FISHING IN WEST AFRICA.
There is one distinctive charm about fishing--its fascinations will
stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the
arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the
so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial
river, with the surrounding atmosphere 45 per cent. mosquito, and if you
are fishing you will enjoy yourself; and what is more important than
this enjoyment, is that you will not embitter your present, nor endanger
your future, by going home in a bad temper, whether you have caught
anything or not, provided always that you are a true fisherman.
This is not the case with other sports; I have been assured by
experienced men that it "makes one feel awfully bad" when, after
carrying for hours a very heavy elephant gun, for example, through a
tangled forest you have got a wretched bad chance of a shot at an
elephant; and as for football, cricket, &c., well, I need hardly speak
of the unchristian feelings they engender in the mind towards umpires
and successful opponents.
[Illustration: BATANGA CANOES. _To face page 89._]
Being, as above demonstrated, a humble, but enthusiastic, devotee of
fishing--I dare not say, as my great predecessor Dame Juliana Berners
says, "with an angle," because my conscience tells me I am a born
poacher,--I need hardly remark that when I heard, from a reliable
authority at Gaboon, that there were lakes in the centre of the island
of Corisco, and that these fresh-water lakes were fished annually by
representative ladies from the villages on this island, and that their
annual fishing was just about due, I decided that I must go there
forthwith. Now, although Corisco is not more than twenty miles out to
sea from the Continent, it is not a particularly easy place to get at
nowadays, no vessels ever calling there; so I got, through the kindness
of Dr. Nassau, a little schooner and a black crew, and, forgetting my
solemn resolve, formed from the fruits of previous experiences, never to
go on to an Atlantic island again, off I sailed. I will not go into the
adventures of that voyage here. My reputation as a navigator was great
before I left Gaboon. I had a record of having once driven my bowsprit
through a conservatory, and once taken all the paint off one side of a
smallpox hospital, to say nothing of repeatedly having made attempts to
climb trees in boats I commanded, but when I returned, I had surpassed
these things by having successfully got my main-mast jammed up a tap,
and I had done sufficient work in discovering new sandbanks, rock
shoals, &c., in Corisco Bay, and round Cape Esterias, to necessitate, or
call for, a new edition of _The West African Pilot_.
Corisco Island is about three miles long by 1-3/4 wide: its latitude
0 deg.56 N., long. 9 deg.20-1/2 E. Mr. Winwood Reade was about the last
traveller to give a description of Corisco, and a very interesting
description it is. He was there in the early sixties, and was evidently
too fully engaged with a drunken captain and a mad Malay cook to go
inland. In his days small trading vessels used to call at Corisco for
cargo, but they do so no longer, all the trade in the Bay now being
carried on at Messrs. Holt's factory on Little Eloby Island (an island
nearer in shore), and on the mainland at Coco Beach, belonging to
Messrs. Hatton and Cookson.
In Winwood Reade's days, too, there was a settlement of the American
Presbyterian Society on Corisco, with a staff of white men. This has
been abandoned to a native minister, because the Society found that
facts did not support their theory that the island would be more healthy
than the mainland, the mortality being quite as great as at any
continental station, so they moved on to the continent to be nearer
their work. The only white people that are now on Corisco are two
Spanish priests and three nuns; but of these good people I saw little or
nothing, as my headquarters were with the Presbyterian native minister,
Mr. Ibea, and there was war between him and the priests.
The natives are Benga, a coast tribe now rapidly dying out. They were
once a great tribe, and in the old days, when the slavers and the
whalers haunted Corisco Bay, these Benga were much in demand as crew
men, in spite of the reputation they bore for ferocity. Nowadays the
grown men get their living by going as travelling agents for the white
merchants into the hinterland behind Corisco Bay, amongst the very
dangerous and savage tribes there, and when one of them has made enough
money by this trading, he comes back to Corisco, and rests, and
luxuriates in the ample bosom of his family until he has spent his
money--then he gets trust from the white trader, and goes to the Bush
again, pretty frequently meeting there the sad fate of the pitcher that
went too often to the well, and getting killed by the hinterlanders.
On arriving at Corisco Island, I "soothed with a gift, and greeted with
a smile" the dusky inhabitants. "Have you got any tobacco?" said they.
