[Illustration: HENRY W. NEVINSON
Photograph by Elliott & Fry]
A MODERN SLAVERY
BY
HENRY W. NEVINSON
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER _&_ BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MCMVI
Copyright, 1906, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published May, 1906.
DEDICATED TO
MY SISTER
MARIAN NEVINSON
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. PLANTATION SLAVERY ON THE MAINLAND 19
III. DOMESTIC SLAVERY ON THE MAINLAND 40
IV. ON ROUTE TO THE SLAVE CENTRE 59
V. THE AGENTS OF THE SLAVE-TRADE 83
VI. THE WORST PART OF THE SLAVE ROUTE 104
VII. SAVAGES AND MISSIONS 126
VIII. THE SLAVE ROUTE TO THE COAST 149
IX. THE EXPORTATION OF SLAVES 168
X. LIFE OF SLAVES ON THE ISLANDS 187
INDEX 211
ILLUSTRATIONS
HENRY W. NEVINSON _Frontispiece_
MAP OF PORTUGUESE WEST AFRICA _Facing p._ 1
AN AFRICAN SWAMP ” 6
THE “KROOBOYS” WORKING A SHIP ALONG THE
COAST ” 16
NATIVES IN CHARACTERISTIC DRESS ” 22
PLANTER’S HOUSE ON AN ANGOLA ESTATE ” 34
FIRST MAIL-STEAMER AT LOBITO BAY ” 40
END OF THE GREAT SLAVE ROUTE AT KATUMBELLA ” 42
AWKWARD CROSSING ” 60
CATHOLIC MISSION AT CACONDA ” 78
CARRIERS ON THE MARCH ” 84
BIHÉAN MUSICIANS ” 96
CROSSING THE CUANZA ” 104
NATIVES BURNING GRASS FOR SALT ” 108
SKELETON OF SLAVE ON A PATH THROUGH THE
HUNGRY COUNTRY ” 112
A CHIBOKWE FORGE WHERE NATIVE SPEARS ARE
MADE ” 128
A CHIBOKWE WOMAN AND HER FETICHES ” 132
ON THE WAY TO THE COAST ” 150
CARRIERS’ REST-HUTS ” 160
“ALL DAY LONG THEY LIE ABOUT THE LOWER DECK” ” 176
THE WOMEN HARDLY STIRRED AS WE APPROACHED
SAN THOMÉ ” 182
LINED UP ON THE PIER AT SAN THOMÉ ” 184
SLAVE QUARTERS ON A PLANTATION ” 192
SLAVES WAITING FOR RATIONS ON SUNDAY ” 194
PREFACE
The following chapters describe my journey in the Portuguese province
of Angola (West Central Africa), and in the Portuguese islands of San
Thomé and Principe, during the years 1904, and 1905.
The journey was undertaken at the suggestion of the editor of _Harper’s
Monthly Magazine_, but in choosing this particular part of Africa for
investigation I was guided by the advice of the Aborigines Protection
Society and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London, and
I wish to thank the secretaries of both these societies for their great
assistance.
I also wish to thank the British and American residents on the mainland
and the islands--and especially the missionaries--for their unfailing
hospitality and help. As far as possible, I kept the object of my
journey from them, knowing that direct aid to my purpose might bring
trouble on them afterwards. Yet even when they knew or suspected the
truth, I found no difference in their kindliness, though I was often
tiresome with sickness, and their own provisions were often very short.
The illustrations are from photographs taken by myself, but on the mail
slave-ship from Benguela to San Thomé I had the advantage of borrowing
a better camera than my own.
LONDON, _March, 1906_.
[Illustration: MAP OF PORTUGUESE WEST AFRICA showing islands of
Principe and San Thomé To which slaves are deported from the interior]
A MODERN SLAVERY
I
INTRODUCTORY
For miles on miles there is no break in the monotony of the scene. Even
when the air is calmest the surf falls heavily upon the long, thin
line of yellow beach, throwing its white foam far up the steep bank of
sand. And beyond the yellow beach runs the long, thin line of purple
forest--the beginning of that dark forest belt which stretches from
Sierra Leone through West and Central Africa to the lakes of the Nile.
Surf, beach, and forest--for two thousand miles that is all, except
where some great estuary makes a gap, or where the line of beach rises
to a low cliff, or where a few distant hills, leading up to Ashanti,
can be seen above the forest trees.
It is not a cheerful part of the world--“the Coast.” Every prospect
does not please, nor is it only man that is vile. Man, in fact, is no
more vile than elsewhere; but if he is white he is very often dead.
We pass in succession the white man’s settlements, with their ancient
names so full of tragic and miserable history--Axim, Sekundi, Cape
Coast Castle, and Lagos. We see the old forts, built by Dutch and
Portuguese to protect their trade in ivory and gold and the souls of
men. They still gleam, white and cool as whitewash can make them,
among the modern erections of tin and iron that have a meaner birth.
