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?