Affairs of West Africa

[Illustration: ON FISHING BENT—SOUTHERN NIGERIA]

Affairs Of West Africa

BY EDMUND D. MOREL (E. D. M.) MEMBER OF THE WEST AFRICAN SECTION OF THE LIVERPOOL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

With Illustrations And Maps

[Illustration]

London William Heinemann 1902

(_All rights reserved_)

To My Wife

Preface

Whatever its defects—and, no doubt, they are many and various—the Author claims for this volume that it is, at least, an honest attempt to deal with the problems, racial, political and commercial, yearly increasing in magnitude, connected with the administration of Western Africa by Great Britain and by the other Powers of Western Europe which participated in the scramble for African territory. As such it is respectfully submitted to the thinking Public. The Author considers it advisable to state that he has no commercial interests in West Africa, and is, therefore, uninfluenced by considerations of a personal nature, in emphasising the importance of the part played by the merchant on the West African stage. He also deems it right to say that the West African Section of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce is neither responsible nor answerable for the opinions expressed herein. The Author hereby acknowledges the courtesy of the Editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the Editor-Proprietor of _West Africa_, the Editor of the _Contemporary Review_, and the Editorial Committee of the _Journal of the African Society_, in permitting the incorporation of certain matter contributed by himself, from time to time, to those publications. His sincere thanks are due to Major Ronald Ross, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., C.B., for the chapter which that distinguished scientist has specially written at the Author’s request. To other kind friends and acquaintances who have good-humouredly submitted to cross-examination, and have allowed themselves to be victimised by the Author’s importunities generally, grateful appreciation is due, and is thankfully acknowledged.

Hawarden, 1902.

Contents

Chap. Page

FOREWORD—MARY KINGSLEY xiii

Part I

I. Five Years Of British Trade With Western Africa 1

II. The Old And The New 7

III. The Real And The Ideal 11

IV. Some Necessary Reforms 20

Part II.—Nigeria

V. The Discovery Of Northern Nigeria 35

VI. THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA—(_cont._) 43

VII. The Hausas And Their Emporium 52

VIII. THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM—(_cont._) 59

IX. The National Industry Of Southern Nigeria 74

X. The Administration Of Northern Nigeria 83

XI. The Finances Of Nigeria 89

XII. Mohammedans, Slave-Raiding And Domestic Servitude 94

XIII. The Principal Products Of Nigeria 110

XIV. Rubber-Collecting In Nigeria 119

XV. The Fulani In Nigeria 125

XVI. The Fulani In West African History 130

XVII. Origin Of The Fulani 136

Part III

XVIII. Sanitary Affairs In West Africa. By Major Ronald Ross, C.B. 153

XIX. Land Tenure And Labour In West Africa 170

XX. A Cotton Industry For West Africa 188

XXI. The Mahogany Trade 201

XXII. Islam In West Africa 208

XXIII. ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA—(_cont._) 224

Part IV.—The French In West Africa

XXIV. Anglo-French Relations In West Africa 238

XXV. Ten Years Of French Action In West Africa 249

XXVI. The Commercial And Financial Condition Of The French Possessions 265

XXVII. French And British Management In West Africa 276

Part V.—Monopoly In West Africa

XXVIII. The Concessions RéGime In French Congo 285

XXIX. International Interests And Monopoly 297

XXX. The History Of The Congo State 312

XXXI. The Domaine Privé 327

XXXII. The “Trade” Of The Congo State 343

Appendix

Sierra Leone (Expenditure, Loans, Exports, &C.) 355

Gold Coast (Expenditure, Loans, Exports, &C.) 356

Lagos (Expenditure, Loans, Exports, &C.) 359

Dahomey (Comparative Table Of Duties) 360

The Dahomey Railway 362

French Guinea Railway 364

West African Mahogany Trade 365

The Gold Coast Mining Industry 367

British Possessions In West Africa (Population And Area) 370

The Rabinek Case 371

Index 373

Illustrations

_On Fishing Bent, Southern Nigeria_ _Frontispiece_

_Facing page_

*_A Pure-bred Kano Man (Hausa)_ 54

*_A Hausa from Yola_ 56

_Hausa Loom and Spool_ 62

_Hausas Drilling_ 68

_Making Palm-oil_ 74

_Duke-Town, Old Calabar, Southern Nigeria_ 76

_Filling Palm-oil Barrels, Southern Nigeria_ 78

_A Palm-kernel Market in Southern Nigeria_ 80

_A Mohammedan Chief and his Standard-Bearer_ 100

_Mandingo Muslims_ 106

_A Baobab—The Giant of West African Flora_ 116

_Washing Rubber_ 122

_Fulani Sword_ 126

*_Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Adamawa_ 128

_Fulani Chief, Futa-Jallon_ 130

_Half-caste Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon_ 134

_Low-caste Fulani, Western Sudan_ 136

_Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon_ 140

_Fulani House, Futa-Jallon_ 142

_Fulani Cattle-pen_ 146

_A Half-caste Fulani Girl and a Susu_ 148

_The Idle Native! Market Scene in West Africa_ 176

_West African “Young Hopefuls”_ 180

_An Ibo Family Group, Southern Nigeria_ 186

_Travelling on the Niger in the Dry Season_ 196

_Felling a Mahogany-tree_ 202

_Squaring the Tree_ 202

_Dragging the Squared Log through the Bush_ 204

_Sapelli, Southern Nigeria’s principal Timber Port_ 204

_A Susu Mallam_ 218

_Fulani Mallam_ 228

_Susu Chief and Staff_ 278

_Ashanti Field Force at Cape Coast ~en route~ for Kumasi_ 280

_Return of Ashanti Field Force_ 282

_The Victim of a Rubber Raid_ 334

Maps

_Northern Part of Africa_ 38

_Northern Nigeria_ 84

_Sketch Map showing Harbour Improvement Scheme, Ivory Coast_ _page_ 273

_Photographs marked thus * are reproduced from “Adamawa” by kind permission of Mr. Ernst Vohsen (Dietrich Reimer). The author is indebted (through the kindness of a friend) to Dr. Maclaud, of the French Guinea Administration, for several of the photographs here reproduced._

Foreword

Mary Kingsley

“Mary Kingsley—the heir and sustainer of a great name, one of the ablest of that remarkable band of wandering writers, men and women, who are the eyes and ears of our nascent Empire, who are bringing home to England, that weary Titan, her tasks, her faults, her problems—Mary Kingsley has gone from us.”—Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD.

Those who had the honour of knowing Mary Kingsley, and corresponding with her on West African affairs, who have studied her writings and her speeches, who realise all that this “good woman with a gigantic intellect” might have done for the Empire in West Africa had she lived, can with difficulty reconcile themselves to the inscrutable decree of Providence which robbed us of her presence. One of her greatest admirers to whom I was expressing the other day much the same feeling, expressed a different view. “Miss Kingsley’s work was done”—he said in effect—“she was the pioneer, she showed the way. That was her allotted task: the fruit of her labours will come in due season.” It may be so. Indeed, when we think of what Mary Kingsley accomplished in the few short years which she devoted to West Africa, the thought arises whether there is not an element of unconscious selfishness in the desire that she might have been spared. The nature of the work she had undertaken, the intense fervour with which she devoted herself body and soul to preaching the morals it was given her to inculcate, the utter brain weariness which at times she was fain to admit—no mortal being could have endured for very long so perpetual a mental and physical strain. It was a passing heavy load for a weak woman of indifferent health to bear, and in death Mary Kingsley has perhaps achieved a greater triumph, a success more striking and profound, than living on she would have attained. Death has had the effect of rapidly fertilising the seeds she sowed, and from her ashes have sprung forces gathering daily in power which, united in a common aim, are taking up her burden and carrying it along the path she pointed out, assured that every year will bring fresh helpers, be the obstacles ever so great. _La verité est en marche_, and although the spirit of the hour is not precisely favourable to that patient investigation of West African problems which affords the only guarantee of political and administrative success, the phase is but a fleeting one, and when the present fashionable policy of force and hurry is found by practical tests to be even more sterile in useful results than the apathy which preceded it, the main truths Mary Kingsley taught will appeal to thinking men with an eloquence all the greater for having been temporarily obscured.

On the personal aspect of Mary Kingsley’s character one would fain dwell at length. Few women, I believe, have inspired all sorts and conditions of men with so intense a respect, so wondering an admiration. Few women are able, as Mary Kingsley was able, to draw forth, by the magic of her earnest personality, the best in a man. She was so unassuming, so unaffected, such a womanly woman in every sense of the word, that it appeared almost incredible she should have grasped the essentialities of West African politics with such comprehensiveness and scientific perception; mastered, as no one had done before—in the sense, at any rate, of being able to impart the knowledge to the world—the intricacies of native custom and native law, or have affronted the physical perils she made so light of. Eminent politicians and administrators, distinguished men of letters, world-renowned scientists, commercial magnates, were regular visitors at her modest residence, and one and all drew from her inexhaustible store. The least of those to whom she extended the privilege of her friendship were always welcome, and never failed to leave her presence without feeling that her words of sympathy and encouragement were a fresh incentive to push onward, never losing hope and fortified against disappointment. The truest, kindest, staunchest friend that ever breathed—such was Mary Kingsley; and we who knew her, and have lost her, know also that something has gone out of our lives which can never be replaced. In a passage of singular beauty, Mrs. Alice Stopford Green thus closes a tribute[1] to the dead friend whose work she herself is doing so much to carry on: “She laid her armour down when she asked to be carried out to the unfathomable Ocean, alone in death as she had been alone in life, going out with her last wish from the bitter strife of men to the immensities where she sought the will of God.”

Part I

Chapter I

Five Years Of British Trade With Western Africa

“West Africa, that great feeding-ground for British manufactures.”—MARY KINGSLEY.

One still—but too often, alas!—meets with people who wonder why England should bother about West Africa at all, and pooh-pooh the idea that we have interests there at the present time worth looking after, while as for the future possibilities of that huge country as a field for British enterprise, they simply will not trouble themselves to give the matter a moment’s consideration.

Now figures are very uninteresting things, no doubt, to the average reader; but they possess a practical significance superior to any number of the most glowing dissertations, and I trust my readers will forgive me if I make, as a basis of justification for inflicting this volume upon them, a few sets of figures which I would respectfully suggest as worthy of their attentive consideration. The statistics are compiled from the Custom House returns, and they show the extent, nature and distribution of British trade in Western Africa during the last few years. In perusing them, three facts should be borne in mind: first, that, although Europeans have been engaged in commercial transactions on the West Coast for upwards of five hundred and fifty years, those transactions were, prior to the abolition of the over-sea slave trade, confined, with very few exceptions[2]—so far as the exports from West Africa were concerned—to the human cargo, and to gold dust and ivory: that the trade in palm oil and kernels, which are now the staple articles of export from West Africa, is therefore of comparatively recent growth, and that the mahogany trade and the rubber trade have only come into existence—to any appreciable extent—within the last few years, a fair indication of the fertility and producing power and almost boundless resources of West Africa. Secondly, that the extensive business relationship which has been built up between Great Britain and West Africa, in the shape of a legitimate commerce, has grown to its present proportions under circumstances absolutely disadvantageous to development, without railways, with but few roads, with intertribal wars often preventing the circulation of trade for months at a time, by merely scratching the surface of the most prolific region in the world. Thirdly, that the figures given below do but show the actual volume of Britain’s trade with West Africa and the wages earned by thousands of English men and women who directly and indirectly benefit by that trade; the British capital invested in West Africa in factories, machinery, craft for navigating the rivers, coaling depôts, surf-boats and lighters, stores and the like, to which must now be added railway material, dredging apparatus, batteries and soon, we may hope, cotton gins, not to mention a fleet of some sixty steamers employed in the carrying trade and passenger traffic—all these things have to be taken into account in estimating West Africa’s worth to Great Britain.

The total values of British produce and manufactures[3] shipped to the _British possessions in West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £1,828,395 1897 1,763,461 1898 1,999,505 1899 2,116,080 1900 2,148,149 ---------- Gross total £9,855,590

Percentage of increase in five years, 17½ per cent.

The total values of British produce and manufactures shipped to the _possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £970,080 1897 1,002,318 1898 1,247,994 1899 1,490,603 1900 2,145,349 ---------- Gross total £6,856,344

Percentage of increase in five years, 121 per cent.

If we add these two totals together, we find that the value of British produce and manufactures shipped to _West Africa_ in the period mentioned was £16,711,934, which is a percentage of increase of 138 per cent.

From the British export trade we turn to the British import trade with West Africa.

The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain _from British West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £2,223,925 1897 2,153,412 1898 2,352,285 1899 2,427,946 1900 2,137,023 ----------- Gross total £11,294,591

The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain from the _possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £333,803 1897 553,130 1898 622,287 1899 651,043 1900 806,077 ---------- Gross total £2,966,340

These two totals added together show that Great Britain imported West African produce in the period under review to the amount of £14,260,931.

The value of Great Britain’s direct commerce with West Africa in the five years 1896-1900 was, therefore, £30,972,865. To this might be added a further sum of £1,750,888, representing foreign and colonial merchandise shipped to West Africa from British ports in the years mentioned.[4]

It is interesting, and valuable, to see which, among the possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa, were the chief absorbers of British goods and the chief exporters of raw produce to Great Britain. Examination yields the following knowledge:

Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which absorbed in five years £6,856,344 of British goods:[5]

French. Portuguese. German. Others. £ £ £ £ 1896 348,258 402,445 68,355 151,022 1897 401,224 360,121 91,320 149,653 1898 531,848 438,320 109,580 178,246 1899 693,255 503,788 126,047 167,513 1900 709,900 1,084,072[6] 120,910 212,175

Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which exported to Great Britain in five years £2,966,340 of raw produce:

French. Portuguese. German. Others. £ £ £ £ 1896 203,442 33,937 42,001 54,423 1897 312,430 116,554 68,194 55,952 1898 431,192 85,544 35,165 70,186 1899 461,267 68,021 48,736 73,019 1900 534,727 75,037 94,681 101,632

The French possessions are, it will be observed, far and away our principal markets and our principal suppliers among the possessions of Foreign Powers. Our exports to and imports from the French possessions amounted together to £4,627,543, or just under 50 per cent. of our total export and import trade with the possessions of Foreign Powers together. The increasing importance of the French possessions in West Africa as a market for the sale of British goods and as suppliers of British home markets is a fact which it is of the utmost consequence for British statesmen to lay to heart. The subject is one which I shall refer to later on. It is already one of the dominant factors of West African politics affecting Great Britain, and is destined to become so more and more as the years go on, for France is in a territorial sense the mistress of West Africa, and may become so in a commercial sense as well.