"I have," I responded, and a friendly feeling at once arose. I then
explained that I wanted to join the fishing party. They were quite
willing, and said the ladies were just finishing planting their farms
before the tornado season came on, and that they would make the
peculiar, necessary baskets at once. They did not do so at once in the
English sense of the term, but we all know there is no time south of
40 deg., and so I waited patiently, walking about the island.
Corisco is locally celebrated for its beauty. Winwood Reade says: "It is
a little world in miniature, with its miniature forests, miniature
prairies, miniature mountains, miniature rivers, and miniature
precipices on the sea-shore." In consequence partly of these things, and
partly of the inhabitants' rooted idea that the proper way to any place
on the island is round by the sea-shore, the paths of Corisco are as
strange as several other things are in latitude 0, and, like the other
things, they require understanding to get on with.
They start from the beach with the avowed intention of just going round
the next headland because the tide happens to be in too much for you to
go along by the beach; but, once started, their presiding genii might
sing to the wayfarer Mr. Kipling's "The Lord knows where we shall go,
dear lass, and the Deuce knows what we shall see." You go up a path off
the beach gladly, because you have been wading in fine white sand over
your ankles, and in banks of rotten and rotting seaweed, on which
centipedes, and other catamumpuses, crawl in profusion, not to mention
sand-flies, &c., and the path makes a plunge inland, as much as to say,
"Come and see our noted scenery," and having led you through a miniature
swamp, a miniature forest, and a miniature prairie, "It's a pity," says
the path, "not to call at So-and-so's village now we are so near it,"
and off it goes to the village through a patch of grass or plantation.
It wanders through the scattered village calling at houses, for some
time, and then says, "Bless me, I had nearly forgotten what I came out
for; we must hurry back to that beach," and off it goes through more
scenery, landing you ultimately about fifty yards off the place where
you first joined it, in consequence of the South Atlantic waves flying
in foam and fury against a miniature precipice--the first thing they
have met that dared stay their lordly course since they left Cape Horn
or the ice walls of the Antarctic.
At last the fishing baskets were ready, and we set off for the lakes by
a path that plunged into a little ravine, crossed a dried swamp, went up
a hill, and on to an open prairie, in the course of about twenty
minutes. Passing over this prairie, and through a wood, we came to
another prairie, like most things in Corisco just then (August), dried
up, for it was the height of the dry season. On this prairie we waited
for some of the representative ladies from other villages to come up;
for without their presence our fishing would not have been legal. When
you wait in West Africa it eats into your lifetime to a considerable
extent, and we spent half-an-hour or so standing howling, in prolonged,
intoned howls, for the absent ladies, notably grievously for On-gou-ta,
and when they came not, we threw ourselves down on the soft, fine,
golden-brown grass, in the sun, and all, with the exception of myself,
went asleep. After about two and a half hours I was aroused from the
contemplation of the domestic habits of some beetles, by hearing a
crackle, crackle, interspersed with sounds like small pistols going off,
and looking round saw a fog of blue-brown smoke surmounting a
rapidly-advancing wall of red fire.
I rose, and spread the news among my companions, who were sleeping, with
thumps and kicks. Shouting at a sleeping African is labour lost. And
then I made a bee-line for the nearest green forest wall of the prairie,
followed by my companions. Yet, in spite of some very creditable sprint
performances on their part, three members of the band got scorched.
Fortunately, however, our activity landed us close to the lakes, so the
scorched ones spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in mud-holes,
comforting themselves with the balmy black slime. The other ladies
turned up soon after this, and said that the fire had arisen from some
man having set fire to a corner of the prairie some days previously, to
make a farm; he had thought the fire was out round his patch, whereas it
was not, but smouldering in the tussocks of grass, and the wind had
sprung up that afternoon from a quarter that fanned it up. I said,
"People should be very careful of fire," and the scorched ladies
profoundly agreed with me, and said things I will not repeat here,
regarding "that fool man" and his female ancestors.
The lakes are pools of varying extent and depth, in the bed-rock[6] of
the island, and the fact that they are surrounded by thick forests on
every side, and that the dry season is the cool season on the Equator,
prevents them from drying up.
