SIERRA LEONE: THE CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.
After a pleasant run, _not_ in a 'sultry and tedious Pacific,'
covering 490 miles from Bathurst, we sighted a heavy cloud banking up
the southern horizon. As we approached it resolved itself into its three
component parts, the airy, the earthy, and the watery; and it turned out
to be our destination. The old frowze of warm, water-laden nimbus was
there; everything looked damp and dank, lacking sweetness and
sightliness; the air wanted clearing, the ground cleaning, and the sea
washing. Such on January 17, 1882, was the first appearance of the
redoubtable Sierra Leone. It was a contrast to the description by the
learned and painstaking Winterbottom. [Footnote: _An Account of the
Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, etc._ London,
Hatchard, 1803.] 'On a nearer approach the face of the country assumes a
more beautiful aspect. The rugged appearance of these mountains is
softened by the lively verdure with which they are constantly crowned
(?); their majestic forms (?), irregularly advancing and receding,
occasion huge masses of light and shade to be projected from their
sides, which add a degree of picturesque grandeur to the scene.'
And first of the name. Pedro de Cintra (1480), following Soeiro da Costa
(1462-63), is said to have applied 'Sierra Leone' to the mountain-block
in exchange for the 'Romarong' of its Timni owners. He did nothing of
the kind: our English term is a mere confusion of two neo-Latin tongues,
'Sierra' being Spanish and 'Leone' Italian. The Portuguese called it
Serra da Leôa (of the Lioness), not 'Lion Hill.' [Footnote: So the late
Keith Johnston, _Africa_, who assigns to the apex a height of 2,500
feet.] Hence Milton is hardly worse than his neighbours when he writes--
Notus and Afer, black with thund'rous clouds
From Serraliona;
and the old French 'Serrelionne' was the most correct translation. The
reason is disputed; some invoke the presence of the Queen of the Cats,
others the leonine rumbling of the re-echoed thunder. The latter
suggested the Montes Claros of the Portuguese. Cà da Mosto in 1505 tells
us that the explorers 'gave the name of Sierra Leone to the mountain on
account of the roaring of thunder heard from the top, which is always
buried in clouds.' But the traveller, entering the roadstead, may see in
the outline of Leicester Cone a fashion of maneless lion or lioness
couchant with averted head, the dexter paw protruding in the shape of a
ground-bulge and the contour of the back and crupper tapering off
north-eastwards. At any rate, it is as fair a resemblance as the French
lion of Bastia and the British lion of 'Gib.' Meanwhile those marvellous
beings the 'mammies' call 'the city' 'Sillyown,' and the pretty, naughty
mulatto lady married to the Missing Link termed it 'Sa Leone.' I shall
therefore cleave to the latter, despite 'Mammy Gumbo's' box inscribed
'Sa leone.'
Presently the lighthouse, four to five miles distant from the anchorage,
was seen nestling at the base of old Cabo Ledo, the 'Glad Head,' the
Timni 'Miyinga,' now Cape 'Sa Leone.' Round this western point the sea
and the discharge of two rivers run like a mill-race. According to
Barbot (ii. 1) 'the natives call Cabo Ledo (not Liedo) or Tagrin (Cape
Sa Leone) 'Hesperi Cornu,' the adjoining peoples (who are lamp-black)
Leucsethiopes, and the mountain up the country Eyssadius Mons.' All the
merest conjecture! Mr. Secretary Griffith, of whom more presently, here
finds the terminus of the Periplus of Hanno, the Carthaginian, in the
sixth century B.C., and the far-famed gorilla-land. [Footnote: This I
emphatically deny. Hanno describes an eruption, not a bush-fire, and Sa
Leone never had a volcano within historic times. There is no range fit
to be called Theôn Ochema (Vehicle of the Gods), which Ptolemy places on
the site of Camarones Peak, and there is no Notou Keras, or Horn of the
South. Lastly, there is no island that could support the gorilla: we
must go further south for one, to Camarones and Corisoo in the Bight of
Benin.]
Formerly the red-tipped lantern-tower had attached to it a bungalow,
where invalids resorted for fresh air; it has now fallen to pieces, and
two iron seats have taken its place. Over this western end of the
peninsula's northern face the play of the sea-breeze is strong and
regular; and the wester and north-wester blow, as at Freetown, fifty
days out of sixty. The run-in from this point is picturesque in clear
weather, and it must have been beautiful before the luxuriant forest was
felled for fuel, and the land was burnt for plantations which were never
planted. A few noble trees linger beside and behind the lighthouse,
filling one with regret for the wanton destruction of their
kind. Lighthouse Hillock, which commands the approach to the port, and
which would sweep the waters as far as the Sá Leone River, will be
provided with powerful batteries before the next maritime war. And we
must not forget that Sá Leone is our only harbour of refuge, where a
fleet can water and refit, between the Gambia and the Cape of Good Hope.
The northern face of the Sá Leone peninsula is fretted with little
creeks and inlets, bights and lagoons, which were charming in a state of
nature. Pirate's Bay, the second after the lighthouse, is a fairy scene
under a fine sky; with its truly African tricolor, its blue waters
reflecting air, its dwarf cliffs of laterite bespread with vivid
leek-green, and its arc of golden yellow sand, upon which the feathery
tops of the cocoa-palms look like pins planted in the ground. To the
travelled man the view suggests many a nook in the Pacific islands. The
bathing is here excellent: natural breakwaters of black rock exclude the
shark. The place derives its gruesome name from olden days, when the
smooth waters and the abundant fish and fruit tempted the fiery
filibusters to a relache. It was given in 1726 by Mr. Smith, surveyor to
the Royal African Company, after Roberts the pirate, who buried 'his
loot' in the Isles de Los, had burned an English ship. There is also a
tradition that Drake chose it for anchoring.
Beyond Pirate's Bay, and separated by a bushy and wooded point, lies
Aberdeen Creek, a long reach extending far into the interior, and
making, after heavy rains, this portion of the country
Both land and island twice a day.
The whole site of Sa Leone is quasi-insular. Bunce or Bunch River to the
north, and Calamart or Calmont, usually called Campbell's Creek, from
the south, are said to meet at times behind the mountain-mass; and at
all seasons a portage of a mile enables canoes to paddle round the
hill-curtain behind Freetown. This conversion of peninsula into islet is
by no means rare in the alluvial formations further south.
Aberdeen Creek abounds in sunken rocks, which do not, however, prevent a
ferry-boat crossing it. Governor Rowe began a causeway to connect it
with the next village, and about a third of the length has already been
done by convict labour. Aberdeen village is a spread of low thatched
huts, lining half-cleared roads by courtesy called streets. Murray Town
and Congo Town bring us to King Tom's Point. Here is the old Wesleyan
College, a large whitewashed bungalow with shingled roof, upper
_jalousies,_ and lower arches; the band of verdure in front being
defended from the waves by a dwarf sea-wall and a few trees still
lingering around it. The position is excellent: the committee, however,
sold it because the distance was too great for the boys to walk, and
bought a fitter place near Battery Point. Thus it became one of the many
Government stores. A deep indentation now shows Upper Town or Kru Town,
heaps of little thatched hovels divided by remnants of bush. It is,
despite its brook, one of the impurest sites in the colony: nothing can
teach a Kruman cleanliness; a Slav village is neatness itself compared
with his. This foul colony settled early in Sá Leone, and in 1816 an
ordinance was passed enabling it to buy its bit of land. The present
chief is 'King' Tom Peter, who is also a first-class police-constable
under the Colonial Grovernment; and his subjects hold themselves far
superior to their brethren in the old home down coast. 'We men work for
cash-money; you men work for waist-cloth.' Again 'pig-iron and tenpenny
nails!'
