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 repetition 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 shore 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 ashore, 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 smutty 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 assure you that Science, true knowledge, that which Spinoza termed the inward aid of God, 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
