Robert H. Milligan

“ In the intervals of the storm, and mingling with it, there came the sound of a dirge, the hopeless death-wail, from a village close by, where the poor natives were mourning for one of their number who had died that day, a young man at whose bed I had stood a few hours earlier, the only son of a heart-broken mother. Those who have always known the words of One who brought life and immortality to light cannot realize the heathen view of death, and the abysmal darkness of the invisible world. ”

“ And in the evening when the social instinct is lively and men sit together at leisure in the balmy breeze, under the canvas roof, on a well-lighted deck, the sea so calm as to allay all apprehension, a wall of darkness around us, and the immensity of the sea beyond, as separate from the rest of the world as would be some tiny planet that has separated from the solid earth and rotates upon its own axis, then the charm of travel on the tropical sea is all that the imagination had preconceived,—a lazy, luxurious dream. ”

“ The view from the veranda of the mission house at Baraka is a scene of magic beauty. The joyous lavishness of colour excludes from the mind the thought of the deadly serpent and the relentless fever-fiend that stealthily glide within the shadows. The long hillside sloping to the beach is half covered with mangoes and palms, oleander and orange-trees, and the graceful plumes of the bamboo that wave to and fro and tumble in the breeze like children at play. ”

“ Each day is exactly like all the others, and the natural surroundings never vary however far they may wander along the beach—three endless lines of colour stretching away to eternity, the dull green forest front, the yellow strip of sand, the white surge of the foaming surf, and beyond it the boundless sea. Even in the darkest night the forest still shows as a blacker rim against the darkness, and the surf-line is white with a whiteness that no night can obscure. ”

“ In the morning looking from the mission-house one may see the bay covered with white sails like a flock of sea-gulls—the sails of the Fang canoes bringing food to the market. This is surely the best fortune that can fall to any people in West Africa. While it still gives opportunity for their trade instinct, it turns them to agriculture, the most wholesome of all occupations for such a people. It keeps them at home, provides healthful work, extends opportunity to all and distributes prosperity. ”

“ Even at night the noise does not cease, but only removes to a distance where it no longer disturbs. The people stay in their towns at night, but they usually make more noise than in the day. From a village at the foot of the hill rises the weird and incessant wail of their mourning for the dead, an appalling dirge that chills the blood; from another village near by, a savage noise of war drums and shouting by which they are warning an expected enemy that they are on the watch; from another, the uncouth music of their dissolute dance ”

“ Nature is not the result of myriad spirits hostile to himself, but the product of one single mind, and its laws, the expression of a constant and loving Will. It is as if the forked lightning at which he trembles in the darkness should flash upon the storm-cloud the word Father; and fear becomes faith. In Jesus the One God of conscience, the Father, becomes supreme over nature.
A certain native named Toko, of the Mpongwe coast tribe, who had been for some years a Christian, went back into the interior among the Fang, preaching the Gospel. ”

“ The Spanish Island of Fernando Po is the most beautiful place in West Africa. Seen from the harbour in the early morning light or in the soft glow of the evening it is a fairy-land of tropical beauty. The bottom of the semicircular harbour is the crater of an extinct volcano and is very deep. The bank is covered down to the water with a lavish growth of ferns, and trailing vines, and flowers of many colours; while above the palm tree is abundant—the most graceful of all trees, and the billowy bamboo tosses in the breeze. ”

“ For a long time the music of Africa defied every attempt on my part to reduce it to musical notation. Very few persons have made the attempt; for it is easier to reduce their language to writing than their music. At first it seemed as inarticulate and spontaneous as the sound of the distant surf with which it blended, or the music of the night-wind in the bamboo.
The melody of African music is strange to our ears, because, as I have said, it is usually derived from tone-systems that are unlike either our major or minor scales. ”

“ But the forest is as variable in her moods as the mind of a man. Stern at times and sometimes awful, yet again she loves to soothe the mind and impart a gentle cheer. If you would know the charm of the night-forest in her most intimate and communicative mood you must wait until some time, as if in response to an inaudible summons, you waken after several hours of deep, restful sleep that is one of the secrets of the forest. Under a roof and between close walls a wakeful hour is monotonous and miserable and the habit of wakefulness is a malady that were fit penance for mortal sins. ”

“ On this boulevard are the trading-houses, French, Portuguese, German and English. The buildings are nearly all white, including the iron roofs; but some of them have roofs of red tile. There are many beautiful trees. The houses are only half visible through screens of foliage; and along the walks every unsightly thing, every deserted building or decaying hut is overgrown with vines of delicate beauty and the wildest profusion of scarlet, purple and lavender flowers.
The beach is strewn with logs of African mahogany of great value, which the traders are preparing to ship. ”

“ The sea rolled in with a tremendous swell—the calemma—like a wall of water that looked three stories high, which, as it approached the land, burst into a succession of breakers that raced towards the shore, and striking with the boom of cannon, tossed the white surf high into the air. One always feels, in going through it, that he is fighting a personal foe; there is even something human in the sound of it. ”

