PART IV

MORAL AND MATERIAL PROGRESS

I.—The Products of the Oil Palm. II.—The Production of Rubber. III.—The Production of Cocoa. IV.—The Progress of Christian Missions.

I

THE PRODUCTS OF THE OIL PALM

With the date palm we have been long familiar, the cocoa-nut palm likewise, and those too which decorate our ball-rooms, galleries and banqueting halls, we greet as delightsome friends, but what is the oil palm—the Eloesis Guineensis of West Africa? It is said that five thousand years ago its sap was used by the Egyptians for the purpose of embalming the bodies of their great dead. To-day by its aid we travel thousands of miles at express rate; it has been so handled by modern science that it enters largely into our diet; the merchants in Hamburg and Liverpool make fortunes out of it; millions of coloured people live by it, and yet it is barely known to the civilized community. A fortnight’s fairly pleasant steam from Liverpool brings the traveller in sight of the high red clay coast line of Sierra Leone, and there the oil palm first greets the traveller in all its luxuriant grandeur.

[Sidenote: PROPAGATING THE OIL PALM]

From Freetown away down the coast as far as San Paul de Loanda, the traveller is never far from the home of the oil palm—the most valuable tree of West Africa—probably the most prolific source of human sustenance in the world. She greets the traveller everywhere as he steps ashore; she invites him to the cool shade of her avenues leading to some hospitable bungalow; she affords a shelter at intervals along the scorching dusty track—as welcome as an oasis of the desert; she waves at him vigorously from the hill-top like some fluttering banner, or gently nods her graceful plumes in the still valley; she stands as sentinel on the outskirts of the native village, or like some giant memorial column on the plain. All nature strikes the African traveller dumb with admiration, but above all in entrancing loveliness the graceful oil palm reigns supreme.

To the parched and weary she is at once meat and drink and friendly shelter. Her palm cabbage and nut oil are no less palatable than her foaming fresh-drawn wine, and if no other home affords, her branches offer a temporary and not comfortless dwelling. She provides her guest with oil to lubricate his gun, with fibre to plug his boat if it springs a leak; her fronds serve as a weapon to combat the infinite torment of flies, or interlaced as a basket to carry a meal. To her the native goes for a tool or a cooking-utensil, a mat or a loin cloth, a basket or a brush, a fishing net or a rope, a torch or a musical instrument, a roof or a wall. To him she is a necessity, to the traveller a luxury, to the merchant a fortune, to the artist a subject full of charm.

Professor Wyndham Dunstan has stated that the oil palm “does not occur thickly much beyond 200 miles from the coast.” Since those words were written we have learnt that whole forests of the oil palm exist over a thousand miles from the coast. It thrives throughout West Africa wherever the atmosphere is sufficiently humid, but it loves best of all the swampy valleys of Sherboro Island and Nigeria, the cocoa farms of San Thomé, the Gold Coast and the Congo, which are by it provided with the necessary protection from the scorching sun and from the fierce tornadoes which sweep periodically over the land. In the strictest sense the oil palm has never yet been an object of cultivation in West Africa, neither is it in the literal sense self-propagating. The housewife, separating the fibrous pericarp from the nuts, tosses the latter aside or scatters the residue on to the rubbish heap behind the hut, with the inevitable result of an early and vigorous crop of young palms. In the course of time the inhabitants of the village, according to African custom, pick up not only their beds, but also their huts, and walk, perhaps something less than a mile away, where they clear another piece of forest land and build up another village. The old site, thus abandoned to nature, is quickly covered with vigorous growth, but in the race for supremacy the graceful palms lead the way and become the communal property of the former inhabitants.

The screeching grey parrot of West Africa with its horny bill tears the oily fruit from the bunch, after consuming most of the oleaginous fibres of the pericarp, drops the nuts whilst flying, far and wide. These, in turn, add to Africa’s economic wealth, and thus do man and animal join in spreading through ever wider regions the growth of the oil palm.

Within ten years the tree begins to push out its bunches of fruit, beginning with tiny bunches of the size, shape and appearance of an ordinary bunch of black grapes. Some trees bear in eight years, and an earlier date still is claimed for certain varieties, but the fruit at this stage seldom yields any appreciable quantity of oil. From fifteen onwards to a hundred and twenty years, the palm plantations give forth an almost continuous supply of fruit, every tree bearing twice a year. In the rainy season the supply is most abundant, but in the second period, known by many as the “short wet” season there is a fair secondary harvest. All the trees do not, however, bear at the same time, and in many areas of the Equatorial regions where the seasons are not sharply defined or always regular, the supply of nuts is never exhausted.

In appearance a head of fruit resembles a huge bunch of grapes with long protecting thorns protruding between each nut, and a good bunch will contain from 1500 to 2000 nuts. A single fruit in appearance is about the size of a large date, and the pericarp is composed of fibre matted closely together with a yellow solidified oil, which fibrous substance envelops a nut or “stone”; this in turn encloses a kernel of the size and shape of a large hazel kernel, in appearance and composition indistinguishable from the well-known “Brazil nut.” From the fibre a dark reddish oil is obtained, whilst the kernels that are shipped to Europe yield a finer white oil.

[Sidenote: COLLECTING THE NUTS]

The almost universal practice amongst the natives in harvesting the nuts is to climb the tree by walking up the trunk with the aid of a loop of stout creeper. Arriving at the top at a height of sixty or eighty feet, the man deals a few vigorous blows with an axe which severs the bunch or bunches from the tree and they then fall to the ground. As the whole family usually takes part in the production of oil and in the division of labour, the man, having cut down the fruit, descends the tree, picks up his protective spear or gun, and returns home, closely followed by the wife and daughters, who transport the bunches of nuts in the wicker baskets which they have woven in their spare moments.

In every colony a similar process is adopted to separate the fruit from the parent stem. Until it is over ripe, the fruit not only adheres firmly to its stem but the porcupine thorns sometimes two inches long, make separation anything but a pleasant task. The tribes everywhere collect the clusters or bunches into heaps and cover them with plantain or banana leaves, exposing them to the sun for from three to six days, the effect of which is that the nuts, subjected to the hot rays of a tropical sun and cut off from the refreshing sustenance of the mother tree, lose their tenacious grip and readily drop away from their stem.

The methods adopted to force the oil from the fibrous pericarp differ considerably in the several political divisions of West Africa. Roughly, however, they fall into two divisions: (_a_) by fermentation; (_b_) by boiling; and in certain parts of the Kroo Coast by a combination of both methods.

The fermenting process is carried out by placing a large quantity of separated, but hard, nuts into a hole about four feet deep, this having been first lined with plantain leaves. In the regions nearer the coast towns, these pits are either paved or cemented inside and in some cases they are both paved and cemented. The nuts are covered up and then left for some weeks, even months, to ferment thoroughly. They are then either pounded in the pit with wooden pestles, or they may be taken out and treated in prepared wooden mortars.

The process of boiling is more expeditious. The nuts are boiled or steamed until the firmly coagulated fibre shows signs of yielding; then they are placed in an old canoe or large mortar and pounded with wooden pestles. In both processes, whether by fermentation or by boiling, the oily fibre separates itself from the hard inner “stone.” The fibre, which is by this time a tangled mass of yellow and brown, is then taken and squeezed, sometimes with the aid of water, through a woven press and a stream of golden liquid results. Sometimes loads of the oily fibre are thrown pell-mell into a large canoe half filled with water in which the children delight to paddle, causing the oil to rise to the surface, when the elders skim it from the top and carry it in earthenware pots for boiling and straining before sending it on its way to the market and the European consumer.

[Sidenote: OIL AND KERNEL TRADE]

The oil, however, is but one exportable product of the palm tree; the value of the inner kernel may be gathered from the fact that over four million pounds’ worth of palm kernels are sent to Europe every year. This kernel is encased in an extremely hard shell, which varies so much in size that until quite recently there was no satisfactory “stone” cracking machinery in Africa. There are now several machines on the market, but the old grey-haired lady of the West African kraal, with her primitive upper and nether grind stones, still makes by far the most reliable “cracker.”

At Victoria, in German Cameroons, we saw an elaborate set of machinery for dealing in turn with the oily fibrous pericarp of the nut, and later, extracting the kernel from the inner stone. The latter process was that of a general crushing, then throwing the entire mass into a brine bath and so separating the shells from the kernels, which were then taken out and dried in the sun. This process, while being infinitely more expeditious, has the obvious drawback that a large proportion of the kernels are so bruised and broken that it entails a considerable wastage of oil.

THE PALM IN TONNAGE AND IN FIGURES STERLING.

Exports in round figures for the year 1911—

OIL. KERNELS.

Tons. Values. Tons. Values.

French Senegal 1 36 1,418 14,300 ” Guinea 53 1,300 4,500 36,600 ” Ivory Coast 5,800 107,100 5,340 45,500 ” Dahomey 14,400 254,100 34,200 400,000 ” Congo 125 3,100 570 7,600

British Gambia — — 447 4,758 ” Sierra Leone 2,902 69,930 42,893 649,347 ” Gold Coast 6,441 128,916 13,254 175,891 ” Nigeria 77,180 1,696,875 176,390 2,574,405

German Cameroons 3,000 63,000 13,500 177,530 ” Togoland 3,050 61,600 8,100 101,700

Belgian Congo (approximately) 700 20,000 2,500 40,000 ------- ---------- ------- ---------- 113,652 £2,405,957 303,112 £4,227,631

TOTAL OUTPUT.

Tons. Values.

Oil 113,652 £2,405,957 Kernels 303,112 £4,227,631 ------- ---------- 416,764 £6,633,588

The proportionate output from the palm trees from the different colonies of West Africa is therefore—

Square mileage of territories. Tons. Values.

