_Rejoicing-, half-eastern and wholly tropical, on arrival of the
Governor--Colonies governed and held as the Romans held their colonies
of Britain--Great g-ulf between the black and the white--The barrier of
sex--Received as a brother but declined as a brother-in-law--Lonely
Fort St James--The strenuous lives led by the men of the past--Crinted
walls--The pilot's wife--Up the river in the Mungo Park--The river
devil's toll--“Pass friend and all's well.”_
When I was a little girl the Queen held something the same place in
my mind as the Almighty. The ruler of the nation hardly had any
personality. She was there, of course, and people talked about her as
conferring great benefits upon us; but so we also talked about God in
church and when we said our prayers at night. As a family, we objected
to saying prayers in the morning. They were not supposed to be necessary
till you had arrived at mature years, say, five, and by then, I suppose,
we had imbibed the idea that we could really take care of ourselves very
well during the day-time. So the Queen, too, was in the same category as
God and Heaven, that distinctly dull place, which was to be the reward
of good works on earth, and His Excellency the Governor took her place
in the minds of all young colonials. Of course, as I grew older, I
realised that the Governor was a man like unto other men, that he could
be talked to like an ordinary man, could ask you to dinner, and even
take a polite interest in your future; but, still, some of the rags of
the childish vagueness and glory clung round him, and so I was quite
pleased to find myself on board a steamer with a real live Governor.
More, I sat next him at table; we discussed the simple commonplace
doings of ship-board life together, and as we arrived at the buoy
I shared in the little fuss and bustle which the landing of such an
exalted personage always makes. And he wasn't really such a very exalted
personage in his own opinion. There was a merry twinkle in his nice
brown eyes as he admitted that his gold-laced coat, made to be worn on
state occasions such as this, was a great deal too hot for the Tropics,
and that its donning must be left to the very last moment; and so I
stood on the flag-dressed deck by myself and watched the land of my
dreams come into view.
A long, low shore is the Gambia--a jutting point, with palms upon it,
running out into a glassy sea, from which is reflected the glare of the
tropical sun. There was a little denser clump of greenery that marked
the site of Bathurst, the capital; and, as we drew closer, we could see
the roofs of the houses peeping out, bright specks of colour that were
the flags, and the long line of red on the wharf, the soldiers turned
out to welcome the returning Governor.
This is the only place along that line of surf-bound coast where a ship
may come up to the wharf and land her passengers dry-shod; but, to-day,
because the captain was in a hurry, he dropped us over the side in
boats, and we landed to all the glory of a welcome that was half-eastern
and wholly and emotionally tropical. The principal street of Bathurst,
the only street worth mentioning, runs all along the river-side, with
houses on one side and the wharfs and piers on the other; and the whole
place was thronged with the black inhabitants. The men shouted and
tossed their hats and caps when they had any; and the women, the
mammies, as I learned to call them later, flung their gaily coloured
cloths from their shoulders for their dearly loved Governor to walk
over; and the handful of whites--there are twenty-five English and some
French and Swiss--came forward and solemnly shook hands. He had come
back to them, the man who had ruled over them for the last ten years,
and white and black loved him, and were glad to do him honour.
In the midst of great rejoicing, a good omen for me, I set my foot on
African shore. I began my journeying, and I looked round to try and
realise what manner of country was this I had come to--what manner of
life I was to be part and parcel of.
These colonies on the West-African coast are as unlike as possible to
the colony in which I first saw the light, that my people have helped to
build up. I fancy, perhaps, the Roman proconsul and the officials in
his train, who came out to rule over Britain in the first century before
Christ, must have led lives somewhat resembling those of the Britons
who nowadays go out to West Africa. One thing is certain, those Italians
must have grumbled perpetually about the inclemency and unhealthiness of
the climate of these northern isles; they probably had a great deal
to say about the fever and ague that was rife. They were accustomed to
certain luxuries that civilisation had made into necessities, and they
came to a land where all the people were traders and agriculturists of
a most primitive sort. They were exiles in a cold, grey land, and they
felt it bitterly. They came to replenish their purses, and when those
purses were fairly full they returned to their own land gladly. The
position describes three-quarters of the Englishmen in West Africa
to-day; but between the Roman and the savage Piet of Caledonia was
never the gulf, the great gulf, which is fixed between even the educated
African and the white man of whatever nationality. It is no good trying
to hide the fact; between the white man and the black lies not only the
culture and the knowledge of the west--that gulf might, and sometimes is
bridged--but that other great bar, the barrier of sex. Tall, stalwart,
handsome as is many a negro, no white woman may take a black man for
her husband and be respected by her own people; no white man may take a
black girl, though her dark eyes be soft and tender, though her skin
be as satin and her figure like that of the Venus of Milo, and hope to
introduce her among his friends as his wife. Even the missionaries who
preach that the black man is a brother decline emphatically to receive
him as a brother-in-law. And so we get, beginning here in the little
colony of the Gambia, the handful of the ruling race set among a subject
people; so the white man has always ruled the black; so, I think, he
must always rule. It will be a bad day for the white when the black man
rules. That there should be any mingling of the races is unthinkable; so
I hope that the white man will always rule Africa with a strong hand.
The Gambia is the beginning of the English colonies on the Coast, and,
the pity of it, a very small beginning.
In the old days, when Charles the Second was king, the English held none
of the banks of the river at all, but contented themselves with a barren
little island about seventeen miles from where Bathurst now stands.
One bank was held by the French, the other by the Portuguese; and the
English built on the island Fort St James to protect their interest in
the great trade in palm oil, slaves, and ivory that came down the river.
Even then the Gambia was rich. It is richer far to-day, but the French
hold the greater part of it. The colony of the Gambia is at the mouth
of the river, twelve miles broad by four hundred long, a narrow strip of
land bordering the mouth of a river set in the heart of the great French
colony of Senegal--a veritable Naboth's vineyard that our friends
the other side of the Channel may well envy us. It brings us in about
£80,000 annually, but to them it would be of incalculable value as an
outlet for the majority of their rich trade.