Beyond this point, at a bend of the bight, we anchor a few hundred feet
from the shore, and we command a front view of roadstead and 'city.'
St. George's Bay, the older 'Baie de France,' would be impossible but
for the Middle Ground, the Scarcies Bank, and other huge shoals of sand
pinned down by rocks which defend the roadstead from the heavy send of
the sea. It is supplied with a tide-rip by the Tagrin, Mitomba, Rokel,
or Rokelle, the Sá Leone River, which Barbot makes the ancients term Nia
(N_ia_), and which the Timni tribe call Robung Dakell, or Stream of
Scales. Hence some identify it with Pliny's 'flumen Bambotum crocodilis
et hippopotamis refertum.' Its northern bank is the low Bullom shore, a
long flat line of mud and mangrove, on which all the fevers, Tertiana,
Quartana, and Co., hold their court. The sea-facing dot is Leopard,
anciently Leopold, Island, where it is said a leopard was once seen: it
is, however, a headland connected by a sandspit with the leeward-most
point of the coast. The Bullom country takes a name after its tribe. A
score of years ago I was told they were wild as wild can be: now the
chief, Alimami (El-Imám) Sanúsi, hospitably receives white faces at his
capital, Callamondia. Moreover, a weekly post passes through Natunu to
Kaikonki _via_ Yongro, Proboh, and Bolloh.
Inland (east) of the Bulloms, or lowlanders, dwell the Timnis, who drove
to seaward the quondam lords of the land. Kissy, Sherbro, and Casamansa
are all named from their 'Reguli.' They retain a few traditional words,
such as 'potu,' meaning a European: similarly in Central Africa the King
of Portugal is entitled Mueneputo. Butter is also 'Mantinka,' the
Lusitanian _Mantêiga_, and a candle is _Kandirr_. Although 'the
religion of Islam seems likely to diffuse itself peaceably over the
whole district in which the colony (Sá Leone) is situated, carrying with
it those advantages which seem ever to have attended its victory over
negro superstition,' [Footnote: _Report of Directors of Sierra Leone
Company to the House of Commons_, quoted by Winterbottom and the
Rev. Mr. Macbriar.] the tribe has remained pagan.
Buttressing the southern shore of the Rokel's _débouchure_ is a dwarf
Ghaut, a broken line of sea-subtending highlands, stretching
south-south-east some eighteen miles from Cape Sá Leone to Cape
Shilling. Inland of these heights the ground is low. The breadth of the
peninsula is about twelve miles, which would give it an area of 300
square miles, larger than the Isle of Wight. There are, besides it, the
Kwiah (Quiah) country, British Sherbro, an important annexation dated
1862; the Isles de Los, the Bananas, and a strip of land on the Bullom
shore,--additions which more than treble the old extent.
The peninsula is distinctly volcanic, and subject to earthquakes: the
seismic movement of 1858 extended to the Gold Coast, and was a precursor
of the ruins of 1862. [Footnote: For the older earthquakes see
Winterbottom, i, 34-5.] Its appearance, however, is rather that of a
sandstone region, the effect of the laterite or volcanic mud which, in
long past ages, has been poured over the plutonic ejections; and the
softly rounded contours, with here and there a lumpy cone, a tongue of
land, and a gentle depression, show the long-continued action of water
and weather. This high background, which arrests the noxious vapours of
the lowlands and of the Bullom shore, and which forbids a thorough
draught, is the fons malorum, the grand cause of the fevers and malaria
for which the land has an eternal ill fame. The 'Sultan' of the Ghauts
is Regent Mountain, or Sugarloaf Peak, a kind of lumpy 'parrot's beak'
which rises nearly 3,000 feet above sea-level: one rarely sees even its
base. The trip to the summit occupies two days; and here wild coffee is
said to flourish, as it does at Kwiah and other parts of the
lowland. The 'Wazir' is Wilberforce, which supports sundry hamlets set
in dense bush; and Leicester Cone, the lioness-hill, ranks third. The
few reclaimed patches, set in natural shrubbery, are widely scattered:
the pure, unsophisticated African is ever ashamed of putting hand to hoe
or plough; and, where the virgin soil would grow almost everything, we
cannot see a farm and nothing is rarer than a field. Firing the bush
also has been unwisely allowed: hence the destruction of much valuable
timber and produce; for instance, tallow-trees and saponaceous
nut-trees, especially the _Pentadesma butyracea_, and the noble
forest which once clothed the land from Sá Leone to the Niger.
Looking towards the Rokel River, we see the Fourah Bay and College, a
large and handsome building, now terribly out of repair. This
establishment, the 'Farran's House' of old maps, is well known to
readers of propagandist works; it opened on February 18, 1828, with six
pupils, one of whom was the 'boy Ajai,' now Bishop Crowther of the Niger
territory. The Church Missionary Society has spent upon it a small
treasury of money; at present it ranks as a manner of university, having
been affiliated in May 1876 to that of Durham. Sealed papers are sent
out from England, but perhaps the local examiners are easy distributors
of B.A.s and so forth to the golden youth of Sá Leone. It is free to
all, irrespective of religious denomination, a liberal concession which
does it high honour. The academical twelve-month has three terms; and
there are three scholarships, each worth 40_l._ per annum, open for
competition every year. Not bad for a maximum of sixteen students, whose
total is steadily diminishing. College evening-classes are held for the
benefit of those who must work by day; and charges are exceedingly
moderate, the admission fee being 10_s._ 6_d._ The Society
proposes, they say, to give it up. It may be wanted half a century
hence. [Footnote: An annual report is published. Those curious on the
subject will consult it.]
West of Fourah College, and separated, _longo intervallo,_ by an
apparently unbroken bush, is Bishop's Court, where the Right Reverend
lives as long as he can or will. Nearer the 'city' lies the deep little
bight called Susan or Sawpit Bay. It is also known as Destruction Bay--a
gloomy name--where ships caught carrying 'bales,' or 'dry goods,' or
'blackbirds,' were broken up. Twenty years ago traces of their ruins
were still seen. Susan is now provided with a large factory: here
'factories' do _not_ manufacture. A host of boats and dug-outs, a
swarm of natives like black ants, a long wooden jetty, and some very
tall houses denote the place where Messrs. Randall and Fisher store and
sell their Kola-nuts. This astringent, the Gora of old writers
(_Sterculia acuminata_), acts in Africa like the Brazilian Guaraná,
the Kát (_Catha edulis_) of southern Arabia, the Betel-nut of
Hindostan, and the opium of China, against which certain bigots, with
all the presumption of utter ignorance, have been, and still are, waging
an absurd war. Sá Leone exported 3,445_l_. worth of Kola-nuts in
1860; in 1870 10,400_l_.; and, in 1880, 24,422_l_. The demand
therefore increases and will increase. [Footnote: Mr. Griffith says,
'The Mohammedans of Africa have a singular belief that if they die with
a portion of this nut in their stomach their everlasting happiness is
secured.' This must be some fanciful Christian tale. Amongst them,
however, the red Kola, when sent to the stranger, denotes war, the white
Kola peace.]