French 992,000 66,407 £869,636 Belgian 900,000 3,200 60,000 British 454,160 319,507 5,300,122 German 224,830 27,650 403,830

Production in figures sterling per square mile under the several colonizing Powers—

£ _s._ _d._ Great Britain 11 13 3 per square mile Germany 1 16 0 ” ” France 0 17 8 ” ” Belgium 0 1 4 ” ”

Whilst the palm provides one of the principal exports of West Africa for consumption in Europe, its domestic uses are inseparable from native life. The fruit is used by the natives in many sections of primitive culinary art. Pounded with manioca leaves, Indian corn and red peppers, a savoury pottage is manufactured which is a universal delight. One of the choicest vegetables in the African continent is the pearly white head of the palm, which, in small trees of two years’ growth, weighs about 1 pound, but in trees of many years’ growth, may turn the scale at 56 pounds. The substance of this vegetable differs in appearance and taste but little from the Brazil nut, but when cooked provides a succulent dish not unlike, though superior to, sea kale. The natives cook this in palm oil, but Europeans usually prefer it boiled and served with a white sauce, or baked in a custard. To obtain this vegetable is almost invariably to destroy the tree, consequently it seldom figures on the every-day menu.

[Sidenote: OIL AND WINE]

Meat, fish and fowl are all of them stewed in palm oil, and, as African meat is deficient in fat, the palm oil makes an excellent and appetizing substitute. I once smelled a very savoury native “hot pot” which, upon examination, revealed a wonderful mixture. The liquid was golden with palm oil, and floating about, adding to the compendium of flavours, I detected bats and beetles, a flat fish “cheek by jowl” with a monkey’s head, caterpillars fitting themselves in with sections of field rats and parrots—altogether a stew delightful to the nostrils, at least of the African boys and girls who squatted around the huge clay cooking pot. The white man, though he usually has no keen appetite for native stews or pottage, lunches and dines off “palm oil chop” with as great a relish as does his Indian confrère upon “curries.” The “chop” may be fish, flesh or fowl, but it all goes by the name “palm oil chop,” which has a happy and almost essential knack in West Africa of hiding a multitude of “foreign bodies.”

No African meal can be regarded as complete without the addition of palm oil, and, as a beverage, palm wine is extensively though moderately consumed. This sparkling beverage closely resembles in appearance the “stone ginger” of civilization. The tribes on the Upper Kasai are probably the greatest consumers of palm wine in Africa. In those parts of the tropics where quantities of sugar cane are cultivated, palm wine competes with a sister product from the cane; the sweet and somewhat insipid taste of the latter being more palatable to some tribes than the sharp flavour of the palm wine. The Eloeis wine is the sap of the palm tree itself, extracted by various means, generally by cutting off the male flower-spike and fixing a calabash to the wound to catch the juice which is removed every morning. Another method is to remove the palm cabbage or head; yet another, to cut down the tree and “dig” a hole in the heart of the trunk, from which the liquid is then scooped into a calabash or earthenware pot. Europeans generally prefer the wine when fresh from the tree, owing to the fact that after a few hours it begins to ferment and loses its sweetness.

The oil palms of West Africa are taking an increasing share in supplying the temporal wants of both the white and the coloured man. It is safe to say that there is no tree in the universe capable of providing to so great and varied an extent, the daily wants of the human organism.

II

THE PRODUCTION OF RUBBER

Rubber has been known for the last four hundred years, but it is only within the last century, or little more, that it has been put to practical use. Civilization was for nearly three hundred years content with the historical fact of Pincon’s Indians of Brazil playing “ball” with crude lumps of rubber, and then it awoke to the fact that rubber could be used to erase pencil marks. In our boyhood Charles Macintosh had established its use as a protective from rain, but in our manhood the annual demand of Great Britain alone for rubber has grown to nearly 50,000 tons. We have lived through the sensation of a “Rubber Boom” which is only now commencing to exact its toll for the immeasurable folly of the thoughtless investing public.

The native use of rubber in West Africa as also among the Brazilian Indians, was first as an aid to merrymaking, in the form of heads of drum-sticks, and in that capacity evoked harmonious chords from the goat-skins tightly stretched over the hollowed forest log. How little these early Africans dreamed that this simple aid to the charms of music would one day deluge their Continent in human blood! There are to-day very few colonies in West Africa without rubber forests which nature—prodigal here as everywhere with her economic gifts—planted generations ago.

The discovery of the great West African rubber supplies dates back about thirty years, but it is a remarkable fact that Stanley in his books on the Founding of the Congo Free State, laid very little stress upon the future of rubber in the Congo.

In 1882 Sir Alfred Maloney urged Southern Nigeria to wake up to the possibilities of rubber, and in 1894 Sir Gilbert Carter, to whom our Nigeria colony owes so much, invited a party of Gold Coasters to explore the hinterland forests with the result that they discovered an abundance of what appeared to be rubber-bearing plants and trees. The native community then set about vigorously searching for rubber with the result that the “Ireh” tree was discovered, and specimens of its latex forwarded to Kew in 1895. Although it had been discovered in the Gold Coast colony ten years earlier the administration in Nigeria was apparently in ignorance of the fact.

There is some evidence that King Leopold received the first intimation of the almost fabulous stores of rubber in the Congo forests between the years 1888 and 1890, and the alert mind of that astute monarch lost no time in formulating plans for its exploitation in the Congo Free State, and what is less generally recognized in the French Congo also.

Since 1885, when the African product first made its presence felt in the rubber market, the natives of that continent have gathered and sent to Europe over 250,000 tons of rubber, the outstanding fact being that all this latex represents sylvan produce, the replacement of which is extremely doubtful. Dr. Chevalier is of the opinion that the natives themselves received for the total output 500,000,000 francs or approximately 9d. per pound. This I very much doubt, for it must not be forgotten that a large proportion of the rubber was obtained, if not for nothing, then for very little.

[Sidenote: WEST AFRICAN VARIETIES]

The principal sources of rubber latex are the Funtumia (Ireh) and the Landolphia varieties, which, to the ordinary reader, fall respectively under the classification of trees and vines. The full-grown Funtumia tree measures from 2 ft. 6 in. to 4 ft., or more, in circumference. The growth of the Landolphia is wild and erratic, creeping along the ground sometimes for several yards, then gradually winding its way through the undergrowth and away up the limbs and branches of the firmly rooted forest giants to a height of forty to fifty feet, then in the full enjoyment of light, it becomes vigorously prolific, sending its leafy branches in all directions, and interlacing the trees overhead. Most scientists seem to agree that it is only when the Landolphia emerges into the sunlight at the tree tops that material size is imparted to the main stem. From the economic standpoint it is important to bear in mind that ordinarily a Landolphia vine takes from ten to twenty years to climb its way up the tree trunk of the average forest tree, at which period the main stem of the vine is seldom more than one inch in diameter.

Beyond question by far the larger proportions of rubber from Central Africa have been obtained from the Landolphia vines, that from the Congo basin almost entirely so. Next in order comes the output from Funtumia forests of the more northerly latitudes, and beyond this a certain amount of grass rubber has been obtained, but the results barely justify the trouble involved.

The extraordinary development and almost general investment in the rubber industry have familiarized the public with rubber production. Almost every schoolboy could write an essay upon the herring-bone or half herring-bone tapping, coolie lines, spacing and so forth. The production of rubber conveys to most minds well-ordered estates of upright trees, model workmen’s dwellings, drying and boiling sheds, constructed by skilled Europeans, rolling tables, hot and cold water supplies, all under the control of neatly clad coolies. None of these conditions apply to West Africa, for there everything is to-day primitive.

The larger Funtumia trees are tapped in a very rough “herring-bone” manner and the latex caught either in leaves or in a calabash, and then transferred to a wooden receptacle for coagulation, but large numbers of trees have been bled to death through the almost incessant tapping to which they have been subjected. Funtumia more than any other variety requires carefully-regulated tapping, and it is well-nigh hopeless to expect the native collector in the hinterland regions to exercise that degree of care which the Funtumia tree demands as the price of giving forth a sustained output. The damage done to the bark alone in the rough and ready methods of extraction almost invariably renders the tree unfit for future tapping; the trees will live sometimes for a few years, but before long they perish. Dr. Chevalier, writing of the Ivory Coast, says: “Wherever exploitation has spread it has caused the adult Funtumia trees to disappear very rapidly. Some are cut level with the ground by the natives in order to extract their maximum yield, others, tapped too frequently, die standing, at last there remain only young Funtumia trees, under fifteen years of age.” This is true of the major part of the rubber-bearing regions of West Africa.

[Sidenote: METHODS OF EXTRACTION]

Several methods are followed in the extraction of the latex from the Landolphia. In every case that has come under our notice the vines were cut down with little thought for the future. Indeed in the upper regions of the Congo the natives sever the vine close to the ground and then tearing it from the trees to which it clings, they cut the vines into lengths of about eighteen inches and pile them into stacks so that from the severed ends the latex may bleed into forest leaves or gourds. Many of the tribes raise the stack of severed creepers upon forked sticks and kindle a slow fire beneath as they assert that the latex flows more freely and completely with the application of heat.

The whole process is beyond question most wasteful, particularly where the natives not only sever the vine, but dig up the roots, compelling these also to yield up their stores of latex. To-day as the traveller marches through the rubber forests of the Congo basin he meets every few yards little heaps of decaying vine from which the rubber has been taken. Frequently too, one sees overhead a tangled mass of dead vine which has withered away through the main stem having been severed. The natives were either in too great a hurry, or else unable to climb for those spreading vines which would often measure some hundreds of yards.

Another method is that adopted by the native tribes in the Kasai River of the Congo, and the Lunda province of Portuguese Angola. Whole families or tribes will make a temporary home in the forest, pitching their little huts on a piece of high ground near a stream. Every day the men will scatter in all directions cutting down and gathering the vines into bundles which they will convey to these little encampments.

The bark of the vines is then stripped off and laid out on blocks of wood, old canoes, boards, or trunks of trees, preparatory to beating it with heavy wooden mallets, which process gradually reduces the bark to a stringy mass not unlike shredded tobacco. It is then threshed with smaller mallets which in time gradually pulverize the wood element into fine powder, leaving “pancakes” of red rubber, about the size of a breakfast plate. These are then cut into thin strips, starting from the outer edge, and wound into balls, just as the manufacturers wind balls of knitting wool. This method though equally wasteful in collection, conserves the whole of the rubber latex.

