After we had been here a short while, a little native boy came into our camp bringing me as a present a very pretty little green and gold beetle. We gave him a pfenning (eight pfennings go to the penny) for it, and seeing I was pleased with it, Schomburgk said he would purchase at the same rate as many other similar beetles as he or the other children cared to bring in. It proved to be a rash promise. The wonderful news must have spread like wildfire amongst the village urchins, who must, moreover, have immediately set to work with feverish energy to secure a goodly store of beetles, for soon the camp was alive with grubby little boys and girls, some carrying no more than a single beetle, or two or three, others with both dirty little paws filled with the pretty delicate insects. It was one of the most comical sights I ever saw. There was Schomburgk dishing out pfennings in exchange for beetles, and the more pfennings he distributed the more children came rolling up with their beetles. They pressed and clamoured round him like English children round a street hawker of toy paper windmills, so that eventually he had to take refuge on a chair in order to escape being mobbed by them, while I set to work to marshal them into a queue, which, as regards both its extent and the happy eagerness of its component parts, reminded me of that which assembles outside the Gaiety on the first night of the production of a new musical comedy.

Whilst we were resting that afternoon, our mail arrived from Bassari. It had come by post-runner to Bassari, whence it had been forwarded by special messenger to Banjeli. At once everybody was on the alert to secure his or her letters, and once secured we retired to a quiet corner to read them. We got two mails together—a month's letters and papers—on this occasion, so that we had plenty of reading matter to occupy ourselves with. Afterwards we came together again to compare notes, and tell each other tit-bits of personal news, talking and chatting until dinner-time, and afterwards far into the night. Amongst a bundle of papers sent out by my sister was a copy of the Elegante Welt, Germany's leading fashion paper, and, womanlike, I was immensely interested in seeing, out here in the wilds, what was being worn at home by the "smart set" in Berlin, London, and the other European capitals.

So utterly sick and tired of fowls had a lengthy sojourn in the African wilds made me, that at Banjeli I decided to have for once a dinner of roast pork, and sent Messa into the village with strict injunctions to bring back a pig, no matter what the cost. He succeeded almost too well, returning in about half an hour at the head of a procession of natives, leading, driving, and carrying pigs of all sorts and sizes. In only one respect were they alike. They were the ugliest-looking lot of porkers I ever set eyes on; all black as to colour, and with long bristly hair, not at all like the rosy-snouted little piglets one sees in the German villages. However, I reflected that I was not buying a pig to look at, but to eat, so I picked out one I considered to be the best and fattest of the lot, paying for him what seemed to me the ridiculously small sum of four shillings. Then, spurred on by my success in the pig-killing line at Mangu, I superintended the similar necessary operations here, only to find, however, when my porcine purchase came to be cut up and dressed, that he was about as scraggy, scrawny, lean, and generally unprofitable a specimen of his species as one could possibly conceive of. What he had been fed on, Heaven only knows. Sawdust and wood shavings, I should imagine, from the taste of him. And this, I hasten to add, was not the fault of the cooking, for from almost the beginning of the trip I have made the kitchen and its conduct my own special care.

Taught in the first instance by that old Togoland campaigner, Captain von Hirschfeld, I have, too, succeeded in perfecting a very excellent system of keeping our drinks cool, and our cheese and butter from running to oil. It is worked this way. In Togoland we have what is called a "Hausa load." This is not a "load," as might be imagined, but a long, narrow basket made of split bamboos laid closely together lengthways, and bound together crossways with strips of bark. Into this long wicker trough I used to put the things I wanted kept cool, wrapped up and covered with sacks kept constantly wet. It was marvellous how beautifully they were preserved by this simple expedient. Even on the march, by detailing a boy to constantly sprinkle the sacks, I was able to keep the butter quite solid, the bottles of liquid comfortably cooled, and even perishable provisions, such as cooked meat for instance, fresh and sweet.

It was Anton, our pet monkey, by the way, who was the alleged cause—as a matter of fact he was quite innocent in the matter—of a grave dereliction of duty on the part of seven of our boys. The affair happened on the road to Ibubu, where the whole lot of them turned up very late; a long way, in fact, in rear of the carriers, who, of course, made ordinarily considerably slower progress with their heavy loads than did our personal servants, who carry no loads. They had, it transpired, met some friends on the road, who treated them to palm wine and native beer; but their excuse was that Anton had scampered off into the bush, and refused to be caught for some time, thereby delaying them. Now this was an excuse that might easily have held water, for we knew, and our boys knew that we knew, that Anton was addicted to such tricks. But on this occasion their somewhat unsteady gait and the strong smell of alcohol that hung about them convicted them, and one by one they broke down under cross-examination, and confessed to the truth. Then came the question of their punishment.

Very early in our trip Schomburgk had told me that the best way to punish a lazy carrier was not by personal chastisement—for which they care little unless it be carried to such an extent as to be inhuman, which, of course, is not to be thought of—nor by fining them; but that if a carrier was really lazy, coming in a long while after the others, the best thing to do was to give him a load, and stand him with it on his head in the middle of the camp, making him stay there for as long a time as he had been behind his fellow-carriers. "Then," said Schomburgk, "the others will all make game of him, and he will have learnt a lesson he is not likely to forget."

