Chapter XI: Conclusion

The preceding pages will, I believe, have convinced the reader that the Camaroons Mountain is, unlike Fernando Po, highly adapted for a colony of liberated Africans, and for the Sanitarium now urgently required by Lagos and the Bights.[110]

The means of preparing the country for human habitation are ready to our hands. From the 45,000 refugee negroes in Canada, an ever-increasing pauperdom, it would be easy and economical to raise 300 or 400 men with a suitable proportion of families. Instead of sending such persons by subscriptions to Yoruba, where, the ground being everywhere private property, they will meet with all disfavour, and where the climate is deadly, the emigrants can be settled, with equal benefit to themselves and to the white race, at Camaroons, whose native chiefs, few and far between, are ever ready to sell ground for reasonable sums.[111]

After long thinking upon the subject and consulting with others, I venture to lay down—not dogmatically it is hoped—the conditions of success in such an undertaking.

The classes preferred should be mechanics and artificers, lumberers and labourers; and even if a small sum per annum were given to each male by way of salary for the first year or two, the expenditure would not be wasted. But the best inducement would be a grant of land on the conditions that fair labour should be expended upon it, and that after the fifth year of residence and free tenure it should be liable to a small quit-rent for municipal purposes. The lots should not be extravagant, as they were in the old days of that Father of Failures, Sierra Leone. Three acres would suffice for a single man, five for husband and wife, and seven to ten for a family.

The healthiest season for landing in this part of Western Africa is about May, at the beginning of the rains. As this would entail enforced idleness for six months, the colonists might be brought to Victoria between June and September, and placed in hulks in Ambas Bay, with light preparatory work during favourable weather till early November, when the dries are set in, and the labours of bush-clearing and road-making might begin. Thus it would be possible to avoid the terrible sickness that destroyed the pioneers at Sierra Leone and Bulama, and which gave to those places a permanent bad name.

The colonists would require medical comforts and rations—rice and biscuit, beans and peas, salt pork and beef—for at least nine months: they would find fish in abundance and sometimes a few vegetables in the market. The superintendent should be furnished with a stock of cloth and knives, matchets and tobacco, to pay the natives of the country for service and supplies. Salt[112] should here, as throughout the Bights of Benin and Biafra, be made one of the great staples of trade. The sale of arms and ammunition and the purchase of slaves even for the purpose of manumission should be forbidden under pain of deportation. And there should be some limit to the introduction and the consumption of ardent spirits.

The first work to be done would be to secure shelter ashore. The mainland contains, as has been shown, stone and wood only too plentifully, whilst the sea offers coralline and madrepore for lime. But framehouses should be brought out from Europe or America, or there will be the same amount of sickness as that caused at Fernando Po by the refusal of the negroes to lodge the Spanish new-comers.

The best position, I have shown, for the first settlement would be Mondori Island, at the mouth of Ambas Bay. The second would be Mount Henry, about two hours’ walk N.N.E. of Victoria Mission Establishment,[113] and about 1000 feet high. The third and last would be the clear and grassy country about Black Crater, 5000 to 7000 feet above sea-level, and distant not more than ten miles. The great requisite at present is a corduroy road, practicable at all times of the year—the path is now a mass of swampy mud during the rainy season.

After erecting the first habitations, the bush would be cleared after the fashion of the aborigines, by cutting down the underwood and thinning the trees,[114] leaving the largest standing for shade and to break the force of the winds. Before the rains the clearings would be burned, and 400 acres roughly prepared for yam and koko, cassava and sweet potatoes, ground-nuts and Indian corn, bread-fruit and plantains, which produce after the first year. The palm-oil tree and the cocoa-nut are found growing wild in the lower altitudes; the only difficulty would be to protect them. European vegetables will thrive.[115] After a time cacao might be made a source of wealth to the colony, and prepare the way for tobacco, coffee, and sugar. Live stock could be purchased in small quantities for herding purposes from the people, or it might be sent from England. Bullocks are fine animals upon these mountains, goats are excellent, sheep are tolerable, and ‘the impure’ abound. Poultry and pigeons are easily reared. The highlands, above 7000 feet, are capable, as the footprints of large deer show, of becoming cattle-runs, and above that altitude they are admirable warrens, awaiting only rabbits. Asses and mules, when required for the sanitarium, could be procured at a moderate price from Tenerife.

Thus the colonists, leaving the bleak and barren north, would soon be enabled to dwell under their own roof-trees in their own land. It is methinks erroneously said that Africa, who sends forth streams of population, vetoes by the deadliness of her climate the reflux of the West upon the East. The experiment is, however, worth trying, under favourable circumstances, and the success of the native establishment would be followed by a sanitarium equal to that of the Mahabaleshwar or the Neilgherry Hills in Western India. The colonists would enjoy full religious liberty and the means of normal education: the head-quarters of the Camaroons Mission are within an easy day’s boating, and there are already two native teachers at Victoria. By degrees the mail-steamers would visit once a month the new settlement—it is directly in their way between the Calabar and Camaroons Rivers, whereas they must make a détour to the island of Fernando Po. And, finally, the coal-depôt and the consulate would be removed from the starving Cove of malarious Clarence to a place of health and plenty. With which I conclude.

A fin corona la obra.

[Footnote 110: During the winter of 1863 I was permitted by the ‘Times’ to show the advantages of Camaroons Mountain as a convict station, a Batavia, or a Loanda for English criminals. Here the place will be considered mainly with a view to a sanitarium.]

[Footnote 111: Above a certain altitude, certainly not exceeding 3500 out of 13,000 feet, the land is uninhabited and uncultivated; though claimed by King William of Bimbia, it can be bought for a nominal sum.]

[Footnote 112: It is the most licit article of African commerce, its use causes an additional and increasing demand, and it benefits the people instead of demoralizing them, as the gunpowder, the muskets, and the pestilent rum of the trade have ever done.]

[Footnote 113: This settlement should be surrounded by a deep ditch and a strong palisade like Capt. Phil. Beaver’s at Bulama. The best form of house is lumber upon stone pillars, which admit a free current of air under the inhabited rooms.]

[Footnote 114: The present expense of felling a large trunk is 18 pence. A small and moveable saw-mill worked by steam-engine or water-power would make plankage worth only the price of labour.]

[Footnote 115: The reader will conceive some idea of the Fernandian colonists when informed that there is not a kitchen garden—to say nothing of a flower garden—in the place. Selim, my factotum, found no difficulty in growing endive, onions, beans, cress, mustard, and a variety of European vegetables.]

* * * * *
APPENDIX.
* * * * *