PART IV

MORAL AND MATERIAL PROGRESS

I.—The Products of the Oil Palm.

II.—The Production of Rubber.

III.—The Production of Cocoa.

IV.—The Progress of Christian Missions.

I

THE PRODUCTS OF THE OIL PALM

With the date palm we have been long familiar, the cocoa-nut palm

likewise, and those too which decorate our ball-rooms, galleries and

banqueting halls, we greet as delightsome friends, but what is the oil

palm—the Eloesis Guineensis of West Africa? It is said that five thousand

years ago its sap was used by the Egyptians for the purpose of embalming

the bodies of their great dead. To-day by its aid we travel thousands of

miles at express rate; it has been so handled by modern science that it

enters largely into our diet; the merchants in Hamburg and Liverpool make

fortunes out of it; millions of coloured people live by it, and yet it is

barely known to the civilized community. A fortnight’s fairly pleasant

steam from Liverpool brings the traveller in sight of the high red clay

coast line of Sierra Leone, and there the oil palm first greets the

traveller in all its luxuriant grandeur.

[Sidenote: PROPAGATING THE OIL PALM]

From Freetown away down the coast as far as San Paul de Loanda, the

traveller is never far from the home of the oil palm—the most valuable

tree of West Africa—probably the most prolific source of human sustenance

in the world. She greets the traveller everywhere as he steps ashore; she

invites him to the cool shade of her avenues leading to some hospitable

bungalow; she affords a shelter at intervals along the scorching dusty

track—as welcome as an oasis of the desert; she waves at him vigorously

from the hill-top like some fluttering banner, or gently nods her

graceful plumes in the still valley; she stands as sentinel on the

outskirts of the native village, or like some giant memorial column on

the plain. All nature strikes the African traveller dumb with admiration,

but above all in entrancing loveliness the graceful oil palm reigns

supreme.

To the parched and weary she is at once meat and drink and friendly

shelter. Her palm cabbage and nut oil are no less palatable than her

foaming fresh-drawn wine, and if no other home affords, her branches

offer a temporary and not comfortless dwelling. She provides her guest

with oil to lubricate his gun, with fibre to plug his boat if it springs

a leak; her fronds serve as a weapon to combat the infinite torment of

flies, or interlaced as a basket to carry a meal. To her the native goes

for a tool or a cooking-utensil, a mat or a loin cloth, a basket or a

brush, a fishing net or a rope, a torch or a musical instrument, a roof

or a wall. To him she is a necessity, to the traveller a luxury, to the

merchant a fortune, to the artist a subject full of charm.

[Illustration: AN AVENUE OF OIL PALMS, 10 YEARS’ GROWTH.]

Professor Wyndham Dunstan has stated that the oil palm “does not occur

thickly much beyond 200 miles from the coast.” Since those words were

written we have learnt that whole forests of the oil palm exist over a

thousand miles from the coast. It thrives throughout West Africa wherever

the atmosphere is sufficiently humid, but it loves best of all the

swampy valleys of Sherboro Island and Nigeria, the cocoa farms of San

Thomé, the Gold Coast and the Congo, which are by it provided with the

necessary protection from the scorching sun and from the fierce tornadoes

which sweep periodically over the land. In the strictest sense the oil

palm has never yet been an object of cultivation in West Africa, neither

is it in the literal sense self-propagating. The housewife, separating

the fibrous pericarp from the nuts, tosses the latter aside or scatters

the residue on to the rubbish heap behind the hut, with the inevitable

result of an early and vigorous crop of young palms. In the course of

time the inhabitants of the village, according to African custom, pick

up not only their beds, but also their huts, and walk, perhaps something

less than a mile away, where they clear another piece of forest land

and build up another village. The old site, thus abandoned to nature,

is quickly covered with vigorous growth, but in the race for supremacy

the graceful palms lead the way and become the communal property of the

former inhabitants.

The screeching grey parrot of West Africa with its horny bill tears the

oily fruit from the bunch, after consuming most of the oleaginous fibres

of the pericarp, drops the nuts whilst flying, far and wide. These, in

turn, add to Africa’s economic wealth, and thus do man and animal join in

spreading through ever wider regions the growth of the oil palm.

Within ten years the tree begins to push out its bunches of fruit,

beginning with tiny bunches of the size, shape and appearance of an

ordinary bunch of black grapes. Some trees bear in eight years, and an

earlier date still is claimed for certain varieties, but the fruit at

this stage seldom yields any appreciable quantity of oil. From fifteen

onwards to a hundred and twenty years, the palm plantations give forth

an almost continuous supply of fruit, every tree bearing twice a year.

In the rainy season the supply is most abundant, but in the second

period, known by many as the “short wet” season there is a fair secondary

harvest. All the trees do not, however, bear at the same time, and in

many areas of the Equatorial regions where the seasons are not sharply

defined or always regular, the supply of nuts is never exhausted.

In appearance a head of fruit resembles a huge bunch of grapes with

long protecting thorns protruding between each nut, and a good bunch

will contain from 1500 to 2000 nuts. A single fruit in appearance is

about the size of a large date, and the pericarp is composed of fibre

matted closely together with a yellow solidified oil, which fibrous

substance envelops a nut or “stone”; this in turn encloses a kernel of

the size and shape of a large hazel kernel, in appearance and composition

indistinguishable from the well-known “Brazil nut.” From the fibre a dark

reddish oil is obtained, whilst the kernels that are shipped to Europe

yield a finer white oil.

[Sidenote: COLLECTING THE NUTS]

The almost universal practice amongst the natives in harvesting the nuts

is to climb the tree by walking up the trunk with the aid of a loop of

stout creeper. Arriving at the top at a height of sixty or eighty feet,

the man deals a few vigorous blows with an axe which severs the bunch

or bunches from the tree and they then fall to the ground. As the whole

family usually takes part in the production of oil and in the division

of labour, the man, having cut down the fruit, descends the tree, picks

up his protective spear or gun, and returns home, closely followed by

the wife and daughters, who transport the bunches of nuts in the wicker

baskets which they have woven in their spare moments.

In every colony a similar process is adopted to separate the fruit from

the parent stem. Until it is over ripe, the fruit not only adheres firmly

to its stem but the porcupine thorns sometimes two inches long, make

separation anything but a pleasant task. The tribes everywhere collect

the clusters or bunches into heaps and cover them with plantain or banana

leaves, exposing them to the sun for from three to six days, the effect

of which is that the nuts, subjected to the hot rays of a tropical sun

and cut off from the refreshing sustenance of the mother tree, lose their

tenacious grip and readily drop away from their stem.

The methods adopted to force the oil from the fibrous pericarp differ

considerably in the several political divisions of West Africa. Roughly,

however, they fall into two divisions: (_a_) by fermentation; (_b_) by

boiling; and in certain parts of the Kroo Coast by a combination of both

methods.

The fermenting process is carried out by placing a large quantity of

separated, but hard, nuts into a hole about four feet deep, this having

been first lined with plantain leaves. In the regions nearer the coast

towns, these pits are either paved or cemented inside and in some cases

they are both paved and cemented. The nuts are covered up and then left

for some weeks, even months, to ferment thoroughly. They are then either

pounded in the pit with wooden pestles, or they may be taken out and

treated in prepared wooden mortars.

The process of boiling is more expeditious. The nuts are boiled or

steamed until the firmly coagulated fibre shows signs of yielding; then

they are placed in an old canoe or large mortar and pounded with wooden

pestles. In both processes, whether by fermentation or by boiling, the

oily fibre separates itself from the hard inner “stone.” The fibre, which

is by this time a tangled mass of yellow and brown, is then taken and

squeezed, sometimes with the aid of water, through a woven press and a

stream of golden liquid results. Sometimes loads of the oily fibre are

thrown pell-mell into a large canoe half filled with water in which the

children delight to paddle, causing the oil to rise to the surface, when

the elders skim it from the top and carry it in earthenware pots for

boiling and straining before sending it on its way to the market and the

European consumer.

[Sidenote: OIL AND KERNEL TRADE]

The oil, however, is but one exportable product of the palm tree; the

value of the inner kernel may be gathered from the fact that over four

million pounds’ worth of palm kernels are sent to Europe every year. This

kernel is encased in an extremely hard shell, which varies so much in

size that until quite recently there was no satisfactory “stone” cracking

machinery in Africa. There are now several machines on the market, but

the old grey-haired lady of the West African kraal, with her primitive

upper and nether grind stones, still makes by far the most reliable

“cracker.”

[Illustration: “WALKING” UP TO GATHER FRUIT. WEAVER BIRDS’ NESTS ON THE

PALM FRONDS.]

[Illustration: HEADS OF OIL PALM FRUIT.]

At Victoria, in German Cameroons, we saw an elaborate set of machinery

for dealing in turn with the oily fibrous pericarp of the nut, and

later, extracting the kernel from the inner stone. The latter process

was that of a general crushing, then throwing the entire mass into a

brine bath and so separating the shells from the kernels, which were then

taken out and dried in the sun. This process, while being infinitely more

expeditious, has the obvious drawback that a large proportion of the

kernels are so bruised and broken that it entails a considerable wastage

of oil.

THE PALM IN TONNAGE AND IN FIGURES STERLING.

Exports in round figures for the year 1911—

OIL. KERNELS.

Tons. Values. Tons. Values.

French Senegal 1 36 1,418 14,300

” Guinea 53 1,300 4,500 36,600

” Ivory Coast 5,800 107,100 5,340 45,500

” Dahomey 14,400 254,100 34,200 400,000

” Congo 125 3,100 570 7,600

British Gambia — — 447 4,758

” Sierra Leone 2,902 69,930 42,893 649,347

” Gold Coast 6,441 128,916 13,254 175,891

” Nigeria 77,180 1,696,875 176,390 2,574,405

German Cameroons 3,000 63,000 13,500 177,530

” Togoland 3,050 61,600 8,100 101,700

Belgian Congo

(approximately) 700 20,000 2,500 40,000

------- ---------- ------- ----------

113,652 £2,405,957 303,112 £4,227,631

TOTAL OUTPUT.

Tons. Values.

Oil 113,652 £2,405,957

Kernels 303,112 £4,227,631

------- ----------

416,764 £6,633,588

The proportionate output from the palm trees from the different colonies

of West Africa is therefore—

Square mileage

of territories. Tons. Values.

