West Coast of Africa

“ It is small wonder and small blame to them that their account of West Africa has been a gloomy one, and such it must remain until these men are under a different system: for all the reasons that during the past have caused them to paint the Coast as a place of no value to England, remain still in full force,—as you can see by studying the disadvantages that service in a West African Crown Colony presents to-day to a civilian official.
Firstly, the climate is unhealthy, so that the usual make of Englishman does not like to take his wife out to the Coast with him. ”

“ The words spoken by the venerable and, I believe, good old chief came as true as the day. We did see often and often more trade than we could cope with, and the establishment grew in such a way that the natives themselves often used to wonder. I never had anything to do with a more prosperous undertaking in Africa, and to-day there are few establishments on the West Coast that can surpass it, either in its quiet, steady trade or healthy climate. I used to say one could live as long as they liked. ”

“ West Africa, name given to the region SW. of the Sahara, consisting of low lands with high lands behind, and through the valleys of which rivers flow down, and including Senegambia, Upper Guinea, and Lower Guinea, the coast of which is occupied by trading stations belonging to the French, the English, the Germans, the Belgians, and the Portuguese, and who are severally forcing their way into the inland territory connected with their several stations. ”

“ As we have seen, to kings, to chartered "Merchant Adventurers," to the cotton planters of the West Indies and of our South, and to the men of the North who traded in black ivory, the West Coast gave vast fortunes. The price was the lives of millions of slaves. And to-day it almost seems as though the sins of the fathers were being visited upon the children; as though the juju of the African, under the spell of which his enemies languish and die, has been cast upon the white man. We have to look only at home. ”

“ In the regions of the double rains in the great forest belt of Africa things are different, so you cannot generalise for West Africa at large in this matter. It is one thing for forest destruction to go on in the Gold Coast, quite another for it to go on in Calabar or Congo Français, where men fight back the forest as Dutchmen fight the sea. ”

“ Half Jack, Jack a Jack, or Anamaquoa—there is nothing like having plenty of names for one place in West Africa, because it leads people at home who don’t know the joke to think there is more of you than there naturally is—gives its name to the bit of coast from Cape Palmas to Grand Bassam, this coast being called the Half Jack, or quite as often the Bristol Coast, and for many years it was the main point of call for the Guineamen, old-fashioned sailing vessels which worked the Bristol trade in the Bights. ”

“ Now life on board a West Coast steamer is an important factor in West African affairs, and its influence is far reaching. It is, indeed, akin to what the Press is in England, in that [Pg 2] it forms an immense amount of public opinion. It is on board the steamer that men from one part of West Africa meet men from another part of West Africa—parts of West Africa are different. ”

“ At Akuse I changed my plans. I had intended to come here, drop down the Volta in the little river steamers that run twice a week to Addah, and then pursue my way along the coast to Keta where there was an old Danish castle, and possibly get across the German border and see Lome, their capital. But there is this charm or drawback—which ever way you like to look at it—about Africa: no one knows anything about the country beyond his immediate district. ”

“ It will be seen from this statement that eastern Africa has high mountain-ranges rising into an elevated plateau; that the land in Equatorial Africa gradually descends toward the west and north-west until within one or two hundred miles of the Atlantic Ocean, when the descent is rapid to the low and unhealthy coast-lands. Through equatorial Africa runs the Kongo, the land north of the Kongo gradually rising to an elevation of about 2,000 feet, and then descending to 1,200 feet at Lake Chad. ”

“ Of all the forces which have made for real progress in West Africa, Christianity stands some say first, others second, but none can place it last. To it belongs primarily in point of time at least, the economic prosperity of the Gold Coast. To it belongs, almost entirely, the credit for the native clerks and educated men on the coast. To it the natives owe their knowledge of useful crafts. To one section of the Christian Church at least belongs the honour of having on the spot saved the Congo natives from extirpation. ”

“ West Africa. For such men are a mere handful whom Imperialism can neglect with impunity, and, even if it has for the moment to excuse itself for so doing, it need only call us “traders.” I say us, because I am vain of having been, since my return, classed among the Liverpool traders by a distinguished officer.
This part of Western Africa from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas was known to the geographers amongst the classics as Leuce Æthiopia: to their successors as the Grain or Pepper or Meleguetta Coast. ”

“ If our victory is great enough, we can hope to unite under our hand the whole of Central Africa with our old colony South-west Africa; Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Dahomey, well-populated Nigeria with the port of Lagos, Kamerun, the rich islands of San Thomé and Principe with their splendid ports, the Katanga ore district, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Mozambique, and Delagoa Bay, Madagascar, German East Africa, Zanzibar, and Uganda ”

“ Africa has about ten thousand miles of sea coast, and extends in depth near three thousand miles from east to west, and as much from north to south, stored with vast treasures of materials, necessary for the trade and manufactures of Great-Britain ”

“ In French West Africa changes in the internal frontiers have been numerous and important. The coast colonies have all been increased in size at the expense of the French Sudan, which has vanished from the maps as an administrative entity. There are carved out of the territories comprised in what is officially known as French West Africa five colonies—Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey and the Upper Senegal and Niger, this last being entirely cut off from the sea—and the civil territory of Mauritania. ”

“ Dennett. I will speak no further now concerning these schools of Fetish, for Nkissism is the most southern of the West African schools, its domain extending over the whole of the regions once forming the kingdom of Kongo down to Angola. Below Angola, on the West Coast, you come to the fringing zone of the Kalahi desert, and to those interesting people the Bushmen, of whose religion I am unable, with any personal experience, to speak. Below them you strike South Africa. South Africa is South Africa; West Africa is West Africa. ”