At first I hardly thought about these things. I was absorbed in the
wonder of the new life. I stayed at Government House with the Governor,
and was caught up in the little whirl of gaieties that greeted his
return. The house was tropical, with big, lofty, airy rooms and great
wide verandahs that as a rule serve also as passageways to pass from one
room to another; for Government House, Bathurst, is built as a tropical
house should be--must be--built, if the builder have any regard for the
health of its inmates. There were no rooms that the prevailing breeze
could not sweep right through. There was a drawingroom and a dining-room
on the ground floor, but I do not think either Sir George or I, or his
private secretary, ever used the drawing-room unless there were guests
to be entertained. The verandahs were so much more inviting, and my
bedroom was a delightful place. It ran right across the house. There
was no carpet, and, as was only right, only just such furniture as I
absolutely needed. The bed was enclosed in another small mosquito-proof
room of wirenetting, and it was the only thing I did not like about the
house. There, and at that season, perhaps it did not very much matter,
for a strong Harmattan wind, the cool wind of the cold, dry season, was
blowing, and it kept the air behind the stout wire-netting fresh
and clean; but I must here put on record my firm belief that no
inconsiderable number of lives in Africa must be lost owing to some
doctor's prejudice in favour of mosquito-proof netting. A mosquito-proof
netting is very stout indeed, and not only excludes the mosquito, but,
and this far more effectually, the fresh air as well. The man who has
plenty of fresh air, day and night, will be in better health, and far
more likely to resist infection if he does happen to get bitten by a
fever-bearing mosquito, than he who must perforce spend at least a third
of his time in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room. This I did not
realise at Government House, Bathurst, or if I did, but dimly, for
there in December the strong Harmattan would have forced its way through
anything. I spent most of my time on the verandah outside my own room,
where I had a view not only of the road that ran to to the centre of
the town but right away across the river. Here I had my breakfast and my
afternoon tea, and here I did all my writing.
In Africa your own servant takes charge of your room, gets your bath,
and brings you your early-morning tea; and here in Bathurst in this
womanless house my servant was to get my breakfast and my afternoon tea
as well, so the first thing to be done was to look out for a boy.
He appeared in the shape of Ansumanah Grant, a Mohammedan boy of
three-and-twenty, a Vai tribesman, who had been brought up by the
Wesleyan missionaries at Cape Mount in Liberia. When I engaged him he
wore a pink pyjama coat, a pair of moleskin breeches, and red carpet
slippers; and, when this was rectified--at my expense--he appeared in a
white shirt, khaki knicker-bockers, a red cummerbund, and bare feet, and
made a very respectable member of society and a very good servant to me
during the whole of my stay in Africa.
[Illustration: 0043]
I always made it a practice to rise early in West Africa, because the
early morning is the most delightful time, and he who stays in bed till
halfpast seven or eight is missing one of the pure delights of life.
When I had had my early breakfast, I went to inspect the town. The
market lies but a stone's throw from Government House, and here all the
natives were to be found, and the white men's servants buying provisions
for the day. To me, before I went to Africa, a negro was a negro, and
I imagined them all of one race. My mind was speedily disabused of that
error. The negro has quite as many nationalities, is quite as distinct
as the European. Here in this little colony was a most cosmopolitan
gathering, for the south and north meet, and Yorubas from Lagos, Gas
from Accra, mongrel Creoles from Sierra Leone meet the Senegalese from
the north, the Hausas from away farther east; and the natives themselves
are the Mohammedan Jolloff, who is an expert river-man, the Mandingo,
and the heathen Jolah, who as yet is low down in the scale of
civilisation, and wears but scanty rags. And all these people were to
be found in the market in the early morning. It is enclosed with a high
wall, the interior is cemented, and gutters made to carry off moisture,
and it is all divided into stalls, and really not at all unlike the
alfresco markets you may see on Saturdays in the poorer quarters of
London. Here they sell meat, most uninviting looking, but few butchers'
shops look inviting; fish--very strange denizens come out of the sea in
the Gambia; native peppers, red and green; any amount of rice, which is
the staple food of the people, and all the tropical fruits, paws-paws,
pine-apples, and dark-green Coast oranges, which are very sweet;
bananas, yellow and pink, and great bunches of green plantains. They are
supposed to sell only on the stalls, for which they pay a small, a very
small rental; but, like true natives, they overflow on to the ground,
and as you walk you must be careful not to tread on neat little piles of
peppers, enamelled iron-ware basins full of native rice, or little heaps
of purple kola-nuts--that great sustaining stimulant of Africa.
There were about half a dozen white women in Bathurst when I was there,
including one who had ostracised herself by marrying a black man;
but none ever came to the market, therefore my arrival created great
excitement, and one good lady, in a are held, half the houses are owned
by rich negroes, Africans they very naturally prefer to be called, but
the poorer people live all crowded together in Jolloff town, whither
my guide led me, and introduced me to her yard. A Jolloff never speaks
about his house, but about his “yard.” Even Government House he knows as
“Governor's Yard.”
[Illustration: 0047]
Jolloff town looks as if if were made of basket-work; they call it here
“crinting,” and all the walls of the houses and of the compounds are
made of this split bamboo neatly woven together. For Bathurst is but a
strip of sand-bank just rescued from the mangrove swamp round, and these
crinted walls serve excellently to keep it together when the strong
Harmattan threatens to blow the whole place bodily into the swamp
behind. My friend's home was a very nice specimen of its class, the
first barbaric home I had ever seen. The compound was surrounded by the
crinted walls, and inside again were two or three huts, also built of
crinting, with a thatched roof. As a rule I am afraid the Jolloff is not
clean, but my pilot's wife had a neat little home. There were no windows
in it, but the strong sunlight came through the crinted walls, and made
a subdued light and a pattern of the basket-work on the white, sanded
floor; there were three long seats of wood, neatly covered with white
napkins edged with red, a table, a looking-glass, and a basket of
bread, for it appeared she was a trader in a small way. It was all
very suitable and charming. Outside in the compound ran about chickens,
goats, a dog or two, and some small children, another woman's children,
alas, for she told me mournfully she had none.
