THE RIVER CONGO A BOUNDARY--SLAVE TRADE--SLAVERY--ORDEAL BY
POISON--INSENSIBILITY OF THE NEGRO--INGRATITUDE.
The River Congo, or Zaire, is a very striking and well-marked line
of division or boundary, in respect of climate, fauna, natives and
customs, between Angola and the rest of the West Coast.
The difference in the scenery and vegetation from those of the north is
very great indeed, and not less so is that of the birds and animals.
I have noticed enough to convince me that it would well repay a
naturalist to investigate the number of species this river cuts off,
as it were, from Angola; the gorilla and chimpanzee, for instance, are
only known north of the Congo; they are found at Loango and Landana,
and from reports of the natives, even near to the river itself; many
species of monkeys, very abundant at Cabinda and on the north bank,
are quite unknown in Angola; and the ordinary grey parrot, which is to
be seen in flocks on the Congo, is also unknown to the south--the only
exception to this rule, as far as I have been able to ascertain, being
at Cassange, about 300 miles to the interior of Loanda, where the rare
“King parrot,” with red feathers irregularly distributed among the grey
ones, is not uncommon. Of small birds I have noticed many at Cabinda
that I never observed in Angola; the same with butterflies, and other
insects.
The Congo is very deep, and the current is always very strong;
even above Boma (or M’Boma), about ninety miles distant from the
sea, the river is a vast body of water and the current still very
swift. From the mouth to beyond this place the banks are deeply cut
into innumerable creeks and rivers, and form many large islands.
The enormous quantity of fresh water poured by this river into the
sea gives rise to many curious speculations as to its extent and
probable sources. I am inclined to believe that the River Congo, or
its principal branch, after going in a north-east direction for a
comparatively short distance, bends to the southward, and will be
found to run for many degrees in that direction.
In the preceding chapter we have seen that south of the Congo no river
deserving of that name, or draining more than the country up to the
third elevation, exists in Angola. The vast country from the River
Congo to perhaps the Orange River, or about 1200 miles, has therefore
no outfall for its waters into the Atlantic Ocean.
The existence of volcanic rocks in Cambambe and Mossamedes appears
to explain the elevation of this part of the coast; how much farther
to the south this elevation has taken place is as yet unknown, and I
can only reconcile the vast body of water of the River Congo with the
absence of any large river farther south, by supposing it to bend down
and drain the long line of country upheaved on the seaboard: it is not
likely to drain much country to the north from the existence of several
rivers such as the Chiloango, Quillo, Massabi, and Mayumba, in a
distance of about 360 miles from its mouth to that of the River Gaboon
under the Equator.
For many years, and up to about the year 1868, the Congo was the
principal shipping place for slaves on the South-West Coast, the large
number of creeks in it affording safe hiding-places for loading the
ships engaged in the traffic, and the swift current enabling them to go
out quickly a long way to sea, and clear the line of cruisers. Boma was
the centre or point for the caravans of slaves coming from different
parts of the interior, and there was little or no trade in produce.
It may not be out of place here to say a few words on the slave-trade
of the South Coast, because a great deal of ignorance and misconception
exists on the subject from judging of it as having been similar to
the slave-trade in North and East Africa. Repugnant and wicked as is
the idea of slavery and dealing in human flesh, philanthropy must be
debited with an amount of unknowing cruelty and wholesale sacrifice
of life perfectly awful to contemplate, as a set-off against its
well-intentioned and successful efforts to put a stop to slavery and
the known horrors of the middle passage, and subsequent ill-treatment
at the hands of the planters.
In no part of Angola or among tribes to the interior have slave-hunts
ever existed as in the north; there are no powerful or more civilized
nations making war on weaker tribes for the purpose of obtaining
slaves, and devastating the country by fire and sword. There is very
little cruelty attending the state of slavery among the natives of
Angola, I believe I may say even in the greater part of the rest of
tropical Africa, but I will restrict myself to the part of which I have
an intimate knowledge. It is a domestic institution, and has existed,
as at present, since time immemorial; and there is no more disgrace or
discredit in having been born of slave parents, and consequently in
being a slave, than there is in Europe in being born of dependents or
servants of an ancestral house, and continuing in its service in the
same manner.
