Travels in West Africa: Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons Part 27

The drinking water you have a better chance with, as I will presently state; chill you cannot avoid. When you are at work on the Coast, even with the greatest care, the sudden fall of temperature that occurs after a tornado coming at the end of a stewing-hot day, is sure to tell on any one, and as for the orders regarding temper neither the natives, nor the country, nor the trade, help you in the least. But still you must remember that although it is impossible to fully carry out these orders, you can do a good deal towards doing so, and preventive measures are the great thing, for it is better to escape fever altogether, or to get off with a light touch of it, than to make a sensational recovery from Yellow Jack himself.

There is little doubt that a certain make of man has the best chance of surviving the Coast climate--an energetic, spare, nervous but light-hearted creature, capable of enjoying whatever there may be to enjoy, and incapable of dwelling on discomforts or worries. It is quite possible for a person of this sort to live, and work hard on the Coast for a considerable period, possibly with better health than he would have in England. The full-blooded, corpulent and vigorous should avoid West Africa like the plague. One after another, men and women, who looked, as the saying goes, as if you could take a lease of their lives, I have seen come out and die, and it gives one a sense of horror when they arrive at your West Coast station, for you feel a sort of accessory before the fact to murder, but what can you do except get yourself laughed at as a croaker, and attend the funeral?

The best ways of avoiding the danger of the night air are--to have your evening meal about 6.30 or 7,--8 is too late; sleep under a mosquito curtain whether there are mosquitoes in your district or not, and have a meal before starting out in the morning, a good hot cup of tea or coffee and bread and b.u.t.ter, if you can get it, if not, something left from last night's supper or even aguma.

Regarding meals, of course we come to the vexed question of stimulants--all the evidence is in favour of alcohol, of a proper sort, taken at proper times, and in proper quant.i.ties, being extremely valuable. Take the case of the missionaries, who are almost all teetotalers, they are young men and women who have to pa.s.s a medical examination before coming out, and whose lives on the Coast are far easier than those of other cla.s.ses of white men, yet the mortality among them is far heavier than in any other cla.s.s.

Mr. Stanley says that wine is the best form of stimulant, but that it should not be taken before the evening meal. Certainly on the South-West Coast, where a heavy, but sound, red wine imported from Portugal is the common drink, the mortality is less than on the West Coast. Beer has had what one might call a thorough trial in Cameroon since the German occupation and is held by authorities to be the cause in part of the number of cases of haematuric fever in that river being greater than in other districts. But this subject requires scientific comparative observation on various parts of the Coast, for Cameroons is at the beginning of the South-West Coast, whereon the percentage of cases of haematuric to those of intermittent and remittent fevers is far higher than on the West Coast.

A comparative study of the diseases of the western division of the continent would, I should say, repay a scientific doctor, if he survived. The material he would have to deal with would be enormous, and in addition to the history of haematuric he would be confronted with the problem of the form of fever which seems to be a recent addition to West African afflictions, the so-called typhoid malaria, which of late years has come into the Rivers, and apparently come to stay. This fever is, I may remark, practically unknown at present in the South-West Coast regions where the "sun for garbage" plan is adhered to. At present the treatment of all white man's diseases on the Coast practically consists in the treatment of malaria, because whatever disease a person gets hold of takes on a malarial type which masks its true nature. Why, I knew a gentleman who had as fine an attack of the smallpox as any one would not wish to have, and who for days behaved as if he had remittent, and then burst out into the characteristic eruption; and only got all his earthly possessions burnt, and no end of carbolic acid dressings for his pains.

I do not suppose this does much harm, as the malaria is the main thing that wants curing; unless Dr. Plehn is right and quinine is bad in haematuria. His success in dealing with this fever seems to support his opinion; and the French doctors on the Coast, who dose it heavily with quinine, have certainly a very heavy percentage of mortality among their patients with the haematuric, although in the other forms of malarial fever they very rarely lose a patient.