French 992,000 66,407 £869,636

Belgian 900,000 3,200 60,000

British 454,160 319,507 5,300,122

German 224,830 27,650 403,830

Production in figures sterling per square mile under the several

colonizing Powers—

£ _s._ _d._

Great Britain 11 13 3 per square mile

Germany 1 16 0 ” ”

France 0 17 8 ” ”

Belgium 0 1 4 ” ”

Whilst the palm provides one of the principal exports of West Africa for

consumption in Europe, its domestic uses are inseparable from native

life. The fruit is used by the natives in many sections of primitive

culinary art. Pounded with manioca leaves, Indian corn and red peppers,

a savoury pottage is manufactured which is a universal delight. One of

the choicest vegetables in the African continent is the pearly white head

of the palm, which, in small trees of two years’ growth, weighs about

1 pound, but in trees of many years’ growth, may turn the scale at 56

pounds. The substance of this vegetable differs in appearance and taste

but little from the Brazil nut, but when cooked provides a succulent

dish not unlike, though superior to, sea kale. The natives cook this

in palm oil, but Europeans usually prefer it boiled and served with a

white sauce, or baked in a custard. To obtain this vegetable is almost

invariably to destroy the tree, consequently it seldom figures on the

every-day menu.

[Illustration: THE OIL PALM IN THE GRIP OF ITS PARASITIC ENEMY.

The Creeper at an early stage. Root and Branch in deadly grip.]

[Sidenote: OIL AND WINE]

Meat, fish and fowl are all of them stewed in palm oil, and, as African

meat is deficient in fat, the palm oil makes an excellent and appetizing

substitute. I once smelled a very savoury native “hot pot” which, upon

examination, revealed a wonderful mixture. The liquid was golden with

palm oil, and floating about, adding to the compendium of flavours, I

detected bats and beetles, a flat fish “cheek by jowl” with a monkey’s

head, caterpillars fitting themselves in with sections of field rats and

parrots—altogether a stew delightful to the nostrils, at least of the

African boys and girls who squatted around the huge clay cooking pot. The

white man, though he usually has no keen appetite for native stews or

pottage, lunches and dines off “palm oil chop” with as great a relish as

does his Indian confrère upon “curries.” The “chop” may be fish, flesh or

fowl, but it all goes by the name “palm oil chop,” which has a happy and

almost essential knack in West Africa of hiding a multitude of “foreign

bodies.”

No African meal can be regarded as complete without the addition of palm

oil, and, as a beverage, palm wine is extensively though moderately

consumed. This sparkling beverage closely resembles in appearance the

“stone ginger” of civilization. The tribes on the Upper Kasai are

probably the greatest consumers of palm wine in Africa. In those parts

of the tropics where quantities of sugar cane are cultivated, palm wine

competes with a sister product from the cane; the sweet and somewhat

insipid taste of the latter being more palatable to some tribes than

the sharp flavour of the palm wine. The Eloeis wine is the sap of the

palm tree itself, extracted by various means, generally by cutting off

the male flower-spike and fixing a calabash to the wound to catch the

juice which is removed every morning. Another method is to remove the

palm cabbage or head; yet another, to cut down the tree and “dig” a hole

in the heart of the trunk, from which the liquid is then scooped into a

calabash or earthenware pot. Europeans generally prefer the wine when

fresh from the tree, owing to the fact that after a few hours it begins

to ferment and loses its sweetness.

The oil palms of West Africa are taking an increasing share in supplying

the temporal wants of both the white and the coloured man. It is safe

to say that there is no tree in the universe capable of providing to so

great and varied an extent, the daily wants of the human organism.

[Illustration: FINE HEADS OF OIL PALM FRUIT.]

II

THE PRODUCTION OF RUBBER

Rubber has been known for the last four hundred years, but it is only

within the last century, or little more, that it has been put to

practical use. Civilization was for nearly three hundred years content

with the historical fact of Pincon’s Indians of Brazil playing “ball”

with crude lumps of rubber, and then it awoke to the fact that rubber

could be used to erase pencil marks. In our boyhood Charles Macintosh

had established its use as a protective from rain, but in our manhood

the annual demand of Great Britain alone for rubber has grown to nearly

50,000 tons. We have lived through the sensation of a “Rubber Boom” which

is only now commencing to exact its toll for the immeasurable folly of

the thoughtless investing public.

The native use of rubber in West Africa as also among the Brazilian

Indians, was first as an aid to merrymaking, in the form of heads of

drum-sticks, and in that capacity evoked harmonious chords from the

goat-skins tightly stretched over the hollowed forest log. How little

these early Africans dreamed that this simple aid to the charms of

music would one day deluge their Continent in human blood! There are

to-day very few colonies in West Africa without rubber forests which

nature—prodigal here as everywhere with her economic gifts—planted

generations ago.

The discovery of the great West African rubber supplies dates back about

thirty years, but it is a remarkable fact that Stanley in his books on

the Founding of the Congo Free State, laid very little stress upon the

future of rubber in the Congo.

In 1882 Sir Alfred Maloney urged Southern Nigeria to wake up to the

possibilities of rubber, and in 1894 Sir Gilbert Carter, to whom our

Nigeria colony owes so much, invited a party of Gold Coasters to explore

the hinterland forests with the result that they discovered an abundance

of what appeared to be rubber-bearing plants and trees. The native

community then set about vigorously searching for rubber with the result

that the “Ireh” tree was discovered, and specimens of its latex forwarded

to Kew in 1895. Although it had been discovered in the Gold Coast colony

ten years earlier the administration in Nigeria was apparently in

ignorance of the fact.

There is some evidence that King Leopold received the first intimation

of the almost fabulous stores of rubber in the Congo forests between the

years 1888 and 1890, and the alert mind of that astute monarch lost no

time in formulating plans for its exploitation in the Congo Free State,

and what is less generally recognized in the French Congo also.

Since 1885, when the African product first made its presence felt in

the rubber market, the natives of that continent have gathered and

sent to Europe over 250,000 tons of rubber, the outstanding fact being

that all this latex represents sylvan produce, the replacement of

which is extremely doubtful. Dr. Chevalier is of the opinion that the

natives themselves received for the total output 500,000,000 francs or

approximately 9d. per pound. This I very much doubt, for it must not be

forgotten that a large proportion of the rubber was obtained, if not for

nothing, then for very little.

[Sidenote: WEST AFRICAN VARIETIES]

The principal sources of rubber latex are the Funtumia (Ireh) and the

Landolphia varieties, which, to the ordinary reader, fall respectively

under the classification of trees and vines. The full-grown Funtumia

tree measures from 2 ft. 6 in. to 4 ft., or more, in circumference. The

growth of the Landolphia is wild and erratic, creeping along the ground

sometimes for several yards, then gradually winding its way through the

undergrowth and away up the limbs and branches of the firmly rooted

forest giants to a height of forty to fifty feet, then in the full

enjoyment of light, it becomes vigorously prolific, sending its leafy

branches in all directions, and interlacing the trees overhead. Most

scientists seem to agree that it is only when the Landolphia emerges into

the sunlight at the tree tops that material size is imparted to the main

stem. From the economic standpoint it is important to bear in mind that

ordinarily a Landolphia vine takes from ten to twenty years to climb its

way up the tree trunk of the average forest tree, at which period the

main stem of the vine is seldom more than one inch in diameter.

Beyond question by far the larger proportions of rubber from Central

Africa have been obtained from the Landolphia vines, that from the Congo

basin almost entirely so. Next in order comes the output from Funtumia

forests of the more northerly latitudes, and beyond this a certain amount

of grass rubber has been obtained, but the results barely justify the

trouble involved.

The extraordinary development and almost general investment in the rubber

industry have familiarized the public with rubber production. Almost

every schoolboy could write an essay upon the herring-bone or half

herring-bone tapping, coolie lines, spacing and so forth. The production

of rubber conveys to most minds well-ordered estates of upright trees,

model workmen’s dwellings, drying and boiling sheds, constructed by

skilled Europeans, rolling tables, hot and cold water supplies, all under

the control of neatly clad coolies. None of these conditions apply to

West Africa, for there everything is to-day primitive.

The larger Funtumia trees are tapped in a very rough “herring-bone”

manner and the latex caught either in leaves or in a calabash, and then

transferred to a wooden receptacle for coagulation, but large numbers

of trees have been bled to death through the almost incessant tapping

to which they have been subjected. Funtumia more than any other variety

requires carefully-regulated tapping, and it is well-nigh hopeless to

expect the native collector in the hinterland regions to exercise that

degree of care which the Funtumia tree demands as the price of giving

forth a sustained output. The damage done to the bark alone in the rough

and ready methods of extraction almost invariably renders the tree unfit

for future tapping; the trees will live sometimes for a few years, but

before long they perish. Dr. Chevalier, writing of the Ivory Coast,

says: “Wherever exploitation has spread it has caused the adult Funtumia

trees to disappear very rapidly. Some are cut level with the ground by

the natives in order to extract their maximum yield, others, tapped

too frequently, die standing, at last there remain only young Funtumia

trees, under fifteen years of age.” This is true of the major part of the

rubber-bearing regions of West Africa.

[Sidenote: METHODS OF EXTRACTION]

Several methods are followed in the extraction of the latex from the

Landolphia. In every case that has come under our notice the vines were

cut down with little thought for the future. Indeed in the upper regions

of the Congo the natives sever the vine close to the ground and then

tearing it from the trees to which it clings, they cut the vines into

lengths of about eighteen inches and pile them into stacks so that from

the severed ends the latex may bleed into forest leaves or gourds. Many

of the tribes raise the stack of severed creepers upon forked sticks

and kindle a slow fire beneath as they assert that the latex flows more

freely and completely with the application of heat.

The whole process is beyond question most wasteful, particularly where

the natives not only sever the vine, but dig up the roots, compelling

these also to yield up their stores of latex. To-day as the traveller

marches through the rubber forests of the Congo basin he meets every few

yards little heaps of decaying vine from which the rubber has been taken.

Frequently too, one sees overhead a tangled mass of dead vine which has

withered away through the main stem having been severed. The natives

were either in too great a hurry, or else unable to climb for those

spreading vines which would often measure some hundreds of yards.

Another method is that adopted by the native tribes in the Kasai River of

the Congo, and the Lunda province of Portuguese Angola. Whole families

or tribes will make a temporary home in the forest, pitching their

little huts on a piece of high ground near a stream. Every day the men

will scatter in all directions cutting down and gathering the vines into

bundles which they will convey to these little encampments.

