reception in manuscript, as we have seen, was most discouraging; its published life was a perfectly brilliant success. It was translated into seven languages, and popularized in many different ways. The author was looked upon as one of the greatest men in France; it was proposed to make him governor to the dauphin. When royalty had vanished, his fame suffered no eclipse. General Buonaparte, in his Italian campaigns, slept with "Paul et Virginie" under his pillow; and he read it again at St. Helena during his captivity. While Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's larger works, which taught his own generation to see the beauties of nature in a way that it had never before imagined, are unread and forgotten, this story will keep his name green for generations to come. The two children, beautiful, good, and unfortunate, have taken hold of the popular imagination; they are more alive than many of the living. Their picture hangs on peasants' walls; their names, to this day, are given to peasants' children. “Le peuple, qui n'oublie jamais ce qui l'a profondément touché, a gardé la mémoire de Paul et de Virginie." E. C. PRICE. From The Fortnightly Review. BRITISH ADMINISTRATION IN WEST AFRICA. LEAVING Bordeaux by Messageries Impériales, I arrived at the French garrison town of Dakar, on the Great Sahara, after an agreeable and luxurious voyage of some twenty days. I put up at the hotel of J. E. Buhan Père, Fils, and Teisseire, and, whilst their obliging maître was seeing to the landing of my baggage, and its passing through the douane, his chef was preparing a sumptuous breakfast, which I and some fellow-passengers, who were on shore whilst the steamer was coaling, enjoyed in true Oriental style amid bubbling fountains and shady palms, in the enclosed courtyard. The cool and shade of this fragrant bower was so delicious that we were able to dispense with the services of the Nubian punkah wallah, whose arm had begun to swing with that lazy but clock-like regularity so well known to the European in tropical climes. After the departure of the steamer, with her thousand French peasants and Spanish emigrants from the Basque provinces, for Buenos Ayres, I was glad that I had taken the precaution of having my passport regularly and duly vised before leav ing the south of France, inasmuch as, being an Englishman and a civil engineer, my movements in French territory created some amount of curiosity. However, Monsieur le Commandant made everything all right for me, and the early morning of my second day in Dakar found me at the Gare de chemin de fer Dakar à Saint Louis-Sénégal, where I found my hostess had preceded me, with my portable luggage and some nice little dainties arranged in a coupé she had secured for me, all to myself. She had ventured to do this, she said, because she knew the habits of the English in la belle France, and she had no doubt I should prefer a compartment to myself; besides, was there not a detachment of troops proceeding to Saint Louis by the same train? Taking leave of my amiable hostess as she handed me the ticket for my heavy baggage (which was to follow by petite vitesse), the guard, after having duly acknowledged Madame's injunctions to look after the comfort of Monsieur l'Anglais en route, signalled the driver that he was at liberty to make a start, and we were soon gliding out of the station for a twelve hours' run to the capital. Everything that could conduce to the comfort of travelling was provided in the compartment I occupied; but, after shaking down, I left my carriage, and, walking along the train, chummed in with the officers. As we arrived half-way at midday, breakfast was announced at the buffet, a special room being improvised for the officers, whose guest I became. I was surprised to find so great an amount of traffic on the line, and wondered where all the grain and other produce and natives came from, for to all appearances we were travelling over a sea of sand. A kind of scrubby jungle grew here and there, to be sure, but not more than enough to give cover to a strolling lion or two, in search of those who might stray from the vil lage or drop out from a caravan, or of a sick camel, perhaps. Punctually to time we drew up at the station in St. Louis at 6 P.M., having accomplished our journey of two hundred and forty miles in twelve hours, including stoppages, and the dropping and picking up of trucks of merchandise at the various stations and sidings on the way. Arrived at St. Louis I found that the French had not only accomplished won ders in the desert through which we had just passed, but that they had transformed that corner of it on which the port of St. Louis stands into a veritable little Paris in miniature. A Paris without the vices of of delight, after a sojourn of some three months amongst its hospitable inhabitants, I proceeded down to the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and