disposed to protest the general opinion that it is “the worst climate
in the world.” The white man never becomes acclimatized, and never will
until he develops another kind of blood. One lives face to face with
the constant and proximate possibility of death as long as he is on the
coast. It is an unnatural consciousness, which, when prolonged through
years, tends to become fixed and permanent even when one has removed from
the circumstances that were its occasion. And yet, the conversation of
the Old Coaster is liable to make an exaggerated impression. In the first
place, the impression is natural that the climate being so unhealthful
must also be uncomfortable. But, in reality, while several months of
the year are extremely uncomfortable, the greater part of the year
is tolerably comfortable and there are several months of exceedingly
pleasant weather. Neither is the heat so great as is generally supposed.
With the greatest effort on my part, I never succeeded in disabusing my
friends of the notion that I was slowly roasting to death in Africa.
With every hot spell in America, when the thermometer was standing at
100°, their thoughts turned towards me in profound sympathy. While
I have at times suffered with the heat and there have been times on
the river, between high banks, cut off from the breeze, when I nearly
fainted, and one occasion upon which I was quite overcome, yet as a rule
I lived comfortably by day; and the nights are always cool. The maximum
temperature on the coast is from 86° to 88°, Fahrenheit, and even such a
temperature is rare. One ought to add, however, that owing to the extreme
humidity this temperature in Africa is incomparably hotter than the same
temperature in America. It is the sultriness of the hottest weather that
makes it insufferable. West Africa is heated by steam and without the
medium of radiators. The uniformity of the climate is pleasurable, and is
very strange to us of northern latitudes. One may reckon upon the weather
to a certainty. Within the limits of a given season there is scarcely any
variation from day to day.
The insalubrity is due to the deadly malaria of the reeking,
mosquito-infested swamps. Mr. Henry Savage Landor, after a journey across
Africa, announces to the world that he is a strong disbeliever in the
mosquito theory of malaria. But, that the mosquito is the agent of the
malaria bacillus, medical science no longer regards as theory, but as
fact, a fact established by the most elaborate and painstaking series of
experiments ever conducted in the interest of medical science. Mr. Landor
also tells us that he and his men were frequently attacked by malarial
fever, becoming so weak that they could not raise their hands; but in
every case a dose of castor-oil effected a cure in a few hours. He is
therefore a strong advocate of castor-oil, but disbelieves in quinine.
The use of castor-oil is no new discovery. Every man who has had any
experience in West Africa takes it at the approach of a fever. But there
is no substitute for quinine. And the medical men of the coast will agree
in saying that life depends always upon the judicious use of it.
In recent years there has been such progress in the knowledge of malaria,
and how to meet malarial conditions, that the record of West Africa is
continually improving. Then again, missionary societies, following the
example of the various European governments, have ceased to make war
upon the inevitable and have greatly reduced the term of service. In
American missions the term is generally three years; in English missions
it is a year and a half or two years; and in the government service the
term is usually much shorter than in the missions. My first experience
in Africa was not a fair test of the climate. We were engaged in opening
a new mission station in the bush, and the conditions were the most
unhealthful. Our food was the coarsest,—it was several mouths before
we tasted bread; our accommodations were the poorest,—part of the time
we lived in a tent that did not protect us against the heavy rains;
and besides there were forced journeys to the coast in the wet season
with incidental hardships. After a succession of fevers and sensational
recoveries I fled from the coast with broken health at the end of a year
and a half.
