path: root/79409-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79409 ***
[Illustration]


                                ABEOKUTA
                                  AND
                        THE CAMAROONS MOUNTAINS.

                            An Exploration.

                                   BY
                           RICHARD F. BURTON,
 VICE PRES. ANTHROP. SOC. OF LONDON; GOLD MEDALLIST, GEOG. SOCS., PARIS
                              AND LONDON;
      F.R.G.S. LONDON; M.A.S.; M.A.S. BOMBAY; M. ETHNO. S. LONDON.

 “Geography, though an earthly study, is a heavenly subject.”—_Burke._

                           _IN TWO VOLUMES._

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:
             TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
                                 1863.

               [_The right of Translation is reserved._]


   LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING
                                 CROSS.


                                   TO
                            MY BEST FRIEND,
                                MY WIFE,
                  THESE PAGES ARE LOVINGLY INSCRIBED.


  Sic ego desertis possim bene vivere sylvis.

   Quo nulla humano sit via trita pede.

  Tu mihi curarum requies, in nocte vel atrâ

   Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.




                                PREFACE.

                               * * * * *


It is an explorer’s duty to record as well as to receive impressions of
what appears novel to him. Amongst the English, Robert Bruce and Mungo
Park; Adanson and the Abbé Rochon amongst the French; and amongst the
Germans, Humboldt, the ‘Prince of Travellers,’ were so mindful of this
obligation, that they spent long years in polishing their journals; and
they owe at least as much—if not more—of their enduring celebrity to
their admirable descriptions as to the extent of their discoveries and
the accuracy of their observations. Let us follow—however humbly—in
their wake without repining. Such, however, is by no means the case with
contemporaries: in these days every little leader of an expedition,
forgetting that ‘_scribere est agere_,’ finds a ready salve for sore
vanity by writing as it were under protest, and by assuming the
superiority of one who boasts that it is his peculiar province to do—not
to write.

But, _quorsum hæc tam putida tendunt?_ Abeokuta—Understone—the present
capital of the Egba or Aku race, and without comparison the most
important position in the broad lands which we know by the name of
Yoruba, is, as might be expected, a ‘_trita via_.’ Four volumes upon the
subject have been alluded to in the following pages. Two of these are by
the weaker sex; and the authoresses, who are not travellers, have
produced neat little drawing-room sketches, all _couleur de rose_; the
African as you see him upon the walls of the Royal Academy, now dressed
up and _musqué_, now subjected to the old stock horrors—slave-driving,
for instance—which he is made to endure with all the gestures of a
Briton: it is, in fact, Ethiopia viewed through European eyes—Africa by
the ‘own artist’ of the ‘Illustrated News.’ The other two are in the
missionary-African line; they, of course, run in a well-known groove.
Without quoting the old saw, ‘_semper aliquid novi ex Africâ_,’ there is
still much to say upon the well-worn subject of Abeokuta. And the tale
of an unenthusiastic traveller, who tells the truth as far as truth lies
in him, cannot fail, even when treating of Yoruba, to convey some novel
facts.

The land which for fifteen years has interested us by its rumoured
progress—the reverend and learned author of ‘Westward Ho!’ speaks of the
blood-stained hosts of Dahome being rolled back by ‘Christian Abeokuta’
at a time when there was about one convert, or ‘professor,’ to one
thousand of the heathenry—and by the equally fanciful reports that it
will supply our idle looms with cotton, has now entered into fresh and
closer relations with the British empire. Lagos, distant about sixty
miles from the head-quarters of the Egbas, has become an English colony,
and will necessarily influence, for weal or for woe, all adjacent
countries. It may extend its moral force throughout Yoruba, and become
valuable, not only as a depôt of, and an outlet for, trade, but also, by
aiding to abolish slave exportation, and by causing human sacrifice and
petty wars to cease, it may save our country a considerable portion of
the million sterling annually expended upon the West African ‘coffin-
squadron.’ As yet, however, our steps have _not_ been in the right
direction. It will presently appear that we have petted our bantling
Abeokuta, and that the spoiled child has waxed fat and kicked—as the
proverb says—against the foreign pricks. We have aroused the ever
wakeful suspicions of the barbarian, and he has not been slow in
entering upon energetic measures: of this, however, more hereafter.

I have attempted to point out in these pages the simple measures—our
West African policy has hitherto erred rather by commission than by
omission—which, in my humble opinion, will secure our influence upon the
sea-board of Yoruba.

The Second Part of this work has been made a pendant to the First, and
the reader will readily perceive the reason. The Camaroons Mountains,
partially familiar to geographers for the last four hundred years, have
remained, as far as exploration is concerned, virgin ground with a
virgin flora, a virgin climate; in fact, virginal all. Captain John
Adams (p. 178, ‘Remarks on the Country extending from Cape Palmas to the
River Congo.’ London: 1823) may be quoted to prove this: ‘A few leagues
to the southward of Del Rey there are some moderately high hills, called
the high land of Camaroons, the altitudes of which have been much
magnified by some travellers, who were probably deceived in consequence
of the surrounding country being a few feet only above the level of the
sea, which gave them, in their eyes, a degree of consequence they would
not have merited had they been placed in an elevated country.’ Of late,
two stout-hearted attempts have been made to scale these glorious
heights, but by force of circumstances neither of them proved
successful. I could not but break a lance with a foe so formidable; and
fate willed the trial not to end in failure.

It was hardly, however, the mere ambition of leaving my mark, to _faire
époque_ on Western Africa, that impelled me to the task. The desire of
adventure was subsidiary to higher views. I need not now here enlarge
upon the movement lately set on foot in British India; suffice it to
say, there will not be, we progressists fondly believe, a single
European regiment stationed permanently, twenty years hence, on the
plains. If it be found advisable in comparatively salubrious Hindostan
to establish hill sanitaria, it becomes a necessity for the yellow-fever
haunted coast of Western Africa. And I hope to make it evident that the
Camaroons Mountains tract is admirably adapted, not only for a
sanitarium, but for a convict station, where those expecting tickets of
leave can undergo a fair trial, and where the incurables can be employed
in expiating, by useful labour, the outrages which they have committed
upon society. And, finally, a colony, selected from the 45,000 negroes,
who, instead of loafing about Canada—a Canadian once told me that if
anything could reconcile him to slavery it was the presence of these
fugitives—might here do valuable work in lumber cutting, cacao growing,
exporting the fibre and meal of the plaintain, and expressing cocoa-nut
and palm oil.

In the conclusion to Vol. II., I have attempted to suggest the readiest
and most efficient method of attaining a result so truly advisable.

The _personnel_ of our ‘international expedition,’ as we called it,
numbered six members, D. Calvo Atilano Iturburu, of Fernando Po; Messrs.
Saker and Smith, of the ‘Camaroons Mission;’ M. Gustav Mann, Government
botanist in West Africa; my factotum Selim Aga, and myself. We assumed
the right, concessible only in a ‘no man’s land,’ of christening the
several peaks: the loftiest was honoured with the name of our Most
Gracious Sovereign, and, from the highest Lady in the kingdom, we
gradually descended to friends and relatives.

The brief and popular notices of the vegetation upon the Camaroons
Mountains are exclusively the work of M. Mann. To the kindness of Sir
William Hooker I owe the list of specimens collected during our visit to
that interesting region; and Dr. Gray has obliged me with the names of
the small animals that were stuffed by Selim Aga. These important
additions are inserted in the Appendix, and I here record my gratitude
for all favours received.

The daily thermometric observations were registered by M. Mann, and
during his illness by Selim Aga under my inspection. Many of the
bearings taken for the map, which was protracted by Mr. George, of the
Royal Geographical Society, are the work of the Rev. A. Saker, whose
energetic assistance was one of the main causes of our success. Without
the aid of that gentleman, and of Messrs. Johnson and Pinnock, of
Victoria, our progress would indeed have been slow. Unfortunately we
were badly provided with instruments; neither chronometer, anemometer,
sympiesometer, nor mercurial barometer for correcting aneroids were in
the camp: I had applied for them, but they had not arrived. As in the
Hydrographic Office chart the main points visible from the sea have been
laid down by a satisfactory triangulation, we confined ourselves to the
prismatic compass; and I taped the road with a line supplied by Lieut.
Stokes, R.N., H.M.S. ‘Bloodhound.’ A pathway up the mountains is now, we
may say, permanently opened; Victoria Bay is within a few hours’ sail of
Fernando Po; and I may venture to promise that, if any questions of
interest are forwarded to me from Europe, they shall be answered to the
best of my power—life and health enduring—in the course of the next dry
season.

I assume nothing on this occasion beyond the modest character of a
reconnoitrer. A writer in the ‘Times’ has lately given to my last
African explorations in Harar and the Lake Regions the title of
reconnaissances. _C’est bien le mot_. I accept it as the best
description of my scanty contributions towards the extension of
geographical knowledge in the ‘dark continent,’ and accordingly it is
prefixed to the Second Part of this work.

It may be satisfactory to my friends to know that, on this occasion,
favoured by his own good fortune, or rather by the misfortunes of
others, an Englishman was the first who, standing upon Victoria
Mountain, gazed into the gigantic black chasm that yawned at his feet.
And—here I speak for my companions—it is also pleasant to reflect that
the name of Europeans will hereafter be respected in the region through
which we travelled.

The Appendices are—

  1st. A description of the Ambozes, or Camaroons Country, by M. J.
  Grazilhier, who in 1699 made a voyage to Old Calabar—extracted from
  Barbot.

  2nd. The journal of the late Mr. Merrick, of the Camaroons Mission,
  who, as far as is known, first attempted to ascend the mountain: it is
  borrowed from the ‘Baptist Missionary Herald.’

  3rd. Sir William Hooker’s list of the botanical specimens collected
  upon the Camaroons Mountains by M. Gustav Mann.

  4th. Dr. Gray’s descriptions of the animals forwarded to the British
  Museum, at the end of the Camaroons explorations.

  5th. Letters, official reports, and memorandum, on the high land of
  Camaroons, by the late Mr. M‘Gregor Laird and the Rev. A. Saker
  (reprinted from the Blue Book of 1857).

  6th. Meteorological observations, by M. Gustav Mann and Selim Aga.

  7th. Hypsometrical table.

With the firm expectation of seeing, _quam primum_, a sanitarium for the
feverish denizens of Lagos, the Oil Rivers, and Fernando Po, established
in this region of health and future plenty, and hoping that the public
will honour my labours with its approval, I relieve the reader from the
tedium of a longer preface.

                                                    RICHARD F. BURTON.

_Fernando Po_, 1863.




                               CONTENTS.

                               * * * * *


                            CHAPTER I.

                                                            PAGE

  FROM LAGOS TO ABEOKUTA                                       1

                           CHAPTER II.

  ENTRÉE INTO ABEOKUTA                                        61

                          CHAPTER III.

  PRESENTED AT COURT                                          99

                           CHAPTER IV.

  TOUCHING MATTERS RELIGIOUS AT ABEOKUTA                     158

                           CHAPTER V.

  THE USUAL SKETCH—GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL               222

                           CHAPTER VI.

  OUR SECOND VISIT TO THE KING                               249

                          CHAPTER VII.

  THE KING’S RETURN VISIT                                    275

                          CHAPTER VIII.

  THE DE OMNIBUS AND COTTON CHAPTER                          299




                                ABEOKUTA
                                  AND
                        THE CAMAROONS MOUNTAINS.

                               * * * * *

                               CHAPTER I.

                        FROM LAGOS TO ABEOKUTA.


After a flying survey of the ‘Oil Rivers’ in the amene delta of the
lovely Niger, I found myself stranded at Fernando Po Island, Bight of
Biafra, Gulf of Guinea, Western Intertropical Africa, and divided by the
thinnest of party-walls from Anti-Paradise. Nothing to do, and no
prospect of doing anything, which pleasant state of things endured
(_ohimè!_) from Wednesday the 2nd to Wednesday the 9th of October,
1861—a long, long, a very long week.

On the day last mentioned the commodore and senior officer of the West
African squadron compassionately offered me a lift to Lagos, the nearest
point where certain necessaries—a ‘cook-boy’ and a _batterie de
cuisine_, a carpenter, a diwan—the mention of this article nearly
revolutionized the colonist part of the island of Fernando Po—and many
other things were procurable. Before the next mail could arrive there
would be ample time to reach Abeokuta, and after enforced rest, the
prospect of such a visit was a joy. I had read much and heard more about
the ‘Town under the Stone,’ and the glowing hues in which the subject
had been depicted had conjured up in my mind a host of doubts that could
be laid only by means of that accurate organ, the eye. A nautico-
diplomatico-missionary visitation was, it had been rumoured, about to
take place, so there remained only to go and ‘see the fun.’ May the
reader find it as funny as I did!

About sunset-time of Thursday, H.M.S. ‘Arrogant,’ with, besides her
usual equipage, a certain person on board, glided out of the little cove
called Clarence, where she had anchored, past the Adelaide Islands,
alias Islas de Santa Isabel; past Cockburn, popularly called Kokpo Cove,
and more prettily Enseñada de Venus; past dwarf cliffs of red clay, with
a tall, thick capping of tangled trees; past Coal Bay, alias Bahia de
Carbon; past Point Bullen, alias Punta de los Frailes, with its _chevaux
de frise_ of tree trunks and its thick back-wall of blackish verdure;
and finally heading W.N.W. out into the open, where we once more
welcomed the bounding waves and the breathable atmosphere of old
Neptune’s domains. It may be here observed, that there are at present
three known names for every part and portion of the island. The
Portuguese and the older Iberian nomenclature having, as might be
expected, fallen into complete oblivion, the English settlers naturally
called things after their own fashion, neglecting the Bubis, or
_indigènes_, who, as usual with barbarians, have a profusion of
terminology for every feature that attracts the eye; whilst, in their
turn, the Spaniards equally and naturally preferred Castilian to the
‘harsh Runic’ of their predecessors.

Fernando Po still haunted us with its presence next morning, though we
had run upwards of one hundred miles: at times it may be distinctly seen
from Corisco Island, distant some forty-five leagues. To us the only
sign of its existence was a mysterious pile of slaty-blue nimbus looming
on the horizon, based broadly upon the main, and towering and tapering
high into the heavens. Such, doubtless, was the spectacle, Tristaõ vaz
Teyxeyra, called by the king for honour ‘O Tristaõ,’ which terrified the
crew whom stout-hearted Da Camera, surnamed Zargo, commanded.[1] The
days sped swiftly among the hospitable ‘Arrogants.’ On Monday the 14th
we were rocking and swinging in the eternal roll of the Lagos roadstead,
and on Tuesday the certain person, after kindly farewells, transferred
himself on board H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ Commander Bedingfield, R.N.

The day after—it was nearly full moon—brought forth a phenomenon whereat
I had reason to rejoice. All ‘old hands’ tell you that the sooner
‘seasoning fever’ introduces himself, the better. After long delay, he
appears in the shape of a bilious remittent, which probably will see the
last of you, and must, even, if merciful, leave you in a sad state of
what is popularly called ‘pull-down.’ The attack came on at 8 A.M.
Preceded by full head, dry skin, blue nails, cold finger tips, and other
normal symptoms, it was succeeded by nausea, by a rigor that lasted
barely thirty minutes, and by the pyrectic stage, which after an hour
and a half passed off in a profuse perspiration. There is nothing
unpleasant in these attacks; rather the contrary. The excitement of the
nerves is like the intoxication produced by a plentiful supply of strong
green tea; the brain becomes uncommonly active, peopled with a host of
visions, and the imagination is raised almost to Parnassus. There are
persons who rhyme under the inspiration of Musa Quartana, and M.
Alexandre Dumas _père_, in the wildest of his romances, the ‘_Voyage au
Caucase_,’ declares that his artist’s most dashing sketch was done with
a pulse beating higher than a hundred. Of course, the patient pays for
it when the fit passes off. The treatment adopted by Mr. Eales, surgeon
of H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ was simple, and so successful that I am induced
to publish it for the benefit of future feverists.[2]

At 8 A.M. on the morrow, the attack did not return—it is a favourable
sign when it defers itself: it delayed twelve hours, and then appeared
precisely in the same way, but not nearly so agreeably, pain in the
temples being now a decided characteristic, and it continued till 12
noon, causing a sleepless night. Next day showed its effects in a
surprising weakness and languor, which endured for a full week, making
one feel much in the condition of a pony that has passed its third year
in Sierra Leone. The vigorous treatment completely expelled the fiend:
it did not show on the third day, which, with the fifth, the seventh,
and the ninth, is held to be critical. Such attacks are by no means so
dangerous as an English bronchitis or influenza, but the debility
induced by them often leads to frequent relapses, and people will act up
to the bad old nursery rule, ‘starve a fever and feed a cold.’ My
experience in East Africa long ago untaught me that tenet, and I have
ever since preferred to support exhausted nature with essence of meat,
beef-tea, and, when such things are procurable, with champagne, brandy-
cum-soda, and ‘ye oldest hoc in ye cellar,’ _non sine_ tobacco if it can
be enjoyed. The Anglo-Indian superstition touching recurrence at ‘the
springs’ is here unknown, yet inveterate habit will make me careful to
prepare for _luna piena_ with a prophylactic—a fortnight of chinchonized
wine.

We were in the depth of the tornado season, and we were made to feel it.
Hardly had we returned to the ‘Prometheus’ on the night of the 21st,
than rain from the masses gathering in the north-east—here as in
Fernando Po it is _the_ quarter—began to fall in the usual sheets and
columns. Then came a premonitory thunder-crash, single, and sounding as
if the _fractus orbis_ were falling in. These solitary outbreaks of
violence are common on the coast, but they appear strange to Europeans.
After a few moments, a flash of lightning filled the firmament with
liquid blue fire, and a queer whizzing, like the shock of an aëriform
mass, or the ‘whistling Jack’ of a Lancaster gun, was succeeded by the
deafening booming report of a battery of Armstrongs, and detached noises
like the upsetting of stone waggons by the thousand. The bolt or fluid
had struck the fore-topmast; neglecting the vane, it had run down the
conductor, which it ripped away from its bearings—what would Sir S. H.
think of this?—and passing along the wire forestay, had separated into
two currents. One traversed the port nightheads, the other, following
the starboard chain-cable into the locker, filled the deck with rust-
dust, and gambolling playfully within three feet of the powder magazine,
that contained some two tons, made the men on watch think that they saw
smoke, and levant ‘in short metre.’ After taking this improper liberty,
the storm-king hauled off, and we heard him in the distance grumbling
like an old man-of-war’s man. A splinter from the foremast made a very
neat paper-knife for my wife.

The period between the 23rd and the 28th of October was passed—under the
hospitable but not water-tight roof of my friend Mr. M‘Coskry, then
acting-governor of Lagos—in various preparations for travel, and in the
enjoyment of Moslem society. ‘A small knot of us gathered to interchange
pleasant communings, whilst grace gave a fresh intenseness of longing.’
Yet El Islam is under a cloud in these regions: the young and vigorous
creed has still the proportions of a child. The number of converts has
been stated at 2000; it can hardly exceed 800. The mosque is still a
hut, the musical call of the Muezzin—how much more human and heart-
stirring than the clang of the brazen-tongued bell![3]—is yet unheard,
and the women of the Kafirs are allowed to display their bosoms in the
market-place. There were, however, several of the Safe Faith[4] who had
pilgrimaged to Meccah, and one man, a servant of the ‘Caboceer’ Kosoko,
had resided a dozen years at El Medinah, and had returned to infidel
Ekko, viâ Sawakin, Kordofan, Darfur, Wádái, Burnu, and Rabba. Many had
also travelled over the northern line from Kano and Sokoo to Tarabulus
or Tripoli. There were books amongst those Moslems, a Koran of Bombay
lithography, and sundry _risálát_ (treatises) of the Maliki school, to
which they all belong. Their manuscripts are written in the curious
semi-Cufic character, which is to them like what the Tondo-Mezzo-Gotico
is to these sheets. The ‘Allamah,’ or most learned, was the Muallim
Dáudá, who knew a little of the grammatical sciences, but who had not
reached the height of interpreting the Koran.

As our journey was to be by water, few impediments were necessary—a
collection of pots and pans, and supplies for the way. Only one servant
was required, and he was found in the person of Selim Aga. A native of
Tegullet, he had been carried when of tender years to Egypt, where he
had found a patron in my old friend, the benevolent Mr. Robert Thurburn
of Alexandria, now deceased. He had lived twelve and a half years in
Europe—where he had forgotten his mother-tongue—chiefly at a Scotch
school near Murtho, Aberdeenshire, and he returned to Africa in 1857
with that failure of failures, the Niger expedition. He proved himself
perfection; a Figaro, but—un-Figaro-like—honest, civil, and unpresuming:
he could cook, doctor, shave, ‘valet,’ garden, carpenter, shoot and
stuff birds, collect spirit specimens—in fact, he took all the trouble
of life off my hands. I at once made him my factotum, regretting to see
such a man wasted upon the barbarism of Lagos. Some years hence, when we
also shall have topographical engineers, and when exploration shall
become a profession, not, as at present, an affair of mere amateurship,
Selim Agas will be useful in cutting a path for the European pioneer
through outer Asia and Central Africa.[5]

After a fortnight all was ready for departure. The little party
consisted of Commander Bedingfield,—who, with that condescension which
characterizes every truly great man, had permitted me to form part of
his suite or train—Mr. Eales, and myself. The dog Sancho must precede
Mr. Williams, a ‘sassy,’ half-educated Egba interpreter to the
Government at Lagos, who, in his quality of interpreter, went on in a
canoe, preferring, _more Africano_, lying at full length to sitting
upright, and who intrigued like a black Talleyrand throughout the week.
Commander Bedingfield, who, and who only, believing in his own
omniscience touching African affairs, had, as will appear, sundry
affairs to settle, and was destined not to succeed in all and every of
them. The second, Mr. Eales, added to the natural wish of sight-seeing,
the _idée fixe_ that unicorns abound in Northern Yoruba. He had heard of
the animal from certain merchants resident at Lagos—one of them had
promised to provide him with a specimen—and he had read of it in the
matter-of-fact and highly imaginative pages of Mr. Bowen.[6] The tales
reported by this missionary-militant remind one of the Chinese tiger
with nine human heads, the ‘intelligent creature of a thousand souls,’
the dog-headed rhinoceros with six horns, the five-headed crocodile, the
bird with one eye, and the horse-like deer with leopard’s spots, white
head, and red tail. We read in ‘Central Africa’ of the Alakere, a tribe
three feet high, who surround their towns—as England is investing her
ships—with iron walls. Beyond them, and eastward of the Niger, are the
Alabiru, also clever smiths, and manufacturers of all the finest Sudan
blades: having inflexible tails, about six inches long, before sitting
down to work they with sharp sticks dig holes in the ground. Mr. Barnum
may save himself the 100,000 dollars which, as the story runs, he has
offered to a certain African traveller who told him how easy it would be
to engraft a simian termination to the human frame. There is also the
ashori-tree, a upas, under which plants will not grow, and which kills
birds when flying too near. Of course the gorilla exists, and is called
‘nákí.’ The Yorubans declare that it tears asunder the fingers of
captives, even as the Mpongwe of the Gaboon River make it pull the nails
from the human victims’ fingers and toes. The chimpanzee is certainly
found in dense forests, and being four feet high, is feared by the
people; as yet, however, we are so ignorant of the anthropoid apes that
the nákí may be a new and more formidable species of troglodytes. There
are subterranean races, humans, with four eyes, living south of Mandara;
and, finally, the Alabiwo, men-unicorns, with a small goat-like horn
projecting from the middle of the forehead. They are black, very
intelligent, and when captured, becoming ashamed of what some men wear
with such complacency, they hide the formation under a kerchief.

Yet after all the unicorn, like the great sea-serpent, has its
advocates; and it is not a little curious that many African tribes have
a distinct name for it.[7] However it may be, Mr. Eales left Abeokuta
_sans_ unicorn, and he has not yet, I believe, found it.

Three lines of road on the west of the Ogun River connect Abeokuta with
the youngest of our colonies, Lagos. The shortest, _viâ_ Ota and
Agbameya, is laid down at sixty-five miles in length. It is rugged, and
unfit for beasts of burden. Further west is the middle path, also swampy
and comparatively useless. The westernmost is the best, and can at times
be travelled on horseback. All of these routes, however, are flooded
during the rains, when the waters cut deep ruts in the hard clay. Even
at this season the best is hardly passable, mud and morass forming the
chief obstacles: it however opens in December, and remains so till
March. It would be worth while to explore for some line to the east of
the Ogun, which might reduce the land journey from sixty-five to forty-
eight miles. All attempts at road-making, however, in the present state
of independent Africa must fail; the people, assisted by their climate,
would in a few months reduce the finest macadam to a mere bridle path—a
long, deep cunette threading grassy banks. Moreover, the Abeokutans are
by no means anxious for a more direct route, which they have been
persuaded would soon deliver them into the hands of the great devourer.
They have coquetted with us for years on this point; and although they
must eventually yield to civilized pressure, they will defer the bad day
as long as possible.

We therefore determined to take the usual line from Lagos to Abeokuta,
across the Ikoradu Water, through the Agboi Creek, and thence up the
Ogun River.

At 9·15 A.M. on Tuesday, the 29th October, 1861, we left our temporary
homes in highest spirits, and were duly escorted to the beach by Mr.
M‘Coskry and M. Maser, a most worthy member of what calls itself _The_
Church Missionary Society. Our conveyances were the first and second
gigs of H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ manned by Krumen, who, demoralized by an
education at Sierra Leone, and by the overpay and the over-kindness of a
fighting craft, proved the idlest and the unhandiest of their tribe. In
the state of nature they will row forty miles without other refreshment
but a ‘snack,’ eaten whilst lying upon their oars. Artificialized, they
must halt, ‘chop water,’ and cook after every third hour; otherwise they
will dawdle, give answers, or, with far-protruded lips, sulk. Our
fellows once saw their captain standing alone on the river bank awaiting
his breakfast, and yet they sat down to ‘yam.’ I could not pity him, it
was his own doing. But one cannot wonder that no merchant vessel will
employ a Kruboy who has been known to serve on board a man-of-war.

And so we rowed up the Osa, or Victoria Water, connecting the Ikoradu or
Cradoo Lagoon with the sea, along the pestilent island of Lagos, which,
probably founded by driftage, and finished with eddy-carried sand, rises
a few feet above sea-level.[8] Our course after leaving the beach lay
westwards, through slack water, along the densely-wooded “Takpa’s”
Point, where, in 1851, El Re Kosoko’s premier had erected _chevaux de
frise_ to prevent the landing of the assaulting Briton. On our right lay
Lagos, which in this, its city end, showed a disorderly mass of hut and
house with mud walls and lumber walls, barred casements and holes for
windows, and huge sloping roofs of dry palm-leaf, inevitably capital
tinder. Then came Fetish Point, where a growth of gigantic trees—the
Egbas still, like the Canaanites of old, worship in the bush—notes that
the land is ‘holy ground.’ Fetish Point has, like the trans-Temple Bar
region, London, a government all its own, an _imperium in imperio_, not
subject to the more aristocratic Lagos: the chief must never be a fetish
or reverend man, and his state is kept up by the voluntary contributions
of the river fishermen, who, at this moment, are in palaver, having
refused to pay church rates. The unlovely channel was scummed over with
a whitish froth, borne along by the strong embrace of the tide: the
surface was broken by long walls of shrimp baskets, sharp, tapering
cones of bamboo strips, attached to strongly-driven poles, and so placed
that the animals, once inside the _camera di morte_, cannot escape by
reason of the violent current. This is a conspicuous feature upon the
smoother surface of the lake beyond: the produce, sun-dried and packed,
is a lucrative branch of native trade, and penetrates inland far north
of Abeokuta. The old travellers remarked the quantity of shrimps
produced in these streams, and gave their name, Camaroẽs—Anglicè,
Camaroons—to a river, and to the magnificent mountain pile which will
form the subject of future pages. As we emerged from the gut,
conspicuous on our right hand, and boldly heading the body of Lagos, was
the mediatized King Dosumo’s ‘palace,’ a red-tiled and partially
whitewashed barn, backed by trees of the noblest stature, and fronted by
water perilously deep, from three to four fathoms, where gunboats have
been known to trust themselves. In equally sunken soundings, and a
little off the town, lay detached ‘pontons,’ or lumps of land, once
mangrove-drifts, then sand-banks, and now clumps of bush: they are
three, and presently they will be four. These are called the ‘Sacrifice
Islands,’ from the executions common in the good old times: the victim
to Oro—of whom more anon—was fastened to a rude cross, clubbed, and
impaled. The latter operation seems to have been a favourite: the
travellers of the last generation describe the ‘horrid custom of
impaling alive a young female,’ and this annual sacrifice, which took
place about the vernal equinox, was supposed to breed plenty in the
land.[9] But Lagos has learned to hide her horrors. We no longer observe
male dogs which, banished to the towns beyond, have ventured to revisit
their homes, strangled as fetish against evil influences, ‘split,
trimmed like sheep, and hung up at the door of some great man, where
rows of the putrid carcases of their canine brethren are often to be
seen;’ nor at the east end of the town do we find large trees covered
with the heads of malefactors, ‘the skulls nailed to the trunks and
large limbs, and presenting a very appalling spectacle.’[10] On the
left, and nearly opposite ‘Sacrifice Islands,’ lies Bruce’s,[11] more
modernly termed Picnic, Island, garden soil beautifully clad in the
green ceiba, or bombax-tree, dotted with the rose-shaped yellow blossoms
of the African mallow. Between this ‘cay’ and the mainland runs a narrow
channel, crossed by a ferry-boat, and on its banks a yellow line of clay
points out the terminus of the nearest western route to Abeokuta.

Presently we emerged from the river into the mirrory expanse of the Lake
glistening in the bright sunshine. North-eastward lay a sea horizon
fringed with dots, denoting tall groves distance-dwarfed and raised in
the air by force of mirage; whilst some ten miles distant, Point
Lambassa, fronted by its own islet, was poised between sea and sky. The
lagoon is called in our maps the Cradoo Waters, doubtless a corruption
of Ikoradu, a town near its banks, and readily visited by Europeans.
Though unsurveyed, it is believed to be of considerable extent, and to
connect the Benin with the Volta River:[12] the formation, however, is
simple; it is merely a general reservoir for the numerous streams, which
rapidly pouring down from the mainland, and lacking watershed near the
coast, here collect within two miles of the surf, and when swollen by
the rains force a tumultuous passage into the Atlantic. According to
some it is connected with the Ardrah Lake near Whydah, which they say
can thus be made from Lagos by water: others declare that the continuity
of its arm, the Osa,[13] or Victoria Lagoon, is broken at Godemé, a
place beyond Porto Novo. It is shallow, but intersected by channels,
some of which are known to be eight fathoms deep: in a setting of
mountain land it would be beautiful; its low shores and its clay-
coloured water, however, render it tame and uninteresting. The bottom is
alternately muddy and sandy. It produces oysters, differing from the
mangrove species, before which every fresh African traveller stands with
open mouth; and amongst the variety of its fishes, one locally called
the mullet stands unrivalled.

We advanced steadily, hugging, as much as the shallows would allow, the
right bank of the long ‘flash,’ or river-bay, where the amphibious
vegetation was indented with covelets, upon whose dwarf precipices of
red clay sprang another and already a less malarious growth. Presently
we descried the market-place of Ikoradu town, in the land of the Ijebu
Remo.[14] This is a people with a chief, but without a king, bordered
eastward by rivals and cognates, the Ijebu Ode, so called because their
Awajáli, or monarch, resides at the city of Ode.[15] In happier times
the Ibadans of the interior made at Ikoradu their barters of gunpowder
and similar necessaries for ivory and palm-oil. They, however, no longer
visit the coast: the war with Abeokuta prevents their taking the western
road, and the eastern, that abuts at Ekpe, besides being indirect, lies
through the lands of their enemies the Ijebu Ode, who have fraternized
with Abeokuta. The market-place on the Lake shows a few ragged sheds at
the bottom of a deep indentation bounded by projecting points, and
looking like the estuary of a considerable stream—which, as will be
seen, it is not. Opposite us was a tall and uniform forest of mangroves,
in whose dark depths a line of lighter-tinged green, backed by a deeper
hue than usual, was the only sign that a channel ran through it. Selim
was the only one of the party who knew the way by experience, and with
his aid we shot into the Agboi Creek at 11·20 A.M., after two hours of
rowing. The entrance of this normal short cut must be set down at a
distance somewhat shorter than that usually assigned to it, twelve
miles—our Krumen assuredly did not exceed five knots an hour.

Before entering the Agboi Creek, a word or two concerning the land
formation which we leave behind us. The coasts of the world have been
divided into the rocky (exclusively or alternating), the coralline, and
the alluvial. The two former are exemplified in Eastern Africa about the
latitudes where we now are: Zanzibar is essentially coralline, the Ajan
is stony. This portion of the West African coast is at present


      ‘Neither sea

  Nor good dry land.’


Essentially alluvial, it is a false coast, a mass of continental islands
fringing the continent, the gift of the rivers, hardly habitable now,
but destined in the progress of time to become fitted by secular
upheaval for human occupation. It wants only altitude. The material is
the finer sand of an immense drift, whose coarser particles have been
left, and will be met with inland. The presence of saline matter by no
means affects the soil, which mainly requires clearing, and in parts
much of the ground is as reclaimable as the alluvial flats of the Nile.

The Agboi Creek, I have said, is a short cut. It is a chord running
directly from the north, whereas the Ogun River, our destination to-day,
bends round in an arc from north-west to east, and eventually south-
east. This narrow ditch is an excellent study of mangroves. The tree,
whose only object in life seems to be emergence and escape from ‘the
briny,’ rises tall, feathery, white-bolled, overarching the wave, based
upon a cone of aërial root and rootlet, infinitely intricate and cage-
like, and steadied by dropping long suckers, which, taking the ground,
rise for themselves in independent sprigs or shoots, whose cap of green
leaves nods over the flow of the graveolent tide. I could not hear that
the fruit is here used as an article of human diet; the trunk, however,
makes excellent firewood, and the bark is used for tanning. Its
complications of bole and branch are further complicated by huge
llianas, chiefly cucurbitaceous, whose ropes, sometimes sixty feet long,
are so fragile that, as we shoot the natural bridges of inclined or
fallen trunks, a brush with the gig’s awning-stanchions brings down the
long length upon our heads. The colour of the ditch-water is that of
cocoa-nibs and milk, whilst here and there tufted leaves, like enormous
water-cresses, float down the stream. Animal life is scarce. At times a
sandpiper starts with its wild twitter, a beautiful little blue marten
(_Cypselus_) flutters over us, screaming hornbills (_Buceros_)—here
their heads are worth half a dollar for charms—form a cross high in the
air, or a pair of glorious purple-robed halcyons (_A. Senegalensis_)
occupies a stump to peer curiously below, and presently to take a
‘header,’ like a handful of gems, into the clayey tide. Now a jumper
fish springs up and flashes in the sunbeams; then a monkey, with
wonderful agility, falls as if shot from one bough to another; then a
crab, with brightly painted claws, scuttles over the dull brown mud. We
pass, however, numerous canoes ascending with empty and descending with
filled oil puncheons, the master seated upon a box amidships, astern the
mistress or mistresses squatting under a mat-awning, whilst the more
than three-quarter-naked boatmen cease poling, doff their head-gear,
whatever it may be, and salute us with word and gesture courteously, as
if they had taken lessons of Madame Michaud, who teaches ladies from the
country to curtsy at court.

The water-way became so narrow that the oars were presently stowed in
and the straight-bladed paddles of the Krumen—poles would have been
better—were called into requisition. After a little more than a mile we
reached a fork of the creek, upon which are built the cocoa-dotted
settlements; Agboi on the right, and to the left Oruba. The villages
were Lagos on a reduced scale; roofs of dried palm-leaf and walls of
African ‘post and plaster,’ swish supported by a framework, in small
squares, of stout cocoa-rib wattling. The foundations, raised but a few
feet above water-level, must become in the rainy season a bed of soppy
treacle-like mire. Yet these people, thus living in the midst of miasma,
are said not to suffer: they look fat and well, they have children at
their desire, and they breed dogs, sheep and goats, pigs and poultry.
They appear but little surprised at our appearance, merely looking up
for a moment from their work, which they resume a minute afterwards.
They are an industrious race: pottery is abundant, nets are hung
everywhere, canoes are numerous; the men have studded the little creek
with fish-traps—open-topped squares of bamboo splints, each with its
trap-door up-current—the women ply the paddle—in every other part of
Egba-land a disgrace to women—and both sexes show a serious turn of mind
by striking the jaw-bone of a sheep upon a stake. Truly it is said that
one half the world knows not how the other half lives.

As we advanced, taking the left, or western, division of the Agboi
Creek, the outfall became heavy against us. It is no tidal stream, and
the current runs some three knots an hour, sweeping the boats round at
the acute angles. At times we tremble for the awning, and we always keep
a sharp look out for the dangerous snags. Our visitors are not pleasant.
The huge ‘mangrove-fly,’ supposed by the people to have eyes under the
wings, draws blood when it can with its sharp stilet; the black
mangrove-ant, showered down by the brushed foliage, as unpleasant to man
as it is fatal to cockroaches; gadflies, like the English horse-fly—they
may be the tsetse, hitherto most ignorantly limited to the southern
regions of intertropical Africa[16]—and the microscopic but vicious
sand-flies attack the ankles, and employ the Krumen in long diversions
of scratching and slapping. _Pour comble de bonheur_, a jagged line of
black nimbus, raising its bosom high above an ominous mass of lurid-
white, cloudy substance, charges across the sky from the north-west, and
warns us to prepare for an African shower.

Presently it came on. A fierce rattling of thunder, a red flicker of
lightning, a volley of drops like shot from above, pitting the creek’s
face, bore down upon us with the speed of the wind, and ended with a
cross between a douche and a shower-bath. The canvas awning, though at
once tilted up, was wet through after the first five minutes, the
waterproof struggled hard but in vain against the intruder, and the boat
began to fill apace. We landed for facility of baling, and, saved by
umbrellas from the distillings of the trees, we guarded against the
dangers of cold fresh water with a liquid considered a panacea in these
lands. The tornado passed off after half an hour, but it departed under
protest as it were, growling, and occasionally returning to bespatter
us. The odour of the vegetation waxed faint and sickly. Briefly, we
experienced many of the proverbial advantages of a ‘short cut.’

Two or three miles more brought us to a change of scenery. The Agboi’s
stream, flowing swiftly, often jammed us against the well-wooded banks;
the snags and sawyers became more frequent, and the creek broader and
shallower. Our men were frequently obliged to dislodge the boat—it drew
about thirteen inches—and, ‘tumbling out,’ to shove her by main force
over the bars that connected the deeper waters, which were seldom more
than four feet. Gradually the mangrove belt disappeared, giving way to
wild bananas, dwarf flabellate palms (_P. spinosa_?), the calamus, with
black prickly stem and long green lines like snakes, and various wild
fruit trees, the African hog-plum (_Spondias Birrea_), and others that
not inaptly simulated cherries. Contrasting with the deep, dark, dense
foliage of the bush, the water-lily of virgin white—the nymphæa, which
ancient Egypt borrowed from the Hindu and then allowed to die
out—floated upon its cradle of emerald green, and, in embayed places,
formed dwarf prairies that rose and fell as the paddles plunged into the
water. Rushes and enormous grasses of the lightest leek tint in places
secured the soil and afforded a third shade of colour. After so much of
Rhizophoræ and Bruguieræ, the banks became to us sylvan glades, with
avenues like those of the old French post road. They were crowned in
places with trees whose towering stature would shame the giants of Bushy
Park: upon them the most ambitious of schoolboys might look with
despair, and from their topmost branches the birds gaze down with
perfect safety at the levelled shot-gun. Here and there a curl of
blueish smoke argued a fishing village in the bush. We had been told
that the creek was two miles long, and after two hours and three-
quarters of hard work, five or six miles in space, we began to wonder if
these truly German _meile_ were ever coming to an end. Presently,
however, the sides widened farther out, the depth became less, we
sighted, in front of us, a grove even larger than its neighbours, and
then we emerged into the River Ogun, which event we duly inaugurated
with a ceremony which I will classically describe as a libation to
Bacchus.

The Ogun,[17] or Abeokuta River, is said to rise in a latitudinal range
of mountains whose northern watershed is to the Kwara.[18] The source is
supposed to be three thousand feet above sea level, and the upper part
of the bed is rendered useless by rocks. Like other streams in this
mythological land, a deity,[19] or rather a god, the younger brother of
the divinity Shango, is attached to it. The Ogun fell into the hands of
the Egbas, or Abeokutans, about 1852, and free communication with Lagos
has added greatly to their influence and their development.

As yet, however, Yoruba has but little inland navigation. It is well
fitted for tramways, hard wood being everywhere procurable and the land
level. Until their day comes, the rivers should be utilized, and the
first step ought to be a survey. The Oshun, in the Ijebu country, near
Ekpe, extends, according to some authorities, within nine hours’ march
of Ibadan; others declare that it cannot be navigated by canoes; others,
that the people have a superstition which permits boats to cross, but
not to ascend or to descend it. West of the Ogun is the Ota Creek, and
beyond this the Yerewa, leading to the market-towns of Okeadon and Ado—a
water-line as yet little known, but said to have thirty miles clear for
canoes. Beyond this again, and more important still, is the Okpara,
which enters the Lagoon between Porto Novo and Badagry.[20]

Father Ogun, at the confluence of the Agboi Creek, is a goodly stream,
little less than one hundred yards broad, deep, smooth, sluggish, and
scarcely affected by the tide. Here it aspires to the honours of what
the Africans call ‘a ship made of iron, and moved by fire,’ _i.e._, a
steamer—if possible flat-bottomed. We were all deceived in our
expectations. We had pictured to ourselves—heaven knows why—a clear and
rapid river running through a high and dry land, with tall and rocky
marge. We found a broad, placid surface, milky with potters’ clay, and
low banks, whose last watermark showed a considerable fall, bearing
walls of verdure broken by the tall white trunks of various unknown
trees, with creeks, landing-places, and hollows, like bowers, between.
Presently, however, we saw rises of reddish earth, here favourite sites
for settlements. We passed two villages, Orichá and Isheri; the latter,
which is considerable, was backed by plantains and fronted by canoes. We
were told by a negro, habited in European toilette, that a better
nighting-place lay close ahead, and we somewhat reluctantly left Isheri
behind. It was, as suspicion suggested it would be, dark night before we
passed the landing-place, and, guided by the sounds of song and drum,
set foot within the next collection of huts—Igaon. Our day’s journey had
been eight hours, halts not included, and the distance covered must have
been twenty-five to twenty-six miles.

It is hardly worth while to describe these places; straggling
settlements, surrounded by bush on all sides except the river, which
they overlook from banks more or less elevated, they compare favourably
with many a fishing village in England, and are more comfortable than
some manufacturing townlets in Lancashire. Igaon is subject to the Alake
or chief of Abeokuta, and numbers perhaps two hundred souls. It is well
known as being the terminus of river navigation in the ‘dries;’ beyond
which travellers must journey through the wet and feverish bush.

Ascending a rugged clay bank, about one hundred and fifty feet high, we
entered the village, and found entertainment at the house of Mr.
Johnson, a Sierra Leone Egbanized Christian black, habited in white
man’s clothing, excepting coat and shoes. He expressed in a little
English his pleasure at seeing us, but his manner was at variance with
his words. We presently discovered the reason of his expatriation to
Igaon, which he explained to be for facility of buying palm-oil—half a
dozen summonses were awaiting him at Lagos. However that may be, he made
us comfortable in his verandah and upon the hut floor, where, after a
copious feed—sitting in a boat is most appetizing work—we and Sancho,
despite the tom-tom and the clammy cold, slept like the Seven Idlers of
Ephesus, and Kitmir their dog. In the morning all was settled with a
dollar; Mr. Johnson was satisfied, ‘and so,’ I hope, ‘was Mrs. Johnson.’

The second day saw us afoot at 5 A.M., and after the initiatory
preserved chocolate, called cocoa—most valuable of tins on these
occasions—we found ourselves afloat at the end of another hour. A dense
and dripping fog from the river almost concealed the water, and this was
a never-failing feature of the morning, which during the day yielded to
something worse. The irregularity of the seasons is not more conspicuous
in Eastern than in Western Africa. The tornados and rains of the year
should now cease, whereas the land still thirsts, and the storms are
apparently setting in. Under cover of the mist, we passed on the right
hand the shallow Akisa Creek, which, joining the Ogun River at Isheri of
the Ijebu Remo, islandizes the situation of Igaon. There we began to
suffer from an annoyance that lasted till the end of the
journey—numerous fishing-ropes of calamus and reeds stretching from bank
to bank. Five or six lengths, joined with a shroud-knot, are secured to
trees or posts on the bank, and are stayed with stout stakes about mid-
stream. Exceedingly tough and strong, they serve to attach wicker cones,
traps for fish; and at times some elderly and idle African Izaak Walton
lashes his canoe to them, and squats upon his hunkers, with an umbrella
hat on his head, peaceably bobbing for the smallest bite, like those, to
me, inexplicable beings in punts who find excitement in hooking minnows
upon the Thames. Where these ropes are thick, boats can be lifted over
them with the oar, without catching the rudder: near the mouth of the
Ogun they are small, and cause accidents. The other way is to shoot
them, passing under either end—no convenient thing when the rush of the
water is like a mill-race, and where there is often not quite room to
row. At the present season the central sag is a foot under water; in the
‘dries,’ laden canoes will pass beneath it.

On this day and the next we enjoyed a fine opportunity of studying
African river scenery, so impressive at first, and, until the eye
becomes accustomed to it, so greatly diversified. But presently it waxes
palling and monotonous: it is the face of an Irish beauty—every feature
faultless, too faultless, and the whole expressionless and inanimate.
The trees were externally of three aspects,—the feathery, the densely
foliaged, and the creeper-clad. In the stream lay logs, snags above and
below, and sawyers dancing upon the wavelet; here a vast trunk, like
some dead plesiosaurus cumbered the bed, causing slack water to leeward;
there stood a stub, upon which baby alligators stretched and sunned
themselves; here a fallen tree, supported by the stream, had shot up
fresh shoots, themselves trees—the very fishing-ropes had in places put
forth _bourgeons_; there a green-robed patriarch was beginning to totter
upon the water-mined bank that showed a cave beneath. The wild plantain,
with wind-torn leaves, bent its purple flowers earthwards. The palms
were of many kinds, the cocoa-nut, the palmetto, the wine-palm (_R.
vinifera_), and chiefly the spiny flabellate species, which haunted the
lower levels, whilst the others waved their tall plumed heads on the
higher ground. The date and the _ronnier_, or _Palmyra nobilis_, were
not yet seen; they are signs of an improvement in the climate. The
ratan, however, grew everywhere. We detected, I thought, a real bamboo,
which, however, must be an importation into these lands;[21] and,
rustling above the others, the African locust, or acacia, whose enormous
pods are used in ‘palaver-sauce,’ claimed a conspicuous place. The
river-sides were solid walls of trees, sweeping in glorious folds
towards the water’s edge, a boundless continuity of shade, many-
coloured, from the darkest spinach—the prevalent hue—to the lightest
green. The dense bank of foliage threw softened summits athwart the
bluest of skies, and the mid height was broken by tall, straight
shafts—they looked limed or whitewashed—shining like the bark of the
silver beech, and ghastly enough in the shades of evening. The African
oak was there, and the stunted kola nut (_C. acuminata_); no one,
however, could point out to us the ashori, or egginha, the local upas;
or the iroko, called the ‘sassa wood,’ and worshipped in Yoruba because
it cracks soundingly at night. The monarchs of the forest were the
bombax, or silk-cotton trees—many of them were one hundred feet high,
and ten in diameter, upright canoes, ready for felling—with boles, near
which the tall and tapering palm, straight as an arrow, attempted
rivalry, but in vain. They were girt below and often about the waist
with anfractuosities, fluted and channelled like Doric columns; these
buttresses show that the timber, being weak, demands support. Many of
these ceibas were intensely green and densely leaved; others were bare
and twiggy; for here, as in other lands, the seasons affect what appear
to be non-deciduous trees, and not a few bore what a European would
hardly expect from so large a growth, a spangling of beautiful blossoms,
white as the snow on Camaroons. The same may be said of the bigonia,
locally called ‘tulip-tree,’—Who would be prepared to see, pinned to
those sombre, yew-like forms, flowers like tiger-lilies, and at a
distance looking as if red-hot cinders had been scattered upon them? The
llianas were especially eccentric, varying from the thickness of twine
to cable; here straight, there arched; now twisted by the wind into
cordage; then forming a ‘true lover’s knot,’ dangling in the air, or
rooted to earth; here they depended, from cords as fine as the chorda
filum, or dead man’s ropes, gourd-like over the voyager’s head; there
they strangled some Laocoon of the woods with a desperate gripe, ‘the
Scotchman hugging the Creole;’ whilst the sarsaparilla vine clung
tenderly to the trunk, as though she loved it. Towering and climbing
herbaceous plants, formed by successive accretions, surrounded a mother
stem with thick vegetable masses,—mysterious columns, so covered that
the eye could not distinguish the support: these immense growths hung
their mantles of parasite, with ribs, folds, and flounces, from the
shoulders to the feet of the tallest trees; their middle was adorned
with the bright blossoms of sundry convolvuli, cucurbitaceæ, asclepiadæ,
and the white-flowered chailletta; and they supplied the watery maze
with arches and ogives, bowers, and fairy retreats, showing the
arabesques and the delicate tracery of a natural Alhambra. The
grotesques were somewhat like the tree-ferns of Fernando Po, finely
pinnated, and flaunting angular tufts upon the summit of the thinnest
stems, often thirty feet high. In one place a palm had raised itself
upon the trunk of a dead tree, and showed every root to the air, as it
drew sustenance from its support. In another, where the parent’s head
had been struck off by the lightning, the lateral branches, extending
horizontally, had put forth a dozen fresh shoots at right angles. In a
third, a giant with blasted top and thunder-rifted stem, had been hurled
down by the breaking tornado, and pitched, branches forwards, upon the
earth. Mr. Bowen asserts that in Egba-land he has never seen a tree that
has suffered from the thunderbolt. I believe, however, accidents to be,
as one might expect, of constant occurrence, and, moreover, that the
palms are peculiarly liable.[22] Almost every large growth had its
little family of orchids snugly nestling in its arms, and in not a few
the topmost boughs were bearded like old goats or Israelites. Nor were
flowers absent from the scene. The glorious nymphæa was there, and the
lower bush was gemmed with the ipomæa, and a large white flower, said to
be selenitic, and opening only to the moon.

The denizens of the bush were worthy of it. The red-grey polly (_P.
erythacus_), the only parrot seen near the Ogun, sat higher than
popinjay ever did, whistling what sounded at that distance a mellow
note, and looking a distinct refusal to put the kettle on. She possibly
divined our intentions: parrot-soup and monkey-fry are not to be
despised. The wild bird is a far finer animal than the tame, but you
must be careful to remove the skin. The gay crested touraco
(_Corythrix_), with its jay-like manners, beautiful and harsh-voiced as
the Maids of Athens, aired its gorgeous coat in the sunbeams upon the
tree-top; the goatsucker whirred, the ibis screamed amongst the
branches, and the Malabar pheasant, or rather cuckoo, flitted into the
darker shades. The lively little marten was surpassed only by the
kingfisher; the yellow-billed blackbird sought something to fight; the
Whydah finch (_Vidua Paradisiaca_) looked as pretty and behaved as
shrewishly as her featherless sister ever could; and the oriole, all
_rouge et noir_ in strata, lit up the shade like a touch of vermilion in
the normal buoy that occupies the normal corner of a sea-piece. The nest
of the latter bird (_Sylvia pensilis_) is a purse, which, swinging in
the wind, is safe from the mischievous monkey: it may have suggested the
idea of a hammock. The Guinea-fowl called ‘come-and-eat-me’ from the
brake; rock-doves of great beauty cooed hoarsely on higher grounds; the
bittern sprang frightened from the bank; and lower down, the savoury
stripe-throated lapwing (_Vanellus strigillatus_, the ‘kiki dodo’ of the
Gold Coast), with two yellow flaps of dark-lined skin springing from the
base of the beak, walked the sand-banks in pairs, or rose loudly
clattering in the air. On the larger river-islets we saw grisly turkey-
buzzards sunning their expanded plumes, mixed with paddy-birds and
Senegal crows (_C. leuconotus_), the latter impudently pursuing and
pecking at them; whilst brown kites, the Indian chíl (_F. chilla_),
stood up to their thighs in the cool wave. Once, and once only, a flight
of the fine cullum crane passed within shot over our heads; and often in
the blue empyrean black speckles, like _muscæ volitantes_, told us that
all was not desert there. The water-elephant, as the hippopotamus is
called upon the Niger, has long been killed out of the Ogun River, and
its stream contains nothing but fish and fish-eaters.

