 CHAPTER XXI TRADE AND LABOR IN WEST AFRICA Part A As I am under the impression that the trade of the West African coast is its most important attribute, I hope I may be pardoned for entering into this subject. My chief excuse for so doing lies in the fact that independent travelers are rare in the bites. The last one I remember hearing of was that unfortunate gentleman who went to the coast for pleasure and lost a leg on Lagos Bar. Now I have not lost any portion of my anatomy anywhere on the coast and therefore have no personal prejudice against the place. I hold a brief for no party and I beg the more experienced old coaster to remember that a looker on sees the most of the game. First of all it should be remembered that Africa does not possess ready-made riches to the extent it is in many quarters regarded as possessing. It is not an Indian field with the accumulated riches of ages waiting for the adventurer to enter and shake the pagoda tree. The pagoda tree in Africa only grows over stores of buried ivory and even then it is a stunted specimen to that which grew over the treasure houses of Delhi, Seringapatam and hundreds of others as rich as they in gems and gold. Africa has lots of stuff in it structurally more than any other continent in the world but it is very much in the structure and it requires hard work to get it out particularly out of one of its richest regions the west coast where the gold, silver, copper, lead and petroleum lie protected against the minor African fever in its deadliest form and the produce prepared by the natives for the trader is equally fever guarded and requires white men of a particular type to work and export it successfully men in doubt with great luck, pluck, patience and tact. The first things to be considered are the natural resources of the country. This subject may be divided into two subsections. One, the means of working these resources as they at present stand. Two, the question of the possibility of increasing them by introducing new materials of trade value in the shape of tea, coffee, cocoa etc. With regard to the first subdivision the most cheerful things that there are to say on the west coast trade can be said. The means of transport being ahead of the trade in all districts save the gold coast. I know this is heresy so I will attempt to explain the matter. First, as regards communication to Europe by sea, the west coast is extremely well off. The two English lines of steamers managed by Missouri's Elder Dempster, the British African and the Royal African are most enterprisingly conducted and their devotion to trade is absolutely pathetic. Let there be but the least vague rumor. Sometimes I have thought they have not waited for the rumor but gone in as an experiment of a punch in of oil or a log of timber waiting for shipment at an out of the world one house port. One of these vessels will bear down on that port and have that cargo. In addition to the English lines there is the Warman line equally devoted to cargo. I may almost say even more so for it is currently reported that Warman liners will lie off and wait for the stuff to grow. This I will not vouch for but I know the time allowed to a Warman captain by his owners between the Cameroons and Big Batanga just around the corner is eight days. These English and German lines having come to a friendly understanding regarding freight work the bites of Benin, Biafra and Panavia without any rivals save now and again the vessels charted by the African Association to bring out a big cargo and the four sailing vessels belonging to the Association which give an 18th century look to the rivers and have great adventures on the bars of Opobo and Bani. The Bristol ships on the Half Jack coast are not rivals but I sort of floating factories shipping their stuff home and getting it out by the regular lines of steamers. The English and German liners therefore carry the bulk of the trade from the whole coast. Their services are complicated and frequent but perfectly simple when you have grasped the fact that the English lines may be divided into two subdivisions, Liverpool boats and Hamburg boats either of which are liable when occasion demands to call it Havre. The Liverpool line is the main line to the more important ports, the Hamburg line being almost entirely composed of cargo vessels calling at the smaller ports as well as the larger. There is another classification that must be grasped. The English boats being divided into firstly a line having its terminus at Sierra Leone and calling at the Isles de los. Secondly a line having its terminus at Acasa. Thirdly a line having its terminus at Old Calabar. Fourthly a line having its terminus at San Paul de Luanda and in addition a direct line from Antwerp to the Congo charted by the Congo Free State Government. Division IV the Southwesters are the quickest vessels as far as Lagos where they only call at the canneries Sierra Leone off the crew coast at Acra and off Lagos. Then they run straight from Lagos into Cameroons without touching the rivers reaching Cameroons in 27 days from Liverpool. After Cameroons they cross to Fernanda Po and run into Victoria and then work their way steadily down coast to their destination. Then sup again doing all they know to extract cargo but never succeeding as they would wish and so being hungry in the hold when they get back to the bite of Benning they are liable to smell cargo and go in after it and therefore are not necessarily the quickest boats home. Two French companies run to the French possessions subsidized by their government as a German line is and as our lines are not the Charger, Rune and the Frasiné. The southwest coast liners of these companies run to Gabon and then to Coutounou up near Lagos then back to Gabon and down as far as Loango calling on their way home at the other ports in Congo-Francés. They are mainly carriers of import goods because they run to time and on the southwest coast unless time has an ameliorating touch of eternity in it you cannot get export goods off. Below the Congo the rivals of the English and German lines are the vessels of the Portuguese line Empresa Nacional. These are run from Lisbon to the Cape Verde Islands then to Santo May and Príncipe then to the ports of Angola, Luanda-Benguela, Mozamides, Ambrisette, etc. and they carry the bulk of the Angola trade at present because of the preferential dues on goods shipped in Portuguese bottoms. The service of English vessels to the west coast is weekly to the rivers fortnightly to the southwest coast monthly and it is the chief thing in west coast trade enterprise that England has to be proud of. Any one of the English boats will go anywhere that mortal boat can go and their captain's local knowledge is a thing England at large should be proud of and the rest of the civilized world regard with awestruck and admiration. That they leave no room for further development of ocean carriage has been several times demonstrated by the collapse of lines that have attempted to rival them the prince line and more recently the general steam navigation but although the west coast trader has at his disposal these vessels he has by no means an easy time or cheap methods of getting his stuff on board save at Sierra Leone and in the oil rivers of the gold coast surf and Lagos bar I have already spoken and the Kalemma as we call the southwest coast surf is nearly if not quite as bad as that on the gold coast indeed I hold it is worse but then I have had more experience of it and it has frequently to be worked in native dugouts and not in the well-made surf boats used on the gold coast but although these surf boats are more safe they are also more expensive than canoes as a fine 40 pounds or 60 pound surf boats average duration of life is only two years in the gold coast surf so there is little to choose from a commercial standpoint between the two serfs when all is done as regards interior transport the difficulty is greater but in the majority of the west coast possessions of european powers there exist great facilities for transport in the network of waterways near the coast and the great rivers running far into the interior these waterways are utilized by the natives being virtually roads in many districts practically the only roads existing for the transport of goods in bulk or in the present state of the trade required to exist but there is room for more wide enterprise in the matter of river navigation and my own opinion is that if English capital were to be employed in the direction of a small suitably built river steamers it would be found more repaying than lines of railway waterways that might be developed in this manner exist in the cross river the volta and the and cobra i do not say that there will be any immediate dividend on these river steamboat lines but i do not think that there will be any dividend immediate or remote on railways in west africa this question of transport is at present regarded as a burning one throughout the continent and for the well-being of certain parts of the west coast railways are essential such as at legos and on the gold coast of legos i do not pretend to speak i have never been sure there of the gold coast i have seen a little and heard a great deal more and i think i may safely say that railway making would not be difficult on it for it is a good hard land not stretches of rotten swamp the great difficulty in making railroads here will consist in landing the material through the surf this difficulty cannot be got over except at enormous expense by making piers but it might be surmounted by sending the planted shore on small bar boats that could get up the volta or and cobra when up the volta it may be said it would be nowhere when anyone wanted it but the cast iron idea that goods must go ashore at places where there are government headquarters like akra and cape coast places where the surface about at its worst seems to me an erroneous one the landing place at cape coast might be made safe and easy but expenditure of a few thousands in developing that rock which at present give shelter when you get around the lee side of it but this would only make things safer for surf boats no other craft could work this bit of beach and there is plenty of room for developing the volta as it is a waterway which a vessel drawing six