RETURN TO AXIM AND DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE.
I awoke on Saturday, April 9, in bad condition, and during the afternoon
had my third attack of fever, the effect of the dam and its miasma.
Wanting change of air, and looking forward to Effuenta, I set off in my
hammock and found my friends. The tertian lasted me till Monday, Sunday
being an 'off-day;' and, as the Tuesday was wet and uncomfortable, I
delayed departure till Wednesday morning. My 'Warburg' had unfortunately
leaked out: the paper cover of the phial was perfect, but of the contents
only a little sediment remained. Treatment, therefore, was confined to
sulphate of quinine and a strychnine and arsenic pill; arseniate of
quinine would have been far better, but the excellent preparation is too
economical for the home-pharmist, and has failed to secure the favour of
the Coast-doctors. One of my friends has made himself almost fever-proof
by the liberal use of arsenic; but I can hardly recommend it, as the
result must be corrected by an equally liberal use of Allan's anti-fat.
Burton, who has studied its use amongst the Styrian arsenic-eaters, denies
that this is the common effect: he found that it makes the mountaineer
preserve his condition, wind and complexion, arms him against ague, and
adds generally to his health. He is still doubtful, however, whether it
shortens or prolongs life.
On Wednesday, April 12, I left Effuenta after morning tea. My hospitable
host had nearly seen the last of his stores, to which he had made me so
cordially welcome; and there were no signs of fresh supplies, although
they had long been due. This is hardly fair treatment for the hard-working
employé: let the Company look to it. With a certain tightening of the
heart I made over my canine friend, Nero, to Dr. Roulston. He had lost all
those bad habits which neglected education had engrafted upon the heat of
youth. He now began to show more fondness for sport than for
sheep-worrying; and he retrieved one bird, carrying it with the utmost
delicacy of mouth.
I set out on foot for Vinegar Hill, and found that the steep eastern
ascent from the Tákwá ridge had been provided with a series of cut steps
by Mr. Commissioner: in these lands, as elsewhere, new brooms sweep clean;
but they are very easily worn out. This place has been for years the
'black beast' of travellers, especially in rainy weather, when the rapid
incline becomes so slippery that even the most sure-footed slither and
slide.
After crossing the Abonsá Hill I took to my hammock and was carried
through rain, and a very devilry of weather, into the Abonsá village. The
whole path was shockingly bad and muddy. Once more I became a lodger of
Mr. Crocker's; his house, being as usual far the best, gave us good
shelter for the night.
Next morning (7.30) we set out down the Abonsá stream in a small canoe
belonging to Mr. MacLennan. The natives made the usual difficulties; the
craft (which was quite sound) could not float, and amongst other things
she had no paddles: for this, however, I had provided by making my men cut
them last evening. Almost immediately after leaving this head of
navigation, barred above by a reef and a fall, we saw that eternal
mangrove. Presently the Aunábé creek broke the line of the right bank. Our
course was as usual exceedingly tortuous, turning to every quadrant of the
compass; and, during the last fortnight, the water-level had risen four
feet. The formation of the trough is that of the Ancobra, and the bed
bristles with rocks. In a distance of seven miles and a half by course
there were four small breaks, and one serious rapid about a hundred yards
long, where the decline exceeded five feet. Here the men had to get
overboard and to ease the canoe down the swirling waters, which dashed
heavily on the rocks. The snags were even thicker than on the upper
Ancobra, and were far more dangerous than on the St. John's. In places the
mangrove fallen from the banks had taken root in the river-bed. In fact,
unless some exertion be soon made, even the present insufficient channel
will be blocked up.
At the Abonsá _embouchure_ Mr. Wyatt's map, copied from M. Dahse, shows an
island backed by a ridge running nearly east-west. I found no river-holm,
and only a small broadening of the Ancobra to about double its usual
breadth. The banks at the sharp angle of junction are, however, low; and,
perhaps, my predecessor saw them when flooded. The Mankuma Hill, on the
right bank, belonging to the Franco-English Company, is somewhat taller
than its neighbours: as usual in this silted-up archipelago, it trends
from the north-east to the south-west.
I had already shot the Ancobra River when paddling up, and was not over
lucky when coming down. The big kingfisher did not put in an appearance,
and the sun-birds equally failed me: the smallest item of my collection
measures two and a quarter inches, and is robed in blue, crimson, and
sulphur. I was fortunate enough to bring home four specimens of a rare
spur-plover (_Lobivanellus albiceps_): they are now in Mr. Sharp's
department of the British Museum. I killed a few little snakes and one
large green tree-snake; two crocodiles, both lost in the river, and an
iguana, which found its way into the spirit-cask. A tzetze-fly (_Glossina
morsitans_) was captured in Effuenta House, curiously deserting its usual
habit of jungle-life in preference to a home on clear ground: its
dagger-like proboscis, in the grooved sheath with a ganglion of muscles at
the base, assimilated it to the dreaded and ferocious cattle-scourge which
extends from Zanzibar to the Tanganyika Lake and from Kilwa (Quiloa) to
the Transvaal. My kind friend and hospitable host Dr. (now Sir) John Kirk,
who did the geography and natural history for the lamentable Zambeze
expedition, met it close to the Victoria Falls. Burton also sent home a
specimen from the Gold Coast east of Accra.
Mr. MacLennan gave me sundry beetles, but insisted on retaining one which
is the largest I ever saw. The hunting-dog must scour the bush in packs,
for the voice is exactly that of hounds. The laugh of the hyæna and the
scream of the buzzard are commonly heard. The track of a 'bush-cow' once
crossed my path: the halves of the spoor were some five inches long by
three wide, and the hoofs knuckled backwards so as to show false hoofs of
almost equal size. I was unable to procure for Dr. Günther a specimen of
the 'bush-dog,' as the Kruboys call it: last year I was bringing home a
live one in the s.s. _Nubia_; but one day the fellow in charge reported
that it was dead and had been thrown overboard. I hold it to be a tailless
lemur, the _galago_ of the East Coast. The French name is _orson_, the
popular idea being that it is an ursine. The Fanti peoples, whose
'folk-lore' is extensive, and who have some tale about every bird, beast,
and fish, thus account for the loud cries which we heard at night in every
'bush.' King Leo, having lost his mother, commanded by proclamation all
his subjects to attend her funeral, and none failed save Orson. One
evening his Feline Majesty, when going his rounds, found the delinquent
upon the ground, and roughly demanded the reason why. Orson, shuffling
towards the nearest tree, pleaded in all humility, 'O King, is thy beloved
parent really deceased? I never heard of it. I am so sorry; I would never
have failed to show the respect due to the royal house.' When he had
climbed the foot of the tree his tone began to alter. 'But, Sire, if thy
Majesty hath lost a mother, I see no cause compelling me to attend her
funeral.' And when quite safe the change was notable. 'Bother the old
woman! very glad she is dead, and may her grave be defiled!' These people
know the stuff of which courtiers are made.
My collection of specimens from the mines and the river-beds filled a
dozen cases. The butterflies, of which we collected a large number, were
all spoilt by the moth for want of camphor. 'Insect-powder' had been our
only preservative. I had also a thirty-gallon cask of plants preserved in
spirits, two boxes well stuffed, a large case of orchids, and a raceme of
the bamboo-palm (_Raphia vinifera_), whose use has still to be found. The
animals, including insects in tubes, filled nearly two kegs and three
bottles, and I had two small cases of stuffed birds, the handiwork of Mr.
Dawson.
Of stone-implements I was lucky enough to secure thirty-six, and made over
four of them to my friend Professor Prestwich. They are found everywhere
throughout the country, but I saw no place of manufacture except those
noted near Axim. Mr. Sam, of Tumento, promised to forward many others to
England. The native women search for and find them not only near the beds
of streams, but also about the alluvial diggings. Nearly all are shaped
like the iron axe or adze of Urúa, in Central Africa, a long narrow blade
with rounded top and wedge-shaped edge. This tool is either used in the
hand like a chisel, or inserted into a conical hole burnt through a
tree-branch, and the shape of the aperture makes every blow tighten the
hold. The people mount it in two ways, either as an axe in line with, or
as an adze at a right angle to, the helve.
At Akankon I obtained from Mr. Amondsen a stone-implement of novel shape,
not seen by me elsewhere. A bit of the usual close-grained trap had been
cut into a parallelopiped seven and a half inches long with a flat head
one inch and a half in diameter and a bevel-edge of two inches and
one-third along the slope. This part had been chipped ready for grinding,
and the article was evidently unfinished; one side still wanted polishing,
and the part opposite the bevel showed signs of tapering, as if a point
instead of an edge had been intended. At Axim I split off by gads and
wedges a large slice of the grooved rocks described by Burton; it came
home with me, and is now lodged in the British Museum.
