CHAPTER I

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[Illustration: SIRIMBA PLAYERS, CONGO.]

WEST AFRICAN STUDIES

BY

MARY H. KINGSLEY

AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA"

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS_

LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1899

_All rights reserved_

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED

LONDON AND BUNGAY.

TO MY BROTHER

MR. C.G. KINGSLEY

AND TO MY FRIEND WHO IS DEAD

THIS BOOK IS

Dedicated

PREFACE TO THE READER

I pray you who may come across this book to distinguish carefully

between the part of it written by others and that written by me.

Anything concerning West Africa written by M. le Comte C. de Cardi or

Mr. John Harford, of Bristol, does not require apology and explanation;

while anything written by me on this, or any subject, does. M. le Comte

de Cardi possesses an unrivalled knowledge of the natives of the Niger

Delta, gained, as all West Coasters know, by personal experience, and

gained in a way whereby he had to test the truth of his ideas about

these natives, not against things said concerning them in books, but

against the facts themselves, for years; and depending on the accuracy

of his knowledge was not a theory, but his own life and property. I have

always wished that men having this kind of first-hand, well-tested

knowledge regarding West Africa could be induced to publish it for the

benefit of students, and for the foundation of a true knowledge

concerning the natives of West Africa in the minds of the general

public, feeling assured that if we had this class of knowledge

available, the student of ethnology would be saved from many fantastic

theories, and the general public enabled to bring its influence to bear

in the cause of justice, instead of in the cause of fads. I need say

nothing more regarding Appendix I.; it is a mine of knowledge concerning

a highly developed set of natives of the true Negro stem, particularly

valuable because, during recent years, we have been singularly badly off

for information on the true Negro. It would not be too much to say that,

with the exception of the important series of works by the late Sir A.

B. Ellis, and a few others, so few that you can count them on the

fingers of one hand, and Dr. Freeman's _Ashanti and Jaman_, published

this year, we have practically had no reliable information on these, the

most important of the races of Africa, since the eighteenth century. The

general public have been dependent on the work of great East and Central

African geographical explorers, like Dr. Livingstone, Mr. H. M. Stanley,

Dr. Gregory, Mr. Scott Elliott, and Sir H. H. Johnston, men whose work

we cannot value too highly, and whom we cannot sufficiently admire; but

who, nevertheless, were not when describing Africans describing Negroes,

but that great mixture of races existing in Central and East Africa

whose main ingredient is Bantu. To argue from what you know about Bantus

when you are dealing with Negroes is about as safe and sound as to argue

from what you may know about Eastern Europeans when you are dealing with

Western Europeans. Nevertheless, this fallacious method has been

followed in the domain of ethnology and politics with, as might be

expected, bad results. I am, therefore, very proud at being permitted by

M. le Comte de Cardi to publish his statements on true Negroes; and I

need not say I have in no way altered them, and that he is in no way

responsible for any errors that there may be in the portions of this

book written by me.

Mr. John Harford, the man who first[1] opened up that still little-known

Qua Ibo river, another region of Negroes, also requires no apology. I am

confident that the quite unconscious picture of a West Coast trader's

life given by him in Appendix II. will do much to remove the fantastic

notions held concerning West Coast traders and the manner of life they

lead out there; and I am convinced that if the English public had more

of this sort of material it would recognise, as I, from a fairly

extensive knowledge of West Coast traders, have been forced to

recognise, that they are the class of white men out there who can be

trusted to manage West Africa.

I most sincerely wish that the whole of this book had been written by

such men as the authors of Appendices I. and II. We are seriously in

want of reliable information on West African affairs. It is a sort of

information you can only get from resident white men, those who live in

close touch with the natives, and who are forced to know the truth about

them in order to live and prosper, and from scientific trained

observers. The transient traveller, passing rapidly through such a

region as West Africa, is not so valuable an informant as he may be in

other regions of the Earth, where his observations can be checked by

those of acknowledged authorities, and supplemented by the literature of

the natives to whom he refers. For on West Africa, outside Ellis's

region, there is no authority newer than the eighteenth century, and the

natives have no written literature. You must, therefore, go down to

_Urstuff_ and rely only on expert observers, whose lives and property

depend on their observing well, or whose science trains them to observe

carefully.

Now of course I regard myself as one of the second class of these

observers: did I not do so I would not dare speak about West Africa at

all, especially in such company; but whatever I am or whatever I do,

requires explanation, apology, and thanks.

You may remember that after my return from a second sojourn in West

Africa, when I had been to work at fetish and fresh-water fishes, I

published a word-swamp of a book about the size of Norie's _Navigation_.

Mr. George Macmillan lured me into so doing by stating that if I gave my

own version of the affair I should remove misconceptions; and if I did

not it was useless to object to such things as paragraphs in American

papers to the effect that "Miss Kingsley, having crossed the continent

of Africa, ascended the Niger to Victoria, and then climbed the Peak of

Cameroon; she is shortly to return to England, when she will deliver a

series of lectures on French art, which she has had great opportunities

of studying." Well, thanks to Mr. Macmillan's kindness, I did publish a

sort of interim report, called _Travels in West Africa_. It did not work

out in the way he prophesied. It has led to my being referred to as "an

intrepid explorer," a thing there is not the making of in me, who am

ever the prey of frights, worries, and alarms; and its main effect, as

far as I am personally concerned, has been to plunge me further still in

debt for kindness from my fellow creatures, who, though capable of doing

all I have done and more capable of writing about it in really good

English, have tolerated that book and frequently me also, with

half-a-dozen colds in my head and a dingy temper. Chief among all these

creditors of mine I must name Mrs. J. R. Green, Mrs. George Macmillan,

and Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith; but don't imagine that they or any other of

my creditors approve of any single solitary opinion I express, or the

way in which I express it. It is merely that I have the power of

bringing out in my fellow-creatures, white or black, their virtues, in a

way honourable to them and fortunate for me.

I must here also acknowledge the great debt of gratitude I owe to Mr.

John Holt, of Liverpool. A part of my work lies in the affairs of the

so-called Bubies of Fernando Po, and no one knows so much about Fernando

Po as Mr. Holt. He has also been of the greatest help to me in other

ethnological questions, and has permitted me to go through his

collections of African things most generously. It is, however, idle for

me to attempt to chronicle my debt to Mr. Holt, for in every part of my

work I owe him much. I do not wish you to think he is responsible for

any of it, but his counsels have ever been on the side of moderation and

generosity in adverse criticism. I honestly confess I believe I am by

nature the very mildest of critics; but Mr. Holt and others think

otherwise; and so, although I have not altered my opinions, I have

restrained from publishing several developments of them, in deference to

superior knowledge.

I am also under a debt of gratitude to Professor Tylor. He also is not

involved in my opinions, but he kindly permits me to tell him things

that I can only "tell Tylor"; and now and again, as you will see in the

Fetish question, he comes down on me with a refreshing firmness; in

fact, I feel that any attempt at fantastic explanations of West African

culture will not receive any encouragement from him; and it is a great

comfort to a mere drudge like myself to know there is some one who

cares for facts, without theories draping them.

I will merely add that to all my own West Coast friends I remain

indebted; and that if you ever come across any one who says I owe them

much, you may take it as a rule that I do, though in all my written

stuff I have most carefully ticketed its source.

I now turn to the explanation and apology for this book, briefly.

Apology for its literary style I do not make. I am not a literary man,

only a student of West Africa. I am not proud of my imperfections in

English. I would write better if I could, but I cannot. I find when I

try to write like other people that I do not say what seems to me true,

and thereby lose all right to say anything; and I am more convinced, the

more I know of West Africa--my education is continuous and unbroken by

holidays,--that it is a difficult thing to write about, particularly

when you are a student hampered on all sides by masses of inchoate

material, unaided by a set of great authors to whose opinions you can

refer, and addressing a public that is not interested in the things that

interest you so keenly and that you regard as so deeply important.