It is easy enough to make a friend; the difficulty is to know where to
stop. I am afraid I had soon exhausted all my interest in my Jolloff
woman, while to her I was a great source of pride, and she wanted me to
come and see her every day. At first she told me she “fear too much”
to come to “Governor's Yard,” but latterly, I regret to state, that
wholesome fear wore off, and she called to see me every day, and I found
suitable conversation a most difficult thing to provide, so that I grew
to look very anxiously indeed for the steamer that was to take me up the
river.
[Illustration: 0049]
The Government steamer, the _Mansikillah_, had broken down. She was
old, and it was, I was told, her chronic state, but I was bitterly
disappointed till the Governor told me he had made arrangements for me
to go in the French Company's steamer, the _Mungo Park_. She was going
up the river with general cargo; she was coming down again with some
of the groundnut crop, little nuts that grow on the root of a trefoil
plant, nuts the Americans call pea-nuts, and the English monkey-nuts.
I had to wait a little till there came a messenger one day to say that
the steamer was ready at last, and would start that afternoon. So I went
down to the little wharf with my servant, my baggage, and the travelling
Commissioner, who was also going up the river.
The _Mungo Park_ was a stern-wheeler of 150 tons, drawing six feet
of water, and when first I saw her you could hardly tell steamer from
wharf, so alive were they both with crowded, shrieking people, all
either wanting to get on, or to get off, which was apparently not quite
clear. After a little wait, out of chaos came a courteous French trader
and a gangway. The gangway took us on board, and the trader, whose
English was as good as mine, explained that he, too, was going up the
river to look after the houses belonging to his company along the banks.
Then he showed me my quarters, and I was initiated into the mysteries of
travelling in the interior of Africa. There was but one cabin on board
the _Mungo Park_, a place about eighteen feet square amidship; in it
were two bunks, a table, a couple of long seats, a cupboard, and washing
arrangements. The sides were all of Venetian shutters, which could
be taken away when not wanted. It was all right in a way, but I must
confess for a moment I wondered how on earth two men and a woman were to
stow away there. Then the trader explained. I should have the cabin to
sleep in, and we all three would have our meals there together, while
arrangements might be made by which we could all in turn bathe and wash.
I learned my first lesson: you accept extraordinary and unconventional
situations, if you are wise, with a smile and without a blush in Africa.
The Commissioner and the trader, I found on further inquiry, would
sleep on the top of the cabin, which was also what one might call the
promenade deck. I arranged my simple belongings, and went up on deck to
look, and I found that it was reached by way of the boiler, across which
some steps and a little, coaly hand-rail led. It would have been nice in
the Arctic regions, but on a tropical afternoon it had its drawbacks. On
the deck I was met by a vociferous black man, who was much too busy
to do more than give an obsequious welcome, for it appeared he was
the captain. I shall always regret I did not take his photograph as he
leaned over the railing, shouting and gesticulating to his men, and to
the would-be passengers, and to the men who were struggling to get the
cargo on board. He cursed them, I should think, all impartially. The
French trader said he was an excellent captain, and he remains in my
mind as the most unique specimen of the genus I have ever seen. He wore
a khaki coat and very elderly tweed trousers, split behind; his feet
were bare; he did not pander to that vitiated taste which demands
underlinen, or at least a shirt, but, seeing it was the cold weather, he
adorned his black skull with a woolly cap with ear-flaps, such as Nansen
probably took on his North-Pole expedition.
There was a great deal of cargo--cotton goods, sugar, salt, coffee,
dates; things that the French company were taking up to supply
their factories on the river, and long before it was stowed the deck
passengers began crowding on board. Apparently there was no provision
whatever made for them; they stowed on top of the cargo, just wherever
they could find a place, and every passenger--there were over ninety of
them--had apparently something to say as to the accommodation, or the
want of accommodation, and he or she said it at the very top of his
or her voice in Jolloff or Mandingo or that bastard English which is
a _lingua franca_ all along the Coast. Not that it mattered much what
language they said it in, because no one paid the least attention; such
a babel have I never before heard. And such a crowd as they were. The
steamer provided water carriage only for the deck passengers, so that
they had their cooking apparatus, their bedding, their food, their
babies, their chickens (unfortunate wretches tied by one leg), and, if
they could evade the eagle eye of the French trader, their goats. The
scene was bedlam let loose to my unaccustomed eyes. We were to tow
six lighters as well, and each of them also had a certain number of
passengers. As we started it seemed likely we should sweep away a few
dozen who were hanging on in the most dangerous places to the frailest
supports. Possibly they wouldn't have been missed. I began to understand
why the old slaver was callous. It was impossible to feel humane in
the midst of such a shrieking, howling mob. The siren gave wild and
ear-piercing shrieks; there were yells from the wharf, more heartrending
yells from the steamer, a minor accompaniment from the lighters,
bleating of goats, cackling of protesting fowls, crying of children, and
we were off without casualty, and things began to settle down.
I had thought my quarters cramped, but looking at the deck passengers,
crowding fore and aft over the coals and on top of the boiler, I
realised that everything goes by comparison, and that they were simply
palatial. I had eighteen feet square of room all to myself to sleep in.
It had one drawback. There was £5000 worth of silver stowed under
the seats, and therefore the trader requested me to lock the doors and
fasten the shutters lest some of the passengers should take a fancy to
it. His view was that plenty of air would come through the laths of the
shutters. I did not agree with the French trader, and watched with keen
interest those boxes of silver depart all too slowly. I would gladly
have changed places and let him and the Commissioner have my cabin if
only I might have taken their place on the deck above. But on the deck
was the wheel, presided over by the black captain, or the equally black
and more ragged mate, so it was not to be thought of.
