As I am under the impression that the trade of the West African
Coast is its most important attribute, I hope I may be pardoned for
entering into this subject. My chief excuse for so doing lies in
the fact that independent travellers are rare in the Bights. The
last one I remember hearing of was that unfortunate gentleman who
went to the Coast for pleasure and lost a leg on Lagos Bar. Now I
have not lost any portion of my anatomy anywhere on the Coast, and
therefore have no personal prejudice against the place. I hold a
brief for no party, and I beg the more experienced old coaster to
remember that "a looker on sees the most of the game."
First of all it should be remembered that Africa does not possess
ready-made riches to the extent it is in many quarters regarded as
possessing. It is not an India filled with the accumulated riches
of ages, waiting for the adventurer to enter and shake the pagoda
tree. The pagoda tree in Africa only grows over stores of buried
ivory, and even then it is a stunted specimen to that which grew
over the treasure-houses of Delhi, Seringapatam, and hundreds of
others as rich as they in gems and gold. Africa has lots of stuff
in it; structurally more than any other continent in the world, but
it is very much in the structure, and it requires hard work to get
it out, particularly out of one of its richest regions, the West
Coast, where the gold, silver, copper, lead, and petroleum lie
protected against the miner by African fever in its deadliest form,
and the produce prepared by the natives for the trader is equally
fever-guarded, and requires white men of a particular type to work
and export it successfully--men endowed with great luck, pluck,
patience, and tact.
The first things to be considered are the natural resources of the
country. This subject may be divided into two sub-sections--(1) The
means of working these resources as they at present stand; (2) The
question of the possibility of increasing them by introducing new
materials of trade-value in the shape of tea, coffee, cocoa, etc.
With regard to the first sub-division the most cheerful things that
there are to say on the West Coast trade can be said; the means of
transport being ahead of the trade in all districts save the Gold
Coast. I know this is heresy, so I will attempt to explain the
matter. First, as regards communication to Europe by sea, the West
Coast is extremely well off, the two English lines of steamers
managed by Messrs. Elder Dempster, the British African, and the
Royal African, are most enterprisingly conducted, and their devotion
to trade is absolutely pathetic. Let there be but the least vague
rumour (sometimes I have thought they have not waited for the
rumour, but "gone in" as an experiment) of a puncheon of oil, or a
log of timber waiting for shipment at an out-of-the-world, one house
port, one of these vessels will bear down on that port, and have
that cargo. In addition to the English lines there is the Woermann
line, equally devoted to cargo, I may almost say even more so, for
it is currently reported that Woermann liners will lie off and wait
for the stuff to grow. This I will not vouch for, but I know the
time allowed to a Woermann captain by his owners between Cameroons
and Big Batanga just round the corner is eight days.
These English and German lines, having come to a friendly
understanding regarding freights, work the Bights of Benin, Biafra,
and Panavia, without any rivals, save now and again the vessels
chartered by the African Association to bring out a big cargo, and
the four sailing vessels belonging to the Association which give an
eighteenth-century look to the Rivers, and have great adventures on
the bars of Opobo and Bonny. {455} The Bristol ships on the Half
Jack Coast are not rivals, but a sort of floating factories,
shipping their stuff home and getting it out by the regular lines of
steamers. The English and German liners therefore carry the bulk of
the trade from the whole Coast. Their services are complicated and
frequent, but perfectly simple when you have grasped the fact that
the English lines may be divided into two sub-divisions--Liverpool
boats and Hamburg boats, either of which are liable when occasion
demands to call at Havre. The Liverpool line is the mail line to
the more important ports, the Hamburg line being almost entirely
composed of cargo vessels calling at the smaller ports as well as
the larger.
There is another classification that must be grasped. The English
boats being divided into, firstly, a line having its terminus at
Sierra Leone and calling at the Isles do Los; secondly, a line
having its terminus at Akassa; thirdly, a line having its terminus
at Old Calabar; fourthly, a line having its terminus at San Paul de
Loanda, and in addition, a direct line from Antwerp to the Congo,
chartered by the Congo Free State Government. Division 4, the
South-westers, are the quickest vessels as far as Lagos, for they
only call at the Canaries, Sierra Leone, off the Kru Coast, at
Accra, and off Lagos; then they run straight from Lagos into
Cameroons, without touching the Rivers, reaching Cameroons in
twenty-seven days from Liverpool. After Cameroons they cross to
Fernando Po and run into Victoria, and then work their way steadily
down coast to their destination. Thence up again, doing all they
know to extract cargo, but never succeeding as they would wish, and
so being hungry in the hold when they get back to the Bight of
Benin, they are liable to smell cargo and go in after it, and
therefore are not necessarily the quickest boats home.
Two French companies run to the French possessions, subsidised by
their Government (as the German line is, and as our lines are not)--
the Chargeurs Reunis and the Fraissinet. The South-west Coast
liners of these companies run to Gaboon and then to Koutonu, up near
Lagos, then back to Gaboon, and down as far as Loango, calling on
their way home at the other ports in Congo Francais. They are
mainly carriers of import goods, because they run to time, and on
the South-west Coast unless Time has an ameliorating touch of
Eternity in it you cannot get export goods off.
Below the Congo the rivals of the English and German lines are the
vessels of the Portuguese line, Empreza Nacional. These run from
Lisbon to the Cape Verde Islands, thence to San Thome and Principe,
then to the ports of Angola (Loanda, Benguella, Mossamedes,
Ambrizette, etc.), and they carry the bulk of the Angola trade at
present, because of the preferential dues on goods shipped in
Portuguese bottoms.
The service of English vessels to the West Coast is weekly; to the
Rivers fortnightly; to the South-west Coast monthly; and it is the
chief thing in West Coast trade enterprise that England has to be
proud of.
Any one of the English boats will go anywhere that mortal boat can
go; and their captains' local knowledge is a thing England at large
should be proud of and the rest of the civilised world regard with
awe-stricken admiration. That they leave no room for further
development of ocean carriage has been several times demonstrated by
the collapse of lines that have attempted to rival them--the Prince
line and more recently the General Steam Navigation.
