Martin, Miss. Not identified. The Office Book record of payment made on the same date (May 7) for the last four items assigned to Miss Martin ["Bush and Beach", XIX, 364–67. March 19, 1859; "On the West African Coast", XIX, 510–14. April 30, 1859; "A May Day in the Pyrenees", XIX, 549–52. May 7, 1859; "Japan Traits", XIX, 561–65. May 14, 1859] indicates that they are by one contributor. The four items deal with Africa, the Pyrenees, and Japan – as do the first five items so assigned ["How the Avalanche Comes Down at Barèges", XV, 292–94. March 28, 1857; "A Packet-Ship's Company", XVII, 350–53. March 27, 1858; "On the Gold Coast", XVIII, 419–23. Oct. 16, 1858; "King Cotton", XIX, 38–40. Dec. 11, 1858; "Japanese Social Life", XIX, 237–40. Feb. 5, 1859] . All nine items, therefore, are the writing of one contributor.
The two articles on Japan are based on Andrew Steinmetz, Japan and Her People, 1859; they do not indicate that the writer has visited Japan. The two sketches laid in the Pyrenees do indicate that the writer has been there. "King Cotton," which urges that England import cotton from west Africa, cites various comments of the British consul at Lagos and of other persons acquainted with Africa; it could have been written by someone who had not been in Africa; so, too, could "A Packet-Ship's Company," though the voyage that that story relates originates on the west African coast.
The remaining three articles, however, seem clearly to be the writing of someone who has lived on the west African coast. The west coast – its flora and fauna, its indigenous peoples and its European inhabitants – is not incidental to the articles; it is the subject of the articles. The narrator of "Bush and Beach" and "On the West African Coast" is an Englishman stationed at a British garrison. In the first article he tells of his fifty-mile trip from Oke Amolo to Ogbomoshaw (Ogbomosho) to aid an English officer in trouble; in the second, he tells of an inland trip with his friend Brown, up the Ogbomoshaw River and down the Saccoom: on both trips he is accompanied by his black African servant Quobna. [DJO Ed.: It is unclear if these pieces were written by Martin].
In "On the Gold Coast" the writer discusses, among other matters, the motives of Europeans in going to west Africa and the effect of west Africa on them: "The fact is, that we Europeans who go to the Gold Coast do not go to work. ... We do not go to colonise. ... We do not encumber ourselves with philanthropic motives or aims. We go because we expect to make money fast. ... The first half-dozen attacks of fever demoralise us; and, like the natives, we live to eat, to drink, and to sleep." Much of the article deals with the British law courts of the west coast and the cases tried there. The account given is authentic, as is proved by its correspondence with facts recorded in – for example – Brodie Cruickshank'sEighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa, 1853. The H.W. writer explains, for instance, that indigenous inhabitants, before they appear in court, have a letter-writer put down, "in what English he can, the facts communicated to him, and thus a preliminary statement, from both plaintiff and defendant, reaches the presiding officer"; Cruickshank (II, 264) states that indigenous inhabitants who are parties to a suit have representations of their cases drawn out by indigenous scribes and handed in on court days. The H.W. writer gives an example of one of these letters to the court – "an exact copy of one now lying before me" – and remarks that the handwriting in such letters is always "remarkably clear and good"; Cruickshank comments on the ease with which indigenous Africans acquire the art of penmanship. The H.W. writer states: "When addressing the judge or any superior, the native lowers the cloth or blanket, worn on state occasions, from the left shoulder, baring his breast"; Cruickshank (II, 282) describes the same custom: indigenous Africans salute Europeans, he says', ''by slightly removing their robe from their left shoulder .... When they wish to be very respectful, they uncover their shoulder altogether, ... the whole of the person from the breast upwards being left exposed.
One Miss Martin it is possible to associate with west Africa is Anna Martin, 1827–1870, who in 1852 married the missionary David Hinderer and in the same year accompanied him to the mission in Ibadan, where the two zealously laboured for many years. The account of her life (Seventeen Years in the Yoruba Country. Memorials of Anna Hinderer, 1872), however, suggests that neither she nor her husband – who might conceivably have used his wife's maiden name as a pseudonym – can have been the H.W. contributor.
Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971
