2S8 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



APPENDIX H 



" As regards the drink trafiSc, no one seems inclined to speak the 

 truth about it in West Africa, and what I say I must be under- 

 stood to say only about West Africa, because I do not like to 

 form opinions without having had opportunities for personal 

 observation, and the only part of Africa I have had these 

 opportunities in has been from Sierra Leone to Angola; and 

 the reports from South Africa show that an entirely different, 

 and a most unhealthy, state of affairs exists there from its invasion 

 by mixed European nationalities with individuals of a low type 

 greedy for wealth. West African conditions are no more like 

 South African conditions than they are like Indian. The 

 missionary party, on the whole, have gravely exaggerated both 

 the evil and the extent of the liquor traffic in West Africa. 

 I make an exception in favour of the late Superintendent of the 

 Wesleyan Mission on the Gold Coast, the Rev. Dennis Kemp, 

 who had enough courage and truth in him to stand up at a 

 public meeting in Liverpool, on 2nd July 1896, and record it 

 as his opinion that, "the natives of the Gold Coast were 

 remarkably abstemious ; but spirits were," he believed, " of no 

 benefit to the natives, and they would be better without them.'' 

 I have quoted the whole of the remark, as it is never fair to 

 quote half of what a man says on any subject, but I do not 

 agree with the latter half of it, and the Gold Coast natives are 

 not any more abstemious, if so much so, as other tribes of the 

 Coast. I have elsewhere attempted to show that the drink 

 traffic is by no means the most important factor in the Mission 

 failure on the West Coast, but that it has been used in an 

 unjustifiable way by the missionary party, because they know 

 that the cry against alcohol is at present a popular one in 



