The roof is of palm thatch, upon which poles of bamboo are placed.
]
The house, as one approaches it, appears through a screen of palms and
orange-trees, of the strong-scented frangipani, the scarlet hibiscus,
and oleander growing as high as the house. There is an abundance of
roses everywhere. There are also a few coffee-trees in the yard, and one
exquisite cinnamon.
The view from the veranda of the mission house at Baraka is a scene of
magic beauty. The joyous lavishness of colour excludes from the mind the
thought of the deadly serpent and the relentless fever-fiend that
stealthily glide within the shadows. The long hillside sloping to the
beach is half covered with mangoes and palms, oleander and orange-trees,
and the graceful plumes of the bamboo that wave to and fro and tumble in
the breeze like children at play. In front is the open sea. On the left,
looking up the estuary, one sees in the bright morning light a fairy
island of deep emerald set in a silver sea, and beyond it a distant
shore in dim purple and gold. And even while one is looking, the island,
the silver sea and the golden-purple shore gradually dissolve and
disappear in the haze that gathers and deepens as the day advances. But
again, and always, it appears in the clear evening light, more beautiful
than ever.
I found it impossible to persuade my friends that Gaboon is not the
hottest place in the world, since it is not only in Africa, but at the
equator. This was also my own idea of Gaboon until it was corrected by
experience. It is not as hot at the equator as it is several hundred
miles north or south of it. The thermometer ranges between 72° and 86°,
seldom going above or below this range. But the humidity is extreme (not
surpassed, I believe, in the world) and this makes it seem hotter than
these figures would indicate. The atmosphere feels as if it were about
fifty per cent. hot water. At the coast there is the delightful
sea-breeze—but as soon as one says it is “delightful” he is reminded
that it is very dangerous.
One hears from the natives of the coast more complaints of cold than of
heat and in the hottest weather their black skin is always cool. The hot
months are December and January; and the coolest are June and July.
The wet and dry seasons of Gaboon are very distinct. The dry season
begins in May and lasts for four months, during all which time there is
not a shower. Then the wet season begins in September and lasts four
months, during which it rains almost incessantly. This is followed by a
short dry season of two months and a short wet season of two months,
thus completing the year. This succession of the seasons is as regular
and distinct as our winter and summer. The effect of the long dry season
corresponds in some respects to our winter, giving vegetation a rest.
Europeans delight in the dry season, although towards the last they long
for the rain. But the natives dislike the dry season, which is too cool
for their comfort; and since the land-breeze is very strong, and their
bodies but slightly protected with clothing, there is much sickness
among them in these months.
I never told the Africans about ice, nor described snow, lest it would
overtax their credulity and discredit me; for if they should doubt I had
no way of proving it. But after the French hospital was built the Gaboon
people not only heard about ice but many of them actually saw it. One
day we obtained a piece of ice at Baraka, sufficient to make ice-cream.
When we had finished eating I took some of it out to the men of my
boat-crew and after telling them that it was something which we liked
very much, I gave a teaspoonful to Makuba, the captain. No sooner had it
entered his mouth than he leaped into the air with a wild yell—wild even
for Africa. He shouted: “I’m killed! I’m burned to death! I’m burned to
death!”
The extremest sensation of cold seems to be not distinguishable from
that of extreme heat. Never having tasted anything cold, it is
positively painful to them.
Despite the exaggeration of the Old Coaster we are constantly reminded
that, after all, Gaboon is _The White Man’s Grave_. There were a number
of Anamese prisoners of war whom the French had transported from Anam.
They were employed in the construction of two miles of road along the
beach. During the few months of work seventy out of one hundred died. In
this dreadful death rate there were probably unusual factors. The road
crosses a marsh that is a first-class incubator for mosquitoes. And
besides, it is not likely that the men were reasonably provided with
food or medical attendance.
Even upon the subject of the climate opinions differ. There are some
persons—very few—who, after living in West Africa a number of years,
become so used to its death record that they seem to think that every
other place is just the same. One or another of these occasionally
becomes an indignant champion of the climate. At one of our annual
mission meetings I offered a resolution appealing to the Board of
Missions in New York for an extra allowance for health changes, in view
of the “hostile climate.” A veteran missionary, whose many years in
Africa made him the wonder of the coast, objected to the word _hostile_,
declaring that unless it were stricken out he would vote against the
resolution. But with charming inconsistency he added that he fully
realized the need of the extra allowance and he would gladly vote for it
if only, for the word _hostile_, we would substitute the word
_peculiar_.
Next morning after breakfast, Mr. Gault, in whose home I was staying,
said to me: “Apropos of the objection made yesterday to the word
_hostile_ as applied to this salubrious climate, have you observed that
every one who asks a blessing at the breakfast-table seems to be
thankful—and surprised—that none of us has been stricken down during the
night and that we are all again able to get to the table?
“The more remarkable,” he added, “when we recall that we were chosen by
the Board not because we were either good or clever, but chiefly because
of our constitutions.”
It was only a short time afterwards that Mr. Gault himself one morning
was not able to get to the breakfast-table. Two days later they buried
him at Batanga. He was one of the truest and best men I have ever known.
There is less fever now than there was a few years ago, and the death
record is decreasing. Not that the conditions are much improved; but
common sense has prevailed, and men as soon as they become seriously ill
hasten away on the first steamer. Besides, the proper use of quinine as
a preventive is better understood as the result of the knowledge of the
sources of malaria and its various stages.