The general conclusions to be drawn from a study of these figures are various. First and foremost there is the clearly established fact that British trade with West Africa is expanding enormously and has almost unlimited prospects before it, now that serious and concentrated efforts are being made on all sides to open up the untapped wealth of the interior by the means of roads and railways and by the improvement of navigable waterways, while the cessation of intertribal warfare in many districts must entail a large increase in the population, and therefore, in the native capacity for production and purchase. It is also demonstrated that every year West Africa absorbs a larger quantity of British manufactured goods: that the exports of British manufactured goods are steadily increasing to British West Africa and increasing to an extraordinary degree to the possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa, especially to the French possessions: that Great Britain is consolidating her hold upon the carrying trade of West Africa as testified by the increased quantity of foreign and colonial manufactures shipped to West Africa from British ports: that the Continent—Germany[7] chiefly—is receiving a greater amount of raw produce from the British possessions in West Africa, a deduction which can be fairly drawn from the stationary aspect of the importation by Great Britain of such produce from her own West African possessions. And the final conclusion is this, that, in view of the restricted extent of the British possessions in West Africa, compared with the possessions of Foreign Powers in that part of the world, the latter offer a very much vaster field for the sale of British goods. Consequently, it is the bounden duty of the British Government and the British Chambers of Commerce, while in no way neglecting the brilliant possibilities which the British West African possessions offer under wise administration for the enterprise of Englishmen, to be ever on the alert to look to the future and to protect British trade with the possessions of the Foreign Powers in West Africa against legislation tending to close the door of those possessions against it; and to insist that, whenever international treaties guaranteeing freedom of trade to the subjects of all nations exist in West Africa, they shall be rigidly adhered to by the signatories. In this respect British diplomacy has shown itself singularly lax. But the mischief already committed may even yet be remedied, and further dangers which loom ahead averted, if the British public will only realise before it is too late the enormous issues at stake.

Chapter II

The Old And The New

“The past has gone with its follies and its waste.... Let us then face the present and contemplate the future.”

In the previous chapter we discussed in practical fashion the grounds upon which the British public is called upon to devote more attention to the affairs of West Africa than it does at present, and an attempt—I hope a successful attempt—was made to show how very short-sighted and singularly misinformed is the opinion which would disinterest itself from a part of the world where the possibilities of commercial development are so strikingly manifest. There has never been such urgent need for an intelligent appreciation, on the part of the British public, of the problems which confront this country in West Africa. In a few short years the policy of Great Britain in West Africa has undergone a complete change. Events have followed one another with bewildering rapidity. Official indifference has been galvanised into life by French activity, and after a brief but dangerous period of international rivalry, British political rights have been established over a considerable extent of territory, not, however, nearly so considerable as a pacific, consistent, well-thought-out programme adopted some years previously would have brought, had our merchant-pioneers been listened to, and had successive Governments been able to throw off the paralysing influence of the resolution of 1865. There is a story told of a certain Minister in charge of the Foreign Office—it was related to me by one of those present at the interview—which illustrates very forcibly the feeling which prevailed in Government circles in those days. A deputation of merchants waited upon his Excellency with the request that he would permit the hoisting of the Union Jack on certain parts of the West African littoral where British merchants had long been trading, and where the rulers of the country were genuinely desirous of receiving a British protectorate. _Pro-formâ_ treaties were produced by the deputation between these rulers and the resident merchants. The merchants asked for no reward. There was no question of expenditure involved. All that the Government was required to do was to meet the wishes of the chiefs. The deputation pointed out that, so far as the relations between the natives and the commercial representatives of Great Britain were concerned, the acceptance of the Government would in no wise alter them, but would simply have the effect of cementing a friendly understanding which already existed. But, urged the deputation, the treaties, if agreed to by the Government, would prove an invaluable diplomatic instrument if the time came, as it seemed likely to do, when England might find herself faced in West Africa by foreign competition. The Minister flung the treaties across the table.

It was a time of wasted opportunities, when a little political foresight would have conferred upon this country great future benefit, and it seems extraordinary, but is unhappily true, that the same failure to look ahead as regards West Africa appears to afflict our Foreign Office to-day despite the lessons of the past. Of this, more anon.

But if successive Governments showed unpardonable negligence in safeguarding British interests in West Africa, for decade after decade, down to the very time when the French had worked their way so far southward into the natural _hinterlands_ of our old Colonies that action became imperative if anything was to be saved from the wreck, the British press and public were greatly to blame also. I well remember that at the very height of the recent Anglo-French controversy which culminated in the Convention of 1898, when rival English and French expeditions were rushing hither and thither through the territories west of the Niger, and when British and French efforts were concentrated upon wringing out of the unfortunate Borgu Chiefs all sorts, kinds, and conditions of agreements, sowing Union Jacks and Tricolors by the wayside, the well-known editor of an equally well-known newspaper to which I then contributed, asked me to show him Nikki[8] on the map, as he had not the least idea where it was.

Mr. Chamberlain came into power just at the moment when French enterprise in the West African uplands had reached its maximum of threatening intensity, and he set himself to vigorously counteract it as far as he could. The invertebrate policy had, however, compromised the situation almost beyond remedy, and had it not been for Mr. Joseph Thomson’s success in obtaining treaty rights with the Emirs of Sokoto and Bornu in 1884 on behalf of the National African Company of Merchants—subsequently the Royal Niger Company—and, it may be added, for the loyal adherence of those native States to the treaties passed with the Company, the magnificent possession of Northern Nigeria would have gone the way of Futa Jallon, of Mossi, and of so many other countries lying at the back of our Colonies; that is to say, would have fallen into French hands. The man who deserves the most credit for saving Northern Nigeria to the Empire is Sir George Taubman Goldie, and however one may deplore some of the uses to which he put his Charter—things we are paying for now in the French Congo and elsewhere—it is but common fairness to assert that, if it had not been for Sir George Goldie, the possessions of Great Britain in West Africa would have been reduced by about one half. It is a matter for some surprise that the Government should not have succeeded in securing the continuation of Sir George Goldie’s co-operation in West Africa after the Royal Niger Company’s Charter was cancelled. An old opponent has lately said of him that “there is no one more competent to guide our West African Administration on practical, humanitarian, economical, prudent, and statesmanlike lines, no one more fitted to take a high position in West African affairs political and commercial,” a statement which will meet with wide acceptance.

But this, after all, is ancient history, and what we are chiefly concerned with now, is the present. What we are called upon to seriously consider is the general trend of England’s policy in West Africa, administrative, financial, political and commercial. Internationally, we are secure in the possession of our territories. The only rivalry we have to fear is the peaceful rivalry of commerce, but commerce is the explanation of our presence in West Africa: it constitutes the sinews of our administration, and its requirements demand the constant vigilance, the most careful attention of the official world.

It is the bounden duty of those who, believing in the immense importance of West Africa to Great Britain, and similarly believing that the present policy which is being pursued by Great Britain in West Africa is open on several grounds to grave objection, to say so, and to give their reasons for saying so, with the assured conviction that, however unpopular their arguments may be, the general interest demands that they should be put forward.

Chapter III

The Real And The Ideal

“The nature of the natives, the climate, everything is against precipitate and hasty action. To advance slowly, leaving no bad or unfinished work behind, to gain the respect and liking of the natives, and only to use force when compelled as a last resource to do so, are the means which in my humble opinion lead to success in West Africa. To quote from the words of a celebrated French traveller: ‘Do not let us dream of a hasty transformation of Africa. Let us employ a method, slow but sure. Let us try and teach the natives what knowledge we have acquired, and not try and make them learn in a few years what it has taken us twenty centuries to learn.’”—SIR CLAUDE MACDONALD in Liverpool, 1892.

“These figures are surprising. One would naturally have expected that as the trade increased the proportion of expenditure would have decreased.... From that date, however, the expenditure has advanced by leaps and bounds, and in 1900 amounted to 28 per cent. of the exports. In other words, the expenditure has increased more rapidly than the trade.... If, however, the expenditure had been on the basis of former years ... we could have given over £1,000,000 worth additional European goods in exchange for the same amount of produce. In other words, the heavier the expenditure the higher price must the merchant ask for his European goods, or the less he is able to give for native produce. This must have the double effect of reducing the demand for manufactures and diminishing the energy of the natives in gathering produce. There is another possibility which should not be lost sight of: our colonies are hemmed in by our French and German neighbours. If in consequence of increased expenditure and the resulting heavier taxes we are unable to offer the natives as large a quantity of manufactures and as good a price as our competitors are enabled to do, produce which is grown on the borders of our Colonies may be diverted to foreign territory with a consequent loss of trade to this country.”—Mr. ARTHUR HUTTON, President African Section, Manchester Chamber of Commerce.[9]

A wise man has said that there is no way of conveying a rebuke so efficiently as upon the back of a compliment, and as a preliminary to criticism of certain phases of British administration in West Africa, a measure of praise is both just and needful. To avoid personalities—whether in the sense of praise or otherwise—should be the constant endeavour of any critic in approaching the subject under discussion, because it is primarily the system, and not the agents of the system, which is in question. Unfortunately the Crown Colony system being what it is, a despotism—though by no means necessarily a tyrannical despotism—there is great difficulty, if not actual impossibility, in altogether avoiding the personal equation.

The revolution in British West African policy is indelibly associated with the advent to power of the present Colonial Secretary, the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain. His entry upon the scene was contemporaneous with the culmination of certain events which must infallibly have modified our previous attitude in relation to West Africa whoever the statesmen responsible at the time might have been. The point need not be laboured, but it is often overlooked. Be that as it may, it is an undoubted fact—a fact redounding greatly to Mr. Chamberlain’s credit—that no Colonial Secretary before him has displayed so lively and personal an interest, both publicly and privately, in the affairs of British West Africa, an interest which has continued unabated during the entire period of his administration. In specific directions the result has been all to the good. Railways, the preliminary surveys of which had been made by direction of Mr. Chamberlain’s predecessor, the Marquis of Ripon, before he quitted office, have been constructed; others are commenced; the routes of more have been surveyed. The study of malaria has received the right honourable gentleman’s warmest support. A general publicity has been given to British West Africa by its identification with so powerful a politician as Mr. Chamberlain, which has materially contributed to remove it from the rut of oblivion and popular ignorance. It may also be added that the Colonial Secretary’s confident public declarations in respect to the future of the gold-mining industry in the Gold Coast has done much to attract capital to that Colony, and that the damper which he recently felt it wise to apply to the introduction of the more undesirable elements connected with the revival, under modern conditions, of gold-mining enterprise in a part of the coast celebrated for its former export of the precious metal, was entirely to his honour, although it would perhaps have been more useful had it come somewhat earlier in the day; while the memorandum he caused to be drawn up in September 1901 embodying the principle of treating native labourers on the Gold Coast, is perhaps the most admirable document ever issued from the Colonial Office.[10] In like manner, it can be taken for granted that all officials in West Africa are animated by the best of intentions, and however profoundly one may differ, from time to time, from certain of their actions, it is always essential to bear in mind that the system under which they work—the inconvenience of which not a few of them in private conversation readily admit—leaves the door wide open to the commitment of errors for which the system is in the first place responsible, while the climate is most trying to the constitutions and temper of Europeans. But it is unreasonable, and subversive of the true interests of the Empire, that the tendency should be encouraged to denounce honest criticism of a specific act of policy in West Africa with which this or that official must in the nature of things be associated, although he need not be, and often is not, the originator of it, as a personal attack upon an absent man, to be resented as an outrage and stigmatised almost as a crime, as an offence at any rate against common decency and fairness. The contention is absurd, and mischievous and unfair. The autocratic power which the Crown Colony system confers upon West African Governors, District Commissioners, and military commandants makes it absolutely essential that independent criticism, so long as it is legitimate, should be exercised by the public at home, whether or no full sanction has been obtained by a particular official from the Colonial Office for the application of measures giving rise to criticism, or whether the measures have been initiated by the Colonial Office itself. By public criticism alone can we hope to avoid the repetition of such deplorable mistakes as led to the Hut Tax war in Sierra Leone and the last Ashanti outbreak; the framing of legislation far in advance of the needs of the country and antagonistic to native feeling, which interest and duty alike imperatively demand, should be taken into consideration; the constant recurrence of punitive expeditions, which in another portion of our Tropical African Empire have worked such incalculable injury; and financial embarrassments, outcome of mismanagement, extravagance, and errors of policy.