Travellers in the Kasai territories of the Congo are generally first aware of their approach to human habitation by hearing the distant thud, thud, of the rubber mallets which is a feature of almost every village of that region.

Hand in hand with the rubber work of the Congo is that of cane basket making, which the busy women weave in all sizes for packing the rubber, thus avoiding the heavy cost of importing “shooks” or barrels from Europe. Every year some hundreds of thousands of these light but very strong hampers are made for conveying the rubber to the buying stations and thence to the European markets.

[Sidenote: THE FUTURE]

The West African rubber problems of to-day which overshadow all others are those of exhaustion and replenishment. Are the forests denuded of rubber, and if so, is there any probability or possibility, of rubber cultivation to replace the exhausted supply? Both these phases of the question are difficult of complete and categorical answer.

For thirty years now exploitation has been running wild through the forests, and within the last fifteen years the rate and methods of exploitation have from every point of view been ruinous. The Funtumia trees have been ruthlessly cut down and even where tapping has taken place, it has been done at any and every season of the year, and in general practice tapped whenever and wherever the tree would yield an ounce of rubber.

Dr. Chevalier is of the opinion that the Funtumia will replace itself owing to the remarkable habit of self-propagation which the tree possesses. The light feathery seeds are easily carried upon every breeze it is true, but unfortunately there is little hope of preserving these young trees from crude and reckless tapping in the farther recesses of the forests. It is generally accepted that the rubber vine areas are being rapidly exhausted. Mr. Consul Mackie says of the Congo, “Wild rubber in districts in which it has been worked on an extensive scale, is now becoming scarce in places. Many of the large rubber zones have been worked out completely.”

We were informed by natives of the Kasai who were bringing in their rubber to the factories, that whereas ten years ago they had only to go one or two days into the forests before finding rubber, they now have to journey nearly a fortnight before they can locate any appreciable number of vines. Throughout the Equatorial regions of the Congo, the rubber vines and trees are so completely worked out that the natives have given up attempting to collect rubber and devote all their energies to gum copal and palm oil.

Most disinterested “coasters” will support Dr. Christy in the opinion that if the African rubber industry is to depend upon the wild forests there is very little chance of its survival.

[Sidenote: CULTIVATION IN THE CONGO]

Within the last fifteen years efforts have been made in various colonies to cultivate rubber. The most promising results are certainly in Nigeria, where the Benin communal plantations are proving so successful that villages in other districts are commencing similar plantations. Many thousands of Funtumia trees are now ready for tapping and some of the rubber obtained has secured 6s. 6d. per pound. Individual native farmers are now taking up rubber planting, and in Southern Nigeria we saw some well-ordered plantations under native control, one of which started in 1896 has over 30,000 trees and gives promise of a good output. In the Gold Coast the natives are interspersing Funtumia trees with their cocoa plants, under the instruction of Government advisers. In Belgian Congo vigorous efforts have been made for the last twelve years to cultivate rubber. In the year 1899 a Royal decree was issued requiring that 150 trees or vines should be planted for every ton of rubber exported, and in June, 1902, the number of plants was raised to 500. As a further incentive some of the Concessionnaire Companies gave a bonus to their agents for every tree planted. The ordinary Belgian being very keen on piling up his banking account the planting was pursued with vigour. As, however, the ordinance did not specify the variety to be planted the Agents of the State and Concessionaire Companies planted varieties good and bad, known and unknown! until on paper the total number of trees planted ran into many millions.

Every few months an Inspector was supposed to visit these areas, but as this official usually had an area of about 25,000 square miles under his control, he was seldom able to visit more than one centre every year. Badly paid, with little allowance for provisions, this man usually responded to the warm hospitality of his planter host, and generally did not make exhaustive inquiries into the rubber planting. On one occasion such an inspector visited a district after the Agent had gone to Europe, in order to “check” the trees and vines before the new Agent arrived to take over the stock and plantations. He asked me if I could direct him to one plantation of 60,000 trees and vines of which he possessed a neatly drawn chart. I could only direct him to where the plantation was supposed to exist, and he immediately set off on what I hinted was a useless journey, and as I expected returned in the afternoon without having discovered a single vine!

Apart from these paper plantations there are certainly several millions of rubber trees in the Congo, and every species almost has been tried. At one time the Belgian tax-payer was told that the Manihot Glaziovii was going to provide fabulous returns, but when the floods came and the winds blew, the spreading Manihots caught the force of the elements and toppled over in all directions like ninepins. The Funtumia was then going to save the Congo from financial disaster, but the “borers” took a fancy to the tree and this, coupled with the fact that in the Congo the Funtumia yields but little rubber, all serious attempts at the extension of Funtumia have been abandoned.

Hopes are now being centred upon the Hevea Braziliensis, but though many of these trees are of ten years’ growth the yield is equally disappointing.

In German Cameroons rubber planting is being pushed forward mainly with the Funtumia and Hevea varieties. In Portuguese West Africa hopes are centred upon Manihot and Funtumia.

The best that can be said of the rubber cultivation in West Africa is that it has not yet passed the experimental stage, and that there is some promise of success in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria.

[Sidenote: RUBBER COMPETITION]

There is, however, one other factor which must not be overlooked, Mr. Herbert Wright pointed out last year that cultivated plantation rubber would soon be arriving in quantities which would cause embarrassment to the rubber merchants. It is certain that when this happens prices are bound to fall, perhaps dramatically. The question for the West African rubber planting community to ask is: can they, when prices fall, compete with the West and East Indies, where labour is plentiful and cheap, and where there is practically no costly land transport. A merchant from the Straits Settlements once informed me that West African rubber producers must be prepared to compete with the East—at 9d. per pound. If that prediction should be justified by future events then West Africa will be wise to concentrate upon its trusty friends the Oil Palm and Cocoa Tree.

III

THE PRODUCTION OF COCOA

Cocoa to most individuals is suggestive of carefully and tastefully packed tins, or in chocolate form, of delightful little packages done up in neat silver paper and prettily tied with bows of silk ribbon. To others it means a welcome and fragrant breakfast or supper beverage. To few, indeed, does it represent anything else. The man in the street, if he thinks at all upon investing his savings in cocoa, argues that after all there is a limit to human digestion, particularly where sweetmeats are concerned, consequently he need not trouble himself about “futures” in cocoa for the field is at best a restricted one. It never occurs to him that the demand for every species of vegetable oil and fat is becoming more clamant every day. Somehow he never asks himself why Bournville, York and Bristol cocoa is 2_s._ 6_d._ per pound, and Dutch only 1_s._ per pound. He presumes, and if he tries it he knows, that one quality is better than the other, but it does not occur to him that there is something in the one beverage which is lacking in the other. The butter from the latter—the pure fat too expensive to eat, but not too expensive to incorporate in pomades for personal adornment, has been extracted. There is no more rigid limit to the demand for cocoa than to the demand for rubber; not only so, but nothing has yet appeared even on the horizon of our imagination that can take the place occupied to-day by the cocoa bean, both for internal and external consumption. This cannot be said with regard to rubber, wool or silk.

[Sidenote: COCOA IN CULTIVATION]

The total world’s supply is to-day close on a quarter of a million tons of cocoa per annum. The East and West Indies and the great Amazonian Valleys, have for generations poured their supplies into Europe, but it is only within the last thirty years that West Africa has made her influence felt upon the cocoa markets of Europe. It is very difficult to obtain reliable evidence as to the colonists who first introduced cocoa to West Africa, probably the credit for it belongs to the Portuguese, whose love of colonization is everywhere evinced by the plants, fruits and grain which they conveyed in past years from one continent to another.

Given a humid atmosphere, a well-watered land and a tropical sun, cocoa will grow almost anywhere up to a height of nearly 1500 feet. Of such lands enjoying atmospheric conditions highly suitable to the production of cocoa, there are nearly one million square miles in the tropical regions of the West African continent. San Thomé and Principe, with less than 300 square miles under cultivation, supply to the world’s markets over 30,000 tons of cocoa every year; if, therefore, but one quarter of the potential cocoa producing areas of West Africa could be brought under cultivation at the same rate, there could be produced over 25,000,000 tons of cocoa.

To-day cocoa is being cultivated in the German colonies of Togoland and Cameroons; in the Portuguese colonies of Cabenda, San Thomé and Principe; in the Belgian Congo; in the Spanish island of Fernando Po, and in the British colonies of the Gold Coast and Nigeria. In all these the production has distinctive features.

From the standpoint of plantation arrangements and the application of scientific methods, the Portuguese in San Thomé are easily first. This no doubt is due to the fact that for over twenty years the planters have been concentrating all their efforts upon the cocoa bean. Throughout their whole area San Thomé and the sister island of Principe are under cocoa cultivation and the traveller never gets away from the sour odour of fermenting cocoa. A series of high hills and deep valleys with numerous rivulets represent the physical features of the islands. The hill ranges, for the most part, rise tier above tier, until they culminate in the Pico da San Thomé with an altitude of just over 7000 feet. The summit of the peak is seldom seen, for the island lies bathed in mists, which warmed by a tropical sun provide the ideal cocoa-growing climate.

The streams which flow unceasingly down the hillsides are scientifically trenched so that a continuous supply of water traverses the cocoa groves all over the islands, and the farms in the centre of each group of plantations all enjoy a plentiful supply of excellent water.

[Sidenote: PORTUGUESE COCOA]

The fermenting sheds are all of them organized in an up-to-date manner for which a knowledge of industries in other Portuguese colonies hardly prepares the traveller. Nowhere throughout West Africa are there such scientific and elaborate cocoa drying grounds as one sees on these Portuguese islands. The majority of cocoa planters in West Africa are satisfied with cemented drying grounds in open courtyards. The cocoa is spread out to dry and left in the open not only during the whole day, but throughout the night. On several roças on the cocoa islands, the Portuguese have, at enormous expense, fitted up drying grounds which are mechanically moved into shelter whenever a storm threatens. Doubtless it is due to the great care exercised by the Portuguese in the work of fermenting and drying that their cocoa is so uniformly good.