And always, as we pass, some “old Coaster” will point to a drain or an
unfinished church, and say, “That was poor Anderson’s last bit.” And
always when we stop and the officials come off to the ship, drenched
by the surf in spite of the skill of native crews, who drive the
boats with rapid paddles, hissing sharply at every stroke to keep the
time--always the first news is of sickness and death. Its form is
brief: “Poor Smythe down--fever.” “Poor Cunliffe gone--black-water.”
“Poor Tompkinson scuppered--natives.” Every one says, “Sorry,” and
there’s no more to be said.
It is not cheerful. The touch of fate is felt the more keenly because
the white people are so few. For the most part, they know one another,
at all events by classes. A soldier knows a soldier. Unless he is
very military, indeed, he knows the district commissioner, and other
officials as well. An official knows an official, and is quite on
speaking terms with the soldiers. A trader knows a trader, and ceases
to watch him with malignant jealousy when he dies. It is hard to
realize how few the white men are, scattered among the black swarms of
the natives. I believe that in the six-mile radius round Lagos (the
largest “white” town on the Coast) the whites could not muster one
hundred and fifty among the one hundred and forty thousand blacks. And
in the great walled city of Abeokuta, to which the bit of railway from
Lagos runs, among a black population of two hundred and five thousand,
the whites could hardly make up twenty all told. So that when one white
man disappears he leaves a more obvious gap than he would in a London
street, and any white man may win a three days’ fame by dying.
Among white women, a loss is naturally still more obvious and
deplorable. Speaking generally, we may say the only white women on the
Coast are nurses and missionaries. A benevolent government forbids
soldiers and officials to bring their wives out. The reason given is
the deadly climate, though there are other reasons, and an exception
seems to be made in the case of a governor’s wife. She enjoys the
liberty of dying at her own discretion. But Accra, almost alone of the
Coast towns, boasts the presence of two or three English ladies, and I
have known men overjoyed at being ordered to appointments there. Not
that they were any more devoted to the society of ladies than we all
are, but they hoped for a better chance of surviving in a place where
ladies live. Vain hope; in spite of cliffs and clearings, in spite of
golf and polo, and ladies, too, Death counts his shadows at Accra much
the same as anywhere else.
You never can tell. I once landed on a beach where it seemed that death
would be the only chance of comfort in the tedious hell. On either
hand the flat shore stretched away till it was lost in distance. Close
behind the beach the forest swamp began. Upon the narrow ridge nine
hideous houses stood in the sweltering heat, and that was all the
town. The sole occupation was an exchange of palm-oil for the deadly
spirit which profound knowledge of chemistry and superior technical
education have enabled the Germans to produce in a more poisonous
form than any other nation. The sole intellectual excitement was the
arrival of the steamers with gin, rum, and newspapers. Yet in that
desolation three European ladies were dwelling in apparent amity, and a
volatile little Frenchman, full of the joy of life, declared he would
not change that bit of beach--no, not for all the _cafés chantants_ of
his native Marseilles. “There is not one Commandment here!” he cried,
unconsciously imitating the poet of Mandalay; and I suppose there is
some comfort in having no Commandments, even where there is very little
chance of breaking any.
The farther down the Coast you go the more melancholy is the scene.
The thin line of yellow beach disappears. The forest comes down into
the sea. The roots of the trees are never dry, and there is no firm
distinction of land and water. You have reached “the Rivers,” the delta
of the Niger, the Circle of the mangrove swamps, in which Dante would
have stuck the Arch-Traitor head downward if only he had visited this
part of the world. I gained my experience of the swamps early, but
it was thorough. It was about the third time I landed on the Coast.
Hearing that only a few miles away there was real solid ground where
strange beasts roamed, I determined to cut a path through the forest in
that direction. Engaging two powerful savages armed with “matchets,”
or short, heavy swords, I took the plunge from a wharf which had been
built with piles beside a river. At the first step I was up to my
knees in black sludge, the smell of which had been accumulating since
the glacial period. Perhaps the swamps are forming the coal-beds of a
remote future; but in that case I am glad I did not live at Newcastle
in a remote past. As in a coronation ode, there seemed no limit to the
depths of sinking. One’s only chance was to strike a submerged trunk
not yet quite rotten enough to count as mud. Sometimes it was possible
to cling to the stems or branches of standing trees, and swing over the
slime without sinking deep. It was possible, but unpleasant; for stems
and branches and twigs and fibres are generally covered with every
variety of spine and spike and hook.
In a quarter of an hour we were as much cut off from the world as on
the central ocean. The air was dark with shadow, though the tree-tops
gleamed in brilliant sunshine far above our heads. Not a whisper of
breeze nor a breath of fresh air could reach us. We were stifled with
the smell. The sweat poured from us in the intolerable heat. Around us,
out of the black mire, rose the vast tree trunks, already rotting as
they grew, and between the trunks was woven a thick curtain of spiky
plants and of the long suckers by which the trees draw up an extra
supply of water--very unnecessarily, one would have thought.
