Dawn in darkest Africa

In Portuguese West Africa one sees the best and the worst treatment of native races. The best for the free native, the best for the educated coloured man and the best for the coloured woman. In every other colony—and in this respect British colonies are becoming the worst—race prejudice not only prevails but is on the increase. In the Portuguese colonies there is a pleasing absence of race prejudice; natives of equal social status are as freely admitted to Portuguese institutions as white men; the hotels, the railways, the parks and roads possess no colour-bar, and if the Portuguese colonies could be purged of their foul blot of slavery, the natives of other African colonies might well envy their fellows in Portuguese Africa. Alongside intimate social relations with the native is a widespread plantation slavery in Angola, San Thomé and Principe.

Angola, one of the largest political divisions of West Africa, is bounded on the north by the Congo, the east by Rhodesia and on the south by German Damaraland; a considerable section of the northern territory, including the whole Lunda country, comes within the operations of the General Act of Berlin. Apart from the Lunda province and strips of land bordering the rivers, the colony cannot be said to give any promise of an agricultural future, although if one nation is adept over all others in turning wastes into gardens, that nation is the Portuguese, to whom gardens and plantations are second nature. A Portuguese house without its shady vinery, its delicate fernery and luxuriant kitchen garden is unthinkable; even the little children in the streets, instead of building castles and grottos, find infinite delight in laying out miniature gardens, in which they arrange flowers and ferns with artistic taste.

Economically, however, Angola does not pay, its finances are like many of its old houses—very unstable and subject to leakage. Walk its streets, visit its families, Government departments or merchants’ houses, and certain it is that every other man you meet will remind you forcibly of Micawber. The Portuguese community in any part of Angola can be roughly classed as the Moneylenders and Borrowers. Each, however, appears to be supremely happy and lives in absolute assurance that something will turn up every day to render life more agreeable.

Loanda, the capital, is a strange admixture of ancient and modern dwellings, old churches, a roofless theatre and dilapidated bull-rings. But despite its shortcomings, the Portuguese have made Loanda the most restful health-restoring sea-port in West Africa. Boma, the capital of the Congo, is distant only twenty-four hours’ steam, but it is surely the most unhealthy and the most foodless place in Africa. The Belgians, if they liked, might supply fresh provisions to its starving and dying population,—for everyone in Boma is dying, it is only a question of time. In Boma, fowls, eggs, fruit, fish and vegetables are priceless, while every day shiploads can be purchased very cheaply in Loanda, and if shipped twice a week to the Lower Congo, would at least make life, though short, more comfortable.

There is one place every visitor to Loanda should inspect—the old Dutch Church dedicated to “The Lady of our Salvation.” Some American dollars would be well spent in preserving this relic, for it is one of the many instances which demonstrate that slaving was a pious occupation in the early seventeenth century. The whole of the interior was once composed of blue and white tiles of pictorial design, and one on the north wall of the chancel is still complete; this apparently represents the conquest of Angola by the Dutch, who are seen in broad-brimmed hats, braided coat-tails and parade boots, fighting and slaughtering the hosts of savages. The whole operation against the unfortunate infidels is being directed, and presumably blessed, by the Lady of our Salvation enthroned in the clouds.

If Portuguese enterprise has made Loanda a restful spot for weary travellers, British capital—in the person Robert Williams—has turned an unknown strip of desert land into a nourishing sea-port now known as Lobito Bay. It is from this port, with excellent anchorage and transport facilities, that the West Coast will connect with the Cape railway. This Lobito—Katanga railway, though it has only completed some 450 of the 1200 miles to Katanga, promises commercial success when opened, for it should then constitute the cheapest transport route to Rhodesia and the Congo; that is unless the Portuguese, with their usual short-sighted economic policy, kill the enterprise with tariffs before it has had a real chance of life.

There are only two other ports of any consequence in Portuguese Angola—Mossamedes and Benguella; the latter a harbour with perpetual “rollers” which make a stay on board anything but a comfortable experience. The town itself, like most Portuguese institutions, is going to ruin: the only redeeming feature being the maintenance of its public gardens, fountains and Eucalyptus avenues. Catumbella, an inland town, lies midway between Lobito Bay and Benguella, and with the latter town, constituted the principal centre of the slave-trade. The old slave-compounds and prison-houses confront the traveller in every part of Catumbella and Benguella, and although many have fallen into disuse, some still have the appearance of occasional occupation.

