A Specimen Day with the Fán Cannibals.
At 5 a.m. on the next day, after a night with the gnats and rats,
I sallied forth in the thick "smokes," and cast a nearer look
upon my cannibal hosts. And first of the tribal name. The Mpongwe
call their wild neighbours Mpángwe; the Europeans affect such
corruptions as Fánwe, Panwe, the F and P being very similar,
Phaouin and Paouen (Pawen). They call themselves Fán, meaning
"man;" in the plural, Bafan. The n is highly nasalized: the
missionaries proposed to express it by "nh" which, however,
wrongly conveys the idea of aspiration; and "Fan," pronounced
after the English fashion, would be unintelligible to them.
The village contains some 400 souls, and throughout the country
the maximum would be about 500 spears, or 4,000 of both sexes,
whilst the minimum is a couple of dozen. It is pleasantly
situated on the left bank of the Mbokwe River, a streamlet here
some 50 feet broad, whose water rises 6 feet 10 inches under the
tidal influence. The single street, about half a mile long, is
formed by two parallel rows of huts, looking upon a cleared line
of yellow clay, and provided with three larger sheds--the palaver
houses. The Fán houses resemble those of the Mpongwe; in fact,
the tribes, beginning at the Camarones River, build in much the
same style, but all are by no means so neat and clean as those of
the seaboard. A thatch, whose projecting eaves form deep shady
verandahs, surmounts walls of split bamboo, supported by raised
platforms of tamped earth, windows being absent and chimneys
unknown; the ceiling is painted like coal tar by oily soot, and
two opposite doors make the home a passage through which no one
hesitates to pass. The walls are garnished with weapons and nets,
both skilfully made, and the furniture consists of cooking
utensils and water-pots, mats for bedding, logs of wood for seats
and pillows, and lumps of timber or dwarf stools, neatly cut out
of a single block. Their only night-light--that grand test of
civilization--is the Mpongwe torch, a yard of hard, black gum,
mixed with and tightly bound up in dried banana leaves. According
to some it is acacia; others declare it to be the "blood" of the
bombax, which is also used for caulking. They gather it in the
forest, especially during the dries, collect it in hollow
bamboos, and prepare it by heating in the neptune, or brass pan.
The odour is pleasant, but fragments of falling fire endanger the
hut, and trimming must be repeated every ten minutes. The sexes
are not separated; as throughout intertropical Africa, the men
are fond of idling at their clubs; and the women, who must fetch
water and cook, clean the hut, and nurse the baby, are seldom
allowed to waste time. They are naturally a more prolific race
than those inhabiting the damp, unhealthy lowlands, and the
number of the children contrasts pleasantly with the "bleak
house" of the debauched Mpongwe, who puts no question when his
wife presents him with issue.
In the cool of the morning Fitevanga, king of Mayyán, lectured me
upon the short and simple annals of the Fán. In 1842 the first
stragglers who had crossed the Sierra del Crystal are said to
have been seen upon the head waters of the Gaboon. I cannot,
however, but suspect that they are the "Paämways" of whom Bowdich
("Sketch of Gaboon," p. 429) wrote in the beginning of the
century, "All the natives on this route are said to be cannibals,
the Paämways not so voraciously as the others, because they
cultivate a large breed of dogs for their eating." Mr. W. Winwood
Reade suspects them to be an offshoot of the great Fulah race,
and there is nothing in point of dialect to disprove what we must
at present consider a pure conjecture. "The Fulah pronouns have
striking analogies with those of the Yoruba, Accra, Ashantee, and
Timmanee, and even of the great Kaffir class of dialects, which
reaches from the equator to the Cape," wrote the late learned E.
Norris, in his "Introduction to the Grammar of the Fulah
Language" (London: Harrison, 1854).
According to the people of the upper river the Fán were expelled
by the Bati or Batti--not "Bari" as it has been written-from
their ancient seats; and they are still pushing them seawards.
The bushmen are said to live seven to ten short marches (seventy
to a hundred miles) to the east, and are described by Mr. Tippet,
whom they have visited, as a fine, tall, slender, and light-
skinned people, who dress like the Fán, but without so much
clothing, and who sharped the teeth of both sexes. Dr. Barth
heard of the Bati, and Herr Petermann's map describes them[FN#20]
as "Pagans, reported to be of a white colour, and of beautiful
shape, to live in houses made of clay, to wear cloth of their own
making, and to hold a country from which a mountain is visible to
the south-west, and close to the sea." The range in question may
be the Long Qua (Kwa), which continues the Camarones block to the
north-east, and the Batis may have passed south-westward from
Southern Adamáwa.