And that deck was something to remember. There were the large
water-bottles there and the filter, the trader's bed in a neat little
roll, the Commissioner's bed, draped with blue mosquito curtains,
the hencoops with the unhappy fowls that served us for food, the
Commissioner's washing apparatus on top of one of the coops, for he was
a young man of resource, the rest of his kit, his rifle, his bath, his
cartridge-belt, his dog, a few plates and cups and basins, a couple of
sieves for rice, two or three stools, the elderly black kettle, out of
the spout of which the skipper and the mate sucked refreshment as if
they had been a couple of snipe, and last, but not least, there was
the French company's mails for their employees up river. I was told the
correspondence always arrived safely, and so it is evident that in some
things we take too much trouble. The captain attended to the sorting of
the mails when he had time to spare from his other duties. I have seen
him with a much-troubled brow sorting letters at night by the light of a
flickering candle, and, when the mails overflowed the deal box, parcels
were stacked against the railing, newspapers leaned for support against
the wheel, and letters collogued in friendly fashion on the deck with
the black kettle.
For the first seventeen miles the little ship, towing her lighters
behind and alongside, went up a river that was like a sea, so far away
were the mangrove swamps that are on either side. Then we reached Fort
St James, and the river narrows. Very pathetic are the ruins of Fort St
James. No one lives there now; no one has lived there for many a long
day, but you see as you pass and look at the crumbling stones of the old
fort why West Africa gained in the minds of men so evil a reputation.
The place is but a rocky islet, with but a few scanty trees upon it;
above is the brazen sky, below the baked earth, on which the tropical
sun pours down with all the added heat gathered from the glare of the
river. They must have died shut up in Fort St James in those far-away
days. Tradition, too, says that the gentlemen of the company of soldiers
who were stationed there were for ever fighting duels, and that the many
vacancies in the ranks were not always due to the climate. But the heat
and the monotony would conduce to irritability, and when a hasty word
had to be upheld at the sword's point, it is no wonder if they cursed
the Coast with a bitterness that is only given to the land of regrets.
But all honour to those dead-and-gone Englishmen. They upheld the might
of Britain, and her rights in the trade in palm oil and slaves and ivory
that even then came down the river. And if they died--now, now at
last, after many weary years, their descendants are beginning dimly to
realise, as they never did, the value of the land for which they gave
their lives.
It is the custom to speak with contempt of a mangrove swamp, as if in it
no beauty could lie, as if it were only waste land--dreary, depressing,
ugly. Each of those epithets may be true--I cannot say--except the last,
and that is most certainly a falsehood. What my impressions would be
if I lived in the midst of it day after day I cannot say, but to a
passer-by the mangrove swamp has a beauty of its own.
When first I saw the Gambia I was fascinated, and found no words too
strong for its beauty; and, having gone farther, I would take back not
one word of that admiration. But I am like the lover who is faithless to
his first mistress--he acknowledges her charm, but he has seen someone
else; so now, as I sit down to write, I am reminded that the Volta is
more ravishingly lovely, and that if I use up all my adjectives on the
Gambia I shall have no words to describe my new mistress. Therefore must
I modify my transports, and so it seems to me I am unfair.
As we moved up the river we could plainly see the shore on either side,
the dense mangrove swamp, doubled by its reflection, green and beautiful
against its setting of blue sky and clear river. Crocodiles lay basking
in the golden sunshine on the mud-banks, white egrets flew slowly from
tree to tree, a brown jolah-king, an ibis debased for some sin in
the youth of the world, sailed slowly across the water, a white
fishing-eagle poised himself on high, looking for his prey, a slate-blue
crane came across our bows, a young pelican just ahead was taking
his first lesson in swimming, and closer to the bank we could see
king-fishers, bright spots of colour against the dark green of the
mangrove.
“The wonder of the Tropics”--the river seemed to be whispering at first,
and then fairly shouted--“can you deny beauty to this river?” and I,
with the cool Harmattan blowing across the water to put the touch of
moisture in the air it needed, was constrained to answer that voice,
which none of the others seemed to hear, “Truly I cannot.”
It would be impossible to describe in detail all the little wharves at
which we stopped; besides, they all bore a strong family resemblance to
one another, differing only when they were in the upper or lower river.
Long before I could see any signs of human habitation the steamer's
skipper was wildly agitated over the mails, wrinkling up his brows
and pawing them over with his dirty black hands--mine were dirtier, at
least, they showed more, and the way to the deck was so coaly it was
impossible to keep clean. Then he would hang on to a string, which
resulted in the most heartrending wails from the steamer's siren; a
corrugated-iron roof would show up among the surrounding greenery, and a
little wharf, or “tenda,” as they call them here, would jut out into
the stream. These tendas are frail-looking structures built of the split
poles of the rhon palm. There seem to be as many varieties of palm as
there are of eucalyptus, all much alike to the uninitiated eye.
The tendas look as if they were only meant to be walked on by bare
feet--certainly very few of the feet rise beyond a loose slipper; and
whether it was blazing noonday or pitchy darkness only made visible by a
couple of hurricane lanterns of one candle-power, the tenda was
crowded with people come to see the arrival of the steamer, which is
a White-Star liner or a Cunarder to them--people in cast-off European
clothing and the ubiquitous tourist cap, Moslems in fez and flowing
white or blue robes, mammies with gaily coloured handkerchiefs bound
round their heads and still gayer skirts and cloths, little children
clad in one garment or no garments at all, beautiful grey donkeys that
carry the groundnuts or the trade goods, fawn-coloured country cattle,
and goats and sheep, black, white, and brown--and every living creature
upon that tenda did his little best towards the raising of a most unholy
din. And the steamer was not to be beaten. Jolloff and Man-dingo too was
shrieked; the captain took a point of vantage, shook his black fist
at intervals, and added his quota of curses in Jolloff, Mandingo,
Senegalese, and broken French and English, and the cargo was unloaded
with a clatter, clatter, punctuated by earpiercing yells that made one
wonder if the slaving days had not come back, and these lumpers were not
shrieking in agony.
