EARLY TRADE IN WEST AFRICA
Concerning the accounts given by classic writers of West Africa,
and of the method of barter called the Silent Trade.
It is a generally received opinion that there are too many books in the
world already. I cannot, however, subscribe to any Institution that
proposes to alter this state of affairs, because I find no consensus of
opinion as to which are the superfluous books; I have my own opinion on
the point, but I feel I had better keep it to myself, for I find the
very books I dislike--almost invariably in one-volume form, as this one
is, though of a more connected nature than this is likely to be--are the
well-beloved of thousands of my fellow human beings; and so I will
restrict my enthusiasms in the matter of books to the cause of
attempting to incite writers to give us more. If any one wants
personally to oblige me he will forthwith write a masterly history of
the inter-relationships--religious, commercial, and cultural--of the
other races of the earth with the African, and he can put in as an
appendix a sketch of the war conquest of Africa by the white races. I do
not ask for a separate volume on this, because there will be so many on
the others; moreover, it is such a kaleidoscopic affair, and its
influence alike on both European, Asiatic, and African seems to me
neither great nor good.
For the past fifteen years I have been reading up Africa; and the effect
of the study of this literature may best be summarised in Mr. Kipling's
observation, "For to admire an' for to see, For to be'old this world so
wide, It's never been no good to me, But I can't drop it if I tried."
Wherein it has failed to be of good, I hastily remark, is that after all
this fifteen years' reading, I found I had to go down into the most
unfashionable part of Africa myself, to try to find out whatever the
thing was really like, and also to discover which of my authors had been
doing the heaviest amount of lying. It seemed clear to the meanest
intelligence that this form of the darkening of counsel was fearfully
prevalent among them, because of the way they disagreed about things
among themselves. Of course I have so far only partially succeeded in
both these matters; for, regarding the first, personal experience taught
me that things differed with district; regarding the second, that all
the people who have been to Africa and have written books on it have,
off and on, told the truth, and that what seemed to the public who have
not been there to be the most erroneous statements have been true in
substance and in fact, and that those statements they have accepted
immediately as true on account of their either flattering their vanity
or comfortably explaining the reasons of the failure of their
endeavours, have the most falsehood in them.
There is another point I must mention regarding this material for that
much wanted colossal work on the history of African relationships with
the rest of the world--which I do not intend to write, but want written
for me--and that is the superiority both in quality and quantity of the
portion which relates to the Early History of the West Coast. Yet very
little attention has been given in our own times to this. I might say no
attention, were it not for Sir A. B. Ellis, that very noble man and
gallant soldier, who did so much good work for England both with sword
and pen. Just for the sake of the work being worth doing, not in the
hope of reward; for twenty years' service and the publication of a
series of books of great interest and importance taught him that West
Africa was under a ban that it was beyond his power to remove;
nevertheless he went on with his work unfaltering, if not uncomplaining,
and died, in 1895, a young man, practically killed by the Warim
incident--the true history of which has yet to be written. For the
credit of my country, I must say that just before death he was knighted.
I do not quote Colonel Ellis's works extensively, because, for one
thing, it is the duty of people to read them first-hand, and as they are
perfectly accessible there is no excuse for their not doing so; and, for
another thing, I am in touch with the majority of the works from which
he gathered his information regarding the early history, and with the
natives from whom he gathered his ethnological information. There are
certain points, I grant, on which I am unable to agree with him, such as
the opinion he formed from his personal prejudices against the traders
in West Africa; but in the main, regarding the regions with which he was
personally acquainted and on which he wrote--the Bight of Benin
regions--I am only too glad that there is Colonel Ellis for me to agree
with.
The fascination of West Africa's historical record is very great,
bristling as it does with the deeds of brave men, bad and good, black
and white. What my German friends would call the Blueth-period of this
history is decidedly that period which was inaugurated by the great
Prince Henry the Navigator; and no man who has ever read, as every man
should read, Mr. Major's book on Prince Henry, can fail to want to know
more still, and what happened down in those re-discovered Bights of
Benin and Biafra after this Blueth-period closed. This can be done,
mainly thanks to a Dutchman named Bosman, who was agent for the great
Dutch house of the Gold Coast for many years circa 1698, and who wrote
home to his uncle a series of letters of a most exemplary nature reeking
with information on native matters and local politics, and suffused with
a tender fear of shocking his aunt, which did not, however, seem in his
opinion to justify him in suppressing important ethnological facts.
Regarding the ethnological information we have of the Gold Coast
natives, the most important works are those by the late Sir A. B. Ellis.
His books are almost models of what books should be that are written by
people studying native customs in their native land. We have also the
results of scientific observers in the works of Buckhardt and Bastian,
besides a mass of scattered information in the works of travellers,
Bosman, Barbot, Labat, Mathews, Bowditch, Cruickshank, Winwood Reade, H.
M. Stanley, Burton, Captain Canot, Captain Binger, and others, and quite
recently a valuable contribution to our knowledge in Mr. Sarbar's _Fanti
Customary Laws_.[28] I think that every student of the African form of
thought should master these works thoroughly, and I fully grant their
great importance; but, nevertheless, I am quite unable to agree with Mr.
