The Jungle Folk of AfricaITHE VOYAGE
“O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,Feast them upon the wideness of the sea.”—Keats.
“O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,Feast them upon the wideness of the sea.”—Keats.
“O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,Feast them upon the wideness of the sea.”
“O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea.”
—Keats.
—Keats.
When I was about to sail for Africa a friend read to me a thrilling incident which was supposed to be prophetic of my own fate. A cannibal maiden proposes marriage to a newly-arrived missionary. The missionary modestly declines her offer; whereupon, looking down at him with utmost complacency, she tells him that she will have him anyhow—eithermarried, orfried. I have gone to Africa twice, and have lived there nearly seven years, yet I have escaped both of these dreadful contingencies. There is no longer any glamour of romance about the missionary life. It is not a life of hair-raising adventures and narrow escapes. In those seven years I was never frightened and seldom killed. Dull monotony is the normal experience and loneliness the besetting trial.
Neither are the sacrifices and privations of missionary life so great as many of us have supposed. The sacrifices of the missionary are more tangible, but not therefore greater, than those of the faithful minister at home; whose sacrifices are often more real because less obvious. A few days before I sailed the second time for Africa,when I knew from former experience that the missionary life was no martyrdom, I was one day seated at a dinner-table where Africa and my going was the subject of conversation. The company had the most exaggerated ideas of the privations incident to missionary life. There was no use in a denial on my part; and to have disclaimed any of the fictitious virtues with which they loaded me would only have caused them to add the virtue of modesty to the rest.
A maiden lady across the table, who for some time had sat with abstracted countenance, at last, with upturned eyes and clasped hands, remarked: “Well, I think it is anappallingsacrifice.”
To have lived up to my part, my face at that moment should have worn a saintly expression of all the virtues rolled into one; but it happened that my mouth was quite full of pork and cabbage, with which my carnal mind was occupied, and I am sure I looked more like an epicure than an ascetic. Nothing but the pork and cabbage kept me from laughing outright.
Really, life in Africa is much the same as life anywhere else; and the “privations” only teach us how many things we can do without which we once thought were indispensable. This lesson is impressed the more deeply in such a land as Africa, where a human being may live for threescore years—comfortable, apparently happy, and at least healthy—with little else than a pot, a pipe and a tom-tom; the first ministers to his necessity, the second to comfort and the third to pleasure. If we will persist in regarding the missionary as a martyr, let us consider that the martyr does not differ essentially from other Christians. Martyrdom is potentially contained in the initial decision of each Christian. The consecration of a life to Christ implies the willingness to lay it down for Him. In an uncivilized land there is a likelihoodof unwonted hardships, and among savages some possibility of a violent death; but the latter is vastly improbable.
One can procure an outfit more conveniently and at less cost in Liverpool than in New York. A week at Liverpool is sufficient for this purpose. The outfit will depend somewhat upon whether one expects to live on the coast or in the bush where he will be cut off from the facilities of transportation by water. All transportation to the interior is by native porters, who carry sixty or seventy pounds on their backs, in loads as compact as possible. This excludes most furniture; and such furniture as can be transported is usually “knocked down.” An ordinary outfit will include several helmets of cork or pith, several white umbrellas lined with green, a dozen white drill suits, denim trousers, canvas shoes, leather shoes, rubber boots, cheese-cloth for mosquito-bars, rubber blankets, pneumatic pillows, hot-water bags, a supply of medicines (unless these are already on the field) especially quinine and castor-oil, a six-mouths’ supply of food—canned meats, vegetables and fruits—besides bedding and kitchenware, tableware, napery, etc., according to need, and guns and ammunition.