About 8 A.M. we halted for an hour and a half to breakfast at Illagu.
There is little of roughing in this style of travel. The fire was soon
lighted, the teapot was boiled, the eggs and ‘Europe mutton’ were fried,
the table, a gangway between two breakers; the chairs—boxes and
canteen—were duly disposed; and after a somewhat long delay, such as may
be excused at the beginning of a journey, when twenty minutes would
merit chastisement at the end, a pleasant picnic was the result. The
Krumen found a dessert for their meal of pork and biscuit in a species
of cardamom—not quite our old friend, _Amomum granum Paradisi_—whose
aromatic seeds they chewed with pleasure. A mishap, however, befel us at
Illagu. After starting, we missed the dog Sancho, and we sent back a
message requesting that he might be forwarded without delay to the
nearest village. He was a most amiable animal; when tied up, he barked
and howled most musically all the way, and when loose he insisted upon
springing overboard, stopping the boat, and exciting different emotions
amongst those in it. A St. Helena pointer—he pointed even at
butterflies—and he was just recovering from an attack of mange. Of
course we made on the way down all inquiries for so pleasant a
companion, but we had to mourn his loss. ‘The captain,’ his master, was
sorely discomfited.

We then resumed our way up the now nut-brown river, garnished with its
various green and white boled trees—the current running against us 2½ to
3 knots an hour. Though fanned by a gentle breath from the north, there
was a decided sting in the sun, and an overkept leg of mutton in the
third locker made us unjustly accuse Africa of unsavoury smells. At
11·30 A.M., the effeminate ‘pull-a-boys’ showing symptoms of fatigue, we
put into the high right bank—the land becomes dry and gravelly, already
showing fragments of quartz—beaconed by the little village of Baragu,
whose appearance, however, was the reverse of novel. Under the
circumstances, a little ‘gooseberry’ was perfectly justifiable, and we
could hardly be so churlish as to refuse a few sips of trade ‘fire-
water’ to our hosts, whose spreading palaver-tree—the local
_bentang_—afforded us a seat in the cool shade rained down by its
horizontal boughs. The people evinced an exemplary amount of gratitude,
and a fondness for the material quite curious; even the small boys never
balked at a wine-glassful. All seemed comfortable and in good condition;
they had sheep and goats, ducks, fowls, and pigeons, whilst the fetish-
house showed signs of fresh whitewash. The women consider elongated
bosoms a charm, and even the men show flaccid mammary glands. This
‘bestial exposure of the sacred part of woman’s form,’ as some term it,
first disappears permanently amongst the Moslem converts from heathenry.
The good-wives had little remarkable, save a plug of pipe-stem-shaped
coral worn in the left nostril: it may serve the purpose of the Indian
nose-ring. Many of them wore their hair upstanding in little tufts of
wool, which coiffure, says a German traveller, ‘made them look more like
horned fiends than human beings.’ Some of the tattoos were painfully
ugly—lines of scars and dreadful knobs and marbles raised in altissimo
relievo by some encaustic process. Severe scalds were common; and one
woman had her back adorned with what appeared to be an imitation in
thickened skin of gouts and streamlets of blood. Many of the children
were marked from head to foot with little gridirons of cuts, dyed dark
blue by means of native antimony. They are all more or less exomphalous,
yet they will grow up like their sires—remarkably sharp when under
puberty,—that epoch, as amongst the Hindus, seeming to addle their
brains. They are placed for discipline under some old and trusty hand,
who compels them by force of stripes to industry; they amused themselves
by remarking on the sly, ‘Oibo akiti agba—The white man is an old ape.’
The African will say of the European, ‘He looks like folks,’ and the
answer will often be, ‘No, he don’t.’ Thus we observe, that whilst the
Caucasian doubts the humanity of the Hamite, the latter repays the
compliment in kind.

This race—the Egbado or Lower Egba—is distinctly negroid, without
showing the characteristics of the full-blooded negro. The skin is of a
dark dilute copper, sometimes black, whilst several of the chiefs are
almost light coloured. When the eyelashes and brows are not plucked, the
eye is fine; and those who hold, like Aurora Floyd, that ‘the glorious
light of a pair of magnificent optics makes a divinity, a Circe,’ can
here see the flattest contradiction to this opinion. The lips are not
thick, but the gums are blue, and the teeth are by no means improved by
the process of chewing. One cannot, however, but be struck by the
contrast between the prognathous, chinless, retreating face, simulating
the Simiadæ, and the admirable forms and figures of the people, who
compare most favourably with those of the xanthous complexion. Their
diet is poor, their climate poorer; calisthenics are unknown; they are
not boxers or runners, like the people of Nupe; and even gymnastics,
except tumbling, are little practised. What can then account for the
beauty of their conformation?

For my part I must attribute it to the almost invariable custom which
the savage man possesses, and which his civilized brother abandons.
Amongst ancient races, such as the Hebrew and the Persian, it was the
rule of religion for the husband to separate from the wife during the
period of gestation and lactation. A modified monogamy amongst the
Greeks and Romans introduced abuses which the nations of the barren
north, especially those of Europe, who cannot afford a plurality of
wives, have perpetuated. On the coast and in the interior of Africa the
instinctive law of nature is almost universally obeyed, and the people
are necessarily polygamous. Speaking of Mandenga-land, Mungo Park says,
‘Three years’ nursing is not uncommon; and during this period the
husband devotes his whole attention to his other wives.’ In Hausa, as in
Yoruba, the period of lactation extends to the third year.[23] The West
African and the Kafirs of the southern continent practise this
abstinence, and prove in their persons the beneficial effects of it.
Europeans, violating the order of the animal creation, lay to their
souls the flattering unction that they are the largest and the strongest
of races, forgetting that by conforming to this African custom they
might become both larger and stronger. Besides, it would necessitate
polygyny[24]—that is to say, a love of offspring warmer than the sexual
feeling. The Mormons have tried it with success; and to the excellent
letter of Mrs. Belinda Pratt[25] I must refer the reader for more
information upon this momentous subject than could be conveyed in these
pages.

On the Ogun River we had ample opportunities of forming judgment
concerning


  ‘The naked negro panting on the Line.’


I have travelled amongst wild tribes from the North American Indians to
the Bhils of Hindostan, but I never saw such an utter absence of what we
conventionally term modesty as amongst these Egbas. The women will stand
up and bathe publicly in the river, without a vestige of dress or shame;
and the niggerlings are as much clad as the Promutuans and the sons of
the Coral Islands. Can this be innocence, as some think? or is it the
mere absence of all ideas of propriety? I confess myself unable to
decide.

Resuming our task, after twenty minutes’ halt, we noticed a gradual
change in the scenery. The bush thinned out, the trees shrank in size
and showed boles rather brown than white, and the banks of clay and
stone gained in size. The number of fishing-ropes denoted the vicinity
of a village, and in shooting one of them the ‘doctor’ managed to be
knocked overboard. At 1·10 P.M. we halted for an hour and a quarter to
refect at Obba. The Krumen were sadly slow, loitering about munching
ship-biscuit and lighting their clays before they thought of putting our
yam-pot on the fire. At Obba signs of improvement were observed. The
landing-place had earth steps and a kind of railing; the village
interior showed neat fields of tania or koko (_C. esculenta_)[26] and
the remnant of a cotton gin and press—bearing, of course, the mark of
Manchester—lay near one of the houses. The people, carrying fly whisks,
assembled round us under the usual tree, and in the best of humours
begged tobacco, and drank our tea with a relish, whilst the boys, for
our especial delectation, threw somersets[27] in the air.

After leaving Obba the southern sky began to bank up, threatening a
repetition of yesterday’s tornado. Presently a stream of cold wind
poured through the tepid air, reminding me of a phenomenon not a little
to be feared upon the Zanzibar Seas and the Tanganyika Lake. But though
thunder growled gruffly, and the well-known haze filled the atmosphere,
and the warm sensation, attributed, I believe, to development of ozone,
warned us of what might be, the only result was a dry storm, for whose
obscurity we had reason to be thankful. The doctor exercised himself
upon parrots, lapwings, and paddy birds; Commander Bedingfield shot a
crocodile upon a tree stump—the favourite basking-place—and the Krumen
lamented being unable to secure the prize. Its gall is here, as in most
other parts of Africa, held to be a deadly poison; in some places a man
with such medicine in his possession would be sure to lose his life. Dr.
Clarke of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast administered it to a dog in
soup and beef; the only effect, as might be expected, was emetism. There
is probably something of fetish in the idea; and similarly, the Hindus
still firmly believe in the poisonous properties of diamond powder,
apart from any mechanical action. In some of the river reaches there was
hardly any tide, and we soon passed our first sand-bank, arguing
increased shallowness in the bed. On the right bank the land became open
and gravelly; the left side, however, was still thickly wooded. At 4·15
P.M. we halted at Mabban, the place named for our nighting. It was a
miserable village, surrounded by an almost impenetrable bush; and the
emaciated population, showing elephantiasis and scars of cutaneous
disease, evidenced the unhealthiness of the situation. The chief was
absent, but we easily obtained permission to occupy the fetish house, a
square box seven feet by seven, open only towards the verandah, and
garnished with pots and basins of crockery ware, with an altar, upon
which stood three little wooden doll-gods, far more bestial than human,
save that they wore proportional cables of beads upon their necks and
wrists. Besides these Penates there were none but ourselves. In the
adjoining quarters the absent chief’s three wives—one light skinned, and
by no means unattractive—slept together under a canopy of thick matting,
hung by strings from the roof, and acting as mosquito bars. We managed
to avoid Mabban on our return: the night passed there was one of sultry,
sweltering heat; during day the subjects of King Beelzebub fed upon us,
and after dark the Maringouins sang a doleful ditty, which was drowned
only by the occasional yelping of negro babyhood. In the distance the
long, loud cries of the Pataku, or bush-dog—a small species of hyæna,
well known on the Gold Coast, but dangerous only to pigs and
children—reminded me of the jackal, the coyote, and the Australian
‘native dog.’ It throws its voice out, at one minute appearing close by,
then a mile off. The only ferocious animal hereabouts to be found is the
leopard, which is as dangerous as his congener in Eastern Africa; and a
man’s arm dangling from the hammock side is very likely to be taken off
somewhere about the elbow. Our run that day had been six hours, say
eighteen miles.

At 5·30 A.M. on Thursday, the 31st, we set out in a spitting rain, with
a cold and heavy mist, which, attached to the river, drifted past us as
we broke through it like thin cloud. On a sandspit we saw signs of
native travellers in the shape of matted sheds, and we vainly inquired
for the interpreter Williams, who had preceded us for his own purposes.
There were also bundles of firewood, tabooed from the prigger by grass-
crowned canes planted around them, thus forming a strong fetish. After
an hour and a half we ran into a little creek on the left bank, and
disembarked at Ojegu, a village differing from its neighbours in no wise
save that it was somewhat more uniform. It has, as usual in Africa, a
bazar or market, where women squatted before baskets under a tree, and
sold beads, thread, and similar utilities, besides various edibles, of
which, at this hour, the favourite is ekko,[28] answering in these lands
to our tea and bread and butter.

The breakfast occupied us an hour and three-quarters, still showing that
the party was not half in training, and we resumed rowing through
sunshine tempered by sprinkling rain. We passed the mouth of the Iro
River, a considerable influent from the west, and shortly afterwards, on
the east, appeared the village of Molokokki, where the river banks were
of rough sandstone. Beyond it are ledges of black rock, forming a
projecting point, which by compression doubles the velocity of the
stream. Lime was nowhere seen, nor does it, I am informed, exist in this
part of Yoruba. Large canoes lumbered the river, some laden with ten
bales of cotton. Making our mooring at Ajido, a knot of three hovels, we
slept upon waterproofs under the bush shade. A little beyond this place
the stream bifurcates, forming in the centre a clump of grassy bush. Our
way lay through the western branch, and its channel—the current ran
swiftly—did not extend eighteen yards in width, till presently the two
streams are anastomosed above the islet. Again, a tornado-like cloud
worked up its way against the southerly wind, and once more it proved
itself that blessing of all blessings, a dry storm. Passing the village
of Okpuba, we remarked that the groves of trees, scattered upon banks
some twenty feet high, would be charming if the underlying bush could be
cleared. Presently cultivation showed itself, the tall tops of the maize
waving gracefully in the wind. At 4·30 P.M., we sighted our terminus,
the large village of Takpana—pronounced Tapana, the Egba _kp_ and _gb_
not being naturally articulable to English organs. Our day’s row had
been eight hours, but the Krumen were breaking down, and the distance
was probably not more than twenty-two miles.

Ascending the bank, and walking through the first straggling village,
where the turkey-buzzard is the only nightman, we found on the outskirts
an uninhabited house in decent condition, and there we were installed by
the civil old chief. He visited us repeatedly, gave us every assistance
in the matters of wood and water, nor did he disdain to join us in a
social glass. The children, and not a few of the adults, spent the
evening over a game known in Ashanti as ‘worra,’ in Sierra Leone ‘wari,’
in East Africa ‘bao,’ and here ‘ayo.’ It is played upon a rude kind of
‘table,’ a solid oblong board, with a little handle at one end, and down
the length run two parallel rows of six little cups. The game is played
by distributing counters, one by one, into each cup, beginning from the
starting-place whence they were taken; and if a single counter be found,
it is removed from the board. In the ‘men’ I at once recognized the
_Guilandina Bonduc_, so well known in eastern medicine, and used for
other purposes at Zanzibar and in India. The game, we presumed, was for
love, gambling being prohibited by ‘Ogboni law,’ which all obey, or
ought to obey. Night sped pleasantly in the new lodgings, which were
comparatively free from mosquitoes and other vermin; perhaps, also, the
last two _veilles_ had made our skins proof against them. The list of
small tenantry is somewhat extensive in these huts. There are flies and
fleas, centipedes—ugly, but little feared—harmless spiders, not like the
tarantula of Mendi city, west of Gallinas; large, black, and green
scorpions, sometimes six inches long, and a yellow species, smaller, but
fiercer. The ants are numerous and interesting; they would amply repay
the labour of collection. There is ota, ‘the stinger,’ who is
particularly hostile to the bug-a-bug, or termes, and especially there
is ijálu, ‘the fighter that makes man go,’—in old Anglo-African called
‘driver,’ because an army of these little wretches, a riband of small
red lines-men, flanked by a light infantry of black warriors, with bull-
dog heads, easily clears the kitchen. On the Gold Coast there are
horrible tales of the fatigued huntsman being set upon and murdered by
them in his sleep; and in the case of a sick man such an event is
greatly to be feared.[29]

The next morning saw us _en route_ at 4·45 A.M., through a fog that not
a little interfered with the flying survey in which we were engaged. The
open earth-banks of the river—here less than fifty yards broad—are well
raised, showing tall Guinea grass and plots of cultivation, with a South
African shrubbery, which not a little reminded my companion—a quondam
member of the unfortunate Zambezi expedition—of that splendid but
useless stream, which promised, with giant might of humbug, to supply,
besides quinine,[30] ‘cotton, indigo, and other raw material to any
amount.’ I say unfortunate, for 5000_l._ per annum, a sum sufficient to
defray with due economy the expenses of half a dozen expeditions, has
been literally thrown away upon this remote corner of South-Eastern
Africa. A vile bar—there is no worse on the coast—a shifting channel,
shallow water, dangerous rocks, and a labyrinth of shoals and sandbanks,
with numerous small islands, considerably detract from the chances that
‘this noble river is capable of being made a great highway for commerce,
civilization, and Christianity.’ The very fact that it is only
approachable through the possessions of another power, who has every
right to impose any conceivable export and import duties, ought alone to
have been considered sufficient obstacles. Add to this, the sparseness
of the population, the villany of the natives, more especially the
‘faithful Makololo,’ and the absence of all conveyance, which, with the
length of the marches, must prevent the transport of even ivory, except
on the shoulders of slaves destined for the coast markets, being
remunerative. An unhappy and ill-judged mission has been the result of
the labour of years; and, as all who knew the subject foresaw from the
beginning, it came to a wretched and untimely end.[31] Bishop and
chaplain, missionaries and their wives and children, all perished
miserably. Ships and boats have been lost—worse still, the blood of the
natives has been shed by those who went to save them—and the unfortunate
promoter of the scheme has suffered even more than he deserved, for want
of moral courage to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.’[32] Cotton, sugar, and indigo flourish, it will be
remembered, in Western Africa, at one-third of the distance which
divides Liverpool from Kilimani; the quality is better, the country is
more settled, and the people are far less unmanageable; yet it is my
sincere belief—founded on facts which will appear in the course of this
narrative—that years must elapse before even Western Africa can supply
with cotton the mills of England for one week of work in the twelve
months. These may be new views—I am convinced that they are true views.

The River Ogun was shoaling rapidly. A bar connected diagonally every
salient and re-entering angle, and frequent grounding now made the way
tedious. We were doubtful as regards arrival: two days ago Mr. Johnson
of Igaon told us that we should land on the morrow, and on this morning
some named noon, others evening, as the time of our reaching the
terminus. When asking the natives touching distances, we had but two
replies: ‘Too much far,’ _i.e._ half the day; and ‘Not so far,’ _i.e._
something under. At 8 A.M. we halted for breakfast at Moroko, another
thatch and mud village perched upon the sandstone bank, shaded by tall
trees and surrounded by bush. The people were as usual most friendly;
they assigned us a place in a large verandah, and they kept us company
during the meal, after which all joined in a social glass of gin. To the
children, however, raspberry vinegar was given as a substitute, the
mothers also tasted it, and—it did not bite—a slight shade of
disappointment might, methought, have been traced in the feminine and
juvenile countenances. As we bade adieu dancing had begun, and we were
followed out of the village with the song of farewell.

Proceeding with our journey at 10 A.M., we passed, on the right bank,
sundry flourishing settlements. At Awoloko we saw women sitting at sale,
men stowing puncheons of oil in canoes by sinking and baling out, cotton
bales heaped up near the landing-place, and other signs of trade. The
people flocked down to gaze, and the children clapped their hands.
Beyond it lay Akolugo, on a tall bank, with a ledge of rock below, and a
little further was a ferry, where crowds were crossing[33]—amongst them
we remarked a tall negress, musket-armed and clad in the simple costume
of the Dahoman ‘Amazons,’ as they are ridiculously called. The
shallowness of the stream caused us even more trouble than before, and
the crew were frequently obliged to tumble out, which they did like
cats, as if afraid of wetting their legs. Presently we saw white faces
in a canoe that bore down upon us; they proved to be Messrs. Wilcoxon
and Roper of the Church Mission Society, who had kindly ridden out to
guide the party. A few strokes of the oars placed us at the landing-
place, ‘Agbameya.’ This is the great ferry, the passage between the
lands of the Egbas and the Egbados, or Lower Egbas, and the terminus of
the land-routes from Lagos and Badagry. It showed a market-place, canoes
in numbers, a few mat sheds for shade, a dwarf grove of papaws (_C.
papaya_), and the normal crowd of natives. Here we left the two gigs,
with orders for their conveyance by the Krumen to Aro, the upper and
higher landing-place, five or six miles distant from the lower port,
Agbameya, and we took leave of water-travel for some days. Beyond Aro,
rocks and rapids render Father Ogun impracticable even to canoes. Those
who would cross it must take to their bosoms huge calabashes, which,
like the earthen pots of the Indus, contain air enough to float two
hundred to three hundred pounds. The ferryman, swimming alongside and
pushing the floats, claims as his due two hundred cowries.

Our ascent of the Ogun River occupied us four days, from the 29th of
October to the 1st of November inclusive, and during this time we made
about sixty-four miles.[34]


[Footnote 1: O Capitão João Gonçalvez da Camera, a gentleman of the
household of the then Infante, and nicknamed Zargo, or the one-eyed—he
lost the other at the siege of Tangiers; but others say that Zargo was
the name of a Moor whom he made captive—was sent in 1418 by his lord, _O
Conquistador_, the Virgin Prince Henry, son of Don John (first of the
name, and second king) by Philippa, grandchild of Edward III. of
England, to examine the West African coast. Returning to Porto Santo, he
was informed by the settlers, whom he had previously left there under
the first Donatorio, or Donee, Bartholomew Perestrello, or Palestrello,
that it was ‘_fama publica_’ that in one particular direction the sea
was ever overhung with a thick impenetrable darkness, ‘_huma grande
sombra_,’ or as De Barros has it, ‘_hum negrum tal e tam medonho e
perpetuo que henhum se atrevia a chegar a elle_,’ denoting, according to
the Jesuit Cordeyro, an abyss, and guarded by a perpetual smoke and
strange noises, which seemed to issue from the mouth of hell. Zargo was
encouraged to explore it by observing that the blackness in question
disappeared during the changes of the moon. The crew, excepting the
pilot, were so frightened that they repeatedly begged to be allowed to
return. Queer times when explorers could be frightened by a fog! Zargo
landed in Madeira 2nd July, 1419, the day of Santa Isabel.]

[Footnote 2: During the first fit, 4 grains ext. colocynth, 4 ditto
jalap, 4 ditto quinine, and ¼ gr. tart. emetic—the latter to induce
perspiration; followed by 6 grs. sulph. quinine and 6 grs. sulph.
magnesia; and 4 grs. nit. potash and 6 grs. sulph. magnesia. On the next
day 1 dr. Epsom salts and 2 grs. quinine, every three hours, which will
probably settle the affair; at least it did in my case.

Of the following the faculty speak very favourably. It is the South
African traveller,


             _Dr. Livingstone’s Remedy for African Fever._

‘The medicines, which must be pure and unadulterated, are as
follows:—Six or eight grains of resin of jalap, and the same amount of
rhubarb, with four grains of calomel and four of quinine, made into
pills with spirit of cardamoms: the whole is a full dose for a man. On
taking effect, quinine (not the unbleached kind), in four-grain or
larger doses, is given every two hours or so, till the ears ring or
deafness ensues; this last is an essential part of the cure. The
prescription, like some others of known value, is not strictly
scientific, and the practice of giving quinine from the very
commencement of the attack is not considered good. I was led into it by
nervous anxiety to save my own children at Lake Ngami, in 1850, and have
experienced its value so frequently since with Africans and Europeans,
that I follow it, though opposed to the teachings of my superiors.’]

[Footnote 3: Whilst the ignorant Moslem believes that bells drive away
good spirits from the abodes of men, the equally ignorant Roman Catholic
_habitant_ of Canada holds himself safe from the devil only when within
the sound of his _clocher_. Both cannot be in the right—perhaps neither
is.]

[Footnote 4: The expression ‘saving faith,’ applied to El Islam, is apt
to convey an erroneous idea: Moslems are wholly opposed to Christians in
their notions touching salvation. With those, every man is sent into the
world by a beneficent Deity to be blessed; with these, to be damned.]

[Footnote 5: In 1860 Selim Aga proposed to recover the papers of the
late M. Vogel, who is generally believed to have been killed by the
Sultan of Wádái, a perilous land, which an older hand, Dr. Barth,
prudently avoided. According to the travelling Arab servant, who in 1859
was sent by the Niger expedition at Bidda, the present capital of Nupe,
M. Vogel travelled from Bugharmi to a well-known well on the frontier of
Wádái, a halting-place for pilgrims and trader caravans. He was there
left by his servant, who had travelled with Dr. Barth, and he proceeded
to the capital of Wádái. The Sultan hearing that the white man had gone
at night to a neighbouring hill, with instruments for observing, forbade
him strictly to repeat the operation. M. Vogel disobeyed the orders, and
two men were sent to take off his head. His papers are said to be still
in possession of Sidi Ali, religious chief of Kano, and there ought to
be no difficulty in recovering them. Dr. Baikie, chief of the Niger
expedition, proposed to do this himself. So Selim was thrown out, and
Dr. Baikie has not yet done it.]

[Footnote 6: ‘Central Africa,’ Charleston, U. S., 1857—about which work
more presently. The Doko race of which Mr. Bowen speaks is probably a
corruption of ‘Donko,’ the slave race from the north of Ashanti, well
known on the Gold Coast: a people with a single gash between the eye and
the upper lip, on both cheeks, were shown to me at Abeokuta under this
name. Mr. Bowen describes them as coming from the Mandara region, and
having four eyes. ‘Doko,’ in Eastern Africa, is applied to the pigmies
called Kimo in Madagascar, and by the Mombas missionaries, Wabilikimo,
_i.e._, men two cubits high. Wayangara, the mythical Christian city, two
months’ journey east of Sokoto, or more generally described as lying
east of Yoruba, is inhabited by white men, who are probably what the
Hausa people call Bature Dudu, black-white men, a Grecian-faced race
that cross the African continent, and report that after three months’
march they arrive within a fortnight of the Salt Sea. There is a native
tradition that they inhabit the lands of Gengira, Darmút, and Sidama.]

[Footnote 7: Dr. Baikie, writing to the ‘Athenæum,’ from Bida Nupe, the
Nyffe of Richard Lander, in Central Africa, January 15, 1862, concerning
this ‘romance of natural history,’ declares that five years of
experience have shaken his scepticism; and that whereas he once looked
upon the unicorn as a myth, he now ‘simply holds that its non-existence
is not proven’—a giant’s step on the path of faith. The horn, he has
heard, is long, black, and straight, or nearly straight, and the hunters
of the one-horned rhinoceros carefully distinguish between this and the
equine monoceros. Finally, he supplies the following list of names by
which the animal is called in various countries, from Lake Chad to the
Gulf of Guinea:—

   Búndiá-ru and Kamárami    in Kanuri (Bornu).

   Maríri                    in Hausa.

   Yílifú and Dákarkúlewal   in Fulfulde, or Filáni.

   Kárafitu                  in Márgí.

   Pānlíli                   in Núpe.

   Agába                     in Bonu (where a skull is said to be).

   Iwú                       in Yoruba.

   Tenesek                   in A’zbentsi (Tawárek).

M. D’Abbadie alludes to it in Kordofan under the name of A’nasa. Mr.
Bowen’s agbangrere was described as having the form of a sorrel horse
with the feet of a cow, and with a single horn like that of an antelope.
A horn was produced, ‘black in colour, coarsely rugose below and smooth
towards the top;’ possibly it was a kudu’s. The unfortunate slayer is
sure to die within a year.]

[Footnote 8: According to Captain John Adams, who, as has been said,
wrote in 1823, Lagos Island is ‘a foot only above the level of the lake
at high water, which is so shallow that boats of only 10 or 15 tons
burden can approach the town.’ If his observations be correct, the
island has risen and the channel has sunk.]

[Footnote 9: I afterwards saw at Benin city a young woman lashed to a
scaffolding upon the summit of a tall blasted tree, and being devoured
by the turkey-buzzards. The people declared it to be a ‘fetish,’ or
charm for bringing rain.]

[Footnote 10: This will remind the reader of Richard Lander’s celebrated
description of the Tree of Death at Badagry; and, as will be seen, the
custom has not yet died out of Yoruba.]

[Footnote 11: On the 25th November, 1851, a force of 260 men in 23
boats, commanded by Commander Forbes, H.M.S. ‘Philomel,’ entered the
river to repress the disorders caused by the ‘usurper Kosoko.’ They were
preceded by Mr. Beecroft, H.M. Consul for Fernando Po, carrying a flag
of truce. About five thousand people manned the bush, and though a
landing was effected and a few houses were fired, the expedition was
‘whipped’—as it deserved, for not shelling or rocketing the town: two
poor fellows were killed, and several were wounded. In January, 1852,
the Commodore, Captain R. W. Bruce, revenged the affront, and his name
has been perpetuated in ‘Bruce’s Island.’]

[Footnote 12: If this surmise be correct there is an uninterrupted line
of natural canalization between the Volta, the Niger, and the Bonny
River, a distance of nearly 400 direct miles.]

[Footnote 13: Mr. Bowen says that the lagoon, or lake, is called Ossa by
the natives, Cradoo by the English. If I understand them aright, ‘Osa’
is the arm which joins the Lagos River, and extends westward to Badagry;
‘Cradoo’ is the lagoon itself.]

[Footnote 14: The former word is variously written, and most generally
Jaboo or Jebu: the Germans prefer Dshebu.]

[Footnote 15: Ode lies some 30 miles south of Ibadan. From Lagos you
sail 20 miles eastward upon the Ikoradu waters, and thence march 22
miles north.]

[Footnote 16: South African travellers have limited the insect’s habitat
to the Zambezi’s banks. I supplied the British Museum with specimens
brought from the vicinity of the equator, and I expect to find the
animal throughout the low and bushy regions of intertropical Africa.]

[Footnote 17: There are three several meanings to this word, and the
Egbas often drop the nasal terminating _n_ which is pronounced by
neighbouring peoples, _e.g._ Ilorí for Ilori_n_. Ŏgŭ_n_ is the P.N. of
the river, Ŏgú_n_ is a god—some writers, however, as Mr. Bowen, spell
both these words Ógú_n_, writing the river and the god the same, and
making Ŏgŭ_n_ signify an army or battle—and Ógŭ_n_ is a charm, or
medicine.]

[Footnote 18: I propose for the future to call the whole of the great
artery of tropical Africa north of the equator by its classical name
Niger, and Nun from the ocean to its confluence; the eastern fork,
Binue, not Chadda, or Tsadda—a term based on the false theory that it
flows out of Lake Chad or Tsad—and the western branch, Kwara.]

[Footnote 19: Similarly, Oya, the Niger, or more properly the Kwara, the
Oshun, and the Obba, are the wives of Shango; concerning whom see
Chapter IV.]

[Footnote 20: The Yerewa is called by the people ‘Ado river,’ and in our
maps Jefferson river. The Okpara is better known as the Ajirá creek or
Carr river, and is about fourteen miles east of Porto Novo.]

[Footnote 21: In Eastern Africa the bamboo reed may be found many days’
march from the coast, but it is supposed to be derived from India.]

[Footnote 22: At Sierra Leone there is the same belief touching the
monkey-bread, or calabash.]

[Footnote 23: In Northern Europe ablactation begins when the milk teeth
appear, between the sixth and the twelfth month; near the Mediterranean,
however, this is by no means the case.]

[Footnote 24: When the late king, Eyo Honesty, of Old Calabar river,
resolved to adopt the single-wife system, the chosen one determined on a
certain occasion to act as if she had been an unit in the normal score.
Mrs. W——, the wife of one of the Scotch Presbyterian missionaries was
directed—when the husband laid his complaint before them—to call upon
the queen, and to bring her majesty to a finer sense of her conjugal
duties. The labour of love was, however, I believe in vain.]

[Footnote 25: Quoted _in extenso_ in ‘The City of the Saints.’]

[Footnote 26: Some travellers, for instance, Dr. Vogel, of the first
Niger expedition, write the word ‘cocoa,’ which renders the confusion of
a vegetable with a shrub and a tree inevitable to the English reader. I
shall therefore write the vegetable ‘koko,’ the shrub ‘cacao,’ and the
tree ‘cocoa.’ Dr. Clarke, of Sierra Leone, mentions three kinds of koko:
firstly, the West Indian, or English; secondly, ‘country koko,’ acrid,
and affecting the throat; and thirdly, ‘water koko,’ said to be a
poisonous root.]

[Footnote 27: An exercise known as Taketi, pronounced ‘Tackety,’ after
the style of ‘rickety.’ When the white man hears in the streets Jo and
Taketi, he will understand that the infant population are requesting him
to dance and tumble for their delectation. It is said that an Egbanized
Englishman, lately proceeding up the river, was seized by the
Abeokutans, and compelled to ‘Tackety’ for their amusement, whilst they
looked on and drank his rum.]

[Footnote 28: Ekko—pronounced ekkau—is maize ground very fine, steeped
in water till subacid, when the grosser particles are removed with the
hand—they fatten poultry well—and the residue, boiled and eaten warm,
resembles the Scottish oatmeal sowens. If kept till cold it hardens into
a paste the consistency of blanc-mange; it becomes a cooling and
nutritious diet, and plantain-leaved triangles of this article may be
seen in every market throughout Yoruba. At Sierra Leone it is called
aggidi.]

[Footnote 29: ‘The larger ants have been known to strip bare to the bone
the carcase of a cow in a single night. And Mr. Abson informed me, that
he was once reduced to that state of debility by a severe attack of
fever, as to be so wholly helpless, that the ants attacked him in the
night, when lying in his bed; and that if, fortunately, one of his
domestics had not awoke, they would have devoured him before morning, so
incapable was he of calling for help or struggling with his assailants.
At the time he related this anecdote to me, I was confined by
indisposition in the very room where the circumstance occurred, and did
not feel very comfortable at the prospect of being perhaps eaten
alive.’—Capt. JOHN ADAMS, p. 68. After this, I need hardly point out to
the collector of natural history the easiest way of cleaning a skeleton
in Africa.]

[Footnote 30: Dr. Haran, of H.M.S. ‘Brisk,’ was kind enough to show me a
fine specimen of a cinchona bark, procured at Madagascar. Dr.
Livingstone, however, is supposed to have seen quinine for the first
time at Kew Gardens.]

[Footnote 31: On my return to England in the spring of 1859, the Rev.
Mr. Monk, who afterwards took a prominent part in the Oxford and
Cambridge Missions, honoured me by asking my opinion upon the subject,
and I will appeal to that gentleman if all that was told him in reply
did or did not come to pass.]

[Footnote 32: To make my meaning plainer, I must state my belief that
the great South African explorer—whose geographical feats needed no
missionary foil—has owned privately to friends that he never made a
Kafir convert, and consequently that he could hardly have expected to
make one.]

[Footnote 33: Ferries are profitable investments in these lands. My
factotum, Selim Aga, tells me of one over the Niger, near Rabba, now
reopened down the river by Masaba, _i.e._ Mohammed Saba, King of Nupe,
who charges 1000 cowries there = 1_s._ 6_d._, for each traveller in the
caravan, 1000 cowries for each tusk, and sundry fees for horses and
mules.]

[Footnote 34: Our itinerary makes the distance from Lagos to the Agboi
Creek 2 hours’ row = 8 miles. From the creek to the Ogun River, 3 h. 25
m. = 7 miles. From the juncture to Igaon, 3 h. 15 m. = 9 miles. Total of
first day, 26 miles.

From Igaon to Mabban, second day, 6 hours = 18 miles.

From Mabban to Takpana, third day, 8 hours = 22 miles.

From Takpana to Agbameya, 3 h. 30 m. = 9 miles. From Agbameya to
Abeokuta, 6 miles. Total of fourth day, 15 miles.

Thus the grand total from Lagos to Abeokuta would be 81 miles, of which
64 were upon the Ogun River, and the direct distance between the cities
might be reduced to 48 miles. Mr. Bowen, however, makes the journey by
river from Abeokuta to Lagos 90 miles.

Abeokuta has been laid down by Mr. Townsend in N. lat. 7° 8′, and E.
long. 3° 20′; the height is about 567 feet by barometer above sea level,
whilst the mountains at the head of the Ogun River rise, it is believed,
to 3000 feet.]




                              CHAPTER II.

                         ENTRÉE INTO ABEOKUTA.


Before entering the great metropolis upon so solemn an occasion, it was
necessary to remove the soil of four days’ travel. Houses there were
none; so, claiming the protection of the tall maize, we ‘cleaned
ourselves,’ literally, not sneeringly, and dressed as rapidly as
possible. We found beasts awaiting us, wretched ‘tattoos,’ cat-hammed
wretches, rats, which people here impudently call horses, all skin and
bone, very like asses, ten hands high, with goose rump and hanging head,
skeletons which a strong man could easily pull over, requiring, like the
old Irish post-horse, a quarter of an hour’s flogging before they can be
got out of a walk, and ever ready, like Paddy on the rare occasions when
he is not sober, to fight at a moment’s notice. In the latter point the
ponies of Yoruba may compare with those of Maharatta-land; their tempers
are peculiarly bad, as indeed one must expect from all low-bred animals,
quadruped as well as biped.

Leaving Agbameya at burning noon, we rode through thick bush, here and
there broken with patches of cultivation. The soil was sandy and
sterile, here and there showing water-rolled pebbles of the drift
period—doubtless nothing but eight months of tropical rain and the fiery
heat of the sun prevent its being desert as Sindh. There were, however,
fine crops of yam and chestnut-like koko. Here also, as in Unyamwezi,
the people are fond of planting together several _semences_, especially
beans, maize, and manioc: the land is carefully prepared with the hoe,
and dwarf heaps, in whose summit a hole is drilled, receive the seed.
This season’s crop is the second; it was planted in August—the first
being in March and April—and the harvest will be reserved for seed: when
it fails a famine is often the result. The Yorubas have a tradition that
maize comes from the East; it was possibly imported, together with
millet, by the Phœnicians under Hanno (B.C. 600), who could not have
grown wheat near the tropical seaboard. As everywhere in Africa, some of
the fields are carefully kept, whilst the others are wretchedly weed-
grown. Happily for the people, the rains, which this year have been
scant, are now setting in. Amongst the shrubs the African marigold was
conspicuous, there was a pretty little blue flower said to close at 2
P.M., and there were a few odoriferous plants which made the bush not
unpleasant. _En revanche_, we passed many a spot whose characteristic
odour was that of a corpse. Perhaps in some cases it may have proceeded
from death: the Egbas cast the bodies of slaves, poor strangers, and
travellers into the bush, from superstition as well as from pure
idleness. Generally, however, it came not from death, but from life:
throughout this part of Africa there is a large black ant—the chhungu
uvundo of Zanzibar—whose fetor is overpowering. I remarked a large pod,
which on pressure discharged a yellowish milk: the people rub this juice
on the hair to expel its surplus population, and of the plant they make
a fine fibre for fishing-lines.

The easily-made route was for the most part a mere bridle-path, kept in
tolerable condition by the tramping of the market-people, and the rain
must frequently take upon itself the privilege of forcing a way down the
king’s high road. A few sheds, where palm wine and native beer were
vended by men and women stretched in the most negligent of positions
under the warm shade, were the only signs of settlements, and we were
disappointed in our hopes of finding the promised half-way house. The
sun shone fiercely at first starting: it was soon tamed by heavy clouds,
which presently burst in a short shower, and the glare of the ground was
greatly mitigated. All who met us addressed some civil word, and were
respectful as Madeiriense: the vast variety and the complexity of their
salutations will afterwards be alluded to. My nag snatched a leaf of
maize, when an old woman in the field somewhat blatantly scolded it for
stealing her property, which reminded me of Mungo Park’s ‘standard law
of Africa:’ ‘If an ass should break a single stem of corn, the farmer
may seize the animal, and if not satisfied by the owner, he can kill and
eat it, but not sell or work it.’ This must be rather a severe penalty
where donkey-flesh is a favourite food. After about six miles of bush
and outlying farm, with a few little rivulets between, we crested a wave
of clearer land, and sighted for the first time Abeokuta—Understone.

There are three natural divisions of country: the rainless, devoid of
vegetation, and consequently termed desert; the pastoral, covered like
prairie-land with herbage and bush, but deficient in forest; and the
agricultural, clothed primally with continuous woods, and subsequently
with second growths of bush and forest, or with savannahs, the results
of old and yearly burnings. Of the latter description is this part of
Egba-land: the bush, however, making allowance for the quantity and
quality of tropical vegetation, is much like what beautiful Goodwood
must have been in the days of the Heptarchy, as yet unconverted into
lawn and grove and bushy dell; all of which will be done, and, until
that still distant day, the land can hardly be said to be ready for
civilization. The only sign of commencement is that the primeval forest
has been extirpated immediately about the city, and has given place to
the long crab-grass which now monopolizes the soil, and which presently
must be taught to disappear before Bahama grass, or some similar and
less exhausting growth.


  ‘By secret charms our native land attracts,’


they say. This may be true or not: it is certain, however, that in
strange countries there are secret influences that disenchant, that
repel. I feel them here. The scene before me wants neither grandeur nor
beauty; there is a gorgeous growth around; hill, water, forest, and
homestead—the constituents of beauty in landscape—all are present; yet,
brooding over them all, darkening sun and sky, and clothing earth with
sombre hues, is the sadness of a stranger-land. And it is a sadness
which must endure. Those who tear themselves from Europe ever recognize
the sensation in the comfortable seats which the New World affords them.
They always think of what they call their ‘home;’ a word which has no
meaning to their children. Those who hold emigration to be England’s
first want, should, in common humanity, advocate the system which
prevailed some century ago in the Western Hebrides, whence whole
villages emigrated, to found, in a hemisphere beyond the Atlantic,
settlements which in name and nature were the exact copies of their
ancient homes.

The first aspect of Abeokuta was decidedly remarkable. The principal
peculiarity was the fantastic breaking of the undulating plain by masses
of grey granite—the rose-coloured is not easily seen—between twenty and
thirty in number, sometimes rising two hundred and fifty to three
hundred feet above the lower levels. White under the sun’s glare, and
cast in strange forms—knobs, pinnacles, walls, backbones, scarps, and
logans—they towered over the patches of dark trees at their bases and
the large brown villages, or rather towns, which separated them. There
was a long dorsum, which nearly bisected the town from north to south,
and which lay like a turtle’s back between the scattered lines of
habitations. The schorl, the sandstone formations, and the iron
conglomerates were thrown into shade by these masses protruded from
below. The country not a little reminded me of features which I have
described in Eastern and Central Africa—Unyamwezi and the lands between
the Nyanza Lake and Ugogo: in the prairies of the great West,
Independence Rock afforded a similar spectacle. In some places the
habitations seemed as close packed as cells in a honeycomb; in others
they were broken by bush, whose growth is encouraged because fire-
engines are unknown. The ground was exceedingly complicated. Our guides
pointed out to us the sites of the chief towns, Ake and Ikijá, Bagura
and Owu, the Rock Olumo—‘the builder,’ or capitolium—and other places
which a few minutes afterwards were forgotten. A line of denser and more
regular trees marks the course of the river, and blue distance, rolling
here and there in long waves, broken by dwarf cones and subsiding into a
mysteriously hazed horizon, formed a charming prospect after our
confinement in the trough-like river.

Beyond the first sight of the town remained some two miles before
reaching Ake, our intended quarters in the modern metropolis of Egba-
land. Continuing our ride, I remarked another truly African custom which
prevails from Kruland to the eastern coast, and which has the knack of
puzzling new comers. The primeval forest has been cleared away around
the town, yet there is not a vestige of cultivation; and if you ask for
the farms, you are told that they are distant some five to twenty miles.
The reason is that if placed within reach nothing could defend them from
the depredations of robbers and cattle. These circum-urban wastes might
easily be purchased for cotton-growing. Before sinking good money,
however, it would be advisable to perpend whether we could render
valuable—even with the aid of coloured ‘professors’ and quadroon
‘emigration-agents’—what the Yorubas cannot.

Before reaching the Agbameya gate of Abeokuta, we had a something of
excitement. The ‘doctor’ had descended from his Rosinante, and a battle
royal was the result. My wretched tattoo rose with a scream high upon
its hind spindles. Unwilling to be involved in the game of biting,
pawing, and kicking, and not knowing the beasts to be unshod, I tried to
dismount, hitched my foot in the stirrup, which did not open with a
spring, and had the pleasure of hearing the sound of war over my back.
The results were a few bruises, and the resolution of carrying for the
future a stout stick, wherewith to belabour belligerents’ heads. A fall
was a bad omen to begin with, but, as says good Edom o’ Gordon,


  ‘Thame luiks to freits, my master dear,

   Then freits will follow thame.’[35]


Besides which it was a Friday, and it let me off cheap.

The celebrated defences of Abeokuta, which have played in Yoruba history
the part of the wall of China and the lines of Torres Vedras, next
appeared. They are seventeen to eighteen miles in circumference. To the
northwards, however, in the direction of the hostile Ibadan, they are
three in number, and the extreme circumference may be twenty
miles—somewhat larger than Thebes of the hundred gates.[36] The
metropolis itself, measured by perambulator, was found to be four miles
by two. Though Abeokuta is wholly on the left, they extend over the
right bank of the Ogun River, and there take in a tract of cleared and
level ground. To any but an ‘old African’—and such the familiar aspect
of everything around makes me already hold myself—it is a marvel that
man should be stopped by such an obstacle. I can only explain it upon
the principle which, a score of years ago, rendered a regiment of
cavalry impotent to face a drain four feet broad. The wall is hardened
mud, good material, but only five to six feet high, without embrasure,
and only here and there pierced with a round aperture by way of
loophole. In some places it is ‘weather-boarded’ with palm-leaves, whose
smoke would soon clear away the defenders. A hundred-pound bag of powder
hung to a peg and provided with a slow match would blow a hole in it big
enough for a Cape waggon to pass through. It is approached by an equally
efficient moat, a ditch perhaps five feet broad, wet with sundry rain
puddles, half choked with bushes, and requiring a dozen fascines or dead
bodies to make the passage perfectly comfortable. The larger entrances,
exclusive of those leading to farms, are five in number; three to the
north, viz., those of Abáka, Ibadan, Oshyelle; and two southerly, viz.,
the gates of Aro and Agbameya. Each is provided—for the benefit of
warders, who take toll by day and who close the entrances and keep watch
at night—with a hollow bastion, in no way differing from an old matted
house, and here and there a rusty veteran of a carronade lies in the
shade of its own shed. The town inside would burn like tinder. On a
windy night five hundred men, taking the proper direction, and firing it
skilfully, might do any amount of damage, and thoroughly demoralize its
defenders. Against the attacks of Africans, with their instinctive
horror of walls, it is safe; and the granite eminences, holes, caves,
and forest clumps of the interior would render it more dangerous to
assault in form, if defended by resolute men, than any barricade upon
the Boulevard. It is doubtless the latter consideration that
concentrated the Egbas round the Rock Olumo. Africans universally avoid,
as the Tibetans seek, these vast masses of mineral, which, attracting
the sun’s heat, and radiating it throughout the night, render their
vicinity in torrid lands sultry and unwholesome.

Beyond the Agbameya gate lay another long tract of uncleared ground,
with rises and falls, separated by dwarf ravines and, in some places, by
flowing streams. My companions had ridden on out of respect for the sun;
my jaded beast could fight, but not canter, so I left the bridle loose,
and it led me through elaborately crooked and intricate streets to its
own manger. On the road were several market-places, large and small.
These people, like the Mexicans, make their markets and fairs take the
place of shops, and there is a great gathering on every fifth day, which
ends the Egba week. The most remarkable is Shekpon, ‘Do-the-bachelors-
good;’ so called from the facility with which Cœlebs can eat, drink, and
smoke without wife or servant. Methinks in these days, when we are so
‘hard up’ for nomenclature that the ‘Army and Navy’ must be turned into
the ‘Navy and Army,’ I may venture to propose ‘Do-the-bachelors-good’ as
a very neat name for the next new club. Beyond this place the path
assumed the aspect of civilization; it was smooth, broad enough for
small-wheeled carriages, and was drained on both sides by a ditch—easy
here to recognize the European hand! On a wall of granite—the south-
western slope of the Ake Hill—I saw what I had read of, the minutest of
local lions in a land where ‘pot-holes’ are by no means rare. These are
two ‘eyes,’ contiguous hollows in the rock, about one foot in diameter,
showing by their white gutters, like tear-streaks, that water issues
from them. It never flows, however, save during and after the rains, and
is probably collected in a fissure behind them.

Presently a most unmistakable church, the true English barn, pierced
with tall windows and abutted by a steeple, which of course had a
clock—a nearer approach showing the belfry to be of lumber and the
church and steeple to be mud, roofed with thatch—provided with a
schoolroom like the church, but without the steeple, and a bit of
‘green,’ scattered over with not unfamiliar trees, formed the startling
termination to the ride. Entering _solus_ the aspiring ‘compound’ of the
Church Missionary Society, I found our consort the doctor, and he
introduced me to the inmates, Dr. and Mrs. Harrison, who were occupying
the house lately built and tenanted by the Rev. Mr. Townsend. A kind
invitation was extended to myself. Commander Bedingfield found quarters
in the neighbouring village of Eruwan, under the roof of Mr. Robert
Wike, general merchant, of the firm of Southam, Wike, and Co.,
Manchester. We were thus all near one another, and, of more consequence
still, considering the immense importance of our undertaking—I say ‘our’
as the historical bellows-blower used ‘we’ in addressing his organist—we
were all in the vicinity of the king who resents the conduct of those
that take up their abode beyond the shadow of his wing.

After dinner, at the exile’s hour of 3 P.M., we set out, accompanied by
Dr. Harrison, to stroll about, to collect fresh impressions, and to
enjoy new sensations. Around us was the town or township of Ake, so
called after the old and now destroyed capital of Egba-land. It is the
head-quarter village of the collection now forming the metropolis, and
it gives the title to the king—Al (from _li_, to have) Ake, pronounced
by Europeans Alake, meaning lord of Ake: we were therefore justified in
assuming it to be typical of an Abeokutan village.

Our first survey was of the mission compound, a large grassy oblong,
garnished with umbrella-trees (a species of ficus), cut by paths and
surrounded by an ample-gated mud wall, backing the various tenements and
outhouses. The position is nearly due north of the Ake Hill, or Rock,
and the site is somewhat higher than that of the other settlements. The
houses are mostly lumber, with tall flying roofs of thatch, and
remarkably badly built for health. Instead of being raised on piles or
pillars, so as to admit a free draught of air beneath, they are placed
upon the damp ground—the subsoil is a tenacious clay, arresting the
rain, which oozes through the valleys without forming springs—and they
are wholly ignorant of an upper story. Even in Tuscany none but the
poorest ever consent to sleep upon the _pian terreno_—what then must be
the results in a land like this? Opposite Dr. Harrison’s, and in the
south-eastern corner, are the lodgings of the bachelor missionaries and
the catechists, under command of the Rev. Mr. Wood. Behind these lie a
dispensary and various offices. On the southern side is a shed intended
for stabling. Amongst other things it contains one of the two brass six-
pounders sent as a present to the Alake of Abeokuta by the home
Government; the other is in the house or palace of Somoye, the
Ibashorun.[37] This gun is covered with a matting: the metal is in good
order, but the carriages and wheels are so worm-eaten that they would
break down during the first march. The neglect of these useless weapons
has been made a subject of grievance against the Abeokutans; but what
can be expected? When Sayyid Said, miscalled the ‘Imam’ of Maskat, lost
his larger guns in an ill-fated attempt upon a coast tribe in Eastern
Africa, they were shortly afterwards returned, with the message that
their captors could not afford to keep weapons that ‘ate so much
powder.’ A few swivels, the old ‘bases,’ East Indian jezails and
zumbaraks, and, for guns of position, ‘falconets,’ or light four-
pounders, might have been a welcome present, but what can these people
do with brass six-pounders? They cannot even melt them down.

Besides which, guns are, like knives and scissors, unlucky presents.
Almost invariably, throughout the length of India, wherever we have made
a gift of cannon to a native prince, we have been compelled to recover
it, _vi et armis_, from himself or from his successor.

Beyond the stables lies the printing-office, whence issues, once a
fortnight, the local paper, partly English, partly Egba, and called ‘Iwe
Irohin,’ ‘The Book of News.’ The subscription is two shillings per
annum, and the editor is our host, Dr. Harrison, a man who, not
undistinguished at Cambridge, has brought himself down to writing
leaders ‘adapted to the meanest intellect.’ The superiority of a regular
coinage over the local cowrie; the propriety of supplanting the hoe with
the plough—such are the abstruse theses which now attract his facile
pen. The printer’s devils are black youths, some of them Abeokutans,
paid four dollars to five dollars per mensem. They handle their ‘long
primer’ with some dexterity, and there is a handy little press, paper
only being now wanted.

On the east and north sides of the compound are the native employés of
the establishment,—Mr. Allen, one of the schoolmasters; Mr. Wilhelm, a
‘Christian visitor;’ and Miss Vincent, who has charge of all the little
converted misses. The most interesting part of the mission grounds is
the village of New Christians: it is called Wasimi, or Come-and-Rest, an
‘Alabama’ in Africa, and it clings to the eastern wall of the compound.
As might be expected from that mortal energy which the Anglo-Saxon has
so successfully distributed about the world, poor African Come-and-Rest
is approached by all the preparations for severe and protracted toil,
gins, saws, cotton-presses, and what not. ‘Come-and-Rest’ is in fact a
would-be workhouse.

But again Anglo-Saxon impetus has failed in converting the haven of
refuge into a workshop, and the African _vis inertia_ has here also been
successful. I never saw more than four men at work amongst the gins, and
then half a dozen squatters were chatting with and staring at them,
whilst a woman or two sat by with baskets of popped maize and boiled
palm-kernels to recruit exhausted nature. In North America the gin-house
is the proper working place of ‘old hands or very young ones, of
breeding women, sucklers, and invalids;’—here it is of sturdy men. There
are seven presses, but seldom more than one at a time is in use; half an
hour is required to fill it by five men, plus a dozen who look at the
workmen, and who in due time take a spell. They average per diem, in the
seven presses, sixteen bales of 112-125 lbs. each, and they have never
exceeded eighteen. In a long shed hard by are two parallel lines of
circular gins, which, though known to tear the cotton fibre, were judged
better for Africa, as requiring less toil than the heavy and complicated
roller, or even the modified East Indian charkha. They cost in England
three pounds, here about four pounds ten shillings; and perhaps half of
the machinery lies upon the ground, all dirt, mud, and rust. Rusty it is
landed from the steamer, rustier it is sent up in a canoe to Abeokuta,
and there it lies upon the ground, rustiest, because the people will not
work. I could mention a respectable body of gentlemen which has spent
thousands of pounds sterling upon such vagaries, in the fond belief,
though perhaps not wholly so, that the words of every glib-tongued negro
are true, and that all those ingenious implements are whirring and
working at Abeokuta as they would whirr and work at Manchester. A small
steam-engine might, indeed, do better; but fuel is dear, and then who,
as the Kanuri say, would ‘make his skin cold’ with labour, when he can
sit in the shade? Again, there are many who, like Mr. Leighton Wilson,
decry introducing machinery into Africa, lest it should render the
African lazy or lazier. I submit to the reader whether this be not a
famous jump into the ‘pit called Absurdum.’