But although the West Coast trader has at his disposal these
vessels, he has by no means an easy time, or cheap methods, of
getting his stuff on board, save at Sierra Leone and in the Oil
Rivers. Of the Gold Coast surf, and Lagos bar I have already
spoken, and the Calemma as we call the South-west Coast surf is
nearly, if not quite as bad as that on the Gold Coast. Indeed I
hold it is worse, but then I have had more experience of it, and it
has frequently to be worked in native dugouts, and not in the well-
made surf boats used on the Gold Coast. But although these surf-
boats are more safe they are also more expensive than canoes, as a
fine 40 or 60 pounds surf-boat's average duration of life is only
two years in the Gold Coast surf, so there is little to choose from
a commercial standpoint between the two surfs when all is done.
As regards interior transport, the difficulty is greater, but in the
majority of the West Coast possessions of European powers there
exist great facilities for transport in the network of waterways
near the coast and the great rivers running far into the interior.
These waterways are utilised by the natives, being virtually roads;
in many districts practically the only roads existing for the
transport of goods in bulk, or in the present state of the trade
required to exist. But there is room for more white enterprise in
the matter of river navigation; and my own opinion is that if
English capital were to be employed in the direction of small
suitably-built river steamers, it would be found more repaying than
lines of railway. Waterways that might be developed in this manner
exist in the Cross River, the Volta, and the Ancobra. I do not say
that there will be any immediate dividend on these river steamboat
lines, but I do not think that there will be any dividend, immediate
or remote, on railways in West Africa. This question of transport
is at present regarded as a burning one throughout the Continent;
and for the well-being of certain parts of the West Coast railways
are essential, such as at Lagos, and on the Gold Coast. Of Lagos I
do not pretend to speak. I have never been ashore there. Of the
Gold Coast I have seen a little, and heard a great deal more, and I
think I may safely say that railway making would not be difficult on
it, for it is good hard land, not stretches of rotten swamp. The
great difficulty in making railroads here will consist in landing
the material through the surf. This difficulty cannot be got over,
except at enormous expense, by making piers, but it might be
surmounted by sending the plant ashore on small bar boats that could
get up the Volta or Ancobra. When up the Volta it may be said, "it
would be nowhere when any one wanted it," but the cast-iron idea
that goods must go ashore at places where there are Government
headquarters like Accra and Cape Coast, places where the surf is
about at its worst, seems to me an erroneous one. The landing place
at Cape Coast might be made safe and easy by the expenditure of a
few thousands in "developing" that rock which at present gives
shelter WHEN you get round the lee side of it, but this would only
make things safer for surf-boats. No other craft could work this
bit of beach; and there is plenty of room for developing the Volta,
as it is a waterway which a vessel drawing six feet can ascend fifty
miles from July till November, and thirty miles during the rest of
the year. The worst point about the Volta is the badness of its
bar--a great semicircular sweep with heavy breakers--too bad a bar
for boats to cross; but a steamer on the Lagos bar boat plan might
manage it, as the Bull Frog reported in 1884 nineteen to twenty-one
feet on it, one hour before high water. The absence of this bar
boat, and the impossibility of sending goods out in surf-boats
across the bar, causes the goods from Adda (Riverside), the chief
town on the Volta, situated about six miles up the river from its
mouth, to be carried across the spit of land to Beach Town, and then
brought out through the shore surf--the worst bit of surf on the
whole Gold Coast. The Ancobra is a river which penetrates the
interior, through a district very rich in gold and timber and more
than suspected of containing petroleum. It is from eighty to one
hundred yards wide up as far as Akanko, and during the rains carries
three and a half to four and a half fathoms, and boats are taken up
to Tomento about forty miles from its mouth with goods to the Wassaw
gold mines. But the bar of the Ancobra is shallow, only giving six
feet, although it is firm and settled, not like that of the Volta
and Lagos; and the Portuguese, in the sixteenth century, used to get
up this river, and work the country to a better profit than we do
nowadays.
The other chief Gold Coast river, the Bosum Prah, that enters the
sea at Chama, is no use for navigation from the sea, being
obstructed with rock and rapids, and its bar only carrying two feet;
but whether these rivers are used or not for the landing of railroad
plant, it is certain that that plant must be landed, and the
railways made, for if ever a district required them the Gold Coast
does. It is to be hoped it will soon enter into the phase of
construction, for it is a return to the trade (from which it draws
its entire revenue) that the local government owes, and owes
heavily; and if our new acquisition of Ashantee is to be developed,
it must have a railway bringing it in touch with the Coast trade,
not necessarily running into Coomassie, but near enough to Coomassie
to enable goods to be sold there at but a small advance on Coast
prices.
It is an error, easily fallen into, to imagine that the natives in
the interior are willing to give much higher prices than the sea-
coast natives for goods. Be it granted that they are compelled now
to give say on an average seventy-five per cent. higher prices to
the sea-coast natives who at present act as middlemen between them
and the white trader, but if the white trader goes into the
interior, he has to face, first, the difficulty of getting his goods
there safely; secondly, the opposition of the native traders who
can, and will drive him out of the market, unless he is backed by
easy and cheap means of transport. Take the case of Coomassie now.
A merchant, let us say, wants to take up from the Coast to Coomassie
3,000 pounds worth of goods to trade with. To transport this he has
to employ 1,300 carriers at one shilling and three pence per day a
head. The time taken is eight days there, and eight days back, =
sixteen days, which figures out at 1,300 pounds, without allowing
for loss and damage. In order to buy produce with these goods that
will cover this, and all shipping expenses, etc., he would have to
sell at a far higher figure in Coomassie than he would on the sea-
coast, and the native traders would easily oust him from the market.
Moreover so long as a district is in the hands of native traders
there is no advance made, and no development goes forward; and it
would be a grave error to allow this to take place at Coomassie, now
that we have at last done what we should have done in 1874 and taken
actual possession, for Coomassie is a grand position that, if
properly managed for a few years, will become a great interior
market, attracting to itself the routes of interior trade. It is
not now a great centre; because of the oppression and usury which
the Kings of Ashantee have inflicted on all in their power, and
which have caused Coomassie mainly to attract one form of trade,
viz., slaves; who were used in their constant human sacrifices, and
for whom a higher price was procurable here than from the Mohammedan
tribes to the north under French sway. And as for the other trade
stuffs, they have naturally for years drained into the markets of
the French Soudan; instead of through such a country as Ashantee,
into the markets of the English Gold Coast; and so unless we run a
railroad up to encourage the white traders to go inland, and make a
market that will attract these trade routes into Coomassie, we shall
be a few years hence singing out "What's the good of Ashantee?" and
so forth, as is our foolish wont, never realising that the West
Coast is not good unless it is made so by white effort.