Most of these lakes are encircled by a rim of rock, from which you jump
down into knee-deep black slime, and then, if you are a representative
lady, you waddle, and squeal, and grunt, and skylark generally on your
way to the water in the middle. If it is a large lake you are working,
you and your companions drive in two rows of stakes, cutting each other
more or less at right angles, more or less in the middle of the lake, so
as to divide it up into convenient portions. Then some ladies with their
specially shaped baskets form a line, with their backs to the bank, and
their faces to the water-space, in the enclosure, holding the baskets
with one rim under water. The others go into the water, and splash with
hands, and feet, and sticks, and, needless to say, yell hard all the
time. The naturally alarmed fish fly from them, intent on getting into
the mud, and are deftly scooped up by the peck by the ladies in their
baskets. In little lakes the staking is not necessary, but the rest of
the proceedings are the same. Some of the smaller lakes are too deep to
be thus fished at all, being, I expect, clefts in the rock, such as you
see in other parts of the island, sometimes 30 or 40 feet deep.
The usual result of the day's fishing is from twelve to fifteen bushels
of a common mud-fish,[7] which is very good eating. The spoils are
divided among the representative ladies, and they take them back to
their respective villages and distribute them. Then ensues, that same
evening, a tremendous fish supper, and the fish left over are smoked
and carefully kept as a delicacy, to make sauce with, &c., until the
next year's fishing day comes round.
The waters of West Africa, salt, brackish, and fresh abound with fish,
and many kinds are, if properly cooked, excellent eating. For culinary
purposes you may divide the fish into sea-fish, lagoon-fish and
river-fish; the first division, the sea-fish, are excellent eating, and
are in enormous quantities, particularly along the Windward Coast on the
Great West African Bank. South of this, at the mouths of the Oil rivers,
they fall off, from a culinary standpoint, though scientifically they
increase in charm, as you find hereabouts fishes of extremely early
types, whose relations have an interesting series of monuments in the
shape of fossils, in the sandstone; but if primeval man had to live on
them when they were alive together, I am sorry for him, for he might
just as well have eaten mud, and better, for then he would not have run
the risk of getting choked with bones. On the South-West Coast the
culinary value goes up again; there are found quantities of excellent
deep-sea fish, and round the mouths of the rivers, shoals of bream and
grey mullet.
The lagoon-fish are not particularly good, being as a rule supremely
muddy and bony; they have their uses, however, for I am informed that
they indicate to Lagos when it may expect an epidemic; to this end they
die, in an adjacent lagoon, and float about upon its surface, wrong side
up, until decomposition does its work. Their method of prophecy is a
sound one, for it demonstrates (_a_) that the lagoon drinking water is
worse than usual; (_b_) if it is not already fatal they will make it so.
The river-fish of the Gold Coast are better than those of the mud-sewers
of the Niger Delta, because the Gold Coast rivers are brisk sporting
streams, with the exception of the Volta, and at a short distance inland
they come down over rocky rapids with a stiff current. The fish of the
upper waters of the Delta rivers are better than those down in the
mangrove-swamp region; and in the South-West Coast rivers, with which I
am personally well acquainted, the up-river fish are excellent in
quality, on account of the swift current. I will however leave culinary
considerations, because cooking is a subject upon which I am liable to
become diffuse, and we will turn to the consideration of the sporting
side of fishing.
Now, there is one thing you will always hear the Gold Coaster (white
variety) grumbling about, "There is no sport." He has only got himself
to blame. Let him try and introduce the Polynesian practice of swimming
about in the surf, without his clothes, and with a suitable large, sharp
knife, slaying sharks--there's no end of sharks on the Gold Coast, and
no end of surf. The Rivermen have the same complaint, and I may
recommend that they should try spearing sting-rays, things that run
sometimes to six feet across the wings, and every inch of them wicked,
particularly the tail. There is quite enough danger in either sport to
satisfy a Sir Samuel Baker; for myself, being a nervous, quiet, rational
individual, a large cat-fish in a small canoe supplies sufficient
excitement.
