Miss Tucker, after a study of Eastern missions, in which she had

peculiar advantages, put forth in 1853, without, however, previously

visiting West Africa, ‘Abbeokuta; or, Sunrise within the Tropics.’ It is

another neat little sketch—prettily stippled, _musqué, couleur de rose_,

touched with the grace of a lady’s hand, and no more like the original

than is Hyperion to a satyr. Pity it is that clever people, reviewers,

and others, write of places they never have seen: in that line there is

but one successful book—Elphinstone’s ‘Cabul;’ of failures there are a

thousand, from Dr. Lord downwards. Some art appears, however, in this

book. It opens, à la Alphabet James, with a scene in which two Christian

cavaliers—one, Sir Henry Leeke, R.N., t’other, the boy Ajai, _i.e._,

‘struggling for life,’ and amongst celestials known as the Rev. Mr.

Crowther—meet in the romantic shades of the Church Missionary House,

Salisbury Square, where, on Friday, the last day of October, 1851, the

anagnorisis leads most classically up to the peripateteia. But there are

necessarily errors in painting natural objects, such as the artist made

who, when sketching from a photograph, converted the Meccan pilgrim’s

‘_hamail_,’ his Koran, into an ignoble powder-flask. For instance, we

read that Olumo the Builder, a mass of gneissoid granite, is a

porphyritic rock. Again, that ‘at one spot the intervening space forms a

deep but low cavern, capable of giving shelter to a considerable number

of persons.’ There is no vestige of such cavern; the eaves of the

rock—if I may so call them—project like roofs; and the little pauper

colony now squatting there has supplied them with clay walls—an

architecture very common at Abeokuta. Mr. Bowen, an eye-witness, rightly

describes it as ‘the shelving sides of an immense rock.’ Again, ‘Ogboni’

is _not_ ‘a civil governor of each town.’[41] The ‘lady Tinabu’ is _not_

the ‘sister of Akitoye.’ The little volume, however, is popular at home:

in 1858 it had reached the sixth edition—which suggests a reflection.

Let me labour to draw these descriptions from the life, to paint black,

black, to produce the most careful of sketches. They will be rough, and

somewhat grotesque, because they are honest; they will disenchant,

because they lack fictitious feeling and unreal romance. Consequently,

will they ever see a reprint? I am sorry for, but do not envy, the

success of ‘Sunrise within the Tropics.’

‘Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all except their sun is set.’

Such false views of living societies, however skilfully drawn by the

‘prettyfiers’ of Africa, cannot conduce to any good.

I now proceed to my own sex, which may be treated with less of ceremony.

The Rev. Mr. Bowen, or more probably his Charleston publishers, entitles

his work ‘Central Africa.’ This custom has of late become far too

common. A gentleman who lived for a few months at the little Portuguese

island of Mozambique was compelled by the bookseller to call his two

octavos ‘Travels in Eastern Africa.’ Another, who sailed down the

Western Coast, and borrowed all his interior from volumes long ago

published, appears before the public with the grandiloquent title, ‘Six

Years of a Traveller’s Life in Western Africa.’ Mungo Park, who did

three times more than all three together, modestly chose ‘Travels in the

Interior Districts of Africa.’ Mr. Bowen’s ‘Central Africa’ describes a

run of one hundred and seventy miles or so into a country long since

explored by Clapperton, Lander, and a host of minor travellers.

Mr. Bowen appears to have been another Dr. Krapf, who had high ideas of

missionarizing Africa: the latter gentleman proposed a chain of stations

stretching across the continent: the former more modestly contented

himself with a weak regiment of six hundred men, and, possibly, martyrs.

The expense was easily managed. Fifty cents per annum from each member

of the Society would produce three hundred thousand dollars, which is

enough. Landing on the coast in February, 1849, after a preliminary tour

through Liberia and among the inland Golas—the ‘Gullah niggers’ of the

Southern States—Mr. Bowen lost his coadjutor, Mr. Goodall, and sailed to

Badagry, which he reached on the 5th August, 1850. His first view was to

establish the ‘Central African Mission’ at Igboho, on the outskirts of

the great continent. With two intervals of return to America in 1853 and

1856, he remained in Africa from 1849 to 1856. During those seven years

he visited the Alake of Abeokuta, and—with difficulty, for the natives

sensibly believe that every town which the white spy enters shall

presently be destroyed[42]—he inspected Bi Olorun Kpello, Awaye, Oke-

Efo, Ilori, the Asehin, sovereign of Isehin, the Are of Ijaye, and the

Alaketu of Iketu. The first station was founded in October, 1853, at

Ijaye, one hundred and twenty miles from Lagos; another at Lagos, about

two years afterwards; and a third at Ogbomosho, one hundred and seventy

miles from Lagos. [N.B.—These are not my distances.] After leaving

Africa, Mr. Bowen’s travels in ‘Central Africa’ were printed in 1857 by

the Southern Baptist Publication Society of Charleston; and in May,

1858, his ‘Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruban Language’[43] was

accepted, and afterwards printed and published by the Smithsonian

Contributions to Knowledge, Washington.

This Central African traveller is quite a patriot, and withal, somewhat

truculent. He had been a Texas Ranger in his youth. He played, it is

said, a good ‘shyooting-iron’ in 1851 during the Dahoman attack upon

Abeokuta—the reverend gentleman was at first rather pleased with his own

militancy, but he afterwards regretted it. We can hardly, therefore,

wonder that his style and sentiments savour much of the arm of flesh. As

regards his characteristically New World vaunts, no harsher treatment is

required than to quote in 1863 what was written by him in 1857. For

instance, ‘America’ (_i.e._, the then United States) ‘is more powerful

in the control of mankind in general than any nation that ever has

existed, or ever can exist, while the seas, continents, deserts,

mountains, and rivers of the globe retain their present form’!! We read

of America’s ‘victories in the name of the living God;’ and we are not

unprepared to be told that that nation is ‘the appointed arbiter of

earth.’ Poor Europe is of course nowhere. Despotism is doomed to perish

there; the king and queen, the lord and the landlord, the ‘coach and

six,’ the servant in livery, the ‘mediæval fogy in certain civilized

countries,’ shall equally become extinct, like the deinornis and the

dodo. England is of course the vilest of nations. An expedition to the

Niger—in which we always fail—would be very easy to Mr. Bowen’s

government. He predicted a sure ‘whipping’ to the Britishers when they

first attacked Lagos; and, prophet-like, he exulted in the correctness

of his prophecy, though he, as a white man, ran no little risk, and

though the Britishers were shedding their blood for such as he. There

are also ungenerous remarks touching English explorers—the elder and the

younger Park, Clapperton, and others, up to Messrs. Laird and Oldfield.

All the honour given to poor Richard Lander for his noble discovery of

the Nun, or Niger’s direct mouth, is that he ‘floated down the Niger

from Yauri to the sea, but forgot to observe whether there was any real

impediment to navigation by steamers’!!!

These are silly, _ad captandum vulgus_, stock sentiments, without which

in those days an American’s book could hardly appear in America; and

thus they may admit of some palliation. But the reflections upon El

Islam penetrate us with the profound dogmatic ignorance of the author.

How well Mr. Bowen is fitted to teach or to convert the Moslem is

evident from one word.[44] He names a Fula Mussulman, Absalom—son of

David—instead of Abd-el-Salam, and tells us with wondrous puerility in a

foot-note that ‘such names as David, Mary, &c., are common amongst

Moslems.’ Had Mr. Bowen ever read his Sale’s Koran? It is evident to me

that any Alufa or Mullah at Ilori or Hausa could have astonished the

Texan with his knowledge of the Old Testament.

The Rev. John Newton—the ‘old African blasphemer’ reformed—mentions a

significant phrase prevalent on the coast in his day. The white man,

after a certain length of residence, ‘grew black,’ not in complexion,

but in disposition, and becoming perfect dupe to charms, necromancies,

&c., put more trust in such things than the wiser sort of natives. Mr.

Bowen shows the first symptom of the disease, which consists in

attributing all European deaths by fever and dysentery to poison, and a

perfect confidence in slow poison. The same mental malady is found

amongst the old East Indians. I know a man who tells the tale of his

having been poisoned some twenty years ago. But when the Asiatic and the

African are determined to do the trick, they so administer their drug

that there is ‘no mistake;’ and if they fail it is by an overdose, as an

ounce of arsenic instead of a few grains. At Iketu, Mr. Bowen, after

being warned of poison, received a bottle of milk from the king. His boy

Sam had seen a Fula man pull a leaf out of the bottle, a portion of the

contents of which were given to a dog. The animal shivered, returned

them, and recovered. Upon re-administration next day the same symptoms

recurred. Mr. Bowen then determined that if he had given the whole, not

the half, dose to the dog, death would have resulted; and he ‘drank no

more milk in Iketu.’

Mr. Robert Campbell, a coloured man, and a ‘professor,’ we are told by

his introducer, who does not say Professor of Philosophy or Political

Economy, or of what,[45] seems to have visited Yoruba on an errand of

‘_industrie_,’ in the French, not the English, sense. The introduction

informs us that the writer, ‘acting upon a commission, received from

bodies’ (fugitive negroes?) ‘in the United States and Canada, visited

the land of his forefathers’ (who were certainly English) ‘to

investigate its condition.’ He left Liverpool in June, 1859, touched at

the usual mail stations on the West African coast, landed at Lagos, and

went up to Abeokuta, where, under a new self-bestowed title,

‘Commissioner of the Niger Valley Exploring Party,’ he made with the

Alake and the chiefs a treaty, to which I shall presently revert. Having

extended his trip to Moslem Ilori, and the surrounding country, he

returned to Lagos on the 10th April, and concludes the little volume

which he wrote, or caused to be written, in this style: ‘We landed at

Liverpool on the 20th May, 1860, in good health, although we had been

to——Africa.’ ‘Pilgrimage to my Motherland’ contains one hundred pages,

respectfully dedicated to certain friends of Africa, Messrs. Christy,

Ashworth, and Ralston. It and its subject are ‘heartily recommended’ to

the public by the introducer, the late Sir Culling E. Eardley, Bart.

In this hearty recommendation I can by no means concur, for reasons

which will be adduced at greater length in a future page. Suffice a few

words here. We are explicitly told, and more than once, that ground

amongst the Egbas is ‘deemed common property, any individual enjoying

the right of taking unoccupied land, as much as he can use, wherever and

whenever he pleases.’ This may be ignorance, and to a certain extent it

is warranted by the incuriousness of Mr. Bowen, who asserted long before

Mr. Campbell that ‘there is no property in land, or rather that land in

Yoruba is common property.’ The corollary is that any number of

Christian converts or colonies of Africo-Canadians can be permanently

settled in the Egba country. I distinctly assert that the reverse is the

fact, and that all such theories foisted on the public with a view to

emigration are likely to do mere injury. The country is by no means a

‘no-man’s land,’ and ignorance of this vital point would certainly lead

to those agrarian wars with which New Zealand has scandalized the

civilized world. There are two ideas incomprehensible to Europeans, but

part and parcel of the African mind. The first, which here requires only

enunciation, is that a slave-born man is a slave for ever. The second is

the non-alienation of land. Whatever be the tenure of property in

ground, it cannot permanently be given or sold. A chief will, for a

quit-rent, permit any stranger to cultivate unreclaimed commons, but the

bargain is purely personal. If the original tenant die, the heir or

successor is expected by another ‘dash’ to obtain renewal of the lease,

and his refusal would justify, in the African mind, his ejection. On the

other hand, if the chief attempt to raise his terms, the heir might

insist upon not paying a sum higher than the original quit-rent, and

amongst the more civilized tribes the voice of the people would be on

his side. No resident in West Africa will ignore that what I have stated

is the fact, and those who are unacquainted with the coast should beware

of the fallacies of Messrs. Bowen and Campbell.

That the animosity of the coloured man should at times break out is not

to be wondered at. The negro must be pitted against the white, that is

part of the _métier_ of the Métis, who is honoured by his mother’s and

despised by his father’s side of the house. The Messieurs Crowther, we

are informed, though full-blooded blacks, are treated with the utmost

respect by all the Abeokutans—a curious comment upon this is the present

expulsion of the junior members of the family. There is a tale told of

the ‘Professor’ at Lagos, that on one occasion, when a European colony

in Yoruba was spoken of, he swore with fury that ‘no white man, if he

could help it, should ever plant foot in Western Africa.’ By the money,

then, of the white dupe, he would establish himself there, and, like the

Sierra Leonites of Abeokuta, he would deny and drive out his

benefactors.

Of course the book abounds in such errors as the following:—‘Not

unfrequently I heard the term ‘agayen’ (meaning simply canoe-man)

reproachfully applied by the people of the interior towns to my

interpreter.’ The word is ‘Igáen,’ and it refers to the ‘Ga’-speaking

peoples of the Gold Coast,—‘canoe-men,’ as they are called in the

English of Lagos. They are far from being despised in Yoruba; but in

some places, as at Benin, every English-speaking black is supposed to be

a Gold Coast man, and this has not tended to raise the reputation of the

‘Igáen.’ These unintentional blunders are excusable; there are others I

have shown that are not so.

[Footnote 35: These lines were quoted by Mungo Park during his last walk

with Sir Walter Scott, who exhorted him to turn back because his foot

slipped.]

[Footnote 36: From the Aro gate to Alabama, the longest diameter, the

distance is said to be six miles.]