feet can ascend 50 miles from july till november and 30 miles during the rest of the year the worst point about the volta is the badness of its bar a great semicircular sweep with heavy breakers too bad a bar for boats to cross but i steamer on the lego's bar boat plan might manage it as the bullfrog reported in 1884 19 to 21 feet on it one hour before high water the absence of this bar boat and the impossibility of sending goods out in surf boats across the bar causes the goods from ada riverside the chief town on the volta situated about six miles up the river from its mouth to be carried across a spit of land to beach town and then brought out through the shore surf the worst bit of surf on the whole gold coast the anchor bra is a river which penetrates the interior through a district very rich in gold and timber and more than suspected of containing petroleum it is from 80 to 100 yards wide up as far as akanko and during the rains carries three and a half to four and a half fathoms and boats are taking up the tomento about 40 miles from its mouth with goods to the wasau gold mines but the bargain cobra is shallow only giving six feet although it is firm and settled not like that of the volta and lego's and the portuguese in the 16th century used to get up this river and work the country to a better profit than we do nowadays the other chief gold coast river the bosom bra that enters the siacama is no use for navigation from the sea being obstructed with rock and rapids and its bar only carrying two feet but whether these rivers are used or not for the landing of railroad plant it is certain that that plant must be landed and the railways made for if ever a district required them the gold coast does it is to be hoped it will soon enter into the phase of construction for it is a return to the trade from which it draws its entire revenue that the local government owes and owes heavily and if our new acquisition of a shanti is to be developed it must have a railway bringing it in touch with the coast trade not necessarily running into kuma sea but near enough to kuma sea to enable goods to be sold at but a small advance on coast prices it is an error easily fallen into to imagine that the natives in the interior are willing to give much higher prices than the sea coast natives for goods be it granted that they aren't compelled now to give say on an average 75 percent higher prices to the sea coast natives who would present act as middlemen between them and the white trader but if the white trader goes into the interior he has to face first the difficulty of getting his goods there safely secondly the opposition of the native traders who can and will drive him out of the market unless he's backed by easy and cheap means of transport take the case of kuma sea now a merchant let us say wants to take up from the coast to kuma sea three thousand pounds worth of goods to trade with to transport this he has to employ 1,300 carriers at one shilling and three pens per day ahead the time taken is eight days there and eight days back equals 16 days which figures out at 1,300 pounds without allowing for loss and damage in order to buy produce with these goods that will cover this and all shipping expenses etc he would have to sell to far higher figure in kuma sea than he would on the sea coast and the native traders would easily oust him from the market moreover so long as a district is in the hands of native traders there is no advance made and no development goes forward and it would be a grave error to allow this to take place at kuma sea now that we have at last done what we should have done in 1874 and taken actual possession for kuma sees a grand position that if properly managed for a few years will become a great interior market attracting to itself the routes of interior trade it is now a great center because of the oppression and usury which the kings of ashanti have inflicted on all in their power and which have caused kuma sea mainly to attract one form of trade these slaves who are used in their constant human sacrifices and for whom a higher price was procurable here than from the mohammedan tribes to the north under french sway and as for the other trade stuffs they have naturally for years drained into the markets of the french sudan instead of through such a country as ashanti into the markets of the english gold coast and so unless we run a railroad up to encourage the white traders to go inland and make a market that will attract these trade routes into kuma sea we shall be a few years hence singing out what's the good of ashanti and so forth as is our foolish want never realizing that the west coast is not good unless it is made so by white effort the new regime on the gold coast is undoubtedly more active than the old more alive to the importance of pushing inland and so forth and the road is going to be made 25 feet wide all the way to kuma sea and then beyond it which is an excellent thing in its way but it will not do much for trade because the pacification of the country and the greatest security of personal property to the native which our rule will afford will aid him in bringing his goods to the coast but not so greatly aid our taking our goods inland for the carriers will require just as much for carrying goods along a road as they do for carrying goods along a bush path and rightly too for it is quite as heavy work for them and heavier as I know from my experience of the governmental road in Cameroon in such a country as West Africa there can be no doubt that a soft bush path with a thick coating of moss and leaves on it and shaded from the sun above by the interlacing branches is far and away better going than a hard sunny wide road this road will be valuable for military expeditions possibly but the military expeditions are not everyday affairs on the gold coast and it cannot be of use for drought animals because of the horse sickness and sets if lie which occur as soon as you get into the forest behind the literal region so it must not be regarded as an equivalent for steam transport as it will only serve to bring down the little trickle of native trade and possibly not increase that trickle much the question of transport of course is not confined to the gold coast below Lagos there is a great river system towards which the trade slowly drains through native hands to the white man's factories on the river banks but this trade being in the hands of native traders is not a fraction of what it would become in the hands of white men and any mineral well there may be in the heavily forested stretches of country remains unworked and unknown the difficulty of transport here greatly hampers the exploitation of the timber wealth it being utterly useless for the natives to fell even a fine tree unless it is so close to a waterway that it can be floated down to the factory this is it which causes the ebony bar and camwood to be cut up by them into small billets which a man can carry the french and germans are both now following the plan of getting as far as possible into the interior by the waterways and then constructing railways the construction of these railways is fairly easy as regards gradients and absence of dense forest when your waterway takes you up to the great park like plateau lands which extend as a general rule behind the forest belt and the inevitable mountain range the most important of these railways will be that of monsoe de braza of the sangha valley in the direction of the chat when this railway is constructed it will be the death of the cameroon and oil river trade more particularly of the latter for in the cameroons the germans have broken down the monopoly of the coast tribes which we in our possession under the niger coast protectorate have not the niger company has broken through and taken full possession of a great interior doing a bit of work which every englishman should feel proud for it is the only thing in west africa that places us on a level with the french and germans in courage and enterprise in penetrating the interior and fortunately the regions taken over by the company are rich and not like the senegal made of sand and savage savages where in west africa outside the company will you find men worthy as explorers to be named in the same breath with de braza captain pincer and zint groth some day i fear when it will be too late we shall realize the foolishness of sticking down the sea coast tidying up our settlements establishing schools and drains and we shall find our possessions in the rivers and along the gold coast valueless particularly in the rivers for the trade will surely drain towards the markets along the line of the french railroad behind them for the middleman tribe that we foster exact a toll of 75 percent on the trade that comes through their hands and the english government is showing great signs of an inclination to impose such duties on the only stuff the native cares much for alcohol that he will take his goods to the market where he can get his alcohol even if he pays a toll to these markets of 50 percent but of these i will speak later and we will return to the question of transport mr scott eliot speaking on this subject as regarding east african regions has given us a most interesting contribution based on his personal experience and official figures as many of his observations and figures are equally applicable to the west coast i hope i may be forgiven for quoting him his criticism is in favor of the utilization of every mile of waterway available he says regarding the victoria nyadza that it is possible to place on it a steamer at the cost of 12677 pounds taking the cost of maintenance fuel and working expenses at 1200 pounds a year a large estimate a capital expenditure of 53 000 pounds 13 000 pounds for the steamer and 40 000 pounds to yield 3 interest would enable the steamer to convey say 30 tons at the rate of 5 to 10 miles an hour for 1600 pounds a year this makes it possible to convey a ton at the rate of a half penny a mile while it would require about 53 000 pounds to build a railway only 18 miles long the congo free of state railway i am informed has cost at a rate per mile something like eight times this further on mr eliot says in america the surplus population of europe and the markets in the eastern states have made railway