Mary Gaunt

“ Occasionally, if the “sea be too full,” as the carriers say, they may go up to a rough path among the cocoa-nut palms, but it is a very rough path. Husks of the cocoa-nuts lie there, palm fronds drying and withering in the sun, a great creeping bean flings its wandering stalks across the path as a trap to the unwary, and when there is other greenery it stands up and stretches out thorny branches to clutch at the passer-by. Besides, the villagers—and there are many villages—bury their dead here, and they consider two feet a deep enough grave, so that the odour of decay rises on the hot air. ”

“ Yet all in good time the beach is strewn with the logs, great square-cut baulks of red timber with their owners' marks upon their butts and covered generally with a thatch of cocoa-nut palm fronds to keep them from the all-powerful sun. The steamer will call for them some day, but it is no easy thing to get them through the surf, and steamer after steamer calls, whistles, decides that the surf is too heavy to embark such timber, and passes on. And where they have been cut and trimmed, the mammies come with baskets to gather pieces of the priceless wood to build their fires. ”

“ Then the black gentleman appears in all the glory of a tall, black-silk hat, a frock coat, a highly starched waistcoat, the gayest of ties, scarlet or pink, the palest of dove-coloured trousers, and bright-yellow kid gloves; and the negro woman hides her fine figure with ill-fitting corsets, over which she wears an open-work muslin blouse, through which her dark skin shows a dull purple. Of all the places in Africa to transgress the laws of beauty and art Freetown is the very worst, and if ever a people tried their best to hide their own charms it is the Creoles of Sierra Leone. ”

“ Half Assinie is just like any other Western Province Gold Coast town, built close down to the roaring, almost impassable surf, because the people draw much of their livelihood from the sea, and built of raffia-palm bamboo, because there is nothing else to build it of. Only there is this difference, that here is a preventive station, with a white man in command. There is a great cleared square, which is all sand and cocoa-nut palms, men in neat dark-blue uniforms pass to and fro, and bugle calls are heard the livelong day. ”

“ It was a tangle of greenery, like some great, gorgeous greenhouse, and the native, when he wants a clearing, burns off a small portion and plants cocoa or cassada, yams, bananas, or maize, with enough cotton here and there, between the lines of food-stuffs, to give him yarn for his immediate needs. When the farmer has used up this land, he abandons it to the umbrella trees and other tropical weeds, and with the wastefulness of the native takes up another piece of land, burning and destroying, quite careless of the value of the trees that go to feed the fire. ”

“ They have touched the fringe of civilisation for so many hundred years; for this is the Coast of the great days of the slave trade, and along this seashore, by this roaring surf, beneath the shade of these cocoa-nut palms, have marched those weary companies of slaves, whose descendants make the problem of America nowadays. It must have been the same shore, the very same. Here is the golden sand and the thunderous surf that only the men of the Coast will dare, and between Axim and the French Ivory Coast not always they. The white scallop shells are tossed aside by the feet of the carriers ”

“ I had my breakfast in the little courtyard behind the house, the people peeping through the fence of palm-poles, and when we set out on our way the Chief, in all the glory of silken robes and great umbrella, came a little way to do us honour.
Never, not even when I was married, have I been such an important person. The tom-toms beat, the umbrellas twirled, long Danes went off, horns blew, and as far as the eye could see were the villagers trailing away behind us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A negro is intensely emotional, but this man had some cause for his grief. He had missed his brother, abandoned the bath, and gone right back to Half Assinie to look for him. The way was by the seashore, there is no way to wander from it; on one side is the roaring surf that no man alone may dare, and on the other, just beyond the line of cocoa-nut palms, a mangrove-fringed lagoon, and beyond that a bush, containing perhaps a few native farms to be reached by narrow tracks, but a bush that no stranger would lightly dare. ”

“ I sat on that verandah and thought of the old days that were only ten years back, and learned much from the Commissioner, and I felt that civilisation was coming by leaps and bounds to Ashanti, and if it be true, as old tradition has it, that a house to be firmly built must have a living man beneath its foundation stone, then must the future of Kumasi be assured, for its foundations were well and truly laid in rivers of human blood. ”

“ Here is a picture of a street in Lome, and the trees are only four years old, but already they stretch across the road and make a pleasant shade. The gardens and the trees of Lome made a great impression on me. Any fences one sees are neat, but as a rule they do not have many fences, only round every bungalow is a well-laid-out, well-kept, tropical garden; if it is only just made you know it will be good in the future because of the promise fulfilled in the garden beside it. ”

“ Why does no one speak of the enormous wealth of West Africa? When America was but a faint dream of the adventurous voyager, when Australia was not on the maps, the west coast of Africa was exploited by the nations growing in civilisation for her wealth of gold, and slaves, and ivory, and the wealth that was there in those long-ago days is there to-day. ”

“ Every white man and many of the black who were not Ashantis had taken refuge in the fort, which was crowded to suffocation, and outside, in front of the fort, camped the friendlies, safe to a certain extent under the white man's guns, but dying slowly because the white man could not give what he had not got himself—food; and here they died, died of disease and hunger and wounds, and the reek of their dying poisoned the air so that the white man, starving behind his high walls of cement, was like to have his end accelerated by those who stood by him. ”

“ The man who has once known Africa longs for her. In the sordid city streets he remembers the might and loneliness of her forests, by the rippling brook he remembers the wide rivers rushing tumultuous to the sea, in the night when the rain is on the roof plashing drearily he remembers the gorgeous tropical nights, the sky of velvet far away, the stars like points of gold, the warm moonlight that with its deeper shadows made a fairer world. ”

