0349
I had picked up a discarded map on the floor of the rest-house at Anum, and here I saw that many of the villages were marked with crosses to show that there was a church, but I saw no church here in Tsito, though I doubt not there was one. What I did see, not only in Tsito but at the entrance to every village I passed through, was a low, thatched shed, under which were the fetish images of the village. These were generally the rough-cut outline in clay or wood of a human figure seated. Sometimes the figure had a dirty rag round it, sometimes a small offering in front of it, and dearly should I have liked to have had a picture, but the people, even Swanzy's agent, objected, and I did not like to run counter to local prejudice. And yet Swanzy's agent is by way of being a Christian, but I dare say Christianity in these parts of Africa, like Christianity in old-time Britain or Gaul, conforms a good deal to pagan modes of thought.
I met a picturesque gentleman starting out for his farm, and him I photographed after he had been assured that no harm could possibly happen to him, though he begged very anxiously that he might be allowed to go home and put on his best cloth. I think he is a very nice specimen of the African peasant as he is, but I am sure he would be much troubled could he know he was going into a book in his farm clothes.
It was just beginning to get hot as I got back to the store after wandering round the village, and I found Grant and the carriers with all my gear had already started and were nowhere to be seen. It was, perhaps, just as well that it never occurred to Grant that I might be afraid to be left alone with strange black men. But to-day my strange black men were not forthcoming. I had expected them to come gaily because, to celebrate the crossing of the Eveto Range, while I had paid the carriers double, I had given the hammock-boys, who had had a very easy time, a couple of shillings to buy either gin or rum or palm wine, whichever they could get. It stamped me as a fool woman, and now, after a long delay, they came and stood round the hammock without offering to lift it from the ground.
“There is trouble,” said the black agent sententiously.
I had come out into the roadway, prepared to get into the hammock.
“What is the matter?”
“They say Ho be far. Four shillings no be enough money to tote hammock to Ho.”
I was furious. They had made the agreement. I had given exactly what they asked, but where I had made the mistake was in doing more. Now what was to be done? I did not hesitate for a moment. I marched straight back to the cocoa-store.
“Tell them,” I said, “they can go home and I will pay them nothing. I will walk.”
Now if either the agent or those hammock-boys had given the thing a moment's thought, they must have seen this was sheer bluff on my part. It would have been a physical impossibility for me to walk, at least I think so; besides, I should have been entirely alone and I had not the faintest notion of the way. However, my performance of yesterday had apparently not impressed them as badly as it had impressed me, and just as I was meditating despairingly what on earth I should do, for I felt to give in would be fatal, into the store came those men bearing the hammock, and it did not need Swanzy's interpreter to tell me, “You get in, Mammy. They go quick.”
We were out of the village at once and into the country. It was orchard-bush country, thick grass just growing tall with the beginning of the rains, and clumps of low-growing trees, with an occasional patch of miniature forest that grew so close it shut out the fierce sun overhead and gave a welcome and grateful shade. We passed the preventive service station on the Border—an untidy, thatched hut, presided over by a black man, who looked not unlike a dilapidated, a very dilapidated railway porter who had been in store for some time and got a little moth-eaten—and I concluded we were at the end of British territory; but not yet. The road was bad when we started, and it grew steadily worse till here it was very bad indeed. It became a mere track through the rough, grass country on either side, a track that admitted of but one man walking singly, and my boys dropped the hammock by way of intimating that they could carry me no farther. They could not, I could see that for myself, for not only was the track narrow, but it twisted and turned and doubled on itself, so that a corkscrew is straight in comparison with the road to Ho.