[Footnote 37: The word is thus written by Mr. Bowen; Mr. Crowther

prefers ‘Obashorun,’ and the vulgar generally use ‘Bashorun.’ It is

difficult to define the functions of this dignitary, who is at once

viceroy, premier, and commander-in-chief.]

[Footnote 38: At the time the above was written I had not met Mr.

Crowther, sen. Since then a personal acquaintance with him has by no

means diminished the respect with which his widely spread reputation in

West Africa had prepared me to regard him.]

[Footnote 39: I simply mean that the destruction of Porto Novo was an

unfortunate performance, justified only by the traditional policy of the

‘the coast.’]

[Footnote 40: This year was an exception, the victim having impiously

levanted.]

[Footnote 41: Mr. Bowen very properly writes the word Ogboni, but

strangers cannot detect the _g_.]

[Footnote 42: We read of a white man, who, compelled to camp under a

tree outside the Awaye gate of Yoruba, was visited by hundreds, and

heard the women sing—

‘Oibo gun sidi Akpe.’

‘The white camped at the foot of the Akpe thorn.’

Which is truly an echo of Mungo Park’s well-known episode.]

[Footnote 43: The book, a thin folio, is favourably spoken of.

Unfortunately it does not enter into the scholarship of a very difficult

language, and thus only half teaches the learner. As might be expected

from the _ser studiorum_, there are grotesquenesses of style and

orthography. Why, for instance, should we read, in ‘Compound

Consonants,’ that _dż_ is sounded like the English _j_ in _jug_? Has the

English _j_ hurt Mr. Bowen’s feelings, that he thus unceremoniously cuts

it? and why trouble _ṡ_ with a diacritical dot when _sh_ does quite as

well?]

[Footnote 44: P. 198.]

[Footnote 45: I believe Mr. Campbell to have been a schoolmaster in

Canada: of course due deference to the dark face forbids the

philanthropist the use of the humbler title.]

CHAPTER III.

PRESENTED AT COURT.

Much to do, and little time to spare.

The morning after arrival at Understone saw me on foot at 5 A.M.; an

hour and a half, however, elapsed before the party was collected for a

stroll to Aro. I need hardly say that they did not expect

‘The blooming pleasures that await without

To bless the wildly devious morning walk.’

Aro, the terminus of the Ogun’s navigable portion, is the nearest port

of Abeokuta, about five miles from the missionary compound at Ake and

one and a half from the Badagry gate.

Starting in a south-westerly direction we struck into the European road,

and passed the two eyes in the granite rock before described. The ‘Do-

the-bachelors-good’ market led to another Church Missionary

establishment, directed by Mr. King, a native catechist, with its long

garner-like room used for pedagoguery and place of worship. To-day being

Saturn’s day, the bell rang ‘_Boys_ and girls _come_ to school! _boys_

and girls _come_ to school!’ The fine ears of the African vulgar

attribute special words to every unusual or artificial sound. The horn

and the tom-tom, for instance, express to them a great complication of

ideas by onomatopoetic language; such as—rise to fight! sit down all!

take hold, take hold!—which would hardly be appreciable to the coarser

senses of the uneducated European. A long stretch down-hill led to the

establishment of Mr. Champness, a respected Wesleyan missionary, who

fortunately escaped the terrible Sierra Leone epidemic of 1858-59.

‘The captain,’ alleging a suspicious blister on the heel, lagged behind

till he found a mount. The path was by no means bad; the gravelly soil

allowed the water to run off on each side, and high-wheeled American

‘trotting-wagons’ would safely pass over it. The exceeding impurity of

the place however at once struck us, and it was an impression which Time

strengthened. The surface was a wave of rising ground, broken into steep

ridges and deep hollows, through which streamlets flow—Yoruba is ‘a land

of waters’—and these again require bridges. Alongside of the road were

rare fields and frequent patches of tangled bush. The fetid tiglium or

croton-oil plant, and the wild senna, whose leaf is unfit for

exportation, the uncultivated indigo, the beautifully-blossomed mallows,

the datura and other medicinal plants were backed by the tall Oro

hedges, whose material is that cactus which the elephant loves, and

which, in this part of Africa, is mainly used as a mordant for arrow-

poison.

The people had already left their sleeping mats, and were loitering

towards the little labours of the day. Mr. Campbell ‘asserts, and

appeals to every one who has visited this section of Africa to verify

his assertion, that there is not a more industrious people [than the

Egbas] upon the face of the earth!’ Making due allowance for the

Americanism that concludes the sentence—‘the face of the earth’ and ‘the

whole globe’ are perfectly familiar to every denizen of the once United

States—I must, however, so far differ as to declare that there is not

one white man in Abeokuta who will endorse this dictum. It is true that

all Egbas, from the lowest to the highest, must, like the Sultan of

Stamboul, practise some handicraft; that the boys are trained to work,

after their gentle fashion, and that the people, unlike their

neighbours, are, for Africa, tolerable farmers; but an English navvy,

fed on beef and beer, will, it is said, work out 2·5 Frenchmen; he would

certainly knock up a dozen Egbas. And how can it be otherwise in these

malarious, fever-stricken, enervating, effeminizing lands? Idleness is

not ‘the root of all evil,’ the bane of society in the tropics; it is

the condition imperatively imposed by a thermometer generally above 70°

(Fah.), where labour is a curse, and where work, if it shortens man’s

days, must also shorten his life.

The people were tolerably well clothed, and, as usual at this hour,

every one was working at the chew-stick, a bit of guava, or of some

other soft wood. ‘Dressy men’ wore shogoto (African knicker-bockers), or

loose cotton drawers, fastened above the hip, and extending, like those

of the Madeiranese peasantry, to the knee. The body was covered with a

cloth gracefully thrown like a plaid over the shoulder, generally the

left, and a second ‘pagne’ was frequently wrapped, shawl-like, round the

waist. The poor dispense with the shogoto and the shoulder-cloth,

retaining nothing but the diggo, or loin-wrap. The women had three

cloths—one on the shoulders, and the other round the body below the

bosom, concealing the third, which is shorter and scantier. These

attires were mostly dyed with indigo, but of different tints, the sky-

blue being apparently the effect of wear. Those who cannot afford such

toilette wear scrimp wrappers, which develop forms not altogether

untempting. The men had caps of every colour, form, and material;

travellers and the ogboni, or elders, who are forbidden to use ‘filá,’

wore large hats of woven palm-leaf, like the Moors, the Mandengas, and

the people of Zanzibar, who, more sensible than Europeans, carry their

umbrella, not in hand, but upon head.

The women, who can rarely grow side ringlets to any length, confined

their hair with a fillet of indigo-dyed cloth, and those who were in

mourning walked about with naked scalps. All went barefoot, except those

who rode. The flasher sort, however, had their feet, like their hands

and arms, adorned with red or camwood,—the henna of this part of Africa.

Some few male exceptions were dressed in Frankish costume, and formed a

hideously respectable contrast to their semi-nude neighbours. The best

looking were decidedly the Moslems, here called ‘Imale,’ probably a

corruption of ‘Muallim.’ They were conspicuous for their decent

dress—turbans, or Hausa head-dresses, gay calico calottes, like the

kantop or ear-cap of India, with the large loose tobe, or shirt, called

Ewu, ‘the Guinea-fowl,’ from the handsome embroidery in spots, which

often renders the article worth five pounds; and shalwars, or trousers,

ample, but gathered in at the ankle. Some Moslems wore long side-locks,

the ‘corners of the beard,’ as the Scripture has it, and which are still

affected by the Jews of Bagdad. They carried large double-edged swords,

which, however, can hardly be drawn; and repining at their subject

position, they are said to dislike white men. None, however, refused to

return the Moslem salutation; and I heard one exclaim to the other,

‘Báriki!’ ‘May it be fortunate to you!’ a phrase usually addressed to

one who sneezes. This is a custom still prevalent throughout Asia, and

not wholly obsolete in Europe, where a ‘_Dieu vous bénisse!_’ is

required by an infirmity threatening, they believe, aneurism, hernia,

hemorrhage, and similar amenities. I remarked that many of the pagans

bore about in their hands bright iron chains, which are religious

implements here, as at Benin. Almost every man had his oggo (oggau)

club, or shillelagh. It is the knobkerry of the Kafirs, the Somal, and

the Fijian Islanders, and it extends throughout the African interior.

Here it is modified to a hockey-stick, about eighteen inches long, with

a twist of strong iron wire round the neck, and nails along the line of

percussion; sometimes it is distinguished by thongs of horny hide, brass

or copper tacks, and other barbaric decorations.

There was a vast variety of tattoos and ornamentation, rendering them a

serious difficulty to strangers. The skin patterns were of every

variety, from the diminutive prick to the great gash and the large boil-

like lumps. They affected various figures—tortoises, alligators, and the

favourite lizard, stars, concentric circles, lozenges, right lines,

welts, gouts of gore, marble or button-like knots of flesh, and elevated

scars, resembling scalds, which are opened for the introduction of

fetish medicines, and to expel evil influences. In this country every

tribe, sub-tribe, and even family, has its blazon,[46] whose infinite

diversifications may be compared with the lines and ordinaries of

European heraldry—a volume would not suffice to explain all the marks in

detail. The chief are as follows:—The distinguishing mark of the Egbas

is a gridron of three cuts, or a multiplication of three upon each

cheek. Free-born women have one, two, or three raised lines, thread-like

scars from the wrist up the back of the arm, and down the dorsal

regions, like long necklaces. They call this ‘entice my husband.’ The

Yorubas draw perpendicular marks from the temples to the level of the

chin, with slight lateral incisions, hardly perceptible, because allowed

soon to heal. The Efons of Kakanda wear a blue patch, sometimes highly

developed, from the cheek-bones to the ear. The Takpas of Nupe make one

long cut from the upper whorl of the nostril, sweeping towards the ear.

At Ijesha, a country lying east of Yoruba Proper, the tattoo is a long

parallelogram of seven perpendicular and five transverse lines. Those

called Brechi[47] wear a flap of skin taken from the forehead, and

overlapping eyebrows, nose, and eyecorners. This style of scalping kills

many, but the survivors are greatly respected. I observed a thing novel

to me; the areola in the women was not unfrequently tattooed a dull dark

blue, the colouring matter being native antimony, found in Yoruba and on

the Niger, and levigated with pepper and natron upon a stone. The

_bijouterie_ was coral, in necklaces and wristlets, heavy bangles, and

anklets of copper, iron, tin, or brass, and various rings upon the

thumb, the middle finger, and the toes. Most people carry beads of

various sizes and colours, denoting their peculiar worship. Necklaces of

large, many-coloured beads, with three bigger than the rest, show the

devotees of Yemaya, goddess of brooks and streams. Pure white beads are

worn by those who adore Obatala; black and white, alternating with red,

by the worshippers of Shango—Vulcan, or Jupiter Tonans. Small white

Indian cowries are the ornaments of idols, and as such are worn by their

servants, especially by those who adore the god Burukú[48] and the

goddess Amanlu, who, like the Hindu Shiva and Bhawani, slay without

weapons. The worshippers of Ifa, called ‘palm-nut priests,’ wear

wristlets of palm-nuts strung on fibre. Brass bracelets, and all

ornaments of the same colour, are symptoms of adoring the female river

god Oshun. Snake worshippers, and, according to others, those who pray

to the Ogun River, have an iron ring round the left wrist. Those who

bear upon their foreheads a painted mark like the Hindoo Tilak (or the

ashes which Roman Catholics daub on on Ash Wednesday) are the votaries

of the aristocratic and expensive god Orishako.

The physical conformation of the Egbas is not very promising in an

intellectual point. The cranium is small[49]—as a European can find by

putting on a native cap—wedge-formed, with compressed brow, almost

always prognathous, hardly ever pyramidal or oval. There are some who

hold prognathism—a peculiarity observable in almost all negro and

negroid tribes—to be exaggerated by lactation unduly prolonged at an

epoch when the bones are still plastic. But such suckling is still the

custom in Southern Italy, without the hideous African development. The

external auditory process projects in a ring of bone round the canal,

seeming to bury or overlap the foramen more than in Europeans,[50]

whilst the protrusion of the lower face and the receding of the chin

give, when carried to excess, a truly bestial appearance. The skeleton

is usually well put together in the upper part; in the lower, the hips

are too narrow for beauty; the shin, probably from sitting at squat in

youth, is convex, and the heel projects behind—a negro should therefore

wear sandals, never patent leathers. The nose is sometimes hooked, but

the nostrils are expanded and elevated at the alæ; in the plainer sort

it is broad and squatting upon both cheeks, with an absence of rigidity

and of dividing apex in the cartilage. The cheek-bones are high, and the

face is frequently lozenge-shaped. The blue eye, seen upon the Niger, is

unknown. Here the sclerotica is rarely clear, except in women and

children; usually it is bloodshot, from the relaxation of the minor

blood-vessels, or of a pale dirty yellow, as from over-activity of the

liver, or speckled with hazel spots. The iris is more frequently a dark

or a light brown, with a sea-green shade, than black; and the brows and

lashes are removed, like the beard and the axile pile. The lips are

large; the circum-oral region tumid; there is an ugly blue-black ridge

between the gums and the teeth; the former are frequently discoloured by

snuff, and the latter, though set off by the blackness around, are

neither whiter nor finer than those of Europeans generally.[51] The hair

is short, scant, crisply-curled, often growing from the scalp like

peppercorns, and rather dull or reddish-brown than black. The heads of

the men are trimmed in landscape or parterre fashion—indescribable. The

prevailing style amongst the women is to plait it up into thin

longitudinal ridges, like those of a musk melon, and to tie the residue

in a small tight knot at the sinciput. The skin is generally rough,

sometimes like shagreen; and in the poor the epidermis of the hand is as

hard as the foot of the domestic fowl. It varies from a dark coffee

colour to a _café au lait_ light as a Mulatto’s; I especially remarked

this peculiarity in the chiefs and fetish men, whose hair also sometimes

verged upon a dirty sand colour. There is not, however, any red race, as

amongst the Fula. Albinism is sporadic and distinct, nor did I see at

Abeokuta that modification of the xanthous temperament afterwards

observed in the Brass River, and at Batanga.

