 CHAPTER XXI PART C of TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA this is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA by Mary H. Kingsley CHAPTER XXI PART C of TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA In a subsequent letter, Mr. Robertson observed that he had been assisted in making the above analysis by an expert in the chemistry of alcohols who said that the present sample differed in no material particulars from, and was neither more nor less deleterious to health than gin, purchased in different parts of London and submitted to analysis. In addition to this analysis, I have also one of Monsieur's Peter's gin, equally satisfactory, and as Van Hoetema and Peter's are the two great suppliers of the gin that goes to West Africa, I think the above is an answer to the poison statements, and should be sufficient evidence against it for all people who are not themselves Absolute Tito-Taylors. Absolute Tito-Taylors are definite-minded people, and one respects them more than one does to those who do not hold with Tito-Talism for themselves, but think it is a good thing for other people. And moreover, it is of no use arguing with them, because they say all alcohol is poison, and won't appreciate any evidence to the contrary, so palover done set. But a large majority of those who attack, or believe in their rectitude of the attack on, the African liquor traffic are not Tito-Taylors, and so should be capable of forming a just opinion. My personal knowledge of the district where most of the liquor goes in, the oil rivers, has been gained in Duke Town, old Calabar. I have been there four separate times, and last year stayed there continuously for some months, during a period in which, if Duke Town had felt inclined to go on the bust, it certainly could have done so. For the police and most of the government officials were away at brass, in consequence of the Akasa palover, and those few who were left behind and the white traders were down with an epidemic of malarial typhoid. But Duke Town did nothing of the kind. I used to be down in the heart of the town, at Ayambas market by Prince Archibong's house, night after night alone, watching the devil makings that were going on there, and the amount of drunkenness I saw was exceedingly small. I did the same thing at the adjacent town of Kwa. My knowledge of Bonney, Bell, and Aquatowns, Libreville, Lembarene, Cavinda, Boma, Banana, Nkoi, Luanda, etc. is extensive and peculiar, and I have spent hours in them with a whole of the missionary and government people have been safe in their distant houses, so had the evils of the liquor traffic been anything like half what it is made out to be. I must have come across it in appalling forms, and I have not. The figures of the case I will not hear a quote because they are easily obtained from government reports by anyone interested in the matter. I regard their value as being small and less combined with a knowledge of the West Coast trade. The liquor goes in at a few ports on the West Coast, and into the hands of those tribes who act as middlemen between the white trader and the interior trade-stuff-producing tribes, and is thereby diffused over an enormous extent of thickly inhabited country. We English are directly in touch with none of the interior trade, save in the territory of the Royal Niger Company, and the Delta tribes with whom we deal in the oil rivers subsist on this trade between the interior and the coast, and they prefer to use spirits as a buying medium because they get the highest percentage of profit from it and the lowest percentage of loss by damage when dealing with it. It does not get spoiled by damp like tobacco and cloth do indeed, in addition to the amount of moisture supplied by their reeking climate. They superad a large quantity of river water to the spirit before it leaves their hands, while with the other articles of trade it is one perpetual grind to keep them free from moisture and mildew. In their coast towns there are immense stories of gin in cases which they would as soon think of drinking themselves as we, if we were butchers, would think of eating up the stock in the shop. His certain percentage of spirits is consumed in the delta, and if spirits are wanted anywhere they are wanted in the Niger delta region, and about one eighth part of that used here is for fetish worship, poured out on the ground and mixed with other things, to hang in bottles over fish traps, and so on to make residences for guardian spirits who are expected to come and take up their boat in them. Spirits to the spirits on the sweets to the sweet principle is universal in West Africa, and those photographs you are often shown of dead chief's graves with bottles on them merely demonstrate that the deceased was taking down with him a little liquor for his own use in the underworld which he holds to be possessed of a chilly and damp climate, and a little over to give a propitiatory peg to one of the ruling authorities there, or any old friend he may come across in the Elysian fields. This is possibly a misguided hidden thing of him to do, and it is generally held in European circles that the underworld such an individual as he will go to is neither damp nor chilly. But granting this no one can contest but that the world he spends his life here in is damp, and that the natives of the Niger Delta live in a saturated forest swamp region that reeks with malaria. Their damp mud walled houses frequently flooded, they themselves spend the greater part of their time dabbling about in the stinking mangrove swamps, and then for five months in a year they are wrapped in the almost continuous torrential downpour of the West African wet season followed in the Delta by the so-called dry season with its thick morning and evening mists and the air rarely above dew point. Then their food is of poor quality and insufficient quantity and in districts near the coast noticeably deficient in meat of any kind. I think the desire for spirits and tobacco given these conditions is quite reasonable, and that when they are taken in moderation as they usually are, they are anything but deleterious. The African himself has not a shadow of a doubt on the point and some form of alcohol he will have. When he cannot get white man's spirit, Min Makara as he calls it in Calabar, he takes black man's spirit, mini thick. This is palm wine, and although it has escaped the abuse heaped on rum and gin, it is worse for the native than either of the others. For he has to drink a disgusting quantity of it because from the palm wine he does not get the stimulating effect quickly as from gin or rum, and the enormous quantity consumed at one sitting will distribute its effects over a week. You can always tell whether a native has had a glass too much rum or half a gallon or so too much palm wine, the first he soon recovers from, while the palm wine keeps him a disgusting nuisance for days, and the constitutional effects of it are worse, for it produces a definite type of renal disease which, if it does not cut short the life of the sufferer in a paroxysm, kills him gradually with dropsy. There is another native drink which works a bitter woe on the African in the form of intoxication, combined with a brilliant bilious attack. It is made from honey-flavored with a bark of a certain tree, and as it is very popular, I had better not spread it further by giving the recipe. The imported gin keeps the African off these abominations which he has to derange his internal works with, before he gets the stimulus that enables him to resist this vile climate, particularly will it keep him from his worst intoxicant, liamba, cannabis sativa, a plant which grows wild on the southwest coast and on the west for all I know, as well as the African or both string hemp, sanseviera. Cuniensis, the plant that produces the liamba, is a nettle-like plant growing six to ten feet high, and the natives collect the tops of the stems with the seed on in little bundles and dry them. It is evidently the seeds which are regarded by them as being the important part, although they do not collect these separately, but you hear great rows among them when buying and selling a little bundle, on the point of the seeds being shaken out. Chee, chee, chee, says A, this is worthless, there are no seeds. I, I, says B, never were there so many seeds in a bunch of liamba, etc. It is used smote, like the ganja of India, not like the preparation bang, and the way the Africans in the Congo used it was a very quaint one. They would hollow out a little hole in the ground, making a little dome over it. Then in went a few hemp tops, and onto them a few stones made red-hot in a fire. Then the dome was closed up, and a reed stuck through it. Then one man after another would go and drop into his lungs, as much smoke as he could with one prolonged deep inspiration, and then go apart and cough in a hard, hacking, distressing way, for ten minutes at a time, and then back to the