The Fán were accompanied in their seaward movement by the Osheba
or 'Sheba, the Moshebo and Moshobo of M. du Chaillu's map. They
are said to be a tribe of kindred blood and warlike tastes,
speaking a remarkably guttural tongue, but intelligible to the
Mpángwe. They too were doubtless pressed forward by the Inner
Bati, who are.also affected by the Okáná, the Yefá, and the
Sensobá. The latter are the innermost known to my negro
informants, and their sheep and goats have found their way to the
Gaboon: they are doughty elephant-hunters, and they attack the
Njína, although they have no fire-arms. The Mpangwe deride the
savagery of these races, who have never heard of a man riding a
horse or an ass, which the Mpongwes call Cavala and Buro burro).
The names of these three races, which are described as brave,
warlike, and hospitable to strangers, will not be found on any
map; indeed the regions east of the Gaboon belong to the great
white blot of inter-tropical Africa, extending from north
latitude 7 degrees to south latitude 5 degrees. Major de Ruvignes
heard also of a tribe called Lachaize (Osheba?) which excels the
Fán in strength and courage as much as the latter do the coast
tribes: a detachment of them had settled near one of the chief
Mpángwe towns, "Mboma." Some days after his arrival he saw
several of these people, and describes them as giants, compared
with the negro races to which his eye was accustomed. The general
stature varied from six feet to six feet four inches; their
complexion was a light café au lait; their hair was ornamented
with cowries, strung so thickly as to suggest a skull-cup, whilst
long streamers of elephants' tails, threaded with the Cypraea and
brass rings, hung down from the head behind the ears, covering
the nape of the neck. All these, we may observe, are Congo
customs. In their manufacture of iron, dug by themselves, they
resemble the cannibals.
The Fán have now lodged themselves amongst the less warlike,
maritime, and sub-maritime tribes, as the (Ashantis) Asiante
lately did in Fante-land; now they visit the factories on the
estuary, and wander as far as the Ogobe. In course of time, they
will infallibly "eat up" the Bákele, as the latter are eating up
the Mpongwe and Shekyani. They have their own names for
neighbouring tribes: the Mpongwe, according to Bowdich, called
the Shekyani, and the inner tribes "Boolas, a synonym of Dunko in
Ashantee;" hence, probably, the "Bulous" of Mr. Hutchinson (p.
253), "a tribe on the Guergay Creek, who speak a different
language from the Mpongwes." The Fán call the Mpongwes, Báyok;
the Bákele, Ngon; the Shekyani, Besek; and the Gaboon River,
Aboka. The sub-tribes of cannibals, living near my line of march,
were named to me as follows:--1. The Lálá (Oshebas?), whose chief
settlement, Sánkwí, is up the Mbokwe River; 2. their neighbours,
the Esánvímá; 3. the Sánikiya, a bush tribe; 4. the Sákulá, near
Mayyán; 5. the Esobá, about Fakanjok; 6. the Esonzel of the Ute,
or Autá village; 7. the Okola, whose chief settlement is Esámási;
and 8. the Ashemvon, with Asya for a capital.
From M. du Chaillu's illustrations (pp. 74, 77) I fully expected
to see a large-limbed, black-skinned, and ferocious-looking race,
with huge mustachios and plaited beards. A finely made, light-
coloured people, of regular features and decidedly mild aspect,
met my sight.
