A first adventure—Tarkwa—Once more Swanzy to the rescue—Women thoroughly contented, independent, and well-to-do—The agricultural wealth of the land—The best bungalow in West Africa—Crusade against the trees—Burnt in the furnaces—Prestea—The sick women—A ghastly hill—Eduaprim—A capable fellow-countrywoman—“Dollying” for gold—Obuasi—Beautiful gardens—75 per cent.—The sensible African snail.

I was born and brought up on the goldfields. My first adventure—I don\'t remember it—was when my nurse, a strapping young emigrant from the Emerald Isle, lost me and herself upon the ranges, and the camp turned out to search, lest the warden\'s precious baby and her remarkably pretty nurse should spend an unhappy night in the bush. As a small girl, I watched the men wash the gold in their cradles, and I dirtied my pinafore when the rain turned the mullock heaps into slimy mud. As I grew older, I escorted strangers from the Old Country who wanted to go down the deep mines of Ballarat. I watched, perforce, the fluctuations of the share market, and men who knew told me that the rise and fall had very often nothing whatever to do with the output of gold; so that I grew up with the firmly fixed idea—it is still rather firmly fixed—that the most uninteresting industry in the world was goldmining.

Wherefore was I not a bit keen on going to the gold mines of West Africa, and I only went to Tarkwa because I felt it would never do to come away not having seen an industry which I am told is going up by leaps and bounds. The question was, where could I go for quarters? There are no hotels as yet, and once more I am deeply indebted to Messrs Swanzy and their agent in the mining centre of the Gold Coast. He put me up and entertained me right royally, and not only did he show me round Tarkwa, but he saw to it that I should have every chance to see some of the other mines, Prestea and Eduaprim.



0464

Tarkwa is set in what we in Australia should call a gully, and the high hills rise up on either side, while the road, along which straggles the European town, runs at the bottom of the gully. For there are several towns in Tarkwa. There is the European town where are all the stores, the railway station, and the houses of the Government officials, and in this town there is some attempt at beautifying the place; some trees have been planted along the roadside, grass grows on the hillsides, whether by the grace of God or the grace of the town council I know not, and round most of the bungalows there is generally a sort of garden, and notably in one or two, where there are white women who have accompanied their husbands, quite promising beginnings of tropical gardens.

There is the native town, bare and ugly, without a scrap of green, just streets cutting each other at right angles, and small houses, roofed with corrugated iron or thatch, and holding a teeming and mixed population that the mines gather together, and then every mine has its own village for its workers; for the labour difficulty has reached quite an acute stage in the goldfields, and the mines often import labour from the north, which they install in little villages, that are known by the name of the mine where the men work, and are generally ruled over by a white officer appointed by the mine. These villages, too, are about as bare and ugly as anything well could be that is surrounded by the glorious green hills and has the blue sky of Africa over it.

Tarkwa gives the impression of a busy, thriving centre; trains rush along the gully and the hills echo their shrill whistles, the roadways are thronged with people, and the stores set out their goods in that open fashion that is half-eastern, so that the hesitating buyer may hesitate no longer but buy the richest thing in sight. In all my travels I never saw such gorgeously arrayed mammies as here. The black ladies\' cloths, their blouses, and the silken kerchiefs with which they covered their heads, all gave the impression of having been carefully studied, and my host assured me they had. Many of them are rich, and in this comfortable country they are all of them self-supporting wives. They sell their wares, or march about the streets, happy, contented, important people, very sure of themselves. Let no one run away with the impression that these women are in any way down-trodden. They look very much the reverse. We may not approve of polygamy, but I am bound to say these women of Tarkwa were no down-trodden slaves. They looked like women who had exactly what they wanted, and, curiously enough whenever I think of thoroughly contented, thoroughly independent, well-to-do women, I think of those women in the goldmining centre of West Africa.

My host told me they spent, comparatively speaking, enormous sums on their personal adornment, were exceedingly particular as to the shade and pattern of their cloths, and were decided that everything, cloth, blouse, and head kerchief, should tone properly. They lay in a large store of clothes too, and when Mr Crockett wrote the other day of “The Lady of the Hundred Dresses,” he might have been thinking of one of these Fanti women. The reason of this prosperity is of course easy to trace. The negro does not like working underground, for which few people I think will blame him, therefore high wages have to be paid, and these high wages have to be spent, and are spent lavishly, much to the advantage of these women traders.



0468

Because Tarkwa is a great centre of industry, Government have very wisely made it one of their agricultural stations, and there, set on a hill, and running down into rich alluvial flats, are gardens wherein grow many of the plants that will in the future contribute largely to the industrial development of the Colony. There is a rubber plantation, a great grove of dark trees already in bearing, plantations of bananas, pine-apples, hemp, and palm trees, and the director, set in his lonely little bungalow on the hilltop, rejoices over the wealth and fertility of the land, which he declares is not in her gold, but in her agricultural products which as yet we are but dimly realising, and then he mourns openly because the Government will not let him bring out his wife. “She would be ready to start in an hour if I might send for her,” he sighed, “and I would want nothing more. But I mayn\'t. Oh, think of the dreary days. And I could work so much better if she were here. I should want nothing else.”

And I sympathised. Think of the dreary days for him, and the still more dreary days for her, for at least he has his work. It would surely I think pay the Government to give a bonus to the woman who proved that she could see her year out without complaint, and who was to her husband what a woman ought to be, a help and a comfort.