reed for another pull. In addition to the worry of hearing their coughs, the liamba gives you trouble with the men, for it spoils their tempers, making them moody and fractious, and prone to quarrel with each other, and when they get an excessive dose of it, their society is more terrifying than tolerable. I once came across three men who had got into this state, and a fourth man who had not but was of the party. They fought with him and broke his head, and then we proceeded on our way, one gentleman taking flying leaps at some places, climbing up trees now and again, and embedding himself in the bush alongside the path, because of the pools of moving blood on it. If they had not kept moving, he said as he sat where he fell, he could have managed it. The others having grand times with various creatures, which, judging from their descriptions of them, I was truly thankful were not there. The men state of mind, however, soon cleared, and I must say this was the only time I came across this liamba, giving such strong effects. Usually the men just cough with that racking cough that lets you know what they have been up to, and quarrel for a short time. When, however, a whiff of liamba is taken by them in the morning before starting on a march, the effect seems to be good, enabling them to get over the ground easily and endure a long march without being exhausted. But a small tot of rum is better for them by far. Many other intoxicants made from bush are known to and used by the witch-doctors. You may say, well, if it is not the polygamy and not the drink that makes the West African as useless as he now is as a developer, or a means of developing the country, what is it? In my opinion, it is the sort of instruction he has received, not that this instruction is necessarily bad in itself, but bad from being unsuited to the sort of man to whom it has been given. It has the tendency to develop his emotionalism, his sloth, and his vanity, and it has no tendency to develop those parts of his character, which are in a rudimentary state and much wanted, thereby throwing the whole character of the man out of gear. The great inferiority of the African to the European lies in the matter of mechanical idea. I own, I regard, not only the African but all colored races as inferior, inferior in kind, not in degree, to the white races, although I know it is unscientific to lump all Africans together, and then generalize over them, because the difference between various tribes is very great. But nevertheless there are certain constant quantities in their character that the tribe be what it may that enable us to do this for practical purposes, making merely the distinction between Negroes and Bantu, and on the subject of this division I may remark that the Negro is superior to the Bantu. He is both physically and intellectually the more powerful man, and although he does not Christianize well, he does often civilize well. The native officials cited by Mr. Hodgson in his letter to the Times of January 4, 1895, as having satisfactorily carried on all the postal and the governmental printing work of the Gold Coast Colony, as well as all the subordinate custom house officials in the Niger Coast protectorate, in fact I may say all of them in the whole of the British possessions on the West Coast are educated Negroes. I am aware that all sea captains regard this latter class as poisonous nuisances, but then every properly constituted sea captain regards custom house officials let their color be what it may as poisonous nuisances anywhere. In addition to these you will find notably in Lagos excellent pure-blooded Negroes in European clothes and with European culture. The best men among these are lawyers, doctors, and merchants, and I have known many ladies of Africa who have risen to an equal culture level with their lords. On the West African seaboard you do not find the Bantu equally advanced, except among the Impongwe, and I am persuaded that this tribe is not pure Bantu but of Negro origin. The educated blacks that are not in Pongwe on the Bantu coast from Cameroons to Benguela you will find are Negroes who have gone down there to make money, but this class of African is the clerk class and we are now concerned with the laborer. The African's own way of doing anything mechanical is the simplest way, not the easiest, certainly not the quickest. He has all the chuckle-headedness of that overrated creature the ant, for his head never saves his heels. Watch a gang of boat boys getting a surf boat down a sandy beach, they turn it broadside on to the direction in which they wish it to go, and then turn it bodily over and over, with structures straining bumps to the boat, and any amount of advice and recriminatory observations to each other. Unless under what direction they will not make a slip nor will they put rollers under her? Watch again a gang of natives trying to get a log of timber down into the river from the bank and you will see the same sort of thing. No idea of a lever or anything of that sort and remember that unless under what direction the African has never made an even fourteenth rate piece of cloth or pottery or a machine, tool, picture, sculpture, and that he has never even risen to the level of picture writing. I am aware of his ingenious devices for transmitting messages, such as the cowry shells strung diversely on strings in use among the Yoruba, but even these do not equal the picture writing of the South American Indians, nor the picture the Red Indian does on a raw elk hide. They are far and away inferior to the graphic sporting sketches left us of mammoth hunts by the priest or caveman. This absence of mechanical aptitude is very interesting, though it most likely has the very simple underlying reason that the conditions under which the African has been living have been such as to make no call for a higher mechanical culture. In his native state he does not want to get heavy surfboards into the sea, his own light dugout is easily slid down. He does not want to cut down heavy timber trees and get them into the river and so on, but this state is now getting disturbed by the influx of white enterprise and not only disturbed but destroyed and so he must alter his ways or there will be grave trouble. But it is encouraging to remark that the African is almost as teachable and is willing to learn handicrafts as he is to simulate other things, provided his mind has not been poisoned by fallacious ideas and the results already obtained from the crewmen and the acras are good. The acras are not such good workmen as they might be because they are to a certain extent spoiled by getting, owing to the dearth of labour, higher wages and more toleration for indifferent bits of work than they deserve, or their work is worth but they have not yet fallen under that deadly spell worked by so many of the white men on so many of the black, the idea that it is the correct and proper thing not to work with your own hands but to get some underling to do all that sort of thing for you while you read and write. This false ideal formed by the native from his empirical observations of some of the white men around him has been the cause of great mischief. He sees the white man is his ruling man, rich, powerful and honoured and so he imitates him and goes to the mission school classes to read and write and as soon as an African learns to read and write he turns into a clerk. Now there is no immediate use for clerks in Africa, certainly no room for further development in this line of goods. What Africa wants at present and will want for the next two hundred years at least are workers, planters, plantation hands, miners and seamen and there are no schools in Africa to teach these things or the doctrine of the nobility of labour save the technical mission schools. Almost every mission on the coast has now a technical school just started or having collections made at home to start one but in the majority of these crafts such as bookbinding, printing, tailoring etc. are being taught which are not at present wanted. Still any technical school is better than none and apart from lay considerations is of great religious value to the mission indirectly for there are many instances in mission annals of a missionary receiving great encouragement from the natives when he first starts in a district. At first the converts flock in, get baptized in batches, go to church, attend school and adopt European clothes with an alacrity and enthusiasm that frequently turns their devoted pastor's head but after the lapse of a few months their conduct is enough to break his heart. Dressing up in European clothes amuses the ladies and some of the young men for a long time in some cases permanently but the older men and the bolder youth soon get bored and when an African is bored and he easily is so he goes utterly to the bad. It is in these places that an industrial mission would be so valuable to the spiritual cause for by employing and amusing the largely