PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 urchased by the Mary Cheves Dulles Fund. 
 
 Division DT.5Z4- 
 
 Section- • 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/historyofslaveOOjohn_0 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
' / am not an old man yet, am I ? 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAV 
 
 BY 
 
 H. H. JOHNSTON, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S, &c. 
 
 AUTHOR OK THE KILIMANJARO EXPEDITION ETC. 
 
 WITH 47 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS ENGRAVED FACSIMILE FROM THE AUTHOR'S DRAWINGS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1889 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In accompanying this little book with prefatory 
 remarks I fear lest I may seem to be overestimating 
 its importance ; but my publishers think a few words 
 of explanation necessary, which will better enable 
 readers to understand the character and the purport 
 of what I have herein written and drawn. 
 
 The ' History of a Slave' is an attempt to give 
 a realistic sketch of life in the Western Sudan. It 
 is the outcome of some considerable experience 
 of the Dark Continent, but is especially based on 
 what I have seen and heard when travelling in North 
 Africa, in the Niger Delta, and on the Cross River. 
 I have pieced together the accounts given me by 
 negro slaves in the Barbary States and in Western 
 
vi THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 Equatorial Africa, especially by Mbudikum people, 
 with whom I have conversed at Old Calabar. 
 
 While this little work does not pretend to topo- 
 graphical accuracy — especially in countries that are 
 only known to us by native reports — yet, to speak 
 colloquially, it is not all humbug. Many of the 
 incidents herein related I have actually witnessed 
 during some one of my journeys in Africa. The 
 places and peoples I have named are of real existence, 
 as are also the languages quoted, though some of 
 them, as in the case of the Mbudikum tongue, pro- 
 bably appear in print for the first time. 
 
 Were it not for the time and care which I have 
 spent on the forty-seven illustrations of this booklet, 
 I should consider even the few foregoing remarks 
 superfluous ; but, for the sake of these drawings, I 
 would ask the reader to treat me somewhat seri- 
 ously. These illustrations are truthful delineations 
 of African life and scenery, and have most of them 
 been done in Africa from actuality, though it does 
 not necessarily follow that their application is to be 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 exactly localised ; that is to say, that, though the 
 drawing may not have been actually done from the 
 scene described in the book, it depicts an analogous 
 scene elsewhere, from which, all or in part, it has 
 been taken. It may, however, be well to mention 
 that I have endeavoured to make my landscapes, 
 architecture, implements, costumes — or the want of 
 them — and studies of human types, as locally accu- 
 rate as possible. 
 
 H. H. JOHNSTON. 
 
 London : March, 1889. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ' I am not an old man yet, ami!' Frontispiece 
 
 ' My mother was a young woman who had a pleasant face, although, after 
 the fashion of these pagans, it was scarred and tattooed on the forehead, 
 and cheeks, and chin ' To face page 3 
 
 ' We lived in a kind of compound, the four sides of which were houses 
 built of clay, with palm-thatch roofs ' 5 
 
 ' My father . . . was old, and his eyes were dim : he had a short grey 
 beard, and the hair of his head was grey, and he had lost many of his 
 teeth. . . . For hours together he would sit on his haunches over the 
 fire in his own hut ... 7 
 
 * But one elephant that was stronger and more cunning than the others 
 would not fly before the shouting, but turned round and made straight 
 at my brother, whom he seized with his trunk and carried to the firm 
 land among the bushes ' . . . . . . . . 1 3 
 
 Epfumo 15 
 
 'There were great fires burning, so that the place was full of light, and 
 round these fires were squatting or standing all the young men of the 
 town 21 
 
 ' We all went home with the birds we had caught ' .... 25 
 
 ' Around the base of the tree were walking two or three brown vultures. 
 . . . When I said in a soft voice, " Ndeba ! " her eyes opened, and she 
 looked hard at me ' ......... 27 
 
X 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 ' She set the bunch of plantains on my head, and made me carry the duck 
 under one arm, and lead the goat by the hand ' . To face page 29 
 
 The Ndoge Brotherhood 29 
 
 ' I espied a Bakuba man and woman who had been out cutting grass for their 
 goats. . . . They sought to escape our notice by crawling on their 
 stomachs through the grass like snakes ' 47 
 
 ' I dressed my hair in the fashion of those who were married men ' . 49 
 
 ' As the elephants, scared by the torches and the shouting, pressed onwards 
 between the narrow hedges, some of them were pushed into the pit and 
 were at the men's mercy ' . ' . . . . . . .51 
 
 ' When the day came round for the next big market to be held in our town 
 . . . there were more of the Mohammedan, Ful, and Hausa traders 
 there than we had ever seen before ' . . . . .53 
 
 ' They said that along the horizon in the direction of Dokaka they saw the 
 smoke of burning towns ' ........ 57 
 
 1 Some of the Ful-be horsemen would tie a rope round the ankle of one 
 of these fugitives and fasten the other end of this rope to his stirrup, 
 and then ride round and round the square at full gallop ' . . .63 
 
 ' I saw her body . . . cast out into the street, where the hyenas which 
 wander through the town at night came and tore it to pieces ' . .67 
 
 ' On our way we passed on the west of a big, big mountain ' . . .69 
 
 ♦ He laughed much to see the way in which I at first wore it ' . . 71 
 
 ' The water seemed like a great sea without limits, except for the deleb 
 palms, which rose above the flood ' 73 
 
 ' And all these creatures, which are wont to disagree in the forest . . . 
 were now so scared by the flood, which had driven them for refuge to 
 this small village on a little mound, that they looked not at each other, 
 but watched the water only 1 77 
 
 • Yakuba seemed the grandest place in all the world, with its fine houses of 
 
 clay . . . and its dakakin (shops) ' 81 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS xi 
 
 ' In this court the camels and horses of my master were tethered, and 
 there were many ducks and fowls, and a few sheep ' . To face page 85 
 
 ' The Sultan was sitting on his carpet smoking a water-pipe ' . . . 91 
 
 ' His executioner, a tall Kanuri man with a red turban, naked to the 
 waist, stood by the Sultan's side with a drawn sword ' -93 
 
 ' And his head was stuck on a post, and the body we dragged about the 
 town by the legs 95 
 
 ' Stealthily walking through the streets of the town where the shadows 
 were deepest ' 101 
 
 ■ A hungry lion had leapt the barrier of thorns, and fastened on to one of 
 the asses, who in terror broke loose from the stake to which it was 
 tethered 1 103 
 
 ' Often I would stop to weep at the misfortunes that had befallen me ' . 1 1 1 
 
 ' I was now forced to walk in step with a poor wild pagan slave from the 
 Ibo country, joined to him during the march by a chain which united 
 our heavy wooden collars ' . . . . . . . . 113 
 
 In the slave market 115 
 
 Beating the taubs 117 
 
 ' Lowering my head, I charged at him like a bull, butting him full in the 
 stomach' 121 
 
 The Kano Cavalry 123 
 
 ' We carried off a rich spoil of slaves, cattle, and camels ' . . .127 
 
 ' One night a lion and lioness jumped into our camp . . . but we drove 
 them off with burning brands ' 131 
 
 The Tree of Death 135 
 
 ' The executioner every now and then turned and made a jest to the 
 people' 137 
 
 Al-Haj-Ayub 139 
 
 • The Mirage (These lakes were shams, and the work of the Jann) ' . 143 
 
xii THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 ' Then he led me through many streets to the house of a Ghadamsi mer- 
 
 ' Many slaves . . . would be able just to reach the drinking place, and 
 then would sink down and die before the water reached their lips ' .147 
 
 ' But when these creatures came nearer — I being too dazed to think of 
 flight— I saw they were only baboons, of a kind not unlike those which 
 were found in my own country' ....... 149 
 
 ' The great Wadan, the big animal with the mane, something of the 
 sheep-kind . . . would come down in the night-time from the cliffs 
 that surrounded the Wadi to . . . the pool ' . . . . . 1 59 
 
 ' And she, too, after running for some distance, threw up her hands and 
 fell down in a heap ' 165 
 
 ' For at this hour he is wont to leave the Mosque of the Olive Tree ' .167 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 How do I know when I was born ? We black men 
 cannot remember the number of years that we have 
 lived. Perhaps it was forty years ago — I don't know, 
 I am not an old man yet, am I ? You see my 
 muscles are strong and firm, my teeth are sound, my 
 skin is smooth and shining, and not puckered and 
 scaly, as it is with old men. And I know that I am 
 not young, because I have left my country in the 
 land of the blacks for a long, long time, and when I 
 was first caught by the slavers I was a strong full- 
 grown man, already married. What curious people 
 you Europeans are ! You ask so many questions, 
 and you want to know so much about things that do 
 not concern you. Why should you care about slaves 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 from the Sudan, and how they live, and what lan- 
 guages they speak ? See, you have written many 
 words already that I have spoken of, Marghi and 
 Fulde, and Mbudikum and Batta, and other tongues 
 of the barbarians and pagans, who know not God, 
 and reject the teaching of His Prophet. I too, 
 was like them once. The country where my mother 
 bore me is far away — far, far away, beyond the 
 Desert, beyond the Great River, beyond the king- 
 doms of the Muslemin, in a land of Kufar (un- 
 believers), where the people, my brothers, went 
 naked, and knew not shame. It is a country so far 
 that, though you may love travelling, I doubt if you 
 would ever reach it : yet once or twice I have heard 
 that white men have been near my mother-land. 
 They came — I have heard it said — to spy out the 
 country and the chiefs of the Ful people, and the 
 Wazir of Bornu afforded them protection. Then, 
 too, I have heard that the great rushing river, which 
 was distant a month's walk from my home, towards 
 the north — -the river that the Ful-be 1 call Mayo 
 Fumbina, and the Batta call the Benue — that this 
 
 1 The Ful or ' Fula ' people. Pul-o is the singular form (one Fulo 
 man), Ful-be the plural. Ful-de or Fuljul-de, the language. The 
 Arabs call the Ful, ' Fillani.' 
 
' My mo/her was a young 'woman ivho had a pleasant face although, after the fashion of 
 these pagans, it was scarred and tattooed on the forehead, and cheeks, and chin. 
 
THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 3 
 
 water flowed towards the setting sun, where it joined 
 the Kwara, which comes from Timbuktu ; and up 
 this Kwara they used to say that white men came 
 in big ships to buy slaves. The white men, I heard, 
 would come to Nufe, and sometimes the Arabs have 
 told me they were English, and sometimes they said 
 they were another kind of Englishmen called Mera- 
 kani. And once, too, some white men came up the 
 Benue River in a steamer, and now the Bornu 
 people bring news to Tarabulus that the white men 
 have got houses on the Benue, where they trade with 
 the Ful people. It may be lying, it may be true, I 
 do not know ; but you white men are wonderful, and 
 so are the things you do. 
 
 Are you going to write my history in a book ? 
 The Sidi, my master, said you wished to do so, and 
 as he likes you, and wishes to please you, he has 
 sent me here, and told me I am to do your bidding. 
 If you wish me to be silent, I am to be silent ; if you 
 wish me to talk, I am to tell you all that I know, if it 
 be words of the Ertana 1 of the Pagans, or if it be of all 
 the things that I have seen and done in all my life, 
 since I was born. Oh, yes ! I will tell you truth — 
 1 Jargon, savage language. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 by God, I will not lie — why should I ? You white 
 men know everything, and if you found I was deceiv- 
 ing you, you would send me away, and my master 
 would punish me ; and I like coming to set: you, it 
 makes me proud to talk to a white man — all my 
 friends say, ' See, Abu-l-Guwah 1 must be a man with 
 something in him, or the Englishman would not send 
 for him every day, and write down in a book the 
 words that he speaks.' 
 
 1 'The Father of Strength,' the strong, lusty. A name sometimes 
 given by the Arabs to Negro slaves. 
 
THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The name they called my mother-country was 
 Mbudikum. It was a land of forests and mountains 
 — a land where water never failed, because in all 
 directions there were brooks and rivers, and my 
 country-people never thought of digging wells. 
 When I can first remember, I was a small, small 
 boy, and I lived in a large village of this country 
 called Bahom. My mother was a young woman 
 who had a pleasant face, although, after the fashion 
 of these pagans, it was scarred and tattooed on the 
 forehead, and cheeks, and chin. My mother was 
 one of the five wives of a man called Asho-eso, who 
 was the chief of the village, and also ruled over 
 three other neighbouring towns. We lived in a 
 kind of compound, the four sides of which were 
 houses built of clay, with palm-thatch roofs ; in the 
 middle of the compound or yard was a small tree 
 growing, and on this tree, were hung the skulls of 
 
6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 people whom my father, the old chief, had killed, 
 and there were also a lot of charms and gri-gris, 
 such as these pagans believe in, tied round the trunk 
 of this tree ; and every now and then, when the men 
 of the village killed a slave or a prisoner whom they 
 had captured when they fought with the Bakuba — 
 the Bakuba were a tribe who lived on a high 
 mountain two days' journey from our village, and 
 who used sometimes to fight with us — when, I say, 
 the men of our town killed some one and roasted 
 his flesh for a feast — for my people were man-eaters 
 like the Ghuls of the desert — the bones of the men 
 they had eaten were laid round about the base of 
 this tree. 
 
 The first thing I remember clearly was playing 
 with the skull of one of these people whom the young 
 men of the town had eaten. I used to roll it about 
 on the ground of the compound, and amuse myself 
 by filling it with sand, and then holding it up to let 
 the sand run out from the eyes and nose. There were 
 a number of other boys — perhaps eight or ten — 
 living with me in the compound, who were said 
 to be my father's children. My mother was the 
 youngest of his wives. Her name was Tutu, and 
 
' My father .... was old, and his eyes were dim ; he had a short grey 
 beard, and the hair of his head was grey, and he had lost many of his 
 teeth .... For hours together he 'Mould sit on his haunches over the 
 fire in his own hut.' 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 7 
 
 the name of the head-wife was Ncleba. I hated 
 Ndeba, and she did not like me, because she was 
 jealous of my mother, and her own children had 
 died. The old chief, my father, they said had been a 
 strong man when he was young, and they had made 
 him chief because he had fought very bravely against 
 the Bakuba, and had captured many prisoners and 
 women and goats and sheep, and, as he was very 
 generous, they made him chief in the place of another 
 man who had been killed ; but, when I remember 
 him, he was old and his eyes were dim ; he had a short 
 grey beard, and the hair of his head was grey and he 
 had lost many of his teeth. His knees were swollen 
 and large, and he could only walk slowly and with 
 a stick. For hours together he would sit on his 
 haunches over the fire in his own hut, and do nothing 
 but take snuff occasionally out of a small antelope- 
 horn which hung round his neck. Only when the 
 women wrangled too loud would he raise himself and 
 find his voice, and when he was angry and shouted, 
 the brightness came back to his eyes, and his voice 
 was strong, and it made us tremble, because it was 
 told that once in his younger days, when a wife had 
 refused to stop yelling because the head-wife had 
 
s 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 taken her portion of peppers, he struck her on the 
 head with his ebony stick, and she died. 
 
 Sometimes I used to creep into my father's hut 
 and watch him as he sat over the fire ; he never 
 spoke much to me, and much of what he said 
 seemed to be nonsense. A few sentences of his 
 talk I still remember ; he said them over and over 
 again, like a kind of song : ' The elephants came 
 down from the mountains — two, three elephants 
 came. They wasted my farm, they dragged down 
 my plantains, and they trampled my maize, and I, 
 Eso, I, the chief, did a cunning thing against 
 them, for I dug a big, big pit, and I overlaid its 
 mouth with thin sticks, and on these sticks I reared 
 the maize stalks upright, as though they were grow- 
 ing, and I scattered grass about in between them, so 
 that none might know that the sticks hid the mouth 
 of the pit, and when the elephants came at night 
 to eat my plantains, they pressed on the sticks, and 
 one, the biggest, fell into the pit, and there, I, Eso, 
 found him, and I cut the tendons of his feet so that 
 he could not walk, and I and my men stuck him in 
 many places with spears, so that he bled to death, 
 and for many days we feasted on his flesh, till our 
 
THE HISTOR Y OE A SLA VE 
 
 9 
 
 bellies ached with food. And his tusks, one I sold 
 to a Tibari 1 trader, and the other I made into 
 bracelets for my wives, and that is why they call me 
 "Asho-eso," the "elephant-killer."' And this tale 
 he would tell many times, until I wearied of it, and 
 little else he would say, except when the women 
 quarrelled, and he could not sleep. 
 
 My eldest brother was a big young man. He 
 was the son of the second wife. I liked him 
 because he was kind to me, and because he, too, 
 hated the eldest wife. When she quarrelled with 
 my mother he took my mother's part. His own 
 mother we all laughed at, because she had once 
 broken her leg, and when it mended the bone stuck 
 out in a lump, and one leg was shorter than the 
 other, so that, when she walked, she walked with a 
 hop. We called her the ' Hyena,' because her gait 
 was limping — and in our language we call the hyena 
 the ' limping leopard ' — but my eldest brother was 
 good to me, and would play with me, and when he 
 took part in these pagan feasts, he would bring back 
 a little of the man's heart they had eaten, so that I 
 might taste it, and grow brave for Wallah ! I was a 
 
 1 Fula. 
 
io THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 pagan and a man-eater, too. I knew no better, and 
 was as a brute, and none had told me of Allah and 
 his Nabi. 1 
 
 My eldest brother taught me to make bows and 
 arrows — the bow out of the springy wood of the 
 climbing palm, and the string, too, of palm fibre or 
 the twisted gut of a goat — and our arrows were 
 made out of stout grass-stems and notched, or some- 
 times the blacksmith of the village would beat me 
 out a small barb of iron, which I would fasten on to 
 the end of my arrow. With these bows and arrows 
 I soon learned to kill small birds, which I took 
 home to eat. I always shared them with my 
 brothers, as was our custom, for we shared every- 
 thing — we boys — but if the women tried to take 
 something of what we had killed to put in their own 
 pots, we made a great noise and stoned them, and 
 my mother would scream and shout at the other 
 women if they tried to take away the things I had 
 killed, for my mother set much store by me, and 
 would let no one do me hurt if she could prevent 
 them. 
 