Through this undergrowth the natives, themselves often up to the middle
in slime, slowly hacked a way. They are always very patient of a
white man’s insanity. Now and then we came to a little clearing where
some big tree had fallen, rotten from bark to core. Or we came to a
“creek”--one of the innumerable little watercourses which intersect
the forest, and are the favorite haunt of the mud-fish, whose eyes are
prominent like a frog’s, and whose side fins have almost developed into
legs, so that, with the help of their tails, they can run over the
slime like lizards on the sand. But for them and the crocodiles and
innumerable hosts of ants and slugs, the lower depths of the mangrove
swamp contain few living things. Parrots and monkeys inhabit the
upper world where the sunlight reaches, and sometimes the deadly
stillness is broken by the cry of a hawk that has the flight of an owl
and fishes the creeks in the evening. Otherwise there is nothing but
decay and stench and creatures of the ooze.
[Illustration: AN AFRICAN SWAMP]
After struggling for hours and finding no change in the swamp and no
break in the trees, I gave up the hope of that rising ground, and
worked back to the main river. When at last I emerged, sopping with
sweat, black with slime, torn and bleeding from the thorns, I knew that
I had seen the worst that nature can do. I felt as though I had been
reforming the British War Office.
It is worth while trying to realize the nature of these wet forests and
mangrove swamps, for they are the chief characteristic of “the Coast”
and especially of “the Rivers.” Not that the whole even of southern
Nigeria is swamp. Wherever the ground rises, the bush is dry. But from
a low cliff, like “The Hill” at Calabar, although in two directions you
may turn to solid ground where things will grow and man can live, you
look south and west over miles and miles of forest-covered swamp that
is hopeless for any human use. You realize then how vain is the chatter
about making the Coast healthy by draining the mangrove swamps. Until
the white man develops a new kind of blood and a new kind of inside,
the Coast will kill him. Till then we shall know the old Coaster
by the yellow and streaky pallor of a blood destroyed by fevers, by
a confused and uncertain memory, and by a puffiness that comes from
enfeebled muscle quite as often as from insatiable thirst.
It is through swamps like these that those unheard-of “punitive
expeditions” of ours, with a white officer or two, a white sergeant
or two, and a handful of trusty Hausa men, have to fight their way,
carrying their Maxim and three-inch guns upon their heads. “I don’t
mind as long as the men don’t sink above the fork,” said the commandant
of one of them to me. And it is beside these swamps that the traders,
for many short-lived generations past, have planted their “factories.”
The word “factory” points back to a time when the traders made the
palm-oil themselves. The natives make nearly the whole of it now and
bring it down the rivers in casks, but the “factories” keep their name,
though they are now little more than depots of exchange and retail
trade. Formerly they were made of the hulks of ships, anchored out in
the rivers, and fitted up as houses and stores. A few of the hulks
still remain, but of late years the traders have chosen the firmest
piece of “beach” they could find, or else have created a “beach” by
driving piles into the slime, and on these shaky and unwholesome
platforms have erected dwelling-houses with big verandas, a series of
sheds for the stores, and a large barn for the shop. Here the “agent”
(or sometimes the owner of the business) spends his life, with one or
two white assistants, a body of native “boys” as porters and boatmen,
and usually a native woman, who in the end returns to her tribe and
hands over her earnings in cash or goods to her chief.
The agent’s working-day lasts from sunrise to sunset, except for the
two hours at noon consecrated to “chop” and tranquillity. In the
evening, sometimes he gambles, sometimes he drinks, but, as a rule,
he goes to bed. Most factories are isolated in the river or swamp,
and they are pervaded by a loneliness that can be felt. The agent’s
work is an exchange of goods, generally on a large scale. In return
for casks of oil and bags of “kernels,” he supplies the natives with
cotton cloth, spirits, gunpowder, and salt, or from his retail store he
sells cheap clothing, looking-glasses, clocks, knives, lamps, tinned
food, and all the furniture, ornaments, and pictures which, being too
atrocious even for English suburbs and provincial towns, may roughly be
described as Colonial.
From the French coasts, in spite of the free-trade agreement of 1898,
the British trader is now almost entirely excluded. On the Ivory Coast,
Dahomey, French Congo, and the other pieces of territory which connect
the enormous African possessions of France with the sea, you will
hardly find a British factory left, though in one or two cases the
skill and perseverance of an agent may just keep an old firm going. In
the German Cameroons, British houses still do rather more than half the
trade, but their existence is continually threatened. In Portuguese
Angola one or two British factories cling to their old ground in hopes
that times may change. In the towns of the Lower Congo the British
firms still keep open their stores and shops; but the well-known policy
of the royal rubber merchant, who bears on his shield a severed hand
sable, has killed all real trade above Stanley Pool. In spite of all
protests and regulations about the “open door,” it is only in British
territory that a British trader can count upon holding his own. It may
be said that, considering the sort of stuff the British trader now
sells, this is a matter of great indifference to the world. That may be
so. But it is not a matter of indifference to the British trader, and,
in reality, it is ultimately for his sake alone that our possessions
in West Africa are held. Ultimately it is all a question of soap and
candles.
We need not forget the growing trade in mahogany and the growing trade
in cotton. We may take account of gold, ivory, gums, and kola, besides
the minor trades in fruits, yams, red peppers, millet, and the beans
and grains and leaves which make a native market so enlivening to a
botanist. But, after all, palm-oil and kernels are the things that
count, and palm-oil and kernels come to soap and candles in the end.