There is always danger in reaction, as in the body physical, so in the body politic; and it is not altogether astonishing, perhaps, that the long spell of official apathy in West Africa, being suddenly changed to precipitate action, should have given rise to some objectionable features. But it cannot be admitted that the latter, instead of being a passing phenomenon, should take permanent root, and become part and parcel of the new order of things. If this be the case, we shall presently be witnessing yet another reaction in West Africa, and with embarrassed finances, a yearly expenditure far in excess of any visible increase in producing power, increased taxation, a native population alienated and disorganised, and energetic rivals forging ahead while we continue to struggle painfully in a quagmire of self-imposed difficulties, the public will lapse once more into its old attitude of indifference tinged with dislike, until some brilliant gentleman at the Foreign Office, deeming the moment opportune, hands over a further slice of British West Africa to a Foreign Power, in exchange for cod-fisheries, or something equally vital to the Empire’s prosperity.[11] The forward policy in West Africa has had its uses; it has served its purpose. We are secure in the possession of a large territory some 700,000 square miles in extent, unsurpassed in natural wealth by any other region in the globe, containing a population of probably 30,000,000 to 35,000,000 souls, of whose habits and customs we possess but the haziest knowledge, whose very languages we are in the main ignorant of; a population composed of the most diverse elements, the resources of whose widely scattered habitat are barely tapped, whose willing co-operation, which is essential to the success of our rule, can only be gained by scientific, painstaking study and the most tactful, sympathetic treatment. Now should be a close time for British West Africa. The country needs political rest. It has been turned topsy-turvy by European rivalry; old landmarks have been swept away; the boundaries of Native States altered to suit the exigencies of European diplomacy; immemorial trade roads interfered with. The native requires breathing space. Official activity should in the main be limited to the construction, with due regard to method and economy, of certain indispensable public works, collecting data concerning the native peoples and respective regions in which they dwell, strengthening native authority so rudely disturbed by recent events; in protecting commerce, encouraging capital, fostering native industries—perfecting those in existence and preparing the ground for others; in short, a work of gradual, sure, systematic consolidation. It should be our object to intermeddle as little as possible with native institutions, abide with scrupulous exactitude to both the spirit and the letter of our treaties with the Chiefs; develop the native peoples along the lines of their own civilisation both in the case of Mohammedans and Pagans; use conciliation in preference to dictation, gold rather than the sword. Administrative extravagance should be rigidly held in check for fear of burdening new Colonies with a load of debt; the soldier and the policeman should be kept in the background, only to be used as a last extremity. Commerce, good roads, _and statesmanship_ should be our preferable choice of weapons for mitigating evils, some at least of which the example of Europe in the past has intensified, others lying in deep-rooted religious beliefs, requiring careful preliminary investigation and thorough understanding before being made the object of official action, and then only of a repressive nature after every pacific inducement had been tried in vain. Patience, more patience, and again patience. That should be, ought to be, the corner-stone of British policy in West Africa. It was the tortoise that won the race; not the hare.

Unfortunately the hare is the more popular beast just now, and the forward policy is as much in evidence in British West Africa to-day as it was five years ago, with the result that what may have been justifiable then bids fair, if it be not stopped in time, to be disastrous now that the necessity for it has passed away with the close of international competition. Energy is being misapplied and misdirected. Let it be conceded that the existing basis of rule in West Africa, the Crown Colony system, is the worst in the world to stand the strain of a naturally active directing influence at headquarters; let it be admitted that it is a clumsy, inelastic instrument which allows the governed no voice in the government, which places the suppliers of revenue, both direct and indirect, in the position of having no effective control over the expenditure of that revenue, which permits of the jeopardising of years of commercial effort by some ill-considered legislative act—let these and many other counts against the Crown Colony system be admitted. The fact nevertheless remains that that system is capable of reform, of modification, of being moulded in accordance with the requirements of the case. The task should not be beyond the capacity of statecraft. Is it to be seriously maintained that British statesmanship has sunk so low that machinery suitable to a bygone age cannot be improved and brought more into line with our altered situation: that we must needs cling to every ancient wheel and rivet though they be clogged with superfluous matter, and eaten through with rust? If the machine which it was sought to preserve intact had done yeoman service in past days, there might be some excuse for hesitating to supply it with new works. But that is emphatically not so with the West African machine.

And it is positively heart-breaking to see that the last few years, far from bringing any reforms, far from holding out the hope of reform in the future, have but accentuated the evil. We cannot, it is true, lose any more territory, unless we care to give away that which is assured to us by international agreement. But in almost every other respect the Crown Colony system, as it prevails in West Africa, and under the new circumstances in which it is performing its functions, is building up a legacy of trouble which can only be contemplated with equanimity, or viewed with indifference, by the thoughtless; by those good people who refuse to walk save in pleasant places, who constitutionally dislike criticism as much as a cat objects to a wetting.

Haste and hurry are the order of the day in British West Africa. Expenditure is going up by leaps and bounds,[12] altogether apart from expenditure on public works. In the case of public works, large and costly undertakings are arranged for on the most unpractical lines, with no effort to benefit by competition, no putting out to tender, no safeguards without which a business man of ordinary intelligence will surround himself in order that he may be sure of getting the best value for his money. An extraordinary theory in economics has become fashionable. It is that the higher the revenue of a given West African Colony the more prosperous that Colony must be, quite oblivious of the effect which every increase of taxation has upon the volume of trade in the way of reduction, and driving it away to the neighbouring territory of a foreign rival. If a West African Colony shows in a given year an increase of £10,000 in revenue, obtained from increased taxation, jubilation in official quarters is excessive: but either nothing is heard of the falling off in trade accompanying the increase in revenue, or it is explained in some other way. The fact that there is a gain in revenue is held to be proof positive of an abounding prosperity and wise management. Every fresh increase in revenue is followed by a corresponding increase in expenditure. The one is made to keep pace with the other. It does not always succeed, because the expenditure is not infrequently in excess of the revenue _quand même_. It is also becoming the usual thing to financially assist these Colonies by “loans” or “grants-in-aid” or “advances” quite on the West Indian model, while the official reports invariably lead off with the reassuring statement that “this Colony has no public debt”: a little farther on, casual reference to the “grant-in-aid” may be discovered by the aid of a microscope, tucked away in some obscure corner, a footnote for choice. Lagos, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, are all at the present moment in the enjoyment of Imperial loans: Sierra Leone for the Railway and the late Hut-Tax war, Lagos for the Railway, the Gold Coast for the Railway and Ashanti war, Nigeria for the purchase of the Niger Co.’s treaties with the natives (the terms of which we have not adhered to), and for raising an army. Meantime, our neighbours the French are—in their West Coast Colonies proper, where comparison alone is possible—making their own Colonies pay a considerable part in the expenses of Railway construction; taxing their trade less, spending less on administration, governing more cheaply and quite as well—better by a long way in some cases.

The producing power of our Colonies, that is to say, the export trade, the only true test of prosperity in West Africa, is either increasing slowly by comparison with the expenditure, or it is stagnant, or it is retrogressing. When it is increasing, the increase is much below the corresponding ratio of increased expenditure. “Large doses”—veritable purgatives—of European conceived legislation are being thrust down the throats of the bewildered natives. The number of Ordinances passed in the British West African Colonies during the last few years, especially in Southern Nigeria,[13] is simply amazing. Most of them are far in advance of the times and cannot but remain a dead letter because, thank goodness, the existing machinery is not yet sufficiently extensive to carry them out. To make as few Ordinances as possible, and to ensure that such as are made shall be permanently useful, does not appear to enter into the official conception; and in the face of the growing objections to this rapidity and fertility of the official brain in forming premature legislation, not only on the part of the natives who are getting more and more confused, and—as the French put it—_déséquilibrés_, but by all people in affairs on the Coast who would desire that officialdom should move more slowly, carrying at each step real and understanding consent: the work of drafting portentous decrees, the exact meaning of which the very lawyers at home cannot comprehend, or reconcile with avowed intentions, goes merrily on.

Punitive expedition follows punitive expedition. We have had a war in Sierra Leone, a war in Ashanti, two expeditions in the Gambia, a big expedition up the Cross River in Southern Nigeria, together with minor affrays, while in Northern Nigeria, which so far is producing no revenue and has not attracted a single merchant (and but one exploring expedition for possible mining purposes), one punitive expedition succeeds another at an interval of a few weeks at most. I will not now labour the case of Northern Nigeria, as that most interesting portion of our West African dominions is discussed at some length farther on, but it is quite evident that the attention of Parliament to the expenditure of Northern Nigeria is becoming increasingly urgent. Lagos alone, under the able guidance of Sir William MacGregor, has known the blessings of peace. Long may it continue to do so.

Specific instances and examples of these general statements will be found scattered throughout this volume. It was, however, necessary to place them in collective form. In the next chapter, endeavour will be made to briefly indicate the lines upon which certain reforms might be attempted and the reasons for those reforms. Official optimism notwithstanding, it is an undoubted fact that, if something is not very shortly done to improve the prevailing system, the majority of the British West African Colonies will drift into a morass of financial confusion paralysing to their development and progress, while the native population within them will be comparatively poorer than in the neighbouring Colonies of commercial rivals.

Chapter IV

Some Necessary Reforms

“It is well known also that this personal system, at its best, is full of abuses of the worst kind politically; the Administrators and those who influence them, get to have favourites, and even chiefs have their legitimate power, influence and dignity interfered with because they refuse to pay homage to their views. In consequence of all this, an apparently successful Administrator is usually and sharply followed by even worse confusion and more protracted wars than were known before his advent. It is the history of all weak despotic systems, having no basis in the country or among the people sought to be governed or influenced.”—“The Crown Colonies of Great Britain” (chapter vi. West Africa), by C. S. Salmon, formerly Colonial Secretary and Administrator of the Gold Coast, &c.

“The inhabitants of the country and the mercantile community who provide the whole of the revenues, have no voice at all in the governing of their Colonies and the expenditure of these revenues, and I sincerely hope that the day is not far distant when the African community will rise up and protest against this Crown Colony system of government”—Mr. ARTHUR HUTTON, President of the African Section of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. (Extract from speech delivered.)

It will, I think, be conceded that, notwithstanding the extraordinarily important and revolutionising discoveries of Major Ross, to whom the entire credit of recent demonstrations belongs, the admirable work performed by the Liverpool[14] and London schools in the study of tropical disease and sanitary improvements on the West Coast, the chances of British West Africa ever becoming a possession where English men and women can flourish and multiply, is excessively remote; so remote, indeed, as to be outside the sphere of useful discussion. In fact, with the one possible exception of the Futa-Jallon uplands, when the Konakry-Kurussa railway line has connected them with the coast, West Africa as a whole is unsuitable, and will, according to all reasonable supposition, always remain unsuitable for European _colonisation_. The dominion of British West Africa must, therefore, be regarded not in the light of a colony properly so called, but as a vast tropical estate.

From that postulate arises a query, or rather, series of queries. What are we in West Africa for? What do we hope to do there? What object took us there? What main purpose keeps us there? The answer is not for a moment in doubt. Commerce took us to West Africa; commerce keeps and will keep us in West Africa. It is the _fons et origo_ of our presence in West Africa. The day that it ceases to be so, West Africa ceases to be of use to the Empire. It will become a costly plaything, and the British people is too essentially practical a people to care long for toys of that kind. As in every other part of the world, commerce in West Africa is the outcome of supply and demand. There is a demand for the products of West Africa on the markets of the world, and there is a demand in West Africa for the products of European industrialism. The increased circulation of a portable currency in West Africa in the shape of silver coinage will facilitate the operations of commerce, but will not dislodge or alter the fundamental nature of that commerce. The development of a mining industry in this or that portion of West Africa will, while it lasts, modify the conditions of trade in the portion affected, but commerce will remain the backbone, as it ever has been, of European intercourse with West Africa.

There is nothing that need occasion regret at the contemplation of the truth. Commerce is the greatest civilising agent. The steps upward in the ethical development of the human race have been synonymous with the spread of commercial relations, and the creation of the means and measures whereby their promotion has been successively extended. The most backward peoples to-day are, generally speaking, those whose secluded habitat renders their commercial transactions with the outside world scanty and precarious. In these days, when the noble meaning which attaches to “philanthropy” and “civilisation” is made the cloak to cover in West Africa so much that is vile, the excuse both sincerely and hypocritically given to explain away so much that is in painful contradiction, one needs, perhaps, to be reminded that such commonplace things as commerce and improved means of communication will do more to benefit the native than any number of attempts to impose laws and institutions unfamiliar to him, by violent even if well-meaning measures of so-called reform.[15] As a nation we should gain much and lose nothing in frankly admitting to ourselves that it is due neither to a desire to mend the ways of priestly theocracies, nor to alter the tyranny of the strong over the weak, which has led to the incorporation within the Empire of some thirty-five millions of West African natives, but the belief that West Africa constitutes a vast outlet for the free and unfettered development of British trade, and an equally vast field for the cultivation of products of economic necessity to ourselves. Thorough realisation of the fact would lead to more accurate appreciation and a truer sense of the direction which our policy should take in West Africa, if ultimate success and not failure is to attend it.

Commercial development is then in an especial and peculiar degree the _raison d’être_ of our presence in West Africa.

Now what are the principal factors in British West African commerce, and how are their claims to consideration in the administration of British West Africa treated under the Crown Colony system? Obviously the two principal factors are the European merchant and his customer, the native. The merchant directly supplies, the native indirectly supplies, the revenue which pays for the salaries of the officials and the general up-keep of the government, and if it be true, as it undoubtedly is, that the burden of taxation ultimately falls upon the native producer, it is equally true that, without the enterprise of the merchant, there would be no revenue and consequently no local funds for the support of administrative machinery. It follows, therefore, as a matter of simple justice, that the merchant should have a voice in the framing of legislation calculated to affect the internal politics, and consequently the commerce of our West African possessions. Apart from its justice, the claim of the merchant to representation in the affairs of our West African Empire has many features in its favour. He enjoys an expert’s knowledge, gained by long years of actual contact with the peoples of Western Africa. Experience has given him an insight into their customs and laws; an acquaintance with their peculiarities, with the working of their minds, with their inbred conservatism, which officials whose residence in West Africa—broken, as it is, by long intervals of leave—is usually of a very temporary or flitting nature, cannot hope to attain at any rate with the same completeness; and a mastery, even if it be only an instinctive mastery, of certain special characteristics which underlie native conceptions, and which have to be reckoned with in dealing with them. The merchant is consequently well fitted to be a most valuable assistant in the administration of British Western Africa.

The fact is recognised by the French and Germans who share with us the vast proportion of influence in West Africa properly so called. Ever practical, the Germans have created an Advisory Board (_Kolonial-rath_) to their Colonial Office, composed for the most part of the leading men in the West African trade. The present Colonial Advisory Board has twelve merchants sitting on its Council.[16] In French West Africa, but on somewhat different lines, the merchant is similarly treated, and just recently the representations of the French merchants to M. Décrais, the then Colonial Minister of France, averted a great evil threatening the Ivory Coast in the contemplated cession to King Leopold’s nominee, M. Empain, of a practical monopoly over the whole of the gold-bearing districts of that dependency, although M. Empain[17] had the most influential support at his back.

