm, tropical morning, we passed the
-      people coming into town to the markets with their wares upon their heads,
-      all carried in long crates, chickens and fowls and unhappy pigs strapped
-      tightly down, for the African pig, like the pig in other lands, has a mind
-      of his own; he will not walk to his own destruction, he has to be carried.
-      These traders were women usually, and they looked at me with interest and
-      no little astonishment, for I believe that never before had a white woman
-      by herself gone alone along this path.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0232.jpg" alt="0232 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0232.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      My carriers had been instructed to go to Accra and to Accra they went by
-      the nearest way, sometimes cutting off little promontories, and thus it
-      happened that, looking up on one of these detours, I saw on a hill,
-      between me and the sea, a ruined fort. Of course I stopped the hammock and
-      got out. I had come to see these forts, and here I was passing one. I
-      wanted to go back. My headman demurred. Had I not distinctly said I wanted
-      to go to Accra, and were we not on the direct road to Accra? To get to
-      that old fort, which he did not think worth looking at, we should have to
-      go back an hour's journey, and the men &ldquo;no be fit.&rdquo; I am regretful now
-      that I only saw that fort from a distance. It was very very hot, and I
-      don't think I felt very fit myself; at any rate, the thought of two hours
-      extra in the hammock dismayed me and I decided to take a long-distance
-      photograph from where I stood. It was an old Dutch fort&mdash;Fort Mori&mdash;and
-      was built on high ground overlooking a little bay. I think now it would
-      have been easier for me to do that two hours than to climb as I did, with
-      the assistance of Grant and my headman, to the highest point on the
-      roadside, through long grass, scrub, and undergrowth, there to poise
-      myself uneasily to get a photograph of the ruins. An ideal place,
-      whispered the men of old, for a fort in the bygone days, for it overlooked
-      all the surrounding country, there was no possibility of surprise, and at
-      its feet was a little sheltered bay. Now, on the yellow sands, in the
-      glare of the sunshine, I could see the great canoes that dared the surf
-      drawn up, the thatched roofs of the native town that drew its sustenance
-      from the sea and in old times owed a certain loyalty to the fort and
-      derived a certain prestige from the presence of the white men.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Regretfully I have only that distant memory of Fort Mori, and I went on.
-      Those men who were &ldquo;no fit&rdquo; to take me back behaved abominably. Whenever
-      they neared a village they endeavoured to steal from the inhabitants&mdash;a
-      piece of suger-cane, a ball of kenky, or a few bananas&mdash;and again and
-      again a quarrel called me to intervene. It is very curious how soon one
-      gets an idea of one's own importance. In England, if I came across a crowd
-      of shouting, furious, angry men, I should certainly pass by on the other
-      side, but here in Africa when I was by myself I felt it my bounden duty to
-      interfere and inquire what was the matter. It was most likely some trouble
-      connected with my carriers. I disliked very much making enemies as I
-      passed, and I endeavoured to catch them and make them pay for what they
-      had stolen. And now I understood at last how it is white people living
-      among a subject race are so often overwhelmed in a sudden rising. It is
-      hard to believe that these people whom you count your inferiors will
-      really rise against you. Here was I, alone, unarmed, only a woman, and yet
-      immediately I heard a commotion I attended at once and dispensed justice
-      to the very best of my ability. I fully expected village elders to bow to
-      my decision, and I am bound to say they generally did.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Most of the villages along the Coast bore a strong family resemblance to
-      the one in which I had spent an unhappy hour while my men attended the
-      funeral palaver, and all the shore is much alike. Between Axim and Sekondi
-      is some rough, rugged, and pretty country, but east and west of those
-      points the shore is flat, and the farther east you go the flatter it
-      becomes, till at the mouth of the Volta and beyond it is all sand and
-      swamp. The first day out from Cape Coast it was somewhat monotonous,
-      possibly if I went over it again I should feel that more; but there was
-      growing up in me a feeling of satisfaction with myself&mdash;I do trust it
-      was not smug&mdash;because I was getting on. I was doing the thing so many
-      men had said I could not possibly do, and I was doing it fairly easily. Of
-      course, I was helped, helped tremendously by the freehanded hospitality of
-      the people in the towns through which I passed, for which kindness I can
-      never be sufficiently grateful, but here with my carriers I was on my own,
-      and I began to regard them as the captures of my bow and spear, and
-      therefore I at least did not find the country uninteresting. Who ever
-      found the land he had conquered dull?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In due course I arrived at Annamabu, an old English fort that the
-      authorities on the Gold Coast hardly think worth preserving, and have
-      given over to the tender mercies of the negro Custom and post office
-      officials. Like Elmina, I could write a book about Annamabu alone, and I
-      was the more interested in it because it is the most perfect specimen of
-      the entirely English fort on the Coast, and is built at the head of a
-      little bay, where is the best landing on the Coast for miles round.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There is a curious difference between the sites chosen by the different
-      nations. The other nations apparently always chose some bold, commanding
-      position, while the English evidently liked, as in this instance, the head
-      of a little bay and a good landing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Annamabu is quite a big native town, ruled over, I believe, by a cultured
-      African, a man who is well read and makes a point of collecting all books
-      about the Coast, and has, so they say, some rare old editions. I tried to
-      see him and went to his house, a mud-built, two-storied building, where I
-      sat in a covered courtyard and watched various members of his family go up
-      and down a rickety staircase that led to the upper stories, but the Chief
-      was away on his farm, and even though I waited long he never made his
-      appearance. I should like to have seen the inside of his house, seen his
-      books; all I did see was the courtyard, all dull-mud colour, untidy and
-      unkempt, with a couple of kitchen chairs in it, a goat or two, some
-      broken-down boxes and casks, and the drums of state that marked his high
-      office piled up outside the door.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the fort itself is the rest-house on the bastion, as untidy and dirty
-      as the Chiefs courtyard. There are three rooms opening one into the other,
-      and in the sitting-room, a great high room with big windows&mdash;those
-      men of old knew how to build&mdash;there is a table, some chairs, a
-      cupboard, and a filter, on which is written that it is for the use of
-      Europeans only, and behind in the bedroom is the forlornest wreck of a
-      bed, and some remnants of crockery that may have been washed about the
-      time when Mrs Noah held the first spring cleaning in the ark, but
-      apparently have never been touched since. It is only fair to say that
-      every traveller, they are like snow in summer, carries his own bedding,
-      and in fact all he needs, so that all that is really wanted for these
-      rest-houses along the shore is a good broom and a good stout arm to wield
-      it, and if a place is left without human occupancy the dirt is only clean
-      dust, for the clean air along these coasts is divine.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But at Annamabu the usual difficulties came in my way; my old men were
-      well broken-in now, but my new mammies were&mdash;well&mdash;even though I
-      am a woman, and so by custom not permitted to use bad language, I must say
-      they were the very devil. They carried on with the men and then they
-      complained of the men's conduct, and when they arrived at Annamabu&mdash;late,
-      of course, and one of them had the chop box&mdash;they sent in word to say
-      they &ldquo;no be fit&rdquo; to go any farther, and there and then they wanted to go
-      back to Cape Coast.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I said by all means they might go back to Cape Coast, but the loads would
-      have to be left here and sent for from Salt Ponds, and therefore, as they
-      had not completed their contract, they should be paid nothing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They came and lay down before me in attitudes of intense weariness
-      calculated to move the heart of a sphinx, but I came to the conclusion I
-      must be a hard-hearted brute, for I was adamant, and those weeping women
-      decided they would go on to Salt Ponds.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At Salt Ponds there is a little company of white people, and, so says
-      report, the very worst surf on the Coast, with perhaps the exception of
-      Half Assinie. The D.C. was away, so the Provincial Commissioner had
-      telegraphed to the medical officer asking him to get me quarters. I
-      arrived about three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, when the place was
-      apparently wrapped in slumber; the doctor's bungalow was pointed out to
-      me, built on stilts on a cement foundation, and on that foundation I
-      established myself and my loads, and made my way upstairs. A ragged and
-      blasphemous parrot, with a very nice flow of language, was in charge, and
-      he did not encourage me to stop, nor did he even hint at favours to come,
-      so I went down again and waited. Apparently I might wait; towards evening
-      I made my way&mdash;I was homeless&mdash;towards another bungalow, where a
-      white man received me with astonishment, gave me the nicest cup of tea I
-      have ever drunk, and sent for the medical officer, who had lunched off
-      groundnut soup and had gone into the country to sleep it off. We all know
-      groundnut soup is heavy.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The medical officer remains in my mind as a man with a grievance; he was
-      kind after his fashion, but he did hate the country. If I had listened to
-      him, I should have believed it was unfit for human habitation, and I
-      couldn't help wondering why he had honoured it with his presence. In his
-      opinion it was exceedingly unbecoming in a woman to be making her way
-      along the Coast alone. To drive in these facts he found me house-room with
-      the only white woman in the place, the charmingly hospitable wife of the
-      German trader who had been on the Coast for a couple of years, who was
-      perfectly well, healthy, and happy, who always did her own cooking, and
-      who gave me some of the most delicious meals I have ever tasted. Thus I
-      was introduced to the German element in West Africa, and began to realise
-      for the first time that efficiency in little things which is going to
-      carry the Germans so far. This fair-haired, plump young woman, with the
-      smiling young face, was one of a type, and I could not help feeling sorry
-      there were not more English women like her. I do not think I have ever met
-      an English woman, with the exception of the nursing Sisters, who has spent
-      a year on the Coast. The accepted theory is they cannot stand it, and in
-      the majority of cases they certainly can't. They get sick. With my own
-      countrywomen it is different; the Australian stays, so does the German, so
-      does the French woman. At first I could not understand it at all, but at
-      last the explanation slowly dawned upon me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;<i>Haus-fraus</i>,&rdquo; said many a woman, and man, too, scornfully, when I
-      praised those capable German women who make a home wherever you find them,
-      and it is this <i>haus-frau</i> element in them that saves them. A German
-      woman's pride and glory is her house, therefore, wherever she is she has
-      to her hand an object of intense interest that fills her mind and keeps
-      her well. An Australian does not take so keen an interest in her house,
-      perhaps, but she has had no soft and easy upbringing; from the time she
-      was a little girl she has got her own hot water, helped with the cooking,
-      washing, and all the multifarious duties of a houshold where a servant is
-      a rarity, therefore, when she comes to a land where servants are
-      plentiful, if they are rough and untaught, she comes to a land of comfort
-      and luxury. Besides, it is the custom of the country that a woman should
-      stand beside her husband; she has not married for a livelihood, men are
-      plentiful enough and she has chosen her mate, wherefore it is her pleasure
-      and her joy to help him in every way. She is as she ought to be, his
-      comrade and his friend, a true helpmate. God forbid that I should say
-      there are not English women like that, because I know there are, but the
-      conditions in England are also very different. The girl who has been
-      brought up in an English household, even if it be a poor one, is not only
-      brought up in luxury, but is the victim of many conventions. Any ruffled
-      rose leaf makes her unhappy. The servants that to the Australian are a
-      luxury to be revelled in are very bad indeed to her. Whenever I saw one of
-      these complaining English women, I used to think of the Princess of my
-      youth. We all remember her. She was wandering about lost, as royalty
-      naturally has a habit of doing, and she came to a little house and asked
-      the inmates to give her shelter because she was a princess. They took her
-      in, but being just a trifle doubtful of her story&mdash;when I was a
-      little girl I always felt that was rather a slur upon those dwellers in
-      the little house&mdash;they put on the bed a pea and then they put over it
-      fourteen hair mattresses and fourteen feather beds&mdash;it doesn't seem
-      to have strained the household to provide so much bedding&mdash;and then
-      they invited the princess to go to bed, which she did. In my own mind I
-      drew the not unnatural conclusion that princesses were accustomed to
-      sleeping in high beds. Next morning they asked her how she slept. She,
-      most rudely, I always thought, said she had not been able to sleep at all,
-      because there was such a hard lump in the bed. And so they knew that her
-      story was true, and she was a real princess. Now, the English women in
-      West Africa always seem to me real princesses of this order. Certain
-      difficulties there always are for the white race in a tropical climate,
-      there always will be, but there is really no need to find out the peas
-      under twenty-eight mattresses. In a manless country like England, many a
-      woman marries not because the man who asks her is the man she would have
-      chosen had she free right of choice, but because to live she must marry
-      somebody, and he is the first who has come along. He may be the last. Her
-      African house interests her not, her husband does not absorb her, she has
-      no one to whom to show off her newly wedded state, no calls to pay, no
-      afternoon teas, no <i>matinées</i>, in fact she has no interest, she is
-      bored to death; she is very much afraid of &ldquo;chill,&rdquo; so she shuts out the
-      fresh, cool night air, and, as a natural result, she goes home at the end
-      of seven months a wreck, and once more the poor African climate gets the
-      credit.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      No, if a woman goes to West Africa there is a great deal to be said for
-      the German <i>haus-frau</i>. At least they always seem to make a home, and
-      I have seen many English women there who cannot.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At Salt Ponds one of my carriers came to me saying he was sick and wanting
-      medicine, and I regret to say, instead of sending him at once to the
-      doctor, I casually offered him half a dozen cascara tabloids, all of which
-      to my dismay he swallowed at one gulp. The next morning he was worse,
-      which did not surprise me, but I called in the medical officer and found
-      he was suffering from pneumonia&mdash;cascara it appears is not the
-      correct remedy&mdash;and I was forced to leave him behind. The mammies I
-      had engaged at Cape Coast also declined to go any farther, so I had to
-      look around me for more carriers, and carriers are by no means easy to
-      come by. Finally the Boating Company came to the rescue with four Kroo
-      boys, and then my troubles began.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I set out and hoped for the best, but Kroo boys are bad carriers at all
-      times. These were worse than usual. One of my hammock-boys hurt his foot,
-      or said he had, and had for the time to be replaced by a Kroo boy, and we
-      staggered along in such a fashion that once more I felt like a
-      slave-driver of the most brutal order. Again and again we stopped for him
-      to rest, and my hammock-boys remarked by way of comforting me:
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Kroo boy no can tote hammock.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Why can Kroo boy no tote hammock?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We no know, Ma. We no be Kroo boy.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      We scrambled along somehow, out of one village into another, and at every
-      opportunity half the carriers ran away and had to be rounded up by the
-      other half. In eight hours we had only done fifteen miles. I felt very
-      cheap, very hungry, very thirsty, and most utterly thankful when we
-      arrived late in the afternoon at a dirty native town called Tantum. The
-      carriers straggled in one by one, and last of all came my chop box, so
-      that, for this occasion only, luncheon, afternoon tea, and dinner were all
-      rolled into one about six o'clock in the evening.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The rest-house was a two-storied house, built of swish and white-washed,
-      and was inside a native compound, where both in the evening and in the
-      morning the women were most industriously engaged in crushing the corn,
-      rolling it on a hard stone with a heavy wooden roller.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And the rest-house, though very loyal, there were four coloured oleographs
-      of Queen Alexandra round the walls of the sitting-room and two at the top
-      of the stairs, all exactly alike, was abominably dirty. It had a little
-      furniture&mdash;two mirrors, well calculated to keep one in a subdued and
-      humble frame of mind, a decrepid bed that I was a little afraid to be in
-      the same room with lest its occupants would require no invitation to get
-      up and walk towards me, a table, and some broken-down chairs. Also on the
-      wall was a notice that two shillings must be paid by anyone occupying this
-      rest-house. Someone had crossed this out and substituted two shillings and
-      sixpence, and that in its turn had been erased, so, as the sum went on
-      increasing at each erasure, at last eighteen shillings and sixpence had
-      been fixed as the price of a night's lodging in this charming abode. I
-      decided in my own mind that two shillings would be ample, and that if the
-      people were civil I should give them an extra threepence by way of a dash.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I photographed Tantum with the interested assistance of a gentleman clad
-      in a blue cloth and a tourist cap. He seemed to consider he belonged to
-      me, so at last I asked him who he was.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;P'lice,&rdquo; said he with a grin, and then I recognised my policeman in
-      unofficial dress.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I didn't like that village. The people may have been all right, but I
-      didn't like their looks and I made my &ldquo;p'lice&rdquo; sleep outside my door. My
-      bedroom had the saving grace of two large windows, and I put my bed
-      underneath one of them in the gorgeous moonlight; but a negro town is very
-      noisy on a moonlight night and the tom-toms kept waking me. I always had
-      to be the first astir else my following would have cheerfully slumbered
-      most of the day, but on this occasion so bright was the moonlight, so
-      noisy the town, that I proceeded to get up at two o'clock, and it was only
-      when I looked at my travelling clock, with a view to reproaching Grant
-      with being so long with my tea, that I discovered my error and went back
-      to bed and a troubled rest again.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Two shillings was accepted with a smile by the good lady of the house, who
-      was a stout, middle-aged woman with only one eye, a dark cloth about her
-      middle, and a bright handkerchief over her head. She gave me the
-      impression that she had never seen so much money in her life before.
-      Possibly she had only recently gone into the rest-house business, say a
-      year or two back, and I was her first traveller with any money to spend.
-      We parted with mutual compliments, and I bestowed on her little
-      grand-daughter the munificent dash of threepence.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There is a story told of a man who went out to India, and as he liked
-      sunshine used to rise up each morning and say to his wife with emphasis,
-      &ldquo;Another fine day, my dear.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Now, she, good woman, had been torn from her happy home in England, and
-      loved the cool grey skies, so at last much aggravated she lost her temper,
-      and asked: &ldquo;What on earth else do you expect in this beastly country?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      So, along the Guinea Coast in the month of March, the hottest season,
-      there is really nothing else to expect but still, hot weather: divine
-      mornings, glorious evenings, but in between fierce hot sunshine. And of
-      course it was not always possible to travel in the coolest part of the
-      day. To sit still by the roadside in the glare of the sunshine, or even
-      under a tree, with a large crowd looking on, was more than I could have
-      managed. So I started as early as I could possibly induce my men to start&mdash;one
-      determined woman can do a good deal&mdash;and then went straight on if
-      possible without a stop to my next point. I would always, when I am by
-      myself, rather be an hour or two late for luncheon than bother to stop to
-      have it on the way, and if a breakfast at half-past five or six and a
-      morning in the open air induces hunger by eleven, it is easily stayed by
-      carrying a little fruit or biscuits or chocolate to eat by the way.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was fiercest noonday when I came to a town called Appam, where once
-      upon a time was an old Dutch lodge worth keeping, if only to show what a
-      tiny place men held garrisoned in the old days. It is hardly necessary to
-      say that the Gold Coast Government do not think so, and have handed this
-      old-time relic over to negro Custom and post office officials; and,
-      judging by the condition of the rest of the town, much has not been
-      required of them, for Appam is the very filthiest town I have ever seen.
-      The old lodge is on the top of a hill overlooking the sea, splendidly
-      situated, but you arrive at it by a steep and narrow path winding between
-      a mass of thatched houses, and it stands out white among the dark roofs.
-      As a passer-by, I should say the only thing for Appam is to put a
-      fire-stick in the place; nothing else but fire could cleanse it. Many of
-      the young people and children were covered with an outbreak of sores that
-      looked as if nasty-looking earth had been scattered over them and had bred
-      and festered, and they told me the children here were reported to be
-      suffering and dying from some disease that baffled the doctors, what
-      doctors I do not know, for there is no white man in Appam. It seems to me
-      it is hardly necessary to give a name to the disease. I should think it
-      was bred of filth pure and simple, and my remedy of the fire-stick would
-      go far towards curing it. But there is a graver side to it than merely the
-      dying of these negro children. Appam is not very far from Accra;
-      communication by surf boat must go on weekly, if not daily, and Appam must
-      be an ideal breeding ground for the yellow-fever mosquito. I know nothing
-      about matters medical, but I must say, when I heard Accra was quarantined
-      for yellow fever, I was not surprised. I had come all along the Coast, and
-      filthier villages it would be difficult to find anywhere, and of these
-      filthy villages Appam, a large town, takes the palm. I left it without
-      regret, and though I should like to see that little Dutch lodge again, I
-      doubt if I ever shall.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My carriers were virtue itself now. The Kroo boys were giving so much
-      trouble that they posed as angels. I must admit they were a cheery,
-      good-tempered lot, and it was impossible to bear malice towards them. They
-      had forgotten that I had ever been wrathful, and behaved as if they were
-      old and much-trusted servants. Munk-wady, a Ju-ju hill on the shore
-      between Appam and Winnebah, is steep and the highest point for many miles
-      along the Coast, and over its flank, where there was but a pretence at a
-      road, we had to go.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You no fear, Ma; you no fear,&rdquo; said the men cheerily, &ldquo;we tote you safe&rdquo;;
-      and so they did, and took me right across the swamp that lay at the other
-      side and right into the yard of the Basel Mission Factory at Winnebah,
-      where a much-astonished manager made me most kindly welcome. It amused me
-      the astonishment I created along the road. No one could imagine how I
-      could get through, and yet it was the simplest matter. It merely resolved
-      itself into putting one foot before the other and seeing that my following
-      did likewise. Of course, there lay the difficulty. &ldquo;Patience and
-      perseverance,&rdquo; runs the old saw, &ldquo;made a Pope of his reverence&rdquo;; and so a
-      little patience and perseverance got me to Accra, though I am sometimes
-      inclined to wonder if it wasn't blind folly that took me beyond it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0248.jpg" alt="0248 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0248.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      But at Winnebah I received a check. Those Kroo boys gave out, and it was
-      plain to be seen they could travel no longer with loads on their heads. I
-      had no use for their company without loads. There were white men in
-      Winnebah, but none of them could help me, for the cocoa harvest in the
-      country behind was in full swing, and carriers there were not. The only
-      suggestion was that there was a ship in the roadstead, and that I should
-      embark on her for Accra. There seemed nothing else for it, and, regretful
-      as I was, I felt I must take their advice. The aggravating part was that
-      it was only a long day's journey from Winnebah to Accra, but as I had no
-      men to carry my loads I could not do it. One thing I was determined to do,
-      however, and that was to visit an old Dutch fort there was at a place
-      called Berraku, about half-way to Accra. I could do it by taking my
-      hammock-boys and my luncheon, and that I did.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      That day's journey is simply remarkable for the frolicsomeness of my men
-      and for the extreme filth of the fishing villages through which we passed.
-      They rivalled Appam. As for the fort, it was built of brick, there was a
-      rest-house upon the bastion for infrequent travellers, and it was tumbling
-      into disrepair. There will be no fort at Berraku presently, for the people
-      of the town will have taken away the bricks one by one to build up their
-      own houses. But it must have been a big place once, and there is in the
-      town a square stone tomb, a relic of the past. The inscription is
-      undecipherable, but it was evidently erected in memory of some important
-      person who left his bones in Africa, and lies there now forgotten.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There was a river to cross just outside the town of Winnebah, and crossing
-      a river is a big undertaking in West Africa, even when you have only one
-      load. I'm afraid I must plead guilty to not knowing my men by sight; for a
-      long time a black man was a black man to me, and he had no individuality
-      about him. Now they all crowded into the boat to cross the river, and it
-      was evident to my mind that we were too many; then as no one seemed
-      inclined to be left behind, I exercised my authority and pointed out the
-      man who was to get out, and out he got, very reluctantly, but cheerily
-      helped by his unfeeling fellows. It took us about a quarter of an hour to
-      cross that river, for it was wide and we had to work up-stream, and once
-      across they all proceeded to go on their way without a thought for the man
-      left behind. And then I discovered what I had done. I had thrown the ægis
-      of my authority over, putting the unfortunate ferryman out of his own
-      boat, and to add injury to insult my men were quite prepared to leave him
-      on one side of the stream and his boat on the other. When I discovered it
-      was the ferryman I had put out I declared they must go back for him, and
-      my decision was received with immense surprise.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You want him, Ma?&rdquo; as if such a desire should be utterly impossible; but
-      when they found I really did, and, moreover, intended to pay him, two of
-      them took the boat and he was brought to me with shouts of laughter, and
-      comforted with an extra dash, which was more than he had expected after my
-      high-handed conduct.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      One could not help liking these peasant peoples; they were such children,
-      so easily pleased, so anxious to show off before the white woman. Here all
-      along the beach the people were engaged in fishing, and again and again I
-      saw a little crowd of men launching a boat, or hauling it in and
-      distributing their catch upon the beach. I always got out and inspected
-      the catch, and they always made way to let me look when they saw I was
-      interested. Of course, we could not speak to each other, but they spread
-      out the denizens of the deep and pointed out anything they thought might
-      be specially curious. I can see now one flat fish that was pulled out for
-      my benefit. One man, who was acting as showman, caught him by the tail and
-      held him out at arm's length. He was only a small fish about the size, I
-      suppose, of a large dish, but that thorny tail went high over the man's
-      head while the body of the fish was still flapping about on the sand, and
-      the lookers-on all laughed and shouted as if they had succeeded in showing
-      the stranger a most curious sight, as indeed they had.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0252.jpg" alt="0252 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0252.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      I was sorry to turn my back on the road, sorry to go back to Winnebah&mdash;Winnebah
-      of the evil reputation, where they say if a white man is not pleasing to
-      the people the fetish men poison him&mdash;sorry to pay off my men and
-      send them back, sorry to take ship for Accra; but I could not get
-      carriers, there was nothing else for it, and by steamer I had to go, and
-      very lucky indeed was I to find a steamer ready to take me, so I said
-      good-bye to the road for some considerable time and went to Accra.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE CAPITAL OF THE GOLD COAST COLONY
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The pains and penalties of landing in Accra&mdash;Negro officials,
-      blatant, pompous, inefficient&mdash;Christiansborg Castle&mdash;The ghost
-      of the man with eyes like bright stones&mdash;The importance of fresh air&mdash;Beautiful
-      situation of Accra&mdash;Its want of shade-trees&mdash;The fences of Accra&mdash;The
-      temptation of the cooks&mdash;Picturesque native population&mdash;Striking
-      coiffure&mdash;The expensive breakwater&mdash;To commemorate the opening
-      of the waterworks&mdash;The forlorn Danish graveyard&mdash;A meddlesome
-      missionary&mdash;Away to the east.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> don't like
-      landing in Accra. There is a good deal of unpleasantness connected with
-      it. For one thing, the ships must lie a long way off for the surf is bad,
-      and the only way to land is to be put into a mammy-chair, dropped into a
-      surf boat, and be rowed ashore by a set of most excellent boatmen, who
-      require to be paid exorbitantly for their services. I don't know what
-      other people pay, but I have never landed on Accra beach under a
-      ten-shilling dash to the boat boys, and then I had to pay something like
-      sixpence a load to have my things taken up to the Custom house. In
-      addition to that you get the half-civilised negro in all his glory,
-      blatant, self-satisfied, loquacious, deadly slow, and very inefficient. As
-      well as landing my goods from the steamer, I wanted to inquire into the
-      fate of other goods that I had, with what I considered much forethought,
-      sent on from Sekondi by a previous steamer, and here I found myself in a
-      sea of trouble, for, the negro mind having grasped the fact that a
-      troublesome woman was looking for boxes that had probably been lost a
-      couple of months ago, each official passed me on from one department to
-      another with complacency. Accra is hot, and Accra is sandy, and Accra as
-      yet does not understand the meaning of the text, &ldquo;the shadow of a great
-      rock in a thirsty land,&rdquo; so for a couple of hours I was hustled about from
-      pillar to post, finding traces of luggage everywhere, and no luggage.
-      Then, a little way from the port office, a large placard in blue and
-      white, announcing &ldquo;Post and Telegraph Office&rdquo; caught my eye, so I thought
-      I would by way of refreshment and interlude send a telegram telling of my
-      safe arrival to my friends in Sekondi, and, in all the heat of a tropical
-      morning, I toiled down one flight of steps and up another and at last
-      found that the telegraph office, in spite of that big placard, was not at
-      the port at all but at Victoriaborg, about a couple of miles away. I could
-      not believe it, but so it was. Whether that placard is previous, or hints
-      at past greatness, I cannot tell. I also found later on that you cannot
-      send a telegram after four o'clock in the afternoon in the Gold Coast.
-      Government takes a most paternal care of its negro subordinates and sees
-      that the poor things are not worked too hard, but when I found they closed
-      for luncheon as well, I was apt to inquire why it should be so
-      hard-hearted as ever to require them to open at all. I think this matter
-      should be inquired into by someone who has the welfare of the negro race
-      at heart.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0256.jpg" alt="0256 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0256.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      When my temper was worn to rags, and I was thoroughly hot and unhappy,
-      wishing myself with all my heart out in the open again with only carriers
-      who &ldquo;no be fit&rdquo; to deal with, at last a surprised white man found me,
-      straightened things out in a moment, and assured me that I should have
-      evening dresses to wear at Government House.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Acting Governor and his wife put me up for a day or two, and then
-      found me quarters, and I hereby put it on record that I really think it
-      was noble of the Acting Governor, for he had no sympathy with my mission,
-      and I think, though he was too polite to say so, was inclined to regard a
-      travelling woman as a pernicious nuisance. I am sure it would have been
-      more convenient for him if I had gone straight on, but I did not want to
-      do the capital of the Colony like an American tourist, and so protested
-      that I must have somewhere where I could rest and arrange my impressions.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Government House is old-world. It is Christiansborg Castle, which was
-      bought from the Danes, I think, some time in the seventies, when a general
-      rearrangement of the Coast took place. It is one of the nicest castles on
-      the Coast, bar, of course, Elmina, which none can touch, and has passed
-      through various vicissitudes. I met at Kumasi the medical officer who had
-      charge of it some years back, when it was a lunatic asylum.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Such a pity,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;to make such a fine place a lunatic asylum. But
-      it was a terrible care to me. I was so afraid some of the lunatics would
-      smash those fine old stained-glass windows.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I stared. Stained-glass windows on the Coast! But there is not a trace of
-      them now, nor have I ever met anyone else who knew of them. I suppose they
-      are some of those things no one thought worth caring about.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0260.jpg" alt="0260 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0260.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      There are ghosts at Christiansborg too. It used to be Government House,
-      and then, because some Governor did not like it, a lunatic asylum, and
-      Government House again. A man once told me how, visiting it while it was a
-      lunatic asylum, he spoke to the warder in charge and said, &ldquo;You must have
-      an easy time here.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No, sah; no, sah,&rdquo; said the man earnestly, &ldquo;it no be good.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked my curious friend.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And then the negro said that as soon as the place was locked up quiet for
-      the night, and he knew there could not possibly be any white men within
-      the walls, two white men, he described them, one had eyes like bright
-      stones, walked up and down that long corridor. And the strange part of the
-      story, said my friend, was that he described unmistakably two
-      dead-and-gone English Governors, men who have died in recent years, one, I
-      think, in the West Indies, and the other on the way home from West Africa!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Christiansborg Castle is close down on the seashore, so close that the
-      surf tosses its spray against its windows, and thus it came about that I
-      learned what seems to me the secret of health in West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      All along the Coast I had wondered; sometimes I felt in the rudest health,
-      as if nothing could touch me, sometimes so weary and languid it was an
-      effort to rouse myself to make half a dozen steps, and here in
-      Christiansborg Castle I was prepared to agree with all the evil that had
-      ever been said about the climate.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;In the morning thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were even,' and at even
-      thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were morning.'&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      That just about expressed my feelings while I was staying at
-      Christiansborg Castle. My room, owing to the exigencies of space was an
-      inside one, and though the doors were large, wide, and always open, still
-      it had no direct communication with the open air. All the windows along
-      the sea side of the Castle were tight closed, for the Acting Governor's
-      wife did not like her pretty things to be spoiled by the damp sea breeze,
-      so she stirred her air by a punkah. But at night of course there was no
-      punkah going and I spent nights of misery. The heat was so oppressive I
-      could not sleep, and I used to get up and wander about the verandah, where
-      the air was cool enough, but I could not sleep there as it was by way of
-      being a public passage-way. After a day or two they very kindly gave me
-      for my abode a tumble-down old bungalow, just outside the Castle walls. It
-      was like a little fort, and probably had been built for defence in the
-      days that were passed and gone. There was a thick stone wall round the
-      front of a strongly built stone house, that was loopholed for defence, and
-      here lodged some of the Government House servants and their families, but
-      on top of this stone house had been built a wooden bungalow, now rapidly
-      falling into decay. Here were two big rooms and wide verandahs with a
-      little furniture, and here I lodged, engaging a cook, and running my own
-      establishment, greatly to my own satisfaction. The bungalow was as close
-      to the seashore as the Castle, and I opened all the windows wide, and let
-      the cool, health-giving fresh air blow over me day and night.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      After the first night the languor and weariness at once disappeared and I
-      felt most wonderfully well, a feeling that I kept always up so long as I
-      could sleep in the uninterrupted fresh air. Put me to sleep in a closed-in
-      room with no possibility of a direct draught and I was tired at once,
-      wherefore I believe and believe firmly that to insure good health in West
-      Africa you must have plenty of fresh air. I go further and would advise
-      everybody to sleep as much in the open as possible, or, at the very least,
-      in a good, strong draught. After that experience, I began to notice. I had
-      a habit of getting up very early in the morning and going out for walks
-      and rides in my cart, and as I went down the streets of towns like
-      Sekondi, Tarkwa, and Accra, it was surprising the number of shutters I saw
-      fast closed against the health-giving air. I concluded the people behind
-      were foolishly afraid of chills and preferred to be slowly poisoned, and I
-      looked too later on in the day at the pallid, white-faced men and women
-      who came out of those houses. For myself, West Africa agreed with me. I
-      have never in my life enjoyed such rude health as I found I had there.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I set the reason down to the care I took to live always in the open. The
-      conclusion I draw is this&mdash;of course I may be wrong&mdash;the margin
-      of health in West Africa is narrow and therefore you cannot do without a
-      supply of the invigorating elixir supplied by Nature herself. Could I live
-      in England as I did there it is quite likely my health would be still
-      better. Now, when I hear a man is ill in West Africa, I ask several
-      questions before I condemn the place. First, of course, there is the
-      unlucky man who would be ill in any climate, then there is the dissipated
-      man who brings his ailments upon himself, and, while in Africa men set his
-      illness down to the right cause, when they are this side of the water they
-      are only too ready to add another nail to their cross and pity the poor
-      devil who has succumbed to the terrible climate they have to face. Next
-      comes the man who, while not exactly dissipated, does himself too well,
-      burns the candle at both ends, and puts upon his constitution a strain it
-      certainly could not stand in a cooler climate, and then, when all these
-      eliminated, there is to my mind the man and the woman, for the women are
-      still greater offenders, who will sleep in too sheltered a spot, and spend
-      their sleeping hours in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0264.jpg" alt="0264 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0264.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Of course other things tend to ill-health&mdash;loneliness, want of
-      occupation for the mind, that perpetual strain that is engendered when a
-      man is not contented with his surroundings and is for ever counting the
-      slowly moving days till he shall go home; but that must come in any land
-      where a man counts himself an exile, and I finally came to the conclusion
-      that pretty nearly half the ill-health of West Africa would be cured if
-      men would but arrange their sleeping-quarters wisely.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At any rate, in this old tumble-down bungalow I was more than happy. I
-      engaged a cart and boys, and I used to start off at six o'clock in the
-      morning, or as near to it as I could get those wretches of Kroo boys to
-      come, and wander over the town.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Accra, which is the principal town of the Ga people, must have been for
-      some centuries counted a town of great importance, for three nations had
-      forts here. The English had James Fort, now used as a prison, the Dutch
-      had Fort Crêvecoeur, now called Vssher Fort and used as a police barracks,
-      and the Danes had Christiansborg Castle close to the big lagoon and three
-      miles away from the town of Accra. And in addition to these forts all
-      along the shore are ruins of great buildings. Till I went to Ashanti,
-      between Christiansborg and Accra was the only bit of good road I had seen
-      on the English coast of Guinea, and that was probably made by the Danes,
-      for there is along part of it an avenue of fine old tamarind trees, which
-      only this careful people would take the trouble to plant. They are
-      slow-growing trees, I believe, and must be planted for shelter between
-      other trees which may be cut down when the beautiful tamarinds grow old
-      enough to take care of themselves. Some of the trees are gone and no one
-      has taken the trouble to fill in the gaps, but still with their delicate
-      greenery they are things of beauty in hot, sun-stricken Accra. For if ever
-      a town needed trees and their shade it is this capital of the Gold Coast.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0268.jpg" alt="0268 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0268.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Accra might be a beautiful city. The coast is not very high, but raised
-      considerably above sea-level, and it is broken into sweeping bays; the
-      country behind gradually rises so that the bungalows at the back of the
-      town get all the breeze that comes in from the ocean and all that sweeps
-      down from the hills. In consequence, Accra, for a town that lies within a
-      few degrees of the Equator, may be counted comparatively cool. The only
-      heat is between nine o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in the
-      afternoon; at night, when I was there, the hottest time of the year, March
-      and the beginning of April, there was always a cool sea breeze. A place is
-      always bearable when the nights are cool.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But on landing, Accra gives the impression of fierce heat. Shade-giving
-      trees are almost entirely absent, the sun blazes down on hot, yellow
-      sands, on hot, red streets lined with bare, white houses, and the very
-      glare makes one pant. In the roadways, here and there, are channels worn
-      by the heavy rainfall, the streets are not very regular, and many of the
-      houses are ill-kept, shabby, and sadly in need of a coat of paint; when
-      they belong to white men one sees written all over them that they are the
-      dwellings of men who have no permanent abiding place here, but are &ldquo;just
-      making it do,&rdquo; and as for the native houses, every native under English
-      rule has yet to learn the lesson that cleanliness and neatness make for
-      beauty. When in the course of my morning's drive I looked at the gardens
-      of Accra, for there are a good many ill-kept gardens, I fancied myself
-      stepping with Alice into Wonderland. The picket fences are made of the
-      curved staves that are imported for the making of barrels, and therefore
-      they are all curved like an &ldquo;S,&rdquo; and I do not think there is one whole
-      fence in all the town; sometimes even the posts and rails are gone, but
-      invariably some of the pickets are missing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;All the good cooks in Accra,&rdquo; said a man to me with a sigh, &ldquo;are in
-      prison for stealing fences.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Not all,&rdquo; said his chum; &ldquo;ours went for stealing the post office, you
-      remember. He'd burnt most of it before they discovered what was becoming
-      of it.&rdquo; They say they are importing iron railings for Accra to circumvent
-      the negro; for the negro, be it understood, does not mind going to prison.
-      He is well-fed, well-sheltered, and the only deprivation he suffers is
-      being deprived of his women; and when he comes out he feels it no
-      disgrace, his friends greet him and make much of him, much as we should
-      one who had suffered an illness through no fault of his own, therefore the
-      cook who has pocketed the money his master has given him to buy wood, and
-      stolen his neighbour's fence, begins again immediately he comes out of
-      prison, and hopes he will not be so unlucky as to be found out this time.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0272.jpg" alt="0272 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0272.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      This is the capital of a rich colony, so in business hours I found the
-      streets thronged, and even early in the morning they were by no means
-      empty, for the negro very wisely goes about his business while yet it is
-      cool. Here, away from the forest, is no tsetse fly, so horses may be seen
-      in buggies or drawing produce, but since man's labour can be bought for a
-      shilling a day, it is cheaper, and so many people, like I was, are drawn
-      by men. I, so as to feel less like a slave-driver, bought peace of mind in
-      one way and much aggravation in another by having three, but many men I
-      saw with only two, and many negroes, who are much harder on those beneath
-      them than the white men, had only one. Produce too is very often taken
-      from the factory to the harbour in carts drawn by eight or a dozen men,
-      and goods are brought up from the sea by the same sweating, toiling,
-      shouting Kroo boys.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They are broad-shouldered, sinewy men, clad generally in the most elderly
-      of European garments cast off by some richer man, but always they are to
-      be known from the surrounding Ga people by the broad vertical band of blue
-      tattooing on their foreheads, the freedom mark that shows they have never
-      been slaves. In Accra the white people are something under two hundred,
-      the Governor and his staff, officials, teachers, merchants, clerks,
-      missionaries, and artisans, and there are less than thirty white women, so
-      that in comparison the white faces are very few in the streets. They are
-      thronged with the dark people who call this place home. Clad in their own
-      costumes they are very picturesque, the men in toga-like cloths fastened
-      on one shoulder, the women with their cloths fastened under the arms,
-      sometimes to show the breasts, sometimes to cover them, and on their head
-      is usually a bright kerchief which hides an elaborate coiffure.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When I was strolling about Christiansborg one day I saw a coiffure which
-      it was certainly quite beyond the power of the wearer to hide under a
-      handkerchief. She was engaged in washing operations under a tree, and so I
-      asked and obtained permission to photograph her. It will be seen by the
-      result that, in spite of her peculiar notions on the subject of
-      hair-dressing, she is not at all ungraceful. Indeed, in their own clothes,
-      the Africans always show good taste. However gaudy the colours chosen,
-      never it seems do natives make a mistake&mdash;they blend into the
-      picture, they suit the garish sunshine, the bright-blue sky, the yellow
-      beach, the cobalt sea, or the white foam of the surf breaking ceaselessly
-      on the shore; only when the man and woman put on European clothes do they
-      look grotesque. There is something in the tight-fitting clothes of
-      civilisation that is utterly unsuited to these sons and daughters of the
-      Tropics, and the man who is a splendid specimen of manhood when he is
-      stark but for a loin cloth, who is dignified in his flowing robe, sinks
-      into commonplaceness when he puts on a shirt and trousers, becomes a
-      caricature when he parts his wool and comes out in a coat and high white
-      collar.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Money is spent in Accra as it is spent nowhere else in the Colony. Of
-      course I do not know much about these matters, therefore I suppose I
-      should not judge, but I may say that after I had seen German results, I
-      came to the conclusion that money was not always exactly wisely spent.
-      Most certainly the people who had the beautifying of the town were not
-      very artistic, and sometimes I cannot but feel they have lacked the saving
-      grace of a sense of humour.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0033" id="linkimage-0033"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0276.jpg" alt="0276 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0276.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The landing here was shockingly bad; it is so still, I think, for the last
-      time I left I was drenched to the skin, so the powers that be set to work
-      at enormous cost to build a breakwater behind which the boats might land
-      in comparative safety. Only comparative, for still the moment the boat
-      touches the shore the boatmen seize the passenger and carry him as swiftly
-      as possible, and quite regardless of his dignity, beyond the reach of the
-      next breaking wave.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said a high official, looking with pride at the breakwater, &ldquo;how I
-      have watched that go up. Every day I have said to myself, 'something
-      accomplished, something done'&rdquo;; and he said it with such heartfelt pride
-      that I had not the heart to point out the sand pump, working at the rate
-      of sixty tons a minute, that this same costly breakwater had necessitated,
-      for the harbour without it would fill up behind the breakwater; not
-      exactly, I fancy, what the authorities intended. The breakwater isn't
-      finished yet, but the harbour is filling fast; by the time it is finished
-      I should doubt whether there will be any water at all behind it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I did Accra thoroughly. I lived in that little bungalow beside the fort,
-      and I went up and down the streets in my cart and I saw all I think there
-      was to be seen. But for one good friend, a medical officer I had known
-      before, the lady who was head of the girls' school, a thoroughly capable,
-      practical young woman, and the one or two friends they brought to see me,
-      I knew nobody, and so I was enabled to form my opinions untrammelled, and
-      I'm afraid I had the audacity to sit in judgment on that little tropical
-      capital and say to myself that things might really be very much better
-      done. The Club may be a cheerful place if you know anyone, but it is very
-      doleful and depressing if the only other women look sidelong at you over
-      the tops of their papers as if you were some curious specimen that it
-      might perhaps be safer to avoid, and I found the outside of the bungalows,
-      with their untidy, forlorn gardens, the houses of sojourners who are not
-      dwellers in the land, anything but promising. Yet money is spent too&mdash;witness
-      the breakwater&mdash;and in my wanderings I came across a tombstone-like
-      erection close to James Fort, which I stopped and inspected. Indeed it is
-      in a conspicuous place, with an inscription which he who runs may read. At
-      least he might have read a little while ago, but the climate is taking it
-      in hand. The stone is of polished granite, which must have cost a
-      considerable amount of money, and by the aid of that inscription I
-      discovered that it was a fountain erected to commemorate the opening of
-      the waterworks in Accra. Oh Africa! Already it is difficult to read that
-      inscription; the unfinished fountain is falling into decay, and the water
-      has not yet been brought to the town! When future generations dig on the
-      site of the old Gold Coast town, I am dreadfully afraid that tombstone
-      will give quite a wrong impression. Now it is one of the most desolate
-      things I know, more desolate even than the forlorn Danish graveyard which
-      lies, overgrown and forgotten, but a stone's throw from my bungalow at
-      Christiansborg. A heavy brick wall had been built round it once, but it
-      was broken down in places so that the people of Christiansborg might
-      pasture their goats and sheep upon it, and I climbed through the gap,
-      risking the snakes, and read the inscriptions. They had died, apparently
-      most of them, in the early years of the nineteenth century, men and women,
-      victims probably to their want of knowledge, and all so pitifully young. I
-      could wish that the Government that makes so much fuss about educating the
-      young negro in the way he should go, could spare, say ten shillings a year
-      to keep these graves just with a little respect. It would want so little,
-      so very little. Those Danes of ninety years ago I dare say sleep sound
-      enough lulled by the surf, but it would be a graceful act to keep their
-      graves in order, and would not be a bad object-lesson for the Africans we
-      are so bent on improving.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0280.jpg" alt="0280 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0280.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Behind the town are great buildings&mdash;technical schools put up with
-      this object in view. They are very ugly buildings, very bare and barren
-      and hot-looking. Evidently the powers who insist so strongly upon hand and
-      eye training think it is sufficient to let the young scholars get their
-      ideas of beauty and form by sewing coloured wools through perforated cards
-      or working them out in coloured chalks on white paper; they have certainly
-      not given them a practical lesson in beauty with these buildings. They may
-      be exceedingly well-fitted for the use to which they are intended, but it
-      seems to me a little far-fetched to house young negroes in such buildings
-      when in such a climate a roof over a cement floor would answer all
-      purposes.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      If I had longed to beat my hammock-boys, my feelings towards them were
-      mild when compared with those I had towards my cart-boys. They were
-      terriblelooking ruffians, clad in the forlornest rags, and they dragged me
-      about at a snail's pace. What they wanted of course was a master who would
-      beat them, and as they did not get it, they took advantage of me. It is
-      surprising how one's opinions are moulded by circumstances. Once I would
-      have said that the man who hit an unoffending black man was a brute, and I
-      suppose in my calmer moments I would say so still, but I distinctly
-      remember seeing one of my cart-boys who had been on an errand to get
-      himself a drink, or satisfy some of his manifold wants, strolling towards
-      me in that leisurely fashion which invariably set me longing for the
-      slave-driver's whip to hasten his steps. In his path was a white man who
-      for some reason bore a grudge against the negro, and, without saying a
-      word, caught him by the shoulder and kicked him on one side, twisted him
-      round, and kicked him on the other side, and I, somewhat to my own horror,
-      found myself applauding in my heart. Here was one of my cart-boys getting
-      his deserts at last. The majority of white men were much of my way of
-      thinking, but of course I came across the other sort. I met a missionary
-      and his wife who were travelling down to inquire into the conditions of
-      the workers in the cocoa plantations in Ferdinando Po. I confess I thought
-      them meddlesome. What should we think if Portugal sent a couple of
-      missionaries to inquire into the conditions of the tailoring trade in the
-      East End of London, or the people in the knife trade in Sheffield? I have
-      seen both these peoples and seen just as a passer-by far more open misery
-      than ever I saw on the coast of West Africa. The misery may be there, but
-      I have not seen it, as I may see it advertising itself between Hyde Park
-      Corner and South Kensington any day of the week. Since I was a tiny child
-      I have heard the poor heathen talked of glibly enough, but I have never in
-      savage lands come across him.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0284.jpg" alt="0284 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0284.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      After nearly a month at Accra I decided I must go on, and then I found it
-      was impossible to get carriers to go along the beach eastward; the best I
-      could do was to go up by the Basel Mission motor lorry to a place called
-      Dodowah, and here the Acting Governor had kindly arranged with the
-      Provincial Commissioner at Akuse to send across carriers to meet me and
-      take me to the Volta.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So one still, hot morning in April I packed up bag and baggage in my nice
-      little bungalow, had one final wrangle with my cart-boys, a parting
-      breakfast with the Basel Mission Factory people whose women-kind are ideal
-      for a place like West Africa and make a home wherever you find them, and
-      started in the lorry north for Dodowah in the heart of the cocoa district.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XII&mdash;BLOOD FETISH OF KROBO HILL
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>To Dodowah by motor lorry&mdash;Orchard-bush country&mdash;Negro
-      tortures&mdash;The Basel Mission factor&mdash;A personally conducted tour&mdash;Great
-      hospitality&mdash;A dinner by moonlight&mdash;Plan a night journey&mdash;The
-      roadway by moonlight&mdash;Barbarous hymns&mdash;Carriers who &ldquo;no be fit&rdquo;
-       once more&mdash;Honesty of the African carrier&mdash;Extraordinary
-      obedience&mdash;The leopard that cried at Akway Pool&mdash;A hard-hearted
-      slave-driver&mdash;Krobo Hill&mdash;Blood fetishes&mdash;Terror of the
-      carriers&mdash;Story of the hill&mdash;The dawning of a new day&mdash;Unexplained
-      disappearances&mdash;Akuse at last&mdash;The arrival of a whirlwind&mdash;The
-      fire on Krobo Hill.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>nland from Accra
-      the country is what they call orchard bush, that is to say, it was rather
-      flat country sloping in gradual gradation to the hills behind, covered
-      now, in the end of the dry season, with yellow grass and dotted all over
-      with trees, not close together as in the forest country but just far
-      enough apart to give it a pleasant, park-like look. There were great tall
-      ant heaps too, or rather the homes of the termite, the white ant which is
-      not an ant at all I believe, and these reminded me of the ghastly form of
-      torture sometimes perpetrated by the negroes. A Provincial Commissioner
-      once told me that he had several times come across on these hills, which
-      are often ten or twelve or twenty feet high, the skeleton of a man who had
-      undoubtedly been fastened there while he was alive; and another went one
-      better and told me how another form of torture was to place a man on the
-      ant heap without any fastening whatever and then to surround it with men
-      and women with knives, so that when he tried to escape he was promptly
-      driven back. In this last case I am glad to think that the torturers are
-      bound to have run their share of risk, and must have received many a good
-      hard nip. But the negro mind seems to rather revel in secret societies,
-      trial by ordeal, and tortures. Christianity, the religion of love and
-      pity, has been preached on the Coast for many a long day now, and yet in
-      this year of our Lord 1911 there is behind the Church of England in Accra,
-      down on the sea beach, a rock which is generally known as Sacrifice Rock,
-      and here those who know declare that every yam festival, which takes place
-      just after the rains in September, they sacrifice a girl in order that the
-      crops may not fail.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0036" id="linkimage-0036"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0291.jpg" alt="0291 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0291.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Riding in a lorry I had plenty of time to consider these matters. My kind
-      Basel Mission Factory <i>haus-frau</i> had provided me with luncheon to
-      eat by the way, and I knew that all my goods and chattels would arrive
-      safely at their destination without my having to worry about them. Grant
-      was the only servant I had left. I had dismissed the cook, and Zacco had
-      quarrelled with Grant and dismissed himself, and so while I sat on the
-      front seat of the lorry alongside the negro driver, Grant and my goods and
-      chattels were packed away in odd corners on top of the merchandise that
-      was going to Dodowah. The road was bad, deeply cut by the passing of these
-      lorries, but I arrived there about midday and was cordially received by a
-      Basel Mission Factory man who told me my carriers had arrived, and
-      suggested I should come to his house and have luncheon.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He was a kindly, fair-haired young German who had been in the Colony about
-      a month and was learning English on Kroo-boy lines. The result was a
-      little startling, but as it was our only means of communication I was
-      obliged to make the best of it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My carriers had been here waiting for me since Friday; this was Monday,
-      and they wanted &ldquo;sissy&rdquo; money. I paid up and declared I should start the
-      moment they had broken their fast. Meanwhile my German friend undertook to
-      show me the sights.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Dodowah is a very pretty little place at the foot of the hills; it is
-      embowered in palm trees and is the centre of the cocoa industry. In the
-      yard of the factory the cocoa was lying drying in the blazing sun, and
-      when I had been duly instructed in its various qualities, my host
-      suggested I should &ldquo;walk small.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I take you my house.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was very kind of him, but I was cautious. I do not like walking in the
-      blazing noonday.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;How far is it?&rdquo; I asked.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Small, small,&rdquo; said he, with conviction.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Grant was a very different person now from the boy in a pink pyjama coat,
-      meek and mild and bullied by Kwesi, whom I had engaged in the distant
-      past. He was my body servant; evidently supposed by everyone else who came
-      in contact with me to hold a position of high trust, and thinking no end
-      of himself. So to him I gave strict instructions. All the loads were to
-      start at once, the hammock-boys were to follow me to the factor's house,
-      and he was to go on with the carriers. We had left the protection of the
-      &ldquo;p'lice&rdquo; behind, and on the whole I thought I could do just as well
-      without.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So I set out with my new friend and accompanied by my new headman who
-      evidently thought it his duty to follow in my wake, though he could
-      understand no English and I could understand not one word of his tongue.
-      That walk remains in my mind as one long nightmare; I only did one worse,
-      and then I thought I must be going to die. We left the plain country and
-      plunged uphill, it was blazing noonday in April, and though there were
-      palms and much growth on either side of the road, on the road itself was
-      not a particle of shade. Still we went up and up and up.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I show you, I show you,&rdquo; said my friend.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Frankly I wished he wouldn't. It was a splendid view from that hillside,
-      with the town nestling embowered in palms at our feet, but a personally
-      conducted walking-tour on the Coast at midday on an April day was the very
-      last thing I desired.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was dripping with perspiration, I was panting and breathless before we
-      had been on that road five minutes; in the next five I would have bartered
-      all my prospects in Africa for a glass of iced water, and then my
-      companion turned. &ldquo;You like go through bushway, short cut.&rdquo; It looked
-      cooler, so I feebly assented and we turned into the bush which was so thin
-      it did not shut out the sun, and the walking was very much rougher. I had
-      given up all hopes of ever coming to the end when my companion stopped,
-      flung up his head like a young war-horse, and said cheerfully, &ldquo;Oh I tink
-      I go lookum road.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I sank down on a log; my new headman, an awful-looking ruffian, stood
-      beside me, and that aggressively active young German went plunging about
-      the bush till he returned still cheerful and remarking, &ldquo;I tink we lose
-      way. We go back.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I draw a veil over the remainder of that walk. We did arrive at his house
-      finally after two and a half hours' march over very rough country, and
-      then he gave me wine to drink and fed me and was good to me, but I was
-      utterly tired out and didn't care for the moment what became of me. He
-      showed me a bedroom and I lay down and slept, rose up and had a bath, and
-      felt as if I might perhaps face the world again. At half-past four we had
-      some tea and I contemplated all my new hammock-boys sitting in a row under
-      some palm trees on the other side of the road. They looked strapping, big,
-      strong men, and I was thankful, for Akuse they said was twenty-seven miles
-      away and I had to do it in one march. The question was, when I should
-      start?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If you start now,&rdquo; said the factor, &ldquo;you get there one&mdash;half-past
-      one in the morning&mdash;very good time.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Now I really could not agree with him. To launch yourself on totally
-      unknown people at halfpast one in the morning and ask them to take you in
-      is not, I think, calculated to place you in a favourable light, and I
-      demurred. But what was I to do? I did not want to inflict myself any
-      longer on this hospitable young man, and already I had paid my carriers
-      for four days while they did nothing. It was a full moon. Last night had
-      been gorgeous; this night promised to be as fine. I asked the question,
-      why could I not travel all night?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh yes, moon be fine too much&rdquo;; and then he went on to tell me a long
-      story about his Kroo boys being frightened to travel that road by
-      themselves. &ldquo;But it all be foolishness.&rdquo; It took me so long to discover
-      the meaning of the words that I really paid no attention to the gist of
-      what he was saying, besides I could not see that a Kroo boy being afraid
-      was any reason why I should be. Finally we figured it out that I should
-      start at nine o'clock, which would bring me to Akuse at a little after six
-      in the morning. This did not seem so bad, and I agreed and cordially
-      thanked the kindness which made him plan a nice little dinner in the
-      moonlight on the verandah. It comes back to me as one of the most unique
-      dinners I ever had; we had no other light but that of the moon, the
-      gorgeous moonlight of the Tropics. It shone silver on the fronds of the
-      palms, the mountains loomed dimly mysterious like mountains in a dream,
-      and the road that ran past the house lay clear and still and warm in the
-      white light.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My host asked leave to dine in a cap; he said the moon gave him a
-      headache, and strongly advised me to do likewise, but though I have heard
-      other people say the moon affects them in that manner, it never troubles
-      me and I declined. And he translated his German grace into English for my
-      benefit, and I could not even smile so kindly was the intention; and we
-      ate fruit on the verandah, and nine o'clock came and I had the top taken
-      off my hammock and started.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho,&rdquo; cried the hammock-boys, clapping their hands as
-      they went at a fast trot, far faster than the ordinary man could walk
-      without any burden on his head, and we were off to Akuse and the Volta.
-      The night was as light as day, and it never occurred to me that there was
-      any danger in the path. We went through the town, and here and there a
-      gleam of fire showed, and here and there was a yellow light in one of the
-      window places, and the people were in groups in the streets, dancing,
-      singing, or merely looking on. Generally they sang, and no one knows how
-      truly barbaric a hymn can sound sung by a line of lightly clad people
-      keeping time with hands and feet to the music. It might have been a war
-      song, it might have been a wail for those about to die; it was, I realised
-      with a start, &ldquo;Jesu, lover of my soul,&rdquo; in the vernacular. I suppose the
-      missionaries know best, but it always seems to me that the latest
-      music-hall favourite would do better for negro purposes than these hymns
-      that have been endeared to most of us by old association. These new men
-      were splendid hammock-men; they stopped for no man, and the groups melted
-      before them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A happy peasant people were these, apparently with just that touch of
-      mysterious sadness about them that is with all peasant peoples. Their own
-      sorrows they must have, of course, but they are not forced upon the
-      passer-by as are the sordid sorrows of the great cities of the civilised
-      world. At the outside ring of these dancers hung no mean and hungry
-      wretches having neither part nor parcel with the singers.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Through the town and out into the open country we went, and the trees made
-      shadows clear-cut on the road like splashes of ink, or, where the foliage
-      was less dense, the leaves barely moving in the still night air made a
-      tracery as of lace work on the road beneath, and there was the soft,
-      sleepy murmur of the birds, and the ceaseless skirl of the insects.
-      Occasionally came another sound, penetrating, weird, rather awe-inspiring,
-      the cry of the leopard, but the hammock-boys took no heed&mdash;it was
-      moonlight and there were eight of them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho.&rdquo; They clapped their hands and sang choruses, and
-      by the time we arrived at the big village of Angomeda, a couple of hours
-      out, I was fairly purring with satisfaction. I have noticed that when
-      things were going well with me I was always somewhat inclined to give all
-      the credit to my perfect management; when they went wrong I laid the blame
-      on Providence, my headman, or any other responsible person within reach.
-      Now my self-satisfaction received a nasty shock.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The village of Angomeda was lying asleep in the moonlight. The brown
-      thatch glistened with moisture, the gates of the compounds and the doors
-      of the houses were fast shut; only from under the dark shadow of a great
-      shade-tree in the centre of the village came something white which
-      resolved itself into Grant apologetic and aggrieved.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Carriers go sleep here, Ma. They say they no fit go by night.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      My fine new carriers &ldquo;no fit.&rdquo; How are the mighty fallen! And I had
-      imagined them pretty nearly at Akuse by now! Clearly, they could not be
-      allowed to stay here. I have done a good many unpleasant things, but I
-      really did not feel I could arrive at Akuse at six o'clock in the morning
-      without a change of clothing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I restrained myself for the moment.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I not knowing, Ma.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I debated a moment. I realised the situation. I was a woman miles from any
-      white man, and I could not speak one word of the language. Still, I had
-      sent those carriers to Akuse and I could not afford to be defied,
-      therefore I alighted.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Where are those carriers?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Nine pointing fingers indicated the house. Evidently the hammock-boys had
-      been here before, and one of them pushed open a door in the wall. Black
-      shadows and silver-white light was that compound. Heaped in the middle,
-      not to be mistaken, were my loads, and from under the deeper shadows
-      beneath the surrounding sheds came tumbling black figures which might or
-      might not have been my erring carriers. I did not know them from the
-      people about them, neither did I know one word of their language, and only
-      one of my hammock-boys spoke any pigeon English. But that consideration
-      did not stay me. I singled out my headman, and him I addressed at length
-      and gave him to understand that I was pained and surprised at such
-      conduct. Never in the course of a long career had I come across carriers
-      who slept when they should have been on the road, and before I was
-      half-way through the harangue those sleepy and reluctant men and women
-      were picking up the loads. I confess I had been doubtful. Why should these
-      carriers pay any attention to me? Now that I know what they risked by
-      their obedience I have no words to express my astonishment. I did not know
-      the carriers, but I did know the loads, and before I got into my hammock I
-      stood at the gate and counted them all out. I need not have worried. The
-      African carrier is the most honest man I have ever met. Never have I lost
-      the smallest trifle entrusted to him. When my goods were well on the road
-      I got into my hammock and started again.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Oh, such a night! On such a night as this Romeo wooed Juliet, on such a
-      night came the Queen of the Fairies to see charm even in the frolicsome
-      Bottom.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      All the glories of the ages, all the delights of the world were in that
-      night. The song of the carriers took on a softness and a richness born of
-      the open spaces of the earth and the glorious night, and for accompaniment
-      was the pad-pad of their feet in the dust of the roadway, and in one long,
-      musical monotonous cadence the cheep of the insects, and again a sharper
-      note, the cry of a bat or night bird.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was orchard-bush country that lay outspread in the white light, with
-      here and there a cocoa plantation. Here a tree cast a dark shadow across
-      the road, and there was a watercourse through which the feet of the men
-      splashed&mdash;only in German West Africa may you always count on a bridge&mdash;and,
-      again, the trees would grow close and tunnel-like over the road with only
-      an occasional gleam of moonlight breaking through. But always the
-      hammock-boys kept steadily on, and the carriers kept up as never before in
-      two hundred miles of travel had carriers kept up. We went through sleeping
-      villages with whitewashed mud walls and thatched roofs gleaming wetly, and
-      even the dogs and the goats were asleep.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was midnight. It was long after midnight; the moon was still high and
-      bright, like a great globe of silver, but there had come over the night
-      that subtle change that comes when night and morning meet. It was night no
-      longer; nothing tangible had changed, but it was morning. The twitter of
-      the birds, the cry of the insects, had something of activity in it; the
-      night had passed, another day had come, though the dawning was hours away.
-      And still the men went steadily on.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A great square hill rose up on the horizon, and we came to a clump of
-      trees where the moonlight was shut out altogether; we passed through
-      water, and it was pitch-dark, with just a gleam of moonlight here and
-      there to show how dense was that darkness. It was Akway Pool, and a
-      leopard was crying in the thick bush close beside it. It was uncanny, it
-      was weird; all the terror that I had missed till now in Africa came
-      creeping over me, and the men were singing no longer. Very carefully they
-      stepped, and the pool was so deep that lying strung up in the hammock I
-      could still have touched the water with my hand. Could it be only a
-      leopard that was crying so? Might it not be something even worse,
-      something born of the deep, dark pool, and the night? Slowly we went up
-      out of the water, and we stood a moment under the shade of the trees, but
-      with the white light within reach, and Krobo Hill loomed up ahead against
-      the dark horizon. The only hammock-boy who could make himself understood
-      came up.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Mammy, man be tired. We stop here small.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was a reasonable request, but the leopard was crying still, and the
-      gloom and fear of the pool was upon me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No, go on.&rdquo; They might have defied me, but they went on, and to my
-      surprise, my very great surprise, the carriers were still with us.
-      Presently we were out in the moonlight again; I had got the better of my
-      fears and repented me. &ldquo;Wait small now.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No, Mammy,&rdquo; came the answer, &ldquo;this be bad place,&rdquo; and they went on
-      swiftly, singing and shouting as if to keep their courage up, or, as I
-      gathered afterwards, to give the impression of a great company. Only
-      afterwards did I know what I had done that night. Krobo Hill grew larger
-      and larger at every step, and on Krobo Hill was one of the worst, if not
-      the worst blood fetish in West Africa. Every Krobo youth before he could
-      become a man and choose a wife had to kill a man, and he did it generally
-      on Krobo Hill. There the fetish priests held great orgies, and for their
-      ghastly ceremonies and initiations they caught any stranger who was
-      reckless enough to pass the hill. How they killed him was a mystery; some
-      said with tortures, some that only his head was cut off. But the fear in
-      the country grew, and at the end of the last century the British
-      Government interfered; they took Krobo Hill and scattered the fetish
-      priests and their abominations, and they declared the country safe. But
-      the negro revels in mystery and horror, and the fear of the hill still
-      lingers in the minds of the people; every now and then a man disappears
-      and the fear is justified. Only three years ago a negro clerk on his
-      bicycle was traced to that hill and no further trace of him found. His hat
-      was in the road, and the Krobos declared that the great white baboons that
-      infest the hill had taken him, but it is hardly reasonable to suppose that
-      the baboons would have any use for a bicycle, whereas he, strong and
-      young, and his bicycle, together emblems of strength and swiftness, made a
-      very fitting offering to accompany to his last resting-place the dead
-      chief whose obsequies the Krobos were celebrating at the time. Always
-      there are rumours of disappearances, less known men and women than a
-      Government clerk and scholar, and always the people know there is need of
-      men and women for the sacrifices, sacrifices to ensure a plenteous
-      harvest, a good fishing, brave men, and fruitful women.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My men were afraid&mdash;even I, who could not understand the reason,
-      grasped that fact; very naturally afraid, for it was quite within the
-      bounds of possibility that a straggler might be cut off.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Would they have touched me?&rdquo; I asked afterwards.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Not with your men round you. Some might escape, and the vengeance would
-      have been terrible.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But if I had been by myself?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Ah, then they might have said that the baboons had taken you; but you
-      would not have been by yourself.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      No, it was extremely unlikely I should be here by myself, but here were my
-      men, sixteen strong and afraid. Akway Pool had been the last water within
-      a safe distance from the hill, and I had not let them halt; now they dared
-      not. A light appeared on the hill, just a point of flickering fire on the
-      ridge, above us now, and I hailed it as a nice friendly gleam telling of
-      human habitation and home, but the men sang and shouted louder than ever.
-      I offered to stop, but the answer was always the same: &ldquo;This be bad place,
-      Mammy. We go.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      At last, without asking my leave, they put down the hammock, and the
-      carriers flung themselves down panting.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We stop small, Mammy&rdquo;; and I sat on my box and watched the great, sinewy
-      men with strapping shoulders as they lay on the ground resting. They had
-      been afraid I was sure, and I knew no reason for their fear.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But the night was past and it was morning, morning now though it was only
-      half-past three and the sun would not be up till close on six o'clock. On
-      again. The moon had swung low to the dawn, and the gathering clouds made
-      it darker than it had yet been, while the stars that peeped between the
-      clouds were like flakes of newly washed silver. People began to pass us,
-      ghostlike figures in the gloom. Greetings were exchanged, news was shouted
-      from one party to the other, and I, in spite of the discomfort of the
-      hammock, was dead with sleep, and kept dropping into oblivion and waking
-      with a start to the wonder and strangeness of my surroundings. Deeper and
-      deeper grew the oblivion in the darkness that precedes the dawn, till I
-      wakened suddenly to find myself underneath a European bungalow, and knew
-      that for the first time in my experience of African travel I had arrived
-      nearly two hours before I expected to.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My people were wild with delight and triumph. I had forced them to come
-      through the Krobo country by night, but my authority did not suffice to
-      keep them quiet now they had come through in safety. They chattered and
-      shouted and yelled, and a policeman who was doing sentry outside the
-      Provincial Commissioner's bungalow started to race upstairs. I tried to
-      stop him, and might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind. Indeed, when I
-      heard him hammering on the door I was strongly of opinion that the
-      Commissioner would think that the whirlwind had arrived. But presently
-      down those steps came a very big Scotchman in a dressing-gown, with his
-      hair on end, just roused from his sleep, and he resolved himself into one
-      of those courteous, kindly gentlemen England is blessed with as
-      representatives in the dark corners of the earth.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Did he reproach me? Not at all. He perjured himself so far as to say he
-      was glad to see me, and he took me upstairs and gave me whisky-and-soda
-      because it was so late, and then tea and fruit because it was so early.
-      And then in the dawning I looked out over Krobo Hill, and my host told me
-      its story.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I cleared them out years ago. I have no doubt they have their blood
-      sacrifices somewhere, but not on Krobo Hill. But the people are still
-      afraid.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I saw a fire there last night.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He shook his head unbelieving.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Impossible; there is a fine of fifty pounds for anyone found on Krobo
-      Hill.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The dawn had come and the sun was rising rosy and golden. The night lay
-      behind in the west.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I looked out of the window at the way I had come and wondered. I am always
-      looking back in life and wondering. Perhaps it would be a dull life where
-      there are no pitfalls to be passed, no rocks to climb over.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I see smoke there now.&rdquo; In the clear morning air it was going up in a
-      long spiral; but again my host shook his head.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Only a cloud.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But there were glasses lying on the table, and I looked through them and
-      there was smoke on Krobo Hill.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So I think my men were right to fear, and I am lost in wonder when I
-      remember they obeyed me and came on when they feared.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And then when the sun had risen and another hot day fairly begun, I went
-      over to the D.C.'s house; he had a wife, and they were kindly putting me
-      up, and I had breakfast and a bath and went to bed and slept I really
-      think more soundly than I have ever in my life slept before.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE FEAR THAT SKULKED BENEATH THE MANGO TREE
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Up the Volta&mdash;Svvanzy's trusting agent at Akuse&mdash;Amedika, the
-      port of Akuse on the Volta&mdash;The trials of a trolley ride&mdash;My
-      canoe&mdash;Paddling up-river&mdash;Rapids that raise the river
-      thirty-four feet&mdash;Dangers of the river&mdash;Entrancingly lovely
-      scenery&mdash;A wealthy land&mdash;The curious preventive service&mdash;Fears&mdash;Leaving
-      the river&mdash;Labolabo&mdash;A notable black man&mdash;The British
-      Cotton-growing Experimental Farm&mdash;The lonely white man&mdash;The fear
-      that was catching&mdash;The lonely man's walk.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Akuse I changed
-      my plans. I had intended to come here, drop down the Volta in the little
-      river steamers that run twice a week to Addah, and then pursue my way
-      along the coast to Keta where there was an old Danish castle, and possibly
-      get across the German border and see Lome, their capital. But there is
-      this charm or drawback&mdash;which ever way you like to look at it&mdash;about
-      Africa: no one knows anything about the country beyond his immediate
-      district. The Provincial Commissioner had gone to Addah, and I discussed
-      my further progress with the D.C. and his wife as we sat on the verandah
-      that night and looked over the country bathed in the most gorgeous
-      moonlight. The D.C.'s wife, a pretty little woman who had only been out a
-      couple of months, was of opinion that the vile country was killing her and
-      her husband, that it was simply a waste of life to live here, and she
-      could not get over her surprise that I should find anything of interest in
-      it. The D.C. thought it wouldn't be half bad if only the Government
-      brought you back to the same place, so that you might see some result for
-      your labours, and he strongly advised me to go a day or two up the river
-      in a canoe just to see the country.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It is quite worth seeing,&rdquo; said he, and his wife smiled. She had seen all
-      she intended to see of the country at Akuse, and did not want to go
-      farther in.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The next day I went into the town, the official quarters are some distance
-      away, and called on a couple of the principal merchants.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The factor at Miller Bros, put a new idea into my head.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh yes, go up the Volta,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;you can get up as far as Labolabo,
-      then cut across-country and come out at Ho in German territory. You can
-      get to Palime from there, and that is rail-head, so you can easily make
-      your way down to Lome.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It sounded rather an attractive programme.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You go and see Rowe about it,&rdquo; he suggested.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So I went and called upon Swanzy's agent, a nice young fellow, who first
-      laughed, then looked me up and down doubtfully, and finally said it could
-      be done. Mr Grey, one of their principals, had come across that way the
-      other day, but it was very rough going indeed. No one else that he knew of
-      had ever ventured it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0037" id="linkimage-0037"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0309.jpg" alt="0309 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0309.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      If I liked to try he would get me a canoe to go up the river in, and give
-      me letters to their black agents, for I must not expect to meet any white
-      men. And again he looked doubtful.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      If I liked; of course I liked. I am always ready to plunge in and take any
-      risks in the future, provided the initial steps are not too difficult, and
-      once he found I wanted to go, Mr Rowe made the initial steps very easy
-      indeed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      First he very nobly lent me twenty-five pounds in threepenny bits, for I
-      had got beyond the region of banks before I realised it, and had only two
-      pounds in hand; he engaged a canoe and six men for me; he gave me letters
-      to all Swanzy's agents in the back-country; and finally, when I had said
-      goodbye to the D.C. and his wife, he gave me luncheon and had me rolled
-      down on a trolley by the little hand railway, if I may coin a word, that
-      runs through the swamp and connects Akuse with its port Amedika on the
-      Volta.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This was a new mode of progression rather pleasant than otherwise, for as
-      it was down-hill to the river it couldn't have been hard on the men who
-      were pushing. I had come from the Commissioner's to the town on a cart,
-      proudly sitting on top of my gear, and drawn by half a dozen Kroo boys;
-      now my luggage went before me on another trolley, and my way was
-      punctuated by the number of parcels that fell off. My clothes were in a
-      tin uniform case supposed, mistakenly, I afterwards found, to be air-tight
-      and watertight, and I did not want this to fall off and break open,
-      because in it I had stowed all my money&mdash;twenty-five pounds all in
-      threepenny bits is somewhat of a care, I find. It escaped, but my bedding
-      went, making a nice cushion for the typewriter which followed it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The port Amedika, as may be seen from the picture, is very primitive, and
-      though twice a week the little mail steamer comes up coaly and black as
-      her own captain, on the occasion of my departure there were only canoes in
-      the harbour.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My canoe was one of the most ordinary structures, with a shelter in the
-      middle under which I had my chair put up. My gear was stowed fore and aft,
-      and six canoe-men took charge.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0038" id="linkimage-0038"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0309.jpg" alt="0309 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0309.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Starting always seems to be a difficulty in Africa, and when I was weary
-      of the hot sun and the glare from the water, and was wondering why we did
-      not start, the canoe-men, true to their kind, found they had no chop, and
-      they had to wait till one of their number went back and got it. But it was
-      got at last and I was fairly afloat on the Volta.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      To be paddled up a river is perhaps a very slow mode of progression, but
-      in no other way could I have seen the country so well; in no other way
-      could I have grasped its vast wealth, its wonderful resources. It is
-      something of an adventure to go up the Volta too, for as soon as we
-      started its smooth, wide reaches were broken by belts of rock that made it
-      seem well-nigh impassable. Again and again from the low seat in the canoe
-      it looked as if a rocky barrier barred all further progress, but here and
-      there the water rushed down the narrow chasm as in a mill-race. Wonderful
-      it was to find that a canoe could be poled up those rocky stairways
-      against the rushing water. The rapids before you reach Kpong are
-      innumerable; it seems as if the going were one long struggle. But the
-      river is wonderfully beautiful; it twists and turns, and first on the
-      right hand and then on the left I could see a tall peak, verdure-clad to
-      its very summit, Yogaga, the Long Woman. First the sun shone on it
-      brilliantly, as if it would emphasise its great beauty, and then a tornado
-      swept down, and the mist seemed to rise up and swallow it. The Senchi
-      Rapids raise the river thirty-four feet in a furlong or two, and the
-      water, white and foaming, boils over the brown rocks like the water
-      churned up in the wake of a great ocean steamer. I could not believe we
-      were going up there when we faced them, but the expert canoe-men, stripped
-      to a loin cloth, with shout and song defying the river, poled and pulled
-      and pushed the canoe up to another quiet reach, and when they had reached
-      calm water flung themselves down and smoked and chattered and looked back
-      over the way we had come. We seemed to go up in a series of spasms; either
-      the men were working for dear life or they were idling so as to bring down
-      upon them the wrath of Grant who, after that trip along the Coast, felt
-      himself qualified to speak, and again and again I had to interfere and
-      explain that if anybody was going to scold the men it must be me. But
-      indeed they worked so hard they needed a spell.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0039" id="linkimage-0039"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0313.jpg" alt="0313 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0313.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Many a time when the canoe was broadside on and the white water was
-      boiling up all round her, I thought, &ldquo;Well, this really looks very
-      dangerous,&rdquo; but nobody had told me it was, so I supposed it was only my
-      ignorance, but I heard afterwards that I was right, it is dangerous. Many
-      a bag of cotton has gone to the bottom here, and many a barrel of oil has
-      been dashed to pieces against the rocks, and if many a white man's gear
-      has not gone to the bottom too, it is only because white men on this river
-      are few and far between. I had one great advantage, I did not realise the
-      danger till we were right in it, and then it was pressing, it absorbed
-      every thought till we were in smooth water again, with the men lying
-      panting at the bottom of the canoe, so that I really had not time to be
-      afraid till it was all over. Frankly, I don't think I could enter upon
-      such a journey again so calmy, but I am glad I have gone once, for it was
-      such a wonderful and enchanting river. Some day they dream the great
-      waterway will be used to reach Tamale, a ten days' journey farther north,
-      but money must be spent before that happy end is arrived at, though I
-      fancy that if the river were in German hands something would be attempted
-      at once, for the country is undoubtedly very rich.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Scratch the earth it laughs a harvest.&rdquo; Cocoa and palm oil and rubber all
-      come to the river or grow within a short distance of its banks, and all
-      tropical fruits and native food-stuffs flourish like weeds. Beauty is
-      perhaps hardly an asset in West Africa, but the Volta is a most beautiful
-      river. The Gambia is interesting, the Congo grand, but the Volta is
-      entrancingly lovely. I have heard men rave of the beauty of the Thames,
-      and it certainly is a pleasant river, with its smooth, green lawns, its
-      shady trees, and its picturesque houses; but to compare it to the Volta is
-      to compare a pretty little birch-bark canoe to a magnificent sailing ship
-      with all her snowy canvas set, heeling over to the breeze. Sometimes its
-      great, wide, quiet reaches are like still, deep lakes, in whose clear
-      surface is mirrored the calm, blue sky, the fleecy clouds, the
-      verdure-clad banks, and the hills that are clothed in the densest green to
-      their very peaks. Sometimes it is a raging torrent, fighting its way over
-      the rocks, and beneath the vivid blue sky is the gorgeous vegetation of
-      the Tropics, tangled, luxuriant, feathery palms, tall and shapely
-      silk-cotton trees bound together with twining creeper and trailing vine in
-      one impenetrable mass. A brown patch proclaims a village, and here are
-      broad-leaved bananas, handsome mangoes, fragrant orange trees,
-      lighter-coloured cocoa patches, and cassada that from the distance might
-      be a patch of lucerne. Always there are hills, rising high, cutting the
-      sky sharply, ever changing, ever reflected faithfully in the river at
-      their feet. There is traffic, of course, men fishing from canoes, and
-      canoes laden with barrels of oil or kernels, or cocoa going down the
-      river, the boats returning with the gin and the cotton cloths for the
-      factories run by the negro agents of the great trading-houses; and every
-      three or four hours or so&mdash;distance is as yet counted by time in West
-      Africa&mdash;are the stations of the preventive service.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0040" id="linkimage-0040"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0317.jpg" alt="0317 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0317.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      This preventive service is rather curious, because both banks of the
-      river, in the latter part of its course, are owned by the English, and the
-      service is between the two portions of the Colony. But east of the Volta,
-      whither I was bound, the country is but little known, and apparently the
-      powers that be do not feel themselves equal to cope with a very effective
-      preventive service, so they have there the same duties, a 4 per cent, one
-      that the Germans have in Togo land, while west of the Volta they have a 10
-      per cent. duty.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I hope there is not much smuggling on the Volta, for with all apologies to
-      the white preventive officers, I doubt the likelihood of the men doing
-      much to stop it. The stations match the river. They have been
-      picturesquely planned&mdash;the plans carefully carried out; the houses
-      are well kept up, and round them are some of the few gardens, in English
-      hands, on the Gold Coast that really look like gardens. Though I did not
-      in the course of three days' travel come across him, I felt they marked
-      the presence of some careful, capable white man. The credit is certainly
-      not due to the negro preventive men. In the presence of their white
-      officer they are smart-looking men; seen in his absence they relax their
-      efforts and look as untidy and dirty as a railway porter after a hard
-      day's struggle with a Bank Holiday crowd. After all one can hardly blame
-      the negro for not exerting himself. Nature has given him all he absolutely
-      requires; he has but to stretch out his hand and take it, using almost as
-      little forethought and exertion as the great black cormorants or the
-      little blue-and-white king-fishers that get their livelihood from the
-      river.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And I was afraid of those men. I may have wronged them for they were quite
-      civil, but I was afraid. Again and again they made me remember, as the
-      ordinary peasants never did, that I was a woman alone and very very
-      helpless. Nothing would have induced me to stay two nights at one of those
-      stations. These men were half-civilised. They had lost all awe of a white
-      face, and, I felt, were inclined to be presuming. What could I have done
-      if they had forgotten their thin veneer of civilisation, and gone back to
-      pure savagery. Nothing&mdash;I know it&mdash;nothing. At Adjena I had to
-      have my camp-bed put up on the verandah, because I found the house too
-      stuffy, and the moonlit river was glorious to look upon, but I was
-      anything but happy in my own mind; I wondered if I wanted help if my
-      canoe-men, who were very decent, respectable savages, would come to my
-      help. I wonder still. But the morning brought me a glorious view. The sun
-      rose behind Chai Hill, and flung its shadow all across the river, and I
-      attempted feebly to reproduce it in a photograph, and gladly and
-      thankfully I went on my way up the river, and I vowed in my own mind that
-      never if I could help it would I come up here again by myself. If any
-      adventurous woman feels desirous of following in my footsteps, I have but
-      one piece of advice to give her&mdash;&ldquo;Don't.&rdquo; I don't think I would do it
-      again for all the money in the Bank of England. I may do him an injustice,
-      but I do not trust the half-civilised black man. I got through, I think,
-      because for a moment he was astonished. Next time he will not be taken by
-      surprise, and it will not be safe.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0041" id="linkimage-0041"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0321.jpg" alt="0321 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0321.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      At Labolabo I left the river. Dearly I should have loved to have gone on,
-      to have made my way up to the Northern Territories, but for one thing, my
-      canoe-men were only engaged as far as Labolabo; for another, I had not
-      brought enough photographic plates. I really think it was that last
-      consideration that stopped me. What was the good of going without taking
-      photographs? Curiously enough, the fact that I was afraid did not weigh
-      much with me. I suppose we are all built alike, and at moments our mental
-      side weights up our emotional side. Now, my mental side very much wanted
-      to go up past the Afram plain. I should have had to stay in the preventive
-      service houses, which grew farther and farther apart, and I was afraid of
-      the preventive service men, afraid of them in the sordid way one fears the
-      low-class ruffian of the great cities, but there was that in me that
-      whispered that there was a doubt, and therefore it might be exceedingly
-      foolish to check my search after knowledge for a fear that might only be a
-      causeless fear. But about the photographic plates there was no doubt; I
-      had not brought nearly enough with me, and therefore I landed very meekly
-      at Labolabo.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There was rather a desolate-looking factory, but it did not look inviting
-      enough to induce me to go inside it, so I sat down under a tree on the
-      high bank of the river and interviewed the black factor to whom Swanzy's
-      agent had given me a letter. He was mightily surprised, but I was
-      accustomed to being received with surprise now, and began to consider the
-      making of a cup of tea. Then the factor brought another man along and
-      introduced him to me as Swanzy's agent at Pekki Blengo, Mr Olympia. And
-      once more I feel like apologising to all the African peoples for anything
-      I may have said against them. Mr Olympia came from French Dahomey. He was
-      extremely good-looking, and had polished, courteous manners such as one
-      dreams of in the Spanish hidalgos of old. If you searched the wide world
-      over I do not think you could wish to find a more charming man than
-      Swanzy's black agent at Pekki Blengo. I know very little of him. I only
-      met him casually as I met other black men, men outside the pale for me, a
-      white woman, but I felt when I looked at him there might be possibilities
-      in the African race; when I think of their enormous strength and their
-      wonderful vigour, immense possibilities.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I explained to Mr Olympia that I wanted to get to the rest-house at Anum,
-      that I had arranged for my canoe-men to carry my kit there, and that Mr
-      Rowe had told me that he, Mr Olympia, could get me carriers on to Ho. He
-      said certainly, but he thought I ought at least to go up to the British
-      Cotton-growing Experimental Farm, about ten minutes' walk away from the
-      river. He felt that the white man in charge would be much hurt if I did
-      not at least call and see him.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A white man at Labolabo! How surprised I was. Of course I would go, and Mr
-      Olympia apologising for the absence of hammock or cart, we set off to
-      walk.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Those African ten minutes! It took me a good forty minutes through the
-      blazing heat of an African afternoon, and then I was met upon the steps of
-      the bungalow by a perfectly amazed white man in his shirt sleeves, who
-      hurriedly explained that when he had seen the luggage coming along in
-      charge of the faithful Grant, who made the nearest approach to a
-      slave-driver I have ever seen, he had asked him, &ldquo;Who be your master?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It be no massa,&rdquo; said Grant, &ldquo;it be missus.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; said my new friend, &ldquo;I set him at the end of the avenue and
-      told him he was to keep you off till I found a coat. But I couldn't find
-      it. I don't know where the blamed thing's got to.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He went on to inquire where I had come from and how I had come. I told
-      him, &ldquo;Up the river.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;it requires a picked crew of ten preventive service
-      men to come up the Volta.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I assured him, I was ready to take my oath about it, you could do it
-      fairly easily with six ordinary, hired men, but he went on shaking his
-      head and declared he couldn't imagine what Rowe was thinking of. He
-      thought I had really embarked on the maddest journey ever woman dreamt of,
-      and while getting me a cool drink, for which I blessed him, went on
-      murmuring, &ldquo;Rowe must have been mad.&rdquo; I think his surprise brought home to
-      me for the first time the fact that I was doing anything unusual. Before
-      that it had seemed very natural to be going up the river, to be simply
-      wanting to get on and see the great waterway and the country behind.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I did not go on to Anum as I had intended. It was Easter Saturday, and my
-      new friend suggested I should spend Easter with him. I demurred, and he
-      said it would be a charity. He had no words to express his loneliness, and
-      as for the canoe-men, who could not stay to carry my things to Anum, let
-      them go. He would see about my gear being taken up there. And so I stayed,
-      glad to see how a man managed by himself in the wilderness.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The British Cotton-growing Experimental Farm at Labolabo is to all intents
-      and purposes a failure. It was set there in the midst of gorgeously rich
-      country to teach the native to grow cotton, and the native seeing that
-      cocoa, with infinitively less exertion, pays him very much better,
-      naturally firmly declines to do anything of the sort. So here in this
-      beautiful spot lives utterly alone a solitary white man who, with four
-      inefficient labourers, tries desperately to keep the primeval bush from
-      swallowing up the farm and entirely effacing all the hard work that has
-      been done there. This farm should be a valuable possession besides being a
-      very beautiful one. The red-roofed bungalow is set in a bay of the high,
-      green hills, which stretch out verdure-clad arms, threatening every moment
-      to envelop it. The land slopes gently, and as I sat on the broad verandah,
-      through the dense foliage of the trees I could catch glimpses of the
-      silver Volta a mile and a half away, while beyond again the blue hills
-      rose range after range till they were lost in the bluer distance. Four
-      years ago this man who was entertaining me so hospitably had planted a
-      mile-long avenue to lead up to his bungalow, and now the tall grape-fruit
-      and shaddock in front of his verandah meet and have regularly to be cut
-      away to keep the path clear. I am too ignorant to know what could be grown
-      with profit, only I can see that the land is rich and fruitful, and should
-      be, with the river so close, a most valuable possession. As it is, it is
-      one of the most lonely places in the world. I sympathised deeply with the
-      man living there alone. The loneliness grips. If I went to my room I could
-      hear him tramping monotonously up and down the verandah. &ldquo;Tramp, tramp,
-      tramp,&rdquo; and when I went out he smiled queerly.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0042" id="linkimage-0042"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0327.jpg" alt="0327 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0327.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I can't help doing it,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;it's the lonely man's walk. And when I
-      can't see those two lines,&rdquo; he pointed to two boards in the verandah, &ldquo;I
-      know I'm drunk and I go to bed.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was like the story of the man who kept a frog in his pocket and every
-      time he had a drink he took it out and looked at it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;What the dickens do you do that for?&rdquo; asked a companion.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Well, when I see two frogs,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I know I've had enough.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Now I don't believe my friend at Labolabo did exceed, judging by his
-      looks, but if ever man might be excused it was he. He had for servants a
-      very old cook and a slave-boy with a much-scarred face; the marks upon his
-      face proclaimed his former status, but no man could understand the
-      unintelligible jargon he spoke, so no man knew where he came from. It was
-      probably north of German territory. At any rate, he flitted about the
-      bungalow a most inadequate steward.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And he laid the table in the stone house&mdash;or rather the shelter with
-      two stone walls, a stone floor, and a broken-down thatch roof, where we
-      had our meals. It was perhaps twenty yards from the bungalow, and on the
-      garden side grew like a wall great bushes of light-green feathery justitia
-      with its yellow, bell-like flowers, while on the other side a little
-      grass-grown plain stretched away to the forest-clad hills behind.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Oh, but it was lonely! and fear is a very catching thing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;There is nothing to be afraid of in Africa,&rdquo; said my host, &ldquo;till the
-      moment there is something, and then you're done.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Whether he was right or not I do not know, but I realised as I had never
-      done before why men get sick in the bush, worse, why they take to drink
-      and why they go mad. I looked out from the verandah, and when I saw a
-      black figure slip silently in among the trees I wondered what it
-      portended. I looked behind me to see if one might not be coming from
-      behind the kitchen. The fool-bird in the bush crying, &ldquo;Hoo! hoo! hoo!&rdquo; all
-      on one note seemed but crying a suitable dirge. Fear hid on the verandah;
-      I could hear him in the creak of a door, in the &ldquo;pad, pad&rdquo; of the
-      slave-boy's feet; I could almost have sworn I saw him skulking under the
-      mango tree where were kept the thermometers; and when on Easter Sunday a
-      tornado swept down from the hills, blotting out the vivid green in one
-      pall of grey mist, he was in the shrieking wind and in the shuddering
-      rain.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Never was I more impersonally sorry to leave a man alone, for if I saw my
-      host again I doubt if he would recognise me, but it seemed wicked to leave
-      a fellow white man alone in such a place. If there had been any real
-      danger, of course I should only have been an embarrassment, but at least I
-      was company of his own kind and I kept that haunting fear at bay.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I stayed two days and then I felt go I must. I was also faced with my own
-      carelessness and the casual manner in which I had dropped into the
-      wilderness. Anum mountain was a steep climb of five miles, and beyond that
-      again I had, as far as I could gather, several days' journey in the wilds
-      before I could hope to reach rail-head in German Togo, and I had actually
-      never remembered that I should want a hammock. The Cotton-growing
-      Association didn't possess one, and, like Christian in the &ldquo;Pilgrim's
-      Progress,&rdquo; I &ldquo;cast about me&rdquo; what I should do. I could not fancy myself
-      walking in the blazing noonday sun. My host smiled. He did not think it
-      was a matter of any great consequence because he felt sure I could not get
-      through, but he came to my rescue all the same and sent up a couple of
-      labourers to the Basel Mission at Anum to see what they could suggest. The
-      labourers came back with a hammock&mdash;rather a dilapidated one&mdash;on
-      their heads, and an invitation to luncheon next day.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It's as far as you'll go,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;if nothing else stops you;
-      you can't possibly get carriers. Remember, I'll put you up with pleasure
-      on your way back.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But I was not going to face the Volta again by myself, though I did not
-      tell him that. Those black men insulted me by making me fear them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was a very hot morning when we started to climb up Anum mountain. The
-      bush on either side was rather thick, and the road was steep and very bad
-      going. It was shaded, luckily, most of the way, and there arose that damp,
-      pleasant smell that comes from moist earth, the rich, sensuous, insidious
-      scent of an orchid that I could not see, or the mouselike smell of the
-      great fruitarian bats that in these daylight hours were hidden among the
-      dense greenery of the roadside. It was a toilsome journey, and my new
-      friend walked beside me, but at last we reached Anum town, a mud-built,
-      native town, bare, hot, dirty, unkempt, and we passed beyond it to the
-      grateful shade once more of the Basel Mission grounds.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XIV&mdash;INTO THE WILDS
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Anum Mountain&mdash;The Basel Mission&mdash;A beautiful spot&mdash;An
-      old Ashanti raid&mdash;A desolate rest-house&mdash;Alone and afraid; also
-      hungry&mdash;A long night&mdash;Jakai&mdash;Pekki Blengo&mdash;The
-      unspeakable Eveto Range&mdash;Underpaid carriers&mdash;A beautiful, a
-      wealthy, and a neglected land&mdash;Tsito&mdash;The churches and the
-      fetish&mdash;Difficulties of lodging in a cocoa-store&mdash;The lonely
-      country between Tsito and the Border&mdash;Doubts of the hammock-boys&mdash;The
-      awful road&mdash;Butterflies&mdash;The Border.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>rankly, my
-      sympathies are not as a rule with the missionaries, certainly not with
-      African missionaries. I have not learned to understand spiritual misery,
-      and of material misery there is none in Africa to be compared with the
-      unutterable woe one meets at every turn in an English city. But one thing
-      I admire in these Swiss and German teachers is the way they have improved
-      the land they have taken possession of. Their women, too, make here their
-      homes and bear their children. &ldquo;A home,&rdquo; I said as I stepped on to the
-      wide verandah of the Mission Station at Anum; &ldquo;a home,&rdquo; as I went into the
-      rooms decorated with texts in German and Twi; &ldquo;a home,&rdquo; as I sat down to
-      the very excellent luncheon provided by the good lady whom most English
-      women would have designated a little scornfully as a <i>haus-frau</i>.
-      Most emphatically &ldquo;a home&rdquo; when I looked out over the beautiful gardens
-      that were nicely planted with mangoes, bananas, palms, and all manner of
-      pretty shrubs and bright-foliaged trees. It seems to me almost a pity to
-      teach the little negro since he is so much nicer in his untutored state,
-      but since they feel it must be done these Basel Mission people are going
-      the very best way about it by beautifying their own surroundings.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      From their verandah over the scented frangipanni and fragrant orange trees
-      you may see far far away the winding Volta like a silver thread at the
-      bottom of the valley, and the great hills that control his course standing
-      up on either side. It is an old station, for in the late sixties the
-      Ashantis raided it, captured the missionary, Mr Ramseyer, his wife and
-      child, and held them in captivity for several years. But times are changed
-      now. The native, even the fierce Ashanti warrior, has learned that it is
-      well for him that the white man should be here, and up in the rest-house
-      on the other side of the mountain a white woman may stay alone in safety.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Why do the powers that be overlook Anum mountain? The rest-house to which
-      my kind friend from Labolabo escorted me after we had lunched at the Basel
-      Mission was shabby and desolate with that desolation that comes where a
-      white man has been and is no longer. No one has ever tried to make a
-      garden, though the larger trees and shrubs have been cleared from about
-      the house and in their stead weeds have sprung up, and the vigour of their
-      growth shows the possibilities, while the beauty of the situation is not
-      to be denied. Away to the north, where not even a native dwells, spreads
-      out the wide extent of the Afram plain, a very paradise for the sportsman,
-      for there are to be found numberless hartebeests, leopards, lions, and
-      even the elephant himself. It lies hundreds, possibly thousands of feet
-      below, and across it winds the narrow streak of the Volta, while to the
-      north the hills stretch out as if they would keep the mighty river for
-      England, barring its passage to the east and to German territory.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And here my friend from Labolabo left me&mdash;left me, I think, with some
-      misgivings.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Come back,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you know I'll be glad to see you. Mind you come
-      back. I know you can't get through.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But I had my own opinion about that.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;What about the carriers Mr Olympia is going to send me to-morrow
-      morning?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And he laughed. &ldquo;Those carriers! don't you wish you may get them? I know
-      those carriers black men promise. Why, the missionary said you needn't
-      expect them.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The Basel missionary had said I might get through if I was prepared to
-      wait, and as I said good-bye I was prepared to wait.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The rest-house was on top of a mountain in the clouds, far away from any
-      sign of habitation. The rooms were large, empty, and desolate with a
-      desolation there is no describing. There was a man in charge living in a
-      little house some way off, the dispenser at the empty hospital which was
-      close to the rest-house, and the Basel missionary spoke of him with scorn.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;He was one of my boys,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;such a fool I sent him away, and why
-      the Government have him for dispenser here I do not know.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Neither do I, but I suspect he was in a place where he could do the very
-      minimum of harm, for very few people come to Anum mountain. There is a
-      Ju-ju upon it, and my first experience was that I could get no food.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      No sooner were we alone than Grant appeared before me mightily aggrieved.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;This bush country no good, Ma. I no can get chop.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I hope I would have felt sorry for him in any case, but it was brought
-      home to me by the fact that he could get no chop for me either.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had come to the end of my stores and there was not a chicken nor an egg
-      nor bread nor fruit to be bought in the village down the hill. The
-      villagers said they had none, or declined to sell, which came to the same
-      thing. I dined frugally off tea and biscuits, and I presume Grant helped
-      himself to the biscuits&mdash;I told him to&mdash;tea he hated&mdash;and
-      then as the evening drew on I prepared to go to bed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Oh! but it was lonely, and fear fell upon me. A white mist came softly up,
-      so that I could not see beyond the broad, empty verandahs. I knew the moon
-      was shining by the white light, but I could not see her and I felt shut in
-      and terrified. Where Grant went to I don't know, but he disappeared after
-      providing my frugal evening meal, and I could hear weird sounds that came
-      out of the mist, and none of the familiar chatter and laughter of the
-      carriers to which I had grown accustomed. It was against all my principles
-      to shut myself in, so I left doors and windows wide open and listened for
-      the various awful things that might come out of the bush and up those
-      verandah steps. What I feared I know not, but I feared, feared greatly;
-      the fear that had come upon me at Labolabo worked his wicked will now that
-      I was alone on Anum mountain, and the white mist aided and abetted. I
-      could hear the drip, drip, as of water falling somewhere in the silence; I
-      could hear the cry of a bird out in the bush, but it was the silence that
-      made every rustle so fraught with meaning. It was no good telling myself
-      there was nothing to fear, that the kindly missionaries would never have
-      left me alone if there had been.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I could only remember that on this mountain had raided those fierce
-      Ashanti warriors, that terrible things had been done here, that terrible
-      things might be done again, that if anything happened to me there was no
-      possibility of help, that I was quite powerless. I wondered if a Savage,
-      on these occasions one spells Savage with a very large &ldquo;S,&rdquo; did come on to
-      the verandah, did come into my bedroom, what should I do. I felt that even
-      a bush-cat would be terrifying, and having got so far I realised that a
-      rabbit would probably send me into hysterics. At the thought of the rabbit
-      my drooping spirits recovered themselves a little, but I spent a very
-      unpleasant night, dozing and listening, till my own heart-beats drowned
-      all other sounds. But I never thought of going back. I don't suppose I
-      should have given up in any case, it is against family tradition, but if I
-      had, there was the Volta behind me, and those preventive service men made
-      it imperative to go on.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But when morning dawned I felt a little better. True, I did not like the
-      thought of tea and biscuits for breakfast, but I thought hopefully of the
-      Basel Mission gardens. I was sure, if I had to stay here, those hospitable
-      people would give me plenty of fruit, and probably a good deal more than
-      that, so I was not quite as depressed as Grant when I dressed and stood on
-      the verandah, looking across the mysterious mist that still shrouded the
-      valley of the Volta.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And before that mist had cleared away, up the steps of the rest-house came
-      the Basel missionary, and at their foot crowded a gang of lightly clad,
-      chattering men and women. My carriers! Mr Olympia had been as good as his
-      word, the missionary kindly came to interpret, and I set out for Pekki
-      Blengo, away in the hills to the east.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was all hill-country through which we passed; range after range of
-      hills, rich in cocoa and palm oil, while along the track, that we English
-      called a road, might be seen rubber trees scored with knives, so that the
-      milky rubber can be collected. Very little of this rich country is under
-      cultivation, the vegetation is dense and close, and the vivid green is
-      brightened here and there by scarlet poinsettas and flamboyant trees, then
-      at the beginning of the rains one mass of flame-coloured blossom. It was a
-      tangle of greenery, like some great, gorgeous greenhouse, and the native,
-      when he wants a clearing, burns off a small portion and plants cocoa or
-      cassada, yams, bananas, or maize, with enough cotton here and there,
-      between the lines of food-stuffs, to give him yarn for his immediate
-      needs. When the farmer has used up this land, he abandons it to the
-      umbrella trees and other tropical weeds, and with the wastefulness of the
-      native takes up another piece of land, burning and destroying, quite
-      careless of the value of the trees that go to feed the fire. Such reckless
-      destruction is not allowed by the Germans, but a few miles to the east.
-      There a native is encouraged to take up a farm, but he must improve it
-      year by year. Our thrifty neighbours will have no such waste within their
-      borders.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the course of the morning I arrived at Jakai, and the whole of the
-      village turned out to interview me, and I in my turn took a photograph of
-      as few as I could manage of the inhabitants under the principal tree. That
-      was always the difficulty. When they grasped I was going to take a
-      picture, and there was generally some much-travelled man ready to instruct
-      the others, they all crowded together in one mass in front of the camera&mdash;if
-      they did not object altogether, when they ran away&mdash;and I always had
-      to wait, and perjure myself, and say the picture was taken long before it
-      was done. But always they were kindly. If I grew afraid at night I always
-      reminded myself of the uniform goodwill of the villages through which I
-      passed; their evident desire that I should be pleased with my
-      surroundings. And at Jakai Grant, with triumph, bought so many eggs that I
-      trembled for my future meals. I foresaw a course of &ldquo;fly&rdquo; egg, hard-boiled
-      egg, and egg and breadcrumbs, but after all that was better than tea and
-      biscuits, and when I saw a pine-apple and a bunch of bananas I felt life
-      was going to be endurable again.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At Pekki Blengo, an untidy, disorderly village, where the streets are full
-      of holes and hillocks, strewn with litter and scarred with waterways, Mr
-      Olympia met me, and conducted me to an empty chiefs house, where I might
-      put up for the night. It was a twostoried house of mud, with plenty of
-      air, for there were great holes where the doors and windows would have
-      been, and I slept peacefully once more with the hum of human life all
-      around me again. But I can hardly admire Pekki Blengo. It is like all
-      these villages of the English Eastern Province. The houses are of mud, the
-      roofs of thatch, and fowls, ducks, pigs, goats, and little happy, naked
-      children alike swarm. That is one comfort so different from travelling in
-      the older lands&mdash;these villagers are apparently happy enough. They
-      are kindly and courteous, too, for though a white woman was evidently an
-      extraordinary sight equal in interest to a circus clown, or even an
-      elephant, and they rushed from all quarters to see her, they never pushed
-      or crowded, and they cuffed the children if they seemed likely to worry
-      her.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And beyond Pekki Blengo the road reached its worst. Mr Olympia warned me I
-      should have to walk across the Eveto Range as no hammock-boys could
-      possibly carry me, and I decided therefore that the walking had better be
-      done very early in the morning, and arranged to start at half-past five,
-      as soon as it was light.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The traveller is always allowed the privilege of arranging in Africa. If
-      he does not he will certainly not progress at all, but at the same time it
-      is surprising how seldom his well-arranged plans come off. True to promise
-      my hammock-boys and carriers turned up some time a little before six in
-      the morning, and the carriers, swarming up the verandah, turned over the
-      loads, made a great many remarks that I was incapable of understanding,
-      and one and all departed. Then the hammock-boys apparently urged me to get
-      into the hammock and start, as they were in a hurry to be off and earn the
-      four shillings they were to have for taking me to Ho in German territory.
-      I pointed out, whether they understood I did not know, that I could not
-      stir without my gear, and I went off to interview Mr Olympia, who was
-      sweetly slumbering in his house about a mile away. He, when he was
-      aroused, said they thought I was not giving them enough; that they said
-      they would not carry loads to Ho for one shilling and sixpence and two
-      shillings a load. I said that that was the sum he had fixed. I was
-      perfectly willing to give more; and he set out to interview the Chief, and
-      see if he could get fresh carriers, but he was not very hopeful about
-      getting any that day. I retired to my chiefs house, grew tired of making
-      mental notes of the people and the surrounding country, and got out a pack
-      of cards and solaced myself with one-handed bridge, which may be
-      educational, but is not very exciting. My hammock-boys again pleaded to be
-      taken on, but I was firm. It was useless moving without my gear; and
-      finally when I was about giving up hope Mr Olympia returned. He had found
-      eight men and women who were bound across the Eveto Range to get loads at
-      Tsito. Sixpence, he explained, was the ordinary charge for a load to
-      Tsito, but if I would rise to say ninepence for my heavier loads&mdash;he
-      hesitated as if such an enormous expenditure might not commend itself to
-      my purse. But naturally I assented gladly, and off went my loads at
-      sixpence and ninepence a head. For a moment I rejoiced, and as usual began
-      to purr over my excellent management. Not for long though. It was my turn
-      now, and where were my hammock-boys? Inquiry elicited the awful fact that
-      they had gone to their farms and could not be prevailed upon to start till
-      next day; Mr Olympia was sure I could not hope to move before to-morrow
-      morning.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The situation was anything but comfortable. I had had nothing to eat since
-      earliest dawn. I had now not even a chair to sit upon, nor a pack of cards
-      to solace the dull hours. I dare not eat and, worse still, dare not drink.
-      Then I sent word to Mr Olympia that if he would get me a couple of men to
-      carry my hammock I would walk.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I sat on the steps of that house and waited, I walked down the road and
-      waited, and the tropical day grew hotter and hotter, the sun poured down
-      pitilessly, and I was weary with thirst, but still I would not drink the
-      native water. At last, oh triumph, instead of two, eight grinning
-      hammock-boys turned up, and about 1.30 on a blazing tropical afternoon we
-      started. Ten minutes later I was set down at the foot of the unspeakable
-      Eveto Range, and my men gave me to understand by signs they could carry me
-      no longer.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I cannot think that the Eveto Range is perpendicular, but it seemed pretty
-      nearly so. It was thickly wooded, as is all the country, and the road was
-      the merest track between the walls of vegetation, a track that twisted and
-      turned out of the way of the larger obstacles, the smaller ones we
-      negotiated as best we might, holes, and roots, and rocks, and waterways,
-      that made the distance doubly and trebly great. In five minutes I felt
-      done; in ten it was brought home to me forcibly that I was an unutterable
-      fool ever to attempt to travel in Africa. In addition to the roughness
-      there was the steepness of the way to be taken into consideration, and the
-      constant strain of going up, up compelled me again and again to lie down
-      flat on my back to recover sufficient strength and breath to go on. What
-      matter if the view was delightful&mdash;it was&mdash;when I had neither
-      time, nor strength, nor energy to raise my eyes from the difficulties that
-      beset my feet. But there was nothing to be done except to crawl painfully
-      along with the tropical sun pouring pitilessly down, and not a breath of
-      wind stirring.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And I was dead with thirst. We came across a bunch of bananas, laid beside
-      the track, and my men offered me one by way of refreshment, but I was too
-      done to eat, and I thought what a fool I was not to carry a flask. When I
-      had given up all hope of surviving, and really didn't much care what
-      became of me so long as I died quickly, we reached the top where were
-      native farms with cotton bushes now in full bloom planted among the
-      food-stuffs, and I rested a little and gathered together my energies for
-      the descent. And if the going up was bad, the going down was worse. There
-      were great rocks and boulders that I would never have dared in England,
-      and when I could spare time from my own woes I reflected that the usual
-      charge for taking a load to Tsito was sixpence, and decided between my own
-      gasps it was the most iniquitous piece of slave-driving I had ever heard
-      of. Twenty pounds, I felt, would never pay me for carrying myself across
-      this awful country, and there were those wretched carriers toiling along
-      for a miserable sixpence, or at most ninepence. I was thoroughly ashamed
-      of myself. And the view was beautiful. Before us, in the evening light,
-      lay the wealthy land where no white man goes, and the beautiful,
-      verdure-clothed hills dappled with shadow and sunshine. The light was
-      going, but, weary as I was, I had to stop and look, for never again might
-      I see a more lovely view.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And at last, just as the darkness was falling, we had crossed the range,
-      and I thankfully and wearily tumbled into my hammock and was carried
-      through the village of Tsito to the trader's store. It was a humble store,
-      presided over by a black man who spoke English, and here they bought
-      cotton and cocoa, and sold kerosene and trade gin, cotton cloths, and the
-      coarsest kinds of tinned fish. I had a letter from Mr Olympia to this
-      black man, and he offered me the hospitality of the cocoa-store; that is
-      to say, a space was cleared among the cocoa and cotton and other
-      impedimenta, my bed and table and bath set up. Grant brought me something
-      to eat&mdash;hard-boiled eggs, biscuits, and bananas, with tea to drink.
-      How thankful I was for that tea! I dined with an admiring crowd looking
-      on, and I remembered my repentance on the mountain and sent for my
-      carriers and paid them all double. I still think it was too little, but in
-      excuse it must be remembered that I was alone and hardly dared risk a
-      reputation for immense wealth.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There are difficulties connected with lodging in a cocoa-store, especially
-      when you are surrounded by a population who have never seen a white woman
-      before. I needed a bath, but how to get it I hardly knew, with eyes all
-      over the place, so at last I put out the lights and had it in the dark,
-      and I went to bed in the dark, and as I was going to sleep I heard the
-      audience dispersing, discussing the show at the top of their voices. As I
-      did not understand what they said I did not know whether they had found it
-      satisfactory. At least it was cheap, unless Swanzy's agent charged them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was not afraid now, curiously enough, right away from civilisation,
-      entirely at these peoples' mercy. I felt quite safe, and after my hard day
-      I slept like the dead. It is mentally very soothing, I notice, to say to
-      oneself, &ldquo;Well done!&rdquo; and our mental attitude has a great effect upon our
-      physical health. At least I found one thing&mdash;I had pitied myself most
-      unnecessarily. My exertions had done me no harm, and I never felt in
-      better health than when I waked up next morning in Swanzy's cocoa-room and
-      proceeded to get dressed in the dark. That was necessary, because I knew
-      the sound of my stirring would bring an interested audience to see how the
-      white woman did things. I really don't think the White City rivalled me as
-      a provider of amusement for the people in the eastern district of the
-      Volta and the western district of Togo in the end of April and beginning
-      of May last.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0043" id="linkimage-0043"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0349.jpg" alt="0349 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0349.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      I had picked up a discarded map on the floor of the rest-house at Anum,
-      and here I saw that many of the villages were marked with crosses to show
-      that there was a church, but I saw no church here in Tsito, though I doubt
-      not there was one. What I did see, not only in Tsito but at the entrance
-      to every village I passed through, was a low, thatched shed, under which
-      were the fetish images of the village. These were generally the rough-cut
-      outline in clay or wood of a human figure seated. Sometimes the figure had
-      a dirty rag round it, sometimes a small offering in front of it, and
-      dearly should I have liked to have had a picture, but the people, even
-      Swanzy's agent, objected, and I did not like to run counter to local
-      prejudice. And yet Swanzy's agent is by way of being a Christian, but I
-      dare say Christianity in these parts of Africa, like Christianity in
-      old-time Britain or Gaul, conforms a good deal to pagan modes of thought.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I met a picturesque gentleman starting out for his farm, and him I
-      photographed after he had been assured that no harm could possibly happen
-      to him, though he begged very anxiously that he might be allowed to go
-      home and put on his best cloth. I think he is a very nice specimen of the
-      African peasant as he is, but I am sure he would be much troubled could he
-      know he was going into a book in his farm clothes.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was just beginning to get hot as I got back to the store after
-      wandering round the village, and I found Grant and the carriers with all
-      my gear had already started and were nowhere to be seen. It was, perhaps,
-      just as well that it never occurred to Grant that I might be afraid to be
-      left alone with strange black men. But to-day my strange black men were
-      not forthcoming. I had expected them to come gaily because, to celebrate
-      the crossing of the Eveto Range, while I had paid the carriers double, I
-      had given the hammock-boys, who had had a very easy time, a couple of
-      shillings to buy either gin or rum or palm wine, whichever they could get.
-      It stamped me as a fool woman, and now, after a long delay, they came and
-      stood round the hammock without offering to lift it from the ground.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;There is trouble,&rdquo; said the black agent sententiously.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had come out into the roadway, prepared to get into the hammock.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They say Ho be far. Four shillings no be enough money to tote hammock to
-      Ho.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I was furious. They had made the agreement. I had given exactly what they
-      asked, but where I had made the mistake was in doing more. Now what was to
-      be done? I did not hesitate for a moment. I marched straight back to the
-      cocoa-store.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Tell them,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;they can go home and I will pay them nothing. I will
-      walk.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Now if either the agent or those hammock-boys had given the thing a
-      moment's thought, they must have seen this was sheer bluff on my part. It
-      would have been a physical impossibility for me to walk, at least I think
-      so; besides, I should have been entirely alone and I had not the faintest
-      notion of the way. However, my performance of yesterday had apparently not
-      impressed them as badly as it had impressed me, and just as I was
-      meditating despairingly what on earth I should do, for I felt to give in
-      would be fatal, into the store came those men bearing the hammock, and it
-      did not need Swanzy's interpreter to tell me, &ldquo;You get in, Mammy. They go
-      quick.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      We were out of the village at once and into the country. It was
-      orchard-bush country, thick grass just growing tall with the beginning of
-      the rains, and clumps of low-growing trees, with an occasional patch of
-      miniature forest that grew so close it shut out the fierce sun overhead
-      and gave a welcome and grateful shade. We passed the preventive service
-      station on the Border&mdash;an untidy, thatched hut, presided over by a
-      black man, who looked not unlike a dilapidated, a very dilapidated railway
-      porter who had been in store for some time and got a little moth-eaten&mdash;and
-      I concluded we were at the end of British territory; but not yet. The road
-      was bad when we started, and it grew steadily worse till here it was very
-      bad indeed. It became a mere track through the rough, grass country on
-      either side, a track that admitted of but one man walking singly, and my
-      boys dropped the hammock by way of intimating that they could carry me no
-      farther. They could not, I could see that for myself, for not only was the
-      track narrow, but it twisted and turned and doubled on itself, so that a
-      corkscrew is straight in comparison with the road to Ho.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And once more fear fell upon me. I was alone with men who could not
-      understand a word that I said, who could not speak a word that I could
-      understand, and since only in a Gilbertian sense could this track be
-      called a road at all, that it could lead to anywhere seemed impossible.
-      There were no farms, no villages, not a sign of habitation. A fool-bird
-      called cynically, &ldquo;Hoo! hoo! hoo!&rdquo; and I hesitated whether I would rather
-      these eight men walked in front of me or behind me. I decided they should
-      walk in front, and they laughingly obeyed, and we walked on through the
-      heat. Many-coloured butterflies, large as small birds, flitted across the
-      track. Never have I seen such beautiful butterflies, blue as gentian, or
-      as turquoise with a brilliancy the turquoise lacks; purple, red, yellow,
-      and white were they, and it was only the utter hopelessness of keeping