The Abeokutan, when taken at his best, is tall and well made, ‘black,

but comely.’ When not so, he is hideously chimpanzee-like. The male

figure here, as all the world over, is notably superior, as amongst the

lower mammals, to that of the female. The latter is a system of soft,

curved, and rounded lines, graceful, but meaningless and monotonous. The

former far excels it in variety of form and in nobility of make, in

strength of bone and in suppleness of muscle and sinew. In these lands,

where all figures are semi-nude, the exceeding difference between the

sexes strikes the eye at once. There will be a score of fine male

figures to one female, and there she is, as everywhere else, as inferior

as is the Venus de’ Medici to the Apollo Belvidere. In Africa also,

where the female figure lacks support, it is soon destroyed. The mammæ

in women are naturally large; after the first child they become pendent

and flaccid, and in old age they shrink to mere purses and lappets of

skin. It is a curious fact that these withered crones will sometimes

suckle children, and that the grandam is used as wet nurse.[52] In some

cases I remarked that, after the fashion of the true Amazons, one breast

was well developed, whilst the other hardly appeared—probably for want

of use.

Life in the open air, light clothing, and an abundance of dirty soap,

compounded of palm-kernel oil boiled with ashes, prevent amongst the

Egbas an over-development of the true African effluvium; yet it is

there. The negro’s skin—or rather the bulbs situated in the cellular web

under the cutis—is a more active organ of depuration than the

European’s, importantly aiding the respiratory and other processes in

eliminating effete matter from the blood. Dr. Stark proved that the

white colour imbibes odours in the lowest, the black in the highest

degree. The disorder—for such at times it is—is increased by frequent

anointings, foul food, and visceral disorders; and when to these is

added want of cleanliness—the oily particles of the perspiration, so

difficult to remove, remaining upon the skin, whilst the watery

disappear[53]—the effect becomes truly intolerable. Even amongst

Europeans in the tropics, the transpiratory secretion often becomes

acrid; and as the old Dutch traveller quaintly remarks, they can never

expect health until their ‘bodies open’—in other words, till their pores

act freely.

As we advanced we were plentifully greeted—more, however, by the women

than the men, and most by the children—with the common word Akabo,

_i.e._, Aku abo, used to a person returning from a journey. The answer

is simply an indefinitely prolonged _o_, which serves on all and every

occasion; if not returned it is a slight. Equals say to one another

Aku,[54] meaning, properly, may you not die, thus showing the real

African dread of death. The life-loving southern European would say,

‘Viva mille anni!’ All these people, from Benin to Dahome, when heard

thus saluting at Sierra Leone, were called Akoos, with as much

correctness as if Englishmen were termed God-bless-yous.[55] More modern

writers have named them Hios,[56] or Eyeos, from Oyo (Auyan), the great

capital of the Yoruban nation, about 2° (N. lat. 9°) N.N.E. of

Abeokuta.[57] The best conventional name of the language, however,

despite Mr. Koelle, is Yoruba; of the country’s P.N. more anon.

All national salutations are tolerably ridiculous; the Englishman cannot

laugh at the African except for his unreasonable ceremoniousness. As the

old joke has it, ‘How do you do?’ can only be answered grammatically by

‘Do what?’ ‘How do you find yourself?’ by ‘I never lost myself!’ ‘How do

you feel?’ by ‘With my hands!’ The Egbas, who are gifted with uncommon

loquacity and spare time, have invented a variety of salutations and

counter-salutations applicable to every possible occasion. For instance,

Oji re, did you wake well? Akwaro, good morning! Akuasan, good day!

Akwale, good evening! Akware, to one tired. Akushe, to one at work.

Akurin (from _rin_, to walk), to a traveller. Akule, to one in the

house. Akwatijo, after a long absence. Akwalejo, to a stranger. Akurajo,

to one in distress. Akujiko, to one sitting. Akudaro, to one standing.

Akuta, to one selling. Wolebe (be careful!) to one met, and so forth.

The servile _shashtanga_ or prostration of the Hindus is also a

universal custom. It is performed in different ways; the most general

is, after depositing the burden, and clapping hands once, twice, or

thrice, to go on all-fours, touch the ground with the belly and breast,

the forehead and both sides of the face successively; kiss the earth,

half rise up, then pass the left over the right fore-arm, and _vice

versâ_, and finally, after again saluting mother Hertha, to stand erect.

The inferior prostrates to the superior, the son to the mother, the

younger to the elder brother, and I have been obliged to correct a

Moslem boy of the evil practice of assuming a position in which man

should address none but his Maker. The performance usually takes place

once a day on first meeting, but meetings are so numerous that at least

one hour out of the twenty-four must thus be spent by a man about town.

Equals kneel, or rather squat, before one another, and snap the fingers

in the peculiarly West African way, which seems to differ in every

tribe.

As we advanced we saw unmistakable signs of idolatry. To many trees bits

of pottery, snail shells—Achatinæ six inches long—were attached: a fence

here consists of a few light sticks tied together with strings, from

which these harmless articles were suspended. In places were pointed out

to us a stalk of Indian corn with a yam or a gourd on the top. The idea

is that, whoever touches these things, the disease or the misfortune of

the placer will be transferred to him. There is the same superstition in

Hindostan, and terrible tales of thus inoculating complaints are current

amongst Europeans.[58] There were broken pots full of fragments of

crystallized quartz and iron conglomerate, which last is said to be a

holy stone. A traveller piling a handful of sand upon his luggage leaves

it under the protection of a medicine, or magic, which Mungo Park calls

‘kwong.’ A hatchet is placed in houses that have been lightning struck,

and water is worshipped in small earthen pots, over which the women

kneel and smite the palm of the hand with the fingers. We are reminded

of Apuleius, who describes the traveller being delayed by ‘an altar

garlanded with flowers, or a cavern overshadowed with leaves, or an oak

laden with horns, or a beech-tree crowned with hides, or a hillock

consecrated by a hedge, or the trunk of a tree chipped out by the

hatchet, or a turf moistened with libations, or a stone drenched with

unguent.’ Strangers connect these mysteries with Oro. The truth is, few

know anything beyond the fact that they are superstitious

observances—many of them, doubtless, quite as efficacious as the

horseshoe or mistletoe in England, or the Pishog, which transferred

cream and butter from one churn to another, in Ireland, where, as in

Abyssinia, old women were burned for becoming grey cats.

We found no difficulty in fording two of the waters on the line of road;

the third, however, was more formidable. Mr. Consul Foote fell there,

his horse having placed its hoof in a deep hole, whence earth had been

taken for building purposes; and he then laid in the germs of the

disease which carried him off in the prime of life. Several old women,

in purest Guinea costume, were washing their clothes and persons, and,

not wishing to wet our feet, we attempted by ‘sweet mouth’ to secure a

mount. The reply was characteristically African, viz., ‘What will you

give me?’ Having neither cowries nor tobacco, we waited till a man came

up, and he was more obliging than the veterans of the other sex.

Nearing the walls we saw a house in the process of preparation for Mr.

Savage, a native merchant. Numbers of labourers were at work, for

Africans, like Asiatics, are great at division of labour, which, indeed,

they often so divide that the remainder is imperceptible. Some hoed a

deep hole,—here as at Benin and in Sokoto, where they are scattered over

the town, a standing nuisance,—which afterwards remains to be filled

with rain and drainage, filth, offal, and sometimes with the corpse of a

child or a slave. The effect of these pits upon the climate may easily

be imagined. Another gang was working the clay, and converting it into

the swish or dab required for the walls; whilst a third party was

engaged in preparing grass thatch and palm leaves for the roof. When the

actual building begins there will be one gang to carry clay balls to the

scene of action, a second of labourers who fling the same balls into

wall shape and pat them down, a third, boys and girls, who hand other

balls from the ground or the scaffolding to the masons above, a trimmer

to plumb and set things square with his wooden shovel, and finally

thatchers to finish off. The shell is usually made in three horizontal

layers, which must dry for a day or two in the sun and wind before

receiving another addition; the builders, however, will await for the

last touch the month of December, when the hard, dry breath of the

harmattan will harden their work to the consistence of concrete. This

desert wind, which Captain Maury and his Ehrenberg bring from impossible

places, is enjoyed like the Neapolitan scirocco by new comers, and is

much feared by natives and old stagers. It is, therefore, supposed to be

a giant, an African Æolus, who sits upon a mountain far in the interior,

blowing dust and cold—the elements of discomfort—over the world.

Presently we arrived at the Aro, or the Badagry or the south-western

gate. It is not unlike that of Agbameya, but, for valid reasons, it is,

or rather it was, on a somewhat more extensive scale. Long quiet—lately

broken—has, however, demoralized the people; ten years ago it was the

same in Great Britain. The wall is hardly eight inches thick, there is

no weather-thatch, the guard-house is almost in ruins, and the moat is a

mere ditch. Victory has made the Egbas too secure.

But a truce to criticism. We are now upon classic ground, the local

Marathon. Here was fought, on the 3rd of March, 1851, the great battle

between the Dahomans and the Abeokutans. The quarrel was of old

standing. Gezo, King of Idáhame, as the land of the Lord of Amazons is

here called, had been defeated at Ado—a town nearly half-way between

Badagry and Abeokuta—by the Ibashorun, or commander-in-chief, of

Abeokuta; and he had lost, besides the town, his stool, which in these

regions means the throne. The Dahomans, holding themselves to be a

military as well as a warlike nation—we have lately been lectured upon

the distinction, which is no difference—and burning for revenge,

determined to destroy Abeokuta, for which purpose they advanced with the

full force of the empire.

Their plans were ill laid, and their boasted secrecy appears to have

been a lamentable failure. Arrived at Ishagga, a small Egbado town

fifteen to seventeen miles south-west of their destination, they were

duped by special treaties, oaths, and sacrifices, and were persuaded to

attack, not the north-western gate, which was the weakest, but the

south-western, which had already been fortified. Their plans of a night

surprise were also overruled by their treacherous allies, who persuaded

them that midday would find the defenders either sleeping or working at

their farms; and finally, the Ishaggans pointed out a ford which wetted

all the cartridges of their friends.

Baddahun or Glele,[59] son of the late King Gezo of Baddahun Dahome,

revenged this treachery, as he was expected to do. After patiently

waiting ten years with annual threats against Abeokuta, which threw the

people off their guard, he suddenly, in the spring of 1862, fell upon

Ishagga with a force not exceeding 6000 men—the town numbered about 3000

souls—massacred all he could not carry away, and departed, laden with

prisoners, amongst whom were seventeen or eighteen Christian converts,

and a Mr. Doherty of Sierra Leone, one of the Scripture readers of the

Church Missionary Society.

The Rev. Mr. Bowen, missionary and quondam Texas ranger, who used, they

say, a good rifle in the fight, thus describes the Dahoman attack of

1851 upon Abeokuta:—About noon, in the bright month of March, the Egbas,

some 15,000 strong—these numbers must be taken _cum grano_—marched out

of the Aro gate to meet the enemy. They then divided into three parties:

the first proceeded to the ford on the Badagry road, the second, under

Ogubonna, the bravest of the Baloguns, now deceased, crossed the river

near the wall, and the third remained not far from the Aro gate.

Meanwhile the Dahomans moved across the prairie with colours flying, in

heavy columns, numbering 10,000 men[60] and 6000 women. They also formed

two divisions, one of which fell upon the Abeokutan force guarding the

ford, whilst the other, under Gezo,[61] their king, charged furiously

upon Ogubonna, and drove him back upon the rocks and rapids of the Ogun

River. Mr. Bowen sent the 3rd brigade to his support, when he rallied,

and even made head against the enemy. The Abeokutans at the ford were

also flung back by the Dahomans; they flocked, however, into the gate,

and effectually checked the enemy, who, in this attack, were mainly

‘Amazons.’[62] There had been some dispute between the male and female

soldiery, and both laboured under considerable dissatisfaction: the

latter had claimed the right to storm, which the former obtained, and

were left to lose the day by their sulking rivalesses.

Then the women, fearing the taunts of the men, pressed hotly forwards,

and many were killed close to the gateway. Here, and here only, there

was something like a stand-up hand-to-hand fight, muskets being clubbed

for want of bayonets; the rest was all skirmishing. After six hours

ensued a purely African scene. King Gezo’s division rested upon the

battlefield half-way between the Aro gate and the river, and Ogubonna’s

did the same. A resolute advance along the whole line, and a single

charge by the one would have settled the fate of the other army—both

preferred, however, to sleep upon the field. During the night King

Gezo’s division moved off, followed by the other Dahoman troops,

carrying their wounded in orderly retreat. The Egbas, enraged by being

attacked by women, pursued them hotly with discharges of musketry,

galling their rear. At Ishagga the Dahomans faced about, fought for a

while, and fled—the treacherous Ishaggans doing their best to destroy

them.

