As I am under the impression that the trade of the West African
Coast is its most important attribute, I hope I may be pardoned for
entering into this subject. My chief excuse for so doing lies in
the fact that independent travellers are rare in the Bights. The
last one I remember hearing of was that unfortunate gentleman who
went to the Coast for pleasure and lost a leg on Lagos Bar. Now I
have not lost any portion of my anatomy anywhere on the Coast, and
therefore have no personal prejudice against the place. I hold a
brief for no party, and I beg the more experienced old coaster to
remember that "a looker on sees the most of the game."
First of all it should be remembered that Africa does not possess
ready-made riches to the extent it is in many quarters regarded as
possessing. It is not an India filled with the accumulated riches
of ages, waiting for the adventurer to enter and shake the pagoda
tree. The pagoda tree in Africa only grows over stores of buried
ivory, and even then it is a stunted specimen to that which grew
over the treasure-houses of Delhi, Seringapatam, and hundreds of
others as rich as they in gems and gold. Africa has lots of stuff
in it; structurally more than any other continent in the world, but
it is very much in the structure, and it requires hard work to get
it out, particularly out of one of its richest regions, the West
Coast, where the gold, silver, copper, lead, and petroleum lie
protected against the miner by African fever in its deadliest form,
and the produce prepared by the natives for the trader is equally
fever-guarded, and requires white men of a particular type to work
and export it successfully - men endowed with great luck, pluck,
patience, and tact.
The first things to be considered are the natural resources of the
country. This subject may be divided into two sub-sections - (1) The
means of working these resources as they at present stand; (2) The
question of the possibility of increasing them by introducing new
materials of trade-value in the shape of tea, coffee, cocoa, etc.
With regard to the first sub-division the most cheerful things that
there are to say on the West Coast trade can be said; the means of
transport being ahead of the trade in all districts save the Gold
Coast. I know this is heresy, so I will attempt to explain the
matter. First, as regards communication to Europe by sea, the West
Coast is extremely well off, the two English lines of steamers
managed by Messrs. Elder Dempster, the British African, and the
Royal African, are most enterprisingly conducted, and their devotion
to trade is absolutely pathetic. Let there be but the least vague
rumour (sometimes I have thought they have not waited for the
rumour, but "gone in" as an experiment) of a puncheon of oil, or a
log of timber waiting for shipment at an out-of-the-world, one house
port, one of these vessels will bear down on that port, and have
that cargo. In addition to the English lines there is the Woermann
line, equally devoted to cargo, I may almost say even more so, for
it is currently reported that Woermann liners will lie off and wait
for the stuff to grow. This I will not vouch for, but I know the
time allowed to a Woermann captain by his owners between Cameroons
and Big Batanga just round the corner is eight days.
These English and German lines, having come to a friendly
understanding regarding freights, work the Bights of Benin, Biafra,
and Panavia, without any rivals, save now and again the vessels
chartered by the African Association to bring out a big cargo, and
the four sailing vessels belonging to the Association which give an
eighteenth-century look to the Rivers, and have great adventures on
the bars of Opobo and Bonny. {455} The Bristol ships on the Half
Jack Coast are not rivals, but a sort of floating factories,
shipping their stuff home and getting it out by the regular lines of
steamers. The English and German liners therefore carry the bulk of
the trade from the whole Coast. Their services are complicated and
frequent, but perfectly simple when you have grasped the fact that
the English lines may be divided into two sub-divisions - Liverpool
boats and Hamburg boats, either of which are liable when occasion
demands to call at Havre. The Liverpool line is the mail line to
the more important ports, the Hamburg line being almost entirely
composed of cargo vessels calling at the smaller ports as well as
the larger.
There is another classification that must be grasped. The English
boats being divided into, firstly, a line having its terminus at
Sierra Leone and calling at the Isles do Los; secondly, a line
having its terminus at Akassa; thirdly, a line having its terminus
at Old Calabar; fourthly, a line having its terminus at San Paul de
Loanda, and in addition, a direct line from Antwerp to the Congo,
chartered by the Congo Free State Government. Division 4, the
South-westers, are the quickest vessels as far as Lagos, for they
only call at the Canaries, Sierra Leone, off the Kru Coast, at
Accra, and off Lagos; then they run straight from Lagos into
Cameroons, without touching the Rivers, reaching Cameroons in
twenty-seven days from Liverpool. After Cameroons they cross to
Fernando Po and run into Victoria, and then work their way steadily
down coast to their destination. Thence up again, doing all they
know to extract cargo, but never succeeding as they would wish, and
so being hungry in the hold when they get back to the Bight of
Benin, they are liable to smell cargo and go in after it, and
therefore are not necessarily the quickest boats home.
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