And once more fear fell upon me. I was alone with men who could not understand a word that I said, who could not speak a word that I could understand, and since only in a Gilbertian sense could this track be called a road at all, that it could lead to anywhere seemed impossible. There were no farms, no villages, not a sign of habitation. A fool-bird called cynically, “Hoo! hoo! hoo!” and I hesitated whether I would rather these eight men walked in front of me or behind me. I decided they should walk in front, and they laughingly obeyed, and we walked on through the heat. Many-coloured butterflies, large as small birds, flitted across the track. Never have I seen such beautiful butterflies, blue as gentian, or as turquoise with a brilliancy the turquoise lacks; purple, red, yellow, and white were they, and it was only the utter hopelessness of keeping them prevented my making any attempt to catch them. Evidently I was not as afraid as I thought I was because I could reflect upon the desirability of those butterflies in a collection. But I was afraid. Occasionally people, men or women, in twos or threes, came along with loads upon their heads, and I tried to speak to them and ask them if this really was the road to Ho, but I could make no one understand and they passed on, turning to stare with wonder at the stranger. There were silk-cotton trees and shea-butter trees and many another unknown tree, but it seemed I had come right out into the wilds beyond human ken or occupation, and I had to assure myself again and again that these carriers were decent peasants, just earning a little, something beyond what came from cocoa or palm oil, with wives—probably many wives—and children, and the strange white woman was worth a good deal more to them safely delivered at her destination than in any way else. We came to a river, and by a merciful interposition of Providence it was dry, and we were able to ignore the slippery, moss-grown tree-trunk that did duty as bridge, and, scrambling down into its bed, cross easily to the other side, and there, in the midst of a shady clump of trees, was Grant with all the carriers.
So it was the road to Ho after all, and, as usual, I had worried myself most unnecessarily. I sat down on my precious black box that contained all my money, and Grant got out a tumbler, squeezed the last orange I possessed into it, filled it up from the sparklet bottle, and I was ready to laugh at my fears and face the world once more.
Again we went along the tortuous path, and then suddenly the Border!
German roads—German villages—The lovely valley of Ho—The kindly German welcome—German hospitality—An ideal woman colonist—Pink roses—The way it rains in Togo—An unfortunate cripple—Vain regrets—Sodden pillows—A German rest-house—A meal under difficulties—Travelling by night—The weirdness of it—The sounds of the night—The fireflies—A long long journey—Palime by night—More German hospitality—Rail-head.
There was nothing to mark the border between the Gold Coast Colony and Togo. The country on the one side was as the country on the other, orchard-bush country with high grass and clumps of trees and shrubs; the lowering sky was the same, the fierce sun the same, only there was a road at last.
The Germans make roads as the Romans made them, that their conquering legions might pass, and here, in this remote corner of the earth, where neither Englishman nor German comes, is a road, the like of which I did not find in the Gold Coast Colony. It is hard and smooth as a garden-path, it is broad enough for two carts or two hammocks to pass abreast, it runs straight as a die, on either side the bushes and grass are kept neatly trimmed away, and deep waterways are cut so that the heavy rainfall may not spoil the road.
After a short time we came to a preventive station, neat and pretty as a station on the Volta, higher praise I cannot give it, and beyond that was a village; a village that was a precursor of all the villages that were to come. As a Briton I write it with the deepest regret, but the difference between an English village and a German village is as the difference between the model village of Edensor and the grimy town of Hanley in the Black Country. Here, in this first little village on the Togo side, all the ground between the houses was smoothed and swept, the houses themselves looked trim and neat, great, beautiful, spreading shade-trees of the orderficus elasticuswere planted at regular intervals in the main street, and underneath them were ranged logs, so that the people who lounge away the heat of the day in the shade may have seats. Even the goats and the sheep had a neater look, which perhaps is no wonder, for here is no filthy litter or offal among which they may lie.
As I passed on my wonder increased. Here was exactly the same country, exactly the same natives, and all the difference between order and neatness and slatternly untidiness.
0357
I went on through this charming country till I found myself looking across a lovely valley at a house set high on a hill, the Commissioner's house at Ho at last. I went down into the valley, along a road that was bordered with flamboyant trees, all full of flame-coloured blossom, and then suddenly the curtain of my hammock was whisked up, and there stood before me a bearded white man, dressed in a white duck suit with a little red badge in his white helmet—the Commissioner, he told me in his halting English, at Ho.
