West African studies Part 1

West African studies.

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley.

PREFACE.

I pray you who may come across this book to distinguish carefully between the part of it written by others and that written by me.

Anything concerning West Africa written by M. le Comte C. de Cardi or Mr. John Harford, of Bristol, does not require apology and explanation; while anything written by me on this, or any subject, does. M. le Comte de Cardi possesses an unrivalled knowledge of the natives of the Niger Delta, gained, as all West Coasters know, by personal experience, and gained in a way whereby he had to test the truth of his ideas about these natives, not against things said concerning them in books, but against the facts themselves, for years; and depending on the accuracy of his knowledge was not a theory, but his own life and property. I have always wished that men having this kind of first-hand, well-tested knowledge regarding West Africa could be induced to publish it for the benefit of students, and for the foundation of a true knowledge concerning the natives of West Africa in the minds of the general public, feeling a.s.sured that if we had this cla.s.s of knowledge available, the student of ethnology would be saved from many fantastic theories, and the general public enabled to bring its influence to bear in the cause of justice, instead of in the cause of fads. I need say nothing more regarding Appendix I.; it is a mine of knowledge concerning a highly developed set of natives of the true Negro stem, particularly valuable because, during recent years, we have been singularly badly off for information on the true Negro. It would not be too much to say that, with the exception of the important series of works by the late Sir A.

B. Ellis, and a few others, so few that you can count them on the fingers of one hand, and Dr. Freeman's _Ashanti and Jaman_, published this year, we have practically had no reliable information on these, the most important of the races of Africa, since the eighteenth century. The general public have been dependent on the work of great East and Central African geographical explorers, like Dr. Livingstone, Mr. H. M. Stanley, Dr. Gregory, Mr. Scott Elliott, and Sir H. H. Johnston, men whose work we cannot value too highly, and whom we cannot sufficiently admire; but who, nevertheless, were not when describing Africans describing Negroes, but that great mixture of races existing in Central and East Africa whose main ingredient is Bantu. To argue from what you know about Bantus when you are dealing with Negroes is about as safe and sound as to argue from what you may know about Eastern Europeans when you are dealing with Western Europeans. Nevertheless, this fallacious method has been followed in the domain of ethnology and politics with, as might be expected, bad results. I am, therefore, very proud at being permitted by M. le Comte de Cardi to publish his statements on true Negroes; and I need not say I have in no way altered them, and that he is in no way responsible for any errors that there may be in the portions of this book written by me.

Mr. John Harford, the man who first[1] opened up that still little-known Qua Ibo river, another region of Negroes, also requires no apology. I am confident that the quite unconscious picture of a West Coast trader's life given by him in Appendix II. will do much to remove the fantastic notions held concerning West Coast traders and the manner of life they lead out there; and I am convinced that if the English public had more of this sort of material it would recognise, as I, from a fairly extensive knowledge of West Coast traders, have been forced to recognise, that they are the cla.s.s of white men out there who can be trusted to manage West Africa.

I most sincerely wish that the whole of this book had been written by such men as the authors of Appendices I. and II. We are seriously in want of reliable information on West African affairs. It is a sort of information you can only get from resident white men, those who live in close touch with the natives, and who are forced to know the truth about them in order to live and prosper, and from scientific trained observers. The transient traveller, pa.s.sing rapidly through such a region as West Africa, is not so valuable an informant as he may be in other regions of the Earth, where his observations can be checked by those of acknowledged authorities, and supplemented by the literature of the natives to whom he refers. For on West Africa, outside Ellis's region, there is no authority newer than the eighteenth century, and the natives have no written literature. You must, therefore, go down to _Urstuff_ and rely only on expert observers, whose lives and property depend on their observing well, or whose science trains them to observe carefully.

Now of course I regard myself as one of the second cla.s.s of these observers: did I not do so I would not dare speak about West Africa at all, especially in such company; but whatever I am or whatever I do, requires explanation, apology, and thanks.

You may remember that after my return from a second sojourn in West Africa, when I had been to work at fetish and fresh-water fishes, I published a word-swamp of a book about the size of Norie's _Navigation_.