The rest of my story is told in a few words. I canoed safely down the
Ancobra River, and reached Axim on April 14. This return was made sad and
solitary by the absence of my canine friend, Nero.
A week soon passed away at the port of the Gold-region. Mr. Grant
presently returned from his excursion to the west. He showed me fine
specimens of gold collected at Newtown, the English frontier-settlement
immediately east of French Assini. I had also warned him to look out for,
and he succeeded in finding, beds of bitumen permeated with petroleum:
this material will prove valuable for fuel and for asphalting, if not for
sale. My time was wholly taken up with papering and repacking my
collection, which had now assumed formidable proportions, and time fled
the faster as the days were occupied in also fighting an impertinent
attack of ague and fever.
On April 24 the B. and A. s.s. _Loanda_ (Captain Brown) anchored in the
roads. Mr. Grant accompanied me on board, and showed himself useful and
energetic as usual. At Cape Palmas we shipped the Honourable Doctor and
Professor Blyden. He pointed out to me certain hillocks on the coast about
Grand Bassá, where he said gold had lately been found. The lay of the land
and the strike and shape of the eminences reminded me strongly of those I
had left behind me. The 'Secretary of the Interior,' who had been
compelled to leave his college, assured me that if wiser counsels prevail
Liberia will abandon her old Japanese policy of exclusion, and will open
her ports to European capital and enterprise. At Sierra Leone I called
upon Governor Havelock, who was recovering from the accident of a
dislocated shoulder. Both he and the 'Governess' were in the best of
health. At Madeira, on May 12, my companion Burton joined us, and we had a
week of dull passage to Liverpool. As we left on Friday and carried a
reverend gentleman on board, the cranky old craft was sorely tossed about
for two successive days, and we were delayed off the Liverpool bar,
arriving on the 20th instead of the 18th of May, 1882.
CONCLUSION.
The journey and the voyage ended, as such things should do, with a dinner
of welcome at the Adelphi, given to us by our hospitable friend Mr. James
Irvine. And here we had the first opportunity of delivering the message
which we had brought home from the Golden Land.
APPENDIX I
§1. THE ASHANTI SCARE.
That fears of an Ashanti attack upon the mines of the Gold Coast
Protectorate are rather fanciful than factual we may learn from the
details of the Blue Book 'Gold Coast, 1881.' The 'threatened Ashanti
invasion,' popularly termed the 'Ashanti scare,' did abundant good by
showing up the weakness of that once powerful despotism, and the
superiority in numbers and in equipment of the coastlanders over the
inlanders. It is true that there are tribes, like the Awunahs of the
Volta, and villages, like Béin in Apollonia, which still sympathise with
our old enemy. But only the grossest political mismanagement, like that
which in 1876 abandoned our ally, the King of Juabin, to the tender
mercies of his Ashanti foeman, aided by the unwisest economy, which
starves everything to death save the treasure-chest, will ever bring about
a general movement against us.
On December 1, 1880, died, to the general regret of native and stranger,
Mr. Ussher, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Gold Coast; a veteran
in the tropics and an ex-commissariat officer, whose political service
dated from 1861. In British India a change of rulers is always supposed to
offer a favourable opportunity for 'doing something,' often in the shape
of a revolt or a campaign. The same proved to be the case in West Africa,
where the Ashanti is officially described as 'crafty, persistent,
mendacious, and treacherous.'
It may easily be imagined that after the English victories at Amoaful and
Ordusu in 1873-74 the African despotism sighed for _la revanche_. The
Treaty of Fománá, concluded (February 13), after the capture (February 4)
and the firing (February 6) of Kumasi, between Sir Garnet Wolseley and the
representative of the King, Kofi Kalkali, or Kerrikerri, subsequently
dethroned, stripped her of her principal dependencies--lopped off, in
fact, her four limbs. These were the ever-hostile province of Denkira,
auriferous Akim, Adansi, and lastly Assin, now part of our Protectorate.
The measure only renewed the tripartite treaty of April 27, 1831, when
King Kwáko Dúa, in consideration of free access to the seaboard, and in
friendship with the unfortunate and ill-treated Governor (George) Maclean,
'renounced all right or title to any tribute, or homage, from the Kings of
Denkira, Assin, and others formerly his subjects.' But _nulla fronti
fides_ is the rule of the hideous little negro despotism, which, in 1853,
again invaded the coveted lands on its southern frontier, Assin.
The treaty of 1874, moreover, compelled Ashanti formally to renounce all
pretensions to sovereignty over Elmina and the tribes formerly in
connection with the Dutch Government. It vetoed her raids and forays upon
neighbouring peoples; like Dahome she had her annual slave-hunts and the
captives were sold for gold-dust to the inner tribes. The young officers
who replaced the veterans of the war would naturally desire, in Kafir
parlance, to 'wash their spears.' Nor are they satisfied with the defeats
sustained by their sires. 'I believe,' wrote Winwood Reade, 'that Sir
Garnet Wolseley attained the main object of the expedition, namely, the
securing of the Protectorate from periodical invasion. Yet still I wish
that the success had been more definite and complete.' The wish is echoed
by most people on the coast; and the natives still say, 'White man he go
up Kumasi, he whip black boy, and then he run away.'
It is regretable that the Commander-in-Chief, if he could not occupy
Kumasi himself, did not leave Sir John H. Glover in charge, and especially
that he did not destroy the Bantama (royal place of human sacrifice),
[Footnote: Sir Garnet Wolseley's admirable conduct of the Egyptian
campaign, where he showed all the qualities which make up the sum of
'generalship,' have wiped out the memory of his failures in Ashanti and
Kafir-land. Better still, he has proved that the British soldier can
still fight, a fact upon which the disgraceful Zulu campaign had cast
considerable doubt. But the public ignores a truth known to every
professional. Under an incompetent or unlucky commander all but the best
men will run: the worst will allow themselves to be led or driven to
victory by one they trust. Compare the Egyptian troops under old Ibrahim
Pasta, and under Arabi, the Fe-lah-Pasha.] or at least remove from it the
skull of Sir Charles Macarthy. [Footnote: Captain Brackenbury throws doubt
upon the skull being preserved in the Bantama; but his book is mainly
apologetic, and we may ask, If the cherished relic be not there, where is
it? The native legend runs thus: 'And they took him (_i.e._ Macarthy) and
cut off his head, and brought it to their camp and removed the brains; but
the skull, which was left, they filled it with gold, and they roasted the
whole body and they carried it to Ashanti.... And the head, which they
bore to Ashanti, has become their "fetish," which they worship till this
day.'--Native account of Macarthy's death, Zimmermann's _Grammar of the
Accra or Ga Language_, Stuttgart, 1858.] And yet we now learn that the
campaign did good work. Captain Lonsdale, who has spent some time in
Kumasi, reports that the Caboceers have built huts instead of repairing
their 'palaces.' Moreover, he declares that the story of sacrificing girls
to mix their blood with house-swish is a pure fabrication; the Ashantis
would no longer dare to do anything so offensive to the conqueror.
Last on the list of solid Ashanti grievances is her exclusion from the
seaboard. Unknown to history before A.D. 1700, the Despotism first invaded
the Coast in 1807, when King Osai Tutu Kwámina pretended a wish to recover
the fugitive chiefs Chibbu and Aputai. These attacks succeeded one another
at intervals of ten years, say the Fantis. The main object was to secure a
port on the coast, where the inlanders could deal directly with the white
man, and could thus escape the unconscionable pillaging, often fifty per
cent. and more, of the Fanti middleman. This feeling is not, indeed,
unknown to Europe: witness Montenegro. I see no reason why the people
should not have an 'Ashantimile' at the Volta mouth; and I shall presently
return to this subject.
Hardly was Governor Ussher buried than troubles began. Mr. Edmund Watt, a
young District-commissioner at Cape Coast Castle, officially reported to
Lieutenant-Governor W. B. Griffith, subsequently Administrator of Lagos,
that Opoku, 'King' of Bekwa (Becquah), had used language tending to a
breach of the peace. This commander-in-Chief of the Ashanti forces in
1873-74 had publicly sworn in his sober senses at Kumasi, and in presence
of the new king, Kwámina Osai Mensah, that he would perforce reduce
Adansi, the hill-country held to be the southern boundary of Ashanti-land.
Such a campaign would have been an infraction of treaty, or at least a
breach of faith: although the province is not under the protection of the
Colonial Government, King Kofi Kalkali [Footnote: This ruler succeeded his
father, King Kwáko Dúa, in 1868; and his compulsory abdication is
considered to have been an ill-advised measure.] had promised to respect
its independence and to leave it unmolested.
