[Frontispiece: LUMBERMEN AND TIMBER-RAFTS AT THE MOUTH OF THE OGOWE.]
ON THE EDGE OF THE
PRIMEVAL FOREST
Experiences and Observations of
a Doctor in Equatorial Africa
by
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
D.THEOL., D.PHIL., D.MED.(STRASBOURG)
AUTHOR OF "THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS,"
"THE PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION," ETC.
TRANSLATED BY C. T. CAMPION
M.A., ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
_TENTH IMPRESSION
WITH 14 PLATES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS_
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
4, 5, & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.1
DEDICATION
To the friends, dead and living,
who have helped me in the enterprise
of which this book is a part,
in deepest gratitude
MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN
FIRST PUBLISHED JANUARY 19TH, 1922
REPRINTED 1922, 1923, 1924,
1926, 1928, 1929, 1931, 1934, and 1937
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. HOW I CAME TO BE A DOCTOR IN THE FOREST.
THE LAND AND PEOPLE OF THE OGOWE
II. THE JOURNEY
III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES
IV. JULY, 1913--JANUARY, 1914
V. JANUARY TO JUNE, 1914
VI. LUMBERMEN AND RAFTSMEN IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST
VII. SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE FOREST
VIII. CHRISTMAS, 1914
IX. CHRISTMAS, 1915
X. THE MISSION
XI. CONCLUSION
NOTE
_With regard to the English Edition of this book I owe a debt of thanks
to two friends. Mr. C. T. Campion, M.A., had the goodness to prepare
and to put at my disposal his very excellent translation, and Mr. John
Naish of Oxford, was kind enough to revise the proofs and to undertake
the final corrections._
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LUMBERMEN AND TIMBER-RAFTS AT THE MOUTH
OF THE OGOWE . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
A RIVER STEAMER ON THE OGOWE
MY LITTLE BUNGALOW (DISTANT VIEW)
MY LITTLE BUNGALOW (NEAR VIEW)
THE HOSPITAL AT LAMBARENE
JOSEPH, THE HOSPITAL ASSISTANT, BANDAGING
SORES IN FRONT OF THE HOSPITAL
NEGRO CHILD WITH ABDOMINAL DROPSY
PAHOUIN BOYS FROM LAMBARENE
STUMP OF A MAHOGANY TREE
RAFT OF OKOUME WOOD AND MAHOGANY BEING
FLOATED DOWN THE OGOWE RIVER
PREMISES OF A TIMBER MERCHANT AT LAMBARENE
A LITTLE PLANTATION OF BANANAS ON THE MARGIN
OF THE UNTOUCHED FOREST
NEGRO VILLAGE AT LAMBARENE
ON THE BANK OF THE OGOWE RIVER
A MISSIONARY'S BUNGALOW AT LAMBARENE
THE BOYS' SCHOOL AT LAMBARENE
_Note_.--I am indebted for a large part of the photographs to the
kindness of a grateful patient. Illustrations Nos. 5 and 6 are based
on a slide made by Mr. Ottmann. For illustration No. 3 I have to thank
Mr. Pelot, and for Nos. 4 and 15 Mr. Morel.
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE LOWER COURSE OF THE OGOWE. (_Based on
a map by the Rev. Mr. Haug._)]
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ON THE EDGE OF THE
PRIMEVAL FOREST
CHAPTER I
HOW I CAME TO BE A DOCTOR IN THE FOREST. THE
LAND AND PEOPLE OF THE OGOWE
I gave up my position of professor in the University of Strasbourg, my
literary work, and my organ-playing, in order to go as a doctor to
Equatorial Africa. How did that come about?
I had read about the physical miseries of the natives in the virgin
forests; I had heard about them from missionaries, and the more I
thought about it the stranger it seemed to me that we Europeans trouble
ourselves so little about the great humanitarian task which offers
itself to us in far-off lands. The parable of Dives and Lazarus seemed
to me to have been spoken directly of us! We are Dives, for, through
the advances of medical science, we now know a great deal about disease
and pain, and have innumerable means of fighting them: yet we take as a
matter of course the incalculable advantages which this new wealth
gives us! Out there in the colonies, however, sits wretched Lazarus,
the coloured folk, who suffers from illness {2} and pain just as much
as we do, nay, much more, and has absolutely no means of fighting them.
And just as Dives sinned against the poor man at his gate because for
want of thought he never put himself in his place and let his heart and
conscience tell him what he ought to do, so do we sin against the poor
man at our gate.
* * * * *
The two or three hundred doctors whom the European States maintain as
medical officers in the colonial world could undertake only a very
small part (so I argued to myself) of the huge task, even if the
majority of them were not there for the benefit, first of all, of the
white colonists and the troops. Society in general must recognise this
work of humanity to be its task, and there must come a time when
doctors go out into the world of their own free will, but sent and
supported by society and in numbers corresponding to the need, to work
for the benefit of the natives. Then only shall we be recognising and
beginning to act upon the responsibility in respect of the coloured
races which lies upon us as inheritors of the world's civilisation.