But, when I could understand, the remarks were harmless enough. What the
black man says to his friends and acquaintances when he speaks in his
own tongue I cannot say, but when he addresses them in English I can
vouch for it his conversation is banal to the last degree. In the
general din I catch some words I understand, and I listen.
“Ah, Mr Jonsing, dat you, sah? How you do, sah?” Mr Jonsing's health is
quite satisfactory; and Mrs Jonsing, and Miss Mabel, and Miss Gladys,
and Mr Edward were all apparently in perfect health, for they were
inquired after one by one at the top of the interested friend's voice.
Then there were many wishes for the continuance of the interesting
family in this happy state, and afterwards there was an excursion into
wider realms of thought.
“You 'member dat t'ing you deny las' mont', sah?” The question comes
tentatively.
“I deny it dis mont', sah,” Mr Jonsing answers promptly, which is, so
far, satisfactory, as showing that Mr Jonsing has at least a mind of
his own, and is not to be bounced into lightly changing it. I might have
heard more, and so gleaned some information into the inner life of these
people, but unfortunately Mr Jonsing now got in the way of the stalwart
captain, and being assisted somewhat ungently by the collar of his
ragged shirt to the tenda, he launched out into curses that were rude,
to put it mildly, and my knowledge of his family affairs came to an
abrupt conclusion.
In the breaks in the mangrove, Balanghar is one of them, there is,
of course, a little hard earth--the great shady _ficus elasticus_,
beautiful silk-cotton trees, and cocoa-nut palms grow; the traders'
yards have white stone posts at the four corners marking the extent of
their leaseholds, and in these enclosures are the trading-houses, the
round huts of the native helpers, and the little crinted yards, in which
are poured the groundnuts, which are the occasion of all this clatter.
One hundred and fifty miles up we came to McCarthy Island, five miles
long by a mile wide, and markedly noticeable because here the great
river changes its character entirely, the mangrove swamps are left
behind, and open bush of mahogany, palm, and many another tree and
creeper, to me nameless, takes its place. On McCarthy Island is a busy
settlement, with the town marked into streets, lined with native shops
and trading-houses. There are great groundnut stores along the river
front, seven, or perhaps eight white people, a church, a hospital,
obsolete guns, and an old powder magazine, that shows that in days gone
by this island was only held by force of arms.
They tell me that McCarthy Island is one of the hottest places in the
world, though that morning the river had been veiled in white mist, the
thermometer was down to between 50 deg. and 60 deg., and my boy had
brought in my early-morning tea with his head tied up in a pocket
handkerchief like an old woman; and at midday it was but little over 90
deg., but this was December, the coolest season of the year. I discussed
the question with a negro lady with her head bound up in a red-silk
handkerchief. She was one of our passengers, and had come up trading in
kola-nuts. Kola-nuts are hard, corner-shaped nuts that grow on a very
handsome tree about the size of an oak, which means a small tree in
Africa. They are much esteemed for their stimulating and sustaining
properties. I have tried them, and I found them only bitter, so perhaps
I do not want stimulating. A tremendous trade is done in them, and all
along the coast you meet the traders, very often, as in this case,
women. I had seen it in her eye for some time that she wanted to
exchange ideas with me, and at last the opportunity came. She told me
she came from Sierra Leone.
“You know Freetown?” That is the capital. I said I had heard it was the
hottest place in the world.
“Pooh!” She tossed her head in scorn. “You wait two mont's; it be fool
to M'Cart'y! You gat no rest, no sleep”; and she showed her white teeth
and stretched out her black hands as if to say that no words of hers
could do justice to this island.
Truly, I think the sun must pour down here in the hot season, judging by
my experience in the cool. The hot season is not in June, as one might
expect, for then come the rains, when no white man, and, indeed, I think
no black man foreign to the place, stays up the river, but in March and
April. I do not propose to visit McCarthy in the hot season. In the cool
the blazing sun overhead, and the reflected glare from the water, played
havoc with my complexion. I did not think about it till the District
Commissioner brought the fact forcibly home to me. He was a nice young
fellow, but the sort of man who is ruin to England as a colonising
nation, because he makes it so patent to everyone that he bitterly
resents colonising on his own account, and will allow no good in the
country wherein lies his work.
I asked him if he did not think of bringing out his wife.
He looked at me a moment, seeking words to show his opinion of a woman
who insisted upon going where he thought no white woman was needed.
“My wife,” he said, with emphasis that marked his surprise; “my wife?
Why, my wife has such a delicate complexion that she has to wash her
face always in distilled water.”
It was sufficient. I understood when I looked in the glass that night
the reproof intended to be conveyed. In all probability the lady was
not quite such a fool as her husband intimated; but one thing is quite
certain, she was buying her complexion at a very heavy cost if she were
going to allow it to deprive her of the joy of seeing new countries.
McCarthy was very busy; dainty cutters, frail canoes, and grimy steamers
crowded the wharves, and to and fro across the great river, 500 yards
wide here, the ferry, a great canoe, went backwards and forwards the
livelong day, and I could just see gathered together herds of the pretty
cattle of the country that looked not unlike Alderneys.
When we left the island the river was narrower, so that we seemed to
glide along between green walls, where the birds were singing and the
monkeys barking and crying and whimpering like children. Again and
again we passed trees full of them, sometimes little grey monkeys, and
sometimes great dog-faced fellows that rumour says would tear you to
pieces if you offended them and had the misfortune to fall into their
hands. Now and then a hippopotamus rose, a reminder of an age that has
gone by, and always on the mud-banks were the great crocodiles. And the
trading-stations were, I think, more solitary and more picturesque.