The mosquito theory—that the Anopheles mosquito is the carrying agent of
the malaria parasite—is of course generally accepted. The late Dr. Koch
advised that a liberal dose of quinine every eighth or ninth day ought
to be an effective preventive with most persons. Major Ronald Ross, head
of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, advised the destruction of
the mosquito, chiefly by drainage, and the segregation of white people
from the natives. The natives have become at least partially immune; but
there are numerous malaria parasites in their blood constituting the
source from which it is carried by the mosquito, which after biting a
native bites a white person; and when the white man’s blood is malarious
a little exposure to the tropical sun, a slight chill, even a mental
shock or undue strain, anything that lowers the vitality, is likely to
precipitate the fever.
I myself, after several years of frequent fever, at last gained
practical immunity by taking five grains of quinine every night, which I
did without omission for three years, until I left the coast. If my
vitality had not been already reduced to the minimum I would not have
required so much quinine. Many persons, instead of taking quinine
regularly, wait until the fever actually comes and then take very large,
nerve-shattering doses for successive days, from thirty to sixty or even
ninety grains a day. One may recover from the fever, but one does not
entirely recover from the quinine until he leaves the coast.
Sometimes the newcomer is fairly frightened into a fever by those who
have lived in Africa long enough to have become obsessed with the
thought of the climate and whose conversation it completely absorbs.
Near the end of my voyage to Africa I spent a night ashore at a certain
mission, where a good lady who was in a very sociable mood, having shown
me to my room, stood in the doorway telling me of the various
persons—not a few—who had died in that particular room, and giving some
graphic detail of each death. It was gradually borne in upon me that
there must be some horrible fatality attached to that room. Finally she
advised me not to lock my door. “For,” said she, “Mr. P——, who always
locked his bedroom door, was found dead in bed one morning in this very
room, although he went to bed looking as well as you do now. About noon
next day they broke the door open, and sure enough there he was—lying
right there!”
I replied: “My dear lady, won’t you please knock on my door very early
in the morning, and if I do not answer, open the door and walk in; for I
fully expect to be dead.”
A certain American lady, who was a missionary for some years in Liberia,
tells how that when she landed, expecting to proceed to a station some
distance inland, where she would join several other missionaries, she
was met with the news that the missionaries of that station (four, I
believe) had all died of fever a few days before she landed, one
immediately after another. Nevertheless, the person who had the
authority for her appointment escorted her to that desolate station and
left her there alone. A partition of boards in the house was nearly all
gone; it was only a few feet from the floor. She asked the explanation
of this appearance and was told that the boards had been used to make
coffins. Having received this interesting, though somewhat curious
information, she was left alone to find what comfort she could in the
reflection that there was enough of the partition left for one more
coffin.
She told me about it herself—many years afterwards.
II
THE WISE ONES
At Gaboon, in the French Congo, one sees all the successive stages in
the process of civilization. First, there is the savage, whose whole
apparel is a little palm-oil and a bit of calico half the size of a
pocket-handkerchief; then there is the man who wears “two fathoms” of
cloth wound about him gracefully and falling below his knees; next,
there is the man who wears this same robe with a shirt; then the man who
discards the native robe and wears a shirt and trousers, but with the
shirt always outside the trousers; and, last of all, the gentleman who
wears his shirt inside his trousers. These several classes are somewhat
distinct. One does not classify the man with a taste for simplicity who
wears a rice-sack with holes for his head and arms; nor the untutored
dude who wears a pink Mother Hubbard or a lady’s undergarment. These
freakish modes represent attempts to hasten the process of civilization
and to pass prematurely from one of the above classes to another.
In general, the distinction of _culotte_ and _sansculotte_ indicates the
difference between the Mpongwe—the old coast tribe—and the Fang—the
interior tribe, who have only reached the coast in recent years. The
Mpongwe is the most civilized of all the tribes south of the Calabar
River. Many of them, besides wearing trousers, live in _deck-houses_,
that is, houses with wooden floors. The first floor ever seen by the
natives was the deck of an English ship; hence the name _deck-house_. It
was also from contact with English sailors that the native learned to
speak of a “fathom” of cloth.
The Mpongwe are the proudest people of West Africa. An African woman is
never allowed to marry into an inferior tribe; although the men may do
so. And since the Mpongwe have no social equals among the adjacent
tribes, it follows that no Mpongwe woman can marry outside of her own
tribe, unless with a north-coast man or a white man. The Fang, the great
interior tribe, are mere “bush-animals” in the mind of the Mpongwe. A
Fang man, though he were perfectly civilized, and even educated in
France, would not be allowed the social status of the meanest Mpongwe.
The coast women can all speak Fang; for they trade with them and buy
their daily food from them; but they are ashamed to be heard speaking
it. Often when I addressed them in Fang they would shake their heads as
if they had never heard the language before; whereupon I nearly always
asked them a question on some matter of interest to themselves; the
price of a parrot, for instance, if I knew that the lady was anxious to
sell it. Such a question invariably made the dumb to speak.
The Mpongwe call themselves _The Wise Ones_. And other tribes generally
admit their claim and take them at their own self-estimate. In former
days, when they had real kings, they buried their kings in secret, not
more than ten persons knowing the hidden grave, lest some other tribe
might steal the body, for the sake of obtaining the brains, which would
be a very powerful fetish and would make them wise like the Mpongwe.
The king was chosen from among the people by the elders and was selected
for his wisdom. The ceremonies of his enthronement were such that he
required not only wisdom, but also courage, physical strength and a
superb digestion. The man’s first intimation that he had been chosen by
the elders was an onrush of the people—not to do him honour, but to
abuse and insult him. They would hurl opprobrious epithets at him, curse
him, spit upon him, pelt him with mud and beat him. For, they said, from
this time he would do all these things to them, while they would be
powerless to retaliate. This, therefore, was their last chance. They
also reminded him of all his failings in graphic and minute particulars.
If the king survived this treatment, he was then taken to the former
king’s house, where he was solemnly invested with the insignia of the
kingly office, in the shape of a silk hat. No one but the king was
permitted to wear a silk hat.
