Where The Twain Meet

mile, and this is mostly black, for the same statistics give something under 16,000 white people to close on

thout mentioning the Great War. You must mention the colour question. If a man is charming and courteous and well educated, what can

hite, draw herself up and sniff when speaking of a highly cultivated man whose

'd receive him, but his wife-I

ity. Every man has a right to choose his personal friends, but it seems to me the only reason why a community should ban a race is when that race lowers the

an, however good looking, however well educated, has one handicap; a stiffly starched white shirt-front and a black evening coat bear very heavily indeed on him. He may be college bred, have the softest and most cultivated of voices, but the dress imposed upon him by civilisation

is can be mended I know not, but I feel sure that as soon as the black people find a style of

0

te person present. But the church was full and the people struck me as being very good looking and well dressed, especially the little children. A dainty little girl of A

a clear skin of pale brown that is soft as velvet. She is more than common tall, but so well proportioned that you do not think so until you see her beside some oth

thers and great-grandmothers. The Creole who lives wisely, as women are beginning to live everywhere nowadays, is quite as likely to be good looking at forty, or even at sixty

owns a canoe, the Dodo, a little light boat, with whi

hen I was younger, they won't let me now I'm grown up, we used

a Creole sail a boat?" And there are big brown men from the Cayman Islands, descendants of the buccaneers, giants with the blood of all the nations of the world in their veins. They trade in salt. An

did you only take chi

the bay is beautifully clear, and all rushed to one side to inspect. Over went the little craft, and then the biggest boy, aged I think 12, saw the danger and flung himself to the other side. He was just in time.

g up in Montego Bay for a nation that

ave wandered to the shores of Montego Bay on the other side of th

to-day to tell the tale, and some years ago before the war I travelled along 300 miles of that coast in a hammock borne on men's heads, and again and again as we moved along, our pace regulated by that of the slowest carrier who bore my goods upon his head, there loomed up before us either on a jutting headland, or at the head

ile on his arm he wore what made him look like the savage he was, a bracelet of some red composition which had doubtless by its bright colour caught his eye. These were the same people, the very same people who had been brought from the Guinea Coast, more than one hundred, more than two hundred years ago. They are the same people you see on the Guinea Coast to-day. They called the people from this coast Koromantyns, and though they were, th

oyed, often they changed hands as the power of one nation waxed or waned, but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the tr

bay and build close down to the water's edge, but Koromantyn departs from the usual practice and was built on high rising ground, a site the Portuguese (Portugais the old mariners called them) themselves might have chosen. I have thought of it many a time since I came to Jamaica, for always the slave risin

cries out, "Here, here, is the unfinished work of those old time slavers, here is the job incomplete, left for Britain to finish as best she may." One hot day in March I left Cape Coast and came by the sea-shore, ten miles or more, along the yielding sand, just beyond reach of the furious white surf, but not out of the reach of its spray, and the memories of the men of old, the men who traded here when Cromwell ruled in England, when Queen Anne sat on the throne, when the unwelcome Georges came over from Hanover, crowded thick in every grove of coconut palms, rose to meet me on every grassy headland. The footsteps of the hammock bearers were clearly marked, and the waves came sweeping up and swept them away, the black crabs, like so many pincushions on stilts, raced after the receding waters, and the wading-birds stalked over the half-liquid sand seeking their livelihood. Overhead was the heavy blue African sky, on the right, the dark blue sea with white-t

an expedition trading for gold, elephants' teeth, and slaves-more especially for slaves. I thought of those old-world men as we passed along, and the sea kept wiping out all traces of the passing of my hammock bearers. But the people would remember that in such a year

come from Cape Coast this morning-if he could only make me see that it was fit and suitable

r the most part with the swish walls and thatched roofs common to the country, but here and there, shabby with the shabbiness of the tropics and the negro combined, were stone houses built on European lines that must have been miniature forts in their time. There is no need of a fort now, there is peace in the land, even the mighty pile of the Castle is delivered over to the care of the negroes, and the glory is departed. I went up the slanting path to the narrow entrance, the entrance, grim and dark and damp, and I got out of my hammock for it was too narr

1

enslave them, "but the most desperate, treacherous villains and great cheats upon the whole coast, for the gold h

same bastion in like hot sunshine, had watched the vultures settle on the roof of the little ammunition house in the corner, and the flag of Britain flutter out from the flag-staff that the hard cement foundation supported. Beyond was the sea, whence had come those grim old slavers, and I, a woman from the South, the land of liberty. All round the walls from their embrasures grinned those eighteen guns that defended the castle and terrorised the negroes. And round them is piled up the shot that has never been used and will never be used now. On the west side the coconut palms have grown up, the wind whispers among the fronds that overshadow t

e, though this was supposed to be a rest-house. But no man ever comes along the coast now, now that the slaves are not, and the gold is not, and the elephants are gone. The place is held solely for the benefit of the negro, and the dust has settled on everything. There are customs cler

