_To Dodowah by motor lorry--Orchard-bush country--Negro tortures--The
Basel Mission factor--A personally conducted tour--Great hospitality--A
dinner by moonlight--Plan a night journey--The roadway by
moonlight--Barbarous hymns--Carriers who “no be fit” once more--Honesty
of the African carrier--Extraordinary obedience--The leopard that
cried at Akway Pool--A hard-hearted slave-driver--Krobo Hill--Blood
fetishes--Terror of the carriers--Story of the hill--The dawning of a
new day--Unexplained disappearances--Akuse at last--The arrival of a
whirlwind--The fire on Krobo Hill._
Inland from Accra the country is what they call orchard bush, that is
to say, it was rather flat country sloping in gradual gradation to the
hills behind, covered now, in the end of the dry season, with yellow
grass and dotted all over with trees, not close together as in the
forest country but just far enough apart to give it a pleasant,
park-like look. There were great tall ant heaps too, or rather the homes
of the termite, the white ant which is not an ant at all I believe, and
these reminded me of the ghastly form of torture sometimes perpetrated
by the negroes. A Provincial Commissioner once told me that he had
several times come across on these hills, which are often ten or twelve
or twenty feet high, the skeleton of a man who had undoubtedly been
fastened there while he was alive; and another went one better and
told me how another form of torture was to place a man on the ant heap
without any fastening whatever and then to surround it with men and
women with knives, so that when he tried to escape he was promptly
driven back. In this last case I am glad to think that the torturers
are bound to have run their share of risk, and must have received many
a good hard nip. But the negro mind seems to rather revel in secret
societies, trial by ordeal, and tortures. Christianity, the religion of
love and pity, has been preached on the Coast for many a long day now,
and yet in this year of our Lord 1911 there is behind the Church of
England in Accra, down on the sea beach, a rock which is generally
known as Sacrifice Rock, and here those who know declare that every
yam festival, which takes place just after the rains in September, they
sacrifice a girl in order that the crops may not fail.
[Illustration: 0291]
Riding in a lorry I had plenty of time to consider these matters. My
kind Basel Mission Factory _haus-frau_ had provided me with luncheon to
eat by the way, and I knew that all my goods and chattels would arrive
safely at their destination without my having to worry about them. Grant
was the only servant I had left. I had dismissed the cook, and Zacco had
quarrelled with Grant and dismissed himself, and so while I sat on the
front seat of the lorry alongside the negro driver, Grant and my goods
and chattels were packed away in odd corners on top of the merchandise
that was going to Dodowah. The road was bad, deeply cut by the passing
of these lorries, but I arrived there about midday and was cordially
received by a Basel Mission Factory man who told me my carriers had
arrived, and suggested I should come to his house and have luncheon.
He was a kindly, fair-haired young German who had been in the Colony
about a month and was learning English on Kroo-boy lines. The result was
a little startling, but as it was our only means of communication I was
obliged to make the best of it.
My carriers had been here waiting for me since Friday; this was Monday,
and they wanted “sissy” money. I paid up and declared I should start the
moment they had broken their fast. Meanwhile my German friend undertook
to show me the sights.
Dodowah is a very pretty little place at the foot of the hills; it is
embowered in palm trees and is the centre of the cocoa industry. In the
yard of the factory the cocoa was lying drying in the blazing sun,
and when I had been duly instructed in its various qualities, my host
suggested I should “walk small.”
“I take you my house.”
It was very kind of him, but I was cautious. I do not like walking in
the blazing noonday.
“How far is it?” I asked.
“Small, small,” said he, with conviction.
Grant was a very different person now from the boy in a pink pyjama
coat, meek and mild and bullied by Kwesi, whom I had engaged in the
distant past. He was my body servant; evidently supposed by everyone
else who came in contact with me to hold a position of high trust, and
thinking no end of himself. So to him I gave strict instructions. All
the loads were to start at once, the hammock-boys were to follow me to
the factor's house, and he was to go on with the carriers. We had left
the protection of the “p'lice” behind, and on the whole I thought I
could do just as well without.