[Sidenote: The decision]
Moved by these thoughts I resolved, when already thirty years old, to
study medicine and to put my ideas to the test out there. At the
beginning of 1913 I graduated as M.D. That same spring I started with
my wife, who had qualified as a nurse, for the River Ogowe in
Equatorial Africa, there to begin my active work.
I chose this locality because some Alsatian missionaries in the service
of the Paris Evangelical Mission {3} had told me that a doctor was
badly needed there on account of the constantly spreading sleeping
sickness. The mission was prepared also to place at my disposal one of
the houses at their station at Lambarene, and to allow me to build a
hospital in their grounds, promising further to give me help with the
work.
The actual expenses of the undertaking, however, I had to provide
myself, and to that I devoted what I had earned by giving organ
concerts, together with the profits from my book on Bach, which had
appeared in German, French, and English. In this way the old Thomas
Cantor of Leipsig, Johann Sebastian himself, helped me in the provision
of a hospital for negroes in the virgin forest, and kind friends in
Germany, France, and Switzerland contributed money. When we left
Europe, the undertaking was securely financed for two years, the
expenses--apart from the journey out and back--being, as I reckoned,
about 15,000 francs[1] a year, and this calculation proved to be very
nearly correct.
[1] _I.e._, about £600 p.a. at the then normal rate of exchange.
The keeping of the accounts and the ordering of all the things needed
had been undertaken by self-sacrificing friends in Strasbourg, and the
cases, when packed, were sent to Africa by the mission with their own.
My work then lived--to use a scientific term--in symbiosis with the
Paris Evangelical Mission, but it was, in itself, undenominational and
international. It was, and is still, my conviction that the
humanitarian work to be done in the world should, for its
accomplishment, call upon us as men not as members of any particular
nation or religious body.
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[Sidenote: The Ogowe district]
Now for a word about the country which was the scene of our labours.
The Ogowe district belongs to the Colony of Gaboon, and the Ogowe
itself is a river, 700 to 800 miles long, north of, and roughly
parallel to, the Congo. Although smaller than the latter, it is yet a
magnificent river, and in the lower part of its course its width is
from 1,200 to 2,200 yards. For the last 120 miles it divides into a
number of arms which enter the Atlantic near Cape Lopez, but it is
navigable for fairly large river steamers as far as N'Djôle, about 250
miles up stream. At that point begins the region of hills and
mountains which leads up to the great plateau of Central Africa. Here
also begins a series of rapids which alternate with stretches of
ordinary open river, and these rapids can only be surmounted by small
screw steamers, built for the purpose, and by native canoes.
While along the middle and upper course of the Ogowe the country is a
mixture of prairie and wood, there is along the lower part of the
river, from N'Djôle downwards, nothing but water and virgin forest.
This damp, low-lying ground is admirably suited for the cultivation of
coffee, pepper, cinnamon, vanilla, and cocoa; the oil palm also grows
well in it. But the chief business of Europeans is neither the
cultivation of these things, nor the collection of rubber in the
forest, but the timber trade. Now on the west coast of Africa, which
is very poor in harbours, especially in such as have rivers discharging
into them, conditions are very seldom favourable for the loading of
timber cargoes. But the Ogowe has the great advantage of discharging
into an excellent roadstead without any bar; the huge rafts can lie
alongside the steamers {5} which are to take them away without danger
of being broken up and scattered on a bar or by a heavy swell. The
timber trade, therefore, is likely to be for an indefinite period the
chief industry of the Ogowe district.
Cereals and potatoes it is, unfortunately, impossible to cultivate,
since the warm, damp atmosphere makes them grow too fast. Cereals
never produce the usual ear, and potato haulms shoot up without any
tubers below. Rice, too, is for various reasons not cultivable. Cows
cannot be kept along the lower Ogowe because they cannot eat the grass
that grows there, though further inland, on the central plateau, they
flourish splendidly. It is necessary, therefore, to import from Europe
flour, rice, potatoes, and milk, a fact which makes living a
complicated business and very expensive.
Lambarene lies a little south of the Equator, so that its seasons are
those of the Southern hemisphere: winter when it is summer in Europe,
and _vice versâ_. Its winter is characterised by its including the dry
season, which lasts from the end of May to the beginning of October,
and summer is the rainy season, the rain falling from early in October
to the middle of December, and from the middle of January to the end of
May. About Christmas one gets three to four weeks of continuous summer
weather, and it is then that the thermometer record is highest.