development profitable on the whole but in africa until pioneer work has been done and the prospects of colonization and plantation are sufficiently definite and settled to induce colonists to go out in considerable numbers it will be ruinous to build a long railway line i do not quote these figures to discourage the west coaster from his railway but only to induce him to get his government to make it in the proper direction namely into the interior where further development of trade is possible judging from other things in english colonies i should expect if left to the spirit of english west coast enterprise it would run in a line that would enable the engine drivers to keep an eye on the atlantic ocean instead of the direction in which it is high time our eyes should be turned i confess i am not an enthusiast on civilizing the african my idea is that the french method of dealing with africa is the best at present get as much of the continent as possible down on the map as yours make your flag wherever you go a sacred thing to the native a thing he dare not attack then when you have done this you may abandon the french plan and gradually develop the trade in an english manner but not in the english manner la sir leon but do your pioneer work first there is a very excellent substratum for english pioneer work on our coasts in the trading community for trade is the great key to the african's heart and everywhere the english trader and his goods stand high in west african esteem this pioneer work must be undertaken or subsidized by the government as it has been in the french possessions for the west coast does not offer these inducements to the ordinary traveler that let us say east africa with its magnificent herds of big game or the northern frontier of india with its mountains and its interesting forms relics and monuments of a high culture offer travel in west africa is very hard work and very unhealthy there are many men who would not hesitate for a moment to go there were the dangers of the native savagery the chief drawback but they hesitate before a trip which means in all probability month after month of tramping through wet gloomy forests with a swamp here and there for change and which will the chances are one hundred to one and in their dying ignominiously a fever in some wretched squalid village reckless expenditure of money in attempts to open up the countries to be deprecated for this hampers its future terribly even if attended with partial success the mortgage being too heavy for the estate as a congo free state finances show and if it is attended with failure it discourages further efforts what we want at present in west africa are three or four bingers and zintcrafts to extend our possessions northwards eastwards and southeastwards until they command the interior trade routes and there is no reason that these men should enter from the west coast getting themselves killed or half killed with fever before they reach their work uganda if half one hears of it is true would be a very suitable base for them to start from and then traveling west they might come down to the present limit of our west coast possessions this belt of territory across the continent would give us control of and plays us in touch with the whole of the interior trade a belt from north to south in africa thanks to our sub kindness and folly we can now never have i will now briefly deal with a second subdivision i spoke of some pages back the possibility of introducing new trade exports by means of cultivating plantations the soil of west africa is extremely rich in places but by no means so in all for vast tracts of it are mangrove swamps and other vast tracts of it are miserably poor sour sandy clay it is impossible in the place at my disposal to enter into a full description of the localities where these unprofitable districts occur but you will find them here and there all along the coast after leaving sir leon the sour clay seems to be new soil recently promoted into the mainland from dried up mangrove swamps and a good rough rule is to not start a plantation on soil that is not growing hardwood forest considerable areas in the gold coast even though the soil is good are now useless for cultivation on account of their having been deforested by the natives wasteful way of making their farms coupled with a hamutan and the long dry season the regions of richest soil are not in our possessions but in those of germany france spain and portugal namely the cameroons and its volcanic island series renando po principle and santo may the rich volcanic earths of this place will enable them to compete in the matter of plantations with any part of the known world cameroons is undoubtedly the best of these because of its superior river supply and although not in the region of the double seasons it is just on the northern limit of them and the height of the peak 13,760 feet condenses the water laden air from its surrounding swamps and the atlantic so that rain is pretty frequent throughout the year when within the region of the double seasons just south of cameroons you have a rainfall no heavier than that of the rivers yet better distributed an essential point for the prosperity of such plantations as those of tea and tobacco which require showers once a month to the north of cameroons there is no prospect of either of these well-paying articles being produced in a quantity or quality that would compete with south america india or the malayan regions and they will have to depend in the matter of plantations on coffee and cacao below cameroons congo francés possesses the richest soil and an excellently arranged climate the lower congo soil is bad and poor close to the river ca congo the bit of portuguese territory to the north of the congo banks and that part of angola as far as the river bingo are pretty much the same make of country as congo francés only heavily forested the whole of angola is an immensely rich region save just around loanda where the land is sand logged for about 50 square miles and those regions to the extreme south and southeast which are in the calahari desert regions coffee grows wild throughout angola in those districts removed from the dry coast lands in the districts of colongo alto and pasango in great profusion and you can go through utterly uncultivated stretches of it 30 miles of it at a time the natives now the merchants have taught them its value are collecting this wild berry and bringing it in in quantities and in addition the english firm of newton and carnegie have started plantations up at casango the greater part of these plantations consist of clearing and taking care of the wild coffee but in addition regularly planting and cultivating young trees as it is found that the yield per tree is immensely increased by cultivation 600 to 800 bags a month were shipped from ampriset alone when i was there in 1893 and the amount has since increased and will still further increase when that leisurely but very worthy little railroad line which proudly calls itself the royal trans-african shall have got its sections made up into the coffee district it was about 30 miles off at ambaca when i was in angola but by now it may have got further however i do not think it is very likely to have gone far and i have a persuasion that that railroad will not become trans-african in my day still it has an immediate future compared with that which any other west coast railway can expect for besides the coffee angola is rich in malachite and gum of high quality and its superior government will attract the rubber from the casai region of the congo free estate in our own possessions the making of plantations is being carried on with much energy by miss eris miller brothers on the gold coast by several private capitalists including mr a l jones of liverpool at legos by the royal niger company in their territory and by several head agents in the niger coast protectorate sir claud mcdonald offered every inducement to this trade development and gave great material help by founding a botanical station at old calabar where plants could be obtained he did his utmost to try and get the natives to embark on plantation making ably seconded by mr billington the botanist in charge of the botanical station who wrote an essay in epic on coffee growing and cultivation at large for their special help and guidance a few chiefs to oblige took coffee plants but they're not enthusiastic for the slaves that would be required to tend coffee and keep it clean in this vigorous forest region are more profitably employed now in preparing palm oil of the coffee plantation at meadow war bay i've already spoken and of those in congo francés which although not at present shipping like the german plantation will soon be doing so in addition to coffee and cow attempts are being made in congo francés to introduce the para rubber tree a large plantation of which i frequently visited new libraville and found to be doing well this would be an excellent tree to plant in a monk coffee for it is very clean and tidy and seems as if it would take to west africa like a duck to water but it is not a quick cropper and i am informed must be left at least three or four years before it is tapped at all so as the gardening books would say it should be planted early it is very possible many other trees producing tropical products valuable in commerce might be introduced successfully into west africa the cultivation of cloves and nutmegs would repay here well for allied species of trees and shrubs are indigenous but the first of these trees takes long time before coming into bearing and the cultivation of the second is a speculative affair all spies i have found growing wild in several districts but in no large quantity cotton with a fine long staple grows wild in quantities wherever there is open ground but it is not cultivated by the natives and when temps have been made to get them to collect it they do so but bring it in very dirty and the traders having no machinery to compress it like that used in america it does not pay to ship indigo is common everywhere along the coast and used by the natives for dying as is also a teasle which gives a very fine peppermint maroon and besides these there are many other dyes and drugs used by them colosynth the turasope bark cardamom ginger