STARTING "ON TREK"
The first few days of November were spent in packing up our belongings
and making ready to start up-country away from the rail-head, and into
"the back of beyond," as Schomburgk put it.
The packing process interested me greatly; partly, I suppose, because
it gave my housewifely instincts full play. It was like making
preparations for a glorified picnic on a gigantic scale. Piles of
provender, pyramids of stores of all kinds, cumbered the camp, and it
fell to my lot to bring order out of chaos.
Necessaries and provisions for a five months' trip had to be packed,
and all the "chop boxes," as they are called out there, had to be
carefully marked and their contents scheduled. It was also necessary to
see that each box weighed precisely 60 lb., neither more nor less, this
being what each porter contracts to carry in Togo.
This was my work, and the motto given me for my guidance was "in every
box a little of everything." This obviated the bother of opening a
separate box for each article wanted on the march, one or two days'
supplies being carried in each box, and used as required, after which
the empty box could be discarded, and another one opened.
The most important single article amongst the host of stores was the
quinine. Over and over again I was urged to look carefully after this.
One can do without food in the bush, I was told; one can even do, for
a while at all events, without water; but to be without quinine spells
death.
Everybody takes it regularly out there, and quite as a matter of
course, the usual dose being thirty-five grains or thereabouts each
week. I took my little lot in two separate doses on Saturday and
Sunday, and I don't mind confessing that, in the words of the popular
ditty of the day, "I didn't want to do it." Only I had to. There was no
escape. Schomburgk and Hodgson, our operator, who were the only other
white people in the party at this stage of the journey, took theirs on
the instalment principle, five grains each evening. But I preferred the
other way.
At last everything was ready. Our one hundred carriers, collected and
sorted with elaborate care from a dozen or more different villages,
made a brave show. Altogether, with our personal staff, interpreters,
and so forth, we had a retinue of exactly 120 followers; a greater, I
reflected, than any I was ever likely to travel with in future, and
certainly far in excess of any that I had been honoured with in the
past.
On the evening of the 4th of November we entertained to dinner the good
Fathers of the Catholic Mission from Atakpame, who had shown us many
kindly courtesies during the time we had spent in their neighbourhood,
and on the 5th we said good-bye to Kamina, and started on our journey.
[Illustration:
_Photo by_ _A. Mocsigay, Hamburg_
MAJOR HANS SCHOMBURGK
The leader and organiser of the expedition. During the last sixteen
years he has only spent about two years outside Africa.]
Our object was to film scenes and plays of native life amongst
absolutely virgin and unspoiled surroundings, and to this end we
intended to penetrate to the extremest northern confines of Togo, as
far at least as the borders of the French Sudan. As I have already
intimated, no white woman had ever travelled so far afield in this part
of Africa before, but we anticipated little difficulty or danger on
this account, the natives being reported as quite friendly everywhere
along our proposed line of route. Then, too, His Highness the Duke of
Mecklenburg, the governor of the colony, had very kindly instructed
all district commissioners and other Government officials to render
the expedition every assistance in their power; so that altogether we
looked forward to a pleasant, if possibly a somewhat strenuous trip.
The first stage of our journey was to a place called Sokode, seven
days' march, and up to this point there is a very fair road.
Consequently we had arranged to cycle so far, the major explaining that
we should have all the horseback riding we wanted later on.
Our first day's trek was to have been a very short one, only seven
miles, and so we did not start until four o'clock in the afternoon,
having sent on our carriers and instructed them where to wait for
us. But once again we had experience of the curious perversity of
the African native. Instead of covering a short seven-mile stage, as
ordered, they travelled a good fifteen before they condescended to call
a halt.
As a result darkness overtook us long before we overtook them, and I
had one or two rather nasty spills, reaching camp at last sore, shaken,
and bruised. Schomburgk was furious, but was obliged to dissemble
a good deal, as at this stage of the journey, with the carriers
comparatively close to their homes, any undue show of harshness or
temper might easily have resulted in stampeding the whole lot of them.
That night I spent on a camp bed in an old deserted straw hut. It was
not altogether uncomfortable, but I got little sleep. The carriers were
all round me in groups of messes, each with its own little fire, and
they were all the time mumbling and talking to one another.
The next day we made a short march, as the rest-house was only about
eight miles ahead. These rest-houses are strung out all along the
Kamina-Sokode road at distances about twenty miles apart, and each
marks the end of a stage. Our operator, Hodgson, should have picked
us up here. He had left Kamina the day after our departure, intending
to overtake us, but he passed us somehow, and cycled on to the next
rest-house.
Naturally we wondered what on earth had become of him, and were
beginning to get rather anxious when, about four o'clock in the
afternoon, a messenger arrived with news of his whereabouts, and
bearing a letter asking urgently for a supply of provisions to be sent
on to him, as he had nothing to eat where he was, and had tasted no
food all that day.
[Illustration: EUROPEAN REST HOUSE AT TSCHOPOWA
The enormous baobab tree on the right was the roosting-place of
innumerable bats, which were greedily eaten, after being killed and
spitted over a fire, by the native "boys" attached to the caravan.]