Mr. Bowen estimates the Dahoman loss at 1200, others exaggerate it to

3000 killed and 1000 prisoners. Mr. Crowther, senior, counted 75 women

and 5 men lying within a few yards between the river and the wall. As

might be expected, the women suffered most; the flower of the army was

believed to have perished. The Egbas’ loss was comparatively trifling.

The effect of the ‘Battle of Aro’ was to place in possession of the

Egbas the Ogun River line and direct communication with Lagos and the

coast, the one thing needful to an African inland nation. The Dahomans

have ever since been burning with rage, and loudly threatening revenge.

Early in 1861 they collected another force—the number was set down at

22,000, which I would divide by three—and marched upon Abeokuta. On the

road, however, small-pox broke out—it is said to have killed 8000!—after

which the remnant found their way home. The Abeokutans, before Gezo’s

attack, dreaded their foe; and had, they say, resolved to burn their

houses and bury themselves in the ruins rather than be taken alive. At

present they despise him, and loudly boast of their power to ‘whip’ him.

Now, therefore, is their danger; and if demoralized by relying upon

English assistance rather than upon their own energies they may one day

come to grief.

But Dahome, in its actual state, is to some extent a bugbear. The mighty

warlike empire of which Bosman dimly heard, and even the strong military

kingdom over which Gezo ruled, is now _en décadence_. Its very

institutions must cause its decline: it lets its own blood, and, though

the drops are few at a time, it cannot but suffer in the long run. The

troops are poorly armed with trade muskets, ignorant of bayonets, and

with short falchions of stuff like hoop-iron. The ‘Amazons’ boast

themselves invulnerable, but readily retreat: an equal number of British

charwomen, armed with the British broomstick, would—I lay, to speak

Yorkishly—clear them off in very few hours.[63] The male soldiery make,

like the French, a noisy, fiery onslaught, but, repulsed with vigour,

they do not readily return to the charge. Their wars are mere slave

hunts; their object is to capture, not to kill, and surprises, not

attacks, form their favourite strategy. The terrible reports current

concerning Dahome and its ‘blood-stained despot’ may be traced to

certain Europeans and Brazilians, whose interest it is to deter slave-

emancipators from investigation. They have lately rumoured that the King

of Dahome is resolved to capture an English officer to hold his stirrup.

We hear occasionally of a white man being sent to Agbome, ‘rolled up

like a cigar,’ and a certain M. Medeiros was, it is said, compelled, for

punishment of his recusancy, to walk the way barefoot.[64] But these are

slavers, who are thoroughly despised by the king, and who, he knows,

must eat any dirt to please him. It is, however, a fact that neither

Baddahun nor Gezo, his father, ever put to death a white man. We have no

good modern account of this interesting despotism. Commander Forbes is

said to have copied from previous publications. There is no doubt that a

man well conversant with Africa, and known to have friendly

intentions—Mr. M‘Coskry of Lagos, for instance—would find no difficulty

in visiting and in returning safe from Dahome. I would gladly accompany

him.[65]

At the several gates of Abeokuta octroi or customs are raised. The two

articles most taxed are cowries and corn—the latter taken in kind. Other

sources of revenue are police dues, trade taxes on imports and exports,

_corvée_ or forced labour—the _begar_ of India—and, on emergency, an

impost equivalent to five shillings on each household. It is by no means

easy to ascertain the amount of Asiatic or African revenue; the

missionaries, however, set down that of Abeokuta at one per cent. These

decidedly moderate proceeds belong not to the Alake, or king, but to the

chiefs; a system which the local paper, the ‘Iwe Irohin,’ thinks—with

scanty popular good-will in consequence—should be altered. The change

would possibly strengthen the hands of the monarch, who certainly

requires support; on the other hand, it would lengthen interregnums,

which are already long enough. The late Mr. Consul Foote strongly

advised the Abeokutans to place an impost upon imports, but to send out

exports free of tax. They did not agree—nor can we wonder, as Lagos has

since followed their example—on the same principle as England prefers

the unjust income-tax to the just property-tax or capital-tax. For in

Abeokuta, as in England, the law-giver would lose by doing justice to

the law-receiver.

Beyond the Aro gate superstition again shows itself. The adit and the

exit are by two parallel but separate paths. At Agbome one thoroughfare

would be for royal, the other for public convenience; here, however, one

is used each month, and if an accident happens it is charged to the

wrong path, much as in England the day’s good or bad temper depends upon

putting the right or the left foot first out of bed. The grass waved

tall and lush over the Dahoman clay; the expanse was broken by sundry

graves, some thatched over like dwarf or ‘fause houses,’ others had a

rude cross, to which articles of clothing were suspended, and an

elephant’s jawbone—the buried man’s idol—hung over the huntsman, who,

like the fisherman, must be buried outside the walls. These two crafts

form separate guilds, which almost become castes, worship the god Ogun,

and meet in separate Ogboni lodges.

About a mile and a half along the Badagry road—a mere pathway worn by

market-people in the bush—placed us at Aro. It is the port and landing-

place of Abeokuta in the rainy season; during the dry season, from the

end of November to the middle of March, Agbameya is preferred. The

outlying village already shows signs of civilization in a ferry, palm-

oil puncheons, and cask-houses. Messrs. M‘Coskry and Wike, and M.

Bergmeyer and Scala, with Robbins, the agent, have depôts there, and

they will probably be followed by others. A little above Aro we see the

ridge of slabs and boulders which, stretching with breaks across the

river, render its rapids un-navigable. The material of the obstruction

is a gneiss, banded with thin lines of snowy quartz, and substratified,

the strata being for the most part highly tilted up. Portages are

useless, for these rapids perpetually recur. The banks of the Ogun are

here perpendicular, and composed of stiff clay; in Egypt, as in Asia,

they would be sonorous with the sakiyah or Persian wheel; in this place

they are silent.

After sitting for a few minutes in the house of a negro, who politely

offered us a dram of trade rum, which was as politely declined, we found

by the stinging sun that it was time to re-start, if we intended to

reach Ake at 9 A.M. On the way we passed a young person in great

distress. She had dropped her pot of black oil,[66] worth at least four

heads of cowries[67] equal to seven shillings—no small loss to the poor

devil—and she was expressing her grief in the long, loud song which I

remember in the Lake Regions of Central Africa. Tears rolled down her

sable cheeks, yet in the intervals of sobbing it would flow on, that

curious bawling cry which one unaccustomed would take to be the

expression of lively joy. It is long before the European ear

distinguishes between the sounds of mirth and the voice of woe

proceeding from Asiatic and African lips. Returning through ‘Do-the-

bachelors-good,’ we found the market warm, as the Hindostanis say. At a

distance we heard a murmur like that of a distant sea, and as we sighted

the open sheds that form the bazar it swelled to a roar. The market

opens from dawn till 9 P.M.; it is fullest, however, a little before

sunset, and the more industrious light lamps, instead of going home with

the darkness. The bazar is a great institution in Yoruba, and, indeed,

throughout the Nigerian Valley. It is also a civilizing agent, and by

giving occupation to the women—it is disreputable for them to work on

the farms, but not to carry the produce for sale—it tends to repress

disorders. Porters are a hardly-used race in this region: men carry 40

lbs. to 80 lbs. burden for weeks’ journeys, and the women may be seen

staggering, as if about to faint, under a bale of cotton 112 lbs. in

weight. Men were tramping off towards the seat of war, sixty miles

distant, laden with all manner of provisions, which they bore upon the

head, not, like East Africans, upon the shoulder. The burden is fastened

to a neat wicker-work cradle, flat, and garnished with side handles. I

would suggest to bumpkins, who take hours in driving a recusant pig to

market, the advisability of lashing it to a plank—should no better

conveyance be procurable—and of carrying it upon the head. We are once

more in the land of caravans: they number hundreds or thousands, each

man carrying his sleeping-mat, cotton-sheet, or wrapper, provision bag,

and earthen pipkin, to warm the ‘kitchen’ for his maize or yam; and they

are old, expert travellers. They make when starting the _nakl safar_, as

the Arabs call the short, initiatory march, at Atade, on the Ibadan, and

Awoyade, on the Badagry road.[68]

Under the long rows of umbrella-trees sat a multitude of black

women—selling appears to be their peculiar privilege—with scions of

every age, from the big-eyed babe hardly a week old to the bold bare

bairn aged ten. Cowries were placed near the goods, and, as in the

Egyptian coffee-house, the buyer’s honour is trusted. The principal

articles were provisions for present consumption, hardware, dry goods,

earthenware, and ‘notions.’ Of the former, we found ready-made soups,

obbe or palaver sauce—so called because eaten in council—which, by the

mixture of mulookhiyah (_Corchorus olitorius_), reminds us of Egypt;[69]

ekko or mush; huge snail shells, here relished as much as in Sierra

Leone; kankie or maize cakes, and fufu balls of levigated corn or boiled

yam; grated cassava or ‘wood flour,’ as it is generally called—a

favourite, because on journeys this farina can be mixed up with cold

water and eaten without cooking—balls of beans ground on a stone, mixed

with spices, and placed to fry in purified black oil; dried rats; pots

of black and yellow palm oil, here far cleaner than in the Oil Rivers;

shea or tree butter, which will become one of the most considerable of

Africa’s many products;[70] sesamum oil; cereals of sorts, especially

Indian and Guinea corn; eggs, terapins, and dried fish from Lagos,

especially shrimps; Telfaria seeds;[71] pink kola nuts, displayed on a

white napkin, neatly covering a basket; ground-nuts of pindar, the

_pistache_ of old French travellers, and now called _arachide_; tobacco

of sorts, chiefly Brazilian; wet goods and drinkables, such as palm wine

and _pitto_, _oli_, or native beer, and well-diluted rum,[72] which is

sold by men; ‘bullock milk for true;’[73] fruits mostly relished by

Europeans—okpaimbo, ‘the white man’s palm,’ _i.e._, pine-apples,

bananas, papaws, oranges, known as the white ‘man’s mango,’[74] and

watermelons, which are exceedingly poor; condiments, pepper and bud

pepper, ginger and other spices; and various vegetables, sweet potatoes,

kokos, okros (_Hibiscus esculentus_), sugar-cane and onions, especially

the bulbless sort, called chives in England and violet onions in India.

The hardware was represented by bracelets of brass, iron,[75] tin, and

copper;[76] and ‘Europe goods,’ knives and cutlasses, scissors and pins,

needles, hoes and bill-hooks. The dry goods were raw silks, broadcloths,

and velvets, of which the green are preferred; country cloths of grass

and various fibres, some composed of pieces not broader than a riband,

and sewn together; calico, shirtings, and cottons of sorts; red, blue,

and white tapes; Hausa and other caps; ropes and lines; threads,

especially red; yarns and reels of cotton. The leather-work was

excellent; black and white, red and yellow, like that of Morocco; and

the people make good flasks and saddle-straps, saddles and embroidered

cushions. The earthenware was not remarkable; gourds and calabashes,

some of them neatly and prettily carved with the knife, serving for

crockery, earthen bowls, and china cups, plates, and dishes. There was a

vast variety of beads, sold singly or by the string, and native

imitations composed of broken palm-kernels and jasper. The ‘notions’

were balls of dirty soap, snuff-boxes, gunpowder, and ammunition; chalk,

found on the Ijaye road; tobacco, roll and leaf; snuff; balls of indigo

and liquid dye; camwood pounded with water and moulded into lumps; horse

and cow dung, here used for plastering floors and walls; little cones of

native salt, nitre, or saltpetre; baskets of leaves, used as brown paper

for wrapping; provisions and firewood, brought by the women six to eight

miles from the bush; stationery of various sorts; brooms, baskets, raw

cotton, and cowries, in any number. Briefly, it was a heterogeneous

mass, whose combined aroma on a warm morning and an empty stomach, after

eight miles of sunny walk, was as startling to the olfactories as the

awful hubbub—chiefly feminine and infantine—of saluting and laughing,

squabbling and cursing, hailing, and howling, was to the auditory

nerves. Pure swearing is European, not Asiatic or African. They

anathematize, however, idiomatically enough, as—‘Oro (the devil) take

you!’ ‘Egugun (king of ghosts) chop you!’ ‘May you die in the bush!’

_i.e._, remain unburied, whereas every man hopes to die in, or rather

on, his bed; ‘May small-pox kill you!’[77] reminding one of an English

exclamation now working itself out. And as usual amongst barbarians, the

mother and the female relatives are abused with an indecency which

beggars description. We lost no time in making the best of our way out

of the range of ‘Do-the-bachelors-good.’

On the day of our arrival, Mr. Williams, a most forward specimen of the

‘nigger,’—these people can be respectful until spoiled by Europeans,

after which they are insufferable—had been sent to announce to H.M. the

Alake, the great fact of Commander Bedingfield having arrived at

Abeokuta, and to request an audience _au plutôt possible_. The king was

pleased to reply that he would see us on the next day, Saturday, shortly

after 10 A.M. The walk to Aro, therefore, led directly to a toilette for

the levée.

But 10 A.M. sped, then 11, then 12. Various messages went and came;

still the great man’s dignity required us to wait, and 1 P.M. had struck

before we were permitted to hope for the possibility of beholding him.