The little tendas were even more frail, just rickety little structures
covered with a mat of crinting, for the river rises here very high, and
these wharves are sure to be carried away in the rainy season. And then
come hills, iron-stone hills, and tall, dry grass ten and twelve feet
high. Sometimes we stopped where there was not even the frailest of
tendas, and one night, just as the swift darkness was falling, the
steamer drew up at a little muddy landing-stage, where there was a break
in the trees, and three dugouts were drawrn up. Here she became wildly
hysterical, and I began to think something would give way, until all
shrieks died down as a tall black man, draped in blue, and with a long
Dane gun across his shoulder, stalked out of the bush. Savage Africa
personified. We had stopped to land a passenger, a mammy with her
head tied up in a handkerchief, and a motley array of boxes, bundles,
calabashes, chairs, saucepans, and fowls that made a small boat-load.
She waved a farewell to the French trader as her friends congregated
upon the shore and examined her baggage.
“She is an important woman,” said he; “the wife of a black trader in the
town behind there. He's a Christian.”
“He's got a dozen wives,” said the Commissioner.
“His official wife, then. Oh, you know the sort. I guarantee she keeps
order in the compound.”
At Fatta Tenda, which is quite a busy centre, from which you may start
for the Niger and Timbuctoo, we gave a dinner-party, a dinner-party
under difficulties. Our cook was excellent. How he turned out such
dainties in a tiny galley three feet by six, and most of that taken
up by the stove, I do not pretend to understand, but he did, so our
difficulties lay not there, but with the lamp. What was the matter with
it I do not know, but it gave a shocking light, and the night before our
dinner-party it went out, and left us to finish our dinner in darkness.
Then, next day, word went round that the mate was going to trim the
lamp, and when we, with two men from the French factory, went
into dinner, an unwonted light shed its brilliancy over the scene.
Unfortunately, there was also a strong scent of kerosene, which is not
usually considered a very alluring fragrance. But we consoled ourselves;
the mate had trimmed the lamp. He had. He had also distributed most of
the oil over the dinner-table--the cloth was soaked in it, and, worse
than that, the salt, pepper, and mustard were full of it; and then, as
we sat down to soup, there came in through the open windows a flight, I
should say several flights, of flying ants. They died in crowds in the
soup, they filled up the glasses, they distributed themselves over the
kerosene-soaked table, till at last we gave them best and fled to the
deck. Finally the servants reduced things to a modified state of order,
but whenever I smell a strong smell of kerosene I am irresistibly
reminded of the day we tried to foregather with our kind, and be
hospitable up the Gambia.
[Illustration: 0065]
There were some Mandingo chiefs here. Bala, Chief of Kantora, and
Jimbermang Jowlah, the local Chief, came to call. Bala dashed up on
horseback, with a large following, to complain that there was trouble on
the Border, for the French had come in and said that his town should
pay a poll tax of 500 dollars. He ranged all his horses, with their high
cantled saddles and their heavy iron stirrups, on the steep, red bank,
and he and his chief man came on board the little steamer to talk to
the Commissioner. They made a quaint picture--the fair, good-looking
Commissioner, with his boyish face grave, as suited the occasion,
and the Chief, a warrior and a gentleman, as unlike Mr Jonsing in
his tourist cap as the Gambia is unlike the Thames at Wapping. The
Commissioner wore a blue-striped shirt and riding breeches, and the
Chief was clad all in blue of different shades; there was a sort of
underskirt to his knees of dark-blue cotton patterned in white, over
that was a pale-blue tunic, through which came his bare arms, and over
that again a voluminous dark-blue cotton garment, caught in at the
waist with a girdle, from which depended a very handsome sporran of red
leather picked out in yellow; on his bare feet were strapped spurs, a
spur with a single point to it like a nail. He had a handsome, clean-cut
face, his shaven head was bared out of courtesy, and at his feet lay his
headgear, a blue-velvet cap, with a golden star and crescent embroidered
upon it, and a great round straw hat adorned with red leather such as
the Hausas farther east make. He was a chief, every inch of him. And his
manners were those of a courtly gentleman too. He did not screech and
howl like the men on the wharf, though he was manifestly troubled and
desperately in earnest; but, sitting there on the deck of the little
steamer, with the various odds and ends of life scattered around him,
he stated his case, through an interpreter, to the young Commissioner
seated on the hen-coop and taking down every word. When it was done he
was assured that the Governor should be told all about it, and now rose
with an air of intense relief. He had thrown his burden on responsible
shoulders, and had time to think about the white woman who was looking
on. He had seen white men before, quite a number, but never had he seen
a white woman, and so he turned and looked at me gravely, with not half
the rude curiosity with which I felt I had been steadily regarding him.
I should like to have been a white woman worth looking at, instead of
which I was horribly conscious that the coal dust was in my hair, that
my hands had but recently grasped the greasy handrail of those steps
across the boiler, and that my skirts had picked up most of the
multifarious messes that were to be gathered there and on the unclean
deck. There is no doubt skirts should not come much below the knees in
the bush.
“He wishes to make his compliments to you,” said the interpreter, and
the grave and silent Chief, with a little, low murmur, took my hand in
both his delicate, cold, black ones, held it for a moment with his
head just a little bent, and then went his way, and I felt I had been
complimented indeed.
The chief of Kantora, having done all he came to do, swam his horses
across the river, trusting, I suppose, to the noise made by his numerous
followers to scare away the crocodiles, and we went up the river to
Kossun, which is within two miles of Yarba Tenda, where the British
river ends. At Kossun there is a French factory only, and that managed
by a black man, and here are the very beginnings of the groundnut trade.
All around was vivid green--green on the bank, green reflected in the
clear waters of the river; the sun was only just rising, the air was
cool, and grey mists like a bridal veil rent with golden beams lay
across the water; only by the factory was a patch of brown, enhancing
the greenery that was all around it.