So I set out with my new friend and accompanied by my new headman who
evidently thought it his duty to follow in my wake, though he could
understand no English and I could understand not one word of his tongue.
That walk remains in my mind as one long nightmare; I only did one
worse, and then I thought I must be going to die. We left the plain
country and plunged uphill, it was blazing noonday in April, and though
there were palms and much growth on either side of the road, on the road
itself was not a particle of shade. Still we went up and up and up.
“I show you, I show you,” said my friend.
Frankly I wished he wouldn't. It was a splendid view from that hillside,
with the town nestling embowered in palms at our feet, but a personally
conducted walking-tour on the Coast at midday on an April day was the
very last thing I desired.
I was dripping with perspiration, I was panting and breathless before
we had been on that road five minutes; in the next five I would have
bartered all my prospects in Africa for a glass of iced water, and then
my companion turned. “You like go through bushway, short cut.” It looked
cooler, so I feebly assented and we turned into the bush which was so
thin it did not shut out the sun, and the walking was very much rougher.
I had given up all hopes of ever coming to the end when my companion
stopped, flung up his head like a young war-horse, and said cheerfully,
“Oh I tink I go lookum road.”
I sank down on a log; my new headman, an awful-looking ruffian, stood
beside me, and that aggressively active young German went plunging about
the bush till he returned still cheerful and remarking, “I tink we lose
way. We go back.”
I draw a veil over the remainder of that walk. We did arrive at his
house finally after two and a half hours' march over very rough country,
and then he gave me wine to drink and fed me and was good to me, but I
was utterly tired out and didn't care for the moment what became of me.
He showed me a bedroom and I lay down and slept, rose up and had a bath,
and felt as if I might perhaps face the world again. At half-past four
we had some tea and I contemplated all my new hammock-boys sitting in
a row under some palm trees on the other side of the road. They looked
strapping, big, strong men, and I was thankful, for Akuse they said was
twenty-seven miles away and I had to do it in one march. The question
was, when I should start?
“If you start now,” said the factor, “you get there one--half-past one
in the morning--very good time.”
Now I really could not agree with him. To launch yourself on totally
unknown people at halfpast one in the morning and ask them to take you
in is not, I think, calculated to place you in a favourable light, and
I demurred. But what was I to do? I did not want to inflict myself any
longer on this hospitable young man, and already I had paid my carriers
for four days while they did nothing. It was a full moon. Last night had
been gorgeous; this night promised to be as fine. I asked the question,
why could I not travel all night?
“Oh yes, moon be fine too much”; and then he went on to tell me a
long story about his Kroo boys being frightened to travel that road by
themselves. “But it all be foolishness.” It took me so long to discover
the meaning of the words that I really paid no attention to the gist of
what he was saying, besides I could not see that a Kroo boy being afraid
was any reason why I should be. Finally we figured it out that I should
start at nine o'clock, which would bring me to Akuse at a little after
six in the morning. This did not seem so bad, and I agreed and cordially
thanked the kindness which made him plan a nice little dinner in the
moonlight on the verandah. It comes back to me as one of the most unique
dinners I ever had; we had no other light but that of the moon, the
gorgeous moonlight of the Tropics. It shone silver on the fronds of the
palms, the mountains loomed dimly mysterious like mountains in a dream,
and the road that ran past the house lay clear and still and warm in the
white light.
My host asked leave to dine in a cap; he said the moon gave him a
headache, and strongly advised me to do likewise, but though I have
heard other people say the moon affects them in that manner, it never
troubles me and I declined. And he translated his German grace into
English for my benefit, and I could not even smile so kindly was the
intention; and we ate fruit on the verandah, and nine o'clock came and I
had the top taken off my hammock and started.
“Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho,” cried the hammock-boys, clapping their hands
as they went at a fast trot, far faster than the ordinary man could walk
without any burden on his head, and we were off to Akuse and the Volta.