The bark of the vines is then stripped off and laid out on blocks of

wood, old canoes, boards, or trunks of trees, preparatory to beating it

with heavy wooden mallets, which process gradually reduces the bark to

a stringy mass not unlike shredded tobacco. It is then threshed with

smaller mallets which in time gradually pulverize the wood element into

fine powder, leaving “pancakes” of red rubber, about the size of a

breakfast plate. These are then cut into thin strips, starting from the

outer edge, and wound into balls, just as the manufacturers wind balls

of knitting wool. This method though equally wasteful in collection,

conserves the whole of the rubber latex.

Travellers in the Kasai territories of the Congo are generally first

aware of their approach to human habitation by hearing the distant thud,

thud, of the rubber mallets which is a feature of almost every village of

that region.

[Illustration: CARRYING RUBBER VINES TO VILLAGE.]

[Illustration: EXTRACTING RUBBER, KASAI RIVER, UPPER CONGO.]

Hand in hand with the rubber work of the Congo is that of cane basket

making, which the busy women weave in all sizes for packing the rubber,

thus avoiding the heavy cost of importing “shooks” or barrels from

Europe. Every year some hundreds of thousands of these light but very

strong hampers are made for conveying the rubber to the buying stations

and thence to the European markets.

[Sidenote: THE FUTURE]

The West African rubber problems of to-day which overshadow all others

are those of exhaustion and replenishment. Are the forests denuded of

rubber, and if so, is there any probability or possibility, of rubber

cultivation to replace the exhausted supply? Both these phases of the

question are difficult of complete and categorical answer.

For thirty years now exploitation has been running wild through the

forests, and within the last fifteen years the rate and methods of

exploitation have from every point of view been ruinous. The Funtumia

trees have been ruthlessly cut down and even where tapping has taken

place, it has been done at any and every season of the year, and in

general practice tapped whenever and wherever the tree would yield an

ounce of rubber.

Dr. Chevalier is of the opinion that the Funtumia will replace itself

owing to the remarkable habit of self-propagation which the tree

possesses. The light feathery seeds are easily carried upon every breeze

it is true, but unfortunately there is little hope of preserving these

young trees from crude and reckless tapping in the farther recesses of

the forests. It is generally accepted that the rubber vine areas are

being rapidly exhausted. Mr. Consul Mackie says of the Congo, “Wild

rubber in districts in which it has been worked on an extensive scale,

is now becoming scarce in places. Many of the large rubber zones have

been worked out completely.”

We were informed by natives of the Kasai who were bringing in their

rubber to the factories, that whereas ten years ago they had only to go

one or two days into the forests before finding rubber, they now have to

journey nearly a fortnight before they can locate any appreciable number

of vines. Throughout the Equatorial regions of the Congo, the rubber

vines and trees are so completely worked out that the natives have given

up attempting to collect rubber and devote all their energies to gum

copal and palm oil.

Most disinterested “coasters” will support Dr. Christy in the opinion

that if the African rubber industry is to depend upon the wild forests

there is very little chance of its survival.

[Sidenote: CULTIVATION IN THE CONGO]

Within the last fifteen years efforts have been made in various colonies

to cultivate rubber. The most promising results are certainly in Nigeria,

where the Benin communal plantations are proving so successful that

villages in other districts are commencing similar plantations. Many

thousands of Funtumia trees are now ready for tapping and some of the

rubber obtained has secured 6s. 6d. per pound. Individual native farmers

are now taking up rubber planting, and in Southern Nigeria we saw some

well-ordered plantations under native control, one of which started in

1896 has over 30,000 trees and gives promise of a good output. In the

Gold Coast the natives are interspersing Funtumia trees with their cocoa

plants, under the instruction of Government advisers. In Belgian Congo

vigorous efforts have been made for the last twelve years to cultivate

rubber. In the year 1899 a Royal decree was issued requiring that 150

trees or vines should be planted for every ton of rubber exported, and

in June, 1902, the number of plants was raised to 500. As a further

incentive some of the Concessionnaire Companies gave a bonus to their

agents for every tree planted. The ordinary Belgian being very keen on

piling up his banking account the planting was pursued with vigour. As,

however, the ordinance did not specify the variety to be planted the

Agents of the State and Concessionaire Companies planted varieties good

and bad, known and unknown! until on paper the total number of trees

planted ran into many millions.

Every few months an Inspector was supposed to visit these areas, but as

this official usually had an area of about 25,000 square miles under

his control, he was seldom able to visit more than one centre every

year. Badly paid, with little allowance for provisions, this man usually

responded to the warm hospitality of his planter host, and generally did

not make exhaustive inquiries into the rubber planting. On one occasion

such an inspector visited a district after the Agent had gone to Europe,

in order to “check” the trees and vines before the new Agent arrived to

take over the stock and plantations. He asked me if I could direct him to

one plantation of 60,000 trees and vines of which he possessed a neatly

drawn chart. I could only direct him to where the plantation was supposed

to exist, and he immediately set off on what I hinted was a useless

journey, and as I expected returned in the afternoon without having

discovered a single vine!

Apart from these paper plantations there are certainly several millions

of rubber trees in the Congo, and every species almost has been tried.

At one time the Belgian tax-payer was told that the Manihot Glaziovii

was going to provide fabulous returns, but when the floods came and the

winds blew, the spreading Manihots caught the force of the elements and

toppled over in all directions like ninepins. The Funtumia was then

going to save the Congo from financial disaster, but the “borers” took a

fancy to the tree and this, coupled with the fact that in the Congo the

Funtumia yields but little rubber, all serious attempts at the extension

of Funtumia have been abandoned.

Hopes are now being centred upon the Hevea Braziliensis, but though

many of these trees are of ten years’ growth the yield is equally

disappointing.

In German Cameroons rubber planting is being pushed forward mainly with

the Funtumia and Hevea varieties. In Portuguese West Africa hopes are

centred upon Manihot and Funtumia.

The best that can be said of the rubber cultivation in West Africa is

that it has not yet passed the experimental stage, and that there is some

promise of success in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria.

[Sidenote: RUBBER COMPETITION]

There is, however, one other factor which must not be overlooked, Mr.

Herbert Wright pointed out last year that cultivated plantation rubber

would soon be arriving in quantities which would cause embarrassment to

the rubber merchants. It is certain that when this happens prices are

bound to fall, perhaps dramatically. The question for the West African

rubber planting community to ask is: can they, when prices fall, compete

with the West and East Indies, where labour is plentiful and cheap, and

where there is practically no costly land transport. A merchant from the

Straits Settlements once informed me that West African rubber producers

must be prepared to compete with the East—at 9d. per pound. If that

prediction should be justified by future events then West Africa will be

wise to concentrate upon its trusty friends the Oil Palm and Cocoa Tree.

III

THE PRODUCTION OF COCOA

Cocoa to most individuals is suggestive of carefully and tastefully

packed tins, or in chocolate form, of delightful little packages done

up in neat silver paper and prettily tied with bows of silk ribbon. To

others it means a welcome and fragrant breakfast or supper beverage. To

few, indeed, does it represent anything else. The man in the street, if

he thinks at all upon investing his savings in cocoa, argues that after

all there is a limit to human digestion, particularly where sweetmeats

are concerned, consequently he need not trouble himself about “futures”

in cocoa for the field is at best a restricted one. It never occurs

to him that the demand for every species of vegetable oil and fat is

becoming more clamant every day. Somehow he never asks himself why

Bournville, York and Bristol cocoa is 2_s._ 6_d._ per pound, and Dutch

only 1_s._ per pound. He presumes, and if he tries it he knows, that

one quality is better than the other, but it does not occur to him that

there is something in the one beverage which is lacking in the other.

The butter from the latter—the pure fat too expensive to eat, but not

too expensive to incorporate in pomades for personal adornment, has been

extracted. There is no more rigid limit to the demand for cocoa than to

the demand for rubber; not only so, but nothing has yet appeared even on

the horizon of our imagination that can take the place occupied to-day by

the cocoa bean, both for internal and external consumption. This cannot

be said with regard to rubber, wool or silk.

[Illustration: COCOA ON SAN THOMÉ. TERMITE TRACK VISIBLE ON THE TRUNK OF

THE TREE.]

[Sidenote: COCOA IN CULTIVATION]

The total world’s supply is to-day close on a quarter of a million tons

of cocoa per annum. The East and West Indies and the great Amazonian

Valleys, have for generations poured their supplies into Europe, but

it is only within the last thirty years that West Africa has made her

influence felt upon the cocoa markets of Europe. It is very difficult to

obtain reliable evidence as to the colonists who first introduced cocoa

to West Africa, probably the credit for it belongs to the Portuguese,

whose love of colonization is everywhere evinced by the plants, fruits

and grain which they conveyed in past years from one continent to another.

Given a humid atmosphere, a well-watered land and a tropical sun, cocoa

will grow almost anywhere up to a height of nearly 1500 feet. Of such

lands enjoying atmospheric conditions highly suitable to the production

of cocoa, there are nearly one million square miles in the tropical

regions of the West African continent. San Thomé and Principe, with less

than 300 square miles under cultivation, supply to the world’s markets

over 30,000 tons of cocoa every year; if, therefore, but one quarter of

the potential cocoa producing areas of West Africa could be brought under

cultivation at the same rate, there could be produced over 25,000,000

tons of cocoa.

To-day cocoa is being cultivated in the German colonies of Togoland

and Cameroons; in the Portuguese colonies of Cabenda, San Thomé and

Principe; in the Belgian Congo; in the Spanish island of Fernando Po, and

in the British colonies of the Gold Coast and Nigeria. In all these the

production has distinctive features.

From the standpoint of plantation arrangements and the application of

scientific methods, the Portuguese in San Thomé are easily first. This

no doubt is due to the fact that for over twenty years the planters have

been concentrating all their efforts upon the cocoa bean. Throughout

their whole area San Thomé and the sister island of Principe are under

cocoa cultivation and the traveller never gets away from the sour

odour of fermenting cocoa. A series of high hills and deep valleys

with numerous rivulets represent the physical features of the islands.

The hill ranges, for the most part, rise tier above tier, until they

culminate in the Pico da San Thomé with an altitude of just over 7000

feet. The summit of the peak is seldom seen, for the island lies bathed

in mists, which warmed by a tropical sun provide the ideal cocoa-growing

climate.

The streams which flow unceasingly down the hillsides are scientifically

trenched so that a continuous supply of water traverses the cocoa groves

all over the islands, and the farms in the centre of each group of

plantations all enjoy a plentiful supply of excellent water.