Now I had come into that country without a letter or a credential of any sort, a foreigner, speaking not one word of the language, and I wondered what sort of reception I should meet with. I tried to explain that I was looking for a rest-house, but he waved my remarks aside with a smile, made me understand that his wife was up in the house on the hill, and that if I would go there she could speak English, and would make me welcome. And so I went on through country, lovely as the country round Anum mountain, only in the British colony there is this great difference—there the land is exactly as Nature made it, bar the little spoiling that man has done, innocent of roads, and exceedingly difficult to traverse, while here in German territory everything is being carried out on some well-thought-out plan. Ho was a station straggling over hill and valley, with high hills clothed with greenery near at hand, high hills fading into the blue distance, and valleys that cried out to the Creator in glad thankfulness that such beauty should be theirs. The road up to the Commissioner's bungalow was steep, steep as the Eveto Range, but it had been graded so that it was easy of ascent as a path in Hyde Park. Every tree had been planted or left standing with thought, not only for its own beauty but for the view that lies beyond; flamboyant, mango, palm, frangipanni, that the natives call forget-me-not, all have a reason for their existence, all add to the beauty and charm of the scene. And when I got to the top of the hill I was at the prettiest of brown bungalows, and down the steps of the verandah came a rosy-cheeked, pretty girl, ready to welcome the stranger.
“Of course you stay with us,” she said in the kindness of her hospitable heart, though there was certainly no of course about it.
She took me in and gave me coffee, and as we sat eating cakes, home-made German cakes, I asked her, “You have not been out very long?” because of the bright colour of her cheeks.
“Oh, not long,” she said, “only a year and two months. But it is so nice we are asking the Government to let us stay two years.”
“And you do not find it dull?”
“Oh no, I love it. The time goes so quick, so quick. There is so much to do.”
And then her husband came and added his welcome to hers, and paid off my carriers in approved German official style, and they took me in to “evening bread,” and I found to my intense surprise they had wreathed my place at table with pink roses. Never have I had such a pretty compliment, or such a pretty welcome, and only the night before I had been dining off hard-boiled eggs and biscuits in Swanzy's cocoa-house at Tsito.
Bed after dinner, and next morning my hostess took me round, and showed me everything there was to be seen, and told me how she passed her time. She looked after the house, she saw to the food, she went for rides on her bicycle, and she worked in the garden. It was the merry heart that went all the day, and I will venture to say that that pretty girl, with her bright, smiling face and her bright, charming manners, interested in this new country to which she had come, keen on her husband's work, was an asset to the nation to which she belonged; worth more to it than a dozen fine ladies who pride themselves on not beinghaus-frau. And as for the Commissioner, if I may judge, he was not only a strong man, but an artist. He had the advantage over an English Commissioner that his tour extended over eighteen months, instead of a year, and that he always came back to the same place. His bungalow looked a home; round it grew up a tropical garden, and behind he had planted a grove of broad-leaved teak trees, and already they were so tall the pathway through the grove was a leafy tunnel just flecked with golden sunshine, that told of the heat outside.
Those Germans were good to me. I feel I can never be grateful enough for such a warm welcome, and always, for the sake of those two there in the outlands, shall I think kindly of the people of the Fatherland.
They helped me to take photographs; the Commissioner mended my camera for me, and he got me more carriers, and told me that they were engaged to take me on thirty miles to Palime for the sum of two shillings a piece, that it could be done in one day if I chose, indeed it must be done in one day unless I stayed in the rest-house at Neve, and he warned me that I carried about with me a great sum of money, and asked if I were sure of my boy. I did not think it was likely Grant would rob me at this stage of the proceedings, but I suddenly realised with a little uncomfortable feeling what implicit trust I was putting in him; and then they gave fresh instructions for my comfort. It would rain, they said it always rained in Togo at this season in the afternoon; and I evidently did not realise how it rained, so they tied up my camera in American cloth and instructed me to put my Burberry on at the first drop of rain. Then with many good wishes we parted, and I set off on the road to Palime.
The road was most excellent, and anyone who has travelled for miles along a track that is really little better than a hunter's trail can understand the delights of smooth and easy going. We passed through villages where the villagers all turned up to see the show, but I fancied, it may have been only fancy, that the people were not as lightheartedly happy as in English territory, and whenever we came to a stream my men stopped and begged in pantomime that they might be allowed to bathe. I should like to have bathed myself, so I assented cheerfully, and the result was that we did not get over the ground very quickly. One of them spoke a little, a very little Twi, the language of the Fantis and Ashantis, and Grant spoke a little, and that was my only means of communication, lost of course when he was not with me, but they were most excellent men and went on and on untiringly.