The new regime on the Gold Coast is undoubtedly more active than the
old--more alive to the importance of pushing inland and so forth--
and a road is going to be made twenty-five feet wide all the way to
Coomassie, and then beyond it, which is an excellent thing in its
way. But it will not do much for trade, because the pacification of
the country, and the greater security of personal property to the
native, which our rule will afford will aid him in bringing his
goods to the coast, but not so greatly aid our taking our goods
inland, for the carriers will require just as much for carrying
goods along a road, as they do for carrying goods along a bush path,
and rightly too, for it is quite as heavy work for them, and
heavier, as I know from my experience of the governmental road in
Cameroon. In such a country as West Africa there can be no doubt
that a soft bush path with a thick coating of moss and leaves on it,
and shaded from the sun above by the interlacing branches, is far
and away better going than a hard, sunny wide road. This road will
be valuable for military expeditions possibly, but military
expeditions are not everyday affairs on the Gold Coast; and it
cannot be of use for draught animals, because of the horse-sickness
and tsetse fly which occur as soon as you get into the forest behind
the littoral region: so it must not be regarded as an equivalent
for steam transport, as it will only serve to bring down the little
trickle of native trade, and possibly not increase that trickle
much.
The question of transport of course is not confined to the Gold
Coast. Below Lagos there is the great river system, towards which
the trade slowly drains through native hands to the white man's
factories on the river banks, but this trade being in the hands of
native traders is not a fraction of what it would become in the
hands of white men; and any mineral wealth there may be in the
heavily-forested stretches of country remains unworked and unknown.
The difficulty of transport here greatly hampers the exploitation of
the timber wealth, it being utterly useless for the natives to fell
even a fine tree, unless it is so close to a waterway that it can be
floated down to the factory. This it is which causes the ebony,
bar, and cam wood to be cut up by them into small billets which a
man can carry. The French and Germans are both now following the
plan of getting as far as possible into the interior by the
waterways, and then constructing railways. The construction of
these railways is fairly easy, as regards gradients, and absence of
dense forest, when your waterway takes you up to the great park-like
plateau lands which extend, as a general rule, behind the forest
belt, and the inevitable mountain range. The most important of
these railways will be that of M. de Brazza up the Sanga valley in
the direction of the Chad. When this railway is constructed, it
will be the death of the Cameroon and Oil River trade, more
particularly of the latter, for in the Cameroons the Germans have
broken down the monopoly of the coast tribes, which we in our
possessions under the Niger Coast Protectorate have not. The Niger
Company has broken through, and taken full possession of a great
interior, doing a bit of work of which every Englishman should feel
proud, for it is the only thing in West Africa that places us on a
level with the French and Germans in courage and enterprise in
penetrating the interior, and fortunately the regions taken over by
the Company are rich and not like the Senegal "made of sand and
savage savages." Where in West Africa outside the Company will you
find men worthy as explorers to be named in the same breath with de
Brazza, Captain Binger, and Zintgraff?
Some day, I fear when it will be too late, we shall realise the
foolishness of sticking down on the sea coast, tidying up our
settlements, establishing schools, and drains, and we shall find our
possessions in the Rivers and along the Gold Coast valueless,
particularly in the Rivers, for the trade will surely drain towards
the markets along the line of the French railroad behind them, for
the middlemen tribe that we foster exact a toll of seventy-five per
cent. on the trade that comes through their hands, and the English
Government is showing great signs of an inclination to impose such
duties on the only stuff the native cares much for--alcohol--that he
will take his goods to the market where he can get his alcohol; even
if he pays a toll to these markets of fifty per cent. But of this I
will speak later, and we will return to the question of transport.
Mr. Scott Elliot, {463} speaking on this subject as regarding East
African regions, has given us a most interesting contribution based
on his personal experience, and official figures. As many of his
observations and figures are equally applicable to the West Coast, I
hope I may be forgiven for quoting him. His criticism is in favour
of the utilisation of every mile of waterway available. He says,
regarding the Victoria Nyanza, that "it is possible to place on it a
steamer at the cost of 12,677 pounds. Taking the cost of
maintenance, fuel and working expenses at 1,200 pounds a year (a
large estimate) a capital expenditure of 53,000 pounds, (13,000
pounds for the steamer and 40,000 pounds to yield three per cent.
interest) would enable this steamer to convey, say thirty tons at
the rate of five to ten miles an hour for 1,600 pounds a year. This
makes it possible to convey a ton at the rate of a halfpenny a mile,
while it would require about 53,000 pounds to build a railway only
eighteen miles long."
The Congo Free State railway I am informed, has cost, at a rate per
mile, something like eight times this. Further on Mr. Elliot says:
"In America the surplus population of Europe, and the markets in the
Eastern States have made railway development profitable on the
whole, but in Africa, until pioneer work has been done, and the
prospects of colonisation and plantation are sufficiently definite
and settled to induce colonists to go out in considerable numbers,
it will be ruinous to build a long railway line."
I do not quote these figures to discourage the West Coaster from his
railway, but only to induce him to get his Government to make it in
the proper direction, namely, into the interior, where further
development of trade is possible. Judging from other things in
English colonies, I should expect, if left to the spirit of English
(West Coast) enterprise, it would run in a line that would enable
the engine drivers to keep an eye on the Atlantic Ocean instead of
the direction in which it is high time our eyes should be turned. I
confess I am not an enthusiast on civilising the African. My idea
is that the French method of dealing with Africa is the best at
present. Get as much of the continent as possible down on the map
as yours, make your flag wherever you go a sacred thing to the
native--a thing he dare not attack. Then, when you have done this,
you may abandon the French plan, and gradually develop the trade in
an English manner, but not in the English manner a la Sierra Leone.
But do your pioneer work first. There is a very excellent
substratum for English pioneer work on our Coasts in the trading
community, for trade is the great key to the African's heart, and
everywhere the English trader and his goods stand high in West
African esteem. This pioneer work must be undertaken, or subsidised
by the Government as it has been in the French possessions, for the
West Coast does not offer those inducements to the ordinary
traveller that, let us say, East Africa with its magnificent herds
of big game, or the northern frontier of India, with its mountains
and its interesting forms, relics, and monuments of a high culture,
offer. Travel in West Africa is very hard work, and very unhealthy.
There are many men who would not hesitate for a moment to go there,
were the dangers of the native savagery the chief drawback; but they
hesitate before a trip which means, in all probability, month after
month of tramping through wet gloomy forests with a swamp here and
there for a change, {465} and which will, the chances are 100 to 1,
end in their dying ignominiously of fever in some wretched squalid
village.
