Great as is the delay and difficulty placed in the way of the
development of the immense natural resources of West Africa by the
labour problem, there is another cause of delay to this development
greater and more terrible by far--namely, the deadliness of the
climate. "Nothing hinders a man, Miss Kingsley, half so much as
dying," a friend said to me the other day, after nearly putting his
opinion to a practical test. Other parts of the world have more
sensational outbreaks of death from epidemics of yellow fever and
cholera, but there is no other region in the world that can match
West Africa for the steady kill, kill, kill that its malaria works
on the white men who come under its influence.
Malaria you will hear glibly talked of; but what malaria means and
consists of you will find few men ready to attempt to tell you, and
these few by no means of a tale. It is very strange that this
terrible form of disease has not attracted more scientific
investigators, considering the enormous mortality it causes
throughout the tropics and sub-tropics. A few years since, when the
peculiar microbes of everything from measles to miracles were being
"isolated," several bacteriologists isolated the malarial microbe,
only unfortunately they did not all isolate the same one. A resume
of the various claims of these microbes is impossible here, and
whether one of them was the true cause, or whether they all have an
equal claim to this position, is not yet clear; for malaria, as far
as I have seen or read of it seems to be not so much one distinct
form of fever as a group of fevers--a genus, not a species. Many
things point to this being the case; particularly the different
forms so called malarial poisoning takes in different localities.
This subject may be also subdivided and complicated by going into
the controversy as to whether yellow fever is endemic on the West
Coast or not. That it has occurred there from time to time there
can be no question: at Fernando Po in 1862 and 1866, in Senegal
pretty frequently; and at least one epidemic at Bonny was true
yellow fever. But in the case of each of these outbreaks it is said
to have been imported from South America, into Fernando Po, by ships
from Havana, and into Bonny by a ship which had on her previous run
been down the South American ports with a cargo of mules. The
litter belonging to this mule cargo was not cleared out of her until
she got into Bonny, when it was thrown overside into the river, and
then the yellow fever broke out. But, on the other hand, South
America taxes West Africa--the Guinea Coast--with having first sent
out yellow fever in the cargoes of slaves. This certainly is a
strange statement, because the African native rarely has malarial
fever severely--he has it, and you are often informed So-and-so has
got yellow fever, but he does not often die of it, merely is truly
wretched and sick for a day or so, and then recovers. {516}
Regarding the haematuria there is also controversy. A very
experienced and excellent authority doubts whether this is entirely
a malarial fever, or whether it is not, in some cases at any rate,
brought on by over-doses of quinine, and Dr. Plehn asserts, and his
assertions are heavily backed up by his great success in treating
this fever, that quinine has a very bad influence when the
characteristic symptoms have declared themselves, and that it should
not be given. I hesitate to advise this, because I fear to induce
any one to abandon quinine, which is the great weapon against
malaria, and not from any want of faith in Dr. Plehn, for he has
studied malarial fevers in Cameroon with the greatest energy and
devotion, bringing to bear on the subject a sound German mind
trained in a German way, and than this, for such subjects, no better
thing exists. His brother, also a doctor, was stationed in Cameroon
before him, and is now in the German East African possessions,
similarly working hard, and when these two shall publish the result
of their conjoint investigations, we shall have the most important
contribution to our knowledge of malaria that has ever appeared. It
is impossible to over-rate the importance of such work as this to
West Africa, for the man who will make West Africa pay will be the
scientific man who gives us something more powerful against malaria
than quinine. It is too much to hope that medical men out at work
on the Coast, doctoring day and night, and not only obliged to
doctor, but to nurse their white patients, with the balance of their
time taken up by giving bills of health to steamers, wrestling with
the varied and awful sanitary problems presented by the native town,
etc., can have sufficient time or life left in them to carry on
series of experiments and of cultures; but they can and do supply to
the man in the laboratory at home grand material for him to carry
the thing through; meanwhile we wait for that man and do the best we
can.
The net results of laboratory investigation, according to the French
doctors, is that the mycetozoic malarial bacillus, the microbe of
paludism, is amoeboid in its movements, acting on the red
corpuscles, leaving nothing of them but the dark pigment found in
the skin and organs of malarial subjects. {517} The German doctors
make a practice of making microscopic examinations of the blood of a
patient, saying that the microbes appear at the commencement of an
attack of fever, increase in quantity as the fever increases, and
decrease as it decreases, and from these investigations they are
able to judge fairly accurately how many remissions may be expected;
in fact to judge of the severity of the case which, taken with the
knowledge that quinine only affects malarial microbes at a certain
stage of their existence, is helpful in treatment.