other of our adjacent English possessions. Would that, as an Englishman, I could pass over unrecounted my travels on territory under the dominion of the British crown. It is urged, however, that in the name of humanity and religion, I ought not to keep anything back, however humiliating it may be to us, the professedly foremost of Christian nations. My testimony, I am reminded, is valuable, coming, as it does, not from a trader, missionary, or merchant, but from an unbiassed and independent traveller. There are some revolting points, however, the direct outcome of British rule, on which I must, in decency, drop the curtain. Paris. The boulevards of St. Louis are wide, well laid out, well watered, and lined on each side with shops, in which may be had the products of France, Africa, and America. The town is supplied with an abundance of good water, scientifically brought from a distance; the drainage is good, the lighting electric, the government municipal. There are shady walks and public gardens; the boulevards have their tempting cafés, where refreshing iced liquors, that any total abstainer may take, can be had. Alcohol, although not prohibited, is restricted by government. No one dare sell to a native that which would make him intoxicated. Drunkenness is unknown. The natives are of good physique, well dressed, happy, and prosperous. In the evening the military band plays on the Place d'Armes, where his Excellency On entering the harbor of Freetown, the governor, the officers of the garrison, the English metropolis of Sierra Leone, I and the men may be seen promenading to- was charmed with the natural beauty of gether with the natives in the most friendly its situation, the tropical luxury and gorand fraternal manner. I was well received geous coloring of the hills rising picturthere, and, although a private traveller, esquely behind a town where "none but his Excellency returned my call within the man is vile." It formed a pretty picture hour. The officers, also, were profuse in from the bay, in which ships lay at anchor, their hospitality, and, Protestant though I and would delight the eye of an artist in was, I was invited to, and spent some en- search of some new material to fill his joyable evenings in, the college with les canvas. But the town itself is fairer to frères. The heathen convert receives view from a distance than pleasant to infrom these Catholic brothers a classical spect closely. Instead of the charm, the education, and at the same time a technical refinement, the cleanliness, and prosperity one. The student, therefore, in leaving of St. Louis, I found this English settlehis college to go out in the mission field, ment a filthy, forlorn, and uncared-for is able to plan and construct, not only his Darkest England in the land of sunny own church, but roads, bridges, and other fountains; a town of misery, crime, and works appertaining to the science of engi- wretchedness, under barbaric English misneering. It is a glorious sight to see those rule. The town is innocent of even the noble and self-sacrificing women, the sis- most elementary principles of sanitation, ters, as they emerge from the convent, each tenement emptying its filth so that it with their long line of neatly clad negro- is absorbed into the wells, or left to decomgirl scholars for service in the cathedral pose and undergo fetid fermentation whergirls rescued, in most part, from slavery; ever it may happen to be thrown. I found and the fathers, too, with their fine, strap- the servant of the shanty - euphoniously ping, academically robed negro scholars, called a hotel - where I was staying, are a picture to look upon. What a hold filching my tea, and substituting for it the of kindliness and love these brothers and brown water of these wells, which, when these sisters have on the natives! The boiled, is the color of strong black tea, if refining influences of the French have not quite of the aroma and taste of the turned these wild heathens into scholars "cup that cheers." I pointed out to the and gentlemen. They have charmed these medical officer how easy it would be to savages into civilization, just as they have convert the place into as charming a health charmed the arid desert into a land of en-resort as St. Louis, but he could not see it. chantment, and built upon it a fairy town, with all the requirements of modern civilization a sylvan abode of elegance, ease, and luxury, a paradise of repose and gladness, a home on whose peaceful, golden sanded shore I sighed to settle, far from the madding crowd. Bidding adieu to this elysium and abode Civil engineers and doctors never agreed, he informed me, on sanitary matters! The irregular, grass-grown streets are but half formed, and being altogether void of trees or shade, are hot and glaring, fit only for the unhappy native wrecked by drink, who, staggering along