It is because our dark and dirty little island needs such quantities
of soap and candles that we have extended the blessings of European
civilization to the Gold Coast and the Niger, and beside the lagoons of
Lagos and the rivers of Calabar have placed our barracks, hospitals,
mad-houses, and prisons. It is for this that district commissioners
hold their courts of British justice and officials above suspicion
improve the perspiring hour by adding up sums. For this the natives
trim the forest into golf-links. For this devoted teachers instruct the
Fantee boys and girls in the length of Irish rivers and the order of
Napoleon’s campaigns. For this the director of public works dies at his
drain and the officer at a palisade gets an iron slug in his stomach.
For this the bugles of England blow at Sokoto, and the little plots of
white crosses stand conspicuous at every clearing.
That is the ancestral British way of doing things. It is for the sake
of the trade that the whole affair is ostensibly undertaken and carried
on. Yet the officer and the official up on “The Hill” quietly ignore
the trader at the foot, and are dimly conscious of very different aims.
The trader’s very existence depends upon the skill and industry of the
natives. Yet the trader quietly ignores the native, or speaks of him
only as a lazy swine who ought to be enslaved as much as possible. And
all the time the trader’s own government is administering a singularly
equal justice, and has, within the last three years, declared slavery
of every kind at an end forever.
In the midst of all such contradictions, what is to be the real
relation of the white races to the black races? That is the ultimate
problem of Africa. We need not think it has been settled by a century’s
noble enthusiasm about the Rights of Man and Equality in the sight
of God. Outside a very small and diminishing circle in England and
America, phrases of that kind have lost their influence, and for the
men who control the destinies of Africa they have no meaning whatever.
Neither have they any meaning for the native. He knows perfectly well
that the white people do not believe them.
The whole problem is still before us, as urgent and as uncertain as
it has ever been. It is not solved. What seemed a solution is already
obsolete. The problem will have to be worked through again from the
start. Some of the factors have changed a little. Laws and regulations
have been altered. New and respectable names have been invented. But
the real issue has hardly changed at all. It has become a part of the
world-wide issue of capital, but the question of African slavery still
abides.
We may, of course, draw distinctions. The old-fashioned export of human
beings as a reputable and staple industry, on a level with the export
of palm-oil, has disappeared from the Coast. Its old headquarters were
at Lagos; and scattered about that district and in Nigeria and up the
Congo one can still see the remains of the old barracoons, where the
slaves were herded for sale or shipment. In passing up the rivers you
may suddenly come upon a large, square clearing. It is overgrown now,
but the bush is not so high and thick as the surrounding forest, and
palms take the place of the mangrove-trees. Sometimes a little Ju-ju
house is built by the water’s edge, with fetiches inside; and perhaps
the natives have placed it there with some dim sense of expiation.
For the clearing is the site of an old barracoon, and misery has
consecrated the soil. Such things leave a perpetual heritage of woe.
The English and the Portuguese were the largest slave-traders upon the
Coast, and it is their descendants who are still paying the heaviest
penalty. But that ancient kind of slave-trade may for the present be
set aside. The British gun-boats have made it so difficult and so
unlucrative that slavery has been driven to take subtler forms, against
which gun-boats have hitherto been powerless.
We may draw another distinction still. Quite different from the
plantation slavery under European control, for the profit of European
capitalists, is the domestic slavery that has always been practised
among the natives themselves. Legally, this form of slavery was
abolished in Nigeria by a proclamation of 1901, but it still exists
in spite of the law, and is likely to exist for many years, even in
British possessions. It is commonly spoken of as domestic slavery, but
perhaps tribal slavery would be the better word. Or the slave might be
compared to the serf of feudal times. He is nominally the property of
the chief, and may be compelled to give rather more than half his days
to work for the tribe. Even under the Nigerian enactment, he cannot
leave his district without the chief’s consent, and he must continue to
contribute something to the support of the family. But in most cases a
slave may purchase his freedom if he wishes, and it frequently happens
that a slave becomes a chief himself and holds slaves on his own
account.
It is one of those instances in which law is ahead of public custom.
Most of the existing domestic slaves do not wish for further freedom,
for if their bond to the chief were destroyed, they would lose the
protection of the tribe. They would be friendless and outcast, with
no home, no claim, and no appeal. “Soon be head off,” said a native,
in trying to explain the dangers of sudden freedom. At Calabar I came
across a peculiar instance. Some Scottish missionaries had carefully
trained up a native youth to work with them at a mission. They had
taught him the height of Chimborazo, the cost of papering a room,
leaving out the fireplace, and the other things which we call education
because we can teach nothing else. They had even taught him the
intricacies of Scottish theology. But just as he was ready primed for
the ministry, an old native stepped in and said: “No; he is my slave.
I beg to thank you for educating him so admirably. But he seems to me
better suited for the government service than for the cure of souls. So
he shall enter a government office and comfort my declining years with
half his income.”