preponderating lower faculties of the African's mind it would give the higher faculties time to develop. I have frequently been told when advocating technical instruction that there are objections against it from spiritual standpoints which as my own views do not enable me to understand them I will not enter into. Also several authorities not mission authorities alone state with ethnologists that the African is incapable of learning except during the period of childhood. Professor A. H. Keane says their inherent mental inferiority almost more marked than their physical characters depends on physiological causes by which the intellectual faculties seem to be arrested before attaining their normal development and further on we must necessarily infer that the development of the negro and white proceeds on different lines while with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brain pan in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone. You will frequently meet with a statement that the negro child is as intelligent or more so than the white child but that as soon as it passes beyond childhood it makes no further mental advance. Burton says his mental development is arrested and then's forth he grows backwards instead of forwards. Now it is nervous for contradicting these statements but with all due respect to the makers of them I must do so and I have the comfort of knowing that many men with a larger personal experience of the African than these authorities have agree with me although at the same time we utterly disclaim holding the opinion that the African is a man and a brother. A man he is but not of the same species and his cranial sutures do I agree close early indeed I have seen them almost obliterated in skulls of men who have died quite young but I think most anthropologists are nowadays beginning to see that the immense value they a few years since set upon skull measurements and cranial capacity etc has been excessive and not to have so great a bearing on the intelligence as they thought. There has been an enormous amount of material carefully collected mainly by Frenchmen on craniology which is exceedingly interesting but full of difficulty and giving very diverse indications. Take the weights of brain given by toponard one anemite one thousand two hundred and thirty three grams seven African negroes one thousand two hundred and thirty eight grams eight African negroes one thousand two hundred eighty nine grams one hut and tot one thousand four hundred and seventeen grams and I think you will see for practical purposes such considerations as weight of brain or closure of sutures etc are negligible and so we need not get paralyzed with respect for physiological causes. Moreover I may remark that the top weight the hut and tot was a lady and that ambroka weighed one negro's brain which scaled one thousand five hundred grams while one hundred and five English and Scotchman only gave an average of one thousand four hundred and twenty seven. So I think we may make our minds easy on the safety of sticking to outside facts and say that after all it does not much affect the question of capacity for industrial training in the African if he does choose to close up the top of his head early and that the whole attempt to make out that the African is a child form and arrested development is well not supported by facts the very comparison between white and black children's intelligence to the disadvantage of the former is all wrong the white child is not his inferior he is not so quick in picking up parlor tricks but then where are either the children at that alongside a French poodle what happens to the African from my observations is just what happens to the European namely when he passes out of childhood he goes into a period of horrible dehoihood during this period his skull might just as well be filled inside with wallets covered outside with it but after a time during which he has succeeded in distracting and discouraging the white men who hoped so much of him when he was a child his mind clears up again and goes ahead all right it is utter rubbish to say you cannot teach an adult African and that he grows backwards for even without white interference he gets more and more cunning as time goes on does anyone who knows them feel inclined to tell me that those old palm oil chiefs have not learned a thing or two during their lives or that a well-matured bush trader has not go down to West Africa yourself if you doubt this and carry on a series of experiments with them in subjects they know of trade subjects try and get the best of a whole series of mature adults male or female and I can promise you you will return a wiser and a poor man but with a joyful heart regarding the capacity of the African to grow up whether he does this by adding convolutions or piling on his gray matter we will leave for the present all that I wish to urge regarding the African at large is that he has been mismanaged of late years by the white races the study of this question is a very interesting one but I have no space to enter into it here in detail in my opinion I say my own I beg you to remark only when I am uttering hearsay this mismanagement has been a byproduct of the wave of hysterical emotionalism that has run through white culture and for which I have an instinctive hatred I have briefly pointed out the evil worked by misdirected missionary effort on the native mind but it is not the missionary alone that is doing harm the government does nearly as much whether it does this because of the fear of Exeter Hall as representing a big voting interest whether just from the tendency to get everything into the hands of a council or an office to be everlastingly nagging and legislating and inspecting matters little the result is bad and it fills me with the greatest admiration for my country to see how in spite of this she keeps the lead that she will always keep it I believe because I believe that it is impossible that this phase of emotionalism no it is not hypocrisy my french friends it is only a sort of fit we'll last and we shall soon be back in our clear senses again and say to the world we do this thing because we think it is right because we think it is best for those we do it to and for ourselves not because of the wickedness of war the brotherhood of man or any other notion bread of fear the way in which the present ideas acting through the government do harm in Africa are many english government officials have very little and very poor encouragement given them if they push inland and attempt to enlarge the sphere of influence which their knowledge of local conditions teaches them requires enlarging because the authorities at home are afraid other nations will say we are rapacious land gravers well we always have been and they will say it anyhow and where after all is the harm in it we have acted in unison with the nations who for good sound reasons of their own have cut down portuguese possessions in africa because we were afraid of being thought to support a nation who went in for slavery i always admire a good move in a game or a brilliant bit of strategy and that was a beauty and on our head now lie the affairs of the congo free state while friends and journey smile sweetly knowing that these affairs will soon be such that they will be able to step in and divide the territory up between themselves without a sign on their character in the interests of humanity the whole of that rich region which by the name of living stone spake grand burden and cameroon should now be ours then again in commercial competition our attitude seems to me very lacking in dignity we are now just beginning to know it is a fight and this commercial war has been going on since 1880 since in fact friends in germany have recovered from their war of 1870 and if we are to carry on this commercial war with any hope of success we must abandon our oh that's not fair i won't play attitude and above all we must have no more government restrictions on our foreign trade in west africa governmental restriction settles like dew in autumn on the liquor traffic it is a case of give a dog a bad name and hang him moreover raising the import dues on liquor may bring into the government a good revenue but it is a short-sighted policy for the liquor is a thing there is the best market foreign west africa the natives have no enthusiasm about cotton goods as they seem from some accounts to have in east central and the supply of them they now get and get cheap and good is as much as they require and if the question of the abstract morality of introducing clothes or introducing liquor to native races were fairly gone into the results would be interesting for clothing native races in european clothes works badly for them and kills them off indeed the whole of this question of trade with the lower races is full of curious and unexpected points speaking at large the introduction of european culture governmental religious or mercantile