Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2

The baptism of D. Alvaro I. (1491), the founding of the cathedral at S. Salvador (1534), the appointment of the Bishop and Chapter, and their transfer to São Paulo de Loanda (1627), have already been alluded to.

According to Fathers Carli and Merolla, Pope Alexander VII. sent twelve to fifteen Capuchins and apostolic missioners, who baptized the King and Queen of Congo and the Count of Sonho. Between A.D. 1490 and 1690 were the palmy days of Christianity in Congo-land, and for two centuries it was more or less the state religion. After this great effort missionary zeal seems to have waxed cold, and disestablishment resulted, as happens in such cases, from unbelief within and violent assaults from without. Under the attacks of the Dutch and French the Church seems to have lost ground during the eighteenth century. In A.D. 1682 the number of propagandists in Sonho fell from a father superior and six missioners to two (Merolla). In A.D. 1700 James Barbot found at Sonho only two Portuguese friars of the Order of Bernardins. In A.D. 1768 the Loango Mission was established, and in A.D. 1777 the fathers were followed by four Italian priests sent by the Propaganda for the purpose of re-christianizing Sonho. Embarking at La Rochelle they entered the Nzadi, where one died of poison, and the survivors escaped only by stratagem. Christianity fell before the old heathenism, and in 1814 we find the King of Congo, D. Garcia V., complaining to His Most Faithful Majesty that missioners were sadly wanted. Captain Tuckey's "Expedition" (A.D. 1816) well sets forth the spiritual destitution of the land. He tells us that three years before his arrival some missionaries had been murdered by the Sohnese; the only specimen he met was an ignorant half-caste with a diploma from the Capuchins of Loanda, and a wife plus five concubines. In 1863 I found that all traces of Christianity had disappeared.

These reverends—who were allowed to dispense with any "irregularity" except bigamy or wilful murder, and "to read forbidden books except Machiavel,"—took the title of Nganga Mfumo—Lord Medicine-man. In the fulness of early zeal they built at S. Salvador the cathedral of Santa Cruz, a Jesuit College, a Capuchin convent, the residence of the father superior, maintained by the King of Portugal; a religious house for the Franciscans, an establishment for the Bishop and his Chapter, and half-a-dozen stone churches. All these edifices have long been in ruins.

Father Cavazzi da Monte Cuccoli, Denis de Carli, and Merolla, themselves missioners, have left us ample accounts of the ecclesiastical rule which, during its short tenure of office, bore a remarkable family resemblance to that of the Jesuit missions in South America. The religious despotism was complete, a tyranny grossly aggravated by the credulity, the bigotry, and the superstition,—I will not say of the age, because such things are of all ages, but of the imperfect education which the age afforded. There was no improvement, but rather a deterioration from the days of Pliny. One father tells the converts that comets forbode ill to the world. Another describes a bird not much unlike a sparrow, at first sight it seems wholly black, but upon a nearer view it looks blue; the excellency of its song is that it harmoniously and articulately pronounces the name of Jesus Christ. A third remarks, "they (the heathen) are excited by the heavens forming a cross under the zone; they are excited by the mountains which have the cross carved on them, without knowing by whom; they are excited by the earth which draws the crucifix in its fruit called Nicefo." Yet all these things are of little force to move the hearts of those Gentiles who scoffingly cry, "When we are sick, forsooth, the wood of this cross will cure us!" Another father, resolving to denounce certain heathen practices, placed on the Feast of Purification an image of the Virgin in relievo upon the altar, and "with a dagger struck through her breast on which the blood followed:" like Mark Antony, he "improved the occasion," and sent home the fathers of families to thrash their wives and daughters who were shut up in the "paint houses." It is gravely related how a hungry friar dines copiously on fish with an angel; how another was saved by the "father of miracles, the glorious Saint Anthony of Padua," whom another priest, taking as his patron, sees before his hammock. A woman, bearing a child in her arms and supposed to be the Virgin, attends the Portuguese army, and she again appears in the shape of a "beautiful beggar." The miraculous resurrection of a boiled cock is gravely chronicled. A certain man lived 380 years "at the intercession of Saint Francis d'Assise." Of course, the missioners saw water-monsters in the Congo River. A child "came from his mother's womb with a beard and all his teeth, perhaps to show he was born into the world grown old in vice." A certain scoffer "being one day to pass a river with two companions, was visibly taken up by an invisible hand into the air. One of his companions, going to take hold of him by the feet, had such a cuff given him that he fell down in the boat, and the offender was seen no more." Father Merolla talks of a breed in the Cabo Verde Islands "between bulls and she-asses, which they compassed by binding a cow's hide upon the latter:" it would be worth inquiring if this was ever attempted, and it might add to our traditions about the "Jumart." And the tale of the elephant-hunters deceiving the animals by anointing themselves with their droppings deserves investigation. Wounds of poisoned arrows are healed by that which produced them. A woman's milk cures the venomous foam which cobras spit into the eyes. A snake as big as a beam kills and consumes men with its look. An "ill liver," reprimanded by his father for vicious inclinations, fires a pistol at him; the rebound of the bullet from the paternal forehead, which remains whole, severely wounds the would-be parricide: the ablest surgeons cannot heal the hurt, and the flesh ever continues to be sore and raw upon the forehead, acting like the brand of Cain.

