IN WEST AFRICA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 11110, 6 May 1911, Page 11

IN WEST AFRICA.

: THE KING'S HIGHWAY. (By Mary Gaunt, in the "Morning Post.") The surf thunders on the shore dcafeningly, the white of its foam is dazzling in the brilliant sunshine, it races up almost to tlio feet of the coconut palms standing in serried lines clean cut .against tho hard white sty, or it races hick having a wide stretch of golden sand 'where the feet of the carriers make hardiy an impression, the tiny oralis like brown cushions on half n dozen ]e?s scuttle into tho water, the jelly-fish Ho Me lumps of glass twinkling in thn'sunsiiine among the white scallop shells, the little wading birds mako dashes into tho

foam, and over all haira a haze born of heat and moisture, dimming and , alter-' . ing outlines, veiling all in a whitish mysterious 2iist. "Boom!' Boom! -Bcom!" The sound of the surf swallows up all other sounds, even the sound of the wind as it stirs gently tlio fronds. of tho palms, the bhouts of tho hammock men, tho grunting of the carriers, and the chatter of the dark-skinned women, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, as they come along, their loads on their heads, their babies slung on their backs. i For it. is the King's Highway, tho King's Highway from Axim to Half AssirJo and the French border, and fori those who will not dare the ruthless surf, who must pass from village to village, there'is no other way, and there has been no other way for centuries, for no man may lightly pass through tho swamps and the bush of the country behind. The. mahogany tree, king of the forest, grew once in that country behind, towering above all other vegetation, strong mid tall and stately, but it is gono now. Without ruth every white man h,as deepoiled Africa in the past; without ruth every second white man who comes into the country would do so still, and bitterly resents the restraining hand that tries to stop him. So they have cut down her mahogany trees far back from the coast, destroyed and not replanted' one to replace them, though it takes a mahogany tree 250 years ,to come to perfection. Mahogany log?, great squared baulks of timber,, lie strewn on tho beach, coming down by every little river from tho far country behind. For many little rivers and ons or two great ones rush into the tea across the sand, and down in the season come, the logs out into the surf to bo captured and guided to the beach at Axim, or, escaping for the time being, flung up again all along the King's Highway, sometimes to lie parching and split in the tropical sunshine, sometimes drawn lip by tho natives nnd carefully Fhe tered by palm frond* till the time shall come when they are again sent on , their wanderings. Criticising and Curious Crowd. There are many people on the King's J-UEfliway, many people passing to and fro pursuing their daily vocations. Here avo Tueii stark, their wot, muscular brown bodies gleaming in the sunshine, launching a surf boat, forcing tho great cum- ' h J? ns Pn&ntly will be a thing ot life, into tho surf that rejects it again and ■again. Here are men ilinging little weighted hand-nets, drawing them in empty, flinging them out again, instructing small boys how to follow . in • their fathers' footsteps; and hove are three or four in the soa salving a heavy mahogany log, guiding it through the white boiling surf to the place whore by and by the steamer u;ill come and jase it away to the whiln man's markets. And the women, with a dark Muo (■lot-h wrapped round their loins, and a baby strapped on their backs, their black wool twisted, into all manner of strange devices, are searching for shell fish alon" the beach; and tho little naked children" the boys naked, tho girls v;ith half a dozen bright strings of beads encircling them below, their waists, are helping their mothers or searching on their own account. These bo the dwellers by tho King's Highway, and there are always; the passers-by. The while man comes sometimes, tlie white woman like snow in summer, so that the people crov;d round to look at the .strange sight and the little children shriek with terror at the very thought of approaching her close, though always she is surrounded by a criticising end curious crowd. And white men or white women, they must have a train of carriers to move them. Sometimes those carriers wear but a loin cloth, sometimes a ragged European shirt, and they carry boxes marked P.W.J), on their heads, camp chairs and tables, and buckets. Hero is a woman with a camp bed on her head and a baby astride the pad at her b?ck, a brown tin Ijath is on another Iran's head,' two more ha.ve battered tin uniform .raises, and there is a policeman in dark blue with a rod fez and bearing a long bamboo stick with a heavy silver top, and so we know, we who may read the signs of the road.'that either before or behind the curriers will como tho inevitable hammock in wjiich the lordly white man is carried liv relays of bearers, and (.lie imiicemnn nml hi? knobbed stickis a sign he is the Commissioner visiting pome out-lying post in liis district. Sometimes there n\e three or i'oi'r policemen with rifles, and we know that a bigger

