For the native, especially when working for the white man, requires a
large amount of intellectual stimulus. We found a bare spot of sufficient
size for our tent, and there we pitched it and began felling the trees
around us, letting the sun down upon ground that it had perhaps not
reached for centuries. The wet season was upon us; the rains were heavier
and more frequent each day. Our tent did not turn the heaviest rains,
which sometimes came in on us in the night and saturated our beds; but it
did us no harm. Much more serious were the extreme and rapid alternations
of temperature within the tent. After a thunder-storm it was often cold
enough to make our teeth chatter, while between showers, if the sun
shone upon the wet tent, it was impossible to endure the heat inside. At
such times, however, all we had to do was to stay outside. We slept on
camp-beds, three of which filled the tent, leaving in the middle just
room enough for a table, and we sat on our beds while eating, side-dishes
being placed on the beds. Our table, which Dr. Good and I made with a
cross-cut saw, and which had no legs, was a solid cut out of a log three
feet in diameter. The first time we sawed it through our saw sloped
off in a line at least thirty degrees from the vertical and with an
increasing curve, to Mr. Kerr’s undisguised amusement. But having served
our apprenticeship we got the next quite straight. And since the slope of
the hill was about thirty degrees, the log table, when properly placed,
stood exactly upright, and Mr. Kerr’s ridicule was changed to admiration
of our skill and judgment.
Most of our dishes were of tin, which we called our silver service.
Indeed, there was no want of tin, for most of our food was imported
in tins—meats, milk and butter. Africa, as some one says, is a land
flowing with milk and honey—condensed milk and tinned honey. There are
many varieties of tinned meats, according to the labels, but they all
taste alike when one has become tired of them and dislikes them equally;
sometimes, when one is feverish, the smell of them is as much as an
ordinary stomach can digest in that debilitating climate. During those
first months our meats were chiefly Armour’s sausage and some anomalous
concoction of strong meats and stale onions called _Irish Stew_. We
bought from the natives bananas, plantains and sweet potatoes, and after
some time we were able to buy a chicken on rare occasions. As soon as
possible we began raising our own chickens; but it was only after several
months that we had them frequently. Our cook, a young man from the
coast, who spoke Kru English, would come to me and ask: “Mastah, what
thing you go chop? Must I kill a chicken, or must I kill a tin?” He much
preferred to “kill a tin,” for in that case the cooking was very simple
and consisted in punching a hole in the top of the tin and then placing
it on an outside fire—we had no stove. When we began to have chickens
occasionally the cook informed us that he must have an assistant, because
“one man he no be fit for do all them work.” Thus we lived for two months
and a half, until our house was built. We bore the rudeness of our
circumstances by making them a constant source of mutual amusement. And
often we conquered defeat itself by laughing at it.
The hill was crowded from dawn until dark with a pandemonium of naked
and astonished natives, who had never seen white men before. They think
aloud. Every impression utters itself in a yell. The habit of talking
aloud to themselves is so common that some white men have accounted for
it by supposing that they are talking to the spirits of their ancestors.
I can only say that if this be so they evidently conceive of the other
world as being very far away.
Each separate act or movement of us white strangers produced a shout of
astonishment.
“He walks!” they shout, when he takes a step forward; or: “He sits down!”
as they jostle each other for a front place to see the animal perform.
The animal, meanwhile, rises to his feet, sits down, then rises again,
turns round slowly, lifts one leg, then the other, lifts his arms and
turns round again. If he has a hat on he will take it off several times.
If by any chance he should have a coat on he will take the coat off too.
No matter how much he may take off they will still desire him to take
off more and complete the vaudeville. He turns round once or twice more,
moves each of his several limbs again, turns round again as an encore,
and then sits down, while the crowd yells appreciation and delight.
Then follows a lively discussion as to his appearance and proportions.
Some of them think he would be good-looking if he only had some colour,
but such a complexion would make anybody ugly. Others think that he is
good-looking even as he is. An interesting query, however, is whether his
whole body is white, or only his hands and face, the rest of him being
black like themselves. In order to settle this urgent question they beg
him to take off his trousers.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF ADMIRING NATIVES.