s, pewter basons and muskets," which Phillips has left on record were the best goods with which to buy slaves on the Gold Coast in the seventeenth century. They did not bring out their women, but they to

t so in imitation of the whites"-remember the white men wore their hair long in those days-"never curling it up or letting it frizzle as the blacks do. She was accompanied, or rather attended by the second's and doctor's wives, who were young blacks about thirteen years of age. This i

s a custom that died hard. Twelve years ago the nursing sister at Sekondi told me that when first she was stationed there she saw a girl, just arrived at marriageable age, sent round to all the likely white men in the to

kondi a sad-faced mulatto woman with the remains-only the remains-of great beauty about her,

nly see her all would be well. But barely a day's journey along the coast came the great Prah river, and it passed her powers to cross it. She waited there for days, and then, reluctantly, all along the burning sands she crawled back wearily to the shelter of the woman she knew would care for her, and there she waited listlessly-to die. Is that what happened to these little girls flaunting it so proudly in their silken clothes? Indeed

ence of one slave was enough to condemn the ship, he tied her to a kedge anchor and dropped her into the sea. And so, as is believed, he drowned his own unborn flesh and blood, as well as the slave girl." Think of the state of public opinion when a whole crew could stand calmly by, or even give a hand to perpetrate such an atrocious deed. Is it any wonder that, on any land where was such slavery as this, there seems to have

chattels. It was the pitiful pretence to place and power that makes us feel more keenly the case of these little

e cargoes that were the raison d'être of these heavily armed castles. In Phillips' day a really good negro might be bough

r these presumably were his private property, and not to be accounted among the cargo. When Ansumanah, my own serving boy, sat in the shade at the bottom of the flight of stairs that led up to the bastion, I remembered Phillips' two little

ight the people came off in their canoes, and at night they lighted fires along the shore as a sign they had something to trade, and their trade goods were always the same, gold, elephants' teeth, that is, ivory, or men, and generally they required th

d get, for might was right and wars were perpetually waged-by the black men be it understood-in o

bare word, where we did not use to trade and had no factory, we sent him away and resumed our voyage." He has left us a very graphic account of the manner in which he and the captain of the East Indian Merchant bought their wares. The slaves were evidently got in small parcels, secured in the factories and shipped off on calm days, for the surf of the Guinea Coast would not always allow of a landing. Where they kept them at Annamabu or in the dominant factory at Koromantyn, I do not know, probably in the court-yard or in the dark d

the goods I suppose, and the surgeo

nning that they shave them all close before we see them, so that, let them be never so old, we can see no grey hairs in their heads or beards, and then, having liquored them well and sleek with palm oil, 'tis no eas

th the horrid stink of the negroes." And he was a hard-bitten sailor of the seventeenth century accustomed to the close evil-smelling sh

ce being before anointed with a little palm oil which caused but little pain, the mark being usually well in four or five days, app

ry them off to the long boat, and she conveyed them aboard ship where the men were all p

his improved home life was perhaps not calculated to inspire confidence. "But home is home," moralises Phillips. "We have likewise seen divers of them eaten by sharks, of which a prodigious number kept about the ships in this place. We had about twelve negroes did wilfully drown themselves, and others starved themselves to death, for 'tis their belief that when they die they return home to their own country and friends again. I have been informed that some commanders have cut off the legs of th

poor opinion of the

iney commanders' words and promises are the least to be depended upon of any I kn

on the horizon, and the long, long voyage was begun, there were trouble

or mutiny, to prevent which we always keep sentinels upon the hatchways, and have a chest of small arms ready loaden and trim'd, constantly lying at hand upon the quarterdeck toge

efore, all that time what of our men who are not employed in distributing their victuals to them and settling them, stand to their arms with l

e of life abo

he goes on feelingly to tell of a Dutch skipper, Clause, who said if his owners would give him ￡100 per month to go

ched Barbadoes they had thrown overboard 320 of them, and all the comment her master makes is t

uch a cargo, "and though he remained upon the poop day and night in irons for two months, without any other shelter than the canopy of heaven, he was never troubled with any sickness, but made good the proverb that 'Naught's never in danger.'" And while he goes on co

hese castles used to be-with the exception of Elmina, the best model and best preserved along the 300 miles of coast. Cape Coast has been used for many purposes, but no white man can live there, because no servant will stay there, they declare it is haunted. Well it might be, for the dungeons are deep and dark, and assuredly they have been used. Kommenda is a shell, and no native will go into the courtyard where the bush is beginnin

my head man with a satis

oked out over the sea with longing eyes, come tramping those stones again, heedless of dark mistress or coffers slowly piling with gold, counting the days, as he had counted them so often, when in his own pleasant land again he would enjoy the fruits of his labour? Stay? No, a thousand times, no, no. And the tropical storm passed, the golden rays of the afternoon sun fell through the slanting rain drops, and then the rain stopped and a mist rose up fro

t, but that remote castle on the Guinea Coast made a f

ype="