Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/717

 In a subsequent letter Mr. Robertson observed that he had been "assisted in making the above analysis by an expert in the chemistry of alcohols, who said that the present sample differed in no material particulars from, and was neither more nor less deleterious to health than, gin purchased in different parts of London and submitted to analysis."

In addition to this analysis I have also one of Messrs. Peters' gin, equally satisfactory, and as Van Huytemers and Peters are the two great suppliers of the gin that goes to West Africa, I think the above is an answer to the "poison" statements, and should be sufficient evidence against it for all people who are not themselves absolute teetotalers. Absolute teetotalers are definite-minded people, and one respects them more than one does those who do not hold with teetotalism for themselves, but think it a good thing for other people, and moreover it is of no use arguing with them because they say all alcohol is poison, and won't appreciate any evidence to the contrary, so "palaver done set"; but a large majority of those who attack, or believe in the rectitude of the attack on the African liquor traffic are not teetotalers and so should be capable of forming a just opinion.

My personal knowledge of the district where most of the liquor goes in—the Oil Rivers—has been gained in Duke Town, Old Calabar. I have been there four separate times, and last year stayed there continuously for some months during a period in which if Duke Town had felt inclined to go on the bust, it certainly could have done so; for the police and most of the Government officials were away at Brass in consequence of the Akassa palaver, and those few who were left behind and the white traders were down with an epidemic of malarial typhoid. But Duke Town did nothing of the kind. I used to be down in the heart of the town, at Eyambas market by Prince Archebongs's house, night after night alone, watching the devil-makings that were going on there, and the amount of drunkenness I saw was exceedingly small. I did the sane thing at the adjacent town of Qwa. My knowledge of Bonny, Bell, and Aklkwa towns, Libreville, Lembarene, Kabinda, Boma, Banana, Nkoi, Loanda, &c., is extensive and peculiar, and I have spent hours in them when the whole of the missionary and Government people have been safe in their distant houses: so had the evils of the liquor traffic been anything like half what it is made out to be I must have come across it in appalling forms, and I have not.

The figures of the case I will not here quote because they are easily obtainable from Government reports by any one