THE LAND OF FETISH.

THE

LAND OF FETISH

BY

A. B. ELLIS,

CAPTAIN FIRST WEST INDIA REGIMENT.

AUTHOR OF “WEST AFRICAN SKETCHES.”

London: CHAPMAN AND HALL,
LIMITED,
11, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1883.

WESTMINSTER:
NICHOLS AND SONS, PRINTERS,
25, PARLIAMENT STREET.

CONTENTS.

THE LAND OF FETISH.

CHAPTER I.

The Gambia—Bathurst—Jolloffs—Novel Advertisements—A Neglected Highway—False Economy—History of the Gambia—Musical Instruments—Burial Custom—Yahassu—St. James’ Island.

My first visit to the Gambia took place in March 1877, from Sierra Leone. After two days’ steaming from the latter place we passed Cape Bald, with the two queer little Bijjals Islands in front of it, and sighted Cape St. Mary at the entrance of the river. On the high ground, at the point, could be seen the long low white building of the deserted barracks, and the tops of mangrove trees could be faintly distinguished above the level of the sea in the distance to the right and left as we entered the estuary; while, making a long sweep of two or three miles, we reached the Fairway buoy, picked up a pilot, and steamed up the river.

Bathurst, St. Mary’s Island, does not appear to advantage from the anchorage. The island is low-lying and flat; in front is a row of staring white houses, with a few stunted silk-cotton trees and hearse-plume like cocoa-nut palms mounting guard over them, and—and that is all. The prospect was not inviting, but, hoping that it might prove better than it looked, I hailed a boat, and was pulled to the shore. On the way several curious Shiriree canoes, fashioned like crocodiles, and full of men, passed down the river. The bows were filled with wooden idols, and in each canoe was a man beating a tom-tom, and howling some monotonous ditty in a minor key.

The island of St. Mary is a mere sandbank, barely raised above the level of the river, (in fact a considerable portion of it is below high-water mark,) and is separated from the mainland by a narrow mangrove swamp, dignified by the name of Oyster Creek, which is fordable at low water. The centre of the isle can boast of a little solidity, as a ridge of rock, covering about twenty square yards, there crops up through the sand, and is pointed out to strangers by the inhabitants with much pride, as a proof that their demesne has a stable foundation. The island has apparently been formed of the sand thrown up by the meeting of the inflowing tide with the current of the river. A bar, or sandbank, is now in course of formation to the south of the island from the same causes, and in a few centuries the British possessions in the Gambia will receive a considerable accession of territory in that direction.

The town of Bathurst is small and insignificant: there is a row of habitable buildings, principally stores, built of brick and stone, facing the river, and behind this lies the remainder of the town, which consists of native huts built of palm-leaves, old boards, and matting. There are no made roads, and every street is ankle-deep in sand. To one side of an open space in the centre of the town stand the old barracks, in which the West India troops were formerly quartered, and this, with Government House, which though small is perhaps the most comfortable in West Africa, are the only two buildings in Bathurst worth a second glance.

The natives of the country north of the Gambia are Jolloffs, an entirely distinct race of negroes, and, as far as my experience goes, the only really black people to be found in West Africa. The colour of the ordinary negro is a deep brown, but the skin of the Jolloffs is of a dead dull black. Their features differ from those of other races on the coast: the eyes are slightly oblique and almond-shaped, the nose long and inclined to be aquiline, and the lower part of the face less prognathous than is usual amongst Africans. There is a tradition amongst them that they were once white, and it may be a fact that in the dim past their ancestors were of Arab blood, and that their colour may be accounted for by a succession of marriages with the aboriginal women of the country. Many of them are remarkably like Arabs in every other respect, and both sexes wear the Arab costume. The women dress their wool, which they suffer to grow long, into innumerable ringlets, each about a foot in length and of the thickness of a pencil, which hang down in a mass on their necks; some of them are rather handsome, and have regular features.

There is a colony of Jolloffs in Bathurst, but the majority of the people of that race that one sees in the town are traders from the interior, who bring down their ground-nuts to exchange for powder, muskets, and Kola nuts. In the one street of stores, of which I have spoken, long lithe Jolloffs may be seen coming out of the shops with trade muskets, the stocks of which are painted a brilliant red, and the barrels made of renovated pieces of old gas-pipe. Into these unquestionably deadly weapons they pour two or three handfuls of powder, and then fire them off in the road to test them. The test frequently leaves nothing remaining but a fragment of barrel and stock, and the practice is one that is rather startling to strangers who may happen to be passing by. The Kola nuts (Sterculia acuminata) are eaten by the natives habitually, as sailors chew tobacco. They are said to be particularly useful to travellers, as they prevent all sensations of hunger, thirst, or weariness. I ate two or three as an experiment, but I did not find that I was any the less ready for my dinner at the usual hour. They are imported from the Timmanee country, near Sierra Leone, principally in the neighbourhood of the Great and Little Scarcies rivers, to which part, though distant three hundred miles from the Gambia, large canoes and boats resort solely for the purpose of obtaining them.

The English-speaking and Christianized negroes in Bathurst, most of whom are emigrants from Sierra Leone, are a vast improvement upon their compatriots in that negro paradise. They positively do a little work occasionally, and some few of them might even be called industrious. I could not discover the cause of the improvement. Perhaps it is owing to the good example of the Jolloffs, or to there not being such a redundancy of missionaries in the Gambia; but I think it is more probably due to the fact that the island is so small that there is no spare land on which they can squat and do nothing (even if there were any soil to produce anything), so that they are obliged to work or starve. They build cutters of from twenty-five to sixty tons’ burden, which are used by the French merchants for bringing produce down the river from their outlying factories, and for carrying cargo between Bathurst and Goree or Dacar.

In the one street of Bathurst there is a fairly good market-shed for native vendors of fruit and green-stuff, and I was going to look round and see what there was to buy when I caught sight of a large slab of marble let in to the rubble wall of the gateway. It bore the following legend:—

“This market was erected by Colonel Luke S. O’Connor during his Governorship, A.D. ——.”