peppers strafanthus nox vomica etc etc but the difficulty of getting these things brought into the traders insufficient quantities prevents their being exported to any considerable extent tea has not been tried and is barely worth trying though there is little doubt it would grow in cameroons and congo francis where it would have an excellent climate and pretty nearly any elevation it liked but i believe tea has of late been discovered to be like coffee not such a stickler for elevation as it used to be thought merely requiring not to have its roots in standing water vanilla grows with great luxurians in cameroons in victoria a grove of gigantic cacao trees is heavily overgrown with this lovely orchid in a most perfect way it does not seem to injure the cacao's in the least and there are other kinds of trees it will take equally well too i saw it growing happily and luxuriously under the direction of the roman catholic mission at landana but it requires a continuously damp climate vanilla when one started gives little or no trouble and it's pods to not require any very careful manipulation before sending to europe and this is a very important point for a great hindrance the great hindrance to plantation enterprise on the coast is the difficulty of getting neat handed laborers i had once the pleasure of meeting a dutch gentleman a plantation expert who had been sent down the west coast by a firm trading there and also in the male archipelago prospecting at a heavy fee to see whether it would pay the firm to open up plantations there better than in malaysia i believe his final judgment was adverse to the west african plan because of the difficulty of getting skillful natives to tend young plants and prepare the products tea he regarded as quite hopeless from this difficulty and he said he did not think you would ever get africans at as cheaper rate or so deftly fingered to roll tea as you can get asiatics no one knows until they have tried it the trouble it is to get an african to do things carefully but it is a trouble not an impossibility if you don't go off with fever from sheer worry and vexation the thing can be done but in the meantime he is maddening i have had many a day's work on plantations instructing cheerful willing apparently intelligent ethiopians of various sexes and sizes on the mortal crime of hoeing up young coffee plants they have quite seen it or lormasa i know fit to do them thing aren't they you go along to more mourning and you'll find your most promising pupils laying around them with their hose talking about the disgraceful way their dearest friends go on and destroying young coffee right and left they're just as bad if not slightly worse particularly the ladies when it comes to picking coffee as soon as your eyes off them the bow is off the tree i know one planter who leads the life of the surprise captain in whs gilbert's ballard lurking among his groves and suddenly appearing among his pickers this he says has given them a feeling of uncertainty as to when and where he may appear casango and all that has done much to preserve his plantation but it is a wearying life not what he expected from his book on coffee plantations which had a frontus peas depicting a planter seated in his veranda with a tumbler full of something cool at his right hand and a pipe in his mouth contemplating a large plantation full of industrious natives picking berries into baskets on all sides labor the labor problem is one that must be studied and solved before west africa can advance much further than its present culture condition because the climate is such that the country cannot be worked by white laborers and that the state of affairs will remain as it is until some true specific is discovered from malaria something important happens to the angle of the earth's axis or some radical change takes place in the nature of the sun is the opinion of all acquainted with the region the west african climate shows no signs of improving whatsoever if it shows any sign of alteration it is for the worse four of late years two extremely deadly forms of fever have come into notice here malarial typhoid and black water the malarial typhoid seems confined to districts where a good deal of european attention has been given to drainage systems which is in itself discouraging the labor problem has been imported with european civilization the civilization has not got on to any considerable extent but the labor problem has for being a malignant nuisance it has taken to west africa is a duck to water and it is now flourishing it has not yet however attained its zenith it is just waiting for the abolition of domestic slavery for that and then meanwhile it grows with the demand for hands to carry on plantation work and public works on the west coast that is to say from sierra leone to cameroon it is worse than on the southwest coast from cameroon to benguela the kruman the akra and the sierra leoneon are at present on the west coast the only solution available the first is as finorship and beach men as you could reasonably wish for but no good for plantation work the second is thanks to the practical training he has received from the basal mission a very fair artisan cook or clerk but also no good for plantation work except as an overseer the third is a poor artisan an excellent clerk or subordinate official but so unreliable in the matter of honesty as to be nearly reliable to swindle any employer legos turns out a large quantity of educated natives but owing to the growing prosperity of the colony these are nearly all engaged in legos itself an important but somewhat neglected fact during the problem is the nature of the west african native and as i think a calm and unbiased study of this factor would give us the satisfactory solution to the problem i venture to give my own observations on it the kru boys as the natives of the grain coast are called irrespective of the age of the individual by the white men the menikusi as fx column are the most important people of west africa for without their help the working of the coast would cost more lives than it already does and would be in fact practically impossible ever since vessels have regularly frequented the bites the crewman has had the helpful habit of shipping himself off on board and doing all the heavy work their first tutors were the slavers who initiated them into the habit and instructed them in ship's work that they might have the benefit of their services in working their vessels along the slave coast and in order to prevent any crew boy being carried off as a slave by mistake which would have prejudiced these useful allies the slavers persuaded them always to tattoo a band of basket work pattern down their foreheads and out onto the tip of their broad noses this is the most extensive bit of real tattoo that i know of in west africa and the crew boys still keep the fashion their next tutors were the traders who have taught and still teach them beach work how to handle cargo try oil and make themselves generally useful in a factory learn sense as the crew boy himself puts it to religious teaching the crew boy seems for an african singularly impervious but two lessons he has learned ship and shore work are the best the white has so far taught the black because unattended with the evil consequences that have followed the other lessons unfortunately the crewman of the grain coast and the kabinda of the southwest coast are the only two tribes that have had the benefit of this kind of education but there are many other tribes who had circumstances led the trader and the slaver to turn their attention to them would have done their tutors quite as much credit but circumstances did not and so nowadays just as a hundred years ago you might get the crew boy to help you if you're going to do any work missionary or mercantile from Sierra Leone to Cameroon below Cameroon the crew boy does not like to go except to the beach of an english or german house for he has suffered much from the congo free state and from spaniards and portuguese who have not respected his feelings in the matter of wanting to return every year or every two years at the most to his own country and his rooted aversion to agricultural work and carrying loads about the bush the pay of the crew boy averages one pound a month there are no modifications in the way in which this sum is reached for example some missionaries pay each man 20 pounds a year but then he has had to find his own chop some southwest coast traders pay eight pounds a year but they find their boys entirely and well in food and give them a cloth a week and of part a of chapter 21 trade and labor in west africa read by kende of bahatrek.com chapter 21 part b of travels in west africa this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org travels in west africa by mary h kingsley chapter 21 part b trade and labor in west africa english men of war on the west african station have like other vessels to take them on to save the white crew and they pay the crew boys the same as they pay the white men i.e. 4.10 pounds a month with rations needless to say men of war are popular although service on board them cuts our friend off from almost every chance of stealing chickens and other things of which i may not speak as herodotus would say i do not know the manner in which men of war pay off the crew boy but i think in hard cash in the circles of society i most mix with on the coast the mercantile marine in the trading he's always paid in goods in a cloth gin guns tobacco gunpowder etc with little concessions to his individual fantasy in the matter for each of these articles has a known value and just as one of our coins can be changed so you can get here change for a gun or any other trade article the crew boy much prefers being paid off in goods i well remember an exquisite scene between captain and king coffee of the crew coast when the subject of engaging boys was being shouted over one voyage out the captain at that time thought i was a w w t a a and ostentatiously wanted coffee to let him pay off the boys he was engaging to work the ship in money and not in gin and gunpowder king coffee space was a study if captain blank who we knew of all had stood on his head and turned bright blue all over with yellow spots before his eyes it would not have been