West African Studies/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
FISHING IN WEST AFRICA.
There is one distinctive charm about fishing—its fascinations will stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial river, with the surrounding atmosphere 45 per cent. mosquito, and if you are fishing you will enjoy yourself; and what is more important than this enjoyment, is that you will not embitter your present, nor endanger your future, by going home in a bad temper, whether you have caught anything or not, provided always that you are a true fisherman.
This is not the case with other sports; I have been assured by experienced men that it "makes one feel awfully bad" when, after carrying for hours a very heavy elephant gun, for example, through a tangled forest you have got a wretched bad chance of a shot at an elephant; and as for football, cricket, &c., well, I need hardly speak of the unchristian feelings they engender in the mind towards umpires and successful opponents.
Being, as above demonstrated, a humble, but enthusiastic, devotee of fishing—I dare not say, as my great predecessor Dame Juliana Berners says, "with an angle," because my 
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Batanga Canoes.
conscience tells me I am a born poacher,—I need hardly remark that when I heard, from a reliable authority at Gaboon, that there were lakes in the centre of the island of Corisco, and that these fresh-water lakes were fished annually by representative ladies from the villages on this island, and that their annual fishing was just about due, I decided that I must go there forthwith. Now, although Corisco is not more than twenty miles out to sea from the Continent, it is not a particularly easy place to get at nowadays, no vessels ever calling there; so I got, through the kindness of Dr. Nassau, a little schooner and a black crew, and, forgetting my solemn resolve, formed from the fruits of previous experiences, never to go on to an Atlantic island again, off I sailed. I will not go into the adventures of that voyage here. My reputation as a navigator was great before I left Gaboon. I had a record of having once driven my bowsprit through a conservatory, and once taken all the paint off one side of a smallpox hospital, to say nothing of repeatedly having made attempts to climb trees in boats I commanded, but when I returned, I had surpassed these things by having successfully got my main-mast jammed up a tap, and I had done sufficient work in discovering new sandbanks, rock shoals, &c., in Corisco Bay, and round Cape Esterias, to necessitate, or call for, a new edition of The West African Pilot.
Corisco Island is about three miles long by 134 wide: its latitude 0°56 N., long. 9°2012 E. Mr. Winwood Reade was about the last traveller to give a description of Corisco, and a very interesting description it is. He was there in the early sixties, and was evidently too fully engaged with a drunken captain and a mad Malay cook to go inland. In his days small trading vessels used to call at Corisco for cargo, but they do so no longer, all the trade in the Bay now being carried on at Messrs. Holt's factory on Little Eloby Island (an island nearer in shore), and on the mainland at Coco Beach, belonging to Messrs. Hatton and Cookson.
In Winwood Reade's days, too, there was a settlement of the American Presbyterian Society on Corisco, with a staff of white men. This has been abandoned to a native minister, because the Society found that facts did not support their theory that the island would be more healthy than the mainland, the mortality being quite as great as at any continental station, so they moved on to the continent to be nearer their work. The only white people that are now on Corisco are two Spanish priests and three nuns; but of these good people I saw little or nothing, as my headquarters were with the Presbyterian native minister, Mr. Ibea, and there was war between him and the priests.
The natives are Benga, a coast tribe now rapidly dying out. They were once a great tribe, and in the old days, when the slavers and the whalers haunted Corisco Bay, these Benga were much in demand as crew men, in spite of the reputation they bore for ferocity. Nowadays the grown men get their living by going as travelling agents for the white merchants into the hinterland behind Corisco Bay, amongst the very dangerous and savage tribes there, and when one of them has made enough money by this trading, he comes back to Corisco, and rests, and luxuriates in the ample bosom of his family until he has spent his money—then he gets trust from the white trader, and goes to the Bush again, pretty frequently meeting there the sad fate of the pitcher that went too often to the well, and getting killed by the hinterlanders.
On arriving at Corisco Island, I "soothed with a gift, and greeted with a smile" the dusky inhabitants. "Have you got any tobacco?" said they. "I have," I responded, and a friendly feeling at once arose. I then explained that I wanted to join the fishing party. They were quite willing, and said the ladies were just finishing planting their farms before the tornado season came on, and that they would make the peculiar, necessary baskets at once. They did not do so at once in the English sense of the term, but we all know there is no time south of 40°, and so I waited patiently, walking about the island.
