I TAKE TO THE ROAD.
Soon after daybreak on the second morning after my departure from
Quittáh, the fishing canoe, which had been sent to fetch me ashore,
swept round the bluff into the quieter waters of Winneba Bay, and
presently took the ground not far from the mouth of the little river
Ainsu; and as I jumped out on to the beach, I found myself folded in
the embrace of no less a person than Mr. David Annan.
He seemed very pleased to see me, and not without reason, as I
presently discovered, for it appeared that, relying on my assumed
opulence, he had refrained from burdening himself with an undue amount
of that which is vulgarly known as “the ready,” and was even now in a
state of some pecuniary embarrassment. The “carrier men” were, in
fact, “not fit,” to use his expression, and refused to lift a load
until they had received tangible evidence of their employer’s
solvency.
A sovereign from my purse, rapidly converted into eighty
“thor-pennies” at an adjacent store, revived the flagging confidence
of our followers, and half an hour after landing, we formed up our
little caravan and stepped out briskly up the steep street of the
town. I looked around me with growing pleasure and interest, for
everything was new and strange. The little church with its tower of
sun-dried clay, that had looked so imposing from the anchorage and now
appeared so mean; the bright red walls of the houses, so different
from the grimy hovels of Quittáh, built of the black lagoon-mud; the
steep rocky road, the strange trees, the gay and comely Fanti women,
were all elements of novelty that came upon me with singular force
after my long sojourn amidst the sandy flats and changeless horizon of
the Bight of Benin.
Even when we descended into the wide plain the novelty was not abated,
for the meadow-like expanse, with its pink soil and waving grass, was
as great a change from Quittáh as the rocky upland. And so, while
Isabel was mourning my absence in the dull and silent house, here was
I striding gaily along the narrow track, watching the little zebra
mice and the white-breasted crows and the circling vultures, with an
exhilaration that I blush to reflect on.
We walked on at a good swinging pace until nearly noon, when, reaching
a belt of woodland, we halted in the shade of a silk-cotton tree to
rest and take our midday meal. I had left the commissariat
arrangements to Annan, and now reaped the harvest of my folly, for
that child of Belial had laid in, with my money, a supply of kanki--a
disgusting mess of boiled maize which I had never tasted before, and
hope never to taste again. It was highly satisfying, however, and its
flavour encouraged moderation, so that when we resumed our march after
an hour’s rest I was completely refreshed.
The road through which we passed during the afternoon exceeded in
beauty my wildest dreams. In the open, indeed, the prospect was merely
that of a fine breezy, rolling country covered with grass and bushes;
but where the winding path led through shady woodland or rustling
groves of oil palms, the richness and luxuriance of the vegetation
filled me with astonishment and delight. My opportunities for
examining the landscape were not indeed great, for our bare-footed
carriers covered the rough ground at a pace that was a revelation to
me, and kept it up, too, until I was ready to drop with fatigue; and
when, towards sunset, we entered a straggling village, I learned from
Annan, with profound relief, that this was the end of our day’s march.
My trunk had been set down by the carrier against the wall of a house,
so I took my seat on it and leaned back with great comfort. Soon a
little crowd of women and children gathered round and stood watching
me with the expectant interest that a group of rustics at home would
manifest in a foreign organ-grinder. I drew out my pipe and filled it
to their complete satisfaction, but my matches had become spoiled by
the damp of the woodland and would not strike, seeing which, a young
woman with a glossy brown baby fastened on to her back, hurried away
and presently returned rolling a glowing cinder in the palm of her
hand. This she very adroitly laid on the tobacco in my pipe and then
blew it softly until it glowed white hot and the smoke ascended in
blue clouds, and when I thanked her with some warmth she laid her
hands together and curtseyed prettily, murmuring “Ya wura,” and then
retired bashfully behind her friends.
Suddenly the calf-like voice of Annan was heard, “shooing” the
children away from me, and my conductor appeared wreathed in smiles
and glorious with rich apparel. For in this short time he had
exchanged his rough travelling costume for the garb of ceremony, and
now displayed the splendour of a velvet smoking cap, a suit of pink
pyjamas, the ankles tucked into a pair of scarlet socks, and carpet
slippers of prismatic brilliancy.
