West African Islands - An Excerpt

West African Islands - St. Helena -( Originally Published 1904 )

THERE are four principal groups of islands lying off the west coast of Africa, all opposite the upper half of the continent. The first are the Azores (a-zorz'), far west of the Strait of Gibraltar ; next are the Madeira (ma-de'ra) Islands to the southward nearer the continent, and still farther south the Canary and Cape Verde archipelagoes.

West of the southern half of Africa are only scattering islets ; the chief of which are several belonging to Spain and Portugal in the Gulf of Guinea, and Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan da Cunha far out from the coast be-longing to Great Britain. The chief of the islands in the Gulf of Guinea is Fernando Po, a possession of Spain which lies just opposite the German colony of the Kameruns. It is peopled by negroes. Its commerce is small, its climate is unhealthful, and, as it is far out of our course, we shall not explore it.

Tristan da Cunha, Ascension, and St. Helena are of no commercial importance; nevertheless, we want to stop at the last-mentioned island. Why ? Because it was for several years the prison cage of Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous emperor of the French. He had at one time almost conquered Europe, but was defeated and banished to the little island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea. ,After being there a short time he escaped, and, crossing to France, raised another army and fought the allied forces of Europe at the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon came near winning in that battle, but he was finally defeated and again taken prisoner. The English, who had most to do with his defeat, decided that they would take no more, risks with him so near Europe, so they carried him away south of the Equator to this rocky island thousands of miles from his dear Paris, twelve hundred miles from the coast of Africa, and eight hundred and twenty miles from Ascension, the nearest land. They stationed soldiers on the island to guard him, and although he was given a house and all comforts, he was kept under guard until he died. His remains were first buried on St. Helena, but they were afterward re-moved to Paris and there placed in a magnificent tomb.

In going north we call at St. Helena, entering the harbor of Jamestown. We climb up Ladder Hill at the back of the town, and over Rupert Hill to Longwood, where Napoleon lived. We next visit the Valley of the Tomb where he was buried, and then return to our ship. St. Helena is a volcanic island, rough and ragged. It has but few people and is important only as a stopping place for some of the ships which sail between England and the Cape of Good Hope.
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The Madeiras And The Azores - ( Originally Published 1904 )

LAS PALMAS has frequent ships to the Madeiras, and we have no trouble in getting a vessel which takes us northward to Funchal, the capital on the island of Madeira, the chief of the group. As we come into its harbor, we seem to be entering a vast amphitheater, walled with hills, dotted with villas, and terraced with gardens, orchards, and vineyards.

Many little boats, manned by half-naked boys, put out for our steamer as we come in, and the little ones ask us to throw money into the water and let them dive for it. We do so, and they leap from their boats into the sea, following the coins to the bottom, and coming up holding them in their hands or teeth. They gasp for breath a moment or two, and then call out for more.

As the anchor drops, peddlers swarm on the boat, offering filigree jewelry, embroideries, flowers made of feathers, and delicious oranges, bananas, lemons, pineapples, and pears. The people have white skins, and they are dressed not unlike Europeans. They are Portuguese, the islands being a province of Portugal which owns them by right of discovery and colonization.

Going ashore, we walk up the cobblestone street to the hotel, and later go out into the country. Much of our travel is upon sledges drawn by bullocks. The roads are paved with smooth cobbles, and the sleds, which have greased runners, glide easily over them. Each team has a boy who goes along in front, and a man who walks behind, jabbing the animals with a goad to make them go faster. Coming down the hills the bullocks are sometimes taken out, and the runners shoot along as though over snow.

Imagine sliding down hill in the most beautiful May or June weather, eating oranges as you go; that is one of our experiences in Madeira.

Funchal is like a city of Portugal. Its better houses are two, three, and sometimes more stories high. The windows along the streets are barred like a prison, and those above have little balconies where the people sit in the evening, chatting and enjoying the air. The streets are narrow, and the cobblestones are hard to our feet. People from all parts of Europe come here for their health. The Madeiras have about the finest climate of the world. They are also famous for their wines and fruits.

The same is true of the Azores or Hawk Islands, which we visit before going east to the Mediterranean Sea. This archipelago is a little volcanic group of nine inhabited islands, having less land than a single county of some of our far western states, but a soil so good for oranges, pineapples, and grapes that it supplies Europe with its finest tropical fruits. There are forty steamers kept busy carrying oranges and pineapples from the Azores to the continent, and in one year as many as fifty million oranges have been shipped to England alone.

The resin of a curious tree, called the dragon tree, is also an article of export.

The Azores are about as far from Africa as Pittsburg is distant from the Mississippi River, and they are almost as far away from Portugal, to which country they belong. They rise abruptly out of the ocean, having been forced up by volcanic eruption. Some of them are little more than volcanoes, and one has a crater so low that the water has rushed in and formed a great lake into which boats go through a break in the brim. Others of the volcanoes are high, Mount Pico, the highest of them, being more than eight thousand feet above the sea.

Our steamer from Madeira carries us over sunny seas. There is a whale spouting at the right of the ship, and nearer us a school of flying fish skimming over the waves. Look ! One has jumped high up and fallen on the deck of our steamer. It is like a small mackerel, but it has winglike fins on the forward part of its body, each as long as one's hand.

We see Mount Pico before we come in sight of the rest of the Azores; they appear a little later, and at the same time the sweet smell of orange blossoms is borne to us on the breeze. As we approach the land, we can see orchards on the hill with windmills waving their arms above them, and below the scattering white villages of the shore.