[Sidenote: PORTUGUESE COCOA]

The fermenting sheds are all of them organized in an up-to-date manner

for which a knowledge of industries in other Portuguese colonies hardly

prepares the traveller. Nowhere throughout West Africa are there such

scientific and elaborate cocoa drying grounds as one sees on these

Portuguese islands. The majority of cocoa planters in West Africa are

satisfied with cemented drying grounds in open courtyards. The cocoa is

spread out to dry and left in the open not only during the whole day,

but throughout the night. On several roças on the cocoa islands, the

Portuguese have, at enormous expense, fitted up drying grounds which are

mechanically moved into shelter whenever a storm threatens. Doubtless

it is due to the great care exercised by the Portuguese in the work of

fermenting and drying that their cocoa is so uniformly good.

Altogether there are nearly 300 roças on the two islands and, with one

or two exceptions, they are in Portuguese hands; there is a Belgian

plantation, and one or two are owned by natives whose ability to make

cocoa production a financial success is demonstrated by the fact that one

who died recently left £6000 for the education of the children of San

Thomé.

The cocoa plantations on these islands are all so compact and within such

easy reach of the sea-shore that transport is quite easy. Both horses and

mules live fairly well on the islands, and these, coupled with bullock

carts and some 1500 kilometres of Decauville railway throughout the

islands and running out to the pier, render unnecessary the porterage

which constitutes such a problem for the cocoa planters in every other

colony in West Africa. It is a melancholy thought that this industry,

built up at so great cost to human life—both white and coloured—stands

only a bare chance of permanence. The lack of indigenous labour, coupled

with the absence of statesmanship on the part of the Home Government, can

only lead to irretrievable disaster.

The nearest approach to the Portuguese systems of cocoa production is

to be found in Belgian Congo, where physical and climatic conditions

are almost identical with those of the Portuguese islands. The first

plantations are met with close to the mouth of the river in the Mayumbe

country, but before reaching the next one has to traverse nearly a

thousand miles. These are situated at the confluence of the Aruwimi river

and the main Congo, and there are besides several small plantations on

the Aruwimi itself. As cocoa-producing enterprises, the only ones to take

into serious consideration are those of the Mayumbe country, south of

the Chiloanga—the Portuguese river, which enters the sea at Landana. The

plantations are run under three separate interests, and may be classified

as State controlled, Roman Catholic and Merchant. The merchants complain

that their difficulty in obtaining labour is greatly increased owing to

the missions and the State using forced labour for their plantations. It

seems incredible that this should be so, but these complaints are neither

new nor isolated. The Commission of Enquiry sent to the Congo by King

Leopold had evidence before it which shewed that the Mission farms at

least were largely staffed with forced labour. The following passage is

an extract from the report of that Commission in 1905:

“The greater part of the natives which people the chapel farms

are neither orphans nor workmen engaged by contract. They are

demanded of the Chiefs, who dare not refuse; and only force,

more or less disguised, enables then to be retained.”

If the Belgian Government could concentrate upon a serious development

of the Mayumbe country by laying down railways, making roads, building

bridges, opening up creeks, and rivers, there is no reason why the

Mayumbe country should not increase its yearly output of cocoa by many

thousands of tons.

The Spanish contribution to the world’s supply is not yet or ever likely

to be anything material, for as colonists in Africa the Spaniards have

ceased to count.

[Sidenote: GERMAN COCOA]

In German colonies cocoa growing is extending rapidly and from a

financial point of view satisfactorily. The German Administration in the

Cameroons, however, seems to favour such enterprises mainly as European

undertakings in which the natives are mere labourers. Within recent

years, probably in view of the success of the Gold Coast production,

some effort has been made to encourage the natives by gifts of seed

and young plants to lay down their own plantations. But the prevailing

German opinion has been set forth in a German report, published in _Der

Tropenpflanzer_ (No. 1, January, 1912), wherein it is stated:—

“What is required in the Cameroons is a more liberal policy

on the part of the German Government towards the plantations,

both as regards the terms for acquiring land, and on the part

of the district officials to obtain better facilities for

getting labour, in order to warrant and make possible a large

and profitable extension of the cocoa-planting area. This will

mean a material improvement in the prosperity of the colony,

for it is evident that what the Gold Coast has achieved by

means of an intelligent population, and under suitable climatic

conditions, can and will never be done in Cameroons with such

material as the Bakwiris, Dualas, etc.”

Whilst colonial Germans take this view, the native certainly will never

emulate the Gold Coast tribes, for the African has a habit of acting up,

or down, to European expectations. The Editor of _Tropical Life_ truly

remarked that whilst these views are held in Berlin, “Germany would

never do any good with the Bakwiris and Dualas; neither did she with the

Herreros, and so ‘punished’ them because they, poor wretches, could not

understand the German method of ruling Africa as do the German Michels at

home.”

There is some reason to believe that the cultivation of the cocoa bean

began in Cameroons and Victoria some years earlier than that on the Gold

Coast, and it is even claimed by some that the phenomenally successful

industry of the British colony was commenced with a seed pod obtained

from Ambas Bay.

[Sidenote: A ROMANCE IN COCOA]

There is probably no single feature in colonial enterprise which can

compare with the cocoa romance of the British colony of the Gold Coast.

The honour of having introduced the industry into that colony is eagerly

debated. Everyone agrees that it belongs to either the Basel Mission

through their introduction of West Indian Christians, or to a certain

native carpenter returning from Ambas Bay, or Victoria. Mr. Tudhope, the

Director of Agriculture, is inclined to give credit to the native, but

it must be admitted that the Basel Mission authorities possess the most

circumstantial evidence in support of their claim. One of their oldest

missionaries at Christiansborg states that about the year 1885 he saw

the original cocoa tree at Odumase; another, that he saw this tree in

full bearing in 1895. It is instructive to recall that the first export,

amounting to 80 lbs. weight, was in the year 1891—that is six years after

the original tree was seen at Odumase.

The missionaries, however, readily admit that soon after their agents

introduced cocoa at Odumase, a native arrived from, the Cameroon colony

and planted beans at Mampong. From these two centres, fifteen miles

apart, the industry has established itself in every district of the

colony and penetrated ten days’ march beyond Kumasi.

The organization is of the simplest kind—purely and solely a native

industry, few of the plantations being large ones, none more than about

twenty-five to thirty acres and the majority not more than two to five

acres. We saw none owned by white men, although I believe there are one

or two, which are, however, quite insignificant. The volume of cocoa

which pours out from the Gold Coast colony flows almost exclusively from

countless small holdings spread all over the hinterland. The farms are

not so close together as those of San Thomé, but the traveller cannot

walk many miles anywhere without passing through the plantations of cocoa

and palm trees.

The atmospheric conditions resemble the Mayumbe country and San Thomé,

the rainfall varying between 32.09 and 54.92 per annum, otherwise

the territory is not so well watered as the Belgian and Portuguese

possessions. In spite of this, the colony can produce a quantity and

quality of cocoa that compares well with other areas. When at the

Botanical Gardens of Aburi, we saw a plot of cocoa measuring one and

two-fifths acres with 259 trees planted fifteen feet apart. The yield

from this plot between October 23rd and December 31st, 1909, was 18,200

pods. Mr. Anderson, reporting upon this experimental plantation says,

“Such results will not often be exceeded in any cocoa-growing country.”

In the year 1891, we almost see that Gold Coast native offering for sale

the first harvest of cocoa. It is only 80 lbs. in weight and with the

greatest ease he carries it to the white man’s store. To the amazement of

his native friends the grower received £4 for that basket of cocoa!

Twenty years later the export of 80 lbs. weight has grown to nearly 90

millions. Since the day that the native husbandman disposed of his 80

lbs. of cocoa, the industry has never wavered. We were informed by white

men who have been long on the coast that when the natives realized the

value of cocoa there was an impetuous and overwhelming demand for seed

until competition became so keen that a sovereign a bean was the general

rate!

In 1902 the export had exceeded £100,000; in 1907 it had passed

half-a-million, and in 1911 leaving gold in the rear of competition for

first place it raced away beyond the finger post of a million and a half

sterling. The whole of this, be it remembered, is a native industry!

The Gold Coast natives are justly proud of their extensive enterprise

and assert that they will not cease extending their plantations until

every acre they can cultivate and every man they can use is producing

cocoa.

[Sidenote: THE COCOA CARRIER]

Not the least interesting spectacle in the Gold Coast is the transport

of cocoa, the bulk of the inland produce being carried by porters to the

railhead, and sometimes the roadways as far as the eye can penetrate

are one long line of cocoa bags on the heads of hundreds of carriers.

This carrying trade has produced an extraordinary flow of free labour

into the whole hinterland of the Gold Coast. At Adawso, a buying station

nearly fifteen miles from the railhead, one firm alone employs in the

season over 3000 carriers who cover the distance to the rail station of

Pakro once, frequently twice, a day with a bag of cocoa. The remuneration

being according to the quantity carried, there is an eagerness to earn

the maximum within the twelve hours of daylight. The men who leave by

daybreak will return about three o’clock in the afternoon, often to

pick up another load and carry it to the railhead, returning again by

moonlight.

The carriers are mostly Hausas, but the fame of the Gold Coast carrier

traffic has spread far into the northern regions of Africa with the

result that recognized caravan routes now come right down through the

northern territories. These carriers, many of them from around and even

beyond Lake Chad, drive herds of cattle down to the Gold Coast colony

about harvest time. They sell the cattle and then carry cocoa for the

season. When the main harvest is over and there is little cocoa carrying,

they will purchase loads of kola nuts which they carry back with them to

the far interior and sell _en route_ at a considerable profit. Thus they

make a threefold financial return—on the sale of cattle, cocoa carrying,

and profits on the kola nut trade.

[Illustration: COCOA DRYING IN SUN.]

The transport of cocoa is chiefly in the hands of alien labour, and

should the flow of this labour cease from any cause whatever, the cocoa

industry would suffer a check from which it would take years to recover.

The coastal regions are fairly secure, for most of the districts within

twenty miles of the coast are reached by a daily service of motor lorries

under the management of the European cocoa-buying firms. Many of the

native farmers within thirty miles of Accra, however, with true African

trading instinct prefer selling their cocoa at a higher price at the port

of embarkation, and so have created the interesting system of “barrel

rolling.” In the season these strongly bound and ponderous casks are

purchased from the European stores, filled with cocoa, and rolled to

the sea-shore. Travelling along the somewhat primitive Gold Coast roads

one meets at frequent intervals perspiring natives struggling with the

barrels which, filled with cocoa, weigh considerably over half-a-ton.