“You get no servant now, Mr. Englefield,” said he with an oily smile,
“but never fear, sah, I shall be your steward and I do you proper.”
“You are very good,” said I. “What are we going to do about food? I
have had enough kanki for to-day; and where am I to sleep to-night?”
“I get you fine dinner, sah--de chief’s wife cook it now--and very
fine bed in de chief’s house. But,” here he dropped his voice and
pulled a most lugubrious face, “dis headman no good at all. He get a
dry eye.”
“A dry eye?” I exclaimed.
“Yes; he never want to give anyting unless you dash him some money
first.”
“Well, I don’t expect him to give me food and lodging for nothing. If
you pay him what you think right, or what _he_ thinks right, I will
let you have it back.”
Annan groaned and pulled out of his pocket a gaudy purse which he
opened and held upside down.
“Dose carriers take all dat you give me dis mornin’ and spend it ’fore
we start. Now de headman say he won’t give us nutting for chop widout
you dash him first.”
I began to suspect that Mr. Annan “get a dry eye,” but it was useless
to wrangle over a few shillings, so I handed him another sovereign,
which he received with a gleeful guffaw and departed--ostensibly to
make an advance payment to the headman--leaving me speculating
curiously as to how he proposed to get change for a sovereign in this
primitive hamlet. Apparently he managed to do so, for I came upon him
unawares shortly after, doling threepenny pieces to the carriers for
subsistence; and mightily disconcerted he seemed, for some reason, at
being discovered.
His account of the dinner that was in preparation was not exaggerated.
It was a colossal feed. The black clay bowls came in one after another
until the little ricketty table would hold no more, and Annan’s eyes
fairly bulged with anticipation. He was indeed “doing me proper,” as
he expressed it, and as he was to share the meal he evidently intended
to “do himself proper”; indeed, I fancy that, recollecting my
inability to make headway with native dishes when we dined together at
Adena, he hoped to consume the major part of these delicacies himself.
If this was his idea when he ordered the feast, my appetite must have
been a revelation to him, for, having decided that henceforth I must
subsist on native food, and being nearly famished, I assaulted the
dishes with indiscriminate ferocity, devouring yams, cassava, fowl,
goat, stink-fish, palm oil and peppers with supreme disregard of their
appearance or flavour until the affrighted Annan abandoned all
attempts at conversation in a frantic effort to keep pace with me.
The apartment in which we dined was converted into a bedroom by the
simple device of taking out the table and laying down two mattresses
formed of bundles of rushes; and although, after dark, the village
resounded with the shrieks of the potto calling to his unmelodious
mate in the forest, and sundry scufflings and rustlings about our room
were unpleasantly suggestive of rats and cockroaches, I almost
instantly fell into a delicious slumber which lasted until I was
awakened by Annan dragging at my arm.
“Cock-o’-peak-time,[_Cock-crow--Cock go speak._] sah,” said he with a
bland smile. “All de carrier men wait outside; dey say dey ready to
start one time.”
“But I haven’t had any breakfast or bath,” I objected, getting up and
stretching myself.
Annan laughed. “Plenty rivers in dis country,” said he, “and if you
want to take chop, I get some here.” He displayed a gritty-looking
collection of roasted plantains in a dirty red handkerchief and moved
towards the door, where a crowd of the villagers had assembled to see
us depart.
It was cheerless and chilly when we emerged from the village on to the
narrow woodland track. A dense mist enshrouded the landscape and made
the trees look ghostly and unreal. Everything reeked with moisture.
The dew pattered down from the trees, the grass and herbage was
saturated and the ground sodden with the wet. Five minutes after
starting I was soaked to the skin and my teeth were chattering.
“You still want a bath, Mr. Englefield?” inquired Annan with a
delighted chuckle as he noted my saturated clothing.
“I want my breakfast,” I retorted savagely, visions of the steaming
“early coffee” at Pereira’s house flitting across my memory.
Annan opened his bundle, and taking out a blackened plantain, handed
it to me after removing the superfluous ashes by wiping it down the
leg of his pyjamas; and despite its repulsive aspect, I chewed it up
thankfully, cinders and all, to his undissembled joy and amusement.
