1843
The canoe manned by four paddlers in which I had crossed the bar at
Guet-n-dar was carried high up on the sand on the crest of a huge wave.
A crowd of blacks rushed forward before the wave could come back,
lifted me out, and put me down, with loud shouts of "Petit roi pas
goutte d'eau" (Not a drop of water on our little king), at the feet of
Bobokar, King of Guet-n-dar, a tall negro, dressed in a striped cotton
gown, and with a laced cocked hat on his head, which had seen better
days on a general officer's or a coachman's.
As soon as I was landed, the King of Guet-n-dar (I only call him king
in obedience to the African custom which bestows the title on every
chief who has a right to beat other people)--the King, I say, set
himself to work to make way for me through his subjects crowding round,
with heavy blows from his cudgel, and crossing the tongue of sand
between the Senegal river and the sea, which forms his kingdom, I
entered St. Louis, the capital of our possessions on the West African
coast. While nobody talks anything but sugar at Martinique, nor cod in
Newfoundland, at St. Louis the only subject of conversation is GUM. It
is its staple product, and indeed is found nowhere else, except in
Arabia.
The gum forests are in country belonging to the Arabs, on the right
bank of the Senegal river, and are consequently in the hands of the
Moors, who carry the produce to the river. The various stations we have
established along its course are intended for the protection of the
traders or coloured agents, acting as intermediaries between the
natives, and the white merchants, unable themselves to face the deadly
climate, and also to close the road to the British markets on the
Gambia river to the Moors. To the garrisons of these stations, regular
charnel-houses, our officers and men come out to die, or else to catch
the germ of some incurable illness. I learn that nowadays, by dint of
using quinine as a preventive, and of improvements in some other
respects, the effects of the unhealthy climate have been somewhat
reduced, but when I was there the condition of things was really
terrible. So my first care, when I reached St. Louis, was to go and see
the victims of duty in the hospital into which they were crowded, and
my heart swelled at the sight of all the poor yellow wasted faces many
of them already bearing the signs of approaching dissolution. Poor
brave fellows! How I wished I had crosses to pin on all their breasts,
to soften the last moments of the life they had given for their
country, by a sign of its remembrance of them! But I had not one, and I
could not help feeling furious at the thought that we were close on New
Year's day, and that a perfect rain of honours was about to fall on a
heap of theatrical directors who had done special service to the
government, and private secretaries, and political writers, who had
never been off the Boulevards, the favoured elect of the world of
politics--those odious politics! The dismal, ill-built, rickety
hospital was perfectly well managed at all events, thanks to our naval
surgeons, and also to our admirable sisters of charity, whose names I
cannot pronounce without indulging in another and an indignant
digression.
Can we really have fallen so low as to tolerate that these holy and
noble women, who have lightened so much suffering, and so worthily
sustained the good name of France all over the world, should be
sacrificed in these latter days to a pack of public-house reformers and
would-be strong-minded freethinkers?
From the hospital, that ante-chamber of death, I went to the barracks
for the living, mere dens, built by St. Routine to sealed pattern, at
so much a foot, identically the same in every climate, and absolutely
unsuitable for any. How different from the spacious, airy, comfortable
edifices raised by the English for the comfort and well-being of their
colonial garrisons!
St. Louis is built beside a river, the flat banks of which are seen
stretching away hedged in by masses of green vegetation. In the
mornings the town is usually wrapped in an unhealthy fog. Yet this is
the moment at which the inhabitants are to be seen languidly dragging
themselves along the straight sandy streets, between the negro huts and
a few white houses with terraces before them. When the fog lifts the
place is nothing but a scorching desert. I was to have gone up the
river to inspect our military stations and their garrisons, but the
only available boat was detained outside the bar across the mouth of
the river, which was absolutely impassable. After waiting for it in
vain for several days, I left St. Louis for Goree and Dakar.
At Goree I once more saw the pretty signares, a regularly enlisted
company of mulatto women, which furnishes our officers, civil and
military, with wives and housekeepers during their turn of colonial
service. Then I came again upon my friend the King of Dakar, an old
acquaintance of mine, who sent me his compliments by his "general of
cavalry," a perfect giant in stature, excessively thin, who wore a
stock and a cocked hat, and no breeches.
At Goree I embarked on board the colonial despatch boat Galibi to
inspect our stations on the Gambia and the Cazamanze. This vessel was
herself a curiosity, not indeed as a ship of war, for she was a fine
little steam despatch boat, armed with four guns, but on account of the
organisation and composition of her crew. There were only four whites
on board--the lieutenant in command, a poor fellow who was soon to fall
a victim to the climate and die at his post, a clerk, an engineer, and
a master-gunner. All the rest of the crew were negroes, hypocritically
denominated Government prisoners, whose whole costume, as a rule,
consisted of a monkey-skin cap and a string of grigris, or charms,
round their waists. "Haven't you ever tried to dress them?" said I to
the lieutenant.
"Oh yes, but as soon as they get on shore they instantly sell their
things, or give them away to their women, and come back naked. So I
have given it up."
When it was time for us to start, the captain owned to me that none of
the crew had ever known how to steer, except one negro, who acted as
his butler, and he could only steer in a river, by keeping the ship at
an equal distance from the two banks. He had never been able to
understand anything about steering by the compass at sea. As we had to
go a certain distance at sea before reaching the mouth of the rivers, I
took on board a whaler and crew from my frigate, and my men went to the
wheel. But now a fresh difficulty arose. The single engineer could not
stop by his engine for ever, without taking any rest. Now and then the
care of the machinery had to be confided to a negro, whom he had
trained after a certain fashion, and I confess I felt far from easy
when I saw him handling the levers and taps with all the
self-confidence of a monkey showing off a magic lantern. Besides our
negro crew, there was a perfect menagerie of creatures loose on board.
Gazelles, which were inoffensive enough, I must grant, a legion of
ill-behaved monkeys, and a tame civet. The monkeys never stopped
playing spiteful tricks on everybody all day long, and at night they
all huddled together, clasping each other, with their tails sticking
out like the rays of a star or the spokes of a wheel. If by anybody's
fault or misfortune one of those tails got trodden on, the whole
cluster of monkeys yelled for an hour, just as journalists do if a
finger is laid on one of their fraternity. As for the civet, she used
to offer her company as bed-fellow to each of us in turn, and it was of
the most stinking and disagreeable kind.