I said to myself, “Oh! indeed,” and passed on.

Thirty yards further down the road I saw a tablet attached to an old swish wall. I walked up to it and read:—

“This wall was repaired during the Administration of Colonel Luke S. O’Connor, Governor, A.D. ——.”

It did not appear to me that this was such a stupendous feat as to need commemoration, so I turned down a side-street and walked on. In a few minutes I met a pump standing in the middle of the road. I saw there was an inscription on this too, and tried to avoid it, but a fatal fascination drew me on, and I read:—

“This pump was erected for the benefit of the thirsty wayfarer during the Governorship of Colonel Luke S. O’Connor, A.D. ——.”

I began to get rather tired of this, and turned towards the country, where I thought there could not be any more advertisements of this kind. I passed a dilapidated battery, which bore testimony in letters of stone to the worth of the departed monarch, Colonel Luke S. O’Connor the First, and approached the Colonial Hospital. From afar off I perceived a slab of darker stone let into the masonry of the wall, and I turned my head the other way. It was no use, I could not pass it, and I groaned in spirit as I read:—

“This building was enlarged during the Administration of Colonel S. Luke O’Connor, Governor, A.D. ——.”

I staggered away and wandered into a neglected grave-yard by the side of the path to Oyster Creek. I was in hopes that I might be able to sooth my mind by finding the grave of this departed potentate; but, alas! after a long search I only found a tomb which bore the following remarkable epitaph:

“Sacred to the memory of the bodies of three sailors, which were washed on shore on March ——, A.D. ——. This monument was erected during the Administration of Colonel Luke S. O’Connor, Governor.”

I left hastily. That man was not going to let his fame languish and die for want of a few monumental inscriptions.

The Gambia river is a magnificent highway to the interior of this portion of Africa. Its estuary measures twenty-seven miles in breadth from Bald Cape to Punshavel, and though it is only two miles across from Bathurst to Barra Point, directly opposite, it widens out to a breadth of seven miles immediately above St. Mary’s Island. At Macarthy’s Island, one hundred and forty-seven miles up the stream, the river is four hundred yards broad; and vessels drawing ten feet of water can ascend even up to some seventy miles above Yahlahlenda. Here, as in our other West African possessions, we have been retrograding of late years. Only some twelve years ago, Macarthy’s Island was garrisoned by troops, European traders had factories there, and small steamers went up the river as far as the falls of Barraconda; while the British name was respected, and the British power dreaded, far and wide among the warlike tribes dwelling upon the river banks. Now the troops have been withdrawn from the Gambia, Macarthy’s Island is deserted, and the natives laugh at the idea of England being a powerful kingdom, since her might is only represented in Bathurst by a miserable force of one hundred policemen. In fact the colony is quite at the mercy of the native chiefs, and but for their internecine squabbles and jealousies would have already fallen a prey to them.

In 1869 the Third West India Regiment, then stationed in the Gambia, was, as a measure of economy, disbanded by the Liberal Government then in power, the Minister for War stating that £20,000 a year would be saved by the transaction. The immediate result of this measure was, that when, in the same year, Bathurst was threatened by hostile tribes from the mainland, the Administrator had no garrison for the protection of the lives and property of British subjects, and was compelled to apply for assistance to the French at Goree. Two French men-of-war were at once sent, and the colony was saved. The effect of this incident was that the British Government, without consulting the inhabitants of the Gambia, or mooting the subject in Parliament, offered the colony to France; and, in spite of the protests of the people, who represented that they were Protestants and did not wish to be subject to a Roman Catholic power, the transfer would have been completed but for the outbreak of the Franco-German war. In 1874-5 the subject again cropped up, and, as a Conservative ministry was then in office, the French offered their settlements at Grand Bassam, Assinee, and Gaboon, in exchange for the Gambia. It is probable that this exchange, which would have been most advantageous for England, as through the acquisition of Assinee we should be able to control the importation of arms to Ashanti, would have been effected, had not the matter become entangled with the religious question. The Exeter Hall party brought all their influence into play, and the French offer was declined.

A more serious result of the disbandment of the Third West India Regiment was the Ashanti war of 1873-4. When the Ashanti invading army crossed the Prah, the Administrator of the Gold Coast had only two hundred soldiers with which to defend a colony of more than two hundred miles in extent. Had the Third West India Regiment been then in existence, and been sent to the Gold Coast with the same promptitude that characterized the despatch of the Second West India Regiment in 1881, the war of 1873 would equally have been nipped in the bud. As it turned out, the interest of the money expended in that war would have more than sufficed to keep up the Third West India Regiment; so that no saving was effected after all.

Our possessions in the Gambia consist of St. Mary’s Island, a strip of land one mile in breadth on the river bank opposite, called “the ceded mile,” about three square miles of unoccupied bush and swamp higher up on the western bank of the river known as Albreda, Macarthy’s Island, and British Combo. Bathurst alone is inhabited by Europeans, nearly all of whom are French. The trade is entirely in French hands, the exports consisting principally of ground-nuts, hides, and beeswax, of which the first are shipped to France and used in the manufacture of olive oil. From a commercial point of view we have nothing to lose by exchanging the Gambia; and should France again broach the subject, as the present Government is now, 1881, almost identical with that which offered the settlement unconditionally in 1869, it could now hardly refuse to part with it without stultifying its former action. At present we are playing the part of the fabled dog in the manger: we will not make use of the Gambia as a means of opening up the interior, nor expend any money on the colony; and, although it is of no value to us as it is, we will not give it up to another nation, to which it would prove exceedingly useful, and which is willing to make the necessary outlay for unclosing this long-closed artery.

