OFF TO THE GOLD COAST 7 



The tribes, by the way, are sometimes called races, 

 and some of them speak of themselves as nations. 



Among the few tribes whose menfolk can be drawn 

 on for labourers are the Kruboys, natives of Liberia. 

 They travel along the Coast, acting as boat-hands and 

 steward boys. Most of those who have now come on 

 board are crew-boys, according to the nautical spelling 

 of the word; they will clean decks, load and unload 

 cargo, do the ship's washing, and generally relieve the 

 white seamen of manual labour whilst the steamer 

 is in tropical waters that is to say, until she reaches 

 Freetown again on the homeward voyage. A few of 

 these boys, however, are travelling as deck passengers 

 they are migrating to neighbouring countries as 

 domestic servants. We shall find some of their 

 " brothers " doing the work of the house at the 

 European bungalows where we shall be staying in the 

 Gold Coast. Notice the tribal mark by which you can 

 always recognise a Kruboy a broad band running 

 vertically down the middle of the forehead. If you 

 look closely at that band you will see it consists of a 

 number of narrow ridges and furrows in horizontal, 

 roughly parallel lines; the mark was made when the 

 boy was a baby by a series of gashes with an old jack- 

 knife, and an application of some native preparation 

 to help the wounds heal into the ridge and furrow 

 pattern. 



You no savvy why I call dem men boys ? 



" Boy " is pigeon-English for a native male labourer, 

 no matter whether he be a child, a youth, or an old 

 man. Keep your ears open to learn as much as you can 

 of your mother-tongue, as spoken by the natives in the 

 Babel-land where we shall soon be going ashore. Those 

 of you who have learnt to talkee-talkee in the East 