“You like dis country chop proper,” he remarked, as I licked my
fingers and held out my hand for another plantain; but his amusement
gave way to apprehension when I proceeded to eat yet a third.
We were meantime entering the fringe of the forest, and the scenery
appeared to me unspeakably lovely. The trees grew more lofty and
umbrageous, and their trunks were clothed in a garment of creepers and
ferns. Once we passed through a grove of oil palms, and I was charmed
with the delicate grace of this plant, so different from the scraggy
cocoa-nut palm of the coast, so soft and feathery and symmetrical, and
so beautifully adorned with the long trailing ferns that hang down in
lacy streamers from the crown of the stem.
Annan’s promise as to the rivers, too, was amply fulfilled, but
although they were pleasant enough to look at, they were a great
annoyance, as they kept my legs continually wet from wading through
them; and I rather envied the carriers, whose scanty clothing made
this a matter of less consequence to them.
After a couple of hours of steady tramping we entered the large
village of Essekúma, where Annan decided to halt for a meal; and it
was quite pleasant to sit in the open compound and dry one’s clothing
in the sun.
A substantial meal of oily and pungent fowl-stew accompanied by a
liberal allowance of tenacious plantain fufu, made me inclined to loll
at my ease and quietly study the village life and meditate upon the
queer sculptured ornaments on the houses; but Annan would hear of no
delay, and having cleaned his fingers on the ever-ready pyjamas, gave
the word to proceed. These Africans were certainly indefatigable
walkers, and their powers of endurance quite remarkable--so
remarkable, indeed, that I began to doubt if I should be able to keep
up with our carriers, burdened as they were with loads varying from
thirty to sixty pounds.
We travelled on, with rare and brief halts for rest at wayside
hamlets, until near sunset, when we reached a small, primitive village
called Obedumássi, at which we brought up for the night, and where
our experiences of the previous evening were repeated. The headman, at
whose house we lodged, kept a civet in a kind of wooden hutch for the
purpose of extracting the perfume, and I had an opportunity of
witnessing the operation. The animal was first poked with a stick to
make it fly round its narrow cage until in the course of its gyrations
it allowed its tail to project between the bars. This was immediately
grabbed by the operator and pulled so that the unfortunate beast was
jammed helplessly against the bars, when the perfume was scooped out
of the scent-gland by means of a wooden implement like a marrow-spoon.
This curious unctuous substance had a disgusting odour somewhat like
that of a recently-extinguished tallow candle, mingled with the scent
of musk, but Annan assured me that “the Hausa men find it sweet too
much,” so I purchased a small quantity with a view to future
contingencies.
The next day was one of almost continuous trudging along a path that
was far from good to walk upon. This everlasting marching would have
been as monotonous as it was fatiguing but for the novelty of the
surroundings, which were almost as strange to me as if I had but just
come from England. Our route on this day lay through an extensive
swamp, some parts of which were overgrown with bamboos, and here the
aspect of nature was most singular and impressive. The bamboo could be
seen as we approached it, an immense cloudy mass of moving green with
mysterious cavern-like openings which led into a dim interior like
that of some colossal crypt. The canes rose out of the ground in huge
bundles like great clustered columns, and interlaced overhead in an
impenetrable vault, so that the gloomy interior was broken up into a
maze of aisles and transepts, some leading away into absolute black
darkness, others showing a distant spot of bright light--the opening
on the further side of the thicket.
We were threading our way through one of these passages, treading
daintily on the crackling _débris_ that formed the floor (for the
mysterious twilight of the place somehow induced a silent and stealthy
manner of movement), when Annan, who was leading, suddenly stopped
dead, and peering down a dark side-aisle began to talk in a loud,
startled tone. At the same moment I noticed a group of men crouching
and almost hidden in the deeper shadow of one of the clusters of
canes, and our carriers, catching sight of them too, hastily laid down
their burdens, and broke out into excited and voluble jabbering, so
that the previously silent crypt was a Babel of noise. In a few
moments the men came forth from their hiding-place into the dim light
of the passage in which we stood, and a sinister-looking crowd they
were, quite nude, with the exception of the narrow loin-cloth, and
each provided with a long flintlock gun with a red-painted stock and a
large knife in a leopard-skin sheath. They were evidently not
travelling far from home, for none of them carried any baggage or
provisions beyond the bottle-shaped gourd which served as a powder
flask, and a bag of slugs.