Presently the clouds began to gather, a great relief, because the sun had been very hot, a few drops of rain fell, and I, remembering instructions, flew out of my hammock and put on my Burberry. By the time it was on the few drops were many drops, and by the time I was in my hammock again, the water was coming down as if it had been poured out of a bucket. Such sheets of rain fairly made me gasp. Now, my hammock was old. I had forgotten the need of a hammock when I started up the Volta, and finding this elderly one at Anum, marked “P.W.D.” Public Works Department, and there being nobody to say me nay, I commandeered it. Now, far be it from me to revile a friend who carried me over many a weary mile of road, but there is no disguising the fact, the poor old hammock was not in the first bloom of youth, and the canopy was about as much use against a rainstorm as so much mosquito-netting. The water simply poured through it. Now the canvas of which the hammock was made, of course, held water, so did the Burberry, the water trickled down my neck, and, worse still, carried as I was, with my feet slightly raised, trickled down my skirts, and the gallant Burberry held it like a bucket. When the water rose up to my waist, icy-cold water, I got out and walked.
The sky was heavily overcast, and it was raining as if it had never had a chance to rain before, and never expected to have a chance to rain again, so I walked on, hatless, because I did not mind about my hair getting wet. I thought to myself, “when the sun comes out, it will dry me,” and I looked at the string of dejected-looking carriers tailing out behind with all their loads covered with banana leaves. And I walked, and I walked, and I walked, and there seemed no prospect of the rain stopping; apparently it proposed to go on to doomsday, or at least the end of the rainy season. An hour passed, two hours, three, my pillows were simply sodden masses, my hammock was a wisp of wet canvas, and I was weary to death; then a village came into view, a little neat German village, and the people came out to look at me with interest, though they had certainly seen a white woman before. I always think of that village with regret. A man passed along through the mud, working his way in a sitting posture, and having on his hands a sort of wooden clog. So very very seldom have I seen misery in Africa that I was struck as I used to be struck when first I came to England, and I put my hand in my pocket for my purse, but all my money with the exception of threepence was in my box, and that threepence I bestowed upon him. Now there remains with me the regret that I did not give him more, for never have I seen such delight on any man's face. He held it out, he called all his friends to look, he bowed obeisance before me again and again. I was truly ashamed of so much gratitude for so small a gift, and while I was debating how I could get at my box to make it a little more, he clattered away, as happy apparently as if someone had left him a fortune. But I always think of it sadly. Why didn't I manage to give him two shillings. It would have meant nothing to me, and so much to him.
But now I was very tired, and when the rest-house was pointed out to me, I hailed it with delight. I have seen many weird rest-houses on my travels, but that was the most primitive of them all. A mud floor was raised a little above the surrounding ground, and over it was a deep thatch, a couple of tiny windowless rooms were made with mud walls, and just outside them was a table, made by the simple process of sticking upright stakes into the ground and laying rough boards across them; two chairs alongside the table were also fixtures, but I sat down wearily, and Grant promptly produced a pack of cards, and went away to make tea.
Bridge was not a success; I was so wet and cold, but the tea came quickly along with a boiled egg and biscuits and mangoes, for the Germans it appears, after their thorough fashion, always insist that wood and water shall be ready in their rest-houses. I was sorry for the carriers, wet and shivering, and I was sorrier for my own servant, for the rain was still coming down pitilessly. I suggested he should have some tea to warm him, but he did not like tea, and the other egg he also rejected, quite rightly I decided when I tried to partake of the specimen he brought for me. But the tea was most refreshing, and I was prepared to try and understand what the carriers wanted. Briefly, they wanted to stop here. Though I could not understand their tongue, I could understand that.
“They say Palime be far, Ma,” said Grant.