But the second time, when I lived at Gaboon, I stayed five and a half
years,—far too long. During the first three years at Gaboon T had
fever once every two or three months. I became very familiar with its
preceding symptoms—physical exhaustion for several days, such that the
least effort induced painful weariness and a frequent heavy sigh; aching
of head and limbs; chills alternating rapidly with feverish heat, and a
terrible temper. At the end of the third year I had a very severe fever
which, instead of yielding to quinine the third day, became much worse,
and the natives carried me in a hammock to the French hospital. There I
remained for five weeks. But after that I had no more fever, not even
once, though I remained in Africa more than two years longer, which
would have been absolutely impossible if the fevers had continued. The
difference was in my use of quinine. At first I took quinine only with
the attacks of fever, and then I took an enormous quantity. But in the
later period I kept myself immune by taking it daily whether I was ill or
not. I took five grains every night for those several years. People are
usually greatly surprised at this and ask if such an amount of quinine
was not a terrible strain upon the constitution. It was, without doubt;
but not so great a strain as malarious blood, and frequent fevers, and
the shock of very large doses of quinine at such times. If I had not
been in greatly reduced health before I began to take it regularly it
is not likely that I should have required nearly so much. But this is
anticipating; for we are still on the outward voyage.
In general the coast of West Africa is not beautiful; although it has a
weird fascination for those who have once lived on it. It is low-lying,
straight and monotonous: a gleaming line of white surf, a golden strip
of sandy beach, a dark green line of forest—and that is all, for days
and days and days, and for some two thousand miles, only broken at
long intervals by the great estuary that is a peculiar characteristic
of African rivers, and by low hills far away on the horizon. Many of
the traders are living, not in the white settlements, but in single
trading-houses and far apart along this lonely shore. They like it or
they hate it. To some it is an idle dream-life that they enjoy, and to
others it is a nightmare that they abhor. Some of those who came aboard
looked like haunted men. Each day is exactly like all the others, and
the natural surroundings never vary however far they may wander along
the beach—three endless lines of colour stretching away to eternity, the
dull green forest front, the yellow strip of sand, the white surge of
the foaming surf, and beyond it the boundless sea. Even in the darkest
night the forest still shows as a blacker rim against the darkness, and
the surf-line is white with a whiteness that no night can obscure. The
unceasing sound of it is like low thunder, and unless one loves it he
must often think what a relief it would be if it would stop but for one
brief moment, and how the silence would “sink like music on his heart.”
In such places, and in the bush, the traders sometimes wear only pajamas,
by day as well as night. There are natives enough around, and there is
always noise enough; but it is the noise that only emphasizes solitude.
And one were better to live entirely alone than to be subjected to the
influence of African degradation without the moral restraints of home and
the society of equals, unless his religious belief be something more than
a mere acceptance of tradition, and his principles something more than
conventional morality. There is a better class of natives whose society
might relieve loneliness, but the trader, as a rule, does not gather this
class around him.
Some are pleased to say very hard things about the traders. But he who
would judge justly must have a mind well attempered to the claims of
morality on the one hand, and on the other, to the allowance due to the
frailty of human nature when placed in circumstances of unparalleled
temptation. No man ever realizes the moral restraints of good society
until they are all withdrawn; nor how insidious the influence even of the
most repulsive vices when they have become so common to our eyes that
they cease to shock: the moral safety of most men is in being shocked.
Of course there are bad men among the traders, and some _very_ bad; and
the rumshop which, wherever the white man has penetrated, rises like
a death-spectre in the landscape, is an abomination to which it would
be difficult to do injustice. But it is not chiefly the trader who is
responsible for the rum traffic. Many of them would be thankful if the
various governments would entirely prohibit its importation. Moreover,
they sell a thousand things besides rum,—as many useful things, and
necessary to civilization, as the native is willing to buy. The traders
are all men of courage—we can at least admire them for that—and many
are honest and many are kind; and it were far better to refrain from
condemning the dissolute than that in so doing one should soil the
reputation of an honest man.
We called at Cape Coast Castle, Accra, Lagos, Monrovia and several other
places where there are no harbours, and where the surf is so violent that
passengers rarely go ashore unless these places are their destination.
The longest stop on the voyage was at Old Calabar, sixty miles up the
Calabar River, where we stayed five days. Old Calabar when I was there
first was the English capital of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, which
afterwards became a part of Nigeria. The heat was insufferable; for,
while it is possible to keep cool on the hills where the white men live,
it is not possible in the low channel of the river, and especially in the
cabin of a steamer. The name _Old Calabar_ has a fine far-away sound,
like _Cairo_ or _Bagdad_, and suggests a place of romantic and legendary
interest. And indeed the tales of the _Arabian Nights_ scarcely surpass
the real history of the native despots that have ruled at Old Calabar
even down to the death of King Duke in our own times, when, despite
the presence of the English, it is said that five hundred natives were
stealthily put to death to furnish the king a seemly retinue in the other
world.