Jevons (_Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 164) when he says,
regarding Fetishism, that "it is certainly amongst the inhabitants of
the Gold and Slave Coasts that the subject can best be studied." These
two Coasts are, I grant, the best place for a student who is resident in
Europe, and therefore dependent on the accounts given by others of the
things he is dealing with, to draw his information from, because of the
accuracy and extent of the information he can get from Ellis's work;
but, apart from Ellis the value of these regions to an ethnologist is
but small, and for an ethnologist who will go out to West Africa and
study his material for himself, the whole of the Coast regions of the
Benin Bight are but of tenth-rate importance, because of the great and
long-continued infusion of both Mohammedan and European forms of thought
into the original native thought-form that has taken place in these
regions. This subject I will refer to later, and I will return now to
the history, confining myself to the earlier portions of it, and to that
which bears on the early development of trade.
I sincerely wish I could go into full details regarding the whole
history of the locality here, because I know my only chance of being
allowed to do so is on paper, and it would be a great relief to my mind;
but I forbear, experience having taught me that the subject, to put it
mildly, is not of general interest. For example, person after person
have I tried to illuminate and educate in the matter of our
relationships with the Ashantees; always, alas, in vain. Before I have
got half through they "hear a voice I cannot hear that's calling them
away;" or remember something "that must be done at once;" or, worst of
all, go off straightway to sleep, after once or twice feebly enquiring,
"Where is that place?" Of course I am glad that my little knowledge has
been the comfort it has to several people. Once, when I was
homeward-bound along the Gold Coast, three gentlemen came on board very
ill from fever, and homeward-bound, too. Their worst symptom was
agonising insomnia. "Not a wink," they assured my friend the Irish
purser, had they had "for a couple of months." "We'll soon put that
right for you on board this boat," he said, in his characteristically
kind and helpful manner. To my great surprise, that same afternoon he
deliberately tackled me on the subject of the real reason that induced
Osai Kwofi Kari Kari to cross the Prah in January, 1873. I was charmed
at this unwonted display of interest in the subject, and hoped also to
gain further information on it from those recently shipped Gold Coasters
in the smoking-room. I was getting on fairly well with it; and my friend
the purser, instead of having "some manifests to write out," as was
usual with him, nobly battled with the intricacies of the subject for a
good half hour and more; and then, just when I was in the middle of some
topographical elucidation, accompanied by questions, up that purser
rose, yawned and stretched himself, and hailed the doctor, who happened
to be passing by. "What do you think of that, doctor?" he said, pointing
to the settee. "Do them a power of good," says his compatriot the
medico. Turning round, I saw the three victims of insomnia grouped
together; the middle man had his head pillowed on the oilclothed top of
the table, and reclining, more or less gracefully, against him on either
side were his two companions, their half-smoked pipes fallen from their
limp fingers--all profoundly, unquestionably asleep. "Oh, yes! of
course, I was delighted," but not flattered; and, warned by this
incident, I will here only say that should any one be really interested
in the eventful history of the long struggle between the English,
Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Brandenburgers, with each other and with
the natives, for the possession of the country where the black man's
gold came from, they will find a good deal about it in the works already
cited; and should any medical man--the remedy is perhaps a little too
powerful to be trusted in the hands of the laity--require it for the
treatment of insomnia as above indicated, I recommend that part of it
which bears on the Ashantee question in small but regular doses.
Our earliest authorities mentioning Africa with the knowledge in them
that it is surrounded by the ocean, save at Suez, are Theopompus and
Herodotus. Unfortunately all Theopompus's works are lost to us,
voluminous though they were, his history alone being a matter of
fifty-eight volumes, while before he took up history he had won for
himself a great reputation as an orator, during the reigns of Philip and
Alexander the Great. He is perpetually referred to, however, though not
always praised, by other great classical writers, Cicero, Pliny, the two
Dionysiuses and others, and was evidently regarded as a great authority;
one particular fragment of his works that refers to Africa is preserved
by AElian, and consists of a conversation between Silenus and Midas, King
of Phrygia. Silenus says that Europe, Asia, and Africa are surrounded by
the sea, but that beyond the known world there is an island of immense
extent containing large animals and men of twice our stature. This
island Mr. Major thinks, and doubtless rightly, is connected with the
tradition of our old friend--you know what I mean, as Captain Marryat's
boatswain says--the Atlantis of Plato. This affair I will no further
mention or hint at, but hastily pass on to that other early authority,
Herodotus, who was born 484 years before Christ, and whose works, thanks
be, have survived. He says: "The Phoenician navigators under command
of Pharaoh-Necho, King of Egypt, setting sail from the Red Sea, made
their way to the Southern Sea; when autumn approached they drew their
vessels to land, sowed a crop, waited until it was ripe for harvest,
reaped it, and put again to sea." Having spent two years in this manner,
in the third year they reached the Pillars of Hercules, (Jebu Zatout,
and Gibraltar), and returned to Egypt, "reporting," says Herodotus,
"what does not find belief in me, but may perhaps in some other persons,
for they said in sailing round Africa they had the sun to the right (to
the North) of them. In this way was Libya first known."[29]
Much has been written regarding the accuracy of these Phoenician
accounts; for, as frequently happens, their mention of a thing that
seemed at first to brand their account as a lie remains to brand it as
the truth--and although I have no doubt those Phoenician gentlemen
heartily wished they had said nothing about having seen the sun to the
North, yet it was best for them in the end, as it demonstrates to us
that they had, at any rate, been South of the Equator; and we owe to
Herodotus here, as in many other places in his works, a debt of
gratitude for honestly putting down what he did not believe himself; he
also has suffered from this habit of accuracy, becoming himself regarded
by the superficial people of this world as a credulous old romancer,
which he never was. Good man, he only liked fair play. "Here," he says
as it were, "is a thing I am told. It's a bit too large for my belief
hatch, but if you can get it down yours, you're free and welcome to ship
it." Herodotus, however, accepts the fact that Africa was surrounded by
water, save at its connection with the great land mass of the earth
(Europe and Asia) by the Isthmus of Suez.