Following the inauguration ceremony, the people came and bowed before
the new king in humble submission, while they praised him as
enthusiastically as they had before reviled him. Then he was fed and
fêted for a week, during which time he was not allowed to leave his
house, but was required to receive guests from all parts of his dominion
and eat with them all. These ceremonies ended, he turned to the
comparatively easy and commonplace duties of his kingly office. This
custom, like many others, has passed away under the influence of
civilization.
In former days the Mpongwe were divided into three distinct classes.
There were, first, the slaves, the largest class of all. Then there was
a middle class, of those who although free were of slave origin, or had
some slave blood in their veins—even a drop. And then there was a very
small aristocracy of pure Mpongwe.
Of these three classes the middle class probably had the hardest time.
They had freedom enough for initiative and trade enterprise and they
often became rich. But so sure as they did, they were at once an object
of envy and class hatred on the part of the aristocracy, with the result
that they were in constant danger of being accused of witchcraft and put
to death, their goods being confiscated for the benefit of the governing
class—the aristocracy.
Since slavery has been formally abolished by the French government the
line between slaves and this middle class has almost disappeared—but not
quite, for slavery has not been entirely abolished. But the
“aristocracy” is as distinct as ever.
Domestic slavery is rarely attended with the usual horrors of alien
enslavement. Mpongwe slaves were serfs rather than slaves. Until the
advent of the white slaver they were rarely sold or exchanged. Mpongwe
slaves were sometimes taken for debt and sometimes stolen from other
tribes.
Several Mpongwe men have told me that their slaves were children of the
interior whom they had rescued when their parents had thrown them away,
either into the bush to perish by the beasts, or into the river. They
must have been driven to this by some cruel superstition; for the
African loves his children, and the mother of his children is his
favourite wife. Perhaps the children were twins. In many tribes there is
such a fear of twins that they are often put to death and their mother
with them. In some of these tribes they are believed to be the result of
adultery with a spirit.
Many former slaves have chosen to maintain the old relationship—somewhat
modified—rather than accept full freedom, and be left without friends,
family or possessions; a peculiar misfortune for those who have never
had an opportunity to acquire a habit of independence.
At one time a man named Ndinga was working for me. He was a faithful
workman, except for one inexplicable fault. Occasionally he would stay
away half a day or the entire day without asking to be excused, or
notifying me. Several times he did this when I was about to make a trip
up the river, and was depending upon him to make one of the crew. At
length I dismissed him and he departed without explanation or complaint.
But one of the other men came to me and told me Ndinga’s plight. He was
really the slave of an Mpongwe chief, right under the eyes of the
government. The master allowed him to work for himself, but I imagine he
took part of his wages. He also exercised the right to call upon him at
any time for personal services, and each time that he had stayed away
from his work he had been called by the master, who ignored my claim
upon Ndinga and the consequent inconvenience to me, though he claimed to
be my personal friend. Ndinga was sufficiently civilized to feel the
degradation of his position, and the poor fellow submitted to rebuke and
final dismissal rather than tell me he was a slave. I learned also that
he had lost several other positions in the same way and had usually been
dismissed with cursing and abuse. I sent for him immediately, and
without explanation told him that I had changed my mind and that he
could return to work. Meantime, I called the master, and reminding him
that slavery was strictly forbidden, I told him that if he should again
call Ndinga away from work I would notify the government. There was no
further trouble.
This man, Ndinga, was in pitiable need of a friend. It is extremely easy
for a slave to get a bad reputation, and Ndinga was said to be a
“leopard-man,” that is, a man who changes himself into a leopard—either
in order to kill an enemy or devour a sheep. I have heard Ndinga accused
of this frequently; and there were many who regarded him with great
fear. Every hysterical woman who thought that she saw a leopard was
ready to swear that it was Ndinga. If the leopards had been active in
the community at that time all their doings would have been charged
against him.
The Mpongwe women are regarded as the best-looking and most graceful
women on the entire coast. Wherever there are communities of white men,
even hundreds of miles north and south of Gaboon, there are Mpongwe
women; for it is with them more than the women of any other tribe that
white men form temporary alliances.
The Gaboon belle has a brown complexion and faultless skin, fine
features and dreamy dark eyes with long lashes. She moves so easily that
she carries her folded parasol, or bottle of gin, or other
indispensable, on her head. She dresses her hair neatly and with great
pains; usually parting it in the middle and arranging it in numerous
small braids which she fastens behind. Her dress is a large square robe
of bright colours, often of fine material, wound around her, immediately
below her arms, reaching to her feet and kept in place by a roll around
the top of it—a peculiar twist of _leger de main_ which only a black
hand can perform. Somewhere in this roll her pipe is usually hidden
away. This dress leaves her graceful shoulders and arms uncovered. She
wears slippers with white stockings, and upon her head a very large silk
handkerchief of bright colour, beautifully arranged in a turban. Add to
this a lace or silk scarf thrown over one shoulder, not forgetting her
silk parasol carried unopened on her head; then add a lot of jewelry and
plenty of perfume, and her attire is complete. Moreover, she has a soft
voice, and does not yell except when she quarrels, and she seldom
quarrels when she is dressed in her best. Most of the Christian women
wear an unbelted wrapper, or Mother Hubbard.