There is, I may remark, a very peculiar point regarding haematuric
disease, the most deadly form of West Coast fever. This disease, so
far as we know, has always been present on the South-West Coast, at
Loando, the Lower Congo and Gaboon, but it is said not to have
appeared in the Rivers until 1881, and then to have spread along the
West Coast. My learned friend, Dr. Plehn, doubts this, and says
people were less observant in those days, but the symptoms of this
fever are so distinct, that I must think it also totally impossible
for it not to have been differentiated from the usual remittent or
intermittent by the old West Coasters if it had occurred there in
former times with anything like the frequency it does now; but we
will leave these theoretical and technical considerations and turn
to the practical side of the question.
You will always find lots of people ready to give advice on fever,
particularly how to avoid getting it, and you will find the most
dogmatic of these are people who have been singularly unlucky in the
matter, or people who know nothing of local conditions. These
latter are the most trying of all to deal with. They tell you,
truly enough no doubt, that the malaria is in the air, in the
exhalations from the ground, which are greatest about sunrise and
sunset, and in the drinking water, and that you must avoid chill,
excessive mental and bodily exertion, that you must never get
anxious, or excited, or lose your temper. Now there is only one--
the drinking water--of this list that you can avoid, for, owing to
the great variety and rapid growth of bacteria encouraged by the
tropical temperature, and the aqueous saturation of the atmosphere
from the heavy rainfall, and the great extent of swamp, etc., it is
practically impossible to destroy them in the air to a satisfactory
extent. I was presented by scientific friends, when I first went to
the West Coast, with two devices supposed to do this. One was a
lamp which you burnt some chemical in; it certainly made a smell
that nothing could live with--but then I am not nothing, and there
are enough smells on the Coast now. I gave it up after the first
half-hour. The other device was a muzzle, a respirator, I should
say. Well! all I have got to say about that is that you need be a
better-looking person than I am to wear a thing like that without
causing panic in a district. Then orders to avoid the night air are
still more difficult to obey--may I ask how you are to do without
air from 6.30 P.M. to 6.30 A.M.? or what other air there is but
night air, heavy with malarious exhalations, available then?
The drinking water you have a better chance with, as I will
presently state; chill you cannot avoid. When you are at work on
the Coast, even with the greatest care, the sudden fall of
temperature that occurs after a tornado coming at the end of a
stewing-hot day, is sure to tell on any one, and as for the orders
regarding temper neither the natives, nor the country, nor the
trade, help you in the least. But still you must remember that
although it is impossible to fully carry out these orders, you can
do a good deal towards doing so, and preventive measures are the
great thing, for it is better to escape fever altogether, or to get
off with a light touch of it, than to make a sensational recovery
from Yellow Jack himself.
There is little doubt that a certain make of man has the best chance
of surviving the Coast climate--an energetic, spare, nervous but
light-hearted creature, capable of enjoying whatever there may be to
enjoy, and incapable of dwelling on discomforts or worries. It is
quite possible for a person of this sort to live, and work hard on
the Coast for a considerable period, possibly with better health
than he would have in England. The full-blooded, corpulent and
vigorous should avoid West Africa like the plague. One after
another, men and women, who looked, as the saying goes, as if you
could take a lease of their lives, I have seen come out and die, and
it gives one a sense of horror when they arrive at your West Coast
station, for you feel a sort of accessory before the fact to murder,
but what can you do except get yourself laughed at as a croaker, and
attend the funeral?
The best ways of avoiding the danger of the night air are--to have
your evening meal about 6.30 or 7,--8 is too late; sleep under a
mosquito curtain whether there are mosquitoes in your district or
not, and have a meal before starting out in the morning, a good hot
cup of tea or coffee and bread and butter, if you can get it, if
not, something left from last night's supper or even aguma.
Regarding meals, of course we come to the vexed question of
stimulants--all the evidence is in favour of alcohol, of a proper
sort, taken at proper times, and in proper quantities, being
extremely valuable. Take the case of the missionaries, who are
almost all teetotalers, they are young men and women who have to
pass a medical examination before coming out, and whose lives on the
Coast are far easier than those of other classes of white men, yet
the mortality among them is far heavier than in any other class.
Mr. Stanley says that wine is the best form of stimulant, but that
it should not be taken before the evening meal. Certainly on the
South-West Coast, where a heavy, but sound, red wine imported from
Portugal is the common drink, the mortality is less than on the West
Coast. Beer has had what one might call a thorough trial in
Cameroon since the German occupation and is held by authorities to
be the cause in part of the number of cases of haematuric fever in
that river being greater than in other districts. But this subject
requires scientific comparative observation on various parts of the
Coast, for Cameroons is at the beginning of the South-West Coast,
whereon the percentage of cases of haematuric to those of
intermittent and remittent fevers is far higher than on the West
Coast.
