The pains and penalties of landing in Accra—Negro officials, blatant, pompous, inefficient—Christiansborg Castle—The ghost of the man with eyes like bright stones—The importance of fresh air—Beautiful situation of Accra—Its want of shade-trees—The fences of Accra—The temptation of the cooks—Picturesque native population—Striking coiffure—The expensive breakwater—To commemorate the opening of the waterworks—The forlorn Danish graveyard—A meddlesome missionary—Away to the east.
I don\'t like landing in Accra. There is a good deal of unpleasantness connected with it. For one thing, the ships must lie a long way off for the surf is bad, and the only way to land is to be put into a mammy-chair, dropped into a surf boat, and be rowed ashore by a set of most excellent boatmen, who require to be paid exorbitantly for their services. I don\'t know what other people pay, but I have never landed on Accra beach under a ten-shilling dash to the boat boys, and then I had to pay something like sixpence a load to have my things taken up to the Custom house. In addition to that you get the half-civilised negro in all his glory, blatant, self-satisfied, loquacious, deadly slow, and very inefficient. As well as landing my goods from the steamer, I wanted to inquire into the fate of other goods that I had, with what I considered much forethought, sent on from Sekondi by a previous steamer, and here I found myself in a sea of trouble, for, the negro mind having grasped the fact that a troublesome woman was looking for boxes that had probably been lost a couple of months ago, each official passed me on from one department to another with complacency. Accra is hot, and Accra is sandy, and Accra as yet does not understand the meaning of the text, “the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land,” so for a couple of hours I was hustled about from pillar to post, finding traces of luggage everywhere, and no luggage. Then, a little way from the port office, a large placard in blue and white, announcing “Post and Telegraph Office” caught my eye, so I thought I would by way of refreshment and interlude send a telegram telling of my safe arrival to my friends in Sekondi, and, in all the heat of a tropical morning, I toiled down one flight of steps and up another and at last found that the telegraph office, in spite of that big placard, was not at the port at all but at Victoriaborg, about a couple of miles away. I could not believe it, but so it was. Whether that placard is previous, or hints at past greatness, I cannot tell. I also found later on that you cannot send a telegram after four o\'clock in the afternoon in the Gold Coast. Government takes a most paternal care of its negro subordinates and sees that the poor things are not worked too hard, but when I found they closed for luncheon as well, I was apt to inquire why it should be so hard-hearted as ever to require them to open at all. I think this matter should be inquired into by someone who has the welfare of the negro race at heart.
0256
When my temper was worn to rags, and I was thoroughly hot and unhappy, wishing myself with all my heart out in the open again with only carriers who “no be fit” to deal with, at last a surprised white man found me, straightened things out in a moment, and assured me that I should have evening dresses to wear at Government House.
The Acting Governor and his wife put me up for a day or two, and then found me quarters, and I hereby put it on record that I really think it was noble of the Acting Governor, for he had no sympathy with my mission, and I think, though he was too polite to say so, was inclined to regard a travelling woman as a pernicious nuisance. I am sure it would have been more convenient for him if I had gone straight on, but I did not want to do the capital of the Colony like an American tourist, and so protested that I must have somewhere where I could rest and arrange my impressions.
Government House is old-world. It is Christiansborg Castle, which was bought from the Danes, I think, some time in the seventies, when a general rearrangement of the Coast took place. It is one of the nicest castles on the Coast, bar, of course, Elmina, which none can touch, and has passed through various vicissitudes. I met at Kumasi the medical officer who had charge of it some years back, when it was a lunatic asylum.
“Such a pity,” said he, “to make such a fine place a lunatic asylum. But it was a terrible care to me. I was so afraid some of the lunatics would smash those fine old stained-glass windows.”
I stared. Stained-glass windows on the Coast! But there is not a trace of them now, nor have I ever met anyone else who knew of them. I suppose they are some of those things no one thought worth caring about.
0260
There are ghosts at Christiansborg too. It used to be Government House, and then, because some Governor did not like it, a lunatic asylum, and Government House again. A man once told me how, visiting it while it was a lunatic asylum, he spoke to the warder in charge and said, “You must have an easy time here.”
“No, sah; no, sah,” said the man earnestly, “it no be good.”
“Why?” asked my curious friend.
And then the negro said that as soon as the place was locked up quiet for the night, and he knew there could not possibly be any white men within the walls, two white men, he described them, one had eyes like bright stones, walked up and down that long corridor. And the strange part of the story, said my friend, was that he described unmistakably two dead-and-gone English Governors, men who have died in recent years, one, I think, in the West Indies, and the other on the way home from West Africa!
Christiansborg Castle is close down on the seashore, so close that the surf tosses its spray against its windows, and thus it came about that I learned what seems to me the secret of health in West Africa.
All along the Coast I had wondered; sometimes I felt in the rudest health, as if nothing could touch me, sometimes so weary and languid it was an effort to rouse myself to make half a dozen steps, and here in Christiansborg Castle I was prepared to agree with all the evil that had ever been said about the climate.
