£30, but, as nearly as I could estimate, the average price of a grown
man in Benguela is £20 (one hundred dollars). At that price the traders
there would be willing to supply a large number. An Englishman whom I
met there had been offered a gang of slaves, consisting of forty men
and women, at the rate of £18 a head. But the slaves were up in Bihé,
and the cost of transport down to the coast goes for something; and
perhaps there was “a reduction on taking a quantity.” However, when he
was in Bihé, he had bought two of them from the Portuguese trader at
that rate. They were both men. He had also bought two boys farther in
the interior, but I do not know at what price. One of them had been
with the Batatele cannibals, who form the chief part of the “Révoltés,”
or rebels, against the atrocious government of the Belgians on the
Upper Congo. Perhaps the boy himself really belonged to the race which
had sold him to the Bihéan traders. At all events, the racial mark was
cut in his ears, and the other “boys” in the Englishman’s service were
never tired of chaffing him upon his past habits. Every night they
would ask him how many men he had eaten that day. But a point was added
to the laugh because the ex-cannibal was now acting as cook to the
party. Under their new service all these slaves received their freedom.
The price of women on the mainland is more variable, for, as in
civilized countries, it depends almost entirely on their beauty and
reputation. Even on the Benguela coast I think plenty of women could be
procured for agricultural, domestic, and other work at £15 a head or
even less. But for the purposes for which women are often bought the
price naturally rises, and it depends upon the ordinary causes which
regulate such traffic. A full-grown and fairly nice-looking woman may
be bought from a trader for £18, but for a mature girl a man must pay
more. At least a stranger who is not connected with the trade has to
pay more. While I was in the town a girl was sold to a prospector, who
wanted her as his concubine during a journey into the interior. Her
owner was an elderly Portuguese official of some standing. I do not
know how he had obtained her, but she was not born in his household
of slaves, for he had only recently come to the country. Most likely
he had bought her as a speculation, or to serve as his concubine if
he felt inclined to take her. The price finally arranged between him
and the prospector for the possession of the girl was one hundred
and twenty-five milreis, which was then nearly equal to £25. For the
visit of the King of Portugal to England and the revival of the “old
alliance” had just raised the value of the Portuguese coinage.
When the bargain was concluded, the girl was led to her new master’s
room and became his possession. During his journey into the interior
she rode upon his wagon. I saw them often on the way, and was told the
story of the purchase by the prospector himself. He did not complain
of the price, though men who were better acquainted with the uses of
the woman-market considered it unnecessarily high. But it is really
impossible to fix an average standard of value where such things
as beauty and desire are concerned. The purchaser was satisfied,
the seller was satisfied. So who was to complain? The girl was not
consulted, nor did the question of her price concern her in the least.
I was glad to find that the Portuguese official who had parted with
her on these satisfactory terms was no merely selfish speculator in
the human market, as so many traders are, but had considered the
question philosophically, and had come to the conclusion that slavery
was much to a slave’s advantage. The slave, he said, had opportunities
of coming into contact with a higher civilization than his own. He was
much better off than in his native village. His food was regular, his
work was not excessive, and, if he chose, he might become a Christian.
Being an article of value, it was likely that he would be well treated.
“Indeed,” he continued, in an outburst of philanthropic emotion, “both
in our own service and at San Thomé, the slave enjoys a comfort and
well-being which would have been forever beyond his reach if he had not
become a slave!” In many cases, he asserted, the slave owed his very
life to slavery, for some of the slaves brought from the interior were
prisoners of war, and would have been executed but for the profitable
market ready to receive them. As he spoke, the old gentleman’s face
glowed with noble enthusiasm, and I could not but envy him his
connection with an institution that was at the same time so salutary
to mankind and so lucrative to himself.