It is said that two of a trade never agree, and accordingly we find the hottest wrath of the missioners vented upon their rival brethren, the Ngangas or medicine-men in Africa, and the Pages or Tupi doctors in South America. The priestly presence deprives an idol of all its powers, the sacerdotal power annihilates all charms and devices, "thereby showing that the performances of Christ's ministers are always above those of the devil's." These "Scinghili," or "Gods of the Earth" (magicians), can sink boats, be ferried over rivers by crocodiles, and "converse with tigers, serpents, lions and other wild animals." The "great ugly wizards" are "sent martyrs to the devil" on all possible occasions. One father soundly belabours one of these "wicked Magi" with the cord of his order, invoking all the while the aid of Saint Michael and the rest of the saints: he enters the "hellish tabernacle, arming himself frequently with the sign of the cross," but he retreats for fear of a mischief from the "poor deluded pagans,"—showing that he is, after all, but an "unbelieving Thomas." On the other hand, the wizards solidly revenged themselves by killing and eating Father Philip da Salesia. And the deluded ones must have found some difficulty in discovering the superiority of exotic over indigenous superstitions. When there is a calm at sea the sailors stick their patron against the mast, and kneeling before him say, "Saint Antony, our countryman, you shall be pleased to stand there, till you have given us a fair wind to continue our voyage!" A certain bishop of Congo makes the sign of the cross upon a "banyan-tree," whereupon it immediately died, like the fig-tree cursed by our-Saviour. A ship is "sunk in a trice" for not having a chaplain on board her. The missioners strongly recommend medals, relics, Agni-Dei, and palm-leaves consecrated on Palm Sundays. They rage furiously against and they flog those who wear "wizards' mats," against magic cords fastened round young children as amulets, and against the teeth and bones of animals, and cloth made from the rind of certain trees carried as preservatives from disease and supernatural influences: even banners in burial-places are "superstitious and blamable." They claim the power of stopping rain by cursing the air, and of producing it by prayer, and by "a devout procession to Our Lady of Pinda," a belief truly worthy of the Nganga; and a fast ship is stranded that "men may learn to honour holidays better." When the magicians swear falsely they either burst like Judas or languish and die—"a warning to be more cautious how they jest with God." An old hag, grumbling after a brutish manner, proceeds to bewitch a good father to death by digging a hole and planting a certain herb. The ecclesiastic resolved to defeat her object by not standing long in one place. He remembers the saying of the wise man, "Mulier nequam plaga mortis;" and at last by ordering her off in the name of the Blessed Trinity and the Holy Virgin, "withal gently blowing towards her," she all of a sudden giving three leaps, and howling thrice, flies away in a trice. The Bolungo or Chilumbo oath or ordeal is, of course, a "hellish ceremony." Demons play as active a part in Africa as in China. The Portuguese nuncio permits the people in their simplicity to light candles before and to worship the so-called "Bull of the Blessed Sacrament," that by which Urban VIII. allowed the Congo kings to be crowned after the Catholic manner by the Capuchins, because the paper bears the "venerable effigies."