_They admire the white man’s hat as much as himself, and regard a suit of
blue denim as a nobler work than an honest man._]
The white man’s feelings are not seriously affected by the fact that they
evidently consider his hat quite as wonderful as himself, and a suit of
blue denim a nobler work than an honest man. Of course the first novelty
will soon wear off, but a white man, as long as he lives away from the
coast and the older settlements, will always be an object of wonder and
excitement, and will be expected to maintain his position by wonderful
and exciting performances. There is danger that the missionary will never
get used to it, but will lose his whole stock of patience and perhaps his
reason in the effort; and there is danger also that he will become so
well used to this inordinate attention that he will miss it dreadfully
when he comes home, and is relegated to his proper obscurity in American
society.
Africa is not a great solitude in which one of an ascetic temper might
enjoy silence and meditation. There is no quiet except during the night
and no solitude but the solitude of a strange city where one passes
through a multitude unrecognized and unknown. For these Africans will
probably never know us. Nor had we three white men any privacy in our
relations with each other, either in our tent or in the house that
displaced it; and for my own part, this was the most trying of all our
privations. Under the circumstances I think we three men deserved great
credit for not hating each other. But after supper, when it was dark I
used to go out to a little walk about ten yards long in front of the
house and removed a short distance from it, the only smooth walk on the
entire hill, and there I enjoyed a few minutes of delightful respite
from noise and publicity, while my thoughts of home and friends were
unrestrained. The life in the homeland seemed already painfully distant,
and almost vague and unreal. Like Silas Marner, when he removed from his
old home to Raveloe where he was surrounded by people who knew nothing
of his history, so to me sometimes the past seemed like a dream because
related to nothing in my present life, and the present, too, a dream,
because linked with no memories of the past.
Even at night the noise does not cease, but only removes to a distance
where it no longer disturbs. The people stay in their towns at night, but
they usually make more noise than in the day. From a village at the foot
of the hill rises the weird and incessant wail of their mourning for the
dead, an appalling dirge that chills the blood; from another village near
by, a savage noise of war drums and shouting by which they are warning
an expected enemy that they are on the watch; from another, the uncouth
music of their dissolute dance; from another the cries of men who profess
to be transformed into gorillas or leopards:—on all sides the noise
ascending throughout the night like the smoke of their torment.
How eagerly we welcomed the mail! It arrived once a month, and was six
weeks old. Even Dr. Good, indefatigable worker, and the opposite of
emotional, was unable to pursue the usual routine of work when we were
expecting the carriers with mail. They usually came in the evening, and
all that day we were under a noticeable strain of expectancy. We were
also exceedingly talkative and communicative for a day or two after its
arrival. Years afterwards I once visited one of our missionaries, Miss
Christensen, when for some months she had been staying alone at Benito,
one of our old coast stations. I remarked that the arrival of her mail
must be a great relief to the extreme loneliness of her situation. She
replied that, on the contrary, the mail day was the loneliest of all,
for want of some appreciative friend to whom she could tell the news
contained in her letters and talk about it. There were educated natives
around her whose friendship was almost sufficient for other days, but not
for mail day. Her home interests were unintelligible to them.
My first letters from Efulen were written on an immense log that lay
near the tent. I stood and leaned over upon it as I wrote. When I
finished my first letter I found that I had been leaning against a stream
of pitch all the while, with the sleeve of a woollen sweater lying in
it. But the difficulties of letter-writing were not merely physical.
Each correspondent in the homeland naturally expected me to tell him all
about the natives and our life in Africa. To describe adequately any one
phase of our life would require a length of letter that would have made
my correspondence unmanageable, and to refer to our strange surroundings
without adequate description would have left my letters unintelligible. I
thought to meet the difficulty by dividing my friends into groups, asking
friends of a feather to flock together, and writing occasionally a long
and elaborate letter to each flock. I have never succeeded in killing two
birds with one stone, but I killed a number of valued correspondents with
each of those letters. No one replied to them but the person to whom the
envelope was directed.