Mr. George Macmillan lured me into so doing by stating that if I gave my own version of the affair I should remove misconceptions; and if I did not it was useless to object to such things as paragraphs in American papers to the effect that "Miss Kingsley, having crossed the continent of Africa, ascended the Niger to Victoria, and then climbed the Peak of Cameroon; she is shortly to return to England, when she will deliver a series of lectures on French art, which she has had great opportunities of studying." Well, thanks to Mr. Macmillan's kindness, I did publish a sort of interim report, called _Travels in West Africa_. It did not work out in the way he prophesied. It has led to my being referred to as "an intrepid explorer," a thing there is not the making of in me, who am ever the prey of frights, worries, and alarms; and its main effect, as far as I am personally concerned, has been to plunge me further still in debt for kindness from my fellow creatures, who, though capable of doing all I have done and more capable of writing about it in really good English, have tolerated that book and frequently me also, with half-a-dozen colds in my head and a dingy temper. Chief among all these creditors of mine I must name Mrs. J. R. Green, Mrs. George Macmillan, and Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith; but don't imagine that they or any other of my creditors approve of any single solitary opinion I express, or the way in which I express it. It is merely that I have the power of bringing out in my fellow-creatures, white or black, their virtues, in a way honourable to them and fortunate for me.

I must here also acknowledge the great debt of grat.i.tude I owe to Mr.

John Holt, of Liverpool. A part of my work lies in the affairs of the so-called Bubies of Fernando Po, and no one knows so much about Fernando Po as Mr. Holt. He has also been of the greatest help to me in other ethnological questions, and has permitted me to go through his collections of African things most generously. It is, however, idle for me to attempt to chronicle my debt to Mr. Holt, for in every part of my work I owe him much. I do not wish you to think he is responsible for any of it, but his counsels have ever been on the side of moderation and generosity in adverse criticism. I honestly confess I believe I am by nature the very mildest of critics; but Mr. Holt and others think otherwise; and so, although I have not altered my opinions, I have restrained from publishing several developments of them, in deference to superior knowledge.

I am also under a debt of grat.i.tude to Professor Tylor. He also is not involved in my opinions, but he kindly permits me to tell him things that I can only "tell Tylor"; and now and again, as you will see in the Fetish question, he comes down on me with a refreshing firmness; in fact, I feel that any attempt at fantastic explanations of West African culture will not receive any encouragement from him; and it is a great comfort to a mere drudge like myself to know there is some one who cares for facts, without theories draping them.

I will merely add that to all my own West Coast friends I remain indebted; and that if you ever come across any one who says I owe them much, you may take it as a rule that I do, though in all my written stuff I have most carefully ticketed its source.

I now turn to the explanation and apology for this book, briefly.

Apology for its literary style I do not make. I am not a literary man, only a student of West Africa. I am not proud of my imperfections in English. I would write better if I could, but I cannot. I find when I try to write like other people that I do not say what seems to me true, and thereby lose all right to say anything; and I am more convinced, the more I know of West Africa--my education is continuous and unbroken by holidays,--that it is a difficult thing to write about, particularly when you are a student hampered on all sides by ma.s.ses of inchoate material, unaided by a set of great authors to whose opinions you can refer, and addressing a public that is not interested in the things that interest you so keenly and that you regard as so deeply important.

In my previous book I most carefully confined myself to facts and arranged those facts on as thin a line of connecting opinion as possible. I was anxious to see what manner of opinion they would give rise to in the minds of the educated experts up here; not from a mere feminine curiosity, but from a distrust in my own ability to construct theories. On the whole this method has worked well. Ethnologists of different theories have been enabled to use such facts as they saw fit; but one of the greatest of ethnologists has grumbled at me, not for not giving a theory, but for omitting to show the inter-relationship of certain groups of facts, an inter-relationship his acuteness enabled him to know existed. Therefore I here give the key to a good deal of this inter-relationship by dividing the different cla.s.ses of Fetishism into four schools. In order to do this I have now to place before you a good deal of material that was either crowded out of the other work or considered by me to require further investigation and comparison. As for the new statements I make, I have been enabled to give them this from the constant information and answers to questions I receive from West Africa. For the rest of the Fetish I remain a mere photographic plate.

Regarding the other sections of this book, they are to me all subsidiary in importance to the Fetish, but they belong to it. They refer to its environment, without a knowledge of which you cannot know the thing.

What Mr. Macmillan has ticketed as Introductory--I could not find a name for it at all--has a certain bearing on West African affairs, as showing the life on a West Coast boat. I may remark it is a section crowded out of my previous book; so, though you may not be glad to see it here, you must be glad it was not there.

The fishing chapter was also cast out of _Travels in West Africa_.