Loanda, Lobito and Benguella all possess “hotels.” Those of the capital proper are a strange mixture of cleanliness, tobacco-ash and half-hidden dirt, but at least they are free from the presence of those unfortunate white women who intrude themselves with such persistence on the attention or inattention of passing white travellers in Benguella, and live by running accounts paid irregularly by white men in that most loathsome of all towns in West Africa. Those wishing to visit Benguella should order their rooms months ahead and not be surprised if on arrival Senhor has forgotten all about the order and has neither room nor bed at his disposal. A sound and vigorous rating, however, will generally extort a promise of a room somewhere, a promise which will seldom be fulfilled until all other guests have retired to beds severally robbed of one portion or another to make up an incomplete set for the newly-arrived guests. Nor must the tired travellers be surprised if a black boy enters the bedroom, without knocking, and demands the “other master’s pillow,” only to be followed later by another woolly pate thrust round the doorway sleepily requesting the surrender of a counterpane or towel, for yet “another master.”

It is useless to expostulate with the hotel manager, who will reply with a veritable flood of apologies and threaten to break the head, and neck if necessary, of every black boy in the place, and yet the guest knows with mathematical certainty that he will again have to go through the same course of torture before getting a troubled sleep on that straw mattress in yonder whitewashed room. This is the whole trouble with the Portuguese, commercially and diplomatically; their eternal protestations of sincerity, integrity and courtesy on the one hand, and, on the other, a total incapability of observing the most sacred promises. It is an old story, the same which confronted Wellington in the early nineteenth century. The Portuguese is very like the African; you despair of curing him of his weaknesses—which are, after all, seldom intentionally vicious—and yet you love him, because his kindly nature compels you.

The chief interest for the British public in Portuguese colonies arises from two distinct causes—financial interests and treaty obligations. Our financial interests are not large; they involve certain railway schemes, the supply of labour for the Transvaal mines, and a few plantation and merchant enterprises. Our treaty obligations, binding us in definite alliance with Portugal, may at any moment involve Great Britain in a grave international situation. The value, or otherwise, of such an alliance is open to a difference of opinion. It is, however, imperative that our ally should observe all moral standards which the civilized Powers are pledged to maintain with all the forces at their disposal. Travellers, consuls, merchants, sea captains and government officials have repeatedly called attention to the prevailing slavery and slave-trade in Portuguese West Africa; both of which detestable practices are in gross violation of Anglo-Portuguese treaties, the Brussels and Berlin Acts. All, or any, of the civilized Powers can at any moment—and in point of responsibility should—intervene and demand the abolition of slavery in Angola, San Thomé and Principe, and if Portugal continued to beg the question by calling slavery by some other name, that Power, or those Powers, could, if they so desired, shake her out of her indifference by casting the anchor of a battleship in sight of the ports of San Thomé and St. Paul de Loanda. I am not advocating such a course for one moment, but it is vital that the British public should realize that in the event of any Power signatory to anti-slavery Conventions waking up for any reason, disinterested or otherwise, to treaty obligations, and making some effort to discharge those liabilities, such Power would be at once confronted by the possibility of Britain’s navy defending Portuguese colonies, although run by slave labour. A pretty spectacle indeed, Britain’s matchless fleet defending the slaver, only wanting old Jack Hawkins on the Bridge, to complete the picture!