Under these circumstances, had it been my ‘palaver,’ I should have

deferred the visit till 3 P.M., and I should not have appeared before 5

P.M. I have no doubt that more civility would have been the result, and

that the impression would have lasted longer. But this is to lecture

omniscience. Armed with umbrellas—here they represent the ‘quality’—we

walked over the few hundred yards that separate the palace from the

mission compound of Ake. We were suddenly told that we had arrived;

turned to the left into a ragged clay house, long and rambling, with a

shallow verandah formed by posts supporting the eaves, under which

female slaves, called—to magnify his importance—king’s wives, sat before

articles for sale. The establishment was as mean-looking for Abeokuta as

is St. James’s for London. Stooping to avoid injuring the coronal

region, we crossed a hollow court-yard, in which there was nothing

remarkable beyond a peculiarly neat pair of stocks, we entered through a

second gate, an inner and a smaller court, and there we found a cluster

of negroes seated at squat _sub divo_ to receive us.

We naturally looked around for the presence-chamber, when we were

motioned to bend double, and thus to insert ourselves under the long,

low verandah that subtended the side of the inner court. Five hexagonal

columns of ultra-Egyptian massiveness, and about four feet high, divided

the house-wall behind the verandah into as many compartments. Of these

‘loose boxes’ the two at either end were open, leading into the house;

the three central were masked by a native cloth; in the middle was an

old brocade bed-hanging—behind which we were told lay H.M.,

invisible—and lastly, was a curtain of scarlet velvet. The Awajali of

Ijebu Ode is never allowed to see or to converse with strangers, except

through his ministers; and that the cabinet may have it all their own

way, when the monarch dies, all the _personnel_ is carefully put to

death. The whole space, including the columns, was ‘beautifully black,

like the rain-cloud,’ as the Egbas say, with horse or cow-dung, mixed

with some leaf which may be indigo. This is the gobar of India, and

though it is unknown in Eastern, it has been observed in Western

Africa.[78] Happily we had brought our own chairs; the palace contains,

I am told, but two, and we had time indeed to sit. The rest of the

verandah was full of chiefs, ‘niggers,’[79] and a few Moslems, a total

of about one hundred and fifty, and all adult males. Never have I seen

such villainous crania and countenances as amongst the seniors of

Abeokuta. Their calvaria depressed in front, and projecting cocoa-nut-

like behind, the absence of beards, the hideous lines and wrinkles that

seamed and furrowed the external parchment, and the cold, unrelenting

cruelty of their physiognomies in repose, suggested the idea of the

eunuch torturers erst so common in Asia. One felt the same _frisson_ at

the sight as when looking upon the Gallic ladies who, in rainy weather,

haunt the County Fire Office at the end of Regent Street, and one was

sure that from pity or mercy it would be as well to address the wounded

mandril. I afterwards observed the same amongst the elders of Benin, and

I should not be surprised to find it at Agbome and Komasi. The

atrocities which these ancients have witnessed, and the passion which

they have acquired for horrors, must have set the mark of the beast upon

their brows. There was not a vestige of splendour. The chiefs were

bareheaded, naked to the waist, wholly unornamented, except with a few

cheap beads, and clothed with a common native loin wrap, or a bit of

unbleached ‘domestics.’ To retain wealth in such lands requires care and

caution: an ostentatious man, however rich, will die poor.

We were beginning to wax impatient at this impertinent blending of

misery and pretentiousness, when it was suggested that H.M.’s linguist,

alias Mr. Wilhelm, the Church Missionary interpreter, had not appeared—a

fresh reason for standing upon ceremony. It is contrary to etiquette for

an Alake to show himself too freely either to his people or to

strangers: the King of Oyo, at the first interview, remains hidden

behind the curtain, and the Alaketu or chief of Iketu is known by a hole

in the wall. Mr. Wilhelm is one of the earliest Egba recaptives who left

Sierra Leone for Abeokuta: he has remained faithful amongst the

faithless, and whilst the others have relapsed into the wildest

heathenry, he has become the senior ‘Christian visitor’—_il a passé

caporal sur le champ de gloire_. To quiet us, I suppose, a very dirty

table of plain deal was set opposite H.M.’s bed-hanging; presently it

was invested with an unwashed native cloth, and, lastly, after a long

delay, it was richly spread with two wash-hand basins. One was ‘blue

mandarin,’ the other, French Faïence, coarser than majolica, true pot-

house appointments, in each of which were two tumblers and two wine-

glasses—the materials for a carouse—at midday in the tropics!—then came

upon the _tapis_ four bottles of maraschino, prepared for commerce; an

ordinary high-shouldered, black gin-bottle, containing the normal

mixture of vitriol, turpentine, and aqua pura; two large case-bottles of

Brazilian rum, the offal of molasses, which, however, these people

prefer to the Jamaica; and water in a ‘lustre jug,’ as the trade calls

it, a thing of obsolete make and colour, such as thirty years ago was

common in English farm-houses.

[Illustration: THE PRESENTATION AT COURT.

Page 140.]

All this splendour, however, did not so dazzle us as to make us forget

that H.M. was treating us most slightingly, and our murmurs were not

spared. At length, the confidential young slave who had drawn the corks,

and who bore a bunch of keys, European and country made, and large

enough for half a dozen chatelaines, drew back the old brocade bed-

hanging. Thereupon H.M. appeared, encaged, like Clapperton’s portrait of

the Bornuese Sultan; or, to choose a comparison nearer home, like a

denizen of one of the larger dens in the Zoological Gardens. The shape

and appearance of the apartment was exactly that of Mr. Punch, magnified

perhaps a score of times; and it was a hole in the wall, under whose

outside verandah we were sitting. The loose box was full of women and

children, probably part of H.M.’s fine family. He is said to have twelve

young and fifty old wives, but lately he has ceased to be a father, and

is disposed, it is whispered, to resent any symptoms of impending

paternity. One of the spouses sat before him, fanning him with a circle

of hairy cowhide rudely set in a hairy handle, differing from the flag-

shaped instrument of the further east. She wore a strand of red coral,

and an indigo-dyed loin wrap, about which she was needlessly coquettish.

In the verandah, dangling over the Alake’s head, were two Moslem charm-

calabashes, covered apparently with many-coloured threads, white and

red, light blue and dark blue, with hangings of written characts and

talismans—their appearance was not familiar to me. The right arm of

majesty reposed upon a long bolster covered with crimson silk velvet;

and two mats, whose ends projected into the verandah, supported the

portly person, which was disposed in a free and easy way upon the dexter

side, with the limbs lazily drawn up. Upon the mat ends were placed a

huge leathern cowrie purse, not unlike the old French _gibecière_; the

royal stick, so enriched with beads that the material was invisible; an

artful animal—done in cotton, with a harlequin suit of beads—intended

for a dog, but resembling an armadillo; two chauris, or fly-flaps, of

white oxtail—H.M. held a third, which rejoiced in a handle of beads—and

a pair of unsheathed swords. One was a blade like the ancient falchion

with which the Osmanli captured Rhodes, only it had a brass head of some

beast, found possibly in heaven above, but certainly not on the earth

below. The other was an antique Toledo, much worn down, but still

bearing in distinct letters the noble Castilian motto, ‘No me trajas sin

razon;’ on the other side, ‘No me degaines sin honor.’ Weapons of this

kind often travel far: when the 18th Regiment, Bombay N. I., attacked

and defeated the Beni Bu Ali Bedouins near Maskat, they found amongst

the spoils, European swords, daggers, and gun-barrels, which had been

handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation.

Such was the setting that enclosed the picture. The picture itself was

as curious. Okukeno, Alake of Abeokuta, is said to be between sixty and

seventy years old, and his contemporary, Ogubonna, had been a balogun,

or high military officer, which implies an elderly man, during the Egba

dispersion, some forty-five years ago. His head, partially shaven, and

his beard, were grizzled; but judging from the plumpness of his arms,

and the absence of wrinkles, Dr. Eales and I concluded that he was not

much beyond fifty. He was a large and massive man, blind of one eye,

which imprudently encountered a stone when attempting to arrest a

faction fight; heavy featured, coarse, and unprepossessing. The loss of

his upper teeth, except the canines, which recalled the Wild Boar of

Ardennes’ fangs, caused a disagreeable indentation of the upper lip; the

lower incisors have been destroyed by snuff, and the tongue-tip

habitually protruded in a manner the reverse of kingly. Altogether he

suggested the idea of an old, very damaged and very rickety lion. His

dress was a tall fez-like cap of crimson velvet, disfigured by a pendant

fringe of small blue porcelain beads round the upper third.[80] A

necklace of red coral—pink is little valued by these lovers of the

gorgeous—and a double string of the same material round each wrist, were

the regal ornaments. This fondness for coral seems to have been borrowed

from Benin, where even in Bosman’s day it was a decoration of state. His

only body-cloth which appeared in view was a toga, of white watered

silk, striped with broad crimson bands; and it sat upon him

incongruously enough. His manner was as peculiar as his audience-chamber

and his appearance. He seemed more than three parts asleep, and we could

never decide whether the cause was old age, affectation of dignity, or

the two greenish glasses of strong waters placed before him on a silver

or silvered tray, now lead-coloured for want of plate-powder.

There are four tribes that have the right of giving what is called a

king to the Egba nation, viz., Ake, Oshelle, Olewu, and Aguru. His

Majesty of Abeokuta belongs to the first. His predecessor was that

Shodeke of Ake who rose to power amongst his countrymen in time to

‘consolidate the heterogeneous mass,’ and to prevent the old blood-feuds

breaking out afresh. Of the consolidator’s virtues all have something to

say. Europeans speak respectfully of him, and his people almost worship

him, as the Egyptians do Mohammed Ali Pasha—no great advantage to his

successor. Shodeke dying in 1845, his brother Someye, the Ibashorun,

premier, or commander-in-chief, was made temporary ruler of Abeokuta.

After his death there was a hard race between Okukeno and his coeval

Ogubonna. The former, however, had raised himself to the rank of sagbwa,

or dictator. Having followed for years the plough, or rather the hoe,

and at times acted as basket-maker—the Egbas are essentially farmers,

whilst the Ijebus are traders—he had acquired the art of seeming humble.

He had also the reputation of being poor—the usual affectation amongst

ambitious chiefs—whilst he was rich in land and slaves. Thus the ‘mild

and amiable sagbua,’ as a writer very wrongly calls him, had the cunning

to defeat his rival, and in 1854 he was invested with the title of

Alake, an honour never conferred upon an Egba prince since the great

dispersion of the people. But he is waxing old; his lieges are weary of

him; there is a report that he has made too much money, and signs appear

that his subjects will send him a quiet message to ‘go and sleep.’[81]

The Alake is usually of calm and quiet demeanour, capable, however, of

showing strong excitement, perfectly inveterate in vengeance, never

forgetting and never forgiving, ever plotting and biding his time—an

excellent thing in an African monarch. The following instance is given

of his patience under injurious treatment: When the waggish savage

Ogodippe, war chief of Ikijá—during the troubles at Lagos he sided with

Akitoye against Kosoko, killed several Brazilian traders, and kidnapped

a number of people—was reproved by the Alake, he arose, walked round

him, and insulted him as anointed king was never insulted before, ending

by asking if more was required. The Alake made no reply, but, _ultâ

mente reponens_, stored up the injury for future discussion, and waits,

like Saadi’s derwaysh, till he gets the insulter into his power.

When the curtain was raised, we were severally introduced by the

interpreter, Lagos Williams, and Commander Bedingfield shook hands with

the Alake. Our ‘mouf,’ as the linguist is here called, then opened the

‘palaver’ with sundry set and dreadfully sententious sentences; for

example, that the Oibo, or white man, had come up from Lagos at the

king’s request; that _vivâ voce_ was the best method of communication;

that he hoped all would be well, and so forth.

In reply the Alake hung down his head, and affected to doze, which, to

say the least, was not polite. No one had ever seen him so surly; many

of the chiefs, therefore, had refused to attend, saying that the Alake

must settle his own quarrels. The few then present attempted to

encourage him by ejaculating certain words in an abrupt metallic tone,

and one man, distinguished as a sycophant, sang out, ‘Ai-ku, don’t

die!’[82] in a strain which still haunts certain fibres of my brain. The

curtain was presently let down, and those outside began a new set of

outlandish noises. Some uttered blessings; others beat the left breast

with the right hand; whilst others, by joining the palms and sharply

drawing back the two smaller fingers of the left hand, produced a

snapping, which in this land signifies approval. All this apparatus was,

we were told, provoked by the solemn occasion of the great man taking

snuff. The ceremony was punctually repeated whenever the king drank, and

his glass was tasted preliminarily by the confidential slave with the

keys. The Egbas rob their rulers of as much of the reality, and leave

them as much of the unreality of rule—the pomp and ceremony—as possible.

This custom of concealing the king on such occasions appears to result

from a compound idea. In some African places, as at Loango, the person

of the ruler is so sacred that it is death to see him eat or drink. In

other parts it is supposed that a man is most obnoxious to witchcraft

when eating, drinking, and sleeping.

After an unconscionable time for digesting the last speech, there arose

an old man, whose wrinkled face and dwindled stomach showed fully his

sixty years. His dress was a white loin-cloth, a necklace of beads, and

a leather talisman, like a ‘grigri bag,’ with two gold or brass rings

sewn to its front. He was the Akpesi or Prince of Ikemta, one of the

Abeokutan townships, the only other man of the same rank being the Apesi

of Eruwan. The ‘king’s mouth,’ or, as he would be called further south,

‘ole parrot,’ is celebrated for eloquence and for a Sancho Panza-like

knowledge of proverbs, and readiness in the use of them. He is therefore

a useful man, but the whites declare that he is not to be trusted. He

presently stood up, and without once referring to his master, delivered

himself of a long speech, with frequent repetitions, the words ‘ki’

(signifying ‘salutation’) and ‘gi-di gi-di’ (‘very well’) being the most

ear-catching. At the peroration he expressed the gladness of the Alake

to see and welcome us at the capital; as for himself, he rubbed his bony

hands on his lean stomach to show the yearning of his own proper bowels

towards us. After which he sat down with the air of a man who can afford

to say Dixi.

