The clerk who signs the three-year contract to work on
the West Coast enlists against a greater chance of death than the
soldier who enlists to fight only bullets; and every box, puncheon,
or barrel that the trader sends in a canoe through the surf is
insured against its never reaching, as the case may be, the shore or
the ship's side.
The surf and the fever are the Minotaurs of the West Coast, and in
the year there is not a day passes that they do not claim and
receive their tribute in merchandise and human life. Said an old
Coaster to me, pointing at the harbor of Grand Bassam: "I've seen
just as much cargo lost overboard in that surf as I've seen shipped
to Europe." One constantly wonders how the Coasters find it good
enough. How, since 1550, when the Portuguese began trading, it has
been possible to find men willing to fill the places of those who
died. But, in spite of the early massacres by the natives, in spite
of attacks by wild beasts, in spite of pirate raids, of desolating
plagues and epidemics, of wars with other white men, of damp heat
and sudden sickness, there were men who patiently rebuilt the forts
and factories, fought the surf with great breakwaters, cleared
breathing spaces in the jungle, and with the aid of quinine for
themselves, and bad gin for the natives, have held their own. Except
for the trade goods it never would be held. It is a country where
the pay is cruelly inadequate, where but few horses, sheep, or
cattle can exist, where the natives are unbelievably lazy and
insolent, and where, while there is no society of congenial spirits,
there is a superabundance of animal and insect pests.
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