As to the slave’s happiness on the islands, I cannot yet describe it,
but according to the reports of residents, ships’ officers, and the
natives themselves, it is brief, however great. What sort of happiness
is enjoyed on the Portuguese plantations of Angola itself I have
already described. As to the comfort and joy of ordinary slavery under
white men, with all its advantages of civilization and religion, the
beneficence of the institution is somewhat dimmed by a few such things
as I have seen, or have heard from men whom I could trust as fully as
my own eyes. At five o’clock one afternoon I saw two slaves carrying
fish through an open square at Benguela, and enjoying their contact
with civilization in the form of another native, who was driving them
along like oxen with a sjambok. The same man who was offered the forty
slaves at £18 a head had in sheer pity bought a little girl from a
Portuguese lady last autumn, and he found her back scored all over
with the cut of the _chicote_, just like the back of a trek-ox under
training. An Englishman coming down from the interior last African
winter, was roused at night by loud cries in a Portuguese trading-house
at Mashiko. In the morning he found that a slave had been flogged, and
tied to a tree in the cold all night. He was a man who had only lately
lost his liberty, and was undergoing the process which the Portuguese
call “taming,” as applied to new slaves who are sullen and show no
pleasure in the advantages of their position. In another case, only a
few weeks ago, an American saw a woman with a full load on her head and
a baby on her back passing the house where he happened to be staying.
A big native, the slave of a Portuguese trader in the neighborhood,
was dragging her along with a rope, and beating her with a whip as
she went. The American brought the woman into the house and kept her
there. Next day the Portuguese owners came in fury with forty of his
slaves, breathing out slaughters, but, as is usual with the Portuguese,
he shrank up when he was faced with courage. The American refused to
give the woman back, and ultimately she was restored to her own distant
village, where she still is.
I would willingly give the names in the last case and in all others;
but one of the chief difficulties of the whole subject is that it
is impossible to give names without exposing people out here to the
hostility and persecution of the Portuguese authorities and traders.
In most instances, also, not only the people themselves, but all the
natives associated with them, would suffer, and the various kinds of
work in which they are engaged would come to an end. It is the same
fear which keeps the missionaries silent. The Catholic missions are
supported by the state. The other missions exist on sufferance. How
can missionaries of either division risk the things they have most
at heart by speaking out upon a dangerous question? They are silent,
though their conscience is uneasy, unless custom puts it to sleep.
Custom puts us all to sleep. Every one in Angola is so accustomed to
slavery as part of the country’s arrangements that hardly anybody
considers it strange. It is regarded either as a wholesome necessity
or as a necessary evil. When any question arises upon the subject, all
the antiquated arguments in favor of slavery are trotted out again.
We are told that but for slavery the country would remain savage and
undeveloped; that some form of compulsion is needed for the native’s
good; that in reality he enjoys more freedom and comfort as a slave
than in his free village. Let us at once sweep away all the talk
about the native’s good. It is on a level with the cant which said
the British fought the Boers and brought the Chinese to the Transvaal
in order to extend to both races a higher form of religion. The only
motive for slavery is money-making, and the only argument in its favor
is that it pays. That is the root of the matter, and as long as we
stick to that we shall, at least, be saved from humbug.
As to the excuse that there is a difference between slavery and
“contracted labor,” this is no more than legal cant, just as the
other pleas are philanthropic or religious cant. Except in the eyes
of the law, it makes no difference whether a man is a “serviçal” or
a slave; it makes no difference whether a written contract exists or
not. I do not know whether the girl I mentioned had signed a contract
expressing her willingness to serve as the prospector’s concubine for
five years, after which she was to be free unless the contract were
renewed. But I do know that whether she signed the contract or not,
her price and position would have been exactly the same, and that
before the five years are up she will in all probability have been
sold two or three times over, at diminishing prices. The “serviçal”
system is only a dodge to delude the antislavery people, who were at
one time strong in Great Britain, and have lately shown signs of life
in Portugal. Except in the eyes of a law which is hardly ever enforced,
slavery exists almost unchecked. Slaves work the plantations, slaves
serve the traders, slaves do the housework of families. Ordinary free
wage-earners exist in the towns and among the carriers, but, as a rule,
throughout the country the system of labor is founded on slavery,
and very few of the Portuguese or foreign residents in Angola would
hesitate to admit it.
From Benguela I determined to strike into a district which has long had
an evil reputation as the base of the slave-trade with the interior--a
little known and almost uninhabited country.