Corisco is locally celebrated for its beauty. Winwood Reade says: "It is a little world in miniature, with its miniature forests, miniature prairies, miniature mountains, miniature rivers, and miniature precipices on the sea-shore." In consequence partly of these things, and partly of the inhabitants' rooted idea that the proper way to any place on the island is round by the sea-shore, the paths of Corisco are as strange as several other things are in latitude 0, and, like the other things, they require understanding to get on with.
They start from the beach with the avowed intention of just going round the next headland because the tide happens to be in too much for you to go along by the beach; but, once started, their presiding genii might sing to the wayfarer Mr. Kipling's "The Lord knows where we shall go, dear lass, and the Deuce knows what we shall see." You go up a path off the beach gladly, because you have been wading in fine white sand over your ankles, and in banks of rotten and rotting seaweed, on which centipedes, and other catamumpuses, crawl in profusion, not to mention sand-flies, &c., and the path makes a plunge inland, as much as to say, "Come and see our noted scenery," and having led you through a miniature swamp, a miniature forest, and a miniature prairie, "It's a pity," says the path, "not to call at So-and-so's village now we are so near it," and off it goes to the village through a patch of grass or plantation. It wanders through the scattered village calling at houses, for some time, and then says, "Bless me, I had nearly forgotten what I came out for; we must hurry back to that beach," and off it goes through more scenery, landing you ultimately about fifty yards off the place where you first joined it, in consequence of the South Atlantic waves flying in foam and fury against a miniature precipice—the first thing they have met that dared stay their lordly course since they left Cape Horn or the ice walls of the Antarctic.
At last the fishing baskets were ready, and we set off for the lakes by a path that plunged into a little ravine, crossed a dried swamp, went up a hill, and on to an open prairie, in the course of about twenty minutes. Passing over this prairie, and through a wood, we came to another prairie, like most things in Corisco just then (August), dried up, for it was the height of the dry season. On this prairie we waited for some of the representative ladies from other villages to come up; for without their presence our fishing would not have been legal. When you wait in West Africa it eats into your lifetime to a considerable extent, and we spent half-an-hour or so standing howling, in prolonged, intoned howls, for the absent ladies, notably grievously for On-gou-ta, and when they came not, we threw ourselves down on the soft, fine, golden-brown grass, in the sun, and all, with the exception of myself, went asleep. After about two and a half hours I was aroused from the contemplation of the domestic habits of some beetles, by hearing a crackle, crackle, interspersed with sounds like small pistols going off, and looking round saw a fog of blue-brown smoke surmounting a rapidly-advancing wall of red fire.
I rose, and spread the news among my companions, who were sleeping, with thumps and kicks. Shouting at a sleeping African is labour lost. And then I made a beeline for the nearest green forest wall of the prairie, followed by my companions. Yet, in spite of some very creditable sprint performances on their part, three members of the band got scorched. Fortunately, however, our activity landed us close to the lakes, so the scorched ones spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in mud-holes, comforting themselves with the balmy black slime. The other ladies turned up soon after this, and said that the fire had arisen from some man having set fire to a corner of the prairie some days previously, to make a farm; he had thought the fire was out round his patch, whereas it was not, but smouldering in the tussocks of grass, and the wind had sprung up that afternoon from a quarter that fanned it up. I said, "People should be very careful of fire," and the scorched ladies profoundly agreed with me, and said things I will not repeat here, regarding "that fool man" and his female ancestors.
The lakes are pools of varying extent and depth, in the bed-rock[1] of the island, and the fact that they are surrounded by thick forests on every side, and that the dry season is the cool season on the Equator, prevents them from drying up.