-      them prevented my making any attempt to catch them. Evidently I was not as
-      afraid as I thought I was because I could reflect upon the desirability of
-      those butterflies in a collection. But I was afraid. Occasionally people,
-      men or women, in twos or threes, came along with loads upon their heads,
-      and I tried to speak to them and ask them if this really was the road to
-      Ho, but I could make no one understand and they passed on, turning to
-      stare with wonder at the stranger. There were silk-cotton trees and
-      shea-butter trees and many another unknown tree, but it seemed I had come
-      right out into the wilds beyond human ken or occupation, and I had to
-      assure myself again and again that these carriers were decent peasants,
-      just earning a little, something beyond what came from cocoa or palm oil,
-      with wives&mdash;probably many wives&mdash;and children, and the strange
-      white woman was worth a good deal more to them safely delivered at her
-      destination than in any way else. We came to a river, and by a merciful
-      interposition of Providence it was dry, and we were able to ignore the
-      slippery, moss-grown tree-trunk that did duty as bridge, and, scrambling
-      down into its bed, cross easily to the other side, and there, in the midst
-      of a shady clump of trees, was Grant with all the carriers.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So it was the road to Ho after all, and, as usual, I had worried myself
-      most unnecessarily. I sat down on my precious black box that contained all
-      my money, and Grant got out a tumbler, squeezed the last orange I
-      possessed into it, filled it up from the sparklet bottle, and I was ready
-      to laugh at my fears and face the world once more.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Again we went along the tortuous path, and then suddenly the Border!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XV&mdash;CROSSING THE BORDER
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>German roads&mdash;German villages&mdash;The lovely valley of Ho&mdash;The
-      kindly German welcome&mdash;German hospitality&mdash;An ideal woman
-      colonist&mdash;Pink roses&mdash;The way it rains in Togo&mdash;An
-      unfortunate cripple&mdash;Vain regrets&mdash;Sodden pillows&mdash;A German
-      rest-house&mdash;A meal under difficulties&mdash;Travelling by night&mdash;The
-      weirdness of it&mdash;The sounds of the night&mdash;The fireflies&mdash;A
-      long long journey&mdash;Palime by night&mdash;More German hospitality&mdash;Rail-head.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here was nothing
-      to mark the border between the Gold Coast Colony and Togo. The country on
-      the one side was as the country on the other, orchard-bush country with
-      high grass and clumps of trees and shrubs; the lowering sky was the same,
-      the fierce sun the same, only there was a road at last.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Germans make roads as the Romans made them, that their conquering
-      legions might pass, and here, in this remote corner of the earth, where
-      neither Englishman nor German comes, is a road, the like of which I did
-      not find in the Gold Coast Colony. It is hard and smooth as a garden-path,
-      it is broad enough for two carts or two hammocks to pass abreast, it runs
-      straight as a die, on either side the bushes and grass are kept neatly
-      trimmed away, and deep waterways are cut so that the heavy rainfall may
-      not spoil the road.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      After a short time we came to a preventive station, neat and pretty as a
-      station on the Volta, higher praise I cannot give it, and beyond that was
-      a village; a village that was a precursor of all the villages that were to
-      come. As a Briton I write it with the deepest regret, but the difference
-      between an English village and a German village is as the difference
-      between the model village of Edensor and the grimy town of Hanley in the
-      Black Country. Here, in this first little village on the Togo side, all
-      the ground between the houses was smoothed and swept, the houses
-      themselves looked trim and neat, great, beautiful, spreading shade-trees
-      of the order <i>ficus elasticus</i> were planted at regular intervals in
-      the main street, and underneath them were ranged logs, so that the people
-      who lounge away the heat of the day in the shade may have seats. Even the
-      goats and the sheep had a neater look, which perhaps is no wonder, for
-      here is no filthy litter or offal among which they may lie.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      As I passed on my wonder increased. Here was exactly the same country,
-      exactly the same natives, and all the difference between order and
-      neatness and slatternly untidiness.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0044" id="linkimage-0044"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0357.jpg" alt="0357 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0357.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      I went on through this charming country till I found myself looking across
-      a lovely valley at a house set high on a hill, the Commissioner's house at
-      Ho at last. I went down into the valley, along a road that was bordered
-      with flamboyant trees, all full of flame-coloured blossom, and then
-      suddenly the curtain of my hammock was whisked up, and there stood before
-      me a bearded white man, dressed in a white duck suit with a little red
-      badge in his white helmet&mdash;the Commissioner, he told me in his
-      halting English, at Ho.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Now I had come into that country without a letter or a credential of any
-      sort, a foreigner, speaking not one word of the language, and I wondered
-      what sort of reception I should meet with. I tried to explain that I was
-      looking for a rest-house, but he waved my remarks aside with a smile, made
-      me understand that his wife was up in the house on the hill, and that if I
-      would go there she could speak English, and would make me welcome. And so
-      I went on through country, lovely as the country round Anum mountain, only
-      in the British colony there is this great difference&mdash;there the land
-      is exactly as Nature made it, bar the little spoiling that man has done,
-      innocent of roads, and exceedingly difficult to traverse, while here in
-      German territory everything is being carried out on some well-thought-out
-      plan. Ho was a station straggling over hill and valley, with high hills
-      clothed with greenery near at hand, high hills fading into the blue
-      distance, and valleys that cried out to the Creator in glad thankfulness
-      that such beauty should be theirs. The road up to the Commissioner's
-      bungalow was steep, steep as the Eveto Range, but it had been graded so
-      that it was easy of ascent as a path in Hyde Park. Every tree had been
-      planted or left standing with thought, not only for its own beauty but for
-      the view that lies beyond; flamboyant, mango, palm, frangipanni, that the
-      natives call forget-me-not, all have a reason for their existence, all add
-      to the beauty and charm of the scene. And when I got to the top of the
-      hill I was at the prettiest of brown bungalows, and down the steps of the
-      verandah came a rosy-cheeked, pretty girl, ready to welcome the stranger.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Of course you stay with us,&rdquo; she said in the kindness of her hospitable
-      heart, though there was certainly no of course about it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      She took me in and gave me coffee, and as we sat eating cakes, home-made
-      German cakes, I asked her, &ldquo;You have not been out very long?&rdquo; because of
-      the bright colour of her cheeks.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, not long,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;only a year and two months. But it is so nice
-      we are asking the Government to let us stay two years.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;And you do not find it dull?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh no, I love it. The time goes so quick, so quick. There is so much to
-      do.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And then her husband came and added his welcome to hers, and paid off my
-      carriers in approved German official style, and they took me in to
-      &ldquo;evening bread,&rdquo; and I found to my intense surprise they had wreathed my
-      place at table with pink roses. Never have I had such a pretty compliment,
-      or such a pretty welcome, and only the night before I had been dining off
-      hard-boiled eggs and biscuits in Swanzy's cocoa-house at Tsito.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Bed after dinner, and next morning my hostess took me round, and showed me
-      everything there was to be seen, and told me how she passed her time. She
-      looked after the house, she saw to the food, she went for rides on her
-      bicycle, and she worked in the garden. It was the merry heart that went
-      all the day, and I will venture to say that that pretty girl, with her
-      bright, smiling face and her bright, charming manners, interested in this
-      new country to which she had come, keen on her husband's work, was an
-      asset to the nation to which she belonged; worth more to it than a dozen
-      fine ladies who pride themselves on not being <i>haus-frau</i>. And as for
-      the Commissioner, if I may judge, he was not only a strong man, but an
-      artist. He had the advantage over an English Commissioner that his tour
-      extended over eighteen months, instead of a year, and that he always came
-      back to the same place. His bungalow looked a home; round it grew up a
-      tropical garden, and behind he had planted a grove of broad-leaved teak
-      trees, and already they were so tall the pathway through the grove was a
-      leafy tunnel just flecked with golden sunshine, that told of the heat
-      outside.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Those Germans were good to me. I feel I can never be grateful enough for
-      such a warm welcome, and always, for the sake of those two there in the
-      outlands, shall I think kindly of the people of the Fatherland.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They helped me to take photographs; the Commissioner mended my camera for
-      me, and he got me more carriers, and told me that they were engaged to
-      take me on thirty miles to Palime for the sum of two shillings a piece,
-      that it could be done in one day if I chose, indeed it must be done in one
-      day unless I stayed in the rest-house at Neve, and he warned me that I
-      carried about with me a great sum of money, and asked if I were sure of my
-      boy. I did not think it was likely Grant would rob me at this stage of the
-      proceedings, but I suddenly realised with a little uncomfortable feeling
-      what implicit trust I was putting in him; and then they gave fresh
-      instructions for my comfort. It would rain, they said it always rained in
-      Togo at this season in the afternoon; and I evidently did not realise how
-      it rained, so they tied up my camera in American cloth and instructed me
-      to put my Burberry on at the first drop of rain. Then with many good
-      wishes we parted, and I set off on the road to Palime.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The road was most excellent, and anyone who has travelled for miles along
-      a track that is really little better than a hunter's trail can understand
-      the delights of smooth and easy going. We passed through villages where
-      the villagers all turned up to see the show, but I fancied, it may have
-      been only fancy, that the people were not as lightheartedly happy as in
-      English territory, and whenever we came to a stream my men stopped and
-      begged in pantomime that they might be allowed to bathe. I should like to
-      have bathed myself, so I assented cheerfully, and the result was that we
-      did not get over the ground very quickly. One of them spoke a little, a
-      very little Twi, the language of the Fantis and Ashantis, and Grant spoke
-      a little, and that was my only means of communication, lost of course when
-      he was not with me, but they were most excellent men and went on and on
-      untiringly.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Presently the clouds began to gather, a great relief, because the sun had
-      been very hot, a few drops of rain fell, and I, remembering instructions,
-      flew out of my hammock and put on my Burberry. By the time it was on the
-      few drops were many drops, and by the time I was in my hammock again, the
-      water was coming down as if it had been poured out of a bucket. Such
-      sheets of rain fairly made me gasp. Now, my hammock was old. I had
-      forgotten the need of a hammock when I started up the Volta, and finding
-      this elderly one at Anum, marked &ldquo;P.W.D.&rdquo; Public Works Department, and
-      there being nobody to say me nay, I commandeered it. Now, far be it from
-      me to revile a friend who carried me over many a weary mile of road, but
-      there is no disguising the fact, the poor old hammock was not in the first
-      bloom of youth, and the canopy was about as much use against a rainstorm
-      as so much mosquito-netting. The water simply poured through it. Now the
-      canvas of which the hammock was made, of course, held water, so did the
-      Burberry, the water trickled down my neck, and, worse still, carried as I
-      was, with my feet slightly raised, trickled down my skirts, and the
-      gallant Burberry held it like a bucket. When the water rose up to my
-      waist, icy-cold water, I got out and walked.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The sky was heavily overcast, and it was raining as if it had never had a
-      chance to rain before, and never expected to have a chance to rain again,
-      so I walked on, hatless, because I did not mind about my hair getting wet.
-      I thought to myself, &ldquo;when the sun comes out, it will dry me,&rdquo; and I
-      looked at the string of dejected-looking carriers tailing out behind with
-      all their loads covered with banana leaves. And I walked, and I walked,
-      and I walked, and there seemed no prospect of the rain stopping;
-      apparently it proposed to go on to doomsday, or at least the end of the
-      rainy season. An hour passed, two hours, three, my pillows were simply
-      sodden masses, my hammock was a wisp of wet canvas, and I was weary to
-      death; then a village came into view, a little neat German village, and
-      the people came out to look at me with interest, though they had certainly
-      seen a white woman before. I always think of that village with regret. A
-      man passed along through the mud, working his way in a sitting posture,
-      and having on his hands a sort of wooden clog. So very very seldom have I
-      seen misery in Africa that I was struck as I used to be struck when first
-      I came to England, and I put my hand in my pocket for my purse, but all my
-      money with the exception of threepence was in my box, and that threepence
-      I bestowed upon him. Now there remains with me the regret that I did not
-      give him more, for never have I seen such delight on any man's face. He
-      held it out, he called all his friends to look, he bowed obeisance before
-      me again and again. I was truly ashamed of so much gratitude for so small
-      a gift, and while I was debating how I could get at my box to make it a
-      little more, he clattered away, as happy apparently as if someone had left
-      him a fortune. But I always think of it sadly. Why didn't I manage to give
-      him two shillings. It would have meant nothing to me, and so much to him.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But now I was very tired, and when the rest-house was pointed out to me, I
-      hailed it with delight. I have seen many weird rest-houses on my travels,
-      but that was the most primitive of them all. A mud floor was raised a
-      little above the surrounding ground, and over it was a deep thatch, a
-      couple of tiny windowless rooms were made with mud walls, and just outside
-      them was a table, made by the simple process of sticking upright stakes
-      into the ground and laying rough boards across them; two chairs alongside
-      the table were also fixtures, but I sat down wearily, and Grant promptly
-      produced a pack of cards, and went away to make tea.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Bridge was not a success; I was so wet and cold, but the tea came quickly
-      along with a boiled egg and biscuits and mangoes, for the Germans it
-      appears, after their thorough fashion, always insist that wood and water
-      shall be ready in their rest-houses. I was sorry for the carriers, wet and
-      shivering, and I was sorrier for my own servant, for the rain was still
-      coming down pitilessly. I suggested he should have some tea to warm him,
-      but he did not like tea, and the other egg he also rejected, quite rightly
-      I decided when I tried to partake of the specimen he brought for me. But
-      the tea was most refreshing, and I was prepared to try and understand what
-      the carriers wanted. Briefly, they wanted to stop here. Though I could not
-      understand their tongue, I could understand that.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They say Palime be far, Ma,&rdquo; said Grant.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Yes, I reckoned Palime must be about fifteen miles, but I looked at the
-      dismal house and decided it was an impossible place to stay. I would
-      rather walk that fifteen miles. I looked at my bedding roll, and decided
-      it must be wet through and through, and then I got into that dripping and
-      uninviting hammock, among the sodden pillows, and gave the order to go on.
-      I was wet through, and I thought I could hold out if we got to Palime as
-      quickly as possible, but I knew we could not possibly do it under five
-      hours, probably longer. However, it was not as hard on me as on the men
-      who had to walk with loads on their heads. Of course I was foolish. I
-      ought either to have changed in one of those dismal-looking little mud
-      rooms, or to have filled my hot-water bottle&mdash;I always carried one to
-      be ready for the chill I never got&mdash;with hot water and wrapped myself
-      up in a rug; but I foolishly forgot all these precautions, and my
-      remembrance of that tramp to Palime is of a struggle against bitter cold
-      and wet and weariness. It was weird, too, passing along the bush in the
-      dark. Grant and the carriers dropped behind, the rain stopped, and the
-      hammock-boys lighted a smoky lantern which gleamed on the wet road ahead,
-      and was reflected in the pools of water that lay there, and made my two
-      front boys throw gigantic shadows on the bush as they passed along.
-      Strange sounds, too, came out of the bush; sometimes a leopard cried,
-      sometimes one of the great fruitarian bats bewailed itself like a woman in
-      pain, there was the splash, splash of the men's feet in the roadway, the
-      deep croak of the African bull-frog, there was the running of water, a
-      drip, drip from the trees and bushes by the roadside, and always other
-      sounds, unexplained, perhaps unexplainable, that one hears in the night.
-      Sometimes tom-toms were beating, sometimes we passed through a village and
-      a few lights appeared, and my men shouted greetings I suppose, but they
-      might have been maledictions. It is an experience I shall never forget,
-      that of being carried along, practically helpless, and hearing my men,
-      whom I could not understand, exchange shouts that I could not understand
-      with people that I could not see. It was hot I dare say, but I was wet to
-      the skin and bitter cold, and I know the night after the rain was
-      beautiful, but I was too tired and too uncomfortable to appreciate it.
-      Then the fireflies came out, like glowing sparks, and again and again I
-      thought we were approaching the lights of a town only to look again and
-      see they were fireflies.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Such a long journey it was. It seemed years since I had left Ho that
-      morning, æons since I had unhappily struggled across the Eveto Range, but
-      I remembered with satisfaction I <i>had</i> crossed the Eveto Range, and
-      so I concluded in time I should reach Palime, but it seemed a long night,
-      and I was very cold.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At last, though it was wrapped in darkness, I saw we had entered a town;
-      we passed up a wide roadway, and finally got into a yard, and my men began
-      banging on a doorway, and saying over and over again, &ldquo;Swanzy's.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The German Commissioner had suggested I should go to Swanzy's; and was it
-      possible we had really arrived? It seemed we had.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I can never get over the feeling of shyness when I go up to a total
-      stranger's house and practically demand hospitality. True, I had in my
-      pocket a telegram from Mr Percy Shaw, one of Swanzy's directors, asking
-      his agents to give me that hospitality, but still I felt dreadfully shy as
-      I waited there in the yard for some sign of life from out of the dark
-      building. It came at last, and in English too.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Who is dere?&rdquo; said a voice, and my heart sank. I thought it must be a
-      negro, since I knew the agent was a German, and thought he would be sure
-      to hail in his own tongue. Somehow I felt I could not have stood a negro
-      that night. Prejudices are very strong when one is tired.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I was wrong. The agent was a German, and down long flights of stairs
-      he came in his dressing-gown, welcoming me, and presently was doing all he
-      could for my comfort. He roused out an unwilling cook, he got cocoa and
-      wine, South-Australian wine to my surprise, and hot cakes, and bread, and
-      fruit, and then when I was refreshed, my baggage not yet having come in,
-      he solemnly conducted me to my bedroom, and presented me with a couple of
-      blankets and a very Brodbignag pair of slippers. I was far more tired than
-      when I had'crossed the Eveto Range, and I undressed, got into bed, wrapped
-      myself up in those warm blankets, and slept the sleep of the woman who
-      knows she has arrived at rail-head, and that her difficult travelling is
-      over.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XVI&mdash;ONE OF THE CURSES OF THE DARK CONTINENT
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The neat little town of Palime&mdash;The market&mdash;The breakfast&mdash;A
-      luxury for the well-to-do&mdash;Mount Klutow&mdash;The German Sleeping
-      Sickness Camp&mdash;The German's consideration for the hammock-boys&mdash;Misahohe,
-      a beautiful road, well-shaded&mdash;A kindly welcome&mdash;The little boys
-      that were cured&mdash;Dr von Raven, a devotee to science&mdash;The town of
-      the sleeping sickness patients&mdash;&ldquo;Last year strong man, this year
-      finish&rdquo;&mdash;Extreme poverty and self-denial&mdash;A ghastly, horrible,
-      lingering and insidious disease&mdash;Dr von Raven's message to the
-      English people.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>alime is the
-      neatest of little towns, set at the foot of some softly rounded hills. Not
-      hills clothed with dense bush such as I had come across farther west, but
-      hills covered with grass, emerald in the brilliant sunshine, with just
-      here and there a tree to give it a park-like appearance. And the town, it
-      is hardly necessary to say, was spotlessly neat and tidy. All the streets
-      were swept and garnished, and all the fences were whole, for if a German
-      puts up a picket fence, he intends it for a permanency, and not for a fuel
-      supply for the nearest huts. That the streets were neat was perhaps a
-      little surprising, for every morning, beginning at dawn, in those streets
-      there was held a market in which all manner of goods, native and European,
-      were exposed for sale, spread out on the ground or on stalls. I looked
-      with interest to see if I could notice any difference between the native
-      under English and under German rule in the markets, and I came to the
-      conclusion that there was none whatever. Here, at rail-head, both native
-      and European goods were bought and sold, and here too the people took
-      their alfresco meals. The native of West Africa usually starts the morning
-      with a little porridge, made of cassada, which is really the same root
-      from which comes our tapioca, but his tapioca is so thin you can drink it,
-      and it looks and smells rather like water starch. It was being made and
-      served out &ldquo;all hot&rdquo; at a copper a gourd, the customer providing his own
-      gourd, and the porridge being in a goodsized earthen pot fixed on three
-      stones over a little fire of sticks, or else the fire was built inside
-      another pot out of which one side and the top had been knocked. Porridge
-      of course is not very staying, so a little later on good ladies make their
-      appearance who fry maize-meal balls in palm oil, and sell them for two a
-      &ldquo;copper,&rdquo; the local name for a <i>pfennig</i>, which is not copper at all,
-      but nickel. Very appetising indeed look these balls. The little flat
-      earthenware pan on the fire is full of boiling palm oil, and the seller
-      mixes very carefully the maize meal, water, a little salt, and some native
-      pepper, till it is smooth like batter, such as a cook would make a pancake
-      of, then it is dropped into the boiling oil, and the result, in a minute
-      or so, is a round, brown ball, which looks and smells delicious. Sometimes
-      trade is brisk, and they are bought straight out of the pan, but when it
-      slacks they are taken out and heaped up on a calabash. I conclude that it
-      is only the aristocracy who indulge in such luxuries, for I am told that
-      the average wage of a labourer in Palime here is ninepence a day, but
-      judging by what I saw, there must have been a good many of the aristocracy
-      in Palime. After all, the woman from the time she is a tiny child is
-      always self-supporting, so in a community where every man and woman is
-      self-supporting, I conclude that many luxuries are attainable that would
-      not be possible when one man has to provide for many.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0045" id="linkimage-0045"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0369.jpg" alt="0369 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0369.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The butchers' shops presided over as they are on the Gold Coast by Hausas
-      are not inviting, and tend to induce strong vegetarian views in anyone who
-      looks upon them, and the amount of very highly smelling stink-fish makes
-      the vegetarian regime very narrow. But there are other things beside
-      food-stuffs for sale; from every railing flutter gay cloths from
-      Manchester, or its rival on the Coast, Keta, and there were several women
-      selling very nice earthenware pots, that attracted me very much. They were
-      the commonest household utensils of the native woman; she uses the smaller
-      ones as plates and dishes, and the larger ones for water, for washing, or
-      for storage. The big ones were terribly expensive and cost a whole
-      sixpence, while a penny brought me a big store of small ones. I thought
-      how very quaint and pretty my balcony at home would look with plants
-      growing in these pots from such a far corner of the earth, and so I bought
-      largely, even though I knew I should have to engage a couple of extra
-      carriers for them, and my host applauded my taste.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      That young German was very kindly. I showed him my telegram, but he
-      laughed at it, and gave me to understand that of course I was welcome
-      anyhow, though again I can certainly see no of course about it. Why should
-      he, in the kindness of his heart, put himself out for me, a total
-      stranger, who did not even belong to his nation? Still he did.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was bent on going on to Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness Camp,
-      and he said he had never seen it, though it was only a short distance
-      away, so he would get carriers and come with me. Accordingly we got
-      carriers, paying them threepence extra because it was Sunday, and went up
-      to Mount Klutow. They were very good carriers, but since I have heard so
-      much about the German's inconsiderateness to the native, I must put it on
-      record that when we came to a steep part of the road, and it was very
-      steep, though a most excellent road, that German not only got out and
-      walked himself, but expected me to do the same. I did of course, but many
-      and many a time have I made my men carry me over far worse places, and
-      many an Englishman have I seen doing likewise.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Again I must put it on record that these German roads are most excellent.
-      They are smooth and wide, well-rolled and hard, and they are shady, a
-      great boon in such a climate. Every native tree that is suitable has been
-      allowed to stand, and others have been planted, shapely, dark-green
-      mangoes and broad-leaved teak, and since all undergrowth has been cleared
-      away, the road seems winding through a beautiful park, while there is
-      absolutely no mosquito. During all my stay in German territory I never
-      slept under a mosquito curtain, and I never saw that abomination, a
-      mosquito-proof room. The Germans evidently think it is easier to do away
-      with the mosquito.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Misahohe is a little Government station, set on the side of the mountain
-      up which we were climbing. It looks from a distance something like a Swiss
-      chalet, and the view from there is as magnificent as that from Anum
-      mountain itself, only here there are white men connected, I think, with
-      the German medical station to see and appreciate its beauties. On and on
-      went the beautiful road; but even the Germans have not yet succeeded in
-      getting rid of the tsetse fly, and so though the roads are good, there are
-      as yet no horses. We met great carts of trade goods going to Kpando,
-      fifteen miles away, and they were drawn and pushed their slow, slow
-      journey by panting, struggling Kroo boys. Strongly as I should object to
-      carrying a load on my head, I really think it would be worse to turn the
-      wheels of a laden cart, spoke by spoke, while you slowly worked it
-      up-hill.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness Camp, there is no timber,
-      and the first impression is of barrenness. We went up and up, and I, who
-      had not yet recovered from my long day's journey to Palime, was
-      exceedingly thankful when my escort allowed me to lie in my hammock till
-      we arrived at a plateau surrounded by low hills. It was really the top of
-      the mountain. There was a poor-looking European bungalow, a very German
-      wooden kiosk on the other side of the road, and a winding road, with on
-      either side of it little brown native huts built of clay, and thatched. It
-      is just a poor-looking native village, with the huts built rather farther
-      apart than the native seems to like his huts when he can choose, and none
-      of the usual shelter trees which he likes about his village. After the
-      magnificent tropical scenery we had just passed through it looked dreary
-      in the extreme, but the young man who came out of the bungalow and made us
-      most kindly welcome, Dr von Raven, the doctor in charge, explained that
-      this barrenness was the very reason of its existence. They wanted a place
-      that the cool winds swept, and they wanted a place that gave no harbour to
-      the <i>glossina pal palis</i>, the tsetse fly that conveys the disease.
-      Mount Klutow was ideal.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had hesitated a little about visiting a doctor and asking him for
-      information. I had no claim, no letters of introduction, and I should not
-      have been surprised if he had paid no attention to me, but, on the
-      contrary, Dr von Raven was kindness itself. He took us to the little kiosk
-      and sent for wine and cakes and beer, so that we might be refreshed after
-      our hot journey, though it was hardly hot here. The good things were
-      brought by two small boys, and the doctor put his hand first on one
-      shoulder and then on the other, and turned the little laughing black faces
-      for me to see.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Sleeping sickness,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Cured,&rdquo; and he gave them a friendly cuff
-      and let them go. He knew very little English, and I knew no German, and Mr
-      Fesen's, even though he was agent for an English firm, was of the
-      scantiest; so that it was a process of difficulty to collect information,
-      and it was only done by the infinite kindness and patience of the two
-      Germans. Dr von Raven produced papers and showed me statistics, and so by
-      degrees I learned all there is to be known, and then he took me round and
-      showed me the patients.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Many men in Africa count themselves exiles, but never saw I more clearly
-      the attributes of exile than in Dr von Raven. Comforts he had none, and
-      his house was bare almost to poverty. Here he had lived for two and a half
-      years without going home, and here he intended to live till some
-      experiments he had in hand were complete. A devotee to science truly, but
-      a cheerful, intensely interested one, with nothing of the martyr about
-      him. Very few white people he must have seen, and he said himself he had
-      only been down to the nearest town of Palime three times in two years, but
-      he looked far better in health than many a man I have seen who has been on
-      the Coast only as many months.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0046" id="linkimage-0046"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0375.jpg" alt="0375 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0375.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      From the doctor's house there curves a road about a kilometre in length,
-      and off this are the houses of the sleeping sickness patients. Two and two
-      they are built, facing each other, two rooms in each house and plenty of
-      space between. They are built of mud, with holes for doors and windows,
-      and the roofs are of grass&mdash;native huts of the most primitive
-      description. Each patient has a room, and each is allowed one relative to
-      attend him. Thus a husband may have a wife, a mother her daughter, and
-      between them they have an allowance of sevenpence a day for food, ample in
-      a country where the usual wage for a day labourer is ninepence. There are
-      one hundred and fifty-five patients in all, and besides them there are a
-      few soldiers for dignity, because the neighbouring chiefs would think very
-      lightly of a man who had not evidences of power behind him, and so
-      whenever the doctor passes they come tumbling out of the guard-room to
-      salute him. There are also a certain number of labourers, because though
-      many of the sick are quite capable of waiting on themselves, it would
-      never do for them to go beyond the confines of the camp, and possibly, or
-      probably, infect the flies that abound just where wood and water are to be
-      had.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Of course there is a market where the women meet and chat and buy their
-      provisions; there are cookhouses and all the attributes of a rather poor
-      native village, but a village where the people are among the surroundings
-      to which they have been accustomed all their lives and in which they are
-      more thoroughly at home than in a hospital. Part of the bareness may be
-      attributed to economy, but the effect is greatly heightened by the absence
-      of all vegetation. Anything that might afford shelter for the flies or
-      shut out the strong, health-giving breezes that blow right across the
-      plateau is strictly forbidden. And here were people in all stages of the
-      disease&mdash;those who had just come in, who to the ordinary eye appeared
-      to have nothing wrong with them, great, strong, healthy-looking men, men
-      of thews and sinews who had been completely cured, and those who were past
-      all help and were lying waiting for death.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You would like to see them?&rdquo; asked the doctor.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I said I would, and I would like to take a photograph or two if I might.
-      My stock of plates was getting woefully scarce.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, and we went down the roadway.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A man was borne out of one of the huts and laid on the ground in the
-      brilliant sunshine. He was wasted to skin and bone, his eyes were sunken
-      and half-open, showing the whites, his skeleton limbs lay helpless, and
-      his head fell forward like a baby's. The doctor pointed to him pitifully.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Last year,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;strong man like this,&rdquo; indicating the men who bore
-      him; &ldquo;this year&mdash;finish.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;He will die?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, he will die&mdash;soon.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0047" id="linkimage-0047"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0379.jpg" alt="0379 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0379.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      And the great brawny savages who carried the stretcher, stark but for a
-      loin cloth and a necklace, with their hair cut into cock's combs, had come
-      there with sleeping sickness and were cured. They brought them out of all
-      the huts to show the visitor&mdash;women in the last stages after epilepsy
-      had set in, with weary eyes, worn faces, and contracted limbs, happy
-      little children with swollen glands, a woman with atoxyl blindness who was
-      cured, a man with atoxyl blindness who, in spite of all, will die. They
-      were there in all stages of the disease, in all stages of recovery. Some
-      looked as if there was nothing the matter with them, but the enlarged
-      glands in the neck could always be felt. The doctor did not seem very
-      hopeful. &ldquo;We could cure it,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it is quite curable if we could
-      only get the cases early enough. Not 2 per cent, of the flies are
-      infected, and of course every man who is bitten by an infected fly does
-      not necessarily contract the disease.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It comes on very insidiously. Three weeks it takes to develop, and then
-      the patient has a little fever every evening. In the morning his
-      temperature is down again, only to rise once more in the evening.
-      Sometimes he will have a day without a rise, sometimes three or four, but
-      you would find, were you to look, the parasites in the blood. After three
-      or four months the glands of the neck begin to swell, and this is the time
-      when the natives recognise the danger and excise the glands. But swollen
-      glands are not always caused by sleeping sickness, and, in that case, if
-      the wounds heal properly, the patient recovers; but if the parasites are
-      in the blood then such rough surgery only causes unnecessary suffering
-      without in any way retarding the progress of the disease. Slowly it
-      progresses, very slowly. Sometimes it takes three or four months before
-      nervous symptoms come on, sometimes it may be twelve months, and after
-      that the case is hopeless. Not all the physicians in the world in the
-      present state of medical knowledge could cure it. In Europeans&mdash;and
-      something like sixty Europeans are known to have contracted the disease&mdash;very
-      often immediately after the bite of the fly, symptoms have been noticed on
-      the skin, red swellings, but in the black man apparently the skin is not
-      affected.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The treatment is of the simplest, but the doctor only arrived at it after
-      careful experiment. After having ascertained by examination of the blood
-      that the patient has sleeping sickness he weighs the patient and gives him
-      five centigrams per kilogram of his own weight of arsenophenylycin. This
-      is divided into two portions and given on two consecutive days, and the
-      treatment is finished. Of course the patient is carefully watched and his
-      blood tested, and if at the end of ten days the parasites are still found,
-      the dose is repeated. Sometimes it is found that the toxin has no effect,
-      and then the doctor resorts to atoxyl, which he administers the same way
-      every two days, with ten days between the doses. This has one grave
-      drawback, for sometimes in conjunction with sleeping sickness it causes
-      blindness. Out of eighty-five cases that have taken atoxyl since 1908 five
-      have gone blind. I saw there one young man cured and stone-blind, and one
-      woman also cured and but just able to see men &ldquo;as trees walking.&rdquo;
-       Apparently there was nothing wrong with their eyes, but the blank look of
-      the blind told that they could not see.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At first this camp here up among the hills was looked upon with suspicion
-      by the natives, and they resisted all efforts to bring them to it. They
-      feared, as they have always feared, all German thoroughgoing methods. But
-      gradually, as is only natural, a good thing makes its own reputation, and
-      the natives who were before so fearful come long distances to seek help
-      where they know only help can be found.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0048" id="linkimage-0048"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0383.jpg" alt="0383 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0383.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      After we had walked all round the camp and got well soaked with the
-      ordinary Togo afternoon shower, of which none of us took any notice, we
-      went back to the kiosk for more refreshment, and here we found waiting us
-      one of the Roman Catholic Fathers from Palime. He was a fair-bearded man
-      in a white helmet and a long, white-cotton <i>soutane</i>, which somehow,
-      even in this country of few clothes, gave the appear-ence of extreme
-      poverty and self-denial. He had come up on a bicycle and had a great deal
-      to say about the sleeping sickness. A day or two before he had been
-      travelling two days west of Palime and he was asked by a native if he
-      could speak English, and, when he assented, was taken to see a sick man.
-      The man was a stranger to the people round and could only make himself
-      understood in pigeon English. He told the Father he lived six days away,
-      in British territory, and as he talked he perpetually took snuff. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo;
-       asked the Father, &ldquo;do you take snuff when you talk to me?&rdquo; Because, the
-      man explained, he had the sickness, and unless he took the strong, pungent
-      snuff into his nostrils he could not talk, his head would fall forward,
-      and he would become drowsy at once. This, he went on to say, was his
-      reason for being here, so far from his home. He had heard there was a
-      doctor here who could cure the sickness, and he was journeying to him as
-      fast as he could. It is sad to think after such faith that he had probably
-      left it too late.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It is very difficult, indeed,&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;to be sure of a cure.&rdquo;
-       The patient is discharged as cured and bound over to come back every six
-      months for examination, and if each time his blood is examined it is free
-      from parasites, all is well. He is certainly cured. But he has gone back
-      to his home in an infected district, and if after six months or twelve
-      months the parasite is again found, who is to say whether he has been
-      re-infected or whether there has been a recrudescence of the old disorder?
-      Occasionally, says the doctor, it is impossible to find the parasite in
-      the blood, while the patient undoubtedly dies of sleeping sickness; the
-      parasite is in the brain.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Since 1908 there have been four hundred cases through the doctor's hands.
-      Of these 19 per cent, have died of sleeping sickness, 67 per cent, have
-      been sent away as cured, and about 3 per cent, have died of other causes.
-      Only ten of those sent away as cured have failed to present themselves for
-      re-examination, and in this land where every journey must be made on foot,
-      and food probably carried for the journey, it speaks very well, I think,
-      for both doctor and patients that so many have come back to him. He is far
-      kinder, probably, than the natives would be to each other&mdash;too kind
-      for his own convenience, for the natives fear his laboratory, and will not
-      come there at night, because when a patient is dying and past all other
-      help he has him brought there to die. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;I may be able to
-      help a little,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But how kind!&rdquo; He shrugged his shoulders with a
-      little smile. &ldquo;It is nothing, it is doctor,&rdquo; and he waved the thought
-      aside as if I were making too much of it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The disease comes, so says Dr von Raven, from west to east, and was first
-      noticed in the Gambia in 1901. As long ago as 1802 a Dr Winterbottom
-      described the sleeping sickness, and in 1850 a slavetrader noticed the
-      swelling of the glands and refused to take slaves so afflicted.
-      Undoubtedly cases of sleeping sickness must have been imported to the West
-      Indies or America, but owing to the absence of the <i>glossina palpalis</i>
-      to act as host the disease did not spread. That it is a ghastly, horrible,
-      lingering, and insidious disease, that every man who has it where the <i>glossina
-      palpalis</i> abounds is a danger to the community among whom he dwells, no
-      one can doubt. They say that after a certain time the natives of a
-      district may acquire immunity, but as this immunity comes only after
-      severe suffering, it is perhaps better to stop the spread of the disease.
-      The Germans have no hesitation in restricting the movements of the native
-      if he is likely to become a public danger, but the British Government is
-      very loath to interfere with a man's rights, even though it be the right
-      to spread disease and death. Dr von Raven and the English Dr Horne met in
-      conference a few months ago with the object of urging upon their
-      respective Governments the absolute necessity for allowing no man to cross
-      the Volta unless he have a certificate from a medical man that he is free
-      from sleeping sickness. They contend, probably rightly, that a little
-      trouble now would ensure the non-spread of the disease and assist
-      materially in stamping it out. The Volta is a natural barrier; there are
-      only two or three well-known crossing places where the people pass to and
-      fro; and here they think a man might well be called upon to present his
-      certificate. Against this is urged the undoubted fact that large numbers
-      of the people are at no time affected, and, therefore, it would be going
-      to a great deal of trouble and expense to effect a small thing. But is it
-      a small thing?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You write,&rdquo; said the doctor as he bid me farewell; &ldquo;you write?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I said I did a little.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Then tell the English people,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how necessary it is to stamp out
-      this disease while it is yet small.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And so to the best of my ability I give his message, the message of a man
-      who is denying himself all things that go to make life pleasant, for the
-      sake of curing this disease, and if that sacrifice is worth while, and he
-      says it is well worth while, then I think it should be well worth the
-      while of us people, who are responsible for these dark children we govern,
-      to put upon them, even at cost to themselves and us, such restrictions as
-      may help to save in the future even 2 per cent, of the population from a
-      ghastly and lingering death.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XVII&mdash;GERMAN VERSUS ENGLISH METHODS
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Lome, the capital of Togo&mdash;A bad situation but the best laid-out
-      town on the Coast&mdash;Avenues of trees&mdash;Promising gardens&mdash;The
-      simple plan by which the Germans ensure the making of the roads&mdash;The
-      prisoner who feared being &ldquo;leff&rdquo;&mdash;The disappointed lifer&mdash;The
-      A.D.C.'s kindness&mdash;The very desirable prison garb&mdash;The energetic
-      Englishman&mdash;How to make a road&mdash;Building a reputation.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>eople who sigh, &ldquo;I
-      am such a bad traveller,&rdquo; as if it were something to be proud of, and
-      complain of the hardships of a railway journey, should come upon the
-      railway after they have had several days in a canoe, some hard walking,
-      and some days' hammock journeying, and then they would view it in quite a
-      different light. I felt it was the height of luxury when I stepped into a
-      first-class railway carriage on the little narrow gauge railway, that goes
-      from Palime to Lome, the capital of Togo.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My host had insisted on telegraphing to Swanzy's there.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They meet you. More comfortable.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Undoubtedly it would be more comfortable, but I wondered what I had done
-      that I should merit so much consideration for my comfort from men who were
-      not only total strangers, but belonged to a nation that has not the
-      reputation for putting itself out for women. I can only say that no one
-      has been kinder to me than those Germans of Togo, and for their sakes I
-      have a very soft corner in my heart for all their nation, and when we
-      English do not like them I can only think it is because of some
-      misunderstanding that a little better knowledge on both sides would clear
-      away.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      You do not see the country well from a railway train even though the
-      stoppages are many. I have a far better idea of the country between the
-      English border and Palime than of the country between Palime and Lome. I
-      was the only first-class passenger; the white men travelled second class,
-      and all the coloured people third, that is in big, empty, covered trucks
-      where they took their food, their babies, their bedding, their baggage,
-      and in fact seemed to make themselves quite as comfortable as if they were
-      at home.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And at Lome a young German from Messrs Swanzy's met me with a cart and
-      carriers for my gear, and carried me off and installed me at their fine
-      house on the sea-front as if I had every right to be there, which I
-      certainly had not.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Lome is the most charming town I have seen in West Africa. It is neat and
-      tidy and clean, it is beautifully laid out, and the buildings are such as
-      would do credit to any nation. Very evident it is that the German does not
-      consider himself an exile, but counts himself lucky to possess so fine a
-      country, and is bent on making the best of it. For Lome has certainly been
-      made the very best of. Only fifteen years ago did the Germans move their
-      capital from Little Pope in the east to Lome in the west of their colony,
-      not a great distance, for the whole sea-board is only thirty-five miles in
-      length, and all that length is, I believe, swamp. Lome is almost
-      surrounded by swamp; its very streets are rescued from it, but with German
-      thoroughness those streets are well-laid-out, the roads well-made and
-      well-kept, and are planted with trees, palms, flamboyant, and the handsome
-      <i>ficus elasticus</i>. Here is a picture of a street in Lome, and the
-      trees are only four years old, but already they stretch across the road
-      and make a pleasant shade. The gardens and the trees of Lome made a great
-      impression on me. Any fences one sees are neat, but as a rule they do not
-      have many fences, only round every bungalow is a well-laid-out, well-kept,
-      tropical garden; if it is only just made you know it will be good in the
-      future because of the promise fulfilled in the garden beside it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0049" id="linkimage-0049"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0393.jpg" alt="0393 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0393.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      All the Government bungalows look like young palaces, and are built to
-      hold two families, the higher-class man having the choice of the flats,
-      and generally taking the upper. Indeed I could find no words to express my
-      admiration for this German capital which compared so very favourably with
-      the English capital I had left but a short time before.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When I had talked to the Commissioner at Ho about the magnificent roads, I
-      had hinted at the forced labour which is talked of so openly in the
-      English colony as being a sin of the Germans. But he denied it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;How do you make your roads then?&rdquo; I asked.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;There is a tax of six shillings a head or else a fortnight's labour a
-      year. It is right. If we have no roads how can we have trade?&rdquo; and I,
-      thinking of the 25 per cent, of the cocoa harvest left up the Afram river
-      because &ldquo;we no be fit to tote,&rdquo; quite agreed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Every English village has some sort of tax by which the roads are kept in
-      order, why object if that tax is paid in the most useful sort of kind,
-      namely labour.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Very very wisely it seems to me have the Germans laid the foundations of
-      their colony, and though it has not paid in the past, it is paying now and
-      in the future it will pay well.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But a certain set of people were not quite as happy as those in the
-      English towns, and that was the prisoners working in the streets. They had
-      iron collars round their necks and were chained together two and two, and
-      though they were by no means depressed, they were not as cheery as the
-      English prisoners. The English negro prisoner is unique. His punishment
-      has been devised by people at home who do not understand the negro and his
-      limitations, and the difficulty of adequately punishing is one of the
-      difficulties of administration in an English colony.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;How do you keep your villages so neat?&rdquo; I asked the Germans.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If they are not neat we fine them.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But if they do not pay the fine?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Then we beat them.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And though it may sound rather brutal, I am inclined to think that is the
-      form of teaching the negro thoroughly understands. He is not yet educated
-      up to understanding the disgrace of going to prison, and regards it
-      somewhat in the light of a pleasant change from the ordinary routine.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The German prisoner is clad in his own rags, the garb an ordinary
-      working-man usually wears. The English prisoner is at the expense of the
-      Government clad in a neat white suit ornamented with a broad arrow. He can
-      hardly bring himself to believe that this is meant for a disgrace, and
-      rather admires himself I fancy in his new costume. Many many are the tales
-      told of the prisoner and his non-realisation of the punishment meted out
-      to him. Once a party of three or four were coming along a street in
-      Freetown, under the charge of a warder, and they stopped to talk to
-      someone. Then they went on again, but one of the party lingered behind to
-      finish his gossip.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The warder looked back. They were still in earnest conversation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No. 14,&rdquo; he called, warningly.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      No. 14 paid no attention.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No. 14,&rdquo; a little more peremptorily.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Still No. 14 was interested in his friend.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No. 14,&rdquo; called the warder sternly, as one who was threatening the worst
-      penalties of the law, &ldquo;if you no come at once, I leff you, No. 14.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And No. 14 with the dire prospect of being &ldquo;leff&rdquo; to his own devices, shut
-      out of paradise in fact, ran to join the others.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There is another story current in Accra about an unfortunate prisoner who
-      got eight months extra. He had been &ldquo;leff,&rdquo; and, finding himself shut out,
-      promptly broke into prison; what was a poor man to do? At any rate, the
-      authorities gave him an extra eight months, so I suspect all parties were
-      entirely satisfied.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Then there was the man who was in for life, and was so thoroughly
-      well-behaved that after sixteen years the Government commuted his sentence
-      and released him. Do you think that prisoner was pleased? He was in a most
-      terrible state of mind, and the mournful petition went up&mdash;What had
-      he done to be so treated? He had served the Government faithfully for
-      sixteen years, and now they were turning him away for absolutely no fault
-      whatever.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He prayed them to reconsider their decision and restore him to the place
-      he had so ably filled!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The fact of the matter is, the negro is very much better for a strong hand
-      over him. He is a child, and like a child should have his hours of labour
-      and his hours of play apportioned to him. The firm hand is what he
-      requires and appreciates. What he may develop into in the future I do not
-      know, with his mighty strength, his fine development, and his superb
-      health; if he had but a mind to match it he must overrun the earth.
-      Luckily for us he has not as yet a mind to match it, he is a child, with a
-      child's wild and unrestrained desires, and like a child it is well for him
-      that some stronger mind should guide his ways. So he thoroughly
-      appreciates prison discipline, but it never occurs to him that it is any
-      disgrace. Even when he has reached a higher standing than that of the
-      peasant, it is hard to make him understand that there is anything
-      disgraceful in going to prison.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Not so very long ago there was a black barrister in one of the
-      West-African capitals who had been home to England. He was naturally a man
-      of some education and standing. Now the Governor's A.D.C. had been for
-      some little time inspector of prisoners. There was a dinner-party at
-      Government House, and what was this young man's astonishment to have his
-      hand seized and shaken very warmly by the black barrister who was a guest.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I have to thank you,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for your great kindness to my mother
-      while she was in prison, when I was in England last year.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Clearly, then, it seems that the Germans are on the right track when they
-      do not dress their prisoners in any special garb. If you come to think of
-      it, a white suit marked with a broad arrow is quite as smart and a good
-      deal cheaper than a red cloth marked with a blue broom, and the black man
-      naturally feels some pride in swaggering round in it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A good sound beating is of course the correct thing, and though a good
-      sound beating is not legal in English territory, luckily, say I very
-      luckily&mdash;for the negro does not understand leniency, he regards it as
-      a sign of weakness&mdash;it is many a time administered <i>sub rosa</i>,
-      and the inferior respects the kindly man who is his master, who if he do
-      wrong will have no hesitation in having him laid out and a round dozen
-      administered. If English administration was not hampered by the
-      well-meaning foolishness of folks at home, I venture to think that native
-      towns would be cleaner and West-African health would be better. Because
-      much as I admire the Germans and the wonderful fixed plan on which they
-      have built up their colony, I have known Englishmen who could get just as
-      good results if their hands had not been tied. And occasionally one meets
-      or hears of a man who will not allow his hands to be tied.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In a certain district by the Volta there are excellent roads much
-      appreciated by the natives. Now these roads were extra vile and likely to
-      remain so before Government could be prevailed upon to stir up the local
-      chiefs to a sense of their duty. But there was an officer in that district
-      who thoroughly understood how to deal with the black man, and he was far
-      enough away from headquarters to make sure of a free hand. He found the
-      making of those roads simple enough. He bought a few dozen native hoes and
-      set a sentry on the road to be made with a rifle over his shoulder and a
-      watch upon his wrist. His orders were to stop every man who passed, put a
-      hoe into his hand, and force him to work upon that road for half an hour
-      by the watch. History sayeth not what happened if he rebelled, but of
-      course he did not rebel. Once, so says rumour, this mighty coloniser came
-      to a place where the roads were worse than usual, which from my experience
-      is saying they were very bad indeed, and he sent for the Chief. The Chief
-      said he could not make his people come to work&mdash;the English had
-      destroyed his power.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the energetic Englishman, &ldquo;the fine is £5. If they are
-      not in in half an hour it'll be £10, and I'll bring 'em in in handcuffs.&rdquo;
-       He began to collect them&mdash;with the handcuffs&mdash;but the second
-      fine was not necessary. They were both illegal, but, as I have said, he
-      was far away from headquarters, and he made those roads. The native bore
-      no malice. It was exactly the treatment he understood. There was a rude
-      justice in it. It was patent to every eye that the road was bad. It was
-      common sense that the man who used it should mend it, and as long as that
-      official was in the country there were in his district roads and bridges
-      as good as any in German Togo; and bridges as a rule are conspicuous by
-      their absence in English territory. Also, as the Government never sends a
-      man back to the same place, this man's good work is all falling back into
-      disrepair, for it is hardly to be expected that Government will be lucky
-      enough to get another man who will dare set its methods at defiance.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Lome, like Accra, has made an effort to get the better of the fierce surf
-      that makes landing so difficult all along the African coast, and they,
-      instead of a useless breakwater, have built a great bridge out into deep
-      water, and at the end of this bridge a large wharf pier or quay, high
-      above the waves, where passengers and goods can be lifted by cranes, and
-      the men can walk the half-mile to the shore dry-shod, or the goods can be
-      taken by train right to the very doors of the warehouses for which they
-      are intended. This cost the much less sum of £100,000. It was highly
-      successful, and a great source of pride to all Togo till a tremendous
-      hurricane a week or so after I had left, swept away the bridge part and
-      left Lome cut off from communication with the rest of the coast, for so
-      successful had this great bridge been they had no surf boats. Still, in
-      spite of that disaster, I think the Germans have managed better than the
-      English, for the bridge even after the necessary repairs have been done
-      will have cost scarcely £150,000, much less than Accra's breakwater, and
-      of course there is no necessity for the sand-pump.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I feel it is ungracious to abuse my own nation and not to recognise all
-      they have done for the negro&mdash;all they have done in the way of
-      colonisation, but after that journey across the little-known part of the
-      Gold Coast into the little-known part of German Togo, I can but see that
-      there is something much to be admired in the thorough German methods.
-      Particularly would I commend the manner in which they conserve the trees
-      and preserve the natural beauties of the country. A beauty-spot to them is
-      a beauty-spot, whether it be in the Fatherland or in remote West Africa,
-      while England seems indifferent if the beautiful place be not within the
-      narrow seas. Possibly she has no eyes; possibly she is only calm in her
-      self-conceit, certain of her position, while Germany is building&mdash;building
-      herself a reputation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XVIII&mdash;KETA ON THE SAND
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The safety of the seashore&mdash;Why they do not plant trees in English
-      territory&mdash;The D.C.'s prayer&mdash;Quittah or Keta&mdash;The Bremen
-      Sisters&mdash;The value of fresh air as a preventive of fever&mdash;A
-      polygamous household&mdash;The Awuna people&mdash;The backsliding clerk of
-      the Bremen Mission&mdash;Incongruity of antimacassars and polygamy&mdash;Naming
-      the child&mdash;&ldquo;Laughing at last&rdquo; and &ldquo;Not love made you&rdquo;&mdash;Forms of
-      marriage&mdash;The cost of a wife&mdash;How to poison an enemy&mdash;Loving
-      and dutiful children&mdash;The staple industry of the place&mdash;Trading
-      women&mdash;The heat of Keta.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>aving got into
-      Lome the question was how to get out of it. I wanted to go to Keta,
-      twenty-seven miles away in British territory, and my idea was to go by sea
-      as I could do it in three hours at the very most, and Elder Dempster,
-      having very kindly franked me on their steamers, it would cost me nothing
-      save the tips to the surf boats that landed me; but there was one great
-      thing against that&mdash;my hosts told me that very often the surf was so
-      bad it was impossible to land at Keta. The head of Swanzy's had a man
-      under him at Keta, and when he went to inspect he invariably went
-      overland. That decided me. I too must go overland.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But carriers were by no means cheap. I had got hammock-boys to carry me
-      the thirty miles from Ho to Palime for two shillings, and here for
-      twenty-seven miles along the shore I paid my hammock-boys six shillings
-      and sixpence and my carriers five shillings and sixpence, so that my pots
-      were adding to their original price considerably.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So on a fine, hot morning in May I was, with my train of carriers, on the
-      road once more. First the going was down between groves of palms by the
-      Governor's palace, which is a palace indeed, and must have cost a small
-      fortune. A very brief walk brought us to the Border, and then the contrast
-      was once more marked. The English villages were untidy and filthy, with a
-      filth that was emphasised now that I had seen what could be done by a
-      little method and orderliness; those Coast villages remain in my mind as a
-      mixture of pigs, and children, and stagnant water, and all manner of
-      litter and untidiness. One saving grace they had was that they were set
-      among the nice clean sand of the seashore that absorbed as much as
-      possible all the dirt and moisture, and we passed along through groves of
-      cocoa-nut palms that lent a certain charm and picturesqueness to the
-      scene. I am never lonely beside the sea; the murmur of its waves is
-      company, and I cannot explain it, but I am never afraid. I do not know
-      why, but I could not walk in a forest by myself, yet I could walk for
-      miles along the seashore and never fear, though I suppose many deeds of
-      violence have been done along these shores; but they have been done on the
-      sand, and the waters have swept over them, and washed all memory of them
-      away.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Soon it was evident that we were travelling along almost as narrow a way
-      as that which led along the shore to Half Assinie. There was a lagoon on
-      the right hand, and the sea on the left, and the numerous villages drew
-      their sustenance from the sea and from the cocoa-nut palms in which they
-      were embowered.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      All the hot long day we travelled, and at last, towards evening, on either
-      side of the road, we came upon fine shade-trees of an order of <i>ficus</i>,
-      planted, it is hardly needful to say, by the Danes who owned this place
-      over thirty years ago. It makes such a wonderful difference, this
-      tree-planting, that I have preached it wherever I went. I met one young
-      D.C. who agreed with me heartily, but explained to me the difficulties of
-      the job in English territory.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had suggested they might get trees from the agricultural stations that
-      Government is beginning to dot over the country, and he said it was quite
-      possible. In fact they had planted three hundred the year before. The
-      place I was in was rather barren-looking, so I asked where they were. He
-      shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the native sheep and goats; they are
-      only to be distinguished by their tails, and a certain perkiness about the
-      goats.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said I, surprised, &ldquo;if you plant trees, you should certainly
-      protect them.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;How?&rdquo; said he.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Barbed wire,&rdquo; was my idea.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;And where are we to get the money for barbed wire? We put cactus all
-      round those three hundred trees we planted, and then the medical officer
-      got on to us because the cactus held water and became a breeding place for
-      mosquitoes, and so we had to take it away, and I don't believe six of
-      those trees are alive now. You see it is too disheartening.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Another thing that is very disheartening is the fact that tours, as they
-      call a term of service among the English, last twelve months, and that a
-      man at the end of a tour goes away for five months, and very often never
-      again returns to the same place, so that he has no permanent interest in
-      its welfare.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Give peace in my time, oh Lord,&rdquo; they declare is the prayer of the
-      West-African D.C., and can we wonder? A man is not likely to stir up
-      strife in a place if he is not going to remain long enough to show that he
-      has stirred it up in a good cause. Fancy a German D.C. explaining his
-      failure to have proper shade-trees by the fact that the native sheep and
-      goats had eaten them!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The English have decided that Keta shall be called Quittah, which means
-      nothing at all, but the native name is, and I imagine will be for a long
-      time to come, Keta, which means &ldquo;On the sand,&rdquo; and on the sand the town
-      literally is. It is simply built on a narrow sand-bank between the ocean
-      and a great lagoon which stretches some days' journey into the interior,
-      and at Keta, at its widest, is never more than a quarter of a mile in
-      extent.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I appealed to the D.C. for quarters, and he very kindly placed me with the
-      Bremen Mission Sisters, and asked me to dinner every night. I feel I must
-      have been an awful nuisance to that D.C., and I am most grateful for his
-      kindness, and still more grateful for his introduction to those kindly
-      mission Sisters.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Deaconesses&rdquo; they called themselves; and they had apparently vowed
-      themselves to the service of the heathen as absolutely as any nun, and
-      wore simple little cotton dresses with white net caps. Sister Minna, who
-      had been out for ten long years, going home I think in that time twice,
-      spoke the vernacular like a native, and Sister Connie was learning it.
-      They kept a girls' school where some three hundred girls, ranging from
-      three to thirteen, learned to read, and write, and sew, and sum, and I was
-      introduced to quite a new phase of African life, for never before had I
-      been able to come so closely in touch with the native.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Again I have to put it on record that I have absolutely no sympathy with
-      missionaries. I cannot see the necessity for missions to the heathen; as
-      yet there should be no crumbs to fall from the children's table while the
-      children of Europe are in such a shameful state as many of them are, far
-      worse than any heathen I have ever seen in Africa. But that did not
-      prevent me admiring very much these Sisters, especially Sister Minna. It
-      was a pity her services were lost to Germany, and given to these heathen,
-      who, I am bound to say, loved and respected her deeply.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But Keta was hot. Never in my life have I lived in such a hot place, and
-      the first night they put me to sleep in their best bedroom, in which was
-      erected a magnificent mosquito-proof room, also the window that looked on
-      the back verandah was covered carefully with coloured cretonne to ensure
-      privacy. In spite of all their kindness I spent a terrible night; the want
-      of air nearly killed me, and I arose in the morning weary to death, and
-      begging that I might be allowed to sleep in the garden. There there was a
-      little more air, but the ants, tiny ones that could get through the meshes
-      of my mosquito curtains, walked over me and made life unbearable. Then I
-      put up a prayer that I might be allowed to sleep on the verandah. The good
-      Sisters demurred. It was, in their opinion, rather public; but what was I
-      to do? Sleep I felt I must get, and so every night Grant came over and put
-      up my camp-bed on the verandah, or rather balcony, and every night I slept
-      the comfortable, refreshing sleep of the fresh-air lover, and if a storm
-      of rain came up, as it did not infrequently, this being the beginning of
-      the rainy season, I simply arose and dragged my bed inside, and waited
-      till it was over. I admit this had its drawbacks, but it was better than
-      sleeping inside. The Sisters were perpetually making remarks on my healthy
-      colour, and contrasting it with their own pale faces, and their not
-      infrequent attacks of fever with my apparent immunity, and they came to
-      the same conclusion that I did, that it was insured by my love of fresh
-      air. Why they did not do likewise I do not know, but I suspect they
-      thought it was not quite proper; not the first time in this world that
-      women have suffered from their notions of propriety.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Under the guidance of Sister Minna I began a series of calls, visiting
-      first one of the head chiefs, who had about sixty wives. Some dwelt in
-      little houses off his compound, some were scattered over the town, and
-      some were away in the country. It was the first time I had really been
-      introduced into a polygamous household with understanding eyes, and I went
-      with interest. It is approaching the vital points of life from an entirely
-      different angle.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Chief received us most graciously. He was a big man, old, with a bald
-      head on which was a horrid red scar, got, he explained, in a big fight. He
-      said he was very pleased to see me, spoke for a moment to one of his
-      attendants, and then presented me with a couple of florins, and wished me
-      well. After all, that was certainly a most substantial sign of goodwill.
-      Then I called upon his wives, young, old, and middle-aged, and I don't
-      even now understand how he managed to have so many without interfering
-      seriously with the natural distribution of men and women. Of course his
-      descendants are many, and many are the complications, for I have seen a
-      married woman, the grand-daughter of the Chief, nursing on her knee her
-      little great-aunt, his daughter, and well spanking her too if she did not
-      come to school quick enough.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      One of his old wives had broken her leg, and we visited her; she had a
-      room in his house, and was lying on her bed on the floor, while beside her
-      sat another wife who had come to see how she was getting on.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If I were a wife,&rdquo; said I, from the outlook of a monogamous country, &ldquo;I
-      should not call upon another wife a man chose to take, even if she were
-      sick.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said kind-hearted Sister Minna. &ldquo;I have lived so long in a
-      country like this that I think I should. It is only kind.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And we went from one household to another, and were received most
-      graciously, and generally Sister Minna was given some small sum of money
-      to entertain me. Sometimes it was sixpence, sometimes it was a shilling,
-      sometimes it even rose as high as two shillings, and she was instructed to
-      buy chickens and bananas that I might be well fed. Also they can never
-      tell a white person's age, and many a time she was asked, because I was
-      short, whether I was not a child.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Altogether I was most agreeably struck with these Awuna people, and found
-      there was even something to be said for the polygamous system. I have
-      always, from my youth upwards, admired the woman who worked and made a
-      place for herself in the world, and here were certainly some of my ideals
-      carried out, for every woman in this community was selfsupporting for the
-      greater part of her life, and not only did she support herself, but her
-      children as well. It was in fact not much of a catch to marry a chief; of
-      course, being a rich man, he probably gave her a little more capital to
-      work upon in the beginning, but she had to pay him back, and work all the
-      same.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We visited another household, the home of a clerk in the Bremen Mission
-      Factory, a gentleman who wore a tweed suit and a high collar, and who once
-      had been a pillar of the mission church. He had four wives, and he lived
-      inside a compound with small houses round it, and his house, the big
-      house, on one side. Each wife had her own little home, consisting of two
-      rooms and a kitchen place; the wife without children was the farthest away
-      from him, and the last wife, just married, had a room next his. His
-      sitting-room was quite gorgeous, furnished European fashion with cane
-      chairs, and settee, coloured cushions, an ordinary lamp with a green
-      shade, and a rack, such as one sees on old-fashioned ships, hung with red
-      and green wineglasses. I don't know why I should have felt that
-      antimacassars and tablecloths were out of place with polygamy, but I did,
-      especially as the wives' houses were bare, native houses, where the women
-      squatted on the floor, their bedrooms were dark and dismal hot places,
-      with any amount of girdle beads hanging against the walls. For clothes are
-      but a new fashion in Keta, and the time is not far off when a woman went
-      clothed solely in girdle beads, and so still it is the fashion to have
-      many different girdle beads, though now that they wear cloths over them
-      they are not to be seen except upon the little girls who still very wisely
-      are allowed to go stark. Each woman's children, not only in this house,
-      but in the Chief's house, ran in and out of the other wives' houses in
-      very friendly fashion, and they most of them bore English names&mdash;Grace,
-      Rosina, and Elizabeth. And the names, when they are not English, are very
-      curious and well worth remembering. A couple had been married for many
-      years, and at last the longed-for child came. &ldquo;Laughing at last,&rdquo; they
-      called it. &ldquo;Come only&rdquo; is another name. &ldquo;A cry in my house&rdquo;&mdash;where so
-      long there had been silence. &ldquo;Every man and his,&rdquo; meaning with pride,
-      &ldquo;this is mine, I want nothing more.&rdquo; But they are not always pleased. &ldquo;God
-      gives bad things&rdquo;&mdash;a girl has been born and they have been waiting
-      for a boy. &ldquo;A word is near my heart,&rdquo; sounds rather tender, but &ldquo;I forgive
-      you&rdquo; must have another meaning, and the child would surely not be as well
-      loved as the one its mother called &ldquo;Sweet thing.&rdquo; Then again girls do not
-      always marry the man they love or would choose, and they will perhaps call
-      their child &ldquo;Not love made you,&rdquo; but on the whole I think pleasant names
-      predominate, and many a child is called &ldquo;So is God,&rdquo; &ldquo;God gives good
-      things,&rdquo; or merely &ldquo;Thanks.&rdquo; Often too a child is called after the day of
-      the week upon which it is born.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;What day were you born?&rdquo; asked the Chief of me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Wednesday,&rdquo; I said.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Then your name is Aquwo,&rdquo; said he.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Marriage in a country like this has a somewhat different status from what
-      it does, say in England. What a woman wants most of all is children;
-      motherhood is the ideal, and the unmarried woman with a child is a far
-      more enviable person than the married woman without, and even in this
-      land, where motherhood is everything, there was in every household that I
-      visited an unhappy woman without children, because vice has been rampant
-      along the Coast for hundreds of years. You may know her at once by her sad
-      face, for not only is she deeply grieved, but everyone despises her, as
-      they do not despise the woman who has had a child without being married.
-      Of course parents prefer their daughters to be chaste, and if a man
-      marries what the Sister described as a &ldquo;good&rdquo; girl, he will probably give
-      her a pair of handsome bracelets to mark his appreciation of the fact, but
-      if on the other hand a daughter, without being married, suddenly presents
-      the household with an addition, they are not more vexed than if the
-      daughter in civilised lands failed to pass her examination, outran her
-      allowance, or perhaps got herself too much talked about with the
-      best-looking ineligible in the neighbourhood. It is a natural thing for a
-      girl to do, and at any rate a child is always an asset.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0050" id="linkimage-0050"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0409.jpg" alt="0409 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0409.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      There is one binding form of marriage that is absolutely indissoluble. If
-      the man and woman, in the presence of witnesses, drink a drop or two of
-      each other's blood, nothing can part them; they are bound for ever, a
-      binding which tells more heavily upon the woman than the man, because he
-      is always free to marry as many wives as he likes, while she is bound only
-      to him, and whatever he does, no one, after such a ceremony, would give
-      her shelter should she wish to leave him. All other marriages are quite
-      easily dissolved, and very often the partings occasion but little
-      heart-burnings on either side. The great desire of everyone is children,
-      and once that is attained, the object of the union is accomplished,
-      wherefore I fancy it is very seldom couples, or rather women, take the
-      trouble to bind themselves so indissolubly. The most respectable form of
-      marriage is for a man to take a girl and seclude her with an old woman to
-      look after her for from five to nine months after marriage. She does no
-      work, but gives herself up to the luxury and enjoyment of the petted,
-      spoiled wife. Her brothers and sisters and her friends come and see her,
-      but she does not pass outside the threshold, and being thus kept from the
-      strong sunlight, she becomes appreciably lighter in colour, and is of
-      course so much the more beautiful. He may take several women after this
-      fashion, and all the marriages are equally binding, but of course this
-      means that he must have a little money. Another kind of marriage is when
-      the man simply gives the woman presents of cloths, and provides her with a
-      house. It is equally binding but is not considered so respectful; there is
-      something of the difference we see between the hasty arrangement in a
-      registry office and the solemn ceremony at St George's, Hanover Square.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      One thing is certain, that when an Awuna man asks a girl to marry him, she
-      will most certainly say &ldquo;No.&rdquo; Formerly the parents were always asked, and
-      they invariably said &ldquo;No,&rdquo; and then the man had to ask again and again,
-      and to reason away their objections to him as a suitor. Now, as women are
-      getting freer under English rule, the girl herself is asked, and she makes
-      a practice of saying &ldquo;No&rdquo; at least two or three times, in order to be able
-      to tell him afterwards she did not want him. Even after they are
-      Christians, says Sister Minna, the women find it very hard to give up this
-      fiction that they do not want to marry, and the girl finds it very
-      difficult to say &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; in church.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      She likes to pretend that she does not want the man. As a rule this is, I
-      believe, true enough. There is no trust or love between the sexes; you
-      never see men and women together. A woman only wants a man in order that
-      she may have children, and one would do quite as well as another.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      After marriage the woman has a free time for a little. She does not have
-      to begin cooking her husband's meals at once, and this also holds good
-      after the first baby is born. A man is considered by public opinion a
-      great churl if he does not get somebody to wait on his wife and fetch her
-      water from the well at this time. After the second baby they are not so
-      particular, and a woman must just make her own arrangements and manage as
-      best she may. It is a woman's pride to bear children, and to the man they
-      are a source of wealth, for the boys must work for the father for a time
-      at least, and the girls are always sold in marriage, for a wife costs at
-      least five or six pounds.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      With all due deference to these kindly missionaries, I cannot think that
-      Christianity has made much progress, for these Awuna people have the
-      reputation of being great poisoners. One of the Chief's wives offered me
-      beer, stuff that looked and tasted like thin treacle, and she tasted it
-      first to show me, said the Sister, that it was quite safe; but also she
-      explained they insert a potent poison under the thumb nail, drink first to
-      show that the draft is innocuous, and then offer the gourd to the intended
-      victim, having just allowed the tip of the thumb nail to dip beneath the
-      liquid.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The early morning is the correct time to do the most important things.
-      Thus if a man wants a girl in marriage he appears at her parents' house at
-      the uncomfortable hour of four o'clock in the morning, and asks her hand.
-      The morning after the Chief had given me a dash, I sent Grant round early,
-      not at four o'clock I fear, when in the Tropics it is quite dark, with a
-      box of biscuits and two boxes of chocolates and the next morning early he
-      sent me his ring as a sign that he had received my dash and was pleased.
-      If by any chance they cannot come and thank you in the morning, they say,
-      &ldquo;To-morrow morning, when the cock crows, I shall thank you again.&rdquo; They
-      use rather an amusing proverb for thanking; where we should say, &ldquo;I have
-      not words to thank you,&rdquo; they say, &ldquo;The hen does not thank the dunghill,&rdquo;
-       because here in these villages, where they do not provide food for the
-      fowls, the dunghill provides everything. Sister Minna once received a very
-      large present of ducks and yams from a man, so she used this proverb in
-      thanking him, as one he would thoroughly understand. Quick came the
-      response, &ldquo;Oh please do not say so. I am the hen, and you are the
-      dunghill,&rdquo; which does not sound very complimentary translated into
-      English.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was delightful staying here at the Mission House, and seeing quite a
-      new side of African life, seeing it as it were from the inside. Every day
-      at seven o'clock in the morning the little girls came to school, and I
-      could hear the monotonous chant of their learning, as I sat working on the
-      verandah. Somewhere about nine school was out and it was time for the
-      second breakfast. The second breakfast was provided by the little markets
-      that were held in the school grounds, where about a dozen women or young
-      girls came with food-stuffs to sell at a farthing, or a copper, for they
-      use either English or German money, a portion. They were rather appetising
-      I thought, and quite a decent little breakfast could be bought for a
-      penny. There were maize-meal balls fried in palm oil, a sort of pancake
-      also made of maize meal and eaten with a piece of cocoa-nut, bananas,
-      split sections of pine-apple, mangoes, little balls of boiled rice served
-      on a plantain leaf, and pieces of the eternal stink-fish. Every woman
-      appears to be a born trader, and I have seen a little girl coming to
-      school with a platter on her head, on which were arranged neatly cut
-      sections of pine-apple, She had managed to acquire a copper or two, and
-      began her career as a trader by selling to the children for their school
-      breakfast. She will continue that career into her married life, and till
-      she is an old old woman past all work, when her children will look after
-      her, for they are most dutiful children, and Christian or heathen never
-      neglect their parents, especially their mother.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Old maids of course you never see, and it is considered much more natural,
-      as I suppose it is, that a woman should have a child by a man whom she has
-      met just casually, than that she should live an old maid. There was a good
-      missionary woman who took a little girl into her household and guarded her
-      most carefully. The only time that girl was out of her sight was once or
-      twice a week for half an hour when she went to fetch water from the well.
-      Presently that girl was the mother to a fine, lusty boy, and the
-      missionary's wife was told and believed that she did not know the father.
-      He was a man she had met casually going to the well.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When they asked me, as they often did, how my husband was, I always
-      explained that he was very well, and had gone on a journey; it saved a lot
-      of trouble, but it amused me to find that Sister Minna, when she was among
-      strangers, always did the same. She explained that once on her way to Lome
-      she stopped her hammock and spoke to a woman. This woman brought up a man,
-      who asked her how her husband was, and in her innocence she explained she
-      had none. The man promptly asked her to marry him, and as she demurred,
-      the ten or twelve standing round asked her to choose among them which man
-      she would have for a husband. The situation was difficult. Finally she got
-      out of it by explaining that she was here to care for their children, and
-      if she had to cook her husband's dinner it would take up too much of her
-      time. Of course in Keta they now know her, and appreciate her, and respect
-      her eccentricities if they do not understand them, but if she goes to a
-      strange place she is careful to hide the fact that she has not a husband
-      somewhere in the background. It is embarrassing to be single.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      She is a firm believer in the good that the missions are doing; I am only
-      a firm believer in the good that a woman like Sister Minna could not help
-      doing in any land.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Keta is the place whence come all the cloths of the Guinea Coast, and
-      again and again in a compound, in a little, sheltered dark corner, you may
-      come across a man working his little loom, always a man, it is not women's
-      work, and often by his side another winding the yarn he will use, and the
-      product of their looms goes away, away to far Palime and Kpando, and all
-      along the Coast, and up the railway line to Kumasi, and into the heart of
-      the rubber country beyond.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But here, being an enterprising people, they are beginning to do their own
-      weaving, and have imported, I am told, men from Keta to show them the best
-      way.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0051" id="linkimage-0051"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0417.jpg" alt="0417 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0417.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      I shall not soon forget Keta. If I shut my eyes I can see it now. The bare
-      hot sand with the burning hot sun pouring pitilessly down upon it; the
-      graceful cocoa-nut palms; the great <i>ficus</i> trees that stand in rows
-      outside the little Danish fort that is so white that it makes your eyes
-      blink in the glare; the flamboyant tree, all red blossom, that grows
-      beside it. Some Goth of a D.C. took the guns from the walls, and stood
-      them upside down in the earth in a row leading down to the beach, and
-      subsequent Commissioners, making the best of a bad job, have painted them
-      carefully with tar to keep them from rusting. At the wells the little
-      naked girls with beads round their middles draw the water, and in the
-      streets, making the best of every little patch of shade, though they have
-      not initiate enough to plant for themselves, are the women sitting always
-      with some trifle to sell, early-morning porridge, or maize-meal balls, or
-      portions of pine-apple, or native sweets made from imported sugar. Once I
-      went into a chiefs house and wanted to photograph the people at work under
-      the shade of the central tree in the courtyard. He sent word to say he
-      would like to be photographed too, and as there was nothing particularly
-      striking or objectionable about his shirt and trousers, I agreed. He kept
-      me waiting till the light was almost gone, and then he appeared in a
-      tourist cap, a light-grey coat, a red tie, a pink shirt, khaki breeches,
-      violent green socks pulled up over the ends of his breeches, and a pair of
-      red-and-yellow carpet slippers. I sent the plate home, but have been
-      unable to discover that photograph anywhere, and I think in all
-      probability the plate could not stand him. So I did not get the people at
-      work. The market is held on a bare piece of ground close to the lagoon,
-      and whenever there is a high tide it is half under water, and the Chief
-      calls upon the people to bring sand from the seashore to raise the ground,
-      and after about six hundred calabashes have been spilled, it looks as if
-      someone had scattered a handful of sand there. Indeed, though Keta has
-      existed for many years, it looks as if at any moment an extra high tide
-      might break away into the lagoon behind, and the whole teeming population,
-      for whose being there I can see no possible reason, might be swept into
-      the sea.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was hotter in Keta than any other place I visited along the Coast, as
-      there are no cool sea breezes for all they are so close to the sea. The
-      sand-bank on which it is built runs almost north and south, and the
-      prevailing wind, being from the south, blows always over hot-baked sand
-      instead of over the cool sea. But yet I enjoyed life in that Mission House
-      very much. It was a new piece of the world to me, and kind Sister Minna
-      told me many things about the native mind. When first she came she had
-      tried to do without beating the children, tried to explain to them that it
-      was a shame that a girl should be beaten, but they would have none of her
-      ways. All they thought was that she was afraid of them, the children
-      despised her, and the school was pandemonium. Now she has thoroughly
-      grasped their limitations, and when a girl does wrong she beats her, and
-      they respect and love her, and send their children to her to be corrected.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I have beaten thirty to-day,&rdquo; she would say with a sigh, as we sat down
-      to dinner, or if we were going to the Commissioner's there was generally
-      one in prison who had to be released before we could go. Sometimes, if she
-      were specially bad, a girl was kept in prison all day and all night, in
-      addition to her beating. Once in the compound opposite I saw a little
-      stark-naked girl about thirteen stand screaming apparently without any
-      cause. The Sisters stood it for about half an hour, then I saw them
-      stealing across the road; they entered the compound, and promptly captured
-      the small sinner. Her aunt, who was the owner of the compound, had
-      apparently given her up as hopeless, and she looked on with interest. I
-      had thought the captive's lungs must have given out long before, but as
-      they crossed the road she put on a fresh spurt, and she yelled still more
-      heartrendingly when she was beaten. But the next day she came trippingly
-      along the verandah, confident, and happy, and apparently all the better
-      for the correction she had received the day before. I do not know what her
-      sin was. Probably she had not obeyed her aunt when she told her to rub the
-      beads. Beads are bought in strings in Germany or England, and then every
-      bead has to be rubbed smooth with water on a stone. It must be a dull job,
-      but the women and children are largely occupied in doing it; the stones
-      you see in every compound are worn hollow, and the palms of the woman's
-      hands are worn quite hard. But it is part of a woman's education and she
-      must do it just as a man must do the weaving.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0052" id="linkimage-0052"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0421.jpg" alt="0421 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0421.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The day came at last when I had to go, and I sat on the beach, surrounded
-      by my goods and chattels, waiting for the surf boat that was to take me to
-      the ship. Grant was bidding regretful farewells to the many friends he had
-      made, and I was bidding my kind Sisters good-bye. Then I was hustled into
-      a boat in a man's arms, hastily we dashed through the surf, and presently
-      I was on board the <i>Bathurst</i> bound for Addah at the mouth of the
-      Volta River.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0053" id="linkimage-0053"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0425.jpg" alt="0425 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0425.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XIX&mdash;FACING DEATH
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The Spanish nuns&mdash;One of the loneliest settlements in West Africa&mdash;Hospitality
-      and swamp&mdash;A capable English woman&mdash;A big future in store for
-      Addah&mdash;The mosquitoes of Addah&mdash;The glorious skies&mdash;Difficulties
-      of getting away&mdash;A tremendous tornado&mdash;The bar steamer&mdash;The
-      boiling bar&mdash;&ldquo;We've had enough!&rdquo;&mdash;Would rather be drowned in the
-      open&mdash;The dismantled ship&mdash;Everybody stark&mdash;The gallant
-      engineer&mdash;On the French steamer bound for Accra.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Addah, at the
-      mouth of the Volta, a place that exists solely for the transport, there is
-      the very worst surf on all this surf-bound coast. There is a big native
-      town a few miles up the river, but here at its entrance live the handful
-      of Europeans, either right on the beach or on the banks of the river, over
-      a mile away, with a great swamp between. The river is wide at its mouth,
-      and the miles of swamp lend to the country an air at once weird and
-      austere.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Enter not here,&rdquo; cries the surf; &ldquo;enter not here.&rdquo; But when its dangers
-      have been dared, and the white man has set foot on the Dark Continent, the
-      swamp takes up the refrain in another key, more sullenly threatening.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;In spite of warning you have crossed the outworks. Now, see how you like
-      the swamp and the mosquito, the steaming heat and the blazing sun.&rdquo; And
-      men come still, as they came three or four hundred years ago.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I, for one, did not much like the landing. The Captain of the <i>Bathurst</i>
-      explained that he had had no intention of calling at Addah, but hearing
-      that there was a white woman on the beach wanting to go, he of his
-      courtesy had decided to take her, and he wanted to be off as he wished to
-      discharge cargo at Pram-Pram before it grew dark. And here, for once, on
-      board an African steamer I found the women passengers largely outnumbering
-      the men, for they had on board a number of nuns who had been exiled from
-      San Paul de Loanda. They were Spanish, French, and German Sisters in the
-      costume of their order; gentle, kindly women with faces that bore evident
-      marks of an indoor life in the Tropics, a mark that cannot be mistaken.
-      They had been very very frightened at first, and they were still very
-      seasick, but the sailormen had made them most kindly welcome, for their
-      sakes were staunch Monarchists when Portugal was spoken of, and they
-      brought them the captain's cat to play with, and looked with deepest
-      admiration on their wonderful embroidery. Never was so much sewing before
-      seen on an African steamer.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I unwittingly added to their woes, for the surf was bad at Addah.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We'll whistle and the bar steamer will come out for you,&rdquo; said the
-      captain, and the steamer gave vent to the most heartrending wails.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the distance I could see a most furious white surf, a palm or two
-      cutting the sky line, and a speck or two that were probably bungalows, but
-      it was a typical African shore and I didn't like the look of it at all. It
-      is bad enough to go to a place uninvited, not to know where you are going
-      to be put up, but when to that is added a bad surf, you wish&mdash;well,
-      you wish it was well over. The ship rolled sickeningly in the swell; the
-      Sisters, first one and then another, disappeared, to come back with faces
-      in all shades of green whiteness, and the ruddy-faced captain paced the
-      deck with an impatience that he in vain tried to control, and I felt an
-      unutterable brute. If I had been seasick it would have crowned things;
-      luckily for myself I am not given that way. At intervals the <i>Bathurst</i>
-      let off shrieks, plaintive and angry, and we went to lunch. I felt I might
-      as well have luncheon, a luncheon to which I really had a right.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You'll have to come on with us to Pram-Pram,&rdquo; said the captain; &ldquo;the
-      beach is evidently too bad.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But presently, after luncheon, we saw a surf boat making its way towards
-      us, and the captain through the glasses proclaimed, &ldquo;Custom's boat. No
-      white man. The surf is very bad.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      When the boat same alongside, the black Custom officer said the captain
-      was right. The surf was bad. They had rather hesitated about coming out,
-      but the bar steamer in the river could not come out till to-morrow.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Will you land,&rdquo; said the captain, &ldquo;or shall we take you on?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It seemed a pity to pass Addah, now I had come so near, and if the Customs
-      could get through I did not see why I should not, so I got into the
-      mammy-chair and was lowered into the surf boat with my servant and my
-      gear. A surf boat is about five feet deep, and this time, as no one had
-      expected a white woman to land, no chair had been provided, so I was
-      obliged to balance myself on one of the narrow planks that ran across the
-      boat and served as seats, and of course my feet dangled uncomfortably.
-      Also, as we approached it, the surf looked most threatening. We were going
-      straight into a furiously boiling sea with white, foam-lashed waves that
-      flung themselves high into the air. I did not like the look of it at all,
-      but as we were bound to go through it, I whisked myself round on my seat
-      so that I sat with my back to the thing I was afraid of. Then the
-      Custom-house officer, a black man, edged his way close beside me, and
-      stretching out his hand put it on my arm. I did not like it. I object to
-      being touched by black men, so I promptly shook it off, and as promptly
-      the boat was apparently flung crash against a stone wall; she had really
-      hit the beach, and over I went backwards and head first into the bottom of
-      the boat. The man's help had been kindly meant; he would have held me in
-      my place. But there is no time for apologies when a surf boat reaches the
-      beach. Before I had realised what was happening, two Kroo boys had dived
-      to the bottom of the boat, seized me without any ceremony whatever, and
-      raced me up to the shore, where they put me down in all the blazing sun of
-      an African afternoon, without even a helmet or an umbrella to protect my
-      head. Grant followed with the helmet, and I endeavoured to smooth my
-      ruffled plumes. At least, I had landed in safety, and the thing was now to
-      find the Commissioner and see what he would do for me. We were on a beach
-      where apparently was not even a boat, only the forlorn remains of the
-      wreck of an iron steamer rapidly coming to its last end. The shore, rising
-      to a height of about six or eight feet, was all sand with a little sparse,
-      coarse grass upon it. We climbed up the yielding bank, and then I saw a
-      native town, Beachtown, on my right, and on my left three or four
-      bungalows built after the English fashion, on high posts rising out of
-      cement platforms. Those bungalows at Beachtown, Addah, are perhaps the
-      forlornest places on all the West-African coast. The wild surf is in front
-      of them, the coarse grass all around them, and behind is a great swamp.
-      Brave, brave, it seemed to me, must be the men and women who lived here
-      and kept their health. The strong sea breeze would be healthgiving, but
-      the deadly monotony of life must be something too terrible. But here the
-      doctor, who was going home by the next steamer, had his wife, and the
-      doctor who had just come out had brought his bride; two women, and I was
-      told there was a third at the transport station. The Commissioner came
-      forward, and I looked at him doubtfully. I had thought I should have known
-      him and I didn't.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You have forgotten me?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Yes; I certainly ought to know him, but&mdash;it came on me with a flash,
-      and I spoke my thoughts. &ldquo;Ah, but you have grown a beard since I met you.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He laughed and blushed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I've just come off trek and I've lost my razors.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was so like Africa. The dishevelled woman from the sea met the unkempt
-      man from the bush, and we foregathered.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They were awfully good to me. Packed they were already with two more
-      people than the bungalows were intended to hold, and so they considered
-      what they should do for me, and while they were considering, hearing I had
-      had luncheon, they gave me coffee and other drinks and offered cigarettes,
-      and then they wrote to the transport company and asked them if they would
-      take in a stray woman.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The kindness of these people in Africa! Can I ever repay it? I know, of
-      course, I never can. The head of Swanzy's transport and his pretty wife
-      sent over to say they would be delighted to have me, and I was to come at
-      once and consider myself at home. And, moreover, they had sent a cart for
-      me, drawn by three Kroo boys.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have said many hard things about the English women in West Africa. I had
-      begun to think, after my visit to Accra, that only the nursing Sisters
-      were worthy of the name of capable women; but, when I went to Addah, my
-      drooping hopes revived. For I met there, in Mrs Dyson, the transport
-      officer's wife, a woman, charming, pretty, and young, who yet thought it
-      not beneath her dignity to look after her husband's house, to see that he
-      lived well here in the wilderness, and who enjoyed herself and made the
-      very best of life.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And Addah, I must admit, takes a deal of making the best of. It has been
-      settled for long years. In Beachtown you may see old guns; in Big Addah, a
-      native town six miles up the Volta, you may see more of them lying about
-      the rough, uncared-for streets, and you may see here a clump of tamarind
-      trees that evidently mark the spot where once the fort has been. Not one
-      stone of it remains. The authorities say that these &ldquo;old shells of forts&rdquo;
-       are not worth preserving, and the natives have taken them literally at
-      their word, and incorporated the very stones in their own buildings.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I am sorry, for Addah at the mouth of the great river must have been a
-      great slaving station once; trade must have come down the river in the
-      past, even as it does now, as it will do, doubled and trebled, in the
-      future.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The house I stayed in was close on the river, and my bedroom opened out on
-      to a verandah that overlooked it. In the shipbuilding yard below
-      perpetually rings the clang of iron on the anvil, for always there are
-      ships to be built or repaired; and there, grown into a great cotton tree
-      in that yard, may be seen the heavy chains that the slavers of oldtime
-      used to hold their ships to the shore. The slavers have gone, the past is
-      dead; but, knowing that wonderful river, I do not mind prophesying that,
-      in spite of that dangerous surf, in spite of those threatening swamps,
-      there is a big future in store for that lonely outpost of the Empire. That
-      sixty-five miles of unimpeded waterway that lies between it and Akuse is
-      not to be lightly disregarded, and the rich country goes far beyond that.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But, at present, there is not much to see at Addah. There is the swamp,
-      apparently miles of it, there is a great, wide, mangrove-fringed river,
-      and there are the never-to-be-forgotten mosquitoes. The mosquitoes of
-      Addah are the sort that make you feel you should go about armed, and that
-      made me feel for once that a mosquito-proof house was an actual necessity.
-      One thing, there is always a strong breeze blowing at Addah, and my
-      hostess was always very particular to have her wire-netting swept down
-      carefully every day so that every scrap of air that could come in did so,
-      and I conclude it was owing to this that I did not feel the air so
-      vitiated and oppressive as I have in other houses. I hope one of the next
-      public works of the Gold Coast will be to fill in that swamp, and so rid
-      the place of those terrible mosquitoes. One solace the white people have,
-      if there are mosquitoes, there is no undergrowth, and so there are no
-      tsetse flies, and they can keep horses. My hostess's two solitary
-      amusements&mdash;because she was a smiling, happy-faced girl she made the
-      best of them&mdash;were to ride along the beach and to play tennis after
-      it had grown cool in the evening, as it always does in Africa before the
-      sun goes down. And those sunsets across the swamp, too, were something to
-      wonder at. Purple and red and gold were they. Every night the sun died in
-      a glory over swamp and heath; every morning he rose golden and red across
-      the wide river, as if he would say that if Addah had naught else to
-      recommend it there was always the eternal beauty of the skies.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0054" id="linkimage-0054"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0435.jpg" alt="0435 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0435.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      But having got there it was rather difficult to get away.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The <i>Sapele</i>, they said, should come and take me back to Sekondi or,
-      at least, to Accra, but the <i>Sapele</i> did not come, and if my hosts
-      had not been the kindest in the world I should have begun to feel
-      uncomfortable. I would gladly have gone overland, but carriers were not,
-      even though some of my precious pots had been broken in the surf, and so
-      my loads were reduced.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But every day there was no steamer, till at last a German steamer was
-      signalled, and the bar steamer, a steamer of 350 tons, which usually lay
-      at the little wharf just outside my bedroom window alongside the
-      shipbuilding yard, prepared to go out. All my gear was carried down and
-      put on board, and then suddenly the captain appeared on the verandah and
-      pointed out to us two waiting women a threatening dark cloud that was
-      gathering all across the eastern sky.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He shook his head, &ldquo;I dare not go out till that is over.&rdquo; And so we stood
-      and waited and watched the storm gather.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was a magnificent sight. The inky sky was reflected in an inky river,
-      an ominous hush was over everything, one felt afraid to breathe, and the
-      halfnaked workmen in the yard dropped their tools and fled to shelter. The
-      household parrot gave one loud shriek, and the harsh sound of his call cut
-      into the stillness like a knife.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      From the distance we could hear the roaring of the surf, as if it were
-      gathering strength, and then the grasses in the swamp to the west bent
-      before a puff of air that broke on the stillness. There was another puff,
-      another, and then the storm was upon us in all its spendour. Never have I
-      seen such a storm. Though it was only four o'clock in the afternoon, it
-      was dark as night, and the lightning cut across like jagged flame, there
-      came immediately the crash of thunder, and then a mighty roaring wind, a
-      wind that swept everything before it, that bent the few trees almost to
-      the ground, that stripped them of their leaves as if they had been
-      feathers shaken out of a bag, that beat the placid river into foam, and
-      tore great sheets of corrugated iron from the roofs of the buildings and
-      tossed them about the yard as if they had been so many strips of muslin.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The bar steamer's captain had gone at the first sign to see that his
-      moorings were safe, and we two women stood on the verandah and watched the
-      fury of the elements, while my hostess wondered where her husband was, and
-      hoped and prayed he was not out in it. The inky blackness was all over the
-      sky now, the wind was shrieking so as to deaden all other sounds, and the
-      only thing we could hear above it was the crash of the thunder. And then I
-      looked at the horizon away to the south-west. There, about a mile away as
-      the crow flies, was the shore, and there against the inky darkness of the
-      sky I could see tossed high into the air great sheets of foam. The surf on
-      that shore must have been terrific. I would have given a good deal to go
-      and see it, but, before I could make up my mind to start, down came the
-      rain in torrents, the horizon was blotted out, the road through the swamp
-      was running like a mill race, and it looked as if it would be no light
-      task to beat my way through wind and rain to the shore.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And when the storm was subsiding back came the bar steamer's captain.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;No going out to-day,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I wouldn't dare risk the bar. Look at the
-      surf!&rdquo; and he pointed across the swamp to where we could again see the
-      great white clouds of foam rising against the horizon. &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; he
-      said, &ldquo;very early&rdquo;; and he went away, and my host, soaked through and
-      through, came back and told us what the storm had looked like from
-      Beachtown.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The next morning was simply glorious. The world was fresh and clean and
-      newly washed, and the river, from my window, looked like a brightly
-      polished mirror.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It'll be a bad bar, though,&rdquo; said my host, shaking his head. &ldquo;Better
-      stay.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      It was very kind of him, but I felt I had trespassed on their kindness
-      long enough; besides, there were other parts of the Coast I wished to see,
-      and I felt I must take this opportunity of getting out of Addah. What was
-      a bad bar? I had faced the surf before. So I bid them farewell, with many
-      grateful thanks, and went on board, and in all the glory of the morning we
-      set off down the river.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was the only white passenger on board, and was allowed to stand on the
-      bridge beside the wheel. Behind me was a little house wherein I might have
-      taken shelter, but I thought I might as well see all there was to be seen;
-      besides, I held my camera in my hand and proposed to take photographs of
-      this &ldquo;bad bar.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The mouth of the Volta is utterly lonely looking. A long sandpit ran out
-      on the right hand, whereon grew a solitary bush, blighted, for there was
-      not a sign of a leaf upon it, and to the left was also sand, with a few
-      scattered palms. I fancy there must have been a native hut or two, though
-      I do not remember them, for I remember the captain saying, &ldquo;We have to
-      make our own marks. When you get a hut in line with a certain tree you
-      know you are in the channel.&rdquo; I was glad to hear there was a channel, for
-      to my uninitiated eyes we seemed heading for a wild waste of boiling
-      water, worse than anything I had ever conceived of, and yet I was not
-      unaccustomed to surf, and had faced it before now in a surf boat. Never
-      again shall I face surf with equanimity. I tried to carry out my
-      programme, but I fear I must have been too upset to withdraw the slides,
-      for I got no photographs. Presently we appeared to be right in the middle
-      of the swirl. The waves rose up like mountains on either side, and towards
-      us would come a great smooth green hill of water which towered far above
-      our heads and then, breaking, swept right over us with a tremendous crash.
-      I can see now the sunlight on that hill; it made it look like green glass,
-      and then, when the foam came, there were all the colours of the rainbow.
-      Again and again the two men at the wheel were flung off, their cloths
-      seemed to be ripped from them as if they had been their shells, and the
-      ship trembled from stem to stern and stood still. I thought, &ldquo;Is this a
-      bad bar? I'm afraid, I'm afraid,&rdquo; but as the captain came scrambling to
-      the wheel to take the place of the men who had been thrown off I did not
-      quite like to say anything. It is extraordinary how hard it is to make one
-      believe there really is anything to fear, and I should hate to be a
-      nuisance at a critical moment, so I said to the captain&mdash;he and I and
-      the German engineer were the only white people on board: &ldquo;It's
-      magnificent.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He was holding on to the wheel by my side and a naked black man, stripped
-      by the ruthless water, was holding on to it on the other, and I could see
-      the moisture on his strained face. Was it sweat or sea water?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Magnificent!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Don't you see we can't stand it? We've had
-      enough!&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      So that was it. We were going down. At least, not exactly going down, but
-      the water was battering us to pieces. I learned then that what I was
-      afraid of was fear, for now I was not afraid. It had come, then, I
-      thought. This was the end of the life where sometimes I had been so
-      intensely happy and sometimes I had been so intensely miserable that I had
-      wanted to die. Not so very long ago, and now I was going to die. Presently
-      those waters that were soaking me through and through would wash over me
-      once for all and I was not even afraid. I thought nothing for those few
-      moments, except how strange that it was all over. I wondered if I had
-      better go into the little house behind me, but no, I saw I was not in the
-      way of the men at the wheel. I could hear the crashing of broken wood all
-      round me, and I thought if I were to be drowned I would rather be drowned
-      in the open. Why I held on to my camera I do not know. That, I think, was
-      purely mechanical. The waves beat on the ship from all quarters, and so
-      apparently held her steady, and I might just as well hold on to the camera
-      as to anything else. I certainly never expected to use it again. Crash,
-      crash, crash came the tons of water, there was a ripping of broken wood,
-      and a human wail that told me that crew and black passengers had realised
-      their danger. Crash, crash, crash. It seemed to me the time was going very
-      slowly, and then suddenly the ship seemed to give a leap forward, and
-      instead of the waves crashing on to us we were riding over them, and the
-      captain seized me by the arm.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Come inside. You're wet to the skin.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We're all right. But, my God, you'll never be nearer to it.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And then I looked around me to see the havoc that the bar had wrought. The
-      bulwarks were swept away, the boats were smashed, the great crane for
-      working cargo was smashed and useless, the galley was swept overboard, the
-      top of the engine-house was broken in, and, transformation scene, every
-      solitary creature on board that little ship, with the exception of the
-      captain and me, was stark. Custom-house officers had stripped off their
-      uniforms, clerks who had come to tally cargo in all the glory of
-      immaculate shirts and high-starched collars were nude, and the black men
-      who worked the ship had got rid of their few rags as superfluous. Everyone
-      had made ready to face the surf.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Much good would it have done 'em,&rdquo; opined the captain; &ldquo;no living thing
-      could have got ashore in that sea.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Then up came the chief engineer, a German; his face was scalded and his
-      eyes were bloodshot, and it was to him we all owed our lives.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The waves had beaten in the top of the engine-room, and the water had
-      poured in till it was flush with the fires; a gauge blew out&mdash;I am
-      not sure if I express myself quite rightly, but the place was full of
-      scalding steam, and all those educated negro engineers fled, but the white
-      man stuck to his job.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I tink it finish,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;when I see the water come close close to the
-      fires, but I say, 'well, as well dis vay as any oder,' so I stick to do my
-      job, an' I not see, I do it by feel.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And we all three shook hands, and the captain and engineer had a glass of
-      whisky, and though it was so early in the morning, never did I think it
-      was more needed. I had been but an onlooker. On them had fallen the burden
-      and heat of the day.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And then came boats, bringing on board the captains of the French and
-      German steamers that lay in the roadstead, far out, because the surf was
-      so bad.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They had been watching us. They thought we were gone, but though they had
-      out their boats they confessed they would have been powerless to aid. No
-      boat could have lived in such a sea, and the captain declared that though
-      he was swept bare of all food nothing would induce him to go back. It
-      would be certain death.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We looked a rather forlorn wreck, but the German captain came to the
-      rescue with a seaman-like goodwill, lending men to work the cargo in place
-      of the broken-down crane, and giving food to the hungry ones. He had come
-      from Lome, and he brought news that the hurricane of the night before had
-      swept away the bridge that had been the pride and delight of the people of
-      Togo, and that never for many a long year had there been such a storm
-      along the Guinea Coast. He had been unable to get his papers and had come
-      away without them. He would take me if I liked, but he must go back to
-      Lome.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But I was rather feeling I had had enough of the sea, and so I turned to
-      the Frenchman. He was just as kind and courteous. His ship was small, he
-      said, and he was not going to Sekondi, but I might tranship at Accra if I
-      liked. The captain of the bar steamer advised my going on board at once,
-      for his ship was in a state of confusion, and also he was going to
-      tranship cargo.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Then Grant took a hand in the proceedings. Whether he had stripped I don't
-      know, for I did not see him, but he presented himself before me in a very
-      wet and damp condition.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Medicine chest gone, Ma.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Now, the medicine chest was my soldier brother's, the pride of my heart. I
-      had proposed to bring it back to him and show him that the only time it
-      had been used in this unhealthy climate was when the carrier had
-      inadvertantly got cascara for his pneumonia. Well, it was gone, and there
-      was nothing more to be said. Its pristine beauty had been lost in the
-      rains in Togo. Grant departed, but presently he was on the bridge again.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Pots be all bruck, Ma.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, Grant!&rdquo; I had got them so far only to lose them in the end. Grant was
-      like one of Job's comforters. He seemed to take a huge delight in
-      announcing to me fresh disasters. My things were all done up small for
-      carrying on men's heads, and the sea had played havoc with them. The
-      bucket was gone; the kettle, an old and tried servant, was gone; the
-      water-bottle was gone, so was the lantern; the chop box had been burst
-      open, and the plates and cups smashed; while the knives and forks had been
-      washed overboard, and the majority of my boots, for some reason or other,
-      had followed. After Grant had made about his tenth journey, announcing
-      fresh disasters, I said:
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, never mind, Grant. We must make the best of it; I'm rather surprised
-      we are not gone ourselves,&rdquo; and with a grin he saw to the handing of the
-      remains of my goods into the boat, and getting them on board the steamer.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      That steamer was tiny. I looked at the cabin assigned me, and determined
-      if I had to sit up all night I would not occupy it, and then I had my
-      precious black box brought on deck, and proceeded to count the damage. It
-      was locked and it was supposed to be air-tight and water-tight. I can't
-      say about the air-tight, but water-tight it certainly was not, for every
-      single thing in that box was soaked through and through. I took them out
-      one by one; then, as no one said me nay, I tied them on to the taffrail,
-      and let my garments flutter out in the breeze and the sunshine. There were
-      four French women on board, bound from the French Congo to Konakri, and
-      they took great interest and helped me with suggestions and advice, but I
-      must say I was glad that I was bound for Sekondi, where my kind friend the
-      nursing Sister was keeping fresh garments for me. As for my poor little
-      typewriter, it was so drenched with water that, though I stood it out in
-      the sun, I foresaw its career in West Africa was over.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      As the sun was setting, came on board the captain of the bar steamer to
-      bid me God-speed. We had never met till the day before, but that morning
-      we had faced death together, and it made a bond.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Go back to-night?&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;not if I know it. Not for a week, if that
-      surf doesn't go down. I couldn't face it.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I wanted him to stay and dine, because I knew he had nothing, but he told
-      me how good the German had been, and said he did not like leaving his own
-      ship after dark; so we said &ldquo;good-bye&rdquo; with, I hope, mutual respect, and,
-      after dinner, I began to consider how I should spend the night. I knew my
-      own bedding must be rather wet, but I knew, also, the camp-bed would be
-      all right, and I told Grant to bring it up on deck and make it up with
-      bedding from the Frenchman's bunk.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They no give you cabin, Ma,&rdquo; said he, surprised.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Nothing would induce a child of Nature to sleep in the open as long as he
-      can find any sort of a cuddy-hole to stew in. I was a little afraid of
-      what the French captain might say, but he took my eccentricity calmly
-      enough.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Ah, zat your bed? Ah, zat is good idea&rdquo;; and left me to a night rolling
-      beneath the stars, when I tossed and dreamed and woke with a start,
-      thinking that the great green hills of water were about to overwhelm me;
-      and as about twenty times more terrified of the dream than I had been of
-      the reality.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Next morning found us outside Accra, a long way outside, because the surf
-      was bad, and I found to my dismay there was no mail in yet, and I must
-      land, for there was no cargo for the <i>Gergovia</i>, and she wanted to go
-      on her way.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I found the landing terrible. I can frankly say I have never been so
-      frightened, and I had no nerve left to stand up against the fear. But it
-      was done. I saw my friend in Accra, and again recounted with delight my
-      travels. For the first time I began to feel I had done something, and I
-      felt it still more when the people in Schenk &amp; Barber's, a great
-      trading firm, held up their hands and declared that I had done a wonderful
-      thing to cross by Krobo Hill at night. I had done well, then, I kept
-      saying to myself, I had accomplished something; but I must admit I was
-      most utterly done. When the mail steamer arrived, the port officer made it
-      his business to see me off to the ship himself; we were drenched to the
-      skin as we rounded the breakwater, and I was so nervous when the
-      mammy-chair came dangling overhead from the ship's deck, that I hear he
-      reported I was the worst traveller he had ever been on board with. Then,
-      in addition to my woes, instead of being able to sit and chat and tell my
-      adventures comfortably to the friends I met, I was, for the first time for
-      many a long year, most violently seasick.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But, when I went to bed, I slept dreamlessly, and when I awakened we were
-      rising to the swell outside Sekondi, and I felt that even if I had to face
-      the surf again I should be among friends presently, and there was a
-      feeling of satisfaction in the thought that I had at least seen something
-      of the most beautiful river in the world, and some unknown country in the
-      east of the Colony.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Always there is that in life, for, good or evil, nothing can take away
-      what we have done. We have it with us, good or bad, for ever. Not
-      Omnipotence can alter the past.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XX&mdash;WITH A COMPANION
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The kindness of Sekondi&mdash;Swanzy's to the rescue&mdash;A journey to
-      Dixcove&mdash;With a nursing Sister&mdash;The rainy season and wet feet&mdash;Engineering
-      a steep hill in the dark&mdash;Rains and brilliant fireflies&mdash;The
-      P.W.D. man's taste in colours&mdash;The need of a woman in West Africa&mdash;Crossing
-      the Whin River&mdash;My fresh-air theory confirmed.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ekondi, from the
-      nursing Sister outwards, was as it always has been, awfully good to me,
-      and I felt as if I were come home. I had the kindest offers of help from
-      all sides, and the railway company took my damaged goods in hand and did
-      their level best to repair damages. I was bound for the goldfields and
-      Ashanti, but I had still uneasily in my remembrance that little bit of
-      coast to the west of Sekondi that I had left unvisited. If I had not
-      written so much already about the carrier difficulties, I might really
-      write a book, that to me would be quite interesting, about that day's
-      journey to Dixcove. Swanzy's transport came to the rescue and provided me
-      with carriers, a most kindly gift, for which I am for ever grateful, and I
-      took with me a young nursing Sister who was anxious to see something of
-      bush travel.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There is always a fascination about the shore, the palm trees and the
-      yellow sand and the blue sky and bluer sea, but now the difficulties were
-      being added to daily and hourly, because it was the beginning of the rainy
-      season, and all the little rivers had &ldquo;broken out,&rdquo; and to cross from one
-      bank to another when a river is flooded, even if it is only a little one,
-      is as a rule no easy matter. To my great amusement I found my companion
-      had a great objection to getting her feet wet. I am afraid I laughed most
-      unsympathetically.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0055" id="linkimage-0055"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0450.jpg" alt="0450 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0450.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You can't,&rdquo; I decided, and I fear she thought me a brute, &ldquo;travel in the
-      rainy season in Africa and hope to keep dry&rdquo;; and I exhorted her not to
-      mind if the water were up to her ankles, but to wade through. She brought
-      home to me difficulties of travel that I had never thought of before. It
-      had never occurred to me to worry as to whether I was likely to get wet
-      before; a little water or a little discomfort never seemed to matter. The
-      seat of the canoe I was sitting in broke and let me down into the
-      waist-deep puddle of water in the bottom, and somehow it seemed a less
-      thing to me than that her feet should get wet did to her. She was a nice,
-      good-looking girl, pleasant and smiling, but I decided that never again as
-      long as I lived would I travel with another woman. I know my own
-      shortcomings, but I never know where another woman will break out.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And we went along that coast, where, two hundred years ago, quaint,
-      gossipy old Bosman had found so much of beauty and interest. Tacorady Fort
-      was deserted in his day. It is overgrown and forgotten now. Boutry is on a
-      high hill, the place of the old fort only marked by a thick clump of
-      trees, dark-green against the sky line; but it was getting dark when we
-      reached Boutry, there was a river to cross, and I was obsessed with a
-      sense of my responsibilities, such as I had never felt when I had only my
-      own skin to look after, and I was very thankful that a doctor who was
-      going to Dixcove had overtaken us. If I damaged my travelling companion in
-      any way, I felt that he at least could share responsibility. We crossed
-      the river, and the darkness fell, pitchy, black darkness; it rained in a
-      businesslike way as it does in the Tropics, and there was a high hill to
-      climb. It was a very steep hill, with a very shocking track that did duty
-      as a road, and my companion expressed her utter inability to get up it. I
-      was perfectly sure that our Kroo hammock-boys could never get us up it,
-      and I was inclined to despair; then that doctor came to our aid. He had
-      four Mendi boys, the best carriers on the Coast, and we put them on to my
-      companion's hammock, and gaily she went off. She knew nothing of the
-      dangers of the way. I did, but I did not feel it necessary to enlighten
-      her. I don't know what the doctor did, but I put on my Burberry and
-      instructed two of my carriers that they must help me over the road. It was
-      a road. When I came back over it in the light, three days later, I
-      wondered how on earth we had tackled it in the dark; still more did I
-      wonder how a heavily laden hammock&mdash;for she was a strapping young
-      woman, a good deal bigger than I am&mdash;had been engineered up and down
-      it. But Mendi carriers are wonderful, and there was a certain charm in
-      walking there in the night. When the rain stopped, the fireflies came out,
-      and the gloom beneath the trees was lightened by thousands of brilliant
-      sparks of fire. I don't know whether fireflies are more brilliant after
-      rain, but I remember them most distinctly on those two wet nights when I
-      was travelling, once on my way to Dixcove and once on the way to Palime.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Up the hill we went and down the hill, along the sands, across the
-      shallows of a river just breaking out&mdash;and the lantern light gleamed
-      wetly on the sand&mdash;through little sleepy villages and across more
-      hilly country, and at last, just as the moon was rising stormily in the
-      clouded sky, we were opposite a long flight of wide steps, and knew we had
-      reached Dixcove.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There was one white man, a P.W.D. man, in Dixcove, and a surprised man was
-      he. Actually, two women had come out of the night and flung themselves
-      upon him. Of course, we had brought servants and provisions and beds, so
-      it was only a question of providing quarters. Now I smile when I think of
-      it. We crossed the courtyard, we climbed the stairs, we entered the modern
-      house that was built on top of the little fort, and out of a sort of
-      whirlpool a modified disorder emerged, when we found ourselves, two men
-      and two women, by the light of a fluttering, chimneyless Hinkson lamp, all
-      assembled in the room that two camp-beds proclaimed the women's bedroom,
-      and we all partook of a little whisky to warm ourselves while we waited
-      for dinner. The P.W.D. man was fluttered and, I think, pleased, for at
-      least our coming broke the monotony, and the nursing Sister undertook the
-      commissariat and interviewed his cook. Altogether we made a cheerful
-      little week-end party in that romote corner of the earth, and when it
-      rained, as rain it did most of the time, we played bridge as if we had
-      been in London.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Dixcove is a pretty little place, literally a cove, and the fort is built
-      on high ground on a neck of land that forms the head of the cove. Round it
-      grow many orange groves, and altogether it is a desirable and delightful
-      spot, but it must be very lonely for the only white man who was there. He
-      had just repainted the bungalow on top of the fort, and whether he had
-      used up the odds and ends of paints, or whether this was his taste, or
-      whether he had desired something to cheer him, or whether he was actuated
-      by the same spirit that seems to move impressionist painters, I do not
-      know, but when I got up next morning and walked on the bastion, that
-      bungalow fairly took my breath away. It was painted whole-heartedly a
-      violent Reckitt's blue; the uprights and the other posts that
-      criss-crossed across it were a bright vivid green, and they were all
-      picked out in pink. There was the little white fort set in the midst of
-      tropical greenery, everything beautiful, with the bungalow on top setting
-      the discordant note. It was pitiful, but at the same time the effect was
-      so comic that the nursing Sister and I laughed till we cried, and then our
-      host came out and could not understand what we were laughing about. We
-      came to the charitable conclusion he must be colour-blind.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0056" id="linkimage-0056"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0456.jpg" alt="0456 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0456.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The two men wanted us to stay. They said it was more comfortable, and when
-      I compared the luncheon the doctor gave us to the meals we had when I
-      provided the eatables and the nursing Sister gave her attention to the
-      cuisine, I must say I agreed with them, and resolved once again to
-      proclaim the absolute necessity for having women in West Africa. But she
-      had to go back to her work, and I had to go on my travels, and so, like
-      the general who marched his army up the hill and marched it down again,
-      presently I was on my way back. And not a moment too soon. It was raining
-      when we started, and our host and the doctor pressed us to stay, but I had
-      not been on the Coast all this time without knowing very well what that
-      rain would mean. The rivers that had been trickles when we set out would
-      be roaring torrents now, and I knew in a little time they would be
-      impassable; then the only thing would be to go back to Sekondi by surf
-      boat, and I had had enough of the surf to last me for many a long day.
-      Besides, our provisions were getting low. We started early; we had less to
-      carry, for we had eaten most of the provisions, and we had more men, for
-      we brought back most of the doctor's following, but still it took us all
-      we knew to get across those rivers, and the Whin River was nearly too much
-      for us. It had been bad when we came, now the sea was racing across the
-      sands, the flooded, muddy water of the river was rushing to meet it, and
-      the two black men who were working a surf boat as a ferry came and asked
-      an exorbitant sum to take us across. My headman demurred and said we
-      wouldn't go. I left it to him, and the bargaining was conducted in the
-      usual slatternly Coast English at the top of their voices. I must confess,
-      as my companion and I sat on the sand and watched the wild waters, I
-      wondered what we would do if we did not cross, for Dixcove was fully
-      fourteen miles behind us. Down came the price by slow degrees, in approved
-      fashion, till at last it appeared I, my companion, our goods, chattels,
-      hammocks, and our followers, numbering fully twenty men, were to be taken
-      across for the sum of two shillings and sixpence. I sent the gear first,
-      and then some of the men, and finally the nursing Sister and I went.
-      Unfortunately there was not room in the boat for the two last men, and I
-      could not help being amused when the ferryman came to be paid, and the men
-      all clustered round vehemently demanding that I should do no such thing
-      till their two companions were also brought over. Not a scrap of faith had
-      they in the ferryman keeping his word, so I had to sit down on the sand
-      among the short, coarse grass and the long stalks of the wandering bean,
-      and wait till those two men were fetched, when I paid up, and we went on
-      to Sekondi.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The journey was short; it is hardly worth recording, hardly worth
-      remembering, but for those wonderful fireflies, and for another thing that
-      bears strongly on my theory regarding health in West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The nursing Sister I took with me was a tall, goodlooking girl,
-      considerably younger than I am, and she looked as if she ought to have
-      been very much stronger. She had barely been on the Coast a short three
-      months, but she had already had one or two goes of fever, a thing I have
-      never had, and she did not like it. She was very careful of herself, and
-      she abominated the climate. At night I noticed she shut herself away from
-      all chance of draughts, drawing curtains and shutting doors so as to
-      insure herself against chill. When we started on our journey she was not
-      well, &ldquo;the climate was not agreeing with her,&rdquo; and they were beginning to
-      think she &ldquo;could not stand it.&rdquo; We spent a day in the open and we got
-      somewhat wet. When night came we shared a room and she wanted to close, at
-      least, a shutter. Partly that was to have privacy and partly to keep away
-      draughts. Then I brutally put down my foot.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I considered it dangerous to be shut in in Africa, and as I was
-      engineering that expedition I thought I ought to have my way. One thing I
-      did not insist upon, I did not have the windows open all round, but I had
-      them wide on two sides, so that a thorough draught might blow through the
-      room. My bed I put right in it, but I allowed her to put hers in the most
-      sheltered part of the room she could find, and, of course, I could not
-      prevent her wrapping her head in a blanket.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      She put in those two nights in fear and trembling, I know, but she went
-      back to Sekondi in far better health than she had left it. That she
-      acknowledged herself, but she does not like Africa; the charm of it had
-      passed her by, and I wonder very much if she will complete her term of
-      service.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XXI&mdash;THE WEST-AFRICAN GOLDFIELDS
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>A first adventure&mdash;Tarkwa&mdash;Once more Swanzy to the rescue&mdash;Women
-      thoroughly contented, independent, and well-to-do&mdash;The agricultural
-      wealth of the land&mdash;The best bungalow in West Africa&mdash;Crusade
-      against the trees&mdash;Burnt in the furnaces&mdash;Prestea&mdash;The sick
-      women&mdash;A ghastly hill&mdash;Eduaprim&mdash;A capable
-      fellow-countrywoman&mdash;&ldquo;Dollying&rdquo; for gold&mdash;Obuasi&mdash;Beautiful