There was nothing to see at Wasimi, nor could I observe that the lanes
were cleaner, the houses better, or the people superior, except in the
number of their rags, to their pagan neighbours. Judging from the
variety of large mortars—the best are those made from the shea or
butter-tree—indigo dyeing seemed to be the principal industry. A little
beyond Wasimi lay the house of Mr. Robbins, an African from Sierra
Leone, trading here as agent for the Manchester Cotton Association. The
compound was approached, as the barbarian ever loves, by a tall and
imposing gate, distinguishing the house of a prince from that of a
pauper. The colours—red, blue, and yellow—were those of the Crystal
Palace; the green, crimson, and black were not. I rather admired the
hall, a long, low, massive _pièce_, whitewashed inside, with the
heaviest square beams for ceiling, and a central row of dumpy columns,
alternately flutings and facets, with beadings between, wholly ignorant
of base or capital, and painted black and dark green. Their object was
to support the short, ponderous rafters of the roof. Timber in these
lands is expensive, and can hardly be depended upon; besides, it can be
divided into two varieties,—the over-soft and the unduly hard. The
effect, however, has that resemblance to Egyptian which every effort of
art emerging from the savage seems to assume, perhaps because in these
lands it most closely resembles the aspect of outside nature, and thus
is forced into the human brain. At any rate it is immeasurably superior
to the Five Classical Orders done by the carpenter, in timber, at
Halifax and throughout Canada.

We prolonged our walk northwards, through the aspiring township Eruwan,
and there we saw another small lion, ‘Orange Cottage, the beautiful
residence of the Messrs. Crowther,’ as the Pilgrim to his Grandmother’s
land is fain to call it. This edifice reminded me of third-rate training
stables in some ultra-cockney part of England—say tailoring Leamington,
and, as my companions were struck by the same thought, the comparison
may be accepted as correct. It is roofed with zinc or iron; the walls
are a composite of clay; the verandahs are supported by pillars of dry
mud. It is partly painted, and wholly hideous, its ugliness being
surpassed only by its pretentiousness. We entered, and read a somewhat
remarkable list of articles for sale or ‘swop,’ concluding with
penknives, gentlemen’s coats, jack-knives, mouth-harmoniums. The Rev.
Mr. Crowther, senior, a man of whom all classes speak well, is now
founding a new mission station at the mouth of the Nun, or Southern
Niger.[38] He was proposed for a bishopric in West Africa, and the
measure was dropped, I believe, only because the white shepherds showed
a settled determination to turn and rend a black pastor. But a man may
be highly respectable as a Churchman, without being fit for the
episcopate. His sons, however, have left Abeokuta, not wholly
_volentes_, but perhaps, on the whole, not quite for the country’s ill.

These, then, are my first impressions of Abeokuta. The streets are as
narrow and irregular as those of Lagos, intersecting each other at every
possible angle; and when broad and shady, one may be sure that they have
been, or that they will be markets, which are found even under the eaves
of ‘the Palace.’ The sun, the vulture, and the pig are the only
scavengers. The houses are made of tamped mud—the sun-dried brick of
Futa and Nupe is here unknown—covered with tall, flying roofs of thatch,
which burn with exemplary speed. At each angle there is a kobbi—a high,
sharp gable—or elevation to throw off the heavy rain. The form of the
building is the gloomy hollow square, totally unlike the circular huts
of the Krumen and the Kafirs. It resembles the Utum of the Arabs, which,
extending to Usagara and Unyanyembe, in Central Intertropical Africa,
produced the ‘Tembe,’ and which, through the ‘Patio’ of Spain, found its
way into remote Galway. There are courts within courts for the various
subdivisions of the polygamous family, and here also sheep and goats are
staked down. The sexes eat alone; every wife is a ‘free dealer;’
consequently there is little more unity than in a nunnery. In each patio
there is usually some central erection intended as a store-house. Into
these central courts the various doors, about four feet wide, open
through a verandah or piazza, where, chimneys being unknown, the fire is
built; and where the inmates sleep on mats spread under the piazza, or
in the rooms, as the fancy takes them. Cooking is also performed in the
open air, as the coarse earthen pots scattered over the surface prove.
The rooms, which number from ten to twenty in a house, are windowless,
and purposely dark, to keep out the sun’s glare; they vary from ten to
fifteen feet in length, and from seven to eight in breadth. The
furniture is simple: rude cots and settees, earthen pots and coarse
plates, grass bags for clothes and cowries, and almost invariably
weapons, especially an old musket, and its leather cases for ammunition.
The number of inhabitants may vary from ten to five hundred, and even
more in the largest. There is generally but one single large outer door,
with charms suspended over it: the reason for this paucity of entrances
will appear when the ceremonies of an ‘Oro Day’ are alluded to. Finally,
the tenements in Yoruba show by their absence of defence a safer state
of society than the similar erections in Central Africa. These have flat
roofs, well protected with clay against the firing of the assailant;
those would readily be burned.

Wending our way homewards in the shades of evening, we stopped at a
house where we were refreshed with music proceeding from a something not
unlike the mouth-harmoniums above advertised; and that nothing might be
wanting to the enjoyment of a somewhat touchy tympanum, there was what
is politely termed ‘singing.’ My companions ‘chaffed’ me for my
undisguised preference of a tom-tom and a squeaking reed which were
sounding the requiem of some worthy hard by, and all explanations were
in vain. Will the reader be as inaccessible? The tom-tom and the
squeaking reed, unlike more pretentious instruments, recall no
reminiscences, provoke no comparisons; they are in keeping with all
around them; they are in the minor key; they offer no direct insult to
taste. Malibran and Mario, Liszt and Paganini, would hardly be enjoyable
in one of these Abeokutan cow-houses. What, then, must it be to hear
one’s own especial favourites, one’s mementos of past enjoyment,
hammered out into a sonata of a discordant, gingling, rattling, musical
bellows, alias seraphine, or burlesqued by the dilettante’s flute—that
type of gentle dulness which waxes cross when it lags behind the
accompaniments—or outraged with that _voce di gola_, that throaty
English voice, which the fog, the habit of speaking with shut lips, and
the practice of closing the larynx when producing gutturals, seem wholly
to disconnect with the ‘petto’? Besides which, there is melody in the
tom-tom, as every East Indian will tell you. ‘He who does not understand
the palm-bird’s note,’ says the Yoruban proverb, ‘complains of the noise
it makes.’ Mungo Park declares his belief that ‘the elephant’s tusk,
hollowed out like a bugle, comes nearer to the human voice than any
other artificial sound.’ And yet, so thoroughly artificial is taste in
music, I have seen a Highland regiment charmed with their bagpipes, and
yet loud in their abuse of the East Indian ‘nai.’

An equally edifying exercise was the perusal of an article in a paper
terming itself the ‘Manchester Examiner.’ The writer, by characterizing
the late Mr. Foote, one of the ablest of African _employés_, as ‘a fussy
and irritable official,’ frustrated his purpose of stating a certain
amount of truth[39] by what Locke calls a ‘compound ignorance’ of the
entire subject, which ignorance to those upon the spot was more amusing
than any travesty. On the way housewards we met a ‘big beggarman,’ with
bare head, European shirt and small-clothes, dirty and torn, and a
begging bowl in fist, like an Asiatic Fakir. This person is no other
than H.M. the Alake’s brother. He became a Christian, and—some say—a
semi-lunatic; others, who know something of his character, declare that
he purposely goes in tatters, hoping that his brother will not molest
him, and moreover will leave him a legacy.

After which we retired to find comforts that best prove the humanizing
influence of the last-created sex, and we thought with the wise—


  ‘Qu’on est heureux de trouver en voyage,

   Un bon souper, mais surtout un bon lit.’


But, before the sound rest which we have a right to expect, we must
briefly analyze the small amount of ‘reading up’ which the last week has
required.

The literature is not extensive. There are at present four small volumes
upon the subject of Abeokuta, which it will be well to remember was not
visited by Clapperton and Lander. Two of these were written by
authoresses, one by a white author, and the other by a ‘cullurd pussun.’
_Place aux dames_—let us give precedence to the fair.

Miss Barber, of Brighton, who has never been in Africa, published some
years ago a novelette bearing the striking title of ‘Oshielle,’
purporting to describe country ways in Yoruba, even as Mr. St. John did
‘Village Life in Egypt.’ The little volume was apparently intended to
aid the ‘Coral Fund.’ This is a collection ‘made up, as its name
implies, of small donations.’ Coral is a favourite article of commerce
in these regions:—I plead guilty to having interpreted the title-page
literally, understanding it as a fund to purchase coral, as ladies will
buy blankets, for the poor benighted African, and probably others have
done the same. ‘Oshielle’ is written in a friendly, kindly, and amiable
spirit, overlaying the black with copious whitewash, and forming a sad
contrast with reality. ‘The beautiful earth is one vast flower-garden’—a
ranker bush is rarely seen. ‘The forsaking of aged parents, the murder
of infant children, and other such vices (?) of heathenism are unknown
amongst Africans.’ Oh, Miss Barber! These things in Africa are the rule,
not the exception. Even in your favourite Abeokuta a man is annually
sacrificed; and within the walls of Ikriku a victim is offered up to the
Ogun every six years. Ikeredu contributes an annual murder;[40] and how
many more are slain I would rather not say. The mildness and humanity of
the people are the theme of praise. Perhaps the worst part of the Egba’s
character is his horrible cruelty to inoffensive animals: he delights in
torturing them, and, unlike the higher races, such as the Mongol and
other pastorals, he lacks the qualifications for reclaiming them. He
will ruin a horse’s temper in a week, he gives pain for pleasure, and he
takes a bestial delight in rendering wretched the beings of which other
and nobler races make companions. In the work of a stranger one must
expect a variety of contradictions. Thus the first chapter opens with
‘Meroke,’ the heroine, ‘at home.’ In the two initial sentences there is
the usual contradiction to be expected from those who read and write
Africa by books and not by eyesight. ‘Even the wing of the crow, as he
flies past, casts a perceptible shadow on the sunny ground.’ And yet a
few lines afterwards we read, ‘There is no blue sky above; the
atmosphere is filled with a soft, shining, veil-like haze.’ But why
bruise these pretty butterflies? Is it their fault that they are so
brilliant and so ephemeral?

Miss Tucker, after a study of Eastern missions, in which she had
peculiar advantages, put forth in 1853, without, however, previously
visiting West Africa, ‘Abbeokuta; or, Sunrise within the Tropics.’ It is
another neat little sketch—prettily stippled, _musqué, couleur de rose_,
touched with the grace of a lady’s hand, and no more like the original
than is Hyperion to a satyr. Pity it is that clever people, reviewers,
and others, write of places they never have seen: in that line there is
but one successful book—Elphinstone’s ‘Cabul;’ of failures there are a
thousand, from Dr. Lord downwards. Some art appears, however, in this
book. It opens, à la Alphabet James, with a scene in which two Christian
cavaliers—one, Sir Henry Leeke, R.N., t’other, the boy Ajai, _i.e._,
‘struggling for life,’ and amongst celestials known as the Rev. Mr.
Crowther—meet in the romantic shades of the Church Missionary House,
Salisbury Square, where, on Friday, the last day of October, 1851, the
anagnorisis leads most classically up to the peripateteia. But there are
necessarily errors in painting natural objects, such as the artist made
who, when sketching from a photograph, converted the Meccan pilgrim’s
‘_hamail_,’ his Koran, into an ignoble powder-flask. For instance, we
read that Olumo the Builder, a mass of gneissoid granite, is a
porphyritic rock. Again, that ‘at one spot the intervening space forms a
deep but low cavern, capable of giving shelter to a considerable number
of persons.’ There is no vestige of such cavern; the eaves of the
rock—if I may so call them—project like roofs; and the little pauper
colony now squatting there has supplied them with clay walls—an
architecture very common at Abeokuta. Mr. Bowen, an eye-witness, rightly
describes it as ‘the shelving sides of an immense rock.’ Again, ‘Ogboni’
is _not_ ‘a civil governor of each town.’[41] The ‘lady Tinabu’ is _not_
the ‘sister of Akitoye.’ The little volume, however, is popular at home:
in 1858 it had reached the sixth edition—which suggests a reflection.
Let me labour to draw these descriptions from the life, to paint black,
black, to produce the most careful of sketches. They will be rough, and
somewhat grotesque, because they are honest; they will disenchant,
because they lack fictitious feeling and unreal romance. Consequently,
will they ever see a reprint? I am sorry for, but do not envy, the
success of ‘Sunrise within the Tropics.’


  ‘Eternal summer gilds them yet,

   But all except their sun is set.’


Such false views of living societies, however skilfully drawn by the
‘prettyfiers’ of Africa, cannot conduce to any good.

I now proceed to my own sex, which may be treated with less of ceremony.
The Rev. Mr. Bowen, or more probably his Charleston publishers, entitles
his work ‘Central Africa.’ This custom has of late become far too
common. A gentleman who lived for a few months at the little Portuguese
island of Mozambique was compelled by the bookseller to call his two
octavos ‘Travels in Eastern Africa.’ Another, who sailed down the
Western Coast, and borrowed all his interior from volumes long ago
published, appears before the public with the grandiloquent title, ‘Six
Years of a Traveller’s Life in Western Africa.’ Mungo Park, who did
three times more than all three together, modestly chose ‘Travels in the
Interior Districts of Africa.’ Mr. Bowen’s ‘Central Africa’ describes a
run of one hundred and seventy miles or so into a country long since
explored by Clapperton, Lander, and a host of minor travellers.

Mr. Bowen appears to have been another Dr. Krapf, who had high ideas of
missionarizing Africa: the latter gentleman proposed a chain of stations
stretching across the continent: the former more modestly contented
himself with a weak regiment of six hundred men, and, possibly, martyrs.
The expense was easily managed. Fifty cents per annum from each member
of the Society would produce three hundred thousand dollars, which is
enough. Landing on the coast in February, 1849, after a preliminary tour
through Liberia and among the inland Golas—the ‘Gullah niggers’ of the
Southern States—Mr. Bowen lost his coadjutor, Mr. Goodall, and sailed to
Badagry, which he reached on the 5th August, 1850. His first view was to
establish the ‘Central African Mission’ at Igboho, on the outskirts of
the great continent. With two intervals of return to America in 1853 and
1856, he remained in Africa from 1849 to 1856. During those seven years
he visited the Alake of Abeokuta, and—with difficulty, for the natives
sensibly believe that every town which the white spy enters shall
presently be destroyed[42]—he inspected Bi Olorun Kpello, Awaye, Oke-
Efo, Ilori, the Asehin, sovereign of Isehin, the Are of Ijaye, and the
Alaketu of Iketu. The first station was founded in October, 1853, at
Ijaye, one hundred and twenty miles from Lagos; another at Lagos, about
two years afterwards; and a third at Ogbomosho, one hundred and seventy
miles from Lagos. [N.B.—These are not my distances.] After leaving
Africa, Mr. Bowen’s travels in ‘Central Africa’ were printed in 1857 by
the Southern Baptist Publication Society of Charleston; and in May,
1858, his ‘Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruban Language’[43] was
accepted, and afterwards printed and published by the Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge, Washington.

This Central African traveller is quite a patriot, and withal, somewhat
truculent. He had been a Texas Ranger in his youth. He played, it is
said, a good ‘shyooting-iron’ in 1851 during the Dahoman attack upon
Abeokuta—the reverend gentleman was at first rather pleased with his own
militancy, but he afterwards regretted it. We can hardly, therefore,
wonder that his style and sentiments savour much of the arm of flesh. As
regards his characteristically New World vaunts, no harsher treatment is
required than to quote in 1863 what was written by him in 1857. For
instance, ‘America’ (_i.e._, the then United States) ‘is more powerful
in the control of mankind in general than any nation that ever has
existed, or ever can exist, while the seas, continents, deserts,
mountains, and rivers of the globe retain their present form’!! We read
of America’s ‘victories in the name of the living God;’ and we are not
unprepared to be told that that nation is ‘the appointed arbiter of
earth.’ Poor Europe is of course nowhere. Despotism is doomed to perish
there; the king and queen, the lord and the landlord, the ‘coach and
six,’ the servant in livery, the ‘mediæval fogy in certain civilized
countries,’ shall equally become extinct, like the deinornis and the
dodo. England is of course the vilest of nations. An expedition to the
Niger—in which we always fail—would be very easy to Mr. Bowen’s
government. He predicted a sure ‘whipping’ to the Britishers when they
first attacked Lagos; and, prophet-like, he exulted in the correctness
of his prophecy, though he, as a white man, ran no little risk, and
though the Britishers were shedding their blood for such as he. There
are also ungenerous remarks touching English explorers—the elder and the
younger Park, Clapperton, and others, up to Messrs. Laird and Oldfield.
All the honour given to poor Richard Lander for his noble discovery of
the Nun, or Niger’s direct mouth, is that he ‘floated down the Niger
from Yauri to the sea, but forgot to observe whether there was any real
impediment to navigation by steamers’!!!

These are silly, _ad captandum vulgus_, stock sentiments, without which
in those days an American’s book could hardly appear in America; and
thus they may admit of some palliation. But the reflections upon El
Islam penetrate us with the profound dogmatic ignorance of the author.
How well Mr. Bowen is fitted to teach or to convert the Moslem is
evident from one word.[44] He names a Fula Mussulman, Absalom—son of
David—instead of Abd-el-Salam, and tells us with wondrous puerility in a
foot-note that ‘such names as David, Mary, &c., are common amongst
Moslems.’ Had Mr. Bowen ever read his Sale’s Koran? It is evident to me
that any Alufa or Mullah at Ilori or Hausa could have astonished the
Texan with his knowledge of the Old Testament.

The Rev. John Newton—the ‘old African blasphemer’ reformed—mentions a
significant phrase prevalent on the coast in his day. The white man,
after a certain length of residence, ‘grew black,’ not in complexion,
but in disposition, and becoming perfect dupe to charms, necromancies,
&c., put more trust in such things than the wiser sort of natives. Mr.
Bowen shows the first symptom of the disease, which consists in
attributing all European deaths by fever and dysentery to poison, and a
perfect confidence in slow poison. The same mental malady is found
amongst the old East Indians. I know a man who tells the tale of his
having been poisoned some twenty years ago. But when the Asiatic and the
African are determined to do the trick, they so administer their drug
that there is ‘no mistake;’ and if they fail it is by an overdose, as an
ounce of arsenic instead of a few grains. At Iketu, Mr. Bowen, after
being warned of poison, received a bottle of milk from the king. His boy
Sam had seen a Fula man pull a leaf out of the bottle, a portion of the
contents of which were given to a dog. The animal shivered, returned
them, and recovered. Upon re-administration next day the same symptoms
recurred. Mr. Bowen then determined that if he had given the whole, not
the half, dose to the dog, death would have resulted; and he ‘drank no
more milk in Iketu.’

Mr. Robert Campbell, a coloured man, and a ‘professor,’ we are told by
his introducer, who does not say Professor of Philosophy or Political
Economy, or of what,[45] seems to have visited Yoruba on an errand of
‘_industrie_,’ in the French, not the English, sense. The introduction
informs us that the writer, ‘acting upon a commission, received from
bodies’ (fugitive negroes?) ‘in the United States and Canada, visited
the land of his forefathers’ (who were certainly English) ‘to
investigate its condition.’ He left Liverpool in June, 1859, touched at
the usual mail stations on the West African coast, landed at Lagos, and
went up to Abeokuta, where, under a new self-bestowed title,
‘Commissioner of the Niger Valley Exploring Party,’ he made with the
Alake and the chiefs a treaty, to which I shall presently revert. Having
extended his trip to Moslem Ilori, and the surrounding country, he
returned to Lagos on the 10th April, and concludes the little volume
which he wrote, or caused to be written, in this style: ‘We landed at
Liverpool on the 20th May, 1860, in good health, although we had been
to——Africa.’ ‘Pilgrimage to my Motherland’ contains one hundred pages,
respectfully dedicated to certain friends of Africa, Messrs. Christy,
Ashworth, and Ralston. It and its subject are ‘heartily recommended’ to
the public by the introducer, the late Sir Culling E. Eardley, Bart.

In this hearty recommendation I can by no means concur, for reasons
which will be adduced at greater length in a future page. Suffice a few
words here. We are explicitly told, and more than once, that ground
amongst the Egbas is ‘deemed common property, any individual enjoying
the right of taking unoccupied land, as much as he can use, wherever and
whenever he pleases.’ This may be ignorance, and to a certain extent it
is warranted by the incuriousness of Mr. Bowen, who asserted long before
Mr. Campbell that ‘there is no property in land, or rather that land in
Yoruba is common property.’ The corollary is that any number of
Christian converts or colonies of Africo-Canadians can be permanently
settled in the Egba country. I distinctly assert that the reverse is the
fact, and that all such theories foisted on the public with a view to
emigration are likely to do mere injury. The country is by no means a
‘no-man’s land,’ and ignorance of this vital point would certainly lead
to those agrarian wars with which New Zealand has scandalized the
civilized world. There are two ideas incomprehensible to Europeans, but
part and parcel of the African mind. The first, which here requires only
enunciation, is that a slave-born man is a slave for ever. The second is
the non-alienation of land. Whatever be the tenure of property in
ground, it cannot permanently be given or sold. A chief will, for a
quit-rent, permit any stranger to cultivate unreclaimed commons, but the
bargain is purely personal. If the original tenant die, the heir or
successor is expected by another ‘dash’ to obtain renewal of the lease,
and his refusal would justify, in the African mind, his ejection. On the
other hand, if the chief attempt to raise his terms, the heir might
insist upon not paying a sum higher than the original quit-rent, and
amongst the more civilized tribes the voice of the people would be on
his side. No resident in West Africa will ignore that what I have stated
is the fact, and those who are unacquainted with the coast should beware
of the fallacies of Messrs. Bowen and Campbell.

That the animosity of the coloured man should at times break out is not
to be wondered at. The negro must be pitted against the white, that is
part of the _métier_ of the Métis, who is honoured by his mother’s and
despised by his father’s side of the house. The Messieurs Crowther, we
are informed, though full-blooded blacks, are treated with the utmost
respect by all the Abeokutans—a curious comment upon this is the present
expulsion of the junior members of the family. There is a tale told of
the ‘Professor’ at Lagos, that on one occasion, when a European colony
in Yoruba was spoken of, he swore with fury that ‘no white man, if he
could help it, should ever plant foot in Western Africa.’ By the money,
then, of the white dupe, he would establish himself there, and, like the
Sierra Leonites of Abeokuta, he would deny and drive out his
benefactors.

Of course the book abounds in such errors as the following:—‘Not
unfrequently I heard the term ‘agayen’ (meaning simply canoe-man)
reproachfully applied by the people of the interior towns to my
interpreter.’ The word is ‘Igáen,’ and it refers to the ‘Ga’-speaking
peoples of the Gold Coast,—‘canoe-men,’ as they are called in the
English of Lagos. They are far from being despised in Yoruba; but in
some places, as at Benin, every English-speaking black is supposed to be
a Gold Coast man, and this has not tended to raise the reputation of the
‘Igáen.’ These unintentional blunders are excusable; there are others I
have shown that are not so.


[Footnote 35: These lines were quoted by Mungo Park during his last walk
with Sir Walter Scott, who exhorted him to turn back because his foot
slipped.]

[Footnote 36: From the Aro gate to Alabama, the longest diameter, the
distance is said to be six miles.]

[Footnote 37: The word is thus written by Mr. Bowen; Mr. Crowther
prefers ‘Obashorun,’ and the vulgar generally use ‘Bashorun.’ It is
difficult to define the functions of this dignitary, who is at once
viceroy, premier, and commander-in-chief.]

[Footnote 38: At the time the above was written I had not met Mr.
Crowther, sen. Since then a personal acquaintance with him has by no
means diminished the respect with which his widely spread reputation in
West Africa had prepared me to regard him.]

[Footnote 39: I simply mean that the destruction of Porto Novo was an
unfortunate performance, justified only by the traditional policy of the
‘the coast.’]

[Footnote 40: This year was an exception, the victim having impiously
levanted.]

[Footnote 41: Mr. Bowen very properly writes the word Ogboni, but
strangers cannot detect the _g_.]

[Footnote 42: We read of a white man, who, compelled to camp under a
tree outside the Awaye gate of Yoruba, was visited by hundreds, and
heard the women sing—


  ‘Oibo gun sidi Akpe.’

  ‘The white camped at the foot of the Akpe thorn.’


Which is truly an echo of Mungo Park’s well-known episode.]

[Footnote 43: The book, a thin folio, is favourably spoken of.
Unfortunately it does not enter into the scholarship of a very difficult
language, and thus only half teaches the learner. As might be expected
from the _ser studiorum_, there are grotesquenesses of style and
orthography. Why, for instance, should we read, in ‘Compound
Consonants,’ that _dż_ is sounded like the English _j_ in _jug_? Has the
English _j_ hurt Mr. Bowen’s feelings, that he thus unceremoniously cuts
it? and why trouble _ṡ_ with a diacritical dot when _sh_ does quite as
well?]

[Footnote 44: P. 198.]

[Footnote 45: I believe Mr. Campbell to have been a schoolmaster in
Canada: of course due deference to the dark face forbids the
philanthropist the use of the humbler title.]




                              CHAPTER III.

                          PRESENTED AT COURT.


Much to do, and little time to spare.

The morning after arrival at Understone saw me on foot at 5 A.M.; an
hour and a half, however, elapsed before the party was collected for a
stroll to Aro. I need hardly say that they did not expect


  ‘The blooming pleasures that await without

   To bless the wildly devious morning walk.’


Aro, the terminus of the Ogun’s navigable portion, is the nearest port
of Abeokuta, about five miles from the missionary compound at Ake and
one and a half from the Badagry gate.

Starting in a south-westerly direction we struck into the European road,
and passed the two eyes in the granite rock before described. The ‘Do-
the-bachelors-good’ market led to another Church Missionary
establishment, directed by Mr. King, a native catechist, with its long
garner-like room used for pedagoguery and place of worship. To-day being
Saturn’s day, the bell rang ‘_Boys_ and girls _come_ to school! _boys_
and girls _come_ to school!’ The fine ears of the African vulgar
attribute special words to every unusual or artificial sound. The horn
and the tom-tom, for instance, express to them a great complication of
ideas by onomatopoetic language; such as—rise to fight! sit down all!
take hold, take hold!—which would hardly be appreciable to the coarser
senses of the uneducated European. A long stretch down-hill led to the
establishment of Mr. Champness, a respected Wesleyan missionary, who
fortunately escaped the terrible Sierra Leone epidemic of 1858-59.

‘The captain,’ alleging a suspicious blister on the heel, lagged behind
till he found a mount. The path was by no means bad; the gravelly soil
allowed the water to run off on each side, and high-wheeled American
‘trotting-wagons’ would safely pass over it. The exceeding impurity of
the place however at once struck us, and it was an impression which Time
strengthened. The surface was a wave of rising ground, broken into steep
ridges and deep hollows, through which streamlets flow—Yoruba is ‘a land
of waters’—and these again require bridges. Alongside of the road were
rare fields and frequent patches of tangled bush. The fetid tiglium or
croton-oil plant, and the wild senna, whose leaf is unfit for
exportation, the uncultivated indigo, the beautifully-blossomed mallows,
the datura and other medicinal plants were backed by the tall Oro
hedges, whose material is that cactus which the elephant loves, and
which, in this part of Africa, is mainly used as a mordant for arrow-
poison.

The people had already left their sleeping mats, and were loitering
towards the little labours of the day. Mr. Campbell ‘asserts, and
appeals to every one who has visited this section of Africa to verify
his assertion, that there is not a more industrious people [than the
Egbas] upon the face of the earth!’ Making due allowance for the
Americanism that concludes the sentence—‘the face of the earth’ and ‘the
whole globe’ are perfectly familiar to every denizen of the once United
States—I must, however, so far differ as to declare that there is not
one white man in Abeokuta who will endorse this dictum. It is true that
all Egbas, from the lowest to the highest, must, like the Sultan of
Stamboul, practise some handicraft; that the boys are trained to work,
after their gentle fashion, and that the people, unlike their
neighbours, are, for Africa, tolerable farmers; but an English navvy,
fed on beef and beer, will, it is said, work out 2·5 Frenchmen; he would
certainly knock up a dozen Egbas. And how can it be otherwise in these
malarious, fever-stricken, enervating, effeminizing lands? Idleness is
not ‘the root of all evil,’ the bane of society in the tropics; it is
the condition imperatively imposed by a thermometer generally above 70°
(Fah.), where labour is a curse, and where work, if it shortens man’s
days, must also shorten his life.

The people were tolerably well clothed, and, as usual at this hour,
every one was working at the chew-stick, a bit of guava, or of some
other soft wood. ‘Dressy men’ wore shogoto (African knicker-bockers), or
loose cotton drawers, fastened above the hip, and extending, like those
of the Madeiranese peasantry, to the knee. The body was covered with a
cloth gracefully thrown like a plaid over the shoulder, generally the
left, and a second ‘pagne’ was frequently wrapped, shawl-like, round the
waist. The poor dispense with the shogoto and the shoulder-cloth,
retaining nothing but the diggo, or loin-wrap. The women had three
cloths—one on the shoulders, and the other round the body below the
bosom, concealing the third, which is shorter and scantier. These
attires were mostly dyed with indigo, but of different tints, the sky-
blue being apparently the effect of wear. Those who cannot afford such
toilette wear scrimp wrappers, which develop forms not altogether
untempting. The men had caps of every colour, form, and material;
travellers and the ogboni, or elders, who are forbidden to use ‘filá,’
wore large hats of woven palm-leaf, like the Moors, the Mandengas, and
the people of Zanzibar, who, more sensible than Europeans, carry their
umbrella, not in hand, but upon head.

The women, who can rarely grow side ringlets to any length, confined
their hair with a fillet of indigo-dyed cloth, and those who were in
mourning walked about with naked scalps. All went barefoot, except those
who rode. The flasher sort, however, had their feet, like their hands
and arms, adorned with red or camwood,—the henna of this part of Africa.
Some few male exceptions were dressed in Frankish costume, and formed a
hideously respectable contrast to their semi-nude neighbours. The best
looking were decidedly the Moslems, here called ‘Imale,’ probably a
corruption of ‘Muallim.’ They were conspicuous for their decent
dress—turbans, or Hausa head-dresses, gay calico calottes, like the
kantop or ear-cap of India, with the large loose tobe, or shirt, called
Ewu, ‘the Guinea-fowl,’ from the handsome embroidery in spots, which
often renders the article worth five pounds; and shalwars, or trousers,
ample, but gathered in at the ankle. Some Moslems wore long side-locks,
the ‘corners of the beard,’ as the Scripture has it, and which are still
affected by the Jews of Bagdad. They carried large double-edged swords,
which, however, can hardly be drawn; and repining at their subject
position, they are said to dislike white men. None, however, refused to
return the Moslem salutation; and I heard one exclaim to the other,
‘Báriki!’ ‘May it be fortunate to you!’ a phrase usually addressed to
one who sneezes. This is a custom still prevalent throughout Asia, and
not wholly obsolete in Europe, where a ‘_Dieu vous bénisse!_’ is
required by an infirmity threatening, they believe, aneurism, hernia,
hemorrhage, and similar amenities. I remarked that many of the pagans
bore about in their hands bright iron chains, which are religious
implements here, as at Benin. Almost every man had his oggo (oggau)
club, or shillelagh. It is the knobkerry of the Kafirs, the Somal, and
the Fijian Islanders, and it extends throughout the African interior.
Here it is modified to a hockey-stick, about eighteen inches long, with
a twist of strong iron wire round the neck, and nails along the line of
percussion; sometimes it is distinguished by thongs of horny hide, brass
or copper tacks, and other barbaric decorations.

There was a vast variety of tattoos and ornamentation, rendering them a
serious difficulty to strangers. The skin patterns were of every
variety, from the diminutive prick to the great gash and the large boil-
like lumps. They affected various figures—tortoises, alligators, and the
favourite lizard, stars, concentric circles, lozenges, right lines,
welts, gouts of gore, marble or button-like knots of flesh, and elevated
scars, resembling scalds, which are opened for the introduction of
fetish medicines, and to expel evil influences. In this country every
tribe, sub-tribe, and even family, has its blazon,[46] whose infinite
diversifications may be compared with the lines and ordinaries of
European heraldry—a volume would not suffice to explain all the marks in
detail. The chief are as follows:—The distinguishing mark of the Egbas
is a gridron of three cuts, or a multiplication of three upon each
cheek. Free-born women have one, two, or three raised lines, thread-like
scars from the wrist up the back of the arm, and down the dorsal
regions, like long necklaces. They call this ‘entice my husband.’ The
Yorubas draw perpendicular marks from the temples to the level of the
chin, with slight lateral incisions, hardly perceptible, because allowed
soon to heal. The Efons of Kakanda wear a blue patch, sometimes highly
developed, from the cheek-bones to the ear. The Takpas of Nupe make one
long cut from the upper whorl of the nostril, sweeping towards the ear.
At Ijesha, a country lying east of Yoruba Proper, the tattoo is a long
parallelogram of seven perpendicular and five transverse lines. Those
called Brechi[47] wear a flap of skin taken from the forehead, and
overlapping eyebrows, nose, and eyecorners. This style of scalping kills
many, but the survivors are greatly respected. I observed a thing novel
to me; the areola in the women was not unfrequently tattooed a dull dark
blue, the colouring matter being native antimony, found in Yoruba and on
the Niger, and levigated with pepper and natron upon a stone. The
_bijouterie_ was coral, in necklaces and wristlets, heavy bangles, and
anklets of copper, iron, tin, or brass, and various rings upon the
thumb, the middle finger, and the toes. Most people carry beads of
various sizes and colours, denoting their peculiar worship. Necklaces of
large, many-coloured beads, with three bigger than the rest, show the
devotees of Yemaya, goddess of brooks and streams. Pure white beads are
worn by those who adore Obatala; black and white, alternating with red,
by the worshippers of Shango—Vulcan, or Jupiter Tonans. Small white
Indian cowries are the ornaments of idols, and as such are worn by their
servants, especially by those who adore the god Burukú[48] and the
goddess Amanlu, who, like the Hindu Shiva and Bhawani, slay without
weapons. The worshippers of Ifa, called ‘palm-nut priests,’ wear
wristlets of palm-nuts strung on fibre. Brass bracelets, and all
ornaments of the same colour, are symptoms of adoring the female river
god Oshun. Snake worshippers, and, according to others, those who pray
to the Ogun River, have an iron ring round the left wrist. Those who
bear upon their foreheads a painted mark like the Hindoo Tilak (or the
ashes which Roman Catholics daub on on Ash Wednesday) are the votaries
of the aristocratic and expensive god Orishako.

The physical conformation of the Egbas is not very promising in an
intellectual point. The cranium is small[49]—as a European can find by
putting on a native cap—wedge-formed, with compressed brow, almost
always prognathous, hardly ever pyramidal or oval. There are some who
hold prognathism—a peculiarity observable in almost all negro and
negroid tribes—to be exaggerated by lactation unduly prolonged at an
epoch when the bones are still plastic. But such suckling is still the
custom in Southern Italy, without the hideous African development. The
external auditory process projects in a ring of bone round the canal,
seeming to bury or overlap the foramen more than in Europeans,[50]
whilst the protrusion of the lower face and the receding of the chin
give, when carried to excess, a truly bestial appearance. The skeleton
is usually well put together in the upper part; in the lower, the hips
are too narrow for beauty; the shin, probably from sitting at squat in
youth, is convex, and the heel projects behind—a negro should therefore
wear sandals, never patent leathers. The nose is sometimes hooked, but
the nostrils are expanded and elevated at the alæ; in the plainer sort
it is broad and squatting upon both cheeks, with an absence of rigidity
and of dividing apex in the cartilage. The cheek-bones are high, and the
face is frequently lozenge-shaped. The blue eye, seen upon the Niger, is
unknown. Here the sclerotica is rarely clear, except in women and
children; usually it is bloodshot, from the relaxation of the minor
blood-vessels, or of a pale dirty yellow, as from over-activity of the
liver, or speckled with hazel spots. The iris is more frequently a dark
or a light brown, with a sea-green shade, than black; and the brows and
lashes are removed, like the beard and the axile pile. The lips are
large; the circum-oral region tumid; there is an ugly blue-black ridge
between the gums and the teeth; the former are frequently discoloured by
snuff, and the latter, though set off by the blackness around, are
neither whiter nor finer than those of Europeans generally.[51] The hair
is short, scant, crisply-curled, often growing from the scalp like
peppercorns, and rather dull or reddish-brown than black. The heads of
the men are trimmed in landscape or parterre fashion—indescribable. The
prevailing style amongst the women is to plait it up into thin
longitudinal ridges, like those of a musk melon, and to tie the residue
in a small tight knot at the sinciput. The skin is generally rough,
sometimes like shagreen; and in the poor the epidermis of the hand is as
hard as the foot of the domestic fowl. It varies from a dark coffee
colour to a _café au lait_ light as a Mulatto’s; I especially remarked
this peculiarity in the chiefs and fetish men, whose hair also sometimes
verged upon a dirty sand colour. There is not, however, any red race, as
amongst the Fula. Albinism is sporadic and distinct, nor did I see at
Abeokuta that modification of the xanthous temperament afterwards
observed in the Brass River, and at Batanga.

The Abeokutan, when taken at his best, is tall and well made, ‘black,
but comely.’ When not so, he is hideously chimpanzee-like. The male
figure here, as all the world over, is notably superior, as amongst the
lower mammals, to that of the female. The latter is a system of soft,
curved, and rounded lines, graceful, but meaningless and monotonous. The
former far excels it in variety of form and in nobility of make, in
strength of bone and in suppleness of muscle and sinew. In these lands,
where all figures are semi-nude, the exceeding difference between the
sexes strikes the eye at once. There will be a score of fine male
figures to one female, and there she is, as everywhere else, as inferior
as is the Venus de’ Medici to the Apollo Belvidere. In Africa also,
where the female figure lacks support, it is soon destroyed. The mammæ
in women are naturally large; after the first child they become pendent
and flaccid, and in old age they shrink to mere purses and lappets of
skin. It is a curious fact that these withered crones will sometimes
suckle children, and that the grandam is used as wet nurse.[52] In some
cases I remarked that, after the fashion of the true Amazons, one breast
was well developed, whilst the other hardly appeared—probably for want
of use.

Life in the open air, light clothing, and an abundance of dirty soap,
compounded of palm-kernel oil boiled with ashes, prevent amongst the
Egbas an over-development of the true African effluvium; yet it is
there. The negro’s skin—or rather the bulbs situated in the cellular web
under the cutis—is a more active organ of depuration than the
European’s, importantly aiding the respiratory and other processes in
eliminating effete matter from the blood. Dr. Stark proved that the
white colour imbibes odours in the lowest, the black in the highest
degree. The disorder—for such at times it is—is increased by frequent
anointings, foul food, and visceral disorders; and when to these is
added want of cleanliness—the oily particles of the perspiration, so
difficult to remove, remaining upon the skin, whilst the watery
disappear[53]—the effect becomes truly intolerable. Even amongst
Europeans in the tropics, the transpiratory secretion often becomes
acrid; and as the old Dutch traveller quaintly remarks, they can never
expect health until their ‘bodies open’—in other words, till their pores
act freely.

As we advanced we were plentifully greeted—more, however, by the women
than the men, and most by the children—with the common word Akabo,
_i.e._, Aku abo, used to a person returning from a journey. The answer
is simply an indefinitely prolonged _o_, which serves on all and every
occasion; if not returned it is a slight. Equals say to one another
Aku,[54] meaning, properly, may you not die, thus showing the real
African dread of death. The life-loving southern European would say,
‘Viva mille anni!’ All these people, from Benin to Dahome, when heard
thus saluting at Sierra Leone, were called Akoos, with as much
correctness as if Englishmen were termed God-bless-yous.[55] More modern
writers have named them Hios,[56] or Eyeos, from Oyo (Auyan), the great
capital of the Yoruban nation, about 2° (N. lat. 9°) N.N.E. of
Abeokuta.[57] The best conventional name of the language, however,
despite Mr. Koelle, is Yoruba; of the country’s P.N. more anon.

All national salutations are tolerably ridiculous; the Englishman cannot
laugh at the African except for his unreasonable ceremoniousness. As the
old joke has it, ‘How do you do?’ can only be answered grammatically by
‘Do what?’ ‘How do you find yourself?’ by ‘I never lost myself!’ ‘How do
you feel?’ by ‘With my hands!’ The Egbas, who are gifted with uncommon
loquacity and spare time, have invented a variety of salutations and
counter-salutations applicable to every possible occasion. For instance,
Oji re, did you wake well? Akwaro, good morning! Akuasan, good day!
Akwale, good evening! Akware, to one tired. Akushe, to one at work.
Akurin (from _rin_, to walk), to a traveller. Akule, to one in the
house. Akwatijo, after a long absence. Akwalejo, to a stranger. Akurajo,
to one in distress. Akujiko, to one sitting. Akudaro, to one standing.
Akuta, to one selling. Wolebe (be careful!) to one met, and so forth.
The servile _shashtanga_ or prostration of the Hindus is also a
universal custom. It is performed in different ways; the most general
is, after depositing the burden, and clapping hands once, twice, or
thrice, to go on all-fours, touch the ground with the belly and breast,
the forehead and both sides of the face successively; kiss the earth,
half rise up, then pass the left over the right fore-arm, and _vice
versâ_, and finally, after again saluting mother Hertha, to stand erect.
The inferior prostrates to the superior, the son to the mother, the
younger to the elder brother, and I have been obliged to correct a
Moslem boy of the evil practice of assuming a position in which man
should address none but his Maker. The performance usually takes place
once a day on first meeting, but meetings are so numerous that at least
one hour out of the twenty-four must thus be spent by a man about town.
Equals kneel, or rather squat, before one another, and snap the fingers
in the peculiarly West African way, which seems to differ in every
tribe.

As we advanced we saw unmistakable signs of idolatry. To many trees bits
of pottery, snail shells—Achatinæ six inches long—were attached: a fence
here consists of a few light sticks tied together with strings, from
which these harmless articles were suspended. In places were pointed out
to us a stalk of Indian corn with a yam or a gourd on the top. The idea
is that, whoever touches these things, the disease or the misfortune of
the placer will be transferred to him. There is the same superstition in
Hindostan, and terrible tales of thus inoculating complaints are current
amongst Europeans.[58] There were broken pots full of fragments of
crystallized quartz and iron conglomerate, which last is said to be a
holy stone. A traveller piling a handful of sand upon his luggage leaves
it under the protection of a medicine, or magic, which Mungo Park calls
‘kwong.’ A hatchet is placed in houses that have been lightning struck,
and water is worshipped in small earthen pots, over which the women
kneel and smite the palm of the hand with the fingers. We are reminded
of Apuleius, who describes the traveller being delayed by ‘an altar
garlanded with flowers, or a cavern overshadowed with leaves, or an oak
laden with horns, or a beech-tree crowned with hides, or a hillock
consecrated by a hedge, or the trunk of a tree chipped out by the
hatchet, or a turf moistened with libations, or a stone drenched with
unguent.’ Strangers connect these mysteries with Oro. The truth is, few
know anything beyond the fact that they are superstitious
observances—many of them, doubtless, quite as efficacious as the
horseshoe or mistletoe in England, or the Pishog, which transferred
cream and butter from one churn to another, in Ireland, where, as in
Abyssinia, old women were burned for becoming grey cats.

We found no difficulty in fording two of the waters on the line of road;
the third, however, was more formidable. Mr. Consul Foote fell there,
his horse having placed its hoof in a deep hole, whence earth had been
taken for building purposes; and he then laid in the germs of the
disease which carried him off in the prime of life. Several old women,
in purest Guinea costume, were washing their clothes and persons, and,
not wishing to wet our feet, we attempted by ‘sweet mouth’ to secure a
mount. The reply was characteristically African, viz., ‘What will you
give me?’ Having neither cowries nor tobacco, we waited till a man came
up, and he was more obliging than the veterans of the other sex.

Nearing the walls we saw a house in the process of preparation for Mr.
Savage, a native merchant. Numbers of labourers were at work, for
Africans, like Asiatics, are great at division of labour, which, indeed,
they often so divide that the remainder is imperceptible. Some hoed a
deep hole,—here as at Benin and in Sokoto, where they are scattered over
the town, a standing nuisance,—which afterwards remains to be filled
with rain and drainage, filth, offal, and sometimes with the corpse of a
child or a slave. The effect of these pits upon the climate may easily
be imagined. Another gang was working the clay, and converting it into
the swish or dab required for the walls; whilst a third party was
engaged in preparing grass thatch and palm leaves for the roof. When the
actual building begins there will be one gang to carry clay balls to the
scene of action, a second of labourers who fling the same balls into
wall shape and pat them down, a third, boys and girls, who hand other
balls from the ground or the scaffolding to the masons above, a trimmer
to plumb and set things square with his wooden shovel, and finally
thatchers to finish off. The shell is usually made in three horizontal
layers, which must dry for a day or two in the sun and wind before
receiving another addition; the builders, however, will await for the
last touch the month of December, when the hard, dry breath of the
harmattan will harden their work to the consistence of concrete. This
desert wind, which Captain Maury and his Ehrenberg bring from impossible
places, is enjoyed like the Neapolitan scirocco by new comers, and is
much feared by natives and old stagers. It is, therefore, supposed to be
a giant, an African Æolus, who sits upon a mountain far in the interior,
blowing dust and cold—the elements of discomfort—over the world.

Presently we arrived at the Aro, or the Badagry or the south-western
gate. It is not unlike that of Agbameya, but, for valid reasons, it is,
or rather it was, on a somewhat more extensive scale. Long quiet—lately
broken—has, however, demoralized the people; ten years ago it was the
same in Great Britain. The wall is hardly eight inches thick, there is
no weather-thatch, the guard-house is almost in ruins, and the moat is a
mere ditch. Victory has made the Egbas too secure.

But a truce to criticism. We are now upon classic ground, the local
Marathon. Here was fought, on the 3rd of March, 1851, the great battle
between the Dahomans and the Abeokutans. The quarrel was of old
standing. Gezo, King of Idáhame, as the land of the Lord of Amazons is
here called, had been defeated at Ado—a town nearly half-way between
Badagry and Abeokuta—by the Ibashorun, or commander-in-chief, of
Abeokuta; and he had lost, besides the town, his stool, which in these
regions means the throne. The Dahomans, holding themselves to be a
military as well as a warlike nation—we have lately been lectured upon
the distinction, which is no difference—and burning for revenge,
determined to destroy Abeokuta, for which purpose they advanced with the
full force of the empire.

Their plans were ill laid, and their boasted secrecy appears to have
been a lamentable failure. Arrived at Ishagga, a small Egbado town
fifteen to seventeen miles south-west of their destination, they were
duped by special treaties, oaths, and sacrifices, and were persuaded to
attack, not the north-western gate, which was the weakest, but the
south-western, which had already been fortified. Their plans of a night
surprise were also overruled by their treacherous allies, who persuaded
them that midday would find the defenders either sleeping or working at
their farms; and finally, the Ishaggans pointed out a ford which wetted
all the cartridges of their friends.

Baddahun or Glele,[59] son of the late King Gezo of Baddahun Dahome,
revenged this treachery, as he was expected to do. After patiently
waiting ten years with annual threats against Abeokuta, which threw the
people off their guard, he suddenly, in the spring of 1862, fell upon
Ishagga with a force not exceeding 6000 men—the town numbered about 3000
souls—massacred all he could not carry away, and departed, laden with
prisoners, amongst whom were seventeen or eighteen Christian converts,
and a Mr. Doherty of Sierra Leone, one of the Scripture readers of the
Church Missionary Society.

The Rev. Mr. Bowen, missionary and quondam Texas ranger, who used, they
say, a good rifle in the fight, thus describes the Dahoman attack of
1851 upon Abeokuta:—About noon, in the bright month of March, the Egbas,
some 15,000 strong—these numbers must be taken _cum grano_—marched out
of the Aro gate to meet the enemy. They then divided into three parties:
the first proceeded to the ford on the Badagry road, the second, under
Ogubonna, the bravest of the Baloguns, now deceased, crossed the river
near the wall, and the third remained not far from the Aro gate.
Meanwhile the Dahomans moved across the prairie with colours flying, in
heavy columns, numbering 10,000 men[60] and 6000 women. They also formed
two divisions, one of which fell upon the Abeokutan force guarding the
ford, whilst the other, under Gezo,[61] their king, charged furiously
upon Ogubonna, and drove him back upon the rocks and rapids of the Ogun
River. Mr. Bowen sent the 3rd brigade to his support, when he rallied,
and even made head against the enemy. The Abeokutans at the ford were
also flung back by the Dahomans; they flocked, however, into the gate,
and effectually checked the enemy, who, in this attack, were mainly
‘Amazons.’[62] There had been some dispute between the male and female
soldiery, and both laboured under considerable dissatisfaction: the
latter had claimed the right to storm, which the former obtained, and
were left to lose the day by their sulking rivalesses.

Then the women, fearing the taunts of the men, pressed hotly forwards,
and many were killed close to the gateway. Here, and here only, there
was something like a stand-up hand-to-hand fight, muskets being clubbed
for want of bayonets; the rest was all skirmishing. After six hours
ensued a purely African scene. King Gezo’s division rested upon the
battlefield half-way between the Aro gate and the river, and Ogubonna’s
did the same. A resolute advance along the whole line, and a single
charge by the one would have settled the fate of the other army—both
preferred, however, to sleep upon the field. During the night King
Gezo’s division moved off, followed by the other Dahoman troops,
carrying their wounded in orderly retreat. The Egbas, enraged by being
attacked by women, pursued them hotly with discharges of musketry,
galling their rear. At Ishagga the Dahomans faced about, fought for a
while, and fled—the treacherous Ishaggans doing their best to destroy
them.

Mr. Bowen estimates the Dahoman loss at 1200, others exaggerate it to
3000 killed and 1000 prisoners. Mr. Crowther, senior, counted 75 women
and 5 men lying within a few yards between the river and the wall. As
might be expected, the women suffered most; the flower of the army was
believed to have perished. The Egbas’ loss was comparatively trifling.
The effect of the ‘Battle of Aro’ was to place in possession of the
Egbas the Ogun River line and direct communication with Lagos and the
coast, the one thing needful to an African inland nation. The Dahomans
have ever since been burning with rage, and loudly threatening revenge.
Early in 1861 they collected another force—the number was set down at
22,000, which I would divide by three—and marched upon Abeokuta. On the
road, however, small-pox broke out—it is said to have killed 8000!—after
which the remnant found their way home. The Abeokutans, before Gezo’s
attack, dreaded their foe; and had, they say, resolved to burn their
houses and bury themselves in the ruins rather than be taken alive. At
present they despise him, and loudly boast of their power to ‘whip’ him.
Now, therefore, is their danger; and if demoralized by relying upon
English assistance rather than upon their own energies they may one day
come to grief.

But Dahome, in its actual state, is to some extent a bugbear. The mighty
warlike empire of which Bosman dimly heard, and even the strong military
kingdom over which Gezo ruled, is now _en décadence_. Its very
institutions must cause its decline: it lets its own blood, and, though
the drops are few at a time, it cannot but suffer in the long run. The
troops are poorly armed with trade muskets, ignorant of bayonets, and
with short falchions of stuff like hoop-iron. The ‘Amazons’ boast
themselves invulnerable, but readily retreat: an equal number of British
charwomen, armed with the British broomstick, would—I lay, to speak
Yorkishly—clear them off in very few hours.[63] The male soldiery make,
like the French, a noisy, fiery onslaught, but, repulsed with vigour,
they do not readily return to the charge. Their wars are mere slave
hunts; their object is to capture, not to kill, and surprises, not
attacks, form their favourite strategy. The terrible reports current
concerning Dahome and its ‘blood-stained despot’ may be traced to
certain Europeans and Brazilians, whose interest it is to deter slave-
emancipators from investigation. They have lately rumoured that the King
of Dahome is resolved to capture an English officer to hold his stirrup.
We hear occasionally of a white man being sent to Agbome, ‘rolled up
like a cigar,’ and a certain M. Medeiros was, it is said, compelled, for
punishment of his recusancy, to walk the way barefoot.[64] But these are
slavers, who are thoroughly despised by the king, and who, he knows,
must eat any dirt to please him. It is, however, a fact that neither
Baddahun nor Gezo, his father, ever put to death a white man. We have no
good modern account of this interesting despotism. Commander Forbes is
said to have copied from previous publications. There is no doubt that a
man well conversant with Africa, and known to have friendly
intentions—Mr. M‘Coskry of Lagos, for instance—would find no difficulty
in visiting and in returning safe from Dahome. I would gladly accompany
him.[65]

At the several gates of Abeokuta octroi or customs are raised. The two
articles most taxed are cowries and corn—the latter taken in kind. Other
sources of revenue are police dues, trade taxes on imports and exports,
_corvée_ or forced labour—the _begar_ of India—and, on emergency, an
impost equivalent to five shillings on each household. It is by no means
easy to ascertain the amount of Asiatic or African revenue; the
missionaries, however, set down that of Abeokuta at one per cent. These
decidedly moderate proceeds belong not to the Alake, or king, but to the
chiefs; a system which the local paper, the ‘Iwe Irohin,’ thinks—with
scanty popular good-will in consequence—should be altered. The change
would possibly strengthen the hands of the monarch, who certainly
requires support; on the other hand, it would lengthen interregnums,
which are already long enough. The late Mr. Consul Foote strongly
advised the Abeokutans to place an impost upon imports, but to send out
exports free of tax. They did not agree—nor can we wonder, as Lagos has
since followed their example—on the same principle as England prefers
the unjust income-tax to the just property-tax or capital-tax. For in
Abeokuta, as in England, the law-giver would lose by doing justice to
the law-receiver.

