a visit to a neighbouring tribe. While there he was stolen from his
father and taken to a distant village where he became a slave. Some time
afterwards he was taken to the coast and sold to a chief of the coast
tribe. Finally the chief sold him to a white man, who in turn gave him to
another white man and he was taken to Gaboon. His master was a Frenchman,
and Keli was his personal attendant. The boy made himself so useful that
when the Frenchman went on furlough to France he took him along. After
living in Paris a considerable time the Frenchman concluded not to return
to Africa; whereupon he sent Keli to England and gave him into the charge
of an English trader who was expecting soon to sail for Africa. With this
trader Keli returned to Africa. Not long after this the trader having
occasion to visit Batanga took Keli with him. This was his opportunity.
In the night he fled to the forest. Finally he fell in with a caravan
going to the Bulu country, and at last reached his town, after an absence
of seven years, during which his father and mother had died, and he had
been long-forgotten. Keli had not been trained by his various masters
in wisdom and judgment, and he made the mistake of telling the people
all that he had seen in Paris and London—all about the big buildings
and multitudes of people, all about the clothes they wore and the very
cold season of snow and ice, all about horses and carriages and railway
trains—quite overtaxing their credulity, and earning the reputation of
a notorious liar and incorrigible fool. Missionaries sometimes make the
same mistake and pay the same penalty.
Meantime Keli had become accomplished to the extent of knowing French
and English and five native dialects. But, alas! how destitute of moral
power is civilization alone! Keli did not seem to have any moral ideas.
The restraining fear of his former fetishism had been expelled, and no
moral motive implanted. His morality was much below that of the average
Bulu, except in the shedding of blood. Nothing but long familiarity can
make that an indifferent matter to any man however degraded; and Keli
had a horror of blood. We took him home with us to Efulen and made him
cook and houseboy, for we were in our usual strait at the time. He knew
his work well and was unapproached in service for the short time that he
behaved. But at the first opportunity, one Sunday during the service,
Keli captured and stole a chicken, the mother of a young brood. He
strewed feathers along a bush-path to make believe that a wild animal
had taken it. Of course it will be remembered that among a people who
have so little, a chicken is one of the high values. The theft was not
insignificant in the mind of the Bulu. But for us the really serious
import of the matter was that it raised the question as to whether
they could steal from us with impunity, or with any possibility of not
being detected. They had never attempted it before, being restrained by
the dread of our supposed fetishes, which Keli knew to be a delusion.
I need not say that we had never fostered the delusion, yet it had
served a providential use. It was now likely to be dispelled and we
were not certain as to the consequences. Keli immediately killed the
chicken and gave it to a Bulu man, his accomplice, who wrapped it in
a loin-cloth and took it to his town while Keli himself came running
to me in great distress, as soon as the service was concluded, telling
a most interesting story of a bushcat that he had seen just as it was
disappearing with the chicken, and how he had given chase and had tried
to rescue it. Of course I suspected himself, but I said nothing until, by
a chain of evidence that I have forgotten, I traced it to him. We made
him a prisoner, and Dr. Good soon wrung a confession from him. He said he
would find the chicken—which, however, having lost its head, could never
be the same chicken again. I took him to town still a prisoner, a workman
walking behind him with a rope around his waist. He led me through the
town to the house of his accomplice. Entering the house he proceeded
directly to the bed and from underneath it produced the chicken, wrapped
in the cloth of the other thief.
I took the chicken and the cloth and started back to the station, still
accompanied by Keli, and a long procession of natives. I had gone but
a short distance when the owner of the cloth with a number of men
following, came running from behind, and dashing past me with a shout,
immediately turned about, placed himself in the narrow path before me,
and with his long knife in his raised arm demanded his cloth. It may have
been mere bluff on his part, one cannot tell. The chief danger, if there
was any, was not their natural brutality so much as their excitement.