A tall, elderly man, apparently the leader of the party, came forward
and made a long statement to Annan, gesticulating and grimacing in the
native fashion and pointing frequently in the direction in which we
were going; then, after Annan had replied in a quieter tone, the
carriers took up their burdens and we moved forward, while the armed
men returned to their retreat.
“Who are those men?” I asked, as we came out once more into the light
of day.
“Dose men,” replied Annan, “is Akotádi people, and dey tell me some
very bad news. Dey say all de roads shut everywhere.”
“What do they mean? Who has shut the roads?”
“Because of de war palaver,” replied Annan. “Dey say dat ’Shanti
people fight wid Békwe, and Adánsi people fight wid ’Shanti and
Akém. Plenty war palaver everywhere.”
“Then it won’t be very safe going through Ashanti, will it?” said I.
“Safe!” yelled Annan. “I tell you all de roads shut. Spose ’Shanti man
see us he tink we Adánsis and he shoot us. Spose Békwe man see us,
he say we Akém and he shoot us. Eberybody shoot us. Shia! m’nyohum!”
He shook his fist in the air and spat on the ground.
I could not help laughing at this outburst, for, apart from the highly
inappropriate application of a disgusting and untranslatable Fanti
expletive, the picture that Annan drew of our progress through the
country was farcical in the extreme. We were Ishmaelites indeed!
“Why de debbil you laugh?” exclaimed Annan, looking as if he could
have cut my throat with pleasure. “You no laugh if ’Shanti man catch
you.”
“No,” I agreed, “I suppose not. But what shall you do? You won’t turn
back, will you?”
“Me turn back!” he shouted. “I tell you, sah, I come to get monkey
skin, and I fit for get monkey skin. ’Shanti man can go to hell.”
I never felt more friendly to the sturdy rascal than on hearing him
speak thus. I could have shaken his dirty hand--if it had been
necessary. When he had spoken of the closed roads I had feared that
our expedition would collapse after all, so this exhibition of dogged
pluck came as a great relief.
The sun had already sunk below the tree tops, and the shades of
evening were gathering fast as we came out of the forest into the open
village of Pra-su. By the fading light I could see that this was
different in appearance from the hamlets we had passed through, for,
in addition to the ordinary Fanti houses, there were groups of
beehive-shaped huts of palm thatch, such as I had seen in the Hausa
quarter at Quittáh, each group enclosed by a fence of palm leaves.
There were also a number of rough sheds of a larger size, and a
one-storey house of European construction--the residence of the
commandant. For Pra-su was the outpost of the British Protectorate,
and had a small garrison of Hausa troops, commanded by an officer of
the Gold Coast Constabulary, to protect the ferry across the river
Pra.
We had hardly entered the village when we came upon a group of the
soldiers. They had scratched upon a smooth patch of earth a kind of
primitive chess-board, and two of them were hurriedly finishing a game
by the last of the twilight while the others stood round and watched.
As we came abreast of the group, I heard my name called, and an
elderly sergeant stepped forward with a salute and a grin of friendly
recognition.
“Welcome to Pra-su; hope you well, sah,” said he.
“Why, it’s Sergeant Aba!” I exclaimed, shaking him by the hand. “Well,
now, I never thought to meet a friend at Pra-su.”
He seemed highly gratified at my addressing him thus, and asked if he
could render me any service, remarking that the Commandant had gone to
Cape Coast and had left him in charge of the station.
“I should be very glad to get something to eat,” said I, “and perhaps
you can find me a clean house to sleep in to-night.”
“You fit to eat country chop?” he asked a little shyly.
I replied that I was fit to eat anything, and the more the better.
“Den, sah, you come wid me and I give you chop, and you look my house.
He be new house, quite clean, spose you like him you sleep dere.”
I thanked him warmly for his offer, and, although Annan looked rather
sourly upon the arrangement, I went off with the Sergeant to inspect
my lodgings.