has a destructive action on all the lower races many of them the governmental and religious sections have stamped right out but trade has never stamped a race out when dissociated from the other two and it certainly has had no bad effect in tropical africa with regards to the liquor traffic try and put yourself in the west african's place imagine for example that you want a pair of boots you go into a shop prepared to pay for them but the man who keeps the shop says my good friend you must not have boots they are immoral you can have a tin of sardines or a pocket handkerchief they are much better for you would you take the sardines or the pocket handkerchiefs more particularly would you feel inclined to take them instead of your desired boots if you knew there was a shop in a neighboring street where boots are to be had and there is a neighboring shop street to all our west coast possessions which is in the hands of either france or germany i do not for a moment deny that the liquor traffic requires regulation but it requires more regulation in europe than it does in africa because europe is more given to intoxication in africa all that is wanted is that the spirit sent in should be wholesome and not sold at a strength over 45 degrees below proof these requirements are fairly well fulfilled already on the west coast and i can see no reason for any further restriction or additional imposed if further restrictions in the sale of it are wanted it is not for interior trade where the natives are not given to excess but in the larger coast towns where there is a body of natives who are the debris of the disintegrating process of white culture but even in those towns like sierra leon and legos these men are a very small percentage of the population if things are even made no worse for him than they are at present the english trader may be trusted to hold a greater part of the trade of west africa for the benefit of the english manufacturers if he is more heavily hampered the english trade will die out the english trader remain because he is the best trader with the natives but it will be small profit to the english manufacturers because the trader will be dealing in foreign made stuff as he is now in the possessions of france and germany english manufacturers i may remark have succeeded in turning out the cloth goods best suited for the african markets but there has of late years been an increase in the quantity of other goods made by foreigners used in the west coast trade the imports from france and germany and the united states to the gold coast for 1894 published 1896 were 217,388 pounds the exports of 212,320 pounds and the consular report 158 for the gold coast says that while the trade with the united kingdom has increased from 1,054,336 pounds 17s 6d in 1893 to 1,190,532 pounds 1s 3d in 1894 or roughly 13 the trade with foreign countries has increased upwards of 22% namely from 350,387 pounds 3s 5d to 429,708 pounds 1s 4d in the legos consular report number 150 similar comparative statistics are not given but the increase at that place is probably greater than on the gold coast as they have a percentage of the legos trade goes through the hands of two german firms but this increase in foreign trade in our colony seems to be even greater in other parts of africa for in a foreign office report from mozambique it is stated regarding cape colony that while british imports show an otherwise satisfactory increase german trade has more than troubled there is a certain school of philanthropists in europe who say that it is not advisable to spread white trade in africa that the native is provided by the bountiful earth with all that he really requires and that therefore he should be allowed to live his simple life and not be compelled or urged to work for the white man's gain i have a sneaking sympathy with these good people because i like the african in his bush state best and one can understand any truly human being horrified at the extinction of native races in the polynesian melanesian and american regions but still their view is full of error as regards africa for one thing i am glad to say the african does not die off as do those weaker races under white control but increases and herein lies the impossibility of accepting this plan as within the sphere of practical politics most certainly in regard to all districts under white control for the bountiful earth does not amount to much in africa with native methods of agriculture it's sufficed when a percentage of the population were shipped to america as slaves now it suffices only to help to keep the natives in their lowest state of culture a state that is only kept up even to its present level by trade the condition of the african native will be a very dreadful one if this trade is not maintained indeed i may say if it is not increased proportionately to the increase of white government control for this governmental control does many things that are good in themselves and glorious on paper it prevents the export slave trade it suppresses human sacrifice it stops internecine war among the natives in short it does everything save suppressed a terrible infant mortality why does not do this i need not discuss to increase the native population without in itself doing anything to increase the means of supporting this population native and wants to decrease these by importing asiatics to do its work in making roads etc it may be said there is no fear of the trade which keeps the native disappearing from the west coast but it is well to remember that the stuff that this trade is dependent on the stuff brought into the traders factory by the native is mainly indeed say for the southwest coast coffin cacao we may say entirely bush stuff uncultivated merely collected and roughly prepared and it is so wastefully collected by the native that it cannot last indefinitely take rubber for example one of the main exports owing to the wasteful methods employed in its collection it gets stamped out of districts the trade in it starts on a bit of coast for some years so rich is a supply that it can be collected almost at the natives back door but owing to his cutting down the vine he clears it off and every year he has to go further and further afield for a load but his ability to go further than a certain point is prevented by the savage interior tribes not under wide control and also on its paying him to go on these long journeys for the price at home takes little notice of his difficulties because of the more carefully collected supply of rubber sent into the home markets by south america and india therefore the native loses and when he is cleared the districts reachable by him the trade is finished there and he has no longer the wherewithal to buy those things which in the days of his prosperity he has acquired a taste for the oil rivers which send out the greatest quantity of trade on the west coast possessions subsist entirely on palm oil for it or anything to happen to the oil palms in the way of blight or ray cheap substitute to be found for palm oil at home the population of the oil rivers even at its present density would starve the development of trade is a necessary condition for the existence of the natives and the discovery products in the forests that will be marketable in europe and the making of plantations whose products will help to take the place of those he so recklessly now destroys will give him a safer future than can any amount of abolition of domestic slavery or institutions of trial by jury etc if wide control advances and plantations are not made and trade with the interior is not expanded the condition of the west african will be a very wretched one far worse than it was before the export slave trade was suppressed in the more healthy districts the population will increase to a state of congestion and will starve the coast regions malaria will always keep the black as well as the wide population thin down but if deserted by the trader and left to the government official and the missionary without any longer the incentive of trade to make the native exert himself or the resulting comforts which assist him in resisting the climate which the trade now enables him to procure the coast native will sink via vise and degradation to extinction and most likely have this process made all the more rapid and unpleasant for him by incursions of the wild tribes from the congested interior i do not cite this as an immediate future for the west african but a little more and how much it is a little less and how far away remember human beings are under the same rule as other creatures if you destroy the things that prey on them they are liable to over swarm the food producing power of their locality it may be said this is not the case look at the Polynesians the south american indians and so on you may look at them as much as you choose but what you see there will not enable you to judge the african the african does not fade away like a flower before