Lieutenant-Governor Griffith lost no time in forwarding the report to the
Colonial Office, adding sundry disquieting rumours which supported his
suspicions. Missionaries and merchants had observed that certain
'messengers,' or envoys, sent from Kumasi to acknowledge the presents of
the late Governor Ussher, were lingering without apparent reason about
Cape Coast Castle, after being formally dismissed. Moreover, their
residing in the house of 'Prince Ansah,' a personage not famous for plain
dealing, boded no good.
A new complication presently arose. Prince Owusu, nephew of the King and
heir to the doughty Gyáman kingdom, fled from Kumasi to the Protectorate,
and reached Elmina on January 18. He appeared in great fear, and declared
that a son of the chief Amankwá Kwomá and three 'court-criers,' or
official heralds, were coming down to the coast on a solemn mission to
demand his extradition. They carried, he said, not the peaceful cane with
the gold or silver head, but the mysterious 'Gold Axe.' Opinions at once
differed as to the import and object of this absurd implement. According
to some its mission portended war, and it had preceded the campaigns of
1863 and 1873. Others declared that it signified a serious 'palaver,'
being a strong hint that the King would cut through and down every
obstacle. Strange to say, the first Ashanti messengers were never called
upon to explain before the public what the 'Gold Axe' really did mean.
The Colonial Office acted with spirit and wholesome vigour. It was urged
on by Mr. Griffith, whose energetic reports certainly saved the
Protectorate grave troubles. He has thereby incurred much blame, ridicule,
and obloquy; nor has he received due credit from those under whom he
served.
The newly-appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Gold Coast, Sir
Samuel Rowe, at once ordered out to relieve Mr. Griffith, left England in
mid-February. He was accompanied by a staff of seven officers temporarily
employed. Reinforcements were hurried from Sierra Leone and the West
Indies. The Admiralty was applied to for the reunion of cruisers upon the
Gold Coast waters. Estimates of native allies were drawn up, showing that
20,000 half-armed men could be brought into the field against the 30,000
of Ashanti. The loyal and powerful chief Kwámina Blay, of Atábo, in
Amrehía, or Western Apollonia, offered 6,000 muskets, and an additional
1,000 hands if the Government would supply arms and ammunition.
On January 19 the ambassador with the 'Gold Axe' presented himself at
Elmina. He was accompanied by Saibi Enkwiá, who had signed the treaty at
Fománá, a village in Assin, between Kumasi and the Bosom Prah River. The
envoy formally demanded possession of Prince Owusu and of one Amangkrá, an
Ashanti trader who had aided him to escape. Saibi Enkwiá added by way of
threat, 'The King said, if the Governor would not order the return of
Owusu to Kumasi, he would attack the Assins.' He further explained that
these Assins were the people who always caused 'palavers' between the
Ashantis and the Protectorate, to which they belonged.
Naturally the ignominious demand was refused. The messengers left for
Kumasi, and Lieutenant-Governor Griffith telegraphed from Madeira to
England (January 25), 'War imminent with Ashanti.' It was considered
suspicious that all the inlanders were disappearing from the coast. This
was afterwards explained: they were flocking north for the 'native
Christmas,' the Yam-custom, or great festival of the year.
Our preparations were pushed forward the more energetically as time
appeared to be tight. The Ashantis were buying up all the weapons they
could find when the sale of arms, ammunition, and salt was prohibited.
Detachments were despatched to the Mansu and Prahsu stations; the latter
is upon the Bosom (Abosom, or Sacred) Prah, the frontier between Ashanti
and the Protectorate, to cross which is to 'pass the Rubicon.' Here, as at
other main fords and ferries, defensive works were laid out. Arrangements
were made for holding nine out of the eighteen forts, abandoning the rest;
and Accra was strengthened as the central place. The 'companies,' or
'native levies,' who, with a suspicious unanimity, applied for guns and
gunpowder, lead and flints, were urged to the 'duty of defence.' Five
cruisers, under Commander (now Captain, R.N.) J. W. Brackenbury, were
stationed off the three chief castles, Elmina, Cape Coast, and Anamabo,
and the naval contingent was drilled daily on shore. The Haussa
constabulary was reinforced. The First West India Regiment sent down men
from Sierra Leone, and the Second 500 rank and file from Barbadoes. In
fact, such ardour was shown that the Ashantis, scared out of their
intentions of scaring, began to fear another English invasion. 'The white
men intend to take Kumasi again!' they said; and perhaps the reflection
that 48,000 ounces of gold were still due to us suggested a motive. They
had been making ready for offence; now they prepared for defence.
About mid-February the 'situation' notably changed. Messieurs Buck and
Huppenbauer, two German missionaries who were making a 'preaching-tour,'
reported from Kumasi that King Mensah was afraid of war, and that his
kingdom was 'on the point to go asunder.' The despot, with African
wiliness, at once threw the blame of threatening Assin upon his confidant,
Saibi Enkwiá. No one believed that an Ashantiman would thus expose himself
to certain death; but the explanation served for an excuse. The King also
asserted that his 'Gold Axe' meant simply nothing. Thereupon the officials
of the Protectorate began looking forward to an ample apology, and to a
fine of gold-dust for the disturbing of their quiet days. In fact, they
foresaw 'peace with honour.'
Governor Sir Samuel Rowe, with his usual good fortune, landed at Elmina on
March 9, exactly the right time. The attempt to intimidate had ignobly
failed, and had recoiled upon the attempter. King Mensah, in order to
remove all suspicions of intending a campaign, had resolved to send
coastwards the most important and ceremonious mission of the age. It was
to conclude a kind of _Paix des Dames_. Queen Kokofu had threatened that
in case of hostilities she would go over to the British. The Queen-mother,
a power in the country, which has often kept the peace for it and plunged
it into war, threatened to take her own life--and here such threats are
always followed by action. In fact, the peace-party had utterly overthrown
the war-party.
The mission left Kumasi in May. It was headed by Prince Bwáki, step-father
to the two royal brothers, Kofi Kalkali and Kwábina Osai Mensah, and the
number as well as the high rank of the retinue made it remarkable. At
Prahsu, where the envoys were met by Governor Rowe, a preliminary
conversation took place. Despite the usual African and barbarian fencing
and foiling, the Englishman carried the day; the message must be delivered
with all publicity and proper ceremony in the old 'palaver-hall' of
historic Elmina Castle.
A conclusive interview took place on May 30. Prince Bwáki explained that
'mistakes had been made, but that the mistakes had not been alone those of
his king and son-in-law.' He declared that the messenger, Saibi Enkwiá,
had exceeded his powers in threatening Assin. The King, he said, had sworn
by 'God and earth,' that is, by the 'spirits' above and by the ghosts
below, that he had sent no such message. At the same time the King
confessed being partly to blame, as the message had been delivered by his
own servant. In the matter of the 'Gold Axe,' however, the mistake was the
mistake of the Lieutenant-Governor (Griffith).
The Prince further explained that Ashanti has two symbols of war, a
peculiar sword and a certain cap; whereas the 'Gold Axe' being 'fetish'
and endowed with some magical and mysterious power, is never sent on a
hostile errand. He offered, in the King's name, as further evidence of
friendly feeling, to surrender the 'so-called Golden Axe,' which important
symbol of Ashanti power had been forwarded from head-quarters with an
especial mission. It was delivered on the express understanding that it
should be despatched to England for the acceptance of H.B. Majesty, and
not be kept upon the coast, exposed to the ribaldry of the hostile Fantis.
The weapon, said Prince Bwáki, is so old that no one knows its origin, and
it is held so precious that in processions it precedes the Great Royal
Stool, or throne, of Ashanti. The leopard-skin, bound with gold upon the
handle, symbolises courage in the field; the gold is wealth, and the iron
is strength.
Finally, the unhappy 'Gold Axe,' after being publicly paraded upon a
velvet cushion through the streets of Elmina, was entrusted to Captain
Knapp Barrow, who returned to England by the next steamer. It was duly
presented, and found its way to the South Kensington Museum, after faring
very badly at the hands of the 'society journals' and other members of the
fourth estate. [Footnote: For instance: 'The gold axe of King Koffee of
Ashantee, lately sent, for an unexplained reason, to the Queen, is
described as a triangular blade of iron, apparently out from a piece of
boiler-plate, roughly stuck into a clumsy handle of African oak. The
handle is covered with leopard-skin, part of which, immediately above the
blade, is deeply soiled, apparently with blood. Bands of thin gold,
enriched with uncouth chevrons and lunettes _en repoussé_, are placed
round the handle. The sheath of the blade, which is of tiger (leopard)
skin, accompanies this hideous implement, and attached to it is the sole
element which has anything like artistic merit. This is a nondescript
object of beaten gold, in shape something like a large cockle-shell with
curved horns extending from the hinge, and not inelegantly decorated with
lines and punctures, _en repoussé_ and open work of quasi-scrolls.']