Most of these lakes are encircled by a rim of rock, from which you jump down into knee-deep black slime, and then, if you are a representative lady, you waddle, and squeal, and grunt, and skylark generally on your way to the water in the middle. If it is a large lake you are working, you and your companions drive in two rows of stakes, cutting each other more or less at right angles, more or less in the middle of the lake, so as to divide it up into convenient portions. Then some ladies with their specially shaped baskets form a line, with their backs to the bank, and their faces to the water-space, in the enclosure, holding the baskets with one rim under water. The others go into the water, and splash with hands, and feet, and sticks, and, needless to say, yell hard all the time. The naturally alarmed fish fly from them, intent on getting into the mud, and are deftly scooped up by the peck by the ladies in their baskets. In little lakes the staking is not necessary, but the rest of the proceedings are the same. Some of the smaller lakes are too deep to be thus fished at all, being, I expect, clefts in the rock, such as you see in other parts of the island, sometimes 30 or 40 feet deep.
The usual result of the day's fishing is from twelve to fifteen bushels of a common mud-fish,[2] which is very good eating. The spoils are divided among the representative ladies, and they take them back to their respective villages and distribute them. Then ensues, that same evening, a tremendous fish supper, and the fish left over are smoked and carefully kept as a delicacy, to make sauce with, &c., until the next year's fishing day comes round.
The waters of West Africa, salt, brackish, and fresh abound with fish, and many kinds are, if properly cooked, excellent eating. For culinary purposes you may divide the fish into sea-fish, lagoon-fish and river-fish; the first division, the sea-fish, are excellent eating, and are in enormous quantities, particularly along the Windward Coast on the Great West African Bank. South of this, at the mouths of the Oil rivers, they fall off, from a culinary standpoint, though scientifically they increase in charm, as you find hereabouts fishes of extremely early types, whose relations have an interesting series of monuments in the shape of fossils, in the sandstone; but if primeval man had to live on them when they were alive together, I am sorry for him, for he might just as well have eaten mud, and better, for then he would not have run the risk of getting choked with bones. On the South-West Coast the culinary value goes up again; there are found quantities of excellent deep-sea fish, and round the mouths of the rivers, shoals of bream and grey mullet.
The lagoon-fish are not particularly good, being as a rule supremely muddy and bony; they have their uses, however, for I am informed that they indicate to Lagos when it may expect an epidemic; to this end they die, in an adjacent lagoon, and float about upon its surface, wrong side up, until decomposition does its work. Their method of prophecy is a sound one, for it demonstrates (a) that the lagoon drinking water is worse than usual; (b) if it is not already fatal they will make it so.
The river-fish of the Gold Coast are better than those of the mud-sewers of the Niger Delta, because the Gold Coast rivers are brisk sporting streams, with the exception of the Volta, and at a short distance inland they come down over rocky rapids with a stiff current. The fish of the upper waters of the Delta rivers are better than those down in the mangrove-swamp region; and in the South-West Coast rivers, with which I am personally well acquainted, the upriver fish are excellent in quality, on account of the swift current. I will however leave culinary considerations, because cooking is a subject upon which I am liable to become diffuse, and we will turn to the consideration of the sporting side of fishing.
Now, there is one thing you will always hear the Gold Coaster (white variety) grumbling about, "There is no sport." He has only got himself to blame. Let him try and introduce the Polynesian practice of swimming about in the surf, without his clothes, and with a suitable large, sharp knife, slaying sharks—there's no end of sharks on the Gold Coast, and no end of surf. The Rivermen have the same complaint, and I may recommend that they should try spearing sting-rays, things that run sometimes to six feet across the wings, and every inch of them wicked, particularly the tail. There is quite enough danger in either sport to satisfy a Sir Samuel Baker; for myself, being a nervous, quiet, rational individual, a large cat-fish in a small canoe supplies sufficient excitement.