The other day I went out for a day's fishing on an African river. I and
two black men, in a canoe, in company with a round net, three stout
fishing-lines, three paddles, Dr. Guenther's _Study of Fishes_, some bait
in an old Morton's boiled-mutton tin, a little manioc, stinking awfully
(as is its wont), a broken calabash baler, a lot of dirty water to sit
in, and happy and contented minds. I catalogue these things because
they are either essential to, or inseparable from, a good day's sport in
West Africa. Yes, even _I_, ask my vict----friends down there, I feel
sure they will tell you that they never had such experiences before my
arrival. I fear they will go on and say, "Never again!" and that it was
all my fault, which it was not. When things go well they ascribe it, and
their survival, to Providence or their own precautions; when things are
merely usual in horror, it's my fault, which is a rank inversion of the
truth, for it is only when circumstances get beyond my control, and
Providence takes charge, that accidents happen. I will demonstrate this
by continuing my narrative. We paddled away, far up a mangrove creek,
and then went up against the black mud-bank, with its great network of
grey-white roots, surmounted by the closely-interlaced black-green
foliage. Absolute silence reigned, as it can only reign in Africa in a
mangrove swamp. The water-laden air wrapped round us like a warm, wet
blanket. The big mangrove flies came silently to feed on us and leave
their progeny behind them in the wounds to do likewise. The stink of the
mud, strong enough to break a window, mingled fraternally with that of
the sour manioc.
I was reading, the negroes, always quiet enough when fishing, were
silently carrying on that great African native industry--scratching
themselves--so, with our lines over side, life slid away like a
dreamless sleep, until the middle man hooked a cat-fish. It came on
board with an awful grunt, right in the middle of us; flop, swish,
scurry and yell followed; I tucked the study of fishes in general under
my arm and attended to this individual specimen, shouting "Lef em, lef
em; hev em for water one time, you sons of unsanctified house
lizards,"[8] and such like valuable advice and admonition. The man in
the more remote end of the canoe made an awful swipe at the 3 ft.-long,
grunting, flopping, yellow-grey, slimy, thing, but never reached it
owing to the paddle meeting in mid-air with the flying leg of the man in
front of him, drawing blood profusely. I really fancy, about this time,
that, barring the cat-fish and myself, the occupants of the canoe were
standing on their heads, with a view of removing their lower limbs from
the terrible pectoral and dorsal fins, with which our prey made such
lively play.
"_Brevi spatio interjecto_," as Caesar says, in the middle of a bad
battle, over went the canoe, while the cat-fish went off home with the
line and hook. One black man went to the bank, whither, with a blind
prescience of our fate, I had flung, a second before, the most valuable
occupant of the canoe, _The Study of Fishes_. I went personally to
investigate fluvial deposit _in situ_. When I returned to the
surface--accompanied by great swirls of mud and great bubbles of the
gases of decomposition I had liberated on my visit to the bottom of the
river--I observed the canoe floating bottom upwards, accompanied by
Morton's tin, the calabash, and the paddles, while on the bank one black
man was engaged in hauling the other one out by the legs; fortunately
this one's individual god had seen to it that his toes should become
entangled in the net, and this floated, and so indicated to his
companion where he was, when he had dived into the mud and got fairly
embedded.
Now it's my belief that the most difficult thing in the world is to
turn over a round-bottomed canoe that is wrong side up, when you are in
the water with the said canoe. The next most difficult thing is to get
into the canoe, after accomplishing triumph number one, and had it not
been for my black friends that afternoon, I should not have done these
things successfully, and there would be by now another haunted creek in
West Africa, with a mud and blood bespattered ghost trying for ever to
turn over the ghost of a little canoe. However, all ended happily. We
collected all our possessions, except the result of the day's
fishing--the cat-fish--but we had had as much of him as we wanted, and
so, adding a thankful mind to our contented ones, went home.
None of us gave a verbatim report of the incident. I held my tongue for
fear of not being allowed out fishing again, and I heard my men giving a
fine account of a fearful fight, with accompanying prodigies of valour,
that we had had with a witch crocodile. I fancy that must have been just
their way of putting it, because it is not good form to be frightened by
cat-fish on the West Coast, and I cannot for the life of me remember
even having seen a witch crocodile that afternoon.
I must, however, own that native methods of fishing are usually safe,
though I fail to see what I had to do in producing the above accident.
The usual method of dealing with a cat-fish is to bang him on the head
with a club, and then break the spiny fins off, for they make nasty
wounds that are difficult to heal, and very painful.
The native fishing-craft is the dug-out canoe in its various local
forms. The Accra canoe is a very safe and firm canoe for work of any
sort except heavy cargo, and it is particularly good for surf; it is,
however, slower than many other kinds. The canoe that you can get the
greatest pace out of is undoubtedly the Adooma, which is narrow and
flat-bottomed, and simply flies over the water. The paddles used vary
also with locality, and their form is a mere matter of local fashion,
for they all do their work well. There is the leaf-shaped Kru paddle,
the trident-shaped Accra, the long-lozenged Niger, and the long-handled,
small-headed Igalwa paddle; and with each of these forms the native, to
the manner born, will send his canoe flying along with that unbroken
sweep I consider the most luxurious and perfect form of motion on earth.