The French system, though far from perfect, is incomparably superior to anything we have in this country. It differs somewhat in the various Colonies, but is substantially composed of two Organisms, the Metropolitan Organism and the Colonial Organism. Under these dual Organisms, every Colony which is not directly represented in the French Parliament is represented at the Colonial Office by a delegate elected by vote of the white inhabitants of such Colony. In French Guinea, where the administration in force is in advance of that of any other French (or English for that matter) West African possession, a commercial delegate is regularly elected, and at the present moment a merchant, M. Gaboriau, representing the interests of that Colony, is attached to the Colonial Office. The weak point in the arrangement is, that the officials in the respective Colonies as well as the merchants have the right to vote in the election of a representative, with the result that very often the officials are in a majority. When that happens, a French politician, who can use his influence in promoting the officials who vote for him, is appointed. Each colony possesses a “Superior Council” or “Administrative Council” composed of the Governor, the heads of departments, and two or more merchants. In Senegal the merchant councillors have always enjoyed considerable power, and no step affecting the interests of the Colony is ever taken without the concurrence of the great Bordeaux merchant firms, which between them centralise the ground-nut trade (they themselves built it up), the staple industry of Senegal. Moreover, Senegal is particularly favoured in that it boasts a Deputy in the Chamber and a local General Council which enjoys large financial responsibility, the merchants—provided they do not fall out among themselves—being always in a majority in the said General Council.

With us matters are altogether different. England, which passes for a country where common-sense is the cardinal virtue, refuses to her merchants any recognised _status_ in the administrative machinery of West Africa. It has been accurately asserted that the merchant is the _uitlander_ of British West Africa. He is seldom, if ever, consulted in the affairs of the country, and although Mr. Chamberlain has on more than one occasion given verbal assurances that no legislative acts affecting the natives (and _de facto_ calculated to influence native production—or, in other words, trade) would be promulgated without previously being submitted to the merchants for their opinion, decrees of the highest importance embodying a kind of revolution in our historical native policy in regard to the laws of native land tenure have just become law in Southern Nigeria, not only without the merchants being consulted, but without their being advised in any other way than by a perusal of the published Ordinances in the local Government Gazette. From time to time—and during the last two years with increasing frequency, consistency, and earnestness—the Liverpool and Manchester Chambers of Commerce, which between them represent the majority of the commercial interests of Great Britain in West Africa,[18] have approached the Foreign and Colonial Offices on their own initiative, sometimes supported by as many as ten or twelve other leading chambers in the Kingdom voicing industrial interests more or less directly affected by specific occurrences. When—I am speaking now of recent times—the Foreign Office has been either memorialised or waited upon by deputations from the Chambers, the question at issue has been one of international import, such for instance as the differential tariff against British goods in the French West African Colonies (1898), and the violation of the Berlin Act in the Congo Basin (1901 and 1902). In the first case, the action of the Chambers was surprisingly successful; in the second case, success has not yet attended their efforts.

When, as in the majority of instances, the Colonial Office has been waited upon or written to, the object has referred to some legislation either contemplated or assented to, or to some measure of internal policy towards a native tribe or ruler. I cannot find that the Colonial Office has on any single occasion, in a matter of importance, consented to adopt the views of the men who, as subsequent events have manifestly proved, saw clearer than the permanent officials, and whose advice, if taken, would have avoided the perpetration of serious mistakes. In 1895 the Manchester Chamber and the local Chamber at Cape Coast strongly advised “that the King of Ashanti (Prempreh) be allowed to reserve all the rights that he now exercises over his people,” but that a British resident should be established at his Court, as the best means of ensuring a lasting peace with the Ashanti people, who, if they had erred, also had—as is historically admitted—grounds of legitimate complaint against the British authorities on various occasions. Prempreh, however, was arrested and deported, and from that moment the Ashantis never ceased to intrigue against the British until their discontent, fanned into flame by the injudicious proceedings of Governor Hodgson, broke forth once more and led to the last sanguinary expedition, which involved an expenditure of a quarter of a million of money.

But the most notable instance at once, of the value of the merchants’ expert knowledge and of the fatuity of lightly rejecting their counsel, is provided in the lamentable chapter in the history of Sierra Leone which began with the enforcement of the Hut Tax Ordinance in 1898, and which is not yet closed, whatever officialdom may say to the contrary. As I propose discussing this subject in some detail later on, it is sufficient to state here that the merchants almost went on their bended knees, figuratively speaking, in seeking to turn the Colonial Office from its purpose; that they entirely failed; that they were met by official assurances which were afterwards shown to be entirely erroneous; that their predictions and warnings were fulfilled to the letter; that their views were subsequently substantiated in every respect by the Special Commissioner despatched later by the Colonial Office to make investigations as to the origin of the rising, and that the persistent refusal of the Colonial Office to abide by the Special Commissioner’s report has reduced our oldest West African possession to such a condition that, if the railway now in course of construction through the eastern district does not—and there appears little or no hope that it will—entirely alter the present state of affairs, Sierra Leone under the present _régime_, and with the pressure of French competition in the neighbouring territories, is irretrievably ruined.

Is it not time that in this respect at least something was done to bring the management of British West Africa more into line with modern requirements, and at a period when the commercial position of Great Britain in West Africa is everywhere threatened by foreign competition, to establish some working arrangement—call it a West African Council or Advisory Board or anything you please—whereby the accumulated experience of the men who are supplying the Government with the wherewithal to govern, should be used as an auxiliary force for the promotion of the general interests of Great Britain in West Africa? The nucleus of such a council or Advisory Board could be at once supplied.

It is said that the merchants cannot agree amongst themselves. The plea lacks in truthfulness, and it is permissible to doubt whether it is sincerely put forward. Unquestionably there are rivalries in the West African trade. What trade is without them? But to argue that competition in trade is a bar to co-operation in matters affecting the general welfare of the country is a very narrow-minded position to take up. It is converting a legitimate, natural, and healthy phenomenon into a disqualification which nothing justifies. Where should we be in West Africa to-day but for our merchant pioneers? Suppose they had endorsed the official resolution of 1865 by withdrawing from the Coast, would the Union Jack be floating in West Africa except in Sierra Leone to-day? If the merchant had been devoid of political conception, and content to let his horizon be confined to those petty but inevitable aspects of commercialism which consist in under-selling a competitor, would not the abandonment of the Gold Coast have followed the battle of Katamansu, and would the richest portion of the Niger Valley be a British Protectorate to-day? Let those who suggest that the British merchant in West Africa is incapable of rising above sordid motives of self-interest remember MacGregor Laird. The merchant has everywhere preceded the administrator in West Africa. In his case the old adage must be reversed. It has been the flag which has followed trade, not trade the flag.[19]

It is also said that the merchants are not unanimous with regard to certain features of West African policy. But can any one single out a body of men among whom variations of opinion on specific points do not occur? Do all the members of a Cabinet invariably see eye to eye on a particular measure to be introduced? Are not the very modifications which any given Bill must go through before being finally drafted and approved by the Cabinet as a whole a guarantee that legislation evolved from the interchange of ideas among the sundry persons concerned—and who, unless they be devoid of individuality, cannot all think alike on every point—will be the better for the destructive and constructive criticism to which it has been subjected? The merchants are in substantial agreement in what they consider the vital principles of British policy in West Africa, principles which informed public opinion is at last beginning to realise the urgency of upholding. No material divergency of views will be found among merchants as to the absolute necessity of respecting native land tenure, the need of careful finance, the danger of constant military operations, the indispensableness of preserving native institutions. If there be a charge against the merchants, it is that they have not hitherto sufficiently exercised their power of influencing successive Governments. They have not risen as they should have done to the height of their duties and responsibilities. They have allowed outsiders to perform a difficult and generally ungrateful work, which they themselves should have taken in hand—that of calling public attention to the urgency of reforms in West African administration. At critical moments they have been weak-kneed, and fearful of giving offence when they should have been resolute in standing by convictions which they knew to be sound. Their attitude is now happily undergoing a change which, if maintained, is bound to have lasting results for good.

At no previous period in the history of British West Africa has the co-operation of the great merchant community in the task of administration been so pressing a necessity as it is to-day. Never could better use be made of such co-operation by the department responsible for West Africa as at present. In the increasing notice which is being given on all sides to West African affairs consequent upon the remarkable growth of European relations with that country and with the birth in West Africa of a modern mining industry, a host of dangerous advisers is arising. We see old errors creeping back in the guise of new verities, old misconceptions gaining fresh lease of life, exploded theories crowding forward to mislead and confuse. Appeals to force as the solution of all difficulties arising out of contact with a primitive people, contemptuous disregard of native laws and customs—the “damned nigger” theory in all its perennial beauty, insistent requests for lavish expenditure, heedless of plain economic facts, and so forth—these are the order of the day. Upon elementary errors of geography are grafted the crudest notions of the political and social condition of the Negro, the most amazing ignorance of history and past experience in every branch of West African lore. By a plausible inversion of facts, opponents of the wild and whirling talk indulged in regarding West Africa are denounced as sentimentalists, although it so happens that the denouncers draw the material which serves them as a basis for their contentions from that very discredited sentimentalism responsible for so many errors in West Africa, which portrays the native as an abject being, brutish, lazy, and degraded, greatly honoured by the bestowal of a bible, a suit of clothes; and a shilling, with a possible extra threepence thrown in as subsistence-money, for a hard day’s work. No doubt it is possible to exaggerate the importance of these _ad captandum_ effusions, but their volume is, perhaps, calculated to momentarily drown the voice of reason. Parrot-like reiteration, if sufficiently sustained, is apt sometimes to impress.

At such a time the assistance of a trained body of men thoroughly conversant with the affairs of Western Africa, in a position to point to past experiences, to vested interests, to technical knowledge as their claim to competency, and to the feeding of the administrative machine as their claim to consideration, ought surely to commend itself to the Authorities. To persist much longer in the rejection of that assistance would be equally short-sighted and unjust.

Another and an equally important question connected with the management of our West African Possessions, is the question of the Crown Agents. If any one attempted to define the duties of that body, he would be hard put to it to do so. They are here, there and everywhere, and their interference puts a premium upon extravagance and waste. The Crown Agents are an anomaly which ought to disappear. At present they constitute a sort of half-way house between the Colonial Office and the West African Governors, and are a positive obstacle to sound finance and good business methods. Enough examples of the extraordinary ways of the Crown Agents could be given to fill a volume. The West African Colonies are hampered right and left by the powers conferred upon this body. The Colonies are not allowed to purchase what they require in the shape of stores, equipment, material and so forth on the open market. Everything has to go through the Crown Agents, with the natural result that the Colonies have to pay 40 per cent. and 50 per cent. more than they would have to if allowed to invite tenders on their own account. Look at the way in which these railways have been and are being built.

The construction is, apparently, the monopoly of one particular firm (under the direction of the Crown Agents); a firm which, as far as can be gathered, had had but little experience in railway construction before, metaphorically speaking, falling upon its feet in West Africa.

The same firm holds the position of “consulting engineers” to the Colonial Office. Surely it is anomalous, from the purely business point of view, that a firm retained as “consulting engineers” to a Government Department in charge of West Africa should also be the actual constructors of the West African railways! The two parts strike one as incompatible. Consulting engineers, one would imagine, would be advisers and arbiters. All contracts should be publicly and openly tendered for. A very widespread impression prevails that the time and cost expended in the construction of these railways have been very great. The Gold Coast Railway was begun in February 1898; it is officially estimated to reach Kumasi early in 1904. Assuming that it does, it will have taken six years to build, which works out at about twenty-eight miles per annum—the distance from Sekondi to Kumasi being 169¼ miles.

It is as yet too early to say definitely what the cost of the line will average per mile. Official estimates, we know, are not always reliable. In this case, even the official estimate is very high, viz. £8000 per mile for the Sekondi-Tarkwa section, and £6300 per mile for the Tarkwa-Kumasi section.

That dissatisfaction with the policy pursued up to the present (that is to say, the policy of constructing these railways under the “Department System,” or, otherwise stated, leaving their construction to the Crown Agents), is not confined to merchants, mine-managers and other revenue-payers of the West African Colonies, but is held by competent and highly placed officials, I reproduce the following remarks of Sir William MacGregor, made on the occasion of a visit to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce in 1900, and in reply to the following question of Mr. Arthur Hutton’s[20]:

“Do you think, from what you have seen, it (_i.e._ railway construction) would be better done by contract?”

SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR: “I believe at the present moment—and I have said so to the Secretary of State—_I believe there would be men living who are now rotting in their graves, if it had been taken out of the control of the Crown Agents_....”[21]

It is competently estimated that the Lagos railway, begun in 1896, will have cost £10,000[22] per mile by the time its 125 miles are in full working order—an enormous rate. The Crown Agents, through whom the moneys have been advanced to the Colony, exact 5 per cent. interest, whereas with the security they have to offer, they should easily be able to get them—and probably have got them—from the Treasury at 3 per cent. Why should the Colony be saddled with an extra 2[23] per cent. interest and find its liability for the current year on the railway loan increased to the enormous total of £54,000, or, say, 22 per cent. of the entire revenue?[24] Why should all indents be sent through the Crown Agents? The delays which this ridiculous system entail are only second in point of importance to the squandering of the public funds which goes on under it. The Crown Agents appear to think that they know more about the material needs of the Colonies than the officials in charge of the Colonies themselves. Two instances have been recently brought to my notice which would be laughable were they not so deplorably unbusiness-like. A certain West African Colony required a two-ton engine for a short, light railway. The request was duly put forward. After months of delay an eight-ton engine was sent out, too heavy, of course, for the rails to support it. It was entirely useless. Again, a scheme was drawn up for the construction of a bridge by the local official responsible. An estimate was made, and the plans and so forth were forwarded home. The bridge was urgently required. Months elapsed; then the Crown Agents, who knew nothing of the local conditions, instead of despatching the materials, sent out an entirely different counter-scheme, far more elaborate, far more costly, and totally unsuited to local requirements. The Colony is still waiting for its bridge.[25] I can only repeat that, whether avowed or not—in many cases, of course, it manifestly cannot be avowed—the Crown Agents are looked upon in official and commercial circles in West Africa as an unmitigated nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress.