We soon reached the mouth of the Gambia River, and, entering it through
a labyrinth of sandbanks, we saw a wide stream with flat shores covered
with mangrove swamps, behind which aquatic form of vegetation huge
trees rose, fantastically tall, and in all the splendour of their
tropical growth. All the rivers of the West African coast present this
identically same appearance. We had hardly entered this one before we
were confronted by one of those international questions which swarm on
the coast in this part of the globe. The Gambia is a British river, but
on its banks is a territory belonging to us, called Albreda, which I
was about to visit. Had we a right to go there direct, up the English
waters of the Gambia, or ought we to stop first of all at St. Mary
Bathurst, the capital of the British possessions on the river, to ask
permission to do so? If a merchant vessel, French or otherwise, tried
to get up to Albreda, the British stopped her by fair words or force,
to maintain their right. But this we were contesting, and as the
business was still in suspense, I passed St. Mary Bathurst without
stopping, and anchored at Albreda. It is not a very important factory.
I was received by four white men and a crowd of negroes. The white
inhabitant stretched on a couch under the veranda of the one-storied
house in which he dwells, has no society beyond that of the signare,
who acts provisionally as his wife, and the crowd of slaves of both
sexes who go and come around him. Fever lurks on every side, and
carries him off on the slightest imprudence. But it is a rich country,
for it is inhabited by a race of negroes, fervent Mussulmans, who are
industrious workers, and the produce of their industry is a lucrative
article of barter. In the evening, after a long walk through the woods,
balmy with a thousand sweet scents, where flights of lovely birds,
long-tailed parrokeets, and black-plumaged widow birds, perched in the
trees, I saw a small British vessel approach, and an officer put off
from her. He had been sent by the governor, who was on board, and had
been going up the river to call on the captain of the French ship, and
express his regret at not having seen him at Bathurst in the morning--a
covert complaint, in fact. On hearing who I was, and that I expected to
go to Bathurst the following day, he sent me word that he would return
and receive me there.
The flagstaff on which our colours had been hoisted having fallen down,
I had it set up again. It was necessary in a disputed country, such as
this was, and pending the Government's decision, that our flag should
wave over our colonists, and protect them from all insult.
Then I landed at Bathurst. Our captives, anxiously directed by the
master-gunner, contrived somehow or other to fire a salute of
twenty-one guns, which was instantly returned from the British forts,
and I went ashore in the whale-boat I had brought from the Belle-Poule.
The commander of the Galibi, who wanted to escort me, had manned a boat
and rigged out his men for the nonce in smart striped shirts and red
caps. Wonderful to relate, they were so electrified by the reception I
was given, and the example of my white crew, that they brought both
shirts and caps faithfully back! I was received on the beach by a
company of what in those days was called the Royal African
Corps--splendid black troops, officered by white men. I had a great
deal of conversation with the governor, a very sensible man, who
expressed the hope that my visit would result in a prompt settlement of
a state of local affairs which might give rise to the most serious
difficulties. He was exceedingly civil to me, and gave me a very fine
dinner-party, before which I was somewhat astonished to see "the
ladies" appear in the drawing-room, in the shape of three very dark
mulattoes, in full evening dress--low bodices, lace
pocket-handkerchiefs, and fans. The doors of the dining-room having
just been thrown open, the governor indicated to me by a gesture that I
was to take one of these ladies into dinner. Not knowing which of them
should take precedence, I held my arm out in the middle of the
drawing-room, and one of the dark-skinned ladies blushingly put hers
within it. Many years afterwards, dining at Washington with that
agreeable man, Charles Sumner, the great abolitionist, and some very
charming ladies, I amused myself by telling him about my Bathurst
dinner, and asked him whether HE had ever given his arm to a negress. I
awaited his answer with some curiosity, to see whether he would dare
answer in the affirmative before the American ladies, who are so
sensitive on the colour question, but he got out of it very adroitly.
"My dear Prince," said he, "in every religion each man has his own
share of work. I preach and you practise. Don't let us mix the two
things up together."
As we were steaming out of the Gambia I saw the commander of the Galibi
on his bridge, in a state of violent excitement, with all his crew
mustered before him, and appealing in the most vehement manner to his
capitaine de riviere (river captain), the title borne by the chief of
the negro crew. I joined him, and he said, "I've just been mustering
the men. I can't recollect all the fellows' names, so I count heads.
I've done it over again four or five times, and there is always one man
too many." And then he began to yell again, "Capitaine de riviere!
What's the meaning of this? There's a man too many!" The capitaine de
riviere, who had stationed himself well forward, pretended not to hear,
but, driven at last from his refuge, he came aft, pulling off his
bell-crowned hat, the distinctive sign of his authority, and,
uncovering his shock of gray hair, like a woollen travelling cap,
murmured in his gentlest tones, "Please, sir, he's a LITTLE PRESENT I
was given at Bathurst!"
We were soon in the Cazamanze, after having very nearly been lost on
the sandbanks obstructing the entrance to the river, on which the sea
breaks furiously. The river is a fine one, wide and deep. I steamed up
it for about a hundred miles. After the few villages near the mouth we
came to a desert country, covered with impenetrable forest and jungle.
We steamed along between two walls of green, and our only excitement as
we went was to watch the numerous hippopotami, who seemed very much put
out by the passing of the Galibi. As we neared our station at Sedhiou,
which I was going to inspect, we noticed several villages, the
inhabitants of which greeted us with yells. The jungle had been cleared
around the houses, over which the great trees stood like huge parasols.
So gigantic was the growth, that sometimes a whole village was
sheltered by one and the same tree. The post of Sedhiou--a brick-built
fort, with a little bastion armed with a gun at each corner--is placed
at a point of great importance on the caravan line from the interior. I
was received by an infantry captain, M. Dallin, who had done the most
excellent service there, but ruined his health, and by two white
soldiers, both wasted by fever. The rest of the garrison consisted of
black soldiers, splendid fellows, brave and faithful, and excellent
workmen, who had done, and were still doing, all the work on the
station.
Thinking of those fine soldiers, and then casting back my memory to the
services recently rendered by their successors, the Senegalese
Riflemen--first-class troops, useful anywhere, like our Algerian
Turcos, who have already proved what they are worth--I ask myself why
we should not utilise the considerable recruiting opportunities Western
Africa offers us to raise a number of negro battalions. They might if
properly enlisted be most usefully employed, especially in those
unhealthy countries where we now squander so many invaluable lives. I
will even go further, for it is my conviction that in thus acting we
should be preparing for the future, and outstripping the march of
events. The state of armed preparation which now exists in Europe--with
every man a soldier, and forced to be a soldier, with every man's
career interrupted, and each man's existence hanging on the chance of
an electoral surprise or a parliamentary incident--cannot possibly
last. It is unhappily to be feared that to escape from this insane
condition of things some violent shock will be necessary, which will
make a clean sweep of the false notions dressed up in fine names which
we have been accumulating for the past century. When that crisis is
over, people will want to be free, as Americans are free--free to do
and to be WHAT THEY CHOOSE, and, especially, free not to be soldiers
UNLESS THEY CHOOSE. There can be no doubt at all that those inventions
of revolutionary tyranny, conscription and compulsory service, will
become the object of universal horror, and that the first person who
dares to take the initiative in abolishing them will be saluted by the
blessings of the entire human race. Wherefore every government will
perforce have to come to what is right and just--to armies consisting
of volunteers and auxiliaries. And who knows whether we shall not then
find the real strength of our army in our black regiments, just as
Russia would in her yellow-skinned ones and Great Britain in her Indian
troops? But I must bring this digression to a close.
