AFRICAN CHARACTERISTICS
Containing some account of the divers noises of Western Afrik and
an account of the country east of Cape Palmas, and other things; to
which is added an account of the manner of shipping timber; of the
old Bristol trade; and, mercifully for the reader, a leaving off.
When we got our complement of Krumen on board, we proceeded down Coast
with the intention of calling off Accra. I will spare you the
description of the scenes which accompany the taking on of Kruboys; they
have frequently been described, for they always alarm the
new-comer--they are the first bit of real Africa he sees if bound for
the Gold Coast or beyond. Sierra Leone, charming, as it is, has a sort
of Christy Minstrel air about it for which he is prepared, but the
Kruboy as he comes on board looks quite the Boys' Book of Africa sort of
thing; though, needless to remark, as innocent as a lamb, bar a tendency
to acquire portable property. Nevertheless, Kruboys coming on board for
your first time alarm you; at any rate they did me, and they also
introduced me to African noise, which like the insects is another most
excellent thing, that you should get broken into early.
Woe! to the man in Africa who cannot stand perpetual uproar. Few things
surprised me more than the rarity of silence and the intensity of it
when you did get it. There is only that time which comes between
10.30 A.M. and 4.30 P.M., in which you can look for anything like the
usual quiet of an English village. We will give Man the first place in
the orchestra, he deserves it. I fancy the main body of the lower
classes of Africa think externally instead of internally. You will hear
them when they are engaged together on some job--each man issuing the
fullest directions and prophecies concerning it, in shouts; no one
taking the least notice of his neighbours. If the head man really wants
them to do something definite he fetches those within his reach an
introductory whack; and even when you are sitting alone in the forest
you will hear a man or woman coming down the narrow bush path chattering
away with such energy and expression that you can hardly believe your
eyes when you learn from them that he has no companion.
[Illustration: FOR PALM WINE. [_To face page 63._]
Some of this talking is, I fancy, an equivalent to our writing. I know
many English people who, if they want to gather a clear conception of an
affair write it down; the African not having writing, first talks it
out. And again more of it is conversation with spirit guardians and
familiar spirits, and also with those of their dead relatives and
friends, and I have often seen a man, sitting at a bush fire or in a
village palaver house, turn round and say, "You remember that, mother?"
to the ghost that to him was there.
I remember mentioning this very touching habit of theirs, as it seemed
to me, in order to console a sick and irritable friend whose cabin was
close to a gangway then in possession of a very lively lot of Sierra
Leone Kruboys, and he said, "Oh, I daresay they do, Miss Kingsley; but
I'll be hanged if Hell is such a damned way off West Africa that they
need shout so loud."
The calm of the hot noontide fades towards evening time, and the noise
of things in general revives and increases. Then do the natives call in
instrumental aid of diverse and to my ear pleasant kinds. Great is the
value of the tom-tom, whether it be of pure native origin or constructed
from an old Devos patent paraffin oil tin. Then there is the
kitty-katty, so called from its strange scratching-vibrating sound,
which you hear down South, and on Fernando Po, of the excruciating mouth
harp, and so on, all accompanied by the voice.
If it be play night, you become the auditor to an orchestra as strange
and varied as that which played before Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego.
I know I am no musician, so I own to loving African music, bar that
Fernandian harp! Like Benedick, I can say, "Give me a horn for my money
when all is done," unless it be a tom-tom. The African horn, usually
made of a tooth of ivory, and blown from a hole in the side, is an
instrument I unfortunately cannot play on. I have not the lung capacity.
It requires of you to breathe in at one breath a whole S.W. gale of wind
and then to empty it into the horn, which responds with a preliminary
root-too-toot before it goes off into its noble dirge bellow. It is a
fine instrument and should be introduced into European orchestras, for
it is full of colour. But I think that even the horn, and certainly all
other instruments, savage and civilised, should bow their heads in
homage to the tom-tom, for, as a method of getting at the inner soul of
humanity where are they compared with that noble instrument! You doubt
it. Well go and hear a military tattoo or any performance on kettle
drums up here and I feel you will reconsider the affair; but even then,
remember you have not heard all the African tom-tom can tell you. I
don't say it's an instrument suited for serenading your lady-love with,
but that is a thing I don't require of an instrument. All else the
tom-tom can do, and do well. It can talk as well as the human tongue. It
can make you want to dance or fight for no private reason, as nothing
else can, and be you black or white it calls up in you all your
Neolithic man.
Many African instruments are, however, sweet and gentle, and as mild as
sucking doves, notably the xylophonic family. These marimbas, to use
their most common name, are all over Africa from Senegal to Zambesi.
Their form varies with various tribes--the West African varieties almost
universally have wooden keys instead of iron ones like the East African.