“ Looking back, I cannot consider that my behaviour at the lake village reflected any particular credit upon me. I felt I ought really to have produced more impression upon a people who had, many of them, never in their lives set eyes on a white woman before. They tell me, those who know, that for these people, whose lives move on in the same groove from the cradle to the grave, the coming of the Forestry officer and the white woman was a great event, and that all things will bear date from the day when the white missus and the white master had chop on the Chief's verandah. ”

“ A brown patch proclaims a village, and here are broad-leaved bananas, handsome mangoes, fragrant orange trees, lighter-coloured cocoa patches, and cassada that from the distance might be a patch of lucerne. Always there are hills, rising high, cutting the sky sharply, ever changing, ever reflected faithfully in the river at their feet. There is traffic, of course, men fishing from canoes, and canoes laden with barrels of oil or kernels, or cocoa going down the river, the boats returning with the gin and the cotton cloths for the factories run by the negro agents of the great trading-houses ”

“ Away to the south went the road to Cape Coast, but it was but a track kept open with the greatest difficulty, and hidden in the depths of the forest on either hand were these same warriors. Truly the chances of the people in the fort seemed small, small indeed. And day after day passed and there was no sign of help. Provisions were getting low, ammunition was running short, and from the Ashanti no mercy could be expected. It was war to the death. Any man or woman who fell into their hands could expect nothing but torture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every woman who goes and stays makes it easier for the woman who follows in her footsteps, and I can see no reason why a woman should not stand the climate of West Africa as well as she does that of India. Women are the crying need; quiet, brave, sensible women who are not daunted because the black cook spoils the soup, or the black laundryman ruins the tablecloth, who will take an intelligent view of life, and will make what is so much needed—a home for their husbands. ”

“ A weary, dreary life is the trader's. He had a house just on the edge of the surf. His “factory” was below it. His only companions were a beautiful green-crested clock-bird and a little old-man monkey with a white beard. The ghastly loneliness of it! Nothing to do but to sell cotton stuffs and enamel ware and gin to the native, and count the days till it was time to tramp to Axim and take the steamer that should bear him back to the Fatherland and all the joys of wife and children. ”

“ But, when I went to bed, I slept dreamlessly, and when I awakened we were rising to the swell outside Sekondi, and I felt that even if I had to face the surf again I should be among friends presently, and there was a feeling of satisfaction in the thought that I had at least seen something of the most beautiful river in the world, and some unknown country in the east of the Colony.
Always there is that in life, for, good or evil, nothing can take away what we have done. We have it with us, good or bad, for ever. Not Omnipotence can alter the past. ”

“ In the early morning a whitish mist hangs over the sea and veils the cocoa-nut palms, and there is a little chill in the air which makes travelling pleasant. We always got up before dawn. At the first streak of light we were having our breakfast, porridge and eggs and marmalade and fruit, bananas, pines, or oranges, quite as comfortably as if we were in civilised lands, though the servants were waiting to pack our breakfast equipage, and we watched our beds and boxes and baths borne away on men's heads as we drank our coffee. ”

“ They were Spanish, French, and German Sisters in the costume of their order; gentle, kindly women with faces that bore evident marks of an indoor life in the Tropics, a mark that cannot be mistaken. They had been very very frightened at first, and they were still very seasick, but the sailormen had made them most kindly welcome, for their sakes were staunch Monarchists when Portugal was spoken of, and they brought them the captain's cat to play with, and looked with deepest admiration on their wonderful embroidery. Never was so much sewing before seen on an African steamer. ”

“ Tarkwa gives the impression of a busy, thriving centre; trains rush along the gully and the hills echo their shrill whistles, the roadways are thronged with people, and the stores set out their goods in that open fashion that is half-eastern, so that the hesitating buyer may hesitate no longer but buy the richest thing in sight. In all my travels I never saw such gorgeously arrayed mammies as here. The black ladies' cloths, their blouses, and the silken kerchiefs with which they covered their heads, all gave the impression of having been carefully studied, and my host assured me they had. ”

“ And at Lome a young German from Messrs Swanzy's met me with a cart and carriers for my gear, and carried me off and installed me at their fine house on the sea-front as if I had every right to be there, which I certainly had not.
Lome is the most charming town I have seen in West Africa. It is neat and tidy and clean, it is beautifully laid out, and the buildings are such as would do credit to any nation. Very evident it is that the German does not consider himself an exile, but counts himself lucky to possess so fine a country, and is bent on making the best of it. ”

“ Sekondi straggles up and down many hills, and by and by if some definite plan of beautifying be followed may be made rather a pretty place. Even now at night, from some of the bungalows on the hillsides when the darkness gently veils the ugly scars that man's handiwork leaves behind, with its great sweep of beach, its sloping hillsides dotted with lights, the stars above and the lights in the craft on the water that lie just outside the surf, it has a wonderful charm and beauty that there is no denying. ”

“ And yet on this road is the Liberian College where the youth of Liberia, male and female, are educated. It is a big building built of brick and corrugated iron, in a style that seems wholly unsuited to the Liberian climate, though viewed from a distance it looks imposing in its setting of greenery. They teach the children algebra and euclid, or profess to do so—evil-tongued rumour has it that the majority of the Liberian women can neither read nor write—but to attain that, to them a useless edge, they have to scramble over without exception the very worst road I have ever met. ”

“ We went along a track now, a track that wound in and out in the dense, tropical forest. Generally the trees met overhead and we marched through a tunnel, the ground beneath our feet was often a quagmire, and if we could not see the sun often, neither could we feel the rain that fell on the foliage above our heads. On either side we could see nothing but the great trunks and buttresses of the trees, and the dense undergrowth. Possibly to go for days and days through a forest like this might give a sense of oppression, but to go as I did, for but a short time, was like peeping into a new world. ”