Several other attempts to circumnavigate Africa were made prior to
Herodotus's writings. One that we have mention of[30] was made by a
Persian nobleman named Sataspes, whom Xerxes had, for a then capital
offence, condemned to impalement. This man's mother persuaded Xerxes
that if she were allowed to deal with her son she would impose on him a
more terrible punishment even than this, namely, that he should be
condemned to sail round Libya. There is no doubt this good lady thought
thereby to save her son; but, as events turned out, Xerxes, by accepting
her suggestion, did not cheat justice by granting this as an alternative
to immediate execution. However, off Sataspes sailed with a ship and
crew from Egypt, out through the Pillars of Hercules, and doubling the
Cape of Libya, then named Solois, he steered south, and, says Herodotus,
"traversed a vast extent of sea for many months, and finding he had
still more to pass he turned round and returned to Egypt and then back
to Xerxes, who had him then impaled, because, for one thing he had not
sailed round Libya, and for another, Xerxes held he lied about those
regions of it that he had visited; for Sataspes said he had seen a
nation of little men who wore garments made of palm leaves, who,
whenever his crew drew their ships ashore, left their cities and flew
into the mountains, though he did them no injury, only taking some
cattle from them; and the reason he gave for his not sailing round Libya
was that his ships could go no further." Sataspes's end was sad, but one
cannot feel that he was a loss to the class of romancers of travel.
Another and a more determined navigator was Eudoxus of Cyzicus (B.C.
117). The scanty record we have of his exploration is of great interest.
While he was making a stay in Alexandria, he met an Indian who was the
sole survivor of a crew wrecked on the Red Sea coast. He is the Indian
who persuaded Ptolemy Euergetes to fit out an expedition to sail to
India, and off they went and succeeded in it greatly, but on their
return the king seized the cargo; so therefore, as a private enterprise,
the thing was a failure. However, Eudoxus was a man of great
determination, and on the death of Ptolemy VII. in the reign of his
successor, he set out on another expedition to India. On his return
voyage he was driven down the African Coast, and found there on the
shore amongst other wreckage the prow of a vessel with the figure of a
horse carved on it. This relic he took with him as a curiosity, and on
his successful return to Alexandria exhibited it there in the market
place, and during its exhibition it was recognised by some pirates from
Cadiz (Gades) who happened to be in that city, and they testified that
the small vessels which were employed in the fisheries along the West
African Coast as far as the River Lixius (Wadi al Knos) always had the
figure of a horse on their prows, and on this account were called
"horses." The fact of this wreck of a vessel belonging to Western
Europe being found on the East Coast of Africa joined with the knowledge
that these vessels did not pass through the Mediterranean Sea, gave
Eudoxus the idea that the vessel he had the figure head of must have
come round Africa from the West Coast, and he then proceeded to Cadiz
and equipped three vessels, one large and two of smaller size, and
started out to do the same thing, bar wrecking. He sailed down the known
West Coast without trouble, but when he came to passing on into the
unknown seas, he had trouble with the crews, and was compelled to beach
his vessels. After doing this he succeeded in persuading his crews to
proceed, but it was then found impossible to float the largest vessel,
so she was abandoned, and the expedition proceeded in the smaller and in
a ship constructed from the wreck of the larger on which the cargo was
shipped with the expedition. Eudoxus reached apparently Senegambia, and
then another mutiny broke out, and he had to return to Barbary. But
undaunted he then fitted out another expedition, consisting of two
smaller vessels, and once again sailed to the South to circumnavigate
Africa. Nothing since has been heard of Eudoxus of Cyzicus surnamed the
Brave.[31]
On his second voyage he fell in with natives who, he says, spoke the
same language that he had previously heard on the Eastern Coast of
Africa. If he was right in this, some authors hold he must have gone
down the West Coast, at least as far as Cameroons, because there you
nowadays first strike the language, which does stretch across the
continent, namely, the Bantu, and we have no reason to suppose that the
Bantu border line was ever further North on this Coast than it is at
present; indeed, the indications are, I think, the other way; but as far
as the language goes, it seems to me that Eudoxus could have heard the
same language as on the East African Coast far higher up than Cameroons,
namely, on the Moroccoan Coast, for in those days, prior to the great
Arab invasion, most likely the language of the Berber races had
possession of Northern Africa from East Coast to West. However, there is
another statement of his which I think points to Eudoxus having gone far
South, namely, that the reason of his turning back was an inability to
get provisions, for this catastrophe is not likely to have overtaken so
brave a man as he was until he reached the great mangrove swamps of the
Niger. The litoral of the Sahara was in those days, we may presume, from
the accounts we have far later from Leo Africanus and Arab writers, more
luxuriant and heavily populated than it is at present.