Of course I could not yield to a demand that was really a threat and
so bring us into contempt. But I was far from comfortable and I would
gladly have made a present of the entire incident to my worst enemy. My
resources were, in the first place, straight bluff, and second, the moral
prestige of the white man. Keeping my eye fixed upon him I ordered him
out of the path, and as he did not obey, I suddenly struck him as heavy a
blow as I could,—so suddenly that he was taken completely off his guard
and was thrown headlong into the thicket, while I passed on. Surprised
more than hurt, it took him some time to recover himself and to take
counsel with his fellows. Meantime, wishing to avoid an ugly palaver,
and still to retain personal authority, I unfolded the cloth, discovered
before the eyes of the people that it was very dirty and full of holes,
laughed at it and got them to laugh, and finally threw it aside, saying:
“Tell him that this cloth is not fit for a white man to take.” As I moved
on I heard the man and his friends coming again, running and yelling; but
as he came up the people shouted that they had his cloth, and the sight
of it appeased his anger.
That night we kept Keli a prisoner in our house. Dr. Good thought that
in our peculiar situation we could not afford to let him go unpunished.
With great reluctance he advised that he ought to be flogged in the
presence of the people. He was always kind and considerate towards the
natives, but he was not a man who would shirk a duty because it was
disagreeable. For myself, my mind was not quite clear that flogging was a
moral necessity. But I knew Dr. Good well and had learned to trust him,
so I consented that he should do as he thought best. The next morning,
therefore, he and I took Keli down to the principal town, and having
called all the people together, Dr. Good told them, in native fashion,
the story of Keli’s wrong. And he added that in view of Keli’s youth and
the hard circumstances of his life he had decided that he would only flog
him and dismiss him. Thereupon, with a rod prepared for the purpose, he
began to administer the flogging.
Now, if I were relating fiction and not reality, I should certainly
proceed to have Keli properly flogged and the mind of the community
deeply impressed in consequence. But as reality never quite attains the
ideal, and as I may not substitute imagination for history in this sober
narrative, I must tell of “the slip twixt the cup and the lip.” Prominent
among Keli’s moral discrepancies was cowardice; and even before the rod
descended for the first time he uttered a scream that evidently startled
Dr. Good, for he let go his hold and Keli bounded from him. Dr. Good
chased him and could easily have caught him but it had been raining and
the clay surface of the street was smooth and slippery, giving Keli’s
bare feet a decided advantage. They both resembled amateur performers on
roller skates. The chase that followed seemed to appeal peculiarly to
the humour of the natives, which was the more excessive because of the
strong reaction from fear and apprehension. They laughed wildly. Keli led
the way around the palaver-house once or twice, then down the street, Dr.
Good following him close and reaching after him, while he administered
what would have been a severe flogging but that the strokes persistently
fell about twelve inches behind Keli’s shoulders, affording him, I
imagine, an acute realization of the old adage, “A miss is as good as a
mile.” Soon they reached a steep slope in the street, and Keli, steadily
gaining, at last made his escape. I, looking on, maintained an exterior
of stern gravity that was the very antithesis of my feeling. But deeper
than outward gravity and inward laughter I was praying that nothing might
happen to impede Keli’s steady progress; for this flogging in pantomime
served to impress a moral lesson, while it left no marks on poor Keli’s
skin, whom seven tribes and nations had helped to degrade. I should not
wonder if Dr. Good himself felt somewhat as I did.
On our way home Dr. Good intimated to me the moral propriety of not
mentioning the incident to Mr. Kerr or any of the missionaries at the
coast, for I was soon going to the coast.
“Indeed,” said I, “you could not possibly bribe me to silence regarding
the episode of this morning. It would be a great wrong, in this weary
land, to deprive my fellow missionaries of such an entertainment, and
I am really thinking of going to the coast a day earlier than I had
expected.”
No man could yield to the inevitable with better grace than Dr. Good.
Before we reached home he was laughing; and he was even disposed to
anticipate me in telling the story, which he did with dramatic effects
and graphic touches inimitable.
It was not long after this that the Bulu conceived the idea of wresting
from us a higher price for all articles of native food. When we refused
their demand they all joined together in a boycott. Our position was
serious enough; for we had a number of workmen from the coast whose
entire food we purchased from the Bulu. We happened to have rice on hand
which for the time we gave the men and which was sufficient to last
several days. Meantime, it happened that there was more sickness than
usual. Some of the principal chief’s wives had bad ulcers and were coming
daily for treatment. But one day when our rice was nearly exhausted,
Dr. Good turned them all away, saying that he would treat them when the
people would bring food. This was a possibility that had never occurred
to them. A few days later they decided to bring food and end the boycott.