There is something patriarchal in the state of bondage among the
negroes, if we look at it from an African point of view (I must again
impress on my readers that all my remarks apply to Angola). The free
man, or owner, and his wife, have to supply their slaves with proper
food and clothing; to tend them in sickness as their own children, to
get them husbands or wives, as the case may be, to supply them with the
means of celebrating their festivals, such as their marriages, births,
or burials, in nearly the same way as amongst themselves; the slaves,
in fact, are considered as their family, and are always spoken of as
“my son,” or “my daughter.” If the daughters of slaves are chosen as
wives or concubines by their owners or other free men, it is considered
an honour, and their children, though looked upon as slaves, are
entitled to special consideration.
There is consequently no cruelty or hardship attending the state of
slavery; a male slave cannot be made by his master to cultivate the
ground, which is women’s work, and the mistress and her slaves till the
ground together.
A stranger set down in Angola, and not aware of the existence of
slavery, would hardly discover that such an institution prevailed
so universally amongst them, so little apparent difference is there
between the master and slave. A not very dissimilar condition of things
existed in the feudal times in England and other countries. Yet many
hundred thousand slaves were brought down to the coast to be sold to
the white men and shipped off, and I will now explain how this was the
case, paradoxical though it may appear after what I have just said.
The number was partly made up of surplus slave population sold off by
the owners, probably from inability to feed or clothe them; cases of
famine from failure of the crops, from drought, &c., a common local
occurrence, also supplied large numbers of slaves; but by far the
greatest part were furnished by the effect of their own laws, almost
every offence being punishable by slavery, to which not only the guilty
party, but even in many cases every member of his family was liable.
Offences against property are especially visited by the severe
penalties of slavery, fine, or death. Any one caught in the act of
stealing, be the amount ever so small, becomes at once the property
or slave of the person robbed. It is a common thing to see blacks
working in chains at factories and houses where they have been caught
stealing, the custom among the Europeans generally being to detain them
until their relatives shall have paid a ransom for them. I must do the
natives the justice to say that they are very observant of their own
laws, even to a white man alone in their territory, who claims their
protection against offenders. Certain offences that we should consider
trifling, are by some tribes visited with heavy punishment, such as
stealing Indian corn whilst growing, or an egg from under a sitting
hen. In other tribes breaking a plate or other article of crockery is
a great offence: this is especially the case to the interior of Novo
Redondo, where the punishment is death or slavery.
I was told there of the amusing manner in which a Portuguese trader
turned the tables on a Soba, or chief of a town, where he had
established himself, and who annoyed him greatly by his constant
demands for presents, by placing a cracked plate under a sheet on
his bed, on which the Soba was in the habit of sitting during his
too frequent visits. On the Soba sitting down as usual, on the trap
prepared for him, he, of course, smashed the plate to atoms, to his
great surprise; frightened at the possible result of the accident,
he humbly begged the trader not to let a soul in the place know of
it, promising restitution; the wished-for result of the scheme was
attained, as he ceased all his importunities during the remainder of
the trader’s stay in the country.
But all these sources of slaves for shipment were but a fraction of
the number supplied by their belief in witchcraft. Witchcraft is their
principal, or only belief; every thing that happens has been brought
about by it; all cases of drought, sickness, death, blight, accident,
and even the most trivial circumstances are ascribed to the evil
influence of witchery or “fetish.”
A “fetish” man is consulted, and some poor unfortunate accused and
either killed at once or sold into slavery, and, in most cases, all
his family as well, and every scrap of their property confiscated and
divided amongst the whole town; in other cases, however, a heavy fine
is imposed, and inability to pay it also entails slavery; the option of
trial by ordeal is sometimes afforded the accused, who often eagerly
demand it, such is their firm belief in it.
