a first adventure—tarkwa—once more swanzy to the rescue—women thoroughly contented, independent, and well-to-do—the agricultural wealth of the land—the best bungalow in west africa—crusade against the trees—burnt in the furnaces—prestea—the sick women—a ghastly hill—eduaprim—a capable fellow-countrywoman—“dollying” for gold—obuasi—beautiful gardens—75 per cent.—the sensible african snail.
i was born and brought up on the goldfields. my first adventure—i don't remember it—was when my nurse, a strapping young emigrant from the emerald isle, lost me and herself upon the ranges, and the camp turned out to search, lest the warden's precious baby and her remarkably pretty nurse should spend an unhappy night in the bush. as a small girl, i watched the men wash the gold in their cradles, and i dirtied my pinafore when the rain turned the mullock heaps into slimy mud. as i grew older, i escorted strangers from the old country who wanted to go down the deep mines of ballarat. i watched, perforce, the fluctuations of the share market, and men who knew told me that the rise and fall had very often nothing whatever to do with the output of gold; so that i grew up with the firmly fixed idea—it is still rather firmly fixed—that the most uninteresting industry in the world was goldmining.
wherefore was i not a bit keen on going to the gold mines of west africa, and i only went to tarkwa because i felt it would never do to come away not having seen an industry which i am told is going up by leaps and bounds. the question was, where could i go for quarters? there are no hotels as yet, and once more i am deeply indebted to messrs swanzy and their agent in the mining centre of the gold coast. he put me up and entertained me right royally, and not only did he show me round tarkwa, but he saw to it that i should have every chance to see some of the other mines, prestea and eduaprim.
0464
tarkwa is set in what we in australia should call a gully, and the high hills rise up on either side, while the road, along which straggles the european town, runs at the bottom of the gully. for there are several towns in tarkwa. there is the european town where are all the stores, the railway station, and the houses of the government officials, and in this town there is some attempt at beautifying the place; some trees have been planted along the roadside, grass grows on the hillsides, whether by the grace of god or the grace of the town council i know not, and round most of the bungalows there is generally a sort of garden, and notably in one or two, where there are white women who have accompanied their husbands, quite promising beginnings of tropical gardens.
there is the native town, bare and ugly, without a scrap of green, just streets cutting each other at right angles, and small houses, roofed with corrugated iron or thatch, and holding a teeming and mixed population that the mines gather together, and then every mine has its own village for its workers; for the labour difficulty has reached quite an acute stage in the goldfields, and the mines often import labour from the north, which they install in little villages, that are known by the name of the mine where the men work, and are generally ruled over by a white officer appointed by the mine. these villages, too, are about as bare and ugly as anything well could be that is surrounded by the glorious green hills and has the blue sky of africa over it.
tarkwa gives the impression of a busy, thriving centre; trains rush along the gully and the hills echo their shrill whistles, the roadways are thronged with people, and the stores set out their goods in that open fashion that is half-eastern, so that the hesitating buyer may hesitate no longer but buy the richest thing in sight. in all my travels i never saw such gorgeously arrayed mammies as here. the black ladies' cloths, their blouses, and the silken kerchiefs with which they covered their heads, all gave the impression of having been carefully studied, and my host assured me they had. many of them are rich, and in this comfortable country they are all of them self-supporting wives. they sell their wares, or march about the streets, happy, contented, important people, very sure of themselves. let no one run away with the impression that these women are in any way down-trodden. they look very much the reverse. we may not approve of polygamy, but i am bound to say these women of tarkwa were no down-trodden slaves. they looked like women who had exactly what they wanted, and, curiously enough whenever i think of thoroughly contented, thoroughly independent, well-to-do women, i think of those women in the goldmining centre of west africa.
my host told me they spent, comparatively speaking, enormous sums on their personal adornment, were exceedingly particular as to the shade and pattern of their cloths, and were decided that everything, cloth, blouse, and head kerchief, should tone properly. they lay in a large store of clothes too, and when mr crockett wrote the other day of “the lady of the hundred dresses,” he might have been thinking of one of these fanti women. the reason of this prosperity is of course easy to trace. the negro does not like working underground, for which few people i think will blame him, therefore high wages have to be paid, and these high wages have to be spent, and are spent lavishly, much to the advantage of these women traders.