Of these voyages, however, we have such scant record that we need not
dwell on them further, and so we will return to about 300 B.C., and
consider the wonderful voyage made by Hanno of Carthage, of which we
have more detailed knowledge; although there still remains a certain
amount of doubt as to who exactly Hanno was, mainly on account of Hanno
apparently having been to Carthage what Jones is to North Wales--the
name of a number of individuals with a habit of doing everything and
frequently distinguishing themselves greatly. The Carthaginians were to
the classic world much what the English are to the modern, a great
colonising, commercial people--warlike when wanted. They planted
colonies in North Africa and elsewhere, and had commercial relationship
with all the then known nations of the world, including a trans-Sahara
trade with the people living to the South of the Great Desert. We shall
never know to the full where those Carthaginians went, from the paucity
of record; but we have record of the voyage of this Hanno in a
_Periplus_ originally written in the Punic language and then translated
into Greek.[32] Hanno, it seems, was a chief magistrate at Carthage, and
Pliny says his voyage was undertaken when Carthage was in a most
flourishing condition.[33] From the _Periplus_ we learn that the
expedition to the West Coast consisted of sixty ships of fifty oars
each, and 30,000 persons of both sexes, ample provisions and everything
necessary for so great an undertaking. The object of this expedition was
to explore, to found colonies, and to increase commerce. The expedition,
after passing the Pillars of Hercules, sailed two days along the coast
and founded their first colony, which they called Thymatirum. Just south
of this place, on a promontory called Soloeis, they built a temple to
Neptune. A short distance further on they found a beautiful lake, the
edges of which were bordered with large reeds, the country abounding in
elephants and other game; a day's sail from this place, they founded
five small cities near the sea called respectively Cariconticos, Gytte,
Acra, Millitea, and Arambys. The next most important part of their
voyage was their discovery of the great River Lixius, on the banks of
which they found a pastoral people they called the Lixitae. These seem
to have been a mild people; but there were in the neighbourhood tribes
of a ferocious character, and they were also told there were Trogloditae
dwelling in the mountains, where the Lixius took its rise, who were
fleeter than horses. Unfortunately we are not told how long the
Carthaginians took in reaching this River Lixius; but if the
Carthaginians had been keeping close in shore they would not have met
with a river that looked great until they reached the mouth of the Ouro
(23 deg.36' N. lat), which is four miles wide, but only an estuary; but as
the Carthaginians do not seem to have gone up it, they may not have
noticed its imperfections, and so, pursuing that dangerous method of
judging a West African river from its mouth, regarded it as a great
river. However this may have been, they took with them as guides and
interpreters some of the Lixitae, and continued their voyage for three
days, when they came to a large bay, an island in it containing a circle
of five stadia, and proceeded to found another colony on that island,
calling it Cerne, where they judged they were as far from the Pillars
of Hercules as these were from Carthage. So it is held now that Cerne is
the same as the French trading station Arguin (about 240 miles north of
Senegal River), on to whose shoals the wreck of the French frigate _La
Meduse_ drifted in 1816, the tragedy of which is familiar to us all from
Gericault's great painting.
Hanno next called at a place where there was a great lake, which they
entered by sailing up a river called by them Cheretes. In this they
found three islands, all larger than the island of Cerne. One day's sail
then brought them to the extremity of the lake overhung by mountains,
which were inhabited by savages clad in wild beasts' skins, who
prevented their landing by pelting them with stones. The next point in
their voyage was a large and broad river, infested with crocodiles and
river horses; and from this place they made their way back to Cerne,
where they rested and repaired and then set forth again, sailing south
along the African shores for twelve successive days. The language of the
natives of these regions the Lixitae did not understand, and the
Carthaginians could not hold any communication with them for another
reason, that they always fled from them; towards the last day they
approached some large mountains covered with trees. They went on two
days further, when they came to a large opening in the sea, on land on
either side of which was a plain whereon they saw fires in every
direction. At this place[34] they refilled their water barrels, and
continued their voyage five days further, when they reached a large bay
which their interpreters said was called the Western Horn. In this bay
they found a large island, in the centre of which was a salt lake with a
small island in it. When they went ashore in the day time they saw no
inhabitants, but at night time they heard in every direction a confused
noise of pipes, cymbals, drums and song, which alarmed the crew, while
the diviners they had with them, equivalent to our naval chaplains,
strongly advised Hanno to leave that place as speedily as possible.
Hanno, however, being less alarmed than his companions, pushed on South,
and they soon found themselves abreast of a country blazing with fires,
streams of which seemed to be pouring from the mountain tops down into
the sea. "We sailed quickly thence," says Hanno, "being much terrified."
Proceeding four days further they found that things did not improve in
appearance from their point of view, for the whole country seemed ablaze
at night, a country full of fire, and at one point the fire seemed to
fly up to the very stars. Hanno says their interpreters told them that
this great fire was the Chariot of the Gods. Three days more sailing
South brought them to another bay, called the Southern Horn. In this bay
they found a large island, in which again there was a lake with another
island in it, having inhabitants who were savage, and whose bodies were
covered with hair. These people the interpreters called the
Gorillae--some were captured and taken aboard, but so savage and
unmanageable did they prove that they were killed and the skins
preserved. As most of the inhabitants of the Islands of the Gorillae
seemed to be females, and as these ladies had made such a gallant fight
of it with their Carthaginian captors, Hanno kept their skins to hang
up in the Temple of Juno on his return home, evidently intending to be
complimentary both to the Goddess and the Gorillae; but it is to be
feared neither of them took it as it was meant, for Hanno had no luck
from the Gods after this, having to turn back from shortness of
provisions, and finally ending his career by, some say, being killed,
and others say exiled from Carthage on account of his having a lion so
tame that it would carry baggage for him; Punic public opinion held that
this demonstrated him to be a man dangerous to the State. The Gorillae
seem to have worked out their vengeance on white men by making it more
than any man's character for truth is worth to see one of them--except
stuffed in a museum, with a label on.
