King of Kwahu

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 27

King of Kwahu

ENGLISHMAN’S KINGDOM

An Independent Ruler

THE well-known author, Mr. C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, the creator of “Captain Kettle,” here tells the story of a modern buccaneer who has established himself “somewhere in West Africa.’ The names of places and people are, of course, fictitious, but the scene definitely is in "West Africa.

J. D. Carlisle left England practically under sentence of death. lie and another man. whose name n§ed not be mentioned here, were both madly in love with a young woman who likewise may ka well remain anonymous. They decided that England was not big enough for the pair of them. So they tossed up for first choice, and the other feliow won. He proposed, was accepted, and the >oung woman I have not named married him. He Is a pushing member of Parliament these days, and she is the mother of five. J- D. Carlisle, as per contract, cleared out by a B. and A. boat, landed at Accra (after being badly spilt from a surf boat), and proceeded to march eastwards into Africa with insufficient escort and equipment. The start was made a good many years ago, when things Accra-side and up Ccomassie way were a good deal cruder than they are at present, and for some three to five years J. D. Carlisle vanished with all the completeness the other fellow could have wished. But he kept alive, and, one concludes, absorbed a good deal of know]c ge of the manners and customs of the various fashion resorts of that part of savage Africa. Incidentally, he proved to be one of those rare men the anopholes mosquito did not bite, and so kept to windward of malaria fever. A good many of us wish we could say as much. It is a splendid asset for a man whose affairs take him into a tropical climate. • A Sort of Land Pirate One gathers that about this period he collected a gang of dusky ruffians at his tail, and waltzed about the hinterland doing business as a sort of land pirate. British influence knew of him, and would have liked much to put salt on his tail, and missed him several times by a short head. A British officer of Ilausa police, seconded from an Irish Fusilier regiment, will, when he reads this, remember some of these hunts in that section of West Africa with rather a wry smile. He would have acquired merit if he had contrived to shoot J. D- Carlisle in legitimate combat; he was strictly commanded not to take the man prisoner: and as ho did neither, and lost a good many of his Hausas in the trying, he gained kicks instead of promotions. The British Army, one gathers, has on its hands from time to time a good many jobs of this description that do not get into the War Office reports, and bland under-secretaries, when pumped on the subject by obviously primeci earnest inquirers in the House of Commons, ‘have no information on the subject.” Very well, then: There was J. D. Carlisle, trained cavalry officer, fully acclimatised, condottieri leader, knocking about somewhere in the unknown bush at the back of Ashanti, making a living out of it ancT perhaps a bit more, but bored stiff with the job, and fed up with the latest Mrs, Carlisle, who, though an Elniina girl and a good looker, had not an idea beyond a gold Mlzpah ring and the latest thing in white-oval-spots-upon-blue for a cloth. As the British Empire couldn’t contrive to shoot him, my own idea is that it should have been diplomatic and planked him down in one of its own jobs. He’d have jumped at that; I’m convinced of it. But instead of this it shifted the Irish Fusilier elsewhere, and put a dour but capable Scot in command of the Hausas, and demanded the head of J. D. Carlisle on a charger within a definite time limit. Fatal Unpopularity The Scot and his Hausas put up a good hunt. J. D. Carlisle, for himself, would have enjoyed this rather than otherwise. His men disliked it. They were pirates pure and simple, and on the make all the time. To butt against Hausas armed with Martinis, as v against their German gas-pipe trade guns, was to them sheer foolishness. So, as Captain Carlisle knew that un-

popularity of this description would be fatal sooner or later—and probably would arrive per powdered glass in his chop—he cast around him for a way out, and presently his eye hit upon Kwahu. Now geologically I should say Kwahu la, volcanic, though I am not guaranteeing this. To use the elegant simile of J. D. Carlisle, it sticks up out of the rough plain like a quart pot stuck on a billiard table. Nothing in the way of a height commands it, and Kwahu commands everything within human view. With a good big longrange howitzer you could bombard it, but the trouble is, there is no possibility of getting any sort of gun of any size so far up country through the i bush. There was only one track up the Kwahu precipice, and any man who could climb it without being helped by a rope could pass standard six of the Alpine Club’s test without further examination. And on all climbers who had not a signed and counter-signed ticket of admission the primitive owners and occupiers of the Kwahu plateau rolled down rocks. These tumbled rocks split on the rocks of the precipices till the whole 3,000 feet of the face was sprayed with flying shrapnel. The plateau was so obviously Impregnable that no African ever tried to storm it, and the British were quite content to leave it alone. Curious Red Gold So to J. D. Carlisle it looked good. He used his brain for its reduction. Therefore he captured it with the loss of one man whose head was bad on heights, and who toppled over the cliff on the way up and broke his neck. The capable Scot also lost his job, and was given another chance in another part of another colony. The conqueror did not cut the throats of the former holders. Nor, much to their surprise, did he make slaves of them. He absorbed the lot and married the women to his men. As there was a shortage of women he raided the lowlands for more. The African always has a weakness for a due allowance of the distaff side in his villages. On the Kwahu plateau are corn lands, and grazing for cattle, and the long-haired things they call sheep. The small dried fish of the country they get from below by barter, and for this and other purposes wash out their own alluvial gold, as and when required. The gold has a curious ruddy tinge, but I don’t know why. The assayers say it is fine gold. There is also water on the place in full abundance, and J. D. Carlisle has rigged up a respectable shower bath for himself, and is contemplating a hydro-electric lighting scheme as an Ashanti boy can never run a paraffin lamp without letting it smoke. Wealth, of course, depends on latitude and neighbourhood, but for the West African hinterland, J. D. Carlisle is a rich man. He owns and has stored in his own royal compound ivory, apes and gold; flint-lock guns and monkey-skins; Winchester rifles, gramophones and champagnes of the vintage years; bunches of novels from Boots; and tinned foie gras; slaves eunuchs, concubines, wives, and the peculiar treasure of kings. “A Regretted Fact” He eats hard, hard, smokes a dozen Corona Coronas of a good year a day. and takes abundance of exercise. He rules his ruffians with a i;aut hand and periodically exercises them in the art of war by making raidsi on lowland tribes who have got saucy and impeded his messengers coming in with luxuries from the coast towns. “He is a much to be regretted fact.” as a local governor once admitted to me. But, as I pointed out, he was there. The governor agreed that he was very much there. During the war he went off on a regular Don Quixote of an expedition, and mopped up a German crowd a thousand miles away. Well rowed. J. D.! ! Captain Carlisle remains very much an Englishman in spite of his sending down chits to British Colonial Governors beginning John, King of Kwahu, gives notice to H.E. the Governor of the Gold Coast that, etc. I often wonder whether he would like to swap his present entourage for the flirtatious young woman who married the other fellow, and who is now the mother of five.