The needs of British West Africa at the present time may be resumed thus: (1) A Council or Advisory Board in which the merchant element shall be widely represented; (2) Tight control over the military element—fewer punitive expeditions, and more tact and patience in dealing with native races, the officials whose administration is virgin of wars to be looked upon as deserving of prior promotion; (3) Economy in Administration; (4) Thorough financial overhaul; (5) Elimination of the Crown Agents; (6) Open tenders for all public works; (7) Sanitation; (8) Scientific study of native peoples, laws and languages; (9) Scientific study of native products and improvement of native industries; (10) Maintenance and not murder of native institutions, upholding and strengthening of the power of the Chiefs; non-interference with domestic slavery in the Protectorates; preservation of native land-tenure; (11) A Civil Service on the lines of the Indian Civil Service; (12) A Civilian Governor-General.

Part II

Chapter V

The Discovery Of Northern Nigeria

The nineteenth century will ever be memorable for the exploration of the interior of the African Continent. It is difficult to realise when we read in the daily newspapers of steamers plying upon Tanganyika, ocean steamers of 4000 tons burthen ploughing their way through the brown waters of the Lower Congo, gun-boats patrolling the Niger, railways piercing alike the deserts of the Eastern Sudan and the forests of Equatoria, telegraphs extending in a network of lines across the Western Sudan and athwart the Great Central Lakes—it seems difficult, I say, when we read of these things to remember that at the close of the eighteenth century the interior of Africa was to all intents and purposes a blank, and that, even within the memory of most of us, the extent of geographical knowledge we possessed respecting vast regions many times larger than European Russia had made no progress since the days of Herodotus and Pliny. What a colossal work it has been, this solving of riddles which had baffled the world for ages upon ages! What prodigies of labour, of courage, of self-abnegation have been required to triumph over the obstacles which nature and man united in opposing to the early pioneers of African research! How many splendid lives have been immolated upon the altar of the African Moloch!

Notwithstanding the remarkable progress in medical science and hygiene, and the potentialities of the modern rifle as a weapon of defence against the attack of man and beast, the difficulties of the African traveller at the present day are sufficiently great. Deadly maladies beset him on every side, and the chance of coming to a sudden and violent end is ever present. But these difficulties are as dust in the balance compared with the sufferings and privations which the first explorers of unknown Africa had to endure. Think of Park, and picture to yourself the position of a lonely European wandering about inland Western Africa in a thick blue fustian coat, with gilt buttons, keeping his precious notes in the crown of a top-hat, and kicked, buffeted, spat upon, treated with contumely and scorn, subjected to every possible insult, over and again a slave, exposed for hours at a time in a burning sun without water, often on the verge of starvation, racked by disease, and in so miserable a plight upon many occasions that death would have been a welcome relief—yet triumphing over everything and finally returning, notes and all, to his own land. Park’s experiences naturally occur to one in relation to the subject which it is proposed to treat in this chapter, because Park was the real discoverer of the Niger, which had been known in a vague manner to the ancients, and also to the Arabs (who, however, wrongly ascribed to it a westerly course, and identified it with the Nile),[26] and laid the foundation of that remarkable series of explorations which ultimately ended in Lander’s supreme success.

In 1805 Park set out once more on his second and fatal journey, with the firm conviction that he would be able to prove to the world the accuracy of his own theory, viz. that the Niger and the Congo were one and the same. The peripatetics of that eventful voyage are known to every student of Africa. After incredible hardships, Park managed to descend the Niger as far as Bussa. There, in sight almost of the goal of his ambitions he perished, victim of a cruel fate, which drove his boat upon those treacherous rocks, since celebrated for having brought two Christian nations to the brink of war. There are aspects of Park’s character which leave something to be desired, but his defects are lost sight of in the magnificence of his courage, his indomitable will, and the never-failing optimism with which he pursued his task, undeterred by disappointment and unshaken by adversity. As an example of human perseverance and fortitude carried to its highest limits, Park probably holds an unique position among African explorers.

Park’s tragic end increased the desire of Englishmen to solve the mystery of the Niger’s course, and in 1816 the British Government organised a dual expedition on a large scale for this purpose. One section, under Captain Tuckey, ascended the Congo, and the other, under Major Peddie, endeavoured to reach the Niger by a more southerly route than that adopted by Park, the idea being that both sections would ultimately meet somewhere in Central Africa. How fantastic was the scheme does not need to be pointed out, but it must be remembered that in those days the consensus of learned opinion favoured Park’s theory of identification concerning the Niger and the Congo. The expedition was an utter failure. The Niger section excited the resentment of the natives, and had to return after losing its chief. Captain Tuckey ascended the Congo as far as the first cataracts, which had baffled the Portuguese for 200 years, and then leaving the River, pushed North, along what used to be the old caravan route, to the Upper River, now covered by the Matadi-Stanleyville railway, constructed by Colonel Thys. He managed to strike the Upper River in the neighbourhood of the modern Leopoldville, but the trying landmarch had played havoc with his followers. Sickness broke out, and finally the expedition had to return with a loss of 75 per cent. of its European members. Several lesser attempts followed. They all ended disastrously, and it seemed as though the Dark Continent refused to yield up its secrets. But Englishmen were not to be beaten. The Western route was indeed given up as impracticable for a time, but what could not be accomplished from the West might be achieved from the North. True, the Desert had to be faced and traversed. But where the Phœnician and the Roman had dared and done, the Englishman might surely follow. The Desert had not balked the Sectaries of Mohammed, and long caravans, conducted by Tripolitan merchants, yearly made their way across those dreary solitudes. Why should not a party of Englishmen attach themselves to one of these caravans, and, protected by the influence of the British Government, armed with the authority of the Pasha of Tripoli, succeed in reaching the fertile countries of the South, whence rich supplies of ostrich feathers, skins, ivory, gold dust, and slaves found their way to the ports of the Northern littoral?

[Illustration: SKETCH OF THE NORTHERN PART OF AFRICA]

For many years the African Association had been collecting materials with a view to a possible penetration by the Northern route. Once the idea found favour with the authorities, Mr. Lucas was despatched by the Association to Tripoli. He did very little in the way of exploration, but brought back many interesting facts confirming Leo Africanus’ description in respect to the existence of flourishing kingdoms far away to the South, where arts and crafts had attained a high degree of development. Ritchie and Lyon followed Lucas. Lyon managed to reach the southernmost limits of Fezzan, on the borders of the Desert.[27] The Desert itself remained uncrossed, however, and the mystery of the Niger still unsolved. Then it was that the British Government determined to make a great effort to solve the problem, and fitted out an expedition, which did not, it is true, fulfil all that was expected of it, but which succeeded, nevertheless, in throwing a vivid light upon unknown Central Africa, and in disclosing to an astonished world the remarkable civilisation which, under Arab, Berber, and Fulani influence, had arisen in the heart of that black “Sudan” the “land of infidels,” and in popular conception,

“Of the cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.”

And so the subjects of this sketch enter upon the scene—three men, Clapperton, Denham and Oudney, none of them perhaps conspicuous for ability, or qualified to make the most of their discoveries, yet animated all three with the ardent love of adventure for which their race has ever been famous, and whose united exertions enabled Western Europe to estimate the political and social conditions prevailing in the richest, most populated, most fertile, and undoubtedly most interesting portion of the Dark Continent. It is peculiarly fitting that the region which these Englishmen were the first Europeans to visit, and which we now designate by the name of Northern Nigeria, should have been ultimately incorporated with the British West African Empire by the foresight of another Englishman, Sir George Taubman Goldie, and the diplomatic ability of the gallant Joseph Thomson. A word now as to the three companions. Of Denham and Oudney, we know little beyond what can be gathered from their own writings; Oudney was a medical man, and Denham held the rank of Major in the army. Oudney was the real leader of the expedition, with which he had been entrusted by Earl Bathurst, then Secretary of State for the Colonies; but his untimely death had the result of depreciating the part which he personally played during its first two years’ work. Clapperton has written of him that he was “A man of unassuming deportment, pleasing manners, steadfast perseverance and undaunted enterprise; while his mind was fraught at once with knowledge, virtue and religion.” Major Denham’s action in joining a raiding party into Mandara (Eastern Bornu) has somewhat tarnished his reputation, in my humble opinion very unjustly, although it is quite true that his action in this respect was the cause of serious embarrassment to Clapperton later on. In criticising Denham’s conduct on this occasion, we must bear in mind in the first place that the Empire of Bornu, at that period, owing to various dynastic revolutions, and to the pressure of its powerful enemies on the East—Baghirmi and Wadai—was in a state of more or less constant warfare both within and without, and that warlike expeditions were constantly taking place, faction fighting against faction and tribe against tribe, warfare being in fact a more or less permanent institution in the social life of the country. And in the second place, we must also recollect that the members of the expedition had been instructed to examine and report upon all the various phases of life in the countries which they might traverse. Now it was impossible for Denham to obtain a thorough knowledge of the habits of the people without personally investigating the manner in which they waged war upon their neighbours. Apart, therefore, from the natural predilections of his soldierly instincts, which would lead him to find particular interest in matters of this kind, it may be assumed that Denham considered it his duty to act as he did. Years afterwards, Barth found himself in much the same predicament. As it happened, the adventure nearly cost Denham his life. The raided proved too strong for the raiders, and, assisted by the Fulani cavalry, completely defeated the latter. Denham’s escape was a marvellous one. He lost everything, and was wounded in three places.

An account of Clapperton’s life is contributed by Lieut.-Colonel Clapperton in the preface to Clapperton and Lander’s journal of the second expedition to Sokoto, published by Murray in 1829. Hugh Clapperton was born in Dumfriesshire in 1788. At the age of thirteen he went to sea as an apprentice, and subsequently entered the Royal Navy. He served in the _Renommée_ and _Venerable_, and visited the East Indies. He then went to the Canadian Lakes, and participated in the American War of Independence. In 1816 he got his commission. A year later the British vessels on the Canadian Lakes were paid off and laid up, and Clapperton returned to England on half-pay. In 1820 he met Dr. Oudney in Edinburgh, and struck up a friendship which resulted in his accompanying the latter to Africa. Of intellectual attainments he had none, but he was large-hearted, generous, and tolerant; courageous in the extreme, gifted with an iron constitution, and of great physical strength. So much for the personal characteristics of the trio. We may now examine the nature of their work. The narrative of the expedition in which all three took part is chiefly contributed by Denham. While Denham was compiling their joint notes, Clapperton started for Africa again, and reached Sokoto from Badagry on the West Coast. The story of Clapperton’s second journey was written by himself, and afterwards published by his faithful servant Richard Lander, who was destined ultimately to follow the Niger down to the sea, thus finally solving the great problem in the attempted elucidation of which Park, Tucker, Clapperton and many others perished.

The primary, and in many respects the main, obstacle which had to be overcome by Oudney and his companions, was the crossing of that portion of the Sahara which lies between Murzuk and Bornu, and which, to use Denham’s words, “Is made up of dark frowning hills of naked rock, in interminable plains, strewed in some places with fragments of stone and pebbles, in others of one vast level surface of sand, and in others, again, the same material rising into immense mounds, altering their form and position according to the strength and direction of the winds.” Caravan routes across the desert had existed for many centuries, and the commerce of the Central Sudan, with the parts of North Africa, was still an important one. The route which the travellers hoped to take, in company with a party of merchants, was the shortest and safest one, that which starting from Tripoli passes through Murzuk and Bilma to Kuka, then the capital of Bornu, situated on the shores of Lake Chad. The expedition arrived at Tripoli in November 1821, but did not reach Murzuk, capital of Fezzan, until the 8th April 1822. Here the Englishmen met with such a discouraging reception from the Sultan that on the 12th May, finding no chance of making any progress whatever, Major Denham started back to Tripoli to interview the Pasha, by whom the British Government had been promised every possible assistance. The Pasha proving as lethargic as his prototype at Murzuk, Denham left Tripoli in a white heat of indignation to report his conduct to the British Government. This did not suit the Pasha at all, and he sent three despatches after the irate Englishman begging him to return, as he had arranged for an escort to accompany the expedition to Bornu. The despatches reached Denham while the boat he had taken passage in was quarantined outside Marseilles, and he forthwith set sail once more for the Barbary shore. On the 29th November 1822, or a year after landing at Tripoli, the expedition left Murzuk, and set out upon its way to Bornu under the guidance of Bu-Kalum, a merchant of repute, much enamoured of pomp and show, and not over energetic in his movements. Within a few weeks’ march from Murzuk the members of the expedition were able to appreciate all the horrors of the trans-Desert slave trade in the sight of “more than 100 skeletons, scattered over the line of route, some of them with the skin attached to the bones.”

On the 13th January they reached Bilma, famous for its salt pans, and on February 4th the discomforts they had endured in the desert received ample compensation by a view of “the great Lake Chad, glowing with the golden rays of the sun in its strength.” The natural emotion of the travellers is thus expressed by Denham, whose descriptions in the general way certainly do not incline to the picturesque:

“It conveyed to my mind,” he writes, “a sensation so gratifying and inspiring that it would be difficult for language to convey an idea of its force and pleasure.... My heart bounded within me at the prospect, for I believe this lake to be the key to the great object of our search, and I could not refrain from silently imploring heaven’s continued protection, which had enabled us to proceed so far in health and strength, even to the accomplishment of our task.”

Chapter VI

THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA—(_cont._)

On the borders of the Lake the travellers observed the cotton shrub growing well and innumerable flocks of waterfowl disporting themselves. So tame were the latter that when approached they “merely changed their position a little to the right or left.” Following the Western shore of the Chad, the travellers pushed on to Kuka. Within a few days’ march of that once-flourishing city they began to realise how erroneous were the popular ideas of the “Sudan.” Instead of “ragged negroes armed with spears,” who, with the assistance of a few Arabs, managed to terrorise the country, the travellers were astonished to see a dense cloud of cavalry riding towards them, the guard of honour sent by the Sheik of Bornu to bid them welcome. With loud cries of “Blessing, blessing! Welcome! welcome!” the black warriors, clad “in coats of mail, composed of iron chain,” bore down upon them in orderly array, waving swords and spears. Surrounded by this imposing mass of horsemen they entered Kuka, and were received in audience by the Sheik. After a short residence in Kuka the companions separated, Denham going off with Bu-Kalum on the raid which turned out so disastrously for all concerned in it.