Well, this plan had been carried out on several occasions with our carriers, and we found that it worked excellently. So Schomburgk decided to try its effect upon our boys, and that afternoon the seven "beauties" were lined up in the middle of the camp, each with a 60lb. load on his head. Also, as they had laid the blame on the poor innocent monkey, he was fastened by a chain to the right leg of our "washerwoman"—he of the ginger-beer-bottle fists—who had been the last one to hold out in the lie about him. At first the culprits treated the whole affair as a huge joke, laughing and chattering amongst themselves. But little by little, as the afternoon wore away, their faces grew longer and longer; the laughter and chatter grew less, and finally died away altogether; they started shifting their loads from the head, first to one shoulder, then to the other, until, eventually, after Schomburgk had gone out with the camera, a benighted appeal for mercy reached my ears. I was seated inside my tent at the time, and for a little while I pretended to take no notice. But the cries of "Little mother! Little mother! Have pity on your poor tired children!" redoubled in intensity, so as Schomburgk had told me, before quitting camp, to let them go when I thought fit, I gave them their "ticket of leave."

Prior to our arrival at Banjeli, Schomburgk had made arrangements with the chief there to film the iron industry, of which I wrote earlier in this chapter. He was a nice old man, and, having met Schomburgk on his previous visit, he had now promised in advance to have everything ready for us. This promise he faithfully kept, and to the letter, an attribute very rare in a native. Next morning we took the pictures. First of all we started off at 6 A.M. to the mountain where the iron ore is mined. We rode the first stage of the journey, accompanied by our two ostriches, who seemed to imagine that we were going on trek again, and intended giving them the slip. It was very comical to watch them, especially after we dismounted, and started to climb the last part of the journey to the top of the hill where the mine is situated, about 1600 feet up. Eventually, however, we had to send them back, for fear they might injure themselves.

The ore is mined by women, strong, but dirty-looking, with more of the masculine element about them than the feminine. It was pitiful to see some of them, with babes at their breasts, digging out the ore with a curious kind of hoe-shaped tool. Besides being a hard occupation, it is also a dangerous one. Only a day or so before our visit one of the miners had been killed, owing to a shaft falling in. On inquiry, I learnt that the women were slaves. I was assured that it was only a mild form of slavery, a system of indentured labour, and that even if liberated they would not go away. Still, I didn't like the idea, and the sight impressed me the least favourably of anything that I had seen in Togoland.

The other operations that centred round the iron industry, however, interested me greatly. Here is a handicraft that is usually associated with a more or less advanced degree of civilisation—the bronze age everywhere preceded the iron age amongst primitive man—being carried on by nude, or nearly nude, savages, in a fashion which, although it has many points in common with our own methods of mining, smelting, and so on, bears, nevertheless, unmistakable signs of being of purely indigenous origin.

Taking it altogether, I am inclined to think that this film, which was one of the last we took, was also one of the best, if not the very best, of the lot, and when I came to see it screened later on in London, I was amazed at its fidelity to life. First the women miners are seen getting the ore out of the mines, as narrated above. The next scene we filmed shows a long string of them carrying it in baskets on their heads down the mountain-side to the primitive native furnace, which the men load with wood, charcoal, and ore. We showed, too, the method of regulating the ventilation of the furnaces by means of holes round the bottoms, these being stopped by clay stoppers, very ingeniously constructed, and which can be inserted and withdrawn at pleasure by means of a wooden stick, embedded in the centre of the clay stopper when it is first made. These furnaces, after being lighted, burn for three days, when the pig-iron is taken out and carried to the market at Bassari, where it is bought by the native blacksmiths. These craftsmen, working with a round boulder for a sledge-hammer, and curious hand-worked bellows, somewhat resembling bag-pipes in appearance, forge the iron into axes, knives, spear and arrow heads, hoes, and so forth, not forgetting the curious iron rattles mentioned in a previous chapter, and which form a valued part and parcel of every Konkombwa warrior's equipment. Speaking in regard to these industrial films in general, a certain eminent scientist who presided at a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, remarked that he did not think that at the present time any very great good was accomplished by getting to the north or south pole, because both these very interesting spots would be there five thousand years hence; but the men who went out into the wild places of the earth in order to try and obtain records of the out-dying customs of native tribes in these remote regions, deserved the greatest praise. Even an ordinary written record (he continued) is of acknowledged value. What, then, must be the value of living pictures, such as these, showing every stage in processes of primitive native industries which, from the nature of things, must, in the not far distant future, become superseded, and so lost to us forever. Similar views, I may add, were expressed in letters written to Major Schomburgk after having viewed the films, by Mr. Atho Joyce, of the British Museum, and by Sir Harry Johnston, the famous explorer.

CHAPTER XVII
IN A MOUNTAIN COUNTRY

I forgot to say that owing to the forethought of the chief of Banjeli, in making all arrangements beforehand for us to film the iron industry there, we were enabled to get away one day earlier than we anticipated. According to the itinerary which we had drawn up, we should have left there on February the 12th, whereas we got away early on the morning of the 11th.

Up to now, from at all events as far north as Nambiri, my journey had been one long triumphal progress, of a kind somewhat different from anything of the kind I had experienced previously. All through the thickly populated Konkombwa country, the roads—they are mere native trails—are punctuated throughout their entire length with little villages, strung out like beads on a string with intervals between them, and from the very first one past a station there used to issue in my direction crowds of women and children to welcome me. On meeting me, they would separate on either side to let me pass, ul-ul-ulling and waving their hands, then close in behind me, and follow me through their own village, and on to the next, a mile or so distant, where the welcome would be repeated by the women and children living at that place, the others returning to their homes; and so on to the end, the result being that I used to have a continuous bodyguard, perpetually renewed, all the way from one station to the other.