The elderly native had himself been educated by the mission, and that
added a certain irony to his claim. When I told the acting governor
of the case, he thought such a thing could not happen in these days,
because the youth could have appealed to the district commissioner,
and the old man’s claim would have been disallowed at law. That may
be so; and yet I have not the least doubt that the account I received
was true. Law was in advance of custom, that was all, and the people
followed custom, as people always do.
Even where there is no question of slave-ownership, the power of the
chiefs is often despotic. If a chief covets a particularly nice canoe,
he can purchase it by compelling his wives and children to work for
the owner during so many days. Or take the familiar instance of the
“Krooboys.” The Kroo coast is nominally part of Liberia, but as the
Liberian government is only a fit subject for comic opera, the Kroo
people remain about the freest and happiest in Africa. Their industry
is to work the cargo of steamers that go down the Coast. They get a
shilling a day and “chop,” and the only condition they make is to
return to “we country” within a year at furthest. Before the steamer
stops off the Coast and sounds her hooter the sea is covered with
canoes. The captain sends word to the chief of the nearest village
that he wants, say, fifty “boys.” After two or three hours of excited
palaver on shore, the chief selects fifty boys, and they are sent on
board under a headman. When they return, they give the chief a share of
their earnings as a tribute for his care of the tribe and village in
their absence. This is a kind of feudalism, but it has nothing to do
with slavery, especially as there is a keen competition among the boys
to serve. When a woman who has been hired as a white man’s concubine
is compelled to surrender her earnings to the chief, we may call it
a survival of tribal slavery, or of the patriarchal system, if you
will. But when, as happens, for instance, in Mozambique, the agents
of capitalists bribe the chiefs to force laborers to the Transvaal
mines, whether they wish to go or not, we may disguise the truth as
we like under talk about “the dignity of labor” and “the value of
discipline,” but, as a matter of fact, we are on the downward slope
to the new slavery. It is easy to see how one system may become merged
into the other without any very obvious breach of native custom. But,
nevertheless, the distinction is profound. As Mr. Morel has said in his
admirable book on _The Affairs of West Africa_, between the domestic
servitude of Nigeria and plantation slavery under European supervision
there is all the difference in the world. The object of the present
series of sketches is to show, by one particular instance, the method
under which this plantation slavery is now being carried on, and the
lengths to which it is likely to develop.
[Illustration: THE “KROOBOYS” WORKING A SHIP ALONG THE COAST]
“In the region of the Unknown, Africa is the Absolute.” It was one of
Victor Hugo’s prophetic sayings a few years before his death, when he
was pointing out to France her road of empire. And in a certain sense
the saying is still true. In spite of all the explorations, huntings,
killings, and gospels, Africa remains the unknown land, and the nations
of Europe have hardly touched the edge of its secrets. We still think
of “black people” in lumps and blocks. We do not realize that each
African has a personality as important to himself as each of us is in
his own eyes. We do not even know why the mothers in some tribes paint
their babies on certain days with stripes of red and black, or why an
African thinks more of his mother than we think of lovers. If we ask
for the hidden meaning of a Ju-ju, or of some slow and hypnotizing
dance, the native’s eyes are at once covered with a film like a seal’s,
and he gazes at us in silence. We know nothing of the ritual of scars
or the significance of initiation. We profess to believe that external
nature is symbolic and that the universe is full of spiritual force;
but we cannot enter for a moment into the African mind, which really
believes in the spiritual side of nature. We talk a good deal about our
sense of humor, but more than any other races we despise the Africans,
who alone out of all the world possess the same power of laughter as
ourselves.
In the higher and spiritual sense, Victor Hugo’s saying remains
true--“In the region of the Unknown, Africa is the Absolute.” But now
for the first time in history the great continent lies open to Europe.
Now for the first time men of science have traversed it from end to
end and from side to side. And now for the first time the whole of it,
except Abyssinia, is partitioned among the great white nations of the
world. Within fifty years the greatest change in all African history
has come. The white races possess the Dark Continent for their own, and
what they are going to do with it is now one of the greatest problems
before mankind. It is a small but very significant section of this
problem which I shall hope to illustrate in my investigations.
II
PLANTATION SLAVERY ON THE MAINLAND
Loanda is much disquieted in mind. The town is really called St. Paul
de Loanda, but it has dropped its Christian name, just as kings drop
their surnames. Between Moorish Tangiers and Dutch Cape Town, it is
the only place that looks like a town at all. It has about it what
so few African places have--the feeling of history. We are aware of
the centuries that lie behind its present form, and we feel in its
ruinous quays the record of early Portuguese explorers and of the Dutch
settlers.