There is a romantic interest about this last week spent in the purchase of strange articles for an untried life, and in taking leave of civilization,—of such things as cities, society, music, fresh beef and fine clothes. The last evening in Liverpool I went to hearTannhauser. Music had always been my pastime, and it was not an easy sacrifice to make. I therefore looked forward to that evening with peculiar interest, knowing that not again until my return, however long I might remain in Africa, would I hear any music worthy of the name. ButTannhauserproved to be not a sweet parting from civilization but an awful experience, by reason of some one in my neighbourhoodbeating the time with his foot, as they so often do in England. I had one of the best seats in the house, but I exchanged it for another, only to find myself in a worse neighbourhood; for, in addition to a man on each side of me beating the time, a woman immediately behind “hummed the tune.” At the close of the performance I was in a condition of “mortal mind” that would have scandalized those who are disposed to canonize missionaries. But the sorrow of parting was thus mitigated as I reflected that civilization has its pains and savagery some compensations.
I went home and wrote the following to a friend: “Some one alluding to Macaulay’s knowledge of history and his unerring accuracy once said that infinite damnation to Macaulay would consist in being surrounded by fiends engaged in misquoting history while he was rendered speechless and unable to correct them; and I am thinking that myinfernowould consist in being compelled to listen to some such exquisite melody asO Thou Sublime Sweet Evening Star, surrounded the while by fiends keeping time with their feet, and Beelzebub humming the tune.”
On my first voyage to Africa (having been appointed to the West Africa Mission, by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church) I was four weeks on the way, from Liverpool, and landed at Batanga, in Cameroon, two hundred miles north of the equator. On the second voyage I was five weeks on the way, and landed at Libreville (better known asGaboon) in the Congo Français, almost exactly at the equator. Libreville was the capital of the French Congo.Gaboonis properly the name of the bay or great estuary upon which Libreville is situated, and is one of the very few good harbours on the west coast. But long before the existence of Libreville, captains and traders had used the nameGaboonto designate the adjacentsettlement of native villages and trading-houses, and it is still the name in general use.
We made many calls along the way. Some of the places are very beautiful, such as the Canary Islands, Sierra Leone, Cape Coast Castle, Victoria, Fernando Po and Gaboon; and some are quite otherwise, for Africa is a land of extremes. Bonny is repulsive, and the Rio del Rey is a nightmare. Meanwhile, we are getting further and further away from all that is known and natural to our eyes, and nearer to a land of strange birds and beasts and trees, inhabited by tribes that to the white man are only a name, or have no name, and to whom he is perhaps an imaginary being, or the ghost of their dead ancestors.
At the Canary Islands, a week after leaving Liverpool, one may spend a day of interest and pleasure. On my first voyage we called at Las Palmas, in Grand Canary Island. On the second voyage we called at Santa Cruz on Teneriffe Island. The object of chief interest is the great Mount Teneriffe, seen sometimes a hundred miles at sea; probably the Mount Atlas of ancient fable, which was supposed to support the firmament. There are of course many mountain peaks in the world which rise to a greater height above the sea-level; but they are usually in ranges or on high table-lands far from the sea, and while the altitude is great, the individual peak may not be great. Teneriffe rises directly out of the sea, slowly at first but with increasing inclination, until at last it sweeps upward to the clouds and far above them, to a height of 12,500 feet. The sandy slopes upon the higher altitudes reflect the light with unequalled splendour. From the harbour of Las Palmas we saw the sun rising on Teneriffe. We stood on the deck before the dawn, and while darkness was all around us, saw the heights already struggling with the darkness, and the summit bathed in the light of the unrisen day. A heavy mist rolled down and spreadover the valleys, like a sea resplendent with every interchange of deepening and dissolving colour; while from below arose the increasing noise and tumult of a half-civilized city awaking from slumber. In a little while the clouds begin to assemble, and the peak is hidden throughout the day: so it is always. But in the evening, the clouds again are parted, like opening curtains, and the whole mountain is disclosed, majestic and beautiful in the light of the setting sun.
On the homeward voyage the steamers often take on an enormous deck-cargo of bananas. They are put in crates the size of barrels and are packed in straw. In the event of a severe storm before reaching Liverpool they are more than likely to be washed overboard. It is a pleasure to watch this loading from the upper deck. The Spanish workmen are neat and clean; they are skillful and work rapidly, as indeed they must in order to load the entire cargo in one day, which is usually the limit of time. All day long Spanish boys without clothes are crowded around the steamer in small boats, begging the passengers to throw pennies into the water and see them dive and get them. Many pennies and small silver coins are thrown over in the course of the day; and the boys seldom miss one.