man still, the Provincial Commissioner, than whom tho natives can hardly realise a greater lord, is passing along tho way. Through Swamp and Lake. Always there are. tho dark iwpnle, draped in graceful cloths, attired in European rags, naked but lor a loin cloth. Twice I saw a man in a cloth riding a bicycle along the hard sand, for civilisation is coming by strange and devious paths to Africa; but usually they walk, and, unless they are paid by the white man, think nothi us of twenty miles with a load on their heads and, in the case of the woman, wKli a baby on her back, and they so in crowds cliatlcriiis and .shouting to each other. Coconuts, cassava, bananas, keuky Hiry carry, piled up cotton goods and enamelled iron ware basins piled high v;ith dried and evilsmclling fish, the harvest of tho sea,

SOliE RECENT MILLINERY MODELS.

and, sometimes on a great platter, djuare gin bottles full of the sourish fermented liquor they get from tho raffia palm. They go oh, an endless procession of people,' living tho lives they led three centuries ago when tho Portuguese and Dutch and Erandenburgers and English built forts on these- shores and gave them with the iniquitous slave trade their first dim knowledge that beyond the surf-bound palmfringed coast were other worlds and other peoples. It is.tho same road, the very same, and the people have altered so very little that it is not worth counting in the general summing up of things. Here and there the dark skin flashing in and out of the surf is lightened to copper colour, not infrequently a • dark face has a straight nose and thin lips, and one remembers that some ofd Dutch factor took as the temporary object of his affection, to bo his plaything and his slave, tho comely, shanaly daughter of the village chief but lie "went back to the flasenhaired maidens of his own land for a wife, leaving his dusky children to their mother's people. Always you may sen tho traces of white blood-, often not. r-c----cent traces, but just something to show that the man who carries your bed or your hammock has a strain of white blood in him somewhere. But there have been more sorrowful men and women (here than the" woman wailing for the; inan v v,'lid 'has 'thrown' her aside. At Beyin, a native town lialf-way betwen A.-rim and the French Ivory Coast, stands a riiinc'd foil, and clustering round it are the - closely-packed houses of the native town. Not a very great fort; two hundred paces will take yon well round the outside walls, but it marked a counlo of. centuries ago, tho centre of a tra'de in flesh and blood. n road through swamp and lake and forest ran into the kick "country— a road runs there still, a trade road, and from the back country to the Kin? of Bayin they brought the slave?, tho men, women, and children who might be traded to the white man for guodly Euronean cloth, for guns and powder, and fo"v the fiery liquor that was bo much more potent, than their own palm wine. But they could not often .shin the slaves at Beyin for only occasionally does the thunderous Mirt allow a boat to put out to sea Thcv must have marched that dolorous coinpany along (ho King's highway, even us we d0..t0-day. Such a coinpanv, men women and little children," faltering, faiiitiug, struggling. Close vour eves and you may see them now. "Look but from beneath the shade of the coconut palms, where the dead are buried, across I tie sand, and you may see the lou» line ! clear cut against the sky. In tho chill ot the early morning, in the shndclets heat of the noonday, in the cool o: the evening, sorrowful, weary, hopeless thev must go .on. If any fall by the way man, woman, or helpless little child' they must die, for the trade cannot allow a loophole of escape. On and on and on, for the cotton-fields of America are calling nnd the sugar cane in the West Indies ■ must lie worked, and (hough he shin but a half, get but a fourth of them to foreign shores, tho trader will find himself well repaid. Tho White Man, Past and Present. Always the white man lias' exploited Africa and if he is satisEed what matter if tho dark man suffer? So they thought two hundred years ago, so some men think even to-day. Oh, tho pitiful ■ghos'ts of the Kind's highway! If you listen you may Iwar their piteous complaints in the sighing of th'D wind in the p'alms, in tho roar of the surf on the sands.- and when tho improvement of the Nesrro seems well-uHi hopeless, the Coast >Jegro, who for four hundred years has been in close contact with the while man, they beg us to deal gentlv and patiently with theso their people, for their wrongs hnve been mamam! we must remember that it is not out of the slave and the down-trodden that we "easily build up a decent, stron", selfrespecting people.