We wandered down several narrow lanes between high fences of palm leaf
and reeds, until, presently, Aba halted and, separating two of the
mats forming the fence, we entered his compound. The twilight had
already faded into night, and I could but dimly make out the
beehive-shaped houses ranged round the enclosure or the shadowy forms
flitting about in the darkness, but I could see that the compound was
an open space some twenty yards square. In the centre of it a dull red
fire was burning, and an aged man in a turban and riga squatted by it
on a mat and occasionally stirred it with a stick. The special object
of his regard, however, was not the fire itself but a singular little
fence that encircled it, which fence I found, on nearer inspection, to
consist of a number of pointed sticks stuck in the earth, each stick
having impaled on it several pieces of meat with a lump of fat as a
crowning ornament.
Aba leaned over the fence and sniffed. “You fit chop dis sort, sah?”
he asked.
I replied with a most emphatic affirmative, for my mouth fairly
watered at the delicious odour of the roasting meat; so Aba fetched a
mat from his house and laid it down before the fire, and we squatted
on it together and watched the meat roasting.
Aba endeavoured to divert me with conversation until the meat should
be ready, but the time seemed endless, and I found my famished gaze
continually wandering towards the kabobs and noting the lumps of fat
frizzling in the heat, and the little streams of oil that trickled
over the meat and dripped upon the ground. And the way in which the
old man slowly turned the skewers, sniffed critically and shook his
head, and Aba’s gaunt Bornu wife came forth, examined the kabobs and
vanished again, wrought me to the verge of frenzy.
At last the old man seemed satisfied, for he plucked up one of the
skewers, and having turned it round and round in the firelight, he
sang out in a cracked voice, “Fatima! Ya karé!” and I breathed a sigh
of relief and licked my lips.
To this day I look back upon that meal with a kind of greedy pleasure.
After the pungent, greasy, Fanti stews, this wholesome food seemed
doubly delicious, and in truth those kabobs might have raised the
ghost of an alderman. Then, too, there was cus-cus in clean wooden
bowls, and flat baskets piled high with masa--little pancakes of
pea-flour fried in clay moulds--and after all this a great calabash of
mangoes was passed round, so that when I at length washed my hands in
the bowl of water that was brought to each of the guests by Aba’s
youngest girl, I was a better fed man than I had been since leaving
Quittáh.
We sat by the fire--new fed with crackling faggots--till far into the
night, and Aba, in his halting English, gave me much information and
sage advice. He shook his head with grave disapproval of my journey
into Ashanti, which country he said was “no place for white man,”
especially just now, for “’Shanti man find blood sweet too much.” He
also warned me against Annan.
“Dat man bery bad man. I sabby him long time. He fit to teef your
money and kill you, and den say ’Shanti shoot you. He dam rascal too
much.”
As a practical comment on his opinions, Annan stole into the compound
just then and came and bent over me.
“Mr. Englefield, sah,” he whispered confidentially, “I come to beg
you, sah.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“De chop for to-morrow. We go to strange country; we must take plenty
chop wid us because of de war palaver.”
“Very well,” said I, “you know what is necessary, and you have enough
money to get it, I suppose.”
“No, sah,” exclaimed he, “dat is where you mistake. De money all
finish to-night.”
“Nonsense,” said I. “You can’t have spent all that money since
yesterday.”
“I tell you it finish,” he declared excitedly. “De carrier chop it
all. You look yourself!” He whisked his purse out with a flourish,
opened it and held it upside down. Unfortunately, he had brought out
the wrong purse, and, as he inverted it, the two sovereigns that I had
given him dropped out on to the mat; at which he was so completely
disconcerted that he hastily picked them up and departed without a
word.
“Dere, what I tell you, sah?” exclaimed Aba, shaking his fist at the
retreating “scholar man.” “Dat man proper rascal. He teef every ting
you get. I beg you, sah, you no go for bush country wid him.”
I laid my hand affectionately on the honest fellow’s shoulder as I got
up from the mat and stretched myself.
“Never fear for me, Aba,” said I; “I look him proper. If he trouble me
I show him my pistol.”
Aba shook his head sadly but said no more, and, as it was now late, he
dragged the mat into a new thatch hut, laid a pillow on it and wished
me good-night.