Critics whom I respect said it was wrong of me not to have explained how I came by my fishes. This made me fear that they thought I had stolen them, so I published the article promptly in the _National Review_, and, by the kindness of its editor, Mr. Maxse, I reprint it. It is the only reprint in this book.

The chapter on Law contains all the material I have been so far able to arrange on this important study. The material on Criminal Law I must keep until I can go out again to West Africa, and read further in the minds of men in the African Forest Belt region; for in them, in that region, is the original text. The connection between Religion and Law I have not reprinted here, it being available, thanks to the courtesy of the Hibbert Trustees, in the _National Review_, September, 1897.

I have left my stiffest bit of explanation and apology till the last, namely, that relating to the Crown Colony system, which is the thing that makes me beg you to disa.s.sociate from me every friend I have, and deal with me alone. I am alone responsible for it, the only thing for which I may be regarded as sharing the responsibility with others being the statistics from Government sources.

It has been the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. I would have given my right hand to have done it well, for I know what it means if things go on as they are. Alas! I am hampered with my bad method of expression. I cannot show you anything clearly and neatly. I have to show you a series of pictures of things, and hope you will get from those pictures the impression which is the truth. I dare not set myself up to tell you the truth. I only say, look at it; and to the best of my ability faithfully give you, not an artist's picture, but a photograph, an overladen with detail, colourless version; all the time wishing to Heaven there was some one else doing it who could do it better, and then I know you would understand, and all would be well. I know there are people who tax me with a brutality in statement, I feel unjustly; and it makes me wonder what they would say if they had to speak about West Africa. It is a repet.i.tion of the difficulty a friend of mine and myself had over a steam launch called the Dragon Fly, whose internal health was chronically poor, and subject to bad attacks. Well, one afternoon, he and I had to take her out to the home-going steamer, and she had suffered that afternoon in the engines, and when she suffered anywhere she let you know it. We did what we could for her, in the interests of humanity and ourselves; we gave her lots of oil, and fed her with delicately-chopped wood; but all to but little avail. So both our tempers being strained when we got to the steamer, we told her what the other one of us had been saying about the Dragon Fly. The purser of the steamer thereon said "that people who said things like those about a poor inanimate steam launch were fools with a flaming hot future, and lost souls entirely." We realised that our observations had been imperfect; and so, being ever desirous of improving ourselves, we offered to put the purser on sh.o.r.e in the Dragon Fly. We knew she was feeling still much the same, and we wanted to know what he would say when jets of superheated steam played on him. He came, and they did; and when they did, you know, he said things I cannot repeat. Nevertheless, things of the nature of our own remarks, but so much finer of the kind, that we regarded him with awe when he was returning thanks to the "poor inanimate steam launch"; but it was when it came to his going ash.o.r.e, gladly to leave us and her, that we found out what that man could say; and we morally fainted at his remarks made on discovering that he had been sitting in a pool of s.m.u.tty oil, which she had insidiously treated him to, in order to take some of the stuffing out of him about the superior snowwhiteness of his trousers. Well, that purser went off the scene in a blue flame; and I said to my companion, "Sir! we cannot say things like that." "Right you are, Miss Kingsley," he said sadly; "you and I are only fit for Sunday school entertainments."

It is thus with me about this Crown Colony affair. I know I have not risen to the height other people--my superiors, like the purser--would rise to, if they knew it; but at the same time, I may seem to those who do not know it, who only know the good intentions of England, and who regard systems as inanimate things, to be speaking harshly. I would not have mentioned this affair at all, did I not clearly see that our present method of dealing with tropical possessions under the Crown Colony system was dangerous financially, and brought with it suffering to the native races and disgrace to English gentlemen, who are bound to obey and carry out the orders given them by the system.

Plotinus very properly said that the proper thing to do was to superimpose the idea upon the actual. I am not one of those who will ever tell you things are impossible, but I am particularly hopeful in this matter. England has an excellent idea regarding her duty to native races in West Africa. She has an excellent actual in the West African native to superimpose her idea upon. All that is wanted is the proper method; and this method I a.s.sure you that Science, true knowledge, that which Spinoza termed the inward aid of G.o.d, can give you. I am not Science, but only one of her brick-makers, and I beg you to turn to her.

Remember you have tried to do without her in African matters for 400 years, and on the road to civilisation and advance there you have travelled on a cabbage leaf.