Our connection with the Gambia dates from 1588, in which year Queen Elizabeth granted a patent to some Exeter merchants to trade there. Thirty years later a company was formed for the purpose of carrying on this trade, which almost entirely consisted of “trafficking in black ivory,” as slave-dealing was euphonically termed. After the abolition of the slave-trade this settlement, in common with the others in West Africa, declined, and the colony was almost abandoned, until in 1816 a new mercantile company was formed by British traders from Senegal. A dependency of the Gambia is Bulama Island, which lies to the east at the mouth of the river Jeba, and where Captain Beaver established a settlement in 1791 at Dalrymple Bay. There used to be a small garrison kept up here under a subaltern officer, but after nine officers, in succession, had died at their post from the effects of the climate, the Government seemed to think the experiment had had a fair trial, and the troops were withdrawn. The Jeba river is unapproachable from the Gambia by land, as between the two lies the Casamanza river with its dense forests and swamps, and the inhabitants of that cheerful region are ferocious savages and cannibals. The Administrator of the Gambia exercises no jurisdiction of any description over the tribes dwelling in the vicinity of the British settlements.

The Jolloffs are a musical race. Besides being the happy possessors of the tom-tom, or native drum, the six-stringed native banjo, and the long reed-instrument which seems universal in West Africa, they are the inventors of various musical machines peculiar to themselves. The most curious of these is one formed of slabs of a dark, heavy, and close-grained wood, which when struck emits musical sounds, varying in depth of tone according to the size and thickness of the piece of wood, the larger pieces giving forth bass notes and the smaller treble. These are arranged in regular order so as to form a complete gamut, and fastened above the halves of calabashes. It is in fact a native dulcimer, in which wood takes the place of glass. They have also a kind of kettledrum, in which the skin is stretched across half an enormous calabash, highly polished and sometimes elaborately carved. Another instrument is a species of zither, having ten strings, all of which are made of some vegetable fibre, though I have somewhere read that it is considered impossible to obtain strings suitable for stringed instruments from such a source. Some of their tunes are rather pleasing, though perhaps monotonous; but if, as some musicians assert, repetition may be considered a beauty, the Jolloffs may be well satisfied with their national music.

The Jolloffs have a curious burial custom. The body of the deceased is laid out in the inclosure, or yard, which surrounds every Jolloff house, where the ladies of the family prepare the kous-kous, and their lord and master prays at morning and evening; and, when it is about to be carried out for sepulture, the funeral party, instead of taking it through the gate, proceed to demolish the whole fence. They consider that it would be fatal to the deceased’s hopes of future bliss if his body passed through any gate before he crossed the bridge of Al Sirat and knocked at the door of paradise. Expectoration seems to be the commonest form in which grief is exhibited by Jolloffs. Of course the men never show even this sign of weakness; but the women at funeral customs, or when they are grieved about anything, fill up the pauses of their dirge, or complaint, with vigorous discharges of saliva. Any fly within a radius of ten feet has but small chance of escape.

The Jolloff country extends from the Gambia to the French possessions on the Senegal river, and is divided into three independent kingdoms, viz. Senaar or Senegal, Saulaem, and Ballah. A late king of Senaar, Jumail by name, was a source of considerable anxiety to the French, and kept up a standing army of ten or twelve thousand cavalry, with which he made frequent raids on the settlements. The religion of these people is purely Mohammedan.

During one of my visits to the Gambia I crossed the river to look at the country of the “ceded mile,” opposite Bathurst. At the extremity of a promontory, where the visitor is usually landed, are the remains of a small fort, called Fort Bullen, which has fallen into disuse since the withdrawal of the troops; and from the summit of its walls one can enjoy the pleasing prospect of miles upon miles of dwarf mangrove, bounded on the horizon inland by a mass of tall cocoanut palms and silk-cotton trees. To the east of the ceded mile lies the Mandingo state of Barra, and to the west the country of the Shirirees, who are idolaters.

The principal town in the British territory on this side of the river is Yahassu; and the ride to it from Fort Bullen after the mangrove strip is traversed is rather picturesque. The path throughout is shaded by stately silk-cotton, teak, caoutchouc, and cedar trees; while plantations of Indian corn and ground-nuts extend on either side. Yahassu stands in the centre of an immense plantation of bananas, and, like all Mandingo towns, is surrounded by a strong stockade, made of the trunks of trees of different lengths, and consequently somewhat irregular. The entrance is at a re-entering angle, and is defended by a small brass cannon, the sole piece of artillery appertaining to the town. The houses are all circular, and consist of a swish wall, about four feet in height, with a conical thatched roof, the rafters of which rest on an inner circular wall reaching to the apex, and forming an inner apartment. The door of this second chamber is in a point of the circumference of the inner circle diametrically opposite to the side and into the outer circle, so that ingress to it is only obtainable by traversing the first apartment, which is usually occupied by the slaves, dependents, and household utensils of the proprietor. Each house stands in a rectangular yard; and the streets of the town, which are about six feet wide, are completely walled in by the plaited palm-leaf fences of these yards. In the centre of the town is a square, where stands a mosque, and a school in which the male children are taught to read the Koran, which is written on wooden tablets whitened with lime. In the neighbourhood of Yahassu, the last elephant seen in this part of Africa was slain some twenty years ago.

After visiting one of these towns, one cannot help being struck with the difference of manner between Christian and Mohammedan negroes. The latter are courteous and dignified, never try to elbow a white man out of the path, or shove against him, or pick a quarrel; and the salutation, “Dam white nigger,” is replaced by the oriental “Salaam Aleykoum,” “Peace be with you;” while the idleness, improvidence, drunkenness, and ignorance of the former is replaced by industry, frugality, temperance, and a certain amount of learning. Yet not satisfied with looking after the converts they have already gained or striving to obtain others from among the idolatrous pagans, missionaries actually endeavour to reduce Mohammedans to the debased condition of their Christian compatriots: fortunately they do not meet with much success. However moralists may endeavour to explain the cause, the fact remains that Christianity does not produce such good results among negroes as do the tenets of Mohammed. Probably I shall bring down a storm of indignation on my head by saying that I consider the former is not a religion adapted to races barely emerging from barbarism. At all events this is what my experience of South and West Africa tells me.

