The extensive Bongo village, in which we were halting and where
Nassar proposed to us a closer study of the manners and customs of
the female inhabitants of the country, is situated close to
Daggondoûd, an important seriba.
On our way we asked our guide about the individual to whose dwelling
we were going. According to Nassar, he was formerly a powerful chief,
but his village had been burnt, and his fields devastated by the
Dinkas and Nubians. Three-fourths of his subjects had fled, and he
was now living a quiet, retired life, so as not to attract the
attention of his neighbours, and, to a certain extent, his masters,
in the seriba. Nassar had informed him of our desire to see something
of the interior economy of his household, and he had acquiesced in
the hope of getting some presents from us.
These, and other details concerning the Bongo tribe generally,
occupied our attention until we arrived at the habitation of the
chief, who received us in the outer room of the house, a sort of
unfurnished vestibule or antechamber, the walls of which were
completely covered with trophies and warlike weapons. Here were hung
lance-heads of exquisite native workmanship, and there was seen the
dangabor, a series of accumulated rings, most artistically made, and
forming an armlet as flexible as can well be conceived. In another
place arrows were interspersed amongst elephants' tusks, on which
varied designs were traced, for the Bongo, besides being skilled in
the manipulation of iron, shows also a great aptitude for sculpture.
The ceiling was ornamented with bows, the skins of beasts, and drums
hollowed out of the trunks of the tamarind tree.
Our host compelled us to admire everything; he did not omit a single
detail, but unfolded all his treasures with an air of complacency, as
much as to say—"There! you have never seen anything like that, either
amongst my neighbours, or in your own country." In his eyes we were
evidently merely a set of savages, and he looked upon himself as the
sole representative, in his country, of art and industry.
At length he pulled aside the skins which served as curtains, and
introduced us to his drawing-room, carpeted with reed-grass. All
around this apartment were symmetrically arranged small wooden
stools, each made out of a single block of wood, called _hegbas_.
Although the room was empty of occupants, it evidently belonged to
the ladies of the establishment, for the males of the Bongo tribe
despise seats, and only allow them to be made use of by women and
children. Above these stools, and hanging from the walls by carved
pegs of wood, were round boxes containing flour, calabashes filled
with beer made from sorghum, and called _leghuy_, and large bamboo
baskets full of grain.
The sight of these viands quite startled Miss Poles.
"Good Heavens!" she exclaimed in a tone of voice in which amusement
and alarm were very comically blended, "is our host going to ask us
to dinner?"
Our companion's alarm was, to a certain extent, natural, seeing that
the Bongos, who live on the confines of a district where we were
destined soon to see cannibalism in full swing, are themselves by no
means delicate in their eating. No description of animal food,
whatever may be its state of decomposition, comes amiss to them,
vultures, even when the term carrion might more properly be applied
to them, worms, maggots, and scorpions being amongst their standing
dishes. Nothing sickens them, nothing is revolting to their sense
either of taste or smell.
Miss Poles was soon reassured, as there was no intention on the part
of the chief to invite us to partake of his hospitality. He was
merely in compliance with our expressed wish, about to present to us
his three lawful wives, but, in their position as the spouses of a
once powerful personage, it was essential that they should appear
surrounded with a certain amount of _prestige_. Our host clapped his
hands, and his private orchestra, for the Bongo is music mad, made
its triumphal entry.
This orchestra consisted of four young slave girls, furnished with
rude instruments. One had in her hand a species of guitar; the
second, an empty calabash covered with a very flexible skin, which
she beat with a bamboo stick, and the other two confined their
exertions to violently shaking large gourds filled with pebbles. With
these instruments an accompaniment was played to a melancholy chant,
and musical talent is developed to such an extent amongst these
people that their concert, though wild and strange, did not strike us
as being at all grotesque. After a limited enjoyment of this
triumphal march, the chief gave another signal, and his wives,
lifting up the curtains, ponderously entered the room in single file.
We might very well have supposed ourselves to have lighted on a
mountebank's show, or the booth of an exhibitor of monstrosities. We
almost thought we heard the customary oration—"Walk up, ladies and
gentlemen, and take your places, and pay as you go out if you are
satisfied with what you have seen. Here you behold a female savage
from the heart of Africa, who has just made a tour of Europe. She has
been exhibited before all the crowned heads on the Continent, and
they have presented her with numerous and flattering tokens of their
admiration. This woman, as heavy as she is savage, weighs, before
eating &c., &c."
I stop—the phenomena are before us, and we are permitted to admire
them at our leisure. The three women sit on the stools ranged along
the wall. When I say "sit," I am exaggerating—such of their person as
can be accommodated on the seats certainly rests thereon, but much
more overhangs the sides, and even if their too unwieldy forms had
not prevented their sitting according to the ordinary acceptation of
the term, a certain appendage, with which they had decked themselves
in our honour, would have prevented them. They had endued themselves
with a species of switch tail, made of bass, which they wear only on
grand occasions for the purpose of indicating their rank and position
in the world, and, above all, in order to produce a still greater
effect on those who are privileged to behold them.
As for the remainder of their costume, with the exception of a few
feathers in their hair, another highly fashionable adornment, they
were like any other Bongo female. From their flesh, pierced and
perforated in all directions, hung an infinity of ornaments, necklets
without number graced their podgy necks, and their noses and
monstrous lips were adorned with their choicest copper rings.
The lord and master of these atrocious creatures took our
astonishment for admiration. He positively swelled with importance,
and, too pleased and proud to remain silent, he informed us, through
the medium of Nassar, that we were the only people who had ever been
favoured with a sight of his wives.
But the principal object of our visit was to gain information as to
how these creatures were fattened up to their present prodigious
size, and on this point we requested some explanation from the chief.
Instead of replying verbally to the question put to him in our name
by Nassar, the Bongo magnate, anxious to instruct us by example
rather than precept, clapped his hands a third time.