Commander Bedingfield rejoined with many thanks and return salutations,

at the same time insinuating a wish that the ‘palaver’ might ‘come

up’—in other words, to do something more than talkee-talkee.

The ‘king’s mouth’ again arose, welcomed us with even more effusion than

before, repeated a prodigious number of ‘ki’s’ and ‘gi-di gi-di’s,’ and

concluding by hinting that this was the happiest day in Abeokuta’s

life—a day to drink, and chat, and make merry, leaving the future to

take care of itself, though he owned that it—the future—was the

properest time to work.

‘The captain’ accepted frankly and freely all offers of conviviality,

but ventured to represent that as the morrow would be Sunday—a _dies

non_—and as he could not afford to be long absent from his seat of

government, H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ it might be as well to settle upon the

next day but one for business purposes. Much, too, of the same kind.

The reply was again superlatively polite, agreeing to everything, except

to fixing a day, which would to a certain extent be derogating.

Then the carousing began. My companions thought it their duty to imbibe

some vile stuff in the shape of strong waters. I remembered Sir William

Temple, who, when sent on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands, kept

a friend to make head against the Dutchmen in beer. They were then

induced to swallow some of the ‘king’s sweet wine,’ and by their looks

it was apparent that they had not found it either Tokay or Lunel. All

the bottles were opened with a perfect disregardlessness of expense, the

Akpesi himself handing the tumblers of rum to the assembled crowd, each

of whom sipped, and sent on. When any one passed the presence, he

prostrated himself as ceremoniously as one kneels during presentation in

London. After the drinking, we wanted to depart—I especially, who, after

drawing out my sketch-book, had, at the request of those present, been

obliged to put it out of sight. We were delayed, however, by the non-

arrival of the king’s ‘dash,’ or present; and when it came it proved to

be a sheep, a goat, and a bag of cowries—the latter now worth about

eighteen shillings.[83] Three cases of excellent Hollands—far too good

for such mouths—were afterwards forwarded as a counter-gift, two to the

chiefs, and one to the Christian converts.

After expressing gratitude for the king’s liberality, we arose, shook

hands, or rather squeezed palms, with the great man, whose temper seemed

to have been mollified by his potations, and we left the hole—terribly

hot it was—without delay.

The audience did not impress me favourably. Having heard much of

progress and civilization at Abeokuta, I hardly expected to meet there

the poorest reception on the West African coast. Presently I remembered

that only twenty years ago the people of Egba had emerged from a low

state of barbarism, and had become acquainted with the outer world

through a few half-caste and European missionaries. Still my opinion is

that their social state—which is about equal to that of the Bhils and

Coolies of Guzerat—has been grossly misrepresented in England, and that

they have been petted into believing themselves far superior to what

they are.

The sulkiness of the old king, we afterwards heard, arose partly from a

correspondence which had lately taken place. ‘The captain,’ in a letter

which he addressed from the ‘Prometheus,’ Lagos, 3rd October, 1861,

introduced the following effective words touching a ‘gross insult

offered to her Majesty’s representative and to himself:’—

‘It seems to me that surely the Alake and chiefs cannot be aware of the

purport of their letter.

‘If they are so, I would ask them a question or two, and request they

will answer me.

‘Has England done anything for Abeokuta to entitle her representative to

offer his advice without being insulted?

‘Is Abeokuta so strong that she will never more require the assistance

of England, and that she can safely defy her power?

‘Does she consider it safe to pull the whiskers of a sleeping lion?’

This style, of course, appeared to the writer peculiarly impressive,

Oriental, likely to come home to the feelings of the Africans, whom he

knew so well. It wanted, however, the first recommendation of

style—intelligibility. The first two questions were queer enough.

Abeokuta, like other barbarous kingdoms, believes herself to be the

strongest and greatest nation in the world; she may own that England has

bigger canoes than she has, but she owns no belief in our superiority by

land.[84] The third was a perfect enigma—a conundrum would have been

more intelligible. Lions love the liberty of desert sands; they will not

venture into the damp, dark forests of Guinea,[85] and—zoological

gardens have not yet been introduced into Ake. So the simple Alake

inquired what is a lion? And some Sierra Leone ‘gentleman’ had read in a

book that it was the ‘king of beasts.’ ‘But what are his whiskers?’ It

was suggested that he probably wore a beard. ‘Then, what the dickens’—or

something to the same purport—asked poor Okukeno, justly indignant at

being taken for a low caste huntsman, ‘have I to do with plucking the

beast’s beard?’

It is, I confess, intolerably presumptuous in me to offer suggestions to

those who are so much better acquainted with the African than myself.

But in a few words, when the object is to _embrouiller_ an affair in

this part of the world, there is nothing better than a letter. On the

other hand, if a peaceful solution of the question at issue be required,

a trusty messenger, or, better still, a personal interview, is the one

thing needful. The only interpreters of letters will be either Sierra

Leone men, or perhaps white confidants. The chances are that both are

imperfectly acquainted with one of the two languages, and the certainty

is that both will have their own ends to serve.

After leaving the presence, we visited another place between the Alake’s

palace and the Ogbone Lodge of Ake—the state prison. It was then

unusually empty. The captives, mostly women and mere boys, sat under a

verandah, with their ankles fast in the stocks, which are a pair of

horse-shoe shaped iron staples fitting closely round the limb, and with

the points driven into a heavy wooden billet. Our object was to see an

African Gasparini, an Egba, who, after having been sold four times for

various crimes, had as often escaped, and returned to his own country.

At midnight of Thursday last he had hid himself in the house of the

agent Robbins, and after collecting his plunder in a blanket, he had sat

down to supper with the effrontery of a London ‘cracksman.’ The master

of the house came in, when his visitor seized his knife and stabbed two

of the servants before he could fairly be secured. This time, men say,

he may again escape; intercession will save the most notorious offender;

and effectually I did not hear of his execution. The punishment for

theft is here severe, as amongst the Moroccans; at first, the bastinado,

then mutilation, and lastly death. In Africa the penalty of robbery

ought to be heavier than that of murder, the former offence being

frightfully prevalent, whilst the latter is comparatively rare. A few

men hung for stealing even trifles would soon make an African settlement

safe from all attempts upon property—always provided that the doom is

certain, not problematical, as in the native states. At Abeokuta

executions are seldom public, and they follow conviction somewhat too

closely to please European ears. The work is usually done at night, in

the king’s compound; a peculiar sound of the drum at the time, and next

morning a fresh skull nailed to one of the trees opposite the palace,

are the sole announcers of the event. ‘Ilejo,’ the present Calcraft, is

said to strike the victim with a club, like the old Italian

_ammazatore_, and the head is then severed from the body.

After the first ‘palaver’ was duly concluded, we returned to the house

of Mr. Wike, and refreshed. Presently appeared a deputation sent by the

Christian converts, and headed by another Williams—the name is here as

common as in Wales—not an interpreter, but a Church Missionary

schoolmaster. The several orders of this hierarchy are, beginning from

the lowest, the Christian visitor; he goes about and flushes the game,

which is then handed for training and reclaiming to the schoolmaster and

the catechist—natives all. Above them begins the white rule of deacons

and priests. This Williams had been acting secretary to the Alake, and

in that capacity he had addressed to the acting governor of Lagos a

letter full of low, puerile impertinence, which was naturally supposed

to express the bile and venom of the breed. Mr. M‘Coskry, by

systematically denouncing slavery, and by taking more active measures,

had incurred all the enmity of these recaptives. But Williams showed a

tolerable reputation; he was not known to feel any special grudge

against the Acting Governor; he was a schoolmaster, and therefore could

hardly be expected to write idiomatic English; and lastly, it was

evident, even by his conversation, that a little learning had made him

mad, like most of his compatriots, in the way of fine words. So when

Williams showed due contrition, his error was set down to the score of

ignorance, and he was dismissed with Lord M——’s ‘short answer.’

Horses were brought to us for sale. I saw nothing at Abeokuta but the

poorest ponies, twelve hands or so high, neatly enough made, but liable

to disease, and uncommonly vicious. One, however, was a Borneo horse,

with the high withers that characterize the breed, and the lowest price

was set down at twenty-eight bags (about twenty-five pounds), in a

country where money is worth four times as much as in Europe. The

animal, moreover, was miserably thin, and the experienced determined

that something must be wrong, or that it would not have been for sale.

Good horses used to be brought down the country from Yoruba; since the

war, however, the Iloris and Ibadans, like Abbas Pasha of Egypt, have

laid an embargo and a prohibitory duty upon exporting them. Even an

Englishman would be compelled to obtain permission from the chief. The

war has greatly raised the price of beasts; they are in all about six

hundred, and the best have been sent to the camp. Yet the warriors on

both sides are ignorant of the simplest forms of cavalry, and this arm,

if introduced, would soon decide the fortunes of the field.

Ponies formerly cost two bags, or thirty-six shillings. The same now

sell for fifteen to twenty bags; even a colt of known name will fetch

that price. A tolerable nag for a European may be bought for thirty

bags; the sum rises to two hundred dollars where size is required—as in

the Arab, a hand’s height makes an enormous difference—and in fancy

cases three hundred dollars would be asked. They are much valued, and

require the greatest care in these hot, damp regions. Their food is

Guinea corn and grass, cut and brought in by the boys; the head ‘syce’

selects the food, and bathes and grooms his beast. Every day, or every

second day, it has a handful of kaón, an impure saltpetre—in Sierra

Leone called lubi—and, by way of anthelmintic, a quantity of spices,

recalling the celebrated East Indian nostrum, _battísí_. Before going to

war the animal is prepared by drugs for a constipation which will last

four days, and thus conceal the trail from the enemy. The trappings are

rough and heavy, huge demi-piques of morocco leather, with shovel-shaped

iron stirrups, sharp at the corners, and points projecting, by way of

spur. The bridle has the cruel ring-bit of the Arab Bedouin, and twisted

leather thongs, forming a whip at the end. Poitrail and crupper are not

wanting, and a variety of ropes and tethers, charms and talismans, are

bound round the neck. The animals, however, are not shod.

This evening, as on the previous, we heard loud shouts, broken by an

occasional musket-shot, and accompanied by the usual tom-tom. A large

crowd of _badauds_ and _flaneurs_ stood or squatted at the gate. They

were celebrating the obsequies of the Akpena or messenger of Ijemma, a

high official who had lately died, not without strong suspicions of

poison. He had been engaged in a quarrel with his superior, the

Ibashorum of his town. The people found business at a stand-still; they

therefore sent to the less useful personage—the messenger—their

compliments, and a humble request that he would ‘go to sleep.’ So to

sleep he went. What a charming way of settling the ridiculous squabbles

and the injurious jealousies of rival and hostile departments and

_ministères_! Am I not justified in suggesting to the civilized peoples

of the world so natty a mode of preventing private feeling from

interfering, as it now so fatally often does, with public duty?

[Footnote 46: ‘Ogubonna’s’ family, for instance, have three small

squares of blue tattoo upon each cheek, combined with the three Egba

cuts.]

[Footnote 47: Capt. John Adams (pp. 133, 134) well describes this

people:—‘A class of Heebos (the Ibo or Eboe, whose chief town is Abo, at

the head of the Nigerian Delta), called Breeche, and whom many have very

erroneously considered to be a distinct nation, masters of slave-ships

have always had a strong aversion to purchase, because the impression

made on their minds, by their degraded situation, was rendered more

galling and permanent from the exalted rank which they occupied in their

own country, and which was thought to have a very unfavourable influence

on their shipmates and countrymen in misfortune.

‘Breeche, in the Heebo language, signifies “gentleman,” or the eldest

son of one, and who is not allowed to perform, in his own country, any

menial office. He inherits at his father’s death all his slaves, and has

the absolute control over the wives and children which he has left

behind him. Before attaining the age of manhood his forehead is

scarified, and the skin brought down from the hair to the eyebrows, so

as to form a line of indurated skin from one temple to the other. This

peculiar mark is distinctive of his rank, the ordinary mark of the Heebo

being formed by numerous perpendicular incisions in each temple, as if

the operation of cupping had been often performed.’]

[Footnote 48: Burukú causes fits, and kills by small-pox—distinctly an

East Indian idea.]

[Footnote 49: Some authors state that the gyri and sulci are shallow and

infirm, but what may be their opportunities of autopsy I know not.]

[Footnote 50: Phrenologically speaking, I believe this denotes either

great destructiveness, or power of abstaining from food, whereas the

Egbas are remarkable for neither.]

[Footnote 51: A man with a theory once accounted to me for the

superiority of the negro’s teeth, by his never drinking anything hotter

than at blood heat. A pot of ekko (gruel) would rather have startled

him; and generally, the semi-civilized African is as fond of heated

aliments as the European. But the barbarian, having no dentist, takes

more care of his teeth; hence the occasional difference.]

[Footnote 52: I can hardly, however, rely upon the case quoted by Dr.