It is when it comes to sailing that the African is inferior. He does not
sail half as much as he might, but still pretty frequently. The
materials of which the sails are made vary immensely in different
places, and the most beautiful are those at Loanda, which are made of
small grass mats, with fringes, sewn together, and are of a warm, rich
sand-colour. Next in beauty comes the branch of a palm, or other tree,
stuck in the bows, and least in beauty is the fisherman's own damaged
waist-cloth. I remember it used to seem very strange to me at first, to
see my companion in a canoe take off his clothing and make a sail with
it, on a wind springing up behind us. The very strangest sail I ever
sailed under was a black man's blue trousers, they were tied waist
upwards to a cross-stick, the legs neatly crossed, and secured to the
thwarts of the canoe. You cannot well tack, or carry out any neat
sailing evolutions with any of the African sails, particularly with the
last-named form. The shape of the African sail is almost always in
appearance a triangle, and fastened to a cross-stick which is secured to
an upright one. It is not the form, however, that prevents it from being
handy, but the way it is put up, almost always without sheets, for
river and lake work, and it is tied together with tie tie--bush rope. If
you should personally be managing one, and trouble threatens, take my
advice, and take the mast out one time, and deal with that tie tie
palaver at your leisure. Never mind what people say about this method
not being seaman-like--you survive.
[Illustration: FALLS ON THE TONGUE RIVER.]
[Illustration: LOANDA CANOE WITH MAT SAILS. [_To face page 101._]
The mat sails used for sea-work are spread by a bamboo sprit. There is a
single mast, to the head of which the sail is either hoisted by means of
a small line run through the mast, or, more frequently, made fast with a
seizing. Such a sail is worked by means of a sheet and a brace on the
sprit, usually by one man, whose companion steers by a paddle over the
stern; sometimes, however, one man performs both duties. Now and again
you will find the luff of the sail bowlined out with another stick. This
is most common round Sierra Leone.
The appliances for catching fish are, firstly, fish traps, sometimes
made of hollow logs of trees, with one end left open and the other
closed. One of these is just dropped alongside the bank, left for a week
or so, until a fish family makes a home in it, and then it is removed
with a jerk. Then there are fish-baskets made from split palm-stems tied
together with tie tie; they are circular and conical, resembling our
lobster pots and eel baskets, and they are usually baited with lumps of
kank soaked in palm-oil. Then there are drag nets made of pineapple
fibre, one edge weighted with stones tied in bunches at intervals; as a
rule these run ten to twenty-five feet long, but in some places they are
much longer. The longest I ever saw was when out fishing in the lovely
harbour of San Paul de Loanda. This was over thirty feet and was
weighted with bunches of clam shells, and made of European yarn, as
indeed most nets are when this is procurable by the natives, and it was
worked by three canoes which were being poled about, as is usual in
Loanda Harbour. Then there is the universal hook and line, the hook
either of European make or the simple bent pin of our youth.
