Part 12
We stopped at Cabinda in the Portuguese territory north of the Congo, and at one or two other trading-places on the coast, and then we put out northwest for the islands. On the eighth day after leaving Benguela we came in sight of San Thomé. Over it the sky was a broken gray of drifting rain-clouds. Only now and again we could see the high peaks of the mountains, which run up to seven thousand feet. The valleys at their base were shrouded in the pale and drizzling mists which hang about them almost continually. Here and there a rounded hill, indigo with forest, rose from the mists and showed us the white house of some plantation and the little cluster of out-buildings and huts where the slaves were to find their new home. Then, as on an enchanted island, the ghostly fog stole over it again, and in another quarter some fresh hill, indigo with forest, stood revealed.
The whole place smoked and steamed like a gigantic hot-house. In fact, it is a gigantic hot-house. As nearly as possible, it stands upon the equator, the actual line passing through the volcanic rocks of its southern extremity. And even in the dry season from April to October it is perpetually soaked with moisture. The wet mist hardly ceases to hang among the hills and forest trees. The thick growth of the tropics covers the mountains almost to their summits, and every leaf of verdure drips with warm dew.
The slaves on deck regarded the scene with almost complete apathy. Some of the men leaned against the bulwark and silently watched the points of the island as we passed. The women hardly stirred from their places. They were occupied with their babies as usual, or lay about in the unbroken wretchedness of despair. Two girls of about fifteen or sixteen, evidently sisters, whom I had before noticed for a certain pathetic beauty, now sat huddled together hand-in-hand, quietly crying. They were just the kind of girls that the planters select for their concubines, and I have little doubt they are the concubines of planters now. But they cried because they feared they would be separated when they came to land.
In the confusion of casting anchor I stood by them unobserved, and in a low voice asked them a few questions in Umbundu, which I had crammed up for the purpose. The answers were brief, in sobbing whispers; sometimes by gestures only. The conversation ran like this:
“Why are you here?”
“We were sold to the white men.”
“Did you come of your own free will?”
“Of course not.”
“Where did you come from?”
“From Bihé.”
“Are you slaves or not?”
“Of course we are slaves!”
“Would you like to go back?”
The delicate little brown hands were stretched out, palms downward, and the crying began afresh.
That night the slaves were left on board, but next morning (June 17th) when I went down to the pier about nine o’clock, I found them being landed in two great lighters. One by one the men and women were dragged up on to the pier by their arms and loin-cloths and dumped down like bales of goods. There they sat in four lines till all were ready, and then, carrying their mats and babies, they were marched off in file to the Curador’s house in the town beside the bay. Here they were driven through large iron gates into a court-yard and divided up into gangs according to the names of the planters who had requisitioned for them. When the parties were complete, they were put under the charge of gangers belonging to various plantations, and so they set out on foot upon the last stage of their journey. When they reached their plantation (which would usually be on the same day or the next, for the island is only thirty-five miles long by fifteen broad) they would be given a day or two for rest, and then the daily round of labor would begin. For them there are no more journeyings, till that last short passage when their dead bodies are lashed to poles and carried out to be flung away in the forest.
NOTE.--I have no direct evidence that the poison was given me intentionally, but the “cumulative” evidence is rather strong. While still in the interior I had been warned that the big slave-dealers had somehow got to know of my purpose and were plotting against me. On the coast the warnings increased, till my life became almost as ludicrous as a melodrama, and I was obliged to “live each day as ’twere my last”--an unpleasant and unprofitable mode of living. One man would drop hints, another would give instances of Portuguese treachery. I was often told the fate of a poor Portuguese trader named De Silva, who objected to slavery and was going to Lisbon to expose the system, but after his first meal on board was found dead in his cabin. People in the street whispered of my fate. A restaurant-keeper at Benguela told an English fellow-passenger on my ship that he had better not be seen with me, for I was in great danger. My boy, who had followed me right through from the Gold Coast with the fidelity of a homeless dog, kept bringing me rumors of murder that he heard among the natives. Two nights before the ship sailed I was at a dinner given by the engineers of the new railway, and into my overcoat-pocket some one, whom I wish publicly to thank, tucked a scrap of paper with the words, “You are in great peril,” written in French. If there was a plot to set upon me in the empty streets that night, it was prevented by an Englishman who volunteered to go back with me, though I had not told him of any danger. Next night I was poisoned. Owing to the frequent warnings, I was ready