the white man not in the least look at the increase of the native in the cape territory look at what he has stood on the west coast christopher columbus visited him before he discovered the american indians wailing captains and seamen of all sorts and nationalities have dropped in on him frequent and free he has absorbed all sorts of doctrine from religious sects cotton goods patent medicines foreign spirits and as the man who draws up the legos annual colonial report poetic clip serves twine whiskey wine and woollen goods yet the west coast african is here with us by the million playing on his tum tum paddling his dugout canoe living in his palm leaf or mud hut ready and able to stand more white men stuff say for an occasional habit of going raving or melancholy med when educated for the ministry and dying when he and more particularly she is shot up in the broiling hot corrugated iron school room with too many clothes on and too much head work to do he survives in a way which i think you will own is interesting and which commands my admiration and respect but there is nowadays a new factor in his relationship with the white races the factor of domestic control i do not think the african will survive this and flourish if it is to be of the nature that the present white ideas aim to make it but on the other hand i do not believe that he will be called upon to try for under the present conditions white control will not become very thorough and in the event of an european war governmental attention will be distracted from west africa and the african will then do what he has done several times before when the white eye has been off him for a decade or so sink back to his old level as he has in congo after the jesuit's tidied him up and as he must have done after his intercourse with the finnishians and egyptians the travelers of a remote future will find him i think still with his tom tom and his dugout canoe just as willing to sell as big curios the debris of our importations to his ancestors at a high price exactly how much he will ask for a devos patent paraffin oil tin or a morton's tin i cannot imagine but it will be something stiff such as he asks nowadays for the finnishian agribeds there will be then as there is now and as there was in the past individual africans will rise to a high level of culture but that will be all for a very long period to say that the african race will never advance beyond its present cultural level is saying too much in spite of the massive evidence supporting this view but i am certain they will never advance above it in the line of european culture the country he lives in is unfitted for it and the nature of the man himself is all against it the truth is the west coast mind has got a great deal too much superstition about it and too little of anything else our own methods of instruction have not been of any real help to the african because what he wants teaching is how to work bishop ingram would have been able to write a more cheerful and hopeful book than his sara leon after 100 years if the sara leonians had had a thorough grounding in technical culture suited to the requirements of their country instead of the ruinous instruction they have been given at the cost of millions of money and hundreds of good if ill advised white men's lives for it is possible for a west african native to be made by european culture into a very good sort of man not the same sort of man that a white man is but a man a white man can shake hands with and associate with without any loss of self-respect it is by no means necessary however that the african should have any white culture at all to become a decent member of society at large quite the other way about for the percentage of honorable and reliable men among the bushmen is higher than among the educated men i do not believe that the white race will ever drag the black up to their own particular summit in the mountain range of civilization both polygamy and slavery are for diverse reasons essential to the well-being of africa at any rate for those vast regions of it which are agricultural and these two institutions will necessitate the african having a summit to himself only alas for the energetic reformer the african is not keen on mountaineering in the civilization range he prefers remaining down below and being comfortable he is not conceited about this he admires the higher culture very much and the people who inconvenience themselves by going in for it but do it himself no and if he is dragged up into the higher regions of a self-abnegatory religion six times in ten he falls back damaged a morally maimed man into his old swampy country fashion valley end of chapter 21 part c trade and labor in west africa read by gehinde of bahatrak.com chapter 22 disease in west africa of travels in west africa this is a liper vox recording all liper vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liper vox.org travels in west africa by mary h. kingsley chapter 22 disease in west africa great as is the delay and difficulty placed in the way of the development of the immense natural resources of west africa by the labor problem there is another cause of delay to this development greater and more terrible by far namely the deadliness of the climate nothing hinders a man miss kingsley have so much as dying a friend said to me the other day after nearly putting his opinion to a practical test other parts of the world have more sensational outbreaks of death from epidemics of yellow fever and cholera but there is no other region in the world that can match west africa for the steady kill kill killed that its malaria works on the white men who come under its influence malaria you will hear glibly talked of but what malaria means and consists of you will find a few men ready to attempt to tell you and these few by no means of a tale it is very strange that these terrible form of disease has not attracted more scientific investigators considering the enormous mortality it causes throughout the tropics and subtropics a few years since when the peculiar microbes of everything from measles to miracles were being isolated several bacteriologists isolated the malaria microbe only unfortunately they did not all isolate the same one a regime of the various claims of these microbes is impossible here and whether one of them was the true cause or whether they all have an equal claim to this position is not yet clear for malaria as far as I have seen or read of it seems to be not so much one distinct form of fever as a group of fevers a genus not a species many things point to this being the case particularly the different forms so-called malaria poisoning takes in different localities this subject may be also subdivided and complicated by going into the controversy as to whether yellow fever is endemic on the west coast or not that it has occurred there from time to time there can be no question at Fernanda Poe in 1862 and 1866 in Senegal pretty frequently and at least one epidemic at Bonnie was true yellow fever but in the case of each of these outbreaks it is said to have been imported from South America into Fernanda Poe by ships from Havana and into Bonnie by a ship which had on her previous run been down the South American ports with a cargo of mules the litter belonging to this meal cargo was not cleared out of her until she got into Bonnie when it was thrown over side into the river and then the yellow fever broke out but on the other hand South America taxes west Africa the guinea coast with having first sent out yellow fever in the cargoes of slaves this certainly is a strange statement because the African native rarely has malaria fever severely he has it and you are often informed so-and-so has got yellow fever but he does not often die of it merely is truly wretched and sick for a day or so and then recovers regarding the hamatura there is also controversy a very experienced and excellent authority doubts whether this is entirely a malaria fever or whether it is not in some cases at any rate brought on by overdoses of quinine and dr. Flynn asserts and his assertions are heavily backed up by his great success in treating this fever that quinine has a very bad influence when the characteristic symptoms have declared themselves and that it should not be given I hesitate to advise this because I fear to induce anyone to abandon quinine which is the great weapon against malaria and not from any want of faith in dr. Flynn for he has studied malarial fevers in Cameroon with the greatest energy and devotion bringing to bear on the subject a sound German mind trained in a German way and then this for such subjects no better thing exists his brother also a doctor was stationed in Cameroon before him and is now in the German East African possessions similarly working hard and when these two shall publish the result of their conjoined investigations we shall have the most important contribution to our knowledge of malaria that has ever appeared