the glory of the morning—the men who have passed along this road—the strong views of the african pig—an old-world castle—thieving carriers—the superiority of the white man—annamabu—a perfect specimen of a fort—a forlorn rest-house—a notable coast chief—tired-out mammies—the medical officer at salt ponds—the capable german women—the reason of the ill-health of the english women—kroo boys as carriers—tantum—a loyal rest-house—filthy appam—a possible origin for the yellow fever at accra—winne-bah—a check—the luckless ferryman—good-bye to the road.

the carriers from kommenda were only to come as far as cape coast, so here i had to find fresh men or rather women to replace them. i know nothing more aggravating than engaging carriers. apparently it was a little break in the monotony of life as lived in an african town to come and engage as a carrier with the white missus, come when she was about to start, an hour late was the correct thing, look at the loads, turn them over, try to lift them, say “we no be fit,” and then sit down and see what would happen next. the usual programme, of course, was gone through at cape coast, the mammies i had engaged smiling and laughing as if it were the best joke in the world, and i only kept my temper by reflecting that since i could not beat them, which i dearly longed to do, it was no good losing it. they had had three days to contemplate those loads and they only found “we no be fit” as i wanted to start. of course the men who had come on from sekondi with me were now most virtuous; they bore me no ill-will for my harsh treatment, indeed they respected me for it, and they regarded themselves as my prop and my stay, as indeed they were.

with infinite difficulty i got off at last, taking three new carriers, mammies, where two had sufficed before.

travelling in the early morning is glorious. the dew is on all the grass; it catches and reflects the sunbeams like diamonds, and there is a freshness in the air which is lost as the day advances. i loved going along that coast too.

i was thrown upon myself for companionship, for my followers could only speak a little pigeon english, and of course we had nothing in common, but the men and women who had gone before walked beside me and whispered to me tales of the strenuous days of old. perhaps the phoenicians had been here, possibly those old sea rovers, the normans, and certainly the portuguese; they had marched along this shore, even as i was marching along, only their own homes were worlds away and the bush behind was peopled for them with unknown monsters, such as i would not dream of. they had feared as they walked, and now i, a woman, could come alone and unarmed.

leaving cape coast that still, warm, tropical morning, we passed the people coming into town to the markets with their wares upon their heads, all carried in long crates, chickens and fowls and unhappy pigs strapped tightly down, for the african pig, like the pig in other lands, has a mind of his own; he will not walk to his own destruction, he has to be carried. these traders were women usually, and they looked at me with interest and no little astonishment, for i believe that never before had a white woman by herself gone alone along this path.

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my carriers had been instructed to go to accra and to accra they went by the nearest way, sometimes cutting off little promontories, and thus it happened that, looking up on one of these detours, i saw on a hill, between me and the sea, a ruined fort. of course i stopped the hammock and got out. i had come to see these forts, and here i was passing one. i wanted to go back. my headman demurred. had i not distinctly said i wanted to go to accra, and were we not on the direct road to accra? to get to that old fort, which he did not think worth looking at, we should have to go back an hour's journey, and the men “no be fit.” i am regretful now that i only saw that fort from a distance. it was very very hot, and i don't think i felt very fit myself; at any rate, the thought of two hours extra in the hammock dismayed me and i decided to take a long-distance photograph from where i stood. it was an old dutch fort—fort mori—and was built on high ground overlooking a little bay. i think now it would have been easier for me to do that two hours than to climb as i did, with the assistance of grant and my headman, to the highest point on the roadside, through long grass, scrub, and undergrowth, there to poise myself uneasily to get a photograph of the ruins. an ideal place, whispered the men of old, for a fort in the bygone days, for it overlooked all the surrounding country, there was no possibility of surprise, and at its feet was a little sheltered bay. now, on the yellow sands, in the glare of the sunshine, i could see the great canoes that dared the surf drawn up, the thatched roofs of the native town that drew its sustenance from the sea and in old times owed a certain loyalty to the fort and derived a certain prestige from the presence of the white men.