Yes, I reckoned Palime must be about fifteen miles, but I looked at the dismal house and decided it was an impossible place to stay. I would rather walk that fifteen miles. I looked at my bedding roll, and decided it must be wet through and through, and then I got into that dripping and uninviting hammock, among the sodden pillows, and gave the order to go on. I was wet through, and I thought I could hold out if we got to Palime as quickly as possible, but I knew we could not possibly do it under five hours, probably longer. However, it was not as hard on me as on the men who had to walk with loads on their heads. Of course I was foolish. I ought either to have changed in one of those dismal-looking little mud rooms, or to have filled my hot-water bottle—I always carried one to be ready for the chill I never got—with hot water and wrapped myself up in a rug; but I foolishly forgot all these precautions, and my remembrance of that tramp to Palime is of a struggle against bitter cold and wet and weariness. It was weird, too, passing along the bush in the dark. Grant and the carriers dropped behind, the rain stopped, and the hammock-boys lighted a smoky lantern which gleamed on the wet road ahead, and was reflected in the pools of water that lay there, and made my two front boys throw gigantic shadows on the bush as they passed along. Strange sounds, too, came out of the bush; sometimes a leopard cried, sometimes one of the great fruitarian bats bewailed itself like a woman in pain, there was the splash, splash of the men's feet in the roadway, the deep croak of the African bull-frog, there was the running of water, a drip, drip from the trees and bushes by the roadside, and always other sounds, unexplained, perhaps unexplainable, that one hears in the night. Sometimes tom-toms were beating, sometimes we passed through a village and a few lights appeared, and my men shouted greetings I suppose, but they might have been maledictions. It is an experience I shall never forget, that of being carried along, practically helpless, and hearing my men, whom I could not understand, exchange shouts that I could not understand with people that I could not see. It was hot I dare say, but I was wet to the skin and bitter cold, and I know the night after the rain was beautiful, but I was too tired and too uncomfortable to appreciate it. Then the fireflies came out, like glowing sparks, and again and again I thought we were approaching the lights of a town only to look again and see they were fireflies.
Such a long journey it was. It seemed years since I had left Ho that morning, æons since I had unhappily struggled across the Eveto Range, but I remembered with satisfaction Ihadcrossed the Eveto Range, and so I concluded in time I should reach Palime, but it seemed a long night, and I was very cold.
At last, though it was wrapped in darkness, I saw we had entered a town; we passed up a wide roadway, and finally got into a yard, and my men began banging on a doorway, and saying over and over again, “Swanzy's.”
The German Commissioner had suggested I should go to Swanzy's; and was it possible we had really arrived? It seemed we had.
I can never get over the feeling of shyness when I go up to a total stranger's house and practically demand hospitality. True, I had in my pocket a telegram from Mr Percy Shaw, one of Swanzy's directors, asking his agents to give me that hospitality, but still I felt dreadfully shy as I waited there in the yard for some sign of life from out of the dark building. It came at last, and in English too.
“Who is dere?” said a voice, and my heart sank. I thought it must be a negro, since I knew the agent was a German, and thought he would be sure to hail in his own tongue. Somehow I felt I could not have stood a negro that night. Prejudices are very strong when one is tired.
But I was wrong. The agent was a German, and down long flights of stairs he came in his dressing-gown, welcoming me, and presently was doing all he could for my comfort. He roused out an unwilling cook, he got cocoa and wine, South-Australian wine to my surprise, and hot cakes, and bread, and fruit, and then when I was refreshed, my baggage not yet having come in, he solemnly conducted me to my bedroom, and presented me with a couple of blankets and a very Brodbignag pair of slippers. I was far more tired than when I had'crossed the Eveto Range, and I undressed, got into bed, wrapped myself up in those warm blankets, and slept the sleep of the woman who knows she has arrived at rail-head, and that her difficult travelling is over.
The neat little town of Palime—The market—The breakfast—A luxury for the well-to-do—Mount Klutow—The German Sleeping Sickness Camp—The German's consideration for the hammock-boys—Misahohe, a beautiful road, well-shaded—A kindly welcome—The little boys that were cured—Dr von Raven, a devotee to science—The town of the sleeping sickness patients—“Last year strong man, this year finish”—Extreme poverty and self-denial—A ghastly, horrible, lingering and insidious disease—Dr von Raven's message to the English people.