anything like such a shock to his majesty what for good him thing copy he said interrogation and astonishment ringing in every word what for good him thing for we country copy i suppose you give gin tobacco gun he be fit for trade but money here his majesty's feelings flew ahead of the royal command of language greatest that was anti-expectorated with profound feeling and expression captain blank's expressive countenance was the battleground of despair and grief at being thus forced to have anything to do with a traffic on popular emissionary circles he however controlled his feelings sufficiently to carefully arrange the due amount of each article to be paid and the affair was settled the somewhat cumbers wage the crew boy gets at the end of his term of service minus those things he has had on account and plus those things he has found is certainly a source of great worry to our friend he obtains a box from the carpenter of the factory or buys a tin one and puts therein his tobacco and small things and then he buys a padlock and locks his box of treasure up hanging the key with his other jujus around his neck and then he has peace regarding the section of his belongings peace at present for the day must sometime dawn when an experimental genius shall arise among his fellow countrymen who will try and see if one key will not open two locks when this possibility becomes known i can foresee nothing for the crew boy but nervous breakdown for even now with his mind at rest regarding the things in his box he lives in a state of constant anxiety but those out of it which have to line the deck during the return voyage to his home he has to keep a vigilant eye on them by day and sleep spread out over them by night for fear of his companions stealing them why he should take all this trouble about his things on his voyage home i can't make out if what is currently reported is true that all the wages earned by the working boys become the property of the elders of his tribe when he returns to them i myself rather doubt if this is the case but expect there is a very heavy tax levied on them for your crew boy is very much a married man and the elders of his tribe have to support and protect his wives and families when he is away at work and i should not wonder if the law was that these said families and wives refer to the state if the boy fails to return within something like his appointed time there must be something besides nostalgia to account for the dreadful worry and apprehension shown by a detained crew boy i am sure the tax is heavily taken in cloth for the boys told me that if it were made up into garments for themselves they did not have to part with it on their return needless to say this makes our friend turn his attention to needlework during his return voyage and many a time i have seen the main deck looking as if it had been taken possession of by a demoniac all dork has working party strangely little is known of the laws and language of these crew men considering how close the association is between them and the whites this arises i think not from the difficulty of learning their language but from the ease and fluency with which they speak their version of our own crew english or trade english as it is called and it is therefore unnecessary for a hot and weird white man to learn crew mouth what particularly makes me think this is the case is that i have picked up a little of it and i found that i could make a crew man understand what i was driving at with this and my small stock of bassa mouth and timne and occasions when i wished to say something to him i did not want generally understood but the main points regarding crew men are well enough known by old coasters their willingness to work if well fed and their habit of engaging for 12 month terms of work and then returning to we country a trader who is satisfied with a boy gives him when he leaves a bit of paper telling the captain of any vessel that he will pay the boy's passage to his factory again when he is willing to come the period that a boy remains in his beloved we country seems to be until his allowance of his own earnings is expended one can picture to one's self some sad partings in that far away dark land my loves says the crew boy to his families his voice happy with tears i must go there is no more cloth i have nothing between me and an easily shocked world but this decayed filament of cotton and then his families weep with him or what is more likely but not so literary expectorate with emotion and he tears himself away from them and comes on board the passing steamer in the uniform of ganja din nothing much before and rather less than half of that behind and goes down coast on the strength of the little bit of paper from his white master which he has carefully treasured and works like a nigger in the good sense of the term for another spell to earn more goods for his home folk those boys who are first starting on traveling to work and those without books have no difficulty in getting passages on the steamers for a captain is glad to get as many on board as he can being sure to get their passage money and a premium for them so great is the demand for crew labor but even this help to working the west coast has been much interfered with of late years by the action of the french government in imposing attacks per head on all laborers leaving their ports on the ivory coast this tax I believe is now removed or much reduced but as for the Liberian Republic it simply gets its revenue in an utterly unjustifiable way out of taxing the crewmen who ship as laborers the crewmen are no property of theirs and they dare not interfere with them on shore but owing to that little transaction in the celebrated rubber monopoly the Liberians became possessed of some ready cash which with great foresight they invested in two little gun boats which enabled them to enforce their tax on the crewmen in their small canoes I do not feel so sympathetic with the crewmen or their employers in this matter as I should for the crewmen are silly hens not to go and wipe out Liberia on shore and the white men are silly hens not to but I had better leave that opinion unexpressed the power of managing crewboys is a great accomplishment for anyone working the west coast one man will get 20% more work out of his staff and always have them cheerful fit and ready while another will get very little out of the same set of men except a taxation to himself and accidents to his goods but this very necessary and important factor in trade is not to be taught with ink some men fall into the proper way of managing the boys very quickly others may have years of experience and yet fail to learn it the rule is make them respect you and make them like you and then the thing is done but first dealing with a crew boy with all his good points is very trying work and they give the new hand an awful time of it while they are experimenting on him to see how far they can do him they do this very cleverly but short sightedly more africano for they spoil the tempers of half the white men whom they have to deal with it is not necessary to treat them brutally in fact it does not pay to do so but it is necessary to treat them severely to keep a steady hand over them never let them become familiar never let them see you have made a mistake when you make a mistake in giving them an order let it be understood that that way of doing a thing is a peculiarly artful dodge of your own and if it fails that it is their fault they will quite realize this if it is properly managed i speak from experience for example once owing to the superior sex being on its back with fever and sending its temperature up with worrying about getting some ebony logs after a bothering wretch of a river steamer that must needs come yelling along for cargo just then i said you live it to me and i'll get it shipped all right and proceeded with the help of three crewboys to raft that ebony off i saw as soon as i had embarked on the affair from the crewboys manner i was down the wrong path but however why did not see until a neat arrangement of ebony billets tied together with tai tai was in the water then i saw that i had constructed an excellent sounding apparatus for finding out the depth of water in the river and that ebony had an affinity for the bottom of water not for the top the situation was a trying one and the way the captain of the vessel kept dancing about his deck saying things in a foreign tongue but quite comprehensible was distracting but i did not devote myself to giving him the information he asked for as to what particular kind of idiot i was because he was neither a mad doctor nor an ethnologist and had no right to the information but i put a raft on the line of a very light wood we had a big store of and this held up the ebony and the current carried it down to the steamer all right then we hauled the line home and sent him some more in the patent plan but just to hurry up you understand and not delay the ship a deadly crime some of that ebony went off in a canoe and all ended happily and the crew boys regarded themselves as having been the spectators of another manifestation of white intelligence in defense of the captain's observations i must say he could not see me because i was deploying behind a wood stack nevertheless i do not mean to say this method of shipping him but he's a good one i shall not try it again in a hurry and the situation cannot be pulled through unless you have as a la gave me a very swift current and although when the thing went well i did say things from behind the wood stack to the captain i did not feel justified in accepting his apologetic invitation to come on board and have a drink my experiences with crew boys would if written in full make an excellent manual for a newcomer but they are too lengthy for this chapter my first experience with them on a small bush journey aged me very much and ever since i have shirked chaperoning crew boys about the west african bush among ticklish tempered native gentlemen and their forward hussies of wives i have always admired men for their strength their courage their enterprise their unceasing struggle for the beyond the something else but not until i had to deal with crew men did i realize the vastness to which this latter characteristic of theirs could