it is impossible to overrate the importance of such work as this to West Africa for the man who will make West Africa pay will be the scientific man who gives us something more powerful against malaria than quinine it is too much to hope that medical men out at work on the coast doctoring day and night and not only obliged to doctor but to nurse their white patients with a balance of their time given up by giving bills of health to steamers wrestling with a varied and awful sanitary problems presented by the native town etc can have sufficient time or life left in them to carry on series of experiments and of cultures but they can and do supply to the man in the laboratory at home grand material for him to carry the thing through meanwhile we wait for that man and do the best we can the net results of laboratory investigation according to the french doctors is that the mycetizoic malarial bacillus the microbe of palatism is amoeboid in its movements acting on the red corpuscles leaving nothing of them but the dark pigment found in the skin and organs of malarial subjects the german doctors make a practice of making microscopic examinations of the blood of a patient saying that the microbes appear at the commencement of an attack of fever increase in quantity as the fever increases and decrease as it decreases and from these investigations they are able to judge fairly accurately how many remissions may be expected in fact to judge of the severity of the case which taken with the knowledge that quinine only affects malarial microbes at a certain stage of their existence is helpful in treatment there is i may remark a very peculiar point regarding hematoric disease the most deadly form of west coast fever this disease so far as we know has always been present on the southwest coast at luanda the lower congo and gaboon but it is said not to have appeared in the rivers until 1881 and then to have spread along the west coast my learned friend dr flan doubts this and says people were less observant in those days but the symptoms of this fever are so distinct that i must think it also totally impossible for it not to have been differentiated from the usual remittant or intermittent by the old west coasters if it had occurred there in former times with anything like the frequency it does now but we believe these theoretical and technical considerations and turn to the practical side of the question you will always find lots of people ready to give advice on fever particularly how to avoid getting it and you will find the most dogmatic of these are people who have been singularly unlucky in the matter or people who know nothing of local conditions these latter are the most trying of all to deal with they tell you truly enough no doubt that the malaria is in the air in the exhalations from the ground which are greatest about sunrise and sunset and in the drinking water and that you must avoid chill excessive mental and bodily exertion that you must never get anxious or excited or lose your temper now there is only one the drinking water of this list that you can avoid for owing to the great variety and rapid growth of bacteria encouraged by the tropical temperature and the aqueous saturation of the atmosphere from the heavy rainfall and the great extent of swamp etc it is practically impossible to destroy them in the air to a satisfactory extent i was presented by scientific friends when i first went to the west coast with the two devices supposed to do this one was a lamp which you burnt some chemical in it certainly made a smell that nothing could live with but then i am nothing and there are enough smells on the coast now i gave it up after the first half hour the other device was a muzzle a respirator i should say well all i have got to say about that is that you need to be a better looking person than i am to wear a thing like that without causing panic in a district then orders to avoid the night air are still more difficult to obey may i ask how you are to do without air from six thirty p.m to six thirty a.m or what other air there is but night air heavy with malaria's exhalations available then the drinking water you have a better chance with as i will presently state chill you cannot avoid when you are at work on the coast even with the greatest care the sudden fall of temperature that occurs after a tornado coming at the end of a stewing hot day is sure to tell on anyone and as for the orders regarding temper neither the natives nor the country nor the trade help you in the least but still you must remember that although it is impossible to fully carry out these orders you can do a good deal towards doing so and preventive measures are the great thing for it is better to escape fever altogether or to get off with a light touch of it than to make a sensational recovery from yellow jack himself there is little doubt that a certain make of man has the best chance of surviving the coast climate an energetic spare nervous but light hearted creature capable of enjoying whatever there may be to enjoy and incapable of dwelling on discomforts or worries it is quite possible for a person of this sort to live and work hard on the coast for a considerable period possibly with better health than he would have in england the full-blooded corpulent and vigorous should avoid west africa like the plague one after another men and women who looked as the same goes as if you could take a lease of their lives I have seen come out and die and it gives one a sense of horror when they arrive at your west coast station for you feel a sort of accessory before the fact to murder but what can you do except to get yourself laughed at as a croaker and attend the funeral best ways of avoiding the danger of the night air are to have your evening meal about six thirty or seven eight is too late sleep under a mosquito curtain whether there are mosquitoes in your district or not and have a meal before starting out in the morning a good hot cup of tea or coffee and bread and butter if you can get it if not something left from last night supper or even aguma regarding meals of course we come to the vexed question of stimulants all the evidence is in favor of alcohol of a proper sort taken at proper times and in proper quantities being extremely valuable take the case of the missionaries who are almost all tito tailors they are young men and women who have to pass a medical examination before coming out and whose lives on the coast are far easier than those of other classes of white men yet the mortality among them is far heavier than in any other class mr. Stanley says that one is the best form of stimulant but that it should not be taken before the evening meal certainly on the southwest coast where a heavy but sound red wine imported from Portugal is the common drink the mortality is less than on the west coast beer has had what one might call a thorough trial in the camera rune since the German occupation and is held by authorities to be the cause in part of the number of cases of hematoric fever in that river being greater than in other districts but this subject requires scientific comparative observation on various parts of the coast for Cameroons is at the beginning of the southwest coast where on the percentage of cases of hematoric to those of intermittent and remittent fevers is far higher than on the west coast a comparative study of the diseases of the western division of the continent would I should say repay a scientific doctor if he survived the material he would have to deal with would be enormous and in addition to the history of hematoric he would be confronted with the problem of the form of fever which seems to be a recent addition to West African afflictions the so-called typhoid malaria which have late years has come into the rivers and apparently come to stay this fever is I may remark practically unknown at present in the southwest coast regions where the Sun for garbage plan is adhered to at present the treatment of all white man's diseases on the coast practically consists in the treatment of malaria because whatever disease a person gets hold of takes on a malaria type which masks its true nature why I knew a gentleman who had his final attack of the smallpox as anyone would not wish to have and who for days behaved as if he had remittent and then burst out into the characteristic eruption and only got all his earthly possessions burnt and no end of carboleic acid dressings for his pains I do not suppose this does much harm as the malaria is the main thing that wants curing unless dr. Flynn is right and quinine is bad in hematuria his success in dealing with this fever seems to support his opinion and the French doctors on the coast who does it heavily with quinine have certainly a very heavy percentage of mortality among their patients with hematuric although in the other forms of malaria fever they very rarely lose a patient but to return to those preventive measures and having done what we can