But to return to those preventive measures, and having done what we can with the air, we will turn our attention to the drinking water, for in addition to malarial microbes the drinking and washing water of West Africa is liable to contain dermazoic and entozoic organisms, and if you don't take care you will get from it into your anatomy Tinea versicolor, Tinea decalvans, Tinea circinata, Tinea sycosis, Tinea favosa, or some other member of that wretched family, let alone being nearly certain to import Trichocephalus dispar, Ascaris lumbricoides, Oxyuris vermicularis, and eight varieties of nematodes, each of them with an awful name of its own, and unpleasant consequences to you, and, lastly, a peculiar abomination, a Filaria. This is not, what its euphonious name may lead you to suppose, a fern, but it is a worm which gets into the white of the eye and leads there a lively existence, causing distressing itching, throbbing and p.r.i.c.king sensations, not affecting the sight until it happens to set up inflammation. I have seen the eyes of natives simply swarming with these Filariae. A curious thing about the disease is that it usually commences in one eye, and when that becomes over-populated an emigration society sets out for the other eye, travelling thither under the skin of the bridge of the nose, looking while in transit like the bridge of a pair of spectacles. A similar, but not identical, worm is fairly common on the Ogowe, and is liable to get under the epidermis of any part of the body. Like the one affecting the eye it is very active in its movements, pa.s.sing rapidly about under the skin and producing terrible p.r.i.c.king and itching, but very trifling inflammation in those cases which I have seen. The treatment consists of getting the thing out, and the thing to be careful of is to get it out whole, for if any part of it is left in, suppuration sets in, so even if you are personally convinced you have got it out successfully it is just as well to wash out the wound with carbolic or Condy's fluid. The most frequent sufferers from these Filariae are the natives, but white people do get them.

Do not confuse this Filaria with the Guinea worm, Filaria medinensis, which runs up to ten and twelve feet in length, and whose habits are different. It is more sedentary, but it is in the drinking water inside small crustacea (cyclops). It appears commonly in its human host's leg, and rapidly grows, curled round and round like a watch-spring, showing raised under the skin. The native treatment of this pest is very cautiously to open the skin over the head of the worm and secure it between a little cleft bit of bamboo and then gradually wind the rest of the affair out. Only a small portion can be wound out at a time, as the wound is very liable to inflame, and should the worm break, it is certain to inflame badly, and a terrible wound will result. You cannot wind it out by the tail because you are then, so to speak, turning its fur the wrong way, and it catches in the wound.

I should, I may remark, strongly advise any one who likes to start early on a canoe journey to see that no native member of the party has a Filaria medinensis on hand; for winding it up is always reserved for a morning job and as many other jobs are similarly reserved it makes for delay.

I know, my friends, that you one and all say that the drinking water at your particular place is of singular beauty and purity, and that you always tell the boys to filter it; but I am convinced that that water is no more to be trusted than the boys, and I am lost in amazement at people of your intelligence trusting the trio of water, boys, and filter, in the way you do. One favourite haunt of mine gets its drinking water from a cemented hole in the back yard into which drains a very strong-smelling black little swamp, which is surrounded by a ridge of sandy ground, on which are situated several groups of native houses, whose inhabitants enhance their fortunes and their drainage by taking in washing. At Fernando Po the other day I was a.s.sured as usual that the water was perfection, "beautiful spring coming down from the mountain," etc. In the course of the afternoon affairs took me up the mountain to Basile, for the first part of the way along the course of the said stream. The first objects of interest I observed in the drinking-water supply were four natives washing themselves and their clothes; the next was the bloated body of a dead goat reposing in a pellucid pool. The path then left the course of the stream, but on arriving in the region of its source I found an interesting little colony of Spanish families which had been imported out whole, children and all, by the Government. They had a nice, neat little cemetery attached, which his excellency the doctor told me was "stocked mostly with children, who were always dying off from worms." Good, so far, for the drinking water! and as to what that beautiful stream was soaking up when it was round corners--I did not see it, so I do not know--but I will be bound it was some abomination or another. But it's no use talking, it's the same all along, Sierra Leone, Grain Coast, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Lagos, Rivers, Cameroon, Congo Francais, Kacongo, Congo Belge, and Angola. When you ask your white friends how they can be so reckless about the water, which, as they know, is a decoction of the malarious earth, exposed night and day to the malarious air, they all up and say they are not; they have "got an awfully good filter, and they tell the boys," etc., and that they themselves often put wine or spirit in the water to kill the microbes. Vanity, vanity! At each and every place I know, "men have died and worms have eaten them." The safest way of dealing with water I know is to boil it hard for ten minutes at least, and then instantly pour it into a jar with a narrow neck, which plug up with a wad of fresh cotton-wool--not a cork; and should you object to the flat taste of boiled water, plunge into it a bit of red-hot iron, which will make it more agreeable in taste. BEFORE boiling the water you can carefully filter it if you like. A good filter is a very fine thing for clearing drinking water of hippopotami, crocodiles, water snakes, catfish, etc., and I daresay it will stop back sixty per cent. of the live or dead African natives that may be in it; but if you think it is going to stop back the microbe of marsh fever--my good sir, you are mistaken. And remember that you must give up cold water, boiled or unboiled, altogether; for if you take the boiled or filtered water and put it into one of those water-coolers, and leave it hanging exposed to night air or day on the verandah, you might just as well save yourself the trouble of boiling it at all.