In the mouldering little church of Our Lady of Salvation, beside the
beach where native women wash, there exists the only work of art which
this side of Africa can show. The church bears the date of 1664, but
the work of art was perhaps ordered a few years before that, while the
Dutch were holding the town, for it consists of a series of pictures in
blue-and-white Dutch tiles, evidently representing scenes in Loanda’s
history. In some cases the tiles have fallen down, and been stuck on
again by natives in the same kind of chaos in which natives would
rearrange the stars. But in one picture a gallant old ship is seen
laboring in a tempest; in another a gallant young horseman in pursuit
of a stag is leaping over a cliff into the sea; and in the third a
thin square of Christian soldiers, in broad-brimmed hats, braided
tail-coats, and silk stockings, is being attacked on every side by a
black and unclad host of savages with bows and arrows. The Christians
are ranged round two little cottages which must signify the fort of
Loanda at the time. Two little cannons belch smoke and lay many black
figures low. The soldiers are firing their muskets into the air, no
doubt in the hope that the height of the trajectory will bring the
bullets down in the neighborhood of the foe, though the opposing forces
are hardly twenty yards apart. The natives in one place have caught
hold of a priest and are about to exalt him to martyrdom, but I think
none of the Christian soldiers have fallen. In defiance of the cannibal
king, who bears a big sword and is twice the size of his followers,
the Christian general grasps his standard in the middle of the square,
and, as in the shipwreck and the hunting scene, Our Lady of Salvation
watches serenely from the clouds, conscious of her power to save.
Unhappily there is no inscription, and we can only say that the scene
represents some hard-won battle of long ago--some crisis in the
miserable conflict of black and white. Since the days of those two
cottages and a flag, Loanda has grown into a city that would hardly
look out of place upon the Mediterranean shore. It has something now
of the Mediterranean air, both in its beauty and its decay. In front
of its low red and yellow cliffs a long spit of sand-bank forms a calm
lagoon, at the entrance of which the biggest war-ships can lie. The
sandy rock projecting into the lagoon is crowned by a Vauban fortress
whose bastions and counter-scarps would have filled Uncle Toby’s heart
with joy. They now defend the exiled prisoners from Portugal, but
from the ancient embrasures a few old guns, some rusty, some polished
with blacking, still puff their salutes to foreign men-of-war, or to
new governors on their arrival. In blank-cartridge the Portuguese War
Department shows no economy. If only ball-cartridge were as cheap, the
mind of Loanda would be less disquieted.
There is an upper and a lower town. From the fortress the cliff,
though it crumbles down in the centre, swings round in a wide arc
to the cemetery, and on the cliff are built the governor’s palace,
the bishop’s palace, a few ruined churches that once belonged to
monastic orders, and the fine big hospital, an expensive present from
a Portuguese queen. Over the flat space between the cliff and the
lagoon the lower town has grown up, with a cathedral, custom-house,
barracks, stores, and two restaurants. The natives live scattered about
in houses and huts, but they have chiefly spread at random over the
flat, high ground behind the cliff. As in a Turkish town, there is much
ruin and plenty of space. Over wide intervals of ground you will find
nothing but a broken wall and a century of rubbish. Many enterprises
may be seen growing cold in death. There are gardens which were meant
to be botanical. There is an observatory which may be scientific still,
for the wind-gage spins. There is an immense cycle track which has
delighted no cyclist, unless, indeed, the contractor cycles. There are
bits of pavement that end both ways in sand. There is a ruin that was
intended for a hotel. There is a public band which has played the same
tunes in the same order three times a week since the childhood of the
oldest white inhabitant. There is a technical school where no pupil
ever went. There is a vast municipal building which has never received
its windows, and whose tower serves as a monument to the last sixpence.
There are oil-lamps which were made for gas, and there is one drain,
fit to poison the multitudinous sea.
So the city lies, bankrupt and beautiful. She is beautiful because she
is old, and because she built her roofs with tiles, before corrugated
iron came to curse the world. And she is bankrupt for various reasons,
which, as I said, are now disquieting her mind. First there is the war.
Only last autumn a Portuguese expedition against a native tribe was
cut to pieces down in the southern Mossamedes district, not far from
the German frontier, where also a war is creeping along. No Lady of
Salvation now helped the thin Christian square, and some three hundred
whites and blacks were left there dead. So things stand. Victorious
natives can hardly be allowed to triumph in victory over whites, but
how can a bankrupt province carry on war? A new governor has arrived,
and, as I write, everything is in doubt, except the lack of money. How
are safety, honor, and the value of the milreis note to be equally
maintained?
[Illustration: NATIVES IN CHARACTERISTIC DRESS]
But there is an uneasy consciousness that the lack of money, the war
itself, and other distresses are all connected with a much deeper
question that keeps on reappearing in different forms. It is the
question of “contract labor.” Cheap labor of some sort is essential,
if the old colony is to be preserved. There was a time when there was
plenty of labor and to spare--so much to spare that it was exported in
profitable ship-loads to Havana and Brazil, while the bishop sat on the
wharf and christened the slaves in batches. But, as I have said, that
source of income was cut off by British gun-boats some fifty years ago,
and is lost, perhaps forever. And in the mean time the home supply of
labor has been lamentably diminished; for the native population, the
natural cultivators of the country, have actually decreased in number,
and other causes have contributed to raise their price above the limit
of “economic value.”
