THE KING OF THE SNAKE RIVER
In that district of Africa every village has its petty monarch, and
these are all vassals of the King of Gabon, who, in turn, is vassal
of the King of Benin; and Zabadie, the sooty sovereign of this
empire, had just died about this time.
The town, or capital (of his Majesty of the Snake River), if it could
be so named, in which we found ourselves, was composed of some six
hundred huts or so; and these resembled a large collection of
beehives, being constructed with meshes, twigs, straw, and turf.
I was dragged to the door of one, while a savage, whom I conceived to
be the proprietor, and who wore a large coin at his neck, threw in my
hat, coat, vest, and trowsers, of which he had violently possessed
himself, being a person in authority and near relation of the King.
While he grasped me by a thong which secured my right wrist, I could
perceive within that his dwelling consisted of one apartment, the
appurtenances of which were only mats, calibashes, a stone mortar for
pounding millet, and a cauldron of earthenware.
Closing the door, which was composed of basket-work, he dragged me to
our forlorn group, which stood before the King, who for some time
permitted us to be pelted with stones, decayed gourds, and pulpy
water-melons, by the women and children of his capital; and under
this treatment and her terror, poor Captain Baylis saw his
unfortunate wife about to sink without being able to yield her the
least assistance, as the point of an asseguy menaced his throat at
the slightest movement.
As an accessory to the alarm our situation excited within us, close
by where his Majesty sat was a negro, on whom a sentence of his had
just been executed.
This miserable wretch had been tied to a stake, disembowelled alive,
and had his body thereafter filled with hot salt. Despite the
terrors of our own situation, his dying agonies suggested terrible
thoughts of what our own fate might be. At last his contortions and
quiverings ceased for ever, and then, on the hoarse beating of an old
Arab drum, the pelting was stopped, the King of the Snakes laid aside
his pipe, and while all his sable subjects, save those who guarded
us, prostrated themselves on the turf, he commenced to address us;
and Baylis, who knew something of his jargon, replied, and translated
the conversation to us.
The Captain earnestly deprecated our treatment, as we had come among
them with the peaceful intention of trading. He pled especially on
behalf of his wife, and offered a great store of bottled rum, old
firelocks, pots, kettles, brass buttons, and iron nails, as ransom
for us all.
At these offers his sable Majesty, the Solon of the Snake River,
before whom had been laid the entire contents of the gig, with the
bloody garments of the poor fellows slain in her, only grinned from
time to time, and then uttered a diabolical laugh, which boded us no
good.
This savage chief presented a dreadful aspect. Black as ebony, tall,
strong, and muscular in form, he had a horizontal slit in his nether
lip (a custom of his people) through which he could loll his tongue
at pleasure. This unusual aperture was so large as to give him the
appearance of having two mouths; thus, when he grinned, the white
teeth appeared at the upper, and the red cruel tongue through the
lower. He wore long splints of wood through the lobes of his ears;
one eye had a fiery red circle painted round it, the other a yellow.
He wore the skin of an ape in front like an apron; and this, with a
pair of sandals, formed of elephant hide, completed his attire. His
weapons were a long asseguy of tough teak wood, having a point of
iron; and a short sword of iron, curiously fashioned, with a great
leathern tassel at the end of the sheath, hung on his left side.
Behind him a savage held the bridle of his dromedary, which was
covered by a multiplicity of barbaric trappings.
"It is the law of Empungua," said the King, "that he who slays a man
shall have a public trial in face of the tribe; and if he cannot
justify the act, he and all his adherents are doomed to die."
"Then," replied Baylis, "I demand justice on those who slew two of my
men, and plundered our boat."
"But how know we not that one or both killed the fetisher, who was at
worship in the Wood of the Devil?" demanded the King, with a dreadful
expression in his yellow eyeballs.
"Ya--ya--ya--yah!" chorused the tribe.
"I swear to you that we know nothing of the act you mention," replied
Baylis, with great earnestness.
"The white men are liars!"
"If we had known, or been guilty of it, would we have ventured ashore
to trade or barter with you like brothers?"
"Yes; because the white men are all liars!"
"It was done by the ship of another nation."
"All the white men belong to one tribe, and one big canoe is very
like another. You are liars who come over the Sea of Darkness."*
* The Atlantic.
Baylis, on finding that all his assertions of innocence met with
utter disbelief, bent all his energy to bribe our release; but his
sable Majesty only grinned through _both_ his horrid mouths, and
said--
"Enough! the King of the Snake River will keep what he has got,
without trusting to getting more. The white men are false. Who of
my people would venture to your ship when we know now what we never
knew before?"
"And what is this?"
"Accursed dog and son of a race of dogs!" thundered the King,
spitting a quid of something like beetel-nut full in the face of
Baylis; "we have learned that you white men take our people away in
shiploads to fatten them for food, in a land far beyond the sea!"
On this, a yell similar to that we had first heard made wood and
welkin ring. Violent hands were again laid on us, and we expected
instant immolation; but their purpose at present was merely to denude
us more fully of anything we had about us.
On having his shirt torn from him, poor Hartly endeavoured to protect
or conceal a little gold locket, which contained the hair of his dead
wife and of their little ones, and which was hung at his neck by a
black silk riband. But he received a blow from a carved war-club
which covered his face with blood; he reeled backward, and the prized
relic was instantly appropriated by the King, who, no doubt, deemed
it the white man's fetish, a "great medicine," or amulet.
Mrs. Baylis became insensible, and was delivered over to a crowd of
women, who shouted and laughed like devils as they bore her into a
wigwam, while her husband, Hartly, six seamen, and I, were, by the
King's order, conducted through the town of huts, and driven like a
herd towards the summit of a high mountain, where we fully expected
to be put to death in some barbarous fashion.
Mounted on his dromedary, the King accompanied his savages, one of
whom, brilliantly smeared over with ochre, was an esquire of the
royal body, I presume, as he sat behind, and held outspread a broad
umbrella of grass matting.