The Mpongwe people are peculiarly gentle, and courteous in their
manners; and in this respect the men even surpass the women. Travelling
in a boat with an Mpongwe crew, one is always surprised at their
courtesy and thoughtful consideration. Courtesy, indeed, which some one
calls “benevolence in little things,” is a racial characteristic. I was
once obliged to make a very hard journey from Batanga to Benito, a
hundred miles down the coast. For this purpose I purchased a bicycle in
a German trading-house at Dualla, the capital of Kamerun. The bicycle
weighed fifty pounds, and cost me a dollar a pound. I did not realize
what I was undertaking. The sea-breeze was against me; portions of the
beach were of soft sand and parts of it were so rough and rocky that I
had to climb steep banks and stretches of rock, carrying the fifty-pound
wheel on my shoulders. I had been long in Africa and my strength was
greatly reduced. Several times, almost overcome with exhaustion, I threw
myself down upon the beach and lay there for half an hour before I could
go on. There were various misadventures along the way and a sensational
escape from quicksand. It was an opportunity, however, to test the
kindness of the native.
I took no food, but depended upon the hospitality of those to whom I was
a stranger; although if hospitality had failed, I could have paid for
food; but not once did it fail along the way. Wherever there was a
stream to be waded, if a native was anywhere in sight, either on the
beach, or fishing out on the sea, in his canoe, I called or beckoned to
him, and he came and carried me over—for a white man must not get wet
when he is exposed to the wind; then he went back and got my wheel. In
one place the water was to the man’s shoulders, and there was a current,
but he held me in a horizontal position above his head, and exerting his
whole strength, with firm, slow step he proceeded, and set me down dry
on the other side. Then he cheerfully turned about and went after my
wheel. In another place heavy crags projected into the sea and at high
tide there was no beach for a quarter of a mile, so that I was compelled
to carry the wheel. At this place, I met a native carrying a load who
was evidently returning from a journey to the interior; and upon my
request for help, he at once hid his load by the way and taking my wheel
carried it over the rocks, nearly all this distance, to the better beach
beyond. In every case I told the man beforehand that I did not expect to
pay him for his service except in friendship, and friendship sufficed.
Nor did I pay anything for my food; and not once on the entire journey
had I the least difficulty in procuring it. Some of these people were of
other tribes; but in courtesy the Mpongwe surpass them all.
They generally live at peace within the family and the village. The
_men_, at least, rarely fight. Whenever I heard that an Mpongwe fight
was in progress, I rushed to the scene; but I must confess to mixed
motives. For a fight among Mpongwe men is decidedly picturesque and
entertaining, since they fight by butting each other in the stomach with
their heads. The women are much more quarrelsome, and these very belles,
whose beauty I have praised, have frequent quarrels and occasional
fights, the latter usually involving a number of women; for though the
quarrel commences with two women, when it gets to a real fight the
family and relations of each woman take part in it. From this moment it
proceeds somewhat formally. They line up on two sides, and with a lively
accompaniment of appropriate language, they rush upon each other, not
usually striking, nor scratching, but each woman seeking to tear off her
opponent’s robe. I witnessed such a fight in which eighteen women
engaged. A woman, when her robe is taken off, admits defeat. For this
reason, instead of preparing for a fight by donning her oldest clothes,
she prepares by putting on her newest and strongest, which she doubles
and ties about her waist, letting it fall to her knees, but she wears no
upper garment.
There is a strange war-custom in all the tribes of West Africa unlike
anything I have ever heard of elsewhere. Sometimes when one of their
number is killed, or a woman stolen by an enemy, instead of avenging his
death directly they will kill some one of a third town which has nothing
whatever to do with the palaver. This third town is then expected to
join with them in punishing the first town, which, being the original
offender, was the cause of all the trouble. In _The Jungle Folk of
Africa_ I have described this custom thus:
“Among the Mpongwe, in the old days before the foreign power was
established, and among the closely related tribes south of them, this
custom prevailed in an extreme form. A woman being stolen, the people of
the offended town would hurry to another town near by, before the news
had reached them, and would kill somebody. This town would then hurry to
the next and kill somebody there, each town doing likewise until perhaps
five or six persons of as many different towns would be killed in one
night. The last town would then, with the help of the others, demand
justice from the first. It may be that the object of this frightful
custom was to restrain men from committing the initial crime, that might
be attended with such wide-spread death, bringing upon themselves the
curses of many people. For above all things the African cannot bear to
be disliked and cannot endure execration.”
The Mpongwe now have no war-customs. And I am not sure that peace has
proved an unmixed blessing. They have lost something of courage and
virility.
Despite the veneer of civilization, I fear that this amiable and
graceful people—excepting only the few Christians—are as superstitious
as ever. Nature is still inhabited by myriad spirits to whose activity
natural phenomena are due. They still speak of the great spirit who
causes the flow and ebb of the tide by dropping an enormous stone into
the sea and again removing it. Trial by ordeal is common even among the
most intelligent. And not a death occurs among them that is not
attributed to witchcraft.
A man dying in the hospital at Gaboon turns his solemn, beautiful eyes
towards one who sits beside him, and tells in confidence what has
brought about his death. It is strange how approaching death, as if to
testify to man’s divine origin in the hour of his most appalling defeat,
dignifies the features and countenance of the lowest with a mysterious
dignity that transcends all differences of colour, transforms even
natural ugliness, and brings all men to one level. The greatest is no
more than human; the lowest is no less. This dying man tells how that
some weeks past, having gone on a journey to a certain town forty miles
north, and during the night having wondered what his friends at home
might be doing, he thought he would visit Gaboon, leaving his body while
his spirit alone travelled through the air. But on the way he met a
company of spirits making a similar journey, one of whom was an enemy;
who, recognizing him, gave him a fatal thrust in the side. He quickly
returned to his body; but in the morning he felt the weakness resulting
from the fatal stroke, and from that day had grown weaker and weaker
until death was upon him.
I was present at the trial of a slave, in a leading Mpongwe town, who
was accused of causing the death of one of the relations of the chief, a
man who had been ill for a long time with tuberculosis. I had been
calling on the sick man regularly. One day, going again to the town, I
saw a crowd of people gathered in the street who were very much excited.