Palime is the neatest of little towns, set at the foot of some softly rounded hills. Not hills clothed with dense bush such as I had come across farther west, but hills covered with grass, emerald in the brilliant sunshine, with just here and there a tree to give it a park-like appearance. And the town, it is hardly necessary to say, was spotlessly neat and tidy. All the streets were swept and garnished, and all the fences were whole, for if a German puts up a picket fence, he intends it for a permanency, and not for a fuel supply for the nearest huts. That the streets were neat was perhaps a little surprising, for every morning, beginning at dawn, in those streets there was held a market in which all manner of goods, native and European, were exposed for sale, spread out on the ground or on stalls. I looked with interest to see if I could notice any difference between the native under English and under German rule in the markets, and I came to the conclusion that there was none whatever. Here, at rail-head, both native and European goods were bought and sold, and here too the people took their alfresco meals. The native of West Africa usually starts the morning with a little porridge, made of cassada, which is really the same root from which comes our tapioca, but his tapioca is so thin you can drink it, and it looks and smells rather like water starch. It was being made and served out “all hot” at a copper a gourd, the customer providing his own gourd, and the porridge being in a goodsized earthen pot fixed on three stones over a little fire of sticks, or else the fire was built inside another pot out of which one side and the top had been knocked. Porridge of course is not very staying, so a little later on good ladies make their appearance who fry maize-meal balls in palm oil, and sell them for two a “copper,” the local name for apfennig, which is not copper at all, but nickel. Very appetising indeed look these balls. The little flat earthenware pan on the fire is full of boiling palm oil, and the seller mixes very carefully the maize meal, water, a little salt, and some native pepper, till it is smooth like batter, such as a cook would make a pancake of, then it is dropped into the boiling oil, and the result, in a minute or so, is a round, brown ball, which looks and smells delicious. Sometimes trade is brisk, and they are bought straight out of the pan, but when it slacks they are taken out and heaped up on a calabash. I conclude that it is only the aristocracy who indulge in such luxuries, for I am told that the average wage of a labourer in Palime here is ninepence a day, but judging by what I saw, there must have been a good many of the aristocracy in Palime. After all, the woman from the time she is a tiny child is always self-supporting, so in a community where every man and woman is self-supporting, I conclude that many luxuries are attainable that would not be possible when one man has to provide for many.
0369
The butchers' shops presided over as they are on the Gold Coast by Hausas are not inviting, and tend to induce strong vegetarian views in anyone who looks upon them, and the amount of very highly smelling stink-fish makes the vegetarian regime very narrow. But there are other things beside food-stuffs for sale; from every railing flutter gay cloths from Manchester, or its rival on the Coast, Keta, and there were several women selling very nice earthenware pots, that attracted me very much. They were the commonest household utensils of the native woman; she uses the smaller ones as plates and dishes, and the larger ones for water, for washing, or for storage. The big ones were terribly expensive and cost a whole sixpence, while a penny brought me a big store of small ones. I thought how very quaint and pretty my balcony at home would look with plants growing in these pots from such a far corner of the earth, and so I bought largely, even though I knew I should have to engage a couple of extra carriers for them, and my host applauded my taste.
That young German was very kindly. I showed him my telegram, but he laughed at it, and gave me to understand that of course I was welcome anyhow, though again I can certainly see no of course about it. Why should he, in the kindness of his heart, put himself out for me, a total stranger, who did not even belong to his nation? Still he did.
I was bent on going on to Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness Camp, and he said he had never seen it, though it was only a short distance away, so he would get carriers and come with me. Accordingly we got carriers, paying them threepence extra because it was Sunday, and went up to Mount Klutow. They were very good carriers, but since I have heard so much about the German's inconsiderateness to the native, I must put it on record that when we came to a steep part of the road, and it was very steep, though a most excellent road, that German not only got out and walked himself, but expected me to do the same. I did of course, but many and many a time have I made my men carry me over far worse places, and many an Englishman have I seen doing likewise.
Again I must put it on record that these German roads are most excellent. They are smooth and wide, well-rolled and hard, and they are shady, a great boon in such a climate. Every native tree that is suitable has been allowed to stand, and others have been planted, shapely, dark-green mangoes and broad-leaved teak, and since all undergrowth has been cleared away, the road seems winding through a beautiful park, while there is absolutely no mosquito. During all my stay in German territory I never slept under a mosquito curtain, and I never saw that abomination, a mosquito-proof room. The Germans evidently think it is easier to do away with the mosquito.