Now all this came to an end. We are entering a wilder and more mountainous country, where villages are few and far between, and the inhabitants correspondingly sparse. From Banjeli to Bassari, for instance, a distance of twenty-two miles, we did not pass a single settlement that could properly be called a village. The road is a narrow winding native path, just wide enough to allow of two people riding abreast. Nothing more pleasant and exhilarating can be conceived than to ride thus in the cool of the African morn along a road where every turn reveals new beauties. It was nowhere level, but all up hill and down dale, some of the steep ascents making us rather pity Hodgson, who had gone on ahead, as usual, on his beloved "bike." Presently we reached the Katscha River, which flows hereabouts at the bottom of a deep gully, cut by the raging torrents that, during the rainy season, hurl themselves down from the adjacent mountains. It is crossed by a native wooden bridge, which, however, looked so frail and insecure, and was moreover in so wretched a state of repair, that we preferred to go through the river, now nearly dry.

The descent to the river bed was as nearly perpendicular as a steeply sloping bank can be; nevertheless, our horses slithered down without mishap, as only African ponies can. By the way, when I first came to Togoland, I rather fancied myself as a fearless and accomplished horsewoman. But I very quickly discovered that a morning canter in the "Row," or even a stiff cross-country gallop to hounds, constituted but a poor preparation for African bush-riding. Practically I had to begin and learn equitation all over again. But I proved an apt pupil—or at least so I was informed—and now even a deep and steep gully like this possesses for me no terror, whatever it might have done at the beginning of the trip.

The usual riverine belt of vegetation that is a feature of all the Togoland streams had broadened, in the case of the Katscha, into a beautiful shady forest, and here it had been our intention to halt and partake of an open-air breakfast, but we had made such good time on this, the early stage of our journey, that we decided to put on a few more miles. Nearing Bassari, we came to a big native town, called Beapabe, which reminded me very much of Bafilo, on account of the number of houses, and the many fine baobab trees scattered about. Here we struck the northern end of a fine, well-kept Government road, which has been built out from Bassari, and which will ultimately extend upward as far as Mangu, following approximately the route along which we have come. We did not keep to this road, however, but left it to our left, and rode through the native market-place, to emerge presently into a perfectly straight and most beautifully kept avenue of mango trees. These grew so thickly overhead as to form a complete arched roof of solid greenery, altogether shutting out the burning rays of the sun; the only disadvantage being that the fruit sometimes hung so low down that, in riding along, it was liable, unless one was very careful, to catch one in the face, with results the reverse of pleasant. Following this avenue for about half a mile we arrived at Bassari.

The station is built very much on the lines of an old Norman castle, with a castellated tower, and a broad raised verandah fronting a level, well-kept parade ground shaded by fine trees, the whole backed by forest-clad mountains. Here we were welcomed by Mr. Muckè, the Sub-District Commissioner, one of the oldest officials of Togoland, and one of Dr. Kersting's most able assistants. He has been in the Government service ever since 1898, and has taken part in practically every piece of Togo history that has been made during the intervening years.

Schomburgk knew him through meeting him here during his previous trip, and the worthy gentleman's only regret was that we had been unable to be with him for the Christmas festivities, of which he gave us a glowing description. We soon convinced him, however, that we could not possibly have managed it; and he then led us, talking all the while, to where he had prepared for us a most substantial and appetising breakfast, to which, needless to say, we did full justice. He had also very kindly got ready for us, and placed at our disposal, the "Massow House," so called, I was informed, after a certain Lieutenant Massow, a pioneer of empire who died in northern Togo in the early days, while engaged in opening up that part of the territory. It is a square house, standing ninety feet above the station, with baobab and other trees all round it, affording a welcome shade. The view from it is one of the finest I had yet seen in Togoland, with picturesque wooded mountains in front and rear, and all around. Here we stayed five days, and were very comfortable; what made it seem more than ordinarily homelike, being the fact that it was provided with windows. This may not sound much to untravelled Europeans, but it was the first windowed house I had slept in since leaving Lome, six months previously, for although at Mangu Captain von Hirschfeld's house had windows, ours had none.

There were, however, some slight drawbacks to residence here. One was that there were no stables for our horses, these being down at the station. We therefore had to tether them under some of the biggest of the trees, for we were afraid that our horse boys would not look after them properly, or at least not to our liking, once they were freed from our constant personal supervision. Another drawback was the scarcity of water. We had to buy every single drop we used, paying at the rate of a halfpenny a calabash for it, from the natives, who brought it on their heads all the way from the Kamaa River, a good two hours distant. It was not good water either, being brown and nasty looking; but it had to serve us for all purposes until Mr. Muckè detailed some prisoners to fetch us water for our personal use from a spring situated some distance up in the mountains that towered at the back of our house. We still, however, had to purchase water for our horses, and for washing purposes, &c. This came rather expensive at a halfpenny a small calabash full, for we had seven horses, and they needed, of course, to be watered regularly twice a day. However, there was no help for it, and Mr. Muckè did his best to atone for the dearth of water by sending us daily plentiful supplies of the most delicious, thirst-quenching fruits—limes, oranges, paw-paws, bananas, &c.—and beautiful flowers from his own garden.

