Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.
“Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
“Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our Guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.”
At the end of five weeks we reached Teneriffe Island, where I waited
three weeks for the return of the _Volta_ from Liverpool. As we
approached the harbour of Santa Cruz the captain called me to the bridge
to see an American flag which waved from a mast among the flags of all
nations. “Come,” said he, “and feast your eyes on your American gridiron.”
It did not take me long to get to the bridge. “Don’t point it out,” said
I, “let me find it myself.”
Those who have wandered much in foreign lands are more deeply imbued with
the sentiment of the flag. But to feel it to the full one must have lived
for years in an uncivilized land, where liberty is not yet born. The
sight of the flag to me that day was like hearing Madam Patti sing _Home
Sweet Home_.
I landed at Santa Cruz and remained there four days—days of unpleasant
recollection. It was thought best to keep Ndong as much as possible
in the open air. Though very weak he could walk, and I led him by the
hand. One would think that these Spaniards of Santa Cruz had never seen
a black skin before; the poor emaciated form added greatly to their
curiosity; and above all, the novelty of a white man caring for one who
to them was only a “little black nigger.” I no sooner appeared with the
child than a crowd gathered around me, and I found myself the centre of
a dirty procession of all ages and genders, that followed me round and
round the block in increasing numbers; large girls walking backwards in
front of me; women with baskets of clothes on their heads going out of
their way to walk by my side and staring with open mouth,—all of them
staring. The slightest betrayal of irritation on my part would have
served only to increase the crowd, and I tried to look perfectly composed
and good-natured. But now and then there was an inward rise of unsaintly
feeling that resembled that of the two she-bears of Holy Scripture that
rudely scattered a crowd of young Spaniards following hard upon the heels
of an ancient prophet.
Ndong was at first exasperated by this unwelcome publicity; but
later his feelings were relieved by an inadvertent remark. Before
reaching Teneriffe, two missionary ladies, to whom I am grateful for
many kindnesses, had made a little suit for him out of some of their
own clothes. This suit was far beyond anything he had ever hoped to
possess. And in addition to this I bought him a pair of shoes at Santa
Cruz—little canvas shoes with hemp soles, for which I paid a peseta. When
he protested against the rude staring of the Spaniards, and was about
to cry, I remarked that perhaps these poor Spanish children were only
admiring his fine clothes. He took me more literally than I had expected,
and from that time made no more complaint.
After four days I left Santa Cruz by a stage-coach, travelling directly
across the middle of the island to Orotava, a small port on the other
side. Orotava is situated at the base of the great Teneriffe Peak, one of
the greatest in the world, which rises to a height of 12,500 feet above
the sea and is supposed to be the Mt. Atlas of ancient fable. Above the
town the broad landscape, on which the quaint hut of the toiling peasant
contrasts with stately English homes, rises at first slowly and then more
rapidly, until at last it sweeps upward far above the clouds. On a hill
three miles from the town towards the Peak stands the magnificent English
hotel, where I stayed, surrounded with many acres of the loveliest
flowers in terraced gardens. It is a perfect fairy-land. The hotel is
immense in size, and in winter it is filled with English guests; but I
was there in summer and I was the only guest.
The hotel commands the finest view of the Peak. It is usually hidden
behind the clouds by day, and is visible in the evening. As one sees
it first, in the late afternoon, a white cloud is stretched across its
middle height, concealing the mountain all but the very summit which
appears like a celestial island floating upon radiant clouds in the high
heavens. It is fifteen miles to the summit. There is a good road and one
can make the ascent on a donkey, all but the last three miles, which most
people prefer to walk. Near the summit the ground is hot a few inches
below the surface, which is usually the only evidence that it is still
an active volcano. But two years ago there issued from the crater for
several mouths a volume of smoke which at the distance of the hotel,
fifteen miles, appeared as large as the funnel of an ocean steamer.