The night was as light as day, and it never occurred to me that there
was any danger in the path. We went through the town, and here and there
a gleam of fire showed, and here and there was a yellow light in one
of the window places, and the people were in groups in the streets,
dancing, singing, or merely looking on. Generally they sang, and no one
knows how truly barbaric a hymn can sound sung by a line of lightly clad
people keeping time with hands and feet to the music. It might have been
a war song, it might have been a wail for those about to die; it was,
I realised with a start, “Jesu, lover of my soul,” in the vernacular. I
suppose the missionaries know best, but it always seems to me that the
latest music-hall favourite would do better for negro purposes than
these hymns that have been endeared to most of us by old association.
These new men were splendid hammock-men; they stopped for no man, and
the groups melted before them.
A happy peasant people were these, apparently with just that touch of
mysterious sadness about them that is with all peasant peoples. Their
own sorrows they must have, of course, but they are not forced upon the
passer-by as are the sordid sorrows of the great cities of the civilised
world. At the outside ring of these dancers hung no mean and hungry
wretches having neither part nor parcel with the singers.
Through the town and out into the open country we went, and the trees
made shadows clear-cut on the road like splashes of ink, or, where the
foliage was less dense, the leaves barely moving in the still night air
made a tracery as of lace work on the road beneath, and there was
the soft, sleepy murmur of the birds, and the ceaseless skirl of the
insects. Occasionally came another sound, penetrating, weird, rather
awe-inspiring, the cry of the leopard, but the hammock-boys took no
heed--it was moonlight and there were eight of them.
“Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho.” They clapped their hands and sang choruses,
and by the time we arrived at the big village of Angomeda, a couple of
hours out, I was fairly purring with satisfaction. I have noticed that
when things were going well with me I was always somewhat inclined to
give all the credit to my perfect management; when they went wrong
I laid the blame on Providence, my headman, or any other responsible
person within reach. Now my self-satisfaction received a nasty shock.
The village of Angomeda was lying asleep in the moonlight. The brown
thatch glistened with moisture, the gates of the compounds and the doors
of the houses were fast shut; only from under the dark shadow of a
great shade-tree in the centre of the village came something white which
resolved itself into Grant apologetic and aggrieved.
“Carriers go sleep here, Ma. They say they no fit go by night.”
My fine new carriers “no fit.” How are the mighty fallen! And I had
imagined them pretty nearly at Akuse by now! Clearly, they could not be
allowed to stay here. I have done a good many unpleasant things, but
I really did not feel I could arrive at Akuse at six o'clock in the
morning without a change of clothing.
But I restrained myself for the moment.
“Why?”
“I not knowing, Ma.”
I debated a moment. I realised the situation. I was a woman miles from
any white man, and I could not speak one word of the language. Still,
I had sent those carriers to Akuse and I could not afford to be defied,
therefore I alighted.
“Where are those carriers?”
Nine pointing fingers indicated the house. Evidently the hammock-boys
had been here before, and one of them pushed open a door in the wall.
Black shadows and silver-white light was that compound. Heaped in the
middle, not to be mistaken, were my loads, and from under the deeper
shadows beneath the surrounding sheds came tumbling black figures which
might or might not have been my erring carriers. I did not know them
from the people about them, neither did I know one word of their
language, and only one of my hammock-boys spoke any pigeon English. But
that consideration did not stay me. I singled out my headman, and him
I addressed at length and gave him to understand that I was pained and
surprised at such conduct. Never in the course of a long career had I
come across carriers who slept when they should have been on the
road, and before I was half-way through the harangue those sleepy and
reluctant men and women were picking up the loads. I confess I had been
doubtful. Why should these carriers pay any attention to me? Now that I
know what they risked by their obedience I have no words to express my
astonishment. I did not know the carriers, but I did know the loads, and
before I got into my hammock I stood at the gate and counted them all
out. I need not have worried. The African carrier is the most honest man
I have ever met. Never have I lost the smallest trifle entrusted to him.
When my goods were well on the road I got into my hammock and started
again.
Oh, such a night! On such a night as this Romeo wooed Juliet, on such a
night came the Queen of the Fairies to see charm even in the frolicsome
Bottom.
