"We had scarcely set foot in the land of the Monbuttoos before,
thanks to their perfect candour, we knew all about their tastes, for,
when we proposed to do a little bartering, they brought us a quantity
of bones, hands, jaws, and pieces of heads which must certainly have
been the remains of their repasts. From that moment we quite agreed
with Schweinfurth in his assertion that 'the cannibalism of the
Monbuttoo is unsurpassed by any nation in the world. But,' continues
that authority, 'with it all, the Monbuttoos are a noble race of men;
men who display a certain national pride, and are endowed with an
intellect and judgment such as few natives of the African wilderness
can boast; men to whom one may put a reasonable question, and who
will return a reasonable answer. The Nubians can never say enough in
praise of their faithfulness in friendly intercourse, or of the order
and stability of their national life.'"
I have given the opinion of the famous German traveller _verbatim_;
now let us see for ourselves what conclusion should be come to as
regards this tribe. It covers an area of four thousand square miles,
situated between 8° and 4° north latitude, 26° and 27° longitude east
from Paris. This country, which boasts about a million inhabitants,
is still, as it was two years ago, when Schweinfurth visited it,
under the absolute sway of one single ruler. King Munza, a most
despotic sovereign, who reigns in the western division, and who has
delegated a portion of his power to his brother Degberra, Viceroy of
the Eastern Provinces. But Munza alone is known, and science, we
repeat, comes to a dead halt at the country of the Monbuttoos.
The journey we are about to undertake, if, indeed, what we hear about
M. de Guéran leads us southwards, will land us in a blank space,
about which, as far as we have gone, no one has been able to give us
the slightest information. What news shall we gather about the stay
of our fellow-countryman in the midst of this people, or about the
route he took on quitting them? Is he, perchance, still here, kept
prisoner by Munza? We are under one continual apprehension—a
perpetual anxiety. If we put a question to a native, we at once think
that he is sure to say something in reply about the white man whom he
saw before we arrived on the scene, and who could not fail to have
been an object of curiosity. But we can only hope to get reliable
information from Munza himself, in the midst of his court and in the
full splendour of his surroundings, and, in order to reach the royal
residence as quickly as possible, we never cease to stimulate the
zeal of our escort and bearers.
Madame de Guéran has now taken up her position at the head of the
caravan, by the side of the guide, Nassar, to impart, as she says,
courage to those behind her. And, indeed, the sight of this brave,
young, and perfectly lovely woman, always wearing the strikingly
original costume, we have already described, produces a very great
impression on our soldiers. To them she is no longer a being of this
earth; she gives these infidels an idea of a very different world
from the one they inhabit. They have always respected her, but now
they revere and love her. She has succeeded in winning the
sympathies, as well as in captivating the imaginations of all these
Orientals.
All sorts of tales, and even legends, which we have more than once
had the opportunity of hearing, are in circulation about her. "She
is," say some, "the daughter of a mighty Northern Prince, and her
father has sent her to us to travel and instruct herself." According
to the Nubians, she is a powerful Sultana, whose husband had been
made prisoner by the people of Khartoum; she is now in pursuit of
them, and we shall all have to fight for her very soon. Then, with
the exaggeration habitual amongst negroes, they relate how she, in
the desert, set free two thousand slaves, whom she sent away to her
father's kingdom, where they are well-fed and wear beautiful clothes
like hers.
We take very good care not to interfere with all this romancing, nor
to keep the narrators within the region of fact; on the contrary, we
ourselves invent numerous anecdotes calculated to enhance the
reputation of our escort, and augment the _prestige_ of our beloved
leader. But will she be able to conquer, at first sight, this
redoubtable King Munza, on whom our fate depends, in the same way
that she has charmed these men, who have known her for six months?
Meanwhile, we do everything in our power to ingratiate ourselves with
the monarch, whom we are overwhelming in advance by a series of
presents conveyed to him by means of the couriers sent to meet us.
These presents consist of ten pieces of calico, ten rolls of cloth,
several carpets and coverings of various kinds, a lantern, a pair of
scissors, a sabre, a sword, a guitar, five boxes of lucifer matches,
and three pairs of socks filled with beads of all sorts. If Munza is
not satisfied with this miscellaneous collection, he must be very
hard to please. We have adhered strictly to the usages common in such
cases, and no travellers have ever displayed more generosity than we
have. We, nevertheless, hold in reserve some other presents destined
to complete the conquest of the monarch, to unloose his tongue on the
subject of M. de Guéran, and to secure his permission for our
continuing on our way southwards, should we deem it necessary.
Whilst waiting for the opportunity of making the acquaintance of
Munza, let us say a few words about the subjects. And, first of all,
one important remark; as regards their features, the Monbuttoos
differ essentially from other black tribes, and bear on their
countenances the impress of their Semitic origin. The tint of their
complexion is much lighter than we have yet seen in Africa, being
almost the colour of ground coffee. The features have a certain
amount of delicacy about them; and occasionally an aquiline nose
maybe seen. But what distinguishes them chiefly from other tribes,
their special characteristic is, that at least one out of every
twenty of the population has greyish light hair, approaching the
colour of hemp.
Their costume, which never varies, is quite original. It is composed
of the bark of a tree called the _rokko_ (a species of fig-tree),
prepared with great care and stained red-brown, which, fastened round
the waist by a girdle, covers the body from the chest to the knees.
Their hair, dressed like that of the Niam-Niam, is surmounted by a
sort of straw hat or cap.
If the men are almost entirely clothed, the women are not. They
simply tattoo their bodies in elaborate patterns, representing
flowers, stars, bees, the spots of a leopard, or the stripes of a
zebra. When they go out they carry with them a strip of cloth which
they lay across their laps as they sit down.
We are traversing the populous district of the Maogoos, governed by
one of Munza's brothers, and we come to the banks of the Welle.
Thanks to a number of canoes, thirty feet long by four broad, and
hollowed out of enormous trunks of trees, which were placed at our
disposal by the natives, we crossed the deep, dark waters of this
river, to which travellers in search of the sources of the Nile have
attached great importance.
On the western bank of the river, some emissaries of the King assumed
the direction of the caravan and guided us towards the royal
residence, situated in the midst of a region where an earthly
paradise might well find a place. At each step we came across
sparkling streamlets, ferns without number, plantations of bananas,
manioc, and sugar cane, and immense fig-trees, whose leafy density
the sun even could not penetrate. It is a superb garden, with
marvellous vegetation, full of flowers and fruit, and enlivened by
the songs of a thousand birds.
My brother Parisians, when I think that, at the most moderate
computation, nine-tenths of you picture Africa to yourselves as a
vast desert, destitute of water and shade—wretched creatures that you
are—there is not a country, perhaps, in the wide world that is
watered by so many, and such great torrents and rivers, that is
shaded by such gigantic trees, that is beautified by nature to such a
luxuriant extent, as certain parts of central Africa. But I have no
time to devote to refuting the errors of my fellow-countrymen, errors
into which I formerly fell like the rest of them. Here we are, at
last, within the private domain of Munza, and the only thing we have
now to do is to obtain from that powerful despot the key to the
enigma which is of such vital interest to us.