 And I learned to fish in the brooks, where we 
 
 1 ' Prophet,' viz. Mohammed. 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 1 1 
 
 made weirs of reeds and bush-creepers, and once I 
 remember, when I jumped into the deep water of 
 one of these pools, which we had dammed up, to 
 catch in my arms a large fish that was entrapped 
 there, a big lizard, such as the Arabs call ' Waran,' 
 attacked me, for he, too, was after the fish, and with 
 his long, sharp-edged tail cut the skin all down my 
 right thigh, and I thought I should have died, 
 because so much blood ran out, and I could hardly 
 drag myself home, where my mother wailed over 
 me ; and because the head-wife was learned in 
 medicine, and knew the best way to stop the flowing 
 of blood and heal the wound, my mother had to give 
 her a large present — I think she gave her a goat — 
 that she might apply her skill to close up the wound 
 in my thigh ; and this she did, as I remember, by 
 washing it, and putting on it the red paste of a 
 wood that was bitter to the taste, and then she 
 strapped up the whole thigh in plantain leaves, and 
 in a few days I was well. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 About this time a great trouble came on us, for my 
 elder brother went out to hunt the elephant with 
 some young men of the town. They would follow 
 the elephants till they came to a great marsh, which 
 was a long day's journey from the town, and here, 
 hiding among the reeds, where the elephants came 
 to drink and bathe, they would let fly at them with 
 spears and poisoned arrows, hoping, by much noise 
 and by gradually closing on them, to drive the ele- 
 phants out of the clear water into the thick mud, 
 where they would stick, and where the men could 
 get close to them and kill them without the ele- 
 phants having the power to escape or to run 
 at the men. But one elephant, that was stronger 
 and more cunning than the others, would not fly 
 before the shouting, but turned round and made 
 straight at my brother, whom he seized with his 
 trunk and carried to the firm land among the 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 13 
 
 bushes ; and here, though he was like a porcupine 
 for the lances and darts and arrows that stuck in 
 his hide, thrown by the young men who were my 
 brother's companions, he desisted not from his 
 purpose, but, placing him on the ground with his 
 trunk, he knelt down and drove one of his great 
 tusks through my brother's body and then broke 
 away from the young men, so that none saw in what 
 direction he escaped through the forest, he bear- 
 ing all the time my brother's body spitted on his 
 tusk. And when the news was brought home, it 
 was said everywhere that it was witchcraft, that 
 some enemy of my brother's had entered into this 
 elephant as a devil, so that he might bring about 
 my brother's death, and I heard the women whisper 
 that the enemy who had done this was my father's 
 head-wife ; and the poor Hyena, as we called my 
 brother's mother, was mad for rage, and threw her- 
 self on the head-wife, biting and striking her until 
 my father roared in his angry voice, and the other 
 women pulled her off and tied her with bush-rope, 
 and then for two days there was quiet ; but the 
 young men had found part of my brother's body in 
 the forest, and had brought it back to the town, and 
 
i 4 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 then I heard it said that ' Epfumo ' was out to find 
 who had bewitched my brother, and entered the 
 elephant to kill him. 
 
 When I heard the great ' Bong ! bong ! ' of the 
 ' Etum,' which is a kind of drum made of a hollow- 
 sounding wood, that gives out a noise almost like a 
 bell, I was frightened and ran to my mother, she 
 everywhere looking for me to hide me with herself 
 in the house ; for you must know the custom was, 
 when this Epfumo was out, that he should slay all 
 women and children, and all youths who were unin- 
 itiated, whom he met in his path. And the reason 
 of this was, that these pagans believe that Epfumo 
 is a ' Shaitan,' a great devil, who is able to search 
 out the truth. 
 
 He appears like a man dressed in a great mantle 
 made of palm-fronds, a mantle which descends from 
 his shoulders to his knees, and is very broad and 
 constructed somewhat like a cage, but there are 
 holes to let the arms pass out through, and on to 
 his finger-nails are fastened leopards'-claws. In one 
 hand he holds a great cutlass, and in the other a 
 pierced antelope-horn, with which he blows a strong 
 blast at times, to warn people out of his way. On 
 
Epfttmo. 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 his head is a hideous mask of painted wood, from 
 the top of which hangs down behind a black-and- 
 white monkey-skin. 
 
 When I was a child I thought that the Epfumo 
 was a real devil, but now I know it is only a man 
 dressed up, and generally the ' doctor,' the pagan 
 priest of the town, and this Epfumo that came out 
 to find the person who bewitched my brother must 
 have been an old man named ' Asho-ntshon,' 
 which means in our language ' Kill-thief.' And all 
 this time that the Epfumo was searching through 
 the town for the bewitcher of my brother, the drum 
 in the fetish-house was going ' Bong ! bong ! bong ! ' 
 and there was no other sound in the town but the 
 noise of the drum, except when a dog howled or 
 the fowls cackled ; and I hid myself in the darkness 
 of my mother's hut, fearing to let go her hand, and 
 she, too, was frightened, and had put the screen of 
 latticed palm-stems against the doorway of her hut ; 
 but presently we heard quite close to the entrance 
 to our compound a blast from the Epfumo's horn. 
 
 My mother started up and trembled all over. 
 ' He is coming in here,' she said, ' I knew it ; it is 
 the head-wife that has bewitched thy brother ; ' and 
 
i6 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 although I was very frightened, I was very curious 
 to see what the Epfumo would do, so I crept close 
 to the doorway and peeped through the cracks of 
 the palm-lattice, and for the first time I saw the 
 terrible Epfumo. He came into the compound, 
 walking at the head of a troop of other devils, 
 dressed somewhat like himself, but with white staves 
 in their hands and no cutlass, and the Epfumo 
 cried, with a loud voice, ' I smell the witch who has 
 bewitched Ejok ' (that was my brother's name), and 
 at these words I saw my father come out of the 
 house, walking very slowly and painfully, and help- 
 ing himself with his stick, and he said, ' What seek- 
 est thou here, Epfumo ? ' and the devil said, ' I 
 seek the bewitcher of Ejok, and I know I am near,' 
 and the Epfumo walked towards our house, or 
 rather he danced towards us with a curious mincing 
 step, and again I shut my eyes with fright, for I saw 
 he was coming to our door, and all this time my 
 mother was crouching on the ground, putting her 
 hands before her eyes ; and when I looked out 
 again the Epfumo had passed on, and he went 
 very near the next house, and the next, but stopped 
 at none till he came to the house of the head-wife. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 17 
 
 and there he danced in ; and then I heard a frightful 
 yell, and the Epfumo came out, dragging the head- 
 wife by the wrist, and she in her scare set both 
 her feet together and bent her body, so that he 
 might fail to move her from the threshold of her 
 hut ; but it was of no use, for my father said, 1 Bind 
 her,' and the other dressed-up men that accompanied 
 Epfumo took coils of bush-rope from underneath 
 their mantle of palm-leaves, and bound the head-wife 
 round and round, so that she was stiff, and could 
 move nothing about her but her head ; and all the 
 while she screamed and screamed, until her screams 
 became like the hoarse cry of an angry camel, and 
 then when she was bound they lifted her up, and 
 carried her out of the compound. And then after 
 some little time the ' Bong ! bong ! bong ! ' of the 
 fetish drum stopped, for the witch was found. And 
 the town came to life again. 
 
 My mother rose up and lifted away the door 
 from the entrance to her hut, made up the embers 
 of the fire, and then rushed out into the compound 
 to meet the other women, who were already raising 
 a mighty clamour with their tongues. They were 
 all shouting, ' Did I not tell you so, did I not say 
 
 c 
 
1 8 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 the head-wife had bewitched Ejok ? Were not her 
 ways always the ways of a witch ? Aha, now she 
 will be punished as she deserves ! ' My mother 
 screamed the loudest of all, for she was glad, and 
 hated the head-wife, and I shouted too and the other 
 boys, and the small girls beat with sticks on the 
 wooden drums, and the goats baaed and the fowls 
 cackled, and there was a great clamour. Only my 
 father sat quiet on his haunches and seemed sad. 
 He said once or twice, ' Witch or no witch, she was 
 a wise woman, and who will tend me now she is 
 gone ? ' Then some young men came rushing in and 
 said the trial would take place as soon as the moon 
 was up. 
 
 And all that day was hard to pass. I longed so 
 to see what they would do with the woman who had 
 bewitched my brother ; and at last the evening meal 
 was over and it was dark, and, lighting a bundle 
 of palm shreds at the fire, which these pagans use 
 as torches, my mother took me by the hand and led 
 me out of the compound, all the other women going 
 too ; but as we passed the open door of my father's 
 hut his fire flickered up, and I saw him sitting 
 there alone musing over the hearth, his chin resting 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 19 
 
 on his hands, which held his ebony staff. And 
 I said to my mother, ' Is he not going too ? ' and 
 she said, 'He is too feeble to walk so far, and 
 besides, he is too old to care for anything now but 
 his soup and his snuff,' and she laughed. But the 
 limping Hyena, the second wife, as she passed, said 
 to my mother, ' It is not well to laugh, for Asho-eso 
 was a strong man once, and it is you young women 
 who have taken away his strength from him.' 
 
 So we passed out into the darkness, and my 
 mother separated herself from the other wives, and 
 here and there we saw the flare of the other torches, 
 for many people were wending their way to the 
 place of trial. But my mother walked not with the 
 other wives, saying she liked not their company ; 
 and as we passed a new house that had been built 
 in the town, a young man, a fine tall proper fellow 
 — his name was ' Ngwi,' or ' the leopard ' — came 
 out from under the eaves of the house and looked 
 in my mother's face as she held up her torch, and 
 my mother nodded to him and let go my hand, 
 holding Ngwi's instead, whilst she still held up her 
 torch to light the way. Then presently she saw the 
 other wives of my father a little way in advance, 
 
2 0 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 and she told me to run on ahead and go with my 
 brothers, for there was something she must say to 
 Ngwi first. So I ran on and joined myself to the 
 limping Hyena, who was very sad, and sobbed 
 and cried still, to think of the death of her 
 son. 
 
 And when we arrived at the place of trial we 
 found it was a large open space in the forest, where 
 the ground was smooth and had been beaten hard 
 by men's feet, and all vegetation was removed 
 except for one great tree, with spreading branches, 
 which grew in the middle of the clearing, and all 
 round the border of this maidan, or square, there 
 were great fires burning, so that the place was full 
 of light, and round these fires were squatting or 
 standing all the young men of the town. Most of 
 them were drunk with palm-wine, and kept shouting 
 and singing without any sense, and close to the base 
 of the big tree there lay my father's head-wife, still 
 in her bonds ; she could only move her head a very 
 little from side to side, and her eyes rolled dread- 
 fully ; and there was another thing close beside her 
 which made me feel very sad and sick — it was the 
 remains they had found of my brother when he had 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 2 I 
 
 been killed by the elephant, only the head and 
 trunk and part of his thighs were there. 
 
 Then presently there was a blowing of horns, 
 and into the square came Asho-ntshon, the old 
 ' Nganga,' or medicine-man of the town, who used 
 to dress up as the Epfumo, but this time he was 
 not Epfumo at all, or the women and children would 
 not have been there. The old Nganga had painted 
 a curious pattern of white lines over his body, and 
 he had a lot of charms hung about his neck, a tall 
 plaited hat on his head, and ruffs of white goat's fur 
 round his ankles. He blew a loud blast on his 
 antelope-horn, and all the noise and talking ceased ; 
 then in the midst of silence he said, ' Epfumo has 
 found the witch who brought about the death of 
 Ejok ; it is Ndeba, the wife of Asho-eso, the chief.' 
 At these words the other wives of my father — 
 except my mother, who had not come — all said, 
 ' Aya, aya ! it is true,' but the Nganga blew another 
 blast on his horn to silence them, and went on, 
 ' Ndeba denies that she bewitched Ejok, so it shall 
 be put to the test, and we will see if Epfumo was 
 wrong.' Then, after saying these words, he took 
 his knife and cut off a small piece — just about a 
 
22 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 mouthful — of the flesh of my dead brother, and 
 called to one of his attendants, who brought a 
 small wooden box, in which was kept a red sauce. 
 Into this sauce he dipped the morsel of my brother's 
 flesh, and rolled it round two or three times ; then 
 he bade them hoist up Ndeba, the head-wife, and 
 whilst they held her upright he said to her, ' Open 
 thy mouth and swallow this piece of the flesh of the 
 man whom Epfumo says thou didst bewitch. It it 
 stays on thy stomach thou wilt be set free, and 
 Epfumo will have told a lie, for all men will see 
 that thou couldst not have bewitched Ejok if his 
 substance will unite with thine ; but if thou vomit 
 up this piece of his body, Epfumo will have shown 
 truly that thou art the witch.' Then the head-wife 
 opened her mouth and received the morsel of my 
 brother's flesh ; and I saw the muscles of her face 
 and throat working as though trying to swallow it. 
 but perhaps the sauce in which it was dipped made 
 her retch, or perhaps after all she was a witch — how 
 do we know ? perhaps there is some truth in what 
 these pagans tell ! are they not the children of Iblis ? 
 How it was I know not, but Ndeba shook all over 
 and vomited forth the piece of flesh that had been 
 put into her mouth. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 23 
 
 Then a great cry went up from among the 
 people ; they all shouted ' Ndeba is the witch, Ndeba 
 is the witch ; Epfumo never tells a lie,' and the 
 young men beat on their drums and blew their 
 antelope-horns, and the limping Hyena, Ejok's 
 mother, gave a sobbing scream, and rushed forward 
 at Ndeba, who had fallen down on the ground, for 
 the young men had left off holding her up. The 
 Hyena tore Ndeba's face with her nails, and 
 smashed in her nose with her fist, and would 
 perhaps have killed her in her rage, only the 
 Nganga kicked and cuffed the Hyena, and dragged 
 her off, and said it was not thus Ndeba was to die. 
 Then he called upon the young men, and they came 
 up and took hold of Ndeba, and whilst some un- 
 wound the bush-rope that had bound her, others 
 tied fresh ropes round her neck, ankles, and wrists, 
 and with the ends of these ropes they lashed her 
 round the trunk of the big tree. ' And is that all ? ' 
 I asked of another of my father's wives, for I could 
 not find my mother ; ' are they not going to kill 
 her ? ' ' No,' she replied, ' it is Epfumo who will 
 kill her, but she will take some time to die, for she 
 is strong even yet, although the Hyena has spoilt 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 her face.' And all this time Ncleba said nothing, 
 she was quite dumb, and did not seem to know 
 what had happened. And, after she was tied to 
 the tree, every one seemed to forget her, and the 
 men and women had a big dance round the fire. 
 Presently my mother came up to me and took me 
 home, and I asked her where she had been all the 
 time, and whether she had seen what had been done 
 to Ndeba ; and she said yes, she had seen all, but I 
 did not believe that she was there. And the next 
 morning there was a great clamour among the 
 women in my father's yard, and the Hyena, who 
 was now the head-wife, reproached my mother with 
 her love for Ngwi, and threatened she would tell 
 everything to my father, but my mother soothed her 
 and hushed her and reminded her that the dead 
 Ejok had been such a friend to me, and when my 
 mother mentioned Ejok's name, the Hyena burst 
 out crying, and promised not to say anything about 
 Ngwi. And that day Ngwi sent my mother a large 
 fish which he had caught in the river, and she 
 divided the fish among all the other women, and 
 they seemed to be great friends. 
 
' We all went home with (he birds we hail caught.' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 -5 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The next day I went out with some of my brothers 
 to snare birds in the forest, and when we were 
 coming back in the evening we passed through 
 the square where the people danced, and where the 
 sacrifices used to take place, and there was Ndeba 
 still tied to the tree ; and when I went up to her, her 
 eyes opened, and she looked at me, but she could 
 not speak, because they had thrust a gag into her 
 mouth. Just above her head they had driven into 
 the tree a small peg, and on this was hung a 
 bundle of red parrot-feathers ; this meant that Ndeba 
 was ' fetish ; ' that no one must touch her, or aid her, 
 or give her food or water, or have anything to 
 do with her, or Epfumo would kill them. So the 
 other boys drew me away from staring at her, and 
 we all went home with the birds we had caught. 
 
 And three days after that there was a big market 
 held in the square, a market that took place in our 
 
26 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 town every ten days, and people came to this market 
 from great distances when there was not war in 
 the land : and here, for the first time, I saw a Ful 
 merchant, a Mohammedan, who had come from the 
 north to buy ivory and slaves. He had with him 
 one or two people from a country near ours who had 
 become the allies and servants of the Mohammedan 
 Ful-be, and who dressed in long blue robes and 
 turbans, like Mohammedans, and although I was 
 frightened at first, and held on to mother's hand, 
 still I looked at this man with wonder and curiosity ; 
 and I being then a pagan and one of the brutes of 
 the field, wondered that this man should cover his 
 body with cloth, for all the people of our town and 
 country went naked except for their bracelets of 
 ivory or their neck ornaments. And when I looked 
 at the tree where Ndeba was bound I saw to my 
 surprise that she was still alive — that is to say, her 
 eyes opened and shut as she watched the coming 
 and going of the people, but they all took no notice 
 of her, and none offered to give her food or water, 
 or to loose her bonds. 
 
 Once the Pul-o merchant asked some questions 
 about her, but the young men of the town said to 
 
* Around the base of the tree were walking two or three brown vultures. . . . When 
 I said in a soft voice, " Ndeba ! » her eyes opened, and she looked hard at me. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 27 
 
 him, ' It is our business, meddle not with her,' and 
 he laughed and turned away. 
 
 The next day I thought much about Ndeba, and 
 wondered whether she still lived, and whether her 
 eyes could still open and shut. So, without telling 
 my mother, who, I knew, would scold me, I slipped 
 away from the yard alone, and stole to the square in 
 the forest. Around the base of the tree were walk- 
 ing two or three brown vultures of a kind that were 
 tame in our town, like fowls, for we allowed them to 
 eat the offal, and no man might disturb them. 
 
 When I stepped as close as I might to Ndeba I 
 saw that her eyelids had dropped. But when I said 
 in a soft voice, ' Ndeba ! ' her eyes opened and she 
 looked hard at me. 
 
 Wallah ! it is wonderful how these old women 
 live ! Here she had been tied to the tree for six 
 days, and was not dead yet. But I thought to 
 myself as I ran back home, ' She will surely die soon, 
 or the vultures would not be walking about her.' 
 
 And still the next day I thought about Ndeba, 
 and wondered whether she was dead yet. But I 
 feared to leave our compound early the next 
 morning, because my mother had asked me many 
 
28 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 questions about where I had been the day before, 
 and had told me that if I went anywhere near Ndeba 
 she would hand me over to Epfumo. However, 
 soon there arose a clamour in the yard, because the 
 Hyena rushed out of my father's house where she 
 had been taking his morning food, and said he was 
 not there, and that he must have disappeared for 
 some hours, because the fire was out, and they sought 
 for him everywhere in the compound, but could not 
 find him. 
 