A number of the passengers debark at the Canary Islands, and the rest have more room and more comfort. Immediately upon leaving the Islands double awnings are stretched over the decks; and the passengers and ship’s officers the next day don their tropical clothing. The sea is exceedingly calm as compared with the North Atlantic and the air soft and balmy. It recalled those lines of Keats—
“Often it is in such gentle temper found,That scarcely will the very smallest shell,Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,When last the winds of heaven were unbound.”
“Often it is in such gentle temper found,That scarcely will the very smallest shell,Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,When last the winds of heaven were unbound.”
“Often it is in such gentle temper found,That scarcely will the very smallest shell,Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,When last the winds of heaven were unbound.”
“Often it is in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell,
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.”
MOUNT TENERIFFE, CANARY ISLANDS.Probably the Mount Atlas of ancient fable, which was supposed to support the firmament.
MOUNT TENERIFFE, CANARY ISLANDS.Probably the Mount Atlas of ancient fable, which was supposed to support the firmament.
MOUNT TENERIFFE, CANARY ISLANDS.
Probably the Mount Atlas of ancient fable, which was supposed to support the firmament.
The change to tropical life takes place in one day and it is like being suddenly transported into another world. The men nearly all are dressed in white drill suits, and most of them wear white caps and white canvas shoes. If they go ashore at various ports along the way they will exchange the cap for a cork helmet and besides will probably carry a white umbrella. The white suits if well made and well laundered look much more comfortable and becoming than any other clothing. They are usually made in military style with stitched collar, so as we go on further south the shirt of civilization may at length be dispensed with and the coat worn directly over an undershirt,—which latter ought to be of wool and medium weight. Except my first year, I wore no shirt at any time through all the years that I lived in Africa, not even at the French Governor’s annual reception at Gaboon. The English at Old Calabar on formal occasions make themselves ridiculous in black dress suits with the conventional area of shirt-front and collar. In these they swelter, vastly uncomfortable, while the starch dissolves and courses towards their shoes down back and breast. It is not only, nor chiefly, the high temperature but the extreme humidity that makes the atmosphere so oppressive. It seems to be seventy-five per cent, warm water.
On shipboard it is usually comfortable and pleasant while we are under way. The most delightful part of the voyage is the first few days after leaving the Canary Islands, when the course lies in the track of the northeast trade-winds. One thinks very differently, however, of this trade-wind in coursing against it on the homeward voyage after a length of time on the fever-stricken coast. It seems piercing cold, and, as Miss Kingsley says, one wishes that the Powers above would send it to the Powers below to get it warmed. It is in this zone that deaths most frequently occur on board. On the outward voyageimmediately after the most delightful part of the voyage comes the very worst part of it, as we pass beyond the trade-wind and close in to the coast near Cape Verde. For several days one is tempted to wish that he might turn back. There is a dead calm on board, and the heat is enough to curl one’s hair. It recalled Sydney Smith’s description of some such place, where “one feels like taking off his flesh and sitting in his bones.” But it continues only two or three days. During this time the “punka” is installed, a large fan suspended from the ceiling, the entire length of the table, worked by a rope, which a boy pulls with his hand.
A week after leaving the Canary Islands we reached our first African port, Sierra Leone. It has the finest harbour on the entire west coast. From the harbour it is very beautiful, with mountains of intense green standing like sentinels on either side and behind the town. The sound of the wind raging about these peaks, like the roaring of a lion, gives the name,Sierra Leone. Despite its attractive appearance, it is calledThe Whiteman’s Grave, and its history justifies the name. But as we proceed down the coast we find that every place which has any considerable number of white men is calledThe Whiteman’s Grave. The nameSierra Leoneapplies to the entire English colony; that of the town at this place isFreetown. It was originally a colony of freed slaves, which the English planted there during the suppression of the slave traffic. The first ship-load of colonists, between four and five hundred, was landed in 1787. Of these, sixty died on the way or within a fortnight after landing. Freetown has now a population of thirty thousand, and is prosperous. Along the wharf are warehouses with roofs of corrugated iron. The roofs of the traders’ houses also, both here and all along the coast, are of corrugated iron. Here and there among the colourlesshuts of the natives there stands out boldly the frame houses of successful native traders, made of imported material and usually painted an impudent blue. Houses with floors are everywhere calleddeck-houses; for the decks of ships were the first floors ever seen by the natives.