-      gardens&mdash;75 per cent.&mdash;The sensible African snail.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was born and
-      brought up on the goldfields. My first adventure&mdash;I don't remember it&mdash;was
-      when my nurse, a strapping young emigrant from the Emerald Isle, lost me
-      and herself upon the ranges, and the camp turned out to search, lest the
-      warden's precious baby and her remarkably pretty nurse should spend an
-      unhappy night in the bush. As a small girl, I watched the men wash the
-      gold in their cradles, and I dirtied my pinafore when the rain turned the
-      mullock heaps into slimy mud. As I grew older, I escorted strangers from
-      the Old Country who wanted to go down the deep mines of Ballarat. I
-      watched, perforce, the fluctuations of the share market, and men who knew
-      told me that the rise and fall had very often nothing whatever to do with
-      the output of gold; so that I grew up with the firmly fixed idea&mdash;it
-      is still rather firmly fixed&mdash;that the most uninteresting industry in
-      the world was goldmining.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Wherefore was I not a bit keen on going to the gold mines of West Africa,
-      and I only went to Tarkwa because I felt it would never do to come away
-      not having seen an industry which I am told is going up by leaps and
-      bounds. The question was, where could I go for quarters? There are no
-      hotels as yet, and once more I am deeply indebted to Messrs Swanzy and
-      their agent in the mining centre of the Gold Coast. He put me up and
-      entertained me right royally, and not only did he show me round Tarkwa,
-      but he saw to it that I should have every chance to see some of the other
-      mines, Prestea and Eduaprim.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0057" id="linkimage-0057"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0464.jpg" alt="0464 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0464.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Tarkwa is set in what we in Australia should call a gully, and the high
-      hills rise up on either side, while the road, along which straggles the
-      European town, runs at the bottom of the gully. For there are several
-      towns in Tarkwa. There is the European town where are all the stores, the
-      railway station, and the houses of the Government officials, and in this
-      town there is some attempt at beautifying the place; some trees have been
-      planted along the roadside, grass grows on the hillsides, whether by the
-      grace of God or the grace of the town council I know not, and round most
-      of the bungalows there is generally a sort of garden, and notably in one
-      or two, where there are white women who have accompanied their husbands,
-      quite promising beginnings of tropical gardens.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There is the native town, bare and ugly, without a scrap of green, just
-      streets cutting each other at right angles, and small houses, roofed with
-      corrugated iron or thatch, and holding a teeming and mixed population that
-      the mines gather together, and then every mine has its own village for its
-      workers; for the labour difficulty has reached quite an acute stage in the
-      goldfields, and the mines often import labour from the north, which they
-      install in little villages, that are known by the name of the mine where
-      the men work, and are generally ruled over by a white officer appointed by
-      the mine. These villages, too, are about as bare and ugly as anything well
-      could be that is surrounded by the glorious green hills and has the blue
-      sky of Africa over it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Tarkwa gives the impression of a busy, thriving centre; trains rush along
-      the gully and the hills echo their shrill whistles, the roadways are
-      thronged with people, and the stores set out their goods in that open
-      fashion that is half-eastern, so that the hesitating buyer may hesitate no
-      longer but buy the richest thing in sight. In all my travels I never saw
-      such gorgeously arrayed mammies as here. The black ladies' cloths, their
-      blouses, and the silken kerchiefs with which they covered their heads, all
-      gave the impression of having been carefully studied, and my host assured
-      me they had. Many of them are rich, and in this comfortable country they
-      are all of them self-supporting wives. They sell their wares, or march
-      about the streets, happy, contented, important people, very sure of
-      themselves. Let no one run away with the impression that these women are
-      in any way down-trodden. They look very much the reverse. We may not
-      approve of polygamy, but I am bound to say these women of Tarkwa were no
-      down-trodden slaves. They looked like women who had exactly what they
-      wanted, and, curiously enough whenever I think of thoroughly contented,
-      thoroughly independent, well-to-do women, I think of those women in the
-      goldmining centre of West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My host told me they spent, comparatively speaking, enormous sums on their
-      personal adornment, were exceedingly particular as to the shade and
-      pattern of their cloths, and were decided that everything, cloth, blouse,
-      and head kerchief, should tone properly. They lay in a large store of
-      clothes too, and when Mr Crockett wrote the other day of &ldquo;The Lady of the
-      Hundred Dresses,&rdquo; he might have been thinking of one of these Fanti women.
-      The reason of this prosperity is of course easy to trace. The negro does
-      not like working underground, for which few people I think will blame him,
-      therefore high wages have to be paid, and these high wages have to be
-      spent, and are spent lavishly, much to the advantage of these women
-      traders.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0058" id="linkimage-0058"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0468.jpg" alt="0468 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0468.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Because Tarkwa is a great centre of industry, Government have very wisely
-      made it one of their agricultural stations, and there, set on a hill, and
-      running down into rich alluvial flats, are gardens wherein grow many of
-      the plants that will in the future contribute largely to the industrial
-      development of the Colony. There is a rubber plantation, a great grove of
-      dark trees already in bearing, plantations of bananas, pine-apples, hemp,
-      and palm trees, and the director, set in his lonely little bungalow on the
-      hilltop, rejoices over the wealth and fertility of the land, which he
-      declares is not in her gold, but in her agricultural products which as yet
-      we are but dimly realising, and then he mourns openly because the
-      Government will not let him bring out his wife. &ldquo;She would be ready to
-      start in an hour if I might send for her,&rdquo; he sighed, &ldquo;and I would want
-      nothing more. But I mayn't. Oh, think of the dreary days. And I could work
-      so much better if she were here. I should want nothing else.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      And I sympathised. Think of the dreary days for him, and the still more
-      dreary days for her, for at least he has his work. It would surely I think
-      pay the Government to give a bonus to the woman who proved that she could
-      see her year out without complaint, and who was to her husband what a
-      woman ought to be, a help and a comfort.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Another thing in Tarkwa I shall never forget is Messrs Swanzy's bungalow,
-      where I stayed for nearly a fortnight. My host had superintended the
-      building of it himself, and it was ideal for a West-African bungalow. It
-      was built of cement raised on arches above the ground; floors and walls
-      were of cement. There was a very wide verandah that served as a
-      sitting-room and dining-room, and the bedrooms, though they were divided
-      from each other by stout walls of cement, were only shut off from the
-      verandah by Venetian screens that could be folded right away. They did not
-      begin till a foot above the floor, and ended six feet above it,
-      consequently there was always a thorough draught of air, and Messrs
-      Swanzy's bungalow at Tarkwa is about the only house I know in West Africa
-      where one can sleep with as much comfort as if in the open air. Needless
-      to say, they are not so foolish as to go in for mosquito-proof netting.
-      They keep the mosquitoes down by keeping the place round neat and tidy,
-      and though the verandah is enclosed with glass, it is done in such fashion
-      that the windows may be thrown right open and do not hinder the free
-      passage of air. Flies and mosquitoes there were, but that, when I was
-      there, was attributed to the presence of the town rubbish tip on the next
-      vacant allotment, and my host hoped to get it taken away. Why the
-      Government had a town rubbish tip close to the handsomest bungalow in the
-      Colony, I do not pretend to say. It was just one of those things that are
-      always striking you as incongruous in West Africa. My host used to fret
-      and fume at every evil fly that came through his windows, and, when I
-      left, was threatening to stand a gang of Hausas round that tip with orders
-      to kick anyone who desired to deposit any more rubbish there.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0059" id="linkimage-0059"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0472.jpg" alt="0472 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0472.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      It is hardly necessary to say there had been at the same time a great
-      crusade against the trees in Tarkwa. But a short time ago the whole place
-      had been dense forest, very difficult to work, and after the usual fashion
-      of the English everyone set to work to demolish the forest trees as if
-      they were the greatest enemies to civilisation. The mines, of course, I
-      believe burn something like a hundred trees a day, and the softwood trees
-      are no good to them. What their furnaces require are the splendid
-      mahogany, the still harder kaku, a beautiful wood that is harder than
-      anything but iron, and indeed any good hard-wood tree; the worth of the
-      wood is no business of theirs. They consider the wealth of Africa lies
-      beneath the soil, and they must get it out; wherefore into their furnaces
-      goes everything burnable, even though the figured mahogany may be worth £1
-      a foot, and the tree be worth £1000. It is a pity, it is a grievous pity,
-      but Tarkwa is certainly prosperous, and I suppose one cannot make
-      omelettes, and look for chickens. Only I cannot help remembering that
-      never in our time, nor in our children's time, nor their children's time,
-      will the hills of Tarkwa be covered with such trees as she has ruthlessly
-      consigned to the flames. Even the soft-wood trees such as the cotton, that
-      might have added beauty to the slopes, have gone because an energetic
-      doctor waged war upon them as shelterers of the mosquito, and the
-      hill-sides lie in the blazing sun for close on twelve hours of a tropical
-      day. Oh for a sensible, artistic German to come and see to the beautifying
-      of Tarkwa, for never saw I a place that could lend itself more readily to
-      the hand of an artist.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But if Tarkwa is being ruthlessly treated, what shall I say of beautiful
-      Prestea, which lies but a short railway journey right away in the heart of
-      the hills. Prestea is a great mine, so large that the whole of the one
-      hundred and eighty white people who make up the white town are employed
-      upon it. It is so hilly that there are hardly any paths, and the people
-      seem to move about on trolleys, winding in and out of the hills, and, it
-      was reported once, one of the unhealthiest places in West Africa. The
-      doctor very kindly gave me hospitality, and we promptly agreed to disagree
-      on every subject. I hate to be ungracious to people who have been kind to
-      me, but with all the will in the world I have to keep my own opinion, and
-      my opinion was diametrically opposed to the doctor's. The nursing Sister
-      who ran the hospital, a nice-looking, capable, sensible Scotch woman, whom
-      it did my heart good to meet, was one of the few I have met who put the
-      sickness of the average English woman in West Africa down to the same
-      causes as I did.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;They come from a class who have nothing to think of, and when they have
-      nothing to do they naturally fall sick,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Every woman on this
-      camp has been sent home this year.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I debated with her whether I should give my opinion of the climate to the
-      world in my book. It meant I was up against every doctor in the place, who
-      ought to know better than I, a stranger, and a sojourner.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If you don't,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;someone else will come along presently and do
-      it.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      That decided me. I am doing it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0060" id="linkimage-0060"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0476.jpg" alt="0476 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0476.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      This nursing Sister, while she had to have the hospital mosquito-proof, in
-      deference to the doctor's opinion, sternly declined to have any such
-      abomination anywhere near her little bungalow, and so the cool, fresh
-      night air blew in through her great windows, and we had an extensive view
-      of the glorious hillsides, all clothed in emerald green, and if a clammy
-      white mist wrapped us close when we waked in the early morning so that we
-      could not see beyond our own verandahs, the rolling away of that mist was
-      a gorgeous sight, ever to be remembered.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Needless to say, the doctor's house was carefully enclosed in
-      mosquito-proof wire, and I dined in an oppressive atmosphere that nearly
-      drove me distracted. The bungalow was set high on a hilltop, in the middle
-      of a garden that should one day be beautiful, but he has of course cut
-      down every native tree, and owing to the mosquito-proof wire we got no
-      benefit from the cool breeze that was blowing outside. He took me to see
-      the new native village he was building, a place that left an impression of
-      corrugated iron and hard-baked clay. Trees, of course, and all vegetation
-      were taboo, but I am bound in justice to say that the old village, a place
-      teeming with inhabitants, drawn from all corners of West Africa, attracted
-      by the lust for gold, was just as bare and ugly, and a good deal more
-      unkempt.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      He took me out, and pointed out to me the principal hill in the centre of
-      Prestea, on which are the mining manager's and other officials' houses,
-      and he pointed it out with pride.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;There's a nice clean hill for you.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      The sun glared down fiercely on corrugated-iron roofs, the soil of the
-      hill looked like a raw, red scar, and there was not so much as a blade of
-      grass to be seen. I did not wonder that the unfortunate women of Prestea
-      had gone home sick if they had been compelled to live in such a place.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I said, &ldquo;It's a horrible place. I never saw a beautiful place more utterly
-      spoiled.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He looked at me with surprise, and his surprise was thoroughly genuine.
-      &ldquo;Why, what's the matter? It's nice and clean.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I pointed to the beautiful hills all round.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Mosquitoes,&rdquo; said he, with a little snort for my ignorance.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But you want some shade?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He shook his head doubtfully.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You can't have trees. The boys would leave pots under them. Breeding
-      places for mosquitoes.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He was my host, so I did not like to say all I felt.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;I'd rather die of fever than sunstroke any day,&rdquo; was the way it finally
-      came out.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; he said judicially, as one who was correcting a
-      long-standing error, &ldquo;no one dies of fever in Africa.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Exactly what I always maintain,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;you, with your ghastly hills
-      are arranging for them to die of sunstroke.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      But he only reiterated that they could not have the trees, because the
-      boys would leave pots and pans under them, and so turn them into mosquito
-      traps. Personally, I didn't arrive at the logic of that, because it has
-      never seemed to me to require trees for boys to leave pots about. The
-      theory was, I suppose, that they would not walk out into the hot sun,
-      while they might be tempted to do work and make litter under shade-trees.
-      And again I did not wonder that there were no women save the nursing
-      Sister in Prestea. To live on that hill and keep one's health would have
-      been next door to impossible.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It doesn't matter,&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;we don't want women in West Africa.
-      I keep my wife at home. It isn't a white man's country.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0061" id="linkimage-0061"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0480.jpg" alt="0480 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0480.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      But I'm bound to say that they very often arrange it shall not be a white
-      man's and emphatically not a white woman's country. It suits somebody's
-      plan that the country should have an evil reputation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Goldfields, too, must never be judged in the same category as one judges
-      the ordinary settlements in a country. When I was a tiny child I learned
-      to discriminate, and to know that &ldquo;diggers&rdquo; must not be judged by the
-      rules that guide the conduct of ordinary men. The population of a
-      goldfield are a wild and reckless lot, and they lead wild and utterly
-      reckless lives, and die in places where other people manage to live
-      happily enough.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When the gold first &ldquo;broke out&rdquo; in Victoria, my father was Gold
-      Commissioner on the Buckland River, among the mountains in the
-      north-eastern district, and I have heard him tell how the men used to die
-      like flies of &ldquo;colonial&rdquo; fever, and the theory was that there was some
-      emanation from the dense vegetation that was all around them. Nowadays the
-      Buckland is one of the healthiest spots in a very healthy country, and no
-      one ever gets fever of any sort there. Now I do not wish to say that West
-      Africa is one of the healthiest countries in the world, but I do say that
-      men very very often work their own undoing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You should see Tarkwa,&rdquo; said a man to me, who was much of my way of
-      thinking, &ldquo;when an alcoholic wave has passed over it!&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Eduaprim was another mine I went to see from Tarkwa. But it was in direct
-      contrast to Prestea, though it too was in the heart of the forest country.
-      No railway led to it; I had to go by hammock, and so I got my first taste
-      of forest travelling, and enjoyed it immensely.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is a solitary mine about nine miles from Tarkwa, and I started off
-      early in the morning, and noticed as I went that the industry is, for good
-      or ill, clearing the forests of West Africa, opening up the dark places,
-      even as it did in my country over fifty years ago. Along the hillsides we
-      went to Eduaprim, past mines and clearings for mining villages; sometimes
-      the road was cut, a narrow track on the side of the hill, with the land
-      rising up on one side and falling sheer on the other, sometimes a little
-      river had to be bridged, and the road went on tunnel-like through the
-      forest that must disappear before the furnaces, but at last I arrived at
-      the top of the hill, and on it, commanding a wonderful view over the
-      surrounding country, stood a bungalow, in a garden that looked over the
-      tops of range upon range of high hills. I saw a storm come sweeping across
-      the country, break and divide at the hilltop upon which I stood, and pass
-      on, veiling the green hills in mist, which rolled away from the hills
-      behind, leaving them smiling and washed and clean under a blue sky. If for
-      no other sight than that, that journey into the hills was worth making.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0062" id="linkimage-0062"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0484.jpg" alt="0484 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0484.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The wife of the manager of the mine was a fellow-countrywoman of mine. She
-      liked West Africa, kept her health there, and felt towards it very much as
-      I did. No one likes great heat. The unchanging temperature is rather
-      difficult to bear for one unaccustomed to it, but she thought it might be
-      managed by a woman interested in her work and her husband, and as for the
-      other discomforts&mdash;like me, she smiled at them. &ldquo;The people who
-      grumble should live in Australia,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;and do their own work,
-      cooking, washing, scrubbing. Do it for a week with the temperature
-      averaging 100 degrees in the shade, and they wouldn't grumble at West
-      Africa, and wouldn't dream of being sick.&rdquo; And yet this contented woman
-      must have led a very lonely life. Some wandering man connected with the
-      mines, or a stray Commissioner, would come to see her occasionally, and
-      the news of the world would come on men's heads from Tarkwa. And, of
-      course, I suppose there was always the mine, which was her husband's
-      livelihood. They took me into the bush behind the bungalow and showed me a
-      great mahogany tree they had cut down, and then they showed me what I had
-      seen many and many a time in my life before, but never in Africa&mdash;men
-      washing the sand for gold. They were &ldquo;dollying&rdquo; it first, that is crushing
-      the hard stone in iron vessels and then washing it, and the &ldquo;show,&rdquo; I
-      could see for myself, was very good.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I lingered in Eduaprim; the charm of talking with a woman who found joy in
-      making a home in the wilderness was not to be lightly foregone, and I only
-      went when I remembered that it was the rainy season, the roads were bad,
-      and Tarkwa was away over those forbidding hills.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And from Tarkwa I went up the line to Obuasi.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This railway line that runs from Sekondi to Kumasi, the capital of
-      Ashanti, is a wonderful specimen of its class. Every day sees some
-      improvement made, but, being a reasonable being, I cannot help wondering
-      what sort of engineers laid it out. It presents no engineering
-      difficulties, but it was extremely costly, and meanders round and round
-      like a corkscrew. They are engaged now in straightening it, but still they
-      say that when the guard wants a light for his pipe all he has to do is to
-      lean out of his van and get it from the engine. It was laid through dense
-      forest, but the forest is going rapidly, the trees being used up for fuel.
-      In the early days, too, these trees were a menace, for again and again,
-      when a fierce tornado swept across the land, the line would be blocked by
-      fallen trees, a casualty that grows less and less frequent as the forest
-      recedes. When first the line was opened they tell me all passengers were
-      notified that they must bring food and bedding, as the company could not
-      guarantee their being taken to their destination. There is also the story
-      of the distracted but pious negro station-master, who telegraphed to
-      headquarters, &ldquo;Train lost, but by God's help hope to find it.&rdquo; It is a
-      single line of 168 miles, so I conclude his trust in the Deity was not
-      misplaced.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Obuasi, on the borders of Ashanti, is the great mine of West Africa, a
-      mine that pays, I think, something like 75 per cent, on its original
-      shares, and even at their present value pays 12 per cent. It is enough to
-      set everyone looking for gold in West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And like Prestea, Obuasi is the mine, and the mine only. There are, I
-      think, between eighty and one hundred white men, all, save the few
-      Government officials and storekeepers, in some way or another connected
-      with the mine, and the place at night looks like a jewel set in the midst
-      of the hills, for it is lighted by electricity. Every comfort of
-      civilisation seems to be here, save and except the white woman, who is
-      conspicuous by her absence. &ldquo;We want no white women,&rdquo; seems to be the
-      general opinion; an opinion, I deeply regret to say, warranted by my
-      experience of the average English woman who goes to West Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0063" id="linkimage-0063"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0488.jpg" alt="0488 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0488.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The place is all hill and valley, European bungalows built on the hills,
-      embowered generally in charming gardens such as one sees seldom in the
-      Colony, and the native villages&mdash;for there are about five thousand
-      black men on the books of the mine&mdash;in the valleys. There are miles
-      of little tramway railways too, handling about 35,000 tons a month, more,
-      they tell me, than the Government railway does, and the mine pays
-      Government a royalty of £25,000 a year.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Obuasi is a fascinating, beautiful place; I should have liked to have
-      spent a month there, but it is not savagery. It is as civilised in many
-      ways as London itself. I stayed in the mining manager's bungalow, and am
-      very grateful to him for his hospitality, and the manager's bungalow is a
-      most palatial place, set on the top of a high hill in the midst of a
-      beautiful garden. Palm and mango and grape-fruit trees, flamboyant, palms,
-      dahlias, corallita, crotons, and roses, the most beautiful roses in the
-      world, red, white, yellow, pink, everywhere; a perfect glory of roses is
-      his garden, and the view from the verandah is delightful. His wide and
-      spacious rooms are panelled with the most beautiful native woods, and
-      looking at it with the eyes of a passer-by, I could see nothing but
-      interest in the life of the man who had put in a year there. He will
-      object strongly, I know, to my writing in praise of anything West-African,
-      and say what can I know about it in a brief tour. True enough, what can I
-      know? But at least I have seen many lands, and I am capable of making
-      comparisons.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Every man I met here pointed out to me the evils of life in Africa.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;You make the very worst of it,&rdquo; said I, and proceeded to tell the story
-      of a bridge party in a Coast town that began at three o'clock on Friday
-      afternoon and ended up at ten o'clock on Monday morning.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;And if those men have fever,&rdquo; said I, feeling I had clinched my argument,
-      &ldquo;they will set it down to the beastly climate.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;So it is,&rdquo; said my opponent emphatically; &ldquo;we could always do that sort
-      of thing in Buluwayo.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      I thereby got the deepest respect for the climate of Buluwayo, and a most
-      doubtful estimate of the character of the pioneer Englishman. Perhaps I
-      look on these things with a woman's narrow outlook, but I'm not a bit
-      sorry for the men who cannot dissipate without paying for it in Africa. I
-      heartily wish them plenty of fever.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The manager took me on a trolley along one of these little lines, right
-      away into the hills. This was a new form of progression. A seat for two
-      people was fixed on a platform and pushed along the line, uphill or on the
-      flat, by three or four negroes, and fairly flew by its own weight
-      downhill. It was a delightful mode of progression, and as we flew along,
-      Xi my host, while pointing out the sights, endeavoured to convert me, not
-      to the faith that West Africa was unfit for the white woman, that would
-      have been impossible, but that the mining industry was a very great one
-      and most useful to the Colony. And here he succeeded.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0064" id="linkimage-0064"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0492.jpg" alt="0492 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0492.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      I admired the forests and regretted their going, but he showed me the
-      farms that had taken their place. Bananas and maize and cassada, said he
-      truly enough, were far more valuable to the people than the great, dark
-      forests they had cleared away&mdash;ten people could live now where one
-      had lived before; and so we rolled on till we came to the Justice mine,
-      where all the hillside seemed to be worked, a mine that has been paying
-      £10,000 a month for the last three years. Truly, it is a wonderful place,
-      that Obuasi mine with its nine shafts, an industry in the heart of savage
-      Africa. They pay £11,000 a week in wages, and when I was thinking how
-      closely in touch it was with civilisation, the manager told me how the
-      chiefs had just raised a great agitation against the mine because it
-      worked on Friday, their sacred day. They complained that the snails were
-      so shocked at this act of sacrilege that they were actually leaving the
-      district. Now the snails in Ashanti are very important people, boundaries
-      are always calculated with reference to them, and if a chief can prove
-      that his men are in the habit of gathering snails over a certain area, it
-      is proof positive that he holds jurisdiction over that land. That the
-      snails should leave the district shocked would be a national calamity. The
-      African snail looks like an enormous whelk, he haunts the Ashanti forest,
-      and is at his best just at the commencement of the rains, when he begins
-      to grow fat and succulent, but is not yet too gross and slimy. He is
-      hunted for assiduously, and all along the forest paths may be seen men,
-      laden with sticks on which are impaled snails drawn from their shells,
-      dried, and smoked. Luckily also these African snails appear to be very
-      sensible, and when it was put to them that the mines could not possibly
-      stop working on a Friday, but a small monetary tribute would be paid to
-      them regularly through the principal chief, they amiably consented at once
-      to stay and meet their final end, as a self-respecting snail should, by
-      impalement on a stick.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0065" id="linkimage-0065"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0497.jpg" alt="0497 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0497.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XXII&mdash;A NEW TRADING CENTRE
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The siege of Kumasi&mdash;The Governor in 1900&mdash;The rebellion&mdash;The
-      friendlies under the walls of the fort&mdash;The Ashanti warrior of ten
-      years ago and the trader of to-day&mdash;The chances of the people in the
-      fort&mdash;The retreat&mdash;The gallant men who conducted it&mdash;The
-      men who were left behind&mdash;The rescue&mdash;Kumasi of to-day&mdash;The
-      trade that comes to Kumasi as the trade of Britain came to London in the
-      days of Augustus&mdash;The Chief Commissioner&mdash;The men needed to rule
-      West Africa.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nd when I had been
-      to Obuasi nothing remained but to go up the line and see Kumasi and go as
-      far beyond as the time at my disposal would allow.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I wonder if English-speaking people have forgotten yet the siege of
-      Kumasi. For me, I shall never forget, and it stands out specially in my
-      mind because I know some of the actors, and now I have seen the fort where
-      the little tragedy took place; for, put it what way you will, it was a
-      tragedy, for though the principals escaped, some with well-merited honour,
-      the minor actors died, died like flies, and no man knoweth even their
-      names.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was dark when I reached Kumasi and got out on to the platform and was
-      met by the kind cantonment magistrate, put into a hammock, and carried up
-      to the fort, and was there received by the Chief Commissioner and his
-      pretty bride, one of the two white women who make Kumasi their home, I had
-      seen many forts, old forts along the Coast, but this fort was put up in
-      1896, and in 1900 its inmates were fighting for their lives. In it were
-      shut up the Governor, his wife, two or three unfortunate Basel missionary
-      women, a handful of troops, and all the other white people in the place.
-      Standing on the verandah overlooking the town to-day, with a piano playing
-      soft music and a dining-table within reach set out with damask and
-      cut-glass and flowers and silver, it is hard to believe that those times
-      are only ten years back. I have heard men talk of those days, and they are
-      reticent; there are always things it seems they think they had better not
-      tell, and I gather that the then Governor was not very much beloved, and
-      that no one put much faith in him. The rebellion started somewhere to the
-      north, and by the time it reached Kumasi it was too late to fly, for it
-      was a good eight days' hard march to the Coast through dense forest. The
-      nearest possible safety outside that fort lay beyond the River Prah, at
-      least three or four days' march away. Every white man and many of the
-      black who were not Ashantis had taken refuge in the fort, which was
-      crowded to suffocation, and outside, in front of the fort, camped the
-      friendlies, safe to a certain extent under the white man's guns, but dying
-      slowly because the white man could not give what he had not got himself&mdash;food;
-      and here they died, died of disease and hunger and wounds, and the reek of
-      their dying poisoned the air so that the white man, starving behind his
-      high walls of cement, was like to have his end accelerated by those who
-      stood by him.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And out beyond, where the English town now stands, with broad streets
-      planted with palms and mangoes and <i>ficus</i>, were the encampments of
-      fierce Ashanti warriors, their cloths wound round their middles, their
-      hair brushed fiercely back from their foreheads, their powder-flasks and
-      bullet-bags slung across their shoulders, and their long Danes in their
-      hands, the locks carefully covered with a shield of pigskin. The same man,
-      very often the very same individual, walks about the streets of Kumasi
-      to-day, and if he wears a tourist cap and a shirt, torn, ragged, and
-      dirty, he is at least a peaceful citizen, and ten years hence he will
-      probably, like the Creoles in Sierra Leone, be talking of &ldquo;going home.&rdquo;
-       But it was ghastly in the fort then. It was small and it was crowded to
-      suffocation. The nearest help was at Cape Coast, nigh on 200 miles away,
-      and between lay the dense forest that no man lightly dared. The Ashanti
-      too was the warrior of the Coast, and the difficulty was even to get
-      carriers who would help to move a force against him. Shut up in the fort
-      there they looked out and waited for help and waited for death that ever
-      seemed coming closer and closer.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Kumasi is set in a hollow, and round it, pressing in on every side, was
-      the great forest. Away to the south went the road to Cape Coast, but it
-      was but a track kept open with the greatest difficulty, and hidden in the
-      depths of the forest on either hand were these same warriors. Truly the
-      chances of the people in the fort seemed small, small indeed. And day
-      after day passed and there was no sign of help. Provisions were getting
-      low, ammunition was running short, and from the Ashanti no mercy could be
-      expected. It was war to the death. Any man or woman who fell into their
-      hands could expect nothing but torture. I gather that his advisers would
-      have had the Governor start for the Coast at once on the outbreak of
-      hostilities, but he could not make up his mind, and lingered and lingered,
-      hoping for the help that did not, that could not come. No one has ever had
-      a word of praise for that Governor, though very gallantly the men under
-      him came out of it. Starvation and death stared them all in the face; the
-      gallant little garrison, heavily handicapped as it was, could certainly
-      hold out but little longer, and the penalty of conquest was death&mdash;death,
-      ghastly and horrible.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At last the Governor gave in and they started, a forlorn little company,
-      for the River Prah, which had generally set a bound to Ashanti raids. The
-      Governor's wife was carried in a hammock, but the Basel missionary women,
-      who had escaped with only the clothes they stood up in, walked, for the
-      hammock-boys were too weak to carry them, and they had to tramp through
-      mud and swamp. The soldiers did their best to protect the forlorn company,
-      the friendlies crowded after, a tumultuous, disorderly crew fleeing before
-      their enemies, and those same enemies hung on their flanks, scrambled
-      through the forest, ruthlessly cut off any stragglers, and poured volleys
-      from their long Danes into the retreating company. Knowing the forest, I
-      wonder that one man ever escaped alive to tell the tale; that the
-      principal actors did, only shows that the Ashanti was not the practised
-      warrior the Coast had always counted him. Had those Ashantis been the lean
-      Pathan from the hills of northern India, not a solitary man would have
-      lived to tell the tale, and the retreat from Kumasi would have taken its
-      place with some of those pitiful stories of the Afghan Border. But one
-      thing the Ashanti is not, he is not a good marksman. He blazes away with
-      his long Dane, content to make a terrific row without making quite sure
-      that every bullet has reached its billet. And so, thanks to the bad
-      marksmanship of the Ashantis, that little company got through.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But let no man think I am in any way disparaging the men who fought here,
-      who by their gallantry brought the Governor and his wife through. Major
-      Armitage and his comrades were brave men of whom England may well be
-      proud, men worthy to take their places beside Blake and Hawkins and all
-      the gallant Britons whose names are inscribed on the roll of fame; they
-      fought against desperate odds, they were cruelly hampered by the helpless
-      people under their care, and they stuck beside them, though by so doing
-      they risked not only death, but death by ghastly torture. Some of them
-      died, some of them got through&mdash;they are with us still, young men,
-      men in the prime of life&mdash;and when we tell our children tales of the
-      way England won her colonies, we may well tell how that little company
-      left the fort of Kumasi, every man who was wise with cyanide of potassium
-      in his pocket, and fought his way down to the Prah.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But even though they went south they were not going to abandon Kumasi,
-      which had been won at the cost of so much blood, and in that fort were
-      left behind three white men and a company of native soldiers. All in good
-      time the relief must come, and till then they must hold it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A verandah hangs round the fort nowadays that the piping times of peace
-      have come, but still upstairs in the rooms above are the platforms for the
-      gun-carriages, and I climbed up on them and walked along the verandahs and
-      wondered how those men must have felt who had looked out from the
-      self-same place ten years ago. If no help came, if waiting were unduly
-      prolonged, they would die, die like rats in a hole, and the men in their
-      companies were dying daily. They were faithful, those dark soldiers of the
-      Empire, but they were dying, dying of disease and hunger, and their
-      officers could not help them, for were they not slowly dying themselves?
-      Rumours there were of the relief force, but they were only rumours, and
-      the spectres of disease and starvation grew daily. Could they hold out?
-      Could they hold out? The tale has been told again and again, and will
-      probably be told yet again in English story, and at last when they had
-      well-nigh given up to despair they heard the sound of English guns, so
-      different from the explosions of the long Danes, and presently there was
-      the call of the bugles, and out into the open trotted a little fox
-      terrier, the advance guard of the men who had come to save Kumasi.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And now the change. Kumasi has a train from the coast port of Sekondi
-      every day, it has a population that exceeds that of the capital of the
-      Gold Coast itself, every day the forest is receding and in the streets are
-      growing up great buildings that mark only the beginning of a trade that is
-      already making the wise wonder how it was when wealth lay on the ground
-      for the picking up, England, who had it all within her grasp, was amiable
-      enough to allow the greater portion of this wonderful land to fall to the
-      lot of the French and Germans.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The forest used to close Kumasi in on every side. It is set in a hollow,
-      and the tall trees and luxuriant green in the days that I have just spoken
-      of threatened to overwhelm it. Now that sensation has passed away.
-      Whatever Kumasi may be in the future, to-day it is a busy centre of life
-      and trade. Where the fetish tree stood, the ground beneath its branches
-      soaked with human blood and strewn with human bones, is now the centre of
-      the town where the great buildings of the merchant princes of West Africa
-      are rising. They are fine, but they are a blot on the landscape for all
-      that. The nation that prides itself on being the colonising nation of the
-      earth never makes any preparation for the expansion of its territory or
-      the growth of its trade, so here in this conquered country, bought at the
-      cost of so much sweat and blood, the authorities are allowing to go up, in
-      the very heart of the town buildings, very handsome buildings without
-      doubt, so close together that in a tropical land where fresh air is life
-      itself they are preparing to take toll of the health of the unfortunates
-      who will have to dwell and work there. But beyond that one grave mistake
-      Kumasi promises to be a very pretty place as well as a very important one.
-      Its wide, red roads, smooth and well-kept, are planted with trees, mangoes
-      and palms; its bungalows are set well apart, surrounded by trees and
-      shrubs and lawns, their red-brown roofs and verandahs toning picturesquely
-      with the prevailing green.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0066" id="linkimage-0066"> </a>
-    </p>
-
-<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0507.jpg" alt="0507 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0507.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-
-    <p>
-      Curious it is when one thinks of its history to see the white painted
-      sign-posts on which are recorded the names of the streets. There is
-      &ldquo;Kingsway&rdquo; for one, and &ldquo;Stewart-avenue,&rdquo; after the man who deeply loved
-      the country, for another, and there are at least two great roads that lead
-      away to the fruitful country in the north, roads that push their way
-      through the dense forest and must even compel the admiration of our
-      friends the Germans, those champion road-makers. And down those roads
-      comes all the wonderful trade of Kumasi, not as the trade of London, of
-      course, but as the trade of London was, perhaps, when Augustus ruled at
-      Rome. The trade of the world comes to London nowadays, the trade of the
-      back-country came to London then, and so does the trade of all the country
-      round come to the Ashanti capital. Its streets are thronged with all
-      manner of peoples, dark, of course, for the ruling whites are but an
-      inconsiderable handful, and only the Chief Commissioner and one missionary
-      have been daring enough to bring their wives.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Ashanti is a conquered country, and it seems to me it has got just the
-      right sort of Government, a Government most exactly suited to the
-      requirements of the negro in his present state of advancement. What a
-      negro community requires is a benevolent despotism, but as a rule the
-      British Government, with its feeling for the rights of the individual,
-      does not see its way to give it such a Government. But Ashanti was
-      conquered at great cost, wherefore as yet England has still to think of
-      the rights of the white men who dwell there as against the rights of the
-      black man, and the result to me, an onlooker, appears to be most
-      satisfactory for both white and black. Of course, such a Government
-      requires to administrate not only excellent men, not only honest and
-      trustworthy men, but men who have the interests of the country at heart,
-      and who devote themselves to it, and such men she has got in the Chief
-      Commissioner, Mr Fuller, and the subordinates chosen by him. Only an
-      onlooker am I, a woman, a passer-by, but as a passer-by I could not but be
-      struck by the difference between the feeling in the Gold Coast Colony and
-      the feeling in Ashanti. The whole tone of thought was different.
-      Everywhere on the Gold Coast men met me with the question, &ldquo;What did I
-      think of this poisonous country? Wasn't it a rotten place?&rdquo; and they
-      seemed bitterly disappointed if I did not confirm their worst blame.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0067" id="linkimage-0067"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0511.jpg" alt="0511 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0511.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      But in Ashanti it was different. The very clerks in the mercantile houses
-      had some good word to say for the country, and were anxious that I should
-      appreciate it and speak well of it, and this I can but set down to the
-      example and guidance of such men as the Chief Commissioner and the men he
-      chooses to serve under him. Had the rest of West Africa always had such
-      broad-minded, clever, interested men at the head of affairs, I think we
-      should have heard a great deal less about its unhealthiness and a great
-      deal more about the productiveness of the country. Since I have seen
-      German methods I am more than thankful that I have been to Ashanti and
-      learned that my own country is quite equal to doing as well, if not
-      beating them at their own methods. The Ashanti himself, the truculent
-      warrior of ten years ago, has under the paternal and sympathetic
-      Government of this Chief Commissioner become a man of peace. If he has not
-      beaten his long Dane gun into a ploughshare he has at least taken very
-      kindly to trade and is pleased, nay eager that the white man should dwell
-      in his country. He stalks about Kumasi in his brightly coloured, toga-like
-      cloth still, very sure that he is a man of great importance among the
-      tribes, and his chiefs march through the streets in chairs on men's heads,
-      with tom-toms beating, immense gaily coloured umbrellas twirling, their
-      silken' cloths a brilliant spot in the brilliant sunshine, their rich gold
-      ornaments marking them off from the common herd, and all their people who
-      are not Christian still give them unquestioned devotion. But Kumasi, as I
-      said, is the centre of a great trade, and the native town, which is
-      alongside but quite apart from the European town, is packed with shops,
-      shops that are really very much in the nature of stalls, for there are no
-      fronts to them, and the goods are exposed to the street, where all manner
-      of things that are attractive to the native are set out.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And here one gathers what is attractive to the native. First and foremost,
-      perhaps, are the necessities of life, the things that the white man has
-      made absolute necessaries. First among them, I think, would be kerosene
-      and bread, so everywhere, in market-place and shop, or even just outside a
-      house, you may see ordinary wine and whisky bottles full of kerosene, and
-      rows and rows of loaves of bread. Then there comes men's clothing&mdash;hideous
-      shirts and uglier trousers, tourist caps that are the last cry in
-      hooliganism, and boots, buttoned and shiny, that would make an angel weep.
-      Alas! and alas! The Ashanti in his native state, very sure of himself, has
-      a certain dignity about him even as must have had the old Roman. You might
-      not have liked the old Roman, probably you would not unless he chose to
-      make himself pleasant, but you could not but recognise the fact that he
-      was no nonentity, and so it is with the Ashanti till he puts on European
-      garments. Then how are the mighty fallen! for like all negroes, in the
-      garb of civilisation, he is commonplace when he is not grotesque. What
-      they are to wear I cannot say, but the better-class among them seem to
-      realise this, for I have often heard it said, not only in Ashanti but in
-      other parts of the Coast: &ldquo;The Chief may not wear European clothes.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0068" id="linkimage-0068"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0515.jpg" alt="0515 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0515.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      And beside clothes in the native shops are hurricane lanterns, ordinary
-      cheap kerosene lamps, and sewing machines which the men work far more
-      often then the women, accordions, mouth harmoniums, and cotton goods in
-      the strange and weird patterns that Manchester thinks most likely to
-      attract the native eye. I have seen brooms and brushes and dustpans
-      printed in brilliant purple on a blue ground, and I have seen the
-      outspread fingers of a great hand in scarlet on a black ground. But mostly
-      there is nothing of very great interest in these shops, just European
-      goods of the commonest, cheapest description supplied apparently with the
-      view of educating the native eye in all that is ugliest and most
-      reprehensible in civilisation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There are horses in Kumasi, for the forest and undergrowth have been
-      cleared away sufficiently to destroy the tsetse fly, and so most evenings,
-      when the heat of the day has passed, the Chief Commissioner and his wife
-      go for a ride, and on occasions many of the soldiermen play polo and hold
-      race-meetings, but as yet there is no wheeled traffic in the streets. Most
-      of the goods are carried on men's heads, and the roadways are crowded.
-      There are women with loads on their heads and generally children on their
-      backs, walking as if the world belonged to them, though in truth they are
-      little better than their husbands' slaves. There are soldiers all in
-      khaki, with little green caps like condensed fezes, lor the place is a
-      great military camp and the black soldier swaggers through the street;
-      there are policemen in blue uniforms with red fezes, their feet bare like
-      those of the soldiers, and their legs bound in dark-blue putties; and
-      there are black men from all corners of West Africa. There are the Kroo
-      boys, those labourers of the Coast, with the dark-blue freedom mark
-      tattooed on their foreheads, never carrying anything on their heads, but
-      pushing and pulling heavily laden carts, in gangs that vary from four to a
-      dozen, and their clothing is the cast-off clothing of the white man; there
-      are Hausas and Wangaras, than whom no man can carry heavier loads, and
-      they wear not a flowing cloth like the Ashanti, but a long, shirt-like
-      garment not unlike the smock of the country labourer. It is narrower and
-      longer, but is usually decorated with the same elaborate needlework about
-      the neck and shoulders; if their legs are not bare they wear Arab
-      trousers, full above and tight about their feet, and the flapping of their
-      heelless slippers makes a clack-clack as they walk. There are Yorubas,
-      dressed much the same, only with little caps like a child's Dutch bonnet,
-      and there are even men from the far north, with blue turbans and the lower
-      part of their faces veiled. Far beyond the dense forest lies their home,
-      away possibly in French territory, but the trade is coming to this new
-      city of the Batouri, and they wander down with the cattle or horses. For
-      all the cattle and horses come down through the forest, driven hastily and
-      fast because of the deadly tsetse, and many must perish by the way. A herd
-      of the humped, long-horned cattle come wearily through the streets.
-      Whatever they may have been once, there is no spirit left in them now, for
-      they have come down that long road from the north; they have fed sparely
-      by the way, and they are destined for the feeding of the population that
-      are swarming into Kumasi to work the mines in the south.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0069" id="linkimage-0069"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0519.jpg" alt="0519 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0519.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Three towns are here in Kumasi: the European quarter, the Ashanti town,
-      and the Mohammedan town or <i>zonga</i>. Here all the carrying trade that
-      is not done by Government is arranged for&mdash;by a woman. Here the
-      houses are small and unattractive, nondescript native huts built by people
-      who are only sojourners in the land, come but to make money, ready to
-      return to their own land in the north the moment it is made. And they sit
-      by the roadside with little things to sell. Food-stuffs often, balls of
-      kenki white as snow, yams and cassada, which is the root of which we make
-      tapioca, cobs of Indian corn, and, of course, stink-fish that comes all
-      the way from the Coast and is highly prized as a food, and does not appear
-      to induce ptomaine poisoning in African stomachs. Some of these dainties
-      are set out on brass trays made in Birmingham; others on wooden platters
-      and on plates delicately woven in various patterns of grass dyed in many
-      colours. But most things they have they are ready to sell, for the negro
-      has great trading instincts, and that trading instinct it is that has made
-      him so easy to hold once he is conquered.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Kumasi is peaceful enough now, and the only reminder of the bad days of
-      ten years back is the fort just above the native town, but it looks down
-      now across a smooth green lawn, on which are some great, shady trees,
-      where chiefs assembled whom I photographed. One was a great fetish chief
-      with gold ornaments upon his head and upon his feet, and knowledge of
-      enough magic, had this been the fifteenth century instead of the
-      twentieth, to drive the white man and all his following back to the sea
-      from whence he came; but it is the twentieth, and he is wise enough to
-      know it, and he flings all the weight of his authority into the scales
-      with the British raj. But at the gate of the fort still stands a guard of
-      black soldiers in all the glory of scarlet and yellow which stands for
-      gold, for the Chief Commissioner lives here, and in a land where a chief
-      is of such importance it is necessary to keep up a certain amount of
-      state, and the Chief Commissioner ruling over this country and receiving
-      obeisance from the chiefs, clad in their gorgeous silken cloths, laden
-      with golden jewellery, men looked up to by their followers as half-divine,
-      must feel something like a Roman proconsul of old carrying the eagles into
-      savage lands, and yet allowing those savages as far as possible to govern
-      themselves by their own laws. Africa has always been the unknown land, but
-      now at last the light is being let into dark places, the French have
-      regenerated Dahomey, and the railway comes to Kumasi. I sat on that
-      verandah and thought of the old days that were only ten years back, and
-      learned much from the Commissioner, and I felt that civilisation was
-      coming by leaps and bounds to Ashanti, and if it be true, as old tradition
-      has it, that a house to be firmly built must have a living man beneath its
-      foundation stone, then must the future of Kumasi be assured, for its
-      foundations were well and truly laid in rivers of human blood.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0070" id="linkimage-0070"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0523.jpg" alt="0523 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0523.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XXIII&mdash;IN THE HEART OF THE RUBBER COUNTRY
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>Bound for Sunyani&mdash;The awe-inspiring-forest&mdash;The road through
-      the forest&mdash;The people upon that road&mdash;Ofinsu and an Ashanti
-      house&mdash;Rather a public bedroom&mdash;Potsikrom&mdash;A night of fear&mdash;Sandflies&mdash;Attractive
-      black babies&mdash;A great show at Bechem&mdash;A most important person&mdash;The
-      Hausa who went in fear of his life&mdash;Coronation night at Tanosu&mdash;A
-      teetotal party&mdash;The medical officer's views on trees&mdash;Beyond the
-      road&mdash;Sunyani.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> talked to the
-      Commissioner, and those talks with him made me want to go somewhere out
-      into the wilds. Kumasi was beginning to look strangely civilised to me. It
-      was a great trading-centre, and presently it would be as well known, it
-      seemed to me, as Alexandria or Cairo, or at the other end of the
-      Continent, Buluwayo. I should like to have gone into the Northern
-      Territories, but the rainy season was upon us, and if that did not daunt
-      me&mdash;and it would not have done so&mdash;I had to consider the time. I
-      ought to be back in London. I had intended to be away for six months, and
-      now it was close on eight since I had come out of the mouth of the Mersey.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Go to Sunyani,&rdquo; said the Chief Commissioner, &ldquo;and go on to Odumase, where
-      the rising began at the beginning of the century. You will be the first
-      white woman to go there, and I think you will find it worth your while.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      So I interviewed the head of the transport service, and by his kindness
-      was supplied with seventeen carriers, and one hot day in June started
-      north.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They had doubts, these kind friends of mine, about my capabilities as a
-      traveller, at least they feared that something might happen to me while I
-      was in their country, and they told me that a medical officer was starting
-      north for Sunyam that day and would go with me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I looked up the medical officer and found him in the midst of packages
-      that he was taking with him beyond civilisation to last for a year. He was
-      most courteous, but it seemed to me that he felt the presence of a woman a
-      responsibility, and I was so sure of myself, hated to be counted a
-      nuisance, that when he said he had intended to go only as far as Sansu
-      that night, I expressed my intention of going on to Ofinsu, and hinted
-      that he might catch me up next morning if he could.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So by myself I set out into the heart of the rubber country north of
-      Kumasi. I was fairly beyond civilisation now. Ten years ago this country
-      was in open rebellion against English rule, and even now there are no
-      European stores there; there is no bread, no kerosene, no gin&mdash;those
-      first necessities of an oncoming civilisation; it was simply the wild
-      heart of the rubber country, unchanged for hundreds of years. It has been
-      known, but it has not been lightly visited. It has been a country to be
-      shunned and talked of with bated breath as &ldquo;the land of darkness.&rdquo; The
-      desert might be dared, the surf might be ventured, the black man might be
-      defied, but the gloom of the forest the white man feared and entered not
-      except upon compulsion. The Nile has given up its secrets, the Sahara
-      yields to cultivation, but still in Africa are there places where the
-      all-conquering white man is dwarfed, and one of them is the great forest
-      that lies north of the capital of Ashanti.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0071" id="linkimage-0071"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0527.jpg" alt="0527 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0527.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Here we know not the meaning of the word forest. England's forests are
-      delightful woods where the deer dwell in peace, where the rabbits scutter
-      through the fern and undergrowth, and where the children may go for a
-      summer's holiday; in Australia are trees close-growing and tall; but in
-      West Africa the forest has a life and being of its own. It is not a thing
-      of yesterday or of ten years back or of fifty years. Those mighty trees
-      that dwarf all other trees in the world have taken hundreds of years to
-      their growth. When a slight young girl came to the throne of England,
-      capturing a nation's chivalry by her youth and innocence, the mahogany and
-      kaku and odoum trees were old and staid monarchs of the forest. When the
-      first of the Georges came over from Hanover, unwelcome, but the nation's
-      last hope, they were young and slim but already tall trees stretching up
-      their crowns to the brilliant sunlight that is above the gloom, and now at
-      last, when the fifth of that name reigns over them, at last is their
-      sanctuary invaded and the seclusion that is theirs shall be theirs no
-      longer. For already the axe is laid to their roots, and through the
-      awe-inspiring forest runs a narrow roadway kept clear by what must be
-      almost superhuman labour, and along that roadway, the beginning of the
-      end, the sign that marks the peaceful conquest of the savage, that marks
-      also the downfall of the forest though it is not even whispered among the
-      trees that scorn them yet, flows a perpetual stream of traffic, men,
-      women, and children. Backwards and forwards from the north to Kumasi and
-      the sea they come, and they bear on their heads, going north, corrugated
-      iron and cotton goods, kerosene, and flour, and chairs, all the trifles
-      that the advance of civilisation makes absolute necessaries; and coming
-      down they bring all in their season, hides, and heavy cakes of rubber, and
-      sticks of dried snails, and all the other articles of native produce that
-      a certain peace has made marketable along the way or in the markets of
-      Kumasi.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The spell was upon me the moment I left the town. That road is like
-      nothing else in the world. The hammock and the carriers were dwarfed by
-      the great roots and buttresses of the trees to tiny, crawling ants, and
-      overhead was a narrow strip of blue sky where the sunlight might be seen,
-      but only at noon did that sunlight reach the roadway below. We travelled
-      in a shadow pleasant in that heat; and on either side, close on either
-      side, were the great trees. Looking down the road I could see them
-      straight as a die, tall pillars, white and brown; ahead of me and close at
-      hand the mighty buttresses that supported those pillars rose up to the
-      height of perhaps ten men before the tree was fairly started, a tall trunk
-      with branches that began to spread, it seemed to me, hundreds of feet
-      above the ground. And between those tree-trunks was all manner of
-      undergrowth, and all were bound and matted together with thickly growing
-      creepers and vines. It was impossible to step an inch from that cleared
-      path. There would be no getting lost in the bush, for it would be almost
-      impossible for the unpractised hand to get into the bush. There is nothing
-      to be seen but the brown, winding roadway, the dense green of the
-      undergrowth, and the trunks of the trees tall and straight as Nelson's
-      column and brown or white against the prevailing green. And there are all
-      shades of green, from that so pale that it is almost golden to that so
-      dark it is almost black, but never a flower breaks the monotony, the
-      monotony that is not monotony but dignity, and the flowers of an English
-      spring or an autumn in Australia would but cheapen the forest of the Gold
-      Coast. There must have been orchids, for sometimes as I passed their rich,
-      sensuous smell would come to my nostrils, but I only knew they were there
-      by my sense of smell just as sometimes I smelt a strong smell of mice, and
-      knew, though I could not see them, that somewhere in the depths of the
-      gloom were hidden away a great colony of fruitarian bats that would not
-      come out into the daylight.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0072" id="linkimage-0072"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0531.jpg" alt="0531 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0531.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      When there was a village there was, of course, a clearing, and on the
-      first day I passed several villages until at last I came to Ofinsu, where
-      I had arranged to spend the night. Ofinsu is on the banks of a river, and
-      the road comes out of the forest and passes broadly between two rows of
-      mud-walled houses with steeply pitched, high-thatched roofs, and my
-      carriers raced along and stopped opposite a small wooden door in a mud
-      wall and rapped hard.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      For the first time on my travels I had really excellent carriers. They
-      were Krepis from beyond the German border, slight, dark men with slim
-      wrists and ankles, and crosses cut as tribal marks on each cheek, and they
-      were cheerful, smiling, willing. When I remembered my before-time
-      tribulations I could hardly believe these were actually carriers who were
-      going along so steadily and well, who were always up before me in the
-      morning, and in as soon as I was at night, who never lingered, never
-      grumbled, never complained, but were simply ideal servants such as I had
-      never had before in my life save perhaps for a day, as when I went to
-      Palime from Ho, and such as I shall count myself extremely lucky if I ever
-      have again.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;We <i>have</i> got good carriers,&rdquo; the transport officer had said,
-      &ldquo;though you don't seem to believe it&rdquo;; and he proved his words, for never
-      have I travelled more comfortably than I did on that one hundred and sixty
-      miles to Sunyani and back.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The knocking at the little door brought a black lady with a shaven head
-      and a blue cloth wrapped round her middle. She was a woman past all
-      beauty, and very little was left to the imagination, but she threw open
-      the door and indicated that we were to enter, and she looked at me very
-      curiously. Never before had a white woman come to Ofinsu.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I entered, and this was my first introduction to an Ashanti house, a house
-      that seems to me singularly suited to the climate and people. It is
-      passing away, they tell me, and I for one am sorry.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We went into a courtyard open to the sky, and round it, raised at least
-      two feet from the ground, were the rooms, I suppose I must call them, but
-      though there was a roof overhead and walls on three sides, walls without
-      windows, the fourth side was open to the central courtyard. When I entered
-      the place was crowded; Hausas or Wangaras&mdash;I never could tell one
-      from the other&mdash;were settled down on the platforms, and their loads&mdash;long
-      bundles made up for carrying on the head&mdash;were all over the place. I
-      said nothing. I am generally for the superiority of the white man and
-      exact all the deference that is my due, but clearly these people were here
-      first, and it seemed to me they had it by right, only how I was to bathe
-      and sleep in a house where everything was so public among such a crowd I
-      did not know.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0073" id="linkimage-0073"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0535.jpg" alt="0535 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0535.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      But my hostess had other views. No sooner had I entered than she began
-      clearing out the former guests, and in less than a quarter of an hour the
-      place that had seemed so crowded was empty, swept and garnished for my
-      accommodation. My bed was put up on one platform, my table and chair on
-      another. &ldquo;Get table quick and chair, so can play cards,&rdquo; Grant instructed
-      my headman, and behind, through a little door that may be seen in the
-      picture, was a place that answered for a kitchen, and a cup of tea was
-      quickly produced for my comfort. It was weird going to sleep there in the
-      open, but it was very, very delightful. I rigged up in the corner of one
-      of the rooms&mdash;I have no other names for them&mdash;with ground sheet
-      and rugs, a little shelter where I could have my bath in comfort, but I
-      undressed without a qualm and went to bed and slept the sleep of the woman
-      who has been in the open air the livelong day and who, happily for
-      herself, can indulge her taste and sleep in the open air all night.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I took a picture of my open-air bedroom with my valuable headman and two
-      small children who belonged to the household I had invaded in the
-      foreground. But that was before I went to bed at night. At earliest dawn,
-      before the dawn in fact, my headman was at my bedside wanting to pack up
-      and start.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      That night's lodging cost me one shilling and threepence. The headman told
-      me one shilling was enough, so I bestowed the extra threepence as a dash
-      on the shaven old woman who had done all for me that my servants could not
-      do, and she seemed so delighted that I was left wondering what the
-      Wan-garas who had given place to me had paid.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Just as the sun was rising we crossed the Ofin River, and I found there
-      assembled the entire population of the village to look at the strange
-      sight&mdash;a perfectly courteous, polite people who never crushed or
-      crowded though they looked their fill. I can only hope I was a success as
-      a show, for certainly I attracted a great deal of attention, but of course
-      I had no means of knowing whether I came up to expectations. It took some
-      time to get my goods and followers across the river in the crank canoe
-      which is only used in the rainy season, for usually the Ofin River can be
-      waded, and while I waited on the farther shore I looked with interest at
-      the other people who were waiting for their loads to be ferried across.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The men were Hausas or Wangaras, some wearing turbans, some with shaven
-      heads, and clad in long, straight, shirt-like garments, while the women
-      excited my deepest compassion. They may have been the men's wives, I know
-      not; but by whatever name they were called they were slaves if ever I saw
-      slaves. They had very little on besides a dirty, earthen-coloured cloth
-      hitched round their loins, their dark faces were brutalised and depressed
-      with that speechless depression that hardly realises its own woes, and
-      their dusty hair that looked as if it had not been washed for years was
-      generally twisted into short, thick, dusty looking plaits that were
-      pressed downwards by the weight of the load they one and all carried. They
-      carried children, too, on their backs, tiny babies that must have been
-      born on the journey, or lusty youngsters that were a load in themselves.
-      But a Hausa will carry an enormous load himself&mdash;sometimes up to 240
-      lbs.&mdash;so it is not likely he will have much consideration for his
-      women. It may be, of course, that their looks belied them, but it seemed
-      to me that they cared little whether Fate drowned them there in the
-      swirling brown waters of the river or brought them safely through to the
-      other side to tramp on, footsore, tired, weary, heartsick&mdash;if these
-      creatures who looked like dumb beasts had life enough in them to be
-      heartsick&mdash;to their destination three months away in the north.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0074" id="linkimage-0074"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0539.jpg" alt="0539 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0539.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      They waited there as I passed, and they looked at me dully and without
-      interest; presently their loads would be brought across and they would be
-      on the march again, and I went on pitying to Potsikrom.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The forest was getting denser and denser. There were fewer towns and
-      clearings on this day&mdash;nothing but the great trees and the narrow
-      ribbon of road with the strip of blue sky far, far away. It was very
-      awe-inspiring, the forest. I should have been unspeakably terrified to
-      pass through it alone, but my chattering men took away all sense of
-      loneliness. There was not much to see, but yet the eternal trees had a
-      most wonderful charm. It was like being in some lofty cathedral where the
-      very air was pulsating with the thought of great and unseen things beyond
-      the comprehension of the puny mortals who dared rashly to venture within
-      the precincts. No wonder the Ashanti gave human sacrifices. Sacrifice, we
-      all know, is the basis of all faith, and what lesser thing than a man
-      could be offered in so great a sanctuary?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And that afternoon we came to Potsikrom, a little village deep in the
-      forest.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The rest-house was a mud building with a thatch roof somewhat dilapidated,
-      and built not after the comfortable, suitable Ashanti fashion, but after
-      the European fashion, possibly in deference to some foolish European who
-      probably regarded all the country as &ldquo;poisonous.&rdquo; That is to say, it was
-      divided into two rooms with holes in the clay, very small holes for
-      windows, and, saving grace, a door at each side of one of the rooms. In
-      the corner of one of these impossible rooms I saw, to my surprise, a
-      camp-bed put up, and for the moment thought it was mine. Then I saw a suit
-      of striped pyjamas which certainly were not mine, and realised it must
-      belong to the medical officer whom I had left at Kumasi the day before.
-      His boys had stolen a march ahead, and, thinking to do better than the
-      white woman, had put up his bed in what they considered the most desirable
-      place, thinking doubtless that possession was nine points of the law.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I certainly didn't desire that corner, but I felt my authority must be
-      maintained, and so I asked:
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Who that bed belong to?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Massa,&rdquo; said a grinning boy.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Take it down,&rdquo; said I.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Up came the Chief's clerk. All these Ashanti chiefs now have a clerk who
-      can write a little English and so communicate for them with Government,
-      and the clerk, interested as he was to see a white woman, was very certain
-      in his own mind that the white man was the more important person. He
-      probably regarded me as his wife come on ahead, and said that the Chief
-      had another house for me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I didn't like that rest-house, but pride has suffered pain since the
-      beginning of the world, so I distinctly declared my intention of staying
-      there and ordered them to clear out the medical officer's bed forthwith.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My boys were very anxious to assert my superiority and out went that bed
-      in the twinkling of an eye, and my men proceeded to put up mine between
-      the two doors, and, having had a table set out for tea, I awaited the
-      arrival of the medical officer with a quiet mind.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0075" id="linkimage-0075"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0543.jpg" alt="0543 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0543.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Presently he arrived and we laughed together over the struggle for
-      supremacy between our men, and pledged our future good fellowship in tea.
-      The Chief sent me in eggs and chickens and yams as dash, the people came
-      and looked at me, and presently the evening fell and I had my evening meal
-      and went to bed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And when I went to bed I repented me of having stood on my dignity. What
-      on earth had I wanted the rest-house for? It was the last house in the
-      village, a little apart from the rest, the great solemn forest was all
-      around me, and I was all alone, for Grant and the men had retired with the
-      darkness to somewhere in the village. My bed stood under a roof certainly,
-      but I should not have dared put up the door of the rest-house for fear of
-      making it too close, and so it meant, of course, that I was sleeping with
-      nothing between me and that awe-inspiring forest. I do not know what I was
-      afraid of any more than I know what I feared at Anum, but I was afraid of
-      something intangible, born of the weird stillness and the gloom. I put a
-      hurricane lantern at the door to scare away any wandering pigs and goats&mdash;I
-      did not really in my heart think there would be any wild beasts&mdash;and
-      then I proceeded to put in a most unpleasant night. First there was too
-      much light, it fell all over my bed, and though I did not like it, I still
-      felt a comfortable sense of safety in the light.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Then I began to itch. I twisted and turned and rolled over, and the more I
-      moved about the more uncomfortable I became. I thought to myself, &ldquo;There,
-      it serves you right! You are always nursing the fat little black babies
-      and now you have got some horrible disease.&rdquo; The thought was by no means
-      consoling, but I was being driven so frantic that I began to think that no
-      disease could really advance with such rapidity. Besides, all sorts of
-      great insects were banging themselves against my mosquito curtains, so I
-      came to the conclusion that probably the tiny sandflies were also
-      attracted by the light and were getting through the meshes. There was
-      nothing for it but to screw up my courage, get out of bed, and take that
-      lantern away. I did it, crept back to bed again, listened for a little to
-      the weird noises of the night, was relieved to find the appalling
-      irritation showed no signs of increasing, and finally, in spite of my
-      fears, dropped off into so sound a sleep that I was only awakened by Grant
-      endeavouring to drive away by fair words my energetic headman, who was
-      evidently debating whether it was not his bounden duty to clear me away,
-      bed and all.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I told the doctor my experiences in the morning, and he confirmed my
-      supposition that it was only sandflies and not horrible disease that had
-      troubled my slumbers.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Very much relieved was I, for the little black babies are dear little
-      round souls, and I should have been loath not to take them when their
-      mothers trusted them to me. I should hesitate much before I took a baby of
-      the peasant class in this country, but there, in the heart of Africa, it
-      is always safe to cuddle the little, round, naked thing that has for all
-      clothing a few beads or a charm or two tied to its hair. They are always
-      clean and soft and round and chubby, and they do not invariably yell with
-      terror at the white woman, though I am bound to say they often do.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0076" id="linkimage-0076"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0547.jpg" alt="0547 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0547.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      We were in the heart of the forest now. There were but one or two villages
-      and only one or two places that could be dignified by the name of
-      clearings. At one, as big, perhaps, as a tiny London square, three or four
-      huts had been erected, and an old woman was making pots. They were all set
-      out in the sun to dry, and the good lady was very nervous when I wanted to
-      take her photograph. She consented at last, and sat there shivering, in
-      her hand a great snail shell which she used to ornament the pots. They
-      were such a lonely little company, so cut off from all their kind, and we
-      must have been such wondrous figures breaking in on their life and then
-      passing on again. I gave them the last bright new pennies I had, and left
-      them wondering.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And so we went on again through the forest, past Insuta, until, as the
-      evening was falling, we created immense astonishment by arriving at
-      Bechem.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Here again the rest-house was built uncomfortably, European fashion, and
-      again my only alternative was to have my bed put up between the two doors
-      so that I might get plenty of air. But at Bechem the town was full. It was
-      a big town set in the midst of a great clearing, and to-day it was
-      swarming with people, for the next day was Coronation Day, and the Chief
-      had sent out word that all his sub-chiefs were to come in and celebrate.
-      And here was another excitement&mdash;a white woman! How many chiefs came
-      to see me that day I really would be afraid to say, and the Chief sent me
-      in by way of dash a sheep, a couple of chickens, piles of plantains, yams,
-      eggs, and all manner of native edibles. It was very amusing to stand there
-      in the midst of the swarming people, receiving these offerings. Of course
-      they all have to be returned with presents of value, and I was thankful
-      they did not think me important enough to receive a cow; as it was it cost
-      me a pound to get out of Bechem, but my carriers were delighted for I
-      presented them with the sheep. He was an elderly ram with long horns, and
-      I think he was the only person who did not thoroughly enjoy the
-      entertainment.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Chief sent in word through his interpreter to say that the people had
-      never seen a white woman before; there were many people here because of
-      the Coronation, might they come and &ldquo;look&rdquo;? Never have I been so frankly
-      regarded as a show. There was nothing for it but to go outside and let
-      them look, and once more I can only hope they were satisfied. I had never
-      seen such crowds of natives before, crowds that had not seen much of the
-      white man and as yet were not arrayed in his cast-off clothes. All round
-      us long Dane guns were popping off in honour of the great occasion, and
-      tom-toms were beating half the night. When I waked next morning&mdash;I
-      slept in the passage to get plenty of air, but I was not afraid because
-      the rest-house was near the centre of the village&mdash;I found that at
-      the earliest glimpse of dawn long lines of people had assembled outside my
-      house and were patiently waiting for me to come out. I had my breakfast in
-      the little courtyard behind the house, the people peeping through the
-      fence of palm-poles, and when we set out on our way the Chief, in all the
-      glory of silken robes and great umbrella, came a little way to do us
-      honour.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Never, not even when I was married, have I been such an important person.
-      The tom-toms beat, the umbrellas twirled, long Danes went off, horns blew,
-      and as far as the eye could see were the villagers trailing away behind
-      us.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0077" id="linkimage-0077"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0551.jpg" alt="0551 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0551.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The Chief escorted us for about a mile, we walking in the cool, misty
-      morning, and then he turned, slipped his cloth from his left shoulder as a
-      mark of respect, shook hands, wished us a prosperous journey, and bid us
-      good-bye like the courteous gentleman he was, and we went on into the
-      mighty forest again.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is always cool in the early morning, and very pleasant here among the
-      trees, so the medical officer and I walked on chatting about Bechem, when
-      we came upon another little party of travellers, who stopped us and asked
-      help. It was a Hausa with a couple of women, his wives in all probability,
-      and a couple of other men, presumably his slaves. He was a tall, strong
-      man in the prime of life, upon whose shaven head were deep lines graven by
-      the loads he had carried. Our headman, who could speak Hausa, interpreted.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Men were following him from Nkwanta, he said, to kill him. A child had
-      died in the town, and they said he &ldquo;had put bad medicine upon it,&rdquo; that
-      is, had bewitched it, and the penalty was death.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was rather startling in this twentieth century to be brought face to
-      face with the actors in such a tragedy, especially when we were powerless
-      to help. We were unarmed and had with us only carriers and servants; it
-      was the prestige of the white man that was carrying us through. The Hausa
-      was going away from Nkwanta as fast as he possibly could, and apparently
-      he did not want to trust himself within its bounds, even under the
-      protection of a white man. He declined to come back with us, and what
-      could we do? The medical officer, I think, did all that he could when he
-      promised to report things to the Commissioner at Sunyani, and recommended
-      the Hausa, since he would not avail himself of our protection, to get the
-      Chiefs clerk at Bechem to write his account of the affair to Sunyani and
-      Kumasi.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And so in the early morning we went our way, and he went his, and he
-      disappeared into the gloom of the forest, a much troubled man. I wondered
-      how he would ever get back to his home in the north, for there is but this
-      one road, and that road leads through Nkwanta. He would only dare it, I
-      think, with a large body of his own people, for who is to report to
-      Government if a travelling Hausa should disappear?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We put in a long day that day, and in the full heat of the noontide
-      arrived at Nkwanta, a most important place, whose Chief rules over a large
-      tract of country. We came upon the butchers' stalls first, all kept by
-      Hausas or Wangaras. This country, on account of the tsetse fly, will allow
-      but few cattle to live, and these men from the north drive them down, kill
-      them, and sell them, for the Ashantis are rich, and like to buy meat. I
-      had hardly taken a photograph of these stalls, when from all sides I saw
-      the people assembling, and presently the Chief appeared. He brought
-      offerings, a sheep, fowls, eggs; yams, and plantains; but this time I
-      pointed out that I was on a journey, and could not take the presents, as I
-      had no means of carrying them. He was very anxious indeed we should stay
-      for that night; said he, they were celebrating the Coronation, and there
-      would be a big dance. I went into his house and took a photograph of the
-      moulded clay that ornaments the walls, and a small slave-boy was proud to
-      stand in the corner so as to give life to the picture, and I think Nkwanta
-      was sorry we elected to go on. I was a little sorry myself afterwards, for
-      as we passed along the forest path we met sub-chiefs going in to the
-      Coronation ceremonies, men carried high in their hammock-chairs, followed
-      by a motley assemblage of men and women, bearing long Danes, horns, drums,
-      household utensils, and all the paraphernalia of a barbaric chief.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0078" id="linkimage-0078"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0555.jpg" alt="0555 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0555.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      And at last we came to a place where the forest was ruthlessly cleared for
-      about a hundred feet on either side of the road, and the tropical sun
-      poured down in all its fierceness. I did not like it. The mighty monarch s
-      of the forest had simply been murdered and left to lie, and already Nature
-      was busily veiling them with curtains of greenery. Why those trees had
-      been so slaughtered I do not know. That the forest would have been better
-      for thinning, I have no doubt, but why not leave the beautiful trees? I am
-      sure the Germans would have done so, but the Englishman seems to have no
-      mean. If there are too many trees he cuts them all down and makes a
-      desert. The medical officer of course did not agree with me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Must get rid of the trees,&rdquo; said he with enthusiasm.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I looked at him. He was a young fellow, pleasant and kindly, sallowed by
-      life in the Tropics. He wore a drab-coloured helmet, coming well down over
-      his back, which was further protected by having a quilted spinal pad
-      fastened down the back of his bush shirt.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;do you wear so big a helmet, and a spinal pad?&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      He looked at me tolerantly, as if he had always known that woman asked
-      silly questions, and I was only confirming a preconceived idea. But he was
-      in a way my host, so he was patient with me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;To keep off the sun, of course,&rdquo; said he.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;The trees,&rdquo; I began; and then he felt I really was silly, for every
-      medical man knows the proper thing is to get rid of the trees, and have
-      some artificial form of shade. At least, that is what I gathered from his
-      subsequent explanation. The idea is apparently to cut down all the forest
-      trees, and when the place is bare, they can be replaced by fresh trees,
-      planted exactly where they ought to grow. Since they are not English trees
-      it does not matter how beautiful they are, and that they take at least two
-      hundred and fifty years to come to perfection is a matter of small moment.
-      So the medical officer and I disagreed, till we came to Tanosu, a little
-      town on the Tano River.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The Chief here had just built a new rest-house, thank heaven, on the
-      comfortable Ashanti pattern, and I was given it by the courteous medical
-      officer, who disapproved of me on trees, while he sought shelter in the
-      village.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The people were very curious. The Chief, who it appears is a poor man,
-      sent the usual presents, and then the people came and looked, and looked,
-      till after about a couple of hours of it I grew weary, and shut the doors
-      of the courtyard. Then they applied their eyes to every crank and cranny,
-      and I had an uneasy feeling that whatever I did unseen eyes were following
-      me. I wanted to rejoice in the Coronation, so I asked the doctor to come
-      to dinner and celebrate, but unfortunately my kitchen was at least a
-      quarter of a mile away, and there were such terrible long waits between
-      the courses that again and again I had to ask my guest if he would not go
-      and see what had happened. We finished at last, and I wanted to drink the
-      King's health in whisky-and-soda which was the only drink I had, but my
-      guest was a teetotaller, so I sent for the servants, only to be informed
-      that every one of them refrained from liquor. And as a rule I approve so
-      highly of temperance. Only for this once did I find it rather depressing.
-      However, we stood up and drank the King's health, and I expect the eyes
-      that were watching us wondered what on earth we were doing. They performed
-      on tom-toms after that, and I fell asleep in the pleasant, damp night air,
-      to a sort of barbaric fantasia on horns and drums.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0079" id="linkimage-0079"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0559.jpg" alt="0559 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0559.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      We were nearing our journey's end. Early next morning we crossed the Tano
-      River, which is full of sacred fish, and the medical officer took my
-      photograph in the stream, and I took his, as he crossed on his boy's
-      shoulders, and when we crossed to the other side we found we had left
-      every vestige of the road, the good road that had so surprised me, behind.
-      We went along a track now, a track that wound in and out in the dense,
-      tropical forest. Generally the trees met overhead and we marched through a
-      tunnel, the ground beneath our feet was often a quagmire, and if we could
-      not see the sun often, neither could we feel the rain that fell on the
-      foliage above our heads. On either side we could see nothing but the great
-      trunks and buttresses of the trees, and the dense undergrowth. Possibly to
-      go for days and days through a forest like this might give a sense of
-      oppression, but to go as I did, for but a short time, was like peeping
-      into a new world. Never a bird or beast I saw, nothing but occasionally a
-      long stream of driver ants, winding like a band of cut jet across the
-      path. And so we went on and on, through the solemn forest, till at last it
-      cleared a little. There was the sky above again, and then no forest, but
-      on my left cornfields and the brown splash of a native town, and in front
-      a clearing, with the rim of the forest again in the distance, and right
-      ahead, on the top of the gently sloping rise, the European bungalows of
-      Sunyani. I had arrived, the first white woman who had come so far off the
-      beaten track.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0080" id="linkimage-0080"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0563.jpg" alt="0563 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0563.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XXIV&mdash;AN OUTPOST
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The white men at Sunyani&mdash;Contrast between civilisation and
-      barbarism&mdash;The little fort&mdash;The suffrage movement&mdash;&ldquo;I am as
-      mud in the sight of my people!&rdquo;&mdash;The girl who did not wish to marry
-      the King&mdash;The heavy loads carried by the Hausas&mdash;The danger of
-      stubbing a toe&mdash;An Ashanti welcome&mdash;The Chief's soul&mdash;The
-      unpleasant duties of the Chief's soul&mdash;The blood of sheep versus the
-      blood of men&mdash;A courteous lady of Odumase&mdash;The Commissioners of
-      Ashanti&mdash;Difficulties of crossing flooded streams&mdash;One way of
-      carrying fowls&mdash;The last night in the wilds.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Sunyani there
-      are usually six white men, namely a Provincial Commissioner, a medical
-      officer&mdash;the relief had come up with me&mdash;three soldiermen, and a
-      non-commissioned officer, and I think my sympathies are rather with that
-      colour sergeant. The other men are all of one class, but he must be
-      utterly alone. The houses and the men were equally delightful. I was taken
-      into a mud-built house with a thatched roof, large and spacious. There
-      were, of course, only holes for windows and doors, and the floors were of
-      beaten earth, but it was most wonderfully comfortable and homelike. The
-      Commissioner was a great gardener, my room was a bower of roses, and there
-      were books, the newest books and magazines, everywhere. I should like to
-      have stayed a month at Sunyani. Think of it! everything had to be carried
-      eighty miles on men's heads, through a dense forest, across all manner of
-      watercourses, where the white ant refused to allow a bridge to remain more
-      than a fortnight, and yet one felt in the midst of civilisation. They told
-      me I was brave to come there, but where was the hardship? none, none. It
-      was all delightful. But there <i>was</i> another side. Close to the
-      European bungalows was a little fort to which the men might retire in case
-      of danger. They did not seem to think that they would ever be likely to
-      require it, but there it was, and I, who had seen the old-time forts along
-      the Coast, looked at this one with interest. It had a ditch round it, and
-      walls of mud, and these were further strengthened by pointed stakes, bound
-      together with barbed wire. An unpleasant place for a naked man to rush
-      would be the little fort at Sunyani. Close against its wall so as to
-      shelter the office, and yet outside so as not to embarrass the people, is
-      the post and telegraph office, and so fast is civilisation coming to that
-      outpost, that they take there for stamps, telegrams, and postal orders
-      something like fourteen pounds a week.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I wandered round seeing everything, from the company of Waffs, exercising
-      in the morning, to the hospital compound where the wives of the dresser
-      and the wives of the patients were busily engaged in making fu-fu. For
-      this is a primitive place, and here are no nursing Sisters and European
-      comforts, and I must say the patients seem to do very well without them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And only ten years ago, here and behind at Odumase, was the centre of the
-      great rebellion against the white man's power; but things are moving,
-      moving quickly. Only a week before I went up Messrs Swanzy had opened,
-      with a black agent in charge, a store in the native town, and the day I
-      arrived the agent brought his takings to the Commissioner for safe keeping
-      in the treasury within the fort. It was such a tiny place, that store,
-      simply a corrugated-iron shack, wherein were sold cotton cloths, odds and
-      ends of cheap fancy goods, such as might be supposed to take the eye of
-      the native, and possibly a little gin. Everything had to come on men's
-      heads, so the wares were restricted, but the agent was well pleased with
-      his enterprise, for that first week he had taken over £150, and this from
-      a people who were utterly unaccustomed to buying.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0081" id="linkimage-0081"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0567.jpg" alt="0567 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0567.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Things are changing, things are changing fast,&rdquo; said the Commissioner,
-      and then he laughed and said that what bothered him most was the advance
-      the suffrage movement was making. It wasn't yet militant, but he didn't
-      know how it was going to end. The women had actually arrived at some idea
-      of their own value to the community, and refused to marry the men their
-      fathers had provided, if they did not happen to meet with their approval.
-      Again and again a Chief would come to the Commissioner&mdash;a girl had
-      declined to marry the man chosen for her, her father had appealed to the
-      Chief, and the young lady, relying on the support of the British
-      Government, had defied them both.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If this woman do not marry the man I tell her to, then am I as mud in the
-      sight of my people!&rdquo; the Chief would say, flinging out protesting hands,
-      and the Commissioner was very often as puzzled as he was.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      On one occasion he came down to his court to find sitting there a
-      good-looking girl of about seventeen, with a baby on her back. She waited
-      patiently all through the sitting of the court, and then, when he had time
-      to give attention to her, explained herself. She had a complaint to make.
-      The King, or head Chief, had married her. Now the Commissioner was puzzled
-      to know why this already much-married man had burdened himself with a wife
-      who manifestly did not want him, and why the lady objected to a regal
-      alliance. The King was brief and to the point. He considered himself a
-      much injured man. The girl's parents had betrothed her to a man in her
-      childhood, and when she grew up she did not like him, and preferring
-      someone else, had declined to marry him. The King had been appealed to,
-      but still she defied them, so, willy-nilly, to prevent further trouble, he
-      had married her himself.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      How that case ended I do not know. But I asked one question: &ldquo;Whose is the
-      baby?&rdquo; And the baby it appeared was child to the man whom her parents and
-      the King had rejected, so that Nature had settled the matter for them all.
-      Whoever had her there was no getting over that baby.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Sunyani is one of the great halting places for the Hausas and Wangaras who
-      come down from Wenchi, so on the French border and here I was introduced
-      into great compounds, where the men who bring down cattle and horses and
-      other goods from the north take up their abode, and rest before they start
-      on their wearisome journey through the forest to Kumasi. I had come
-      through in five days, but these men generally take very much longer. The
-      Hausa carries tremendously heavy loads, so heavy that he cannot by himself
-      lift it to his head, and therefore he always carries a forked stick, and
-      resting his load on this, rests it also in the fork of a tree, and so
-      slips out from underneath it. Again and again on our way up had we come
-      across men thus resting their heavy loads. He must walk warily too, for
-      they say so heavy is the load that the Hausa who stubs his toe breaks his
-      neck. Slowly he goes, for time as yet is of no consequence in West Africa.
-      A certain sum he expects to make, and whether he takes three months or six
-      months to make it is as yet a matter of small moment to the black man,
-      apparently, whatever his race.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0082" id="linkimage-0082"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0572.jpg" alt="0572 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0572.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      After I had been all round Sunyani, and dined at the mess, and inspected
-      the fort and the hospital, they arranged for me to go to Odumase, five
-      miles away.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Odumase is on the extreme northern border of Ashanti, and in fact the
-      inhabitants are not Ashanti at all, calling themselves after their own
-      town, but it was here that the rising that overwhelmed Kumasi in 1900-1
-      was engineered and had its birth. Here, as a beginning, they took sixty
-      unfortunate Krepi traders, bound them to a tree, and did them slowly to
-      death with all manner of tortures, cutting a finger off one day, a toe the
-      next, an arm perhaps the next, and leaving the unfortunate victims to
-      suffer by the insects and the sun. And here, when they had taken him, they
-      brought back the instigator of that rebellion, and showed him captive to
-      his own people. He was no coward, whatever his sins, and he stood forth
-      and exhorted his people to rescue him, reviling the white men, and
-      spitting upon them. But his people were awed by the white man's troops,
-      and they let him be taken down to Kumasi, where he was tried, and hanged,
-      not for fighting against the British raj, but for cold-blooded murder.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So to Odumase Mr Fell took me, explaining that because I was the first
-      white woman to go there, the people would greet me in Ashanti fashion, and
-      I was not to be afraid.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was well he explained. Long before we could see the town, running along
-      the forest path came the Ashanti warriors to meet me, and they came with
-      yells and shouts, firing off their long Danes, so that presently I could
-      see nothing but grey smoke, and I could hear nothing much either for the
-      yells and shouts, and blowing of horns, and beating of tom-toms. It is
-      just as well to explain an Ashanti welcome, else it is apt to be
-      terrifying, for had I not been told I certainly should never have realised
-      that a lot of guns pointing at me from every conceivable angle and
-      spouting fire and smoke, were emblems of goodwill. But they were; and then
-      I was introduced to the chiefs, and took their photographs. And now I have
-      an awful confession to make. I have taken so many Ashanti chiefs that I do
-      not know t'other from which. They were all clad in the most gorgeous
-      silken robes, woven in the country, in them all the colours of the
-      rainbow, and they were all profusely decorated with golden ornaments. They
-      had great rings like stars and catfish on their fingers, they had all
-      manner of gold ornaments on their heads, round their necks, round their
-      arms, and on their legs, and they had many symbolical staffs with gold
-      heads carried round them. Always, of course, they sat under a great
-      umbrella, and their attendants too wore gold ornaments. Some of the latter
-      were known as their souls, and the Chiefs soul wore on his breast a great
-      plate of gold. What his duties are now I do not know, I think he is King's
-      messenger, but in the old times, which are about ten years back, his
-      duties were more onerous. He was beloved of the Chief, and lived a
-      luxurious life, but he could not survive his Chief. When his master died,
-      his sun was set, and he was either killed or buried alive with him.
-      Moreover, if the Chief had an unpleasant message to a neighbouring chief,
-      he sent his soul to carry it, and if that chief did not like the message,
-      and desired war, he promptly slew the messenger, put his jaw-bone in a
-      cleft stick and sent it back. Altogether the Chiefs soul was by no means
-      sure of a happy life, and on the whole I think must infinitely prefer the
-      <i>pax Britannica</i>.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It takes a little time though before peace is appreciated. The last time
-      Mr Fell had been to Nkwanta, the big town I had passed through, he found
-      the place swimming in blood, and many stools reeking in it. It was only
-      sheep's blood luckily, for Nkwanta had quarrelled with a sub-chief, and
-      this was celebrating his reconciliation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;If the white man not be here,&rdquo; said Nkwanta through his interpreter,
-      &ldquo;plenty men go die to-day.&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Oh, sheep are just as good,&rdquo; said the Provincial Commissioner.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Well perhaps,&rdquo; said Nkwanta, but there was no ring of conviction in his
-      tones.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Odumase the white men almost razed to the ground as punishment for the
-      part it took in the great rebellion, but it is fast going up again. Many
-      houses are built, ugly and after the white man's fashion, and many more
-      houses are building. We passed one old man diligently making swish, that
-      is kneading earth and water into sort of rough bricks for the walls, and I
-      promptly took a photograph of him, for it seemed to me rather remarkable
-      to see him working when all the rest of the place was looking at the white
-      woman. And then I saw an old woman with shaven head and no ornaments
-      whatever; she was thin and worn, and I was sorry for her. &ldquo;No one cares
-      for old women here,&rdquo; I thought, I believe mistakenly, so I called her over
-      and bestowed on her the munificent dole of threepence. She took my hand in
-      both hers and bowed herself almost to the ground in gratitude or thanks,
-      and I felt that comfortable glow that comes over us when we have done a
-      good action.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was a fool. There are no poor in West Africa, and she was quite as great
-      a lady as I was, only more courteous. As I left Odumase she came forward
-      with a small girl beside her, and from that girl's head she took a large
-      platter of most magnificent plantains, ripe and ready for eating, which
-      she with deep obeisance laid at my feet. If I could give presents so could
-      she, and she did it with much more dignity. Still, I flatter myself she <i>did</i>
-      like that threepenny bit I was very very loath to leave Sunyani. It was a
-      place on the very outskirts of the Empire, and the highest civilisation
-      and barbarism mingled. It must be lonely of course, intensely lonely at
-      times, but it must be at the same time most interesting to carve a
-      province out of a wilderness, to make roads and arrange for a trade that
-      is growing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      They are wonderfully enthusiastic all the Commissioners in Ashanti, and
-      when I praise German methods, I always want to exempt Ashanti, for here
-      all the Commissioners, following in the footsteps of their Chief, seem to
-      work together, and work with love. In the very country where roadmaking
-      seems the most difficult, roadmaking goes on. The Commissioner at Sunyani
-      had sent to the King of Warn telling him he wanted three hundred men to
-      make a road to the Tano River, and the King of Warn sent word,
-      &ldquo;Certainly&rdquo;; he was sending a thousand, and I left the Commissioner
-      wondering what on earth he was to do for tools. So is civilisation coming
-      to Ashanti, not by a great upheaval or desperate change, but by their own
-      methods, and the wise men who rule over them, rule by means of their own
-      chiefs. I have no words strong enough to express my admiration for those
-      Ashanti Commissioners and the men I met there in the forest. We differed
-      only, I think, on the subject of treefelling, and possibly had I had
-      opportunity to learn more about things, I might have found excuses even
-      for that.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0083" id="linkimage-0083"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0581.jpg" alt="0581 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0581.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The rainy season was upon us, and it was time for me to go back. The
-      medical officer, who had just been relieved, was coming down with me, and
-      this medical officer was very sick with a poisoned hand. It was my last
-      trek in the bush, and I should have liked to linger, but the thought of
-      that bad hand made me go faster, for I would not keep him from help longer
-      than I could help. So we retraced our steps exactly, doing in four days
-      what I had taken five to do on the way up, and this was the more
-      remarkable because now it rained. It rained heavens hard, and the little
-      streams that our men had carried us through quite easily on the way up,
-      were now great, rushing rivers that sometimes we negotiated with a canoe,
-      and sometimes laboriously got over with the aid of a log. It really is no
-      joke crossing a flooded African stream on a slimy log. I took a picture of
-      one, with the patient Wangara crossing. Then my men carried me in my
-      hammock to the log, and with some little difficulty I got out of that
-      hammock on to it. I had to scramble to my feet, and the man beside me made
-      me understand that I had better not fall over, as on the other side the
-      water was deep enough to drown me. I walked very gingerly, because the
-      water beneath looked unpleasantly muddy, up that tree-trunk, scrambled
-      somehow round the root and down the other branch, till at last I got into
-      water shallow enough to allow of my being transferred to my hammock and
-      carried to dry land, there to sit and watch my goods and chattels coming
-      across the same way. I felt a wretch too, for it had taken close on twenty
-      men, more or less, to get me across without injury, and yet here were a
-      company of Wangaras or Hausas, and the patient women had loads on their
-      heads and babies on their backs. No one worried about them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      For perhaps the first time in my life I was more than content with that
-      station in life into which it had pleased my God to call me. I do not
-      think I could wish my worst enemy a harder fate than to be a Wangara woman
-      on trek, unless perhaps I was extra bitter, and wished him to taste life
-      as an African fowl. That must be truly a cruel existence. He scratches for
-      a living, and every man's hand is against him. I used to feel sometimes as
-      if I were aiding and abetting, for I received on this journey so many
-      dashes of fowls that neither I nor the medical officer could possibly eat
-      them all, and so our servants came in for them. More than once I have come
-      across Grant sitting resting by the roadside with a couple of unfortunate
-      fowls tied to his toes. In Grant's position I should have been anything
-      but happy, but he did not seem to mind, and as I never saw the procession
-      <i>en route</i>, I was left in doubt as to whether he carried them, or
-      insisted on their walking after him. I saw that he had rice for them, and
-      told him to give them water, but I dare say he did not trouble.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0084" id="linkimage-0084"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0585.jpg" alt="0585 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0585.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      The last night out, my last night in the bush I fear me for many a long
-      day, we stopped at a village called Fu-fu, and I went to the rest-house,
-      which was built European fashion, and was on the edge of the forest, at
-      some distance from the village.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I found my men putting up my bed in a room where all the air came through
-      rather a small hole in the mud wall, and I objected.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; said my patient headman, who after nearly a fortnight had failed
-      to fathom the white woman's vagaries.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There was a verandah facing the town and a verandah facing the forest, and
-      I promptly chose the bush side as lending itself more to privacy. Very
-      vehemently that headman protested.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;It no be fit, Ma, it no be fit. Bush close too much&rdquo;; so at length I gave
-      in, and had the bed put up on the verandah facing the town. On the other
-      end, I decided, the medical officer and I would chop. For we had been most
-      friendly coming down, and had had all our meals together.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Before dinner I think the whole of the women of that village had been to
-      see me, and had eaten up the very last of my biscuits, but I did not mind,
-      for was it not the end of the journey, and they were so interested, and so
-      smiling, and so nice. We had dinner, and we burned up the last of the
-      whisky to make a flare over the plum-pudding; and then the medical officer
-      wished me good night and wended his way to his house somewhere in the
-      town, Grant and the cook betook themselves to another hut nearer the town
-      and barricaded the door, and then suddenly I realised that I was entirely
-      alone on the edge of this vast, mysterious, unexplainable forest. And the
-      headman had said &ldquo;the bush no be fit.&rdquo; I ought to have remembered Anum
-      Mount and Potsikrom, but I didn't. I crept into bed and once more gave
-      myself up to the most unreasoning terror. What I expected to come out of
-      that forest I do not know. What I should have done had anything come I'm
-      sure I do not know, but never again do I want to spend such a night. The
-      patter of the rain on the iron roof made me shiver, the sighing of the
-      wind in the branches sent fingers clutching at my heart; when I dropped
-      into a doze I waked in deadly terror, my hands and face were clammy with
-      sweat, and I dozed and waked, and dozed and waked, till, when the dawn
-      came breaking through the clouds at last, it seemed as if the night had
-      stretched itself into an interminable length. And yet nothing had
-      happened; there had been nothing to be afraid of, not even a leopard had
-      cried, but so tired was I with my own terrors that I slept in my hammock
-      most of the way into Kumasi.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And here my trip practically ended. I stayed a day or two longer,
-      wandering round this great, new trading-centre, and then I took train to
-      Sekondi, stayed once more with my kind friend, Miss Oram, the nursing
-      Sister there, gathered together my goods and chattels, and on a day when
-      it was raining as if never again could the sun shine, I went down in the
-      transport officer's hammock for the last time; for the last time went
-      through the surf, and reached the deck of the <i>Dakar</i>, bound for
-      England.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0085" id="linkimage-0085"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0589.jpg" alt="0589 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0589.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XXV&mdash;THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <i>The enormous wealth of West Africa&mdash;The waste&mdash;The need of
-      some settled scheme&mdash;Competitive examination for the West-African
-      Civil Service&mdash;The men who come after the pioneers&mdash;One industry
-      set against another&mdash;The climate&mdash;The need of women&mdash;The
-      dark peoples we govern&mdash;The isolation of the cultivated black man&mdash;The
-      missionaries&mdash;The Roman Catholics&mdash;The Basel missionaries&mdash;West
-      Africa the country of raw material&mdash;An answer to the question, &ldquo;What
-      shall I do with my son?&rdquo;&mdash;The fascination of Africa.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p class="pfirst">
-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nd so I have
-      visited 'the land I had dreamed about as a little child in far-away
-      Australia. But no, I have never been to that land. It is a wonderful
-      country that lies with the long, long thoughts of childhood, with the
-      desires of youth, with the hopes that are in the heart of the bride when
-      she draws the curtain on her marriage morning. Beautiful hopes, beautiful
-      desires, never to be fulfilled. We know, as we grow older, that some of
-      our longings will never be granted exactly in the way we have expected
-      them to be granted, but that does not mean that good things will not come
-      to us, though not in the guise in which we have looked for them.
-      Therefore, though I have never visited Carlo's country, and never can
-      visit it, still I have seen a very goodly land, a land flowing with milk
-      and honey, a land worthy of a high place in the possessions of any nation,
-      and yet, I think, a land that has been grievously misjudged.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Why does no one speak of the enormous wealth of West Africa? When America
-      was but a faint dream of the adventurous voyager, when Australia was not
-      on the maps, the west coast of Africa was exploited by the nations growing
-      in civilisation for her wealth of gold, and slaves, and ivory, and the
-      wealth that was there in those long-ago days is there to-day. There is
-      gold as of yore, gold for the working; slaves, but we recognise the rights
-      of man now and use them only as cheap labour; and there is surely raw
-      material and vegetable products that should bring food and wealth to the
-      struggling millions of the older world. The African peasant is passing
-      rich on threepence a day, and within reach of his hand grow rubber and
-      palm oil, groundnuts and cotton, cocoa and hemp, and cocoa-nuts and all
-      manner of tropical fruits. These things, I know, appertain to other lands,
-      but here they are simply flung out with a tropical lavishness, and till
-      this century I doubt if they have been counted of any particular value. If
-      the English colonies of West Africa were cultivated by men with knowledge
-      and patience, bringing to the work but a fiftieth of the thought and
-      attention that is given to such matters in France, the return would be
-      simply amazing. I have seen 25 per cent, of an ignorant peasant
-      community's cocoa harvest wasted because there were no roads; I have seen
-      cocoa-nut plantations useless, &ldquo;because the place isn't suitable,&rdquo; when in
-      all probability some parasite was killing the palms. I have seen lives and
-      money lost in a futile endeavour to teach the native to grow cotton, when
-      the climate and conditions cried out that cocoa was the proper product to
-      be encouraged.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0086" id="linkimage-0086"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0593.jpg" alt="0593 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0593.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      What the portion of West Africa I know well wants is to be worked on some
-      settled scheme, a scheme made by some far-seeing mind that shall embrace,
-      not the conditions of five years hence, but of fifty years hence; the man
-      who works there should be laying the foundations of a plan that shall come
-      to fruition in the time of our children's children, that should be still
-      in sound working order in their grandchildren's time. The wheat of the
-      Canadian harvest-field may bring riches in a year, the wool of Australia's
-      plains wealth in two or three, but the trees of the African forest have
-      taken hundreds of years to their growth, and, when they are grown, are
-      like no other trees in the world. With them none may compare. So may these
-      tropical dependencies of England be when rightly used, they shall come to
-      their full growth. But we must remember they are tropical dependencies.
-      The ordinary Englishman, it seems to me, is apt to expect to gather apples
-      from a cocoa-nut palm, potatoes from a groundnut vine, and to rail because
-      he cannot find those apples and potatoes. He will never find them, and the
-      man who expects them is the man in the wrong place.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I hope some day soon to find there is a competitive examination for
-      positions in the West-African Civil Service. Does any man grumble who has
-      won a place in the Indian Civil Service? I think not. A competitive
-      examination may not be the ideal way of choosing your political staff, but
-      as yet we have evolved none better. The man who passes high in a
-      competitive examination must at least have the qualities of industry and
-      self-denial, and who will deny that these are good qualities to bring to
-      the governing of a subject people?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is curious to watch English methods of colonisation, and whether we
-      will or no we must sit in judgment upon them. The first men who go out are
-      sometimes good, sometimes bad, but all have this saving grace&mdash;that
-      strong spirit of adventure, that dash and go which made England a
-      colonising nation and mistress of the seas. It would be like asking a
-      great cricketer to play tiddly-winks to ask one of the men who fought for
-      Ashanti to take part in a competitive examination. They have competed and
-      passed in a far sterner school. But the men who follow in the footsteps of
-      the pioneers are sometimes made of different stuff. They are often the
-      restless, discontented ones of the nation, men who complain of the land
-      they leave, complain of the land they come to, find no good in West
-      Africa, seek for no good, exaggerate its drawbacks, are glad to regard
-      themselves as martyrs and to give the country an evil name. Such men, I
-      think, a competitive examination would weed out.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There must be continuity of service. That is a foregone conclusion. At
-      present England thinks so little of the land that is hers that she puts a
-      man in a place but for a year, and the political officer has no chance of
-      learning the conditions and needs of the people over whom he rules; he is
-      a rolling stone perpetually moving on. Then it is the height of folly to
-      set one industry against another. All should surely, in a new country, be
-      worked for the common good. For instance, there is a railway running
-      between Kumasi and Sekondi, a Government railway, and behind Kumasi lies a
-      vast extent of country unexplored and unexploited, with hardly a road in
-      it. One would have thought that it would simply be wisdom and for the good
-      of the whole community that the railway which is Government property
-      should be used for the opening up of the country behind. Such is the plan
-      in Canada; such is the practice in Australia. But in West Africa
-      Government holds different views. Ashanti wants to build a road to the
-      Northern Territories, a road such as the Germans have made all over Togo,
-      but Government, instead of using the railway to further that project,
-      charge such exorbitant freight on the road material, that the road-making
-      has come to a standstill. It is typical of the country. Each department is
-      pitted against the other, instead of one and all working for the good of
-      the whole. The great mind that shall be at liberty to plan, that I fear
-      sometimes lest the Germans and French have found, has yet to come.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0087" id="linkimage-0087"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0597.jpg" alt="0597 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0597.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      There are many prejudices to break down, and first and foremost is the
-      prejudice against the climate. Now I am not going to say that West Africa
-      is a health resort, though I went there ill and came away in the rudest
-      health. Still I do recognise that a tropical climate is hard for a
-      European, more especially, perhaps, for people of these northern isles, to
-      dwell in. A man cannot afford to burn the candle at both ends there, and
-      if he would keep well he must of necessity live in all soberness and
-      temperance. He does not always do that, but at present, whatever his
-      illness is due to, it is always set down to the climate, and he is always
-      sure of a full measure of pity.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Once I stayed for a short time next to a hospital, and the Europeans in
-      the little town were much exercised because that hospital was so full. At
-      last it occurred to me to ask what was the matter with the patients. I was
-      not told what was the matter with them, but I found that the only one for
-      whom anyone had much pity was the gentleman who had D.T. But even the
-      worst of them you may be sure would have full measure of pity in England.
-      &ldquo;Poor fellow, that awful climate!&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      Doctors tell me fever is rife, and I feel they must know more about it
-      than I do, but it has been discovered in England that a life in the open
-      air is an almost certain preventive of phthisis, and I cannot help
-      thinking that <i>a sane and sober life in the open air day and night</i>
-      would be a more certain preventive against fever than all the quinine and
-      mosquito-proof rooms that were ever dreamt of. Observe, I say, a sane and
-      sober life; and a sane and sober life means most emphatically that a man
-      does not rush at his work and live habitually at high pressure. For this
-      is a temptation that the better-class of man is peculiarly liable to in
-      West Africa. &ldquo;Let us succeed, let us get on, and let us get home&rdquo;; and
-      who, in the present conditions, can blame him for such sentiments. They
-      are such as do any man credit, but they very often, in a hot climate more
-      especially, spell destruction as surely as the wild dissipation of the
-      reckless man who does not care. And there is only one cure for that&mdash;the
-      cure the French and Germans are providing. The women must be encouraged to
-      go out. Every woman who goes and stays makes it easier for the woman who
-      follows in her footsteps, and I can see no reason why a woman should not
-      stand the climate of West Africa as well as she does that of India. Women
-      are the crying need; quiet, brave, sensible women who are not daunted
-      because the black cook spoils the soup, or the black laundryman ruins the
-      tablecloth, who will take an intelligent view of life, and will make what
-      is so much needed&mdash;a home for their husbands. I know there are men
-      who say that Africa is no place for a woman. I have met them again and
-      again. Some of those men I respected very much; some I put in quite
-      another category. The first evidently regarded a wife as a precious
-      plaything, not as a creature who was helpmeet and friend, whose greatest
-      joy must be to keep her marriage vows and share her husband's life for
-      good or ill, whose life must of necessity be incomplete unless she were
-      allowed to keep those marriage vows. The other sort, I am afraid, like the
-      freedom that the absence of white women gives them, a freedom that is
-      certainly not for the ultimate welfare of a colony, for the mingling of
-      the European and the daughter of Ham should be unthinkable. It is good for
-      neither people.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0088" id="linkimage-0088"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0601.jpg" alt="0601 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0601.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      And here we come to the great difficulty of a tropical dependency, the
-      question that as yet is unanswered and unanswerable. What of the dark
-      peoples we govern? They are a peasant people with a peasant people's
-      faults and a peasant people's charm, but what of their future? The native
-      untouched by the white man has a dignity and a charm that there is no
-      denying; it seems a great pity he cannot be kept in that condition. The
-      man on the first rung of civilisation has points about him, and on the
-      whole one cannot help liking him, but the man who has gathered the
-      rudiments of an education, as presented to men in an English school on the
-      Coast, is, to my mind, about as disagreeable a specimen of humanity as it
-      is possible to meet anywhere. He has lost the charming courtesy of the
-      untutored savage, and replaced it by a horrible veneer of civilisation
-      that is blatant and pompous; and it is only because I have met such men as
-      Dr Blyden and Mr Olympia that I am prepared to admit that education can do
-      something beyond spoiling a good thing. Between black and white there is
-      that great, unbridgeable gulf fixed, and no man may cross it. The black
-      men who attain to the higher plane are as yet so few and scattered that
-      each must lead a life of utter intolerable loneliness, men centuries
-      before their time, men burdened with knowledge like Galileo, men who must
-      suffer like Galileo, for none may understand them, and the white man
-      stands and must stand&mdash;it is inevitable&mdash;too far off even for
-      sympathy.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      All honour to those men who go before the pioneers; but for them, as far
-      as we can see, is only bitterness.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The curious thing is that most people who have visited West Africa or any
-      other tropical dependency will recognise these facts, and yet England
-      continues to pour into Africa a continuous stream of missionaries. Why?
-      For years Christianity has been taught on the Coast, and it is now a
-      well-recognised fact that on the Coast dishonesty and vice are to be
-      found, while the man from the interior is at least honest, healthy, and
-      free from vice. I am not saying that religion as taught by the missionary
-      has taught vice, but I am declaring emphatically that it has failed to
-      keep the negro from it. Why encourage missionaries? As civilisation
-      advances the native must be taught. Very well, let him pay for his own
-      teaching, he will value it a great deal more; or, since the merchants want
-      clerks and the white rulers want artisans, let them pay for the native to
-      be taught. But very, very strongly do I feel, when I look at the
-      comfortable, well-fed native of West Africa and the wastrel of the English
-      streets, that the English who subscribe to missions are taking the bread
-      from the children's table and throwing it to the dogs.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0089" id="linkimage-0089"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0605.jpg" alt="0605 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0605.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Hundreds and thousands of people are ready to give to missions, but I am
-      very sure not a fraction of them have the very faintest conception of what
-      they are giving to. Their idea is that they are giving to the poor heathen
-      who are sunk in the deepest misery. Now there is not in all the length and
-      breadth of Africa, I will venture to swear, one-quarter of the unutterable
-      misery and vice you may see any day in the streets of London or any great
-      city of the British Isles. There is not a tribe that has not its own
-      system of morals and sees that they are carried out; there is not the
-      possibility of a man, woman, or child dying of starvation in all West
-      Africa while there is any food among the community. Can we say that of any
-      town in England? What then are we trying to teach the native?
-      Christianity. But surely a man's god is only such as his mind can
-      appreciate; a high-class mind has a high-class god, a kindly mind a kindly
-      god, and an evil mind an evil god. No matter whether we call that god
-      Christ, or by any other name, he will have the attributes the mind that
-      conceives him gives him; wherefore why worry?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Of course I know that a large number of people feel that religion comes
-      from without and not from within, and a larger number still say as long as
-      a mission is industrial it is a good thing, and to both of these I can
-      only point out the streets and alleys and tenement houses of the towns of
-      England. It seems to me the most appalling presumption on the part of any
-      nation with such ghastly festering sores at its own heart to try and
-      impose on any other people a code of morals, a system of ethics, a
-      religion, if you will, until its own body is sweet and clean. An
-      industrial mission is doubtless a good thing, but until there are no men
-      clamouring for the post of sandwich-men in London, no women catering to a
-      shameful traffic in Piccadilly, I think we should keep the money for our
-      industrial missions at home.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Let us look the thing straight in the face. They talk of human sacrifices.
-      Are there no human sacrifices in our own midst? We lie if we say there are
-      none. Every day we who pride ourselves upon having been a Christian nation
-      for the last thousand years condemn little children to a life of utter
-      hopelessness, to a life the very thought of which, in connection with our
-      own children, would make us hide our faces in shuddering horror. So if any
-      man is appealed to to give to missions, I would have him look round and
-      see that everyone in his immediate neighbourhood is beyond the need of
-      help, that there are no ghastly creatures at his own gate that the heathen
-      he is trying to convert would scorn to have at his side. Believe me, if
-      Christianity is to justify itself there is not yet one crumb to spare from
-      the children's table for the dogs that lie outside.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      For the individual missionary I have&mdash;in many cases, I must have&mdash;a
-      great respect. The trouble to my mind is that Christianity presented in so
-      many guises must be a little confusing to the heathen. There are the Roman
-      Catholics. They are pawns in the great game played by Rome; no individual
-      counts. They have given themselves to the missionary service to teach the
-      heathen, and they stay until they die or until they are too sick to be of
-      further use in the land. Of course they are helpful, any life that is
-      oblivious of self and is utterly devoted to others must needs be helpful,
-      and they have my deepest respect, because never, never have I been called
-      upon to sympathise with a Roman Catholic father or sister. They have given
-      their lives, no man can do more, and all I can say is, I would prefer they
-      gave it to the civilising of the submerged folks of their own nations than
-      to civilising the black man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0090" id="linkimage-0090"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0609.jpg" alt="0609 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0609.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      Then at the other end of the social scale are the Basel Missions. They
-      combine business and religion very satisfactorily in a thoroughly
-      efficient German spirit, and while the missionaries attend to the souls of
-      the heathen and set up schools to teach them not only to read and write,
-      but various useful trades as well, the Basel Mission Factories do a
-      tremendous trade in all the necessaries of life. These Basel missionaries
-      are most kindly, worthy people, and to their kindness I owe much.
-      Occasionally I have come across a man of wide reading and with clever,
-      observant eyes, but as a rule they are chosen from the lower middle
-      classes among the Swiss and Germans; very often the missionary spirit runs
-      in the families, and it passes on from father to son, from mother to
-      daughter. These people, too, come out if not for life, like the Roman
-      Catholics, at least for long periods of years. It is generally believed on
-      the Coast, and I have never heard it contradicted, that when a man attains
-      a certain standing he is allowed to marry, even though he is not due for a
-      holiday in Europe. They have at headquarters photographs of all the
-      eligible maidens in training for the mission field, and the candidate for
-      matrimony may choose his wife, and she is duly forwarded to him, for the
-      heads of the Basel Missions, like me, believe in matrimony for Africa. And
-      most excellent wives do these Basel missionary women make. They bear their
-      children here in West Africa where no English woman thinks she can stay
-      more than six months, and their homes are truly homes in the best sense of
-      the word. If example is good for the heathen, then he has it in the Basel
-      Missions. Another thing, they must make the most excellent nucleus for
-      German interests, for no one who has been in a Basel Mission Station or
-      Factory can but respect these men and women and little children who make a
-      home and a garden in the wilderness. And what I have said about the Basel
-      Missions applies to the Bremen Missions, except that these are more
-      pronouncedly German. But better women may I never hope to meet in this
-      wide world than those in the Bremen Missions. And in between these two
-      extremes are missionaries of every class and description. Against the
-      individuals I have nothing to say, save and except this&mdash;I want to
-      discount the admiration given to the &ldquo;poor missionary.&rdquo; They are good men
-      I doubt not, but they are earning a living just as I who write am earning
-      a living, or you who read, and to my mind they are earning a living in the
-      halo of sanctity very much more comfortably than the struggling doctor or
-      the poor curate in an East-End parish. Whatever their troubles, they have
-      never the bitterness of seeing the ghastly want that they cannot relieve,
-      and if they do not live in England, they have always the joy of making a
-      home in a new country, and that is a joy that those who talk so glibly
-      about exile do not seem to realise.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0091" id="linkimage-0091"> </a>
-    </p>
-
-<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0613.jpg" alt="0613 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0613.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-
-    <p>
-      &ldquo;But we must have the negroes taught reading and writing and trades,&rdquo; said
-      a man to me once when we were discussing the missionary question; and I
-      agree it is necessary, but I do not see why I am to regard the teacher as
-      on a higher plane than he who teaches the same in England. And as for the
-      religion that is taught, the only comment I have to make upon it is that
-      no man that ever I heard of would take a mission boy or a Christian for a
-      servant when he could get a decent heathen. Finally, considering the
-      amount of destitution and terrible want in the streets of England, if I
-      had my way I would put a heavy tax on all money contributed for the
-      conversion of the heathen. Before it was allowed to go out of the country
-      I would if I could take heavy toll, and with that toll give the luckless
-      children of my own colour a start in life in the Colonies.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Finally, West Africa is the country of raw material. It should be
-      England's duty so to work that country that it be complementary to
-      England, the great manufacturing land. The peasant of the Gold Coast
-      burning the bush to make his cocoa plantations is absolutely necessary to
-      the girl fixing the labels on the finished product; her very livelihood
-      depends upon him. The nearer these two are brought together in a
-      commercial sense the better for both, and what we say of cocoa we may say
-      of palm oil and groundnuts and other vegetable fats, of rubber, of hemp,
-      of gold, of tin. This country which produces with tropical luxuriance
-      should be, if properly worked, a source of immense wealth to the nation
-      that possesses it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      And as we rise in the social scale, think of the openings this country,
-      thickly populated, well cultivated, flourishing, would offer for the young
-      men of the middle classes seeking a career. A political service like the
-      Civil Service of India, officered by men who have won places there by
-      strenuous work and high endeavour, who are proud of the positions they
-      have won, and a busy mercantile community, serving side by side with these
-      political officers, would go some way to answering the question on the
-      lips of the middle-class father, &ldquo;What shall I do with my son?&rdquo; The work
-      of women is widening every day, and I, who honestly believe that an
-      ordinary woman may go where an ordinary man can, may with profit take up
-      work even as a man may do, see scope for the women of the future there
-      too, not only as wives and helpmeets to the men, but as heads of
-      independent enterprises of their own.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have finished my book, ended the task that I have set myself to do, and
-      I hope I have been able to convey to my readers some of the fascination
-      that Africa has always held for those who have once visited her shores.
-      But hitherto it has been the fascination of the mistress, never of the
-      wife. She held out no lure, for she was no courtesan. A man came to her in
-      his eager youth asking, praying that she would give him that which should
-      make all life good; and she trusted and opened her arms. What she had to
-      give she gave freely, generously; there was no stint, no lack. And he
-      took. Her charm he counted as a matter of course, her tenderness was his
-      due, her passion was for his pleasure; but the fascination he barely
-      admitted could not keep him. Though she had given all she had no rights,
-      and when other desires called he left her, left her with words of pity
-      that were an injury, of regret that were an insult.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0092" id="linkimage-0092"> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
-      <img src="images/0617.jpg" alt="0617 " width="100%" /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h5>
-      <a href="images/0617.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      But all this is changing. Africa holds. The man who has once known Africa
-      longs for her. In the sordid city streets he remembers the might and
-      loneliness of her forests, by the rippling brook he remembers the wide
-      rivers rushing tumultuous to the sea, in the night when the rain is on the
-      roof plashing drearily he remembers the gorgeous tropical nights, the sky
-      of velvet far away, the stars like points of gold, the warm moonlight that
-      with its deeper shadows made a fairer world. Even the languor and the heat
-      he longs for, the white foam of the surf on the yellow sand of the
-      beaches, the thick jungle growth densely matted, rankly luxuriant,
-      pulsating with the irrepressible life of the Tropics. All other places are
-      tame. The fascination that he has denied comes back calling to him in
-      after years. Thus &ldquo;the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.&rdquo; This
-      mistress he will have none of has spoiled him for all else. And here the
-      analogy fails. Africa holds, and the man whom she holds may yield to the
-      fascination not only without shame, but with pride. Before her lies a
-      great future; to the man who knows how to use her gifts she offers wealth
-      and prosperity. To be won easily? Well, no. These gifts lie there as
-      certainly as there is a sky above us, as that the sun will rise to-morrow,
-      but there lie difficulties in the way, obstacles to be overcome. Africa
-      offers the opportunities&mdash;success is for the
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <br />
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent5">
-      &ldquo;One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent15">
-      Never doubted clouds would break,
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent5">
-      Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent30">
-      triumph,
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent10">
-      Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent30">
-      Sleep to wake.
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent15">
-      Now at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent20">
-      Greet the unseen with a cheer!
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent10">
-      Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
-    </p>
-    <p class="indent10">
-      'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed&mdash;fight on&mdash;'&rdquo;
-     </p>
-    <p>
-      <br />
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 6em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-    <title>Alone in West Africa, by Mary Gaunt</title>