But now that they had once attempted it there was need that we should
always be prepared by having on hand a supply of rice.
About this time I went to the coast expecting to remain only a few days
and return with a large caravan; for we were in need of many things. It
was on this journey that the incident occurred which I have related,
when my carriers lost their way with my bed and clothing and I suffered
extreme exposure. The result was a fever immediately upon reaching the
coast, and a second fever before I had sufficiently recovered from the
first to set out for the interior, and then a third fever, the worst
that I had had. If I could have reached Efulen I would probably have
recovered; for the climate of Batanga is dreadful. But the wet season,
which had been coming on gradually was now at its worst, and cut off the
possibility of a retreat to the interior, in my greatly reduced health.
The last fever had been so serious that I could not risk another. There
was only one thing to do. So, with the advice of all the missionaries at
Batanga, I took the first steamer that came, and fled from the coast,
having been in Africa a year and a half. Nor did my health permit of my
return to Africa for four full years. As I put out from the Batanga beach
in a surf-boat and stood looking back at the receding shore while we rose
and fell with the heavy waves of the evening sea, the last one that I saw
was Mrs. Laffin, who again came out and waved her handkerchief. She was
very well then; but only a few weeks later she died.
A month after Mrs. Laffin’s death came the dreadful news that Dr. Good
had died. He was a man of iron constitution and such amazing vitality of
body and mind that it seemed impossible to associate death with him. The
unnaturalness of his death impressed me as might some great convulsion in
nature; as if a mountain had been uprooted and cast into the depths of
the sea.
Mr. Kerr was at Efulen when Dr. Good died and several other missionaries
had arrived.
While I was still there Dr. Good had planned a trip of three weeks into
the interior further than he had yet gone with a view to choosing a site
for another mission station; but circumstances at Efulen led him to
postpone the journey. At that time he received a message from a notorious
and dreaded chief of the interior near the present Elat, warning him not
to dare to come into his country, for that he would surely kill him. Dr.
Good, however, continued his preparations for the journey. In the course
of a long and serious conversation as to what it would be best to do in
case that interior chief or any other should do him violence or should
capture and detain him, he urged and exacted from me a promise that in
any event the German government should not be called to his assistance,
even to save his life. Not that he denied his right to protection but he
knew the severity of the government, having recently witnessed it in a
war upon a neighbouring tribe. And indeed I myself had arrived in Africa
in time to see something of the desolation of that war in the silent
and smoking remains of towns from which the people (all who had escaped
from the sword) had fled into the depths of the forest. For instance,
two little boys who had just been taken into our school at Batanga had
been found alone in the forest, and crying beside the dead body of their
mother. I yielded to Dr. Good a reluctant promise as he desired; for I
could not controvert the moral principle which actuated this strong,
brave-hearted man.
For other reasons he did not go at that time; but not long after I
left Africa, and upon the arrival of others, he set out upon this hard
and uncertain journey. Perhaps he erred on the side of economy and
indifference to comfort, not providing himself with everything procurable
that could conserve his strength and vitality. He made extensive
explorations of the interior, chose the site for a new station, returned
to Efulen exhausted, and the next day was stricken with fever. The third
day afterwards he died, having been delirious most of the time. He was
only thirty-seven years old. His last conscious words were a message to
the church at home, “See that I have not laboured in vain.”
Great man and great missionary! There was something about Dr. Good that
always reminded one of Livingstone. Six years later, standing at his
grave on Efulen hill, where every tree and every foot of ground were
associated with his memory, I recalled the inscription in the crypt of
St. Paul’s Cathedral, over the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, its great
architect. “If you ask a monument look around you.” The Church of Efulen,
the growth of which has since been marvellous, no costly pile of stone or
marble, but of more precious human souls upon whose darkness the light of
heaven has dawned, the large congregation that gathers there to worship
the true God, and the many changes in the community near and far—these
are the lasting monuments of Dr. Good.
IX
THE KRUBOYS
It was not on the voyage to Batanga, but on subsequent voyages along the
lower coast, to the Congo, to St. Paul de Loanda and Benguela, that I
was fully impressed with the service of the black man to the white and
the disposition to cruelty on the part of the latter. For it is south
of Batanga that the natives employed on the steamer do their hardest
work. What I saw and heard on those several voyages gave ample food
for reflection upon the moral danger of unrestrained authority and the
unfitness of most men to govern their fellows of lower degree. I was
allowed to remain absorbed in my own thoughts as there were but few
passengers on board; on one such journey I was the only passenger for
three weeks out of five.