As we steamed down the Cazamanze we ran aground, and while the ship was
being got off I went ashore, in a creek, where at the very outset I
disturbed the slumbers of a couple of crocodiles sleeping on a stone. A
moment later I was nearly knocked over by a big boar with reddish
bristles and up-curved fangs, a "wart hog." Then I got into the brush,
tall grass much higher than myself, above which hung the green roof of
the giant trees. Pushing my way along I came to a place where the
ground was trodden and the branches broken, and on which I saw the
traces and fresh tracks of a herd of elephants. Close to me, too, I
heard the crackling caused by the passage of some big animal which I
could not see. We followed the elephants' path, but hindered by the
grasses they had trodden down, and our feet catching in the holes made
in the damp soil by their huge feet, we were soon forced to beat a
retreat. Another wild beast's track led us to an immense glade, like a
small plain, hemmed in by the woods, where we saw herds of antelope
quietly feeding. We started in pursuit of them, but like the ducks on
the ponds, the creatures seemed to have a very correct appreciation of
the distance our guns would carry and the impotent fire we poured on
them disturbed them not. Not a single beast even left the plain to take
shelter in the woods, where we could hear the greater wild ones
howling. Ah! if we had possessed long-range weapons, what a shoot we
should have had, and what a paradise of sport that virgin country was!
But one victim only fell to our rifles, a big monkey, which one of our
sailors killed, and which he and his comrades eat. It was, so it would
appear, a dish to lick your lips over!
For want of game we brought something else back with us from this
expedition up the Gambia and Cazamanze rivers--fever. Not a soul
escaped it, and in spite of the care of the surgeon-major of the
Belle-Poule, who was particularly skilful in treating the malady, we
took a long time to get over it. I went back to Goree, where I was to
see another sad sight. One of our gunboats had come in from a
river-station with only four healthy men out of seventy-five. Typhus
fever was decimating the crew. I had to present the Cross of the Legion
of Honour to the lieutenant in command, M. de Langle, who had behaved
like a hero. I went alongside his ship to see him in the lonely creek
to which the infected vessel had been relegated. A crowd of spectral
figures crept to the ports to look at me. It was a pitiful scene.
I had by this time gone the round of nearly all our possessions along
the West Coast of Africa, and the impression I was carrying away was
far from being a good one. On this coast, as elsewhere, France
originally outstripped all other nations, and the first European
expeditions to the Black Continent were sent out from Dieppe during the
fourteenth century. The principal merchandise they brought back
consisted of ivory, and the branch of industry occupied by working this
substance still exists in that town at the present day. Up to the
eighteenth century all the important factories on the coast were in our
hands. After that date, just as in India and America, where also we had
been the earliest colonists, everything began to go to ruin, and our
possessions dwindled to the unimportant posts I had just been to see.
Since my visit an effort has been made to recommence some extension of
our factories and trade in the locality. The question is whether it
will be successful, and, above all, whether, amidst the vicissitudes of
our politics and the constant state of provisional arrangement in which
we live, we possess the coherence and connectedness of design and
system necessary to that success. I pray it may be so! But there are
two insurmountable obstacles which will always prove stumbling-blocks
to us--the unhealthy climate, deathly indeed to white men, and the
black population, a childish race, who may be disciplined into being
good soldiers, but who will never work except when made to by force,
and that brute force.
Before continuing our cruise along the African coast, the squadron (the
Belle Poule and Africaine, frigates, and Coquette, corvette) went to
the Cape Verd Islands, both to give the crews change of air, to test
the speed of the various vessels, and to take in fresh provisions. This
last object was defeated, in consequence of a curious circumstance. A
Portuguese station in the Bissago Archipelago had been attacked by the
negroes, and when reinforcements had been asked for, the government at
Lisbon had answered by sending two transports to fetch troops from the
Cape Verd Islands,--from Porto-Praya, where we had anchored, in
particular,--and to convey them to the threatened spot. But before
embarking troops they had to be found, and there were none, or rather
they existed on paper only. To supply the want and respond to the
pressing appeal made to him the governor could devise no better plan
than to set an ambush at the gates of the different towns, seize the
country people as they came in, and send them away as soldiers. Of
course, when once wind of this got about, nobody came in, the markets
were deserted, and the towns were famine-stricken. Although the Cape
Verd Islands appear from sea to be nothing but arid mountains, with
bare rocks and rugged slopes, they really are furrowed with delightful
valleys, covered with leafy woods, where innumerable monkeys peacefully
dwell, and in which the flocks of guinea-fowl inhabiting the open
spaces on the islands take refuge from pursuit. There is no more
curious sight to be seen than these mobs of birds, two or three hundred
of them together, tearing along like a contingent of Arab horsemen, at
such a rapid pace that it is impossible to come up with them, on that
rocky soil, even with the best of horses. A native of the island gave
us a luncheon in one of the valleys of which I speak. His house, which
was reached through an avenue of cocoa-palms, stood in the middle of a
grove of enormous orange-trees, over sixty feet in height. We were
waited on at table by handsome negresses, slaves; and these, according
to our host, were the conditions of their life. Their time, except on
Sundays, belonged to their master, who, in return, gave them their
food, and, when necessary, an occasional beating. They dressed
themselves out of the money they earned--Heaven knows how!--lodged
where they best could, and were given a bonus whenever they had a
child--a young slave to add to their owner's stock. It was a simple
arrangement enough. On my return to the African coast, I was to tumble
headlong into all the questions contingent on the slave system, the
suppression of the slave trade, which still existed, and the whole
future of the negro race.
Sierra Leone, our first port, differs from the rest of the invariably
flat African coasts by reason of its background of high mountains, and
the green hills which run down right to the seashore. Between these
hills lies the mouth of a great river, forming an excellent haven, and
a first-rate military and commercial station. But the place is terribly
unhealthy. To give us a taste of local colour, we were surrounded,
before we got into the river, by hosts of sharks, and in a few minutes
we had hoisted five of the huge fishes on board. Then no sooner had we
cast anchor before Freetown, than a gentleman of a certain age, in a
blue coat and white nankeen trousers and a top hat, appeared, asking
speech of the captain. He was sent to me. "Captain," said he, "I've
come to know how many ladies will be wanted for the frigate?"
"Why, sir," I replied in some astonishment, "I don't know; I've not
thought about it yet."
"You see I make it my business, sir, when a man-o'-war comes into port,
to come and offer my services."
"Well, sir, I'm much obliged to you, I won't give you any special
order; I'll leave the business completely to itself."
