FROM TENERIFFE TO CAPE LOPEZ 15 
good for anything. You may build him railways, dig 
him canals, spend hundreds of thousands of pounds 
to provide irrigation for the land he is to cultivate, but 
it all makes no impression on him ; he is absolutely 
and on principle opposed to everything European, 
however advantageous and profitable it may be. But 
let a marabout — a travelling preacher of Islam — come 
into the village on his ambling horse with his yellow 
cloak over his shoulders, then things begin to wake up ! 
Everybody crowds round him, and brings his savings 
in order to buy with hard cash charms against sickness, 
wounds, and snake bite, against bad spirits and bad 
neighbours. Wherever the negro population has turned 
Mahommedan there is no progress, either socially or 
economically. When we built the first railway in 
Madagascar, the natives stood for days together round 
the locomotive and wondered at it ; they shouted for 
joy when it let off steam, and kept trying to explain to 
each other how the thing could move. In an African 
town inhabited by Mahommedan negroes, the local 
water power was used once for an installation of electric 
light, and it was expected that the people would be 
surprised at the novel brightness. But the evening 
that the lamps were first used the whole population 
remained inside their houses and huts and discussed the 
matter there, so as to show their indifference to the 
novelty.” * 
Very valuable I found my acquaintance with a 
military doctor who had already had twelve years’ 
experience of Equatorial Africa, and was going to Grand 
Bassam as director of the Bacteriological Institute there. 
* In some African colonies Mahommedan negroes are more open 
to progress. 