But my favourite method, and the one by which I got most of my fish up
rivers or in creeks is the stockade trap. These are constructed by
driving in stakes close together, leaving one opening, not in the middle
of the stockade, but towards the up river end. In tidal waters these
stockades are visited daily, at nearly low tide, for the high tide
carries the fish in behind the stockade, and leaves them there on
falling. Up river, above tide water, the stockades are left for several
days, in order to allow the fish to congregate. Then the opening is
closed up, the fisher-women go inside and throw out the water and
collect the fish. There is another kind of stockade that gives great
sport. During the wet season the terrific rush of water tears off bits
of bank in such rivers as the Congo, and Ogowe, where, owing to the
continual fierce current of fresh water the brackish tide waters do not
come far up the river, so that the banks are not shielded by a great
network of mangrove roots. In the Ogowe a good many of the banks are
composed of a stout clay, and so the pieces torn off hang together, and
often go sailing out to sea, on the current, waving their bushes, and
even trees, gallantly in the broad Atlantic, out of sight of land. Bits
of the Congo Free State are great at seafaring too, and owing to the
terrific stream of the great Zaire, which spreads a belt of fresh water
over the surface of the ocean 200 miles from land, ships fall in with
these floating islands, with their trees still flourishing. The Ogowe
is not so big as the Congo, but it is a very respectable stream even
for the great continent of rivers, and it pours into the Atlantic, in
the wet season, about 1,750,000 cubic feet of fresh water per second, on
which float some of these islands. But by no means every island gets out
to sea, many of them get into slack water round corners in the Delta
region of the Ogowe and remain there, collecting all sorts of _debris_
that comes down on the flood water, getting matted more and more firm by
the floating grass, every joint of which grows on the smallest
opportunity. In many places these floating islands are of considerable
size; one I heard of was large enough to induce a friend of mine to
start a coffee plantation on it; unfortunately the wretched thing came
to pieces when he had cut down its trees and turned the soil up. And one
I saw in the Karkola river, was a weird affair. It was in the river
opposite our camp, and very slowly, but perceptibly it went round and
round in an orbit, although it was about half an acre in extent. A good
many of these bits of banks do not attain to the honour of becoming
islands, but get on to sand-banks in their early youth, near a native
town, to the joy of the inhabitants, who forthwith go off to them, and
drive round them a stockade of stakes firmly anchoring them. Thousands
of fishes then congregate round the little island inside the stockade,
for the rich feeding in among the roots and grass, and the affair is
left a certain time. Then the entrance to the stockade is firmly closed
up, and the natives go inside and bale out the water, and catch the fish
in baskets, tearing the island to pieces, with shouts and squeals of
exultation. It's messy, but it is amusing, and you get tremendous
catches.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL DO LOANDA. [_To face page 102._]
A very large percentage of fish traps are dedicated to the capture of
shrimp and craw-fish, which the natives value highly when smoked, using
them to make a sauce for their kank; among these is the shrimp-basket.
These baskets are tied on sticks laid out in parallel lines of
considerable extent. They run about three inches in diameter, and their
length varies with the place that is being worked. The stakes are driven
into the mud, and to each stake is tied a basket with a line of tie tie,
the basket acting as a hat to the stake when the tide is ebbing; as the
tide comes in, it lowers the basket into the current and carries into
its open end large quantities of shrimps, which get entangled and packed
by the force of the current into the tapering end of the basket, which
is sometimes eight or ten feet from the mouth. You can always tell where
there is a line of these baskets by seeing the line of attendant
sea-gulls all solemnly arranged with their heads to win'ard, sea-gull
fashion.
Another device employed in small streams for the capture of either
craw-fish or small fish is a line of calabashes, or earthen pots with
narrow mouths; these are tied on to a line, I won't say with tie tie,
because I have said that irritating word so often, but still you
understand they are; this line is tied to a tree with more, and carried
across the stream, sufficiently slack to submerge the pots, and then to
a tree on the other bank, where it is secured with the same material. A
fetish charm is then secured to it that will see to it, that any one who
interferes with the trap, save the rightful owner, will "swell up and
burst," then the trap is left for the night, the catch being collected
in the morning.
Single pots, well baited with bits of fish and with a suitable stone in
to keep them steady, are frequently used alongside the bank. These are
left for a day or more, and then the owner with great care, crawls
along the edge of the bank and claps on a lid and secures the prey.
[Illustration: ROUND A KACONGO CAMP FIRE. [_To face page 105._]
Hand nets of many kinds are used. The most frequent form is the round
net, weighted all round its outer edge. This is used by one man, and is
thrown with great deftness and grace, in shallow waters. I suppose one
may hardly call the long wreaths of palm and palm branches, used by the
Loango and Kacongo coast native for fishing the surf with, nets, but
they are most effective. When the Calemma (the surf) is not too bad, two
or more men will carry this long thick wreath out into it, and then drop
it and drag it towards the shore. The fish fly in front of it on to the
beach, where they fall victims to the awaiting ladies, with their
baskets. Another very quaint set of devices is employed by the Kruboys
whenever they go to catch their beloved land and shore crabs. I remember
once thinking I had providentially lighted on a beautiful bit of ju-ju;
the whole stretch of mud beach had little lights dotted over it on the
ground. I investigated. They were crab-traps. "Bottle of Beer," "The
Prince of Wales," "Jane Ann," and "Pancake" had become--by means we will
not go into here--possessed of bits of candle, and had cut them up and
put in front of them pieces of wood in an ingenious way. The crab, a
creature whose intelligence is not sufficiently appreciated, fired with
a scientific curiosity, went to see what the light was made of, and then
could not escape, or perhaps did not try to escape, but stood
spell-bound at the beauty of the light; anyhow, they fell victims to
their spirit of inquiry. I have also seen drop-traps put for crabs round
their holes. In this case the sense of the beauty of light in the crab
is not relied on, and once in he is shut in, and cannot go home and
communicate the result of his investigations to his family.