The run up the Calabar River is a pleasant variety after the long weeks
on the sea. Here we first saw the crocodile, which abounds in all the
largest rivers of Africa. It is the ugliest beast in the world. Lying
on a bank of mud, its head always towards the water, and among old logs
and roots, it looks itself like some gnarled and slimy log, and is
difficult to discern. But at the sound of a gun or the near approach of
the steamer it slides down into the water quick as a flash. Most of the
passengers get their guns and take a few shots at them. In every case the
passenger declares that he has shot the crocodile without a doubt; and
as the creature disappears into the water there is of course no way of
disproving the statement. But when we were coming down the river there
seemed to be as many as ever.
The Spanish Island of Fernando Po is the most beautiful place in West
Africa. Seen from the harbour in the early morning light or in the soft
glow of the evening it is a fairy-land of tropical beauty. The bottom
of the semicircular harbour is the crater of an extinct volcano and is
very deep. The bank is covered down to the water with a lavish growth of
ferns, and trailing vines, and flowers of many colours; while above the
palm tree is abundant—the most graceful of all trees, and the billowy
bamboo tosses in the breeze. In the middle and extending backwards is the
white town of Saint Isabel, and behind the town stands a great solitary
mountain of green, which rises to a height of ten thousand feet. Like
other fairy-lands it requires the illusion of distance. It appears best
from the harbour, and that is true of most tropical beauty. The soil is
the most fertile in West Africa. I have seen plantains there full twice
as large as any that I have seen elsewhere. For some years it has been
producing large quantities of cocoa, most of which is shipped to Spain
and thence over the world in the form of chocolate.
Africa is a land of extremes. From Fernando Po crossing again to the
mainland we went fifteen miles up the Rio del Rey to the ugliest place
in the world. I have also been in the Rio del Rey several times on the
homeward voyage, when the steamers usually spend a day there taking on
palm-oil and rubber,—a coast steamer would go to Hades for palm-oil
and take all the passengers along with it. There is no native village
here. The three trading houses receive the produce which the natives
bring down the river. All around is one vast mangrove swamp, an ideal
mosquito-incubator. The trading-houses are erected upon a foundation made
with the ashes of passing steamers, which were saved and deposited here.
The foliage of the mangrove is thin, and at a distance resembles our
poplar. But the greater part of the mangrove is a solid mass of roots,
almost wholly above ground and more nearly vertical than horizontal. The
trees seem to be standing on stilts, six or eight feet long, as if they
were trying to keep out of the water. There are also aerial roots, long,
leafless and straight, depending from all the branches, even the highest,
which as they reach the water spread into several fingers. At the high
tide the roots are submerged and the ugliness of the swamp concealed
for a while. But as the tide ebbs the roots appear dripping and slimy
until they are completely exposed: and as the water still recedes long
stretches of fœtid mud-bank appear. The smell has been accumulating for
ages. A low-lying mist rises from the oozing banks, and now and then
stretches a stealthy arm out over the river, or creeps from root to root.
Some one standing near exclaimed: “O heavens, what a place!” I could only
wonder at the geographical direction of his thoughts; for my thoughts
were of Gehenna and the river Styx. The mangrove swamp is surely the
worst that nature has ever been known to do. My feeling of disgust was
intensified by many experiences of after years. Sometimes approaching a
town at the ebbing tide, a strong native has carried me on his back from
the boat to the solid bank, across a waste of sludge, and sometimes he
has fallen in the act. Other times, when one could not wade, they have
thrown me a line and have dragged me across in a canoe; and I felt that
if the canoe should capsize I would sink almost forever; or, perhaps
be dug up twenty thousand years hence and exhibited as a pre-historic
specimen. “Every prospect pleases,” reads the hymn, “and only man is
vile.” But the worst débris of humanity is not half so vile as the
prospect of a mangrove swamp at low tide.