[Illustration: 0069]
The groundnut grows on a vine, and behind the factory this was all
garnered into great heaps, and surrounded by crinted fences until time
should be found to comb out the nuts. In the empty fields shy women,
who dared not lift their faces to look at the strange, white woman, were
gleaning, and the little, naked children were frankly afraid, and ran
shrieking from the horrid sight. And just behind the factory were little
enclosures of neatly plaited straw, and each of these contained a man's
crop ready waiting to be valued and bought by the trader. Kossun was
the only place where I saw the nuts as they belonged to the grower. All
along the river there were heaps of them, looking like young mountains,
but all these heaps were trader's property. At Nianimaroo, on the lower
river, I saw a heap, which the pleased proprietor told me was worth
£1000. He apparently had finished his heap, and was waiting to send it
down the river, but everywhere else men, picturesque in fluttering rags
or grotesque in cast-off European garments, were bringing calabashes and
sacks of groundnuts to add to the heaps; and, since they cannot walk on
the yielding nuts, which are like so many pebbles under their bare feet,
little board ladders or steps of filled sacks were placed for them to
run up. And no sooner were the heaps piled up than they had to be dug
out again.
At Fatta Tenda, on the way down, having got rid of her cargo and her
deck passengers, the _Mungo Park_ began to load again with groundnuts;
and men were busy through all the burning hot midday digging into the
groundnut heap, filling up sacks, and as the sacks were filled stalwart,
half-naked black men, like a line of ants, tramped laden down the steep
bank and poured their loads into the steamer's hold in a cloud of gritty
dust that penetrated everywhere. The trader told me that when he wanted
labourers he appealed to one of the principal men who live in the town
a mile or so behind the wharf, and he sent in his “family,” who are paid
at the rate of a shilling a day. It is very, very doubtful whether much
of that shilling ever reaches the man who actually does the hard work.
Things move slowly in the Gambia as in all Africa, and “family” is
probably a euphonious term for household slave. After all, it is
possibly only like the system of serfdom that existed in Europe in days
gone by and will not exist very long here, for knowledge is coming,
though it comes slowly, and with wealth pouring into the country and
a Commissioner to appeal to in cases of oppression the black man
will presently free himself. Even the women are already beginning to
understand the difference. The morals of the country, be it remembered,
are the primitive morals of a primitive people. A man may have four
legal wives by Mohammedan law. He may have ever so many concubines, who
add to his dignity; and then, if he is a big man--this was vouched
for by the official native interpreter, who joined his Commissioner at
M'Carthy--he has ever so many more women in his household, and these he
expects to have children.
It is their business and he sees that they do it, and the children
belong to him no matter who is the father. Children, it will be seen,
are an asset, and the woman is now beginning to understand that the
children are hers alone, and again and again a troubled woman, angry and
tearful, walks miles to appeal to the travelling Commissioner, such and
such a man, her master has taken away her children and she has heard
that the great white master will restore them to her. And in most cases
the great white master, who has probably a laughing, round, boyish
face, fancies he has not a desire above good shooting, and speaks of
the country as “poisonous,” does all that is expected of him and often a
good deal more also.
[Illustration: 0073]
And yet, only ten years ago, they were very doubtful still about the
white man's protectorate in the Gambia, as graves in the Bathurst
cemetery testify. Then was the last rising, when the district of
San-nian Kunta was very disaffected, and two Commissioners, Mr Sitwell
and Mr Silva, were sent with twelve native police to put matters
straight. After the wont of the English, they despised their enemy and
marched into a hostile village with the ammunition boxes screwed down,
sat themselves down under a tree, and called on the Chief and village
elders to come up before them. But the chief and elders did no such
thing. Hidden in the surrounding bush, they replied with a volley
from their long Danes, killing both the Commissioners and most of the
policemen, but one escaping got away to the next Commissioner, a young
fellow named Price. Now, Mr Price had only four policemen, but he was by
no means sure of the death of his comrades, so promptly he sent off to
headquarters for help, and without delay marched back to the disaffected
village. The white men were dead and shockingly mutilated, but with his
four faithful policemen he brought their remains back for decent burial.
He did not know what moment he might not be attacked. He had before him
as object lessons in savage warfare the dead bodies of his comrades. He
had to march through thick bush, and they say at the end of that day's
work young Mr Price's hair turned white. Punishment came, of course.
Six months later the new Governor, Sir George Denton, with a company
of W.A.F.F.'s--West African Field Force--marched to that disaffected
village; the chief was deposed and exiled, and peace has reigned ever
since.
And now much farther away from Bathurst a woman may go through the
country by herself in perfect safety. All the towns are still from one
to four miles back from the tenda, away in the bush, from the old-time
notion I suppose that there was danger to be dreaded by the great
waterway, and early in the morning I used to take the narrow track
through the long grass which was many feet above my head, and go and see
primitive native life.
Up at the head of the river our steamer filled rapidly. When our holds
were full the groundnuts were put in sacks and piled on the decks fore
and aft, half-way up the masts, almost to the tops of the funnels, and
the only place that was not groundnuts was the little cabin and the deck
on top. There were £600 worth of groundnuts on board the _Mungo Park_,
and we stowed on top of them passengers, men and women, and all their
multifarious belongings, and then proceeded to pick up lighters also
laden with groundnuts bound down the river.