How far Hanno really went down South is not known with any certainty. M.
Gosselin held he only reached the River Nun, on the Moroccoan coast.
Major Rennell fixed his furthest point somewhere north of Sierra Leone,
and held the Island of the Gorillae to be identical with the Island of
Sherboro'. Bougainville believed that he at any rate went well into the
Bight of Benin, while others think he went at any rate as far as Gaboon.
I cannot myself see why he should not have done so, considering the
winds and tides of the locality and the time taken; indeed, I should be
quite willing to believe he went down to Congo, and that in the most
terrific of the fires he witnessed an eruption of the volcanic peak of
Cameroon, a volcano not yet extinct. Indeed the name given to this high
fire "that almost reached the stars" by his interpreters--the Chariot of
the Gods--is not so very unlike the name the Cameroon Peak bears to this
day, Mungo Mah Lobeh, the Throne or Place of Thunder, and this native
name is also capable of being translated into "the Place of the Gods" or
spirits. The thing I do not believe in the affair is that the Lixitae
interpreters ever called it or any other place "a chariot"; for as Hanno
was the first white man they had seen, and they had no chariots of their
own, it is unlikely they could have known anything of chariots; and I
think this Chariot of the Gods must have been an error of Hanno's in
translating his interpreter's remarks. It is perfectly excusable in him
if it is so, because to understand what an interpreter means who does
not know your language, and whose own language you are not an adept in,
and who is translating from a language regarding which you are both
alike ignorant, is a process fraught with difficulty. I have tried it,
so speak feelingly. It is true it is not an impossibility, as those
unversed in African may hastily conjecture, because at least one-third
of an African language consists in gesture, and this gesture part is
fairly common to all tribes I have met, so that by means of it you can
get on with daily life; but it breaks down badly when you come to the
names of places. I myself once went on a long march to a place that
subsequent knowledge informed me was "I don't know" in my director's
native tongue. Still, if he did not know, I did not know, and so it was
all the same. I got there all right, therefore it did not matter to me;
but I was haunted during my stay in it by a confused feeling that
perhaps I was flying in the face of Science by being somewhere
else--being in two places at the same time.
I really, however, cannot help thinking Hanno must have got past the
Niger Delta; for there is nothing to frighten any one, as far as the
look of things go, until you go south from Calabar, and find yourself
facing that magnificent Great Cameroon and Fernando Po; and Hanno's
people were scared as they were never scared before. Yet, again, there
are those fires, which were in the main doubtless what that very wise
and not half-appreciated missionary, the late Rev. J. Leighton Wilson,
says they were, namely, fires made by the native burning down the high
grass at the end of a dry season to make his farms. Now Hanno could have
seen any quantity of these along parts of the shores of the Bight of
Benin, but is not likely to have seen them to any alarming extent on the
Biafran Bight, because the shores thereof are deeply fringed with
mangrove swamps, and the native does not start making farms in them.
Hanno might have seen what looked like the smoke of innumerable fires on
the sides of Cameroon Mountain and Fernando Po. I myself have seen the
whole mighty forest there smoking as if beneath it smouldered the
infernal regions themselves; but it is only columns and wafts of mist,
and so gives no blaze at night; if you want to see a real land of flame
with, over it, a pall of cloud reflecting back its crimson light in a
really terrifying way, you must go south of Cameroon, south of Congo
Francais, south, until you reach the region of the Great Congo itself;
and there--on the grass-covered hills and plains of the Lower Congo
lands--you will see a land of fire at the end of the dry season,
terrific enough to awe any man. Of course, if Hanno passed the Congo and
went down as far as the fringing sands of the Kalahari desert, he would
certainly not have been able to get stores; but also down there he would
not have met with an island on which there were gorillas; for even if we
grant that there was sufficient dense forest south of the Congo in his
days for gorillas to have inhabited, and allow that in old days gorillas
were south of the Congo, which they are not now, still, there is no
island near the coast. So I am afraid we cannot quite settle Hanno's
furthest point, and must content ourselves by saying he was a brave man,
a good sailor, and a credit therefore to his country and the human race.
After Hanno's time I cannot find any record of a regular set of trading
expeditions down the West Coast by the Carthaginians. From scattered
observations it is certain the commerce of the Carthaginians with the
Barbary Coast and the Bight of Benin was long carried on; but it does
not seem to have been carried on along the coast of the Bight of Biafra;
and the voyage in 170 B.C. may be cited in support of this, showing that
the voyage as far south as Eudoxus went was then considered as
marvellous and new. Still, on the other hand, it must be remembered
that, prior to our own day, the navigator had no great inducement to
tell the rest of the world exactly where he had been; indeed, the
navigator whose main interest is commerce is, to this day, not keen on
so doing. He would rather keep little geographical facts--such as short
cuts by creeks, and places where either gold, or quicksilver, and buried
ivory, is plentiful--to himself, than go explaining about these things
for the sake of getting an unrepaying honour. One sees this so much in
studying the next period of this history--the early Portuguese and early
French discoveries; you will find that one of these nations knew about a
place years before the other came along, and discovered it, and claimed
it as its own--with disputes as a natural consequence.