Reckless expenditure of money in attempts to open up the country is
to be deprecated, for this hampers its future terribly, even if
attended with partial success, the mortgage being too heavy for the
estate, as the Congo Free State finances show; and if it is attended
with failure it discourages further efforts. What we want at
present in West Africa are three or four Bingers and Zintgraffs to
extend our possessions northwards, eastwards, and south-eastwards,
until they command the interior trade routes. And there is no
reason that these men should enter from the West Coast, getting
themselves killed, or half killed, with fever, before they reach
their work. Uganda, if half one hears of it is true, would be a
very suitable base for them to start from, and then travelling west
they might come down to the present limit of our West Coast
possessions. This belt of territory across the continent would give
us control of, and place us in touch with, the whole of the interior
trade. A belt from north to south in Africa--thanks to our
supineness and folly--we can now never have.
I will now briefly deal with the second sub-division I spoke of some
pages back--the possibility of introducing new trade exports by
means of cultivating plantations. The soil of West Africa is
extremely rich in places, but by no means so in all, for vast tracts
of it are mangrove swamps, and other vast tracts of it are miserably
poor, sour, sandy clay. It is impossible in the space at my
disposal to enter into a full description of the localities where
these unprofitable districts occur, but you will find them here and
there all along the Coast after leaving Sierra Leone. The sour clay
seems to be new soil recently promoted into the mainland from dried-
up mangrove swamps, and a good rough rule is, do not start a
plantation on soil that is not growing hard-wood forest.
Considerable areas on the Gold Coast, even though the soil is good,
are now useless for cultivation, on account of their having been
deforested by the natives' wasteful way of making their farms,
coupled with the harmattan and the long dry season.
The regions of richest soil are not in our possessions, but in those
of Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal, namely, the Cameroons and
its volcanic island series, Fernando Po, Principe, and San Thome.
The rich volcanic earths of these places will enable them to compete
in the matter of plantations with any part of the known world.
Cameroons is undoubtedly the best of these, because of its superior
river supply, and although not in the region of the double seasons
it is just on the northern limit of them, and the height of the
Peak--13,760 feet--condenses the water-laden air from its
surrounding swamps and the Atlantic, so that rain is pretty frequent
throughout the year. When within the region of the double seasons
just south of Cameroons you have a rainfall no heavier than that of
the Rivers, yet better distributed, an essential point for the
prosperity of such plantations as those of tea and tobacco, which
require showers once a month. To the north of Cameroons there is no
prospect of either of these well-paying articles being produced in a
quantity, or quality, that would compete with South America, India,
or the Malayan regions, and they will have to depend in the matter
of plantations on coffee and cacao. Below Cameroons, Congo Francais
possesses the richest soil and an excellently arranged climate. The
lower Congo soil is bad and poor close to the river. Kacongo, the
bit of Portuguese territory to the north of the Congo banks, and
that part of Angola as far as the River Bingo, are pretty much the
same make of country as Congo Francais, only less heavily forested.
The whole of Angola is an immensely rich region, save just round
Loanda where the land is sand-logged for about fifty square miles,
and those regions to the extreme south and south-east, which are in
the Kalahari desert regions.
Coffee grows wild throughout Angola in those districts removed from
the dry coast-lands--in the districts of Golongo Alto and Cassengo
in great profusion, and you can go through utterly uncultivated
stretches of it, thirty miles of it at a time. The natives, now the
merchants have taught them its value, are collecting this wild berry
and bringing it in in quantities, and in addition the English firm
of Newton and Carnegie have started plantations up at Cassengo. The
greater part of these plantations consist of clearing and taking
care of the wild coffee, but in addition regularly planting and
cultivating young trees, as it is found that the yield per tree is
immensely increased by cultivation.
Six hundred to eight hundred bags a month were shipped from
Ambrizette alone when I was there in 1893, and the amount has since
increased and will still further increase when that leisurely, but
very worthy little railroad line, which proudly calls itself the
Royal Trans-African, shall have got its sections made up into the
coffee district. It was about thirty miles off at Ambaca when I was
in Angola, but by now it may have got further. However, I do not
think it is very likely to have gone far, and I have a persuasion
that that railroad will not become trans-African in my day; still it
has an "immediate future" compared with that which any other West
Coast railway can expect; for besides the coffee, Angola is rich in
malachite and gum of high quality, and its superior government will
attract the rubber from the Kassai region of the Congo Free State.
In our own possessions the making of plantations is being carried on
with much energy by Messrs. Miller Brothers on the Gold Coast, {468}
by several private capitalists, including Mr. A. L. Jones of
Liverpool, at Lagos; by the Royal Niger Company in their territory,
and by several head Agents in the Niger Coast Protectorate. Sir
Claude MacDonald offered every inducement to this trade development,
and gave great material help by founding a botanical station at Old
Calabar, where plants could be obtained. He did his utmost to try
and get the natives to embark on plantation-making, ably seconded by
Mr. Billington, the botanist in charge of the botanical station, who
wrote an essay in Effik on coffee growing and cultivation at large
for their special help and guidance. A few chiefs, to oblige, took
coffee plants, but they are not enthusiastic, for the slaves that
would be required to tend coffee and keep it clean, in this vigorous
forest region, are more profitably employed now in preparing palm
oil.
Of the coffee plantation at Man o' War Bay I have already spoken,
and of those in Congo Francais, which, although not at present
shipping like the German plantation, will soon be doing so. In
addition to coffee and cacao attempts are being made in Congo
Francais to introduce the Para rubber tree, a large plantation of
which I frequently visited near Libreville, and found to be doing
well. This would be an excellent tree to plant in among coffee, for
it is very clean and tidy, and seems as if it would take to West
Africa like a duck to water, but it is not a quick cropper, and I am
informed must be left at least three or four years before it is
tapped at all, so, as the gardening books would say, it should be
planted early.