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-

-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alone in West Africa, by Mary Gaunt

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

-

-

-

-Title: Alone in West Africa

-       Illustrated

-

-Author: Mary Gaunt

-

-Release Date: March 21, 2017 [EBook #54400]

-Last Updated: March 12, 2018

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE IN WEST AFRICA ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by David Widger from page images generously

-provided by the Internet Archive

-

-

-

-

-

-

-</pre>

-

-    <div style="height: 8em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h1>

-      ALONE IN WEST AFRICA

-    </h1>

-    <h2>

-      By Mary Gaunt

-    </h2>

-    <h3>

-      Author Of &ldquo;The Uncounted Cost,&rdquo; Etc.

-    </h3>

-    <h4>

-      Charles Scribner's Sons London: T. Werner Laurie

-    </h4>

-    <h3>

-      1911

-    </h3>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0002.jpg" alt="0002 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0002.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0008.jpg" alt="0008 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <b>CONTENTS</b>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> DEDICATION </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> ALONE IN WEST AFRICA </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I&mdash;SONS OF THE SEA WIFE </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II&mdash;THE GROUNDNUT COLONY </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III&mdash;THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVE? </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;WHERE THE BLACK MAN RULES </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V&mdash;THE GUINEA COAST </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE KING'S HIGHWAY </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;ON THE FRENCH BORDER </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII&mdash;ALONE IN WEST AFRICA </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX&mdash;AN OLD DUTCH TOWN </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X&mdash;IN THE PATHS OF THE MEN OF OLD

-      </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE CAPITAL OF THE GOLD COAST

-      COLONY </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII&mdash;BLOOD FETISH OF KROBO HILL </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE FEAR THAT SKULKED BENEATH

-      THE MANGO TREE </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV&mdash;INTO THE WILDS </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV&mdash;CROSSING THE BORDER </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI&mdash;ONE OF THE CURSES OF THE DARK

-      CONTINENT </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII&mdash;GERMAN VERSUS ENGLISH METHODS

-      </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII&mdash;KETA ON THE SAND </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX&mdash;FACING DEATH </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX&mdash;WITH A COMPANION </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI&mdash;THE WEST-AFRICAN GOLDFIELDS

-      </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII&mdash;A NEW TRADING CENTRE </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII&mdash;IN THE HEART OF THE RUBBER

-      COUNTRY </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV&mdash;AN OUTPOST </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV&mdash;THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES </a>

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      DEDICATION

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      To those who have helped me I dedicate this record of my travels in West

-      Africa. Without their help I could have done nothing; it was always most

-      graciously and kindly given and I know not how to show my appreciation of

-      it. &ldquo;Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor,&rdquo; is all I can give in

-      return, unless some of them will take this book in very inadequate

-      payment. Sir Charles Lucas, the head of the Colonial Office, gave me

-      letters of introduction, Elder Dempster and Co. gave me a free passage,

-      their captains and their officers put themselves out to help me, Sir

-      George Denton welcomed me to West Africa, and after these comes a long

-      string of people who each and all contributed so much to my welfare that I

-      feel myself ungracious not to mention them all by name. I must thank

-      Messrs Swanzy and Co., who helped me up the Volta and across the unknown

-      country on the German border, and I were churl indeed if I did not

-      remember those men and women of another nation, who received me out of the

-      unknown, fed me, welcomed me, and smoothed my way for me. To each and all

-      then, with this dedication, I offer my most grateful thanks.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h1>

-      ALONE IN WEST AFRICA

-    </h1>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER I&mdash;SONS OF THE SEA WIFE

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Hereditary taste for wandering&mdash;A first adventure&mdash;&ldquo;Little

-      girls you must not be tired&rdquo;&mdash;How Carlo was captured by savages in

-      West Africa&mdash;Life in Ballarat&mdash;Nothing for a woman to do but

-      marry&mdash;Marriage&mdash;Plans for wandering twenty years hence&mdash;Life

-      in Warrnambool&mdash;Widowhood&mdash;May as well travel now there is

-      nothing left&mdash;London for an aspirant in literature&mdash;Stony

-      streets and drizzling rain&mdash;Scanty purse&mdash;Visit to the home of a

-      rich African trader&mdash;Small successes&mdash;At last, at last on board

-      s.s. Gando bound for the Gambia.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      &ldquo;There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent20">

-      And a wealthy wife is she;

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      She breeds a breed o' rovin' men,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent20">

-      And casts them over sea.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ometimes when

-      people ask me with wonder why I went to West Africa, why I wanted to go, I

-      feel as if that wife must have grown old and feeble and will bear no more

-      men to send across the sea. I hope not. I trust not. More than ninety

-      years ago she sent my mother's father into the Honourable East India Co.'s

-      service, and then, in later years with his ten children to colonise Van

-      Diemen's Land. Nearly sixty years ago she sent my father, a slim young

-      lad, out to the goldfields in Australia, and she breathed her spirit over

-      the five boys and two girls who grew up in the new land. I cannot remember

-      when any one of us would not have gone anywhere in the world at a moment's

-      notice. It would not have been any good pointing out the dangers, because

-      dangers at a distance are only an incentive. There is something in the

-      thought of danger that must be overcome, that you yourself can help to

-      overcome, that quickens the blood and gives an added zest to life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I can remember as a small girl going with my sister to stay with an uncle

-      who had a station, Mannerim, behind Geelong. The house had been built in

-      the old days of slabs with a bark roof, very inflammable material. I loved

-      the place then because it spoke of the strenuous old days of the Colony. I

-      love the memory of it now for old times' sake, and because there happened

-      the first really exciting incident in my life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a January morning, the sky overcast with smoke and a furious hot

-      wind blowing from the north. The men of the household looked out

-      anxiously, but I sat and read a story-book. It was the tale of a boy named

-      Carlo who was wrecked on the coast of West Africa&mdash;nice vague

-      location; he climbed a cocoa-nut tree&mdash;I can see him now with a rope

-      round his waist and his legs dangling in an impossible attitude&mdash;and

-      he was taken by savages. His further adventures I do not know, because a

-      man came riding in shouting that the calf paddock was on fire and everyone

-      must turn out. Everyone did turn out except my aunt who stayed behind to

-      prepare cool drinks, and those drinks my little sister and I, as being

-      useless for beating out the flames, were sent to carry to the workers in

-      jugs and &ldquo;billies.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Now little girls,&rdquo; said my aunt who was tenderness and kindness itself,

-      &ldquo;remember you are not to get tired.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was the first lesson I really remember in the stern realities of life.

-      We had hailed the bushfire as something new and exciting; now we were to

-      be taught that much excitement brings its strenuous hard labour. The fire

-      did not reach the house, and the men and women got their drink, but it was

-      two very weary, dirty, smoke-grimed and triumphant little girls who bathed

-      and went to bed that night. I never finished the story of Carlo. Where he

-      went to I can't imagine, but I can't think the savages ate him else his

-      story would never have been written; and from that moment dated my deep

-      interest in West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We grew up and the boys of the family went a-roving to other lands. One

-      was a soldier, two were sailors, and the two youngest were going to be

-      lawyers, whereby they might make money and go to the other ends of the

-      world if they liked. When we were young we generally regarded money as a

-      means of locomotion. We have hardly got over the habit yet. Only for us

-      two girls was there no prospect. Our world was bounded by our father's

-      lawns and the young men who came to see us and made up picnic parties to

-      the wildest bush round Ballarat for our amusement. It was not bad. Even

-      now I acknowledge to something of delight to be found in a box-seat of a

-      four-in-hand, a glorious moonlight night, and four horses going at full

-      speed; something delightful in scrambles over the ranges and a luncheon in

-      the shade by a waterhole, with romantic stories for a seasoning, and the

-      right man with a certain admiration in his eyes to listen. It was not bad,

-      but it was not as good a life as the boys of the family were having, and

-      it was giving me no chance of visiting the land Carlo had gone to that had

-      been in my mind at intervals ever since the days of my childish bushfire.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was really nothing for a woman but to marry, and accordingly we both

-      married and I forgot in my entrance into that world, which is so old and

-      yet always so new, my vague longings after savage lands.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I wonder sometimes would I have been contented to lead the ordinary

-      woman's life, the life of the woman who looks after her husband and

-      children. I think so, because it grew to be the life I ardently yearned

-      for. The wander desire was just pushed a little into the back-ground and

-      was to come off twenty years hence when we had made our fortune. And

-      twenty years looked such a long long while then. It even looks a long time

-      now, for it has not passed, and I seem to have lived a hundred years and

-      many lives since the days in the little Victorian town of Warrnambool when

-      my handsome young husband and I planned out our future life. But I was

-      nearer to Carlo's land than I thought even then, and if I could have

-      peeped into the future I would only have shrunk with unspeakable dread

-      from the path I must walk, the path that was to lead me to the

-      consummation of my childish hopes. In a very few years the home life I had

-      entered into with such gladness was over, my husband was dead, and I was

-      penniless, homeless, and alone. Of course I might have gone back to my

-      father's house, my parents would have welcomed me, but can any woman go

-      back and take a subordinate position when she has ruled? I think not;

-      besides it would only have been putting off the evil day. When my father

-      died, and in the course of nature he must die before me, there would be

-      but a pittance, and I should have to start out once more handicapped with

-      the added years. Again, and I think this thought was latent beneath all

-      the misery and hopelessness that made me say I did not care what became of

-      me, was I not free, free to wander where I pleased, to seek those

-      adventures that had held such a glamour for me in my girlhood. True, I had

-      not much money with which to seek them. When everything was settled up I

-      found if I stayed quietly in Australia I had exactly thirty pounds a year

-      to call my own. Thirty pounds a year, and I reckoned I could make perhaps

-      fifty pounds by my pen. My mother pointed out to me that if I lived with

-      my parents it would not be so bad. But it was not to be thought of for a

-      moment. The chance had come, through seas of trouble, but still it had

-      come, and I would go and see the great world for myself. I thought I had

-      lived my life, that no sorrow or gladness could ever touch me keenly

-      again; but I knew, it was in my blood, that I should like to see strange

-      places and visit unknown lands. But on thirty pounds a year one can do

-      nothing, so I took a hundred pounds out of my capital and came to London

-      determined to make money by my pen in the heart of the world.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh, the hopes of the aspirant for literary fame, and oh, the dreariness

-      and the weariness of life for a woman poor and unknown in London! I lodged

-      in two rooms in a dull and stony street. I had no one to speak to from

-      morning to night, and I wrote and wrote and wrote stories that all came

-      back to me, and I am bound to say the editors who sent them back were

-      quite right. They were poor stuff, but how could anyone do good work who

-      was sick and miserable, cold and lonely, with all the life crushed out of

-      her by the grey skies and the drizzling rain? I found London a terrible

-      place in those days; I longed with all my heart for my own country, my own

-      little home in Warrnambool where the sun shone always, the roses yellow

-      and pink climbed over the wall, the white pittosporum blossoms filled the

-      air with their fragrance, and the great trees stood up tall and straight

-      against the dark-blue sky. I did not go back to my father, because my

-      pride would not allow me to own myself a failure and because all the

-      traditions of my family were against giving in. But I was very near it,

-      very near it indeed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then after six months of hopelessness there came to see me from Liverpool

-      a friend of one of my sailor brothers, and she, good Samaritan, suggested

-      I should spend my Christmas with her.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I went. She and her daughters were rich people and the husband and father

-      had been an African trader. So here it was again presented to me, the land

-      to which I had resolved to go when I was a little child, and everything in

-      the house spoke to me of it. In the garden under a cedar tree was the

-      great figurehead of an old sailing ship; in the corridor upstairs was the

-      model of a factory, trees, boats, people, houses all complete; in the

-      rooms were pictures of the rivers and swamps and the hulks where trade was

-      carried on. To their owners these possessions were familiar as household

-      words that meant nothing; to me they reopened a new world of desire or

-      rather an old desire in a new setting&mdash;the vague was taking concrete

-      form. I determined quite definitely that I would go to West Africa. The

-      thing that amazed me was that everybody with money in their pockets was

-      not equally desirous of going there.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      About this time, too, I discovered that it was simply hopeless for me to

-      think of writing stories about English life. The regular, conventional

-      life did not appeal to me; I could only write adventure stories, and the

-      scene of adventure stories was best laid in savage lands. West Africa was

-      not at all a bad place in which to set them. Its savagery called me. There

-      and then I started to write stories about it. Looking back, I smile when I

-      think of the difficulties that lay in my path. Even after I had carefully

-      read every book of travel I could lay my hands on, I was still in deepest

-      ignorance, because every traveller left so much undescribed and told

-      nothing of the thousand and one little trifles that make ignorant eyes see

-      the life that is so different from that in a civilised land. But if you

-      will only look for a thing it is astonishing how you will find it often in

-      the most unlikely places; if you set your heart on something it is

-      astonishing how often you will get your heart's desire. I sought for

-      information about West Africa and I found it, not easily; every story I

-      wrote cost me a world of trouble and research and anxiety, and I fear me

-      the friends I was beginning to make a world of trouble too. But they were

-      kind and long-suffering; this man gave me a little information here, that

-      one there, and I can laugh now when I think of the scenes that had to be

-      written and rewritten before a hammock could be taken a couple of miles,

-      before a man could sit down to his early-morning tea in the bush. It took

-      years to do it, but at last it was done to some purpose; the book I had

-      written with great effort caught on, and I had the money for the trip I

-      had planned many years before when I was a small girl reading about those

-      distant lands. I hesitated not a moment. The day I had sufficient money to

-      make such a thing possible I went up to the City to see about a passage to

-      West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now a wonderful thing happened. Such a piece of good luck as I had not

-      in my wildest dreams contemplated. Elder Dempster, instigated by the kind

-      offices of Sir Charles Lucas, the permanent head of the Colonial Office,

-      who knew how keen was my desire, offered me a ticket along the Coast, so

-      that I actually had all the money I had earned to put into land travel,

-      and Mr Laurie, my publisher, fired by my enthusiasm, commissioned a book

-      about the wonderful old forts that I knew lay neglected and crumbling to

-      decay all along the shores of the Gold Coast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As I look back it seems as if surely the fairy godmother who had omitted

-      to take my youth in charge was now showering me with good gifts, or maybe,

-      most probably, the good gifts had been offered all along and I had never

-      recognised them. We, some of us, drive in a gorgeous coach and never see

-      anything but the pumpkin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At least I was not making that mistake now. I was wild with delight and

-      excitement when, on a cold November day, when London was wrapped in fog, I

-      started from Euston for Liverpool. One of the brothers who I had envied in

-      my youth, a post captain in the Navy now (how the years fly), happened to

-      be in London and came down to the station to see me and my heaped

-      impedimenta off.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He understood my delight in the realisation of my dream.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Have you any directions for the disposal of your remains?&rdquo; he asked

-      chaffingly, as we groped our way through the London fog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, that will all be settled,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;long before you hear anything

-      about it&rdquo;; and we both laughed. We did not think, either of us, my

-      adventure was going to end disastrously. It would have been against all

-      the traditions of the family to think any such thing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He told me how once he had gone into action with interest because he

-      wanted to see what it would be like to be under fire, and whether he would

-      be frightened. He didn't have much time to contemplate the situation, for

-      presently he was so badly wounded that it took him six months to crawl off

-      his bed, but it brought him a cross of honour from Italy. &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; says

-      he, with a certain satisfaction, &ldquo;I know.&rdquo; So he sympathised. He felt that

-      whatever happened I would have the satisfaction of knowing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is hardly necessary to describe to an English reader Liverpool on a

-      cold, grey morning in November. There is the grey sky and the grey streets

-      and the grey houses, and the well-to-do shivering in their wraps, and the

-      poor shivering in their rags, all the colourless English world, that is

-      not really colourless for those who know how to look at it, but which had

-      driven me to sunnier lands; and there was the ship with her wet decks, her

-      busy officers in comforters and sea-boots, her bare-footed sailors, and

-      her gangways crowded with cargo, baggage, and numbers of bewildered

-      passengers themselves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And I think as we crowded into the smoking-room for warmth I was the only

-      enthusiastic person among them. The majority of the passengers on board

-      s.s. <i>Gando</i> actually didn't want to go to West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It seems strange, but so it was; the greater part of them, if they could

-      have afforded to stay at home, would actually have stayed. I was inclined

-      to be impatient with them. Now I forgive them. They know not what they do.

-      It is a pity, but it can be remedied.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The <i>Gando</i> was not a mail boat. I had chosen her because she called

-      at Dakar, and I thought I would like to go if possible to the first

-      settlement on the Coast, and I wanted to see how the French did things. I

-      may say here I never got to Dakar&mdash;still it is something to be looked

-      forward to in the future, to be done when next I write a book that pays&mdash;for

-      on board the <i>Gando</i> was Sir George Denton, the Governor of the

-      Gambia, surely the nicest governor ever lucky colony had, and for such an

-      important person the ship went a little out of her way and called first at

-      Bathurst, port and capital of the Gambia colony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now, I had a letter of introduction to Sir George and I presented it, and

-      he promptly asked me to come ashore with him. I had never thought of

-      staying in the Gambia beyond the day or two the ship would take to

-      discharge her cargo&mdash;&ldquo;a potty little colony,&rdquo; as I had heard it

-      called, and it hardly seemed worth while to waste my time in a miniature

-      Thames. How the Governor laughed when he found out my appalling ignorance,

-      and how ashamed I was when I found it out!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The Thames,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;well, we only hold the mouth of the river about

-      four hundred miles up, but the Gambia is at least a thousand miles in

-      extent, and may be longer for all I know.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I apologised to the Gambia.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But could I see the river?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why, of course; we'll send you up in the <i>Mansikillah</i>, the

-      Government steamer&rdquo;; and I accepted his invitation with alacrity and with

-      gratitude.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Truly, my fairy godmother was more than waving her wand. I hadn't left

-      English shores a week, and here was an invitation to go four hundred miles

-      into the interior of the continent of my dreams.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We went first to the Canary Islands, the islands of the blest of the

-      ancients, but the Canaries were as nothing to me; they have been civilised

-      too long. They were only a stepping-stone to that other land, the land of

-      romance, that I was nearing at last.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now I have an apology to make, an apology which very few people will

-      understand, but those few will, and to them it is a matter of such

-      importance that I must make it. I went to see a savage land. I went to

-      seek material for the only sort of story I can write, and to tell of the

-      prowess of the men who had gone before and left their traces in great

-      stone forts all along three hundred miles of coast. I found a savage land,

-      in some parts a very wild land indeed, but I found what I had never

-      expected, a land of immense possibilities, a land overflowing with wealth,

-      a land of corn and wine and oil. I expected swamp and miasma, heat, fever,

-      and mosquitoes. I found these truly, but I found, too, a lovely land, an

-      entrancingly lovely land in places; I found gorgeous nights and divine

-      mornings, and I found that the great interest of West Africa lay not in

-      the opportunity it gave for vivid descriptions of heroes who fought and

-      suffered and conquered, or fought and suffered and died, but in showing

-      its immense value to the English crown in describing a land where every

-      tropical product may be grown, a land with a teeming population and a

-      generous soil, a land in fact that, properly managed, should supply raw

-      material for half the workshops in England, a land that may be made to

-      give some of its sunlight to keep alight the fires on English hearths in

-      December, a land that as yet only the wiser heads amongst us realise the

-      value of.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A man comes to West Africa,&rdquo; said a Swiss to me once, &ldquo;because he can

-      make in ten years as much as he could make in thirty in England.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      That is the land I found, and I apologise if I have ever written or

-      thought of it in any other way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The White Man's Grave,&rdquo; say many still. But even the all-powerful white

-      man must have a grave in the end. Live wisely and discreetly and it is, I

-      think with wise old Zachary Macauley who ruled Sierra Leone at the end of

-      the eighteenth century, no more likely to be in West Africa than in any

-      other place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the ship sailed on, and one morning early, before daylight, we heard

-      the bell buoy that marks the mouth of the Gambia before lazy eyes can see

-      there is a river, and knew that we had arrived at our destination. At

-      last, at last I was on the very threshold of the land I had dreamed of

-      years before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER II&mdash;THE GROUNDNUT COLONY

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Rejoicing-, half-eastern and wholly tropical, on arrival of the

-      Governor&mdash;Colonies governed and held as the Romans held their

-      colonies of Britain&mdash;Great g-ulf between the black and the white&mdash;The

-      barrier of sex&mdash;Received as a brother but declined as a

-      brother-in-law&mdash;Lonely Fort St James&mdash;The strenuous lives led by

-      the men of the past&mdash;Crinted walls&mdash;The pilot's wife&mdash;Up

-      the river in the Mungo Park&mdash;The river devil's toll&mdash;&ldquo;Pass

-      friend and all's well.&rdquo;</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen I was a little

-      girl the Queen held something the same place in my mind as the Almighty.

-      The ruler of the nation hardly had any personality. She was there, of

-      course, and people talked about her as conferring great benefits upon us;

-      but so we also talked about God in church and when we said our prayers at

-      night. As a family, we objected to saying prayers in the morning. They

-      were not supposed to be necessary till you had arrived at mature years,

-      say, five, and by then, I suppose, we had imbibed the idea that we could

-      really take care of ourselves very well during the day-time. So the Queen,

-      too, was in the same category as God and Heaven, that distinctly dull

-      place, which was to be the reward of good works on earth, and His

-      Excellency the Governor took her place in the minds of all young

-      colonials. Of course, as I grew older, I realised that the Governor was a

-      man like unto other men, that he could be talked to like an ordinary man,

-      could ask you to dinner, and even take a polite interest in your future;

-      but, still, some of the rags of the childish vagueness and glory clung

-      round him, and so I was quite pleased to find myself on board a steamer

-      with a real live Governor. More, I sat next him at table; we discussed the

-      simple commonplace doings of ship-board life together, and as we arrived

-      at the buoy I shared in the little fuss and bustle which the landing of

-      such an exalted personage always makes. And he wasn't really such a very

-      exalted personage in his own opinion. There was a merry twinkle in his

-      nice brown eyes as he admitted that his gold-laced coat, made to be worn

-      on state occasions such as this, was a great deal too hot for the Tropics,

-      and that its donning must be left to the very last moment; and so I stood

-      on the flag-dressed deck by myself and watched the land of my dreams come

-      into view.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A long, low shore is the Gambia&mdash;a jutting point, with palms upon it,

-      running out into a glassy sea, from which is reflected the glare of the

-      tropical sun. There was a little denser clump of greenery that marked the

-      site of Bathurst, the capital; and, as we drew closer, we could see the

-      roofs of the houses peeping out, bright specks of colour that were the

-      flags, and the long line of red on the wharf, the soldiers turned out to

-      welcome the returning Governor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This is the only place along that line of surf-bound coast where a ship

-      may come up to the wharf and land her passengers dry-shod; but, to-day,

-      because the captain was in a hurry, he dropped us over the side in boats,

-      and we landed to all the glory of a welcome that was half-eastern and

-      wholly and emotionally tropical. The principal street of Bathurst, the

-      only street worth mentioning, runs all along the river-side, with houses

-      on one side and the wharfs and piers on the other; and the whole place was

-      thronged with the black inhabitants. The men shouted and tossed their hats

-      and caps when they had any; and the women, the mammies, as I learned to

-      call them later, flung their gaily coloured cloths from their shoulders

-      for their dearly loved Governor to walk over; and the handful of whites&mdash;there

-      are twenty-five English and some French and Swiss&mdash;came forward and

-      solemnly shook hands. He had come back to them, the man who had ruled over

-      them for the last ten years, and white and black loved him, and were glad

-      to do him honour.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the midst of great rejoicing, a good omen for me, I set my foot on

-      African shore. I began my journeying, and I looked round to try and

-      realise what manner of country was this I had come to&mdash;what manner of

-      life I was to be part and parcel of.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      These colonies on the West-African coast are as unlike as possible to the

-      colony in which I first saw the light, that my people have helped to build

-      up. I fancy, perhaps, the Roman proconsul and the officials in his train,

-      who came out to rule over Britain in the first century before Christ, must

-      have led lives somewhat resembling those of the Britons who nowadays go

-      out to West Africa. One thing is certain, those Italians must have

-      grumbled perpetually about the inclemency and unhealthiness of the climate

-      of these northern isles; they probably had a great deal to say about the

-      fever and ague that was rife. They were accustomed to certain luxuries

-      that civilisation had made into necessities, and they came to a land where

-      all the people were traders and agriculturists of a most primitive sort.

-      They were exiles in a cold, grey land, and they felt it bitterly. They

-      came to replenish their purses, and when those purses were fairly full

-      they returned to their own land gladly. The position describes

-      three-quarters of the Englishmen in West Africa to-day; but between the

-      Roman and the savage Piet of Caledonia was never the gulf, the great gulf,

-      which is fixed between even the educated African and the white man of

-      whatever nationality. It is no good trying to hide the fact; between the

-      white man and the black lies not only the culture and the knowledge of the

-      west&mdash;that gulf might, and sometimes is bridged&mdash;but that other

-      great bar, the barrier of sex. Tall, stalwart, handsome as is many a

-      negro, no white woman may take a black man for her husband and be

-      respected by her own people; no white man may take a black girl, though

-      her dark eyes be soft and tender, though her skin be as satin and her

-      figure like that of the Venus of Milo, and hope to introduce her among his

-      friends as his wife. Even the missionaries who preach that the black man

-      is a brother decline emphatically to receive him as a brother-in-law. And

-      so we get, beginning here in the little colony of the Gambia, the handful

-      of the ruling race set among a subject people; so the white man has always

-      ruled the black; so, I think, he must always rule. It will be a bad day

-      for the white when the black man rules. That there should be any mingling

-      of the races is unthinkable; so I hope that the white man will always rule

-      Africa with a strong hand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Gambia is the beginning of the English colonies on the Coast, and, the

-      pity of it, a very small beginning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the old days, when Charles the Second was king, the English held none

-      of the banks of the river at all, but contented themselves with a barren

-      little island about seventeen miles from where Bathurst now stands. One

-      bank was held by the French, the other by the Portuguese; and the English

-      built on the island Fort St James to protect their interest in the great

-      trade in palm oil, slaves, and ivory that came down the river. Even then

-      the Gambia was rich. It is richer far to-day, but the French hold the

-      greater part of it. The colony of the Gambia is at the mouth of the river,

-      twelve miles broad by four hundred long, a narrow strip of land bordering

-      the mouth of a river set in the heart of the great French colony of

-      Senegal&mdash;a veritable Naboth's vineyard that our friends the other

-      side of the Channel may well envy us. It brings us in about £80,000

-      annually, but to them it would be of incalculable value as an outlet for

-      the majority of their rich trade.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At first I hardly thought about these things. I was absorbed in the wonder

-      of the new life. I stayed at Government House with the Governor, and was

-      caught up in the little whirl of gaieties that greeted his return. The

-      house was tropical, with big, lofty, airy rooms and great wide verandahs

-      that as a rule serve also as passageways to pass from one room to another;

-      for Government House, Bathurst, is built as a tropical house should be&mdash;must

-      be&mdash;built, if the builder have any regard for the health of its

-      inmates. There were no rooms that the prevailing breeze could not sweep

-      right through. There was a drawingroom and a dining-room on the ground

-      floor, but I do not think either Sir George or I, or his private

-      secretary, ever used the drawing-room unless there were guests to be

-      entertained. The verandahs were so much more inviting, and my bedroom was

-      a delightful place. It ran right across the house. There was no carpet,

-      and, as was only right, only just such furniture as I absolutely needed.

-      The bed was enclosed in another small mosquito-proof room of wirenetting,

-      and it was the only thing I did not like about the house. There, and at

-      that season, perhaps it did not very much matter, for a strong Harmattan

-      wind, the cool wind of the cold, dry season, was blowing, and it kept the

-      air behind the stout wire-netting fresh and clean; but I must here put on

-      record my firm belief that no inconsiderable number of lives in Africa

-      must be lost owing to some doctor's prejudice in favour of mosquito-proof

-      netting. A mosquito-proof netting is very stout indeed, and not only

-      excludes the mosquito, but, and this far more effectually, the fresh air

-      as well. The man who has plenty of fresh air, day and night, will be in

-      better health, and far more likely to resist infection if he does happen

-      to get bitten by a fever-bearing mosquito, than he who must perforce spend

-      at least a third of his time in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room.

-      This I did not realise at Government House, Bathurst, or if I did, but

-      dimly, for there in December the strong Harmattan would have forced its

-      way through anything. I spent most of my time on the verandah outside my

-      own room, where I had a view not only of the road that ran to to the

-      centre of the town but right away across the river. Here I had my

-      breakfast and my afternoon tea, and here I did all my writing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In Africa your own servant takes charge of your room, gets your bath, and

-      brings you your early-morning tea; and here in Bathurst in this womanless

-      house my servant was to get my breakfast and my afternoon tea as well, so

-      the first thing to be done was to look out for a boy. He appeared in the

-      shape of Ansumanah Grant, a Mohammedan boy of three-and-twenty, a Vai

-      tribesman, who had been brought up by the Wesleyan missionaries at Cape

-      Mount in Liberia. When I engaged him he wore a pink pyjama coat, a pair of

-      moleskin breeches, and red carpet slippers; and, when this was rectified&mdash;at

-      my expense&mdash;he appeared in a white shirt, khaki knicker-bockers, a

-      red cummerbund, and bare feet, and made a very respectable member of

-      society and a very good servant to me during the whole of my stay in

-      Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0043.jpg" alt="0043 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0043.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I always made it a practice to rise early in West Africa, because the

-      early morning is the most delightful time, and he who stays in bed till

-      halfpast seven or eight is missing one of the pure delights of life. When

-      I had had my early breakfast, I went to inspect the town. The market lies

-      but a stone's throw from Government House, and here all the natives were

-      to be found, and the white men's servants buying provisions for the day.

-      To me, before I went to Africa, a negro was a negro, and I imagined them

-      all of one race. My mind was speedily disabused of that error. The negro

-      has quite as many nationalities, is quite as distinct as the European.

-      Here in this little colony was a most cosmopolitan gathering, for the

-      south and north meet, and Yorubas from Lagos, Gas from Accra, mongrel

-      Creoles from Sierra Leone meet the Senegalese from the north, the Hausas

-      from away farther east; and the natives themselves are the Mohammedan

-      Jolloff, who is an expert river-man, the Mandingo, and the heathen Jolah,

-      who as yet is low down in the scale of civilisation, and wears but scanty

-      rags. And all these people were to be found in the market in the early

-      morning. It is enclosed with a high wall, the interior is cemented, and

-      gutters made to carry off moisture, and it is all divided into stalls, and

-      really not at all unlike the alfresco markets you may see on Saturdays in

-      the poorer quarters of London. Here they sell meat, most uninviting

-      looking, but few butchers' shops look inviting; fish&mdash;very strange

-      denizens come out of the sea in the Gambia; native peppers, red and green;

-      any amount of rice, which is the staple food of the people, and all the

-      tropical fruits, paws-paws, pine-apples, and dark-green Coast oranges,

-      which are very sweet; bananas, yellow and pink, and great bunches of green

-      plantains. They are supposed to sell only on the stalls, for which they

-      pay a small, a very small rental; but, like true natives, they overflow on

-      to the ground, and as you walk you must be careful not to tread on neat

-      little piles of peppers, enamelled iron-ware basins full of native rice,

-      or little heaps of purple kola-nuts&mdash;that great sustaining stimulant

-      of Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There were about half a dozen white women in Bathurst when I was there,

-      including one who had ostracised herself by marrying a black man; but none

-      ever came to the market, therefore my arrival created great excitement,

-      and one good lady, in a are held, half the houses are owned by rich

-      negroes, Africans they very naturally prefer to be called, but the poorer

-      people live all crowded together in Jolloff town, whither my guide led me,

-      and introduced me to her yard. A Jolloff never speaks about his house, but

-      about his &ldquo;yard.&rdquo; Even Government House he knows as &ldquo;Governor's Yard.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0047.jpg" alt="0047 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0047.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Jolloff town looks as if if were made of basket-work; they call it here

-      &ldquo;crinting,&rdquo; and all the walls of the houses and of the compounds are made

-      of this split bamboo neatly woven together. For Bathurst is but a strip of

-      sand-bank just rescued from the mangrove swamp round, and these crinted

-      walls serve excellently to keep it together when the strong Harmattan

-      threatens to blow the whole place bodily into the swamp behind. My

-      friend's home was a very nice specimen of its class, the first barbaric

-      home I had ever seen. The compound was surrounded by the crinted walls,

-      and inside again were two or three huts, also built of crinting, with a

-      thatched roof. As a rule I am afraid the Jolloff is not clean, but my

-      pilot's wife had a neat little home. There were no windows in it, but the

-      strong sunlight came through the crinted walls, and made a subdued light

-      and a pattern of the basket-work on the white, sanded floor; there were

-      three long seats of wood, neatly covered with white napkins edged with

-      red, a table, a looking-glass, and a basket of bread, for it appeared she

-      was a trader in a small way. It was all very suitable and charming.

-      Outside in the compound ran about chickens, goats, a dog or two, and some

-      small children, another woman's children, alas, for she told me mournfully

-      she had none.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is easy enough to make a friend; the difficulty is to know where to

-      stop. I am afraid I had soon exhausted all my interest in my Jolloff

-      woman, while to her I was a great source of pride, and she wanted me to

-      come and see her every day. At first she told me she &ldquo;fear too much&rdquo; to

-      come to &ldquo;Governor's Yard,&rdquo; but latterly, I regret to state, that wholesome

-      fear wore off, and she called to see me every day, and I found suitable

-      conversation a most difficult thing to provide, so that I grew to look

-      very anxiously indeed for the steamer that was to take me up the river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0049.jpg" alt="0049 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0049.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The Government steamer, the <i>Mansikillah</i>, had broken down. She was

-      old, and it was, I was told, her chronic state, but I was bitterly

-      disappointed till the Governor told me he had made arrangements for me to

-      go in the French Company's steamer, the <i>Mungo Park</i>. She was going

-      up the river with general cargo; she was coming down again with some of

-      the groundnut crop, little nuts that grow on the root of a trefoil plant,

-      nuts the Americans call pea-nuts, and the English monkey-nuts.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had to wait a little till there came a messenger one day to say that the

-      steamer was ready at last, and would start that afternoon. So I went down

-      to the little wharf with my servant, my baggage, and the travelling

-      Commissioner, who was also going up the river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The <i>Mungo Park</i> was a stern-wheeler of 150 tons, drawing six feet of

-      water, and when first I saw her you could hardly tell steamer from wharf,

-      so alive were they both with crowded, shrieking people, all either wanting

-      to get on, or to get off, which was apparently not quite clear. After a

-      little wait, out of chaos came a courteous French trader and a gangway.

-      The gangway took us on board, and the trader, whose English was as good as

-      mine, explained that he, too, was going up the river to look after the

-      houses belonging to his company along the banks. Then he showed me my

-      quarters, and I was initiated into the mysteries of travelling in the

-      interior of Africa. There was but one cabin on board the <i>Mungo Park</i>,

-      a place about eighteen feet square amidship; in it were two bunks, a

-      table, a couple of long seats, a cupboard, and washing arrangements. The

-      sides were all of Venetian shutters, which could be taken away when not

-      wanted. It was all right in a way, but I must confess for a moment I

-      wondered how on earth two men and a woman were to stow away there. Then

-      the trader explained. I should have the cabin to sleep in, and we all

-      three would have our meals there together, while arrangements might be

-      made by which we could all in turn bathe and wash. I learned my first

-      lesson: you accept extraordinary and unconventional situations, if you are

-      wise, with a smile and without a blush in Africa. The Commissioner and the

-      trader, I found on further inquiry, would sleep on the top of the cabin,

-      which was also what one might call the promenade deck. I arranged my

-      simple belongings, and went up on deck to look, and I found that it was

-      reached by way of the boiler, across which some steps and a little, coaly

-      hand-rail led. It would have been nice in the Arctic regions, but on a

-      tropical afternoon it had its drawbacks. On the deck I was met by a

-      vociferous black man, who was much too busy to do more than give an

-      obsequious welcome, for it appeared he was the captain. I shall always

-      regret I did not take his photograph as he leaned over the railing,

-      shouting and gesticulating to his men, and to the would-be passengers, and

-      to the men who were struggling to get the cargo on board. He cursed them,

-      I should think, all impartially. The French trader said he was an

-      excellent captain, and he remains in my mind as the most unique specimen

-      of the genus I have ever seen. He wore a khaki coat and very elderly tweed

-      trousers, split behind; his feet were bare; he did not pander to that

-      vitiated taste which demands underlinen, or at least a shirt, but, seeing

-      it was the cold weather, he adorned his black skull with a woolly cap with

-      ear-flaps, such as Nansen probably took on his North-Pole expedition.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a great deal of cargo&mdash;cotton goods, sugar, salt, coffee,

-      dates; things that the French company were taking up to supply their

-      factories on the river, and long before it was stowed the deck passengers

-      began crowding on board. Apparently there was no provision whatever made

-      for them; they stowed on top of the cargo, just wherever they could find a

-      place, and every passenger&mdash;there were over ninety of them&mdash;had

-      apparently something to say as to the accommodation, or the want of

-      accommodation, and he or she said it at the very top of his or her voice

-      in Jolloff or Mandingo or that bastard English which is a <i>lingua franca</i>

-      all along the Coast. Not that it mattered much what language they said it

-      in, because no one paid the least attention; such a babel have I never

-      before heard. And such a crowd as they were. The steamer provided water

-      carriage only for the deck passengers, so that they had their cooking

-      apparatus, their bedding, their food, their babies, their chickens

-      (unfortunate wretches tied by one leg), and, if they could evade the eagle

-      eye of the French trader, their goats. The scene was bedlam let loose to

-      my unaccustomed eyes. We were to tow six lighters as well, and each of

-      them also had a certain number of passengers. As we started it seemed

-      likely we should sweep away a few dozen who were hanging on in the most

-      dangerous places to the frailest supports. Possibly they wouldn't have

-      been missed. I began to understand why the old slaver was callous. It was

-      impossible to feel humane in the midst of such a shrieking, howling mob.

-      The siren gave wild and ear-piercing shrieks; there were yells from the

-      wharf, more heartrending yells from the steamer, a minor accompaniment

-      from the lighters, bleating of goats, cackling of protesting fowls, crying

-      of children, and we were off without casualty, and things began to settle

-      down.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had thought my quarters cramped, but looking at the deck passengers,

-      crowding fore and aft over the coals and on top of the boiler, I realised

-      that everything goes by comparison, and that they were simply palatial. I

-      had eighteen feet square of room all to myself to sleep in. It had one

-      drawback. There was £5000 worth of silver stowed under the seats, and

-      therefore the trader requested me to lock the doors and fasten the

-      shutters lest some of the passengers should take a fancy to it. His view

-      was that plenty of air would come through the laths of the shutters. I did

-      not agree with the French trader, and watched with keen interest those

-      boxes of silver depart all too slowly. I would gladly have changed places

-      and let him and the Commissioner have my cabin if only I might have taken

-      their place on the deck above. But on the deck was the wheel, presided

-      over by the black captain, or the equally black and more ragged mate, so

-      it was not to be thought of.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And that deck was something to remember. There were the large

-      water-bottles there and the filter, the trader's bed in a neat little

-      roll, the Commissioner's bed, draped with blue mosquito curtains, the

-      hencoops with the unhappy fowls that served us for food, the

-      Commissioner's washing apparatus on top of one of the coops, for he was a

-      young man of resource, the rest of his kit, his rifle, his bath, his

-      cartridge-belt, his dog, a few plates and cups and basins, a couple of

-      sieves for rice, two or three stools, the elderly black kettle, out of the

-      spout of which the skipper and the mate sucked refreshment as if they had

-      been a couple of snipe, and last, but not least, there was the French

-      company's mails for their employees up river. I was told the

-      correspondence always arrived safely, and so it is evident that in some

-      things we take too much trouble. The captain attended to the sorting of

-      the mails when he had time to spare from his other duties. I have seen him

-      with a much-troubled brow sorting letters at night by the light of a

-      flickering candle, and, when the mails overflowed the deal box, parcels

-      were stacked against the railing, newspapers leaned for support against

-      the wheel, and letters collogued in friendly fashion on the deck with the

-      black kettle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For the first seventeen miles the little ship, towing her lighters behind

-      and alongside, went up a river that was like a sea, so far away were the

-      mangrove swamps that are on either side. Then we reached Fort St James,

-      and the river narrows. Very pathetic are the ruins of Fort St James. No

-      one lives there now; no one has lived there for many a long day, but you

-      see as you pass and look at the crumbling stones of the old fort why West

-      Africa gained in the minds of men so evil a reputation. The place is but a

-      rocky islet, with but a few scanty trees upon it; above is the brazen sky,

-      below the baked earth, on which the tropical sun pours down with all the

-      added heat gathered from the glare of the river. They must have died shut

-      up in Fort St James in those far-away days. Tradition, too, says that the

-      gentlemen of the company of soldiers who were stationed there were for

-      ever fighting duels, and that the many vacancies in the ranks were not

-      always due to the climate. But the heat and the monotony would conduce to

-      irritability, and when a hasty word had to be upheld at the sword's point,

-      it is no wonder if they cursed the Coast with a bitterness that is only

-      given to the land of regrets. But all honour to those dead-and-gone

-      Englishmen. They upheld the might of Britain, and her rights in the trade

-      in palm oil and slaves and ivory that even then came down the river. And

-      if they died&mdash;now, now at last, after many weary years, their

-      descendants are beginning dimly to realise, as they never did, the value

-      of the land for which they gave their lives.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is the custom to speak with contempt of a mangrove swamp, as if in it

-      no beauty could lie, as if it were only waste land&mdash;dreary,

-      depressing, ugly. Each of those epithets may be true&mdash;I cannot say&mdash;except

-      the last, and that is most certainly a falsehood. What my impressions

-      would be if I lived in the midst of it day after day I cannot say, but to

-      a passer-by the mangrove swamp has a beauty of its own.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When first I saw the Gambia I was fascinated, and found no words too

-      strong for its beauty; and, having gone farther, I would take back not one

-      word of that admiration. But I am like the lover who is faithless to his

-      first mistress&mdash;he acknowledges her charm, but he has seen someone

-      else; so now, as I sit down to write, I am reminded that the Volta is more

-      ravishingly lovely, and that if I use up all my adjectives on the Gambia I

-      shall have no words to describe my new mistress. Therefore must I modify

-      my transports, and so it seems to me I am unfair.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As we moved up the river we could plainly see the shore on either side,

-      the dense mangrove swamp, doubled by its reflection, green and beautiful

-      against its setting of blue sky and clear river. Crocodiles lay basking in

-      the golden sunshine on the mud-banks, white egrets flew slowly from tree

-      to tree, a brown jolah-king, an ibis debased for some sin in the youth of

-      the world, sailed slowly across the water, a white fishing-eagle poised

-      himself on high, looking for his prey, a slate-blue crane came across our

-      bows, a young pelican just ahead was taking his first lesson in swimming,

-      and closer to the bank we could see king-fishers, bright spots of colour

-      against the dark green of the mangrove.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The wonder of the Tropics&rdquo;&mdash;the river seemed to be whispering at

-      first, and then fairly shouted&mdash;&ldquo;can you deny beauty to this river?&rdquo;

-       and I, with the cool Harmattan blowing across the water to put the touch

-      of moisture in the air it needed, was constrained to answer that voice,

-      which none of the others seemed to hear, &ldquo;Truly I cannot.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It would be impossible to describe in detail all the little wharves at

-      which we stopped; besides, they all bore a strong family resemblance to

-      one another, differing only when they were in the upper or lower river.

-      Long before I could see any signs of human habitation the steamer's

-      skipper was wildly agitated over the mails, wrinkling up his brows and

-      pawing them over with his dirty black hands&mdash;mine were dirtier, at

-      least, they showed more, and the way to the deck was so coaly it was

-      impossible to keep clean. Then he would hang on to a string, which

-      resulted in the most heartrending wails from the steamer's siren; a

-      corrugated-iron roof would show up among the surrounding greenery, and a

-      little wharf, or &ldquo;tenda,&rdquo; as they call them here, would jut out into the

-      stream. These tendas are frail-looking structures built of the split poles

-      of the rhon palm. There seem to be as many varieties of palm as there are

-      of eucalyptus, all much alike to the uninitiated eye.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The tendas look as if they were only meant to be walked on by bare feet&mdash;certainly

-      very few of the feet rise beyond a loose slipper; and whether it was

-      blazing noonday or pitchy darkness only made visible by a couple of

-      hurricane lanterns of one candle-power, the tenda was crowded with people

-      come to see the arrival of the steamer, which is a White-Star liner or a

-      Cunarder to them&mdash;people in cast-off European clothing and the

-      ubiquitous tourist cap, Moslems in fez and flowing white or blue robes,

-      mammies with gaily coloured handkerchiefs bound round their heads and

-      still gayer skirts and cloths, little children clad in one garment or no

-      garments at all, beautiful grey donkeys that carry the groundnuts or the

-      trade goods, fawn-coloured country cattle, and goats and sheep, black,

-      white, and brown&mdash;and every living creature upon that tenda did his

-      little best towards the raising of a most unholy din. And the steamer was

-      not to be beaten. Jolloff and Man-dingo too was shrieked; the captain took

-      a point of vantage, shook his black fist at intervals, and added his quota

-      of curses in Jolloff, Mandingo, Senegalese, and broken French and English,

-      and the cargo was unloaded with a clatter, clatter, punctuated by

-      earpiercing yells that made one wonder if the slaving days had not come

-      back, and these lumpers were not shrieking in agony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But, when I could understand, the remarks were harmless enough. What the

-      black man says to his friends and acquaintances when he speaks in his own

-      tongue I cannot say, but when he addresses them in English I can vouch for

-      it his conversation is banal to the last degree. In the general din I

-      catch some words I understand, and I listen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah, Mr Jonsing, dat you, sah? How you do, sah?&rdquo; Mr Jonsing's health is

-      quite satisfactory; and Mrs Jonsing, and Miss Mabel, and Miss Gladys, and

-      Mr Edward were all apparently in perfect health, for they were inquired

-      after one by one at the top of the interested friend's voice. Then there

-      were many wishes for the continuance of the interesting family in this

-      happy state, and afterwards there was an excursion into wider realms of

-      thought.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You 'member dat t'ing you deny las' mont', sah?&rdquo; The question comes

-      tentatively.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I deny it dis mont', sah,&rdquo; Mr Jonsing answers promptly, which is, so far,

-      satisfactory, as showing that Mr Jonsing has at least a mind of his own,

-      and is not to be bounced into lightly changing it. I might have heard

-      more, and so gleaned some information into the inner life of these people,

-      but unfortunately Mr Jonsing now got in the way of the stalwart captain,

-      and being assisted somewhat ungently by the collar of his ragged shirt to

-      the tenda, he launched out into curses that were rude, to put it mildly,

-      and my knowledge of his family affairs came to an abrupt conclusion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the breaks in the mangrove, Balanghar is one of them, there is, of

-      course, a little hard earth&mdash;the great shady <i>ficus elasticus</i>,

-      beautiful silk-cotton trees, and cocoa-nut palms grow; the traders' yards

-      have white stone posts at the four corners marking the extent of their

-      leaseholds, and in these enclosures are the trading-houses, the round huts

-      of the native helpers, and the little crinted yards, in which are poured

-      the groundnuts, which are the occasion of all this clatter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One hundred and fifty miles up we came to McCarthy Island, five miles long

-      by a mile wide, and markedly noticeable because here the great river

-      changes its character entirely, the mangrove swamps are left behind, and

-      open bush of mahogany, palm, and many another tree and creeper, to me

-      nameless, takes its place. On McCarthy Island is a busy settlement, with

-      the town marked into streets, lined with native shops and trading-houses.

-      There are great groundnut stores along the river front, seven, or perhaps

-      eight white people, a church, a hospital, obsolete guns, and an old powder

-      magazine, that shows that in days gone by this island was only held by

-      force of arms.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They tell me that McCarthy Island is one of the hottest places in the

-      world, though that morning the river had been veiled in white mist, the

-      thermometer was down to between 50 deg. and 60 deg., and my boy had

-      brought in my early-morning tea with his head tied up in a pocket

-      handkerchief like an old woman; and at midday it was but little over 90

-      deg., but this was December, the coolest season of the year. I discussed

-      the question with a negro lady with her head bound up in a red-silk

-      handkerchief. She was one of our passengers, and had come up trading in

-      kola-nuts. Kola-nuts are hard, corner-shaped nuts that grow on a very

-      handsome tree about the size of an oak, which means a small tree in

-      Africa. They are much esteemed for their stimulating and sustaining

-      properties. I have tried them, and I found them only bitter, so perhaps I

-      do not want stimulating. A tremendous trade is done in them, and all along

-      the coast you meet the traders, very often, as in this case, women. I had

-      seen it in her eye for some time that she wanted to exchange ideas with

-      me, and at last the opportunity came. She told me she came from Sierra

-      Leone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You know Freetown?&rdquo; That is the capital. I said I had heard it was the

-      hottest place in the world.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; She tossed her head in scorn. &ldquo;You wait two mont's; it be fool to

-      M'Cart'y! You gat no rest, no sleep&rdquo;; and she showed her white teeth and

-      stretched out her black hands as if to say that no words of hers could do

-      justice to this island.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Truly, I think the sun must pour down here in the hot season, judging by

-      my experience in the cool. The hot season is not in June, as one might

-      expect, for then come the rains, when no white man, and, indeed, I think

-      no black man foreign to the place, stays up the river, but in March and

-      April. I do not propose to visit McCarthy in the hot season. In the cool

-      the blazing sun overhead, and the reflected glare from the water, played

-      havoc with my complexion. I did not think about it till the District

-      Commissioner brought the fact forcibly home to me. He was a nice young

-      fellow, but the sort of man who is ruin to England as a colonising nation,

-      because he makes it so patent to everyone that he bitterly resents

-      colonising on his own account, and will allow no good in the country

-      wherein lies his work.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I asked him if he did not think of bringing out his wife.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He looked at me a moment, seeking words to show his opinion of a woman who

-      insisted upon going where he thought no white woman was needed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;My wife,&rdquo; he said, with emphasis that marked his surprise; &ldquo;my wife? Why,

-      my wife has such a delicate complexion that she has to wash her face

-      always in distilled water.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was sufficient. I understood when I looked in the glass that night the

-      reproof intended to be conveyed. In all probability the lady was not quite

-      such a fool as her husband intimated; but one thing is quite certain, she

-      was buying her complexion at a very heavy cost if she were going to allow

-      it to deprive her of the joy of seeing new countries.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      McCarthy was very busy; dainty cutters, frail canoes, and grimy steamers

-      crowded the wharves, and to and fro across the great river, 500 yards wide

-      here, the ferry, a great canoe, went backwards and forwards the livelong

-      day, and I could just see gathered together herds of the pretty cattle of

-      the country that looked not unlike Alderneys.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When we left the island the river was narrower, so that we seemed to glide

-      along between green walls, where the birds were singing and the monkeys

-      barking and crying and whimpering like children. Again and again we passed

-      trees full of them, sometimes little grey monkeys, and sometimes great

-      dog-faced fellows that rumour says would tear you to pieces if you

-      offended them and had the misfortune to fall into their hands. Now and

-      then a hippopotamus rose, a reminder of an age that has gone by, and

-      always on the mud-banks were the great crocodiles. And the

-      trading-stations were, I think, more solitary and more picturesque. The

-      little tendas were even more frail, just rickety little structures covered

-      with a mat of crinting, for the river rises here very high, and these

-      wharves are sure to be carried away in the rainy season. And then come

-      hills, iron-stone hills, and tall, dry grass ten and twelve feet high.

-      Sometimes we stopped where there was not even the frailest of tendas, and

-      one night, just as the swift darkness was falling, the steamer drew up at

-      a little muddy landing-stage, where there was a break in the trees, and

-      three dugouts were drawrn up. Here she became wildly hysterical, and I

-      began to think something would give way, until all shrieks died down as a

-      tall black man, draped in blue, and with a long Dane gun across his

-      shoulder, stalked out of the bush. Savage Africa personified. We had

-      stopped to land a passenger, a mammy with her head tied up in a

-      handkerchief, and a motley array of boxes, bundles, calabashes, chairs,

-      saucepans, and fowls that made a small boat-load. She waved a farewell to

-      the French trader as her friends congregated upon the shore and examined

-      her baggage.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She is an important woman,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;the wife of a black trader in the

-      town behind there. He's a Christian.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;He's got a dozen wives,&rdquo; said the Commissioner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;His official wife, then. Oh, you know the sort. I guarantee she keeps

-      order in the compound.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      At Fatta Tenda, which is quite a busy centre, from which you may start for

-      the Niger and Timbuctoo, we gave a dinner-party, a dinner-party under

-      difficulties. Our cook was excellent. How he turned out such dainties in a

-      tiny galley three feet by six, and most of that taken up by the stove, I

-      do not pretend to understand, but he did, so our difficulties lay not

-      there, but with the lamp. What was the matter with it I do not know, but

-      it gave a shocking light, and the night before our dinner-party it went

-      out, and left us to finish our dinner in darkness. Then, next day, word

-      went round that the mate was going to trim the lamp, and when we, with two

-      men from the French factory, went into dinner, an unwonted light shed its

-      brilliancy over the scene. Unfortunately, there was also a strong scent of

-      kerosene, which is not usually considered a very alluring fragrance. But

-      we consoled ourselves; the mate had trimmed the lamp. He had. He had also

-      distributed most of the oil over the dinner-table&mdash;the cloth was

-      soaked in it, and, worse than that, the salt, pepper, and mustard were

-      full of it; and then, as we sat down to soup, there came in through the

-      open windows a flight, I should say several flights, of flying ants. They

-      died in crowds in the soup, they filled up the glasses, they distributed

-      themselves over the kerosene-soaked table, till at last we gave them best

-      and fled to the deck. Finally the servants reduced things to a modified

-      state of order, but whenever I smell a strong smell of kerosene I am

-      irresistibly reminded of the day we tried to foregather with our kind, and

-      be hospitable up the Gambia.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0065.jpg" alt="0065 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0065.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      There were some Mandingo chiefs here. Bala, Chief of Kantora, and

-      Jimbermang Jowlah, the local Chief, came to call. Bala dashed up on

-      horseback, with a large following, to complain that there was trouble on

-      the Border, for the French had come in and said that his town should pay a

-      poll tax of 500 dollars. He ranged all his horses, with their high cantled

-      saddles and their heavy iron stirrups, on the steep, red bank, and he and

-      his chief man came on board the little steamer to talk to the

-      Commissioner. They made a quaint picture&mdash;the fair, good-looking

-      Commissioner, with his boyish face grave, as suited the occasion, and the

-      Chief, a warrior and a gentleman, as unlike Mr Jonsing in his tourist cap

-      as the Gambia is unlike the Thames at Wapping. The Commissioner wore a

-      blue-striped shirt and riding breeches, and the Chief was clad all in blue

-      of different shades; there was a sort of underskirt to his knees of

-      dark-blue cotton patterned in white, over that was a pale-blue tunic,

-      through which came his bare arms, and over that again a voluminous

-      dark-blue cotton garment, caught in at the waist with a girdle, from which

-      depended a very handsome sporran of red leather picked out in yellow; on

-      his bare feet were strapped spurs, a spur with a single point to it like a

-      nail. He had a handsome, clean-cut face, his shaven head was bared out of

-      courtesy, and at his feet lay his headgear, a blue-velvet cap, with a

-      golden star and crescent embroidered upon it, and a great round straw hat

-      adorned with red leather such as the Hausas farther east make. He was a

-      chief, every inch of him. And his manners were those of a courtly

-      gentleman too. He did not screech and howl like the men on the wharf,

-      though he was manifestly troubled and desperately in earnest; but, sitting

-      there on the deck of the little steamer, with the various odds and ends of

-      life scattered around him, he stated his case, through an interpreter, to

-      the young Commissioner seated on the hen-coop and taking down every word.

-      When it was done he was assured that the Governor should be told all about

-      it, and now rose with an air of intense relief. He had thrown his burden

-      on responsible shoulders, and had time to think about the white woman who

-      was looking on. He had seen white men before, quite a number, but never

-      had he seen a white woman, and so he turned and looked at me gravely, with

-      not half the rude curiosity with which I felt I had been steadily

-      regarding him. I should like to have been a white woman worth looking at,

-      instead of which I was horribly conscious that the coal dust was in my

-      hair, that my hands had but recently grasped the greasy handrail of those

-      steps across the boiler, and that my skirts had picked up most of the

-      multifarious messes that were to be gathered there and on the unclean

-      deck. There is no doubt skirts should not come much below the knees in the

-      bush.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;He wishes to make his compliments to you,&rdquo; said the interpreter, and the

-      grave and silent Chief, with a little, low murmur, took my hand in both

-      his delicate, cold, black ones, held it for a moment with his head just a

-      little bent, and then went his way, and I felt I had been complimented

-      indeed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The chief of Kantora, having done all he came to do, swam his horses

-      across the river, trusting, I suppose, to the noise made by his numerous

-      followers to scare away the crocodiles, and we went up the river to

-      Kossun, which is within two miles of Yarba Tenda, where the British river

-      ends. At Kossun there is a French factory only, and that managed by a

-      black man, and here are the very beginnings of the groundnut trade. All

-      around was vivid green&mdash;green on the bank, green reflected in the

-      clear waters of the river; the sun was only just rising, the air was cool,

-      and grey mists like a bridal veil rent with golden beams lay across the

-      water; only by the factory was a patch of brown, enhancing the greenery

-      that was all around it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0069.jpg" alt="0069 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0069.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The groundnut grows on a vine, and behind the factory this was all

-      garnered into great heaps, and surrounded by crinted fences until time

-      should be found to comb out the nuts. In the empty fields shy women, who

-      dared not lift their faces to look at the strange, white woman, were

-      gleaning, and the little, naked children were frankly afraid, and ran

-      shrieking from the horrid sight. And just behind the factory were little

-      enclosures of neatly plaited straw, and each of these contained a man's

-      crop ready waiting to be valued and bought by the trader. Kossun was the

-      only place where I saw the nuts as they belonged to the grower. All along

-      the river there were heaps of them, looking like young mountains, but all

-      these heaps were trader's property. At Nianimaroo, on the lower river, I

-      saw a heap, which the pleased proprietor told me was worth £1000. He

-      apparently had finished his heap, and was waiting to send it down the

-      river, but everywhere else men, picturesque in fluttering rags or

-      grotesque in cast-off European garments, were bringing calabashes and

-      sacks of groundnuts to add to the heaps; and, since they cannot walk on

-      the yielding nuts, which are like so many pebbles under their bare feet,

-      little board ladders or steps of filled sacks were placed for them to run

-      up. And no sooner were the heaps piled up than they had to be dug out

-      again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Fatta Tenda, on the way down, having got rid of her cargo and her deck

-      passengers, the <i>Mungo Park</i> began to load again with groundnuts; and

-      men were busy through all the burning hot midday digging into the

-      groundnut heap, filling up sacks, and as the sacks were filled stalwart,

-      half-naked black men, like a line of ants, tramped laden down the steep

-      bank and poured their loads into the steamer's hold in a cloud of gritty

-      dust that penetrated everywhere. The trader told me that when he wanted

-      labourers he appealed to one of the principal men who live in the town a

-      mile or so behind the wharf, and he sent in his &ldquo;family,&rdquo; who are paid at

-      the rate of a shilling a day. It is very, very doubtful whether much of

-      that shilling ever reaches the man who actually does the hard work. Things

-      move slowly in the Gambia as in all Africa, and &ldquo;family&rdquo; is probably a

-      euphonious term for household slave. After all, it is possibly only like

-      the system of serfdom that existed in Europe in days gone by and will not

-      exist very long here, for knowledge is coming, though it comes slowly, and

-      with wealth pouring into the country and a Commissioner to appeal to in

-      cases of oppression the black man will presently free himself. Even the

-      women are already beginning to understand the difference. The morals of

-      the country, be it remembered, are the primitive morals of a primitive

-      people. A man may have four legal wives by Mohammedan law. He may have

-      ever so many concubines, who add to his dignity; and then, if he is a big

-      man&mdash;this was vouched for by the official native interpreter, who

-      joined his Commissioner at M'Carthy&mdash;he has ever so many more women

-      in his household, and these he expects to have children.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is their business and he sees that they do it, and the children belong

-      to him no matter who is the father. Children, it will be seen, are an

-      asset, and the woman is now beginning to understand that the children are

-      hers alone, and again and again a troubled woman, angry and tearful, walks

-      miles to appeal to the travelling Commissioner, such and such a man, her

-      master has taken away her children and she has heard that the great white

-      master will restore them to her. And in most cases the great white master,

-      who has probably a laughing, round, boyish face, fancies he has not a

-      desire above good shooting, and speaks of the country as &ldquo;poisonous,&rdquo; does

-      all that is expected of him and often a good deal more also.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0073.jpg" alt="0073 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0073.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And yet, only ten years ago, they were very doubtful still about the white

-      man's protectorate in the Gambia, as graves in the Bathurst cemetery

-      testify. Then was the last rising, when the district of San-nian Kunta was

-      very disaffected, and two Commissioners, Mr Sitwell and Mr Silva, were

-      sent with twelve native police to put matters straight. After the wont of

-      the English, they despised their enemy and marched into a hostile village

-      with the ammunition boxes screwed down, sat themselves down under a tree,

-      and called on the Chief and village elders to come up before them. But the

-      chief and elders did no such thing. Hidden in the surrounding bush, they

-      replied with a volley from their long Danes, killing both the

-      Commissioners and most of the policemen, but one escaping got away to the

-      next Commissioner, a young fellow named Price. Now, Mr Price had only four

-      policemen, but he was by no means sure of the death of his comrades, so

-      promptly he sent off to headquarters for help, and without delay marched

-      back to the disaffected village. The white men were dead and shockingly

-      mutilated, but with his four faithful policemen he brought their remains

-      back for decent burial. He did not know what moment he might not be

-      attacked. He had before him as object lessons in savage warfare the dead

-      bodies of his comrades. He had to march through thick bush, and they say

-      at the end of that day's work young Mr Price's hair turned white.

-      Punishment came, of course. Six months later the new Governor, Sir George

-      Denton, with a company of W.A.F.F.''s&mdash;West African Field Force&mdash;marched

-      to that disaffected village; the chief was deposed and exiled, and peace

-      has reigned ever since.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now much farther away from Bathurst a woman may go through the country

-      by herself in perfect safety. All the towns are still from one to four

-      miles back from the tenda, away in the bush, from the old-time notion I

-      suppose that there was danger to be dreaded by the great waterway, and

-      early in the morning I used to take the narrow track through the long

-      grass which was many feet above my head, and go and see primitive native

-      life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Up at the head of the river our steamer filled rapidly. When our holds

-      were full the groundnuts were put in sacks and piled on the decks fore and

-      aft, half-way up the masts, almost to the tops of the funnels, and the

-      only place that was not groundnuts was the little cabin and the deck on

-      top. There were £600 worth of groundnuts on board the <i>Mungo Park</i>,

-      and we stowed on top of them passengers, men and women, and all their

-      multifarious belongings, and then proceeded to pick up lighters also laden

-      with groundnuts bound down the river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Towards the evening of the second day of our homeward journey we came to a

-      big creek down which was being poled by six men a red lighter, deep in the

-      water and laden to the very brim with groundnuts. This the steamer was to

-      tow behind. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The heavily laden

-      lighter drifted first to one side and then to the other and threatened to

-      fill, and the Commissioner's interpreter, sitting on deck, told me a long

-      story of how here in the river there is a devil that will not allow a

-      steamer or a cutter to go past unless the owner dances to placate him. If

-      he do not care to dance himself he must pay someone else to dance for him.

-      Unless someone dances, the engines may work, the sails may fill, but that

-      vessel will not go ahead till the river devil has his toll. No one danced

-      on board the <i>Mungo Park</i>, unless the black captain's prancing about

-      and shaking his fist and shouting what sounded like blood-curdling threats

-      at the skipper of the lighter might be construed into dancing. If so, it

-      had not the desired effect, for the heavy lighter wouldn't steer, and

-      presently the captain decided to tow it alongside. The darkness fell; all

-      around us was the wide, weird, dark river, with the green starboard light

-      just falling upon the mast of the lighter alongside, and for a few brief

-      moments there was silence and peace, for the lighter was towing all right

-      at last. Then the mast bent forward suddenly, there was a stifled,

-      strangled cry, the captain gave a wild yell, the engines were stopped, and

-      there was no more lighter, only the smooth dark water was rough with

-      floating groundnuts and the river devil had taken his toll. Five of the

-      crew had jumped for the <i>Mungo Park</i> and reached her, but the sixth,

-      a tall Man-dingo, wrapped in a blue cloth, had gone down a prey for the

-      wicked crocodiles or the cruel, strong undercurrents. They launched a boat

-      and we felt our impotence and the vastness of the river, for they only had

-      a hurricane lantern and it looked but a tiny speck on the waste of dark

-      waters. The boat went up and down flashing its feeble light. Here was a

-      patch of groundnuts, here a floating calabash, here a cloth, but the

-      lighter and the man were gone, and we went on our way, easily enough now,

-      because, of course, the steamer had paid toll.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are the beginnings, it seems to me, in the groundnut trade of the

-      Gambia, of what may be in the future a very great industry. True, the

-      value of the groundnut is regulated by the price of cotton-seed oil, for

-      which the oil pressed from the groundnut makes a very excellent

-      substitute. Last year the Gambia's groundnuts, the harvest of the

-      simplest, most ignorant peasants but one remove from savagery, was worth

-      between £500,000 and £600,000, and not one-twentieth of the soil was

-      cultivated, but the colony's existence was fairly justified. The greater

-      part of this crop goes into French hands and is exported to Marseilles,

-      where it is made into the finer sorts of soap. What wonder then if the

-      French cast longing eyes upon the mighty river, for not only is the land

-      around it rich, but they have spent large sums upon railways for their

-      great colony of Senegal, and had they the Gambia as well they would have

-      water carriage for both their imports and exports even in the dry season,

-      and in the rains they could bring their heavy goods far far inland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I realised all this as I came back to Bathurst with the dust from the

-      groundnuts in my hair and eyes and nostrils, and dresses that had not been

-      worn an hour before they were shrieking for the washtub. But what did a

-      little discomfort matter?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I returned in time for the Christmas and New-Year festivities. On

-      Christmas night all the English in the colony dined at Government House to

-      celebrate the festival. Exiles all, they would have said. I have been told

-      that I judge the English in West Africa a little hardly, and of course I

-      realise all the bitterness of divided homes, especially at this season

-      that should be one of family reunions. But after all the English make

-      their life in West Africa far harder than they need. Dimly I saw this on

-      my visit to the Gambia; slowly the feeling grew upon me till, when I left

-      the Coast eight months later, I was fully convinced that if England is to

-      hold her pride of place as a colonising nation with the French and

-      Germans, she must make less of this exile theory and more of a home in

-      these outlands. The doctors tell me this is impossible, and of course I

-      must bow to the doctors' opinion, but it is saying in effect&mdash;which I

-      will not allow for a moment&mdash;that the French and Germans&mdash;and

-      especially the French and German women&mdash;are far better than the

-      English.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Here in the Gambia I began to think it, and the fact was driven in more

-      emphatically as I went down the Coast. The Englishman makes great moan,

-      but after all he holds a position in West Africa the like of which he

-      could not dream of in England. He is the superior, the ruler; men bow down

-      before him and rush to do his bidding&mdash;he who would have a suburban

-      house and two maid-servants in the old country, lives in barbaric

-      splendour. Of course it is quite possible he prefers the suburban house

-      and two maid-servants and his wife. And there, of course, the crux of the

-      matter lies. Why, I know not, but English women are regarded as heroines

-      and martyrs who go out to West Africa with their husbands. Possibly it is

-      because I am an Australian and have had a harder bringing-up that I resent

-      very much the supposition that a woman cannot go where a man can. From the

-      time I was a little girl I have seen women go as a matter of course to the

-      back-blocks with their husbands, and if, barring a few exceptions, they

-      did not stay there, we all supposed not that it was the country that did

-      not agree with them, but the husband. We all know there are husbands and

-      wives who do not agree. And I can assure you, for I know both, life in the

-      back-blocks in Australia, life in many of the towns of Australia, with its

-      heat and its want of service, is far harder for a woman than it is in West

-      Africa. Yet here in the Gambia and all along the Coast was the same

-      eternal cry wherever there was a woman, &ldquo;How long can she stay?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The difference between the French and the English views on this vexed

-      question was exemplified by the Commissioner's view and the French

-      trader's. I have already given the former. Said the latter, &ldquo;Of course my

-      wife will come out. Why should she not. She is just waiting till the baby

-      is a month old. What is the good of a wife to me in Paris? The rains? Of

-      course she will stay the rains. It is only the English who are afraid of

-      the rainy season.&rdquo; And I was sorry for the little contempt he put into his

-      voice when he spoke of the English fear. I know this opinion of mine will

-      bring down upon my devoted head a storm of wrath from West-Coast

-      officials, but whether the Coast is healthy or not there is no denying the

-      fact that the nation who takes its women is far more likely to hold a

-      country, and in that the French and Germans are beating us hands down.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But this I only realised dimly during my stay in the Gambia. I was to

-      leave on New Year's Day and on New Year's Eve we all went to the barracks

-      of the W.A.F.F.'s to see the New Year in. And then in the soft, warm night

-      the Governor and I went back to Government House. The stars were like

-      points of gold, the sky was like dark-blue velvet, and against it the

-      graceful palms stood out like splashes of ink, the water washed softly

-      against the shore, there was the ceaseless hum of insects in the air, and

-      from the native town behind came a beating of tom-toms subdued by the

-      distance. The sentry started out of the shadow at the gate as the

-      rickshaws arrived, and there came his guttural hail, &ldquo;Who goes dere?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Friend,&rdquo; said the Governor's voice. It was commonplace, everyday to him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Pass friend and all's well,&rdquo; came the answer, and we went in and up the

-      steps; but surely, I thought, it was a very good omen, a very good omen

-      indeed. &ldquo;Pass friend and all's well.&rdquo; I was leaving that day that had not

-      yet dawned; I was going down the Coast and all should be well.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER III&mdash;THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVE?

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The origin of Sierra Leone&mdash;The difficulties of disposing of freed

-      slaves&mdash;One of the beauty-spots of the earth&mdash;Is it possible

-      that in the future, like Jamaica, it may be a health-resort?&mdash;Zachary

-      Macauley's views&mdash;Few women in Freetown&mdash;Sanitary matters taken

-      out of the hands of the Town Council and vested in a sanitary officer&mdash;Marked

-      improvement in cleanliness and health of the town&mdash;A remarkable man

-      of colour&mdash;Extraordinary language of the Creole&mdash;Want of taste

-      in dress when they ape the European&mdash;Mrs Abraham Freeman at home.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> had no intention

-      of going to Sierra Leone, but in West Africa as yet you make your way from

-      one place to another along the sea-board, and not only did Sierra Leone

-      lie directly on my way, but the steamer, the <i>Zaria</i>, in which I was

-      travelling, stayed there for four days.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the old days, a little over one hundred years ago, England,

-      successfully policing the world, was putting down the iniquitous

-      slave-trade all along the coasts of Africa, and found herself with numbers

-      of black and helpless men, women, and children upon her hands. They had

-      been collected from all parts of the Coast; they themselves often did not

-      know where their homes lay, and the problem&mdash;quite a difficult one&mdash;was

-      to know what to do with them. To land them promiscuously on the Coast was

-      to seal their fate; either they would be killed or at the very best they

-      would at once relapse into the condition from which they had been rescued.

-      In this dilemma England did perhaps the only thing she could do. She

-      bought from the chiefs a strip of land round the mouth of a river and

-      landed there her somewhat troublesome charges to make for themselves, if

-      they could, a home. Of course she did not leave them to their own devices;

-      to do that would have been to insure their destruction at the hands of the

-      Mendi and Timini war-boys, but she planted there a Governor and some

-      soldiers, and made such provision as she could for the future of these

-      forlorn people. Then the colony was but a little strip of land. It is but

-      a small place still, but the British Protectorate now takes in those

-      warlike Timinis and Mendis, and extends some hundreds of miles inland and

-      as far south as the negro republic of Liberia, which I was on my way to

-      visit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0083.jpg" alt="0083 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0083.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I don't know who chose Sierra Leone, but whoever he was the choice does

-      him infinite credit. It is the most beautiful spot on all the west coast

-      of Africa. I have seen many of the beautiful harbours of the world,

-      Sydney, and Dunedin, and Hobart, which to my mind is the most beautiful of

-      them all, Cape Town, and Naples, and Vigo, Genoa, Palermo, Messina, and

-      lovely Taormina, which after all is not a harbour. I know them intimately,

-      and with any of these Sierra Leone can hold her own. We entered the mouth

-      of the river, passed the lighthouse, a tall, white building nestling among

-      the palms, and all along the shore were entrancing little green bays, with

-      green lawns. They looked like lawns from the ship, shaded by over-hanging

-      trees. The blue sea met softly the golden sands, and the hills behind were

-      veiled in a most alluring mist. It lifted and closed down and lifted

-      again, like a bride longing yet fearing to disclose her loveliness to her

-      lord. Here it seemed to me that a man might, when the feverish heat of

-      youth is passed, build himself a home and pass the evening of his days

-      resting from his labours; but I am bound to say I was the only person on

-      board who did think so. One and all were determined to impress upon me the

-      fact that Sierra Leone was known as the White Man's Grave, and that it

-      deserved the name. And yet Zachary Macauley, who ruled over it in the end

-      of the eighteenth century, staunchly upheld its advantages. I do not know

-      that he exactly recommends it as a health-resort, but something very near

-      to it, and he is very angry when anyone reviles the country. Zachary

-      Macauley was probably right. If a man is not prepared to stand a certain

-      amount of heat he must not go to the Coast at all; and if he does go he

-      must be prepared so to guide his life that it is possible to conform to

-      the rules of health demanded of the white man in the Tropics. If he looks

-      for the pleasures and delights of England and her temperate climate, he

-      will find himself bitterly disappointed, but if he seeks for what Africa

-      can give, and give with lavish hand, he will probably find that the

-      country will treat him well.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We cast anchor opposite the town appropriately named Freetown, and I

-      landed, presented my letter, and was asked by the kindly Governor to stay

-      for a few days at Government House.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The majority of the Europeans, with the exception of the Governor, do not

-      live in Freetown. They have wisely built their bungalows on the healthier

-      hillsides, and I suppose as the colony increases in importance the

-      Governor will go too; but I am glad when I was there he was still at Fort

-      Thornton.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0087.jpg" alt="0087 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0087.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Of the history of the fort I know nothing. The bungalow is raised on thick

-      stone walls, and you go up steps to the dwelling-house, past great rooms

-      that are railed off with iron bars. There are ornamental plants there now,

-      but there is no disguising the fact these are evidently relics of old

-      slave days; I presume the barracoons of the slaves. But behind the

-      one-time courtyard is filled up and sown with Bahama grass kept

-      close-cropped and green, so that croquet and bowls may be played upon it.

-      The bastions are now embowered in all manner of tropical greenery, and the

-      great guns, the guns that Zachary Macauley used against the French

-      privateers, peep out from a tangle of purple bougainvillea, scarlet

-      hibiscus, fragrant frangipanni, and glorious white moon flowers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are white women in Freetown, not very many, but still fifteen or

-      sixteen&mdash;the wives of the soldiers, of the political officers,

-      medical officers, and the traders, and their number is growing, so that

-      when the Governor gives a garden-party, the lawn that was once the

-      courtyard of the fort is gay with bright muslin dresses, ribbons, and

-      flowers. They seemed to like it too, those to whom I spoke, and there is

-      no doubt that the place is improving from a health point of view. Until

-      within the last two or three years the management of sanitary affairs was

-      in the hands of the Town Council, of whom a large number were negroes, and

-      the average negro is extremely careless about things sanitary; at last, so

-      evil a reputation did the most beautiful town on the Coast get that it was

-      found necessary to vest all power in the hands of a strong and capable

-      medical officer, and make him responsible for the cleanliness of the town.

-      The result, I believe, has more than justified all hopes. Perhaps some day

-      the town may be as healthy as it is beautiful.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I really know very little about Sierra Leone. I intended to come back

-      and go up the railway that goes a couple of hundred miles up country, but

-      as yet I have not had time, and all I can speak about with authority is

-      its exceeding beauty. The streets are wide and rather grass-grown, for it

-      is difficult to keep down vegetation in a moist and tropical climate, and

-      I am glad to say there are, though the town is by no means well-planted,

-      some beautiful trees to be seen. Government House is embowered in verdure,

-      and the first station on the railway that runs up to the hill-top is

-      &ldquo;Cotton-tree.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And the dwellers in this earthly paradise? Knowing their pathetic and

-      curious history I was anxious to see this people sprung from men and women

-      gathered from all corners of Africa, unfortunate and unhappy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Frankly, I share with the majority of Coasters a certain dislike to the

-      educated negro. But many of the men I like best, the men whose opinion I

-      have found well worth taking about things West-African, tell me I am

-      wrong. You cannot expect to come up from savagery in a few decades, and

-      the thing I dislike so in the negro clerk is but a phase that will pass.

-      Here in Sierra Leone I met one man who made me feel that it would pass,

-      that the time will come when the colour of the skin will make no

-      difference, and that is the African known to all the world as Dr Blyden.

-      He is an old man now and he was ill, so I went to see him; and as I sat

-      and talked to him one still, hot evening, looking down the busy street

-      where men and women in all stages of dress and undress were passing to and

-      fro, carrying burdens on their heads, shrieking and shouting at one

-      another in the unintelligible jargon they call English, had I not looked

-      and seen for myself that his complexion was the shadowed livery of the

-      burnished sun, I should have thought I was talking to some professor of

-      one of the older Universities of England. His speech was measured and

-      cultivated and there was no trace in it of that indescribable pompous

-      intonation which seems peculiar to the educated black man. He gave me good

-      advice, too.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0091.jpg" alt="0091 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0091.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What shall I write about?&rdquo; I asked, and halfexpected him to enter into a

-      long dissertation upon the possibilities that lay latent in his race. But

-      I might have known this man, who had conquered more difficulties on his

-      way upwards than ever I had dreamed about, better than that.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Write about what you see,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;And if you do not understand what

-      you see then ask until you do.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So I have taken his advice and I write about what I have seen, and though

-      afterwards I found reason to like much the peasant peoples of West Africa,

-      I did not like the Creoles, as these descendants of freed slaves call

-      themselves. Do I judge them hardly, I wonder? If so, I judge only as all

-      the West Coast judges. They are a singularly arrogant people, blatant and

-      self-satisfied, and much disliked along the Coast from the Gambia to San

-      Paul de Loando. But they have taken advantage of the peace which England

-      has ensured to them, and are prosperous. Traders and town-dwellers are

-      they if they can manage it, and they pursue their avocations up and down

-      the Coast. A curious thing about them is their language. If you ask them

-      they would tell you it is English, and they would tell you they know no

-      other; and English it is, as to the words, but such an extraordinary

-      jargon it is quite as difficult to understand as any unknown tongue. Yet

-      it is the peculiar bastard tongue that is spoken all over the Coast. Many

-      who speak it as the only means of communication between them and their

-      boys must have wondered how such a jargon ever came into existence, and it

-      was not till Mr Migeod wrote his book on the languages of West Africa that

-      anyone in fact ever thought of classing it as a separate language. But

-      once pointed out, the fact is undoubted. Sierra Leonese is simply English

-      spoken with a negro construction.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Listening very carefully, it took a great deal of persuasion to make me

-      believe the words were English. When I bought bananas from a woman sitting

-      under the shade of a spreading cotton tree and the man behind her came

-      forward and held out his hand, saying: &ldquo;Make you gi'e me heen ooman coppa

-      all,&rdquo; I grasped the fact that he intended to have the money long before I

-      understood that he had said, in the only English, the only tongue he knew:

-      &ldquo;Give me her money,&rdquo; even though I did know that &ldquo;coppa&rdquo; stood for money.

-      Some of the words, of course, become commonplaces of everyday life, and I

-      am sure the next time I call on a friend, who is rich enough to have a

-      man-servant, association of ideas will take me back, and I shall ask quite

-      naturally, &ldquo;Massa lib?&rdquo; instead of the customary &ldquo;Is Mrs Jones at home?&rdquo;

-       Of course, in the case of Mrs Jones it would be &ldquo;Missus,&rdquo; but it was

-      generally a master I was inquiring for in Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sunday or some high holiday is the day to see Freetown in its best

-      clothes. Then the black gentleman appears in all the glory of a tall,

-      black-silk hat, a frock coat, a highly starched waistcoat, the gayest of

-      ties, scarlet or pink, the palest of dove-coloured trousers, and

-      bright-yellow kid gloves; and the negro woman hides her fine figure with

-      ill-fitting corsets, over which she wears an open-work muslin blouse,

-      through which her dark skin shows a dull purple. Of all the places in

-      Africa to transgress the laws of beauty and art Freetown is the very

-      worst, and if ever a people tried their best to hide their own charms it

-      is the Creoles of Sierra Leone. It would be comic if it were not pathetic.

-      And yet, that these clothes are not part and parcel of the lives of these

-      children near bred to the sun is promptly seen if a shower of rain comes

-      on. In a lightning flash I saw a damsel, who might have come out of Fulham

-      Road, or, at the very least, Edgeware Road, strip off the most perishable

-      of her precious finery, do them up in a neat parcel that would carry

-      easily under her umbrella, and serenely and unembarrassed march home in

-      her white chemise and red petticoat. And she seemed to think as she passed

-      me smiling she was doing the only right and proper thing to be done; as

-      indeed she was.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was a seeker after knowledge while I was in Freetown, and was always

-      anxious to go anywhere and everywhere if a reason could be possibly

-      contrived, so it happened that on one occasion I went to Lumley in search

-      of fish. Lumley is a little village in the environ of Freetown, and the

-      fish was to be bought from one Abraham Freeman, who dwelt at the side of

-      the lagoon there. I went in a hammock, of course, and the way was lovely,

-      up hill and down dale, through country that looked like a gigantic

-      greenhouse run wild. The village was mostly built of mud with thatched

-      roofs, but sometimes the houses were of wood, and the upper parts very

-      wisely of trellis-work so as to insure a free current of air. When I

-      arrived I looked round and told my hammock-boys to set me down at a

-      cottage where a negro clad in a white shirt and trousers was lolling in a

-      hammock. He did not scream at the scenery. He was rather suitably clad, I

-      thought. It seemed he was the schoolmaster and a person of authority in

-      the place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Can you tell me where Abraham Freeman lives?&rdquo; I asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He corrected me gently but decidedly in his pompous English.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Mr Freeman's abode is a little farther on by the lagoon. I believe Mr

-      Freeman is absent in his boat, but Mrs Freeman is at home and will receive

-      you.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So we went on a little farther through the tangle of greenery till the

-      waters of the lagoon showed up. A dried mud-shack, thatched with palm

-      leaves, stood between the row of cocoa-nut palms that fringed the lagoon

-      and the roadway, and there my hammock-boys set me down.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Dis Abraham Freeman's?&rdquo; They were Timini and did not waste their breath

-      on titles for a Creole, whom they would have eaten up save for the

-      presence of the white man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I got out and a tall, skinny black woman clad in a narrow strip of blue

-      cloth round her hips came forward to meet me. Nothing was left to the

-      imagination, and all her charms had long since departed. She hadn't even a

-      handkerchief round her head, and the negro woman has lost all sense of

-      vanity when she leaves her wool uncovered. Mrs Abraham Freeman was at

-      home! My boys found a box for me to sit upon, and I contemplated Mrs

-      Freeman and her family. Rebecca Freeman, about fifteen, was like a bronze

-      statue so beautifully moulded was she; she really did not need anything

-      beyond the narrow cloth at her hips, and being very justifiably vain she

-      wore a gaily coloured silk turban. Elkanah Freeman, when he took off his

-      coat to shin up a cocoa-nut palm, wore no shirt, was built like a Greek

-      god; and &ldquo;my little gran'-darter, Deborah,&rdquo; stark but for a string of

-      green beads round her middle, was a delightful little cuddlesome thing,

-      but &ldquo;my sistah Esther an' Mistah Freeman's sistah Elizabeth&rdquo; were hideous,

-      skinny, and withered old hags, and the little strips of cloth they wore

-      did not hide much. Each had a stone between her bony knees, and on it was

-      breaking up some small sort of shell-fish like periwinkles. I got Mrs

-      Freeman to show me the inside of her house. It was just four windowless

-      rooms with openings under the eaves for air, with walls of dried clay, and

-      for all furniture two wooden couches heaped up with rags. Outside on three

-      stones a pot was boiling, and I asked her what was in it and could not

-      make out her answer till she pointed out three skinny pigs rooting among

-      the unsavoury refuse of the yard, then I grasped she was saying &ldquo;hog,&rdquo; and

-      I was thankful I was not going to have any of that dinner. She begged from

-      me on the score of her poverty, and in pity I gave her a shilling, and

-      then the little grand-daughter was so winsome, she had to have a penny,

-      and then the two poor old souls, cracking shell-fish and apparently done

-      with all that makes life good for a woman, begged so piteously that they

-      had to have something; so, on the whole, it was rather an expensive visit,

-      but it was well worth it to see Mrs Freeman &ldquo;at home.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But I don't know Sierra Leone. I speak of all the West Coast as a

-      passer-by speaks of it; but I know less of Sierra Leone than any other

-      place I visited. Only it charmed me&mdash;I am going back some day soon if

-      I can afford it&mdash;and I went on with regret to the negro republic.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER IV&mdash;WHERE THE BLACK MAN RULES

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>America's experiment in the way of nation-making&mdash;Exiles in their

-      mothers' land&mdash;The forlorn little company on Providence Island&mdash;Difficulties

-      of landing and finding accommodation&mdash;British Consul to the rescue&mdash;The

-      path to the British Consulate and the Liberian College&mdash;An

-      outrageously ill-kept town&mdash;&ldquo;Lovely little homes up the river&rdquo;&mdash;A

-      stickler for propriety&mdash;Dress and want of dress&mdash;The little

-      ignorant missionary girl&mdash;At prayer in Lower Buchanan&mdash;The

-      failure of a race.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>o one on board the

-      <i>Zaria</i> really believed I would land in Liberia. When I heard them

-      talk I hardly believed it myself, and yet being there it seemed a pity not

-      to see all I could see. The captain and officers were strongly of opinion

-      there was absolutely nothing to see whatever. If it was madness for a

-      woman to come alone to the Coast, it was stark-staring madness that almost

-      needed restraining in a strait-waistcoat to think of landing in Liberia,

-      for Liberia of all the countries along the Guinea Coast is the one most

-      disliked by the sailors, most despised, and since I have been there I am

-      inclined to say not without reason. For of course I did land; I should

-      have been ashamed of myself if I had not, and I spent the best part of a

-      fortnight there, and thanks to the kindness of His Britannic Majesty's

-      Consul spent it very comfortably indeed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Liberia is America's experiment in the way of nation-making even as Sierra

-      Leone is Great Britain's, and if I cannot praise the Creole of Sierra

-      Leone I have still less admiration for his American cousin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the second decade of the last century philanthropists began to consider

-      the future of the freed slave in the United States, and it was decided

-      that it would be wisdom to transport him back to the continent from which

-      his forefathers came, and let him try there to put into practice the

-      lessons he had learned in the art of civilisation. Bitter is the slur of

-      black blood in the States; bitter, bitter was it ninety years ago when the

-      forlorn little company who were to found a civilised negro state first set

-      foot on their mothers' land. America was but young among the nations in

-      1822, so she took no responsibility, made no effort to launch these

-      forlorn people in their new venture, or to help them once they were

-      launched. Their leader was a quadroon with a fine face if one may judge

-      from the picture in Executive Mansion, Monrovia, and he dreamed I suppose

-      of wiping away the slur, the unmerited slur which lay across him and all

-      like him with dark blood in their veins. With the chain and with the lash

-      had America enforced the stern law that by the sweat of his brow shall man

-      live, and she had seen to it that the personal toil of the negro and all

-      with negro blood in their veins profited them only after their taskmasters

-      had been satisfied. They belonged to a degraded subject race; no wonder

-      they came back gladly, hopefully to the land from which certainly all

-      their mothers had sprung. But it was no easy task they had before them.

-      For a strong, hopeful, virile people it would have been difficult; to a

-      people burdened with the degradation of centuries of servitude it has

-      proved a task well-nigh beyond their capabilities. And before we condemn

-      as do all the men along the Coast, as very often I do myself, it is only

-      fair to remember the past.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0101.jpg" alt="0101 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0101.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      It must have been a very forlorn little company of people who landed on a

-      small island at the mouth of that unknown river in 1822. They called the

-      island Providence Island, and there they were cooped up for some weeks,

-      for the people on the shore, warlike savages who brooked no master,

-      objected to the newcomers, and it was some little time before they could

-      set foot on the mainland and found their principal town of Monrovia. That

-      was nearly ninety years ago, but very far inland they have never been able

-      to go, for though Liberia takes up quite a large space on the map it is

-      only Liberia in name. The hinterland is held by fighting tribes who resent

-      any interference with their vested rights, and make the fact particularly

-      clear.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The outlines of the history of Liberia I had known vaguely for many a long

-      day even to the name of Monrovia their capital, so called after President

-      Munro, and it seemed to give point to the story to sit on the deck of the

-      ship that swung at her anchors just beyond the surf of the river mouth. At

-      least they had chosen a very beautiful place. Blue sky, blue sea,

-      snow-white surf breaking on the bar, and a hillside clothed in dense

-      greenery with palms cutting the sky line and the roofs of houses peeping

-      out from among the verdure, that is what I saw, and the captain was

-      emphatic I had seen the best of it. I did not doubt his word then, and

-      having been ashore I am bound to confess he was right.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the difficulty was to get ashore. I had a letter to the British

-      Consul, but I had not sampled the kindliness of British Consuls as I had

-      that of the Governors, and I did not know exactly what he would say. &ldquo;I

-      wonder if there is an hotel,&rdquo; I said doubtfully to the captain, and he

-      sniffed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You couldn't stay in a negro hotel.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I sent off my letter to the Consul and waited, and a little cloud came up

-      out of the sea and spread over all the sky, and it rained, and it rained,

-      and it rained, and it rained. The sky was dark and forbidding, the sea was

-      leaden-coloured, the waves just tipped with angry, white foam, and the

-      green hills were blotted out, the decks were awash, the awnings were

-      sopping and wept coaly tears, and the captain said as if that settled it,

-      &ldquo;There, you can't possibly go ashore.&rdquo; But I was by no means sure. Still

-      there was no letter from His Majesty's Consul. Morning passed on to

-      afternoon, and afternoon waned towards evening and still there was no

-      letter. A ship on a pouring wet day is just about as uncomfortable a place

-      as one can be in, but still I was inclined to accept the captain's opinion

-      that Monrovia without someone to act as guide, philosopher, and friend

-      would be a worse place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No letter, and the captain came along.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I must get away before dark.&rdquo; He spoke as if that settled it, and he was

-      right, but not the way he expected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I felt I simply could not go without seeing this place, and I decided.

-      &ldquo;Then I'll go ashore.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You can't possibly.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh yes, I can. They won't eat me.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I don't know though that I was quite comfortable as I was dropped over the

-      side in a mammy chair into a surf boat that was half-full of water. The

-      rain had stopped at last but everything in that boat was wet, and my gear

-      made a splash as it was dropped down.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My soldier brother had lent me his camp-kit for the expedition.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Can't possibly hurt it,&rdquo; said he good-naturedly. &ldquo;It's been through two

-      campaigns. If you spoil it, it shall be my contribution; but you won't.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I accepted, but I thought as I sat on the bedding-roll at the bottom of

-      that very wet boat, with my head not coming above the gunwale, that he did

-      not know Africa. I hoped I should not have to sleep on that bed that

-      night, because it was borne in on me it would be more than damp.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Luckily I didn't. We crossed the bar, and the ragged, half-naked Kroo

-      boys, than whom there are surely no better boatmen in the world, begged a

-      dash, &ldquo;because we no splash you,&rdquo; as if a bucket or two of salt water

-      would have made much difference, and I gave it and was so absorbed in the

-      wonder as to what was to become of me that I gave hardly any heed to the

-      shore that was approaching. When I did it was to notice that all the

-      beauty I had seen from the deck was vanishing. Man's handiwork was

-      tumble-down, dirty, dilapidated, unfinished. I stepped from the boat to a

-      narrow causeway of stone; it is difficult to get out of a boat five feet

-      deep with grace, more especially when your skirts are sopping, and I

-      stepped from the causeway, it was not above a foot wide, into yellow mud,

-      and saw I was surrounded by dilapidated buildings such as one might see in

-      any poor, penniless little port. There were negroes in all stages of rags

-      round me, and then out from amongst them stepped a white man, a neat and

-      spick-and-span white man with soldier written all over him, the soldier of

-      the new type, learned, thoughtful, well-read.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Mrs Gaunt?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I said &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; with a little gasp, because his immaculate spruceness made me

-      feel I was too much in keeping with the buildings and the people around

-      us.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Did you get my note? I am sorry I only got yours a couple of hours ago.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh, I understood by now that in Africa it is impossible for a note to

-      reach its destination quickly, and I said so, and he went on to arrange

-      for my accommodation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If you will stay at the Consulate I will be delighted, but it is a mile

-      and a half from the town, and I have no wife; or there is a boarding-house

-      in the town, not too uncomfortable I am told.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      There could be but one answer to that. Of course I accepted his

-      invitation; there are but few conventions and no Mrs Grundy in

-      out-of-the-way spots, thank heaven, and in the growing darkness we set off

-      for the Consulate. It was broken to me regretfully that I would have to

-      walk; there is no other means of progression in the negro republic.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Such a walk as it was. Never have I met such a road. It was steep, and it

-      was rough, and it was stony as a mountain torrent; now after the rain it

-      was wet and slippery and the branches of the overhanging trees showered us

-      with water as we passed. It was lonely as a forest path in Ashanti, and

-      the jungle was thick on either hand, the night birds cried, the birds that

-      loved the sun made sleepy noises, the ceaseless insects roused to activity

-      by the rain made the darkness shrill with their clamour, and there were

-      mysterious rustlings as small animals forced their way through the bush or

-      fled before us. My host offered me his stick to pull me over the steepest

-      rocks, and also supplied the interesting information that round the

-      Consulate the deer came down to lick the salt from the rocks, and the

-      panthers, tigers they called them there, came down and killed the deer. I

-      made a mental note not to walk in that path by night; indeed I made a note

-      not to walk in it ever again, as drenched and dripping with perspiration

-      we emerged into a clearing and saw looming up before us a tropical

-      bungalow and beyond the sea. It is an exquisite situation but is

-      desperately lonely.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0108.jpg" alt="0108 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0108.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      My gear came on men's heads and the Consul's note was delivered to me in

-      the bush. Neither he nor I understood why it had come by such a roundabout

-      path. One of his servants also met us half-way with a lantern, and since I

-      had heard by then about the &ldquo;tigers&rdquo; I confess to thinking it was a wise

-      precaution.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Consulate is a fine two-storied building with wide verandahs and a

-      large hall where we generally sat, and that hall was very inadequately

-      lighted by some excellent lamps. The Consul didn't understand them and the

-      negro servants didn't understand them, and darkness was just visible and I

-      determined as soon as I knew my host well enough to ask him to let me have

-      a turn at his lamps. Such is the power of a little knowledge; when I left

-      the Consulate it was lighted as it should be, but that first night we

-      spent in a dim, religious light, and I felt I was going to enjoy myself

-      hugely, for here at last was something new. The Gambia and Sierra Leone

-      had been too much regulation Tropics; all that I had seen and done I had

-      at least read of before, but this was something quite different. This had

-      all the glamour of the unknown and the unexpected. I am bound to say that

-      His Majesty's Consul did not look at things with the same eyes. He didn't

-      like Liberia, and he said frankly that things might be unexpected in a

-      measure but he always knew they would be unpleasant. But I went to bed

-      that night with the feeling I was really entering into the land of

-      romance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next morning I told my host I would go and see the town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But I shan't go by the short cut,&rdquo; I added emphatically.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What short cut?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The way we came last night.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;That's not a short cut,&rdquo; said he, and he smiled pitifully at my ignorance

-      of what was before me. &ldquo;That's the main road.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And so it was. Afterwards I tried to photograph it, but in addition to the

-      difficulty of getting an accurate picture of a steep slope, I had the

-      misfortune to shake the camera, and so my most remarkable picture was

-      spoiled. I give a picture of the road, but I always felt when I came to

-      that part the worst was left behind. And yet on this road is the Liberian

-      College where the youth of Liberia, male and female, are educated. It is a

-      big building built of brick and corrugated iron, in a style that seems

-      wholly unsuited to the Liberian climate, though viewed from a distance it

-      looks imposing in its setting of greenery. They teach the children algebra

-      and euclid, or profess to do so&mdash;evil-tongued rumour has it that the

-      majority of the Liberian women can neither read nor write&mdash;but to

-      attain that, to them a useless edge, they have to scramble over without

-      exception the very worst road I have ever met.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the road only matches the rest of the place. Monrovia is not only an

-      ill-kept town, it is an outrageously ill-kept town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0112.jpg" alt="0112 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0112.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Many towns have I seen in the world, many, many towns along this west

-      coast of Africa, so I am in a position to compare, and never have I seen

-      such hopelessly miserable places as Monrovia and the other smaller

-      Liberian towns along the Coast. The streets look pretty enough in a

-      photograph; they are pretty enough in reality because of the kindly hand

-      of Nature and the tropical climate which makes vegetation grow up

-      everywhere. There is no wheeled traffic, no possibility of getting about

-      except on your own feet, and in consequence the roadways are generally

-      knee-deep in weeds, with just a track meandering through them here and

-      there, and between the roadway and the side walk is a rough gutter, or at

-      least waterway, about two feet deep, and of uncertain width, usually

-      hidden by the veiling weeds. Occasionally they have little gimcrack

-      bridges apparently built of gin cases across these chasms, but, as a rule,

-      if I could not jump as the wandering goats did, I had to make my way

-      round, even though it involved a detour of at least a quarter of a mile.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the houses in the streets were unlike the houses to be seen anywhere

-      else on the West Coast, and, to my mind at least, are quite unsuited to a

-      tropical climate. They are built of wood, brick, or, and this is the most

-      common, of corrugated iron, are three or four stories high, steep and

-      narrow, with high-pitched roofs, and narrow balconies, and many windows

-      which are made with sashes after the fashion of more temperate climes. The

-      Executive Mansion, as they call the official residence of the President,

-      is perhaps as good a specimen as any and is in as good repair, though even

-      it is woefully shabby, and the day I called there, for of course I paid my

-      respects, clothes were drying on the weeds and grass of the roadway just

-      in front of the main entrance. Two doors farther down was a tall, rather

-      pretentious redbrick house which must have cost money to build, but the

-      windows were broken and boarded up, and one end of the balcony was just a

-      ragged fringe of torn and rotting wood. So desolate was the place I

-      thought it must be deserted, but no. On looking up I saw that on the other

-      end of the balcony were contentedly lolling a couple of half-dressed women

-      and a man, naked to the waist, who were watching with curiosity the white

-      woman strolling down the street.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A great deal of the Liberian's life must be spent on his balcony, for the

-      houses must be very stuffy in such a climate, and they are by no means

-      furnished suitably; of course it is entirely a matter of taste, but for

-      West Africa I infinitely preferred the sanded, earthen floor of my friend

-      the Jolloff pilot's wife to the blue Brussels-carpet on the drawing-room

-      floor of the wife of the President of the Liberian republic. But, as I

-      have said, this is a matter of taste, and I may be wrong. I know many

-      houses in London, the furniture of which appears to me anything but

-      suitable.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was quaint to me, me an Australian with strong feelings on the question

-      of colour, to be entertained by the President's wife, a kindly black lady

-      in a purple dress and with a strong American accent. She had never been

-      out of Africa, she told me, and she had great faith in the future of

-      Liberia. The President had been to England twice. And the President's sad

-      eyes seemed to say, though he hinted no such thing, that he did not share

-      his wife's optimism.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0116.jpg" alt="0116 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0116.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We have lovely little homes up the river,&rdquo; she said as she shifted the

-      array of bibles and hymn-books that covered the centre-table in the

-      drawingroom to make room for the tray on which was ginger-beer for my

-      refreshment, &ldquo;and if you will go up, we will make you very welcome.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      She would not let me take her photograph as I desired to do; possibly she

-      had met the amateur photographer before and distrusted the species. I

-      could not convince her I could produce a nice picture.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I never saw those &ldquo;lovely little homes&rdquo; either. They certainly were not to

-      be found in my meaning of the words in Monrovia or any of the Coast towns,

-      and up country I did not go; there was no way of doing so, save on my own

-      feet, and I felt then I could not walk in such a hot climate. There may be

-      such homes, I do not know, for between this good, kindly woman and me was

-      the great unbridgeable gulf fixed, and our modes of thought were not the

-      same. In judging things Liberian I try to remember that. Every day it was

-      brought home to me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The civilised black man, for instance, is often a great stickler for

-      propriety, and I have known one who felt himself obliged to board up his

-      front verandah because the white man who lived opposite was wont to stroll

-      on <i>his</i> balcony in the early morning clad only in his pyjamas, and

-      yet often passing along the street and looking up I saw men and women in

-      the scantiest of attire lounging on their balconies doing nothing, unless

-      they were thinking, which is doubtful.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dress or want of dress, I find, strikes one curiously. I have times

-      without number seen a black man working in a loin cloth or bathing as

-      Nature made him, and not been conscious of anything wrong. He seemed fitly

-      and suitably clad; he lacked nothing. But looking on those men in the

-      balconies in only a pair of trousers, or women in a skirt pure and simple,

-      among surroundings that to a certain extent spoke of civilisation, there

-      was a wrong note struck. They were not so much barbaric as indecent. It

-      was as if a corner of the veil of respectability had been lifted, the thin

-      veneer of civilisation torn off, and you saw if you dared to look the

-      possibilities that lie behind. I believed all the horrible stories of

-      Vaudooism of America and the West Indies when I saw the naked chest and

-      shoulders of a black man leaning over a balcony in Monrovia, and yet I

-      have been only moved to friendliness when the fetish man of an Ashanti

-      village, with greasy curls flying, with all his weird ornaments jingling,

-      tom-toms beating, and excited people shouting, came dancing towards me and

-      pranced round me with pointing fingers that I hope and believe meant a

-      blessing. Can anyone tell me why this was? Was it because the fetish man

-      was giving of his very best, while the half-civilised man was sinking back

-      into barbarism and looking at the white woman gave her thoughts she would

-      deeply have resented? Was it just an example of the thought-reading we are

-      subconsciously doing every day and all day long without exactly realising

-      it ourselves?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The people of Monrovia, there are over 4000 of them, seem always lounging

-      and idling, and the place looks as if it were no one's business to knock

-      in a nail or replace a board. It is falling into decay. It is not

-      deserted, for the people are there, and presumably they live. They exist

-      waiting for their houses to tumble about their ears. There is a

-      market-place down in Waterside, the poorest, most miserable market-place

-      on all the African coast. The road here, just close to the landing-place,

-      is not made, but just trodden hard by the passing of many feet. Here and

-      there the native rocks crop up, and no effort has been made to smooth them

-      down. Above all, the stench is sickening, for the Coast negro, without the

-      kindly, sometimes the stern guidance of the white man, is often

-      intolerably dirty, and if my eyes did not recognise it, my nose would. In

-      all the town, city they call it, there is not one garden or attempt at a

-      garden. The houses are set wide enough apart; any fences that have been

-      put up are as a rule broken-down, invariably in need of repair, and in

-      between those houses is much wild growth. The scarlet hibiscus covers a

-      broken fence; an oleander grows bushy and covered with pink roselike

-      flowers; stately cocoa-nut palms, shapely mangoes are to be seen, and all

-      over the streets and roadway in the month of January, I was there, as if

-      it would veil man's neglect as far as possible, grew a creeping

-      convolvulus with masses of pink cup-shaped flowers&mdash;in the morning

-      hopeful and fresh and full of dew, in the evening wilted and shut up

-      tightly as if they had given up the effort in hopeless despair. Never have

-      I seen such a dreary, neglected town. It would be pitiful anywhere in the

-      world. It is ten times more so here, where one feels that it marks the

-      failure of a race, that it almost justifies the infamous traffic of our

-      forefathers. It was all shoddy from the very beginning. It is now shoddy

-      come to its inevitable end.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For all the great mark on the map, as I have said, the settlements at

-      Monrovia do not extend more than thirty miles up the river; elsewhere the

-      civilised negroes barely hold the sea-board. They are eternally at war

-      with the tribesmen behind, and here in Monrovia I met half a dozen of the

-      prisoners, dressed in rags, chained two and two with iron collars round

-      their necks, and their guard, a blatant, self-satisfied person, was just

-      about as ragged a scarecrow as they were. Not that the victory is by any

-      means always to the Liberians, for a trader, an Englishman, who had been

-      seeking fresh openings in the hinterland where no Liberian would dare to

-      go, told me that though the tribes are not as a rule cannibals, they do

-      make a practice of eating their best-hated enemies, and he had come across

-      the hands and feet of not a few of the Liberian Mendi soldiery in pickle

-      for future use.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To keep these tribesmen in check, the Liberian, who is essentially a man

-      of peace&mdash;a slave&mdash;has been obliged to raise an army from the

-      Mendis who inhabit the British protectorate to the west, and so he has

-      laid upon himself a great burden. For, unfortunately, there is not always

-      money in the treasury to satisfy this army of mercenaries when they get

-      tired of taking out their pay in trade gin or tobacco. Poor Liberians,

-      threatened with a double danger. If they have no soldiers the tribesmen

-      within their borders eat them up, and if they have soldiers, war they must

-      have, to provide an outlet for energies that otherwise might be

-      misdirected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I left my kind host with many regrets and Monrovia without any, and I went

-      on board the <i>Chama</i> which was to call at Grand Bassa and Cape

-      Palmas, and if I did not intend to view them entirely from the ship's

-      deck, at least I felt after my visit to Monrovia it would hardly be

-      necessary for me to stay in either of these towns.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0122.jpg" alt="0122 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0122.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      They bear a strong family resemblance to the capital, only they are &ldquo;more

-      so.&rdquo; The tribes see to it, I believe, that there is no communication with

-      the capital except by sea, and the little communities with their

-      pretensions to civilisation are far less ininteresting than the people of

-      an Ashanti village who have seldom or never seen a white man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I landed at Lower Buchanan, Grand Bassa, early one morning. The beach

-      simply reeked of human occupancy. They do not trouble about sanitation in

-      Liberia, and the town itself looked as if the houses had been set down

-      promiscuously in the primeval bush. Perhaps there were more signs of

-      wealth than in Monrovia, for I did see three cows and at least half a

-      dozen hairy, razor-backed pigs on the track that was by courtesy the

-      principal street, and it must require something to support all the

-      churches.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I suppose it is the emotional character of the negro that makes him take

-      so largely to religion, or rather, I think I may say, the observances of

-      religion. The question of the missionaries is a vexed one, and on board

-      the <i>Chama</i> was a missionary who made me think. She was a pretty

-      young girl who had left home and father and mother and sisters and

-      brothers and lover&mdash;ah, the lover was evidently hard where all had

-      been hard&mdash;to minister to the spiritual needs of the people who dwelt

-      behind Cape Palmas. She was sweetly ignorant of the world, of everything

-      that did not apply to the little home in Canada that she had left with

-      such reluctance, and was evidently immensely surprised to find the captain

-      and officers of the ship kindly, honest gentlemen who treated her as

-      tenderly and deferentially as they might have treated one of their own

-      young sisters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I thought all sailors were bad men,&rdquo; she said wonderingly. &ldquo;I have always

-      been led to believe they were bad.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now, what could such a nice, ignorant little girl as that teach the negro?

-      And yet she had curiously hard ideas on some subjects. She talked about

-      the missionary and his wife to whom she was going for five long years and

-      to whom she was bringing out clothes for their baby.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If it is alive,&rdquo; she added naively.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, I hope it will live,&rdquo; said I, the heathen who doubted the use of

-      missionaries and all their works.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Well, I don't know&rdquo;&mdash;and the cynicism sat curiously on the sweet,

-      young face&mdash;&ldquo;poor little kiddie, perhaps it is better dead. What sort

-      of a life could it have out there, and what sort of an upbringing? Its

-      mother has other work to do.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And I tried to show her that one white child was worth a thousand

-      problematical souls of negroes, and I tried in vain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But if ever I saw the wrong side of Christianity I saw it here in Liberia.

-      Monrovia had many churches, all more or less unfinished, all more or less

-      in decay, and here in Lower Buchanan three corrugated-iron churches within

-      a stone's throw of one another constituted one of the chief features of

-      the town. It was early on a Tuesday morning, the best time for work in a

-      tropical climate, if work is going to be done at all. On the beach the

-      Kroo boys were bringing from surf boats the piassava, the fibre that grows

-      in the swamps and constitutes a large part of the Liberian export, but in

-      Lower Buchanan itself the greater part of the inhabitants that I saw were

-      in church. I entered that church.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0126.jpg" alt="0126 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0126.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Such a tatterdemalion crew! God forbid that I should scoff at any man's

-      faith, but here cleanliness is practically divorced from godliness, and I

-      can honestly say that never in my life have I seen dirtier bundles of rags

-      than that congregation. A woman in a costume a scarecrow would have

-      despised, her head adorned with a baby's hat, the dirty white ribbons

-      fluttering down behind, was praying aloud with much unction, shouting that

-      she was a miserable sinner, and calling upon the Lord to forgive her. The

-      negro loves the sound of his own voice, and again I must claim that I do

-      not scorn any man's sincere faith, but that negro lady was thoroughly

-      enjoying herself, absolutely sure of her own importance. The ragged

-      scarecrows who listened punctuated the prayer with groans of delight, and

-      the only decent one amongst them was a small girl, whose nakedness was

-      hidden by a simple blue-and-white cloth, and she was probably a household

-      slave. For these descendants of a slave people make slaves in their turn,

-      perhaps not men slaves, but women are saleable commodities among a savage

-      nation, and for a trifling consideration, a bottle of trade gin or a few

-      sticks of trade tobacco, they will hand over a girl-child who, taken into

-      the household without pay, holds the position of a servant and is

-      therefore to all intents and purposes a slave. This is really not as bad

-      as it sounds; her position is probably quite as good as it would be in her

-      own tribe, and as she grows older she either marries or forms some sort of

-      alliance with a Liberian. Loose connections and divorce are both so common

-      that she is no worse off than the ordinary Liberian woman, and the

-      admixture of good, strong virile blood may possibly help the future race.

-      At least that is what I thought as I watched the congregation at prayer.

-      They sang hymn choruses so beautifully as to bring tears to my eyes, and

-      then they came outside and abused me because I wanted to photograph them.

-      Had I been they, I should have objected to going out to the world as

-      specimens of their people, but they need not have reviled me in the

-      blatant, coarse manner of the negro who has just seen enough of

-      civilisation to think he rules the universe. I did not press the matter,

-      because I felt it would be ungracious to make a picture of them against

-      their will. But clearly the lovely little homes were not in Lower

-      Buchanan. Nor were they in Cape Palmas.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Far be it from me to say that plantations of some useful description do

-      not exist. They may; I can only say I have seen no evidences of them in

-      three of their towns or near those towns. I will put it on record that I

-      did see some cabbage stalks behind some broken railings opposite the

-      President's house in Monrovia, but that was absolutely the only thing in

-      the shape of a garden, vegetable, fruit, or flower, that I did see in the

-      environs of the towns. You can buy no fruit in Monrovia, no chickens, no

-      eggs. Bananas and limes have to be imported. Meat is only to be had at

-      rare intervals, and living is so frightfully dear that when the British

-      Consul had, during my stay, to provide for a distressed British subject

-      who had been unfortunate enough to get adrift in the land, he had to pay

-      six shillings and sixpence a day for his board and lodging&mdash;a bare

-      room, not over-clean, with a rough bed in it, and board that did not

-      include meat, but consisted chiefly of manioc or cassava which is what the

-      majority of the Liberians live on themselves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The country as a matter of fact lives on the Custom's dues which reach

-      about £70,000 a year and are levied not only on the goods that they

-      themselves use but on those the unfortunate natives of the hinterland

-      require. No Liberian is a craftsman even of the humblest sort. The Kroo

-      men are fishermen and boatmen; men from Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and

-      Lagos, with an occasional Vai tribesman thrown in, are painters, smiths,

-      and carpenters. The Liberian, the descendant of the freed slave, despises

-      these things; he aspires to be a gentleman of leisure, to serve in the

-      Government Service, or in the Church, to walk about in a black suit with a

-      high collar and a silver-mounted cane. Then apparently he is happy even if

-      he come out of the most dilapidated house in Monrovia. There are, I

-      believe, exceptions. I wonder, considering their antecedents and the

-      conditions under which they have had to exist, whether one could expect

-      more. Possibly it should be counted to them for great righteousness if any

-      good men be found among them at all. But taken as a whole the Liberians

-      after close on ninety years of self-government must strike the stranger as

-      an effete race, blatant and arrogant of speech, an arrogance that is only

-      equalled by their appalling ignorance, a race that compares shockingly

-      with the Mandingo or Jolloff of the Gambia, the stately Ashanti, a warrior

-      with reserve power, or the busy agricultural Yoruba. These men are

-      gentlemen in their own simple, untutored way, courteous and dignified. The

-      Liberian is only a travesty of the European, arrogant without proper

-      dignity, boastful with absolutely nothing in the world to boast about

-      unless it be the amazing wealth of the country he mismanages so

-      shamefully. For Liberia is a rich country; it has a soil of surpassing

-      fertility, and it seems to me that almost anything in the way of tropical

-      products might be produced there. That nothing is produced is due to the

-      ignorance and idleness of these descendants of slaves who rule or misrule

-      the land. Since the days of the iniquitous trade, that first brought her

-      into touch with civilisation, West Africa has been exploited for the sake

-      of the nations of the western world. No one till this present generation

-      seems to have recognised that she had any rights. Now we realise that the

-      black man must be considered at least as much as the white man, who has

-      made himself his master. Now most settlements along the Coast are busy,

-      prosperous, and, above all, sanitary. Only in Liberia, the civilised black

-      man's own country, does a different state of things prevail; only here has

-      the movement been retrograde.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      An end must come, but who can say what this end will be.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The missionary girl who had given up all she held most dear, who had

-      joined the noble band of martyrs and heroes for Africa, said she had done

-      so because she had seen a letter from a black man just mentioning a

-      chapter and verse of the New Testament. She had looked it up and read the

-      prayer of the Macedonians. Strange, strange are the workings of the

-      Unseen, cruel sometimes the penalties poor human nature takes upon itself.