After one month in Africa, while we were still in the tent, I had my
first and worst experience of the dreaded African fever, although in
this instance it was probably malarial-typhoid. It lasted several weeks.
When we had been at Efulen nearly a month Dr. Good was suddenly called
to the coast by the severe illness of his wife, who was at Batanga
expecting soon to leave for home. Dr. Good was not a physician, but with
years of experience and an aptitude for medicine he had acquired such
skill in the treatment of African fever that he was almost equal to a
physician. As for myself, I summed up my experience in the statement that
once in my life I had had a severe headache. I do not remember whether
Mr. Kerr’s experience had been as extensive as mine. We both had a
vague consciousness when Dr. Good left for the coast that our situation
was precarious and fraught with some danger:—in a country called the
_Whiteman’s Grave_, under conditions that even in America would have
taxed the constitution of the strongest. In the light of later knowledge
we could have greatly improved upon our pioneer methods, and they seemed
to us quite amateurish though supported by the best intentions. In coping
with untried conditions and unknown factors of danger one must always
expect to go through a period of preliminary inexperience and make
preliminary blunders before attaining the mastery. But in Africa the
preliminary inexperience often costs the life of one and the blunders
disable another, while the triumph is reserved for those who come after.
The imperfection of our first policy was inevitable; the present method,
which provides every procurable comfort for men so situated, is not only
more humane but immensely more economical. It is only in the last few
years that missions have become a science—at least in Africa, and that
those who go to dangerous and unknown places may profit by the formulated
experience of those who have gone to such places before. Of course it was
never intended that two new arrivals, Mr. Kerr and myself, should be left
alone at a new station. But the unexpected emergency which called Dr.
Good to the coast is typical of the miscarriage of the surest plans that
men can make in Africa.
Only a few days after Dr. Good left Efulen I was stricken with the fever.
The approach of it is very peculiar, especially the first time. I mistook
it for a spell of homesickness; for one becomes extremely depressed. I
thought I had been brave, but all at once the very pith of my resolution
was gone. I felt that I had overrated my courage. The life which I had
chosen seemed a doom from which there was now no honourable escape. My
feelings recoiled in an agony of revolt that was mentally prostrating. It
was the fever and I did not know. It was night and I was walking near
the house, but I was too tired to continue walking, and I lay down on
the ground in the dim starshine and wept for home,—it was many years ago
and I was very young. I was not surprised that I had a severe headache,
for I thought it was the result of my mental agitation. The next day
I was worse, and the following night I was delirious the whole night,
but morning brought relief. I did not think it could be fever for the
symptoms were not what I had expected. We were pitiably helpless.
At last, a happy thought striking Mr. Kerr, he exclaimed: “I have a
thermometer: that will tell us.”
“It would tell us,” said I, “if we knew what normal temperature is; but
for my part I don’t know, though I think it is 212°”—perhaps I was still
delirious.
Mr. Kerr suggested that it might be marked on the thermometer. And,
if not, I said that he might take his own temperature first, and so
ascertain the normal.
However, it was marked on the thermometer at ninety-eight and two-fifths
degrees, or thereabouts. Mr. Kerr then took my temperature and found that
it was 105°. In the evening it was 106°. Next day it was the same, and
so the fever raged for several days. We dispatched a messenger to Dr.
Good, reporting to him also my temperature for two days. It was the tenth
day of the fever before he reached me, though he started immediately;
for the roads were at the worst. He had no expectation that I would be
alive. Meantime I had begun to take quinine. The wet season was now at
the worst. The tent was not sufficient to turn the heaviest rains, which
sometimes came through and saturated the bed. Between showers the sun
came out so strong that I was compelled to leave bed and rush outside for
fresh air. After several days of this, Mr. Kerr suggested that my bed be
moved into the house of the workmen, which had only an earthen floor
with a considerable slant to it. But it had at least a thatch roof that
would turn rain and would afford a better protection against the sun.
There was a square opening for a window over which we hung a salt-bag.