regretfully i have only that distant memory of fort mori, and i went on. those men who were “no fit” to take me back behaved abominably. whenever they neared a village they endeavoured to steal from the inhabitants—a piece of suger-cane, a ball of kenky, or a few bananas—and again and again a quarrel called me to intervene. it is very curious how soon one gets an idea of one's own importance. in england, if i came across a crowd of shouting, furious, angry men, i should certainly pass by on the other side, but here in africa when i was by myself i felt it my bounden duty to interfere and inquire what was the matter. it was most likely some trouble connected with my carriers. i disliked very much making enemies as i passed, and i endeavoured to catch them and make them pay for what they had stolen. and now i understood at last how it is white people living among a subject race are so often overwhelmed in a sudden rising. it is hard to believe that these people whom you count your inferiors will really rise against you. here was i, alone, unarmed, only a woman, and yet immediately i heard a commotion i attended at once and dispensed justice to the very best of my ability. i fully expected village elders to bow to my decision, and i am bound to say they generally did.

most of the villages along the coast bore a strong family resemblance to the one in which i had spent an unhappy hour while my men attended the funeral palaver, and all the shore is much alike. between axim and sekondi is some rough, rugged, and pretty country, but east and west of those points the shore is flat, and the farther east you go the flatter it becomes, till at the mouth of the volta and beyond it is all sand and swamp. the first day out from cape coast it was somewhat monotonous, possibly if i went over it again i should feel that more; but there was growing up in me a feeling of satisfaction with myself—i do trust it was not smug—because i was getting on. i was doing the thing so many men had said i could not possibly do, and i was doing it fairly easily. of course, i was helped, helped tremendously by the freehanded hospitality of the people in the towns through which i passed, for which kindness i can never be sufficiently grateful, but here with my carriers i was on my own, and i began to regard them as the captures of my bow and spear, and therefore i at least did not find the country uninteresting. who ever found the land he had conquered dull?

in due course i arrived at annamabu, an old english fort that the authorities on the gold coast hardly think worth preserving, and have given over to the tender mercies of the negro custom and post office officials. like elmina, i could write a book about annamabu alone, and i was the more interested in it because it is the most perfect specimen of the entirely english fort on the coast, and is built at the head of a little bay, where is the best landing on the coast for miles round.

there is a curious difference between the sites chosen by the different nations. the other nations apparently always chose some bold, commanding position, while the english evidently liked, as in this instance, the head of a little bay and a good landing.

annamabu is quite a big native town, ruled over, i believe, by a cultured african, a man who is well read and makes a point of collecting all books about the coast, and has, so they say, some rare old editions. i tried to see him and went to his house, a mud-built, two-storied building, where i sat in a covered courtyard and watched various members of his family go up and down a rickety staircase that led to the upper stories, but the chief was away on his farm, and even though i waited long he never made his appearance. i should like to have seen the inside of his house, seen his books; all i did see was the courtyard, all dull-mud colour, untidy and unkempt, with a couple of kitchen chairs in it, a goat or two, some broken-down boxes and casks, and the drums of state that marked his high office piled up outside the door.

in the fort itself is the rest-house on the bastion, as untidy and dirty as the chiefs courtyard. there are three rooms opening one into the other, and in the sitting-room, a great high room with big windows—those men of old knew how to build—there is a table, some chairs, a cupboard, and a filter, on which is written that it is for the use of europeans only, and behind in the bedroom is the forlornest wreck of a bed, and some remnants of crockery that may have been washed about the time when mrs noah held the first spring cleaning in the ark, but apparently have never been touched since. it is only fair to say that every traveller, they are like snow in summer, carries his own bedding, and in fact all he needs, so that all that is really wanted for these rest-houses along the shore is a good broom and a good stout arm to wield it, and if a place is left without human occupancy the dirt is only clean dust, for the clean air along these coasts is divine.

but at annamabu the usual difficulties came in my way; my old men were well broken-in now, but my new mammies were—well—even though i am a woman, and so by custom not permitted to use bad language, i must say they were the very devil. they carried on with the men and then they complained of the men's conduct, and when they arrived at annamabu—late, of course, and one of them had the chop box—they sent in word to say they “no be fit” to go any farther, and there and then they wanted to go back to cape coast.