A comparative study of the diseases of the western division of the
continent would, I should say, repay a scientific doctor, if he
survived. The material he would have to deal with would be
enormous, and in addition to the history of haematuric he would be
confronted with the problem of the form of fever which seems to be a
recent addition to West African afflictions, the so-called typhoid
malaria, which of late years has come into the Rivers, and
apparently come to stay. This fever is, I may remark, practically
unknown at present in the South-West Coast regions where the "sun
for garbage" plan is adhered to. At present the treatment of all
white man's diseases on the Coast practically consists in the
treatment of malaria, because whatever disease a person gets hold of
takes on a malarial type which masks its true nature. Why, I knew a
gentleman who had as fine an attack of the smallpox as any one would
not wish to have, and who for days behaved as if he had remittent,
and then burst out into the characteristic eruption; and only got
all his earthly possessions burnt, and no end of carbolic acid
dressings for his pains.
I do not suppose this does much harm, as the malaria is the main
thing that wants curing; unless Dr. Plehn is right and quinine is
bad in haematuria. His success in dealing with this fever seems to
support his opinion; and the French doctors on the Coast, who dose
it heavily with quinine, have certainly a very heavy percentage of
mortality among their patients with the haematuric, although in the
other forms of malarial fever they very rarely lose a patient.
But to return to those preventive measures, and having done what we
can with the air, we will turn our attention to the drinking water,
for in addition to malarial microbes the drinking and washing water
of West Africa is liable to contain dermazoic and entozoic
organisms, and if you don't take care you will get from it into your
anatomy Tinea versicolor, Tinea decalvans, Tinea circinata, Tinea
sycosis, Tinea favosa, or some other member of that wretched family,
let alone being nearly certain to import Trichocephalus dispar,
Ascaris lumbricoides, Oxyuris vermicularis, and eight varieties of
nematodes, each of them with an awful name of its own, and
unpleasant consequences to you, and, lastly, a peculiar abomination,
a Filaria. This is not, what its euphonious name may lead you to
suppose, a fern, but it is a worm which gets into the white of the
eye and leads there a lively existence, causing distressing itching,
throbbing and pricking sensations, not affecting the sight until it
happens to set up inflammation. I have seen the eyes of natives
simply swarming with these Filariae. A curious thing about the
disease is that it usually commences in one eye, and when that
becomes over-populated an emigration society sets out for the other
eye, travelling thither under the skin of the bridge of the nose,
looking while in transit like the bridge of a pair of spectacles. A
similar, but not identical, worm is fairly common on the Ogowe, and
is liable to get under the epidermis of any part of the body. Like
the one affecting the eye it is very active in its movements,
passing rapidly about under the skin and producing terrible pricking
and itching, but very trifling inflammation in those cases which I
have seen. The treatment consists of getting the thing out, and the
thing to be careful of is to get it out whole, for if any part of it
is left in, suppuration sets in, so even if you are personally
convinced you have got it out successfully it is just as well to
wash out the wound with carbolic or Condy's fluid. The most
frequent sufferers from these Filariae are the natives, but white
people do get them.
Do not confuse this Filaria with the Guinea worm, Filaria
medinensis, which runs up to ten and twelve feet in length, and
whose habits are different. It is more sedentary, but it is in the
drinking water inside small crustacea (cyclops). It appears
commonly in its human host's leg, and rapidly grows, curled round
and round like a watch-spring, showing raised under the skin. The
native treatment of this pest is very cautiously to open the skin
over the head of the worm and secure it between a little cleft bit
of bamboo and then gradually wind the rest of the affair out. Only
a small portion can be wound out at a time, as the wound is very
liable to inflame, and should the worm break, it is certain to
inflame badly, and a terrible wound will result. You cannot wind it
out by the tail because you are then, so to speak, turning its fur
the wrong way, and it catches in the wound.
I should, I may remark, strongly advise any one who likes to start
early on a canoe journey to see that no native member of the party
has a Filaria medinensis on hand; for winding it up is always
reserved for a morning job and as many other jobs are similarly
reserved it makes for delay.