Yet, in spite of all these advantages and appliances above cited, I
grieve to say the West African, all along the Coast, decends to the
unsportsmanlike trick of poisoning. Certain herbs are bruised and thrown
into the water, chiefly into lagoons and river-pools. The method is
effective, but I should doubt whether it is wholesome. These herbs cause
the fish to rise to the surface stupefied, when they are scooped up with
a calabash. Other herbs cause the fish to lie at the bottom, also
stupefied, and the water in the pool is thrown out, and they are
collected.
More as a pastime than a sport I must class the shooting of the peculiar
hopping mud-fish by the small boys with bows and arrows, but this is the
only way you can secure them as they go about star-gazing with their
eyes on the tops of their heads, instead of attending to baited hooks,
and their hearing (or whatever it is) is so keen that they bury
themselves in the mud-banks too rapidly for you to net them. Spearing is
another very common method of fishing. It is carried on at night, a
bright light being stuck in the bow of the canoe, while the spearer
crouching, screens his eyes from the glare with a plantain leaf, and
drops his long-hafted spear into the fish as they come up to look at the
light. It is usually the big bream that are caught in this way out in
the sea, and the carp up in fresh water.
The manners and customs of many West African fishes are quaint. I have
never yet seen that fish the natives often tell me about that is as big
as a man, only thicker, and which walks about on its fins at night, in
the forest, so I cannot vouch for it; nor for that other fish that hates
the crocodile, and follows her up and destroys her eggs, and now and
again dedicates itself to its hate, and goes down her throat, and then
spreads out its spiny fins and kills her.
The fish I know personally are interesting in quieter ways. As for
instance the strange electrical fish, which sometimes have sufficient
power to kill a duck and which are much given to congregating in sunken
boats, causing much trouble when the boat has to be floated again,
because the natives won't go near them, to bail her out.
Then there is that deeply trying creature the Ning Ning fish, who, when
you are in some rivers in fresh water and want to have a quiet night's
rest, just as you have tucked in your mosquito bar carefully and
successfully, comes alongside and serenades you, until you have to get
up and throw things at it with a prophetic feeling, amply supported by
subsequent experience, that hordes of mosquitos are busily ensconcing
themselves inside your mosquito bar. What makes the Ning Ning--it is
called after its idiotic song--so maddening is that it never seems to be
where you have thrown the things at it. You could swear it was close to
the bow of the canoe when you shied that empty soda-water bottle or that
ball of your precious indiarubber at it, but instantly comes "ning,
ning, ning" from the stern of the canoe. It is a ventriloquist or goes
about in shoals, I do not know which, for the latter and easier
explanation seems debarred by their not singing in chorus; the
performance is undoubtedly a solo; any one experienced in this fish soon
finds out that it is not driven away or destroyed by an artillery of
missiles, but merely lies low until its victim has got under his
mosquito curtain, and resettled his mosquito palaver,--and then back it
comes with its "ning ning."
A similar affliction is the salt-water drum-fish, with its "bum-bum."
Loanda Harbour abounds with these, and so does Chiloango. In the bright
moonlight nights I have looked overside and seen these fish in a wreath
round the canoe, with their silly noses against the side, "bum-bumming"
away; whether they admire the canoe, or whether they want it to come on
and fight it out, I do not know, because my knowledge of the different
kinds of fishes and of their internal affairs is derived from Dr.
Guenther's great work, and that contains no section on ichthyological
psychology. The West African natives have, I may say, a great deal of
very curious information on the thoughts of fishes, but, much as I liked
those good people, I make it a hard and fast rule to hold on to my
common-sense and keep my belief for religious purposes when it comes to
these deductions from natural phenomena--not that I display this mental
attitude externally, for there is always in their worst and wildest
fetish notions an underlying element of truth. The fetish of fish is too
wide a subject to enter on here, it acts well because it gives a close
season to river and lagoon fish; the natives round Lake Ayzingo, for
example, saying that if the first fishes that come up into the lake in
the great dry season are killed, the rest of the shoal turn back, so on
the arrival of this vanguard they are treated most carefully, talked to
with "a sweet mouth," and given things. The fishes that form these
shoals are _Hemichromis fasciatus_ and _Chromis ogowensis_.