Portugal shares with every other West African Power the problem of shortage of labour and with it the short-sighted energy of the impatient employer, who, beyond the ken of the official eye, frequently resorts to illegal means for increasing his supply. Domestic slavery survives in Portuguese Angola as well as in Nigeria, and in Belgian and French Congo. One can only estimate very roughly the slave population of Africa, but probably not less than a million human beings are to-day ignorant of the blessings of personal liberty. Mr. Nevinson, in his admirable book on “Modern Slavery,” says of Angola alone, “including the very large number of natives who, by purchase or birth, are the family slaves of the village chiefs and other fairly prosperous natives, we might probably reckon at least half the population as living under some form of slavery.” We cannot acquit many Powers in Africa from the charge of profiting administratively from this form of human chattelage, but when Portugal sets up a tu quoque plea we are compelled to differ. The dividing line between the Powers is that whilst many of them profit by this practice occasionally and for restricted periods, the Portuguese descend to the lowest level, adopt the native practice themselves and thus become not the “hirers,” but the owners. In this way they endeavour to meet their interminable shortage in the labour supply. To what lengths they are prepared to carry this system may be gathered from the report of Professor A. Prister in the Hamburger Fremden-Blatt for 28th July, 1906:—“In Angola, even in San Paolo de Loanda, under the eyes of the Governor, the Bishop and the high officials,” he alleges, are to be found “regular ‘bridewells’ for the production of slaves.” One of these, he says, he visited on the estate of “one of the richest Portuguese,” sixteen miles from Loanda. There he saw a large number of women, with only a few men, at work. “Each woman has a little hut, in a courtyard enclosed by a wall, in which she lives with her young ones. The woman is always pregnant, and carries her last child on her back, during work, in Kaffir manner. The overseer of this plantation, who treated me in every respect with Portuguese friendliness, and took me for a great admirer of his breeding establishment, told me that about four hundred negroes were there, and added with a laugh that he had over a hundred young ones in the compound. This is just as if a cattle-breeder were boasting of the fine increase in his herds. When the young one is so far grown up that he can be put to some use, at from six to eight years of age, he enters into a so-called contract, or he steps quite simply into the place of a dead serviçal. For instance, Joseph is told that his name is no more Joseph but Charles, and immediately the dead Charles is replaced. He never fell ill; he never died; he only lives a second life.” It is to be hoped that such incidents are rare even in Angola, but it brings home forcibly to the British mind the sort of colonies the “matchless navy” of Great Britain may be called upon one day to defend.

Certain apologists of the Portuguese are very fond of comparing the British indentured labour system with labour conditions on the Angolan mainland and the islands. The labour system of the East and West Indies are by no means ideal, but there is a world of difference, not only in the daily management of this labour, but fundamentally.

In San Thomé the contracted labourer from Angola is a slave: he calls himself a slave, and the Mozambique free man holds him in contempt as a slave; either he was captured, or purchased on the mainland with cash by the plantation owners just as men purchase cattle or capture wild animals. Every single slave with whom I spoke, both on the mainland and on the islands, gave me the clearest account, replete with convincing detail, of the manner in which he or she had been either kidnapped or purchased. Not a few of the slaves had “changed hands” several times before the ultimate sale to the planter.

The Slave’s Case

In the back streets of Angolan ports, on the highways of Lobito and Benguella, and in the shady by-paths of Catumbella, the traveller may at any time penetrate the secrets of the tragedies which attach themselves to the souls of men and women who have lost their freedom. The same tragedies but with attendant secrets darker still, are locked within the breasts of the slaves on the Portuguese cocoa islands in the Gulf of Guinea. There by the roadside, on the banks of crystal streams, up in the cocoa roças, and along the valleys thick with cocoa-trees, the traveller has abundant opportunities for penetrating the secrets of the miserable slaves.

Behind the mountainous coast of Angola, the town of Novo Redondo hides itself in a hollow, as if ashamed of its history, or perhaps so that its traffic in human beings during past centuries might escape the attention of watchful cruisers. There, amongst a group of slaves and freemen, I met a woman with a story more eloquent than others because it was also so recent, so vivid and so forceful. She had not been long on the coast, for only a few months ago she had for the first time witnessed the Atlantic breakers tossing themselves with their impetuous fury on that strip of rocky shore. The hour was that of the mid-day rest, and the woman was sitting sadly apart from the other labourers. A glance at her attitude, coiffure and other characteristics rendered her a somewhat singular figure in that group of serviçaes, still there was a familiarity which surely could not be mistaken—somewhere in Central Africa those cicatrized arms, that braided head, had a tribal home.

“True, white man, I have come from far; from the land of great rivers and dark forests.”

“How were you enslaved?” I asked.

“They charged me with theft and then sold me to another tribe, and they in turn to a black trader. This man drove me for many ‘moons’ along the great road until a white man at D— bought me and sent me here.”

“Where am I going now? Who can tell? I suppose I shall be sold to a planter.”

There was no need of the slave’s reiterated assertion that she had been nearly ten months marching down to the coast; the locality of her tribe was plainly set forth on the forearm by the indelible cicatrizing knife of her race. The journey from the Batetela tribe of the Congo to the shores of Novo Redondo cannot be much less than 1,500 miles. This was one of the most recent cases we discovered and shows that the slave trade in Portuguese territory is a question of the moment.