Needless to say it was an utter impostor. The real Golden Axe is great
'fetish,' and never leaves either Kumasi or, indeed, the presence of the
King.
The ceremony of delivering the message in the palaver-hall was
satisfactory. Prince Bwáki grasped the knees of Governor Rowe, the
official sign of kneeling. He expressed the devotion of his liege lord to
the Majesty of England; and finally he offered to pay down at once two
thousand ounces of gold in proof of Ashantian sincerity. All these
transactions were duly recorded; the promises in the form of a bond.
The play was now played out; cruisers and troops dispersed, and golden
Peace reigned once more supreme. Prince Owusu, a drunken, dissolute
Eupatrid, who had caused the flutter, when ordered on board a man-of-war
for transportation to a place of safety, relieved the Gold Coast from
further trouble. He was found hanging in the 'bush' behind Elmina Castle.
Most men supposed it to be a case of suicide; a few of course surmised
that he had been kidnapped and murdered by orders from Kumasi.
Since that time to the present day our Protectorate has been free from
'scare.' The affair, as it happened, did abundant good by banishing all
fear for the safety of the Wásá (Wassaw) diggings. During the worst times
not a single English employé of the mines had left his post to take refuge
in the Axim fort. This does them honour, as some of the establishments lay
within handy distance of the ferocious black barbarians.
The native chiefs, especially 'King Blay,' proved themselves able and
willing to aid us in whatever difficulties might occur. The kingdom of
Gyáman further showed that it can hold its own against shorn Ashanti, or
rather that it is becoming the more powerful of the two. The utter failure
of the scare is an earnest that, under normal circumstances, while King
Mensah, a middle-aged man, occupies the 'stool,' we shall hear no more of
'threatened Ashanti invasions.'
But the true way to pacify the despotism is to allow Ashanti to 'make a
beach'--in other words, to establish a port. This measure I have supported
for the last score of years, but to very little purpose. The lines of
objection are two. The first is in the mercantile. As all the world knows,
commercial interests are sure to be supported against almost any other in
a reformed House of Commons; and, in the long run, they gain the day. The
Coast-tribes under our protection are mere brokers and go-betweens, backed
up and supported by the wholesale merchant, because he prefers _quieta non
movere_, and he fears lest the change be from good to bad. I, on the other
hand, contend that both our commerce and customs would gain, in quantity
as well as in quality, by direct dealings with the peoples of the
interior. The second, or sentimental, line belongs to certain newspapers;
and even _their_ intelligence can hardly believe the _ad captandum_
farrago which they indite. The favourite 'bunkum' is about 'baring the
Christian negro's throat to the Ashanti knife.' But the Fantis and other
Coast-tribes were originally as murderous and bloodthirsty in their
battles and religious rites as their northern neighbours: if there be any
improvement it is wholly due to the presence and the pressure, physical as
well as moral, of Europeans--of Christians, if you like. Even Whydah is
not blood-stained like Agbóme, because it has been occupied by a few
slavers, white and brown. Why, then, should the Ashantis be refused the
opportunity and the means of amendment? Ten years' experience in Africa
teaches me that they would be as easily reformed as the maritime peoples;
and it is evident that the sentimentalist, if he added honesty and common
sense to the higher quality, should be the first to advocate the trial.
But I would not allow the Ashantis to hold a harbour anywhere near Elmina.
They should have their 'mile' and beach east of the Volta River, where
they would soon effect a lodgment, despite all the opposition of their
sanguinary friends and our ferocious enemies the Awunah and the Krepi
(Crepee) savages.
I will end this paper with a short notice of the kingdom of Gyáman,
generally written Gaman and too often pronounced 'Gammon.' Its strength
and vigour are clearly increasing; it is one of the richest of
gold-fields, and it lies directly upon the route to the interior. Of late
years it has almost faded from the map, but it is described at full length
in the pages of Barbot (1700) and Bosman (1727), of Bowdich (1818), and of
Dupuis (1824). They assign to it for limits Mandenga-land to the north and
west; to the south, Aowin and Bassam, and the Tando or eastern fork of the
Assini to the east. This Tando, which some moderns have represented as an
independent stream, divides it from Ashanti-land, lying to the south and
the south-east. Dupuis places the old capital, Bontuko, whence the Gyámans
were formerly called 'Bontukos,' eight stages north-west of Kumasi; and
the new capital, Huraboh, five marches beyond Bontuko. The country, level
and grassy, begins the region north of the great forest-zone which
subtends the maritime mangrove swamps. It breeds horses and can command
Moslem allies, equestrian races feared by the Ashantis.
The Gyámans, according to their tradition, migrated, or rather were
driven, southwards from their northern homes. This was also, as I have
said, the case with the Fantis and Ashantis; the latter occupied their
present habitat about 1640, and at once became the foes of all their
neighbours. King Osai Tutu, 'the Great,' first of Ashanti despot-kings
(1719), made Gyáman tributary. The conquest was completed by his
brother-successor, Osai Apoko (1731), who fined Abo, the neighbour-king,
in large sums of gold and fixed an annual subsidy. Gyáman, however,
rebelled against Osai Kwájo (Cudjoe), the fourth of the dynasty (1752),
and twice defeated him with prodigious slaughter. The Ashanti invader
brought to his aid Moslem cavalry, and succeeded in again subjugating the
insurgents. The conquered took no action against the fifth king, but they
struck for independence under Osai Apoko II (1797). Aided by Moslem and
other allies, they crossed the Tando and fought so sturdily that the enemy
'liberally bestowed upon them the titles of warlike and courageous.' The
Ashantis at length compelled the Moslems of their country to join them,
and ended by inflicting a crushing defeat upon the invaders.
Osai Tutu Kwámina, on coming to the throne (1800), engaged in the campaign
against Gyáman called, for distinction, the 'first Bontuko war.' He
demanded from King Adinkara his ancestral and royal stool, which was
thickly studded and embossed with precious metal. The craven yielded it
and purchased peace. His brave sister presently replaced it by a seat of
solid gold: this the Ashanti again requisitioned, together with a large
gold ornament in the shape of an elephant, said to have been dug from some
ruins. The Amazon replied, with some detail and in the 'spade' language,
that she and her brother should exchange sexes, and that she would fight
_à l'outrance_; whereupon the Ashanti, with many compliments about her
bravery, gave her twelve months to prepare for a campaign.
In 1818 Dupuis found Ashanti engaged in the 'second Bontuko war' with
Adinkara, who had again thrown off his allegiance. But small-pox was
raging in the capital, and this campaign ended (1819-20) with the defeat
and death of the womanly monarch, with a massacre of 10,000 prisoners, and
with the sale of 20,000 captives. Thus Gyáman was again annexed to
Ashanti-land as a province, instead of enjoying the rank of a tributary
kingdom; and the conqueror's dominions extended from Cape Lahou (W. long.
4º 36') through Gyáman to the Volta River (E. long. 0º 42' 18"), a
coast-line of some 318 direct geographical miles.
Gyáman, however, seems to have had a passion for liberty. She fought again
and again to recover what she had lost in 1820; and, on more occasions
than one, she was successful in battle. During the 'Ashanti scare' the
sturdy kingdom was preparing for serious hostilities; and a little war of
six or seven months had already been waged between the neighbours. The
late Prince Owusu, before mentioned, deposed before the authorities of our
Protectorate as follows: 'At Kumasi I was ordered to eat the skull of the
late King of Gyáman, which was kept there as a trophy from the conquest of
Gyáman; but I did not do it.' He also asserted that, in 1879, a white man,
Nielson, and his interpreter, Huydecooper, had been sent by an intriguer
to Gyáman, bearing a pretended message from the British Government and the
Fanti chiefs, enjoining the King to conclude peace with the Ashantis, and
to restore their 3,700 captives. Neither of these men saw the ruler of
Gyáman, and it is believed that Nielson, having begun a quarrel by firing
upon the people, was killed in the fray.
At this moment Gyáman is battling with her old enemies, and threatens to
be a dangerous rival, if not a conqueror. Here, then, we may raise a
strong barrier against future threats of Ashanti invasion, and make
security more secure. The political officers of the Protectorate will be
the best judges of the steps to be taken; and, if they are active and
prudent, we shall hear no more of the Kumasi bugbear.
* * * * *
§2. THE LABOUR-QUESTION IN WESTERN AFRICA.
In their present condition our African colonies are colonies only because
they are administered by the Colonial Office.
Most of these stations--for such they should be termed--were established,
for slaving purposes, by the Portuguese, and were conquered by the Dutch.
Thence they passed into the hands of England, who vigorously worked the
black _traite_ for the benefit of her West Indian possessions.