I know no more charming way of spending an afternoon than to leisurely
paddle alone to the edge of the Ogowe sand bank in the dry season, and
then lie and watch the ways of the water-world below. If you keep quiet,
the fishes take no notice of you, and go on with their ordinary
avocations, under your eyes, hunting, and feeding, and playing, and
fighting, happily and cheerily until one of the dreaded raptorial fishes
appears upon the scene, and then there is a general scurry. Dreadful
warriors are the little fishes that haunt sand banks (_Alestis
Kingsleyae_) and very bold, for when you put your hand down in the water,
with some crumbs, they first make two or three attempts to frighten it,
by sidling up at it and butting, but on finding there's no fight in the
thing, they swagger into the palm of your hand and take what is to be
got with an air of conquest; but before the supply is exhausted, there
always arises a row among themselves, and the gallant bulls, some two
inches long, will spin round and butt each other for a second or so, and
then spin round again, and flap each other with their tails, their
little red-edged fins and gill-covers growing crimson with fury. I never
made out how you counted points in these fights, because no one ever
seemed a scale the worse after even the most desperate duels.
Most of the West Coast tribes are inveterate fishermen. The Gold Coast
native regards fishing as a low pursuit, more particularly
oyster-fishing, or I should say oyster-gathering, for they are collected
chiefly from the lower branches of the mangrove-trees; this occupation
is, indeed, regarded as being only fit for women, and among all tribes
the villages who turn their entire attention to fishing are regarded as
low down in the social scale. This may arise from fetish reasons, but
the idea certainly gains support from the conduct of the individual
fisherman. Do not imagine Brother Anglers, that I am hinting that the
Gentle Art is bad for the moral nature of people like you and me, but I
fear it is bad for the African. You see, the African, like most of us,
can resist anything but temptation--he will resist attempts to reform
him, attempts to make him tell the truth, attempts to clothe, and keep
him tidy, &c., and he will resist these powerfully; but give him real
temptation and he succumbs, without the European preliminary struggle.
He has by nature a kleptic bias, and you see being out at night fishing,
he has chances--temptations, of succumbing to this--and so you see a man
who has left his home at evening with only the intention of spearing
fish, in his mind, goes home in the morning pretty often with his
missionary's ducks, his neighbours' plantains, and a few odd trifles
from the trader's beaches, in his canoe, and the outer world says "Dem
fisherman, all time, all same for one, with tief man."[9]
The Accras, who are employed right down the whole West Coast, thanks to
the valuable education given them by the Basel Mission as cooks,
carpenters, and coopers, cannot resist fishing, let their other
avocations be what they may. A friend of mine the other day had a new
Accra cook. The man cooked well, and my friend vaunted himself, and was
content for the first week. At the beginning of the second week the
cooking was still good, but somehow or other, there was just the
suspicion of a smell of fish about the house. The next day the suspicion
merged into certainty. The third day the smell was insupportable, and
the atmosphere unfit to support human life, but obviously healthy for
flies.
The cook was summoned, and asked by Her Britannic Majesty's
representative "Where that smell came from?" He said he "could not smell
it, and he did not know." Fourth day, thorough investigation of the
premises revealed the fact that in the back-yard there was a large
clothes-horse which had been sent out by my friend's wife to air his
clothes; this was literally converted into a screen by strings of fish
in the process of drying, _i.e._, decomposing in the sun.
The affair was eliminated from the domestic circle and cast into the
Ocean by seasoned natives; and awful torture in this world and the next
promised to the cook if he should ever again embark in the fish trade.
The smell gradually faded from the house, but the poor cook, bereaved of
his beloved pursuit, burst out all over in boils, and took to religious
mania and drink, and so had to be sent back to Accra, where I hope he
lives happily, surrounded by his beloved objects.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Specimens of rock identified by the Geological Survey, London, as
cretaceous, and said by other geologists up here to be possibly
Jurassic.
[7] _Clarias laviaps._
[8] Translation: "Leave it alone! Leave it alone! Throw it into the
water at once! What did you catch it for?"
[9] Translation: "All fishermen are thieves."