So soon as we had anchored, the natives, in a score of boats, were crowding about the gangway, pushing back each other’s boats, fighting, cursing and yelling, in a general strife for the very lucrative privilege of rowing passengers ashore. However otherwise engaged in this scramble they are all yelling; and the resultant noise is the proper introduction to Africa. For, as noise is the first, so it will be the final and lasting impression. It is the grand unity in which other associations are gradually dislimned. We went ashore in the late afternoon. The people were all in the streets, moving about, but no one moving rapidly; all active, but no oneveryactive. As there are no vehicles, pedestrians occupy the whole street, which is covered with grass. There is a great variety of dress and considerable undress. Many of the women wear a loose calico wrapper—a Mother Hubbard; and many of the men are dressed in the Mohammedan costume, which is more becoming, and more suitable for the climate, than any possible modification of European dress. It consists of a long white shirt with loose, flowing sleeves, and an outer garment somewhat like a university gown, of black or of blue. The ordinary man wears anything he may happen to have, from an eighth of a yard of calico to a rice-bag in which he cuts holes for his head and arms.
Ever so many were carrying loads on their heads—never any other way—and without touching them with their hands. Indeed, if their hands were engaged I am not sure whether they could talk; for when they talkthey gesticulate continually. Some were carrying beer bottles erect on their heads, some carried books, some of the women carried folded parasols; others carried fire-wood, or bananas, or large baskets of vegetables. They exchange the neighbourhood gossip as they pass, but without turning their heads; and sometimes they throw down their loads and seat themselves on opposite sides of the street to have “a friendly yell.” When we returned to the steamer we found on board, on the lower deck, about twenty native passengers. They have brought all their household goods, including chickens; and several of the women have babies strapped to their backs. They pay only for a passage on deck, taking the risk of the weather, and expect to yell their way to Fernando Po, in about two weeks. The number of deck passengers increases at each of the next several ports, until the deck is crowded; but they are never allowed on the upper deck.
The deck, formerly spacious and shining, is now covered with baggage, the abundance of which is only exceeded by its outlandish variety. The first mate is the ship’s general housekeeper. Cleanliness and order are a mental malady with him. If he could have his way the ship would carry no cargo, since the opening of the hatches and the discharging of it deranges the order of the lower deck and litters it with rubbish. Besides he would like to employ the boat-crews in holystoning one deck or another all the time instead of only once each morning. The sight of a dog affects him more seriously than seeing a ghost. Passengers are a great trial to him who carelessly place their deck chairs for comfort or for conversation with each other instead of leaving them in unneighbourly straight lines as he arranged them. He is rarely on speaking terms with the chief engineer, because the latter must frequently have coal carried fromthe forehold; and there is a standing feud between him and the cook, whose grease-tub sits outside the galley door. The mate’s sole horror of a storm at sea is that the rolling of the ship spills the grease. Imagine the life this gentleman lives from the time that the native passengers begin to come aboard and fill the deck with their piles of miscellaneous baggage. He ages perceptibly. Disorder is precisely the weak point in the native character; and much of the mate’s time is spent in pitched battles with the native women, over the bestowment of their goods. No sooner has he, with the help of several deck-hands, arranged a lady’s goods in a neat square pile ten feet high and seated her children in a straight row than the lady orders all her children to get out of her way and proceeds to tear down the pile in order to get a cosmetic and a mirror that happen to be in two different boxes in the bottom. When the mate is not around the deck passengers seem very happy as they sit at random on their baggage and yell at each other. Here and there men in Mohammedan dress sit on the sunny deck in cross-legged tailor-fashion, reminding one of old Bible pictures. If they quarrel a great deal they also laugh a great deal, and the quarrels are no sooner ended than they are forgotten.