i said by all means they might go back to cape coast, but the loads would have to be left here and sent for from salt ponds, and therefore, as they had not completed their contract, they should be paid nothing.

they came and lay down before me in attitudes of intense weariness calculated to move the heart of a sphinx, but i came to the conclusion i must be a hard-hearted brute, for i was adamant, and those weeping women decided they would go on to salt ponds.

at salt ponds there is a little company of white people, and, so says report, the very worst surf on the coast, with perhaps the exception of half assinie. the d.c. was away, so the provincial commissioner had telegraphed to the medical officer asking him to get me quarters. i arrived about three o'clock on a sunday afternoon, when the place was apparently wrapped in slumber; the doctor's bungalow was pointed out to me, built on stilts on a cement foundation, and on that foundation i established myself and my loads, and made my way upstairs. a ragged and blasphemous parrot, with a very nice flow of language, was in charge, and he did not encourage me to stop, nor did he even hint at favours to come, so i went down again and waited. apparently i might wait; towards evening i made my way—i was homeless—towards another bungalow, where a white man received me with astonishment, gave me the nicest cup of tea i have ever drunk, and sent for the medical officer, who had lunched off groundnut soup and had gone into the country to sleep it off. we all know groundnut soup is heavy.

the medical officer remains in my mind as a man with a grievance; he was kind after his fashion, but he did hate the country. if i had listened to him, i should have believed it was unfit for human habitation, and i couldn't help wondering why he had honoured it with his presence. in his opinion it was exceedingly unbecoming in a woman to be making her way along the coast alone. to drive in these facts he found me house-room with the only white woman in the place, the charmingly hospitable wife of the german trader who had been on the coast for a couple of years, who was perfectly well, healthy, and happy, who always did her own cooking, and who gave me some of the most delicious meals i have ever tasted. thus i was introduced to the german element in west africa, and began to realise for the first time that efficiency in little things which is going to carry the germans so far. this fair-haired, plump young woman, with the smiling young face, was one of a type, and i could not help feeling sorry there were not more english women like her. i do not think i have ever met an english woman, with the exception of the nursing sisters, who has spent a year on the coast. the accepted theory is they cannot stand it, and in the majority of cases they certainly can't. they get sick. with my own countrywomen it is different; the australian stays, so does the german, so does the french woman. at first i could not understand it at all, but at last the explanation slowly dawned upon me.

“haus-fraus,” said many a woman, and man, too, scornfully, when i praised those capable german women who make a home wherever you find them, and it is this haus-frau element in them that saves them. a german woman's pride and glory is her house, therefore, wherever she is she has to her hand an object of intense interest that fills her mind and keeps her well. an australian does not take so keen an interest in her house, perhaps, but she has had no soft and easy upbringing; from the time she was a little girl she has got her own hot water, helped with the cooking, washing, and all the multifarious duties of a houshold where a servant is a rarity, therefore, when she comes to a land where servants are plentiful, if they are rough and untaught, she comes to a land of comfort and luxury. besides, it is the custom of the country that a woman should stand beside her husband; she has not married for a livelihood, men are plentiful enough and she has chosen her mate, wherefore it is her pleasure and her joy to help him in every way. she is as she ought to be, his comrade and his friend, a true helpmate. god forbid that i should say there are not english women like that, because i know there are, but the conditions in england are also very different. the girl who has been brought up in an english household, even if it be a poor one, is not only brought up in luxury, but is the victim of many conventions. any ruffled rose leaf makes her unhappy. the servants that to the australian are a luxury to be revelled in are very bad indeed to her. whenever i saw one of these complaining english women, i used to think of the princess of my youth. we all remember her. she was wandering about lost, as royalty naturally has a habit of doing, and she came to a little house and asked the inmates to give her shelter because she was a princess. they took her in, but being just a trifle doubtful of her story—when i was a little girl i always felt that was rather a slur upon those dwellers in the little house—they put on the bed a pea and then they put over it fourteen hair mattresses and fourteen feather beds—it doesn't seem to have strained the household to provide so much bedding—and then they invited the princess to go to bed, which she did. in my own mind i drew the not unnatural conclusion that princesses were accustomed to sleeping in high beds. next morning they asked her how she slept. she, most rudely, i always thought, said she had not been able to sleep at all, because there was such a hard lump in the bed. and so they knew that her story was true, and she was a real princess. now, the english women in west africa always seem to me real princesses of this order. certain difficulties there always are for the white race in a tropical climate, there always will be, but there is really no need to find out the peas under twenty-eight mattresses. in a manless country like england, many a woman marries not because the man who asks her is the man she would have chosen had she free right of choice, but because to live she must marry somebody, and he is the first who has come along. he may be the last. her african house interests her not, her husband does not absorb her, she has no one to whom to show off her newly wedded state, no calls to pay, no afternoon teas, no matinées, in fact she has no interest, she is bored to death; she is very much afraid of “chill,” so she shuts out the fresh, cool night air, and, as a natural result, she goes home at the end of seven months a wreck, and once more the poor african climate gets the credit.