Fifty years ago, it is said, a ragged urchin ran the streets of San Thomé, holding sometimes for a five reis piece, sometimes for as many kicks, the heads of mules and horses for the affluent slave-planters of that island. That ragged urchin to-day possesses a mansion in three capitals of Europe, and a stately car rushes to and fro with the sovereign lord of some thousands of slaves. The sycophants, time-servers, and others of the crowd of parasitic admirers, who cluster round this august person, care little for the misery beneath that sordid splendour. His wretched slaves spend their days from 5.30 in the morning until sunset cultivating cocoa, that their master may fare sumptuously every day in Europe, and finance dethroned Royalty which is not ashamed to use these ill-gotten funds in half-hearted endeavours to regain a discredited crown. The slaves know nothing of this; one thing only they know is that when the bell rings at sunrise they must devote their energies to the production of the cocoa bean until sunset, and that this weary monotony has in it not a glimmer of hope of cessation.

Along that picturesque road, known as the Mother of God road (philosophers might give us some reason why the slavers in all history annex the Holy Virgin), we once met a group of slaves with a sadness written on their faces which seemed almost to cry out, “We are lost souls.”

“Are you well fed?”

“Yes, white man, we are fed.”

“Housed?”

“Yes.”

“Are you freemen?”

“No, we are only slaves.”

“Would you like your liberty?”

“Aye, would we not, but Master won’t liberate us.”

Amongst that group was one old man quite grey, who declared he had been on the islands over thirty years, and his conversation so interested me that I asked him to describe his journey to the coast. This, though a story over thirty years old, was full of terrible interest. The old man had by this time gained some confidence, and when speaking of the district where he was first sold I became convinced that his home was in the far hinterland of the Congo. With unexpected suddenness I startled him by uttering one of the rhythmic morning greetings of his native tongue. The old man started at first, as if struck with a whip, then, like a man half awake, he appeared to reach after some unseen thing; then at last it suddenly broke in upon him that the language he had heard was the music of his boyhood; his wrinkled old face was wreathed in smiles, his tired eyes lit up, and then in short animated sentences he poured forth question after question.

“Oh! white man, tell me about Luebo, tell me about Basongo.”

“Tell me is Kalamba still alive?”

The impetuosity of the questions, the lively gestures, the hungering look in those brown eyes showed how the old man thirsted for information of his little village away on the banks of the broad Kasai.

The island of Principe has a horror all its own, for it is infested with the dread sleeping sickness. Conditions are so bad that the Portuguese dare not send the free labourers from Mozambique, lest their current of labour from that part of West Africa should take alarm and cease. White men and women are fleeing from danger, but the authorities still keep slaves within biting distance of the fever impregnated fly. Dr. Correa Mendes, a courageous Portuguese medical authority, has urged that every living animal should be killed as the only hope of saving Principe; but none have yet dared to propose the liberation of the slaves.

The slaves of Principe present an even more melancholy appearance than do those of San Thomé. They appear to possess an instinctive knowledge that they are confined in a death-trap, and their appeals for liberation are piteously violent.

I cannot readily forget a conversation with four young slaves on Principe. Of these, but two had known freedom; the others had been born of slave parents. On the features of one, the traces of sleeping sickness in an advanced stage were plainly marked, and though still labouring at his task, it was plain that death had already marked him for its own.

I asked the usual questions.

“Are you well fed?”

“Yes, Senhor.”

“Clothed and housed?”

“Yes, Senhor.”

“You are not flogged or beaten?”

“Oh! are we not!”

“But I am told the planters never beat you.”

“Tell me then, Senhor, how was this deep wound caused?”

In support of this statement the whole group of slaves chimed in with exclamations and assertions that they were constantly flogged and beaten.

“Do you desire your freedom?”

“Senhor, why taunt us? Did you ever know an African who did not love his home and country?”

“Well, I think there are people in Europe who will endeavour to emancipate you.”

“Senhor, I fear when you get on yonder ocean, you will forget the poor slaves of Principe and San Thomé!”

This latter reply was uttered with so desponding a note that I ventured to make the slaves a promise, which British honour—no less than British responsibility—should see fulfilled.

“Listen, I am now going to Europe and shall soon meet the liberty-loving British people. I know how they detest slavery; I know how they will struggle for your liberty. Take this promise yourselves—and pass the word round the plantations to the other slaves—God helping us, we will set you free within two years.”

The effect of this promise was good to behold, the eyes brightened, there was an elasticity in movement and grateful word of thanks as the slaves resumed their never-ending task. Even the slave in the fell grip of sleeping sickness appeared to share in the joy of a freedom he could not hope to experience.