Then followed a long fight for life, through several weeks, and a slow
victory due chiefly to the kindness and untiring care of my associates.
Dr. Good after his arrival nursed me day and night. What is usually known
as African fever ends fatally or otherwise in a few days. I therefore
concluded long afterwards that it must have been malarial-typhoid.
We each have our foibles and whims which sickness sometimes brings into
strong relief. One of my own I cannot forbear relating. After several
days of sickness, when I knew that it was fever, and recovery seemed
hopeless, my mind turned to the meagre and unique undertaking formalities
in such a place as Efulen. The fact that no boards were procurable did
not trouble me in the least; I felt that I could be comfortable in a
cotton blanket or a rubber sheet. But I had a great longing for a genuine
white shirt laundered in America. Through all the successive changes
of clothing by which I had gradually discarded the total apparel of
civilization I had maintained a serene attitude. But, for that final
ceremony, after which there should be no more changes, I had a childish
desire for something that would separate me from the rude and savage
surroundings of Africa and that would serve to designate the civilization
to which I really belonged; and the most civilized article I could think
of was a white shirt such as those I had packed away in the bottom of a
trunk at Batanga.
A little incident of that period will further illustrate the helplessness
of bachelor white men in such an emergency. One day, when I had been
ill a week, I became hungry for the first time; but not so hungry that
I could eat corned beef, sardines, or Irish stew; and we had not yet
been able to procure a chicken or even an egg from the natives. Mr.
Kerr looking hopelessly over the pile of tins suddenly discovered one
little tin of oysters, which had gotten into our supplies by some happy
mischance. He shouted for joy and came running to show it to me. Nothing
could have been better; and when he asked me how I would like to have
them prepared, I said I would like them stewed in milk. He soon brought
them to me steaming, and even the odour seemed to invigorate me. I took a
spoonful—and with a nauseous exclamation I spewed it into the middle of
the room. Dear reader, _condensed milk is forty per cent. sugar_.
Two other incidents of those days will serve to exhibit certain native
characteristics that I may not have occasion to notice again. A party
of natives were going to the coast and on the way they stopped at
Efulen. Hearing how very ill I was, and consulting with the workmen,
they concluded that I might live one more day, or two days at the most.
Accordingly when they reached the coast, the two days having expired,
they reported to my friends that I was dead. The report was credited for
several days, although in the mind of some there was a doubt. It was
only when these messengers appeared again and they asked them about the
details of the funeral that the story broke down notwithstanding the fine
imagination of the natives; for they had never seen a white man buried,
and their own customs were very different. They evidently made me so
misconduct myself at my own funeral that my friends concluded that I was
alive. But that was the nearest I ever came to an untimely end. I would
not by any means call those natives unmitigated liars. Not every white
man can maintain the distinction between fact and conviction.
Again, one night when the fever was at the worst, a small boy, Lolo, who
was sitting by my bed keeping cold water on my head, told me that there
was no more water. This was the fault of the cook, a man of Batanga. Mr.
Kerr was asleep in the other end of the house, and he needed sleep. I
sent for the cook and told him to go quickly and bring water. There was
a good spring part way down the hill a short distance behind the house.
The man refused to go, though he had never been disobedient before. He
was afraid of the darkness. It was useless to threaten him or quarrel
with him, and worse than useless for a sick man. No power under heaven
could have compelled him to go to that spring alone; nor was there any
one on the premises who would go with him. Not all are so cowardly in the
night; but there are many strong men in Africa who would fight bravely to
death with any visible or natural foe, but are arrant cowards before the
creatures of their own imagination; invisible and supernatural enemies
with which they fill the darkness of the night.
It was a great day for us when our new house was finished. It was made
entirely of native material and was much like a native house except that
it had a floor and was elevated from the ground and had swinging doors
and windows. Like all houses of white men in Africa it was set on posts
about six feet from the ground. The walls were of bark, in pieces six
feet long and from a foot to two feet in width. The bark is held by split
bamboo the size of laths, placed horizontally, six inches apart and tied
with bush-rope made of the abundant vine, which is split and shaved down
with a knife. The roof, which was supported by rafters of bamboo, was of
palm thatch. This roof turns the rain perfectly and is much cooler than
any other kind. There was no ceiling in the house.