The other day I went out for a day's fishing on an African river. I and two black men, in a canoe, in company with a round net, three stout fishing-lines, three paddles, Dr. Günther's Study of Fishes, some bait in an old Morton's boiled-mutton tin, a little manioc, stinking awfully (as is its wont), a broken calabash baler, a lot of dirty water to sit in, and happy and contented minds. I catalogue these things because they are either essential to, or inseparable from, a good day's sport in West Africa. Yes, even I, ask my vict———friends down there, I feel sure they will tell you that they never had such experiences before my arrival. I fear they will go on and say, "Never again!" and that it was all my fault, which it was not. When things go well they ascribe it, and their survival, to Providence or their own precautions; when things are merely usual in horror, it's my fault, which is a rank inversion of the truth, for it is only when circumstances get beyond my control, and Providence takes charge, that accidents happen. I will demonstrate this by continuing my narrative. We paddled away, far up a mangrove creek, and then went up against the black mud-bank, with its great network of grey-white roots, surmounted by the closely-interlaced black-green foliage. Absolute silence reigned, as it can only reign in Africa in a mangrove swamp. The water-laden air wrapped round us like a warm, wet blanket. The big mangrove flies came silently to feed on us and leave their progeny behind them in the wounds to do likewise. The stink of the mud, strong enough to break a window, mingled fraternally with that of the sour manioc.
I was reading, the negroes, always quiet enough when fishing, were silently carrying on that great African native industry—scratching themselves—so, with our lines over side, life slid away like a dreamless sleep, until the middle man hooked a cat-fish. It came on board with an awful grunt, right in the middle of us; flop, swish, scurry and yell followed; I tucked the study of fishes in general under my arm and attended to this individual specimen, shouting "Lef em, lef em; hev em for water one time, you sons of unsanctified house lizards,"[3] and such like valuable advice and admonition. The man in the more remote end of the canoe made an awful swipe at the 3 ft.-long, grunting, flopping, yellow-grey, slimy, thing, but never reached it owing to the paddle meeting in mid-air with the flying leg of the man in front of him, drawing blood profusely. I really fancy, about this time, that, barring the cat-fish and myself, the occupants of the canoe were standing on their heads, with a view of removing their lower limbs from the terrible pectoral and dorsal fins, with which our prey made such lively play.
"Brevi spatio interjecto," as Cæsar says, in the middle of a bad battle, over went the canoe, while the cat-fish went off home with the line and hook. One black man went to the bank, whither, with a blind prescience of our fate, I had flung, a second before, the most valuable occupant of the canoe, The Study of Fishes. I went personally to investigate fluvial deposit in situ. When I returned to the surface—accompanied by great swirls of mud and great bubbles of the gases of decomposition I had liberated on my visit to the bottom of the river—I observed the canoe floating bottom upwards, accompanied by Morton's tin, the calabash, and the paddles, while on the bank one black man was engaged in hauling the other one out by the legs; fortunately this one's individual god had seen to it that his toes should become entangled in the net, and this floated, and so indicated to his companion where he was, when he had dived into the mud and got fairly embedded.
Now it's my belief that the most difficult thing in the world is to turn over a round-bottomed canoe that is wrong side up, when you are in the water with the said canoe. The next most difficult thing is to get into the canoe, after accomplishing triumph number one, and had it not been for my black friends that afternoon, I should not have done these things successfully, and there would be by now another haunted creek in West Africa, with a mud and blood bespattered ghost trying for ever to turn over the ghost of a little canoe. However, all ended happily. We collected all our possessions, except the result of the day's fishing—the cat-fish—but we had had as much of him as we wanted, and so, adding a thankful mind to our contented ones, went home.
None of us gave a verbatim report of the incident. I held my tongue for fear of not being allowed out fishing again, and I heard my men giving a fine account of a fearful fight, with accompanying prodigies of valour, that we had had with a witch crocodile. I fancy that must have been just their way of putting it, because it is not good form to be frightened by cat-fish on the West Coast, and I cannot for the life of me remember even having seen a witch crocodile that afternoon.
I must, however, own that native methods of fishing are usually safe, though I fail to see what I had to do in producing the above accident. The usual method of dealing with a cat-fish is to bang him on the head with a club, and then break the spiny fins off, for they make nasty wounds that are difficult to heal, and very painful.
The native fishing-craft is the dug-out canoe in its various local forms. The Accra canoe is a very safe and firm canoe for work of any sort except heavy cargo, and it is particularly good for surf; it is, however, slower than many other kinds. The canoe that you can get the greatest pace out of is undoubtedly the Adooma, which is narrow and flat-bottomed, and simply flies over the water. The paddles used vary also with locality, and their form is a mere matter of local fashion, for they all do their work well. There is the leaf-shaped Kru paddle, the trident-shaped Accra, the long-lozenged Niger, and the long-handled, small-headed Igalwa paddle; and with each of these forms the native, to the manner born, will send his canoe flying along with that unbroken sweep I consider the most luxurious and perfect form of motion on earth.
