A WOMAN SLAVE DRIVER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 59, 27 July 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

A WOMAN SLAVE DRIVER.

| MARY GAUNT'S EXPERIENCES, When an Australian woman turns slave-driver and compels sixteen superstitious blacks to take her through the most fearsome jungle in the wilds of Africa it is certainly an extraordinary performance, hut that is what Mary (iaunt, daughter of Judge (Jaunt, of Melbourne, did, if we are to ■believe what she tells us in her book, "Alone in West Africa." At first .she treated her carriers humanely and they imposed upon her at every turn, till she was compelled to harden her heart and be a slavedriver, or give up the trip. Travelling was not difficult, she says, until she was far from the coast, but way back in the unbroken forests she not only found it tedious and slow, but had much trouble in keeping her negro servants from deserting her because of the terrifying fetishes which kept them frightened out of their few dull wits much of the time. Miss Gaunt says that she encountered one tribe of blacks who at their annual yam festival sacrifice a girl that their crops may not fail. Most of the tribes have secret orders whose initiatory degrees include physical torture of the severest kind. One of the orders requires that every male candidate for membership shall be placed upon an ant-hill and forced to stand there and let the insects bite him. Men and women stand around with sharp knives and jab the tortured one every time he attempts to escape.

It is in her story of the fetish of Krobo Hill, however, that the authoress gives us an account of the most interesting part of 'her journey through the trackless wilds. She says: It was midnight. It was long after midnight; the moon was still high and bright, like a great globe of silver, but there had come over the. night that subtle change that comes when night and morning meet. It was night no longer; nothing tangible had changed, but it was morning. The twitter of the birds, the cry of the insects had something of activity in it; the night 'had passed, another day had come, though the dawning hours was hours away. And still the men went steadily on.

A great square hill rose up on the horizon, and we came to a clump of trees where the moonlight was shut out altogether; we passed through water, and it was pitch dark, with just a gleam of moonlight here and there to show how dense was that darkness. It was Akway Pool,and a leopard was crying in'the thick bush close beside it. It was uncanny, it was weird; all the terror that I had missed till now in Africa came creeping ov«r me, and the men were singing no longer. Very carefully they stepped, and the pool was so deep that lying strung up in the hammock I could still touch the water with my hand. Could it be only a leopard that was crying so? Might it not be something worse, something born of the deep, dark pool, and the night? Slowly we went up out of { the water, and we stood a moment under the shade of the trees, but with the white light within reach, and Krobo Hill loomed up ahead against the dark horizon. The only 'hammock-boy who could make himself understood came up. "Mammy, man be tired. We stop 'here small."

It was a reasonable request, but the leopard was crying still, and the gloom and fear of the pool was upon me. "No, go on." They might have defied me, but thev went on, and to my surprise—my very great surprise—the carriers were still with us. Presently we were out in the moonlight again; 1 had got the better of my fears and repented. "Wait small now." '"No, Mammy," came the answer, "this be bad place," and they went on swiftly, singing and shouting as if to keep their courage up, or, as I gathered afterwards, to give the impression'of a great company. Only afterwards did I know what I had done that night. Krobo Hill grow larger and larger at every step, and on Krobo Hill was one of the worst, if not the worst, fetish in West Africa. Every Krobo youth before he could become a man and choose a wife had to kill a man, and 'he did it generally on Krobo Hill. There the fetish priests held great orgies, and for their ghastly ceremonies and initations they caught any stranger who was reckless enough to pass the hill. How they killed him was a mystery; some said with tortures, some that only his head was cut off. But the fear in the country grew, and at the end of last century the British Government interfered; they took Krobo Hill and scattered the fetish priests and their abominations, and they declared the country safe. But the negro revels in mystery and horror, and the fear of the hill still lingers in the minds of the people: every now and then a man disappears and the fear is justified. Only three years ago a, negro clerk on his bicycle was traced to that hill and no further trace of him found. His hat was iu the road, and the Knbos declared that .the great white baboons that infest the hill had taken him, but it is hardly reasonable that the baboons would have use for a bicycle, whereas he, strong and young, and his bicycle, together emblems of strength and swiftness, made a very fitting offering to accompany to his last resting-place the dead chief whose obsequies the Krobos were celebrating at the time. Always there are rumors of disappearances, less known men and women than a Government clerk and scholar, and always the people know there is need of men and women for the sacrifices, sacrifices to ensure a plenteous harvest, a good fishing, brave men, and fruitful women.