The energetic Major subsequently visited a large portion of the Eastern parts of Bornu, located and ascended the Shari as far as Logon, then the capital of an important kingdom, and explored a considerable portion of the Eastern shores of the Lake. The information he collected in the course of his peregrinations and the maps of the district which he compiled were of very great value. The Southern and Eastern shores of the Lake were entirely unknown, the Lake itself practically unlocated, and the existence of the Shari unsuspected. It has always appeared to me that Denham never received the credit which was due to him for his exploring work. In view of his unscientific training, he was unable to turn his discoveries to the best advantage, but all things considered, his investigations proved in the main surprisingly accurate. His ignorance of African history, too, was very much against him. He was distinctly an unlettered man, neither possessed of a ready pen nor imbued with much imagination. The natural result of these shortcomings is apparent in every page of his Journal. We find him recording the most trivial incidents, and almost neglecting the social, political and ethnological problems with which he came daily in contact. The same lack of study and intelligent research—of education, really—is visible, but perhaps to a lesser extent, in Clapperton’s writings.

It was in a sense a new world which the explorers had entered, a world of absorbing interest, where Eastern magnificence and barbaric display mingled with the naked barbarism of Africa; where semi-Arabised potentates went a-warring with mail-clad knights, and powerful Barons brought their contingent of retainers to assist their liege lord in his campaigns of plunder and conquest. The travellers had left nineteenth-century England, had plunged into the Desert, and had emerged therefrom amid a feudalism which recalled in many ways that of their own land in the Middle Ages. What an opportunity was theirs in this region, which for centuries, by reason of its fertility, had proved a magnet to attract the migration of races from the North, West, and East! Some twenty years later a man with a truly scientific mind went over the same ground, and then, and only then, did people realise all that Denham and Clapperton had left untold. But, although it was reserved for the genial and cultured German who succeeded Denham to show how profound is the gulf between a character such as Barth’s, studious and observant, replete with historical lore and scientific attainment, and men like Denham and Clapperton, notable only for their courage, dogged perseverance, and love of adventure, yet the prestige of the former, which increases rather than diminishes as our knowledge of these regions in question becomes more extensive, can never rob the Englishmen of the right of priority of discovery. They were the first white men to reach the Chad, to discover the Shari, to explore Bornu, Sokoto, and part of Kanem, and to describe, however indifferently, the wonderful social fabric, the picturesque civilisation, teeming with energy and industrialism, which existed, and exists, in the upper portion of the Niger Basin.

While Denham bent his steps eastwards, Clapperton and Oudney left Kuka in a westerly direction with the intention of entering the Empire of Sokoto, founded by Othman Fodio (the Fulani reformer during the first years of the nineteenth century) out of the heterogeneous and mutually antagonistic Hausa States. Of this Empire and the remarkable race which created it, the travellers had heard a great deal while in Bornu. The two States were for the time being at peace, and the Sheik Mohammed-el-Kanemy, the virtual, and subsequently the absolute ruler of Bornu, made no opposition to the Englishmen’s visit. Shortly after leaving Katagum, at the small village of Murmur, Dr. Oudney, who had been ailing for many months, died, much to Clapperton’s distress. The sad event did not, however, deter his companion from pushing onwards, noting as he went the extraordinary beauty and fertility of the country, the numerous plantations of cotton, tobacco and indigo, the rows upon rows of date-palms, the splendid cattle, the luxurious foliage, and the industry of the inhabitants, tending their flocks and herds, toiling in the fields, carrying fruit and butter to the markets, weaving and dyeing their handsome cotton cloths. On January 19, 1824, Clapperton reached Kano, the great Emporium of the Central Sudan, his first feeling being one of disappointment, which was not diminished by the circumstance that, although he had donned his naval uniform, no one took the slightest heed of him, “but all intent on their own business, allowed me to pass by without remark.” This little incident, trivial in itself, throws an interesting sidelight upon the character of the gallant sailor, who was imbued with a proper sense of the dignity befitting his position and never failed to uphold it, as witness the following conversation which took place between him and the Governor of Kano. There is, by the way, a passage in this short dialogue which may be commended to the attention of certain missionary enthusiasts at the present time:

“‘How do you do, Abdullah (Clapperton’s native name)? Will you come and see me at Hadyja on your return?’ I answered, ‘God willing,’ with due Moslem solemnity. ‘You are a Christian, Abdullah?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And what have you come to see?’ ‘The country.’ ‘What do you think of it?’ ‘It is a fine country, but very sickly.’ At this he smiled, and again asked, ‘Would you Christians allow us to come and see your country?’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ ‘Would you force us to become Christians?’ ‘By no means; we never meddle with a man’s religion.’ ‘What,’ said he, ‘and do you ever pray?’ ‘Sometimes; our religion commands us to pray always; but we pray in secret, and not in public, except on Sundays.’ One of his people abruptly asked what a Christian was? ‘Why a Kaffir,’[28] rejoined the Governor. ‘Where is your Jew servant?’ again asked the Governor; ‘you ought to let me see him.’ ‘Excuse me, he is averse to it, and I never allow my servants to be molested for their religious opinions.’ ‘Well, Abdullah, thou art a man of understanding, and you must come and see me at Hadyja.’”

Clapperton came very satisfactorily out of that interview, but he did not fare quite so well in a later colloquy with Sultan Bello, the ruler of the Sokoto Empire, who asked him one day whether he was a Nestorian or a Socinian. The puzzled Englishman, who probably had never heard of either sect, excused himself by replying that he was a Protestant. The fact of having such a question put to him thousands of miles in the interior of the Dark Continent, supposed to be the abode of primitive savagery, was sufficient evidence of the intelligence of the inhabitants, of which he received abundant proof every fresh day he prolonged his stay in the country. Under the able guidance of Bello, Othman’s successor and “a noble-looking man,” as Clapperton calls him (with the aristocratic and finely cut features peculiar to the Fulani), the statesmanlike qualities of the ruling race and the wonderful commercial and industrial activity of the Hausa population, reached their full development, and law and order reigned throughout that portion of the new States which had accepted the Fulani dominion. The country had been divided into Provinces, to each of which Governors were appointed. Trade was encouraged, industries protected, and manufactures promoted. Prosperity was everywhere apparent, and, to quote the words used by Clapperton in the course of one of his interviews with Bello:

“The people of England could all read and write, and were acquainted with most other regions of the earth; but of this country alone they hitherto knew scarcely anything, and erroneously regarded the inhabitants as naked savages, devoid of religion, and not far removed from the condition of wild beasts; whereas, I found them, from my personal observation, to be civilised, humane, and pious.”

Clapperton very much desired to continue his westward journey, and, if possible, strike the Niger, follow it to its mouth, and thus attain the supreme object of the mission; for the information which the traveller had obtained in Sokoto made it a practical certainty that the Niger discharged itself somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. But Bello objected, alleging the disturbed condition of the westward country, which had not yet been subjected. Much to his disappointment, therefore, the Englishman was compelled to forego his plans. He, however, parted on the best of terms with his enlightened host, who gave him a letter to the King of England, and begged him to return at the earliest possible opportunity. The letter is worth reproducing here:

“Bello To King George IV.

“In the name of God, the merciful and the clement. May God bless our favourite prophet Mahommed and those who follow his sound doctrine. To the head of the Christian nation, the honoured and the beloved among the English people, George the Fourth, King of Great Britain. Praise be to God who inspires, and peace be unto those who follow the right path. Your Majesty’s servant, Rayes Abdullah, came to us, and we found him a very intelligent and wise man; representing in every respect your greatness, wisdom, dignity, clemency, and penetration. When the time of his departure came he requested us to form a friendly relation and correspond with you, and to prohibit the exportation of slaves by our merchants to Ataghar, Dahomi, and Ashanti. We agree with him upon this, on account of the good which will result from it both to you and to us; and that a vessel of yours is to come to the harbour of Racka, with two guns and the quantities of powder, shot, &c., which they require; as also a number of muskets. We will then send our officer to arrange to settle everything with your consul, and fix a certain period for the arrival of your merchant ships, and when they come they may traffic and deal with our merchants. Then, after their return, the consul may reside in that harbour, viz., Racka, as protector, in company with our agent there. May God be pleased. Dated, 1st of Rhamadan, 1239 of Hejra. April 18, 1824.”

Furnished with this letter, which he might well regard as a signal proof of success, and which augured a promising development of relations in the future, Clapperton travelled back to Kuka, where Denham joined him in due course, after his return from the Chad. The homeward journey was accomplished without mishap, and on January 25, 1825, the survivors of the mission reached Tripoli, after four adventurous years, replete with interest to their country and to the world.

As already stated, Clapperton, when he parted company with Sultan Bello, did so with the full intention of returning at the earliest opportunity. Bello had shown himself most eager to establish durable relations with Great Britain, and had suggested that a British vessel should go to “Racka,” there to deliver the warlike stores which were to cement the understanding between his Christian Majesty King George IV. and the Fulani Ruler. Clapperton found the British Government eager to profit by the opportunity of concluding an alliance with so influential a potentate, and lost no time in giving Clapperton (who was raised to the rank of commander) authority to organise another expedition. Clapperton himself was all enthusiasm. On the 27th August 1825 he left England in H.M.S. _Brazen_, in company with his trusted servant, Richard Lander, and attended by three companions, Mr. Dickson, Captain Pearce, and Dr. Morrison. Dickson, for some unexplained reason, landed at Whydah with the intention of reaching Sokoto alone, and was never heard of again. Disappointed at not meeting any of Bello’s messengers at Lagos, which it appears had been arranged, Clapperton started his inland march from Badagry, after trying the Benin route and being dissuaded from adopting it by an English merchant established in that river. Shortly afterwards both Captain Pearce and Dr. Morrison contracted fever and died. Clapperton and Lander pushed safely onwards through Yoruba and Borgu, and arrived without further calamity at Bussa. The river was crossed below the rapids, and the expedition duly reached Kano by way of Zeg-Zeg. At Bussa, Clapperton gathered valuable information with regard to Park’s untimely end, fully confirming the previous information which had reached England.

Everything seemed to promise well for the ultimate success of the mission. Unfortunately, however, there were a number of causes at work destined to wreck the sanguine hopes of its leader. As Clapperton neared his destination, a doubt of the reception awaiting him at Sokoto appears to have weighed heavily upon his mind. In the first place, Bello’s messengers had not put in appearance at Lagos; then the seaport of “Racka,” mentioned in Bello’s map, did not exist as such, which latter circumstance caused Clapperton to entertain serious misgivings as to his former host’s good faith. The absence of the messengers can easily be explained in view of the disturbed state of the country between Yoruba and the Niger, for the Fulani were then extending their conquests southwards, and the entire region was in a state of effervescence; but the misunderstanding about “Racka” is certainly strange. It is difficult to believe that Bello purposely intended to mislead. Bello had spoken of the “harbour” of Racka, but as is pointed out in the introduction to Clapperton’s journal, the Arabic word Bahr, used in the manuscript, does not necessarily signify sea, but any collection of water, whether lake or river.[29] On Bello’s map the Niger is designated as the “sea.” It is probable, therefore, that Bello was perfectly honest in describing “Racka” as a “harbour,” and that the _bahr_ of the manuscript should more correctly have been translated by “river” instead of “sea.” Racka, however, turned out to be an inland town, and the fact strengthened Clapperton’s suspicions. How the confusion arose it is impossible, on the documentary evidence available, to determine, but it seems obvious that Racka must have been meant for Rabba, an important town on the banks of the Niger, some distance below Bussa, and at one time the capital of the kingdom of Nupe.

To this error of interpretation and geography was really due Clapperton’s subsequent misfortunes, because, had the suspicion that Bello was playing him false been absent from his mind, the intrepid Englishman would hardly have adopted the unwise attitude which he subsequently did in his negotiations with the Fulani monarch. That attitude proved his undoing, and the direct cause of his death. His mental condition did not enable him to grasp the fact that the entire state of affairs had changed since his first visit. Sokoto was then at peace with Bornu. But in the interval war had broken out again. Now, in addition to the presents that Clapperton had brought to Bello, his baggage also contained a number of presents, including war-stores, for the Sheik-el-Kanemy, ruler of Bornu, who had become Bello’s deadly enemy. It was manifestly impossible for Bello to allow these presents to pass through the country at such a time, and he wrote to Clapperton to that effect. To this Clapperton rejoined that he had been instructed by his Government to go to Bornu, that he had a letter from Earl Bathurst to the Sheik-el-Kanemy, and that he was in duty bound to carry out his mandate. This insistence aroused Bello’s mistrust, which seems to have been intensified by reports, doubtless spread through the instrumentality of Arab merchants dreading commercial competition, that Clapperton was a spy sent on behalf of the English Government to obtain information with the idea of facilitating a future invasion of the country by the British. Clapperton repeatedly, and with growing exasperation, pressed his wishes upon the Sultan, and Bello, with increasing distrust, as repeatedly declined to entertain them. The strain and the mortification were too great, even for Clapperton’s splendid constitution, and when Bello, yielding to his own suspicions, and to the advice of his counsellors, demanded the production of the presents intended for the Sheik, Clapperton fell seriously ill. After hovering between life and death for many days, he finally expired in the arms of his devoted servant, Lander.

Thus terminated a career of unbounding usefulness. To England and to science Clapperton rendered great services, and had his intellectual capacity equalled his courage and determination, those services would have been even greater than they were. Of him we may truly say that he was a fine type of the English gentleman of the old school, without much erudition, but simple, God-fearing, honest, manly, a credit to his country and to his race.

Chapter VII

The Hausas And Their Emporium.

“The province of Kano is the garden of Central Africa.”—Dr. BARTH.