Altogether there are nearly 300 roças on the two islands and, with one or two exceptions, they are in Portuguese hands; there is a Belgian plantation, and one or two are owned by natives whose ability to make cocoa production a financial success is demonstrated by the fact that one who died recently left £6000 for the education of the children of San Thomé.

The cocoa plantations on these islands are all so compact and within such easy reach of the sea-shore that transport is quite easy. Both horses and mules live fairly well on the islands, and these, coupled with bullock carts and some 1500 kilometres of Decauville railway throughout the islands and running out to the pier, render unnecessary the porterage which constitutes such a problem for the cocoa planters in every other colony in West Africa. It is a melancholy thought that this industry, built up at so great cost to human life—both white and coloured—stands only a bare chance of permanence. The lack of indigenous labour, coupled with the absence of statesmanship on the part of the Home Government, can only lead to irretrievable disaster.

The nearest approach to the Portuguese systems of cocoa production is to be found in Belgian Congo, where physical and climatic conditions are almost identical with those of the Portuguese islands. The first plantations are met with close to the mouth of the river in the Mayumbe country, but before reaching the next one has to traverse nearly a thousand miles. These are situated at the confluence of the Aruwimi river and the main Congo, and there are besides several small plantations on the Aruwimi itself. As cocoa-producing enterprises, the only ones to take into serious consideration are those of the Mayumbe country, south of the Chiloanga—the Portuguese river, which enters the sea at Landana. The plantations are run under three separate interests, and may be classified as State controlled, Roman Catholic and Merchant. The merchants complain that their difficulty in obtaining labour is greatly increased owing to the missions and the State using forced labour for their plantations. It seems incredible that this should be so, but these complaints are neither new nor isolated. The Commission of Enquiry sent to the Congo by King Leopold had evidence before it which shewed that the Mission farms at least were largely staffed with forced labour. The following passage is an extract from the report of that Commission in 1905:

“The greater part of the natives which people the chapel farms are neither orphans nor workmen engaged by contract. They are demanded of the Chiefs, who dare not refuse; and only force, more or less disguised, enables then to be retained.”

If the Belgian Government could concentrate upon a serious development of the Mayumbe country by laying down railways, making roads, building bridges, opening up creeks, and rivers, there is no reason why the Mayumbe country should not increase its yearly output of cocoa by many thousands of tons.

The Spanish contribution to the world’s supply is not yet or ever likely to be anything material, for as colonists in Africa the Spaniards have ceased to count.

[Sidenote: GERMAN COCOA]

In German colonies cocoa growing is extending rapidly and from a financial point of view satisfactorily. The German Administration in the Cameroons, however, seems to favour such enterprises mainly as European undertakings in which the natives are mere labourers. Within recent years, probably in view of the success of the Gold Coast production, some effort has been made to encourage the natives by gifts of seed and young plants to lay down their own plantations. But the prevailing German opinion has been set forth in a German report, published in _Der Tropenpflanzer_ (No. 1, January, 1912), wherein it is stated:—

“What is required in the Cameroons is a more liberal policy on the part of the German Government towards the plantations, both as regards the terms for acquiring land, and on the part of the district officials to obtain better facilities for getting labour, in order to warrant and make possible a large and profitable extension of the cocoa-planting area. This will mean a material improvement in the prosperity of the colony, for it is evident that what the Gold Coast has achieved by means of an intelligent population, and under suitable climatic conditions, can and will never be done in Cameroons with such material as the Bakwiris, Dualas, etc.”

Whilst colonial Germans take this view, the native certainly will never emulate the Gold Coast tribes, for the African has a habit of acting up, or down, to European expectations. The Editor of _Tropical Life_ truly remarked that whilst these views are held in Berlin, “Germany would never do any good with the Bakwiris and Dualas; neither did she with the Herreros, and so ‘punished’ them because they, poor wretches, could not understand the German method of ruling Africa as do the German Michels at home.”

There is some reason to believe that the cultivation of the cocoa bean began in Cameroons and Victoria some years earlier than that on the Gold Coast, and it is even claimed by some that the phenomenally successful industry of the British colony was commenced with a seed pod obtained from Ambas Bay.

[Sidenote: A ROMANCE IN COCOA]

There is probably no single feature in colonial enterprise which can compare with the cocoa romance of the British colony of the Gold Coast. The honour of having introduced the industry into that colony is eagerly debated. Everyone agrees that it belongs to either the Basel Mission through their introduction of West Indian Christians, or to a certain native carpenter returning from Ambas Bay, or Victoria. Mr. Tudhope, the Director of Agriculture, is inclined to give credit to the native, but it must be admitted that the Basel Mission authorities possess the most circumstantial evidence in support of their claim. One of their oldest missionaries at Christiansborg states that about the year 1885 he saw the original cocoa tree at Odumase; another, that he saw this tree in full bearing in 1895. It is instructive to recall that the first export, amounting to 80 lbs. weight, was in the year 1891—that is six years after the original tree was seen at Odumase.

The missionaries, however, readily admit that soon after their agents introduced cocoa at Odumase, a native arrived from, the Cameroon colony and planted beans at Mampong. From these two centres, fifteen miles apart, the industry has established itself in every district of the colony and penetrated ten days’ march beyond Kumasi.

The organization is of the simplest kind—purely and solely a native industry, few of the plantations being large ones, none more than about twenty-five to thirty acres and the majority not more than two to five acres. We saw none owned by white men, although I believe there are one or two, which are, however, quite insignificant. The volume of cocoa which pours out from the Gold Coast colony flows almost exclusively from countless small holdings spread all over the hinterland. The farms are not so close together as those of San Thomé, but the traveller cannot walk many miles anywhere without passing through the plantations of cocoa and palm trees.

The atmospheric conditions resemble the Mayumbe country and San Thomé, the rainfall varying between 32.09 and 54.92 per annum, otherwise the territory is not so well watered as the Belgian and Portuguese possessions. In spite of this, the colony can produce a quantity and quality of cocoa that compares well with other areas. When at the Botanical Gardens of Aburi, we saw a plot of cocoa measuring one and two-fifths acres with 259 trees planted fifteen feet apart. The yield from this plot between October 23rd and December 31st, 1909, was 18,200 pods. Mr. Anderson, reporting upon this experimental plantation says, “Such results will not often be exceeded in any cocoa-growing country.”

In the year 1891, we almost see that Gold Coast native offering for sale the first harvest of cocoa. It is only 80 lbs. in weight and with the greatest ease he carries it to the white man’s store. To the amazement of his native friends the grower received £4 for that basket of cocoa!

Twenty years later the export of 80 lbs. weight has grown to nearly 90 millions. Since the day that the native husbandman disposed of his 80 lbs. of cocoa, the industry has never wavered. We were informed by white men who have been long on the coast that when the natives realized the value of cocoa there was an impetuous and overwhelming demand for seed until competition became so keen that a sovereign a bean was the general rate!

In 1902 the export had exceeded £100,000; in 1907 it had passed half-a-million, and in 1911 leaving gold in the rear of competition for first place it raced away beyond the finger post of a million and a half sterling. The whole of this, be it remembered, is a native industry!

The Gold Coast natives are justly proud of their extensive enterprise and assert that they will not cease extending their plantations until every acre they can cultivate and every man they can use is producing cocoa.

[Sidenote: THE COCOA CARRIER]

Not the least interesting spectacle in the Gold Coast is the transport of cocoa, the bulk of the inland produce being carried by porters to the railhead, and sometimes the roadways as far as the eye can penetrate are one long line of cocoa bags on the heads of hundreds of carriers. This carrying trade has produced an extraordinary flow of free labour into the whole hinterland of the Gold Coast. At Adawso, a buying station nearly fifteen miles from the railhead, one firm alone employs in the season over 3000 carriers who cover the distance to the rail station of Pakro once, frequently twice, a day with a bag of cocoa. The remuneration being according to the quantity carried, there is an eagerness to earn the maximum within the twelve hours of daylight. The men who leave by daybreak will return about three o’clock in the afternoon, often to pick up another load and carry it to the railhead, returning again by moonlight.

The carriers are mostly Hausas, but the fame of the Gold Coast carrier traffic has spread far into the northern regions of Africa with the result that recognized caravan routes now come right down through the northern territories. These carriers, many of them from around and even beyond Lake Chad, drive herds of cattle down to the Gold Coast colony about harvest time. They sell the cattle and then carry cocoa for the season. When the main harvest is over and there is little cocoa carrying, they will purchase loads of kola nuts which they carry back with them to the far interior and sell _en route_ at a considerable profit. Thus they make a threefold financial return—on the sale of cattle, cocoa carrying, and profits on the kola nut trade.

The transport of cocoa is chiefly in the hands of alien labour, and should the flow of this labour cease from any cause whatever, the cocoa industry would suffer a check from which it would take years to recover. The coastal regions are fairly secure, for most of the districts within twenty miles of the coast are reached by a daily service of motor lorries under the management of the European cocoa-buying firms. Many of the native farmers within thirty miles of Accra, however, with true African trading instinct prefer selling their cocoa at a higher price at the port of embarkation, and so have created the interesting system of “barrel rolling.” In the season these strongly bound and ponderous casks are purchased from the European stores, filled with cocoa, and rolled to the sea-shore. Travelling along the somewhat primitive Gold Coast roads one meets at frequent intervals perspiring natives struggling with the barrels which, filled with cocoa, weigh considerably over half-a-ton. They may be “holding on” to a barrel racing down a steep incline, or three of them straining their utmost to force the ponderous weight up a steep hill. Occasionally they come to grief, for we saw more than one cask which had fallen over a cliff into a deep gorge below. Generally speaking, three men will undertake to roll two barrels to the coast, the three concentrating their efforts upon a single barrel going uphill, while on the level road or down hill they control the two barrels between them. We met three such men who had rolled two casks for twenty-five to thirty miles, a task of two days, for which they receive 20_s._ per cask.