with antidotes, but I think I should not have reached the ship alive next day without the courageous and devoted help of a South-African prospector who had been shut up with me in Ladysmith. The Dutch trader with whom I was staying was himself far above suspicion, but I shall not forget his indignant excitement when he saw what had happened. Evidently it was what he had feared, though I only told him I must have eaten something unwholesome. The tiresome sense of apprehension lasted during my voyage to the islands, and I was obliged to keep a dyspeptic watch upon the food. But I do not wish to make much of these little personal matters. To American and English people in their security they naturally seem absurd, and as a proof how common the art of poisoning still is in Portuguese possessions I will only mention that I have met a Portuguese trader in San Thomé who carries about in his waistcoat a little packet of pounded glass which he detected one evening in his soup, and that on the Portuguese ship which finally took me from San Thomé to Lisbon a Portuguese official died the day we started, from an illness due to his belief that he was being poisoned, and that during the voyage a poor Belgian from the interior gradually faded away under the same belief, and was carried out at Lisbon in a dying condition. Of course both may have been mad, but even madness does not take that form without something to suggest it.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] I find that the latest published Consular Report on San Thomé and Principe (1902) actually repeats the hypocritical fiction about the redemption of slaves. After speaking of the “enormous mortality” on the two islands, the Report continues: “So large a death-rate calls for constant fresh supplies of laborers from Angola, the principal ports from which they are obtained being Benguela, Novo Redondo, and Loanda, where they are ransomed from the black traders who bring them from the far interior.” Mr. Consul Nightingale, who wrote the Report, was, of course, perfectly aware of the truth, and no doubt he wrote in irony. But English people do not understand irony--least of all in an official document.
[12] There is a well-known carriers’ song with the refrain, “She has crossed Ondumba ya Maria,” that being the name of a dry brook on this road from Katumbella to Benguela. It means, “She has gone into slavery to be sold for San Thomé”--“Gone to the devil,” or, “Gone to glory,” as we say, almost indifferently.
[13] See note on page 185.
X
LIFE OF SLAVES ON THE ISLANDS
They stand in the Gulf of Guinea--those two islands of San Thomé and Principe where the slaves die--about one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest coast at the Gaboon River in French Congo. San Thomé lies just above the equator, Principe some eighty miles north and a little east of San Thomé, and a hundred and twenty miles southwest of Fernando Po. San Thomé is about eight times as large as Principe, and the population, which may now be reckoned considerably over forty thousand, is also about eight times as large. It is difficult to say what proportion of these populations are slaves. The official returns of 1900 put the population of San Thomé at 37,776, including 19,211 serviçaes, or slaves, with an import of 4572 serviçaes in 1901. And the population of Principe was given as 4327, including 3175 serviçaes. But the prosperity of the islands is increasing with such rapidity that these numbers have now been probably far surpassed.[14]
It is cocoa that has created the prosperity. In old days the islands were famous for their coffee, and it is still perhaps the best in Africa. But the trade in coffee sank to less than a half in the ten years, 1891 to 1901, while in that time the cocoa trade increased fourfold--from 3597 tons to 14,914--and since 1901 the increase has been still more rapid. The islands possess exactly the kind of climate that kills men and makes the cocoa-tree flourish. It is, as I have described, a hot-house climate--burning heat and torrents of rain in the wet season, from October to April; stifling heat and clouds of dripping mist in the season that is called dry. In such an air and upon the fine volcanic soil the cocoa-plant thrives wherever it is set, and continues to produce all the year round. Nearly one-third of the islands is now under cultivation, and the wild forest is constantly being cleared away. In consequence, the value of land has gone up beyond the dreams of a land-grabber’s avarice. Little plots that could be had for the asking ten years ago now fetch their hundreds. There is a story, perhaps mythical, that one of the greatest owners--once a clerk or carrier in San Thomé--has lately refused £2,000,000 for his plantations there. In 1901 the export trade from San Thomé alone was valued at £764,830, having more than doubled in five years, and by this time it is certainly over £1,000,000. There are probably about two hundred and thirty plantations or “roças” on San Thomé now, some employing as many as one thousand slaves. And on Principe there are over fifty roças, with from three hundred to five hundred slaves working upon the largest. All these evidences of increasing prosperity must be very satisfactory to the private proprietors and to the shareholders in the companies which own a large proportion of the land. For the most part they live in Lisbon, enjoying themselves upon the product of the cocoa-tree and the lives of men and women.