There has, however, been one very interesting point in the dealing of
the nations of higher culture with the Africans, and that is the way
their commerce with them has had periods of abeyance. The Egyptians
have left us record of having been extensively in touch with the
interior of Africa, _via_ the Nile Valley,--then came a pause. Then came
the Carthaginian commerce,--then a pause. Then the Portuguese, French,
English, Dutch, and Dane trading enterprise, say, roughly from 1340 to
1700,--then a falling off of this enterprise; revived during the
Slave-trade days, falling off again on its suppression, and reviving in
our own days. I suppose I ought to say greatly, but--well, we will
discuss that later. These pauses have always been caused by the nations
of higher culture getting too busy with wars at home to trouble
themselves about the African, all the more so because the produce of
Africa has filtered slowly, whether it was fetched by white man or no,
into their markets through the hands of the energetic North African
tribes and the Arabs. Whenever the white man has settled down with his
home affairs, and has had time to spare, he has always gone and looked
up the African again, "discovered him," and he has always found him in
the same state of culture that the pioneers of the previous Blueth-period
found him in. Hanno does not find down the West Coast another
Carthage--he finds bush fires, and hears the tom-tom and the horn and
the shouts. He finds people slightly clad and savage. Then read Aluise
da Ca da Mostro and the rest of Prince Henry's adventures; well, you
might--save that the old traveller is more interesting--almost be
reading a book published yesterday. The only radical change made for
large quantities of Africans by means of white intercourse was made by
exporting them to America. How this is going to turn out we do not yet
know; and whether or no, after the present period of white exploitation
of Africa, there may not come another pause from our becoming too
interested in some big fight of our own to keep up our interest in the
African, we cannot tell; so I will pass on to a very interesting point
in a method of trade mentioned by the early authorities--the silent
trade.
Herodotus gives us the first description of it,[35] saying that the
Carthaginians state that beyond the Pillars of Hercules there is a
region of Libya, and men who inhabit it. When they arrive among these
people and have unloaded their merchandise they set it in order on the
shore, go on board their ships and make a great smoke, and the
inhabitants seeing the smoke come down to the sea shore, deposit gold in
exchange for the merchandise, and withdraw to some distance. The
Carthaginians then going ashore examine the goods, and if the quantity
seems sufficient for the merchandise they take it and sail away; but if
it is not sufficient they go on board again and wait; the natives then
approach and deposit more gold until they have satisfied them: neither
party ever wrongs the other, for they do not touch the gold before it is
made adequate to the value of the merchandise, nor do the natives touch
the merchandise before the Carthaginians have taken the gold.
The next description of this silent trade I have been able to find is
that given by Aluise da Ca da Mostro, a Venetian gentleman who, allured
by the accounts of the riches of West Africa given by Prince Henry the
Navigator, abandoned trading with the Low Countries, entered the
Prince's service, and went down the Coast in 1455. When in the district
of Cape Blanco, at a place called by him Hoden, he was told that six
days' journey from this place there was a place called Tagazza,
signifying a chest of gold; there large quantities of rock salt were dug
from the earth every year and carried on camels by the Arabs and the
Azanaghi, who were tawny Moors,[36] in separate companies to Timbuk, and
from thence to the Empire of Melli, which belonged to the negroes;
having arrived there they disposed of their salt in the course of eight
days, at the rate of two and three hundred mitigals the load (a mitigal
= a ducat), according to the quantity thereof, after which they returned
home with the gold they had been paid in. These merchants reckoned it
forty days' journey on horseback from Tagazza to "Timbuk" as Mostro,
while from Timbuk to Melli it is thirty days' journey. Ca da Mostro then
inquired to what use the salt taken to Melli was put; and they said that
the merchants used a certain quantity of it themselves, for on account
of their country lying near the Line, where the days and nights are of
equal length, at certain seasons of the year the heats were excessive,
and putrefied the blood unless salt was taken; their method of taking it
was to dissolve a piece in a porringer of water daily and drink it. When
the remainder of the salt reached Melli, carried thither on camels, each
camel load was broken up into pieces of a suitable size for one man to
carry. A large number of what Ca da Mostro calls footmen--whom we
nowadays call porters--were assembled at Melli to be ready to carry the
salt from thence further away still into the heart of Africa.
I have dwelt on this salt's wanderings because we have here a very
definite description of a trade route, and the importance of
understanding these trade routes is very great. We do not learn,
however, exactly where the salt goes to beyond Melli; but Melli seems to
have been, as Timbuctoo was, and to a certain extent still is, a trade
focus; and from Melli evidently the salt went in many directions, and it
is interesting to note Ca da Mostro's observations on the salt porters,
who he says carry in each hand a long forked stick, which when they are
tired they fix into the ground and rest their loads on; so to-day may
you see the West African porters doing, save that it is only the porters
who have to pass over woodless plateaux on their journeys that carry two
sticks.