IV
ON ROUTE TO THE SLAVE CENTRE
He who goes to Africa leaves time behind. Next week is the same as
to-morrow, and it is indifferent whether a journey takes a fortnight
or two months. That is why the ox-wagon suits the land so well. Mount
an ox-wagon and you forget all time. Like the to-morrows of life, it
creeps in its petty pace, and soon after its wheels have reached their
extreme velocity of three miles an hour you learn how vain are all
calculations of pace and years. Yet, except in the matter of speed,
which does not count in Africa, the ox-wagon has most of the qualities
of an express-train, besides others of greater value. Its course is at
least equally adventurous, and it affords a variety of sensations and
experiences quite unknown to the ordinary railway passenger.
Let me take an instance from the recent journey on which I have crossed
some four hundred and fifty or five hundred miles of country in two
months. A good train would have traversed the distance in a winter’s
night, and have left only a tedious blank upon the mind. On a railway
what should I have known of a certain steep descent which we approached
one silent evening after rain? The red surface was just slippery with
the wet. The oxen were going quietly along, when, all of a sudden, they
were startled by the heavy thud of the wheels jolting over a tree stump
on the track. Within a few yards of the brink they set off at a trot,
the long and heavy chain hanging loose between them.
“Kouta! Kouta ninni!” (“Brake! Hard on!”) shouted the driver, and we
felt the Ovampo boy behind the wagon whirl the screw round till the
hind wheels were locked. But it was too late. We were over the edge
already. Backing and slipping and pulling every way, striking with
their horns, charging one another helplessly from behind, the oxen
swept down the steep. Behind them, like a big gun got loose, came the
wagon, swaying from side to side, leaping over the rocks, plunging into
the holes, at every moment threatening to crush the hinder oxen of the
span. Then it began to slide sideways. It was almost at right angles to
the track. In another second it would turn clean over, with all four
wheels in air, or would dash us into a great tree that stood only a few
yards down.
“Kouta loula!” (“Loose the brake!”) yelled the driver, but nothing
could stop the sliding now. We clung on and thought of nothing. Men on
the edge of death think of nothing. Suddenly the near hind wheel
was thrown against a high ridge of clay. The wagon swung straight, and
we were plunged into a river among the struggling oxen, all huddled
together and entangled in the chain.
[Illustration: AWKWARD CROSSING]
“That was rather rapid,” I said, as the wagon came to a dead stop in
the mud and we took to the water, but in no language could I translate
the expression of the driver’s emotions.
Only last wet season the owner of a wagon started down a place like
that with twenty-four fine oxen, and at the bottom he had eight oxen,
and more beef than he could salt.
Beside another hill lies the fresh grave of a poor young Boer, who was
thrown under his wagon wheels and never out-spanned again. Such are the
interests of an ox-wagon when it takes to speed.
Or what traveller by train could have enjoyed such experiences as were
mine in crossing the Kukema--a river that forms a boundary of Bihé?
At that point it was hardly more than five feet deep and twenty yards
wide. In a train one would have leaped over it without pause or notice.
But in a wagon the passage gave us a whole long day crammed with varied
labor and learning. Leading the oxen down to the brink at dawn, we
out-spanned and emptied the wagon of all the loads. Then we lifted its
“bed” bodily off the four wheels, and spreading the “sail,” or canvas
hood, under it, we launched it with immense effort into the water as
a raft. We anchored it firmly to both banks by the oxen’s “reems” (I
do not know how the Boers spell those strips of hide, the one thing,
except patience, necessary in African travel), and dragging it to
and fro through the water, we got the loads over dry in about four
journeys. Then the oxen were swum across, and tying some of them to the
long chain on the farther side, we drew the wheels and the rest of the
wagon under water into the shallows. Next came the task of taking off
the “sail” in the water and floating the “bed” into its place upon the
beam again--a lifelong lesson in applied hydraulics. When at last the
sun set and white man and black emerged naked, muddy, and exhausted
from the water, while the wagon itself wallowed triumphantly up the
bank, I think all felt they had not lived in vain. Though, to be sure,
it was wet sleeping that night, and the rain came sousing down as if
poured out of one immeasurable slop-pail.
A railway bridge? What a dull and uninstructive substitute that would
have been!