All the glories of the ages, all the delights of the world were in that
night. The song of the carriers took on a softness and a richness
born of the open spaces of the earth and the glorious night, and for
accompaniment was the pad-pad of their feet in the dust of the roadway,
and in one long, musical monotonous cadence the cheep of the insects,
and again a sharper note, the cry of a bat or night bird.
It was orchard-bush country that lay outspread in the white light, with
here and there a cocoa plantation. Here a tree cast a dark shadow across
the road, and there was a watercourse through which the feet of the
men splashed--only in German West Africa may you always count on a
bridge--and, again, the trees would grow close and tunnel-like over the
road with only an occasional gleam of moonlight breaking through. But
always the hammock-boys kept steadily on, and the carriers kept up as
never before in two hundred miles of travel had carriers kept up. We
went through sleeping villages with whitewashed mud walls and thatched
roofs gleaming wetly, and even the dogs and the goats were asleep.
It was midnight. It was long after midnight; the moon was still high and
bright, like a great globe of silver, but there had come over the night
that subtle change that comes when night and morning meet. It was night
no longer; nothing tangible had changed, but it was morning. The twitter
of the birds, the cry of the insects, had something of activity in it;
the night had passed, another day had come, though the dawning was hours
away. And still the men went steadily on.
A great square hill rose up on the horizon, and we came to a clump of
trees where the moonlight was shut out altogether; we passed through
water, and it was pitch-dark, with just a gleam of moonlight here and
there to show how dense was that darkness. It was Akway Pool, and a
leopard was crying in the thick bush close beside it. It was uncanny,
it was weird; all the terror that I had missed till now in Africa came
creeping over me, and the men were singing no longer. Very carefully
they stepped, and the pool was so deep that lying strung up in the
hammock I could still have touched the water with my hand. Could it be
only a leopard that was crying so? Might it not be something even worse,
something born of the deep, dark pool, and the night? Slowly we went up
out of the water, and we stood a moment under the shade of the trees,
but with the white light within reach, and Krobo Hill loomed up ahead
against the dark horizon. The only hammock-boy who could make himself
understood came up.
“Mammy, man be tired. We stop here small.”
It was a reasonable request, but the leopard was crying still, and the
gloom and fear of the pool was upon me.
“No, go on.” They might have defied me, but they went on, and to my
surprise, my very great surprise, the carriers were still with us.
Presently we were out in the moonlight again; I had got the better of my
fears and repented me. “Wait small now.”
“No, Mammy,” came the answer, “this be bad place,” and they went on
swiftly, singing and shouting as if to keep their courage up, or, as
I gathered afterwards, to give the impression of a great company. Only
afterwards did I know what I had done that night. Krobo Hill grew larger
and larger at every step, and on Krobo Hill was one of the worst, if not
the worst blood fetish in West Africa. Every Krobo youth before he
could become a man and choose a wife had to kill a man, and he did it
generally on Krobo Hill. There the fetish priests held great orgies, and
for their ghastly ceremonies and initiations they caught any stranger
who was reckless enough to pass the hill. How they killed him was a
mystery; some said with tortures, some that only his head was cut off.
But the fear in the country grew, and at the end of the last century the
British Government interfered; they took Krobo Hill and scattered the
fetish priests and their abominations, and they declared the country
safe. But the negro revels in mystery and horror, and the fear of the
hill still lingers in the minds of the people; every now and then a man
disappears and the fear is justified. Only three years ago a negro
clerk on his bicycle was traced to that hill and no further trace of him
found. His hat was in the road, and the Krobos declared that the great
white baboons that infest the hill had taken him, but it is hardly
reasonable to suppose that the baboons would have any use for a bicycle,
whereas he, strong and young, and his bicycle, together emblems of
strength and swiftness, made a very fitting offering to accompany to
his last resting-place the dead chief whose obsequies the Krobos were
celebrating at the time. Always there are rumours of disappearances,
less known men and women than a Government clerk and scholar, and always
the people know there is need of men and women for the sacrifices,
sacrifices to ensure a plenteous harvest, a good fishing, brave men, and
fruitful women.