-      Who shall say that a Guiding Hand had not made that girl choose wisely for

-      the development of her own character, and who shall say that some ultimate

-      good may not yet come for beautiful, wealthy, poverty-stricken Liberia.

-      That the civilised nations, sinking their own jealousies, may step in and

-      save her despite herself, I think, is the only hope. But it must be as

-      Paul would have saved, not as the pitiful Christ. For the pendulum has

-      swung too far back; the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's

-      teeth are set on edge. She does not know it herself, she will resent

-      bitterly the imputation, but to me Liberia seems to be stretching out her

-      hands crying dumbly to the white man the cry that came across the water of

-      old, the cry the missionary girl listened to, the cry of Macedonia, &ldquo;Come

-      over and help us.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But I was one who only heard the cry in passing, who felt that I at least

-      could not help. I went on in the <i>Chama</i> to Axim, interested with

-      what I had seen, but forgetting much in what I thought was to be my first

-      hammock-trip alone. For I wanted to go to Half Assinie, and since no one

-      may be sure of landing all their gear in safety on that surf-bound coast,

-      I had to land at Axim and go back overland the fifty miles to the French

-      border, and I thought I should have to do it alone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER V&mdash;THE GUINEA COAST

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Every man's duty&mdash;&ldquo;Three deaths in two days&rdquo;&mdash;An old

-      Portuguese settlement&mdash;A troubled District Commissioner&mdash;What to

-      do with a wandering white woman&mdash;The Judge's quarters&mdash;The

-      kindly medical officer and his wife&mdash;A West-African town&mdash;&ldquo;My

-      outside wife&rdquo;&mdash;Dangers ahead&mdash;The man who was never afterwards

-      heard of&mdash;The Forestry officer's carriers&mdash;&ldquo;Good man, bad man,

-      fool man&rdquo;&mdash;First night in the wilds&mdash;Hair in the soup.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> great German

-      philosopher has remarked that you very seldom get a human being who has

-      all the qualities of his own sex without a trace of the characteristics of

-      the other. Such a being would be hardly attractive. At least I consoled

-      myself with that reflection when I found stirring within me a very

-      masculine desire to be out of leading strings and to be allowed to take

-      care of myself. It is pleasant to be taken care of, but it is decidedly

-      uncomfortable to feel that you are a burden upon men upon whom you have no

-      claim whatever. They were looking after me because they were emphatically

-      sure that the Coast is no place for a lone woman. At the bottom of my

-      heart, grateful as I was to the individuals, I didn't like it. I thought

-      my freedom was coming at Axim, but it didn't.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Every man felt it his duty to impress upon me the unhealthiness of the

-      Coast, and every man did his duty manfully, forgetting that I have a very

-      excellent pair of eyes and an inquiring mind. The hot, still morning we

-      arrived at Axim the captain, having discussed matters with the Custom

-      officer, came to me solemnly shaking his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A terrible place, Mrs Gaunt, a terrible place. Three deaths in Axim in

-      the last two days.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was quite a correct Coast speech, and for the moment I was shocked,

-      though not afraid, because naturally it never occurs to me that I will

-      die, at least not just yet, and not because the people round me are dying.

-      The captain was gloomily happy as having vindicated the evil reputation of

-      the country, and I looked ashore and wondered what was wrong with so

-      attractive a place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Portuguese, those mariners of long ago, chose the site and, as they

-      always did, chose wisely. A promontory, on which is the white fort, juts

-      out into the sea, and behind is all the luxuriant greenery of the Tropics,

-      for the land rises just sufficiently to give beauty to the scene. I

-      wondered why those three people had died, and I inquired. The whole

-      incident is so characteristic of the loose talk that builds up an evil

-      reputation for a country. Those deaths were held up to me as a warning. It

-      would have been quite as much to the point if they had warned me against

-      getting frost-bitten or falling into a cauldron of boiling sugar. One man

-      died of a disease he had contracted twenty years before, and was

-      exceedingly lucky to have lived so long, another had died of drink, and

-      the third was a woman. She, poor thing, was the wife of a missionary from

-      Sierra Leone, and had not been in a cooler climate for two years. There

-      was a baby coming, and instead of going home she had come to Axim, had a

-      bad go of blackwater, and when the baby came, her constitution could not

-      stand the double strain, and she died. Only her death was directly

-      attributable to the climate, and the exercise of a little common sense

-      would have saved her.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I landed and was not afraid.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But my arrival was a cause of tribulation to the District Commissioner.

-      There was no hotel, so I appealed to him for quarters. It really was a

-      little hard on him. He sighed and did his best, and the only time I really

-      saw him look happy was about three weeks later when he saw me safely in a

-      surf boat bound for the out-going steamer. But when I landed, the need for

-      shelter was pressing, and he gave me a room in the Judge's quarters where

-      it seems they bestow all homeless white strangers in Axim. Already the

-      Forestry officer was there, and he had a sitting-room and a bedroom, so

-      that I could only have a bedroom and a bathroom. Now, with a verandah and

-      such a large room at my disposal, I could make myself more than

-      comfortable; then, because I did not know African ways, I accepted the

-      very kind invitation of the medical officer and his wife, the only white

-      woman in Axim, to &ldquo;chop&rdquo; with them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      African ways are very convenient when you come to think of it. Here was a

-      big empty room with a wardrobe and a little cane furniture in it. I went

-      in with my brother's kit and set up my camp-bed, my bath, laid down my

-      ground sheet and put up my table and chair, and I had all that was really

-      necessary. Outside was the ragged garden, haunted they said, though I

-      never saw the ghost, and because it was usually empty the big rats

-      scrambled up the stairs, and the birds sat in the oleander bushes and

-      called &ldquo;Be quick, be quick&rdquo; continually.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I couldn't take their advice because it is impossible to hurry things on

-      the Coast and I must wait for the carriers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The first night I had dinner&mdash;chop&mdash;with the medical officer and

-      his wife and went to bed reflecting a little regretfully I had made no

-      preparations for my early-morning tea. However, I concluded it might be

-      good discipline to do without it. But it is a great thing to have a

-      capable boy. Just as it began to get light Grant appeared outside my

-      mosquito curtains as usual with a cup of tea and some fruit. The cup and

-      teapot were my own; he had stolen all the materials from the Forestry

-      officer next door, and I was much beholden to that young man when, on

-      apologising, he smiled and said it was all right, he was glad I liked his

-      tea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Axim is a pretty little town with the usual handful of whites and the

-      negroes semi-civilised with that curious civilisation which has probably

-      persisted for centuries, which is not what we would call civilisation and

-      yet is not savagery. It is hardly even barbarism. These Coast towns are

-      not crowded with naked savages as many a stay-at-home Briton seems to

-      imagine; they are peopled with artisans, clerks, traders, labourers,

-      people like in many ways to those in the same social scale in other

-      countries, and differing only when the marked characteristics of the negro

-      come in. All along in these Coast towns the negroes are much the same. To

-      their own place they are suitable; only when they try to conform too much

-      to the European lines of thought do they strike one as <i>outré</i> or

-      objectionable. I suppose that is what jars in the Christian negro. It is

-      not the Christianity, it is the striving after something eminently

-      unsuited to him. Left to himself though, he naturally goes back to the

-      mode of life that was his forefathers', and sometimes he has the courage

-      to own it. I remember a man who called in the medical officer about his

-      wife. The ordinary negro has as many wives as he can afford, but the

-      Christian is by way of only having one, and as this man was clothed in the

-      ordinary garb of the European, unnecessary coat, shirt, and hat, I

-      naturally set him down as a Christian.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I Christian,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;Mission-teacher once.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Not now?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No, Swanzy's agent now. You savey my wife; she get well?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I said I had no doubt she would, and I rejoiced in this sign of marital

-      affection, when he dashed it all to the ground.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She not my real wife; she my outside wife,&rdquo; said he as one who would

-      explain their exact relations.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My views on negro homes received a shock, but after all if the women don't

-      object, what matter? It is the custom of the country.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I looked round the town and took photographs, wasted many plates trying to

-      develop in too hot a place, and declared my intention of going west just

-      as soon as ever I could get carriers. I didn't quite know how I should

-      manage, but I concluded I should learn by experience.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Even now, though I have travelled since then close on 700 miles in a

-      hammock, I cannot make up my mind whether it would have been safe for me

-      to go alone. Undoubtedly I should have made many mistakes, and in a

-      country where the white man holds his position by his prestige it is

-      perhaps just as well that a woman of his colour should not make mistakes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Not suitable,&rdquo; said one who objected strongly to the presence of any

-      white women on the Coast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Hardly safe,&rdquo; said another.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Not safe,&rdquo; said a third emphatically, and then they told a story. Axim

-      has been settled and civilised many years, and yet only last year a man

-      disappeared. He was one of a party dining with his friends. After dinner

-      they started a game of cards, and up the verandah steps came this man's

-      house-steward. His master was wanted. The company protested, but he left

-      declaring he would return immediately. He did not return and from that day

-      to this neither he nor his house-boy have been seen by mortal eyes. The

-      story sounds fearsome enough. It sounded worse to me preparing to go along

-      the Coast by myself, but now, thinking it over calmly, I see flaws.

-      Investigated, I wonder if it would turn out like the story of the three

-      people dead in two days; true, but admitting of quite a different

-      construction being put upon it than that presented for my edification. One

-      thing I do know and that is that I would feel very much safer in an

-      Ashanti village that has only been conquered in the last ten years than I

-      would alone in any of those little towns along the Guinea Coast, between

-      Axim and Half Assinie, that have been in contact with the white man for

-      the last three hundred years.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Anyhow, Axim decided for me I should not go alone, and the Forestry

-      officer, like the chivalrous, gracious gentleman he was, came forward and

-      pretended he had business at Half Assinie and that it would be a great

-      pleasure to have a companion on the road. And so well did he play his part

-      that it was not till we were bound back from the Border that I discovered

-      he had simply come to look after me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then I was initiated into the difficulties of carriers. The Omahin, that

-      is to say the Chief of Beyin, had sent me twenty men and women, and the

-      Forestry officer had two separate lots of Kroo boys and Mendis, and early

-      one morning in January we made preparations for a start. We didn't start

-      early. It seems to me how ever carefully you lay your plans, you never do.

-      First no carriers turned up; then some of the Forestry officer's men

-      condescended to appear. Then the orderly, a man from the north with his

-      face cut with a knife into a permanent sardonic grin, strolled up. He was

-      sent out to seek carriers, and presently drove before him two or three

-      women, one with a baby on her back, and these it appeared were the advance

-      contingent of my gang. A Beyin woman-carrier or indeed any woman along the

-      Coast generally wears a printed-cotton cloth of a dark colour round her by

-      way of a skirt, and one of the little loose blouses that the missionaries

-      introduced on to the Coast over a hundred years ago because they regarded

-      it as indecent for a woman to have her bosom uncovered. Now her shoulders

-      are often covered by the blouse, but that many a time is of such skimpy

-      proportions that it does not reach very far, the skirt invariably slips,

-      and there is a gap, in which case&mdash;well, shall we say the result is

-      not all the originators desired. A woman can carry anything but a hammock,

-      but these carriers of mine were not very good specimens of the class. They

-      looked at the loads, they went away, they came back, they altered, they

-      grumbled, and at last about two hours late we started, I going ahead, the

-      Forestry officer fetching up the rear to round in all stragglers, and in

-      between came our motley array of goods. There is a family resemblance

-      among all travellers on the Gold Coast. They all try to reduce their loads

-      to a minimum and they all find that there are certain necessaries of life

-      which they must have, and certain other things which may be luxuries but

-      which they cannot do without, and certain other little things which it

-      would be a sin not to take as it makes all the difference between comfort

-      and savagery. So the procession comes along, a roll of bedding, a chop

-      box, a kitchen box with pots and pans, a bath, a chair, a table, the

-      servant's box, a load of water, a certain amount of drink, whisky, gin,

-      and if the traveller is very luxurious (I wasn't) some claret, a uniform

-      case with clothes, a smaller one containing the heavier things such as

-      boots and the various goods that pertain to the European's presence there.

-      Before the Commissioner goes his orderly, carrying his silver-topped

-      stick, the insignia of his rank. I had a camera and a lot of heavy plates

-      but I don't think the Forestry officer had anything special except a tent

-      which took three men to carry and which we could never set up because we

-      found on the first night that the ridge poles had been left behind. It is

-      not supposed to be well to sleep in native houses, but it did us no harm.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The carrier divides the masters he serves into three divisions. &ldquo;He be

-      good man,&rdquo; &ldquo;he be bad man,&rdquo; and &ldquo;he be fool man.&rdquo; My carriers decided I

-      was a fool man and they were not far wrong. Less than an hour after

-      leaving Axim, distance as yet is always counted by time in Africa, we came

-      to the Ancobra River and my first difficulty arose. My hammock had not yet

-      been brought across and I, walking on a little way, came to a swampy bit

-      which it was difficult to negotiate without wetting my feet above the

-      ankles. My headman stooped and offered a brawny, bare back for my

-      acceptance. I hesitated. My clothes were not built for riding pick-a-back.

-      I looked back; there was no hammock, neither, thank heaven, was there any

-      sign of the Forestry officer. I tried to show them how to cross their

-      hands and carry me as in a chair, but no, they would have none of my

-      methods, and then I gave in hastily lest my travelling companion should

-      appear, accepted the back, rode across most ungracefully, and was set down

-      triumphantly on the other side. And then they, began to take advantage of

-      me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Missus,&rdquo; explained one, &ldquo;you walk small. If man tote hammock, plenty

-      broken bottle cut feet.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And so I walked all through the outskirts of that little river-side

-      village. It was the hottest part of a very hot day, the sand made the

-      going heavy, and the sun poured down mercilessly out of a cloudless sky. I

-      was soon exceedingly tired, but I was filled with pity for the

-      unfortunates who had to carry me. They walked beside me happily enough or

-      dawdled behind scorning the fool woman who employed them. I may say when I

-      came back my men carried me over every foot of the path, but they set me

-      down a dozen times that day, and when my companion came up and found me

-      sitting under a cocoa-nut palm, as he did pretty frequently, he

-      remonstrated with me and remonstrated with my men, but the thing rested

-      with me. It took me all day long to learn that the men must do the work

-      they had undertaken to do, and until I was convinced of it in my own mind

-      they certainly were not. We had luncheon in the house of the headman of a

-      fishing village; at afternoon tea-time we were sitting on the sand waiting

-      for the tide to run out so that we might cross the Twin Rivers, and we

-      waited nearly two hours, and at last as the darkness was falling we

-      arrived at a village where we must stop the night. My first night in the

-      wilds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a small fishing village on the sands of the seashore, built of the

-      stalks of the raffia palm which here the people call bamboo. The Chief had

-      a compound cleared out for us, and I do not know now whether that compound

-      was clean. In my mind it remains as clean, because till then I had always

-      expected a native house to be most uninhabitable, and was surprised to

-      find any simple comforts at all. The floors were of sand, the walls of the

-      stalks of the raffia, and the thatch of the fronds. I prefer palm to mud

-      for a wall; for one thing, it is nice and airy, the wind can blow right

-      through it and you might almost be in the open air, but then again, you

-      must make your toilet and have your bath in the dark, for if you have a

-      light everything is as clearly visible to the outside world as if you had

-      been placed in a cage for their special benefit. However, my bed was put

-      up, my bath and toilet things set out, and I managed to dress and come

-      outside for dinner which we had in the open. The grey sand was our carpet,

-      the blue-black sky dotted with twinkling diamonds our canopy, and the

-      flickering, chimneyless Hinkson lamp lighted our dinner-table. I was more

-      than content. It was delightful, and then the serpent entered into our

-      paradise.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Kwesi,&rdquo; said the Forestry officer angrily, &ldquo;there's a hair in the soup.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Kwesi had only brought the soup from the kitchen to the table, so it was

-      hardly fair to blame him, but the average man, if his wife is not present,

-      is apt to consider the nearest servant is always responsible for his

-      little discomforts, and he does not change his character in Africa I find.

-      Kwesi accepted the situation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It not ploper hair, sah,&rdquo; he protested as apologetically as if he had

-      sought diligently for a hair without success and been obliged to do the

-      best he could with negro wool.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I, not being a wife and therefore not responsible, was equal to suggesting

-      that it probably came off the flour bag and he might as well have his

-      dinner in peace, but he was not easily soothed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That first night, absolutely in the open, everything took on a glamour

-      which comes back to me whenever I think of it. A glorious night out in the

-      open in the Tropics is one of the pure delights of life. A fire flickered

-      in the centre of the compound; to the right in a palm-thatched hut we

-      could see the cook at work, and we had <i>hors d'oeuvre</i>, which here

-      they call small chop, and the soup which my companion complained of, and

-      fish and chicken and sweets and fruit as good as if we had been in a

-      London restaurant. Better, for the day's hammocking on the beach with the

-      salt spray wetting our faces and the roar of the turbulent West-Coast surf

-      in our ears had given us an appetite that required no tempting. The hair

-      was but an incident; the sort of contrast that always marks West Africa.

-      We dined luxuriously.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Around us were strewn our camp outfit, all the thousand and one things

-      that are required to make two people comfortable. It had taken sixteen men

-      to carry us twenty miles in our hammocks; it had taken five-and-twenty

-      more to minister to our comfort. The headman of the village regarded us as

-      honoured guests. He provided a house, or rather several houses in a

-      compound, he told the carriers where they could get wood and water, he

-      sold us chickens at exorbitant prices, but still chickens, and plantains

-      and kenky and groundnuts for the men. And so we dined in comfort and

-      talked over the incidents of the day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE KING'S HIGHWAY

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The burying of the village dead&mdash;For Ju-ju&mdash;The glory of the

-      morning&mdash;The catastrophes by the way&mdash;The cook is condemned to

-      death&mdash;Redeemed for two shillings&mdash;The thunderous surf&mdash;The

-      charm of the shore&mdash;Traces of white blood&mdash;A great negro town&mdash;Our

-      quarters&mdash;Water that would induce a virulent typhus in any but a

-      negro community&mdash;The lonely German trader&mdash;Difficulties of

-      entertaining a negro potentate&mdash;The lair of the hunted.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he King's Highway

-      is along the shore here easy enough going when the tide is out and the

-      golden sand is hard; very heavy indeed when the roaring waves break almost

-      at the foot of the cocoa-nut palms that stand in phalanxes tall and

-      stately, or bending somewhat towards the sea that is their life, all the

-      way from Axim to Half Assinie, and beyond again to the French border.

-      There is no other way than this way along the shore. Occasionally, if the

-      &ldquo;sea be too full,&rdquo; as the carriers say, they may go up to a rough path

-      among the cocoa-nut palms, but it is a very rough path. Husks of the

-      cocoa-nuts lie there, palm fronds drying and withering in the sun, a great

-      creeping bean flings its wandering stalks across the path as a trap to the

-      unwary, and when there is other greenery it stands up and stretches out

-      thorny branches to clutch at the passer-by. Besides, the villagers&mdash;and

-      there are many villages&mdash;bury their dead here, and they consider two

-      feet a deep enough grave, so that the odour of decay rises on the hot air.

-      All along the shore, which is the highway, just under the cocoa-nut palms,

-      I saw tiny miniature sloping thatches over some pots&mdash;a sign that

-      someone has been buried there. At first I was touched to think so many of

-      the living mourned the dead; but my sentimental feelings are always

-      receiving rude shocks, and I found that these thatches had not been raised

-      in tender remembrance, but to placate the ghosts of the dead and to

-      prevent them from haunting the living. They must be rather foolish ghosts,

-      too, and easily taken in; for I observed that a bunch of cock's feathers

-      evidently simulated a chicken, and the pots were nearly always rather

-      elderly and often broken. There were more gruesome signs of Ju-ju too; a

-      crow suspended with outspread wings, a kid with drooping head and hanging

-      legs. I hope these things were not put up while they were alive and left

-      to suffer in the tropical sunshine, but I fear, I fear. The negro is

-      diabolically cruel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When we were children we always ate the things we liked least first, bread

-      and butter, and then cake; and there is much to be said for the plan.

-      Afterwards I found it was much easier and nicer travelling in the bush,

-      but on that first journey travelling along the shore had great charms for

-      me. In the early morning a whitish mist hangs over the sea and veils the

-      cocoa-nut palms, and there is a little chill in the air which makes

-      travelling pleasant. We always got up before dawn. At the first streak of

-      light we were having our breakfast, porridge and eggs and marmalade and

-      fruit, bananas, pines, or oranges, quite as comfortably as if we were in

-      civilised lands, though the servants were waiting to pack our breakfast

-      equipage, and we watched our beds and boxes and baths borne away on men's

-      heads as we drank our coffee. There were catastrophes sometimes, of

-      course.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was the morning when the coffee had been made on top of the

-      early-morning tea, and the evening when the peaches were agreeably

-      flavoured with household soap; the day when some unknown hand had conveyed

-      native peppers, which are the hottest things in creation outside the

-      infernal regions, into the sparklet bottle; and the day when the drinking

-      water gave out altogether, and was replaced by the village water, black

-      and greasy, and sufficient to induce in any but a negro community a

-      virulent typhus. But all disasters paled before the day when neither the

-      dinner nor the cook were forthcoming at Beyin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Forestry officer, in the kindness and hospitality of his heart, had

-      asked me to be his guest, so that we always had chop together, and I

-      gained experience without any trouble to myself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was sorry there was no dinner, because it seemed a long time since we

-      had had tea, but otherwise I was not troubled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Where be cook, Kwesi?&rdquo; asked the Forestry officer of his immediate

-      attendant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Kwesi spluttered and stammered; he was so full of news. Round at a little

-      distance stood the people of the town of Beyin&mdash;men in cloths; women,

-      some with a handkerchief round their heads, but some with a coiffure that

-      suggested the wearer had been permanently surprised, and her hair had

-      stood up on end and stayed there ever since; little children, who shyly

-      poked their heads round their mothers' legs to look at the strange white

-      woman. The truth was hardly to be told in Kwesi's agitated pigeon English.

-      It was awful. The cook had marched into the town on business bent and

-      demanded chickens for the white master and the white missus, and the

-      inhabitants, with a view to raising the market price, had declared there

-      was not a chicken within miles of the place, and they had not seen such a

-      thing for years. Cook was aggravated, for the chickens were walking about

-      under his very eyes, not perhaps well-bred Dorkings or Buff Orpingtons,

-      but the miserable little runt about the size of a self-respecting pigeon

-      that is known as a chicken all over West Africa, and the sight was too

-      much for him. He seized one of those chickens and proceeded to pluck and

-      dress it, and before he was half-through the Omahin's men had come down

-      and hauled him off to durance vile, for he had committed the iniquitous

-      offence of stealing one of the Omahin's guard's chickens, and public

-      opinion was almost agreed that only death could expiate so grievous a

-      crime. Of course, there was the white woman to be considered, an unknown

-      quantity, for many of them had never seen a white woman before; and there

-      was the Forestry officer, by no means an unknown quantity, for it was

-      pretty certain he would resent any harm to his cook. Finally, with much

-      yelling and shouting and tremendous gesticulation, the case was laid

-      before him and the demand made that his cook should be handed over to the

-      powers he had offended. I am bound to say that young man held the scales

-      of justice with a niceness that is only to be properly appreciated when we

-      remember that it was his dinner that was not forthcoming and his cook

-      whose life was threatened. He listened to both sides, and then decreed

-      that the cook was to be redeemed by the payment of two shillings, that the

-      crowd was to disperse, and dinner to come up forthwith.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Two shillings,&rdquo; said the next white man we met, the preventive officer at

-      Half Assinie, close to the Border, &ldquo;two shillings! I should think so

-      indeed. The price of a chicken is sixpence, and it's dear at that.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      They are such arrant savages, these people of the King's Highway; often

-      enough they are stark save for a loin cloth, and I have seen men without

-      even the proverbial fig leaf. The very decencies of life seem unknown to

-      them, and yet they calculate in sixpences and shillings, even as the man

-      in the streets in England does.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They have touched the fringe of civilisation for so many hundred years;

-      for this is the Coast of the great days of the slave trade, and along this

-      seashore, by this roaring surf, beneath the shade of these cocoa-nut

-      palms, have marched those weary companies of slaves, whose descendants

-      make the problem of America nowadays. It must have been the same shore,

-      the very same. Here is the golden sand and the thunderous surf that only

-      the men of the Coast will dare, and between Axim and the French Ivory

-      Coast not always they. The white scallop shells are tossed aside by the

-      feet of the carriers; the jellyfish that twinkle like lumps of glass in

-      the strong sunshine must be avoided, for they sting; plover and little

-      wading birds like snipe dart into the receding wave, or race back from its

-      oncoming; and the little crabs, like brown pincushions on stilts, run to

-      hide themselves in the water. Here are crows, too, with neat black coats

-      and immaculate white waistcoats and white collars, who fly cawing round

-      the villages. We saw an occasional vulture, like a ragged and very

-      dissipated turkey, tearing at the carcass of a goat or sheep. Such is the

-      shore now. So was it four hundred years ago. The people must have changed

-      a little, but very, very little in this western portion of the Gold Coast,

-      which is given over to the mahogany cutters, the gold-seekers, and the men

-      who seek mineral oil. And the people are born, and live, and die, and know

-      very, very little more than their forefathers, who lived in fear of the

-      trader who would one day tear them from their homes, and force

-      civilisation upon them with the cat and with the branding iron. In the old

-      days they got much of their sustenance from the sea, and so do they get it

-      still; and when the surf was not too bad we saw the dark men launching

-      their great surf boats, struggling to get them into the surf, struggling

-      to keep them afloat till they got beyond it, when they were things of

-      life. And when the surf was too bad, as it was on many days, they

-      contented themselves with throwing in hand-nets, racing back as the sea

-      washed over them, racing forward as it receded; and the women and children

-      gathered shell-fish just where sand and surf met, carrying in their hands

-      calabashes, or cocoa-nut shells, or those enamelled iron-ware basins which

-      are as common now on the Coast as they are in London town. It seems to me

-      that enamelled iron ware is one of the great differences between now and

-      the days when the English and Dutch and Portuguese adventurers came first

-      to this coast trading for gold and ivory and slaves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are other traces of them, too, though they only built forts and

-      dared hardly go beyond the shelter of their walls. Not infrequently the

-      skin of the man who bore me was lightened to copper colour; every now and

-      then I saw straight features and thin lips, though the skin was black, and

-      I remembered, I must perforce remember, that these traders of old time

-      made the dark women minister to their passions, and that the dark women

-      bore them children with pride, even as they do to-day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Beyin is one of the biggest purely negro towns along the Coast. It is

-      close on the shore, a mass of negro compounds huddled close together; the

-      walls of the compounds and of houses are alike made of raffia palm, and

-      the roofs are thatched with the fronds, looking not unlike peasant

-      cottages in Somerset or Brittany.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the people who live in them are simple savages. They chatter and

-      shriek, talking at the top of their voices about&mdash;God knows what; for

-      it seems as if nothing in the nature of news could have happened since the

-      long-ago slave-raiding days. In the street they pressed me close; only

-      when I noticed any particular one, especially a woman or a child, that one

-      fled shrieking to hide behind its neighbour. We sent our orderly forward

-      to tell the Omahin we proposed to honour them with our presence for two

-      days, and to ask for a house to live in. The house was forthcoming, a

-      great two-storied house, built of swish, and whitewashed. It was right in

-      the centre of the town, so closely surrounded by the smaller houses that,

-      standing on the balcony, I could drop things easily on to the roofs below;

-      but it had this advantage, that unless the people climbed on their roofs&mdash;they

-      did as a matter of fact&mdash;we could not be overlooked. We had three

-      rooms: an enormous centre room that someone had begun to paint blue, got

-      tired, and finished off with splashes of whitewash, the council chamber of

-      the town; and two side-rooms for bedrooms. And words fail me to describe

-      those bedrooms. There were iron beds with mattresses, mattresses that

-      looked as if they had been rescued from the refuse heap specially to

-      accommodate us, and tables covered with dirt and the most wonderful

-      collection of odds and ends it has ever been my fortune to come across.

-      They were mostly the cheapest glass and china ornaments, broken-down lamps

-      that in their palmy days must have been useless, and one of those big

-      gaily painted china sitting hens that humble households sometimes serve up

-      their breakfast eggs under. The first thing was to issue strict orders

-      that not even the ground sheet was to touch that bed; the next was to

-      clear away the ornaments, wipe down the table, cover it with clean paper

-      and a towel, sweep the floor, lay down the ground sheet, put up the bed,

-      and decide whether I would wash in sea water or in the black and greasy

-      liquid which comes from a mile away across the swamp, and which was the

-      only alternative. I may say I tried them both, and found them both

-      unsatisfactory; and I finished with the sea water because I knew that,

-      however uncomfortable, it was at least clean.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Here we used the last of our drinking water and had to beg a little from

-      the only white trader in the town, who gave generously of his small store,

-      as white men do help each other beyond civilisation. He was German, and

-      somewhat difficult to understand at times when he grew excited; but he

-      stood on the same side of the gulf as we other two, while the black

-      people, those who served us, and those who stared at us, were apart on the

-      other side. A weary, dreary life is the trader's. He had a house just on

-      the edge of the surf. His &ldquo;factory&rdquo; was below it. His only companions were

-      a beautiful green-crested clock-bird and a little old-man monkey with a

-      white beard. The ghastly loneliness of it! Nothing to do but to sell

-      cotton stuffs and enamel ware and gin to the native, and count the days

-      till it was time to tramp to Axim and take the steamer that should bear

-      him back to the Fatherland and all the joys of wife and children.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I saw the homeward-bound steamer to-day,&rdquo; he said pathetically, though he

-      did not know he was pathetic. &ldquo;I always look for it.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The steamer! I did not know it came close enough in.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It doesn't. Of course it was only the smoke on the horizon.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Surely, surely, the tragedy of the exile's life lay in those words.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We had sent our orderly forward to say we were going to visit the Omahin,

-      and soon after our arrival we called upon him. His palace is a collection

-      of swish huts with palm-thatched roofs, built round a sanded compound; and

-      we were ushered into a cramped, whitewashed room&mdash;his court. The

-      population packed themselves into the body of the court to stare at the

-      white people and native royalty; and the Omahin and his councillors were

-      crowded up in the corner, whence, I presume, justice is dispensed. The

-      exalted personage was clad in a dark robe of many-coloured silks, with a

-      band of the same material round his black head. Round his neck was a

-      great, heavy gold chain, on his arms bracelets of the same metal, and on

-      his fingers heavy gold rings. Some of his councillors were also dressed in

-      native robes, and they carried great horns of gold and the sticks that

-      mark his rank with gold devices on top of them. The incongruity was

-      provided by the &ldquo;scholars&rdquo; among his following&mdash;the linguists, the

-      registrar, and other minor officials. These functionaries were clad in the

-      most elderly of cast-off European garments, frock coats green with age,

-      shirts that simply shrieked for the washtub, and trousers that a London

-      unemployed would have disdained. However, they interpreted for us, and we

-      explained to the Chief how pleased the white lady was with his country and

-      how much she wished to visit the lake village, which was three hours away

-      on the trade route to the back-country. He expressed his willingness to

-      give us a guide through the swamp that lay behind the town, and then with

-      a great deal of solemnity we took our leave and retired to our own

-      somewhat delayed afternoon tea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We were mistaken if we thought we were going to be allowed to have it in

-      peace. We had not sat down a moment, the Forestry officer, the German

-      trader, and I, when the ragged travesty of a Gold Coast policeman, who was

-      the Omahin's messenger, came dawdling upstairs to announce that the Omahin

-      was coming to return our call; and he and his councillors and linguists

-      followed close on his heels. The linguist explained that it was the custom

-      to return a ceremonial call at once, and custom rules the roost in West

-      Africa. That might be, but our conversational powers had been exhausted a

-      quarter of an hour before, and not the most energetic ransacking of our

-      brains could find anything to say to this negro potentate, who sat

-      stolidly in a chair surrounded by an ever increasing group of attendants.

-      I asked him if he would have tea. No. Cake, suggested the Forestry officer

-      frantically. No. Toast and butter we both offered in a breath. No; he had

-      no use for toast and butter, or for biscuits or oranges, which exhausted

-      our tea-table. And then the Forestry officer had a brilliant idea: &ldquo;You

-      offer him a whisky-and-soda.&rdquo; I did, and the dusky monarch weighed the

-      matter a moment. Then he agreed, and a glass of whisky-and-soda was given

-      him. We did not offer any refreshment to his followers. It would have left

-      us bankrupt, and then not supplied them all. For a moment the Omahin

-      looked at his whisky-and-sparklet, then he held out the glass, and aman

-      stepped forward, and, bending low, took a sip; again he held out the

-      glass, choosing his man apparently quite promiscuously from among the

-      crowd, and again the man bent low and sipped. It was done over and over

-      again. I did not realise that a glass could have held so much liquid as

-      one after another, the chosen of the company, among whom was my most

-      troublesome hammock-boy, sipped. At last there was but a teaspoonful left,

-      and the Omahin put it to his own lips and drank with gusto, handed it to

-      one of his attendants, took it back, and, tipping it up, drained the very

-      last dregs; then, solemnly holding out a very hard and horny hand, shook

-      hands with us and departed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The next day we visited Lake Nuba. Beyin stands upon a narrow neck of land

-      between the sea and a swamp that in the rainy season is only passable in

-      canoes, but when I was there in the middle of the dry season a winding

-      path took us through the dense swamp grasses to the place that is neither

-      land nor water, and it is difficult to say whether a hammock or a canoe is

-      the least dangerous mode of progression. Be it understood that this is a

-      trade route. Rotting canoes lay among the grasses; and there passed to and

-      fro quite an array of people laden with all manner of goods, plantains,

-      and cassava, stink-fish (which certainly does not belie its name), piles

-      of cotton goods for the interior, and great enamelled-ware basins piled

-      with loam to make swish houses in Beyin. Most often these heavily laden

-      folks are women who stalk along with a child up on their backs, or

-      suckling it under their arms. They stared with wonder at the white woman

-      in the hammock and moved into the swamp to let her pass, but I should

-      think they no more envied me than I envy the Queen of England driving in

-      the Park. Presently the way was ankle-deep in water, knee-deep in mud.

-      Raffia palm, creepers, and all manner of swamp grasses grew so close that

-      the hammock could barely be forced through, and only two men could carry

-      it. We went up perhaps twenty feet in squelching, slippery mud. We came

-      down again, and the greenery opened out into an expanse of water, where

-      starry-white water-lilies opened cups to the sky above, and the great

-      leaves looked like green rafts on the surface of the water. There were

-      holes hidden by that water, but it is the trade route north all the same;

-      and has been the trade route for hundreds of years since the Omahins of

-      Beyin raided that way, and brought down their strings of slaves, carrying

-      the tiny children lest they should be drowned, to the Dutch and Portuguese

-      and English traders on the Coast. Presently we came to a more marked

-      waterway, and here were canoes waiting for us. I draw a veil over the

-      disembarking out of a hammock into an extremely crank and wet canoe. I was

-      up to my knees in water, but the Forestry officer expressed himself as

-      delighted. I held up a dripping skirt, and he made his men paddle over,

-      and inspected. It was, of course, as we might have expected; the natives

-      had seen that the most important person in their eyes, the man, got the

-      only fairly dry canoe, and my kindly guardian was shocked, and insisted on

-      an immediate change being made. And if it is necessary to draw a veil over

-      the disembarking from a hammock to a canoe it is certainly necessary to

-      draw one over the changing from one crank canoe to another. I can assure

-      you it cannot be done gracefully. Even a mermaid who had no fear of being

-      drowned could hardly accomplish that with elegance. But it was done at

-      last, and we set off up the long and picturesque waterway fringed with

-      lilies and palms and swamp grasses that led to Lake Nuba. And sometimes

-      the waterway was deep, sometimes shallow. The canoe was aground, and every

-      man had to jump overboard to help push it over the obstruction, but more

-      than one man went over his head in slime and water. At each accident the

-      lucky ones who had escaped roared and yelled with laughter as if it were

-      the best of jokes. Perhaps it was. It was so hot that it could have been

-      no hardship to have a bath, and they had nothing on to spoil. But at last

-      we got out on the lake. It looked a huge sheet of water from the little

-      canoe, and it took a good hour's paddling till we came to the lake

-      village.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This is the lair of the hunted, though it does lie on the trade route.

-      Behind it lies the swamp which is neither land nor water in the dry

-      season, and it looks just a tangle of raffia palm and swamp grass, and all

-      manner of tropical greenery. The huts, like the huts of Beyin are, are

-      built of raffia palm, but they go one better than Beyin and the fishing

-      villages, even the flooring is of the stems; and the whole village is

-      raised on stakes, so that it hangs over the water, and the houses can only

-      be reached by a framework of poles.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If you <i>will</i> go exploring,&rdquo; said the Forestry officer, as I

-      gathered up my skirts and essayed the frail ladder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I here put it on record that I think savage life can by no manner of means

-      be recommended, save and except for its airiness. There is plenty of air.

-      It is easy enough to see through those lightly built walls of raffia palm,

-      and the doings of the occupants must be fairly open to the public. Also,

-      except in one room, where a hearth had been laid down about six feet by

-      three in extent, the flooring is so frail that in trying to walk on it I

-      slipped through, and was nipped tightly by the ankles. I couldn't rescue

-      myself. I was held as in a vice till the grinning King's messenger and a

-      Kroo-boy carrier got me out, wherefore I conclude the inhabitants of those

-      villages must spend the most of their time on their backs. In the dry

-      season there is a little bit of hard earth underneath the huts. In the wet

-      season there is nothing but water and the raffia palm flooring or a crank

-      canoe for a resting-place. No wonder even the tiny children seem as much

-      at home in a canoe as I am in an easy chair. And yet the village is

-      growing, so there must be a charm about it as a dwelling-place. We had

-      &ldquo;chop&rdquo; on the verandah of the Chiefs house. The Chief had apparently quite

-      recently buried one of his household, for at the end of the platform close

-      against the dwelling-chambers was erected one of the miniature sloping

-      roofs with offerings of cock's feathers, shells, and pots to placate the

-      ghost. It was quite a new erection, too, for the palm-leaf thatch was

-      still green; but where the dead body was I do not know, probably sunk in

-      the swamp underneath, and why so close I do not know either, since the

-      people evidently feared his ghost. However, even if we were lunching over

-      a grave, it did not trouble us half so much as the fate of the toast which

-      was being brought across from another hut in a particularly crank canoe,

-      and was naturally an object of much curiosity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0160.jpg" alt="0160 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0160.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The people were very courteous. It seems to me that the farther you get

-      from civilisation the more courteous the population. Village children

-      eager to see the lions in a circus could not have been more keen than the

-      people of this lake village to see the white woman, but they did not even

-      come and look till our linguist went forth and announced that the white

-      people had had their chop, and were ready to receive the headman. He came,

-      bringing his little daughter&mdash;a rough-looking, bearded old man, who

-      squatted down in front of me and rammed the tail of his cloth into his

-      mouth; and immediately there followed in his train, I should think, the

-      entire village, men, women, and children, and ranged themselves in rows on

-      the bamboo flooring, and looked their fill. Rows of eyes staring at one

-      are embarrassing; I don't care whether they be those of a cultured people

-      or of savages clad in scanty garments. If you stand up before an audience

-      in a civilised land you know what you are there for, and you either

-      succeed or fail, so the thing marches and comes to an end. But sitting

-      before a subdued crowd clad in Manchester cotton or simply a smile, with

-      all eyes centred on you, I at least feel that my rôle is somewhat more

-      difficult. What on earth am I to do? If I move they chatter; if I single

-      one out to be touched, he moves away, and substitutes a neighbour, who is

-      equally anxious to substitute someone else, and the production of a camera

-      causes a stampede. Looking back, I cannot consider that my behaviour at

-      the lake village reflected any particular credit upon me. I felt I ought

-      really to have produced more impression upon a people who had, many of

-      them, never in their lives set eyes on a white woman before. They tell me,

-      those who know, that for these people, whose lives move on in the same

-      groove from the cradle to the grave, the coming of the Forestry officer

-      and the white woman was a great event, and that all things will bear date

-      from the day when the white missus and the white master had chop on the

-      Chief's verandah.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Before we left Beyin, I promised to take the Omahin's photograph. Early in

-      the morning, when we had sent on our carriers, we wended our way to his

-      house, where an eager crowd awaited us. They kept us waiting, of course; I

-      do not suppose it would be consistent with an African chief's dignity to

-      show himself in any hurry. When I grew tired of waiting and was turning

-      away, the linguist came out to know if I would promise a picture when it

-      was taken. I agreed. Certainly. More waiting, and then out came the

-      linguist with a dirty scrap of paper and a lead pencil in his hand, and

-      demanded of the Forestry officer his name and address.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked the astonished young man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;So we can write to you when pictures no come.&rdquo; It was lucky I was pretty

-      sure of my own powers, but it was a little rough to make the Forestry

-      officer responsible for any accident that might happen. It was a great

-      relief to my mind when there came back to me from Messrs Sinclair a

-      perfect picture of the Omahin and his following and his little son. I sent

-      them the picture enlarged, but I never heard from that respectable

-      linguist what they thought of it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0164.jpg" alt="0164 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0164.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER VII&mdash;ON THE FRENCH BORDER

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Very heavy going&mdash;-Half Assinie&mdash;The preventive service

-      station&mdash;The energetic officer&mdash;Dislike of Africa&mdash;The Tano

-      River&mdash;The enterprising crocodiles&mdash;The mahogany logs&mdash;Wicked

-      waste&mdash;Gentlemen adventurers&mdash;A primitive dinner-party&mdash;Forced

-      labour&mdash;The lost carrier&mdash;&ldquo;Make die and chopped&rdquo;&mdash;A negro

-      Good Samaritan&mdash;A matrimonial squabble&mdash;The wife who would earn

-      her own living&mdash;Dissatisfied carriers.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e were bound to

-      Half Assinie and the French border and the way was all along the shore,

-      which is a narrow strip of land between the roaring surf and a

-      mangrove-fringed lagoon, and on this strip are the palm-built fishing

-      villages and the cocoa-nut groves that are so typical of the Coast. The

-      last day out from Half Assinie the way was very heavy going indeed. We had

-      our midday meal in the street of a village with the eyes of the villagers

-      upon us, and by the afternoon the &ldquo;sea was too full,&rdquo; the sun was

-      scorching, and the loose sand was cruel heavy going for the carriers and

-      the hammock-boys. The sun went down, the cool of the evening came, but the

-      bearers were staggering like drunken men before a shout went up. We had

-      reached Half Assinie, the last important town in the Gold Coast Colony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Half Assinie is just like any other Western Province Gold Coast town,

-      built close down to the roaring, almost impassable surf, because the

-      people draw much of their livelihood from the sea, and built of

-      raffia-palm bamboo, because there is nothing else to build it of. Only

-      there is this difference, that here is a preventive station, with a white

-      man in command. There is a great cleared square, which is all sand and

-      cocoa-nut palms, men in neat dark-blue uniforms pass to and fro, and bugle

-      calls are heard the livelong day. We arrived long before the rest of our

-      following, and we marched straight up to the preventive officer's house

-      only to find that he was down with fever. But he was hospitable. All white

-      men are in West Africa. The house was ours. It consisted of a square of

-      sun-dried, white-washed mud, divided into three rooms with square openings

-      for windows, mud floor and no ceiling, but high above the walls the

-      palm-thatched roof is raised and carried far out beyond them to form a

-      verandah where we could sit and eat and entertain visitors. It was big

-      enough, never less than twelve and often quite eighteen feet wide, and

-      could be made quite a comfortable living-room were a woman there, but

-      Englishmen and the English Government do not encourage wives. The rooms

-      assigned to the guests were of necessity empty, for men cannot carry

-      furniture about in West Africa, and our host being sick and our gear not

-      yet arrived, the Forestry officer and I, comforted with whisky-and-soda,

-      took two chairs and sat out in the compound under the stars and watched

-      for the coming of our carriers. The going had been so hard they straggled

-      in one by one, bath and bed and chairs and tables and boxes, and it was

-      nine o'clock before we were washed and dressed and in our right minds, and

-      waiting &ldquo;chop&rdquo; at a table on the big verandah that the faithful Kwesi, who

-      had been properly instructed, had decorated with yellow cannas from the

-      garden.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is something about Half Assinie that gives the impression of being

-      at the end of the world. Of course I have been in places much farther from

-      civilisation, but nowhere has the tragedy of the Englishman's life in West

-      Africa so struck me as it did here, and again I must say I think it is the

-      conditions of the life and not the climate that is responsible for that

-      tragedy. The young man who ran that preventive station was cheerful

-      enough; he got up from his bed of fever when he could hardly stagger

-      across the room to entertain his visitors. When he could barely crawl, he

-      was organising a game of cricket between some white men who had

-      unexpectedly landed and the &ldquo;scholars&rdquo; among the black inhabitants; and he

-      was energetic and good-tempered and proud of his men, but he hated the

-      country and had no hesitation in saying so. He had no use for West Africa;

-      he counted the days till he should go home. He would not have dreamt of

-      bringing his wife out even if she had wished to come. He was, in fact, a

-      perfect specimen of the nice, pleasant Englishman who is going the way

-      that allows France and Germany to beat us in colonising all along the

-      line. It was his strong convictions, many of them unspoken, that impressed

-      me, his realisation of his own discontent and discomfort and hopelessness

-      that have tinged my recollections of the place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It should be a place of great importance, for it is but a short distance

-      from the Tano River, and down the Tano River, far from the interior, come

-      the great mahogany logs that rival the logs of Honduras and Belize and all

-      Central America in value. They are cut far away in the forests of the

-      interior; they are floated down the Tano River, paying toll to the natives

-      who guide them over the falls and rapids; they come between tall,

-      silk-cotton trees and fan palms and raffia palms, where the chimpanzee

-      hides himself and the dog-faced monkeys whimper and cry, the crocodile

-      suns himself on the mud-banks, and great, bell-shaped, yellow flowers

-      lighten the greenery. They come past the French preventive station, that

-      the natives call France, a station thriftily decorated with a tiny flag

-      that might have come out of a cracker, past the English station built of

-      raffia palm like the lake village, for this ground is flooded in the

-      rains, through a saving canal, for the Tano River enters the sea in French

-      territory, into a lagoon behind Half Assinie. The lagoon is surrounded by

-      swamp, and the crocodiles, they say, abound, and are so fierce and

-      fearless they have been known to take the paddler's arm as he stoops to

-      his stroke. I did not know of their evil reputation as I sat on a box in

-      the frail canoe, that seemed to place me in the midst of a waste of

-      waters, rising up to the greenery in the far distance, and the blue-white

-      sky above shut down on us like a lid. I was even inclined to be vexed with

-      the men's reluctance to jump out and push when we ran ashore on a

-      sand-bank. They should be able to grow rice in these swamps at the mouth

-      of the Tano River and behind Beyin, and so raise up a new industry that

-      shall save Half Assinie when the mahogany trade is a thing of the past.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0170.jpg" alt="0170 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0170.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      From the lagoon to Half Assinie, a couple of miles away, the logs are

-      brought on a tramway line, and where they land the men are squaring them,

-      cutting off the butts where the journey down the river has split and

-      marred them, and making them ready to be moved down to the beach by the

-      toilsome application of many hands. It reminded me of the way they must

-      have built the pyramids as I watched the half-naked men toil and sweat and

-      push and shriek, and apparently accomplish so little. Yet all in good time

-      the beach is strewn with the logs, great square-cut baulks of red timber

-      with their owners' marks upon their butts and covered generally with a

-      thatch of cocoa-nut palm fronds to keep them from the all-powerful sun.

-      The steamer will call for them some day, but it is no easy thing to get

-      them through the surf, and steamer after steamer calls, whistles, decides

-      that the surf is too heavy to embark such timber, and passes on. And where

-      they have been cut and trimmed, the mammies come with baskets to gather

-      pieces of the priceless wood to build their fires. It seems to me that the

-      trimming is done wastefully. The average savage and the ignorant white is

-      always wasteful where there is plenty, and it is nothing to them that the

-      mahogany tree does not come to maturity for something like two hundred and

-      fifty years, and that the cutters have denuded the country far, far beyond

-      the sea coast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are other phases of life in Half Assinie. Usually there is but one

-      white man there, the preventive officer, but when I visited it actually

-      ten white people sat down one night to dinner. For there had landed some

-      white people bound on some errand which, as has been the custom from time

-      immemorial in Africa, was veiled in mystery. They were seeking gold; they

-      hoped to find diamonds; their ultimate aim was to trade with the natives,

-      and cut out every other trading-house along the Coast. Frankly, I do not

-      know what they had landed for&mdash;their leader talked of his wealth and

-      how he grew bananas and pines and coffee, and created a tropical paradise

-      in Devonshire, and meanwhile in Africa conferred the inimitable benefits

-      of innumerable gramophones and plenty of work upon the guileless savage&mdash;but

-      I only gathered he was there for the purpose of filling his pockets, how,

-      I have not the faintest idea. His dinner suggested Africa in the primitive

-      days of the first adventurers and rough plenty. Soup in a large bowl, from

-      which we helped ourselves, a dozen tins of sardines flung on a plate, a

-      huge tongue from a Gargantuan ox, and dishes piled with slices of

-      pine-apple. The table decorations consisted of beer bottles, distributed

-      at intervals down the table between the kerosene lamps; the boys who

-      waited yelled and shrieked and shouted, like the untamed savages they

-      were, and some of the white men were unshaven and in their shirt sleeves,

-      and the shirts, to put it mildly, needed washing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Gentlemen adventurers,&rdquo; said I to my companion under my breath, thinking

-      of the days of old and the men who had landed on these shores.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Would you say gentlemen?&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And I decided that one epithet would be sufficient.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      How the bugles called. Every hour almost a man clad in the dark-blue

-      preventive service uniform stood out in the square with his bugle and

-      called to the surf and the sky and the sand and the cocoa-nut palms and

-      the natives beyond, saying to them that here was the representative of His

-      Britannic Majesty, here was the white man powerful above all others who

-      kept the Borders, who was come as the forerunner of law and cleanliness

-      and order. For these things do not come naturally to the native. He clears

-      the land when he needs it and then he leaves it to itself and the quickly

-      encroaching bush. The mosquito troubles him not. Dirt and filth and evil

-      smells are not worth counting weighed in the balance against a comfortable

-      afternoon's sleep, and so it came that when I commented on the neatness of

-      Half Assinie, the preventive officer laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0174.jpg" alt="0174 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0174.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Forced labour,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;The place was in a frightful state a month ago

-      and I couldn't get anybody to do anything, so I just turned out my men,

-      put a cordon round, and forced everyone to do an hour's labour, men,

-      mammies, and half-grown children, till we got the place clear. It wasn't

-      hard on anyone, and you see.&rdquo; He was right. Sometimes in Africa, nay, as a

-      rule, the powers of a dictator are needed by the white man. If he is a

-      wise and clever dictator so much the better, but one thing is certain, he

-      must not be a man who splits hairs. Justice, yes, rough crude justice he

-      must give&mdash;must have the sort of mind that sees black and white and

-      does not trouble about the varying shades in between.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We came back from the Border by the road that we had gone, the road that

-      is the King's Highway, and an incident happened that shows how very, very

-      easily a wrong impression of a people may be gathered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When we were in Beyin on our way out, the two headmen who were eternally

-      at war with each other suddenly appeared in accord leading between them a

-      man by the hands.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;This man be very sick.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      This man certainly was very sick, and it seemed to the Forestry officer

-      that the simplest thing would be to leave him behind at Beyin and pick him

-      up on our return journey. He thought his decision would be received with

-      gratitude. Not at all. The sick carrier protested that all he wanted was

-      to be relieved of his load and allowed to go on. The men of Beyin were bad

-      people; if he stayed they would kill him and chop him. The Forestry

-      officer was inclined to laugh. Murder of an unoffending stranger and

-      cannibalism on a coast that had been in touch with civilisation for the

-      last four hundred years; the idea was not to be thought of. But the

-      frightened sick man stuck to his point and his brother flung down his load

-      and declared if he were left behind he should stay with him. There was

-      nothing for it then but to agree to their wishes. He was relieved of his

-      load and he started, and he and his brother arrived at Half Assinie long

-      after all the other carriers had got in. The gentlemen adventurers

-      numbered among them a doctor, and he was called in and prescribed for the

-      sick man. After the little rest there he was better, and started back for

-      Axim, his brother, who was carrying the Forestry officer's bath, in close

-      attendance. By and by we passed the bath abandoned on the beach, and its

-      owner perforce put another man on to carry it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That night there were no signs of the missing men, but next morning the

-      brother, the man who ought to have carried the bath, turned up. His face

-      was sodden with crying. A negro is intensely emotional, but this man had

-      some cause for his grief. He had missed his brother, abandoned the bath,

-      and gone right back to Half Assinie to look for him. The way was by the

-      seashore, there is no way to wander from it; on one side is the roaring

-      surf that no man alone may dare, and on the other, just beyond the line of

-      cocoa-nut palms, a mangrove-fringed lagoon, and beyond that a bush,

-      containing perhaps a few native farms to be reached by narrow tracks, but

-      a bush that no stranger would lightly dare. But no trace of his brother

-      could this man find. What had become of the sick carrier? That was the

-      question we asked ourselves, and to that no answer could we find except

-      the sinister verdict pronounced by his fellows, &ldquo;Make die and chopped.&rdquo;

-       And that I believed for many months, till just before I left the Coast the

-      Forestry officer and I met again and he told me the end of the story. He

-      had made every inquiry, telegraphed up and down the Coast, and given the

-      man up for lost, and then after four or five weeks a miserable skeleton

-      came crawling into Axim. The lost carrier. He had felt faint by the

-      wayside, crawled into the shade of a bush and become insensible, and there

-      had been found by some man, a native of the country and a total stranger

-      to him. And this Good Samaritan instead of falling upon him and making him

-      die as he fully expected, took him to his own house, fed and succoured

-      him, and when he was well enough set him on his way. So he and I and all

-      his fellows had wronged these men of the shore. Greater kindness he could

-      not have found in a Christian land, and in all probability he might easily

-      have found much less.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Beyin too furnished another lesson for me, not quite so pleasant. All

-      my carriers had come from here, and on our way back they struck. In plain

-      words they wanted to see the colour of my money. Said the Forestry

-      officer, &ldquo;Don't pay them, else they'll all run away and you will have no

-      one to carry your things into Axim.&rdquo; That was a contingency not to be

-      thought of, so the ultimatum went forth&mdash;no pay until they had

-      completed their contract. That night I regret to state there was a row in

-      the house, a matrimonial quarrel carried on in the approved matrimonial

-      style all the world over, with the mother-in-law for chorus and general

-      backer-up. There was a tremendous racket and the principal people

-      concerned seemed to be one of my women-carriers and the Omahin's registrar

-      in whose house we were lodged. Then because Fanti is one of the Twi

-      languages, and an Ashanti can understand it quite well, Kwesi interpreted

-      for me. This woman, it appeared, was one of the registrar's wives, and he

-      disapproved of her going on the road as a common carrier. It was not

-      consistent with his dignity as an official of the court, he said at the

-      top of his voice; he had given her a good home and she had no need to

-      demean herself. She shrilly declared he had done no such thing, and if he

-      had, had shamefully neglected her for that last hussy he had married, and

-      her mother backed her and several other female friends joined in, and

-      whether they settled the dispute or not to their own satisfaction I do not

-      know, but the gentleman cuffed the lady and the lady had the extreme

-      satisfaction of scattering several handfuls of his wool to the winds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next morning none of my carriers turned up; there lay the loads under a

-      tree in front of the house with the orderly looking at them with his

-      sardonic grin, but never a carrier. It was cool with the coolness of early

-      morning. We had our breakfast in the great room, we discussed the

-      disturbance of the night before, the things were all washed up, still no

-      carriers; at last, just as it was getting hot and our tempers were giving

-      out, came a message. The carriers would not go unless they were paid.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And it's a foregone conclusion they won't go if they are paid,&rdquo; sighed

-      the Forestry officer as he set off to interview the Omahin and tell him

-      our decision. If the carriers did not come in at once, it ran, we would

-      leave all the loads, making him, the Omahin, responsible for their safety,

-      and we would push on with the Mendi and Kroo-boy carriers in the Forestry

-      officer's employ. Those left behind not having carried out their contract

-      of course would then get no pay at all, and this would happen unless they

-      returned to work within a quarter of an hour. The effect was marvellous.

-      The Omahin, of course, did not grasp how exceedingly uncomfortable it

-      would have been for us to leave our gear behind us, and as we had sixteen

-      Kroo boys and Mendi boys the feat was quite feasible, and promptly those

-      Beyin people returned to work and were as eager to get their loads as they

-      had before been to leave them. So I learned another lesson in the

-      management of carriers, and we made our way without further incident back

-      to Axim.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER VIII&mdash;ALONE IN WEST AFRICA

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Cinderella&mdash;A troubled Commissioner&mdash;Few people along the

-      Coast&mdash;No hotels&mdash;Nursing Sister to the rescue&mdash;Sekondi&mdash;A

-      little log-rolling&mdash;A harassed hedge&mdash;Carriers&mdash;Difficulties

-      of the way&mdash;A funeral palaver&mdash;No dinner and no ligjit&mdash;First

-      night alone&mdash;Unruly carriers&mdash;No breakfast&mdash;Crossing the

-      Prah&mdash;A drink from a marmalade pot&mdash;&ldquo;We no be fit, Ma&rdquo;&mdash;The

-      evolution of Grant&mdash;Along the Coast in the dark&mdash;Elmina at last&mdash;A

-      sympathetic medical officer&mdash;&ldquo;I have kicked your policeman.&rdquo;</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>est Africa is

-      Cinderella among the colonies. No one goes there for pleasure, and of

-      those who gain their livelihood from the country three-fourths regard

-      themselves as martyrs and heroes, counting the days till the steamer shall

-      take them home again for that long leave that makes a position there so

-      desirable. The other quarter perhaps, some I know for certain, find much

-      good in the country, many possibilities, but as yet their voice is not

-      heard by the general public above that chorus that drowns its protest.

-      That any man should come to the Gold Coast for pleasure would be

-      surprising; that a woman should come when she had no husband there, and

-      that she should want to go overland all along the sea-board, passed

-      belief. &ldquo;Why? why?&rdquo; asked everyone. &ldquo;A tourist on the Coast,&rdquo; a surprised

-      ship's captain called me, and I disclaimed it promptly. My publisher had

-      commissioned a book and I was there to write it. And then they could not

-      make up their minds whether I or my publisher were the greater fool, for

-      but very few among that little company saw anything to write about in the

-      country.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In Axim the troubled Commissioner set his foot down. I had been to Half

-      Assinie and he felt that ought to satisfy the most exacting woman; but

-      since I was anxious to do more he stretched a point and took me as far as

-      Prince's, an abandoned Branden-burgher fort that is tumbling into ruins,

-      with a native farm in the courtyard, but no farther could I go. Carriers

-      he could not get me, and for the first time I saw a smile on his face, a

-      real relieved smile, when he saw me into the boat that took me to the

-      steamer bound for Sekondi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No one goes along the Coast except an occasional Public Works Department

-      man or a School Inspector; nobody wants to, and it is not easy of

-      accomplishment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Even in the towns it is difficult for the stranger. I do not know what

-      would happen if that stranger had not friends and letters of introduction,

-      for though there are one or two hotels, as yet no one who is not

-      absolutely driven to it by stern necessity stays in a West-African hotel.

-      In Sekondi it is almost impossible, for at this town is the Coast terminus

-      of the railway that runs to the mines at Tarkwa and Kumasi, and the miner

-      both coming and returning seems to require so much liquid refreshment that

-      he is anything but a desirable fellow-housemate, wherefore was I deeply

-      grateful when Miss Oram, the nursing Sister at the Sekondi Hospital, asked

-      me to stay in her quarters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sekondi straggles up and down many hills, and by and by if some definite

-      plan of beautifying be followed may be made rather a pretty place. Even

-      now at night, from some of the bungalows on the hillsides when the

-      darkness gently veils the ugly scars that man's handiwork leaves behind,

-      with its great sweep of beach, its sloping hillsides dotted with lights,

-      the stars above and the lights in the craft on the water that lie just

-      outside the surf, it has a wonderful charm and beauty that there is no

-      denying. And yet there is no doubt Sekondi should not be there. Who is

-      responsible for it I do not know, but there must have been some atrocious

-      piece of log-rolling before Elmina and Cape Coast were deprived of the

-      benefit of the railway to the north. At Sekondi is no harbour. It is but

-      an open roadstead where in days gone past both the Dutch and English held

-      small forts for the benefit of their trade. At Sekondi was no town. At the

-      end of the last century the two little fishing villages marked the Dutch

-      and English forts. Now the English fort is gone, Fort Orange is used as a

-      prison, and a town has sprung into existence that has taken the trade from

-      Cape Coast and Elmina. It is a town that looks like all the English towns,

-      as if no one cared for it and as if everyone lives there because perforce

-      he must. In the European town the roads are made, and down their sides are

-      huge gutters to carry off the storm waters; the Englishman, let it be

-      counted to him for grace, is great on making great cemented gutters that

-      look like young rivers when it rains, and one enterprising Commissioner

-      planted an avenue or two of trees which promise well, only here and there

-      someone has seen fit to cut a tree or two down, and the gap has never been

-      replaced. Some of the bungalows are fairly comfortable, but though purple

-      bougainvillia, flame-coloured flamboyant trees, and dainty pink

-      corrallitis will grow like weeds, decent gardens are few and far between.

-      Instead of giving an impression of tropical verdure as it easily might,

-      Sekondi looks somewhat hot and barren. This, it is only fair to say, I did

-      not notice so much till I had visited German territory and seen what

-      really could be done with the most unpromising material in a tropical

-      climate. But German territory is the beloved child, planned and cared for

-      and thought much of; English territory is the foster-child, received into

-      the household because of the profit it will bring, and most of the towns

-      of the Gold Coast shore bear these marks plain for everyone to read. They

-      suffer, and suffer severely from the iniquitous system that is for ever

-      changing those in authority over them in almost every department.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sekondi Hospital for instance is rather a nice-looking building but it is

-      horribly bare-looking and lacks sadly a garden and greenery. There is, of

-      course, a large reserve all round it where are the houses of the medical

-      officers and nursing Sisters, and in this reserve many things are growing,

-      but the general impression is of something just beginning. This I hardly

-      understood, since the place has been in existence for the last ten years,

-      till I found out that in the last eight months there had been four

-      different doctors head of that hospital, and each of those doctors had had

-      different views as to how the grounds should be laid out. So round the

-      medical officer's bungalow the hedge had been three times planted and

-      three times dug up. Just as I left, the fourth unfortunate hedge was being

-      put in. That, as I write, is nearly six weeks ago, so in all probability

-      they are now considering some new plan. If only someone with knowledge

-      would take in hand the beautifying of these West-African towns and insist

-      on the plans being adhered to! In one of the principal streets of Sekondi

-      is a tamarind tree standing alone, a pleasant green spot in the general

-      glare and heat, a reminder of how well the old Dutch did, a reproach that

-      we who are a great people do not do better. It seems to me it would want

-      so little to make these towns beautiful places, the moral effect would be

-      so great if they were.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I had come to go along the Coast, and the question was carriers; I

-      appealed to the transport. My friend, Mr Migeod, the head of the

-      transport, was on leave, and his second in command shook his head

-      doubtfully. The troops in the north were out on manoeuvres and they had

-      taken almost very carrier he could lay his hands on; but he would see what

-      he could do. How few could I do with? Seventeen, I decided, with two

-      servants, was the very fewest I could move with, and he said he would do

-      his best. I wanted to start on the following Monday, and I chose the hour

-      of ten; also because this was my first essay entirely alone I decided I

-      would not go farther than Chama, nine miles along the Coast to the east.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So, on a Monday morning early in March, behold me with all my goods and

-      chattels, neatly done up into loads not weighing over 60 lbs., laid out in

-      a row in the Sister's compound, and waiting for the carriers. I had begged

-      a policeman for dignity, or protection, I hardly know which, and he came

-      first and ensconced himself under the house, and I sat on the verandah and

-      waited. Presently the carriers came and began gingerly turning over the

-      loads and looking at me doubtfully. They were Mendis and Timinis, not the

-      regular Government carriers, but a scratch lot picked up to fill up gaps

-      in the ranks. I didn't like the looks of them much, but there was nothing

-      else to be done so I prepared to accept them. But it always takes two to

-      make a bargain, and apparently those carriers liked me less than I liked

-      them, for presently they one and all departed, and I began a somewhat

-      heated discussion across the telephone with the head of the transport.

-      Looking back, I don't see what he could have done more than he did. It is

-      impossible to evolve carriers out of nothing, but then I didn't see it

-      quite in that light. I wanted carriers; I was looking to him to produce

-      them, and I hadn't got them. He gave me to understand he thought I was

-      unreasonable, and we weren't quite as nice to each other as we might have

-      been. The men, he said, were frightened, and I thought that was

-      unreasonable, for there was nothing really terrifying about me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At three o'clock another gang arrived with a note from the transport

-      officer. They were subsisted for sixteen days, and I might start there and

-      then for Accra.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I should have preferred to have subsisted my men myself; that is, given

-      them each threepence daily, as I had on the way to the French border,

-      seeing that they were not regular Government men; but as the thing was

-      done there was nothing for it but to make the best of it, and I went down,

-      hunted up my policeman, and saw the loads on to the men's heads. I saw

-      them start out in a long string, and then the thing that always happens in

-      Africa happened. Both my servants were missing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Zacco, a boy with a scarred face from the north, did not much matter, but

-      Grant knew my ways and I could trust him. Clearly, out in the wilds by

-      myself with strange carriers and without even a servant, I should be very

-      badly off, and I hesitated. Not for long though. If I were going to let

-      little things connected with personal comfort stand in my way I knew I

-      should never get to Accra, so I decided to start; my servants might catch

-      me up, and if they did not, I would rely on the ministrations of the

-      hammock-boys. If the worst came to the worst, I supposed I could put my

-      dignity in my pocket and cook myself something, or live on tinned meat and

-      biscuits; and so, leaving directions with my hostess that those boys were

-      to be severely reprimanded when they turned up, I got into my hammock and

-      started.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The road to Accra from Sekondi is along the seashore, and so, to be very

-      Irish, there is no road. Of a truth, very few people there are who choose

-      to go by land, as it is so much easier to go by steamer, and the way,

-      generally speaking, is along the sand. Just outside Sekondi the beach is

-      broken by huge rocks that run out into the sea, apparently barring the way

-      effectually, and those rocks had to be negotiated. My hammock-boys

-      stopped, and I got out and watched my men with the loads scrambling over

-      the rocks, and one thing I was sure of, on my own feet I could not go that

-      way. I mentioned that to my demurring men, and insisted that over those

-      rocks they had to get me somehow, if it took the eight hammock-boys to do

-      it. And over those rocks I was got without setting foot out of my hammock,

-      and I fairly purred with pride, most unjustly setting it down to my own

-      prowess and feeling it marked a distinct stage on my journey eastwards. We

-      were, all of us, pleased as we went on again in all the glare of a

-      tropical afternoon, and I mentally sniffed at the men who had hinted I was

-      not able to manage carriers. There was not a more uplifted woman in all

-      Africa than I was for about the space of half an hour. It is trite to say

-      pride goes before a fall. We have all heard it from our cradles and I

-      ought to have remembered it, but I didn't. Presently we came to a village,

-      or rather two villages, with a stream dividing them, and there was a

-      tremendous tom-toming going on, and the monotonous sound of natives

-      chanting. The place was surrounded by thick greenery, only there was a

-      broad way between the houses, a brown road with great waterways and holes

-      in it, and the occasional shade-tree, under which the village rests in the

-      heat of the day, and holds its little markets and its little councils and

-      even does a stray job of cooking. The tom-toming went on, and men appeared

-      blowing horns. They were evidently very excited, and I remember still,

-      with a shudder, the staring, bloodshot eyes of two who passed my hammock

-      braying on horns. Most of my men could speak a little English, so I asked

-      not without some little anxiety, &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It be funeral palaver, Ma.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh, well, a funeral palaver was no great matter, surely. I had never heard

-      of these Coast natives doing anything more than drink palm wine to

-      celebrate the occasion. Some of those we passed had evidently drunk

-      copiously already, and I was thankful we were passing. We came to the

-      little river, we crossed the ford, and then we stopped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We go drink water, Ma,&rdquo; said my men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I ought to have said &ldquo;No,&rdquo; but it was a very hot afternoon, and the

-      request was not unreasonable. They had had to work hard carrying me over

-      those rocks so I got out and let them go. And then, as I might have known,

-      I waited. I grew cross, but it is no good losing your temper when there is

-      no one to be made uneasy by it, and then I grew frightened; but, if it is

-      foolish to lose one's temper, it is the height of folly to be afraid when

-      there is no help possible. I was standing on the bank of the little river

-      that we had just forded, my hammock was at my feet, all around was

-      greenery, tropical greenery of palm and creeper, not very dense compared

-      to other bush I have seen, but dense enough to prevent one's stepping off

-      the road; before me was the village, with its mud walls and its thatched

-      roofs, and behind me were the groves of trees on the other side of the

-      water that hid the village, from which came the sound of savage revelry.

-      Never have I felt more alone, and yet Sekondi was a bare five miles away.

-      I comforted myself with the reflection that nothing would be likely to

-      happen, but the thought of those half-naked men with the bloodshot,

-      staring eyes was most unpleasantly prominent in my mind. Some little naked

-      boys came and bathed and stared at me; I didn't know whether to welcome

-      them as companions or not. They understood no English, and when asked

-      where were my men only stared the harder. I tried to take a photograph,

-      but the policeman, who carried my stand, was also absent at the funeral,

-      and I fear my hand shook, for I have never seen that picture. Then, at

-      last, when I was absolutely despairing, a hammock-boy turned up. He was a

-      most ragged ruffian, with a printed cloth by way of trousers, a very

-      openwork singlet, all torn away at one arm, a billycock hat in the last

-      stages of dilapidation, and a large red woollen comforter with a border of

-      black, blue, and yellow. That comforter fascinated me, and I looked at it

-      as I talked to him, and wondered where it had been made. It had been

-      knitted, and many of the stitches had been dropped, and I pictured to

-      myself the sewing-party sitting round the fire doing useful work, while

-      someone read aloud one of Father Benson's books. My hammock-boy looked at

-      me as if he wondered how I was taking it, and wiped his mouth with the

-      tail of the comforter, where they had used up the odd bits of wool. He

-      flung it across his shoulder and a long, dropped red stitch caught over

-      his ear.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Where be the men?&rdquo; I was very angry indeed, which was very rough on the

-      only one of the crowd who had turned up. He was very humble, and I

-      suggested he should go and look for them, and tell them that if &ldquo;they no

-      come quick, they get no pay.&rdquo; He departed on his errand, and I waited with

-      a sinking heart. Even if there was no danger, and I was by no means sure

-      of that, with that tom-toming and that chant in my ears, I could not

-      afford to go back and announce that I had failed. All my outlay had been

-      for nothing. Another long wait, and more little boys to look at me. The

-      evening was coming; here in the hollow, down among the trees, the gloom

-      was already gathering, and I began to think that neither Chama nor Sekondi

-      would see me that night. I wondered what it would be like to spend the

-      night under the trees, and whether there were any beasts that might molest

-      me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Toom, toom, toom,&rdquo; went the village drum, as if to remind me there might

-      be worse things than spending the night under the trees, and then my

-      friend with the comforter appeared, leading two of the other hammock-boys;

-      one wore a crocheted, red tam-o'-shanter that fell over his face&mdash;probably

-      made at the same sewing-party. It was the same wool.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I talked to those three men. Considering they were the best behaved of the

-      lot, it comes back to me now that I was rather hard on them. I pointed out

-      the dire pains and penalties that befell hammock-boys who did not pay

-      proper attention to their duties, and I trusted that the fact that I was

-      utterly incapable of inflicting those penalties was not as patent to them

-      as it was to me, and then I decreed that my friend with the comforter

-      should go back and try and retrieve a fourth man while the other two

-      stayed with me. After another long wait he got that fourth man and we

-      started off, I dignifiedly wrathful&mdash;at least I hope I was dignified;

-      there was no doubt about the wrath&mdash;and they bearing evident marks of

-      having consumed a certain quantity of the funeral palm wine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was dark when we reached Chama, at least as dark as it ever is on a

-      bright, starlight night in the Tropics, and we came out of the gloom of

-      the trees to find a dark bungalow raised high on stilts on a cement

-      platform, looming up against the star-spangled sky, and then another

-      surprise, a comforting surprise, awaited me: on that cement platform were

-      two white spots, and those white spots rose up to greet me, shamefaced,

-      humble, contrite, my servants. They had evidently slunk past me without

-      being seen, and I was immensely relieved. But naturally I did not say so.

-      I mentioned that I was very angry with them, and that it would take a long

-      course of faithful service to make up for so serious a lapse, and they

-      received my reproof very humbly, and apparently never realised that I was

-      just about as lonely a woman as there was in the world at that moment, and

-      would gladly have bartered all my wild aspirations after fame and fortune

-      for the comfortable certainty that I was going to spend a safe night. It

-      certainly does not jump with my firm faith in thought transference that

-      none of those men apparently ever discovered I was afraid. I should have

-      thought it was written all over me, but also, afraid as I was, it never

-      occurred to me to turn back; so, if the one thought impressed them,

-      perhaps the other did too.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then I waited on that dark verandah. There was some scanty Government

-      furniture in the rest-house, and my repentant servant fetched me out a

-      chair, and I sat and waited. I looked out; there was the clearing round

-      the house, the gloom of the dense greenery that grew up between the house

-      and the seashore, while east ran the road to the town of Chama, about a

-      ten minutes' walk distant, and on the west a narrow track hardly

-      discernible in the gloom came out of the greenery. Up that I had come and

-      up that I expected my men. And it seemed I might expect them. No one was

-      going to deny me that privilege. Still, I began to feel distinctly better.

-      At least I had arrived at Chama, and four hammock-boys and two servants

-      were very humbly at my service. I wasn't going to spend the night in the

-      open at the mercy of the trees and the unknown beasts, and I laughed at

-      the idea of being afraid of the trees, though to my mind African trees

-      have a distinct personality of their own. Well, there was nothing to be

-      done but wait, and I waited in the dark, for as no carriers had come in

-      there was no possibility of a light, or of dinner either for that matter.

-      Grant was extremely sympathetic and most properly shocked at the behaviour

-      of the carriers. No punishment could be too great for men who could treat

-      his missus in such an outrageous manner. In the excitement and bustle of

-      getting off I had eaten very little that day, so I was very hungry now; it

-      added to my woes and decreased my fear. Nothing surely could be going to

-      happen to a woman who was so very commonplacely hungry. At last, about ten

-      o'clock, I saw my loads come straggling out of the gloom of the trees on

-      to the little path up to the platform, and then, before I quite realised

-      what was happening, the verandah was full of carriers, drunk and

-      hilarious, and not at all inclined to recognise the enormity of their

-      crime. Something had to be done, I knew. It would be the very worst of

-      policies to allow my verandah to be turned into pandemonium. The headman

-      had lighted a lantern, that I made Grant take, and by its flickering light

-      I singled out my policeman, cheerfully happy, but still, thank goodness,

-      holding on to the sticks of my camera. Him I tackled angrily. How dared he

-      allow drunken carriers on my verandah, or anywhere near me? Everyone, on

-      putting down his load, was to go downstairs immediately. How we cleared

-      that verandah I'm sure I don't know. The four virtuous haminock-boys and

-      Grant and Zacco, I suppose, all took a hand, backed by their stern missus,

-      and presently I and my servants had it to ourselves with a humble and

-      repentant policeman sitting on the top of the steps, and Grant set about

-      getting my dinner. It was too late, I decided, to cook anything beyond a

-      little coffee, so I had tinned tongues and tinned apricots this my first

-      night alone in Africa. Then came the question of going to bed. There were

-      several rooms in the rest-house, but the verandah seemed to me a

-      pleasanter place where to sleep on a hot night. Of course, I was alone,

-      and would it be safer inside? The doors and windows were frail enough,

-      besides it would be impossible to sleep with them shut, so I, to my boy's

-      intense astonishment, decided for the verandah, and there I set up my bed,

-      just an ordinary camp-bed, with mosquito curtains over it, and I went to

-      bed and wondered if I could sleep.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      First I found myself listening, listening intently, and I heard a thousand

-      noises, the night birds calling, the skirl of the untiring insects, a

-      faint tom-toming and sounds of revelry from the village, which gave things

-      an unpleasant air of savagery, the crash of the ceaseless surf on the

-      beach. I decided I was too frightened to sleep and I heartily wished

-      myself back in England, writing mystery stories for a livelihood, and then

-      I began to think that I was most desperately tired, that the mosquito

-      curtains were a great protection, and before I realised I was sleepy was

-      sound asleep and remembered no more till I awakened wondering where I was,

-      and saw the first streaks of light in the east. Before the first faint

-      streaks of light and sunrise is but a short time in the Tropics, and now I

-      knew that everything depended upon me, so I flew out of bed and dressed

-      with great promptitude, and there was Grant with early-morning tea and

-      then breakfast. But no carriers; and I had given orders we were to start

-      at half-past five. It was long past that; six o'clock, no carriers,

-      half-past. I sent Zacco for the headman and he like the raven from the ark

-      was no more seen. I sent Grant and he returned, not with an olive branch

-      but with the policeman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Where are the carriers?&rdquo; I demanded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They chop,&rdquo; said he nonchalantly, as if it were no affair of his.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Chop! At this hour in the morning?&rdquo; It was close on seven.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He signified that they did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Bring the headman.&rdquo; And I was a very angry white missus indeed. Since I

-      had got through the night all right I felt I was bound to do somthing

-      today and I was not nearly so afraid as I had been.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The headman wept palm-wine tears. &ldquo;They chop,&rdquo; he said and he sobbed and

-      gulped and wiped his face with the back of his hand like a discomfited

-      Somersetshire laburer. His condition immensely improved my courage. I was

-      the white woman all over dealing with the inferior race, and I had not a

-      doubt as to what should be done.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Policeman, you follow me.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He did not like it much, my little Fanti policeman, because he feared

-      these Mendis and Timinis who could have eaten him alive, but he followed

-      me however reluctantly. I wanted him as representing law and order. The

-      thinking I intended to do myself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We walked down to the village and there in the middle of the road were my

-      carriers in two parties, each seated round a large enamelled-iron basin

-      full of fish and rice. They did chop. They looked up at me with a grin,

-      but I had quite made up my mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Policeman,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;no man chops so late. Throw away the chop.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He hesitated. He could not make up his mind which he was most afraid of,

-      me or the men. Finally he decided that I was the most terrifying person

-      and he gingerly picked up one of those basins and carefully put it down

-      under a shrub.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Policeman,&rdquo; I said, and I was emphatic, &ldquo;that's not the way to throw away

-      chop. Scatter it round,&rdquo; and with one glance at me to see if I meant what

-      I said, he scattered it on the ground. What surprised me was that the men

-      let him. Certainly those round the second dish seized it and fled up

-      towards the rest-house, and we came after them. When we arrived the men

-      were still eating, but there was still some rice in the dish, and I made

-      the policeman seize it and fling it away, and then every one of those men

-      came back meekly to work, picked up their loads or waited round the

-      hammock for me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I saw the loads off with the headman, and told him to get across the Prah

-      River if he could and on to Kommenda, where I proposed to have my

-      luncheon, and then I stayed behind to take some photographs of the old

-      fort. It took me some time to take my pictures. The heat was intense, and

-      beyond the fort, which is quaintly old-world, there is not much to see.

-      The town is the usual Coast village built of clay, which they call swish,

-      with thatched roofs; the streets between the houses are hot and dry and

-      bare, and little naked children disport themselves there with the goats,

-      sheep, pigs, and chickens. There are the holes from which the earth has

-      been taken to make the swish&mdash;man-traps in the night,

-      mosquitobreeding places at all times&mdash;and there are men and women

-      standing gossiping in the street, wondering at the unusual sight of a

-      white woman, just for all the world as they might do in a remote Cornish

-      village if a particularly smart motor passed by. They are fishing

-      villages, these villages along the Coast, living by the fishing, and

-      growing just a little maize and plantains and yams for their own immediate

-      needs; and it is a curious thing to say, but they give one the same

-      sleepy, out-of-the-world feeling that a small village in Cornwall does.

-      There is not in them the go and the promise there is in an Ashanti

-      village, the dormant wealth waiting to be awakened one feels there is

-      along the Volta. No, these places were exploited hundreds of years ago by

-      the men who built the fort that frowns over them still, and they are

-      content to live on from day to day with just enough to keep them going,

-      with the certain knowledge that no man can die of starvation, and when a

-      young man wants distraction I suppose he goes to the bigger towns. So I

-      found nothing of particular interest in Chama, and I went on till I

-      reached the Prah River, just where it breaks out across the sands and

-      rushes to meet the ocean.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I wondered in that journey to Accra many times whether my face was set

-      hard, whether my lips were not one firm, stern line that could never

-      unbend and look kindly again. My small camp mirror that I consulted was

-      exceedingly unflattering, but if I had not before been certain that no

-      half-measures were of any use I should have been certain of it when I

-      reached the river. There lay my loads, and sitting down solemnly watching

-      them like so many crows, rather dissipated crows, were my men. They rose

-      up as my hammock came into view.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Missus, men want drink water. It be hot.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was hot, very hot, and the river it seemed was salt; moreover, the only

-      house in sight, and that was a good way off, was the hut apparently

-      belonging to the ferryman. I looked at them, and my spirits rose; it was

-      borne in on me that I had them well in hand, for there was no reason why

-      they should not have gone off in a body to get that much-needed water.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I gave the order, &ldquo;One man go fetch water.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Why they obeyed me I don't know now, and why they didn't take the bucket I

-      don't know now. I ought to have sent one man with a bucket; but experience

-      always has to be bought, and I only realised that I was master of the

-      situation, and must not spoil it by undue haste. So I solemnly stood there

-      under my sun umbrella and watched those men have a drink one by one out of

-      an empty marmalade pot. Whenever, in the future, I see one of those golden

-      tins, it will call up to my memory a blazing hot day, a waste of sand and

-      coarse grass, a wide river flowing through it, and a row of loads with a

-      ragged company of black men sitting solemnly beside them waiting while one

-      of their number brought them a drink. That drink was a tremendous piece of

-      business, but we were through with it at last, and though I was rather

-      weary and very hot I was inclined to be triumphant. I felt I had the men

-      fairly well in hand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Still, they weren't all that I could have desired. The road was very, very

-      bad indeed, sometimes it was down on the heavy sand, sometimes the rocks

-      were too rough&mdash;the hammock had to be engineered up and down the bank

-      by devious and uncomfortable ways, sometimes we stopped to buy fruit in a

-      village, and sometimes the men stopped and declared: &ldquo;Missus, oder

-      hammock-boy, he no come.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Then I was hard. I knew it was no good being anything else.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If hammock-boy no come you go on. I no stop.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And they went, very slowly and reluctantly, but they went. It seemed

-      cruel, but I soon grasped the fact that if I once allowed them to wait for

-      the relief men who lingered there always would be lingerers, and we should

-      crawl to Accra at the rate of five miles a day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They sang songs as they went, and this my first day out the song took a

-      most personal turn.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If man no get chop,&rdquo; they intoned in monotonous recitative, &ldquo;he go die.

-      Missus frow away our chop&mdash;&mdash;-&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The deduction was obvious and I answered it at once. &ldquo;All right, you go

-      die. I no care. If men no come to work they may die.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But they went very badly indeed, and it was after two o'clock in the

-      afternoon before we arrived at Kommenda on the seashore, where there is a

-      village and a couple of old forts falling into decay. Here, inside the

-      courtyard of one of them, which is Ju-ju, I had my table and chair put out

-      and my luncheon served. The feeling of triumph was still upon me. Already

-      I was nearer Elmina than Sekondi and I felt in all probability, bad as

-      they were, the men would go on. But, before I had finished my luncheon, my

-      serenity received another shock. Of course no one dared disturb so

-      terrible a person at her chop, but, after I had finished, while I was

-      endeavouring to instruct Zacco in the way in which a kettle might be

-      induced to boil without letting all the smoke go down the spout&mdash;I

-      wanted some coffee&mdash;Grant came up with a perturbed countenance and

-      said the headman wanted to speak to me. I sent for him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Missus,&rdquo; he began propitiatingly, &ldquo;man be tired too much. You stop here

-      to-night; we take you Cape Coast to-morrow.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0200.jpg" alt="0200 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0200.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      For the moment I was very properly wrathful. Then I reflected&mdash;the

-      white men did not understand, the majority of them, my desire to see

-      Elmina, the most important castle on the Coast, how then should these

-      black men understand. There was a tiny rest-house built on the bastion of

-      the fort here, and looking at it I decided it was just the last place I

-      should like to spend the night in. I did not expect to meet a white man at

-      Elmina, but at least it must be far nearer civilisation than this.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I looked at my headman more in sorrow than in anger. He was a

-      much-troubled person, and evidently looked upon me as a specimen of the

-      genus &ldquo;Massa.&rdquo; I said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;That is a very beautiful idea, headman, and does you credit. The only

-      drawback I see to it is that I do not want to go to Cape Coast to-morrow,

-      and I do want to go to Elmina to-night.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He scratched his head in a bewildered fashion, transferring a very elderly

-      tourist cap from one hand to the other in order that he might give both

-      sides a proper chance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Man no be fit,&rdquo; he got out at last.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, they no be fit. Send for the Chief,&rdquo; and I turned away and went on

-      with Zacco's instructions in the art of making coffee. Still, in my own

-      mind, I was very troubled. That rest-house on the bastion was a

-      horrid-looking hole, and I had heard it whispered that the men of Kommenda

-      were very truculent. If I had been far from a white man at Chama, I was

-      certainly farther still now at Kommenda. Still, my common sense told me I

-      must not allow I was dismayed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Presently I was told the Chief had arrived, and I went outside and

-      interviewed him. He wasn't a very big chief, and his stick of office only

-      had a silver top to it with the name of the village written on it in large

-      letters. He could speak no English, but with my headman and his linguist

-      he soon grasped the fact that I wanted more carriers, and agreed to supply

-      them. Then I went back inside the fort and he joined the group outside who

-      had come to look at the white woman, and who, I am glad to say, all kept

-      respectfully outside. I seated myself again and sent for the headman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Headman, you bring in man who no be fit.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The headman went outside and presently returned with the downcast, ragged

-      scarecrow who had been carrying my bed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You no be fit?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No, Ma.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I pointed out a place against the wall.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You go sit there. You go back to Sekondi. I get 'nother man. Headman,

-      fetch in other man who no be fit.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The culprit sat himself down most reluctantly, afraid, whether of me or

-      the Ju-ju that was supposed to reign over the place, I know not, and the

-      headman brought in another man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You no be fit?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No, Ma&rdquo;; but it was a very reluctant no.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Sit down over there. Another man, headman,&rdquo; but somehow I did not think

-      there would be many more. And for once my intuitions were right. The

-      headman came back reporting the rest were fit. I felt triumphant. Then the

-      unfortunate scare-crows against the wall rose up humbly and protested

-      eagerly: &ldquo;we be fit.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But I was brutally stern. It cost me dear in the end, but it might have

-      cost me dearer if I had taken them on. However, I had no intention of

-      doing any such thing. They had declared themselves of their own free will

-      &ldquo;no fit.&rdquo; I was determined they should remain &ldquo;no fit&rdquo; whatever it cost me

-      to fill their places. I must rule this caravan, and I must decide where we

-      should halt. I engaged two Kommenda men to carry the loads, and when I had

-      taken photographs of the fort&mdash;how thankful I was that they turned

-      out well, for Kommenda is one of the most unget-at-able places I know, and

-      before a decent photographer gets there again I don't suppose there will

-      be one stone left on another&mdash;I started after my men to Elmina.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The carriers who were &ldquo;no fit&rdquo; came with us. Why, I hardly know, but they

-      were very, very repentant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was four o'clock before we left Kommenda, and since we had twelve miles

-      to go I hardly expected to arrive before dark, but I did think we might

-      arrive about seven. I reckoned without my host, or rather without my

-      carriers. There was more than a modicum of truth in the statement that

-      they were no fit. The dissipation of the day before, and the lack of chop

-      to-day&mdash;carriers always make a big meal early in the morning&mdash;were

-      beginning to tell; besides they were very bad specimens of their class,

-      and they lingered and halted and crawled till I began to think we should

-      be very lucky indeed if we got into Elmina before midnight. The darkness

-      fell, and in the little villages the lights began to appear&mdash;these

-      Coast villagers use a cheap, a very cheap sort of kerosene lamp&mdash;and

-      more than once my headman appealed to me. &ldquo;We stop here, Ma.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I was very tired myself, now, very tired, indeed, and gladly would I have

-      stopped, but those negro houses seen by the light of a flickering,

-      evil-smelling lamp were impossible; besides I realised it would be very

-      bad to give in to my men. Finally we left the last little village behind,

-      and before us lay a long, crescent-shaped bay, with a twinkling point of

-      light at the farther horn&mdash;Elmina, I guessed. It was quite dark now,

-      sea and sky mingled, a line of white marked the breakers where the water

-      met the sands, and on my left was the low shore hardly rising twenty feet

-      above the sea-level, and covered with short, wiry sea-grasses, small

-      shrubs, and the creeping bean. The men who were carrying me staggered

-      along, stumbling over every inequality of the ground, and I remembered my

-      youthful reading in &ldquo;Uncle Tom's Cabin,&rdquo; and felt I very much resembled

-      Legree. There was, too, a modicum of sympathy growing up in my mind for

-      Legree and all slave-drivers. Perhaps there was something to be said for

-      them; they certainly must have had a good deal to put up with. Presently

-      my men dropped the hammock, and I scrambled out and looked at them

-      angrily. The carriers were behind, the policeman&mdash;my protection and

-      my dignity&mdash;was nowhere to be seen, my two servants were just behind,

-      where they ought to have been, and my four hammock-boys looked at me in

-      sullen misery.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We no be fit.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The case was beyond all words at my command, and I set my face to the

-      east, and began to walk in the direction of the feeble little light I

-      could see twinkling in the far distance, and which I concluded rightly, as

-      it turned out, must be Elmina.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My servants overtook me, and Grant, who had been a most humble person when

-      first I engaged him, who had been crushed with a sense of his own

-      unworthiness the night before, now felt it incumbent upon himself to

-      protest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You no walk, Ma. It no be fit.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      How sick I was of that &ldquo;no be fit.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Grant,&rdquo; I said with dignity, at least I hope it was with dignity,

-      abandoning pigeon English, &ldquo;there is no other way. Tell those boys if I

-      walk to Elmina they get no pay,&rdquo; and I stalked on, wishing at the bottom

-      of my heart I knew something of the manners and customs of the African

-      snake. In my own country I should have objected strongly to walking in

-      such grass, when I could not see my way, and it just shows the natural

-      selfishness of humanity that this thought had never occurred to me while

-      my hammock-boys were carrying me. I don't suppose I had gone half a mile

-      when Grant and the boys overtook me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ma,&rdquo; said Grant with importance, the way he achieved importance that day

-      was amazing, &ldquo;you get in. They carry you now.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They no be fit.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They carry you,&rdquo; declared he emphatically.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We try, Ma,&rdquo; came a humble murmur from the boys, and I got in once more

-      and we staggered along.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      How I hated it all, and what a brute I felt. I thought to offer a little

-      encouragement, so I said after a little time, when I thought the light was

-      getting appreciably larger: &ldquo;Grant, which of these men carry me best?&rdquo; and

-      thought I would offer a suitable reward.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They all carry you very badly, Ma,&rdquo; came back Grant's stern reply; &ldquo;that

-      one,&rdquo; and he pointed to the unfortunate who bore the lefthand front end of

-      the hammock, &ldquo;carry you worst.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now, here was a dilemma. The light wasn't very far away now, and I could

-      see against the sky the loom of a great building.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;each of the other three shall have threepence

-      extra,&rdquo; and the lefthand front man dropped his end of the hammock with

-      something very like a sob, and left the other three to struggle on as best

-      they might. We were close to Elmina now. There was a row of palms on our

-      right between us and the surf, and I could see houses with tiny lights in

-      them, and so could the men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I will walk,&rdquo; I said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the three remaining were very eager. &ldquo;No, Ma; no, Ma, we carry you.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Then there appeared a man in European clothes, and him I stopped and

-      interviewed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Is that the Castle of Elmina?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said he, evidently mightily surprised at being interviewed by a

-      white woman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Who is in charge?&rdquo; and I expected to hear some negro post office or

-      Custom official.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Dr Dove,&rdquo; said the stranger in the slurring tones of the negro.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A white man?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Yes, a white man.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      For all my weariness, I could have shouted for joy. Such an unexpected

-      piece of good luck! I had not expected to meet a white man this side of

-      Cape Coast. I had thought the great Castle here was abandoned to the

-      tender mercies of the negro official.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You can get in,&rdquo; went on my new friend; &ldquo;the drawbridge is not down yet.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      A drawbridge! How mediaeval it sounded, quite in keeping with the day I

-      had spent, the day that had begun in Chama fifty years ago.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We staggered along the causeway, the causeway made so many hundreds of

-      years ago by the old Portuguese adventurers; the sentry rose up in

-      astonishment, and we staggered across it into the old courtyard; I got out

-      of my hammock at the foot of a flight of broad stone steps, built when men

-      built generously, and a policeman, not mine, raced up before me. All was

-      in darkness in the great hall, and then I heard an unmistakable white

-      man's voice in tones of surprise and unbelief.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A missus, a&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I stepped forward in the pitchy darkness, wondering what pitfalls there

-      might be by the way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I am a white woman,&rdquo; I said uncertainly, for I was very weary, and I had

-      an uneasy feeling that this white man, like so many others I had met,

-      might think I had no business to be there, and I didn't feel quite equal

-      to asserting my rights just at that moment, and then I met an outstretched

-      hand. It needed no more. I knew at once. It was a kindly, friendly,

-      helpful hand. Young or old, pretty or plain, ragged, smart, or

-      disreputable, whatever I was, I felt the owner of that hand would be good

-      to me. Dr Duff, for the negro had pronounced his name after his kind, led

-      me upstairs through the darkness, with many apologies for the want of

-      light, into a big room, dimly lighted by a kerosene lamp, and then we

-      looked at each other.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;God bless my soul! Where on earth did you come from?&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No one told me there was a white man in Elmina,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;and the relief

-      of finding one was immense.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But not till I was washed and bathed, dressed, fed, and in my right mind

-      did we compare notes, and then we sat up till midnight discussing things.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It seemed to me I had sounded the depths, I had mastered the difficulties

-      of African travel. My new friend listened sympathetically as he drank his

-      whisky-and-soda, and then he flattered my little vanities as they had

-      never been flattered since I had set out on my journeyings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Not one woman in ten thousand would have got through.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I liked it, but I think he was wrong. Any woman who had once started would

-      have got through simply and solely because there was absolutely nothing

-      else to be done. It is a great thing in life to find there is only one

-      way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Dr Duff descended to commonplace matters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I hope you don't mind,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I've kicked your policeman.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;is a thing he has been asking someone to do ever since we

-      left Sekondi a thousand years ago.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER IX&mdash;AN OLD DUTCH TOWN

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>But one man of the ruling race&mdash;Overlooked Elmina&mdash;Deadly

-      fever&mdash;The reason why&mdash;Magnificent position&mdash;Ideal for a

-      capital&mdash;Absence of tsetse&mdash;Loyal to their Dutch masters&mdash;Difficulty

-      in understanding incorruptibility of English officials&mdash;Reported gold

-      in Elmina&mdash;The stranded school-inspector&mdash;&ldquo;Potable water&rdquo;&mdash;Preferred

-      the chance of guinea-worm to trouble&mdash;Stern German head-teacher&mdash;Cape

-      Coast&mdash;Wonderful native telegraphy&mdash;Haunted Castle&mdash;Truculent

-      people.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>lmina means, of

-      course, the mine, and the reason for the name is lost in the mist of ages.

-      Certain it is there is no mine nearer than those at Tarkwa, at least two

-      days' journey away, but in the old Portuguese and Dutch days Elmina was a

-      rich port. It is a port still, though an abandoned one, and you may land

-      from a boat comfortably on to great stone steps, as you may land in no

-      other place along the Guinea Coast. On the 17th of May in this year of our

-      Lord, 1911, there raged along the Coast a hurricane such as there has not

-      been for many a long day, and the aftermath of that hurricane was found in

-      a terrific surf, which for several days made landing at any port

-      difficult, in some cases impossible. The mail steamer found she could land

-      no mails at Cape Coast, and then was forgotten, neglected Elmina

-      remembered, and the mails were landed there, eight miles to the west, and

-      carried overland to their destination.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Yet is there but one man of the ruling race in Elmina, and the fine old

-      Castle, where the Portuguese and Dutch governors of Guinea reigned, is

-      almost abandoned to the desecrating hand of the negro officials&mdash;Custom

-      and post office men! Why, when the Gold Coast was looking for a capital,

-      they overlooked Elmina is explained usually by the declaration that yellow

-      fever was very bad there; and I conclude it was for the same reason that

-      they passed it by when they wanted a seaport for the inland railway.

-      Somehow it seems an inadequate reason. It would have been cheaper surely

-      to search for the cause of the ill-health than to abandon so promising a

-      site. The reason lies deeper than that. It is to be found in that strong

-      feeling in the Englishman&mdash;that feeling which is going to ruin him as

-      a colonising nation now that rivals are in the field, unless he looks to

-      his ways&mdash;that one place in &ldquo;such a poisonous country&rdquo; is as good or

-      as bad as another, and therefore if people die in one place, &ldquo;let's try

-      another beastly hole.&rdquo; Die they certainly did in Elmina. It was taken over

-      from the Dutch in 1874, and in 1895 the records make ghastly reading.

-      &ldquo;Yellow fever, died,&rdquo; you read, not once but over and over again. Young

-      and strong and hopeful, and always the record is the same, and now,

-      looking at it with seeing eyes and an understanding mind, the explanation

-      is so simple, the cure so easy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Round this great Castle is a double line of moats, each broad and deep and

-      about half a mile in extent, and these moats were full to the brim of

-      water, stagnant water, an ideal breeding place for that entirely

-      domesticated animal, the yellow-fever mosquito&mdash;<i>stegmia</i>, I

-      believe, is the correct term. Get but one yellow-fever patient, let him

-      get bitten by a mosquito or two, and the thing was done. But sixteen years

-      ago they were not content with such simple ways as that. It seems there

-      was a general sort of feeling then along the Coast, it has not quite gone

-      yet, that chill was a thing greatly to be dreaded, and so instead of

-      taking advantage of the magnificent position so wisely chosen by the

-      Portuguese mariners, where the fresh air from the ocean might blow night

-      and day, they mewed themselves up in quarters on the landward side of the

-      Castle, so built that it is almost impossible to get a thorough draught of

-      air through them. The result in such a climate is languor and weariness,

-      an ideal breeding ground for malaria or yellow fever. And so they died,

-      God rest their souls; some of them were gallant gentlemen, but they died

-      like flies, and Elmina, for no fault of its own, was abandoned.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0212.jpg" alt="0212 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0212.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And yet the old Portuguese were right. It is an ideal site for a capital.

-      The Castle is on a promontory which juts out into the sea, and is almost

-      surrounded by water, for the Sweetwater River, which was very salt when I

-      was there, runs into the sea in such a fashion as to leave but a narrow

-      neck of land between the Castle and the mainland. The land rises behind

-      the town, it is clear of scrub and undergrowth, so that horses and cattle

-      may live, as there is no harbour for that curse of West Africa, the tsetse

-      fly; there is sufficient open space for the building of a large town, and

-      it is nearer to Kumasi, whence comes all the trade from the north, than

-      Sekondi, which was chosen, instead of it, as a railway terminus. A

-      grievous pity! It is England's proud boast that she lets the man on the

-      spot have a free hand, knowing that he must be the better judge of local

-      conditions and needs; it is West Africa's misfortune that she had so evil

-      a reputation that the best and wisest men did not go there; and hence

-      these grave mistakes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had always believed that every coloured man was yearning to come under

-      the British flag, therefore was I much astonished to hear that in 1874,

-      when Britain took over this part of the Coast, the natives resented the

-      change of masters very bitterly. They would not submit, and the big

-      village to the west of the fort, old Elmina native town, was in open

-      rebellion. At last the guns from the fort were turned upon it, the

-      inhabitants evacuated it hastily, it was bombarded, and the order went

-      forth that no one should come back to it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Even now, thirty-seven years later, the old law which prohibits the native

-      from digging on the site of the old town is still in force, and since the

-      natives were in the habit of burying their wealth beneath their huts,

-      great store of gold dust is supposed to be hidden there. Again and again

-      the solitary official in charge of Elmina has been approached by someone

-      asking permission to dig there, generally with the intimation that if only

-      the permission be granted, a large percentage of the hidden treasure shall

-      find its way into the pockets of that official.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It is hard,&rdquo; said Dr Duff, &ldquo;for the native mind to grasp the fact that

-      the English official is incorruptible, and the law must be kept&mdash;but

-      I confess,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I should like to know if there really is gold in

-      old Elmina.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The town has been a fine town once. The houses are substantially built of

-      stone, they are approached by fine flights of stone steps, there are the

-      ruins of an old casino, and picturesque in its desolation is an old Dutch

-      garden. If I were to describe the magnificent old Castle, I should fill

-      half the book; it is so well worth writing about. I walked up the hill

-      behind the Castle where they have built up the roadway with discarded

-      cannon, and there I took photographs and wished I had a little more time

-      to spare for the place, and vowed that when I reached England the British

-      Museum should help me to find out all there is to be known about this

-      magnificent place and the men who have gone before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0216.jpg" alt="0216 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0216.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      For the man of the present it must be a little difficult to live in, if it

-      is only for the intense loneliness. It must be lonely to live in the bush

-      with the eternal forest surrounding you, but at least there a man is an

-      outpost of Empire, the trade is coming to him, he may find interest and

-      amusement in the breaking of a road or the planning of a garden, while the

-      making of a town would fill all his time, but in Elmina there are no such

-      consolations. The place is dead, slain by the English; the young men go

-      away following the trade, and the old mammies with wrinkled faces and

-      withered breasts lounge about the streets and talk of departed glories.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had not expected to find one white man here, and I found two, the other

-      being a school-inspector who was on his way along the Coast inspecting the

-      native schools. He was in a fix, for he had sent on his carriers and

-      stores and could get no hammock-boys. They had promised to send them from

-      Cape Coast and they had not come. The medical officer made both us

-      strangers hospitably welcome, but stores are precious things on the Coast

-      and one does not like to trespass, so he was a troubled school-inspector.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I think I'll walk on to Kommenda,&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I wouldn't,&rdquo; said I, the only one who knew that undesirable spot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We made a queer little party of three in that old-world Castle, in the old

-      Dutch rooms that are haunted by the ghosts of the dead-and-gone men and

-      women of a past generation. At least, I said they were haunted, the

-      school-inspector was neutral, and the medical officer declared no ghosts

-      had ever troubled him. I don't know whether it was ghosts that troubled

-      me, but the fact remains that I, who could sleep calmly by myself in the

-      bush with all my carriers drunk, could not sleep easily now that my

-      troubles were over, and I set it down to the haunting unhappy thoughts of

-      the people who had gone before me, who were dead, but who had lived and

-      suffered in those rooms; and yet in the day-time we were happy enough, and

-      the two men instructed me as one who had a right to know in things

-      African. The school-inspector was very funny on the education of the

-      native. His great difficulty apparently was to make the rising generation

-      grasp the fact that grandiloquent words of which they did not understand

-      the meaning were not proofs of deep knowledge. The negro is like the

-      Hindoo Baboo dear to the heart of Mr Punch. He dearly loves a long word.

-      Hygiene is a subject the Government insist upon being taught, only it

-      seems to me they would do more wisely to teach it in the vernacular so

-      that it might be understood by the common people. As it is, said my

-      school-inspector, the pupils are very pat; and when solemnly asked by the

-      teacher what are the constituents of drinking water, rap out a list of

-      Latin adjectives the only one of which he can understand is &ldquo;potable.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Tut, tut,&rdquo; said the inspector, &ldquo;run along, Kudjo, and bring me a glass of

-      drinking water&rdquo;; and then it was only too evident that that youthful scion

-      of the Fanti race who had been so glib with his adjectives did not

-      understand what &ldquo;potable&rdquo; meant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0220.jpg" alt="0220 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0220.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Afterwards in the eastern portion of the Colony I was told of other

-      difficulties and snares that lie in the way of the unlucky schoolmaster.

-      In Africa it is specially necessary to be careful of your water, as in

-      addition to many other unpleasant results common in other lands there is

-      here a certain sort of worm whose eggs may apparently be swallowed in the

-      water. They have an unpleasant habit of hatching internally and then

-      working their way out to the outer air, discommoding greatly their

-      unwilling host. Therefore twice a week in every English school the

-      qualities of good water and the way to insure it are insisted upon by the

-      teacher. But does that teacher practise what he preaches? He doesn't like

-      guinea-worm, but neither does he like trouble, wherefore he chooses the

-      line of least resistance and chances his water. If the worst come to the

-      worst and he has guinea-worm, a paternal Government will pay his salary

-      while he is ill.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At least up till lately it always has. But a change is coming over the

-      spirit of the dream. The other day there arose in Keta, a town in the

-      Eastern Province, a German head-teacher who got very tired of subordinates

-      who were perpetually being incapacitated by guinea-worm, a perfectly

-      preventable disease, and, as the Germans are nothing if not practical,

-      there went forth in his school the cruel order that any teacher having

-      guinea-worm should have no salary during his illness. There is going to be

-      one more case of guinea-worm in that school, then there is going to be a

-      sad and sorry man fallen from his high estate and dependent on his

-      relatives, and then the teachers will possibly learn wisdom and practise

-      what they preach. But in Elmina my school-inspector seemed to think the

-      Golden Age was yet a long way off.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I left him and the medical officer with many hopes for a future meeting,

-      and one afternoon took up my loads and having sent a telegram to the

-      Provincial Commissioner&mdash;how easy it seemed now&mdash;set out for

-      Cape Coast eight miles along the shore.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is very little difference in the scenery all along the shore here.

-      The surf thunders to the right, and to the left the land goes back low and

-      sandy, covered with coarse grass and low-growing shrubs, while here and

-      there are fishing villages with groves of cocoa-nuts around them, only the

-      houses instead of being built of the raffia palm are built of swish, that

-      is mud, and as you go east dirtier and dirtier grow the villages.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It took us barely two hours and a half to reach Cape Coast, one of the

-      oldest if not the oldest English settlement on the Coast. It was the

-      original Capo Corso of the Portuguese, but the English have held it since

-      early in the seventeenth century, and the natives, of course, bear English

-      names&mdash;in Elmina they have Dutch names&mdash;and remember no other

-      masters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cape Coast is a great straggling untidy town with rather an eastern look

-      about it which comes, I think, from the fact that many of the houses have

-      flat roofs. But it is a drab-looking town without any of the gorgeous

-      colouring of the east. The Castle is built down on the seashore behind

-      great walls and bastions, and here are the Customs, the Commissioner's

-      Court, the Post Office, all the mechanism required for the Government of a

-      people, but the old cannon are still there, piles of shot and shell and

-      great mortars, and in the courtyards are the graves of the men and women

-      who have gone before, the honoured dead. Here lies the lady whom the early

-      nineteenth century reckoned a poet, L. E. L., Laetitia Landor, the wife of

-      Captain Maclean who perished by some unexplainable misadventure while she

-      was little more than a bride, and here lies Captain Maclean himself, the

-      wise Governor whom the African merchants put in when England, in one of

-      her periodic fits of thriftless economy, would have abandoned the Gold

-      Coast, and here are other unknown names Dutch and English, and oh, curious

-      commentary on the hygiene of the time, in the same courtyard is the well

-      whence the little company of whites, generally surrounded by a people

-      often hostile, must needs in time of siege or stress always draw their

-      water.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They say Cape Coast like Elmina is haunted, and men have told me tales of

-      unaccountable noises, of footsteps that crossed the floor, of voices in

-      conversation, of sighs and groans and shrieks for help that were

-      unexplained and unexplainable. One man who had been D.C. there told me he

-      could keep no servant in the Castle at night they were so terrified, but

-      as I only paid flying visits to take photographs I cannot say of my own

-      knowledge whether there is anything uncanny about it. There ought to be,

-      for there are deep dungeons underground, dark and uncanny, where in old

-      days they possibly kept their slaves and certainly their prisoners-of-war.

-      There was no light in them then, there is very little now, only

-      occasionally someone has knocked away a stone from the thick walls, and

-      you may see a round of dancing sunlight in the gloom and hear the sound of

-      the ceaseless surf. An officer in the Gold Coast regiment told me he

-      wanted to have a free hand to dig in the earth here, for he was sure the

-      pirates who owned it in the old days must have buried much treasure here

-      and forgotten all about it, but he was a hopeful young man and looked

-      forward to the days when the Ashantis should come down and besiege Cape

-      Coast again as they had done in the old days, and he pointed out the

-      particular gun on the bastion that in case of such an event he should

-      train on the Kumasi road and blow those savages into the next world. I

-      have seen those fighting men of Ashanti since then and I do not think they

-      are ever coming to Cape Coast, at least as enemies, which perhaps is just

-      as well, for the gun which that gay young lieutenant slapped so

-      affectionately and called &ldquo;Old Girl&rdquo; is pretty elderly and I fancy might

-      do more damage to those loading than to those at the other end of her

-      muzzle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I did not lodge at the fort. The medical officer, it was always the

-      medical officer to the rescue, very kindly took charge and I was very

-      comfortably lodged in the hospital. And here I had proof of the wonderful

-      manner in which news is carried by the birds of the air in West Africa. I

-      had thought that the Provincial Commissioner was going to put me up, and I

-      instructed my boys to that effect.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ask way to Government House,&rdquo; which I thought lay to the west of the

-      town. As we passed the first houses a man sprang up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Dis way, Ma, I show you,&rdquo; and off he went, we following, and I thought my

-      men had asked the question. Clearly Government House was not to the west,

-      for we went on through the town and up a hill and up to a large bungalow

-      which I was very sure was not Government House, unless we had arrived at

-      the back.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I got out protesting, but my boys were very sure and so was our guide.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Dis be bungalow, Ma. Missus come.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Then I knew they were wrong, for I knew the Commissioner had no wife. But

-      they weren't after all, for down the steps breathing kindly welcome came

-      the medical officer's wife, a pretty bride of a couple of months, and she

-      smilingly explained that the Commissioner had asked her to take me in

-      because it would be so much more comfortable for me where there was

-      another woman. &ldquo;I suppose he sent you on,&rdquo; said she.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But not only had he not sent me on, but he knew nothing of my coming, and

-      was waiting in Government House for my arrival. The town, then, knew of my

-      expected coming and his intentions with regard to me almost before he had

-      formulated them himself. At any rate, it was none of his doing or his

-      servants' doings that I went straight to the hospital, and the telegram

-      stating my intention had only been sent that morning. So much for native

-      telegraphy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Round Cape Coast, in my mind, hangs a mist of romance which will always

-      sharply divide it from the town as I saw it. When I think of it I have to

-      remind myself that I have seen Cape Coast and that, apart from kindly

-      recollections of the hospitality with which I was received, I do not like

-      it. The people are truculent and abominably ill-mannered, and I do not

-      think I would ever venture to walk in the streets again without the

-      protection of a policeman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There were two white women there, so they had hardly the excuse of

-      curiosity, as we must have been familiar sights, yet they mobbed me in the

-      streets, and when I tried to take photographs of the quaint, old-world

-      streets, hustled and crowded me to such an extent that it was quite out of

-      the question. And they did this even when I was accompanied by my two

-      servants and my hammock-boys.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;These Fanti people catch no sense,&rdquo; said Grant angrily, when after a wild

-      struggle I had succeeded in photographing a couple of men playing

-      draughts, and utterly failed to get a very nice picture of a man making a

-      net. I quite agreed with Grant; these Fanti people do catch no sense, and

-      I got no photographs, for which I was sorry, for there are corners in that

-      old town picturesque and quaint and not unlike corners in the towns along

-      the Sicilian coast. What they said of me I do not know, but I am afraid it

-      was insulting, and if ever my friends the Ashantis like to go through Cape

-      Coast again I shall give them a certain amount of sympathy. At least it

-      would give me infinite satisfaction to hear of some of them getting that

-      beating I left without being able to inflict.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I do not think a white woman would be safe alone in Cape Coast, and this I

-      am the more sorry for because it has belonged so long to the English.

-      Perhaps Dr Blyden is right when he says, and I think he spoke very

-      impartially when speaking of his own people, that the French have

-      succeeded best in dealing with the negro, I beg his pardon, the African.

-      They have succeeded in civilising him, so says Dr Blyden, with dignity.

-      The English certainly have not.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0228.jpg" alt="0228 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0228.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER X&mdash;IN THE PATHS OF THE MEN OF OLD

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The glory of the morning&mdash;The men who have passed along this road&mdash;The

-      strong views of the African pig&mdash;An old-world Castle&mdash;Thieving

-      carriers&mdash;The superiority of the white man&mdash;Annamabu&mdash;A

-      perfect specimen of a fort&mdash;A forlorn rest-house&mdash;A notable

-      Coast Chief&mdash;Tired-out mammies&mdash;The medical officer at Salt

-      Ponds&mdash;The capable German women&mdash;The reason of the ill-health of

-      the English women&mdash;Kroo boys as carriers&mdash;Tantum&mdash;A loyal

-      rest-house&mdash;Filthy Appam&mdash;A possible origin for the yellow fever

-      at Accra&mdash;Winne-bah&mdash;A check&mdash;The luckless ferryman&mdash;Good-bye

-      to the road.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he carriers from

-      Kommenda were only to come as far as Cape Coast, so here I had to find

-      fresh men or rather women to replace them. I know nothing more aggravating

-      than engaging carriers. Apparently it was a little break in the monotony

-      of life as lived in an African town to come and engage as a carrier with

-      the white missus, come when she was about to start, an hour late was the

-      correct thing, look at the loads, turn them over, try to lift them, say

-      &ldquo;We no be fit,&rdquo; and then sit down and see what would happen next. The

-      usual programme, of course, was gone through at Cape Coast, the mammies I

-      had engaged smiling and laughing as if it were the best joke in the world,

-      and I only kept my temper by reflecting that since I could not beat them,

-      which I dearly longed to do, it was no good losing it. They had had three

-      days to contemplate those loads and they only found &ldquo;we no be fit&rdquo; as I

-      wanted to start. Of course the men who had come on from Sekondi with me

-      were now most virtuous; they bore me no ill-will for my harsh treatment,

-      indeed they respected me for it, and they regarded themselves as my prop

-      and my stay, as indeed they were.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With infinite difficulty I got off at last, taking three new carriers,

-      mammies, where two had sufficed before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Travelling in the early morning is glorious. The dew is on all the grass;

-      it catches and reflects the sunbeams like diamonds, and there is a

-      freshness in the air which is lost as the day advances. I loved going

-      along that coast too.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was thrown upon myself for companionship, for my followers could only

-      speak a little pigeon English, and of course we had nothing in common, but

-      the men and women who had gone before walked beside me and whispered to me

-      tales of the strenuous days of old. Perhaps the Phoenicians had been here,

-      possibly those old sea rovers, the Normans, and certainly the Portuguese;

-      they had marched along this shore, even as I was marching along, only

-      their own homes were worlds away and the bush behind was peopled for them

-      with unknown monsters, such as I would not dream of. They had feared as

-      they walked, and now I, a woman, could come alone and unarmed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Leaving Cape Coast that still, warm, tropical morning, we passed the

-      people coming into town to the markets with their wares upon their heads,

-      all carried in long crates, chickens and fowls and unhappy pigs strapped

-      tightly down, for the African pig, like the pig in other lands, has a mind

-      of his own; he will not walk to his own destruction, he has to be carried.