Beyond the Aro gate superstition again shows itself. The adit and the
exit are by two parallel but separate paths. At Agbome one thoroughfare
would be for royal, the other for public convenience; here, however, one
is used each month, and if an accident happens it is charged to the
wrong path, much as in England the day’s good or bad temper depends upon
putting the right or the left foot first out of bed. The grass waved
tall and lush over the Dahoman clay; the expanse was broken by sundry
graves, some thatched over like dwarf or ‘fause houses,’ others had a
rude cross, to which articles of clothing were suspended, and an
elephant’s jawbone—the buried man’s idol—hung over the huntsman, who,
like the fisherman, must be buried outside the walls. These two crafts
form separate guilds, which almost become castes, worship the god Ogun,
and meet in separate Ogboni lodges.

About a mile and a half along the Badagry road—a mere pathway worn by
market-people in the bush—placed us at Aro. It is the port and landing-
place of Abeokuta in the rainy season; during the dry season, from the
end of November to the middle of March, Agbameya is preferred. The
outlying village already shows signs of civilization in a ferry, palm-
oil puncheons, and cask-houses. Messrs. M‘Coskry and Wike, and M.
Bergmeyer and Scala, with Robbins, the agent, have depôts there, and
they will probably be followed by others. A little above Aro we see the
ridge of slabs and boulders which, stretching with breaks across the
river, render its rapids un-navigable. The material of the obstruction
is a gneiss, banded with thin lines of snowy quartz, and substratified,
the strata being for the most part highly tilted up. Portages are
useless, for these rapids perpetually recur. The banks of the Ogun are
here perpendicular, and composed of stiff clay; in Egypt, as in Asia,
they would be sonorous with the sakiyah or Persian wheel; in this place
they are silent.

After sitting for a few minutes in the house of a negro, who politely
offered us a dram of trade rum, which was as politely declined, we found
by the stinging sun that it was time to re-start, if we intended to
reach Ake at 9 A.M. On the way we passed a young person in great
distress. She had dropped her pot of black oil,[66] worth at least four
heads of cowries[67] equal to seven shillings—no small loss to the poor
devil—and she was expressing her grief in the long, loud song which I
remember in the Lake Regions of Central Africa. Tears rolled down her
sable cheeks, yet in the intervals of sobbing it would flow on, that
curious bawling cry which one unaccustomed would take to be the
expression of lively joy. It is long before the European ear
distinguishes between the sounds of mirth and the voice of woe
proceeding from Asiatic and African lips. Returning through ‘Do-the-
bachelors-good,’ we found the market warm, as the Hindostanis say. At a
distance we heard a murmur like that of a distant sea, and as we sighted
the open sheds that form the bazar it swelled to a roar. The market
opens from dawn till 9 P.M.; it is fullest, however, a little before
sunset, and the more industrious light lamps, instead of going home with
the darkness. The bazar is a great institution in Yoruba, and, indeed,
throughout the Nigerian Valley. It is also a civilizing agent, and by
giving occupation to the women—it is disreputable for them to work on
the farms, but not to carry the produce for sale—it tends to repress
disorders. Porters are a hardly-used race in this region: men carry 40
lbs. to 80 lbs. burden for weeks’ journeys, and the women may be seen
staggering, as if about to faint, under a bale of cotton 112 lbs. in
weight. Men were tramping off towards the seat of war, sixty miles
distant, laden with all manner of provisions, which they bore upon the
head, not, like East Africans, upon the shoulder. The burden is fastened
to a neat wicker-work cradle, flat, and garnished with side handles. I
would suggest to bumpkins, who take hours in driving a recusant pig to
market, the advisability of lashing it to a plank—should no better
conveyance be procurable—and of carrying it upon the head. We are once
more in the land of caravans: they number hundreds or thousands, each
man carrying his sleeping-mat, cotton-sheet, or wrapper, provision bag,
and earthen pipkin, to warm the ‘kitchen’ for his maize or yam; and they
are old, expert travellers. They make when starting the _nakl safar_, as
the Arabs call the short, initiatory march, at Atade, on the Ibadan, and
Awoyade, on the Badagry road.[68]

Under the long rows of umbrella-trees sat a multitude of black
women—selling appears to be their peculiar privilege—with scions of
every age, from the big-eyed babe hardly a week old to the bold bare
bairn aged ten. Cowries were placed near the goods, and, as in the
Egyptian coffee-house, the buyer’s honour is trusted. The principal
articles were provisions for present consumption, hardware, dry goods,
earthenware, and ‘notions.’ Of the former, we found ready-made soups,
obbe or palaver sauce—so called because eaten in council—which, by the
mixture of mulookhiyah (_Corchorus olitorius_), reminds us of Egypt;[69]
ekko or mush; huge snail shells, here relished as much as in Sierra
Leone; kankie or maize cakes, and fufu balls of levigated corn or boiled
yam; grated cassava or ‘wood flour,’ as it is generally called—a
favourite, because on journeys this farina can be mixed up with cold
water and eaten without cooking—balls of beans ground on a stone, mixed
with spices, and placed to fry in purified black oil; dried rats; pots
of black and yellow palm oil, here far cleaner than in the Oil Rivers;
shea or tree butter, which will become one of the most considerable of
Africa’s many products;[70] sesamum oil; cereals of sorts, especially
Indian and Guinea corn; eggs, terapins, and dried fish from Lagos,
especially shrimps; Telfaria seeds;[71] pink kola nuts, displayed on a
white napkin, neatly covering a basket; ground-nuts of pindar, the
_pistache_ of old French travellers, and now called _arachide_; tobacco
of sorts, chiefly Brazilian; wet goods and drinkables, such as palm wine
and _pitto_, _oli_, or native beer, and well-diluted rum,[72] which is
sold by men; ‘bullock milk for true;’[73] fruits mostly relished by
Europeans—okpaimbo, ‘the white man’s palm,’ _i.e._, pine-apples,
bananas, papaws, oranges, known as the white ‘man’s mango,’[74] and
watermelons, which are exceedingly poor; condiments, pepper and bud
pepper, ginger and other spices; and various vegetables, sweet potatoes,
kokos, okros (_Hibiscus esculentus_), sugar-cane and onions, especially
the bulbless sort, called chives in England and violet onions in India.
The hardware was represented by bracelets of brass, iron,[75] tin, and
copper;[76] and ‘Europe goods,’ knives and cutlasses, scissors and pins,
needles, hoes and bill-hooks. The dry goods were raw silks, broadcloths,
and velvets, of which the green are preferred; country cloths of grass
and various fibres, some composed of pieces not broader than a riband,
and sewn together; calico, shirtings, and cottons of sorts; red, blue,
and white tapes; Hausa and other caps; ropes and lines; threads,
especially red; yarns and reels of cotton. The leather-work was
excellent; black and white, red and yellow, like that of Morocco; and
the people make good flasks and saddle-straps, saddles and embroidered
cushions. The earthenware was not remarkable; gourds and calabashes,
some of them neatly and prettily carved with the knife, serving for
crockery, earthen bowls, and china cups, plates, and dishes. There was a
vast variety of beads, sold singly or by the string, and native
imitations composed of broken palm-kernels and jasper. The ‘notions’
were balls of dirty soap, snuff-boxes, gunpowder, and ammunition; chalk,
found on the Ijaye road; tobacco, roll and leaf; snuff; balls of indigo
and liquid dye; camwood pounded with water and moulded into lumps; horse
and cow dung, here used for plastering floors and walls; little cones of
native salt, nitre, or saltpetre; baskets of leaves, used as brown paper
for wrapping; provisions and firewood, brought by the women six to eight
miles from the bush; stationery of various sorts; brooms, baskets, raw
cotton, and cowries, in any number. Briefly, it was a heterogeneous
mass, whose combined aroma on a warm morning and an empty stomach, after
eight miles of sunny walk, was as startling to the olfactories as the
awful hubbub—chiefly feminine and infantine—of saluting and laughing,
squabbling and cursing, hailing, and howling, was to the auditory
nerves. Pure swearing is European, not Asiatic or African. They
anathematize, however, idiomatically enough, as—‘Oro (the devil) take
you!’ ‘Egugun (king of ghosts) chop you!’ ‘May you die in the bush!’
_i.e._, remain unburied, whereas every man hopes to die in, or rather
on, his bed; ‘May small-pox kill you!’[77] reminding one of an English
exclamation now working itself out. And as usual amongst barbarians, the
mother and the female relatives are abused with an indecency which
beggars description. We lost no time in making the best of our way out
of the range of ‘Do-the-bachelors-good.’

On the day of our arrival, Mr. Williams, a most forward specimen of the
‘nigger,’—these people can be respectful until spoiled by Europeans,
after which they are insufferable—had been sent to announce to H.M. the
Alake, the great fact of Commander Bedingfield having arrived at
Abeokuta, and to request an audience _au plutôt possible_. The king was
pleased to reply that he would see us on the next day, Saturday, shortly
after 10 A.M. The walk to Aro, therefore, led directly to a toilette for
the levée.

But 10 A.M. sped, then 11, then 12. Various messages went and came;
still the great man’s dignity required us to wait, and 1 P.M. had struck
before we were permitted to hope for the possibility of beholding him.
Under these circumstances, had it been my ‘palaver,’ I should have
deferred the visit till 3 P.M., and I should not have appeared before 5
P.M. I have no doubt that more civility would have been the result, and
that the impression would have lasted longer. But this is to lecture
omniscience. Armed with umbrellas—here they represent the ‘quality’—we
walked over the few hundred yards that separate the palace from the
mission compound of Ake. We were suddenly told that we had arrived;
turned to the left into a ragged clay house, long and rambling, with a
shallow verandah formed by posts supporting the eaves, under which
female slaves, called—to magnify his importance—king’s wives, sat before
articles for sale. The establishment was as mean-looking for Abeokuta as
is St. James’s for London. Stooping to avoid injuring the coronal
region, we crossed a hollow court-yard, in which there was nothing
remarkable beyond a peculiarly neat pair of stocks, we entered through a
second gate, an inner and a smaller court, and there we found a cluster
of negroes seated at squat _sub divo_ to receive us.

We naturally looked around for the presence-chamber, when we were
motioned to bend double, and thus to insert ourselves under the long,
low verandah that subtended the side of the inner court. Five hexagonal
columns of ultra-Egyptian massiveness, and about four feet high, divided
the house-wall behind the verandah into as many compartments. Of these
‘loose boxes’ the two at either end were open, leading into the house;
the three central were masked by a native cloth; in the middle was an
old brocade bed-hanging—behind which we were told lay H.M.,
invisible—and lastly, was a curtain of scarlet velvet. The Awajali of
Ijebu Ode is never allowed to see or to converse with strangers, except
through his ministers; and that the cabinet may have it all their own
way, when the monarch dies, all the _personnel_ is carefully put to
death. The whole space, including the columns, was ‘beautifully black,
like the rain-cloud,’ as the Egbas say, with horse or cow-dung, mixed
with some leaf which may be indigo. This is the gobar of India, and
though it is unknown in Eastern, it has been observed in Western
Africa.[78] Happily we had brought our own chairs; the palace contains,
I am told, but two, and we had time indeed to sit. The rest of the
verandah was full of chiefs, ‘niggers,’[79] and a few Moslems, a total
of about one hundred and fifty, and all adult males. Never have I seen
such villainous crania and countenances as amongst the seniors of
Abeokuta. Their calvaria depressed in front, and projecting cocoa-nut-
like behind, the absence of beards, the hideous lines and wrinkles that
seamed and furrowed the external parchment, and the cold, unrelenting
cruelty of their physiognomies in repose, suggested the idea of the
eunuch torturers erst so common in Asia. One felt the same _frisson_ at
the sight as when looking upon the Gallic ladies who, in rainy weather,
haunt the County Fire Office at the end of Regent Street, and one was
sure that from pity or mercy it would be as well to address the wounded
mandril. I afterwards observed the same amongst the elders of Benin, and
I should not be surprised to find it at Agbome and Komasi. The
atrocities which these ancients have witnessed, and the passion which
they have acquired for horrors, must have set the mark of the beast upon
their brows. There was not a vestige of splendour. The chiefs were
bareheaded, naked to the waist, wholly unornamented, except with a few
cheap beads, and clothed with a common native loin wrap, or a bit of
unbleached ‘domestics.’ To retain wealth in such lands requires care and
caution: an ostentatious man, however rich, will die poor.

We were beginning to wax impatient at this impertinent blending of
misery and pretentiousness, when it was suggested that H.M.’s linguist,
alias Mr. Wilhelm, the Church Missionary interpreter, had not appeared—a
fresh reason for standing upon ceremony. It is contrary to etiquette for
an Alake to show himself too freely either to his people or to
strangers: the King of Oyo, at the first interview, remains hidden
behind the curtain, and the Alaketu or chief of Iketu is known by a hole
in the wall. Mr. Wilhelm is one of the earliest Egba recaptives who left
Sierra Leone for Abeokuta: he has remained faithful amongst the
faithless, and whilst the others have relapsed into the wildest
heathenry, he has become the senior ‘Christian visitor’—_il a passé
caporal sur le champ de gloire_. To quiet us, I suppose, a very dirty
table of plain deal was set opposite H.M.’s bed-hanging; presently it
was invested with an unwashed native cloth, and, lastly, after a long
delay, it was richly spread with two wash-hand basins. One was ‘blue
mandarin,’ the other, French Faïence, coarser than majolica, true pot-
house appointments, in each of which were two tumblers and two wine-
glasses—the materials for a carouse—at midday in the tropics!—then came
upon the _tapis_ four bottles of maraschino, prepared for commerce; an
ordinary high-shouldered, black gin-bottle, containing the normal
mixture of vitriol, turpentine, and aqua pura; two large case-bottles of
Brazilian rum, the offal of molasses, which, however, these people
prefer to the Jamaica; and water in a ‘lustre jug,’ as the trade calls
it, a thing of obsolete make and colour, such as thirty years ago was
common in English farm-houses.

[Illustration: THE PRESENTATION AT COURT.

Page 140.]

All this splendour, however, did not so dazzle us as to make us forget
that H.M. was treating us most slightingly, and our murmurs were not
spared. At length, the confidential young slave who had drawn the corks,
and who bore a bunch of keys, European and country made, and large
enough for half a dozen chatelaines, drew back the old brocade bed-
hanging. Thereupon H.M. appeared, encaged, like Clapperton’s portrait of
the Bornuese Sultan; or, to choose a comparison nearer home, like a
denizen of one of the larger dens in the Zoological Gardens. The shape
and appearance of the apartment was exactly that of Mr. Punch, magnified
perhaps a score of times; and it was a hole in the wall, under whose
outside verandah we were sitting. The loose box was full of women and
children, probably part of H.M.’s fine family. He is said to have twelve
young and fifty old wives, but lately he has ceased to be a father, and
is disposed, it is whispered, to resent any symptoms of impending
paternity. One of the spouses sat before him, fanning him with a circle
of hairy cowhide rudely set in a hairy handle, differing from the flag-
shaped instrument of the further east. She wore a strand of red coral,
and an indigo-dyed loin wrap, about which she was needlessly coquettish.
In the verandah, dangling over the Alake’s head, were two Moslem charm-
calabashes, covered apparently with many-coloured threads, white and
red, light blue and dark blue, with hangings of written characts and
talismans—their appearance was not familiar to me. The right arm of
majesty reposed upon a long bolster covered with crimson silk velvet;
and two mats, whose ends projected into the verandah, supported the
portly person, which was disposed in a free and easy way upon the dexter
side, with the limbs lazily drawn up. Upon the mat ends were placed a
huge leathern cowrie purse, not unlike the old French _gibecière_; the
royal stick, so enriched with beads that the material was invisible; an
artful animal—done in cotton, with a harlequin suit of beads—intended
for a dog, but resembling an armadillo; two chauris, or fly-flaps, of
white oxtail—H.M. held a third, which rejoiced in a handle of beads—and
a pair of unsheathed swords. One was a blade like the ancient falchion
with which the Osmanli captured Rhodes, only it had a brass head of some
beast, found possibly in heaven above, but certainly not on the earth
below. The other was an antique Toledo, much worn down, but still
bearing in distinct letters the noble Castilian motto, ‘No me trajas sin
razon;’ on the other side, ‘No me degaines sin honor.’ Weapons of this
kind often travel far: when the 18th Regiment, Bombay N. I., attacked
and defeated the Beni Bu Ali Bedouins near Maskat, they found amongst
the spoils, European swords, daggers, and gun-barrels, which had been
handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation.

Such was the setting that enclosed the picture. The picture itself was
as curious. Okukeno, Alake of Abeokuta, is said to be between sixty and
seventy years old, and his contemporary, Ogubonna, had been a balogun,
or high military officer, which implies an elderly man, during the Egba
dispersion, some forty-five years ago. His head, partially shaven, and
his beard, were grizzled; but judging from the plumpness of his arms,
and the absence of wrinkles, Dr. Eales and I concluded that he was not
much beyond fifty. He was a large and massive man, blind of one eye,
which imprudently encountered a stone when attempting to arrest a
faction fight; heavy featured, coarse, and unprepossessing. The loss of
his upper teeth, except the canines, which recalled the Wild Boar of
Ardennes’ fangs, caused a disagreeable indentation of the upper lip; the
lower incisors have been destroyed by snuff, and the tongue-tip
habitually protruded in a manner the reverse of kingly. Altogether he
suggested the idea of an old, very damaged and very rickety lion. His
dress was a tall fez-like cap of crimson velvet, disfigured by a pendant
fringe of small blue porcelain beads round the upper third.[80] A
necklace of red coral—pink is little valued by these lovers of the
gorgeous—and a double string of the same material round each wrist, were
the regal ornaments. This fondness for coral seems to have been borrowed
from Benin, where even in Bosman’s day it was a decoration of state. His
only body-cloth which appeared in view was a toga, of white watered
silk, striped with broad crimson bands; and it sat upon him
incongruously enough. His manner was as peculiar as his audience-chamber
and his appearance. He seemed more than three parts asleep, and we could
never decide whether the cause was old age, affectation of dignity, or
the two greenish glasses of strong waters placed before him on a silver
or silvered tray, now lead-coloured for want of plate-powder.

There are four tribes that have the right of giving what is called a
king to the Egba nation, viz., Ake, Oshelle, Olewu, and Aguru. His
Majesty of Abeokuta belongs to the first. His predecessor was that
Shodeke of Ake who rose to power amongst his countrymen in time to
‘consolidate the heterogeneous mass,’ and to prevent the old blood-feuds
breaking out afresh. Of the consolidator’s virtues all have something to
say. Europeans speak respectfully of him, and his people almost worship
him, as the Egyptians do Mohammed Ali Pasha—no great advantage to his
successor. Shodeke dying in 1845, his brother Someye, the Ibashorun,
premier, or commander-in-chief, was made temporary ruler of Abeokuta.
After his death there was a hard race between Okukeno and his coeval
Ogubonna. The former, however, had raised himself to the rank of sagbwa,
or dictator. Having followed for years the plough, or rather the hoe,
and at times acted as basket-maker—the Egbas are essentially farmers,
whilst the Ijebus are traders—he had acquired the art of seeming humble.
He had also the reputation of being poor—the usual affectation amongst
ambitious chiefs—whilst he was rich in land and slaves. Thus the ‘mild
and amiable sagbua,’ as a writer very wrongly calls him, had the cunning
to defeat his rival, and in 1854 he was invested with the title of
Alake, an honour never conferred upon an Egba prince since the great
dispersion of the people. But he is waxing old; his lieges are weary of
him; there is a report that he has made too much money, and signs appear
that his subjects will send him a quiet message to ‘go and sleep.’[81]

The Alake is usually of calm and quiet demeanour, capable, however, of
showing strong excitement, perfectly inveterate in vengeance, never
forgetting and never forgiving, ever plotting and biding his time—an
excellent thing in an African monarch. The following instance is given
of his patience under injurious treatment: When the waggish savage
Ogodippe, war chief of Ikijá—during the troubles at Lagos he sided with
Akitoye against Kosoko, killed several Brazilian traders, and kidnapped
a number of people—was reproved by the Alake, he arose, walked round
him, and insulted him as anointed king was never insulted before, ending
by asking if more was required. The Alake made no reply, but, _ultâ
mente reponens_, stored up the injury for future discussion, and waits,
like Saadi’s derwaysh, till he gets the insulter into his power.

When the curtain was raised, we were severally introduced by the
interpreter, Lagos Williams, and Commander Bedingfield shook hands with
the Alake. Our ‘mouf,’ as the linguist is here called, then opened the
‘palaver’ with sundry set and dreadfully sententious sentences; for
example, that the Oibo, or white man, had come up from Lagos at the
king’s request; that _vivâ voce_ was the best method of communication;
that he hoped all would be well, and so forth.

In reply the Alake hung down his head, and affected to doze, which, to
say the least, was not polite. No one had ever seen him so surly; many
of the chiefs, therefore, had refused to attend, saying that the Alake
must settle his own quarrels. The few then present attempted to
encourage him by ejaculating certain words in an abrupt metallic tone,
and one man, distinguished as a sycophant, sang out, ‘Ai-ku, don’t
die!’[82] in a strain which still haunts certain fibres of my brain. The
curtain was presently let down, and those outside began a new set of
outlandish noises. Some uttered blessings; others beat the left breast
with the right hand; whilst others, by joining the palms and sharply
drawing back the two smaller fingers of the left hand, produced a
snapping, which in this land signifies approval. All this apparatus was,
we were told, provoked by the solemn occasion of the great man taking
snuff. The ceremony was punctually repeated whenever the king drank, and
his glass was tasted preliminarily by the confidential slave with the
keys. The Egbas rob their rulers of as much of the reality, and leave
them as much of the unreality of rule—the pomp and ceremony—as possible.
This custom of concealing the king on such occasions appears to result
from a compound idea. In some African places, as at Loango, the person
of the ruler is so sacred that it is death to see him eat or drink. In
other parts it is supposed that a man is most obnoxious to witchcraft
when eating, drinking, and sleeping.

After an unconscionable time for digesting the last speech, there arose
an old man, whose wrinkled face and dwindled stomach showed fully his
sixty years. His dress was a white loin-cloth, a necklace of beads, and
a leather talisman, like a ‘grigri bag,’ with two gold or brass rings
sewn to its front. He was the Akpesi or Prince of Ikemta, one of the
Abeokutan townships, the only other man of the same rank being the Apesi
of Eruwan. The ‘king’s mouth,’ or, as he would be called further south,
‘ole parrot,’ is celebrated for eloquence and for a Sancho Panza-like
knowledge of proverbs, and readiness in the use of them. He is therefore
a useful man, but the whites declare that he is not to be trusted. He
presently stood up, and without once referring to his master, delivered
himself of a long speech, with frequent repetitions, the words ‘ki’
(signifying ‘salutation’) and ‘gi-di gi-di’ (‘very well’) being the most
ear-catching. At the peroration he expressed the gladness of the Alake
to see and welcome us at the capital; as for himself, he rubbed his bony
hands on his lean stomach to show the yearning of his own proper bowels
towards us. After which he sat down with the air of a man who can afford
to say Dixi.

Commander Bedingfield rejoined with many thanks and return salutations,
at the same time insinuating a wish that the ‘palaver’ might ‘come
up’—in other words, to do something more than talkee-talkee.

The ‘king’s mouth’ again arose, welcomed us with even more effusion than
before, repeated a prodigious number of ‘ki’s’ and ‘gi-di gi-di’s,’ and
concluding by hinting that this was the happiest day in Abeokuta’s
life—a day to drink, and chat, and make merry, leaving the future to
take care of itself, though he owned that it—the future—was the
properest time to work.

‘The captain’ accepted frankly and freely all offers of conviviality,
but ventured to represent that as the morrow would be Sunday—a _dies
non_—and as he could not afford to be long absent from his seat of
government, H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ it might be as well to settle upon the
next day but one for business purposes. Much, too, of the same kind.

The reply was again superlatively polite, agreeing to everything, except
to fixing a day, which would to a certain extent be derogating.

Then the carousing began. My companions thought it their duty to imbibe
some vile stuff in the shape of strong waters. I remembered Sir William
Temple, who, when sent on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands, kept
a friend to make head against the Dutchmen in beer. They were then
induced to swallow some of the ‘king’s sweet wine,’ and by their looks
it was apparent that they had not found it either Tokay or Lunel. All
the bottles were opened with a perfect disregardlessness of expense, the
Akpesi himself handing the tumblers of rum to the assembled crowd, each
of whom sipped, and sent on. When any one passed the presence, he
prostrated himself as ceremoniously as one kneels during presentation in
London. After the drinking, we wanted to depart—I especially, who, after
drawing out my sketch-book, had, at the request of those present, been
obliged to put it out of sight. We were delayed, however, by the non-
arrival of the king’s ‘dash,’ or present; and when it came it proved to
be a sheep, a goat, and a bag of cowries—the latter now worth about
eighteen shillings.[83] Three cases of excellent Hollands—far too good
for such mouths—were afterwards forwarded as a counter-gift, two to the
chiefs, and one to the Christian converts.

After expressing gratitude for the king’s liberality, we arose, shook
hands, or rather squeezed palms, with the great man, whose temper seemed
to have been mollified by his potations, and we left the hole—terribly
hot it was—without delay.

The audience did not impress me favourably. Having heard much of
progress and civilization at Abeokuta, I hardly expected to meet there
the poorest reception on the West African coast. Presently I remembered
that only twenty years ago the people of Egba had emerged from a low
state of barbarism, and had become acquainted with the outer world
through a few half-caste and European missionaries. Still my opinion is
that their social state—which is about equal to that of the Bhils and
Coolies of Guzerat—has been grossly misrepresented in England, and that
they have been petted into believing themselves far superior to what
they are.

The sulkiness of the old king, we afterwards heard, arose partly from a
correspondence which had lately taken place. ‘The captain,’ in a letter
which he addressed from the ‘Prometheus,’ Lagos, 3rd October, 1861,
introduced the following effective words touching a ‘gross insult
offered to her Majesty’s representative and to himself:’—


‘It seems to me that surely the Alake and chiefs cannot be aware of the
purport of their letter.

‘If they are so, I would ask them a question or two, and request they
will answer me.

‘Has England done anything for Abeokuta to entitle her representative to
offer his advice without being insulted?

‘Is Abeokuta so strong that she will never more require the assistance
of England, and that she can safely defy her power?

‘Does she consider it safe to pull the whiskers of a sleeping lion?’


This style, of course, appeared to the writer peculiarly impressive,
Oriental, likely to come home to the feelings of the Africans, whom he
knew so well. It wanted, however, the first recommendation of
style—intelligibility. The first two questions were queer enough.
Abeokuta, like other barbarous kingdoms, believes herself to be the
strongest and greatest nation in the world; she may own that England has
bigger canoes than she has, but she owns no belief in our superiority by
land.[84] The third was a perfect enigma—a conundrum would have been
more intelligible. Lions love the liberty of desert sands; they will not
venture into the damp, dark forests of Guinea,[85] and—zoological
gardens have not yet been introduced into Ake. So the simple Alake
inquired what is a lion? And some Sierra Leone ‘gentleman’ had read in a
book that it was the ‘king of beasts.’ ‘But what are his whiskers?’ It
was suggested that he probably wore a beard. ‘Then, what the dickens’—or
something to the same purport—asked poor Okukeno, justly indignant at
being taken for a low caste huntsman, ‘have I to do with plucking the
beast’s beard?’

It is, I confess, intolerably presumptuous in me to offer suggestions to
those who are so much better acquainted with the African than myself.
But in a few words, when the object is to _embrouiller_ an affair in
this part of the world, there is nothing better than a letter. On the
other hand, if a peaceful solution of the question at issue be required,
a trusty messenger, or, better still, a personal interview, is the one
thing needful. The only interpreters of letters will be either Sierra
Leone men, or perhaps white confidants. The chances are that both are
imperfectly acquainted with one of the two languages, and the certainty
is that both will have their own ends to serve.

After leaving the presence, we visited another place between the Alake’s
palace and the Ogbone Lodge of Ake—the state prison. It was then
unusually empty. The captives, mostly women and mere boys, sat under a
verandah, with their ankles fast in the stocks, which are a pair of
horse-shoe shaped iron staples fitting closely round the limb, and with
the points driven into a heavy wooden billet. Our object was to see an
African Gasparini, an Egba, who, after having been sold four times for
various crimes, had as often escaped, and returned to his own country.
At midnight of Thursday last he had hid himself in the house of the
agent Robbins, and after collecting his plunder in a blanket, he had sat
down to supper with the effrontery of a London ‘cracksman.’ The master
of the house came in, when his visitor seized his knife and stabbed two
of the servants before he could fairly be secured. This time, men say,
he may again escape; intercession will save the most notorious offender;
and effectually I did not hear of his execution. The punishment for
theft is here severe, as amongst the Moroccans; at first, the bastinado,
then mutilation, and lastly death. In Africa the penalty of robbery
ought to be heavier than that of murder, the former offence being
frightfully prevalent, whilst the latter is comparatively rare. A few
men hung for stealing even trifles would soon make an African settlement
safe from all attempts upon property—always provided that the doom is
certain, not problematical, as in the native states. At Abeokuta
executions are seldom public, and they follow conviction somewhat too
closely to please European ears. The work is usually done at night, in
the king’s compound; a peculiar sound of the drum at the time, and next
morning a fresh skull nailed to one of the trees opposite the palace,
are the sole announcers of the event. ‘Ilejo,’ the present Calcraft, is
said to strike the victim with a club, like the old Italian
_ammazatore_, and the head is then severed from the body.

After the first ‘palaver’ was duly concluded, we returned to the house
of Mr. Wike, and refreshed. Presently appeared a deputation sent by the
Christian converts, and headed by another Williams—the name is here as
common as in Wales—not an interpreter, but a Church Missionary
schoolmaster. The several orders of this hierarchy are, beginning from
the lowest, the Christian visitor; he goes about and flushes the game,
which is then handed for training and reclaiming to the schoolmaster and
the catechist—natives all. Above them begins the white rule of deacons
and priests. This Williams had been acting secretary to the Alake, and
in that capacity he had addressed to the acting governor of Lagos a
letter full of low, puerile impertinence, which was naturally supposed
to express the bile and venom of the breed. Mr. M‘Coskry, by
systematically denouncing slavery, and by taking more active measures,
had incurred all the enmity of these recaptives. But Williams showed a
tolerable reputation; he was not known to feel any special grudge
against the Acting Governor; he was a schoolmaster, and therefore could
hardly be expected to write idiomatic English; and lastly, it was
evident, even by his conversation, that a little learning had made him
mad, like most of his compatriots, in the way of fine words. So when
Williams showed due contrition, his error was set down to the score of
ignorance, and he was dismissed with Lord M——’s ‘short answer.’

Horses were brought to us for sale. I saw nothing at Abeokuta but the
poorest ponies, twelve hands or so high, neatly enough made, but liable
to disease, and uncommonly vicious. One, however, was a Borneo horse,
with the high withers that characterize the breed, and the lowest price
was set down at twenty-eight bags (about twenty-five pounds), in a
country where money is worth four times as much as in Europe. The
animal, moreover, was miserably thin, and the experienced determined
that something must be wrong, or that it would not have been for sale.
Good horses used to be brought down the country from Yoruba; since the
war, however, the Iloris and Ibadans, like Abbas Pasha of Egypt, have
laid an embargo and a prohibitory duty upon exporting them. Even an
Englishman would be compelled to obtain permission from the chief. The
war has greatly raised the price of beasts; they are in all about six
hundred, and the best have been sent to the camp. Yet the warriors on
both sides are ignorant of the simplest forms of cavalry, and this arm,
if introduced, would soon decide the fortunes of the field.

Ponies formerly cost two bags, or thirty-six shillings. The same now
sell for fifteen to twenty bags; even a colt of known name will fetch
that price. A tolerable nag for a European may be bought for thirty
bags; the sum rises to two hundred dollars where size is required—as in
the Arab, a hand’s height makes an enormous difference—and in fancy
cases three hundred dollars would be asked. They are much valued, and
require the greatest care in these hot, damp regions. Their food is
Guinea corn and grass, cut and brought in by the boys; the head ‘syce’
selects the food, and bathes and grooms his beast. Every day, or every
second day, it has a handful of kaón, an impure saltpetre—in Sierra
Leone called lubi—and, by way of anthelmintic, a quantity of spices,
recalling the celebrated East Indian nostrum, _battísí_. Before going to
war the animal is prepared by drugs for a constipation which will last
four days, and thus conceal the trail from the enemy. The trappings are
rough and heavy, huge demi-piques of morocco leather, with shovel-shaped
iron stirrups, sharp at the corners, and points projecting, by way of
spur. The bridle has the cruel ring-bit of the Arab Bedouin, and twisted
leather thongs, forming a whip at the end. Poitrail and crupper are not
wanting, and a variety of ropes and tethers, charms and talismans, are
bound round the neck. The animals, however, are not shod.

This evening, as on the previous, we heard loud shouts, broken by an
occasional musket-shot, and accompanied by the usual tom-tom. A large
crowd of _badauds_ and _flaneurs_ stood or squatted at the gate. They
were celebrating the obsequies of the Akpena or messenger of Ijemma, a
high official who had lately died, not without strong suspicions of
poison. He had been engaged in a quarrel with his superior, the
Ibashorum of his town. The people found business at a stand-still; they
therefore sent to the less useful personage—the messenger—their
compliments, and a humble request that he would ‘go to sleep.’ So to
sleep he went. What a charming way of settling the ridiculous squabbles
and the injurious jealousies of rival and hostile departments and
_ministères_! Am I not justified in suggesting to the civilized peoples
of the world so natty a mode of preventing private feeling from
interfering, as it now so fatally often does, with public duty?


[Footnote 46: ‘Ogubonna’s’ family, for instance, have three small
squares of blue tattoo upon each cheek, combined with the three Egba
cuts.]

[Footnote 47: Capt. John Adams (pp. 133, 134) well describes this
people:—‘A class of Heebos (the Ibo or Eboe, whose chief town is Abo, at
the head of the Nigerian Delta), called Breeche, and whom many have very
erroneously considered to be a distinct nation, masters of slave-ships
have always had a strong aversion to purchase, because the impression
made on their minds, by their degraded situation, was rendered more
galling and permanent from the exalted rank which they occupied in their
own country, and which was thought to have a very unfavourable influence
on their shipmates and countrymen in misfortune.

‘Breeche, in the Heebo language, signifies “gentleman,” or the eldest
son of one, and who is not allowed to perform, in his own country, any
menial office. He inherits at his father’s death all his slaves, and has
the absolute control over the wives and children which he has left
behind him. Before attaining the age of manhood his forehead is
scarified, and the skin brought down from the hair to the eyebrows, so
as to form a line of indurated skin from one temple to the other. This
peculiar mark is distinctive of his rank, the ordinary mark of the Heebo
being formed by numerous perpendicular incisions in each temple, as if
the operation of cupping had been often performed.’]

[Footnote 48: Burukú causes fits, and kills by small-pox—distinctly an
East Indian idea.]

[Footnote 49: Some authors state that the gyri and sulci are shallow and
infirm, but what may be their opportunities of autopsy I know not.]

[Footnote 50: Phrenologically speaking, I believe this denotes either
great destructiveness, or power of abstaining from food, whereas the
Egbas are remarkable for neither.]

[Footnote 51: A man with a theory once accounted to me for the
superiority of the negro’s teeth, by his never drinking anything hotter
than at blood heat. A pot of ekko (gruel) would rather have startled
him; and generally, the semi-civilized African is as fond of heated
aliments as the European. But the barbarian, having no dentist, takes
more care of his teeth; hence the occasional difference.]

[Footnote 52: I can hardly, however, rely upon the case quoted by Dr.
Clarke, of Sierra Leone (p. 118), viz., that the stimulus of suckling an
orphan monkey caused a lacteal flow from the breasts of a virgin
negress; yet there is no reason for disbelieving the possibility.
Embrocations of virgin’s milk are not uncommon in the Asiatic and the
African pharmacopœia.]

[Footnote 53: The _fanatici_ for the Turkish bath, who contend that
perspiration makes the ploughman cleaner than the prince, are apt to
forget this part of the process.]

[Footnote 54: Also written ‘Oku’ and ‘Aiku,’ properly ‘Ai-ku,’ from _ai_
‘negative,’ and _ku_ ‘to die.’ ‘Aiku’ is a noun, signifying
‘immortality,’ or, rather, ‘unquenchableness.’ ‘Aku’ is also a noun,
signifying a salutation.]

[Footnote 55: The inverted form of blessing would perhaps be more
intelligible. The Somalis know our men as ‘Godam,’ and the Spaniards
named their mustachios, from a favourite military oath, ‘bigotes.’]

[Footnote 56: Captain John Adams (p. 92, &c.) gives a long notice of the
Hios—he seems to have been hard on the letter _h_—and their king. He
places the country between Hausa and Dahome, hardly believing that its
army is 100,000 men, but declaring that its influence extends to the sea
by way of Ardrah.]

[Footnote 57: The maps usually write it ‘Eyeo.’ It must not be
confounded with Oyo, in Yoruba Proper, lying one degree N.N.E. (N. lat.
8°) of Abeokuta.]

[Footnote 58: My friend Dr. Arnott, a surgeon in one of the East Indian
regiments, showed me what appeared to be a true syphilitic sore,
communicated to his horse, doubtless, by some native so afflicted.]

[Footnote 59: Baddahun, usually written Badohong, was his princely name;
Glele, or Gleli (the jawbone), is one of his strong names.]

[Footnote 60: Others say 8000 men and 4000 women, which is more likely.]

[Footnote 61: According to Mr. Freeman, a missionary, who has frequently
visited Abome and Komasi, Gezo of Dahome was one of the greatest of
African kings. He reigned some thirty-five years, and in 1858 died of
fever. When Mr. Duncan—the Life-Guardsman—was sent to him as vice-
consul, he was much pleased with the size of the person; but after a
fortnight or so, he inquired of a friend why the King of England ‘did
not send him a man with a head.’]

[Footnote 62: Much nonsense is afloat touching these ‘Amazons.’ They are
simply, like the Urdubegani of the Deccan and of other Asiatic courts,
the slaves of the palace organized as royal property, and weaponed by
the late King Gezo—who feared treason from the men. Most of them are
women taken in adultery or too shrewish to live with their husbands, who
‘dash’ them to the king, instead of killing them. Once, however, royal
slaves they become vestals. They are bound, like the female priests of
Grewhe, under penalty of death, to chastity and celibacy, and this
naturally communicates a certain amount of ferocity to their
minds—‘horrors’ are, with the eunuch, their succedaneum for love. Upon
this subject I am tempted to quote a few lines from Captain John Adams
(p. 74), who says of Dahome: ‘One of the conditions by which a female is
admitted into the order of priesthood, is that of leading a life of
celibacy, and renouncing the pleasures of the world; and but few are
admitted to enter it at all; for during a residence of many months at
Grewhe, one ceremony only of this kind was performed, at which I was
present.

‘There is a striking similarity in the conditions imposed on those poor
deluded African women who are admitted into the priesthood, and many of
those nuns who in Catholic Europe are forced to take the veil; only the
former are instruments in the hands of fraud and oppression, while the
others are too often the victims of domestic tyranny and ambition. But
the lot of the savage African is far superior to that of the civilized
European. For the former, notwithstanding the restraints imposed on her,
can enjoy the sweets of personal liberty, and has some scope for the
play of her natural affections; whereas the latter is shut within the
gloomy walls of a prison, where her short life is passed away in vain
regret, and in the society of immolated beings who are as melancholy and
desponding as herself.’

To which we may add, another advantage to the African woman, that her
feelings, like those of barbarians and the uncivilized generally, are by
no means so highly developed as amongst Europeans. A scanty diet, a life
of toil, and the petty cares of domestic duties, blunt, if they do not
destroy, the _besoin d’amour_. She is not even—


                  ‘Commanded

  By such poor passion as the maid that milks,

  And does the meanest chares.’


Female soldiery, as a rule, is a failure; or rather, like female labour
in all departments of industry, it produces a worse article at a cheaper
rate. The Amazons, I believe, are no exception. They cannot be estimated
at more than 2000, although many travellers—Dalziell, Cruickshanks,
Winniett, Duncan, and Forbes—have raised the number to 4000, and even
6000. In the case of Messrs. Duncan and Forbes, the Amazons were marched
round the palace yard, in at one and out at the other gate, like the
commissariat cattle in Afghanistan. Captain John Adams (p. 93) mentions
the same manœuvre on the part of the King of Hio (Yoruba), adding, ‘This
was a political stratagem that would hardly have been expected from an
African savage.’]

[Footnote 63: It is, however, only fair to the Amazons to state, that
Mr. Bowen, on the day after the battle, saw several hundreds of them
lying dead on the field, where they had fought with great fury.
Commander Forbes, on the other hand (vol. i., p. 81), says of the
Dahoman army, ‘These soldiers, being yearly at war, have gained a fame
that, if fairly tried, would soon be found wanting.’]

[Footnote 64: It is a dire insult to refuse the invitation of an African
king to visit his capital. Captain John Adams (p. 63, &c.) tells how
seven English seamen, cast ashore four or five miles from ‘Grewhe,’ were
sent up ninety miles to the king at Agbome. One man, affecting lameness
to escape the journey, ‘had his hands and feet tied together, and a pole
introduced between them, and in this way they were going to Abomey;
when, to avoid so painful an alternative, he found the use of his limbs,
and marched along with his unfortunate companions.’ They seem all to
have been well treated at the capital. The king tried, by promises and
threats, to persuade the man who had affected lameness to stay with him.
But when the fellow answered that, ‘“if his shipmates went away without
him he would destroy himself,” the king seemed to feel uneasy at this,
and consulted one of his principal men, who advised him to permit the
man to return with his companions, which was granted.’]

[Footnote 65: This was written in 1861. At present (Feb. 1863) we hear
that Commodore Wilmot, Captain Luce, and Dr. Haran have set out on a
journey to Agbome, where I may venture to predict they will be received
as honoured guests.]

[Footnote 66: The palm-kernel oil, which is so fast becoming an
important article of traffic, is of two kinds. The white oil is that
expressed from the kernel after it has been cracked. The black oil is
that which drips through the husk when toasted with the kernel inside.
This is done to save labour. As yet no efficient crusher has been
invented, consequently every kernel must be broken by manual labour.
When machinery shall be invented, the trade will assume a new standing.
It is now worth 50_l._ per ton.]

[Footnote 67: One head of cowries, = 1_s._ 9_d._, here keeps a man for a
week.]

[Footnote 68: So travellers from Badagry pass the first night at Mo, a
place not far distant from the sea.]

[Footnote 69: It is almost as complicated as the Hindu’s curry, though
far inferior in delicacy of taste. The material is fish, flesh, and
boiled fowl, with yam or koko, flavoured with onions or shalots, ground
cocoa-nut, malaguetta and other peppers, red and green okros or occros
(_Hibiscus esculentus_) in large quantities, and lastly, refined palm
oil, which gives the _goût_. In black man’s palaver sauce they insert
‘affitti’ or ‘ogiri,’ a condiment about as aromatic as bad asafœtida.]

[Footnote 70: Of this valuable nut more hereafter.]

[Footnote 71: They are oleaginous, and produced by a gourd one to two
feet long, growing upon a climber.]

[Footnote 72: The ‘pombo’ of Eastern Africa. Maize is here macerated for
three days, till germination takes place. It is then spread on leaves
for fermentation, sun-dried on mats, and bruised. Mixed with cold water,
in a pot, it is well stirred for two hours, and boiled for twenty-four
hours; on the next day it is again boiled, and afterwards strained,
cooled, and stored in calabashes.]

[Footnote 73: This is Anglo-Africa for cow’s milk.]

[Footnote 74: The mango seems to have been known here of old.]

[Footnote 75: Tolerable native iron is brought from the northern
country.]

[Footnote 76: Copper is said to be found in the mountains to the east of
Abeokuta.]

[Footnote 77: There is also an independent expletive—‘Small-pox!’
ejaculated as if the speaker believed in the Sitla Devi, or the small-
pox goddess of India. Yet the disease is rarely fatal in these parts, as
on the sea-board west of and about Lagos.]

[Footnote 78: ‘A singular custom prevails here (Ardrah), that of
anointing, occasionally, the interior walls of houses with fresh cow-
dung; a useful practice, for it dries quickly, has by no means an
unpleasant smell, and fills up crevices which would otherwise be
tenanted by noxious and troublesome insects.’—(Captain John Adams, p.
81.)]

[Footnote 79: In these lands, ‘nigger’ always means a slave.]

[Footnote 80: Shodeke, concerning whom more anon, wore, we are told by
Mr. T. B. Freeman, a scarlet cloth coat and a large blue tassel.]

[Footnote 81: Which is the polite way of directing him to retire to his
harem, and then and there to poison himself, unless he wishes a worse
fate. This constitutional proceeding is the Harikari, or ‘happy release’
of the Japanese, and in practice is not unknown in Europe. In Africa,
hasty deposition is checked, however, by the custom of slaying openly,
or secretly, the high officer called the ‘king’s father,’ and other
great chiefs, to meet him in Orun or Hades. Since the above was written
the Alake died on the 1st September, 1862.]

[Footnote 82: Mr. Hughes thought the word was ‘Ekun’ (a leopard), one of
the king’s strong names, but he was in error.]

[Footnote 83: In 1863 it has diminished to fifteen shillings.]

[Footnote 84: I have repeatedly heard the same assertion from the lips
of the cowardly Krumen.]

[Footnote 85: The king of beasts is found above Macarthy’s Island, in
the Gambia River, and Lander mentions him in Barba and Upper Yoruba. Mr.
Bowen ignores his existence east of the Ogun River.]




                              CHAPTER IV.

                TOUCHING MATTERS RELIGIOUS AT ABEOKUTA.


The rains had not yet ended, and the mornings were damp and misty,
whilst a worse than English fog moved for hours after sunrise through
the cloudy air. Captain Parry found the heat uncomfortable at 23° (Fah.)
above zero; the Abeokutans shuddered with cold when the mercury showed
65°.

On such a morning, accompanied by the boy Olufanobbi, alias Robert
Fisher, Egba, Ogbone, Christian convert, and printer’s devil in the
Church Missionary establishment at the salary of four dollars per
mensem, I sallied forth to inspect the father of the settlement, the
Rock Olumo.

Our route lay to the west, with a little northing, along a rough road,
and the town was at this hour one vast latrine. The perfume from the
bush must not be described. The men, and even the women, again showed a
wonderful absence of all that with us goes by the name of decorum. As on
the Gold Coast, the sable fair ones bathe publicly _in purissimis_.[86]
There is not a public woman in the town, which some, as forgotten
Mandeville, say speaks well, and others badly, for private morality; and
Mr. Bowen only met one bastard. As in Ashanti, here, even in the highest
ranks, that form of the social evil known to civilization, especially
trans-Atlantic, as the ‘panel dodge,’ is said to be sometimes practised.
The wives of the highest chiefs will bring on intrigues with young men,
and betray them to the husbands, who either get their money or sell
them. In shaking hands, the emphatic gesture is to touch the lady’s palm
with the dexter index; but the amourist risks, if unlucky enough to
displease, a seat upon the stool of repentance, and an _exposé_ to
public ridicule.

The wells lying by the paths were shallow pits; rain-water arrested by
tenacious potters’ clay a few feet below the surface. Where they are
private property, women pay to the owner two to three cowries per
potful, or one cent for fifty gallons. The water is good, but requires
cooling; the bucket is half a calabash-gourd, lashed to strings, and
requiring an hour to fill a large vessel. Time, however, is of little
value in these regions, and the people love to gossip round their
meeting-place, the well. I need hardly point out how unwholesome these
sites are. Concealed water, and a hot, dry surface, must produce the
most deadly miasma.[87]

On the road we passed by the five great crafts of Abeokuta—the
blacksmith, the carpenter, the weaver, the dyer, and the potter. I
turned in to inspect their several workshops, and to see their
appliances, which merit description on account of their similarity to,
or rather identity with, those in the distant centre, the east and the
south. By a collection from the works of different travellers in the
remotest parts of the dark Continent, it would methinks be easy to prove
a close connection in ancient times between nations and peoples now
ignoring one another’s existence. Indeed, so exactly the same are many
of the articles—the bellows, for instance—and so artificial, forbidding
the idea of an instinctive invention, that one almost suspects a common
centre to all the races amongst whom they are common.

The blacksmith, who is also goldsmith, silversmith, copper-worker, and
tinman, sits under an open shed of leaf-mats. His fire is of palm-nut
husks—as good as charcoal. His bellows is that of ancient Egypt and
Greece, and is described by every African traveller, from Mungo Park
downwards; from Unyamwezi to the lands of the Ovampo. Two bags of rough
goatskin are secured in troughs cut out of a single piece of wood. The
upper part of each skin has a handle, or stick, two feet long, so that
it can be worked by one standing or sitting. There is an earthen pipe
leading from the wooden pipe which projects from each trough, and the
junction is not air-tight. The handles are raised alternately by the
blower; consequently, when one ‘follis’ receives air, the other ejects
it. The forge is, like that of the Gold Coast, a perpendicular screen of
dried clay, through which the nozzles of the bellows pass, supplying a
regular blast; the larger anvil is a stone, and the smaller a lump of
iron. The craftsman has spindles for drilling, and rough files, with a
better sort from Europe, which he keeps carefully wrapped up in greasy
rag. His native hammers, pincers, and hooks are exceedingly artless
tools. He makes little clay crucibles for melting hard metals; puts the
material in without flux; buries it in the glowing husks, and casts it
into bars by means of an oiled mould. He buys a kind of carbonized iron
from the interior, and he forges from it rude keys, chains and staples,
swords and knives, sickles and hoes, inserted in large clumsy handles,
and adzes and axes two inches wide, with the iron driven through the
wooden handle as it should be, not the wood driven through the iron.[88]
The repairing of a ‘long Dane,’ or buccaneer gun, is about the measure
of his knowledge; he has never learned to temper iron, and even when
running leaden plugs for bullets, he loses half the material by not
stirring a little grease with the melted metal, and removing the dross
with his knife.

The carpenter is a century behind the blacksmith, probably because every
man in these regions can use an axe without professional aid. He has an
adze and splitting wedges, but neither hooks nor saws. He must hold the
wood with hand or foot, and when making a plank, he must hack away the
rest of the tree-trunk. His industry is confined to doors and shutters,
bowls, and mortars for pounding grain.

Men in Abeokuta, as in ancient Egypt, weave, which the old Greek held to
be an effeminate occupation; they are also the best, if not the only,
needle-workers. The cotton, cleared of seed by an iron cylinder rolling
on a block of wood, and bow-whipped as in India, is spun into yarn-balls
by means of the old distaff, and is sold every evening in the market.
The weaver employs his mornings in winding off the portion which he will
require for the day. The loom, standing under the usual open shed,
differs little from the horizontal structure of Eastern and Central
Africa. Like the bellows, the principle extends throughout the
continent. It is perpendicular, as in ancient Egypt, where, however,
both forms were used. A framework of sticks, about four feet high, with
eighteen inches of extreme breadth, is planted in the ground. The twist
for the warp is passed over the upper and under the lower connecting
bar, and the thread for the weft or woof is shot between with a shuttle
and a ‘sley,’ here called ‘assá,’ a reed used to beat the woof tight. It
is a rude implement, and makes narrow strips of ‘tree-wool’ cloth, six
inches or so wide, which, to form a garment, must be sewn together.
Dyeing with indigo is done by women, much in the way described by Mungo
Park amongst the Mandengas. It produces a beautiful tint, with a finer
purple gloss than the Indian can show, and the people colour thread with
every tinge, from the lightest blue to what closely approaches black.
Freshly-pounded leaves—the dry are rarely used—are placed in an earthen
pot till it is half full; it is then filled with a lye prepared from the
potash of various wood ashes. After soaking for some days, till
fermentation throws up an iridescent scum—at this time is the chief
danger of failure—it is ready for use. The cloth, wetted in cold water,
and wrung out, is placed in it for two hours, sun-dried by hanging
across a pole, beaten with a stick, washed in water to remove
impurities, again wrung out, and returned to the pot. No mordant is
used; the operation is repeated ten or twelve times during four days,
when the dye becomes permanent.