It is when it comes to sailing that the African is inferior. He does not sail half as much as he might, but still pretty frequently. The materials of which the sails are made vary immensely in different places, and the most beautiful are those at Loanda, which are made of small grass mats, with fringes, sewn together, and are of a warm, rich sand-colour. Next in beauty comes the branch of a palm, or other tree, stuck in the bows, and least in beauty is the fisherman's own damaged waist-cloth. I remember it used to seem very strange to me at first, to see my companion in a canoe take off his clothing and make a sail with it, on a wind springing up behind us. The very strangest sail I ever sailed under was a black man's blue trousers, they were tied waist upwards to a cross-stick, the legs neatly crossed, and secured to the thwarts of the canoe. You cannot well tack, or carry out any neat sailing evolutions with any of the African sails, particularly with the last-named form. The shape of the African sail is almost always in appearance a triangle, and fastened to a cross-stick which is secured to an upright one. It is not the form, however, that prevents it from being handy, but the 
Falls on the Tongue River.
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Loanda Canoe With Mat Sails.
way it is put up, almost always without sheets, for river and lake work, and it is tied together with tie tie—bush rope. If you should personally be managing one, and trouble threatens, take my advice, and take the mast out one time, and deal with that tie tie palaver at your leisure. Never mind what people say about this method not being seaman-like—you survive.
The mat sails used for sea-work are spread by a bamboo sprit. There is a single mast, to the head of which the sail is either hoisted by means of a small line run through the mast, or, more frequently, made fast with a seizing. Such a sail is worked by means of a sheet and a brace on the sprit, usually by one man, whose companion steers by a paddle over the stern; sometimes, however, one man performs both duties. Now and again you will find the luff of the sail bowlined out with another stick. This is most common round Sierra Leone.
The appliances for catching fish are, firstly, fish traps, sometimes made of hollow logs of trees, with one end left open and the other closed. One of these is just dropped alongside the bank, left for a week or so, until a fish family makes a home in it, and then it is removed with a jerk. Then there are fish-baskets made from split palm-stems tied together with tie tie; they are circular and conical, resem- bling our lobster pots and eel baskets, and they are usually baited with lumps of kank soaked in palm-oil. Then there are drag nets made of pineapple fibre, one edge weighted with stones tied in bunches at intervals; as a rule these run ten to twenty-five feet long, but in some places they are much longer. The longest I ever saw was when out fishing in the lovely harbour of San Paul de Loanda. This was over thirty feet and was weighted with bunches of clam shells, and made of European yarn, as indeed most nets are when this is procurable by the natives, and it was worked by three canoes which were being poled about, as is usual in Loanda Harbour. Then there is the universal hook and line, the hook either of European make or the simple bent pin of our youth.
But my favourite method, and the one by which I got most of my fish up rivers or in creeks is the stockade trap. These are constructed by driving in stakes close together, leaving one opening, not in the middle of the stockade, but towards the up river end. In tidal waters these stockades are visited daily, at nearly low tide, for the high tide carries the fish in behind the stockade, and leaves them there on falling. Up river, above tide water, the stockades are left for several days, in order to allow the fish to congregate. Then the opening is closed up, the fisher-women go inside and throw out the water and collect the fish. There is another kind of stockade that gives great sport. During the wet season the terrific rush of water tears off bits of bank in such rivers as the Congo, and Ogowé, where, owing to the continual fierce current of fresh water the brackish tide waters do not come far up the river, so that the banks are not shielded by a great network of mangrove roots. In the Ogowé a good many of the banks are composed of a stout clay, and so the pieces torn off hang together, and often go sailing out to sea, on the current, waving their bushes, and even trees, gallantly in the broad Atlantic, out of sight of land. Bits of the Congo Free State are great at seafaring too, and owing to the terrific stream of the great Zaire, which spreads a belt of fresh water over the surface of the ocean 200 miles from land, ships fall in with these floating islands, with their trees still flourishing. The Ogowé is 
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St. Paul do Loanda.