The complexion is, as a rule, chocolate, the distinctive colour
of the African mountaineer and of the inner tribes; there are
dark men, as there would be in England, but the very black are of
servile origin. Few had any signs of skin-disease; I saw only one
hand spotted with white, like the incipient Morphetico (leper) of
the Brazil. Many, if bleached, might pass for Europeans, so
"Caucasian" are their features; few are negro in type as the
Mpongwe, and none are purely "nigger" like the blacks of maritime
Guinea and the lower Congoese. And they bear the aspect of a
people fresh from the bush, the backwoods; their teeth are
pointed, and there is generally a look of grotesqueness and
surprise. When I drank tea, they asked what was the good of
putting sugar in tobacco water. The hair is not kinky,
peppercorn-like, and crisply woolly, like that of the Coast
tribes; in men, as well as in women, it falls in a thick curtain,
nearly to the shoulders, and it is finer than the usual
elliptical fuzz. The variety of their perruquerie can be rivalled
only by that of the dress and ornament. The males affect plaits,
knobs, and horns, stiff twists and upright tufts, suddenly
projecting some two inches from the scalp; and, that analogies
with Europe might not be wanting, one gentleman wore a queue,
zopf, or pigtail, bound at the shoulders, not by a ribbon, but by
the neck of a claret bottle. Other heads are adorned with single
feathers, or bunches and circles of plumes, especially the red
tail-plumes of the parrot and the crimson coat of the Touraco
(Corythrix), an African jay; these blood-coloured spoils are a
sign of war. The Brazilian traveller will be surprised to find
the coronals of feathers, the Kennitare (Acangátara) of the Tupí-
Guarani race, which one always associates with the New World. The
skull-caps of plaited and blackened palm leaf, though common in
the interior, are here rare; an imitation is produced by tressing
the hair longitudinally from occiput to sinciput, making the head
a system of ridges, divided by scalp-lines, and a fan-shaped tuft
of scarlet-stained palm frond surmounts the poll. I noticed a
fashion of crinal decoration quite new to me.
A few hairs, either from the temples, the sides or the back of
the head, are lengthened with tree-fibres, and threaded with red
and white pound-beads, so called by Europeans because the lb.
fetches a dollar. These decorations fall upon the breast or back;
the same is done to the thin beard, which sprouts tufty from both
rami of the chin, as in the purely nervous temperament of Europe;
and doubtless the mustachios, if the latter were not mostly
wanting, would be similarly treated. Whatever absurdity in hair
may be demanded by the trichotomists and philopogons of Europe, I
can at once supply it to any extent from Africa--gratis.
Gentlemen remarkable by a raie, which as in the Scotch terrier
begins above the eyes and runs down the back, should be grateful
to me for this sporting offer.
Nothing simpler than the Fán toilette. Thongs and plaits of goat,
wild cat, or leopard skin gird the waist, and cloth, which is
rare, is supplied by the spoils of the black monkey or some other
"beef." The main part of the national costume, and certainly the
most remarkable, is a fan of palm frond redolent of grease and
ruddled with ochre, thrust through the waist belt; while new and
stiff the upper half stands bolt upright and depends only when
old. It suggests the "Enduap" (rondache) of ostrich-plumes worn
by the Tupi-Guarani barbarians of the Brazil, the bunchy caudal
appendages which made the missionaries compare them with pigeons.
The fore part of the body is here decked with a similar fan, the
outspread portion worn the wrong way, like that behind. The
ornaments are seed-beads, green or white, and Loangos (red
porcelain). The "bunch" here contains 100 to 120 strings, and up
country 200, worth one dollar; each will weigh from one to three,
and a wealthy Fán may carry fifteen to forty-five pounds. The
seed-bead was till lately unknown; fifteen to twenty strings make
the "bunch." There is not much tattooing amongst the men, except
on the shoulders, whilst the women prefer the stomach; the
gandin, however, disfigures himself with powdered cam-wood, mixed
with butter-nut, grease, or palm oil--a custom evidently derived
from the coast-tribes. Each has his "Ndese," garters and armlets
of plaited palm fibre, and tightened by little cross-bars of
brass; they are the "Hibás" which the Bedawin wear under their
lower articulations as preservatives against cramp. Lastly, a
Fetish horn hangs from the breast, and heavy copper rings
encumber the wrists and ankles. Though unskilful in managing
canoes--an art to be learned, like riding and dancing, only in
childhood--many villagers affect to walk about with a paddle,
like the semi-aquatic Kru-men. Up country it is said they make
rafts which are towed across the stream by ropes, when the
swiftness of the current demands a ferry. The women are still
afraid of the canoe.
All adult males carry arms, and would be held womanish if they
were seen unweaponed. These are generally battle-axes, spears
cruelly and fantastically jagged, hooked and barbed, and curious
leaf-shaped knives of archaic aspect; some of the latter have
blades broader than they are long, a shape also preserved by the
Mpongwe. The sheaths of fibre or leather are elaborately
decorated, and it is chic for the scabbard to fit so tight that
the weapon cannot be drawn for five minutes; I have seen the same
amongst the Somal. There are some trade-muskets, but the "hot-
mouthed weapon" has not become the national weapon of the Fán.