The potter is also a woman. The earthenware is a very poor article,
better than that of Lagos and Ikoradu, but far inferior to the produce
of Wari. The reddish clay is brought from a place about two and a half
miles to the north-east of the city. The wheel being unknown, it is
fashioned by hand, and so neatly that strangers will hardly believe it.
Being but half burned, it seldom lasts. This handicraft is depressed by
the competition of the calabash-maker. The gourd, a congener to the
pumpkin, varies in size from a snuff-box to a milk-churn. When the fruit
ripens, a hole is made in the smaller end, and the air decays the pulp,
leaving the hard rind intact. When a lid is wanted, the fruit is sliced
off on a plane, one-third from the smaller end. It is then neatly cut
and carved with a hand-knife, and this ‘ornamental engraving’[89] is
said to be a lucrative trade. The cost of a good article is about
twenty-five strings, or one shilling. The manufacture of glass is
unknown in Yoruba; it is, however, if native accounts are to be
believed, at Nupe, and especially at Rabba, once the capital of that
interesting region.

About half way I saw a mosque—an oblong hut, with blackened walls, and a
thatched roof of mat and leaves; it fronted Meccah pretty correctly. The
door was closed, and all my Arabic could not procure me admission,
although a talib—a ‘scholar,’ who should have known better—was lying
under the verandah, learning _memoriter_ the last verslets of that
beautiful and most edifying chapter, the Ya Sín. A little beyond, we
passed an Ogbone lodge, remarkable only for its painted and carved door,
upon which distinct symbols of Phallic worship—not disguised as in Egypt
by the sacred Tau—appeared in natural size. A little beyond was a large
slab of gneiss, which bore upon its summit what appeared to be the trace
of ichnites; a little inquiry proved them to be the work of man—the
hollowness being formed by pounding and grinding.

After about a mile and a half of up and down, sand and boulder, midden
and offal, we ascended a short steep pitch, and stood near and opposite
the Rock Olumo. Surmounting an abrupt hill, with falls on all sides, it
is a conspicuous landmark in the scenery. It has the honour of giving a
name to the city clustering at its feet, Abe-okuta ‘(the town)
Underneath the rock,’ by us called Understone. The Builder—for such is
the meaning of its name—is some two hundred yards in length, divided
about midway by a fissure that affords an easy ascent, and overhanging
on all sides except the north, where a neighbouring tree acts as a
natural ladder. Many have mounted to the summit, and, according to my
informants, a cannon has been fired there. On another occasion, a small
party climbed it with Commander Bedingfield, in jack-boots, _viâ_ the
tree. I confess that, with the view of keeping legs and ankles unbroken
until after the ascent of the Camaroons Mountains, this feat did not
appear advisable. It has been dedicated to Oro. No one objects, however,
to strangers taking liberties there, although it has been tabooed to the
people for fear of accidents. Cavern, as described in books, there is
none. The projecting sides, however, form tall, deep ledges, beneath
which people can find shelter; and under the eastern side dwarf walls of
red clay have converted it into troglodyte abodes. Besides human bipeds,
the swallows flock and nest there in numbers.

Walking round to the left side, which I should advise future travellers
to avoid, I saw the point of view chosen as a frontispiece to ‘Sunrise
within the Tropics.’ Either the amateur artist or his engraver has
succeeded in making it as unlike reality as possible. The view, however,
is quite in character with the book itself, essentially Anglo-African,
and well fitted for the delectation of the Hall, once more appropriately
known as Exeter Change. The right-hand foreground is adorned with the
customary clump of typical palm-trees and aloes, and a group of natives,
white men drawn black, most European in bearing and civilized in
gesture, reminding us of our ‘own artist’ in the ‘Illustrated News,’
who, with praiseworthy catholicity of art, makes as little possible
distinction between humanity in its opposite hemispheres. Below lies the
town, neat, rural, pretty, white-walled and red-tiled, built with all
the symmetry of Clapham, and backed by a glorious lake-like river with
little green islets—and, doubtless, eel-pie houses;—whilst in the
distance a fair expanse of rolling hills, green and blue, fills up the
scene.

Let me describe what I saw and sketched. Beyond the barren mass of stern
grey stone—filthily dirty—which afforded me a standing-place, there was
a perpendicular drop of some fifty feet, disclosing part of the city
below and in front. It was a grisly mass of rusty thatching and dull
red-clay wall, with narrow winding lanes and irregular open spaces, a
ragged tree rising here and there. The only comparison which the scene
suggested was that of a huge anthill scattered over with dead leaves and
dwarf shrubs. On the left was a high tongue of land, with top sinking
towards the foreground; it supports Bagura, one of the most populous
townships; and here the houses that crowd one another prevent the ground
from being seen. It is separated by a stony stream-bed, the usual fence
in this part of Africa, from the neighbouring settlements, Ikereku and
Ikijá, Iláwo and Ikporo. In the distance is a narrow line representing
the Ogun River above the rapids, and the horizon is shut in by rising
ground which appears barren and sterile. In the magnificence of its
distances Abeokuta greatly resembles Washington, but there the
similarity ends. The main peculiarity of the scene is the shape of the
houses—large irregular squares, with huge thatches raised high at the
angles to throw off the rain. There are but two which attract the eye by
superiority of size, viz., those of the late Ogobonna, and of the
waggish savage Ogodippe.

Olumo, however, is classic ground in these regions, the Arg, the
Capitolium of the Egba race, the Rock against which the gates of Ibadan
have not yet prevailed. It was the _point de réunion_ of the people of
Egba, who, about 1820-1822, had been scattered to the winds by intestine
tumults and the fury of their enemies.[90] Some thirty-five or forty
years ago, say in 1825, a few of the better sort, flying from their new
masters, took refuge under ‘the Builder,’ where, it is said, they found
robbers—probably their own countrymen—who had preceded them. As in
classic Rome, the sanctuary was joined by other fugitives and villains.
When the new-comers found themselves strong enough, they drove out the
original bandits, and then laid the foundations of a city which, after
Olumo, they called Abeokuta. It grew apace. In memory of their former
settlements, they gave to the new seats the names of their ancient
townships—Ake, for instance, was the old capital of Egba-land in the
days when it was a province of Yoruba—and they conferred upon their
military and civil chiefs titles familiar to their ears in olden times.
They hung up their harps by the side of Olumo, and holding the soil to
be hard and sterile, they sighed for a return to the lands flowing with
milk and honey.[91]

Presently Abeokuta became a fenced city, and was girt with a moat and a
clay wall, after the approved fashion of African fortification. Its
population waxed numerous. Mr. T. B. Freeman, in 1842, estimated it to
contain forty-five thousand souls. In 1858, Mr. Bowen gave it eighty
thousand: more modern travellers have raised the number to one hundred
thousand; and, looking at the extent and the thickness of the
population, I should not wonder if, when the soldiers return from the
Ibadan war, it was found to contain one hundred and fifty thousand
souls, nearly equal to the entire population of redoubted Dahome. It
contains the remnants of some one hundred and fifty townships—some say
one hundred, but they diminish for fear of exaggeration, and others, too
sanguine, raise it to two hundred and eighty-five—which all retain their
own peculiar institutions. The constitution, in fact, is that of a
federal republic under a perpetual president.[92]

The Abeokutans still aspire to regain the lands of their forefathers,
and they swear that they will come to their own again. I doubt the
probability of their so doing. The weak outlying states of El Islam,
Ilori, for instance—now the last ripple of the mighty wave urged
southwards by an irresistible current—though at present unable to sweep
away the barriers of Paganism, is strong enough to resist any
encroachments. And the day will come when the Law of the Prophet shall
rule throughout the lands, when Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands
unto Allah, and shall thus rise to her highest point of civilization.
Meanwhile, those who support Abeokuta are but shoring up a falling wall.
The only thing they can say is that, like Turkey, she may take some time
to fall: on the other hand, when the Moslems succeed to the land, they
will find it rich in cotton and palm oil.

The sun having lost his strength, I proceeded, in company with Mr.
Hughes, a thoroughly Yorubanized Englishman, to ascend the rocks of Ake,
the hill immediately behind the Church Missionary compound. The path led
along the burial-ground and near a foul wet hole, whence the clay for
building houses had been excavated. Ascending, we remarked an Oro-, or
wild mango-tree,[93] whose trunk had been gashed apparently for the
purpose of letting out the turpentine. After losing our way in the thick
grass—it should be kept clear for the benefit of those who desire a
breath of fresh air—we fell into sundry lanes bordered by the
unwholesome tiglium, whose odour after sunset denotes its dangerous
qualities. Passing through a blocked-up gap in a hedge, we entered a
field of tobacco; the herb which Niwt named and which Thevet ought to
have named—an analogy of Colon and Amerigo—grows wild in the streets of
Lagos and Abeokuta: the people, however, prefer to import it from the
Brazils. The land has usually been considered too worn out to support so
exhausting a crop; in places, however, it flourishes. The people have
learned to top the plants, and the American missionaries have taught
them to cure it by hanging the leaves for a day or two in bunches to
dry, and then piling up and sweating it for two or three days. It thus
becomes tolerable smoking, with a little Cavendish or gold-leaf by way
of ‘kitchen’ to its mildness, and the highest price is about 5_d._ per
pound. The people, however, are not great smokers. Both sexes and all
ages prefer a pinch of natronized snuff between the lower lip and the
gums—in fact, where it can best excite the salivary glands. Pure snuff
is also made, and though a little deficient in flavour, it is by no
means despicable. The favourite snuff-box is a hollowed hard-shelled
fruit called ‘agbar.’ Curious to say, these Africans have not learned
the use of smoking or eating datura, a poison which overruns the land,
and I saw no bhang growing in the country.

Ascending a dwarf slope of koko field, we clambered up some rocks, and
reached a place where Egugun, literally ‘Bones,’ is worshipped. The king
of ghosts here receives sacrifice in honour of the manes of the ancestor
in whose behalf the offering is made—it is in fact an African prayer for
the dead. The place shows only a dwarf enclosure of red clay walls,
whose roof is a gneiss boulder resembling Olumo. It was blackened with
smoke, and as we perched there to rest we were curiously inspected from
below by the meddlesome Christian populace of Wasimi.

We manifestly stood on holy ground. Many stones bore signs of
medicine—yams, dabs of palm oil, broken calabashes, and cowries in
strings. Above us rose the ‘logan-stone,’ the remains of an older world,
now washed down into the deep Atlantic. Descending through a dense bush,
where long sharp thorns and the chance of meeting a snake made us ‘look
alive,’ and hopping from boulder to boulder, we presently entered the
mysterious Oro grove: a little further north it would be called a
‘Debbil-bush.’ The Egbas, like the ancient Persians, and most of the
modern pagans, combine a propensity for worshipping in high places with
fondness of the concealment which the shady forest affords. There was
nothing to distinguish the place from a jungle camp—though I have little
doubt that at no great distance we might find a skeleton or two with the
fatal cord still unrotted around its neck. Three dwarf sheds, short
smoke-stained mud walls with roofs of decaying palm-leaf, brown and
bald, a grassy patch broken here and there by boulders and enclosed
within a wall of bush verdure, capped by tall overhanging trees—this was
all that met the eye. To fill in the picture, you must suppose the place
restored and occupied by twenty or thirty ancients, villainous-looking
as Spanish inquisitors in caricature, with countenances expressing the
cold cruelty of the _castrato_ and the bloodthirsty joy with which the
cat plays with her prey; some sitting under the shade drinking pitto,
palm-wine, and fire-water, others standing, staff in hand, chanting,
gesticulating, and dealing out the words of wisdom, with, perhaps, the
material for torture or human sacrifice lying bound on the sward at
their feet. Such was the scene described to me by a gentleman who
unwittingly had passed by the Oro grove when council had met, and who
had bowed to its inmates.

Returning towards Eruwan, I was shown by Mr. Hughes a house from which
he had saved an old man. The building had caught fire by the
carelessness of some women. The people however supposed it to be the
work of Shango—god of thunder and lightning: had no European been there,
or one without the pluck to break through the crowd and to harangue them
with explanations, there would have been an Egba _de moins_. As we
passed the Church Missionary compound there was a ‘pow-wow.’ A circle of
converts, clad in quasi-European toggery, squatted upon the ground, and
in the centre stood the speaker, who threw out his upper limbs and
gesticulated, walking up and down like a Hindu preacher. At first I
thought it was a young ‘camp meeting:’ presently the occasion was
explained to me. The chiefs at the seat of war had sent to the city a
message complaining that the Christians were not nearly so ready to
fight, and _pro patriô mori_, as they had promised, and as they ought to
be. It was a curious contrast to the scenes that had passed during the
day within the walls of the sacred building hard by—tidings of peace and
goodwill to all men delivered in the morning; in the evening, a summons
to kidnap, plunder, and kill. Yet, ταῦτα οὔτως ἔχει, as the Romaic
epitaph pathetically has it.

I now proceed to a short account of the Yoruban mythology as far as it
is known—few of the people are conversant with its details—to books and
to my various informants. Like all these religions, if such they can be
called, there is in it a vagueness and a variety of explanation which,
despite the advantage of alphabets and of a far superior organization,
appears strikingly in the worship of ancient Greece and Rome, and of
modern India. The minor details are never to be trusted; the main points
are better fixed in the public mind—before two days’ residence in the
city you hear of Shango and Oro, and after a week they have become
‘household words.’ The mythology of Yoruba is not far from being as
extensive as that with which Assyria, Egypt, and India overspread the
Indo-European world, and its gods are numerically strong, mustering from
three hundred to four hundred. Like all other similar systems, it is a
syncretism, the deities being collected from the various lands to which
they were peculiar: thus Shiva, the Indian, is a local god, posterior to
Brahma and Vishnu, the other members of the triad; thus Bacchus came
from the banks of the Ganges or the Indus; and thus Osiris was imported
from Egypt into Rome. As I have before said, touching things material,
everywhere we see traces that Africa was once as closely united as
Italy. It is, therefore, difficult to say how much of the Yoruban faith
is original. The Romans penetrated through the northern desert, the Jews
had a powerful kingdom in Abyssinia, the Portuguese missionaries
invested the eastern and the western coasts, and the Moslems have
gradually been hemming in the heathenry. Such influences must have been
strong upon the plastic and conforming mind of the polytheist, but the
measure of their strength is not appreciable.

Long ago Dr. Vanderkemp asserted that the Kafirs of the Cape were ‘pure
atheists,’ without the idea of the existence of a God. Mr. Casalis (p.
238) tells us that the Kafirs ‘had entirely lost the idea of a Creator;’
that ‘it never entered their’ (the Kafirs’) ‘heads that the earth and
sky might be the work of an invisible being;’ and that in their
languages the word for world signified ‘having always been—to exist in
an incomprehensible manner.’ Bishop Colenso ascribes to them a distinct
traditionary belief in the Supreme Being, whom they acknowledge under
the twofold titles of Umkulumkulu—the Great Essence, and
Umvelinquanze—the First Comer Out; but of him and his attributes they
understand nothing, and neither worship nor invoke him.’ Dr.
Livingstone, with his usual peremptory and unsatisfactory way of laying
down the law upon every question, affirms that ‘the existence of a God
and of a future state has always been admitted by all the Bechuanas.’ A
far better authority, Dr. Moffat (‘Missionary Labours,’ p. 245), remarks
concerning the Bachwanas (Bechuanas), whilst owning that they ‘are acute
reasoners and minute observers of men and manners,’ that ‘to tell them,
the greatest of them, that there was a Creator, the Governor of the
heavens and earth—of the fall of man, or the redemption of the world—the
resurrection of the dead, and immortality beyond the grave—is to tell
them what appeared to be more fabulous, extravagant, and ludicrous than
their own vain stories about lions, hyænas, and jackals.’[94] I can
easily understand this. Perhaps the illustrious Humboldt, the greatest
philosopher of our age, sympathized in their touching confession of
ignorance concerning all things beyond man’s actual reach. And it is
undoubted that, by the force of their rationalism, these men, gifted
with the ‘docility of a child, but the reasoning powers of mature age,’
were able to suggest to the Bishop of Natal that his misgivings touching
the historical character of the books attributed to Moses were founded
on fact. The same missionary (p. 257) declares that the Kafirs have no
word in their language expressing the conception of a Deity: he found no
altars, legends, or unknown gods, and his _soi-disant_ converts would
often declare to him that he had taught them the rudimental conception
of a Deity. He believes, like the Jesuits in China—who accounted for
Buddhism, the origin of their faith, as Satan’s caricature of it—that it
was the Devil who erased every vestige of religious impression from the
heathen mind. Setting aside the great fact, that of all unsuccessful
characters in history Sathanas is probably the greatest failure—in other
words that ‘the Devil _is_ an Ass’—I must differ from him in holding
atheism to be the natural condition of the savage and uninstructed mind,
the night of spiritual existence, which disappears before the dawn of a
belief in things unseen. A Creator is to creation what the cause of any
event in life is to its effect: those familiar to the sequence will
hardly credit its absence from the minds of others. And only the brain
supersaturated with its own prejudices and impressions can force itself
into explanations of the seeming mystery by referring it to diabolical
and similar mythical agencies.

The Egbas have progressed more than one step beyond this savage atheism.
With ‘gods many and lords many,’[95] and a considerable mixture of
idolatry, they have a distinct name for a Creator. They call him Olorun,
an abbreviation of O li Orun—lord or owner of the sky or firmament. It
might also be translated Lord of Ghostland; Oki Orun, ‘Hill Ghostland’
being, Anglicised, ‘Heaven,’ opposed to Orun Akpadi, which some
translate ‘Crucible Hades,’ _i.e._, Hell. Thus, the name of the town Bi
Olorun Kpellu, ‘Si Deus nobiscu’ (quis contra nos?). He is also known as
Eleda—the Creator, Olo-Dumare—the Ever-Righteous, Oluwa—the Lord, and
Oga-Ogo—the Glorious High One. These, however, are palpable attributes
of a vague being without personality and without objectivity: at best
the name is used like the Hindu Pariah employs the word
Bhagwan—Deity—whilst he worships some low incarnation which he considers
infinitely inferior in dignity to a live Brahmin. I much doubt, also,
whether the word conveys at all to their minds the Ens Entium, an
existence disseverated from some natural object—sun or sea, rain or
firmament.[96] The use of the name, however, is clear and distinct. The
Egbas say Olorun—not Orishako or Obatala—bless you! Olorun give you
children, farms, cowries! and so forth. Olorun aku!—salutation to
God!—is the highest expression of submission. Essentially simple, the
prayer has nothing to do with the metaphysics of faith—confession of
aboriginal sin, prayer for pardon, or thanksgiving for redemption. They
talk of seeing Olorun after death, and are said not to be without the
idea of a vague and obscure futurity, a continuation in which rewards
and punishments will be distributed. In Orun and its several
modifications it would not be difficult to discover a tripartite kingdom
of the dead, corresponding with the Elysium, the Hades, and the Tartarus
of ancient Europe. Only, as amongst the more polished Greeks and Romans,
the future is held by them to be, from its exceeding uncertainty, and
from the total absence of all judicial proof of its existence, much less
important than the present. As has been remarked, the Egbas have long
dwelt in the presence of a monotheistic people, the Moslems, and of late
years they have had Christians amongst them. But even without these
advantages the ease of an agricultural state, and the existence of a
distinct priestly body, would tend to promote the study of that which
comes, or is made to come, after the material world.

Similarly the East Africans near the Moslems of Zanzibar have their
Mulungu; in the South-east, where the Portuguese are, their Murimo; and
in Kongo, also colonized by Europeans, their Zambi and Nganna Riossu.
Mungo Park also remarks of the negroes bordering upon Moslem Mandeng
that ‘the belief of one God, and of a future state of reward and
punishment, is entire and universal among them.’

To quote the same traveller, ‘The Africans represent the Deity indeed as
the creator and preserver of all things; but, in general, they consider
him a being so remote, and of so exalted a nature, that it is idle to
imagine the feeble supplications of wretched mortals can reverse the
decrees and change the purposes of unerring wisdom.’[97] That the gods
take but little interest, and exercise scant interference in human
affairs, is an idea as old as Confucius and Epicurus—they meddle,
indeed, so little that a future state must be hypothesised in account
for their incuriousness. The Africans, like many other ancient peoples,
seem to think that the Deity has retired from business, and has deputed
his functions to inferior officers. Besides, as much of their religion
is modified by and modelled upon their private life and the ceremonies
of their courts, they hold the courtiers completely distinct from and
somewhat independent of the king. They therefore use the name of, but do
not pray to, Olorun; and holding him so far above and beyond mankind
that he must be addressed through intermediate agencies, they satisfy
the yearnings of their human nature by the adoration of subordinate
beings. Thus the ancient Christians, whilst asserting that latria,
altars, and sacrifice were due to God alone, sanctioned addresses to
saints and martyrs, in order to be assisted by their prayers. Hence the
worship of Orisha or idols.

The word Orisha is derived by some—Europeans will find the root of
everything—from Asha, ‘customs’ or ‘religious ceremonies.’ It is also
called Alaybawi—a mediator or intercessor. The saint system and prayers
to the Virgin are the vestiges of this idea in Christianity; in El Islam
the doctrine of Imams and Walis are fragments of the older creed set,
like the Black Stone which was once white, in the corner of the modern
faith. Of course the symbol is confounded with the thing symbolized; and
the statue or picture, which the enlightened look upon as they would a
portrait or a memento, becomes amongst the vulgar an object of absolute
worship.[98]

There are three principal Orisha, which word, thus used, does not mean
idols, but rather the Di majorum gentium of the Romans, and which appear
to be deified heroes and ancestors. This triad consists of Obatala,
Shango, and Ifa. It does not, like the Hindu Trinity, express a
metaphysical idea of the Demiurgos in his great triune
operations—creating, preserving, destroying; nor does it typify the
family, as the Egyptian Osiris, Isis, and Horus; nor does it deify the
elemental worlds, like the Romans, who personified them by Jupiter,
Neptune, and Pluto. And it will be remarked that for the grace and
beauty of Greek fable these Africans substitute a grotesqueness—the
reflex of their own physical and moral peculiarities. It is to be hoped
that those enthusiasts who declare that ‘le dogme de la Trinité de
Personnes, dans l’Unité de l’Etre, se trouve dans la conscience des
peuples,’ will not find the idea in the Yoruban triad as they have in
the ‘three perpendicular lines of the Egyptians, the Chinese word
equivalent to Jehovah (!), the Tibetan Trabat, the savages of Cuba, the
Tanga-tanga of the Peruvians, the Celtic druids, the Odin, Wilo, and We
of the Scandinavians, and the book of Zohar.’ A past, present, and
future—a creation, preservation, and destruction—are easy mental
sequences, starting up instinctively. Besides, the Indo-European race,
to which the triad-belief belongs—as opposed to Semitic
monotheism—shows, from the most ancient times, the closest connection of
thought and derivation of language.

Obatala is derived from Oba ti nla, the King of Greatness, also called
Orisha Klá, the great Orisha. Others deduce the word from ‘Oba ti álá,’
King of Whiteness or Purity, whence his worshippers always wear white
garments. His other titles are Alamore, ‘owner of the good clay,’ and
Orisha Kpokpo, or Idol of the Gate—a guardian and a Janus. In this view
he is the first and greatest of created things; some, however, believe
him to be an ancient king of Yoruba, and quote the name of his father.
Thus Shodeke, as has been said, is in a fair way of becoming a
demigod.[99] He is sometimes represented as a warrior on horseback,
holding a spear; at other times as an androgyne, which white men
philosophize about as representing the male and female energies of
nature, whose god is Olorun or Eleda, the creator. Obatala’s wife is
Iyangba, or the receiving mother, and is denoted, like Isis and the
Madonna, by a woman nursing a child.[100] His sacred symbol is Okko, a
ship—the vessel, according to the rationalists, in which the Yoruban
people crossed the Niger: it is the Ark of that faith. Obatala created
the first man, Okikishi—so called from Okiki, fame, or Obalofu, the lord
of speech, equivalent to the Adam of the Hebrews; and the first woman
was his wife Iye, or life, from ‘ye,’ to live; in sound and idea
curiously resembling Hawwa or Eve. They came from heaven, an idea also
found in the book of Genesis. No Hebrew or Moslem believes the garden of
Eden to have been upon earth, but in the first or lowest of the Seven
Heavens, which is an exact fac-simile of these sub-lunary scenes;[101]
with them, therefore, the ‘Fall’ of man is literally a fall. Obalofu and
Iye had many children. Their first settlement was at Ife; they then
successively removed to Ikose, Igboho (Lander’s Bohoo), and Oyo or Eyeo.

The second great Orisha is called Shango—he is a well-known god.[102]
This demi-deity—at once Vulcan, Tubal Cain, Thor, and Jupiter Tonans—was
born at Ife, and reigned at Ikoso, a town lately destroyed; others say
that he is a Nupe god. He had a palace of brass, and kept 10,000 horses
in his stables, showing him, by the analogy of Hercules, and Castor and
Pollux, to have been originally a mere mortal. Like certain Hebrew
worthies, he went alive to heaven, where he reigns in state, hunts,
fishes, markets, and wars. The abstract Shango is the grandson of
Aganju, the desert or firmament, a descendant from Okikishi: his father
is Orungan, or midday, and his mother is Yemaya or Ijemoja, ‘mother of
fishes,’ an unimportant river in Yoruba.[103] His elder brother is Dada,
or nature—from ‘da,’ to create; his younger is the River Ogun; his
friend and associate is Orishako, god of farms; his slave, Biri, or
darkness; his wives are the Rivers Oya (Niger), Oshun, and Obba; and his
priest is Magba, the Receiver—not a bad name. His worshippers carry a
bag, because he was fond of predatory wars. Practically, Shango is the
deity of thunder, lightning,[104] and fire: he is also called Jákuta, or
the stone-thrower, and he favours the good, especially protecting
hunters, fishermen, and warriors. Wherever lightning has struck, or an
aërolite[105] has fallen, there Shango has been; when a house is fired,
or is struck by lightning, the priests and mob rush in to find the
stone, and seize the opportunity of plundering; besides which, they
claim a general right to steal goats and chickens. Shango’s symbol is a
small wooden bat, called ‘ose,’ with a handle one foot long. He is
consulted by throwing sixteen pierced cowries: if eight fall upwards and
eight downwards, it is peace; if all are upwards, it is also a good
sign; and, _vice versâ_, if all fall with their teeth to the ground, it
is war.

The last of the triad is Ifa, which appears to be not a person, but a
myth, originating at the town of Ife.[106] He is the revealer of
futurity, and the patron of marriage and childbirth. His high priest—the
head of the Babbalawo, or Fathers of Secrets—is said to live upon a
mountain near Awaye, a gigantic cone of granite eight to ten miles in
circumference, seen from the distance of several days’ journey towering
solitary above the landscape, and surmounted, it is said, by a palm-
tree, bearing sixteen boughs, produced by the sixteen nuts planted by
the sixteen founders of the Yoruban empire. His chief priest at Abeokuta
is known as Obba Limore, King of the grove; and none but the secret-
keeping sex is initiated into the mysteries. As the great oracle, Ifa
supports a large family, who live gratis upon the offerings of the
devotees—sheep and goats, fowls and pigeons.[107] The priests are known
by their bead necklaces, small strings twisted together, with ten large
white and green beads, some inches apart. They officiate in white, and
constantly use a fly-whisk. Their deity being called Bángá, God of Palm-
nuts, they choose as his symbols those that are placental with four
holes. The operation of casting lots is intricate, and is variously
described by different observers: odd and even, and ‘heads or tails,’
appear to be the ruling principles.[108] Ifa proved unexpectedly—if not
paid for the purpose—a friend to the white man at Abeokuta. When
consulted whether missionaries should be admitted, he answered, ‘Yes.’
When it was further inquired whether a church might be founded at
Igbeni, he replied in the affirmative. The pious of Understone refer his
general correctness to the operation of evil spirits: on this occasion,
however, as in many others, Satan seems to have amused himself with
casting out sin.

Besides these three great Orishas, there are many Di minorum gentium,
who are, even more palpably, men and women of note in their day—of whom
only the principal will be noticed.

Ogun is the god of blacksmiths and armourers. He is also the patron of
hunters and warriors, in which quality human sacrifices are offered to
him. The victim is decapitated, the head is affixed to a tree, and the
body is placed publicly before the symbol, a dwarf, spear shaped, iron
or copper, to which a chain is attached.

The sun and the moon are worshipped at Ife, ‘the Pantheon of Yoruba,’
where a brazen chair and brass images of these objects fell from heaven.

A peculiar worship in this country is Ori, which means the worshipper’s
own head, seeming to involve the idea of luck or good fortune. Other
parts of the body are worshipped; the foot, for instance, before
proceeding on a journey—and most African travellers will sympathize with
this sentiment. The symbol of Ori is half a calabash stuck with almonds,
like a pudding, till the substance can hardly be seen, and hung about
with long strings of the same shell. This is placed upon the ground, and
duly adored. A similar emblem belongs to Dada, whom the missionaries
translate Nature, but who is rather the god or genius of newly-born
children. His sign is a cawl, and he is worshipped as a calabash,
provided with longer strings than those of Ori.

Odua or Odudua, the universe, or the goddess of earth and sky, is
located at Ife.[109] Oye is the Yoruban Æolus, the Harmattan, a giant,
residing in a cave of the winds at Igbetti, one of the highest mountains
in Yoruba, between Igboho and Ilori: during the dry season he rushes out
and breathes cold over the land: in Hausa ice is not unknown.

The idol Oriskako—_i.e._, Orisha Oko—patron of farms, has its head-
quarters—_i.e._, its priests and sacrifices—at Irawo, a town in Western
Yoruba. Its symbol is a large iron bar, and its worship is very
expensive. The people have a tradition that in the olden time a six-
fingered giant dwelt at the Egba town of Igbehi. When summoned to swear
by Oriskako, at Irawo, he waxed wroth, slew the priests, and carried off
ten of the sacred bars, for which reason no native of Igbehi is allowed
to enter Irawo.

The ‘Orisha of children’ is a truly hideous little image, carried about
by women, in their waist-clothes, when one of twins dies or is
destroyed:[110] consequently these idols are of two sexes. The male,
about a span and two fingers high, is in the rudest semblance of a man,
mounted on a little circular pedestal, with a head like a Pongo’s, a
top-knot of hair, huge ears, prognathous jaws, projecting lips, and thin
lozenge-shaped cuts on the forehead, and on each cheek three similar
horizontal and three perpendicular. The body—but little longer than the
head, or broader than the feet—is in the style of the coarsest Hindu
idol: a kind of pent-roof descends from the waist, exposing the legs,
which are much shorter than the forearm. The feminine figure is wholly
nude, in equally symmetrical proportions, finished as certain statues
outside the Pitti Palace at Florence, and with a bosom of the largest
dimensions, showing the true African _beau-idéal_. These idols are both
adorned with rings and bracelets of beads: they are hardly to be bought
at Abeokuta: at Lagos, however, two men make them, at the rate of three
shillings each. I sent a pair for the edification of those at home.

With all these beneficent deities, it would be curious if the Egbas
neglected the worship of the bad god—the Guebre’s Ahriman. Accordingly,
we find they have a terrible evil entity, whom they call Eshu, the
Rejected—from ‘shu,’ to cast out—and whom the missionaries identify with
the Devil, who is palpably a Semite. Eshu is probably some bad ghost,
who has made a name amongst the million. Of the same kind is Akilasho.
Eshu is also called Elegbárá, the mighty and evil being, stronger than
good: he is propitiated by small offerings; his symbol, erroneously
called an altar, is a bit of stone—a rude conglomerate of pebbles set in
clay, tinged with oxide—and upon this palm oil is poured. Vestiges of
this ‘devil worship’[111] are everywhere to be seen in the streets of
Abeokuta. The Egbas have borrowed from the Moslem Fula the word Ibilisi,
the Arab Iblis or Sathanas; amongst the latter, however, it is concrete
and objective, not so with the former. Orun Akpadi represents the rude
beginning of a future place of punishment; at present, however, it seems
to convey to their minds the next world—a faint idea of continuation is
familiar to most Africans, except to the most material tribes—where
evil-doers will expiate the sins of this life.

We now proceed to a third class of deities, which distinctly shows the
power of religion as a substitute for police or gendarmerie amongst a
barbarous people. The two principal persons—if they can so be called—are
Egugun and Oro.

Egugun—literally meaning ‘Bones’—is supposed to be a dead man risen from
the grave: he is called by Europeans the Aku Devil.[112] He is not
unknown at Lagos, but his powers are greater at Abeokuta and in the
northern parts of Yoruba. He is the local Mumbo Jumbo, the Ndá and
Kuhkwi of Southern Guinea, the Okuku of the Mpongwe, Bakele, and Shekani
tribes, the Makoko of Batanga, the Lú of Bambarra, and the Simo of the
Rio Nunez. ‘Egugun sha’au’—‘Egugun chop you!’—is the equivalent of our
‘Devil take you!’ I once met this ‘party’ in the streets. He was a tall
fellow, without the drawn sword mentioned by Mr. Bowen, but otherwise
most fantastically clad. His face was covered with a plaiting of net-
work, like a mask, and his head with a hood, whose streamers of red
scarlet crimson and dirty white hung down and mixed with the similar
tatters and patches of his lower dress. To his back, between the
shoulders, was suspended a German penny mirror, and his shoes, like
moccassins, completely hid his feet. The latter members he is not
supposed to possess; and the same was thought of Europeans before they
were seen to remove their boots and stockings. Egugun replied with a
curious and studied grunting to our facetious salutations, and moved out
of the way of the horses. It is said that if any one—even the
king—touches him, the man must die. Adult males, and even the free-born
boys, know Egugun to be a mortal; but if a woman swears falsely by him,
or even says that he is not a tenant of the grave, she would lose her
life. The missionaries have declared that ‘even Mohammedans and
Christians are obliged to conceal their knowledge of the imposture under
penalty of martyrdom’—but this, I think, is hardly probable. Egugun,
then, is a ‘Raw bones and bloody head,’ apparently intended to keep
slaves, women, and children in a state of due subjection: he is the whip
and the cucking-stool apotheosised. In Southern Guinea the women have a
counteracting institution called Njembe.

If Egugun represent the domestic, Oro personifies the public police; and
it is explained as ‘the executive or vindictive power of civil
government deified.’ The word properly means pain, torment, punishment.
The derivation has naturally been sought in ‘Orun, the sun; in the
Hebrew Aur; in the Ur of the Chaldees; in οὐρανὸς; in the Egyptian
Pharaoh; in the Orotalt or Urrat-Ilat (fire-goddess) of the Pagan Arabs;
in Aurora and Aurum, and, more remote still, in the Madagascan Auru, the
Philippine Arao, and the Peruvian Uru;’ but apparently, by going
farther, philological vagary has fared worse. We will rest contented,
then, with its primary meaning, ‘punishment’—when a criminal is killed,
he is ‘given to Oro,’ and thus the penalty assumes a Macchiavellian
mystery—and we will conclude that it represents to the Egba what Nemesis
did to the Greek and Roman.

Oro is a _vox et præterea nihil_, and an idea common to Yoruba; I
afterwards found him flourishing at the city of Great Benin. Like
Egugun, he is supposed not to be known to the women—as if that were
possible!—and I have seen an Egbanized Englishman show terror on hearing
his name mentioned in public. Mr. Bowen has been greatly blamed by the
Abeokutans for revealing the great secret in print. Oro is supposed to
haunt the woods, and when he appears it is for the purpose of striking
terror. Nightly, about 7 or 8 P.M., the cry of ‘Oro’ (the voice of my
father) resounds in the streets; at this savage tocsin the women must
fly within doors, under the usual penalty, a violent death. It was not
without trouble that the missionaries obtained permission for their
female converts to attend service on Sunday evenings. Oro, however, does
not visit the market-places, and he disappears before a party of men
with lanterns. This African curfew is produced by a thin slip of wood,
about one foot long by a few inches in breadth, fastened to a stick by a
long string, which allows it to ascend and descend, thereby raising and
lowering the tone. I recommend this utensil—whose curious booming noise,
as it sounds through the shades of night, is imposing enough—to Mr. Hume
and the Spiritualists. It is as superior to the silk kerchief and the
easy-tongs as the Thug’s silken cord is to the foul fustian sleeve of
the English garotter. The voice of Oro is accompanied by a terrible
caterwauling, in imitation of wild beasts; and he appears to be
everywhere—the fact is, he is stationed in all the different quarters of
the city. As a _vox_, he curbs the irregularities which would be
favoured by the darkness of night and the shading trees. He is certainly
armed, and probably he consists of a strong party. A corpse whose throat
has been cut, and whose shin-bones have been broken with fearful
violence by this ‘spirit,’ may at times be seen.

I was not fortunate enough to witness an Oro day; the ceremonies,
however, were lengthily explained to me. It takes place only on
occasions of great palavers. The principal requisite is that no woman
must be seen out of doors; and the object is obvious—to insure a decent
silence during debate. We read in ‘Appleton’[113] that the old Mohawks
always avoided speaking whilst paddling across the Saratoga Lake. On one
occasion an Englishwoman persuaded them to ferry her over, which they
did with the promise that their custom should be respected. The strong-
minded Britoness, when half way over, determined to ‘show the savages
the weakness of their superstition,’ and to that effect uttered a loud
cry. Nothing followed, and the chief was rallied upon the subject of his
fears. ‘The Great Spirit,’ replied the Mohawk, with much truth, ‘is
merciful; he knows that a white woman cannot hold her tongue.’ Now the
Egbas have found in their simplicity the method of doing what the
Eastern proverb declares to be impossible—of curbing a certain member of
a certain sex.

When the town is ‘given to Oro,’ as the phrase is, criers go about
shouting, ‘Atolo! Atolo! Ozez! Ozez!’ and striking clapperless unbrazed
bells like extinguishers. The women rush within the house—the gates are
apparently built for the purpose—and pass their hours in ‘knagging’ and
quarrelling. The men and boys go abroad; in places the streets are
desert as those of New York on Sundays, whilst others are crowded with
dancers and tumblers, processions and stump orators—in fact, with all
the material of a ‘palaver.’ The Ogbone lodges are filled with their
members, who discuss the important measure after the African fashion,
every one freely giving his own opinion, however far-fetched or
ridiculous. According to Mr. Campbell, severe whippings are then and
there administered to those offending with the fair sex. Breakers of the
seventh commandment, says Mr. Bowen, are obliged to run the gauntlet in
the public square. After sunset the firing of guns—which are not allowed
to be discharged during the hours of light—announces the conclusion of
an Oro day, when the town returns to its normal occupations.

The Egbas have no such thing as demonolatry because they have no demons,
or the genius which Christian philosophers opined to be evil spirits.
The distinction between diaboloi and daimonii is unknown to them; but
they believe in certain entities which, unless propitiated, will do them
evil. The missionaries Anglicise Egbiri by ‘ghost,’ and Emi by
‘spirit’—a manifest borrowing from the Pneuma, Psychos, Soma, that
compose the European Ego.[114] The hysteric sufferers known to the
ancients as daimonazomenoi and enthusiazomenoi, who, under fits, were
insensible, like the mesmeric subjects of the modern day, are common
amongst the Egbas, as indeed amongst all pure or nearly pure African
races. Of course there is the true African belief in ghosts, who are
supposed to desire men’s deaths, and the deceased is a vindictive thing
to be feared as long as remembered.[115] Witchcraft is common. The white
witch or witch-finder of the days of James I. is usually the fetish-man;
and according to the Mosaic law, the witch or wizard is not suffered to
live. Europeans often consider the crime fanciful, and waste a great
deal of good pity upon victims to popular indignation. Setting aside the
Mosaic order and the Twelve Tables, the witch, it must be remembered,
believes in the power of her spells, and commits murder in her heart;
her incantations too often take effect—like the predictions of Mdlle. le
Normand—upon the silly superstitious souls around her; and not
unfrequently she brings arsenic, or something equally material—as the
homœopaths do calomel—to the aid of her spiritual powers.[116] On the
other hand, witchcraft has its good side, and is by no means the unmixed
evil that some hold it to be. Where the dark places of the earth are
full of cruelty, its vague terrors form a salutary check upon the
violence of husbands and masters, rulers and criminals. It is the power,
and the only power, of the weak.

Where witchcraft prevails, the talisman must be common. Here the grigri,
as it is barbarously called, is the prophylactic of the Jews, the amulet
of Christian Abyssinia and Syria, the cross and miraculous medal of
Southern Europe. So horse-shoes in England and the West Indies
neutralize evil influences; egg-shells hung in the chimney-corner make
chickens flourish, and extracted teeth are thrown over the house, or are
worn, to prevent toothache. A folio volume might be filled with these
fooleries of faith, which serve for two objects—the attainment of good
and the avoidance of harm in this life. I look upon them as the vestiges
of that fetishism which is the first dawn of religion in the breast of
the savage and the barbarian, and which cannot fail to crop out even
from the enlightened surface of monotheism. Besides which, belief or
superstition is, like happiness, most equally divided amongst men. Those
who balk at the possible will swallow the impossible, and those who
deride the credos of others must make up for themselves faiths of their
own, which appear quite as ridiculous to their neighbours. In the
present state of human nature, faith appears a necessary evil, an
inseparable weakness. Nor can we see any corrective of, or substitute
for it until, after the convulsion which follows the present period of
quiescence, a higher race—as the elephant is to the mastodon—succeeds
the present.

Witchcraft also necessitates ordeals; these, however, are not the
Judicia Dei, as they were held to be in Europe. They rather correspond
in action with the Erinnyes and the Eumenides of ancient Greece. The
poisons and drugs are intelligent beings, which, entering the stomach
that here represents man’s heart in its sentimental sense, searches out
his guilt and sin. At times, finding nothing of evil, it returns by
emetism, and thus establishes the innocence of the accused; at others,
it discovers the material element of witch-power—the aorta has been
shown as an irrefragable proof—and it kills the wizard by the
mismanagement of a weapon intended for the destruction of others; he is
hoisted with his own petard; he falls into the pit which he digged for
his brother. Trial by poison ordeal, however, is not so fatally common
as the sancy water and the poison bean, which sweep away whole families
and even villages on the coast and on the Oil Rivers; nor is it
accompanied with the horrors that distinguish it at Badagry and ill-
famed Dahome. The priest will squirt capsicum or bird-pepper juice into
the eyes of the accused, and lachrymation proves guilt: this, however,
appears rather in the light of a torture to make criminals confess.
Certain Yoruban cities are said to have local ordeals, but little is
known of them at Abeokuta.

Dreams, according to the Yorubans and to many of our fetishists, are not
an irregular action, and partial activity of the brain, but so many
revelations brought by the manes of the departed. They believe in a
physical metamorphosis, which Europeans insist upon confounding with
metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. The former is simple and
purely natural; the latter is a complex and contradictory system,
postulating the existence of what is proofless; an immortal nonentity
called Spirit, created out of nothing—despite ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’—in a
limited number for an unlimited number of human beings, and destined to
end where it began, and whence its beginning was consequently uncalled
for. But Europe cannot deride Asia in this particular. He who denies or
demands proof that a soul or spirit exists, who considers ‘Mind’ to be
the working of the brain, and who holds ‘Matter,’ as it is popularly
understood, sufficient for all human phenomena, is held in a holy
horror. To me it appears that he rather honours the Omnipotent who can,
out of so vile a body, produce effects which others must attribute to
their mysterious ‘dweller in the temple,’ must in fact solve their
difficulties by adding a supplement to the Book of Creation.

It is hard to say whence came the tales invented by the African to
explain the inferiority of the black to the white man. Their
universality induces me to think them an emanation from the Hamitic
brain. Nothing so puzzles and perplexes the negro as to inform him that
all nations were made of one flesh; it is an insult to his Common Sense
which Time only can efface. The much-vexed Noachian flood is of course
found for them in their legends of local inundations. As might be
expected amongst a working people, there is already an idea of a
week[117]—a decimal week, like that of the Aztecs and Javans, containing
five days. The terminal day of rest is called Ose, when water is brought
for the deities in long processions, libations are poured out, and other
religious ceremonies are performed. A month of four weeks, each
consisting of five days, gives an equal number of units to each whole;
with us the system is so complicated that we cannot remember it without
a schoolboy rhyme—moreover, all the weeks are comprehended without
fractions in the year.

It is a question whether the intercourse of more progressive creeds is
or is not modifying the Yoruban mythology. The older hands declare that
faith is gradually decaying, and that Oro is not nearly so powerful as
in their day; and they vainly attempt to arouse the enthusiasm of the
people by petty attempts at a persecution. Old age, however, is and
always will be _laudator temporis acti se puero_; on the other hand,
there are residents who assert that the idolatries are not diminishing,
and that cannibalism and human sacrifices, which were once performed in
public, are now practised under the rose. My time did not permit me to
enter deeply into these troublesome questions. Mr. Crowther[118] has
accused the Egbas (his own tribe) of boiling and eating the bodies of
certain Ijebu invaders, in order to terrify the enemy;[119] and declares
that Ikumi, chief of the Ijebu, was guilty of a similar savagery. The
missionary, however, like the antiquary, is always somewhat credulous on
the subject of heathen malpractices. Concerning human sacrifice I have
something in a future page.

There is nothing remarkable in the marriage rites of the Egbas.
Betrothal takes place early, although the girl is rarely married before
eighteen or twenty, and the dowry, amongst the middle classes, may be
four dollars. The bride and bridegroom repair to Ife, or some other
place of pilgrimage; pray, and sacrifice. At night the bridesmaids
escort the bride to her new home, where a feast leads to the
consummation of the marriage. If the groom be satisfied, he sends
presents to the wife’s family, especially to his mother-in-law, who is
called the ‘little mother,’ in contradiction to the true parent. If he
find reason to complain, he dismisses his bride, and sends, bitterly, a
few broken cowries to her mamma.[120] The marriages are not very
prolific; ‘fecundity diminishes in proportion as we advance from
temperate regions to the poles and the equator.’ All Africans—amongst
whom there is a curious Malthusian instinct—possess anaphrodisiacs, and,
finally, the prolonged lactation, by determining the vital current to
the breast, prevents the women from becoming mothers. There are few
ceremonies after birth: a name is presently given to the child, and, as
amongst the Mpongwe of the Gaboon River, water is sprinkled upon it—a
faint resemblance to the modern, not the ancient, baptism of the
Christians. The son inherits all the father’s wives save his own mother.

Polygamy is of course the foundation-stone of Yoruban society. I cannot
remember a single African or Asiatic tribe—except the polyandrous—in
which this is not the case, and the rule is equally applicable to the
North American aborigines. Europe forms, and almost always has formed,
the sole exception. To account for this fact perhaps a few lines may not
be out of place.

The savage and the barbarian are polygamic because they are dependent
for the necessaries and for the little comforts of their poor existence
upon a plurality of women and the number of their children. Servants are
unknown; slaves are rare. A single wife cannot perform all the offices
required even in the simplest stage of society. Moreover, there is, in
the different races or sub-species of mankind, as amongst the humbler
animals, a greater or a lesser difference, bodily and mental, between
the two sexes. In the gallinaceæ the male is far nobler than the female;
in the equines the two are nearly equal; in the falconidæ the female is
stronger and braver than the male. Thus, in the European and the
Hindu,[121] the woman is quasi-equal with the man; in the African, the
American, and the lower races of Asiatic, she is inferior and
monogamous, whilst his propensities are polygamic.

Amongst the Jews there was at first no attempt at the vulgar limitations
of the family. ‘The care of the Mosaic, as of other Oriental
legislation, was directed to the protection of the woman from harsh
behaviour or capricious desertion, and to the fair treatment of the
offspring without reference to the mutual affection of the parents. That
the man who associated with a virgin incurred the charge of her
protection, and that the mother, by the very act of maternity, assumed
the lesser dignity of the wife, were the foundations of the domestic
morals of the ancient world, the guiding principles of the social
life.’[122] Samuel and the Patriarchs had two and more spouses, Solomon
a countless harem, as became a king of kings, and Cato looked upon his
wife merely as a machine for the manufacture of progeny. As society
became more complex, a certain limitation became necessary. The
customary laws of the Jews confined the high-priest to one wife, and
apostolic injunction continued the same to the Christian bishop,
without, however, forbidding a plurality of wives to the laity or to the
other officers of the Church. It is hard to believe that this want of
express condemnation arose from mere expediency, from the danger of
disruption of the Oriental home, and from the fear of its being an
obstacle to the conversion of the wealthier classes. Those familiar with
modes of thought in the East well know the horror and loathing with
which the people generally look upon the one-wife system, their contempt
for the bastard, and their inability to witness in their own society
those scenes which the monogamic cities of Europe must tolerate for fear
of even greater social evils to the family. The ordinary Hebrew was
ordered to be contented with four wives, a practice perpetuated by the
apostle of El Islam and the king to eighteen. Thus Josephus distinctly
called polygamy ‘the custom of his country.’ Nor was it modified till
the depression of the Jew’s social position compelled him to follow the
laws and customs of the nations amongst whom he was located. ‘In the
eleventh century Rabbi Gerson, in connection with other Jewish doctors
in France and the north of Germany, prohibited marrying more than one
wife under pain of excommunication, and this was afterwards accepted by
most European congregations. Nevertheless, both in Italy and Germany
there seems to have existed the permission to take a second wife, when
the first was hopelessly barren, and Papal dispensations to this effect
are recorded to have been given in the dominions of the Holy See as late
as the seventeenth century (_vide_ “Historia degli riti Hebraici,” by
Leo. Mutensis, 1657, cited by Selden in his “Uxor Hebraica”); while in
Sicily, where the Saracenic traditions might still linger, the author of
the “Ebraismo della Sicilia,” writing in 1748, attributes the rapid
increase of the Jewish population to the enforced early marriages and
the habitual practice of polygamy.’[123] (P. 20. By Giovanni de’
Giovanni: Inquisator Reale della suprema Inquisizione di Sicilia.)

It is, as the reviewer well remarks, entirely gratuitous to suppose
that, at the time of the advent of Christ, the general Jewish custom of
polygamy had fallen into desuetude in consequence of the prohibition by
Roman manners, if not by Roman laws. The reverse was the case; the rigid
monogamy of the early Italians was disappearing in the presence of a
less austere and a more sensuous life. ‘The almost sacramental Sabine
ceremony of the _confarreatio_ (of which we still retain a relic in our
“bride-cake”) was rapidly becoming confined to the use of the Pagan
priesthood; the wife was daily ceasing to regard her husband as _amicum,
patrem, tutorem_; the dignity and privilege of the _materfamilias_ had
declined to the position of _uxor tantummodo_; the married Antony had
openly espoused Cleopatra, and the _quotidiana repudia_ of Mæcenas
shocked only the stoic Seneca.’ To this I will add that the old-bachelor
system appeared in its entirety amongst the philosophers and wits,
_teste_ one Horatius Flaccus, who might have been a club-man of the
present day.

During a missionary dinner at Abeokuta I was somewhat startled by an
account of their treatment of polygamic converts. Having accidentally
mentioned that a Protestant bishop in South Africa had adopted to
advantage the plan of not separating husband and wives, I was assured
that in Yoruba the severe test of sincerity was always made a _sine quâ
non_ before baptism. This naturally induced an inquiry as to what became
of the divorcees. ‘We marry them,’ said the Rev. Mr. Gollmer, ‘to some
bachelor converts.’ This appeared to me the greatest insult to common
sense, the exercise of a power to bind and to loose with a witness; a
right to sanctify adultery pure and simple, to do evil that good may
come of it,[124] a proceeding which may make any marriage a no-marriage.
But I was still more astonished to find, when quoting the opinion of
Martin Luther, in the case of Philip of Hesse, that several reverend
gentlemen had never heard of it, and most when the Rev. Mr. Gollmer, who
manifestly made acquaintance with it for the first time, opined that the
said Martin Luther had so lately emerged from the darkness of Romanism,
that on this point his inner vision was not strong enough to face the
light.[125]

The reverend gentleman’s last objection struck me the more forcibly, as
it is evident that to the Roman Catholic Church—which, when barely
adolescent claimed, and still claims in her decrepitude, the right of
precedence over the State—we owe, in modern times, the most curious
limitation of human liberty ever forced upon mankind. Let us see what
the reviewer says upon the subject. I will abridge his excellent sketch.