[Sidenote: TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES]

The problem which faces administrator, merchant and native producer is that of transport. This threatens to become acute, for we were informed by a merchant who recently journeyed beyond Kumasi that large consignments of cocoa were lost owing to the lack of transport facilities. At the same time, given a fair price for cocoa in the home market, just treatment for transport labourers, the extension of roads and light railways, there is no reason why a single ton of cocoa should fail to reach the coast.

In the Gold Coast colony the white man occupies his normal position in the tropics—the connecting link or middle-man between the European manufacturer and the native producer. The Government very wisely endeavours to keep the industry in the hands of the native farmers and assists them by sending lecturers through the colony, whose duty it is to advise the farmers upon pruning, fermentation, drying, the danger of pests, and the general principles of modern agricultural science. With inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State.

The other British colony in which cocoa has a future is Southern Nigeria. To read the Government reports of ten years ago there seemed little hope that the natives of this colony would become cocoa farmers, or indeed that they would ever do much more than vegetate in the agricultural world. Africa is the land of surprises, and more and more the African is surprising Europe by exploding “the lazy nigger theory.”

The Acting Secretary of Southern Nigeria, writing his 1903 report from Old Calabar, said:—

“With every year that passes, it becomes increasingly important that new exports, indicating new areas of work and development, should make an appearance on the export lists of the Protectorate. That ‘Palm Oil’ and ‘Palm Kernels’ will ever cease to be the dominant products is more than unlikely; but these products demand nothing from the native in the way of labour that the veriest bushman cannot carry out. Portions of this Protectorate must be gradually turned over—and education may succeed, where persuasion fails—to the production of other commodities. It is not in the nature of the average West African to lay out capital for which there is no immediate return. He can understand the yam growing at his door; he can understand the cask of oil to be filled before his ‘boys’ can return with the required cloth, pipe, or frock-coat, but he will not sow for his son to reap; nor will a village work, of its own initiative, for the benefit of the next generation that is to occupy it. It is this difficulty that has rendered so great the task of encouraging the rubber industry. It is for this reason that cocoa and coffee have never been properly taken up by the natives themselves.”

This is just what the Belgian and German Governments are proclaiming to-day.

[Sidenote: DOUBLING THE OUTPUT]

At this period cocoa was just beginning to grip the native mind in Southern Nigeria; he had begun to “sow for his son to reap”; he had begun to understand something more “than the yam growing at his door”; he had in fact just dispatched 300,000 lbs. of cocoa to Europe. The very next year the Acting Governor was able to write: “There has been an enormous development in cocoa,” and the Southern Nigeria natives, as if in unconscious protest against the Governor’s 1903 report, poured into the European markets over 1,000,000 lbs. of cocoa beans! Two years later, the export had risen to 1,500,000 lbs. Turning to the Government report three years later again, we find that the export had again doubled itself, and was then over 3,000,000 lbs. “These figures,” said the Colonial Secretary, “indicate the extraordinary expansion that has taken place of late years in the cultivation of this plant.” Finally, turning to the most recent report, we find that the export has again doubled itself in two years, _i.e._ over 6,000,000 lbs.

The actual figures are as follows:—

1903 288,614 lbs. £3,652 1904 1,189,460 ” £18,874 1906 1,619,987 ” £27,054 1908 3,060,609 ” £50,587 1910 6,567,181 ” £100,000 (approximately)

It is somewhat doubtful whether this ratio of doubling the output every two years will be sustained, for it is considerably in excess even of the Gold Coast rates of increase. There are advantages possessed by Southern Nigeria which natural conditions deny to the Gold Coast—the heavy surf, and the lack of good shipping accommodation, tell heavily against the merchants and the native producers of the Gold Coast, whereas it is possible to load and unload cargoes in Lagos without their suffering any damage from sea water. Again, the cocoa areas of Southern Nigeria enjoy in the main a more generous water supply than those of the Gold Coast.

The general statistics of the cocoa trade, compiled upon the materialistic basis of tons and sovereigns, are not without interest to the man outside the cocoa community. For example, the Portuguese at present produce more cocoa on their two little islands of San Thomé and Principe than any other cocoa-producing area in the world. They produce from those 400 square miles of volcanic rocky land more than twice the quantity produced by the Republic of Venezuela with a tropical region of nearly 400,000 square miles. At the same time out of the eighteen cocoa-consuming countries of the world the Portuguese are proportionately the smallest consumers of Linnæus’ “Food of the Gods.” Another interesting feature is the growth of the British export from the West African colonies. Within ten years this has multiplied itself something like twelve times over, _i.e._ in round figures from about 2500 tons in 1902 to over 30,000 tons to-day.

Cocoa grows apparently with greater ease in West Africa than in any other cocoa-producing area in the world. The elaborate systems of manuring which seem imperative in most tropical colonies never enter the head of the West African producer. He piles the fermenting husks in heaps between the rows of trees and then when thoroughly decayed he throws the refuse round the base of the trees.

Insect pests abound, in fact it is seldom one sees a cocoa tree free from the tunnels of the devouring termite, and the bark-boring beetle too makes his presence felt, particularly in the German Cameroons, but in the great cocoa-producing colonies of the Gold Coast and San Thomé, the natives and the Portuguese are profound believers in the principle of “live and let live,” at least in favour of the insect world. The Germans, in all things scientific, have attempted to deal with the pest-ridden area by manuring with superphosphate and potassium chloride, and a largely increased yield is claimed for areas treated in this manner.

[Sidenote: SPACING]

In very few plantations that we visited was there any adherence to the wide spacing so strongly advised by expert agriculturists. The British Botanical Gardens of Aburi set an example by laying out experimental plots with cocoa trees fifteen feet apart, but the natives in that colony, and also in Southern Nigeria, ridicule this advice and declare that at such distance they find the rays of the sun are able to penetrate so freely that the ground becomes baked and the roots are robbed of the humidity which is vital to the growth of good cocoa trees. It is noteworthy that on Grenada and other West Indian estates, there is also a tendency to plant more closely than the experts advise. Neither in the Gold Coast nor in Southern Nigeria do many plantations give wider spacing than eight feet apart, and thus many of them crowd from 500 to 700 trees upon a single acre. The plantations in British West Africa being entirely under native control, there are no very reliable statistics upon the annual yield per tree. One official at the Botanical Gardens of Aburi estimated that the natives obtain about 7 lbs. of cocoa per tree per annum; this is a very high average, and I am inclined to think seldom attained, for in Trinidad the annual yield is somewhere about 1 lb. per tree. We visited one large cocoa plantation in Southern Nigeria, where a native had planted 100,000 cocoa trees about one-half of which were already yielding, and from the 50,000 he had obtained within the year 30 tons of cocoa, or an average per tree of a little over 1¼ lbs.

The most important question, that from which the planter is never free, is that of labour. The Germans put the labourers on contracts of twelve months with wages of 8_s._ to 10_s._ per month with food, but the conditions of these plantations are not likely to inspire any great enthusiasm amongst humanitarians or economists. The abject fear exhibited by the natives whenever the white man approaches is too eloquent to be mistaken, moreover the whip is carried by the planters as openly as a man in Europe carries a walking-stick. Whips and free contracts seldom go together. Under another section I have dealt with Portuguese labour which in the main is a system of slavery, although it carries with it a paper wage of about 10_s._ per month and rations.

[Sidenote: COST OF LABOUR]

The native farmers of Southern Nigeria and the Gold Coast employ a good deal of native labour and generally speaking find little difficulty in obtaining all they want. These native farmers, however, prepare their contracts somewhat differently from the European, generally they are for “twelve months of thirty working days,” and the wages vary from 15_s._ to 20_s._ per month, whilst a foreman will get 30_s._ a month. The labourers are free to go at any time, but those who complete their contracts to the satisfaction of the employer are usually given a bonus.

Cocoa growing is probably the least arduous labour in the tropical world of agriculture, as it involves less exposure and at no stage can it be called dangerous as is the case with copra, palm oil and indigenous rubber. The proportion of labourers employed varies according to the colony and circumstances. In the island of Fernando Po, the planters endeavour to employ one man per acre, but the restricted supply of labour seldom permits so ideal a proportion. In the Portuguese island of San Thomé, one labourer is allowed for each hectare under cultivation, but it must require a good deal of “persuasion” to get a native to control an average of at least 2¼ acres of cocoa.

Concurrently with native labour is the question of white supervision which is necessarily costly. On one cocoa plantation of San Thomé, with a total expenditure of £23,000 no less than £3000 is spent upon white control. Upon those Belgian plantations of Mayumbe which are cultivated by free labour, there is barely any white supervision, whilst on the Portuguese islands the proportion of employés works out at about one white man to every thirty natives.

So far as it is possible at the moment to forecast the future of cocoa production in West Africa, the British system alone rests upon a solid basis, for the obvious reason that all other fields are dependent upon systems of labour supply which have little chance of continuance, much less extension. The indigenous industry of the British colonies working in its own interests, unencumbered by the heavy cost of European supervision and the drawbacks of imported contract labour, will, under the guidance of a paternal and sympathetic administration, certainly outdistance and leave far behind in the race for supremacy such systems as those which prevail in San Thomé and Principe.

This virile British enterprise which is bounding forward throughout the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria has only one real enemy—the concessionnaire hunter. Fortunately, the British Government is fully alive to the danger and is determined, so far as possible, to keep the agricultural land in the hands of the natives. If this can be secured without placing powers in the hands of the Government which would lead to widespread disaffection and unrest amongst the natives, then the cocoa industry of British West Africa promises to eclipse all other cocoa-producing areas of the world.