I know, my friends, that you one and all say that the drinking water
at your particular place is of singular beauty and purity, and that
you always tell the boys to filter it; but I am convinced that that
water is no more to be trusted than the boys, and I am lost in
amazement at people of your intelligence trusting the trio of water,
boys, and filter, in the way you do. One favourite haunt of mine
gets its drinking water from a cemented hole in the back yard into
which drains a very strong-smelling black little swamp, which is
surrounded by a ridge of sandy ground, on which are situated several
groups of native houses, whose inhabitants enhance their fortunes
and their drainage by taking in washing. At Fernando Po the other
day I was assured as usual that the water was perfection, "beautiful
spring coming down from the mountain," etc. In the course of the
afternoon affairs took me up the mountain to Basile, for the first
part of the way along the course of the said stream. The first
objects of interest I observed in the drinking-water supply were
four natives washing themselves and their clothes; the next was the
bloated body of a dead goat reposing in a pellucid pool. The path
then left the course of the stream, but on arriving in the region of
its source I found an interesting little colony of Spanish families
which had been imported out whole, children and all, by the
Government. They had a nice, neat little cemetery attached, which
his excellency the doctor told me was "stocked mostly with children,
who were always dying off from worms." Good, so far, for the
drinking water! and as to what that beautiful stream was soaking up
when it was round corners--I did not see it, so I do not know--but I
will be bound it was some abomination or another. But it's no use
talking, it's the same all along, Sierra Leone, Grain Coast, Ivory
Coast, Gold Coast, Lagos, Rivers, Cameroon, Congo Francais, Kacongo,
Congo Belge, and Angola. When you ask your white friends how they
can be so reckless about the water, which, as they know, is a
decoction of the malarious earth, exposed night and day to the
malarious air, they all up and say they are not; they have "got an
awfully good filter, and they tell the boys," etc., and that they
themselves often put wine or spirit in the water to kill the
microbes. Vanity, vanity! At each and every place I know, "men
have died and worms have eaten them." The safest way of dealing
with water I know is to boil it hard for ten minutes at least, and
then instantly pour it into a jar with a narrow neck, which plug up
with a wad of fresh cotton-wool--not a cork; and should you object
to the flat taste of boiled water, plunge into it a bit of red-hot
iron, which will make it more agreeable in taste. BEFORE boiling
the water you can carefully filter it if you like. A good filter is
a very fine thing for clearing drinking water of hippopotami,
crocodiles, water snakes, catfish, etc., and I daresay it will stop
back sixty per cent. of the live or dead African natives that may be
in it; but if you think it is going to stop back the microbe of
marsh fever--my good sir, you are mistaken. And remember that you
must give up cold water, boiled or unboiled, altogether; for if you
take the boiled or filtered water and put it into one of those
water-coolers, and leave it hanging exposed to night air or day on
the verandah, you might just as well save yourself the trouble of
boiling it at all.
Next in danger to the diseases come the remedies for them. Let the
new-comer remember, in dealing with quinine, calomel, arsenic, and
spirits, that they are not castor sugar nor he a glass bottle, but
let him use them all--the two first fairly frequently--not waiting
for an attack of fever and then ladling them into himself with a
spoon. The third, arsenic--a drug much thought of by the French,
who hold that if you establish an arsenic cachexia you do not get a
malarial one--should not be taken except under a doctor's orders.
Spirit is undoubtedly extremely valuable when, from causes beyond
your control, you have got a chill. Remember always your life hangs
on quinine, and that it is most important to keep the system
sensitive to it, which you do not do if you keep on pouring in heavy
doses of it for nothing and you make yourself deaf into the bargain.
I have known people take sixty grains of quinine in a day for a
bilious attack and turn it into a disease they only got through by
the skin of their teeth; but the prophylactic action of quinine is
its great one, as it only has power over malarial microbes at a
certain state of their development,--the fully matured microbe it
does not affect to any great degree--and therefore by taking it when
in a malarious district, say, in a dose of five grams a day, you
keep down the malaria which you are bound, even with every care, to
get into your system. When you have got very chilled or over-tired,
take an extra five grains with a little wine or spirit at any time,
and when you know, by reason of aching head and limbs and a
sensation of a stream of cold water down your back and an awful
temper, that you are in for a fever, send for a doctor if you can.
If, as generally happens, there is no doctor near to send for, take
a compound calomel and colocynth pill, fifteen grains of quinine and
a grain of opium, and go to bed wrapped up in the best blanket
available. When safely there take lashings of hot tea or, what is
better, a hot drink made from fresh lime-juice, strong and without
sugar--fresh limes are almost always to be had--if not, bottled
lime-juice does well. Then, in the hot stage, don't go fanning
about, nor in the perspiring stage, for if you get a chill then you
may turn a mild dose of fever into a fatal one. If, however, you
keep conscientiously rolled in your blanket until the perspiring
stage is well over, and stay in bed till the next morning, the
chances are you will be all right, though a little shaky about the
legs. You should continue the quinine, taking it in five-grain
doses, up to fifteen to twenty grains a day for a week after any
attack of fever, but you must omit the opium pill. The great thing
in West Africa is to keep up your health to a good level, that will
enable you to resist fever, and it is exceedingly difficult for most
people to do this, because of the difficulty of getting exercise and
good food. But do what you may it is almost certain you will get
fever during a residence of more than six months on the Coast, and
the chances are two to one on the Gold Coast that you will die of
it. But, without precautions, you will probably have it within a
fortnight of first landing, and your chances of surviving are almost
nil. With precautions, in the Rivers and on the S.W. Coast your
touch of fever may be a thing inferior in danger and discomfort to a
bad cold in England.