It has been said of the Hausas that they are “superior both intellectually and physically to all the natives of Equatorial Africa.” The statement strikes one as being exaggerated. The intellectual average of the Hausa is undoubtedly lower than that of the Fulani, who, thanks to their genius for combination, administrative capacity, religious fervour, fighting superiority, and moral influence, completely defeated and subdued their former masters, although the numerical odds were greatly in favour of the latter. Again, the physique of the Hausas, though usually good, is certainly inferior to that of several of the Senegalese races, the Krus, the Kaffir stock, and probably also to one or two of the Bantu offshoots now inhabiting the basin of the Upper Congo. Much has been made of the fact that 500 Hausas trained by British officers beat off several thousand Fulani at Bida. But what chance have Fulani horsemen against Maxim guns and repeating-rifles? The Baggara Arab, universally reputed the bravest of the brave, fared no better against Macdonald’s trained Sudanese.

These remarks are by no means put forward to depreciate the Hausa race, which is undoubtedly a very fine one, but by way of protest against the somewhat hysterical estimates concerning this people which find favour among those who profess to look upon them as excellent material for proselytising purposes, and are ever representing them to us as cruelly oppressed, groaning under the tyrannical sway of the wicked Fulani. The fact is, that a great deal of sentimental nonsense has been said and written, principally by the missionary element, about the Hausas, who are generally content with their lot, and having accepted Islam do not suffer from the predatory incursions of the conquering race. Fulani and Hausas grow up side by side: unions are frequent among them, and the well-to-do Hausa enjoys a somewhat similar position in relation to the ruling class as represented by the Fulani, as did the merchant classes in the old days in our own country in relation to the nobility and governing classes.

It seems fairly well established that at least a portion of the Hausa[30] race inhabited the beautiful and mountainous region of Air or Asben, at the time (about 700 A.D.) when the Berbers—the modern Tuareg—driven south by Arab invaders, crossed the desert into Air and made themselves masters of that region.[31] These Asben Hausas belonged to the family or clan of Gober. They were the Goberawa, who claim to be the oldest and noblest branch of the Hausa race. This claim is very generally admitted by Arabic historians, and is expressly mentioned in the curious Fulani history of the Sudan communicated to Clapperton by Sultan Bello, son of Othman Fodio, in 1828.[32] Bello says of the people of Gober that they are “free born, because their origin was from the Copts of Egypt who had emigrated into the interior of the Gharb or Western countries.” This statement is particularly interesting as regards the possible Semitic or Eastern origin of the Gober family of the Hausas. Dr. Barth, whose authority in all matters relating to the ethnology of Western Central Africa still remains uncontested, although fifty years have now elapsed since his wonderful series of travels was accomplished, attributed to the Goberawa an original relationship with North Africa. The theory is borne out by the traditions of the Hausas themselves, who trace back their descent to a Diggera mother, the Diggera or Deggara being a Berber tribe which, at some remote period, was predominant in the city of Daura, one of the oldest centres of Hausa influence. To this day some of the Hausa Mallams speak vaguely of a former relationship with the East, and Canon Robinson during his stay in Kano was informed by “the most learned man in that city” that the Hausas migrated in early times from the Far East, beyond Mecca.[33] It is much to be deplored in this connection that the national records of the Hausas should have been destroyed by the Fulani at the taking of Katsena. Nevertheless, we may reasonably hope, now that the relations of Northern Nigeria with the outside world are bound to become more frequent, some further light may be shortly forthcoming which will help to elucidate a problem fraught with great attraction to all students of West Africa.

After their expulsion from Air by the inflowing tide of Berber immigration, the Hausas gradually spread west and south, and in course of time formed themselves into seven states, viz. Gober, Daura, Biram, Kano, Rano, Katsena and Zeg-Zeg.[34] In Hausa mythology each of these States represented one of the seven legitimate children, offspring of the Diggera mother already alluded to, to each of whom was respectively given a task to perform. Thus Gober was the warrior _serki-n-yaki_ (_serki_, Prince: _n_, of: _yaki_, fighting); Kano and Rano the dyers _saraki-n-baba_ (from the abundance of indigo _marinas_ or dyeing pits which represent one of the most considerable national industries of the Hausas); Katsena and Daura the traders _saraki-n-Kaswa_, and Zeg-Zeg the purveyor of slaves _serki-n-bay_ which, by the way, affords incidental proof, if any were needed, that in the matter of slavery the Hausas can hardly claim superior moral characteristics over their Fulani conquerors. Disputes between these various States were frequent, and although peopled by the same race, they were constantly in open warfare against one another. So great, indeed, was their mutual antagonism, that when the Fulani uprising took place in Gober, a considerable number of Hausas, principally from the province of Zanfara, rallied round Othman’s standard, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Fulani against their own compatriots.

[Illustration: A PURE-BRED KANO MAN (HAUSA)]

Prior to their more or less forced conversion by the Fulani early in the nineteenth century, the Hausas were Pagans. True, the Hausa King of Katsena embraced Islam about the seventeenth century, Katsena at that period being the most flourishing city of Hausa—the “Florence of the Hausas,” as Richardson[35] calls it—in regular communication with Arabs from the East, and where the Hausa language attained its greatest richness and purity of form. But the great mass of the Hausa people were unaffected by the event. The precise nature of their rites before the conquest remains obscure. It appears possible however that, at one time, the Hausas, Songhays, and other tribes of the Niger Basin were snake worshippers. The Arabic historians Ahmed-Baba, Edrizi and El-Bekri state that in the time of the first Songhay king—placed at 679 A.D. by Dr. Barth, at 776 A.D. by others—the natives rendered homage to serpents. Colonel Frey,[36] in his interesting and ingenious study, suggests that this worship may have extended to the _manatus_ or _manatee_, that curious and somewhat uncanny creature being an inhabitant of the Niger River.

Be that as it may, with the dawn of the nineteenth century a higher ideal and a purer faith rose up in Hausaland, and gained ground with marvellous rapidity. No doubt the result was not obtained without bloodshed, without cruelty, without what Joseph Thompson called “the terrible clamour and dread accompaniments of war.” Nevertheless, it was accomplished, and none but the wholly fanatical will deny that the Hausas have greatly benefited thereby. To an unbiased mind it must appeal as little short of marvellous that, in a period comparatively so short, a whole race should not only have been converted to Islam, but have remained devoted to its precepts when a lapse into Paganism would have been easy and, in a sense, natural. Apart from the added dignity which the acceptance of Islam imparts to individuals in their intercourse with their fellows in a pagan country, the explanation is probably to be found in the fact that, after the Fulani had unquestionably established their political domination over the Hausas, they none the less persistently continued their religious propaganda by peaceful means, and that, although a sense of security seems to have temporarily dulled their political instincts, it has had, on the contrary, a vivifying effect upon their religious ideals. It is, in any case, notorious that Islam, through the medium of Fulani preachers, is steadily sweeping down the River Niger, penetrating into pagan villages, amid the swamps and forests. The pagan Igarras whom the Niger Company long thought would constitute a solid bulwark and a sort of buffer-state against the invading tide, are now being fast won over to Islam, and Fulani _fikis_ are even met with behind Akassa, a few miles from the seaboard itself.

It is no easy matter to correctly estimate the Hausa population in Nigeria, but of true Hausas there must probably be five or six millions, besides the numerous half-breeds of mixed Hausa and Fulani, Hausa and Kanuri, Hausa and Songhay, or Hausa and Tuareg blood, the latter of whom are chiefly to be met with in the northerly districts of the Sokoto Empire, and are of less muscular build than the true Hausas. The Hausas are incontestably the traders of Africa. Their commercial aptitude is renowned from the borders of the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Guinea; from the Gulf of Guinea to the Shari; from the Shari to the Red Sea. They are great travellers and have even been met with on the Sangha, the Ubanghi, and the Congo. Every North African port has its colony of Hausas. The same may be said of the West African Coast ports. There is not an important trading centre in the Niger bend but shelters a family or two of Hausas. Every year numerous Hausa caravans leave Nigeria for the countries lying at the back of the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, and Liberia, to gather the far-famed Kola or _guro_ nut, the fruit of _Sterculia acuminata_, which they convey with infinite care—delicately wrapped in leaves—and sell at an enormous profit in Kano, Gando, Zaria, &c., from whence the nuts are again transported to Bornu, Wadai, and even as far as Khartoum.

[Illustration: A HAUSA FROM YOLA]

If the trading instincts of the Hausas are remarkably developed, their industrial enterprise is still more so. It may with safety be declared that the product of their looms and dye-pits constitutes the most extensive article in the internal commerce of the Dark Continent. Kano is the head and centre of this intrinsically native industry, which is unparalleled in Africa, and Kano is, and in all human probability will continue to be, Manchester’s great rival for the African interior markets. Kano has been termed the Manchester and Birmingham of the Sudan, and having due regard to local circumstances and conditions, the comparison is strictly just.

The number of Europeans who have visited Kano may still be counted upon the fingers of both hands. Arab merchants from North and East Africa have, however, been regular frequenters of the city since the conquest of Hausa by Othman Fodio, and for some considerable time past Kano has sheltered an Arab Colony with a recognised “Consul” who enjoys considerable influence. Its resident population has been variously estimated at thirty thousand to sixty thousand and its floating population at sixty thousand to two millions,[37] including the most varied elements, Hausas, Fulani, Kanuri, Baghirmis, Wadaiens, Arabs, Tuaregs, and Jews; merchants from Egypt, Tunis, Tripoli and Fezzan, from the Niger Bend, Adamawa and the Eastern Sudan. The city itself is of enormous extent, containing within its encompassing wall, which is reputed to be no less than fifteen miles in circumference, large tracts of land under cultivation. This immense wall played an important part in the periodic wars with Bornu at the beginning and middle of the past century. If the citizens of Kano did not think themselves sufficiently strong to meet their aggressors in the open, they simply shut the gates of the city and lined the walls, and the Bornuese hosts, deeming discretion the better part of valour, never attempted an assault. The situation of Kano is fairly elevated and otherwise good, but is unhealthy owing to the presence of large pools of stagnant water into which refuse of all kinds is indiscriminately pitched. The city is divided into different quarters, the Fulani quarter, Arab quarter, Hausa quarter, and so forth. The market is held daily and the most bewildering diversity of articles are always on sale: native cloths, silk embroidered _tobes_, leather and brass ware, ivory, weapons, rough agricultural implements, silver and brass ornaments and trinkets, antimony, ostrich feathers, live stock—cattle, horses and sheep—and foodstuffs innumerable. Long files of asses pass through from the distant Chad laden with natron for Nupe, and arrive from the Niger Bend weighed down with kolas. Camels are permanently in evidence, whether carrying on their sturdy backs salt-cakes from Bilma or European merchandise from Tripoli. Brilliantly attired Ghadamseen and Arab traders caracole on gaily caparisoned steeds, and the fierce-eyed, black-lithamed Tuareg of the desert (many of whom, by the way, are extensive property owners in Northern Nigeria) scowls darkly from the back of his swift-footed _mehari_. In this great city throbs and vibrates an industrial vitality unequalled in Africa.[38]

Chapter VIII

THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM—(_cont._)

“Travellers who have been in the country tell us that Kano, which is the Manchester of Nigeria, has an attendance annually at its market of over one million persons.”—_Extract from a speech by_ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN.

The reputation of Kano as a manufacturing city is of comparatively recent growth, and although the Hausas have manufactured cotton for a considerable time (how long is uncertain, but we do know that their leather-ware[39] was widely sought after as far back as the beginning of the sixteenth century), the importance of Kano as a trading and manufacturing emporium only dates from the Fulani conquest and the destruction of Katsena by Bello. The Hausa cottons of Kano are in demand throughout the whole of the Islamic world of North, West, and central Africa. Lieutenant-Colonel Monteil, one of the few Europeans who have visited Kano, gives it as his opinion that the inhabitants of two-thirds of the Sudan, and nearly all the inhabitants of the Central and Eastern Sahara, clothe themselves in Kano cottons; while Dr. Barth estimated the annual export of cotton from Kano to Timbuctoo alone to amount in value to some £5000. The principal cotton articles manufactured by the Hausas at Kano are the _Tobe_ or shirt for men; the _Turkedi_ or women’s dress; the _Zenne_ or plaid; and the black veil or litham invariably worn by the Tuareg and very often by the Fulani, Kanuri, and Arab. The _tobes_ are dyed various colours, while the _turkedi_ are always of that deep, dark blue obtained by repeated washings in indigo-pits for which the province of Kano is famous. Of the plaids a large selection is produced, varying in colour and in texture, some being composed of a mixture of silk and cotton, others of cotton only, others again of pure silk. Dr. Barth, speaking of this cotton industry of Kano, and remarking that the Province which produces it is also able to supply the corn necessary for the sustenance of its population, and possesses besides splendid pasture land, says: “In fact, if we consider that this industry is not carried on here as in Europe, in immense establishments, degrading man to the meanest conditions of life, but that it gives employment and support to families without compelling them to sacrifice their domestic habits, we must presume that Kano ought to be one of the happiest countries in the world; and so it is, so long as its Governor, too often lazy and indolent, is able to defend its inhabitants from the cupidity of their neighbours, which, of course, is constantly stimulated by the very wealth of their country.” What the lazy Fulani Governor of Barth’s days could not do, British power can, and indeed has; and having done so, is also able to ensure that by judicious management the national, social life of this interesting country shall continue in that state of happiness which struck the great German traveller.

In addition to its cloths, Kano produces excellent leather work, principally sandals, sword-scabbards, riding-boots, shoes, despatch-bags, water-bottles and saddles, and annually exports large quantities of tanned hides. The people of Kano also produce iron weapons, rough agricultural implements and sword-hilts for German blades, which are, or used to be, imported from the north. The following estimate of the total trade of Kano, carefully compiled from Dr. Barth’s calculations, will give some idea of its extent and value at the time (1851) of the German explorer’s stay in the city. The sterling is arrived at by reckoning one million _kurdi_ or cowries—the chief currency in Kano—at £100.

Exports.

Cloths £30,000 Slaves 20,000 Sandals 1,000 Miscellaneous leather-work 500 ------- Total £51,500 =======

Imports.