“ There is no sound so well known in Africa, and none that so haunts the memory in after years, as the mourning dirge, in which with united voices they chant their sorrow for the dead—their despair and desolation ”

“ Not having been accustomed to rise so early, my sense of humour is still dormant at that hour; life is always a serious matter to me and a doubtful boon until after breakfast. I yawn, and yawn again, and heave a weary sigh, as I reflect that the clamorous noise which has thus ushered in the day will continue through the long hours until its close.
Soon after our arrival at Efulen Dr. Good and I visited the town of an old chief of some fame, named Abesula. ”

“ On my part, it was my knowledge of Lolo that first inspired me with a strong desire for a school, and enabled me to realize what a moral factor a school of such boys might become in transforming the life of the people. The African baby is a beautiful, solemn-eyed little creature, who looks out at the world as if he were undecided whether to stay. About half of them decide not to stay. The African baby is cunning and bright, but it seldom cries, and it is not given to play nearly as much as the white child. As the child grows older he cheers up. ”

“ In general the coast of West Africa is not beautiful; although it has a weird fascination for those who have once lived on it. It is low-lying, straight and monotonous: a gleaming line of white surf, a golden strip of sandy beach, a dark green line of forest—and that is all, for days and days and days, and for some two thousand miles, only broken at long intervals by the great estuary that is a peculiar characteristic of African rivers, and by low hills far away on the horizon. ”

“ One day long ago, when a fellow missionary and myself were together in the Bulu interior, a native young man, in response to our inquiry, expressed the African belief that the rainbow is a snake. It has the power—which many men also have—of making itself invisible. The missionary, reflecting that superstition is simply ignorance of nature and nature’s laws, resolved to undertake immediately the boy’s education. The sun was shining brightly, and the missionary, having sent the native to fetch a bucket of water, told him that he himself would then and there make a rainbow. ”

“ The laws of growth, seed-time and harvest, rain and sunshine—all the kindly ministry of nature is quiet and unobtrusive, while her cruelty thrusts itself upon the attention because it is her unaccustomed mood. The conception of nature in the African mind is derived from the devastating tornado and the storm upon the sea that threatens to engulf him, from the hard work necessary to procure his food and the scarcity of meat, from sickness that disables him and death that bereaves him of his friends. ”

“ There are only one or two things that the African will work for; that is to say there are only one or two things that he wants.
He will work to earn a dowry in order to marry; especially if he has in mind some particular woman as the prospective wife. Month after month he will labour and even for a year or two he will engage in the hardest work. But just as the white master is about to reverse his opinion of the whole black race and proclaim that they are the greatest workers in the world the man completes the amount of the dowry, and immediately he quits. ”

“ But in the open forest, especially when there is a glimmer of stars shining through the screen of dark foliage, a wakeful hour passes easily. One is never lonely in such an hour, for a mystic life pervades the night-forest, and one realizes that it is something more and greater than the definite forms which the eye sees by day. ”

“ Every success enhances his reputation; and if he is very clever he will even convert failure into success. If a man return a fetish and tell him it has failed—that his goods have been stolen, his hens have not laid, his wives have eloped, or his canoe has capsized with him—the doctor will not usually dispute the failure, but will discover the reason, and more than ever impress his customer with his skill and knowledge. Sometimes as soon as he looks at it he will say that it is dead; that the spirit has escaped from it and it may as well be thrown away. ”

“ All deaths that we call natural are imputed to witchcraft. As soon as the cry of witchcraft is raised, the people, panic stricken with fear, are transformed to ferocious demons. With wild eyes they rush up and down the street in a body crying out for blood. This is the opportunity of the witch-doctor, either to levy blackmail, or to rid himself of his enemies. When a woman is accused by him, no matter in what esteem she may have been held hitherto, and regardless of her family connections, the people turn upon her in cruel rage and can scarce wait for the ordeal. ”

“ Even cannibalism, regarded as the lowest reach of degradation, is not only a natural consequence of fetishism, but is one of its logical forms. I doubt whether, among the Fang, it is ever practiced on the mere impulse of hunger. It is rather the last desperate resort of fear seeking fetish protection. The strongest protection against an enemy in war is to eat one of their number. After that the enemy can do no harm and need not be feared; unless (always this same dreadful qualification) —unless some traitor in one’s own town should break the spell even of this fetish by witchcraft. ”

“ Four years have passed, and in all likelihood the chief with his family has been killed long ago, leaving not even a name behind him, but only this haunting cry, that keeps ringing in one’s heart.
So they all are crying to us with outstretched hands; a people who call the white man, Father, and trust him with pathetic confidence until he betrays their trust and smites them with the rod of tyranny. I think I can hear their piteous cry wafted on the winds that wander over the great forest: “We shall all be killed! ”