IV

THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS

The day has gone by when the world could dismiss Christian missions in West Africa with a contemptuous sneer, for Christian missionary effort with its eloquent facts, definitely established, can no longer be ignored. Of all the forces which have made for real progress in West Africa, Christianity stands some say first, others second, but none can place it last. To it belongs primarily in point of time at least, the economic prosperity of the Gold Coast. To it belongs, almost entirely, the credit for the native clerks and educated men on the coast. To it the natives owe their knowledge of useful crafts. To one section of the Christian Church at least belongs the honour of having on the spot saved the Congo natives from extirpation.

Whilst all missions have much in common, the investigator cannot but observe the fact that administrators and commercial men alike will, in the majority of cases, hold in a measure of contempt the Protestant missionary, whilst they esteem highly his Catholic brethren. One searches for a reason for this attitude, which can neither be found in the devotion of the missionary—for heroes abound in both sections—nor is it to be found in the character and success of their respective missionary labours, for in this particular both sections are witnessing encouraging results. The only answer which the administrator and trader will give is that Father O’Donnell is “a good fellow.” It is difficult to escape from the conclusion that the good father is more “diplomatic” than his bluff and somewhat puritanical Protestant _confrère_. The Protestant missionaries with greater freedom than that allowed to the Catholic Fathers, criticize administrations, report abuses, and generally give any form of oppression or iniquity a quick, even reckless exposure. The colossal crime of the Congo was exposed on the spot almost entirely by the Protestant missionaries, although far outnumbered by the Catholics. In the French Congo are established several Roman Catholic Orders, yet hardly a priest has raised his voice against the atrocities committed there. The slavery of Angola and San Thomé has been exposed primarily by Protestants, the priests standing by and for the most part content to witness the traffic in human beings without a protest. I do not condemn, but merely state facts. I know too well how the sufferings of native tribes have appealed to generous members of the Roman Catholic Church, but no review of Christian missions in West Africa would be honest or complete without some reference to this fundamental difference between the two great sections of the Christian Church.

[Sidenote: MISSIONARIES AND ABUSES.]

My chief reason, however, for calling attention to this feature is that the antipathy towards Christian missionaries is hardly likely to become less marked in the near future. The great changes which are taking place may precipitate a grave situation within the next twenty years. The attitude of administrators is no longer the benevolent tutelage of native races. There is an increasing autocracy in most colonies; the martial spirit with its harsh regulations and rigorous discipline, so out of place in nature’s calm paradise, is permeating every department of affairs. This spirit brooks no opposition, knows no sympathy, and sometimes even forgets justice. It blows hot or cold, where and when it listeth, but it tends always towards menacing native peace and progress. High-minded Christian men must be driven by this restless spirit into an increasingly resolute defence of their native communities.

Commercial methods, too, are undergoing a still more far-reaching change. As I have already pointed out, the old-time merchant is giving place to the highly organized syndicate, which possesses neither heart nor conscience and is generally strong enough in influence at home and power abroad to menace any administration, and, if necessary, threaten the various Governments in two, three and even more countries at one time. The missionary, bold in his isolation, knowing no higher earthly authority than his highly tempered conscience, willing, if need be, to suffer any extremity, is bound to find himself more and more in conflict with the exploiting energy of these vigorous dividend seekers. This conflict is of course an excellent tonic for the Church, but it makes the lot of these isolated men and women in Central Africa very much harder to bear.

The forces of Christianity have not yet made much headway in the far hinterland of the Sierra Leone Protectorate, the northern territories of the Gold Coast, nor in Northern Nigeria. In the Sierra Leone colony, where slaves liberated during a period of fifty years were dumped down as they were released by British battleships, Christianity has permeated fairly completely the life and habits of the people; nearly two-thirds of the population are nominally Christian, whilst the Mohammedans number less than one-tenth. In the Gold Coast the traveller may witness some of the most effective missionary work in West Africa. The Basel Mission alone has over 30,000 adherents who find about £5000 a year towards mission expenses. Another notable fact is that the natives have invested in the Mission Savings Bank over £23,000, a sum considerably in excess of the amount deposited with the Government. As was the attitude towards the Quaker bankers of Puritan England, the Christian community of the Gold Coast is regarded by the natives as the safest repository for the wealth of both worlds.

[Sidenote: CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMEDANISM]

In Southern Nigeria Christian missionaries find themselves confronted with a firmly entrenched Mohammedan community. Something over fifty per cent. of the population is Mohammedan, and that of a most attractive order. None can meet the leading Mohammedans of that colony without being impressed with their simple piety and their tenacity to what they regard as their invincible faith. Officialdom opposes the advance of the emissaries of Christianity in the more northerly territory, on the ground of trouble with the Moslem community. This attitude is regarded by most Mohammedans as anything but a compliment to their religious faith, holding firmly as they do that the Koran is powerful enough to withstand all the assaults of another creed. Below Nigeria, that is south-east of the Niger delta, Mohammedan influence is left behind, and Christianity is confronted with simple paganism. Not the bloodthirsty and strongly entrenched barbaric paganism which confronted Livingstone in East Africa, Ramseyer at Kumasi, Hannington in Uganda, and Grenfell in the Congo, but a paganism so broken by the forces of civilization, so rent and riven by internal mistrust, that the masses of the people are crying out: “Who will show us any good?”

Efforts to win West Central Africa to Christianity divide themselves into two periods. The first effective efforts were made by the Portuguese and Dutch settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first period was almost exclusively due to Roman Catholic zeal, which, under the blessing of the Pope, regarded the tropics as a preserve of the Vatican. The nineteenth century witnessed but little advance, until Livingstone’s enthusiasm and his romantic career lighted a flame which spread throughout the civilized world, and Protestantism, awaking to its opportunity, began to pour missionaries into the tropical regions of West Africa. The Basel Mission attempted the Gold Coast, and its first missionaries perished to a man; the Church Missionary Society pushed on its work from Sierra Leone away up the Niger, where men and women did little more for a time than replace the dead and dying; the Methodists, never behind any other denomination in enthusiasm, began work in Sierra Leone, Calabar, and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea; the Baptists established an excellent mission in the Cameroons, where they were “elbowed out” by the Germans, and at a later date commenced their great work in the Congo.

[Sidenote: RELIC WORSHIP]

Little remains in the social life of Africa as a result of the work of the early Roman Catholic missionaries. The tribes have no settled church organization based upon the devoted efforts of three centuries ago. Ruins may be seen in several parts and extremely interesting ones too. On the islands of San Thomé and Principe, we frequently saw the partial structure of churches, one of which must have been erected very early in the sixteenth century, for a tomb close to the chancel, grey with age and moss grown, was dated 1542. If the colonists of San Thomé were zealous slavers, they certainly gave much of their ill-gotten gain to the erection of churches. Fragments of these edifices are lying about in the tropical undergrowth and an examination will show that marble pillars, façades, altars, even common stone, had been gathered from the four corners of the earth to build ornate “Houses of God” on these isolated rocks in the Gulf of Guinea. Visiting one of these ruins we were struck by the pathetic reverence with which the natives regarded those crumbling walls; the priest had long since died, and there was none to lead those almost hopeless souls along the path of religious faith. Standing inside those four walls, gazing at the broken altar and the creeper-clad walls, we were forced to keep our heads covered, for the ruin had lost its roof generations before, and the equatorial sun was pouring its direct rays upon us. Directing a question to some of the natives standing near by, we were amazed to find that they refused to answer; two or three times we repeated our questions, but they all maintained immovable positions and refused to utter a single word. A man close at my elbow then informed me that no native could reply whilst the white man kept his hat on his head in the House of God! The silent rebuke of those simple natives forced us to leave the precincts of the old ruin and pass into the little chapel which still remains more or less watertight. Into this place, not more than ten feet square, the natives had moved the images of the Virgin and Apostles, and in the centre of the room a native palm oil lamp sent forth its unpleasant odour. This lamp was half African fetish and half salvation to those natives, for their worship had degenerated into a sort of corrupt Zoroastrianism, and the Alpha and Omega of their religion seemed to be the uninterrupted burning of this light. They were most insistent that since the foundation of the church, between 1500 and 1530, the light had never been allowed to go out!

This, however, was but one testimony to the relic worship of the slave islands. Along the roadsides, in secluded corners of out of the way roças, nestling in plantain groves, the traveller may see miniature chapels constructed from rustic forest tree branches, very similar to the fetish houses of the mainland of Africa. In most of these one also sees little prayer-stools, and in all of them a rude cross roughly cut out with the native axe and the cross pieces bound together with forest vines. Most of these crosses are surrounded by native pagan charms, and thus all that is least essential in Christianity is joined together in native religious fervour with the superstitions of paganism, and this gives a melancholy impression of the result of the years of toil and sacrifice by men and women devoted to the theory of the Christian Faith.

[Sidenote: ICHABOD]

Ichabod is written along every roadside and in every ruined chapel; the very images in decay seem to utter the word, and the mind is compelled to recall the fact that Christianity in creed only, without Christian practice, is foredoomed. Surely the curse of the miserable slaves of generations ago rests upon everything on those islands; by their agony and bloody sweat they toiled to erect those magnificent churches, the crack of the whip on the slave plantations extorted the gold which purchased the images of the Virgin, to add lustre to countless churches and to purchase images of the compassionate Christ for the cross roads and public places. One wonders what all this parade meant to the slaves at the time. They have long ceased to suffer the bonds of slavery, or the crack of the whip; those slaves whose toil built the churches and bought the crucifixes have gone, and though decay everywhere marks the one-time existence of an unholy Christianity, one element remains and flourishes—a slavery, without any hope beyond that which may be inspired by the hybrid of effete Christianity wedded to African superstition.