By degrees things began to settle down. I had charge of the
commissariat and cooking arrangements. The natives I found tractable
enough, but woefully deficient in their notions of cleanliness. Most of
them entertained the idea that the proper way to wash a plate or a
dish was to lick it all over thoroughly. In this way, they explained,
they not only cleansed it, but at the same time were able to get at
least a taste of the white man's "chop."
Water, they contended, was for drinking, not for washing things in.
Even to rub over a kitchen utensil with a wisp of dried grass seemed
to them a work of supererogation. Eventually I used to boil the water
myself in which the dishes were washed up--a necessary precaution
against dysentery--and superintend the washing-up operations from start
to finish. It was, I found, the only way.
I also had charge of the petty cash book, and used to make small
advances to the boys as occasion demanded. They had christened me "The
Puss," and applications for money became more frequent and insistent
than Schomburgk deemed consistent with good order and discipline. It
was, "Please, Puss, give me some pennies," "Me want one shilling,
please. Puss," and so on from morning till night.
The climax came on the evening of the second day, when we were about
twenty-five miles out from Kamina. Just as I was retiring for the
night, a letter was handed to me which purported to come from Messa,
our cook, and Alfred, our chief interpreter, but which was really, I
found out afterwards, inspired by the first-named individual, although
drawn up and signed by them both.
"Dear Puss," it ran, "cook and myself want advance. One pound please.
Or more. If not more, less would be good. Farther up in the bush
presently we no want one penny. This the last. So please not tell
master, because perhaps he make palaver. Good evening, dear Puss. We
salute you. Alfred and Messa."
Well, I made a bit of a palaver myself about it, for a sovereign seemed
a good round sum for a couple of natives to want all of a hurry, but
eventually, yielding to their urgent entreaties, I let them have it.
We broke camp next morning at three o'clock, so as to avoid marching
in the heat of the day. To my amazement and disgust the cook had
disappeared. So, too, had one of our bicycles. The chief interpreter,
on being interrogated, disclaimed all knowledge of the whereabouts
of the absent man. He had, he asserted, merely written the letter
to oblige Messa, and had no idea that he intended deserting, as he
apparently had done.
Here was a pretty go and no mistake. The major swore fluently; I
cried--profusely. Then we both got angry. He said it was all my fault.
"The idea of giving a nigger a whole sovereign advance!" I retorted
that he ought to have impressed upon me more carefully what mean,
underhand skunks niggers were.
Gloomily we marched to the next camp, and I could hear Schomburgk
grumbling to himself at intervals whenever I got near enough to him,
which was not often. "No cook! Whatever shall we do? And Messa was a
good cook. A better one I never had. And good cooks cannot be picked up
in the bush like paw-paws." And so on, and so on.
We marched eighteen miles that morning, the longest stage we had done
so far, then halted for breakfast.
"Sardines and crackers!" sneered Schomburgk.
"For gracious sake go away somewhere for half an hour," I retorted
hotly. "I'm going to run this chop."
He picked up his gun, and strolled off into the bush--grumbling. I set
to work to prepare breakfast. It was hard work to bring my self-imposed
task to a successful issue, for I had only the most rudimentary cooking
utensils, and an open fire.
By dint of much labour and perseverance, however, I managed in the end
to prepare a very decent dish of eggs and bacon, with hot rolls, and
strong steaming coffee. Schomburgk grunted approval when he came to
partake of it, and afterwards was quite genial, despite the affair of
the missing Messa. "Feed the brute!" I forget the name of the tactful
woman who first gave our sex that very excellent piece of advice, but
she knew what she was talking about. She had studied men, and to some
purpose.
An hour later our truant cook turned up. He explained that just prior
to starting on trek with us he had married a young wife, and having
regard to her attractiveness and inexperience he had, on mature
reflection, deemed it inadvisable to leave her behind. He had therefore
gone back to fetch her, borrowing the bicycle and the sovereign for
that purpose.
By dint of cross-examination I elicited that he had not left our
previous camp until midnight. He had therefore cycled twenty-five miles
to Kamina, and the same distance back again, plus the eighteen miles we
had marched that morning, or nearly seventy miles in all in rather less
than nine hours, a wonderful performance for a native, and on a native
road.
I asked him about his wife. "Oh," he replied, "she come presently. She
walking."
Sure enough she turned up that afternoon, having trudged the whole
distance from Kamina, forty-three miles. When I saw her I did not blame
Messa for not caring to leave her behind. She was as pretty a girl,
for a native, as I ever wish to see. Fourteen or fifteen years old,
probably, but quite fully developed and beautifully proportioned, with
a pair of roguish alluring eyes, and a face all smiles. She accompanied
us throughout the trip, and proved herself quite an acquisition.
As for Messa, we ought of course to have chided him severely. But, as
a matter of fact, we were so exceedingly glad to get him back again
that but little was said to him at the time. Later on, however, he was
taken pretty sternly to task, and warned that any similar breach of
discipline would in future be very seriously dealt with.