But at Winnebah I received a check. Those Kroo boys gave out, and it was plain to be seen they could travel no longer with loads on their heads. I had no use for their company without loads. There were white men in Winnebah, but none of them could help me, for the cocoa harvest in the country behind was in full swing, and carriers there were not. The only suggestion was that there was a ship in the roadstead, and that I should embark on her for Accra. There seemed nothing else for it, and, regretful as I was, I felt I must take their advice. The aggravating part was that it was only a long day's journey from Winnebah to Accra, but as I had no men to carry my loads I could not do it. One thing I was determined to do, however, and that was to visit an old Dutch fort there was at a place called Berraku, about half-way to Accra. I could do it by taking my hammock-boys and my luncheon, and that I did.
That day's journey is simply remarkable for the frolicsomeness of my men and for the extreme filth of the fishing villages through which we passed. They rivalled Appam. As for the fort, it was built of brick, there was a rest-house upon the bastion for infrequent travellers, and it was tumbling into disrepair. There will be no fort at Berraku presently, for the people of the town will have taken away the bricks one by one to build up their own houses. But it must have been a big place once, and there is in the town a square stone tomb, a relic of the past. The inscription is undecipherable, but it was evidently erected in memory of some important person who left his bones in Africa, and lies there now forgotten.
There was a river to cross just outside the town of Winnebah, and crossing a river is a big undertaking in West Africa, even when you have only one load. I'm afraid I must plead guilty to not knowing my men by sight; for a long time a black man was a black man to me, and he had no individuality about him. Now they all crowded into the boat to cross the river, and it was evident to my mind that we were too many; then as no one seemed inclined to be left behind, I exercised my authority and pointed out the man who was to get out, and out he got, very reluctantly, but cheerily helped by his unfeeling fellows. It took us about a quarter of an hour to cross that river, for it was wide and we had to work up-stream, and once across they all proceeded to go on their way without a thought for the man left behind. And then I discovered what I had done. I had thrown the ægis of my authority over, putting the unfortunate ferryman out of his own boat, and to add injury to insult my men were quite prepared to leave him on one side of the stream and his boat on the other. When I discovered it was the ferryman I had put out I declared they must go back for him, and my decision was received with immense surprise.
“You want him, Ma?” as if such a desire should be utterly impossible; but when they found I really did, and, moreover, intended to pay him, two of them took the boat and he was brought to me with shouts of laughter, and comforted with an extra dash, which was more than he had expected after my high-handed conduct.
One could not help liking these peasant peoples; they were such children, so easily pleased, so anxious to show off before the white woman. Here all along the beach the people were engaged in fishing, and again and again I saw a little crowd of men launching a boat, or hauling it in and distributing their catch upon the beach. I always got out and inspected the catch, and they always made way to let me look when they saw I was interested. Of course, we could not speak to each other, but they spread out the denizens of the deep and pointed out anything they thought might be specially curious. I can see now one flat fish that was pulled out for my benefit. One man, who was acting as showman, caught him by the tail and held him out at arm's length. He was only a small fish about the size, I suppose, of a large dish, but that thorny tail went high over the man's head while the body of the fish was still flapping about on the sand, and the lookers-on all laughed and shouted as if they had succeeded in showing the stranger a most curious sight, as indeed they had.
I was sorry to turn my back on the road, sorry to go back to Winnebah—Winnebah of the evil reputation, where they say if a white man is not pleasing to the people the fetish men poison him—sorry to pay off my men and send them back, sorry to take ship for Accra; but I could not get carriers, there was nothing else for it, and by steamer I had to go, and very lucky indeed was I to find a steamer ready to take me, so I said good-bye to the road for some considerable time and went to Accra.
The pains and penalties of landing in Accra—Negro officials, blatant, pompous, inefficient—Christiansborg Castle—The ghost of the man with eyes like bright stones—The importance of fresh air—Beautiful situation of Accra—Its want of shade-trees—The fences of Accra—The temptation of the cooks—Picturesque native population—Striking coiffure—The expensive breakwater—To commemorate the opening of the waterworks—The forlorn Danish graveyard—A meddlesome missionary—Away to the east.
I don't like landing in Accra. There is a good deal of unpleasantness connected with it. For one thing, the ships must lie a long way off for the surf is bad, and the only way to land is to be put into a mammy-chair, dropped into a surf boat, and be rowed ashore by a set of most excellent boatmen, who require to be paid exorbitantly for their services. I don't know what other people pay, but I have never landed on Accra beach under a ten-shilling dash to the boat boys, and then I had to pay something like sixpence a load to have my things taken up to the Custom house. In addition to that you get the half-civilised negro in all his glory, blatant, self-satisfied, loquacious, deadly slow, and very inefficient. As well as landing my goods from the steamer, I wanted to inquire into the fate of other goods that I had, with what I considered much forethought, sent on from Sekondi by a previous steamer, and here I found myself in a sea of trouble, for, the negro mind having grasped the fact that a troublesome woman was looking for boxes that had probably been lost a couple of months ago, each official passed me on from one department to another with complacency. Accra is hot, and Accra is sandy, and Accra as yet does not understand the meaning of the text, “the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land,” so for a couple of hours I was hustled about from pillar to post, finding traces of luggage everywhere, and no luggage. Then, a little way from the port office, a large placard in blue and white, announcing “Post and Telegraph Office” caught my eye, so I thought I would by way of refreshment and interlude send a telegram telling of my safe arrival to my friends in Sekondi, and, in all the heat of a tropical morning, I toiled down one flight of steps and up another and at last found that the telegraph office, in spite of that big placard, was not at the port at all but at Victoriaborg, about a couple of miles away. I could not believe it, but so it was. Whether that placard is previous, or hints at past greatness, I cannot tell. I also found later on that you cannot send a telegram after four o'clock in the afternoon in the Gold Coast. Government takes a most paternal care of its negro subordinates and sees that the poor things are not worked too hard, but when I found they closed for luncheon as well, I was apt to inquire why it should be so hard-hearted as ever to require them to open at all. I think this matter should be inquired into by someone who has the welfare of the negro race at heart.