Next in danger to the diseases come the remedies for them. Let the new-comer remember, in dealing with quinine, calomel, a.r.s.enic, and spirits, that they are not castor sugar nor he a gla.s.s bottle, but let him use them all--the two first fairly frequently--not waiting for an attack of fever and then ladling them into himself with a spoon. The third, a.r.s.enic--a drug much thought of by the French, who hold that if you establish an a.r.s.enic cachexia you do not get a malarial one--should not be taken except under a doctor's orders.

Spirit is undoubtedly extremely valuable when, from causes beyond your control, you have got a chill. Remember always your life hangs on quinine, and that it is most important to keep the system sensitive to it, which you do not do if you keep on pouring in heavy doses of it for nothing and you make yourself deaf into the bargain.

I have known people take sixty grains of quinine in a day for a bilious attack and turn it into a disease they only got through by the skin of their teeth; but the prophylactic action of quinine is its great one, as it only has power over malarial microbes at a certain state of their development,--the fully matured microbe it does not affect to any great degree--and therefore by taking it when in a malarious district, say, in a dose of five grams a day, you keep down the malaria which you are bound, even with every care, to get into your system. When you have got very chilled or over-tired, take an extra five grains with a little wine or spirit at any time, and when you know, by reason of aching head and limbs and a sensation of a stream of cold water down your back and an awful temper, that you are in for a fever, send for a doctor if you can.

If, as generally happens, there is no doctor near to send for, take a compound calomel and colocynth pill, fifteen grains of quinine and a grain of opium, and go to bed wrapped up in the best blanket available. When safely there take lashings of hot tea or, what is better, a hot drink made from fresh lime-juice, strong and without sugar--fresh limes are almost always to be had--if not, bottled lime-juice does well. Then, in the hot stage, don't go fanning about, nor in the perspiring stage, for if you get a chill then you may turn a mild dose of fever into a fatal one. If, however, you keep conscientiously rolled in your blanket until the perspiring stage is well over, and stay in bed till the next morning, the chances are you will be all right, though a little shaky about the legs. You should continue the quinine, taking it in five-grain doses, up to fifteen to twenty grains a day for a week after any attack of fever, but you must omit the opium pill. The great thing in West Africa is to keep up your health to a good level, that will enable you to resist fever, and it is exceedingly difficult for most people to do this, because of the difficulty of getting exercise and good food. But do what you may it is almost certain you will get fever during a residence of more than six months on the Coast, and the chances are two to one on the Gold Coast that you will die of it. But, without precautions, you will probably have it within a fortnight of first landing, and your chances of surviving are almost nil. With precautions, in the Rivers and on the S.W. Coast your touch of fever may be a thing inferior in danger and discomfort to a bad cold in England.