This extremely curious and interesting ordeal is by poison, which is
prepared from the thick, hard bark of a large tree, the _Erythrophlæum
Guineense_ (Oliver, ‘Flora of Tropical Africa,’ ii. 320). Dr. Brunton
has examined the properties of this bark, and finds that it possesses
a very remarkable action. The powder, when inhaled, causes violent
sneezing; the aqueous extract, when injected under the skin of
animals, causes vomiting, and has a remarkable effect upon the vagus
nerve, which it first irritates and then paralyses. The irritation of
this nerve makes the heart beat slowly. (Fuller details may be found
in the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society’ for this year.) It is called
“casca” by the natives, and I obtained a specimen at Bembe, which was
brought to me concealed in rags, by a half-witted water-carrier in my
service, and he procured it for me only after my promising him that I
would not tell anyone. He said it was from a tree growing about half a
day’s journey off, but I could not get him to take me to it. The other
blacks denied all knowledge of it, and said it was “fetish” for anyone
to have it in his possession. On two occasions afterwards, I obtained
some more specimens from natives of Cabinda, where the tree is said to
be abundant, and the natives very fond of referring all their disputes
and accusations to its decision.
“Casca” is prepared by the bark being ground on a stone to a fine
powder, and mixed with about half a pint of cold water, a piece about
two inches square being said to be a dose. It either acts as an emetic
or as a purgative; should the former effect take place, the accused is
declared innocent, if the latter, he is at once considered guilty, and
either allowed to die of the poison, which is said to be quick in its
action, or immediately attacked with sticks and clubs, his head cut off
and his body burnt.
All the natives I inquired of agreed in their description of the
effect produced on a person poisoned by this bark; his limbs are first
affected and he loses all power over them, falls to the ground, and
dies quickly; without much apparent suffering.
It is said to be in the power of the “fetish” man to prepare the
“casca” mixture in such a manner as to determine which of the effects
mentioned shall be produced; in case of a dispute, both parties drink
it, and according as he allows the mixture to settle, and gives one
the clear liquid and the other the dregs, so does it produce vomiting
in the former, and acts as a purgative in the latter case. I have very
little doubt that as the “fetish” man is bribed or not, so he can and
does prepare it.
The Portuguese in Angola strictly prohibit the use of “casca,” and
severely punish any natives concerned in a trial by this bark, but it
is nevertheless practised in secret everywhere.
The occasion of the test is one of great excitement, and is accompanied
by much cruelty. In some tribes the accused, after drinking the potion,
has to stoop and pass under half-a-dozen low arches made by bending
switches and sticking both ends into the ground; should he fall down in
passing under any of the arches, that circumstance alone is sufficient
to prove him guilty, without waiting for the purgative effect to be
produced.
Before the trial the accused is confined in a hut, closely guarded,
and the night before it is surrounded by all the women and children
of the neighbouring towns, dancing and singing to the horrid din of
their drums and rattles. On the occasion of the ordeal the men are all
armed with knives, matchets, and sticks, and the moment the poor devil
stumbles in going under one of the switches, he is instantly set upon
by the howling multitude and beaten to death, and cut and hacked to
pieces in a few minutes. I was at Mangue Grande on one occasion when
a big dance was going on the night before a poor wretch was to take
“casca.” I went to the town with some of the traders at that place,
and we offered to ransom him, but to no purpose; nothing, they said,
could save him from the trial. I learnt, however, that he passed it
successfully, but I think I never heard such a hideous yelling as the
400 or 500 women and children were making round the hut, almost all
with their faces and bodies painted red and white, dancing in a perfect
cloud of dust, and the whole scene illuminated by blazing fires of dry
grass under a starlit summer sky.
The most insignificant and extraordinary circumstances are made the
subject of accusations of witchcraft, and entail the usual penalties.
I was at Ambrizzette when three Cabinda women had been to the river
with their pots for water; all three were filling them from the stream
together, when the middle one was snapped up by an alligator, and
instantly carried away under the surface of the water, and of course
devoured. The relatives of the poor woman at once accused the other
two of bewitching her, and causing the alligator to take her out of
their midst! When I remonstrated with them, and attempted to show
them the utter absurdity of the charge, their answer was, “Why did not
the alligator take one of the end ones then, and not the one in the
middle?” and out of this idea it was impossible to move them, and the
poor women were both to take “casca.” I never heard the result, but
most likely one or both were either killed or passed into slavery.