 My mother laughed and said, ' Puh ! He has 
 found his strength again, that is all. Perhaps it was 
 Ndeba that bewitched him, and now he has grown 
 strong, and gone off to hunt or trade.' 
 
 And then all the other women began shouting 
 at my mother, saying she had hidden him or killed 
 him lest he should find out about Ngwi, and while 
 they were making all this to-do, I slipped out of our 
 compound, and ran off to the forest to see whether 
 Ndeba was still living. 
 
 And when I got to the square, to my surprise 
 I saw my father sitting down near Ndeba's feet, 
 and leaning against the trunk of the tree, but a 
 vulture was perched on Ndeba's shoulder, tearing 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 29 
 
 the flesh off her cheeks ; so it was clear she was 
 dead. 
 
 And what do you think ? my father was dead, too, 
 and when I touched his body to awaken him, for I 
 thought he was asleep, he rolled over on the ground. 
 I was so frightened at this, fearing lest they should 
 say I had killed him, that I ran right into the forest 
 and hid there all the rest of the day, and at nightfall 
 I returned home, hoping that they would not notice 
 my absence, or would think that I had been to snare 
 birds. 
 
 But long before I reached our compound I heard 
 the wailing of the women, crying out for my father's 
 death, for his body had been found in the market- 
 place, and brought back to our home. And my 
 mother told me that Epfumo had killed my father, 
 because he had been to say good-bye to Ndeba. 
 
 The next morning, quite early, my mother 
 caught her largest she-goat, one that had a little 
 one running by her side, and a duck which she had 
 bought from a Ful trader, and cut a big bunch of 
 plantains out of her plantations. She set the bunch 
 of plantains on my head, and made me carry the 
 duck under one arm, and lead the goat with the 
 
30 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 other hand. Then she told me to go to the house of 
 Asho-ntshon, the Nganga, and say, ' This is a present 
 from Tutu, the wife of Asho-eso.' Only that I was to 
 say, and nothing more, and then to return as quickly 
 as possible. 
 
 When I reached the Nganga's compound, there, 
 too, was Ngwi, the young man that was my mother's 
 friend, and he had with him two goats and a bag 
 of kauri shells. He went in before me, and gave 
 these things to the Nganga, with whom he had a 
 long talk which I could not hear. I was tired of 
 waiting, so I began to rummage among the rubbish 
 which lay in the Nganga's courtyard, and in one 
 of the heaps of rubbish I remember I picked up 
 part of a man's jaw, which had the teeth still in 
 it, although they were loose, and I pulled all the 
 teeth out to make myself a necklace, but whilst I 
 was doing this the Nganga came up, and cuffed me 
 on the head for meddling with his treasures. 
 
 Then he asked my business, and I gave him my 
 mother's message and the present she had sent. He 
 bade me wait whilst he went back into his house, 
 and then he came out again with some red feathers 
 of a parrot and some string made of human gut, which 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 3 1 
 
 he told me to give to my mother, who was to hang 
 the feathers round her neck with the piece of string. 
 When I returned to our compound, my mother was 
 waiting for me, and took me aside and asked me in a 
 whisper what the Nganga had said, and I gave her the 
 string and the parrot-feathers, and told her what she 
 was to do, at which she clapped her hands and seemed 
 pleased. When I went back with her into the court- 
 yard I saw the Hyena, who was the head- wife since 
 Ndeba's death, sitting on one of our native stools, 
 whilst other women were painting her all over with 
 the camwood dye, and then drawing lines of white, 
 in a kind of pattern, round her eyes, down the sides 
 of her neck, and along the outer part of her arms. 
 I ran to my mother to know what they were decking 
 the Hyena for, and she said, with a laugh, that she 
 was making herself smart for her journey to the 
 Under- world. 
 
 'Where is the U nder- world ? ' I asked. ' Is it 
 beyond the mountain, on the great river ? ' 
 
 ' No,' she said, ' it is under the ground, where dead 
 people go when they are buried. Thy father has 
 gone there, since Epfumo has called him, and now 
 the Hyena must go too, to tend upon him.' 
 
3 2 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 That same day some of the young men from the 
 town came to prepare my father to be put into the 
 earth. They opened his body and took out his 
 bowels, which they buried in the ground in the 
 middle of the compound ; then they made a big fire 
 in the hut where my father lived, and after they had 
 sewn up the body they smoked it on a frame of sticks 
 above the fire, and there it lay all the rest of the day 
 and the whole night, till it was quite black and dry ; 
 and it got so small, so shrunken, that it was not like 
 my father at all. The next morning they took it 
 down off the sticks, and rubbed the smoke-black off 
 with the husks of bananas and with corn-cobs, so 
 that the body was shiny like leather. After this 
 they got the red dye and white earth, and painted 
 the face of the corpse red and white, and put on the 
 ivory bracelets and the charms that my father had 
 worn round his neck when he was alive, and then 
 they got the grass-cloth which our people used to 
 weave and dye red and black, and they wound these 
 cloths round and round his body so that it was like 
 a bundle, and only the head was free : but before 
 they wound this cloth round him they bent the 
 legs up, so that my father was sitting with his 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 33 
 
 knees close to his chest, just as he sat when he was 
 alive, and when the cloth was wound round and 
 round his body, it kept the knees and the arms in 
 position. Then they dug a big, big hole in the floor 
 of my father's hut. 
 
 And whilst this was going on, all that day the 
 Hyena had been led round about the town, painted 
 up in the way I have told you ; she was led by the 
 other wives of my father. She went to all the people 
 in the town to say good-bye, and each gave her 
 greeting, and many gave her presents to take with 
 her. And when all was ready, the grave dug, and 
 the corpse prepared, they sent for the Nganga, 
 and all the people began to come to our compound, 
 carrying torches, for it was night. Then some of 
 my other brothers brought three white goats from 
 my father's flock and three white fowls, and baskets 
 of ground-nuts and maize. And the Nganga, who 
 was painted all over in different colours and had a 
 monkey-skin cap upon his head, began to dance 
 round the grave, and said a lot of silly words which 
 I did not understand. After this he called in a loud 
 voice on my father, ' Asho-eso, art thou ready to 
 go ? ' And, though no one answered, he pretended 
 
 D 
 
34 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 to listen at the lips of the corpse whom they had 
 seated at the edge of the grave, and then he turned 
 to the other people and said, ' I hear him say " Yes." ' 
 So the young men got bush-rope and tied it round 
 the corpse and lowered it into the grave. 
 
 Then some one led up the Hyena. I could see 
 that she was trembling very much, but she did not 
 speak, and the Nganga bade her lie on the ground 
 by the side of the grave. She lay down on her 
 back, and he kneeled on her chest, got her neck in 
 his skinny hands, and squeezed it so that she was 
 strangled and died. Then they laid her body in the 
 grave at the feet of my father. And after this they 
 brought the three white goats and three white fowls 
 and cut their throats one after another over the 
 grave, so that the blood fell on the two corpses, but 
 the bodies of the goats and fowls were taken away 
 to be eaten at the funeral feast. The Nganga scat- 
 tered a few of the ground-nuts and some maize into 
 the grave, and they put in a horn of snuff and a wisp 
 of salt in a banana leaf, and a gourd of water, some 
 red peppers and some wooden dishes ; and then the 
 earth was all heaped back into the grave and tramp- 
 led down by the young men. After this they had 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 35 
 
 a big feast, and my mother gave me a large pie ce of 
 meat. All the night they stayed singing and shout- 
 ing and drinking palm-wine, until they were most of 
 them drunk. 
 
 The next day all the big men met in the Epfumo 
 house to say who should be the next chief, and some 
 said one man and some said another, and whilst 
 they were quarrelling the Ngaftga came dancing in, 
 blowing his horn, and shouting out that he had a 
 message from Epfumo, and the message was that 
 Ngwi was to be the new chief. 
 
 Some grumbled at this, and said he was too 
 young, but no one thought of disputing the Nganga's 
 word. So the next day the Nganga gave to Ngwi 
 my father's ebony staff, and Ngwi came down and 
 took possession of our compound and all that was in 
 it, and the three remaining wives of my father became 
 the wives of Ngwi, and Ngwi made my mother the 
 head-wife, so that she had all the other wives as her 
 servants. 
 
 And Ngwi killed ten of my father's goats and 
 tapped many palm-trees, so that there were great 
 jars of palm-wine. And he dug up many yams and 
 ground-nuts, and prepared a big feast, to which all 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 the men of the village came. They were all pleased 
 at this, and said Ngwi would make a good chief 
 after all, because he was generous and fed the 
 hungry. And I liked Ngwi, because he was kind to 
 me and gave me a big ivory bracelet. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 After my father's death several years went by, and 
 things went well for our village. Ngwi was a brave 
 man in war, and several times defeated the people 
 of the mountain, bringing back with him many slaves 
 and goats and sheep, and he made several new plan- 
 tations, and dug cunning pitfalls for the elephant, so 
 that our store of ivory increased. And he took four 
 new wives, and begat children with them all. I 
 learnt to shoot with the bow and arrow, and to hurl 
 the dart with a good aim, and Ngwi promised me 
 that when I should be made a man he would give 
 me a gun, for at this time our people had begun to 
 get guns from the Ful-be traders. 
 
 As I grew older I saw less of my mother, and as 
 she had another child by Ngwi, she cared less for 
 me, and would often drive me out of her hut im- 
 patiently when I came to her for food, and besides, 
 I liked more to go out with the bigger boys fishing 
 
38 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 or hunting, or pretending to play at war with blunt 
 arrows and wooden spears, which we used to aim at 
 each other. They did not do much harm, as they 
 had not sharp points, but one day I shot an arrow 
 into a boy's eye and put out his sight. I was very 
 proud of this, and Ngwi praised me, and said I 
 should make a good warrior, but he had to pay a 
 goat in compensation to the father of the boy. 
 
 Ngwi was very good to me, and used to take me 
 with him sometimes, when he went on a trading 
 expedition to a Ful settlement, two or three days 
 distant from the village. Here I used to see the 
 Mohammedans riding on horses and asses, animals 
 that were new to our people, who always called them 
 the ' white man's cows,' for as the Ful-be were so 
 much lighter than we in colour, we used to call them 
 ' Pan-mukwo,' or ' white men.' 
 
 One day Ngwi looked at me attentively, and said 
 I was getting big enough to be made into a man, 
 and soon after that the old Nganga came to our 
 compound and told me I must go away with him. 
 At the same time Ngwi had to pay him a goat, and 
 my mother gave him a small present too. Ngwi 
 gave the goat because, as he had taken our ' house,' 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 39 
 
 he was looked upon as my father ; and, indeed, I 
 believe he was so in reality. The Nganga made 
 me follow him to a place about an hour's walk from 
 the town, in the middle of the woods. It was a large 
 enclosure, surrounded by a hedge of spiky-leaved 
 plants, called ' Ngonje.' Inside were a number of 
 huts, with a large Epfumo house in the middle of 
 the enclosure. As we went in a number of big boys, 
 as big and bigger than myself, rushed out of the 
 little houses, making a curious noise like ' Drrr,' and 
 speaking to me in a strange language, which I did 
 not understand. 
 
 They were all clothed with a large skirt made 
 of palm-leaves, which was attached to their waists. 
 Their bodies were covered with red paint, and a lot 
 of white marks were drawn about their faces. When 
 I had looked carefully into their eyes I recognised 
 first one and then another as old playfellows, who 
 had disappeared from our village recently, and at 
 the time I had asked about their disappearance I 
 was told that they were sent away to be made into 
 men. When I called them by their names they 
 were very angry and beat me with sticks, and the 
 old Nganga told me that I must not call them by 
 
4 o 
 
 THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 their old names any more, as they had changed them 
 for new ones, and also that I must not speak to them 
 until I had learnt the sacred language, and that every 
 time I spoke in the old tongue the other boys would 
 beat me ; that I must not eat this, or this, or this, 
 until I was made a man, or it would kill me, and 
 the things that we were allowed to have for our food 
 were certain roots and fruits, which we had to search 
 for in the woods, and flesh of monkeys and lizards 
 and snakes, and any wild creatures which we could 
 kill with our bows and arrows, but goat's-flesh, and 
 fowls, and fish were forbidden to us. At first I was 
 told that I must be a servant to the elder boys, and 
 together with others who, like myself, had just been 
 admitted, we had to prepare the food and cook for 
 the bigger boys ; and often these elder ones beat us, 
 and the Nganga seldom interfered, saying that beat- 
 ing was good for the young. 
 
 Once when I forgot the rule about speaking in 
 the common language, one of my companions hit me 
 such a blow on the head with his club that for some 
 time I did not know where I was, but the next day, 
 when we were out hunting, I shot him in the back 
 with an arrow, so that he was sick long afterwards, 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 41 
 
 and this I said I would do to any one who struck me 
 again ; and after this the bigger boys did not treat 
 me so harshly. When I had been eight days in this 
 place, the medicine-man took me and some other 
 younger boys, who had entered the enclosure about 
 the same time as myself, and circumcised us. 
 
 After this we who had run naked hitherto made 
 ourselves skirts of palm-fronds, and painted our- 
 selves red and white, like the other boys. Now we 
 were considered to be men, and we each received a 
 new name. I, who had been called ' Mvu' hitherto 
 (which means 'dog'), was named ' Mitwo,' which 
 means ' Big Head.' And like the others I began to 
 learn the new language, which was different from 
 the one we commonly talked, though it was made 
 chiefly by turning the words the wrong way : thus 
 instead of ' Nguo ' (stone), we said ' Ongu.' Some- 
 times in our walks abroad we met people of our 
 town, and were told that if we spoke to any one who 
 did not belong to the ' Ndoge ' — as our brotherhood 
 was called — Epfumo would kill us ; moreover, we 
 had the power to beat and wound any women who 
 got in our way, and whenever we heard people ap- 
 proaching we always made the noise ' Drrr,' so that 
 
4? 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 they might get out of our way. All this time the 
 Nganga would visit us once a day and tell us many 
 things, and hold with us much loose conversation 
 that I may not repeat to you. Every now and then 
 the bigger boys were leaving our enclosure and 
 coming not back, and when I asked where they were 
 gone, I was told that they had left for another place 
 where they must learn the last things the Nganga 
 had to teach them. 
 
 And when it came to my turn to go, the Nganga 
 had a piece of goat's skin tied over my face, so that 
 I could not see, and led me by the hand for some 
 distance through the bush, telling me always that if 
 I pushed aside the goat's skin and looked at the road 
 I was going Epfumo would kill me, and at last we 
 stopped, and he bade me go down on my hands and 
 knees, arid then pushed me through a narrow place 
 between some branches, and when I got through he 
 made me stand up and took the goat's skin off my 
 eyes, and then I heard loud voices and girls' laughter, 
 and when I looked round I saw many young girls 
 painted with red and white, and with the palm-leaf 
 skirts, and with them were some of the older boys 
 who had left our enclosure. And at first I felt silly, 
 
THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 43 
 
 for the girls laughed and jeered at me ; but the 
 medicine-man bade me be of good courage and heed 
 not what they said, as I was now a man. And 
 in this place I sojourned some twenty days, and 
 when this time was over the Nganga again put the 
 goat's skin over my face and led me away along 
 devious paths for about the space of an hour. And 
 then, when we had stopped, he removed the goat's 
 skin from my face and said to me, ' Now go to 
 this brook and wash all the red and white paint 
 from thy body, and cast away thy skirt of palm- 
 leaves. Then follow this path, and it will take 
 thee back to the town, where thou canst return 
 to thy father's house. Tell all that thou meetest 
 that thy new name is " Mitwo." Speak no word of 
 all that thou hast seen and done during these months 
 that thou hast been in the Ndoge, or assuredly 
 Epfumo will kill thee. And suffer that no man 
 call thee by the name of thy childhood, or it will 
 bring thee misfortune.' And after this I returned to 
 the town and entered my father's compound, where 
 my mother and Ngwi rejoiced greatly to see me 
 back, and gave me a goat and plantains and ground- 
 nuts, wherewith to make a feast with my friends. 
 
44 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 Wallah ! how I have talked to you to-day ! See, 
 you are weary ; you open your mouth in big yawns. 
 I have said enough to-day. Let me go my way 
 about my master's business, and I will come to you 
 again in the morning. 
 
THE H1ST0R V OF A SLA VE 
 
 45 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 When I had returned from the Ndoge I was not 
 allowed to live any longer in my father's compound, 
 for it was not considered seemly for a young un- 
 married man to live among his father's wives. I 
 had to take up my abode with the other young men 
 of the town who were bachelors. We had a big 
 compound to ourselves, but we were obliged to hunt 
 and fish, and make plantations to supply ourselves 
 with food. 
 
 And it was about this time that the Nganga in- 
 structed me as to the Epfumo Society, to which 
 nearly all the young free men of the village belonged, 
 and it was there that I learnt that the Epfumo was 
 really a man dressed up, and not a devil ; only we 
 were sworn a solemn oath not to reveal this secret, 
 so that the women and children and slaves might 
 still be kept in awe of the Epfumo, whom they 
 thought to be a strong devil that would be able to 
 
4 6 
 
 THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 find out all secrets. And several times — I knew no 
 better than the other pagans, and did as they did — 
 have I dressed up as Epfumo with other young men 
 of the Society, and lain in wait to catch women 
 who were out of their houses after the Epfumo 
 gong had sounded ; and these we could do with as 
 we pleased, and no one — not even their husbands — 
 could say us nay ; and, indeed, some of us hid 
 women that we captured for a long time in a secret 
 place we had made in the woods, and to them we 
 always threatened that they would be surely killed 
 by Epfumo if they should at any time reveal the 
 names of those who had carried them off ; and when 
 we were tired of the women we would let them 
 return to their homes, and knowing that they had 
 been captured by the Epfumo, no one asked them 
 questions or rebuked them for their absence. 
 
 And once we caught a slave on the road, who 
 had not hidden himself at the sounding of the drum, 
 and him we killed and ate — Wallah ! we were but as 
 the brutes — in the Epfumo house that same night, 
 and the old Nganga man praised us for our dex- 
 terity. 
 
 Twice, whilst I was living with the other young 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 47 
 
 men of the town, we were called upon to go to war 
 with the Bakuba people of the mountain, a few days' 
 distant from us. The first time we fought them 
 because they had carried off a woman belonging to 
 our town, and killed her husband, having surprised 
 them on the way to trade with the Ful-be ; and the 
 second time Ngwi said we must attack the mountain 
 people by stealth, and try to capture some of the 
 women to sell as slaves to the Ful-be. 
 