The 'colonies' in question, however, saw their occupation gone with negro
emancipation, and they became mere trading-ports and posts for collecting
ground-nuts, palm-oil, and gold-dust. Philanthropy and freedom expected
from them great things; but instead of progressing they have gradually and
surely declined. The public calls them 'pest-houses,' and the Government
pronounces them a 'bore.' Travellers propose to make them over to Liberia
or to any Power that will accept such white elephants.
Remains now the task of placing upon the path of progress these wretched
West African 'colonies,' and of making them a credit and a profit to
England, instead of a burden and an opprobrium.
Immigration, I find, is _le mot de l'énigme_.
Between 1860 and 1865 I studied the labour-question in West Africa, and my
short visit in 1882 has convinced me that it is becoming a vital matter
for our four unfortunate establishments, Bathurst, Sierra Leone, the Gold
Coast, and Lagos.
A score of years ago many agreed with me that there was only one solution
for our difficulties, a system of extensive coolie-importation. But in
those days of excited passions and divided interests, when the export
slave-trade and the _émigration libre_ were still rampant on either coast,
it was by no means easy to secure a fair hearing from the public. Not a
small nor an uninfluential section, the philanthropic and the missionary,
raised and maintained the cuckoo-cry, 'Africa for the Africans!'--worthy
of its successor, 'Ireland for the Irish!' Others believed in imported
labour, which has raised so many regions to the height of prosperity; but
they did not see how to import it. And the general _vis inertiæ_, peculiar
to hepatic tropical settlements, together with the unwillingness, or
rather the inability, to undertake anything not absolutely necessary, made
many of the colonists look upon the proposal rather as a weariness to the
flesh than a benefit. A chosen few steadily looked forward to it; but they
contented themselves with a theoretical prospect, and, perhaps wisely, did
not attempt action.
The condition of the Coast, however, has radically changed during the last
two decades. The export slave-trade has died the death, never to
'resurrect.' The immense benefits of immigration are known to all men,
theoretically and practically. India and China have thrown open their
labour-markets. And, finally, the difficulty of finding hands, for
agriculture especially, in Western Africa has now come to a crisis.
Here I must be allowed a few words of preliminary explanation. In this
matter, the reverse of Europe, Africa, whose social system is built upon
slavery, holds field-work, and indeed all manual labour, degrading to the
free man. The idea of a 'bold peasantry, its country's pride,' is utterly
alien to Nigritia. The husband hunts, fights, and trades--that is to say,
peddles--he leaves sowing and reaping to his wives and his chattels. Even
a slave will rather buy him a slave than buy his own liberty. 'I am free
enough,' he says; 'all I want is a fellow to serve me.' The natives of the
Dark Continent are perfectly prepared to acknowledge that work is a curse;
and, so far scripturally, they deem
Labour the symbol of man's punishment.
No Spaniard of the old school would despise more than a negro those
new-fangled notions glorifying work now familiar to stirring and bustling
North Europe. Nor will these people exert themselves until, like the
Barbadians, they must either sweat or starve. Example may do something to
stir them, but the mere preaching of industry is hopeless. I repeat: their
_beau idéal_ of life is to do nothing for six days in the week and to rest
on the seventh. They are quite prepared to keep, after their fashion, 365
sabbaths per annum.
In the depths of Central Africa, where a European shows a white face for
the first time, the wildest tribes hold markets once or twice a week;
these meetings on the hillside or the lake-bank are crowded, and the din
and excitement are extreme. Armed men, women, and children may be seen
dragging sheep and goats, or sitting under a mat-shade through the
livelong days before their baskets and bits of native home-spun, the whole
stock in trade consisting perhaps of a few peppers, a heap of palm-nuts,
or strips of manioc, like pipe-clay. This savage scene is reflected in the
comparatively civilised stations all down the West African coast, where
the inexperienced and ardent philanthrope is apt to suppose that the lazy,
feckless habits are not nature-implanted but contracted by contact with a
more advanced stage of society.
Again, in many parts of Africa the richest lands, and those most
favourably situated, are either uninhabited or thinly peopled, the result
of intestine wars or of the export slave-trade. Mr. Administrator
Goulsbury, of Bathurst, during his adventurous march from the Gambia to
the Sierra Leone River, crossed league after league of luxuriant ground
and found it all desert. He says, [Footnote: Blue Book of 1882, quoted in
Chap. X.] 'I think the fact has never been sufficiently recognised that
Africa, and especially the west coast of the continent, is but very
sparsely populated.... It is not only very limited, but is, I believe, if
not stationary, actually decreasing in numbers.... I commend this fact to
the consideration of those who indulge in day-dreams as to the almost
unlimited increase of commerce which they fondly imagine is to be the
result and reward of opening up the interior of the country.'
In regions richer than the Upper Gambia the disappearance of man is ever
followed by a springing of bush and forest so portentous that a few hands
are helpless and hopeless. Such is the case with the great wooded belt
north of the Gold Coast, where even the second-growth becomes impenetrable
without the matchet, and where the swamps and muds, bred and fed by
torrential rains, bar the transit of travellers. The Whydah and Gaboon
countries are notable specimens of once populous regions now all but
deserted.
Nothing more surprising, to men who visit Africa for the first time, than
the over-wealth of labour in Madeira and its penury on the Western Coast.
At Bathurst they find ships loading or unloading by the work of the Golah
women, whose lazy husbands live upon the hardly-earned wage. They see the
mail-steamers landing ton after ton of Chinese rice shipped _viâ_ England.
The whole country with its humid surface and its reeking, damp-hot climate
is a natural rice-bed. The little grain produced by it is far better than
the imported, but there are no hands to work the ground. It is the same
with salt, which is cheaper when brought from England: no man has the
energy to lay out a salina; and, if he did, its outlay, under 'Free
Trade,' would be greater than its income.
Steaming along the picturesque face of the Sierra Leone peninsula, the
stranger remarks with surprise that its most fertile ridges and slopes
hardly show a field, much less a farm, and that agriculture is confined to
raising a little garden-stuff for the town-market. The peasant, the hand,
is at a discount. The Sierra Leonite is a peddler-born who aspires to be a
trader, a merchant; or he looks to a learned profession, especially the
law. The term 'gentleman-farmer' has no meaning for him. Of late years a
forcing process has been tried, and a few plantations have been laid out,
chiefly for the purpose, it would appear, of boasting and of vaunting the
new-grown industry at home. Mr. Henry M. Stanley remarks [Footnote:
_Coomassie and Magdala_, p. 8], 'In almost every street in Sierra Leone I
heard the voice of praise and local prayer from the numerous aspirants to
clerkships and civil service employ; but I am compelled to deny that I
ever heard the sound of mallet and chisel, of mortar, pestle, and trowel,
the ringing sound of hammer on anvil, or roar of forge, which, to my
practical mind, would have had a far sweeter sound. There is virgin land
in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone yet untilled; there are buildings in
the town yet unfinished; there are roads for commerce yet to be made; the
trade of the African interior yet waits to be admitted into the capacious
harbour of Sierra Leone for the enrichment of the fond nursing-mother of
races who sits dreamily teaching her children how to cackle instead of how
to work.'
The same apathy to agriculture prevails in Liberia. For the last forty
years large plantations have been laid out on the noble St. Paul River
between Cape Mount and Mount Mesurado. The coffee-shrub, like the
copal-tree, belts Africa from east to west--from Harar, where I saw it,
through Karagué, where it grows wild, the bean not being larger than a
pin's head, to Manywema, in the Congo valley, and to the West Coast,
especially about the Rio Nunez, north of Sierra Leone. It is of the finest
quality, second only to the Mocha; but what hope is there of its
development? The Váy tribe, which holds the land, is useless; the rare new
comers from America will work, but the older settlers will not; and there
is hardly money enough to pay Krumen.
On the Gold Coast there is no exceptional scarcity of population: under
normal circumstances, the labour-market is sufficiently supplied, but a
strain soon exhausts it. Sir Garnet Wolseley found his greatest difficulty
in the want of workmen: he was obliged to apply for 500 British navvies;
and, at one time, he thought of converting the first and second West India
Regiments, with Wood's and Russell's men, into carriers. On the other
hand, the conduct of the women was admirable; as the conqueror said in the
Mansion House, he hardly wondered at the King of Dahome keeping up a corps
of 'Amazons.' I shall presently return to the gold-mines.
At Lagos M. Colonna, Consular Agent for France, informs me that by his
firm alone 600 hands are wanted for field-service, and that the number
might rise to a thousand. He would also be glad to hire artisans,
blacksmiths and carpenters, masons and market-gardeners. The Yorubas from
the upper country, who will engage for three years, demand from a franc to
a shilling per diem, rations not given. Labour ranges from sixteen to
twenty-four francs per mensem; and coolies could not command more than
twenty-five francs, including 'subsistence.' Here Kruboys are much used.