Personally, I like the West African best; there is something exquisite
in the sweet, clear, water-like notes produced from the strips of soft
wood of graduated length that make the West African keyboard. All these
instruments have the sound magnified and enriched by a hollow wooden
chamber under their keyboard. In Calabar this chamber is one small
shallow box, ornamented, as most wooden things are in Calabar, with
poker work--but in among the Fan, under the keyboard were a set of
calabashes, and in the calabashes one hole apiece and that hole covered
carefully with the skin of a large spider. While down in Angola you met
the xylophone in the imposing form you can see in the frontispiece to
this volume. Of the orchid fibre-stringed harp, I have spoken elsewhere,
and there remains but one more truly great instrument that I need
mention. I have had a trial at playing every African instrument I have
come across, under native teachers, and they have assured me that, with
application, I should succeed in becoming a rather decent performer on
the harp and xylophone, and had the makings of a genius for the tom-tom,
but my greatest and most rapid triumph was achieved on this other
instrument. I picked up the hang of the thing in about five minutes, and
then, being vain, when I returned to white society I naturally desired
to show off my accomplishment, but met with no encouragement
whatsoever--indeed my friends said gently, but firmly, that if I did it
again they should leave, not the settlement merely, but the continent,
and devote their remaining years to sweeping crossings in their native
northern towns--they said they would rather do this than hear that
instrument played again by any one.
This instrument is made from an old powder keg, with both ends removed;
a piece of raw hide is tied tightly round it over what one might call a
bung-hole, while a piece of wood with a lump of rubber or fastening is
passed through this hole. The performer then wets his hand, inserts it
into the instrument, and lightly grasps the stick and works it up and
down for all he is worth; the knob beats the drum skin with a beautiful
boom, and the stick gives an exquisite screech as it passes through the
hole in the skin which the performer enhances with an occasional howl or
wail of his own, according to his taste or feeling. There are other
varieties of this instrument, some with one end of the cylinder covered
over and the knob of the stick beating the inside, but in all its forms
it is impressive.
Next in point of strength to the human vocal and instrumental performers
come frogs. The small green one, whose note is like that of the
cricket's magnified, is a part-singer, but the big bull frog, whose
tones are all his own, sings in Handel Festival sized choruses. I don't
much mind either of these, but the one I hate is a solo frog who seems
eternally engaged at night in winding up a Waterbury watch. Many a night
have I stocked thick with calamity on that frog's account; many a night
have I landed myself in hailing distance of Amen Corner from having gone
out of hut, or house, with my mind too full of the intention of
flattening him out with a slipper, to think of driver ants, leopards, or
snakes. Frog hunting is one of the worst things you can do in West
Africa.
Next to frogs come the crickets with their chorus of "she did, she
didn't," and the cicadas, but they knock off earlier than frogs, and
when the frogs have done for the night there is quiet for the few hours
of cool, until it gets too cool and the chill that comes before the dawn
wakes up the birds, and they wake you with their long, mellow,
exquisitely beautiful whistles.
The aforesaid are everyday noises in West Africa, and you soon get used
to them or die of them; but there are myriads of others that you hear
when in the bush. The grunting sigh of relief of the hippos, the strange
groaning, whining bark of the crocodiles, the thin cry of the bats, the
cough of the leopards, and that unearthly yell that sometimes comes out
of the forest in the depths of dark nights. Yes, my naturalist friends,
it's all very well to say it is only a love-lorn, innocent little
marmoset-kind of thing that makes it. I know, poor dear, Softly, Softly,
and he wouldn't do it. Anyhow, you just wait until you hear it in a
shaky little native hut, or when you are spending the night, having been
fool enough to lose yourself, with your back against a tree quite alone
and that yell comes at you with its agony of anguish and appeal out of
that dense black world of forest which the moon, be she never so strong,
cannot enlighten, and which looks all the darker for the contrast of
the glistening silver mist that shows here and there in the clearings,
or over lagoon, or river, wavering twining, rising and falling; so full
of strange motion and beauty, yet, somehow, as sinister in its way as
the rest of your surroundings, and so deadly silent. I think if you hear
that yell cutting through this sort of thing like a knife and sinking
despairingly into the surrounding silence, you will agree with me that
it seems to favour Duppy, and that, perchance, the strange red patch of
ground you passed at the foot of the cotton tree before night came down
on you, was where the yell came from, for it is red and damp and your
native friends have told you it is so because of the blood whipped off a
sasa-bonsum and his victims as he goes down through it to his
under-world home.