The distance from Santa Cruz to Orotava is twenty-six miles; and the
road of course passes up and down the mountain grades, in some places
very steep. We were nine hours on the way. The old coach, a relic of
bygone ages, was so “romantic” that I doubted whether it would ever
reach its destination. It was drawn by three scraggy horses, a little
older than the coach, at whom the driver never ceased shouting, as he
cracked his long-lashed whip about their heads. The harness was of sundry
materials, leather straps, ropes and chains, tied and knotted any place
and everywhere. And they were continually parting, especially in critical
ascents of the road, at which the driver would spring from his seat in a
panic, as if such a casualty had never happened before, notwithstanding
the evidence of many previous knots. Then seeing the excitement of the
passengers, who were trying to scramble out, but in such disorder that
they jammed together and each one prevented the others, he would block
the coach and proceed to repair the harness, in which art he ought to
have been an expert, if practice makes perfect. No sooner did we reach
the next ascent, however, than as if by the spell of some malignant
sprite all the knots untied at the same moment, and again the passengers
were thrown into a state of panic.—But one gets used to being killed. We
had two relays of horses on the way.
The coach was apparently intended for four persons, but for a
considerable part of the distance was occupied by seven, four of whom
smoked cheap cigars, although the windows were closed much of the time.
For we ascended the mountain to a great height, and night coming on at
the same time, it was very cold, much more so than I had prepared for,
and being fresh from the equator, I suffered as if I had been thrust
into the Arctic zone. Ndong had a high fever, and I had to wrap my
travelling-rug around him. The result was that for the next ten days I
had one of the severest colds I have ever had in my life. The coach was
so crowded that I could only save Ndong from being crushed or sat upon by
holding him on my knee, but he was very much exhausted by the journey.
Before reaching Orotava I left the coach which did not pass the Grand
Hotel, to which I was bound. I took a carriage, which carried some of the
mails from that point, and which passed the hotel. The driver was told
to leave me at the hotel. But he forgot and took me on down the steep
grade, a mile further towards the town. Then, recalling the order he had
received he suddenly stopped, and pointing to the lights of the hotel
up the steep height behind us invited me to get out. I kept my seat and
requested him to drive me back to the hotel. A “palaver” ensued in which
neither of us understood in particular what the other was saying. For he
spoke only Spanish, of which I did not know a sentence. I had no money
accessible before reaching the hotel. I tried to tell him that I would
pay him; but he probably did not understand. Then I thought that the
matter might as well be cut short; so pointing to the hotel I gave him a
peremptory order in the English language, but the accent was universal.
In reply he whipped his horses and drove straight on to the town.
Reaching his destination, on the main street, he jumped down and with
violent gesticulation proceeded to throw all my baggage into the street,
which was a sufficient inducement for me to follow; and I found myself,
at eleven o’clock at night, miserably cold, with a sick child in my arms,
and with all my baggage, in the street of a foreign town where there was
no person with whom I could speak a word.
Several loafers who were still abroad gathered around, and recalling by
mere chance the name of a Spanish hotel in the town, I directed them to
carry my baggage and the child, and show me the way to it. Fortunately
it was quite near. I remained there that night, and next day went to the
Grand.
In the community there was a physician, whose services I requested, Dr.
Ingram, a Scotchman, who was residing there for his health. He found
that one of Ndong’s lungs was completely congested, and he advised that
I should send him to a hospital three miles further up the mountainside
and close to his home. Accordingly I took Ndong to the hospital where he
remained for a week.
I went every day to see him, riding the six miles, to the hospital and
back, on a donkey, which added another chapter of novel experience. The
Canary Island donkey is a very diminutive quadruped, the colour of a
mouse and as innocent looking as a lamb. Its ears are about as long as
its legs. The price of the donkey’s hire includes the owner, who runs
behind and shouts, and prods him with a stick. After two days’ experience
I concluded that shouting and prodding were of no use whatever, and
realizing that the moral man in me was rapidly degenerating, I decided
on the third day to leave the driver at home and even pay a higher price
if necessary for the donkey without a driver, intending myself to assume
the management of this soft-eyed creature, who perhaps only needed a
little petting, for those eyes bespoke a peaceful temper. The owner
readily assented to the proposition and very wisely requested me to pay
in advance.