Not all the slaves are purchased for plantation work, as the following typical instances will shew. Beautiful black women have their price. The day was indeed a hot one as I strolled along the shores of the Atlantic below the mouth of the Congo, when a finely-built young woman met me. Originally captured over 2,000 miles away, her fine figure and bright features had obtained for her captor a high price as “domestic” for the white man. To him it was nothing that she longed to exchange her captive life for that home away in the far interior, or that the roar of the waves was a perpetual reminder of the gentle lappings of the lake shore of Tanganyika. The woman was his slave, purchased with “honest money”—his slave until he ceased to want her, and then—well, he would sell her to the nearest planter and buy another, for healthy young girls are always marketable not only in Portuguese territory but in other parts of West Africa.

Another day two white-clad European travellers might have been seen moving in and out amongst the villages outside a Portuguese town of Angola, exchanging greetings with half-dressed natives. Presently it is realized that this is no casual visit of curious strangers, for it is obvious that the white man’s handshake is but an excuse for a closer scrutiny of the arm, the temple, or the chest, and the natives gather round the travellers as they proceed from group to group. Something now arrests attention, for the white man is sitting down amidst a party of four or five women.

In a few minutes confidence has been gained, and the women submit to an examination of certain marks cut years ago on their arms and foreheads. The white man first tries a sentence in a tongue unknown to the group of interested onlookers, but there is no response from those to whom it was addressed. He tries another, and there is a sudden silence; all eyes are directed to a woman who, after a faint cry of amazement, is gazing fixedly into space, for the white man had by that sentence struck a chord silenced by long years of sorrow and suffering. The woman gazed on silently and intently as if trying to recall a half-forgotten past. She travels in thought back over yonder mountains, across the hot plain, and on by rippling streams and through valleys thick with ripe corn, away across the Cuanza river, on for months to Lake Dilolo, where she sees again as in a vision the white man who bought her from the native slave-trader. In fancy she leaves the cornfields of Angola, crosses the upper Kasai, and is away north beyond Lusambo, and westward to the little Congo village with its deep green plantain groves and manioca fields.

A remark breaks the spell, and she realizes that it was but a dream, for she is still a captive; but the white man speaking her native tongue is no dream—he is still there speaking the language that sounds like the far-off music of another life. The light of hope dawns in her eyes as she turns on the traveller, pleading, “White man, can’t you take me home?”

It must not be supposed that all the San Thomé planters on the island believe in, or defend, present conditions, any more than it must be supposed that, without exception, they are habitually guilty of inhuman maltreatment of the slaves. The charge of maintaining slavery most of them emphatically deny, and in support of their contention point to legal contracts which cover the original transaction by which the labour was obtained. They also remind the investigator that the labourers are paid. There are, however, some honest planters who admit that the original “contract” was not altogether genuine, and the statements made by the planters and the slaves respectively with regard to the wages paid, differ so absurdly that one is compelled to dismiss both.

To many managers definite acts of cruelty would be highly repulsive. It is furthermore very obvious that not a few owners and planters do everything which science and money can provide to make the lot of the slave a happy one. The planters argue with much warmth and sincerity of conviction that the labourers are better housed, fed, and clothed on the plantations than they would be in their mainland villages. Their melancholy demeanour and their insistent desire for liberty, the low birth rate and frightful mortality amongst the slaves is put down very largely to the gross obstinacy and stupidity of the enslaved negroes.

If the planters are questioned upon the desire of the slaves to regain their liberty they reply that this would be an act of injustice because many of the labourers have forgotten the districts from which they were originally “recruited” and that even if complete repatriation were carried through the men and women repatriated would probably fall a prey to evil influences on the mainland.

The attitude assumed by the Portuguese authorities towards the question of slavery in their West African colonies has hitherto been first of all one of inferential denial that slavery exists, and secondly they call attention to the elaborate regulations framed for protecting the natives from any infringement of their liberties.

On paper, the labourers are contracted for short periods of service in Angola and the cocoa islands; are said to have a happier lot than any other contract labourers in the world; and that any who so desire are free to return to their homes at the termination of their contracts. A great deal more is on paper which, if practices only accorded with the minimum of professions, would assure the cessation of slavery in Portuguese West Africa.