them as he emerges from one government-licensed grog-shop to another, finally pitches headlong into one of the many holes and man-traps, there to lie and grow sober under a blistering sun. Unhappy wretch! with our left hand we give him the Bible, with our right the bottle. Statistics of crime through drink, out of which the government reaps so great a revenue, are not to be had in Africa, but, to form some idea of the effects of our dastardly sin, one has only to see, as I did, the ghastly sights in the vicinity of the police-courts when the poor bedeviled human wrecks, male and female, are being dragged, howling and cursing, to her Maj. esty's gaol, to expiate crimes solely due to the poison we have ourselves supplied to them. Her Majesty's gaol in Freetown is an imposing structure, with a European governor, turnkeys, warders, and others living on the premises. The gaol of our neighbors, the French, in St. Louis, with a greater population than that of Freetown, would just about fill one of the many cells of our gaol. Besides this, we, in Freetown, ape her Majesty's high courts in London, and sit bewigged and begowned during the very hottest part of the day. The English judge in Freetown can only be approached through counsel, who, negro though he be, knows how to get the oyster, and how to leave the shell. In St. Louis, the président du tribunal manages to dispose of both civil and criminal cases from seven to nine in the morning, with the assistance of a clerk only. I met in St. Louis an English-born Freetown negress who told me that, having a dispute about property in Freetown, she had gone to law there. She won her case, a simple one, but the costs in it ruined her. The poor woman said to me that the English were very bad to the natives. "Very bad man, sar, Englishman, drink too much whiskey, take all poor negro money, get drunk, go back to England; bad man, Englishman. I come here, Frenchman very good man; he no kick poor black, rob, and call him dam nigger." So many English negro subjects seek protection on French soil that the authorities in St. Louis, trying to stem the tide of fugitives from the English, had levied a poll-tax on them! There is no safety for personal property in Freetown, as the native police stand guard whilst their countrymen break into houses and stores. The native landlord of the "hotel" in which I put up once came to me in the dead of night, and asked me if I had heard a noise below. They were breaking into his spirit stores, he said. I was about to rush down, but he persuaded me not to do so, unless I wanted a "knife into me" or my head broken by the robbers and by the police, who were sure to be with them, he said. The police court and station were just opposite, and her Majesty's gaol in close proximity. Listening, we heard the thieves looting the place; and, after they had decamped and were safely away, not before, we descended, to find the door cleverly broken open and every demijohn of liquor gone. On asking the proprietor whether he was not going to complain to the European police magistrate, he replied: "What is the use? My complaining will do no good. I shall get no redress; but one thing I should be sure to get, namely, the ill-will of the police." This is a specimen of British rule in Sierra Leone and West Africa generally. I could multiply similar cases and worse to an indefinite extent. Yet the number of officials in Freetown and the cost of civil administration is enormous. In the adjoining territory the French administer the country's affairs seven hundred per cent. cheaper than it costs the English. In the capital of Sierra Leone there are eighty-four salaried officials, whose aggregate pay amounts to £16,764 15s. 6d. per annum, or 6s. 8d. per head of the population, plus 35. 31d. per head, the cost of six months' leave of absence to England on full pay, with free passage out and back, for every year of service. This enormous expenditure is exclusive of the military, medical, and commissariat departments, which considerably more than double the 10s. per head. One European merchant in Freetown informed me that he paid over £5,000 a year in taxes alone to the civil administration; and as there are other merchants of the same standing, we find that, together with all the other taxes, licenses to drinkingdens and grog-shops, the local government's annual income is thousands in excess of expenditure, startling as that expenditure may be. And yet the imperial government say the colony is in debt to them, and they heartily wish it at the bottom of the sea. What, then, becomes of the money? Where does it go? There is a "cathedral" in the town which cost the government £8,000, instead of a tithe of that colossal sum. The natives have a bishop, a real live bishop all to themselves; for a white face is rarely seen at "cathedral" service. I was there once with a commissariat officer and his