-      These traders were women usually, and they looked at me with interest and

-      no little astonishment, for I believe that never before had a white woman

-      by herself gone alone along this path.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0232.jpg" alt="0232 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0232.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      My carriers had been instructed to go to Accra and to Accra they went by

-      the nearest way, sometimes cutting off little promontories, and thus it

-      happened that, looking up on one of these detours, I saw on a hill,

-      between me and the sea, a ruined fort. Of course I stopped the hammock and

-      got out. I had come to see these forts, and here I was passing one. I

-      wanted to go back. My headman demurred. Had I not distinctly said I wanted

-      to go to Accra, and were we not on the direct road to Accra? To get to

-      that old fort, which he did not think worth looking at, we should have to

-      go back an hour's journey, and the men &ldquo;no be fit.&rdquo; I am regretful now

-      that I only saw that fort from a distance. It was very very hot, and I

-      don't think I felt very fit myself; at any rate, the thought of two hours

-      extra in the hammock dismayed me and I decided to take a long-distance

-      photograph from where I stood. It was an old Dutch fort&mdash;Fort Mori&mdash;and

-      was built on high ground overlooking a little bay. I think now it would

-      have been easier for me to do that two hours than to climb as I did, with

-      the assistance of Grant and my headman, to the highest point on the

-      roadside, through long grass, scrub, and undergrowth, there to poise

-      myself uneasily to get a photograph of the ruins. An ideal place,

-      whispered the men of old, for a fort in the bygone days, for it overlooked

-      all the surrounding country, there was no possibility of surprise, and at

-      its feet was a little sheltered bay. Now, on the yellow sands, in the

-      glare of the sunshine, I could see the great canoes that dared the surf

-      drawn up, the thatched roofs of the native town that drew its sustenance

-      from the sea and in old times owed a certain loyalty to the fort and

-      derived a certain prestige from the presence of the white men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Regretfully I have only that distant memory of Fort Mori, and I went on.

-      Those men who were &ldquo;no fit&rdquo; to take me back behaved abominably. Whenever

-      they neared a village they endeavoured to steal from the inhabitants&mdash;a

-      piece of suger-cane, a ball of kenky, or a few bananas&mdash;and again and

-      again a quarrel called me to intervene. It is very curious how soon one

-      gets an idea of one's own importance. In England, if I came across a crowd

-      of shouting, furious, angry men, I should certainly pass by on the other

-      side, but here in Africa when I was by myself I felt it my bounden duty to

-      interfere and inquire what was the matter. It was most likely some trouble

-      connected with my carriers. I disliked very much making enemies as I

-      passed, and I endeavoured to catch them and make them pay for what they

-      had stolen. And now I understood at last how it is white people living

-      among a subject race are so often overwhelmed in a sudden rising. It is

-      hard to believe that these people whom you count your inferiors will

-      really rise against you. Here was I, alone, unarmed, only a woman, and yet

-      immediately I heard a commotion I attended at once and dispensed justice

-      to the very best of my ability. I fully expected village elders to bow to

-      my decision, and I am bound to say they generally did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Most of the villages along the Coast bore a strong family resemblance to

-      the one in which I had spent an unhappy hour while my men attended the

-      funeral palaver, and all the shore is much alike. Between Axim and Sekondi

-      is some rough, rugged, and pretty country, but east and west of those

-      points the shore is flat, and the farther east you go the flatter it

-      becomes, till at the mouth of the Volta and beyond it is all sand and

-      swamp. The first day out from Cape Coast it was somewhat monotonous,

-      possibly if I went over it again I should feel that more; but there was

-      growing up in me a feeling of satisfaction with myself&mdash;I do trust it

-      was not smug&mdash;because I was getting on. I was doing the thing so many

-      men had said I could not possibly do, and I was doing it fairly easily. Of

-      course, I was helped, helped tremendously by the freehanded hospitality of

-      the people in the towns through which I passed, for which kindness I can

-      never be sufficiently grateful, but here with my carriers I was on my own,

-      and I began to regard them as the captures of my bow and spear, and

-      therefore I at least did not find the country uninteresting. Who ever

-      found the land he had conquered dull?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In due course I arrived at Annamabu, an old English fort that the

-      authorities on the Gold Coast hardly think worth preserving, and have

-      given over to the tender mercies of the negro Custom and post office

-      officials. Like Elmina, I could write a book about Annamabu alone, and I

-      was the more interested in it because it is the most perfect specimen of

-      the entirely English fort on the Coast, and is built at the head of a

-      little bay, where is the best landing on the Coast for miles round.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is a curious difference between the sites chosen by the different

-      nations. The other nations apparently always chose some bold, commanding

-      position, while the English evidently liked, as in this instance, the head

-      of a little bay and a good landing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Annamabu is quite a big native town, ruled over, I believe, by a cultured

-      African, a man who is well read and makes a point of collecting all books

-      about the Coast, and has, so they say, some rare old editions. I tried to

-      see him and went to his house, a mud-built, two-storied building, where I

-      sat in a covered courtyard and watched various members of his family go up

-      and down a rickety staircase that led to the upper stories, but the Chief

-      was away on his farm, and even though I waited long he never made his

-      appearance. I should like to have seen the inside of his house, seen his

-      books; all I did see was the courtyard, all dull-mud colour, untidy and

-      unkempt, with a couple of kitchen chairs in it, a goat or two, some

-      broken-down boxes and casks, and the drums of state that marked his high

-      office piled up outside the door.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the fort itself is the rest-house on the bastion, as untidy and dirty

-      as the Chiefs courtyard. There are three rooms opening one into the other,

-      and in the sitting-room, a great high room with big windows&mdash;those

-      men of old knew how to build&mdash;there is a table, some chairs, a

-      cupboard, and a filter, on which is written that it is for the use of

-      Europeans only, and behind in the bedroom is the forlornest wreck of a

-      bed, and some remnants of crockery that may have been washed about the

-      time when Mrs Noah held the first spring cleaning in the ark, but

-      apparently have never been touched since. It is only fair to say that

-      every traveller, they are like snow in summer, carries his own bedding,

-      and in fact all he needs, so that all that is really wanted for these

-      rest-houses along the shore is a good broom and a good stout arm to wield

-      it, and if a place is left without human occupancy the dirt is only clean

-      dust, for the clean air along these coasts is divine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But at Annamabu the usual difficulties came in my way; my old men were

-      well broken-in now, but my new mammies were&mdash;well&mdash;even though I

-      am a woman, and so by custom not permitted to use bad language, I must say

-      they were the very devil. They carried on with the men and then they

-      complained of the men's conduct, and when they arrived at Annamabu&mdash;late,

-      of course, and one of them had the chop box&mdash;they sent in word to say

-      they &ldquo;no be fit&rdquo; to go any farther, and there and then they wanted to go

-      back to Cape Coast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I said by all means they might go back to Cape Coast, but the loads would

-      have to be left here and sent for from Salt Ponds, and therefore, as they

-      had not completed their contract, they should be paid nothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They came and lay down before me in attitudes of intense weariness

-      calculated to move the heart of a sphinx, but I came to the conclusion I

-      must be a hard-hearted brute, for I was adamant, and those weeping women

-      decided they would go on to Salt Ponds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Salt Ponds there is a little company of white people, and, so says

-      report, the very worst surf on the Coast, with perhaps the exception of

-      Half Assinie. The D.C. was away, so the Provincial Commissioner had

-      telegraphed to the medical officer asking him to get me quarters. I

-      arrived about three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, when the place was

-      apparently wrapped in slumber; the doctor's bungalow was pointed out to

-      me, built on stilts on a cement foundation, and on that foundation I

-      established myself and my loads, and made my way upstairs. A ragged and

-      blasphemous parrot, with a very nice flow of language, was in charge, and

-      he did not encourage me to stop, nor did he even hint at favours to come,

-      so I went down again and waited. Apparently I might wait; towards evening

-      I made my way&mdash;I was homeless&mdash;towards another bungalow, where a

-      white man received me with astonishment, gave me the nicest cup of tea I

-      have ever drunk, and sent for the medical officer, who had lunched off

-      groundnut soup and had gone into the country to sleep it off. We all know

-      groundnut soup is heavy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The medical officer remains in my mind as a man with a grievance; he was

-      kind after his fashion, but he did hate the country. If I had listened to

-      him, I should have believed it was unfit for human habitation, and I

-      couldn't help wondering why he had honoured it with his presence. In his

-      opinion it was exceedingly unbecoming in a woman to be making her way

-      along the Coast alone. To drive in these facts he found me house-room with

-      the only white woman in the place, the charmingly hospitable wife of the

-      German trader who had been on the Coast for a couple of years, who was

-      perfectly well, healthy, and happy, who always did her own cooking, and

-      who gave me some of the most delicious meals I have ever tasted. Thus I

-      was introduced to the German element in West Africa, and began to realise

-      for the first time that efficiency in little things which is going to

-      carry the Germans so far. This fair-haired, plump young woman, with the

-      smiling young face, was one of a type, and I could not help feeling sorry

-      there were not more English women like her. I do not think I have ever met

-      an English woman, with the exception of the nursing Sisters, who has spent

-      a year on the Coast. The accepted theory is they cannot stand it, and in

-      the majority of cases they certainly can't. They get sick. With my own

-      countrywomen it is different; the Australian stays, so does the German, so

-      does the French woman. At first I could not understand it at all, but at

-      last the explanation slowly dawned upon me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;<i>Haus-fraus</i>,&rdquo; said many a woman, and man, too, scornfully, when I

-      praised those capable German women who make a home wherever you find them,

-      and it is this <i>haus-frau</i> element in them that saves them. A German

-      woman's pride and glory is her house, therefore, wherever she is she has

-      to her hand an object of intense interest that fills her mind and keeps

-      her well. An Australian does not take so keen an interest in her house,

-      perhaps, but she has had no soft and easy upbringing; from the time she

-      was a little girl she has got her own hot water, helped with the cooking,

-      washing, and all the multifarious duties of a houshold where a servant is

-      a rarity, therefore, when she comes to a land where servants are

-      plentiful, if they are rough and untaught, she comes to a land of comfort

-      and luxury. Besides, it is the custom of the country that a woman should

-      stand beside her husband; she has not married for a livelihood, men are

-      plentiful enough and she has chosen her mate, wherefore it is her pleasure

-      and her joy to help him in every way. She is as she ought to be, his

-      comrade and his friend, a true helpmate. God forbid that I should say

-      there are not English women like that, because I know there are, but the

-      conditions in England are also very different. The girl who has been

-      brought up in an English household, even if it be a poor one, is not only

-      brought up in luxury, but is the victim of many conventions. Any ruffled

-      rose leaf makes her unhappy. The servants that to the Australian are a

-      luxury to be revelled in are very bad indeed to her. Whenever I saw one of

-      these complaining English women, I used to think of the Princess of my

-      youth. We all remember her. She was wandering about lost, as royalty

-      naturally has a habit of doing, and she came to a little house and asked

-      the inmates to give her shelter because she was a princess. They took her

-      in, but being just a trifle doubtful of her story&mdash;when I was a

-      little girl I always felt that was rather a slur upon those dwellers in

-      the little house&mdash;they put on the bed a pea and then they put over it

-      fourteen hair mattresses and fourteen feather beds&mdash;it doesn't seem

-      to have strained the household to provide so much bedding&mdash;and then

-      they invited the princess to go to bed, which she did. In my own mind I

-      drew the not unnatural conclusion that princesses were accustomed to

-      sleeping in high beds. Next morning they asked her how she slept. She,

-      most rudely, I always thought, said she had not been able to sleep at all,

-      because there was such a hard lump in the bed. And so they knew that her

-      story was true, and she was a real princess. Now, the English women in

-      West Africa always seem to me real princesses of this order. Certain

-      difficulties there always are for the white race in a tropical climate,

-      there always will be, but there is really no need to find out the peas

-      under twenty-eight mattresses. In a manless country like England, many a

-      woman marries not because the man who asks her is the man she would have

-      chosen had she free right of choice, but because to live she must marry

-      somebody, and he is the first who has come along. He may be the last. Her

-      African house interests her not, her husband does not absorb her, she has

-      no one to whom to show off her newly wedded state, no calls to pay, no

-      afternoon teas, no <i>matinées</i>, in fact she has no interest, she is

-      bored to death; she is very much afraid of &ldquo;chill,&rdquo; so she shuts out the

-      fresh, cool night air, and, as a natural result, she goes home at the end

-      of seven months a wreck, and once more the poor African climate gets the

-      credit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No, if a woman goes to West Africa there is a great deal to be said for

-      the German <i>haus-frau</i>. At least they always seem to make a home, and

-      I have seen many English women there who cannot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Salt Ponds one of my carriers came to me saying he was sick and wanting

-      medicine, and I regret to say, instead of sending him at once to the

-      doctor, I casually offered him half a dozen cascara tabloids, all of which

-      to my dismay he swallowed at one gulp. The next morning he was worse,

-      which did not surprise me, but I called in the medical officer and found

-      he was suffering from pneumonia&mdash;cascara it appears is not the

-      correct remedy&mdash;and I was forced to leave him behind. The mammies I

-      had engaged at Cape Coast also declined to go any farther, so I had to

-      look around me for more carriers, and carriers are by no means easy to

-      come by. Finally the Boating Company came to the rescue with four Kroo

-      boys, and then my troubles began.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I set out and hoped for the best, but Kroo boys are bad carriers at all

-      times. These were worse than usual. One of my hammock-boys hurt his foot,

-      or said he had, and had for the time to be replaced by a Kroo boy, and we

-      staggered along in such a fashion that once more I felt like a

-      slave-driver of the most brutal order. Again and again we stopped for him

-      to rest, and my hammock-boys remarked by way of comforting me:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Kroo boy no can tote hammock.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why can Kroo boy no tote hammock?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We no know, Ma. We no be Kroo boy.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      We scrambled along somehow, out of one village into another, and at every

-      opportunity half the carriers ran away and had to be rounded up by the

-      other half. In eight hours we had only done fifteen miles. I felt very

-      cheap, very hungry, very thirsty, and most utterly thankful when we

-      arrived late in the afternoon at a dirty native town called Tantum. The

-      carriers straggled in one by one, and last of all came my chop box, so

-      that, for this occasion only, luncheon, afternoon tea, and dinner were all

-      rolled into one about six o'clock in the evening.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The rest-house was a two-storied house, built of swish and white-washed,

-      and was inside a native compound, where both in the evening and in the

-      morning the women were most industriously engaged in crushing the corn,

-      rolling it on a hard stone with a heavy wooden roller.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the rest-house, though very loyal, there were four coloured oleographs

-      of Queen Alexandra round the walls of the sitting-room and two at the top

-      of the stairs, all exactly alike, was abominably dirty. It had a little

-      furniture&mdash;two mirrors, well calculated to keep one in a subdued and

-      humble frame of mind, a decrepid bed that I was a little afraid to be in

-      the same room with lest its occupants would require no invitation to get

-      up and walk towards me, a table, and some broken-down chairs. Also on the

-      wall was a notice that two shillings must be paid by anyone occupying this

-      rest-house. Someone had crossed this out and substituted two shillings and

-      sixpence, and that in its turn had been erased, so, as the sum went on

-      increasing at each erasure, at last eighteen shillings and sixpence had

-      been fixed as the price of a night's lodging in this charming abode. I

-      decided in my own mind that two shillings would be ample, and that if the

-      people were civil I should give them an extra threepence by way of a dash.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I photographed Tantum with the interested assistance of a gentleman clad

-      in a blue cloth and a tourist cap. He seemed to consider he belonged to

-      me, so at last I asked him who he was.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;P'lice,&rdquo; said he with a grin, and then I recognised my policeman in

-      unofficial dress.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I didn't like that village. The people may have been all right, but I

-      didn't like their looks and I made my &ldquo;p'lice&rdquo; sleep outside my door. My

-      bedroom had the saving grace of two large windows, and I put my bed

-      underneath one of them in the gorgeous moonlight; but a negro town is very

-      noisy on a moonlight night and the tom-toms kept waking me. I always had

-      to be the first astir else my following would have cheerfully slumbered

-      most of the day, but on this occasion so bright was the moonlight, so

-      noisy the town, that I proceeded to get up at two o'clock, and it was only

-      when I looked at my travelling clock, with a view to reproaching Grant

-      with being so long with my tea, that I discovered my error and went back

-      to bed and a troubled rest again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Two shillings was accepted with a smile by the good lady of the house, who

-      was a stout, middle-aged woman with only one eye, a dark cloth about her

-      middle, and a bright handkerchief over her head. She gave me the

-      impression that she had never seen so much money in her life before.

-      Possibly she had only recently gone into the rest-house business, say a

-      year or two back, and I was her first traveller with any money to spend.

-      We parted with mutual compliments, and I bestowed on her little

-      grand-daughter the munificent dash of threepence.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is a story told of a man who went out to India, and as he liked

-      sunshine used to rise up each morning and say to his wife with emphasis,

-      &ldquo;Another fine day, my dear.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now, she, good woman, had been torn from her happy home in England, and

-      loved the cool grey skies, so at last much aggravated she lost her temper,

-      and asked: &ldquo;What on earth else do you expect in this beastly country?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So, along the Guinea Coast in the month of March, the hottest season,

-      there is really nothing else to expect but still, hot weather: divine

-      mornings, glorious evenings, but in between fierce hot sunshine. And of

-      course it was not always possible to travel in the coolest part of the

-      day. To sit still by the roadside in the glare of the sunshine, or even

-      under a tree, with a large crowd looking on, was more than I could have

-      managed. So I started as early as I could possibly induce my men to start&mdash;one

-      determined woman can do a good deal&mdash;and then went straight on if

-      possible without a stop to my next point. I would always, when I am by

-      myself, rather be an hour or two late for luncheon than bother to stop to

-      have it on the way, and if a breakfast at half-past five or six and a

-      morning in the open air induces hunger by eleven, it is easily stayed by

-      carrying a little fruit or biscuits or chocolate to eat by the way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was fiercest noonday when I came to a town called Appam, where once

-      upon a time was an old Dutch lodge worth keeping, if only to show what a

-      tiny place men held garrisoned in the old days. It is hardly necessary to

-      say that the Gold Coast Government do not think so, and have handed this

-      old-time relic over to negro Custom and post office officials; and,

-      judging by the condition of the rest of the town, much has not been

-      required of them, for Appam is the very filthiest town I have ever seen.

-      The old lodge is on the top of a hill overlooking the sea, splendidly

-      situated, but you arrive at it by a steep and narrow path winding between

-      a mass of thatched houses, and it stands out white among the dark roofs.

-      As a passer-by, I should say the only thing for Appam is to put a

-      fire-stick in the place; nothing else but fire could cleanse it. Many of

-      the young people and children were covered with an outbreak of sores that

-      looked as if nasty-looking earth had been scattered over them and had bred

-      and festered, and they told me the children here were reported to be

-      suffering and dying from some disease that baffled the doctors, what

-      doctors I do not know, for there is no white man in Appam. It seems to me

-      it is hardly necessary to give a name to the disease. I should think it

-      was bred of filth pure and simple, and my remedy of the fire-stick would

-      go far towards curing it. But there is a graver side to it than merely the

-      dying of these negro children. Appam is not very far from Accra;

-      communication by surf boat must go on weekly, if not daily, and Appam must

-      be an ideal breeding ground for the yellow-fever mosquito. I know nothing

-      about matters medical, but I must say, when I heard Accra was quarantined

-      for yellow fever, I was not surprised. I had come all along the Coast, and

-      filthier villages it would be difficult to find anywhere, and of these

-      filthy villages Appam, a large town, takes the palm. I left it without

-      regret, and though I should like to see that little Dutch lodge again, I

-      doubt if I ever shall.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My carriers were virtue itself now. The Kroo boys were giving so much

-      trouble that they posed as angels. I must admit they were a cheery,

-      good-tempered lot, and it was impossible to bear malice towards them. They

-      had forgotten that I had ever been wrathful, and behaved as if they were

-      old and much-trusted servants. Munk-wady, a Ju-ju hill on the shore

-      between Appam and Winnebah, is steep and the highest point for many miles

-      along the Coast, and over its flank, where there was but a pretence at a

-      road, we had to go.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You no fear, Ma; you no fear,&rdquo; said the men cheerily, &ldquo;we tote you safe&rdquo;;

-      and so they did, and took me right across the swamp that lay at the other

-      side and right into the yard of the Basel Mission Factory at Winnebah,

-      where a much-astonished manager made me most kindly welcome. It amused me

-      the astonishment I created along the road. No one could imagine how I

-      could get through, and yet it was the simplest matter. It merely resolved

-      itself into putting one foot before the other and seeing that my following

-      did likewise. Of course, there lay the difficulty. &ldquo;Patience and

-      perseverance,&rdquo; runs the old saw, &ldquo;made a Pope of his reverence&rdquo;; and so a

-      little patience and perseverance got me to Accra, though I am sometimes

-      inclined to wonder if it wasn't blind folly that took me beyond it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0248.jpg" alt="0248 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0248.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      But at Winnebah I received a check. Those Kroo boys gave out, and it was

-      plain to be seen they could travel no longer with loads on their heads. I

-      had no use for their company without loads. There were white men in

-      Winnebah, but none of them could help me, for the cocoa harvest in the

-      country behind was in full swing, and carriers there were not. The only

-      suggestion was that there was a ship in the roadstead, and that I should

-      embark on her for Accra. There seemed nothing else for it, and, regretful

-      as I was, I felt I must take their advice. The aggravating part was that

-      it was only a long day's journey from Winnebah to Accra, but as I had no

-      men to carry my loads I could not do it. One thing I was determined to do,

-      however, and that was to visit an old Dutch fort there was at a place

-      called Berraku, about half-way to Accra. I could do it by taking my

-      hammock-boys and my luncheon, and that I did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That day's journey is simply remarkable for the frolicsomeness of my men

-      and for the extreme filth of the fishing villages through which we passed.

-      They rivalled Appam. As for the fort, it was built of brick, there was a

-      rest-house upon the bastion for infrequent travellers, and it was tumbling

-      into disrepair. There will be no fort at Berraku presently, for the people

-      of the town will have taken away the bricks one by one to build up their

-      own houses. But it must have been a big place once, and there is in the

-      town a square stone tomb, a relic of the past. The inscription is

-      undecipherable, but it was evidently erected in memory of some important

-      person who left his bones in Africa, and lies there now forgotten.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a river to cross just outside the town of Winnebah, and crossing

-      a river is a big undertaking in West Africa, even when you have only one

-      load. I'm afraid I must plead guilty to not knowing my men by sight; for a

-      long time a black man was a black man to me, and he had no individuality

-      about him. Now they all crowded into the boat to cross the river, and it

-      was evident to my mind that we were too many; then as no one seemed

-      inclined to be left behind, I exercised my authority and pointed out the

-      man who was to get out, and out he got, very reluctantly, but cheerily

-      helped by his unfeeling fellows. It took us about a quarter of an hour to

-      cross that river, for it was wide and we had to work up-stream, and once

-      across they all proceeded to go on their way without a thought for the man

-      left behind. And then I discovered what I had done. I had thrown the ægis

-      of my authority over, putting the unfortunate ferryman out of his own

-      boat, and to add injury to insult my men were quite prepared to leave him

-      on one side of the stream and his boat on the other. When I discovered it

-      was the ferryman I had put out I declared they must go back for him, and

-      my decision was received with immense surprise.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You want him, Ma?&rdquo; as if such a desire should be utterly impossible; but

-      when they found I really did, and, moreover, intended to pay him, two of

-      them took the boat and he was brought to me with shouts of laughter, and

-      comforted with an extra dash, which was more than he had expected after my

-      high-handed conduct.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One could not help liking these peasant peoples; they were such children,

-      so easily pleased, so anxious to show off before the white woman. Here all

-      along the beach the people were engaged in fishing, and again and again I

-      saw a little crowd of men launching a boat, or hauling it in and

-      distributing their catch upon the beach. I always got out and inspected

-      the catch, and they always made way to let me look when they saw I was

-      interested. Of course, we could not speak to each other, but they spread

-      out the denizens of the deep and pointed out anything they thought might

-      be specially curious. I can see now one flat fish that was pulled out for

-      my benefit. One man, who was acting as showman, caught him by the tail and

-      held him out at arm's length. He was only a small fish about the size, I

-      suppose, of a large dish, but that thorny tail went high over the man's

-      head while the body of the fish was still flapping about on the sand, and

-      the lookers-on all laughed and shouted as if they had succeeded in showing

-      the stranger a most curious sight, as indeed they had.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0252.jpg" alt="0252 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0252.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I was sorry to turn my back on the road, sorry to go back to Winnebah&mdash;Winnebah

-      of the evil reputation, where they say if a white man is not pleasing to

-      the people the fetish men poison him&mdash;sorry to pay off my men and

-      send them back, sorry to take ship for Accra; but I could not get

-      carriers, there was nothing else for it, and by steamer I had to go, and

-      very lucky indeed was I to find a steamer ready to take me, so I said

-      good-bye to the road for some considerable time and went to Accra.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE CAPITAL OF THE GOLD COAST COLONY

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The pains and penalties of landing in Accra&mdash;Negro officials,

-      blatant, pompous, inefficient&mdash;Christiansborg Castle&mdash;The ghost

-      of the man with eyes like bright stones&mdash;The importance of fresh air&mdash;Beautiful

-      situation of Accra&mdash;Its want of shade-trees&mdash;The fences of Accra&mdash;The

-      temptation of the cooks&mdash;Picturesque native population&mdash;Striking

-      coiffure&mdash;The expensive breakwater&mdash;To commemorate the opening

-      of the waterworks&mdash;The forlorn Danish graveyard&mdash;A meddlesome

-      missionary&mdash;Away to the east.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> don't like

-      landing in Accra. There is a good deal of unpleasantness connected with

-      it. For one thing, the ships must lie a long way off for the surf is bad,

-      and the only way to land is to be put into a mammy-chair, dropped into a

-      surf boat, and be rowed ashore by a set of most excellent boatmen, who

-      require to be paid exorbitantly for their services. I don't know what

-      other people pay, but I have never landed on Accra beach under a

-      ten-shilling dash to the boat boys, and then I had to pay something like

-      sixpence a load to have my things taken up to the Custom house. In

-      addition to that you get the half-civilised negro in all his glory,

-      blatant, self-satisfied, loquacious, deadly slow, and very inefficient. As

-      well as landing my goods from the steamer, I wanted to inquire into the

-      fate of other goods that I had, with what I considered much forethought,

-      sent on from Sekondi by a previous steamer, and here I found myself in a

-      sea of trouble, for, the negro mind having grasped the fact that a

-      troublesome woman was looking for boxes that had probably been lost a

-      couple of months ago, each official passed me on from one department to

-      another with complacency. Accra is hot, and Accra is sandy, and Accra as

-      yet does not understand the meaning of the text, &ldquo;the shadow of a great

-      rock in a thirsty land,&rdquo; so for a couple of hours I was hustled about from

-      pillar to post, finding traces of luggage everywhere, and no luggage.

-      Then, a little way from the port office, a large placard in blue and

-      white, announcing &ldquo;Post and Telegraph Office&rdquo; caught my eye, so I thought

-      I would by way of refreshment and interlude send a telegram telling of my

-      safe arrival to my friends in Sekondi, and, in all the heat of a tropical

-      morning, I toiled down one flight of steps and up another and at last

-      found that the telegraph office, in spite of that big placard, was not at

-      the port at all but at Victoriaborg, about a couple of miles away. I could

-      not believe it, but so it was. Whether that placard is previous, or hints

-      at past greatness, I cannot tell. I also found later on that you cannot

-      send a telegram after four o'clock in the afternoon in the Gold Coast.

-      Government takes a most paternal care of its negro subordinates and sees

-      that the poor things are not worked too hard, but when I found they closed

-      for luncheon as well, I was apt to inquire why it should be so

-      hard-hearted as ever to require them to open at all. I think this matter

-      should be inquired into by someone who has the welfare of the negro race

-      at heart.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0256.jpg" alt="0256 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0256.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      When my temper was worn to rags, and I was thoroughly hot and unhappy,

-      wishing myself with all my heart out in the open again with only carriers

-      who &ldquo;no be fit&rdquo; to deal with, at last a surprised white man found me,

-      straightened things out in a moment, and assured me that I should have

-      evening dresses to wear at Government House.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Acting Governor and his wife put me up for a day or two, and then

-      found me quarters, and I hereby put it on record that I really think it

-      was noble of the Acting Governor, for he had no sympathy with my mission,

-      and I think, though he was too polite to say so, was inclined to regard a

-      travelling woman as a pernicious nuisance. I am sure it would have been

-      more convenient for him if I had gone straight on, but I did not want to

-      do the capital of the Colony like an American tourist, and so protested

-      that I must have somewhere where I could rest and arrange my impressions.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Government House is old-world. It is Christiansborg Castle, which was

-      bought from the Danes, I think, some time in the seventies, when a general

-      rearrangement of the Coast took place. It is one of the nicest castles on

-      the Coast, bar, of course, Elmina, which none can touch, and has passed

-      through various vicissitudes. I met at Kumasi the medical officer who had

-      charge of it some years back, when it was a lunatic asylum.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Such a pity,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;to make such a fine place a lunatic asylum. But

-      it was a terrible care to me. I was so afraid some of the lunatics would

-      smash those fine old stained-glass windows.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I stared. Stained-glass windows on the Coast! But there is not a trace of

-      them now, nor have I ever met anyone else who knew of them. I suppose they

-      are some of those things no one thought worth caring about.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0260.jpg" alt="0260 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0260.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      There are ghosts at Christiansborg too. It used to be Government House,

-      and then, because some Governor did not like it, a lunatic asylum, and

-      Government House again. A man once told me how, visiting it while it was a

-      lunatic asylum, he spoke to the warder in charge and said, &ldquo;You must have

-      an easy time here.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No, sah; no, sah,&rdquo; said the man earnestly, &ldquo;it no be good.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked my curious friend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then the negro said that as soon as the place was locked up quiet for

-      the night, and he knew there could not possibly be any white men within

-      the walls, two white men, he described them, one had eyes like bright

-      stones, walked up and down that long corridor. And the strange part of the

-      story, said my friend, was that he described unmistakably two

-      dead-and-gone English Governors, men who have died in recent years, one, I

-      think, in the West Indies, and the other on the way home from West Africa!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Christiansborg Castle is close down on the seashore, so close that the

-      surf tosses its spray against its windows, and thus it came about that I

-      learned what seems to me the secret of health in West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All along the Coast I had wondered; sometimes I felt in the rudest health,

-      as if nothing could touch me, sometimes so weary and languid it was an

-      effort to rouse myself to make half a dozen steps, and here in

-      Christiansborg Castle I was prepared to agree with all the evil that had

-      ever been said about the climate.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;In the morning thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were even,' and at even

-      thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were morning.'&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      That just about expressed my feelings while I was staying at

-      Christiansborg Castle. My room, owing to the exigencies of space was an

-      inside one, and though the doors were large, wide, and always open, still

-      it had no direct communication with the open air. All the windows along

-      the sea side of the Castle were tight closed, for the Acting Governor's

-      wife did not like her pretty things to be spoiled by the damp sea breeze,

-      so she stirred her air by a punkah. But at night of course there was no

-      punkah going and I spent nights of misery. The heat was so oppressive I

-      could not sleep, and I used to get up and wander about the verandah, where

-      the air was cool enough, but I could not sleep there as it was by way of

-      being a public passage-way. After a day or two they very kindly gave me

-      for my abode a tumble-down old bungalow, just outside the Castle walls. It

-      was like a little fort, and probably had been built for defence in the

-      days that were passed and gone. There was a thick stone wall round the

-      front of a strongly built stone house, that was loopholed for defence, and

-      here lodged some of the Government House servants and their families, but

-      on top of this stone house had been built a wooden bungalow, now rapidly

-      falling into decay. Here were two big rooms and wide verandahs with a

-      little furniture, and here I lodged, engaging a cook, and running my own

-      establishment, greatly to my own satisfaction. The bungalow was as close

-      to the seashore as the Castle, and I opened all the windows wide, and let

-      the cool, health-giving fresh air blow over me day and night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After the first night the languor and weariness at once disappeared and I

-      felt most wonderfully well, a feeling that I kept always up so long as I

-      could sleep in the uninterrupted fresh air. Put me to sleep in a closed-in

-      room with no possibility of a direct draught and I was tired at once,

-      wherefore I believe and believe firmly that to insure good health in West

-      Africa you must have plenty of fresh air. I go further and would advise

-      everybody to sleep as much in the open as possible, or, at the very least,

-      in a good, strong draught. After that experience, I began to notice. I had

-      a habit of getting up very early in the morning and going out for walks

-      and rides in my cart, and as I went down the streets of towns like

-      Sekondi, Tarkwa, and Accra, it was surprising the number of shutters I saw

-      fast closed against the health-giving air. I concluded the people behind

-      were foolishly afraid of chills and preferred to be slowly poisoned, and I

-      looked too later on in the day at the pallid, white-faced men and women

-      who came out of those houses. For myself, West Africa agreed with me. I

-      have never in my life enjoyed such rude health as I found I had there.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I set the reason down to the care I took to live always in the open. The

-      conclusion I draw is this&mdash;of course I may be wrong&mdash;the margin

-      of health in West Africa is narrow and therefore you cannot do without a

-      supply of the invigorating elixir supplied by Nature herself. Could I live

-      in England as I did there it is quite likely my health would be still

-      better. Now, when I hear a man is ill in West Africa, I ask several

-      questions before I condemn the place. First, of course, there is the

-      unlucky man who would be ill in any climate, then there is the dissipated

-      man who brings his ailments upon himself, and, while in Africa men set his

-      illness down to the right cause, when they are this side of the water they

-      are only too ready to add another nail to their cross and pity the poor

-      devil who has succumbed to the terrible climate they have to face. Next

-      comes the man who, while not exactly dissipated, does himself too well,

-      burns the candle at both ends, and puts upon his constitution a strain it

-      certainly could not stand in a cooler climate, and then, when all these

-      eliminated, there is to my mind the man and the woman, for the women are

-      still greater offenders, who will sleep in too sheltered a spot, and spend

-      their sleeping hours in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0264.jpg" alt="0264 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0264.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Of course other things tend to ill-health&mdash;loneliness, want of

-      occupation for the mind, that perpetual strain that is engendered when a

-      man is not contented with his surroundings and is for ever counting the

-      slowly moving days till he shall go home; but that must come in any land

-      where a man counts himself an exile, and I finally came to the conclusion

-      that pretty nearly half the ill-health of West Africa would be cured if

-      men would but arrange their sleeping-quarters wisely.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At any rate, in this old tumble-down bungalow I was more than happy. I

-      engaged a cart and boys, and I used to start off at six o'clock in the

-      morning, or as near to it as I could get those wretches of Kroo boys to

-      come, and wander over the town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Accra, which is the principal town of the Ga people, must have been for

-      some centuries counted a town of great importance, for three nations had

-      forts here. The English had James Fort, now used as a prison, the Dutch

-      had Fort Crêvecoeur, now called Vssher Fort and used as a police barracks,

-      and the Danes had Christiansborg Castle close to the big lagoon and three

-      miles away from the town of Accra. And in addition to these forts all

-      along the shore are ruins of great buildings. Till I went to Ashanti,

-      between Christiansborg and Accra was the only bit of good road I had seen

-      on the English coast of Guinea, and that was probably made by the Danes,

-      for there is along part of it an avenue of fine old tamarind trees, which

-      only this careful people would take the trouble to plant. They are

-      slow-growing trees, I believe, and must be planted for shelter between

-      other trees which may be cut down when the beautiful tamarinds grow old

-      enough to take care of themselves. Some of the trees are gone and no one

-      has taken the trouble to fill in the gaps, but still with their delicate

-      greenery they are things of beauty in hot, sun-stricken Accra. For if ever

-      a town needed trees and their shade it is this capital of the Gold Coast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0268.jpg" alt="0268 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0268.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Accra might be a beautiful city. The coast is not very high, but raised

-      considerably above sea-level, and it is broken into sweeping bays; the

-      country behind gradually rises so that the bungalows at the back of the

-      town get all the breeze that comes in from the ocean and all that sweeps

-      down from the hills. In consequence, Accra, for a town that lies within a

-      few degrees of the Equator, may be counted comparatively cool. The only

-      heat is between nine o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in the

-      afternoon; at night, when I was there, the hottest time of the year, March

-      and the beginning of April, there was always a cool sea breeze. A place is

-      always bearable when the nights are cool.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But on landing, Accra gives the impression of fierce heat. Shade-giving

-      trees are almost entirely absent, the sun blazes down on hot, yellow

-      sands, on hot, red streets lined with bare, white houses, and the very

-      glare makes one pant. In the roadways, here and there, are channels worn

-      by the heavy rainfall, the streets are not very regular, and many of the

-      houses are ill-kept, shabby, and sadly in need of a coat of paint; when

-      they belong to white men one sees written all over them that they are the

-      dwellings of men who have no permanent abiding place here, but are &ldquo;just

-      making it do,&rdquo; and as for the native houses, every native under English

-      rule has yet to learn the lesson that cleanliness and neatness make for

-      beauty. When in the course of my morning's drive I looked at the gardens

-      of Accra, for there are a good many ill-kept gardens, I fancied myself

-      stepping with Alice into Wonderland. The picket fences are made of the

-      curved staves that are imported for the making of barrels, and therefore

-      they are all curved like an &ldquo;S,&rdquo; and I do not think there is one whole

-      fence in all the town; sometimes even the posts and rails are gone, but

-      invariably some of the pickets are missing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;All the good cooks in Accra,&rdquo; said a man to me with a sigh, &ldquo;are in

-      prison for stealing fences.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Not all,&rdquo; said his chum; &ldquo;ours went for stealing the post office, you

-      remember. He'd burnt most of it before they discovered what was becoming

-      of it.&rdquo; They say they are importing iron railings for Accra to circumvent

-      the negro; for the negro, be it understood, does not mind going to prison.

-      He is well-fed, well-sheltered, and the only deprivation he suffers is

-      being deprived of his women; and when he comes out he feels it no

-      disgrace, his friends greet him and make much of him, much as we should

-      one who had suffered an illness through no fault of his own, therefore the

-      cook who has pocketed the money his master has given him to buy wood, and

-      stolen his neighbour's fence, begins again immediately he comes out of

-      prison, and hopes he will not be so unlucky as to be found out this time.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0272.jpg" alt="0272 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0272.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      This is the capital of a rich colony, so in business hours I found the

-      streets thronged, and even early in the morning they were by no means

-      empty, for the negro very wisely goes about his business while yet it is

-      cool. Here, away from the forest, is no tsetse fly, so horses may be seen

-      in buggies or drawing produce, but since man's labour can be bought for a

-      shilling a day, it is cheaper, and so many people, like I was, are drawn

-      by men. I, so as to feel less like a slave-driver, bought peace of mind in

-      one way and much aggravation in another by having three, but many men I

-      saw with only two, and many negroes, who are much harder on those beneath

-      them than the white men, had only one. Produce too is very often taken

-      from the factory to the harbour in carts drawn by eight or a dozen men,

-      and goods are brought up from the sea by the same sweating, toiling,

-      shouting Kroo boys.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They are broad-shouldered, sinewy men, clad generally in the most elderly

-      of European garments cast off by some richer man, but always they are to

-      be known from the surrounding Ga people by the broad vertical band of blue

-      tattooing on their foreheads, the freedom mark that shows they have never

-      been slaves. In Accra the white people are something under two hundred,

-      the Governor and his staff, officials, teachers, merchants, clerks,

-      missionaries, and artisans, and there are less than thirty white women, so

-      that in comparison the white faces are very few in the streets. They are

-      thronged with the dark people who call this place home. Clad in their own

-      costumes they are very picturesque, the men in toga-like cloths fastened

-      on one shoulder, the women with their cloths fastened under the arms,

-      sometimes to show the breasts, sometimes to cover them, and on their head

-      is usually a bright kerchief which hides an elaborate coiffure.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When I was strolling about Christiansborg one day I saw a coiffure which

-      it was certainly quite beyond the power of the wearer to hide under a

-      handkerchief. She was engaged in washing operations under a tree, and so I

-      asked and obtained permission to photograph her. It will be seen by the

-      result that, in spite of her peculiar notions on the subject of

-      hair-dressing, she is not at all ungraceful. Indeed, in their own clothes,

-      the Africans always show good taste. However gaudy the colours chosen,

-      never it seems do natives make a mistake&mdash;they blend into the

-      picture, they suit the garish sunshine, the bright-blue sky, the yellow

-      beach, the cobalt sea, or the white foam of the surf breaking ceaselessly

-      on the shore; only when the man and woman put on European clothes do they

-      look grotesque. There is something in the tight-fitting clothes of

-      civilisation that is utterly unsuited to these sons and daughters of the

-      Tropics, and the man who is a splendid specimen of manhood when he is

-      stark but for a loin cloth, who is dignified in his flowing robe, sinks

-      into commonplaceness when he puts on a shirt and trousers, becomes a

-      caricature when he parts his wool and comes out in a coat and high white

-      collar.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Money is spent in Accra as it is spent nowhere else in the Colony. Of

-      course I do not know much about these matters, therefore I suppose I

-      should not judge, but I may say that after I had seen German results, I

-      came to the conclusion that money was not always exactly wisely spent.

-      Most certainly the people who had the beautifying of the town were not

-      very artistic, and sometimes I cannot but feel they have lacked the saving

-      grace of a sense of humour.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0033" id="linkimage-0033"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0276.jpg" alt="0276 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0276.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The landing here was shockingly bad; it is so still, I think, for the last

-      time I left I was drenched to the skin, so the powers that be set to work

-      at enormous cost to build a breakwater behind which the boats might land

-      in comparative safety. Only comparative, for still the moment the boat

-      touches the shore the boatmen seize the passenger and carry him as swiftly

-      as possible, and quite regardless of his dignity, beyond the reach of the

-      next breaking wave.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said a high official, looking with pride at the breakwater, &ldquo;how I

-      have watched that go up. Every day I have said to myself, 'something

-      accomplished, something done'&rdquo;; and he said it with such heartfelt pride

-      that I had not the heart to point out the sand pump, working at the rate

-      of sixty tons a minute, that this same costly breakwater had necessitated,

-      for the harbour without it would fill up behind the breakwater; not

-      exactly, I fancy, what the authorities intended. The breakwater isn't

-      finished yet, but the harbour is filling fast; by the time it is finished

-      I should doubt whether there will be any water at all behind it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I did Accra thoroughly. I lived in that little bungalow beside the fort,

-      and I went up and down the streets in my cart and I saw all I think there

-      was to be seen. But for one good friend, a medical officer I had known

-      before, the lady who was head of the girls' school, a thoroughly capable,

-      practical young woman, and the one or two friends they brought to see me,

-      I knew nobody, and so I was enabled to form my opinions untrammelled, and

-      I'm afraid I had the audacity to sit in judgment on that little tropical

-      capital and say to myself that things might really be very much better

-      done. The Club may be a cheerful place if you know anyone, but it is very

-      doleful and depressing if the only other women look sidelong at you over

-      the tops of their papers as if you were some curious specimen that it

-      might perhaps be safer to avoid, and I found the outside of the bungalows,

-      with their untidy, forlorn gardens, the houses of sojourners who are not

-      dwellers in the land, anything but promising. Yet money is spent too&mdash;witness

-      the breakwater&mdash;and in my wanderings I came across a tombstone-like

-      erection close to James Fort, which I stopped and inspected. Indeed it is

-      in a conspicuous place, with an inscription which he who runs may read. At

-      least he might have read a little while ago, but the climate is taking it

-      in hand. The stone is of polished granite, which must have cost a

-      considerable amount of money, and by the aid of that inscription I

-      discovered that it was a fountain erected to commemorate the opening of

-      the waterworks in Accra. Oh Africa! Already it is difficult to read that

-      inscription; the unfinished fountain is falling into decay, and the water

-      has not yet been brought to the town! When future generations dig on the

-      site of the old Gold Coast town, I am dreadfully afraid that tombstone

-      will give quite a wrong impression. Now it is one of the most desolate

-      things I know, more desolate even than the forlorn Danish graveyard which

-      lies, overgrown and forgotten, but a stone's throw from my bungalow at

-      Christiansborg. A heavy brick wall had been built round it once, but it

-      was broken down in places so that the people of Christiansborg might

-      pasture their goats and sheep upon it, and I climbed through the gap,

-      risking the snakes, and read the inscriptions. They had died, apparently

-      most of them, in the early years of the nineteenth century, men and women,

-      victims probably to their want of knowledge, and all so pitifully young. I

-      could wish that the Government that makes so much fuss about educating the

-      young negro in the way he should go, could spare, say ten shillings a year

-      to keep these graves just with a little respect. It would want so little,

-      so very little. Those Danes of ninety years ago I dare say sleep sound

-      enough lulled by the surf, but it would be a graceful act to keep their

-      graves in order, and would not be a bad object-lesson for the Africans we

-      are so bent on improving.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0280.jpg" alt="0280 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0280.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Behind the town are great buildings&mdash;technical schools put up with

-      this object in view. They are very ugly buildings, very bare and barren

-      and hot-looking. Evidently the powers who insist so strongly upon hand and

-      eye training think it is sufficient to let the young scholars get their

-      ideas of beauty and form by sewing coloured wools through perforated cards

-      or working them out in coloured chalks on white paper; they have certainly

-      not given them a practical lesson in beauty with these buildings. They may

-      be exceedingly well-fitted for the use to which they are intended, but it

-      seems to me a little far-fetched to house young negroes in such buildings

-      when in such a climate a roof over a cement floor would answer all

-      purposes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If I had longed to beat my hammock-boys, my feelings towards them were

-      mild when compared with those I had towards my cart-boys. They were

-      terriblelooking ruffians, clad in the forlornest rags, and they dragged me

-      about at a snail's pace. What they wanted of course was a master who would

-      beat them, and as they did not get it, they took advantage of me. It is

-      surprising how one's opinions are moulded by circumstances. Once I would

-      have said that the man who hit an unoffending black man was a brute, and I

-      suppose in my calmer moments I would say so still, but I distinctly

-      remember seeing one of my cart-boys who had been on an errand to get

-      himself a drink, or satisfy some of his manifold wants, strolling towards

-      me in that leisurely fashion which invariably set me longing for the

-      slave-driver's whip to hasten his steps. In his path was a white man who

-      for some reason bore a grudge against the negro, and, without saying a

-      word, caught him by the shoulder and kicked him on one side, twisted him

-      round, and kicked him on the other side, and I, somewhat to my own horror,

-      found myself applauding in my heart. Here was one of my cart-boys getting

-      his deserts at last. The majority of white men were much of my way of

-      thinking, but of course I came across the other sort. I met a missionary

-      and his wife who were travelling down to inquire into the conditions of

-      the workers in the cocoa plantations in Ferdinando Po. I confess I thought

-      them meddlesome. What should we think if Portugal sent a couple of

-      missionaries to inquire into the conditions of the tailoring trade in the

-      East End of London, or the people in the knife trade in Sheffield? I have

-      seen both these peoples and seen just as a passer-by far more open misery

-      than ever I saw on the coast of West Africa. The misery may be there, but

-      I have not seen it, as I may see it advertising itself between Hyde Park

-      Corner and South Kensington any day of the week. Since I was a tiny child

-      I have heard the poor heathen talked of glibly enough, but I have never in

-      savage lands come across him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0284.jpg" alt="0284 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0284.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      After nearly a month at Accra I decided I must go on, and then I found it

-      was impossible to get carriers to go along the beach eastward; the best I

-      could do was to go up by the Basel Mission motor lorry to a place called

-      Dodowah, and here the Acting Governor had kindly arranged with the

-      Provincial Commissioner at Akuse to send across carriers to meet me and

-      take me to the Volta.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So one still, hot morning in April I packed up bag and baggage in my nice

-      little bungalow, had one final wrangle with my cart-boys, a parting

-      breakfast with the Basel Mission Factory people whose women-kind are ideal

-      for a place like West Africa and make a home wherever you find them, and

-      started in the lorry north for Dodowah in the heart of the cocoa district.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XII&mdash;BLOOD FETISH OF KROBO HILL

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>To Dodowah by motor lorry&mdash;Orchard-bush country&mdash;Negro

-      tortures&mdash;The Basel Mission factor&mdash;A personally conducted tour&mdash;Great

-      hospitality&mdash;A dinner by moonlight&mdash;Plan a night journey&mdash;The

-      roadway by moonlight&mdash;Barbarous hymns&mdash;Carriers who &ldquo;no be fit&rdquo;

-       once more&mdash;Honesty of the African carrier&mdash;Extraordinary

-      obedience&mdash;The leopard that cried at Akway Pool&mdash;A hard-hearted

-      slave-driver&mdash;Krobo Hill&mdash;Blood fetishes&mdash;Terror of the

-      carriers&mdash;Story of the hill&mdash;The dawning of a new day&mdash;Unexplained

-      disappearances&mdash;Akuse at last&mdash;The arrival of a whirlwind&mdash;The

-      fire on Krobo Hill.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>nland from Accra

-      the country is what they call orchard bush, that is to say, it was rather

-      flat country sloping in gradual gradation to the hills behind, covered

-      now, in the end of the dry season, with yellow grass and dotted all over

-      with trees, not close together as in the forest country but just far

-      enough apart to give it a pleasant, park-like look. There were great tall

-      ant heaps too, or rather the homes of the termite, the white ant which is

-      not an ant at all I believe, and these reminded me of the ghastly form of

-      torture sometimes perpetrated by the negroes. A Provincial Commissioner

-      once told me that he had several times come across on these hills, which

-      are often ten or twelve or twenty feet high, the skeleton of a man who had

-      undoubtedly been fastened there while he was alive; and another went one

-      better and told me how another form of torture was to place a man on the

-      ant heap without any fastening whatever and then to surround it with men

-      and women with knives, so that when he tried to escape he was promptly

-      driven back. In this last case I am glad to think that the torturers are

-      bound to have run their share of risk, and must have received many a good

-      hard nip. But the negro mind seems to rather revel in secret societies,

-      trial by ordeal, and tortures. Christianity, the religion of love and

-      pity, has been preached on the Coast for many a long day now, and yet in

-      this year of our Lord 1911 there is behind the Church of England in Accra,

-      down on the sea beach, a rock which is generally known as Sacrifice Rock,

-      and here those who know declare that every yam festival, which takes place

-      just after the rains in September, they sacrifice a girl in order that the

-      crops may not fail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0036" id="linkimage-0036"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0291.jpg" alt="0291 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0291.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Riding in a lorry I had plenty of time to consider these matters. My kind

-      Basel Mission Factory <i>haus-frau</i> had provided me with luncheon to

-      eat by the way, and I knew that all my goods and chattels would arrive

-      safely at their destination without my having to worry about them. Grant

-      was the only servant I had left. I had dismissed the cook, and Zacco had

-      quarrelled with Grant and dismissed himself, and so while I sat on the

-      front seat of the lorry alongside the negro driver, Grant and my goods and

-      chattels were packed away in odd corners on top of the merchandise that

-      was going to Dodowah. The road was bad, deeply cut by the passing of these

-      lorries, but I arrived there about midday and was cordially received by a

-      Basel Mission Factory man who told me my carriers had arrived, and

-      suggested I should come to his house and have luncheon.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was a kindly, fair-haired young German who had been in the Colony about

-      a month and was learning English on Kroo-boy lines. The result was a

-      little startling, but as it was our only means of communication I was

-      obliged to make the best of it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My carriers had been here waiting for me since Friday; this was Monday,

-      and they wanted &ldquo;sissy&rdquo; money. I paid up and declared I should start the

-      moment they had broken their fast. Meanwhile my German friend undertook to

-      show me the sights.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dodowah is a very pretty little place at the foot of the hills; it is

-      embowered in palm trees and is the centre of the cocoa industry. In the

-      yard of the factory the cocoa was lying drying in the blazing sun, and

-      when I had been duly instructed in its various qualities, my host

-      suggested I should &ldquo;walk small.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I take you my house.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was very kind of him, but I was cautious. I do not like walking in the

-      blazing noonday.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;How far is it?&rdquo; I asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Small, small,&rdquo; said he, with conviction.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Grant was a very different person now from the boy in a pink pyjama coat,

-      meek and mild and bullied by Kwesi, whom I had engaged in the distant

-      past. He was my body servant; evidently supposed by everyone else who came

-      in contact with me to hold a position of high trust, and thinking no end

-      of himself. So to him I gave strict instructions. All the loads were to

-      start at once, the hammock-boys were to follow me to the factor's house,

-      and he was to go on with the carriers. We had left the protection of the

-      &ldquo;p'lice&rdquo; behind, and on the whole I thought I could do just as well

-      without.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I set out with my new friend and accompanied by my new headman who

-      evidently thought it his duty to follow in my wake, though he could

-      understand no English and I could understand not one word of his tongue.

-      That walk remains in my mind as one long nightmare; I only did one worse,

-      and then I thought I must be going to die. We left the plain country and

-      plunged uphill, it was blazing noonday in April, and though there were

-      palms and much growth on either side of the road, on the road itself was

-      not a particle of shade. Still we went up and up and up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I show you, I show you,&rdquo; said my friend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Frankly I wished he wouldn't. It was a splendid view from that hillside,

-      with the town nestling embowered in palms at our feet, but a personally

-      conducted walking-tour on the Coast at midday on an April day was the very

-      last thing I desired.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was dripping with perspiration, I was panting and breathless before we

-      had been on that road five minutes; in the next five I would have bartered

-      all my prospects in Africa for a glass of iced water, and then my

-      companion turned. &ldquo;You like go through bushway, short cut.&rdquo; It looked

-      cooler, so I feebly assented and we turned into the bush which was so thin

-      it did not shut out the sun, and the walking was very much rougher. I had

-      given up all hopes of ever coming to the end when my companion stopped,

-      flung up his head like a young war-horse, and said cheerfully, &ldquo;Oh I tink

-      I go lookum road.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I sank down on a log; my new headman, an awful-looking ruffian, stood

-      beside me, and that aggressively active young German went plunging about

-      the bush till he returned still cheerful and remarking, &ldquo;I tink we lose

-      way. We go back.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I draw a veil over the remainder of that walk. We did arrive at his house

-      finally after two and a half hours' march over very rough country, and

-      then he gave me wine to drink and fed me and was good to me, but I was

-      utterly tired out and didn't care for the moment what became of me. He

-      showed me a bedroom and I lay down and slept, rose up and had a bath, and

-      felt as if I might perhaps face the world again. At half-past four we had

-      some tea and I contemplated all my new hammock-boys sitting in a row under

-      some palm trees on the other side of the road. They looked strapping, big,

-      strong men, and I was thankful, for Akuse they said was twenty-seven miles

-      away and I had to do it in one march. The question was, when I should

-      start?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If you start now,&rdquo; said the factor, &ldquo;you get there one&mdash;half-past

-      one in the morning&mdash;very good time.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now I really could not agree with him. To launch yourself on totally

-      unknown people at halfpast one in the morning and ask them to take you in

-      is not, I think, calculated to place you in a favourable light, and I

-      demurred. But what was I to do? I did not want to inflict myself any

-      longer on this hospitable young man, and already I had paid my carriers

-      for four days while they did nothing. It was a full moon. Last night had

-      been gorgeous; this night promised to be as fine. I asked the question,

-      why could I not travel all night?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh yes, moon be fine too much&rdquo;; and then he went on to tell me a long

-      story about his Kroo boys being frightened to travel that road by

-      themselves. &ldquo;But it all be foolishness.&rdquo; It took me so long to discover

-      the meaning of the words that I really paid no attention to the gist of

-      what he was saying, besides I could not see that a Kroo boy being afraid

-      was any reason why I should be. Finally we figured it out that I should

-      start at nine o'clock, which would bring me to Akuse at a little after six

-      in the morning. This did not seem so bad, and I agreed and cordially

-      thanked the kindness which made him plan a nice little dinner in the

-      moonlight on the verandah. It comes back to me as one of the most unique

-      dinners I ever had; we had no other light but that of the moon, the

-      gorgeous moonlight of the Tropics. It shone silver on the fronds of the

-      palms, the mountains loomed dimly mysterious like mountains in a dream,

-      and the road that ran past the house lay clear and still and warm in the

-      white light.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My host asked leave to dine in a cap; he said the moon gave him a

-      headache, and strongly advised me to do likewise, but though I have heard

-      other people say the moon affects them in that manner, it never troubles

-      me and I declined. And he translated his German grace into English for my

-      benefit, and I could not even smile so kindly was the intention; and we

-      ate fruit on the verandah, and nine o'clock came and I had the top taken

-      off my hammock and started.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho,&rdquo; cried the hammock-boys, clapping their hands as

-      they went at a fast trot, far faster than the ordinary man could walk

-      without any burden on his head, and we were off to Akuse and the Volta.

-      The night was as light as day, and it never occurred to me that there was

-      any danger in the path. We went through the town, and here and there a

-      gleam of fire showed, and here and there was a yellow light in one of the

-      window places, and the people were in groups in the streets, dancing,

-      singing, or merely looking on. Generally they sang, and no one knows how

-      truly barbaric a hymn can sound sung by a line of lightly clad people

-      keeping time with hands and feet to the music. It might have been a war

-      song, it might have been a wail for those about to die; it was, I realised

-      with a start, &ldquo;Jesu, lover of my soul,&rdquo; in the vernacular. I suppose the

-      missionaries know best, but it always seems to me that the latest

-      music-hall favourite would do better for negro purposes than these hymns

-      that have been endeared to most of us by old association. These new men

-      were splendid hammock-men; they stopped for no man, and the groups melted

-      before them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A happy peasant people were these, apparently with just that touch of

-      mysterious sadness about them that is with all peasant peoples. Their own

-      sorrows they must have, of course, but they are not forced upon the

-      passer-by as are the sordid sorrows of the great cities of the civilised

-      world. At the outside ring of these dancers hung no mean and hungry

-      wretches having neither part nor parcel with the singers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Through the town and out into the open country we went, and the trees made

-      shadows clear-cut on the road like splashes of ink, or, where the foliage

-      was less dense, the leaves barely moving in the still night air made a

-      tracery as of lace work on the road beneath, and there was the soft,

-      sleepy murmur of the birds, and the ceaseless skirl of the insects.

-      Occasionally came another sound, penetrating, weird, rather awe-inspiring,

-      the cry of the leopard, but the hammock-boys took no heed&mdash;it was

-      moonlight and there were eight of them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho.&rdquo; They clapped their hands and sang choruses, and

-      by the time we arrived at the big village of Angomeda, a couple of hours

-      out, I was fairly purring with satisfaction. I have noticed that when

-      things were going well with me I was always somewhat inclined to give all

-      the credit to my perfect management; when they went wrong I laid the blame

-      on Providence, my headman, or any other responsible person within reach.

-      Now my self-satisfaction received a nasty shock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The village of Angomeda was lying asleep in the moonlight. The brown

-      thatch glistened with moisture, the gates of the compounds and the doors

-      of the houses were fast shut; only from under the dark shadow of a great

-      shade-tree in the centre of the village came something white which

-      resolved itself into Grant apologetic and aggrieved.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Carriers go sleep here, Ma. They say they no fit go by night.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      My fine new carriers &ldquo;no fit.&rdquo; How are the mighty fallen! And I had

-      imagined them pretty nearly at Akuse by now! Clearly, they could not be

-      allowed to stay here. I have done a good many unpleasant things, but I

-      really did not feel I could arrive at Akuse at six o'clock in the morning

-      without a change of clothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I restrained myself for the moment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I not knowing, Ma.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I debated a moment. I realised the situation. I was a woman miles from any

-      white man, and I could not speak one word of the language. Still, I had

-      sent those carriers to Akuse and I could not afford to be defied,

-      therefore I alighted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Where are those carriers?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Nine pointing fingers indicated the house. Evidently the hammock-boys had

-      been here before, and one of them pushed open a door in the wall. Black

-      shadows and silver-white light was that compound. Heaped in the middle,

-      not to be mistaken, were my loads, and from under the deeper shadows

-      beneath the surrounding sheds came tumbling black figures which might or

-      might not have been my erring carriers. I did not know them from the

-      people about them, neither did I know one word of their language, and only

-      one of my hammock-boys spoke any pigeon English. But that consideration

-      did not stay me. I singled out my headman, and him I addressed at length

-      and gave him to understand that I was pained and surprised at such

-      conduct. Never in the course of a long career had I come across carriers

-      who slept when they should have been on the road, and before I was

-      half-way through the harangue those sleepy and reluctant men and women

-      were picking up the loads. I confess I had been doubtful. Why should these

-      carriers pay any attention to me? Now that I know what they risked by

-      their obedience I have no words to express my astonishment. I did not know

-      the carriers, but I did know the loads, and before I got into my hammock I

-      stood at the gate and counted them all out. I need not have worried. The

-      African carrier is the most honest man I have ever met. Never have I lost

-      the smallest trifle entrusted to him. When my goods were well on the road

-      I got into my hammock and started again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh, such a night! On such a night as this Romeo wooed Juliet, on such a

-      night came the Queen of the Fairies to see charm even in the frolicsome

-      Bottom.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All the glories of the ages, all the delights of the world were in that

-      night. The song of the carriers took on a softness and a richness born of

-      the open spaces of the earth and the glorious night, and for accompaniment

-      was the pad-pad of their feet in the dust of the roadway, and in one long,

-      musical monotonous cadence the cheep of the insects, and again a sharper

-      note, the cry of a bat or night bird.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was orchard-bush country that lay outspread in the white light, with

-      here and there a cocoa plantation. Here a tree cast a dark shadow across

-      the road, and there was a watercourse through which the feet of the men

-      splashed&mdash;only in German West Africa may you always count on a bridge&mdash;and,

-      again, the trees would grow close and tunnel-like over the road with only

-      an occasional gleam of moonlight breaking through. But always the

-      hammock-boys kept steadily on, and the carriers kept up as never before in

-      two hundred miles of travel had carriers kept up. We went through sleeping

-      villages with whitewashed mud walls and thatched roofs gleaming wetly, and

-      even the dogs and the goats were asleep.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was midnight. It was long after midnight; the moon was still high and

-      bright, like a great globe of silver, but there had come over the night

-      that subtle change that comes when night and morning meet. It was night no

-      longer; nothing tangible had changed, but it was morning. The twitter of

-      the birds, the cry of the insects, had something of activity in it; the

-      night had passed, another day had come, though the dawning was hours away.

-      And still the men went steadily on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A great square hill rose up on the horizon, and we came to a clump of

-      trees where the moonlight was shut out altogether; we passed through

-      water, and it was pitch-dark, with just a gleam of moonlight here and

-      there to show how dense was that darkness. It was Akway Pool, and a

-      leopard was crying in the thick bush close beside it. It was uncanny, it

-      was weird; all the terror that I had missed till now in Africa came

-      creeping over me, and the men were singing no longer. Very carefully they

-      stepped, and the pool was so deep that lying strung up in the hammock I

-      could still have touched the water with my hand. Could it be only a

-      leopard that was crying so? Might it not be something even worse,

-      something born of the deep, dark pool, and the night? Slowly we went up

-      out of the water, and we stood a moment under the shade of the trees, but

-      with the white light within reach, and Krobo Hill loomed up ahead against

-      the dark horizon. The only hammock-boy who could make himself understood

-      came up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Mammy, man be tired. We stop here small.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a reasonable request, but the leopard was crying still, and the

-      gloom and fear of the pool was upon me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No, go on.&rdquo; They might have defied me, but they went on, and to my

-      surprise, my very great surprise, the carriers were still with us.

-      Presently we were out in the moonlight again; I had got the better of my

-      fears and repented me. &ldquo;Wait small now.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No, Mammy,&rdquo; came the answer, &ldquo;this be bad place,&rdquo; and they went on

-      swiftly, singing and shouting as if to keep their courage up, or, as I

-      gathered afterwards, to give the impression of a great company. Only

-      afterwards did I know what I had done that night. Krobo Hill grew larger

-      and larger at every step, and on Krobo Hill was one of the worst, if not

-      the worst blood fetish in West Africa. Every Krobo youth before he could

-      become a man and choose a wife had to kill a man, and he did it generally

-      on Krobo Hill. There the fetish priests held great orgies, and for their

-      ghastly ceremonies and initiations they caught any stranger who was

-      reckless enough to pass the hill. How they killed him was a mystery; some

-      said with tortures, some that only his head was cut off. But the fear in

-      the country grew, and at the end of the last century the British

-      Government interfered; they took Krobo Hill and scattered the fetish

-      priests and their abominations, and they declared the country safe. But

-      the negro revels in mystery and horror, and the fear of the hill still

-      lingers in the minds of the people; every now and then a man disappears

-      and the fear is justified. Only three years ago a negro clerk on his

-      bicycle was traced to that hill and no further trace of him found. His hat

-      was in the road, and the Krobos declared that the great white baboons that

-      infest the hill had taken him, but it is hardly reasonable to suppose that

-      the baboons would have any use for a bicycle, whereas he, strong and

-      young, and his bicycle, together emblems of strength and swiftness, made a

-      very fitting offering to accompany to his last resting-place the dead

-      chief whose obsequies the Krobos were celebrating at the time. Always

-      there are rumours of disappearances, less known men and women than a

-      Government clerk and scholar, and always the people know there is need of

-      men and women for the sacrifices, sacrifices to ensure a plenteous

-      harvest, a good fishing, brave men, and fruitful women.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My men were afraid&mdash;even I, who could not understand the reason,

-      grasped that fact; very naturally afraid, for it was quite within the

-      bounds of possibility that a straggler might be cut off.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Would they have touched me?&rdquo; I asked afterwards.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Not with your men round you. Some might escape, and the vengeance would

-      have been terrible.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But if I had been by myself?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah, then they might have said that the baboons had taken you; but you

-      would not have been by yourself.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      No, it was extremely unlikely I should be here by myself, but here were my

-      men, sixteen strong and afraid. Akway Pool had been the last water within

-      a safe distance from the hill, and I had not let them halt; now they dared

-      not. A light appeared on the hill, just a point of flickering fire on the

-      ridge, above us now, and I hailed it as a nice friendly gleam telling of

-      human habitation and home, but the men sang and shouted louder than ever.

-      I offered to stop, but the answer was always the same: &ldquo;This be bad place,

-      Mammy. We go.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      At last, without asking my leave, they put down the hammock, and the

-      carriers flung themselves down panting.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We stop small, Mammy&rdquo;; and I sat on my box and watched the great, sinewy

-      men with strapping shoulders as they lay on the ground resting. They had

-      been afraid I was sure, and I knew no reason for their fear.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the night was past and it was morning, morning now though it was only

-      half-past three and the sun would not be up till close on six o'clock. On

-      again. The moon had swung low to the dawn, and the gathering clouds made

-      it darker than it had yet been, while the stars that peeped between the

-      clouds were like flakes of newly washed silver. People began to pass us,

-      ghostlike figures in the gloom. Greetings were exchanged, news was shouted

-      from one party to the other, and I, in spite of the discomfort of the

-      hammock, was dead with sleep, and kept dropping into oblivion and waking

-      with a start to the wonder and strangeness of my surroundings. Deeper and

-      deeper grew the oblivion in the darkness that precedes the dawn, till I

-      wakened suddenly to find myself underneath a European bungalow, and knew

-      that for the first time in my experience of African travel I had arrived

-      nearly two hours before I expected to.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My people were wild with delight and triumph. I had forced them to come

-      through the Krobo country by night, but my authority did not suffice to

-      keep them quiet now they had come through in safety. They chattered and

-      shouted and yelled, and a policeman who was doing sentry outside the

-      Provincial Commissioner's bungalow started to race upstairs. I tried to

-      stop him, and might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind. Indeed, when I

-      heard him hammering on the door I was strongly of opinion that the

-      Commissioner would think that the whirlwind had arrived. But presently

-      down those steps came a very big Scotchman in a dressing-gown, with his

-      hair on end, just roused from his sleep, and he resolved himself into one

-      of those courteous, kindly gentlemen England is blessed with as

-      representatives in the dark corners of the earth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Did he reproach me? Not at all. He perjured himself so far as to say he

-      was glad to see me, and he took me upstairs and gave me whisky-and-soda

-      because it was so late, and then tea and fruit because it was so early.

-      And then in the dawning I looked out over Krobo Hill, and my host told me

-      its story.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I cleared them out years ago. I have no doubt they have their blood

-      sacrifices somewhere, but not on Krobo Hill. But the people are still

-      afraid.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I saw a fire there last night.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He shook his head unbelieving.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Impossible; there is a fine of fifty pounds for anyone found on Krobo

-      Hill.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The dawn had come and the sun was rising rosy and golden. The night lay

-      behind in the west.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I looked out of the window at the way I had come and wondered. I am always

-      looking back in life and wondering. Perhaps it would be a dull life where

-      there are no pitfalls to be passed, no rocks to climb over.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I see smoke there now.&rdquo; In the clear morning air it was going up in a

-      long spiral; but again my host shook his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Only a cloud.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But there were glasses lying on the table, and I looked through them and

-      there was smoke on Krobo Hill.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I think my men were right to fear, and I am lost in wonder when I

-      remember they obeyed me and came on when they feared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then when the sun had risen and another hot day fairly begun, I went

-      over to the D.C.'s house; he had a wife, and they were kindly putting me

-      up, and I had breakfast and a bath and went to bed and slept I really

-      think more soundly than I have ever in my life slept before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE FEAR THAT SKULKED BENEATH THE MANGO TREE

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Up the Volta&mdash;Svvanzy's trusting agent at Akuse&mdash;Amedika, the

-      port of Akuse on the Volta&mdash;The trials of a trolley ride&mdash;My

-      canoe&mdash;Paddling up-river&mdash;Rapids that raise the river

-      thirty-four feet&mdash;Dangers of the river&mdash;Entrancingly lovely

-      scenery&mdash;A wealthy land&mdash;The curious preventive service&mdash;Fears&mdash;Leaving

-      the river&mdash;Labolabo&mdash;A notable black man&mdash;The British

-      Cotton-growing Experimental Farm&mdash;The lonely white man&mdash;The fear

-      that was catching&mdash;The lonely man's walk.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Akuse I changed

-      my plans. I had intended to come here, drop down the Volta in the little

-      river steamers that run twice a week to Addah, and then pursue my way

-      along the coast to Keta where there was an old Danish castle, and possibly

-      get across the German border and see Lome, their capital. But there is

-      this charm or drawback&mdash;which ever way you like to look at it&mdash;about

-      Africa: no one knows anything about the country beyond his immediate

-      district. The Provincial Commissioner had gone to Addah, and I discussed

-      my further progress with the D.C. and his wife as we sat on the verandah

-      that night and looked over the country bathed in the most gorgeous

-      moonlight. The D.C.'s wife, a pretty little woman who had only been out a

-      couple of months, was of opinion that the vile country was killing her and

-      her husband, that it was simply a waste of life to live here, and she

-      could not get over her surprise that I should find anything of interest in

-      it. The D.C. thought it wouldn't be half bad if only the Government

-      brought you back to the same place, so that you might see some result for

-      your labours, and he strongly advised me to go a day or two up the river

-      in a canoe just to see the country.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It is quite worth seeing,&rdquo; said he, and his wife smiled. She had seen all

-      she intended to see of the country at Akuse, and did not want to go

-      farther in.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The next day I went into the town, the official quarters are some distance

-      away, and called on a couple of the principal merchants.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The factor at Miller Bros, put a new idea into my head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh yes, go up the Volta,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;you can get up as far as Labolabo,

-      then cut across-country and come out at Ho in German territory. You can

-      get to Palime from there, and that is rail-head, so you can easily make

-      your way down to Lome.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It sounded rather an attractive programme.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You go and see Rowe about it,&rdquo; he suggested.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I went and called upon Swanzy's agent, a nice young fellow, who first

-      laughed, then looked me up and down doubtfully, and finally said it could

-      be done. Mr Grey, one of their principals, had come across that way the

-      other day, but it was very rough going indeed. No one else that he knew of

-      had ever ventured it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0037" id="linkimage-0037"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0309.jpg" alt="0309 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0309.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      If I liked to try he would get me a canoe to go up the river in, and give

-      me letters to their black agents, for I must not expect to meet any white

-      men. And again he looked doubtful.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If I liked; of course I liked. I am always ready to plunge in and take any

-      risks in the future, provided the initial steps are not too difficult, and

-      once he found I wanted to go, Mr Rowe made the initial steps very easy

-      indeed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      First he very nobly lent me twenty-five pounds in threepenny bits, for I

-      had got beyond the region of banks before I realised it, and had only two

-      pounds in hand; he engaged a canoe and six men for me; he gave me letters

-      to all Swanzy's agents in the back-country; and finally, when I had said

-      goodbye to the D.C. and his wife, he gave me luncheon and had me rolled

-      down on a trolley by the little hand railway, if I may coin a word, that

-      runs through the swamp and connects Akuse with its port Amedika on the

-      Volta.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This was a new mode of progression rather pleasant than otherwise, for as

-      it was down-hill to the river it couldn't have been hard on the men who

-      were pushing. I had come from the Commissioner's to the town on a cart,

-      proudly sitting on top of my gear, and drawn by half a dozen Kroo boys;

-      now my luggage went before me on another trolley, and my way was

-      punctuated by the number of parcels that fell off. My clothes were in a

-      tin uniform case supposed, mistakenly, I afterwards found, to be air-tight

-      and watertight, and I did not want this to fall off and break open,

-      because in it I had stowed all my money&mdash;twenty-five pounds all in

-      threepenny bits is somewhat of a care, I find. It escaped, but my bedding

-      went, making a nice cushion for the typewriter which followed it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The port Amedika, as may be seen from the picture, is very primitive, and

-      though twice a week the little mail steamer comes up coaly and black as

-      her own captain, on the occasion of my departure there were only canoes in

-      the harbour.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My canoe was one of the most ordinary structures, with a shelter in the

-      middle under which I had my chair put up. My gear was stowed fore and aft,

-      and six canoe-men took charge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0038" id="linkimage-0038"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0309.jpg" alt="0309 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0309.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Starting always seems to be a difficulty in Africa, and when I was weary

-      of the hot sun and the glare from the water, and was wondering why we did

-      not start, the canoe-men, true to their kind, found they had no chop, and

-      they had to wait till one of their number went back and got it. But it was

-      got at last and I was fairly afloat on the Volta.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To be paddled up a river is perhaps a very slow mode of progression, but

-      in no other way could I have seen the country so well; in no other way

-      could I have grasped its vast wealth, its wonderful resources. It is

-      something of an adventure to go up the Volta too, for as soon as we

-      started its smooth, wide reaches were broken by belts of rock that made it

-      seem well-nigh impassable. Again and again from the low seat in the canoe

-      it looked as if a rocky barrier barred all further progress, but here and

-      there the water rushed down the narrow chasm as in a mill-race. Wonderful

-      it was to find that a canoe could be poled up those rocky stairways

-      against the rushing water. The rapids before you reach Kpong are

-      innumerable; it seems as if the going were one long struggle. But the

-      river is wonderfully beautiful; it twists and turns, and first on the

-      right hand and then on the left I could see a tall peak, verdure-clad to

-      its very summit, Yogaga, the Long Woman. First the sun shone on it

-      brilliantly, as if it would emphasise its great beauty, and then a tornado

-      swept down, and the mist seemed to rise up and swallow it. The Senchi

-      Rapids raise the river thirty-four feet in a furlong or two, and the

-      water, white and foaming, boils over the brown rocks like the water

-      churned up in the wake of a great ocean steamer. I could not believe we

-      were going up there when we faced them, but the expert canoe-men, stripped

-      to a loin cloth, with shout and song defying the river, poled and pulled

-      and pushed the canoe up to another quiet reach, and when they had reached

-      calm water flung themselves down and smoked and chattered and looked back

-      over the way we had come. We seemed to go up in a series of spasms; either

-      the men were working for dear life or they were idling so as to bring down

-      upon them the wrath of Grant who, after that trip along the Coast, felt

-      himself qualified to speak, and again and again I had to interfere and

-      explain that if anybody was going to scold the men it must be me. But

-      indeed they worked so hard they needed a spell.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0039" id="linkimage-0039"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0313.jpg" alt="0313 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0313.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Many a time when the canoe was broadside on and the white water was

-      boiling up all round her, I thought, &ldquo;Well, this really looks very

-      dangerous,&rdquo; but nobody had told me it was, so I supposed it was only my

-      ignorance, but I heard afterwards that I was right, it is dangerous. Many

-      a bag of cotton has gone to the bottom here, and many a barrel of oil has

-      been dashed to pieces against the rocks, and if many a white man's gear

-      has not gone to the bottom too, it is only because white men on this river

-      are few and far between. I had one great advantage, I did not realise the

-      danger till we were right in it, and then it was pressing, it absorbed

-      every thought till we were in smooth water again, with the men lying

-      panting at the bottom of the canoe, so that I really had not time to be

-      afraid till it was all over. Frankly, I don't think I could enter upon

-      such a journey again so calmy, but I am glad I have gone once, for it was

-      such a wonderful and enchanting river. Some day they dream the great

-      waterway will be used to reach Tamale, a ten days' journey farther north,

-      but money must be spent before that happy end is arrived at, though I

-      fancy that if the river were in German hands something would be attempted

-      at once, for the country is undoubtedly very rich.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Scratch the earth it laughs a harvest.&rdquo; Cocoa and palm oil and rubber all

-      come to the river or grow within a short distance of its banks, and all

-      tropical fruits and native food-stuffs flourish like weeds. Beauty is

-      perhaps hardly an asset in West Africa, but the Volta is a most beautiful

-      river. The Gambia is interesting, the Congo grand, but the Volta is

-      entrancingly lovely. I have heard men rave of the beauty of the Thames,

-      and it certainly is a pleasant river, with its smooth, green lawns, its

-      shady trees, and its picturesque houses; but to compare it to the Volta is

-      to compare a pretty little birch-bark canoe to a magnificent sailing ship

-      with all her snowy canvas set, heeling over to the breeze. Sometimes its

-      great, wide, quiet reaches are like still, deep lakes, in whose clear

-      surface is mirrored the calm, blue sky, the fleecy clouds, the

-      verdure-clad banks, and the hills that are clothed in the densest green to

-      their very peaks. Sometimes it is a raging torrent, fighting its way over

-      the rocks, and beneath the vivid blue sky is the gorgeous vegetation of

-      the Tropics, tangled, luxuriant, feathery palms, tall and shapely

-      silk-cotton trees bound together with twining creeper and trailing vine in

-      one impenetrable mass. A brown patch proclaims a village, and here are

-      broad-leaved bananas, handsome mangoes, fragrant orange trees,

-      lighter-coloured cocoa patches, and cassada that from the distance might

-      be a patch of lucerne. Always there are hills, rising high, cutting the

-      sky sharply, ever changing, ever reflected faithfully in the river at

-      their feet. There is traffic, of course, men fishing from canoes, and

-      canoes laden with barrels of oil or kernels, or cocoa going down the

-      river, the boats returning with the gin and the cotton cloths for the

-      factories run by the negro agents of the great trading-houses; and every

-      three or four hours or so&mdash;distance is as yet counted by time in West

-      Africa&mdash;are the stations of the preventive service.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0040" id="linkimage-0040"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0317.jpg" alt="0317 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0317.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      This preventive service is rather curious, because both banks of the

-      river, in the latter part of its course, are owned by the English, and the

-      service is between the two portions of the Colony. But east of the Volta,

-      whither I was bound, the country is but little known, and apparently the

-      powers that be do not feel themselves equal to cope with a very effective

-      preventive service, so they have there the same duties, a 4 per cent, one

-      that the Germans have in Togo land, while west of the Volta they have a 10

-      per cent. duty.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I hope there is not much smuggling on the Volta, for with all apologies to

-      the white preventive officers, I doubt the likelihood of the men doing

-      much to stop it. The stations match the river. They have been

-      picturesquely planned&mdash;the plans carefully carried out; the houses

-      are well kept up, and round them are some of the few gardens, in English

-      hands, on the Gold Coast that really look like gardens. Though I did not

-      in the course of three days' travel come across him, I felt they marked

-      the presence of some careful, capable white man. The credit is certainly

-      not due to the negro preventive men. In the presence of their white

-      officer they are smart-looking men; seen in his absence they relax their

-      efforts and look as untidy and dirty as a railway porter after a hard

-      day's struggle with a Bank Holiday crowd. After all one can hardly blame

-      the negro for not exerting himself. Nature has given him all he absolutely

-      requires; he has but to stretch out his hand and take it, using almost as

-      little forethought and exertion as the great black cormorants or the

-      little blue-and-white king-fishers that get their livelihood from the

-      river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And I was afraid of those men. I may have wronged them for they were quite

-      civil, but I was afraid. Again and again they made me remember, as the

-      ordinary peasants never did, that I was a woman alone and very very

-      helpless. Nothing would have induced me to stay two nights at one of those

-      stations. These men were half-civilised. They had lost all awe of a white

-      face, and, I felt, were inclined to be presuming. What could I have done

-      if they had forgotten their thin veneer of civilisation, and gone back to

-      pure savagery. Nothing&mdash;I know it&mdash;nothing. At Adjena I had to

-      have my camp-bed put up on the verandah, because I found the house too

-      stuffy, and the moonlit river was glorious to look upon, but I was

-      anything but happy in my own mind; I wondered if I wanted help if my

-      canoe-men, who were very decent, respectable savages, would come to my

-      help. I wonder still. But the morning brought me a glorious view. The sun

-      rose behind Chai Hill, and flung its shadow all across the river, and I

-      attempted feebly to reproduce it in a photograph, and gladly and

-      thankfully I went on my way up the river, and I vowed in my own mind that

-      never if I could help it would I come up here again by myself. If any

-      adventurous woman feels desirous of following in my footsteps, I have but

-      one piece of advice to give her&mdash;&ldquo;Don't.&rdquo; I don't think I would do it

-      again for all the money in the Bank of England. I may do him an injustice,

-      but I do not trust the half-civilised black man. I got through, I think,

-      because for a moment he was astonished. Next time he will not be taken by

-      surprise, and it will not be safe.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0041" id="linkimage-0041"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0321.jpg" alt="0321 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0321.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      At Labolabo I left the river. Dearly I should have loved to have gone on,

-      to have made my way up to the Northern Territories, but for one thing, my

-      canoe-men were only engaged as far as Labolabo; for another, I had not

-      brought enough photographic plates. I really think it was that last

-      consideration that stopped me. What was the good of going without taking

-      photographs? Curiously enough, the fact that I was afraid did not weigh

-      much with me. I suppose we are all built alike, and at moments our mental

-      side weights up our emotional side. Now, my mental side very much wanted

-      to go up past the Afram plain. I should have had to stay in the preventive

-      service houses, which grew farther and farther apart, and I was afraid of

-      the preventive service men, afraid of them in the sordid way one fears the

-      low-class ruffian of the great cities, but there was that in me that

-      whispered that there was a doubt, and therefore it might be exceedingly

-      foolish to check my search after knowledge for a fear that might only be a

-      causeless fear. But about the photographic plates there was no doubt; I

-      had not brought nearly enough with me, and therefore I landed very meekly

-      at Labolabo.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was rather a desolate-looking factory, but it did not look inviting

-      enough to induce me to go inside it, so I sat down under a tree on the

-      high bank of the river and interviewed the black factor to whom Swanzy's

-      agent had given me a letter. He was mightily surprised, but I was

-      accustomed to being received with surprise now, and began to consider the

-      making of a cup of tea. Then the factor brought another man along and

-      introduced him to me as Swanzy's agent at Pekki Blengo, Mr Olympia. And

-      once more I feel like apologising to all the African peoples for anything

-      I may have said against them. Mr Olympia came from French Dahomey. He was

-      extremely good-looking, and had polished, courteous manners such as one

-      dreams of in the Spanish hidalgos of old. If you searched the wide world

-      over I do not think you could wish to find a more charming man than

-      Swanzy's black agent at Pekki Blengo. I know very little of him. I only

-      met him casually as I met other black men, men outside the pale for me, a

-      white woman, but I felt when I looked at him there might be possibilities

-      in the African race; when I think of their enormous strength and their

-      wonderful vigour, immense possibilities.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I explained to Mr Olympia that I wanted to get to the rest-house at Anum,

-      that I had arranged for my canoe-men to carry my kit there, and that Mr

-      Rowe had told me that he, Mr Olympia, could get me carriers on to Ho. He

-      said certainly, but he thought I ought at least to go up to the British

-      Cotton-growing Experimental Farm, about ten minutes' walk away from the

-      river. He felt that the white man in charge would be much hurt if I did

-      not at least call and see him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A white man at Labolabo! How surprised I was. Of course I would go, and Mr

-      Olympia apologising for the absence of hammock or cart, we set off to

-      walk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Those African ten minutes! It took me a good forty minutes through the

-      blazing heat of an African afternoon, and then I was met upon the steps of

-      the bungalow by a perfectly amazed white man in his shirt sleeves, who

-      hurriedly explained that when he had seen the luggage coming along in

-      charge of the faithful Grant, who made the nearest approach to a

-      slave-driver I have ever seen, he had asked him, &ldquo;Who be your master?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It be no massa,&rdquo; said Grant, &ldquo;it be missus.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; said my new friend, &ldquo;I set him at the end of the avenue and

-      told him he was to keep you off till I found a coat. But I couldn't find

-      it. I don't know where the blamed thing's got to.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He went on to inquire where I had come from and how I had come. I told

-      him, &ldquo;Up the river.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;it requires a picked crew of ten preventive service

-      men to come up the Volta.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I assured him, I was ready to take my oath about it, you could do it

-      fairly easily with six ordinary, hired men, but he went on shaking his

-      head and declared he couldn't imagine what Rowe was thinking of. He

-      thought I had really embarked on the maddest journey ever woman dreamt of,

-      and while getting me a cool drink, for which I blessed him, went on

-      murmuring, &ldquo;Rowe must have been mad.&rdquo; I think his surprise brought home to

-      me for the first time the fact that I was doing anything unusual. Before

-      that it had seemed very natural to be going up the river, to be simply

-      wanting to get on and see the great waterway and the country behind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I did not go on to Anum as I had intended. It was Easter Saturday, and my

-      new friend suggested I should spend Easter with him. I demurred, and he

-      said it would be a charity. He had no words to express his loneliness, and

-      as for the canoe-men, who could not stay to carry my things to Anum, let

-      them go. He would see about my gear being taken up there. And so I stayed,

-      glad to see how a man managed by himself in the wilderness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The British Cotton-growing Experimental Farm at Labolabo is to all intents

-      and purposes a failure. It was set there in the midst of gorgeously rich

-      country to teach the native to grow cotton, and the native seeing that

-      cocoa, with infinitively less exertion, pays him very much better,

-      naturally firmly declines to do anything of the sort. So here in this

-      beautiful spot lives utterly alone a solitary white man who, with four

-      inefficient labourers, tries desperately to keep the primeval bush from

-      swallowing up the farm and entirely effacing all the hard work that has

-      been done there. This farm should be a valuable possession besides being a

-      very beautiful one. The red-roofed bungalow is set in a bay of the high,

-      green hills, which stretch out verdure-clad arms, threatening every moment

-      to envelop it. The land slopes gently, and as I sat on the broad verandah,

-      through the dense foliage of the trees I could catch glimpses of the

-      silver Volta a mile and a half away, while beyond again the blue hills

-      rose range after range till they were lost in the bluer distance. Four

-      years ago this man who was entertaining me so hospitably had planted a

-      mile-long avenue to lead up to his bungalow, and now the tall grape-fruit

-      and shaddock in front of his verandah meet and have regularly to be cut

-      away to keep the path clear. I am too ignorant to know what could be grown

-      with profit, only I can see that the land is rich and fruitful, and should

-      be, with the river so close, a most valuable possession. As it is, it is

-      one of the most lonely places in the world. I sympathised deeply with the

-      man living there alone. The loneliness grips. If I went to my room I could

-      hear him tramping monotonously up and down the verandah. &ldquo;Tramp, tramp,

-      tramp,&rdquo; and when I went out he smiled queerly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0042" id="linkimage-0042"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0327.jpg" alt="0327 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0327.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I can't help doing it,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;it's the lonely man's walk. And when I

-      can't see those two lines,&rdquo; he pointed to two boards in the verandah, &ldquo;I

-      know I'm drunk and I go to bed.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was like the story of the man who kept a frog in his pocket and every

-      time he had a drink he took it out and looked at it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What the dickens do you do that for?&rdquo; asked a companion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Well, when I see two frogs,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I know I've had enough.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now I don't believe my friend at Labolabo did exceed, judging by his

-      looks, but if ever man might be excused it was he. He had for servants a

-      very old cook and a slave-boy with a much-scarred face; the marks upon his

-      face proclaimed his former status, but no man could understand the

-      unintelligible jargon he spoke, so no man knew where he came from. It was

-      probably north of German territory. At any rate, he flitted about the

-      bungalow a most inadequate steward.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And he laid the table in the stone house&mdash;or rather the shelter with

-      two stone walls, a stone floor, and a broken-down thatch roof, where we

-      had our meals. It was perhaps twenty yards from the bungalow, and on the

-      garden side grew like a wall great bushes of light-green feathery justitia

-      with its yellow, bell-like flowers, while on the other side a little

-      grass-grown plain stretched away to the forest-clad hills behind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh, but it was lonely! and fear is a very catching thing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is nothing to be afraid of in Africa,&rdquo; said my host, &ldquo;till the

-      moment there is something, and then you're done.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Whether he was right or not I do not know, but I realised as I had never

-      done before why men get sick in the bush, worse, why they take to drink

-      and why they go mad. I looked out from the verandah, and when I saw a

-      black figure slip silently in among the trees I wondered what it

-      portended. I looked behind me to see if one might not be coming from

-      behind the kitchen. The fool-bird in the bush crying, &ldquo;Hoo! hoo! hoo!&rdquo; all

-      on one note seemed but crying a suitable dirge. Fear hid on the verandah;

-      I could hear him in the creak of a door, in the &ldquo;pad, pad&rdquo; of the

-      slave-boy's feet; I could almost have sworn I saw him skulking under the

-      mango tree where were kept the thermometers; and when on Easter Sunday a

-      tornado swept down from the hills, blotting out the vivid green in one

-      pall of grey mist, he was in the shrieking wind and in the shuddering

-      rain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Never was I more impersonally sorry to leave a man alone, for if I saw my

-      host again I doubt if he would recognise me, but it seemed wicked to leave

-      a fellow white man alone in such a place. If there had been any real

-      danger, of course I should only have been an embarrassment, but at least I

-      was company of his own kind and I kept that haunting fear at bay.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I stayed two days and then I felt go I must. I was also faced with my own

-      carelessness and the casual manner in which I had dropped into the

-      wilderness. Anum mountain was a steep climb of five miles, and beyond that

-      again I had, as far as I could gather, several days' journey in the wilds

-      before I could hope to reach rail-head in German Togo, and I had actually

-      never remembered that I should want a hammock. The Cotton-growing

-      Association didn't possess one, and, like Christian in the &ldquo;Pilgrim's

-      Progress,&rdquo; I &ldquo;cast about me&rdquo; what I should do. I could not fancy myself

-      walking in the blazing noonday sun. My host smiled. He did not think it

-      was a matter of any great consequence because he felt sure I could not get

-      through, but he came to my rescue all the same and sent up a couple of

-      labourers to the Basel Mission at Anum to see what they could suggest. The

-      labourers came back with a hammock&mdash;rather a dilapidated one&mdash;on

-      their heads, and an invitation to luncheon next day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It's as far as you'll go,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;if nothing else stops you;

-      you can't possibly get carriers. Remember, I'll put you up with pleasure

-      on your way back.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But I was not going to face the Volta again by myself, though I did not

-      tell him that. Those black men insulted me by making me fear them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a very hot morning when we started to climb up Anum mountain. The

-      bush on either side was rather thick, and the road was steep and very bad

-      going. It was shaded, luckily, most of the way, and there arose that damp,

-      pleasant smell that comes from moist earth, the rich, sensuous, insidious

-      scent of an orchid that I could not see, or the mouselike smell of the

-      great fruitarian bats that in these daylight hours were hidden among the

-      dense greenery of the roadside. It was a toilsome journey, and my new

-      friend walked beside me, but at last we reached Anum town, a mud-built,

-      native town, bare, hot, dirty, unkempt, and we passed beyond it to the

-      grateful shade once more of the Basel Mission grounds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XIV&mdash;INTO THE WILDS

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Anum Mountain&mdash;The Basel Mission&mdash;A beautiful spot&mdash;An

-      old Ashanti raid&mdash;A desolate rest-house&mdash;Alone and afraid; also

-      hungry&mdash;A long night&mdash;Jakai&mdash;Pekki Blengo&mdash;The

-      unspeakable Eveto Range&mdash;Underpaid carriers&mdash;A beautiful, a

-      wealthy, and a neglected land&mdash;Tsito&mdash;The churches and the

-      fetish&mdash;Difficulties of lodging in a cocoa-store&mdash;The lonely

-      country between Tsito and the Border&mdash;Doubts of the hammock-boys&mdash;The

-      awful road&mdash;Butterflies&mdash;The Border.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>rankly, my

-      sympathies are not as a rule with the missionaries, certainly not with

-      African missionaries. I have not learned to understand spiritual misery,

-      and of material misery there is none in Africa to be compared with the

-      unutterable woe one meets at every turn in an English city. But one thing

-      I admire in these Swiss and German teachers is the way they have improved

-      the land they have taken possession of. Their women, too, make here their

-      homes and bear their children. &ldquo;A home,&rdquo; I said as I stepped on to the

-      wide verandah of the Mission Station at Anum; &ldquo;a home,&rdquo; as I went into the

-      rooms decorated with texts in German and Twi; &ldquo;a home,&rdquo; as I sat down to

-      the very excellent luncheon provided by the good lady whom most English

-      women would have designated a little scornfully as a <i>haus-frau</i>.

-      Most emphatically &ldquo;a home&rdquo; when I looked out over the beautiful gardens

-      that were nicely planted with mangoes, bananas, palms, and all manner of

-      pretty shrubs and bright-foliaged trees. It seems to me almost a pity to

-      teach the little negro since he is so much nicer in his untutored state,

-      but since they feel it must be done these Basel Mission people are going

-      the very best way about it by beautifying their own surroundings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From their verandah over the scented frangipanni and fragrant orange trees

-      you may see far far away the winding Volta like a silver thread at the

-      bottom of the valley, and the great hills that control his course standing

-      up on either side. It is an old station, for in the late sixties the

-      Ashantis raided it, captured the missionary, Mr Ramseyer, his wife and

-      child, and held them in captivity for several years. But times are changed

-      now. The native, even the fierce Ashanti warrior, has learned that it is

-      well for him that the white man should be here, and up in the rest-house

-      on the other side of the mountain a white woman may stay alone in safety.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Why do the powers that be overlook Anum mountain? The rest-house to which

-      my kind friend from Labolabo escorted me after we had lunched at the Basel

-      Mission was shabby and desolate with that desolation that comes where a

-      white man has been and is no longer. No one has ever tried to make a

-      garden, though the larger trees and shrubs have been cleared from about

-      the house and in their stead weeds have sprung up, and the vigour of their

-      growth shows the possibilities, while the beauty of the situation is not

-      to be denied. Away to the north, where not even a native dwells, spreads

-      out the wide extent of the Afram plain, a very paradise for the sportsman,

-      for there are to be found numberless hartebeests, leopards, lions, and

-      even the elephant himself. It lies hundreds, possibly thousands of feet

-      below, and across it winds the narrow streak of the Volta, while to the

-      north the hills stretch out as if they would keep the mighty river for

-      England, barring its passage to the east and to German territory.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And here my friend from Labolabo left me&mdash;left me, I think, with some

-      misgivings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Come back,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you know I'll be glad to see you. Mind you come

-      back. I know you can't get through.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But I had my own opinion about that.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What about the carriers Mr Olympia is going to send me to-morrow

-      morning?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And he laughed. &ldquo;Those carriers! don't you wish you may get them? I know

-      those carriers black men promise. Why, the missionary said you needn't

-      expect them.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The Basel missionary had said I might get through if I was prepared to

-      wait, and as I said good-bye I was prepared to wait.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The rest-house was on top of a mountain in the clouds, far away from any

-      sign of habitation. The rooms were large, empty, and desolate with a

-      desolation there is no describing. There was a man in charge living in a

-      little house some way off, the dispenser at the empty hospital which was

-      close to the rest-house, and the Basel missionary spoke of him with scorn.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;He was one of my boys,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;such a fool I sent him away, and why

-      the Government have him for dispenser here I do not know.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Neither do I, but I suspect he was in a place where he could do the very

-      minimum of harm, for very few people come to Anum mountain. There is a

-      Ju-ju upon it, and my first experience was that I could get no food.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No sooner were we alone than Grant appeared before me mightily aggrieved.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;This bush country no good, Ma. I no can get chop.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I hope I would have felt sorry for him in any case, but it was brought

-      home to me by the fact that he could get no chop for me either.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had come to the end of my stores and there was not a chicken nor an egg

-      nor bread nor fruit to be bought in the village down the hill. The

-      villagers said they had none, or declined to sell, which came to the same

-      thing. I dined frugally off tea and biscuits, and I presume Grant helped

-      himself to the biscuits&mdash;I told him to&mdash;tea he hated&mdash;and

-      then as the evening drew on I prepared to go to bed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh! but it was lonely, and fear fell upon me. A white mist came softly up,

-      so that I could not see beyond the broad, empty verandahs. I knew the moon

-      was shining by the white light, but I could not see her and I felt shut in

-      and terrified. Where Grant went to I don't know, but he disappeared after

-      providing my frugal evening meal, and I could hear weird sounds that came

-      out of the mist, and none of the familiar chatter and laughter of the

-      carriers to which I had grown accustomed. It was against all my principles

-      to shut myself in, so I left doors and windows wide open and listened for

-      the various awful things that might come out of the bush and up those

-      verandah steps. What I feared I know not, but I feared, feared greatly;

-      the fear that had come upon me at Labolabo worked his wicked will now that

-      I was alone on Anum mountain, and the white mist aided and abetted. I

-      could hear the drip, drip, as of water falling somewhere in the silence; I

-      could hear the cry of a bird out in the bush, but it was the silence that

-      made every rustle so fraught with meaning. It was no good telling myself

-      there was nothing to fear, that the kindly missionaries would never have

-      left me alone if there had been.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I could only remember that on this mountain had raided those fierce

-      Ashanti warriors, that terrible things had been done here, that terrible

-      things might be done again, that if anything happened to me there was no

-      possibility of help, that I was quite powerless. I wondered if a Savage,

-      on these occasions one spells Savage with a very large &ldquo;S,&rdquo; did come on to

-      the verandah, did come into my bedroom, what should I do. I felt that even

-      a bush-cat would be terrifying, and having got so far I realised that a

-      rabbit would probably send me into hysterics. At the thought of the rabbit

-      my drooping spirits recovered themselves a little, but I spent a very

-      unpleasant night, dozing and listening, till my own heart-beats drowned

-      all other sounds. But I never thought of going back. I don't suppose I

-      should have given up in any case, it is against family tradition, but if I

-      had, there was the Volta behind me, and those preventive service men made

-      it imperative to go on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But when morning dawned I felt a little better. True, I did not like the

-      thought of tea and biscuits for breakfast, but I thought hopefully of the

-      Basel Mission gardens. I was sure, if I had to stay here, those hospitable

-      people would give me plenty of fruit, and probably a good deal more than

-      that, so I was not quite as depressed as Grant when I dressed and stood on

-      the verandah, looking across the mysterious mist that still shrouded the

-      valley of the Volta.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And before that mist had cleared away, up the steps of the rest-house came

-      the Basel missionary, and at their foot crowded a gang of lightly clad,

-      chattering men and women. My carriers! Mr Olympia had been as good as his

-      word, the missionary kindly came to interpret, and I set out for Pekki

-      Blengo, away in the hills to the east.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was all hill-country through which we passed; range after range of

-      hills, rich in cocoa and palm oil, while along the track, that we English

-      called a road, might be seen rubber trees scored with knives, so that the

-      milky rubber can be collected. Very little of this rich country is under

-      cultivation, the vegetation is dense and close, and the vivid green is

-      brightened here and there by scarlet poinsettas and flamboyant trees, then

-      at the beginning of the rains one mass of flame-coloured blossom. It was a

-      tangle of greenery, like some great, gorgeous greenhouse, and the native,

-      when he wants a clearing, burns off a small portion and plants cocoa or

-      cassada, yams, bananas, or maize, with enough cotton here and there,

-      between the lines of food-stuffs, to give him yarn for his immediate

-      needs. When the farmer has used up this land, he abandons it to the

-      umbrella trees and other tropical weeds, and with the wastefulness of the

-      native takes up another piece of land, burning and destroying, quite

-      careless of the value of the trees that go to feed the fire. Such reckless

-      destruction is not allowed by the Germans, but a few miles to the east.

-      There a native is encouraged to take up a farm, but he must improve it

-      year by year. Our thrifty neighbours will have no such waste within their

-      borders.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the course of the morning I arrived at Jakai, and the whole of the

-      village turned out to interview me, and I in my turn took a photograph of

-      as few as I could manage of the inhabitants under the principal tree. That

-      was always the difficulty. When they grasped I was going to take a

-      picture, and there was generally some much-travelled man ready to instruct

-      the others, they all crowded together in one mass in front of the camera&mdash;if

-      they did not object altogether, when they ran away&mdash;and I always had

-      to wait, and perjure myself, and say the picture was taken long before it

-      was done. But always they were kindly. If I grew afraid at night I always

-      reminded myself of the uniform goodwill of the villages through which I

-      passed; their evident desire that I should be pleased with my

-      surroundings. And at Jakai Grant, with triumph, bought so many eggs that I

-      trembled for my future meals. I foresaw a course of &ldquo;fly&rdquo; egg, hard-boiled

-      egg, and egg and breadcrumbs, but after all that was better than tea and

-      biscuits, and when I saw a pine-apple and a bunch of bananas I felt life

-      was going to be endurable again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Pekki Blengo, an untidy, disorderly village, where the streets are full

-      of holes and hillocks, strewn with litter and scarred with waterways, Mr

-      Olympia met me, and conducted me to an empty chiefs house, where I might

-      put up for the night. It was a twostoried house of mud, with plenty of

-      air, for there were great holes where the doors and windows would have

-      been, and I slept peacefully once more with the hum of human life all

-      around me again. But I can hardly admire Pekki Blengo. It is like all

-      these villages of the English Eastern Province. The houses are of mud, the

-      roofs of thatch, and fowls, ducks, pigs, goats, and little happy, naked

-      children alike swarm. That is one comfort so different from travelling in

-      the older lands&mdash;these villagers are apparently happy enough. They

-      are kindly and courteous, too, for though a white woman was evidently an

-      extraordinary sight equal in interest to a circus clown, or even an

-      elephant, and they rushed from all quarters to see her, they never pushed

-      or crowded, and they cuffed the children if they seemed likely to worry

-      her.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And beyond Pekki Blengo the road reached its worst. Mr Olympia warned me I

-      should have to walk across the Eveto Range as no hammock-boys could

-      possibly carry me, and I decided therefore that the walking had better be

-      done very early in the morning, and arranged to start at half-past five,

-      as soon as it was light.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The traveller is always allowed the privilege of arranging in Africa. If

-      he does not he will certainly not progress at all, but at the same time it

-      is surprising how seldom his well-arranged plans come off. True to promise

-      my hammock-boys and carriers turned up some time a little before six in

-      the morning, and the carriers, swarming up the verandah, turned over the

-      loads, made a great many remarks that I was incapable of understanding,

-      and one and all departed. Then the hammock-boys apparently urged me to get

-      into the hammock and start, as they were in a hurry to be off and earn the

-      four shillings they were to have for taking me to Ho in German territory.

-      I pointed out, whether they understood I did not know, that I could not

-      stir without my gear, and I went off to interview Mr Olympia, who was

-      sweetly slumbering in his house about a mile away. He, when he was

-      aroused, said they thought I was not giving them enough; that they said

-      they would not carry loads to Ho for one shilling and sixpence and two

-      shillings a load. I said that that was the sum he had fixed. I was

-      perfectly willing to give more; and he set out to interview the Chief, and

-      see if he could get fresh carriers, but he was not very hopeful about

-      getting any that day. I retired to my chiefs house, grew tired of making

-      mental notes of the people and the surrounding country, and got out a pack

-      of cards and solaced myself with one-handed bridge, which may be

-      educational, but is not very exciting. My hammock-boys again pleaded to be

-      taken on, but I was firm. It was useless moving without my gear; and

-      finally when I was about giving up hope Mr Olympia returned. He had found

-      eight men and women who were bound across the Eveto Range to get loads at

-      Tsito. Sixpence, he explained, was the ordinary charge for a load to

-      Tsito, but if I would rise to say ninepence for my heavier loads&mdash;he

-      hesitated as if such an enormous expenditure might not commend itself to

-      my purse. But naturally I assented gladly, and off went my loads at

-      sixpence and ninepence a head. For a moment I rejoiced, and as usual began

-      to purr over my excellent management. Not for long though. It was my turn

-      now, and where were my hammock-boys? Inquiry elicited the awful fact that

-      they had gone to their farms and could not be prevailed upon to start till

-      next day; Mr Olympia was sure I could not hope to move before to-morrow

-      morning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The situation was anything but comfortable. I had had nothing to eat since

-      earliest dawn. I had now not even a chair to sit upon, nor a pack of cards

-      to solace the dull hours. I dare not eat and, worse still, dare not drink.

-      Then I sent word to Mr Olympia that if he would get me a couple of men to

-      carry my hammock I would walk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I sat on the steps of that house and waited, I walked down the road and

-      waited, and the tropical day grew hotter and hotter, the sun poured down

-      pitilessly, and I was weary with thirst, but still I would not drink the

-      native water. At last, oh triumph, instead of two, eight grinning

-      hammock-boys turned up, and about 1.30 on a blazing tropical afternoon we

-      started. Ten minutes later I was set down at the foot of the unspeakable

-      Eveto Range, and my men gave me to understand by signs they could carry me

-      no longer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I cannot think that the Eveto Range is perpendicular, but it seemed pretty

-      nearly so. It was thickly wooded, as is all the country, and the road was

-      the merest track between the walls of vegetation, a track that twisted and

-      turned out of the way of the larger obstacles, the smaller ones we

-      negotiated as best we might, holes, and roots, and rocks, and waterways,

-      that made the distance doubly and trebly great. In five minutes I felt

-      done; in ten it was brought home to me forcibly that I was an unutterable

-      fool ever to attempt to travel in Africa. In addition to the roughness

-      there was the steepness of the way to be taken into consideration, and the

-      constant strain of going up, up compelled me again and again to lie down

-      flat on my back to recover sufficient strength and breath to go on. What

-      matter if the view was delightful&mdash;it was&mdash;when I had neither

-      time, nor strength, nor energy to raise my eyes from the difficulties that

-      beset my feet. But there was nothing to be done except to crawl painfully

-      along with the tropical sun pouring pitilessly down, and not a breath of

-      wind stirring.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And I was dead with thirst. We came across a bunch of bananas, laid beside

-      the track, and my men offered me one by way of refreshment, but I was too

-      done to eat, and I thought what a fool I was not to carry a flask. When I

-      had given up all hope of surviving, and really didn't much care what

-      became of me so long as I died quickly, we reached the top where were

-      native farms with cotton bushes now in full bloom planted among the

-      food-stuffs, and I rested a little and gathered together my energies for

-      the descent. And if the going up was bad, the going down was worse. There

-      were great rocks and boulders that I would never have dared in England,

-      and when I could spare time from my own woes I reflected that the usual

-      charge for taking a load to Tsito was sixpence, and decided between my own

-      gasps it was the most iniquitous piece of slave-driving I had ever heard

-      of. Twenty pounds, I felt, would never pay me for carrying myself across

-      this awful country, and there were those wretched carriers toiling along

-      for a miserable sixpence, or at most ninepence. I was thoroughly ashamed

-      of myself. And the view was beautiful. Before us, in the evening light,

-      lay the wealthy land where no white man goes, and the beautiful,

-      verdure-clothed hills dappled with shadow and sunshine. The light was

-      going, but, weary as I was, I had to stop and look, for never again might

-      I see a more lovely view.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And at last, just as the darkness was falling, we had crossed the range,

-      and I thankfully and wearily tumbled into my hammock and was carried

-      through the village of Tsito to the trader's store. It was a humble store,

-      presided over by a black man who spoke English, and here they bought

-      cotton and cocoa, and sold kerosene and trade gin, cotton cloths, and the

-      coarsest kinds of tinned fish. I had a letter from Mr Olympia to this

-      black man, and he offered me the hospitality of the cocoa-store; that is

-      to say, a space was cleared among the cocoa and cotton and other

-      impedimenta, my bed and table and bath set up. Grant brought me something

-      to eat&mdash;hard-boiled eggs, biscuits, and bananas, with tea to drink.

-      How thankful I was for that tea! I dined with an admiring crowd looking

-      on, and I remembered my repentance on the mountain and sent for my

-      carriers and paid them all double. I still think it was too little, but in

-      excuse it must be remembered that I was alone and hardly dared risk a

-      reputation for immense wealth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are difficulties connected with lodging in a cocoa-store, especially

-      when you are surrounded by a population who have never seen a white woman

-      before. I needed a bath, but how to get it I hardly knew, with eyes all

-      over the place, so at last I put out the lights and had it in the dark,

-      and I went to bed in the dark, and as I was going to sleep I heard the

-      audience dispersing, discussing the show at the top of their voices. As I

-      did not understand what they said I did not know whether they had found it

-      satisfactory. At least it was cheap, unless Swanzy's agent charged them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was not afraid now, curiously enough, right away from civilisation,

-      entirely at these peoples' mercy. I felt quite safe, and after my hard day

-      I slept like the dead. It is mentally very soothing, I notice, to say to

-      oneself, &ldquo;Well done!&rdquo; and our mental attitude has a great effect upon our

-      physical health. At least I found one thing&mdash;I had pitied myself most

-      unnecessarily. My exertions had done me no harm, and I never felt in

-      better health than when I waked up next morning in Swanzy's cocoa-room and

-      proceeded to get dressed in the dark. That was necessary, because I knew

-      the sound of my stirring would bring an interested audience to see how the

-      white woman did things. I really don't think the White City rivalled me as

-      a provider of amusement for the people in the eastern district of the

-      Volta and the western district of Togo in the end of April and beginning

-      of May last.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0043" id="linkimage-0043"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0349.jpg" alt="0349 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0349.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I had picked up a discarded map on the floor of the rest-house at Anum,

-      and here I saw that many of the villages were marked with crosses to show

-      that there was a church, but I saw no church here in Tsito, though I doubt

-      not there was one. What I did see, not only in Tsito but at the entrance

-      to every village I passed through, was a low, thatched shed, under which

-      were the fetish images of the village. These were generally the rough-cut

-      outline in clay or wood of a human figure seated. Sometimes the figure had

-      a dirty rag round it, sometimes a small offering in front of it, and

-      dearly should I have liked to have had a picture, but the people, even

-      Swanzy's agent, objected, and I did not like to run counter to local

-      prejudice. And yet Swanzy's agent is by way of being a Christian, but I

-      dare say Christianity in these parts of Africa, like Christianity in

-      old-time Britain or Gaul, conforms a good deal to pagan modes of thought.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I met a picturesque gentleman starting out for his farm, and him I

-      photographed after he had been assured that no harm could possibly happen

-      to him, though he begged very anxiously that he might be allowed to go

-      home and put on his best cloth. I think he is a very nice specimen of the

-      African peasant as he is, but I am sure he would be much troubled could he

-      know he was going into a book in his farm clothes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was just beginning to get hot as I got back to the store after

-      wandering round the village, and I found Grant and the carriers with all

-      my gear had already started and were nowhere to be seen. It was, perhaps,

-      just as well that it never occurred to Grant that I might be afraid to be

-      left alone with strange black men. But to-day my strange black men were

-      not forthcoming. I had expected them to come gaily because, to celebrate

-      the crossing of the Eveto Range, while I had paid the carriers double, I

-      had given the hammock-boys, who had had a very easy time, a couple of

-      shillings to buy either gin or rum or palm wine, whichever they could get.