One early morning at San Thomé I went out to visit a plantation which is rightly regarded as a kind of model--a show-place for the intelligent foreigner or for the Portuguese shareholder who feels qualms as he banks his dividends. There were four hundred slaves on the estate, not counting children, and I was shown their neat brick huts in rows, quite recently finished. I saw them clearing the forest for further plantation, clearing the ground under the cocoa-trees, gathering the great yellow pods, sorting the brown kernels, which already smelled like a chocolate-box, heaping them up to ferment, raking them out in vast pans to dry, working in the carpenters’ sheds, superintending the new machines, and gathering in groups for the mid-day meal. I was shown the turbine engine, the electric light, the beautiful wood-work in the manager’s house, the clean and roomy hospital with its copious supply of drugs and anatomical curiosities in bottles, the isolated house for infectious cases. To an outward seeming, the Decree of 1903 for the regulation of the slave labor had been carried out in every possible respect. All looked as perfect and legal as an English industrial school. Then we sat down to an exquisite Parisian _déjeuner_ under the bower of a drooping tree, and while I was meditating on the hardships of African travel, a saying of another of the guests kept coming back to my mind: “The Portuguese are certainly doing a marvellous work for Angola and these islands. Call it slavery if you like. Names and systems don’t matter. The sum of human happiness is being infinitely increased.”
The doctor had come up to pay his official visit to the plantation that day. “The death-rate on this roça,” he remarked, casually, during the meal, “is twelve or fourteen per cent. a year among the serviçaes.” “And what is the chief cause?” I asked. “Anæmia,” he said. “That is a vague sort of thing,” I answered; “what brings on anæmia?” “Unhappiness [tristeza],” he said, frankly.
He went on to explain that if they could keep a slave alive for three or four years from the date of landing, he generally lived some time longer, but it was very difficult to induce them to live through the misery and homesickness of the first few years.
This cause, however, does not account for the high mortality among the children. On one of the largest and best-managed plantations of San Thomé the superintendent admits a children’s death-rate of twenty-five per cent., or one-quarter of all the children, every year. Our latest consular reports do not give a complete return of the death-rate for San Thomé, but on Principe 867 slaves died during 1901 (491 males and 376 females), which gives a total death-rate of 20.67 per cent. per annum. In other words, you may calculate that among the slaves on Principe one in every five will be dead by the end of the year.[15]
No wonder that the price of slaves is high, and that it is almost impossible for the supply from Angola to keep pace with the demand, though the government calls on its Agents to drive the trade as hard as they can, and the Agents do their very utmost to encourage the natives to raid, kidnap, accuse of witchcraft, press for debts, soak in rum, and sell. A manager in Principe, who employs one hundred and fifty slaves on his roça, told me that it is impossible for him fully to develop the land without two hundred more, but he simply cannot afford the £6000 needed for the purchase of that number.
The common saying that if you have seen one plantation you have seen all is not exactly true. I found the plantations differed a good deal according to the wealth of the proprietor and the superintendent’s disposition. Still there is a general similarity in external things from which one can easily build up a type. Let us take, for instance, a roça which I visited one Sunday after driving some six or seven miles into the interior from the port of San Thomé. The road led through groves of the cocoa-tree, the gigantic “cotton-tree,” breadfruit, palms, and many hard and useful woods which I did not know. For a great part of the distance the wild and untouched forest stood thick on both sides, and as we climbed into the mountains we looked down into unpenetrated glades, where parrots, monkeys, and civet-cats are the chief inhabitants. The sides of the road were thickly covered with moss and fern, and the high rocks and tree-tops were from time to time concealed by the soaking white mist which the people for some strange reason call “flying-fish milk.” High up in the hills we came to a filthy village, where a few slaves were drearily lying about, full of the deadly rum that hardly even cheers. A few hundred yards farther up was the roça which owns the village and runs the rum-shop there for the benefit of the slaves and its own pocket. The buildings are arranged in a great quadrangle, with high walls all round and big gates that are locked at night. On one side stands the planter’s house, and attached to it are the dwellings of the overseers, or gangers, together with the quarters of such slaves as are employed for domestic purposes, whether as concubines or servants. On the other side stand the quarters of the ordinary slaves who labor on the plantation. They are built in long sheds, and in a few cases these are two stories high, but in most plantations only one. Some of the sheds are arranged like the dormitories in our barracks; sometimes the homes are almost or entirely isolated; sometimes, as in this roça, they are divided by partitions, like the stalls in a stable. At one end of the quadrangle, besides the magazines for the working and storage of the cocoa, there is a huge barn, which the slaves use as a kitchen, each family making its own little fire on the ground and cooking its rations separately, as the unconquerable habit of all natives is. At the other end of the quadrangle, sunk below the level of the fall of the hill, stands the hospital, with its male and female wards duly divided according to law.