Perhaps nothing written in the earlier days upon this question has brought out so forcibly the “ownership” feature of labour conditions as the disclosures made in the Cadbury—Standard libel action. In that trial Sir Edward Carson called attention to a circular forwarded to Messrs. Cadbury referring to the sale of an estate in San Thomé. The stock enumerated included one item, “Two hundred black labourers ... £3555.” This gives the average price of the slaves as £18 per capita, taking the sick with the healthy and the young with the old. Various prices are quoted as the value of the slaves, but this depends, of course, upon physique, sex and age. Mr. Joseph Burtt, the Commissioner of the cocoa firms, gives £25 to £40, whilst Mr. Consul Nightingale stated £50 as the average price. When in Portuguese West Africa several of the slaves were even able to tell us the prices at which they were purchased by the different middlemen, and occasionally even by Portuguese themselves.

The evidence now to hand of the existence of both the slave-trade and slavery is overwhelming.

On November 22nd, 1909, the Portuguese Foreign Minister called upon Sir Edward Grey, apparently with the object of discussing this question, and in conversation the Foreign Minister informed M. Du Bocage that the information he “had received from private sources placed beyond doubt[10] the fact that it had been the custom for natives to be captured in the interior by people who were really slave-dealers; the captured natives were then brought down to the coast and went to work in the Portuguese islands.”

On the 26th of October last, Sir Arthur Hardinge, whose intimate knowledge of slavery questions is probably unequalled, informed the Portuguese Minister for Foreign Affairs that when he was in Brussels, he “had heard serious complaints in official circles at Brussels of the way in which slaves were kidnapped by Angola caravans from the Kasai district of the Congo, which shewed that the charges made did not emanate solely from missionaries or philanthropic sentimentalists.”

In July, 1909, an exhaustive series of regulations were issued from Lisbon. The 139 articles covered almost every actual and conceivable feature of the whole labour question, but as Mr. Consul Mackie pointedly remarked—

The evidence, therefore, that the Portuguese colonial labour systems are pure slavery is confirmed (a) In a British Law Court, (b) by the British Foreign Minister, (c) by the British Consul on the spot, and (d) by Sir Arthur Hardinge. Could anyone desire more emphatic evidence than is now provided? and this does not exhaust the available sources, for even the Portuguese themselves have now been forced to admit that the slave-trade is very much in evidence.

Writing to Sir Arthur Hardinge on October 23rd last, the Portuguese Foreign Minister admitted that there was—

It is instructive to note that the Portuguese Minister in this passage makes no distinction between serviçaes and slaves, yet when unofficial critics declare that in practice the terms are indistinguishable, they are condemned for deliberately confusing the public mind. It is also of importance to bear in mind that the Lunda Province is included in the territories which come under the operations of the Berlin Act, whereby every European Power is under the most solemn responsibility to secure throughout these territories the abolition of slavery.

There is further the evidence, from a Portuguese source, in the fact that in 1911 eleven Portuguese are reported to have been expelled for engaging in the slave-traffic. The Governor of Angola informed Mr. Drummond Hay that nothing severer than the order of expulsion was administered owing to the lack of “conclusive evidence,” but four months later the Portuguese Foreign Minister admitted that the Europeans “by the inquiry were found guilty of acts of slave-traffic.” Sir Arthur Hardinge pointed out that

When, therefore, the long stream of unofficial testimony upon the existence of the slave-trade and slavery in the Portuguese colonies is confirmed in turn by the British Minister at Lisbon and by the British Consul of Angola, and moreover when Sir Edward Grey, who always chooses language with exceptional care, officially informs civilization that the charges are proved “beyond doubt,” and finally when the Portuguese authorities are driven to admit it, then surely the time has come to cease gathering evidence and to set about some substantial and far-reaching measures of reform.

To meet a situation which is a grave international scandal and a potential menace to European peace, what do the Portuguese offer to civilization? They claim good treatment of the labourers, humane regulations and repatriation of the slaves.

It is common ground that the slaves upon the islands are, generally speaking, well fed, housed and fairly well clothed, but the slaves themselves are emphatic in their assertions that they are frequently beaten. This the Portuguese deny, but those who know West Africa are perfectly well aware that it is impossible to keep something like 40,000 slaves working on the cocoa farms at the rate of “a man per hectare” without a considerable amount of “pressure.”