Seen from the sea, the Ivory Coast is a relief to the eye after the dead
level of the Grain Coast, but the attention of the mariner to rocks has
no practical surcease; and there is that submarine horror for sailing
ships, the Bottomless pit. They used to have great tragedies with it in
olden times, and you can still, if you like, for that matter; but the
French having a station 15 miles to the east of it at Grand Bassam would
nowadays prevent your experiencing the action of this phenomenon
thoroughly, and getting not only wrecked but killed by the natives
ashore, though they are a lively lot still.
Now although this is not a manual of devotion, I must say a few words on
the Bottomless pit. All along the West Coast of Africa there is a great
shelving bank, submarine, formed by the deposit of the great mud-laden
rivers and the earth-wash of the heavy rains. The slope of what the
scientific term the great West African bank is, on the whole, very
regular, except opposite Piccaninny Bassam, where it is cut right
through by a great chasm, presumably the result of volcanic action. This
chasm commences about 15 miles from land and is shaped like a V, with
the narrow end shorewards. Nine miles out it is three miles wider and
2,400 feet deep, at three miles out the sides are opposite each other
and there is little more than a mile between them, and the depth is
1,536 feet; at one mile from the beach the chasm is only a quarter of a
mile wide and the depth 600 feet--close up beside the beach the depth is
120 feet. The floor of this chasm is covered with grey mud, and some
five miles out the surveying vessels got fragments of coral rock.
[Illustration: SECRET SOCIETY LEAVING THE SACRED GROVE]
[Illustration: JENGU DEVIL DANCE OF KING WILLIAM'S SLAVES,
SETTE CAMMA, NOV. 9, 1888. [_To face page 69._]
The sides of this submarine valley seem almost vertical cliffs, and
herein lies its danger for the sailing ship. The master thereof, in the
smoke or fog season (December-February), may not exactly know to a mile
or so where he is, and being unable to make out Piccaninny Bassam, which
is only a small native village on the sand ridge between the surf and
the lagoon, he lets go his anchor on the edge of the cliffs of this
Bottomless pit. Then the set of the tide and the onshore breeze cause it
to drag a little, and over it goes down into the abyss, and ashore he is
bound to go. In old days he and his ship's crew formed a welcome change
in the limited dietary of the exultant native. Mr. Barbot, who knew them
well, feelingly remarks, "it is from the bloody tempers of these brutes
that the Portuguese gave them the name of Malagens for they eat human
flesh," and he cites how "recently they have massacred a great number of
Portuguese, Dutch and English, who came for provisions and water, not
thinking of any treachery, and not many years since, (that is to say,
in 1677) an English ship lost three of its men; a Hollander fourteen;
and, in 1678, a Portuguese, nine, of whom nothing was ever heard since."
From Cape Palmas until you are past the mouth of the Taka River (St.
Andrew) the coast is low. Then comes the Cape of the Little Strand
(Caboda Prazuba), now called, I think, Price's Point. To the east of
this you will see ranges of dwarf red cliffs rising above the beach and
gradually increasing in height until they attain their greatest in the
face of Mount Bedford, where the cliff is 280 feet high. The Portuguese
called these Barreira Vermelhas; the French, Kalazis Rouges; and the
Dutch, Roode Kliftin, all meaning Red Cliffs. The sand at their feet is
strewn with boulders, and the whole country round here looks fascinating
and interesting. I regret never having had an opportunity of seeing
whether those cliffs had fossils on them, for they seem to me so like
those beloved red cliffs of mine in Kacongo which have. The
investigation, however, of such makes of Africa is messy. Those Kacongo
cliffs were of a sort of red clay that took on a greasy slipperiness
when they were wet, which they frequently were on account of the little
springs of water that came through their faces. When pottering about
them, after having had my suspicions lulled by twenty or thirty yards of
crumbly dryness, I would ever and anon come across a water spring, and
down I used to go--and lose nothing by it, going home in the evening
time in what the local natives would have regarded as deep mourning for
a large family--red clay being their sign thereof. The fossils I found
in them were horizontally deposed layers of clam shells with regular
intervals, or bands, of red clay, four or five feet across; between the
layers some of the shell layers were 40 or more feet above the present
beach level. Identical deposits of shell I also found far inland in Ka
Congo, but that has nothing to do with the Ivory Coast.
Inland, near Drewin, on the Ivory Coast, you can see from the sea
curious shaped low hills; the definite range of these near Drewin is
called the Highland of Drewin; after this place they occur frequently
close to the shore, usually isolated but now and again two or three
together, like those called by sailors the Sisters. I am much interested
in these peculiar-shaped hills that you see on the Ivory and Gold Coast,
and again, far away down South, rising out of the Ouronuogou swamp, and
have endeavoured to find out if any theories have been suggested as to
their formation, but in vain. They look like great bubbles, and run from
300 to 2,000 feet.
The red cliffs end at Mount Bedford and the estuary of the Fresco River,
and after passing this the coast is low until you reach what is now
called the district of Lahu, a native sounding name, but really a
corruption from its old French name La-Hoe or Hou.