Bows and arrows are unknown; the Náyin or cross-bow peculiar to
this people, and probably a native invention, not borrowed, as
might be supposed, from Europe, is carried only when hunting or
fighting: a specimen was exhibited in London with the gorillas.
The people are said sometimes to bend it with the foot or feet
like the Tupí Guaranís, the Jivaros, and other South Americans.
Suffice it to remark of this weapon, with which, by the by, I
never saw a decent shot made, that the détente is simple and
ingenious, and that the "Ebe" or dwarf bolt is always poisoned
with the boiled root of a wild shrub. It is believed that a graze
is fatal, and that the death is exceedingly painful: I doubt both
assertions. Most men also carry a pliable basket full of bamboo
caltrops, thin splints, pointed and poisoned. Placed upon the
path of a bare-footed enemy, this rude contrivance, combined with
the scratching of the thorns, and the gashing cuts of the grass,
must somewhat discourage pursuit. The shields of elephant hide
are large, square, and ponderous. The "terrible war-axe" is the
usual poor little tomahawk, more like a toy than a tool.
After a bathe in the muddy Mbokwe, I returned to the village, and
found it in a state of ferment. The Fán, like all inner African
tribes, with whom fighting is our fox-hunting, live in a chronic
state of ten days' war, and can never hold themselves safe; this
is the case especially where the slave trade has never been heard
of. Similarly the Ghazwah ("Razzia") of the Bedawin is for
plunder, not for captives. Surprises are rare, because they will
not march in the dark. Battles are not bloody; after two or three
warriors have fallen their corpses are dragged away to be
devoured, their friends save themselves by flight, and the weaker
side secures peace by paying sheep and goats. On this occasion
the sister of a young "brave" had just now been killed and
"chopped" by the king of Sánkwí, a neighbouring settlement of
Oshebas, and the bereaved brother was urging his comrades with
vociferous speeches to "up and arm." Usually when a man wants
"war," he rushes naked through his own village, cursing it as he
goes. Moreover, during the last war Mayyán lost five men to three
of the enemy; which is not fair, said the women, who appeared
most eager for the fray. All the youths seized their weapons; the
huge war-drums, the hollowed bole of a tree fringed with Nyáre
hide, was set up in the middle of the street; preparations for
the week of singing and dancing which precedes a campaign were
already in hand, and one war-man gave earnest of blood-shed by
spearing a goat the property of Mr. Tippet. It being our interest
that the peace should be kept till after my proposed trip into
the interior, I repaired to the palaver-house and lent weight to
the advice of my host, who urged the heroes to collect ivory,
ebony, and rubber, and not to fight till his stores were filled.
We concluded by carrying off the goat. After great excitement the
warriors subsided to a calm; it was broken, however, two days
afterwards by the murder of a villager, the suspected lover of a
woman whose house was higher up the Mbokwe River; he went to
visit her, and was incontinently speared in the breast by the
"injured husband." If he die and no fine be paid, there will be
another "war."
I made careful inquiry about anthropophagy amongst the Fán, and
my account must differ greatly from that of M. du Chaillu. The
reader, however, will remember that Mayyán is held by a
comparatively civilized race, who have probably learned to
conceal a custom so distasteful to all their neighbours, white
and black; in the remoter districts cannibalism may yet assume
far more hideous proportions. Since the Fán have encouraged
traders to settle amongst them, the interest as well as the
terrors of the Coast tribes, who would deter foreigners from
direct dealings, has added new horrors to the tale; and yet
nothing can exceed the reports of older travellers.
During my peregrinations I did not see a single skull. The
chiefs, stretched at full length, and wrapped in mats, are buried
secretly, the object being to prevent some strong Fetish medicine
being made by enemies from various parts of the body. In some
villages the head men of the same tribe are interred near one
another; the commonalty are put singly and decently under ground,
and only the slave (Máká) is thrown as usual into the bush. Mr.