I have now only the pleasant duty of remarking that in this book I have said nothing regarding missionary questions. I do not think it will ever be necessary for me to mention those questions again except to Nonconformist missionaries. I say this advisedly, because, though I have not one word to retract of what I have said, the saying of it has demonstrated to me the fearless honesty and the perfect chivalry in controversy of the Nonconformist missions in England. As they are the most extensively interested in West Africa, if on my next stay out in West Africa I find anything I regard as rather wrong in missionary affairs I intend to have it out within doors; for I know that the Nonconformists will be clear-headed, and fight fair, and stick to the point.

MARY H. KINGSLEY.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. McEachen first traded there in a hulk, but, after about two years, withdrew in 1873. No trade was done in this river by white men until Mr. Harford went in, since then it has continued.

WEST AFRICAN STUDIES

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Regarding a voyage on a West Coast boat, with some observations on the natural history of mariners never before published; to which is added some description of the habits and nature of the ant and other insects, to the end that the new-comer be informed concerning these things before he lands in Afrik.

There are some people who will tell you that the labour problem is the most difficult affair that Africa presents to the student; others give the first place to the influence of civilisation on native races, or to the interaction of the interests of the various white Powers on that continent, or to the successful sanitation of the said continent, or some other high-sounding thing; but I, who have an acquaintance with all these matters, and think them well enough, as intellectual exercises, yet look upon them as slight compared to the problem of the West Coast Boat.

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 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. These men talk things over together without explaining them, and the consequence is confusion in idea and the darkening of counsel from the ideas so formed being handed over to people at home who practically know no part of the West Coast whatsoever.

I had an example of this the other day, when a lady said to me in an aggrieved tone, after I had been saying a few words on swamps, "Oh, Miss Kingsley, but I thought it was wrong to talk about swamps nowadays, and that Africa was really quite dry. I have a cousin who has been to Accra and he says," &c. That's the way the formation of an erroneous opinion on West Africa gets started. Many a time have I with a scientific interest watched those erroneous opinions coming out of the egg on a West Coast boat. Say, for example, a Gold Coaster meets on the boat a River-man. River-man in course of conversation, states how, "hearing a fillaloo in the yard one night I got up and found the watchman going to sleep on the top of the ladder had just lost a leg by means of one crocodile, while another crocodile was kicking up a deuce of a row climbing up the crane." Gold Coaster says, "Tell that to the Marines."

River-man says, "Perfect fact, Sir, my place swarms with crocodiles.

Why, once, when I was," &c., &c. Anyhow it ends in a row. The Gold Coaster says, "Sir, I have been 7 years" (or 13 or some impressive number of years) "on the West Coast of Africa, Sir, and I have never seen a crocodile." River-man makes remarks on the existence of a toxic state wherein a man can't see the holes in a ladder, for he knows he's seen hundreds of crocodiles.

I know Gold Coasters say in a trying way when any terrific account of anything comes before them, "Oh, that was down in the Rivers," and one knows what they mean. But don't you go away with the idea that a Gold Coaster cannot turn out a very decent tale; indeed, considering the paucity of their material, they often display the artistic spirit to a most noteworthy degree, but the net result of the conversation on a West African steamboat is error. Parts of it, like the curate's egg, are quite excellent, but unless you have an acquaintance with the various regions of the Coast to which your various informants refer, you cannot know which is which. Take the above case and a.n.a.lyse it, and you will find it is almost all, on both sides, quite true. I won't go bail for the crocodile up the crane, but for the watchman's leg and the watchman being asleep on the top of the ladder I will, for watchmen will sleep anywhere; and once when I was, &c., I myself saw certainly not less than 70 crocodiles at one time, let alone smelling them, for they do swarm in places and stink always. But on the other hand the Gold Coaster might have remained 7, 13, or any other number of centuries instead of years, in a teetotal state, and yet have never seen a crocodile.

It may seem a reckless thing to say, but I believe that the great percentage of steamboat talk is true; only you must remember that it is not stuff that you can in any way use or rely on unless you know yourself the district from which the information comes, and it must, like all information--like all specimens of any kind--be very carefully ticketed, then and there, as to its giver and its district. In this it is again like the English Press, wherein you may see a statement one day that everything is quite satisfactory, say in Uganda, and in the next issue that there has been a ma.s.sacre or some unpleasantness. The two statements have in them the connecting thread of truth, that truth that, according to Fichte, is in all things. The first shows that it is the desire in the official mind that everything should be quite satisfactory to every one; the second, that practically this blessed state has not yet arrived--that is all.