In my previous book I most carefully confined myself to facts and

arranged those facts on as thin a line of connecting opinion as

possible. I was anxious to see what manner of opinion they would give

rise to in the minds of the educated experts up here; not from a mere

feminine curiosity, but from a distrust in my own ability to construct

theories. On the whole this method has worked well. Ethnologists of

different theories have been enabled to use such facts as they saw fit;

but one of the greatest of ethnologists has grumbled at me, not for not

giving a theory, but for omitting to show the inter-relationship of

certain groups of facts, an inter-relationship his acuteness enabled him

to know existed. Therefore I here give the key to a good deal of this

inter-relationship by dividing the different classes of Fetishism into

four schools. In order to do this I have now to place before you a good

deal of material that was either crowded out of the other work or

considered by me to require further investigation and comparison. As for

the new statements I make, I have been enabled to give them this from

the constant information and answers to questions I receive from West

Africa. For the rest of the Fetish I remain a mere photographic plate.

Regarding the other sections of this book, they are to me all subsidiary

in importance to the Fetish, but they belong to it. They refer to its

environment, without a knowledge of which you cannot know the thing.

What Mr. Macmillan has ticketed as Introductory--I could not find a name

for it at all--has a certain bearing on West African affairs, as showing

the life on a West Coast boat. I may remark it is a section crowded out

of my previous book; so, though you may not be glad to see it here, you

must be glad it was not there.

The fishing chapter was also cast out of _Travels in West Africa_.

Critics whom I respect said it was wrong of me not to have explained how

I came by my fishes. This made me fear that they thought I had stolen

them, so I published the article promptly in the _National Review_, and,

by the kindness of its editor, Mr. Maxse, I reprint it. It is the only

reprint in this book.

The chapter on Law contains all the material I have been so far able to

arrange on this important study. The material on Criminal Law I must

keep until I can go out again to West Africa, and read further in the

minds of men in the African Forest Belt region; for in them, in that

region, is the original text. The connection between Religion and Law I

have not reprinted here, it being available, thanks to the courtesy of

the Hibbert Trustees, in the _National Review_, September, 1897.

I have left my stiffest bit of explanation and apology till the last,

namely, that relating to the Crown Colony system, which is the thing

that makes me beg you to disassociate from me every friend I have, and

deal with me alone. I am alone responsible for it, the only thing for

which I may be regarded as sharing the responsibility with others being

the statistics from Government sources.

It has been the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. I would have

given my right hand to have done it well, for I know what it means if

things go on as they are. Alas! I am hampered with my bad method of

expression. I cannot show you anything clearly and neatly. I have to

show you a series of pictures of things, and hope you will get from

those pictures the impression which is the truth. I dare not set myself

up to tell you the truth. I only say, look at it; and to the best of my

ability faithfully give you, not an artist's picture, but a photograph,

an overladen with detail, colourless version; all the time wishing to

Heaven there was some one else doing it who could do it better, and then

I know you would understand, and all would be well. I know there are

people who tax me with a brutality in statement, I feel unjustly; and it

makes me wonder what they would say if they had to speak about West

Africa. It is a repetition of the difficulty a friend of mine and myself

had over a steam launch called the Dragon Fly, whose internal health was

chronically poor, and subject to bad attacks. Well, one afternoon, he

and I had to take her out to the home-going steamer, and she had

suffered that afternoon in the engines, and when she suffered anywhere

she let you know it. We did what we could for her, in the interests of

humanity and ourselves; we gave her lots of oil, and fed her with

delicately-chopped wood; but all to but little avail. So both our

tempers being strained when we got to the steamer, we told her what the

other one of us had been saying about the Dragon Fly. The purser of the

steamer thereon said "that people who said things like those about a

poor inanimate steam launch were fools with a flaming hot future, and

lost souls entirely." We realised that our observations had been

imperfect; and so, being ever desirous of improving ourselves, we

offered to put the purser on shore in the Dragon Fly. We knew she was

feeling still much the same, and we wanted to know what he would say

when jets of superheated steam played on him. He came, and they did; and

when they did, you know, he said things I cannot repeat. Nevertheless,

things of the nature of our own remarks, but so much finer of the kind,

that we regarded him with awe when he was returning thanks to the "poor

inanimate steam launch"; but it was when it came to his going ashore,

gladly to leave us and her, that we found out what that man could say;

and we morally fainted at his remarks made on discovering that he had

been sitting in a pool of smutty oil, which she had insidiously treated

him to, in order to take some of the stuffing out of him about the

superior snowwhiteness of his trousers. Well, that purser went off the

scene in a blue flame; and I said to my companion, "Sir! we cannot say

things like that." "Right you are, Miss Kingsley," he said sadly; "you

and I are only fit for Sunday school entertainments."

It is thus with me about this Crown Colony affair. I know I have not

risen to the height other people--my superiors, like the purser--would

rise to, if they knew it; but at the same time, I may seem to those who

do not know it, who only know the good intentions of England, and who

regard systems as inanimate things, to be speaking harshly. I would not

have mentioned this affair at all, did I not clearly see that our

present method of dealing with tropical possessions under the Crown

Colony system was dangerous financially, and brought with it suffering

to the native races and disgrace to English gentlemen, who are bound to

obey and carry out the orders given them by the system.

Plotinus very properly said that the proper thing to do was to

superimpose the idea upon the actual. I am not one of those who will

ever tell you things are impossible, but I am particularly hopeful in

this matter. England has an excellent idea regarding her duty to native

races in West Africa. She has an excellent actual in the West African

native to superimpose her idea upon. All that is wanted is the proper

method; and this method I assure you that Science, true knowledge, that

which Spinoza termed the inward aid of God, can give you. I am not

Science, but only one of her brick-makers, and I beg you to turn to her.

Remember you have tried to do without her in African matters for 400

years, and on the road to civilisation and advance there you have

travelled on a cabbage leaf.

I have now only the pleasant duty of remarking that in this book I have

said nothing regarding missionary questions. I do not think it will ever

be necessary for me to mention those questions again except to

Nonconformist missionaries. I say this advisedly, because, though I have

not one word to retract of what I have said, the saying of it has

demonstrated to me the fearless honesty and the perfect chivalry in

controversy of the Nonconformist missions in England. As they are the

most extensively interested in West Africa, if on my next stay out in

West Africa I find anything I regard as rather wrong in missionary

affairs I intend to have it out within doors; for I know that the

Nonconformists will be clear-headed, and fight fair, and stick to the

point.

MARY H. KINGSLEY.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. McEachen first traded there in a hulk, but, after about two

years, withdrew in 1873. No trade was done in this river by white men

until Mr. Harford went in, since then it has continued.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY 1

CHAPTER II

SIERRA LEONE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 35

CHAPTER III

AFRICAN CHARACTERISTICS 62

CHAPTER IV

FISHING IN WEST AFRICA 88

CHAPTER V

FETISH 112

CHAPTER VI

SCHOOLS OF FETISH 136

CHAPTER VII

FETISH AND WITCHCRAFT 156

CHAPTER VIII

AFRICAN MEDICINE 180

CHAPTER IX

THE WITCH DOCTOR 199

CHAPTER X

EARLY TRADE IN WEST AFRICA 220

CHAPTER XI

FRENCH DISCOVERY OF WEST AFRICA 250

CHAPTER XII

COMMERCE IN WEST AFRICA 281

CHAPTER XIII

THE CROWN COLONY SYSTEM 301

CHAPTER XIV

THE CROWN COLONY SYSTEM IN WEST AFRICA 314

CHAPTER XV

MORE OF THE CROWN COLONY SYSTEM 324

CHAPTER XVI

THE CLASH OF CULTURES 363

CHAPTER XVII

AN ALTERNATIVE PLAN 392

CHAPTER XVIII

AFRICAN PROPERTY 420

APPENDIX

I. A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE NATIVES OF THE NIGER

COAST PROTECTORATE, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR

CUSTOMS, RELIGION, TRADE, ETC. BY M. LE COMTE

C. N. DE CARDI 443

II. A VOYAGE TO THE AFRICAN OIL RIVERS TWENTY-FIVE

YEARS AGO. BY JOHN HARFORD 567

III. TRADE GOODS USED IN THE EARLY TRADE WITH AFRICA

AS GIVEN BY BARBOT AND OTHER WRITERS OF THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. BY M. H. KINGSLEY. 615

INDEX 635

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SIRIMBA PLAYERS, CONGO _Frontispiece_.

