Travels in West Africa

These colors may result from the cartographer's lack of artistic talent. However, there is no mistaking what he means by the color black; you will find that mapmakers color West Africa black from north of Sierra Leone to south of the Congo. "I wouldn't go there if I were you," my doctor friends said. "You will catch some disease. But if you must go, and if you are as stubborn as a mule, just bring me—" and then followed a long list of requests from here to New York, any one of which—but I only discovered the trouble they would cause later.

Everyone I spoke to pointed me toward the missionaries. "There are many of them down there," they said casually, "and they have been there for years." So, I turned to missionary literature with great enthusiasm, only to find that these well-meaning people did not write their reports to describe the country as it actually was. Instead, they wrote about how the country was progressing toward what they thought it should be, emphasizing the need for readers to donate more generously and not worry about getting an insufficient "return on their investment" in terms of saved souls. I also found terrifying confirmation of my medical friends' warnings about the region's unhealthiness, along with various details about the distribution of cotton shirts that I did not spend much time reading.

However, it was from the missionaries that I gained my first impression of the social conditions in West Africa. I gathered that the population consisted, first, of the native people—the "raw material," so to speak—and that they were influenced for good or evil by the missionaries and the traders, respectively. There were also government officials, whose primary job was to support and solidify the missionaries' work—a task they performed quite poorly. But as for those traders! Well, I immediately categorized them as one of the dangers of West Africa. Later, I encountered a classic coastal legend: when a trader from that region died and went—well, it is obvious where—the Devil original: "Fallen Angel" immediately stepped down from his hellish throne (referencing Milton A reference to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where the "Fallen Angel" refers to Lucifer/Satan.) to let the trader take his place. I should note that this is the version of the story told by sailors. In the land-based version of the story, the trader is replaced by a first mate from Liverpool. Of course, one does not have to believe either version—it is certainly not a story told by missionaries.