After leaving Sierra Leone on the outward voyage the course changes
eastward. A few days later we sighted the coast of Liberia and nearly
opposite Monrovia we anchored and waited for eighty black men who were
shipped as workmen for the rest of the voyage. We anchored far out at
sea; for the Liberian coast is very rough and dangerous, and for most of
the entire coast the latest charts are more than fifty years old.
These workmen belong to the Kru tribe. They do all the work of
discharging and taking on cargo for the entire voyage, remaining on
board for the round trip—usually three or four months—and receiving in
payment an average of a shilling a day. We do not call them “Krumen,”
but “Kruboys,” for in Africa they are boys till they die.
The Kruboys are the “real thing,” the Africans that you have pictured in
your imagination and have read about, and at the sight of them coming
off in a fleet of large canoes, accompanied by the whole population,
almost stark naked—the majority wearing a bit of calico the size of a
pocket-handkerchief—black and savage, and each of them yelling like ten
savages, the ladies on board usually hurry down to their cabins and
remain for a while in obscurity. Ropes are thrown over to the Kruboys
and they climb the side of the ship like monkeys. At closer view they
do not appear savage at all. Every face reveals laughing good-nature,
and each man looking after his simple necessities in a businesslike way
makes himself as comfortable as possible, and yells as loud as possible,
while he asks for what he wants and declares to all on board what he
is going to do, though he does not seem to expect anybody to listen to
him or to pay any attention to him. There is considerable disputation,
some quarrelling, and an occasional fight. They have a remarkable way of
passing from laughter to quarrel and from fight to song by the easiest
sort of transition: passion does not linger.
One soon becomes accustomed to their nakedness, and even the ladies
seem to forget it. In this they are helped by the native’s childlike
unconsciousness of any breach of etiquette. Then sometimes one goes
to the other extreme and thinks that there is nothing of the savage
about them at all—barring the yell and a soon-discovered incorrigible
indifference to the categories of “mine” and “thine” with consequent
insecurity of all portable property. In this stage of developing opinion
I have heard ladies pronounce them “perfectly lovely.” And the Old
Coaster blandly informs them that they are “as innocent as lambs.”
The Kruboy is of real negro stock, and is not so graceful, not so
intellectual, not so gentle in manners, as the natives further south of
the Calabar, the Bantu tribes, who are not classified as negroes. But the
Kruboy’s physique is magnificent, in size, development, and strength.
They prefer to sleep in the companionway or some other sheltered place;
but, as there is not room for all, most of them lie in their nakedness
on the open deck, exposed to all kinds of weather. Their food is rice,
salt pork, and sea biscuits. Their degradation is manifest not so much in
the indecency that most people expect, as in their unappeasable hunger
and greedy appetite. All food is “chop” to the Kruboy, and when he eats
he “chops.” You may not like this word—you may hate it; but you will be
obliged to use it continually on the coast; and the Kruboy would not
understand any substitute. One day the Kruboys were landing some salt at
Batanga for our missionary, Mr. Gault, when the boat capsized in the surf
and before they could recover it the salt had all dissolved in the sea.
They came to Mr. Gault carrying the empty, dripping sacks, but absolutely
indifferent to the loss, and said: “Massa, the sea done chop all them
salt.”
The English names of the Kruboys are interesting, and need some
explanation. In the African languages there is no distinct vocabulary of
“proper names.” As it was with the Jews, and some other nations ancient
and modern, so in Africa names are usually descriptive or commemorative
of some incident, notable or otherwise, and any word, phrase, or
sentence, may be so used. For instance on the Gaboon River there is a
very small village, which, as I was entering it for the first time, one
of my boat-boys described as consisting of four men, four women, four
houses, four goats, and four chickens; but the name of it was _Bi Biana
Milam_—_We Despise Big Towns_. I thought it was rather pathetic; for I
know how the big towns vex the little towns. Childlessness is a reproach
and a great sorrow among African women; and a certain woman in Gaboon who
was advanced in years when she bore her first child gave him a name which
means, “It-is-no-disgrace-to-be-childless.” These names sound far better
in their own language.