In Susan Bay there is a good coal-shed with a small supply for the use
of the colonial steamer. A store of compressed coal is on the town-front
and heaps used to lie about King Tom's Point. A hulk was proposed and
refused. It is now intended to increase the quantity, for the benefit of
future companies, especially the 'Castle Line,' which talks of sending
their steamers to Sá Leone. I hope they will so do; more competition is
much wanted. But the coal-depôt may prove dangerous. The mineral in the
tropics produces by its exhalations fatal fevers, especially that
exaggerated form of bilious-remittent popularly known as 'Yellow Jack.'
It is certain that in places like West Indian St. Thomas the
neighbourhood of the coal-sheds is more unhealthy, without apparent
reason, than the sites removed from it.
And now we reach Freetown proper, which may be called Cathedral-Town or
Jail-Town. At a distance the 'Liverpool' or 'London of West Africa,' as
the lieges wildly entitle it, is not unpicturesque; but the style of
beauty is that of a baronial castle on the Rhine with an unpensioned
proprietor, ruinous and tumbledown. After Las Palmas and Santa Cruz it
looks like a dingy belle who has seen better and younger days; and who,
moreover, has forgotten her paint. She has suffered severely from the
abolition of the export slave-trade, in whose palmy times she supplied
many a squadron, and she will not be comforted for the loss.
The colours of the houses are various; plain white is rare, and the
prevailing tints are the light-brick of the fresh laterite and the dark
rusty ochre of the old. But all are the same in one point, the mildewed,
cankered, gangrened aspect, contrasting so unfavourably with the
whitewashed port-towns of the Arabs. The upper stories of wood-work
based on masonry, the fronting piazzas or galleries, the huge
plank-balconies, and the general use of shingle roofs--in fact, the
quantity of tinder-timber, reminding one of olden Cairo, are real risks:
some of the best houses have been destroyed by fire; and, as in
Valparaiso and the flue-warmed castles of England, it is only a question
of time when the inmates will be houseless. Thanks to the form of
ground, the townlet is well laid out, with a gradual rake towards the
bay. But there is no marine parade, and the remarkably uneven
habitations crowd towards the water-front, like those of Eastern ports,
thinning off and losing style inland. The best are placed to catch the
'Doctor,' or sea-breeze: here, as at Zanzibar, the temperature out of
the wind becomes unendurable.
Freetown lies upon a gentle declivity, a slope of laterite and diluvium
washed down from the higher levels. The ground is good for drainage, but
the soft and friable soil readily absorbs the deluging torrents of rain,
and as readily returns them to the air in the shape of noxious
vapours. The shape is triangular. The apex is 'Tower Hill,' so named
from a ruined martello, supposed to have been built by the Dutch, and
till lately used for stores. The barracks, which lodge one of the West
India regiments, are six large blocks crowning the hill-crest and girt
with a low and loopholed wall. In winter, or rather in the December
summer, the slopes are clad in fine golden stubbles, the only spectacle
of the kind which this part of the coast affords. Though not more than
four hundred feet or so above sea-level, the barracks are free from
yellow fever; and in the years when the harbour-town has been almost
depopulated the only fatal cases were those brought up from
below. Moreover, the disease did not spread. The officers' quarters,
with cool and lofty rooms, twenty feet high, are surrounded by shady and
airy piazzas or verandahs, where the wind, when there is any, must find
its way. For many years they had _jalousies_ and half-windows
instead of glass, which forced the inmates to sit in outer darkness
during tornadoes and the Rains. The garrison, like the town, owes an
eternal debt of gratitude to Governor J. Pope Henessy. Seeing the main
want of Sá Leone, he canalised in 1872, with the good aid of
Mr. Engineer Jenkins, a fine fountain rising below 'Heddle's Farm,'
enabling the barracks to have a swimming-bath and the townsfolk to lay
on, through smaller pipes, a fair supply of filtered water. For this
alone he amply deserves a statue; but colonies, like republics, are
rarely grateful.
The sea-front of the triangle, whose lowest houses are sprinkled by the
wave-spray, is bounded on the east by Battery Point. It is a grassy flat
with a few fine trees, and benches ever black with the native
lounger. Here the regimental band plays on Wednesdays; an occasional
circus pitches its tents, and 'beauty and fashion' flock to see and be
seen. The many are on foot; the few use Bath-chairs or _machilas_,
--_fautenils_ hung to a pole. The only carriage in the place
belongs to the Governor, and he lost no time in losing one of
his horses. Riding is apparently unknown.
The Battery is the old Fort Falconbridge. A worm-eaten gun or two, far
more dangerous to those in rear than to those in front, rises _en
barbette._ The affair would fall in half an hour before the mildest
of gunboats. Yet by fortifying three points at an expense of some 6,000£
to 8,000£ Sá Leone might be decently defended. The first is Lighthouse
Point, along which ships entering and leaving perforce must run; the
second would be King Tom's Point, flanking the harbour-front; and the
third would be Johnson's Battery, where salutes are now fired, a work
lying above Government House upon a spur of Barrack Hill. Needless to
say all three would want the heaviest guns.
Running the eye west of the Battery, a few wooden houses or sheds, some
of them overhanging the dwarf cliff, the black rocks, and the red-yellow
sands, lead to Taylor's warehouses, a huge pile of laterite still
unfinished. Here the traditional 'man and boy' may sometimes be seen
working in the cooler and more comfortable hours. Beyond it, on a level
with the water, stands the new camber, where we shall land. Then comes
the huge block built by Mr. Charles Heddle, of Hoy, who by grace of a
large fortune, honourably made at Freetown, has become proprietor of a
noble château and broad lands in France. It has now been converted into
the Crown commissariat-store. The sea-frontage has a clear fall of
eighty feet, whereas, from the street behind the wooden upper story, it
appears below the average height. Very mean are the custom-house and
adjoining coal-shed. Governor 'Dangan's Wharf,' a contemptible jetty,
and its puny lighthouse have at length made way for a quay, along which
ships, despite sunken rocks, were expected to lie; but the sea soon
broke down the perpendicular wall, and now it is being rebuilt with a
'batter.' A hollow square behind it shows the workmen blasting the
material, a fine-grained grey granite, which seems here, as at Axim, to
be the floor-rock of the land. No wonder that the new harbour-works have
cost already 70,000_l_., of which 50,637_l_. are still owed,
and that the preposterous wharfage-duty is 10_s_. per ton. To avoid
this and the harbour-dues, ships anchor, whenever they safely can, in
the offing, where the shoals are Nature's breakwaters. West of the
quarry-hollow, in my day a little grassy square, are the old
Commissariat-quarters, now a bonded warehouse. This building is also a
long low cottage viewed from inland, and a tall, grim structure seen
from the sea. On a higher level stands St. George's, once a church, but
years ago promoted to a cathedral-dignity, making Freetown proud as
Barchester Towers. We shall presently pass it and its caricature, the
pert little Wesleyan church to its east. The extreme west of the
triangle-base is occupied by the gaol. No longer a 'barn-like structure
faced by a black wall,' it is a lengthy scatter of detached buildings,
large enough to accommodate half the population, and distinguished by
its colour, a light ashen grey. Behind this projecting site lies King
Jimmy's Bridge, a causeway through whose central arch a stream of
sparkling water winds its way seawards.
Below King Jimmy's Bridge is the only antiquity which Sá Leone
knows. Here, according to some, Sir Francis Drake, the discoverer of
California and her gold, the gallant knight of whom the Virgin Queen
said that 'his actions did him more honour than his title,' left his
name upon the buttress of primitive rock. Others have (correctly?)
attributed the inscription to Sir John Hawkins, the old naval worthy
whose name still blossoms in the dust at Sá Leone as the 'first slaver.'