Priests may be good servants, but they are, mundanely speaking, bad masters. The ecclesiastical tyranny exercised upon the people from the highest to the lowest goes far to account for the extinction of Christianity in the country where so much was done to spread it. The kings of Congoland, who "tread on the lion in the kingdom of their mothers" must abjectly address their spiritual lords. "I conjure you, prostrate at your holy feet, to hearken to my words." Whilst the friars talk of "that meekness which becomes a missioner," their unwise and unwarrantable interference extends to the Count of Sonho himself; whose election was not valid unless published in the church, owning withal that, "though a Black, he is an absolute Prince; and not unworthy of a Crown, though he were even in Italy, considering the number of his Servants and the extent of his Dominions." They issue eight ordinances or "spiritual memorandums" degrading governors of cities and provinces who are not properly married, who neglect mass, or who do not keep saints' festivals. Flogging seems to have been the punishment of all infractions of discipline, for those who used "magic guards" to their fields instead of "setting the sign of the Cross;" and for all who did not teach their children "to repeat, so many times a day, the Rosary or the Crown, in honour of the Blessed Virgin, to fast on Saturdays, to eat no flesh on Wednesdays, and such things used among Christians." One of the Mwanis (governors) refuses to grub up and level with his own hands a certain grove where the "hellish trade" (magic) was practised; he is commanded to discipline himself in the church during the whole time of celebrating mass. If the governor is negligent in warning the people that a missioner has arrived, "he will receive a deserved punishment, for we make it our business to get such a person removed from his employment, even within his year,"—a system of temporal penalties affixed to spiritual lâches not unknown elsewhere. The following anecdote will show the style of reproof. Father Benedict da Belvedere, a Neapolitan who had preached at Rome and was likewise confessor to the nuns, heard the chief elector, one of the principal nobles, asking the heretical question, "Are we not all to be saved by baptism?" A "sound box on the ear" was the reply, and it led to a tumult. The head of the mission sent for the offended dignitary, and offered him absolution if he would sincerely recant his words and beg pardon of the churchman militant. The answer was, "That would be pleasant indeed; he was the aggressor, yet I must make the excuse! Must I receive a blow, and, notwithstanding, be thought to have done wrong?" But the peace-maker explained that the blow was given not to offend, but to defend from hearkening to heresies; that it was administered, moreover, out of paternal affection by a spiritual father, whom it did not mis-become, to a son who was not dishonoured by receiving it. The unfortunate elector not only suffered in the ear, but was also obliged to make an abject apology, and to kiss the offender's feet before he was re-admitted to communion. At Maopongo the priests lost favour with the court and the women by whipping the queen, and, by the same process they abated the superhuman pretensions of the blacksmith.

When the chiefs and princes were so treated, what could the subjects expect? The smallest ecclesiastical faults were punished with fining and a Talmudic flogging, and for disobedience, a man was sent "bound to Brazil, a thing they are more than ordinarily afraid of." A man taking to wife, after the Mosaic law, a woman left in widow-hood by his kinsman, is severely scourged, and the same happens to a man who marries his cousin, besides being deprived of a profitable employment. Every city and town in Sonho had a square with a central cross, where those who had not satisfied the Easter command or who died unconfessed were buried without privilege of clergy. The missioners insist upon their privilege of travelling free of expense, and make a barefaced use of the corvée. The following is the tone of a mild address to the laity: "Some among you are like your own maccacos or monkeys amongst us who, keeping possession of anything they have stolen, will sooner suffer themselves to be taken and killed, than to let go their prey. So impure swine wallow in their filth and care not to be cleansed."

A perpetual source of trouble was of course the slave-trade: negroes being the staple of the land, and ivory the other and minor item, the great profits could not fail to render it the subject of contention. The reasons why the Portuguese never succeeded in making themselves masters of Sonho are reduced by the missioner annalists to three. Firstly, the opposition of the people caused by fear; secondly, the objections of the Sonhese to buying arms and ammunition; and, thirdly, the small price paid by the Portuguese for "captives." The "Most Reverend Cardinal Cibo," writing in the name of the Sacred College, complained that the "pernicious and abominable abuse of slave-selling" was carried on under the eyes of the missioners, and peremptorily ordered them to remedy the evil. Finding this practically impossible, the holy men salved their consciences by ordering their flocks not to supply negroes to the heretical Hollanders and English, "whose religion is so very contrary to ours," but to the Portuguese, who would "withdraw the poor souls out of the power of Lucifer." One father goes so far, in his fear of heretical influences, as to remunerate by the gift of a slave the dealer Ferdinando Gomez, who had supplied him with "a flask of wine for the sacrament and some other small things," yet he owns F. Gomez to be a rogue.