attain one might have been excused for thinking that a man without rates and taxes without pockets and without the manifold want creating culture of modern european civilization and education would necessarily have been bounded to some extent in his desires but one would have been wrong profoundly wrong in so thinking for the crew men yearns after and done for as many things for his body as the lamented foustace did for his soul and away among the apes this interesting creature would have to go at once if the wanting of little were a crucial test for the determination of the family termed by the scientific world the harmony day later when i got to know the crew men well i learned that they desired not only the vast majority of the articles that they saw but did more obtained them at all events some of them without asking me for them such commodities for example as fouls palm wine old tins and bottles and other gentlemen's wives were never safe one of that first gang of boys showed self-help to such a remarkable degree that i christened him smiles his name u b d d being both protracted and improper called for change of some sort but even this brought no comfort to one still hampered with conventional ideas regarding property and frequent roll calls were found necessary so that the crimes of my friend smiles and his fellows might not accumulate to an unimaginable extent this used to be the sort of thing where them nettle rush live he live for drunk masa where them smiles he live for 10 for still masa where them black malmiserie but i draw a veil over the confessional for there is simply no artistic reticence about your crew men when he's telling the truth or otherwise regarding a fellow creature after accumulating with this gang enough experience to fill a hat remembering always one of the worst things you can do in west africa is to worry yourself i'm thought me of the advice i had received from my cousin rose kingly who had successfully ridden through mexico when mexico was having a rather worse revolution than usual to always preserve a firm manner i thought i would try this on those crew boys and said no in place of i wish you would not do that please i can't say it was an immediate success during this period we came across a trader's lonely store wherein he had a consignment of red parasols after these appalling objects the souls of my crew men hungered with a great desire no said i in my severeest tone and after buying other things we passed on imagine my horror therefore hours afterwards and miles away to find my precious crew had got a red parasol peace previous experience quite justified me in thinking that these had been stolen and i pictured to myself my portuguese friends whose territory i was then in commenting upon the incident and reviling me as another instance of how the brutal english go looting through the land i found however i was wrong for the parasols had been dashed my rapacious rascals for top and the last one connected with the affair who deserved pity was the trader from whom i had believed them stolen it was i not he who suffered for it was the wet season in west africa and those red parasols ran to this day my scientific soul has never been able to account for the vast body of crimson dye those miserable cotton things poured out plentifully drenching myself and their owners the crew boys and everything we associated with that day i am quite prepared to hear that some subsequent wanderer has found a red trail in africa itself like that one so often sees upon the maps when they do i hear by claim that real red trail as mine i confess i like the african on the whole a thing i never expected to do when i went to the coast with the idea that he was a degraded savage cruel brute but that is a trifling error you soon get rid of when you know him the crew boy is decidedly the most likable of all africans that i know wherein his charm lies is difficult to describe when you certainly want the patience of job and a conscience made of stretching leather to deal with the crew boy in the african climate and live in his better manifestations he reminds me of that charming personality the irish peasant for though he lacks the sparkle he's full of humor and is the laziest and the most industrious of mankind he lies and tells the truth in such a hopelessly uncertain manner that you cannot rely on him for either he is ungrateful and faithful to the death honest and thievish all in one in the same specimen of him in gratitude is a crime laid very frequently to the score of all africans but i think unfairly certainly i have never had to complain of it and the crew men often show gratitude for good treatment in a grand way the way those crew boys of gallant captain lane helped him work legos bar and save lives by the dozen from the stranded ships on it and halt their massa out from among the sharky foam every time he went into it on the lifeboat upsetting would have done credit to deal or norfolk lifeboat men but the secret of their devotion is their personal attachment they do not save people out of surf on abstract moral principles the african at large is not an enthusiast on moral principles and one and all they let nature take its course if they don't feel keen on a man surviving half the africans in gratitude although it may look very bad on paper is really not so very bad for half the time you have been asking him to be grateful to you for doing two or giving him things he does not care a row of pins about i have quite his feelings for example for half the things in civilized countries i am expected to be glad to get oh how nice it must be to be able to get about in cars omni buses and railway trains again is it well i don't think so and i do not feel glad over it similarly we will take an african case of ingratitude a wide friend of mine put himself an awful lot of trouble to save the life of one of his sub traders who had had an accident and succeeded it had been the custom of the man's wife to bring the trader little presents of fowls etc from time to time and sometime after the accident he met the lady and told her he had noticed a falling off in her offerings and he thought her very ungrateful after what he had done for her husband she grunted in the next morning she brought in as a present the most forlorn skinny one and a half feathered chicken you have ever laid eye on and in answer to the trader's comments she said i have referred at great length to the crewmen because of their importance and also because they are the natives the white men have more to do with as servants than any other but methods of getting on with them are not necessarily applicable to dealing with other forms of african laborers such as plantation hens in the congo frances angola and cameroon in cameroon the germans are now using largely the batanga natives on the plantations the dualas the great trading tribe in cameroon river being too lazy to do any heavy work and they have also tried to import laborers from togo land but this attempt was not a success ending in the revolt of 1894 which lost several white lives the public work is carried on as it is in our own colonies by the criminals in the chain gang the germans have had many accusations hurled against them by people of their own nationality but on the whole these atrocities have been much exaggerated and only half understood and certainly have not amounted to anything like the things that have gone on in the philanthropic congo free state the food given out by the german government is the best government rations given on the whole west coast when they have allowed me to have some of their native employees as when i was up cameroon mountain for example i bought rations from the government stores for them and was much struck by the soundness and good quality of both rice and beef and the rations they gave out to those tahomians or togo landers who revolted was so much more than they could or cared to eat that they used to sell much of it to the dualas in belltown this is not open to the criticism that the stuff was too bad for the togo landers to eat as was once said to me by a philanthropic german who had never been to the coast because the dualas are a rich tribe perfectly free traders in the matter able to go to the river factories and buy provisions there had they wished to and so would not have bothered government rations unless they were worth having the great point that has brought the germans into disrepute with the natives employed by them is their military spirit which gives rise to a desire to regulate everything and that other attribute of the military spirit nagging you should never nag an african it only makes him bothered and then sulky and when he's sulky he lie down and die despite you but in spite of the germans being overgiven to this unpleasant habit of military regularity and so on the natives from the crew coast and from basa and the french ivory coast return to them time after time for spells of work so there must be grave exaggeration regarding their bad treatment for these natives are perfectly free in the matter the french use loango boys for factory hands and these people are very bright and intelligent but as in pong way who knew them well said they are much too likely to be devils to be good too much and are undoubtedly given to poisoning which is an unpleasant habit in a house servant their military force are composed of senegalese very fine fierce fellows superiors i believe as fighting men to our house us and very devoted to and well treated by their french officers that the frenchmen does not know how to push trade in his possessions the trade returns with a balance all on the wrong side clearly show still he does know how to get possession of africa better than we do and this means he knows how to deal with the natives the building up of conco francés for example has not cost one third of the human lives black or white than an equivalent quantity of conco belgue has nor one third of the expense of yuganda or Sierra Leone it is customary in england to dwell on the commercial failure and deduce from it the erroneous conclusion that france will soon leave it off when she finds it does not pay this is an error because commercial success the making the thing pay is not the french ideal in the affair it is our own and i'm the last person to