The results accruing to the second period of Christian propaganda have the unmistakable signs of a vitality which will revolutionize Central Africa. Whilst purely missionary zeal centres itself upon the heroic figure of Livingstone, recognition must be given to Henry Stanley, and also—though one hesitates to couple the name with these two heroes—to King Leopold. Looking back upon African history, one fact emerges above all others, that the work of Livingstone and Stanley together had created an international interest in the position of the peoples and the possibilities of the countries in those regions. This condition observed by King Leopold, his master mind promptly seized and exploited it. The crafty Belgian monarch saw that by preaching Christianity and civilization for the African, his long-awaited opportunity for colonial expansion and a place in history would be gratified,—a place in history he has that none assuredly will envy; his people, too, possess a colony, and though they do not see it to-day, they will yet heap their curses upon the sovereign who has fastened the millstone round their necks.

The labours of Livingstone, Stanley, and King Leopold, culminated in the Conference of Berlin, which was unique in that it had for its programme not only the interests of honest commercial expansion, the suppression of the slave-trade, the sale of arms, ammunition and alcohol, but also that of stimulating Christian missionary propaganda, and by its subsequent treaty, missionaries were encouraged to win pagan tribes from barbarism. The immensity of the area which by this historic event was thrown open under international stimulus to the forces of Christianity is not generally realized. The Congo basin extends far beyond the boundaries of the Belgian colony. Its northern frontier reaches the tributaries of the Niger and the Nile, while its eastern border includes a large section of German East Africa, and in the south and west larger areas still of both British Central Africa and Portuguese Angola come under the operations of the Act of Berlin. In and around this great pagan area, almost as large as the European continent, the forces of Christianity have within the last half century been concentrating their energies.

Christian effort in these regions is confined to no single country, and is the monopoly of no single denomination. Great Britain, America, Germany, Sweden, and France have all found devoted men and women, and have all poured forth most generously the necessary funds. Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Free Churchmen, and Lutherans, have all taken their share, selecting spheres which for various reasons they considered themselves best able to manage.

The character of the work, however, differs considerably. At first Protestant missions revolted against the idea of industrial missions; they had, and it must be admitted they still have, a constitutional objection against anything which provides a “return.” It is difficult to find a reason for this, but probably it is due to a revulsion from the practices of Pizarro and his miscreants in Peru, and of the slave-dealing work of the Portuguese, in which the Church of Rome became so deeply involved. This dislike for any other work than that of simple preaching and teaching left to the Roman Catholics the whole field of industrial enterprise and right splendidly they have occupied it. There are many separate features which one dislikes, but looked upon as a complete work the Roman Catholic missionaries are rendering noble service to stable progress. I shall not readily forget visits to their farms on the Congo; to their admirable outfitting, printing, house-building, and wheelwright departments of German Togoland. In Lome we saw a score of lads learning bootmaking under the patient tuition of a lay brother. In the tailoring shop another score were cutting out and making suits of every description, from the cheap 20-mark ducks to the 150-mark dress suit to which the superintending Father was putting finishing touches—and made for a native too!

If in earlier years Protestant missions hesitated to engage in remunerative industrial pursuits, they scored heavily over their Catholic _confrères_, and continue to score, in medical work. It was at first difficult to make the native see the advisability of even comparative cleanliness, for ablutions of any kind are, with many natives, a degrading practice only fitted for the effeminate white race. “What! I wash?” exclaimed an old chief to us in horror-stricken tones, when once I asked him to take a journey to the river before sitting near our table. However, as he proceeded to do a worse thing—scrape himself—I withdrew and apologized for the insulting suggestion! There is some hope that the medical fraternity will in time bring the natives to realize the value of the bountiful streams which God has given them, though they may retort that the devil has filled them with crocodiles.

[Sidenote: THE MEDICAL MISSION]

It is, however, certain that the tribes of Africa are beginning to value the generous and devoted medical work of the Protestant missionaries. Journeying up the Congo one day we had on board a chieftain who three months before had left his village for an operation at a mission station hundreds of miles below his home. The senior missionary in this man’s district had persuaded him to take the journey and run the risk. The man had been bedridden for years with an elephantiasis growth; his wives had forsaken him and most of his friends had abandoned him. He had long given an obstinate refusal to the missionary’s proposal, but ultimately he was prevailed upon to make the journey to the distant mission post. The day for departure came, and with it funeral-loving friends, and weeping women who made the track echo with a monotonous death wail as the man was carried on board the steamer,—never, as they believed, to return alive. Two months later the man had come through the operation and seemed to be in perfect health. He boarded the steamer in full vigour, carrying his own box and sundry goods which the travelling native collects from the long-lost brothers and cousins whom they have a habit of discovering in every town. After three weeks’ steam, we were nearing the chieftain’s home; what a dressing of the hair and anointing of the body took place during several hours before the village itself was sighted! Within hail, lusty voices shouted to the villagers that their chief was aboard and was well and strong. The cry passed from lip to lip until the beach was lined with incredulous natives, the most hopeful amongst them anticipating nothing better than that the man would be carried ashore. Fifteen minutes later the ship was at anchor, the “gangway” run ashore and lo! the first man to stride off the ship was the erstwhile bedridden chief! It was too much for the majority who promptly took to their heels and bolted to a safe distance! In a few minutes, however, they realized that it was not a spirit, but the real man returned alive and well. Gradually they surrounded him, questioned him, gesticulated excitedly, rang the drums to inform the countryside that so great a miracle had taken place, and generally made such a din and noise that it was only with difficulty conversation became at all possible. That sort of sermon is far more eloquent to the native than many discourses on Christian ethics preached with the inevitable limitations of a foreign tongue and at the best often misunderstood; moreover, it renders him very receptive to Christian teaching.

[Sidenote: MISSIONARIES AND OPPRESSION]

The advantage of medical work in Protestant missionary propaganda has indeed been great. But it does not stand alone, for the natives have of recent years witnessed and wondered at another spectacle—to them no less miraculous—white man opposing white man on their behalf. It is a grave misfortune to Christianity, and to the Roman Catholic missionaries themselves, that they have hitherto been unable to make common cause with their Protestant brethren in protecting natives from oppression. There is, however, some hope that this feature is passing away and that the future will witness their co-operation with those who fight and struggle for native freedom, for at present the _prestige_ which accrues to the championship of native rights belongs almost exclusively to the Protestant communities. How powerfully this has operated was brought out in the report of the Commissioners, whom King Leopold was compelled to send to the Congo, in 1904. Writing in this connection, Monsieur Janssens and his Committee said:—

“Often, also, in the regions where evangelical stations are established, the native, instead of going to the magistrate, his natural protector, adopts the habit, when he thinks he has a grievance against an agent or an Executive officer, to confide in the missionary. The latter listens to him, helps him according to his means, and makes himself the echo of all the complaints of a region. Hence the astounding influence which the missionaries possess in some parts of the territory. It exercises itself not only among the natives within the purview of their religious propaganda, but over all the villages whose troubles they have listened to. The missionary becomes, for the native of the region, the only representative of equity and justice; he adds to the ascendency acquired from his religious zeal the _prestige_ which, in the interest of the State itself, should be invested in the magistrates.”

Without doubt the advent of the late King Leopold as an Administrator in Central African affairs was a calamity almost impossible to exaggerate and had his influence continued it would sooner or later have overrun the surrounding territories administered respectively by Britain, France, and Germany. That they indeed suffered contamination was only too clearly demonstrated in the case of French Congo, while German Cameroons was not altogether free from the Leopoldian taint. On the Congo itself, the very name of white man was made to stink in the nostrils of the native tribes for all time, by reason of the enormities in which King Leopold figured as the chief actor. But even that wily monarch outwitted himself; by his protestations of Christianity and Philanthropy he was bound by the clauses of the Berlin and Brussels Acts to countenance and encourage missionary enterprise, and in practice to admit to the vast regions of the Congo Valley the Heralds of the Cross. And this was his undoing, for thereby came those exposures of almost incredible abuses, which shocked the civilized world, and branded the arch culprit for all time as a murderer of millions. The same fatal blunder in his diplomacy worked on the spot salvation for the remnant of the people. They flocked from all quarters to the protection of the missionary, who was to them the personification of justice.

[Sidenote: THE “INGLEZA”]

What wonder that the word “Ingleza” (English) became a passport to any native community, no matter how wild and how averse to the white man. It is recorded that the Belgian rubber merchants, recognizing this, have sought safety when travelling amongst hostile tribes in adopting the name and manner of the Englishman. A certain Belgian tells how two of his colleagues when travelling were attacked by infuriated natives whose relatives had suffered at the hands of the rubber-mongers, and on being told that it was the natives’ intention to first mutilate them, as they themselves had been mutilated, and then to put them to death, one of them in his extremity sought refuge in the reputation of the missionary and replied, “What, put Ingleza to death!” While stoutly repudiating the assertion that they were English, the natives requested them to sing a hymn, and, fortunately for the desperate men, one of them remembered and sang a verse of a hymn he had learnt somewhere, and so amazed the natives that they let them go unharmed.

“Ingleza nta fombaka” (the Englishman never lies), has passed into a proverb and is spreading not only throughout the Congo, but even into Portuguese Angola. Possessing the unbounded confidence of the native mind, the Christian missionary, reinforced by practical medical work, may, if he desires, possess the vast unoccupied fields of the continent and obtain there an ever firmer foothold.

[Sidenote: PROTESTANT EXPENDITURE]

Within recent years, however, Protestant missions have taken up with increasing zeal industrial and commercial enterprises in the interests of the natives. We were unfortunate in being unable to visit what I am told is one of the finest industrial enterprises in West Africa—the Scotch Calabar Mission, but apart from those of the Roman Catholics we inspected several Protestant establishments. The British Government, recognizing what is now becoming common ground, that a purely literary and spiritual education does not produce the most robust type of civilized African, is now combining technical training in industries with literary studies, and no longer gives grants of lump sums to missions, but so much per head for the “finished product,” _e.g._ a native attaining a given literary and technical standard. In the Gold Coast the maximum per annum is 27_s_. 6_d._ _per capita_. In a school at Christiansborg, the annual upkeep of which costs £500, over £170 was earned in one year by the ability of the scholars in this way. The Primitive Methodists have a very effective little Industrial Mission on the Spanish island of Fernando Po. Under the vigorous and enlightened leadership of the Rev. Jabez Bell the mission situated at Bottler Point is now so prosperous that the returns from the cocoa farms together with subscriptions from the native members, more than cover the expenditure. If in any forthcoming rearrangement of the Map of Africa Fernando Po should come under Germany the character of the Primitive Methodist Mission on that island is bound to appeal to the practical-minded Teuton.