Yet remember, before you elect to cast your lot in with the West Coasters, that 85 per cent. of them die of fever or return home with their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that there is no getting acclimatised to the Coast. There are, it is true, a few men out there who, although they have been resident in West Africa for years, have never had fever, but you can count them up on the fingers of one hand. There is another cla.s.s who have been out for twelve months at a time, and have not had a touch of fever; these you want the fingers of your two hands to count, but no more. By far the largest cla.s.s is the third, which is made up of those who have a slight dose of fever once a fortnight, and some day, apparently for no extra reason, get a heavy dose and die of it. A very considerable cla.s.s is the fourth--those who die within a fortnight to a month of going ash.o.r.e.

The fate of a man depends solely on his power of resisting the so- called malaria, not in his system becoming inured to it. The first cla.s.s of men that I have cited have some unknown element in their const.i.tutions that renders them immune. With the second cla.s.s the power of resistance is great, and can be renewed from time to time by a spell home in a European climate. In the third cla.s.s the state is that of c.u.mulative poisoning; in the fourth of acute poisoning.

Let the new-comer who goes to the Coast take the most cheerful view of these statements and let him regard himself as preordained to be one of the two most favoured cla.s.ses. Let him take every care short of getting frightened, which is as deadly as taking no care at all, and he may--I sincerely hope he will--survive; for a man who has got the grit in him to go and fight in West Africa for those things worth fighting for--duty, honour and gold--is a man whose death is a dead loss to his country.

The cargoes from West Africa truly may "wives and mithers maist despairing ca' them lives o' men." Yet grievous as is the price England pays for her West African possessions, to us who know the men who risk their lives and die for them, England gets a good equivalent value for it; for she is the greatest manufacturing country in the world, and as such requires markets. Nowadays she requires them more than new colonies. A colony drains annually thousands of the most enterprising and energetic of her children from her, leaving behind them their aged and incapable relations.

Moreover, a colony gradually becomes a rival manufacturing centre to the mother country, whereas West Africa will remain for hundreds of years a region that will supply the manufacturer with his raw material, and take in exchange for it his manufactured articles, giving him a good margin of profit. And the holding of our West African markets drains annually a few score of men only--only too often for ever--but the trade they carry on and develop there--a trade, according to Sir George Baden-Powell, of the annual value of nine millions sterling--enables thousands of men, women and children to remain safely in England, in comfort and pleasure, owing to the wages and profits arising from the manufacture and export of the articles used in that trade.

So I trust that those at home in England will give all honour to the men still working in West Africa, or rotting in the weed-grown, snake-infested cemeteries and the forest swamps--men whose battles have been fought out on lonely beaches far away from home and friends and often from another white man's help, sometimes with savages, but more often with a more deadly foe, with none of the anodyne to death and danger given by the companionship of hundreds of fellow soldiers in a fight with a foe you can see, but with a foe you can see only incarnate in the dreams of your delirium, which runs as a poison in burning veins and aching brain--the dread West Coast fever. And may England never again dream of forfeiting, or playing with, the conquests won for her by those heroes of commerce, the West Coast traders; for of them, as well as of such men as Sir Gerald Portal, truly it may be said--of such is the Kingdom of England.

APPENDIX. THE INVENTION OF THE CLOTH LOOM.

This story is taken down from an Eboe, but practically the same story can be found among all the cloth-making tribes in West Africa.

In the old times there was a man who was a great hunter; but he had a bad wife, and when he made medicine to put on his spear, she made medicine against his spear, but he knew nothing of this thing and went out after bush cow.

By and by he found a big bush cow, and threw his spear at it, but the bush cow came on, and drove its horns through his thigh, so the man crept home, and lay in his house very sick, and the witch doctor found out which of his wives had witched the spear, and they killed her, and for many days the man could not go out hunting. But he was a great hunter, and his liver grew hot in him for the bush, so he dragged himself to the bush, and lay there every day. One day, as he lay, he saw a big spider making a net on a bush and he watched him. By and by he saw how the spider caught his game, and that the spider was a great hunter, and the man said "If I had hunted as this spider hunts, if I had made a trap like that and put it in the bush and then gone aside and let the game get into it and weary itself to death quickly,--quicker and safer than they do in pit-falls--that bush cow would not have gored me." And so after a time he tried to make a net like the spider's, out of bush rope, and he did this thing and put his net into the forest, and caught bush deer (gazelles) and earthpig (pangolins) and porcupines, and he made more nets, and every net he made was better, and he grew well, and became a greater hunter than before. One day he made a very fine net, and his wife said "This is a cloth, it is better than our cloth (bark cloth) because when the rain gets to it, it does not shrivel. Make me a cloth like this and then I will beat it with the mallet and wear it." And the man tried to do this thing, but he could not get it a good shape and he said, "Yet the spider gets a shape in his cloth. I will go and ask him again this thing." And he went to the spider, and took him another offering, and said: "Oh, my lord, teach me more things." And he sat and watched him for many days.