The waters and the tramp of negro feet have obliterated the epigraph,
which was, they say, legible forty years ago. The rock is covered with
griffonages; and here some well-cut square letters easily read--
M. A. RVITER.
VICE-AMIRALL-
VAN-HOLLANT.
Near this 'written rock' is King James's Well, a pure stream which in
former times supplied the shipping.
The scene in the harbour is by no means lively, although the three or
four dismantled merchant-craft, dreary as the settlement, have now
disappeared. A little white-painted colonial steamer, a dwarf
paddle-wheeler, the _Prince of Wales,_ lies moping and solitary off
foul Krutown Bay. At times a single gunboat puts in an appearance. There
may be a French steamer with a blue anchor on a white flag bound for
Sherbro, or the Isles de Los; and a queer Noah's Ark kind of craft,
belonging to Mr. Broadhurst, a partner in Randall and Fisher's, runs to
the river Scarcies and others. These are the grandees of the waters. The
middle class is composed of Porto Loko [Footnote: Porto Loko--not
Locco--derives its name from a locust-tree, whose fruit is an ingredient
in 'palaver sauce;' and Winterbottom (I.4), who calls it Logo, derives
the word from the land of that name.] boats, which affect the streams
and estuaries. Originally canoes, they were improved to the
felucca-type of the Portuguese, and the hulls reminded Cameron and
myself of the Zanzibarian 'Mtepe.' A strong standing-awning of wood
occupies the sternward third; the masts number two or three, with a
short jib, and there are six oars on each side, worked by men on foot,
who alternately push and pull--a thoroughly novel process in rowing.
The Sá Leone boats which carry passengers on shore are carefully named,
but apparently never washed: they want the sunshades of the Bathurst
craft. The commonalty of the sea is the host of dug-outs, in which the
sable fisherman, indolently thrown back, props his feet upon the
gunwales and attaches a line to each big toe. These men land little more
than enough for their own subsistence, and the market-supply is
infinitesimal compared with what industry and proper appliances might
produce.
The background of the 'city' is a green curtain of grass and
fruit-trees, amongst which predominate the breadfruit, an early
introduction; the prim dark mango, somewhat like an orange multiplied by
two, or three, and palms, ever present in equinoctial lowlands. On the
heights above the settlement there is room for cool country-seats, where
European exiles might live comparatively safe from fever and the more
deadly dysentery. A white lodge peeping from a densely wooded
mountain-flank, originally Carnes's Farm and now Heddle's Farm, was
called Mount Oriel (Oriole?) by Mrs. Melville, the wife of a pensioned
judge of the Mixed Customs Court, who lived here seven years. Her sketch
of a sojourn upon the Lioness Range is not tempting: young gentlemen who
intend leading brides to the deadly peninsula should hide the book from
their fair intendeds. I cannot, however, but admire the 'word-painting'
of the scenery and the fidelity of those descriptions concerning which I
have a right to form an opinion. The book [Footnote: A Residence in
Sierra Leone. By a Lady. London: Murray, 1849.] was edited by the late
Mrs. Caroline Norton.
Though not more than 550 feet above sea-level, the climate of Heddle's
Farm is said to be wholly different from that of the lower town. The
property was bought by Government for a song, and now it occasionally
lodges a sick governor or a convalescent officer. During my last visit
the Sa Leonites spoke of building a sanatorium at Wilberforce village,
alias Signal Hill, where a flag announces the approach of vessels. The
tenement rose to nearly the first story, when it stopped short for want
of funds. Now they talk of a white regiment being stationed at the
'White Man's Grave,' and propose barracks high up the hills beyond sight
of the town-frontage. The site was pointed out to me where the
artillery-range now is, and beyond where a dwarf thatch shows the
musketry-ground of the West India regiment. We shall sight from afar,
when steaming out southwards, the three white dots which represent
quarters on Leicester Cone; now they are hidden in frowsy
fog-clouds. But all these heights have one and the same
disadvantage. You live in a Scotch mist, you breathe as much water as
air, and you exchange fever and dysentery for rheumatism, and lumbago,
and all that dire cohort.
Presently the health-officer with his blue flag gave us pratique, and
the fort-adjutant with his red flag carried off our only soldier. The
latter, with a hospitality rare, it is to be hoped, in British
regiments, would hardly recognise his quondam shipmates. We were duly
interviewed, in most civilised style, by a youth who does this work for
Mr. George A. Freeman, manager of the 'West African Reporter.' Then the
s.s. _Senegal_ was attacked and captured by a host of sable
visitors, some coming to greet their friends, other to do a little
business in the washing and the shoreboat lines.
The washerwoman lost no time in showing up, although her charges have
been greatly reduced. She formerly demanded nearly treble as much as in
London; now, however, she makes only sixteen to twenty shillings a
month, not bad pay in a place where living costs threepence, and
comfortable living sixpence, a day. These nymphs of the wash-tub are
painfully familiar and plain. The dress is a bright cotton foulard bound
on like the anatomy of a turban and garnished, as were our grandmothers'
nightcaps, with huge front bows. Gaudy shawls cover white cotton
jackets; and skirts of bright, showy longcloth suggest the parrot or the
cockatoo. The ornaments are large gold earrings and necklaces of beads
or coral. I could not but remark the difference of tone. There was none
of the extreme 'bumptiousness' and pugnacious impudence of twenty years
ago; indeed, the beach-boys, nowhere a promising class, were rather
civil than otherwise. Not a single allusion to the contrast of 'white
niggahs and black gen'lemen.' Nor did the unruly, disorderly African
character ever show itself, as formerly it often did, by fisticuffing,
hair-pulling, and cursing, with a mixture of English and Dark-Continent
ideas and phraseology, whose _tout ensemble_ was really portentous.
The popular voice ascribes this immense change for the better to the
energetic action of Governor S. Rowe (1876); and if so his statue
deserves to stand beside that of Pope Henessy. We could not fairly
complain of the inordinate noise, which would have been the death of
a sick traveller. Niger cannot speak without bawling. The charge for
landing was only threepence; _en revanche_ the poor fellows
stole every little thing they could, including my best meerschaum.
Cameron and I went ashore to hire Krumen for the Gold Coast, and herein
we notably failed. We disembarked at the camber, a huge pile of masonry,
whose weight upon an insecure foundation has already split the sea-wall
in more than one place. The interior also is silting up so fast that it
will constantly require dredging to admit boats. In fact, the colony
must deeply repent not having patronised Mr. Jenkins's project of a
T-headed pier, on one side of which landing would have been practicable
in all weathers.
The sun, despite the mist, seemed to burn our backs, and the glare from
the red clay soil roasted our eyes as we toiled up the ramp, bad as
those of 'Gib.,' which leads to Water Street, the lower line subtending
the shore. Here we could inspect St. George's Cathedral, built, they
say, at a cost of 10,000_l._ to 15,000_l._, which would be
reduced to 5,000_l._ in England--contracts in such 'colonies' cost
more than stone and slate. The general aspect is that of its Bombay
brother, and the order is called, I believe, neo-Gothic, the last insult
to ecclesiastical architecture. A single rusty tower, with
toy-battlements, pins down along ridge-back, evidently borrowed from a
barn; the light yellow-wash is mildewed and weather-stained, and the
windows show unseemly holes. Surely Bishop Cheetham could have afforded
a few panes of glass when exchanging his diocese for a rectory in
England. Let me here note that the Catholic bishop at Goa and elsewhere
is expected to die at his post, and that there is an over-worldly look
in this Protestant form of the 'nolo episcopari.' East of the cathedral,
and uncompromisingly 'Oriented' to the north, stands the unfinished
shell of a Wesleyan chapel, suggesting that caricature which has
intruded itself into the shadow of York Minster. Some 5,000_l._
were spent upon this article by the locals; but the home committee
wisely determined that it should not be finished, and now they propose
to pull it down for building-material.