not so big as the Congo, but it is a very respectable stream even for the great continent of rivers, and it pours into the Atlantic, in the wet season, about 1,750,000 cubic feet of fresh water per second, on which float some of these islands. But by no means every island gets out to sea, many of them get into slack water round corners in the Delta region of the Ogowé and remain there, collecting all sorts of débris that comes down on the flood water, getting matted more and more firm by the floating grass, every joint of which grows on the smallest opportunity. In many places these floating islands are of considerable size; one I heard of was large enough to induce a friend of mine to start a coffee plantation on it; unfortunately the wretched thing came to pieces when he had cut down its trees and turned the soil up. And one I saw in the Karkola river, was a weird affair. It was in the river opposite our camp, and very slowly, but perceptibly it went round and round in an orbit, although it was about half an acre in extent. A good many of these bits of banks do not attain to the honour of becoming islands, but get on to sand-banks in their early youth, near a native town, to the joy of the inhabitants, who forthwith go off to them, and drive round them a stockade of stakes firmly anchoring them. Thousands of fishes then congregate round the little island inside the stockade, for the rich feeding in among the roots and grass, and the affair is left a certain time. Then the entrance to the stockade is firmly closed up, and the natives go inside and bale out the water, and catch the fish in baskets, tearing the island to pieces, with shouts and squeals of exultation. It's messy, but it is amusing, and you get tremendous catches.
A very large percentage of fish traps are dedicated to the capture of shrimp and craw-fish, which the natives value highly when smoked, using them to make a sauce for their kank; among these is the shrimp-basket. These baskets are tied on sticks laid out in parallel lines of considerable extent. They run about three inches in diameter, and their length varies with the place that is being worked. The stakes are driven into the mud, and to each stake is tied a basket with a line of tie tie, the basket acting as a hat to the stake when the tide is ebbing; as the tide comes in, it lowers the basket into the current and carries into its open end large quantities of shrimps, which get entangled and packed by the force of the current into the tapering end of the basket, which is sometimes eight or ten feet from the mouth. You can always tell where there is a line of these baskets by seeing the line of attendant sea-gulls all solemnly arranged with their heads to win'ard, sea-gull fashion.
Another device employed in small streams for the capture of either craw-fish or small fish is a line of calabashes, or earthen pots with narrow mouths; these are tied on to a line, I won't say with tie tie, because I have said that irritating word so often, but still you understand they are; this line is tied to a tree with more, and carried across the stream, sufficiently slack to submerge the pots, and then to a tree on the other bank, where it is secured with the same material. A fetish charm is then secured to it that will see to it, that any one who interferes with the trap, save the rightful owner, will "swell up and burst," then the trap is left for the night, the catch being collected in the morning. Single pots, well baited with bits of fish and with a suitable stone in to keep them steady, are frequently
used alongside the bank. These are left for a day or more, 
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Round a Kacongo Camp Fire.
and then the owner with great care, crawls along the edge of the bank and claps on a lid and secures the prey.
Hand nets of many kinds are used. The most frequent form is the round net, weighted all round its outer edge. This is used by one man, and is thrown with great deftness and grace, in shallow waters. I suppose one may hardly call the long wreaths of palm and palm branches, used by the Loango and Kacongo coast native for fishing the surf with, nets, but they are most effective. When the Calemma (the surf) is not too bad, two or more men will carry this long thick wreath out into it, and then drop it and drag it towards the shore. The fish fly in front of it on to the beach, where they fall victims to the awaiting ladies, with their baskets. Another very quaint set of devices is employed by the Kruboys whenever they go to catch their beloved land and shore crabs. I remember once thinking I had providentially lighted on a beautiful bit of ju-ju; the whole stretch of mud beach had little lights dotted over it on the ground. I investigated. They were crab-traps. "Bottle of Beer," "The Prince of Wales," "Jane Ann," and "Pancake" had become—by means we will not go into here—possessed of bits of candle, and had cut them up and put in front of them pieces of wood in an ingenious way. The crab, a creature whose intelligence is not sufficiently appreciated, fired with a scientific curiosity, went to see what the light was made of, and then could not escape, or perhaps did not try to escape, but stood spell-bound at the beauty of the light; anyhow, they fell victims to their spirit of inquiry. I have also seen drop-traps put for crabs round their holes. In this case the sense of the beauty of light in the crab is not relied on, and once in he is shut in, and cannot go home and communicate the result of his investigations to his family.