You would not think, when looking at this bit of coast from the sea,
that the strip of substantial brown sand beach is but a sort of viaduct,
behind which lies a chain of stagnant lagoons. In the wet season, these
stretches of dead water cut off the sand beach from the forest for as
much as 40 miles and more.
Beyond Mount La-Hou on this sand strip there are many native
villages--each village a crowded clump of huts, surrounded by a grove of
coco palm trees, each tree belonging definitely to some native family or
individual, and having its owner's particular mark on it, and each grove
of palm trees slanting uniformly at a stiff angle, which gives you no
cause to ask which is the prevailing wind here, for they tell you bright
and clear, as they lean N.E., that the S.W. wind brought them up to do
so.
Groves of coco palms are no favourites of mine. I don't like them. The
trees are nice enough to look on, and nice enough to use in the divers
ways you can use a coco-nut palm; but the noise of the breeze in their
crowns keeps up a perpetual rattle with their hard leaves that sounds
like heavy rain day and night, so that you feel you ought to live under
an umbrella, and your mind gets worried about it when you are not
looking after it with your common sense.
Then the natives are such a nuisance with coco-nuts. For a truly
terrific kniff give me even in West Africa a sand beach with coco-nut
palms and natives. You never get coco-nut palms without natives, because
they won't grow out of sight of human habitation. I am told also that
one coco will not grow alone; it must have another coco as well as human
neighbours, so these things, of course, end in a grove. It's like
keeping cats with no one to drown the kittens.
Well, the way the smell comes about in this affair is thus. The natives
bury the coco-nuts in the sand, so as to get the fibre off them. They
have buried nuts in that sand for ages before you arrive, and the nuts
have rotted, and crabs have come to see what was going on, a thing crabs
will do, and they have settled down here and died in their generations,
and rotted too. The sandflies and all manner of creeping things have
found that sort of district suits them, and have joined in, and the
natives, who are great hands at fishing, have flung all the fish offal
there, and there is usually a lagoon behind this sort of thing which
contributes its particular aroma, and so between them the smell is a
good one, even for West Africa.
The ancient geographers called this coast Ajanginal AEthiope, and the
Dutch and French used to reckon it from Growe, where the Melaguetta
Coast ends. Just east of Cape Palmas, to the Rio do Sweiro da Costa,
where they counted the Gold Coast to begin, the Portuguese divided the
coast thus. The Ivory, or, as the Dutchmen called it, the Tand Kust,
from Gowe to Rio St. Andrew; the Malaguetta from St. Andrew to the Rio
Lagos;[5] and the Quaqua from the Rio Lagos to Rio de Sweiro da Costa,
which is just to the east of what is now called Assini.
It is undoubtedly one of the most interesting and nowadays least known
bits of the coast of the Bight of Benin; but, taken altogether, with my
small knowledge of it, I do not feel justified in recommending the Ivory
Coast as either a sphere for emigration or a pleasure resort.
Nevertheless, it is a very rich district naturally, and one of the most
amusing features of West African trade you can see on a steamboat is to
watch the shipping of timber therefrom.
This region of the Bight of Benin is one of enormous timber wealth, and
the development of this of late years has been great, adding the name of
Timber Ports to the many other names this particular bit of West Africa
bears, the Timber Ports being the main ports of the French Ivory Coast,
and the English port of Axim on the Gold Coast.
The best way to watch the working of this industry is to stay on board
the steamer; if by chance you go on shore when this shipping of mahogany
is going on you may be expected to help, or get out of the way, which is
hot work, or difficult. The last time I was in Africa we on the----
shipped 170 enormous bulks of timber. These logs run on an average 20 to
30 feet long and 3 to 4 feet in diameter. They are towed from the beach
to the vessel behind the surf boats, seven and eight at a time, tied
together by a rope running through rings called dogs, which are driven
into the end of each log, and when alongside, the rope from the donkey
engine crane is dropped overboard, and passed round the log by the
negroes swimming about in the water regardless of sharks and as agile as
fish. Then, with much uproar and advice, the huge logs are slowly heaved
on board, and either deposited on the deck or forthwith swung over the
hatch and lowered down. It is almost needless to remark that, with the
usual foresight of men, the hatch is of a size unsuited to the log, and
therefore, as it hangs suspended, a chorus of counsel surges up from
below and from all sides.