-      It stamped me as a fool woman, and now, after a long delay, they came and

-      stood round the hammock without offering to lift it from the ground.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is trouble,&rdquo; said the black agent sententiously.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had come out into the roadway, prepared to get into the hammock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They say Ho be far. Four shillings no be enough money to tote hammock to

-      Ho.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I was furious. They had made the agreement. I had given exactly what they

-      asked, but where I had made the mistake was in doing more. Now what was to

-      be done? I did not hesitate for a moment. I marched straight back to the

-      cocoa-store.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Tell them,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;they can go home and I will pay them nothing. I will

-      walk.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now if either the agent or those hammock-boys had given the thing a

-      moment's thought, they must have seen this was sheer bluff on my part. It

-      would have been a physical impossibility for me to walk, at least I think

-      so; besides, I should have been entirely alone and I had not the faintest

-      notion of the way. However, my performance of yesterday had apparently not

-      impressed them as badly as it had impressed me, and just as I was

-      meditating despairingly what on earth I should do, for I felt to give in

-      would be fatal, into the store came those men bearing the hammock, and it

-      did not need Swanzy's interpreter to tell me, &ldquo;You get in, Mammy. They go

-      quick.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      We were out of the village at once and into the country. It was

-      orchard-bush country, thick grass just growing tall with the beginning of

-      the rains, and clumps of low-growing trees, with an occasional patch of

-      miniature forest that grew so close it shut out the fierce sun overhead

-      and gave a welcome and grateful shade. We passed the preventive service

-      station on the Border&mdash;an untidy, thatched hut, presided over by a

-      black man, who looked not unlike a dilapidated, a very dilapidated railway

-      porter who had been in store for some time and got a little moth-eaten&mdash;and

-      I concluded we were at the end of British territory; but not yet. The road

-      was bad when we started, and it grew steadily worse till here it was very

-      bad indeed. It became a mere track through the rough, grass country on

-      either side, a track that admitted of but one man walking singly, and my

-      boys dropped the hammock by way of intimating that they could carry me no

-      farther. They could not, I could see that for myself, for not only was the

-      track narrow, but it twisted and turned and doubled on itself, so that a

-      corkscrew is straight in comparison with the road to Ho.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And once more fear fell upon me. I was alone with men who could not

-      understand a word that I said, who could not speak a word that I could

-      understand, and since only in a Gilbertian sense could this track be

-      called a road at all, that it could lead to anywhere seemed impossible.

-      There were no farms, no villages, not a sign of habitation. A fool-bird

-      called cynically, &ldquo;Hoo! hoo! hoo!&rdquo; and I hesitated whether I would rather

-      these eight men walked in front of me or behind me. I decided they should

-      walk in front, and they laughingly obeyed, and we walked on through the

-      heat. Many-coloured butterflies, large as small birds, flitted across the

-      track. Never have I seen such beautiful butterflies, blue as gentian, or

-      as turquoise with a brilliancy the turquoise lacks; purple, red, yellow,

-      and white were they, and it was only the utter hopelessness of keeping

-      them prevented my making any attempt to catch them. Evidently I was not as

-      afraid as I thought I was because I could reflect upon the desirability of

-      those butterflies in a collection. But I was afraid. Occasionally people,

-      men or women, in twos or threes, came along with loads upon their heads,

-      and I tried to speak to them and ask them if this really was the road to

-      Ho, but I could make no one understand and they passed on, turning to

-      stare with wonder at the stranger. There were silk-cotton trees and

-      shea-butter trees and many another unknown tree, but it seemed I had come

-      right out into the wilds beyond human ken or occupation, and I had to

-      assure myself again and again that these carriers were decent peasants,

-      just earning a little, something beyond what came from cocoa or palm oil,

-      with wives&mdash;probably many wives&mdash;and children, and the strange

-      white woman was worth a good deal more to them safely delivered at her

-      destination than in any way else. We came to a river, and by a merciful

-      interposition of Providence it was dry, and we were able to ignore the

-      slippery, moss-grown tree-trunk that did duty as bridge, and, scrambling

-      down into its bed, cross easily to the other side, and there, in the midst

-      of a shady clump of trees, was Grant with all the carriers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So it was the road to Ho after all, and, as usual, I had worried myself

-      most unnecessarily. I sat down on my precious black box that contained all

-      my money, and Grant got out a tumbler, squeezed the last orange I

-      possessed into it, filled it up from the sparklet bottle, and I was ready

-      to laugh at my fears and face the world once more.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again we went along the tortuous path, and then suddenly the Border!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XV&mdash;CROSSING THE BORDER

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>German roads&mdash;German villages&mdash;The lovely valley of Ho&mdash;The

-      kindly German welcome&mdash;German hospitality&mdash;An ideal woman

-      colonist&mdash;Pink roses&mdash;The way it rains in Togo&mdash;An

-      unfortunate cripple&mdash;Vain regrets&mdash;Sodden pillows&mdash;A German

-      rest-house&mdash;A meal under difficulties&mdash;Travelling by night&mdash;The

-      weirdness of it&mdash;The sounds of the night&mdash;The fireflies&mdash;A

-      long long journey&mdash;Palime by night&mdash;More German hospitality&mdash;Rail-head.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here was nothing

-      to mark the border between the Gold Coast Colony and Togo. The country on

-      the one side was as the country on the other, orchard-bush country with

-      high grass and clumps of trees and shrubs; the lowering sky was the same,

-      the fierce sun the same, only there was a road at last.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Germans make roads as the Romans made them, that their conquering

-      legions might pass, and here, in this remote corner of the earth, where

-      neither Englishman nor German comes, is a road, the like of which I did

-      not find in the Gold Coast Colony. It is hard and smooth as a garden-path,

-      it is broad enough for two carts or two hammocks to pass abreast, it runs

-      straight as a die, on either side the bushes and grass are kept neatly

-      trimmed away, and deep waterways are cut so that the heavy rainfall may

-      not spoil the road.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After a short time we came to a preventive station, neat and pretty as a

-      station on the Volta, higher praise I cannot give it, and beyond that was

-      a village; a village that was a precursor of all the villages that were to

-      come. As a Briton I write it with the deepest regret, but the difference

-      between an English village and a German village is as the difference

-      between the model village of Edensor and the grimy town of Hanley in the

-      Black Country. Here, in this first little village on the Togo side, all

-      the ground between the houses was smoothed and swept, the houses

-      themselves looked trim and neat, great, beautiful, spreading shade-trees

-      of the order <i>ficus elasticus</i> were planted at regular intervals in

-      the main street, and underneath them were ranged logs, so that the people

-      who lounge away the heat of the day in the shade may have seats. Even the

-      goats and the sheep had a neater look, which perhaps is no wonder, for

-      here is no filthy litter or offal among which they may lie.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As I passed on my wonder increased. Here was exactly the same country,

-      exactly the same natives, and all the difference between order and

-      neatness and slatternly untidiness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0044" id="linkimage-0044"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0357.jpg" alt="0357 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0357.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I went on through this charming country till I found myself looking across

-      a lovely valley at a house set high on a hill, the Commissioner's house at

-      Ho at last. I went down into the valley, along a road that was bordered

-      with flamboyant trees, all full of flame-coloured blossom, and then

-      suddenly the curtain of my hammock was whisked up, and there stood before

-      me a bearded white man, dressed in a white duck suit with a little red

-      badge in his white helmet&mdash;the Commissioner, he told me in his

-      halting English, at Ho.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now I had come into that country without a letter or a credential of any

-      sort, a foreigner, speaking not one word of the language, and I wondered

-      what sort of reception I should meet with. I tried to explain that I was

-      looking for a rest-house, but he waved my remarks aside with a smile, made

-      me understand that his wife was up in the house on the hill, and that if I

-      would go there she could speak English, and would make me welcome. And so

-      I went on through country, lovely as the country round Anum mountain, only

-      in the British colony there is this great difference&mdash;there the land

-      is exactly as Nature made it, bar the little spoiling that man has done,

-      innocent of roads, and exceedingly difficult to traverse, while here in

-      German territory everything is being carried out on some well-thought-out

-      plan. Ho was a station straggling over hill and valley, with high hills

-      clothed with greenery near at hand, high hills fading into the blue

-      distance, and valleys that cried out to the Creator in glad thankfulness

-      that such beauty should be theirs. The road up to the Commissioner's

-      bungalow was steep, steep as the Eveto Range, but it had been graded so

-      that it was easy of ascent as a path in Hyde Park. Every tree had been

-      planted or left standing with thought, not only for its own beauty but for

-      the view that lies beyond; flamboyant, mango, palm, frangipanni, that the

-      natives call forget-me-not, all have a reason for their existence, all add

-      to the beauty and charm of the scene. And when I got to the top of the

-      hill I was at the prettiest of brown bungalows, and down the steps of the

-      verandah came a rosy-cheeked, pretty girl, ready to welcome the stranger.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Of course you stay with us,&rdquo; she said in the kindness of her hospitable

-      heart, though there was certainly no of course about it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She took me in and gave me coffee, and as we sat eating cakes, home-made

-      German cakes, I asked her, &ldquo;You have not been out very long?&rdquo; because of

-      the bright colour of her cheeks.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, not long,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;only a year and two months. But it is so nice

-      we are asking the Government to let us stay two years.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And you do not find it dull?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh no, I love it. The time goes so quick, so quick. There is so much to

-      do.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And then her husband came and added his welcome to hers, and paid off my

-      carriers in approved German official style, and they took me in to

-      &ldquo;evening bread,&rdquo; and I found to my intense surprise they had wreathed my

-      place at table with pink roses. Never have I had such a pretty compliment,

-      or such a pretty welcome, and only the night before I had been dining off

-      hard-boiled eggs and biscuits in Swanzy's cocoa-house at Tsito.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bed after dinner, and next morning my hostess took me round, and showed me

-      everything there was to be seen, and told me how she passed her time. She

-      looked after the house, she saw to the food, she went for rides on her

-      bicycle, and she worked in the garden. It was the merry heart that went

-      all the day, and I will venture to say that that pretty girl, with her

-      bright, smiling face and her bright, charming manners, interested in this

-      new country to which she had come, keen on her husband's work, was an

-      asset to the nation to which she belonged; worth more to it than a dozen

-      fine ladies who pride themselves on not being <i>haus-frau</i>. And as for

-      the Commissioner, if I may judge, he was not only a strong man, but an

-      artist. He had the advantage over an English Commissioner that his tour

-      extended over eighteen months, instead of a year, and that he always came

-      back to the same place. His bungalow looked a home; round it grew up a

-      tropical garden, and behind he had planted a grove of broad-leaved teak

-      trees, and already they were so tall the pathway through the grove was a

-      leafy tunnel just flecked with golden sunshine, that told of the heat

-      outside.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Those Germans were good to me. I feel I can never be grateful enough for

-      such a warm welcome, and always, for the sake of those two there in the

-      outlands, shall I think kindly of the people of the Fatherland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They helped me to take photographs; the Commissioner mended my camera for

-      me, and he got me more carriers, and told me that they were engaged to

-      take me on thirty miles to Palime for the sum of two shillings a piece,

-      that it could be done in one day if I chose, indeed it must be done in one

-      day unless I stayed in the rest-house at Neve, and he warned me that I

-      carried about with me a great sum of money, and asked if I were sure of my

-      boy. I did not think it was likely Grant would rob me at this stage of the

-      proceedings, but I suddenly realised with a little uncomfortable feeling

-      what implicit trust I was putting in him; and then they gave fresh

-      instructions for my comfort. It would rain, they said it always rained in

-      Togo at this season in the afternoon; and I evidently did not realise how

-      it rained, so they tied up my camera in American cloth and instructed me

-      to put my Burberry on at the first drop of rain. Then with many good

-      wishes we parted, and I set off on the road to Palime.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The road was most excellent, and anyone who has travelled for miles along

-      a track that is really little better than a hunter's trail can understand

-      the delights of smooth and easy going. We passed through villages where

-      the villagers all turned up to see the show, but I fancied, it may have

-      been only fancy, that the people were not as lightheartedly happy as in

-      English territory, and whenever we came to a stream my men stopped and

-      begged in pantomime that they might be allowed to bathe. I should like to

-      have bathed myself, so I assented cheerfully, and the result was that we

-      did not get over the ground very quickly. One of them spoke a little, a

-      very little Twi, the language of the Fantis and Ashantis, and Grant spoke

-      a little, and that was my only means of communication, lost of course when

-      he was not with me, but they were most excellent men and went on and on

-      untiringly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Presently the clouds began to gather, a great relief, because the sun had

-      been very hot, a few drops of rain fell, and I, remembering instructions,

-      flew out of my hammock and put on my Burberry. By the time it was on the

-      few drops were many drops, and by the time I was in my hammock again, the

-      water was coming down as if it had been poured out of a bucket. Such

-      sheets of rain fairly made me gasp. Now, my hammock was old. I had

-      forgotten the need of a hammock when I started up the Volta, and finding

-      this elderly one at Anum, marked &ldquo;P.W.D.&rdquo; Public Works Department, and

-      there being nobody to say me nay, I commandeered it. Now, far be it from

-      me to revile a friend who carried me over many a weary mile of road, but

-      there is no disguising the fact, the poor old hammock was not in the first

-      bloom of youth, and the canopy was about as much use against a rainstorm

-      as so much mosquito-netting. The water simply poured through it. Now the

-      canvas of which the hammock was made, of course, held water, so did the

-      Burberry, the water trickled down my neck, and, worse still, carried as I

-      was, with my feet slightly raised, trickled down my skirts, and the

-      gallant Burberry held it like a bucket. When the water rose up to my

-      waist, icy-cold water, I got out and walked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The sky was heavily overcast, and it was raining as if it had never had a

-      chance to rain before, and never expected to have a chance to rain again,

-      so I walked on, hatless, because I did not mind about my hair getting wet.

-      I thought to myself, &ldquo;when the sun comes out, it will dry me,&rdquo; and I

-      looked at the string of dejected-looking carriers tailing out behind with

-      all their loads covered with banana leaves. And I walked, and I walked,

-      and I walked, and there seemed no prospect of the rain stopping;

-      apparently it proposed to go on to doomsday, or at least the end of the

-      rainy season. An hour passed, two hours, three, my pillows were simply

-      sodden masses, my hammock was a wisp of wet canvas, and I was weary to

-      death; then a village came into view, a little neat German village, and

-      the people came out to look at me with interest, though they had certainly

-      seen a white woman before. I always think of that village with regret. A

-      man passed along through the mud, working his way in a sitting posture,

-      and having on his hands a sort of wooden clog. So very very seldom have I

-      seen misery in Africa that I was struck as I used to be struck when first

-      I came to England, and I put my hand in my pocket for my purse, but all my

-      money with the exception of threepence was in my box, and that threepence

-      I bestowed upon him. Now there remains with me the regret that I did not

-      give him more, for never have I seen such delight on any man's face. He

-      held it out, he called all his friends to look, he bowed obeisance before

-      me again and again. I was truly ashamed of so much gratitude for so small

-      a gift, and while I was debating how I could get at my box to make it a

-      little more, he clattered away, as happy apparently as if someone had left

-      him a fortune. But I always think of it sadly. Why didn't I manage to give

-      him two shillings. It would have meant nothing to me, and so much to him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But now I was very tired, and when the rest-house was pointed out to me, I

-      hailed it with delight. I have seen many weird rest-houses on my travels,

-      but that was the most primitive of them all. A mud floor was raised a

-      little above the surrounding ground, and over it was a deep thatch, a

-      couple of tiny windowless rooms were made with mud walls, and just outside

-      them was a table, made by the simple process of sticking upright stakes

-      into the ground and laying rough boards across them; two chairs alongside

-      the table were also fixtures, but I sat down wearily, and Grant promptly

-      produced a pack of cards, and went away to make tea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bridge was not a success; I was so wet and cold, but the tea came quickly

-      along with a boiled egg and biscuits and mangoes, for the Germans it

-      appears, after their thorough fashion, always insist that wood and water

-      shall be ready in their rest-houses. I was sorry for the carriers, wet and

-      shivering, and I was sorrier for my own servant, for the rain was still

-      coming down pitilessly. I suggested he should have some tea to warm him,

-      but he did not like tea, and the other egg he also rejected, quite rightly

-      I decided when I tried to partake of the specimen he brought for me. But

-      the tea was most refreshing, and I was prepared to try and understand what

-      the carriers wanted. Briefly, they wanted to stop here. Though I could not

-      understand their tongue, I could understand that.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They say Palime be far, Ma,&rdquo; said Grant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Yes, I reckoned Palime must be about fifteen miles, but I looked at the

-      dismal house and decided it was an impossible place to stay. I would

-      rather walk that fifteen miles. I looked at my bedding roll, and decided

-      it must be wet through and through, and then I got into that dripping and

-      uninviting hammock, among the sodden pillows, and gave the order to go on.

-      I was wet through, and I thought I could hold out if we got to Palime as

-      quickly as possible, but I knew we could not possibly do it under five

-      hours, probably longer. However, it was not as hard on me as on the men

-      who had to walk with loads on their heads. Of course I was foolish. I

-      ought either to have changed in one of those dismal-looking little mud

-      rooms, or to have filled my hot-water bottle&mdash;I always carried one to

-      be ready for the chill I never got&mdash;with hot water and wrapped myself

-      up in a rug; but I foolishly forgot all these precautions, and my

-      remembrance of that tramp to Palime is of a struggle against bitter cold

-      and wet and weariness. It was weird, too, passing along the bush in the

-      dark. Grant and the carriers dropped behind, the rain stopped, and the

-      hammock-boys lighted a smoky lantern which gleamed on the wet road ahead,

-      and was reflected in the pools of water that lay there, and made my two

-      front boys throw gigantic shadows on the bush as they passed along.

-      Strange sounds, too, came out of the bush; sometimes a leopard cried,

-      sometimes one of the great fruitarian bats bewailed itself like a woman in

-      pain, there was the splash, splash of the men's feet in the roadway, the

-      deep croak of the African bull-frog, there was the running of water, a

-      drip, drip from the trees and bushes by the roadside, and always other

-      sounds, unexplained, perhaps unexplainable, that one hears in the night.

-      Sometimes tom-toms were beating, sometimes we passed through a village and

-      a few lights appeared, and my men shouted greetings I suppose, but they

-      might have been maledictions. It is an experience I shall never forget,

-      that of being carried along, practically helpless, and hearing my men,

-      whom I could not understand, exchange shouts that I could not understand

-      with people that I could not see. It was hot I dare say, but I was wet to

-      the skin and bitter cold, and I know the night after the rain was

-      beautiful, but I was too tired and too uncomfortable to appreciate it.

-      Then the fireflies came out, like glowing sparks, and again and again I

-      thought we were approaching the lights of a town only to look again and

-      see they were fireflies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Such a long journey it was. It seemed years since I had left Ho that

-      morning, æons since I had unhappily struggled across the Eveto Range, but

-      I remembered with satisfaction I <i>had</i> crossed the Eveto Range, and

-      so I concluded in time I should reach Palime, but it seemed a long night,

-      and I was very cold.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At last, though it was wrapped in darkness, I saw we had entered a town;

-      we passed up a wide roadway, and finally got into a yard, and my men began

-      banging on a doorway, and saying over and over again, &ldquo;Swanzy's.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The German Commissioner had suggested I should go to Swanzy's; and was it

-      possible we had really arrived? It seemed we had.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I can never get over the feeling of shyness when I go up to a total

-      stranger's house and practically demand hospitality. True, I had in my

-      pocket a telegram from Mr Percy Shaw, one of Swanzy's directors, asking

-      his agents to give me that hospitality, but still I felt dreadfully shy as

-      I waited there in the yard for some sign of life from out of the dark

-      building. It came at last, and in English too.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Who is dere?&rdquo; said a voice, and my heart sank. I thought it must be a

-      negro, since I knew the agent was a German, and thought he would be sure

-      to hail in his own tongue. Somehow I felt I could not have stood a negro

-      that night. Prejudices are very strong when one is tired.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I was wrong. The agent was a German, and down long flights of stairs

-      he came in his dressing-gown, welcoming me, and presently was doing all he

-      could for my comfort. He roused out an unwilling cook, he got cocoa and

-      wine, South-Australian wine to my surprise, and hot cakes, and bread, and

-      fruit, and then when I was refreshed, my baggage not yet having come in,

-      he solemnly conducted me to my bedroom, and presented me with a couple of

-      blankets and a very Brodbignag pair of slippers. I was far more tired than

-      when I had'crossed the Eveto Range, and I undressed, got into bed, wrapped

-      myself up in those warm blankets, and slept the sleep of the woman who

-      knows she has arrived at rail-head, and that her difficult travelling is

-      over.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XVI&mdash;ONE OF THE CURSES OF THE DARK CONTINENT

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The neat little town of Palime&mdash;The market&mdash;The breakfast&mdash;A

-      luxury for the well-to-do&mdash;Mount Klutow&mdash;The German Sleeping

-      Sickness Camp&mdash;The German's consideration for the hammock-boys&mdash;Misahohe,

-      a beautiful road, well-shaded&mdash;A kindly welcome&mdash;The little boys

-      that were cured&mdash;Dr von Raven, a devotee to science&mdash;The town of

-      the sleeping sickness patients&mdash;&ldquo;Last year strong man, this year

-      finish&rdquo;&mdash;Extreme poverty and self-denial&mdash;A ghastly, horrible,

-      lingering and insidious disease&mdash;Dr von Raven's message to the

-      English people.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>alime is the

-      neatest of little towns, set at the foot of some softly rounded hills. Not

-      hills clothed with dense bush such as I had come across farther west, but

-      hills covered with grass, emerald in the brilliant sunshine, with just

-      here and there a tree to give it a park-like appearance. And the town, it

-      is hardly necessary to say, was spotlessly neat and tidy. All the streets

-      were swept and garnished, and all the fences were whole, for if a German

-      puts up a picket fence, he intends it for a permanency, and not for a fuel

-      supply for the nearest huts. That the streets were neat was perhaps a

-      little surprising, for every morning, beginning at dawn, in those streets

-      there was held a market in which all manner of goods, native and European,

-      were exposed for sale, spread out on the ground or on stalls. I looked

-      with interest to see if I could notice any difference between the native

-      under English and under German rule in the markets, and I came to the

-      conclusion that there was none whatever. Here, at rail-head, both native

-      and European goods were bought and sold, and here too the people took

-      their alfresco meals. The native of West Africa usually starts the morning

-      with a little porridge, made of cassada, which is really the same root

-      from which comes our tapioca, but his tapioca is so thin you can drink it,

-      and it looks and smells rather like water starch. It was being made and

-      served out &ldquo;all hot&rdquo; at a copper a gourd, the customer providing his own

-      gourd, and the porridge being in a goodsized earthen pot fixed on three

-      stones over a little fire of sticks, or else the fire was built inside

-      another pot out of which one side and the top had been knocked. Porridge

-      of course is not very staying, so a little later on good ladies make their

-      appearance who fry maize-meal balls in palm oil, and sell them for two a

-      &ldquo;copper,&rdquo; the local name for a <i>pfennig</i>, which is not copper at all,

-      but nickel. Very appetising indeed look these balls. The little flat

-      earthenware pan on the fire is full of boiling palm oil, and the seller

-      mixes very carefully the maize meal, water, a little salt, and some native

-      pepper, till it is smooth like batter, such as a cook would make a pancake

-      of, then it is dropped into the boiling oil, and the result, in a minute

-      or so, is a round, brown ball, which looks and smells delicious. Sometimes

-      trade is brisk, and they are bought straight out of the pan, but when it

-      slacks they are taken out and heaped up on a calabash. I conclude that it

-      is only the aristocracy who indulge in such luxuries, for I am told that

-      the average wage of a labourer in Palime here is ninepence a day, but

-      judging by what I saw, there must have been a good many of the aristocracy

-      in Palime. After all, the woman from the time she is a tiny child is

-      always self-supporting, so in a community where every man and woman is

-      self-supporting, I conclude that many luxuries are attainable that would

-      not be possible when one man has to provide for many.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0045" id="linkimage-0045"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0369.jpg" alt="0369 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0369.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The butchers' shops presided over as they are on the Gold Coast by Hausas

-      are not inviting, and tend to induce strong vegetarian views in anyone who

-      looks upon them, and the amount of very highly smelling stink-fish makes

-      the vegetarian regime very narrow. But there are other things beside

-      food-stuffs for sale; from every railing flutter gay cloths from

-      Manchester, or its rival on the Coast, Keta, and there were several women

-      selling very nice earthenware pots, that attracted me very much. They were

-      the commonest household utensils of the native woman; she uses the smaller

-      ones as plates and dishes, and the larger ones for water, for washing, or

-      for storage. The big ones were terribly expensive and cost a whole

-      sixpence, while a penny brought me a big store of small ones. I thought

-      how very quaint and pretty my balcony at home would look with plants

-      growing in these pots from such a far corner of the earth, and so I bought

-      largely, even though I knew I should have to engage a couple of extra

-      carriers for them, and my host applauded my taste.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That young German was very kindly. I showed him my telegram, but he

-      laughed at it, and gave me to understand that of course I was welcome

-      anyhow, though again I can certainly see no of course about it. Why should

-      he, in the kindness of his heart, put himself out for me, a total

-      stranger, who did not even belong to his nation? Still he did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was bent on going on to Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness Camp,

-      and he said he had never seen it, though it was only a short distance

-      away, so he would get carriers and come with me. Accordingly we got

-      carriers, paying them threepence extra because it was Sunday, and went up

-      to Mount Klutow. They were very good carriers, but since I have heard so

-      much about the German's inconsiderateness to the native, I must put it on

-      record that when we came to a steep part of the road, and it was very

-      steep, though a most excellent road, that German not only got out and

-      walked himself, but expected me to do the same. I did of course, but many

-      and many a time have I made my men carry me over far worse places, and

-      many an Englishman have I seen doing likewise.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again I must put it on record that these German roads are most excellent.

-      They are smooth and wide, well-rolled and hard, and they are shady, a

-      great boon in such a climate. Every native tree that is suitable has been

-      allowed to stand, and others have been planted, shapely, dark-green

-      mangoes and broad-leaved teak, and since all undergrowth has been cleared

-      away, the road seems winding through a beautiful park, while there is

-      absolutely no mosquito. During all my stay in German territory I never

-      slept under a mosquito curtain, and I never saw that abomination, a

-      mosquito-proof room. The Germans evidently think it is easier to do away

-      with the mosquito.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Misahohe is a little Government station, set on the side of the mountain

-      up which we were climbing. It looks from a distance something like a Swiss

-      chalet, and the view from there is as magnificent as that from Anum

-      mountain itself, only here there are white men connected, I think, with

-      the German medical station to see and appreciate its beauties. On and on

-      went the beautiful road; but even the Germans have not yet succeeded in

-      getting rid of the tsetse fly, and so though the roads are good, there are

-      as yet no horses. We met great carts of trade goods going to Kpando,

-      fifteen miles away, and they were drawn and pushed their slow, slow

-      journey by panting, struggling Kroo boys. Strongly as I should object to

-      carrying a load on my head, I really think it would be worse to turn the

-      wheels of a laden cart, spoke by spoke, while you slowly worked it

-      up-hill.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness Camp, there is no timber,

-      and the first impression is of barrenness. We went up and up, and I, who

-      had not yet recovered from my long day's journey to Palime, was

-      exceedingly thankful when my escort allowed me to lie in my hammock till

-      we arrived at a plateau surrounded by low hills. It was really the top of

-      the mountain. There was a poor-looking European bungalow, a very German

-      wooden kiosk on the other side of the road, and a winding road, with on

-      either side of it little brown native huts built of clay, and thatched. It

-      is just a poor-looking native village, with the huts built rather farther

-      apart than the native seems to like his huts when he can choose, and none

-      of the usual shelter trees which he likes about his village. After the

-      magnificent tropical scenery we had just passed through it looked dreary

-      in the extreme, but the young man who came out of the bungalow and made us

-      most kindly welcome, Dr von Raven, the doctor in charge, explained that

-      this barrenness was the very reason of its existence. They wanted a place

-      that the cool winds swept, and they wanted a place that gave no harbour to

-      the <i>glossina pal palis</i>, the tsetse fly that conveys the disease.

-      Mount Klutow was ideal.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had hesitated a little about visiting a doctor and asking him for

-      information. I had no claim, no letters of introduction, and I should not

-      have been surprised if he had paid no attention to me, but, on the

-      contrary, Dr von Raven was kindness itself. He took us to the little kiosk

-      and sent for wine and cakes and beer, so that we might be refreshed after

-      our hot journey, though it was hardly hot here. The good things were

-      brought by two small boys, and the doctor put his hand first on one

-      shoulder and then on the other, and turned the little laughing black faces

-      for me to see.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Sleeping sickness,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Cured,&rdquo; and he gave them a friendly cuff

-      and let them go. He knew very little English, and I knew no German, and Mr

-      Fesen's, even though he was agent for an English firm, was of the

-      scantiest; so that it was a process of difficulty to collect information,

-      and it was only done by the infinite kindness and patience of the two

-      Germans. Dr von Raven produced papers and showed me statistics, and so by

-      degrees I learned all there is to be known, and then he took me round and

-      showed me the patients.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Many men in Africa count themselves exiles, but never saw I more clearly

-      the attributes of exile than in Dr von Raven. Comforts he had none, and

-      his house was bare almost to poverty. Here he had lived for two and a half

-      years without going home, and here he intended to live till some

-      experiments he had in hand were complete. A devotee to science truly, but

-      a cheerful, intensely interested one, with nothing of the martyr about

-      him. Very few white people he must have seen, and he said himself he had

-      only been down to the nearest town of Palime three times in two years, but

-      he looked far better in health than many a man I have seen who has been on

-      the Coast only as many months.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0046" id="linkimage-0046"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0375.jpg" alt="0375 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0375.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      From the doctor's house there curves a road about a kilometre in length,

-      and off this are the houses of the sleeping sickness patients. Two and two

-      they are built, facing each other, two rooms in each house and plenty of

-      space between. They are built of mud, with holes for doors and windows,

-      and the roofs are of grass&mdash;native huts of the most primitive

-      description. Each patient has a room, and each is allowed one relative to

-      attend him. Thus a husband may have a wife, a mother her daughter, and

-      between them they have an allowance of sevenpence a day for food, ample in

-      a country where the usual wage for a day labourer is ninepence. There are

-      one hundred and fifty-five patients in all, and besides them there are a

-      few soldiers for dignity, because the neighbouring chiefs would think very

-      lightly of a man who had not evidences of power behind him, and so

-      whenever the doctor passes they come tumbling out of the guard-room to

-      salute him. There are also a certain number of labourers, because though

-      many of the sick are quite capable of waiting on themselves, it would

-      never do for them to go beyond the confines of the camp, and possibly, or

-      probably, infect the flies that abound just where wood and water are to be

-      had.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course there is a market where the women meet and chat and buy their

-      provisions; there are cookhouses and all the attributes of a rather poor

-      native village, but a village where the people are among the surroundings

-      to which they have been accustomed all their lives and in which they are

-      more thoroughly at home than in a hospital. Part of the bareness may be

-      attributed to economy, but the effect is greatly heightened by the absence

-      of all vegetation. Anything that might afford shelter for the flies or

-      shut out the strong, health-giving breezes that blow right across the

-      plateau is strictly forbidden. And here were people in all stages of the

-      disease&mdash;those who had just come in, who to the ordinary eye appeared

-      to have nothing wrong with them, great, strong, healthy-looking men, men

-      of thews and sinews who had been completely cured, and those who were past

-      all help and were lying waiting for death.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You would like to see them?&rdquo; asked the doctor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I said I would, and I would like to take a photograph or two if I might.

-      My stock of plates was getting woefully scarce.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, and we went down the roadway.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A man was borne out of one of the huts and laid on the ground in the

-      brilliant sunshine. He was wasted to skin and bone, his eyes were sunken

-      and half-open, showing the whites, his skeleton limbs lay helpless, and

-      his head fell forward like a baby's. The doctor pointed to him pitifully.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Last year,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;strong man like this,&rdquo; indicating the men who bore

-      him; &ldquo;this year&mdash;finish.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;He will die?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, he will die&mdash;soon.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0047" id="linkimage-0047"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0379.jpg" alt="0379 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0379.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And the great brawny savages who carried the stretcher, stark but for a

-      loin cloth and a necklace, with their hair cut into cock's combs, had come

-      there with sleeping sickness and were cured. They brought them out of all

-      the huts to show the visitor&mdash;women in the last stages after epilepsy

-      had set in, with weary eyes, worn faces, and contracted limbs, happy

-      little children with swollen glands, a woman with atoxyl blindness who was

-      cured, a man with atoxyl blindness who, in spite of all, will die. They

-      were there in all stages of the disease, in all stages of recovery. Some

-      looked as if there was nothing the matter with them, but the enlarged

-      glands in the neck could always be felt. The doctor did not seem very

-      hopeful. &ldquo;We could cure it,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it is quite curable if we could

-      only get the cases early enough. Not 2 per cent, of the flies are

-      infected, and of course every man who is bitten by an infected fly does

-      not necessarily contract the disease.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It comes on very insidiously. Three weeks it takes to develop, and then

-      the patient has a little fever every evening. In the morning his

-      temperature is down again, only to rise once more in the evening.

-      Sometimes he will have a day without a rise, sometimes three or four, but

-      you would find, were you to look, the parasites in the blood. After three

-      or four months the glands of the neck begin to swell, and this is the time

-      when the natives recognise the danger and excise the glands. But swollen

-      glands are not always caused by sleeping sickness, and, in that case, if

-      the wounds heal properly, the patient recovers; but if the parasites are

-      in the blood then such rough surgery only causes unnecessary suffering

-      without in any way retarding the progress of the disease. Slowly it

-      progresses, very slowly. Sometimes it takes three or four months before

-      nervous symptoms come on, sometimes it may be twelve months, and after

-      that the case is hopeless. Not all the physicians in the world in the

-      present state of medical knowledge could cure it. In Europeans&mdash;and

-      something like sixty Europeans are known to have contracted the disease&mdash;very

-      often immediately after the bite of the fly, symptoms have been noticed on

-      the skin, red swellings, but in the black man apparently the skin is not

-      affected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The treatment is of the simplest, but the doctor only arrived at it after

-      careful experiment. After having ascertained by examination of the blood

-      that the patient has sleeping sickness he weighs the patient and gives him

-      five centigrams per kilogram of his own weight of arsenophenylycin. This

-      is divided into two portions and given on two consecutive days, and the

-      treatment is finished. Of course the patient is carefully watched and his

-      blood tested, and if at the end of ten days the parasites are still found,

-      the dose is repeated. Sometimes it is found that the toxin has no effect,

-      and then the doctor resorts to atoxyl, which he administers the same way

-      every two days, with ten days between the doses. This has one grave

-      drawback, for sometimes in conjunction with sleeping sickness it causes

-      blindness. Out of eighty-five cases that have taken atoxyl since 1908 five

-      have gone blind. I saw there one young man cured and stone-blind, and one

-      woman also cured and but just able to see men &ldquo;as trees walking.&rdquo;

-       Apparently there was nothing wrong with their eyes, but the blank look of

-      the blind told that they could not see.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At first this camp here up among the hills was looked upon with suspicion

-      by the natives, and they resisted all efforts to bring them to it. They

-      feared, as they have always feared, all German thoroughgoing methods. But

-      gradually, as is only natural, a good thing makes its own reputation, and

-      the natives who were before so fearful come long distances to seek help

-      where they know only help can be found.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0048" id="linkimage-0048"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0383.jpg" alt="0383 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0383.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      After we had walked all round the camp and got well soaked with the

-      ordinary Togo afternoon shower, of which none of us took any notice, we

-      went back to the kiosk for more refreshment, and here we found waiting us

-      one of the Roman Catholic Fathers from Palime. He was a fair-bearded man

-      in a white helmet and a long, white-cotton <i>soutane</i>, which somehow,

-      even in this country of few clothes, gave the appear-ence of extreme

-      poverty and self-denial. He had come up on a bicycle and had a great deal

-      to say about the sleeping sickness. A day or two before he had been

-      travelling two days west of Palime and he was asked by a native if he

-      could speak English, and, when he assented, was taken to see a sick man.

-      The man was a stranger to the people round and could only make himself

-      understood in pigeon English. He told the Father he lived six days away,

-      in British territory, and as he talked he perpetually took snuff. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo;

-       asked the Father, &ldquo;do you take snuff when you talk to me?&rdquo; Because, the

-      man explained, he had the sickness, and unless he took the strong, pungent

-      snuff into his nostrils he could not talk, his head would fall forward,

-      and he would become drowsy at once. This, he went on to say, was his

-      reason for being here, so far from his home. He had heard there was a

-      doctor here who could cure the sickness, and he was journeying to him as

-      fast as he could. It is sad to think after such faith that he had probably

-      left it too late.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It is very difficult, indeed,&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;to be sure of a cure.&rdquo;

-       The patient is discharged as cured and bound over to come back every six

-      months for examination, and if each time his blood is examined it is free

-      from parasites, all is well. He is certainly cured. But he has gone back

-      to his home in an infected district, and if after six months or twelve

-      months the parasite is again found, who is to say whether he has been

-      re-infected or whether there has been a recrudescence of the old disorder?

-      Occasionally, says the doctor, it is impossible to find the parasite in

-      the blood, while the patient undoubtedly dies of sleeping sickness; the

-      parasite is in the brain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Since 1908 there have been four hundred cases through the doctor's hands.

-      Of these 19 per cent, have died of sleeping sickness, 67 per cent, have

-      been sent away as cured, and about 3 per cent, have died of other causes.

-      Only ten of those sent away as cured have failed to present themselves for

-      re-examination, and in this land where every journey must be made on foot,

-      and food probably carried for the journey, it speaks very well, I think,

-      for both doctor and patients that so many have come back to him. He is far

-      kinder, probably, than the natives would be to each other&mdash;too kind

-      for his own convenience, for the natives fear his laboratory, and will not

-      come there at night, because when a patient is dying and past all other

-      help he has him brought there to die. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;I may be able to

-      help a little,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But how kind!&rdquo; He shrugged his shoulders with a

-      little smile. &ldquo;It is nothing, it is doctor,&rdquo; and he waved the thought

-      aside as if I were making too much of it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The disease comes, so says Dr von Raven, from west to east, and was first

-      noticed in the Gambia in 1901. As long ago as 1802 a Dr Winterbottom

-      described the sleeping sickness, and in 1850 a slavetrader noticed the

-      swelling of the glands and refused to take slaves so afflicted.

-      Undoubtedly cases of sleeping sickness must have been imported to the West

-      Indies or America, but owing to the absence of the <i>glossina palpalis</i>

-      to act as host the disease did not spread. That it is a ghastly, horrible,

-      lingering, and insidious disease, that every man who has it where the <i>glossina

-      palpalis</i> abounds is a danger to the community among whom he dwells, no

-      one can doubt. They say that after a certain time the natives of a

-      district may acquire immunity, but as this immunity comes only after

-      severe suffering, it is perhaps better to stop the spread of the disease.

-      The Germans have no hesitation in restricting the movements of the native

-      if he is likely to become a public danger, but the British Government is

-      very loath to interfere with a man's rights, even though it be the right

-      to spread disease and death. Dr von Raven and the English Dr Horne met in

-      conference a few months ago with the object of urging upon their

-      respective Governments the absolute necessity for allowing no man to cross

-      the Volta unless he have a certificate from a medical man that he is free

-      from sleeping sickness. They contend, probably rightly, that a little

-      trouble now would ensure the non-spread of the disease and assist

-      materially in stamping it out. The Volta is a natural barrier; there are

-      only two or three well-known crossing places where the people pass to and

-      fro; and here they think a man might well be called upon to present his

-      certificate. Against this is urged the undoubted fact that large numbers

-      of the people are at no time affected, and, therefore, it would be going

-      to a great deal of trouble and expense to effect a small thing. But is it

-      a small thing?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You write,&rdquo; said the doctor as he bid me farewell; &ldquo;you write?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I said I did a little.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Then tell the English people,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how necessary it is to stamp out

-      this disease while it is yet small.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And so to the best of my ability I give his message, the message of a man

-      who is denying himself all things that go to make life pleasant, for the

-      sake of curing this disease, and if that sacrifice is worth while, and he

-      says it is well worth while, then I think it should be well worth the

-      while of us people, who are responsible for these dark children we govern,

-      to put upon them, even at cost to themselves and us, such restrictions as

-      may help to save in the future even 2 per cent, of the population from a

-      ghastly and lingering death.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XVII&mdash;GERMAN VERSUS ENGLISH METHODS

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Lome, the capital of Togo&mdash;A bad situation but the best laid-out

-      town on the Coast&mdash;Avenues of trees&mdash;Promising gardens&mdash;The

-      simple plan by which the Germans ensure the making of the roads&mdash;The

-      prisoner who feared being &ldquo;leff&rdquo;&mdash;The disappointed lifer&mdash;The

-      A.D.C.'s kindness&mdash;The very desirable prison garb&mdash;The energetic

-      Englishman&mdash;How to make a road&mdash;Building a reputation.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>eople who sigh, &ldquo;I

-      am such a bad traveller,&rdquo; as if it were something to be proud of, and

-      complain of the hardships of a railway journey, should come upon the

-      railway after they have had several days in a canoe, some hard walking,

-      and some days' hammock journeying, and then they would view it in quite a

-      different light. I felt it was the height of luxury when I stepped into a

-      first-class railway carriage on the little narrow gauge railway, that goes

-      from Palime to Lome, the capital of Togo.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My host had insisted on telegraphing to Swanzy's there.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They meet you. More comfortable.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Undoubtedly it would be more comfortable, but I wondered what I had done

-      that I should merit so much consideration for my comfort from men who were

-      not only total strangers, but belonged to a nation that has not the

-      reputation for putting itself out for women. I can only say that no one

-      has been kinder to me than those Germans of Togo, and for their sakes I

-      have a very soft corner in my heart for all their nation, and when we

-      English do not like them I can only think it is because of some

-      misunderstanding that a little better knowledge on both sides would clear

-      away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      You do not see the country well from a railway train even though the

-      stoppages are many. I have a far better idea of the country between the

-      English border and Palime than of the country between Palime and Lome. I

-      was the only first-class passenger; the white men travelled second class,

-      and all the coloured people third, that is in big, empty, covered trucks

-      where they took their food, their babies, their bedding, their baggage,

-      and in fact seemed to make themselves quite as comfortable as if they were

-      at home.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And at Lome a young German from Messrs Swanzy's met me with a cart and

-      carriers for my gear, and carried me off and installed me at their fine

-      house on the sea-front as if I had every right to be there, which I

-      certainly had not.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Lome is the most charming town I have seen in West Africa. It is neat and

-      tidy and clean, it is beautifully laid out, and the buildings are such as

-      would do credit to any nation. Very evident it is that the German does not

-      consider himself an exile, but counts himself lucky to possess so fine a

-      country, and is bent on making the best of it. For Lome has certainly been

-      made the very best of. Only fifteen years ago did the Germans move their

-      capital from Little Pope in the east to Lome in the west of their colony,

-      not a great distance, for the whole sea-board is only thirty-five miles in

-      length, and all that length is, I believe, swamp. Lome is almost

-      surrounded by swamp; its very streets are rescued from it, but with German

-      thoroughness those streets are well-laid-out, the roads well-made and

-      well-kept, and are planted with trees, palms, flamboyant, and the handsome

-      <i>ficus elasticus</i>. Here is a picture of a street in Lome, and the

-      trees are only four years old, but already they stretch across the road

-      and make a pleasant shade. The gardens and the trees of Lome made a great

-      impression on me. Any fences one sees are neat, but as a rule they do not

-      have many fences, only round every bungalow is a well-laid-out, well-kept,

-      tropical garden; if it is only just made you know it will be good in the

-      future because of the promise fulfilled in the garden beside it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0049" id="linkimage-0049"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0393.jpg" alt="0393 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0393.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      All the Government bungalows look like young palaces, and are built to

-      hold two families, the higher-class man having the choice of the flats,

-      and generally taking the upper. Indeed I could find no words to express my

-      admiration for this German capital which compared so very favourably with

-      the English capital I had left but a short time before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When I had talked to the Commissioner at Ho about the magnificent roads, I

-      had hinted at the forced labour which is talked of so openly in the

-      English colony as being a sin of the Germans. But he denied it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;How do you make your roads then?&rdquo; I asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is a tax of six shillings a head or else a fortnight's labour a

-      year. It is right. If we have no roads how can we have trade?&rdquo; and I,

-      thinking of the 25 per cent, of the cocoa harvest left up the Afram river

-      because &ldquo;we no be fit to tote,&rdquo; quite agreed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Every English village has some sort of tax by which the roads are kept in

-      order, why object if that tax is paid in the most useful sort of kind,

-      namely labour.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Very very wisely it seems to me have the Germans laid the foundations of

-      their colony, and though it has not paid in the past, it is paying now and

-      in the future it will pay well.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But a certain set of people were not quite as happy as those in the

-      English towns, and that was the prisoners working in the streets. They had

-      iron collars round their necks and were chained together two and two, and

-      though they were by no means depressed, they were not as cheery as the

-      English prisoners. The English negro prisoner is unique. His punishment

-      has been devised by people at home who do not understand the negro and his

-      limitations, and the difficulty of adequately punishing is one of the

-      difficulties of administration in an English colony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;How do you keep your villages so neat?&rdquo; I asked the Germans.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If they are not neat we fine them.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But if they do not pay the fine?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Then we beat them.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And though it may sound rather brutal, I am inclined to think that is the

-      form of teaching the negro thoroughly understands. He is not yet educated

-      up to understanding the disgrace of going to prison, and regards it

-      somewhat in the light of a pleasant change from the ordinary routine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The German prisoner is clad in his own rags, the garb an ordinary

-      working-man usually wears. The English prisoner is at the expense of the

-      Government clad in a neat white suit ornamented with a broad arrow. He can

-      hardly bring himself to believe that this is meant for a disgrace, and

-      rather admires himself I fancy in his new costume. Many many are the tales

-      told of the prisoner and his non-realisation of the punishment meted out

-      to him. Once a party of three or four were coming along a street in

-      Freetown, under the charge of a warder, and they stopped to talk to

-      someone. Then they went on again, but one of the party lingered behind to

-      finish his gossip.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The warder looked back. They were still in earnest conversation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No. 14,&rdquo; he called, warningly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No. 14 paid no attention.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No. 14,&rdquo; a little more peremptorily.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Still No. 14 was interested in his friend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No. 14,&rdquo; called the warder sternly, as one who was threatening the worst

-      penalties of the law, &ldquo;if you no come at once, I leff you, No. 14.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And No. 14 with the dire prospect of being &ldquo;leff&rdquo; to his own devices, shut

-      out of paradise in fact, ran to join the others.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is another story current in Accra about an unfortunate prisoner who

-      got eight months extra. He had been &ldquo;leff,&rdquo; and, finding himself shut out,

-      promptly broke into prison; what was a poor man to do? At any rate, the

-      authorities gave him an extra eight months, so I suspect all parties were

-      entirely satisfied.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then there was the man who was in for life, and was so thoroughly

-      well-behaved that after sixteen years the Government commuted his sentence

-      and released him. Do you think that prisoner was pleased? He was in a most

-      terrible state of mind, and the mournful petition went up&mdash;What had

-      he done to be so treated? He had served the Government faithfully for

-      sixteen years, and now they were turning him away for absolutely no fault

-      whatever.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He prayed them to reconsider their decision and restore him to the place

-      he had so ably filled!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The fact of the matter is, the negro is very much better for a strong hand

-      over him. He is a child, and like a child should have his hours of labour

-      and his hours of play apportioned to him. The firm hand is what he

-      requires and appreciates. What he may develop into in the future I do not

-      know, with his mighty strength, his fine development, and his superb

-      health; if he had but a mind to match it he must overrun the earth.

-      Luckily for us he has not as yet a mind to match it, he is a child, with a

-      child's wild and unrestrained desires, and like a child it is well for him

-      that some stronger mind should guide his ways. So he thoroughly

-      appreciates prison discipline, but it never occurs to him that it is any

-      disgrace. Even when he has reached a higher standing than that of the

-      peasant, it is hard to make him understand that there is anything

-      disgraceful in going to prison.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Not so very long ago there was a black barrister in one of the

-      West-African capitals who had been home to England. He was naturally a man

-      of some education and standing. Now the Governor's A.D.C. had been for

-      some little time inspector of prisoners. There was a dinner-party at

-      Government House, and what was this young man's astonishment to have his

-      hand seized and shaken very warmly by the black barrister who was a guest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I have to thank you,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for your great kindness to my mother

-      while she was in prison, when I was in England last year.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Clearly, then, it seems that the Germans are on the right track when they

-      do not dress their prisoners in any special garb. If you come to think of

-      it, a white suit marked with a broad arrow is quite as smart and a good

-      deal cheaper than a red cloth marked with a blue broom, and the black man

-      naturally feels some pride in swaggering round in it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A good sound beating is of course the correct thing, and though a good

-      sound beating is not legal in English territory, luckily, say I very

-      luckily&mdash;for the negro does not understand leniency, he regards it as

-      a sign of weakness&mdash;it is many a time administered <i>sub rosa</i>,

-      and the inferior respects the kindly man who is his master, who if he do

-      wrong will have no hesitation in having him laid out and a round dozen

-      administered. If English administration was not hampered by the

-      well-meaning foolishness of folks at home, I venture to think that native

-      towns would be cleaner and West-African health would be better. Because

-      much as I admire the Germans and the wonderful fixed plan on which they

-      have built up their colony, I have known Englishmen who could get just as

-      good results if their hands had not been tied. And occasionally one meets

-      or hears of a man who will not allow his hands to be tied.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In a certain district by the Volta there are excellent roads much

-      appreciated by the natives. Now these roads were extra vile and likely to

-      remain so before Government could be prevailed upon to stir up the local

-      chiefs to a sense of their duty. But there was an officer in that district

-      who thoroughly understood how to deal with the black man, and he was far

-      enough away from headquarters to make sure of a free hand. He found the

-      making of those roads simple enough. He bought a few dozen native hoes and

-      set a sentry on the road to be made with a rifle over his shoulder and a

-      watch upon his wrist. His orders were to stop every man who passed, put a

-      hoe into his hand, and force him to work upon that road for half an hour

-      by the watch. History sayeth not what happened if he rebelled, but of

-      course he did not rebel. Once, so says rumour, this mighty coloniser came

-      to a place where the roads were worse than usual, which from my experience

-      is saying they were very bad indeed, and he sent for the Chief. The Chief

-      said he could not make his people come to work&mdash;the English had

-      destroyed his power.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the energetic Englishman, &ldquo;the fine is £5. If they are

-      not in in half an hour it'll be £10, and I'll bring 'em in in handcuffs.&rdquo;

-       He began to collect them&mdash;with the handcuffs&mdash;but the second

-      fine was not necessary. They were both illegal, but, as I have said, he

-      was far away from headquarters, and he made those roads. The native bore

-      no malice. It was exactly the treatment he understood. There was a rude

-      justice in it. It was patent to every eye that the road was bad. It was

-      common sense that the man who used it should mend it, and as long as that

-      official was in the country there were in his district roads and bridges

-      as good as any in German Togo; and bridges as a rule are conspicuous by

-      their absence in English territory. Also, as the Government never sends a

-      man back to the same place, this man's good work is all falling back into

-      disrepair, for it is hardly to be expected that Government will be lucky

-      enough to get another man who will dare set its methods at defiance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Lome, like Accra, has made an effort to get the better of the fierce surf

-      that makes landing so difficult all along the African coast, and they,

-      instead of a useless breakwater, have built a great bridge out into deep

-      water, and at the end of this bridge a large wharf pier or quay, high

-      above the waves, where passengers and goods can be lifted by cranes, and

-      the men can walk the half-mile to the shore dry-shod, or the goods can be

-      taken by train right to the very doors of the warehouses for which they

-      are intended. This cost the much less sum of £100,000. It was highly

-      successful, and a great source of pride to all Togo till a tremendous

-      hurricane a week or so after I had left, swept away the bridge part and

-      left Lome cut off from communication with the rest of the coast, for so

-      successful had this great bridge been they had no surf boats. Still, in

-      spite of that disaster, I think the Germans have managed better than the

-      English, for the bridge even after the necessary repairs have been done

-      will have cost scarcely £150,000, much less than Accra's breakwater, and

-      of course there is no necessity for the sand-pump.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I feel it is ungracious to abuse my own nation and not to recognise all

-      they have done for the negro&mdash;all they have done in the way of

-      colonisation, but after that journey across the little-known part of the

-      Gold Coast into the little-known part of German Togo, I can but see that

-      there is something much to be admired in the thorough German methods.

-      Particularly would I commend the manner in which they conserve the trees

-      and preserve the natural beauties of the country. A beauty-spot to them is

-      a beauty-spot, whether it be in the Fatherland or in remote West Africa,

-      while England seems indifferent if the beautiful place be not within the

-      narrow seas. Possibly she has no eyes; possibly she is only calm in her

-      self-conceit, certain of her position, while Germany is building&mdash;building

-      herself a reputation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XVIII&mdash;KETA ON THE SAND

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The safety of the seashore&mdash;Why they do not plant trees in English

-      territory&mdash;The D.C.'s prayer&mdash;Quittah or Keta&mdash;The Bremen

-      Sisters&mdash;The value of fresh air as a preventive of fever&mdash;A

-      polygamous household&mdash;The Awuna people&mdash;The backsliding clerk of

-      the Bremen Mission&mdash;Incongruity of antimacassars and polygamy&mdash;Naming

-      the child&mdash;&ldquo;Laughing at last&rdquo; and &ldquo;Not love made you&rdquo;&mdash;Forms of

-      marriage&mdash;The cost of a wife&mdash;How to poison an enemy&mdash;Loving

-      and dutiful children&mdash;The staple industry of the place&mdash;Trading

-      women&mdash;The heat of Keta.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>aving got into

-      Lome the question was how to get out of it. I wanted to go to Keta,

-      twenty-seven miles away in British territory, and my idea was to go by sea

-      as I could do it in three hours at the very most, and Elder Dempster,

-      having very kindly franked me on their steamers, it would cost me nothing

-      save the tips to the surf boats that landed me; but there was one great

-      thing against that&mdash;my hosts told me that very often the surf was so

-      bad it was impossible to land at Keta. The head of Swanzy's had a man

-      under him at Keta, and when he went to inspect he invariably went

-      overland. That decided me. I too must go overland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But carriers were by no means cheap. I had got hammock-boys to carry me

-      the thirty miles from Ho to Palime for two shillings, and here for

-      twenty-seven miles along the shore I paid my hammock-boys six shillings

-      and sixpence and my carriers five shillings and sixpence, so that my pots

-      were adding to their original price considerably.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So on a fine, hot morning in May I was, with my train of carriers, on the

-      road once more. First the going was down between groves of palms by the

-      Governor's palace, which is a palace indeed, and must have cost a small

-      fortune. A very brief walk brought us to the Border, and then the contrast

-      was once more marked. The English villages were untidy and filthy, with a

-      filth that was emphasised now that I had seen what could be done by a

-      little method and orderliness; those Coast villages remain in my mind as a

-      mixture of pigs, and children, and stagnant water, and all manner of

-      litter and untidiness. One saving grace they had was that they were set

-      among the nice clean sand of the seashore that absorbed as much as

-      possible all the dirt and moisture, and we passed along through groves of

-      cocoa-nut palms that lent a certain charm and picturesqueness to the

-      scene. I am never lonely beside the sea; the murmur of its waves is

-      company, and I cannot explain it, but I am never afraid. I do not know

-      why, but I could not walk in a forest by myself, yet I could walk for

-      miles along the seashore and never fear, though I suppose many deeds of

-      violence have been done along these shores; but they have been done on the

-      sand, and the waters have swept over them, and washed all memory of them

-      away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Soon it was evident that we were travelling along almost as narrow a way

-      as that which led along the shore to Half Assinie. There was a lagoon on

-      the right hand, and the sea on the left, and the numerous villages drew

-      their sustenance from the sea and from the cocoa-nut palms in which they

-      were embowered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All the hot long day we travelled, and at last, towards evening, on either

-      side of the road, we came upon fine shade-trees of an order of <i>ficus</i>,

-      planted, it is hardly needful to say, by the Danes who owned this place

-      over thirty years ago. It makes such a wonderful difference, this

-      tree-planting, that I have preached it wherever I went. I met one young

-      D.C. who agreed with me heartily, but explained to me the difficulties of

-      the job in English territory.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had suggested they might get trees from the agricultural stations that

-      Government is beginning to dot over the country, and he said it was quite

-      possible. In fact they had planted three hundred the year before. The

-      place I was in was rather barren-looking, so I asked where they were. He

-      shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the native sheep and goats; they are

-      only to be distinguished by their tails, and a certain perkiness about the

-      goats.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said I, surprised, &ldquo;if you plant trees, you should certainly

-      protect them.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;How?&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Barbed wire,&rdquo; was my idea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And where are we to get the money for barbed wire? We put cactus all

-      round those three hundred trees we planted, and then the medical officer

-      got on to us because the cactus held water and became a breeding place for

-      mosquitoes, and so we had to take it away, and I don't believe six of

-      those trees are alive now. You see it is too disheartening.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Another thing that is very disheartening is the fact that tours, as they

-      call a term of service among the English, last twelve months, and that a

-      man at the end of a tour goes away for five months, and very often never

-      again returns to the same place, so that he has no permanent interest in

-      its welfare.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Give peace in my time, oh Lord,&rdquo; they declare is the prayer of the

-      West-African D.C., and can we wonder? A man is not likely to stir up

-      strife in a place if he is not going to remain long enough to show that he

-      has stirred it up in a good cause. Fancy a German D.C. explaining his

-      failure to have proper shade-trees by the fact that the native sheep and

-      goats had eaten them!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The English have decided that Keta shall be called Quittah, which means

-      nothing at all, but the native name is, and I imagine will be for a long

-      time to come, Keta, which means &ldquo;On the sand,&rdquo; and on the sand the town

-      literally is. It is simply built on a narrow sand-bank between the ocean

-      and a great lagoon which stretches some days' journey into the interior,

-      and at Keta, at its widest, is never more than a quarter of a mile in

-      extent.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I appealed to the D.C. for quarters, and he very kindly placed me with the

-      Bremen Mission Sisters, and asked me to dinner every night. I feel I must

-      have been an awful nuisance to that D.C., and I am most grateful for his

-      kindness, and still more grateful for his introduction to those kindly

-      mission Sisters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Deaconesses&rdquo; they called themselves; and they had apparently vowed

-      themselves to the service of the heathen as absolutely as any nun, and

-      wore simple little cotton dresses with white net caps. Sister Minna, who

-      had been out for ten long years, going home I think in that time twice,

-      spoke the vernacular like a native, and Sister Connie was learning it.

-      They kept a girls' school where some three hundred girls, ranging from

-      three to thirteen, learned to read, and write, and sew, and sum, and I was

-      introduced to quite a new phase of African life, for never before had I

-      been able to come so closely in touch with the native.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again I have to put it on record that I have absolutely no sympathy with

-      missionaries. I cannot see the necessity for missions to the heathen; as

-      yet there should be no crumbs to fall from the children's table while the

-      children of Europe are in such a shameful state as many of them are, far

-      worse than any heathen I have ever seen in Africa. But that did not

-      prevent me admiring very much these Sisters, especially Sister Minna. It

-      was a pity her services were lost to Germany, and given to these heathen,

-      who, I am bound to say, loved and respected her deeply.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Keta was hot. Never in my life have I lived in such a hot place, and

-      the first night they put me to sleep in their best bedroom, in which was

-      erected a magnificent mosquito-proof room, also the window that looked on

-      the back verandah was covered carefully with coloured cretonne to ensure

-      privacy. In spite of all their kindness I spent a terrible night; the want

-      of air nearly killed me, and I arose in the morning weary to death, and

-      begging that I might be allowed to sleep in the garden. There there was a

-      little more air, but the ants, tiny ones that could get through the meshes

-      of my mosquito curtains, walked over me and made life unbearable. Then I

-      put up a prayer that I might be allowed to sleep on the verandah. The good

-      Sisters demurred. It was, in their opinion, rather public; but what was I

-      to do? Sleep I felt I must get, and so every night Grant came over and put

-      up my camp-bed on the verandah, or rather balcony, and every night I slept

-      the comfortable, refreshing sleep of the fresh-air lover, and if a storm

-      of rain came up, as it did not infrequently, this being the beginning of

-      the rainy season, I simply arose and dragged my bed inside, and waited

-      till it was over. I admit this had its drawbacks, but it was better than

-      sleeping inside. The Sisters were perpetually making remarks on my healthy

-      colour, and contrasting it with their own pale faces, and their not

-      infrequent attacks of fever with my apparent immunity, and they came to

-      the same conclusion that I did, that it was insured by my love of fresh

-      air. Why they did not do likewise I do not know, but I suspect they

-      thought it was not quite proper; not the first time in this world that

-      women have suffered from their notions of propriety.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Under the guidance of Sister Minna I began a series of calls, visiting

-      first one of the head chiefs, who had about sixty wives. Some dwelt in

-      little houses off his compound, some were scattered over the town, and

-      some were away in the country. It was the first time I had really been

-      introduced into a polygamous household with understanding eyes, and I went

-      with interest. It is approaching the vital points of life from an entirely

-      different angle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Chief received us most graciously. He was a big man, old, with a bald

-      head on which was a horrid red scar, got, he explained, in a big fight. He

-      said he was very pleased to see me, spoke for a moment to one of his

-      attendants, and then presented me with a couple of florins, and wished me

-      well. After all, that was certainly a most substantial sign of goodwill.

-      Then I called upon his wives, young, old, and middle-aged, and I don't

-      even now understand how he managed to have so many without interfering

-      seriously with the natural distribution of men and women. Of course his

-      descendants are many, and many are the complications, for I have seen a

-      married woman, the grand-daughter of the Chief, nursing on her knee her

-      little great-aunt, his daughter, and well spanking her too if she did not

-      come to school quick enough.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One of his old wives had broken her leg, and we visited her; she had a

-      room in his house, and was lying on her bed on the floor, while beside her

-      sat another wife who had come to see how she was getting on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If I were a wife,&rdquo; said I, from the outlook of a monogamous country, &ldquo;I

-      should not call upon another wife a man chose to take, even if she were

-      sick.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said kind-hearted Sister Minna. &ldquo;I have lived so long in a

-      country like this that I think I should. It is only kind.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And we went from one household to another, and were received most

-      graciously, and generally Sister Minna was given some small sum of money

-      to entertain me. Sometimes it was sixpence, sometimes it was a shilling,

-      sometimes it even rose as high as two shillings, and she was instructed to

-      buy chickens and bananas that I might be well fed. Also they can never

-      tell a white person's age, and many a time she was asked, because I was

-      short, whether I was not a child.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Altogether I was most agreeably struck with these Awuna people, and found

-      there was even something to be said for the polygamous system. I have

-      always, from my youth upwards, admired the woman who worked and made a

-      place for herself in the world, and here were certainly some of my ideals

-      carried out, for every woman in this community was selfsupporting for the

-      greater part of her life, and not only did she support herself, but her

-      children as well. It was in fact not much of a catch to marry a chief; of

-      course, being a rich man, he probably gave her a little more capital to

-      work upon in the beginning, but she had to pay him back, and work all the

-      same.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We visited another household, the home of a clerk in the Bremen Mission

-      Factory, a gentleman who wore a tweed suit and a high collar, and who once

-      had been a pillar of the mission church. He had four wives, and he lived

-      inside a compound with small houses round it, and his house, the big

-      house, on one side. Each wife had her own little home, consisting of two

-      rooms and a kitchen place; the wife without children was the farthest away

-      from him, and the last wife, just married, had a room next his. His

-      sitting-room was quite gorgeous, furnished European fashion with cane

-      chairs, and settee, coloured cushions, an ordinary lamp with a green

-      shade, and a rack, such as one sees on old-fashioned ships, hung with red

-      and green wineglasses. I don't know why I should have felt that

-      antimacassars and tablecloths were out of place with polygamy, but I did,

-      especially as the wives' houses were bare, native houses, where the women

-      squatted on the floor, their bedrooms were dark and dismal hot places,

-      with any amount of girdle beads hanging against the walls. For clothes are

-      but a new fashion in Keta, and the time is not far off when a woman went

-      clothed solely in girdle beads, and so still it is the fashion to have

-      many different girdle beads, though now that they wear cloths over them

-      they are not to be seen except upon the little girls who still very wisely

-      are allowed to go stark. Each woman's children, not only in this house,

-      but in the Chief's house, ran in and out of the other wives' houses in

-      very friendly fashion, and they most of them bore English names&mdash;Grace,

-      Rosina, and Elizabeth. And the names, when they are not English, are very

-      curious and well worth remembering. A couple had been married for many

-      years, and at last the longed-for child came. &ldquo;Laughing at last,&rdquo; they

-      called it. &ldquo;Come only&rdquo; is another name. &ldquo;A cry in my house&rdquo;&mdash;where so

-      long there had been silence. &ldquo;Every man and his,&rdquo; meaning with pride,

-      &ldquo;this is mine, I want nothing more.&rdquo; But they are not always pleased. &ldquo;God

-      gives bad things&rdquo;&mdash;a girl has been born and they have been waiting

-      for a boy. &ldquo;A word is near my heart,&rdquo; sounds rather tender, but &ldquo;I forgive

-      you&rdquo; must have another meaning, and the child would surely not be as well

-      loved as the one its mother called &ldquo;Sweet thing.&rdquo; Then again girls do not

-      always marry the man they love or would choose, and they will perhaps call

-      their child &ldquo;Not love made you,&rdquo; but on the whole I think pleasant names

-      predominate, and many a child is called &ldquo;So is God,&rdquo; &ldquo;God gives good

-      things,&rdquo; or merely &ldquo;Thanks.&rdquo; Often too a child is called after the day of

-      the week upon which it is born.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What day were you born?&rdquo; asked the Chief of me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Wednesday,&rdquo; I said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Then your name is Aquwo,&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Marriage in a country like this has a somewhat different status from what

-      it does, say in England. What a woman wants most of all is children;

-      motherhood is the ideal, and the unmarried woman with a child is a far

-      more enviable person than the married woman without, and even in this

-      land, where motherhood is everything, there was in every household that I

-      visited an unhappy woman without children, because vice has been rampant

-      along the Coast for hundreds of years. You may know her at once by her sad

-      face, for not only is she deeply grieved, but everyone despises her, as

-      they do not despise the woman who has had a child without being married.

-      Of course parents prefer their daughters to be chaste, and if a man

-      marries what the Sister described as a &ldquo;good&rdquo; girl, he will probably give

-      her a pair of handsome bracelets to mark his appreciation of the fact, but

-      if on the other hand a daughter, without being married, suddenly presents

-      the household with an addition, they are not more vexed than if the

-      daughter in civilised lands failed to pass her examination, outran her

-      allowance, or perhaps got herself too much talked about with the

-      best-looking ineligible in the neighbourhood. It is a natural thing for a

-      girl to do, and at any rate a child is always an asset.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0050" id="linkimage-0050"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0409.jpg" alt="0409 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0409.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      There is one binding form of marriage that is absolutely indissoluble. If

-      the man and woman, in the presence of witnesses, drink a drop or two of

-      each other's blood, nothing can part them; they are bound for ever, a

-      binding which tells more heavily upon the woman than the man, because he

-      is always free to marry as many wives as he likes, while she is bound only

-      to him, and whatever he does, no one, after such a ceremony, would give

-      her shelter should she wish to leave him. All other marriages are quite

-      easily dissolved, and very often the partings occasion but little

-      heart-burnings on either side. The great desire of everyone is children,

-      and once that is attained, the object of the union is accomplished,

-      wherefore I fancy it is very seldom couples, or rather women, take the

-      trouble to bind themselves so indissolubly. The most respectable form of

-      marriage is for a man to take a girl and seclude her with an old woman to

-      look after her for from five to nine months after marriage. She does no

-      work, but gives herself up to the luxury and enjoyment of the petted,

-      spoiled wife. Her brothers and sisters and her friends come and see her,

-      but she does not pass outside the threshold, and being thus kept from the

-      strong sunlight, she becomes appreciably lighter in colour, and is of

-      course so much the more beautiful. He may take several women after this

-      fashion, and all the marriages are equally binding, but of course this

-      means that he must have a little money. Another kind of marriage is when

-      the man simply gives the woman presents of cloths, and provides her with a

-      house. It is equally binding but is not considered so respectful; there is

-      something of the difference we see between the hasty arrangement in a

-      registry office and the solemn ceremony at St George's, Hanover Square.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One thing is certain, that when an Awuna man asks a girl to marry him, she

-      will most certainly say &ldquo;No.&rdquo; Formerly the parents were always asked, and

-      they invariably said &ldquo;No,&rdquo; and then the man had to ask again and again,

-      and to reason away their objections to him as a suitor. Now, as women are

-      getting freer under English rule, the girl herself is asked, and she makes

-      a practice of saying &ldquo;No&rdquo; at least two or three times, in order to be able

-      to tell him afterwards she did not want him. Even after they are

-      Christians, says Sister Minna, the women find it very hard to give up this

-      fiction that they do not want to marry, and the girl finds it very

-      difficult to say &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; in church.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She likes to pretend that she does not want the man. As a rule this is, I

-      believe, true enough. There is no trust or love between the sexes; you

-      never see men and women together. A woman only wants a man in order that

-      she may have children, and one would do quite as well as another.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After marriage the woman has a free time for a little. She does not have

-      to begin cooking her husband's meals at once, and this also holds good

-      after the first baby is born. A man is considered by public opinion a

-      great churl if he does not get somebody to wait on his wife and fetch her

-      water from the well at this time. After the second baby they are not so

-      particular, and a woman must just make her own arrangements and manage as

-      best she may. It is a woman's pride to bear children, and to the man they

-      are a source of wealth, for the boys must work for the father for a time

-      at least, and the girls are always sold in marriage, for a wife costs at

-      least five or six pounds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With all due deference to these kindly missionaries, I cannot think that

-      Christianity has made much progress, for these Awuna people have the

-      reputation of being great poisoners. One of the Chief's wives offered me

-      beer, stuff that looked and tasted like thin treacle, and she tasted it

-      first to show me, said the Sister, that it was quite safe; but also she

-      explained they insert a potent poison under the thumb nail, drink first to

-      show that the draft is innocuous, and then offer the gourd to the intended

-      victim, having just allowed the tip of the thumb nail to dip beneath the

-      liquid.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The early morning is the correct time to do the most important things.

-      Thus if a man wants a girl in marriage he appears at her parents' house at

-      the uncomfortable hour of four o'clock in the morning, and asks her hand.

-      The morning after the Chief had given me a dash, I sent Grant round early,

-      not at four o'clock I fear, when in the Tropics it is quite dark, with a

-      box of biscuits and two boxes of chocolates and the next morning early he

-      sent me his ring as a sign that he had received my dash and was pleased.

-      If by any chance they cannot come and thank you in the morning, they say,

-      &ldquo;To-morrow morning, when the cock crows, I shall thank you again.&rdquo; They

-      use rather an amusing proverb for thanking; where we should say, &ldquo;I have

-      not words to thank you,&rdquo; they say, &ldquo;The hen does not thank the dunghill,&rdquo;

-       because here in these villages, where they do not provide food for the

-      fowls, the dunghill provides everything. Sister Minna once received a very

-      large present of ducks and yams from a man, so she used this proverb in

-      thanking him, as one he would thoroughly understand. Quick came the

-      response, &ldquo;Oh please do not say so. I am the hen, and you are the

-      dunghill,&rdquo; which does not sound very complimentary translated into

-      English.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was delightful staying here at the Mission House, and seeing quite a

-      new side of African life, seeing it as it were from the inside. Every day

-      at seven o'clock in the morning the little girls came to school, and I

-      could hear the monotonous chant of their learning, as I sat working on the

-      verandah. Somewhere about nine school was out and it was time for the

-      second breakfast. The second breakfast was provided by the little markets

-      that were held in the school grounds, where about a dozen women or young

-      girls came with food-stuffs to sell at a farthing, or a copper, for they

-      use either English or German money, a portion. They were rather appetising

-      I thought, and quite a decent little breakfast could be bought for a

-      penny. There were maize-meal balls fried in palm oil, a sort of pancake

-      also made of maize meal and eaten with a piece of cocoa-nut, bananas,

-      split sections of pine-apple, mangoes, little balls of boiled rice served

-      on a plantain leaf, and pieces of the eternal stink-fish. Every woman

-      appears to be a born trader, and I have seen a little girl coming to

-      school with a platter on her head, on which were arranged neatly cut

-      sections of pine-apple, She had managed to acquire a copper or two, and

-      began her career as a trader by selling to the children for their school

-      breakfast. She will continue that career into her married life, and till

-      she is an old old woman past all work, when her children will look after

-      her, for they are most dutiful children, and Christian or heathen never

-      neglect their parents, especially their mother.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Old maids of course you never see, and it is considered much more natural,

-      as I suppose it is, that a woman should have a child by a man whom she has

-      met just casually, than that she should live an old maid. There was a good

-      missionary woman who took a little girl into her household and guarded her

-      most carefully. The only time that girl was out of her sight was once or

-      twice a week for half an hour when she went to fetch water from the well.

-      Presently that girl was the mother to a fine, lusty boy, and the

-      missionary's wife was told and believed that she did not know the father.

-      He was a man she had met casually going to the well.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When they asked me, as they often did, how my husband was, I always

-      explained that he was very well, and had gone on a journey; it saved a lot

-      of trouble, but it amused me to find that Sister Minna, when she was among

-      strangers, always did the same. She explained that once on her way to Lome

-      she stopped her hammock and spoke to a woman. This woman brought up a man,

-      who asked her how her husband was, and in her innocence she explained she

-      had none. The man promptly asked her to marry him, and as she demurred,

-      the ten or twelve standing round asked her to choose among them which man

-      she would have for a husband. The situation was difficult. Finally she got

-      out of it by explaining that she was here to care for their children, and

-      if she had to cook her husband's dinner it would take up too much of her

-      time. Of course in Keta they now know her, and appreciate her, and respect

-      her eccentricities if they do not understand them, but if she goes to a

-      strange place she is careful to hide the fact that she has not a husband

-      somewhere in the background. It is embarrassing to be single.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She is a firm believer in the good that the missions are doing; I am only

-      a firm believer in the good that a woman like Sister Minna could not help

-      doing in any land.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Keta is the place whence come all the cloths of the Guinea Coast, and

-      again and again in a compound, in a little, sheltered dark corner, you may

-      come across a man working his little loom, always a man, it is not women's

-      work, and often by his side another winding the yarn he will use, and the

-      product of their looms goes away, away to far Palime and Kpando, and all

-      along the Coast, and up the railway line to Kumasi, and into the heart of

-      the rubber country beyond.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But here, being an enterprising people, they are beginning to do their own

-      weaving, and have imported, I am told, men from Keta to show them the best

-      way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0051" id="linkimage-0051"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0417.jpg" alt="0417 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0417.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I shall not soon forget Keta. If I shut my eyes I can see it now. The bare

-      hot sand with the burning hot sun pouring pitilessly down upon it; the

-      graceful cocoa-nut palms; the great <i>ficus</i> trees that stand in rows

-      outside the little Danish fort that is so white that it makes your eyes

-      blink in the glare; the flamboyant tree, all red blossom, that grows

-      beside it. Some Goth of a D.C. took the guns from the walls, and stood

-      them upside down in the earth in a row leading down to the beach, and

-      subsequent Commissioners, making the best of a bad job, have painted them

-      carefully with tar to keep them from rusting. At the wells the little

-      naked girls with beads round their middles draw the water, and in the

-      streets, making the best of every little patch of shade, though they have

-      not initiate enough to plant for themselves, are the women sitting always

-      with some trifle to sell, early-morning porridge, or maize-meal balls, or

-      portions of pine-apple, or native sweets made from imported sugar. Once I

-      went into a chiefs house and wanted to photograph the people at work under

-      the shade of the central tree in the courtyard. He sent word to say he

-      would like to be photographed too, and as there was nothing particularly

-      striking or objectionable about his shirt and trousers, I agreed. He kept

-      me waiting till the light was almost gone, and then he appeared in a

-      tourist cap, a light-grey coat, a red tie, a pink shirt, khaki breeches,

-      violent green socks pulled up over the ends of his breeches, and a pair of

-      red-and-yellow carpet slippers. I sent the plate home, but have been

-      unable to discover that photograph anywhere, and I think in all

-      probability the plate could not stand him. So I did not get the people at

-      work. The market is held on a bare piece of ground close to the lagoon,

-      and whenever there is a high tide it is half under water, and the Chief

-      calls upon the people to bring sand from the seashore to raise the ground,

-      and after about six hundred calabashes have been spilled, it looks as if

-      someone had scattered a handful of sand there. Indeed, though Keta has

-      existed for many years, it looks as if at any moment an extra high tide

-      might break away into the lagoon behind, and the whole teeming population,

-      for whose being there I can see no possible reason, might be swept into

-      the sea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was hotter in Keta than any other place I visited along the Coast, as

-      there are no cool sea breezes for all they are so close to the sea. The

-      sand-bank on which it is built runs almost north and south, and the

-      prevailing wind, being from the south, blows always over hot-baked sand

-      instead of over the cool sea. But yet I enjoyed life in that Mission House

-      very much. It was a new piece of the world to me, and kind Sister Minna

-      told me many things about the native mind. When first she came she had

-      tried to do without beating the children, tried to explain to them that it

-      was a shame that a girl should be beaten, but they would have none of her

-      ways. All they thought was that she was afraid of them, the children

-      despised her, and the school was pandemonium. Now she has thoroughly

-      grasped their limitations, and when a girl does wrong she beats her, and

-      they respect and love her, and send their children to her to be corrected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I have beaten thirty to-day,&rdquo; she would say with a sigh, as we sat down

-      to dinner, or if we were going to the Commissioner's there was generally

-      one in prison who had to be released before we could go. Sometimes, if she

-      were specially bad, a girl was kept in prison all day and all night, in

-      addition to her beating. Once in the compound opposite I saw a little

-      stark-naked girl about thirteen stand screaming apparently without any

-      cause. The Sisters stood it for about half an hour, then I saw them

-      stealing across the road; they entered the compound, and promptly captured

-      the small sinner. Her aunt, who was the owner of the compound, had

-      apparently given her up as hopeless, and she looked on with interest. I

-      had thought the captive's lungs must have given out long before, but as

-      they crossed the road she put on a fresh spurt, and she yelled still more

-      heartrendingly when she was beaten. But the next day she came trippingly

-      along the verandah, confident, and happy, and apparently all the better

-      for the correction she had received the day before. I do not know what her

-      sin was. Probably she had not obeyed her aunt when she told her to rub the

-      beads. Beads are bought in strings in Germany or England, and then every

-      bead has to be rubbed smooth with water on a stone. It must be a dull job,

-      but the women and children are largely occupied in doing it; the stones

-      you see in every compound are worn hollow, and the palms of the woman's

-      hands are worn quite hard. But it is part of a woman's education and she

-      must do it just as a man must do the weaving.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0052" id="linkimage-0052"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0421.jpg" alt="0421 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0421.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The day came at last when I had to go, and I sat on the beach, surrounded

-      by my goods and chattels, waiting for the surf boat that was to take me to

-      the ship. Grant was bidding regretful farewells to the many friends he had

-      made, and I was bidding my kind Sisters good-bye. Then I was hustled into

-      a boat in a man's arms, hastily we dashed through the surf, and presently

-      I was on board the <i>Bathurst</i> bound for Addah at the mouth of the

-      Volta River.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0053" id="linkimage-0053"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0425.jpg" alt="0425 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0425.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XIX&mdash;FACING DEATH

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The Spanish nuns&mdash;One of the loneliest settlements in West Africa&mdash;Hospitality

-      and swamp&mdash;A capable English woman&mdash;A big future in store for

-      Addah&mdash;The mosquitoes of Addah&mdash;The glorious skies&mdash;Difficulties

-      of getting away&mdash;A tremendous tornado&mdash;The bar steamer&mdash;The

-      boiling bar&mdash;&ldquo;We've had enough!&rdquo;&mdash;Would rather be drowned in the

-      open&mdash;The dismantled ship&mdash;Everybody stark&mdash;The gallant

-      engineer&mdash;On the French steamer bound for Accra.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Addah, at the

-      mouth of the Volta, a place that exists solely for the transport, there is

-      the very worst surf on all this surf-bound coast. There is a big native

-      town a few miles up the river, but here at its entrance live the handful

-      of Europeans, either right on the beach or on the banks of the river, over

-      a mile away, with a great swamp between. The river is wide at its mouth,

-      and the miles of swamp lend to the country an air at once weird and

-      austere.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Enter not here,&rdquo; cries the surf; &ldquo;enter not here.&rdquo; But when its dangers

-      have been dared, and the white man has set foot on the Dark Continent, the

-      swamp takes up the refrain in another key, more sullenly threatening.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;In spite of warning you have crossed the outworks. Now, see how you like

-      the swamp and the mosquito, the steaming heat and the blazing sun.&rdquo; And

-      men come still, as they came three or four hundred years ago.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I, for one, did not much like the landing. The Captain of the <i>Bathurst</i>

-      explained that he had had no intention of calling at Addah, but hearing

-      that there was a white woman on the beach wanting to go, he of his

-      courtesy had decided to take her, and he wanted to be off as he wished to

-      discharge cargo at Pram-Pram before it grew dark. And here, for once, on

-      board an African steamer I found the women passengers largely outnumbering

-      the men, for they had on board a number of nuns who had been exiled from

-      San Paul de Loanda. They were Spanish, French, and German Sisters in the

-      costume of their order; gentle, kindly women with faces that bore evident

-      marks of an indoor life in the Tropics, a mark that cannot be mistaken.

-      They had been very very frightened at first, and they were still very

-      seasick, but the sailormen had made them most kindly welcome, for their

-      sakes were staunch Monarchists when Portugal was spoken of, and they

-      brought them the captain's cat to play with, and looked with deepest

-      admiration on their wonderful embroidery. Never was so much sewing before

-      seen on an African steamer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I unwittingly added to their woes, for the surf was bad at Addah.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We'll whistle and the bar steamer will come out for you,&rdquo; said the

-      captain, and the steamer gave vent to the most heartrending wails.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the distance I could see a most furious white surf, a palm or two

-      cutting the sky line, and a speck or two that were probably bungalows, but

-      it was a typical African shore and I didn't like the look of it at all. It

-      is bad enough to go to a place uninvited, not to know where you are going

-      to be put up, but when to that is added a bad surf, you wish&mdash;well,

-      you wish it was well over. The ship rolled sickeningly in the swell; the

-      Sisters, first one and then another, disappeared, to come back with faces

-      in all shades of green whiteness, and the ruddy-faced captain paced the

-      deck with an impatience that he in vain tried to control, and I felt an

-      unutterable brute. If I had been seasick it would have crowned things;

-      luckily for myself I am not given that way. At intervals the <i>Bathurst</i>

-      let off shrieks, plaintive and angry, and we went to lunch. I felt I might

-      as well have luncheon, a luncheon to which I really had a right.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You'll have to come on with us to Pram-Pram,&rdquo; said the captain; &ldquo;the

-      beach is evidently too bad.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But presently, after luncheon, we saw a surf boat making its way towards

-      us, and the captain through the glasses proclaimed, &ldquo;Custom's boat. No

-      white man. The surf is very bad.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      When the boat same alongside, the black Custom officer said the captain

-      was right. The surf was bad. They had rather hesitated about coming out,

-      but the bar steamer in the river could not come out till to-morrow.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Will you land,&rdquo; said the captain, &ldquo;or shall we take you on?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It seemed a pity to pass Addah, now I had come so near, and if the Customs

-      could get through I did not see why I should not, so I got into the

-      mammy-chair and was lowered into the surf boat with my servant and my

-      gear. A surf boat is about five feet deep, and this time, as no one had

-      expected a white woman to land, no chair had been provided, so I was

-      obliged to balance myself on one of the narrow planks that ran across the

-      boat and served as seats, and of course my feet dangled uncomfortably.

-      Also, as we approached it, the surf looked most threatening. We were going

-      straight into a furiously boiling sea with white, foam-lashed waves that

-      flung themselves high into the air. I did not like the look of it at all,

-      but as we were bound to go through it, I whisked myself round on my seat

-      so that I sat with my back to the thing I was afraid of. Then the

-      Custom-house officer, a black man, edged his way close beside me, and

-      stretching out his hand put it on my arm. I did not like it. I object to

-      being touched by black men, so I promptly shook it off, and as promptly

-      the boat was apparently flung crash against a stone wall; she had really

-      hit the beach, and over I went backwards and head first into the bottom of

-      the boat. The man's help had been kindly meant; he would have held me in

-      my place. But there is no time for apologies when a surf boat reaches the

-      beach. Before I had realised what was happening, two Kroo boys had dived

-      to the bottom of the boat, seized me without any ceremony whatever, and

-      raced me up to the shore, where they put me down in all the blazing sun of

-      an African afternoon, without even a helmet or an umbrella to protect my

-      head. Grant followed with the helmet, and I endeavoured to smooth my

-      ruffled plumes. At least, I had landed in safety, and the thing was now to

-      find the Commissioner and see what he would do for me. We were on a beach

-      where apparently was not even a boat, only the forlorn remains of the

-      wreck of an iron steamer rapidly coming to its last end. The shore, rising

-      to a height of about six or eight feet, was all sand with a little sparse,

-      coarse grass upon it. We climbed up the yielding bank, and then I saw a

-      native town, Beachtown, on my right, and on my left three or four

-      bungalows built after the English fashion, on high posts rising out of

-      cement platforms. Those bungalows at Beachtown, Addah, are perhaps the

-      forlornest places on all the West-African coast. The wild surf is in front

-      of them, the coarse grass all around them, and behind is a great swamp.

-      Brave, brave, it seemed to me, must be the men and women who lived here

-      and kept their health. The strong sea breeze would be healthgiving, but

-      the deadly monotony of life must be something too terrible. But here the

-      doctor, who was going home by the next steamer, had his wife, and the

-      doctor who had just come out had brought his bride; two women, and I was

-      told there was a third at the transport station. The Commissioner came

-      forward, and I looked at him doubtfully. I had thought I should have known

-      him and I didn't.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You have forgotten me?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Yes; I certainly ought to know him, but&mdash;it came on me with a flash,

-      and I spoke my thoughts. &ldquo;Ah, but you have grown a beard since I met you.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He laughed and blushed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I've just come off trek and I've lost my razors.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was so like Africa. The dishevelled woman from the sea met the unkempt

-      man from the bush, and we foregathered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were awfully good to me. Packed they were already with two more

-      people than the bungalows were intended to hold, and so they considered

-      what they should do for me, and while they were considering, hearing I had

-      had luncheon, they gave me coffee and other drinks and offered cigarettes,

-      and then they wrote to the transport company and asked them if they would

-      take in a stray woman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The kindness of these people in Africa! Can I ever repay it? I know, of

-      course, I never can. The head of Swanzy's transport and his pretty wife

-      sent over to say they would be delighted to have me, and I was to come at

-      once and consider myself at home. And, moreover, they had sent a cart for

-      me, drawn by three Kroo boys.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I have said many hard things about the English women in West Africa. I had

-      begun to think, after my visit to Accra, that only the nursing Sisters

-      were worthy of the name of capable women; but, when I went to Addah, my

-      drooping hopes revived. For I met there, in Mrs Dyson, the transport

-      officer's wife, a woman, charming, pretty, and young, who yet thought it

-      not beneath her dignity to look after her husband's house, to see that he

-      lived well here in the wilderness, and who enjoyed herself and made the

-      very best of life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And Addah, I must admit, takes a deal of making the best of. It has been

-      settled for long years. In Beachtown you may see old guns; in Big Addah, a

-      native town six miles up the Volta, you may see more of them lying about

-      the rough, uncared-for streets, and you may see here a clump of tamarind

-      trees that evidently mark the spot where once the fort has been. Not one

-      stone of it remains. The authorities say that these &ldquo;old shells of forts&rdquo;

-       are not worth preserving, and the natives have taken them literally at

-      their word, and incorporated the very stones in their own buildings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I am sorry, for Addah at the mouth of the great river must have been a

-      great slaving station once; trade must have come down the river in the

-      past, even as it does now, as it will do, doubled and trebled, in the

-      future.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The house I stayed in was close on the river, and my bedroom opened out on

-      to a verandah that overlooked it. In the shipbuilding yard below

-      perpetually rings the clang of iron on the anvil, for always there are

-      ships to be built or repaired; and there, grown into a great cotton tree

-      in that yard, may be seen the heavy chains that the slavers of oldtime

-      used to hold their ships to the shore. The slavers have gone, the past is

-      dead; but, knowing that wonderful river, I do not mind prophesying that,

-      in spite of that dangerous surf, in spite of those threatening swamps,

-      there is a big future in store for that lonely outpost of the Empire. That

-      sixty-five miles of unimpeded waterway that lies between it and Akuse is

-      not to be lightly disregarded, and the rich country goes far beyond that.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But, at present, there is not much to see at Addah. There is the swamp,

-      apparently miles of it, there is a great, wide, mangrove-fringed river,

-      and there are the never-to-be-forgotten mosquitoes. The mosquitoes of

-      Addah are the sort that make you feel you should go about armed, and that

-      made me feel for once that a mosquito-proof house was an actual necessity.

-      One thing, there is always a strong breeze blowing at Addah, and my

-      hostess was always very particular to have her wire-netting swept down

-      carefully every day so that every scrap of air that could come in did so,

-      and I conclude it was owing to this that I did not feel the air so

-      vitiated and oppressive as I have in other houses. I hope one of the next

-      public works of the Gold Coast will be to fill in that swamp, and so rid

-      the place of those terrible mosquitoes. One solace the white people have,

-      if there are mosquitoes, there is no undergrowth, and so there are no

-      tsetse flies, and they can keep horses. My hostess's two solitary

-      amusements&mdash;because she was a smiling, happy-faced girl she made the

-      best of them&mdash;were to ride along the beach and to play tennis after

-      it had grown cool in the evening, as it always does in Africa before the

-      sun goes down. And those sunsets across the swamp, too, were something to

-      wonder at. Purple and red and gold were they. Every night the sun died in

-      a glory over swamp and heath; every morning he rose golden and red across

-      the wide river, as if he would say that if Addah had naught else to

-      recommend it there was always the eternal beauty of the skies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0054" id="linkimage-0054"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0435.jpg" alt="0435 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0435.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      But having got there it was rather difficult to get away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The <i>Sapele</i>, they said, should come and take me back to Sekondi or,

-      at least, to Accra, but the <i>Sapele</i> did not come, and if my hosts

-      had not been the kindest in the world I should have begun to feel

-      uncomfortable. I would gladly have gone overland, but carriers were not,

-      even though some of my precious pots had been broken in the surf, and so

-      my loads were reduced.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But every day there was no steamer, till at last a German steamer was

-      signalled, and the bar steamer, a steamer of 350 tons, which usually lay

-      at the little wharf just outside my bedroom window alongside the

-      shipbuilding yard, prepared to go out. All my gear was carried down and

-      put on board, and then suddenly the captain appeared on the verandah and

-      pointed out to us two waiting women a threatening dark cloud that was

-      gathering all across the eastern sky.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He shook his head, &ldquo;I dare not go out till that is over.&rdquo; And so we stood

-      and waited and watched the storm gather.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a magnificent sight. The inky sky was reflected in an inky river,

-      an ominous hush was over everything, one felt afraid to breathe, and the

-      halfnaked workmen in the yard dropped their tools and fled to shelter. The

-      household parrot gave one loud shriek, and the harsh sound of his call cut

-      into the stillness like a knife.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From the distance we could hear the roaring of the surf, as if it were

-      gathering strength, and then the grasses in the swamp to the west bent

-      before a puff of air that broke on the stillness. There was another puff,

-      another, and then the storm was upon us in all its spendour. Never have I

-      seen such a storm. Though it was only four o'clock in the afternoon, it

-      was dark as night, and the lightning cut across like jagged flame, there

-      came immediately the crash of thunder, and then a mighty roaring wind, a

-      wind that swept everything before it, that bent the few trees almost to

-      the ground, that stripped them of their leaves as if they had been

-      feathers shaken out of a bag, that beat the placid river into foam, and

-      tore great sheets of corrugated iron from the roofs of the buildings and

-      tossed them about the yard as if they had been so many strips of muslin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The bar steamer's captain had gone at the first sign to see that his

-      moorings were safe, and we two women stood on the verandah and watched the

-      fury of the elements, while my hostess wondered where her husband was, and

-      hoped and prayed he was not out in it. The inky blackness was all over the

-      sky now, the wind was shrieking so as to deaden all other sounds, and the

-      only thing we could hear above it was the crash of the thunder. And then I

-      looked at the horizon away to the south-west. There, about a mile away as

-      the crow flies, was the shore, and there against the inky darkness of the

-      sky I could see tossed high into the air great sheets of foam. The surf on

-      that shore must have been terrific. I would have given a good deal to go

-      and see it, but, before I could make up my mind to start, down came the

-      rain in torrents, the horizon was blotted out, the road through the swamp

-      was running like a mill race, and it looked as if it would be no light

-      task to beat my way through wind and rain to the shore.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And when the storm was subsiding back came the bar steamer's captain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No going out to-day,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I wouldn't dare risk the bar. Look at the

-      surf!&rdquo; and he pointed across the swamp to where we could again see the

-      great white clouds of foam rising against the horizon. &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; he

-      said, &ldquo;very early&rdquo;; and he went away, and my host, soaked through and

-      through, came back and told us what the storm had looked like from

-      Beachtown.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The next morning was simply glorious. The world was fresh and clean and

-      newly washed, and the river, from my window, looked like a brightly

-      polished mirror.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It'll be a bad bar, though,&rdquo; said my host, shaking his head. &ldquo;Better

-      stay.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was very kind of him, but I felt I had trespassed on their kindness

-      long enough; besides, there were other parts of the Coast I wished to see,

-      and I felt I must take this opportunity of getting out of Addah. What was

-      a bad bar? I had faced the surf before. So I bid them farewell, with many

-      grateful thanks, and went on board, and in all the glory of the morning we

-      set off down the river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was the only white passenger on board, and was allowed to stand on the

-      bridge beside the wheel. Behind me was a little house wherein I might have

-      taken shelter, but I thought I might as well see all there was to be seen;

-      besides, I held my camera in my hand and proposed to take photographs of

-      this &ldquo;bad bar.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The mouth of the Volta is utterly lonely looking. A long sandpit ran out

-      on the right hand, whereon grew a solitary bush, blighted, for there was

-      not a sign of a leaf upon it, and to the left was also sand, with a few

-      scattered palms. I fancy there must have been a native hut or two, though

-      I do not remember them, for I remember the captain saying, &ldquo;We have to

-      make our own marks. When you get a hut in line with a certain tree you

-      know you are in the channel.&rdquo; I was glad to hear there was a channel, for

-      to my uninitiated eyes we seemed heading for a wild waste of boiling

-      water, worse than anything I had ever conceived of, and yet I was not

-      unaccustomed to surf, and had faced it before now in a surf boat. Never

-      again shall I face surf with equanimity. I tried to carry out my

-      programme, but I fear I must have been too upset to withdraw the slides,

-      for I got no photographs. Presently we appeared to be right in the middle

-      of the swirl. The waves rose up like mountains on either side, and towards

-      us would come a great smooth green hill of water which towered far above

-      our heads and then, breaking, swept right over us with a tremendous crash.

-      I can see now the sunlight on that hill; it made it look like green glass,

-      and then, when the foam came, there were all the colours of the rainbow.

-      Again and again the two men at the wheel were flung off, their cloths

-      seemed to be ripped from them as if they had been their shells, and the

-      ship trembled from stem to stern and stood still. I thought, &ldquo;Is this a

-      bad bar? I'm afraid, I'm afraid,&rdquo; but as the captain came scrambling to

-      the wheel to take the place of the men who had been thrown off I did not

-      quite like to say anything. It is extraordinary how hard it is to make one

-      believe there really is anything to fear, and I should hate to be a

-      nuisance at a critical moment, so I said to the captain&mdash;he and I and

-      the German engineer were the only white people on board: &ldquo;It's

-      magnificent.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He was holding on to the wheel by my side and a naked black man, stripped

-      by the ruthless water, was holding on to it on the other, and I could see

-      the moisture on his strained face. Was it sweat or sea water?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Magnificent!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Don't you see we can't stand it? We've had

-      enough!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So that was it. We were going down. At least, not exactly going down, but

-      the water was battering us to pieces. I learned then that what I was

-      afraid of was fear, for now I was not afraid. It had come, then, I

-      thought. This was the end of the life where sometimes I had been so

-      intensely happy and sometimes I had been so intensely miserable that I had

-      wanted to die. Not so very long ago, and now I was going to die. Presently

-      those waters that were soaking me through and through would wash over me

-      once for all and I was not even afraid. I thought nothing for those few

-      moments, except how strange that it was all over. I wondered if I had

-      better go into the little house behind me, but no, I saw I was not in the

-      way of the men at the wheel. I could hear the crashing of broken wood all

-      round me, and I thought if I were to be drowned I would rather be drowned

-      in the open. Why I held on to my camera I do not know. That, I think, was

-      purely mechanical. The waves beat on the ship from all quarters, and so

-      apparently held her steady, and I might just as well hold on to the camera

-      as to anything else. I certainly never expected to use it again. Crash,

-      crash, crash came the tons of water, there was a ripping of broken wood,

-      and a human wail that told me that crew and black passengers had realised

-      their danger. Crash, crash, crash. It seemed to me the time was going very

-      slowly, and then suddenly the ship seemed to give a leap forward, and

-      instead of the waves crashing on to us we were riding over them, and the

-      captain seized me by the arm.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Come inside. You're wet to the skin.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We're all right. But, my God, you'll never be nearer to it.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And then I looked around me to see the havoc that the bar had wrought. The

-      bulwarks were swept away, the boats were smashed, the great crane for

-      working cargo was smashed and useless, the galley was swept overboard, the

-      top of the engine-house was broken in, and, transformation scene, every

-      solitary creature on board that little ship, with the exception of the

-      captain and me, was stark. Custom-house officers had stripped off their

-      uniforms, clerks who had come to tally cargo in all the glory of

-      immaculate shirts and high-starched collars were nude, and the black men

-      who worked the ship had got rid of their few rags as superfluous. Everyone

-      had made ready to face the surf.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Much good would it have done 'em,&rdquo; opined the captain; &ldquo;no living thing

-      could have got ashore in that sea.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Then up came the chief engineer, a German; his face was scalded and his

-      eyes were bloodshot, and it was to him we all owed our lives.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The waves had beaten in the top of the engine-room, and the water had

-      poured in till it was flush with the fires; a gauge blew out&mdash;I am

-      not sure if I express myself quite rightly, but the place was full of

-      scalding steam, and all those educated negro engineers fled, but the white

-      man stuck to his job.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I tink it finish,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;when I see the water come close close to the

-      fires, but I say, 'well, as well dis vay as any oder,' so I stick to do my

-      job, an' I not see, I do it by feel.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And we all three shook hands, and the captain and engineer had a glass of

-      whisky, and though it was so early in the morning, never did I think it

-      was more needed. I had been but an onlooker. On them had fallen the burden

-      and heat of the day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then came boats, bringing on board the captains of the French and

-      German steamers that lay in the roadstead, far out, because the surf was

-      so bad.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They had been watching us. They thought we were gone, but though they had

-      out their boats they confessed they would have been powerless to aid. No

-      boat could have lived in such a sea, and the captain declared that though

-      he was swept bare of all food nothing would induce him to go back. It

-      would be certain death.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We looked a rather forlorn wreck, but the German captain came to the

-      rescue with a seaman-like goodwill, lending men to work the cargo in place

-      of the broken-down crane, and giving food to the hungry ones. He had come

-      from Lome, and he brought news that the hurricane of the night before had

-      swept away the bridge that had been the pride and delight of the people of

-      Togo, and that never for many a long year had there been such a storm

-      along the Guinea Coast. He had been unable to get his papers and had come

-      away without them. He would take me if I liked, but he must go back to

-      Lome.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I was rather feeling I had had enough of the sea, and so I turned to

-      the Frenchman. He was just as kind and courteous. His ship was small, he

-      said, and he was not going to Sekondi, but I might tranship at Accra if I

-      liked. The captain of the bar steamer advised my going on board at once,

-      for his ship was in a state of confusion, and also he was going to

-      tranship cargo.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Grant took a hand in the proceedings. Whether he had stripped I don't

-      know, for I did not see him, but he presented himself before me in a very

-      wet and damp condition.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Medicine chest gone, Ma.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now, the medicine chest was my soldier brother's, the pride of my heart. I

-      had proposed to bring it back to him and show him that the only time it

-      had been used in this unhealthy climate was when the carrier had

-      inadvertantly got cascara for his pneumonia. Well, it was gone, and there

-      was nothing more to be said. Its pristine beauty had been lost in the

-      rains in Togo. Grant departed, but presently he was on the bridge again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Pots be all bruck, Ma.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, Grant!&rdquo; I had got them so far only to lose them in the end. Grant was

-      like one of Job's comforters. He seemed to take a huge delight in

-      announcing to me fresh disasters. My things were all done up small for

-      carrying on men's heads, and the sea had played havoc with them. The

-      bucket was gone; the kettle, an old and tried servant, was gone; the

-      water-bottle was gone, so was the lantern; the chop box had been burst

-      open, and the plates and cups smashed; while the knives and forks had been

-      washed overboard, and the majority of my boots, for some reason or other,

-      had followed. After Grant had made about his tenth journey, announcing

-      fresh disasters, I said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, never mind, Grant. We must make the best of it; I'm rather surprised

-      we are not gone ourselves,&rdquo; and with a grin he saw to the handing of the

-      remains of my goods into the boat, and getting them on board the steamer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That steamer was tiny. I looked at the cabin assigned me, and determined

-      if I had to sit up all night I would not occupy it, and then I had my

-      precious black box brought on deck, and proceeded to count the damage. It

-      was locked and it was supposed to be air-tight and water-tight. I can't

-      say about the air-tight, but water-tight it certainly was not, for every

-      single thing in that box was soaked through and through. I took them out

-      one by one; then, as no one said me nay, I tied them on to the taffrail,

-      and let my garments flutter out in the breeze and the sunshine. There were

-      four French women on board, bound from the French Congo to Konakri, and

-      they took great interest and helped me with suggestions and advice, but I

-      must say I was glad that I was bound for Sekondi, where my kind friend the

-      nursing Sister was keeping fresh garments for me. As for my poor little

-      typewriter, it was so drenched with water that, though I stood it out in

-      the sun, I foresaw its career in West Africa was over.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the sun was setting, came on board the captain of the bar steamer to

-      bid me God-speed. We had never met till the day before, but that morning

-      we had faced death together, and it made a bond.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Go back to-night?&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;not if I know it. Not for a week, if that

-      surf doesn't go down. I couldn't face it.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I wanted him to stay and dine, because I knew he had nothing, but he told

-      me how good the German had been, and said he did not like leaving his own

-      ship after dark; so we said &ldquo;good-bye&rdquo; with, I hope, mutual respect, and,

-      after dinner, I began to consider how I should spend the night. I knew my

-      own bedding must be rather wet, but I knew, also, the camp-bed would be

-      all right, and I told Grant to bring it up on deck and make it up with

-      bedding from the Frenchman's bunk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They no give you cabin, Ma,&rdquo; said he, surprised.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Nothing would induce a child of Nature to sleep in the open as long as he

-      can find any sort of a cuddy-hole to stew in. I was a little afraid of

-      what the French captain might say, but he took my eccentricity calmly

-      enough.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah, zat your bed? Ah, zat is good idea&rdquo;; and left me to a night rolling

-      beneath the stars, when I tossed and dreamed and woke with a start,

-      thinking that the great green hills of water were about to overwhelm me;

-      and as about twenty times more terrified of the dream than I had been of

-      the reality.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next morning found us outside Accra, a long way outside, because the surf

-      was bad, and I found to my dismay there was no mail in yet, and I must

-      land, for there was no cargo for the <i>Gergovia</i>, and she wanted to go

-      on her way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I found the landing terrible. I can frankly say I have never been so

-      frightened, and I had no nerve left to stand up against the fear. But it

-      was done. I saw my friend in Accra, and again recounted with delight my

-      travels. For the first time I began to feel I had done something, and I

-      felt it still more when the people in Schenk &amp; Barber's, a great

-      trading firm, held up their hands and declared that I had done a wonderful

-      thing to cross by Krobo Hill at night. I had done well, then, I kept

-      saying to myself, I had accomplished something; but I must admit I was

-      most utterly done. When the mail steamer arrived, the port officer made it

-      his business to see me off to the ship himself; we were drenched to the

-      skin as we rounded the breakwater, and I was so nervous when the

-      mammy-chair came dangling overhead from the ship's deck, that I hear he

-      reported I was the worst traveller he had ever been on board with. Then,

-      in addition to my woes, instead of being able to sit and chat and tell my

-      adventures comfortably to the friends I met, I was, for the first time for

-      many a long year, most violently seasick.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But, when I went to bed, I slept dreamlessly, and when I awakened we were

-      rising to the swell outside Sekondi, and I felt that even if I had to face

-      the surf again I should be among friends presently, and there was a

-      feeling of satisfaction in the thought that I had at least seen something

-      of the most beautiful river in the world, and some unknown country in the

-      east of the Colony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Always there is that in life, for, good or evil, nothing can take away

-      what we have done. We have it with us, good or bad, for ever. Not

-      Omnipotence can alter the past.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XX&mdash;WITH A COMPANION

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The kindness of Sekondi&mdash;Swanzy's to the rescue&mdash;A journey to

-      Dixcove&mdash;With a nursing Sister&mdash;The rainy season and wet feet&mdash;Engineering

-      a steep hill in the dark&mdash;Rains and brilliant fireflies&mdash;The

-      P.W.D. man's taste in colours&mdash;The need of a woman in West Africa&mdash;Crossing

-      the Whin River&mdash;My fresh-air theory confirmed.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ekondi, from the

-      nursing Sister outwards, was as it always has been, awfully good to me,

-      and I felt as if I were come home. I had the kindest offers of help from

-      all sides, and the railway company took my damaged goods in hand and did

-      their level best to repair damages. I was bound for the goldfields and

-      Ashanti, but I had still uneasily in my remembrance that little bit of

-      coast to the west of Sekondi that I had left unvisited. If I had not

-      written so much already about the carrier difficulties, I might really

-      write a book, that to me would be quite interesting, about that day's

-      journey to Dixcove. Swanzy's transport came to the rescue and provided me

-      with carriers, a most kindly gift, for which I am for ever grateful, and I

-      took with me a young nursing Sister who was anxious to see something of

-      bush travel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is always a fascination about the shore, the palm trees and the

-      yellow sand and the blue sky and bluer sea, but now the difficulties were

-      being added to daily and hourly, because it was the beginning of the rainy

-      season, and all the little rivers had &ldquo;broken out,&rdquo; and to cross from one

-      bank to another when a river is flooded, even if it is only a little one,

-      is as a rule no easy matter. To my great amusement I found my companion

-      had a great objection to getting her feet wet. I am afraid I laughed most

-      unsympathetically.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0055" id="linkimage-0055"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0450.jpg" alt="0450 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0450.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You can't,&rdquo; I decided, and I fear she thought me a brute, &ldquo;travel in the

-      rainy season in Africa and hope to keep dry&rdquo;; and I exhorted her not to

-      mind if the water were up to her ankles, but to wade through. She brought

-      home to me difficulties of travel that I had never thought of before. It

-      had never occurred to me to worry as to whether I was likely to get wet

-      before; a little water or a little discomfort never seemed to matter. The

-      seat of the canoe I was sitting in broke and let me down into the

-      waist-deep puddle of water in the bottom, and somehow it seemed a less

-      thing to me than that her feet should get wet did to her. She was a nice,

-      good-looking girl, pleasant and smiling, but I decided that never again as

-      long as I lived would I travel with another woman. I know my own

-      shortcomings, but I never know where another woman will break out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And we went along that coast, where, two hundred years ago, quaint,

-      gossipy old Bosman had found so much of beauty and interest. Tacorady Fort

-      was deserted in his day. It is overgrown and forgotten now. Boutry is on a

-      high hill, the place of the old fort only marked by a thick clump of

-      trees, dark-green against the sky line; but it was getting dark when we

-      reached Boutry, there was a river to cross, and I was obsessed with a

-      sense of my responsibilities, such as I had never felt when I had only my

-      own skin to look after, and I was very thankful that a doctor who was

-      going to Dixcove had overtaken us. If I damaged my travelling companion in

-      any way, I felt that he at least could share responsibility. We crossed

-      the river, and the darkness fell, pitchy, black darkness; it rained in a

-      businesslike way as it does in the Tropics, and there was a high hill to

-      climb. It was a very steep hill, with a very shocking track that did duty

-      as a road, and my companion expressed her utter inability to get up it. I

-      was perfectly sure that our Kroo hammock-boys could never get us up it,

-      and I was inclined to despair; then that doctor came to our aid. He had

-      four Mendi boys, the best carriers on the Coast, and we put them on to my

-      companion's hammock, and gaily she went off. She knew nothing of the

-      dangers of the way. I did, but I did not feel it necessary to enlighten

-      her. I don't know what the doctor did, but I put on my Burberry and

-      instructed two of my carriers that they must help me over the road. It was

-      a road. When I came back over it in the light, three days later, I

-      wondered how on earth we had tackled it in the dark; still more did I

-      wonder how a heavily laden hammock&mdash;for she was a strapping young

-      woman, a good deal bigger than I am&mdash;had been engineered up and down

-      it. But Mendi carriers are wonderful, and there was a certain charm in

-      walking there in the night. When the rain stopped, the fireflies came out,

-      and the gloom beneath the trees was lightened by thousands of brilliant

-      sparks of fire. I don't know whether fireflies are more brilliant after

-      rain, but I remember them most distinctly on those two wet nights when I

-      was travelling, once on my way to Dixcove and once on the way to Palime.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Up the hill we went and down the hill, along the sands, across the

-      shallows of a river just breaking out&mdash;and the lantern light gleamed

-      wetly on the sand&mdash;through little sleepy villages and across more

-      hilly country, and at last, just as the moon was rising stormily in the

-      clouded sky, we were opposite a long flight of wide steps, and knew we had

-      reached Dixcove.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was one white man, a P.W.D. man, in Dixcove, and a surprised man was

-      he. Actually, two women had come out of the night and flung themselves

-      upon him. Of course, we had brought servants and provisions and beds, so

-      it was only a question of providing quarters. Now I smile when I think of

-      it. We crossed the courtyard, we climbed the stairs, we entered the modern

-      house that was built on top of the little fort, and out of a sort of

-      whirlpool a modified disorder emerged, when we found ourselves, two men

-      and two women, by the light of a fluttering, chimneyless Hinkson lamp, all

-      assembled in the room that two camp-beds proclaimed the women's bedroom,

-      and we all partook of a little whisky to warm ourselves while we waited

-      for dinner. The P.W.D. man was fluttered and, I think, pleased, for at

-      least our coming broke the monotony, and the nursing Sister undertook the

-      commissariat and interviewed his cook. Altogether we made a cheerful

-      little week-end party in that romote corner of the earth, and when it

-      rained, as rain it did most of the time, we played bridge as if we had

-      been in London.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dixcove is a pretty little place, literally a cove, and the fort is built

-      on high ground on a neck of land that forms the head of the cove. Round it

-      grow many orange groves, and altogether it is a desirable and delightful

-      spot, but it must be very lonely for the only white man who was there. He

-      had just repainted the bungalow on top of the fort, and whether he had

-      used up the odds and ends of paints, or whether this was his taste, or

-      whether he had desired something to cheer him, or whether he was actuated

-      by the same spirit that seems to move impressionist painters, I do not

-      know, but when I got up next morning and walked on the bastion, that

-      bungalow fairly took my breath away. It was painted whole-heartedly a

-      violent Reckitt's blue; the uprights and the other posts that

-      criss-crossed across it were a bright vivid green, and they were all

-      picked out in pink. There was the little white fort set in the midst of

-      tropical greenery, everything beautiful, with the bungalow on top setting

-      the discordant note. It was pitiful, but at the same time the effect was

-      so comic that the nursing Sister and I laughed till we cried, and then our

-      host came out and could not understand what we were laughing about. We

-      came to the charitable conclusion he must be colour-blind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0056" id="linkimage-0056"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0456.jpg" alt="0456 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0456.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The two men wanted us to stay. They said it was more comfortable, and when

-      I compared the luncheon the doctor gave us to the meals we had when I

-      provided the eatables and the nursing Sister gave her attention to the

-      cuisine, I must say I agreed with them, and resolved once again to

-      proclaim the absolute necessity for having women in West Africa. But she

-      had to go back to her work, and I had to go on my travels, and so, like

-      the general who marched his army up the hill and marched it down again,

-      presently I was on my way back. And not a moment too soon. It was raining

-      when we started, and our host and the doctor pressed us to stay, but I had

-      not been on the Coast all this time without knowing very well what that

-      rain would mean. The rivers that had been trickles when we set out would

-      be roaring torrents now, and I knew in a little time they would be

-      impassable; then the only thing would be to go back to Sekondi by surf

-      boat, and I had had enough of the surf to last me for many a long day.

-      Besides, our provisions were getting low. We started early; we had less to

-      carry, for we had eaten most of the provisions, and we had more men, for

-      we brought back most of the doctor's following, but still it took us all

-      we knew to get across those rivers, and the Whin River was nearly too much

-      for us. It had been bad when we came, now the sea was racing across the

-      sands, the flooded, muddy water of the river was rushing to meet it, and

-      the two black men who were working a surf boat as a ferry came and asked

-      an exorbitant sum to take us across. My headman demurred and said we

-      wouldn't go. I left it to him, and the bargaining was conducted in the

-      usual slatternly Coast English at the top of their voices. I must confess,

-      as my companion and I sat on the sand and watched the wild waters, I

-      wondered what we would do if we did not cross, for Dixcove was fully

-      fourteen miles behind us. Down came the price by slow degrees, in approved

-      fashion, till at last it appeared I, my companion, our goods, chattels,

-      hammocks, and our followers, numbering fully twenty men, were to be taken

-      across for the sum of two shillings and sixpence. I sent the gear first,

-      and then some of the men, and finally the nursing Sister and I went.