no, if a woman goes to west africa there is a great deal to be said for the german haus-frau. at least they always seem to make a home, and i have seen many english women there who cannot.

at salt ponds one of my carriers came to me saying he was sick and wanting medicine, and i regret to say, instead of sending him at once to the doctor, i casually offered him half a dozen cascara tabloids, all of which to my dismay he swallowed at one gulp. the next morning he was worse, which did not surprise me, but i called in the medical officer and found he was suffering from pneumonia—cascara it appears is not the correct remedy—and i was forced to leave him behind. the mammies i had engaged at cape coast also declined to go any farther, so i had to look around me for more carriers, and carriers are by no means easy to come by. finally the boating company came to the rescue with four kroo boys, and then my troubles began.

i set out and hoped for the best, but kroo boys are bad carriers at all times. these were worse than usual. one of my hammock-boys hurt his foot, or said he had, and had for the time to be replaced by a kroo boy, and we staggered along in such a fashion that once more i felt like a slave-driver of the most brutal order. again and again we stopped for him to rest, and my hammock-boys remarked by way of comforting me:

“kroo boy no can tote hammock.”

“why can kroo boy no tote hammock?”

“we no know, ma. we no be kroo boy.”

we scrambled along somehow, out of one village into another, and at every opportunity half the carriers ran away and had to be rounded up by the other half. in eight hours we had only done fifteen miles. i felt very cheap, very hungry, very thirsty, and most utterly thankful when we arrived late in the afternoon at a dirty native town called tantum. the carriers straggled in one by one, and last of all came my chop box, so that, for this occasion only, luncheon, afternoon tea, and dinner were all rolled into one about six o'clock in the evening.

the rest-house was a two-storied house, built of swish and white-washed, and was inside a native compound, where both in the evening and in the morning the women were most industriously engaged in crushing the corn, rolling it on a hard stone with a heavy wooden roller.

and the rest-house, though very loyal, there were four coloured oleographs of queen alexandra round the walls of the sitting-room and two at the top of the stairs, all exactly alike, was abominably dirty. it had a little furniture—two mirrors, well calculated to keep one in a subdued and humble frame of mind, a decrepid bed that i was a little afraid to be in the same room with lest its occupants would require no invitation to get up and walk towards me, a table, and some broken-down chairs. also on the wall was a notice that two shillings must be paid by anyone occupying this rest-house. someone had crossed this out and substituted two shillings and sixpence, and that in its turn had been erased, so, as the sum went on increasing at each erasure, at last eighteen shillings and sixpence had been fixed as the price of a night's lodging in this charming abode. i decided in my own mind that two shillings would be ample, and that if the people were civil i should give them an extra threepence by way of a dash.

i photographed tantum with the interested assistance of a gentleman clad in a blue cloth and a tourist cap. he seemed to consider he belonged to me, so at last i asked him who he was.