They may be “holding on” to a barrel racing down a steep incline, or

three of them straining their utmost to force the ponderous weight up a

steep hill. Occasionally they come to grief, for we saw more than one

cask which had fallen over a cliff into a deep gorge below. Generally

speaking, three men will undertake to roll two barrels to the coast, the

three concentrating their efforts upon a single barrel going uphill,

while on the level road or down hill they control the two barrels between

them. We met three such men who had rolled two casks for twenty-five to

thirty miles, a task of two days, for which they receive 20_s._ per cask.

[Sidenote: TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES]

The problem which faces administrator, merchant and native producer

is that of transport. This threatens to become acute, for we were

informed by a merchant who recently journeyed beyond Kumasi that

large consignments of cocoa were lost owing to the lack of transport

facilities. At the same time, given a fair price for cocoa in the home

market, just treatment for transport labourers, the extension of roads

and light railways, there is no reason why a single ton of cocoa should

fail to reach the coast.

In the Gold Coast colony the white man occupies his normal position

in the tropics—the connecting link or middle-man between the European

manufacturer and the native producer. The Government very wisely

endeavours to keep the industry in the hands of the native farmers and

assists them by sending lecturers through the colony, whose duty it is

to advise the farmers upon pruning, fermentation, drying, the danger of

pests, and the general principles of modern agricultural science. With

inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset

of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral

progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State.

The other British colony in which cocoa has a future is Southern Nigeria.

To read the Government reports of ten years ago there seemed little hope

that the natives of this colony would become cocoa farmers, or indeed

that they would ever do much more than vegetate in the agricultural

world. Africa is the land of surprises, and more and more the African is

surprising Europe by exploding “the lazy nigger theory.”

The Acting Secretary of Southern Nigeria, writing his 1903 report from

Old Calabar, said:—

“With every year that passes, it becomes increasingly

important that new exports, indicating new areas of work and

development, should make an appearance on the export lists of

the Protectorate. That ‘Palm Oil’ and ‘Palm Kernels’ will ever

cease to be the dominant products is more than unlikely; but

these products demand nothing from the native in the way of

labour that the veriest bushman cannot carry out. Portions of

this Protectorate must be gradually turned over—and education

may succeed, where persuasion fails—to the production of other

commodities. It is not in the nature of the average West

African to lay out capital for which there is no immediate

return. He can understand the yam growing at his door; he can

understand the cask of oil to be filled before his ‘boys’ can

return with the required cloth, pipe, or frock-coat, but he

will not sow for his son to reap; nor will a village work, of

its own initiative, for the benefit of the next generation

that is to occupy it. It is this difficulty that has rendered

so great the task of encouraging the rubber industry. It is

for this reason that cocoa and coffee have never been properly

taken up by the natives themselves.”

This is just what the Belgian and German Governments are proclaiming

to-day.

[Sidenote: DOUBLING THE OUTPUT]

At this period cocoa was just beginning to grip the native mind in

Southern Nigeria; he had begun to “sow for his son to reap”; he had begun

to understand something more “than the yam growing at his door”; he had

in fact just dispatched 300,000 lbs. of cocoa to Europe. The very next

year the Acting Governor was able to write: “There has been an enormous

development in cocoa,” and the Southern Nigeria natives, as if in

unconscious protest against the Governor’s 1903 report, poured into the

European markets over 1,000,000 lbs. of cocoa beans! Two years later, the

export had risen to 1,500,000 lbs. Turning to the Government report three

years later again, we find that the export had again doubled itself,

and was then over 3,000,000 lbs. “These figures,” said the Colonial

Secretary, “indicate the extraordinary expansion that has taken place of

late years in the cultivation of this plant.” Finally, turning to the

most recent report, we find that the export has again doubled itself in

two years, _i.e._ over 6,000,000 lbs.

The actual figures are as follows:—

1903 288,614 lbs. £3,652

1904 1,189,460 ” £18,874

1906 1,619,987 ” £27,054

1908 3,060,609 ” £50,587

1910 6,567,181 ” £100,000 (approximately)

It is somewhat doubtful whether this ratio of doubling the output every

two years will be sustained, for it is considerably in excess even of the

Gold Coast rates of increase. There are advantages possessed by Southern

Nigeria which natural conditions deny to the Gold Coast—the heavy surf,

and the lack of good shipping accommodation, tell heavily against the

merchants and the native producers of the Gold Coast, whereas it is

possible to load and unload cargoes in Lagos without their suffering any

damage from sea water. Again, the cocoa areas of Southern Nigeria enjoy

in the main a more generous water supply than those of the Gold Coast.

The general statistics of the cocoa trade, compiled upon the

materialistic basis of tons and sovereigns, are not without interest

to the man outside the cocoa community. For example, the Portuguese at

present produce more cocoa on their two little islands of San Thomé and

Principe than any other cocoa-producing area in the world. They produce

from those 400 square miles of volcanic rocky land more than twice the

quantity produced by the Republic of Venezuela with a tropical region

of nearly 400,000 square miles. At the same time out of the eighteen

cocoa-consuming countries of the world the Portuguese are proportionately

the smallest consumers of Linnæus’ “Food of the Gods.” Another

interesting feature is the growth of the British export from the West

African colonies. Within ten years this has multiplied itself something

like twelve times over, _i.e._ in round figures from about 2500 tons in

1902 to over 30,000 tons to-day.

Cocoa grows apparently with greater ease in West Africa than in any other

cocoa-producing area in the world. The elaborate systems of manuring

which seem imperative in most tropical colonies never enter the head of

the West African producer. He piles the fermenting husks in heaps between

the rows of trees and then when thoroughly decayed he throws the refuse

round the base of the trees.

Insect pests abound, in fact it is seldom one sees a cocoa tree free

from the tunnels of the devouring termite, and the bark-boring beetle

too makes his presence felt, particularly in the German Cameroons, but

in the great cocoa-producing colonies of the Gold Coast and San Thomé,

the natives and the Portuguese are profound believers in the principle of

“live and let live,” at least in favour of the insect world. The Germans,

in all things scientific, have attempted to deal with the pest-ridden

area by manuring with superphosphate and potassium chloride, and a

largely increased yield is claimed for areas treated in this manner.

[Sidenote: SPACING]

In very few plantations that we visited was there any adherence to the

wide spacing so strongly advised by expert agriculturists. The British

Botanical Gardens of Aburi set an example by laying out experimental

plots with cocoa trees fifteen feet apart, but the natives in that

colony, and also in Southern Nigeria, ridicule this advice and declare

that at such distance they find the rays of the sun are able to penetrate

so freely that the ground becomes baked and the roots are robbed of

the humidity which is vital to the growth of good cocoa trees. It is

noteworthy that on Grenada and other West Indian estates, there is also

a tendency to plant more closely than the experts advise. Neither in the

Gold Coast nor in Southern Nigeria do many plantations give wider spacing

than eight feet apart, and thus many of them crowd from 500 to 700

trees upon a single acre. The plantations in British West Africa being

entirely under native control, there are no very reliable statistics

upon the annual yield per tree. One official at the Botanical Gardens of

Aburi estimated that the natives obtain about 7 lbs. of cocoa per tree

per annum; this is a very high average, and I am inclined to think seldom

attained, for in Trinidad the annual yield is somewhere about 1 lb. per

tree. We visited one large cocoa plantation in Southern Nigeria, where

a native had planted 100,000 cocoa trees about one-half of which were

already yielding, and from the 50,000 he had obtained within the year 30

tons of cocoa, or an average per tree of a little over 1¼ lbs.

The most important question, that from which the planter is never

free, is that of labour. The Germans put the labourers on contracts of

twelve months with wages of 8_s._ to 10_s._ per month with food, but

the conditions of these plantations are not likely to inspire any great

enthusiasm amongst humanitarians or economists. The abject fear exhibited

by the natives whenever the white man approaches is too eloquent to be

mistaken, moreover the whip is carried by the planters as openly as a man

in Europe carries a walking-stick. Whips and free contracts seldom go

together. Under another section I have dealt with Portuguese labour which

in the main is a system of slavery, although it carries with it a paper

wage of about 10_s._ per month and rations.

[Sidenote: COST OF LABOUR]

The native farmers of Southern Nigeria and the Gold Coast employ a good

deal of native labour and generally speaking find little difficulty in

obtaining all they want. These native farmers, however, prepare their

contracts somewhat differently from the European, generally they are for

“twelve months of thirty working days,” and the wages vary from 15_s._ to

20_s._ per month, whilst a foreman will get 30_s._ a month. The labourers

are free to go at any time, but those who complete their contracts to the

satisfaction of the employer are usually given a bonus.

Cocoa growing is probably the least arduous labour in the tropical world

of agriculture, as it involves less exposure and at no stage can it be

called dangerous as is the case with copra, palm oil and indigenous

rubber. The proportion of labourers employed varies according to the

colony and circumstances. In the island of Fernando Po, the planters

endeavour to employ one man per acre, but the restricted supply of labour

seldom permits so ideal a proportion. In the Portuguese island of San

Thomé, one labourer is allowed for each hectare under cultivation, but it

must require a good deal of “persuasion” to get a native to control an

average of at least 2¼ acres of cocoa.

Concurrently with native labour is the question of white supervision

which is necessarily costly. On one cocoa plantation of San Thomé, with

a total expenditure of £23,000 no less than £3000 is spent upon white

control. Upon those Belgian plantations of Mayumbe which are cultivated

by free labour, there is barely any white supervision, whilst on the

Portuguese islands the proportion of employés works out at about one

white man to every thirty natives.

So far as it is possible at the moment to forecast the future of cocoa

production in West Africa, the British system alone rests upon a solid

basis, for the obvious reason that all other fields are dependent

upon systems of labour supply which have little chance of continuance,

much less extension. The indigenous industry of the British colonies

working in its own interests, unencumbered by the heavy cost of European

supervision and the drawbacks of imported contract labour, will, under

the guidance of a paternal and sympathetic administration, certainly

outdistance and leave far behind in the race for supremacy such systems

as those which prevail in San Thomé and Principe.

This virile British enterprise which is bounding forward throughout

the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria has only one real enemy—the

concessionnaire hunter. Fortunately, the British Government is fully

alive to the danger and is determined, so far as possible, to keep the

agricultural land in the hands of the natives. If this can be secured

without placing powers in the hands of the Government which would lead

to widespread disaffection and unrest amongst the natives, then the

cocoa industry of British West Africa promises to eclipse all other

cocoa-producing areas of the world.