The average shade temperature in the rainy season is 82°-86° F.,[2] in
the dry season about 77°-82° F., the nights being always nearly as hot
as the days. This circumstance, and the excessive moisture of the {6}
atmosphere, are the chief things which make the climate of the Ogowe
lowlands such a trial for a European. After a year's residence fatigue
and anæmia begin to make themselves disagreeably perceptible. At the
end of two or three years he becomes incapable of real work, and does
best to return to Europe for at least eight months in order to recruit.
[2] _I.e._, 28° to 30° and 25° to 28° C.
The mortality among the whites at Libreville, the capital of Gaboon,
was, in 1903, 14 per cent.
* * * * *
Before the war there lived in the Ogowe lowlands about two hundred
whites: planters, timber merchants, storekeepers, officials, and
missionaries. The number of the natives is hard to estimate, but, at
any rate, the country is not thickly inhabited. We have at present
merely the remains of eight once powerful tribes, so terribly has the
population been thinned by three hundred years of alcohol and the slave
trade. Of the Orungu tribe, which lived in the Ogowe delta, there are
scarcely any left; of the Galoas, who belonged to the Lambarene
district, there remain still 80,000 at most. Into the void thus
created there swarmed from inland the cannibal Fans, called by the
French Pahouins, who have never yet come into contact with
civilisation, and but for the opportune arrival of the Europeans this
warrior folk would by this time have eaten up the old tribes of the
Ogowe lowlands. Lambarene forms in the river valley the boundary
between the Pahouins and the old tribes.
[Sidenote: The colonization of Ogowe and its missions.]
Gaboon was discovered by the Portuguese at the end of the fifteenth
century, and by 1521 there was a Catholic mission settlement on the
coast between the {7} mouths of the Congo and the Ogowe. Cape Lopez is
named after one of them, Odoardo Lopez, who came out there in 1578. In
the eighteenth century the Jesuits had extensive plantations on the
coast, with thousands of slaves, but they were as far from penetrating
to the hinterland as were the white traders.
When, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the French and the
English combined to fight the slave trade on the west coast, they
chose, in 1849, the bay which lies north of that of Cape Lopez for the
headquarters of their fleet, establishing there also a settlement to
which they could send the rescued slaves: hence the name Libreville.
That the narrow channels which empty themselves here and there into
Cape Lopez bay belonged to a great river, the whites did not yet know,
for the natives inhabiting the coast had withheld the information in
order to keep the inland trade in their own hands. It was not till
1862 that Lieut. Serval, while on an excursion to the south-east of
Libreville, discovered the Ogowe in the neighbourhood of Lambarene.
Then began the exploration, from Cape Lopez, of the lower course of the
river, and the chiefs were gradually brought to acknowledge the French
protectorate.
When in the eighties the need was felt of finding the most convenient
route for trade from the coast up to the navigable parts of the Congo,
de Brazza believed that it was to be found in the Ogowe, since this
river rises only some 125 miles north-west of Stanley Pool, and is
separated from the Alima, a navigable tributary of the Congo, only by a
narrow watershed. He even succeeded in getting to the Congo by this
route a steamer which could be taken to pieces and transported by {8}
land, but the route proved to be impracticable for trade on account of
the difficulties caused by the rapids in the upper part of the Ogowe.
The construction of the Belgian-Congo railway between Matadi and
Brazzaville was finished in 1898, and this put a final end to any idea
of making the Ogowe a way to the Congo. To-day the Ogowe is used only
by the traffic which goes up to its own still comparatively unexplored
hinterland.
The first Protestant missionaries on the Ogowe were Americans, who came
there about 1860, but as they could not comply with the requirement of
the French Government that they should give their school instruction in
French, they resigned their work later on to the Paris Missionary
Society.
To-day this society owns four stations: N'Gômô, Lambarene, Samkita, and
Talagouga. N'Gômô is about 140 miles from the coast, and the others
follow one another in that order at intervals of about 35 miles.
Talagouga is situated on a picturesque island just in front of N'Djôle,
which is the farthest point to which the river steamer goes.
At each Protestant mission station there are generally one unmarried
and two married missionaries, and, as a rule, a woman teacher also,
making five or six persons, without reckoning the children.
The Catholic mission has three stations in the same district: one in
Lambarene, one in N'Djôle, and one near Samba, on the N'Gounje, the
largest tributary of the Ogowe, and on each station there live about
ten whites: usually three priests, two lay brothers, and five sisters.
The administrative officials of the district are {9} stationed at Cape
Lopez, at Lambarene, at Samba, and at N'Djôle, with about five hundred
coloured soldiers distributed over it to act as a police force.
Such was the country, and such the people among whom for four and a
half years I worked as the forest doctor. What I experienced during
that time and the observations I made previous to the outbreak of the
war, I shall now describe with the help of the reports which I wrote
every six months in Lambarene and sent as printed letters to my friends
and supporters. During the war such correspondence was, of course,
impossible, and for that later period and for what is said about the
religious and social problems treated of, I rely on memoranda which I
made for my own use.
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