It is very possible many other trees producing tropical products
valuable in commerce might be introduced successfully into West
Africa. The cultivation of cloves and nutmegs would repay here
well, for allied species of trees and shrubs are indigenous, but the
first of these trees takes a long time before coming into bearing
and the cultivation of the second is a speculative affair. Allspice
I have found growing wild in several districts, but in no large
quantity. Cotton with a fine long staple grows wild in quantities
wherever there is open ground, but it is not cultivated by the
natives; and when attempts have been made to get them to collect it
they do so, but bring it in very dirty, and the traders having no
machinery to compress it like that used in America, it does not pay
to ship. Indigo is common everywhere along the Coast and used by
the natives for dyeing, as is also a teazle, which gives a very fine
permanent maroon; and besides these there are many other dyes and
drugs used by them--colocynth, datura soap bark, cardamom, ginger,
peppers, strophanthus, nux vomica, etc., etc., but the difficulty of
getting these things brought in to the traders in sufficient
quantities prevents their being exported to any considerable extent.
Tea has not been tried, and is barely worth trying, though there is
little doubt it would grow in Cameroons and Congo Francais where it
would have an excellent climate and pretty nearly any elevation it
liked. But I believe tea has of late years been discovered to be
like coffee, not such a stickler for elevation as it used to be
thought, merely requiring not to have its roots in standing water.
Vanilla grows with great luxuriance in Cameroons. In Victoria a
grove of gigantic cacao trees is heavily overgrown with this lovely
orchid in a most perfect way. It does not seem to injure the cacaos
in the least, and there are other kinds of trees it will take
equally well to. I saw it growing happily and luxuriantly under the
direction of the Roman Catholic Mission at Landana; but it requires
a continuously damp climate. Vanilla when once started gives little
or no trouble, and its pods do not require any very careful
manipulation before sending to Europe, and this is a very important
point, for a great hindrance--THE great hindrance to plantation
enterprise on the Coast--is the difficulty of getting neat-handed
labourers. I had once the pleasure of meeting a Dutch gentleman--a
plantation expert, who had been sent down the West Coast by a firm
trading there, and also in the Malay Archipelago--prospecting, at a
heavy fee, to see whether it would pay the firm to open up
plantations there better than in Malaysia. I believe his final
judgment was adverse to the West African plan, because of the
difficulty of getting skilful natives to tend young plants, and
prepare the products. Tea he regarded as quite hopeless from this
difficulty, and he said he did not think you would ever get Africans
at as cheap a rate, or so deftly fingered to roll tea, as you can
get Asiatics. No one knows until they have tried it the trouble it
is to get an African to do things carefully; but it is a trouble,
not an impossibility. If you don't go off with fever from sheer
worry and vexation the thing can be done, but in the meantime he is
maddening. I have had many a day's work on plantations instructing
cheerful, willing, apparently intelligent Ethiopians of various
sexes and sizes on the mortal crime of hoeing up young coffee
plants. They have quite seen it. "Oh, Lor! massa, I no fit to do
dem thing." Aren't they! You go along to-morrow morning, and
you'll find your most promising pupils laying around them with their
hoes, talking about the disgraceful way their dearest friends go on,
and destroying young coffee right and left. They are just as bad,
if not slightly worse, particularly the ladies, when it comes to
picking coffee. As soon as your eye is off them, the bough is off
the tree. I know one planter who leads the life of the Surprise
Captain in W. H. S. Gilbert's ballad, lurking among his groves, and
suddenly appearing among his pickers. This, he says, has given them
a feeling of uncertainty as to when and where he may appear,
kassengo and all, that has done much to preserve his plantation; but
it is a wearying life, not what he expected from his book on coffee-
plantations, which had a frontispiece depicting a planter seated in
his verandah, with a tumblerful of something cool at his right hand,
and a pipe in his mouth, contemplating a large plantation full of
industrious natives picking berries into baskets on all sides.
LABOUR.--The labour problem is one that must be studied and solved
before West Africa can advance much further than its present culture
condition, because the climate is such that the country cannot be
worked by white labourers; and that this state of affairs will
remain as it is until some true specific is discovered for malaria,
something important happens to the angle of the earth's axis, or
some radical change takes place in the nature of the sun, is the
opinion of all acquainted with the region. The West African climate
shows no signs of improving whatsoever. If it shows any sign of
alteration it is for the worse, for of late years two extremely
deadly forms of fever have come into notice here, malarial typhoid
and blackwater. The malarial typhoid seems confined to districts
where a good deal of European attention has been given to drainage
systems, which is in itself discouraging.
The labour problem has been imported with European civilisation.
The civilisation has not got on to any considerable extent, but the
labour problem has; for, being a malignant nuisance, it has taken to
West Africa as a duck to water, and it is now flourishing. It has
not yet, however, attained its zenith; it is just waiting for the
abolition of domestic slavery for that--and then! Meanwhile it
grows with the demand for hands to carry on plantation work, and
public works. On the West Coast--that is to say, from Sierra Leone
to Cameroon--it is worse than on the South West Coast from Cameroon
to Benguella.
The Kruman, the Accra, and the Sierra Leonian are at present on the
West Coast the only solution available. The first is as fine a
ship-and-beach-man as you could reasonably wish for, but no good for
plantation work. The second is, thanks to the practical training he
has received from the Basel Mission, a very fair artisan, cook, or
clerk, but also no good for plantation work, except as an overseer.
The third is a poor artisan, an excellent clerk, or subordinate
official, but so unreliable in the matter of honesty as to be nearly
reliable to swindle any employer. Lagos turns out a large quantity
of educated natives, but owing to the growing prosperity of the
colony, these are nearly all engaged in Lagos itself.
An important but somewhat neglected factor in the problem is the
nature of the West African native, and as I think a calm and
unbiassed study of this factor would give us the satisfactory
solution to the problem, I venture to give my own observations on
it.
The Kruboys, as the natives of the Grain Coast are called,
irrespective of the age of the individual, by the white men--the
Menekussi as the Effiks call them--are the most important people of
West Africa; for without their help the working of the Coast would
cost more lives than it already does, and would be in fact
practically impossible. Ever since vessels have regularly
frequented the Bights, the Kruman has had the helpful habit of
shipping himself off on board, and doing all the heavy work. Their
first tutors were the slavers, who initiated them into the habit,
and instructed them in ship's work, that they might have the benefit
of their services in working their vessels along the Slave Coast.
And in order to prevent any Kruboy being carried off as a slave by
mistake, which would have prejudiced these useful allies, the
slavers persuaded them always to tattoo a band of basket-work
pattern down their foreheads and out on to the tip of their broad
noses: this is the most extensive bit of real tattoo that I know of
in West Africa, and the Kruboys still keep the fashion. Their next
tutors were the traders, who have taught and still teach them beach
work; how to handle cargo, try oil, and make themselves generally
useful in a factory,--"learn sense," as the Kruboy himself puts it.