The officer in command on this particular hatch presently shouts "Lower
away," waving his hand gracefully from the wrist as though he were
practising for piano playing, but really to guide Shoo Fly, who is
driving the donkey engine. The tremendous log hovers over the hatch, and
then gradually, "softly, softly," as Shoo Fly would say, disappears into
the bowels of the ship, until a heterogeneous yell in English and Kru
warns the trained intelligence that it is low enough, or more probably
too low. "Heave a link!" shouts the officer, and Shoo Fly and the donkey
engine heaveth. Then the official hand waves, and the crane swings round
with a whiddle, whiddle, and there is a moment's pause, the rope
strains, and groans, and waits, and as soon as the most important and
valuable people on board, such as the Captain, the Doctor, and myself,
are within its reach to give advice, and look down the hatch to see
what is going on, that rope likes to break and comes clawing at us a
mass of bent and broken wire, and as we scatter, the great log goes with
a crash into the hold. Fortunately, the particular log I remember as
indulging in this catastrophe did not go through the ship's bottom, as I
confidently expected it had at the time, nor was any one killed, such a
batch of miraculous escapes occurring for the benefit of the officer and
men below as can only be reasonably accounted for by their having
expected this sort of thing to happen.
Quaint are the ways of mariners at times. That time they took on
quantities of great logs at the main gangway, well knowing that they
would have to go down the hatch aft, and that this would entail hauling
them along the narrow alley ways. This process was effected by rigging
the steam winches aft, then two sharp hooks connected together by a
chain at the end of the wire hawser were fixed into the head of the log,
and the word passed "Haul away," water being thrown on the deck to make
the logs slip easier over it, and billets of wood put underneath the log
with the same intention, and the added hope of saving the deck from
being torn by the rough hewn, hard monster.
Now there are two superstitions rife regarding this affair. The first
is, that if you hitch the hooks lightly into each side of the log's head
and then haul hard, the weight of the log will cause the hooks to get
firmly and safely embedded in it. The second is, that the said weight
will infallibly keep the billets under it in due position.
Nothing short of getting himself completely and permanently killed
shakes the mariner's faith in these notions. What often happens is this.
When the strain is at its highest the hooks slip out of the wood, and
try and scalp any one that's handy, and now and again they succeed.
There was a man helping that day at Axim whom the Doctor said had only
last voyage fell a victim to the hooks; they slipped out of the head of
the log and played round his own, laying it open to the bone at the
back, cutting him over the ears and across the forehead, and if that man
had not had a phenomenally thick skull he must have died. But no, there
he was on this voyage as busy as ever with the timber, close to those
hooks, and evidently with his superstitious trust in the invariable
embedding of hooks in timber unabated one fraction.
Sometimes the performance is varied by the hauling rope itself parting
and going up the alley way like a boa constrictor in a fit, whisking up
black passengers and boxes full of screaming parrots in its path from
places they had placed themselves, or been placed in, well out of its
legitimate line of march. But the day it succeeds in clawing hold of and
upsetting the cook's grease tub, which lives in the alley-way, that is
the day of horror for the First officer and the inauguration of a period
of ardent holystoning for his minions.
Should, however, the broken rope fail to find, as the fox-hunters would
say, in the alley-way, it flings itself in a passionate embrace round
the person of the donkey engine aft, and gives severe trouble there. The
mariners, with an admirable faith and patience, untwine it, talking
seriously to it meanwhile, and then fix it up again, may be with more
care, and the shout, "Heave away!"--goes forth again; the rope groans
and creaks, the hooks go in well on either side of the log, and off it
moves once more with a graceful, dignified glide towards its
destination. The Bo'sun and Chips with their eyes on the man at the
winch, and let us hope their thoughts employed in the penitential
contemplation of their past sins, so as to be ready for the consequences
likely to arise for them if the rope parts again, do not observe the
little white note--underbill--as a German would call it, which is
getting nearer and nearer the end of the log, which has stuck to the
deck. In a few moments the log is off it, and down on Chips' toes, who
returns thanks with great spontaneity, in language more powerful then
select. The Bo'sun yells, "Avast heaving, there!" and several other
things, while his assistant Kruboys, chattering like a rookery when an
old lady's pet parrot has just joined it, get crowbars and raise up the
timber, and the Carpenter is a free man again, and the little white
billet reinstated. "Haul away," roars the Bo'sun, "Abadeo Na nu de um
oro de Kri Kri," join in the hoarse-voiced Kruboys, "Ji na oi," answers
the excited Shoo Fly, and off goes that log again. The particular log
whose goings on I am chronicling slewed round at this juncture with the
force of a Roman battering ram, drove in the panel of my particular
cabin, causing all sorts of bottles and things inside to cast themselves
on the floor and smash, whereby I, going in after dark, got cut. But no
matter, that log, one of the classic sized logs, was in the end safely
got up the alley-way and duly stowed among its companions. For let West
Africa send what it may, be it never so large or so difficult, be he
never so ill-provided with tackle to deal with it, the West Coast
mariner will have that thing on board, and ship it--all honour to his
determination and ability.