We then entered the fruit and vegetable market, a neat and well-paved
bazar, surmounted by a flying roof and pierced for glass windows. The
dead arches in the long walls are externally stone and internally
brick. The building was full of fat middle-aged negresses, sitting at
squat before their 'blyes,' or round baskets, which contained a variety
and confusion of heterogeneous articles. The following is a list almost
as disorderly as the collection itself.
There were pins and needles, yarn and thread, that have taken the place
of the wilder thorn and fibre; all kinds of small hardware;
looking-glasses in lacquered frames; beads of sorts, cowries and reels
of cotton; pots of odorous pomatum and shea-butter nuts; feathers of the
plantain-bird and country snuff-boxes of a chestnut-like fruit (a
strychnine?) from which the powder is inhaled, _more majorum_,
through a quill; physic-nuts (_tiglium_, or croton), a favourite
but painful native remedy; horns of the goat and antelope, possibly
intended for fetish 'medicine;' blue-stone, colcothar and other
drugs. Amongst the edibles appeared huge achatinae, which make an
excellent soup, equal to that of the French snail; ground-nuts; very
poor rice of four varieties, large and small, red and dark; cheap
ginger, of which the streets are at times redolent, and which makes good
home-brewed 'pop;' the Kolá-nut, here worth a halfpenny and at Bathurst
a penny each; the bitter Kolá, a very different article from the
esculent; skewered _rôts_ of ground-hog, a rodent that can climb,
destroy vegetables, and bite hard if necessary; dried bats and rats,
which the African as well as the Chinese loves, and fish _cuits au
soleil_, preferred when 'high,' to use the mildest adjective. From
the walls hung dry goods, red woollen nightcaps and comforters,
leopards' and monkeys' skins, and the pelt of an animal which might have
been a gazelle.
Upon the long counters or tables were displayed the fruits and
vegetables. The former were the custard-apple or sweet-sop (_Annona
squamosa_), the sour-sop (_A. muricata_), the Madeiran
_chirimoya_, (_A. cherimolia_), citrons, sweet and sour limes,
and oranges, sweet and bitter, grown in the mountains; bananas
(_M. paradisiaca_), the staff of life on the Gold Coast, and
plantains (_M. sapientum_), the horse-plantains of India;
[Footnote: The West Indian plantain is apparently unknown or unused]
pine-apples more than half wild; mangoes terribly turpentiney unless the
trunk be gashed to let out the gum; 'monkey-plums' or 'apples' and
'governor's plums.' The common guavas are rank and harsh, but the
'strawberry guava,' as it is locally called, has a delicate, subacid
flavour not easily equalled. The _aguacáte_, or alligator-pear
(_Persea gratissima_), which was _not_ 'introduced by the
Basel missionaries from the West Indies,' is inferior to the
Mexican. Connoisseurs compare its nutty flavour with that of the
filbert, and eat it with pepper, salt, and the sauce of Worcester, whose
fortune was made by the nice conduct of garlic. The papaw [Footnote: The
leaves are rubbed on meat to make it tender, and a drop of milk from the
young fruit acts as a vermifuge.] should be cooked as a vegetable and
stuffed with forced meat; the flesh of the granadilla, which resembles
it, is neglected, while the seeds and their surroundings are flavoured
with sherry and sugar. There is an abundance of the _Eriobotrya
Japonica,_ in Madeira called the loquat and elsewhere the Japanese
medlar: it grows wild in the Brazil, where the people distil from
it. [Footnote: I cannot yet decide whether its birthplace is Japan or
South America, whose plants have now invaded Western India and greatly
altered the vegetation.]
The chief vegetables were the watercress, grown in private gardens;
onions, large and mild as the Spanish; _calavances_, or beans;
_okras_ or _gumbos_, the _bhendi_ of India (_Hibiscus
esculentus_), the best thickening for soup; _bengwas_, or
egg-plants; yams (_Dioscorea bulbifera_) of sorts; bitter Cassada
(_Jatropha manihot_) and the sweet variety (_Jatropha
janipha_); garlic; kokos (_Colocasia esculenta_); potatoes,
which the steamers are beginning to bring from England, not from
Madeira; tomatoes like musket-balls, but very sweet and wholesome; and
the _batata_, (_Convolvulus patatus_, or sweet potato), which
whilom made 'kissing comfits.' The edibles consisted of' fufu'
(plantain-paste); of 'cankey,' a sour pudding of maize-flour; of
ginger-cake; of cassava-balls finely levigated, and of sweetened
'agadi,' native bread in lumps, wrapped up in plantain-leaves. Toddy was
the usual drink offered for sale.
The butchers' yard, near the market, is no longer a 'ragged and
uncleanly strip of ground.' The long-horned cattle, small, mostly
humpless, and resembling the brindled and dun Alderney cow, are driven
in from the Pulo (Fulah) country. I have described the beef as tasting
not unlike what one imagines a knacker's establishment to produce, and
since that time I have found but scant improvement. It is sold on
alternate days with mutton, the former costing 6_d_., the latter
9_d_. a pound. Veal, so bad in England and so good in Southern
Europe, is unknown. The long, lean, hairy black-and-white sheep do not
supply an excellent article. Goats and kids are plentiful, and the flesh
would be good if it had any taste. Hogs abound, as in Ireland; but no
one eats pork, for the best of reasons. The poultry-list comprises
small tough fowls (l0_d_. to 2_s_.), partridges, ducks (2_s_.
6_d_.), geese, especially the spur-winged from Sherbro,
and the Muscovy or Manilla duck--a hard-fleshed, insipid bird, whose old
home was South American Paraguay--turkeys (10_s_. to 15_s_.),
and the _arripiada_, or frizzly chicken, whose feathers stand on
end. Milk is scarce and dear. Englishmen raw in the tropics object to
milch-goats and often put up with milch-pigs, which are said to be here
kept for the purpose. I need not tell all the old tale, 'Goat he go die;
pig he go for bush,' &c. Butter (1_s_. 8_d_. in 2-lb. tins) is
oily and rancid, with the general look of cartgrease, in this tropical
temperature. It is curious that the Danish and Irish dairies cannot
supply the West African public with a more toothsome article.