Tippet, who had lived three years with this people, knew only
three cases of cannibalism; and the Rev. Mr. Walker agreed with
other excellent authorities, that it is a rare incident even in
the wildest parts--perhaps opportunity only is wanted. As will
appear from the Fán's bill of fare, anthropophagy can hardly be
caused by necessity, and the way in which it is conducted shows
that it is a quasi-religious rite practised upon foes slain in
battle, evidently an equivalent of human sacrifice. If the whole
body cannot be carried off, a limb or two is removed for the
purpose of a roast. The corpse is carried to a hut built
expressly on the outskirts of the settlement; it is eaten
secretly by the warriors, women and children not being allowed to
be present, or even to look upon man's flesh; and the cooking
pots used for the banquet must all be broken. A joint of "black
brother" is never seen in the villages: "smoked human flesh" does
not hang from the rafters, and the leather knife-sheaths are of
wild cow; tanned man's skin suggests only the tannerie de Meudon,
an advanced "institution." Yet Dr. Schweinfurth's valuable
travels on the Western Nile prove that public anthropophagy can
co-exist with a considerable amount of comfort and, so to speak,
civilization--witness the Nyam-Nyam and Mombattu (Mimbuttoo). The
sick and the dead are uneaten by the Fán, and the people shouted
with laughter when I asked a certain question.
The "unnatural" practice, which, by the by, has at different ages
extended over the whole world, now continues to be most prevalent
in places where, as in New Zealand, animal food is wanting; and
everywhere pork readily takes the place of "long pig." The damp
and depressing atmosphere of equatorial Africa renders the
stimulus of flesh diet necessary. The Isángú, or Ingwánba, the
craving felt after a short abstinence from animal food, does not
spare the white traveller more than it does his dark guides; and,
though the moral courage of the former may resist the
"gastronomic practice" of breaking fast upon a fat young slave,
one does not expect so much from the untutored appetite of the
noble savage. On the eastern parts of the continent there are two
cannibal tribes, the Wadoe and the Wabembe; and it is curious to
find the former occupying the position assigned by Ptolemy (iv.
8) to his anthropophagi of the Barbaricus Sinus: according to
their own account, however, the practice is modern. When weakened
by the attacks of their Wákámbá neighbours, they began to roast
and eat slices from the bodies of the slain in presence of the
foe. The latter, as often happens amongst barbarians, and even
amongst civilized men, could dare to die, but were unable to face
the horrors of becoming food after death: the great Cortez knew
this feeling when he made his soldiers pretend anthropophagy.
Many of the Wadoe negroids are tall, well made, and light
complexioned, though inhabiting the low and humid coast regions--
a proof, if any were wanted, that there is nothing unwholesome in
man's flesh. Some of our old accounts of shipwrecked seamen,
driven to the dire necessity of eating one another, insinuate
that the impious food causes raging insanity. The Wabembe tribe,
occupying a strip of land on the western shore of the Tanganyika
Lake, are "Menschenfresser," as they were rightly called by the
authors of the "Mombas Mission Map." These miserables have
abandoned to wild growth a most prolific soil; too lazy and
unenergetic to hunt or to fish, they devour all manner of
carrion, grubs, insects, and even the corpses of their deceased
friends. The Midgán, or slave-caste of the semi-Semitic Somal,
are sometimes reduced to the same extremity; but they are ever
held, like the Wendigo, or man-eaters, amongst the North American
Indians, impure and detestable. On the other hand, the Tupi-
Guaranís of the Brazil, a country abounding in game, fish, wild
fruits, and vegetables, ate one another with a surprising relish.
This subject is too extensive even to be outlined here: the
reader is referred to the translation of Hans Stade: old
travellers attribute the cannibalism of the Brazilian races to
"gulosity" rather than superstition; moreover, these barbarians
had certain abominable practices, supposed to be known only to
the most advanced races.
Anthropophagy without apparent cause was not unknown in Southern
Africa. Mr. Layland found a tribe of "cave cannibals" amongst the
mountains beyond Thaba Bosigo in the Trans-Gariep Country.[FN#21]
He remarks with some surprise, "Horrible as all this may appear,
there might be some excuse made for savages, driven by famine to
extreme hunger, for capturing and devouring their enemies. But
with these people it was totally different, for they were
inhabiting a fine agricultural tract of country, which also
abounded in game. Notwithstanding this, they were not contented
with hunting and feeding upon their enemies, but preyed much upon
each other also, for many of their captures were made from
amongst the people of their own tribe, and, even worse than this,
in times of scarcity, many of their own wives and children became
the victims of this horrible practice."