SANTA CRUZ, TENERIFFE _To face page_ 12

FOR PALM WINE " 63

SECRET SOCIETY LEAVING THE SACRED GROVE " 69

JENGU DEVIL DANCE OF KING WILLIAM'S SLAVES,

SETTE CAMMA, NOVEMBER 9, 1888[A] " 69

BATANGA CANOES " 89

FALLS ON THE TONGUE RIVER " 101

LOANDA CANOE WITH MAT SAILS. " 101

ST. PAUL DO LOANDA " 102

ROUND A KACONGO CAMP FIRE " 105

FANTEE NATIVES OF THE GOLD COAST " 137

YORUBA " 141

A CALABAR CHIEF " 145

NATIVES OF GABOON " 151

FJORT NATIVES OF KACONGO AND LOANGO " 155

OIL RIVER NATIVES " 245

ST. PAUL DO LOANDA " 281

CLIFFS AT LOANDA " 285

DONDO ANGOLA " 287

TRADING STORES " 289

ST. PAUL DO LOANDA " 291

IN AN ANGOLA MARKET " 297

A MAN OF SOUTH ANGOLA " 297

A HOUSA " 420

HOUSE PROPERTY IN KACONGO " 423

BUBIES OF FERNANDO PO " 423

JA JA, KING OF OPOBO " 443

JA JA MAKING JU JU " 540

FOOTNOTES:

[A] By permission of R. B. N. Walker, Esq.

WEST AFRICAN STUDIES

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Regarding a voyage on a West Coast boat, with some observations on

the natural history of mariners never before published; to which is

added some description of the habits and nature of the ant and

other insects, to the end that the new-comer be informed concerning

these things before he lands in Afrik.

There are some people who will tell you that the labour problem is the

most difficult affair that Africa presents to the student; others give

the first place to the influence of civilisation on native races, or to

the interaction of the interests of the various white Powers on that

continent, or to the successful sanitation of the said continent, or

some other high-sounding thing; but I, who have an acquaintance with all

these matters, and think them well enough, as intellectual exercises,

yet look upon them as slight compared to the problem of the West Coast

Boat.

Now life on board a West Coast steamer is an important factor in West

African affairs, and its influence is far reaching. It is, indeed, akin

to what the Press is in England, in that it forms an immense amount of

public opinion. It is on board the steamer that men from one part of

West Africa meet men from another part of West Africa--parts of West

Africa are different. These men talk things over together without

explaining them, and the consequence is confusion in idea and the

darkening of counsel from the ideas so formed being handed over to

people at home who practically know no part of the West Coast

whatsoever.

I had an example of this the other day, when a lady said to me in an

aggrieved tone, after I had been saying a few words on swamps, "Oh, Miss

Kingsley, but I thought it was wrong to talk about swamps nowadays, and

that Africa was really quite dry. I have a cousin who has been to Accra

and he says," &c. That's the way the formation of an erroneous opinion

on West Africa gets started. Many a time have I with a scientific

interest watched those erroneous opinions coming out of the egg on a

West Coast boat. Say, for example, a Gold Coaster meets on the boat a

River-man. River-man in course of conversation, states how, "hearing a

fillaloo in the yard one night I got up and found the watchman going to

sleep on the top of the ladder had just lost a leg by means of one

crocodile, while another crocodile was kicking up a deuce of a row

climbing up the crane." Gold Coaster says, "Tell that to the Marines."

River-man says, "Perfect fact, Sir, my place swarms with crocodiles.

Why, once, when I was," &c., &c. Anyhow it ends in a row. The Gold

Coaster says, "Sir, I have been 7 years" (or 13 or some impressive

number of years) "on the West Coast of Africa, Sir, and I have never

seen a crocodile." River-man makes remarks on the existence of a toxic

state wherein a man can't see the holes in a ladder, for he knows he's

seen hundreds of crocodiles.

I know Gold Coasters say in a trying way when any terrific account of

anything comes before them, "Oh, that was down in the Rivers," and one

knows what they mean. But don't you go away with the idea that a Gold

Coaster cannot turn out a very decent tale; indeed, considering the

paucity of their material, they often display the artistic spirit to a

most noteworthy degree, but the net result of the conversation on a West

African steamboat is error. Parts of it, like the curate's egg, are

quite excellent, but unless you have an acquaintance with the various

regions of the Coast to which your various informants refer, you cannot

know which is which. Take the above case and analyse it, and you will

find it is almost all, on both sides, quite true. I won't go bail for

the crocodile up the crane, but for the watchman's leg and the watchman

being asleep on the top of the ladder I will, for watchmen will sleep

anywhere; and once when I was, &c., I myself saw certainly not less than

70 crocodiles at one time, let alone smelling them, for they do swarm in

places and stink always. But on the other hand the Gold Coaster might

have remained 7, 13, or any other number of centuries instead of years,

in a teetotal state, and yet have never seen a crocodile.

It may seem a reckless thing to say, but I believe that the great

percentage of steamboat talk is true; only you must remember that it is

not stuff that you can in any way use or rely on unless you know

yourself the district from which the information comes, and it must,

like all information--like all specimens of any kind--be very carefully

ticketed, then and there, as to its giver and its district. In this it

is again like the English Press, wherein you may see a statement one day

that everything is quite satisfactory, say in Uganda, and in the next

issue that there has been a massacre or some unpleasantness. The two

statements have in them the connecting thread of truth, that truth that,

according to Fichte, is in all things. The first shows that it is the

desire in the official mind that everything should be quite satisfactory

to every one; the second, that practically this blessed state has not

yet arrived--that is all.

I need not, however, further dwell on this complex phase, and will turn

to the high educational value of the West African steamboat to the young

Coaster, holding that on the conditions under which the Coaster makes

his first voyage out to West Africa largely depends whether or no he

takes to the Coast. Strange as it is to me, who love West Africa, there

are people who have really been there who have not even liked it in the

least. These people, I fancy, have not been properly brought up in a

suitable academy as I was.

Doubtless a P. & O. is a good preparatory school for India, or a Union,

or Castle liner for the Cape, or an Empereza Nacional simply superb for

a Portuguese West Coast Possession, but for the Bights, especially for

the terrible Bight of Benin, "where for one that comes out there are

forty stay in," I have no hesitation in recommending the West Coast

cargo boat. Not one of the best ships in the fleet, mind you; they are

well enough to come home in, and so on, but you must go on a steamer

that has her saloon aft on your first trip out or you will never

understand West Africa.

It was on such a steamer that I made my first voyage out in '93, when,

acting under the advice of most eminent men, before whose names European

Science trembles, I resolved that the best place to study early religion

and law, and collect fishes, was the West Coast of Africa.

On reaching Liverpool, where I knew no one and of which I knew nothing

in '93, I found the boat I was to go by was a veteran of the fleet. She

had her saloon aft, and I am bound to say her appearance was anything

but reassuring to the uninitiated and alarmed young Coaster, depressed

by the direful prophecies of deserted friends concerning all things West

African. Dirt and greed were that vessel's most obvious attributes. The

dirt rapidly disappeared, and by the time she reached the end of her

trip out, at Loanda, she was as neat as a new pin, for during the voyage

every inch of paint work was scraped and re-painted, from the red below

her Plimsoll mark to the uttermost top of her black funnel. But on the

day when first we met these things were yet to be. As for her greed, her

owners had evidently then done all they could to satisfy her. She was

heavily laden, her holds more full than many a better ship's; but no,

she was not content, she did not even pretend to be, and shamelessly

whistled and squarked for more. So, evidently just to gratify her, they

sent her a lighter laden with kegs of gunpowder, and she grunted

contentedly as she saw it come alongside. But she was not really

entirely content even then, or satisfied. I don't suppose, between

ourselves, any South West Coast boat ever is, and during the whole time

I was on her, devoted to her as I rapidly became, I saw only too clearly

that the one thing she really cared for was cargo. It was the criterion

by which she measured the importance, nay the very excuse for existence,

of a port. If she is ever sold to other owners and sent up the

Mediterranean, she will anathematise Malta and scorn Naples. "What! no

palm oil!" she'll say; "no rubber? Call yourself a port!" and tie her

whistle string to a stanchion until the authorities bring off her papers

and let her clear away. Every one on board her she infected with a

commercial spirit. I am not by nature a commercial man myself, yet

under her influence I found myself selling paraffin oil in cases in the

Bights: and even to missionaries and Government officials travelling on

her in between ports, she suggested the advisability of having out

churches, houses, &c., in sections carefully marked with her name.