But the Kruboys of the steamers take English names which, to say the
least, are not dignified, and are more absurd when the ship’s officers
call them out in anger—and the ship’s officers are always angry when they
talk to the Kruboys. Frying-Pan, Black Kettle, Crowbar, Ham and Eggs,
Liver and Bacon, Bottle of Beer, Whisky, Bag of Rice, Weariness, Three
O’clock, Daybreak, Half a Dinner, Castor Oil, Every Day, To-morrow, Never
Tire, Sea Breeze, Jim Crow, Two Pounds Six, Smiles, Silence, My Friend,
Gunpowder, Bayonet, Cartridge, Crocodile, Misery, Get-your-hair-cut, Tom
Tom, Pagan and Shoo Fly are names I have heard.
While we are on this subject we may as well get acquainted with the Kru
English, which is the “Pigeon English” of the coast. All Kruboys “speak
English Mouth” in this peculiar dialect. To people of intelligence
and cultivation it is always very offensive at first. They especially
cannot bear to hear white people use it; nor does it seem to them in
the least degree necessary. Good English is as simple and they think
would be quite as easily understood by the black man. I remember well
how it first affected me. I was disgusted when I was told that I would
soon be speaking it myself. The first change in my feelings took place
when I found that it had its method and its idiom. It is not “any old
English.” There is correct and incorrect Kru English. It may properly
be regarded as a dialect. The African languages, however they may differ
in vocabulary, have a common idiom. Kru English is simply the idiom
of the African languages with an English vocabulary. There are some
irregularities and a small number of importations from other tongues, the
principal foreign word being “sabey” for “know,” from the French “savez.”
One of its principal features is the use of the verb “live” for the verb
“to be.”
I stand in the doorway and call: “Half a Dinner!” and the answer comes
back faintly: “I live for come.”
If I want to ask a boy whether Shoo Fly has arrived, I say: “Shoo Fly
live?” And as Shoo Fly never arrives when he is expected I probably get
the answer: “Shoo Fly no live;” or, “Shoo Fly no lib;” or possibly, “He
lib for chop, massa.”
To “find” a thing is to search for it, though one may not find it at all;
and a man will say: “I find him, find him, long time and never look him.”
There is a great dearth of prepositions in the African languages; and in
Kru language the word “for” serves all prepositional uses. It seldom uses
more than one demonstrative, and the word “them” is forced to do this
reluctant service.
I ask: “What for them man Weariness he no work to-day?” and perhaps get
the answer: “He live for sick. He live close for die.”
There are certain stock phrases that one hears all the time: “You
sabey Englis mouf?” “I hear him small, small.” “Massa, I no sabey them
palaver.” “Them man he make me trouble too much.” “I go one time” (“one
time” is “at once”), or “I go come one time.”
Kruboys are not the only Africans who speak Kru English. It is spoken by
thousands along the coast who have no knowledge of any other European
language. Even Frenchmen, and especially Germans, in their own colonies,
sometimes have to learn Kru English in order to converse with their
boat-boys. White men are often proud of speaking it well, and I have
sometimes seen men standing at the head of the gangway and shouting down
to the boys in a boat below, apparently for no other reason than to
display their linguistic talent, as one might be vain of a knowledge of
French or German. I have not used it as much as some; for, in the Congo
Français where I spent most of my time, very little English, good or bad,
is spoken; and in the interior one does not hear it at all. But I am very
familiar with it. I have preached in it and have even prayed in it. This
would have been impossible if any person had been present who could speak
good English. Humour is peculiarly a social enjoyment. It takes at least
two persons to enjoy a joke. Often in the native towns I have witnessed
the most amusing incongruities without being in the least amused, until
I thought of it afterwards, sometimes long afterwards, when talking with
some one else who would appreciate the humour and see the incongruity
with me. So, I say, I have preached in the Kru English, and, reverently,
I believe—at least without any consciousness of incongruity; but if an
English-speaking person had entered the church I could scarcely have
proceeded to the end of the sentence.
Shortly before leaving Africa I was visiting a coast town in a tribe
whose own language I did not know. But they understood Kru English, and
I preached to them in that dialect, on the parable of the Lost Sheep.
It will not be fully appreciated without the African accent, tone, and
gesture. I related the parable to them about as follows: