While I was up the Congo and the Kasai rivers, Mrs. Davis had
remained at Boma, and when I rejoined her, we booked passage home on
the Nigeria. We chose the Nigeria, which is an
Elder-Dempster freight and passenger steamer, in preference to the fast
mail steamer because of the ports of the West Coast we wished to see as
many as possible. And, on her six weeks' voyage to Liverpool, the
Nigeria promised to spend as much time at anchor as at sea. On the
Coast it is a more serious matter to reserve a cabin than in New York.
You do not stop at an uptown office, and on a diagram of the ship's
insides, as though you were playing roulette, point at a number.
Instead, as you are to occupy your cabin, not for one, but for six,
weeks, you search, as vigilantly as a navy officer looking for
contraband, the ship herself and each cabin.
But going aboard was a simple ceremony. The Hotel Splendide stands
on the bank of the Congo River. After saying “Good-by” to her
proprietor, I walked to the edge of the water and waved my helmet. In
the Congo, a white man standing in the sun without a hat is a spectacle
sufficiently thrilling to excite the attention of all, and at once
Captain Hughes of the Nigeria sent a cargo boat to the rescue,
and on the shoulders of naked Kroo boys Mrs. Davis and the maid, and
the trunks, spears, tents, bathtubs, carved idols, native mats, and a
live mongoos were dropped into it, and we were paddled to the gangway.
“If that's all, we might as well get under way,” said Captain
Hughes. The anchor chains creaked, from the bank the proprietor of the
Splendide waved his hand, and the long voyage to Liverpool had begun.
It was as casual as halting and starting a cable-car.
According to schedule, after leaving the Congo, we should have gone
south and touched at Loanda. But on this voyage, outward bound, the
Nigeria had carried, to help build the railroad at Lobito Bay, a
deckload of camels. They had proved trying passengers, and instead of
first touching at the Congo, Captain Hughes had continued on south and
put them ashore. So we were robbed of seeing both Loanda and the
camels.
This line, until Calabar is reached, carries but few passengers,
and, except to receive cargo, the ship is not fully in commission.
During this first week she is painted, and holystoned, her carpets are
beaten, her cabins scrubbed and aired, and the passengers mess with the
officers. So, of the ship's life, we acquired an intimate knowledge,
her interests became our own, and the necessity of feeding her gaping
holds with cargo was personal and acute. On a transatlantic steamer,
when once the hatches are down, the captain need think only of
navigation; on these coasters, the hatches never are down, and the
captain, that sort of captain dear to the heart of the owners, is the
man who fills the holds.
A skipper going ashore to drum up trade was a novel spectacle.
Imagine the captain of one of the Atlantic greyhounds prying among the
warehouses on West Street, demanding of the merchants: “Anything going
my way, this trip?” He would scorn to do it. Before his passengers have
passed the custom officers, he is in mufti, and on his way to his villa
on Brooklyn Heights, or to the Lambs Club, and until the Blue Peter is
again at the fore, little he cares for passengers, mails, or cargo. But
the captain of a “coaster” must be sailor and trader, too. He is
expected to navigate a coast, the latest chart of which is dated
somewhere near 1830, and at which the waves rush in walls of spray,
sometimes as high as a three-story house. He must speak all the known
languages of Europe, and all the unknown tongues of innumerable black
brothers. At each port he must entertain out of his own pocket the
agents of all the trading houses, and, in his head, he must keep the
market price, “when laid down in Liverpool,” of mahogany, copra, copal,
rubber, palm oil, and ivory. To see that the agent has not overlooked a
few bags of ground nuts, or a dozen puncheons of oil, he must go on
shore and peer into the compound of each factory, and on board he must
keep peace between the Kroo boys and the black deck passengers, and see
that the white passengers with a temperature of 105, do not drink more
than is good for them. At least, those are a few of the duties the
captains on the ships controlled by Sir Alfred Jones, who is Elder and
Dempster, are expected to perform. No wonder Sir Alfred is popular.
Our first port of call was Landana, in Portuguese territory, but two
ships of the Woermann Line were there ahead of us and had gobbled up
all the freight. So we could but up anchor and proceed to Libreville,
formerly the capital of the French Congo. At five in the morning by the
light of a ship's lantern, we were paddled ashore to drum up trade. We
found two traders, Ives and Thomas, who had waiting for the Nigeria
at the mouth of the Gabun River six hundred logs of mahogany, and, in
consequence, there was general rejoicing, and Scotch and “sparklets,”
and even music from a German music-box that would burst into song only
after it had been fed with a copper. One of the clerks said that Ives
had forgotten how to extract the coppers and in consequence was using
the music-box as a savings bank.
In the French Congo the natives are permitted to trade; in the Congo
Free State they are not, or, rather, they have nothing with which to
trade, and the contrast between the empty “factories” of the Congo and
those of Libreville, crowded with natives buying and selling, was
remarkable. There also was a conspicuous difference in the quality and
variety of the goods. In Leopold's Congo “trade” goods is a term of
contempt. It describes articles manufactured only for those who have no
choice and must accept whatever is offered. When your customers must
take what you please to give them the quality of your goods is likely
to deteriorate. Salt of the poorest grade, gaudy fabrics that neither
“wear” nor “wash,” bars of coarse soap (the native is continually
washing his single strip of cloth), and axe-heads made of iron, are
what Leopold thinks are a fair exchange for the forced labor of the
black.
But the articles I found in the factories in Libreville were what,
in the Congo, are called “white man's goods” and were of excellent
quality and in great variety. There were even French novels and cigars.
Some of the latter, called the Young American on account of the name
and the flag on the lid, tempted me, until I saw they were manufactured
by Dusseldorffer and Vanderswassen, and one suspected Rotterdam.
In Ives's factory I saw for the first time a “trade” rifle, or Tower
musket. In the vernacular of the Coast, they are “gas-pipe” guns. They
are put together in England, and to a white man are a most terrifying
weapon. The original Tower muskets, such as, in the days of '76, were
hung over the fireplace of the forefathers of the Sons of the
Revolution, were manufactured in England, and stamped with the word
“Tower,” and for the reigning king G.R. I suppose at that date at the
Tower of London there was an arsenal; but I am ready to be corrected.
To-day the guns are manufactured at Birmingham, but they still have the
flint lock, and still are stamped with the word “Tower” and the royal
crown over the letters G.R., and with the arrow which is supposed to
mark the property of the government. The barrel is three feet four
inches long, and the bore is that of an artesian well. The native fills
four inches of this cavity with powder and the remaining three feet
with rusty nails, barbed wire, leaden slugs, and the legs and broken
parts of iron pots. An officer of the W.A.F.F.'s, in a fight in the
bush in South Nigeria, had one of these things fired at him from a
distance of fifteen feet. He told me all that saved him was that when
the native pulled the trigger the recoil of the gun “kicked” the muzzle
two feet in the air and the native ten feet into the bush. I bought a
Tower rifle at the trade price, a pound, and brought it home. But
although my friends have offered to back either end of the gun as being
the more destructive, we have found no one with a sufficient sporting
spirit to determine the point.
Libreville is a very pretty town, but when it was laid out the
surveyors just missed placing the Equator in its main street. It is
easy to understand why with such a live wire in the vicinity Libreville
is warm. From the same cause it also is rich in flowers, vines, and
trees growing in generous, undisciplined abundance, making of
Libreville one vast botanical garden, and burying the town and its
bungalows under screens of green and branches of scarlet and purple
flowers. Close to the surf runs an avenue bordered by giant cocoanut
palms and, after the sun is down, this is the fashionable promenade.
Here every evening may be seen in their freshest linen the six married
white men of Libreville, and, in the latest Paris frocks, the six
married ladies, while from the verandas of the factories that line the
sea front and from under the paper lanterns of the Cafe Guion the
clerks and traders sip their absinthe and play dominoes, and cast
envious glances at the six fortunate fellow exiles.
For several days we lay a few miles south of Libreville, off the
mouth of the Gabun River, taking in the logs of mahogany. It was a
continuous performance of the greatest interest. I still do not
understand why all those engaged in it were not drowned, or pounded to
a pulp. Just before we touched at the Gabun River, two tramp steamers,
chartered by Americans, carried off a full cargo of this mahogany to
the States. It was an experiment the result of which the traders of
Libreville are awaiting with interest. The mahogany that the reader
sees in America probably comes from Hayti, Cuba, or Belize, and is of
much finer quality than that of the Gabun River, which latter is used
for making what the trade calls “fancy” cigar-boxes and cheap
furniture. But before it becomes a cigar-box it passes through many
adventures. Weeks before the steamer arrives the trader, followed by
his black boys, explores the jungle and blazes the trees. Then the boys
cut trails through the forest, and, using logs for rollers, drag and
push the tree trunks to the bank of the river. There the tree is cut
into huge cubes, weighing about a ton, and measuring twelve to fifteen
feet in length and three feet across each face. A boy can “shape” one
of these logs in a day.
Although his pay varies according to whether the tributaries of the
river are full or low, so making the moving of the logs easy or
difficult, he can earn about three pounds ten shillings a month, paid
in cash. Compared with the eighty cents a month paid only a few miles
away in the Congo Free State, and in “trade” goods, these are good
wages. When the log is shaped the mark of the trader is branded on it
with an iron, just as we brand cattle, and it is turned loose on the
river. At the mouth of the river there is little danger of the log
escaping, for the waves are stronger than the tide, and drive the logs
upon the shore. There, in the surf, we found these tons of mahogany
pounding against each other. In the ship's steam-launch were iron
chains, a hundred yards long, to which, at intervals, were fastened
“dogs,” or spikes. These spikes were driven into the end of a log, the
brand upon the log was noted by the captain and trader, and the logs,
chained together like the vertebrae of a great sea serpent, were towed
to the ship's side. There they were made fast, and three Kroo boys
knocked the spike out of each log, warped a chain around it, and made
fast that chain to the steel hawser of the winch. As it was drawn to
the deck a Senegalese soldier, acting for the Customs, gave it a second
blow with a branding hammer, and, thundering and smashing, it swung
into the hold.
[Illustration: There, in the Surf, We Found These Tons of Mahogany,
Pounding Against Each Other.]
In the “round up” of the logs the star performers were the three
Kroo boys at the ship's side. For days, in fascinated horror, the six
passengers watched them, prayed for them, and made bets as to which
would be the first to die. One understands that a Kroo boy is as much
at home in the sea as on shore, but these boys were neither in the sea
nor on shore. They were balancing themselves on blocks of slippery wood
that weighed a ton, but which were hurled about by the great waves as
though they were life-belts. All night the hammering of the logs made
the ship echo like a monster drum, and all day without an instant's
pause each log reared and pitched, spun like a barrel, dived like a
porpoise, or, broadside, battered itself against the iron plates. But,
no matter what tricks it played, a Kroo boy rode it as easily as though
it were a horse in a merry-go-round.
It was a wonderful exhibition. It furnished all the thrills that one
gets when watching a cowboy on a bucking bronco, or a trained seal.
Again and again a log, in wicked conspiracy with another log, would
plan to entice a Kroo boy between them, and smash him. At the sight the
passengers would shriek a warning, the boy would dive between the logs,
and a mass of twelve hundred pounds of mahogany would crash against a
mass weighing fifteen hundred with a report like colliding freight
cars.
And then, as, breathless, we waited to see what once was a Kroo boy
float to the surface, he would appear sputtering and grinning, and
saying to us as clearly as a Kroo smile can say it: “He never touched
me!”
[Illustration: A Log of Mahogany Jammed in the Anchor Chains.]
Two days after we had stored away the mahogany we anchored off
Duala, the capital of the German Cameroons. Duala is built upon a high
cliff, and from the water the white and yellow buildings with many
pillars gave it the appearance of a city. Instead, it is a clean,
pretty town. With the German habit of order, it has been laid out like
barracks, but with many gardens, well-kept, shaded streets, and high,
cool houses, scientifically planned to meet the necessities of the
tropics. At Duala the white traders and officials were plump and
cheerful looking, and in the air there was more of prosperity than
fever. The black and white sentry boxes and the native soldiers
practising the stork march of the Kaiser's army were signs of a rigid
military rule, but the signs of Germany's efforts in trade were more
conspicuous. Nowhere on the coast did we see as at Duala such gorgeous
offices as those of the great trading house of Woermann, the hated
rivals of “Sir Alfred,” such carved furniture, such shining brass
railings, and nowhere else did we see plate-glass windows, in which,
with unceasing wonder, the natives stared at reflections of their own
persons. In the river there was a private dry dock of the Woermanns,
and along the wharfs for acres was lumber for the Woermanns, boxes of
trade goods, puncheons and casks for the Woermanns, private cooper
shops and private machine shops and private banks for the Woermanns.
The house flag of the Woermanns became as significant as that of a
reigning sovereign. One felt inclined to salute it.
The success of the German merchant on the East Coast and over all
the world appears to be a question of character. He is patient,
methodical, painstaking; it is his habit of industry that is helping
him to close port after port to English, French, and American goods.
The German clerks do not go to the East Coast or to China and South
America to drink absinthe or whiskey, or to play dominoes or cricket.
They work twice as long as do the other white men, and during those
longer office hours they toil twice as hard. One of our passengers was
a German agent returning for his vacation. I used to work in the
smoking-room and he always was at the next table, also at work, on his
ledgers and account books. He was so industrious that he bored me, and
one day I asked him why, instead of spoiling his vacation with work, he
had not balanced his books before he left the Coast.
“It is an error,” he said; “I can not find him.” And he explained
that in the record of his three years' stewardship, which he was to
turn over to the directors in Berlin, there was somewhere a mistake of
a sixpence.
“But,” I protested, “what's sixpence to you? You drink champagne all
day. You begin at nine in the morning!”
“I drink champagne,” said the clerk, “because for three years I have
myself alone in the bush lived, but, can I to my directors go with a
book not balanced?” He laid his hand upon his heart and shook his head.
“It is my heart that tells me 'No!'“
After three weeks he gave a shout, his face blushed with pleasure,
and actual tears were in his eyes. He had dug out the error, and at
once he celebrated the recovery of the single sixpence by giving me
twenty-four shillings' worth of champagne. It is a true story, and
illustrates, I think, the training and method of the German mind, of
the industry of the merchants who are trading over all the seas. As a
rule the “trade” goods “made in Germany” are “shoddy.” They do not
compare in quality with those of England or the States; in every
foreign port you will find that the English linen is the best, that the
American agricultural implements, American hardware, saws, axes,
machetes, are superior to those manufactured in any other country. But
the German, though his goods are poorer, cuts the coat to please the
customer. He studies the wishes of the man who is to pay. He is not the
one who says: “Take it, or leave it.”
The agent of one of the largest English firms on the Ivory Coast,
one that started by trading in slaves, said to me: “Our largest
shipment to this coast is gin. This is a French colony, and if the
French traders and I were patriots instead of merchants we would buy
from our own people, but we buy from the Germans, because trade follows
no flag. They make a gin out of potatoes colored with rum or gin, and
label it 'Demerara' and 'Jamaica.' They sell it to us on the wharf at
Antwerp for ninepence a gallon, and we sell it at nine francs per dozen
bottles. Germany is taking our trade from us because she undersells us,
and because her merchants don't wait for trade to come to them, but go
after it. Before the Woermann boat is due their agent here will come to
my factory and spy out all I have in my compound. 'Why don't you ship
those logs with us?' he'll ask.
“'Can't spare the boys to carry them to the beach,' I'll say.
“'I'll furnish the boys,' he'll answer. That's the German way.
“The Elder-Dempster boats lie three miles out at sea and blow a
whistle at us. They act as though by carrying our freight they were
doing us a favor. These German ships, to save you the long pull, anchor
close to the beach and lend you their own shore boats and their own
boys to work your cargo. And if you give them a few tons to carry, like
as not they'll 'dash' you to a case of 'fizz.' And meanwhile the
English captain is lying outside the bar tooting his whistle and
wanting to know if you think he's going to run his ship aground for a
few bags of rotten kernels. And he can't see, and the people at home
can't see, why the Germans are crowding us off the Coast.”
Just outside of Duala, in the native village of Bell Town, is the
palace and the harem of the ruler of the tribe that gave its name to
the country, Mango Bell, King of the Cameroons. His brother, Prince
William, sells photographs and “souvenirs.” We bought photographs, and
on the strength of that hinted at a presentation at court. Brother
William seemed doubtful, so we bought enough postal cards to establish
us as etrangers de distinction, and he sent up our names. With
Pivani, Hatton &Cookson's chief clerk we were escorted to the royal
presence. The palace is a fantastic, pagoda-like building of three
stories; and furnished with many mirrors, carved oak sideboards, and
lamp-shades of colored glass. Mango Bell, King of the Cameroons, sounds
like a character in a comic opera, but the king was an extremely
serious, tall, handsome, and self-respecting negro. Having been
educated in England, he spoke much more correct English than any of us.
Of the few “Kings I Have Met,” both tame and wild, his manners were the
most charming. Back of the palace is an enormously long building under
one roof. Here live his thirty-five queens. To them we were not
presented.
[Illustration: The Palace of the King of the Cameroons.]
Prince William asked me if I knew where in America there was a
street called Fifth Avenue. I suggested New York. He referred to a
large Bible, and finding, much to his surprise, that my guess was
correct, commissioned me to buy him, from a firm on that street, just
such another Bible as the one in his hand. He forgot to give me the
money to pay for it, but loaned us a half-dozen little princes to bear
our purchases to the wharf. For this service their royal highnesses
graciously condescended to receive a small “dash,” and with the chief
clerk were especially delighted. He, being a sleight-of-hand artist,
apparently took five-franc pieces out of their Sunday clothes and from
their kinky hair. When we left they were rapidly disrobing to find if
any more five-franc pieces were concealed about their persons.
The morning after we sailed from Duala we anchored in the river in
front of Calabar, the capital of Southern Nigeria. Of all the ports at
which we touched on the Coast, Calabar was the hottest, the best
looking, and the best administered. It is a model colony, but to bring
it to the state it now enjoys has cost sums of money entirely out of
proportion to those the colony has earned. The money has been spent in
cutting down the jungle, filling in swamps that breed mosquitoes and
fever, and in laying out gravel walks, water mains, and open cement
gutters, and in erecting model hospitals, barracks, and administrative
offices. Even grass has been made to grow, and the high bluff upon
which are situated the homes of the white officials and Government
House has been trimmed and cultivated and tamed until it looks like an
English park. It is a complete imitation, even to golf links and tennis
courts. But the fight that has been made against the jungle has not
stopped with golf links. In 1896 the death rate was ten men out of
every hundred. That corresponds to what in warfare is a decimating
fire, upon which an officer, without danger of reproof, may withdraw
his men. But at Calabar the English doctors did not withdraw, and now
the death rate is as low as three out of every hundred. That Calabar,
or any part of the West Coast, will ever be made entirely healthy is
doubtful. Man can cut down a forest and fill in a swamp, but he can not
reach up, as to a gas jet, and turn off the sun. And at Calabar, even
at night when the sun has turned itself off, the humidity and the heat
leave one sweating, tossing, and gasping for air. In Calabar the first
thing a white man learns is not to take any liberties with the sun.
When he dresses, eats, drinks, and moves about the sun is as constantly
on his mind, as it is on the face of the sun-dial. The chief ascent to
the top of the bluff where the white people live is up a steep cement
walk about eighty yards long. At the foot of this a white man will be
met by four hammock-bearers, and you will see him get into the hammock
and be carried in it the eighty yards.
For even that short distance he is taking no chances. But while he
nurses his vitality and cares for his health he does not use the sun as
an excuse for laziness or for slipshod work. I have never seen a place
in the tropics where, in spite of the handicap of damp, fierce heat,
the officers and civil officials are so keenly and constantly employed,
where the bright work was so bright, and the whitewash so white.
Out at the barracks of the West African Frontier Force, the
W.A.F.F.'s, the officers, instead of from the shade of the veranda
watching the non-coms. teach a native the manual, were themselves at
work, and each was howling orders at the black recruits and smashing a
gun against his hip and shoulder as smartly as a drill sergeant. I
found the standard maintained at Calabar the more interesting because
the men were almost entirely their own audience. If they make the place
healthy, and attractive-looking, and dress for dinner, and shy at
cocktails, and insist that their tan shoes shall glow like meershaum
pipes, it is not because of the refining presence of lovely women, but
because the men themselves like things that way. The men of Calabar
have learned that when the sun is at 110, morals, like material things,
disintegrate, and that, though the temptation is to go about in
bath-room slippers and pajamas, one is wiser to bolster up his drenched
and drooping spirit with a stiff shirt front and a mess jacket. They
tell that in a bush station in upper Nigeria, one officer got his
D.S.O. because with an audience of only a white sergeant he persisted
in a habit of shaving twice a day.
[Illustration: The Home of the Thirty Queens of King Mango Bell.]
There are very few women in Calabar. There are three or four who are
wives of officials, two nurses employed by the government, and the
Mother Superior and Sisters of the Order of St. Joseph, and, of course,
all of them are great belles. For the Sisters, especially the officers,
the government people, the traders, the natives, even the rival
missionaries, have the most tremendous respect and admiration. The
sacrifice of the woman who, to be near her husband on the Coast,
consents to sicken and fade and grow old before her time, and of the
nurse who, to preserve the health of others, risks her own, is very
great; but the sacrifice of the Sisters, who have renounced all thought
of home and husband, and who have exiled themselves to this steaming
swamp-land, seems the most unselfish. In order to support the 150
little black boys and girls who are at school at the mission, the
Sisters rob themselves of everything except the little that will keep
them alive. Two, in addition to their work at the mission, act as
nurses in the English hospital, and for that they receive together
$600. This forms the sole regular income of the five women; for each
$120 a year. With anything else that is given them in charity, they buy
supplies for the little converts. They live in a house of sandstone and
zinc that holds the heat like a flat-iron, they are obliged to wear a
uniform that is of material and fashion so unsuited to the tropics that
Dr. Chichester, in charge of the hospital, has written in protest
against it to Rome, and on many days they fast, not because the Church
bids them so to do, but because they have no food. And with it all,
these five gentlewomen are always eager, cheerful, sweet of temper, and
a living blessing to all who meet them. What now troubles them is that
they have no room to accommodate the many young heathen who come to
them to be taught to wear clothes, and to be good little boys and
girls. This is causing the Sisters great distress. Any one who does not
believe in that selfish theory, that charity begins at home, but who
would like to help to spread Christianity in darkest Africa and give
happiness to five noble women, who are giving their lives for others,
should send a postal money order to Marie T. Martin, the Reverend
Mother Superior of the Catholic Mission of Old Calabar, Southern
Nigeria.
And if you are going to do it, as they say in the advertising pages,
“Do it now!”
[Illustration: The Mother Superior and Sisters of St. Joseph and
Their Converts at Old Calabar.]
At Calabar there is a royal prisoner, the King of Benin. He is not
an agreeable king like His Majesty of the Cameroons, but a grossly fat,
sensual-looking young man, who, a few years ago, when he was at war
with the English, made “ju ju” against them by sacrificing three
hundred maidens, his idea being that the ju ju would drive the English
out of Benin. It was poor ju ju, for it drove the young man himself out
of Benin, and now he is a king in exile. As far as I could see, the
social position of the king is insecure, and certainly in Calabar he
does not move in the first circles. One afternoon, when the four or
five ladies of Calabar and Mr. Bedwell, the Acting Commissioner, and
the officers of the W.A.F.F.'s were at the clubhouse having ice-drinks,
the king at the head of a retinue of cabinet officers, high priests,
and wives bore down upon the club-house with the evident intention of
inviting himself to tea. Personally, I should like to have met a young
man who could murder three hundred girls and worry over it so little
that he had not lost one of his three hundred pounds, but the others
were considerably annoyed and sent an A.D.C. to tell him to “Move on!”
as though he were an organ-grinder, or a performing bear.
“These kings,” exclaimed a subaltern of the W.A.F.F.'s, indignantly,
“are trying to push in everywhere!”
When we departed from Calabar, the only thing that reconciled me to
leaving it and its charming people, was the fact that when the ship
moved there was a breeze. While at anchor in the river I had found that
not being able to breathe by day or to sleep by night in time is
trying, even to the stoutest constitution.
One of the married ladies of Calabar, her husband, an officer of the
W.A.F.F.'s, and the captain of the police sailed on the Nigeria
“on leave,” and all Calabar came down to do them honor. There was the
commissioner's gig, and the marine captain's gig, and the police
captain's gig, and the gig from “Matilda's,” the English trading house,
and one from the Dutch house and the French house, and each gig was
manned by black boys in beautiful uniforms and fezzes, and each crew
fought to tie up to the foot of the accommodation ladder. It was as gay
as a regatta. On the quarter-deck the officers drank champagne, in the
captain's cabin Hughes treated the traders to beer, in the “square” the
non-coms. of the W.A.F.F.'s drank ale. The men who were going away on
leave tried not to look too happy, and those who were going back to the
shore drank deep and tried not to appear too carelessly gay. A billet
on the West Coast is regarded by the man who accepts it as a sort of
sporting proposition, as a game of three innings of nine months each,
during which he matches his health against the Coast. If he lives he
wins; if he dies the Coast wins.
After Calabar, at each port off which we anchored, at Ponny,
Focardos, Lagos, Accra, Cape Coast Castle, and Sekonni, it was always
the same. Always there came over the side the man going “Home,” the man
who had fought with the Coast and won. He was as excited, as jubilant
as a prisoner sentenced to death who had escaped his executioners. And
always the heartiest in their congratulations were the men who were
left behind, his brother officers, or his fellow traders, the men of
the Sun Hat Brigade, in their unofficial uniforms, in shirtwaists,
broad belts from which dangled keys and a whistle, beautifully polished
tan boots, and with a wand-like whip or stick of elephant hide. They
swarmed the decks and overwhelmed the escaping refugee with good
wishes. He had cheated their common enemy. By merely keeping alive he
had achieved a glorious victory. In their eyes he had performed a feat
of endurance like swimming the English Channel. They crowded to
congratulate him as people at the pit-mouth congratulate the entombed
miner, who, after many days of breathing noisome gases, drinks the pure
air. Even the black boys seem to feel the triumph of the white master,
and their paddles never flashed so bravely, and their songs never rang
so wildly, as when they were racing him away from the brooding Coast
with its poisonous vapors toward the big white ship that meant health
and home.
Although most of the ports we saw only from across a mile or two of
breakers, they always sent us something of interest. Sometimes all the
male passengers came on board drunk. With the miners of the Gold Coast
and the “Palm Oil Ruffians” it used to be a matter of etiquette not to
leave the Coast in any other condition. Not so to celebrate your escape
seemed ungenerous and ungrateful. At Sekondi one of the miners from
Ashanti was so completely drunk, that he was swung over the side, tied
up like a plum-pudding, in a bag.
When he emerged from the bag his expression of polite inquiry was
one with which all could sympathize. To lose consciousness on the
veranda of a cafe, and awake with a bump on the deck of a steamer many
miles at sea, must strengthen one's belief in magic carpets.