About an hour’s row up the river from Bathurst is the island of St. James, which was the site of the first British settlement established in the Gambia. This isle, now so silent and deserted, was, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the scene of much bloodshed. During our numerous local wars with the French on this coast it was captured by them, and re-captured by us, no less than three times. On the last occasion a French naval force under the Count de Genes, in 1703, destroyed all the houses and devastated the entire settlement; and it was after this that the building of the town of Bathurst was commenced. Why the new colonists did not re-occupy James Island it is difficult to say, as it is fertile, well wooded, and fairly healthy, while St. Mary’s is barren, treeless, and pestilential. The ruins of the old fort, built in 1669, can still be distinguished from the river, covered with brushwood and shrouded in trees. The island is now entirely uninhabited, and its silence is never disturbed except by the advent of an occasional fisherman from the neighbouring Mandingo town of Sikka.

It is from the Mandingo tribes, who inhabit the country bordering on the river, that the supply of ground-nuts is principally obtained, and in the swampy districts a good deal of rice is grown; they also trade in beeswax and small quantities of gold. They are an industrious and, generally speaking, harmless people, and a European, speaking Arabic, might traverse the entire country alone and unarmed. To eat kola-nut with, or present some kola-nuts to, a Mandingo or Jolloff, places a stranger on the same footing as the tasting of salt does with an Arab; and after such a ceremony one is entitled to protection and assistance. A kola-nut is a good kind of passport and viséd for any Mohammedan town.

CHAPTER II.

British Combo—An interesting Conversation—Bakko—A small Account—Sabbajee—Peculiar Governors—The Gambia Militia—A new Field for Sportsmen.

Until I had visited British Combo I never could understand why it was that old officers always spoke of the withdrawal of troops from the Gambia with regret, and talked of that colony fondly as the best station in West Africa; but after I had seen it, though shorn of its former glories, it was quite comprehensible. Having borrowed from a friend one of those diminutive but thoroughbred Arab horses common to the country, I started from Bathurst one morning soon after daybreak on my expedition. Passing the disgraceful burial-ground, and leaving to the right Jolah town, which is inhabited by a race of outcasts supposed to have no moral or religious code of any kind, and to possess their women in common, I crossed a level tract of cultivated country, and halted for a few minutes in the grove of palms at Oyster Creek. This creek used to be the resort of the sporting members of the garrison, who would supplement the somewhat scanty food supply of the colony with green pigeons, wild ducks, curlew, and snipe from this place; but now the report of a gun but rarely awakes its echoes.

On the other side of the creek I entered upon a swampy region, consisting of stretches of sand and small lagoons surrounded by dwarf mangroves; and after splashing through the last of these I found myself in front of a dense growth of grass, eight or nine feet high. I thought that if all the open country of which I had heard were like this I should not care much about it, and rode into the narrow path which lay before me. The grass closed overhead, and I could see nothing in front but a long green tunnel, with occasional flecks of gold on the sand where the sunlight broke through. The grass was heavy with dew; a continual shower-bath of drops fell on me from above, and the long wet stems brushed my legs on either side. I should have enjoyed it very much if I had been unprovided with clothes, but I had not anticipated this bath, and was consequently dressed.

After a couple of miles of this I emerged into an open plain, as thoroughly wet through as if I had been towed behind a boat for a quarter of an hour; but the view compensated for any little discomfort. The country was of a dead level, covered with waving grass of a most brilliant green, and dotted with clumps of palm and monkey-bread trees; plantations of corn and ground-nuts appeared here and there; the deserted barracks of Cape St. Mary glistened white in the sun from a sand-ridge in the front; while to the left was the dense vegetation and rich colouring of a tropical forest. In the foreground were several of those peculiar trees which bear no leaves when in blossom, covered with their scarlet tulip-like flowers, while herds of cattle in the distance gave the scene almost a pastoral aspect. There may not seem very much in this to cause ecstasy, but nobody who has not sojourned for some months on the Gold Coast, surrounded by its interminable and depressing bush, can understand the delight with which a little open country may be greeted. The monkey-bread is not a handsome tree, and might be compared to a distorted semaphore or a corpulent sign-post. The trunks of these trees are sometimes immense, measuring from twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference, but they only throw out two or three stunted limbs, which can boast of but few twigs, and produce no leaves to speak of.

I had reined in my horse near a conical ant-heap to look at a flock of green parrots that were screaming round a crimson flowering shrub when I observed two gorgeously-appareled Mandingos approaching me. One wore a most elaborate turban, and his robe and sandals were highly embroidered. He was apparently a chief, as the other, who was not much behind-hand in the matter of brilliancy, was carrying, in addition to his own spear, the curved sword and leather purse-bag of the former. Both, it is needless to say, wore strings of leather-covered grisgris, or amulets. I was anxious to air the little Arabic I knew, so as they drew nigh I said,

“Salaam Aleykoum.”

They replied as one man, “Haira bi, haira bi,” and then stopped, evidently waiting for more, while the spearman stirred up the sand with the shaft of his weapon.

I was non-plussed, and thought that they were taking an unfair advantage of me; but, as they both remained gazing upon me in an attitude of earnest expectancy, I let off at them again my solitary phrase, “Salaam Aleykoum.”

“Jam-diddi toh-chow haira-slocum-doodledum,” said the chief, or something that sounded like it.

“Quite so,” I replied.

“Kara noona chi dodgemaroo,” he continued, excitedly.

“C’est vrai,” I responded, breaking out into another language in my agony.

“Hanu sah daday,” he shouted, advancing towards me.

“Verbum sap,” I yelled, in despair.

“Ri-tiddi, to tolli, soh gamma,” they both shouted, and, bowing almost to the earth, extended their hands deferentially towards me.