I never heard why he was so anxious to make sure of a monopoly in his
line of business. Apart from this little incident, our stay in this
port, during which we were treated in the most friendly manner by the
kindliest of governors and his lady, was in no way different from any
other.
Yet Sierra Leone was interesting as being the headquarters of the
British naval station, established to suppress the slave trade, and as
being the place where the slave cargoes found on board the captured
slavers were landed. Freetown and its neighbourhood was full of these
poor wretches, who were denominated, somewhat hypocritically, liberated
Africans; but the government took good care not to liberate them, and
there indeed it was right. To have turned out these human cattle, swept
up in distant raids, now far from home and country, would have been to
cast them infallibly into the clutches of cruel and pitiless native
masters, who would keep back what they could not sell for human
sacrifices or cannibal banquets. It was mere common humanity therefore,
to keep them safe, once they had been caught. But to avoid feeding
useless mouths, the finest men were enrolled as soldiers--the British
government, ever in advance of others, applying a law of compulsory
service, unlimited in period, to their case. The recruiting service
once satisfied, the rest of the poor devils were turned, willy-nilly,
into "free labourers," and the greater part of them were sent as such
to the British Antilles. The ship that bore them thither was no longer
called a slaver, and her cargo were not slaves. But if the names were
changed, the things themselves were terribly alike. Yet philanthropy
and sentimentality were satisfied. And so were the captains and crews
of the British cruisers, for hunting slavers is a lucrative business,
and the prize money earned made them forget the unhealthiness of the
climate and the monotony of the blockade.
The passion for lucre excited on both sides gave rise to actions which
bordered on sheer piracy, concerning which many a tale fell on my ear
all along the Guinea coast. Thus one Frenchman I met had been in
command of a Spanish slaver, which was lying becalmed. He victoriously
repulsed the attacking boats of a British cruiser, and killed the
lieutenant in command of her, who was the first to board the
slave-ship, with his own hand. A slight breeze and the fall of night
enabled him to make good his escape. But no more of this. The negro
trade and the suppression of it, the abuses on both sides, are all of
them bygone things, bereft of interest. Slavery is the one thing that
remains. It always has existed in Africa, and the steady progress made
in that part of the globe by the Mohammedan religion, which admits
slavery, as the basis of the social system, will no doubt still further
help to perpetuate it. Should all the black tribes merge into one huge
Mussulman body, stirred at once by religious fanaticism and by a
passion for slavery, a formidable difficulty will be added to those
which already confront European action in the continent inhabited by
the sons of Ham.
From the liberated Africans of Sierra Leone we came to another
category. A negro republic, with all the necessary
impedimenta--elections, assemblies, newspapers, and the most
exaggerated form of Protestant Puritanism to boot. This Liberian
Republic, founded by an American religious body, is a sort of El Dorado
for the exclusive benefit of freed negroes from the United States, and
is absolutely forbidden ground to the white race. After great
difficulties to begin with, after being abandoned and repopulated more
than once, after times of scarcity during which the miserable freed men
bitterly regretted their lost servitude, the republic has ended by
taking root. There were about ten thousand inhabitants, doing nothing
at all, for the free negro thinks and says, like his slave brother,
"Work no good!" What did they live on then? First of all, on the
sunshine, and then by doing a kind of broker's work between passing
ships and the natives. They vegetated in fact, and if they did not
actually rot in idleness, they owed it to a tall Virginian mulatto, a
very intelligent fellow, extraordinarily like Alphonse Karr in
appearance, "Governor Roberts," with whom I had several long and
interesting talks. He had been sharp enough to get hold of the key of
the cashbox, and by that act had become the sole representative of the
sovereign people. In spite of the constitution, in spite of laws and
regulations, all power was concentrated in his hands, and, save for the
name, his republic was transformed into a tidy little dictatorship.
Leaving Liberia, we slipped away down the Ivory Coast and the Gold
Coast, driven gently along by a scorching wind called the Harmattan.
Our charts were primitive and incomplete, the information they gave
quite inadequate. We had to steer by soundings, very cautiously. The
coast was uniformly low and green, with no distinctive signs upon it.
If we wanted to know where we were, we had to go after some canoe full
of fishermen, and ask our way, hat in hand, as one does in the street.
It was a funny sight to see the great black hull of the Belle-Poule,
with her white sails scarcely filled by the light breeze, hugging the
land, amongst a crowd of canoes full of noisy stark naked savages, hung
with necklaces, and with arrows stuck in their heads of fuzzy hair,
looking like handfuls of horse-hair pulled out of a mattress and
clipped into any number of different shapes. A regular market went on
alongside. Our sailors would pass down a biscuit or some other thing in
their caps, and haul them up again with pineapples, or bananas, or
fish, or perhaps a gray parrot. Thus we sailed along till we came to
some great forts, whose white walls bristled with cannon--Axim, Elmina,
Cape Coast Cattle--the two first flying the Dutch, the last one, the
British flag. All along the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast we were to
come upon these forts, originally constructed to ensure the humane
management of the slave trade, nowadays become very burdensome
stations, of no value but as marts for the barter of palm oil,
oleaginous nuts, and ivory on the one part, against gunpowder, brandy,
glass beads, matches, and the blue cotton cloth known as "guinea cloth"
on the other. I went from Elmina, where the Dutch officers were most
friendly, to Cape Coast, by land, in a palanquin. My companions
travelled in baskets shaped like Egyptian mummies, which tall negroes
carried on their heads, without putting their hands to them. It was not
safe to stir! At Cape Coast, I found yet another mode of locomotion.
Governor Maclean took me for a long expedition along the road towards
Coomassie, the Ashanti King's capital. We travelled in a small
victoria, to which was harnessed a four-in-hand of splendid negroes,
whose backs bore the marks of terrible floggings. In spite of the sandy
road, the team went gaily along full trot, urged forward by the
Governor's incessant cry of "Get on faster, boys!" Then I went back on
board and steered for Accra, another group of forts. Thence to
Crevecoeur, a Dutch fort, and Christianborg, a Danish one, the governor
of which, a charming young fellow, came off to see me. Living as he did
alone amongst the blacks, he was delighted to find himself amongst
people of his own kind again, for a few minutes.
The following day we landed in canoes, for the bar was rough, and I had
been charitably warned not to put my arm or hand into the water. Only a
few days previously an unlucky French sailor, who had wanted to get
back his hat, which had fallen into the water, had had an arm seized
and taken off by a shark. I did as I was bid; we plunged into the surf,
and got through without any drawbacks. Just as I reached the shore a
tremendous fusillade began. It was a reception after the local fashion,
which had been prepared for me: over three thousand dancing natives
doing a sort of Arab fantasia on foot. They wore shell necklaces and
bracelets on their arms and legs. Some had caps made of wild beasts'
skins, or circlets of turkey's feathers on their heads; others again
had gold horns on their foreheads. Everybody was shouting and writhing
about and firing off guns; the elders of the tribe pressed round me
with dancing attendants behind them, who held huge coloured parasols
over their heads. The women exerted themselves as much as the men,
performing the most extravagant and peculiar dances to the sound of
twenty or thirty tomtoms, or great drums, six feet long. The whole
thing made the most extraordinary clatter and uproar. When we got near
the fort, the crowd executed a sham assault on it, the big gun in the
citadel was fired, and I made my triumphal entry between two rows of
soldiers in red Danish uniforms. Nothing could have been more
picturesque.