Misahohe is a little Government station, set on the side of the mountain up which we were climbing. It looks from a distance something like a Swiss chalet, and the view from there is as magnificent as that from Anum mountain itself, only here there are white men connected, I think, with the German medical station to see and appreciate its beauties. On and on went the beautiful road; but even the Germans have not yet succeeded in getting rid of the tsetse fly, and so though the roads are good, there are as yet no horses. We met great carts of trade goods going to Kpando, fifteen miles away, and they were drawn and pushed their slow, slow journey by panting, struggling Kroo boys. Strongly as I should object to carrying a load on my head, I really think it would be worse to turn the wheels of a laden cart, spoke by spoke, while you slowly worked it up-hill.
At Mount Klutow, the German Sleeping Sickness Camp, there is no timber, and the first impression is of barrenness. We went up and up, and I, who had not yet recovered from my long day's journey to Palime, was exceedingly thankful when my escort allowed me to lie in my hammock till we arrived at a plateau surrounded by low hills. It was really the top of the mountain. There was a poor-looking European bungalow, a very German wooden kiosk on the other side of the road, and a winding road, with on either side of it little brown native huts built of clay, and thatched. It is just a poor-looking native village, with the huts built rather farther apart than the native seems to like his huts when he can choose, and none of the usual shelter trees which he likes about his village. After the magnificent tropical scenery we had just passed through it looked dreary in the extreme, but the young man who came out of the bungalow and made us most kindly welcome, Dr von Raven, the doctor in charge, explained that this barrenness was the very reason of its existence. They wanted a place that the cool winds swept, and they wanted a place that gave no harbour to theglossina pal palis, the tsetse fly that conveys the disease. Mount Klutow was ideal.
I had hesitated a little about visiting a doctor and asking him for information. I had no claim, no letters of introduction, and I should not have been surprised if he had paid no attention to me, but, on the contrary, Dr von Raven was kindness itself. He took us to the little kiosk and sent for wine and cakes and beer, so that we might be refreshed after our hot journey, though it was hardly hot here. The good things were brought by two small boys, and the doctor put his hand first on one shoulder and then on the other, and turned the little laughing black faces for me to see.
“Sleeping sickness,” said he. “Cured,” and he gave them a friendly cuff and let them go. He knew very little English, and I knew no German, and Mr Fesen's, even though he was agent for an English firm, was of the scantiest; so that it was a process of difficulty to collect information, and it was only done by the infinite kindness and patience of the two Germans. Dr von Raven produced papers and showed me statistics, and so by degrees I learned all there is to be known, and then he took me round and showed me the patients.
Many men in Africa count themselves exiles, but never saw I more clearly the attributes of exile than in Dr von Raven. Comforts he had none, and his house was bare almost to poverty. Here he had lived for two and a half years without going home, and here he intended to live till some experiments he had in hand were complete. A devotee to science truly, but a cheerful, intensely interested one, with nothing of the martyr about him. Very few white people he must have seen, and he said himself he had only been down to the nearest town of Palime three times in two years, but he looked far better in health than many a man I have seen who has been on the Coast only as many months.
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From the doctor's house there curves a road about a kilometre in length, and off this are the houses of the sleeping sickness patients. Two and two they are built, facing each other, two rooms in each house and plenty of space between. They are built of mud, with holes for doors and windows, and the roofs are of grass—native huts of the most primitive description. Each patient has a room, and each is allowed one relative to attend him. Thus a husband may have a wife, a mother her daughter, and between them they have an allowance of sevenpence a day for food, ample in a country where the usual wage for a day labourer is ninepence. There are one hundred and fifty-five patients in all, and besides them there are a few soldiers for dignity, because the neighbouring chiefs would think very lightly of a man who had not evidences of power behind him, and so whenever the doctor passes they come tumbling out of the guard-room to salute him. There are also a certain number of labourers, because though many of the sick are quite capable of waiting on themselves, it would never do for them to go beyond the confines of the camp, and possibly, or probably, infect the flies that abound just where wood and water are to be had.
