BONNY RIVER, GULF OF GUINEA, _March 27, 1860_.
From Lagos, our steamer proceeded to the river Benin, landed some
cargo, and received forty-two puncheons of palm oil. We there found
a Hamburg ship, just in from Zanzibar, on the coast of Africa, with
a full cargo of cowrie shells, used for currency and ornaments. The
shores are here monotonous; the vegetation is rank, as well as at the
mouth of the Niger, which we passed on our way to this place.
A project is on foot for a new expedition up the Niger, the former
expedition on the part of the British government having met with
disaster. We have a disabled steward now on board, who accompanied
these adventurers; he is as yellow as a marigold, and the seeds of
fever in him will probably never be eradicated.
The entrance to Bonny river is difficult, and requires watchful
navigation. We brought on deck a huge iron riveted air-tight boiler, to
be used as a buoy or guide to mariners passing the bar, and came near
losing it, as well as our vessel.
Sunday morning, May 25th, according to usual custom on board of British
vessels, the Church of England service was read in the presence of crew
and passengers; and I was quite interested in noticing some blacks
from Monrovia, who were present, and seemed to take some interest in
the ceremonies. At five P. M., just at the close of dinner,
the ship some seven miles from the mouth of the river, under full sail
and heavy head of steam, the captain on the bridge, struck a sand-bar,
jumped twice, and we rushed on deck and found her in a perilous
condition. We got out hawsers astern, furled all sail, and worked the
machine and windlass back, to haul off, but without success. Night was
approaching, and the breakers increasing, the ship at times keeling
over, and then jumping as if the masts would come out of her. The ports
and skylights of cabin closed, with the sea breaking over the stern,
made it look dreary enough. Being on a barbarous coast, where no white
man lives, the prospects were not very flattering. The boats were all
got in condition, with buckets for bailing. Rockets were sent up for
relief, hoping they might be seen some five miles up from the mouth of
the river, where lay a small steamer, used as a tender, and for the
continuation of the voyage to Fernando Po. Our own steamer being at the
end of her line in the Gulf of Guinea, usually takes in her coal from
a hulk moored in the stream, brushes up, and waits the return of the
tender, with freight picked up in the Old Calabar and Camaroon rivers.
A little time after the accident occurred, one of our passengers, an
old sea captain, came to me, and said softly, “If you have anything
valuable which you wish to save, you had better get it out, as I would
not give fifty pounds for the vessel.” I was hurriedly packing up a few
articles, when the purser came to me and said, “I have been securing
the ship’s papers and valuables, and I would advise your taking a
few articles in your valise, as we may have to take the ship’s boats
outside the breakers, and wait for the tide.” You can imagine we passed
a wretched and sleepless night. The engines were soon choked up with
sand, and all began to think the ship must be lost, although strongly
built. Morning brought us more quiet weather. We sent the second mate
with a boat’s crew up the river for relief. He had twelve miles to
make, with sails and oars. At mid-day the little steamer came. We threw
overboard coal, and palm oil in puncheons, to lighten the ship, took
advantage of the wind, steam, &c., and succeeded in forcing her over
the sandbars by nightfall. We had taken refuge on board of the small
steamer, in the distance, as she could not approach us for the shoals;
and I got off with a portion of my effects, in wet condition.
The Bonny is a broad and navigable river. The New Calibar River comes
in a short distance from this place. The trade of the two rivers is in
palm oil. Vessels of large size come out from England with a variety
of goods, that can be used by the natives in the interior, such as
waistcloths, beads, rum, tobacco, guns, powder, &c.
The vessels are anchored, sails put away, the ship is housed in, with
peaked roof, covered with palm leaf, making it cool; and here they
remain for two years, or until they get full. They have their cooperage
on board, the casks being brought in shooks [bundles of staves]. The
natives come alongside in canoes, with the oil made from the berry
of the palm tree, boiled and skimmed, and enter the ship, fitted up
like a country store for barter and trade. Some want brass stair rods
as currency, which treasure can, in emergencies, be buried, and not
injured by rust. Some want a portion of most articles named. The native
chiefs and traders buy largely, and some on credit, which is paid for
in oil in quantities.
The small currency here is not the cowrie-shell, but small
horseshoe-formed brass articles called manillas.
At this enlightened age of the world we hear so little of cannibalism,
that were I not an eye-witness, I also should be doubtful. I lauded
with a party here on the shore, proceeded through the bush, was carried
on the shoulders of our Kroomen sailors, through the pools of water,
and came to the village of Bonny, composed of huts of reed, plastered
with mud, covered with palm leaves, without any attempt at ornament or
architecture in construction on lines of alleys or streets. A party
of girls and boys, of some ten years of age, whose dress consisted of
a string of beads about the loins, and with long poles in hand, were
trying to drive out a “guana” [a species of lizard] into the marsh,
and he persisted in not going voluntarily. This brute was five feet
in length, harmless, and one of their fetisches [idols]. They would
punch him along, and turn him with their poles, at which he would bite,
but they dared not lay hands on the holy animal. Woe to the man who
inadvertently or wilfully kills one! We were then told that the heads
of the two prisoners who were killed, and whose bodies were eaten the
day previous, were in front of the Joujou House, or heathen temple,
to which we repaired. We found the head of a female, some eighteen
years of age, having good teeth and features, but little distorted,
notwithstanding the beheading with a dull axe. The man appeared to have
been forty years of age. A party of men were dancing like wild Indians
around the heads, and in front of the mud temple, to the sounds
of tom-toms, or kettle-drums, reed flutes, &c.; the Joujou men, or
priests, were singing monotonous and discordant songs. The heads of the
victims began to smell, rendering the feast, perhaps, more acceptable
to the priests’ wives, whose privilege it is to have soup made from
the heads, after which the whitened skulls will be placed upon a rude
platform, standing in front of the temple, which now contains the
craniums and bones of the last victims; and these ghastly relics will
add further trophies to the paved floor of the building, whose walls
are also provided with scores of others. I have often gazed upon the
beautiful and variegated mosaic floors of marble in the churches of
Italy, but it had never occurred to me that I should ever see a heathen
temple with a mosaic floor of the skulls and bones of prisoners who
had been killed and eaten. When I reflected upon the narrow escape
we had just made upon this barbarous coast, within a few miles of
such wretches, who might now be feasting upon our remains, if thrown
helpless in their hands, I could only express my gratitude to heaven
for my protection.