IV

THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS

The day has gone by when the world could dismiss Christian missions

in West Africa with a contemptuous sneer, for Christian missionary

effort with its eloquent facts, definitely established, can no longer

be ignored. Of all the forces which have made for real progress in West

Africa, Christianity stands some say first, others second, but none can

place it last. To it belongs primarily in point of time at least, the

economic prosperity of the Gold Coast. To it belongs, almost entirely,

the credit for the native clerks and educated men on the coast. To it

the natives owe their knowledge of useful crafts. To one section of the

Christian Church at least belongs the honour of having on the spot saved

the Congo natives from extirpation.

Whilst all missions have much in common, the investigator cannot but

observe the fact that administrators and commercial men alike will, in

the majority of cases, hold in a measure of contempt the Protestant

missionary, whilst they esteem highly his Catholic brethren. One searches

for a reason for this attitude, which can neither be found in the

devotion of the missionary—for heroes abound in both sections—nor is it

to be found in the character and success of their respective missionary

labours, for in this particular both sections are witnessing encouraging

results. The only answer which the administrator and trader will give

is that Father O’Donnell is “a good fellow.” It is difficult to escape

from the conclusion that the good father is more “diplomatic” than his

bluff and somewhat puritanical Protestant _confrère_. The Protestant

missionaries with greater freedom than that allowed to the Catholic

Fathers, criticize administrations, report abuses, and generally give

any form of oppression or iniquity a quick, even reckless exposure. The

colossal crime of the Congo was exposed on the spot almost entirely by

the Protestant missionaries, although far outnumbered by the Catholics.

In the French Congo are established several Roman Catholic Orders, yet

hardly a priest has raised his voice against the atrocities committed

there. The slavery of Angola and San Thomé has been exposed primarily by

Protestants, the priests standing by and for the most part content to

witness the traffic in human beings without a protest. I do not condemn,

but merely state facts. I know too well how the sufferings of native

tribes have appealed to generous members of the Roman Catholic Church,

but no review of Christian missions in West Africa would be honest or

complete without some reference to this fundamental difference between

the two great sections of the Christian Church.

[Sidenote: MISSIONARIES AND ABUSES.]

My chief reason, however, for calling attention to this feature is that

the antipathy towards Christian missionaries is hardly likely to become

less marked in the near future. The great changes which are taking

place may precipitate a grave situation within the next twenty years.

The attitude of administrators is no longer the benevolent tutelage of

native races. There is an increasing autocracy in most colonies; the

martial spirit with its harsh regulations and rigorous discipline, so

out of place in nature’s calm paradise, is permeating every department

of affairs. This spirit brooks no opposition, knows no sympathy, and

sometimes even forgets justice. It blows hot or cold, where and when it

listeth, but it tends always towards menacing native peace and progress.

High-minded Christian men must be driven by this restless spirit into an

increasingly resolute defence of their native communities.

Commercial methods, too, are undergoing a still more far-reaching

change. As I have already pointed out, the old-time merchant is giving

place to the highly organized syndicate, which possesses neither heart

nor conscience and is generally strong enough in influence at home and

power abroad to menace any administration, and, if necessary, threaten

the various Governments in two, three and even more countries at one

time. The missionary, bold in his isolation, knowing no higher earthly

authority than his highly tempered conscience, willing, if need be, to

suffer any extremity, is bound to find himself more and more in conflict

with the exploiting energy of these vigorous dividend seekers. This

conflict is of course an excellent tonic for the Church, but it makes the

lot of these isolated men and women in Central Africa very much harder to

bear.

The forces of Christianity have not yet made much headway in the far

hinterland of the Sierra Leone Protectorate, the northern territories of

the Gold Coast, nor in Northern Nigeria. In the Sierra Leone colony,

where slaves liberated during a period of fifty years were dumped down

as they were released by British battleships, Christianity has permeated

fairly completely the life and habits of the people; nearly two-thirds

of the population are nominally Christian, whilst the Mohammedans number

less than one-tenth. In the Gold Coast the traveller may witness some

of the most effective missionary work in West Africa. The Basel Mission

alone has over 30,000 adherents who find about £5000 a year towards

mission expenses. Another notable fact is that the natives have invested

in the Mission Savings Bank over £23,000, a sum considerably in excess of

the amount deposited with the Government. As was the attitude towards the

Quaker bankers of Puritan England, the Christian community of the Gold

Coast is regarded by the natives as the safest repository for the wealth

of both worlds.

[Sidenote: CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMEDANISM]

In Southern Nigeria Christian missionaries find themselves confronted

with a firmly entrenched Mohammedan community. Something over fifty per

cent. of the population is Mohammedan, and that of a most attractive

order. None can meet the leading Mohammedans of that colony without

being impressed with their simple piety and their tenacity to what they

regard as their invincible faith. Officialdom opposes the advance of

the emissaries of Christianity in the more northerly territory, on the

ground of trouble with the Moslem community. This attitude is regarded by

most Mohammedans as anything but a compliment to their religious faith,

holding firmly as they do that the Koran is powerful enough to withstand

all the assaults of another creed. Below Nigeria, that is south-east of

the Niger delta, Mohammedan influence is left behind, and Christianity

is confronted with simple paganism. Not the bloodthirsty and strongly

entrenched barbaric paganism which confronted Livingstone in East Africa,

Ramseyer at Kumasi, Hannington in Uganda, and Grenfell in the Congo, but

a paganism so broken by the forces of civilization, so rent and riven by

internal mistrust, that the masses of the people are crying out: “Who

will show us any good?”

Efforts to win West Central Africa to Christianity divide themselves into

two periods. The first effective efforts were made by the Portuguese

and Dutch settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The

first period was almost exclusively due to Roman Catholic zeal, which,

under the blessing of the Pope, regarded the tropics as a preserve of

the Vatican. The nineteenth century witnessed but little advance, until

Livingstone’s enthusiasm and his romantic career lighted a flame which

spread throughout the civilized world, and Protestantism, awaking to its

opportunity, began to pour missionaries into the tropical regions of

West Africa. The Basel Mission attempted the Gold Coast, and its first

missionaries perished to a man; the Church Missionary Society pushed on

its work from Sierra Leone away up the Niger, where men and women did

little more for a time than replace the dead and dying; the Methodists,

never behind any other denomination in enthusiasm, began work in Sierra

Leone, Calabar, and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea; the Baptists

established an excellent mission in the Cameroons, where they were

“elbowed out” by the Germans, and at a later date commenced their great

work in the Congo.

[Sidenote: RELIC WORSHIP]

Little remains in the social life of Africa as a result of the work of

the early Roman Catholic missionaries. The tribes have no settled church

organization based upon the devoted efforts of three centuries ago.

Ruins may be seen in several parts and extremely interesting ones too.

On the islands of San Thomé and Principe, we frequently saw the partial

structure of churches, one of which must have been erected very early

in the sixteenth century, for a tomb close to the chancel, grey with

age and moss grown, was dated 1542. If the colonists of San Thomé were

zealous slavers, they certainly gave much of their ill-gotten gain to the

erection of churches. Fragments of these edifices are lying about in the

tropical undergrowth and an examination will show that marble pillars,

façades, altars, even common stone, had been gathered from the four

corners of the earth to build ornate “Houses of God” on these isolated

rocks in the Gulf of Guinea. Visiting one of these ruins we were struck

by the pathetic reverence with which the natives regarded those crumbling

walls; the priest had long since died, and there was none to lead those

almost hopeless souls along the path of religious faith. Standing inside

those four walls, gazing at the broken altar and the creeper-clad walls,

we were forced to keep our heads covered, for the ruin had lost its roof

generations before, and the equatorial sun was pouring its direct rays

upon us. Directing a question to some of the natives standing near by, we

were amazed to find that they refused to answer; two or three times we

repeated our questions, but they all maintained immovable positions and

refused to utter a single word. A man close at my elbow then informed me

that no native could reply whilst the white man kept his hat on his head

in the House of God! The silent rebuke of those simple natives forced us

to leave the precincts of the old ruin and pass into the little chapel

which still remains more or less watertight. Into this place, not more

than ten feet square, the natives had moved the images of the Virgin

and Apostles, and in the centre of the room a native palm oil lamp sent

forth its unpleasant odour. This lamp was half African fetish and half

salvation to those natives, for their worship had degenerated into a sort

of corrupt Zoroastrianism, and the Alpha and Omega of their religion

seemed to be the uninterrupted burning of this light. They were most

insistent that since the foundation of the church, between 1500 and 1530,

the light had never been allowed to go out!

This, however, was but one testimony to the relic worship of the slave

islands. Along the roadsides, in secluded corners of out of the way

roças, nestling in plantain groves, the traveller may see miniature

chapels constructed from rustic forest tree branches, very similar to

the fetish houses of the mainland of Africa. In most of these one also

sees little prayer-stools, and in all of them a rude cross roughly cut

out with the native axe and the cross pieces bound together with forest

vines. Most of these crosses are surrounded by native pagan charms, and

thus all that is least essential in Christianity is joined together in

native religious fervour with the superstitions of paganism, and this

gives a melancholy impression of the result of the years of toil and

sacrifice by men and women devoted to the theory of the Christian Faith.

[Sidenote: ICHABOD]

Ichabod is written along every roadside and in every ruined chapel; the

very images in decay seem to utter the word, and the mind is compelled

to recall the fact that Christianity in creed only, without Christian

practice, is foredoomed. Surely the curse of the miserable slaves of

generations ago rests upon everything on those islands; by their agony

and bloody sweat they toiled to erect those magnificent churches, the

crack of the whip on the slave plantations extorted the gold which

purchased the images of the Virgin, to add lustre to countless churches

and to purchase images of the compassionate Christ for the cross roads

and public places. One wonders what all this parade meant to the slaves

at the time. They have long ceased to suffer the bonds of slavery, or the

crack of the whip; those slaves whose toil built the churches and bought

the crucifixes have gone, and though decay everywhere marks the one-time

existence of an unholy Christianity, one element remains and flourishes—a

slavery, without any hope beyond that which may be inspired by the hybrid

of effete Christianity wedded to African superstition.

[Illustration: THE CRUCIFIX IN AFRICAN FETISH HUT ON THE ISLAND OF SAN

THOMÉ.]

[Illustration: RUIN OF ONCE IMPOSING CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF PRINCIPE.]