Clarke, of Sierra Leone (p. 118), viz., that the stimulus of suckling an

orphan monkey caused a lacteal flow from the breasts of a virgin

negress; yet there is no reason for disbelieving the possibility.

Embrocations of virgin’s milk are not uncommon in the Asiatic and the

African pharmacopœia.]

[Footnote 53: The _fanatici_ for the Turkish bath, who contend that

perspiration makes the ploughman cleaner than the prince, are apt to

forget this part of the process.]

[Footnote 54: Also written ‘Oku’ and ‘Aiku,’ properly ‘Ai-ku,’ from _ai_

‘negative,’ and _ku_ ‘to die.’ ‘Aiku’ is a noun, signifying

‘immortality,’ or, rather, ‘unquenchableness.’ ‘Aku’ is also a noun,

signifying a salutation.]

[Footnote 55: The inverted form of blessing would perhaps be more

intelligible. The Somalis know our men as ‘Godam,’ and the Spaniards

named their mustachios, from a favourite military oath, ‘bigotes.’]

[Footnote 56: Captain John Adams (p. 92, &c.) gives a long notice of the

Hios—he seems to have been hard on the letter _h_—and their king. He

places the country between Hausa and Dahome, hardly believing that its

army is 100,000 men, but declaring that its influence extends to the sea

by way of Ardrah.]

[Footnote 57: The maps usually write it ‘Eyeo.’ It must not be

confounded with Oyo, in Yoruba Proper, lying one degree N.N.E. (N. lat.

8°) of Abeokuta.]

[Footnote 58: My friend Dr. Arnott, a surgeon in one of the East Indian

regiments, showed me what appeared to be a true syphilitic sore,

communicated to his horse, doubtless, by some native so afflicted.]

[Footnote 59: Baddahun, usually written Badohong, was his princely name;

Glele, or Gleli (the jawbone), is one of his strong names.]

[Footnote 60: Others say 8000 men and 4000 women, which is more likely.]

[Footnote 61: According to Mr. Freeman, a missionary, who has frequently

visited Abome and Komasi, Gezo of Dahome was one of the greatest of

African kings. He reigned some thirty-five years, and in 1858 died of

fever. When Mr. Duncan—the Life-Guardsman—was sent to him as vice-

consul, he was much pleased with the size of the person; but after a

fortnight or so, he inquired of a friend why the King of England ‘did

not send him a man with a head.’]

[Footnote 62: Much nonsense is afloat touching these ‘Amazons.’ They are

simply, like the Urdubegani of the Deccan and of other Asiatic courts,

the slaves of the palace organized as royal property, and weaponed by

the late King Gezo—who feared treason from the men. Most of them are

women taken in adultery or too shrewish to live with their husbands, who

‘dash’ them to the king, instead of killing them. Once, however, royal

slaves they become vestals. They are bound, like the female priests of

Grewhe, under penalty of death, to chastity and celibacy, and this

naturally communicates a certain amount of ferocity to their

minds—‘horrors’ are, with the eunuch, their succedaneum for love. Upon

this subject I am tempted to quote a few lines from Captain John Adams

(p. 74), who says of Dahome: ‘One of the conditions by which a female is

admitted into the order of priesthood, is that of leading a life of

celibacy, and renouncing the pleasures of the world; and but few are

admitted to enter it at all; for during a residence of many months at

Grewhe, one ceremony only of this kind was performed, at which I was

present.

‘There is a striking similarity in the conditions imposed on those poor

deluded African women who are admitted into the priesthood, and many of

those nuns who in Catholic Europe are forced to take the veil; only the

former are instruments in the hands of fraud and oppression, while the

others are too often the victims of domestic tyranny and ambition. But

the lot of the savage African is far superior to that of the civilized

European. For the former, notwithstanding the restraints imposed on her,

can enjoy the sweets of personal liberty, and has some scope for the

play of her natural affections; whereas the latter is shut within the

gloomy walls of a prison, where her short life is passed away in vain

regret, and in the society of immolated beings who are as melancholy and

desponding as herself.’

To which we may add, another advantage to the African woman, that her

feelings, like those of barbarians and the uncivilized generally, are by

no means so highly developed as amongst Europeans. A scanty diet, a life

of toil, and the petty cares of domestic duties, blunt, if they do not

destroy, the _besoin d’amour_. She is not even—

‘Commanded

By such poor passion as the maid that milks,

And does the meanest chares.’

Female soldiery, as a rule, is a failure; or rather, like female labour

in all departments of industry, it produces a worse article at a cheaper

rate. The Amazons, I believe, are no exception. They cannot be estimated

at more than 2000, although many travellers—Dalziell, Cruickshanks,

Winniett, Duncan, and Forbes—have raised the number to 4000, and even

6000. In the case of Messrs. Duncan and Forbes, the Amazons were marched

round the palace yard, in at one and out at the other gate, like the

commissariat cattle in Afghanistan. Captain John Adams (p. 93) mentions

the same manœuvre on the part of the King of Hio (Yoruba), adding, ‘This

was a political stratagem that would hardly have been expected from an

African savage.’]

[Footnote 63: It is, however, only fair to the Amazons to state, that

Mr. Bowen, on the day after the battle, saw several hundreds of them

lying dead on the field, where they had fought with great fury.

Commander Forbes, on the other hand (vol. i., p. 81), says of the

Dahoman army, ‘These soldiers, being yearly at war, have gained a fame

that, if fairly tried, would soon be found wanting.’]

[Footnote 64: It is a dire insult to refuse the invitation of an African

king to visit his capital. Captain John Adams (p. 63, &c.) tells how

seven English seamen, cast ashore four or five miles from ‘Grewhe,’ were

sent up ninety miles to the king at Agbome. One man, affecting lameness

to escape the journey, ‘had his hands and feet tied together, and a pole

introduced between them, and in this way they were going to Abomey;

when, to avoid so painful an alternative, he found the use of his limbs,

and marched along with his unfortunate companions.’ They seem all to

have been well treated at the capital. The king tried, by promises and

threats, to persuade the man who had affected lameness to stay with him.

But when the fellow answered that, ‘“if his shipmates went away without

him he would destroy himself,” the king seemed to feel uneasy at this,

and consulted one of his principal men, who advised him to permit the

man to return with his companions, which was granted.’]

[Footnote 65: This was written in 1861. At present (Feb. 1863) we hear

that Commodore Wilmot, Captain Luce, and Dr. Haran have set out on a

journey to Agbome, where I may venture to predict they will be received

as honoured guests.]

[Footnote 66: The palm-kernel oil, which is so fast becoming an

important article of traffic, is of two kinds. The white oil is that

expressed from the kernel after it has been cracked. The black oil is

that which drips through the husk when toasted with the kernel inside.

This is done to save labour. As yet no efficient crusher has been

invented, consequently every kernel must be broken by manual labour.

When machinery shall be invented, the trade will assume a new standing.

It is now worth 50_l._ per ton.]

[Footnote 67: One head of cowries, = 1_s._ 9_d._, here keeps a man for a

week.]

[Footnote 68: So travellers from Badagry pass the first night at Mo, a

place not far distant from the sea.]

[Footnote 69: It is almost as complicated as the Hindu’s curry, though

far inferior in delicacy of taste. The material is fish, flesh, and

boiled fowl, with yam or koko, flavoured with onions or shalots, ground

cocoa-nut, malaguetta and other peppers, red and green okros or occros

(_Hibiscus esculentus_) in large quantities, and lastly, refined palm

oil, which gives the _goût_. In black man’s palaver sauce they insert

‘affitti’ or ‘ogiri,’ a condiment about as aromatic as bad asafœtida.]

[Footnote 70: Of this valuable nut more hereafter.]

[Footnote 71: They are oleaginous, and produced by a gourd one to two

feet long, growing upon a climber.]

[Footnote 72: The ‘pombo’ of Eastern Africa. Maize is here macerated for

three days, till germination takes place. It is then spread on leaves

for fermentation, sun-dried on mats, and bruised. Mixed with cold water,

in a pot, it is well stirred for two hours, and boiled for twenty-four

hours; on the next day it is again boiled, and afterwards strained,

cooled, and stored in calabashes.]

[Footnote 73: This is Anglo-Africa for cow’s milk.]

[Footnote 74: The mango seems to have been known here of old.]

[Footnote 75: Tolerable native iron is brought from the northern

country.]

[Footnote 76: Copper is said to be found in the mountains to the east of

Abeokuta.]

[Footnote 77: There is also an independent expletive—‘Small-pox!’

ejaculated as if the speaker believed in the Sitla Devi, or the small-

pox goddess of India. Yet the disease is rarely fatal in these parts, as

on the sea-board west of and about Lagos.]

[Footnote 78: ‘A singular custom prevails here (Ardrah), that of

anointing, occasionally, the interior walls of houses with fresh cow-

dung; a useful practice, for it dries quickly, has by no means an

unpleasant smell, and fills up crevices which would otherwise be

tenanted by noxious and troublesome insects.’—(Captain John Adams, p.

81.)]

[Footnote 79: In these lands, ‘nigger’ always means a slave.]

[Footnote 80: Shodeke, concerning whom more anon, wore, we are told by

Mr. T. B. Freeman, a scarlet cloth coat and a large blue tassel.]

[Footnote 81: Which is the polite way of directing him to retire to his

harem, and then and there to poison himself, unless he wishes a worse

fate. This constitutional proceeding is the Harikari, or ‘happy release’

of the Japanese, and in practice is not unknown in Europe. In Africa,

hasty deposition is checked, however, by the custom of slaying openly,

or secretly, the high officer called the ‘king’s father,’ and other

great chiefs, to meet him in Orun or Hades. Since the above was written

the Alake died on the 1st September, 1862.]

[Footnote 82: Mr. Hughes thought the word was ‘Ekun’ (a leopard), one of

the king’s strong names, but he was in error.]

[Footnote 83: In 1863 it has diminished to fifteen shillings.]

[Footnote 84: I have repeatedly heard the same assertion from the lips

of the cowardly Krumen.]

[Footnote 85: The king of beasts is found above Macarthy’s Island, in

the Gambia River, and Lander mentions him in Barba and Upper Yoruba. Mr.

Bowen ignores his existence east of the Ogun River.]

CHAPTER IV.

TOUCHING MATTERS RELIGIOUS AT ABEOKUTA.

The rains had not yet ended, and the mornings were damp and misty,

whilst a worse than English fog moved for hours after sunrise through

the cloudy air. Captain Parry found the heat uncomfortable at 23° (Fah.)

above zero; the Abeokutans shuddered with cold when the mercury showed

65°.

On such a morning, accompanied by the boy Olufanobbi, alias Robert

Fisher, Egba, Ogbone, Christian convert, and printer’s devil in the

Church Missionary establishment at the salary of four dollars per

mensem, I sallied forth to inspect the father of the settlement, the

Rock Olumo.

Our route lay to the west, with a little northing, along a rough road,

and the town was at this hour one vast latrine. The perfume from the

bush must not be described. The men, and even the women, again showed a

wonderful absence of all that with us goes by the name of decorum. As on

the Gold Coast, the sable fair ones bathe publicly _in purissimis_.[86]

There is not a public woman in the town, which some, as forgotten

Mandeville, say speaks well, and others badly, for private morality; and

Mr. Bowen only met one bastard. As in Ashanti, here, even in the highest

ranks, that form of the social evil known to civilization, especially

trans-Atlantic, as the ‘panel dodge,’ is said to be sometimes practised.

The wives of the highest chiefs will bring on intrigues with young men,

and betray them to the husbands, who either get their money or sell

them. In shaking hands, the emphatic gesture is to touch the lady’s palm

with the dexter index; but the amourist risks, if unlucky enough to

displease, a seat upon the stool of repentance, and an _exposé_ to

public ridicule.

The wells lying by the paths were shallow pits; rain-water arrested by

tenacious potters’ clay a few feet below the surface. Where they are

private property, women pay to the owner two to three cowries per

potful, or one cent for fifty gallons. The water is good, but requires

cooling; the bucket is half a calabash-gourd, lashed to strings, and

requiring an hour to fill a large vessel. Time, however, is of little

value in these regions, and the people love to gossip round their

meeting-place, the well. I need hardly point out how unwholesome these

sites are. Concealed water, and a hot, dry surface, must produce the

most deadly miasma.[87]

On the road we passed by the five great crafts of Abeokuta—the

blacksmith, the carpenter, the weaver, the dyer, and the potter. I

turned in to inspect their several workshops, and to see their

appliances, which merit description on account of their similarity to,

or rather identity with, those in the distant centre, the east and the

south. By a collection from the works of different travellers in the

remotest parts of the dark Continent, it would methinks be easy to prove

a close connection in ancient times between nations and peoples now

ignoring one another’s existence. Indeed, so exactly the same are many

of the articles—the bellows, for instance—and so artificial, forbidding

the idea of an instinctive invention, that one almost suspects a common

centre to all the races amongst whom they are common.