The varieties of timber chiefly exported from the West African timber
ports are _Oldfieldia Africana_, of splendid size and texture, commonly
called mahogany, but really teak, Bar and Camwood and Ebony. Bar and
Cam are dye-woods, and, before the Anilines came in these woods were in
great request; invaluable they were for giving the dull rich red to
bandana handkerchiefs and the warm brown tints to tweed stuffs. Camwood
was once popular with cabinet makers and wood-turners here, but of late
years it has only come into this market in roots or twisty bits--all the
better these for dyeing, but not for working up, and so it has fallen
out of demand among cabinet makers in spite of its beautiful grain and
fine colour, a pinky yellow when fresh cut, deepening rapidly on
exposure to the air into a rich, dark red brown. Amongst old Spanish
furniture you will find things made from Camwood that are a joy to the
eye. There has been some confusion as to whether Bar and Camwood are
identical--merely a matter of age in the same tree or no--but I have
seen the natives cutting both these timbers, and they are quite
different trees in the look of them, as any one would expect from seeing
a billet of Bar and one of Cam; the former is a light porous wood and
orange colour when fresh cut, while 500 billets of Bar and only 150 to
200 of Cam go to the ton.
There are many signs of increasing enterprise in the West African timber
trade, but so far this form of wealth has barely been touched, so vast
are the West African forests and so varied the trees therein. At present
it, like most West African industries, is fearfully handicapped by the
deadly climate, the inferiority and expensiveness of labour, and the
difficulties of transport.
At present it is useless to fell a tree, be it ever so fine, if it is
growing at any distance from a river down which you can float it to the
sea beach, for it would be impossible to drag it far through the
Liane-tangled West African forest.
Indeed, it is no end of a job to drag a decent-sized log even two
hundred yards or so to a river. The way it is done is this. When felling
the tree you arrange that its head shall fall away from the river, then
trim off the rough stuff and hew the heavy end to a rough point, so that
when the boys are pully-hauling down the slope--you must have a
slope--to the bank, it may not only be able to pierce the opposing
undergrowth spearwise more easily than if its end were flat or jagged,
but also by the fact of its own weight it may help their exertions.
I have seen one or two grand scenes on the Ogowe with trees felled on
steep mountain sides, wherein you had only got to arrange these
circumstances, start your log on its downward course to the river, get
out of the fair way of it, and leave the rest to gravity, which carried
things through in grand style, with a crashing rush and a glorious
splash into the river. You had, of course, to take care you had a clear
bank and not one fringed with dead-trees, into which your mighty spear
would embed itself and also to have a canoe load of energetic people to
get hold of the log and keep it out of the current of that lively Ogowe
river, or it would go off to Kama Country express. But this work on
timber was far easier than that on the Gold or Ivory Coasts, whence most
timber comes to Europe, and where the make of the country does not give
you so fully the assistance of steep gradients.
After what I have told you about the behaviour of these great baulks on
board ship you will not imagine that the log behaves well during its
journey on land. Indeed, my belief in the immorality of inanimate nature
has been much strengthened by observing the conduct of African timber.
Nor am I alone in judging it harshly, for an American missionary once
said to me, "Ah! it will be a grand day for Africa when we have driven
out all the heathen devils; they are everywhere, not only in graven
images, but just universally scattered around." The remark was made on
the occasion of a floor that had been laid down by a mission carpenter
coming up on its own account, as native timber floors laid down by
native carpenters customarily come, though the native carpenter lays
Norway boards well enough.
When, after much toil and tribulation and uproar, the log has been got
down to the river and floated, iron rings are driven into it, and it is
branded with its owner's mark. Then the owner does not worry himself
much about it for a month or so, but lets it float its way down and
soak, and generally lazy about until he gets together sufficient of its
kind to make a shipment.
One of the many strange and curious things they told me of on the West
Coast was that old idea that hydrophobia is introduced into Europe by
means of these logs. There is, they say, on the West Coast of Africa a
peculiarly venomous scorpion that makes its home on the logs while they
are floating in the river, three-parts submerged on account of weight,
and the other part most delightfully damp and cool to the scorpion's
mind. When the logs get shipped frequently the scorpion gets shipped
too, and subsequently comes out in the hold and bites the resident rats.
So far I accept this statement fully, for I have seen more than enough
rats and scorpions in the hold, and the West Coast scorpions are
particularly venomous, but feeling that in these days it is the duty of
every one to keep their belief for religious purposes, I cannot go on
and in a whole souled way believe that the dogs of Liverpool, Havre,
Hamburg, and Marseilles worry the said rats when they arrive in dock,
and, getting bitten by them, breed rabies.
