Self-respecting person black or white
likes that sort of thing from the hands of an utter stranger, and if
you attempt it you'll get yourself disliked in West Africa. Add to
this the knowledge of all A. B. Ellis's works; Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy; Pliny's Natural History; and as much of Aristotle as
possible. If you have a good knowledge of the Greek and Latin
classics, I think it would be an immense advantage; an advantage I
do not possess, for my classical knowledge is scrappy, and in place
of it I have a knowledge of Red Indian dogma: a dogma by the way
that seems to me much nearer the African in type than Asiatic forms
of dogma.
Armed with these instruments of observation, with a little industry
and care you should in the mill of your mind be able to make the
varied tangled rag-bag of facts that you will soon become possessed
of into a paper. And then I advise you to lay the results of your
collection before some great thinker and he will write upon it the
opinion that his greater and clearer vision makes him more fit to
form.
You may say, Why not bring home these things in their raw state?
And bring them home in a raw state you must, for purposes of
reference; but in this state they are of little use to a person
unacquainted with the conditions which surround them in their native
homes. Also very few African stories bear on one subject alone, and
they hardly ever stick to a point. Take this Fernando Po legend.
Winwood Reade (Savage Africa, p. 62) gives it, and he says he heard
it twice. I have heard it, in variants, four times - once on
Fernando Po, once in Calabar and twice in Gaboon. So it is
evidently an old story: -
"The first man called all people to one place. His name was
Raychow. 'Hear this, my people' said he, 'I am going to give a name
to every place, I am King in this River.' One day he came with his
people to the Hole of Wonga Wonga, which is a deep pit in the ground
from which fire comes at night. Men spoke to them from the Hole,
but they could not see them. Raychow said to his son, 'Go down into
the Hole' - and his son went. The son of the King of the Hole came
to him and defied him to a contest of throwing the spear. If he
lost he should be killed, if he won he should go back in safety. He
won - then the son of the King of the Hole said, 'It is strange you
should have won, for I am a spirit.