“p'lice,” said he with a grin, and then i recognised my policeman in unofficial dress.

i didn't like that village. the people may have been all right, but i didn't like their looks and i made my “p'lice” sleep outside my door. my bedroom had the saving grace of two large windows, and i put my bed underneath one of them in the gorgeous moonlight; but a negro town is very noisy on a moonlight night and the tom-toms kept waking me. i always had to be the first astir else my following would have cheerfully slumbered most of the day, but on this occasion so bright was the moonlight, so noisy the town, that i proceeded to get up at two o'clock, and it was only when i looked at my travelling clock, with a view to reproaching grant with being so long with my tea, that i discovered my error and went back to bed and a troubled rest again.

two shillings was accepted with a smile by the good lady of the house, who was a stout, middle-aged woman with only one eye, a dark cloth about her middle, and a bright handkerchief over her head. she gave me the impression that she had never seen so much money in her life before. possibly she had only recently gone into the rest-house business, say a year or two back, and i was her first traveller with any money to spend. we parted with mutual compliments, and i bestowed on her little grand-daughter the munificent dash of threepence.

there is a story told of a man who went out to india, and as he liked sunshine used to rise up each morning and say to his wife with emphasis, “another fine day, my dear.”

now, she, good woman, had been torn from her happy home in england, and loved the cool grey skies, so at last much aggravated she lost her temper, and asked: “what on earth else do you expect in this beastly country?”

so, along the guinea coast in the month of march, the hottest season, there is really nothing else to expect but still, hot weather: divine mornings, glorious evenings, but in between fierce hot sunshine. and of course it was not always possible to travel in the coolest part of the day. to sit still by the roadside in the glare of the sunshine, or even under a tree, with a large crowd looking on, was more than i could have managed. so i started as early as i could possibly induce my men to start—one determined woman can do a good deal—and then went straight on if possible without a stop to my next point. i would always, when i am by myself, rather be an hour or two late for luncheon than bother to stop to have it on the way, and if a breakfast at half-past five or six and a morning in the open air induces hunger by eleven, it is easily stayed by carrying a little fruit or biscuits or chocolate to eat by the way.

it was fiercest noonday when i came to a town called appam, where once upon a time was an old dutch lodge worth keeping, if only to show what a tiny place men held garrisoned in the old days. it is hardly necessary to say that the gold coast government do not think so, and have handed this old-time relic over to negro custom and post office officials; and, judging by the condition of the rest of the town, much has not been required of them, for appam is the very filthiest town i have ever seen. the old lodge is on the top of a hill overlooking the sea, splendidly situated, but you arrive at it by a steep and narrow path winding between a mass of thatched houses, and it stands out white among the dark roofs. as a passer-by, i should say the only thing for appam is to put a fire-stick in the place; nothing else but fire could cleanse it. many of the young people and children were covered with an outbreak of sores that looked as if nasty-looking earth had been scattered over them and had bred and festered, and they told me the children here were reported to be suffering and dying from some disease that baffled the doctors, what doctors i do not know, for there is no white man in appam. it seems to me it is hardly necessary to give a name to the disease. i should think it was bred of filth pure and simple, and my remedy of the fire-stick would go far towards curing it. but there is a graver side to it than merely the dying of these negro children. appam is not very far from accra; communication by surf boat must go on weekly, if not daily, and appam must be an ideal breeding ground for the yellow-fever mosquito. i know nothing about matters medical, but i must say, when i heard accra was quarantined for yellow fever, i was not surprised. i had come all along the coast, and filthier villages it would be difficult to find anywhere, and of these filthy villages appam, a large town, takes the palm. i left it without regret, and though i should like to see that little dutch lodge again, i doubt if i ever shall.

my carriers were virtue itself now. the kroo boys were giving so much trouble that they posed as angels. i must admit they were a cheery, good-tempered lot, and it was impossible to bear malice towards them. they had forgotten that i had ever been wrathful, and behaved as if they were old and much-trusted servants. munk-wady, a ju-ju hill on the shore between appam and winnebah, is steep and the highest point for many miles along the coast, and over its flank, where there was but a pretence at a road, we had to go.