 The first time I had to go to war I feared 
 greatly, although the people called me ' Big Head,' 
 because they thought me strong and courageous ; 
 but I was new to war, and feared to be killed and 
 eaten by the mountain people, so that I did not 
 adventure myself in the front of the party that 
 attacked the Bakuba ; but whilst I was skulking in 
 the rear I espied a Bakuba man and woman who 
 had been out cutting grass for their goats, and 
 whom our attack had cut off from the town. They 
 sought to escape our notice by crawling on their 
 stomachs through the grass like snakes, and winding 
 behind every rock and stump till they should arrive 
 close to the Bakuba stronghold ; but seeing they 
 were unarmed, save for the small cutlass which the 
 
48 
 
 THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 man had, I attacked them suddenly as they were 
 lying on the ground, drove my spear right through 
 the man's body and pinned him to the ground, and 
 knocked the woman down with my club. Then 
 my heart grew big, and I shouted loudly to my 
 comrades to tell them what I had done, and some of 
 them came running up and cut off the head of the 
 man through whom I had run my spear, and helped 
 me to tie the arms and ankles of the woman before 
 she awoke. 
 
 The rest of our party did not do much against 
 Bakuba, because they found the town well defended 
 and few of its fighting men were absent ; so after 
 they had shouted much, and shot many arrows, and 
 called the Bakuba every foul name they could think 
 of to draw them from their stockade, Ngwi and my 
 companions decided to retreat. So we returned to 
 our town with the body of the man I had killed and 
 the woman I had captured, and my mother shrieked 
 loudly with joy when they told her what a brave 
 man her son had become. The body of the man 
 we warriors ate in the Epfumo house, and good 
 and sweet was the flesh — Wallah ! it is shameful 
 that I say such things now, but Alhamdzi lillah ! I 
 
' I dressed my hair in the fashion of those who were married men. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 49 
 
 am no longer a pagan and an eater of man's flesh — 
 and the woman I had captured I took to wife, and 
 made work in my plantations. My mother said to 
 me, ' Treat her well, and she will remain with 
 thee, but if thou hast the heart to use her badly, 
 it were better to sell her to the Batibari 1 than to 
 let her remain in our town, for if she is unhappy 
 she will surely find a way to escape back to her 
 country.' 
 
 So I said to the woman, ' Wilt thou swear by 
 Epfumo to stay with me, and be a true wife to 
 me ? ' and she replied, ' My heart is sad for having 
 left my country, but thou art the strongest. Thou 
 killedst my man — what other man have I now to 
 love beside thee ? I will swear by Epfumo not to 
 leave thee if thou treat me kindly.' We sent for 
 the Nganga, and he brought the 'ju-ju' mixture, 
 which is made of man's flesh and drugs from the 
 woods, and he put some of this on the tongue of my 
 woman : she, putting one hand on her head and the 
 other hand in mine, swore that she would remain 
 with me and become one of our people. After this 
 I got my friends to help me, and we built a house 
 1 The Ful-be. 
 
 E 
 
5° 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 and made a yard for me to live in, for I was now a 
 married man, and dressed my hair in the fashion of 
 those who were married men. 
 
 The second time we went to war with the Ba- 
 kuba was, as I have said, to capture women to sell 
 to the Ful-be. For when my wife had grown to 
 know me and like me, she told me one day that 
 about the night when it should be full moon it was 
 the custom of the men among her people to leave 
 the town and surround the plantations, where the 
 elephants came to rob them, and that they had fashi- 
 oned two great hedges of sticks and thorns which 
 narrowed to a small lane, at the end of which was 
 a big, big pit, and that when they had surrounded 
 the plantations that the elephants were rifling, they 
 began with great shouting and the flames of their 
 torches to drive the elephants into the space 
 between the two hedges that converged in the pit, 
 and that as the elephants, scared by the torches and 
 the shouting, pressed onwards between the narrow 
 hedges, some of them were pushed into the pit and 
 were at the men's mercy ; for the elephant in some 
 things is a foolish beast, and has not the wit to turn 
 aside and break through the fence of thorns, but 
 
5 
 
 Is 
 
THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 5 1 
 
 presses on towards the outlet where the pit awaits 
 him. 
 
 And when I told all this to Ngwi he considered 
 awhile, and said : ' I have a good plan in my head : 
 let us select all the strong and valiant among the 
 men of this town two days before the moon is full, 
 and let us journey secretly through the bush until 
 we are close to the Bakuba town, on the mountain. 
 Then we will lie concealed in the woods among the 
 stones, and await the time when we shall see the 
 men of the town issuing forth with their torches to 
 hunt the elephants. And when they are away in 
 the plantations we will take the town by surprise, 
 and capture as many of the women as we can secure 
 quickly, and having done this we will return to our 
 town with what speed we can.' 
 
 This we did, and brought back with us it might 
 be thirty, it might be forty, women and a few young 
 children. We had captured many more, but the 
 Bakuba men pursued us and harried us on our return, 
 and recovered some of their people, although in their 
 fighting they themselves lost nine or ten men whose 
 bodies we ate on our return. And of our town four 
 men only were killed in battle, for Ngwi was cunning, 
 
 e 2 
 
52 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 and knew how to skilfully direct the fighting. And 
 as the bodies of these four were carried off by the 
 Bakuba, and therefore could not be buried, the 
 Nganga said that none of their wives need follow 
 them to the Under- world, inasmuch as the bodies 
 of their husbands rested doubtless in the stomachs 
 of the Bakuba ; and this was said to be a wise word, 
 and the men of the town applauded when the 
 Nganga divided the wives of the slain amongst those 
 who had been bravest in the battle. And as I pleased 
 the Nganga by my prowess I received one of these 
 women for a wife ; and, moreover, I had kept back 
 for myself a young girl whom I had captured in the 
 Bakuba country, so that I had now three wives and 
 became a big man in the town. 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 53 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 But what we had done against the Bakuba was 
 surely bad in Allah's sight, for He made it a means 
 of bringing about our punishment. 
 
 When the day came round for the next big 
 market to be held in our town — the market that we 
 used to have every ten days — there were more of 
 the Mohammedan, Ful, and Hausa traders there than 
 we had ever seen before. They had heard that we 
 had some new slaves to sell ; and about this time, 
 too, from the number of elephants that the young 
 men began to kill, we had a large store of ivory to 
 trade with ; all of which Ngwi made us sell for guns 
 and gunpowder, for he was determined that we 
 should become so strong that the Bakuba people 
 should no longer be able to fight with us, and should 
 come under our power altogether. 
 
 One of these Mohammedan traders, whose name 
 was Rashidu, talked to me much about the Sultan 
 
54 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 of Gashka, and asked me how our people would like 
 to become Mohammedans, and live under the Sultan 
 of Gashka's rule. I told him — foolish pagan as I 
 was — that we liked best to worship the spirits of 
 our fathers, and to follow in their ways ; and that, 
 although the Sultan of Gashka might be a strong 
 and just man, we would sooner live under our own 
 chiefs. 
 
 This man asked me many questions about our 
 country and the countries' beyond us to the south ; 
 and he told us, if we went many days' journey 
 towards the setting sun, we should come to the great 
 water where the white people ruled. He also said 
 that he liked so much the slaves he had bought at 
 this market that we must wage other wars on our 
 neighbours, and get more and more slaves ; so that 
 when he came again, in three months' time, he 
 would find a good number of slaves ready for sale. 
 He talked to me in the Juku language, which I 
 partly understood from the trading journeys which I 
 had made. 
 
 When the market was over, and the Ful-be 
 traders had left our town with their slaves, and asses, 
 and the ivory they had bought, I reported to Ngwi 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 55 
 
 all that Rashidu had said to me. When he heard 
 these words he shook his head and said he liked 
 them not ; he had heard that a country not far away 
 from us, called Banyo, had lately been ravaged by 
 this same Sultan of Gashka, and many of its people 
 carried off into slavery. What if the Ful-be of 
 Gashka should do the same to us ? 
 
 But I, not knowing the strength of people beyond 
 our borders, laughed at Ngwi's words, and said, 
 ' And if they do come and fight, have we not also 
 guns now, and would we not fight for our homes 
 and our women ? ' 
 
 A matter of some three months slipped by, and 
 nothing troubled us ; but we had not got the number 
 of slaves we had hoped to obtain, because we had 
 made friends with the Bakuba people of the moun- 
 tain. It was such Bakuba people as we had among 
 us as slaves and wives that urged us to do this, and 
 Ngwi was of opinion that it was foolish for this 
 fighting always to go on. Moreover, the Baku' a 
 people agreed that, if we swore an oath not to attack 
 them any more, they would consent to accept Ngwi 
 as their head chief, and many of the elders in both 
 Bahom and Bakuba were of opinion that it was time 
 
56 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 we made up our quarrels and became as brothers ; 
 for, they said, ' We hear news from the north that 
 the " Pan-mukwo " 1 — the Ful-be chiefs who worship 
 Allah — are extending their rule in all directions, 
 and are enslaving the black men, the people of the 
 land. It is time, therefore, we black people were 
 united against them.' 
 
 And, when we were all agreed upon this, we sent 
 messages to the Dokaka and Jetem peoples to the 
 east and south of us, telling them what we had done, 
 and asking them to join with us in resisting the 
 Batibari, as we used to call the Ful-be Moham- 
 medans. And they consented to this. And the 
 chief of the Dokaka sent one of his daughters to wed 
 with Ngwi, so that the two peoples might become 
 more surely friends. But all this availed nothing 
 against the decrees of Allah, as I will further relate 
 to you. 
 
 After, as I think, some three months had passed 
 since the Ful-be traders had come to buy our Bakuba 
 slaves, our great trouble came upon us. One day 
 some of our young men, who had been two days' 
 journey to the east to trade with the Dokaka, came 
 
 1 White men in Mbudikum. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 57 
 
 back to our town breathless with much running, and 
 exhausted with want of food. When they had got 
 their speech, they told us that the King of Gashka 
 had sent a great army, some on foot and many riding 
 on horses and asses, which had suddenly entered 
 the Dokaka country and wasted it in all directions, 
 burning the town, shooting the fighting-men, and 
 catching the young women and children for slaves ; 
 and added that, having eaten up Dokaka, it was 
 likely that the Gashka warriors would attack us and 
 the Bakuba. 
 
 At these words we were filled with consternation, 
 and Ngwi sent some of the young men to creep 
 stealthily through the grass and forest till they 
 reached the high hill which was a short distance 
 from our town in the direction of Dokaka, and he 
 told them to climb to the top of this hill, and to look 
 out in the direction whence the other young men 
 had come, and report whether they saw anything to 
 bear out their statements. At eventide these spies 
 returned, and terror was in their faces, for they said 
 that along the horizon in the direction of Dokaka 
 they saw the smoke of burning towns, and one whose 
 eyes were sharper than the rest thought he could 
 
5 8 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 distinguish men dressed in long clothes riding on 
 horseback across the plain. Then did we lay our 
 heads together, that we might make preparations for 
 defence. The women and children were all sent to 
 Bakuba, as being a place more easy to defend, and 
 we men remained behind in the town, sending our 
 spies out into the forest and on to the hills in all 
 directions, to keep us apprised of the advance of the 
 Ful-be. 
 
 But we had begun our precautions too late. The 
 women, who feared to start at night on account of 
 the wild beasts and ghosts, of which these pagans 
 are always afraid, left the village to escape to Bakuba 
 just before the dawn ; but before the sun was up 
 they came running back into the town, shrieking out 
 that the men riding on horses were upon us ; and 
 then our scouts came in one after the other, some 
 wounded with the enemy's bullets, and all said, ' The 
 Batibari are here ! There is no time to escape ! ' 
 And all was hubbub and confusion. Some went and 
 hid themselves, some began to load their guns and 
 get ready their spears and arrows, others cut down 
 branches from the trees and tried to block the door- 
 ways of the different compounds ; but there was 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 59 
 
 great panic and confusion everywhere, and although 
 Ngwi shouted, and ordered, and tried to assemble 
 the fighting-men together, every one seemed to go 
 his own way, and think only of securing his own 
 property. 
 
 In the middle of all this turmoil we heard sud- 
 denly the firing of guns and distant shouting of 
 1 Allah Akbaru,' the war-cry of the Ful-be ; and then, 
 as it were, all at once the town was full of Moham- 
 medans, some on foot, and some crashing through 
 the plantations on horseback ; and our people ran 
 hither and thither like frightened sheep. But there 
 was no escape, for the Ful-be had surrounded the 
 town, and any who tried to slip past the enemy into 
 the bush were shot down. Six of the Ful-be, with 
 guns and cutlasses, came into my compound, and I 
 was afraid to resist them, for I saw it was useless to 
 fight against them. But a little slave boy, whom I 
 had captured from the Bakuba, aimed at them an 
 arrow from his little bow, and they in rage seized 
 him and blew out his brains. And then telling us 
 that if we moved we should be likewise slain, they 
 proceeded to bind my three wives and myself, by 
 chaining our ankles together, and fastening us one 
 
6o 
 
 THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 to the other round the neck with other chains, and 
 tying our hands behind us. When this was done 
 five of them marched us out of the compound into 
 the open space in front, where we saw others of my 
 country-people also chained and fettered, and sitting 
 or lying in groups. 
 
 Round these captives were standing a ring of 
 Ful-be and Hausa warriors, with their guns loaded, 
 and ready to shoot any who might try to escape or 
 resist. There was an incessant wailing of the women 
 and children. Among these I saw my mother, who, 
 in between her cries, told me that Ngwi was killed : 
 that he had fought desperately, and had killed two 
 of the Ful-be, after which they had managed to 
 knock him down with a club, and had cut his head 
 off. 
 
 Whilst half the Ful-be guarded us, whom they 
 had chained, the other part of the army was ranging 
 through the town, some of the soldiers searching for 
 hidden slaves, and laying hands on all the goats and 
 sheep and ivory they could find, and others being 
 sent to prevent any of our people from lurking con- 
 cealed. 
 
 Presently a great cry arose from among the 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 61 
 
 Ful-be that were standing guard over us. I could 
 not understand what they were saying, because they 
 spoke in their own language, which I did not then 
 know ; but it appeared as I afterwards learnt that 
 some of our people, who at the first alarm had 
 escaped into the bush, had set on two of the Ful-be 
 whom they had found separated from their com- 
 panions, and looting some plantations, and had killed 
 them, and this aroused the wrath of the other Ful-be 
 to such an extent that we feared they would kill us 
 all. They captured most of the runaway party who 
 had been concerned in the death of their brothers, 
 and brought them into the open place where we 
 were lying chained. Not a few of these runaways 
 were poor women and little children, who could not 
 have had anything' to do with the death of the two 
 Ful-be soldiers ; but, nevertheless, on them as well as 
 on their husbands and brothers the Mohammedans 
 wreaked their anger. 
 
 They tied the men to stakes and tree trunks, 
 and lopped their limbs off one by one, and then 
 beheaded them ; they ripped up the women, and 
 lifting up the children by the feet they swung them 
 round and dashed out their brains on the stone seats 
 
62 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 in the open square, where our elders used to sit 
 under the shade of the big trees. Then their leader 
 spoke to us in the language of Mbum, which most 
 of us understood (for it was the language of trade), 
 and told us that if any of us attempted to stir hand 
 or foot from where we were laid, the same punish- 
 ment should be meted out to us. Whilst these 
 things were being done a small body of the Ful-be 
 were busy burning the town, and cutting down the 
 plantations of bananas, and setting fire to the dry 
 bush outside the town, so that the whole place 
 might be laid bare and afford no hiding-place to 
 such of our people as might have escaped, and think 
 of lurking near the Ful camp. 
 
 All through that day, some in the sun and some 
 in the shade, we lay chained together in the open 
 square of our town. One or two of the women 
 who were far gone with child died from the fright 
 and the anguish of their premature delivery, and 
 so we lay all through the night, while the Ful-be 
 made big bonfires and roasted our sheep and goats. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 63 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Early the next morning they passed in review all 
 of us whom they had captured, which I suppose 
 amounted to one-half of our townspeople — perhaps 
 some five hundred. They made us stand up in our 
 chains — men, women, and children (the little 
 children were not chained, because the Ful-be knew 
 they would not leave their mothers) — and we were 
 carefully examined by the leader of the Ful soldiers. 
 All such as were aged, or deformed, or weakly 
 were separated from the others, and put on one 
 side. Their chains were taken off, and they were 
 told jestingly by the Ful-be that they might go 
 where they pleased ; but when the poor simpletons 
 began to slink off towards the bush, the Ful-be, with 
 shouts of laughter, began firing at them with their 
 guns and riding them down on horseback. 
 
 Some of the Ful-be horsemen would stop for 
 
64 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 a moment and tie a rope round the ankle of one of 
 these fugitives who had fallen down, and fasten the 
 other end of this rope to his stirrup, and then ride 
 round and round the square at full gallop, till the 
 man he had dragged with him was simply a shape- 
 less mass of blood and bones. 
 
 At length their leader recalled all his men by 
 having a drum beaten, and orders were given to get 
 ready for a start. 
 
 All we slaves whom they had selected to take 
 away with them were marched in twos and threes to 
 the river, where we were made to wash and drink. 
 Here several who were mad with grief jumped into 
 the river, though they were chained together, and 
 tried to swim down the stream, but they all sank to 
 the bottom and were seen no more. 
 
 One woman, who had been incessantly howling 
 all the morning because her son had been killed by 
 the Ful-be, was ordered several times by those who 
 were guarding us to cease her noise, and as she 
 paid no heed to their warning, she was shot. After 
 we had been made to drink at the river we were 
 ranged in a row on the bank, and the Ful-be distri- 
 buted among us food from our own plantations. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 65 
 
 This we were ordered to eat, and threatened with 
 immediate death if we refused. 
 
 About mid-day the Ful-be army was got into 
 order, and the slaves were made to march in the 
 centre of the caravan, with soldiers in front and 
 behind, some widening the road as we went along — 
 that is to say, cutting down the bush to prevent 
 any enemies concealing themselves on the line of 
 route. All of us slaves who were men had our 
 hands securely tied behind our backs with coils of 
 bush-rope, and round our necks were fastened slave- 
 sticks, linking every two slaves together. The 
 women's hands were free, so that they might more 
 easily take their children with them, either by holding 
 their hands or carrying them slung round their back. 
 In this fashion we walked all the rest of that day, 
 and slept at night in a Ful-be camp, where we found 
 a lot more Mohammedem soldiers of the King of 
 Gashka who had been slave-raiding at Bakuba, and 
 had brought back with them a number of Bakuba 
 people whom they had captured. 
 
