LITMIR.BIZ

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      Containing some account of the divers noises of Western Afrik and an account of the country east of Cape Palmas, and other things; to which is added an account of the manner of shipping timber; of the old Bristol trade; and, mercifully for the reader, a leaving off.

      When we got our complement of Krumen on board, we proceeded down Coast with the intention of calling off Accra. I will spare you the description of the scenes which accompany the taking on of Kruboys; they have frequently been described, for they always alarm the new-comer—they are the first bit of real Africa he sees if bound for the Gold Coast or beyond. Sierra Leone, charming, as it is, has a sort of Christy Minstrel air about it for which he is prepared, but the Kruboy as he comes on board looks quite the Boys’ Book of Africa sort of thing; though, needless to remark, as innocent as a lamb, bar a tendency to acquire portable property. Nevertheless, Kruboys coming on board for your first time alarm you; at any rate they did me, and they also introduced me to African noise, which like the insects is another most excellent thing, that you should get broken into early.

      Woe! to the man in Africa who cannot stand perpetual uproar. Few things surprised me more than the rarity of silence and the intensity of it when you did get it. There is only that time which comes between 10.30 A.M. and 4.30 P.M., in which you can look for anything like the usual quiet of an English village. We will give Man the first place in the orchestra, he deserves it. I fancy the main body of the lower classes of Africa think externally instead of internally. You will hear them when they are engaged together on some job—each man issuing the fullest directions and prophecies concerning it, in shouts; no one taking the least notice of his neighbours. If the head man really wants them to do something definite he fetches those within his reach an introductory whack; and even when you are sitting alone in the forest you will hear a man or woman coming down the narrow bush path chattering away with such energy and expression that you can hardly believe your eyes when you learn from them that he has no companion.

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      [To face page 63.

      For Palm Wine.

      Some of this talking is, I fancy, an equivalent to our writing. I know many English people who, if they want to gather a clear conception of an affair write it down; the African not having writing, first talks it out. And again more of it is conversation with spirit guardians and familiar spirits, and also with those of their dead relatives and friends, and I have often seen a man, sitting at a bush fire or in a village palaver house, turn round and say, “You remember that, mother?” to the ghost that to him was there.

      I remember mentioning this very touching habit of theirs, as it seemed to me, in order to console a sick and irritable friend whose cabin was close to a gangway then in possession of a very lively lot of Sierra Leone Kruboys, and he said, “Oh, I daresay they do, Miss Kingsley; but I’ll be hanged if Hell is such a damned way off West Africa that they need shout so loud.”

      

      The calm of the hot noontide fades towards evening time, and the noise of things in general revives and increases. Then do the natives call in instrumental aid of diverse and to my ear pleasant kinds. Great is the value of the tom-tom, whether it be of pure native origin or constructed from an old Devos patent paraffin oil tin. Then there is the kitty-katty, so called from its strange scratching-vibrating sound, which you hear down South, and on Fernando Po, of the excruciating mouth harp, and so on, all accompanied by the voice.

      If it be play night, you become the auditor to an orchestra as strange and varied as that which played before Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego. I know I am no musician, so I own to loving African music, bar that Fernandian harp! Like Benedick, I can say, “Give me a horn for my money when all is done,” unless it be a tom-tom. The African horn, usually made of a tooth of ivory, and blown from a hole in the side, is an instrument I unfortunately cannot play on. I have not the lung capacity. It requires of you to breathe in at one breath a whole S.W. gale of wind and then to empty it into the horn, which responds with a preliminary root-too-toot before it goes off into its noble dirge bellow. It is a fine instrument and should be introduced into European orchestras, for it is full of colour. But I think that even the horn, and certainly all other instruments, savage and civilised, should bow their heads in homage to the tom-tom, for, as a method of getting at the inner soul of humanity where are they compared with that noble instrument! You doubt it. Well go and hear a military tattoo or any performance on kettle drums up here and I feel you will reconsider the affair; but even then, remember you have not heard all the African tom-tom can tell you. I don’t say it’s an instrument suited for serenading your lady-love with, but that is a thing I don’t require of an instrument. All else the tom-tom can do, and do well. It can talk as well as the human tongue. It can make you want to dance or fight for no private reason, as nothing else can, and be you black or white it calls up in you all your Neolithic man.

      Many African instruments are, however, sweet and gentle, and as mild as sucking doves, notably the xylophonic family. These marimbas, to use their most common name, are all over Africa from Senegal to Zambesi. Their form varies with various tribes—the West African varieties almost universally have wooden keys instead of iron ones like the East African. Personally, I like the West African best; there is something exquisite in the sweet, clear, water-like notes produced from the strips of soft wood of graduated length that make the West African keyboard. All these instruments have the sound magnified and enriched by a hollow wooden chamber under their keyboard. In Calabar this chamber is one small shallow box, ornamented, as most wooden things are in Calabar, with poker work—but in among the Fan, under the keyboard were a set of calabashes, and in the calabashes one hole apiece and that hole covered carefully with the skin of a large spider. While down in Angola you met the xylophone in the imposing form you can see in the frontispiece to this volume. Of the orchid fibre-stringed harp, I have spoken elsewhere, and there remains but one more truly great instrument that I need mention. I have had a trial at playing every African instrument I have come across, under native teachers, and they have assured me that, with application, I should succeed in becoming a rather decent performer on the harp and xylophone, and had the makings of a genius for the tom-tom, but my greatest and most rapid triumph was achieved on this other instrument. I picked up the hang of the thing in about five minutes, and then, being vain, when I returned to white society I naturally desired to show off my accomplishment, but met with no encouragement whatsoever—indeed my friends said gently, but firmly, that if I did it again they should leave, not the settlement merely, but the continent, and devote their remaining years to sweeping crossings in their native northern towns—they said they would rather do this than hear that instrument played again by any one.

      This instrument is made from an old powder keg, with both ends removed; a piece of raw hide is tied tightly round it over what one might call a bung-hole, while a piece of wood with a lump of rubber or fastening is passed through this hole. The performer then wets his hand, inserts it into the instrument, and lightly grasps the stick and works it up and down for all he is worth; the knob beats the drum skin with a beautiful boom, and the stick gives an exquisite screech as it passes through the hole in the skin which the performer enhances with an occasional howl or wail of his own, according to his taste or feeling. There are other varieties of this instrument, some with one end of the cylinder covered over and the knob of the stick beating the inside, but in all its forms it is impressive.

      Next in point of strength to the human vocal and instrumental performers come frogs. The small green one, whose note is like that of the cricket’s magnified, is a part-singer, but the big bull frog, whose tones are all his own, sings in Handel Festival sized choruses. I don’t much mind either of these, but the one I hate is a solo frog who seems eternally engaged at night in winding up a Waterbury watch. Many a night have I stocked thick with calamity on that frog’s account; many a night have I landed myself in hailing distance of Amen Corner from having gone out of hut, or house, with my mind too full of the intention of flattening him out with a slipper, to think of driver ants, leopards, or snakes. Frog hunting is one of the worst things you can do in West Africa.

      Next to frogs come the crickets with their chorus of “she did, she didn’t,” and the cicadas, but

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