I need not, however, further dwell on this complex phase, and will turn to the high educational value of the West African steamboat to the young Coaster, holding that on the conditions under which the Coaster makes his first voyage out to West Africa largely depends whether or no he takes to the Coast. Strange as it is to me, who love West Africa, there are people who have really been there who have not even liked it in the least. These people, I fancy, have not been properly brought up in a suitable academy as I was.

Doubtless a P. & O. is a good preparatory school for India, or a Union, or Castle liner for the Cape, or an Empereza Nacional simply superb for a Portuguese West Coast Possession, but for the Bights, especially for the terrible Bight of Benin, "where for one that comes out there are forty stay in," I have no hesitation in recommending the West Coast cargo boat. Not one of the best ships in the fleet, mind you; they are well enough to come home in, and so on, but you must go on a steamer that has her saloon aft on your first trip out or you will never understand West Africa.

It was on such a steamer that I made my first voyage out in '93, when, acting under the advice of most eminent men, before whose names European Science trembles, I resolved that the best place to study early religion and law, and collect fishes, was the West Coast of Africa.

On reaching Liverpool, where I knew no one and of which I knew nothing in '93, I found the boat I was to go by was a veteran of the fleet. She had her saloon aft, and I am bound to say her appearance was anything but rea.s.suring to the uninitiated and alarmed young Coaster, depressed by the direful prophecies of deserted friends concerning all things West African. Dirt and greed were that vessel's most obvious attributes. The dirt rapidly disappeared, and by the time she reached the end of her trip out, at Loanda, she was as neat as a new pin, for during the voyage every inch of paint work was sc.r.a.ped and re-painted, from the red below her Plimsoll mark to the uttermost top of her black funnel. But on the day when first we met these things were yet to be. As for her greed, her owners had evidently then done all they could to satisfy her. She was heavily laden, her holds more full than many a better ship's; but no, she was not content, she did not even pretend to be, and shamelessly whistled and squarked for more. So, evidently just to gratify her, they sent her a lighter laden with kegs of gunpowder, and she grunted contentedly as she saw it come alongside. But she was not really entirely content even then, or satisfied. I don't suppose, between ourselves, any South West Coast boat ever is, and during the whole time I was on her, devoted to her as I rapidly became, I saw only too clearly that the one thing she really cared for was cargo. It was the criterion by which she measured the importance, nay the very excuse for existence, of a port. If she is ever sold to other owners and sent up the Mediterranean, she will anathematise Malta and scorn Naples. "What! no palm oil!" she'll say; "no rubber? Call yourself a port!" and tie her whistle string to a stanchion until the authorities bring off her papers and let her clear away. Every one on board her she infected with a commercial spirit. I am not by nature a commercial man myself, yet under her influence I found myself selling paraffin oil in cases in the Bights: and even to missionaries and Government officials travelling on her in between ports, she suggested the advisability of having out churches, houses, &c., in sections carefully marked with her name.

As we ran down the Irish Channel and into the Bay of Biscay, the weather was what the mariners termed "a bit fresh." Our craft was evidently a wet ship, either because she was nervous and femininely flurried when she saw a large wave coming, or, as I am myself inclined to believe, because of her insatiable mania for shipping cargo. Anyhow, she habitually sat down in the rise of those waves, whereby, from whatever motive, she managed to ship a good deal of the Atlantic Ocean in various sized sections.

Her saloon, as aforesaid, was aft, and I observed it was the duty, in order to keep it dry, of any one near the main door who might notice a ton or so of the fourth element coming aboard, to seize up three cocoa-fibre mats, shut three cabin doors and yell "Bill!" After doing this they were seemingly at full liberty to retire into the saloon and dam the Atlantic Ocean, and remark, "It's a dog's life at sea." I never noticed "Bill" come in answer to this performance, so I was getting to regard "Bill" as an invocation to a weather Ju Ju; but this was hasty, for one night in the Bay I was roused by a new noise, and on going into the saloon to see what it was, found the stewardess similarly engaged; mutually we discovered, in the dim light--she wasn't the boat to go and throw away money on electric--that it was the piano adrift off its das, and we steered for it. Very cleverly we fielded _en route_ a palm in pot complete, but shipped some beer and Worcester sauce bottles that came at us from the rack over the table, whereby we got a bit messy and sticky about the hair and a trifle cut; nevertheless, undaunted we held our course and seized the instrument, instinctively shouting "Bill," and "Bill" came, in the form of a sandy-haired steward, amiable in nature and striking in costume.