At a place near the mountain range of Pungo Andongo, about 150 miles
inland of Loanda, I was once the amused spectator at a curious trial
of a man for bewitching the spirit of his dead wife. Her sister, it
appeared, suffered from violent headaches, and sleepless nights, which
were said to be caused by the wife’s spirit being unable to rest, on
account of the widower being a wizard. A large circle of spectators
was formed round the sick sister, who was squatting on the ground; a
fetish man was beating a drum, and singing, or rather droning, some
incantation; after a little while, the woman began to give short yelps,
and to close her eyes, and on being interrogated by the fetish man,
said the spirit of her sister had spoken to her, and that she could
not rest until her husband had made restitution of her two goats and
her baskets, &c., which he had appropriated, and which she had desired
should be given to her sister. The man instantly rose, and brought the
goats, baskets, clothes, &c., and laid them before his sister-in-law,
and the trial was over. If he had denied the accusation, he would
inevitably have had to take “casca.”
When we consider the great population of the vast country that supplied
the slave trade of the coast, and that, as I have explained, the
state of their laws and customs renders all transgressions liable to
slavery, the absence of necessity for the slave wars and hunts of the
north of Africa and other extensive and thinly populated districts is
sufficiently proved. I have been unable to collect positive information
as to the statistics of the slaves shipped in Angola (from Congo to
Benguella inclusively), but the number could not have been far short of
100,000 per annum. I was told by some of the old inhabitants, that to
see as many as ten to twelve vessels loading at a time at Loanda and
Benguella was a common occurrence. At the time of the last shipments
from Benguella, about ten years ago, I have seen as many as 1000
slaves arrive in one caravan from the interior, principally from Bihé.
Up to within a very few years there existed a marble arm-chair on
the wharf at the custom-house at Loanda, where the bishop, in the
slave-trading times, was wont to sit, to baptize and bless the batches
of poor wretches as they were sent off in barge-loads to the vessels
in the harbour. The great slaughter now going on in a great part of
Africa, which I have mentioned as the result of the suppression of
the slave shipments from the coast, can now be understood; whereas
formerly they were sent to the coast to be sold to the white men and
exported, they are now simply murdered. On the road down from Bembe in
April last, we passed the ashes and bones of a black who had stolen
a trade-knife, a bit of iron in a small wooden handle, and made in
Germany at the rate of a few shillings per gross, and passed on the
coast in trade; on the top of his staff was stuck his skull and the
knife he had stolen, a ghastly and lasting warning to passersby of the
strict laws of the country respecting property.
If a famine overtakes any part of the country, a common occurrence,
the slaves are simply taken out and knocked on the head to save them
from starvation. I was told by the natives that the slaves offered no
resistance to that fate, but accepted it as inevitable, and preferable
to the pangs of hunger, knowing that it was no use going to the coast
to save their lives at the hands of the white men by being shipped as
slaves. At Musserra, three Cabinda blacks from the boats’ crews joined
three natives in robbing one of the factories: on complaint being made
to the king and principal men of the town, they marched off the three
Cabindas, promising to punish them, which they did by cutting off their
heads, unknown to the white men; they then brought the three natives
to deliver up to the traders as their slaves, but on these refusing
to accept them, and demanding that a severe punishment should also be
passed on them, they quietly tied a large stone to their necks, took
them out in a canoe to the bay, and dropped them into the sea.
It is impossible to reclaim the hordes of savages inhabiting the
interior even of Angola from their horrid customs and their disregard
for life; the insalubrity of the country, though it is infinitely
superior in this respect to the rest of the West Coast, would be an
almost insuperable bar to their improvement; their own progress is
still more hopeless. In my opinion, it would be necessary that tropical
Africa should undergo a total physical revolution, that the long line
of unhealthy coast should be upheaved, and the deadly leagues of
pestiferous swamps be thus drained, before the country would be fitted
for the existence of a higher type of mankind than the present negro
race.
It can only have been by countless ages of battling with malaria,
that they have been reduced physically and morally to their present
wonderful state or condition of withstanding successfully the climatic
influences, so fatal to the white and more highly organized race--the
sun and fevers of their malignant and dismal mangrove swamps, or
the mists and agues of their magnificent tropical forests, no more
affecting them than they do the alligators and countless mosquitoes
that swarm in the former, or the monkeys and snakes that inhabit the
latter. It is really astonishing to see the naked negro, without a
particle of covering on his head (often shaved), in the full blaze of
the fierce sun, his daily food a few handfuls of ground-nuts, beans,
or mandioca-root, and very often most unwholesome water for drink. At
night he throws himself on the ground, anywhere, covers himself with
a thin grass or cotton cloth, nearly transparent in texture, without
a pillow, like a dog, and awakes in the morning generally wet through
with the heavy dew, and does not suffer the least pain or inconvenience
from the climate from infancy to old age unless his lungs become
affected.