In a few minutes I had experienced to the full the pain of misplaced
confidence. My donkey was a facsimile of the immortal _Modestine_. Having
patted the donkey kindly and exchanged with her a long look of mutual
regard, I mounted. She started off on an easy trot until the owner was
out of sight. Then she stopped and stood still and declined to go on in
spite of coaxing, kicking and whipping, until I seriously thought of
building a fire under her to get her to move. While I was reflecting
upon the adaptation of means to ends and for the time had ceased from
all measures of coercion, she started as suddenly as she had stopped
and with as little reason. She seemed to be clear outside the principle
of causality that inheres in the universe. And having started, she ran
anywhere and in every direction, evincing neither purpose nor method in
her going except a marked predilection for hedges and brambles.
In less than two minutes, however, she reverted to her natural gait,
which, like that of _Modestine_, was something as much slower than a walk
as a walk is slower than a run. Under cruel and continuous beating I
forced her to maintain a gait that I hoped would carry me to the hospital
and back before night, six miles in an entire afternoon. Occasionally
my spirit revolted from the ignoble occupation of so maltreating a poor
dumb animal. But the moment I relaxed she turned aside from the road and
began to browse. Each peasant that passed me threw back his head and
laughed. An inward consciousness that I would have laughed myself if I
had been in their place only added to my misery. “But O, what a cruel
thing is a farce to those engaged in it!” Under the influence of their
laughter and the perversity of _Modestine_ humanity died in my heart and
I belaboured her with all the strength and vivacity that my health would
allow, stopping only to get my breath and to mop the perspiration from my
superheated brow. Of course, I might better have walked the rocky ascent;
but in one thing I was as obstinate as the donkey—I would not give up my
undertaking to ride her to the hospital and back. Besides, I kept hoping
that, as she could not do worse, she might possibly do better; otherwise
my arm should have failed me for despair. And to think that I was paying
for all this disservice! By some strange fortuity of circumstances we
actually reached the hospital, and afterwards the hotel, where I took
final leave of her, a weary but a wiser man. At parting she again turned
to me with an affectionate look of lamb-like innocence; but a deep sense
of injury together with aching limbs rendered me insensible to her
magnanimity.
The people of Teneriffe are so far behind modern times that the barbers
are still the surgeons. Dr. Ingram blistered Ndong’s congested lung and
the barber was afterwards called in daily to dress the wound. After six
days I took Ndong back to the hotel. He seemed on the way to recovery,
and was much stronger on his feet.
Under Mr. Marling’s teaching he had acquired a habit of prayer morning
and evening to which he had ever been faithful. Nothing could surpass the
pathos of the prayers that he offered thanking God for every kindness
that he had received from anybody and pleading for his complete recovery.
He knew that he was a great care to me and it troubled him. On one
occasion he entreated: “O Father in heaven, please make me well; for I’ve
been sick so long; and I’m so little; and I have no father nor mother.”
The day after he returned from the hospital I observed that he was
inclined to be impatient; the next day he was more impatient, and was
positively disobedient. I was surprised and pained; and I wondered
whether it could be possible that my constant care had in any way spoiled
a disposition which years of neglect and adversity had only sweetened.
But it was soon explained. That evening while he was eating his dinner,
in a little room next the dining-room where I was eating mine, I heard
him talking excitedly to the waiter. I immediately went to him and
carried him to my room. He sat down and covering his face with both his
hands held them there without moving. I spoke to him but he did not
answer. Then removing his hands from his face, I called him by name. He
turned his eyes towards mine in an agony of fear: it was his last sane
moment. He uttered a loud shriek, and another, and another. I caught
him in my arms as he went into a convulsion and laid him on my bed. But
I knew that upon this poor little boy, from his birth marked out for
misfortune, and who had now suffered so long, had at last fallen the
most terrible of human calamities—insanity; and that, too, just when his
recovery seemed hopeful.