We went out riding a good deal during our stay at Bassari. All round the station—another legacy from Dr. Kersting's days—there are beautiful tree plantations, similar to those at Mangu, and these are kept in apple-pie order by Mr. Muckè, who is as proud of Bassari almost as Bassari is of him. In the evening, after dinner, he used to hold us spellbound by the hour together, telling us stories of the olden days, when all the country round about was unsafe, and almost unknown, and when warfare with the wild natives was practically endemic. Muckè and Bassari! Bassari and Muckè! The two terms are identical—interchangeable. He has been christened the "King of Bassari," and with reason, for he rules his sub-district with a rod of iron, and yet with a fine sense of justice that makes the natives respect, and at the same time fear, him. Schomburgk, who has the greatest respect and liking for him, remarked one day that he was of the class that helps build up colonial empires without talking about it, and I fancy that that very aptly describes him. If he has a fault it is that he is rather too fond of his Bassari. A story is told of him, which may or may not be true, but which at all events fits him to a nicety. It concerns a visit he paid to Germany's capital during one of his infrequent leaves of absence. He was asked what he thought of it. "Ah—Berlin!" he is reported to have remarked, drawing out his words in his slow, thoughtful, methodical way. "Well—yes! Berlin is all very well, of course. But"—with a sudden brightening of the eyes and a quick acceleration of speech—"give me Bassari." The yarn is not new of course; it is merely one of the many variants of Punch's old-time joke anent the Peeblesshire Scotsman who declared, after his first trip to France, that Paris was "a graun' city, mon, but gie me Peebles for playsur." But, as I have already intimated, it exactly hits off Muckè, and Muckè's attitude towards that little unregarded strip of West African soil whereon he reigns an uncrowned monarch. A curious attribute of Muckè's is that, although the soul of hospitality, his fondness for a practical joke will sometimes go to the length of permitting a white stranger to pass his domicile; and this, in a land where peripatetic white men are as rare as butterflies on an iceberg—a more apt simile would be ice in Hades—is a sufficiently strange trait to merit mention, the more especially as it was the cause of Hodgson going without his breakfast for ten minutes longer than he otherwise need have done. And for Hodgson to go without his breakfast for even five minutes beyond the appointed time, was an eventuality that Hodgson did not greatly appreciate. I need not say more.

Well, Hodgson had gone on ahead of us from Banjeli, as I have already said, on his "bike," and when he cycled level with Muckè's house he just gave it a sidelong, passing glance, and went on, never dreaming but that if it were the residence of a fellow white man he would step outside and give him a hail. Muckè, however, did nothing of the kind, but sat tight, and when his boy rushed in crying, "Master! Master! There's a white man gone past!" Muckè simply replied, "Is there? Well, don't bother about that; he'll come back again." And he did, after having over-shot his destination some little distance; whereupon Muckè remarked, "You must be fond of cycling, but come inside now and have some breakfast." Two more facts about Mr. Muckè. He owns the finest and handsomest horse I saw in all my journeyings through Togoland. It is a perfectly black stallion of Arab breed, and came from the far interior of the French Sudan, whence it was brought by a Hausa trader, a journey of many months' duration. Such horses are difficult to acquire, and Schomburgk badly wanted to buy this one on his first trip, but Muckè would not sell. Another great pet of Muckè's—he simply idolises his horse—is a tame bush buck, which he keeps in a wire enclosure outside his house.

Bassari is the principal market for the raw iron, which is mined and smelted at Banjeli. Here it comes to be made up into the finished articles, as mentioned in the previous chapter, and our reason for staying here so long was that we wanted to film these finishing processes, the native smiths at work, and so on. When we were not taking pictures, we put in our time exploring the surrounding country, which is exceedingly picturesque and pretty, and also densely populated. The climate, too, is healthier and less enervating than most other parts of Togo; the great drawback being the terrific thunderstorms and the heavy moist heat of the rainy season.

We also paid a few visits to local notables, chief amongst whom is the Mallam Mohammed. Everybody in Bassari, and for miles around, knows the Mallam, who is a sort of local Pooh-Bah. For one thing, he is the richest native in these parts. For another, his interests are practically unlimited, so that he has a finger in every local pie. He is, for instance, a great dealer in horses, trading as far north as the French Sudan, and with Dahomey on the one side, and the Gold Coast Colony on the other. He also occupies the important and responsible post—as regards a big place like Bassari—of sery-chi-songu, or head-keeper of the native rest-house and compound, known together as the songu, and this carries with it the further responsible—and lucrative—position of tax-collector to the Government. Besides all these things he is head schoolmaster at an open-air school for natives which he has established, and where the little children, sitting cross-legged on mats under a shady tree, are taught the Mohammedan religion, and to read and write. He is very proud of this unique school, and with reason, for the scholars seemed to me to be a wonderfully intelligent lot of laddies. I was especially struck with their painstaking writing of the neat and pretty Arabic characters, which is done on soft slabs of wood, with a pointed stick and native made ink. It was really astonishing to see the beautiful results they obtain with these primitive writing materials.

Of course he invited us to his house, where I was introduced, collectively and separately, to his eight wives. These ladies possess a certain degree of culture, and most of them are good-looking; one, a Fulani girl of light, almost white complexion, being really pretty. The chief wife showed me, with evident pride, all their household treasures, their European crockery, brass dishes and cooking utensils, and so forth. I was greatly struck by the contrast these afforded to much of the native furnishings. For instance, her bed was made of mud, baked hard, a mere raised platform, similar to that used by the Sumbu women for grinding corn on, and on top of this was a mattress and rug of native manufacture, surmounted by a European mosquito-curtain, of which she was exceedingly proud. There were numbers of children about the place, some quite pretty, and ranging in hue from jet black to light chocolate colour.

Afterwards all the eight paid me a return visit at our house. I had invited them to afternoon tea, but found out on their arrival that they did not drink tea, preferring cocoa, which, to suit their palates, I had to make inordinately sweet. They put in an appearance arrayed in their smartest lavelaps, each one heavily be-jewelled, and with faces rouged and powdered, and eyes and lashes and eyebrows painted black, after the fashion of a stage actress's make-up. They chewed kola-nuts incessantly, and their nails were dyed red with henna. But what struck me most about my visitors was the inordinate quantities of scent they used. What particular kind of scent it was, I do not know. I have never smelt anything exactly like it before or since. But I do know that it was so heavy and overpowering that I felt a difficulty in breathing the same atmosphere. The slightest movements of their wraps sent invisible clouds of it wafting and rolling about the room, and when once five of them stirred suddenly and quickly in unison, they set going an aromatic hurricane that made me gasp, and cough, and choke. However, the wild bees, who swarmed in countless numbers in the big baobab trees near our house, seemed to like it, for they buzzed round my visitors in clouds incommoding them so greatly that, after two or three ineffectual attempts to drive them off, they had to sit, during the remainder of their stay, with their heads and shoulders shrouded in their lavelaps.