Nevertheless, I do not interrupt and say, "Stuff," because if you do
this to the old coaster he only offers to fight you, or see you
shrivelled, or bet you half-a-crown, or in some other time-honoured way
demonstrate the truth of his assertion, and he will, moreover, go on and
say there is more hydrophobia in the aforesaid towns than elsewhere, and
as the chances are you have not got hydrophobia statistics with you, you
are lost. Besides, it's very unkind and unnecessary to make a West
Coaster go and say or do things which will only make things harder for
him in the time "to come," and anyhow if you are of a cautious, nervous
disposition you had better search your bunk for scorpions, before
turning in, when you are on a vessel that has got timber on board, and
the chances are that your labours will be rewarded by discovering
specimens of this interesting animal.
Scorpions and centipedes are inferior in worrying power to driver ants,
but they are a feature in Coast life, particularly in places--Cameroons,
for example. If you see a man who seems to you to have a morbid caution
in the method of dealing with his hat or folded dinner napkin, judge him
not harshly, for the chances are he is from Cameroon, where there are
scorpions--scorpions of great magnitude and tough constitutions, as was
demonstrated by a little affair up here that occurred in a family I
know.
The inhabitants of the French Ivory Coast are an exceedingly industrious
and enterprising set of people in commercial matters, and the export and
import trade is computed by a recent French authority at ten million
francs per annum. No official computation, however, of the trade of a
Coast district is correct, for reasons I will not enter into now.
The native coinage equivalent here is the manilla--a bracelet in a state
of sinking into a more conventional token. These manillas are made of an
alloy of copper and pewter, manufactured mainly at Birmingham and
Nantes, the individual value being from 20 to 25 centimes.
Changes for the worse as far as English trade is concerned have passed
over the trade of the Ivory Coast recently, but the way, even in my
time, trade was carried on was thus. The native traders deal with the
captains of the English sailing vessels and the French factories, buying
palm oil and kernels from the bush people with merchandise, and selling
it to the native or foreign shippers. They get paid in manillas, which
they can, when they wish, get changed again into merchandise either at
the factory or on the trading ship. The manilla is, therefore, a kind of
bank for the black trader, a something he can put his wealth into when
he wants to store it for a time.
They have a singular system of commercial correspondence between the
villages on the beach and the villages on the other side of the great
lagoon that separates it from the mainland. Each village on the shore
has its particular village on the other side of the lagoon, thus Alindja
Badon is the interior commercial centre for Grand Jack on the beach,
Abia for Anamaquoa, or Half Jack, and so on. Anamaquoa is only separated
from its sister village by a little lagoon that is fordable, but the
other towns have to communicate by means of canoes.
Grand Bassam, Assini, and Half Jack are the most important places on the
Ivory Coast. The main portion of the first-named town is out of sight
from seaboard, being some five miles up the Costa River, and all you can
see on the beach are two large but lonesome-looking factories. Half
Jack, Jack a Jack, or Anamaquoa--there is nothing like having plenty of
names for one place in West Africa, because it leads people at home who
don't know the joke to think there is more of you than there naturally
is--gives its name to the bit of coast from Cape Palmas to Grand Bassam,
this coast being called the Half Jack, or quite as often the Bristol
Coast, and for many years it was the main point of call for the
Guineamen, old-fashioned sailing vessels which worked the Bristol trade
in the Bights.
This trade was established during the last century by Mr. Henry King, of
Bristol, for supplying labour to the West Indies, and was further
developed by his two sons, Richard, who hated men-o'-war like a quaker,
and William who loved science, both very worthy gentlemen. After their
time up till when I was first on the Coast, this firm carried on trade
both on the Bristol Coast and down in Cameroon, which in old days bore
the name of Little Bristol-in-Hell, but now the trade is in other hands.
According to Captain Binger, there are now about 30 sailing ships still
working the Ivory Coast trade, two of them the property of an energetic
American captain, but the greater part belonging to Bristol. Their
voyage out from Bristol varies from 60 to 90 days, according as you get
through the Horse latitudes--so-called from the number of horses that
used to die in this region of calms when the sailing vessels bringing
them across from South America lay week out and week in short alike of
wind and water.
In old days, when the Bristol ship got to the Coast she would call at
the first village on it. Then the native chiefs and head men would come
on board and haggle with the captain as to the quantity of goods he
would let them have on trust, they covenanting to bring in exchange for
them in a given time a certain number of slaves or so much produce. This
arrangement being made, off sailed the Guineaman to his next village,
where a similar game took place all the way down Coast to Grand Bassam.