As the Portuguese would not pay high prices like the heretics, disturbances resulted, and these were put down by the desperate expedient of shutting the church-doors—a suicidal act not yet quite obsolete. Whereupon the Count of Sonho, we are told, "changed his countenance almost from black to yellow," and complained to the bishop at Loanda that the sacraments were not administered: the appeal was in vain, and, worse, an extra aid was sent to the truculent churchmen. Happily for them, the small- pox broke out, and the ruler was persuaded by his subjects to do the required penance. Appearing at the convent, unattended, with a large rope round his neck, clad in sackcloth, crowned with thorns, unshod, and carrying a crucifix, he knelt down and kissed the feet of the priest, who said to him, "If thou hast sinned like David, imitate him likewise in thy repentance!"

The schismatics caused abundant trouble Captain Cornelius Clas "went about sowing heretical tares amidst the true corn of the Gospel;" amongst other damnable doctrines and subtleties, this nautical and volunteer theologian persuaded the blacks, whom he knew to be desirous of greater liberty in such matters, that baptism is the only sacrament necessary to salvation, because it takes away original sin, as the blood of the Saviour actual sin. He furthermore (impudently) disowned the real presence in the consecrated Host; he invoked Saint Anthony, although his tribe generally denies that praying to saints can be of any use to man; and he declared that priests should preach certain doctrines (which, by the way, were perniciously heretical). Thus in a single hour he so prevailed upon those miserable negroes that their hearts became quite as black as their faces. An especially offensive practice of the Hollanders, in the eyes of the good shepherds, was that of asking the feminine sheep for a whiff of tobacco—it being a country custom to consider the taking a pipe from a woman's mouth a "probable earnest of future favours." When an English ship entered the river, the priests forbade by manifesto the sale of slaves to the captain, he being a Briton, ergò a heretic, despite the Duke of York. The Count of Sonho disobeyed, and was excommunicated accordingly: he took his punishment with much patience, although upon occasions of reproof he would fly into passions and disdains; he was reconciled only after obliging 400 couples that lived in concubinage to lawful wedlock, and thus a number of "strayed souls was reduced to matrimony."

We can hardly wonder that, under such discipline, a large ecclesiastical body was necessary to "maintain the country in its due obedience to the Christian faith," and that, despite their charity in alms and their learning, no permanent footing was possible for the strangers. Nor can we be astonished that the good fathers so frequently complain of being poisoned. On one occasion a batch of six was thus treated near Bamba. In this matter perhaps they were somewhat fanciful, as the white man in India is disposed to be. One of them, for instance cured himself with a "fruit called a lemon" and an elk-hoof, from what he took to be poison, but what was possibly the effect of too much pease and pullet broth. In "O Muata Cazembe "(pp. 65-66), we find that the Asiatic Portuguese attach great value to the hoof of the Nhumbo (A. gnu), they call it "unha de grãbesta," and use it even in the gotta-coral (epilepsy).

And yet many of these ecclesiastics, whom Lopez de Lima justly terms "fabulistas," were industrious and sensible men, where religion was not concerned. They carefully studied the country, its "situation, possessions, habitations, and clothing." They formed always outside their faith the justest estimate of their black fellow-creatures. I cannot too often repeat Father Merolla's dictum, "The reader may perceive that the negroes are both a malicious and subtle people that spend the most part of their time in circumventing and deceiving."

Nor has spiritual despotism been confined to the Catholic missions in West Africa: certain John Knoxes in the Old Calabar River have repeated, especially in the case of the king "young Eyo," whom they excluded from communion, all the abuses and the errors of judgment of the seventeenth century with the modifications of the nineteenth. And we must not readily endorse Dr. Livingstone's professional opinion. "In view of the desolate condition of this fine missionary field, it is more than probable that the presence of a few Protestants would soon provoke the priests, if not to love, to good works." Such is not the history of our propagandism about the Cape of Good Hope. Dr. Gustav Fritsch ("The Natives of South Africa," 1872), thus speaks of the missionary Livingstone, who must not be confounded with the great explorer Livingstone: "A man who is borne onward by religious enthusiasm and a glowing ambition, without our being able to say which of these two levers works more powerfully in his soul. Certain it is that he endured more labours and overcame more geographical difficulties than any other African traveller either before or after him; yet it is also sure that, on account of the defective natural-historical education of the author, and the indiscreet partisanship for the natives against the settlers, his works have spread many false views concerning South Africa." This, I doubt not, will be the verdict of posterity. See "Anthropologia," in which are included the Proceedings of the London Anthropological Society (inaugurated 22 January, 1873. No. 1, October, 1873. London: Baillière, Tindall, and Co.) The Review (pp. 89-102), bears the well-known initials J. B. D., and it is not saying too much that no man in England is so well fitted as Dr. Davis to write it. I quote these passages without any feeling of disrespect for the memory of the great African explorer. Truth is a higher duty even than generous appreciation of a heroic name, and the time will come when Negrophilism must succumb to Fact.

