A CRUISE IN WEST AFRICAN WATERS.*
THOSE who remember On a Surf-Bound Coast will not be unwilling to accompany its author on another cable-laying
voyage off the coast of Africa. This time we have lees of technical detail, but life in what Mr. Crouch designates as " Feverland " is described, in so far as he saw it, in a lively, vivid manner. On this occasion, the cable which had been
successfully laid as far RB Accra, on the Gold Coast, was to be carried to the French settlement at Cutanu, on the Slave Coast,
two hundred miles east of Accra, thence to the Portuguese island of St. Thome, in the Bight of Benin, five hundred miles further south, and almost on the Equator, and afterwards to St. Paul de Loanda, on the coast of Angola, some two hundred miles south of the Congo River. It is with the latter portion of the work that Mr. Crouch was at this time concerned; and he and his superior officer took their passage from Accra to St. Thome by one of the mail-steamers that coast round the Bight of Benin, discharging cargo at the various settlements on their route. In this way they saw something of Bonny, Old Calabar, Fernando Po, the Cameroons, and various less im- portant places, and after about a week at St. Thome, went on to St. Paul de Loanda, where they remained nearly a month; and this part of the cable-laying being over, the author started on his homeward voyage.
In speaking of the miserable condition of the Niger Delta and the whole West African Coast, Mr. Crouch tells us nothing new. As regards adaptability for European life, this region appears, owing to its fatal climate, to be absolutely hopeless. And yet, strange to say, there are now and then white men to be found so content with their existence there, that they do not wish to leave it. A trader at Bonny, for instance, after speaking of the inevitable attacks of fever as if they were merely annoying trifles that had to be put up with, when asked how he liked living beside the sluggish, discoloured river, with its slimy, treacherous mud- banks, its gloomy mangrove swamps, and dull, thick atmo- sphere,—" Like it F" he repeats, looking round at me with a quick, penetrating glance. "How do I like it? Why, I've been in Bonny seventeen years, and I only wish I had the time to spend there all over again. That's how I like it." The reader will naturally say,—What can be the attraction? The force of habit, of course, counts for a good deal; then plenty of money can be ma de by trading, not merely in palm- oil, which is the principal product, and constitutes an enormous industry, but in palm-kernels, camwood, and ivory ; while the position of the trader is one of complete inde- pendence. He pays no Custom or taxes to anyone, and makes his own trading arrangements with the natives. In consequence of this he is able to sell European goods at a profit for little less than half what they would cost in England. So if the confident expectation he entertained on leaving England that he would be able to resist the maladies to which every white man falls a prey has proved delusive, and if his amusements are very much limited to playing billiards, drinking cocktails, and receiving occasional news from home, he has his work to occupy him, and lives much more comfortably than he could probably do at home, for many of the factories seem to be tastefully furnished, and even the clerks indulge in a style of dress which is quite un- expected amid such surroundings. However, it is not to be taken that all West African traders are of the same type ; Mr. Crouch met with some who not only had scientific and intellectual pursuits, but also took an active and kindly interest in the native races, especially in the children, by whom they were much beloved, though this writer holds very strong opinions as to the low mental capacity and unimprovable character of the Negro. In this he is in decided opposition to Stanley, who finds the African races "capable of great love and affection, and possessed of gratitude and other noble traits of human nature," adding,—" I know, too, that they can be made good, obedient servants; that many are clever, honest, industrious, docile, enterprising, brave, moral; that
they are, in short, equal to any other race or colour on the face of the globe in all the attributes of manhood." Mr. Crouch endeavours to controvert this evidence by taking it bit by bit, and adducing the exactly opposite testimony of Burton, Monteiro, Bosnian, Duncan, and others, quoting in particular Dr. Tucker's address to the American Church
• Glimpses of Feverlancl; or. a Cruise in West African Waters. By Archer P. Crouch, B.A. London : Sampson Low and Co.
Congress in 1883, his conviction being that money and sympathy expended on the black man are altogether wasted, and that philanthropy should first turn to those of our own flesh and blood. That our own people have the first claim upon us, we freely concede, but that the Negro should be left to suffer all the miseries of slavery, we just as emphatically deny. It is all very well to speak of it as "a domestic institu- tion, handed down from time immemorial," and to say that, "as it still exists in Africa between black man and black man, it has in itself few unfavourable aspects," and to allude to the horrors of the slave-trade as things of the past. The traffic in human beings may be abolished as regards ourselves and other civilised countries ; but that the same horrors yet exist, and will do so as long as Mahommedanism holds its sway in Africa, is a fact that cannot be contradicted, and every humane person should wish well to, and be ready to assist, the noble Crusade that has been formed for their suppression.
Though Mr. Crouch expresses such a strong opinion as to the inferiority of the Negro, he cannot help praising the grand physique of the Duallas, the native race at the Cameroons, and allthat he gleaned concerning them—their cleanliness, morality, their skilfulness in works of art, their drum-signalling, their kind treatment of their slaves, and their intelligence in the matter of trading—goes to show the exact contrary of his contention with regard to Blacks. The reader will be interested in the account of this fine people, and at the same time amused to discover that boycotting, under the name of egbooing, is quite common among them, and found to be a most efficacious means of repressing the greed of the palm-oil traders. Of course, polygamy is practised amongst them, a man increasing his number of wives as he gets on in the world, and paying a pretty good price for each of them. Ten or twelve may be said to be the usual thing ; in fact, the number is only limited by the extent of his wealth, for the Dualla considers it absolutely neces- sary to have plenty in order to keep up his family. These women are, in fact, servants ; they cook for their husband, wait upon him, till the ground, and perform all the hard manual labour which even a slave is not required to do. But there is yet another use for them, which is not a little curious,—they are employed as so many animated ledgers. A man having transactions with several firms will, when he receives a consignment of goods to exchange up-river, call his first wife and give her an exact inventory of what he has re- ceived, say, from a Liverpool firm, stating the value of each article in bars; to his second wife he will give a similar account of his dealings with a Bristol merchant ; to his third, of what he has received from a German house ; and so on. On his return from his expedition, he calls his wives together, receives an exact description of the property entrusted to him, and is thus enabled to render his account correctly at the various places of business.
Of the beauty of the scenery at the Cameroons, especially at Filmset, if the majestic peaks should happen to be devoid of the mist that so often enshrouds them, Mr. Crouch speaks with great enthusiasm, as he also does later on of Prince's Island. The climate is, of course, the disadvantage ; the rains last from June to October, and then follow tornadoes, with a violent storm every day; and May is another tornado month. In January, the " harmattan," commonly called "the smokes," sets in, and this hot, dry wind, accompanied by haze, would be unendurable but for a cool sea-breeze that springs up at the same time. The report of a resident of many years was that every white man who settles at the Cameroons must have an attack of fever between the second and eighth week after his arrival, and the sooner it comes the better. After that, with care and the avoidance of excessive drinking, he may live there in fair health and even enjoy himself; but he had better take a holiday in Northern climates at least once in two or three years. The account of St. Paul de Loanda and of the Portuguese provinces south of the Congo, with the gigantic baobab-trees,
the fibre of which is now used for making paper, and the india-rubber creepers, with their deliciously scented starry blossoms, will be found interesting : but, indeed, Glimpses of Feverland is always readable and sometimes amusing.
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