 The next day the whole force set out, with all 
 the soldiers, to travel to a large town called Banyo, 
 which we reached in four days' time. Any slaves 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 that could not keep up with the march of the 
 caravan were stabbed or shot, and left behind, and 
 the fear of this death made us walk as we had never 
 walked before. But with some of the women who 
 were young and comely the Ful-be soldiers were not 
 so harsh, and would occasionally mount them on the 
 asses that carried the camp-baggage. In this way I 
 saw that two of my wives had already made friends 
 with their guardians, and one of them was even 
 laughing when the soldiers jested — so soon do these 
 poor pagans forget. On the road, every night we 
 stopped to camp, the Ful-be gave us just as much 
 food as would keep us from starving ; but those who 
 were young and well made got a little more than 
 those who were old and ungainly. Thus my 
 mother, who was getting on in years, and was worth 
 little as a slave, received such scant food from the 
 Ful-be that the fatigue of these four days' journey 
 caused her to die of weakness soon after we got to 
 Banyo ; and, as I lay joined to another man in the 
 market-place at night, I saw her body released from 
 its bonds by the soldiers and cast out into the street, 
 where the hyenas which wander through the town 
 at night came and tore it to pieces. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 67 
 
 Banyo is a big town belonging to the Sultan of 
 Gashka. It is a place where the pagans of many 
 nations, who are more or less under the Pul-o rule, 
 bring their ivory and slaves for sale. I saw men 
 here from many far countries, whose speech I could 
 not understand. When we had rested several clays 
 at Banyo we again set out for Gashka, which we 
 reached after about two days' journey, passing a big 
 mountain on the way. Along this road not a few of 
 the slaves sank down from weariness and were 
 killed, for the road we followed was very arduous, 
 lying among hills and valleys and great rocks. 
 When we reached Gashka I was so tired that I 
 cared not whether I lived or died. But here we 
 were a little better treated by the Ful-be. 
 
 Before we got into the town the Sultan came out 
 with a lot of his soldiers on horseback to meet this 
 army which he had sent slave-raiding, and he was 
 mightily pleased at the number of slaves they had 
 obtained. There was a great firing of guns, and 
 shouting, and blowing of horns, and ' lalilu-ing ' on 
 the part of the Ful-be women, who shrieked out all 
 manner of jests at us as we went by, calling out 
 many words about our nakedness, which caused them 
 
 f 2 
 
68 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 to laugh. When we got into the town we slaves 
 were divided into small companies and distributed 
 among the principal men of the town, who were to 
 keep us in watch and ward till the Sultan should 
 decide what to do with us. By great good fortune 
 I found myself with my head-wife and one of my 
 brothers and five other people of our town. Much 
 we wept together for the sorrows that had over- 
 taken us. 
 
 The man to whom we were entrusted was none 
 other than the commander of the expedition, and 
 him we found a not unkindly master. We were 
 taken into his courtyard, and he explained to us in 
 the Mbum language that he should take off our 
 fetters, so that we should be free to walk about 
 his compound, but if we attempted to escape we 
 should be killed at once ; 1 and, moreover, if we did 
 get outside the town, where were we to go ? We 
 were now many days' journey from our country, 
 which had been laid waste, and wherever we might 
 wander we should find the Ful-be there ready to re- 
 capture us.' Then, according to our country fashion, 
 he made us take a pinch of the soil between our 
 fingers and swear not to run away, and this, seeing 
 
' On our way we passed on the west of a big, big mountain. ' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 69 
 
 no help for it, we did, and after so doing our lot was 
 less hard, for we were allowed to wash ourselves, 
 and could eat and drink in plenty. 
 
 After we had stayed in Gashka perhaps ten or 
 twelve days, a big slave market was held there, at 
 which nearly all the slaves which the Ful-be had 
 captured in their recent raids were exposed for sale, 
 and a Pul-o slave merchant from Yola, after closely 
 examining me, bought me for two thousand kauri 
 shells, and he also purchased five other of our people, 
 among whom was my head-wife. Our new master 
 joined himself to a big Ful caravan, with which he 
 travelled to Yola during many days over a moun- 
 tainous country that was inhabited by the Kotofo 
 people, who are friends of the Ful-be. On our way 
 we passed on the west of a big, big mountain, bigger 
 than any I had yet seen, and we reached Yola after 
 spending twenty days on the road. When I beheld 
 this place I was filled with wonder, for I had seen 
 no town like it. It is not worthy to be compared 
 with Tarabulus, nor with Kano or Murzuk or the 
 great cities of the Sudan, but it far surpassed any- 
 thing I had seen in my own country, and I began to 
 think that after all we pagans were as monkeys com- 
 
7 o 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 pared to the Ful-be, and I felt ashamed that I was 
 naked and had no clothes to make me look like a 
 Mohammedan. On our journey to Yola I had won 
 the favour of my Pul-o master, who was pleased to 
 find me strong and active and good-tempered, and 
 when we arrived at Yola he gave me an old blue 
 cotton shirt to wear, with which I was greatly 
 pleased, though he and his friends laughed much to 
 see the way in which I at first wore it, for we pagans 
 recking little of decency would have it that clothes 
 should be worn to make a man look smart and not 
 to cover his body, so that when I first got this shirt 
 I wound it round my neck and shoulders until I was 
 taught its proper use. 
 
' He laughed much to see the >vay in which I at first 'wore it? 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 7« 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 While I stayed in Yola I began to learn the Ful 
 language, or as those people call it the ' Fulful-de,' 
 and when my master, the Pul-o merchant, found that 
 I was of a mind to learn, be began to show me 
 favour, and entrusted me with matters of trade rather 
 than with labour in the plantations, such as the other 
 slaves were put to. In this way I went with him 
 on several small journeys into the Batta country, 
 and to the great Pul-o town of Ribago ; and seeing 
 that I was versed in the knowledge of the ivory 
 traffic he employed me to choose out and buy tusks 
 from the people round the big mountain — I think its 
 name was Alantika — and once I went as far as 
 Ngaundere, where we bought much ivory, and where 
 my master gathered in many more slaves from the 
 pagan countries round. Many of these were wild 
 people, wilder than we had been in Mbudikum ; 
 most of them were stark naked, but some wore 
 
72 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 leaves, and we who were now clothed and had for- 
 gotten the days when we were pagans, laughed at 
 these bushmen, and when they were handed over to 
 our charge to carry the ivory, we treated them as 
 the slaves of slaves, and beat them when they did 
 not understand our orders. 
 
 When my master had collected a good supply of 
 ivory and slaves he decided to set out from Yola, 
 and proceed to a great city of the Ful-be called 
 Yakuba, in the country of Bautshi. This he told 
 me was his home, and here he had a big house and 
 many wives, and he was resolved to return thither, 
 and after he had disposed of his slaves and ivory, to 
 settle down with his women and children for the 
 rest of his days. So when he had finished his 
 business in Yola, and had given a handsome present 
 to the Pul-o governor of that place, he trafficked 
 with the Batta people, and bought many canoes, all 
 of which, as is the fashion of these countries, were 
 hollowed out of a single tree, and not put together 
 with boards and nails as are the ships of the Arabs 
 and the Christians, or even the boats of the fishing 
 people that live round the Great Lake. And we 
 loaded these canoes with the ivory which our master 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 73 
 
 had collected. In charge of each canoe was put a 
 trustworthy slave, and the ivory was weighed and 
 counted, and written in a book, so that if any tusks 
 were lost or stolen our master would surely find out 
 and punish the slave who had been in charge of the 
 canoe. And in the biggest canoe we put together 
 a little house of palm-thatch which should be a place 
 for our master to sit in, protected from the sun and 
 rain ; and when the canoes were all packed and the 
 slaves all tied together and stowed away in them, 
 we started on our journey down the great Benue, to 
 reach the place called Wusu. 
 
 Now it was the season of the rains, and the 
 river was greatly risen in volume, and overflowed 
 its banks for a considerable distance on either side, 
 so that the water seemed like a great sea without 
 limits, except for the deleb palms which rose above 
 the flood, and marked where the borders of the 
 stream should be in the dry season. Here and there 
 we could see distant hills which looked like islands 
 in a great lake. Many difficulties encompassed us 
 in this journey, and often we were near to destruc- 
 tion, for the floods of the river having extended so 
 far, it was exceedingly difficult for us to know which 
 
74 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 should be the right channel of the river, and hard to 
 tell how we should avoid the great snags and fallen 
 trees which lay concealed so near the surface of the 
 water, and against which the canoes would often 
 bump, so that we were near capsizing. 
 
 And worse than this were the river-horses — 
 ' Nseshe,' as we used to call them in our country — 
 animals as big almost as elephants, who live in the 
 water and have great mouths stuck with huge teeth 
 — and these ' Nseshe,' these river-horses, as the 
 Arabs call them, are of a bold and ferocious nature 
 in the rainy season, for it was the time of year when 
 they were breeding, and whenever they could find a 
 canoe in the shallow waters they would often make 
 for it and endeavour to upset it, either by bumping 
 the canoe underneath with their big heads, so that 
 they stove a hole in the bottom, or else seizing the 
 gunwale with their teeth and dragging the canoe 
 over to one side and so capsizing it. And, although 
 my master gave orders that we should fire many 
 guns at these river-horses and hurl spears at them, 
 this did not secure us altogether from their pursuit ; 
 and, indeed, it caused them sometimes to wax more 
 fierce, and in this way we lost two canoes and much 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 75 
 
 ivory, for the river-horses broke their sides in, and 
 caused the ivory to fall into the river-mud, where 
 most of it was buried and lost, and the slaves that 
 were in these canoes, being thrown into the water, 
 had to swim for their lives. One of them was killed 
 by a river-horse, who bit his body in two ; others 
 were dragged down by crocodiles, and we saw them 
 no more. Two of them, who were women, our 
 master took into his own canoe. But the others, 
 the men, he would not stay to help, because the other 
 canoes were already overcrowded, and these slaves 
 being of little value, he cared not to run any further 
 risk by picking them up. So what became of them 
 I know not : perchance they swam on until they 
 touched ground and were able to wade to the dry 
 land, or it may be the crocodiles caught them all. 
 
 For some time, as we paddled down stream, we 
 could see their heads bobbing like black points on 
 the waste of waters, and we laughed much when, 
 every now and then, we heard a scream, and guessed 
 that a crocodile had seized another slave. And we 
 slaves, who cared little for the loss of the ivory, for 
 it was not ours, began to make many merry jests 
 about the crocodiles, saying that they would thank 
 
7 6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 Allah for the feast He had given them ; but our 
 master, who was sad for the loss of his ivory, chid 
 us and bade us be silent, or he would throw us to 
 the crocodiles too. 
 
 In some places that we passed by there had been 
 great floods, owing to the heavy rains ; and, in the 
 country of Basama, the villages were all on little 
 islands, with the water coming close up to the 
 houses, and only the tops of the plantain trees show- 
 ing here and there where the plantations were 
 covered. And on one of these islands, where the 
 village had been deserted by the inhabitants, who 
 had fled away in canoes, we saw a strange sight. 
 There was a lion seated on his haunches, a company 
 of baboons on the roofs of the houses, some hogs, of 
 a kind called ' Ngena ' in our country language ; two 
 bush-deer, of a sort which we name ' Ngaba,' red- 
 coated, with white stripes ; and a large black snake, 
 of a kind whose name is ' Nok ' in M budikum, and 
 which the Ful-be call ' Modondi.' And all these 
 creatures, which are wont to disagree in the forest — 
 the lion to eat the bush-deer, and the snake to eat 
 the baboons, and the hogs to kill the snake — were 
 now so scared by the flood, which had driven them 
 
' And all these creatures, which are wont to disagree in the forest . . . were now so scared by 
 the Hood, which had driven them for refuge to this small village on a little mound, 
 that they looked not at each other, but 'Matched the 'water only. ' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 77 
 
 for refuge to this small village on a little mound, that 
 they looked not at each other, but watched the water 
 only, as it mounted higher and higher, and ate up 
 the ground as it rose ; and our master bade us fire 
 our guns and hurl our lances at the lion. But 
 whether we killed him or not I cannot say, for the 
 flood was so strong that we dare not turn the canoes 
 broadside and stop, lest they should be overwhelmed. 
 And, as we got nearer towards the district of Muri, 
 the great expanse of water grew less in breadth, for 
 the mountains closed in nearer to the course of the 
 stream ; but, on this account, the force of the current 
 grew even stronger. 
 
 At length the Pul-o soldier, who was one of my 
 master's servants, called out to the steersman of the 
 canoe that was leading to enter a small creek or 
 branch of the river which appeared on our right-hand, 
 and here the water was quieter, and soon after we 
 had entered this narrow branch we stopped at a 
 riverside town called Wuzu. Here all the slaves 
 and the ivory were disembarked, and we all left the 
 canoes, which were afterwards sold by our master to 
 a Pul-o who lived at Muri. 
 
 At Wuzu my master only stayed sufficient time 
 
78 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 to get all the caravan in order, and then set out for 
 Muri, which was a day's journey from Wuzu. Muri 
 was a big town of the Ful-be, which belonged to the 
 Sultan of Yakuba, and here my master had many 
 friends and abode for several days, conversing with 
 them ; and here he bought many camels, and asses, 
 and horses, with some of his ivory, and the rest of 
 the tusks he packed on the camels and asses ; and 
 he resolved to sell at Muri, where there was a great 
 market, most of his slaves, for he desired to proceed 
 quickly to Yakuba, and no longer needed the slaves 
 to carry the ivory. I feared that he would sell me 
 here, for several Ful-be merchants examined me, and 
 pinched my muscles, and said they liked the looks 
 of me, but my master said that he would keep me 
 for his own household, as I had a good head for 
 trade, and a manner of saying things which caused 
 him to laugh. 
 
 So when all was ready for our journey to Yakuba, 
 my master bade me seat myself on one of those 
 asses which had a load of ivory on its back ; and at 
 first I was greatly afraid, for I had never ridden any 
 beast before, and the ass seemed to know that I was 
 a pagan, for when I tried to mount him he would rear 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 79 
 
 up his hind-quarters and throw off the ivory. At 
 length I managed to get on, and although I slipped 
 off several times over the ass's tail, I was vexed 
 when my master jeered at me, and so I clung on 
 with one hand clutching the ass's mane, and with 
 the other holding one of his ears, and every time he 
 would rear up before or behind, I would put the tip 
 of his ear in my mouth and bite it, and he soon gave 
 over trying to unseat me ; and by the time we 
 reached near to Yakuba I could ride without fear, 
 and would even at times mount on one of the 
 camels, which were strange beasts in my sight, for 
 there was nothing like them in our country. 
 
 When we had got within one day's journey of 
 Yakuba we saw the great mountains behind which 
 the town lay, and my master, with some of his 
 friends and guards, rode on in front of the caravan, 
 carrying with him a present for the ' Lamido,' or 
 Sultan, of the country, and bidding his head man, 
 or overseer of slaves, to lead us all by other roads 
 to his plantations outside the town, so that his 
 wealth of ivory and slaves might not be shown to 
 the people of Yakuba (for it was said the Sultan of 
 Yakuba was a very greedy man, and harassed those 
 
8o 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 whom he knew to be rich) ; and so we abode several 
 days at the plantations, where the ivory was stored, 
 and then one day my master came riding out of the 
 town to see that everything was safely stowed away, 
 and he chose out such slaves among us as he wanted 
 (myself among the number), and took us back with 
 him into the town. 
 
 And here I was amazed at what I saw, for 
 although Yola was a big town, and the governor of 
 it had a great house, and there were one or two 
 large mosques, there was nothing there that could 
 compare with Yakuba. The people of that place 
 are more in number than those of Tarabulus or 
 Murzuk, and perhaps it is only surpassed in popu- 
 lousness by Kano ; though I have heard the city of 
 Sakatu is a vast place inhabited by many people. 
 But to me, who was then a pagan and a bushman, 
 Yakuba seemed the grandest place in all the world, 
 with its fine houses of clay, and their wooden doors 
 and arches and window-frames, and its ' dakakin ' 
 (shops), the like of which I had never seen before. 
 Here were merchants from as far as the Great Desert, 
 and even Ghadames, and people from Bornu and 
 Sakatu and Nufe. Some were selling the cloth 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 81 
 
 made by the Christians, which had reached even our 
 country of Mbudikum from the lands of Diwala and 
 the great sea. Others trafficked in the blue cloth 
 of Nufe or the taubs of Kano, or sold leather sandals, 
 finely embroidered, or saddles and horse-gear from 
 the Hausa lands, or the white salt brought up the 
 Kwara river in big ships by the Christians, and 
 wonderful things of glass, and plates of earthenware 
 and brass. And I tapped my mouth with amaze- 
 ment to think that the hands of men could fashion 
 such things. And in one ' dukkan ' they were selling 
 paper to write on, and reed pens and ink, and the 
 Quran bound in leather — the book of Our Lord Mo- 
 hammed, Salam 'ala Rasulna wa Nabina — peace be 
 upon our Apostle and Prophet ! When I first saw 
 these Qurans being sold I recked not of their value, 
 for I was still a pagan, and I wondered to myself 
 that men should give for them many kauri shells or 
 great silver riyalat (dollars), or a small tusk of ivory, 
 seeing that these books were, to my ignorance, but 
 made of leather and paper, and could neither be 
 eaten nor burned for perfume, nor used for any 
 purpose useful for man's body. And in another shop 
 was an old Pul-o ' m,'alam,' who was selling small 
 
 G 
 
S2 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 pieces of sheep-skin, on which he had written 
 something with a reed pen. And as my master 
 stopped to buy one of these I asked him what 
 their purpose was, and he said they were charms 
 to be folded up and put in a small case which 
 was made out of the shell of a nut, and to be 
 hung round a man's neck, to avert any harm that 
 might happen to him by evil spirits or to cure 
 him of some malady. And if, perchance, a man 
 was sick, there was no better medicine for him 
 than to soften one of these pieces of sheep-skin 
 in water, when it had been written on by the 
 m,'alam, and to swallow it, for the words thereon 
 written were the words of our Lord Mohammed 
 from the holy Quran, and were apt for the healing 
 of both body and soul. Afterwards I came to 
 know these things well, and many a time, Wallah ! 
 have my bodily ailments been cured by swallow- 
 ing these charms, Alhamdu- lillah / And yet 
 other 'dakakin' sold sweet perfumes — pastilles to 
 burn in the house and to make a grateful odour, or 
 ointments wherewith a man's skin should be rubbed 
 so that it glistened, and was sweet and pleasing in 
 the nostrils of his friends. And so, passing through 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 83 
 
 this great bazaar, we arrived at the courtyard of my 
 master's house. 
 