By and by he saw more (his eyes were opened) and he saw the spider made his net on sticks, and so he went home and got fine bush rope that he had collected, and taken there, to make his game nets with, and he brought them to the bush near the spider, and fixing the strings on to the bush he made a new net and he got shape into it, and he made more nets this way, and every net he made was better.

And his wife was pleased and gave him sons, and by and by the man saw that he did not want all the sticks of a bush to make his net on, only some of them; and so he took these home and put them up in his house, and made his nets there, and after a time his wife said: "Why do you make the stuff for me with that bush rope? Why do you not make it with something finer?" And he went into the bush and took offerings to the spider and said: "Oh, my lord, teach me more things!" And he sat and watched the spider, but the spider only went on making stuff out of his belly. And the man said: "Oh, my lord, you pa.s.s me. I cannot do this thing." And as he went home he thought and saw that there are trees, and there are bush ropes, thick bush rope and thin bush rope, and then there is gra.s.s which was thinner still, and he took the gra.s.s, and tried to make a net with it, and did this thing and made more nets and every net he made was better. And his wife was pleased and said "This is good cloth."

And the man lived to be very old and was a great chief and a great hunter. For it is good for a man to be a great hunter, and it is good for a man to please women. This is the origin of the cloth loom.

It was in the old time, and men have got now thread on spools from the white man, for the white man is a great spider; but this is how the black man learnt to make cloth.

NOTES.

{14} Sierra Leone has been known since the voyage of Hanno of Carthage in the sixth century B.C., but it has not got into general literature to any great extent since Pliny. The only later cla.s.sic who has noticed it is Milton, who in a very suitable portion of Paradise Lost says of Notus and Afer, "black with thunderous clouds from Sierra Lona." Our occupation of it dates from 1787.

{15} Lagos also likes to bear this flattering appellation, and has now-a-days more right to the t.i.tle.

{28} Along the Coast, and in other parts of Africa, the coa.r.s.er, flat-sided kinds of banana are usually called plantains, the name banana being reserved for the finer sorts, such as the little "silver banana."

{37} From Point Limbok, the seaward extremity of Cameroons Mountain, to Cape Horatio, the most eastern extremity of Fernando Po, the soundings are, from the continent, 13, 17, 20, 23, 27, 29, 30, 34 fathoms; close on to the island, 35 and 29 fathoms.

{44} I am informed that the allowance made to these priests exceeds by some pounds the revenues Spain obtains from the Island. In Spanish possessions alone is a supporting allowance made to missionaries though in all the other colonies they obtain a government grant.

{47} Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians, T. J. Hutchinson.

{48a} There is difference of opinion among authorities as to whether Fernando Po was discovered by Fernando Po or by Lopez Gonsalves.

{48b} From April 1777 till the end of 1782, 370 men out of the 547 died of fever.

{51} Porto is the Bubi name for black men who are not Bubis, these were in old days Portuguese slaves, "Porto" being evidently a corruption of "Portuguese," but it is used alike by the Bubi to designate Sierra Leonian and Accras, in fact, all the outer barbarian blacks. The name for white men, Mandara, used by the Bubis, has a sort of resemblance to the Effik name for whites, Makara, i.e., the ruling one, but I do not know whether these two words have any connection.