Anthropophagy, either as a necessity, a sentiment, or a
superstition, is known to sundry, though by no means to all, the
tribes dwelling between the Nun (Niger) and the Congo rivers; how
much farther south it extends I cannot at present say. On the
Lower Niger, and its branch the Brass River, the people hardly
take the trouble to conceal it. On the Bonny and New Calabar,
perhaps the most advanced of the so-called Oil Rivers,
cannibalism, based upon a desire of revenge, and perhaps, its
sentimental side, the object of imbibing the valour of an enemy
slain in battle, has caused many scandals of late years. The
practice, on the other hand, is execrated by the Efiks of Old
Calabar, who punish any attempts of the kind with extreme
severity. During 1862 the slaves of Creek-town attempted it, and
were killed. At Duke-town an Ibo woman also cut up a man, sun-
dried the flesh, and sold it for monkey's meat--she took
sanctuary at the mission house. Yet it is in full vigour amongst
their Ibo neighbours to the north-west, and the Duallas of the
Camarones River also number it amongst their "country customs."
The Mpongwe, as has been said, will not eat a chimpanzee; the Fán
devour their dead enemies.
The Fán character has its ferocious side, or it would not be
African: prisoners are tortured with all the horrible barbarity
of that human wild beast which is happily being extirpated, the
North American Indian; and children may be seen greedily licking
the blood from the ground. It is a curious ethnological study,
this peculiar development of destructiveness in the African
brain. Cruelty seems to be with him a necessary of life, and all
his highest enjoyments are connected with causing pain and
inflicting death. His religious rites--a strong contrast to those
of the modern Hindoo--are ever causelessly bloody. Take as an
instance, the Efik race, or people of Old Calabar, some 6,000
wretched remnants of a once-powerful tribe. For 200 years they
have had intercourse with Europeans, who, though slavers, would
certainly neither enjoy nor encourage these profitless horrors;
yet no savages show more brutality in torture, more frenzied
delight in bloodshed, than they do. A few of their pleasant
practices are--
The administration of Esere, or poison-bean;
"Egbo floggings" of the utmost severity, equalling the knout;
Substitution of an innocent pauper for a rich criminal;
Infanticide of twins; and
Vivisepulture.
And it must be remembered that this tribe has had the benefit of
a resident mission for the last generation. I can hardly believe
this abnormal cruelty to be the mere result of uncivilization; it
appears to me the effect of an arrested development, which leaves
to the man all the ferocity of the carnivor, the unreflecting
cruelty of the child.
The dietary of these "wild men of the woods" would astonish the
starveling sons of civilization. When will the poor man realize
the fact that his comfort and happiness will result not from
workhouses and almshouses, hospitals and private charities, but
from that organized and efficient emigration, so long advocated
by the seer Carlyle? Only the crassest ignorance and the
listlessness born of misery and want prevent the able-bodied
pauper, the frozen-out mechanic, or the weary and ill-clad, the
over-worked and under-fed agricultural labourer, from quitting
the scenes of his purgatory, and from finding, scattered over
earth's surface, spots where he may enjoy a comparative paradise,
heightened by the memory of privations endured in the wretched
hole which he pleases to call his home. But nostalgia is a more
common disease than men suppose, and it affects none more
severely than those that are remarkable for their physical
powers. A national system of emigration, to be perfect, must not
be confined to solitary and individual hands, who, however
numerous, are ever pining for the past. The future will organize
the exodus of whole villages, which, like those of the Hebrides
in the last century, will bear with them to new worlds their
Lares and Penates, their wives, families, and friends, who will
lay out the church and the churchyard after the old fashion
familiar to their youth, and who will not forget the palaver-
house, vulgarly called pothouse or pub.
Few of these Lestrigons lack fish, which they catch in weirs,
fowl, flesh of dogs, goats, or sheep; cattle is a luxury yet
unknown, but the woods supply an abundance of Nyáre and other
"bush-beef." They also have their special word for the meat-
yearning. Still in the semi-nomadic stage, they till the ground,
and yet depend greatly upon the chase. They break their fast
(kidiashe) at 6 A.M., eat a mid-day meal (amos), and sup
(gogáshe) at sunset, besides "snacks" all through the day when
they can find material. They are good huntsmen, who fear neither
the elephant (nyok), the hippopotamus (nyok á mádzim), frequent
in the rivers of the interior, the crocodile, nor the gorilla
(njí). It is generally asserted--and the unfortunate Douville re-
echoed the assertion--that the river-horse and the crocodile will
not live together; the reason is, simply, that upon the seaboard,
where these animals were first observed, the crocodile prefers
the fresh water of the river, the hippopotamus the brackish water
at its mouth. In the interior, of course, they dwell together in
amity, because there is nothing for them to quarrel about.