No council, during the first centuries of the Church, denounced polygamy
as a sin, but the apostolic limitation of the bishop’s household was
soon applied to the whole ministry, and, in the West penalties were
attached to the practice. The Manicheans and Gnostics condemned marriage
in toto, because it is founded on concupiscence and propagates the work
of the devil in confining human souls in bodies of matter: hence Mani
called his elect or perfect—the class above the hearers—men-virgins.
This heresy was rebutted, but it seems to have found place in the minds
of men. St. Jerome, who is accused by the Reformers of thinking too
exclusively of ‘victuals and virginity,’ would not undertake to declare
a polygamist in mortal sin (‘Epistle to Pammachius,’ where he writes
‘non damno polygamos’). St. Augustine (contra Faustum, lib. 22) is even
more precise: ‘Quando mos erat plures habere uxores, crimen non erat;
nunc propterea crimen est, quia mos non est.’[126] Polygamy was
forbidden throughout the empire by the imperial decrees of A.D. 393, but
within thirty years the Emperor Valentinian restored the liberty of
marriage, according to the several customs and religions of the
inhabitants of the Roman world. Even in later days the Merovingian kings
took as many wives simultaneously as suited their passions or their
politics, and ‘Charlemagne, an eminently Christian emperor, paraded as
large a harem as an Oriental sultan would have decorously concealed.’
Probably, in the presence of such disorders, that development of the
doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church took place which
ended in marriage being taken out of the category of personal contracts,
and, according to the character of the participants, crowned as a
sacrament or branded as a sin. In these latter days the claims of
polygamy have been wholly neglected. A late work (‘La Régénération du
Monde, opuscule dédié aux douze tribus d’Israël’) by M. Joseph de
Félicité, contains the following curious sentences:—‘Il est donc
essentiel que les peuples’ (Jews and Moslems), ‘sachant que la
Polygamie, qui a été autorisée et pratiquée jusqu’au temps de Jésus-
Christ, a été revoquée par lui’ (when? where?) ‘et qu’elle est interdite
par la Sainte Eglise suivant le décrit du Concile de Trent XXIVme
session: “Si quelqu’un dit qu’il est permis aux Chretiens d’avoir
plusieurs femmes, et que cela n’est défendu par aucune loi divine, qu’il
soit anathème.”’ But there is an older and a more terrible anathema upon
him who takes away from or adds to a word of what was spoken, and,
perhaps, even the Council of Trent will not be held guiltless.

It is, therefore, among the dissidents from the Church of Rome that we
must look for assertions touching the lawfulness of polygamy. The
advocates are of two classes. The first is of the Casuists—the German
Reformers, for instance—who permit the practice in exceptional cases of
individual temperament or state necessity, such as might be the subjects
of especial dispensation in the Roman Church; the second is of the
Moralists, who, without regarding polygamy as an absolute good, still
look on it as a preservative from the miseries and disgraces incident to
the illicit intercourse of the sexes in countries where marriage is
restricted and men are licentious.[127] To this class belong the Saxon
Lyserus (author of ‘Polygamia Triumphatrix,’ under the name of
Theophilus Aletheus), Bishops Berkeley and Burnet—who concludes by
saying that ‘he can see nothing so strong against polygamy as to balance
the great and visible imminent hazards that hang over so many thousands
if it be not allowed’—the Rev. Mr. Madan, who, in his ‘Thelyphthora,’
would give to seduction all the responsibilities of marriage, and the
‘oblique advocate,’ poetic Cowper. In 1784, the argument was revived in
Russia by the Comte de Rantzow, who asserted that Frederic of Sweden had
lately proposed to the states of his kingdom—where bigamy is punished
with extreme severity—to permit polygamy, and that the project had been
accepted by the two Lower, but rejected by the two Upper Houses of the
legislature.

To conclude; I would assure these and other missionaries that had less
objection been made to polygamy on their part, the heathen would have
found far fewer obstacles to conversion. Those who hold it their duty to
save souls, should seriously consider whether they are justified in
placing such stumbling-blocks upon the path of improvement.

Funerals play almost as important a part as weddings in the economy of
Yoruban society. The preliminary wake takes place in the verandah of the
dead man’s house, which, like the king’s audience room, is hung with the
richest cloths procurable. The ceremony itself reminds us of the old
Scotch annalist’s words: ‘In years of plenty,’ says Fletcher of Saltoun,
‘many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast
and riot for many days, and at country weddings, markets, burials, and
other public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women,
perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together.’ Women
are there skilful in weeping and shrieking ‘like mandrakes torn from the
ground;’ the sound of the tom-tom is incessant; at times an overloaded
musket is discharged; whilst the mob drinks to intoxication and dances
to ‘break the fear,’ as the East Africans say. During the orgies, a
procession perambulates the town, numerous singers, dancers, and
myriologists, or keeners, accompanying men who bear a board covered with
a cloth to represent a corpse. The body, packed mummy-like in all the
finery which was never exposed during lifetime,[128] is buried at full
length in the house where the deceased lived, and a stone is placed over
the grave, or a painted tablet is affixed to the wall opposite the spot.
Hunters and other castes are buried outside the city gates. The corpses
of debtors and ‘pawns,’ or men pledged for debt, are tied up in mats, as
on the Gold Coast, and are placed horizontally between stakes at a
distance of four to five feet from the ground, where they must remain
until redeemed by the nearest of kin. Infants are buried behind the
housewalls, not in the piazza, because they are supposed to have been
killed by evil influences. On the seventh night, the relations and
friends of the departed issue from the city gates after dark, cast his
arms and clothes on the way-side, thrice call upon his name, and adjure
him not to let, haunt, or otherwise injure them. After thus propitiating
the ghost, they return to the dead man’s house, where a feast and a
carousal end the ceremonies.

Human sacrifices for the dead, or ‘customs,’ so common in many parts of
Africa, are here comparatively rare; when offered, it is with the idea
of presenting to the departed what is most valuable to the living;[129]
and, as has been observed, a modified apotheosis is common. In Roman
Catholic countries the deceased, if not too severely handled by the
devil’s advocate, may after a century or so, and at an expense of
10,000_l._, become a saint—at Abeokuta he has a chance of being raised
to the godhead. The Cairene superstition of the dead refusing to leave
the town, the bier whirling round and round, and the bearers being
driven hither and thither, is not unknown: here, however, if the people
are thrown against the wall of a man’s house, it involves the latter in
a witchcraft ‘palaver,’ which he must settle by fine or by the poison
ordeal.


[Footnote 86: When we first occupied the unhappy valley of the Indus,
the Sindhian women used to bathe without dress at the wells: with Moslem
decorum they were safe, but the Frank soon changed all that.]

[Footnote 87: Lagos kills a consul about every two years. The only way
to remedy it would be to sleep for the first year on board a ship, or
still better, a large hulk anchored off the town in mid-channel. At
night the malarious vapour is condensed and concentrated by the
chilliness of the ground, and is absorbed or rendered innocuous by
passing over a sheet of water.]

[Footnote 88: The European fashion is best adapted for heavy axe-blades
in temperate climates. In the tropics the wood, alternately wetted and
parched, shrinks, swells, and rots. I prefer, to all, a hollow iron
handle, firmly riveted to the blade.]

[Footnote 89: I sent some to England, where their novelty and
grotesqueness caused them to be greatly admired.]

[Footnote 90: An account of the Egba dispersion will be given in a
future page.]

[Footnote 91: Figurative. There are but few wild bees, and honey is
unknown in this part of Africa.]

[Footnote 92: Mr. Senior, and probably others, opines touching ‘plural
government,’ that ‘the Greeks were the inventors of the system of
dividing the sovereign power among a number of co-ordinate persons,
whose combined assent was necessary to an act of supreme authority.’ He
would have found the principle and the practice in the remotest and most
barbarous of African tribes.]

[Footnote 93: It is not cultivated, and therefore little prized by
natives: the flavour of turpentine is its characteristic.]

[Footnote 94: This curious admission reminds me of the words of a
certain preacher: ‘Now, my brethren, Conscience is not, as some say, a
geographical or a chronological accident,’—a fatal sentence, never to be
forgotten, I am sure, by many of his hearers.]

[Footnote 95: Mr. Bowen steps into the absurd, by enunciating the
doctrine, that ‘no _man_ has ever believed in two gods.’ He should have
said, no free-born citizen of the Great Republic.]

[Footnote 96: Some writers (_e.g._ ‘Savage Life in Africa.’ Home and
Foreign Review, July, 1862,) have objected that ‘it does not follow,
because a savage calls God and sky by the same name, that therefore he
necessarily confuses one with the other. Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins had
one name for spirit, breath, and wind; but we cannot therefore conclude
that they identified them. The foundation of reason is the power of
using symbols, _i.e._, of making one thing stand for another, which is
known to be different from it.’ But this is a vicious analogy. The
Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins were not savages: I only assert, that in the
undeveloped human mind the confusion of name points to the confusion of
sense—that the metaphysical idea is subordinate to the physical.
Nezuhualcoyotl, the great Mexican king, when weary of idols, raised a
temple ‘al Dios no conocido, causa di los causas.’ If this be no
priestly pious fraud, Mexico, like Athens, had the foot lifted for
another step in advance when Christianity, the fourth and penultimate
act of the great drama, appeared on the stage of life.]

[Footnote 97: Did Mungo Park ever write this ‘Encyclopædist’ sentence?]

[Footnote 98: From the Hindu to the Romanist, no educated man really
adores the picture or image; and, I suspect, few uneducated men do
otherwise than adore it. This should be a serious consideration with
those who allow and contend for what Moses absolutely forbade—the bowing
before graven images. The Iconoclasts of early Christianity, and the
Apostle of El Islam, doubtless found the abuse of such ornaments greater
than their use, and told the people to hold them in abomination.]

[Footnote 99: ‘The present Alake succeeded Shodeke, a man so venerated
as to be ranked among the demigods.’—(Mr. Campbell, p. 40.)]

[Footnote 100: Mr. Bowen says that ‘Iyangba herself is Obatala. The two
are one, or, in other words, Obatala is an androgyne, representing the
productive energy of nature, or the generative principle, as
distinguished from the creative power of God.’ But this explanation
appears extra Indo-European. On the other hand the Rev. Mr. Crowther
calls Obbatalla ‘the great goddess of Yoruba, supposed to be the framer
of the human body in the womb.’ The fact that this diety is male,
female, and hermaphrodite, is a fair specimen of pagan vagueness.]

[Footnote 101: So the Spiritualists or Fetishists of the present day
assert that everything on earth is but a copy, of which the antitype is
to be found in the other.]

[Footnote 102: The worship of Shango, however, is not known in Great
Benin.]

[Footnote 103: She is denoted by a little idol, with dull yellow skin,
blue hair, white beads, and striped dress.]

[Footnote 104: The authoress of ‘A Residence at Sierra Leone’ (p. 96)
tells us, ‘Many of the liberated Africans worship lightning,’ and is
told by a Christian convert, that an Aku man, who offered himself as a
groom, ‘no do for horseman, he worship de tunder.’ Of course the man was
a devotee of Shango.]

[Footnote 105: A Shango-stone was showed to me; it was a bit of white
quartz.]

[Footnote 106: There are probably two Ife. One is placed in our maps in
the province of Kakanda, between Aku-land and the Niger. According to
some, it has lately been destroyed: the spot is worthy of exploration.
The mythical Ife was founded by Obalofu, and there worship (_alias_
idolatry) is said to have originated. As the first place made by the
Creator, it has become the market of ghostland—the dead there go to sell
and buy.]

[Footnote 107: The place of the Mganga, or medicine-man of the South—the
rain-maker or rain-stopper, like the χαλαζοφύλακες, and those who
practised aquælicium in classical Europe—is supplied in Yoruba, as we
might expect, from the comparative complexity of the system, by a great
variety of priestly drones.]

[Footnote 108: The priest brings his nuts in a rhinoceros horn from the
upper country. Holding the sixteen in his left hand, he takes them up at
random—as we do at a ‘bean club’—in his right, and the operation is
repeated till either two, called ‘ofu,’ or one, called ‘ossa,’ remains.
The chosen nut is then rolled, with the middle finger, over the earth,
or over a board whitened with the dust made by tree-worms. Finally, it
is marked with certain lines, which, by deciding the value and the
nature of sacrifice, procure success.

An old converted priest thus performed the ceremony in my presence. He
counted sixteen nuts, freed them from dust, and placed them in a bowl on
the ground, full of yam half boiled, crushed, and covered with some
acrid vegetable infusion. His acolyte, a small boy, was then called,
made to squat near the bowl, resting his body on the outer edge of the
feet, which were turned inwards, and to take from the fetish-man two or
three bones, seeds, and shells, some of which are of good, others of bad
omen. Elevating them, he rested his hands upon his knees. The adept cast
the nuts from one hand to the other, retaining some in the left, and
while manipulating, dropped others into the bowl. He then stooped down,
drew with the index and medius lines on the yam, inspected the nuts, and
occasionally referred to the articles in the boy’s hand. Thus he was
enabled to pronounce an opinion upon what was to happen.

I cannot flatter myself that the _modus operandi_ has been made quite
intelligible to the reader, for the best of reasons—I do not quite
understand it myself. The system is far more simple in Dahome, and at
some future time I may explain it.]

[Footnote 109: Mr. Crowther mentions that Odudua was situated in front
of the Council House at Ake, and that sacrifices of beasts and fowls
were made to it every five days, in order to obtain children, wealth,
and peace.]

[Footnote 110: Twins, however, at Abeokuta are not necessarily killed,
as in the Oil Rivers further south, or amongst the Kamskatkans, and many
of the North American aborigines.]

[Footnote 111: Here, as in other parts of Africa, Christian Europeans,
like Moslems, call all idols ‘devils,’ and foolishly believe that every
image, tree, stone, charm, and amulet are objects of worship, pure and
simple.]

[Footnote 112: Europeans, as has been said, call all the native objects
of worship ‘devils,’ indiscriminately. The practice is incorrect, but
dates of old. ‘All the gods of the Gentiles are devils,’ says the
Psalmist.]

[Footnote 113: ‘Illustrated Handbook of American Travel.’ New York:
Appleton and Co.]

[Footnote 114: Like the Mbuiti of the Mpongwe, or Gaboons. The word
‘spirit’ is always used in these cases: nothing can be more incorrect
than the secondary idea which it conveys, yet I am at pains to find a
better. ‘Emi’ is synonymous with the Hebrew ‘Ruach’ (breath).]

[Footnote 115: The Basutos think that the ghosts of their ancestors are
always endeavouring to draw them to themselves (‘Casalis,’ p. 249). M.
du Chaillu (ch. xix.) very truly shows that no negro fears the ghost of
his grandfather or his great-grandfather, proving, as has been well
remarked, the shortness of thought which is characteristic of the
African.]

[Footnote 116: In one of the silliest of modern effusions, the ‘Night
Side of Nature,’ where black magic is traced to the power of the will,
we read: ‘It is extremely absurd to suppose that statutes were created
to suppress a crime which never existed.’ The crime did exist, and does
exist, amongst the ignorant and barbarous: the light of science, of
course, is an efficient exorciser.]

[Footnote 117: The Fulas, to mention no other African tribe, have not a
regular week.]

[Footnote 118: ‘Journal,’ &c., p. 185.]

[Footnote 119: The same is told of a cannibal race in Eastern Africa.]

[Footnote 120: This reminds one of the Hindostani slang ‘tutelí kaurí,’
or ‘broken cowrie,’ which in Africa becomes ‘broken calabash.’]

[Footnote 121: The Hindu race, in early times, made an approximation to
monogamy. The country was then almost civilized, and the population must
have been dense. The Semitic family shows the same phenomenon. But when
quoting the words of the Eastern poet—


  ‘His wives may never be four,

   He will best consult his reason,

   Best secure his home from treason,

   Who takes one, and wants no more’—


they should be read rather as a grumble against the ‘legalities and
proprieties of society,’ than as a theory which could be generally
carried out. The Asiatic races that are inferior to the Arab and the
Hindu, have never, I believe, adopted monogamy, although polyandry has
been practised for centuries.]

[Footnote 122: I have borrowed these sentences, and almost all the
information contained in these paragraphs, from a Paper in the
‘Edinburgh Review,’ Jan., 1862. The reader will readily recognize the
master-hand in that admirable article. It is amusing, however, to see in
it what a poor halfpenny-worth there is of bread (monogamy) to an
intolerable deal of sack (polygamy). Whilst pages 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23
are devoted to showing that polygamy was a Mosaic institution,
unforbidden to the early Christians, and only rendered restrictive and
penal—principally by the Church of Rome—in modern times, a single
sentence informs us that the settlement of the question was left to old
Roman laws, to German manners, and to ‘the silent but absolute operation
of a religion, based on the sentiments with which no system of polygamy
seems to be compatible—freedom and love.’

An eminent Moslem divine—El Siyuti, I think—wrote a Moslem treatise on
what to avoid. Through some three hundred pages he indulges his reader
with a full description of the most voluptuous practices of the East—a
perfect worship of Bacchus and Venus. In the last he perorates,
beginning—‘This much, O reader, have I recounted unto thee, so that thou
mayest know the things forbidden unto thee,’ &c., &c.

With respect to the reviewer’s last assertion, viz., that Christianity
is based upon freedom and love—I doubt that the monogamic sentiment was
ever intended by it. And I doubt even more vehemently whether the
mixture of sentiment and passion, which we know by that name, has not
added to the miseries rather than conduced to the happiness of human
life. In my humble opinion, it is not one of the least merits of
polygamy that it abstracts from the parents an affection which it
bestows upon the progeny. As no man, it is said, can serve God and
Mammon, so no woman can equally love husband and children; even the same
woman, at different periods of her existence, will prefer one to the
detriment of the other. And whilst conjugal love contains the base alloy
of sexual feeling, parental affection is of all the most pure and holy.
The unselfish will find no difficulty in pointing out which to prefer.]

[Footnote 123: St. Augustine, Grotius, and other authorities, admit that
polygamy is more natural than monogamy, yet they declare—and they are
followed by Paley—that it would prevent increase of population. The
contrary is the case. Hippocrates, Harvey, Willoughby, Forster, and the
practice of the Mormons, show, that amongst all animals, mankind
included, polygamy tends to population by increasing the births of
female children. Dr. Johnson (‘Life,’ vol. iii., p. 71) says it is ‘not
natural for a man and a woman to live together in the married state.’
Balzac explains this, by observing that, ‘physically and morally, man is
man longer than woman is woman.’ Napoleon, the last of the three
Avataras of intellect, declares, in the Code Civile, ‘Le mariage ne
dérive pas de la nature.’

In the City of the Saints, I flattered myself it had been proved, that
whereas monogamy equalizes the birth of the two sexes, polygamy produces
more females, and polyandry more males. Hence came the deduction, that
‘Nature, our plastic mother, had prepared her children for all three
systems.’ The ‘British Quarterly Review,’ of Jan. 1st, 1862, in an un-
able article, thus reasons upon this adaptation principle:—‘If a man
breaks a leg, nature instantly adopts extraordinary measures to insure
its repair; but are we entitled to infer that she delights in fractured
limbs?’ If this be argument, there can be no more said upon the subject.
Polygamy and polyandry, amongst mankind, are the rule, not the
exception. Broken legs are the exception, not the rule. The comparison
of the ‘learned’ reviewer is, therefore, applicable to monogamy, not to
polygamy and polyandry.]

[Footnote 124: Martin Luther allowed Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, for
political reasons, to intermarry with a second wife, the first being
still living. (‘Memoirs of Luther,’ translated by M. Michelet: 1836. See
also ‘Athenæum,’ June 18, 1836.) The Reformer, who said, ‘If Sarah
refuses, take Hagar,’ regarded, like all the early Christians, saints
and sinners, marriage as a purely civil rite. He never hesitated, when
the object of union was impeded, to grant letters of divorce, and he
notably held that the polygamy practised under the Mosaic dispensation
was lawful in modern times. ‘For my part,’ he declares, ‘I confess that
I cannot oppose the man who may wish to marry several wives, and that I
do not think such plurality contrary to the Holy Scriptures.’ This is
true wisdom. Human liberty has been sufficiently abridged without
imagining further curtailments.]

[Footnote 125: The lax law makes the polygamic wife a legitimate wife,
the missionary declares her illegitimate and not respectable; he
degrades her in her own estimate, and he would drive her an outcast from
her home. Can aught be more absurd, more wicked?]

[Footnote 126: This ‘mos’ is equivalent with the Moslems’ ‘Rasm:’ the
importance attached to it is eminently Oriental, conservative opposed to
progressive. One is tempted to quote St. Augustine against himself: ‘Væ
tibi, flumen moris humani! Quis resistat tibi?’ (‘Conf.,’ i. 8.)]

[Footnote 127: There is nothing more curious in the moral world than to
watch the effects of restriction of marriage by increased luxury and
expense in England, France, and other so-called civilized lands.
Polygamy has been cast out except amongst the few who can afford to
practise an illegal concubinage, and polyandry has now become the last
resource of those unable or unwilling to marry.]

[Footnote 128: Some authorities say that cowries are placed in the tomb
as gold-dust is further west: others deny it.]

[Footnote 129: It must be remembered that human sacrifices prevailed
amongst all the polished people of the old and new worlds; in Greece
they were common until the days of Solon, and the Romans abolished them
only in A.C. 100.]




                               CHAPTER V.

             THE USUAL SKETCH—GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL.


The country properly called Yoruba, or, by older writers, Yarribah, and
Yahribah—imitations of the Hausa pronunciation—has larger limits than
those usually assigned to it. Mr. Bowen, for instance, gives as its
frontiers the lands of Nupe (Nufe, or Nyffe), Borghú, and the regions
known as the Sudan, on the north; the Bight of Benin or Slave Coast, on
the south—so far he is correct—on the east by Ibini, or Benin, and the
Niger; and on the west by Mahi and Dahome, or, as it is here called,
Idáhame. It is, however, abundantly evident that Benin and Dahome are
integral parts of Yoruba, somewhat differing in language, but identical
in manners, customs, and religion. I would accordingly make the Niger,
in 6° 45′ east long., and the Volta River, in east long. 1° 45′, its
extreme limits. Thus, instead of two hundred miles in breadth, the
irregular parallelogram will be about three hundred and fifty, and its
depth from north to south will be upwards of two hundred miles. The area
will be seventy thousand instead of fifty thousand square miles. The
population is set down at two millions, which may be safely doubled,
thus giving about twenty-five souls to the square mile.

There is also a Yoruba Proper, which includes the two former kingdoms of
Ife and Isehin. The southern limit lies about twenty miles beyond
Abeokuta, or sixty miles from the sea, and thence it extends northwards
to the frontiers of Borghú. The area is usually laid at thirty thousand
square miles, and the population at eight hundred thousand souls; nor is
this an over-estimate. In this part of Africa, though much of the
country is desert, the cities[130] are numerous, many of them are ten to
twelve miles in circumference, they contain thousands of houses, and
each holds from ten to threescore souls. There are also many smaller
towns numbering from two thousand to fifteen thousand people. In this
section of the country lies the ancient metropolis of Yoruba, Oyo (also
called Katanga or Eyeo), whence the people were known as Hios and Eyeos.
The old capital, which is said to have been twenty miles in
circumference, was destroyed by the Fulas and Hausas in 1825, when the
king established himself at the tent-market ‘Ago-ojjá,’ which is now
known by its former name, Oyo. The next most considerable cities are
Ibadan, now at war with Abeokuta; Ijaye, the hapless ally of the latter;
and Ilori. Besides which there are ten minor cities, whose names do not
require mention. Yoruba Proper is now well nigh Moslem.

Besides Yoruba Proper, and the kingdoms of Wari, Benin, and Dahome—the
latter was, according to native tradition, a mere tributary province—the
great Yoruba country contains seven independent territories, whose names
are as follows:—

1. Iketu, in our maps Ketu, with a capital of the same name, is a small
country lying between Agbome and the River Ogun, south of Yoruba Proper,
and shut out from the sea. It has hitherto withstood the power of
Dahome, and as the soil is poor, whilst timber and water are far from
abundant, it is not much coveted by its neighbours. The extent is
conjectured to be two thousand square miles, and the population one
hundred thousand.[131]

2. Ekko,[132] which the Portuguese called Lagos; the chief town is Aoni,
or Awini, _i.e._, descended from Ini or Bini—Benin. The limits are Egba-
land to the north, the sea to the south, the Ijebu country on the east,
and Badagry, now its dependency, on the west. Its area cannot be less
than one thousand square miles, and its population eighty thousand.[133]

3. Egba, which, with Iketu, forms the head-quarters of the so-called Aku
nation. It is a small kingdom lying on both sides of the Ogun River, but
principally on the left bank. It is bounded on the north by Yoruba
Proper, south by Ekko, east by Ijebu, and west by Iketu. It also
includes the fallen kingdom of Ota, lying between Badagry and Abeokuta.
The capital of Egba-land is Abeokuta, and there are no other
considerable cities. The area, including Ota, is about three thousand
square miles, and the population may be assumed at two hundred
thousand.[134]

4. Ijebu, popularly called Jaboo, lies between Egba-land and Benin: it
is bounded northwards by Yoruba Proper and Kakanda, southwards by the
sea, or more properly by the long lagoon called the Ikoradu, or Cradoo
Waters. It is divided into two parts, the Ijebu Ode to the east, and
westward the Ijebu Remo: the Awajali, or great king, however, resides at
Ode. The land has been little visited by travellers: it is described as
an undulating surface of bush and savannah. The area is set down at five
thousand square miles, the population at two hundred thousand souls. The
Ijebus, a warlike race, have ever been the most deadly enemies of the
Egbas, who, in return, gave them the bad name of being the most
barbarous of the Yoruban tribes.

5. Ijesha, whose capital is Ilesha, is a little-known province lying
between Yoruba and Kakanda: its area is set down at two thousand square
miles, and its population at two hundred thousand souls.

6. Kakanda,[135] more properly called Effong or Effon, extends from
Yoruba Proper to the Niger and the Kwara Rivers. This province is very
little known, but the people are celebrated for working copper, of which
they are supposed to have mines. In Kakanda is the celebrated Ife,
‘said,’ if we believe the maps, ‘to be the origin of idolatry.’ It is
the spot where the Yoruba nation and all others arose—the Eden of these
regions; moreover, from it sprang the sea, and they show the source of
the largest river known to them, namely, the Osa Lagoon, running between
Lagos and Godomé. The Dahomans, who, like other Yorubans, thence derive
their faith, call it Fe.

7. Ilori, which Richard Lander writes Alourie, a province and a city of
that name, inhabited by Moslem Fulas and Gambari,[136] a tribe of Hausa
men, together with a few pagan Yorubas. The king is a Fula, and the
chiefs are mostly Gambari and Kaniki.[137] About 1820 Ilori became
independent of Yoruba Proper: it then proclaimed the Jihad, and assisted
in the destruction of Oyo or Eyeo. Of late years Ilori has suffered at
the hands of Ibadan, but it has recovered since the latter people have
been weakened by their wars with Abeokuta. About 1850, Masaba of Nupe, a
half-caste Fula, made a coalition to attack Ilori and its chief Chítá, a
relation of his own, whose daughter he had married. Two years
afterwards, however, Masaba was driven out by his subjects, and Iláde,
his capital, on the banks of the Niger, was burnt. The King of Sokoto
then sent him to reside at Ilori as a private citizen. Shortly
afterwards he left it, and he now resides at Bidda, on the Kaduna, a
tributary of the Niger.

Ilori, like Tinbuktu and Sokoto, is one of the great marts of Central
Africa. All manner of European goods are imported _viâ_ the Desert from
Tripoli and other Mediterranean ports, although an easy land journey of
two hundred and fifty miles separates it from the Bight of Benin. The
Niger River also runs at no great distance to the eastward of it. The
exploitation of the whole Nigerian valley is in our hands if we choose
to take the trouble.

The word Yoruba has, as might be expected, been identified by the
ethnological sciolist with Europa. Sultan Mohammed Bello[138] derives
the name Yarba from Yarab, son of Kahtan, called Joktan by the Hebrew
annalist, and enumerated by Moslem genealogists amongst the Arab el
Ariba, or pure Arabs who preceded the Mutaarab, the Ishmaelitic et
insititious and impure Egypto-Arab race. Mr. Bowen derives it from Goru,
which in Fula means river, and _bah_ or _ba_, great. He is sensible
enough to place little confidence in his own philology; and, for the
most part, _bah_, as in Joli-bah, and Bah-fing, is believed to be an
African corruption of the Arabic _bahr_, a sea or large stream. The
popular derivation of Yoruba is Ori Obba, or ‘Head King’—with which, for
want of a better, we must fain be satisfied.

With respect to the origin of the Yoruban race, some hold that it is an
offshoot from Nupe, on the north of the Kwara, driven by a war across
the Niger when the river was swollen; and thus the ship, Okko, became
their emblem. They first founded Ife, and subsequently Igboho and
Oyo.[139] Another well-known tradition makes the Yoruban forefathers to
have been created at Ife, or rather at the obscurely remembered mythical
town of that name, four months’ journey to the east. Another declares
that they are descended from sixteen persons who were sent forth from
the east to found a colony. Their leaders took with them a hen and a
piece of cloth, containing a palm-nut in a few handfuls of mould. For a
time they waded through water, till the earth, dissolved through the
cloth, formed a bank in which the palm-nut grew to a tree with sixteen
branches, whereupon the hen sprang upon the bank and dried the
waters.[140] A third makes Iketu, Egba, Ijebu, Ife, Ibini, and Yoruba
six brothers by one mother. Yoruba, the Benjamin of the family, settled
at Ife, and after a time he reduced the others to the condition of his
dependents and vassals, when he removed to Igboho and made it his
capital. The great mother of the six tribes is still worshipped at Ife
and Abeokuta as Iyommodi (contracted from Iya ommo oddi), the mother of
the hunter’s children. Naturally enough the Moslems identify the hunter
with Nimrod, and his children with the Canaanites, who, driven to the
west, peopled the Sudan—Yauri and its vicinity. It is remarkable that
all these legends derive the population of Yoruba from the east;
and—even the fables which natives tell concerning their origin most
frequently show a modicum of truth—we are so far justified in believing
that from early times a race of pagans, pushed forward by the stream of
immigration from the lands nearer Arabia, occupied the thinly populated
countries south of the Kwara.[141]

We will now proceed to that province of the great Yoruban country which
most interests us—Egba-land. According to its Aku population, it
included at one time Dahome and the Popo, or races extending from
Badagry to the Volta River. At last the giant Lishabe—there were good
and bad giants in those days—rebelled against a Yoruban tyrant, and
vindicated the freedom of his country. This West African Kav or
Washington is now a god, and his farm, which it would be sacrilege to
reclaim, is pointed out on the east of the Ogun River, a little below
Abeokuta.

After their ‘declaration of independence’ the Egba race endured a
succession of terrible calamities, which led to their dispersion. Though
the worst must have happened almost within memory of man, there are many
conflicting statements accounting for it. According to some—and this is
the version recognized by the missionaries—the Egbas, after winning
their independence, were long governed by a king of their own; but
finally, growing weary of monarchy, they determined that every town
should be ruled by its own chiefs. This led to mutual jealousies and
dissensions; as might be expected, the oligarchies become more
tyrannical than despots, without possessing the virtues and the habits
of freemen. About fifty years ago this bad blood, stimulated by the
slave trade and by the machinations of the Yorubas and the Ijebus,
resulted in civil and internecine wars. In the course of twenty-five
years the numerous cities and towns which covered the land were all laid
waste with the sole exception of Oba, which is yet standing, about ten
miles south-west of Abeokuta. It is probable that five hundred thousand
people perished by sword and famine. Many were sold to the slave ships,
and the remnant of the tribe was scattered abroad. Others say that the
wars began about a little pepper in the market-town of Akponi—which
shows that the country was ripe for confusion. The people of Ife, Ikija,
Ikesi, Owu, and Ijebu, all armed against one another; whilst Afunja,
chief of Ilori; Alimi, a Fula of Sokoto; and Ali, chief of the Gambari
people, attacked Yoruba in force. Thousands of plunderers were already
at work; the sword and torch, famine, and the slave-ship completed the
destruction. Others declare that about two generations ago the Egbas had
a king who determined to rule them with absolute sway. He was quietly
directed to ‘go sleep,’ but he had the audacity to refuse. Then the
turbulent Egbas arose, and in full durbar slew their anointed king, who
claimed the right divine to do wrong. But the killing was murder in the
eyes of Oro; punishment followed the regicidal act with no lame foot.
The Fula Moslems of the Niger pressed upon Yoruba, Yoruba upon the
Egbas. The latter having no head, and being, though not absolutely
republican, a headstrong and unmanageable brood, began to fight among
themselves, and to sell one another in all directions. According to Mr.
T. B. Freeman, one of the earliest visitors to Abeokuta, a war had
lasted nearly a century between the kings of Dahome and of Great Benin.
The lands lying between the two rivals had suffered greatly; and even in
the present day the line of country between Badagry and Abeokuta, which
is one hundred miles long, does not contain more than five hundred
souls. In those days the Egbas dwelt to the eastward[142] of their
present homes, but were driven out by their neighbours the Ijebu, who
had sided with Benin. Under their chief, Ladmodi, the Egbas made head
against the violence of the enemy, but he was at last slain and the
tribe dispersed.

Without attempting to decide which account is true, it is evident that
during the first quarter of the present century there was a general
dispersion of the Egbas. We know that about 1820-22 there was a great
influx of Aku captives into Sierra Leone, and that they found their way
east and west, to the United States,[143] Gambia, Fernando Po, Hausa,
Borneo, Central Africa, the Fezzan, Egypt, and even to Stamboul. It was
a race worsted and spoiled, not, as is commonly asserted, by Europeans,
but by its own folly and want of proper despotism.

In 1825, as has been recounted, the Rock Olumo gave to a remnant of the
Egbas a rallying point. When their numbers were equal to the task, they
founded, about 1826, the town Abeokuta, under the chief Shodeke, who, as
the next in rank, had succeeded Ladmodi. The _novus homo_ then attacked
Ijebu, the old enemy, but after some successes he was defeated by a
coalition near Ekpe. The Ijebu raised another force, and fell upon
Shodeke. After a long campaign, however, they were compelled to retire,
losing one-third of their host. Shodeke then warred with Ilori, and
wrested from Yoruba Proper the little kingdom and city of Ota. He took
Ado, the key of the Badagry line, which connected him with the coast,
and he made an alliance with Dahome. In 1838 he invited Europeans to
settle in his capital; and he died honoured and revered in 1844.

The closer connection of Abeokuta with England dates from 1838-1839. In
that year certain Christian Akus or Egbas of Sierra Leone, freighted
with merchandize a small captured and condemned slaver—the class of
vessel was ominous of what was fated to happen—and, with a white man for
master and a crew of _emancipados_, sailed for Badagry. They were well
received, and presently they returned with a cargo of palm oil. Two
other confiscated ships followed suit, and a little trade was thus set
up, originating the idea of returning to their old homes as Oibo,
foreigners or civilized men. Between 1839 and 1842 some five hundred
Yoruban recaptives determined to form a colony. About two hundred and
sixty-five landed in three ships at Lagos, and suffered from the
rapacity of the chiefs, reaching Abeokuta with difficulty. Between two
hundred and three hundred entered _viâ_ Badagry, where, by the influence
of Yoe Wawu, the Popo ‘English chief,’[144] they were better received,
and made for the interior in parties of fifty and sixty. Mr. T. B.
Freeman, a coloured Wesleyan missionary from Cape Coast Castle, followed
them for spiritual refreshment on the 11th December, 1842, visited
Abeokuta, which he describes even then as double the size of Komasi, and
reported his journey in the ‘Missionary Register’ for 1843. He and the
other converts were hospitably and kindly treated by Shodeke the king,
who allowed them to stand before him, not to prostrate themselves like
his heathen subjects.

The movement was accelerated and intensified by the ill-fated Niger
expedition, commanded by Captain Trotter, R.N., whose principal, if not
sole success, was in persuading Obi, chief of Abo, the capital of the
extensive Ibo (Eboe) country that occupies the lands lying about the
head of the Delta, to sign the treaty for the suppression of the slave
trade. Obi’s example was followed by the Ata of Igarrah, who also claims
the city of Kakanda. On the return of the expedition it was decided that
a Mr. Townsend, one of the Church Missionary Society’s catechists,
should proceed to Yoruba, and select an eligible base for future
operations. He embarked on the 14th November, 1842, on board a condemned
slaver, which three negroes had purchased and freighted, for Badagry.
There he met Mr. Freeman, who, on his return from Abeokuta, gave a
favourable description of Shodeke. Mr. Townsend, accompanied by two
blacks, Andrew Wilhelm and John M‘Cormack, proceeded to the capital, and
after a satisfactory interview with the warrior-king, returned to Sierra
Leone. Andrew Wilhelm was again sent to Abeokuta, whilst Mr. Townsend
proceeded for ordination to England. It was then arranged that he should
at once revisit Abeokuta in company with the Rev. Mr. Gollmer, who had
been some years at Sierra Leone, and Mr. Crowther, who had lately been
‘crowned a minister,’ the first full-blooded negro who ever ‘wagged his
pow’ in a Church of England pulpit, and who had preached his first
sermon at Freetown in January, 1844.

The Rev. Mr. Townsend arrived at Sierra Leone in December, 1844,
accompanied by Messrs. Gollmer and Crowther, with their wives and
families, and sundry natives, catechists and interpreters, carpenters
and labourers. He landed at Badagry in January, 1845; but Shodeke was
dead, and the Ado war, which was then raging, delayed their advance:
finally, it was decided that Messrs. Townsend and Crowther should
proceed to Abeokuta, and that Mr. Gollmer should remain at Badagry. The
quarrels of Akitoye and Kosoko detained the whole party seventeen weary
months on the coast, until M. Domingo Martinez[145]—the well-known
slave-dealer of Porto Novo and Whydah—effected a peace, and enabled the
missionaries to proceed, despite the unwillingness of the Badagry people
to part with them. Messrs. Townsend and Crowther, with their wives, left
Badagry on the 27th July, 1846, and arriving safely at Abeokuta, were
entertained by one Osho Ligregere, and were welcomed by Okokenu, the
actual Alake.

Ake—the royal head-quarters, in which Shodeke had resided—was chosen for
the first settlement. Three acres were granted by the king, a shed was
erected, Mr. Townsend preached, Andrew Wilhelm translated, and the
chiefs, Ogubonna, the Balogun, and Somoye, the Ibashorun,
listened—curiously. The mission-house was built in December, 1846; in
1847, a church was opened; and the end of that year saw four preaching
sheds at Owu, Itoku, Ikijá, and Igbein, where Mr. Crowther settled
himself, about two miles from Ake.

In 1848, Mr. Townsend—leaving behind him Mr. J. C. Müller, who died in
1850—returned to England, bearing a letter and a country cloth, offered
by the Alake and his caboceers to Her Most Gracious Majesty. His
departure was the signal for an attempt at persecution, which, probably,
the converts had brought upon themselves.[146] The conservative movement
was directed by several chiefs, of whom Akigbogun—termed the ‘Pharaoh of
Igbon’—distinguished himself. At the bottom of the affair, however, were
the Ogboni lodges, who said that the converts were turning the world
upside down; and certain Sierra Leone renegades, who had relapsed into
heathenism and the slave export trade. The fetishmen, to whom the new
faith was foolishness, also feared the loss of many goats and fowls. But
the polytheist is a bad persecutor: there was a little shaking of roofs,
flogging, pinioning, and prohibiting visits to the church or to white
men. Enough was done to fill a chapter, headed Persecution; but all was
of the mildest, none of the ‘curious juice,’ except from the back, was
shed.

Meanwhile, the Earl of Chichester, President of the Church Missionary
Society, was authorized to communicate with the Alake, acknowledging his
present, and exhorting him to wean his people from illicit to lawful
commerce. This letter, accompanied by a gift of English and Arabic
Bibles, and a steel corn-mill, was conveyed by the Revs. Dr.
Hinderer—who was sent to study the Hausa language—and J. Smith, to
Abeokuta, in the spring of 1849. The Alake and the chiefs, highly
gratified, proposed a sacrifice to the presents, which was rejected. The
so-called persecution ended in 1849, when the continuance of the
‘sentimental squadron’ was determined on; and in the spring of the next
year Mr. Townsend, who plays the part of the ‘great Eltchee’ in these
lands, returned from England to Ake in March 1850. In the same year Mr.
Hinderer, accompanied by Mr. Phillips, an interpreter, visited the towns
of Igbara and Ishagga, and settled at Oshelle, about eight miles north-
east of Ake.[147] In January, 1851, Mr. Beecroft, H.M.’s Consul for the
Bight of Biafra, after a journey to Agbome, proceeded to Abeokuta, and
made a covenant with the chiefs to repress future persecution. The same
year saw Badagry burnt down and destroyed in a cut-throat affair, and
Lagos scotched by the British. In March the King Gezo, of Dahome,
determining to renew the scenes of Okeadon—where, it is said, 20,000
Otas were seized and sold—attacked Abeokuta, and suffered shameful
defeat; and in the autumn of the same eventful year of Grace, 1851,
Commander Forbes, R.N.—of ‘Sarah Forbes Bonetta’ celebrity—proceeded to
Abeokuta in state,[148] and concluded a treaty between H.M.’s Government
and the Alake and labourers.

Abeokuta, at the present time of writing (Nov. 1861), contains four
several sects—Wesleyans, Episcopalians, Northern States Baptists, and
Southern States Baptists—who have split upon the rock of slavery. There
is a total of twenty whites—viz., three merchants—Messrs. Wike, Hughes,
and Bergmeyer—eleven male missionaries, four women, and two children.
The Wesleyans have one of each sex. The Church Missionary Society has
six whites, including one woman at Ake, three men, one woman, and two
children at Ikijá, and none at Owu: their total, therefore, is eight
men, two women, and two children. The Baptists have two white men and
one woman.

I felt truly grieved at the sight of my poor pretty countrywomen at
Abeokuta, and anticipated but too correctly what, in many cases, has
since proved their sad fate. They looked like galvanized corpses, even
those who had left England but a few months before, radiant with
pleasure, bright with youth and beauty. It is a crying sin and a shame
to expose these tender beings to such rude, unworthy trials. But what
words of mine would avail? I could only leave with them my wishes, my
vain hopes that they may soon be restored to those homely decent lands,
which no Englishwoman—if the power of ukase were mine—should ever be
permitted to leave.

Seven deaths have occurred in this mission since 1846. Mr. and Mrs.
Dennard, Messrs. Lord, Field, Paley, and Carter, and Mrs. Buhler, occupy
‘God’s Acre,’ the fetid, grassy graveyard of Abeokuta. Besides which
there are numerous native converts. Some years ago the average of
European life on the coast of the Benin Bight was two years; and of 100
white children only one or two, even when removed to England, reached
the age of ten. At Abeokuta this state of things seems in a fair way to
be perpetuated. The least that could be done by the authorities at home
would be to allow every missionary, male and female, a full year’s
furlough after every two years spent in the African interior.

As has been seen, the missionary holds a peculiar position in these
lands. At home a carter, a blacksmith, or a cobbler, he comes out to
Africa—I use his own expressions—‘to found empires, and to create
nations.’ Whilst one Mr. T******* rings the bell for the ‘Western Times’
in the streets of Exeter, the other, a missionary, holds in his hand the
destinies of Abeokuta. Far from being a disparagement, it is highly
honourable, according to English ideas, for a man so to raise himself
above his caste; but how often ‘_honores mutant mores_,’ and what a
terribly bad politician from Indus to the Pole your reverend man mostly
is!

The Sierra Leone settlers are numbered at 2000. They have the name of
being prime disturbers of the public peace—especially those who have had
the misfortune to visit England—and they are openly accused of relapsing
into the lowest heathenism, and of slave-trading, under the specious
pretext of redeeming captives. Of course they deny the charge, and if by
any chance they speak the truth this time, they have been greatly
maligned. But of them more in a future page.

The number of converts registered is about 1500, the communicants may
amount to 800. The slave-trade, in its slow but sure reflux from the
west to the east, has done this much of good. The Mombas Mission in
Eastern Africa, where there are no re-captives, could, in the same
number of years, boast of but one convert, and he had been a maniac. As
might be expected, the stranger hears of shining lights amongst the Neo-
christians of Abeokuta, such as John Baptist Dasalu, Martha Dasalu, Mat.
Oluwalla, Mary Ije, and Susannah Kute. There is even a Christian
_Balogun_ or Caboceer, John Akirona, _i.e._ John the Great, and he is
favourably spoken of as an independent and honest man. The neophytes are
exposed to sore temptations. I have heard convert-women on the coast
declare that their native catechists are holy men, that to offend with
them is not the same as to sin with the laity; besides which, under such
circumstances, it is not their—the weaker vessel’s—‘palaver.’ In the
more degraded stages of the Roman Catholic religion the penitent thinks
the same of her confessor. Moreover, if I am rightly informed, convicts
are preferred for conversion, which must naturally lead to ‘breakings
out.’

The schools contain 265 children, who are crammed with hymn-singing,
reading, and other civilized arts. As an American missionary rightly
observes, the English language is held to be a second revelation to
mankind, and thus becomes a curse to the people. The natives should be
induced to found, and to support their own schools; and, until they
discover the value of education, it is perhaps better not to force their
minds.

As for the adults—chiefs and commons—of Abeokuta generally, there is in
their minds an ingrained idolatry, against which even the outburst of
missionary spirit, in the days of Cary and his contemporaries, would
prove futile. ‘At least thirteen apostles,’ as I heard a Scotchman say,
‘would be required for the people Egba.’ The power of the Ogboni is
unlimited; it extends from Abeokuta to Sierra Leone, where the ‘Akoo
companies’ form a complete _vehm gericht_, and no foreigner can expect
to swim against such a tide. This may explain the later failures of our
political relations with Abeokuta. And the Egba is stubborn, most
suspicious and hard to change when he has once adopted an idea; it is to
be feared that without main force—which we cannot apply—the Ogboni will
succeed in defeating all our best intentions.


[Footnote 130: Like the French Canadians, the people are gregarious, and
prefer for safety to live in cities and towns. Their farms and fields
show only small huts.]

[Footnote 131: These conjectures are all borrowed from Mr. Bowen, who
probably saw more of the country than any other white man.]

[Footnote 132: According to the Ethiopic Directory, Ichoo is the name of
the town of Lagos—a decided mistake.]

[Footnote 133: Mr. Bowen allows it 400 square miles, and 30,000 souls,
but he does not include Badagry and other provinces.]

[Footnote 134: Mr. Bowen gives 100,000, but he estimates Abeokuta at
80,000 only.]

[Footnote 135: Kakanda or Ibbodo, the capital of the Effon people, is a
large city on the right bank of the Kwara River.]

[Footnote 136: The Gambari, of old called Cumbrie, are the men of
Hausa—so termed from the Kambi—who live on the banks of the Niger above
Busa.]

[Footnote 137: The Kaniki are the people of Burnu, and the latter word
means a ship, the town having been built where Noah’s ark first touched
land. We have given the name of the city to the country. The Kaniki are
descended from Barba, _i.e._ Dar Borghú.]

[Footnote 138: See Appendix to Denham and Clapperton’s Travels.]

[Footnote 139: Igbo means a forest; Igboho, a noisy forest, a howling
wilderness; Oyo is derived from _yo_, to escape, and points to the first
city of refuge south of the Kwara.]

[Footnote 140: Missionaries naturally connect this ridiculous fable with
the Mosaic Creation and the equally apocryphal Noachian flood dove and
olive-branch. I extract the following from the Rev. Mr. Crowther’s
introductory remarks to the ‘Grammar and Vocabulary of the Yoruba
Language:’ ‘It is said by the Yorubans that fifteen persons were sent
from a certain region; and that a sixteenth, whose name was Okambi (an
only child), and who was afterwards made King of Yoruba, volunteered to
accompany them. The person who sent them out presented Okambi with a
small piece of black cloth, with something tied up in it; besides a
fowl, Tetu, a servant (slave), and a trumpeter,—Okinkin was the name of
the latter. On opening the gate of this unknown region, they observed a
large expanse of water before them, through which they were obliged to
wade. As they went on, the trumpeter reminded Okambi of the small piece
of cloth, by sounding the trumpet according to the instructions of the
person above mentioned. The cloth being opened, a palm-nut, which was
deposited in it with some earth, fell into the water. The nut grew
immediately into a tree, which had sixteen branches. As the travellers
were fatigued by long wading through water they were glad of this
unexpected relief, and soon climbed up and rested themselves on the
branches. When they had recruited their strength, they prepared again
for the journey, yet not without great perplexity, not knowing in what
direction they should proceed. In this situation, a certain person,
Okikisi, saw them from the region whence they set out, and reminded the
trumpeter of his duty; on which he sounded again, and thus reminded
Okambi of the small piece of black cloth, as before. On opening it some
earth dropped into the water, and became a small bank; when the fowl,
which was given to Okambi, flew upon it and scattered it, and wherever
the earth touched the water, it immediately dried up. Okambi then
descended from the palm-tree, allowing only his slave and his trumpeter
to come down with him. The other persons begged that they might be
allowed to come down; but he did not comply with their request until
they had promised to pay him, at certain times, a tax of two hundred
cowries each person.

‘Thus originated the kingdom of Yoruba, which was afterwards called Ife;
whence three brothers set out for a further discovery of better
countries. At their departure they left a slave, named Adimu (which
signifies ‘Holdfast’), to govern the country of Ife in their absence.
The tradition of the three brothers explains the relationship of the
three chieftains in the kingdom of Yoruba; namely, the chief Iketu,
called Alaketu, and said to be the eldest; the second, or Alake, chief
of the Egbas; and the King of Yoruba, the youngest, who however in
former days took tribute from the rest. There is a similar tradition
concerning the chiefs of Allada (Ardrah), Ijashe (Porto Novo), and
Dahome.

‘After the repulse of the Dahoman army in 1850, some of the prisoners
were presented to Oni, the Chief of Ife, to the Alaketu, and to the King
of Yoruba by the Abeokutans, in memory of their victory. He of Ife
returned a polite symbolical letter which was construed by the
missionaries as an invitation to come over into his country and to help
his people.’]

[Footnote 141: The early history of Yoruba is thus given by the Rev. Mr.
Crowther: ‘The Kings of Yoruba may be safely traced back to the time of
Ajagbo, who reigned in Oyo (Katanga), and died at a great age. The time
of his reign cannot now be ascertained. He was succeeded by Abiodun, who
also enjoyed a long and peaceful reign, and died an old man. The elders
of Yoruba always refer to his rule as a time of peculiar felicity, and
one which cannot again be expected for a long time. About this time the
Felutas (Fulas) were known only as shepherds and herdsmen. They were
permitted to feed their sheep and cattle wherever they liked, and
generally lodged outside the town in tents.

‘After the death of Abiodun, Arogangan, his brother, succeeded him.
Arogangan’s nephew, Afunja, born in Ilori, whose father was a brave
warrior, was made Are-obbo (King’s Chief Warrior), and was placed in
Ilori, the king thinking that Afunja would be satisfied with this high
post of honour; but instead of this, Afunja used every artifice that he
could think of to dethrone Arogangan, that he might possess the kingdom.
The king being aware of his designs, under pretence of offence given to
him by the people of Iwe-re, the town of Abiodun’s mother, sent Afunja
to war against it, making sure that by this means he should remove
Afunja out of the way; but the matter turned out the reverse. When
Afunja got to Iwe-re, he told them that he was sent by Arogangan to
fight against them. They were surprised at this declaration. Afunja was
sent back, and an army sent to demand Arogangan, and to fight against
Oyo in case of refusal to give him up. Oyo was besieged, and Arogangan,
dreading the consequences of falling into the hands of his enemies,
poisoned himself; upon which the army departed from Oyo. The beginning
of his reign may be supposed to be about the year 1800. He reigned seven
years’ [N.B.—This would place the beginning of the chronicle between
1720 and 1740].

‘Adebo succeeded his brother Arogangan. He was chosen by the Elders of
Oyo, in preference to Afunja, who might now have been placed on the
throne of Yoruba on account of his greatness of mind, but was refused
because of his treachery. Adebo reigned only one hundred and twenty
days. It is supposed that he was poisoned.

‘Maku, one of the royal family, a favourite of Afunja, succeeded Adebo;
but it appears that the majority of the inhabitants of Oyo were not well
pleased with him. There was war at Igboho; and Maku, accompanied by
Okpelle, one of the king’s counsellors, took the command; but being
unsuccessful in the undertaking, he chose rather to die than return
home; so he killed himself. He reigned only three months.

‘After Maku’s death it appears there was an interregnum of five years,
during which period affairs were conducted by one Ojo, who was
Obbashorun or privy counsellor. Majotu succeeded Maku, and reigned for
some time well; but his son did a great deal of mischief, chiefly by
kidnapping. The people complained bitterly against the prince; and at
last required him to be given up for trial. Majotu felt very uneasy on
account of his son’s behaviour, and life became such a misery to him
that he poisoned himself. It is not certain how long he reigned.

‘It is not uncommon among the Yorubas, under some injury, vexation, or
disappointment, to commit suicide, either by taking some poisonous
draught, sticking themselves with a poisoned arrow, or cutting their
throats or bellies with a sword or razor. Such are generally looked upon
as acts of bravery.

‘Amodo succeeded Majotu; about which time the country of Yoruba was in
great confusion.