Kola nuts (from West Coast hinterlands) £10,000 Ivory (from Adamawa) 10,000 Salt (from the interior) 8,000 Coarse silk (_viâ_ Tripoli) 7,000 Arab dresses (from Tunis and Tripoli) 5,000 Beads (Italy, _viâ_ Tripoli) 5,000 Sword-blades (from Germany, _viâ_ Tripoli) 5,000 Manchester goods (_viâ_ Tripoli) 4,000 Muslins (England, _viâ_ Tripoli) 4,000 Rose oil (_viâ_ Tripoli) 5,000 Copper (from Wadai and Bahr-el-Ghazal) 2,000 Woollen cloths (_viâ_ Tripoli) 1,500 Spices and cloves (_viâ_ Tripoli) 1,500 Sugar (from France, _viâ_ Tripoli) 1,200 Tin 1,000 Egyptian dresses 1,000 Needles (from Germany, _viâ_ Tripoli) 800 Common paper, ditto 500 Razors (from Syria) 300 ------- Total £71,800 =======

To which might be added a transit trade in natron, passing through Kano from Bornu on its way to Nupe, yielding about £1000 “passage-money.” The remarkable total of £123,300 is thus arrived at.

Of late years the trade of Kano, both in respect to imports and exports, has undergone some change, and is bound to become still more modified as time goes on. For instance, the buying and selling of slaves is a thing of the past, or soon will be. The imports of ivory from Adamawa are nothing like what they were in Barth’s time. The internal salt trade has largely been extinguished, the native article being unable to compete with European salt. But with this exception—salt—the increased importation of European goods into the Niger and Binue since 1880, that is to say, since the spread of British commercial enterprise in the Upper River and its tributary, does not appear to have affected the caravan trade of Kano with the Tripolitan ports, _viâ_ the oases of Bilma, Fezzan, and Murzuk. In 1897, for instance, the British Consul for Tripoli estimated the goods sent to Sokoto (for Sokoto read the State of Sokoto, of which the city of Kano is the commercial and industrial centre and the terminus of the Tripoli caravans, the trade of the city of Sokoto being insignificant) by caravan across the desert at £46,000. These figures compared with Barth’s tables of Tripoli imported goods are actually more considerable than the total value as estimated by Barth half a century ago. This is a very important fact, and by bearing it well in mind we shall avoid falling into an error which might have unfortunate consequences. Then, again, a comparison of the articles imported in 1851 and 1897 is instructive as affording proof of the conservatism of the African and the old-established nature of this trade.

Dr. Barth’S Enumeration, 1851.

Coarse silk, Arab dresses, sword-blades, Manchester goods, muslins, rose oil, woollen cloths, sugar, spices and cloves, needles, paper.

Foreign Office Report, 1897.

Cotton and woollen cloths, silk waste, silk yarn, box rings, beads, amber, paper, sugar, drugs, tea.

We may go even farther back than this. According to the exceedingly interesting and minute accounts of “Shereef Imhammed” and “Ben Ali, a Moorish trader,” given in the first published proceedings of the African Association in 1791, the trade between Tripoli and the Kingdom of “Cashna,” _i.e._ Katsena (Katsena being then in its prime), consisted of the following articles:

Imports To Katsena From Tripoli.

Red woollen caps, check linens, light coarse woollen cloths, baiza, cowries, barakans or alhaiks, small Turkey carpets, silk (wrought and unwrought), tissues and brocades, sabre-blades, Dutch knives, scissors, coral beads, small looking-glasses.

Exports From Katsena To Tripoli.

Cotton cloths, slaves, goatskins “of the red and yellow dyes,” ox and buffalo hides, gold dust, civet.

The “slaves” item is another proof that the Hausa Kings of those days were extensive slave dealers. It is curious to notice that in the map attached to this old work, a reproduction of which faces page 38, Kano does not even appear, which shows that at that period it had little or no importance as an industrial centre.

[Illustration: HAUSA LOOM AND SPOOL]

The articles imported in 1897 were, therefore, substantially the same as in 1851 and even in 1791. Then as now, English cotton and woollen goods figured prominently amongst them, and it is evident that up to 1897 large profits were to be earned by Europeans (indirectly) and Arabs (directly) in the caravan business between North Africa and Nigeria. Seven years after the opening in regular form of the Western fluvial route, Northern Nigeria is seen to have been importing from Tripoli more goods than in 1851.

It is not due then to commercial development from the south, but to another reason, that the caravan traffic with Tripoli has fallen off since 1897. That reason is to be found in the internal political convulsions of which the Chad basin has been the scene for the last eight years, and to the external political confusion brought about by the action of European Powers, or rather of one European Power—France. When Rabah conquered Bornu in 1893-94, the Ghadamseen merchants suffered heavy losses through the sacking of Kuka, and trade was entirely stopped for a time. Rabah saw his mistake, and endeavoured to remedy it by liberal promises of future support and protection. He kept his word, and trade revived. Then came the advance of the French down the Shari, followed by a renewed period of anarchy in Bornu, as Rabah hurriedly flung himself across the river into Baghirmi to arrest the march of the invaders. Under Fad-el-Allah, Bornu became a cockpit of internecine strife. With the consolidation of French influence in a portion of the Chad region the merchants of the north took heart of grace once more, but the recent pillage of sundry rich caravans by the Kanem Arabs, various confederations of Tuareg and other adherents of the Sheik-Senussi, has demonstrated that at present the French are unable to ensure the safety of caravans, however desirous they may be to do so. These repeated blows have played havoc with the Nigerian-Tripoli caravan trade, and those merchants who are still bold enough to face the risks favour the Wadai route. In 1900 the caravan trade with Wadai was still important, amounting in the aggregate, according to the French Consul at Tripoli, to £210,000, imports and exports included. But it is quite certain that 1901 and 1902 will show a notable decrease of those figures.[40]

Are we to conclude, therefore, that Kano’s internal trade with the north and east has gone never to return, and that the caravan traffic is a thing of the past? That is the view which appears to be generally adopted.[41] I confess that I do not share it, and it would certainly be an immense misfortune for Kano and Northern Nigeria generally if such were, indeed, the case. The main sources of Kano’s wealth and prosperity do not depend upon the influx of trade from the south, but upon the industry of its inhabitants in catering for the requirements not of Europe but of Africa. It is a great _dépôt_ of Negroland for Negroland, and if Kano could no longer find purchasers for her cotton and her leather work, her prosperity must needs decrease and her wealth decline. Now it is obviously in our interest that this should not happen. It should be the object of our policy to maintain, strengthen and assist the commercial and industrial position of Kano, the centre of Hausa activity, the magnet which attracts a flow of internal commerce from all points of the compass. How can that best be done?

In the first place, it is necessary to understand the main caravan system of North-West Central Africa. The accompanying map (facing p. 84) shows the principal routes, and a broad survey of the subject induces the belief that it is the interest of both England and France to encourage the revival of the caravan traffic between Kano (or, in other words, Nigeria) and Kano’s interior markets, or, at any rate, to do nothing to still further curtail it. The wider the stream of internal trade both in and out of Nigeria the greater the prosperity of the country, and it would be as equally pedantic for us to object if the French, who are in more or less theoretical possession of the majority of Kano’s markets, succeed in eventually diverting _in toto_ the caravan traffic from the Tripoli route towards Timbuctoo and In Salah, as it would be for the French to interfere with a possible re-opening of the long-abandoned eastern route (not marked in the map) towards the Nile. But there should be an understanding between the two Powers on the subject of this internal trade, which is centuries old, and which certainly cannot be displaced in a day; in fact, never can entirely be displaced, except by oppressive and selfish interference, either on the part of the French or ourselves. Any action tending to compel a diversion of trade in such or such a direction would prove in the long run to be anything but advantageous to the Power which attempted it. For instance, if France were to start putting prohibitive taxes on exports and imports to and from Kano over the frontier in order to forcibly confine the circulation of trade to certain channels, it would lead to serious trouble with the natives, which would cost more to cope with than any prospective profit to be derived from such action. Similarly, if the authorities of Northern Nigeria were to actively discourage Kano’s trade with the territories under French protection, in order to develop Kano’s trade with the south, it would only lead to a decrease in the productive capacity of Kano, and consequently lessen the prosperity of Northern Nigeria as a whole.

Economic changes are bound to occur, especially when the British and French railway systems proposing to tap the Niger valley are more advanced, but there is plenty of scope for both to earn an honourable livelihood, and the central fact to be borne in mind is that Kano’s trade is, and must be, as previously stated, more of an internal than an external one. Before Kano can purchase such cottons, woollens and other articles as it absorbs, from the south, that is to say, from European merchants, it must be in a position to give, in return, articles of African produce that will pay the European merchant to buy. To suppose that Kano will be able to do so until the iron horse has penetrated well over the Kano side of the Niger, or until a carriage-road the model of the one the French are building from Conakry to Futa-Jallon connects a navigable point on the Niger with Kano, is to cherish an illusion. Transport charges would kill any chance of profit in a transaction which differs in every particular from the nature of Kano’s internal trade. The one would be a direct transaction, to stand or fall on its merits; the other can best be described as a multiplicity of transactions with the purchasing commodity represented by native cloth, a useless article so far as export to Europe is concerned. In fact, it is no easy matter to determine how Kano will be able to feed a railway from the coast without the creation of some great industry suitable for European export, corresponding with the oil-palm industry of the coastwise regions. One thing at least is certain, that if through extravagance in construction and working, or other causes, the section of an eventual railway from the coast to Kano, which passes through the oil-palm bearing regions cannot be made to pay, the economical outlook for the railway when it leaves the oil-palm zone is anything but cheerful. Of course, where the main purpose is strategic, considerations other than commercial come into play, and the matter assumes a different aspect.

To resume, it would seem really desirable that a mutual arrangement between England and France should be arrived at as regards freedom of circulation for the internal traffic of the Chad region. I urged that course in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ when the negotiations for the Convention of 1898 were pending. Recent events suggest that the proposal might still be adopted with advantage to both parties concerned, and as a measure both just and wise in the relation it bears to the legitimate interests of the natives.

It remains to be said in this connection that the principal articles imported into the Upper Niger by the Niger Company, which up to the present has enjoyed the monopoly of the Upper Niger trade, are salt, brass, copper and iron rods, white damask cloths, white brocaded cloths, indigo-dyed cloths (in imitation of, but inferior to, the cloth produced from native looms and dyed in Kano), cowries, rice, yarn and gunpowder. The salt which is imported chiefly from England has a large sale, being greatly superior to native manufactured salt from Bilma and the shores of Lake Chad. The copper, brass and iron rods are chiefly used for conversion into arrow-heads. As for the cloths, they do not equal the products of the Kano looms, and unless of the finest white damask, are rejected by the Mohammedans. They find, however, a ready sale among the Pagans. These cloths are, as a rule, exchanged against ivory, gum, bees-wax or rubber, bought by Hausa traders, who in turn take them to Kano and there exchange them for native-made cloth.

I have entered rather fully into the trading and industrial statistics of Kano because, apart from the interest naturally attaching to the commercial life of one of the most flourishing cities of Africa, the centre of a great industrial and agricultural district, a knowledge of these particulars enables one, I think, the better to realise what are the distinctive characteristics of the Hausa race—Kano being pre-eminently Hausa. The Hausa is primarily and essentially the business man of Africa. He is not and never will become a governing personality. His aims are commercial, and he neither seeks nor desires any other state. Of political ambition he has none, and although strongly attached to the Mohammedan faith, and good-humouredly contemptuous of his pagan customers, he is quite content that they should remain pagans to the end of the chapter, willingly resigning the attractions of proselytism into the hands of the Fulani. Withal he is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky sort of person, generally kind to his slaves, and content to gang his own gait in his own way. That is the natural state of the Hausa. If we take him away from his business habits and fashion him into a soldier, we perforce place him in the midst of artificial conditions of life, where his individuality become lost. He is then merely interesting in the sense that our other African levies are interesting, that is, from an exclusively military point of view.

The Hausa can be drilled into a good soldier, and under decent treatment will show much patient endurance and bravery. Like all Negroes, if adequate supervision be lacking, he will take advantage of the prestige attaching to his uniform to tyrannise over the aborigines among whom he is quartered.

In his military capacity the Hausa has rendered good service in the Benin and Ashanti campaigns; in the course of innumerable skirmishes on the lower Niger, throughout the operations so admirably carried out by Sir George Goldie against Nupe and Ilorin, and so on. It should, however, be remembered that on those occasions where the Hausa soldier has fought under the British flag, he has gone into battle with the consciousness of possessing weapons which gave him an incontestable superiority over his antagonist. He has never been called upon to face a native force officered by Europeans, and armed with quick-firing rifles similar to his own. His capacity to rise to the occasion if necessity demanded it need not be queried. That is a matter upon which military men personally acquainted with the Hausa’s qualities and defects as a fighting unit are alone competent to give an opinion.[42] But until the Hausa has been put to the test, it may be well not to found too high an estimate of his military abilities, bearing in mind that, unlike the French West African recruits, he does not come of a fighting stock.

[Illustration: HAUSAS DRILLING]

As already stated, it is in his natural sphere of commerce and industry that the Hausa shines. In that respect he stands without a rival on the continent in which he lives. His manufacturing skill is not only remarkable for Africa: it puts Europe to the blush. For closeness, durability and firmness of texture, the products of his looms and dye-pits eclipse anything that Manchester can produce. In a land of reputed indolence, his activity is as conspicuous as his enterprise. He makes an ideal commercial traveller, peddling his wares over enormous distances, and seldom failing to secure a considerable profit on his transactions.

The Hausa has so identified himself with the commercial requirements of a vast region that his language has, throughout it, been adopted as the necessary vehicle of inter-communication for all that appertains to trade and commerce. The Hausa language is _per se_ specially well fitted for extensive propagation among African races. Reclus[43] has said of it that by its fine sonorousness, the richness of its vocabulary, the simplicity of its grammatical structure, and the graceful equilibrium of its phrases, Hausa deserves to rank among the foremost languages of the Dark Continent; and Sir Harry Johnston includes it with English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic and Swahili among the great languages of New Africa.[44]

The first vocabulary of Hausa was compiled by Mr. James Richardson, who, in comp