on a gigantic scale. Piles of provender, pyramids of stores of all kinds, cumbered the camp, and it fell to my lot to bring order out of chaos.
Necessaries and provisions for a five months' trip had to be packed, and all the "chop boxes," as they are called out there, had to be carefully marked and their contents scheduled. It was also necessary to see that each box weighed precisely 60 lb., neither more nor less, this being what each porter contracts to carry in Togo.
This was my work, and the motto given me for my guidance was "in every box a little of everything." This obviated the bother of opening a separate box for each article wanted on the march, one or two days' supplies being carried in each box, and used as required, after which the empty box could be discarded, and another one opened.
The most important single article amongst the host of stores was the quinine. Over and over again I was urged to look carefully after this. One can do without food in the bush, I was told; one can even do, for a while at all events, without water; but to be without quinine spells death.
Everybody takes it regularly out there, and quite as a matter of course, the usual dose being thirty-five grains or thereabouts each week. I took my little lot in two separate doses on Saturday and Sunday, and I don't mind confessing that, in the words of the popular ditty of the day, "I didn't want to do it." Only I had to. There was no escape. Schomburgk and Hodgson, our operator, who were the only other white people in the party at this stage of the journey, took theirs on the instalment principle, five grains each evening. But I preferred the other way.
At last everything was ready. Our one hundred carriers, collected and sorted with elaborate care from a dozen or more different villages, made a brave show. Altogether, with our personal staff, interpreters, and so forth, we had a retinue of exactly 120 followers; a greater, I reflected, than any I was ever likely to travel with in future, and certainly far in excess of any that I had been honoured with in the past.
On the evening of the 4th of November we entertained to dinner the good Fathers of the Catholic Mission from Atakpame, who had shown us many kindly courtesies during the time we had spent in their neighbourhood, and on the 5th we said good-bye to Kamina, and started on our journey.
Photo by
A. Mocsigay, Hamburg
Major Hans Schomburgk
The leader and organiser of the expedition. During the last sixteen years he has only spent about two years outside Africa.
Our object was to film scenes and plays of native life amongst absolutely virgin and unspoiled surroundings, and to this end we intended to penetrate to the extremest northern confines of Togo, as far at least as the borders of the French Sudan. As I have already intimated, no white woman had ever travelled so far afield in this part of Africa before, but we anticipated little difficulty or danger on this account, the natives being reported as quite friendly everywhere along our proposed line of route. Then, too, His Highness the Duke of Mecklenburg, the governor of the colony, had very kindly instructed all district commissioners and other Government officials to render the expedition every assistance in their power; so that altogether we looked forward to a pleasant, if possibly a somewhat strenuous trip.
The first stage of our journey was to a place called Sokode, seven days' march, and up to this point there is a very fair road. Consequently we had arranged to cycle so far, the major explaining that we should have all the horseback riding we wanted later on.
Our first day's trek was to have been a very short one, only seven miles, and so we did not start until four o'clock in the afternoon, having sent on our carriers and instructed them where to wait for us. But once again we had experience of the curious perversity of the African native. Instead of covering a short seven-mile stage, as ordered, they travelled a good fifteen before they condescended to call a halt.
As a result darkness overtook us long before we overtook them, and I had one or two rather nasty spills, reaching camp at last sore, shaken, and bruised. Schomburgk was furious, but was obliged to dissemble a good deal, as at this stage of the journey, with the carriers comparatively close to their homes, any undue show of harshness or temper might easily have resulted in stampeding the whole lot of them.
That night I spent on a camp bed in an old deserted straw hut. It was not altogether uncomfortable, but I got little sleep. The carriers were all round me in groups of messes, each with its own little fire, and they were all the time mumbling and talking to one another.
The next day we made a short march, as the rest-house was only about eight miles ahead. These rest-houses are strung out all along the Kamina-Sokode road at distances about twenty miles apart, and each marks the end of a stage. Our operator, Hodgson, should have picked us up here. He had left Kamina the day after our departure, intending to overtake us, but he passed us somehow, and cycled on to the next rest-house.
Naturally we wondered what on earth had become of him, and were beginning to get rather anxious when, about four o'clock in the afternoon, a messenger arrived with news of his whereabouts, and bearing a letter asking urgently for a supply of provisions to be sent on to him, as he had nothing to eat where he was, and had tasted no food all that day.
European Rest House at Tschopowa
The enormous baobab tree on the right was the roosting-place of innumerable bats, which were greedily eaten, after being killed and spitted over a fire, by the native "boys" attached to the caravan.
By degrees things began to settle down. I had charge of the commissariat and cooking arrangements. The natives I found tractable enough, but woefully deficient in their notions of cleanliness. Most of them entertained the idea that the proper way to wash a plate or a dish was to lick it all over thoroughly. In this way, they explained, they not only cleansed it, but at the same time were able to get at least a taste of the white man's "chop."
Water, they contended, was for drinking, not for washing things in. Even to rub over a kitchen utensil with a wisp of dried grass seemed to them a work of supererogation. Eventually I used to boil the water myself in which the dishes were washed up—a necessary precaution against dysentery—and superintend the washing-up operations from start to finish. It was, I found, the only way.
I also had charge of the petty cash book, and used to make small advances to the boys as occasion demanded. They had christened me "The Puss," and applications for money became more frequent and insistent than Schomburgk deemed consistent with good order and discipline. It was, "Please, Puss, give me some pennies," "Me want one shilling, please. Puss," and so on from morning till night.
The climax came on the evening of the second day, when we were about twenty-five miles out from Kamina. Just as I was retiring for the night, a letter was handed to me which purported to come from Messa, our cook, and Alfred, our chief interpreter, but which was really, I found out afterwards, inspired by the first-named individual, although drawn up and signed by them both.
"Dear Puss," it ran, "cook and myself want advance. One pound please. Or more. If not more, less would be good. Farther up in the bush presently we no want one penny. This the last. So please not tell master, because perhaps he make palaver. Good evening, dear Puss. We salute you. Alfred and Messa."
Well, I made a bit of a palaver myself about it, for a sovereign seemed a good round sum for a couple of natives to want all of a hurry, but eventually, yielding to their urgent entreaties, I let them have it. We broke camp next morning at three o'clock, so as to avoid marching in the heat of the day. To my amazement and disgust the cook had disappeared. So, too, had one of our bicycles. The chief interpreter, on being interrogated, disclaimed all knowledge of the whereabouts of the absent man. He had, he asserted, merely written the letter to oblige Messa, and had no idea that he intended deserting, as he apparently had done.
Here was a pretty go and no mistake. The major swore fluently; I cried—profusely. Then we both got angry. He said it was all my fault. "The idea of giving a nigger a whole