The governor gave us a splendid lunch, in the European style, in a big
room in the fort. The only thing that was African about it was the
waiting, which certainly did not lack local colour; for it was done by
a score of young negresses, selected for the irreproachable beauty of
their forms, which no veil, not even the very tiniest, concealed. There
they stood, plate in hand, and napkin under arm, without the smallest
shyness, seeing indeed they wore the dress(!) of the country. Imagine
the bronze caryatidae round the new Paris Opera House come down off
their pedestals, and handing round the dishes at a big Parisian
dinner-party! All these young ladies' coquetry had gone to the dressing
of their woolly hair, which was clipped, like garden shrubs, into the
most fanciful shapes, and to the fineness of their skins, which were as
soft and shiny as satin. This resulted from the daily baths they were
in the habit of taking, rubbing themselves also with fine sand. But,
unluckily, the rubbing could not get rid of the negro scent. I have
never been able myself to endure the odour of negroes of either sex;
but I have known people whom it quite intoxicated, and who were always
trying to get reappointed to Senegal, so as to get back to it, in spite
of having had their health shattered by African fevers. It is said,
too, to attract sharks, and that if a white man bathes with a negro
where they swarm, the negro is always seized first. I have no personal
experience of this fact.
A hundred miles west of the forts of Accra we found ourselves opposite
Widah, the chief mart of the kingdom of Dahomey. From the sea we looked
on a sort of sandy dyke, on which the waves broke furiously. Behind the
dyke lay a wide lagoon, some of it a mere marsh, and beyond the lagoon
the flags of France, Spain, and Brazil floated over some forts and
large white European houses. It was the first time we had seen our flag
waving on any spot on the coast since leaving Senegal, and we were very
eager to go and see the station it sheltered. Landing was no easy
matter, and I waited a long time in a big canoe, manned by twenty
paddlers kneeling forward, before the old negro in the stern decided
the attempt to be possible. He never stopped invoking every fetish
under the sun, and sprinkling the sea out of a brandy bottle, keeping
his eye the while on the waves as they came rolling in. Then all at
once he gave a great shout, loudly responded to by the twenty paddlers,
who yelled in cadence, while the canoe flew before the united and
frenzied strokes of their paddles. Two enormous waves passed, leaving
us undamaged; but a third approached, huge and threatening. Should we
get to the shore before it? Would it rise upright and capsize us, or
would it break on us and swamp us? Neither. It did reach us, indeed,
but the old steersman had calculated well; it lifted us up unharmed and
carried us on to the beach, where a hundred negroes laid hold of the
canoe and dragged it high and dry. I was seized myself before I had
time to collect my ideas, and put into a hammock hung upon a long pole,
which five or six tall negroes held horizontally, with arms
outstretched above their heads, during the time it took to cross the
lagoon, where the water was waist high. They set me down at last, at
the gate of the French fort, in the middle of an immense crowd, much
excited at the arrival of a French squadron--there were three ships.
Widah had been, and still was, a very important slave station. France,
England, and Portugal had in former days possessed forts there, and had
successively abandoned them. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Brazilian
factories alone remained in possession of the trade in that country.
They sold European goods to the King of Dahomey, taking slaves, of whom
they had formerly exported large numbers, in exchange, and this was a
source of great riches. But at the time I speak of, with the British
cruisers about, hardly one slaver got through out of every ten. The
King of Dahomey had a glut of slaves on his hands, and cleared them off
by massacring them as human sacrifices at idol feasts. One Frenchman,
M. Provencal, of the firm of Regis, at Marseilles, had lately rehoisted
the national colours at the French fort, rebuilt the dwellings, and set
to work to do legitimate trade, offering his goods to the King of
Dahomey, and taking nothing in exchange but palm-oil and similar
produce. If the slave trade is put down--and when I was on that coast
its days seemed already numbered--that enterprising and plucky
Frenchman will have done more to civilise those countries than all the
more violent measures have accomplished. I was very glad to notice his
action, and gave him the heartiest encouragement to persevere in it.
The courtyard of the station was already full of casks of palm-oil,
which augured well.
Immediately on my arrival I received a visit from the Avogal, the King
of Dahomey's governor at Widah, a big healthy-looking negro, with whom
the only conversation I had was of the most commonplace description. He
was accompanied by two other blacks, with intelligent faces and sharp
eyes, who sat on each side of him without speaking a word, and departed
equally silently. "Those are the censors," said M. Provencal. "Each of
the King's officials is always attended in that fashion to report all
he says and does. If the King should be dissatisfied with him he has
his head cut off." If this habit was universal there would be fewer
office seekers. This king ruled after the antique pattern. He had kept
all his seignorial rights. If any of his subjects married a wife the
lady had first to be presented to him, and if he liked her he kept her.
His authority was unlimited in fact; nevertheless, powerful though he
might be, he was likely to find it hard to change his subjects from
slave-hunters into oil growers.
After the Avogal's visit I went to pay one in my turn to a strange
individual, more of a king in Widah than the King of Dahomey himself,
who could not do without him,--for he supplied him with guns and
gunpowder for his wars, and brandy wherewith to intoxicate his Amazons.
This personage, a Brazilian of the name of Don Francisco de Souza, but
known invariably as Cha-Cha, had been settled at Widah for forty-three
years. He was a veteran slaver, from whom the British had captured
thirty-four ships, two of them quite recently. A little old man, with
quick eyes and an expressive countenance, he was credited with having
two thousand slaves in his barracoons, and with being the father of
eighty male children--the girls had never been thought worth reckoning
up. All his sons had been properly brought up. I saw them walking about
in all directions, uniformly dressed in white suits, and wearing Panama
hats. Most of them were very handsome mulattoes.
The state of the surf, which was impassable, prevented me from getting
back on board, so it was settled that I should dine with Cha-Cha, and
sleep at the French fort, where I installed myself in the former
quarters of the governor, which I shared with M. Provencal. Rather a
comical adventure befell me there. A very aged negro, formerly
gatekeeper of the fort, when M. Dagneau commanded it for the King of
France, had been to pay his respects to me in the morning, and I had
caused him to be given a present for himself and his family in the
shape of a demijohn of brandy, which they first danced round and then
carried off, with great rejoicings. Well, the enthusiasm increased in
measure as the contents of the demijohn disappeared, and towards
evening the courtyard within the fort was invaded, to a great beating
of tomtoms and clucking of women's tongues, by a huge crowd of
Dahomeyan negroes, preceded by a sort of corps de ballet of young
negresses, wriggling themselves about in every conceivable manner. At
their head marched the ci-devant porter in a great state of excitement.
