The Figures Of The Case I Will Not Here Quote Because They Are
Easily Obtainable From Government Reports By Any One Interested In
The Matter.
I regard their value as being small unless combined
with a knowledge of the West Coast trade.
The liquor goes in at a
few ports on the West Coast, and into the hands of those tribes who
act as middlemen between the white trader and the interior trade-
stuff-producing tribes; and is thereby diffused over an enormous
extent of thickly inhabited country. We English are directly in
touch with none of the interior trade - save in the territory of the
Royal Niger Company, and the Delta tribes with whom we deal in the
Oil Rivers subsist on this trade between the interior and the Coast,
and they prefer to use spirits as a buying medium because they get
the highest percentage of profit from it, and the lowest percentage
of loss by damage when dealing with it. It does not get spoilt by
damp, like tobacco and cloth do; indeed, in addition to the amount
of moisture supplied by their reeking climate, they superadd a large
quantity of river water to the spirit before it leaves their hands,
while with the other articles of trade it is one perpetual grind to
keep them free from moisture and mildew. In their Coast towns there
are immense stores of gin in cases, which they would as soon think
of drinking themselves as we, if we were butchers, would think of
eating up the stock in the shop. A certain percentage of spirit is
consumed in the Delta, and if spirits are wanted anywhere they are
wanted in the Niger Delta region; and about one-eighth part of that
used here is used for fetish-worship, poured out on the ground and
mixed with other things to hang in bottles over fish-traps, and so
on to make residences for guardian spirits who are expected to come
and take up their abode in them. Spirits to the spirits, on the
sweets to the sweet principle is universal in West Africa; and those
photographs you are often shown of dead chiefs' graves with bottles
on them merely demonstrate that the deceased was taking down with
him a little liquor for his own use in the under-world - which he
holds to be possessed of a chilly and damp climate - and a little
over to give a propitiatory peg to one of the ruling authorities
there - or any old friend he may come across in the Elysian fields.
This is possibly a misguided heathen thing of him to do, and it is
generally held in European circles that the under-world such an
individual as he will go to is neither damp, nor chilly. But
granting this, no one can contest but that the world he spends his
life here in is damp, and that the natives of the Niger Delta live
in a saturated forest swamp region that reeks with malaria.
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