Near the meat-market is the double row of houses with shops upon the
ground-floor, not unlike a Banyan's street in outer Bombay, but smaller,
dirtier, meaner far. Here the stranger can buy dry goods and a few
curiosities of Mandenga manufacture--grigris (teraphim or charms), bows,
spears, and saddles and bridles like those of the Somal, both perfectly
useless to white men. The leather, however, is excellent as the
Moroccan, and the work dates from the days when the Saracens pushed
southwards from the Mediterranean to the Niger-valley. Wild animals are
at times offered for sale, but Darkey has heard exaggerated accounts of
prices paid in England for grey parrots, palm-birds, monkeys,
bush-antelopes, mongooses, ground-pigs, and other 'small deer' brought
from the rivulets behind Freetown. Sundry snakes were offered for sale,
the Mandenga, 4 to 5 feet long, with black marks upon a yellow ground,
and the spitting serpent, between 5 and 6 feet long, with a long head,
also dark above and silvery grey below. I doubted the fact of its
ejecting saliva till assured by the Rev. John Milum that two
missionaries at Lagos, Messieurs J. B. Wood and David, had suffered
severely from inflamed eyes after the contemptuous ophine
_crachat_. All along the coast is a cerastes (horned snake), whose
armature is upon the snout and whose short fat form suggests the
puff-adder. The worst is a venomous-looking cobra, or hooded viper, with
flat, cordate head, broad like all the more ferocious species. It is the
only thanatophid whose bite I will not undertake to cure. We carried on
the A.S.S. _Winnebah_, for the benefit of Mr. Cross, of Liverpool,
a big black ape, which the Sá Leonites called a 'black chimpanzee.'
Though badly wounded she had cost 27_l_., and died after a few days
of the cage. The young chimpanzees were valued at 6_1_.
I looked in vain for the old inn, the only thing in the place, a dirty
hovel, kept, in 1862, by a Liberian negro, inscribed 'Lunch-house' on a
sign-board flanked by the Union Jack and the U.S. 'oysters and
gridiron.' Nothing has succeeded to this 'American hotel,' and visitors
must depend upon the hospitality of acquaintances. A Frenchman lately
opened a _Gasthaus_, and lost no time in becoming bankrupt. There
is, however, a manner of boarding-house kept by a Mrs. King.
Turning south from Water Street, we passed the Wilberforce, or rather
the 'Willyfoss,' memorial, a colossal scandal noticed by every visitor
at Sá Leone, a 'folly' which has cost 3,000_l_. Its condition is
exactly what it was two decads ago--a chapel-like shell of dingy, mouldy
laterite with six lancet-windows and metal pillars. Its case is a
complicated concern. The ecclesiastical authorities wanted it for their
purposes, and so did the secular civilians, and so did the military. At
last the Sá Leonites, hopeless of obtaining a Government grant, have set
on foot a subscription which reached 500_l_.--some say 700_l_.
There are, therefore, certain fitful signs of activity, and
bricks and fire-bricks now cumber the ground; but it is all a 'flash
in the pan.' The present purpose is to make it a library, in place of
the fine old collection which went to the dogs. It is also to serve as a
lecture-room. But who is there in the 'African Liverpool' that can
lecture? What is he to lecture about? Who will stand or sit out being
lectured?
Immediately beyond this grim and grisly reminiscence are the neat
dwelling-house and the store of the Honourable Mr. Sybille Boyle, so
named from a ship and from her captain, R.N., who served in the
preventive squadron about 1824. He is an unofficial member of Council
and a marked exception to the rule of the 'Liberateds.' Everybody has a
good word to say of him. The establishment is the regular colonial,
where you can buy anything between a needle and a sheet-anchor. Bottled
ale is not wanting, and thus steamer-passengers learn to congregate in
the back parlour.
We then walked to the top of Gloucester Street, expecting to see the
Duke of Edinburgh's memorial. I left it an arch of sticks and timber
spanning this main cross-line, which leads to Government House. The
temporary was to be supplanted by a permanent marble _arc de
triomphe_, commemorating the auspicious occasion when the black
colony first looked upon a live white Royal Highness. At once
700_l_. was subscribed, and only 800_l_. was wanting; but all
those interested in the matter died, and the 350_l_. which remained
in the chest was, I believe, transferred to the 'Willyfoss.' The august
day is still kept as a public holiday, for the people are, after their
fashion, loyal-mouthed in the extreme. But the memorial is clean
forgotten, and men stare if you ask about it. Half-way up the street is
the post-office, whose white chief is not a whit more civil than the
negro head in 1862.
Upon this highly interesting spot we stood awhile to note the
peculiarities of the place and its position. The soil is a loose clay,
deep-red or brown, impregnated with iron and, where unclothed with
humus, cold and infertile, as the spontaneous aloe shows. The subsoil is
laterite, also highly ferruginous. Soft and working well with the axe
while it retains the quarry-water, it soon hardens by exposure; and,
thus weathered, it forms the best and ugliest of the local building
materials. Embedded in the earth's surface are blocks and boulders
apparently erratic, dislodged or washed down from the upper heights,
where similar masses are seen. Many are scattered, as if by an eruption;
others lie in slab or dome shape upon the shore. The shape is usually
spheroidal, and the material hypersthene (a hard and close-grained
bluish granite) or diorite, greenstone-trap blackened by sun and
rain. In the few cuttings of the higher levels I afterwards remarked
that detached 'hardheads' are puddinged into the friable laterite; but I
nowhere found the granitic floor-rock protruding above ground. The
boulders are treated by ditching and surrounding with a hot fire for
forty-eight hours; cold water, not vinegar, is then poured upon them,
and causes the heated material suddenly to contract and fracture, when
it can easily be removed. Magnetic iron also occurs, and specimens have
been sent to England; but veins have not yet been discovered.
Our walk had furnished us with a tolerable idea of 'the city's' plan,
without referring to the printed affair. Fronting north with westing, it
is divided into squares, blocks, and insulae, after the fashion of a
chessboard. This is one of the oldest as well as the newest mode of
distributions. The temples of the classical gods, being centrally
situated, required for general view broad, straight approaches. From
Washington to Buenos Ayres the modern cities of the New World have
reverted to this ancient system without other reason but a love of
regularity and simplicity. Here the longer streets flank the sea and the
shorter run at right angles up the inner slopes. Both are bright red
lines worn in the vegetation between the houses. The ribbons of green
are the American or Bahama grass; fine, silky, and creeping along the
ground, it is used to stuff mattresses, and it forms a good substitute
for turf. When first imported it was neglected, cut away, and nearly
killed out; now it is encouraged, because its velvety plots relieve the
glaring red surface, it keeps off the 'bush,' and it clears the surface
of all other vegetation. Looking upon the city below, we were surprised
to see the dilapidation of the tenements. Some have tumbled down; others
were tumbling down; many of those standing were lumber or board shanties
called 'quarter-frames' and 'ground-floors;' sundry large piles rose
grisly and fire-charred, and the few good houses looked quite
modern. But what can be expected in a place where Europeans never expect
to outstay the second year, and where Africans, who never yet worked
without compulsion, cannot legally be compelled to work?
We then walked up to Government House, the Fort Thornton of old charts,
whose roof, seen from the sea, barely tops the dense curtain of tree and
shrubbery that girds and hangs around it. Passing under a cool and shady
avenue of mangoes and figs, and the archway, guarded by a porter's lodge
and a detachment of the three hundred local police, we came in sight of
the large, rambling residence, built piecemeal, like many an English
country-house. There is little to recommend it save the fine view of the
sea and the surrounding shrubbery-ground. I can well understand how,
with the immense variety of flower and fruit suddenly presented to his
eyes, the gentleman fresh from England required six months to recover
the free and full use of all his senses and faculties.