At Lagos several native men came out in a boat to meet a deck passenger and land his baggage. The natives are not allowed to use the gangway, and if the rope ladder is in use they pass up and down a single rope suspended over the ship’s side. On this occasion I observed one of the men from the boat alongside sliding down a rope and carrying a heavy box, by no means an easy thing to do. He expected that the others of his party would be waiting to receive him in the boat below. But they had drifted several yards away and were engaged in eating some potato peelings which a steward had thrown to them. Hecalled to them but they paid no attention:—they were eating. He yelled at them and cursed them, at the same time making with his legs impressive gestures of appeal and threat. But they sat indifferent until they had finished, while he with his load remained suspended in the air. Moreover, the sea at Lagos abounds with sharks. At last, having finished their repast, they came to his rescue. I was watching eagerly to see how many would be killed in the ensuing fight. But not a blow was struck, and the palaver did not last a minute. So forgetful are they of injuries. And though they are capable of great cruelty towards their enemies, their cruelty is callous rather than vindictive; not the cruelty that delights in another’s pain, but rather that of a dull imagination which does not realize it.
A few days after leaving Sierra Leone we anchored off Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, where we shipped eighty native men,Krumen, who were engaged by the ship as workmen for the discharging and loading of cargo. They are engaged for the round trip down the coast, three or four months, and are unshipped again on the homeward voyage. Of these Krumen I shall speak at some length in another chapter. They are the original native tribe of this part of the coast and are not to be confounded with the proper Liberians whose ancestors emigrated from America.
Liberia represents the philanthropic effort of America to restore to their native land the Africans carried to America by the slave trade. A large area of country was purchased from the native chiefs, and in 1820 the first settlement of colonists was established. Liberia is a country of possibilities. There is no richer soil on the entire west coast. It is especially suitable for coffee and cocoa; but it has remained undeveloped. The poor and ignorant colonists were not fit for self-government. Americashould have done more or else less. The Liberians might far better have remained in America. During the several generations of their absence from Africa they seemed to have lost the power of resisting the malaria. The mortality among them was very great and they were pitiably helpless. The government of Liberia some one has said is a fit subject for comic opera. At one time becoming possessed of a little cash, by some wonderful accident, they provided themselves with a small gunboat by which they hoped to convince calling ships that theirs is a real government competent to collect dues, impose fines, and enforce the rules of quarantine and release that obtain at other ports, for which purpose it has proved as ineffective as a pop-gun. But they have used it successfully against the canoes of the Krumen in levying a heavy and unjustifiable duty upon these men when they return from the south voyage with their pay.
After two weeks on shipboard the immobility of life becomes agreeable and we are all content to be lazy. And in the evening when the social instinct is lively and men sit together at leisure in the balmy breeze, under the canvas roof, on a well-lighted deck, the sea so calm as to allay all apprehension, a wall of darkness around us, and the immensity of the sea beyond, as separate from the rest of the world as would be some tiny planet that has separated from the solid earth and rotates upon its own axis, then the charm of travel on the tropical sea is all that the imagination had preconceived,—a lazy, luxurious dream. When Boswell remarked to Johnson, “We grow weary when idle,” Johnson replied: “That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if all were idle there would be no growing weary; we should entertain one another.” We were all equally idle and lazy, and wished we could be lazier. There were whole days when the conversation—until evening—containednothing more epigrammatic than “Please pass the butter,” or “Have a pickle?”
The company consists of traders, government officials and missionaries; and the captain is usually present. As our number diminishes at each successive port, we become better acquainted and more friendly. Men of antipodal differences are thus frequently brought into friendly and sympathetic relations, men who in ordinary life would seldom have been brought into contact with each other, and who never would have known that they had anything in common; and the experience is wholesome. I have learned to think more kindly of the African trader and to refrain from criticism because of some whom I have known intimately on these long voyages.
