The day was cloudy, but our trotting caravan did not exceed twenty
miles in travel. In Africa things are done leisurely, for neither
life, speculation, nor ambition is so exciting or exacting as to make
any one in a hurry. I do not recollect to have ever seen an individual
_in haste_ while I dwelt in the torrid clime. The shortest existence
is long enough, when it is made up of sleep, slave-trade, and
mastication.
* * * * *
At sunset no town was in sight; so it was resolved to bivouac in the
forest on the margin of a beautiful brook, where rice, tea, and beef,
were speedily boiled and smoking on the mats. When I was about to
stretch my weary limbs for the night on the ground, my boy gave me
another instance of Ibrahim's true and heedful hospitality, by
producing a grass hammock he had secretly ordered to be packed among
my baggage. With a hammock and a horse I was on velvet in the forest!
Delicious sleep curtained my swinging couch between two splendid
cotton-woods until midnight, when the arm of our Fullah chief was
suddenly laid on my shoulder with a whispered call to prepare for
defence or flight. As I leaped to the ground the caravan was already
afoot, though the profoundest silence prevailed throughout the wary
crowd. The watch announced strangers in our neighborhood, and two
guides had been despatched immediately to reconnoitre the forest.
This was all the information they could give me.
The native party was fully prepared and alert with spears, lances,
bows and arrows. I commanded my own men to re-prime their muskets,
pistols, and rifles; so that, when the guides returned with a report
that the intruders were supposed to form a party of fugitive slaves,
we were ready for our customers.
Their capture was promptly determined. Some proposed we should delay
till daylight; but Ali-Ninpha, who was a sagacious old fighter,
thought it best to complete the enterprise by night, especially as the
savages kept up a smouldering fire in the midst of their sleeping
group, which would serve to guide us.
Our little band was immediately divided into two squads, one under the
lead of the Fullah, and the other commanded by Ali-Ninpha. The Fullah
was directed to make a circuit until he got in the rear of the slaves,
while Ali-Ninpha, at a concerted signal, began to advance towards them
from our camp. Half an hour probably elapsed before a faint call, like
the cry of a child, was heard in the distant forest, upon which the
squad of my landlord fell on all-fours, and crawled cautiously, like
cats, through the short grass and brushwood, in the direction of the
sound. The sleepers were quickly surrounded. The Mandingo gave the
signal as soon as the ends of the two parties met and completed the
circle; and, in an instant, every one of the runaways, except two, was
in the grasp of a warrior, with a cord around his throat. Fourteen
captives were brought into camp. The eldest of the party alleged that
they belonged to the chief of Tamisso, a town on our path to Timbo,
and were bound to the coast for sale. On their way to the _foreign_
factories, which they were exceedingly anxious to reach, their owner
died, so that they came under the control of his brother, who
threatened to change their destination, and sell them in the interior.
In consequence of this they fled; and, as their master would surely
slay them if restored to Tamisso, they besought us with tears not to
take them thither.
Another council was called, for we were touched by the earnest manner
of the negroes. Ali-Ninpha and the Fullah were of opinion that the
spoil was fairly ours, and should be divided in proportion to the men
in both parties. Yet, as our road passed by the objectionable town, it
was impossible to carry the slaves along, either in justice to
ourselves or them. In this strait, which puzzled the Africans sorely,
I came to their relief, by suggesting their dispatch to my factory
with orders for the payment of their value in merchandise.
The proposal was quickly assented to as the most feasible, and our
fourteen captives were at once divided into two gangs, of seven each.
Hoops of bamboo were soon clasped round their waists, while their
hands were tied by stout ropes to the hoops. A long tether was then
passed with a slip-knot through each rattan belt, so that the slaves
were firmly secured to each other, while a small coil was employed to
link them more securely in a band by their necks. These extreme
precautions were needed, because we dared not diminish our party to
guard the gang. Indeed, Ali-Ninpha was only allowed the two
interpreters and four of my armed people as his escort to Kya, where,
it was agreed, he should deliver the captives to Ibrahim, to be
forwarded to my factory, while he hastened to rejoin us at the river
Sanghu, where we designed tarrying.
For three days we journeyed through the forest, passing occasionally
along the beds of dried-up streams and across lonely tracts of wood
which seemed never to have been penetrated, save by the solitary path
we were treading. As we were anxious to be speedily reunited with our
companions, our steps were not hastened; so that, at the end of the
third day, we had not advanced more than thirty miles from the scene
of capture, when we reached a small _Mandingo_ village, recently built
by an upstart trader, who, with the common envy and pride of his
tribe, gave our _Fullah_ caravan a frigid reception. A single hut was
assigned to the chief and myself for a dwelling, and the rage of the
Mahometan may readily be estimated by an insult that would doom him to
sleep beneath the same roof with a Christian!