Their numbers have decreased, because the whole country, always exposed
to small-pox, has been suffering more and more from the diseases which
alcoholism brings or leaves, and, like most of tropical Africa, it has
been devastated within the last twenty or thirty years by this new
plague to humanity, called “the sleeping-sickness.” Men of science are
undecided still as to the cause. They are now inclined to connect it
with the tsetse-fly, long known in parts of Africa as the destroyer
of all domesticated animals, but hitherto supposed to be harmless
to man, whether domesticated or wild. No one yet knows, and we can
only describe its course from the observed cases. It begins with an
unwillingness to work, an intense desire to sit down and do nothing, so
that the lowest and most laborious native becomes quite aristocratic
in his habits. The head then keeps nodding forward, and intervals of
profound sleep supervene. Control over the expression of emotion is
lost, so that the patient laughs or cries without cause. This has been
a very marked symptom among the children I have seen. In some the
great tears kept pouring down; others could not stop laughing. The
muscles twitch of themselves, and the glands at the back of the neck
swell up. Then the appetite fails, and in the cases I have seen there
is extreme wasting, as from famine. Sometimes, however, the body
swells all over, and the natives call this kind “the Baobab,” from
the name of the enormous and disproportioned tree which abounds here,
and always looks as if it suffered from elephantiasis, like so many
of the natives themselves. Often there is an intense desire to smoke,
but when the pipe is lit the patient drops it with indifference. Then
come fits of bitter cold, and during these fits patients have been
known to fall into the fire and allow themselves to be burned to death.
Towards the end, violent trembling comes on, followed by delirium and
an unconsciousness which may continue for about the final fortnight.
The disease lasts from six to eight months; sometimes a patient lives
a year. But hitherto there has been no authenticated instance of
recovery. Of all diseases, it is perhaps the only one which up to now
counts its dead by cent per cent. It attacks all ages between five
years and forty, and even those limits are not quite fixed. It so
happens that most of the cases I have yet seen in the country have been
children, but that may be accidental. For a long time it was thought
that white people were exempt. But that is not so. They are apparently
as liable to the sickness as the natives, and there are white patients
suffering from it now in the Loanda hospital.
My reason for now dwelling upon the disease which has added a new
terror to Africa is its effect upon the labor-supply. It is very
capricious in its visitation. Sometimes it will cling to one side of
a river and leave the other untouched. But when it appears it often
sweeps the population off the face of the earth, and there are places
in Angola which lately were large native towns, but are now going
back to desert. So people are more than ever wanted to continue the
cultivation of such land as has been cultivated, and, unhappily, it
is now more than ever essential that the people should be cheap. The
great days when fortunes were made in coffee, or when it was thought
that cocoa would save the country, are over. Prices have sunk. Brazil
has driven out Angola coffee. San Thomé has driven out the cocoa. The
Congo is driving out the rubber, and the sugar-cane is grown only for
the rum that natives drink--not a profitable industry from the point
of view of national economics. Many of the old plantations have come
to grief. Some have been amalgamated into companies with borrowed
capital. Some have been sold for a song. None is prosperous; but
people still think that if only “contract labor” were cheaper and more
plentiful, prosperity would return. As it is, they see all the best
labor draughted off to the rich island of San Thomé, never to return,
and that is another reason why the mind of Loanda is much disquieted.
I do not mean that the anxiety about the “contract labor” is entirely
a question of cash. The Portuguese are quite as sensitive and kindly
as other people. Many do not like to think that the “serviçaes”
or “contrahidos,” as they are called, are, in fact, hardly to be
distinguished from the slaves of the cruel old times. Still more do
not like to hear the most favored province of the Portuguese Empire
described by foreigners as a slave state. There is a strong feeling
about it in Portugal also, I believe, and here in Angola it is the
chief subject of conversation and politics. The new governor is thought
to be an “antislavery” man. A little newspaper appears occasionally in
Loanda (_A Defeza de Angola_) in which the shame of the whole system
is exposed, at all events with courage. The paper is not popular with
the official or governing classes. No courageous newspaper ever can
be; for the official person is born with a hatred of reform, because
reform means trouble. But the paper is read none the less. There is a
feeling about the question which I can only describe again as disquiet.
It is partly conscience, partly national reputation; partly also it
is the knowledge that under the present system San Thomé gets all the
advantage, and the mainland is being drained of laborers in order that
the island’s cocoa may abound.
Legally the system is quite simple and looks innocent enough. Legally
it is laid down that a native and a would-be employer come before a
magistrate or other representative of the Curator-General of Angola,
and enter into a free and voluntary contract for so much work in return
for so much pay. By the wording of the contract the native declares
that “he has come of his own free will to contract for his services
under the terms and according to the forms required by the law of April
29, 1875, the general regulation of November 21, 1878, and the special
clauses relating to this province.”
The form of contract continues:
1. The laborer contracts and undertakes to render all such [domestic,
agricultural, etc.] services as his employer may require.
2. He binds himself to work nine hours on all days that are not
sanctified by religion, with an interval of two hours for rest, and
not to leave the service of the employer without permission, except in
order to complain to the authorities.
3. This contract to remain in force for five complete years.
4. The employer binds himself to pay the monthly wages of ----, with
food and clothing.
Then follow the magistrate’s approval of the contract, and the
customary conclusion about “signed, sealed, and delivered in the
presence of the following witnesses.” The law further lays it down that
the contract may be renewed by the wish of both parties at the end of
five years, that the magistrates should visit the various districts and
see that the contracts are properly observed and renewed, and that all
children born to the laborers, whether man or woman, during the time
of his or her contract shall be absolutely free.
