Нигерия: народы и проблемы. Эдмунд Дене Морель

there over the face of the land, and one hears the necessity of commercially developing the country to save the British taxpayers’ pockets, of the gentlemen who want to exploit the rubber forests of the Bauchi plateau, of the Chambers of Commerce that require the reservation of lands for British capitalists, and of those who argue that a native, who learned how to smelt tin before we knew there was tin in the country, should no longer be permitted to do so, now that we wish to smelt it ourselves, and of the railways and the roads which have to be built—yes, it seems permissible, though quite useless. But I confess that when one studies what is being done out here in the concrete, from the point of view of the men who are doing it, then it is no longer permissible to doubt. When one sees this man managing, almost single-handed, a country as large as Scotland; when one sees that man, living in a leaky mud hut, holding, by the sway of his personality, the balance even between fiercely antagonistic races, in a land which would cover half a dozen of the large English counties; when one sees the marvels accomplished by tact, passionate interest and self-control, with utterly inadequate means, in continuous personal discomfort, short-handed, on poor pay, out here in Northern Nigeria—then one feels that permanent evil cannot ultimately evolve from so much admirable work accomplished, and that the end must make for good.

      And, thinking over this personal side of the matter as one jogs along up hill and down dale, through plain and valley and mountain side, through lands of plenty and lands of desolation, past carefully fenced-in fields of cotton and cassava, past the crumbling ruins of deserted habitations, along the great white dusty road through the heart of Hausaland, along the tortuous mountain track to the pagan stronghold, there keeps on murmuring in one’s brain the refrain: “How is it done? How is it done?” Ten years ago, nay, but six, neither property nor life were safe. The peasant fled to the hills, or hurried at nightfall within the sheltering walls of the town. Now he is descending from the hills and abandoning the towns.

      And the answer forced upon one, by one’s own observations, is that the incredible has been wrought, primarily and fundamentally, not by this or that brilliant feat of arms, not by Britain’s might or Britain’s wealth, but by a handful of quiet men, enthusiastic in their appreciation of the opportunity, strong in their sense of duty, keen in their sense of right, firm in their sense of justice, who, working in an independence, and with a personal responsibility in respect to which, probably, no country now under the British flag can offer a parallel, whose deeds are unsung, and whose very names are unknown to their countrymen, have shown, and are every day showing, that, with all her faults, Britain does still breed sons worthy of the highest traditions of the race.

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      CHAPTER II

      ON THE GREAT WHITE ROAD

      You may fairly call it the Great White Road to Hausaland, although it does degenerate in places into a mere track where it pierces some belt of shea-wood or mixed trees, and you are reduced to Indian file. But elsewhere it merits its appellation, and it glimmers ghostly in the moonlight as it cuts the plain, cultivated to its very edge with guinea-corn and millet, cassava and cotton, beans and pepper. And you might add the adjective, dusty, to it. For dusty at this season of the year it certainly is. Dusty beyond imagination. Surely there is no dust like this dust as it sweeps up at you, impelled by the harmattan blowing from the north, into your eyes and mouth and nose and hair? Dust composed of unutterable things. Dust which countless bare human feet have tramped for months. Dust mingled with the manure of thousands of oxen, horses, sheep and goats. Dust which converts the glossy skin of the African into an unattractive drab, but which cannot impair his cheerfulness withal. Dust which eats its way into your boxes, and defies the brush applied to your clothes, and finds its way into your soup and all things edible and non-edible. Dust which gets between you and the sun, and spoils your view of the country, wrapping everything in a milky haze which distorts distances and lies thick upon the foliage. The morning up to nine, say, will be glorious and clear and crisp, and then, sure enough, as you halt for breakfast and with sharpened appetite await the looked-for “chop,” a puff of wind will spring up from nowhere and in its train will come the dust. The haze descends and for the rest of the day King Dust will reign supreme. It is responsible for much sickness, this Sahara dust, of that my African friends and myself are equally convinced. You may see the turbaned members of the party draw the lower end of that useful article of apparel right across the face up to the eyes when the wind begins to blow. The characteristic litham of the Tuareg, the men of the desert, may have had its origin in the necessity, taught by experience, of keeping the dust out of nose and mouth. I have been told by an officer of much Northern Nigerian experience, that that terrible disease, known as cerebro-spinal meningitis, whose characteristic feature is inflammation of the membranes of the brain, and which appears in epidemic form out here, is aggravated, if not induced, in his opinion—and he assures me in the opinion of many natives he has consulted—by this disease-carrying dust. In every town and village in the Northern Hausa States, you will see various diseases of the eye lamentably rife, and here, I am inclined to think, King Dust also plays an active and discreditable part.

      The Great White Road. It thoroughly deserves that title from the point where one enters the Kano Province coming from Zaria. It is there not only a great white road but a very fine one, bordered on either side by a species of eucalyptus, and easily capable, so far as breadth is concerned, of allowing the passage of two large automobiles abreast. I, personally, should not care to own the automobile which undertook the journey, because the road is not exactly what we would call up-to-date. Thank Heaven that there is one part of the world, at least, to be found where neither roads, nor ladies’ costumes are “up-to-date.” If the Native Administration of the Kano Emirate had nothing else to be commended for, and under the tactful guidance of successive Residents it has an increasing account to its credit, the traveller would bear it in grateful recollection for its preservation of the trees in the immediate vicinity of, and sometimes actually on the Great White Road itself. It is difficult to over-estimate the value to man and beast, to the hot and dusty European, to the weary-footed carrier, to the patient pack-ox, and cruelly-bitted native horse, of the occasional shady tree at the edge of or on the road. And what magnificent specimens of the vegetable kingdom the fertile soil of Kano Province does carry—our New Forest giants, though holding their own for beauty and shape and, of course, clinging about our hearts with all their wealth of historical memories and inherited familiarity, would look puny in comparison. With one exception I do not think anything on the adverse side of trivialities has struck me more forcibly out here than the insane passion for destroying trees which seems to animate humanity, White and Black. In many parts of the country I have passed through the African does appear to appreciate his trees, both as shade for his ordinary crops and special crops (such as pepper, for instance, which you generally find planted under a great tree) and cattle. In Kano Province, for instance, this is very noticeable. But in other parts he will burn down his trees, or rather let them burn down, with absolute equanimity, making no effort to protect them (which on many occasions he could easily do) when he fires the grasses (which, pace many learned persons, it seems to me, he is compelled by his agricultural needs to do—I speak now of the regions I have seen). I have noticed quantities of splendid and valuable timber ruined in this way. The European—I should say some Europeans—appears to suffer from the same complaint. It is the fashion—if the word be not disrespectful, and Heaven forfend that the doctors should be spoken of disrespectfully in this part of the world, of all places—among the new school of tropical medicine out here to condemn all growing things in a wholesale manner. In the eyes of some, trees or plants of any kind in the vicinity of a European station are ruthlessly condemned. Others are specially incensed against low shrubs. Some are even known to pronounce the death-warrant of the pine-apple, and I met an official at a place, which shall be nameless, who went near weeping tears of distress over a fine row of this fruit which he had himself planted, and which were threatened, as he put it, by the ferocity of the local medical man. In another place destruction hangs over a magnificent row of mango trees—and for beauty and luxuriousness of foliage the mango tree is hard to beat—planted many years ago by the Roman Catholic Fathers near one of their mission stations; and in still another, an official, recently returned on leave, found to his disgust that a group of trees he especially valued had been cut down during his absence by a zealous reformer of the medical world.

      In the southern portions of Southern Nigeria, where Sir Walter Egerton is a resolute foe of medical vandalism, I am inclined