To religious teaching the Kruboy seems for an African singularly
impervious, but the two lessons he has learnt--ship and shore work--
are the best that the white has so far taught the black, because
unattended with the evil consequences that have followed the other
lessons. Unfortunately, the Kruman of the Grain Coast and the
Cabinda of the South West Coast, are the only two tribes that have
had the benefit of this kind of education, but there are many other
tribes who, had circumstances led the trader and the slaver to turn
their attention to them, would have done their tutors quite as much
credit. But circumstances did not, and so nowadays, just as a
hundred years ago, you must get the Kruboy to help you if you are
going to do any work, missionary or mercantile, from Sierra Leone to
Cameroon. Below Cameroon the Kruboy does not like to go, except to
the beach of an English or German house, for he has suffered much
from the Congo Free State, and from Spaniards and Portuguese, who
have not respected his feelings in the matter of wanting to return
every year, or every two years at the most, to his own country, and
his rooted aversion to agricultural work and carrying loads about
the bush.
The pay of the Kruboy averages 1 pounds a month. There are
modifications in the way in which this sum is reached; for example,
some missionaries pay each man 20 pounds a year, but then he has to
find his own chop. Some South-West Coast traders pay 8 pounds a
year, but they find their boys entirely, and well, in food, and give
them a cloth a week. English men-of-war on the West African Station
have, like other vessels to take them on to save the white crew, and
they pay the Kruboys the same as they pay the white men, i.e., 4
pounds 10s. a month with rations. Needless to say, men-of-war are
popular, although service on board them cuts our friend off from
almost every chance of stealing chickens and other things of which I
may not speak, as Herodotus would say. I do not know the manner in
which men-of-war pay off the Kruboy, but I think in hard cash. In
the circles of society I most mix with on the Coast--the mercantile
marine and the trading--he is always paid in goods, in cloth, gin,
guns, tobacco, gunpowder, etc., with little concessions to his
individual fancy in the matter, for each of these articles has a
known value, and just as one of our coins can be changed, so you can
get here change for a gun or any other trade article.
The Kruboy much prefers being paid off in goods. I well remember an
exquisite scene between Captain --- and King Koffee of the Kru Coast
when the subject of engaging boys was being shouted over one voyage
out. The Captain at that time thought I was a W.W.T.A.A. and
ostentatiously wanted Koffee to let him pay off the boys he was
engaging to work the ship in money, and not in gin and gunpowder.
King Koffee's face was a study. If Captain ---, whom he knew of
old, had stood on his head and turned bright blue all over with
yellow spots, before his eyes, it would not have been anything like
such a shock to his Majesty. "What for good him ting, Cappy?" he
said, interrogation and astonishment ringing in every word. "What
for good him ting for We country, Cappy? I suppose you gib gin,
tobacco, gun he be fit for trade, but money--" Here his Majesty's
feelings flew ahead of the Royal command of language, great as that
was, and he expectorated with profound feeling and expression.
Captain ---'s expressive countenance was the battle ground of
despair and grief at being thus forced to have anything to do with a
traffic unpopular in missionary circles. He however controlled his
feelings sufficiently to carefully arrange the due amount of each
article to be paid, and the affair was settled.
The somewhat cumbrous wage the Kruboy gets at the end of his term of
service, minus those things he has had on account and plus those
things he has "found," is certainly a source of great worry to our
friend. He obtains a box from the carpenter of the factory, or buys
a tin one, and puts therein his tobacco and small things, and then
he buys a padlock and locks his box of treasure up, hanging the key
with his other ju-jus round his neck, and then he has peace
regarding this section of his belongings. Peace at present, for the
day must some time dawn when an experimental genius shall arise
among his fellow countrymen, who will try and see if one key will
not open two locks. When this possibility becomes known I can
foresee nothing for the Kruboy but nervous breakdown; for even now,
with his mind at rest regarding the things in his box, he lives in a
state of constant anxiety about those out of it, which have to lie
on the deck during the return voyage to his home. He has to keep a
vigilant eye on them by day, and sleep spread out over them by
night, for fear of his companions stealing them. Why he should take
all this trouble about his things on his voyage home I can't make
out, if what is currently reported is true, that all the wages
earned by the working boys become the property of the Elders of his
tribe when he returns to them. I myself rather doubt if this is the
case, but expect there is a very heavy tax levied on them, for your
Kruboy is very much a married man, and the Elders of his tribe have
to support and protect his wives and families when he is away at
work, and I should not wonder if the law was that these said wives
and families "revert to the State" if the boy fails to return within
something like his appointed time. There must be something besides
nostalgia to account for the dreadful worry and apprehension shown
by a detained Kruboy. I am sure the tax is heavily taken in cloth,
for the boys told me that if it were made up into garments for
themselves they did not have to part with it on their return.
Needless to say, this makes our friend turn his attention to
needlework during his return voyage and many a time I have seen the
main deck looking as if it had been taken possession of by a
demoniacal Dorcas working party.
Strangely little is known of the laws and language of these Krumen,
considering how close the association is between them and the
whites. This arises, I think, not from the difficulty of learning
their language, but from the ease and fluency with which they speak
their version of our own--Kru-English, or "trade English," as it is
called, and it is therefore unnecessary for a hot and wearied white
man to learn "Kru mouth." What particularly makes me think this is
the case is, that I have picked up a little of it, and I found that
I could make a Kruman understand what I was driving at with this and
my small stock of Bassa mouth and Timneh, on occasions when I wished
to say something to him I did not want generally understood. But
the main points regarding Krumen are well enough known by old
Coasters--their willingness to work if well fed, and their habit of
engaging for twelve-month terms of work and then returning to "We
country." A trader who is satisfied with a boy gives him, when he
leaves, a bit of paper telling the captain of any vessel that he
will pay the boy's passage to his factory again, when he is willing
to come. The period that a boy remains in his beloved "We country"
seems to be until his allowance of his own earnings is expended.
One can picture to one's self some sad partings in that far-away
dark land. "My loves," says the Kruboy to his families, his voice
heavy with tears, "I must go. There is no more cloth, I have
nothing between me and an easily shocked world but this decayed
filament of cotton." And then his families weep with him, or, what
is more likely, but not so literary, expectorate with emotion, and
he tears himself away from them and comes on board the passing
steamer in the uniform of Gunga Din--"nothing much before and rather
less than half of that behind," and goes down Coast on the strength
of the little bit of paper from his white master which he has
carefully treasured, and works like a nigger in the good sense of
the term for another spell, to earn more goods for his home-folk.