Legally, could any agreement look fairer and more innocent? Or could
any government have better protected a subject population in the
transition from recognized slavery to free labor? Even apart from the
splendor of legal language, laws often seem divine. But let us see how
the whole thing works out in human life.
An agent, whom for the sake of politeness we may call a labor merchant,
goes wandering about among the natives in the interior--say seven or
eight hundred miles from the coast. He comes to the chief of a tribe,
or, I believe, more often, to a little group of chiefs, and, in return
for so many grown men and women, he offers the chiefs so many smuggled
rifles, guns, and cartridges, so many bales of calico, so many barrels
of rum. The chiefs select suitable men and women, very often one of
the tribe gives in his child to pay off an old debt, the bargain is
concluded, and off the party goes. The labor merchant leads it away
for some hundreds of miles, and then offers its members to employers
as contracted laborers. As commission for his own services in the
transaction, he may receive about fifteen or twenty pounds for a man
or a woman, and about five pounds for a child. According to law, the
laborer is then brought before a magistrate and duly signs the above
contract with his or her new master. He signs, and the benevolent law
is satisfied. But what does the native know or care about “freedom
of contract” or “the general regulation of November 21, 1878”? What
does he know about nine hours a day and two hours rest and the days
sanctified by religion? Or what does it mean to him to be told that the
contract terminates at the end of five years? He only knows that he has
fallen into the hands of his enemies, that he is being given over into
slavery to the white man, that if he runs away he will be beaten, and
even if he could escape to his home, all those hundreds of miles across
the mountains, he would probably be killed, and almost certainly be
sold again. In what sense does such a man enter into a free contract
for his labor? In what sense, except according to law, does his
position differ from a slave’s? And the law does not count; it is only
life that counts.
I do not wish at present to dwell further upon this original stage in
the process of the new slave-trade, for I have not myself yet seen it
at work. I only take my account from men who have lived long in the
interior and whose word I can trust. I may be able to describe it more
fully when I have been farther into the interior myself. But now I will
pass to a stage in the system which I have seen with my own eyes--the
plantation stage, in which the contract system is found in full working
order.
For about a hundred miles inland from Loanda, the country is flattish
and bare and dry, though there are occasional rivers and a sprinkling
of trees. A coarse grass feeds a few cattle, but the chief product
is the cassava, from which the natives knead a white food, something
between rice and flour. As you go farther, the land grows like the “low
veldt” in the Transvaal, and it has the same peculiar and unwholesome
smell. By degrees it becomes more mountainous and the forest grows
thick, so that the little railway seems to struggle with the
undergrowth almost as much as with the inclines. That little railway
is perhaps the only evidence of “progress” in the province after three
or four centuries. It is paid for by Lisbon, but a train really does
make the journey of about two hundred and fifty miles regularly in two
days, resting the engine for the night. To reach a plantation you must
get out on the route and make your way through the forest by one of
those hardly perceptible “bush paths” which are the only roads. Along
these paths, through flag-grasses ten feet high, through jungle that
closes on both sides like two walls, up mountains covered with forest,
and down valleys where the water is deep at this wet season, every bit
of merchandise, stores, or luggage must be carried on the heads of
natives, and every yard of the journey has to be covered on foot.
After struggling through the depths of the woods in this way for three
or four hours, we climbed a higher ridge of mountain and emerged from
the dense growth to open summits of rock and grass. Far away to the
southeast a still higher mountain range was visible, and I remembered,
with what writers call a momentary thrill, that from this quarter of
the compass Livingstone himself had made his way through to Loanda on
one of his greatest journeys. Below the mountain edge on which I stood
lay the broad valley of the plantation, surrounded by other hills
and depths of forest. The low white casa, with its great barns and
outhouses, stood in the middle. Close by its side were the thatched
mud huts of the work-people, the doors barred, the little streets all
empty and silent, because the people were all at work, and the children
that were too small to work and too big to be carried were herded
together in another part of the yards. From the house, in almost every
direction, the valleys of cultivated ground stretched out like fingers,
their length depending on the shape of the ground and on the amount of
water which could be turned over them by ditch-canals.
It was a plantation on which everything that will grow in this part
of Africa was being tried at once. There were rows of coffee, rows of
cocoa-plant, woods of bananas, fields of maize, groves of sugar-cane
for rum. On each side of the paths mango-trees stood in avenues, or the
tree which the parlors of Camden Town know as the India-rubber plant,
though in fact it is no longer the chief source of African rubber. A
few other plants and fruits were cultivated as well, but these were the
main produce.
The cultivation was admirable. Any one who knows the fertile parts
of Africa will agree that the great difficulty is not to make things
grow, but to prevent other things from growing. The abundant growth
chokes everything down. An African forest is one gigantic struggle for
existence, and an African field becomes forest as soon as you take your
eyes off it. But on the plantation the ground was kept clear and clean.
The first glance told of the continuous and persistent labor that
must be used. And as I was thinking of this and admiring the result,
suddenly I came upon this continuous and persistent labor in the flesh.