Another entertainment for the white passengers was when the boat
boys fought for the black passengers as they were lowered in the
mammy-chair. As a rule, in the boats from shore, there were twelve boys
to paddle and three or four extra men to handle and unhook the
mammy-chair and the luggage. While the boys with the paddles manoeuvred
to bring their boat next to the ship's side, the extra boys tried to
pull their rivals overboard, dragging their hands from ropes and
gunwales, and beating them with paddles. They did this while every
second the boat under them was spinning in the air or diving ten feet
into the hollow of the waves, and trying to smash itself and every
other boat into driftwood. From the deck the second officer would swing
a mammy-chair over the side with the idea of dropping it into one of
these boats. But before the chair could be lowered, a rival boat would
shove the first one away, and with a third boat would be fighting for
its place. Meanwhile, high above the angry sea, the chair and its cargo
of black women would be twirling like a weathercock and banging against
the ship's side. The mammies were too terrified to scream, but the
ship's officers yelled and swore, the boat's crews shrieked, and the
black babies howled. Each baby was strapped between the shoulders of
the mother. A mammy-chair is like one of those two-seated swings in
which people sit facing one another. If to the shoulders of each person
in the swing was tied a baby, it is obvious that should the swing bump
into anything, the baby would get the worst of it. That is what
happened in the mammy-chair. Every time the chair spun around, the head
of a baby would come “crack!” against the ship's side. So the babies
howled, and no one of the ship's passengers, crowded six deep along the
rail, blamed them. The skull of the Ethiopian may be hard, but it is
most unfair to be swathed like a mummy so that you can neither kick nor
strike back, and then have your head battered against a
five-thousand-ton ship.
How the boys who paddled the shore boats live long enough to learn
how to handle them is a great puzzle. We were told that the method was
to take out one green boy with a crew of eleven experts. But how did
the original eleven become experts? At Accra, where the waves are very
high and rough, are the best boat boys on the coast. We watched the
Custom House boat fight her way across the two miles of surf to the
shore. The fight lasted two hours. It was as thrilling as watching a
man cross Niagara Falls on a tight-rope. The greater part of the two
hours the boat stood straight in the air, as though it meant to shake
the crew into the sea, and the rest of the time it ran between walls of
water ten feet high and was entirely lost to sight. Two things about
the paddling on the West Coast make it peculiar; the boys sit, not on
the thwarts, but on the gunwales, as a woman rides a side-saddle, and
in many parts of the coast the boys use paddles shaped like a fork or a
trident. One asks how, sitting as they do, they are able to brace
themselves, and how with their forked paddles they obtained sufficient
resistance. A coaster's explanation of the split paddle was that the
boys did not want any more resistance than they could prevent.
[Illustration: The Kroo Boys Sit, Not On the Thwarts, but On the
Gunwales, as a Woman Rides a Side Saddle.]
There is no more royal manner of progress than when one of these
boats lifts you over the waves, with the boys chanting some wild
chorus, with their bare bodies glistening, their teeth and eyes
shining, the splendid muscles straining, and the dripping paddles
flashing like twelve mirrors.
Some of the chiefs have canoes of as much as sixty men-power, and
when these men sing, and their bodies and voices are in unison, a war
canoe seems the only means of locomotion, and a sixty-horse-power
racing car becomes a vehicle suited only to the newly rich.
I knew I had left the West Coast when, the very night we sailed from
Sierra Leone, for greater comfort, I reached for a linen bed-spread
that during four stifling, reeking weeks had lain undisturbed at the
foot of the berth. During that time I had hated it as a monstrous
thing; as something as hot and heavy as a red flannel blanket, as a
buffalo robe. And when, on the following night, I found the wind-screen
was not in the air port, and that, nevertheless, I still was alive, I
knew we had passed out of reach of the Equator, and that all that
followed would be as conventional as the “trippers” who joined us at
the Canary Isles; and as familiar as the low, gray skies, the green,
rain-soaked hills, and the complaining Channel gulls that convoyed us
into Plymouth Harbor.