As we ran down the Irish Channel and into the Bay of Biscay, the weather

was what the mariners termed "a bit fresh." Our craft was evidently a

wet ship, either because she was nervous and femininely flurried when

she saw a large wave coming, or, as I am myself inclined to believe,

because of her insatiable mania for shipping cargo. Anyhow, she

habitually sat down in the rise of those waves, whereby, from whatever

motive, she managed to ship a good deal of the Atlantic Ocean in various

sized sections.

Her saloon, as aforesaid, was aft, and I observed it was the duty, in

order to keep it dry, of any one near the main door who might notice a

ton or so of the fourth element coming aboard, to seize up three

cocoa-fibre mats, shut three cabin doors and yell "Bill!" After doing

this they were seemingly at full liberty to retire into the saloon and

dam the Atlantic Ocean, and remark, "It's a dog's life at sea." I never

noticed "Bill" come in answer to this performance, so I was getting to

regard "Bill" as an invocation to a weather Ju Ju; but this was hasty,

for one night in the Bay I was roused by a new noise, and on going into

the saloon to see what it was, found the stewardess similarly engaged;

mutually we discovered, in the dim light--she wasn't the boat to go and

throw away money on electric--that it was the piano adrift off its dais,

and we steered for it. Very cleverly we fielded _en route_ a palm in pot

complete, but shipped some beer and Worcester sauce bottles that came at

us from the rack over the table, whereby we got a bit messy and sticky

about the hair and a trifle cut; nevertheless, undaunted we held our

course and seized the instrument, instinctively shouting "Bill," and

"Bill" came, in the form of a sandy-haired steward, amiable in nature

and striking in costume.

After the first three or four days, a calm despair regarding the fate of

my various lost belongings and myself having come on me, and the weather

having moderated, I began to make observations on what manner of men my

fellow-passengers were. I found only two species of the genus Coaster,

the Government official and the trading Agent, were represented; so far

we had no Missionaries. I decided to observe those species we had

quietly, having heard awful accounts of them before leaving England, but

to reserve final judgment on them until they had quite recovered from

sea-sickness and had had a night ashore. Some of the Agents soon revived

sufficiently to give copious information on the dangers and mortality of

West Africa to those on board who were going down Coast for the first

time, and the captain and doctor chipped in ever and anon with a

particularly convincing tale of horror in support of their statements.

This used to be the sort of thing. One of the Agents would look at the

Captain during a meal-time, and say, "You remember J., Captain?" "Knew

him well," says the Captain; "why I brought him out his last time, poor

chap!" then follows full details of the pegging-out of J., and his

funeral, &c. Then a Government official who had been out before, would

kindly turn to a colleague out for the first time, and say, "Brought any

dress clothes with you?" The unfortunate new comer, scenting an allusion

to a more cheerful phase of Coast life, gladly answers in the

affirmative.

"That's right," says the interlocutor; "you want them to wear at

funerals. Do you know," he remarks, turning to another old Coaster, "my

dress trousers did not get mouldy once last wet season."

"Get along," says his friend, "you can't hang a thing up twenty-four

hours without its being fit to graze a cow on."

"Do you get anything else but fever down there?" asks a new comer,

nervously.

"Haven't time as a general rule, but I have known some fellows get kraw

kraw."

"And the Portuguese itch, abscesses, ulcers, the Guinea worm and the

smallpox," observe the chorus calmly.

"Well," says the first answerer, kindly but regretfully, as if it pained

him to admit this wealth of disease was denied his particular locality;

"they are mostly on the South-west Coast." And then a gentleman says

parasites are, as far as he knows, everywhere on the Coast, and some of

them several yards long. "Do you remember poor C.?" says he to the

Captain, who gives his usual answer, "Knew him well. Ah! poor chap,

there was quite a quantity of him eaten away, inside and out, with

parasites, and a quieter, better living man than C. there never was."

"Never," says the chorus, sweeping away the hope that by taking care you

may keep clear of such things--the new Coaster's great hope. "Where do

you call--?" says a young victim consigned to that port. Some say it is

on the South-west, but opinions differ, still the victim is left assured

that it is just about the best place on the seaboard of the continent

for a man to go to who wants to make himself into a sort of complete

hospital course for a set of medical students.

This instruction of the young in the charms of Coast life is the

faithfully discharged mission of the old Coasters on steamboats,

especially, as aforesaid, at meal times. Desperate victims sometimes

determine to keep the conversation off fever, but to no avail. It is in

the air you breath, mentally and physically; one will mention a lively

and amusing work, some one cuts in and observes "Poor D. was found dead

in bed at C. with that book alongside him." With all subjects it is the

same. Keep clear of it in conversation, for even a half hour, you

cannot. Far better is it for the young Coaster not to try, but just to

collect all the anecdotes and information you can referring to it, and

then lie low for a new Coaster of your own to tell them to, and when

your own turn comes, as come it will if you haunt the West Coast long

enough, to peg out and be poor so and so yourself. For goodness sake die

somewhere where they haven't got the cemetery on a hill, because going

up a hill in shirt collars, &c., will cause your mourners to peg out

too, at least this is the lesson I was taught in that excellent West

Coast school.

When, however, there is no new Coaster to instruct on hand, or he is

tired for ten minutes of doing it, the old Coaster discourses with his

fellow old Coasters on trade products and insects. Every attention

should be given to him on these points. On trade products I will

discourse elsewhere; but insects it is well that the new comer should

know about before he sets foot on Africa. On some West Coast boats

excellent training is afforded by the supply of cockroaches on board,

and there is nothing like getting used to cockroaches early when your

life is going to be spent on the Coast--but I need not detain you with

them now, merely remarking that they have none of the modest reticence

of the European variety. They are very companionable, seeking rather

than shunning human society, nestling in the bunk with you if the

weather is the least chilly, and I fancy not averse to light; it is true

they come out most at night, but then they distinctly like a bright

light, and you can watch them in a tight packed circle round the lamp

with their heads towards it, twirling their antennae at it with evident

satisfaction; in fact it's the lively nights those cockroaches have that

keep them abed during the day. They are sometimes of great magnitude; I

have been assured by observers of them in factories ashore and on moored

hulks that they can stand on their hind legs and drink out of a quart

jug, but the most common steamer kind is smaller, as far as my own

observations go. But what I do object to in them is, that they fly and

feed on your hair and nails and disturb your sleep by so doing; and you

mayn't smash them--they make an awful mess if you do. As for insect

powder, well, I'd like to see the insect powder that would disturb the

digestion of a West African insect.

But it's against the insects ashore that you have to be specially

warned. During my first few weeks of Africa I took a general natural

historical interest in them with enthusiasm as of natural history; it

soon became a mere sporting one, though equally enthusiastic at first.

Afterwards a nearly complete indifference set in, unless some wretch

aroused a vengeful spirit in me by stinging or biting. I should say,

looking back calmly upon the matter, that 75 per cent. of West African

insects sting, 5 per cent. bite, and the rest are either permanently or

temporarily parasitic on the human race. And undoubtedly one of the many

worst things you can do in West Africa is to take any notice of an

insect. If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying

lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the

least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it

will go away--for that's your best chance; you have none in a stand-up

fight with a good thorough-going African insect. Well do I remember, at

Cabinda, the way insects used to come in round the hanging lamp at

dinner time. Mosquitoes were pretty bad there, not so bad as in some

other places, but sufficient, and after them hawking came a cloud of

dragon-flies, swishing in front of every one's face, which was worrying

till you got used to it. Ever and anon a big beetle, with a terrific

boom on, would sweep in, go two or three times round the room and then

flop into the soup plate, out of that, shake himself like a retriever

and bang into some one's face, then flop on the floor. Orders were then

calmly but firmly given to the steward boys to "catch 'em;" down on the

floor went the boys, and an exciting hunt took place which sometimes

ended in a capture of the offender, but always seemed to irritate a

previously quiet insect population who forthwith declared war on the

human species, and fastened on to the nearest leg. It is best, as I have

said, to leave insects alone. Of course you cannot ignore driver ants,

they won't go away, but the same principle reversed is best for them,

namely, your going away yourself.