 And what happened after this I must tell you on 
 another occasion, for my tongue has wagged too 
 much to-day. Besides, yesterday I had trouble with 
 my master after I had remained so long with you, 
 for he was vexed, and told me that his business suf- 
 fered by my useless talking with you. If you want 
 me again, you must make it all right with Si Abd-al- 
 Ghirha, so that he may not oppose my coming to 
 you. InsJt Allah ushufka al-ghodwa — God grant 
 that I see you to-morrow. If you gave me a silver 
 riyal I should return with a glad heart and a new 
 turban, for it is not fitting that I should talk to a 
 great Nasrani 1 with an old, dirty headcloth like this. 
 Allah yasalimk ! 
 
 ' Christian. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Aya ! And must I go on telling you still the 
 events of my life ? Are you not weary of all this 
 talk, talk, talk ? It is strange how all the little 
 things I have seen and done come back to my 
 memory as I sit and converse with you. Think 
 not that I am telling you lies. I speak the 
 truth. Allah yaslmd ! — may God bear witness ! 
 What was I saying yesterday, when I left off? 
 Was I telling you about my Pul-o master, old 
 Nyebbu ? Yes, now I remember, I was speaking 
 of his house. 
 
 This was a place built much in the fashion of the 
 Arabs in Murzuk or Tarabulus, only not so fine 
 because it was nearer to the land of the pagans, and 
 moreover, like all our houses in the Blacks' country, 
 it was built of clay, not stone. We passed through 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 85 
 
 a narrow door opening on to the street, and came 
 into a big courtyard, round which ran a high clay 
 wall. Inside the courtyard were two or three tama- 
 rind trees and sycamores, under which there was a 
 refreshing shade. In this court the camels and horses 
 of my master were tethered, and there were many 
 ducks and fowls and a few sheep. On the other side 
 of the court, opposite to where we had entered, was 
 a high wall which screened the house beyond, and 
 another archway in the middle of the wall which was 
 closed with a great wooden door. This my master 
 pushed open, and led me after him into his diwan, 
 a large cool room with small windows high up, and 
 seats of clay running all round the sides, on which 
 tanned goat-skins and handsome carpets and silk 
 cushions were placed. 
 
 My master instructed me as to my duties, which 
 were to attend on himself, to prepare his snuff, or his 
 pipe, and to make his coffee or his tshai (tea), which 
 he bought from the Maghrabi merchants, and to run 
 his errands, and to keep his diwan clean. When he 
 was laid down to rest and had fallen to sleep in the 
 heat of the day, I stood up on the clay couches and 
 looked through the small windows near the top of 
 
86 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 the walls, and through these I could see into the inner 
 court of the house which belonged to the harim of 
 my master, where his wives and women slaves 
 dwelt. 
 
 Now the Ful-be, although they are Muslemin, are 
 not jealous of their women as are the Arabs, neither 
 are the women allowed as much freedom as they 
 were in our country of Mbudikum, so that whereas 
 my master was displeased if I entered the court and 
 part of the house set apart for his harim, still, he 
 paid little heed if his wives or women slaves con- 
 versed with me when we should meet outside in the 
 greater court, or if I should encounter them in the 
 bazaar of the town. Indeed he would sometimes 
 send me a-trading to the ' dakakin ' in company with 
 his head wife and some of her women, in order that 
 I might assist them in carrying home some of the 
 things they bought. 
 
 And in this way I became acquainted with a 
 woman slave of the name of Erega, belonging to the 
 Marghi tribe. And there sprang up a love between 
 us, and we sought many opportunities of meeting in 
 secret, and this the head wife found out and told my 
 master, who was exceedingly wroth, and vowed that 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 87 
 
 he would punish me, and he had me tied to a stake 
 and flogged on the back until I fainted ; and to 
 another stake the Marghi girl was also tied, and 
 would have been flogged, but that she swore by 
 God and the Earth that no harm had passed be- 
 tween us, and that the head wife had only accused 
 her out of jealousy ; and as she was a comely 
 girl, and a favourite with the old Pul-o, he was 
 inclined to believe her, and she was released ; 
 but he still said that on the morrow he would sell 
 me to the Turks. 
 
 And all that night I remained tied by my wrists 
 to the post where I had been flogged ; but just 
 before the dawn, when every one was sleep- 
 ing soundly, the young Marghi girl, who had 
 managed to get out of the harim, came to my side 
 with a knife and cut my bonds, and then bade me 
 run away, and hide until my master's wrath had spent 
 itself. This I needed no second bidding to do, and, 
 sore as I was with my beating, I crept cautiously to 
 the gateway of the courtyard, and putting aside the 
 beam, and opening the wooden door noiselessly, I 
 fled into the town. 
 
 Before it was yet light I had hidden in one of the 
 
So 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 masajid (mosques), and waited until daylight. Then 
 I made for one of the gates of the town, thinking 
 to pass out into the country and hide in the bush 
 for awhile ; but the soldiers who stood at the gates 
 would not let me pass, seeing me naked and my 
 back all bloody, and suspecting me to be a runaway 
 slave. 
 
 When I told them what had happened to me, 
 disguising such of my tale as would make them 
 think I had been justly punished, they took pity on 
 me, and one of their number said he would take me 
 to the great Sultan of the town — the Amir of Yakuba 
 — and as I limped alongside of this soldier, who was 
 on horseback, my heart quaked within me, for I said to 
 myself, ' Surely the Amir is a great man, and will 
 know the truth, and will return me to my master ! ' 
 But I dared not run away from the soldier, lest worse 
 should befall me. And when the soldier dismounted 
 and led me into the Sultan's palace, I could not feel 
 my feet touch the ground, such was the fear and 
 awe that possessed me. After a while life came 
 back to me, and I lifted up my eyes, and looked 
 up at the Sultan when my companion nudged 
 me. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 89 
 
 He was a tall Pul-o, with a yellow face marked 
 with smallpox, and with a thick black beard. 
 Below his eyes was a thin blue veil covering his 
 nose, mouth, and chin, and falling over his breast, so 
 that when he spoke his voice sounded far away and 
 muffled. 
 
 The soldier told him my tale, and he listened 
 attentively, and then addressed me with some- 
 what of kindness, saying that he would inquire 
 further into the matter when he had leisure, and 
 telling the soldier to take me away, to wash my 
 wounds, and clothe me in a taub and a turban, and 
 to give me food, and bring me back towards even- 
 tide, when the Sultan should have returned from his 
 prayers at the masjid. 
 
 At eventide, then, the Sultan saw me again, and 
 this time my heart was strengthened, for I was 
 clothed in a fine new blue taub and a clean white 
 turban, and my belly was full with maize-porridge, 
 and I thought myself a fine fellow and a regular 
 Muslim ; and the Sultan made me tell him all my 
 history, from the time when I was captured by the 
 Ful-be, and especially he asked me many questions 
 about my Pul-o master, old Nyebbu, inquiring about 
 
90 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 his wealth, and how much ivory he had, and how 
 many slaves and guns, and asking me to tell him 
 everything I knew. And when I had answered as 
 near as I could all these questions, and seeing from 
 his manner that the Sultan seemed rather jealous of 
 Nyebbu, a ' Shaitan ' 1 put it into my heart to tell 
 lies that should hurt my master ; and I told the 
 Sultan I had heard Nyebbu say many times that he 
 was the greatest man in Yakuba, and that when the 
 right day came he would depose the Amir and make 
 himself Sultan in his stead, and that he had sent a 
 great present to the Amir-al-Mumenin at Sakatu to 
 gain his favour, so that he might win him over to his 
 side. 
 
 And these latter words were not altogether a lie, 
 for I had seen my master despatch this present to 
 Wurno, but with what purpose I do not know. And 
 after I had finished talking I could see that the 
 Sultan was in a mighty rage against my master, for 
 his eyes blazed, and by pulling at his veil with 
 his hands he tore it. When I had done talking 
 he said nothing, but dismissed me, and told me to 
 return to the soldiers in the courtyard, who would 
 
 1 Evil spirit. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 91 
 
 feed me and treat me well ; but on no account 
 was I to leave his palace, or he would have me 
 killed. 
 
 The next day a messenger came to fetch me to 
 the palace of the Sultan of Yakuba, and when I 
 arrived there and arose from touching the ground 
 with my forehead, I saw standing in the corner of 
 the diwan my Pul-o master, who had two guards on 
 either side of him, with drawn swords : his hands 
 were tied together behind his back, and he looked 
 in a sorry plight, with his clothes torn, and his face 
 bloody where some soldier had struck him in arrest- 
 ing him. 
 
 When his eyes met mine, they lit up with 
 wrath, but he said nothing, and I, knowing myself 
 to be in favour with the Sultan, met his gaze proudly, 
 arranged my new turban, and smoothed down the 
 folds of my new taub so that he might see I was now 
 in good circumstances. The Sultan was sitting on 
 his carpet smoking a water-pipe. His executioner, 
 a tall Kanuri man with a red fez, naked to the waist, 
 and having a great red cloth round his loins, stood 
 by the Sultan's side with a drawn sword. When I 
 had remained there waiting for some few moments, 
 
9 2 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 the Sultan removed the mouthpiece of the pipe from 
 his lips and said : — 
 
 ' Repeat now the charges thou didst bring yes- 
 terday against thy master Nyebbu, and if thou 
 shouldst have lied to me, and I find it out, I shall 
 know how to deal with thee.' 
 
 Then my heart waxed faint within me lest the 
 Sultan should of his wisdom discover the lies I had 
 told, but I plucked up courage, thinking that it was 
 only my word against my master's, and that the 
 latter was jealously regarded by the Sultan, and I 
 resolved to tell the same tale as I had related the 
 day before. 
 
 When I had finished, the Sultan turned to my 
 master and said : — 
 
 ' Thou hast heard the words of this slave, O 
 Nyebbu ! What hast thou to say in thy defence ? ' 
 
 And my master replied, his voice shaking with 
 anger, 'It is a cunning mixture of truth and lies 
 which the slave has told, O Sultan ! This and this 
 is true, but that and that is false. It is true that I 
 have sent ivory to thy liege lord the Amir-al- 
 Mumenin, as a compliment, but it is less than the 
 present I gave thee. It is false that the thought 
 
' His executioner, a tall Kanuri man with a red turban, naked to the 
 waist, stood by the Sultan's side with a drawn sword.' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 93 
 
 ever entered my heart, or the words ever passed my 
 lips, that I wished to conspire against thy power or 
 make myself Sultan in thy stead. It is true that I 
 gave this dog a flogging ; and I blame myself only 
 that my heart was soft, and that, for the offence he 
 committed, I did not have him killed outright. Now 
 I take Allah to witness that I have not sinned in 
 aught against my allegiance to thee and thy rule, 
 and I pray thee, as a just man, and one fearing 
 God, to release me from my bonds and hand over to 
 me for punishment this lying slave. Thou hast the 
 power to do me to death, I know, but assuredly 
 Allah and the Amir-al-Mumenin, thy lord, will re- 
 quire my blood at thy hands.' 
 
 When he had ceased speaking, the Sultan rose 
 in wrath, and called out to those of his guards and 
 courtiers who were around him, ' Is not this man 
 self-condemned ? Do you not hear the proud fashion 
 in which he talks ? What care I for the Amir of 
 Sakatu ? Is he lord over me? I, the Sultan of 
 Yakuba, of Bautshi, of Muri, of Soso ? It is 
 enough : the slave has spoken truth. Strike off the 
 head of Nyebbu, and we will see whether his friend, 
 the Amir of Sakatu, can help him ; and cut out the 
 
94 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 tongue of this dog, and son of a dog, in that he has 
 dared to invoke the name of Allah to support his 
 false statements.' 
 
 When my master heard these words, he shook 
 himself free of his guards, and, throwing himself flat 
 on his stomach, he managed, as best he could with 
 his tied hands, to wriggle to the Sultan's feet, cry- 
 ing, ' Aman ! Aman ! O my lord ! be merciful — spare 
 my life, and let me live yet a little while, and I will 
 be thy slave : I will be content to light thy pipe and 
 boil the kettle for thy tshai. Take, take all that is 
 mine — my ivory, and slaves, and women — if thou 
 seest good ; but let me yet live a little while. I will 
 start on the Haj to Mekka. I will pray for thee 
 there at the Holy places.' 
 
 And thus he wept, and groaned, and called aloud, 
 and even turned his face towards me, saying, ' Speak 
 thou in my favour, O Horejandu ! 1 I have ever 
 treated thee kindly since the day I bought thee at 
 Yola.' But I spurned his face with my foot, and 
 said, ' Who am I that I should dare to speak when 
 the Sultan has spoken ? ' And the Sultan called out 
 in an angry voice, ' I am weary of this noise. Are 
 
 1 Fulful-de for ' Big Head.' 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 95 
 
 you all, then, as this man, that you look to the Amir 
 of Sakatu, and not to me — that I speak and you 
 obey not ? ' 
 
 And the guards seized my master without more 
 ado, and dragged him to the steps of the outer 
 court. Here, while the Pul-o merchant was still 
 calling out on his rough treatment, they thrust a 
 wooden gag into his mouth, so that it prised his 
 jaws open ; and, when this was done, the exe- 
 cutioner took from his waistband a pair of iron 
 pincers, and, seizing my master's tongue, tore it out 
 by the roots ; and then, tying him against a wooden 
 block in the centre of the courtyard, the executioner 
 sliced off his head at one blow. And his head was 
 stuck on a post outside the Sultan's gateway, and 
 the body we dragged about the town by the legs, 
 shouting out that thus should all people be treated 
 that despised the authority of the Sultan of Yakuba; 
 and the body was afterwards flung outside the town 
 for the hyenas to eat. And, after Nyebbu had been 
 executed, the Sultan sent men to seize all his 
 property and slaves, and he attached me to his own 
 household, and gave me the Marghi girl to wife, the 
 same that belonged to my late master ; and I 
 
96 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 became a great favourite with the Sultan of Yakuba, 
 and was much feared in the town, for it was said, 
 ' Whomsoever Horejandu condemns, him the Sul- 
 tan executes.' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 97 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 So my affairs prospered for the space of a year or 
 more, but, meanwhile, some Ful-be in the town, who 
 liked not the Sultan of Yakuba, had sent secret 
 messages to Wurno to tell the Amir-al-Mumenin 
 the things which Mohammed Sadiku, the Sultan of 
 Yakuba, had done, and the way in which he had re- 
 pudiated his allegiance to his liege lord of Sakatu ; 
 and after some fourteen months had passed the 
 rumour reached us that a great army was on its way 
 from Kano to punish Sadiku, and set up another 
 Sultan in his stead, who should govern Yakuba for 
 the Amir of Sakatu. 
 
 And these things caused great terror to my new 
 master, the Sultan, who sent messengers in all direc- 
 tions to all parts of his dominions to collect his fight- 
 ing men and defend his capital ; and the walls of 
 the town were repaired and made good, much store 
 of provisions were collected therein, and there was 
 
 H 
 
9 8 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 constant drilling of troops all day, and serving out 
 of gunpowder, and lead to cast into bullets. And at 
 length we could see from the great mountain behind 
 Yakuba the smoke of burning villages, and other 
 signs of the devastating army ; and soon a great 
 host was encompassing the town on all save the 
 mountain side. And, seeing the great forces 
 brought to subdue Yakuba, the Ful-be notables of 
 the town held council among themselves in secret 
 conclave, and they said to each other, ' Wherefore 
 should we join issue with this man who has been 
 Sultan of Yakuba ? His quarrel is not our quarrel. 
 Why should we fight to save him from the rule of 
 the great Amir of Sakatu ? We are Ful-be, and the 
 Sultan of Sakatu is a Pul-o, and the Prince of the 
 True Believers. Surely it would be a sin in Allah's 
 eyes to fight against him. Let us then send out 
 messengers from the town to the commander of the 
 host, and ask him for protection and a guarantee of 
 our property, if we come to terms with him, and 
 hand over to his keeping the man who has been 
 Sultan here.' 
 
 And news was brought to me of what the Ful-be 
 elders had planned by one who was my friend in 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 99 
 
 this council ; and I went in to my master, the 
 Sultan, and told him secretly what was in the wind. 
 And he trembled much and turned ashy pale, and 
 said to me : 
 
 ' I see clearly that the men of the town have no 
 gratitude in their hearts for what I have done for 
 them, and will not stand by me. When I call upon 
 them to fight they will go over to the enemy, 
 even if they do not first surround my palace and 
 capture me, and give me over to my enemies as a 
 prisoner. There is nothing for it therefore but to 
 escape to the mountains while there is yet time. 
 Do thou therefore make ready for me food that I 
 may. take away with me ; and at nightfall I will 
 disguise myself, and bear an order, sealed with my 
 own seal, that shall let me pass out at the mountain 
 gate, and so I will hide among the hill people till 
 I can find means to escape to the kingdom of 
 Adamawa, where I have friends ; and as for thee, 
 thou shalt go with me and follow my fortunes, 
 and, if thou art true to me, when Allah shall 
 again give me prosperity, I swear by Allah I will 
 reward thee. I will make thee a rich man and free. 
 See,' he said, ' thou had nought to gain by turning 
 
 H 2 
 
THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 against me as those traitors have done, and thou art 
 more hated in the town perhaps than even I am, 
 and they would be sure to kill thee when I am 
 gone.' 
 
 And this reflection was a true one, and seeing 
 that I had nothing to gain by betraying my master, 
 I resolved to escape from the town with him, and 
 follow him wheresoever he should go. 
 
 So we hastily and secretly set to work to make 
 preparations for the journey, and the Sultan filled a 
 bag with silver riyalat (dollars), which he hung 
 round his neck, and he wrote out with his own pen, 
 on a piece of sheep-skin, an order to let himself 
 and myself pass out of the gate, only he called us by 
 the names of two of his servants ; and he hid about 
 his person such small things as he could hastily lay 
 his hands on, and I did the same, also preparing 
 some balls of cooked yam and maize cakes ; and we 
 put over all these things several rich taubs and 
 scarves, and hid our faces with lishams or face-veils, 
 such as the Ful-be of the North are given to wear, 
 and arming ourselves secretly with daggers and 
 loaded pistols — the Sultan carried a pistol with six 
 barrels, such as you call ' riwolwa,' which had been 
 
1 Stealthily walking through the streets of the town where the shadozvs were deepest.'' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 101 
 
 sent him as a present by the Christian traders on 
 the Kwara — we left the palace. 
 