I shook them with unction, and they both passed on, highly gratified with our interesting conversation, and pleased with the information that I had given them. Really the Mandingos are a most intelligent race, and how well these two understood what I had been telling them.

Riding on, I shortly arrived at a small village surrounded by a fence made of palm-sticks, and further fortified on the exterior by hedges of thorned acacia and prickly pear. This was the Mandingo town of Bakko, and here the individual in whose honour the stone advertisements of which I have spoken were erected was, during one of his numerous petty expeditions, defeated with considerable loss by the natives under Hadji Ismail, the black prophet. On that occasion a portion of the colonial force was cut off and annihilated, while the remainder fell back with considerable difficulty upon Bathurst, where, as the victorious Mandingos followed up their success, and received large accessions to their number from their warlike neighbours, the governor was obliged ingloriously to apply to the French to save him and the colony.

I dismounted here, and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of naked and grisgris-covered children, while three or four men lounging about suspended their yawning and regarded me with stoical indifference. I did not discharge my sentence at these, because I had learnt all the news from the two with whom I had already conversed; and, besides, I was rather fatigued with the previous conversation. After a few moments a negro, clothed in the remnants of European garments, and whom in consequence I inferred was not a Mohammedan, came up to me and said, “Good morning.” He asked me what was my name, address, and occupation, whether I was married or revelling in single bliss, if I had any rum with me, and why I had come to Bakko; and in return vouchsafed the information that he was a farmer. He said he would show me round the town if I liked, so I left my horse in charge of a Mandingo and went inside the fence.

The interior was a perfect labyrinth, and the houses similar to those in the town of Yahassu, on the Barra side of the river, but smaller and dirty. My guide pointed out to me several small edifices of palm-sticks and bamboo, like miniature houses, raised upon piles inside the village gate, and informed me that these were where the people kept their corn. The doors to these granaries were merely bolted, and a piece of paper, inscribed with a verse from the Koran in Arabic characters, was fastened to each as a protection from thieves. My cicerone said,

“These are very foolish people, sar.”

“Are they? How?”

“They put dem writings on the bolts, and then think nobody can open the doors.”

“Oh!”

“Yes; and them Mandingos won’t touch them when they’re leff so—they ’fraid to.”

“You’re not afraid, I suppose?”

“Me? No, I don’t care for grisgris. By’mby I show you my farm; when these foolish people sleep on dark night, I take as much corn as I want for planting time. They think it must be devil,” and he chuckled at the joke.

“What religion are you then?”

“Oh! I b’long to the Wesleyans.”

“Ah! I thought so.”

My co-religionist informed me that the deer usually devoured half his crops, and that leopards, and animals “that howled like drunken men at night,” by which graphic description he meant hyenas, were so numerous and bold in their raids on the poultry and dogs that the thorn hedges, which I had noticed surrounding the village, were erected for their special behoof. Beguiling the time with such artless conversation, he led me round the village, and finally halted before a hut, which he asked me to enter, saying it was his. As I thought he had been unusually civil and obliging for an English-speaking negro, I did not like to refuse, though I do not care to invade the sanctity of such houses and inhale the odour thereof. I saw some six or seven women suckling babies and pounding kous-kous, whom I learned were the wives of my host, and sat down as far from them and as near to the door as possible; while their lord and master produced a dirty-white piece of paper and a lead pencil, and began writing away most laboriously.

After waiting a few minutes, and finding that my obliging friend was still hard at work, I got up and said I was going. He added a few finishing touches to his manuscript, came forward, and handed it to me. I read as follows:—

Thomas Henry, services to European stranger from steamer.

I said: “What does this mean? You don’t think I’m going to pay this, do you?”

All the civility dropped from my guide’s manner like a mask, and he said, jeeringly—

“I ’spose you call yourself a gen’leman.”

“I shall pay nothing of the sort,” I continued. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

“Yes!”

I looked about for some implement of castigation, more weighty than my light riding-whip, and said—

“What d’you say?”

He moved off to a safe distance, and replied:

“If you not a fool, I like to know what you come to this town for nuffin for. You must be a fool, man.”

I saw there was nothing to be gained by following up this branch of the discussion, so I returned to the original subject, and said, decisively—

“I shall not pay you anything, for your impertinence.”

“’Spose you no pay, I keep the horse.”

The thought of what my friend’s face would be like if I returned to Bathurst without his steed, was quite enough, and I hurried out of the village to the spot where I had left the animal. He was nowhere to be seen.

I felt then that I was up a tree of considerable altitude. If I went back to Bathurst for police, the thief would decamp in my absence; and, even if he obligingly remained to be caught, the delay of the law is such that I should miss my passage by the steamer, which was to sail next day. When I thought of my stupidity in leaving my horse, I began to have an uncomfortable conviction that my guide’s estimate of my character was correct; and I thought I should have to submit to his extortion after all. While still deliberating on the probable results of a violent assault on this amiable negro, a happy idea occurred to me. I knew that in every Mohammedan town there was a head-man, or alcaid, who, in those that were independent, was magistrate, governor, and arbitrator in general, and answerable for the preservation of order to the Mandingo king; while in those nominally subject to the British, such as Bakko, he settled disputes between the natives, and regulated the charges made against strangers for food and lodging; so I said to my extortioner, who had followed me out of the village—

“I shall go to the head-man.”

My forlorn hope told; his countenance fell almost to zero; and without waiting to consider that I did not know the alcaid, or where to find him, and that if I did succeed in finding him I could not make him understand my complaint, as I could not speak his language, he said, sulkily,

“Well, I don’t want to make trouble, you can pay half.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort.”

“Give me five shillings, and the palaver’s set.”

“Certainly not.”

“Master, dash me two shillings for the boy that hold the horse, and I go fetch him.”

I thought it would not do to push my advantage too far, so I agreed to these terms, and in a few minutes this scoundrel brought out, from the penetralia of some hovel in the village—my missing steed.