When she had paid out the trust goods to the last village, she would
stand out to sea and work back to her first village of call on the
Bristol Coast to pick up the promised produce, this arrangement giving
the native traders time to collect it. In nine cases out of ten,
however, it was not ready for her, so on she went to the next. By this
time the Guineaman would present the spectacle of a farmhouse that had
gone mad, grown masts, and run away to sea; for the decks were protected
from the burning sun by a well-built thatch roof, and she lounged along
heavy with the rank sea growth of these seas. Sometimes she would be
unroofed by a tornado, sometimes seized by a pirate parasitic on the
Guinea trade, but barring these interruptions to business she called
regularly on her creditors, from some getting the promised payment, from
others part of it, from others again only the renewal of the promise,
and then when she had again reached her last point of call put out to
sea once more and worked back again to the first creditor village. In
those days she kept at this weary round until she got in all her debts,
a process that often took her four or five years, and cost the lives of
half her crew from fever, and then her consorts drafted a man or so on
board her and kept her going until she was full enough of pepper, gold,
gum, ivory, and native gods to sail for Bristol. There, when the
Guineaman came in, were grand doings for the small boys, what with
parrots, oranges, bananas, &c., but sad times for most of those whose
relatives and friends had left Bristol on her.
In much the same way, and with much the same risks, the Bristol Coast
trade goes on now, only there is little of it left, owing to the French
system of suppressing trade. Palm oil is the modern equivalent to
slaves, and just as in old days the former were transhipped from the
coasting Guineamen to the transatlantic slavers, so now the palm oil is
shipped off on to the homeward bound African steamers, while, as for the
joys and sorrows, century-change affects them not. So long as Western
Africa remains the deadliest region on earth there will be joy over
those who come up out of it; heartache and anxiety over those who are
down there fighting as men fought of old for those things worth the
fighting, God, Glory and Gold; and grief over those who are dead among
all of us at home who are ill-advised enough to really care for men who
have the pluck to go there.
During the smoke season when dense fogs hang over the Bight of Benin,
the Bristol ships get very considerably sworn at by the steamers. They
have letters for them, and they want oil off them; between ourselves,
they want oil off every created thing, and the Bristol boat is not easy
to find. So the steamer goes dodging and fumbling about after her,
swearing softly about wasting coal all the time, and more harshly still
when he finds he has picked up the wrong Guineaman, only modified if she
has stuff to send home, stuff which he conjures the Bristol captain by
the love he bears him to keep, and ship by him when he is on his way
home from windward ports, or to let him have forthwith.
Sometimes the Bristolman will signal to a passing steamer for a doctor.
The doctors of the African and British African boats are much thought of
all down the Coast, and are only second in importance to the doctor on
board a telegraph ship, who, being a rare specimen, is regarded as,
_ipso facto_, more gifted, so that people will save up their ailments
for the telegraph ship's medical man, which is not a bad practice, as it
leads commonly to their getting over those ailments one way or the other
by the time the telegraph ship arrives. It is reported that one day one
of the Bristolmen ran up an urgent signal to a passing mail steamer for
a doctor, and the captain thereof ran up a signal of assent, and the
doctor went below to get his medicines ready. Meanwhile, instead of
displaying a patient gratitude, the Bristolman signalled "Repeat
signal." "Give it 'em again," said the steamboat captain, "those
Bristolmen ain't got no Board schools." Still the Bristolman kept
bothering, running up her original signal, and in due course off went
the doctor to her in the gig. When he returned his captain asked him,
saying, "Pills, are they all mad on board that vessel or merely drunk as
usual?" "Well," says the doctor, "that's curious, for it's the very same
question Captain N. has asked me about you. He is very anxious about
your mental health, and wants to know why you keep on signalling 'Haul
to, or I will fire into you,'" and the story goes that an investigation
of the code and the steamer's signal supported the Bristolman's reading,
and the subject was dropped in steam circles.
Although the Bristolmen do not carry doctors, they are provided with
grand medicine chests, the supply of medicines in West Africa being
frequently in the inverse ratio with the ability to administer them
advantageously.
Inside the lid of these medicine chests is a printed paper of
instructions, each drug having a number before its name, and a hint as
to the proper dose after it. Thus, we will say, for example, 1 was
jalap; 2, calomel; 3, croton oil; and 4, quinine. Once upon a time there
was a Bristol captain, as good a man as need be and with a fine head on
him for figures. Some of his crew were smitten with fever when he was
out of number 4, so he argues that 2 and 2 are 4 all the world over, but
being short of 2, it being a popular drug, he further argues 3 and 1
make 4 as well, and the dose of 4 being so much he makes that dose up
out of jalap and croton oil. Some of the patients survived; at least, a
man I met claimed to have done so. His report is not altogether
reproducible in full, but, on the whole, the results of the treatment
went more towards demonstrating the danger of importing raw abstract
truths into everyday affairs than to encouraging one to repeat the
experiment of arithmetical therapeutics.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] No connection with the Colony of Lagos.