0468
because tarkwa is a great centre of industry, government have very wisely made it one of their agricultural stations, and there, set on a hill, and running down into rich alluvial flats, are gardens wherein grow many of the plants that will in the future contribute largely to the industrial development of the colony. there is a rubber plantation, a great grove of dark trees already in bearing, plantations of bananas, pine-apples, hemp, and palm trees, and the director, set in his lonely little bungalow on the hilltop, rejoices over the wealth and fertility of the land, which he declares is not in her gold, but in her agricultural products which as yet we are but dimly realising, and then he mourns openly because the government will not let him bring out his wife. “she would be ready to start in an hour if i might send for her,” he sighed, “and i would want nothing more. but i mayn't. oh, think of the dreary days. and i could work so much better if she were here. i should want nothing else.”
and i sympathised. think of the dreary days for him, and the still more dreary days for her, for at least he has his work. it would surely i think pay the government to give a bonus to the woman who proved that she could see her year out without complaint, and who was to her husband what a woman ought to be, a help and a comfort.
another thing in tarkwa i shall never forget is messrs swanzy's bungalow, where i stayed for nearly a fortnight. my host had superintended the building of it himself, and it was ideal for a west-african bungalow. it was built of cement raised on arches above the ground; floors and walls were of cement. there was a very wide verandah that served as a sitting-room and dining-room, and the bedrooms, though they were divided from each other by stout walls of cement, were only shut off from the verandah by venetian screens that could be folded right away. they did not begin till a foot above the floor, and ended six feet above it, consequently there was always a thorough draught of air, and messrs swanzy's bungalow at tarkwa is about the only house i know in west africa where one can sleep with as much comfort as if in the open air. needless to say, they are not so foolish as to go in for mosquito-proof netting. they keep the mosquitoes down by keeping the place round neat and tidy, and though the verandah is enclosed with glass, it is done in such fashion that the windows may be thrown right open and do not hinder the free passage of air. flies and mosquitoes there were, but that, when i was there, was attributed to the presence of the town rubbish tip on the next vacant allotment, and my host hoped to get it taken away. why the government had a town rubbish tip close to the handsomest bungalow in the colony, i do not pretend to say. it was just one of those things that are always striking you as incongruous in west africa. my host used to fret and fume at every evil fly that came through his windows, and, when i left, was threatening to stand a gang of hausas round that tip with orders to kick anyone who desired to deposit any more rubbish there.
0472
it is hardly necessary to say there had been at the same time a great crusade against the trees in tarkwa. but a short time ago the whole place had been dense forest, very difficult to work, and after the usual fashion of the english everyone set to work to demolish the forest trees as if they were the greatest enemies to civilisation. the mines, of course, i believe burn something like a hundred trees a day, and the softwood trees are no good to them. what their furnaces require are the splendid mahogany, the still harder kaku, a beautiful wood that is harder than anything but iron, and indeed any good hard-wood tree; the worth of the wood is no business of theirs. they consider the wealth of africa lies beneath the soil, and they must get it out; wherefore into their furnaces goes everything burnable, even though the figured mahogany may be worth ￡1 a foot, and the tree be worth ￡1000. it is a pity, it is a grievous pity, but tarkwa is certainly prosperous, and i suppose one cannot make omelettes, and look for chickens. only i cannot help remembering that never in our time, nor in our children's time, nor their children's time, will the hills of tarkwa be covered with such trees as she has ruthlessly consigned to the flames. even the soft-wood trees such as the cotton, that might have added beauty to the slopes, have gone because an energetic doctor waged war upon them as shelterers of the mosquito, and the hill-sides lie in the blazing sun for close on twelve hours of a tropical day. oh for a sensible, artistic german to come and see to the beautifying of tarkwa, for never saw i a place that could lend itself more readily to the hand of an artist.
but if tarkwa is being ruthlessly treated, what shall i say of beautiful prestea, which lies but a short railway journey right away in the heart of the hills. prestea is a great mine, so large that the whole of the one hundred and eighty white people who make up the white town are employed upon it. it is so hilly that there are hardly any paths, and the people seem to move about on trolleys, winding in and out of the hills, and, it was reported once, one of the unhealthiest places in west africa. the doctor very kindly gave me hospitality, and we promptly agreed to disagree on every subject. i hate to be ungracious to people who have been kind to me, but with all the will in the world i have to keep my own opinion, and my opinion was diametrically opposed to the doctor's. the nursing sister who ran the hospital, a nice-looking, capable, sensible scotch woman, whom it did my heart good to meet, was one of the few i have met who put the sickness of the average english woman in west africa down to the same causes as i did.