wife, and we were stared at by the natives, who seemed to look upon us as altogether out of place. I cannot say I admired the bish op's sermon. He preaches at the natives, not to them; Churchism—not Christ. Next to the civilizing influence of the French on the African is that of the Mahomedan. The followers of the Prophet are moving down from the north in a long wave, converting the tribes, and instilling into them energy and the arts, in the place of savage idleness. These converted tribes in turn assist in converting the next tribe to Mahomedanism, and so the flood moves on. It is no vulgar conquest, like our Christian wars, for the sake of plunder alone. The tribe in becoming Mahomedan is bound to keep its villages in a healthy condition, bound to accept a sanitary code, including abstention from strong drink; officials are appointed, trades are formed, every man must work, so that the most useful industries and delightful arts spring up. Law is speedy in their townships. The old, grey-bearded village chieftain walks round the streets at daybreak, knouting any gentleman of the Municipal Council whose streets show signs of uncleanliness. The English are even behind the Mahomedans. The Anglican Church, too, fails in many ways where the French succeeds. We preach too much at the natives, and hold them at too great a distance; the French priest preaches to them and treats them with love and kindly interest. this crying injury to a perishing people remains unredressed and unheeded by the most humane and Christian nation in the world. Tempted by greed and avarice white traders introduce the poison to the native. Souls of men are bartered for money, and Africa is being slowly but surely desolated by the foremost missionary nation on earth. As stated by the Bishop of London, it is a positive fact that in one place in Africa the Christians are building a mosque rather than a church, because the Mahomedans do not bring drink with them; whereas an increased number of Christians would mean an increase in the importation of drink. One of the Mahomedan African chiefs, in praying for the suppression of the liquor traffic, created by us in his country, says: "The natives themselves do not want it, it is forbidden by their laws, but they are forced to break those laws by you English. You are deteriorating our people and destroying whole races of them." He pathetically implores "the English queen to stop sending her rum and her gin to his people." The very air of Africa reeks with rum and gin imported by us, every hut is redolent of its fumes. Gin bottles and boxes meet the eye at every step, and in some places the wealth and importance of the various villages are measured by the size of the pyramids of empty gin-bottles which they erect and worship. Over large areas drink is almost the sole currency, and in many parts the year's wages of the negro factory worker are paid altogether in spirits. Many Englishmen are disappointed that Lord Salisbury has not stipulated for a larger portion of the Dark Continent. But it might be well to remember that if, by annexing African territory Englishmen win the privilege of destroying the people The steamer in which I recently reby the worst kind of alcoholic drugs, it turned from West Africa brought home would seem that the less territory we have with her a cargo of rubber, palm oil, ivory, the better. Surely the time has come gold, and other rich produce she had obwhen some action should be taken in Par- tained, in exchange for a compound called liament as regards this drink traffic in rum and gin, bartered at the rate of, “rum Africa. What is the use of sending mis- 9d. per gallon and gin 2s. 6d. per dozen sionaries to convert the heathen if our pint bottles." This so-called rum and gin traders in heathen lands thrust upon the is known to the natives as "the missionnatives a poison which destroys them ary." The introduction of this missionwith more certainty than any war, pestiary into peaceful villages transforms them lence, or famine? Will no one set on foot a holy crusade against this curse? It is work far above the shibboleth of party politics and sectarian differences. In a unity of effort against the demon of all demons, distinction of race and nation, and creed should vanish, since all are responsible for the great wrong. Drunkenness, says Archdeacon Farrar, is considered in Africa a European fashion, and in spite of the grief of the native authorities, into a Hades peopled by brutalized human beings, whose punishment it is to be possessed by a never-ending thirst for more missionary. The chastity of women becomes a virtue of the past. They follow one about with scarcely a rag on their besotted persons, crying for more gin. The wretched natives, having disposed of their cattle for drink, take to thieving for it, and being caught, are sometimes flogged to death by our government officials. For