He began a fresh harangue in negro French.
"Croire Anglais tues tous Francais. Voir Francais. Trouver pere.
Contents, tous contents. Envoie commandant a nous. Pitit-Roi. Contents,
tous contents. Tous femmes, tous filles a toi, tous contents!" "Think
English killed all French. See Frenchman. Find father. Glad, all glad.
Sent captain to us. Little king. Glad, all glad. All women, all girls
for you. All glad!" And the young ladies smiled still broader, and
contorted their bodies still more violently, while the tomtoms crashed
louder than ever. It was clear the crowd expected something, and as it
did not see any sign of what it desired, the old negro became yet more
explicit both in speech and gesture. The populace actually expected me
to provide them with a scion of the royal race! And the commander of
the Favorite, Larrieu, flew at me instantly. "Come, Monseigneur," he
cried, "here's a chance of distinguishing yourself. Noblesse oblige!"
"My dear fellow," I replied, "I leave you to represent me," and I beat
an ignominious retreat, which the crowd did not misunderstand, to judge
by the grunts of disappointment I overheard.
That night I dined with Cha-Cha off silver plate, under the light shed
by church candelabra and candlesticks; and the toasts of the King and
Queen, and Prosperity to France, were each saluted by twenty-one guns,
for Cha-Cha's factory and harem, in which he was said to keep a
thousand women, formed a real fortress, bristling with cannon, and with
the additional natural defence of the lagoon before it. Most of
Cha-Cha's children were present at the dinner, and several captains of
slave ships, brimful of stories of their adventures. Cha-Cha made me a
present of a box of Havanas, the like of which the King of all the
Spains had never smoked. I handed it over to Larrieu, and the next day
I returned on board my ship, not without having one or two encounters.
The first of these was with the freshly-landed crews of the slavers
which had been captured the week before, about fifty determined-looking
men of all nationalities, who stopped me and requested in the most
arrogant manner to be taken to some port where they might reengage--an
impossible thing for me to do.
The second encounter was more painful. A crowd of lame or sickly slaves
escaped from the barracoons and threw themselves at my feet, clinging
to my clothes, wailing and beseeching me to buy them. The poor
wretches, who had no market value, and whom therefore the King did not
care to feed, expected to be sent shortly to Abomey for human
sacrifices. There were hundreds of them--a most distressing sight.
After Widah our cruise took on a different aspect. We had come to that
part of the coast called the Bights, consisting of the Gulfs of Biafra
and Benin, between which lies the huge Niger Delta. The weather, which
continued as scorching as ever, became excessively oppressive. The sky
was always dark and the rain never ceased. Sometimes a rift was seen in
the clouds in the distance, it would rapidly increase in size, taking a
funnel shape, and then a tornado would burst, like a tempest in
miniature, lasting only three or four hours, but of extraordinary
violence. During one of these the Belle-Poule had to scud along under
bare poles at the rate of twelve knots an hour. The weather was
excessively unhealthy, but in the whole course of this long cruise I
never lost but one man, who was carried off by a violent inflammation
of the liver. I attribute this good fortune in the first place to the
undoubted cleverness of our surgeon-major, Dr. Loze, whose whole career
had been spent in tropical waters. His theory was that quinine was only
absolutely efficacious if administered at a very fleeting moment in the
course of the fever, between the hot and cold fits, and he always sat
up with his patients himself, so as to catch the favourable
opportunity. In the second place we took quite exceptional hygienic
precautions, especially against the night damp. The crew wore their
winter kit from sunset to sunrise. No man was allowed to lie down on
deck during the night watches, especially while the dew was falling.
They had to walk up and down the whole time, under an awning, which was
always kept up over the deck. In order to carry this out, we never had
more than half watches on duty at night. We had to navigate carefully
and slowly, being short of hands, but the result was well worth the
temporary departure from the usual regulations for life on board a ship
of war.
I went up one of the arms by which the Niger pours it waters into the
Gulf of Guinea on board the Fine, a schooner belonging to the station,
commanded by Captain Lahalle. This arm, known as the Bonny River, is
the trading branch, the one down which passes all the produce which the
mighty Niger--a completely navigable river, with neither cataracts nor
rapids, the great future artery of Equatorial Africa--brings from the
interior of the continent. A negro king of the name of Pepel, more
intelligent than his fellows, had constituted himself broker to this
important trade. The European merchantmen coming up the river anchored
before his town, made over their cargoes to him, and shipped palm-oil,
the chief riches of the country, in their stead. The drawback was that
anything you do with negroes is slow work. Whether it was that the
palm-oil, which came in canoes, and very irregularly, from high up the
river, did not arrive in sufficient quantities, or whether it was
deliberate delay on Pepel's part, a year would sometimes elapse before
the return cargo was completed, and sickness was meanwhile decimating
the crews. Some cases there had been in which everybody had died, in
others, ships had set sail in despair, without completing their full
cargo, and Pepel had triumphed in his bad faith, until a man-of-war
came and made him disgorge. Several times already the authorities oft
the French station had had to chastise him, and it was a service to the
trade of every nation to go and show him one's teeth now and again.
This object it was, together with a certain amount of curiosity, which
had brought us to the Niger River.
When we got to Pepel's town we found eight large Liverpool merchantmen,
partly dismantled, and covered with roofs made of plantain leaves,
surrounded by canoes going incessantly to and from the shore, where
hundreds of negroes loaded them with casks of palm-oil. There was a
stir and commercial activity such as I had not yet seen anywhere on
that coast. The whole trade was exclusively English. To avoid the
mortality to their crews, the English captains had their ships
dismantled as soon as they got into the river, roofed the decks over,
and sent their sailors back to England. The unloading and loading of
the ships were then done by negro labour, as soon as a ship's cargo was
completed, she was manned and sent back to Liverpool with the crew of
some new arrival, and so on ad lib. It was very sensible, very well
suited to the circumstances of the case; but to carry out such a plan
the commercial houses must have had a great many ships, very large
capital, and a spirit of consistency in business affairs no longer
existing in our country. What with our unstable regime, and the
invariably provisional conditions under which we live, we could never
think of such a continuous struggle.