 Stealthily walking through the streets of the 
 town where the shadows were deepest, we arrived 
 at the mountain-gate, and the Sultan speaking in a 
 muffled voice showed his written pass to the captain 
 of the guard, and told him to let us quickly pass on 
 the Sultan's business. And the captain of the guard, 
 suspecting nothing, touched the permit with his 
 forehead in token of respect, and gave orders to his 
 men that they should cautiously unbar the gates 
 and let us through. So we passed out of the town 
 and climbed up into the mountain, where we hid 
 ourselves amongst the stones and bushes. 
 
 When the dawn came we could look out over 
 the town, and, fearing to leave our place of hiding 
 in daylight whilst so many scouts of the Kano army 
 were scouring the plains, we resolved to lay quiet 
 all that day until darkness should again set in, and 
 we could venture to cross the open country at night. 
 And soon after the sun was up we could see that 
 there was a great commotion inside the town and 
 out, for the leaders had evidently discovered our 
 flight, and had sent to treat with the commander of 
 
io2 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 the Sakatu army. When it was about mid-day the 
 gates of the town were opened, and after much firing 
 of guns the besieging force marched in. 
 
 What happened afterwards we did not know, 
 for as no one was sent searching for us we cautiously 
 crept down the other side of the mountain where 
 there were no inhabitants, crawling cautiously 
 among the stones and bushes, and keeping ever a 
 good look-out that no one spied us. When the sun 
 was setting we were at the base of the mountain, 
 and there being a moon that night we made the 
 best of our way on foot across the plain until we 
 came to some hills, where we hid for awhile. And 
 the next day we waded across the shallow part of a 
 river, and bought a little food at a small village of 
 Bautshi people, who wondered greatly to see us 
 Mohammedans on foot, but we explained to them 
 that our caravan had been broken up by the in- 
 vading army, and our camels taken from us. And 
 here, with three of the silver riyalat, we managed to 
 buy two small asses, which we mounted, and then 
 rode on as quickly as might be in a southerly 
 direction, crossing a great plain between two ranges 
 of mountains ; and when we had been travelling thus 
 
' A hungry lion had leapt the barrier of thorns, and fastened on to one of the asses, ivho in 
 terror broke loose from the stake to which it was tethered.' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 103 
 
 for some three days we arrived at a quiet valley 
 between some downs, where there were no people 
 dwelling. 
 
 The punishment of Allah fell upon my master, 
 the Sultan, here. We had made ourselves a small 
 camp for the night by cutting down thorn-bushes 
 and strewing them in a circle, and inside these we 
 tethered our asses, and the Sultan lit a fire with his 
 flint and steel and tinder, and when we had eaten, 
 and washed our hands with sand, and prayed, the 
 Sultan laid down to sleep, and bade me watch until 
 it was the middle of the night, when I should sleep, 
 and he would take his turn of watching. 
 
 But after awhile it was fated that my eyelids 
 should grow heavy, and slumber fall upon me, so 
 that I ceased to watch ; and when I had slept for a 
 little while I was awakened by the firing of a pistol, 
 and then I heard the growling of a lion and the 
 voice of my master calling for help. And it would 
 seem that whilst I slept the fire had gone out, and a 
 hungry lion had leapt the barrier of thorns, and 
 fastened on to one of the asses, who in terror broke 
 loose from the stake to which it was tethered, and 
 struck my master with its hoofs as he slept, and he, 
 
io 4 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 starting up in a fright, and seeing by the light of the 
 waning moon that a lion was attacking the ass, 
 pulled out his ' riwolwa ' and fired it at the body of 
 the lion, at the same time calling on me to help 
 him ; and the lion, being wounded in the back and 
 greatly enraged, left the ass which he was tearing 
 and fell on my master, whose arm and leg he tore 
 with his teeth and claws ; but my master, fighting 
 for his life, fired off all the other barrels of the 
 ' riwolwa ' into the lion's head with the other hand, 
 which was free, and the lion left off biting him and 
 fell dead. 
 
 Then I, who had scarce known whether I was 
 alive or dead with the fright I had had, arose, and 
 seeing the lion was dead, I dragged his body from 
 off my master, whom I also took for dead, but he 
 had only fainted from loss of blood. 
 
 I got the flint and steel from his waist-cloth and 
 struck a light, and having made a blaze of dried 
 twigs, I tore off long strips of cloth from my 
 master's clothes, and bound up the great wounds in 
 his thigh and arm where the lion had torn him. 
 
 And when it was morning I saw my master 
 had opened his eyes and was looking round, but a 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 105 
 
 fever had got hold of him, and he talked nonsense, 
 and he knew not where he was nor what had 
 happened to him. I tended to his wants as well as 
 I could, and then, bethinking myself that he was too 
 ill to continue his journey then, and that the ass 
 which the lion had attacked was also in a sorry 
 condition, I thought it best to remain where we 
 were till my master should have recovered ; and so 
 I took our two gourds and went out to seek water, 
 that I might have wherewith to quench our thirst 
 and wash my master's wounds. 
 
 And when I had ascended a little hillock, where 
 there was rain-water lying in the clefts of the rocks, 
 I spied in the distance, riding slowly across the 
 plain, some Ful-be horsemen. Guessing that they 
 were on the look-out for my master, I hurried back 
 to our encampment, which was on the other side 
 and shielded from their sight. Then I stamped out 
 the fire, so that its smoke should not betray the 
 whereabouts of the camp to the Ful-be, and sat 
 down to reflect on what I should do ; and, seeing 
 that my master lay sick and out of his senses, and 
 that one of the asses, too, was disabled, I resolved 
 within myself that it was foolish to remain with my 
 
io6 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 master any longer, for it would be long ere he could 
 travel, and then only slowly, and assuredly the 
 Ful-be would discover us and slay us. So, having 
 considered all this, I went to my master, who was 
 talking nonsense and heeded me not, and took from 
 his neck the bag of dollars which he carried, and the 
 ' riwolwa,' and whatever other things of value were 
 easy to stow away ; and then, leaving him a gourd 
 of water, a little food, and the disabled ass, I 
 mounted the other and rode away towards the high 
 range of hills in the west, knowing the hillock where 
 I had been to get the water would for some time 
 screen me from the gaze of the Ful-be horsemen ; 
 and at nightfall I reached a village at the base of the 
 mountains. 
 
 Here I gave myself out to be a Hausa trader, 
 for the people were foolish, timid pagans, who, 
 seeing me dressed like a Hausa, believed me to be 
 such. 
 
 I had not any clear plan in my mind as to what 
 course I should pursue ; but I, in my ignorance of 
 the purposes of Allah, thought I was now far enough 
 away from pursuit, and would give myself out as a 
 free man, and could trade with the dollars I had 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 taken from my master. So I told all the villagers 
 that I was riding in front of a large caravan of slaves 
 from the Adamawa countries, and wished to know 
 where in that direction I should find a great market 
 at which I could profitably dispose of my slaves. 
 And they, in their foolishness, said, ' Why not go to 
 Yakuba ? There is no better place to sell slaves 
 than in Yakuba.' But I told them I had heard 
 there was a glut of slaves in that market, and asked 
 if they knew of no great town to the westward. On 
 that they counselled me to proceed to Keffi, which 
 should be a town nearly as big as Yakuba, lying to 
 the westward. And they directed me to proceed 
 along a certain little river to a place where it joined 
 a bigger stream, and after crossing at the ford, skirt- 
 ing a great mountain, and crossing another river, I 
 should then see Keffi before me. And believing in 
 the tale that I told them, they asked me before 
 leaving to give them some guarantee that my big 
 caravan, which they supposed to be following me, 
 should not harass them as it passed through their 
 town, and I, wishing to satisfy them and get 
 free, pulled out the pass which the Sultan of Yakuba 
 had written, and gave it into their hands, they, of 
 
io8 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 course, not being able to read what was thereon 
 written. 
 
 And then by the earliest morning I rode off in the 
 direction of Keffi. And after several days' journey, 
 which would be wearisome to recount to you, I found 
 myself at the gates of this great town, and had to 
 sleep outside all the night, because I arrived after 
 sundown, and the gates were shut ; and I was much 
 harassed by the attacks of the hyenas, who would 
 run in on me and snap at my own limbs or the legs 
 of my ass. 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 When I entered Keffi the next morning I was an 
 over-confident fool, believing that the townspeople 
 of that place would as readily believe my lies as 
 the simple villagers in the wilderness. So in the 
 market-place I told all who questioned me that I was 
 a Hausa merchant come to trade there, to buy slaves 
 with riyalat ; and I said how the rest of my caravan 
 had been broken up and dispersed by the attacks of 
 robbers, and I only had escaped. And hearing this 
 story several traders came forward and spoke to me 
 in the Hausa language. I stammered and stuttered. 
 I could not speak that tongue, and replied to them 
 in the Ful speech, and they laughed aloud at me, 
 and cried out, ' What are these lies thou tellest us ? 
 Thou a Hausa merchant, and canst not speak the 
 Hausa tongue ? And the Fulful-de thou talkest is 
 the Fulful-de of a slave. Perchance thou art some 
 runaway that hath robbed his master and donned his 
 
no THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 clothes. Come along with us to the governor of 
 the town, and give us a true statement of thy case.' 
 
 And though I protested, and swore, and entreated, 
 and several times wrenched my garments from their 
 grasp, they dragged me from off the ass and led me 
 to the Hausa governor of that town, which although 
 in the empire of the Amir of Sakatu is ruled by 
 Hausas ; and when I was carried before the go- 
 vernor, so great was my fear that my wit deserted 
 me and I could not frame a lie that should satisfy 
 them, but blurted out the whole truth of what had be- 
 fallen m e before I came to Yakuba ; and I was long 
 in the telling of the tale, but encouraged to proceed, 
 and cheered in the telling by the laughter of the 
 governor, who made merry over the things I had 
 done. When I had finished speaking he bade 
 them strip me of all my clothes and dollars, 
 and everything I possessed, so that I was stark 
 naked. 
 
 ' Now,' he said, ' thou deservest death for the 
 things thou hast done ; but I have not the heart to 
 kill thee, for thou hast made my sides ache with 
 laughter. Thou shalt live, therefore, and become 
 my slave. But beware lest thou play any pranks 
 
' Often I would stop to weep at the misfortunes that had befallen me. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 in 
 
 with me. I have more wisdom than Nyebbu and 
 Sadiku.' 
 
 So he bade his servants give me an old piece of 
 cloth to hide my nakedness, and sent me to work in 
 his plantations. 
 
 This was a bitter lot for me, who had thought 
 myself almost a Mohammedan gentleman ; and 
 often I would stop to weep at the misfortunes that 
 had befallen me. And thus, when I failed to do good 
 work, I got many a flogging from the overseer of 
 the governor's plantation ; and one day it was said 
 to me that as I was a worthless slave I should be 
 sold in the market. 
 
 So, together with some others, who were wild 
 bushmen from the Akpoto country, that had been 
 captured in a Hausa raid across the Benue, we were 
 taken on a great fair day to the town of Keffi, and 
 stationed there in the market-place for sale. And a 
 Hausa merchant of Kano looked at me, examined 
 me, and asked many questions about me, and, finally, 
 after much talking with the overseer, bought me for 
 fourteen dollars : and two days afterwards my new 
 master set out for Kano, with a big caravan, with 
 many camels and horses and asses and slaves ; and 
 
ii2 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 my neck was set in a great wooden collar, the other 
 end of which was fastened to the neck of another 
 slave ; and thus, with pain and weariness, we had to 
 walk on day after day in the middle of the caravan ; 
 and although I pleaded many times to be set free to 
 walk by myself, and swore every oath I could think 
 of not to run away, the leader of the caravan had no 
 pity on me, and said he had heard in Keffi I was a 
 cunning rascal, and he did not intend to give me any 
 chance of escape. 
 
 I do not know how I lived through this journey, 
 so great was my suffering and so little had I to eat. 
 The great wooden collar that I wore round my neck 
 was never removed, and its chafing caused two great 
 sores to come on my shoulders, the scars of which 
 I bear to this day. The Hausa man, who was the 
 ' Maidoki,' or leader of the caravan, was called 
 Shekara. He was a cruel man with a hard heart, 
 and paid no heed to my whining nor yet to my com- 
 pliments, for at first I thought to win his favour by 
 extolling his greatness or the beauty of his counten- 
 ance or the splendour of his horse-trappings as he 
 rode past us, but he would only aim a blow at my 
 head with the butt of the lance that he carried, and 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 113 
 
 rebuke me for a saucy slave in daring to comment 
 on a person of his greatness. 
 
 I, who had been a favourite of the Sultan of 
 Yakuba, and considered myself as much a Muslim 
 as any Arab or Pul-o follower of the Prophet, I was 
 now forced to walk in step with a poor wild pagan 
 slave from the Ibo country, joined to him during the 
 march by a chain which united our heavy wooden 
 collars. Sometimes I would try to show the guards 
 of the caravan that I was a Muslim like themselves, 
 and in a loud voice I would recite the Fatha, the 
 prayer from the Book of books which I had picked 
 up from the Ful-be Muslemin, or I would attempt to 
 pray the Two-Bow Prayer, but so often as I did this 
 in the hearing of the guards they would strike me on 
 the mouth and jeer at me, saying that Allah could 
 not understand such jargon, and mocking me for the 
 nonsense that I spoke in the Arabic I had learnt by 
 rote. 
 
 We sojourned for awhile at a place called Saria, 
 and here the slave to whom I was fastened fell sick 
 and died, and a number of other slaves of the caravan 
 also perished, so much so that the leader feared to 
 lose all his profits ; so he consulted with some of his 
 
 1 
 
ii 4 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 men, and it was agreed that such of us as had sur- 
 vived the sickness should be somewhat better treated, 
 so that we might reach Kano in fair condition. 
 Moreover, the wooden collar was taken from my 
 neck, and the sores were dressed with oil, and a large 
 rope was tied round my throat instead, and this in 
 turn fastened to another slave. I was given a little 
 more food than before, and our progress was slower 
 between Saria and Kano, so that the slaves might 
 not become too exhausted. 
 
 At length one day the soldiers in front of the 
 caravan began firing their guns and shouting, and 
 the word passed along that Kano was in sight. 
 
 This was a finer city than any I had yet seen, 
 and although I was sick and weak, and an ill-treated 
 slave, even I felt glad, and walked in a more upright 
 manner as I passed through the great gate and 
 entered the streets of the town. We slaves were all 
 taken to the slave market to be sold next day, but 
 this did not make us sad in any way, for we felt that, 
 whatever our lot might be, it could not be worse 
 than our previous sufferings, and we were even 
 merry as we sat over a huge dish of porridge that 
 night. 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 "5 
 
 The next morning there was a great press of 
 people in the market, where each lot of slaves with 
 their sellers were stood in a row for purchasers to 
 inspect. There were Arabs, Kanuri people from 
 Bornu, Tawarek from the Great Desert, and Ful-be 
 from Sakatu and the Kwara River, all wishing to 
 purchase slaves. A Hausa man of Kano, whose 
 name was Gungi, and who was a ' Mairini,' or dyer, 
 examined me very closely, and asked many questions 
 about me. Of course the Hausa who bought me in 
 Keffi spoke highly of my qualities, and said there 
 never was such a strong and willing worker as I, but 
 the dyer looked doubtfully at me, because of my 
 great leanness and the sores on my body. However, 
 at last, after much dispute he bought me for thirty 
 thousand kurdi (kauri shells), and took me away with 
 him to his house, which was in the quarter of the 
 town called Sherbale. 
 
 When we were arrived he spoke to me in Ful- 
 ful-de, which I then knew better than Hausa, and 
 told me that if I was a good slave I should find in 
 him a kind master, but that if I shirked my work, or 
 stole, or ran away, I should find no pity in his heart. 
 I spoke many sweet things to him, and knelt to him, 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 and kissed his hand, and won his favour, for he 
 looked kindly on me. Then he clapped his hands, 
 and when some women slaves came he bade them 
 lead me to a small tank of water, where I could 
 wash, and afterwards to give me food. He also sent 
 a small boy to me whilst I was washing, with a 
 common blue taub of cotton and an old red fez, and 
 told me to wear these instead of the dirty rags I wore 
 about my body. Having washed and put on my 
 new clothes, I looked quite a better kind of man, 
 and my new master — Baba Gungi, as he was called 
 — took great credit to himself for having made such 
 a cheap bargain in the market. 
 
 In the afternoon of that day Baba Gungi took 
 me with him to his ' Marina,' at the back of his yard. 
 This was an open terrace or platform of clay, with a 
 number of clay dyeing-pots, and three slaves were 
 here stirring up the indigo juice that was in the pots, 
 and mixing it every now and then with some 
 pounded red wood, of a kind brought from Adamawa. 
 
 My master spoke to these other slaves, and told 
 them to instruct me in the work and make me 
 useful. 
 
 When he had left us, his slaves, who were rather 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 117 
 
 simple folk, and mostly people from Bornu, asked 
 me to tell them something of myself — who I was 
 and whence I came, and to them I related' much of 
 my past adventures as I have told them tc you, and 
 in this way we sat long talking until they heard the 
 sound of our master's sandals pattering on the ground 
 of the courtyard outside, and started up in a panic to 
 go back to their work. 
 
 Then I was shown by one of them how I must 
 fetch a white cotton taub from among a bundle that 
 lay on a clay bench that ran along one side of the 
 marina, and soak it in a tank of clean water ; and 
 when this was done wring it out nearly dry, and 
 then plunge it into one of the dye-pots, where 
 another man stirred it round with a stick. And then, 
 again, I was to take other shirts from the other dye 
 pots, the dyeing of which was finished, and, having 
 wrung them out, to plunge them for a minute into 
 another tank of dirty water, and then again wringing 
 them out, to hang them on the branch of a small tree 
 which grew in the middle of the dyeing-place ; and, 
 when this was done, and whilst these shirts were set 
 to dry, I was given others that were already dried, 
 and these I had to spread out on mats on the ground 
 
n8 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 of the marina, and beat first one side and then the 
 other with a long, pliant stick. This was a business 
 hard to learn, for the taubs must be beaten in a 
 certain fashion, so that the roughness of the dye 
 leaves the cotton, and a shiny appearance, like silk, 
 takes its place. All through the day we would hear 
 this sound of beating the taubs going on, for always 
 one slave or another was at the work ; and, as they 
 beat, they would sing this song in unison with the 
 sound of the blows : 
 
 Mu Masurini ne ! 
 Dafari mu-rina riga, 
 Baya ga mu-buga riga, 
 Anshima mu-tala ta 
 Ga mutum kiau ! 1 
 
 For the first few weeks that I lived in Kano I 
 sought only to gain the favour of my master, and I 
 was so industrious in this dyeing work that the 
 other slaves reported well of me to Baba Gungi. 
 But after a time I wearied of this life, although I 
 had plenty to eat and a master who did not ill-treat 
 
 1 We are dyers ! 
 First we dye the shirt, 
 Then we beat the shirt, 
 And then we sell it 
 To a goodly man. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 119 
 
 me. I began in time to assume a mastery over the 
 other slaves of the marina, and became a kind of 
 chief among them — so much so that I made them 
 do all the work, and passed my time mostly joking 
 and laughing with my master's women. 
 