Chapter XVII. — Concluding Remarks.

I have thus attempted to trace a picture of the Congo River in the latter days of the slave-trade, and of its lineal descendant, "L'Immigration Africaine." The people at large are satisfied, and the main supporters of the traffic—the chiefs, the "medicine- men," and the white traders—have at length been powerless to arrest its destruction.

And here we may quote certain words of wisdom from the "Congo Expedition" in 1816: "It is not to be expected that the effects of abolition will be immediately perceptible; on the contrary, it will probably require more than one generation to become apparent: for effects, which have been the consequence of a practice of three centuries, will certainly continue long after the cause is removed." The allusion in the sentence which I have italicized, is of course, to the American exportation—domestic slavery must date from the earliest ages. These sensible remarks conclude with advocating "colonization in the cause of civilization;" a process which at present cannot be too strongly deprecated.

That the Nzadi is capable of supplying something better than slaves may be shown by a list of what its banks produce. Merolla says in 1682: "Cotton here is to be gathered in great abundance, and the shrubs it grows on are so prolific, that they never almost leave sprouting." Captain Tuckey ("Narrative," p. 120) declares "the only vegetable production at Boma of any consequence in commerce is cotton, which grows wild most luxuriantly, but the natives have ceased to gather it since the English have left off trading to the river," I will not advocate tobacco, cotton and sugar; they are indigenous, it is true, but their cultivation is hardly fitted to the African in Africa. Copper in small quantities has been brought from the interior, but the mineral resources of the wide inland regions are wholly unknown. If reports concerning mines on the plateau be trustworthy, there will be a rush of white hands, which must at once change, and radically change, all the conditions of the riverine country. Wax might be supplied in large quantities; the natives, however, have not yet learnt to hive their bees. Ivory was so despised by the slave-trade, that it was sent from the upper Congo to Mayumba and the other exporting harbours; demand would certainly produce a small but regular supply.

The two staples of commerce are now represented by palm-oil, which can be produced in quantities over the lowlands upon the whole river delta, and along the banks from the mouth to Boma, a distance of at least fifty direct miles. The second, and the more important, is the arachis, or ground-nut, which flourishes throughout the highlands of the interior, and which, at the time of my visit, was beginning to pay. As the experience of some thirty years on different parts of the West Coast has proved, both these articles are highly adapted to the peculiarities of the negro cultivator; they require little labour, and they command a ready, a regular, and a constant sale.

When time shall be ripe for a bonâ fide emigration, the position of Boma, at the head of the delta, a charming station, with healthy air and delicious climate, points it out as the head- quarters. Houses can be built for nominal sums, the neighbouring hills offer a sanatorium, and due attention to diet and clothing will secure the white man from the inevitable sufferings that result from living near the lower course.

With respect to the exploration of the upper stream, these pages, compared with the records of the "First Congo Expedition," will show the many changes which time has brought with it, and will suggest the steps most likely to forward the traveller's views. At some period to come explorers will follow the line chosen by the unfortunate Tuckey; but the effects of the slave-trade must have passed away before that march can be made without much obstruction. When Lieutenant Grandy did me the honour of asking my advice, I suggested that he might avoid great delay and excessive outlay by "turning" the obstacle and by engaging "Cabindas" instead of Sierra Leone men. At the Royal Geographical Society (Dec. 14th, 1874) he thus recorded his decision: "For the guidance of future travellers in the Congo country, I would suggest that all the carriers be engaged at Sierra Leone, where any number can be obtained for 1s. 3d. a day. From my experience of them I can safely say they will be found to answer every requirement, and the employment of them would render an expedition entirely independent of the natives, who, by their cowardice and constant desertion, entailed upon us such heavy expenses and serious delays. My conviction, after nearly four years of travel upon the West African coast, is this: if Sierra Leone men be used, they must be mixed with Cabindas and with Congoese "carregadores," registered in presence of the Portuguese authorities at S. Paulo de Loanda.

I conclude with the hope that the great Nzadi, one of the noblest, and still the least known of the four principal African arteries, will no longer be permitted to flow through the White Blot, a region unexplored and blank to geography as at the time of its creation, and that my labours may contribute something, however small, to clear the way for the more fortunate explorer.

Appendix