The men were filled with terror, for it was possible that a straggler might 'be cut off. But their fears made no difference— they had to keep going. Miss Gaunt continues.

'Would they have touched me ?" I ask ed afterwards.

"Not with your men around you. Some might escape, and the vengeance would have been terrible." "But if I had been by myself?" "Ah, then they might have said that the baboons had taken you; but you wou>ld not have been by yourself." No. it was extremely unlikely I should have been by myself, and here were my men. sixteen* strong, and afraid. Akway Pool had been the last water within a safe distance from the hill, and I had not let them halt; now they dared not. A light appeared on the hill, just a point of dickering fire on the ridge, above us now, and I bailed it as a nice friendly gleam telling of human habitation and home, but the men sang and shouted louder than ever. T offered to stop, but the answer was the same. "This be a bad place, Mammy. We go." At last, without asking my leave, they put down the bammock, and the carriers flung themselves down panting. "We stop small, Mammy"; and I sat on my box and watched tbe great, sinewy men with strapping shoulders as they lay on the ground resting. They had been afraid. T. was sure, and I. knew no reason of their fear.

But the night was past and -it was morning; morning now. though it was only half-past three and the sun would not be up till close on six o'clock. On aeain. The moon bad swung low to the dawn, and the gathering clouds made, it darker than it bad yet been, while the stars that peeped between the clouds weer like flakes of newly washed silver. People began to pass us, ghost-like

figures in the gloom. Greetings were exchanged, news was shouted from one party to the. other, and I, in spite of the discomfort of the hammock, was dead with sleep, and kept dropping into oblivion and waking with a start to the wonder and strangeness of my surroundings. Deeper and deeper grew the oblivion in the darkness that precedes the dawn, till J awakened .suddenly to find myself underneath a European bungalow, and knew that for the first time in my experience of African travel 1 'had arrived nearly two hours before I expected to. My people were wild with delight and triumph. I had forced them to come through the Krobo •country -by night, but my authority did not suffice to keep them quiet now they had come through in safety. They chattered and shouted and yelled, and a policeman who was doing sentry outside the Provincial Commissioner's bungalow started to race upstairs. I tried to stop him, and might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind. Indeed, when I heard him hammering on the door I was strongly of opinion that the Commissioner would think that the whirlwind had arrived. But presently down those steps came a very big Scotchman in a dressing-gown, with his 'hair on end, just roused from his sleep, and he resolved himself into one of those courteous, kindly gentlemen England is blest with as representatives in the dark corners of the earth. The Commissioner was astonished to see a woman at his bungalow door, and Miss Gaunt says he was polite enough to pretend that he was glad to see her, but she doubts the heartiness of his welcome. After he had given her refreshments and fruits the Commissioner told her the story here related:— "I cleared them out years ago. I have no doubt they have their 'blood-sacrifices somewhere, 'but not on Krobo Hill. But the people are still afraid." "I saw a fire there last night." "Impossible! There is a fine of fifty pounds for anyone found on Krobo Hill."

The dawn had come and the sun was rising rosy and golden. The night lay behind in the west. I looked out of the window at the way I had come and wondered. lam always looking back in life and wondering. Perhaps it would be a dull life where there were no pitfalls to be passed, no rocks to climb over. "I see smoke there now." My host shook his head. "Only a cloud," he said. But there were glasses lying on the table, and I looked through them, and there was smoke on Krobo Hill. So I think my men were right to fear, and I am lost in wonder when I remember they obeyed me and came on when they feared. The D.C. and his wife kindly put me up, and I had breakfast and a 'bath and went to bed and slept, I really think, more soundly than I had ever in my life slept before. *