-      Unfortunately there was not room in the boat for the two last men, and I

-      could not help being amused when the ferryman came to be paid, and the men

-      all clustered round vehemently demanding that I should do no such thing

-      till their two companions were also brought over. Not a scrap of faith had

-      they in the ferryman keeping his word, so I had to sit down on the sand

-      among the short, coarse grass and the long stalks of the wandering bean,

-      and wait till those two men were fetched, when I paid up, and we went on

-      to Sekondi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The journey was short; it is hardly worth recording, hardly worth

-      remembering, but for those wonderful fireflies, and for another thing that

-      bears strongly on my theory regarding health in West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The nursing Sister I took with me was a tall, goodlooking girl,

-      considerably younger than I am, and she looked as if she ought to have

-      been very much stronger. She had barely been on the Coast a short three

-      months, but she had already had one or two goes of fever, a thing I have

-      never had, and she did not like it. She was very careful of herself, and

-      she abominated the climate. At night I noticed she shut herself away from

-      all chance of draughts, drawing curtains and shutting doors so as to

-      insure herself against chill. When we started on our journey she was not

-      well, &ldquo;the climate was not agreeing with her,&rdquo; and they were beginning to

-      think she &ldquo;could not stand it.&rdquo; We spent a day in the open and we got

-      somewhat wet. When night came we shared a room and she wanted to close, at

-      least, a shutter. Partly that was to have privacy and partly to keep away

-      draughts. Then I brutally put down my foot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I considered it dangerous to be shut in in Africa, and as I was

-      engineering that expedition I thought I ought to have my way. One thing I

-      did not insist upon, I did not have the windows open all round, but I had

-      them wide on two sides, so that a thorough draught might blow through the

-      room. My bed I put right in it, but I allowed her to put hers in the most

-      sheltered part of the room she could find, and, of course, I could not

-      prevent her wrapping her head in a blanket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She put in those two nights in fear and trembling, I know, but she went

-      back to Sekondi in far better health than she had left it. That she

-      acknowledged herself, but she does not like Africa; the charm of it had

-      passed her by, and I wonder very much if she will complete her term of

-      service.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XXI&mdash;THE WEST-AFRICAN GOLDFIELDS

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>A first adventure&mdash;Tarkwa&mdash;Once more Swanzy to the rescue&mdash;Women

-      thoroughly contented, independent, and well-to-do&mdash;The agricultural

-      wealth of the land&mdash;The best bungalow in West Africa&mdash;Crusade

-      against the trees&mdash;Burnt in the furnaces&mdash;Prestea&mdash;The sick

-      women&mdash;A ghastly hill&mdash;Eduaprim&mdash;A capable

-      fellow-countrywoman&mdash;&ldquo;Dollying&rdquo; for gold&mdash;Obuasi&mdash;Beautiful

-      gardens&mdash;75 per cent.&mdash;The sensible African snail.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was born and

-      brought up on the goldfields. My first adventure&mdash;I don't remember it&mdash;was

-      when my nurse, a strapping young emigrant from the Emerald Isle, lost me

-      and herself upon the ranges, and the camp turned out to search, lest the

-      warden's precious baby and her remarkably pretty nurse should spend an

-      unhappy night in the bush. As a small girl, I watched the men wash the

-      gold in their cradles, and I dirtied my pinafore when the rain turned the

-      mullock heaps into slimy mud. As I grew older, I escorted strangers from

-      the Old Country who wanted to go down the deep mines of Ballarat. I

-      watched, perforce, the fluctuations of the share market, and men who knew

-      told me that the rise and fall had very often nothing whatever to do with

-      the output of gold; so that I grew up with the firmly fixed idea&mdash;it

-      is still rather firmly fixed&mdash;that the most uninteresting industry in

-      the world was goldmining.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Wherefore was I not a bit keen on going to the gold mines of West Africa,

-      and I only went to Tarkwa because I felt it would never do to come away

-      not having seen an industry which I am told is going up by leaps and

-      bounds. The question was, where could I go for quarters? There are no

-      hotels as yet, and once more I am deeply indebted to Messrs Swanzy and

-      their agent in the mining centre of the Gold Coast. He put me up and

-      entertained me right royally, and not only did he show me round Tarkwa,

-      but he saw to it that I should have every chance to see some of the other

-      mines, Prestea and Eduaprim.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0057" id="linkimage-0057"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0464.jpg" alt="0464 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0464.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Tarkwa is set in what we in Australia should call a gully, and the high

-      hills rise up on either side, while the road, along which straggles the

-      European town, runs at the bottom of the gully. For there are several

-      towns in Tarkwa. There is the European town where are all the stores, the

-      railway station, and the houses of the Government officials, and in this

-      town there is some attempt at beautifying the place; some trees have been

-      planted along the roadside, grass grows on the hillsides, whether by the

-      grace of God or the grace of the town council I know not, and round most

-      of the bungalows there is generally a sort of garden, and notably in one

-      or two, where there are white women who have accompanied their husbands,

-      quite promising beginnings of tropical gardens.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is the native town, bare and ugly, without a scrap of green, just

-      streets cutting each other at right angles, and small houses, roofed with

-      corrugated iron or thatch, and holding a teeming and mixed population that

-      the mines gather together, and then every mine has its own village for its

-      workers; for the labour difficulty has reached quite an acute stage in the

-      goldfields, and the mines often import labour from the north, which they

-      install in little villages, that are known by the name of the mine where

-      the men work, and are generally ruled over by a white officer appointed by

-      the mine. These villages, too, are about as bare and ugly as anything well

-      could be that is surrounded by the glorious green hills and has the blue

-      sky of Africa over it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Tarkwa gives the impression of a busy, thriving centre; trains rush along

-      the gully and the hills echo their shrill whistles, the roadways are

-      thronged with people, and the stores set out their goods in that open

-      fashion that is half-eastern, so that the hesitating buyer may hesitate no

-      longer but buy the richest thing in sight. In all my travels I never saw

-      such gorgeously arrayed mammies as here. The black ladies' cloths, their

-      blouses, and the silken kerchiefs with which they covered their heads, all

-      gave the impression of having been carefully studied, and my host assured

-      me they had. Many of them are rich, and in this comfortable country they

-      are all of them self-supporting wives. They sell their wares, or march

-      about the streets, happy, contented, important people, very sure of

-      themselves. Let no one run away with the impression that these women are

-      in any way down-trodden. They look very much the reverse. We may not

-      approve of polygamy, but I am bound to say these women of Tarkwa were no

-      down-trodden slaves. They looked like women who had exactly what they

-      wanted, and, curiously enough whenever I think of thoroughly contented,

-      thoroughly independent, well-to-do women, I think of those women in the

-      goldmining centre of West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My host told me they spent, comparatively speaking, enormous sums on their

-      personal adornment, were exceedingly particular as to the shade and

-      pattern of their cloths, and were decided that everything, cloth, blouse,

-      and head kerchief, should tone properly. They lay in a large store of

-      clothes too, and when Mr Crockett wrote the other day of &ldquo;The Lady of the

-      Hundred Dresses,&rdquo; he might have been thinking of one of these Fanti women.

-      The reason of this prosperity is of course easy to trace. The negro does

-      not like working underground, for which few people I think will blame him,

-      therefore high wages have to be paid, and these high wages have to be

-      spent, and are spent lavishly, much to the advantage of these women

-      traders.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0058" id="linkimage-0058"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0468.jpg" alt="0468 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0468.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Because Tarkwa is a great centre of industry, Government have very wisely

-      made it one of their agricultural stations, and there, set on a hill, and

-      running down into rich alluvial flats, are gardens wherein grow many of

-      the plants that will in the future contribute largely to the industrial

-      development of the Colony. There is a rubber plantation, a great grove of

-      dark trees already in bearing, plantations of bananas, pine-apples, hemp,

-      and palm trees, and the director, set in his lonely little bungalow on the

-      hilltop, rejoices over the wealth and fertility of the land, which he

-      declares is not in her gold, but in her agricultural products which as yet

-      we are but dimly realising, and then he mourns openly because the

-      Government will not let him bring out his wife. &ldquo;She would be ready to

-      start in an hour if I might send for her,&rdquo; he sighed, &ldquo;and I would want

-      nothing more. But I mayn't. Oh, think of the dreary days. And I could work

-      so much better if she were here. I should want nothing else.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And I sympathised. Think of the dreary days for him, and the still more

-      dreary days for her, for at least he has his work. It would surely I think

-      pay the Government to give a bonus to the woman who proved that she could

-      see her year out without complaint, and who was to her husband what a

-      woman ought to be, a help and a comfort.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Another thing in Tarkwa I shall never forget is Messrs Swanzy's bungalow,

-      where I stayed for nearly a fortnight. My host had superintended the

-      building of it himself, and it was ideal for a West-African bungalow. It

-      was built of cement raised on arches above the ground; floors and walls

-      were of cement. There was a very wide verandah that served as a

-      sitting-room and dining-room, and the bedrooms, though they were divided

-      from each other by stout walls of cement, were only shut off from the

-      verandah by Venetian screens that could be folded right away. They did not

-      begin till a foot above the floor, and ended six feet above it,

-      consequently there was always a thorough draught of air, and Messrs

-      Swanzy's bungalow at Tarkwa is about the only house I know in West Africa

-      where one can sleep with as much comfort as if in the open air. Needless

-      to say, they are not so foolish as to go in for mosquito-proof netting.

-      They keep the mosquitoes down by keeping the place round neat and tidy,

-      and though the verandah is enclosed with glass, it is done in such fashion

-      that the windows may be thrown right open and do not hinder the free

-      passage of air. Flies and mosquitoes there were, but that, when I was

-      there, was attributed to the presence of the town rubbish tip on the next

-      vacant allotment, and my host hoped to get it taken away. Why the

-      Government had a town rubbish tip close to the handsomest bungalow in the

-      Colony, I do not pretend to say. It was just one of those things that are

-      always striking you as incongruous in West Africa. My host used to fret

-      and fume at every evil fly that came through his windows, and, when I

-      left, was threatening to stand a gang of Hausas round that tip with orders

-      to kick anyone who desired to deposit any more rubbish there.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0059" id="linkimage-0059"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0472.jpg" alt="0472 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0472.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      It is hardly necessary to say there had been at the same time a great

-      crusade against the trees in Tarkwa. But a short time ago the whole place

-      had been dense forest, very difficult to work, and after the usual fashion

-      of the English everyone set to work to demolish the forest trees as if

-      they were the greatest enemies to civilisation. The mines, of course, I

-      believe burn something like a hundred trees a day, and the softwood trees

-      are no good to them. What their furnaces require are the splendid

-      mahogany, the still harder kaku, a beautiful wood that is harder than

-      anything but iron, and indeed any good hard-wood tree; the worth of the

-      wood is no business of theirs. They consider the wealth of Africa lies

-      beneath the soil, and they must get it out; wherefore into their furnaces

-      goes everything burnable, even though the figured mahogany may be worth £1

-      a foot, and the tree be worth £1000. It is a pity, it is a grievous pity,

-      but Tarkwa is certainly prosperous, and I suppose one cannot make

-      omelettes, and look for chickens. Only I cannot help remembering that

-      never in our time, nor in our children's time, nor their children's time,

-      will the hills of Tarkwa be covered with such trees as she has ruthlessly

-      consigned to the flames. Even the soft-wood trees such as the cotton, that

-      might have added beauty to the slopes, have gone because an energetic

-      doctor waged war upon them as shelterers of the mosquito, and the

-      hill-sides lie in the blazing sun for close on twelve hours of a tropical

-      day. Oh for a sensible, artistic German to come and see to the beautifying

-      of Tarkwa, for never saw I a place that could lend itself more readily to

-      the hand of an artist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But if Tarkwa is being ruthlessly treated, what shall I say of beautiful

-      Prestea, which lies but a short railway journey right away in the heart of

-      the hills. Prestea is a great mine, so large that the whole of the one

-      hundred and eighty white people who make up the white town are employed

-      upon it. It is so hilly that there are hardly any paths, and the people

-      seem to move about on trolleys, winding in and out of the hills, and, it

-      was reported once, one of the unhealthiest places in West Africa. The

-      doctor very kindly gave me hospitality, and we promptly agreed to disagree

-      on every subject. I hate to be ungracious to people who have been kind to

-      me, but with all the will in the world I have to keep my own opinion, and

-      my opinion was diametrically opposed to the doctor's. The nursing Sister

-      who ran the hospital, a nice-looking, capable, sensible Scotch woman, whom

-      it did my heart good to meet, was one of the few I have met who put the

-      sickness of the average English woman in West Africa down to the same

-      causes as I did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They come from a class who have nothing to think of, and when they have

-      nothing to do they naturally fall sick,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Every woman on this

-      camp has been sent home this year.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I debated with her whether I should give my opinion of the climate to the

-      world in my book. It meant I was up against every doctor in the place, who

-      ought to know better than I, a stranger, and a sojourner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If you don't,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;someone else will come along presently and do

-      it.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      That decided me. I am doing it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0060" id="linkimage-0060"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0476.jpg" alt="0476 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0476.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      This nursing Sister, while she had to have the hospital mosquito-proof, in

-      deference to the doctor's opinion, sternly declined to have any such

-      abomination anywhere near her little bungalow, and so the cool, fresh

-      night air blew in through her great windows, and we had an extensive view

-      of the glorious hillsides, all clothed in emerald green, and if a clammy

-      white mist wrapped us close when we waked in the early morning so that we

-      could not see beyond our own verandahs, the rolling away of that mist was

-      a gorgeous sight, ever to be remembered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Needless to say, the doctor's house was carefully enclosed in

-      mosquito-proof wire, and I dined in an oppressive atmosphere that nearly

-      drove me distracted. The bungalow was set high on a hilltop, in the middle

-      of a garden that should one day be beautiful, but he has of course cut

-      down every native tree, and owing to the mosquito-proof wire we got no

-      benefit from the cool breeze that was blowing outside. He took me to see

-      the new native village he was building, a place that left an impression of

-      corrugated iron and hard-baked clay. Trees, of course, and all vegetation

-      were taboo, but I am bound in justice to say that the old village, a place

-      teeming with inhabitants, drawn from all corners of West Africa, attracted

-      by the lust for gold, was just as bare and ugly, and a good deal more

-      unkempt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He took me out, and pointed out to me the principal hill in the centre of

-      Prestea, on which are the mining manager's and other officials' houses,

-      and he pointed it out with pride.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There's a nice clean hill for you.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The sun glared down fiercely on corrugated-iron roofs, the soil of the

-      hill looked like a raw, red scar, and there was not so much as a blade of

-      grass to be seen. I did not wonder that the unfortunate women of Prestea

-      had gone home sick if they had been compelled to live in such a place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I said, &ldquo;It's a horrible place. I never saw a beautiful place more utterly

-      spoiled.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He looked at me with surprise, and his surprise was thoroughly genuine.

-      &ldquo;Why, what's the matter? It's nice and clean.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I pointed to the beautiful hills all round.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Mosquitoes,&rdquo; said he, with a little snort for my ignorance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But you want some shade?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He shook his head doubtfully.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You can't have trees. The boys would leave pots under them. Breeding

-      places for mosquitoes.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He was my host, so I did not like to say all I felt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I'd rather die of fever than sunstroke any day,&rdquo; was the way it finally

-      came out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; he said judicially, as one who was correcting a

-      long-standing error, &ldquo;no one dies of fever in Africa.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Exactly what I always maintain,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;you, with your ghastly hills

-      are arranging for them to die of sunstroke.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But he only reiterated that they could not have the trees, because the

-      boys would leave pots and pans under them, and so turn them into mosquito

-      traps. Personally, I didn't arrive at the logic of that, because it has

-      never seemed to me to require trees for boys to leave pots about. The

-      theory was, I suppose, that they would not walk out into the hot sun,

-      while they might be tempted to do work and make litter under shade-trees.

-      And again I did not wonder that there were no women save the nursing

-      Sister in Prestea. To live on that hill and keep one's health would have

-      been next door to impossible.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It doesn't matter,&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;we don't want women in West Africa.

-      I keep my wife at home. It isn't a white man's country.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0061" id="linkimage-0061"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0480.jpg" alt="0480 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0480.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      But I'm bound to say that they very often arrange it shall not be a white

-      man's and emphatically not a white woman's country. It suits somebody's

-      plan that the country should have an evil reputation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Goldfields, too, must never be judged in the same category as one judges

-      the ordinary settlements in a country. When I was a tiny child I learned

-      to discriminate, and to know that &ldquo;diggers&rdquo; must not be judged by the

-      rules that guide the conduct of ordinary men. The population of a

-      goldfield are a wild and reckless lot, and they lead wild and utterly

-      reckless lives, and die in places where other people manage to live

-      happily enough.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the gold first &ldquo;broke out&rdquo; in Victoria, my father was Gold

-      Commissioner on the Buckland River, among the mountains in the

-      north-eastern district, and I have heard him tell how the men used to die

-      like flies of &ldquo;colonial&rdquo; fever, and the theory was that there was some

-      emanation from the dense vegetation that was all around them. Nowadays the

-      Buckland is one of the healthiest spots in a very healthy country, and no

-      one ever gets fever of any sort there. Now I do not wish to say that West

-      Africa is one of the healthiest countries in the world, but I do say that

-      men very very often work their own undoing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You should see Tarkwa,&rdquo; said a man to me, who was much of my way of

-      thinking, &ldquo;when an alcoholic wave has passed over it!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Eduaprim was another mine I went to see from Tarkwa. But it was in direct

-      contrast to Prestea, though it too was in the heart of the forest country.

-      No railway led to it; I had to go by hammock, and so I got my first taste

-      of forest travelling, and enjoyed it immensely.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is a solitary mine about nine miles from Tarkwa, and I started off

-      early in the morning, and noticed as I went that the industry is, for good

-      or ill, clearing the forests of West Africa, opening up the dark places,

-      even as it did in my country over fifty years ago. Along the hillsides we

-      went to Eduaprim, past mines and clearings for mining villages; sometimes

-      the road was cut, a narrow track on the side of the hill, with the land

-      rising up on one side and falling sheer on the other, sometimes a little

-      river had to be bridged, and the road went on tunnel-like through the

-      forest that must disappear before the furnaces, but at last I arrived at

-      the top of the hill, and on it, commanding a wonderful view over the

-      surrounding country, stood a bungalow, in a garden that looked over the

-      tops of range upon range of high hills. I saw a storm come sweeping across

-      the country, break and divide at the hilltop upon which I stood, and pass

-      on, veiling the green hills in mist, which rolled away from the hills

-      behind, leaving them smiling and washed and clean under a blue sky. If for

-      no other sight than that, that journey into the hills was worth making.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0062" id="linkimage-0062"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0484.jpg" alt="0484 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0484.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The wife of the manager of the mine was a fellow-countrywoman of mine. She

-      liked West Africa, kept her health there, and felt towards it very much as

-      I did. No one likes great heat. The unchanging temperature is rather

-      difficult to bear for one unaccustomed to it, but she thought it might be

-      managed by a woman interested in her work and her husband, and as for the

-      other discomforts&mdash;like me, she smiled at them. &ldquo;The people who

-      grumble should live in Australia,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;and do their own work,

-      cooking, washing, scrubbing. Do it for a week with the temperature

-      averaging 100 degrees in the shade, and they wouldn't grumble at West

-      Africa, and wouldn't dream of being sick.&rdquo; And yet this contented woman

-      must have led a very lonely life. Some wandering man connected with the

-      mines, or a stray Commissioner, would come to see her occasionally, and

-      the news of the world would come on men's heads from Tarkwa. And, of

-      course, I suppose there was always the mine, which was her husband's

-      livelihood. They took me into the bush behind the bungalow and showed me a

-      great mahogany tree they had cut down, and then they showed me what I had

-      seen many and many a time in my life before, but never in Africa&mdash;men

-      washing the sand for gold. They were &ldquo;dollying&rdquo; it first, that is crushing

-      the hard stone in iron vessels and then washing it, and the &ldquo;show,&rdquo; I

-      could see for myself, was very good.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I lingered in Eduaprim; the charm of talking with a woman who found joy in

-      making a home in the wilderness was not to be lightly foregone, and I only

-      went when I remembered that it was the rainy season, the roads were bad,

-      and Tarkwa was away over those forbidding hills.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And from Tarkwa I went up the line to Obuasi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This railway line that runs from Sekondi to Kumasi, the capital of

-      Ashanti, is a wonderful specimen of its class. Every day sees some

-      improvement made, but, being a reasonable being, I cannot help wondering

-      what sort of engineers laid it out. It presents no engineering

-      difficulties, but it was extremely costly, and meanders round and round

-      like a corkscrew. They are engaged now in straightening it, but still they

-      say that when the guard wants a light for his pipe all he has to do is to

-      lean out of his van and get it from the engine. It was laid through dense

-      forest, but the forest is going rapidly, the trees being used up for fuel.

-      In the early days, too, these trees were a menace, for again and again,

-      when a fierce tornado swept across the land, the line would be blocked by

-      fallen trees, a casualty that grows less and less frequent as the forest

-      recedes. When first the line was opened they tell me all passengers were

-      notified that they must bring food and bedding, as the company could not

-      guarantee their being taken to their destination. There is also the story

-      of the distracted but pious negro station-master, who telegraphed to

-      headquarters, &ldquo;Train lost, but by God's help hope to find it.&rdquo; It is a

-      single line of 168 miles, so I conclude his trust in the Deity was not

-      misplaced.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Obuasi, on the borders of Ashanti, is the great mine of West Africa, a

-      mine that pays, I think, something like 75 per cent, on its original

-      shares, and even at their present value pays 12 per cent. It is enough to

-      set everyone looking for gold in West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And like Prestea, Obuasi is the mine, and the mine only. There are, I

-      think, between eighty and one hundred white men, all, save the few

-      Government officials and storekeepers, in some way or another connected

-      with the mine, and the place at night looks like a jewel set in the midst

-      of the hills, for it is lighted by electricity. Every comfort of

-      civilisation seems to be here, save and except the white woman, who is

-      conspicuous by her absence. &ldquo;We want no white women,&rdquo; seems to be the

-      general opinion; an opinion, I deeply regret to say, warranted by my

-      experience of the average English woman who goes to West Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0063" id="linkimage-0063"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0488.jpg" alt="0488 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0488.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The place is all hill and valley, European bungalows built on the hills,

-      embowered generally in charming gardens such as one sees seldom in the

-      Colony, and the native villages&mdash;for there are about five thousand

-      black men on the books of the mine&mdash;in the valleys. There are miles

-      of little tramway railways too, handling about 35,000 tons a month, more,

-      they tell me, than the Government railway does, and the mine pays

-      Government a royalty of £25,000 a year.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Obuasi is a fascinating, beautiful place; I should have liked to have

-      spent a month there, but it is not savagery. It is as civilised in many

-      ways as London itself. I stayed in the mining manager's bungalow, and am

-      very grateful to him for his hospitality, and the manager's bungalow is a

-      most palatial place, set on the top of a high hill in the midst of a

-      beautiful garden. Palm and mango and grape-fruit trees, flamboyant, palms,

-      dahlias, corallita, crotons, and roses, the most beautiful roses in the

-      world, red, white, yellow, pink, everywhere; a perfect glory of roses is

-      his garden, and the view from the verandah is delightful. His wide and

-      spacious rooms are panelled with the most beautiful native woods, and

-      looking at it with the eyes of a passer-by, I could see nothing but

-      interest in the life of the man who had put in a year there. He will

-      object strongly, I know, to my writing in praise of anything West-African,

-      and say what can I know about it in a brief tour. True enough, what can I

-      know? But at least I have seen many lands, and I am capable of making

-      comparisons.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Every man I met here pointed out to me the evils of life in Africa.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You make the very worst of it,&rdquo; said I, and proceeded to tell the story

-      of a bridge party in a Coast town that began at three o'clock on Friday

-      afternoon and ended up at ten o'clock on Monday morning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And if those men have fever,&rdquo; said I, feeling I had clinched my argument,

-      &ldquo;they will set it down to the beastly climate.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;So it is,&rdquo; said my opponent emphatically; &ldquo;we could always do that sort

-      of thing in Buluwayo.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I thereby got the deepest respect for the climate of Buluwayo, and a most

-      doubtful estimate of the character of the pioneer Englishman. Perhaps I

-      look on these things with a woman's narrow outlook, but I'm not a bit

-      sorry for the men who cannot dissipate without paying for it in Africa. I

-      heartily wish them plenty of fever.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The manager took me on a trolley along one of these little lines, right

-      away into the hills. This was a new form of progression. A seat for two

-      people was fixed on a platform and pushed along the line, uphill or on the

-      flat, by three or four negroes, and fairly flew by its own weight

-      downhill. It was a delightful mode of progression, and as we flew along,

-      Xi my host, while pointing out the sights, endeavoured to convert me, not

-      to the faith that West Africa was unfit for the white woman, that would

-      have been impossible, but that the mining industry was a very great one

-      and most useful to the Colony. And here he succeeded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0064" id="linkimage-0064"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0492.jpg" alt="0492 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0492.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I admired the forests and regretted their going, but he showed me the

-      farms that had taken their place. Bananas and maize and cassada, said he

-      truly enough, were far more valuable to the people than the great, dark

-      forests they had cleared away&mdash;ten people could live now where one

-      had lived before; and so we rolled on till we came to the Justice mine,

-      where all the hillside seemed to be worked, a mine that has been paying

-      £10,000 a month for the last three years. Truly, it is a wonderful place,

-      that Obuasi mine with its nine shafts, an industry in the heart of savage

-      Africa. They pay £11,000 a week in wages, and when I was thinking how

-      closely in touch it was with civilisation, the manager told me how the

-      chiefs had just raised a great agitation against the mine because it

-      worked on Friday, their sacred day. They complained that the snails were

-      so shocked at this act of sacrilege that they were actually leaving the

-      district. Now the snails in Ashanti are very important people, boundaries

-      are always calculated with reference to them, and if a chief can prove

-      that his men are in the habit of gathering snails over a certain area, it

-      is proof positive that he holds jurisdiction over that land. That the

-      snails should leave the district shocked would be a national calamity. The

-      African snail looks like an enormous whelk, he haunts the Ashanti forest,

-      and is at his best just at the commencement of the rains, when he begins

-      to grow fat and succulent, but is not yet too gross and slimy. He is

-      hunted for assiduously, and all along the forest paths may be seen men,

-      laden with sticks on which are impaled snails drawn from their shells,

-      dried, and smoked. Luckily also these African snails appear to be very

-      sensible, and when it was put to them that the mines could not possibly

-      stop working on a Friday, but a small monetary tribute would be paid to

-      them regularly through the principal chief, they amiably consented at once

-      to stay and meet their final end, as a self-respecting snail should, by

-      impalement on a stick.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0065" id="linkimage-0065"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0497.jpg" alt="0497 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0497.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XXII&mdash;A NEW TRADING CENTRE

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The siege of Kumasi&mdash;The Governor in 1900&mdash;The rebellion&mdash;The

-      friendlies under the walls of the fort&mdash;The Ashanti warrior of ten

-      years ago and the trader of to-day&mdash;The chances of the people in the

-      fort&mdash;The retreat&mdash;The gallant men who conducted it&mdash;The

-      men who were left behind&mdash;The rescue&mdash;Kumasi of to-day&mdash;The

-      trade that comes to Kumasi as the trade of Britain came to London in the

-      days of Augustus&mdash;The Chief Commissioner&mdash;The men needed to rule

-      West Africa.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nd when I had been

-      to Obuasi nothing remained but to go up the line and see Kumasi and go as

-      far beyond as the time at my disposal would allow.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I wonder if English-speaking people have forgotten yet the siege of

-      Kumasi. For me, I shall never forget, and it stands out specially in my

-      mind because I know some of the actors, and now I have seen the fort where

-      the little tragedy took place; for, put it what way you will, it was a

-      tragedy, for though the principals escaped, some with well-merited honour,

-      the minor actors died, died like flies, and no man knoweth even their

-      names.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was dark when I reached Kumasi and got out on to the platform and was

-      met by the kind cantonment magistrate, put into a hammock, and carried up

-      to the fort, and was there received by the Chief Commissioner and his

-      pretty bride, one of the two white women who make Kumasi their home, I had

-      seen many forts, old forts along the Coast, but this fort was put up in

-      1896, and in 1900 its inmates were fighting for their lives. In it were

-      shut up the Governor, his wife, two or three unfortunate Basel missionary

-      women, a handful of troops, and all the other white people in the place.

-      Standing on the verandah overlooking the town to-day, with a piano playing

-      soft music and a dining-table within reach set out with damask and

-      cut-glass and flowers and silver, it is hard to believe that those times

-      are only ten years back. I have heard men talk of those days, and they are

-      reticent; there are always things it seems they think they had better not

-      tell, and I gather that the then Governor was not very much beloved, and

-      that no one put much faith in him. The rebellion started somewhere to the

-      north, and by the time it reached Kumasi it was too late to fly, for it

-      was a good eight days' hard march to the Coast through dense forest. The

-      nearest possible safety outside that fort lay beyond the River Prah, at

-      least three or four days' march away. Every white man and many of the

-      black who were not Ashantis had taken refuge in the fort, which was

-      crowded to suffocation, and outside, in front of the fort, camped the

-      friendlies, safe to a certain extent under the white man's guns, but dying

-      slowly because the white man could not give what he had not got himself&mdash;food;

-      and here they died, died of disease and hunger and wounds, and the reek of

-      their dying poisoned the air so that the white man, starving behind his

-      high walls of cement, was like to have his end accelerated by those who

-      stood by him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And out beyond, where the English town now stands, with broad streets

-      planted with palms and mangoes and <i>ficus</i>, were the encampments of

-      fierce Ashanti warriors, their cloths wound round their middles, their

-      hair brushed fiercely back from their foreheads, their powder-flasks and

-      bullet-bags slung across their shoulders, and their long Danes in their

-      hands, the locks carefully covered with a shield of pigskin. The same man,

-      very often the very same individual, walks about the streets of Kumasi

-      to-day, and if he wears a tourist cap and a shirt, torn, ragged, and

-      dirty, he is at least a peaceful citizen, and ten years hence he will

-      probably, like the Creoles in Sierra Leone, be talking of &ldquo;going home.&rdquo;

-       But it was ghastly in the fort then. It was small and it was crowded to

-      suffocation. The nearest help was at Cape Coast, nigh on 200 miles away,

-      and between lay the dense forest that no man lightly dared. The Ashanti

-      too was the warrior of the Coast, and the difficulty was even to get

-      carriers who would help to move a force against him. Shut up in the fort

-      there they looked out and waited for help and waited for death that ever

-      seemed coming closer and closer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Kumasi is set in a hollow, and round it, pressing in on every side, was

-      the great forest. Away to the south went the road to Cape Coast, but it

-      was but a track kept open with the greatest difficulty, and hidden in the

-      depths of the forest on either hand were these same warriors. Truly the

-      chances of the people in the fort seemed small, small indeed. And day

-      after day passed and there was no sign of help. Provisions were getting

-      low, ammunition was running short, and from the Ashanti no mercy could be

-      expected. It was war to the death. Any man or woman who fell into their

-      hands could expect nothing but torture. I gather that his advisers would

-      have had the Governor start for the Coast at once on the outbreak of

-      hostilities, but he could not make up his mind, and lingered and lingered,

-      hoping for the help that did not, that could not come. No one has ever had

-      a word of praise for that Governor, though very gallantly the men under

-      him came out of it. Starvation and death stared them all in the face; the

-      gallant little garrison, heavily handicapped as it was, could certainly

-      hold out but little longer, and the penalty of conquest was death&mdash;death,

-      ghastly and horrible.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At last the Governor gave in and they started, a forlorn little company,

-      for the River Prah, which had generally set a bound to Ashanti raids. The

-      Governor's wife was carried in a hammock, but the Basel missionary women,

-      who had escaped with only the clothes they stood up in, walked, for the

-      hammock-boys were too weak to carry them, and they had to tramp through

-      mud and swamp. The soldiers did their best to protect the forlorn company,

-      the friendlies crowded after, a tumultuous, disorderly crew fleeing before

-      their enemies, and those same enemies hung on their flanks, scrambled

-      through the forest, ruthlessly cut off any stragglers, and poured volleys

-      from their long Danes into the retreating company. Knowing the forest, I

-      wonder that one man ever escaped alive to tell the tale; that the

-      principal actors did, only shows that the Ashanti was not the practised

-      warrior the Coast had always counted him. Had those Ashantis been the lean

-      Pathan from the hills of northern India, not a solitary man would have

-      lived to tell the tale, and the retreat from Kumasi would have taken its

-      place with some of those pitiful stories of the Afghan Border. But one

-      thing the Ashanti is not, he is not a good marksman. He blazes away with

-      his long Dane, content to make a terrific row without making quite sure

-      that every bullet has reached its billet. And so, thanks to the bad

-      marksmanship of the Ashantis, that little company got through.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But let no man think I am in any way disparaging the men who fought here,

-      who by their gallantry brought the Governor and his wife through. Major

-      Armitage and his comrades were brave men of whom England may well be

-      proud, men worthy to take their places beside Blake and Hawkins and all

-      the gallant Britons whose names are inscribed on the roll of fame; they

-      fought against desperate odds, they were cruelly hampered by the helpless

-      people under their care, and they stuck beside them, though by so doing

-      they risked not only death, but death by ghastly torture. Some of them

-      died, some of them got through&mdash;they are with us still, young men,

-      men in the prime of life&mdash;and when we tell our children tales of the

-      way England won her colonies, we may well tell how that little company

-      left the fort of Kumasi, every man who was wise with cyanide of potassium

-      in his pocket, and fought his way down to the Prah.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But even though they went south they were not going to abandon Kumasi,

-      which had been won at the cost of so much blood, and in that fort were

-      left behind three white men and a company of native soldiers. All in good

-      time the relief must come, and till then they must hold it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A verandah hangs round the fort nowadays that the piping times of peace

-      have come, but still upstairs in the rooms above are the platforms for the

-      gun-carriages, and I climbed up on them and walked along the verandahs and

-      wondered how those men must have felt who had looked out from the

-      self-same place ten years ago. If no help came, if waiting were unduly

-      prolonged, they would die, die like rats in a hole, and the men in their

-      companies were dying daily. They were faithful, those dark soldiers of the

-      Empire, but they were dying, dying of disease and hunger, and their

-      officers could not help them, for were they not slowly dying themselves?

-      Rumours there were of the relief force, but they were only rumours, and

-      the spectres of disease and starvation grew daily. Could they hold out?

-      Could they hold out? The tale has been told again and again, and will

-      probably be told yet again in English story, and at last when they had

-      well-nigh given up to despair they heard the sound of English guns, so

-      different from the explosions of the long Danes, and presently there was

-      the call of the bugles, and out into the open trotted a little fox

-      terrier, the advance guard of the men who had come to save Kumasi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now the change. Kumasi has a train from the coast port of Sekondi

-      every day, it has a population that exceeds that of the capital of the

-      Gold Coast itself, every day the forest is receding and in the streets are

-      growing up great buildings that mark only the beginning of a trade that is

-      already making the wise wonder how it was when wealth lay on the ground

-      for the picking up, England, who had it all within her grasp, was amiable

-      enough to allow the greater portion of this wonderful land to fall to the

-      lot of the French and Germans.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The forest used to close Kumasi in on every side. It is set in a hollow,

-      and the tall trees and luxuriant green in the days that I have just spoken

-      of threatened to overwhelm it. Now that sensation has passed away.

-      Whatever Kumasi may be in the future, to-day it is a busy centre of life

-      and trade. Where the fetish tree stood, the ground beneath its branches

-      soaked with human blood and strewn with human bones, is now the centre of

-      the town where the great buildings of the merchant princes of West Africa

-      are rising. They are fine, but they are a blot on the landscape for all

-      that. The nation that prides itself on being the colonising nation of the

-      earth never makes any preparation for the expansion of its territory or

-      the growth of its trade, so here in this conquered country, bought at the

-      cost of so much sweat and blood, the authorities are allowing to go up, in

-      the very heart of the town buildings, very handsome buildings without

-      doubt, so close together that in a tropical land where fresh air is life

-      itself they are preparing to take toll of the health of the unfortunates

-      who will have to dwell and work there. But beyond that one grave mistake

-      Kumasi promises to be a very pretty place as well as a very important one.

-      Its wide, red roads, smooth and well-kept, are planted with trees, mangoes

-      and palms; its bungalows are set well apart, surrounded by trees and

-      shrubs and lawns, their red-brown roofs and verandahs toning picturesquely

-      with the prevailing green.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0066" id="linkimage-0066"> </a>

-    </p>

-

-<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0507.jpg" alt="0507 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0507.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-

-    <p>

-      Curious it is when one thinks of its history to see the white painted

-      sign-posts on which are recorded the names of the streets. There is

-      &ldquo;Kingsway&rdquo; for one, and &ldquo;Stewart-avenue,&rdquo; after the man who deeply loved

-      the country, for another, and there are at least two great roads that lead

-      away to the fruitful country in the north, roads that push their way

-      through the dense forest and must even compel the admiration of our

-      friends the Germans, those champion road-makers. And down those roads

-      comes all the wonderful trade of Kumasi, not as the trade of London, of

-      course, but as the trade of London was, perhaps, when Augustus ruled at

-      Rome. The trade of the world comes to London nowadays, the trade of the

-      back-country came to London then, and so does the trade of all the country

-      round come to the Ashanti capital. Its streets are thronged with all

-      manner of peoples, dark, of course, for the ruling whites are but an

-      inconsiderable handful, and only the Chief Commissioner and one missionary

-      have been daring enough to bring their wives.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ashanti is a conquered country, and it seems to me it has got just the

-      right sort of Government, a Government most exactly suited to the

-      requirements of the negro in his present state of advancement. What a

-      negro community requires is a benevolent despotism, but as a rule the

-      British Government, with its feeling for the rights of the individual,

-      does not see its way to give it such a Government. But Ashanti was

-      conquered at great cost, wherefore as yet England has still to think of

-      the rights of the white men who dwell there as against the rights of the

-      black man, and the result to me, an onlooker, appears to be most

-      satisfactory for both white and black. Of course, such a Government

-      requires to administrate not only excellent men, not only honest and

-      trustworthy men, but men who have the interests of the country at heart,

-      and who devote themselves to it, and such men she has got in the Chief

-      Commissioner, Mr Fuller, and the subordinates chosen by him. Only an

-      onlooker am I, a woman, a passer-by, but as a passer-by I could not but be

-      struck by the difference between the feeling in the Gold Coast Colony and

-      the feeling in Ashanti. The whole tone of thought was different.

-      Everywhere on the Gold Coast men met me with the question, &ldquo;What did I

-      think of this poisonous country? Wasn't it a rotten place?&rdquo; and they

-      seemed bitterly disappointed if I did not confirm their worst blame.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0067" id="linkimage-0067"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0511.jpg" alt="0511 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0511.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      But in Ashanti it was different. The very clerks in the mercantile houses

-      had some good word to say for the country, and were anxious that I should

-      appreciate it and speak well of it, and this I can but set down to the

-      example and guidance of such men as the Chief Commissioner and the men he

-      chooses to serve under him. Had the rest of West Africa always had such

-      broad-minded, clever, interested men at the head of affairs, I think we

-      should have heard a great deal less about its unhealthiness and a great

-      deal more about the productiveness of the country. Since I have seen

-      German methods I am more than thankful that I have been to Ashanti and

-      learned that my own country is quite equal to doing as well, if not

-      beating them at their own methods. The Ashanti himself, the truculent

-      warrior of ten years ago, has under the paternal and sympathetic

-      Government of this Chief Commissioner become a man of peace. If he has not

-      beaten his long Dane gun into a ploughshare he has at least taken very

-      kindly to trade and is pleased, nay eager that the white man should dwell

-      in his country. He stalks about Kumasi in his brightly coloured, toga-like

-      cloth still, very sure that he is a man of great importance among the

-      tribes, and his chiefs march through the streets in chairs on men's heads,

-      with tom-toms beating, immense gaily coloured umbrellas twirling, their

-      silken' cloths a brilliant spot in the brilliant sunshine, their rich gold

-      ornaments marking them off from the common herd, and all their people who

-      are not Christian still give them unquestioned devotion. But Kumasi, as I

-      said, is the centre of a great trade, and the native town, which is

-      alongside but quite apart from the European town, is packed with shops,

-      shops that are really very much in the nature of stalls, for there are no

-      fronts to them, and the goods are exposed to the street, where all manner

-      of things that are attractive to the native are set out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And here one gathers what is attractive to the native. First and foremost,

-      perhaps, are the necessities of life, the things that the white man has

-      made absolute necessaries. First among them, I think, would be kerosene

-      and bread, so everywhere, in market-place and shop, or even just outside a

-      house, you may see ordinary wine and whisky bottles full of kerosene, and

-      rows and rows of loaves of bread. Then there comes men's clothing&mdash;hideous

-      shirts and uglier trousers, tourist caps that are the last cry in

-      hooliganism, and boots, buttoned and shiny, that would make an angel weep.

-      Alas! and alas! The Ashanti in his native state, very sure of himself, has

-      a certain dignity about him even as must have had the old Roman. You might

-      not have liked the old Roman, probably you would not unless he chose to

-      make himself pleasant, but you could not but recognise the fact that he

-      was no nonentity, and so it is with the Ashanti till he puts on European

-      garments. Then how are the mighty fallen! for like all negroes, in the

-      garb of civilisation, he is commonplace when he is not grotesque. What

-      they are to wear I cannot say, but the better-class among them seem to

-      realise this, for I have often heard it said, not only in Ashanti but in

-      other parts of the Coast: &ldquo;The Chief may not wear European clothes.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0068" id="linkimage-0068"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0515.jpg" alt="0515 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0515.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And beside clothes in the native shops are hurricane lanterns, ordinary

-      cheap kerosene lamps, and sewing machines which the men work far more

-      often then the women, accordions, mouth harmoniums, and cotton goods in

-      the strange and weird patterns that Manchester thinks most likely to

-      attract the native eye. I have seen brooms and brushes and dustpans

-      printed in brilliant purple on a blue ground, and I have seen the

-      outspread fingers of a great hand in scarlet on a black ground. But mostly

-      there is nothing of very great interest in these shops, just European

-      goods of the commonest, cheapest description supplied apparently with the

-      view of educating the native eye in all that is ugliest and most

-      reprehensible in civilisation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are horses in Kumasi, for the forest and undergrowth have been

-      cleared away sufficiently to destroy the tsetse fly, and so most evenings,

-      when the heat of the day has passed, the Chief Commissioner and his wife

-      go for a ride, and on occasions many of the soldiermen play polo and hold

-      race-meetings, but as yet there is no wheeled traffic in the streets. Most

-      of the goods are carried on men's heads, and the roadways are crowded.

-      There are women with loads on their heads and generally children on their

-      backs, walking as if the world belonged to them, though in truth they are

-      little better than their husbands' slaves. There are soldiers all in

-      khaki, with little green caps like condensed fezes, lor the place is a

-      great military camp and the black soldier swaggers through the street;

-      there are policemen in blue uniforms with red fezes, their feet bare like

-      those of the soldiers, and their legs bound in dark-blue putties; and

-      there are black men from all corners of West Africa. There are the Kroo

-      boys, those labourers of the Coast, with the dark-blue freedom mark

-      tattooed on their foreheads, never carrying anything on their heads, but

-      pushing and pulling heavily laden carts, in gangs that vary from four to a

-      dozen, and their clothing is the cast-off clothing of the white man; there

-      are Hausas and Wangaras, than whom no man can carry heavier loads, and

-      they wear not a flowing cloth like the Ashanti, but a long, shirt-like

-      garment not unlike the smock of the country labourer. It is narrower and

-      longer, but is usually decorated with the same elaborate needlework about

-      the neck and shoulders; if their legs are not bare they wear Arab

-      trousers, full above and tight about their feet, and the flapping of their

-      heelless slippers makes a clack-clack as they walk. There are Yorubas,

-      dressed much the same, only with little caps like a child's Dutch bonnet,

-      and there are even men from the far north, with blue turbans and the lower

-      part of their faces veiled. Far beyond the dense forest lies their home,

-      away possibly in French territory, but the trade is coming to this new

-      city of the Batouri, and they wander down with the cattle or horses. For

-      all the cattle and horses come down through the forest, driven hastily and

-      fast because of the deadly tsetse, and many must perish by the way. A herd

-      of the humped, long-horned cattle come wearily through the streets.

-      Whatever they may have been once, there is no spirit left in them now, for

-      they have come down that long road from the north; they have fed sparely

-      by the way, and they are destined for the feeding of the population that

-      are swarming into Kumasi to work the mines in the south.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0069" id="linkimage-0069"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0519.jpg" alt="0519 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0519.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Three towns are here in Kumasi: the European quarter, the Ashanti town,

-      and the Mohammedan town or <i>zonga</i>. Here all the carrying trade that

-      is not done by Government is arranged for&mdash;by a woman. Here the

-      houses are small and unattractive, nondescript native huts built by people

-      who are only sojourners in the land, come but to make money, ready to

-      return to their own land in the north the moment it is made. And they sit

-      by the roadside with little things to sell. Food-stuffs often, balls of

-      kenki white as snow, yams and cassada, which is the root of which we make

-      tapioca, cobs of Indian corn, and, of course, stink-fish that comes all

-      the way from the Coast and is highly prized as a food, and does not appear

-      to induce ptomaine poisoning in African stomachs. Some of these dainties

-      are set out on brass trays made in Birmingham; others on wooden platters

-      and on plates delicately woven in various patterns of grass dyed in many

-      colours. But most things they have they are ready to sell, for the negro

-      has great trading instincts, and that trading instinct it is that has made

-      him so easy to hold once he is conquered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Kumasi is peaceful enough now, and the only reminder of the bad days of

-      ten years back is the fort just above the native town, but it looks down

-      now across a smooth green lawn, on which are some great, shady trees,

-      where chiefs assembled whom I photographed. One was a great fetish chief

-      with gold ornaments upon his head and upon his feet, and knowledge of

-      enough magic, had this been the fifteenth century instead of the

-      twentieth, to drive the white man and all his following back to the sea

-      from whence he came; but it is the twentieth, and he is wise enough to

-      know it, and he flings all the weight of his authority into the scales

-      with the British raj. But at the gate of the fort still stands a guard of

-      black soldiers in all the glory of scarlet and yellow which stands for

-      gold, for the Chief Commissioner lives here, and in a land where a chief

-      is of such importance it is necessary to keep up a certain amount of

-      state, and the Chief Commissioner ruling over this country and receiving

-      obeisance from the chiefs, clad in their gorgeous silken cloths, laden

-      with golden jewellery, men looked up to by their followers as half-divine,

-      must feel something like a Roman proconsul of old carrying the eagles into

-      savage lands, and yet allowing those savages as far as possible to govern

-      themselves by their own laws. Africa has always been the unknown land, but

-      now at last the light is being let into dark places, the French have

-      regenerated Dahomey, and the railway comes to Kumasi. I sat on that

-      verandah and thought of the old days that were only ten years back, and

-      learned much from the Commissioner, and I felt that civilisation was

-      coming by leaps and bounds to Ashanti, and if it be true, as old tradition

-      has it, that a house to be firmly built must have a living man beneath its

-      foundation stone, then must the future of Kumasi be assured, for its

-      foundations were well and truly laid in rivers of human blood.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0070" id="linkimage-0070"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0523.jpg" alt="0523 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0523.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XXIII&mdash;IN THE HEART OF THE RUBBER COUNTRY

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>Bound for Sunyani&mdash;The awe-inspiring-forest&mdash;The road through

-      the forest&mdash;The people upon that road&mdash;Ofinsu and an Ashanti

-      house&mdash;Rather a public bedroom&mdash;Potsikrom&mdash;A night of fear&mdash;Sandflies&mdash;Attractive

-      black babies&mdash;A great show at Bechem&mdash;A most important person&mdash;The

-      Hausa who went in fear of his life&mdash;Coronation night at Tanosu&mdash;A

-      teetotal party&mdash;The medical officer's views on trees&mdash;Beyond the

-      road&mdash;Sunyani.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> talked to the

-      Commissioner, and those talks with him made me want to go somewhere out

-      into the wilds. Kumasi was beginning to look strangely civilised to me. It

-      was a great trading-centre, and presently it would be as well known, it

-      seemed to me, as Alexandria or Cairo, or at the other end of the

-      Continent, Buluwayo. I should like to have gone into the Northern

-      Territories, but the rainy season was upon us, and if that did not daunt

-      me&mdash;and it would not have done so&mdash;I had to consider the time. I

-      ought to be back in London. I had intended to be away for six months, and

-      now it was close on eight since I had come out of the mouth of the Mersey.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Go to Sunyani,&rdquo; said the Chief Commissioner, &ldquo;and go on to Odumase, where

-      the rising began at the beginning of the century. You will be the first

-      white woman to go there, and I think you will find it worth your while.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So I interviewed the head of the transport service, and by his kindness

-      was supplied with seventeen carriers, and one hot day in June started

-      north.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They had doubts, these kind friends of mine, about my capabilities as a

-      traveller, at least they feared that something might happen to me while I

-      was in their country, and they told me that a medical officer was starting

-      north for Sunyam that day and would go with me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I looked up the medical officer and found him in the midst of packages

-      that he was taking with him beyond civilisation to last for a year. He was

-      most courteous, but it seemed to me that he felt the presence of a woman a

-      responsibility, and I was so sure of myself, hated to be counted a

-      nuisance, that when he said he had intended to go only as far as Sansu

-      that night, I expressed my intention of going on to Ofinsu, and hinted

-      that he might catch me up next morning if he could.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So by myself I set out into the heart of the rubber country north of

-      Kumasi. I was fairly beyond civilisation now. Ten years ago this country

-      was in open rebellion against English rule, and even now there are no

-      European stores there; there is no bread, no kerosene, no gin&mdash;those

-      first necessities of an oncoming civilisation; it was simply the wild

-      heart of the rubber country, unchanged for hundreds of years. It has been

-      known, but it has not been lightly visited. It has been a country to be

-      shunned and talked of with bated breath as &ldquo;the land of darkness.&rdquo; The

-      desert might be dared, the surf might be ventured, the black man might be

-      defied, but the gloom of the forest the white man feared and entered not

-      except upon compulsion. The Nile has given up its secrets, the Sahara

-      yields to cultivation, but still in Africa are there places where the

-      all-conquering white man is dwarfed, and one of them is the great forest

-      that lies north of the capital of Ashanti.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0071" id="linkimage-0071"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0527.jpg" alt="0527 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0527.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Here we know not the meaning of the word forest. England's forests are

-      delightful woods where the deer dwell in peace, where the rabbits scutter

-      through the fern and undergrowth, and where the children may go for a

-      summer's holiday; in Australia are trees close-growing and tall; but in

-      West Africa the forest has a life and being of its own. It is not a thing

-      of yesterday or of ten years back or of fifty years. Those mighty trees

-      that dwarf all other trees in the world have taken hundreds of years to

-      their growth. When a slight young girl came to the throne of England,

-      capturing a nation's chivalry by her youth and innocence, the mahogany and

-      kaku and odoum trees were old and staid monarchs of the forest. When the

-      first of the Georges came over from Hanover, unwelcome, but the nation's

-      last hope, they were young and slim but already tall trees stretching up

-      their crowns to the brilliant sunlight that is above the gloom, and now at

-      last, when the fifth of that name reigns over them, at last is their

-      sanctuary invaded and the seclusion that is theirs shall be theirs no

-      longer. For already the axe is laid to their roots, and through the

-      awe-inspiring forest runs a narrow roadway kept clear by what must be

-      almost superhuman labour, and along that roadway, the beginning of the

-      end, the sign that marks the peaceful conquest of the savage, that marks

-      also the downfall of the forest though it is not even whispered among the

-      trees that scorn them yet, flows a perpetual stream of traffic, men,

-      women, and children. Backwards and forwards from the north to Kumasi and

-      the sea they come, and they bear on their heads, going north, corrugated

-      iron and cotton goods, kerosene, and flour, and chairs, all the trifles

-      that the advance of civilisation makes absolute necessaries; and coming

-      down they bring all in their season, hides, and heavy cakes of rubber, and

-      sticks of dried snails, and all the other articles of native produce that

-      a certain peace has made marketable along the way or in the markets of

-      Kumasi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The spell was upon me the moment I left the town. That road is like

-      nothing else in the world. The hammock and the carriers were dwarfed by

-      the great roots and buttresses of the trees to tiny, crawling ants, and

-      overhead was a narrow strip of blue sky where the sunlight might be seen,

-      but only at noon did that sunlight reach the roadway below. We travelled

-      in a shadow pleasant in that heat; and on either side, close on either

-      side, were the great trees. Looking down the road I could see them

-      straight as a die, tall pillars, white and brown; ahead of me and close at

-      hand the mighty buttresses that supported those pillars rose up to the

-      height of perhaps ten men before the tree was fairly started, a tall trunk

-      with branches that began to spread, it seemed to me, hundreds of feet

-      above the ground. And between those tree-trunks was all manner of

-      undergrowth, and all were bound and matted together with thickly growing

-      creepers and vines. It was impossible to step an inch from that cleared

-      path. There would be no getting lost in the bush, for it would be almost

-      impossible for the unpractised hand to get into the bush. There is nothing

-      to be seen but the brown, winding roadway, the dense green of the

-      undergrowth, and the trunks of the trees tall and straight as Nelson's

-      column and brown or white against the prevailing green. And there are all

-      shades of green, from that so pale that it is almost golden to that so

-      dark it is almost black, but never a flower breaks the monotony, the

-      monotony that is not monotony but dignity, and the flowers of an English

-      spring or an autumn in Australia would but cheapen the forest of the Gold

-      Coast. There must have been orchids, for sometimes as I passed their rich,

-      sensuous smell would come to my nostrils, but I only knew they were there

-      by my sense of smell just as sometimes I smelt a strong smell of mice, and

-      knew, though I could not see them, that somewhere in the depths of the

-      gloom were hidden away a great colony of fruitarian bats that would not

-      come out into the daylight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0072" id="linkimage-0072"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0531.jpg" alt="0531 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0531.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      When there was a village there was, of course, a clearing, and on the

-      first day I passed several villages until at last I came to Ofinsu, where

-      I had arranged to spend the night. Ofinsu is on the banks of a river, and

-      the road comes out of the forest and passes broadly between two rows of

-      mud-walled houses with steeply pitched, high-thatched roofs, and my

-      carriers raced along and stopped opposite a small wooden door in a mud

-      wall and rapped hard.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For the first time on my travels I had really excellent carriers. They

-      were Krepis from beyond the German border, slight, dark men with slim

-      wrists and ankles, and crosses cut as tribal marks on each cheek, and they

-      were cheerful, smiling, willing. When I remembered my before-time

-      tribulations I could hardly believe these were actually carriers who were

-      going along so steadily and well, who were always up before me in the

-      morning, and in as soon as I was at night, who never lingered, never

-      grumbled, never complained, but were simply ideal servants such as I had

-      never had before in my life save perhaps for a day, as when I went to

-      Palime from Ho, and such as I shall count myself extremely lucky if I ever

-      have again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We <i>have</i> got good carriers,&rdquo; the transport officer had said,

-      &ldquo;though you don't seem to believe it&rdquo;; and he proved his words, for never

-      have I travelled more comfortably than I did on that one hundred and sixty

-      miles to Sunyani and back.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The knocking at the little door brought a black lady with a shaven head

-      and a blue cloth wrapped round her middle. She was a woman past all

-      beauty, and very little was left to the imagination, but she threw open

-      the door and indicated that we were to enter, and she looked at me very

-      curiously. Never before had a white woman come to Ofinsu.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I entered, and this was my first introduction to an Ashanti house, a house

-      that seems to me singularly suited to the climate and people. It is

-      passing away, they tell me, and I for one am sorry.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We went into a courtyard open to the sky, and round it, raised at least

-      two feet from the ground, were the rooms, I suppose I must call them, but

-      though there was a roof overhead and walls on three sides, walls without

-      windows, the fourth side was open to the central courtyard. When I entered

-      the place was crowded; Hausas or Wangaras&mdash;I never could tell one

-      from the other&mdash;were settled down on the platforms, and their loads&mdash;long

-      bundles made up for carrying on the head&mdash;were all over the place. I

-      said nothing. I am generally for the superiority of the white man and

-      exact all the deference that is my due, but clearly these people were here

-      first, and it seemed to me they had it by right, only how I was to bathe

-      and sleep in a house where everything was so public among such a crowd I

-      did not know.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0073" id="linkimage-0073"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0535.jpg" alt="0535 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0535.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      But my hostess had other views. No sooner had I entered than she began

-      clearing out the former guests, and in less than a quarter of an hour the

-      place that had seemed so crowded was empty, swept and garnished for my

-      accommodation. My bed was put up on one platform, my table and chair on

-      another. &ldquo;Get table quick and chair, so can play cards,&rdquo; Grant instructed

-      my headman, and behind, through a little door that may be seen in the

-      picture, was a place that answered for a kitchen, and a cup of tea was

-      quickly produced for my comfort. It was weird going to sleep there in the

-      open, but it was very, very delightful. I rigged up in the corner of one

-      of the rooms&mdash;I have no other names for them&mdash;with ground sheet

-      and rugs, a little shelter where I could have my bath in comfort, but I

-      undressed without a qualm and went to bed and slept the sleep of the woman

-      who has been in the open air the livelong day and who, happily for

-      herself, can indulge her taste and sleep in the open air all night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I took a picture of my open-air bedroom with my valuable headman and two

-      small children who belonged to the household I had invaded in the

-      foreground. But that was before I went to bed at night. At earliest dawn,

-      before the dawn in fact, my headman was at my bedside wanting to pack up

-      and start.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That night's lodging cost me one shilling and threepence. The headman told

-      me one shilling was enough, so I bestowed the extra threepence as a dash

-      on the shaven old woman who had done all for me that my servants could not

-      do, and she seemed so delighted that I was left wondering what the

-      Wan-garas who had given place to me had paid.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Just as the sun was rising we crossed the Ofin River, and I found there

-      assembled the entire population of the village to look at the strange

-      sight&mdash;a perfectly courteous, polite people who never crushed or

-      crowded though they looked their fill. I can only hope I was a success as

-      a show, for certainly I attracted a great deal of attention, but of course

-      I had no means of knowing whether I came up to expectations. It took some

-      time to get my goods and followers across the river in the crank canoe

-      which is only used in the rainy season, for usually the Ofin River can be

-      waded, and while I waited on the farther shore I looked with interest at

-      the other people who were waiting for their loads to be ferried across.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The men were Hausas or Wangaras, some wearing turbans, some with shaven

-      heads, and clad in long, straight, shirt-like garments, while the women

-      excited my deepest compassion. They may have been the men's wives, I know

-      not; but by whatever name they were called they were slaves if ever I saw

-      slaves. They had very little on besides a dirty, earthen-coloured cloth

-      hitched round their loins, their dark faces were brutalised and depressed

-      with that speechless depression that hardly realises its own woes, and

-      their dusty hair that looked as if it had not been washed for years was

-      generally twisted into short, thick, dusty looking plaits that were

-      pressed downwards by the weight of the load they one and all carried. They

-      carried children, too, on their backs, tiny babies that must have been

-      born on the journey, or lusty youngsters that were a load in themselves.

-      But a Hausa will carry an enormous load himself&mdash;sometimes up to 240

-      lbs.&mdash;so it is not likely he will have much consideration for his

-      women. It may be, of course, that their looks belied them, but it seemed

-      to me that they cared little whether Fate drowned them there in the

-      swirling brown waters of the river or brought them safely through to the

-      other side to tramp on, footsore, tired, weary, heartsick&mdash;if these

-      creatures who looked like dumb beasts had life enough in them to be

-      heartsick&mdash;to their destination three months away in the north.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0074" id="linkimage-0074"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0539.jpg" alt="0539 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0539.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      They waited there as I passed, and they looked at me dully and without

-      interest; presently their loads would be brought across and they would be

-      on the march again, and I went on pitying to Potsikrom.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The forest was getting denser and denser. There were fewer towns and

-      clearings on this day&mdash;nothing but the great trees and the narrow

-      ribbon of road with the strip of blue sky far, far away. It was very

-      awe-inspiring, the forest. I should have been unspeakably terrified to

-      pass through it alone, but my chattering men took away all sense of

-      loneliness. There was not much to see, but yet the eternal trees had a

-      most wonderful charm. It was like being in some lofty cathedral where the

-      very air was pulsating with the thought of great and unseen things beyond

-      the comprehension of the puny mortals who dared rashly to venture within

-      the precincts. No wonder the Ashanti gave human sacrifices. Sacrifice, we

-      all know, is the basis of all faith, and what lesser thing than a man

-      could be offered in so great a sanctuary?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And that afternoon we came to Potsikrom, a little village deep in the

-      forest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The rest-house was a mud building with a thatch roof somewhat dilapidated,

-      and built not after the comfortable, suitable Ashanti fashion, but after

-      the European fashion, possibly in deference to some foolish European who

-      probably regarded all the country as &ldquo;poisonous.&rdquo; That is to say, it was

-      divided into two rooms with holes in the clay, very small holes for

-      windows, and, saving grace, a door at each side of one of the rooms. In

-      the corner of one of these impossible rooms I saw, to my surprise, a

-      camp-bed put up, and for the moment thought it was mine. Then I saw a suit

-      of striped pyjamas which certainly were not mine, and realised it must

-      belong to the medical officer whom I had left at Kumasi the day before.

-      His boys had stolen a march ahead, and, thinking to do better than the

-      white woman, had put up his bed in what they considered the most desirable

-      place, thinking doubtless that possession was nine points of the law.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I certainly didn't desire that corner, but I felt my authority must be

-      maintained, and so I asked:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Who that bed belong to?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Massa,&rdquo; said a grinning boy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Take it down,&rdquo; said I.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Up came the Chief's clerk. All these Ashanti chiefs now have a clerk who

-      can write a little English and so communicate for them with Government,

-      and the clerk, interested as he was to see a white woman, was very certain

-      in his own mind that the white man was the more important person. He

-      probably regarded me as his wife come on ahead, and said that the Chief

-      had another house for me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I didn't like that rest-house, but pride has suffered pain since the

-      beginning of the world, so I distinctly declared my intention of staying

-      there and ordered them to clear out the medical officer's bed forthwith.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My boys were very anxious to assert my superiority and out went that bed

-      in the twinkling of an eye, and my men proceeded to put up mine between

-      the two doors, and, having had a table set out for tea, I awaited the

-      arrival of the medical officer with a quiet mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0075" id="linkimage-0075"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0543.jpg" alt="0543 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0543.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Presently he arrived and we laughed together over the struggle for

-      supremacy between our men, and pledged our future good fellowship in tea.

-      The Chief sent me in eggs and chickens and yams as dash, the people came

-      and looked at me, and presently the evening fell and I had my evening meal

-      and went to bed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And when I went to bed I repented me of having stood on my dignity. What

-      on earth had I wanted the rest-house for? It was the last house in the

-      village, a little apart from the rest, the great solemn forest was all

-      around me, and I was all alone, for Grant and the men had retired with the

-      darkness to somewhere in the village. My bed stood under a roof certainly,

-      but I should not have dared put up the door of the rest-house for fear of

-      making it too close, and so it meant, of course, that I was sleeping with

-      nothing between me and that awe-inspiring forest. I do not know what I was

-      afraid of any more than I know what I feared at Anum, but I was afraid of

-      something intangible, born of the weird stillness and the gloom. I put a

-      hurricane lantern at the door to scare away any wandering pigs and goats&mdash;I

-      did not really in my heart think there would be any wild beasts&mdash;and

-      then I proceeded to put in a most unpleasant night. First there was too

-      much light, it fell all over my bed, and though I did not like it, I still

-      felt a comfortable sense of safety in the light.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then I began to itch. I twisted and turned and rolled over, and the more I

-      moved about the more uncomfortable I became. I thought to myself, &ldquo;There,

-      it serves you right! You are always nursing the fat little black babies

-      and now you have got some horrible disease.&rdquo; The thought was by no means

-      consoling, but I was being driven so frantic that I began to think that no

-      disease could really advance with such rapidity. Besides, all sorts of

-      great insects were banging themselves against my mosquito curtains, so I

-      came to the conclusion that probably the tiny sandflies were also

-      attracted by the light and were getting through the meshes. There was

-      nothing for it but to screw up my courage, get out of bed, and take that

-      lantern away. I did it, crept back to bed again, listened for a little to

-      the weird noises of the night, was relieved to find the appalling

-      irritation showed no signs of increasing, and finally, in spite of my

-      fears, dropped off into so sound a sleep that I was only awakened by Grant

-      endeavouring to drive away by fair words my energetic headman, who was

-      evidently debating whether it was not his bounden duty to clear me away,

-      bed and all.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I told the doctor my experiences in the morning, and he confirmed my

-      supposition that it was only sandflies and not horrible disease that had

-      troubled my slumbers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Very much relieved was I, for the little black babies are dear little

-      round souls, and I should have been loath not to take them when their

-      mothers trusted them to me. I should hesitate much before I took a baby of

-      the peasant class in this country, but there, in the heart of Africa, it

-      is always safe to cuddle the little, round, naked thing that has for all

-      clothing a few beads or a charm or two tied to its hair. They are always

-      clean and soft and round and chubby, and they do not invariably yell with

-      terror at the white woman, though I am bound to say they often do.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0076" id="linkimage-0076"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0547.jpg" alt="0547 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0547.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      We were in the heart of the forest now. There were but one or two villages

-      and only one or two places that could be dignified by the name of

-      clearings. At one, as big, perhaps, as a tiny London square, three or four

-      huts had been erected, and an old woman was making pots. They were all set

-      out in the sun to dry, and the good lady was very nervous when I wanted to

-      take her photograph. She consented at last, and sat there shivering, in

-      her hand a great snail shell which she used to ornament the pots. They

-      were such a lonely little company, so cut off from all their kind, and we

-      must have been such wondrous figures breaking in on their life and then

-      passing on again. I gave them the last bright new pennies I had, and left

-      them wondering.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And so we went on again through the forest, past Insuta, until, as the

-      evening was falling, we created immense astonishment by arriving at

-      Bechem.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Here again the rest-house was built uncomfortably, European fashion, and

-      again my only alternative was to have my bed put up between the two doors

-      so that I might get plenty of air. But at Bechem the town was full. It was

-      a big town set in the midst of a great clearing, and to-day it was

-      swarming with people, for the next day was Coronation Day, and the Chief

-      had sent out word that all his sub-chiefs were to come in and celebrate.

-      And here was another excitement&mdash;a white woman! How many chiefs came

-      to see me that day I really would be afraid to say, and the Chief sent me

-      in by way of dash a sheep, a couple of chickens, piles of plantains, yams,

-      eggs, and all manner of native edibles. It was very amusing to stand there

-      in the midst of the swarming people, receiving these offerings. Of course

-      they all have to be returned with presents of value, and I was thankful

-      they did not think me important enough to receive a cow; as it was it cost

-      me a pound to get out of Bechem, but my carriers were delighted for I

-      presented them with the sheep. He was an elderly ram with long horns, and

-      I think he was the only person who did not thoroughly enjoy the

-      entertainment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Chief sent in word through his interpreter to say that the people had

-      never seen a white woman before; there were many people here because of

-      the Coronation, might they come and &ldquo;look&rdquo;? Never have I been so frankly

-      regarded as a show. There was nothing for it but to go outside and let

-      them look, and once more I can only hope they were satisfied. I had never

-      seen such crowds of natives before, crowds that had not seen much of the

-      white man and as yet were not arrayed in his cast-off clothes. All round

-      us long Dane guns were popping off in honour of the great occasion, and

-      tom-toms were beating half the night. When I waked next morning&mdash;I

-      slept in the passage to get plenty of air, but I was not afraid because

-      the rest-house was near the centre of the village&mdash;I found that at

-      the earliest glimpse of dawn long lines of people had assembled outside my

-      house and were patiently waiting for me to come out. I had my breakfast in

-      the little courtyard behind the house, the people peeping through the

-      fence of palm-poles, and when we set out on our way the Chief, in all the

-      glory of silken robes and great umbrella, came a little way to do us

-      honour.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Never, not even when I was married, have I been such an important person.

-      The tom-toms beat, the umbrellas twirled, long Danes went off, horns blew,

-      and as far as the eye could see were the villagers trailing away behind

-      us.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0077" id="linkimage-0077"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0551.jpg" alt="0551 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0551.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The Chief escorted us for about a mile, we walking in the cool, misty

-      morning, and then he turned, slipped his cloth from his left shoulder as a

-      mark of respect, shook hands, wished us a prosperous journey, and bid us

-      good-bye like the courteous gentleman he was, and we went on into the

-      mighty forest again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is always cool in the early morning, and very pleasant here among the

-      trees, so the medical officer and I walked on chatting about Bechem, when

-      we came upon another little party of travellers, who stopped us and asked

-      help. It was a Hausa with a couple of women, his wives in all probability,

-      and a couple of other men, presumably his slaves. He was a tall, strong

-      man in the prime of life, upon whose shaven head were deep lines graven by

-      the loads he had carried. Our headman, who could speak Hausa, interpreted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Men were following him from Nkwanta, he said, to kill him. A child had

-      died in the town, and they said he &ldquo;had put bad medicine upon it,&rdquo; that

-      is, had bewitched it, and the penalty was death.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was rather startling in this twentieth century to be brought face to

-      face with the actors in such a tragedy, especially when we were powerless

-      to help. We were unarmed and had with us only carriers and servants; it

-      was the prestige of the white man that was carrying us through. The Hausa

-      was going away from Nkwanta as fast as he possibly could, and apparently

-      he did not want to trust himself within its bounds, even under the

-      protection of a white man. He declined to come back with us, and what

-      could we do? The medical officer, I think, did all that he could when he

-      promised to report things to the Commissioner at Sunyani, and recommended

-      the Hausa, since he would not avail himself of our protection, to get the

-      Chiefs clerk at Bechem to write his account of the affair to Sunyani and

-      Kumasi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And so in the early morning we went our way, and he went his, and he

-      disappeared into the gloom of the forest, a much troubled man. I wondered

-      how he would ever get back to his home in the north, for there is but this

-      one road, and that road leads through Nkwanta. He would only dare it, I

-      think, with a large body of his own people, for who is to report to

-      Government if a travelling Hausa should disappear?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We put in a long day that day, and in the full heat of the noontide

-      arrived at Nkwanta, a most important place, whose Chief rules over a large

-      tract of country. We came upon the butchers' stalls first, all kept by

-      Hausas or Wangaras. This country, on account of the tsetse fly, will allow

-      but few cattle to live, and these men from the north drive them down, kill

-      them, and sell them, for the Ashantis are rich, and like to buy meat. I

-      had hardly taken a photograph of these stalls, when from all sides I saw

-      the people assembling, and presently the Chief appeared. He brought

-      offerings, a sheep, fowls, eggs; yams, and plantains; but this time I

-      pointed out that I was on a journey, and could not take the presents, as I

-      had no means of carrying them. He was very anxious indeed we should stay

-      for that night; said he, they were celebrating the Coronation, and there

-      would be a big dance. I went into his house and took a photograph of the

-      moulded clay that ornaments the walls, and a small slave-boy was proud to

-      stand in the corner so as to give life to the picture, and I think Nkwanta

-      was sorry we elected to go on. I was a little sorry myself afterwards, for

-      as we passed along the forest path we met sub-chiefs going in to the

-      Coronation ceremonies, men carried high in their hammock-chairs, followed

-      by a motley assemblage of men and women, bearing long Danes, horns, drums,

-      household utensils, and all the paraphernalia of a barbaric chief.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0078" id="linkimage-0078"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0555.jpg" alt="0555 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0555.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And at last we came to a place where the forest was ruthlessly cleared for

-      about a hundred feet on either side of the road, and the tropical sun

-      poured down in all its fierceness. I did not like it. The mighty monarch s

-      of the forest had simply been murdered and left to lie, and already Nature

-      was busily veiling them with curtains of greenery. Why those trees had

-      been so slaughtered I do not know. That the forest would have been better

-      for thinning, I have no doubt, but why not leave the beautiful trees? I am

-      sure the Germans would have done so, but the Englishman seems to have no

-      mean. If there are too many trees he cuts them all down and makes a

-      desert. The medical officer of course did not agree with me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Must get rid of the trees,&rdquo; said he with enthusiasm.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I looked at him. He was a young fellow, pleasant and kindly, sallowed by

-      life in the Tropics. He wore a drab-coloured helmet, coming well down over

-      his back, which was further protected by having a quilted spinal pad

-      fastened down the back of his bush shirt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;do you wear so big a helmet, and a spinal pad?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He looked at me tolerantly, as if he had always known that woman asked

-      silly questions, and I was only confirming a preconceived idea. But he was

-      in a way my host, so he was patient with me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;To keep off the sun, of course,&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The trees,&rdquo; I began; and then he felt I really was silly, for every

-      medical man knows the proper thing is to get rid of the trees, and have

-      some artificial form of shade. At least, that is what I gathered from his

-      subsequent explanation. The idea is apparently to cut down all the forest

-      trees, and when the place is bare, they can be replaced by fresh trees,

-      planted exactly where they ought to grow. Since they are not English trees

-      it does not matter how beautiful they are, and that they take at least two

-      hundred and fifty years to come to perfection is a matter of small moment.

-      So the medical officer and I disagreed, till we came to Tanosu, a little

-      town on the Tano River.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Chief here had just built a new rest-house, thank heaven, on the

-      comfortable Ashanti pattern, and I was given it by the courteous medical

-      officer, who disapproved of me on trees, while he sought shelter in the

-      village.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The people were very curious. The Chief, who it appears is a poor man,

-      sent the usual presents, and then the people came and looked, and looked,

-      till after about a couple of hours of it I grew weary, and shut the doors

-      of the courtyard. Then they applied their eyes to every crank and cranny,

-      and I had an uneasy feeling that whatever I did unseen eyes were following

-      me. I wanted to rejoice in the Coronation, so I asked the doctor to come

-      to dinner and celebrate, but unfortunately my kitchen was at least a

-      quarter of a mile away, and there were such terrible long waits between

-      the courses that again and again I had to ask my guest if he would not go

-      and see what had happened. We finished at last, and I wanted to drink the

-      King's health in whisky-and-soda which was the only drink I had, but my

-      guest was a teetotaller, so I sent for the servants, only to be informed

-      that every one of them refrained from liquor. And as a rule I approve so

-      highly of temperance. Only for this once did I find it rather depressing.

-      However, we stood up and drank the King's health, and I expect the eyes

-      that were watching us wondered what on earth we were doing. They performed

-      on tom-toms after that, and I fell asleep in the pleasant, damp night air,

-      to a sort of barbaric fantasia on horns and drums.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0079" id="linkimage-0079"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0559.jpg" alt="0559 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0559.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      We were nearing our journey's end. Early next morning we crossed the Tano

-      River, which is full of sacred fish, and the medical officer took my

-      photograph in the stream, and I took his, as he crossed on his boy's

-      shoulders, and when we crossed to the other side we found we had left

-      every vestige of the road, the good road that had so surprised me, behind.

-      We went along a track now, a track that wound in and out in the dense,

-      tropical forest. Generally the trees met overhead and we marched through a

-      tunnel, the ground beneath our feet was often a quagmire, and if we could

-      not see the sun often, neither could we feel the rain that fell on the

-      foliage above our heads. On either side we could see nothing but the great

-      trunks and buttresses of the trees, and the dense undergrowth. Possibly to

-      go for days and days through a forest like this might give a sense of

-      oppression, but to go as I did, for but a short time, was like peeping

-      into a new world. Never a bird or beast I saw, nothing but occasionally a

-      long stream of driver ants, winding like a band of cut jet across the

-      path. And so we went on and on, through the solemn forest, till at last it

-      cleared a little. There was the sky above again, and then no forest, but

-      on my left cornfields and the brown splash of a native town, and in front

-      a clearing, with the rim of the forest again in the distance, and right

-      ahead, on the top of the gently sloping rise, the European bungalows of

-      Sunyani. I had arrived, the first white woman who had come so far off the

-      beaten track.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0080" id="linkimage-0080"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0563.jpg" alt="0563 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0563.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XXIV&mdash;AN OUTPOST

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The white men at Sunyani&mdash;Contrast between civilisation and

-      barbarism&mdash;The little fort&mdash;The suffrage movement&mdash;&ldquo;I am as

-      mud in the sight of my people!&rdquo;&mdash;The girl who did not wish to marry

-      the King&mdash;The heavy loads carried by the Hausas&mdash;The danger of

-      stubbing a toe&mdash;An Ashanti welcome&mdash;The Chief's soul&mdash;The

-      unpleasant duties of the Chief's soul&mdash;The blood of sheep versus the

-      blood of men&mdash;A courteous lady of Odumase&mdash;The Commissioners of

-      Ashanti&mdash;Difficulties of crossing flooded streams&mdash;One way of

-      carrying fowls&mdash;The last night in the wilds.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Sunyani there

-      are usually six white men, namely a Provincial Commissioner, a medical

-      officer&mdash;the relief had come up with me&mdash;three soldiermen, and a

-      non-commissioned officer, and I think my sympathies are rather with that

-      colour sergeant. The other men are all of one class, but he must be

-      utterly alone. The houses and the men were equally delightful. I was taken

-      into a mud-built house with a thatched roof, large and spacious. There

-      were, of course, only holes for windows and doors, and the floors were of

-      beaten earth, but it was most wonderfully comfortable and homelike. The

-      Commissioner was a great gardener, my room was a bower of roses, and there

-      were books, the newest books and magazines, everywhere. I should like to

-      have stayed a month at Sunyani. Think of it! everything had to be carried

-      eighty miles on men's heads, through a dense forest, across all manner of

-      watercourses, where the white ant refused to allow a bridge to remain more

-      than a fortnight, and yet one felt in the midst of civilisation. They told

-      me I was brave to come there, but where was the hardship? none, none. It

-      was all delightful. But there <i>was</i> another side. Close to the

-      European bungalows was a little fort to which the men might retire in case

-      of danger. They did not seem to think that they would ever be likely to

-      require it, but there it was, and I, who had seen the old-time forts along

-      the Coast, looked at this one with interest. It had a ditch round it, and

-      walls of mud, and these were further strengthened by pointed stakes, bound

-      together with barbed wire. An unpleasant place for a naked man to rush

-      would be the little fort at Sunyani. Close against its wall so as to

-      shelter the office, and yet outside so as not to embarrass the people, is

-      the post and telegraph office, and so fast is civilisation coming to that

-      outpost, that they take there for stamps, telegrams, and postal orders

-      something like fourteen pounds a week.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I wandered round seeing everything, from the company of Waffs, exercising

-      in the morning, to the hospital compound where the wives of the dresser

-      and the wives of the patients were busily engaged in making fu-fu. For

-      this is a primitive place, and here are no nursing Sisters and European

-      comforts, and I must say the patients seem to do very well without them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And only ten years ago, here and behind at Odumase, was the centre of the

-      great rebellion against the white man's power; but things are moving,

-      moving quickly. Only a week before I went up Messrs Swanzy had opened,

-      with a black agent in charge, a store in the native town, and the day I

-      arrived the agent brought his takings to the Commissioner for safe keeping

-      in the treasury within the fort. It was such a tiny place, that store,

-      simply a corrugated-iron shack, wherein were sold cotton cloths, odds and

-      ends of cheap fancy goods, such as might be supposed to take the eye of

-      the native, and possibly a little gin. Everything had to come on men's

-      heads, so the wares were restricted, but the agent was well pleased with

-      his enterprise, for that first week he had taken over £150, and this from

-      a people who were utterly unaccustomed to buying.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0081" id="linkimage-0081"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0567.jpg" alt="0567 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0567.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Things are changing, things are changing fast,&rdquo; said the Commissioner,

-      and then he laughed and said that what bothered him most was the advance

-      the suffrage movement was making. It wasn't yet militant, but he didn't

-      know how it was going to end. The women had actually arrived at some idea

-      of their own value to the community, and refused to marry the men their

-      fathers had provided, if they did not happen to meet with their approval.

-      Again and again a Chief would come to the Commissioner&mdash;a girl had

-      declined to marry the man chosen for her, her father had appealed to the

-      Chief, and the young lady, relying on the support of the British

-      Government, had defied them both.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If this woman do not marry the man I tell her to, then am I as mud in the

-      sight of my people!&rdquo; the Chief would say, flinging out protesting hands,

-      and the Commissioner was very often as puzzled as he was.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On one occasion he came down to his court to find sitting there a

-      good-looking girl of about seventeen, with a baby on her back. She waited

-      patiently all through the sitting of the court, and then, when he had time

-      to give attention to her, explained herself. She had a complaint to make.

-      The King, or head Chief, had married her. Now the Commissioner was puzzled

-      to know why this already much-married man had burdened himself with a wife

-      who manifestly did not want him, and why the lady objected to a regal

-      alliance. The King was brief and to the point. He considered himself a

-      much injured man. The girl's parents had betrothed her to a man in her

-      childhood, and when she grew up she did not like him, and preferring

-      someone else, had declined to marry him. The King had been appealed to,

-      but still she defied them, so, willy-nilly, to prevent further trouble, he

-      had married her himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      How that case ended I do not know. But I asked one question: &ldquo;Whose is the

-      baby?&rdquo; And the baby it appeared was child to the man whom her parents and

-      the King had rejected, so that Nature had settled the matter for them all.

-      Whoever had her there was no getting over that baby.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sunyani is one of the great halting places for the Hausas and Wangaras who

-      come down from Wenchi, so on the French border and here I was introduced

-      into great compounds, where the men who bring down cattle and horses and

-      other goods from the north take up their abode, and rest before they start

-      on their wearisome journey through the forest to Kumasi. I had come

-      through in five days, but these men generally take very much longer. The

-      Hausa carries tremendously heavy loads, so heavy that he cannot by himself

-      lift it to his head, and therefore he always carries a forked stick, and

-      resting his load on this, rests it also in the fork of a tree, and so

-      slips out from underneath it. Again and again on our way up had we come

-      across men thus resting their heavy loads. He must walk warily too, for

-      they say so heavy is the load that the Hausa who stubs his toe breaks his

-      neck. Slowly he goes, for time as yet is of no consequence in West Africa.

-      A certain sum he expects to make, and whether he takes three months or six

-      months to make it is as yet a matter of small moment to the black man,

-      apparently, whatever his race.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0082" id="linkimage-0082"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0572.jpg" alt="0572 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0572.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      After I had been all round Sunyani, and dined at the mess, and inspected

-      the fort and the hospital, they arranged for me to go to Odumase, five

-      miles away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Odumase is on the extreme northern border of Ashanti, and in fact the

-      inhabitants are not Ashanti at all, calling themselves after their own

-      town, but it was here that the rising that overwhelmed Kumasi in 1900-1

-      was engineered and had its birth. Here, as a beginning, they took sixty

-      unfortunate Krepi traders, bound them to a tree, and did them slowly to

-      death with all manner of tortures, cutting a finger off one day, a toe the

-      next, an arm perhaps the next, and leaving the unfortunate victims to

-      suffer by the insects and the sun. And here, when they had taken him, they

-      brought back the instigator of that rebellion, and showed him captive to

-      his own people. He was no coward, whatever his sins, and he stood forth

-      and exhorted his people to rescue him, reviling the white men, and

-      spitting upon them. But his people were awed by the white man's troops,

-      and they let him be taken down to Kumasi, where he was tried, and hanged,

-      not for fighting against the British raj, but for cold-blooded murder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So to Odumase Mr Fell took me, explaining that because I was the first

-      white woman to go there, the people would greet me in Ashanti fashion, and

-      I was not to be afraid.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was well he explained. Long before we could see the town, running along

-      the forest path came the Ashanti warriors to meet me, and they came with

-      yells and shouts, firing off their long Danes, so that presently I could

-      see nothing but grey smoke, and I could hear nothing much either for the

-      yells and shouts, and blowing of horns, and beating of tom-toms. It is

-      just as well to explain an Ashanti welcome, else it is apt to be

-      terrifying, for had I not been told I certainly should never have realised

-      that a lot of guns pointing at me from every conceivable angle and

-      spouting fire and smoke, were emblems of goodwill. But they were; and then

-      I was introduced to the chiefs, and took their photographs. And now I have

-      an awful confession to make. I have taken so many Ashanti chiefs that I do

-      not know t'other from which. They were all clad in the most gorgeous

-      silken robes, woven in the country, in them all the colours of the

-      rainbow, and they were all profusely decorated with golden ornaments. They

-      had great rings like stars and catfish on their fingers, they had all

-      manner of gold ornaments on their heads, round their necks, round their

-      arms, and on their legs, and they had many symbolical staffs with gold

-      heads carried round them. Always, of course, they sat under a great

-      umbrella, and their attendants too wore gold ornaments. Some of the latter

-      were known as their souls, and the Chiefs soul wore on his breast a great

-      plate of gold. What his duties are now I do not know, I think he is King's

-      messenger, but in the old times, which are about ten years back, his

-      duties were more onerous. He was beloved of the Chief, and lived a

-      luxurious life, but he could not survive his Chief. When his master died,

-      his sun was set, and he was either killed or buried alive with him.

-      Moreover, if the Chief had an unpleasant message to a neighbouring chief,

-      he sent his soul to carry it, and if that chief did not like the message,

-      and desired war, he promptly slew the messenger, put his jaw-bone in a

-      cleft stick and sent it back. Altogether the Chiefs soul was by no means

-      sure of a happy life, and on the whole I think must infinitely prefer the

-      <i>pax Britannica</i>.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It takes a little time though before peace is appreciated. The last time

-      Mr Fell had been to Nkwanta, the big town I had passed through, he found

-      the place swimming in blood, and many stools reeking in it. It was only

-      sheep's blood luckily, for Nkwanta had quarrelled with a sub-chief, and

-      this was celebrating his reconciliation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If the white man not be here,&rdquo; said Nkwanta through his interpreter,

-      &ldquo;plenty men go die to-day.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, sheep are just as good,&rdquo; said the Provincial Commissioner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Well perhaps,&rdquo; said Nkwanta, but there was no ring of conviction in his

-      tones.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Odumase the white men almost razed to the ground as punishment for the

-      part it took in the great rebellion, but it is fast going up again. Many

-      houses are built, ugly and after the white man's fashion, and many more

-      houses are building. We passed one old man diligently making swish, that

-      is kneading earth and water into sort of rough bricks for the walls, and I

-      promptly took a photograph of him, for it seemed to me rather remarkable

-      to see him working when all the rest of the place was looking at the white

-      woman. And then I saw an old woman with shaven head and no ornaments

-      whatever; she was thin and worn, and I was sorry for her. &ldquo;No one cares

-      for old women here,&rdquo; I thought, I believe mistakenly, so I called her over

-      and bestowed on her the munificent dole of threepence. She took my hand in

-      both hers and bowed herself almost to the ground in gratitude or thanks,

-      and I felt that comfortable glow that comes over us when we have done a

-      good action.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was a fool. There are no poor in West Africa, and she was quite as great

-      a lady as I was, only more courteous. As I left Odumase she came forward

-      with a small girl beside her, and from that girl's head she took a large

-      platter of most magnificent plantains, ripe and ready for eating, which

-      she with deep obeisance laid at my feet. If I could give presents so could

-      she, and she did it with much more dignity. Still, I flatter myself she <i>did</i>

-      like that threepenny bit I was very very loath to leave Sunyani. It was a

-      place on the very outskirts of the Empire, and the highest civilisation

-      and barbarism mingled. It must be lonely of course, intensely lonely at

-      times, but it must be at the same time most interesting to carve a

-      province out of a wilderness, to make roads and arrange for a trade that

-      is growing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They are wonderfully enthusiastic all the Commissioners in Ashanti, and

-      when I praise German methods, I always want to exempt Ashanti, for here

-      all the Commissioners, following in the footsteps of their Chief, seem to

-      work together, and work with love. In the very country where roadmaking

-      seems the most difficult, roadmaking goes on. The Commissioner at Sunyani

-      had sent to the King of Warn telling him he wanted three hundred men to

-      make a road to the Tano River, and the King of Warn sent word,

-      &ldquo;Certainly&rdquo;; he was sending a thousand, and I left the Commissioner

-      wondering what on earth he was to do for tools. So is civilisation coming

-      to Ashanti, not by a great upheaval or desperate change, but by their own

-      methods, and the wise men who rule over them, rule by means of their own

-      chiefs. I have no words strong enough to express my admiration for those

-      Ashanti Commissioners and the men I met there in the forest. We differed

-      only, I think, on the subject of treefelling, and possibly had I had

-      opportunity to learn more about things, I might have found excuses even

-      for that.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0083" id="linkimage-0083"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0581.jpg" alt="0581 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0581.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The rainy season was upon us, and it was time for me to go back. The

-      medical officer, who had just been relieved, was coming down with me, and

-      this medical officer was very sick with a poisoned hand. It was my last

-      trek in the bush, and I should have liked to linger, but the thought of

-      that bad hand made me go faster, for I would not keep him from help longer

-      than I could help. So we retraced our steps exactly, doing in four days

-      what I had taken five to do on the way up, and this was the more

-      remarkable because now it rained. It rained heavens hard, and the little

-      streams that our men had carried us through quite easily on the way up,

-      were now great, rushing rivers that sometimes we negotiated with a canoe,

-      and sometimes laboriously got over with the aid of a log. It really is no

-      joke crossing a flooded African stream on a slimy log. I took a picture of

-      one, with the patient Wangara crossing. Then my men carried me in my

-      hammock to the log, and with some little difficulty I got out of that

-      hammock on to it. I had to scramble to my feet, and the man beside me made

-      me understand that I had better not fall over, as on the other side the

-      water was deep enough to drown me. I walked very gingerly, because the

-      water beneath looked unpleasantly muddy, up that tree-trunk, scrambled

-      somehow round the root and down the other branch, till at last I got into

-      water shallow enough to allow of my being transferred to my hammock and

-      carried to dry land, there to sit and watch my goods and chattels coming

-      across the same way. I felt a wretch too, for it had taken close on twenty

-      men, more or less, to get me across without injury, and yet here were a

-      company of Wangaras or Hausas, and the patient women had loads on their

-      heads and babies on their backs. No one worried about them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For perhaps the first time in my life I was more than content with that

-      station in life into which it had pleased my God to call me. I do not

-      think I could wish my worst enemy a harder fate than to be a Wangara woman

-      on trek, unless perhaps I was extra bitter, and wished him to taste life

-      as an African fowl. That must be truly a cruel existence. He scratches for

-      a living, and every man's hand is against him. I used to feel sometimes as

-      if I were aiding and abetting, for I received on this journey so many

-      dashes of fowls that neither I nor the medical officer could possibly eat

-      them all, and so our servants came in for them. More than once I have come

-      across Grant sitting resting by the roadside with a couple of unfortunate

-      fowls tied to his toes. In Grant's position I should have been anything

-      but happy, but he did not seem to mind, and as I never saw the procession

-      <i>en route</i>, I was left in doubt as to whether he carried them, or

-      insisted on their walking after him. I saw that he had rice for them, and

-      told him to give them water, but I dare say he did not trouble.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0084" id="linkimage-0084"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0585.jpg" alt="0585 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0585.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The last night out, my last night in the bush I fear me for many a long

-      day, we stopped at a village called Fu-fu, and I went to the rest-house,

-      which was built European fashion, and was on the edge of the forest, at

-      some distance from the village.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I found my men putting up my bed in a room where all the air came through

-      rather a small hole in the mud wall, and I objected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; said my patient headman, who after nearly a fortnight had failed

-      to fathom the white woman's vagaries.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a verandah facing the town and a verandah facing the forest, and

-      I promptly chose the bush side as lending itself more to privacy. Very

-      vehemently that headman protested.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It no be fit, Ma, it no be fit. Bush close too much&rdquo;; so at length I gave

-      in, and had the bed put up on the verandah facing the town. On the other

-      end, I decided, the medical officer and I would chop. For we had been most

-      friendly coming down, and had had all our meals together.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Before dinner I think the whole of the women of that village had been to

-      see me, and had eaten up the very last of my biscuits, but I did not mind,

-      for was it not the end of the journey, and they were so interested, and so

-      smiling, and so nice. We had dinner, and we burned up the last of the

-      whisky to make a flare over the plum-pudding; and then the medical officer

-      wished me good night and wended his way to his house somewhere in the

-      town, Grant and the cook betook themselves to another hut nearer the town

-      and barricaded the door, and then suddenly I realised that I was entirely

-      alone on the edge of this vast, mysterious, unexplainable forest. And the

-      headman had said &ldquo;the bush no be fit.&rdquo; I ought to have remembered Anum

-      Mount and Potsikrom, but I didn't. I crept into bed and once more gave

-      myself up to the most unreasoning terror. What I expected to come out of

-      that forest I do not know. What I should have done had anything come I'm

-      sure I do not know, but never again do I want to spend such a night. The

-      patter of the rain on the iron roof made me shiver, the sighing of the

-      wind in the branches sent fingers clutching at my heart; when I dropped

-      into a doze I waked in deadly terror, my hands and face were clammy with

-      sweat, and I dozed and waked, and dozed and waked, till, when the dawn

-      came breaking through the clouds at last, it seemed as if the night had

-      stretched itself into an interminable length. And yet nothing had

-      happened; there had been nothing to be afraid of, not even a leopard had

-      cried, but so tired was I with my own terrors that I slept in my hammock

-      most of the way into Kumasi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And here my trip practically ended. I stayed a day or two longer,

-      wandering round this great, new trading-centre, and then I took train to

-      Sekondi, stayed once more with my kind friend, Miss Oram, the nursing

-      Sister there, gathered together my goods and chattels, and on a day when

-      it was raining as if never again could the sun shine, I went down in the

-      transport officer's hammock for the last time; for the last time went

-      through the surf, and reached the deck of the <i>Dakar</i>, bound for

-      England.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0085" id="linkimage-0085"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0589.jpg" alt="0589 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0589.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XXV&mdash;THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <i>The enormous wealth of West Africa&mdash;The waste&mdash;The need of

-      some settled scheme&mdash;Competitive examination for the West-African

-      Civil Service&mdash;The men who come after the pioneers&mdash;One industry

-      set against another&mdash;The climate&mdash;The need of women&mdash;The

-      dark peoples we govern&mdash;The isolation of the cultivated black man&mdash;The

-      missionaries&mdash;The Roman Catholics&mdash;The Basel missionaries&mdash;West

-      Africa the country of raw material&mdash;An answer to the question, &ldquo;What

-      shall I do with my son?&rdquo;&mdash;The fascination of Africa.</i>

-    </p>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nd so I have

-      visited 'the land I had dreamed about as a little child in far-away

-      Australia. But no, I have never been to that land. It is a wonderful

-      country that lies with the long, long thoughts of childhood, with the

-      desires of youth, with the hopes that are in the heart of the bride when

-      she draws the curtain on her marriage morning. Beautiful hopes, beautiful

-      desires, never to be fulfilled. We know, as we grow older, that some of

-      our longings will never be granted exactly in the way we have expected

-      them to be granted, but that does not mean that good things will not come

-      to us, though not in the guise in which we have looked for them.

-      Therefore, though I have never visited Carlo's country, and never can

-      visit it, still I have seen a very goodly land, a land flowing with milk

-      and honey, a land worthy of a high place in the possessions of any nation,

-      and yet, I think, a land that has been grievously misjudged.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Why does no one speak of the enormous wealth of West Africa? When America

-      was but a faint dream of the adventurous voyager, when Australia was not

-      on the maps, the west coast of Africa was exploited by the nations growing

-      in civilisation for her wealth of gold, and slaves, and ivory, and the

-      wealth that was there in those long-ago days is there to-day. There is

-      gold as of yore, gold for the working; slaves, but we recognise the rights

-      of man now and use them only as cheap labour; and there is surely raw

-      material and vegetable products that should bring food and wealth to the

-      struggling millions of the older world. The African peasant is passing

-      rich on threepence a day, and within reach of his hand grow rubber and

-      palm oil, groundnuts and cotton, cocoa and hemp, and cocoa-nuts and all

-      manner of tropical fruits. These things, I know, appertain to other lands,

-      but here they are simply flung out with a tropical lavishness, and till

-      this century I doubt if they have been counted of any particular value. If

-      the English colonies of West Africa were cultivated by men with knowledge

-      and patience, bringing to the work but a fiftieth of the thought and

-      attention that is given to such matters in France, the return would be

-      simply amazing. I have seen 25 per cent, of an ignorant peasant

-      community's cocoa harvest wasted because there were no roads; I have seen

-      cocoa-nut plantations useless, &ldquo;because the place isn't suitable,&rdquo; when in

-      all probability some parasite was killing the palms. I have seen lives and

-      money lost in a futile endeavour to teach the native to grow cotton, when

-      the climate and conditions cried out that cocoa was the proper product to

-      be encouraged.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0086" id="linkimage-0086"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0593.jpg" alt="0593 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0593.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      What the portion of West Africa I know well wants is to be worked on some

-      settled scheme, a scheme made by some far-seeing mind that shall embrace,

-      not the conditions of five years hence, but of fifty years hence; the man

-      who works there should be laying the foundations of a plan that shall come

-      to fruition in the time of our children's children, that should be still

-      in sound working order in their grandchildren's time. The wheat of the

-      Canadian harvest-field may bring riches in a year, the wool of Australia's

-      plains wealth in two or three, but the trees of the African forest have

-      taken hundreds of years to their growth, and, when they are grown, are

-      like no other trees in the world. With them none may compare. So may these

-      tropical dependencies of England be when rightly used, they shall come to

-      their full growth. But we must remember they are tropical dependencies.

-      The ordinary Englishman, it seems to me, is apt to expect to gather apples

-      from a cocoa-nut palm, potatoes from a groundnut vine, and to rail because

-      he cannot find those apples and potatoes. He will never find them, and the

-      man who expects them is the man in the wrong place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I hope some day soon to find there is a competitive examination for

-      positions in the West-African Civil Service. Does any man grumble who has

-      won a place in the Indian Civil Service? I think not. A competitive

-      examination may not be the ideal way of choosing your political staff, but

-      as yet we have evolved none better. The man who passes high in a

-      competitive examination must at least have the qualities of industry and

-      self-denial, and who will deny that these are good qualities to bring to

-      the governing of a subject people?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is curious to watch English methods of colonisation, and whether we

-      will or no we must sit in judgment upon them. The first men who go out are

-      sometimes good, sometimes bad, but all have this saving grace&mdash;that

-      strong spirit of adventure, that dash and go which made England a

-      colonising nation and mistress of the seas. It would be like asking a

-      great cricketer to play tiddly-winks to ask one of the men who fought for

-      Ashanti to take part in a competitive examination. They have competed and

-      passed in a far sterner school. But the men who follow in the footsteps of

-      the pioneers are sometimes made of different stuff. They are often the

-      restless, discontented ones of the nation, men who complain of the land

-      they leave, complain of the land they come to, find no good in West

-      Africa, seek for no good, exaggerate its drawbacks, are glad to regard

-      themselves as martyrs and to give the country an evil name. Such men, I

-      think, a competitive examination would weed out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There must be continuity of service. That is a foregone conclusion. At

-      present England thinks so little of the land that is hers that she puts a

-      man in a place but for a year, and the political officer has no chance of

-      learning the conditions and needs of the people over whom he rules; he is

-      a rolling stone perpetually moving on. Then it is the height of folly to

-      set one industry against another. All should surely, in a new country, be

-      worked for the common good. For instance, there is a railway running

-      between Kumasi and Sekondi, a Government railway, and behind Kumasi lies a

-      vast extent of country unexplored and unexploited, with hardly a road in

-      it. One would have thought that it would simply be wisdom and for the good

-      of the whole community that the railway which is Government property

-      should be used for the opening up of the country behind. Such is the plan

-      in Canada; such is the practice in Australia. But in West Africa

-      Government holds different views. Ashanti wants to build a road to the

-      Northern Territories, a road such as the Germans have made all over Togo,

-      but Government, instead of using the railway to further that project,

-      charge such exorbitant freight on the road material, that the road-making

-      has come to a standstill. It is typical of the country. Each department is

-      pitted against the other, instead of one and all working for the good of

-      the whole. The great mind that shall be at liberty to plan, that I fear

-      sometimes lest the Germans and French have found, has yet to come.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0087" id="linkimage-0087"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0597.jpg" alt="0597 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0597.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      There are many prejudices to break down, and first and foremost is the

-      prejudice against the climate. Now I am not going to say that West Africa

-      is a health resort, though I went there ill and came away in the rudest

-      health. Still I do recognise that a tropical climate is hard for a

-      European, more especially, perhaps, for people of these northern isles, to

-      dwell in. A man cannot afford to burn the candle at both ends there, and

-      if he would keep well he must of necessity live in all soberness and

-      temperance. He does not always do that, but at present, whatever his

-      illness is due to, it is always set down to the climate, and he is always

-      sure of a full measure of pity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Once I stayed for a short time next to a hospital, and the Europeans in

-      the little town were much exercised because that hospital was so full. At

-      last it occurred to me to ask what was the matter with the patients. I was

-      not told what was the matter with them, but I found that the only one for

-      whom anyone had much pity was the gentleman who had D.T. But even the

-      worst of them you may be sure would have full measure of pity in England.

-      &ldquo;Poor fellow, that awful climate!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Doctors tell me fever is rife, and I feel they must know more about it

-      than I do, but it has been discovered in England that a life in the open

-      air is an almost certain preventive of phthisis, and I cannot help

-      thinking that <i>a sane and sober life in the open air day and night</i>

-      would be a more certain preventive against fever than all the quinine and

-      mosquito-proof rooms that were ever dreamt of. Observe, I say, a sane and

-      sober life; and a sane and sober life means most emphatically that a man

-      does not rush at his work and live habitually at high pressure. For this

-      is a temptation that the better-class of man is peculiarly liable to in

-      West Africa. &ldquo;Let us succeed, let us get on, and let us get home&rdquo;; and

-      who, in the present conditions, can blame him for such sentiments. They

-      are such as do any man credit, but they very often, in a hot climate more

-      especially, spell destruction as surely as the wild dissipation of the

-      reckless man who does not care. And there is only one cure for that&mdash;the

-      cure the French and Germans are providing. The women must be encouraged to

-      go out. Every woman who goes and stays makes it easier for the woman who

-      follows in her footsteps, and I can see no reason why a woman should not

-      stand the climate of West Africa as well as she does that of India. Women

-      are the crying need; quiet, brave, sensible women who are not daunted

-      because the black cook spoils the soup, or the black laundryman ruins the

-      tablecloth, who will take an intelligent view of life, and will make what

-      is so much needed&mdash;a home for their husbands. I know there are men

-      who say that Africa is no place for a woman. I have met them again and

-      again. Some of those men I respected very much; some I put in quite

-      another category. The first evidently regarded a wife as a precious

-      plaything, not as a creature who was helpmeet and friend, whose greatest

-      joy must be to keep her marriage vows and share her husband's life for

-      good or ill, whose life must of necessity be incomplete unless she were

-      allowed to keep those marriage vows. The other sort, I am afraid, like the

-      freedom that the absence of white women gives them, a freedom that is

-      certainly not for the ultimate welfare of a colony, for the mingling of

-      the European and the daughter of Ham should be unthinkable. It is good for

-      neither people.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0088" id="linkimage-0088"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0601.jpg" alt="0601 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0601.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And here we come to the great difficulty of a tropical dependency, the

-      question that as yet is unanswered and unanswerable. What of the dark

-      peoples we govern? They are a peasant people with a peasant people's

-      faults and a peasant people's charm, but what of their future? The native

-      untouched by the white man has a dignity and a charm that there is no

-      denying; it seems a great pity he cannot be kept in that condition. The

-      man on the first rung of civilisation has points about him, and on the

-      whole one cannot help liking him, but the man who has gathered the

-      rudiments of an education, as presented to men in an English school on the

-      Coast, is, to my mind, about as disagreeable a specimen of humanity as it

-      is possible to meet anywhere. He has lost the charming courtesy of the

-      untutored savage, and replaced it by a horrible veneer of civilisation

-      that is blatant and pompous; and it is only because I have met such men as

-      Dr Blyden and Mr Olympia that I am prepared to admit that education can do

-      something beyond spoiling a good thing. Between black and white there is

-      that great, unbridgeable gulf fixed, and no man may cross it. The black

-      men who attain to the higher plane are as yet so few and scattered that

-      each must lead a life of utter intolerable loneliness, men centuries

-      before their time, men burdened with knowledge like Galileo, men who must

-      suffer like Galileo, for none may understand them, and the white man

-      stands and must stand&mdash;it is inevitable&mdash;too far off even for

-      sympathy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All honour to those men who go before the pioneers; but for them, as far

-      as we can see, is only bitterness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The curious thing is that most people who have visited West Africa or any

-      other tropical dependency will recognise these facts, and yet England

-      continues to pour into Africa a continuous stream of missionaries. Why?

-      For years Christianity has been taught on the Coast, and it is now a

-      well-recognised fact that on the Coast dishonesty and vice are to be

-      found, while the man from the interior is at least honest, healthy, and

-      free from vice. I am not saying that religion as taught by the missionary

-      has taught vice, but I am declaring emphatically that it has failed to

-      keep the negro from it. Why encourage missionaries? As civilisation

-      advances the native must be taught. Very well, let him pay for his own

-      teaching, he will value it a great deal more; or, since the merchants want

-      clerks and the white rulers want artisans, let them pay for the native to

-      be taught. But very, very strongly do I feel, when I look at the

-      comfortable, well-fed native of West Africa and the wastrel of the English

-      streets, that the English who subscribe to missions are taking the bread

-      from the children's table and throwing it to the dogs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0089" id="linkimage-0089"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0605.jpg" alt="0605 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0605.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Hundreds and thousands of people are ready to give to missions, but I am

-      very sure not a fraction of them have the very faintest conception of what

-      they are giving to. Their idea is that they are giving to the poor heathen

-      who are sunk in the deepest misery. Now there is not in all the length and

-      breadth of Africa, I will venture to swear, one-quarter of the unutterable

-      misery and vice you may see any day in the streets of London or any great

-      city of the British Isles. There is not a tribe that has not its own

-      system of morals and sees that they are carried out; there is not the

-      possibility of a man, woman, or child dying of starvation in all West

-      Africa while there is any food among the community. Can we say that of any

-      town in England? What then are we trying to teach the native?

-      Christianity. But surely a man's god is only such as his mind can

-      appreciate; a high-class mind has a high-class god, a kindly mind a kindly

-      god, and an evil mind an evil god. No matter whether we call that god

-      Christ, or by any other name, he will have the attributes the mind that

-      conceives him gives him; wherefore why worry?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course I know that a large number of people feel that religion comes

-      from without and not from within, and a larger number still say as long as

-      a mission is industrial it is a good thing, and to both of these I can

-      only point out the streets and alleys and tenement houses of the towns of

-      England. It seems to me the most appalling presumption on the part of any

-      nation with such ghastly festering sores at its own heart to try and

-      impose on any other people a code of morals, a system of ethics, a

-      religion, if you will, until its own body is sweet and clean. An

-      industrial mission is doubtless a good thing, but until there are no men

-      clamouring for the post of sandwich-men in London, no women catering to a

-      shameful traffic in Piccadilly, I think we should keep the money for our

-      industrial missions at home.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Let us look the thing straight in the face. They talk of human sacrifices.

-      Are there no human sacrifices in our own midst? We lie if we say there are

-      none. Every day we who pride ourselves upon having been a Christian nation

-      for the last thousand years condemn little children to a life of utter

-      hopelessness, to a life the very thought of which, in connection with our

-      own children, would make us hide our faces in shuddering horror. So if any

-      man is appealed to to give to missions, I would have him look round and

-      see that everyone in his immediate neighbourhood is beyond the need of

-      help, that there are no ghastly creatures at his own gate that the heathen

-      he is trying to convert would scorn to have at his side. Believe me, if

-      Christianity is to justify itself there is not yet one crumb to spare from

-      the children's table for the dogs that lie outside.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For the individual missionary I have&mdash;in many cases, I must have&mdash;a

-      great respect. The trouble to my mind is that Christianity presented in so

-      many guises must be a little confusing to the heathen. There are the Roman

-      Catholics. They are pawns in the great game played by Rome; no individual

-      counts. They have given themselves to the missionary service to teach the

-      heathen, and they stay until they die or until they are too sick to be of

-      further use in the land. Of course they are helpful, any life that is

-      oblivious of self and is utterly devoted to others must needs be helpful,

-      and they have my deepest respect, because never, never have I been called

-      upon to sympathise with a Roman Catholic father or sister. They have given

-      their lives, no man can do more, and all I can say is, I would prefer they

-      gave it to the civilising of the submerged folks of their own nations than

-      to civilising the black man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0090" id="linkimage-0090"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0609.jpg" alt="0609 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0609.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Then at the other end of the social scale are the Basel Missions. They

-      combine business and religion very satisfactorily in a thoroughly

-      efficient German spirit, and while the missionaries attend to the souls of

-      the heathen and set up schools to teach them not only to read and write,

-      but various useful trades as well, the Basel Mission Factories do a

-      tremendous trade in all the necessaries of life. These Basel missionaries

-      are most kindly, worthy people, and to their kindness I owe much.

-      Occasionally I have come across a man of wide reading and with clever,

-      observant eyes, but as a rule they are chosen from the lower middle

-      classes among the Swiss and Germans; very often the missionary spirit runs

-      in the families, and it passes on from father to son, from mother to

-      daughter. These people, too, come out if not for life, like the Roman

-      Catholics, at least for long periods of years. It is generally believed on

-      the Coast, and I have never heard it contradicted, that when a man attains

-      a certain standing he is allowed to marry, even though he is not due for a

-      holiday in Europe. They have at headquarters photographs of all the

-      eligible maidens in training for the mission field, and the candidate for

-      matrimony may choose his wife, and she is duly forwarded to him, for the

-      heads of the Basel Missions, like me, believe in matrimony for Africa. And

-      most excellent wives do these Basel missionary women make. They bear their

-      children here in West Africa where no English woman thinks she can stay

-      more than six months, and their homes are truly homes in the best sense of

-      the word. If example is good for the heathen, then he has it in the Basel

-      Missions. Another thing, they must make the most excellent nucleus for

-      German interests, for no one who has been in a Basel Mission Station or

-      Factory can but respect these men and women and little children who make a

-      home and a garden in the wilderness. And what I have said about the Basel

-      Missions applies to the Bremen Missions, except that these are more

-      pronouncedly German. But better women may I never hope to meet in this

-      wide world than those in the Bremen Missions. And in between these two

-      extremes are missionaries of every class and description. Against the

-      individuals I have nothing to say, save and except this&mdash;I want to

-      discount the admiration given to the &ldquo;poor missionary.&rdquo; They are good men

-      I doubt not, but they are earning a living just as I who write am earning

-      a living, or you who read, and to my mind they are earning a living in the

-      halo of sanctity very much more comfortably than the struggling doctor or

-      the poor curate in an East-End parish. Whatever their troubles, they have

-      never the bitterness of seeing the ghastly want that they cannot relieve,

-      and if they do not live in England, they have always the joy of making a

-      home in a new country, and that is a joy that those who talk so glibly

-      about exile do not seem to realise.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0091" id="linkimage-0091"> </a>

-    </p>

-

-<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0613.jpg" alt="0613 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0613.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But we must have the negroes taught reading and writing and trades,&rdquo; said

-      a man to me once when we were discussing the missionary question; and I

-      agree it is necessary, but I do not see why I am to regard the teacher as

-      on a higher plane than he who teaches the same in England. And as for the

-      religion that is taught, the only comment I have to make upon it is that

-      no man that ever I heard of would take a mission boy or a Christian for a

-      servant when he could get a decent heathen. Finally, considering the

-      amount of destitution and terrible want in the streets of England, if I

-      had my way I would put a heavy tax on all money contributed for the

-      conversion of the heathen. Before it was allowed to go out of the country

-      I would if I could take heavy toll, and with that toll give the luckless

-      children of my own colour a start in life in the Colonies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Finally, West Africa is the country of raw material. It should be

-      England's duty so to work that country that it be complementary to

-      England, the great manufacturing land. The peasant of the Gold Coast

-      burning the bush to make his cocoa plantations is absolutely necessary to

-      the girl fixing the labels on the finished product; her very livelihood

-      depends upon him. The nearer these two are brought together in a

-      commercial sense the better for both, and what we say of cocoa we may say

-      of palm oil and groundnuts and other vegetable fats, of rubber, of hemp,

-      of gold, of tin. This country which produces with tropical luxuriance

-      should be, if properly worked, a source of immense wealth to the nation

-      that possesses it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And as we rise in the social scale, think of the openings this country,

-      thickly populated, well cultivated, flourishing, would offer for the young

-      men of the middle classes seeking a career. A political service like the

-      Civil Service of India, officered by men who have won places there by

-      strenuous work and high endeavour, who are proud of the positions they

-      have won, and a busy mercantile community, serving side by side with these

-      political officers, would go some way to answering the question on the

-      lips of the middle-class father, &ldquo;What shall I do with my son?&rdquo; The work

-      of women is widening every day, and I, who honestly believe that an

-      ordinary woman may go where an ordinary man can, may with profit take up

-      work even as a man may do, see scope for the women of the future there

-      too, not only as wives and helpmeets to the men, but as heads of

-      independent enterprises of their own.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I have finished my book, ended the task that I have set myself to do, and

-      I hope I have been able to convey to my readers some of the fascination

-      that Africa has always held for those who have once visited her shores.

-      But hitherto it has been the fascination of the mistress, never of the

-      wife. She held out no lure, for she was no courtesan. A man came to her in

-      his eager youth asking, praying that she would give him that which should

-      make all life good; and she trusted and opened her arms. What she had to

-      give she gave freely, generously; there was no stint, no lack. And he

-      took. Her charm he counted as a matter of course, her tenderness was his

-      due, her passion was for his pleasure; but the fascination he barely

-      admitted could not keep him. Though she had given all she had no rights,

-      and when other desires called he left her, left her with words of pity

-      that were an injury, of regret that were an insult.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0092" id="linkimage-0092"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0617.jpg" alt="0617 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0617.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      But all this is changing. Africa holds. The man who has once known Africa

-      longs for her. In the sordid city streets he remembers the might and

-      loneliness of her forests, by the rippling brook he remembers the wide

-      rivers rushing tumultuous to the sea, in the night when the rain is on the

-      roof plashing drearily he remembers the gorgeous tropical nights, the sky

-      of velvet far away, the stars like points of gold, the warm moonlight that

-      with its deeper shadows made a fairer world. Even the languor and the heat

-      he longs for, the white foam of the surf on the yellow sand of the

-      beaches, the thick jungle growth densely matted, rankly luxuriant,

-      pulsating with the irrepressible life of the Tropics. All other places are

-      tame. The fascination that he has denied comes back calling to him in

-      after years. Thus &ldquo;the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.&rdquo; This

-      mistress he will have none of has spoiled him for all else. And here the

-      analogy fails. Africa holds, and the man whom she holds may yield to the

-      fascination not only without shame, but with pride. Before her lies a

-      great future; to the man who knows how to use her gifts she offers wealth

-      and prosperity. To be won easily? Well, no. These gifts lie there as

-      certainly as there is a sky above us, as that the sun will rise to-morrow,

-      but there lie difficulties in the way, obstacles to be overcome. Africa

-      offers the opportunities&mdash;success is for the

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent5">

-      &ldquo;One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      Never doubted clouds would break,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent5">

-      Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent30">

-      triumph,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent10">

-      Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent30">

-      Sleep to wake.

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      Now at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent20">

-      Greet the unseen with a cheer!

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent10">

-      Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent10">

-      'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed&mdash;fight on&mdash;'&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 6em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

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