A policeman--no longer a Zouave of the West Indian corps--took in our
cards, and we introduced ourselves to Captain A. E. Havelock,
'Governor-in-Chief of Sierra Leone and the Gambia.' He is No. 47 since
Captain Day, R.N., first ruled in A.D. 1803. I had much to say to him
about sundry of his predecessors. Captain Havelock, who dates only from
1881, has the reputation of being slightly 'black.' The Neri and the
Bianchi factions here represent the Buffs and Blues of a land further
north. He is yet in the heyday of popularity, when, in the consecrated
phrase, the ruler 'gains golden opinions.' But colonial judgments are
fickle, and mostly in extremes. After this smiling season the weather
lowers, the storm breaks, and all is elemental rage, when from being a
manner of demigod the unhappy ruler gradually becomes one of the
'meanest and basest of men.' _Absit omen!_
We returned at sunset to Government House and spent a pleasant
evening. The 'smokes' had vanished, and with them the frowse and
homeliness of morning. The sun, with rays of lilac red, set over a
panorama of townlet, land, and sea, to which distance added many a
charm. Mingling afar with the misty horizon, the nearer waters threw
out, by their golden and silvery sheen, the headlands, capes, and
tongues stretching in long perspective below, while the Sugarloaf,
father of mountains, rose in solitary grandeur high above his subject
hills. On the nearer slope of Signal Hill we saw the first of the
destructive bush-burnings. They are like prairie-fires in these lands,
and sometimes they gird Freetown with a wall of flame. Complexion is all
in all to Sá Leone, and she showed for a few moments a truly beautiful
prospect.
The Governor has had the courage to bring out Mrs. Havelock, and she has
had the courage to stand firm against a rainy season. The climate is
simply the worst on the West Coast, despite the active measures of
sanitation lately taken, the Department of Public Health, the ordinances
of the Colonial Government in 1879, and the excellent water with which
the station is now provided. On a clear sunny day the charnel-house, I
repeat, is lovely, _mais c'est la mort_; it is the terrible beauty
of death. Mrs. Melville says, with full truth, 'I felt amidst all the
glory of tropic sunlight and everlasting verdure a sort of ineffable
dread connected with the climate.' Even when leaving the 'pestilent
shore' she was 'haunted by the shadowy presence.' This is womanly, but a
little reflection must suggest it to man.
Even half a century ago opinions differed concerning the climate of the
colony. Dr. Madden could obtain only contradictory accounts. [Footnote:
See _Wanderings in West Africa_, for details, vol. i. p. 275.]
There is a tradition of a Chief Justice applying to the Colonial Office
for information touching his pension, the clerks could not answer him,
and he presently found that none of his predecessors had lived to claim
it. Mr. Judge Rankin was of opinion that its ill-fame was maintained by
'policy on the one hand and by ignorance of truth on the other.' But
Mr. Judge died a few days after. So with Dr. Macpherson, of the African
Colonial Corps. It appears ill-omened to praise the place; and, after
repeated visits to it, I no longer wonder that the 'Medical Gazette' of
April 14, 1838, affirmed, 'No statistical writer has yet tried to give
the minutest fraction representing the chance of a surgeon's return from
Sierra Leone.'
On the other hand, Mrs. Falconbridge, whose husband was sent out from
England on colonial business in 1791, and who wrote the first 'lady's
book' upon the Coast, pointed out at the beginning that sickness was due
quite as much to want of care as to the climate. In 1830 Mr. John
Cormack, merchant and resident since 1800, stated to a Committee of the
House of Commons that out of twenty-six Europeans in his service seven
had died, seven had remained in Africa, and of twelve who returned to
England all save two or three were in good health. We meet with a
medical opinion as early as 1836 that 'not one-fourth of the deaths
results merely from climate.' Cases of old residents are quoted--for
instance, Governor Kenneth Macaulay, a younger brother of Zachary
Macaulay, who resisted it for twenty years; Mr. Reffall for fifteen
years, and sundry other exceptions.
In this section of the nineteenth century it is the custom to admit that
the climate is bad and dangerous; but that it has often been made the
scape-goat of European recklessness and that much of the sickness and
death might be avoided. The improvement is attributed to the use of
quinine, unknown to the early settlers, and much is expected from
sanatoria and from planting the blue gum (_Eucalyptus globulus_),
which failed, owing to the carelessness and ignorance of the planters. A
practical appreciation of the improvement is shown by the Star Life
Assurance Society, which has reduced to five per cent. its former very
heavy rates. Lastly, the bad health of foreigners is accounted for by
the fact that they leave their own country for a climate to which they
are not accustomed, where the social life and the habits of the people
are so different from their own, and yet that they continue doing all
things as in England.
But how stand the facts at the white man's Red Grave? Mrs. Havelock and
the wife of the officer commanding the garrison are the only Europeans
in the colony, whereas a score of years ago I remember half a
dozen. Even the warmest apologisers for the climate will not expose
their wives to it, preferring to leave them at home or in
Madeira. During last March there were five deaths of white men--that is,
more than a third--out of a total of 163. What would the worst of
English colonies say to a mortality of 350 per thousand per annum? Of
course we are told that it is exceptional, and the case of the insurance
societies is quoted. But they forget to tell us the reason. A mail
steamer now calls at Freetown once a week, and the invalid is sent home
by the first opportunity. Similarly a silly East Indian statistician
proved, from the rare occurrence of fatal cases, Aden to be one of the
healthiest stations under 'the Company.' He ignored the fact that even a
scratch justified the surgeons in shipping a man off on sick leave.
I quite agree with the view of Mr. Frederick Evans: [Footnotes: _The
Colonies and India_, Dec. 24, 1881.] 'Let anyone anxious to test the
nature of the climate go to Kew Gardens and sit for a week or two in one
of the tropical houses there; he may be assured that he will by no means
feel in robust health when he leaves.' The simile is perfect. Europeans
living in Africa like Europeans as regards clothing and diet are, I
believe, quite right. We tried grass-cloth, instead of broadcloth, in
Western India, when general rheumatism was the result. In the matter of
meat and drink the Englishman cannot do better than adhere to his old
mode of life as much as possible, with a few small modifications. Let
him return to the meal-times of Queen Elizabeth's day--
Sunrise breakfast, sun high dinner,
Sundown sup, makes a saint of a sinner--
and especially shun the 9 A.M. breakfast, which leads to a heavy tiffin
at 1 P.M., the hottest and most trying section of the day. With respect
to diet, if he drinks a bottle of claret in England let him reduce
himself in Africa to a pint 'cut' with, water; if he eats a pound of
meat he should be contented with eight ounces and an extra quantity of
fruit and vegetables. In medicine let him halve his cathartics and
double his dose of tonics.
From its topographical as well as its geographical position the climate
of Freetown is oppressively hot, damp, and muggy. The annual mean is
79.5° Fahr.; the usual temperature of the dwellings is from 78° to 86°
Fahr. Its year is divided into two seasons, the Dries and the Rains. The
wet season begins in May and ends with November; for the last five years
the average downfall has been 155 inches, five times greater than in
rainy England. These five months are times of extreme discomfort. The
damp heat, despite charcoal fires in the houses and offices, mildews
everything--clothes, weapons, books, man himself. It seems to exhaust
all the positive electricity of the nervous system, and it makes the
patient feel utterly miserable. It also fills the air with noxious
vapours during the short bursts of sunshine perpendicularly rained down,
and breeds a hateful brood of what the Portuguese call immundicies--a
foul 'insect-youth.' Only the oldest residents prefer the wet to the dry
months. The Rains end in the sickliest season of the year, when the sun,
now getting the upper hand, sucks the miasmatic vapours from the soil
and distributes them to mankind in the shape of ague and fever,
dysentery, and a host of diseases. The Dries last from November to
April, often beginning with tornadoes and ending with the Harmatan,
smokes or scirocco. The climate is then not unlike Bombay, except that
it lacks the mild East Indian attempt at a winter, and that barometric
pressure hardly varies.