Towards the evening of the second day of our homeward journey we came to
a big creek down which was being poled by six men a red lighter, deep in
the water and laden to the very brim with groundnuts. This the steamer
was to tow behind. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The heavily
laden lighter drifted first to one side and then to the other and
threatened to fill, and the Commissioner's interpreter, sitting on deck,
told me a long story of how here in the river there is a devil that will
not allow a steamer or a cutter to go past unless the owner dances to
placate him. If he do not care to dance himself he must pay someone else
to dance for him. Unless someone dances, the engines may work, the sails
may fill, but that vessel will not go ahead till the river devil has
his toll. No one danced on board the _Mungo Park_, unless the black
captain's prancing about and shaking his fist and shouting what sounded
like blood-curdling threats at the skipper of the lighter might be
construed into dancing. If so, it had not the desired effect, for the
heavy lighter wouldn't steer, and presently the captain decided to tow
it alongside. The darkness fell; all around us was the wide, weird, dark
river, with the green starboard light just falling upon the mast of the
lighter alongside, and for a few brief moments there was silence and
peace, for the lighter was towing all right at last. Then the mast bent
forward suddenly, there was a stifled, strangled cry, the captain gave a
wild yell, the engines were stopped, and there was no more lighter, only
the smooth dark water was rough with floating groundnuts and the river
devil had taken his toll. Five of the crew had jumped for the _Mungo
Park_ and reached her, but the sixth, a tall Man-dingo, wrapped in a
blue cloth, had gone down a prey for the wicked crocodiles or the cruel,
strong undercurrents. They launched a boat and we felt our impotence and
the vastness of the river, for they only had a hurricane lantern and it
looked but a tiny speck on the waste of dark waters. The boat went up
and down flashing its feeble light. Here was a patch of groundnuts,
here a floating calabash, here a cloth, but the lighter and the man were
gone, and we went on our way, easily enough now, because, of course, the
steamer had paid toll.
There are the beginnings, it seems to me, in the groundnut trade of the
Gambia, of what may be in the future a very great industry. True, the
value of the groundnut is regulated by the price of cotton-seed oil,
for which the oil pressed from the groundnut makes a very excellent
substitute. Last year the Gambia's groundnuts, the harvest of the
simplest, most ignorant peasants but one remove from savagery, was worth
between £500,000 and £600,000, and not one-twentieth of the soil was
cultivated, but the colony's existence was fairly justified. The greater
part of this crop goes into French hands and is exported to Marseilles,
where it is made into the finer sorts of soap. What wonder then if the
French cast longing eyes upon the mighty river, for not only is the land
around it rich, but they have spent large sums upon railways for their
great colony of Senegal, and had they the Gambia as well they would
have water carriage for both their imports and exports even in the dry
season, and in the rains they could bring their heavy goods far far
inland.
I realised all this as I came back to Bathurst with the dust from the
groundnuts in my hair and eyes and nostrils, and dresses that had not
been worn an hour before they were shrieking for the washtub. But what
did a little discomfort matter?
I returned in time for the Christmas and New-Year festivities. On
Christmas night all the English in the colony dined at Government House
to celebrate the festival. Exiles all, they would have said. I have been
told that I judge the English in West Africa a little hardly, and of
course I realise all the bitterness of divided homes, especially at this
season that should be one of family reunions. But after all the English
make their life in West Africa far harder than they need. Dimly I saw
this on my visit to the Gambia; slowly the feeling grew upon me till,
when I left the Coast eight months later, I was fully convinced that if
England is to hold her pride of place as a colonising nation with the
French and Germans, she must make less of this exile theory and more of
a home in these outlands. The doctors tell me this is impossible, and
of course I must bow to the doctors' opinion, but it is saying in
effect--which I will not allow for a moment--that the French and
Germans--and especially the French and German women--are far better than
the English.
Here in the Gambia I began to think it, and the fact was driven in more
emphatically as I went down the Coast. The Englishman makes great moan,
but after all he holds a position in West Africa the like of which he
could not dream of in England. He is the superior, the ruler; men bow
down before him and rush to do his bidding--he who would have a suburban
house and two maid-servants in the old country, lives in barbaric
splendour. Of course it is quite possible he prefers the suburban house
and two maid-servants and his wife. And there, of course, the crux of
the matter lies. Why, I know not, but English women are regarded as
heroines and martyrs who go out to West Africa with their husbands.
Possibly it is because I am an Australian and have had a harder
bringing-up that I resent very much the supposition that a woman cannot
go where a man can. From the time I was a little girl I have seen women
go as a matter of course to the back-blocks with their husbands, and if,
barring a few exceptions, they did not stay there, we all supposed not
that it was the country that did not agree with them, but the husband.
We all know there are husbands and wives who do not agree. And I can
assure you, for I know both, life in the back-blocks in Australia,
life in many of the towns of Australia, with its heat and its want of
service, is far harder for a woman than it is in West Africa. Yet here
in the Gambia and all along the Coast was the same eternal cry wherever
there was a woman, “How long can she stay?”
The difference between the French and the English views on this vexed
question was exemplified by the Commissioner's view and the French
trader's. I have already given the former. Said the latter, “Of course
my wife will come out. Why should she not. She is just waiting till
the baby is a month old. What is the good of a wife to me in Paris? The
rains? Of course she will stay the rains. It is only the English who are
afraid of the rainy season.” And I was sorry for the little contempt
he put into his voice when he spoke of the English fear. I know this
opinion of mine will bring down upon my devoted head a storm of wrath
from West-Coast officials, but whether the Coast is healthy or not there
is no denying the fact that the nation who takes its women is far more
likely to hold a country, and in that the French and Germans are beating
us hands down.
But this I only realised dimly during my stay in the Gambia. I was
to leave on New Year's Day and on New Year's Eve we all went to the
barracks of the W.A.F.F.'s to see the New Year in. And then in the soft,
warm night the Governor and I went back to Government House. The stars
were like points of gold, the sky was like dark-blue velvet, and against
it the graceful palms stood out like splashes of ink, the water washed
softly against the shore, there was the ceaseless hum of insects in the
air, and from the native town behind came a beating of tom-toms subdued
by the distance. The sentry started out of the shadow at the gate as the
rickshaws arrived, and there came his guttural hail, “Who goes dere?”
“Friend,” said the Governor's voice. It was commonplace, everyday to
him.
“Pass friend and all's well,” came the answer, and we went in and up the
steps; but surely, I thought, it was a very good omen, a very good omen
indeed. “Pass friend and all's well.” I was leaving that day that had
not yet dawned; I was going down the Coast and all should be well.