[Illustration: OIL RIVER NATIVES. [_To face page 245._]
Speaking however further on the course of this salt trade Ca da Mostro
says that some of the merchants of Melli go with it until they come to a
certain water, whether fresh or salt his informant could not say; but he
holds it most likely was fresh, or there would be no need of carrying
salt there; and it is the opinion of the few people who have of late
years interested themselves in the matter that this great water is the
Niger Joliba. But be this as it may, when those merchants from Melli
arrive on the banks of this great water they place their shares of salt
in heaps in a row, every one setting a mark on his own. This done, the
merchants retire half a day's journey; then "the negroes, who will not
be seen or spoken with, and who seem to be the inhabitants of some
islands, come in large boats," and having viewed the salt lay a sum of
gold on every heap and then retire. When they are all gone the negro
merchants who own the salt return, and if the quantity of gold pleases
them they take it and leave the salt; if not, they leave both and
withdraw themselves again. The silent people then return, and the heaps
from which they find the gold has been removed they carry away, and
either advance more gold to the other heaps or take their gold from them
and leave the salt. In this manner, says Ca da Mostro, from very ancient
times these negroes have traded without either speaking to or seeing
each other, until a few years before, when he was at Cape Blanco among
the Azanaghi, who supply the negroes of Melli with their salt as
aforesaid, and who evidently get from them gossip as well as gold. They
told him that their fellow merchants among the black Moors had told them
that they had had serious trouble in consequence of the then Emperor of
Melli, a man who took more general interest in affairs than was common
in Emperors of Melli, having been fired with a desire to know why these
customers of his traders did not like being seen; he had commanded the
salt merchants when they next went to traffic with the silent people to
capture some of them for him by digging pits near the salt heaps,
concealing themselves therein and then rushing out and seizing some of
the strange people when they came to look at the salt heaps. The
merchants did not at all relish the royal commission, for they knew, as
any born trader would, that it must be extremely bad for trade to rush
out and seize customers by the scruff of their necks while they were in
the midst of their shopping. However, much as the command added to their
commercial anxieties, the thing had to be done, or there was no doubt
the Emperor would relieve them both of all commercial anxieties and
their heads at one and the same time. So they carried out the royal
command, and captured four of their silent customers. Three they
immediately liberated, thinking that to keep so many would only increase
the bad blood, and one specimen would be sufficient to satisfy the
Imperial curiosity. Unfortunately however the unfortunate captive they
retained would neither speak nor eat, and in a few days died; and so the
salt merchants of Melli returned home in very low spirits, feeling
assured that their Emperor would be actively displeased with them for
failing to satisfy his curiosity, and that the silent customers would be
too alarmed and angered with them for their unprovoked attack to deal
with them again. Subsequent events proved them to be correct in both
surmises: his Majesty was highly disgusted at not having been able to
see one of these people; and naturally, for the description given to him
of those they had captured was at least highly interesting. The
merchants said they were a span taller than themselves and well shaped,
but that they made a terrible figure because their under lip was thicker
than a man's fist and hung down on their breasts; also that it was very
red, and something like blood dropped from it and from their gums. The
upper lip was no larger than that of other people, and owing to this
there were exposed to view both gums and teeth, which were of great
size, particularly the teeth in the corners of the mouth. Their eyes
were of great size and blackness. As for the customers, for three years
went the merchants of Melli to the banks of the great water and arranged
their salt heaps and looked on them for gold dust in vain: but the
fourth year it was there; and the merchants of Melli believed that their
customers' lips had begun to putrefy through the excessive heat and the
want of salt, so that being unable to bear so grievous a distemper they
were compelled to return to their trade. Things were then established on
a fairly reasonable basis; the merchants did not again attempt to see
their customers, and they knew from their experience with their captive
that they were by nature dumb; for had there been speech in him, would
he not have spoken under the treatment to which he was subjected? And as
for the Emperor of Melli he said right out he did not care whether those
blacks could speak or no, so long as he had but the profit of their
gold.
This gold, I may remark, that was collected at Melli was divided into
three parts: the first was sent by the Melli caravans to Kokhia on the
caravan route to Syria and Cairo; the other two parts went from Melli to
Timbuctoo, where it was again divided up, some of it going to Toet,[37]
and from thence along the coast to Tunis, in Barbary. Some of it went to
Hoden, not far from Cape Blanco, and from there to Oran and Hona; thence
it went to Fez, Morocco, Azila-Azasi, and Moosa, towns outside the
Straits of Gibraltar, whence it went into Europe, through the hands of
Italians, and other Christians, who exchanged their merchandise for the
wares of the Barbary moors; and the remainder of the gold went down to
the West African Coast to the Portuguese at Arguin. This description of
the gold route is by Ca da Mostro, and is the first description of West
African trade route I have found.
But I must tear myself from the fascination of gold and its trade routes
and return to that silent trade. The next person after Ca da Mostro to
mention it is Captain Richard Jobson, who in 1620-1621 made a voyage
especially to discover "the golden trade," of what he calls Tombak,
which is our last author's Timbuk, by way of the Gambia, then held by
many to be a mouth of the Niger.
Jobson's inquiries regarding this "golden trade" informed him that the
great demand for salt in the Gambia trade arose from the desire for it
among the Arabiks of Barbary; that the natives themselves only consumed
a small percentage of this import, trading away the main to those
Arabiks in the hinterland, who in their turn traded it for gold to
Tombak, where the demand for it was great, because that city, although
possessing all manner of other riches and commodities, lacked salt, so
that the Arabiks did a good trade therein. Jobson was also informed that
the Arabiks had, as well as the market for salt at Timbuctoo, a market
for it with a strange people who would not be seen, and who lived not
far from Yaze; that the salt was carried to them, and in exchange they
gave gold. Asking a native merchant, who was engaged in this trade, why
they would not be seen, he made a sign to his lips, but would say no
more. Jobson, however, learnt from other sources that the reason these
negroes buy salt from the tawny Moors is because of the thickness of
their lips, which hang down upon their breasts, and, being raw, would
putrefy if they did not take salt, a thing their country does not
afford, so that they must traffic for it with the Moors. The manner they
employ, according to Jobson, is this: the Moors on a fixed day bring
their goods to a place assigned, where there are certain houses
appointed for them; herein they deposit their commodities, and, laying
their salt and other goods in parcels or heaps separately, depart for a
whole day, during which time their customers come, and to each parcel of
goods lay down a proportion of gold as they value it, and leave both
together. The merchants then return, and as they like the bargain take
the gold and leave their wares, or if they think the price offered too
little, they divide the merchandise into two parts, leaving near the
gold as much as they are inclined to give for it, and then again depart.