The blacksmith, who is also goldsmith, silversmith, copper-worker, and

tinman, sits under an open shed of leaf-mats. His fire is of palm-nut

husks—as good as charcoal. His bellows is that of ancient Egypt and

Greece, and is described by every African traveller, from Mungo Park

downwards; from Unyamwezi to the lands of the Ovampo. Two bags of rough

goatskin are secured in troughs cut out of a single piece of wood. The

upper part of each skin has a handle, or stick, two feet long, so that

it can be worked by one standing or sitting. There is an earthen pipe

leading from the wooden pipe which projects from each trough, and the

junction is not air-tight. The handles are raised alternately by the

blower; consequently, when one ‘follis’ receives air, the other ejects

it. The forge is, like that of the Gold Coast, a perpendicular screen of

dried clay, through which the nozzles of the bellows pass, supplying a

regular blast; the larger anvil is a stone, and the smaller a lump of

iron. The craftsman has spindles for drilling, and rough files, with a

better sort from Europe, which he keeps carefully wrapped up in greasy

rag. His native hammers, pincers, and hooks are exceedingly artless

tools. He makes little clay crucibles for melting hard metals; puts the

material in without flux; buries it in the glowing husks, and casts it

into bars by means of an oiled mould. He buys a kind of carbonized iron

from the interior, and he forges from it rude keys, chains and staples,

swords and knives, sickles and hoes, inserted in large clumsy handles,

and adzes and axes two inches wide, with the iron driven through the

wooden handle as it should be, not the wood driven through the iron.[88]

The repairing of a ‘long Dane,’ or buccaneer gun, is about the measure

of his knowledge; he has never learned to temper iron, and even when

running leaden plugs for bullets, he loses half the material by not

stirring a little grease with the melted metal, and removing the dross

with his knife.

The carpenter is a century behind the blacksmith, probably because every

man in these regions can use an axe without professional aid. He has an

adze and splitting wedges, but neither hooks nor saws. He must hold the

wood with hand or foot, and when making a plank, he must hack away the

rest of the tree-trunk. His industry is confined to doors and shutters,

bowls, and mortars for pounding grain.

Men in Abeokuta, as in ancient Egypt, weave, which the old Greek held to

be an effeminate occupation; they are also the best, if not the only,

needle-workers. The cotton, cleared of seed by an iron cylinder rolling

on a block of wood, and bow-whipped as in India, is spun into yarn-balls

by means of the old distaff, and is sold every evening in the market.

The weaver employs his mornings in winding off the portion which he will

require for the day. The loom, standing under the usual open shed,

differs little from the horizontal structure of Eastern and Central

Africa. Like the bellows, the principle extends throughout the

continent. It is perpendicular, as in ancient Egypt, where, however,

both forms were used. A framework of sticks, about four feet high, with

eighteen inches of extreme breadth, is planted in the ground. The twist

for the warp is passed over the upper and under the lower connecting

bar, and the thread for the weft or woof is shot between with a shuttle

and a ‘sley,’ here called ‘assá,’ a reed used to beat the woof tight. It

is a rude implement, and makes narrow strips of ‘tree-wool’ cloth, six

inches or so wide, which, to form a garment, must be sewn together.

Dyeing with indigo is done by women, much in the way described by Mungo

Park amongst the Mandengas. It produces a beautiful tint, with a finer

purple gloss than the Indian can show, and the people colour thread with

every tinge, from the lightest blue to what closely approaches black.

Freshly-pounded leaves—the dry are rarely used—are placed in an earthen

pot till it is half full; it is then filled with a lye prepared from the

potash of various wood ashes. After soaking for some days, till

fermentation throws up an iridescent scum—at this time is the chief

danger of failure—it is ready for use. The cloth, wetted in cold water,

and wrung out, is placed in it for two hours, sun-dried by hanging

across a pole, beaten with a stick, washed in water to remove

impurities, again wrung out, and returned to the pot. No mordant is

used; the operation is repeated ten or twelve times during four days,

when the dye becomes permanent.

The potter is also a woman. The earthenware is a very poor article,

better than that of Lagos and Ikoradu, but far inferior to the produce

of Wari. The reddish clay is brought from a place about two and a half

miles to the north-east of the city. The wheel being unknown, it is

fashioned by hand, and so neatly that strangers will hardly believe it.

Being but half burned, it seldom lasts. This handicraft is depressed by

the competition of the calabash-maker. The gourd, a congener to the

pumpkin, varies in size from a snuff-box to a milk-churn. When the fruit

ripens, a hole is made in the smaller end, and the air decays the pulp,

leaving the hard rind intact. When a lid is wanted, the fruit is sliced

off on a plane, one-third from the smaller end. It is then neatly cut

and carved with a hand-knife, and this ‘ornamental engraving’[89] is

said to be a lucrative trade. The cost of a good article is about

twenty-five strings, or one shilling. The manufacture of glass is

unknown in Yoruba; it is, however, if native accounts are to be

believed, at Nupe, and especially at Rabba, once the capital of that

interesting region.

About half way I saw a mosque—an oblong hut, with blackened walls, and a

thatched roof of mat and leaves; it fronted Meccah pretty correctly. The

door was closed, and all my Arabic could not procure me admission,

although a talib—a ‘scholar,’ who should have known better—was lying

under the verandah, learning _memoriter_ the last verslets of that

beautiful and most edifying chapter, the Ya Sín. A little beyond, we

passed an Ogbone lodge, remarkable only for its painted and carved door,

upon which distinct symbols of Phallic worship—not disguised as in Egypt

by the sacred Tau—appeared in natural size. A little beyond was a large

slab of gneiss, which bore upon its summit what appeared to be the trace

of ichnites; a little inquiry proved them to be the work of man—the

hollowness being formed by pounding and grinding.

After about a mile and a half of up and down, sand and boulder, midden

and offal, we ascended a short steep pitch, and stood near and opposite

the Rock Olumo. Surmounting an abrupt hill, with falls on all sides, it

is a conspicuous landmark in the scenery. It has the honour of giving a

name to the city clustering at its feet, Abe-okuta ‘(the town)

Underneath the rock,’ by us called Understone. The Builder—for such is

the meaning of its name—is some two hundred yards in length, divided

about midway by a fissure that affords an easy ascent, and overhanging

on all sides except the north, where a neighbouring tree acts as a

natural ladder. Many have mounted to the summit, and, according to my

informants, a cannon has been fired there. On another occasion, a small

party climbed it with Commander Bedingfield, in jack-boots, _viâ_ the

tree. I confess that, with the view of keeping legs and ankles unbroken

until after the ascent of the Camaroons Mountains, this feat did not

appear advisable. It has been dedicated to Oro. No one objects, however,

to strangers taking liberties there, although it has been tabooed to the

people for fear of accidents. Cavern, as described in books, there is

none. The projecting sides, however, form tall, deep ledges, beneath

which people can find shelter; and under the eastern side dwarf walls of

red clay have converted it into troglodyte abodes. Besides human bipeds,

the swallows flock and nest there in numbers.

Walking round to the left side, which I should advise future travellers

to avoid, I saw the point of view chosen as a frontispiece to ‘Sunrise

within the Tropics.’ Either the amateur artist or his engraver has

succeeded in making it as unlike reality as possible. The view, however,

is quite in character with the book itself, essentially Anglo-African,

and well fitted for the delectation of the Hall, once more appropriately

known as Exeter Change. The right-hand foreground is adorned with the

customary clump of typical palm-trees and aloes, and a group of natives,

white men drawn black, most European in bearing and civilized in

gesture, reminding us of our ‘own artist’ in the ‘Illustrated News,’

who, with praiseworthy catholicity of art, makes as little possible

distinction between humanity in its opposite hemispheres. Below lies the

town, neat, rural, pretty, white-walled and red-tiled, built with all

the symmetry of Clapham, and backed by a glorious lake-like river with

little green islets—and, doubtless, eel-pie houses;—whilst in the

distance a fair expanse of rolling hills, green and blue, fills up the

scene.

Let me describe what I saw and sketched. Beyond the barren mass of stern

grey stone—filthily dirty—which afforded me a standing-place, there was

a perpendicular drop of some fifty feet, disclosing part of the city

below and in front. It was a grisly mass of rusty thatching and dull

red-clay wall, with narrow winding lanes and irregular open spaces, a

ragged tree rising here and there. The only comparison which the scene

suggested was that of a huge anthill scattered over with dead leaves and

dwarf shrubs. On the left was a high tongue of land, with top sinking

towards the foreground; it supports Bagura, one of the most populous

townships; and here the houses that crowd one another prevent the ground

from being seen. It is separated by a stony stream-bed, the usual fence

in this part of Africa, from the neighbouring settlements, Ikereku and

Ikijá, Iláwo and Ikporo. In the distance is a narrow line representing

the Ogun River above the rapids, and the horizon is shut in by rising

ground which appears barren and sterile. In the magnificence of its

distances Abeokuta greatly resembles Washington, but there the

similarity ends. The main peculiarity of the scene is the shape of the

houses—large irregular squares, with huge thatches raised high at the

angles to throw off the rain. There are but two which attract the eye by

superiority of size, viz., those of the late Ogobonna, and of the

waggish savage Ogodippe.

Olumo, however, is classic ground in these regions, the Arg, the

Capitolium of the Egba race, the Rock against which the gates of Ibadan

have not yet prevailed. It was the _point de réunion_ of the people of

Egba, who, about 1820-1822, had been scattered to the winds by intestine

tumults and the fury of their enemies.[90] Some thirty-five or forty

years ago, say in 1825, a few of the better sort, flying from their new

masters, took refuge under ‘the Builder,’ where, it is said, they found

robbers—probably their own countrymen—who had preceded them. As in

classic Rome, the sanctuary was joined by other fugitives and villains.

When the new-comers found themselves strong enough, they drove out the

original bandits, and then laid the foundations of a city which, after

Olumo, they called Abeokuta. It grew apace. In memory of their former

settlements, they gave to the new seats the names of their ancient

townships—Ake, for instance, was the old capital of Egba-land in the

days when it was a province of Yoruba—and they conferred upon their

military and civil chiefs titles familiar to their ears in olden times.

They hung up their harps by the side of Olumo, and holding the soil to

be hard and sterile, they sighed for a return to the lands flowing with

milk and honey.[91]

Presently Abeokuta became a fenced city, and was girt with a moat and a

clay wall, after the approved fashion of African fortification. Its

population waxed numerous. Mr. T. B. Freeman, in 1842, estimated it to

contain forty-five thousand souls. In 1858, Mr. Bowen gave it eighty

thousand: more modern travellers have raised the number to one hundred

thousand; and, looking at the extent and the thickness of the

population, I should not wonder if, when the soldiers return from the

Ibadan war, it was found to contain one hundred and fifty thousand

souls, nearly equal to the entire population of redoubted Dahome. It

contains the remnants of some one hundred and fifty townships—some say

one hundred, but they diminish for fear of exaggeration, and others, too

sanguine, raise it to two hundred and eighty-five—which all retain their

own peculiar institutions. The constitution, in fact, is that of a

federal republic under a perpetual president.[92]

The Abeokutans still aspire to regain the lands of their forefathers,

and they swear that they will come to their own again. I doubt the

probability of their so doing. The weak outlying states of El Islam,

Ilori, for instance—now the last ripple of the mighty wave urged

southwards by an irresistible current—though at present unable to sweep

away the barriers of Paganism, is strong enough to resist any

encroachments. And the day will come when the Law of the Prophet shall

rule throughout the lands, when Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands

unto Allah, and shall thus rise to her highest point of civilization.

Meanwhile, those who support Abeokuta are but shoring up a falling wall.

The only thing they can say is that, like Turkey, she may take some time

to fall: on the other hand, when the Moslems succeed to the land, they

will find it rich in cotton and palm oil.

The sun having lost his strength, I proceeded, in company with Mr.

Hughes, a thoroughly Yorubanized Englishman, to ascend the rocks of Ake,

the hill immediately behind the Church Missionary compound. The path led

along the burial-ground and near a foul wet hole, whence the clay for

building houses had been excavated. Ascending, we remarked an Oro-, or

wild mango-tree,[93] whose trunk had been gashed apparently for the

purpose of letting out the turpentine. After losing our way in the thick

grass—it should be kept clear for the benefit of those who desire a

breath of fresh air—we fell into sundry lanes bordered by the

unwholesome tiglium, whose odour after sunset denotes its dangerous

qualities. Passing through a blocked-up gap in a hedge, we entered a

field of tobacco; the herb which Niwt named and which Thevet ought to

have named—an analogy of Colon and Amerigo—grows wild in the streets of

Lagos and Abeokuta: the people, however, prefer to import it from the

Brazils. The land has usually been considered too worn out to support so

exhausting a crop; in places, however, it flourishes. The people have

learned to top the plants, and the American missionaries have taught

them to cure it by hanging the leaves for a day or two in bunches to

dry, and then piling up and sweating it for two or three days. It thus

becomes tolerable smoking, with a little Cavendish or gold-leaf by way

of ‘kitchen’ to its mildness, and the highest price is about 5_d._ per

pound. The people, however, are not great smokers. Both sexes and all

ages prefer a pinch of natronized snuff between the lower lip and the

gums—in fact, where it can best excite the salivary glands. Pure snuff

is also made, and though a little deficient in flavour, it is by no

means despicable. The favourite snuff-box is a hollowed hard-shelled

fruit called ‘agbar.’ Curious to say, these Africans have not learned

the use of smoking or eating datura, a poison which overruns the land,

and I saw no bhang growing in the country.

Ascending a dwarf slope of koko field, we clambered up some rocks, and

reached a place where Egugun, literally ‘Bones,’ is worshipped. The king

of ghosts here receives sacrifice in honour of the manes of the ancestor

in whose behalf the offering is made—it is in fact an African prayer for

the dead. The place shows only a dwarf enclosure of red clay walls,

whose roof is a gneiss boulder resembling Olumo. It was blackened with

smoke, and as we perched there to rest we were curiously inspected from

below by the meddlesome Christian populace of Wasimi.