After they had been with me for some time an infant started to cry lustily, to my great surprise, for I had seen no signs of a baby up till then, nor had any mention been made of one. I suppose I looked the astonishment I felt, for they all began to laugh, and the chief wife rose, unrolled her outer lavelap, and after a further unwrapping of shawls, produced a fine, healthy child of six weeks, or thereabouts, from a sort of sling in which she had been carrying it between her shoulders at the back. She then handed it to another of the wives, who suckled it, so I suppose she was the mother. Then, when it had had its fill, it was passed on to yet a third woman—not the chief wife—who wrapped it up as before, and slung it behind her back under her lavelap.

In order to amuse and entertain them, I showed them my European clothes and jewellery. The former interested them greatly, but my rings and bracelets did not appear to impress them. They seemed to consider them too small and trivial to be of any particular value. They themselves wore numbers of very large and heavy silver bangles and finger and thumb rings, together with massive gold brooches of native workmanship and design. That evening, on their return, they sent me food of their own cooking. It was, however, so terribly peppered that a single spoonful brought the tears to my eyes and nearly choked me; so I gave it to my boys, who devoured it greedily, smacking their lips over it with many grunts and gurgles of ecstatic approval.

During our stay at Bassari, Herr von Parpart, District Commissioner of Sokode, arrived with his escort. They had ridden the whole distance from Sokode to Bassari, about forty miles, in the one day, a truly wonderful performance considering the roads they had to traverse, of which more anon. As a result of their journey, Parpart was somewhat tired, so I did not see him that night, and the following morning very early he was up and away to Banjeli before I rose. I was rather disappointed at being unable to make his acquaintance, but as it turned out, it was only a pleasure deferred, for we were destined to see a good deal of him later on during our stay at Sokode.

It was at Bassari one evening, on returning from our ride, that I first heard close up, and was able to observe, the curious death wailing and other ceremonious celebrations precedent to a native funeral, concerning which I shall have more to say presently. I had frequently, when on my travels, heard these same weird sounds afar off, but on this occasion I was brought into actual contact with them, and the result was an almost painful shock to my nervous system. The wailing and lamentation emanated from the compound occupied by the native soldiers attached to the station, and, on inquiring, I found that they were mourning for a little child who had died that day, a baby of about two weeks.

CHAPTER XVIII
A WOMAN "PALAVER"

I have entitled the following chapter "A Woman Palaver," and this it is—no more. Men may skip it, if they like. Women, I venture to think, will find it interesting. In what I have set down there is, I suppose, little that is of real ethnographical or anthropological value. Nevertheless, the facts were obtained at first hand, and are the result of many long and confidential talks with the women of many diverse native tribes, and of my own observations and deductions, taken and recorded on the spot. The latter portion of the chapter, dealing with caravan life and cookery from a white woman's point of view, I have been led to insert in the hope, which I believe to be well founded, that it may serve a useful purpose in the case of any other woman who may in future visit the West African hinterland under circumstances similar to those in which I found myself.

Marriage, and its natural corollary, the bearing and rearing of children, constitute the main features in a native woman's life; indeed, marriage may be said to be the pivotal point, as it were; round which all else revolves. Broadly speaking, it is, as amongst most primitive peoples, a matter of barter, of sale and exchange. Girls are marketable commodities, just as are cattle, or goats, or fowls, and are, in fact, interchangeable, a wife being bought by so many of one or the other, or by so much salt, or coined money, as the case may be.

Frequently, instead of buying a wife outright, the prospective husband will work for her, exchanging in fact his labour against her value with his prospective father-in-law. In this way a man can obtain a wife, or wives, without any capital outlay whatever, and for this reason the plan is much favoured by the younger and more impecunious natives. Those who are older and better off naturally prefer to pay cash on the nail, or its equivalent.

Girls are frequently bought by far-seeing natives as soon as they are born, and are then considered as betrothed from birth. The price of such is naturally much less than when they are adult, or approaching adolescence, for obviously the child may die before attaining to marriageable age. A girl so betrothed is supposed to keep herself chaste; but an unbetrothed girl is free by native law to indulge her sexual appetite as she pleases. If a child is born out of wedlock, however, it is not necessarily considered to belong to the mother. On the contrary, the reputed father has the first claim to it by tribal law; but he must claim it directly it is born, and if the girl disputes his claim, he must make it good by evidence that will satisfy the chief, or the village elders, as the case may be. If he fails, then the child is retained by the mother, and goes with her to the man who eventually marries her, and who becomes a father to it. As a rule, the fact of a woman having previously given birth to one or more children, is no bar to matrimony. Indeed, the native husband seems rather to prefer it so, for reasons into which I need not enter.

Marriage customs vary widely amongst the different tribes. The semi-wild Tschokossi people of the far north, for instance, seem to have, so far as I could discover, no wedding ceremonies whatever of a fixed settled character, although the occasion is always made one of feasting and rejoicing. The Tschaudjo, on the other hand, who profess Mohammedanism and are by comparison civilised, possess a very elaborate series of marriage rites, which is strictly adhered to. Those precedent to the actual ceremony, however, are secret, and strangers are jealously excluded from any participation in them, nor may they be present even as spectators.