I climbed into the saddle, threw the money at the man’s head, and then, with my whip—but no, I won’t say what I did, or I shall have the “poor black brother society” of Exeter Hall down on me. It is sufficient to say that I rode off in a more happy frame of mind, though still annoyed to think that after the many years during which I had been acquainted with the negro I should have been such an idiot as to imagine that a Christianized and English-speaking low-class specimen of the species could be polite and obliging without having some ulterior scheme of insult or extortion in view.

On my return to Bathurst I learned that Bakko enjoyed anything but an enviable reputation. It appeared that its inhabitants were outcast Mandingos, who had found it advisable to leave their native country, and who, while thoroughly grasping the full meaning of meum, had but hazy and unsatisfactory notions as to the interpretation of tuum, in consequence of which their society was rather avoided, and they were rarely seen in the haunts of civilisation, except on those few occasions on which the intelligent police might be observed escorting them towards a public building yclept the jail.

From Bakko I rode on over open country, adorned with herds of short-horned cattle and solitary pie-bald sheep with long tails, and where occasionally the wild ostrich may be seen, to Josswang, close to Cape St. Mary. There are a few houses here, which, in the palmy days of the colony, were the country residences of the Bathurst merchants, but which now are affected by the universal blight which has fallen upon the settlement and fast becoming ruinous. Ten miles from Cape St. Mary is the Mandingo town of Sabbajee, now belonging to British Combo, which was the scene of one of the glorious exploits of the great advertiser Colonel Luke S. O’Connor, who commanded a force which took the town, stockaded like all such, by assault. That individual’s mania for self-laudatory memorials was so great that on this occasion he, as Governor, took away two large kettledrums which had been captured by a West India Regiment, and, after a short interval, returned them to the regiment, embellished with two silver plates, which set forth that he, during his administration of the government, had presented these drums to it for gallantry in the field; and then sent in a bill for the plates.

He is not the only peculiar governor with which the Gambia has been afflicted; one in particular I can remember who was notorious for his parsimony throughout West Africa. I had known this potentate when he revolved in a more humble sphere, and during one of my visits to Bathurst (I shall not say in what year) I allowed myself the honour of calling on him. At about 1 p.m. I presented myself at the door of Government House and knocked; not a soul was to be seen anywhere, and the place might have been deserted. I kept on knocking louder and louder for some minutes, and then as nobody answered and the door was wide open I walked in. I traversed one room, and, turning round the corner of a screen, discovered a person attired in very seedy garments employed in cutting mouthfuls off a slab of mahogany-coloured meat which lay in a plate on a chair. This was the governor, but I should never have recognised him in that position had it not been for the suit of clothes he was wearing and which I remembered having seen on him some years before. He received me with great affability, asked me to sit down, and conversed about mutual acquaintances. He did not ask me to join him in his lunch, for which I was not sorry, but he did ask me to have a glass of wine. He said:

“Can I offer you a glass of pam wine?”

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t quite catch....”

“Will you take a glass of pam wine?”

I said, “I don’t quite know what you mean.”

“You don’t know pam wine? It is the sap of the pam tree; the natives bring it round to sell. It is very refreshing.”

He meant that horrible emetic known as palm wine, and I declined with thanks.

The subjects of this monarch said that he kept no servants, and made a police orderly do all the housework. I saw nobody at all. They added that he gave a small dinner once a quarter, and that everybody ate a good square meal before going to it, because they knew that they would not get enough to satisfy hunger at his table. All these West African Governors neglect their duty in the matter of entertaining, though they receive a special table allowance of £500 a year for that purpose. A circular from the Colonial Office pointing out that that money is intended for entertainment, and not for the defraying of ordinary household expenses, would not be out of place.

The Gambia boasts of a local corps of militia. It is not often called out, principally because there is no particular uniform for it, no officers, except two unmilitary Colonial officials, and no arms, except old trade muskets, for the men. As the latter are mostly decrepid old pensioners and discharged men, all Africans, from the disbanded West India regiments, it is not a very formidable body. It is a curious fact that Africans cannot, as a rule, be taught to shoot straight: the practice of the Houssa Constabulary on the Gold Coast is deplorable, and it is well known that it is the bad shooting of the few Africans who still remain in the existing West Indian Regiments that pulls down the figure of merit in those corps. There is no such difficulty with West Indian negroes, for the average recruit from the West Indies is as good a shot as the British recruit, and this almost seems to show that a certain amount of cultivation and civilisation is necessary for making a marksman. In these days of long-range firing it is fortunate that recruiting in Africa has ceased.

Should any of my readers feel tempted to visit the Gambia, I believe that they would find a hitherto unopened field for sport at the upper waters of that river. Certain it is that elephants abound some distance above the falls of Barraconda, the river is full of hippopotami and crocodiles; while leopards, hyænas, antelopes, and civet-cats are easily found, by any one who knows how and where to look, in the vicinity of Bathurst itself. Of the feathered tribes, quail, curlew, snipe, duck, and the usual varieties of cranes and parrots, are common; while the valuable marabout bird and the ostrich are frequently bagged by the badly-armed and worse-shooting Mandingos and Jolloffs.

CHAPTER III.

The Slave Coast—Whydah—The Dahoman Palaver of 1876—The Dahoman Army—An Unpleasant Bedfellow—The Snake House—Dahoman Fetishism—Various Gods—A Curious Ceremony—Importunate Relatives—The Dahoman Priesthood.

Towards the end of the year 1879 I visited Whydah, the seaport of Dahomey, on the Slave Coast. Between Whydah and the boundary of the Gold Coast Colony, now advanced to Flohow, about two miles beyond the old smuggling port of Danoe, are the ancient slave stations of Porto Seguro, Bageida, Little Popo, and Grand Popo; and the lagoon system, which commences with the Quittah Lagoon to the east of the river Volta, extends along the whole of this coast as far as Lagos. These lagoons are however gradually silting up, and this movement is proceeding so rapidly that already canoes can only pass from Elmina Chica to Porto Seguro during the rainy season, the old bed of the lagoon being a vast arid plain during the summer.