When my temper was worn to rags, and I was thoroughly hot and unhappy, wishing myself with all my heart out in the open again with only carriers who “no be fit” to deal with, at last a surprised white man found me, straightened things out in a moment, and assured me that I should have evening dresses to wear at Government House.
The Acting Governor and his wife put me up for a day or two, and then found me quarters, and I hereby put it on record that I really think it was noble of the Acting Governor, for he had no sympathy with my mission, and I think, though he was too polite to say so, was inclined to regard a travelling woman as a pernicious nuisance. I am sure it would have been more convenient for him if I had gone straight on, but I did not want to do the capital of the Colony like an American tourist, and so protested that I must have somewhere where I could rest and arrange my impressions.
Government House is old-world. It is Christiansborg Castle, which was bought from the Danes, I think, some time in the seventies, when a general rearrangement of the Coast took place. It is one of the nicest castles on the Coast, bar, of course, Elmina, which none can touch, and has passed through various vicissitudes. I met at Kumasi the medical officer who had charge of it some years back, when it was a lunatic asylum.
“Such a pity,” said he, “to make such a fine place a lunatic asylum. But it was a terrible care to me. I was so afraid some of the lunatics would smash those fine old stained-glass windows.”
I stared. Stained-glass windows on the Coast! But there is not a trace of them now, nor have I ever met anyone else who knew of them. I suppose they are some of those things no one thought worth caring about.
There are ghosts at Christiansborg too. It used to be Government House, and then, because some Governor did not like it, a lunatic asylum, and Government House again. A man once told me how, visiting it while it was a lunatic asylum, he spoke to the warder in charge and said, “You must have an easy time here.”
“No, sah; no, sah,” said the man earnestly, “it no be good.”
“Why?” asked my curious friend.
And then the negro said that as soon as the place was locked up quiet for the night, and he knew there could not possibly be any white men within the walls, two white men, he described them, one had eyes like bright stones, walked up and down that long corridor. And the strange part of the story, said my friend, was that he described unmistakably two dead-and-gone English Governors, men who have died in recent years, one, I think, in the West Indies, and the other on the way home from West Africa!
Christiansborg Castle is close down on the seashore, so close that the surf tosses its spray against its windows, and thus it came about that I learned what seems to me the secret of health in West Africa.
All along the Coast I had wondered; sometimes I felt in the rudest health, as if nothing could touch me, sometimes so weary and languid it was an effort to rouse myself to make half a dozen steps, and here in Christiansborg Castle I was prepared to agree with all the evil that had ever been said about the climate.
“In the morning thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were even,' and at even thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were morning.'”
That just about expressed my feelings while I was staying at Christiansborg Castle. My room, owing to the exigencies of space was an inside one, and though the doors were large, wide, and always open, still it had no direct communication with the open air. All the windows along the sea side of the Castle were tight closed, for the Acting Governor's wife did not like her pretty things to be spoiled by the damp sea breeze, so she stirred her air by a punkah. But at night of course there was no punkah going and I spent nights of misery. The heat was so oppressive I could not sleep, and I used to get up and wander about the verandah, where the air was cool enough, but I could not sleep there as it was by way of being a public passage-way. After a day or two they very kindly gave me for my abode a tumble-down old bungalow, just outside the Castle walls. It was like a little fort, and probably had been built for defence in the days that were passed and gone. There was a thick stone wall round the front of a strongly built stone house, that was loopholed for defence, and here lodged some of the Government House servants and their families, but on top of this stone house had been built a wooden bungalow, now rapidly falling into decay. Here were two big rooms and wide verandahs with a little furniture, and here I lodged, engaging a cook, and running my own establishment, greatly to my own satisfaction. The bungalow was as close to the seashore as the Castle, and I opened all the windows wide, and let the cool, health-giving fresh air blow over me day and night.
After the first night the languor and weariness at once disappeared and I felt most wonderfully well, a feeling that I kept always up so long as I could sleep in the uninterrupted fresh air. Put me to sleep in a closed-in room with no possibility of a direct draught and I was tired at once, wherefore I believe and believe firmly that to insure good health in West Africa you must have plenty of fresh air. I go further and would advise everybody to sleep as much in the open as possible, or, at the very least, in a good, strong draught. After that experience, I began to notice. I had a habit of getting up very early in the morning and going out for walks and rides in my cart, and as I went down the streets of towns like Sekondi, Tarkwa, and Accra, it was surprising the number of shutters I saw fast closed against the health-giving air. I concluded the people behind were foolishly afraid of chills and preferred to be slowly poisoned, and I looked too later on in the day at the pallid, white-faced men and women who came out of those houses. For myself, West Africa agreed with me. I have never in my life enjoyed such rude health as I found I had there.