One way and another we talked a good deal of insects as well as fever on

the----, but she herself was fairly free from these until she got a

chance of shipping; then, of course, she did her best--with the flea

line at Canary, mixed assortment at Sierra Leone, scorpions and

centipedes in the Timber ports, heavy cargo of the beetle and

mangrove-fly line, with mosquitoes for dunnage, in the Oil Rivers; it

was not till she reached Congo--but of that anon.

We duly reached Canary. This port I had been to the previous year on a

Castle liner, having, in those remote and dark ages, been taught to

believe that Liverpool boats were to be avoided; I was, so far, in a

state of mere transition of opinion from this view to the one I at

present hold, namely, that Liverpool West African boats are quite the

most perfect things in their way, and, at any rate, good enough for me.

I need not discourse on the Grand Canary; there are many better

descriptions of that lovely island, and likewise of its sister,

Teneriffe, than I could give you. I could, indeed give you an account of

these islands, particularly "when a West Coast boat is in from South,"

that would show another side of the island life; but I forbear, because

it would, perhaps, cause you to think ill of the West Coaster unjustly;

for the West Coaster, when he lands on the island of the Grand Canary,

homeward bound, and realises he has a good reasonable chance to see his

home and England again, is not in a normal state, and prone to fall

under the influence of excitement, and display emotions that he would

not dream of either on the West Coast itself or in England. Indeed, it

is not too much to say that on the Canary Islands a good deal of the

erroneous prejudice against West Africa is formed; but this is not the

place to go into details on the subject.

It was not until we left Canary that my fellow passengers on

the ---- realised that I was going to "the Coast." They had most civilly

bidden me good-bye when they were ashore on the morning of our arrival

at Las Palmas; and they were surprised at my presence on board at

dinner, as attentive to their conversation as ever. They explained that

they had regarded me at first as a lady missionary, until my failure,

during a Sunday service in the Bay of Biscay, to rescue it from the

dire confusion into which it had been thrown by an esteemed and able

officer and a dutiful but inexperienced Purser caused them to regard me

as only a very early visitor to Canary. Now they required explanation. I

said I was interested in Natural History. "Botany," they said, "They had

known some men who had come out from Kew, but they were all dead now."

[Illustration: SANTA CRUZ, TENERIFFE. [_To face page 12_]

I denied a connection with Kew, and in order to give an air of

definiteness to my intentions, remembering I had been instructed that

"one of the worst things you can do in West Africa is to be indefinite,"

I said I was interested in the South Antarctic Drift--I was in those

days.

They promptly fell into the pit of error that this was a gold mine

speculation, and said they had "never heard of such a mine." I attempted

to extricate them from this idea, and succeeded, except with a deaf

gentleman who kept on sweeping into the conversation with yarns and

opinions on gold mines in West Africa and the awful mortality among

people who attended to such things, which naturally led to a prolonged

discussion ending in a general resolution that people who had anything

to do with gold mines generally died rather quicker even than men from

Kew. Indeed, it took me days to get myself explained, and when it was

accomplished I found I had nearly got myself regarded as a lunatic to go

to West Africa for such reasons. But fortunately for me, and for many

others who have ventured into this kingdom, the West African merchants

are good-hearted, hospitable English gentlemen, who seem to feel it

their duty that no harm they can prevent should happen to any one; and

my first friends, among them my fellow passengers on the----, failing

in inducing me to return from Sierra Leone, which they strongly

advised, did their best to save me by means of education. The things

they thought I "really ought to know" would make wild reading if

published in extenso. Led by the kindest and most helpful of captains,

they poured in information, and I acquired a taste for "facts"--any sort

of facts about anything--a taste when applied to West African facts,

that I fancy ranks with that for collecting venomous serpents; but to my

listening to everything that was told me by my first instructors, and

believing in it, undoubtedly I have often owed my life, and countless

times have been enabled to steer neatly through shoaly circumstances

ashore.

Our captain was not a man who would deliberately alarm a new comer, or

shock any one, particularly a lady; indeed, he deliberately attempted to

avoid so doing. He held it wrong to dwell on the dark side of Coast

life, he said, "because youngsters going out were frequently so

frightened on board the boats that they died as soon as they got on

shore of the first cold they got in the head, thinking it was Yellow

Jack"; so he always started conversation at meal times with anecdotes of

his early years on an ancestral ranch in America. One great charm about

"facts" is that you never know but what they may come in useful; so I

eagerly got up a quantity of very strange information on the conduct of

the American cow. He would then wander away among the China Seas or the

Indian Ocean, and I could pass an examination on the social habits of

captains of sailing vessels that ran to Bombay in old days. Sometimes

the discourse visited the South American ports, and I took on

information that will come in very handy should I ever find myself

wandering about the streets of Callao after dark, searching for a

tavern. But the turn that serious conversation always drifted into was

the one that interested me most, that relating to the Coast.

Particularly interesting were those tales of the old times and the men

who first established the palm oil trade. They were, many of them, men

who had been engaged in the slave trade, and on the suppression thereof

they turned their attention to palm oil, to which end their knowledge of

the locality and of the native chiefs and their commercial methods was

of the greatest help. Their ideas were possibly not those at present in

fashion, but the courage and enterprise those men displayed under the

most depressing and deadly conditions made me proud of being a woman of

the nation that turned out the "Palm oil ruffians"--Drake, Hawkins, the

two Roberts, Frobisher, and Hudson--it is as good as being born a

foreign gentleman.

There was one of these old coasters of the palm oil ruffian type who

especially interested me. He is dead now. For the matter of that he died

at a mature age the year I was born, and I am in hopes of collecting

facts sufficient to enable me to publish his complete biography. He

lived up a creek, threw boots at leopards, and "had really swell

spittoons, you know, shaped like puncheons, and bound with brass." I am

sure it is unnecessary for me to mention his name.

Two of the old Coasters never spoke unless they had something useful and

improving to say. They were Scotch; indeed, most of us were that trip,

and I often used to wonder if the South Atlantic Ocean were broad enough

for the accent of the "a," or whether strange sounds would ever worry

and alarm Central America and the Brazils. For general social purposes

these silent ones used coughs, and the one whose seat was always next to

mine at table kept me in a state of much anxiety, for I used to turn

round, after having been riveted to the captain's conversation for

minutes, and find him holding some dish for me to help myself from; he

never took the least notice of my apologies, and I felt he had made up

his mind that, if I did it again, he should take me by the scruff of my

neck some night and drop me overboard. He was an alarmingly powerfully

built man, and I quite understood the local African tribe wishing to

have him for a specimen. Some short time before he had left for home

last trip, they had attempted to acquire his head for their local ju ju

house, from mixed aesthetic and religious reasons. In a way, it was

creditable of them, I suppose, for it would have caused them grave

domestic inconvenience to have removed thereby at one fell swoop, their

complete set of tradesmen; and as a fellow collector of specimens I am

bound to admit the soundness of their methods of collecting! Wishing for

this gentleman's head they shot him in the legs. I have never gone in

for collecting specimens of hominidae but still a recital of the

incident did not fire me with a desire to repeat their performance;

indeed, so discouraged was I by their failure that I hesitated about

asking him for his skeleton when he had quite done with it, though it

was gall and wormwood to think of a really fine thing like that falling

into the hands of another collector.

The run from Canary to Sierra Leone takes about a week. That part of it

which lies in the track of the N.E. Trade Winds, _i.e._, from Canary to

Cape Verde, makes you believe Mr. Kipling when he sang--

"There are many ways to take

Of the eagle and the snake,

And the way of a man with a maid;

But the sweetest way for me

Is a ship upon the sea

On the track of the North-East trade."

was displaying, gracefully, a sensible choice of things; but you only

feel this outward bound to the West Coast. When you come up from the

Coast, fever stricken, homeward bound, you think otherwise. I do not

mean to say that owing to a disintegrating moral effect of West Africa

you wish to pursue the other ways mentioned in the stanza, but you do

wish the Powers above would send that wind to the Powers below and get

it warmed. Alas! it is in this Trade Wind zone that most men die, coming

up from the Coast sick with fever, and it is to the blame of the Trade

Wind that you see obituary notices--"of fever after leaving Sierra

Leone." Nevertheless, outward bound the thing is delightful, and

dreadfully you feel its loss when you have run through it as you close

in to the African land by Cape Verde. At any rate I did; and I began to

believe every bad thing I had ever heard of West Africa, and straightway

said to myself, what every man has said to himself who has gone there

since Hanno of Carthage, "Why was I such a fool as to come to such an

awful place?" It is the first meeting with the hot breath of the Bights

that tries one; it is the breath of Death himself to many. You feel when

first you meet it you have done with all else; not alone is it hot, but

it smells--smells like nothing else. It does not smell all it can then;

by and by, down in the Rivers, you get its perfection, but off Cape

Verde you have to ask yourself, "Can I live in this or no?" and you

have to leave it, like all other such questions, to Allah, and go on.