M. Colonna pays his first-class per mensem $5 (each =5 francs 20
centimes), his second class $4, and his third $3. Returning to the Gold
Coast, I find two classes of working men, the country-people and the
Kruboys: the Sierra Leonites are too few to be taken into consideration.
At present, when there are only five working mines, none of which are
properly manned, labour is plentiful and cheap. It will be otherwise when
the number increases, as it will soon do, to fifty and a hundred. Upwards
of seventy concessions have already been granted, and I know one house
which has, or soon will have, half a dozen ready for market. Then natives
and Kruboys will strike for increased wages till even diamond-mines would
not pay. The Gold Coast contains rich placers in abundance: if they fail
it will be for want of hands, or because the cost of labour will swallow
up profits.
The country-people, Fantis, Accra-men, Apollonians of Béin, and others,
will work, and are well acquainted with gold-working. But they work in
their own way; and, save under exceptional conditions, they are incapable
of regular and continuous labour. It gives one the heart-ache to see their
dawdling, idling, shuffling, shiftless style of spoiling time. They are
now taking to tribute, piece and contract work. The French mines supply
them with tools and powder, and, by way of pay and provisions, allow them
to keep two-thirds of the produce. It is evident that such an arrangement
will be highly profitable to the hands who will 'pick the eyes out of the
mine,' and who will secrete all the richest stuff, leaving the poorest to
their employers. No amount of European surveillance will suffice to
prevent free gold in stone being stolen. Hence the question will arise
whether, despite the price of transport, reduction in England will not pay
better.
The Kruboys in the north and the Kabinda boys in the south have been
described as the Irishmen of West Africa: they certainly do the most work;
and trading-ships would find it almost impossible to trade without them.
During the last twenty years they have not improved in efficiency even on
board men-of-war. In 1861-65 the gangs with their headmen willingly
engaged for three years. Now they enlist only for a year; they carefully
keep tallies, and after the tenth monthly cut they begin to apply for
leave. Thus the men's services are lost just as they are becoming
valuable. It is the same with the Accra-men. When the mines learn the
simple lesson _l'union fait la force_ they will combine not to engage
Krumen for less than two years.
There are two great centres at which Kruboys are hired. The first is
Sierra Leone, where they demand from all employers what the
mail-steamers pay--the headmen half-a-crown and the hands a shilling a
day besides rations. The second is the Kru coast. In 1850 the 'boys'
received 5_s._ per mensem in goods, which reduced it to 3_s._ They had
also daily rice-rations, 'Sunday beef,' and, at times, a dash of
tobacco, a cap, a blanket or a waist-cloth. In 1860 the hire rose to
9_s._ in kind, or 4_s._ 6_d._ in coin. About this time cruisers began to
pay them the monthly wages of ordinary seamen, 1_l._ 10s., with white
man's rations or compensation-money, amounting to another 12_l._ a year.
In 1882 headmen engage for the Oil Rivers at 1_l._, and 'boys' for
10_s._ to 12_s._ For the gold-mines of Wásá they have learned to demand
1_s._ 3_d._ per diem, and at the cheapest 1_l._ a month, the headmen
receiving double.
The Kru-market does not supply more than 4,000 hands, and yet it is
already becoming 'tight.' In a few years demand will be excessive.
[Footnote: The usual estimate of the Kru-hands employed out of their own
country is as follows:--
For the Oil Rivers:
150 each for Brass and Bonny, New Calabar and Camarones;
150-200 for the Niger, and
150 for Fernando Po and the Portuguese Islands 1200-1500
At Lagos 1000
On board the 25 Bristol ships, at 20 each 500
For nine to ten ships of war 200
For ten mail-steamers 200
In the mines: (May, 1882)
Izrah 7, Akankon 14, Effuenta 120,
the two French companies 200, the Gold Coast 100,
and Crockerville 20 461
----
Total 3861; say 4000]
The following notes were given to me by the managers of mines, whom I
consulted upon the subject.
Mr. Crocker prefers Fantis, Elminas, and others; and he can hire as many
as he wants; at Cape Coast Castle alone there are some eighty hands now
unemployed. He pays 36_s._, without rations, per month of four weeks. He
has about a score of Kruboys, picked up 'on the beach;' these are
fellows who have lost all their money, and who dare not go home
penniless. Their headman receives per mens. $3.50, and in exceptional
cases $4. The better class of 'boys' get from $2.50 to $3; and lesser
sums are given to the 'small boys,' whose principal work is stealing,
skulking.
Mr. Creswick has a high opinion of Krumen working in the mines, and has
found sundry of them to develop into excellent mechanics. The men want
only good management. Under six Europeans, himself included, he employs a
hundred hands, and from eight to ten mechanics. The first headman draws
37_s_. 6_d_., the second 22_s_., full-grown labourers 18_s_., and 'small
boys' from 4_s_. to 6_s_. and 9_s_.
Mechanics' wages range between 1_l_. 5_s_. and 4_l_. All have rations or
'subsistence,' which here means 3_d_. a day.
Mr. MacLennan has a few Fanti miners, whom he pays at the rate of 6_d_.
per half-day. His full muster of Krumen is 120; the headmen receive 27_s_.
6_d_., rising, after six months, to 35_s_. The first class of common boys
get 20_s_.; the second from 13_s_. 6_d_. to 15_s_.; and the third, mostly
'small boys,' between 5_s_. and 10_s_. His carpenters and blacksmiths, who
are Gold Coasters and Sierra Leonites, draw from 2_l_. 10_s_. to 3_l_. The
rations are, as usual, 1-1/2 lb. of rice per day, with 1 lb. of 'Sunday
beef,' whose brine is converted into salt.
Mr. A. Bowden, manager of the Tákwá and Abosu Mines, also employs a
'mixed multitude.' His Sierra Leone carpenters and blacksmiths draw
3_l._ 10_s._ to 4_l._ 10_s._ per month without rations, and his native
mechanics 3_l._ to 3_l._ 10_s._ The Fanti labourers are paid, as usual,
a shilling per diem and find themselves. The Kruboys, besides being
lodged and fed (1-1/2 lb. rice per day and 1 lb. beef or fish per week),
draw in money as follows: headman, 2_l_.; second ditto, 1_l_. 7s. to
1_l_. 12_s._; miners, 18_s._ to 20_s._ and labourers 9_s._ to 16_s._
This state of the labour-market is, I have said, purely provisional. It
will not outlast the time when the present concessions are in full
exploitation; and this condition of things I hope soon to see. We can then
draw from the neighbouring countries, from Yoruba to the north-east, and
perhaps, but this is doubtful, from the Baasás [Footnote: A manly and
powerful race, who call themselves Americans and will have nothing to do
with the English.] and the Drewins to the west. But we must come, sooner
or later, and the sooner the better, to a regular coolie-immigration, East
African, Indian, and Chinese.
The benefit of such an influx must not be measured merely by the
additional work of a few thousand hands. It will at once create jealousy,
competition, rivalry. It will teach by example--the only way of teaching
Africans--that work is not ignoble, but that it is ignoble to earn a
shilling and to live idle on three-pence a day till the pence are
exhausted. Its advantages will presently be felt along the whole western
coast, and men will wonder why it was not thought of before. The French,
as they are wont to do in these days, have set us an example. Already in
early 1882 the papers announced that a first cargo of 178
Chinese--probably from Cochin-China--had been landed at Saint-Louis de
Senegal for the proposed Senegambian railway.
The details of such an immigration and the measures which it will require
do not belong to this place. Suffice it to say that we can draw freely
upon the labour-banks of Macáo, Bombay, and Zanzibar. The intelligent,
thrifty, and industrious Chinese will learn mining here, as they have
learnt it elsewhere, with the utmost readiness. The 'East Indian' will be
well adapted for lighter work of the garden and the mines. Finally, the
sturdy Wásawahili of the East African coast will do, as carriers and
labourers, three times the work of Pantis and Apollonians.
I need hardly say that Captain Cameron and I would like nothing better
than to organise a movement of this kind; we would willingly do more good
to the West African coast than the whole tribe of its so-called
benefactors.
§3. GOLD-DIGGING IN NORTH-WESTERN AFRICA.
_a. Sketch of its Origin_.
The mineral wealth of Central Africa has still to be studied; at present
we are almost wholly ignorant of it. We know, however, that the outlying
portions of the Continent contain three distinct and grand centres of
mining-industry. The first worked is the north-eastern corner--in fact,
the Nile-valley and its adjacencies, where Fayzoghlú still supplies the
noble metal. The second, also dating from immense antiquity, is the whole
West African coast from Morocco to the Guinea Gulf, both included. The
third and last, the south-eastern gold-fields, have been discovered by the
Portuguese in comparatively modern days.