As soon as we had anchored and were preparing to go ashore, a great
uproar attracted my attention, and caused me to hurry out of my cabin
on deck. An unhappy negro who had been bathing close to us, with
numerous companions of both sexes, had just been seized and carried off
by a shark. We could still see the eddy above the spot where the
monster was devouring him. It was the second time I had witnessed such
a scene. These horrible creatures are "fetish" at the mouth of the
Bonny, where its waters join those of the new Calabar River, and human
sacrifices are offered to them. In other words, on certain days of the
year, the people go in procession to the river bar and throw in some
wretched children, who have been told they were being taken to a
festival. The sharks have a fine feast, to the joy of the onlookers,
and amid much beating of tom-toms. This Jew-Jew, or shark-worship, is
one of the most abominable superstitions I have ever met with. At Widah
the snakes were "fetish." Here at Bonny it was the lizards, which is
less cruel. Yet they are hideous enough, those Bonny lizards, huge
creatures over a yard or a yard and a half long. They have temples of
their own, where they are fed, and whence they sally out for walks,
constantly waving their rose-coloured forked tongues, and walking all
sideways, so as not to set their feet on their huge bellies, like great
bags, which they drag after them like trawl nets. One has to go about
with lanterns at night, for to step on these "fetish" gentry would
excite the population into taking the law into its own hands.
During a visit to the English sea-captains, we heard that a French
ship, the Julie of Bordeaux, had just sailed in despair, without having
completed her cargo, paid for in advance, after waiting nine months in
the river, and that Pepel, thinking that we had come on that account,
was shaking in his shoes. But on making inquiries we could find no
trace of any complaint, official or semi-official, having been made,
and further, the Julie was accused of having tried to dabble in the
slave trade. Here was a puzzle for us. What were we to do? Say nothing
to Pepel? Then he would laugh us to scorn, for his conscience pricked
him, we knew. All his canoes had taken to flight when we arrived, and
not a single negro had boarded us. Threaten him? But with what? And
why? To tell how we got out of this hole would be to betray... a
professional secret. All I can say is, that the next morning, in a huge
straw hat, and with a big striped parasol in my hand, I performed the
functions of dragoman to his Excellency Commander Lahalle, full
lieutenant, representing France and the French navy.
We began by crossing a swamp, covered with huge mangrove trees, through
which small canals had been cut to allow of the canoes getting up to
the houses. Under the dark mangrove shadows the long canoes, full of
fierce-looking stark-naked blacks, looked like huge crocodiles, ready
to fly at us. After a time we came alongside Pepel's house, a sort of
labyrinth of clay and straw-built huts. I announced his Excellency the
Commander to a negro who spoke Spanish. We were invited to sit down, a
crowd of blacks assembled, and the elders of the tribe arrived. Lastly
appeared a tall young man wearing a blue cotton shirt and trousers,
with amulets strung round his neck, and a sceptre covered with a
tigerskin in his hand. This was Pepel himself. He understood English
and spoke it a little. We had what is called in those parts a palaver
with him. I spoke very slowly, and the King answered me. We went over a
great many subjects. We were severe--but just! Nothing concerning the
result of this conference ever transpired, but the diplomatic action of
France made itself felt. Something else made itself felt as well, and
that was the horrible smell in Pepel's town, a filthy place, inhabited
by a numerous and hideous population.
When I got outside it I stopped short before a striking sight--a
semi-circular clump of trees so huge that men looked like pigmies
beneath them, giving me much the same impression as the mosque of St.
Sophia at Constantinople had formerly made on me. The trunks of these
trees were like the pillars of some strange cathedral, and it was as
dark beneath them as in some ancient church. The bare sandy soil
swarmed with women, some naked, some clothed, and all tattooed and
painted and striped in various colours, scraping up the earth to find
fresh water, the rarest of all commodities on the African coast. It was
a picture worth painting.
On leaving the Niger (which is British, irrevocably British), fierce
tornadoes drove us swiftly to Fernando Po, a lovely island covered with
forests, over which rises a huge peak, much like the Peak of Teneriffe,
and like it too, almost always lost in the clouds. I anchored close in
shore in an excellent haven, and seized the opportunity to send my crew
to amuse themselves and do their washing on shore. A pretty stream,
which tumbled in one waterfall after another through the masses of
tropical growth, was soon the scene of numerous laundry operations, in
which all the negresses in the neighbourhood insisted on joining,
incited thereto no doubt by the desire of seeing how my four hundred
strapping fellows set about their work.
[Illustration with caption: CITIZEN OF FERNANDO PO.]
From the top of the hill to its foot there rose one great
Africo-European shout of laughter and shriek of delight, which it was a
downright pleasure to listen to.
Officially speaking, Fernando Po was a Spanish possession But not a
single Spaniard lived on the island, and no Spanish flag floated over
it. The English indeed had landed several cargoes of their "liberated
Africans" on it, and an individual, whether official or not I cannot
tell, had also come to govern them. He had built himself a comfortable
house, before which he had planted a flagstaff, from which the Union
Jack waved. After a time he had assumed the style and title of
governor, and I was requested to call on him as such, which I
absolutely refused to do. On my return to Europe, chancing to meet
Comte Bresson, our ambassador in Spain, I mentioned the state of
matters at Fernando Po to him, and soon after received a letter from
him from Madrid, in which he told me the Spanish Government had just
despatched a warship to retake possession of the island. It was well
worth while, for if the British Niger, the German Cameroons, and the
French Gaboon are some day to develop commercially and colonially, as
they seem to give promise of doing, Fernando Po, with its insular
position, its comparatively healthy climate, and its excellent
anchorage, lying as it does at an equal distance from the three centres
of activity, cannot fail to become a most important place both from the
commercial and the military point of view.
I speak of the FRENCH Gaboon. It was not French at the time of my
visit, but it was soon to become so. We had important commercial
interests there, and the idea of forming a colonial station was already
entertained.
Commander Bouet, who had preceded me on the coast, had taken his
gunboat up the river, and had earnestly pressed me to do the same thing
with the Belle-Poule, so as to prove its navigability for the largest
ships, which, once acknowledged, would stamp it as a first-class naval
station. I resolved to make the attempt, though I had no charts, no
levels nor surveys, and the low shores offered no landmarks nor
distinctive signs, not even a tree to guide one. Bouet had merely
warned me that there were dangerous sandbanks to be avoided. "Pooh!
you'll find your way amongst them all right." And so we did indeed, but
it was a regular voyage of discovery.
While we were creeping along with all due caution, a fleet of canoes
joined us from the right bank of the river, where Libreville now
stands, with Qua-Ben, king of the right bank, and his suite, on board.
The chief boarded us, came and greeted me, and then with a
self-important air, established himself, accompanied by the whole of
his suite, on the poop of my frigate. He was a small deformed man, with
a countenance betraying all the spitefulness usual among dwarfs and
humpbacked people. He was huddled into a British naval officer's
uniform. Taken up as I was with the management of my ship, I paid no
attention at all to him. Presently a top man just come down out of the
mizzentop approached me and whispered, "Captain, that king is an awful
rascal. I was here last year with a ship from Nantes, and he stripped
us of everything."