“In the morning thou shalt say, \'Would to God it were even,\' and at even thou shalt say, \'Would to God it were morning.\'”
That just about expressed my feelings while I was staying at Christiansborg Castle. My room, owing to the exigencies of space was an inside one, and though the doors were large, wide, and always open, still it had no direct communication with the open air. All the windows along the sea side of the Castle were tight closed, for the Acting Governor\'s wife did not like her pretty things to be spoiled by the damp sea breeze, so she stirred her air by a punkah. But at night of course there was no punkah going and I spent nights of misery. The heat was so oppressive I could not sleep, and I used to get up and wander about the verandah, where the air was cool enough, but I could not sleep there as it was by way of being a public passage-way. After a day or two they very kindly gave me for my abode a tumble-down old bungalow, just outside the Castle walls. It was like a little fort, and probably had been built for defence in the days that were passed and gone. There was a thick stone wall round the front of a strongly built stone house, that was loopholed for defence, and here lodged some of the Government House servants and their families, but on top of this stone house had been built a wooden bungalow, now rapidly falling into decay. Here were two big rooms and wide verandahs with a little furniture, and here I lodged, engaging a cook, and running my own establishment, greatly to my own satisfaction. The bungalow was as close to the seashore as the Castle, and I opened all the windows wide, and let the cool, health-giving fresh air blow over me day and night.
After the first night the languor and weariness at once disappeared and I felt most wonderfully well, a feeling that I kept always up so long as I could sleep in the uninterrupted fresh air. Put me to sleep in a closed-in room with no possibility of a direct draught and I was tired at once, wherefore I believe and believe firmly that to insure good health in West Africa you must have plenty of fresh air. I go further and would advise everybody to sleep as much in the open as possible, or, at the very least, in a good, strong draught. After that experience, I began to notice. I had a habit of getting up very early in the morning and going out for walks and rides in my cart, and as I went down the streets of towns like Sekondi, Tarkwa, and Accra, it was surprising the number of shutters I saw fast closed against the health-giving air. I concluded the people behind were foolishly afraid of chills and preferred to be slowly poisoned, and I looked too later on in the day at the pallid, white-faced men and women who came out of those houses. For myself, West Africa agreed with me. I have never in my life enjoyed such rude health as I found I had there.
I set the reason down to the care I took to live always in the open. The conclusion I draw is this—of course I may be wrong—the margin of health in West Africa is narrow and therefore you cannot do without a supply of the invigorating elixir supplied by Nature herself. Could I live in England as I did there it is quite likely my health would be still better. Now, when I hear a man is ill in West Africa, I ask several questions before I condemn the place. First, of course, there is the unlucky man who would be ill in any climate, then there is the dissipated man who brings his ailments upon himself, and, while in Africa men set his illness down to the right cause, when they are this side of the water they are only too ready to add another nail to their cross and pity the poor devil who has succumbed to the terrible climate they have to face. Next comes the man who, while not exactly dissipated, does himself too well, burns the candle at both ends, and puts upon his constitution a strain it certainly could not stand in a cooler climate, and then, when all these eliminated, there is to my mind the man and the woman, for the women are still greater offenders, who will sleep in too sheltered a spot, and spend their sleeping hours in the vitiated air of a mosquito-proof room.
0264
Of course other things tend to ill-health—loneliness, want of occupation for the mind, that perpetual strain that is engendered when a man is not contented with his surroundings and is for ever counting the slowly moving days till he shall go home; but that must come in any land where a man counts himself an exile, and I finally came to the conclusion that pretty nearly half the ill-health of West Africa would be cured if men would but arrange their sleeping-quarters wisely.
At any rate, in this old tumble-down bungalow I was more than happy. I engaged a cart and boys, and I used to start off at six o\'clock in the morning, or as near to it as I could get those wretches of Kroo boys to come, and wander over the town.
Accra, which is the principal town of the Ga people, must have been for some centuries counted a town of great importance, for three nations had forts here. The English had James Fort, now used as a prison, the Dutch had Fort Crêvecoeur, now called Vssher Fort and used as a police barracks, and the Danes had Christiansborg Castle close to the big lagoon and three miles away from the town of Accra. And in addition to these forts all along the shore are ruins of great buildings. Till I went to Ashanti, between Christiansborg and Accra was the only bit of good road I had seen on the English coast of Guinea, and that was probably made by the Danes, for there is along part of it an avenue of fine old tamarind trees, which only this careful people would take the trouble to plant. They are slow-growing trees, I believe, and must be planted for shelter between other trees which may be cut down when the beautiful tamarinds grow old enough to take care of themselves. Some of the trees are gone and no one has taken the trouble to fill in the gaps, but still with their delicate greenery they are things of beauty in hot, sun-stricken Accra. For if ever a town needed trees and their shade it is this capital of the Gold Coast.
0268
Accra might be a beautiful city. The coast is not very high, but raised considerably above sea-level, and it is broken into sweeping bays; the country behind gradually rises so that the bungalows at the back of the town get all the breeze that comes in from the ocean and all that sweeps down from the hills. In consequence, Accra, for a town that lies within a few degrees of the Equator, may be counted comparatively cool. The only heat is between nine o\'clock in the morning and four o\'clock in the afternoon; at night, when I was there, the hottest time of the year, March and the beginning of April, there was always a cool sea breeze. A place is always bearable when the nights are............