The regulations are exhaustive upon every feature of the labourer’s life except emancipation, from the time he is “recruited” until he is buried, but as Mr. Consul Mackie has recently pointed out, “The absence of any (regulations) for the return journey in the event of the labourer declining to accept the conditions of the contract is somewhat suspicious.” That the keeping of statistical records is part of the ordinary administrative routine is a common-place, but that this elementary duty may be performed, a regulation was issued three years ago, yet to this day that instruction has never been carried out, with the result that no reliable information is possible with regard to the birth and death rates.

According to regulations, every labourer’s history is carefully recorded and the fullest details endorsed upon the contract, yet in the case of 135 out of 163 slaves repatriated in the early part of last year it was impossible to state how long they had been upon the islands. This is not only a further evidence of the futility of Portuguese regulations, but it constitutes additional evidence as to the fictitious nature of the supposed “contract systems.”

To the tragedy of slavery on Principe is added the ever present horror of sleeping sickness which is everywhere raging on the island. To the lasting disgrace of the Portuguese Government it still permits the retention of slaves on the island where conditions are so bad that, as I have already pointed out, the eminent Dr. Mendes has advised the killing of all the cattle on the island in the hope of checking the ravages of the disease. Here again the Portuguese Government has been content to meet the situation with paper “regulations,” which would be comic if it were not for the distressing condition of these wretched slaves. According to these regulations all the slaves “must wear trousers to the heel, blouses with sleeves to the wrist, and high collars ... they must wear on their backs a black cloth covered with glue!” It is barely necessary to state that these regulations are openly disregarded in every particular.

Finally the Portuguese point to their highly-regulated system of repatriation. Sir Edward Grey and Sir Arthur Hardinge have emphasized that “one excellent test” of a desire for reform “will be the rate and method of repatriation.” Since the year 1888 some 67,614 slaves are known to have been shipped to San Thomé and Principe from the Angola mainland, but it is also known that a good deal of smuggling has been carried on. Then, too, there are some slaves born on the islands prior to the year 1888, and these are claimed as the property of the planters. At the same time the death rate has been very high and the birth rate extremely low, with the result that the estimate of the slave—or according to the Portuguese the Angola serviçal—population of about 37,000 is probably fairly accurate.

In 1903 a repatriation fund was established with the object of providing the repatriated slaves with a sum of money upon their landing again on the mainland, and there was a further complicated arrangement which could have no chance of being effectively carried out, whereby “recontracted” slaves should receive their bonus in 6 per cent. instalments every quarter. This was no philanthropic contribution, but actually represented a regular deduction of 50 per cent. from the “wages” of the slaves and serviçaes, until May, 1911, when the deduction was raised to two-thirds, leaving the labourer only one-third, and as most of the slaves appear to die prematurely, the benefit they receive from their “wages” is a negligible quantity.

From the year 1903, when this fund was instituted, until 1907 these deductions from wages were actually left in the hands of the planters. In December, 1907, they admitted to holding £100,000—a not inconsiderable capital fund for working their plantations. In 1908 the fund was transferred to the Government bank, but in the autumn of that year it had by some means, yet to be discovered, shrunk to about £62,000. After about nine years’ working this fund stands to-day at approximately £100,000.

In Sir Edward Grey’s despatch to Sir Francis Hyde Villiers of November 3rd, 1910, he pointed out that public opinion would be favourably impressed with a “regular and satisfactory” method of repatriation. During the early part of this year 900 slaves were repatriated to Angola and 500 more were due to leave at the end of June. Probably, therefore, it may be safely estimated that since 1908 something like 2000 will have been returned to the mainland before the close of this year, but even so this still leaves something like 35,000 still in slavery. Though this “rate of repatriation” shews some improvement, it cannot be regarded as satisfactory in view of the fact that unless it is materially accelerated, it will take not less than twenty years to liberate the whole of the slaves on the two islands.

Turning to the method of repatriation, it is clear that this is being carried on in the most inhuman and barbarous manner. When we were at Benguella, the condition of the repatriated slaves was so distressing that we offered the Governor a sum of money to provide the miserable creatures with food and medicine. This His Excellency could not receive, nor could he allow the Curador to accept it.

The planters, realizing that civilization demands that “repatriation” should take place, are just now permitting it, but they are at the same time doing everything in their power to discredit it. There is some evidence that they are only liberating the sick and worn out, for of twenty-eight slaves recently liberated, whose ages were known, Mr. Consul Drummond Hay tells us their average age was forty-two years, and their period of labour on the islands averaged thirty-one years.

The Portuguese journal Reforma in its issue of August 19th, 1911, exposes in convincing language the condition and real objects of this so-called repatriation:—