Passing the clump of trees three miles east of Grand Popo known as Mount Pulloy, and which is one of the principal landmarks of this lowlying coast, we anchor off the town of Whydah, eleven miles from Grand Popo. The landing here is very bad, the surf being worse than at any other port in West Africa, and sharks abound. In fact in the spring of 1879 the canoemen employed by the different trades at this place struck work, so many of their number having been devoured by these denizens of the deep.

The lagoon at Whydah is a quarter of a mile in breadth and from four to five feet deep; it is separated from the sea by a sand-ridge, 880 yards broad. On this sand-bank stand the stores and sheds of the different mercantile firms, French, English, and German; but the traders are not allowed by the Dahomans to live there, and after business hours they have to cross over to the town of Whydah, which lies a mile and a half inland on the northern shore of the lagoon.

The king of Dahomey is the only absolute monarch known in West Africa, the power of all the other negro potentates being limited by the influence and authority of the principal chiefs and captains, as that of the king of Ashanti is limited by the dukes of Ashanti, but he of Dahomey knows no other law than that of his own sweet will. Even the European traders who reside at Whydah are to a considerable extent subject to the native laws, or in other words to the king’s pleasure, and none of them would be allowed to leave the country without permission.

The king has some knowledge of European methods of raising a revenue, and an ad valorem duty is imposed on imported goods, while each vessel on entering the port has to pay a certain quantity of goods, assessed according to the number of her masts, to the king. To the east and west of Whydah stake and wattle fences extend across the lagoon, closing all passage except through small openings, where are stationed his Majesty’s revenue officers, who stop and examine all canoes passing through, and frequently help themselves to anything that takes their fancy. Little Popo and Grand Popo are both claimed by the king of Dahomey, but are really independent. As the natives of these towns will not acknowledge him as suzerain he periodically makes raids upon villages lying on the northern side of the lagoon. The two towns themselves being situated on the sand-bank are safe from attack, as, since the Dahomans attacked Grand Popo by water and were defeated, it is a law that no Dahoman warrior shall enter a canoe.

In 1876 we had a difference with the king of Dahomey. In the early part of that year Messrs. F. and A. Swanzy’s agent at Whydah, an English gentleman, was maltreated by order of the caboceer of the town, and subsequently sent to Abomey, the capital, as a prisoner. There he was treated with every indignity, compelled to dance before the king’s wives, and was daily dragged out, bareheaded, to be present at the execution of criminals or sacrifice of human victims, hints not being spared that he might shortly prepare himself for a similar fate. Eventually, after being mulcted of money and goods, he was suffered to escape.

As a compensation for this outrage on a British subject, Commodore Hewett, who commanded the West African squadron, demanded a fine of one thousand puncheons of palm-oil, and threatened to blockade the coast from Adaffia to Lagos if it were not forthcoming. The king refused to pay the fine, and the coast was blockaded from July 1st. Both the Dahomans and the British residents in West Africa anticipated that war would ensue. The king had impediments placed in the lagoon at Whydah and collected bodies of Amazons in the vicinity of that town. On our side the system of lagoons between Lagos and Dahomey was surveyed by naval officers, and it was found that small steamers could ascend to within thirty miles of Abomey. In September 1876 the Dahoman troops advanced towards Little Popo, and destroyed several villages in that neighbourhood; an attack on the British settlement at Quittah was also threatened.

The blockade continued till 1877, when a French firm at Whydah, rather than suffer their trade to remain at a standstill, paid, in the name of the king, a first instalment of two hundred puncheons of palm-oil. The whole of this was lost in the SS. Gambia, which was wrecked on the Athol Rock off Cape Palmas. This was the first and last instalment ever paid by, or for, the King of Dahomey; and in 1878 and 1879, when a second instalment was demanded, the King flatly refused to pay anything. The blockade, however, was not renewed.

Thus affairs remain at the present day. For an outrage on a British subject we demand compensation, a portion of the sum demanded is paid by a French house, and the matter is allowed to drop. This is almost a repetition of what occurred with regard to the Ashanti war indemnity. The Ashanti envoys who signed the conditions of peace paid to Sir Garnet Wolseley 2,000 ounces out of the 50,000 demanded, and promised to pay the rest by quarterly instalments. When the first became due an officer was sent to Coomassie with an escort of constabulary to receive it, and it was obtained without trouble; on the third occasion, when the same officer, Captain Baker, was sent, the King said the gold was not ready. Captain Baker replied that he would leave next day at noon whether the gold was forthcoming or not. On the day following he paraded his men and marched out amid hootings and derisive laughter, but when he had reached the Ordah river runners overtook him with the gold dust. The Colonial Government, however, thought it would not be advisable to send for any more instalments, and no more have been paid. West African natives are now beginning to regard Great Britain as a power which is satisfied with threatening punishment, and one that would not go to any trouble to obtain actual redress, especially where the offending state was powerful.

It was indeed whispered in official circles on the Gold Coast that an expedition to Abomey would have been undertaken but for the opposition of the French Government. There is no doubt that the French are a little sore at the withdrawal of our offer to give them our possessions on the Gambia river, and this has been shown by their endeavouring to intimidate the people of Catanoo into hoisting the French flag, and, later, by their occupation of the island of Matacong near Sierra Leone; but as far as regards Whydah neither France nor any other European power has any claim to any portion of its soil.