At their next return the bargain is finished, for they either find more
gold added or the whole taken away, and the goods left on their hands.
A further confirmation of the existence of this method of trading we
find in that most interesting voyage of Claude Jannequin, Sieur de
Rochfort, 1639. He says, "In this cursed country"--he always speaks of
West Africa like that--"there is no provision but fish dried in the sun,
and maize and tobacco." The natives will only trade by the French laying
down on the ground what they would give for the provisions, and then
going away, on which the natives came and took the commodities and left
the fish in exchange. The regions he visited were those of Cape Blanco.
To this day you will find a form of this silent trade still going on in
Guinea. I have often seen on market roads in many districts, but always
well away from Europeanised settlements, a little space cleared by the
wayside, and neatly laid with plantain leaves, whereon were very tidily
arranged various little articles for sale--a few kola nuts, leaves of
tobacco, cakes of salt, a few heads of maize, or a pile of yams or sweet
potatoes. Against each class of articles so many cowrie shells or beans
are placed, and, always hanging from a branch above, or sedately sitting
in the middle of the shop, a little fetish. The number of cowrie shells
or beans indicate the price of the individual articles in the various
heaps, and the little fetish is there to see that any one who does not
place in the stead of the articles removed their proper price, or who
meddles with the till, shall swell up and burst. There is no doubt it
is a very easy method of carrying on commerce.
In what the silent trade may have originated it is hard to say; but one
thing is certain, that the dread and fear of the negroes did not result
from the evil effects of the slave trade, as so many of their terrors
are said to have done, for we have seen notice of it long before this
slave trade arose. Nevertheless, there can be but little doubt that it
arose from a sense of personal insecurity, and has fetish in it, the
natives holding it safer to leave so dangerous a thing as trafficking
with unknown beings--white things that were most likely spirits, with
the smell of death on them--in the hands of their gods. In the cases of
it that I have seen no doubt it was done mostly for convenience, one
person being thereby enabled to have several shops open at but little
working expense; but I have seen it employed as a method of trading
between tribes at war with each other.[38] We must dismiss, I fear,
bashfulness regarding lips as being a real cause; but I will not dismiss
the bleeding lips as a mere traveller's tale, because I have seen quite
enough to make me understand what those people who told of bleeding
thick lips meant; several, not all of my African friends, are a bit
thick about the lower lip, and when they have been passing over
waterless sun-dried plateaux or bits of desert they are anything but
decorative. The lips get swollen and black, and Ca da Mostro does not go
too far in his description of what he was told regarding them.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Clowes and Sons, 1897.
[29] _Melpomene_, IV. 41.
[30] _Melpomene_, IV. 43.
[31] See Ellis's _History of the Gold Coast_, also Tozer's _History of
Ancient Geography_, Beazley's _Dawn of Modern Geography_, and _Strabo_,
B.C. 25, book xvii, edited by Theodore Jansonius ab Almelooven,
Amsterdam, 1707.
[32] There is doubt as to whether this _Periplus_ is the entire one
with which the classic writers were conversant.
[33] "Et Hanno Carthaginis potentia florente circumvectus a Gabibus ad
finem Arabiae navigationem eam prodidit scripto"; (and Hanno, when
Carthage flourished, sailed round from Cadiz to the remotest parts of
Arabia, and left an account of his voyage in writing) Plinius, lib. ii.
cap. lxvii. p.m. 220. See also lib. v. cap. i. p.m. 523, and Pomponius
Mela, lib. iii. cap. ix. p. 63, edit. Isaici Vossii.
There is an English version of the _Periplus_, edited by Falconer,
London, 1797; and an Oxford edition of it, and some other works, by Dr.
Hudson, 1698. Also there is a work on Hanno's _Periplus_ based on MS.
in the Meyer Museum at Liverpool by Simonides, not the Iambic poet,
who wrote a ridiculous satire against women, quoted by AElian; nor
yet Simonides who was one of the greatest of the ancient poets, and
flourished in the seventy-fifth Olympia; but a modern gentleman
connected with America, whose work I am sufficient scholar neither to
use nor to criticise.
[34] Major identifies this place with Cape Verde, pointing out that the
inability of the Lixitae interpreters to understand the language accords
with the fact that at the Senegal commences the country of the blacks;
"the immense opening" he regards as the Gambia.
[35] _Melpomene_, IV. 96.
[36] The writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries commonly
divide up the natives of Africa into--1, Moors; 2, Tawny Moors;
3, Black Moors, a term that lingers to this day in our word
Blackeymoor; 4, Negroes.
[37] Ato, according to the version given in Grynaeus.
[38] Mr. Ling Roth kindly informs me of further instances of this silent
trading to be found in _Lander's Journal_, Lond., 1832, iii. 161-163,
and Forbes's _Wanderings of a Naturalist_, Lond. 1886, where it is cited
for the Kubus of Sumatra. He says it also occurs among the Veddahs, and
that there is in no case any fetish control.