The man had just died, and as usual the panic-stricken people were
determined to blame somebody. The chief who was trying the case was a
well-educated man who had been closely associated with white people all
his life and was prominent in trade. Arbitrary suspicion had about
settled upon this slave—for slaves are always the first to be
suspected—when a boy came forward and said that on the preceding night
he had discovered the slave standing behind the sick man’s house and
that he had watched him while he opened a bundle of leaves which he had
in his hand and in which was a piece of human flesh like a fish in size
and form. No more evidence was necessary. No one asked the boy how he
knew that it was not a fish which he had seen; nor how he knew that it
was human.
They would have killed the man instantly but for their fear of the
French government; for the town was close beside the capital. When I
tried to reason with them, they answered me with the all-sufficient
exclamation: “Ask the boy! Ask him yourself!” Those who took the leading
part in this trial were dressed like Europeans.
Sickness and death, they believe, may be caused by fetish medicine,
which need not be administered to the victim, but is usually laid beside
the path where he is about to pass. Others may pass and it will do them
no harm. The parings of finger-nails, the hair of the victim and such
things are powerful ingredients in these “medicines.” An Mpongwe, after
having his hair cut, gathers up every hair most carefully and burns it
lest an enemy should secure it and use it to his injury. When sickness
continues for a length of time they usually conclude that some offended
relation has caused an evil spirit to abide in the town.
An Mpongwe man, Ayenwe, had a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism.
I was going to see him regularly and doing what little I could for him.
But his mother’s people, who lived in a town four miles away, concluded
that it was a spell of witchcraft, inflicted by his father’s people. So
they came one stormy night at midnight and stealing him out of his
house, put him in a canoe and carried him on the rough sea to their
town. The patient can always be prevailed upon by his relations, if
there are enough of them to wear out his resistance. However strongly he
may object at first he will finally throw up his hands and say: “Kill me
if you will then. The responsibility is yours; I have nothing more to do
with it.” A man’s very soul is not his own in Africa.
An Mpongwe woman, Paia, was suffering greatly from salivation, through
the injudicious use of calomel. She was a Christian woman and a member
in the Mpongwe Church, although her relations were all heathen. She was
in agony and a fellow missionary and myself had already reached the
point where we could do nothing more for her. The numerous heathen
relations were all present. They sat on the floor smoking and
expectorating in gloomy silence, with the windows closed, and filled the
house so that I could hardly pass in and out. I tried my best to get
them to take Paia to the French hospital, but they were horrified at the
bare suggestion. The tales in free circulation concerning the
hospital—poisons administered by the doctor, mutilation, and death by
slow torture—would fill a volume. Several days passed: Paia was worse.
They concluded that the house was bewitched—and perhaps the whole
town—and resolved to carry her away to another town, across the river.
In such cases it is advisable to put a body of water between the victim
and the bewitched town. Paia told me that she was more than willing to
go to the hospital if they would let her; but she said they would never
consent. Next morning about daylight I suddenly appeared before her door
with four strong men and a hammock swung on a pole. Before her relations
knew what had happened one of the men had carried her out to the
hammock, and we started to the hospital. The French doctor, one of the
very best on the coast, at my request gave her special attention, and in
a few days she was well.
[Illustration:
WOMEN’S SECRET SOCIETY OF GABOON.
]
The lowest reach of Mpongwe degradation is represented by the woman’s
secret society, to which a majority of the Mpongwe women
belong—practically all, except the Christians, who regard it with
abhorrence. I know of nothing in any interior tribe more degrading and
immoral. In former times of cruelty and oppression the society probably
served for the protection of women against their husbands; but in these
times it is the husbands who need protection, and the society, having
outlived its usefulness, has degenerated. The women of the society
frequently meet together at night, usually in an arbour of palms, and
sing unspeakably lewd songs—phallic songs—which are heard all over the
village. There is always a crowd of young men gathered around the
arbour; and the badinage which passes between them and the women is
shocking. And yet these same persons, on all other occasions in their
daily intercourse, observe a degree of decorum which would astonish
those who think that there is scarcely any such thing as decorum in
Africa.
III
A DYING TRIBE
This amiable and attractive people, the Mpongwe tribe, is now but a
dying remnant, hurrying to extinction. It is not long since they were
numbered by tens of thousands; now there are probably not more than five
hundred pure Mpongwe. There are women among them for whom marriage is
impossible. For, as I have already said, their social superiority makes
it impossible for them to marry into other tribes; but, within their own
tribe, many Mpongwe women are related, nearly or remotely, to every
surviving family, and the very strict laws of consanguinity forbid the
marriage of related persons. It is expected, therefore, that these women
will make their alliances with white men; that is, that they will not
marry at all.
The first exterminating factor was slavery. Sir Harry Johnston, in _The
Civilization of Africa_, has this to say in regard to the fatal
adaptability of the Negro to a condition of slavery:
“The Negro in general is a born slave. He is possessed of physical
strength, docility, cheerfulness of disposition, a short memory for
sorrows and cruelties, and an easily aroused gratitude for kindness and
just dealing. He does not suffer from homesickness to the overbearing
extent that afflicts other peoples torn from their homes, and, provided
he is well fed, he is easily made happy. Above all, he can toil hard
under the hot sun and in the unhealthy climates of the torrid zone. He
has little or no race-fellowships—that is to say, he has no sympathy for
other Negroes; he recognizes and follows his master independent of any
race affinities, and as he is usually a strong man and a good fighter,
he has come into request not only as a labourer but as a soldier.”
Sir Harry, speaking as an eye-witness of the capturing and the
exportation of slaves, gives a lurid description of their sufferings,
which, he says, “were so appalling that they almost transcend belief.”
He makes a conservative estimate that in the modern period of the
slave-traffic twenty million Africans must have been sold into slavery.