“ And how shall we convey this idea to the degraded mind of the African?
Of course we should change his idea of nature if we could persuade him of God’s unity, and that nature, therefore, is the product of a single mind; His spirituality, and that He is therefore present everywhere, in nature and the hearts of men; His holiness, and that God and nature are therefore on the side of righteousness; His love, and that God and nature are therefore benevolent and sympathetic with man. But to talk to the African about God’s attributes is to speak in an unknown tongue. ”

“ Men sacrifice for each other, and we even have martyrs. But in the forest there is no sacrifice, no martyrdom, nor do trees ever confederate; but each fights for itself in a ceaseless and savage struggle. And nowhere else in the forest world is the struggle for existence so remorseless as in the tropic zone of Africa; for nowhere else is variety so profuse and growth so rapid. ”

“ In Africa virtue is almost identified with courage, and power is worshipped. Woman, therefore, who in all lands represents the gentler virtues—compassion, devotion, patience—is contemptible; and the child also; for where power is worshipped feebleness can have no claim. Woman, thus relegated to a place of inferiority and contempt, sinks to a lower level of degradation than the man. Cruelty is the characteristic of the men; licentiousness, of the women.
But notwithstanding the imperfection of his ideal the African is essentially moral. He knows the difference between right and wrong ”

“ There I baptized sixty-five persons, making in all one hundred and twenty members in the Ayol Church. And, besides, there were nearly three hundred catechumens.
When I reflect on the kind of men and women that these Christians are, and consider the savages they might have been; when I realize the surroundings of darkest ignorance, revolting degradation and horrible cruelty in the midst of which they walk in ways of righteousness and truth; when I think how rough that way is and how very dark the night of Africa, my heart goes out to them all in eager sympathy and solicitude. ”

“ With the increasing wind and the straining of the whole canoe I felt that something must soon happen by way of climax. The only question was whether the collapse, when it came, would be particular or general. Suddenly a gust of wind was followed by a crash. The boom was gone, the sheet broken, the sail torn. A passing wave drenched us and almost swamped the canoe. Then I plied the saucepan diligently, while Ndong Koni dexterously managed the canoe—for we were in the trough of the sea—and Ndong Bisia and the other man, using the ball of twine, made a new sheet and tied the torn sail. ”

“ Life is so hard for the African, so bare and comfortless! And when he would fain seek the road to the Better Land so many forces conspire against him that, apart for our faith in God and the love of God, one might think that the world around him was contrived for his defeat. In this dark land one catches only an occasional glimpse of the all-ruling and kindly Providence in which we believe. ”

“ The greatest is no more than human; the lowest is no less. This dying man tells how that some weeks past, having gone on a journey to a certain town forty miles north, and during the night having wondered what his friends at home might be doing, he thought he would visit Gaboon, leaving his body while his spirit alone travelled through the air. ”

“ Every face reveals laughing good-nature, and each man looking after his simple necessities in a businesslike way makes himself as comfortable as possible, and yells as loud as possible, while he asks for what he wants and declares to all on board what he is going to do, though he does not seem to expect anybody to listen to him or to pay any attention to him. There is considerable disputation, some quarrelling, and an occasional fight. They have a remarkable way of passing from laughter to quarrel and from fight to song by the easiest sort of transition: passion does not linger. ”

“ It means that all those who sincerely offer it, however great the contrast of their history and traditions, are a community, united by the stronger bonds of aims and ideals. It means that they have a vision of a united race of mankind; a vision of all nations drawn into one common brotherhood in commerce, government and religion, and that they believe in the abounding adequacy of the Gospel of Christ for its realization. Society resounds with the cry of the oppressed and the dissonance of human passion ”

“ Lightning sometimes strikes the tallest trees, which come crashing down bringing half a dozen others with them. Then in this open place where the sunlight reaches the ground there shoots up with amazing rapidity a tangled undergrowth, from which young trees race upwards to secure the light and air in such rivalry and struggle that the weak are soon strangled or crowded to death, and the battle is to the swift. ”

“ Of course the authority of custom in Africa serves to check personal tyranny and to modify the principle that might is right. It thus prevents society from going backward; but it also prevents it from going forward; a thousand years are as a day. Mobility is a condition of progress.
A more radical difference between the civilized man and the African than any we have yet mentioned is that of work. It is not merely a contrast between actual work and idleness, but a contrast of attitudes that constitutes this difference. ”

“ If he remain long in a climate so unnatural to him and in a strange and uncivilized society the likelihood is that there will be an imperceptible and unconscious lowering of moral standards and accommodation to the standards of the society around him. Cruelty which at first shocked him gradually ceases to shock and at length he becomes indifferent, or perhaps himself capable of barbarous deeds from which he would at first have recoiled with horror.
For the men of whom I have been speaking are not inferior to the average man at home. ”