say our ideal is wrong but it is not the french ideal and i'm the last person to say france is wrong either there may exist half a hundred or more right reasons for doing anything and the reasons france has for her energetic policy in africa are sound ones for they are the employment of her martial spirits where their activity will not endanger the state the stowing of these spirits in paris having been found to be about as advisable as stowing overproof spirits and gunpowder in a living room with plenty of lighted lice first blazing round and her other reason is the top opportunity african enterprise affords for sound military training you will often hear in england regarding french annexation in africa oh let her have the deadly hole and much good made do her france knows very well what good it will do her and she will certainly take all she is allowed to get quietly as a stop for quietness regarding egypt and she will cheerfully fight you for the rest small blame to her she knows africa is a superb training ground for her officers sham fights and auto maneuvers have a certain value in the formation of a fighting army but the whole of these parlor games put together in a 10-year lump are not to be compared to one month's work at real war to fit an army for its real work and france knows well the real work will come again someday not far off for her army how soon it comes she little cares for she has no idea of peace before her never has had never will have in the next time she tries conclusions with one of us teutonic nations she will be armed with men who have learned their trade well on the burning sands of senegal and they will take a lot of beating we do not require africa as a training ground for our army india is as magnificent a military academy as any nation requires but we do require all the africa we can get west east and south for a market and it is here we clash with france for france not only does not develop the trade of her colonies for her own profit but stamps trade at large out by her preferential tariffs etc so that we cannot go into her colonies and trade freely as she and germany can come into ours we can go into her colonies and do business with french goods and this is done but french goods are not so suitable from their make nor capable of being sold at a sufficient profit to make a big trade but france throws few obstacles if any in the matter of plantation enterprise still this enterprise being so hampered by the dearth of good labor is not at the present time highly remunerative in africa foreign labor several important authorities have advocated the importation of foreign labor into africa this seems to me to be a fatal error for several reasons for one thing experience has by now fully demonstrated that the west coast climate is bad for men not native to it whether those men be white black or yellow the united presbyterian mission who work in old calabar was founded with the intention of inaugurating a mission which after the white men had established it was to be carried on by educated christian blacks from jamaica where this mission had long been established and flourished but it was found that these men although primarily africans had by their deportation from africa in the course in some cases of only one generation lost the power of resistance to the deadly malarial climate their forefathers possessed and so the mission is now carried on by whites not that these good people have a greater resistance to the fever than the jamaica christians but because they are more devoted to the evangelization of the african and what black assistance they receive comes with the exception of mrs. fuller from a few educated ethics of calabar the congo free state have imported as laborers both west indian negroes principally barbadians and china men in both cases the mortality has been terrible more than the white mortality which competent authorities put down for the congo at 77 percent and the experiment has therefore failed it may be said that much of this mortality has arisen from the way in which these laborers have been treated in the free state but that this is not entirely the case is demonstrated by the case of the enemies in congo francés who are well treated these enemies are the political prisoners arising from the french occupation of ton kin and the mortality among one gang of 100 of them who were employed to make the path through swamping ground from glass to libreville a distance of two and a half miles was 70 and this although the swamp was nothing particularly bad as swamps go and was swept by seer the whole way even had the experiment of imported labor been successful for the time being i hold it would be a grave error to import labor into africa for this reason that africa possesses in herself the most magnificent mass of labor material in the whole world and surely if her children could build up as they have the prosperity and trade of the americas she should under proper guidance and good management be able to build up her own but good guidance and a proper management are the things that are wanted and are wanting it is impossible to go into this complicated question fully here and i will merely ask unprejudiced people who do not agree with me whether they do not think that as so much has been done with one african tribe the crewmen a tribe possessing no material difference in make of mind or body from hundreds of other tribes but which have merely been trained by white men in a different way from other tribes that there is room for great hope in the native labor supply and would not a very hopeful outlook for west africa regarding the labor question be possible if a regime of common sense were substituted for our present one this is of course the missionary question a question which i feel it is hopeless to attempt to speak of without being gravely misunderstood and which i therefore would willingly shirk mentioning but i'm convinced that the future of africa is not a bit associated from the future of its natives by the importation of yellow races or hindus and the missionary question is not to be dissociated from the future of the african natives and so the subject must be touched on and i prefaced my remarks by stating that i have a profound personal esteem for several missionaries naturally for it is impossible to know such men and women as mr and mrs denny's camp of the gold coast measures and amsha cod and mesures and monserr forget and monserr kakon and dr nasau of gaboon and many others without recognizing at once the beauty of their natures and the nobility of their intentions indeed taken as a whole the missionaries must be regarded as superbly brave noble minded men who go and risk their own lives and often those of their wives and children and definitely sacrifice their personal comfort and safety to do what from their point of view is their simple duty but it is their methods of working that have produced in west africa the results which all truly interested in west africa must deplore and one is bound to make an admission that goes against one's insular prejudice that the protestant english missionaries have had most to do with rendering the african useless the bad effects that have arisen from their teaching have come primarily from the failure of the missionary to recognize the difference between the african and themselves as being a different not of degree but of kind i am aware that they are supported in this side by several eminent ethnologists but still there are a large number of anatomical facts that point the other way and a far larger number still relating to mental attributes and i feel certain that a black man is no more an undeveloped white man than a rabbit is an undeveloped hair and the mental difference between the two races is very similar to that between men and women among ourselves a great woman either mentally or physically will excel an indifferent man but no woman ever equals a really great man the missionary to the african has done what my father found them doing to the pollinations regarding the native minds as so many jugs only requiring to be emptied of the stuff which is in them and refilled with a particular form of dogma he is engaged in teaching in order to make them the equals of the white races this form of procedure works in very various ways it eliminates those parts of the native fetish that were a wholesome restraint on the african the children in the mission school are be granted better than the children outside it in some ways they display great aptitude for learning anything that comes in their way but there is a great difference between white and black children the black child is a very solemn thing it comes into the world in large quantities and looks upon it with its great sad eyes as if it were weighing carefully the question whether or no it is a fit place for a respectable soul to abide in four times in ten it decides that it is not and dies if however decides to stay it passes between two and three years in a grim and profound study occasionally emitting howls which end suddenly in a sob wine it never does at the end of this period it takes to spoon food walks about and makes itself handy to its mother or goes into the mission school if it remains in the native state it has no toys of a frivolous nature a little hoe or a little kalabash are considered better training if it goes into the school it picks up with astonishing rapidity the lessons taught it there giving rise to hopes for its future which are only too frequently disappointed in a few years time it is not until he reaches years of indiscretion that the african becomes joyful but when he attains this age he always does cheer up considerably and then whatever his previous training may have been he takes to what mr. Kipling calls boot with great avidity and of this he consumes an enormous quantity for the next 16 years barring accidents he rips he rips carefully terrified by his many fetish restrictions if he is a pagan but if he is in that partially converted state he usually finds him in when trouble has been taken with his soul then he rips unrestrained it is most unfair to describe Africans in this state as converted either in missionary reports or in attacks on them they are not converted in the least a really converted african is a very beautiful form