Yet, in spite of all these advantages and appliances above cited, I grieve to say the West African, all along the Coast, decends to the unsportsmanlike trick of poisoning. Certain herbs are bruised and thrown into the water, chiefly into lagoons and river-pools. The method is effective, but I should doubt whether it is wholesome. These herbs cause the fish to rise to the surface stupefied, when they are scooped up with a calabash. Other herbs cause the fish to lie at the bottom, also stupefied, and the water in the pool is thrown out, and they are collected.
More as a pastime than a sport I must class the shooting of the peculiar hopping mud-fish by the small boys with bows and arrows, but this is the only way you can secure them as they go about star-gazing with their eyes on the tops of their heads, instead of attending to baited hooks, and their hearing (or whatever it is) is so keen that they bury themselves in the mud-banks too rapidly for you to net them. Spearing is another very common method of fishing. It is carried on at night, a bright light being stuck in the bow of the canoe, while the spearer crouching, screens his eyes from the glare with a plantain leaf, and drops his long-hafted spear into the fish as they come up to look at the light. It is usually the big bream that are caught in this way out in the sea, and the carp up in fresh water.
The manners and customs of many West African fishes are quaint. I have never yet seen that fish the natives often tell me about that is as big as a man, only thicker, and which walks about on its fins at night, in the forest, so I cannot vouch for it; nor for that other fish that hates the crocodile, and follows her up and destroys her eggs, and now and again dedicates itself to its hate, and goes down her throat, and then spreads out its spiny fins and kills her.
The fish I know personally are interesting in quieter ways. As for instance the strange electrical fish, which sometimes have sufficient power to kill a duck and which are much given to congregating in sunken boats, causing much trouble when the boat has to be floated again, because the natives won't go near them, to bail her out.
Then there is that deeply trying creature the Ning Ning fish, who, when you are in some rivers in fresh water and want to have a quiet night's rest, just as you have tucked in your mosquito bar carefully and successfully, comes alongside and serenades you, until you have to get up and throw things at it with a prophetic feeling, amply supported by subsequent experience, that hordes of mosquitos are busily ensconcing themselves inside your mosquito bar. What makes the Ning Ning—it is called after its idiotic song—so maddening is that it never seems to be where you have thrown the things at it. You could swear it was close to the bow of the canoe when you shied that empty soda- water bottle or that ball of your precious indiarubber at it, but instantly comes "ning, ning, ning" from the stern of the canoe. It is a ventriloquist or goes about in shoals, I do not know which, for the latter and easier explanation seems debarred by their not singing in chorus; the performance is undoubtedly a solo; any one experienced in this fish soon finds out that it is not driven away or destroyed by an artillery of missiles, but merely lies low until its victim has got under his mosquito curtain, and resettled his mosquito palaver,—and then back it comes with its "ning ning."