The annexation of Whydah would not be a difficult matter, and that is the only real obstacle to our possessing a compact colony extending from Assinee to Lagos. We should find allies in the Egbas of Abbeokuta, the people of Grand and Little Popo, and in the inhabitants of Whydah itself, who, in the last century, were an independent people, and who still bear no goodwill to their conquerors. The Amazons are the élite of the Dahoman army, and they have shown at Abbeokuta and elsewhere that they can fight with a ferocity that more resembles the blind rage of beasts of prey than human courage. Their number is variously estimated at from 15,000 to 20,000, and their warlike spirit is kept alive by a yearly war which commences every April. Numbers of the male prisoners made in these periodical wars are drafted into the Dahoman army, so that it may reasonably be supposed that a considerable portion of the male army corps is but luke-warm in its fealty. The whole Dahoman army is estimated at 60,000 soldiers, all of whom carry fire-arms, and a great number breach-loaders, the importation of which has of late years been carried on extensively at all parts of the West Coast.

In 1876 it was proposed that a flotilla should ascend the lagoons from Lagos to within thirty miles of Abomey and there disembark troops. As however all that we should require would be the possession of Whydah it seems objectless to proceed to Abomey, where we should have to attack the enemy in the midst of his resources, and where, if we did suffer a reverse, it would be irretrievable and none could escape. A much less dangerous plan would be to land, unexpectedly, at Grand Popo (the Whydah surf making the disembarcation of troops there out of the question), a small force of from 800 to 1,000 men. These men, proceeding by lagoon, would be in Whydah in two hours: there are no Dahoman troops there, and there would be no resistance. As Abomey is sixty miles from Whydah, a day and a-half would elapse before intelligence of this occupation could reach the King, two days at least would be occupied in mustering the army and performing the fetish ceremonies necessary before commencing a war; and the army would be another day and a-half on the march downwards, so that five days would elapse between the entry of British troops into the town and the arrival of the enemy. It is not at all improbable that if Whydah were occupied in force the King, who is not by any means ignorant of the power of Great Britain, would make the best of a bad business and cede it to us with what grace he could. In any case by seizing his solitary port we should make him entirely dependent upon us for the African necessaries of life, viz., rum, tobacco, and gunpowder, and by cutting off his supplies could soon bring him to terms. Our territorial possessions in West Africa will surely increase, and as they do so and fresh tribes are brought under our rule, some scheme of disarmament similar to that carried out in South Africa will have to be enforced. By occupying the Slave Coast we should be able to anticipate events by prohibiting the importation of arms now, and at the same time we should consolidate our West African possessions.

In Whydah are the remains of several so-called forts, some of which are still inhabited, though the majority have fallen into disuse. The principal are the English, French, and Portuguese forts, and consist of swish buildings surrounded by loop-holed walls. They were built early in the last century, when the King of Whydah, which was then an independent state, allotted portions of ground to each nationality for trading purposes. These old buildings, like all similar ones in West Africa, are garnished with dozens of obsolete and useless guns.

Three out of the five districts into which the town of Whydah is divided derive their names from these forts, being called English Town, French Town, and Portuguese Town. The two remaining districts are called Viceroy’s Town and Charchar Town. Each district is under the superintendence of a yavogau or caboceer, who is responsible for everything that occurs in his district.

While at Whydah I stayed at the French factory, and there I had a rather unpleasant adventure on the night of my arrival. It was a very close night, and I was sleeping in a grass hammock slung from the joists of the roof, when I was awakened by something pressing heavily on my chest. I put out my hand and felt a clammy object. It was a snake. I sprang out of the hammock with more agility than I have ever exhibited before or since, and turned up the lamp that was burning on the table. I then discovered that my visitor was a python, from nine to ten feet in length, who was making himself quite at home, and curling himself up under the blanket in the hammock. I thought it was the most sociable snake I had ever met, and I like snakes to be friendly when they are in the same room with me, because then I can kill them the more easily; so I went and called one of my French friends to borrow a stick or cutlass with which to slay the intruder. When I told him what I purposed doing he appeared exceedingly alarmed, and asked me anxiously if I had yet injured the reptile in any way. I replied that I had not, but that I was going to. He seemed very much relieved, and said it was without doubt one of the fetish snakes from the snake-house, and must on no account be harmed, and that he would send and tell the priests, who would come and take it away in the morning. He told me that a short time back the master of a merchant-vessel had killed a python that had come into his room at night, thinking he was only doing what was natural, and knowing nothing of the prejudices of the natives, and had in consequence got into a good deal of trouble, having been imprisoned for four or five days and made to pay a heavy fine.

Next morning I went to see the snake-house. It is a circular hut, with a conical roof made of palm-branches, and contained at that time from 200 to 250 snakes. They were all pythons, and of all sizes and ages; the joists and sticks supporting the roof were completely covered with them, and looking upwards one saw a vast writhing and undulating mass of serpents. Several in a state of torpor, digesting their last meal, were lying on the ground; and all seemed perfectly tame, as they permitted the officiating priest to pull them about with very little ceremony.

Ophiolotry takes precedence of all other forms of Dahoman religion, and its priests and followers are most numerous. The python is regarded as the emblem of bliss and prosperity, and to kill one of these sacred boas is, strictly speaking, a capital offence, though now the full penalty of the crime is seldom inflicted, and the sacrilegious culprit is allowed to escape after being mulcted of his worldly goods, and having “run-a-muck” through a crowd of snake-worshippers armed with sticks and fire-brands. Any child who chances to touch, or to be touched by, one of these holy reptiles, must be kept for the space of one year at the fetish house under the charge of the priests, and at the expense of the parents, to learn the various rites of ophiolotry and the accompanying dancing and singing.

Fetishism in Dahomey is entirely different to fetishism on the Gold Coast, and more nearly approaches idolatry, as the unsubstantial shadows and apocryphal demons, which are worshipped and dreaded by the Fantis and Ashantis, are on the Slave Coast replaced by images and tangible objects. Before every house in Whydah one may perceive a cone of baked clay, sometimes large and sometimes small, the apex of which is discoloured with libations of palm-wine, palm-oil, &c. This is the fetish Azoon, who protects streets, houses, and buildings of every description.