During my last visit to Sá Leone I secured a boat, and, accompanied by
Dr. Lovegrove, of the A.S.S. _Armenian_, set out to inspect the
lower bed of the Rokel and the islands which it waters. Passing along
Fourah Bay, we remarked in the high background a fine brook, cold,
clear, and pure, affording a delicious bath; it is almost dry in the
Dries, and swells to a fiumara during the Rains. Its extent was then a
diminutive rivulet tumbling some hundreds of feet down a shelving bed
into Granville Bay, the break beyond Fourah. On the way we passed
several Timni boats, carrying a proportionately immense amount of
'muslin.' Of old the lords of the land, they still come down the river
with rice and cocoa-nuts from the Kwiah (Quiah) country, from Porto
Loko, from Waterloo, and other places up stream. They not unfrequently
console themselves for their losses by a little hard fighting; witness
their defence of the Modúka stockade in 1861, when four officers and
twenty-three of our men were wounded. [Footnote: _Wanderings in West
Africa_, vol. i pp. 246-47.] Some of the boats are heavy row-barges
with a framework of sticks for a stern-awning; an old Mandenga, with
cottony beard, sits at each helm. They row _simplices munditiis_.
At Sá Leone men are punished for not wearing overalls, and
thus the 'city' becomes a rag-fair. The Timni men are dark negroids
with the slightest infusion of Semitic blood; some had coated their
eyebrows and part of their faces with chalk for ophthalmia. They
appeared to be merry fellows enough; and they are certainly the only men
in the colony who ever pretend to work. A Government official harshly
says of them, 'I would willingly ascribe to the nearest of our
neighbours and their representatives in Freetown, of whom there are
many, some virtues if they possessed any; but, unfortunately, taken as a
people, they have been truly described by able and observant writers as
dishonest and depraved.' Mr. Secretary evidently forgets the
'civilising' and infectious example of Sá Leone, _versus_ the
culture of El-Islam.
Arrived at Bishopscourt, we disembarked and visited the place. Here in
old days 'satisfaction' was given and taken; and a satirical medico
declared that forty years of _rencontres_ had not produced a single
casualty. He was more witty than wise; I heard of one gentleman who had
been 'paraded' and 'winged.' Old Granville Town, which named the bay,
has completely disappeared; the ruins of the last house are gone from
the broad grassy shelf upon which the first colonists built their homes.
From Granville Bay the traveller may return by the 'Kissy Road.' Once it
was the pet promenade, the Corso, the show-walk of Freetown; now it has
become a Tottenham Court Road, to which Water, Oxford, and Westmoreland
Streets are preferred. The vegetation becomes splendid, running up to
the feet of the hills, which swell suddenly from the shelf-plain. The
approach to Sá Leone is heralded by a row of shops even smaller and
meaner than those near the market-place. There are whole streets of
these rabbit-hutches, whose contents 'mammy,' when day is done, carries
home in a 'bly'-basket upon her head, possibly leaving 'titty' to mount
guard upon the remnant. The stock in trade may represent a capital of
4_l_., and the profits 1_s_. a day. Yet 'daddy' styles himself
merchant, gets credit, and spends his evenings conversing and smoking
cigars--as a gentleman should--with his commercial friends.
Passing the easternmost end of the peninsula, and sailing along the
Bullom ('lowland') shores, we verified Dr. Blyden's assertion that this
'home of fevers' shows no outward and visible sign of exceeding
unhealthiness. The soil is sandy, the bush is comparatively thin, and
the tall trees give it the aspect of a high and dry land. We then turned
north-east and skirted Tasso Island, a strip of river-holm girt with a
wall of mangroves. It had an old English fort, founded in 1695; the
factors traded with the Pulo (Fulah) country for slaves, ivory, and
gold. It was abandoned after being taken by Van Ruyter, when he restored
to the Dutch West Indian Company the conquests of Commodore Holmes. The
rich soil in 1800 supported a fine cotton plantation, and here
Mr. Heddle kept a 'factory.' The villagers turned out to gaze, not
habited like the Wolofs of Albreda, but clad in shady hats and seedy
pantaloons.
After clearing Tasso we advanced merrily, and at the end of two hours'
and a half actual sailing and pulling we landed upon Bance, which some
call Bence's Island. A ruined jetty with two rusty guns, buried like
posts, projected from the sand-strip; and a battery, where nine cannon
still linger, defended the approach. There is a similar beach to the
north-east, with admirable bathing in the tepid, brackish waves and a
fine view of the long leonine Sierra. The outlying rocks, capped with
guano, look like moored boats and awnings. The sea-breeze was delicious;
the lapping, dazzling stream made sweet music, and the huge cotton-trees
with laminar buttresses gave most grateful shade.
The island resembles Gambian James multiplied by four or five. Behind
the battery are the ruins of a huge building, like the palaces of old
Goa, vast rooms, magazines, barracoons, underground vaults, and all
manner of contrivances for the good comfort and entertainment of the
slaver and the slave. A fine promenade of laterite, which everywhere
about Sá Leone builds the best of roads, and a strip of jungle rich in
the _Guilandina Bonduc_, whose medicinal properties are well known
to the people, leads to the long-deserted graveyard. We pass an old well
with water thirty-five feet deep, and enter the _enceinte_, that
contains four tombs; the marble tablets, which would soon disappear in
India for the benefit of curry-stuffs, here remain intact. One long home
was tenanted by 'Thomas Knight, Esquire, born in the county of Surrey,
who acted eighteen years as agent for the proprietors of this island,
and who died on August 27 of 1785,' beloved, of course, by
everybody. Second came the 'honourable sea-Captain Hiort, born in 1746,
married in 1771 to the virtuous lady Catherine Schive, and died in 1783,
leaving two good-natured daughters, which his soul is in the hands of
God.' The third was Mr. John Tittle, who departed life in 1776; and the
last was Captain Josiah Dory, a 'man of upright character,' who
migrated to the many in 1765.
Barbot (ii. 1) describes Bance's Island as defended by a small fort on a
steep rock of difficult access, ascended only by a sort of stairs cut in
the stone, and acting as the store-house of the Royal African
Company. The low walls of lime and ashlar had a round 'flanker' with
five guns, a curtain with embrasures for four large cannon, and a
platform just before it for six guns, all well mounted. The only good
buildings were the slave-booths. Winterbottom, who places it over
eighteen miles above St. George's Bay (_Baie de France_) and north
of Tasso Island, thus describes Bance: 'This is a small barren island
considerably elevated, with a dry, gravelly soil; but being placed as it
were in the midst of an archipelago of low marshy islands, the breeze,
from whatever quarter it blows, is impregnated with moisture and marsh
effluvia, which render it sickly. The air also is very much heated, and
the thermometer generally stands 4° or 5° higher on this island than it
does at Freetown.'
We regained the steamer shortly after dark, delighted with our picnic
and resolved always to take the same advantage of all halts. In those
days the interior was most interesting. The rivers Scarcies, Nunez, and
Ponga were unknown; the equestrian Susu tribe had never been visited;
and, the Timbo country, the great centre whence arise the Niger, the
Rokel, and the Senegal, awaited exploration.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.