[Illustration: AN IMPROVED MISSION HOUSE AT EFULEN.
_The first house was similar but much smaller._]
The changes of temperature at Efulen being very sudden, and immediately
felt within the thin walls of our house, we had need of fire, and we
made a fireplace by a simple device for which we claimed joint credit.
We cut a hole in the floor and built the ground up from below to the
level of the floor. There was no chimney, not even a hole for the smoke
to escape; but it got out easily enough through the opening (the width
of the rafters) between the walls and the roof. Usually we found it very
pleasant to sit around a good fire in such a fireplace, and the smoke
troubled us but very little. Often however by reason of some sudden
change of wind, or passing whirlwind, the smoke was seized with panic
and spread in a black cloud through the room, so enveloping us and
suffocating our senses that the fire itself was wholly inferential, on
the principle that where there was so much smoke there must be some fire.
Many a thought of siderial sublimity, in the moment of its utterance, was
thus strangled in a mouthful of smoke and ashes.
The whole house was twenty-four feet long and sixteen feet wide. There
were five rooms in all. The partitions were of bark and did not reach to
the roof but were eight feet high. We had greatly improved our furniture.
Those who admire _mission_ furniture ought to have seen ours. Instead of
the first table, which was a solid piece of log turned on end, Dr. Good
and I sawed a cut six inches wide out of that same log, and Mr. Kerr put
rustic legs into it. The chairs were made exactly the same way but cut
from smaller logs.
In such a house, seated upon such chairs and around such a table we sat
each evening after supper, indulging in a social hour. And while the
votaries of the _simple life_ in the far-away homeland were absorbed in
the discussion of such questions as How to Avoid Luxuries, the subject of
our discussion was frequently How to Obtain Comforts.
We were not always idle as we talked; for the evening brought its own
duties, often of a strictly domestic nature Sometimes, as we sat around
the table, Dr. Good was engaged in darning his socks, Mr. Kerr was
mending his shoes, while in a state of despair I was trying to put a neat
patch on a pair of trousers.
This magnificent house was regarded by the Bulu, not as a private
house, but as a public place, equivalent to their palaver-houses. They
sometimes showed resentment when we insisted upon the personal view of
it and required them to ask admission before coming in, which they were
disposed to do in crowds and at all times, even when we were eating.
We were always willing to show them through it in groups, though it
took considerable time. Some of them expressed their astonishment in
vociferous yells, but others, deeply impressed, looked around them with
a reverential air, like people in church. They came up the steps of the
porch on their hands and knees, as Africans always do at first. The women
and children seemed afraid of the height of it and it would not have
been possible to get them to stand near the edge and look down from the
dizzy height of nearly six feet. This timidity which at first I could not
understand and which later disappeared, I imagine was not due so much to
the height of the house above the ground but to their doubt regarding the
safety of the floor. They had never walked on any floor but the solid
ground, and they stepped upon ours as if they fully expected that it
would break and let them through.
We had hoped that the climate of Efulen would be more healthful than that
of the coast; but the health record since the station was established in
1893, has not been better than that of some other stations. Personally I
believe that without doubt Efulen is more healthful than the immediate
coast at Batanga; but I do not regard it as more healthful than Gaboon.
It is certainly cooler and owing to its elevation of two thousand feet
the air is not so humid and is more exhilarating. But the changes of
temperature are very sudden and one becomes sensitive even to slight
changes after being in the tropics a few years. In the light of similar
experiments made elsewhere in West Africa it seems likely that less
fever but more dysentery will prevail in those localities that have the
higher altitudes, and less dysentery and more fever at the coast. To some
persons fever is more dangerous; to others, dysentery; one may take his
choice. At Efulen the sand-flies are very bad, morning and evening; but
they cease their activity in the bright sunshine and also in the darkness
of night.