I set the reason down to the care I took to live always in the open. The conclusion I draw is this—of course I may be wrong—the margin of health in West Africa is narrow and therefore you cannot do without a supply of the invigorating elixir supplied by Nature herself. Could I live in England as I did there it is quite likely my health would be still better. Now, when I hear a man is ill in West Africa, I ask several questions before I condemn the place. First, of course, there is the unlucky man who would be ill in any climate, then there is the dissipated man who brings his ailments upon himself, and, while in Africa men set his illness down to the right cause, when they are this side of the water they are only too ready to add another nail to their cross and pity the poor devil who has succumbed to the terrible climate they have to face. Next comes the man who, while not exactly dissipated, does himself too well, burns the candle at both ends, and puts upon his constitution a strain it certainly could not stand in a cooler climate, and then, when all these eliminated, there is to my mind the man and the woman, for the women are still greater offenders, who will sleep in too sheltered a spot, and spend their sleeping hours in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room.
Of course other things tend to ill-health—loneliness, want of occupation for the mind, that perpetual strain that is engendered when a man is not contented with his surroundings and is for ever counting the slowly moving days till he shall go home; but that must come in any land where a man counts himself an exile, and I finally came to the conclusion that pretty nearly half the ill-health of West Africa would be cured if men would but arrange their sleeping-quarters wisely.
At any rate, in this old tumble-down bungalow I was more than happy. I engaged a cart and boys, and I used to start off at six o'clock in the morning, or as near to it as I could get those wretches of Kroo boys to come, and wander over the town.
Accra, which is the principal town of the Ga people, must have been for some centuries counted a town of great importance, for three nations had forts here. The English had James Fort, now used as a prison, the Dutch had Fort Crêvecoeur, now called Vssher Fort and used as a police barracks, and the Danes had Christiansborg Castle close to the big lagoon and three miles away from the town of Accra. And in addition to these forts all along the shore are ruins of great buildings. Till I went to Ashanti, between Christiansborg and Accra was the only bit of good road I had seen on the English coast of Guinea, and that was probably made by the Danes, for there is along part of it an avenue of fine old tamarind trees, which only this careful people would take the trouble to plant. They are slow-growing trees, I believe, and must be planted for shelter between other trees which may be cut down when the beautiful tamarinds grow old enough to take care of themselves. Some of the trees are gone and no one has taken the trouble to fill in the gaps, but still with their delicate greenery they are things of beauty in hot, sun-stricken Accra. For if ever a town needed trees and their shade it is this capital of the Gold Coast.
Accra might be a beautiful city. The coast is not very high, but raised considerably above sea-level, and it is broken into sweeping bays; the country behind gradually rises so that the bungalows at the back of the town get all the breeze that comes in from the ocean and all that sweeps down from the hills. In consequence, Accra, for a town that lies within a few degrees of the Equator, may be counted comparatively cool. The only heat is between nine o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in the afternoon; at night, when I was there, the hottest time of the year, March and the beginning of April, there was always a cool sea breeze. A place is always bearable when the nights are cool.
But on landing, Accra gives the impression of fierce heat. Shade-giving trees are almost entirely absent, the sun blazes down on hot, yellow sands, on hot, red streets lined with bare, white houses, and the very glare makes one pant. In the roadways, here and there, are channels worn by the heavy rainfall, the streets are not very regular, and many of the houses are ill-kept, shabby, and sadly in need of a coat of paint; when they belong to white men one sees written all over them that they are the dwellings of men who have no permanent abiding place here, but are “just making it do,” and as for the native houses, every native under English rule has yet to learn the lesson that cleanliness and neatness make for beauty. When in the course of my morning's drive I looked at the gardens of Accra, for there are a good many ill-kept gardens, I fancied myself stepping with Alice into Wonderland. The picket fences are made of the curved staves that are imported for the making of barrels, and therefore they are all curved like an “S,” and I do not think there is one whole fence in all the town; sometimes even the posts and rails are gone, but invariably some of the pickets are missing.
“All the good cooks in Accra,” said a man to me with a sigh, “are in prison for stealing fences.”
“Not all,” said his chum; “ours went for stealing the post office, you remember. He'd burnt most of it before they discovered what was becoming of it.” They say they are importing iron railings for Accra to circumvent the negro; for the negro, be it understood, does not mind going to prison. He is well-fed, well-sheltered, and the only deprivation he suffers is being deprived of his women; and when he comes out he feels it no disgrace, his friends greet him and make much of him, much as we should one who had suffered an illness through no fault of his own, therefore the cook who has pocketed the money his master has given him to buy wood, and stolen his neighbour's fence, begins again immediately he comes out of prison, and hopes he will not be so unlucky as to be found out this time.
This is the capital of a rich colony, so in business hours I found the streets thronged, and even early in the morning they were by no means empty, for the negro very wisely goes about his business while yet it is cool. Here, away from the forest, is no tsetse fly, so horses may be seen in buggies or drawing produce, but since man's labour can be bought for a shilling a day, it is cheaper, and so many people, like I was, are drawn by men. I, so as to feel less like a slave-driver, bought peace of mind in one way and much aggravation in another by having three, but many men I saw with only two, and many negroes, who are much harder on those beneath them than the white men, had only one. Produce too is very often taken from the factory to the harbour in carts drawn by eight or a dozen men, and goods are brought up from the sea by the same sweating, toiling, shouting Kroo boys.