One such wedding took place while I was at Paratau, but although I tried to gain permission to see the thing from start to finish, I was unable to. I gathered, however, that the principal feature of the initial proceedings, so far as the bride was concerned, consisted in a sort of very rough washing and massaging of her whole body, lasting throughout the entire night immediately preceding the actual day of the wedding. This operation took place in a hut set apart for the purpose, the poor bride being rubbed and scrubbed vigorously by relays of village women armed with pieces of porous stone, like pumice, and rough wooden brushes or scrapers, shaped like hair-brushes, but minus the bristles. The ordeal, which lasted practically from dusk till dawn, must have been a pretty unpleasant one, judging from the shrieks and yells that came from the interior of the hut where it was being carried out. At the same time other women were engaged in buffeting and harrying the bridegroom; although the treatment meted out to him, I was informed, was nothing like so violent or painful as that which the bride had to endure.

However, the latter looked, I am bound to say, none the worse when, next day, dressed all in white from head to foot, she took her place with her prospective husband in the bridal procession. Both were mounted on fine horses—the Tschaudjo, as I have already explained, are splendid horsemen—and were escorted by multitudes of people, shouting and firing guns, to the mosque, where the actual ceremony was performed in accordance with the Mohammedan law. The day's proceedings culminated in a feast, after which husband and wife were escorted to their hut by practically all the married women in the neighbourhood, who remained outside all through the night, yelling at the top of their voices, singing, capering, and beating drums.

Every native wife, it may be mentioned, is entitled by tribal law to her own separate hut, no matter how many other wives her husband may possess, and she can also lay claim to an equal share of his society and attentions, the rule being for him to stay with each of his women for five days and nights together in regular rotation. Thus, in the case of a well-to-do native possessing eight wives, a favourite number amongst those who can afford it, it takes him exactly forty days to "go the rounds," so to speak. As I have already intimated, native women do not resent polygamy in the least; and on the whole they seem happy and contented. They take, too, considerable pride in their personal appearance; and they are, speaking generally, far cleaner in their personal habits than are the men. This is largely due, no doubt, to the fact that they bathe two or even three times a day, when going down to the river for water. The men usually bathe once a day, in the evening, and then it is invariably a warm bath, the water for which is carried and heated for them by the women. This, however, does not apply to some of the remote pagan tribes, whose habits are filthy. Practically all the women I came across spend a lot of time and trouble over dressing their hair, with the exception of the Konkombwa, who, as already related, crop their wool quite close. They are also very fond of cleaning their teeth, using little pointed sticks of soft wood, which they are everlastingly twiddling in their mouths with their fingers as they go to and fro for the morning and evening water. Soap they manufacture themselves in little black balls about the bigness of a golf ball, and very good soap it is, giving a soft and abundant lather.

The savage woman looks forward to the ordeal of childbirth with none of those fears and misgivings that so frequently beset her civilised sister. To her, indeed, it can scarcely be counted an ordeal. She is, as a rule, a perfectly healthy female animal, and her strong, supple body has never been compressed by corsets, or had its natural growth and development hindered by tight-fitting skirts, heavy "tailor-made" costumes, and other similar sartorial abominations. Every woman, too, has received during her early girlhood, and quite as a matter of course, a training in midwifery; but of this I shall have more to say presently.

Assuming the birth to take place at home, and in her own village, which, however, by no means always happens, she is taken in hand by her female friends and relations when the critical moment arrives, and as a general rule all is over in two hours or thereabouts, and the mother is frequently up and about again an hour or so later. They are as a rule, skilful and careful midwives, with two exceptions. The umbilical cord is nearly always severed in an exceedingly primitive, not to say rough and ready, fashion, leaving a disfiguring protuberance, which in after life, amongst peoples who almost invariably go nude, or nearly so, is unpleasantly noticeable. The other exception has to do with the observance of a proper degree of cleanliness on the part of the mother, and those attendant on her, which is largely lacking. On the other hand, the new-born baby is always well looked after, being given a warm bath directly after it first enters the world, and otherwise carefully tended.

When, as not infrequently happens, the birth takes place while the woman is on a journey, or at work in the fields, the mother does not allow the incident to unduly distress her. She is quite capable of looking after herself in her "trouble," and does so, much as do the wild bush animals amongst whom she lives, and from whom she has learnt and adopted many practices. In such an eventuality she simply rests for an hour or two, or perhaps three at the outside, then wraps the baby in her lavelap, bunches it in a heap behind her back between the shoulders, and goes on with her work or resumes her journey, as though nothing untoward had happened. Nor does she appear to suffer any after ill-effects; although that is not to say that they do not result. And this is where white women in Africa might do a lot of good on lines similar to those achieved by the Zenana missions in India; teaching the native mothers, that is to say, the importance of personal hygiene at this critical time, of obstetric cleanliness; and likewise impressing upon native husbands—this is vital—the necessity of permitting women with new-born babies to be released for a time from their hard domestic duties.

The native mother suckles her child for from three to four years, during which time she separates herself entirely from her husband, who has, almost perforce, to take to himself another wife, assuming him to be still a monogamist. One reason for this custom, no doubt, is that the ordinary native food is not sufficiently sustaining for a very young child, or rather it cannot assimilate enough of it, because its little stomach is not big enough to hold a sufficient quantity. The poor little mite does its best, and is assisted thereto by its mother, who practises regularly upon it a system of forcible feeding of so drastic and unpleasant a nature as would, I should imagine, quickly break down the resolution of even the most stubborn of suffragettes.