In this paper I propose to treat only of the western field. Its
exploitation began early enough to be noticed by Herodotus, the oldest of
Greek prose-writers. He tells us (lib. iv. 196, &c.) that the
Carthaginians received gold from a black people, whose caravans crossed
the Sahará, or Great Desert, and that they traded for it with the wild
tribes of the West Coast. His words are as follows:--'There is a land in
Libya, and a nation beyond the Pillars of Hercules [the Straits of
'Gib.'], which they [the Carthaginians] are wont to visit, where they no
sooner arrive but forthwith they break cargo; and, having disposed their
wares in an orderly way along the beach, leave them, and, returning aboard
their ships, raise a great smoke.
'The natives, when they see the smoke, come down to the shore, and, laying
out to view so much gold as they think the worth of the wares, withdraw
themselves afar. The Carthaginians upon this come ashore and look. If they
deem the gold sufficient they take it and wend their way; but if it does
not seem to them sufficient, they go aboard once more and wait patiently.
Then the others draw near and add to their gold till the Carthaginians are
content. Neither party deals unfairly by the other; for they themselves
never touch the gold till it comes up to the worth of their goods, nor do
the natives ever carry off the goods till the gold is taken away.'
Plato ('Critias' [Footnote: The celebrated Dialogue which treats of
Altantis and describes cocoas as the 'fruits having a hard rind, affording
drinks and meats and ointments.']) may refer to this dumb trade when he
tells us, 'Never was prince more wealthy than Atlas [eldest son of
Poseidon by Cleito]. His land was fertile, healthy, beautiful, marvellous;
it was terminated by a range of gold-yielding mountains.' Lyon, speaking
of the western Sudán, uses almost the very words of Herodotus. 'An
invisible nation, according to our informant, inhabit near this place, and
are said to trade by night. Those who come to traffic for their gold lay
their merchandise in heaps and retire. In the morning they find a certain
quantity of gold-dust placed against every heap, which if they think
sufficient they leave the goods; if not, they let both remain till more of
the precious ore is added' (p. 149). [Footnote: Shaw gives a similar
account (_Travels_, p. 302).]
The classical trade in gold and slaves was diligently prosecuted by the
Arabs or Saracens after Mohammed's day. Their caravans traversed the great
wilderness which lies behind the fertile Mediterranean shore, and founded
negroid empires in the western Sudán, or Blackland. Gháná, whence,
perhaps, the Portuguese Guiné and our Guinea of 'the dreadful mortal
name,' became the great gold-mart of the day. Famous in history is its
throne, a worked nugget of solid gold, weighing 30 lbs. It has been
rivalled in modern times by the 'stool' of Bontuko (Gyáman), and by the
'Hundredweight of gold' produced by New South Wales. Most of the wealth
came from a district to the south-west, Wangara, Ungura, or Unguru,
bordering on the Niger, and supposed to correspond with modern
Mandenga-land. In the lowlands, after the annual floods, the natives dug
and washed the diluvial deposits for the precious metal exactly as is now
done upon the Gold Coast; and they burrowed into the highlands which
surround in crescent-form the head-waters of the great River Joliba.
Presently Tinbukhtu succeeded, according to Leo Africanus (1500), Gháná as
the converging point of the trade, and made the name for wealth which
endures even to the present day. Its princes and nobles lavishly employed
the precious ore in ornaments, some weighing 1,300 ounces.
In due time the Moroccan Arabs were succeeded by their doughty rivals, the
Portuguese of the heroic ages of D. D. João II. and Manoel. I here pass
over the disputed claim of the French, who declare that they imported the
metal from 'Elmina' as early as 1382. [Footnote: See Chapter II.] The
first gold was discovered on his second voyage by Gonçalo Baldeza (1442)
at the Rio de Ouro, the classical Lixus and the modern El-Kus, famed for
the defeat and death of Dom Sebastiam. [Footnote: I have noticed it in
_Camoens, his Life and his Lusiads_, vol ii. chapter iii. The
identification with the Rio de Onro is that of Bowdich (p. 505). Another
Rio de Ouro was visited in 1860 by Captain George Peacock (before alluded
to), 'having a French frigate under his orders.' The 'River of Gold' of
course would become a favourite and a banal name.]
In 1470 João de Santarem and Pero d'Escobar, knights of the King, sailed
past Cape Falmas, discovered the islands of São Thomé and Annobom (January
1, 1471); and, on their return homewards, found a trade in gold-dust at
the village of Sama (Chamah) and on the site which we miscall 'Elmina.'
[Footnote: This form of the word, a masculine article with a feminine
noun, cannot exist in any of the neo-Latin languages. In Italian and
Spanish it would be La Mina, in Portuguese A Mina. The native name is Dina
or Edina.] During the same year Fernan' Gomez, a worthy of Lisbon, bought
a five years' monopoly of the gold-trade from the King, paying 44_l._ 9_s._
par annum, and binding himself to explore, every year, 300 miles down
coast from Sierra Leone. One of these expeditions landed at 'Elmina' and
discovered Cape Catherine in south latitude 1º 50' and west longitude
(Gr.) 9º 2'. The rich mines opened at Little Kommenda, or Aprobi, led to
the building of the Fort São Jorje da Mina, by Diego d'Azembuja, sent out
(A.D. 1481) to superintend the construction. But about 1622 the falling in
of some unbraced and untimbered shafts and the deaths of many miners
induced Gweffa, the King, to 'put gold in Fetish,' making it an accursed
thing; and it has not been worked since that time.
Thus Portugal secured to herself the treasures which made her the
wealthiest of European kingdoms. But when she became a province of Spain,
under D. Philip II., her Eastern conquests were systematically neglected
in favour of the Castilian colonies that studded the New World. The weak
Lusitanian garrisons were massacred on the Gold Coast, as in other parts
of Africa; and the Hollanders, the 'Water-beggars,' who had conquered
their independence from Spain, proceeded to absorb the richest possessions
of their quondam rivals. 'Elmina,' the capital, fell into Dutch hands
(1637), and till 1868 Holland retained her forts and factories on the Gold
Coast.
In their turn the English and the French, who had heard of the fabulous
treasures of the Joliba valley and the Tinbukhtu mart, began to claim
their share. As early as 1551 Captain Thomas Wyndham touched at the Gold
Coast and brought home 150 lbs. of the precious dust. The first English
company for exploring the Gambia River sent out (1618) their agent,
Richard Thompson. This brave and unfortunate explorer was rancorously
opposed by the Portuguese and eventually murdered by his own men. He was
followed (1620) by Richard Jobson, to whom we owe the first account of the
Gambia River. He landed at various points, armed with mercury, aqua regia
(nitric acid), large crucibles, and a 'dowsing' or divining rod;
[Footnote: A form of this old and almost universal magical instrument,
worked by electricity, has, I am told, been lately invented and patented
in the United States.] washed the sands and examined the rocks even beyond
the Falls of Barraconda. After having often been deceived, as has occurred
to many prospectors since his day, he determined that gold never occurs in
low fertile wooded lands, but in naked and barren hills, which embed it in
their reddish ferruginous soil. Hence it was long and erroneously
determined that bare rocks in the neighbourhood of shallow alluvia
characterise rich placers, and that the wealthiest mining-regions are poor
and stunted in vegetation. California and Australia, the Gold Coast and
South Africa, are instances of the contrary. Wásá, however, confirms the
old opinion that the strata traversed by lodes determine the predominating
metal; as quartz produces gold; hard blue slate, lead; limestone,
green-stone and porphyry, copper; and granite, tin. [Footnote: Page 17, _A
Treatise on Metalliferous Minerals and Mining_, by D. C. Davies. London,
Crosby and Co., 1881. The volume is handy and useful to explorers.]
After twenty days' labour Jobson succeeded in extracting 12 lbs. from a
single site. He declares that at length he 'arrived at the mouth of the
mine itself, and found gold in such abundance as surprised him with joy
and admiration.' Unfortunately he leaves us no notice of its position; it
is probably lost, like many of the old Brazilian diggings. The Gambia
River still exports small quantities of dust supposed to have been washed
in the Ghauts, or sea-subtending ridges, of the interior. Most of it,
however, finds its way to the wealthier and more prosperous French colony.
Whilst the English chose the Gambia the French preferred Senegal, where
they founded (1626) 'St. Louis,' called after Louis XIV. The Sieur Brue,
Director-General of the Senegal Company, made a second journey of
discovery in 1698, and reached with great difficulty the gold-mines of
desert and dreary Bambúk. There he visited the principal districts, and
secured specimens of what he calls the _ghingan_, or golden earth. He
proposed a third incursion, but the absolute apathy of his countrymen
proved an insuperable obstacle.