A similar affliction is the salt-water drum-fish, with its "bum-bum." Loanda Harbour abounds with these, and so does Chiloango. In the bright moonlight nights I have looked overside and seen these fish in a wreath round the canoe, with their silly noses against the side, "bum-bumming" away; whether they admire the canoe, or whether they want it to come on and fight it out, I do not know, because my knowledge of the different kinds of fishes and of their internal affairs is derived from Dr. Günther's great work, and that contains no section on ichthyological psychology. The West African natives have, I may say, a great deal of very curious information on the thoughts of fishes, but, much as I liked those good people, I make it a hard and fast rule to hold on to my common-sense and keep my belief for religious purposes when it comes to these deductions from natural phenomena—not that I display this mental attitude externally, for there is always in their worst and wildest fetish notions an underlying element of truth. The fetish of fish is too wide a subject to enter on here, it acts well because it gives a close season to river and lagoon fish; the natives round Lake Ayzingo, for example, saying that if the first fishes that come up into the lake in the great dry season are killed, the rest of the shoal turn back, so on the arrival of this vanguard they are treated most carefully, talked to with "a sweet mouth," and given things. The fishes that form these shoals are Hemichromis fasciatus and Chromis ogowensis. I know no more charming way of spending an afternoon than to leisurely paddle alone to the edge of the Ogowé sand bank in the dry season, and then lie and watch the ways of the water-world below. If you keep quiet, the fishes take no notice of you, and go on with their ordinary avocations, under your eyes, hunting, and feeding, and playing, and fighting, happily and cheerily until one of the dreaded raptorial fishes appears upon the scene, and then there is a general scurry. Dreadful warriors are the little fishes that haunt sand banks (Alestis Kingsleyæ) and very bold, for when you put your hand down in the water, with some crumbs, they first make two or three attempts to frighten it, by sidling up at it and butting, but on finding there's no fight in the thing, they swagger into the palm of your hand and take what is to be got with an air of conquest; but before the supply is exhausted, there always arises a row among themselves, and the gallant bulls, some two inches long, will spin round and butt each other for a second or so, and then spin round again, and flap each other with their tails, their little red-edged fins and gill-covers growing crimson with fury. I never made out how you counted points in these fights, because no one ever seemed a scale the worse after even the most desperate duels.
Most of the West Coast tribes are inveterate fishermen. The Gold Coast native regards fishing as a low pursuit, more particularly oyster-fishing, or I should say oyster-gathering, for they are collected chiefly from the lower branches of the mangrove-trees; this occupation is, indeed, regarded as being only fit for women, and among all tribes the villages who turn their entire attention to fishing are regarded as low down in the social scale. This may arise from fetish reasons, but the idea certainly gains support from the conduct of the individual fisherman. Do not imagine Brother Anglers, that I am hinting that the Gentle Art is bad for the moral nature of people like you and me, but I fear it is bad for the African. You see, the African, like most of us, can resist anything but temptation—he will resist attempts to reform him, attempts to make him tell the truth, attempts to clothe, and keep him tidy, &c., and he will resist these powerfully; but give him real temptation and he succumbs, without the European preliminary struggle. He has by nature a kleptic bias, and you see being out at night fishing, he has chances—temptations, of succumbing to this—and so you see a man who has left his home at evening with only the intention of spearing fish, in his mind, goes home in the morning pretty often with his missionary's ducks, his neighbours' plantains, and a few odd trifles from the trader's beaches, in his canoe, and the outer world says "Dem fisherman, all time, all same for one, with tief man."[4]
The Accras, who are employed right down the whole West Coast, thanks to the valuable education given them by the Basel Mission as cooks, carpenters, and coopers, cannot resist fishing, let their other avocations be what they may. A friend of mine the other day had a new Accra cook. The man cooked well, and my friend vaunted himself, and was content for the first week. At the beginning of the second week the cooking was still good, but somehow or other, there was just the suspicion of a smell of fish about the house. The next day the suspicion merged into certainty. The third day the smell was insupportable, and the atmosphere unfit to support human life, but obviously healthy for flies.
The cook was summoned, and asked by Her Britannic Majesty's representative "Where that smell came from?" He said he "could not smell it, and he did not know." Fourth day, thorough investigation of the premises revealed the fact that in the back-yard there was a large clothes-horse which had been sent out by my friend's wife to air his clothes; this was literally converted into a screen by strings of fish in the process of drying, i.e., decomposing in the sun.
The affair was eliminated from the domestic circle and cast into the Ocean by seasoned natives; and awful torture in this world and the next promised to the cook if he should ever again embark in the fish trade. The smell gradually faded from the house, but the poor cook, bereaved of his beloved pursuit, burst out all over in boils, and took to religious mania and drink, and so had to be sent back to Accra, where I hope he lives happily, surrounded by his beloved objects.
- ↑ Specimens of rock identified by the Geological Survey, London, as cretaceous, and said by other geologists up here to be possibly Jurassic.
- ↑ Clarias laviaps.
- ↑ Translation: "Leave it alone! Leave it alone! Throw it into the water at once! What did you catch it for?"
- ↑ Translation: "All fishermen are thieves."