{55} I am glad to find that my own observations on the drink question entirely agree with those of Dr. Oscar Baumann, because he is an unprejudiced scientific observer, who has had great experience both in the Congo and Cameroon regions before he came to Fernando Po. In support of my statement I may quote his own words: --"Die Bube trinken namlich sehr gerne Rum; Gin verschmahen sie vollstandig, aber ausser Tabak und Salz gehort Rum zu den gesuchtesten europaischen Artikeln fur sie. Wie bekannt hat sich in Europa ein heftiges Geschrei gegen die Vergiftung der Neger durch Alcohol erhoben. Wenn da.s.selbe schon fur die meisten Stamme Westafrikas der Berechtigung fast vollstandig entbehrt und in die Categorie verweisen worden muss die man mit dem nicht sehr schonen aber treffenden Ausdrucke 'Humanitatsduselei' bezeichnet, so ist es den Bube gegenuber wohl mehr als zwecklos. Es mag ja vorkommen da.s.s ein Bube wenn er sein Palmol verkauft hat, sich ein oder zweimal im Jahre mit Rum ein Rauschlein antrinkt. Deshalb aber gleich von Alkohol-Vergiftung zu sprechen ware mindestens lacherlich. Ich bin uberzeugt da.s.s mancher jener Herren die in Wort und Schrift so heftig gegen die Alkolismus der Neger zetern in ihren Studenten- jahren allein mehr geistige Getranke genossen haben als zehn Bube wahrend ihres ganzen Lebens. Der Handelsrum welcher wie ich mich ofters uberzeugt zwar recht verwa.s.sert aber keineswegs abstossend schlecht schmeckt, ist den Bube gewohnlich nur eine Delikatesse welche mit Andacht schluckweise genossen wird. Wenn ein Arbeiter bei uns einen Schluck Branntwein oder ein Glas Bier geniesst um sich zu starken, so findet das Jeder in der Ordnung; der Bube jedoch, welcher splitternackt tagelang in feuchten Bergwaldern umher klettern muss, soll beliebe nichts als Wa.s.ser trinken!" Eine Africanische Tropen. insel Fernando Poo, Dr. Oscar Baumann, Edward Holzer, Wien, 1888.

{56} "Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Bubisprache auf Fernando Poo," O.

Baumann, Zeitschrift fur afrikanische Sprachen. Berlin, 1888.

{61} Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians. T. J. Hutchinson.

{80} The Sierra del Cristal and the Pallaballa range are, by some geographers, held to be identical; but I have reason to doubt this, for the specimens of rock brought home by me have been identified by the Geological Survey, those of the Pallaballa range as mica schist and quartz; those of the Sierra del Cristal as "probably schistose grit, but not definitely determinable by inspection," and "quartz rock." The quant.i.ty of mica in the sands of the Ogowe, I think, come into it from its affluents from the Congo region because you do not get these mica sands in rivers which are entirely from the Sierra del Cristal, such as the Muni. The Rumby and Omon ranges are probably identical with the Sierra del Cristal, for in them as in the Sierra you do not get the glistening dove-coloured rock with a spa.r.s.e vegetation growing on it, as you do in the Pallaballa region.

{96} The villages of the Fans and Bakele are built in the form of a street. When in the forest there are two lines of huts, the one facing the other, and each end closed by a guard house. When facing a river there is one line of huts facing the river frontage.

{167} The M'pongwe speaking tribes are the M'pongwe, Orungu, Nkami, Ajumba, Inlenga and the Igalwa.

{170} These four Ajumba had been engaged, through the instrumentality of M. Jacot, to accompany me to the Rembwe River.

The Ajumba are one of the n.o.ble tribes and are the parent stem of the M'pongwe; their district is the western side of Lake Ayzingo.

{181} As this river is not mentioned on maps, and as I was the first white traveller on it, I give my own phonetic spelling; but I expect it would be spelt by modern geographers "Kakola."

{185} A common African sensation among natives when alarmed, somewhat akin to our feeling some one walk over our graves.

{189} Since my return I think the French gentleman may have been M.

F. Tenaille d'Estais, who is down on the latest map (French) as having visited a lake in this region in 1882, which is set down as Lac Ebouko. He seems to have come from and returned to Lake Ayzingo--on map Lac Azingo--but on the other hand "Ebouko" was not known on the lake, Ajumba and Fans alike calling it Ncovi.