The Mpongwe was one of the tribes that suffered most. A large portion of
their country was depopulated. The slave-traffic was frightfully
demoralizing to the Africans themselves. It excited fiendish passions,
stifled every instinct of humanity and inspired craft and cruelty far
surpassing anything hitherto known. It was said that three men of the
same family dared not leave their town together lest two of them should
combine to sell the third.
More than half a century has passed since the last slave ship sailed out
of Gaboon harbour and disappeared over the western horizon with its
cargo of grief and rage, many of them wailing vengeance in a mournful
chant, improvising the words as they sang. For the African sings his
bitterest grief as well as his joy. He sings where the white man would
weep, or curse; but to the accustomed ear no cry could equal the pity of
his song.
It was in this region that Du Chaillu hunted the gorilla and gathered
much of the material for his famous books. An interior chief, in
appreciation of Du Chaillu’s visit to his town, once presented him with
a fat slave; and when Du Chaillu kindly declined the offer, protesting
that he would not know what to do with him, the chief exclaimed in
astonishment: “You must kill him and eat him, of course.”
Du Chaillu spat violently upon the ground—the African way of expressing
disgust and abhorrence.
“Then,” said the bewildered chief, “what do you do with all our people
who are sent down the river and far away to your country? We have
believed that you fatten them and eat them.”
It is supposed that our present mission station was formerly the site of
a slave pen, where slaves were kept until they were shipped—a
_barracoon_; hence the name _Baraka_.
The slave-traffic was succeeded by the rum-traffic; and it would not be
easy to say which of the two has proved the greater evil for Africa.
There is more drunkenness in Gaboon, among the Mpongwe, than in most
places on the coast. Except among the few Christians, an abundance of
rum is used at every marriage and every funeral and both men and women
drink to drunkenness. The women drink as much as the men, and there are
a greater number of hopeless dipsomaniacs among them.
One day, as I was walking along the beach, I met a bright-looking
Mpongwe woman who surprised me by addressing me in English. I was eager
to know who she was. She said her name was Elida Harrington, and that
when she was very young the wife of one of our missionaries, for whom
she had been working, took her to America when she went on furlough and
that during the period of the furlough she had attended school in
America. Those early days were evidently a sweet memory, and Elida’s
face was aglow with pleasure as she told me. Finally I asked her why I
had never seen her at the mission. The glow faded from her face, and
after a moment of gloomy silence she replied: “You’ll know soon enough.”
I afterwards learned that Elida, when she was young, was married to a
man who was given to _nagging_. He was continually making petty and
groundless charges of infidelity against his wife. There is no surer way
to inspire the dislike of the African. They are wonderfully generous in
forgiving impulsive cruelty, but continual nagging will alienate them.
At last, just to spite her husband, Elida told him that all his charges
were true; that she had done all those things, and much worse—such
things as he had never thought of charging against her. Her husband,
when he recovered from a paroxysm of rage and astonishment, told her to
pack her things and leave his house; to which she quietly replied that
she would be glad to do so, since she had already decided upon that very
course.
Soon after my first meeting with Elida I called at her house. It was
then that I learned why she kept away from the mission. She was so
intoxicated that she could not get to the door. And this was habitual.
One day Elida went to see her sister Jane, who was sick in bed. Jane
wanted some bread and gave her the price of a loaf and asked her to go
out and buy it for her. Poor Jane never got the bread. And poor Elida!
She went only as far as the first rum-shop.
I think of another, a young man who bore an honoured name, _Augustus
Boardman_, and who from his childhood was closely connected with the
mission. He spoke English not like an African but as if it were his
native tongue. I never knew a native who understood the finer feelings
of white people as Augustus did. I never knew a native who had in
himself so much of what we call _sentiment_. On one occasion he went
with me to Angom where Mr. Marling was buried. Mr. Marling, who had been
dead for five years, was the missionary whom Augustus had known best and
loved most. In the evening, just before leaving for the coast, I
happened to pass Mr. Marling’s grave, and there I saw a beautiful wreath
of flowers carefully woven, which Augustus had laid upon the grave. The
African is strangely indifferent to flowers, and I have never known
another who would have done what Augustus did.
On another occasion I received a letter from him when he was up the
Ogowè River. He wrote that while visiting at our old mission on the
Ogowè he had come across an English song-book, in which he had found a
song, the words of which were the most beautiful he had ever read in his
life; so beautiful that he had committed them to memory; and he was
wondering whether it was well known and commonly sung among
English-speaking people. He copied the words of the entire song and
enclosed them in the letter. The song was _The Lost Chord_. The anguish
of the lost chord in his own life was the secret of the deep impression
that the song made upon him.
In America a child can be kept out of the way of the worst temptations
until he has reached years of discretion, but such separation is
impossible in Africa. This boy, when he was a little child, was taught
to drink rum; his mother died a hopeless victim of it; and by the time
he was a young man the appetite for it was insatiable and complete
master of him. The finer feelings which characterized him seemed to make
him all the more the victim of this inordinate desire. He fought it as
he might have fought a python of his native jungles, but in vain. On one
occasion, in the presence of Mr. Marling, he pledged himself with the
solemnity of an oath never to taste it again. A few days afterwards he
was walking down the street of an interior town when most unexpectedly
he met a boy with a bottle of rum. He sprang at the boy, snatched the
bottle from him and drank the contents. Other efforts ended similarly.
He afterwards made such promises to me, weeping and fairly prostrated
with shame and humiliation; yet he soon fell again. He became at length
quite hopeless, and it was necessary to dismiss him from all service in
the mission. He got several good positions, but lost them immediately.
When I last saw him he was a moral wreck and almost an outcast even in
Africa, where there are no outcasts. Augustus has since died; one more
victim of poisoned rum.
