NA TURE 



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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29, li 



'IE GOLD COAST OF WESTERN AFRICA. 

 ■lie Years on the Gold Coast. By the Rev. Dennis 

 Kemp, late General Superintendent Wesleyan Missions, 

 (iold Coast District. Pp. .\v + 279. (London: 

 Al.icmillan and Co., Ltd., 1898.) 



Gold Coast, Past and Present. By George 

 Macdonald, late H.M. Director of Education for 

 the Gold Coast Colony and Protectorate, &c. 

 I'p. ix + 352. (London: Longmans, Green, and 

 Co., 1898.) 



pHE Gold Coast of West Africa and the Loango Coast 



L of South-west Africa are regions of especial interest 



tlie ethnologist, for in these he is not, as he is in the 



jiority of African regions, dependent on such fragments 



information as he can gather from books written by 



a\ellers, who, to him, seem deliberately, malignly deter- 



ined to give as little of the sort of information an 



!;hnologist wants as possible : and only too frequently 



; ve that little in a manner that arouses suspicion in the 



Uind of a cautious student. 



' However on the Geld Coast and the Loango Coast the 

 J thnologist is not dependent on the traveller, having at his 

 pmmand a mass of information : concerning the first, in 

 ae works of seventeenth century writers, grandly supple- 

 mented in this century by those of Sir A. B. Ellis, Reindorf, 

 (uchholtz and others ; and concerning the second, in the 

 forks of the Roman Catholic missioners, who for some 

 jioo years (1490-1670) held that region, and in this century 

 inese have been supplemented by the works of .Adolf 

 lastian. Bastian, be it granted, is a jungle of information 

 iicking tlie brilliant lucidity of Ellis, and he has led many 

 jistray, from neither they, nor he, knowing that the fetish 

 if the Loangoes and of the whole of the Fiot tribes is a 

 jchool of fetish differing very markedly from other 

 fichools, and particularly from that of the tribes Ellis 

 llealt with. Nevertheless, Bastian's work is monumental 

 [nd e.xact. 



I The two books dealing with the Gold Coast that are 

 jiow before us, in addition to dealing with an interesting 

 '(egion, are especially valuable in being not the works of 

 |ravellers spending busy, hurried, worried sojourns in the 

 Country, liut of men resident there for considerable 

 fjeriods, and of a class thrown by their occupations into 

 ji;ontact with the natives in ways which compel the 

 Ijicquisition of detailed knowledge concerning them. 

 j We will take " Nine Years at the Gold Coast " first, 

 poth on account of its exceptional charm, and of its being 

 ihe longest record of experience there which has been 

 published since Cruickshank's great book. 

 f All who know West Africa know that the Rev. Dennis 

 'Kemp is one of the great African missionaries, the man 

 |who by the power of his personality and his skill in 

 (organisation has made the Wesleyan Mission at the 

 IGold Coast one of the most thriving and successful 

 (missions in Africa. It is necessary to mention this, 

 ibecause you get no hint of the fact directly from Mr. 

 /Kemp. The writer, a person who has, more than most 

 men, come under adverse criticism from Mr. Kemp, well 

 I remembers his stating at the end of a warm argument, 

 NO. 1522, VOL. 59] 



that he believed in three things — the Christian religion, 

 the British constitution, and Mrs. Kemp, and this he dis- 

 plays amply in his book. At the same time, however, he 

 displays quite unconsciously those qualities which have 

 enabled him to do so much good service — a perfectly 

 honest, simple, manly spirit ; militant, but suffused with 

 an abiding chivalry. This latter quality, indeed, he 

 displays almost too much, particularly when it comes to 

 the representatives of other missions. Any one acquainted 

 with the state of affairs between the Roman Catholics and 

 the Wesleyans on the Gold Coast, might have reasonably 

 expected that at least the former mission would not receive 

 a kindly reference ; but, no, the Rev. Dennis Kemp arrives 

 there by praising the nuns. 



It must not, however, be surmised that Mr. Kemp is 

 so uniformly benign as to be uninteresting to the un- 

 regenerate reader ; far from it. He says some ex- 

 ceedingly harsh things about white traders and natives ; 

 but he also gives us, so frankly, many stories of native 

 honour and kindly helpfulness, that they almost take the 

 sting out of his general remarks on the character of the 

 African. He says also : 



" I do not remember meeting with a merchant who was 

 altogether regardless of the welfare of the natives. I 

 have met with many who have taken the deepest interest 

 in their advancement." 



So we may conjecture that even traders are not hope- 

 lessly bad in Mr. Kemp's eyes. 



Mr. Kemp's criticism on native character is interest- 

 ing, but we venture to think that on the whole it is too 

 severe. Cowardice, theft, and lying, are certainly not 

 its most prominent characteristics ; but it must be re- 

 membered that the people of whom he is writing, the 

 Tshi and Ga speaking peoples, are people who have 

 been subjected to the disintegrating effects of alien 

 culture. To the north they have been played on by the 

 Muhammedanised Berbers of the Western Sudan ; to 

 the south by Europeans of divers kinds. That after 

 some 400 years of this sort of thing the Gold Coast 

 native should be as good as he is, is a thing highly to 

 his credit, and that he also preserves a quantity of 

 excellent fetish is a subject of congratulation to the 

 ethnologist. 



The main interest of the book to us here is the amount 

 of fetish information which it gives. Of course it does 

 not give one-quarter as much as it might ; for example, 

 Mr. Kemp frequently mentions, with pleasure, the con- 

 version of a fetish priest, and adds that these men confess 

 their past impositions ; but Mr. Kemp keeps those con- 

 fessions to himself in an irritating manner. Sfill there 

 is much highly interesting information given, and 

 although "Nine Years at the Gold Coast" is naturally 

 written from a missionary standpoint, this does not de- 

 tract from its value, for never for one moment does Mr. 

 Kemp's point of view lead him to telling half-truths ; when 

 he once mentions an incident, you have it whole with 

 all its instructive, pathetic and amusing atmosphere. 

 Never for one moment does he fail in his belief in the 

 efficacy of mission work ; never for one moment is he 

 pessimistic about it, or anything else, though he will 

 tell you things about the mission convert that a more 

 nervous man would omit. Here, for example, is a 

 delightful story. 



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