We land at Ponta Delgada, the chief city of the archipelago, on the island of San Miguel (sari me-gel'), the largest of the group, and make our way up the street to the hotel. What a curious city ! The buildings are of all the colors of the rainbow. The houses and stores are painted rose pink, sky blue, and bright yellow. There are many white houses, red houses, and houses of brown, gray, and purple. The buildings are close to the sidewalks. They have roofs of red tiles, and the whole city is a patchwork with as many colors as Joseph's coat.

The natives are Portuguese, not unlike those of Madeira, although their dress is very different. The better class women wear hoods of blue broadcloth, for all the world like gigantic sunbonnets with capes which reach almost to the feet. Some of the men wear high hats of blue cloth, and they have large capes over their shoulders. The poorer women have shawls or handkerchiefs about their heads, and their dresses are as bright colored as the walls of their houses.

We take donkeys and ride about through the towns. Donkeys are used for all sorts of work. They carry great loads on their backs, they haul carts, and are also the chief riding animals. Each of us has a donkey boy who runs along behind with a long stick or goad in his hand, beating the animal when he slackens his pace.

We find the farming rude in the extreme, but the soil is so rich that the islands are of some commercial importance.

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The Cape Verde And Canary Archipelagoes -( Originally Published 1904 )

STEAMING northward we touch at the island of Ascension, noted for its enormous green turtles, some of which weigh as much as a good-sized Jersey cow, and then go on north to the Cape Verde Islands, situated several hundred miles west of Cape Verde, Africa, from which they are named.

The Cape Verde Islands were discovered and colonized by the Portuguese in the middle of the fifteenth century, and they still belong to them. They are nine or ten in number, but their total area is not much greater than the area of Rhode Island. They are of volcanic origin, most of them being made up of high mountains covered with lava. Some of the islands are all rock; others have patches of rice, corn, and tobacco ; cotton and indigo grow wild in the woods.

Our ship stops at St. Vincent, coming to anchor in a little bay half surrounded by volcanic hills. How dry and dreary it is! There is not a blade of grass to be seen, and the brown lava rocks throw back the rays of the sun, making it hotter than ever. St. Vincent has no water, and its vegetation is so scanty that it would not support a rabbit, much less a man. Still it is the most important of all these islands, and we see why when we notice the many ships in the harbor taking on coal. St. Vincent is a great coaling station on the ocean highway to South Africa. Those sheds on the wharves are filled with coal from Cardiff, Wales, and that town back of them is occupied chiefly in furnishing coal and other supplies to the steamers. There are gangs of negroes at work coaling the ships, and we can hear the great lumps as they rattle down into the hold of our ship.

We next stop at the Canary Islands, opposite Morocco. The nearest is only sixty-five miles from the mainland, and they lie right in the track of ships going from Europe to South Africa.

The Canaries are volcanic islands, rising steeply out of the deep waters of the ocean. There are only about seven of them large enough to be considered important and many smaller ones. They were discovered by an Italian from Genoa, the same city from which Columbus came, about two hundred years before the latter discovered America. They afterward became the property of Spain, and are now ruled as one of the provinces of that country. The original inhabitants were Africans, but they have long since disappeared, and now almost all the people are Spaniards.

The islands have but a small area, in all not much more than two third's that of Puerto Rico, and their population is but a few hundred thousand. They are very beautiful, and their climate is so mild that many people from England and other parts of Europe visit them during the winter.

One of the most striking features of the Canaries is Mount Teneriffe, whose snow-white peak more than two miles above the sea is visible long before we reach the islands themselves. It is on Teneriffe, one of the chief islands of the group, that we make our first landing, anchoring at the city of Santa Cruz, the capital of the archipelago.

We seem to be in one of the cities of old Spain. The houses are of brick and stone covered with stucco, painted yellow, blue, and other bright colors. They are close to the streets, and some of them surround patios or court-yards, the garden often being in the center of the house, with rooms all around it. Some buildings have towers on their roofs, where the people sit in the evening enjoying the view. We stroll about the narrow streets, spelling out the signs over the stores, and take a drive out through the suburbs past the great walled ring used for bull fighting.

The Canaries are noted for their wines and fruits. We drive over roads lined with vineyards and orange orchards, the rich yellow balls peeping at us out of the trees. We stop at one place and buy a dozen ripe, juicy oranges for a sum equal to ten cents of our money. They are more delicious than any we have tasted at home, as they come fresh from the trees.

Riding back we go along hills dotted with fine residences, gardens, and fields of rich crops. The roads are lined with cacti, geraniums, and roses, and we now and then see a patch of nopal plants, a kind of cactus which is grown to feed an odd little insect which furnishes one of the dyestuffs of commerce. Have you ever heard of cochineal ? It is a dye of the most brilliant crimson, which may be changed by chemicals to orange, red, and bright scarlet. The dyestuff is made from the dead bodies of the cochineal insects which feed on this plant. When the plants are a year old, some of the little insects are placed upon them. They lay their eggs, and in a short time the leaves are covered with tiny white specks, which if touched leave a bright crimson stain. The insects keep on growing until they cover the plants with what seems to be a white mold. Soon after this they are scraped off, put into boiling water, and dried in ovens or on hot plates. When dried, they look much like grains of buckwheat, and are then ready to be shipped to dye factories all over the world.

Returning to Santa Cruz, we take a little steamer which makes a tour of the islands, spending a day at Las Palmas, the capital of the Grand Canary from which the archipelago gets its name. The island is famous for the canary birds which originally came from here and which are often found wild. We take donkeys and ride about through the country, enjoying the people, who are very polite. The moment we enter a home our host tells us the house is ours, and if we admire anything, he at once asks us to accept it as a present, knowing very well that we shall refuse.
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