They are broad-shouldered, sinewy men, clad generally in the most elderly of European garments cast off by some richer man, but always they are to be known from the surrounding Ga people by the broad vertical band of blue tattooing on their foreheads, the freedom mark that shows they have never been slaves. In Accra the white people are something under two hundred, the Governor and his staff, officials, teachers, merchants, clerks, missionaries, and artisans, and there are less than thirty white women, so that in comparison the white faces are very few in the streets. They are thronged with the dark people who call this place home. Clad in their own costumes they are very picturesque, the men in toga-like cloths fastened on one shoulder, the women with their cloths fastened under the arms, sometimes to show the breasts, sometimes to cover them, and on their head is usually a bright kerchief which hides an elaborate coiffure.
When I was strolling about Christiansborg one day I saw a coiffure which it was certainly quite beyond the power of the wearer to hide under a handkerchief. She was engaged in washing operations under a tree, and so I asked and obtained permission to photograph her. It will be seen by the result that, in spite of her peculiar notions on the subject of hair-dressing, she is not at all ungraceful. Indeed, in their own clothes, the Africans always show good taste. However gaudy the colours chosen, never it seems do natives make a mistake—they blend into the picture, they suit the garish sunshine, the bright-blue sky, the yellow beach, the cobalt sea, or the white foam of the surf breaking ceaselessly on the shore; only when the man and woman put on European clothes do they look grotesque. There is something in the tight-fitting clothes of civilisation that is utterly unsuited to these sons and daughters of the Tropics, and the man who is a splendid specimen of manhood when he is stark but for a loin cloth, who is dignified in his flowing robe, sinks into commonplaceness when he puts on a shirt and trousers, becomes a caricature when he parts his wool and comes out in a coat and high white collar.
Money is spent in Accra as it is spent nowhere else in the Colony. Of course I do not know much about these matters, therefore I suppose I should not judge, but I may say that after I had seen German results, I came to the conclusion that money was not always exactly wisely spent. Most certainly the people who had the beautifying of the town were not very artistic, and sometimes I cannot but feel they have lacked the saving grace of a sense of humour.
The landing here was shockingly bad; it is so still, I think, for the last time I left I was drenched to the skin, so the powers that be set to work at enormous cost to build a breakwater behind which the boats might land in comparative safety. Only comparative, for still the moment the boat touches the shore the boatmen seize the passenger and carry him as swiftly as possible, and quite regardless of his dignity, beyond the reach of the next breaking wave.
“Ah,” said a high official, looking with pride at the breakwater, “how I have watched that go up. Every day I have said to myself, 'something accomplished, something done'”; and he said it with such heartfelt pride that I had not the heart to point out the sand pump, working at the rate of sixty tons a minute, that this same costly breakwater had necessitated, for the harbour without it would fill up behind the breakwater; not exactly, I fancy, what the authorities intended. The breakwater isn't finished yet, but the harbour is filling fast; by the time it is finished I should doubt whether there will be any water at all behind it.
I did Accra thoroughly. I lived in that little bungalow beside the fort, and I went up and down the streets in my cart and I saw all I think there was to be seen. But for one good friend, a medical officer I had known before, the lady who was head of the girls' school, a thoroughly capable, practical young woman, and the one or two friends they brought to see me, I knew nobody, and so I was enabled to form my opinions untrammelled, and I'm afraid I had the audacity to sit in judgment on that little tropical capital and say to myself that things might really be very much better done. The Club may be a cheerful place if you know anyone, but it is very doleful and depressing if the only other women look sidelong at you over the tops of their papers as if you were some curious specimen that it might perhaps be safer to avoid, and I found the outside of the bungalows, with their untidy, forlorn gardens, the houses of sojourners who are not dwellers in the land, anything but promising. Yet money is spent too—witness the breakwater—and in my wanderings I came across a tombstone-like erection close to James Fort, which I stopped and inspected. Indeed it is in a conspicuous place, with an inscription which he who runs may read. At least he might have read a little while ago, but the climate is taking it in hand. The stone is of polished granite, which must have cost a considerable amount of money, and by the aid of that inscription I discovered that it was a fountain erected to commemorate the opening of the waterworks in Accra. Oh Africa! Already it is difficult to read that inscription; the unfinished fountain is falling into decay, and the water has not yet been brought to the town! When future generations dig on the site of the old Gold Coast town, I am dreadfully afraid that tombstone will give quite a wrong impression. Now it is one of the most desolate things I know, more desolate even than the forlorn Danish graveyard which lies, overgrown and forgotten, but a stone's throw from my bungalow at Christiansborg. A heavy brick wall had been built round it once, but it was broken down in places so that the people of Christiansborg might pasture their goats and sheep upon it, and I climbed through the gap, risking the snakes, and read the inscriptions. They had died, apparently most of them, in the early years of the nineteenth century, men and women, victims probably to their want of knowledge, and all so pitifully young. I could wish that the Government that makes so much fuss about educating the young negro in the way he should go, could spare, say ten shillings a year to keep these graves just with a little respect. It would want so little, so very little. Those Danes of ninety years ago I dare say sleep sound enough lulled by the surf, but it would be a graceful act to keep their graves in order, and would not be a bad object-lesson for the Africans we are so bent on improving.
Behind the town are great buildings—technical schools put up with this object in view. They are very ugly buildings, very bare and barren and hot-looking. Evidently the powers who insist so strongly upon hand and eye training think it is sufficient to let the young scholars get their ideas of beauty and form by sewing coloured wools through perforated cards or working them out in coloured chalks on white paper; they have certainly not given them a practical lesson in beauty with these buildings. They may be exceedingly well-fitted for the use to which they are intended, but it seems to me a little far-fetched to house young negroes in such buildings when in such a climate a roof over a cement floor would answer all purposes.