We passed close in to Cape Verde, which consists of rounded hills having

steep bases to the sea. From these bases runs out a low, long strip of

sandy soil, which is the true cape. Beyond, under water, runs out the

dangerous Almadia reef, on which were still, in '93, to be seen the

remains of the _Port Douglas_, who was wrecked there on her way to

Australia in '92. Her passengers were got ashore and most kindly treated

by the French officers of Senegal; and finally, to the great joy and

relief of their rescuers the said passengers were fetched away by an

English vessel, and taken to what England said was their destination and

home, Australia, but what France regarded as merely a stage on their

journey to hell, to which port they had plainly been consigned.

It was just south of Cape Verde that I met my first tornado. The weather

had been wet in violent showers all the morning and afternoon. Our old

Coasters took but little notice of it, resigning themselves to

saturation without a struggle, previous experience having taught them it

was the best thing to do, dryness being an unattainable state during the

wet season, and "worrying one's self about anything one of the worst

things you can do in West Africa." So they sat on deck calmly smoking,

their new flannel suits, which were donned after leaving the trade

winds, shrinking, and their colours running on to the other deck,

uncriticised even by the First officer. He was charging about shouting

directions and generally making that afternoon such a wild, hurrying

fuss about "getting in awnings," "tricing up all loose gear," such as

deck chairs, and so on, to permanent parts of the----, that, as nothing

beyond showers had happened, and there was no wind, I began to feel

most anxious about his mental state. But I soon saw that this activity

was the working of a practical prophetic spirit in the man, and these

alarms and excursions of his arose from a knowledge of what that low

arch of black cloud coming off the land meant.

We were surrounded by a wild, strange sky. Indeed, there seemed to be

two skies, one upper, and one lower; for parts of it were showing

evidences of terrific activity, others of a sublime, utterly indifferent

calm. At one part of our horizon were great columns of black cloud,

expanding and coalescing at their capitals. These were mounted on a

background of most exquisite pale green. Away to leeward was a gigantic

black cloud-mountain, across whose vast face were bands and wreaths of

delicate white and silver clouds, and from whose grim depths every few

seconds flashed palpitating, fitful, livid lightnings. Striding towards

us came across the sea the tornado, lashing it into spray mist with the

tremendous artillery of its rain, and shaking the air with its own

thunder-growls. Away to windward leisurely boomed and grumbled a third

thunderstorm, apparently not addressing the tornado but the

cloud-mountain, while in between these phenomena wandered strange, wild

winds, made out of lost souls frightened and wailing to be let back into

Hell, or taken care of somehow by some one. This sort of thing naturally

excited the sea, and all together excited the----, who, not being built

so much for the open and deep sea as for the shoal bars of West African

rivers, made the most of it.

In a few seconds the wind of the tornado struck us, screaming through

the rigging, eager for awnings or any loose gear, but foiled of its prey

by the First officer, who stood triumphantly on a heap of them, like a

defiant hen guarding her chickens.

Some one really ought to write a monograph on the natural history of

mariners. They are valuable beings, and their habits are exceedingly

interesting. I myself, being already engaged in the study of other

organisms, cannot undertake the work; however, I place my observations

at the disposal of any fellow naturalist who may have more time, and

certainly will have more ability.

The sailor officer (_Nauta pelagius vel officinalis_) is metamorphic.

The stage at which the specimen you may be observing has arrived is

easily determined by the band of galoon round his coat cuff; in the

English form the number of gold stripes increasing in direct ratio with

rank. The galoon markings of the foreign species are frequently merely

decorative, and in many foreign varieties only conditioned by the extent

of surface available to display them and the ability of the individual

to acquire the galoon wherewith to decorate himself.

The English third officer, you will find, has one stripe, the second

two, the first three, and the _imago_, or captain, four, the upper one

having a triumphant twist at the top.

You may observe, perhaps, about the ship sub-varieties, having a red

velvet, or a white or blue velvet band on the coat cuff; these are

respectively the Doctor, Purser, and Chief engineer; but with these

sub-varieties I will not deal now, they are not essentially marine

organisms, but akin to the amphibia.

The metamorphosis is as clearly marked in the individual as in the

physical characteristics. A third officer is a hard-working individual

who has to do any thing that the other officers do not feel inclined

to, and therefore rarely has time to wash. He in course of time becomes

second officer, and the slave of the hatch. During this period of his

metamorphosis he feels no compunction whatever in hauling out and

dumping on the deck burst bacon barrels or leaking lime casks, actions

which, when he reaches the next stage of development, he will regard as

undistinguishable in a moral point of view from a compound commission of

the seven deadly sins. For the deck, be it known, is to the First

officer the most important thing in the cosmogony, and there is probably

nothing he would not sacrifice to its complexion. One that I had the

pleasure of knowing once lamented to me that he was not allowed by his

then owners to spread a layer of ripe pineapples upon his precious idol,

and let them be well trampled in and then lie a few hours, for this he

assured me gave a most satisfactory bloom to a deck's complexion. Yet

when this same man becomes a captain and grows another stripe round his

cuffs, he no longer takes an active part in the ship's household

affairs, that is his First officer's business, the ship's husband's

affair; and should he have an inefficient First the captain expects Men

and Nations to sympathise with him, just as a lady expects to be

sympathised with over a bad housemaid.

There are, however, two habits which are constant to all the species

through each stage of transformation from roustabout to captain. One is

a love of painting. I have never known an officer or captain who could

pass a paint-pot, with the brush sticking temptingly out, without

emotion. While, as for Jack, the happiest hours he knows seemingly are

those he spends sitting on a slung plank over the side of his ocean

home, with his bare feet dangling a few feet above the water as

tempting bait for sharks, and the tropical sun blazing down on him and

reflected back at him from the iron ship's side and from the oily ocean

beneath. Then he carols forth his amorous lay, and shouts, "Bill, pass

that paint-pot" in his jolliest tones. It is very rarely that a black

seaman is treated to a paint-pot; all they are allowed to do is to knock

off the old stuff, which they do in the nerveless way the African does

most handicraft. The greatest dissipation of the black hands department

consists in being allowed to knock the old stuff off the steam-pipe

covers, donkey, and funnel. This is a delicious occupation, because,

firstly, you can usually sit while doing it, and secondly, you can make

a deafening din and sing to it.

The other habit and the more widely known is the animistic view your

seaman takes of Nature. Every article that is to a landsman an article

and nothing more, is to him an individual with a will and mind of his

own. I myself believe there is something in it. I feel sure that a

certain hawser on board the ---- had a weird influence on the minds of

all men who associated with it. It was used at Liverpool coming out of

dock, but owing to the absence of harbours on the Coast it was not

required again until it tied our ocean liner up to a tree stump at Boma,

on the Congo. Nevertheless it didn't suit that hawser's views to be down

below in the run and see nothing of life. It insisted on remaining on

deck, and the officers gave in to it and said "Well, perhaps it was

better so, it would rot if it went down below," so some days it abode on

the quarter-deck, some days on the main, and now and again it would

condescend to lie on the fo'castle, head in the sun. It had too its

varying moods of tidiness, now neat and dandy coiled, now dishevelled

and slummocky after association with the Kru boys.

It is almost unnecessary to remark that the relationship between the

First officer and the Chief engineer is rarely amicable. I certainly did

once hear a First officer pray especially for a Chief engineer all to

himself under his breath at a Sunday service; but I do not feel certain

that this was a display of true affection. I am bound to admit that "the

engineer is messy," which is magnanimous of me, because I had almost

always a row of some kind on with the First officer, owing to other

people upsetting my ink on his deck, whereas I have never fallen out

with an engineer--on the contrary, two Chief engineers are amongst the

most valued friends I possess.