details of these unhappy murders I refer | Coast wrote recently to his principals to my readers to Blue-Book C-5,740, Sierra send no more cloth, drink being the only Leone, and C- 5,897 — 5. article in demand. We here read with shame and alarm the wanton acts of misgovernment, which are of periodical, if not constant occurrence on the West Coast of Africa, from the Gambia down to the mouth of the Niger and the Oil Rivers District. The thousands of lives sacrificed during the past few years in mischievous raids upon native tribes cannot be restored, nor can the scandal be atoned for of lawless floggings and tortures inflicted by English officials, who appear to have discarded all the qualities proper to Englishmen upon taking service in the Gold Coast or Sierra Leone Constabulary. In the Gold Coast Colony a government official gave twenty natives, who were suspected of complicity in a theft, seventytwo lashes apiece, from which flogging four of them died. For this offence he was tried at Accra in August, 1889, but, the charge of murder preferred against him having been withdrawn, he was convicted of assault only, and sentenced by the acting chief justice to pay a fine of £5 and enter into his own recognizances to keep the peace for six months. The curse of drink, misrule, flogging, murder, torture, and other atrocities has caused the black to ask: "From whence come these white savages, who are more savage than ourselves?" Slavery and slave-dealing has been renewed under our rule on the Gold Coast. "Quite recently five thousand girls and boys were brought from Salaga and other districts in the interior for sale at Accra and other English territory on the coast. This traffic is actually increasing, owing to the apathy of her Majesty's government. This allegation is supported by the fact that on the 26th March, 1890, there appears on the record in the register of the court at Accra an entry on the matter, and another entry in May of the same year." An intelligent rescued slave-girl gave me an account of how they were captured for sale in English territory. One tribe making a raid upon another seizes all girls and boys above a certain age, after which the old men, women, and young children are driven into a barn and burnt. Great as is the curse of the slave-trade, the curse of drink is infinitely greater, for it destroys, not merely life, character, morals, and all that religion teaches, but even trade. For every gallon of spirit imported into Africa a bale of legitimate goods is kept out. A trader on the West West Africa is one of the richest mineral regions on the planet, and England has been given an entrance to it for the purpose of spreading a civilization and Christianity that will not do harm to the cause of the Gospel or bring disgrace on morality. The Mahomedan traders on the west coast of Sierra Leone, when asked where they get their precious metals and fine work, turn round and point to the north-east - Segoo, Bambara. Why have we not been in Bambara years ago? A light railway should have been run up to the north-east. The French are outstripping us along the line, and they deserve to; for St. Louis alone is an example of their superiority to us as colonizers. They are tapping all that rich region while we remain inert. West Africa has, from interested motives, been represented as unhealthy for Europeans. This illusion is being rapidly dispelled by disinterested travellers. The Englishman, through unhealthy habits, may dig his own grave even in England, as so many thousands do annually. Besides, were London as innocent of sanitary arrangements as Freetown, it would soon become the white man's grave in grim reality. A man unaddicted to drink and gluttony may live, and does live, an enjoyable life in West Africa; he enjoys it so much that, like Emin Pasha, he refuses to be rescued. Officers and others have told me they preferred being out there for a time, not only because they liked the life, but because "dear old Cox" has been able to transfer the balance of their account from the debit to the credit side. West Africa is the coming country; it teems with wealth; it is within easy distance of this country, and can be brought within six days of the London market if necessary. All that we require to do is to get rid of the drink, open out the country as honest people, and make room for our surplus population, from the nobleman's son down to the humblest artisan and laborer. There is fibre there for our manufacturers of Lancashire and Yorkshire; there is gold, silver, copper, coal, precious stones, ivory, india-rubber, nitrate, indigo, antimony, guano, palm oil, kola, ebony, mahogany, gum-copal, potash, ginger, gum, iron, farinaceous foods, dye woods, tanning material, spices, coffee, tobacco, cocoa, cotton, and other produce. Some of these vegetable products grow wild. Horses, camels, and sheep can be bred in the north. |