The results accruing to the second period of Christian propaganda have

the unmistakable signs of a vitality which will revolutionize Central

Africa. Whilst purely missionary zeal centres itself upon the heroic

figure of Livingstone, recognition must be given to Henry Stanley, and

also—though one hesitates to couple the name with these two heroes—to

King Leopold. Looking back upon African history, one fact emerges above

all others, that the work of Livingstone and Stanley together had

created an international interest in the position of the peoples and

the possibilities of the countries in those regions. This condition

observed by King Leopold, his master mind promptly seized and exploited

it. The crafty Belgian monarch saw that by preaching Christianity and

civilization for the African, his long-awaited opportunity for colonial

expansion and a place in history would be gratified,—a place in history

he has that none assuredly will envy; his people, too, possess a colony,

and though they do not see it to-day, they will yet heap their curses

upon the sovereign who has fastened the millstone round their necks.

The labours of Livingstone, Stanley, and King Leopold, culminated in the

Conference of Berlin, which was unique in that it had for its programme

not only the interests of honest commercial expansion, the suppression of

the slave-trade, the sale of arms, ammunition and alcohol, but also that

of stimulating Christian missionary propaganda, and by its subsequent

treaty, missionaries were encouraged to win pagan tribes from barbarism.

The immensity of the area which by this historic event was thrown open

under international stimulus to the forces of Christianity is not

generally realized. The Congo basin extends far beyond the boundaries of

the Belgian colony. Its northern frontier reaches the tributaries of the

Niger and the Nile, while its eastern border includes a large section of

German East Africa, and in the south and west larger areas still of both

British Central Africa and Portuguese Angola come under the operations

of the Act of Berlin. In and around this great pagan area, almost as

large as the European continent, the forces of Christianity have within

the last half century been concentrating their energies.

Christian effort in these regions is confined to no single country,

and is the monopoly of no single denomination. Great Britain, America,

Germany, Sweden, and France have all found devoted men and women, and

have all poured forth most generously the necessary funds. Anglicans,

Roman Catholics, Free Churchmen, and Lutherans, have all taken their

share, selecting spheres which for various reasons they considered

themselves best able to manage.

The character of the work, however, differs considerably. At first

Protestant missions revolted against the idea of industrial missions;

they had, and it must be admitted they still have, a constitutional

objection against anything which provides a “return.” It is difficult to

find a reason for this, but probably it is due to a revulsion from the

practices of Pizarro and his miscreants in Peru, and of the slave-dealing

work of the Portuguese, in which the Church of Rome became so deeply

involved. This dislike for any other work than that of simple preaching

and teaching left to the Roman Catholics the whole field of industrial

enterprise and right splendidly they have occupied it. There are many

separate features which one dislikes, but looked upon as a complete

work the Roman Catholic missionaries are rendering noble service to

stable progress. I shall not readily forget visits to their farms on the

Congo; to their admirable outfitting, printing, house-building, and

wheelwright departments of German Togoland. In Lome we saw a score of

lads learning bootmaking under the patient tuition of a lay brother. In

the tailoring shop another score were cutting out and making suits of

every description, from the cheap 20-mark ducks to the 150-mark dress

suit to which the superintending Father was putting finishing touches—and

made for a native too!

If in earlier years Protestant missions hesitated to engage in

remunerative industrial pursuits, they scored heavily over their Catholic

_confrères_, and continue to score, in medical work. It was at first

difficult to make the native see the advisability of even comparative

cleanliness, for ablutions of any kind are, with many natives, a

degrading practice only fitted for the effeminate white race. “What! I

wash?” exclaimed an old chief to us in horror-stricken tones, when once I

asked him to take a journey to the river before sitting near our table.

However, as he proceeded to do a worse thing—scrape himself—I withdrew

and apologized for the insulting suggestion! There is some hope that the

medical fraternity will in time bring the natives to realize the value of

the bountiful streams which God has given them, though they may retort

that the devil has filled them with crocodiles.

[Sidenote: THE MEDICAL MISSION]

It is, however, certain that the tribes of Africa are beginning to value

the generous and devoted medical work of the Protestant missionaries.

Journeying up the Congo one day we had on board a chieftain who three

months before had left his village for an operation at a mission station

hundreds of miles below his home. The senior missionary in this man’s

district had persuaded him to take the journey and run the risk. The man

had been bedridden for years with an elephantiasis growth; his wives had

forsaken him and most of his friends had abandoned him. He had long given

an obstinate refusal to the missionary’s proposal, but ultimately he

was prevailed upon to make the journey to the distant mission post. The

day for departure came, and with it funeral-loving friends, and weeping

women who made the track echo with a monotonous death wail as the man was

carried on board the steamer,—never, as they believed, to return alive.

Two months later the man had come through the operation and seemed to be

in perfect health. He boarded the steamer in full vigour, carrying his

own box and sundry goods which the travelling native collects from the

long-lost brothers and cousins whom they have a habit of discovering in

every town. After three weeks’ steam, we were nearing the chieftain’s

home; what a dressing of the hair and anointing of the body took place

during several hours before the village itself was sighted! Within hail,

lusty voices shouted to the villagers that their chief was aboard and was

well and strong. The cry passed from lip to lip until the beach was lined

with incredulous natives, the most hopeful amongst them anticipating

nothing better than that the man would be carried ashore. Fifteen minutes

later the ship was at anchor, the “gangway” run ashore and lo! the first

man to stride off the ship was the erstwhile bedridden chief! It was too

much for the majority who promptly took to their heels and bolted to a

safe distance! In a few minutes, however, they realized that it was

not a spirit, but the real man returned alive and well. Gradually they

surrounded him, questioned him, gesticulated excitedly, rang the drums

to inform the countryside that so great a miracle had taken place, and

generally made such a din and noise that it was only with difficulty

conversation became at all possible. That sort of sermon is far more

eloquent to the native than many discourses on Christian ethics preached

with the inevitable limitations of a foreign tongue and at the best often

misunderstood; moreover, it renders him very receptive to Christian

teaching.

[Sidenote: MISSIONARIES AND OPPRESSION]

The advantage of medical work in Protestant missionary propaganda has

indeed been great. But it does not stand alone, for the natives have

of recent years witnessed and wondered at another spectacle—to them no

less miraculous—white man opposing white man on their behalf. It is a

grave misfortune to Christianity, and to the Roman Catholic missionaries

themselves, that they have hitherto been unable to make common cause

with their Protestant brethren in protecting natives from oppression.

There is, however, some hope that this feature is passing away and that

the future will witness their co-operation with those who fight and

struggle for native freedom, for at present the _prestige_ which accrues

to the championship of native rights belongs almost exclusively to the

Protestant communities. How powerfully this has operated was brought out

in the report of the Commissioners, whom King Leopold was compelled to

send to the Congo, in 1904. Writing in this connection, Monsieur Janssens

and his Committee said:—

“Often, also, in the regions where evangelical stations are

established, the native, instead of going to the magistrate,

his natural protector, adopts the habit, when he thinks he

has a grievance against an agent or an Executive officer, to

confide in the missionary. The latter listens to him, helps him

according to his means, and makes himself the echo of all the

complaints of a region. Hence the astounding influence which

the missionaries possess in some parts of the territory. It

exercises itself not only among the natives within the purview

of their religious propaganda, but over all the villages whose

troubles they have listened to. The missionary becomes, for the

native of the region, the only representative of equity and

justice; he adds to the ascendency acquired from his religious

zeal the _prestige_ which, in the interest of the State itself,

should be invested in the magistrates.”

Without doubt the advent of the late King Leopold as an Administrator in

Central African affairs was a calamity almost impossible to exaggerate

and had his influence continued it would sooner or later have overrun the

surrounding territories administered respectively by Britain, France, and

Germany. That they indeed suffered contamination was only too clearly

demonstrated in the case of French Congo, while German Cameroons was

not altogether free from the Leopoldian taint. On the Congo itself, the

very name of white man was made to stink in the nostrils of the native

tribes for all time, by reason of the enormities in which King Leopold

figured as the chief actor. But even that wily monarch outwitted himself;

by his protestations of Christianity and Philanthropy he was bound by

the clauses of the Berlin and Brussels Acts to countenance and encourage

missionary enterprise, and in practice to admit to the vast regions of

the Congo Valley the Heralds of the Cross. And this was his undoing, for

thereby came those exposures of almost incredible abuses, which shocked

the civilized world, and branded the arch culprit for all time as a

murderer of millions. The same fatal blunder in his diplomacy worked

on the spot salvation for the remnant of the people. They flocked from

all quarters to the protection of the missionary, who was to them the

personification of justice.

[Sidenote: THE “INGLEZA”]

What wonder that the word “Ingleza” (English) became a passport to any

native community, no matter how wild and how averse to the white man. It

is recorded that the Belgian rubber merchants, recognizing this, have

sought safety when travelling amongst hostile tribes in adopting the

name and manner of the Englishman. A certain Belgian tells how two of

his colleagues when travelling were attacked by infuriated natives whose

relatives had suffered at the hands of the rubber-mongers, and on being

told that it was the natives’ intention to first mutilate them, as they

themselves had been mutilated, and then to put them to death, one of

them in his extremity sought refuge in the reputation of the missionary

and replied, “What, put Ingleza to death!” While stoutly repudiating the

assertion that they were English, the natives requested them to sing a

hymn, and, fortunately for the desperate men, one of them remembered and

sang a verse of a hymn he had learnt somewhere, and so amazed the natives

that they let them go unharmed.

“Ingleza nta fombaka” (the Englishman never lies), has passed into a

proverb and is spreading not only throughout the Congo, but even into

Portuguese Angola. Possessing the unbounded confidence of the native

mind, the Christian missionary, reinforced by practical medical work,

may, if he desires, possess the vast unoccupied fields of the continent

and obtain there an ever firmer foothold.

[Sidenote: PROTESTANT EXPENDITURE]

Within recent years, however, Protestant missions have taken up with

increasing zeal industrial and commercial enterprises in the interests of

the natives. We were unfortunate in being unable to visit what I am told

is one of the finest industrial enterprises in West Africa—the Scotch

Calabar Mission, but apart from those of the Roman Catholics we inspected

several Protestant establishments. The British Government, recognizing

what is now becoming common ground, that a purely literary and spiritual

education does not produce the most robust type of civilized African, is

now combining technical training in industries with literary studies, and

no longer gives grants of lump sums to missions, but so much per head for

the “finished product,” _e.g._ a native attaining a given literary and

technical standard. In the Gold Coast the maximum per annum is 27_s_.