Or consider the ox, how full of personality he is compared to the
locomotive! Outwardly he is far from emotional. You cannot coax him as
you coax a horse or a dog. A fairly tame ox will allow you to clap his
hind quarters, but the only real pleasure you can give him is a lick
of salt. For salt even a wild ox will almost submit to be petted. The
smell of the salt-bag is enough to keep the whole span sniffing and
lowing round the wagon instead of going to feed, and, especially on
the “sour veldt,” the Sunday treat of salt spread along a rock is a
festival of luxury.
But unexpressive as oxen are, one soon learns the inner character of
each. There is the wise and willing ox, who will stick to the track
and always push his best. He is put at the head of the span. In the
middle comes the wild ox, who wants to go any way but the right; the
sullen ox, who needs the lash; and the well-behaved representative of
gentility, who will do anything and suffer anything rather than work.
Nearest the wagon, if possible for as many as four spans, you must put
the strong and well-trained oxen, who answer quickly to their names. On
them depends the steering and safety of the wagon. At the sound of his
name each ox is trained to push his side of the yoke forward, and round
trees or corners the wagon follows the curve of safety.
“Blaawberg! Shellback! Rachop! Blomveldt!” you cry. The oxen on the
left of the four last spans push forward the ends of their yokes, and
edging off to the right, the wagon moves round the segment of an arc.
To drive a wagon is like coxing an eight without a rudder.
But on a long and hungry trek even the leaders will sometimes turn
aside into the bush for tempting grass, or as a hint that it is time
to stop. In a moment there is the wildest confusion. The oxen behind
are dragged among the trees. The chain gets entangled; two oxen pull
on different sides of a standing trunk; yoke-pegs crack; necks are
throttled by the halters; the wagon is dashed against a solid stump,
and trees and stump and all have to be hewn down with the axe before
the span is free again. Sometimes the excited and confused animals drag
at the chain while one ox is being helplessly crushed against a tree.
Often a horn is broken off. I know nothing that suggests greater pain
than the crack of a horn as it is torn from the skull. The ox falls
silently on his knees. Blood streams down his face. The other oxen
go on dragging at the chain. When released from the yoke, he rushes
helplessly over the bush, trying to hide himself. But flinging him on
his side and tying his legs together, the natives bind up the horn, if
it has not actually dropped, with a plaster of a poisonous herb they
call “moolecky,” to keep the blow-flies away. Sometimes it grows on
again. Sometimes it remains loose and flops about. But, as a rule, it
has to be cut off in the end.
To avoid such things most transport-riders set a boy to walk in front
of the oxen as “toe-leader,” though it is a confession of weakness.
Another difficulty in driving the ox is his peculiar horror of mud
from the moment that he is in-spanned. By nature he loves mud next
best to food and drink. He will wallow in mud all a tropical day,
and the more slimy it is, the better he likes it. But put him in the
yoke, and he becomes as cautious of mud as a cat, as dainty of his
feet as a lady crossing Regent Street. It seems strange at first, but
he has his reasons. When he comes to one of those ghastly mud-pits
(“slaughter-holes” the Boers call them), which abound along the road in
the wet season, his first instinct is to plunge into it; but reflection
tells him that he has not time to explore its cool depths and
delightful stickiness, and that if he falls or sticks the team behind
and perhaps the wagon itself will be upon him. So he struggles all he
can to skirt delicately round it, and if he is one of the steering
oxen, the effort brings disaster either on the wagon or himself. No
less terrible is his fate when for hour after hour the wagon has to
plough its way through one of the upland bogs; when the wheels are sunk
to the hubs, and the legs of all the oxen disappear, and the shrieking
whips and yelling drivers are never for a moment still. Why the ox also
very strongly objects to getting his tail wet I have not found out.
Another peculiarity is that the ox is too delicate to work if it is
raining. Cut his hide to ribbons with rhinoceros whips, rot off his
tail with inoculation for lung-sickness, let ticks suck at him till
they swell as large as cherries with his blood--he bears all patiently.