‘Afunja, who was made chief warrior in the kingdom, took the opportunity
of the unsettled state of affairs at the capital to ingratiate himself
with the people of Ilori. He allowed them to make whatever use they
liked of their plunder in battle; taking nothing from them, either for
himself or for the king, and thus encouraged them to war. By this means,
such slaves as were not satisfied deserted their masters and joined
Afunja at Ilori; in doing which they were declared free and independent.
The Felutas, who had hitherto contented themselves with a pastoral life,
began now to distinguish themselves as great warriors; and as they
gained a firm footing in the country they introduced their religion—that
is, Mohammedanism. As Afunja could not get to the throne in any other
way, he tried to make himself friendly with the people of the capital,
and to get them into a quarrel with some principal head-men in Ilori,
who, it appears, began to be too strong for him. But they of Ilori,
being aware of his treacherous plans, caught him and burnt him publicly
in Ilori, and exposed his ashes for many days. After this, the people of
Ilori, being mostly Mohammedan, did not think it proper to be subject to
a pagan king, but became independent, and on this account the civil war
broke out which has almost desolated the kingdom of Yoruba. Since this
time, Ilori has become the rendezvous of the Mohammedan army.

‘The surviving princes who have a right to the throne of Yoruba in
succession, are Atiba, Tella, Afunja the younger, and Ajibekum. Atiba is
the present King of Yoruba. He removed the seat of government from Oyo
to Aggo-oja, where he is now using every means in his power to subdue
Ilori.’]

[Footnote 142: The Abeokutans, as will be seen, point out their old
seats northwards, around the present Ibadan.]

[Footnote 143: The Guinea niggers of the United States are the Fantis
and Popos. The good niggers are from Yoruba, Nupe, Hausa, and the Sudan
generally. The Bozals of Cuba are any wild blacks.]

[Footnote 144: Badagry, like Whydah, was divided in the old slaving days
into different towns, French, English, Portuguese, &c., and each had its
independent chief. In 1842 there was an English factory there, for
buying palm oil. All the other commerce was in the hands of the slave
traders. Kidnapping was common. The roads were unsafe to travel, and
farming could be carried on only within a short distance of the towns.]

[Footnote 145: Commander Forbes calls him, probably by a misprint,
Domingo Josè Martins.]

[Footnote 146: The proceedings of new converts in the old haunts of
idolatry may serve to throw no little light upon the causes of the great
persecutions under Nero, and other ‘enemies of the Church.’]

[Footnote 147: Since 1851, Mr. Hinderer, with an interval of sick leave
to England, has been settled at Ibadan. The chiefs of Abeokuta opposed
this measure strongly, and the country is now at war with Abeokuta: he
naturally takes the side of his protégés, and differs totally from his
colleagues in Egba-land upon the subject of the ‘mad dogs of Ibadan.’]

[Footnote 148: Commander Forbes was received with a formal cavalcade,
which was omitted in our case, a sign that familiarity with us was
breeding contempt for the white face.]




                              CHAPTER VI.

                     OUR SECOND VISIT TO THE KING.


The morning of Monday saw me on foot betimes. At 6 A.M. I again ascended
the Ake Hill, behind, or north of the Church Missionary compound, and
proceeded to take, with prismatic compass, bearings of Abeokuta, which
as yet has not been honoured with aught worthy the name of plan. My
first thought was to measure by gun-sound, _secundum artem_, a base
between Ake and Olumo. The timid English residents feared, however, lest
his potent majesty the Alake might take umbrage at the shooting, and
suspect sinister intentions.

The next motion was to meet the Akpesi or Prince of Eruwan, the second
dignitary in the town, who had called on Commander Bedingfield previous
to this day’s interview, for the purpose of communicating ideas of his
own. As at Komasi, and in Great Benin city, it is not ‘etiquette’ for
subjects to visit a stranger before the ceremony of presentation: that
over, however, they call singly and in mass.

The Akpesi is a tall, thin, wrinkled senior, very plain, close-shaved,
as usual, little ornamented, and poorly clad. He is one of the wise, who
never bring forth their best clothes till after death. His discourse was
sensible, and to the point. Amongst other things, he declared that
Abeokuta did not want this, showing the backs of both hands placed side
by side (hostility), nor this, one palm up and the other down (double-
face or deceit), but rather this, and this only, both palms up (a sign
of friendship). I took the opportunity of asking him if he could not
procure me admission into one of the Ogboni lodges. He replied—a great
man never says ‘No’—that it would require large fees. When the amount
was demanded, he named twenty-two bags of cowries, two sheep, and two
goats. As this did not seem to deter me he doubled the sheep and goats.
The sum being acceded to he declared that there was much death to be
seen in those places; and as this again failed, and he was driven into a
corner, he requested me to ‘let it go’ at present, but that on some
future occasion I should be satisfied. This was conclusive, but not
satisfactory. It is astonishing how much Asiatics and Africans make of
these mysteries, and how long it takes to fathom them. I was nearly five
years in India before a Brahmin could be induced to invest me with the
thread of the Twice Born; and my attempts to discover the secret of the
Jatawalla[149] were all in vain. My plans of sketching the interior of
an Ogboni lodge failed at Abeokuta, though Mr. Wilhelm, the catechist,
did his best: a week was not sufficient. The last answer was, that their
excellent friend Mr. Townsend had advised them never to admit a
European. At Ikoradu, however, my friend Mr. M‘Coskry and I, happening
to pass an Ogboni lodge, which was full of men and elders, quietly
walked in, and stepped round the building before the assembly, stupefied
by the sudden appearance of white faces, dropping as it were from the
skies, found presence of mind to protest.

Mr. Bowen translates Ogboni, ‘a sort of freemasonry, a respectable,
elderly man.’ It is neither one nor the other. Any naked boy, running
about the streets, may, when ten years old, if a free-born Egba, of good
repute—_integer vitæ scelerisque purus_—rise to this dignity. Nor is it
in any way connected with European freemasonry—a favourite comparison
with the uninitiated. Freemasonry, properly considered, is a faith _per
se_—holding the grand tenets—1st, Monotheism, or the belief in one God,
without which no man can become even an ‘entered apprentice;’ and 2ndly,
Brotherhood, or the mutual fellowship of man, in all conditions and
circumstances of life. It is evident that neither of these sublime ideas
are indigenous amongst the Egbas. The Alake is superior to the chief of
the Ogboni, and the others follow in their several degrees. They are
elected by the people, and, together with the war captains, they form a
council, whose powers are said to be unlimited. They rule during the
long interregnums, and at all times they manage the revenue and the
taxes. In emergencies they are assisted by companies of old and young
men, representing the masses. The Ogboni have proved a serious obstacle
to the progress of El Islam and Christianity, by their strict
surveillance over the juniors, and by the inquisition which they
exercise in the inner affairs of life. Consequently, some missionaries
object to converts belonging to it. I have already alluded to its
political influence.

The Ogboni lodge, which thus resembles the Muanza of East Africa, the
Purrah of the Susu Timni and Bulloms near Sierra Leone, and the
Endowment House of the City of the Saints, is found in every town.
Supported by the fees paid every seventeenth day by the members of the
lodge, it is a long, low building, only to be distinguished by the
absence of loungers, fronted by a deep and shady verandah, with stumpy
polygonal clay pillars and a single door, carefully closed. The panels
are adorned with iron alto-relievos of ultra-Egyptian form; snakes,
hawk-headed figures, and armed horsemen in full front, riding what are
intended to be horses in profile; the whole coloured red, black, and
yellow. The temples of Obatala are similarly decorated.[150] A
gentleman, who had an opportunity of overlooking the Ogboni lodge from
the Ake church steeple, described it to me as a hollow building with
three courts, of which the innermost, provided with a single door, was
that reserved for the elders, the holy of holies, like the Kadasta
Kadastan of the Abyssinians. He considered that the courts are intended
for the different degrees. The stranger must, however, be careful what
he believes concerning their mysteries. The Rev. Mr. Bowen asserts that
the initiated are compelled to ‘kneel down and drink a mixture of blood
and water from a hole in the earth.’ The Egbas deny this: moreover, they
charge Mr. Bowen with attempting to worm out their secrets for the
purpose of publication. As all are pledged to the deepest reticence, and
as it would be fatal to reveal any mystery—if any there be—we are hardly
likely to be troubled with over-information.

The Alake had summoned us to audience at the early hour of 10 A.M. We
went punctually, and were met at the door by Beri, his Majesty’s M.C.,
who informed us that his master was then unprepared, but would let us
know when visible. We left the palace not unamused by this second
attempt at, and success in, ‘doing dignity,’ and we sauntered about in
the shade outside. Two of the trees showed a peculiar fruit. One had a
brace of skulls with tenpenny nails through the forehead, and bits of
brown skin, like dry fig-peel, still sticking in patches to the half-
bleached bone. These had been women who, according to one account, had
been executed for attempting to poison their master, a native Christian
merchant; according to others they had been sold by the said Christian
merchant for sacrifice. Another tree showed seven of these relics: one
of them was almost mummified, and the lower jawbone was still attached
by remnants of cartilage. His Majesty the Alake—who had soon heard of
our visit to the place—afterwards informed us that four of these
belonged to Egbas who had been executed for kidnapping their friends and
allies the Ijaye. The Tyburn trees were distinguished by the clothes,
probably the attire of the dead, wrapped round the boles up to the
branches. I amused myself with sketching the blossoms that grew on those
boughs, and—the scene was quite Dantesque—I could not but wish that M.
Doré had been there to borrow from it certain details.

Returning to Mr. Wike’s house, we were shown a small collection of
industrial specimens prepared by the Commercial Association of Abeokuta
for the Great Exhibition of 1862. There was some poor líf, or palm-tree
fibre, used as a sponge throughout Africa; specimens of the silk-cotton
from the bombax; and _someye_, or native silk produced by a worm that
feeds upon a fig-leaf. This article may some day become valuable. Beans
were in great abundance, of several varieties—purple, the common kind,
red-peckled, yellow (_Calavances_), white haricots, black, pink, whity-
brown, and some large red, like our kidney-beans. I recognized, for the
first time, the Njugu ya mawe (_Voiandzeia subterranea_) of East Africa,
which is there regarded as the tiger-nut of the western regions. Besides
which there was a soft, useful chalk dug up near the town, and farm-
grown piper cubebs, whose oil, like that of the ricinus, when not
rancid, is much prized for sauces. I defer an account of the cotton to a
future page.

At 11·15 A.M. we were again summoned to the palace, and, entering, we
found all _in statu quo ante_, except that there was a greater gathering
than before, and that the curtains relieving the majestic form of his
Majesty were a fine green velvet and a striped silk. He receives, it is
said, unofficial visitors far less formally, and the cooking in his
verandah is not interrupted. The same old deal table and native body-
cloth, the same jugs and basins, glasses and case-bottles, stood before
the presence, and he was fanned by a young wife, who, perceiving the
admiration excited by _ses appas_, veiled her bosom with a bit of
velvet. Behind me sat a handsome young Alufa,[151] or Moslem, who told
me that he was an Arab, born at Burnu: he certainly spoke the purest
Semitic. ‘And how about the Jihad?’ I inquired, in his vernacular. ‘Give
those guns and powder to us,’ he replied, with a gleaming eye, ‘and we
will soon Islamize these dogs!’ The Alake grunted out that he did not
understand ‘dat mouf,’ and a sign to the Alufa caused him to rise and
depart.

Commander Bedingfield opened the palaver by asking explanations
concerning our being sent back from the ‘palace.’ Fault was thrown upon
Beri, the M.C., and we had the grace to accept this apology for a
designed impertinence. This time it was business ‘and no mistake.’ The
Akpesi of Eruwan was the king’s orator, and he spoke well, dividing his
speech topically, touching upon all the interesting heads, quoting
proverbs, monopolizing attention like a diner-out, and exciting us
against his enemies. He began by saying, after the usual compliments—the
Arabic _afiyah_, health, was repeatedly used, and the reply was _amin_,
or amen—that he must be allowed to give us a detailed account of the
events that had lately happened. On our consenting, he commenced a good
two hours’ speech, talking ten minutes at a time, and then resting
whilst his words were interpreted to us by Lagos Williams, who, assuming
all the tone of a Methodist preacher, spun out his words to the finest
length, lest his African brethren might suspect him of ‘skipping’ or
‘fudging.’ The assembly was hushed, except when some chief vociferated
‘silence!’ or some sycophant drawled out ‘don’t die!’ The ‘mad dogs of
Ibadan,’ we were told, had repeatedly rejected the king’s messengers,
had bought ammunition at Lagos, had declared their intention of first
shaving the forehead, then the back of the head, _i.e._, of destroying,
as a preliminary, Ijaye, their neighbour, and afterwards Abeokuta; and
they had threatened, in case of interference, to blacken every
Englishman’s face as cloth is dyed with indigo. ‘These,’ he said,
pointing to six seniors squatting in the opposite verandah, three brown
as Mulattos, and all the half-dozen naked to the waist, with the various
appurtenances of chiefdom—cowrie-bags, chauris, gun-barrel walking-
sticks, and huge broad-brimmed beavers, trimmed with half a foot of
faded gilt lace—‘these are the kings of cities which have fallen into
the hands of the Yorubas,[152] and which we will recover before we
rest.’ He scouted the report that the people of Ijaye had been sold off
by their allies, the Egbas; the cry had been raised at Lagos by the
Yorubas to excite the English against innocent Abeokuta; and in disproof
of it he pointed in the direction where four men’s heads had been taken
off for kidnapping. He explained the notorious disappearance of the
Ijayans by the fact that the Are, their king, had made sale the penalty
of _fainéance_ in war, and that the people, pressed by hunger, had been
compelled to dispose of their slaves and children, their wives, and even
themselves, for two bags, or about one pound sixteen shillings each. All
of which was plausible, but not true. He then slipped into another
subject, declared that Mr. Sam. Crowther, jun., should never again enter
the gates of Abeokuta, protesting, as the cause of the people’s wrath,
that Europeanized Egba’s spite against the Rev. Mr. Townsend, an
excellent man, ever their friend, who kept five hundred kegs of powder
ready for the defence of their city. Waxing aggrieved, he entered into a
complaint touching the conduct of the acting governor of Lagos, who had
written insulting letters to them, and the late Captain Jones, who,
bribed with four hundred bags by the Ibadans, had not only broken his
promise to bring up from Lagos, for the purpose of drilling the
Abeokutans, a detachment of ten men from the West India regiment, but
had also attempted to visit their very enemy—that scum of the
country—who was sworn to dye white men black, as with indigo. He
concluded with the apposite remark that all of public had now been said,
and that what remained must be spoken in private. This was the gist of
an harangue which did not cease till men began to yawn; many followed
the example of the farmer-king and snored, a few rose to depart, and all
appeared to be tired. Even the palaver soon wearies the cobweb brains of
these Africans.

Commander Bedingfield saw his opportunity, and sensibly declared that as
they had had their say he also must have his. As regards the war with
Ibadan, it was their own affair, their loss and not ours; we wanted not
Abeokuta, but peace and plenty of cotton; and although we might aid her
in defence, we should never abet her in offensive war. With respect to
the man Crowther, he also was entitled to a fair hearing; and although
the Alake had a right to banish a foreigner offending against the laws
of the land, still allegations against a British subject holding
property in the place should be substantiated before being acted upon.
Captain Jones’s letter to government—it had, by its entire truth, given
great offence at Abeokuta to white men as well as to black—might contain
a few expressions better omitted, still excusable in so young an
officer; but no one wearing her Majesty’s uniform was capable of
receiving a bribe (as this was stated with indignation, the Akpesi rose
and explained that the bribe had been given by the Ibadans to the
Ijebus). Moreover, it is an European practice for a non-combatant to
visit both armies in the field. An allusion was then made to a human
sacrifice, whose object was good fortune in war against the enemy,
offered up, on the 12th October, 1861, outside the Ijaye gate, with the
permission of the Egbas, by the people of Ikesi and Ife, the town
destroyed, it is said, by the Ibadans four or five years ago. An Ibadan
prisoner, who had long been in chains, of which he showed marks, was led
out, loaded with cowries, and made contented with rum; a crowd collected
round him, sending messages to their departed friends, and begging the
victim to remember their wants, children for the women and wives for the
bachelors. The captive, at first, made some objections, but presently
became in excellent humour, and sang his epicedium with a will. Mr.
Stone, an American Baptist missionary, had heard what was to take place,
but did not arrive in time. The man was duly decapitated, and the usual
ceremonies followed the death, such as entreating the ghost not to be
wrath with, or to haunt his slayers. This was the tale palmed upon us:
it was a systematic falsehood. The Alake had become possessor of an Ife
idol,[153] and the chiefs had told him that a man should be offered to
it for peace. The job was given to the Ife people because the idol was
from their country, and the rite was performed outside the gate to throw
dust in European eyes. ‘The captain’ reprobated all such proceedings,
and concluded by informing the Alake that H.E. the acting governor of
Lagos, who had offended them, had done so under orders, and that, as he
was acknowledged by the home authorities, he must be treated with
respect. Whereupon a form of written apology was passed to Mr. King, a
coloured missionary sitting hard by.

But kidnapping and human sacrifice are still sore subjects with the West
African. Presently we had a scene. The old Alake had ceased to doze, and
gradually his one eye lighted up, he forgot to fan his under-arms, to
swab his face, to snuff, and to drink. As he insisted upon breaking
silence, many chiefs, turbulent and unvenerative as Africans ever are,
left the assembly, audibly declaring that, as their king would speak,
they washed their hands of the consequences. His Majesty began by
telling us fiercely that he himself had written the letter to the acting
governor of Lagos without the knowledge of his councillors, and that
since the time of the Ado war, he had ever known him as a merchant and
as an enemy. He then entered upon the subject of the war, his voice
changed from a low sing-song recitative to a louder tone, he lashed
himself into a rage—the listeners half applauding—and finally he rose
upon his feet and bellowed like a rickety old bull. He was rather an
effective figure; a tall, large, aged man, amply clad—only his left eye,
the bright side, showing. He thumped his breast, and not being over-firm
upon his legs, he leaned back so much that his wives were compelled to
hold on his white-topped, blue-fringed, scarlet velvet cap. ‘Never,’ he
exclaimed with violence, ‘will my word be for peace as long as Ibadan
holds the graves of our fathers, our homes, and our ancestral farms!’
And he foamed at the mouth with the idea. Some of my companions thought
the display natural. I was too much at home with African customs—the
scene is by no means unfamiliar to Europe—to mistake the movement, but I
judged from it that our mediation would not be highly acceptable. At
last the Alake, who had gradually left his cage, sank back into it, the
curtain fell amidst shouts of applause, and the assembly—warned by the
cold gusts and the lively dust that a tornado was at hand—prepared to
break up. We drank a little peppermint, and as we were told that the
king would meet us outside, Mr. Eales and I left the palace. Commander
Bedingfield, however, more sensibly sent in a message that he must shake
hands with and be duly dismissed by the Alake, who, after some delay,
returned smiling in fresh clean robes, and hobnobbed with his
‘distinguished visitor.’

The palaver was well managed, and in one sense successful: it seemed to
promise an early, though not a satisfactory, adjustment of a very
complicated affair, which however was not fated to be. As the
explanation throws light upon the customs and politics of this part of
the world, I will enter upon it at some length.

The war between Abeokuta and Ibadan, which formed the subject of the
late palaver, began ‘twenty moons ago,’ _i.e._ in May, 1859, and in 1863
it is far from settled.[154] It is an old quarrel. As early as Richard
Lander’s day that mysterious race the Fulas[155] were driving the pure
Yorubas southwards, and they in their turn were ousting the Egbas. As
has been shown, the dispersion of the Egbas was mainly brought about by
the Ijebus and the Ibadans, who, being warlike and quasi-Moslems, took
possession of the rich farm lands north of comparatively barren
Abeokuta, and have now made them their own. There has long, therefore,
been bad blood. The origin of the last quarrel is stated to be that the
Ibadans slew the wealthy mother-in-law of Murummi, Are or chief of
Ijaye, who seized the murderers, and refused to give them up without
ransom. Whereupon Ibadan marched against Ijaye, and the latter threw
themselves into the arms of Abeokuta. On the other hand, it is generally
believed that the Ijebu Remo and Dahome, those ever-watchful enemies of
the Egbas, supported Ibadan. The quarrel has lately been complicated by
the threats of Dahome, who is preparing his sacrifices: the arrangements
usually begin in September and October, and the attack takes place in
December and January. To make matters worse, the Mohammedans of Ilori,
to the north of Ibadan, thinking, I suppose, that when Kafirs fall out
Moslems come in, have promised aid and comfort to Abeokuta. The war has
produced great scarcity, trebling the price of many articles in Yoruba,
besides causing a serious deficiency in palm-oil and other products. It
was generally supposed that both were weary of the affair, but that they
would not cease without the intervention of a third party. Further
experience, however, has proved the error of the supposition.

There was, moreover, a deeper cause of quarrel than old and obsolete
animosities, and this was carefully kept concealed. To an African power,
direct connection with the seaboard is a necessity. Dahome was unknown
in the last century until she had conquered and absorbed the maritime
kingdom of Whydah. The Ashanti wars in the earlier part of the present
century were waged against the Gold Coast races and ourselves with the
same object; and at the present moment there are actual hostilities for
the same end. The possession of a port gives two great advantages. The
first is a power of exportation and importation without paying the heavy
African transit dues. The second is the right to claim such transit dues
from neighbours and nations dwelling inland. The African ever aspires to
the condition of a middleman, when, Jew-like, he can live gratis and
labourless by the sweat of another’s brow. Such is the condition of the
whole of this coast, a broken line of broker settlements, some
numbering, like Grand Bonny, nine thousand souls, and such has from time
immemorial been the condition of the shores of Eastern Africa. Abeokuta
having obtained by means of the Ogun a direct communication with the
sea, is determined to charge a heavy transit duty upon the produce of
Ibadan and the inland kingdoms. And those who can find no other direct
road will fight till they can obtain access to the ocean. This greed of
gain—not the pious and patriotic aspiration to recover the lands of
their forefathers—has sustained the Abeokutans in a four years’ conflict
with the Ibadans.[156]

It remains to consider the causes of complaint brought by the Egbas
against the Crowthers and Captain Jones—they are as instructive as the
causes of the war. Mr. Sam. Crowther, like his brother Mr. Josiah, had
made himself wonderfully unpopular at Abeokuta. He had refused to pay
certain fines leviable on certain offences. His accusations against Mr.
Townsend were the _cheval de bataille_ of the Abeokutans. But as before,
so here, the true cause of complaint lay much deeper. Mr. Sam., like his
respected father who was proposed for a bishopric, had been witness to
and an active hand in promoting a treaty, upon which the Alake, his
chiefs, and his subjects, soon learned to look in its real light, and
were seized with violent indignation.

I quote this instructive instrument _in extenso_ below.[157] It speaks
for itself: it is sublime in its impudence. If carried out it would
create a system of _fueros_ more exceptional than any that Mexico has
yet seen: it would found an _imperium in imperio_, bringing into the
heart of the country a wholly irresponsible race. There is no possible
guarantee for Art. 3. Whence is ‘the intelligence’ to come, and what may
be its measure? Moreover, though signed by eight names, of whom half
died before the end of 1861, it was never submitted to the greater
chiefs and to the Ogboni lodges, or Upper and Lower Houses of the land,
and it degrades the people because it places their freedom in the bands
of a king and of a few chiefs. The reader has already seen that the
Alake of Abeokuta is no autocrat.

That needy and greedy coloured fugitives from the western world should
enter into such speculations is no wonder. That the late Sir Culling E.
Eardley, Bart., of Bedwell Park, should ‘heartily recommend’ the scheme
in a preface to Mr. Campbell’s _brochure_, and call upon Manchester to
second the movement, _is_, as I have already shown, the error of those
who make Africa a no-man’s land. Land quarrels caused the old Egba
troubles, and nothing but agrarian wars could result in the haven of
refuge opened to his brethren by the Pilgrim to his Motherland. What
would Sir Culling E. Eardley have replied to a deputation of gipsies,
who proposed to settle themselves as a free republic under the spare
shades of Bedwell Park? Yet that is what he advocates for Egba-
land.[158]

Meanwhile, the Alake and chiefs, far more acute than the English
philanthrope, declare that, whilst perfectly ready to admit settlers
subject to the British authorities at Lagos, and amenable to English
law, they will have nothing to do with these irresponsible adventurers,
who, in time, may become too strong for them. They have already tasted
the sweets of a negro immigration from Sierra Leone, and they are by no
means willing to see anything more of the Oibo dúdú, white-blacks, or
trouser-white-men, as they call their guests. They therefore adopt the
African, I may say the universal plan, of denying the transaction in
toto. The Alake was half asleep when he affixed his mark; moreover,
‘black and white’ does not bind firm and fast in these lands. The chiefs
assert with truth that they have no power to execute such instrument
without the full permission of the Ogboni lodges. The people declare
that they know nothing of the matter which most concerns them. And I
venture to opine that, as a mere act of justice, we should allow the
Egbas to do what they like with their own.

Mr. Consul Foote had applied for a detachment of two hundred soldiers of
the Second West India Regiment, to instruct the Egbas in military
matters. The idea was not brilliant. These negro troops naturally
despise ‘niggers,’ and are not willing to serve with them: the men,
however, were forwarded to Lagos, were kept there till they became
troublesome, and were sent back to head-quarters. Meanwhile, Capt. A. T.
Jones, of the same corps—the son of a well-known military name—was a
young officer of considerable talent and energy, of an ardent
temperament, strong in body, but unfortunately in ill-health. He was
directed to obtain ‘military information touching the resources of the
country, and the means the Abeokutans may have of carrying on offensive
war.’ Delayed by a fever caught on the Osa Lagoon during the affair at
Porto Novo, he left his detachment of ten men at Lagos, reached Abeokuta
on the 11th May, 1861, and was graciously received by the Alake. After
stating his object, he was forwarded to the seat of war with an escort
and introductions to the chiefs. On the 20th of May he arrived at
Okomeji, the camp of observation, distant thirty miles from Abeokuta,
and he visited its commander, the late Ogubonna, who, ten years before,
had repulsed the Dahoman attack. He then proceeded forty miles
northwards to Ijaye, and on the 22nd of May he started for the front.
The enemy, hearing from spies of the white man’s arrival, resolved to
waylay him: however, by hard riding, and by preceding his escort,
Captain Jones entered the Egba lines that same evening. On the next
day—operations were hurried by both parties, who were anxious for the
fetish of the white man’s presence—took place the battle of Ijaye.
Captain Jones placed himself near the first rank of the Abeokutan army,
about three hundred yards from the enemy, and watched the tactics of
both parties. He withdrew only when his interpreter was wounded in the
thigh by his side, a bullet grazed his own leg, and a third ball struck
the tree against which he was leaning, a few inches above his head. When
the action, which proved a drawn battle, ended, he retired to the Egba
lines, and returned to Abeokuta on the 31st of May.

The report written by Captain Jones, after his return to Lagos, caused
great umbrage at Abeokuta. The older missionaries were vexed to see the
place ‘shown up,’ and declared that it had been malignantly described.
The natives, influenced by one Turner, a coloured man, now living with
the King of Ijebu, were loud in their complaints. They declared that
Captain Jones had appeared their friend, that he had made all manner of
promises, and that he had deliberately broken them for the worst of
purposes—all of which was of course false. Perhaps he was a little hot
and hasty in his expressions touching the lukewarmness with which our
offer of auxiliaries was received, and the ‘scorn and indifference’
manifested by the Abeokutans in neglecting certain useless pieces of
artillery sent to them from England. But, on the whole, his report was
perfectly truthful, and redounded greatly to the credit of this young
and promising officer.

Captain Jones remained at Lagos for a few days, suffering from fever. He
then set out _viâ_ Ijebu for Ibadan, taking with him a servant, an
interpreter named Thomas, and a messenger or mihmandar from King Dosumo.
Falling ill on the way, he was advised to return, and at last he was
carried in a hammock from the landing-place at Ijini, twenty miles down
the Lagoon, to his canoe. The breeze being against him, he was delayed
there for some time, and he breathed his last—Europeans say from
congestion of the lungs, natives say from poison—on the Ikoradu Waters,
within sight of Lagos, 7th July, 1861.

Monday’s evening was as gloomy as its morning; the tornado, after
exhausting its electricity, poured down a slow, steady rain, which
effectually confined us to in-door amusements. The _séjour_ was becoming
_bien triste_. On Saturday the Ake converts and those of Abaka had a
prayer-meeting for general purposes, for the success of Commander
Bedingfield’s mission. Sunday was of course a ‘day of rest’ (7 A.M.,
native service and school; 10·30 A.M., English service, followed by
school; and 4·30 P.M., native service—such is ‘rest’). On Monday
afternoon there was a monthly prayer-meeting of all the churches and
chapels for the forwarding of peace—a custom, I believe, originating
with the Loodhianah Mission in Northern India; and on Tuesday, it being
the 5th of the month, there will be a gathering for the benefit of the
natives; ministers, schoolmasters, and native agents all meet, and the
converts are expected to attend. It is evident that the Abeokuta mission
cannot be accused of neglecting its duties.


[Footnote 149: The Jatawalla worships Shiva, and is so called from his
jata, or huge mop of hair, which he twists in the shape of a turban. I
have found the length, by careful measurement—passing my thumb-nail down
it to detect plaiting, if possible—six feet and upwards. If there be any
secret in this, what a fortune it would make, even compared with the
‘incomparable oil, Macassar!’]

[Footnote 150: The doors have distinct panels, upon which are seen a
leopard, a fish, a serpent, and a land tortoise. The horseman is also
common. Mr. Bowen remarks, that one of the carvings was ‘a female
figure, with one hand and one foot,’ probably a half Obatala, or the
female principle of Nature; ‘and the monster was remarkable for having a
queue of very long hair (which no negro can have), with a ball or globe
at the end.’ Opposite to this were the symbols of the Lampsacan god, or
rather the Yoni Lingam, in juxtaposition. I differ from Mr. Bowen in the
opinion that no negro can have long hair; the Fans of the Gaboon River,
to mention no other tribe, often wear it falling upon their shoulders.]

[Footnote 151: ‘Alpha’ is the usual English way of writing the word,
which I presume is a corruption of the Arabic Árif.]

[Footnote 152: Yoruba Proper, Ibadan, and Ilori, is here alluded to.]

[Footnote 153: The Rev. Mr. Crowther informs us that all kinds of idols
are to be had at Ife, and that celebrated gods are frequently purchased
there by the people of other tribes.]

[Footnote 154: The style of fighting will be described in a future
chapter.]

[Footnote 155: ‘Fula,’ a word said to signify brown or yellow, has been
traced back to the Psylli, or Psulloi, of the classical authors; and
others make them descendants of the shepherd kings. They are known by a
variety of names—Poul, Poulh, Peul, Pheul, Pholey, and Phoulah: in Hausa
and Yoruba they are known as Filani and Falani; in Burnu as Filata or
Fillatah; and their country is called Fuladú. The race is said to come
from Masina, near Tinbuktu, and to have inhabited the three Fula
countries which are derived from Phut, the grandson of Noah. About a
century ago, their celebrated Shaykh Usman (_alias_ Danfodio) built
Sokoto in the woods of Ader, organized an empire, and marched under a
white flag to the Jihad. He conquered Hausa, Kubbi, Yaori, Nupe, and
Moslem Burnu, and became Amir el Muminin over followers that have now
spread from the Senegal River to the Ibos, at the head of the Niger
Delta,—an extent of country larger than Russia in Europe.]

[Footnote 156: The missionaries, headed by Mr. Townsend, take an
opposite view of the affair. According to them, the Ibadans seized Ido
and Ilugun, stopped the trade road to Ijaye and Isehin, and drove the
Abeokutans out of their farms. Her Majesty’s Consul at Lagos, and the
British merchants, sent deputations to Abeokuta and Ibadan, to prevent
the war: at the former place it succeeded, at the latter it failed. My
belief is, however, that the Abeokutans were, and are still, the
aggressors.]

[Footnote 157:

                                TREATY.

This treaty, made between His Majesty Okukenu, Alake; Somoye, Ibashorun;
Sokenu, Ogubonna, and Atambala, chiefs and baloguns of Abbeokuta, on the
first part; and Martin Robinson Delany, and Robert Campbell, of the
Niger Valley exploring party, commissioners from the African race of the
United States and the Canadas in America, on the second part, covenants—

ART. 1.—That the king and chiefs, on their part, agree to grant and
assign unto the said commissioners, on behalf of the African race in
America, the right and privilege of settling, in common with the Egba
people, on any part of the territory belonging to Abbeokuta, not
otherwise occupied.

ART. 2.—That all matters requiring legal investigation among the
settlers be left to themselves, to be disposed of according to their own
custom.

ART. 3.—That the commissioners, on their part, also agree that the
settlers shall bring with them, as an equivalent for the privileges
above accorded, intelligence, education, a knowledge of the arts and
sciences, agriculture, and other mechanic and industrial occupations,
which they shall put into immediate operation, by improving the lands,
and in other useful vocations.

ART. 4.—That the laws of the Egba people shall be strictly respected by
the settlers, and in all matters in which both parties are concerned, an
equal number of commissioners, mutually agreed upon, shall be appointed,
who shall have power to settle such matters. As a pledge of our faith,
and the sincerity of our hearts, we each of us hereunto affix our hand
and seal, this twenty-seventh day of December, Anno Domini One thousand
eight hundred and fifty-nine.

                                      His mark  X  OKUKENU, ALAKE.

                                      His mark  X  SOMOYE, IBASHORUN.

                                      His mark  X  SOKENU, BALOGUN.

                                      His mark  X  OGUBONNA, BALOGUN.

                                      His mark  X  ATAMBALA, BALOGUN.

                                      His mark  X  OGUSEYE, ANABA.

                                      His mark  X  NGTEBO BALOGUNOSO.

                                      His mark  X  OGUDEMU, AGEOKO.

                                          (Signed)    M. R. DELANY.

                                          (Signed)    ROBERT CAMPBELL.

    (_Witness_)    SAMUEL CROWTHER, JUN.

    (_Attest_)     SAMUEL CROWTHER, SEN.

]

[Footnote 158: With similar simplicity, Mr. Abraham Lincoln proposed
shunting off his spare contrabands into the Republics of Central
America, who, as might be expected, gratefully declined the boon,
declaring, like the Abeokutans, that they are ready to receive emigrants
of every colour, but not those who appear as an independent power.]




                              CHAPTER VII.

                        THE KING’S RETURN VISIT.


Matutinè, I ascended the Ake church steeple, pulled out a board to
enable me to catch a glimpse of the Ogboni lodge of Eruwan, and
succeeded only in seeing that it had three courts, which confirmed the
account of my informant. This day, Tuesday, the to us memorable 5th of
November, was to become more memorable yet. His Majesty the Alake had
overwhelmed Commander Bedingfield with the proffer of a return visit—an
event rare in Abeokuta; moreover, his Majesty had the grace to be
punctual to his time, 10 A.M.

The Egbas, it must be remembered, are a race of bushmen and farmers,
clothiers and blacksmiths, compelled by their enemies to collect and
centralize. They were naturally unwilling to elect a king till necessity
drove, and then they did it with all manner of limitations. The Alake, I
have said, possesses neither the state nor the power of the pettiest
Indian Rajah. The only king ever known in Yoruba was he of Oyo (Eyeo),
the capital, who was described as living in regal state.

Negrotic Africa—not unlike her sisters Europe and Asia—has three
distinctly marked forms of government. The first and strongest is a
military despotism, like that of Ashanti, Dahome, Kongo, the Balonda
people, the Kazembe and Urungu; Turkey, Persia, and the Great Mogul of
the olden time, are their equivalents. In these the ruler owns no law
but custom, which means right, and which cannot be transgressed even by
the most powerful.[159] The second is a kind of feudal monarchy,
modified by the personal character of the king; oftentimes he is
inferior in weight to his councillors and officers, and even a slave may
refuse to obey him. Instances are, the Kafir races, Umyamwezi, Karagwah,
Yoruba, and others, in which, like those of Maskat, Yemen, and most
parts of Arabia, the regal power is sometimes almost obliterated. The
last and lowest are rude republics, in which a kind of autonomy
prevails: they are chiefly found amongst the Bedouin tribes, the hill
people, and the jungle races of Asia and Africa.

To the second of this category belongs the government of Abeokuta, a
weak constitutional monarchy, blighted by the checks and limits which
were intended to prevent its luxuriance. The king commands in his own
town, but nowhere else, like the magistrate of a Swiss canton—to which,
indeed, the state of Abeokuta may fitly be compared—and his orders
hardly extend within gunshot. His is a monarchy engrafted upon the old
barbarous patriarchal rule. The chiefs and councillors, more formidable
than the barons in King John’s day, are bound, though they often refuse,
to render suit and service to their suzerain. Ancient tradition is their
statute law, which, amongst civilized people, sanctions the most
arbitrary injustice, and which breeds a hundred tyrants instead of one.
Their king is also fettered by the laws of the land, of which the
Ogbonis are the conservators and exponents. He and his council may act
in judicial proceedings, or the case may be carried before the Ogbonis
in lodge assembled, or, if generally important, it may be decided by a
‘monster meeting’ of the lieges. No treaty or agreement is valid, unless
ratified by all those who have a voice in it. No ordinance against witch
torture or human sacrifice would be respected, unless the bill pass
through the House of Lords, viz., the Bale,[160] with the chiefs, civil
and military; the head fetishmen, who are the peers spiritual; the
select elders, who are the law officers of the crown; and the House of
Commons, or Ogboni lodges. A subject transgressing such law would put
himself under the protection of a chief, and then, unless the popular
voice be unanimous, he cannot be punished. ‘An Englishman’s house is his
castle,’ says the European proverb. ‘Every man is king in his own
house,’ is the less moderate Yoruban saying. It will now be clear to the
reader how much can be expected from civilized treaties and conventions
with such barbarians.

After this long digression, return we to the Alake’s visit.


  ‘Shouts of applause ran rattling to the skies’


in most discordant music, whilst a braying of horns and a beating of
tom-toms, giving notice of his Majesty’s arrival, brought us all to the
compound’s gate. The procession was not imposing. First came the family-
chair or stool; it was probably a common framework of bamboo, hidden by
a cloth of coarse red serge. This ‘venerable utensil’ was accompanied by
the Akpesis and other chiefs, who ominously seemed thus to pay more
attention to it than to its master; so amongst Moslems the turban often
fares better than the wearer. Succeeded a few lads carrying drawn knives
and coarse swords; they acted cutlass boys or pages to the Alake. The
great man himself appeared under an umbrella of huge dimensions,
inferior only to the little tent under which the King of Ashanti walks
in state: the material was a glaring pink silk, with a heavy red fringe,
and it was bran new, as the paper lingering about the wires showed.
During the visit it was placed outside, against the house-wall, and its
accidental fall was followed by the sound of cudgelling, and the normal
results. The Alake was habited in the larger fez, with its band of blue
beads, and he tottered along with difficulty under a ponderous robe of
scarlet velvet—in shape somewhat like the proctor’s at Alma Mater—worn
over an Ewu ágbadá or Guinea-fowl pattern of similar shape, but of less
gorgeous hue. He propped himself on a beaded staff, some five feet
long—canes and swords here do the duty of European cards and Asiatic
signets[161]—and he flirted a white fly-whisk, with beaded handle, but
without the little bells. His pantaloons were of purple velvet, with a
broad stripe of the veriest tinsel gold, and his carpet slippers were
fringed round with black monkey’s skin, reminding one of the ‘pair,
large enough for an elephant,’ worn by that dread Nigerian potentate who
declared all embarkation in a canoe to be essentially unkingly. Never
before was such an old ‘Guy’ seen. Being very fond of children, he led
by the hand a son and heir; the boy was by no means plain, and was
dressed somewhat after the fashion of his papa. Around them pressed a
multitude of wives and slave girls, with bare heads, and hair dressed
melon-wise, coral necklaces, and bosoms veiled with white cloths, over
which, at the waist, were fastened sacques of black and variegated
cotton velvets, girt with light-coloured kerchiefs. The harem was
accompanied by the _hoi polloi_, cowrie-bag bearers and other officials
of the household, armed with huge black whips of hippopotamus hide,
decorated with brass tacks. The total might have been eighty souls, and
they all crowded into one not large room. The atmosphere soon became
that of a slave-ship.

After _com’liments_—to use the customary initial formula of diplomatic
communication in these regions—which were acknowledged by the chief
protruding his tongue, he sat down, handed his _chob_ or stick of office
to an attendant, placed the son between his knees, and became the
central point of a female semicircle. The eldest wife, a gaunt old
woman, standing bolt upright behind him, supported his upper regions
with both hands upon his shoulders, and occasionally passed a yellow
bandanna over his pearl-studded face and neck. Two others, on his right
and left, used cow-skin fans: when undue warmth troubled the great man’s
body, he raised his arms high in the air, threw off the wide sleeves,
and directed the cooling draught to be applied where most wanted. The
rest grouped themselves near the wall, in a crescent, open to the front.
Commander Bedingfield sat down opposite the Alake, Mr. Eales on the
right of his chief officer, whilst I took my place in the rear for the
purpose of easier sketching. The chiefs ranged themselves round Mr.
Wike’s room, crowding on the chairs and sofas, and looking daggers if
compelled to squat, as they do at home, upon the floor. The usual
_afiyah_ and _amin_—these words sounded like signs of ‘a good time
coming’—concluded, the palaver proceeded, the interlocutors being ‘the
captain,’ through Lagos Williams, who, having lately been made an
Ogboni, had become ultra-Egba; the Akpesi, and at times the Alake.

The subject of the human sacrifice was again brought upon the _tapis_.
As has been said, when the Awajali of Ode dies, his servants are slain.
Lately an attendant youth, seeing the royal personage likely to ‘hop the
twig,’ endeavoured to make his escape in time. He was seized, however,
and history is silent as to his fate.

I need hardly enlarge upon the national duty of putting down with a
strong hand such abominations as those of Abeokuta and Ode. The late Mr.
M‘Gregor Laird describes moral suasion in Africa as a twenty-four
pounder, with British seamen behind it; and Mr. Consul Hutchinson
equally happily defined an English official’s moral force to be a moral
farce without a gun-boat. When children require the stick, we apply it;
when adults misbehave themselves, we put them in irons; and if Africa,
Western or Eastern, requires the twenty-four pounder and the gun-boat,
we ought not to withhold them from her.

England is passing from one phase of sentiment into another. Before the
mutiny of the mild Hindu, all was ordered to be _suaviter in modo_, till
the natives, our respectable ‘fellow-subjects,’ were petted and spoiled
by over-indulgence. In those fiery times we found that the _fortiter in
re_—measures which, a year before, would have provoked a national
shudder—was necessary to our very existence. In the due admixture of
both, the _narm_ and the _garm_—as the people have it—the rough and the
smooth, the bakhshish and the bastinado, lies the secret of preserving
the health of the Asiatic and African body politic. The old trader was
not so far wrong who advised his friends, when dealing with a ‘black
fellow,’ to hold out one hand for shaking, and to keep the other ready
for knocking down.

The Akpesi of Eruwan again explained—without a word of truth—that the
human sacrifice in question was the work, not of Abeokutans, but solely
of men from Ife and Ikisi. But Commander Bedingfield, who now knew the
whole affair, simply replied that he was shocked at such an event; that
it was a step in the wrong direction; that it would be a hard nut for
the English people to crack, and that the Alake should not have allowed
it.

A little lying on the part of the natives ensued, when it was broken off
by the sudden irruption of Mr., Mrs., and Master Gollmer, and Messrs.
Wilcoxon and Roper, of the Church Missionary Society. The first-
mentioned did not fail to impress us carefully and intelligibly with a
sense of the high honour conferred upon us by the presence of the Alake.
All Windsor Castle in the house of a subject would hardly have produced
an equal amount of congratulation. Master Gollmer was politely received
by the young prince, who was about the size of a small French poodle;
but the European juvenile, alarmed at the novelty of the scene, began to
boo-hoo in a style which soon caused the precipitate retreat of the
party. We resumed the palaver.

Many solemn promises of reform, not to be broken, as the phrase is, till
the next opportunity, were voluntarily given to us. The Akpesi then
observed that it might be the wish of Englishmen not to behead
criminals; that yesterday we had been looking at and ‘writing’ the
skulls, and so forth.

This was easily settled. Legal executions are not yet objected to by the
civilized people of England. _C’est incroyable, mais c’est vrai_.

The Akpesi then referred to the correspondence from Lagos, which he
insisted had been far from courteous, and which he said had been
answered in a similar spirit. The fact is, they did not say so, but they
could not get over the charge of having pulled a beast’s whiskers.

Commander Bedingfield suggested _bona verba_, remarking that _litera
scripta manet_, and that civility, is a _sine quâ non_ in official
correspondence.

The Akpesi then uprose and spoke as he was wont—_submissè, temperatè,
granditer_. He ran through a brief history of the white men who had
visited Abeokuta, beginning with Mr. Townsend and ending with Messrs.
Beecroft and Forbes. He then digressed into a little violence touching
the Crowthers. Mr. Sam. Crowther, Sen.’s name was Ajai, ‘struggling for
life,’ a native of the little village of Ishoggo (Oshogun), who had been
taken prisoner in a Fula attack about 1821, and who had been rescued
from a Portuguese slaver by H.M.S. ‘Myrmidon,’ Captain, afterwards Sir
Henry Leeke. Ajai was therefore still a subject of the Alake, but, from
respect for the English, he had been allowed to wear pantaloons, and to
call himself an Oibo dudu. Yet his son, Mr. Samuel Crowther, Jun., had
proved himself a bitter enemy to his black brethren, or rather masters,
by traducing their friend Mr. Townsend. Therefore he had better stay at
Lagos; and if he came to Abeokuta, the people would certainly kill him.

The reply was, that the Alake could object for a good and sufficient
reason to any one setting foot in his city, but that killing was not to
be spoken of, as such an event might lead to serious complications.

‘Then,’ quoth the Akpesi, ‘he—Ajai’s son—shall not come back till
Tow’sen’ returns.’

‘Presently,’ replied the captain, ‘we shall know if it be Mr. Townsend’s
wish to revisit Abeokuta.’

The Alake, who awaking after a long doze, now wreathed his face with
curious smiles, and took up the thread of discourse. His delivery was
not pleasant; the loss of his incisors, and the length of his canines,
rendered him almost unintelligible. His tongue protruded in a queer,
paralytic way. He spoke so low as to be hardly audible, and at times he
broke forth into a crone-like chuckle. He spoke with the utmost
deliberation, and when he stopped to be fanned and wiped, his
_claqueurs_ vociferated the usual cries. He also thought it necessary to
go through the history of his white visitors, beginning, not as German
savans with the inevitable Adam, but with the siege of Ado, when the
acting governor of Lagos first became his enemy. It took place, I may
observe, in 1840, or one year before Mr. M‘Coskry came to the coast. He
ended with Mr. Foote and the attack on Porto Novo. ‘White men,’ said the
Alake, ‘have stood before me in three forms—missionaries, war-men, and
merchants. Missionaries are good men who ‘teach book,’ and who dissuade
people from slavery and sacrifice, exhorting them to live in peace and
quiet, but never meddling with their neighbours’ business. (!) War-men
are also good men; their trade is to fight, and yet they fight for
order, not to gratify their own passions; they harm no one but enemies;
they are heroes—they are giants. As for merchants, they come to get what
they can; they care for nothing but cowries; they trade with a man, and
his enemy—in fact,’ said the Alake, raising his voice, ‘they are liars
and rascals.’ N.B.—Two members of this unjustly abused body were sitting
in the room, and one was looking uncommonly glum. ‘As for the Oibo
dudu’—the white-blacks, or Sierra Leonites—resumed the king, ‘I must
call them even worse than the merchants.’[162] After this ebullition of
feeling Okokenu ran over all the Ibadan war; how the Ibadans had
intrigued with Lagos and with Fallun—King Dosumo’s string-puller—how
they had brought Dahome to war with him, and how they had slaughtered
his Ijayan friends. Could he be at peace with such people? Finally, he
again warned us to write to England, that Agbome was engaged in the
sacrifices preliminary to a commando. This may be true:[163] that
amiable people are mustered at the end of every wet season for the
annual slave hunt; the king then inspects the force, makes all
preparations and forms a camp always away from the place which he
purposes to attack. The next step is a rapid raid, direction unknown.

Breakfast was being placed on the table, and at noon the palaver ceased,
the king retiring in state under the salute of trade muskets, which,
loaded like chambers, were fired from the hip. The next day was fixed
for signing the reformed treaty. These people, I have said, will sign
everything, but they have no idea of keeping anything.

In the evening, the chiefs, privily meeting Commander Bedingfield,
consented to append more stringent clauses to the treaty concluded in
1852 by Commander Forbes, and left him well contented. He had expected
another summons from the king, but, fortunately for us, it did not come.
The day ended with another fierce tornado, and a steamy heat, which
fully accounts for the complexion of the European and the Europeaness at
Abeokuta. Physiologists inform us that blue and green are not found in
the human skin; I have now seen both—aye, and yellow-green, too.

This chapter will conclude with an account of the strategy and the
military force of the Egbas. The admirable report of the late Captain
Jones has been my principal authority.

War in Yoruba is carried on much as it was in India some two centuries
ago. There is no regular army, but each chief has his armed retainers
like the Highland clansmen, and these form the force. After an ‘Oro-
palaver,’ which sometimes lasts three days, when the time and place of
rendezvous are settled upon, the warriors march out, with the usual mob
of sutlers carrying their beds and provisions upon their heads, and
laden with arms and ammunition. They march better even than Spaniards or
Portuguese, and they can easily get over forty miles in twenty-four
hours. When the quarrel is not very popular, an edict threatens all who
lag behind with the loss of their heads. Those who cannot afford horses,
walk—after Nelson’s saying, ‘Let the man trudge it who has lost his
budget.’

The warriors arm themselves. Their principal weapons are ‘buccaneer
guns,’ called ‘long Danes,’ because first imported from the Gold Coast:
these are large flint pieces in gaily-painted stocks, costing in England
from seven to ten shillings each, and here seven to eight gallons of
palm-oil = fourteen to sixteen shillings. Africans rarely, if ever, pay
anything like a decent price for muskets. The process of firing is
peculiar, the gun being either discharged from the hip, or held out at
arm’s length, with averted face, for good reason; the kick is that of an
ass, and it would lay open even Deaf Burke’s cheek. The state finds a
coarse powder, mostly exported from Boston, more than three parts
charcoal, and of this two hands’ breadth is the usual charge; the
bullets are bolts of bar-iron, cast and cut by the blacksmiths. Pistols
are rarely worn; spears and bows and arrows are little used. Swords seem
intended principally to hack and hew the wounded and dead. A few,
especially Moslems, have straight, double-edged blades, with brass
handles and leather scabbards, from which they are drawn with
difficulty, and only Arabs use the scimitar or curved blade. Bowie
knives have of late formed an article of importation, and are found
handy. The only artillery consists of wall-pieces, about 1½ inch bore,
crammed with a handful of bolts or nails, fired from a rest, and easily
transported from place to place. Rockets are as yet unknown; these and
case-shot would be found uncommonly serviceable.

Arrived at the field of action, the Egba army’s proceedings explain the
phrases ‘going out to war, sitting down, and encamping before a town.’
They select ground about three-quarters of an hour’s march from the
place to be attacked, generally choosing the bank of a stream. The first
operation is to dig a scarpless, narrow ditch, facing towards the
fields. The earth thrown out is mixed with water, and made into a swish
parapet, which, besides wanting height and thickness, is weakened by
round loop-holes. A rain-thatch is then placed over it, and at certain
points scaffoldings are prepared for sentinels and look-out men, only
the chiefs having spyglasses.

This part of the encampment being concluded, the warriors house
themselves. The camp is laid out without streets, the rule being for the
retainers to live pell-mell near their chief. The huts are built with
four corner-posts, two forked poles support the ridge of the roof, which
is composed of three large bars with smaller between, the whole being
covered with grass or matting. These places are laid out generally in
three rooms, the centre for reception, and the two sides for sleeping
and storing. Compounds are often attached, and in the rear, away from
the enemy, they prepare fields of maize and beans. The siege may last
for years, and commissariat there is none: women and camp-followers
attend to hold bazars; provisions are sometimes sent from the town; and
when ‘provaunt’ fails the warriors walk home.

There is no attempt at uniform. The soldiers wear
shogoto—knickerbockers—or waist-cloths, and war jackets, striped blue,
white, and red. The bullet-bag is neatly made of leather, far inferior,
however, to Mandenga or Morocco work. The powder-flask is either a
calabash or a skin bottle, the latter often having the hair outside. The
accoutrements hang from the right shoulder to the left side. The chiefs
are elaborately dressed, with teeth cowries and a multitude of talismans
sewn upon their garments and accoutrements. Being thus somewhat
conspicuous, they avoid the danger of discouraging their men by a rare
prudence when under fire. Like the North American Indians, the Egbas
ignore defensive armour: a few Wilkinson’s coats of mail worn under the
dress would soon turn the tide of battle.

The army, it will be observed, is wholly infantry, and the actions are
settled by skirmishers and light troops. Though here and there a man
fights on horseback, it seems never to have occurred to these people to
organize a troop; yet there are animals enough in the country to form an
excellent light cavalry, and irregulars are much wanted. The temper of
the beasts, however, would require them to be Rareyfied or prepared for
discipline by such treatment as was adopted in the Poonah Horse, Western
India.

There is an attempt to divide the army into a resemblance of the
civilized brigade and the regiment, under the several chiefs: moreover,
the Egbas do not wholly ignore the use of the reserve. Both parties are
perfectly well acquainted with each other’s movements, many men having
in both camps friends to whom they are bound by oath. It will sometimes
happen that a chief refuses to go forth to war, pleading brotherhood
with the enemy; and the reason is rarely disregarded.