The banana, planted with a careless hand, supplies the staff of
life, besides thatch, fuel, and fibre for nets and lines: when
they want cereals, maize, holcus, and panicum will grow almost
spontaneously. The various palm-trees give building materials,
oil, wine, and other requisites too numerous to mention. The
"five products of the cow" are ignored, as in the western
hemisphere of yore: one of the most useful, however, is produced
by the Nje or Njeve, a towering butyraceous tree, differing from
that which bears the Shea butternut. Its produce is sun-dried,
toasted over a fire, pounded and pressed in a bag between two
boards, when it is ready for use. The bush, cut at the end, is
fired before the beginning, of the rains, leaving the land ready
for yams and sweet potatoes almost without using the hoe. In the
middle dries, from June to September, the villagers sally forth
en masse for a battue of elephants, whose spoils bring various
luxuries from the coast. Lately, before my arrival, they had
turned out to gather the Aba, or wild mango, for Odika sauce; and
during this season they will do nothing else. The Fán plant their
own tobacco, which is described as a low, spreading plant, and
despise the imported weed; they neither snuff nor chew. All
manufacture their own pipe-bowls, and they are not ignorant of
the use of Lyamba or Hashish. They care little for sugar,
contrary to the rule of Africa in general, but they over-salt all
their food; and they will suck the condiment as children do
lollipops. Their palm oil is very poor, as if they had only just
learned the art of making it.
After the daily siesta, which lasted till 3 P. M., Mr. Tippet
asked me to put in an appearance at a solemn dance which, led by
the king's eldest daughter, was being performed in honour of the
white visitor. A chair was placed in the verandah, the street
being the ballroom. Received with the usual salutation,
"Mboláne," to which the reply is "An," I proceeded to the
external study of Fán womanhood. Whilst the men are tall and
élancés, their partners are usually short and stout, and,
"Her stature tall, I hate a dumpy woman,"
is a matter of taste upon which most of us agree with his
lordship. This peculiar breadth of face and person probably
result from hard work and good fare, developing adipose tissue. I
could not bring myself to admire Gondebiza, the princess royal,--
what is grotesque in one sex becomes unsightly in the other. Fat,
thirty, and perhaps once fair, her charms had seen their prime,
and the system of circles and circlets which composed her
personnel had assumed a tremulous and gravitating tendency. She
was habited in the height of Fán fashion. Her body was modestly
invested in a thin pattern of tattoo, and a gauze-work of oil and
camwood; the rest of the toilette was a dwarf pigeon-tail of fan-
palm, like that of the men, and a manner of apron, white beads,
and tree bark, greasy and reddened: the latter was tucked under
and over the five lines of cowries, which acted as cestus to the
portly middle, "big as a budget." The horns of hair, not unlike
the rays of light in Michael Angelo's "Moses," were covered with
a cap of leaves, and they were balanced behind by a pigtail
lashed with brass wire. Her ornaments were sundry necklaces of
various beads, large red and white, and small blue and pink
porcelains; a leaf, probably by way of amulet, was bound to a
string round the upper arm; and wrists and ankles were laden with
heavy rings of brass and copper, the parure of the great in Fán-
land. The other ballerine were, of course, less brilliantly
attired, but all had rings on their arms, legs, and ankles,
fingers, and toes. A common decoration was a bunch of seven or
eight long ringlets, not unlike the queues de rat, still affected
by the old-fashioned Englishwoman; these, however, as in the men,
were prolonged to the bosom by strings of alternate red and white
beads. Others limited the decoration to two rats' tails depending
from the temples, where phrenologists localize our "causality."
Many had faces of sufficient piquancy; the figures, though full,
wanted firmness, and I noticed only one well-formed bosom. The
men wore red feathers, but none carried arms.