If I had longed to beat my hammock-boys, my feelings towards them were mild when compared with those I had towards my cart-boys. They were terriblelooking ruffians, clad in the forlornest rags, and they dragged me about at a snail's pace. What they wanted of course was a master who would beat them, and as they did not get it, they took advantage of me. It is surprising how one's opinions are moulded by circumstances. Once I would have said that the man who hit an unoffending black man was a brute, and I suppose in my calmer moments I would say so still, but I distinctly remember seeing one of my cart-boys who had been on an errand to get himself a drink, or satisfy some of his manifold wants, strolling towards me in that leisurely fashion which invariably set me longing for the slave-driver's whip to hasten his steps. In his path was a white man who for some reason bore a grudge against the negro, and, without saying a word, caught him by the shoulder and kicked him on one side, twisted him round, and kicked him on the other side, and I, somewhat to my own horror, found myself applauding in my heart. Here was one of my cart-boys getting his deserts at last. The majority of white men were much of my way of thinking, but of course I came across the other sort. I met a missionary and his wife who were travelling down to inquire into the conditions of the workers in the cocoa plantations in Ferdinando Po. I confess I thought them meddlesome. What should we think if Portugal sent a couple of missionaries to inquire into the conditions of the tailoring trade in the East End of London, or the people in the knife trade in Sheffield? I have seen both these peoples and seen just as a passer-by far more open misery than ever I saw on the coast of West Africa. The misery may be there, but I have not seen it, as I may see it advertising itself between Hyde Park Corner and South Kensington any day of the week. Since I was a tiny child I have heard the poor heathen talked of glibly enough, but I have never in savage lands come across him.
After nearly a month at Accra I decided I must go on, and then I found it was impossible to get carriers to go along the beach eastward; the best I could do was to go up by the Basel Mission motor lorry to a place called Dodowah, and here the Acting Governor had kindly arranged with the Provincial Commissioner at Akuse to send across carriers to meet me and take me to the Volta.
So one still, hot morning in April I packed up bag and baggage in my nice little bungalow, had one final wrangle with my cart-boys, a parting breakfast with the Basel Mission Factory people whose women-kind are ideal for a place like West Africa and make a home wherever you find them, and started in the lorry north for Dodowah in the heart of the cocoa district.
To Dodowah by motor lorry—Orchard-bush country—Negro tortures—The Basel Mission factor—A personally conducted tour—Great hospitality—A dinner by moonlight—Plan a night journey—The roadway by moonlight—Barbarous hymns—Carriers who “no be fit” once more—Honesty of the African carrier—Extraordinary obedience—The leopard that cried at Akway Pool—A hard-hearted slave-driver—Krobo Hill—Blood fetishes—Terror of the carriers—Story of the hill—The dawning of a new day—Unexplained disappearances—Akuse at last—The arrival of a whirlwind—The fire on Krobo Hill.
Inland from Accra the country is what they call orchard bush, that is to say, it was rather flat country sloping in gradual gradation to the hills behind, covered now, in the end of the dry season, with yellow grass and dotted all over with trees, not close together as in the forest country but just far enough apart to give it a pleasant, park-like look. There were great tall ant heaps too, or rather the homes of the termite, the white ant which is not an ant at all I believe, and these reminded me of the ghastly form of torture sometimes perpetrated by the negroes. A Provincial Commissioner once told me that he had several times come across on these hills, which are often ten or twelve or twenty feet high, the skeleton of a man who had undoubtedly been fastened there while he was alive; and another went one better and told me how another form of torture was to place a man on the ant heap without any fastening whatever and then to surround it with men and women with knives, so that when he tried to escape he was promptly driven back. In this last case I am glad to think that the torturers are bound to have run their share of risk, and must have received many a good hard nip. But the negro mind seems to rather revel in secret societies, trial by ordeal, and tortures. Christianity, the religion of love and pity, has been preached on the Coast for many a long day now, and yet in this year of our Lord 1911 there is behind the Church of England in Accra, down on the sea beach, a rock which is generally known as Sacrifice Rock, and here those who know declare that every yam festival, which takes place just after the rains in September, they sacrifice a girl in order that the crops may not fail.
Riding in a lorry I had plenty of time to consider these matters. My kind Basel Mission Factory haus-frau had provided me with luncheon to eat by the way, and I knew that all my goods and chattels would arrive safely at their destination without my having to worry about them. Grant was the only servant I had left. I had dismissed the cook, and Zacco had quarrelled with Grant and dismissed himself, and so while I sat on the front seat of the lorry alongside the negro driver, Grant and my goods and chattels were packed away in odd corners on top of the merchandise that was going to Dodowah. The road was bad, deeply cut by the passing of these lorries, but I arrived there about midday and was cordially received by a Basel Mission Factory man who told me my carriers had arrived, and suggested I should come to his house and have luncheon.
He was a kindly, fair-haired young German who had been in the Colony about a month and was learning English on Kroo-boy lines. The result was a little startling, but as it was our only means of communication I was obliged to make the best of it.
My carriers had been here waiting for me since Friday; this was Monday, and they wanted “sissy” money. I paid up and declared I should start the moment they had broken their fast. Meanwhile my German friend undertook to show me the sights.
