In his entertaining book on the Congo, H.H. Johnston says (423) of the
races living along the upper part of that river: "They are decidedly
amorous in disposition, but there is a certain poetry in their
feelings which ennobles their love above the mere sexual lust of the
negro." If this is true, it is one of the most important discoveries
ever made by an African explorer, one on which we should expect the
author to dwell at great length. What does he tell us about the Congo
tribes? "The women," he says of the Ba-Kongo, "have little regard for
their virtue, either before or after marriage, and but for the
jealousy of the men there would be promiscuous intercourse between the
sexes." These women, he says, rate it as especially honorable to be a
white man's mistress:
"Moreover, though the men evince some marital jealousy
among themselves, they are far from displaying anything
but satisfaction when a European is induced to accept
the loan of a wife, either as an act of hospitality or
in consideration of some small payment. Unmarried girls
they are more chary of offering, as their value in the
market is greater; but it may be truly said that among
these people womanly chastity is unknown and a woman's
honor is measured by the price she costs."
These remarks, it is true, refer to the lower Congo, and it is only of
the upper river that Johnston predicates the poetic features which
ennoble love. Stanley Pool being accepted by him as the dividing line,
we may there perhaps begin our search for romantic love. One day, the
author relates, rain had driven him to a hut on the shore of the Pool,
where there was a family with two marriageable daughters. The father
"was most anxious I should become his son-in-law,
'moyennant' several 'longs' of cloth. Seeing my
hesitation, he mistook it for scorn and hastened to
point out the manifold charms of his girls, whilst
these damsels waxed hotly indignant at my coldness.
Then another inspiration seized their father--perhaps I
liked a maturer style of beauty, and his wife, by no
means an uncomely person, was dragged forward while her
husband explained with the most expressive gestures,
putting his outspread hands before his eyes and
affecting to look another way, that, again with the
simple intermediary of a little cloth, he would remain
perfectly unconscious of whatever amatory passages
might occur between us."
Evidently the poetry of love had not drifted down as far as the Pool.
Let us therefore see what Johnston has to say of the Upper Congo
(423):
"Husbands are fond of their own wives, _as well as of those
of other people_." "Marriage is _a mere question of
purchase_, and is attended by no rejoicings or special
ceremony. A man procures _as many wives as possible_, partly
because they labor for him and also because soon after one
wife becomes with child _she leaves him for two or three
years_ until her baby is weaned." Apart from these facts
Johnston gives us no hint as to what he understands by
affection except what the following sentence allows us to
infer (429):
"The attachment between these dogs and their African
masters is deep and fully reciprocated. They are
_considered very dainty eating_ by the natives, and are
indeed such a luxury that by an unwritten law only _the
superior sex_--the men--are allowed to partake of
roasted dog."
The amusing italics are mine.
If Johnston really found traces of poetic, ennobling love in this
region, surely so startling a novelty in West Africa would have called
for a full "bill of particulars," which would have been of infinitely
greater scientific value than the details he gives regarding
unchastity, infidelity, commercialism, separation from wives and
contempt for women, which are so common throughout the continent as to
call for no special notice. Evidently his ideas regarding "poetic
love" were as hazy as those of some other writers quoted in this
chapter, and we have once more been led on by the mirage of a "false
fact."[146]
In 1891 the Swedish explorer Westermarck published a book describing
his adventures among the cannibal tribes of the Upper Congo. I have
not seen the book, but the Rev. James Johnston, in summing up its
contents, says (193):
"A man can sell wife and children according to his own
depraved pleasure. Women are the slave drudges, the men
spending their hours in eating, drinking, and sleeping.
Cannibalism in its worst features prevails. Young women
are prized as special delicacies, particularly girls'
ears prepared in palm oil, and, in order to make the
flesh more palatable, the luckless victims are kept in
water up to their necks for three or four days before
they are slaughtered and served as food."