The Road to the Boneyard
The Confessions of a Tenderfoot " Coaster." By Warren Henry. Illustrated. (Witherby. 16s.)
ANYONE who has been wintering in the Canaries and is homeward bound must often have noticed, as he boarded the ship at Las Palmas, a listless face or two looking over the side—the face of a European, not sunburnt but bleached, and bearing on it every evidence of lassitude, anaemia, and general debility. The wonder is that that face should be there at all, for between Freetown in Sierra Leone and the Canary Islands there is a stretch of ocean called the Bone- yard, because it " has received into its depths more home- ward-bound Coasters (in weighted hammocks) than the apologists for West Africa would willingly hear about." These are almost the concluding words of Mr. Warren's account of a trader's life on the West Coast of Africa—in his case of a four years' service (without any leave) at various stations on the French Ivory Coast.
Mr. Warren's narrative, though constantly lit up by bright sparks of humour, paints an extremely depressing picture. Amid a greenery that is almost black, and a mud that is always yellow and generally fetid, looking out seaward to a surf of unchanging cobalt-and-cream, which seems in a way to be " painting Eternity," and with a climate which is prolific in various dangerous and enervating diseases, the prospect for the white man is drear indeed. " To awn the matter up, it seemed that the Coast and Drink, and Drink and the Coast, were inseparable. The thing to do was to drink, not talk about drinking. The objective was to keep alive if possible, but to keep detached from sentiment and pity in any event." One does not say that under those conditions the moral sense is wholly abandoned- -for race will always tell—but it becomes blunted.
Jiggers lay their eggs in your toes, says Mr. Warren ; centipedes multiply themselves out of all, reckoning and particularly malodorous cockroaches can always be depended upon ; while " spiders as big as eggs and tarantulas of the most authentic variety " show constant anxiety to share the comfort of your bed. Though dangers from savage man and beast do not exist (the author seems never to have shot anything on land larger than a monkey), yet it is the . climate that steadily saps first the physical and then the moral fibre of the European.
With the greatest frankness our author faces the question of irregular, .unions with " black mammies." lie points out that such .unions are neither clandestine nor considered unvirttious on the native siele, while. the woman, for her part, acts as laundress, housekeeper, and in emergency as sick-nurse.:' The 'matter is entirely one of bargain and contract, and when the contract is at an end there is a
possibility of a gratuity or pension, on which Mr. Warren comments, " Europe can do no. more." , Our view is that Europe can do more. It can, for instance, by modern cooling devices make- the tropics bearable fdr white women ; and it can allow ifs employees to be married and give them more frequent leave, so that these unions with women of another race shall not be so common. The cynical Coaster's adage that " Necessity is the father of half- castes " has wit and wisdom in it ; but we ought to see to it (although the difficulties are admittedly many) that the necessity is removed.
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