Dodowah is a very pretty little place at the foot of the hills; it is embowered in palm trees and is the centre of the cocoa industry. In the yard of the factory the cocoa was lying drying in the blazing sun, and when I had been duly instructed in its various qualities, my host suggested I should “walk small.”
“I take you my house.”
It was very kind of him, but I was cautious. I do not like walking in the blazing noonday.
“How far is it?” I asked.
“Small, small,” said he, with conviction.
Grant was a very different person now from the boy in a pink pyjama coat, meek and mild and bullied by Kwesi, whom I had engaged in the distant past. He was my body servant; evidently supposed by everyone else who came in contact with me to hold a position of high trust, and thinking no end of himself. So to him I gave strict instructions. All the loads were to start at once, the hammock-boys were to follow me to the factor's house, and he was to go on with the carriers. We had left the protection of the “p'lice” behind, and on the whole I thought I could do just as well without.
So I set out with my new friend and accompanied by my new headman who evidently thought it his duty to follow in my wake, though he could understand no English and I could understand not one word of his tongue. That walk remains in my mind as one long nightmare; I only did one worse, and then I thought I must be going to die. We left the plain country and plunged uphill, it was blazing noonday in April, and though there were palms and much growth on either side of the road, on the road itself was not a particle of shade. Still we went up and up and up.
“I show you, I show you,” said my friend.
Frankly I wished he wouldn't. It was a splendid view from that hillside, with the town nestling embowered in palms at our feet, but a personally conducted walking-tour on the Coast at midday on an April day was the very last thing I desired.
I was dripping with perspiration, I was panting and breathless before we had been on that road five minutes; in the next five I would have bartered all my prospects in Africa for a glass of iced water, and then my companion turned. “You like go through bushway, short cut.” It looked cooler, so I feebly assented and we turned into the bush which was so thin it did not shut out the sun, and the walking was very much rougher. I had given up all hopes of ever coming to the end when my companion stopped, flung up his head like a young war-horse, and said cheerfully, “Oh I tink I go lookum road.”
I sank down on a log; my new headman, an awful-looking ruffian, stood beside me, and that aggressively active young German went plunging about the bush till he returned still cheerful and remarking, “I tink we lose way. We go back.”
I draw a veil over the remainder of that walk. We did arrive at his house finally after two and a half hours' march over very rough country, and then he gave me wine to drink and fed me and was good to me, but I was utterly tired out and didn't care for the moment what became of me. He showed me a bedroom and I lay down and slept, rose up and had a bath, and felt as if I might perhaps face the world again. At half-past four we had some tea and I contemplated all my new hammock-boys sitting in a row under some palm trees on the other side of the road. They looked strapping, big, strong men, and I was thankful, for Akuse they said was twenty-seven miles away and I had to do it in one march. The question was, when I should start?
“If you start now,” said the factor, “you get there one—half-past one in the morning—very good time.”
Now I really could not agree with him. To launch yourself on totally unknown people at halfpast one in the morning and ask them to take you in is not, I think, calculated to place you in a favourable light, and I demurred. But what was I to do? I did not want to inflict myself any longer on this hospitable young man, and already I had paid my carriers for four days while they did nothing. It was a full moon. Last night had been gorgeous; this night promised to be as fine. I asked the question, why could I not travel all night?
“Oh yes, moon be fine too much”; and then he went on to tell me a long story about his Kroo boys being frightened to travel that road by themselves. “But it all be foolishness.” It took me so long to discover the meaning of the words that I really paid no attention to the gist of what he was saying, besides I could not see that a Kroo boy being afraid was any reason why I should be. Finally we figured it out that I should start at nine o'clock, which would bring me to Akuse at a little after six in the morning. This did not seem so bad, and I agreed and cordially thanked the kindness which made him plan a nice little dinner in the moonlight on the verandah. It comes back to me as one of the most unique dinners I ever had; we had no other light but that of the moon, the gorgeous moonlight of the Tropics. It shone silver on the fronds of the palms, the mountains loomed dimly mysterious like mountains in a dream, and the road that ran past the house lay clear and still and warm in the white light.
My host asked leave to dine in a cap; he said the moon gave him a headache, and strongly advised me to do likewise, but though I have heard other people say the moon affects them in that manner, it never troubles me and I declined. And he translated his German grace into English for my benefit, and I could not even smile so kindly was the intention; and we ate fruit on the verandah, and nine o'clock came and I had the top taken off my hammock and started.
“Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho,” cried the hammock-boys, clapping their hands as they went at a fast trot, far faster than the ordinary man could walk without any burden on his head, and we were off to Akuse and the Volta. The night was as light as day, and it never occurred to me that there was any danger in the path. We went through the town, and here and there a gleam of fire showed, and here and there was a yellow light in one of the window places, and the people were in groups in the streets, dancing, singing, or merely looking on. Generally they sang, and no one knows how truly barbaric a hymn can sound sung by a line of lightly clad people keeping time with hands and feet to the music. It might have been a war song, it might have been a wail for those about to die; it was, I realised with a start, “Jesu, lover of my soul,” in the vernacular. I suppose the missionaries know best, but it always seems to me that the latest music-hall favourite would do better for negro purposes than these hymns that have been endeared to most of us by old association. These new men were splendid hammock-men; they stopped for no man, and the groups melted before them.