The price which Christian missions have paid for religious work amongst the pagan tribes of West Central Africa can never be correctly estimated. In the Congo alone Protestant missions have spent nearly one and a quarter millions sterling within the last twenty-five years. Out of some 550 missionaries, over 170 have gone to an early grave, many not living six months, some only a few days. These men and women were not only the matured youth of their countries, but they were compelled to pass the most rigid medical examination prior to acceptance by the missionary boards. They were indeed the flower of the Christian Church; moreover, the very difficulties and dangers which were known to exist, served to attract none but the strongest characters. Some people, incapable of recognizing sterling qualities in any but themselves, have written and spoken of missionaries as those who could not have made their way in any other sphere of life. Whatever may be true of other mission fields, so far as the missionaries of West Africa are concerned, the majority resigned good and assured positions and accepted a comparative pittance in order that they might serve what surely is the greatest of all causes. I have failed to obtain statistics from the Roman Catholic Church, but the foregoing applies equally to the devoted men of that body. With them, as with the Protestants, it has been _via crucis via lucis_.

The following statistics, so far as they are a guide to Christian progress, show some of the results achieved by the missionary forces of Protestantism in West Africa:—

Annual Native _Sierra Leone_ Adherents. Scholars. Contributions. Anglican 12,700 3,283 £7,267 Methodists 7,584 2,665 —

_Nigeria_ Anglican 40,700 15,089 £11,676 United Free Church 6,431 3,675 £2,834 Methodists, including French Dahomey, German Togoland, and Fernando Po 7,137 3,793 —

_Gambia_ Methodists 1,058 594 —

_Gold Coast_ Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 3,273 — £677 Methodists 61,481 7,821 — Basel Mission 35,000 — £9,500

_Congo_ Baptists 4,536 11,637 — American Baptists 5,230 7,500 (est.) — Presbyterian 10,000 8,000 — Swedish 1,821 5,721 — French Protestants 1,800 1,000 —

_Angola_ Methodists 750 1,083 £325 Other Missions in West Africa Estimate 15,000 8,000 400 ------- ------ ------- Totals 214,501 79,861 £32,679

From the statistical tables of the Protestant Missions, we have a known membership and communicant list of over 200,000 men and women, and nearly 80,000 scholars under daily Christian instruction. If to this be added an equal number in connection with the Roman Catholic Church—probably a generous estimate—West Central Africa possesses a Christian Church of something approaching half a million strong. This, however, does not take into account the large native interest in Christianity evidenced by the considerable purchase of the Scriptures. Every year the British and Foreign Bible Society ships some thousands of pounds worth of Bibles to the different colonies, the natives contributing an increasing sum to the Bible Society, which gives a “return” in cash from the native Christian community of the Protestant Churches of over £30,000 per annum, or an average contribution of over 4_s._ 3_d._ per head throughout the Churches.

[Sidenote: INDUSTRIAL RESULTS]

The fact that the results of missionary industrial enterprise are hampered by a not unreasonable dislike to “profit-making” prevents embarkation upon those bye-products of industrial activity which render commercial enterprise financially sound. A missionary is usually quite willing to teach men to adze timber, plane boards, square joints, lay bricks, and grow cotton and rubber, but he knows that his Board and its supporters regard “profit” with a very critical eye. Richard Blaize, an educated native of Abeokuta, left his fortune to meet this difficulty and now extensive workshops are erected at Abeokuta, and all the public buildings of that splendid city have been erected “at a profit” by the Christian Industrial School of Abeokuta.

In the Gold Coast the German Basel Mission leads the way with engaging vigour in the matter of industrial missions. The commercial section of the Mission includes industrial training institutes, and nothing could be more pleasing than the interest and energy with which the natives devote themselves to cabinet work, coach-building, and agricultural pursuits; but the main activities of this department are those of the ordinary African merchant with the exception that the agents are forbidden to sell spirituous liquors. This branch of the work, which is conducted by twenty-three “mercantile” missionaries, is in every respect admirable. One of the leading railway managers remarked to me that, “The most business-like commercial house in the colony is the Basel Mission; their men always know how many trucks they will require, their trolleys are to time, their goods properly bagged and labelled, and their whole organization so smart and up-to-date that they never dislocate the traffic.” There can be little doubt that the attention given to business by the representatives of the Mission is due to the type of white men they can command—none are accepted unless they agree to make their employment a matter of conscience, and develop their commercial undertakings with the same motive as that which animates their spiritual brethren, with whom they share all things in common, with the exception of salaries, those of the mercantile brethren being considerably higher and based, to some extent, upon returns. The white agents are assisted by coloured men in charge of branches, many of whom can show a record of service extending from 12 to 15 years, and some of them are now drawing salaries—including commission—of £500 per annum. These men are to be found on Sundays teaching in the Sunday schools, and preaching at the out-stations of the Mission.

The capital for these operations is derived, in the main, from three sources: (1) the Basel Mission itself; (2) shareholders connected with the Mission, whose dividends are limited to 5 per cent. per annum; (3) from funds in the Mission’s Savings Bank, into which the natives of the colony have placed for security considerably over £20,000 at interest varying from 3½ to 5 per cent.

The results of the Mission’s work can be seen all over the colony; the polite native clerks, the managers of stores, the English-speaking planters, the coloured Government officials have nearly all of them received their training at the Basel Mission schools, and the Acting Governor does not hesitate to recognize that his best officials have been produced by the Mission. Testimony of this nature is unhappily seldom forthcoming from other colonies.

The industrial section usually executes orders to the value of about £4000 per annum; its go-carts, trolleys, traps, and waggonettes are sent into almost every colony from Sierra Leone to German Cameroons. The net profits of this department average slightly over £400 per annum.

The commercial department is certainly one of the most profitable enterprises in the colony, and the stores of the Mission are crowded with purchasers throughout the day. The exigencies of business naturally precluded the possibility of obtaining with any degree of exactness the volume of trade done by the Mission, but some of the figures are eloquent testimony to the confidence the natives have in these mercantile missionaries. In the year 1909-1910, the Mission exported 35 tons of rubber, 14,000,000 lbs. of palm kernels, 600,000 gallons of palm oil, and nearly 17,000,000 lbs. weight of cocoa beans.

The profit-bearing transactions of the Basel Mission cannot be much under £150,000, which on the moderate basis of 8 per cent. net profit would provide the Mission Exchequer with a sum of £12,000 per annum. Government grants-in-aid of educational work amounted in 1910 to £240. There are also periodic collections in aid of Mission funds; the native Church at Nsaba, for example, collected £240 last year. The whole expenditure of this Mission must be almost, if not completely, covered by its income from the various operations.

Whatever the actual financial position of this Mission, its general business operations, splendid educational institutions, its devoutly spiritual atmosphere, combine in forming one of the greatest—if not the greatest—force for progress in the Gold Coast colony. But the price has to be paid, for, according to the report of the Acting Governor, “The highest death-rate was again amongst the missionaries!”

[Sidenote: DANGER AHEAD]

The future of Christianity in West Africa is hopeful but it has its dangers. First its very success may lead to disastrous consequences. In the early years the mission work was almost entirely in the hands of the extreme evangelical section of the Church, who subordinated everything to the actual work of preaching. We understand and sympathize with the fiery zeal that believes in doing all the preaching, but the native thinks the preacher a strange being, and frequently does not understand two sentences of Anglicized Bantu, or worse still, his Bantuized English! Circumstances have broadened the outlook and men are beginning to realize the value of training the native to do the preaching, contenting themselves with an apparently more restrictive sphere in the class-room and study. The native preacher thus prepared is zealous to a degree, and that he is ready to suffer incredible hardships and even torture, we know from the romantic history of the Uganda Mission. He is willing and able to carry his message further afield than the white man could ever hope to do; he is, moreover, able to present his message through the medium of a complete mastery of the native tongue. The results of this form of propaganda are becoming almost startling. Christian evangelists from one territory are meeting those of far distant regions and in this manner the whole of the riverine systems of Central Africa are coming rapidly under the influence of Christianity. It is in this respect, rather than in tabulated statistics, that one sees the onward march of the Christian Faith. The bush native no longer clings to and prides himself in paganism; if he is not a Mohammedan, he will tell you he is a Christian, even though his life and conduct would shut him out of the formal communion of any Christian Church.

This condition of affairs may lead to a grave situation, for already in several colonies the natives are restive under an inadequate white control or leadership. Educated in the principles of liberty, but without much respect for, or belief in, the nobler tenets of the Christian Faith, they are breaking away from Christian government and forming themselves into Christian communities in which personal desire is never allowed to conflict with accepted standards of ethics. One day I visited a leading “Christian” in a certain colony; he showed me round the district, took me over his delightful little farm, pointed out his model dwellings, machinery houses, and so forth; then I inspected a building with three compartments and was informed that one section was used as a “gin store,” the middle section for prayer meetings, and in the third the man kept his wives! All this he boldly asserted could be justified by reference to the Scriptures. I was not prepared to contest the assertion, because my host claimed his own conscience as the final arbiter of interpretation. The extent to which these secessions may go can be gathered from the fact that one such seceding church in West Africa claims a membership of over 10,000 adults.

[Sidenote: THE LIGHT ETERNAL]

The missionary societies, unable to supply sufficient men to cope with these vast areas, are forced to leave the movement almost alone and thus it spreads, and will continue to spread, until Central Africa is completely brought under the influence of a form of Christianity which for many years will be a caricature of the religion of Christ. The only hope, and happily a probable development, is that the religious wave, which is now moving irresistibly across the central regions, will be followed by an ethical wave which will give the “Light eternal” to the Dark Continent.