and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society. 



ill 



Those of her critics who denounce the dilatori- 

 ness of Portugal in this mattor, are very unjust 

 — they forget that within the eighteen months 

 or two years that have elapsed since they raised 

 the question in its present form, she has had no 

 less than five changes of ministry, plus the series 

 of crises preceding and following the assassina- 

 tion of King Carlos and Prince Luiz Felippe. 



But Angola is not S Thome— another fact 

 that the boycotters of the latter's produce have 

 succeeded in completely obscuring. Putting the 

 case on the lowest ground -that of simple com- 

 mercial interest, the abuses practised in Angola 



CONSTITUTE A FRAUD UPON THE S. THOME 

 PLANTERS, 



and one repeatedly complained of by them, as 

 enhancing needlessly the cost of imported 

 labour, apart from its inhumanity. To establish 

 a boycott of the cacao of S. Thome by way of 

 punishing, not the real culprits, but a section of 

 the victims of these, may be humanitarian logic; 

 but it fails to convince the Portuguese public of 

 the bona fides of the movement — and no wonder 

 So far from being to blame for the abuses, the 

 S. Thome plantingcommunity really deserve the 

 thanks of the civilised world for their efforts to 

 redress whatever suffering the Angolan may 

 have endured at the hands of his native chiefs 

 and the emissaries of these on the African conti- 

 nent. This may sound paradoxical to such of 

 your readers as have obtained their views of the 

 case from writers such as Neviuson and Burtt, 

 but there is another side to the story which these 

 gentlemen have carefully refrained from placing 

 in the prominence its merits. Let me relate 



A TYPICAL CASE, 



the particulars of which have been furnished 

 me by one of the most distinguished young- 

 officers in the Portuguese African army, Captain 

 David da Lima, Commander of the Order of the 

 Torre o Espada who permits me to cite him by 

 name as personally acquainted with the facts. 



A number of prisoners-of-war were held by a 

 native chieftain in the hinterland of Angola, 

 beyond the realm of effective civil jurisdiction, 

 where chieftains arrogate to themselves powers 

 of life aud death over their tribes. A Portuguese 

 recruiting agent was in the vicinity, and the 

 chieftain made overtures to him for the sale of 

 these prisoners, whom he looked upon as a 

 serious expense to himself. The Portuguese 

 Agent, however, knowing that the British hu- 

 manitarian was on the warpath, too, and had 

 succeeded in worrying the colonial authorities 

 to the extent of making the latter eager to find 

 a scapegoat, declined to deal otherwise than on 

 the basis of an individual payment to each man 

 engaged, and a regular hiring contract. This 

 did not suit the chieftain's book at all, so he 

 summoned the Portuguese to a palaver, pro- 

 duced the captives, and, finding the Portuguese 

 obdurate, proceeded to cut off the heads of his 

 men, one by one, reraarkingthat they were evi- 

 dently of no use to anybody. This was more 

 than the Portuguese could stand, so he yielded 

 the point, took the risk, and rescued the 

 remainder of the men from their sentence 

 of death, It was the only thing he could do, 



and an Englishman would have done the same 

 in like circumstances ; but the authorities 

 had their eye upon him, and he was arrested, 

 tried and punished, his case being cited to the 

 humanitarians as evidence of the readiness of 

 the authorities to suppress mal-practices. 



But whatever the circumstances of the An- 

 golan's engagement in the interior, his troubles 

 are at an end with his arrival at the coast. He 

 is presented to the Curador at Loanda or Ben- 

 guella as the case may be to whom he makes a 



DECLARATION OF WILLINGNESS TO GO TO THE 

 ISLANDS 



(he has but little choice in the matter), fully 

 believing he is going to a speedy and possibly 

 a painless death. When he arrives at S. Thome, 

 his astonishment is profound. As often as not, 

 his first question at the Curadoria is " am I re- 

 ally alive, or are these the regions beyond death?" 

 He has not recovered from his terror at the 

 sight of the sea and the sensations attendant on 

 the voyage, Translated to the plantations, his 

 astonishment continues. He is, of course, use- 

 less for work and none is expected of him for 

 the first month or two. Everything is new and 

 strange, and for his first year he is placed under 

 the tutelage of an old hand of his own race, 

 who teaches him how to wear his clothes, how 

 to feed himself, ar.d many other things a child 

 learns in infancy, but he has yet to learn. He 

 has next to be taught to work, to turn out up 

 to time, to obey orders and make himself gene- 

 rally useful. Occasionally he rebels against 

 this, but as a rule he is docile and passive if 

 not actively willing. 



For my part, I confess I fail to understand 



WHY THE S. THOME PLANTER PREFERS THE 

 ANGOLAN 



to any other class of negro, but such seems to 

 be the case. He is cheap— very cheap — that is 

 true. But personally I would go so far as to 

 say, varying Mr. Nevinson's concluding dictum 

 ("■ A Modern Slavery ") that it were better for 

 those islands, if not for humanity at large, that 

 not another Angolan should be imported. The 

 Angolan is as often as not physically feeble, due 

 generally to hereditary disease so prevalent in 

 the African interior — so much that his passing 

 the Doctor is more or less a scandal. (If it 

 is true that the Doctor's fees depend on the 

 number he passes for embarkation, the 

 system is to blame for this fraud on the 

 planter.) But were I to put aside the busi- 

 ness aspect of the case, and regard it as a 

 purely humanitarian question, 1 should vote for 

 the resumption of the immigration as soon as 

 the hinterland abuses can be reformed out of 

 existence ; but 1 should say as little about 

 repatriation as possible — this last I regard as a 

 mischievous fallacy from whatever point of 

 view it be regarded. As to improving matteis 

 on the rofas, it might be possible to hurry the 

 pace by intensive educational culture, but with 

 the Sierra Leone negro, the Poona Brahman, 

 and the Bengali Babu before our eyes as the 

 fine Jteur of British colonial culture, least said 

 soonest mended. Space forbids my bringing 

 into the discussion the 