The thick millet gruel, or thin porridge, called fu-fu, which is the staple diet of the Togoland negro, is simply poured and crammed down its little throat whenever feeding-time comes round, giving rise to the peculiar pot-bellied appearance so noticeable in all native children. One result of this lengthy suckling, coupled with an insufficiency of any other sort of nourishing food, is a very high rate of infantile mortality. The mother gets careless as time goes on, does not properly attend to the cleanliness of her nipples, is guilty herself of all sorts of imprudences of diet, with the result that the youngster sickens and dies.

The negro baby at birth is not black. It is either white, or of a very light yellowish colour; but this gradually darkens, until by the time it is a month old, it has assumed a chocolate tint, which afterwards deepens rapidly to the ordinary jet-black of the full-blooded negro. Another peculiarity I noticed, in the new-born native baby, is its long, straight hair. This, however, rapidly falls out, to be replaced in due course by the well-known thick woolly thatch that does duty for hair on the cranium of the African adult native.

African children learn to walk at a later age than do European children. This is probably due to the fact that they have, comparatively speaking, very little practice. As soon as the youngster is born it is taken to the local ju-ju man, who bestows upon it, for a consideration, certain charms, or fetishes—a small piece of bone, a fragment of wood, or a bit of glass, say. These are carefully placed in the middle of different-sized strings of beads, which are then made into bracelets for its wrists, into anklets for its legs, and into a waist-belt. So long as it wears these, which it does constantly, it is supposed to be secure from the influence of the evil eye. But in order to make assurance doubly sure, the mother rarely lets the little one out of her sight. She carries it about with her constantly on her back, shrouded in her lavelap, from the folds of which, in the case of a very young child, not even the head protrudes. This method of carrying the child is rendered easier, owing to the fact that all native women wear round their waists big bead belts, drawn quite tight with a view to making their hips look larger and more prominent; a greatly admired feature. Into these belts the lower edge of the head lavelap is tucked, affording a comfortable support to baby.

As soon as it does begin to toddle, however, it is, assuming it to be a girl, given a tiny calabash, and taught to balance it, filled with water, upon its little head. From now on it becomes a useful unit in the tribal, or village, organisation. It accompanies its mother regularly to the river when she goes with the other women to get water; is taught to sweep out the hut with a little broom, to prepare fu-fu, is taken into the forest and instructed what herbs and wild vegetables are good for food, and which must be avoided. In short, the child is trained in the ordinary domestic and other duties that fall to the lot of the average native woman.

At about the age of ten or twelve, assuming her parents are able to afford the expense, the little girl undergoes an extraordinary ordeal, generally referred to euphemistically as being "sent into the bush." This means that she quits her home and her parents, and is placed in charge of a fetish woman, who leads her away to a hut, or rather a collection of huts, in the forest, far from the habitations of men. Here is a very important personage, a "mammy," generally referred to as the "Women's Queen," and under her care and tuition, and that of her assistant fetish women, the little girl remains for a period varying from two to five or six months, or even longer.

During this period she receives instruction in the art and practice of midwifery, and has to undergo the painful, and to our minds revolting, operation of introcision, corresponding to the rite of circumcision, to which her brothers, if she has any, are called upon to submit themselves at about the same age. This much is known; but what other practices are carried on in these women's fetish groves cannot be told. No man may approach anywhere near any of them under penalty of instant death, and the women's lips are sealed regarding them. Even to their husbands, it is said, they dare not speak concerning them, nor to any uninitiated women. I made several attempts to get them to tell me personally something concerning the matter, but without result. At Atakpame I made the acquaintance of one of these "women's queens," a charming old pagan, rejoicing in the very Christianlike name of Maria. She bore herself with the dignity of the abbess of a cloister, as indeed in a sense she was, and she had the smallest and most beautifully formed hands, wrists, and ankles I ever beheld in a negress. She was most affable and courteous, and I tried hard to get her to tell me something of herself and her work. Beyond, however, telling me that her high office was hereditary, her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother having held it before her, and that she "taught the girls for their good," she would vouchsafe me no information whatever.

One thing, however, is certain; the woman who, either owing to the poverty of her parents or from any cause, has not been "sent into the bush" as a girl, is looked down upon as an inferior by all the other women of her tribe. So much is this so, that women of twenty, or even thirty years of age, who have been long married, and perhaps borne two or three children, are not infrequently handed over to the fetish women by their husbands, who themselves pay the initiation fees, in order that the stigma may be removed from them.

The status of married women amongst the West African native tribes varies widely. Among the pagan Tschokossi of the extreme north, the wife is a chattel and a beast of burden, and her condition is very little, if any, better than that of a domestic slave. The Tschaudjo woman, on the other hand, is a household queen, lording it over everybody, including her husband, who must yield implicit obedience to her lightest whim. In between these two extremes come the great mass of the native women, who are drudges certainly, but willing drudges, and with their rights and privileges well defined and carefully guarded by tribal law and custom. Probably they are neither better nor worse off, according to their lights, than the majority of working wives elsewhere. Certainly, they appear to be happy and contented; conjugal quarrels are comparatively rare; and poverty, as we understand the term in Europe, is practically unknown. The worst off are the widows, who are usually looked down upon and disregarded, although there are plentiful exceptions to this general rule. In the old days the wives of a chief, or other big man, were buried with him; their legs and arms being first broken with a heavy club, after which they were thrown, still breathing, into the open grave. But these barbarous practices have now been, to all intents and purposes, done away with; and now the widow simply shaves her head, and wears a white bandage round her forehead, as signs of mourning. On the man's grave are placed broken guns, bows, arrows, and so forth; on the woman's are calabashes and cooking-pots, also broken, and in each case there are supplies of food to enable the dead person to subsist during his or her long journey to the supposedly far-away land of shades.