All night he continued talking wildly, and shrieking at intervals. In
the morning he was more quiet, though not more sane. Nor was there any
marked change during the ten long weary days that we still remained in
the hotel. He gradually became weaker and more insane. I did not let him
out of my sight except when I went to my meals, and then I locked him in
my room.
Once when I returned from dinner I found him dressed in a suit of white
pajamas of mine. He said to me: “That woman who comes in to attend to the
room while you are at dinner is a very foolish person. She came in this
evening and looked at me and laughed, and laughed. But all Spaniards seem
to be foolish.”
On the 10th of July I returned to Santa Cruz. The next day the _Volta_
arrived and I immediately went on board. I looked forward with dread
to the long journey on the steamer with an insane child. I engaged a
second-class cabin (although I was a first-class passenger) that I might
be removed from the white passengers; for on these steamers there are
seldom any white men travelling second-class. Again, by the kindness of
the captain, Ndong occupied the cabin with me. He was determined to go
all over the ship, but it was more than ever necessary that I should
restrain him. He became impatient of the restraint, and regarded me as
his prison-keeper. It made a great difference when this child, who had
loved me with the utmost devotion, now turned against me. But his own
suffering was increased by this feeling; nor was there anything I could
do to relieve it. I simply waited for the end and prayed to Him who
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
There were on board sixteen officers of the English army who were
expecting to debark at Cape Coast Castle and were bound for the Ashantee
territory of the interior, which, as you probably know, has been for
several mouths the scene of another great uprising of the natives almost
as formidable as that of thirty years ago. When we reached Sierra
Leone, we also took on board more than two hundred native soldiers, as
deck-passengers. I am glad to testify that among these sixteen officers
there were several real gentlemen, in the American sense; others were
tolerable; and there were still others. They were not pleasant fellow
passengers. We were looking forward with some dread to their last
night on board; and they also were looking forward to it, but with
feelings entirely different from ours. We were expecting to reach Cape
Coast Castle on Thursday. But for the last sixty hours the captain,
without telling anybody, used the reserve power of two knots an hour,
increasing our full speed from ten to twelve knots. Accordingly, it was
with astonishment and unmixed joy that on Wednesday morning, coming on
deck, we read on the bulletin: “Cape Coast Castle this morning at eight
o’clock!” They had not time to get drunk.
But, in any case, the heartrending scene which we witnessed soon after
we had anchored would probably have sobered them. Five missionaries of
the Swiss _Basle Mission_ were brought on board in a most pitiful and
awful condition. Among them was that great and widely-known veteran, Mr.
Ramseyer, whom I had long wished to meet. Mrs. Ramseyer was also in the
party, besides two other younger women and another man.
At the outbreak of the war these missionaries had fled to Kummassi,
the seat of the English government, and were there when that city was
besieged by the natives. The English governor was also in the city.
For several months they had lived on half-rations, until they were
so reduced in flesh that their friends would not have recognized
them. All this time they were waiting and watching for the arrival of
reinforcements from the English army. At last, having waited for the
expected relief until their supplies were nearly exhausted, they broke
through the lines of the enemy and made a desperate effort to reach
the coast. The governor escaped at the same time and with his retinue
started for the coast by a different road. Along the main road the enemy
was strongest so that it was impassable; therefore the missionary party
of six persons, three men and their wives, together with their fifty
carriers, took a most circuitous road, and indescribably bad. They all
walked but Mrs. Ramseyer who was carried in a hammock. Many of their
carriers were shot down by the enemy and others died by the way, being
exhausted by famine. I think it was only fifteen carriers that reached
the coast. One man of the missionary party died when they had been a
week on the way. They walked for twenty-five successive days before they
reached the coast. One woman, the wife of the man who died on the way,
walked all the last day without shoes.
“That day, as well as others,” said Mr. Ramseyer, “we waded in water to
our waists, and sometimes almost to the women’s shoulders.”