Yet remember, before you elect to cast your lot in with the West
Coasters, that 85 per cent. of them die of fever or return home with
their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that there is no
getting acclimatised to the Coast. There are, it is true, a few men
out there who, although they have been resident in West Africa for
years, have never had fever, but you can count them up on the
fingers of one hand. There is another class who have been out for
twelve months at a time, and have not had a touch of fever; these
you want the fingers of your two hands to count, but no more. By
far the largest class is the third, which is made up of those who
have a slight dose of fever once a fortnight, and some day,
apparently for no extra reason, get a heavy dose and die of it. A
very considerable class is the fourth--those who die within a
fortnight to a month of going ashore.
The fate of a man depends solely on his power of resisting the so-
called malaria, not in his system becoming inured to it. The first
class of men that I have cited have some unknown element in their
constitutions that renders them immune. With the second class the
power of resistance is great, and can be renewed from time to time
by a spell home in a European climate. In the third class the state
is that of cumulative poisoning; in the fourth of acute poisoning.
Let the new-comer who goes to the Coast take the most cheerful view
of these statements and let him regard himself as preordained to be
one of the two most favoured classes. Let him take every care short
of getting frightened, which is as deadly as taking no care at all,
and he may--I sincerely hope he will--survive; for a man who has got
the grit in him to go and fight in West Africa for those things
worth fighting for--duty, honour and gold--is a man whose death is a
dead loss to his country.
The cargoes from West Africa truly may "wives and mithers maist
despairing ca' them lives o' men." Yet grievous as is the price
England pays for her West African possessions, to us who know the
men who risk their lives and die for them, England gets a good
equivalent value for it; for she is the greatest manufacturing
country in the world, and as such requires markets. Nowadays she
requires them more than new colonies. A colony drains annually
thousands of the most enterprising and energetic of her children
from her, leaving behind them their aged and incapable relations.
Moreover, a colony gradually becomes a rival manufacturing centre to
the mother country, whereas West Africa will remain for hundreds of
years a region that will supply the manufacturer with his raw
material, and take in exchange for it his manufactured articles,
giving him a good margin of profit. And the holding of our West
African markets drains annually a few score of men only--only too
often for ever--but the trade they carry on and develop there--a
trade, according to Sir George Baden-Powell, of the annual value of
nine millions sterling--enables thousands of men, women and children
to remain safely in England, in comfort and pleasure, owing to the
wages and profits arising from the manufacture and export of the
articles used in that trade.
So I trust that those at home in England will give all honour to the
men still working in West Africa, or rotting in the weed-grown,
snake-infested cemeteries and the forest swamps--men whose battles
have been fought out on lonely beaches far away from home and
friends and often from another white man's help, sometimes with
savages, but more often with a more deadly foe, with none of the
anodyne to death and danger given by the companionship of hundreds
of fellow soldiers in a fight with a foe you can see, but with a foe
you can see only incarnate in the dreams of your delirium, which
runs as a poison in burning veins and aching brain--the dread West
Coast fever. And may England never again dream of forfeiting, or
playing with, the conquests won for her by those heroes of commerce,
the West Coast traders; for of them, as well as of such men as Sir
Gerald Portal, truly it may be said--of such is the Kingdom of
England.
APPENDIX. THE INVENTION OF THE CLOTH LOOM.
This story is taken down from an Eboe, but practically the same
story can be found among all the cloth-making tribes in West Africa.
In the old times there was a man who was a great hunter; but he had
a bad wife, and when he made medicine to put on his spear, she made
medicine against his spear, but he knew nothing of this thing and
went out after bush cow.
By and by he found a big bush cow, and threw his spear at it, but
the bush cow came on, and drove its horns through his thigh, so the
man crept home, and lay in his house very sick, and the witch doctor
found out which of his wives had witched the spear, and they killed
her, and for many days the man could not go out hunting. But he was
a great hunter, and his liver grew hot in him for the bush, so he
dragged himself to the bush, and lay there every day. One day, as
he lay, he saw a big spider making a net on a bush and he watched
him. By and by he saw how the spider caught his game, and that the
spider was a great hunter, and the man said "If I had hunted as this
spider hunts, if I had made a trap like that and put it in the bush
and then gone aside and let the game get into it and weary itself to
death quickly,--quicker and safer than they do in pit-falls--that
bush cow would not have gored me." And so after a time he tried to
make a net like the spider's, out of bush rope, and he did this
thing and put his net into the forest, and caught bush deer
(gazelles) and earthpig (pangolins) and porcupines, and he made more
nets, and every net he made was better, and he grew well, and became
a greater hunter than before. One day he made a very fine net, and
his wife said "This is a cloth, it is better than our cloth (bark
cloth) because when the rain gets to it, it does not shrivel. Make
me a cloth like this and then I will beat it with the mallet and
wear it." And the man tried to do this thing, but he could not get
it a good shape and he said, "Yet the spider gets a shape in his
cloth. I will go and ask him again this thing." And he went to the
spider, and took him another offering, and said: "Oh, my lord,
teach me more things." And he sat and watched him for many days.