“they come from a class who have nothing to think of, and when they have nothing to do they naturally fall sick,” said she. “every woman on this camp has been sent home this year.”
i debated with her whether i should give my opinion of the climate to the world in my book. it meant i was up against every doctor in the place, who ought to know better than i, a stranger, and a sojourner.
“if you don't,” said she, “someone else will come along presently and do it.”
that decided me. i am doing it.
0476
this nursing sister, while she had to have the hospital mosquito-proof, in deference to the doctor's opinion, sternly declined to have any such abomination anywhere near her little bungalow, and so the cool, fresh night air blew in through her great windows, and we had an extensive view of the glorious hillsides, all clothed in emerald green, and if a clammy white mist wrapped us close when we waked in the early morning so that we could not see beyond our own verandahs, the rolling away of that mist was a gorgeous sight, ever to be remembered.
needless to say, the doctor's house was carefully enclosed in mosquito-proof wire, and i dined in an oppressive atmosphere that nearly drove me distracted. the bungalow was set high on a hilltop, in the middle of a garden that should one day be beautiful, but he has of course cut down every native tree, and owing to the mosquito-proof wire we got no benefit from the cool breeze that was blowing outside. he took me to see the new native village he was building, a place that left an impression of corrugated iron and hard-baked clay. trees, of course, and all vegetation were taboo, but i am bound in justice to say that the old village, a place teeming with inhabitants, drawn from all corners of west africa, attracted by the lust for gold, was just as bare and ugly, and a good deal more unkempt.
he took me out, and pointed out to me the principal hill in the centre of prestea, on which are the mining manager's and other officials' houses, and he pointed it out with pride.
“there's a nice clean hill for you.”
the sun glared down fiercely on corrugated-iron roofs, the soil of the hill looked like a raw, red scar, and there was not so much as a blade of grass to be seen. i did not wonder that the unfortunate women of prestea had gone home sick if they had been compelled to live in such a place.
i said, “it's a horrible place. i never saw a beautiful place more utterly spoiled.”
he looked at me with surprise, and his surprise was thoroughly genuine. “why, what's the matter? it's nice and clean.”
i pointed to the beautiful hills all round.
“mosquitoes,” said he, with a little snort for my ignorance.
“but you want some shade?”
he shook his head doubtfully.
“you can't have trees. the boys would leave pots under them. breeding places for mosquitoes.”
he was my host, so i did not like to say all i felt.
“i'd rather die of fever than sunstroke any day,” was the way it finally came out.
“my dear lady,” he said judicially, as one who was correcting a long-standing error, “no one dies of fever in africa.”
“exactly what i always maintain,” said i; “you, with your ghastly hills are arranging for them to die of sunstroke.”
but he only reiterated that they could not have the trees, because the boys would leave pots and pans under them, and so turn them into mosquito traps. personally, i didn't arrive at the logic of that, because it has never seemed to me to require trees for boys to leave pots about. the theory was, i suppose, that they would not walk out into the hot sun, while they might be tempted to do work and make litter under shade-trees. and again i did not wonder that there were no women save the nursing sister in prestea. to live on that hill and keep one's health would have been next door to impossible.
“it doesn't matter,” said the doctor, “we don't want women in west africa. i keep my wife at home. it isn't a white man's country.”
0480
but i'm bound to say that they very often arrange it shall not be a white man's and emphatically not a white woman's country. it suits somebody's plan that the country should have an evil reputation.
goldfields, too, must never be judged in the same category as one judges the ordinary settlements in a country. when i was a tiny child i learned to discriminate, and to know that “diggers” must not be judged by the rules that guide the conduct of ordinary men. the population of a goldfield are a wild and reckless lot, and they lead wild and utterly reckless lives, and die in places where other people manage to live happily enough.
when the gold first “broke out” in victoria, my father was gold commissioner on the buckland river, among the mountains in the north-eastern district, and i have heard him tell how the men used to die like flies of “colonial” fever, and the theory was that there was some emanation from the dense vegetation that was all around them. nowadays the buckland is one of the healthiest spots in a very healthy country, and no one ever gets fever of any sort there. now i do not wish to say that west africa is one of the healthiest countries in the world, but i do say that men very very often work their own undoing.