But if a soft shower descends on him while he is in the yoke, he will
work no more. Within a minute or two he gets the sore hump--a terrible
thing to have. There is nothing to do but to stop. The hump must be
soothed down with wagon-grease--a mixture of soft-soap, black-lead,
and tar--and I have heard of wagons halted for weeks together because
the owner drove his oxen through a storm. Seeing that it rains in
water-spouts nearly every morning or afternoon from October to May, the
working-hours are considerably shortened, and unhappy is the man who is
in haste. I was in haste.
To be happy in Africa a man should have something oxlike in his nature.
Like an ox, or like “him that believeth,” he must never make haste. He
must accept his destiny and plod upon his way. He must forget emotion
and think no more of pleasures. He must let time run over him, and hope
for nothing greater than a lick of salt.
But there is one kind of ox which develops further characteristics, and
that is the riding-ox. He is the horse of Angola and of all Central
Africa where he can live. With ring in nose and saddle on back, he will
carry you at a swinging walk over the country, even through marshes
where a horse or a donkey would sink and shudder and groan. One of my
wagon team was a riding-ox, and it took four men to catch and saddle
him. To avoid the dulness of duty he would gallop like a racer and
leap like a deer. But when once saddled his ordinary gait was discreet
and solemn; and though his name was Buller, I called him “Old Ford,”
because he somehow reminded me of the Chelsea ’bus.
All the oxen in the team, except Buller, were called by Boer names.
Nor was this simply because Dutch is the natural language of oxen.
Very nearly every one concerned with wagons in Angola is a Boer, and
it is to Boers that the Portuguese owe the only two wagon tracks that
count in the country--the road from Benguela through Caconda to Bihé
and on towards the interior, and the road up from Mossamedes, which
joins the other at Caconda. I think these tracks form the northernmost
limit of the trek-ox in Africa, and his presence is entirely due to a
party of Boers who left the Transvaal rather more than twenty years
ago, driven partly by some religious or political difference, but
chiefly by the wandering spirit of Boers. I have conversed with a man
who well remembers that long trek--how they Started near Mafeking and
crept through Bechuanaland, and skirting the Kalahari Desert, crossed
Damaraland, and reached the promised land of Angola at last. They were
five years on the way--those indomitable wanderers. Once they stopped
to sow and reap their corn. For the rest they lived on the game they
shot. Now you find about two hundred families of them scattered up
and down through South Angola, chiefly in the Humpata district. They
are organized for defence on the old Transvaal lines, and to them the
Portuguese must chiefly look to check an irruption of natives, such as
the Cunyami are threatening now on the Cunene River.
Yet the Portuguese have taken this very opportunity (February, 1905)
for worrying them all about licenses for their rifles, and threatening
to disarm them if all the taxes are not paid up in full. At various
points I met the leading Boers going up to the fort at Caconda,
brooding over their grievances, or squatted on the road, discussing
them in their slow, untiring way. On further provocation they swore
they would trek away into Barotzeland and put themselves under British
protection. They even raised the question whether the late war had
not given them the rights of British subjects already. A slouching,
unwashed, foggy-minded people they are, a strange mixture of simplicity
and cunning, but for knowledge of oxen and wagons and game they have no
rivals, and in war I should estimate the value of one Boer family at
about ten Portuguese forts. They trade to some extent in slaves, but
chiefly they buy them for their own use, and they almost always give
them freedom at the time of marriage. Their boy slaves they train with
the same rigor as their oxen, but when the training is complete the boy
is counted specially valuable on the road.
Distances in Africa are not reckoned by miles, but by treks or by days.
And even this method is very variable, for a journey that will take
a fortnight in the dry season may very well take three months in the
wet. A trek will last about three hours, and the usual thing is two
treks a day. I think no one could count on more than twelve miles a
day with a loaded wagon, and I doubt if the average is as much as ten.
But it is impossible to calculate. The record from Bihé to Benguela by
the road is six weeks, but you must not complain if a wagon takes six
months, and the journey used to be reckoned at a year, allowing time
for shooting food on the way. In a straight line the distance is about
two hundred and fifty miles, or, by the wagon road, something over four
hundred and fifty, as nearly as I can estimate. But when it takes you
two or three days to cross a brook and a fortnight to cross a marsh,
distance becomes deceptive.