The way babies are treated would be enough to kill a white child. The
women when at work on the plantations generally place them on a heap
of grass or on the ground, and are not at all particular to put them
in the shade, and I have often seen them naked and filthy, and covered
with a thick mass of large buzzing flies over their faces and bodies,
fast asleep, with the sun shining full on them. The women, in carrying
them tied behind their backs, seldom include their little heads in
the cloth that secures them, but leave them to swing and loll about
helplessly in every direction with the movement of walking.
Children, of any age, seldom cry, and when they do it is a kind of
howl; when hurt or punished, they very rarely shed tears, or sob, but
keep up a monotonous noise, which would never be imagined to be the
crying of a child, but rather a song.
I once saw, in one of the market-places in Loanda, a boy of about
sixteen lying on the ground, nearly naked, with his face and body
covered with flies, but none of the busy thronging crowd had thought
that he was dead and stiff, as I discovered when I touched him with
my foot, but thought he was simply asleep and basking in the sun: his
being covered with flies was too trivial a circumstance to attract any
attention.
The manner in which negroes receive most severe wounds, with apparently
little pain and absence of nervous shock, is most extraordinary. I have
often been told of this by the Portuguese surgeons, who remark the
absence of shock to the system with which negroes undergo amputations
and other severe operations (without chloroform), which are attended
by so much danger to the white race. I was staying at Ambrizzette when
a man came there with his right hand blown to a mass of shreds, from
the explosion of a gun-barrel; he was accompanied by his relatives, who
took him to the different factories to beg the white men to cut off
the hanging shreds of flesh and dress the injured part. All refused to
attend to the man, till a Frenchman gave them a sharp razor, arnica,
and balsam, and some bandages, and made them go out of the house
and enclosure to operate on the sufferer themselves, away from the
factories; which they did. About an hour after I was passing a group
of natives sitting round a fire, and amongst them was the wounded man
laughing and joking quite at his ease, and with his left hand roasting
ground-nuts with the rest, as if nothing had happened to him.
The reason the white men refused to help the wounded black was not
from want of charity or pity, as all would have done everything in
their power to alleviate his sufferings, but it was the singular
custom of the natives that prevented their doing so. Had he died, the
white man who ministered to him would have been made responsible for
his death, and would have been almost as heavily fined as if he had
murdered him! If he got well, as he did, his benefactor would have been
inconvenienced by heavy demands for his maintenance and clothing, and
expected to make presents to the king, &c., for he would be looked upon
as having saved his life, and consequently bound to support him, to a
certain extent, as he was, though alive, unable from the accident to
get his own living as readily as if he were uninjured. The Frenchman
got over this risk by giving the remedies, not to the wounded black
himself, but to his friends, and also making them clear out of the
precincts of the house; so that in no case, whether the man died or
lived, could any claim be made against him.
The only way to put a stop to the awful bloodshed now going on in the
interior would be to organize an emigration scheme, under the direct
supervision of the several governments who have entered into treaties
for the abolition of slavery, and transport the poor wretches, now
being murdered in cold blood by thousands, to tropical climates where
they might earn their living by the cultivation of those articles
necessary for consumption in civilized countries; their constitution
would enable them to resist the climate, and they would gradually
become civilized.
One great bar to their civilization in Angola, is that no tribe on the
coast can be induced to work for wages, except as servants in houses
and stores, and even these are mostly slaves of other natives, or work
to pay off some fine or penalty incurred in their towns. For some years
that I have been collecting the inner bark of the Adansonia digitata,
or Baobab tree (the application of which to paper-making I discovered
in 1858, and commenced working as a commercial speculation in 1865), I
have been unable to induce one single native to hire himself to work by
day or piecework; they will cut, prepare, and dry it, and bring it for
sale, but nothing will induce them to hire themselves, or their slaves,
to a white man.