A happy peasant people were these, apparently with just that touch of mysterious sadness about them that is with all peasant peoples. Their own sorrows they must have, of course, but they are not forced upon the passer-by as are the sordid sorrows of the great cities of the civilised world. At the outside ring of these dancers hung no mean and hungry wretches having neither part nor parcel with the singers.
Through the town and out into the open country we went, and the trees made shadows clear-cut on the road like splashes of ink, or, where the foliage was less dense, the leaves barely moving in the still night air made a tracery as of lace work on the road beneath, and there was the soft, sleepy murmur of the birds, and the ceaseless skirl of the insects. Occasionally came another sound, penetrating, weird, rather awe-inspiring, the cry of the leopard, but the hammock-boys took no heed—it was moonlight and there were eight of them.
“Yi, yi, yi, ho, ho, ho.” They clapped their hands and sang choruses, and by the time we arrived at the big village of Angomeda, a couple of hours out, I was fairly purring with satisfaction. I have noticed that when things were going well with me I was always somewhat inclined to give all the credit to my perfect management; when they went wrong I laid the blame on Providence, my headman, or any other responsible person within reach. Now my self-satisfaction received a nasty shock.
The village of Angomeda was lying asleep in the moonlight. The brown thatch glistened with moisture, the gates of the compounds and the doors of the houses were fast shut; only from under the dark shadow of a great shade-tree in the centre of the village came something white which resolved itself into Grant apologetic and aggrieved.
“Carriers go sleep here, Ma. They say they no fit go by night.”
My fine new carriers “no fit.” How are the mighty fallen! And I had imagined them pretty nearly at Akuse by now! Clearly, they could not be allowed to stay here. I have done a good many unpleasant things, but I really did not feel I could arrive at Akuse at six o'clock in the morning without a change of clothing.
But I restrained myself for the moment.
“Why?”
“I not knowing, Ma.”
I debated a moment. I realised the situation. I was a woman miles from any white man, and I could not speak one word of the language. Still, I had sent those carriers to Akuse and I could not afford to be defied, therefore I alighted.
“Where are those carriers?”
Nine pointing fingers indicated the house. Evidently the hammock-boys had been here before, and one of them pushed open a door in the wall. Black shadows and silver-white light was that compound. Heaped in the middle, not to be mistaken, were my loads, and from under the deeper shadows beneath the surrounding sheds came tumbling black figures which might or might not have been my erring carriers. I did not know them from the people about them, neither did I know one word of their language, and only one of my hammock-boys spoke any pigeon English. But that consideration did not stay me. I singled out my headman, and him I addressed at length and gave him to understand that I was pained and surprised at such conduct. Never in the course of a long career had I come across carriers who slept when they should have been on the road, and before I was half-way through the harangue those sleepy and reluctant men and women were picking up the loads. I confess I had been doubtful. Why should these carriers pay any attention to me? Now that I know what they risked by their obedience I have no words to express my astonishment. I did not know the carriers, but I did know the loads, and before I got into my hammock I stood at the gate and counted them all out. I need not have worried. The African carrier is the most honest man I have ever met. Never have I lost the smallest trifle entrusted to him. When my goods were well on the road I got into my hammock and started again.
Oh, such a night! On such a night as this Romeo wooed Juliet, on such a night came the Queen of the Fairies to see charm even in the frolicsome Bottom.
All the glories of the ages, all the delights of the world were in that night. The song of the carriers took on a softness and a richness born of the open spaces of the earth and the glorious night, and for accompaniment was the pad-pad of their feet in the dust of the roadway, and in one long, musical monotonous cadence the cheep of the insects, and again a sharper note, the cry of a bat or night bird.
It was orchard-bush country that lay outspread in the white light, with here and there a cocoa plantation. Here a tree cast a dark shadow across the road, and there was a watercourse through which the feet of the men splashed—only in German West Africa may you always count on a bridge—and, again, the trees would grow close and tunnel-like over the road with only an occasional gleam of moonlight breaking through. But always the hammock-boys kept steadily on, and the carriers kept up as never before in two hundred miles of travel had carriers kept up. We went through sleeping villages with whitewashed mud walls and thatched roofs gleaming wetly, and even the dogs and the goats were asleep.
It was midnight. It was long after midnight; the moon was still high and bright, like a great globe of silver, but there had come over the night that subtle change that comes when night and morning meet. It was night no longer; nothing tangible had changed, but it was morning. The twitter of the birds, the cry of the insects, had something of activity in it; the night had passed, another day had come, though the dawning was hours away. And still the men went steadily on.
A great square hill rose up on the horizon, and we came to a clump of trees where the moonlight was shut out altogether; we passed through water, and it was pitch-dark, with just a gleam of moonlight here and there to show how dense was that darkness. It was Akway Pool, and a leopard was crying in the thick bush close beside it. It was uncanny, it was weird; all the terror that I had missed till now in Africa came creeping over me, and the men were singing no longer. Very carefully they stepped, and the pool was so deep that lying strung up in the hammock I could still have touched the water with my hand. Could it be only a leopard that was crying so? Might it not be something even worse, something born of the deep, dark pool, and the night? Slowly we went up out of the water, and we stood a moment under the shade of the trees, but with the white light within reach, and Krobo Hill loomed up ahead against the dark horizon. The only hammock-boy who could make himself understood came up.
“Mammy, man be tired. We stop here small.”
It was a reasonable request, but the leopard was crying still, and the gloom and fear of the pool was upon me.