As we sit on deck in the evening the captain tells us that at Lagos, where we are due in a few days, he has seen the natives fight the sharks in the sea and kill them. The shark is the monster of the tropical seas, the incarnation of ferocity and hunger. The native takes a stout stick, six inches long and sharpened at both ends. With his hand closed tight around this he dives into the sea, and as the shark comes at him with its terrible mouth open, he thrusts the stick upright into its mouth as far as he can. There it remains planted in the upper and lower jaws of the shark, which, not being able to close its mouth, soon drowns and comes to the surface. It is a good story, and not incredible as a fact; for the native is brave enough and fool enough to do this very thing. But this is the same captain who tells of fearful storms which he has successfully encountered, when the ship rolled until she took in water through the funnels. He remarked to me one day, speaking of one of his officers who was not the brightest: “I always have to verify his reckoning; for he always mistakes east for west and invariably puts latitude where longitude ought to be.” He also tells of an invitationhe once received from a cannibal chief near Old Calabar, to come ashore and help him pick a missionary. He has seen the sea-serpent many a time and knows all about it. It is not dark green with brown stripes, as is generally supposed, but is bright yellow with blue spots, and is quite three hundred feet long. On one occasion it followed the captain’s ship for several days, at times raising one hundred and fifty feet of its length out of the water, and being prevented from helping itself to a sailor now and then only by great quantities of food which they threw over to it. This caused a famine on board, and they reached the nearest port in a half-starved condition. An affidavit goes with each of the captain’s stories. Most captains indulge in this entertaining hyperbole. Some are decidedly gifted with what has been called a “creative memory.” I have never yet known a captain who could not turn out as handsome a yarn as Gulliver.
As the company become better acquainted conversation is more intimate and varied. Now we are discussing some subject of continental magnitude, and again, with equal interest, some infinitesimal triviality. Detached from the rest of the world, and with no daily budget of news, our interest becomes torpid, and things great and small appear without perspective on a flat surface of equality. We avowed our disbelief in the infallibility of the pope, and pronounced against his claim to temporal authority. We anticipated all the conclusions of the Hague Conference, and discussed the imminence of the “yellow peril.” We resolved that the Crown Colony system was a failure and had never been a success, and we devised an elaborate substitute but could not agree upon the details. We agreed that the English aristocracy had long been effete, and that the Duke of X, related to the queen, was a “hog.” We reached the amicable conclusionthat the thirteen colonies should never have rebelled, and that the blame was all on the side of England. We left posterity nothing to say on the relative merits of the republican and the monarchic forms of government, and decided that the enfranchisement of the negro was a mistake.
In juxtaposition to these discussions, one man occupied the company a part of an evening recounting the entire history of his corns; but I regret that I have forgotten their number and disposition. Another disclosed the fact that he always wore safety-pins instead of garters, and descanted upon his preference with such enthusiasm that he made at least one convert that I know of. I was carefully told how to mix a gin cocktail (though I may never have any practical use for this valuable knowledge) and how to toss a champagne cocktail from one glass to another in a beautiful parabolic curve; also how many cocktails a man might drink in a day without being chargeable with intemperance: in short, if there is anything about “booze” that I do not know it must be because I have forgotten.
One night (but this was another voyage and a different kind of captain) we put in practice the principle of arbitration of which we were all adherents; and the result was my discomfiture. An argument had arisen among us as to which was the more simple of the two currency systems,dollars and cents, andpounds, shillings and pence—as if there were logical room for difference of opinion! At last, the captain arriving, we decided to refer the matter to him and to surrender our judgment to his arbitrament. The captain (an Englishman of the very stolid sort), after a period of reflection replied very slowly, and with all the gravity of a judge: “Pounds, shillings and pence is the simpler system; for, don’t you know, that when you are told the price of a thing in dollars and centsyou always, in your mind, convert it into pounds, shillings and pence.”
“Of course, Captain,” said I; “I had not thought of that until you mentioned it; neither had I recalled the well-known fact that a Frenchman, while speaking French in the streets of Paris, is really thinking in English. Your decision is as shrewd as it is impartial.”