_He is full of compassion and plenteous in mercy._ And, knowing Augustus
as I knew him, I dare to hope that he has again at last heard the
long-lost chord, and the sound of the great _Amen_.
The native is constitutionally incapable of being a moderate drinker.
And, besides, drunkenness is not disgraceful; they have not the spirit
that revolts from it. I have personally seen little children
intoxicated. I have seen them intoxicated in the schoolroom. I have
known of parents getting their own children to drink to intoxication for
their amusement. It is doubtful whether there is another tribe in all
West Africa so besotted with alcoholism as the Mpongwe. Physicians agree
that it is one of the chief causes of their increasing sterility.
Another factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe is the demoralization
of domestic life incident to methods of trade. The Mpongwe man is a
trader by instinct. In shrewdness and diplomacy I doubt whether he has a
superior among all the tribes of West Africa. This shrewdness he
expresses in many homely proverbs; as, for example, when he says: “If
you must sleep three in a bed, sleep in the middle.” White traders all
along the coast employ the Mpongwe as middlemen between them and the
interior people, who possess the export products. The white man gives
the middleman a certain quantity of goods on trust. With these he goes
to the interior and establishes a small trading-post in one or several
towns. It is a life of privation and danger, a lonely, miserable
existence, but he endures it with patience for the joyful hope that at
the end of a year or two he may return to his beloved town and family in
Gaboon, so rich that he can afford to “rip” for six months; to dress so
that the women will adore him and the men hate him. His goods being soon
exhausted by his numerous relations as well as himself, he starts off
for another year or two. He has a wife, or wives, at Gaboon, and he
takes to himself a wife or two at each of his interior trading-centres.
In the dangers of these middlemen and the necessities of trade Miss Mary
H. Kingsley finds a plausible argument for polygamy, amounting, in Miss
Kingsley’s opinion, to a full justification. Indeed, for various
reasons, the majority of traders defend and advocate native polygamy.
The journeys of these native traders to the interior are dangerous, and
I agree with Miss Kingsley that they deserve credit for their courage.
“Certainly they run less risk of death from fever than a white man
would; but, on the other hand, their colour gives them no protection;
and their chance of getting murdered is distinctly greater; the white
governmental powers cannot revenge their death in the way they would the
death of a white man, for these murders usually take place away in some
forest region, in a district no white man has ever penetrated.”
There are two reasons why so many of them nevertheless survive. The
first is that trade follows definite routes and the trader is expected
about once in six months by all the towns along the way, in which the
people are eager for trade-goods, the men “fairly wild for tobacco” and
the women impatient for beads and other ornaments. Under these
circumstances, for the people of any one town to kill the trader would
mean trouble between that town and the other towns along the route.
But this consideration alone is not sufficient; and Miss Kingsley gives
us the means that he employs for his further safety, as follows: “But
the trader is not yet safe. There is still a hole in his armour, and
this is only to be stopped up in one way, namely, by wives; for you see,
although the village cannot safely kill him and take all his goods, they
can still let him die safely of a disease, and take part of them,
passing on sufficient stuff to the other villages to keep them quiet.
Now the most prevalent disease in the African bush comes out of the
cooking-pot, and so to make what goes into the cooking-pot—which is the
important point, for earthen pots do not in themselves breed poison—safe
and wholesome, you have got to have some one who is devoted to your
health to attend to the cooking affairs; and who can do this like a
wife?—one in each village of the whole of your route. I know myself one
gentleman whose wives stretch over 300 miles of country, with a good
wife base in a coast town as well. This system of judiciously conducted
alliances gives the black trader a security nothing else can, because
naturally he marries into influential families at each village, and all
the wife’s relations on the mother’s side regard him as one of
themselves and look after him and his interests. That security can lie
in woman, especially so many women, the so-called civilized man may
ironically doubt, but the security is there, and there only, and on a
sound basis; for remember that the position of a travelling trader’s
wife in a village is a position that gives the lady prestige, the
discreet husband showing little favours to her family and friends, if
she asks for them while he is with her; and then she has not got the
bother of having a man always about the house, and liable to get all
sorts of silly notions into his head, if she speaks to another
gentleman, and then go and impart these notions to her with a cutlass,
or a kassengo, as the more domestic husband, I am assured by black
ladies, is prone to.”[1]
Footnote 1:
_Travels in West Africa_, p. 252.
This picture is not untrue to the facts. And yet some of us who have
old-fashioned ideas of morality are not convinced that polygamy is
thereby justified with its beastly immorality on the part of those men
and of all those women who prefer not to have husbands hanging about the
house with silly notions—that is to say, _moral_ notions—about the
behaviour of women. And however heartrending may be the condition of
those interior men and women, without tobacco and without beads, we
cannot agree that their necessity justifies any such degrading practice
for its relief. As for the slight excess of rubber and ivory that
civilized folks obtain by this means, it may soothe the civilized breast
to know that all, or nearly all, this trade produce would reach the
coast in other and more legitimate ways without these middlemen, whose
presence is a curse to the interior people, whose absence is a curse to
their own tribe, and who are above all a curse to themselves.
This demoralization of domestic life is even worse for the Mpongwe women
than for their absent husbands. There is a large settlement of white men
in Gaboon, most of them government officials. And because of the climate
the white population is always rapidly changing. Nearly all the Mpongwe
women become the mistresses of those men. And the worst of it is that
instead of being deemed disgraceful this only gives them social prestige
among their own people. A woman said to me one day:
“Iga is so proud she won’t speak to me any more.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, she is living with a white man now,” was the reply.
The marriage tie in Gaboon has long ceased to be a “tie.” It was much
more binding before the advent of the white man, and it is more binding
to-day among the uncivilized Fang.
The dreadful diseases that have been imported into Africa are certainly
a factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe. But the subject is too
unpleasant to discuss at length in this place.