There are at present in Angola several sugar and cotton plantations
worked by slaves, called at present “libertos,” who are meant by the
Portuguese Government to work ten years, as a compensation to their
owners for the capital expended in their purchase and for their
clothing, education and medical treatment. At a near date, the total
abolition of slavery in Angola has been decreed, and will come into
force; with the inevitable result of the ruin of the plantations, or
of its becoming a dead letter in the province.
By the native laws, a black once sold as a slave, and escaping back to
his tribe, is considered a free man, so that a planter at present has
no hold on his slaves; if they escape into the neighbouring towns, the
natives will only deliver them up on the payment of a certain amount,
very often more than he had cost in the first instance.
No amount of kindness or good done to a negro will have the slightest
influence in preventing him from leaving his benefactor without as much
as a “good-bye,” or a shadow of an excuse, and very often going from
a pampered existence to the certainty of the hard fare and life of
their free condition, and this, not from the slightest idea of love of
freedom, or anything of the kind, but simply from an animal instinct to
live a lazy and vegetative existence.
When I was at Cuio, working a copper deposit, a black called Firmino,
the slave of a Portuguese there, attached himself very much to me, and
was, seemingly, never so happy as when accompanying me in my trips
and rambles, and not from any payment I gave him, beyond a small and
occasional present. When his master was leaving the place, Firmino came
crying to me, begging me to buy him, that he might remain in my service
as my slave, promising that he would never leave me.
His master generally treating him with harshness, if not cruelty, I
took pity on him, and gave 13_l._ 10_s._ for him, a high and fancy
price there, but he was considered worth it from his great size and
strength, his speaking Portuguese perfectly, and good qualities
generally.
I explained to him that although I had bought him, he was a free man,
and could go at once if he liked; but that as long as he remained in my
service as my personal attendant, he should have clothes and pay. He
went on his knees to thank me and to swear in negro fashion, by making
a cross in the dust with his forefinger, that he would never leave me.
A fortnight after, having to send him with a bundle of clothes from
Benguella to Cuio, he delivered them to the person they were addressed
to, but joined three slaves in stealing a boat and sailing to Loanda.
A month after I received a letter from the police there advising
me that a nigger called Firmino had been caught with others in an
extensive robbery, and claimed to be my slave. I answered that he was
no slave of mine, detailing the circumstances of my freeing him, and
asking that he should be dealt with as he deserved. He was punished and
drafted as a soldier at Loanda, and on my meeting him there one day and
asking him his reason for leaving me, and treating me so ungratefully,
he said that “he did not know why he had done so;” and I do not believe
he did, or ever tried to find out, or bothered his head any more about
it.
It is no use disguising the fact that the negro race is, mentally,
differently constituted from the white, however disagreeable and
opposed this may be to the usual and prevailing ideas in this country.
I do not believe, and I fearlessly assert, that there is hardly
such a thing possible as the sincere conversion of a single negro
to Christianity whilst in Africa, and under the powerful influence
of their fellows. No progress will be made in the condition of the
negro as long as the idea prevails that he can be reasoned out of his
ignorance and prejudices, and his belief in fetish, or that he is the
equal of the white man; in fact, he must remain the same as he is now,
until we learn to know him properly, and what he really is.
Loanda was discovered in the year 1492, and since 1576 the white race
has never abandoned it. The Jesuits and other missionaries did wonders
in their time, and the results of their great work can be still noticed
to this day: thousands of the natives, for 200 miles to the interior,
can read and write very fairly, though there has hardly been a mission
or school, except in a very small way, at Loanda itself, for many many
years; but those accomplishments are all that civilization or example
has done amongst them. They all believe firmly in their fetishes and
charms, and though generally treated with the utmost kindness and
equality by the Portuguese, the negro race, and even the mulattoes,
have never advanced further than to hold secondary appointments, as
writers or clerks, in the public offices and shops, and to appear
(in public) in the most starched and dandyfied condition. I can only
recollect one black man who had at all distinguished himself in trade;
keeping low and filthy grog-shops being about the extent of their
business capacity. Another honourable exception is a Captain Dias, who
is the captain or governor of the district of the “Barra do Bengo,”
near Loanda, a very intelligent man, and from whom I several times
experienced great kindness and hospitality.
[Illustration: PLATE II.
PORTO DA LENHA. _To face page 81._]