The death record of the Rio del Rey is appalling. Every time that I have
been there—seven times—the traders that came on board looked like dying
men; and often their limbs were bandaged for ulcers or kraw-kraw. I was
once on board when an English missionary and his wife debarked at this
place, expecting to go on up the river, beyond the swamps, to the mission
station in the hills of the interior. The lady was becoming more and more
fearful during the voyage, and the effect upon her of this lower river
was such that she was almost hysterical. She remained on board all day
until we were about to weigh the anchor. The first impression counts for
much in the matter of health and resistance to the fever; and the sight
of that shrinking woman going ashore in such a place was pitiable; for we
all felt that she was doomed. After a few months, however, she escaped
with her life; but she was never able to return to Africa. The mangrove
swamp stretches along the greater part of the coast of West Africa, and
along the rivers where the water is salt or brackish because of the flow
of the tide from the sea.
The next experience after the Rio del Rey was a greater contrast than
ever. We proceeded forty miles southward and called at Victoria, in the
German colony of Cameroon. The harbour at Victoria is divided from the
sea by a semicircle of islands, some small and some larger. One of these
islands, a large barren rock, when seen from a certain part of the beach,
bears a singular though grotesque resemblance to Queen Victoria as she
appeared when seated upon the throne. It is presumably from this that the
place was given the name _Victoria_; for the English traders were there
before Germany occupied the territory.
Immediately behind the harbour is the great Mount Cameroon, one of the
greatest mountains in the world, a solitary peak, which rises immediately
from the sea to a height of 13,700 feet; which is twelve hundred feet
higher than Teneriffe. It was evening as we approached, and before we had
entered the harbour it was night; for in the tropics day darkens quickly
into night and there is no twilight. But on the top of the mountain, far
above our night, we still saw the rose-red of the lingering day. The moon
rose behind the mountain and we steered into the shadow of it closer and
closer, for by night it seemed much nearer than it really was. The number
of passengers had diminished to a very few, and they were silent; not a
voice was heard on the deck. It was the strangest silence I have ever
experienced; not the mere negation of sound, but like something positive,
and diffused from the mountain itself; a silence more impressive than
speech; the silence of an infinite comprehension. The engines stopped:
we were ready to cast the anchor, and I found myself wondering how the
captain’s voice would sound when in a moment he would shout: “Let go.”
“How fit a place,” someone at length remarked, “for the sounding of the
last trumpet and the final judgment! before this mountain which has
looked down unchanged upon all the generations that have come and passed
away since the world began.”
It is not always silent, however, for the natives, with some sense of
its majesty, call it the “Throne of Thunder.” Fierce storms wage battle
around its middle height, with terrific peals of thunder such as I
have never heard elsewhere. Sometimes for many days it wraps itself in
clouds and darkness, completely invisible. I was once a whole week at
various ports within a few miles of it, and did not catch a glimpse of
it. The clouds wrapped it about to the very base, and there was nothing
to indicate that it was there except the unusual frequency of storm and
thunder. Then, one day when we were at Victoria, the weather brightened
so much that we expected soon to see the peak. I asked a native
attendant, a young man, to watch for it and tell me if he saw it. At
length, while I was sitting on deck watching for it myself, he exclaimed:
“The peak! Mr. Milligan, the peak!”
“Where?” I said. “I don’t see it.”
“Look higher,” he exclaimed.
“I am looking as high as I can. I am looking as high as the sky.”
“Look higher than the sky,” he cried, with native simplicity; “the sky is
not high.”
I lifted my eyes still higher towards the zenith, and there, through
an expanding rift in the heavy cloud, I saw the peak, calm, bright
and beautiful, just as it had been all the time, even when hidden by
low-hanging clouds. I have often thought of it since. God is higher than
our highest thought, higher than our sky. Our habits of mind and heart,
even our theology may hide Him from our sight, until by some unwonted
experience these are shattered, and through the rent clouds of our former
sky we see the living God.