The centre of the quadrangle is occupied by great flat pans, paved with cement or stones, for the drying of the cocoa-beans. Within the largest of these enclosures the slaves are gathered two or three times a week to receive their rations of meal and dried fish. At six o’clock on the afternoon of my visit they all assembled to the clanging of the bell, the grown-up slaves bringing large bundles of grass, which they had gathered as part of their daily task, for the mules and cattle. They stood round the edges of the square in perfect silence. In the centre of the square at regular intervals stood the whity-brown gangers, leaning on their long sticks or flicking their boots with whips. Beside them lay the large and savage dogs which prowl round the buildings at night to prevent the slaves escaping in the darkness. As it was Sunday afternoon, the slaves were called upon to enjoy the Sunday treat. First came the children one by one, and to each of them was given a little sup of wine from a pitcher. Then the square began slowly to move round in single file. Slabs of dried fish were given out as rations, and for the special Sunday treat each man or woman received two leaves of raw tobacco from one of the superintendent’s mistresses, or, if they preferred it, one leaf of tobacco and a sup of wine in a mug. Nearly all chose the two leaves of tobacco as the more lasting joy. When they had received their dole, they passed round the square again in single file, till all had made the circuit. From first to last not a single word was spoken. It was more like a military execution than a festival.
About once a month the slaves receive their wages in a similar manner. By the Decree of 1903, the minimum wage for a man is fixed at 2500 reis (something under ten shillings) a month, and for a woman at 1800 reis. But, as a matter of fact, the planters tell me that the average wage is 1200 reis a month, or about one and twopence a week. In some cases the wages are higher, and one or two slaves were pointed out to me whose wages came to fifteen shillings a month. I am told that in the islands, unlike the custom on the mainland, these wages are really paid in cash and not by tokens, but the planters always add that as the money can only be spent in the plantation store, nearly all of it comes back to them in the form of profit on rum or cloth or food.
According to the law, only two-fifths of the wages are to be paid every month, the remaining three-fifths going to a “Repatriation Fund” in San Thomé. In the case of the slaves from Angola this is never done, and it is much to the credit of the Portuguese that, as there is no repatriation, they have dropped the institution of a Repatriation Fund. They might easily have pocketed three-fifths of the slaves’ wages under that excuse, but this advantage they have renounced. They never send the slaves home, and they do not deduct the money for doing it. Neither do they deduct a proportion of the wages which, according to the law, might be sent to the mainland for the support of a man’s family till the termination of his contract. They know a contract terminates only at death, and from this easy method of swindling they also abstain. It is, as I said, to their credit, the more because it is so unlike their custom.
For some reason which I do not quite understand--perhaps because they come under French government--the Cape Verde serviçaes receive a higher wage (three thousand reis for a man and twenty-five hundred for a woman); about a third is deducted every month for repatriation, and in many cases, at all events, the people are actually sent back. So the planters told me, though I have not seen them on a returning ship myself.
According to the law, the wages of all slaves must be raised ten per cent. if they agree to renew their contract for a second term of five years. With the best will in the world, it would be almost impossible to carry out this provision, for no slave ever does agree to renew his contract. His wishes in the matter are no more consulted than a blind horse’s in a coal-pit. The owner or Agent of the plantation waits till the five years of about fifty of his slaves have expired. Then he sends for the Curador from San Thomé, and lines up the fifty in front of him. In the presence of two witnesses and his secretary the Curador solemnly announces to the slaves that the term of their contract is up and the contract is renewed for five years more. The slaves are then dismissed and another scene in the cruel farce of contracted labor is over. One of the planters told me that he thought some of his slaves counted the years for the first five, but never afterwards.
Some planters do not even go through the form of bringing the Curador and the time-expired slaves face to face. They simply send down the papers for signature, and do not mention the matter to the slaves at all. At the end of June, 1905, a planter told me he had sent down the papers in April and had not yet received them back. He was getting a little anxious. “Of course,” he said, “it makes no difference whatever to the slaves. They know nothing about it. But I like to comply with the law.”
In one respect, however, that well-intentioned citizen did not comply with the law at all. The law lays it down that every owner of fifty slaves must set up a hospital with separate wards for the sexes. This man employed nearly two hundred slaves and had no hospital at all. The official doctor came up and visited the sick in their crowded huts twice a month.