The worst of it is that no amount of experience will drive it into the

head of the First officer that the engineer will want coal--particularly

and exactly when the ship has just been thoroughly scrubbed and painted

to go into port. I have not been at sea so long as many officers, yet I

know that you might as well try and get a confirmed dipsomaniac past a

grog shop as the engineer past, say the Canary Coaling Company; indeed

he seems to smell the Dakar coal, and hankers after it when passing it

miles out to sea. Then, again, if the engineer is allowed to have a coal

deposit in the forehold it is a fresh blow and grief to the First

officer to find he likes to take them as Mrs. Gamp did her stimulant,

when she "feels dispoged," whether the deck has just been washed down or

no.

The cook, although he always has a blood feud on with the engineer

concerning coals for the galley fire, which should endear him to the

First officer, is morally a greater trial to the First than he is to his

other victims. You see the cook has a grease tub, and what that means

to the deck in a high sea is too painful to describe. So I leave the

First officer with his pathetic and powerful appeals to the immortal

gods to be told why it is his fate to be condemned to this "dog's life

on a floating Hanwell lunatic asylum," commending him to the sympathetic

consideration of all good housewives, for only they can understand what

that dear good man goes through.

After we passed Cape Verde we ran into the West African wet season rain

sheet. There ought to be some other word than rain for that sort of

thing. We have to stiffen this poor substantive up with adjectives, even

for use with our own thunderstorms, and as is the morning dew to our

heaviest thunder "torrential downpour of rain," so is that to the rain

of the wet season in West Africa. For weeks it came down on us that

voyage in one swishing, rushing cataract of water. The interspaces

between the pipes of water--for it did not go into details with

drops--were filled with gray mist, and as this rain struck the sea it

kicked up such a water dust that you saw not the surface of the sea

round you, but only a mist sea gliding by. It seemed as though we had

left the clear cut world and entered into a mist universe. Sky, air, and

sea were all the same, as our vessel swept on in one plane, just because

she capriciously preferred it. Many days we could not see twenty yards

from the ship. Once or twice another vessel would come out of the mist

ahead, slogging past us into the mist behind, visible in our little

water world for a few minutes only as a misty thing, and then we

leisurely tramped on alone "o'er the viewless, hueless deep," with our

horizon alongside.

If you cleared your mind of all prejudice the thing was really not

uncomfortable, and it seemed restful to the mind. As I used to be

sitting on deck every one who came across me would say, "Wet, isn't it?

Well, you see this is the wet season on the Coast"--or, "Damp, isn't it?

Well, you see this is the wet season on the Coast"--and then they went

away, and, I believe slept for hours exhausted by their educational

efforts. After this they would come on deck and sit in their respective

chairs, smoking, save that irrepressible deaf gentleman, who spent his

time squirrel like between vivid activity and complete quiescence. You

might pass the smoking room door and observe the soles of his shoes

sticking out off the end of the settee with an air of perfect restful

calm hovering over them, as if the owner were hibernating for the next

six months. Within two minutes after this an uproar on the poop would

inform the experienced ear that he was up and about again, and had found

some one asleep on a chair and attacked him.

It was during one of these days, furnishing reminiscences of Noah's

flood, that conversation turned suddenly on Driver ants. One of the

silent men, who had been sitting for an hour or so, with a countenance

indicative of a contemplative acceptance of the penitential psalms,

roused by one of the deaf man's rows, observed, "Paraffin is good for

Driver ants." "Oh," said the deaf gentleman as he sat suddenly down on

my ink-pot, which, for my convenience, was on a chair, "you wait till

you get them up your legs, or sit down among them, as I saw Smith, when

he was tired clearing bush. They took the tire out of him, he live for

scratch one time. Smith was a pocket circus. You should have seen him

get clear of his divided skirt. Oh lor! what price paraffin?"

The conversation on the Driver ant now became general. As far as I

remember, Mr. Burnand, who in _Happy Thoughts_ and _My Health_, gave

much information, curious and interesting, on earwigs and wasps, omitted

this interesting insect. So, perhaps, a _precis_ of the information I

obtained may be interesting. I learnt that the only thing to do when you

have got them on you is to adopt the course of action pursued by Brer

Fox on that occasion when he was left to himself enough to go and buy

ointment from Brer Rabbit, namely, make "a burst for the creek," water

being the quickest thing to make them leave go. Unfortunately, the first

time I had occasion to apply this short and easy method with the ant was

when I was strolling about by Bell-Town with a white gentleman and his

wife, and we strolled into Drivers. There were only two water-barrels in

the vicinity, and my companions, being more active than myself, occupied

them.

While in West Africa you should always keep an eye lifting for Drivers.

You can start doing it as soon as you land, which will postpone the

catastrophe, not avoid it; for the song of the West Coaster to his enemy

is truly, "Some day, some day, some day I shall meet you; Love, I know

not when nor how." Perhaps, therefore, this being so, and watchfulness a

strain when done deliberately, and worrying one of the worst things you

can do in West Africa, it may be just as well for you to let things

slide down the time-stream until Fate sends a column of the wretches up

your legs. This experience will remain "indelibly limned on the tablets

of your mind when a yesterday has faded from its page," or, as the

modern school of psychologists would have it, "The affair will be

brought to the notice of your sublimated consciousness, and that part of

your mind will watch for Drivers without worrying you, and an automatic

habit will be induced that will cause you never to let more than one eye

roam spell-bound over the beauties of the African landscape; the other

will keep fixed, turned to the soil at your feet."

The Driver is of the species _Ponera_, and is generally referred to the

species _anomma arcens_. The females and workers of these ants are

provided with stings as well as well-developed jaws. They work both for

all they are worth, driving the latter into your flesh, enthusiastically

up to the hilt; they then remain therein, keeping up irritation when you

have hastily torn their owner off in response to a sensation that is

like that of red hot pinchers. The full-grown worker is about half an

inch long, and without ocelli even. Yet one of the most remarkable among

his many crimes is that he will always first attack the eyes of any

victim. These creatures seem to have no settled home; no man has seen

the beginning or end, as far as I know, of one of their long trains. As

you are watching the ground you see a ribbon of glistening black, one

portion of it lost in one clump of vegetation, the other in another, and

on looking closer you see that it is an _acies instituta_ of Driver

ants. If you stir the column up with a stick they make a peculiar

fizzing noise, and open out in all directions in search of the enemy,

which you take care they don't find.

These ants are sometimes also called "visiting ants," from their habit

of calling in quantities at inconvenient hours on humanity. They are

fond of marching at night, and drop in on your house usually after you

have gone to bed. I fancy, however, they are about in the daytime as

well, even in the brightest weather; but it is certain that it is in

dull, wet weather, and after dusk, that you come across them most on

paths and open spaces. At other times and hours they make their way

among the tangled ground vegetation.

Their migrations are infinite, and they create some of the most

brilliant sensations that occur in West Africa, replacing to the English

exile there his lost burst water pipes of winter, and such like things,

while they enforce healthy and brisk exercise upon the African.

I will not enter into particulars about the customary white man's method

of receiving a visit of Drivers, those methods being alike ineffective

and accompanied by dreadful language. Barricading the house with a rim

of red hot ashes, or a river of burning paraffin, merely adds to the

inconvenience and endangers the establishment.

The native method with the Driver ant is different: one minute there

will be peace in the simple African home, the heavy-scented hot night

air broken only by the rhythmic snores and automatic side slaps of the

family, accompanied outside by a chorus of cicadas and bull frogs. Enter

the Driver--the next moment that night is thick with hurrying black

forms, little and big, for the family, accompanied by rats, cockroaches,

snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and huge spiders animated by the one

desire to get out of the visitors' way, fall helter skelter into the

street, where they are joined by the rest of the inhabitants of the

village, for the ants when they once start on a village usually make a

regular house-to-house visitation. I mixed myself up once in a

delightful knockabout farce near Kabinda, and possibly made the biggest

fool of myself I ever did. I was in a little village, and out of a hut

came the owner and his family and all the household parasites pell mell,

leaving the Drivers in possession; but the mother and father of the

family, when they recovered from this unwonted burst of activity, showed

such a lively concern, and such unmistakable signs of anguish at having

left something behind them in the hut, that I thought it must be the

baby. Although not a family man myself, the idea of that innocent infant

perishing in such an appalling manner roused me to action, and I joined

the frenzied group, crying, "Where him live?" "In him far corner for

floor!" shrieked the distracted parents, and into that hut I charged.