Those boys who are first starting on travelling to work, and those
without books, have no difficulty in getting passages on the
steamers, for a captain is glad to get as many on board as he can,
being sure to get their passage money and a premium for them, so
great is the demand for Kru labour. But even this help to working
the West Coast has been much interfered with of late years by the
action of the French Government in imposing a tax per head on all
labourers leaving their ports on the Ivory Coast. This tax, I
believe, is now removed or much reduced; but as for the Liberian
Republic, it simply gets its revenue in an utterly unjustifiable way
out of taxing the Krumen who ship as labourers. The Krumen are no
property of theirs, and they dare not interfere with them on shore;
but owing to that little transaction in the celebrated Rubber
Monopoly, the Liberians became possessed of some ready cash, which,
with great foresight, they invested in two little gun-boats which
enabled them to enforce their tax on the Krumen in their small
canoes. I do not feel so sympathetic with the Krumen or their
employers in this matter as I should, for the Krumen are silly hens
not to go and wipe out Liberia on shore, and the white men are silly
hens not to--but I had better leave that opinion unexpressed.
The power of managing Kruboys is a great accomplishment for any one
working the West Coast. One man will get 20 per cent. more work out
of his staff, and always have them cheerful, fit, and ready; while
another will get very little out of the same set of men except
vexation to himself, and accidents to his goods; but this very
necessary and important factor in trade is not to be taught with
ink. Some men fall into the proper way of managing the boys very
quickly, others may have years of experience and yet fail to learn
it. The rule is, make them respect you, and make them like you, and
then the thing is done; but first dealing with the Kruboy, with all
his good points, is very trying work, and they give the new hand an
awful time of it while they are experimenting on him to see how far
they can do him. They do this very cleverly, but shortsightedly,
more Africano, for they spoil the tempers of half the white men whom
they have to deal with. It is not necessary to treat them brutally,
in fact it does not pay to do so, but it is necessary to treat them
severely, to keep a steady hand over them. Never let them become
familiar, never let them see you have made a mistake. When you make
a mistake in giving them an order let it be understood that that way
of doing a thing is a peculiarly artful dodge of your own, and if it
fails, that it is their fault. They will quite realise this if it
is properly managed. I speak from experience; for example, once,
owing to the superior sex being on its back with fever and sending
its temperature up with worrying about getting some ebony logs off
to a bothering wretch of a river steamer that must needs come
yelling along for cargo just then, I said, "You leave it to me, I'll
get it shipped all right," and proceeded, with the help of three
Kruboys, to raft that ebony off. I saw as soon as I had embarked on
the affair, from the Kruboys' manner, I was down the wrong path, but
how, or why, I did not see until a neat arrangement of ebony billets
tied together with tie-tie was in the water. Then I saw that I had
constructed an excellent sounding apparatus for finding out the
depth of water in the river; and that ebony had an affinity for the
bottom of water, not for the top. The situation was a trying one
and the way the captain of the vessel kept dancing about his deck
saying things in a foreign tongue, but quite comprehensible, was
distracting; but I did not devote myself to giving him the
information he asked for, as to what PARTICULAR kind of idiot I was,
because he was neither a mad doctor nor an ethnologist and had no
right to the information; but I put a raft on the line of a very
light wood we had a big store of, and this held up the ebony, and
the current carried it down to the steamer all right. Then we
hauled the line home and sent him some more on the patent plan, but,
just to hurry up, you understand, and not delay the ship, a deadly
crime, SOME of that ebony went off in a canoe and all ended happily,
and the Kruboys regarded themselves as having been the spectators of
another manifestation of white intelligence. In defence of the
captain's observations, I must say he could not see me because I was
deploying behind a woodstack; nevertheless, I do not mean to say
this method of shipping ebony is a good one. I shall not try it
again in a hurry, and the situation cannot be pulled through unless
you have, as Allah gave me, a very swift current; and although, when
the thing went well, I DID say things from behind the woodstack to
the captain, I did not feel justified in accepting his apologetic
invitation to come on board and have a drink.
My experiences with Kruboys would, if written in full, make an
excellent manual for a new-comer, but they are too lengthy for this
chapter. My first experience with them on a small bush journey aged
me very much; and ever since I have shirked chaperoning Kruboys
about the West African bush among ticklish-tempered native gentlemen
and their forward hussies of wives.
I have always admired men for their strength, their courage, their
enterprise, their unceasing struggle for the beyond--the something
else, but not until I had to deal with Krumen did I realise the
vastness to which this latter characteristic of theirs could attain.
One might have been excused for thinking that a man without rates
and taxes, without pockets, and without the manifold, want-creating
culture of modern European civilisation and education would
necessarily have been bounded, to some extent, in his desires. But
one would have been wrong, profoundly wrong, in so thinking, for the
Kruman yearns after, and duns for, as many things for his body as
the lamented Faustus did for his soul, and away among the apes this
interesting creature would have to go, at once, if the wanting of
little were a crucial test for the determination of the family
termed by the scientific world the Hominidae. Later, when I got to
know the Krumen well, I learnt that they desired not only the vast
majority of the articles that they saw, but did more--obtained them-
-at all events some of them, without asking me for them; such
commodities, for example, as fowls, palm wine, old tins and bottles,
and other gentlemen's wives were never safe. One of that first gang
of boys showed self-help to such a remarkable degree that I
christened him Smiles. His name--You-be-d--d--being both protracted
and improper, called for change of some sort, but even this brought
no comfort to one still hampered with conventional ideas regarding
property, and frequent roll-calls were found necessary, so that the
crimes of my friend Smiles and his fellows might not accumulate to
an unmanageable extent.
This used to be the sort of thing--"Where them Nettlerash lib?" "He
lib for drunk, Massa." "Where them Smiles?" "He lib for town, for
steal, Massa." "Where them Black Man Misery?" But I draw a veil
over the confessional, for there is simply no artistic reticence
about your Kruman when he is telling the truth, or otherwise,
regarding a fellow creature.
After accumulating with this gang enough experience to fill a hat
(remembering always "one of the worst things you can do in West
Africa is to worry yourself") I bethought me of the advice I had
received from my cousin Rose Kingsley, who had successfully ridden
through Mexico when Mexico was having a rather worse revolution than
usual, "to always preserve a firm manner." I thought I would try
this on those Kruboys and said "NO" in place of "I wish you would
not do that, please." I can't say it was an immediate success.