The cultivating, gathering, and preparation of food constitutes the most important part of the native wife's duties, as it does, I suppose, amongst all primitive peoples. Native cooking may be almost entirely summed up in one word—porridge. This, however, is not made altogether of meal or flour, but is mixed with herbs and wild vegetables, and is invariably so highly seasoned with native pepper, derived from the wild pepper plant, as to be uneatable by Europeans.

For this reason, if for no other, one is obliged to carefully superintend one's own cooking when on trek. The ordinary native cook will put pepper into all dishes, if he is not carefully watched, and he uses the pepper-pot with no sparing hand. The matter of superintendence and oversight of the culinary department fell to my lot all the time we were on our travels. All our provisions were carried with us up country from Atakpame in old kerosene tins, which a native artisan had previously fitted with hinged lids and locks and keys. These tins, carefully cleansed from all smell or taint of oil, constitute the very best receptacles possible for the conveyance of perishable commodities, as they are white-ant proof and weather-proof.

Each box, as I have previously explained, held a little of everything, and I entered in my store book before starting the contents of each. In this way it was easy at any time to get at any particular article, and I was able to check any tendency to extravagance on the part of our cook; a most necessary precaution when dealing with natives.

Cooking in the bush, I need hardly say, is a very different thing from cooking at home. Largely it is carried out in the open; or at best in a small low hut, with little or no ventilation, and of course minus a chimney. In this latter case, as there is, of course, no outlet for the smoke, the mistress—in this case myself—usually finds it impossible to remain in her "kitchen" for more than a minute or so at a time, and the superintendence of the preparation of a meal resolves itself into a succession of dashes in and out—mostly out—and a continuous rubbing and wiping of smarting eyeballs.

One thing I never dared trust to the cook, and that was the boiling of the water; not only that used for drinking, but also that for washing up in, and for our personal ablutions. It all had to be boiled for a full ten minutes by my watch, and always under my personal supervision. This was done outside the hut on a special stove, but the operation was only carried out systematically and regularly by means of constant pertinacity and insistence on my part, to which Messa, our cook, was wont continuously to oppose as great a measure of passive resistance as he dared. The one objection to boiled water is that, to quote Artemus Ward's dictum anent "biled crow," it "ain't nice." Its taste is about as insipid as it is possible to conceive, and a prolonged course of it as a beverage is unthinkable. Consequently we drank tea when on trek almost entirely; either hot or cold, and flavoured with limes.

Barring his rooted objection to boiling water, and his undue predilection for the pepper-pot, traits which, I am given to understand, he shared with all native servants, Messa was a good cook. He could dish up a fowl so that it looked and tasted like anything but a fowl; an invaluable attribute in a cook in a country where a surfeit of fowls, as fowls, is so quickly and invariably produced. He used to buy for a penny a bone as big as a small log of wood from the villagers, split it open, and serve us delicious marrow on toast. His soups, made out of the most unpromising materials—he used to give us one kind the basis of which was burnt monkey-nuts that was a gastronomic dream—were simply delicious.

His great fault was that he would use tinned stuff whenever possible, even when other fresh food of the same kind was available. For instance, we had amongst other canned vegetables several tins of spinach, of which we were all very fond. Only when it was all gone did I discover that spinach of a most delicious quality—far better than the tinned—grew wild in the bush all along our line of route.

The greatest luxury in the vegetable line up in the bush is the ordinary potato, which cannot be got to grow anywhere in Togo. We had brought one load, 60 lb., up country with us; and when we wanted to give anybody an extra special treat, we would cook them a few potatoes. I remember on one occasion, on our way up, asking our good friend Mr. Kuepers, the schoolmaster at Sokode, to breakfast with us at Paratau, where we were living, the distance between the two places being about three miles. He demurred somewhat, seeking excuses, for to come meant an early rise and an early ride. But when I told him that we had got eggs and bacon, and European fresh potatoes, he agreed to come like a shot. Our great ambition was to take some of the potatoes on to Mangu, and we did succeed, by exercising considerable self-denial, in saving about 15 lb. Then, to our grief and consternation, they began suddenly to go bad. Each morning Messa would sort them carefully out, laying them to dry in the sun, and bringing the black ones to me, saying, with a sorrowful face: "Little mother, four more—or six or seven as the case might be—potatoes gone bad." Eventually, by bestowing upon those remaining as much devoted care and attention as a fond mother does to her new-born babe, or a dog fancier on a litter of pedigree puppies, we got enough good ones into Mangu to give each European there three for his Christmas dinner. Yams, which are the native equivalent to our potatoes, I did not like at all at first; but in the end, mashed and served with butter, I grew to find them at least palatable. Our tinned butter, by the way, became after a while of the consistency of oil, from the constant jolting on the carrier's heads, and could only be used for cooking. The tinned bacon was the best of the canned provisions, keeping good and sweet to the last. It was, however, very expensive, costing 4s. 8d. a pound tin. Native eggs were everywhere plentiful and cheap, costing about a shilling the hundred. They are small, but nice tasting. Fruit, too, was plentiful, especially bananas, of which Messa used to make all sorts of tasty dishes. But when I wanted to give the men a real treat, I used to prepare for them a special Hamburg dish, consisting of dried apples and plums, boiled with bacon and little suet dumplings.

CHAPTER XIX
BACK IN SOKODE

The first stage of our journey to Malfakasa, the half-way house, so to speak, between Bassari and Sokode, led us down to the Kamaa River along a beautiful, well-kept road, planted on either side with mango trees. The Kamaa in the dry season is, like most West African rivers, practically without water; but during the rainy season it is frequently quite unfordable, and many a poor native, I was informed, has lost his life in its treacherous whirlpools, while attempting a crossing that looks perhaps easy, but is in reality excessively dangerous.