By and by he saw more (his eyes were opened) and he saw the spider
made his net on sticks, and so he went home and got fine bush rope
that he had collected, and taken there, to make his game nets with,
and he brought them to the bush near the spider, and fixing the
strings on to the bush he made a new net and he got shape into it,
and he made more nets this way, and every net he made was better.
And his wife was pleased and gave him sons, and by and by the man
saw that he did not want all the sticks of a bush to make his net
on, only some of them; and so he took these home and put them up in
his house, and made his nets there, and after a time his wife said:
"Why do you make the stuff for me with that bush rope? Why do you
not make it with something finer?" And he went into the bush and
took offerings to the spider and said: "Oh, my lord, teach me more
things!" And he sat and watched the spider, but the spider only
went on making stuff out of his belly. And the man said: "Oh, my
lord, you pass me. I cannot do this thing." And as he went home he
thought and saw that there are trees, and there are bush ropes,
thick bush rope and thin bush rope, and then there is grass which
was thinner still, and he took the grass, and tried to make a net
with it, and did this thing and made more nets and every net he made
was better. And his wife was pleased and said "This is good cloth."
And the man lived to be very old and was a great chief and a great
hunter. For it is good for a man to be a great hunter, and it is
good for a man to please women. This is the origin of the cloth
loom.
It was in the old time, and men have got now thread on spools from
the white man, for the white man is a great spider; but this is how
the black man learnt to make cloth.
NOTES.
{14} Sierra Leone has been known since the voyage of Hanno of
Carthage in the sixth century B.C., but it has not got into general
literature to any great extent since Pliny. The only later classic
who has noticed it is Milton, who in a very suitable portion of
Paradise Lost says of Notus and Afer, "black with thunderous clouds
from Sierra Lona." Our occupation of it dates from 1787.
{15} Lagos also likes to bear this flattering appellation, and has
now-a-days more right to the title.
{28} Along the Coast, and in other parts of Africa, the coarser,
flat-sided kinds of banana are usually called plantains, the name
banana being reserved for the finer sorts, such as the little
"silver banana."
{37} From Point Limbok, the seaward extremity of Cameroons Mountain,
to Cape Horatio, the most eastern extremity of Fernando Po, the
soundings are, from the continent, 13, 17, 20, 23, 27, 29, 30, 34
fathoms; close on to the island, 35 and 29 fathoms.
{44} I am informed that the allowance made to these priests exceeds
by some pounds the revenues Spain obtains from the Island. In
Spanish possessions alone is a supporting allowance made to
missionaries though in all the other colonies they obtain a
government grant.
{47} Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians, T. J. Hutchinson.
{48a} There is difference of opinion among authorities as to whether
Fernando Po was discovered by Fernando Po or by Lopez Gonsalves.
{48b} From April 1777 till the end of 1782, 370 men out of the 547
died of fever.
{51} Porto is the Bubi name for black men who are not Bubis, these
were in old days Portuguese slaves, "Porto" being evidently a
corruption of "Portuguese," but it is used alike by the Bubi to
designate Sierra Leonian and Accras, in fact, all the outer
barbarian blacks. The name for white men, Mandara, used by the
Bubis, has a sort of resemblance to the Effik name for whites,
Makara, i.e., the ruling one, but I do not know whether these two
words have any connection.
