Читать книгу Alone in West Africa - Mary Gaunt - Страница 11

The Government steamer, the Mansikillah, had broken down. She was old, and it was, I was told, her chronic state, but I was bitterly disappointed till the Governor told me he had made arrangements for me to go in the French Company's steamer, the Mungo Park. She was going up the river with general cargo; she was coming down again with some of the groundnut crop, little nuts that grow on the root of a trefoil plant, nuts the Americans call pea-nuts, and the English monkey-nuts.

I had to wait a little till there came a messenger one day to say that the steamer was ready at last, and would start that afternoon. So I went down to the little wharf with my servant, my baggage, and the travelling Commissioner, who was also going up the river.

The Mungo Park was a stern-wheeler of 150 tons, drawing six feet of water, and when first I saw her you could hardly tell steamer from wharf, so alive were they both with crowded, shrieking people, all either wanting to get on, or to get off, which was apparently not quite clear. After a little wait, out of chaos came a courteous French trader and a gangway. The gangway took us on board, and the trader, whose English was as good as mine, explained that he, too, was going up the river to look after the houses belonging to his company along the banks. Then he showed me my quarters, and I was initiated into the mysteries of travelling in the interior of Africa. There was but one cabin on board the Mungo Park, a place about eighteen feet square amidship; in it were two bunks, a table, a couple of long seats, a cupboard, and washing arrangements. The sides were all of Venetian shutters, which could be taken away when not wanted. It was all right in a way, but I must confess for a moment I wondered how on earth two men and a woman were to stow away there. Then the trader explained. I should have the cabin to sleep in, and we all three would have our meals there together, while arrangements might be made by which we could all in turn bathe and wash. I learned my first lesson: you accept extraordinary and unconventional situations, if you are wise, with a smile and without a blush in Africa. The Commissioner and the trader, I found on further inquiry, would sleep on the top of the cabin, which was also what one might call the promenade deck. I arranged my simple belongings, and went up on deck to look, and I found that it was reached by way of the boiler, across which some steps and a little, coaly hand-rail led. It would have been nice in the Arctic regions, but on a tropical afternoon it had its drawbacks. On the deck I was met by a vociferous black man, who was much too busy to do more than give an obsequious welcome, for it appeared he was the captain. I shall always regret I did not take his photograph as he leaned over the railing, shouting and gesticulating to his men, and to the would-be passengers, and to the men who were struggling to get the cargo on board. He cursed them, I should think, all impartially. The French trader said he was an excellent captain, and he remains in my mind as the most unique specimen of the genus I have ever seen. He wore a khaki coat and very elderly tweed trousers, split behind; his feet were bare; he did not pander to that vitiated taste which demands underlinen, or at least a shirt, but, seeing it was the cold weather, he adorned his black skull with a woolly cap with ear-flaps, such as Nansen probably took on his North-Pole expedition.

There was a great deal of cargo—cotton goods, sugar, salt, coffee, dates; things that the French company were taking up to supply their factories on the river, and long before it was stowed the deck passengers began crowding on board. Apparently there was no provision whatever made for them; they stowed on top of the cargo, just wherever they could find a place, and every passenger—there were over ninety of them—had apparently something to say as to the accommodation, or the want of accommodation, and he or she said it at the very top of his or her voice in Jolloff or Mandingo or that bastard English which is a lingua franca all along the Coast. Not that it mattered much what language they said it in, because no one paid the least attention; such a babel have I never before heard. And such a crowd as they were. The steamer provided water carriage only for the deck passengers, so that they had their cooking apparatus, their bedding, their food, their babies, their chickens (unfortunate wretches tied by one leg), and, if they could evade the eagle eye of the French trader, their goats. The scene was bedlam let loose to my unaccustomed eyes. We were to tow six lighters as well, and each of them also had a certain number of passengers. As we started it seemed likely we should sweep away a few dozen who were hanging on in the most dangerous places to the frailest supports. Possibly they wouldn't have been missed. I began to understand why the old slaver was callous. It was impossible to feel humane in the midst of such a shrieking, howling mob. The siren gave wild and ear-piercing shrieks; there were yells from the wharf, more heartrending yells from the steamer, a minor accompaniment from the lighters, bleating of goats, cackling of protesting fowls, crying of children, and we were off without casualty, and things began to settle down.

I had thought my quarters cramped, but looking at the deck passengers, crowding fore and aft over the coals and on top of the boiler, I realised that everything goes by comparison, and that they were simply palatial. I had eighteen feet square of room all to myself to sleep in. It had one drawback. There was £5000 worth of silver stowed under the seats, and therefore the trader requested me to lock the doors and fasten the shutters lest some of the passengers should take a fancy to it. His view was that plenty of air would come through the laths of the shutters. I did not agree with the French trader, and watched with keen interest those boxes of silver depart all too slowly. I would gladly have changed places and let him and the Commissioner have my cabin if only I might have taken their place on the deck above. But on the deck was the wheel, presided over by the black captain, or the equally black and more ragged mate, so it was not to be thought of.