“ Flora.—Nowhere, perhaps, does the flora of West Africa attain a more wonderful development than in the republic of Liberia and in the adjoining regions of Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. This is partly due to the equatorial position and the heavy rainfall. The region of dense forest, however, does not cover the whole of Liberia; the Makona river and the northern tributaries of the Lofa and St Paul’s flow through a mountainous country covered with grass and thinly scattered trees, while the ravines and watercourses are still richly forested. ”

“ Call of the Coast—Mal-de-mer—Coasters afloat—From 78° to 90°—The Kru sailor—His civilised degeneration—Laundryman’s discipline—A dangerous stretch—The skipper—From ship to train.
What induces that mysterious, elusive “call to the Coast” to which few who have been to West Africa remain unresponsive? None deny its existence, even those who remain unaffected. Yet no conclusive answer has been given for a strange, fascinating attraction to revisit a part of the world which is regarded as uninviting. ”

“ They now have villages among the Mpongwe, and along the entire length of the Gaboon River and the tributaries of the river and estuary. This for years was my mission field, a territory one hundred and twenty miles east and west, and fifty miles north and south. The entire area is a network of waterways, which are also the highways; for there are very few bush-roads, and they are of the worst kind. I know of no more attractive field in West Africa. It combines the far more comfortable home of the coast, and the more hopeful work of the interior. ”

“ Such undeveloped regions have generally excellent local reasons, reasons that cast no blame on white man’s enterprise or black man’s savagery. They are rock-reefed coast or barred rivers, and therefore not worth the expense to the trader of [Pg 51] working them, and you must always remember that unless the trader opens up bits of West Africa no one else will. It may seem strange to the landsman that the navigator should hug such a coast as the shoals (the Bainos as the old Portuguese have it) of St. ”

“ First, that the soil, the rocks, and the flora of Africa have not had the advantage of scientific scrutiny, and as a consequence but little is known as yet of her real worth and wealth in these respects. Second, that West African trade is only in a nascent state—that it comes from but a slight fringe of the coast, while the rich interior yields, as yet, but a reluctant hold upon the vast and various treasures it possesses. ”

“ Apart from the influences of elevation, heat, humidity, and degradation, I have imagined that the lighter and darker colors observed in the native population run in five longitudinal bands along the southern portion of the continent. Those on the seaboard of both the east and west are very dark; then two bands of lighter color lie about three hundred miles from each coast, of which the westerly one, bending round, embraces the Kalahari Desert and Bechuana countries ”

“ Between the two latter and German West Africa and Angola, the territories of British South Africa and British Central Africa in the interior extend northward to the Congo State and to German East Africa, which occupies the east coast north of Lake Nyassa and the Ruvuma River. The Orange River and Vaal River colonies adjoin Natal and British South Africa. North of German East Africa lies British East Africa, which touches on the north the British sphere of influence in the Sudan, Abyssinia, and on the coast, Italian Somaliland. ”

“ In physical characteristics French West Africa presents three types: (1) a dense forest region succeeding a narrow coast belt greatly broken by lagoons; (2) moderately elevated and fertile plateaus, generally below 2000 ft., such as the region enclosed in the great bend of the Niger; (3) north of the Senegal and Niger, the desert lands forming part of the Sahara (q.v.) . The most elevated districts are Futa Jallon, whence rise the Senegal, Gambia and Niger, and Gon—both massifs along the south-western edge of the plateau lands, containing heights of 5000 to 6000 ft. ”

“ Referring to the climate the author says: "In West Africa the body loses its strength, the memory its retentiveness, and the will its energy. These are the effects observed upon persons remaining in West Africa only for a short time, and they form a part of the experience of almost every person who has lived on the West Coast. ”

“ What does Africa,—what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; ”

“ The greatest hindrance has been the Arab slave trade, which, driven from the west coast had established itself on the east coast. The unwise course of the Germans who established a commercial enterprise there in 1889 has led to Arab hostilities719 that appear disastrous in the extreme to missionary work for the present, especially among the Ugandas.
LARI AND MADI NATIVES.
There are very extensive missionary interests in East Africa. No less than thirteen societies are at work on the coast or in the interior. ”

“ Barca and Tripoli remain subject to the Porte. Tunis and Algeria pertain to France, whose influence reaches down across the Sahara and Sudan to the northern slope of the Congo basin. On the west coast below Jlorocco is the small Rio d'Ouro possession of Spain. Then come the French Senegal, British Gambia, Portuguese Guinea, French Guinea, the British Sierra Leone, Liberia, another block of French territory, the British Ashanti, German Togoland, French Dahomey, the extensive British Niger territories, and German Kamerun. ”

“ To the south, towards Port Nolloth, stretches seventy-odd miles of desolate, waterless sand-scrub; eastward lie vast expanses of similarly dreary, featureless, undulating scrub, beyond which rise the unknown and mysterious mountains of the Richtersfeld and hundreds of miles of uninhabited country; westward is the wide lonely ocean; and to the north, across the Orange River, lie the dreaded sand-dunes of German South-West Africa. ”

“ It is an object lesson in miniature of what will otherwise be an infinitely greater drain on the resources of England, for West Africa is immensely larger, immensely more densely populated, and immensely more deadly in climate than the West Indies. ”