with the air we will turn our attention to the drinking water for an addition to malaria microbes the drinking and washing water of West Africa is liable to contain derma zoic and endozoic organisms and if you don't take care you will get from it into your anatomy tinier versicular tinier decalvins tinier surcinada tinier psychosis tinier favoza or some other member of that wretched family let alone being nearly certain to import tricosephalus dispar as carous lumbar coides oxyurus vermicularis and eight varieties of nematodes each of them with an awful name of its own and unpleasant consequences to you and lastly a peculiar abomination of philaria this is not what it's euphonious name may lead you to suppose a fern but it is a worm which gets into the white of the eyes and leads their a lively existence causing distressing itching throbbing and pricking sensations not affecting the site until it happens to set up inflammation i have seen the eyes of natives simply swarming with this philaria a curious thing about the disease is that it usually commences in one eye and when that becomes overpopulated an emigration society sets out for the other eye traveling thither under the skin of the bridge of the nose looking while in transit like the bridge of a pair of spectacles a similar but not identical worm is fairly common on the ogowe and is liable to get under the epidermis of any part of the body like the one affecting the eye it is very active in its movements passing rapidly about under the skin and producing terrible pricking and itching but very trifling inflammation in those cases which i have seen the treatment consists of getting the thing out and the thing to be careful of is to get it out whole for if any part of it is left in separation sets in so even if you are personally convinced you have got it out successfully it is just as well to wash out the wound with carbolyg or condies fluid the most frequent sufferers from this philaria are the natives but white people do get them do not confuse this philaria with the guinea worm philaria medinensis which runs up to 10 and 12 feet in length and whose habits are different it is more sedentary but it is in the drinking water inside small crustacea cyclops it appears commonly in its human host's leg and rapidly grows curled round and round like a watch spring showing raised under the skin the native treatment of this pest is very cautiously to open the skin over the head of the worm and secure it between a little cleft bit of bamboo and then gradually wind the rest of the affair out only a small portion can be wound out at a time as the wound is very liable to inflame and should the worm break it is certain to inflame badly and a terrible wound will result you cannot wind it out by the tail because you are then so to speak turning it's further wrong way and it catches in the wound I should say I may remark strongly advise anyone who likes to start early on a canoe journey to see that no native member of the party has a philaria medinensis on hand for winding it up is always reserved for a morning job and as many other jobs are similarly reserved it makes for delay I know my friends that you one and all say that the drinking water at your particular place is of singular beauty and purity and that you always tell the boys to filter it but I am convinced that the water is no more to be trusted than the boys and I'm lost in amazement at people of your intelligence trusting the trio of water boys and filter in the way you do one favorite hunt of mine gets its drinking water from a cemented hole in the backyard into which drains a very strong smelling black little swamp which is surrounded by a ridge of sandy ground on which are situated several groups of native houses whose inhabitants enhance their fortunes and their drainage by taking in washing at Fernanda Poe the other day I was assured as usual that the water was perfection beautiful spring coming down from the mountain etc in the course of the afternoon affairs took me up the mountain to Basile for the first part of the way along the course of the said stream the first objects of interest I observed in the drinking water supply were four natives washing themselves and their clothes the next was the bloated body of a dead goat reposing in a pellucid pool the path and left the course of the stream but on arriving in the region of its source I found an interesting little colony of Spanish families which had been imported out whole children and all by the government they had a nice neat little cemetery attached which his excellency the doctor told me was stocked mostly with children who were always dying off from worms good so far for the drinking water and as to what that beautiful stream was soaking up when it was round corners I did not see it so I do not know but I will be bound it was some abomination or another but it's no use talking it's the same all along Sierra Leone Green Coast Ivory Coast Gold Coast Lagos Rivers Cameroon Congo Francé Cacongo Congo Belgue and Angola when you ask your white friends how they can be so reckless about the water which as they know is a decoction of the malaria's earth exposed night and day to the malaria's air they all up and say they are not they have got an awfully good filter and they tell the boys etc and that they themselves often put wine or spirit in the water to kill the microbes vanity vanity at each and every place I know men have died and worms have eaten them the safest way of dealing with water I know is to boil it hard for 10 minutes at least and then instantly pour it into a jar with a narrow neck which plug up with a water fresh cotton wool not a cork and should you object to the flat taste of boiled water plunge into it a bit of red hot iron which will make it more agreeable in taste before boiling the water you can carefully filter it if you like a good filter is a very fine thing for clearing drinking water of hippopotamia crocodiles water snakes catfish etc and I dare say it will stop back 60 percent of the live or dead african natives that may be in it but if you think it is going to stop back the microbe of marsh fever my good sir you are mistaken and remember that you must give up cold water boiled or unboiled all together for if you take the boiled or filtered water and put it into one of those water coolers and leave it hanging exposed to night air or day on the veranda you might just as well save yourself the trouble of boiling it at all next in danger to the diseases come the remedies for them let the newcomer remember in dealing with quinine calomel arsenic and spirits that they are not cast or sugar nor he a glass bottle but let him use them all the two first fairly frequently not waiting for an attack of fever and then ladling them into himself with a spoon the third arsenic a drug much thought of by the french who holds that if you establish an arsenic hakexia you do not get a malarial one should not be taken except under a doctor's orders spirit is undoubtedly extremely valuable when from causes beyond your control you have got a chill remember always your life hangs on quinine and that it is most important to keep the system sensitive to it which you do not do if you keep on pouring in heavy doses of it for nothing and you make yourself deaf into the bargain i have known people take 60 grains of quinine in a day for a bilious attack and turn it into a disease they only get through by the skin of their teeth for the prophylactic action of quinine is its great one as it only has power over malarial microbes at a certain state of their development the fully matured microbe it does not affect any great degree and therefore by taking it when in a malaria's district say in a dose of five grams a day you keep down the malaria which you are bound even with every care to get into your system when you have got very chilled or overtired take an extra five grains with a little wine or spirit at any time and when you know by reason of aching head and limbs and a sensation of a stream of cold water down your back and an awful temper that you are in for a fever send for a doctor if you can if as generally happens there is no doctor near to send for take a compound callomil and call synth pill 15 grams of quinine and a grain of opium and go to bed wrapped up in the best blanket available when safely there take lashings of hot tea or what is better a hot drink made from fresh lime juice strong and without sugar fresh limes are almost always to be had if not bottled lime juice does well then in the hot stage don't go fanning about nor in the perspiring stage for if you get a chill then you may turn a mild dose of fever into a fatal one if however you keep conscientiously rolled in your blanket until the perspiring stage is well over and stay in bed till the next morning the chances are you will be all right though a little shaky about the legs you should continue the quinine taking it in five grain doses up to 15 to 20 grains a day for