“No, go on.” They might have defied me, but they went on, and to my surprise, my very great surprise, the carriers were still with us. Presently we were out in the moonlight again; I had got the better of my fears and repented me. “Wait small now.”
“No, Mammy,” came the answer, “this be bad place,” and they went on swiftly, singing and shouting as if to keep their courage up, or, as I gathered afterwards, to give the impression of a great company. Only afterwards did I know what I had done that night. Krobo Hill grew larger and larger at every step, and on Krobo Hill was one of the worst, if not the worst blood fetish in West Africa. Every Krobo youth before he could become a man and choose a wife had to kill a man, and he did it generally on Krobo Hill. There the fetish priests held great orgies, and for their ghastly ceremonies and initiations they caught any stranger who was reckless enough to pass the hill. How they killed him was a mystery; some said with tortures, some that only his head was cut off. But the fear in the country grew, and at the end of the last century the British Government interfered; they took Krobo Hill and scattered the fetish priests and their abominations, and they declared the country safe. But the negro revels in mystery and horror, and the fear of the hill still lingers in the minds of the people; every now and then a man disappears and the fear is justified. Only three years ago a negro clerk on his bicycle was traced to that hill and no further trace of him found. His hat was in the road, and the Krobos declared that the great white baboons that infest the hill had taken him, but it is hardly reasonable to suppose that the baboons would have any use for a bicycle, whereas he, strong and young, and his bicycle, together emblems of strength and swiftness, made a very fitting offering to accompany to his last resting-place the dead chief whose obsequies the Krobos were celebrating at the time. Always there are rumours of disappearances, less known men and women than a Government clerk and scholar, and always the people know there is need of men and women for the sacrifices, sacrifices to ensure a plenteous harvest, a good fishing, brave men, and fruitful women.
My men were afraid—even I, who could not understand the reason, grasped that fact; very naturally afraid, for it was quite within the bounds of possibility that a straggler might be cut off.
“Would they have touched me?” I asked afterwards.
“Not with your men round you. Some might escape, and the vengeance would have been terrible.”
“But if I had been by myself?”
“Ah, then they might have said that the baboons had taken you; but you would not have been by yourself.”
No, it was extremely unlikely I should be here by myself, but here were my men, sixteen strong and afraid. Akway Pool had been the last water within a safe distance from the hill, and I had not let them halt; now they dared not. A light appeared on the hill, just a point of flickering fire on the ridge, above us now, and I hailed it as a nice friendly gleam telling of human habitation and home, but the men sang and shouted louder than ever. I offered to stop, but the answer was always the same: “This be bad place, Mammy. We go.”
At last, without asking my leave, they put down the hammock, and the carriers flung themselves down panting.
“We stop small, Mammy”; and I sat on my box and watched the great, sinewy men with strapping shoulders as they lay on the ground resting. They had been afraid I was sure, and I knew no reason for their fear.
But the night was past and it was morning, morning now though it was only half-past three and the sun would not be up till close on six o'clock. On again. The moon had swung low to the dawn, and the gathering clouds made it darker than it had yet been, while the stars that peeped between the clouds were like flakes of newly washed silver. People began to pass us, ghostlike figures in the gloom. Greetings were exchanged, news was shouted from one party to the other, and I, in spite of the discomfort of the hammock, was dead with sleep, and kept dropping into oblivion and waking with a start to the wonder and strangeness of my surroundings. Deeper and deeper grew the oblivion in the darkness that precedes the dawn, till I wakened suddenly to find myself underneath a European bungalow, and knew that for the first time in my experience of African travel I had arrived nearly two hours before I expected to.
My people were wild with delight and triumph. I had forced them to come through the Krobo country by night, but my authority did not suffice to keep them quiet now they had come through in safety. They chattered and shouted and yelled, and a policeman who was doing sentry outside the Provincial Commissioner's bungalow started to race upstairs. I tried to stop him, and might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind. Indeed, when I heard him hammering on the door I was strongly of opinion that the Commissioner would think that the whirlwind had arrived. But presently down those steps came a very big Scotchman in a dressing-gown, with his hair on end, just roused from his sleep, and he resolved himself into one of those courteous, kindly gentlemen England is blessed with as representatives in the dark corners of the earth.
Did he reproach me? Not at all. He perjured himself so far as to say he was glad to see me, and he took me upstairs and gave me whisky-and-soda because it was so late, and then tea and fruit because it was so early. And then in the dawning I looked out over Krobo Hill, and my host told me its story.
“I cleared them out years ago. I have no doubt they have their blood sacrifices somewhere, but not on Krobo Hill. But the people are still afraid.”
“I saw a fire there last night.”
He shook his head unbelieving.
“Impossible; there is a fine of fifty pounds for anyone found on Krobo Hill.”
The dawn had come and the sun was rising rosy and golden. The night lay behind in the west.
I looked out of the window at the way I had come and wondered. I am always looking back in life and wondering. Perhaps it would be a dull life where there are no pitfalls to be passed, no rocks to climb over.
“I see smoke there now.” In the clear morning air it was going up in a long spiral; but again my host shook his head.
“Only a cloud.”
But there were glasses lying on the table, and I looked through them and there was smoke on Krobo Hill.
So I think my men were right to fear, and I am lost in wonder when I remember they obeyed me and came on when they feared.
And then when the sun had risen and another hot day fairly begun, I went over to the D.C.'s house; he had a wife, and they were kindly putting me up, and I had breakfast and a bath and went to bed and slept I really think more soundly than I have ever in my life slept before.