6_d._ _per capita_. In a school at Christiansborg, the annual upkeep of

which costs £500, over £170 was earned in one year by the ability of the

scholars in this way. The Primitive Methodists have a very effective

little Industrial Mission on the Spanish island of Fernando Po. Under the

vigorous and enlightened leadership of the Rev. Jabez Bell the mission

situated at Bottler Point is now so prosperous that the returns from the

cocoa farms together with subscriptions from the native members, more

than cover the expenditure. If in any forthcoming rearrangement of the

Map of Africa Fernando Po should come under Germany the character of the

Primitive Methodist Mission on that island is bound to appeal to the

practical-minded Teuton.

The price which Christian missions have paid for religious work amongst

the pagan tribes of West Central Africa can never be correctly estimated.

In the Congo alone Protestant missions have spent nearly one and a

quarter millions sterling within the last twenty-five years. Out of some

550 missionaries, over 170 have gone to an early grave, many not living

six months, some only a few days. These men and women were not only the

matured youth of their countries, but they were compelled to pass the

most rigid medical examination prior to acceptance by the missionary

boards. They were indeed the flower of the Christian Church; moreover,

the very difficulties and dangers which were known to exist, served to

attract none but the strongest characters. Some people, incapable of

recognizing sterling qualities in any but themselves, have written and

spoken of missionaries as those who could not have made their way in

any other sphere of life. Whatever may be true of other mission fields,

so far as the missionaries of West Africa are concerned, the majority

resigned good and assured positions and accepted a comparative pittance

in order that they might serve what surely is the greatest of all causes.

I have failed to obtain statistics from the Roman Catholic Church, but

the foregoing applies equally to the devoted men of that body. With them,

as with the Protestants, it has been _via crucis via lucis_.

The following statistics, so far as they are a guide to Christian

progress, show some of the results achieved by the missionary forces of

Protestantism in West Africa:—

Annual

Native

_Sierra Leone_ Adherents. Scholars. Contributions.

Anglican 12,700 3,283 £7,267

Methodists 7,584 2,665 —

_Nigeria_

Anglican 40,700 15,089 £11,676

United Free Church 6,431 3,675 £2,834

Methodists, including French Dahomey,

German Togoland, and Fernando Po 7,137 3,793 —

_Gambia_

Methodists 1,058 594 —

_Gold Coast_

Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel 3,273 — £677

Methodists 61,481 7,821 —

Basel Mission 35,000 — £9,500

_Congo_

Baptists 4,536 11,637 —

American Baptists 5,230 7,500 (est.) —

Presbyterian 10,000 8,000 —

Swedish 1,821 5,721 —

French Protestants 1,800 1,000 —

_Angola_

Methodists 750 1,083 £325

Other Missions in West Africa

Estimate 15,000 8,000 400

------- ------ -------

Totals 214,501 79,861 £32,679

From the statistical tables of the Protestant Missions, we have a known

membership and communicant list of over 200,000 men and women, and nearly

80,000 scholars under daily Christian instruction. If to this be added

an equal number in connection with the Roman Catholic Church—probably a

generous estimate—West Central Africa possesses a Christian Church of

something approaching half a million strong. This, however, does not

take into account the large native interest in Christianity evidenced by

the considerable purchase of the Scriptures. Every year the British and

Foreign Bible Society ships some thousands of pounds worth of Bibles to

the different colonies, the natives contributing an increasing sum to the

Bible Society, which gives a “return” in cash from the native Christian

community of the Protestant Churches of over £30,000 per annum, or an

average contribution of over 4_s._ 3_d._ per head throughout the Churches.

[Sidenote: INDUSTRIAL RESULTS]

The fact that the results of missionary industrial enterprise are

hampered by a not unreasonable dislike to “profit-making” prevents

embarkation upon those bye-products of industrial activity which render

commercial enterprise financially sound. A missionary is usually quite

willing to teach men to adze timber, plane boards, square joints, lay

bricks, and grow cotton and rubber, but he knows that his Board and its

supporters regard “profit” with a very critical eye. Richard Blaize, an

educated native of Abeokuta, left his fortune to meet this difficulty

and now extensive workshops are erected at Abeokuta, and all the public

buildings of that splendid city have been erected “at a profit” by the

Christian Industrial School of Abeokuta.

In the Gold Coast the German Basel Mission leads the way with engaging

vigour in the matter of industrial missions. The commercial section of

the Mission includes industrial training institutes, and nothing could

be more pleasing than the interest and energy with which the natives

devote themselves to cabinet work, coach-building, and agricultural

pursuits; but the main activities of this department are those of

the ordinary African merchant with the exception that the agents are

forbidden to sell spirituous liquors. This branch of the work, which is

conducted by twenty-three “mercantile” missionaries, is in every respect

admirable. One of the leading railway managers remarked to me that,

“The most business-like commercial house in the colony is the Basel

Mission; their men always know how many trucks they will require, their

trolleys are to time, their goods properly bagged and labelled, and their

whole organization so smart and up-to-date that they never dislocate

the traffic.” There can be little doubt that the attention given to

business by the representatives of the Mission is due to the type of

white men they can command—none are accepted unless they agree to make

their employment a matter of conscience, and develop their commercial

undertakings with the same motive as that which animates their spiritual

brethren, with whom they share all things in common, with the exception

of salaries, those of the mercantile brethren being considerably higher

and based, to some extent, upon returns. The white agents are assisted by

coloured men in charge of branches, many of whom can show a record of

service extending from 12 to 15 years, and some of them are now drawing

salaries—including commission—of £500 per annum. These men are to be

found on Sundays teaching in the Sunday schools, and preaching at the

out-stations of the Mission.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MISSIONARIES’ HOUSE. BASEL INDUSTRIAL MISSION.

FURNITURE MADE BY GOLD COAST MISSION SCHOLARS.]

The capital for these operations is derived, in the main, from three

sources: (1) the Basel Mission itself; (2) shareholders connected with

the Mission, whose dividends are limited to 5 per cent. per annum; (3)

from funds in the Mission’s Savings Bank, into which the natives of the

colony have placed for security considerably over £20,000 at interest

varying from 3½ to 5 per cent.

The results of the Mission’s work can be seen all over the colony; the

polite native clerks, the managers of stores, the English-speaking

planters, the coloured Government officials have nearly all of them

received their training at the Basel Mission schools, and the Acting

Governor does not hesitate to recognize that his best officials have been

produced by the Mission. Testimony of this nature is unhappily seldom

forthcoming from other colonies.

The industrial section usually executes orders to the value of about

£4000 per annum; its go-carts, trolleys, traps, and waggonettes are sent

into almost every colony from Sierra Leone to German Cameroons. The net

profits of this department average slightly over £400 per annum.

The commercial department is certainly one of the most profitable

enterprises in the colony, and the stores of the Mission are crowded

with purchasers throughout the day. The exigencies of business naturally

precluded the possibility of obtaining with any degree of exactness

the volume of trade done by the Mission, but some of the figures are

eloquent testimony to the confidence the natives have in these mercantile

missionaries. In the year 1909-1910, the Mission exported 35 tons of

rubber, 14,000,000 lbs. of palm kernels, 600,000 gallons of palm oil, and

nearly 17,000,000 lbs. weight of cocoa beans.

The profit-bearing transactions of the Basel Mission cannot be much under

£150,000, which on the moderate basis of 8 per cent. net profit would

provide the Mission Exchequer with a sum of £12,000 per annum. Government

grants-in-aid of educational work amounted in 1910 to £240. There are

also periodic collections in aid of Mission funds; the native Church at

Nsaba, for example, collected £240 last year. The whole expenditure of

this Mission must be almost, if not completely, covered by its income

from the various operations.

Whatever the actual financial position of this Mission, its general

business operations, splendid educational institutions, its devoutly

spiritual atmosphere, combine in forming one of the greatest—if not the

greatest—force for progress in the Gold Coast colony. But the price has

to be paid, for, according to the report of the Acting Governor, “The

highest death-rate was again amongst the missionaries!”

[Sidenote: DANGER AHEAD]

The future of Christianity in West Africa is hopeful but it has its

dangers. First its very success may lead to disastrous consequences. In

the early years the mission work was almost entirely in the hands of the

extreme evangelical section of the Church, who subordinated everything

to the actual work of preaching. We understand and sympathize with the

fiery zeal that believes in doing all the preaching, but the native

thinks the preacher a strange being, and frequently does not understand

two sentences of Anglicized Bantu, or worse still, his Bantuized English!

Circumstances have broadened the outlook and men are beginning to

realize the value of training the native to do the preaching, contenting

themselves with an apparently more restrictive sphere in the class-room

and study. The native preacher thus prepared is zealous to a degree, and

that he is ready to suffer incredible hardships and even torture, we

know from the romantic history of the Uganda Mission. He is willing and

able to carry his message further afield than the white man could ever

hope to do; he is, moreover, able to present his message through the

medium of a complete mastery of the native tongue. The results of this

form of propaganda are becoming almost startling. Christian evangelists

from one territory are meeting those of far distant regions and in this

manner the whole of the riverine systems of Central Africa are coming

rapidly under the influence of Christianity. It is in this respect,

rather than in tabulated statistics, that one sees the onward march of

the Christian Faith. The bush native no longer clings to and prides

himself in paganism; if he is not a Mohammedan, he will tell you he is a

Christian, even though his life and conduct would shut him out of the

formal communion of any Christian Church.

This condition of affairs may lead to a grave situation, for already

in several colonies the natives are restive under an inadequate white

control or leadership. Educated in the principles of liberty, but without

much respect for, or belief in, the nobler tenets of the Christian Faith,

they are breaking away from Christian government and forming themselves

into Christian communities in which personal desire is never allowed to

conflict with accepted standards of ethics. One day I visited a leading

“Christian” in a certain colony; he showed me round the district, took

me over his delightful little farm, pointed out his model dwellings,

machinery houses, and so forth; then I inspected a building with three

compartments and was informed that one section was used as a “gin store,”

the middle section for prayer meetings, and in the third the man kept his

wives! All this he boldly asserted could be justified by reference to

the Scriptures. I was not prepared to contest the assertion, because my

host claimed his own conscience as the final arbiter of interpretation.

The extent to which these secessions may go can be gathered from the fact

that one such seceding church in West Africa claims a membership of over

10,000 adults.

[Sidenote: THE LIGHT ETERNAL]

The missionary societies, unable to supply sufficient men to cope with

these vast areas, are forced to leave the movement almost alone and

thus it spreads, and will continue to spread, until Central Africa is

completely brought under the influence of a form of Christianity which

for many years will be a caricature of the religion of Christ. The only

hope, and happily a probable development, is that the religious wave,

which is now moving irresistibly across the central regions, will be

followed by an ethical wave which will give the “Light eternal” to the

Dark Continent.