The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1884-08-22

Remarkable Facts Concerning so-Called
savages, Told by . Traveller.

zone Railway" said Mr.. Capper, the
other day on his way to the house OF
commons, where he was expected to
give evidence on q Welsh railway bill
and Thames communications, zone rail-
way is worth 10 bishops in Africa.
That is what Sir Lyon Plaifair once said,
and 1 entirely agree with him. think
that if all the missionary societies were
to devote q years income to the con
struction of q Central African line OF
railway from the highest navigable point
of the Niger to the Congo, they would
do more for the Discrimination and civ
ilization of the dark continent than all
the efforts of the missionaries for the
next so years. 1t is a great delusion to
imagine that the African native is not
quite as good a man as many Europeans,
and o good deal better than some Euro
peans. / have travelled on
foot 1000 miles down the
African coast, going in at the Niger and
coming out at Loando, and my exper-
fence is that in manliness and shrewd-
ness, in intelligence and honesty, and IN
the essentials of government, the black
man is quite as good as the white. Boil
down your idea of civilization as much
as you please. and unless you make it
consist of the mere use of pocket hand
kerchiefs you will find that these so
called savages are as civilized as any of
ourselves. They are traders, and keen
traders, too. They have their own re-
ligion, their W laws, and their W
patriarchal methods of life. All the
best of them are Mohammedans. They
administer justice in their own way, and
show more hospitality to the stranger
and the traveller than the ordinary
Englishman or foreigner. Through all
my travels in those parts-and ! have
lived for many years in Central Africa
l was never molested, nor had any oc-
casion to modest a native. Only once
was anything stolen from me, and the
man who did it made a mistake. 1t was
in one of the creeks running into the Nj
ger, where / lodged for the night
in the grounds of one of the traders.
In the morning / found that my
clothes and all my belongings had dis
appeared. / simply sent word to the
local king of what had happened, andin
a very short time every missing article
was restored. Stolen goods are always
recovered, provided you go the right
way to work, and some of the African
chiefs might give Scotland-yard a hint
in that matter. They have not, it is
true--these so-callod uncivilized black
fellows-our~ conception of the value of
time. Neither have they the penny
newspapers, but they have what, until
the last 100 years, served as a very eff
fective substitute, and still, serves the
Spanish and the Portuguese, in the
shape of their BARRIERS shops, which are
the accepted news centers of the neigh
borhood. Every one goes to the bar
bers' shops to learn the news, and these
establishments fulfill a great social want.
So particular are many of the natives In
the matter of personal neatness that in
many districts besides shaving and
shearing his customers, trims the nails
of both his feet and hands. Nor are
they far behind us in the art
of transmitting intelligence.
News travels from mouth to
mouth through the villages more
rapidly than it could be brought by
steamers along the rivers. / heard Of
the Franco-P russian war in 1870 from
the months Of natives who had passed
il on from one to the other from the
seaboard Of the Mediterranean to The
upper waters of the Niger. Then as TO
trade, / would like TO take those who
think that these unsophisticated natives
are mere children to an African horse
fair. They know as much about a
horse as any Yorkshireman, and are up
to all the tricks Of the trade Of the pro-
fessional horse roper.
The wealth Oh these regions is simply
boundless. The amount Of money that
is to be made by an ntelligentapplication
OF British enterprise and British capital
is beyond belief, though it - not as if
you had 10 do there what yon have to do
elsewhere, that is, to plow your land and
SOW your seed for the harvest. The
harvest smiles around on every hand
and only wants to be gathered. Look,
for instance, at the development Of
the oil rivers. A few years ago it used
to be thought a great thing to get
$1,000 worth Of oil now E100, 900 worth
Of Oil is collected every year, and this
is but q mere f~oreshadowing OF what
might be done along the whole coast of
West Africa If the country was only