Another thing in Tarkwa I shall never forget is Messrs Swanzy\'s bungalow, where I stayed for nearly a fortnight. My host had superintended the building of it himself, and it was ideal for a West-African bungalow. It was built of cement raised on arches above the ground; floors and walls were of cement. There was a very wide verandah that served as a sitting-room and dining-room, and the bedrooms, though they were divided from each other by stout walls of cement, were only shut off from the verandah by Venetian screens that could be folded right away. They did not begin till a foot above the floor, and ended six feet above it, consequently there was always a thorough draught of air, and Messrs Swanzy\'s bungalow at Tarkwa is about the only house I know in West Africa where one can sleep with as much comfort as if in the open air. Needless to say, they are not so foolish as to go in for mosquito-proof netting. They keep the mosquitoes down by keeping the place round neat and tidy, and though the verandah is enclosed with glass, it is done in such fashion that the windows may be thrown right open and do not hinder the free passage of air. Flies and mosquitoes there were, but that, when I was there, was attributed to the presence of the town rubbish tip on the next vacant allotment, and my host hoped to get it taken away. Why the Government had a town rubbish tip close to the handsomest bungalow in the Colony, I do not pretend to say. It was just one of those things that are always striking you as incongruous in West Africa. My host used to fret and fume at every evil fly that came through his windows, and, when I left, was threatening to stand a gang of Hausas round that tip with orders to kick anyone who desired to deposit any more rubbish there.



0472

It is hardly necessary to say there had been at the same time a great crusade against the trees in Tarkwa. But a short time ago the whole place had been dense forest, very difficult to work, and after the usual fashion of the English everyone set to work to demolish the forest trees as if they were the greatest enemies to civilisation. The mines, of course, I believe burn something like a hundred trees a day, and the softwood trees are no good to them. What their furnaces require are the splendid mahogany, the still harder kaku, a beautiful wood that is harder than anything but iron, and indeed any good hard-wood tree; the worth of the wood is no business of theirs. They consider the wealth of Africa lies beneath the soil, and they must get it out; wherefore into their furnaces goes everything burnable, even though the figured mahogany may be worth ￡1 a foot, and the tree be worth ￡1000. It is a pity, it is a grievous pity, but Tarkwa is certainly prosperous, and I suppose one cannot make omelettes, and look for chickens. Only I cannot help remembering that never in our time, nor in our children\'s time, nor their children\'s time, will the hills of Tarkwa be covered with such trees as she has ruthlessly consigned to the flames. Even the soft-wood trees such as the cotton, that might have added beauty to the slopes, have gone because an energetic doctor waged war upon them as shelterers of the mosquito, and the hill-sides lie in the blazing sun for close on twelve hours of a tropical day. Oh for a sensible, artistic German to come and see to the beautifying of Tarkwa, for never saw I a place that could lend itself more readily to the hand of an artist.

But if Tarkwa is being ruthlessly treated, what shall I say of beautiful Prestea, which lies but a short railway journey right away in the heart of the hills. Prestea is a great mine, so large that the whole of the one hundred and eighty white people who make up the white town are employed upon it. It is so hilly that there are hardly any paths, and the people seem to move about on trolleys, winding in and out of the hills, and, it was reported once, one of the unhealthiest places in West Africa. The doctor very kindly gave me hospitality, and we promptly agreed to disagree on every subject. I hate to be ungracious to people who have been kind to me, but with all the will in the world I have to keep my own opinion, and my opinion was diametrically opposed to the doctor\'s. The nursing Sister who ran the hospital, a nice-looking, capable, sensible Scotch woman, whom it did my heart good to meet, was one of the few I have met who put the sickness of the average English woman in West Africa down to the same causes as I did.

“They come from a class who have nothing to think of, and when they have nothing to do they naturally fall sick,” said she. “Every woman on this camp has been sent home this year.”

I debated with her whether I should give my opinion of the climate to the world in my book. It meant I was up against every doctor in the place, who ought to know better than I, a stranger, and a sojourner.

“If you don\'t,” said she, “someone else will come along presently and do it.”

That decided me. I am doing it.



0476

This nursing Sister, while she had to have the hospital mosquito-proof, in deference to the doctor\'s opinion, sternly declined to have any such abomination anywhere near her little bungalow, and so the cool, fresh night air blew in through her great windows, and we had an extensive view of the glorious hillsides, all clothed in emerald green, and if a clammy white mist wrapped us close when we waked in the early morning so that we could not see beyond our own verandahs, the rolling away of that mist was a gorgeous sight, ever to be remembered.

Needless to say, the doctor\'s house was carefully enclosed in mosquito-proof wire, and I dined in an oppressive atmosphere that nearly drove me distracted. The bungalow was set high on a hilltop, in the middle of a garden that should one day be beautiful, but he has of course cut down every native tree, and owing to the mosquito-proof wire we got no benefit from the cool breeze that was blowing outside. He took me to see the new native village he was building, a place that left an impression of corrugated iron and hard-baked clay. Trees, of course, and all vegetation were taboo, but I am bound in justice to say that the old village, a place teeming with inhabitants, drawn from all corners of West Africa, attracted by the lust for gold, was just as bare and ugly, and a good deal more unkempt.

He took me out, and pointed out to me the principal hill in the centre of Prestea, on which are the mining manager\'s and other officials\' houses, and he pointed it out with pride.

“There\'s a nice clean hill for you.”

The sun glared down fiercely on corrugated-iron roofs, the soil of the hill looked like a raw, red scar, and there was not so much as a blade of grass to be seen. I did not wonder that the unfortunate women of Prestea had gone home sick if they had been compelled to live in such a place.