A short time before I left Africa I spent ten days at a sanitarium of the
Basle Mission, on the side of Cameroon, between three and four thousand
feet high. I had then been in Africa for years and had tropical blood in
my veins, and I suffered much with the cold. There was so much covering
on my bed that I was fairly sore with the weight of it, and yet I was
cold. The storms raged frequently, hiding the heavens from those below
and the earth from us; for we were above the storm-cloud, and dwelt in
light and sunshine. The detonation of thunder beneath us was like the
muttering rumble of an earthquake.
The German government has built a splendid road from the base of the
mountain up to the sanitarium. The road is well graded, and winds upwards
like a continuous S, covering a distance of sixteen miles in the ascent.
I was delighted when I found that the missionaries would provide me
a mule upon which I could ride up to the sanitarium. I am a lover of
horses, and often during those years in Africa I had been homesick for
the sight of one. The mule, when he appeared, was sleek and strong; I
put my arms around his neck and patted him and caressed him as if he
were a long-lost friend. Then I mounted him and started up the road, an
attendant following behind with another mule and carrying my baggage.
The mule which I rode was deeply imbued with Longfellow’s sentiment:
“Home-keeping hearts are happiest; to stay at home is best.” He climbed
slowly and reluctantly, and by some mysterious operation of the law of
gravitation his head had a persistent tendency to turn about and swing
down the grade. I soon realized that I could go faster without him, and
that the strength which I was expending in keeping him in the path of
duty was greater than that which I would require in going my way alone;
and I had no strength to spare. Therefore after three or four miles in
his company, finding his disposition fixed and unaspiring, I dismounted,
and leaving him in the road for the guide, I walked the rest of the
sixteen miles.
But ten days later, when I was returning to Victoria, the same mule
was again put at my disposal, and I gladly accepted him. For I was
much stronger, and I was going in the direction of his own desire; and
besides it was down-hill all the way, and I knew that he was too lazy to
hold back. The grade was not such that there was any danger to him from
running; so I galloped the sixteen miles, and had the ride of my life. I
could have shouted with delight. After a few miles I took a severe pain
in my side. I dismounted and lay down on the ground. In a little while
I was all right again, and taking off a pair of stout suspenders I tied
them as tight as possible around my waist with a large clumsy knot at my
side. I had already discarded my coat, and my only upper garment was a
woolen undershirt with short sleeves. The suspenders around my waist gave
me a new accession of strength and I galloped all the rest of the way,
with the same pleasure, and entered Victoria where I made something of a
sensation. My last association, therefore, with the great mountain, was
not an impression of its solemn majesty, but the memory of a jolly good
ride.
[Illustration: MISSION HOUSE AT BATANGA.]
I was glad when at last we reached Batanga, and the long voyage was
over. Our attention was drawn to the canoes in which men were fishing,
and for which Batanga is famous. The quiet morning sea was dotted with
them within a radius of a mile around us, some of them being two miles
from the shore. The Batanga canoe is the smallest on the entire coast.
It is almost as light as bark; the men come to the beach in the morning
carrying their canoes on their heads. It is quite an entertainment to see
them going out through the surf, and I have seen a canoe capsized half a
dozen times in the attempt. Later in the day, when the surf is heavier,
they cannot get out at all. At sea the man straddles his canoe and lets
his legs hang in the water; and in this fashion he sometimes ventures two
miles from the shore.
We anchored nearly a mile from the beach and were sent ashore in a
surf-boat manned by native Krumen. There is no harbour at Batanga, and
the landing in the surf was the most exciting of my African experiences
until that time. As we entered the surf the boat stood still for a
moment, until caught up on the breast of a breaker, and—“Then, like
a pawing horse let go, she made a sudden bound,” and we were carried
towards the beach with violent speed that looked like destruction for
us all. The crest of the breaker passed under us, however, when we were
close to the beach, and immediately the Krumen leaped into the water, and
with all their might ran the boat up on the beach far enough to escape
the next wave. Then, while most of them placed themselves around the boat
to steady it, the rest of them presented their backs to the passengers
and yelled at them to jump on and ride ashore.