a week after any attack of fever but you must omit the opium pill the great thing in west africa is to keep up your health to a good level that will enable you to resist fever and it is exceedingly difficult for most people to do this because of the difficulty of getting exercise and good food but do what you may it is almost certain you will get fever during a residence of more than six months on the coast and the chances are two to one on the gold coast that you will die of it but without precautions you will probably have it within a fortnight of first landing and your chances of surviving are almost nil with precautions in the rivers and on the southwest coast your touch of fever may be a thing inferior in danger and discomfort to a bad cold in england yet remember before you elect to cast your lot in with the west coasters that 85 percent of them die of fever or return home with their health permanently wrecked also remember there is no getting acclimatized to the coast there are it is true a few men out there who although they have been resident in west africa for years have never had fever but you can count them up on the fingers of one hand there is another class who have been out for 12 months at a time and have not had a touch of fever these you want the fingers of your two hands to count but no more by far the largest class is the third which is made up of those who have a slight dose of fever once a fortnight and some day apparently for no extra reason get a heavy dose and die of it a very considerable class is the fourth those who die within a fortnight to a month of going ashore the fate of a man depends solely on his power of resisting the so-called malaria not in his system becoming inured to it the first class of men that i have cited have some unknown element in their constitutions that renders them immune with the second class the power of resistance is great and can be renewed from time to time by a spell home in a european climate in the third class the state is that of cumulative poisoning in the fourth of acute poisoning let the newcomer who goes to the coast take the most cheerful view of these statements and let him regard himself as pre-ordained to be one of the two most favorite classes let him take every care short of getting frightened which is as deadly as taking no care at all and he may i sincerely hope he will survive for a man who has not cut the grid in him to go and fight in west africa for those things worth fighting for duty honor and gold is a man whose death is a dead loss to his country the car goes from west africa truly may wives and mythers may despairing k them lives of men yet grievous as is the price england pays for her west african possessions to us who know the men who risk their lives and die for them england gets a good equivalent value for it for she is the greatest manufacturing country in the world and as such requires markets nowadays she requires them more than new colonies a colony drains annually thousands of the most enterprising and energetic of her children from her leaving behind them their aged and incapable relations moreover a colony gradually becomes a rival manufacturing center to the mother country whereas west africa will remain for hundreds of years a region that will supply the manufacturer with his raw material and take in exchange for it his manufactured articles giving him a good margin of profit and the holding of our west african markets drains annually a few score of men only only too often forever but the trade they carry on and develop there a trade according to sir george bedan powell of the annual value of nine million sterling enables thousands of men women and children to remain safely in england in comfort and pleasure owing to the wages and profits arising from the manufacture and export of the articles used in that trade so i trust that those at home in england will give all honor to the men still working in west africa erotting in the weed grown snake infested cemeteries in the forest swamps men whose battles have been fought out on lonely beaches far away from home and friends and often from another white man's help sometimes with savages but more often with a more deadly foe with none of the anodyne to death and danger given by the companionship of hundreds of fellow soldiers in a fight with a foe you can see but with a foe you can see only incarnate in the dreams of your delirium which runs as a poison in burning veins and aching brain the dread west coast fever and may england never again dream of forfeiting or playing with the conquests won for her by those heroes of commerce the west coast traders four of them as well as of such men as sir gerald portal truly it may be said of such is the kingdom of england end of chapter 22 disease in west africa read by gaende of bahatrek dot com chapter 23 appendix the invention of the cloth loom this is a liber vox recording all liber vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liber vox dot org travels in west africa by mary age kingsley chapter 23 appendix the invention of the cloth loom this story is taken down from an evil but practically the same story can be found among all the cloth making tribes in west africa in the old times there was a man who was a great hunter but he had a bad wife and when he made medicine to put on his spear she made medicine against his spear but he knew nothing of this thing and went out after bush cow by and by he found a big bush cow and threw his spear at it but the bush cow came on and drove its horns through his thigh so the man crapped home and lay in his house very sick and the witch doctor found out which of his wives had witched the spear and they killed her and for many days the man could not go out hunting but he was a great hunter and his liver grew hot in him for the bush so he dragged himself to the bush and lay there every day one day as he lay he saw a big spider making a net on a bush and he watched him by and by he saw how the spider caught his game and that the spider was a great hunter and the man said if i had hunted as the spider hunts if i had made a trap like that and put it in the bush and then gone aside and let the game get into it and weary itself to death quickly quicker and safer than they do in pitfalls that bush cow would not have gored me and so after a time he tried to make a net like the spiders out of bush rope and he did this thing and put his net into the forest and caught bush deer gazelles and earth pig pangolins and porcupines and he made more nets and every net he made was better and he grew well and became a greater hunter than before one day he made a very fine net and his wife said this is a cloth it is better than our cloth bark cloth because when the rain gets to it it does not shrivel make me a cloth like this and then i will beat it with a mallet and wear it and the man tried to do this thing but he could not get it a good shape and he said yet the spider gets a shape in his cloth i will go and ask him again this thing and he went to the spider and took him another offering and said oh my lord teach me more things and he sat and watched him for many days bind by he saw more his eyes were opened and he saw the spider made his net on sticks and so he went home and got fine bush rope that he had collected and taken there to make his game nets with and he brought them to the bush near the spider and fixing the strings onto the bush he made a new net and he got shape into it and he made more nets this way and every net he made was better and his wife was pleased and gave him sons and by and by the man saw that he did not want all the sticks of a bush to make his net on only some of them and so he took these home and put them up in his house and made his nets there and after a time his wife said why do you make the stuff for me with that bush rope why do you not make it with something finer and he went into the bush and took offerings to the spider and said oh my lord teach me more things and he sat and watched the spider but the spider only went on making stuff out of his belly and the man said oh my lord you pass me i cannot do this thing and as he went home he thought and saw that there are trees and there are bush ropes thick bush rope and thin bush rope and then there is grass which was thinner still and he took the grass and tried to make a net with it and did this thing and made more nets and every net he made was better and his wife was pleased and said this is good cloth and the man lived to be very old and was a great chief and a great hunter for it is good for a man to pay great hunter and it is good for a man to please women this is the origin of the cloth loom it was in the old time and men have got new thread on spools from the white man for the white man is a great spider but this is how the black man learned to make cloth end of chapter 23 appendix the invention of the cloth loom this is also the end of travels in west africa read by cane day of bahatrek.com