{55} I am glad to find that my own observations on the drink
question entirely agree with those of Dr. Oscar Baumann, because he
is an unprejudiced scientific observer, who has had great experience
both in the Congo and Cameroon regions before he came to Fernando
Po. In support of my statement I may quote his own words: --"Die
Bube trinken namlich sehr gerne Rum; Gin verschmahen sie
vollstandig, aber ausser Tabak und Salz gehort Rum zu den
gesuchtesten europaischen Artikeln fur sie. Wie bekannt hat sich in
Europa ein heftiges Geschrei gegen die Vergiftung der Neger durch
Alcohol erhoben. Wenn dasselbe schon fur die meisten Stamme
Westafrikas der Berechtigung fast vollstandig entbehrt und in die
Categorie verweisen worden muss die man mit dem nicht sehr schonen
aber treffenden Ausdrucke 'Humanitatsduselei' bezeichnet, so ist es
den Bube gegenuber wohl mehr als zwecklos. Es mag ja vorkommen dass
ein Bube wenn er sein Palmol verkauft hat, sich ein oder zweimal im
Jahre mit Rum ein Rauschlein antrinkt. Deshalb aber gleich von
Alkohol-Vergiftung zu sprechen ware mindestens lacherlich. Ich bin
uberzeugt dass mancher jener Herren die in Wort und Schrift so
heftig gegen die Alkolismus der Neger zetern in ihren Studenten-
jahren allein mehr geistige Getranke genossen haben als zehn Bube
wahrend ihres ganzen Lebens. Der Handelsrum welcher wie ich mich
ofters uberzeugt zwar recht verwassert aber keineswegs abstossend
schlecht schmeckt, ist den Bube gewohnlich nur eine Delikatesse
welche mit Andacht schluckweise genossen wird. Wenn ein Arbeiter
bei uns einen Schluck Branntwein oder ein Glas Bier geniesst um sich
zu starken, so findet das Jeder in der Ordnung; der Bube jedoch,
welcher splitternackt tagelang in feuchten Bergwaldern umher
klettern muss, soll beliebe nichts als Wasser trinken!" Eine
Africanische Tropen. insel Fernando Poo, Dr. Oscar Baumann, Edward
Holzer, Wien, 1888.
{56} "Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Bubisprache auf Fernando Poo," O.
Baumann, Zeitschrift fur afrikanische Sprachen. Berlin, 1888.
{61} Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians. T. J. Hutchinson.
{80} The Sierra del Cristal and the Pallaballa range are, by some
geographers, held to be identical; but I have reason to doubt this,
for the specimens of rock brought home by me have been identified by
the Geological Survey, those of the Pallaballa range as mica schist
and quartz; those of the Sierra del Cristal as "probably schistose
grit, but not definitely determinable by inspection," and "quartz
rock." The quantity of mica in the sands of the Ogowe, I think,
come into it from its affluents from the Congo region because you do
not get these mica sands in rivers which are entirely from the
Sierra del Cristal, such as the Muni. The Rumby and Omon ranges are
probably identical with the Sierra del Cristal, for in them as in
the Sierra you do not get the glistening dove-coloured rock with a
sparse vegetation growing on it, as you do in the Pallaballa region.
{96} The villages of the Fans and Bakele are built in the form of a
street. When in the forest there are two lines of huts, the one
facing the other, and each end closed by a guard house. When facing
a river there is one line of huts facing the river frontage.
{167} The M'pongwe speaking tribes are the M'pongwe, Orungu, Nkami,
Ajumba, Inlenga and the Igalwa.
{170} These four Ajumba had been engaged, through the
instrumentality of M. Jacot, to accompany me to the Rembwe River.
The Ajumba are one of the noble tribes and are the parent stem of
the M'pongwe; their district is the western side of Lake Ayzingo.
{181} As this river is not mentioned on maps, and as I was the first
white traveller on it, I give my own phonetic spelling; but I expect
it would be spelt by modern geographers "Kakola."
{185} A common African sensation among natives when alarmed,
somewhat akin to our feeling some one walk over our graves.
{189} Since my return I think the French gentleman may have been M.
F. Tenaille d'Estais, who is down on the latest map (French) as
having visited a lake in this region in 1882, which is set down as
Lac Ebouko. He seems to have come from and returned to Lake
Ayzingo--on map Lac Azingo--but on the other hand "Ebouko" was not
known on the lake, Ajumba and Fans alike calling it Ncovi.
{200} Diospyros and Copaifua mopane.
{205} Vipera nasicornis; M'pongwe, Ompenle.
{208} I have no hesitation in saying that the gorilla is the most
horrible wild animal I have seen. I have seen at close quarters
specimens of the most important big game of Central Africa, and,
with the exception of snakes, I have run away from all of them; but
although elephants, leopards, and pythons give you a feeling of
alarm, they do not give that feeling of horrible disgust that an old
gorilla gives on account of its hideousness of appearance.
{223} An European coat or its equivalent value is one of the
constant quantities in an ivory bundle.
{241} Specimen placed in Herbarium at Kew.
{286} It is held by some authorities to come from gru-gru, a
Mandingo word for charm, but I respectfully question whether gru-gru
has not come from ju-ju, the native approximation to the French
joujou.
{295} The proper way to spell this name is booby, i.e. silly, but as
Bubi is the accepted spelling, I bow to authority.
{301} This article has different names in different tribes; thus it
is called a bian among the Fan, a tarwiz, gree-gree, etc., on other
parts of the Coast.
{306} Care must be taken not to confuse with sacrifices
(propitiations of spirits) the killing of men and animals as
offerings to the souls of deceased persons.
{324} Pronounced Tchwee.
{329} Among the Fjort the body cannot be buried until all the
deceased's debts are paid.