“you should see tarkwa,” said a man to me, who was much of my way of thinking, “when an alcoholic wave has passed over it!”
eduaprim was another mine i went to see from tarkwa. but it was in direct contrast to prestea, though it too was in the heart of the forest country. no railway led to it; i had to go by hammock, and so i got my first taste of forest travelling, and enjoyed it immensely.
it is a solitary mine about nine miles from tarkwa, and i started off early in the morning, and noticed as i went that the industry is, for good or ill, clearing the forests of west africa, opening up the dark places, even as it did in my country over fifty years ago. along the hillsides we went to eduaprim, past mines and clearings for mining villages; sometimes the road was cut, a narrow track on the side of the hill, with the land rising up on one side and falling sheer on the other, sometimes a little river had to be bridged, and the road went on tunnel-like through the forest that must disappear before the furnaces, but at last i arrived at the top of the hill, and on it, commanding a wonderful view over the surrounding country, stood a bungalow, in a garden that looked over the tops of range upon range of high hills. i saw a storm come sweeping across the country, break and divide at the hilltop upon which i stood, and pass on, veiling the green hills in mist, which rolled away from the hills behind, leaving them smiling and washed and clean under a blue sky. if for no other sight than that, that journey into the hills was worth making.
0484
the wife of the manager of the mine was a fellow-countrywoman of mine. she liked west africa, kept her health there, and felt towards it very much as i did. no one likes great heat. the unchanging temperature is rather difficult to bear for one unaccustomed to it, but she thought it might be managed by a woman interested in her work and her husband, and as for the other discomforts—like me, she smiled at them. “the people who grumble should live in australia,” said she, “and do their own work, cooking, washing, scrubbing. do it for a week with the temperature averaging 100 degrees in the shade, and they wouldn't grumble at west africa, and wouldn't dream of being sick.” and yet this contented woman must have led a very lonely life. some wandering man connected with the mines, or a stray commissioner, would come to see her occasionally, and the news of the world would come on men's heads from tarkwa. and, of course, i suppose there was always the mine, which was her husband's livelihood. they took me into the bush behind the bungalow and showed me a great mahogany tree they had cut down, and then they showed me what i had seen many and many a time in my life before, but never in africa—men washing the sand for gold. they were “dollying” it first, that is crushing the hard stone in iron vessels and then washing it, and the “show,” i could see for myself, was very good.
i lingered in eduaprim; the charm of talking with a woman who found joy in making a home in the wilderness was not to be lightly foregone, and i only went when i remembered that it was the rainy season, the roads were bad, and tarkwa was away over those forbidding hills.
and from tarkwa i went up the line to obuasi.
this railway line that runs from sekondi to kumasi, the capital of ashanti, is a wonderful specimen of its class. every day sees some improvement made, but, being a reasonable being, i cannot help wondering what sort of engineers laid it out. it presents no engineering difficulties, but it was extremely costly, and meanders round and round like a corkscrew. they are engaged now in straightening it, but still they say that when the guard wants a light for his pipe all he has to do is to lean out of his van and get it from the engine. it was laid through dense forest, but the forest is going rapidly, the trees being used up for fuel. in the early days, too, these trees were a menace, for again and again, when a fierce tornado swept across the land, the line would be blocked by fallen trees, a casualty that grows less and less frequent as the forest recedes. when first the line was opened they tell me all passengers were notified that they must bring food and bedding, as the company could not guarantee their being taken to their destination. there is also the story of the distracted but pious negro station-master, who telegraphed to headquarters, “train lost, but by god's help hope to find it.” it is a single line of 168 miles, so i conclude his trust in the deity was not misplaced.
obuasi, on the borders of ashanti, is the great mine of west africa, a mine that pays, i think, something like 75 per cent, on its original shares, and even at their present value pays 12 per cent. it is enough to set everyone looking for gold in west africa.
and like prestea, obuasi is the mine, and the mine only. there are, i think, between eighty and one hundred white men, all, save the few government officials and storekeepers, in some way or another connected with the mine, and the place at night looks like a jewel set in the midst of the hills, for it is lighted by electricity. every comfort of civilisation seems to be here, save and except the white woman, who is conspicuous by her absence. “we want no white women,” seems to be the general opinion; an opinion, i deeply regret to say, warranted by my experience of the average english woman who goes to west africa.
the place is all hill and valley, european bungalows built on the hills, embowered generally in charming gardens such as one sees seldom in the colony, and the native villages—for there are about five thousand black men on the books of the mine—in the valleys. there are miles of little tramway railways too, handling about 35,000 tons a month, more, they tell me, than the government railway does, and the mine pays government a royalty of ￡25,000 a year.
obuasi is a fascinating, beautiful place; i should have liked to have spent a month there, but it is not savagery. it is as civilised in many ways as london itself. i stayed in the mining manager's bungalow, and am very grateful to him for his hospitality, and the manager's bungalow is a most palatial place, set on the top of a high hill in the midst of a beautiful garden. palm and mango and grape-fruit trees, flamboyant, palms, dahlias, corallita, crotons, and roses, the most beautiful roses in the world, red, white, yellow, pink, everywhere; a perfect glory of roses is his garden, and the view from the verandah is delightful. his wide and spacious rooms are panelled with the most beautiful native woods, and looking at it with the eyes of a passer-by, i could see nothing but interest in the life of the man who had put in a year there. he will object strongly, i know, to my writing in praise of anything west-african, and say what can i know about it in a brief tour. true enough, what can i know? but at least i have seen many lands, and i am capable of making comparisons.
every man i met here pointed out to me the evils of life in africa.
“you make the very worst of it,” said i, and proceeded to tell the story of a bridge party in a coast town that began at three o'clock on friday afternoon and ended up at ten o'clock on monday morning.
“and if those men have fever,” said i, feeling i had clinched my argument, “they will set it down to the beastly climate.”
“so it is,” said my opponent emphatically; “we could always do that sort of thing in buluwayo.”
i thereby got the deepest respect for the climate of buluwayo, and a most doubtful estimate of the character of the pioneer englishman. perhaps i look on these things with a woman's narrow outlook, but i'm not a bit sorry for the men who cannot dissipate without paying for it in africa. i heartily wish them plenty of fever.
the manager took me on a trolley along one of these little lines, right away into the hills. this was a new form of progression. a seat for two people was fixed on a platform and pushed along the line, uphill or on the flat, by three or four negroes, and fairly flew by its own weight downhill. it was a delightful mode of progression, and as we flew along, xi my host, while pointing out the sights, endeavoured to convert me, not to the faith that west africa was unfit for the white woman, that would have been impossible, but that the mining industry was a very great one and most useful to the colony. and here he succeeded.
i admired the forests and regretted their going, but he showed me the farms that had taken their place. bananas and maize and cassada, said he truly enough, were far more valuable to the people than the great, dark forests they had cleared away—ten people could live now where one had lived before; and so we rolled on till we came to the justice mine, where all the hillside seemed to be worked, a mine that has been paying ￡10,000 a month for the last three years. truly, it is a wonderful place, that obuasi mine with its nine shafts, an industry in the heart of savage africa. they pay ￡11,000 a week in wages, and when i was thinking how closely in touch it was with civilisation, the manager told me how the chiefs had just raised a great agitation against the mine because it worked on friday, their sacred day. they complained that the snails were so shocked at this act of sacrilege that they were actually leaving the district. now the snails in ashanti are very important people, boundaries are always calculated with reference to them, and if a chief can prove that his men are in the habit of gathering snails over a certain area, it is proof positive that he holds jurisdiction over that land. that the snails should leave the district shocked would be a national calamity. the african snail looks like an enormous whelk, he haunts the ashanti forest, and is at his best just at the commencement of the rains, when he begins to grow fat and succulent, but is not yet too gross and slimy. he is hunted for assiduously, and all along the forest paths may be seen men, laden with sticks on which are impaled snails drawn from their shells, dried, and smoked. luckily also these african snails appear to be very sensible, and when it was put to them that the mines could not possibly stop working on a friday, but a small monetary tribute would be paid to them regularly through the principal chief, they amiably consented at once to stay and meet their final end, as a self-respecting snail should, by impalement on a stick.