M. Golberry describes Bambúk in gloomy and sombre colours. Its gold is
distributed amongst low ranges of peeled and sterile hills. Probably this
results from fires and disforesting. It occurs in the shape of spangles,
grains, and _pépites_ (nuggets), whose size increases with the depth of
the digging. In the Matakon mine the dust adhered to fragments of iron,
emery, and lapis lazuli, from which it was easily detached and washed. The
less valuable Semayla placer produced dust in a hard reddish loam, mixed
with still more refractory materials; it was crushed in mortars with rude
wooden dollies or with grain-pestles. The pits, six feet in diameter,
reached a depth of from ten to twelve yards, where they were stopped by a
bed of hard reddish marle; this the Frenchman held to be the hanging wall
of a much richer lode. The people used ladders, but they neglected to
collar or brace the mouth, and the untimbered pit-sides often fell in;
hence fatal accidents, attributed to the 'earth-spirits.' They held gold
to be a capricious elf, and when a rich vein suddenly ran barren they
cried out, 'There! he is off!'
In later days Mungo Park drew attention by his famous first journey
(1795-97) to the highlands of the Mandingoes (Mandenga-land), and revived
interest in the provinces of Shronda, Konkodu, Dindiko, Bambúk, and
Bambarra. Here the natives collect dust by laborious washings of detrital
sand. His fatal second expedition (1805) produced an unfinished journal,
which, however, gives the amplest and most interesting notices concerning
the gold-production of the region he traversed. My space compels me to
refer readers to the original. [Footnote: Murray's edition of 1816, vol.
i, p. 40, and vol. ii. p. 751.]
The traveller Caillié (1827), after crossing the Niger _en route_ to
Tinbukhtu, passed south of the Bouré province, in the valley of the Great
River; and here he reports an abundance of gold. As in the districts
visited by Park, it is all alluvial and washed out of the soil. The dust,
together with native cloth, wax, honey, cotton and cattle, finds its way
to the coast, where it is bartered for beads, amber and coral, calicoes
and firearms. The gold-mines of Bouré were first visited and described by
Winwood Reade. [Footnote: _Coomassie_, &c., p. 126.]
The peninsula of Sierra Leone is not yet proved to be auriferous. Here
stray Moslems, mostly Mandengas, occasionally bring down the Melakori
River ring-gold and dust from the interior. The colonists of Liberia
assert that at times they have come upon a pocket which produced fifty
dollars; the country-people also occasionally offer gold for sale. From
the Bassam coast middle-men travel far inland and buy the metal from the
bushmen. Near Grand Bassam free gold in quartz-reefs near the shore has
been reported.
We now reach the Gold Coast proper, which amply deserves its glorious
golden name. I have shown that the whole seaboard of West Africa, between
it and Morocco, produces more or less gold; here, however, the precious
metal comes down to the very shore and is washed upon the sands. Its
length from the Assini boundary-line to the Volta [Footnote: Chapter XIV.
I would not assert that gold is not found east of the Volta River. M.
Colonna, of Lagos, told me that he had good reason to suspect its presence
on the seaboard of Dahome, and promised me to make further enquiries.] has
been laid down at 220 direct geographical miles by a depth of about 100.
The area of the Protectorate, which has been a British colony since 1874,
is assumed to be 16,620 instead of 24,500 square miles, and the population
may exceed half a million. Its surface is divided into twelve petty
kingdoms; and its strand is studded with forts and ruins of forts, a total
of twenty-five, or one to every eight miles. This small section of West
Africa poured a flood of gold into Europe; and, until the mineral
discoveries of California and Australia, it continued to be the principal
source of supply to the civilised world.
The older writers give us ample details about gold-digging and trading two
centuries ago. Bosnian (Letter VI.) shows that the people prospected for
the illustrious metal in three forms of ground. The first was in, or
between, particular hills, where they sank pits; the second was about the
rivers and waterfalls; and the third was on the seashore near the mouths
of rivulets after violent night-rains. He ends his letter with these
sensible words: 'I would refer to any intelligent metallist whether a vast
deal of ore must not of necessity be lost here, from which a great deal of
gold might be separated, from want of skill in the metallic art; and not
only so, but I firmly believe that vast quantities of pure gold are left
behind; for the negroes only ignorantly dig at random, without the least
knowledge of the veins of the mine. [Footnote: The origin of these mineral
veins is still disputed, science being as yet too young for the task of
solving the mystery. Probably, as Mr. Davies remarks, 'the mode of the
origin and means of the deposition are not one only but many,' and we have
the Huttonian (igneous) and Wernerian (aqueous) theories, the sublimation
of Necker, the electricity of Mr. R. W. Fox, the infiltration and
gravitation of fluid metals towards cracks, vughs (cavities), and
shrinkages, and the law of replacement. 'If a steel plate be removed atom
by atom,' says Mr. R. Brough Smyth (_Gold Fields of Victoria_, Melbourne,
1869), 'and each atom be replaced by a corresponding atom of silver--a
fact established by direct experiment--it will be readily seen that a
mineral vein may be formed in the same way.'] And I doubt not that if the
land belonged to Europeans they would soon find it to produce much richer
treasures than the negroes obtain from it. But it is not probable that we
shall ever possess that liberty here, wherefore we must be content with
being so far masters of it as we are at present, which, if well and
prudently managed, would turn to a very great account.'
Times, however, are changed. England is now mistress of the field, and it
will be her fault if she leaves it untilled.
The good old Hollander first mentions amongst his six gold-sites the
kingdom of Denkira; it then included the conquests of Wásá (Wassaw), of
Encasse, [Footnote: The Inkassa of D'Anville, 1729.] and of Juffer or
Quiforo. The gold of that region is good, but much alloyed for the trade
with 'fetish'-figures. These are composed sometimes of pure mountain-gold;
more often the ore is mixed with one-third, or even a half, of silver and
copper, and stuffed with half-weight of the black earth used for moulding.
The second was Acanny (D'Anville's Akanni), with gold so pure and fine
that 'Acanny sika' meant the best ley. Then came the kingdom of Akim,
which 'furnishes as large quantities of gold as any land that I know, and
that also the most valuable and pure of any that is carried away from the
coast.' It was easily distinguished by its deep colour. The fourth and
fifth were Ashanti and Ananse, a small tract between the ex-great
despotism and Denkira. The sixth and last was Awine, our Aowin, the region
to the east of the Tando, then and now included in the British
Protectorate. The Dutch 'traded here with a great deal of pleasure,' the
people 'being the civilest and fairest dealers of all the negroes.'
The Ashanti war of 1873-74 had the effect of opening to transit a large
area of workable ground. English officers traversed the interior in all
directions, and their reports throw vivid light upon the position, the
extent, and the value of the auriferous grounds which subtend the Gold
Coast and which supply it with the precious metal.
The gold-provinces best known to us are now three--Wásá, of which these
pages treat; Akim, the hill-land, an easy journey of a week north with
westing from Akra; and Gyáman, the rival of Ashanti.
Akim is divided into eastern and western. Mr. H. Ponsonby, when travelling
through both regions, found the natives getting quantities of gold by
digging holes eight to ten feet deep on either side of the forest-paths.
He saw as much as three ounces taken up in less than half an hour. Around
the capital of eastern Akim, Kyebi, or Chyebi, the land is also
honeycombed with man-holes, making night-travel dangerous to the stranger.
It requires a sharp eye to detect the deserted pits, two feet in diameter
and 'sunk straight, as if they had been bored with huge augurs.' I have
seen something of the kind in the water-meadows near Shoreham. The workman
descends by foot-holes, and works with a hoe four to six inches long by
two broad: when his calabash is filled it is drawn up by his companions.
The earthquakes of April and July 1862 [Footnote: I happened to be at Akra
during the convulsion of July 10. The commandant, Major (now Colonel) de
Buvignes, and I set out for a stroll along the sands to the west. The
morning was close and cloudy: what little breeze there was came from the
south-west, under a leaden sky and over a leaden sea. At 8.10 A.M., as we
were returning from the rocks about three-quarters of a mile off, there
was a sudden rambling like a distant thunder-clap; the sands seemed to
wave up and down as a shaken carpet, and we both staggered forwards.
Others described the movement as rising and falling like the waters of a
lagoon. I looked with apprehension at the sea; but the direction of the
shock was apparently from west-north-west; and the line was too oblique to
produce one of those awful earthquake-waves, seventy feet high, which have
swept tall ships over the roofs of cities. We ran as fast as we could to
the town, where everything was in the wildest confusion. The 'Big House'
and Mr. John Hansen's were mere ruins; the Court-house had come to pieces,
and the prison-cells yawned open. I distinctly saw that the rock-ledge
under Akra, between Fort James and Crèvecoeur, had been upraised: canoes
passed over what was now dry. A second shock at 8.20 A.M., and a third
about 10.45, completed the destruction, split every standing wall, and
shook down the three forts into ruinous heaps. Nor did the seismic
movements cease till July 15, when I made my escape.