The form of saltation suggested Mr. Catlin's drawings. A circular
procession of children, as well as adults, first promenaded round
the princess, who danced with all her might in the centre, her
countenance preserving the grand sérieux. The performers in this
"ging-a-ring" then clapped hands with prolonged ejaculations of
o-o-o-oh, stamped and shuffled forwards, moving the body from the
hips downwards, whilst H. R. H. alone stood stationary and
smileless as a French demoiselle of the last century, who came to
the ball not to causer but to danser. At times, when King
Fitevanga condescended to show his agility, the uproar of
applause became deafening. The orchestra consisted of two men
sitting opposite each other,--one performed on a caisson, a log
of hollowed wood, four feet high, skin-covered, and fancifully
carved; the other on the national Anjyá, a rude "Marimba," the
prototype of the pianoforte. It is made of seven or eight hard-
wood slats, pinned with bamboo tacks to transverse banana trunks
lying on the ground: like the grande caisse, it is played upon
with sticks, plectra like tent-pegs. Mr. W. Winwood Reade
("Savage Africa," chap, xiii.) says: "The instrument is also
described by Froebel as being used by the Indians of Central
America, where, which is still more curious, it is known by the
same name--'marimba.'" Of course they borrowed the article and
the name from the negroes: most tribes in Africa have their own
terms for this universal instrument, but it is everywhere
recognized by the African who knows Europeans as "marimba." Thus
Owen tells us (p. 308) "that at the mouth of the Zambesi it is
called 'Tabbelah,'" evidently the Arabic "Tablah" Another
favourite instrument is a clapper, made of two bamboos some five
feet long, and thick as capstan bars,--it is truly the castanet
en grand.
Highly gratified by the honour, but somewhat overpowered by the
presence and by that vile scourge the sandfly, I retired after
the first review, leaving the song, the drum, and the dance to
continue till midnight. Accustomed to the frantic noises of
African village-life in general, my ears here recognized an
excess of bawl and shout, and subsequent experience did not
efface the impression. But, in the savage and the barbarian,
noise, like curiosity, is a healthy sign; the lowest tribes are
moping and apathetic as sick children; they will hardly look at
anything, however strange to them.
The rest of my day and week was devoted to the study of this
quaint people, and the following are the results. Those who have
dealings with the Fán universally prefer them in point of honesty
and manliness to the Mpongwe and Coast races; they have not had
time to become thoroughly corrupt, to lose all the lesser without
gaining anything of the greater virtues. They boast, like John
Tod, that they ne'er feared the French, and have scant respect
for (white) persons; indeed, their independence sometimes takes
the form of insolence. We were obliged to release by force the
boy Nyongo, and two of Mr. Tippet's women who had been put "in
log"--Anglicè, in the stocks. They were wanted as hostages during
the coming war, and this rude contrivance was adopted to insure
their presence.
Chastity is still known amongst the Fán. The marriage tie has
some significance, the women will not go astray except with the
husband's leave, which is not often granted. The men wax wroth if
their mothers be abused. It is an insult to call one of them a
liar or a coward; the coast-tribes would merely smile at the soft
impeachment; and assure you that none but fools--yourself
included by implication--are anything else. Their bravery is the
bravery of the savage, whose first object in battle is to
preserve his only good, his life: to the civilized man,
therefore, they appear but moderately courageous. They are fond
of intoxication, but are not yet broken to ardent spirits: I have
seen a single glass of trade rum cause a man to roll upon the
ground and convulsively bite the yellow clay like one in the
agonies of the death-thirst. They would do wisely to decline
intercourse with Europeans; but this, of course, is impossible--
there is a manifest destiny for them as for their predecessors.
The vile practice of the white or West Coast is to supply savages
with alcohol, arms, and ammunition; to live upon the lives of
those they serve. The more honourable Moslems of the eastern
shores do not disgrace themselves by such greed of gain.
The Fán are cunning workers in iron, which is their wealth. Their
money is composed of Ikíá, dwarf bars shaped like horse-fleams, a
coinage familiar to old travellers in West Africa, and of this
Spartan currency a bundle of ten represents sixpence. "White
man's Ikíá" would be silver, for which the more advanced Mpongwe
have corrupted the English to "solove." An idea exists on the
Lower River that our hardware is broken up for the purpose of
being made into spear-heads and other weapons. Such is not
generally the case. The Wamasai, the Somal and the Cape Kafirs--
indeed, all the metal-working African barbarians--call our best
Sheffield blades "rotten iron." They despise a material that
chips and snaps, and they prefer with ample cause their native
produce, charcoal-smelted, and tempered by many successive
heatings and hammerings, without quenching in water. Nor will
they readily part with it when worked. The usual trade medium is
a metal rod; two of these are worth a franc if of brass, while
three of copper represent two francs. There is a great demand for
beads and salt, the latter especially throughout the interior.
Thus ended my "first impressions" amongst the Fán cannibals.