"Are you quite sure?"
"Perfectly, sir, it's Qua-Ben. I know him quite well"
"Very good, call the master-at-arms...Master-at-arms, take that king
over there, and put him in irons!"
Four pairs of sinewy arms lifted up his sable majesty, under the orders
of the master-at-arms, the police officer of the ship, and thus
carried, and followed by his dismayed attendants, the king disappeared
below. He yelled like a dog who has had his paw trodden on, and I
fancied I heard the words "Bouet! Bouet!" here and there. That was
indeed the name he was invoking. When he had once been laid out on his
plank couch, we extracted a complete confession of his misdeeds through
the medium of several interpreters, and we learnt also the fact, which
a summary investigation confirmed, that Commander Bouet had already
chastised him and made him disgorge his plunder once. So I had him set
at liberty, and advised him to meditate on his second warning, and
behave accordingly for the future.
He lost no time in taking himself off, while the Belle-Poule cast
anchor near the left bank of the river, before a town belonging to
another native king known as Denis. This Denis was by no means an
ordinary individual. Some of his predecessors, too, had been
illustrious in their way. His father, who had been kidnapped when very
young and taken to Europe, had played the Chinese bells in a military
band under the first Napoleon's empire, had returned to his own
country, and had finally been called to the highest place in the State.
His son had inherited his father's honours. He was a fine-looking
negro, with grizzled woolly pate, who spoke French fairly well, and
seemed much inclined to come to an understanding with us and open up
his country to trade and civilisation. He came to call on me in great
state, dressed in the handsome uniform of a general of the French
Republic, the cast-off garments of some performer at the Cirque
Olympique. He had a tricolour plume in his hat, a gold laced coat with
lapels turned back on the chest, white breeches, and top boots. He wore
the decoration of the Legion of Honour, which he had been given for
some service or other he had done our fleet in those waters; and a
large gold medal of Queen Victoria, given him by the English, hung down
on a thick chain between his knees. His son--who lived close to the
landing-stage in a big hut with a hoarding round it, like what you see
in Paris round pulled-down houses, on which was written, instead of the
usual warning, "Petit Denis, Fils du Roi" (Little Denis, the King's
Son) in letters a foot high--was anxious to come too. He had a Hussar
uniform, but not knowing how to put it on, he sent at the last moment
to ask for somebody to go and help him to get into it. I lost no time
in detailing the midshipmen of the frigate for this duty, which they
performed with the greatest gusto, dressing up "Petit Denis" just as
the tailor's assistants dress up M. Jourdain in the Bourgeois
Gentil-homme. But the scamps tightened him up to such an extent in his
jacket and belts that he was more dead than alive, and on the brink of
an apopletic attack, by the time he got on board. We gave the royal
family the best welcome at our command. My bandmaster, M. Paulus,
entertained them with his noisiest tunes; but whenever the band stopped
the king cried "Encore! encore!" When the bandsmen got tired out I shut
his majesty up in a little cabin with the three ship's drummers, and
told them to keep rolling till he had enough of it. But the drummers
gave out in their turn, and I had to send the insatiable melomaniac and
his family on shore at last, whether he would or no.
In return for my handsome behaviour to him he invited me to join him in
an elephant hunt. These animals were very numerous in the vicinity, and
were devastating the plantations. But the season was particularly
unhealthy, everybody was ill; we should have had to spend the night in
pestilential marshes, where we were certain to get fever, and as I had
hardly got clear of that we had caught in the Cazamanze River, I had to
refuse the tempting offer. We spent several days in the Gaboon, amongst
a race of negroes who struck me as being more intelligent and more easy
to civilise than any others on the coast. The women, too, had better
features than most negresses. Aquiline noses were to be seen among them
and lips of moderate size, and some had an almost European look. Their
necks and arms and waists were loaded with necklaces and bracelets of
shells or metal, which rattled every time they moved, a somewhat idle
precaution, inspired, so it was said, by the excessive jealousy of
their lords and masters. On the whole I carried away a very good
impression of the future possibilities of the Gaboon, both naval and
colonial.
When the Belle-Poule had finished her cruise along the Guinea Coast she
had orders to go to Brazil; so we set sail for Rio de Janeiro. On our
way thither we touched at He du Prince, a Portuguese possession
entirely covered with coffee plantations, the produce of which
connoisseurs reckon to be the best in the world. Almost the whole of
the island belonged to one lady, who did all in her power to induce our
purser to give up his profession and come and manage her immense
property for her. Failing in this endeavour she sent him a keepsake, in
the shape of a pair of braces embroidered by her own fair hands, just
as we were departing. We took in water at Ile du Prince, and as we had
used up all our stores during our long cruise, I shipped a boat-load of
yams to take the place of potatoes, and completed my victualling,
during a stay of a few hours at Ascension, by taking a large number of
turtle on board. They weighed about six hundred pounds each, and did us
quite well instead of fresh meat.
A sudden change came over my life at Rio de Janeiro, one which my
parents had long desired. I married. My bride was the second daughter
of the Emperor Dom Pedro, Princess Francoise, whose acquaintance I had
made some six years previously, during my first visit to Brazil. The
official request for the princess's hand was made in the King's name by
the Baron de Langsdorff, who was sent over as ambassador extraordinary
for that purpose in the Ville de Marseilles. The wedding was celebrated
at the San Cristofero Palace, and a few days afterwards we started for
Brest, which place we reached after a slow passage of seventy-two days
against contrary winds.
On my arrival I had to give up the command of the Belle-Poule, and I
did not part from the old ship, which had carried me so well and safely
through so many adventures, without a pang of emotion. I felt, when I
clasped my officers' hands in hearty farewell, that I was sure (THEN,
at least) of meeting them again in the course of my professional
career. The painful leave-taking was when I had to say good-bye to my
brave crew, a happy family, in which discipline had been so strictly
established from the very outset of the voyage, that punishment had
become unknown, and whose universal sense of duty had engendered that
mutual affection between officers and men which is the foundation of
true professional zeal and self-sacrifice.
The fine body of fighting men which four years of care and unvaryingly
consistent management had brought to the highest pitch of perfection,
all the brave fellows of whom I felt I could ask anything and be
certain it would be performed, were to be scattered, every man to his
own home. I was never to see them again, except a few, one here and one
there. Nowadays even, after the lapse of fifty years, if chance takes
me anywhere upon the seacoast, I sometimes see some old sailor's eye
fixed on me, altered as I am, as though he were searching the far
depths of his memory. All at once one hand goes up to his cap, and the
other is stretched out to me with a friendly look, and the words "Do
you remember such a one, topman of the maintop--such a storm--such an
escape?"
Then my heart swells, and I say to myself, as I could go on saying for
ever, "There is nothing you cannot do with Frenchmen when they are once
saturated with the spirit of obedience, discipline, and duty!"