of christian but those africans who are the chief mainstay of missionary reports and who afford such material for the scoffer they're at have merely had the restraint of fear removed from their minds in the mission schools without the greater restraint of love being put in its place the missionary made men is the curse of the coast and you find him in european clothes without all the way down from Sierra Leone to Luanda the pagans despise him the whites hate him still he thinks enough of himself to keep him comfortable his conceit is marvelous nothing equals it except perhaps that of the individual rife among us which the saturday review once aptly described as the suburban agnostic and the missionary man is very much like the suburban agnostic in his religious method after a period of mission school life he returns to his country fashion and deals with the fetish connected with it very much in the same way as the suburban agnostic deals with his religion ie he removes from it all the inconvenient portions shouldn't wonder if there might be something in the idea of the immortality of the soul and a future heaven you know but as for hell my dear sir that's rank superstition no one believes in it now and as for Sabbath keeping and food restrictions what other rubbish for enlightened people so the back sliding african deals with his country fashion ideas he eliminates from them the idea of immediate retribution etc and keeps the polygamy and the dances and all the lazy hazy minded native ways the education he has received at the mission school in reading and writing fits him for a commercial career and as every african is a born trader he embarks on it and there are pretty goings on on the west coast he frequently sets up in business for himself on the southwest coast he usually becomes a sub trader to one of the great english french or german firms on both coasts he gets himself disliked and brings down a program on all black traders expressed in language more powerful than select this whole sale denunciation of black traders is unfair because there are many perfectly straight trading natives still the majority are recruited from missionary school failures and are utterly bad post hoc non proctor hoc is an excellent maxim but one that never seems to enter the missionary head down here highly disgusted and pained at his pupils goings on but absolutely convinced of the excellence of his own methods of instruction and the spiritual equality irrespective of color of christians the missionary rises up and says things one can understand him saying about the bad influence of the white traders stating they lure the pupils from the fold to destruction these things are nevertheless not true then the white trader hears them and gets his back up and says things about the effect of missionary training on the african which are true but harsh because it is not the missionaries intent to turn out skillful forgers and unmitigated liars although they practically do so my share when i drop in on the state of mutual recrimination is to get myself into hot water with both parties the missionary thinks me misguided for regarding the africans goings on as part of the make of the men and the trader regards me as a soft-headed idiot when i state that it is not the missionaries individual blame that a lamb recently required from the fold has gone down the primrose path with the trust or the rum shade of sir john false staff what a life this is the two things to which the missionary himself ascribes his want of success are polygamy and the liquor traffic now polygamy is like most other subjects a difficult thing to form a just opinion on if before forming the opinion you take a careful study of the facts bearing on the case is therefore advisable if you wish to produce an opinion generally acceptable in civilized circles to follow the usual recipe for making opinions just take a prejudice of your own and mix it up with a so-called opinion of that class of people who go in for that sort of prejudice too i have got myself so entangled with facts that i cannot follow this plan and therefore i'm compelled to think polygamy for the africans is not an unmixed evil and that at the present culture level of the african it is not to be eradicated this arises from two reasons the first is that it is perfectly impossible for one african woman to do the work of the house prepare the food fetch water cultivate the plantations and look after the children attributed to one man she might do it if she had the work in her of an english or irish charwoman but she has not and a whole village full of african women to not do the work in a week that one of these will do in a day then too the african lady is quite indifferent as to what extent her good man may flirt with other ladies so long only as he does not go and give them more cloth and beads then he gives her and the second reason for polygamy lies in the custom well known to ethnologists and so widely diffused that one might say it was constant throughout all african tribes only there are so many of them whose domestic relationships have not been carefully observed as regards the drink traffic no one seems inclined to speak the truth about it in west africa and what i say i must be interested to say only about west africa because i do not like to form opinions without having had opportunities for personal observation and the only part of africa i have had these opportunities in has been from seara leon to angola and the reports from south africa show that an entirely different and a most unhealthy state of affairs exists there from its invasion by mixed european nationalities with individuals of a low type greedy for wealth west african conditions are no more like south african conditions than they are like indian the missionary party on the whole have gravely exaggerated both the evil and the extent of the liquor traffic in west africa i make an exception in favor of the late superintendent of the west leon mission on the gold coast the reverend denis camp who had enough courage and truth in him to stand up at a public meeting in liverpool on july 2nd 1896 and recorded as his opinion that the natives of the gold coast were remarkably abstinence but spirits were he believed of no benefit to the natives and they would be better without them i have quoted the whole of the remark as it is never fair to quote half a man says on any subject but i do not agree with the latter half of it and the gold coast natives are not any more abstinence if so much so as other tribes on the coast i have elsewhere attempted to show that the drink traffic is by no means the most important factor in the mission failure on the west coast but that it has been used in an unjustifiable way by the missionary party because they know the cry against alcohol is at present a popular one in england and it has also the advantage of making the subscribers at home regard the african is an innocent creature who is led away by bad white men and therefore still more interesting and more worthy and in more need of subscriptions than ever i should rather like to see the african lady or gentleman who could be led away all the leading away i have seen on the coast has been the other way about i do not say every missionary on the west coast who makes untrue statements on this subject is an original liar he is usually only following his leaders and repeating their observations without going into the evidence around him and the missionary public in england and scotland are largely to blame for their perpetual thirst for thrilling details of the amount of baptisms and experiences among the people they pay other people to risk their lives to convert or for thrilling details of the difficulties these said emissaries have to contend with as for the general public who swallow the statements i think they are prone from the evidence of the evils they see around them directly rising from drink to accept as true without bothering themselves with calm investigation statements of a like effect regarding other people i have no hesitation in saying that in the whole of west africa in one week there is not one quarter the amount of drunkenness you can see any saturday night you choose in a couple of hours in the vox hall road and you will not find in a whole year's investigation on the coast one seventieth part of the evil degradation and premature decay you can see any afternoon you choose to take a walk in the more densely populated parts of any of our own towns i own the whole affair is no business of mine for i have no financial interest in the liquor traffic whatsoever but i hate the praying upon emotional sympathy by misrepresentation and i grieve to see thousands of pounds wasted that are bitterly needed by our own cold starving poor i do not regard the money as wasted because it goes to the african but because such an immense percentage of it does no good and much harm to him it is customary to refer to the spirit sent out to west africa as poisonous and as raw alcohol it is neither i give an analysis of a bottle of van hoitermas tray gin which i obtained to satisfy my own curiosity on the point analysis of sample of tray gin with reference to the bottle of the above i have the honor to report as follows it contains absolute alcohol 39.35 percent acidity expressed as acetic acid 0.0068 percent ethers expressed as acetic acid 0.021 percent aldehydes present in small quantity forferal ditto ditto higher alcohols ditto ditto the only alcohol that can be estimated quantitatively is ethyl alcohol there is no methyl and the higher alcohols as shown by savoury methods only exist in traces the spirit is flavored by more than one essential oil and apparently oil of juniper is one of these oils the liquid contains no sugar and leaves but a small extract in my opinion the liquid essentially consists of a pure distilled spirit flavored with essential oils of course no attempt to identify these oils in the quantity sent this 632 cc one bottle was made the ethers are returned as ethyl acetate but from fractional distillation amyl acetate was found to be present i have the honor to be et cetera signed gh robertson fellow of the chemical society associate of the institute of chemistry end of chapter 21 part b trade and labor in west africa read by gain day of bar trek dot com