I endeavored to avert an outburst by apprising the Mandingo that I was
a bosom friend of Ali-Ninpha, his countryman and superior, and begged
that he would suffer the "head-man" of our caravan to dwell in a
house _alone_. But the impudent _parvenu_ sneered at my advice; "he
knew no such person as Ali-Ninpha, and cared not a snap of his finger
for a Fullah chief, or a beggarly white man!"
My body-servant was standing by when this tart reply fell from the
Mandingo's lips, and, before I could stop the impetuous youth, he
answered the trader with as gross an insult as an African can utter.
To this the Mandingo replied by a blow over the boy's shoulders with
the flat of a cutlass; and, in a twinkling, there was a general shout
for "rescue" from all my party who happened to witness the scene.
Fullahs, Mandingoes, and Soosoos dashed to the spot, with spears,
guns, and arrows. The Fullah chief seized my double-barrelled gun and
followed the crowd; and when he reached the spot, seeing the trader
still waving his cutlass in a menacing manner, he pulled both triggers
at the inhospitable savage. Fortunately, however, it was always my
custom on arriving in _friendly_ towns, to remove the copper caps from
my weapons, so that, when the hammers fell, the gun was silent. Before
the Fullah could club the instrument and prostrate the insulter, I
rushed between them to prevent murder. This I was happy enough to
succeed in; but I could not deter the rival tribe from binding the
brute, hand and foot, to a post in the centre of his town, while the
majority of our caravan cleared the settlement at once of its fifty or
sixty inhabitants.
Of course, we appropriated the dwellings as we pleased, and supplied
ourselves with provisions. Moreover, it was thought preferable to wait
in this village for Ali-Ninpha, than to proceed onwards towards the
borders of the Sanghu. When he arrived, on the second day after the
sad occurrence, he did not hesitate to exercise the prerogative of
judgment and condemnation always claimed by superior chiefs over
inferiors, whenever they consider themselves slighted or wronged. The
process in this case was calmly and humanely formed. A regular trial
was allowed the culprit. He was arraigned on three charges:--1. Want
of hospitality; 2. Cursing and maltreating a Fullah chief and a white
Mongo; 3. Disrespect to the name and authority of his countryman and
superior, Ali-Ninpha. On all these articles the prisoner was found
guilty; but, as there were neither slaves nor personal property by
which the ruffian could be mulcted for his crimes, the tribunal
adjudged him to be scourged with fifty lashes, and to have his
"town-fence or stockade destroyed, never to be rebuilt." The blows
were inflicted for the abuse, but the perpetual demolition of his
defensive barrier was in punishment for refused hospitality. Such is
the summary process by which social virtues are inculcated and
enforced among these interior tribes of Africa!
* * * * *
It required three days for our refreshed caravan to reach the dry and
precipitous bed of the Sanghu, which I found impossible to pass with
my horse, in consequence of jagged rocks and immense boulders that
covered its channel. But the men were resolved that my convenient
animal should not be left behind. Accordingly, all hands went to work
with alacrity on the trees, and in a day, they bridged the ravine with
logs bound together by ropes made from twisted bark. Across this frail
and swaying fabric I urged the horse with difficulty; but hardly had
he reached the opposite bank, and recovered from his nervous tremor,
when I was surprised by an evident anxiety in the beast to return to
his swinging pathway. The guides declared it to be an instinctive
warning of danger from wild beasts with which the region is filled;
and, even while we spoke, two of the scouts who were in advance
selecting ground for our camp, returned with the carcasses of a deer
and leopard. Though meat had not passed our lips for five days, we
were in no danger of starvation; the villages teemed with fruits and
vegetables. Pine-apples, bananas, and a pulpy globe resembling the
peach in form and flavor, quenched our thirst and satisfied our
hunger.
Besides these, our greedy natives foraged in the wilderness for
nourishment unknown, or at least unused, by civilized folks. They
found comfort in barks of various trees, as well as in buds, berries,
and roots, some of which they devoured raw, while others were either
boiled or made into palatable decoctions with water that gurgled from
every hill. The broad valleys and open country supplied animal and
vegetable "delicacies" which a white man would pass unnoticed. Many a
time, when I was as hungry as a wolf, I found my vagabonds in a nook
of the woods, luxuriating over a mess with the unctuous lips of
aldermen; but when I came to analyze the stew, I generally found it to
consist of a "witch's cauldron," copiously filled with snails,
lizards, iguanas, frogs and alligators!