{338} In speaking of native ideas I should prefer to use the good
Yorkshire term of "overthrowing" in place of "superstition," but as
the latter is the accepted word for such matters I feel bound to
employ it.
{363} "Tshi-speaking People," Colonel Sir H. B. Ellis.
{439} Since my return to England I have read Sir Richard Burton's
account of his first successful attempt to reach the summit of the
Great Cameroons in 1862. His companions were Herr Mann, the
botanist, and Senor Calvo. Herr Mann claimed to have ascended the
summit a few days before the two others joined him, but Burton seems
to doubt this. The account he himself gives of the summit is:
"Victoria mountain now proved to be a shell of a huge double crater
opening to the south-eastward, where a tremendous torrent of fire
had broken down the weaker wall, the whole interior and its
accessible breach now lay before me plunging down in vertical cliff.
The depth of the bowl may be 360 feet. The total diameter of the
two, which are separated by a rough partition of lava, 1,000 feet. .
. Not a blade of grass, not a thread of moss, breaks the gloom of
this Plutonic pit, which is as black as Erebus, except where the
fire has painted it red or yellow." This ascent was made from the
west face. I got into the "Plutonic pit" through the S.E. break in
its wall, and was said to be the first English person to reach it
from the S.E., and the twenty-eighth ascender, according to my well-
informed German friends.
{455} The African Association now own two steamers. Alexander
Miller Brothers and Co. also charter steamers.
{463} A Naturalist in Mid Africa, 1896.
{465} The accounts given by the various members of the Stanley Emin
Relief Expedition well describe the usual sort of West African
hinterland work, but the forests of the Congo are less relieved by
open park-like country than those of the rivers to the north or
south. Still the Congo, in spite of this disadvantage, has greater
facilities for transport in the way of waterways than is found east
of the Cross or Cameroon.
{468} Export of coffee from the Gold Coast, 1894, given in the
Colonial Report on that year published in 1896, was of the value of
1,265 pounds 3s. 4d.; cocoa, 546 pounds 17s. 4d. The greater part
of this coffee goes to Germany.
Export of coffee from Lagos, given in Colonial Report for 1892,
published in 1893, was of the value of 12 pounds. No figures on
this subject are given in the 1894 report, published in 1896, but I
cite these figures to show the delay in publishing these reports by
the Colonial Office and the difficulty of getting reliable
statistics on West African trade.
{493} "The Development of Dodos." National Review, March, 1896.
{504} Ethnology, p. 266. A. H. Keane, Cambridge, 1896.
{508} Lagos Annual Consular Report (150, p.6), 1894: "There were
only three cases of drunkenness. Considering that in the Island of
Lagos alone the population is over 33,300, this clearly proves that
drunkenness in this part of Africa is uncommon, and that there is
insufficient evidence for the contention which is advanced that the
native is being ruined by what is so often spoken of as the heinous
gin traffic; it is a well-known fact by those in a position best
able to judge by long residence that the inhabitants of this country
have a natural repugnance to intemperance."
{509} Board of Trade Journal, August 1896.
{514} By slavery, I mean the quasi-feudal system you find existing
among the true negroes. I do not mean either the form of domestic
slavery of Egypt, or the system of labour existing in the Congo Free
State; although I am of opinion that the suppression of his export
slave trade to the Americas was a grave mistake. It has been
fraught with untold suffering to the African, which would have been
avoided by altering the slave trade into a coolie system.
{516} Bilious Haemoglobinuric, black water fever.
{517} See also Klebs and Tommasi Crudeli, Arch. f. exp. Path., xi.;
Ceci, ibid., xv.; Tommasi Crudeli, La Malaria de Rome, Paris, 1881;
Nuovi Studj sulla Natura della Malaria, Rome, 1881; "Malaria and the
Ancient Drainage of the Roman Hills," Practitioner, ii., 1881;
Instituzioni de anat. Path., vol. i., Turin, 1882; Marchiafava e
Cuboni, Nuovi Studj sulla Natura della Malaria, Acad. dei Lincei,
Jan. 2, 1881; Marchand, Virch. Arch., vol. lxxxviii.; Laveran,
Nature parasitaire des Accidents d'Impaludisme, Paris, 1881;
Richard, Comptes Rendus, 1881; Steinberg, Rep. Nat. Board of Health
(U.S.), 1881. Malaria-krankheiten, K. Schwalbe; Berlin, 1890;
Parkes, On the Issue of a Spirit Ration in the Ashantee Campaign,
Churchill, 1875; Zumsden, Cyclopaedia of Medicine; Ague, Dr. M. D.
O'Connell, Calcutta, 1885; Roman Fever, North, Appendix I. British
Central Africa, Sir H. H. Johnstone.