Читать книгу Alone in West Africa - Mary Gaunt - Страница 14

And yet, only ten years ago, they were very doubtful still about the white man's protectorate in the Gambia, as graves in the Bathurst cemetery testify. Then was the last rising, when the district of San-nian Kunta was very disaffected, and two Commissioners, Mr. Sitwell and Mr. Silva, were sent with twelve native police to put matters straight. After the wont of the English, they despised their enemy and marched into a hostile village with the ammunition boxes screwed down, sat themselves down under a tree, and called on the Chief and village elders to come up before them. But the chief and elders did no such thing. Hidden in the surrounding bush, they replied with a volley from their long Danes, killing both the Commissioners and most of the policemen, but one escaping got away to the next Commissioner, a young fellow named Price. Now, Mr. Price had only four policemen, but he was by no means sure of the death of his comrades, so promptly he sent off to headquarters for help, and without delay marched back to the disaffected village. The white men were dead and shockingly mutilated, but with his four faithful policemen he brought their remains back for decent burial. He did not know what moment he might not be attacked. He had before him as object lessons in savage warfare the dead bodies of his comrades. He had to march through thick bush, and they say at the end of that day's work young Mr. Price's hair turned white. Punishment came, of course. Six months later the new Governor, Sir George Denton, with a company of W.A.F.F.''s—West African Field Force—marched to that disaffected village; the chief was deposed and exiled, and peace has reigned ever since.

And now much farther away from Bathurst a woman may go through the country by herself in perfect safety. All the towns are still from one to four miles back from the tenda, away in the bush, from the old-time notion I suppose that there was danger to be dreaded by the great waterway, and early in the morning I used to take the narrow track through the long grass which was many feet above my head, and go and see primitive native life.

Up at the head of the river our steamer filled rapidly. When our holds were full the groundnuts were put in sacks and piled on the decks fore and aft, half-way up the masts, almost to the tops of the funnels, and the only place that was not groundnuts was the little cabin and the deck on top. There were £600 worth of groundnuts on board the Mungo Park, and we stowed on top of them passengers, men and women, and all their multifarious belongings, and then proceeded to pick up lighters also laden with groundnuts bound down the river.

Towards the evening of the second day of our homeward journey we came to a big creek down which was being poled by six men a red lighter, deep in the water and laden to the very brim with groundnuts. This the steamer was to tow behind. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The heavily laden lighter drifted first to one side and then to the other and threatened to fill, and the Commissioner's interpreter, sitting on deck, told me a long story of how here in the river there is a devil that will not allow a steamer or a cutter to go past unless the owner dances to placate him. If he do not care to dance himself he must pay someone else to dance for him. Unless someone dances, the engines may work, the sails may fill, but that vessel will not go ahead till the river devil has his toll. No one danced on board the Mungo Park, unless the black captain's prancing about and shaking his fist and shouting what sounded like blood-curdling threats at the skipper of the lighter might be construed into dancing. If so, it had not the desired effect, for the heavy lighter wouldn't steer, and presently the captain decided to tow it alongside. The darkness fell; all around us was the wide, weird, dark river, with the green starboard light just falling upon the mast of the lighter alongside, and for a few brief moments there was silence and peace, for the lighter was towing all right at last. Then the mast bent forward suddenly, there was a stifled, strangled cry, the captain gave a wild yell, the engines were stopped, and there was no more lighter, only the smooth dark water was rough with floating groundnuts and the river devil had taken his toll. Five of the crew had jumped for the Mungo Park and reached her, but the sixth, a tall Man-dingo, wrapped in a blue cloth, had gone down a prey for the wicked crocodiles or the cruel, strong undercurrents. They launched a boat and we felt our impotence and the vastness of the river, for they only had a hurricane lantern and it looked but a tiny speck on the waste of dark waters. The boat went up and down flashing its feeble light. Here was a patch of groundnuts, here a floating calabash, here a cloth, but the lighter and the man were gone, and we went on our way, easily enough now, because, of course, the steamer had paid toll.

There are the beginnings, it seems to me, in the groundnut trade of the Gambia, of what may be in the future a very great industry. True, the value of the groundnut is regulated by the price of cotton-seed oil, for which the oil pressed from the groundnut makes a very excellent substitute. Last year the Gambia's groundnuts, the harvest of the simplest, most ignorant peasants but one remove from savagery, was worth between £500,000 and £600,000, and not one-twentieth of the soil was cultivated, but the colony's existence was fairly justified. The greater part of this crop goes into French hands and is exported to Marseilles, where it is made into the finer sorts of soap. What wonder then if the French cast longing eyes upon the mighty river, for not only is the land around it rich, but they have spent large sums upon railways for their great colony of Senegal, and had they the Gambia as well they would have water carriage for both their imports and exports even in the dry season, and in the rains they could bring their heavy goods far far inland.

I realised all this as I came back to Bathurst with the dust from the groundnuts in my hair and eyes and nostrils, and dresses that had not been worn an hour before they were shrieking for the washtub. But what did a little discomfort matter?

I returned in time for the Christmas and New-Year festivities. On Christmas night all the English in the colony dined at Government House to celebrate the festival. Exiles all, they would have said. I have been told that I judge the English in West Africa a little hardly, and of course I realise all the bitterness of divided homes, especially at this season that should be one of family reunions. But after all the English make their life in West Africa far harder than they need. Dimly I saw this on my visit to the Gambia; slowly the feeling grew upon me till, when I left the Coast eight months later, I was fully convinced that if England is to hold her pride of place as a colonising nation with the French and Germans, she must make less of this exile theory and more of a home in these outlands. The doctors tell me this is impossible, and of course I must bow to the doctors' opinion, but it is saying in effect—which I will not allow for a moment—that the French and Germans—and especially the French and German women—are far better than the English.

Here in the Gambia I began to think it, and the fact was driven in more emphatically as I went down the Coast. The Englishman makes great moan, but after all he holds a position in West Africa the like of which he could not dream of in England. He is the superior, the ruler; men bow down before him and rush to do his bidding—he who would have a suburban house and two maid-servants in the old country, lives in barbaric splendour. Of course it is quite possible he prefers the suburban house and two maid-servants and his wife. And there, of course, the crux of the matter lies. Why, I know not, but English women are regarded as heroines and martyrs who go out to West Africa with their husbands. Possibly it is because I am an Australian and have had a harder bringing-up that I resent very much the supposition that a woman cannot go where a man can. From the time I was a little girl I have seen women go as a matter of course to the back-blocks with their husbands, and if, barring a few exceptions, they did not stay there, we all supposed not that it was the country that did not agree with them, but the husband. We all know there are husbands and wives who do not agree. And I can assure you, for I know both, life in the back-blocks in Australia, life in many of the towns of Australia, with its heat and its want of service, is far harder for a woman than it is in West Africa. Yet here in the Gambia and all along the Coast was the same eternal cry wherever there was a woman, “How long can she stay?”

The difference between the French and the English views on this vexed question was exemplified by the Commissioner's view and the French trader's. I have already given the former. Said the latter, “Of course my wife will come out. Why should she not. She is just waiting till the baby is a month old. What is the good of a wife to me in Paris? The rains? Of course she will stay the rains. It is only the English who are afraid of the rainy season.” And I was sorry for the little contempt he put into his voice when he spoke of the English fear. I know this opinion of mine will bring down upon my devoted head a storm of wrath from West-Coast officials, but whether the Coast is healthy or not there is no denying the fact that the nation who takes its women is far more likely to hold a country, and in that the French and Germans are beating us hands down.

But this I only realised dimly during my stay in the Gambia. I was to leave on New Year's Day and on New Year's Eve we all went to the barracks of the W.A.F.F.'s to see the New Year in. And then in the soft, warm night the Governor and I went back to Government House. The stars were like points of gold, the sky was like dark-blue velvet, and against it the graceful palms stood out like splashes of ink, the water washed softly against the shore, there was the ceaseless hum of insects in the air, and from the native town behind came a beating of tom-toms subdued by the distance. The sentry started out of the shadow at the gate as the rickshaws arrived, and there came his guttural hail, “Who goes dere?”

“Friend,” said the Governor's voice. It was commonplace, everyday to him.

“Pass friend and all's well,” came the answer, and we went in and up the steps; but surely, I thought, it was a very good omen, a very good omen indeed. “Pass friend and all's well.” I was leaving that day that had not yet dawned; I was going down the Coast and all should be well.