Of course there is a market where the women meet and chat and buy their provisions; there are cookhouses and all the attributes of a rather poor native village, but a village where the people are among the surroundings to which they have been accustomed all their lives and in which they are more thoroughly at home than in a hospital. Part of the bareness may be attributed to economy, but the effect is greatly heightened by the absence of all vegetation. Anything that might afford shelter for the flies or shut out the strong, health-giving breezes that blow right across the plateau is strictly forbidden. And here were people in all stages of the disease—those who had just come in, who to the ordinary eye appeared to have nothing wrong with them, great, strong, healthy-looking men, men of thews and sinews who had been completely cured, and those who were past all help and were lying waiting for death.
“You would like to see them?” asked the doctor.
I said I would, and I would like to take a photograph or two if I might. My stock of plates was getting woefully scarce.
“Yes,” he said, and we went down the roadway.
A man was borne out of one of the huts and laid on the ground in the brilliant sunshine. He was wasted to skin and bone, his eyes were sunken and half-open, showing the whites, his skeleton limbs lay helpless, and his head fell forward like a baby's. The doctor pointed to him pitifully.
“Last year,” he said, “strong man like this,” indicating the men who bore him; “this year—finish.”
“He will die?”
“Oh, he will die—soon.”
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And the great brawny savages who carried the stretcher, stark but for a loin cloth and a necklace, with their hair cut into cock's combs, had come there with sleeping sickness and were cured. They brought them out of all the huts to show the visitor—women in the last stages after epilepsy had set in, with weary eyes, worn faces, and contracted limbs, happy little children with swollen glands, a woman with atoxyl blindness who was cured, a man with atoxyl blindness who, in spite of all, will die. They were there in all stages of the disease, in all stages of recovery. Some looked as if there was nothing the matter with them, but the enlarged glands in the neck could always be felt. The doctor did not seem very hopeful. “We could cure it,” he said; “it is quite curable if we could only get the cases early enough. Not 2 per cent, of the flies are infected, and of course every man who is bitten by an infected fly does not necessarily contract the disease.”
It comes on very insidiously. Three weeks it takes to develop, and then the patient has a little fever every evening. In the morning his temperature is down again, only to rise once more in the evening. Sometimes he will have a day without a rise, sometimes three or four, but you would find, were you to look, the parasites in the blood. After three or four months the glands of the neck begin to swell, and this is the time when the natives recognise the danger and excise the glands. But swollen glands are not always caused by sleeping sickness, and, in that case, if the wounds heal properly, the patient recovers; but if the parasites are in the blood then such rough surgery only causes unnecessary suffering without in any way retarding the progress of the disease. Slowly it progresses, very slowly. Sometimes it takes three or four months before nervous symptoms come on, sometimes it may be twelve months, and after that the case is hopeless. Not all the physicians in the world in the present state of medical knowledge could cure it. In Europeans—and something like sixty Europeans are known to have contracted the disease—very often immediately after the bite of the fly, symptoms have been noticed on the skin, red swellings, but in the black man apparently the skin is not affected.
The treatment is of the simplest, but the doctor only arrived at it after careful experiment. After having ascertained by examination of the blood that the patient has sleeping sickness he weighs the patient and gives him five centigrams per kilogram of his own weight of arsenophenylycin. This is divided into two portions and given on two consecutive days, and the treatment is finished. Of course the patient is carefully watched and his blood tested, and if at the end of ten days the parasites are still found, the dose is repeated. Sometimes it is found that the toxin has no effect, and then the doctor resorts to atoxyl, which he administers the same way every two days, with ten days between the doses. This has one grave drawback, for sometimes in conjunction with sleeping sickness it causes blindness. Out of eighty-five cases that have taken atoxyl since 1908 five have gone blind. I saw there one young man cured and stone-blind, and one woman also cured and but just able to see men “as trees walking.” Apparently there was nothing wrong with their eyes, but the blank look of the blind told that they could not see.
At first this camp here up among the hills was looked upon with suspicion by the natives, and they resisted all efforts to bring them to it. They feared, as they have always feared, all German thoroughgoing methods. But gradually, as is only natural, a good thing makes its own reputation, and the natives who were before so fearful come long distances to seek help where they know only help can be found.