Before an action begins, bribes are freely given to learn the strength
of the enemy, his health, his spirit, and his number; all manner of
false reports—now the intention of a retreat, then the advent of an
auxiliary—fly about, like Crimean shaves, to little purpose. Ambushes
are tried, and invariably fail. After this preliminary the hosts find
themselves embattled opposite each other as unwillingly as in the præ-
Napoleonic German wars, when it was the general’s great object to avoid
the enemy. The chiefs tree themselves, and receive reports in the rear,
not unlike a certain commander-in-chief in Crim-Tartary—most unlike him
who never said _Ite_, but _Venite_, or his Chinese equivalent[164] the
great Wang. The action begins by ordering a corps from each brigade or
division to the fore. Instead, however, of charging—bayonets are
unknown—they spread out in open order, skirmishing till their ammunition
is exhausted, and then retiring to ask for more in the rear. At times A.
feigns a retreat, and B. advances, perhaps sufficiently to produce a hot
fire, but never so far as to reach the enemy’s walls, which he
instinctively fears. If there be any danger of a hand-to-hand fight B.
then retires, and A., in his turn, advances. No one dreams of
outflanking more than of charging home, and the reserve sits quietly, as
did the commissariat behind the sand-heaps at the ‘Battle of Meeanee.’
Even platoon firing is unknown. This kind of Champ de Mars work is kept
up till sunset, when both hosts wend homewards to sup, dance, boast
hugely, and claim the victory. A Sikh review in the olden days, when the
followers of Nanak Shah disdained to sponge their guns or to box their
ammunition, was a bloody affair compared with a pitched battle in
Yoruba; and a single civilized regiment would, I should say, scatter an
army.

After ten thousand rounds the dead are counted by units, the wounded by
tens. The ‘battle of Ijaye’ was fought by seventeen thousand men: of
these, five were killed and fifty were hurt. From the weapons used we
could hardly expect otherwise. In the campaigns of the first Napoleon a
man’s own weight in powder, and ten times his weight in lead, were
consumed for each individual placed _hors de combat_ by their ridiculous
musket. In 1851 Brown Bess expended at the Cape three thousand two
hundred rounds to each Kafir, and in the Crimea the French fired away
five millions of small-arm cartridges without killing twenty-five
thousand Russians. It is becoming the belief of military men that the
use of arms of precision, cannon and rifles, assisted by skill and
practice, will eventually settle the fate of campaigns—which remains to
be seen. But at any rate a reliable weapon is an absolute necessity to
the soldier. It might not be advisable to arm the Egbas with Enfield
rifles, Prince’s breech-loaders, and Colt’s revolvers; still they might
supply themselves with sound Tower muskets and bayonets, with tolerable
sabres for their horsemen, and with pikes for a select body, which,
forming in column, would take that initiative in which all are so
notably deficient. These people have a modicum of invention, and a total
want of progressive power. It is as if a certain amount of knowledge is
spontaneously evolved by them, and then ceases.

The Egba army fought at a considerable disadvantage at the time when
Captain Jones was present. The commander-in-chief, His Highness
Ogubonna, had won a certain prestige by his conduct in 1851 against
Dahome. He was, however, a very old man, said to be seventy—equal to
ninety in England, gross, effete, wholly addicted to women, and rarely
in the habit of leaving his hut. Yet it is the deliberate opinion of
Captain Jones that, with all its faults of commission and omission,
Abeokuta is ‘capable of carrying on an offensive war against any
neighbouring native power.’

The tactic to be used against this people is that which never yet failed
in India; and the superiority of European weapons would at once give the
victory to a civilized force. All our disasters in the East have been
caused by abandoning the one true and easy system—an opening by a hot
fire of artillery, round shot, howitzers, and rockets; a steady advance
of infantry in masses, covered by sharpshooters; and, finally, a rush of
cavalry to cut down the fugitives and to render the rout complete.

It is at present our policy in these regions to maintain the strictest
neutrality. We have hitherto been persuaded to side with the Abeokutans,
thinking that they were engaged in a defensive when they were really
waging an offensive war. The great variety of tribes to whom the broad
lands of Yoruba belong are all willing, in their several degrees, to
become our ‘faithful friends and allies;’ and we shall have no
difficulty in keeping them so. The object of each is of course to
monopolize our amity and assistance for the pure purpose of self-
aggrandizement, and to the prejudice of its neighbours. Peace with us,
however, would be its object when nothing is to be gained by war.

It will wholly conduce to proper relations with the interior when we
have a sufficient armed force at Lagos. The Egbas, like the people of
the West African coast generally, have persuaded themselves that the
English are invincible at sea, and upon the seaboard, where their ships’
guns can be brought to bear, but that they are no soldiers. This is the
first lesson that should be taught them. Europeans are unnecessary,
except as officers, and the Upper Yoruba country, with Hausa and Burnu,
supplies an admirable material for native soldiers. The province of
Lagos will hold a very different standing in the country when provided,
not, as proposed, with two hundred men, but with a weak troop of light
irregular cavalry, a battery of field artillery, and a small regiment of
four hundred infantry.


[Footnote 159: So Darius (Dan. vi. 13-15), unable to change the ‘custom’
which he had established, could kill but not spare.]

[Footnote 160: The Bale of a town is its governor, subject only to the
king. In each house there is a Bale or householder. Like the king, these
Bales also have their associates or lieutenants.]

[Footnote 161: Similarly, in the olden times of England, a stick called
Irmin Sule or the Pillar of Irmin, and sacred to Thor, was used in
musters.]

[Footnote 162: H.M. was not so far wrong. The following, which is an
exact copy of a letter addressed to Dr. Harrison, will show what is
going on at Abeokuta on the part of the Sierra Leone settlers:—


                  _‘To the Editor of the Iwe Irohin._

                                           ‘_Lagos, Sept. 28th_, 1861.

‘DEAR SIR,

   ‘Sorry you have not inserted the whole of our defence against such
notorious falsehood of the W. African of the 26th May.

‘But as you take upon yourselves to refute our defence. We therefore
pray you most earnestly to proof the fact, who is this Sierra Leone
Emigrants that thus denie, that he is not an emigrant from Sierra Leone,
and in the next place to proof, which of the Sierra Leone Emigrants, has
at any time claimed to be tried by native law, which is another error,
which you must either proof or correct.

‘We belief that whatever is inserted in any such paper for public
perusal, must be true and nothing but the truth.

‘We are not forced by the late Consul Foote to register our names as you
imagine.

‘With regard to a S. Woman who you said to be exacting five strings out
of seven from a boy slave who was servant to a whiteman “Pray Messrs.
Editors,” It is in your place to report such one to H.B.M. Consul and to
be punished, and if not, you can name such one, but not to charge the
whole population with an offence committed by a single individual. It
was in order to distinguish one man from another was the reason a name
given to every man.

                           ‘We remain, dear Sir,

                                            ‘Your Obedient Servants,

                                            ‘THE SIERRA LEONE EMIGRANTS.

‘P.S.—Pray to insert the whole of the above.’]

[Footnote 163: It was true, but the attack was not directed against
Abeokuta. Early in the ensuing spring King Baddahun, with six thousand
warriors, fell upon Ishagga, which had treacherously attacked his
father. The plans were well laid, and the place was surprised; only
sixteen men defending themselves, the others flying to a bush a quarter
of a mile from the town. The Dahomans slew some five hundred souls and
carried off the church bell, the catechist Doherty, and seventeen or
eighteen converts of both sexes, natives and Sierra Leonites. This is
the fifth Egbado town destroyed during the Ibadan war, the others being
Jigá, Mashaye, Shampa, and Igo.]

[Footnote 164: This general, after tying up his beard in two knots,
would take a sabre in each hand, and filling up the rear of his men, so
lustily belabour all who hung back, that the Chinese terrified rush
never failed to secure the victory.]




                             CHAPTER VIII.

                   THE DE OMNIBUS AND COTTON CHAPTER.


Of Egba society it cannot be said to be ‘based upon slavery.’ It has a
variety of ranks. Omo bibi, a child born born, _i.e._, twice born, the
Hindu ‘dwija,’ is one whose parents are both free Egbas. The son of a
free mother by a domestic slave is called omo ohi wabe. Omo odo, or ‘the
child of presence,’ is a domestic, and eru a common slave. Either of the
two, when manumitted after the master’s death, is called eru edili,
which is also the name of the progeny of a slave girl by a free father.
Those pawned by others—a custom reminding us of the old Roman Nexum—are
termed ofá, or wafa, apparently an Arabic derivative; one pawned by
himself is faru so fá. Of the population, probably four-fifths are
free,—a large proportion in this part of Africa.

There are, therefore, three great classes of Egbas. The first is the
rich free man, the second the poor free man, and, thirdly, the serf,
colonus, or slave. If we reckon the fetish men as the fourth class, we
obtain that quadruple division which prevailed amongst the old
Egyptians, Hindus, Greeks, &c., and which, under the name of caste,[165]
has so often and so ignorantly been abused. The license of liberty to be
observed amongst the Egbas probably results from their habits of
domestic slavery. As was said of the citizens of Athens and Sparta, and
in the later days of the Southern States of the American Union, the
masters of slaves, if free themselves, are ever the freest of the
free.[166]

African slavery here, as elsewhere, results from four causes—famine,
captivity in war, debt, and crime. Captives of course prefer the chain
to the sword, and insolvents and felons would be imprisoned in Europe.
The Egbas are, now, too much of a trading people to sell their brethren
except for the best reasons. Whilst our cruisers cut down the branches
of slave export, trade in cotton and oil—the ‘little palm-nut’ has been
described as the ‘true emblem of peace in Africa’—fells the trunk and
digs up the stumps of this Shajrat el Zukkum. But the development of
commerce naturally increases the necessity for slave labour in a land
where hired labour is expensive and uncertain, whilst the increased
price of provisions greatly adds to the miseries of the servile.[167]
Thus the Abeokutans—who are far from being disciples of Clarkson and
Wilberforce, Acland and Buxton—took the earliest opportunity of
enriching themselves at the expense of their allies the Ijayans. Of this
unhappy tribe no less than twenty thousand have, it is said,
disappeared. But the Egbas are fighting without pay or rations,
consequently their friends form their commissariat. The enemies, of
course, vend their captives, and even the Ijayans sell themselves for
provisions, or are sold by their chiefs as a penalty for shirking the
war. Kidnapping is severely punished by the Egbas, who, in April 1847,
passed a law making the penalty death. Once it was so common that at
Badagry and other places no poor man could sleep in peace. Lagos was
then one of seventy exporting points on this ill-fated coast, extending
three thousand six hundred miles, from Cape Verde to where the shores of
the Camaroons deflect to the south. The traffic has naturally
diminished. In 1825 the export was probably two hundred thousand; in
1839 Lord John Russell announced that the number of slaves annually
introduced into America and the West Indies exceeded one hundred
thousand; now it has diminished to a maximum of half the latter total,
and north of the equator it is almost entirely confined to the Slave
Coast, or the western half of the Benin Bight.

The Yorubas have a marked national character. Divided into a number of
little states, or independent cantons, they are eminently clannish. An
Egba will feel hurt if his people be not properly appreciated, and the
‘Aku’ race at Sierra Leone produces the most dangerous because the most
intelligent recaptives. They have strong virtues and vices, and, by
dwelling upon one side, to the neglect of the rest of the moral
development, it would be easy to make them the best or the worst of
men.[168] They are kind and courteous, hospitable and not eminently
dishonest, except in and around the cities. On the other hand, they are
covetous, cruel, and wholly deficient in what the civilized man calls
Conscience. With considerable shrewdness in business, they are as simple
in some points as children. They believe that white men fabricate
cowries, and an old farmer, seeing a cloud, will say to a missionary,
‘Please let it rain for us!’ There is the usual African want of
invention; a plough, a saw, or an alphabet are equally beyond the limits
of their organization. They are somewhat litigious, and there is a
numerous judiciary, whilst private disputes are settled by a kind of
_consiglio di famiglia_. Their cruelty is shown rather in their religion
than in their laws. Murder, treason, and arson, sometimes adultery and
theft, are punished by death, the offender being beheaded or garotted
with a rope. In Ilori the neck is broken with an iron mace. Minor
offences are visited with the whip, fine, or imprisonment.

Men amongst the Egbas are farmers, tillers of ground, blacksmiths, wood-
workers, carpenters, weavers, tailors, and barbers. Women do the
housework and sell at market; between whiles they spin, wash, cook, draw
water, dye cloth, and make soap and pottery. The Egba rises with the
dawn, brushes his teeth, bathes at home or in the brook, and repairs to
the jungle, which, as in India, is twice visited; if once only, the
exception would be attributed to disordered health. The breakfast, or
first of the three meals, is usually eaten round the pots of the market
women. It is a light affair, of the hot diluted paste, or burgoo, here
called ekko. The farmer then repairs to his fields, and the townsman to
his business, whilst the gude-wife either busies herself at home or sits
selling in the bazar. Dinner, from 10 A.M. to noon, is eaten either in
the farms or the streets. The farm-wives and hill-wives bring in the
material and the townswomen prepare it. It is something hot and simple,
yam balls or Indian corn cakes, with a ‘kitchen’ of the highly-seasoned
palaver sauce: the trash in which Europeans delight, papaws and
pineapples, plantains and oranges, are mostly left to the monkeys.
Vegetables, farinaceous food, and meat, especially the two latter, are
the general favourites. The rich will eat rats and snails, and the poor
carrion, rather than condemn themselves to become vegetarians. Meat,
however, as in Asia, is rarely cooked solid, hashes and stews being
preferred to roast and boiled. Those of easy means pass the greater part
of the day in dressing their hair, consulting Ifa, saluting friends, and
visiting the Ogboni lodges. After dark they eat once more, sometimes in
the streets, more generally in the house, and then gossip, play, if not
gamble, see dances or dance themselves, smoke, snuff, drink palm-wine,
maize-beer, and trade-rum, and retire to rest when they can do no more.

As regards the Yoruba language, spoken by the Egbas, Egbados, Ijebus,
Iketus, and Otas, as well as by many of the people of Badagry and Lagos,
and said to extend along the coast to New Calabar, and internally to the
Niger, I know nothing of it except what the two grammars, Mr. Crowther’s
and Mr. Bowen’s, teach.[169] As many people have not read even these, I
may still be able to offer something new to them. The language is
decidedly difficult. In other countries missionaries expect to speak
fluently after the second year; here they usually take five. Mr. Bowen
is said to have learned it in eighteen months; but he was uncommonly
’cute in picking up languages, though he turned his knowledge to scant
account. Learning the Yoruba dialect is a severe exertion to a brain
relaxed by the climate, and students complain that all books published
upon the subject are mere sketches, leaving the learner to fill in
details. Something of the same kind was asserted touching Persian by Sir
William Jones. And it certainly is now time for a work upon the
scholarship, not the mere accidence, of African speech.

Mr. Bowen finds in the Yoruban language affinities with Sanscrit, Greek,
Latin, Pahlivi, Persian, German, Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, Saxon and
English, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Esquimaux, Basque, Welsh, Celtic,
Slavonic, Albanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Celebes, Philippines,
Brazilian, besides a host of African languages, Okem, Opandi, Kufa,
Nupe, Uchan, Isubu, Ashanti, Oloma, Accra, Kru, Dahome, Mahi, Opaddi,
Fula, Mbariki, Kaniki, Mbe, Wolof, Mose, Dey, Shoa, Filham, Bullom,
Mandenga, Goali, Bassa, Golal, Benin, Melou, Kakanda, Madagascar, Galla,
and others. This is not the way to treat philology, we may not argue
radical affinity from a chance resemblance of words. I must also differ
in opinion with the learned Bishop Vidal,[170] who wrote his
‘Introduction’ before the Yoruba was classified, and before the
alliteral languages of Southern Africa, of which the types are the
Kongoese and the Zulu, were sufficiently studied. The bishop, by the
absence of classified prefixes and modifications of the particles
contained in the verb, judges Yoruba to be unconnected with the large
family of Kafir tongues.[171] On the other hand, there is an artful
system of prefixes and a purely conventional euphony, which, to say
nothing of minor points, denotes a similarity of origin.

The Yoruba language is mostly one of intonation, and in many cases the
accent and the articulation determine the sense of the words. This is
trying to the dull ear of the northern race, and many are unable to
master the difficulty; yet a stranger, with the organs of tune highly
developed, finds little difficulty in separating the words, which do
not, as in Popo and in English, run into one another. The sounds
peculiar to the tongue are _pk_ and _gb_, sounded almost like a single
consonant, and, like Arabic, it wants the _v_ and the _p_. There is
neither passive voice nor variation for number and person, nor
indefinite article, in which the Greek and Latin are also deficient. It
seems to be built upon a century of biliteral roots, and Mr. Bowen’s
vocabulary contains about twelve thousand vocables. The language is
therefore sufficiently rich for the wants of a simple and barbarous
race.

It is noted as a curious point that the Yoruban is wealthy in abstract
terms, that it possesses distinct words for such far-fetched ideas as
sin, guilt, honour, atonement, faith, mediation, repentance, pardon,
adoption, salvation, perdition, justification, and sanctification. The
same, however, according to the Rev. Mr. Walker, is true of the Mpongwe,
or Gaboon dialect; and, indeed, we may expect it to be an invariable
characteristic of these languages, which have a regular system of
compounding words, equally intelligible, root and branch, to all
speakers.

The Yoruban tongue has no poetry, like the Hausa, nor are words set to
tunes as amongst the musical Fulas, except a few artless attempts like
the corn-songs of the American negroes. But the African development of
the language-power fills it with riddles and childish puzzles; moreover,
it is rich in proverbs, the infant literature of the world. Bishop Vidal
seems to have thought the Yorubas distinguished amongst the nations of
the world by the number and terseness of their proverbial sayings. So
far from this being the case, there is hardly a tribe upon the West
African coast which has not as many and as good. The same philologist
also sees a high standard of morality in this popular code, if it can so
be called, a vestige of the ‘Universal Conscience bearing witness
amongst men.’ There is, according to him, no virtue, sin, nor human
relation which is not enforced, described, or forbidden by some pithy
dictum. As a rule, methinks, the most exalted views in proverbs and
poetry evidence a rather low actuality. Thus the unwarlike delight in
tales of slaughter, liars hold high theories touching truth, universal
selfishness proclaims aloud mutual dependence, the most reckless of
human life have a hundred reasons for not taking it, and no nation more
despises the poor, or has more saws against a right to despise him, than
the Yoruba. Moreover, all the world over, proverbs run in pairs, and
pull both ways: for the most part one neutralizes, by contradiction, the
other. Thus the Englishman bids him who would thrive to consult his
wife, and warns him at the same time that women, being unreasonable as
spaniels, are greatly improved by being beaten.

The Yoruba proverbs have been divided into three kinds, firstly, the
paranomasia, play upon words, or, in simple English, pun; secondly,
sprightly descriptions of natural phenomena and visible objects;
thirdly, moral truths and rules for conduct. The Bishop of Sierra Leone
naturally saw in them a touching resemblance to the parallelism of
Hebrew national poetry, and divided them into the gradational, the
antithetic, the synthetic, and the introverted. But parallelism is
natural to the Semitic mind, one of whose rudest but sublimest
expressions is in the northern dialect called Hebrew. Every page of the
‘Thousand and One Nights’ will supply instances of it. The other more
artful divisions may be found not only in Hebrew and the Yoruba, but in
all the Asiatic languages with which I am acquainted.

Abeokuta lies in the zone of almost constant rain. The warmest months,
which are also comparatively dry, are December, January, February, and
early March. In January trees cast their leaves, and thus enjoy their
annual repose. February is essentially a spring month, as the greenness
of the country shows. At the end of that time the Harmattan wind will
blow from the north and the north-east for two or three days, and
perhaps bring on a few light showers. April and May are distinguished by
tornados, thunderings, and the ‘former rains,’ which are now heavy and
continuous, reaching a crisis when the sun attains the tropic of Cancer,
whilst storms are frequent and severe, and Shango does considerable
damage. Here the heaviest downfalls are not when the sun is directly
vertical, but when he is northing or southing. On this coast of Africa,
however, the ‘rainy monsoon’ is not constant and persisting, as on the
eastern shores of the continent, upon which Trade-winds from the South
Atlantic directly impinge. Four inches at a time is severe, and twenty
inches is the rare extreme. June is generally the wettest month in the
year. About mid July and August there is mostly an intermission in the
rains, but not so marked as in the Gaboon country and the coast south of
the equator. This second dry season is cool and pleasant, broken only by
a few showers. September is again pluviose: the ‘latter rains,’ however,
are rarely heavy, but mostly short and sharp. From October to mid-
November is the second tornado season, whose storms are more violent and
dangerous than those of the first, and December recommences the dry
season.

Thus there are four dry and eight wet months, the former corresponding
with our winter, the latter with our spring, summer, and autumn. That,
however, is the hot, and this the cool time of the year. The rainy is
also the healthier season. From the days of Mungo Park, who attributed
most of his misfortunes to the hot weather, the dry season has been
assumed as the fittest for African travel, and the idea has led to many
a loss. In the West Indies, the rule is, that both dry and wet weather
are healthy, whilst irregular rain and sunshine are feverish. Here, as
in most parts of intertropical Africa, the worst months are those
immediately before and after the rains, the middling is the dry season,
the best is the wet, especially August and September. There is but one
serious disadvantage to those explorers who are compelled to walk their
journeys, the inundations will certainly cause swollen feet, a trivial
evil, but which may arrest progress. Still there is less malaria, that
mysterious agency which, like the pestilence walking in darkness, ever
hides its origin from the world, and leaves us to grope for its origin
in cosmical causes,—vegetation, geology, geographical position, and a
rarefied atmosphere deficient in oxygen. Happily for us the old African
treatment—‘A. B. caught fever, gave him calomel, bled him, blistered his
feet, died on the third day’—is now obsolete: I would not, however,
advise any white man to expose himself for more than two or three
consecutive years to the climate of Western Intertropical Africa.

At Abeokuta the nights are not oppressive; sometimes they are even
chilly, with damp and heavy dews:[172] inland they are hotter and more
trying. The heat of the day is between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M.: near the
coast, however, there is a strong and regular sea breeze, charged with
vapour, and blowing from the south, the west, or the south-west. The
average of summer heat may be 80° Fah. in the shade. During our three
weeks’ stay we had three violent storms in five days, and a heavy fog
every morning. The difference between the wet and the dry bulbs varies
from 0° 2′ Fah. in the rainy season to 25° Fah. during Harmattan winds.

We will conclude with the commerce and the productions of Abeokuta. I
have shown that at present she aspires to become the great highway of
transit between the Sudan—that is to say, the countries north of
Guinea—and the coast; and that it is our object to give the unmaritime
peoples direct communication with our markets on the seaboard.

For the twenty years previous to 1787, the whole import trade of Western
Africa, Morocco included, with England, fell short of 72,000_l._ In 1810
it had increased to 535,577_l._ It may now safely be assumed at three
millions sterling.[173] And there is hardly any limit to its future
development. Yoruba is a valuable and an unexploited field. Its products
are cereals (maize and millet), vegetables (peas, beans, cassava, yams,
and koko, onions and sweet potatoes), sugar-cane, ginger—in small
quantities, and lately introduced—cubebs, and various oil seeds, bene or
sesamum, telfaria, castor plant, ground nuts, cocoa-nuts, and physic
nuts (_Corcos purgans_): coffee has been grown, but it has been allowed
to die out. Copper abounds in places. Indigo and coarse tobacco would
flourish anywhere,[174] and the minerals have not been explored. The
present exports are palm-oil from the nut, now worth 11 heads per
measure of 10 imperial gallons, and black oil from the kernel, worth 7
to 7½ heads; ground-nut oil and shea butter or ‘Niger grease,’ which has
been almost stopped by the war; indigo in balls of ¼ lb. each, worth 2½
strings; and lubi (natron), worth 1 head 10 strings per pound; a few
hides; cotton; ivory, costing, when prime, 3 heads per lb.; country
cloths sent to Bahia and up the coast, and Niger mats worth 2 heads 25
strings to 3 heads each. The minor imports are hardware, pottery,
velvets, red caps, silks, beads, and coral, especially the red;
trinkets, fancy looking-glasses, mostly German.[175] The chief objects
are cowries from East Africa, and a few from England, manufactured roll
tobacco from Brazil, and leaf tobacco from the Anglo-American States,
either _viâ_ England or direct; Manchester cottons, rum and spirits,
arms and ammunition.

The four latter articles are a serious injury to the country, and
present a sad contrast between the West African coast, whose commerce is
in the hands of Christian merchants, and the Eastern shores, which the
Moslems and Hindu Banyans supply with foreign goods. On the shores of
Zanzibar, until the Messrs. Oswald and other Hamburgers settled in the
island of the same name, muskets and gunpowder—used almost entirely for
slave-driving—were unknown except amongst the Beloch and Arab subjects
and mercenaries of the local government. That house sold off, it is
said, 13,000 guns in one year. The interior—Unyamwezi, and the regions
about the Tanganyika Lake—is still in the hands of Arab traders, who
never allow the natives to become possessed of civilized weapons, and
who would incur eternal infamy if they sold ardent spirits to the
people. I shall never cease to protest against the sale of rum, guns,
and gunpowder, when an innocent trade of worked cottons, salt, and the
minor luxuries of life would be equally profitable.[176] It is my
sincere belief that if the slave export trade were revived, with all its
horrors, and that rum, guns, and gunpowder were things unknown, the
country would greatly gain in happiness by the exchange.

Abeokuta, like Lagos, has been inundated with cowries, which, used in
Europe for the arts, here become a coin.[177] Formerly the small white
Indian shell, costing 60_l._ per ton at home, and 80_l._ on the African
coast, was the currency, which extinguished the round trade or barter.
Presently the Hamburg merchants settled at Zanzibar, where the cypræa
can be collected for a mere trifle, made a speculation which succeeded;
the large, coarse, blue African, being much cheaper, arrived in
shiploads, brought fifty per cent. to the importer, and supplanted the
small Indian, which are now rare, and bought up by chiefs and fetish-
men. At present there is a glut, and in every village you tread upon
bits of cowries. Moreover, fewer are found, and therefore fewer are
sent.

The ‘plump-breasted dove,’ as the Yorubas call it, is a vile currency,
an intolerable burden. Lycurgus did not fetter the commerce of Sparta
more effectually with his iron bars. Every shell must be pierced and
strung upon grass or palm fibre, which takes no short time. At Dahome a
hundred slaves will be engaged in this occupation, and a merchant at
Lagos must employ eight or ten ‘cowrie-girls.’ The weight of each bag of
2000 blue Africans will be from 80 to 90 lbs., and of white Indians from
35 to 45 lbs., and yet it is barely worth one pound sterling. Mungo
Park, when he opened a shop during his second journey at Sansanding, was
obliged to employ three tellers to count his cash—25,756 cowries, worth
at Lagos 1_l._ 5_s._[178] Lieut. Forbes complains that to carry 50
dollars, he had to hire five women. A horse will cost 60,000 to 120,000,
a sheep 4000 to 6000, and a fowl 200 to 250 of this barbarous small
change.[179]

It is fully time to change the system. At Zanzibar and Maskat, the late
Sayyid Said found no difficulty in so doing. He applied to the East
Indian Government for some tons of pice or copper coins, and the
improvement was readily adopted by his subjects. The experiment should
be tried without delay at Lagos, and, if successful, it would probably
soon extend into the interior.

At present the country has the nuisance of twelve different dollar-
coinages in circulation, and when these different dollars have been got
rid of there still remains the inconvenience of two currencies, English
money and cowries, which, as has been seen, bear no fixed relative
proportion. And the Abeokutans are little aware of their losses by the
system of barter to which the retail purchaser is sometimes driven: it
obliges them to pay one hundred per cent. above the invoice price for
English goods, which, if the currency were settled, could be profitably
sold by the merchant at a maximum of fifty per cent.

Provisions are somewhat expensive at Abeokuta—the luxuries of life
especially so. The price of maize or Indian corn,[180] of which 15 to
25, and in the best lands 30 bushels, are produced by the acre, varies
from 20 to 75 cents per bushel. At present the bushel of 60 to 70 lbs.
costs from 2 heads 25 strings to 3 heads, and it has fetched 5 in times
of scarcity. Guinea corn (_H. sorghum_) is rare, and sells at fancy
prices; the measure is a calabash, containing about one gallon, and is
usually worth double the price of maize. Rice and farinha, or cassava
flour, are being introduced; the latter fetches 10 to 20 strings per
basket, and makes tolerable tapioca. True arrowroot is as yet unknown.
The indigenous yam[181] is here the staff of life: a dozen costs from 1
head to 1 head 5 strings. Native beans, per basket of 40 lbs., fetch
from 2 heads 25 strings to 3 heads. Sugarcane is sold in bundles of 40
canes, four feet long, for from 40 strings to 1 head. Fruits, being
despised, are cheap: there are grape-vines of several varieties, but all
with produce equally dry and insipid: limes, papaws, and pineapples
command 2 cowries each, oranges 10, and bananas 15 to 20 strings per
bunch. Europeans use milk; the negroes, more sensible, do not.[182]
Butter and ghi, the clarified butter of India, is here supplied by the
butyraceous çe or shea butter.

Large and, for Africa, well-bred cattle are as common in the country as
the buffalo—the ‘jackass cow’ of Sierra Leone—is rare. The common cow
may be bought for 4 to 5 bags: the ox of course costs less. The price of
beef varies from 5_d._ to 6_d._ per lb. The sheep—after the first hot
season it becomes hairy, not woolly—is worth 7, and if full grown 20
heads. The goat, which, unlike that of the Oil Rivers, is here cheaper,
averages from 6 to 15. The hogs are black and heavily built, and the
professional hunters bring wild boars to market. Poultry is common,
fetching 10 to 20 strings, and a fine fowl may be had for 25. Guinea
fowls are dearer and better, costing from 1 to 1½ heads: there is a wild
species with a black silky tuft.

Horses are of fancy prices, and are never used for packs or _bât_:
asses, mules, and camels, common in the regions north and south of the
confluence, are as yet unknown. Ladies and children use a peculiar kind
of palanquin—a chair fastened by woodwork to the carrying pole, and
covered with an umbrella-like awning. Domestic slaves are always in the
market: men, women, and girls fetch from 8 to 10 bags, but being
preferred for exportation, are worth from 12 to 16 bags.

The coming exportation from this region will be the shea butter-nut, an
indigenous bassia. However much the palm and palm-kernel oils may fall
before the earth oils of America, shea butter will maintain its price,
from 50_l._ to 52_l._ per ton of 2252 lbs.—about 5_l._ per ton more
valuable than tallow. The tree, which is mentioned with enthusiasm by
Mungo Park, grows in immense forests: there is one between Ilori and
Bida, of nine days’ march; and between Ilori and Sai there are plentiful
scatters, here thick, there thin. It is a fine, large growth, producing
an emerald-green plum, whose pulp is sweet and edible. For butter, the
fruit is gathered in April or June, and smoke-dried in a country oven; a
cone of clay, with the smaller end downwards, containing the fire, and
divided from the nut by a wall of pierced clay. It is subsequently
reduced to powder in a mortar, but so carelessly that the husk is not
removed: it is hand-washed and worked in three or four waters, and when
it rises to the surface it is ladled off. It is then boiled in large
country jars, and stored in smaller earthen pots, after which it will
keep untainted for years. This ‘Niger grease,’ as Europeans call it, is
beautifully white, hard, and subaromatic. Park prefers it, when fresh,
to ‘butter from the cow.’ It is used by the people for all the purposes
of cookery, and, as an unguent, it is considered invaluable for
alleviating rheumatic pains. At Abeokuta, owing to the war, there is but
little in the market. At Ilori it still commands a price of one shilling
per pound—far too expensive for commerce. The opening of the Niger will
bring this valuable vegetable butter in enormous quantities to our
shores; and the varieties of butyraceous nuts are almost wholly unknown:
there are several even upon the Niger, whilst the Gaboon River and the
coast south of the equator abound in tallow-nuts, with which the people
are acquainted, whilst we are not.

It remains to consider the subject of cotton-growing about Abeokuta, and
throughout Yoruba generally.

The shrub is of various qualities, and, as in Africa generally, all are
of tolerable staple. The ‘black-seed’ resembles the sea-island (_G.
arboreum_), and the ‘green-seed’ (_G. herbaceum_) is the short staple or
upland cotton of the Southern States of Anglo-America. Besides which,
there are many hybrids, and all the varieties are grown in the same
field. There is brown cotton, but not the red, long-stapled species,
with small boll and leaf, which flourishes in Hausa. The best kind is
called akashe, and is too expensive for exportation, a penny being the
price of eight seeds. It is not uncommon, however, round Abeokuta, and
it merits a trial in a _jardin d’essai_. The feel is as soft as silk,
and the seed is white: the yarn shown to me was dyed grey. Nothing can
be worse than Abeokutan manufactures, even those made from the finest
cottons. The Egbas are as far from the jenny of James Hargreaves as from
the power-loom. Their materials are still a distaff and spindle, exactly
resembling the artless implements of India and East Africa. The bhaunri
is a bit of wood, weighted with a lump of clay, and painted with the
brightest colours.

Cotton must ever be an interesting subject to a country in which five
millions of souls—about one-sixth of the population, and a number
exceeding the total of Holland and Portugal—are or were interested
directly or indirectly; which possesses 200,000,000_l._ of fixed and
floating investments; which, in 1860, produced an interest of
80,000,000_l._[183]—more than equal to the whole revenue of the empire;
which imported from one country alone 35,000,000_l._ per annum,[184] and
manufactured to the value of 55,000,000_l._; which, in less than a
century, has increased its operations three-hundred-fold—from 4,000,000
lbs. in 1767 to 1,200,000,000 lbs. in 1861; which, during the last fifty
years, has consumed 20,000,000,000 lbs., equal to 750,000,000_l._, or
nearly the national debt; and which for years has paid at least twopence
per lb. over-price to the Southern States of America.[185]

The wars of secession have brought two great rivals in the field, India
and Africa. Despite the persevering efforts of adventurer and speculator
to extract money from the pockets of the British capitalist, little can
be expected from the former. The old Court of Directors spent lac after
lac in improving the staple, and failed. After a few months the produce
returned to the old stock as surely as the English bull-dog became a
pariah and the English child a degenerate. It is a law of
nature—mysterious, unintelligible, yet not to be mistaken. Wherever—as
in Mekran or Zanzibar—the American ‘domestics,’ which are all made of
medium staple, met our cottons, in which medium staple was eked out with
Indian or short staple, the former invariably beat the latter out of the
market. Hindostan and the East certainly did miracles in the olden time,
as the Dacca fabrics and the Mosul muslins prove. These textures,
however, were, like the shawls of Kashmir, hand-woven, at an enormous
expenditure of time and trouble, and it is folly to expect them to be
imitated by the coarse appliances of machinery.

When Indian cotton is cried up for the English market, and is
represented as likely to supersede American, either ignorance or deceit
should be suspected. Mr. H. R. Cassels,[186] a most competent observer,
shall be placed in the witness-box. Leaving other presidencies to speak
for themselves, that gentleman maintains that the experience of half a
century of cotton cultivation in Bombay teaches that—


‘1. Exotic cotton cannot be successfully cultivated on a large scale in
the Bombay Presidency, except in a limited portion of its southern
districts.

‘2. Indian cotton may be improved in clearness, and somewhat reduced in
cost, but the general characteristic of the staple will not be
materially altered.

‘3. In so far as this quality of cotton is serviceable to the
manufacturers of England, India can compete with America; but if a finer
description be required, India cannot adequately supply it.

‘4. Unless, therefore, such alterations in machinery can be devised as
may render the manufacturer indifferent to length and fineness of staple
(and of the probability of this others must judge), India is not likely
to replace the United States.[187]

‘5. It seems evident, then, that Indian cotton must continue to hold a
subordinate place in European markets, and that there is a point at
which its competition with other growths entirely ceases.’


Here, then, is the whole truth. From such cold comfort as this let the
political statistician turn to Africa.

I will not delay to prove that, whereas India yields short staple,
medium staple and long staple are indigenous in Africa. It is also
evident that the cultivation can be developed in a short space of time.
Cotton culture began under the orders of Mohammed Ali in 1818: the first
exportation was in 1823, and in 1855, besides five or six millions of
lbs. worked in the country, it exported 56,874,300 lbs. The United
States of America exported, we know, eight bales in 1784, and it was
doubted at Liverpool that so much could be produced in the country: in
1850, or within the assumed time of a man’s life, America grew 550
millions out of the 1000 millions of lbs. which the world affords.
Algeria is another case in point, proving the adaptability of Africa for
cotton-growing, and Natal will be.[188]

Africa can produce the ‘tree wool’ which England so greatly requires:
she has, however, two grand drawbacks. The first is the inadequacy of
regular labour, the second is the want of roads, tramways, and canals,
and the expensiveness of freight.

The first is a most serious difficulty. It is clear that, without slaves
or quasi-slaves, like the Hindu ryot and the Egyptian fellah under
Mohammed Ali, cotton has not yet anywhere been cultivated in any
considerable quantities, or with any great success. There are certain
stages of the growth when a war, a strike, or anything that removes the
labourer, is fatal to the year’s harvest. Africa, as will be seen by the
example of Abeokuta, cannot depend upon herself; she must look
elsewhere. We have, though tardily, recognized the fact that nothing can
be more suicidal than the emigration of Kulis (coolies) from a land
which, instead of being over-stocked, really suffers from a paucity of
population. From Southern China, however, we can draw supplies of hands
almost _ad libitum_. At present the best fields yield about one-fourth
of the average of the United States, and the prosperity of the crop will
depend upon careful manuring and selection of seed. I have every
confidence in the eventual triumph of free _versus_ slave labour, but it
is hard to say how, at present, any extensive movement of the kind can
be organized, at any rate for the use of Africa.

Transport and freight remain to be considered. There is a difficulty
about road-making in Africa which appears strange to the English reader;
yet it is not a little real. The habits of the natives, and the power of
the climate, would reduce in a few months the best macadam to the
condition of a bridle-path. Beasts of burden are wanting; carts have to
be invented; the country is unfit for canalization, and tramways are
long before its civilization. Finally, freight from the coast is one
penny per pound by steamer, and three-farthings by sailing ship—equal,
in fact, to the Indian, and double the American.

As might be expected, the attempts to develop African cotton have
hitherto been desultory in the extreme. We have tried the ridiculous
Zambezi, and the Spaniards have talked of Fernando Po.[189] Abeokuta has
had a fair trial, and hitherto has failed with an almost total failure.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the city, where farm land lies, there
is little grown, and that little is brought to market in baskets and
blies by the women. The country to the north, especially about Ilori,
supplies the best and the largest quantities. Planted after the harvest
in July, the shrub lasts, they say, for several years, and not being
lopped, attains a height of ten feet. Abeokuta entered the lists with
every prospect of success. She was presented with machinery, agents were
sent to her, she doubled her produce every year, and the Manchester
Association published their expectations for 1859-1860 at 20,000 bales
(112 lbs. to 125 lbs. each). But the war with Ibadan broke out, the
yield fell to 3447 small bales, and between 1st October and 1st January
of the present year (1861) only 500 bales reached Lagos. This, too, in
despite of famine prices in Lancashire and elsewhere. The prime cost at
Abeokuta was 3_d._ to 3½_d._ per lb., and 3_s._ 6_d._ for packing each
bale. Ready for exportation, the bale was worth twenty-eight head of
cowries = 9·60 dollars = 2_l._ 4_s._; it has, however, risen to 2_l._
12_s._ in very scarce times. But peace in America will restore the
balance of the English market, and reduce inferior cottons to a maximum
and minimum of 6¾_d._ and 2_d._, whilst the best qualities will range
between 9_d._ and 5_d._ Under these circumstances, what would become of
cotton culture in Africa?

I presume that the benefits of the cotton famine more than
counterbalance to capitalists its disadvantages, otherwise they would
not sit still calling upon Hercules. It is from them that enterprise
must originate. At present it is confined to trusting a few hundreds of
pounds sterling to any black face with a glib tongue that promises to
procure the article cheap. Combination is wanted, and, still more,
before Europeans expend time and money in Africa, a distinct pledge
that, for so many years, their produce will command a certain price in
the market, which is of course impossible. At present, to tell a plain,
unvarnished truth, we are convinced that if Manchester could once more
buy all her cotton from the Southern States of America at one penny a
bale cheaper than she could obtain it from English territory she would
do so.

The conclusion which I draw from my brief visit to Yoruba is, that it
can produce cotton, and that, for the present at least, it will not. The
public is respectfully advised not so readily to believe those who find
for it cotton districts in every corner of Africa. The Niger River and
Valley offer, perhaps, the best of all sites, and are of all the most
neglected. This part of the subject however must, for the best of
reasons, be reserved for future consideration.

                             END OF VOL. I

   LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING
                                 CROSS.


[Footnote 165: Caste is one of the most enlightened inventions of the
civilized East. It supplies an admirable system of police, acts as
practical conservatism, and leads to high excellence in the crafts,
arts, and sciences, by breeding generation after generation, till an
instinctive superiority is acquired. The Englishman exclaims, ‘What a
shame it is, because my father is a tinker, that I am forbidden by the
laws of the land to be prime minister;’ and he objects to caste because
it ‘keeps the people down.’ He forgets, however, that he is talking, not
of petty European kingdoms of twenty or thirty millions, but of some two
hundred millions of human beings, and that each caste is quite numerous
enough to form by itself a first-class nation.]

[Footnote 166: The ‘Iwe Irohin,’ appearing October 1862, has the
following sensible but curious article upon the subject of slavery: ‘It
is the boast of Englishmen of the present day that no one is a slave on
British ground; and they have a right to be proud of it, for in 1834
they gave the large sum of twenty million pounds sterling as a
compensation to the slave owners; but though there is no doubt that a
land where every man is free is in a better state than where slavery
exists to a large extent, yet we must remember that slavery is
recognized throughout the Bible, not only in the patriarchal times and
under the Mosaic law, but also very distinctly by St. Paul, who lays
down the relative duties of masters and servants to the Churches of
Ephesus and Colosse, and exhorts Timothy to teach the slaves at Ephesus
to count their own masters worthy of all honour, especially if their
masters were Christians, 1 Tim. vi. 1, 2; and sent back to his master,
Philemon, Onesimus who had been converted under his ministry at Rome,
St. Paul had fully acknowledged the right of Philemon to his servant,
though he thought it convenient for him as a Christian to release him;
and he insists upon the duty of Christian servants to obey their
masters, though he wished them to obtain their freedom if they could, 1
Cor. vii. 21. The tendency of Christianity is no doubt to diminish
slavery, but it does not do this by exciting the slaves to revolt or run
away; on the contrary, it commands them to please their masters well in
all things, but it exhorts masters, as it does all other Christians, to
do to others as they would they should do to them.’]

[Footnote 167: Upon the present state of things that results from
cutting off all slave export, I shall have more to say at some future
time when treating upon the Oil Rivers of West Africa.]

[Footnote 168: As a case in point, compare Richard Lander’s and the Rev.
Mr. Bowen’s estimates of the race.]

[Footnote 169: Mr. Crowther’s is copied too servilely from Murray,
itself an Anglo-Latin modification.]

[Footnote 170: Introductory remarks to Mr. Crowther’s Vocabulary of the
Yoruban language.]

[Footnote 171: The peculiarity which the bishop notices in the adverbs,
viz., that there is a distinct word to express the quality or degree of
each substantive, is already found in Arabic adjectives, especially
those of colour.]

[Footnote 172: New comers are apt to expose themselves needlessly at
night by sleeping in open rooms, and thus by checking perspiration, when
the temperature changes after midnight, to awake with fever or
dysentery. The only Spanish officer who has escaped fever at Fernando Po
attributes his immunity to sleeping in a well-closed apartment. We read
in ‘La Médecine des Prophètes’ (Traduit de l’Arabe par M. le Docteur
Baron. Paris, 1860.): ‘Le sommeil refoule les esprits à l’intérieur du
corps, et alors l’extérieur se refroidit; aussi a-t-on besoin dans le
sommeil de se couvrir davantage.’]

[Footnote 173: The following is an extract of the Returns made to
Parliament of the West African imports and exports:—

There was imported into the United Kingdom, in the year ended 31st
December, 1861, from the Western Coast of Africa, produce of the value,
in round numbers, of one and a half million sterling. This amount is
exclusive of the imports from the British, French, and Spanish
possessions on that coast.

Palm-oil is the chief article of commerce brought into this country from
thence, the value of which, in 1860, was not less than 1,684,532_l._ The
other articles, consisting chiefly of dye woods, cotton, ebony, and
elephants’ teeth, had a total value of only 92,000_l._

The last made-up returns are given below, as well as the increase or
decrease as compared with 1859:—

                           1860.       Increase.    Decrease.

                             £             £            £

  Barwood                    8,939        2,046

  Camwood                    7,370          519

  Copper ore                   648                       515

  Cotton                     6,094          405

  Ebony                      3,797        1,184

  Guano                      2,590        1,186

  Gum animi                    222                       531

   „  copal                    865                       727

  Oil (palm)             1,684,532      263,503

  Orchil                                                  29

  Teeth (elephants’)        35,672                     6,203

  Wax (bees’)                2,134                     5,590

  All other articles        23,702        4,147
                         ---------      -------       ------
         Total           1,776,565      272,990       13,602

                                         13,602
                                        -------
  Increase in 1860 over 1859            259,388
                                        -------

The exports of British produce and manufactures were valued at
865,804_l._ for the year 1861, which is less by 85,491_l._ than for the
preceding year.

By the subjoined table it will be seen that the largest shipments in
1860 were cotton goods, gunpowder, guns, spirits, and earthenware, and
that with one exception all the articles exhibit increases over 1859:—

                              1860.      Increase.    Decrease.

                                 £            £            £

  Apparel                      24,158        6,582

  Guns                         61,613       22,230

  Gunpowder                   100,169       28,785

  Beads                         8,338        5,264

  Brass manufactures           20,820        1,846

  Cottons                     464,661      138,216

  Earthenware                  23,227       11,418

  Hardware                     50,314        2,405

  Iron and steel               25,147        4,442

  Silk manufactures            14,421        6,429

  Spirits (British)            15,695       12,078

  Staves                       56,538                     1,909

  Woollens                     11,074        4,032

  All other articles           75,120       13,450
                              -------      -------      -------
         Total                951,295      257,177        1,909

                                             1,909
                                           -------
  Increase in 1860 over 1859               255,268
                                           -------

Of foreign and colonial produce and manufactures exported from this
country to the Western Coast of Africa the value in 1860 was 194,139_l._
The principal articles were beads, cowries, silk manufactures, spirits,
and tobacco.]

[Footnote 174: The tobacco, like that of Africa generally, lacks
strength and flavour: whether cultivation would improve it remains to be
seen.]

[Footnote 175: The traveller’s best outfit would be grey domestics, a
few striped ditto, some silk velvets (red and green, with white stripe),
a little coral, some fez or tarbushes, a few umbrellas, and trifles like
needles, scissors, and little looking-glasses.]

[Footnote 176: According to the ‘Iwe Irohin’ (Appendix, Oct. 1862), ‘the
chiefs of Abeokuta are beginning to feel the evils which are being
inflicted on the town by rum-selling.’ The obvious means of discouraging
the importation would be to impose a duty of 5 per cent., gradually and
by very slow degrees, raised to 50, and even to cent. per cent. on
ardent spirits, and with great prudence to make the imposts on gunpowder
so heavy as to be almost prohibitory. To effect such innovation,
however, we must be free from the presence of rivals; upon the Gold
Coast, for instance, and at Lagos, under present circumstances, hasty
steps would lead to ruinous consequences.]

[Footnote 177: The following is the usual computation:—

40 cowries = 1 string (ojo), which varies, according to the market, from
1_f._ to 1_d._ The string of 50 cowries is called Adotta.

5 strings = 1 bunch.

10 bunches = 50 strings, or 2000 cowries 1 head (Egba or Egbawa) = $1,
whence probably the word ‘head’ was derived in former times, but now
varying from 2_s._ to 1_s._ 5_d._

10 heads, or 20,000 cowries = 1 bag (okkekan), now worth 18_s._

20 heads = 1 oz. gold dust = £4.

Thus assuming the dollar to be at the old value 4_s._ 6_d._ (it has
lately been reduced to 4_s._ 2_d._)—

                    _s._ _d._          Bags.  Heads.  Strings.  Cowries.

 One bag,     worth  18   0   contains   1      0        0         0

  „  dollar     „     4   6      „       0      2       25         0

  „  head       „     1   9½     „       0      1        0         0

  „  shilling   „     1   0      „       0      0       27        31

The natives, as might be expected, have a number of names and minor
subdivisions, even a single cowrie being made to buy snuff and similar
small articles. The following are the names generally known:—

  Ogonu (_i.e._ one hundred) = 2½ strings.

  Igbio = 5 strings; in Portuguese, Gallinha; Anglicè, ‘bunch,’ or
  smaller bundle.

  Ojuluba (5 strings and 1) = 6 strings.

  Enowo   = 10 strings.

  Egbeta  = 15    „

  Egbeni  = 20    „

  Egbenu  = 25    „

  Egbefa  = 30    „

  Egbejje = 35    „

  Egbejja = 40    „

  Egbisi  = 45    „

               After which comes the head = 50 strings.]

[Footnote 178: At Sansanding, however, 3000 cowries were = 1 minkalli of
gold = 12_s._ 6_d._]

[Footnote 179: The only thing in its favour is that it teaches the
children arithmetic. Mr. Crowther informs us that they begin by counting
one by one, then by twos, and lastly by fives. It is a taunt to say ‘_O
daju danu o o’mo essan messan_’—with all your cleverness, you do not
know nine times nine.]

[Footnote 180: Maize, called muhindi, _i.e._ Indian or Hindostan corn,
in East Africa, is here called yangan or agbado, _i.e._ agba odo, ‘what
is beaten in the mortar.’ It is said to have been brought from the
eastward, beyond the Niger, by a yellow monkey—the Oibo, or white man,
according to the boys, is the ‘old baboon,’—which tends to show that it
is not a native of the land. We cannot however as yet answer the
question whether maize and the arachis be African or purely American
growths.]

[Footnote 181: Mr. Bowen mentions a Yoruban tradition, that yams were
the primitive human food. The first man vainly attempted to eat it raw:
he afterwards found one accidentally roasted before the fire—somewhat
like Elia’s genesis of the sucking pig—and succeeded better. Europeans,
less sensible, eat the yam boiled, in which state it is detestable,
though far superior to potato when roasted.]

[Footnote 182: It is considered heating and bilious, especially if drunk
whilst the sun is hot. The Portuguese, on both coasts of Africa,
carefully avoid it. I prefer tea _à la Russe_, with a small quantity of
sugar, if procurable, and a slice of lemon instead of ‘bullock milk.’]

[Footnote 183: 25,000,000_l._ consumed, and 55,000,000_l._ exported.]

[Footnote 184: England takes 85 per cent. from America, 8 from foreign,
and 7 from British territory.]

[Footnote 185: And it is said landowners have often sold for 9_d._ what
they have raised for 3_d._ per lb.]

[Footnote 186: ‘Cotton; an Account of its Culture in the Bombay
Presidency, prepared from Government Records, and other authentic
sources, in accordance with a resolution of the Government of India.’
(London: Smith, Elder, and Co.)]

[Footnote 187: It has been contended that an improvement of machinery
will make short staple do the work of medium staple. This, if true, only
shifts the difficulty; the same amount of alteration in machinery will
make medium staple do the work of long staple.]

[Footnote 188: Natal has all the constituents of climate which render
the coast of Georgia so famous for cotton-growing: it is not too
constantly hot for seaboard or upland, and its current is a fac-simile
of the Gulf Stream.]

[Footnote 189: Early in 1862 I sent, kindly assisted by D. Pellon, four
samples of cotton, growing almost wild about Clarence, to the African
Association at Liverpool. They were described as follows:—

  1. _Gossipium vitifolium_, good colour, uneven, staple equal to
  middling Orleans, considered worth 13¼_d._ to 14_d._

  2.    „         „      good staple, rather yellow, very clean; value
  the same.

  3. _Gossipium tricuspidatum_, dull colour, uneven staple, mixed with
  short; clean, worth 12½_d._

  4.    „          „       colour too yellow, good strong staple, equal
  to Egyptian; when clean worth 16½_d._]




Transcriber's note:


  Page 12, footnote 6, Changed: "what the Hansa people call Bature Dudu"
  to: "Hausa"

  Page 103, Changed: "turbans, or Hauea head-dresses" to: "Hausa"

  Page 167, Changed: "his engraver has succeded" to: "succeeded"

  Page 206, Changed: "I have something n a future page" to: "in a"

  Page 229, footnote 140, Changed: "and Vocabulary or the Yoruba
  Language" to: "of the"

  Page 229-230 footnote 140, Changed: "with something tired up in it"
  to: "tied"

  Page 265, Changed: "morever, a deeper cause of quarrel" to: "moreover"

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79409 ***