Again, the disregard of native institutions and the destruction of
tribal authority by the foreign government tends to break down all
authority and remove all moral restraints. This is more or less true in
all West Africa. The native form of government among the Mpongwe is
somewhat patriarchal; authority belongs to the head of the family, the
head of the clan and the head of the tribe. The native reverence for the
authority of these men is the saving virtue that sustains the tribe. But
the chief’s authority and this reverence are destroyed together when the
people see him tied up occasionally and flogged; or ruthlessly flung
into prison; or his authority superseded by that of a native policeman.
The kingly office goes begging for an occupant when men find that the
grandeur of royalty consists in being held more or less responsible for
all the misdoings of all the tribe, while, perhaps, some black mistress
of a government official has more real power than the native king.
The authority of custom, in former times, even exceeded the authority of
kings. But the foreigner ignores native customs, or ridicules them, or
even condemns and forbids them—often without understanding them. The
tribal customs of Africa, from the most trivial to the most revolting,
are not arbitrary, but have a moral meaning and significance; though
they sometimes outlive their usefulness. They either embody such rude
justice as the African has attained; or else they represent the
operation of the law of self-preservation. One can give a rational
explanation even of the most cruel and revolting custom that I have ever
known in Africa, namely, the custom of burying a man’s wives alive with
him when he dies. Africa abounds with deadly poisons, and African wives
frequently contract an unpleasant habit of using them in the
cooking-pot. How common the practice is may be judged by the African
proverb: “We don’t eat out of the same dish,” used for instance as
follows: “So-and-so is angry but what do I care? We don’t eat out of the
same dish.” The wife prepares her husband’s food and has the daily
opportunity of using this deadly weapon. But this burial custom—the fact
that when he dies she will be buried with him—gives her a personal
interest in keeping him alive. It is scarcely necessary to say that I
think that this custom ought to be suppressed and its observance
severely punished. But meantime something ought to be done to improve
the morals of the African wife.
The dowry paid for a wife among the Mpongwe is forty dollars. Among the
uncivilized Fang it is several times this amount, although the Fang are
very poor in comparison. The Mpongwe dowry was reduced by the French
government as a step in the direction of its abolishment; for it is
nothing more than a purchase price. But the result of this forced
reduction of the dowry has been demoralization rather than civilization.
The custom among all tribes is that if a wife desert her husband her
family must pay back the dowry or send back the wife. It is not easy to
send back a large dowry, and the people, being unable or unwilling to do
it, will send the woman back unless she has a very strong case against
her husband. But forty dollars can easily be raised, especially if there
should be several white men to help. So there is nothing to prevent the
Mpongwe woman from leaving her husband when she pleases; and it pleases
her to change him frequently. Until the African attains the moral
sentiment that makes the marriage bond sacred it is better that there
should be the bond of outright purchase and ownership rather than no
marriage at all.
It is so with the whole body of custom. It expresses the inward life of
the people. It contains such rudimentary morality as they know, or
embodies a principle that is necessary for the preservation of society.
It is on the level of the African’s moral culture. It corresponds with
his beliefs and has the consent of his mind. The foreigner may by sheer
force change his outward condition, but unless there be also a
corresponding inward change he does not respond to the new obligations;
his moral responsibility is not equal to the new demands, and the result
is moral degeneration followed inevitably by physical degeneration.
This very matter of the dowry illustrates the different method of the
missionary and, I believe, the true principle of progress. Our early
missionaries made no church laws against the dowry, but they faithfully
preached the equality of woman and the higher idea of marriage; and as
the Christians became imbued with this sentiment they themselves
abolished the dowry within their own society. But they did it at the
instance of a moral sentiment which made marriage more secure than ever.
The inward preceded the outward change. The missionary does as much harm
as anybody else when he adopts the easy method of ruthless and
indiscriminate assaults upon native customs and beliefs. It was not the
Master’s method. Even slavery Jesus did not attack with violence; that
were as vain—if I may use the illustration of Dr. Richard Storrs—as vain
as to attack an Arctic ice-field with pick and drill; but He turned upon
it the summer sunshine and it slowly melted away. He inspired men with a
sentiment of human brotherhood and destroyed slavery by expelling the
spirit that made it possible. The African has a rooted antipathy to the
pick and drill, but he loves the sunshine; he is responsive to truth and
capable of high and transforming affections.
It is said on the coast that England rules her African colonies for
_commerce_, France for _revenue_ and Spain for _plunder_. The English
policy gives the utmost encouragement to native enterprise and thrift,
and on the whole the English colonies are the most prosperous and
promising. The French policy of revenue imposes such a burden of
taxation that life no longer consists in eating and drinking and talking
palavers, but in paying taxes. And the enormous import and export duty
stifles enterprise and in the end defeats its own purpose. But it must
be said that the French officials, of all classes, in their personal
intercourse with the natives, are free and friendly, and in consequence
are much better liked than the English officials, who, though usually
just, are often arrogant, and, while they care for the welfare of the
native, care nothing for his feelings. One recalls that in the early
days of America the French got on with the Indians much better than the
English.
The German policy cannot be described in one word. Their policy is
commercial; but they love government for its own sake and they govern
far too much. There is an element of militarism in their rule that is
entirely too rigorous for the African, and must ultimately destroy him
unless it becomes modified through knowledge and experience. It is
certain that Germany has not yet solved the problems of colonial
government in Africa. Some years have passed since I lived in Kamerun
and it may be that conditions have improved—though I doubt it; but it
used to be that the first visible institution of government in a new
district was the whipping-post. Whatever Germany does she does with all
her might, and the activity of this institution made the proximity of a
government station an undesirable neighbourhood if one chanced to have a
human heart. The outpost of civilization in Africa is frequently a
whipping-post.
[Illustration: