CHAPTER VI

IN THE CAPITAL OF TSCHAUDJOLAND

Paratau, where our camp was situated, is the residence of Uro Djabo, the paramount chief of the important Tschaudjo tribe. Uro means "king," and it is indeed virtually as King of the Tschaudjo that Djabo is recognised, and subsidised, by the German Government.

In Togo it is customary for white strangers to visit a really big chief like this before proceeding to the Government rest-house, and although I was very, very tired, West African etiquette had to be observed.

I found the Uro a most charming host, and although he was old and fat, and his personal appearance, therefore, was not particularly imposing, he managed somehow to convey the idea of dignity, and the power and ability to command. He received us in great state, surrounded by a big bodyguard of officials and personal attendants, conspicuous amongst the former being his prime minister, Mama-Sugu, an exceedingly tall, well-proportioned, and fine-looking man. In his turban he looked quite young; in fact, I made a mental note of his age as probably about thirty. Afterwards, however, he removed it, and I then saw that he was grey-headed and partially bald. Probably he was about fifty, but this estimate is, of course, only approximate, for natives keep no records of their birthdays, and have only the most hazy notions, consequently, as to how old they really are.

Governments are not remarkable for gratitude, but the German Government has certainly good reason to be grateful to Uro Djabo, since it was to his father and predecessor that it practically owes its possession of Togoland. When the famous Dr. Kersting, the founder and pioneer of northern Togo, first entered the country, he found it inhabited by many distinct and warlike tribes, continually fighting with one another.

Following in a small way the example set by Cortez in Mexico, and by Clive in India, he allied himself with the strongest and most warlike of the lot, the Tschaudjo to wit, and he and the old Uro between them practically subdued the whole country, and placed it under the German flag.

In the course of our somewhat prolonged stay at Paratau I had several chats with Uro Djabo, and he used to hold forth at length, through an interpreter, of course, concerning the former power and greatness of the Tschaudjo people. They were originally it appeared a conquering tribe, like the Masai and the Zulus, and they swept down from the north many years ago, devastating the country as they advanced. They came riding on horses, and as these animals had never before been seen in Togoland, the terror they inspired almost sufficed by itself to ensure the defeat of the aboriginal owners of the soil.

Djabo also showed me over his "palace," a collection of circular huts of various sizes, arranged in irregular zigzag fashion, and connected by a wall. The principal hut, which was very much bigger and higher than any of the others, contained the entrance-hall and stables, and was surmounted by an ostrich egg, the emblem of royalty.

At the other extremity of the space enclosed by the huts and connecting wall a crested crane was kept. Uro Djabo attached very great importance to this bird. It was, I was informed, sacred; and anyone killing it, or otherwise interfering with it, would be very severely punished. The crane knew quite well that it was privileged, and it used to strut up to the cooking-pots when the natives were at dinner, and help itself to any choice morsel that took its fancy. Any ordinary bird acting after this fashion would have promptly had its neck wrung, for hardly anything upsets a West African native more than a liberty taken with his food. But directly the crane appeared, they would all draw away from their cooking-pot, and patiently wait until he had finished helping himself before resuming their meal. I tried hard to get Uro Djabo to tell me all about this bird, but he always avoided the subject, and when I pressed him, he refused point-blank. Nor did anyone else seem inclined to say anything about it, beyond telling me, in awe-struck whispers, that it was the Uro's ju-ju.

Djabo, as I have already intimated, kept up considerable state for a native. He was always accompanied by his band, mostly drum, with one or two reed-like instruments; and by his prime minister, sword-bearer, personal servants, and the like, all elaborately attired in Arab dress. Thus, when one day we asked the old fellow to our house for afternoon tea, he came with a retinue of about twenty followers, completely filling the small compound. He was, however, a most democratic sort of a king. When, for instance, he helped himself to a biscuit, he first took a bite, then handed it round for everybody else to have a nibble at it. When Schomburgk gave him a cigar, all his attendants smoked it after him in turn, each taking two or three big whiffs before passing it along to the next in waiting. I never saw a cigar smoked by so many people, or last so short a while, for each native tried to draw into his lungs as big a modicum of smoke as he possibly could, so that it was burned away and done with in no time. Djabo meanwhile chatted and joked with all and sundry. In fact, the only difference discernible between the king and his subjects was that he sat in a chair, while the others squatted on the ground.

Subsequent to this visit, Djabo received me alone in his palace, and introduced me to his wives. I saw about twenty of them. Two or three were young girls, and fairly presentable; but mostly they were old, fat, and ugly. After the reception was over I complimented him, not upon the beauty or intelligence of his wives, but on the fact of his being able to afford so many of them, for this is West African etiquette. "Oh," he replied lightly, "this is nothing. I have hundreds more scattered up and down the country."

Among other presents that Djabo had received from the Government at one time and another was a large and very substantial garden chair. It was of extremely ordinary appearance, and quite out of keeping with the surroundings of the African bush; but old Djabo was inordinately proud of it, and even went to the length of keeping a chair-bearer, whose sole duty it was to look after this one piece of furniture, and to carry it about to wherever his master went. This was a source of difficulty to us when we came to film his Majesty, for he would insist on being photographed seated in it, a proceeding which, of course, would have rendered the picture worthless from our point of view. Eventually, however, after many palavers, and the present of a piece of silk stuff, he consented to dispense with it for that one occasion.

There is a big native market at Paratau, and food is very cheap. Eggs, for instance, can be bought at the rate of eight a penny. Lemons are a farthing a dozen. A fine plump pigeon costs threepence. These sums represent, of course, very much more to a native than they do to a European; but even allowing for the difference in the value of money, I came to the conclusion that the average Tschaudjo man or woman could, if they choose, live far better at a much cheaper rate than can the average labouring man of, say, England or Germany. Certainly the majority of those I met appeared to be well fed and contented.

I have alluded elsewhere to the skilful riding of the Tschaudjo horsemen, and one of the objects of our stay at Paratau was to film them. In this we succeeded perfectly. In fact, I was myself immensely pleased, and even surprised, at the faithful realism of the scene when I came to see it afterwards in London on the screen. Everybody was very much taken by the clever equestrian feats performed by the Arabs at the International Horse Show at Olympia last year. But there were only a few picked men. We were able to film a much greater number of the genuine wild horsemen of the Sudan, and to film them, too, at home among their native surroundings.

By the way I am frequently reminded here, as elsewhere, that I am the first white woman to intrude her presence among these primitive people. The women shrink from me, or look askance, and the children run screaming in terror away from me. Once I got the interpreter to inquire of one sweet little lassie of about nine or ten why she had run from me. He brought the child before me, but for a long time she would not say a word. She just stood still, with eyes downcast, and trembling in every limb.

At length she looked quickly up, and shot a hard, swift question at the interpreter.

"No! No! No!" was his reply. "Of course not. Stupid little one! Why do you think such things?"

I asked him what the child had said. He answered that she had asked whether, if she spoke the truth, I was going to flog her.

"Tell her," I said, "that, on the contrary, I will make her a present."

He translated my promise, whereupon the girl, after one quick half-inquiring, half-doubting glance at me, rapped out something that sounded short, solid, and authoritative, like the rat-a-tat-tat of a door-knocker.

Then it was the interpreter's turn to take refuge in silence. He absolutely declined to translate what she had said, saying that it was too dreadful, was quite unfit for me to hear, &c. &c.

"Very well," I said at last, "I will go and tell Major Schomburgk that you refuse to perform your duties."

Whereupon the poor man, driven into a corner, blurted out the message, running his words altogether in his confusion and excitement. "The impudent little wench says," he rapped out, "that shefearstolookuponyoubecauseyouaresougly."

I had to laugh. I simply could not help it. But my mirth had a slight--a very slight--tinge of bitterness in it. To be told to my face that I was ugly! And by this naked little ebony imp.

Well, men, I reflected, had not found me uncomely. And even from my own sex--supremest test of all--I had listened to words of appreciation, and even of admiration upon occasion. So I playfully pinched the cheek of my little critic, and sent her away happy in the possession of a gaudy-coloured silk handkerchief.

This incident broke the ice, so to speak, and soon I was on the best of terms with practically the entire juvenile population of Paratau. They discovered that I was not really an ogre, as they had imagined at first. But I could not prevail upon them to admit that I possessed any claim upon their admiration, whatever I might have upon their gratitude. "Am I really and truly ugly?" I one day asked a little boy, a dear little chum of mine. "Really and truly you are, dear Puss," he replied, with childish frankness. "But," he added in extenuation, and as a balm perhaps for my wounded feelings, "you cannot help that. The good God made you so, did he not? We cannot all be black and beautiful."

Projecting my mind into theirs, and trying to think as they thought, I have come to the conclusion that they regarded me much as a white child regards a black golliwog--a something to be frightened of at first, and yet cherished because of its strangeness and uncouthness. Only in their case the golliwog was alive, and so all the more fearsome until experience had shown them its harmlessness.

After spending about ten days in Paratau, I began to feel my health breaking down. Our camp was pitched close to the old Government station, and the site was by no means an ideal one. My hut, like the others, was close, very stuffy, and almost unventilated. It had no windows, and it was built of the usual wattle and daub, which is all right when fairly fresh, but when old, as this was, it is apt to give off a sickly, mouldy odour. Then, too, there were the smells from the native village--anything but pleasant. While to crown all, the entire place was surrounded by dense fields--you might almost call them plantations--of guinea corn, fifteen to twenty feet high, which effectually shut out any breath of air. Not, however, that this mattered so very much; for the harmattan season had now set in, and the hot, palpitating air was filled with an impalpable yellow dust, like fog, so thick that one could look straight into the sun at mid-day without hurting one's eyes.

One result was that I suffered from almost incessant headaches. Yet I did not like to complain, for we were now in the middle of a new drama, and I knew that Schomburgk had set his heart on completing it at as early a date as possible. But sometimes, after rehearsing from seven till eleven in the broiling heat, in cowboy dress, and with crowds of perspiring niggers for supers, I felt that I must drop in my tracks from sheer physical exhaustion.

The climax came one day when I had to enact the heroine in a scene where Nebel, who was supposed to be a fugitive from justice, was galloping away across the mountains, and I after him, followed by twenty or thirty Tschaudjo horsemen. Nebel kept turning round in his saddle and firing at me. The horsemen behind were emitting a series of the most blood-curdling yells. And between them they frightened my horse, so that it bolted, and headed straight for the brink of a fairly high cliff, with a lot of rocks and broken ground at the bottom.

Greatly alarmed, I threw away my revolver, and using both hands, and all my strength, I tried my hardest to pull up my frightened steed. He was a grand horse, the best in Sokode, and he and I were great friends. Ordinarily, I could do anything with him, but now he was simply mad with terror, and I was entirely powerless to even check appreciably his wild race towards what appeared to be certain death for both of us.

Nebel tried his best to stop him by grabbing at his bridle as we flew past him, but the runaway swerved violently, nearly unseating me then and there. The next instant he leapt wildly into the air over rocks and boulders, and I gave myself up for lost.

As luck would have it, however, he alighted on almost the only patch of moderately soft ground that there was anywhere in the vicinity. A yard to the left, a yard to the right, were masses of jagged rocks, and had he come down on these I should almost inevitably have been killed. As it was he stumbled, recovered himself, stumbled again, and again recovered, and then stood stock still, streaming with perspiration and trembling in every limb.

I was, of course, riding astride; luckily for me. Had I been in a side-saddle, I do not see how I could by any possibility have retained my seat. As it was I was badly bruised and shaken, and this, coupled with the shock to my nerves, so aggravated my previous indisposition that I collapsed.

"I must go away, and at once," I told Schomburgk that evening, "or I feel that I cannot recover."

To his credit be it said, Schomburgk was most sympathetic. He saw that matters were serious, and although the hour was late, he sent a special messenger to Sokode to tell the authorities there how things stood, and to ask for their assistance. With a promptitude and kindness that I can never forget, the German Government officials set to work at once, collected a hundred carriers from their own working staff, and sent them over to us the first thing in the morning, in order that we might be able to start straight away for Aledjo-Kadara, the sanatorium of Togo.

An hour later we had left our pretty but unhealthy camp at Paratau, and were on the march for the highlands on which Aledjo stands--the Switzerland of Togo as grateful invalids from the sweltering lowlands have enthusiastically christened it.