My men were afraid--even I, who could not understand the reason, grasped
that fact; very naturally afraid, for it was quite within the bounds of
possibility that a straggler might be cut off.
“Would they have touched me?” I asked afterwards.
“Not with your men round you. Some might escape, and the vengeance would
have been terrible.”
“But if I had been by myself?”
“Ah, then they might have said that the baboons had taken you; but you
would not have been by yourself.”
No, it was extremely unlikely I should be here by myself, but here were
my men, sixteen strong and afraid. Akway Pool had been the last water
within a safe distance from the hill, and I had not let them halt; now
they dared not. A light appeared on the hill, just a point of flickering
fire on the ridge, above us now, and I hailed it as a nice friendly
gleam telling of human habitation and home, but the men sang and shouted
louder than ever. I offered to stop, but the answer was always the same:
“This be bad place, Mammy. We go.”
At last, without asking my leave, they put down the hammock, and the
carriers flung themselves down panting.
“We stop small, Mammy”; and I sat on my box and watched the great,
sinewy men with strapping shoulders as they lay on the ground resting.
They had been afraid I was sure, and I knew no reason for their fear.
But the night was past and it was morning, morning now though it was
only half-past three and the sun would not be up till close on six
o'clock. On again. The moon had swung low to the dawn, and the gathering
clouds made it darker than it had yet been, while the stars that peeped
between the clouds were like flakes of newly washed silver. People began
to pass us, ghostlike figures in the gloom. Greetings were exchanged,
news was shouted from one party to the other, and I, in spite of the
discomfort of the hammock, was dead with sleep, and kept dropping into
oblivion and waking with a start to the wonder and strangeness of my
surroundings. Deeper and deeper grew the oblivion in the darkness that
precedes the dawn, till I wakened suddenly to find myself underneath a
European bungalow, and knew that for the first time in my experience of
African travel I had arrived nearly two hours before I expected to.
My people were wild with delight and triumph. I had forced them to come
through the Krobo country by night, but my authority did not suffice to
keep them quiet now they had come through in safety. They chattered and
shouted and yelled, and a policeman who was doing sentry outside the
Provincial Commissioner's bungalow started to race upstairs. I tried to
stop him, and might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind. Indeed, when
I heard him hammering on the door I was strongly of opinion that the
Commissioner would think that the whirlwind had arrived. But presently
down those steps came a very big Scotchman in a dressing-gown, with his
hair on end, just roused from his sleep, and he resolved himself into
one of those courteous, kindly gentlemen England is blessed with as
representatives in the dark corners of the earth.
Did he reproach me? Not at all. He perjured himself so far as to say he
was glad to see me, and he took me upstairs and gave me whisky-and-soda
because it was so late, and then tea and fruit because it was so early.
And then in the dawning I looked out over Krobo Hill, and my host told
me its story.
“I cleared them out years ago. I have no doubt they have their blood
sacrifices somewhere, but not on Krobo Hill. But the people are still
afraid.”
“I saw a fire there last night.”
He shook his head unbelieving.
“Impossible; there is a fine of fifty pounds for anyone found on Krobo
Hill.”
The dawn had come and the sun was rising rosy and golden. The night lay
behind in the west.
I looked out of the window at the way I had come and wondered. I am
always looking back in life and wondering. Perhaps it would be a dull
life where there are no pitfalls to be passed, no rocks to climb over.
“I see smoke there now.” In the clear morning air it was going up in a
long spiral; but again my host shook his head.
“Only a cloud.”
But there were glasses lying on the table, and I looked through them and
there was smoke on Krobo Hill.
So I think my men were right to fear, and I am lost in wonder when I
remember they obeyed me and came on when they feared.
And then when the sun had risen and another hot day fairly begun, I went
over to the D.C.'s house; he had a wife, and they were kindly putting
me up, and I had breakfast and a bath and went to bed and slept I really
think more soundly than I have ever in my life slept before.