Too true! There in the corner lay the poor little thing, a mere inert

black mass, with hundreds of cruel Drivers already swarming upon it. To

seize it and give it to the distracted mother was, as the reporter would

say, "the work of an instant." She gave a cry of joy and dropped it

instantly into a water barrel, where her husband held it down with a

hoe, chuckling contentedly. Shiver not, my friend, at the callousness of

the Ethiopian; that there thing wasn't an infant--it was a ham!

These ants clear a house completely of all its owner's afflictions in

the way of vermin, killing and eating all they can get hold of. They

will also make short work of any meat they come across, but don't care

about flour or biscuits. Like their patron Mephistopheles, however, they

do not care for carrion, nor do they destroy furniture or stuffs. Indeed

they are typically West African, namely, good and bad mixed. In a few

hours they leave the house again on their march through the Ewigkeit,

which they enliven with criminal proceedings. Yet in spite of the

advantage they confer on humanity, I believe if the matter were put to

the human vote, Africa would decide to do without the Driver ant.

Mankind has never been sufficiently grateful to its charwomen, like

these insect equivalents, who do their tidying up at supremely

inconvenient times. I remember an incident at one place in the Lower

Congo where I had been informed that "cork fever" was epidemic in a

severe form among the white population. I was returning to quarters from

a beetle hunt, in pouring rain; it was as it often is, "the wet season,"

&c., when I saw a European gentleman about twenty yards from his

comfortable-looking house seated on a chair, clad in a white cotton

suit, umbrellaless, and with the water running off him as if he was in a

douche bath. I had never seen a case of cork fever, but I had heard such

marvellous and quaint tales of its symptoms that I thought--well,

perhaps, anyhow, I would not open up conversation. To my remorse he

said, as I passed him, "Drivers." Inwardly apologising, I outwardly

commiserated him, and we discoursed. It was on this occasion that I saw

a mantis, who is by way of being a very pretty pirate on his own

account, surrounded by a mob of the blind hurrying Drivers who, I may

remark, always attack like Red Indians in open order. That mantis

perfectly well knew his danger, but was as cool as a cucumber, keeping

quite quiet and lifting his legs out of the way of the blind enemies

around him. But the chances of keeping six legs going clear, for long,

among such brutes without any of them happening on one, were small, even

though he only kept three on the ground at one time. So, being a devotee

of personal courage, I rescued him--whereupon he bit me for my pains.

Why didn't he fly? How can you fly, I should like to know, unless you

have a jumping off place?

Drivers are indeed dreadful. I was at one place where there had been a

white gentleman and a birthday party in the evening; he stumbled on his

way home and went to sleep by the path side, and in the morning there

was only a white gentleman's skeleton and clothes.

However, I will dwell no more on them now. Wretches that they are, they

have even in spirit pursued me to England, causing a critic to observe

that _brevi spatio interjecto_ is my only Latin, whereas the matter is

this. I was once in distinguished society in West Africa that included

other ladies. We had a distinguished native gentleman, who had had an

European education, come to tea with us. The conversation turned on

Drivers, for one of the ladies had the previous evening had her house

invaded by them at midnight. She snatched up a blanket, wrapped herself

round with it, unfortunately allowed one corner thereof to trail,

whereby it swept up Drivers, and awful scenes followed. Then our visitor

gave us many reminiscences of his own, winding up with one wherein he

observed "_brevi spatio interjecto_, ladies; off came my breeches."

After this we ladies all naturally used this phrase to describe rapid

action.

There is another ant, which is commonly called the red Driver, but it is

quite distinct from the above-mentioned black species. It is an

unwholesome-looking, watery-red thing with long legs, and it abides

among trees and bushes. An easy way of obtaining specimens of this ant

is to go under a mango or other fruit tree and throw your cap at the

fruit. You promptly get as many of these insects as the most ardent

naturalist could desire, its bite being every bit as bad as that of the

black Driver.

These red ones build nests with the leaves of the tree they reside on.

The leaves are stuck together with what looks like spiders' webs. I have

seen these nests the size of an apple, and sent a large one to the

British Museum, but I have been told of many larger nests than I have

seen. These ants, unfortunately for me who share the taste, are

particularly devoted to the fruit of the rubber vine, and also to that

of a poisonous small-leaved creeping plant that bears the most

disproportionately-sized spiny, viscid, yellow fruit. It is very

difficult to come across specimens of either of these fruits that have

not been eaten away by the red Driver.

It is a very fascinating thing to see the strange devices employed by

many kinds of young seedlings and saplings to keep off these evidently

unpopular tenants. They chiefly consist in having a sheath of

exceedingly slippery surface round the lower part of the stem, which the

ants slide off when they attempt to climb. I used to spend hours

watching these affairs. You would see an ant dash for one of these

protected stems as if he were a City man and his morning train on the

point of starting from the top of the plant stem. He would get up half

an inch or so because of the dust round the bottom helping him a bit,

then, getting no holding-ground, off he would slip, and falling on his

back, desperately kick himself right side up, and go at it again as if

he had heard the bell go, only to meet with a similar rebuff. The plants

are most forbearing teachers, and their behaviour in every way a credit

to them. I hope that they may in time have a moral and educational

effect on this overrated insect, enabling him to realise how wrong it is

for him to force himself where he is not welcome; but a few more

thousand years, I fear, will elapse before the ant is anything but a

chuckleheaded, obstinate wretch. Nothing nowadays but his happening to

fall off with his head in the direction of some other vegetable frees

the slippery plant from his attempts. To this other something off he

rushes, and if it happens to be a plant that does not mind him up he

goes, and I have no doubt congratulates himself on having carried out

his original intentions, understanding the world, not being the man to

put up with nonsense and all that sort of thing, whereas it is the plant

that manages him. Some plants don't mind ants knocking about among the

grown-up leaves, but will not have them with the infants, and so cover

their young stuff with a fur or down wherewith the ant can do nothing.

Others, again, keep him and feed him with sweetstuff so that he should

keep off other enemies from its fruit, &c. But I have not space to sing

in full the high intelligence of West African vegetation, and I am no

botanist; yet one cannot avoid being struck by it, it is so manifold and

masterly.

Before closing these observations I must just mention that tiny,

sandy-coloured abomination _Myriaica molesta_. In South West Africa it

swarms, giving a quaint touch to domestic arrangements. No reckless

putting down of basin, tin, or jam-pot there, least of all of the

sugar-basin, unless the said sugar-basin is one of those commonly used

in those parts, of rough, violet-coloured glass, with a similar lid.

Since I left South West Africa I have read some interesting observations

of Sir John Lubbock's on the dislike of ants to violet colour. I wonder

if the Portuguese of Angola observed it long ago and adopted violet

glass for basins, or was it merely accidental and empirical. I suspect

the latter, or they would use violet glass for other articles. As it is,

everything eatable in a house there is completely insulated in

water--moats of water with a dash of vinegar in it--to guard it from the

ants from below; to guard from the ants from above, the same breed and

not a bit better. Eatables are kept in swinging safes at the end of coir

rope recently tarred. But when, in spite of these precautions, or from

the neglect of them, you find, say your sugar, a brown, busy mass, just

stand it in the full glare of the sun. Sun is a thing no ant likes, I

believe, and it is particularly distasteful to ants with pale

complexions; and so you can see them tear themselves away from their

beloved sugar and clear off into a Hyde Park meeting smitten by a

thunderstorm.

This kind of ant, or a nearly allied species, is found in houses in

England, where it is supposed they have been imported from the Brazils

or West Indies in 1828. Possibly the Brazils got it from South West

Africa, with which they have had a trade since the sixteenth century,

most of the Brazil slaves coming out of Congo. It is unlikely that the

importation was the other way about; for exotic things, whether plants

or animals, do not catch on in Western Africa as they do in Australia.

In the former land everything of the kind requires constant care to keep

it going at all, and protect it from the terrific local circumstances.

It is no use saying to animal or vegetable, "there is room for all in

Africa"--for Africa, that is Africa properly so called--Equatorial West

Africa, is full up with its own stuff now, crowded and fighting an

internecine battle with the most marvellous adaptations to its

environment.