During this period we came across a trader's lonely store wherein he
had a consignment of red parasols. After these appalling objects
the souls of my Krumen hungered with a great desire. "NO," said I,
in my severest tone, and after buying other things, we passed on.
Imagine my horror, therefore, hours afterwards and miles away, to
find my precious crew had got a red parasol apiece. Previous
experience quite justified me in thinking that these had been
stolen; and I pictured to myself my Portuguese friends, whose
territory I was then in, commenting upon the incident, and reviling
me as another instance of how the brutal English go looting through
the land. I found, however, I was wrong, for the parasols had been
"dashed" my rapacious rascals "for top," and the last one connected
with the affair who deserved pity was the trader from whom I had
believed them stolen. It was I, not he, who suffered, for it was
the wet season in West Africa and those red parasols ran. To this
day my scientific soul has never been able to account for the vast
body of crimson dye those miserable cotton things poured out,
plentifully drenching myself and their owners, the Kruboys, and
everything we associated with that day. I am quite prepared to hear
that some subsequent wanderer has found a red trail in Africa itself
like that one so often sees upon the maps. When they do, I hereby
claim that real red trail as mine.
I confess I like the African on the whole, a thing I never expected
to do when I went to the Coast with the idea that he was a degraded,
savage, cruel brute; but that is a trifling error you soon get rid
of when you know him. The Kruboy is decidedly the most likeable of
all Africans that I know. Wherein his charm lies is difficult to
describe, and you certainly want the patience of Job, and a
conscience made of stretching leather to deal with the Kruboy in the
African climate, and live. In his better manifestations he reminds
me of that charming personality, the Irish peasant, for though he
lacks the sparkle, he is full of humour, and is the laziest and the
most industrious of mankind. He lies and tells the truth in such a
hopelessly uncertain manner that you cannot rely on him for either.
He is ungrateful and faithful to the death, honest and thievish, all
in one and the same specimen of him.
Ingratitude is a crime laid very frequently to the score of all
Africans, but I think unfairly; certainly I have never had to
complain of it, and the Krumen often show gratitude for good
treatment in a grand way. The way those Kruboys of gallant Captain
Lane helped him work Lagos Bar and save lives by the dozen from the
stranded ships on it and hauled their "Massa" out from among the
sharkey foam every time he went into it, on the lifeboat upsetting,
would have done credit to Deal or Norfolk lifeboat men, but the
secret of their devotion is their personal attachment. They do not
save people out of surf on abstract moral principles. The African
at large is not an enthusiast on moral principles, and one and all
they'll let nature take its course if they don't feel keen on a man
surviving.
Half the African's ingratitude, although it may look very bad on
paper, is really not so very bad; for half the time you have been
asking him to be grateful to you for doing to, or giving him things
he does not care a row of pins about. I have quite his feelings,
for example, for half the things in civilised countries I am
expected to be glad to get. "Oh, how nice it must be to be able to
get about in cars, omnibuses and railway trains again!" Is it?
Well I don't think so, and I do not feel glad over it. Similarly,
we will take an African case of ingratitude. A white friend of mine
put himself to an awful lot of trouble to save the life of one of
his sub-traders who had had an accident, and succeeded. It had been
the custom of the man's wife to bring the trader little presents of
fowls, etc., from time to time, and some time after the accident he
met the lady and told her he had noticed a falling off in her
offerings and he thought her very ungrateful after what he had done
for her husband. She grunted and the next morning she brings in as
a present the most forlorn, skinny, one-and-a-half-feathered chicken
you ever laid eye on, and in answer to the trader's comments she
said: "Massa, fo sure them der chicken no be 'ticularly good
chicken, but fo sure dem der man no be 'ticularly good man. They
go" (they match each other).
I have referred at great length to the Krumen because of their
importance, and also because they are the natives the white men have
more to do with as servants than any other; but methods of getting
on with them are not necessarily applicable to dealing with other
forms of African labourers, such as plantation hands in the Congo
Francais, Angola, and Cameroon. In Cameroon the Germans are now
using largely the Batanga natives on the plantations; the Duallas,
the great trading tribe in Cameroon River, being too lazy to do any
heavy work; and they have also tried to import labourers from Togo
Land, but this attempt was not a success, ending in the revolt of
1894, which lost several white lives. The public work is carried
on, as it is in our own colonies, by the criminals in the chain-
gang. The Germans have had many accusations hurled against them by
people of their own nationality, but on the whole these "atrocities"
have been much exaggerated and only half understood; and certainly
have not amounted to anything like the things that have gone on in
the "philanthropic" Congo Free State. The food given out by the
German Government is the best Government rations given on the whole
West Coast. When they have allowed me to have some of their native
employes, as when I was up Cameroon Mountain, for example, I bought
rations from the Government stores for them, and was much struck by
the soundness and good quality of both rice and beef, and the
rations they gave out to those Dahomeyans or Togolanders who
revolted was so much more than they could, or cared to eat, that
they used to sell much of it to the Duallas in Bell Town. This is
not open to the criticism that the stuff was too bad for the
Togolanders to eat, as was once said to me by a philanthropic German
who had never been to the Coast, because the Duallas are a rich
tribe, perfectly free traders in the matter, able to go to the river
factories and buy provisions there had they wished to, and so would
not have bought the Government rations unless they were worth
having. The great point that has brought the Germans into disrepute
with the natives employed by them is their military spirit, which
gives rise to a desire to regulate everything; and that other
attribute of the military spirit, nagging. You should never nag an
African, it only makes him bothered and then sulky, and when he's
sulky he'll lie down and die to spite you. But in spite of the
Germans being over-given to this unpleasant habit of military
regularity and so on, the natives from the Kru Coast and from Bassa
and the French Ivory Coast return to them time after time for spells
of work, so there must be grave exaggeration regarding their bad
treatment, for these natives are perfectly free in the matter.
The French use Loango boys for factory hands, and these people are
very bright and intelligent, but as a M'pongwe, who knew them well,
said: "They are much too likely to be devils to be good too much"
and are undoubtedly given to poisoning, which is an unpleasant habit
in a house servant. Their military force are composed of Senegalese
Laptot, very fine, fierce fellows, superior, I believe, as fighting
men to our Hausas, and very devoted to, and well treated by, their
French officers.