The collapse came when they reached the coast; at least for all but Mr.
Ramseyer, a man of iron constitution. The next day the _Volta_ called and
they were brought on board and were laid upon the deck like corpses; all
but Mr. Ramseyer.
The captain, whose humour and inexhaustible anecdote were usually an
antidote for the tedium and weariness of so long a journey, was overcome
by the scene on deck to the extent that I saw him brush a tear away.
And then, finding it absolutely necessary to do something, as a vent to
his feeling of sympathy, and supposing that the very best thing for the
missionary party all round would be a strong stimulant, he stepped to the
skylight and shouted: “Whisky! Whisky!” Then, evidently reflecting that
if a little whisky were good, more would be better, he circulated about
the deck shouting, “Whisky!” at every steward who put his head out of a
port-hole.
It sounded like an invocation to some favourite fetish; and for that
matter whisky is the fetish of many white men in West Africa. They invoke
its aid in all their troubles. If there had been many more stewards
around, I am afraid there would have been a serious shortage of whisky
for the rest of the voyage, and such an event would have created greater
consternation on the coast than the Ashantee war itself.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed a man in the saloon who had been occupied with
writing and did not know what was occurring on deck, “where is all that
whisky going at this hour of the morning? What’s come on board? the
English army?”
“No,” replied the steward, “it’s a party of missionaries.” The man
went up the companionway two steps at a time to see the party of
missionaries who could drink so much whisky. I do not remember whether
the missionaries drank any of the whisky; but it may be taken for granted
that it was not wasted.
While they still lay on the deck, Mr. Ramseyer, standing up, told the
story of their sufferings to the shocked and eager passengers assembled
about him. Until this morning the war had been a kind of a jest to these
officers of the army; but now it became a stern reality, and the change
in their behaviour was noticeable. One of them, by the way, was shot by a
native and instantly killed a few days after landing.
That same evening Mr. Ramseyer told me of the experience of himself and
Mrs. Ramseyer in the former Ashantee war, thirty years ago. In that war
they were captured by the natives and held for ransom. Five long years,
from 1869 to 1874, they were prisoners, carried about from place to place
to escape the pursuit of the English. They were told that they would
be killed rather than given up. During the first year their feet were
put in stocks at night to prevent their escape. But they made friends
of their captors, who finally gave them up without ransom. They went to
Switzerland for a long rest, and then returned again to their work.
Mr. Ramseyer closed his story of this latest war by declaring
triumphantly that the Christian natives had not taken part in the
rebellion; though their loyalty had cost many of them their lives.
I have digressed at length from my subject and am several days ahead
of my story; but I am glad to have this opportunity of recording the
heroism of this grand old man, great alike in counsel and in action;
whose advice successive governors of Ashantee for many years have sought;
and the equal heroism of his noble wife, and the devotion of the other
missionaries of the party, who might have escaped safely at the outbreak
of this war, but that they chose rather to suffer with their people.
I said that from the time we came on board at Santa Cruz Ndong was
disposed to wander over the ship, and I had to watch him closely. Several
times he escaped from me. On one occasion I had been up with him until
about three o’clock in the morning. He was then asleep and I also lay
down and slept soundly for a little while. But during this time he had
wakened and was gone. The door was fastened at the first hook and I did
not suppose that he could pass through. He went on a tour of inspection
around the ship; but in a few minutes he was tired and wished to return.
He became confused and wandered into the saloon, at the other end of
the deck, and from the saloon into the cabin which he had occupied with
me when we went north. One of the army officers, a captain, an entire
stranger to me at the time, occupied the cabin. Imagine his surprise when
he was awakened in the dark by a strange hand upon his face. Supposing
it to be the hand of a robber, he seized it; but finding how very, very
small it was, he concluded that his life was not in immediate danger. He
remembered the little boy whom he had seen with me, and calling a steward
he sent him to me. I apologized to the gentleman next morning as best I
could. His generosity relieved my humiliation.