“you no fear, ma; you no fear,” said the men cheerily, “we tote you safe”; and so they did, and took me right across the swamp that lay at the other side and right into the yard of the basel mission factory at winnebah, where a much-astonished manager made me most kindly welcome. it amused me the astonishment i created along the road. no one could imagine how i could get through, and yet it was the simplest matter. it merely resolved itself into putting one foot before the other and seeing that my following did likewise. of course, there lay the difficulty. “patience and perseverance,” runs the old saw, “made a pope of his reverence”; and so a little patience and perseverance got me to accra, though i am sometimes inclined to wonder if it wasn't blind folly that took me beyond it.

0248

but at winnebah i received a check. those kroo boys gave out, and it was plain to be seen they could travel no longer with loads on their heads. i had no use for their company without loads. there were white men in winnebah, but none of them could help me, for the cocoa harvest in the country behind was in full swing, and carriers there were not. the only suggestion was that there was a ship in the roadstead, and that i should embark on her for accra. there seemed nothing else for it, and, regretful as i was, i felt i must take their advice. the aggravating part was that it was only a long day's journey from winnebah to accra, but as i had no men to carry my loads i could not do it. one thing i was determined to do, however, and that was to visit an old dutch fort there was at a place called berraku, about half-way to accra. i could do it by taking my hammock-boys and my luncheon, and that i did.

that day's journey is simply remarkable for the frolicsomeness of my men and for the extreme filth of the fishing villages through which we passed. they rivalled appam. as for the fort, it was built of brick, there was a rest-house upon the bastion for infrequent travellers, and it was tumbling into disrepair. there will be no fort at berraku presently, for the people of the town will have taken away the bricks one by one to build up their own houses. but it must have been a big place once, and there is in the town a square stone tomb, a relic of the past. the inscription is undecipherable, but it was evidently erected in memory of some important person who left his bones in africa, and lies there now forgotten.

there was a river to cross just outside the town of winnebah, and crossing a river is a big undertaking in west africa, even when you have only one load. i'm afraid i must plead guilty to not knowing my men by sight; for a long time a black man was a black man to me, and he had no individuality about him. now they all crowded into the boat to cross the river, and it was evident to my mind that we were too many; then as no one seemed inclined to be left behind, i exercised my authority and pointed out the man who was to get out, and out he got, very reluctantly, but cheerily helped by his unfeeling fellows. it took us about a quarter of an hour to cross that river, for it was wide and we had to work up-stream, and once across they all proceeded to go on their way without a thought for the man left behind. and then i discovered what i had done. i had thrown the ?gis of my authority over, putting the unfortunate ferryman out of his own boat, and to add injury to insult my men were quite prepared to leave him on one side of the stream and his boat on the other. when i discovered it was the ferryman i had put out i declared they must go back for him, and my decision was received with immense surprise.

“you want him, ma?” as if such a desire should be utterly impossible; but when they found i really did, and, moreover, intended to pay him, two of them took the boat and he was brought to me with shouts of laughter, and comforted with an extra dash, which was more than he had expected after my high-handed conduct.

one could not help liking these peasant peoples; they were such children, so easily pleased, so anxious to show off before the white woman. here all along the beach the people were engaged in fishing, and again and again i saw a little crowd of men launching a boat, or hauling it in and distributing their catch upon the beach. i always got out and inspected the catch, and they always made way to let me look when they saw i was interested. of course, we could not speak to each other, but they spread out the denizens of the deep and pointed out anything they thought might be specially curious. i can see now one flat fish that was pulled out for my benefit. one man, who was acting as showman, caught him by the tail and held him out at arm's length. he was only a small fish about the size, i suppose, of a large dish, but that thorny tail went high over the man's head while the body of the fish was still flapping about on the sand, and the lookers-on all laughed and shouted as if they had succeeded in showing the stranger a most curious sight, as indeed they had.

i was sorry to turn my back on the road, sorry to go back to winnebah—winnebah of the evil reputation, where they say if a white man is not pleasing to the people the fetish men poison him—sorry to pay off my men and send them back, sorry to take ship for accra; but i could not get carriers, there was nothing else for it, and by steamer i had to go, and very lucky indeed was i to find a steamer ready to take me, so i said good-bye to the road for some considerable time and went to accra.