And that deck was something to remember. There were the large water-bottles there and the filter, the trader's bed in a neat little roll, the Commissioner's bed, draped with blue mosquito curtains, the hencoops with the unhappy fowls that served us for food, the Commissioner's washing apparatus on top of one of the coops, for he was a young man of resource, the rest of his kit, his rifle, his bath, his cartridge-belt, his dog, a few plates and cups and basins, a couple of sieves for rice, two or three stools, the elderly black kettle, out of the spout of which the skipper and the mate sucked refreshment as if they had been a couple of snipe, and last, but not least, there was the French company's mails for their employees up river. I was told the correspondence always arrived safely, and so it is evident that in some things we take too much trouble. The captain attended to the sorting of the mails when he had time to spare from his other duties. I have seen him with a much-troubled brow sorting letters at night by the light of a flickering candle, and, when the mails overflowed the deal box, parcels were stacked against the railing, newspapers leaned for support against the wheel, and letters collogued in friendly fashion on the deck with the black kettle.

For the first seventeen miles the little ship, towing her lighters behind and alongside, went up a river that was like a sea, so far away were the mangrove swamps that are on either side. Then we reached Fort St. James, and the river narrows. Very pathetic are the ruins of Fort St. James. No one lives there now; no one has lived there for many a long day, but you see as you pass and look at the crumbling stones of the old fort why West Africa gained in the minds of men so evil a reputation. The place is but a rocky islet, with but a few scanty trees upon it; above is the brazen sky, below the baked earth, on which the tropical sun pours down with all the added heat gathered from the glare of the river. They must have died shut up in Fort St. James in those far-away days. Tradition, too, says that the gentlemen of the company of soldiers who were stationed there were for ever fighting duels, and that the many vacancies in the ranks were not always due to the climate. But the heat and the monotony would conduce to irritability, and when a hasty word had to be upheld at the sword's point, it is no wonder if they cursed the Coast with a bitterness that is only given to the land of regrets. But all honour to those dead-and-gone Englishmen. They upheld the might of Britain, and her rights in the trade in palm oil and slaves and ivory that even then came down the river. And if they died—now, now at last, after many weary years, their descendants are beginning dimly to realise, as they never did, the value of the land for which they gave their lives.

It is the custom to speak with contempt of a mangrove swamp, as if in it no beauty could lie, as if it were only waste land—dreary, depressing, ugly. Each of those epithets may be true—I cannot say—except the last, and that is most certainly a falsehood. What my impressions would be if I lived in the midst of it day after day I cannot say, but to a passer-by the mangrove swamp has a beauty of its own.

When first I saw the Gambia I was fascinated, and found no words too strong for its beauty; and, having gone farther, I would take back not one word of that admiration. But I am like the lover who is faithless to his first mistress—he acknowledges her charm, but he has seen someone else; so now, as I sit down to write, I am reminded that the Volta is more ravishingly lovely, and that if I use up all my adjectives on the Gambia I shall have no words to describe my new mistress. Therefore must I modify my transports, and so it seems to me I am unfair.

As we moved up the river we could plainly see the shore on either side, the dense mangrove swamp, doubled by its reflection, green and beautiful against its setting of blue sky and clear river. Crocodiles lay basking in the golden sunshine on the mud-banks, white egrets flew slowly from tree to tree, a brown jolah-king, an ibis debased for some sin in the youth of the world, sailed slowly across the water, a white fishing-eagle poised himself on high, looking for his prey, a slate-blue crane came across our bows, a young pelican just ahead was taking his first lesson in swimming, and closer to the bank we could see king-fishers, bright spots of colour against the dark green of the mangrove.

“The wonder of the Tropics”—the river seemed to be whispering at first, and then fairly shouted—“can you deny beauty to this river?” and I, with the cool Harmattan blowing across the water to put the touch of moisture in the air it needed, was constrained to answer that voice, which none of the others seemed to hear, “Truly I cannot.”

It would be impossible to describe in detail all the little wharves at which we stopped; besides, they all bore a strong family resemblance to one another, differing only when they were in the upper or lower river. Long before I could see any signs of human habitation the steamer's skipper was wildly agitated over the mails, wrinkling up his brows and pawing them over with his dirty black hands—mine were dirtier, at least, they showed more, and the way to the deck was so coaly it was impossible to keep clean. Then he would hang on to a string, which resulted in the most heartrending wails from the steamer's siren; a corrugated-iron roof would show up among the surrounding greenery, and a little wharf, or “tenda,” as they call them here, would jut out into the stream. These tendas are frail-looking structures built of the split poles of the rhon palm. There seem to be as many varieties of palm as there are of eucalyptus, all much alike to the uninitiated eye.

The tendas look as if they were only meant to be walked on by bare feet—certainly very few of the feet rise beyond a loose slipper; and whether it was blazing noonday or pitchy darkness only made visible by a couple of hurricane lanterns of one candle-power, the tenda was crowded with people come to see the arrival of the steamer, which is a White-Star liner or a Cunarder to them—people in cast-off European clothing and the ubiquitous tourist cap, Moslems in fez and flowing white or blue robes, mammies with gaily coloured handkerchiefs bound round their heads and still gayer skirts and cloths, little children clad in one garment or no garments at all, beautiful grey donkeys that carry the groundnuts or the trade goods, fawn-coloured country cattle, and goats and sheep, black, white, and brown—and every living creature upon that tenda did his little best towards the raising of a most unholy din. And the steamer was not to be beaten. Jolloff and Man-dingo too was shrieked; the captain took a point of vantage, shook his black fist at intervals, and added his quota of curses in Jolloff, Mandingo, Senegalese, and broken French and English, and the cargo was unloaded with a clatter, clatter, punctuated by earpiercing yells that made one wonder if the slaving days had not come back, and these lumpers were not shrieking in agony.

But, when I could understand, the remarks were harmless enough. What the black man says to his friends and acquaintances when he speaks in his own tongue I cannot say, but when he addresses them in English I can vouch for it his conversation is banal to the last degree. In the general din I catch some words I understand, and I listen.

“Ah, Mr. Jonsing, dat you, sah? How you do, sah?” Mr. Jonsing's health is quite satisfactory; and Mrs. Jonsing, and Miss Mabel, and Miss Gladys, and Mr. Edward were all apparently in perfect health, for they were inquired after one by one at the top of the interested friend's voice. Then there were many wishes for the continuance of the interesting family in this happy state, and afterwards there was an excursion into wider realms of thought.

“You 'member dat t'ing you deny las' mont', sah?” The question comes tentatively.

“I deny it dis mont', sah,” Mr. Jonsing answers promptly, which is, so far, satisfactory, as showing that Mr. Jonsing has at least a mind of his own, and is not to be bounced into lightly changing it. I might have heard more, and so gleaned some information into the inner life of these people, but unfortunately Mr. Jonsing now got in the way of the stalwart captain, and being assisted somewhat ungently by the collar of his ragged shirt to the tenda, he launched out into curses that were rude, to put it mildly, and my knowledge of his family affairs came to an abrupt conclusion.

In the breaks in the mangrove, Balanghar is one of them, there is, of course, a little hard earth—the great shady ficus elasticus, beautiful silk-cotton trees, and cocoa-nut palms grow; the traders' yards have white stone posts at the four corners marking the extent of their leaseholds, and in these enclosures are the trading-houses, the round huts of the native helpers, and the little crinted yards, in which are poured the groundnuts, which are the occasion of all this clatter.

One hundred and fifty miles up we came to McCarthy Island, five miles long by a mile wide, and markedly noticeable because here the great river changes its character entirely, the mangrove swamps are left behind, and open bush of mahogany, palm, and many another tree and creeper, to me nameless, takes its place. On McCarthy Island is a busy settlement, with the town marked into streets, lined with native shops and trading-houses. There are great groundnut stores along the river front, seven, or perhaps eight white people, a church, a hospital, obsolete guns, and an old powder magazine, that shows that in days gone by this island was only held by force of arms.

They tell me that McCarthy Island is one of the hottest places in the world, though that morning the river had been veiled in white mist, the thermometer was down to between 50 deg. and 60 deg., and my boy had brought in my early-morning tea with his head tied up in a pocket handkerchief like an old woman; and at midday it was but little over 90 deg., but this was December, the coolest season of the year. I discussed the question with a negro lady with her head bound up in a red-silk handkerchief. She was one of our passengers, and had come up trading in kola-nuts. Kola-nuts are hard, corner-shaped nuts that grow on a very handsome tree about the size of an oak, which means a small tree in Africa. They are much esteemed for their stimulating and sustaining properties. I have tried them, and I found them only bitter, so perhaps I do not want stimulating. A tremendous trade is done in them, and all along the coast you meet the traders, very often, as in this case, women. I had seen it in her eye for some time that she wanted to exchange ideas with me, and at last the opportunity came. She told me she came from Sierra Leone.

“You know Freetown?” That is the capital. I said I had heard it was the hottest place in the world.

“Pooh!” She tossed her head in scorn. “You wait two mont's; it be fool to M'Cart'y! You gat no rest, no sleep”; and she showed her white teeth and stretched out her black hands as if to say that no words of hers could do justice to this island.

Truly, I think the sun must pour down here in the hot season, judging by my experience in the cool. The hot season is not in June, as one might expect, for then come the rains, when no white man, and, indeed, I think no black man foreign to the place, stays up the river, but in March and April. I do not propose to visit McCarthy in the hot season. In the cool the blazing sun overhead, and the reflected glare from the water, played havoc with my complexion. I did not think about it till the District Commissioner brought the fact forcibly home to me. He was a nice young fellow, but the sort of man who is ruin to England as a colonising nation, because he makes it so patent to everyone that he bitterly resents colonising on his own account, and will allow no good in the country wherein lies his work.

I asked him if he did not think of bringing out his wife.

He looked at me a moment, seeking words to show his opinion of a woman who insisted upon going where he thought no white woman was needed.

“My wife,” he said, with emphasis that marked his surprise; “my wife? Why, my wife has such a delicate complexion that she has to wash her face always in distilled water.”

It was sufficient. I understood when I looked in the glass that night the reproof intended to be conveyed. In all probability the lady was not quite such a fool as her husband intimated; but one thing is quite certain, she was buying her complexion at a very heavy cost if she were going to allow it to deprive her of the joy of seeing new countries.

McCarthy was very busy; dainty cutters, frail canoes, and grimy steamers crowded the wharves, and to and fro across the great river, 500 yards wide here, the ferry, a great canoe, went backwards and forwards the livelong day, and I could just see gathered together herds of the pretty cattle of the country that looked not unlike Alderneys.

When we left the island the river was narrower, so that we seemed to glide along between green walls, where the birds were singing and the monkeys barking and crying and whimpering like children. Again and again we passed trees full of them, sometimes little grey monkeys, and sometimes great dog-faced fellows that rumour says would tear you to pieces if you offended them and had the misfortune to fall into their hands. Now and then a hippopotamus rose, a reminder of an age that has gone by, and always on the mud-banks were the great crocodiles. And the trading-stations were, I think, more solitary and more picturesque. The little tendas were even more frail, just rickety little structures covered with a mat of crinting, for the river rises here very high, and these wharves are sure to be carried away in the rainy season. And then come hills, iron-stone hills, and tall, dry grass ten and twelve feet high. Sometimes we stopped where there was not even the frailest of tendas, and one night, just as the swift darkness was falling, the steamer drew up at a little muddy landing-stage, where there was a break in the trees, and three dugouts were drawrn up. Here she became wildly hysterical, and I began to think something would give way, until all shrieks died down as a tall black man, draped in blue, and with a long Dane gun across his shoulder, stalked out of the bush. Savage Africa personified. We had stopped to land a passenger, a mammy with her head tied up in a handkerchief, and a motley array of boxes, bundles, calabashes, chairs, saucepans, and fowls that made a small boat-load. She waved a farewell to the French trader as her friends congregated upon the shore and examined her baggage.

“She is an important woman,” said he; “the wife of a black trader in the town behind there. He's a Christian.”

“He's got a dozen wives,” said the Commissioner.

“His official wife, then. Oh, you know the sort. I guarantee she keeps order in the compound.”

At Fatta Tenda, which is quite a busy centre, from which you may start for the Niger and Timbuctoo, we gave a dinner-party, a dinner-party under difficulties. Our cook was excellent. How he turned out such dainties in a tiny galley three feet by six, and most of that taken up by the stove, I do not pretend to understand, but he did, so our difficulties lay not there, but with the lamp. What was the matter with it I do not know, but it gave a shocking light, and the night before our dinner-party it went out, and left us to finish our dinner in darkness. Then, next day, word went round that the mate was going to trim the lamp, and when we, with two men from the French factory, went into dinner, an unwonted light shed its brilliancy over the scene. Unfortunately, there was also a strong scent of kerosene, which is not usually considered a very alluring fragrance. But we consoled ourselves; the mate had trimmed the lamp. He had. He had also distributed most of the oil over the dinner-table—the cloth was soaked in it, and, worse than that, the salt, pepper, and mustard were full of it; and then, as we sat down to soup, there came in through the open windows a flight, I should say several flights, of flying ants. They died in crowds in the soup, they filled up the glasses, they distributed themselves over the kerosene-soaked table, till at last we gave them best and fled to the deck. Finally the servants reduced things to a modified state of order, but whenever I smell a strong smell of kerosene I am irresistibly reminded of the day we tried to foregather with our kind, and be hospitable up the Gambia.