 And occasionally I would manage to have a 
 little dyeing done privately for such friends as I had 
 made in the town, and for this they would give me 
 small presents, so that I could gradually store up 
 money with which to buy fine clothes. And my 
 master at first approved of my smart appearance, 
 and told me that I did credit to his household ; but 
 gradually he grew distrustful, and suspected that I 
 had not dealt quite honestly with him ; moreover, he 
 grew angry at my behaviour with the women, and 
 at the saucy tone I took when he rebuked me, and 
 I heard him say one day to another of the slaves 
 that he would find means to reduce my pride. 
 
 One morning he found great fault with the 
 dyeing of some taubs, and ordered me to repeat 
 the process. I called another of the slaves, and bid 
 him dip the taubs again into the dyeing-pots, but 
 my master angrily interrupted and said : ' I ordered 
 thee to do it, thou dog, and not Brahimu. It is 
 
THE HIS TOE Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 time thou shouldst be punished for thy insolence.' 
 And he stepped into the house, and fetched thence 
 a great whip made of hippopotamus hide. 
 
 I was standing with my back to him, mocking 
 his wrath to the other slaves, when he suddenly 
 began to lash me with this whip, and even through 
 the cotton shirt which covered my shoulders he cut 
 my flesh with the whip and drew blood. I could not 
 contain myself at this treatment, so I turned on him 
 with all my strength — for I am a strong man, which 
 is why the Arabs call me Abu-'l-guwah — and, lower- 
 ing my head, I charged at him like a bull, butting 
 him full in the stomach. Such was the force of my 
 blow that the whip fell from his hand, and he sank 
 to the ground like a dying man. 
 
 When the other slaves saw that I had seemingly 
 killed their master they raised a terrible noise, and 
 all the women came into the marina shrieking and 
 tearing their garments and calling for help. Re- 
 membering what had happened to me at Yakuba, 
 before any could detain me I broke from them all, 
 and ran full pelt through the streets to the palace of 
 the Ghaladima, or governor of the town, and heed- 
 ing not the clamour of the guards, I rushed on 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 121 
 
 blindly into the diwan, where the governor was 
 sitting on his carpet. Seizing the skirt of his long 
 robe in one hand, I cried ' Aman ! Aman ! I place 
 myself under thy protection.' And he proudly 
 removed his garment from my hand, called to his 
 guards to seize me, and demanded to know why I 
 had been allowed to enter his presence. And they, 
 bowing their foreheads to the dust, protested 
 humbly that I must be a madman, a possessed, that 
 there was no holding me, that I passed through 
 them like one of the Jann. 1 And then the Sultan 
 demanded of me to tell him my tale ; and I related 
 to him so much of my history as might bear on the 
 case, laying great stress on the fact that I was a 
 Muslim, and had been a big chief in my own 
 country, and that to be struck by another man put 
 madness in my heart. And the Sultan said to me : 
 
 ' Knowest thou how to fight, how to aim with a 
 gun, how to ride a horse in battle ? ' 
 
 And I replied that I had been a great warrior in 
 my own land, and had slain many people. 
 
 Then he asked me if I were willing to become 
 one of his soldiers ; and I said : 
 
 / 1 Genii, spirits. 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 ' Ay, Wallah, if thou grant me protection ! ' 
 
 Then he handed me over to the ' Sarki-n-yaki, ' 
 the captain of the guard, that he should drill me 
 as a soldier. 
 
 Once more my heart felt proud at the change in 
 my fortunes, and the other soldiers amongst whom 
 I now lived treated me with a certain amount ol 
 respect, as being a slave who had killed his master 
 and yet had got off scathless. It took me some 
 time to learn to ride a horse in the same fearless 
 fashion as the other troopers rode ; but I had lost 
 my fear of that animal, and the horses of Hausa- 
 land are smaller and more docile than those of the 
 Arabs in Tarabulus. We were armed with a 
 straight sword, which was hung on our left side, and 
 in the right hand we carried a long heavy spear. 
 The officers of the troop wore daggers, fastened 
 in a belt round their left arm ; and a few of us 
 had muskets, which we carried in place of the spear, 
 and those who had muskets — I was one — daily 
 practised firing at a target. We wore red fezzes on 
 our heads, and we dressed in large blue shirts round 
 the breast and down to the hips ; these were bound 
 close to the body by means of a red shawl, which 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 123 
 
 we wound tightly about us. Some of the officers 
 had their black shawls tied over the lower part of 
 their faces, after the fashion of the Tawarek. We 
 wore no sandals on our feet, because they interfered 
 with our grasp of the stirrups. This cavalry, which 
 was in the service of the Sultan of Kano, was quar- 
 tered in barracks at the back of the palace, and 
 these barracks enclosed a square, or maidan, 
 where we could drill or exercise with our horses. 
 
 About what happened further, when I went to 
 war for the Sultan of Kano, I will tell you when 
 I see you to-morrow. Insh-allah, ma tashuf ash- 
 shtcrr ! 
 
i24 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 When I had served in the army of the Sultan of 
 Kano for perhaps six months, we were ordered to 
 get ready to go on a warlike expedition. The Sarki 
 — as the Hausa people called their Sultan — the 
 Sarki of Kano had arranged a very clever plan. 
 Some little while before the Sultan of Gujeba, a 
 town in the Bornu territories, had sent an invitation 
 to him to join in a raid on the pagans of Kalam ; 
 but the Kano Sultan excused himself by saying that 
 he had other concerns in which he wished to employ 
 his army. Nevertheless he urged the Sultan of 
 Gujeba to exterminate in Kalam all such as should 
 not have embraced the true faith ; and, as soon as 
 he satisfied himself that the Sultan of Gujeba had 
 set out on his expedition with all his forces, and that 
 the frontier lands of Bornu were denuded of soldiers, 
 he gave orders to the commander of his army, 
 Sheik Abd-er-Rahman (a Moor, who had risen to a 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 125 
 
 high position in the service of the Sultan of Kano), 
 to get ready four thousand cavalry and about twenty 
 thousand foot soldiers, armed with bows and spears 
 and muskets, and invade the country of Katagum 
 and the border-lands of Bornu. Before the army 
 left Kano many of us wished for charms against 
 death, and several old ' figis ' or ' m,'alams ' came, 
 with their calabash inkstands and reed-pens, and 
 wrote out verses from the Quran on sheep-skin. 
 
 When we left Kano we rode for about the space 
 of half a day, and then stopped to encamp for the 
 night, and the villagers of the district opened a 
 market in our camp and sold provisions. At night- 
 fall the leader of the camp sent for such of us as 
 he esteemed for our valour, and gave us kola-nuts 
 to eat. We started again at midnight, when the 
 waning moon was risen, and then made a long 
 journey, even to the next evening. The day after 
 that we arrived in the vicinity of a town called Gubu, 
 which our commander proposed to attack, as it was 
 well populated. All the inhabitants round, at our 
 approach, had flocked into Gubu, and defended 
 themselves behind its walls, and also concealed 
 themselves in the palm-groves and the stubble of 
 
126 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 the durrha-corn in its environs. They shot poisoned 
 arrows and hurled darts at us : but we soon dis- 
 lodged them from the vicinity of the town by setting 
 fire to the stubble and such of the dry trees as would 
 burn, and the raging of this fire swept the ground 
 clean, and drove all the people into the town ; 
 and the next day we delivered the assault with 
 the whole force, and easily carried the town by 
 storm. 
 
 But the leader of our army, Abd-er- Rahman, was 
 angry at the resistance they had made, and he cut 
 off the heads of eight hundred of the defenders ; 
 and, having selected about two thousand of the best 
 among the slaves, he despatched them with a small 
 convoy back to Kano, whilst we proceeded further 
 towards Katagum, leaving the town of Gubu not 
 quite empty of inhabitants ; for, as our commander 
 said, we must allow some to remain behind to breed 
 more slaves. The country of Katagum we utterly 
 wasted and laid bare, and carried off a rich spoil of 
 slaves, cattle, and camels ; and after raiding as far 
 as Fititi, we reassembled our forces and returned to 
 Kano. 
 
' We carried off a rich spoil of slaves, cattle, and a 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 127 
 
 I had agreed with some of my comrades that we 
 should mutually assist each other in capturing slaves, 
 and share the profits between us. The custom in 
 that country is that, when a private soldier shall have 
 caught, say, five slaves, he shall give two of them to 
 the Sarki of Kano and retain the other three for 
 himself — out of every five he must give up two to 
 the governor. We — that is to say, my five com- 
 rades and myself — managed altogether to capture 
 forty slaves, whom we bound one to the other and 
 drove back before us when we were returning to 
 Kano with the rest of the force. Of these forty 
 some were old women, some were young girls and 
 boys, and three or four were able-bodied men. We 
 gave up sixteen of the slaves to the Sultan, taking 
 care to choose the oldest and least valuable among 
 them, and of the twenty-four that remained we each 
 got four. Altogether, the whole amount of slaves 
 collected with this raid numbered several thousand, 
 and brought much wealth to the Sultan. At that 
 time there was not a good market for slaves in Kano 
 — there was no demand for them now by the mer- 
 chants from the Kwara ; so the Sultan of Kano 
 
128 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 resolved to send a strong slave caravan to Zinder, a 
 town about eight days' journey north of Kano ; and 
 he chose me as one of the escort, at which I greatly 
 rejoiced, for I counted on selling at a good price 
 my own four slaves. At the same time we had to 
 convey presents and a letter to the Sarki of Zinder, 
 who had recently allied himself to Kano against the 
 Bornu people. 
 
 The commander of this expedition to Zinder — 
 the ' Sarki-n-bai,' or the ' Maidaria,' 1 as we used to 
 call him — was a very jolly, good-tempered man, 
 named Ubanmasifa. He was fond of jesting, and 
 would often make us laugh loudly at his tales. He 
 had taken a liking to me when we went on the slave 
 raid to Katagum, and on this journey to Zinder he 
 made me his Zaka-fada. 2 Several Moorish mer- 
 chants from Fezzan accompanied us from Kano to 
 Zinder, and with one of these — a man named Al- 
 Haj-Ayub — I became very friendly, and he talked 
 much to me of the fine things which were to be seen 
 in his country, and in the land of the Turks at 
 Tarabulus, and advised me to secretly leave the 
 service of the Sarki of Kano, and accompany him 
 
 1 'The Laugher.' 8 Aide-de-camp. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 129 
 
 on his return to Murzuk, whither he was going with 
 a convoy of slaves and camels, for, he told me, 
 camels were so cheap in Zinder that many people 
 came across the Great Desert to buy them and take 
 them back to Fezzan to sell again. 
 
 K 
 
13° 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 In our caravan, besides slaves, we carried a store of 
 sweet potatoes and dried fish, which are things that 
 may be profitably sold in Zinder, where the people 
 are far off from any big water that holds fish, and for 
 some reason or other cannot grow sweet potatoes in 
 their plantations. The road from Kano to Zinder is 
 unsafe travelling for small caravans, because of the 
 robbers that lurk in the woods, and some of these 
 are Daura people, who are pagans and very fierce, 
 and are constantly at war with the people of both 
 Zinder and Kano. They would lie in wait to attack 
 even us, and would endeavour to surround and kill 
 any stragglers of the caravan, shooting poisoned 
 arrows. The force of their bows is so great that it 
 is said their arrows will pierce three planks of wood 
 placed together, and the poison of them, which is 
 obtained from a certain plant, causes you to quickly 
 swell up and die, even if your skin is only just pricked 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 with the point of the arrow. We lost in this way- 
 one or two soldiers who had lagged behind. 
 
 And another danger in this country was the many 
 lions and hyenas of a large kind, spotted, and not 
 striped such as those you see in Tarabulus. We had 
 to make big fires at night-time to keep off these 
 beasts, and even then we were not safe, for one night 
 a lion and lioness jumped into our camp over the 
 hedge of thorns in a place where the fire had sunk 
 low, and attacked some of our horses, but we drove 
 them off with burning brands. The hyenas, how- 
 ever, as we neared Zinder, got so bold that they 
 would surround the camp at night in large numbers, 
 and any man who should venture outside alone 
 would be attacked and pulled down ; and they had a 
 cunning method of leaping at the throats of such 
 as they found alone and unprotected ; and by seizing 
 the necks of these people suddenly in their jaws, they 
 would prevent their crying out. 
 
 After being about ten days on this route, we 
 came within sight of Zinder, which we first dis- 
 covered by the numbers of vultures that were 
 circling round it in the air, for this great town lies 
 a little low, and is concealed by a lot of rocks and 
 
 K 2 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 low green hills. As soon as we entered the town, 
 we of the escort who were taking the letter and the 
 present from the Sarki of Kano to the Sarki of 
 Zinder, went first to the house of the Ghaladima, 
 the Wazir of the Sultan, and he, bidding us wait 
 awhile in his outer court, hurried off to acquaint the 
 Sarki of our coming, and arrange for an audience. 
 The houses of Zinder seemed to us poor and dirty 
 after those of Kano. The walls are simply of clay, 
 baked in the sun, which has not been whitewashed 
 nor decorated after the fashion of the Arabs. There 
 is scarcely any furniture, and no mats or carpets to 
 sit on ; indeed, the Ghaladima himself was sitting in 
 the dust. 
 
 After we had waited a short space of time, the 
 Wazir returned and said the Sultan was ready to 
 receive us, and, acting himself as a guide, he led us 
 through the streets of the town to the Sultan's palace, 
 which was a kind of mud fort. Herein we entered, 
 and after passing through several courts where there 
 were a lot of soldiers lounging about, all unarmed 
 and bare-headed, clad in very dirty taubs, we were 
 ushered into a dark chamber, where the Sultan was 
 sitting on a mud bench. Instructed by the Wazir. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 133 
 
 we all threw ourselves down, and, taking up the 
 dust of the floor in our hands, we threw it over our 
 heads, saying in Hausa, ' Baba-n-sarki, Baba-n- 
 sarki ; Sarki-n-dunia ! ' 1 
 
 Then, the Sultan having commanded us to deliver 
 our message, we rose up and told him the occasion 
 of our visit, and delivered to him the letter and the 
 present which the Sarki of Kano had sent to him. 
 
 The Sultan ordered his people to fetch an old 
 figi^an Arab from Wadai, who acted as his scribe 
 — and when this man arrived he handed him the 
 letter to read. Its contents pleased the Sultan, and 
 he said that, in future, he should trust to Allah and 
 the Sarki of Kano for the maintenance of his power, 
 and not any longer to the Sheikh of Bornu, who had 
 no business in his country, for in Zinder did they not 
 speak Hausa and not Kanuri ? And then he bade 
 the Wazir give us each a present of kauri shells from 
 the treasury, and supply us with food during our 
 stay ; and he told us that he would consider what 
 reply he should send to the Sarki of Kano, and 
 would give us a letter and a present to our Sultan 
 when we should be ready to return to Kano. 
 
 1 ' Oh, great King, great King ; King of the World ! ' 
 
i34 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 After this we went out into the town, and visited 
 such people as were persons of importance, paying 
 many compliments, and receiving small presents in 
 return. The next day we went to look at the slave- 
 market to hear what prices were being given for 
 slaves, but we found, to our disappointment, that 
 they were of no more value here than at Kano. for 
 the Sarki of Zinder had made many Ghazias J of late 
 into the Daura countrv. and Zinder was full of slaves 
 for sale. As I did not see any chance of getting a 
 good price at present for my four slaves, whom I 
 had brought with me, I resolved not to be in a 
 hurry to sell them, although I had to feed them all 
 this time. 
 
 The Sarki of Zinder is a cruel man, and much 
 feared by his subjects and by the Tawarek of the 
 desert who come to Zinder to trade. For the least 
 offence he sentences people to death. When a 
 criminal is to be killed he is taken by the executioner 
 to an open place, underneath a lofty tree, with thick 
 shiny leaves, of a kind called 'Alleluba' in the 
 Hausa tongue. Of this sort of tree there are three 
 or four onlv in Zinder. and each one is called 
 
 1 Slave-raids. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 135 
 
 ' Itatshe-n-mutua,' which means the ' Tree of 
 Death,' for these trees mark the places of execution 
 upon the outskirts of the town. 
 
 A few days after we had come to Zinder we 
 heard that a number of men, who had been caught 
 stealing in the Sultan's plantations, were to be killed, 
 and the Ghaladima sent a small boy to guide us to 
 the place of execution, so that we might see how 
 such things were carried on in Zinder. 
 
 We came, then, to one of these trees standing in 
 an open space, which was bounded by great rocks, 
 wherein the hyenas had their dens, and could eat 
 the bodies of the people executed. The place under 
 the shade of the tree was so clean swept and smooth 
 that I went thither to seat myself out of the sun, but 
 the boy who had come with us hastily snatched me 
 back, and asked me if I wished to die. 
 
 ' For,' he said, ' all such as go under the boughs 
 of that tree, save the executioner, must die ; and it 
 is fortunate the executioner is not already here, or 
 certainly thou wouldst have been hung up by the 
 heels.' 
 
 When I heard these words I took care to get a 
 safe distance from this Tree of Death, and I then 
 
136 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 observed that its upper branches were covered with 
 innumerable vultures, who seemed to know, from 
 the crowd of people standing under the place, that 
 an execution had been ordered. 
 
 Presently the men doomed to death by the Sultan 
 arrived, and fear was struck into all our hearts when 
 we saw the manner of punishment ordered, and we 
 wondered not the Sultan of Zinder had made him- 
 self greatly feared by his people. 
 
 There were six men this time to be killed. Their 
 arms were bound to their sides and their ankles 
 hobbled. Three of them the executioner tied round 
 the neck and the ankles to the trunk of the tree, and 
 then taking his long and straight sword he drove it 
 into their bowels, and ripped them right up to the 
 breastbone, after which he plunged in his hands and 
 tore out their hearts, which he cast out to the vul- 
 tures, who were thronging round him waiting for the 
 offering. 
 
 As to the other three, he first tied a rope round 
 their ankles, and then seizing them as a man would 
 seize a man in wrestling, turned them round on end 
 on their heads, and while his assistant held them in 
 this position, he threw the end of the rope over the 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 i37 
 
 lower branches of the tree, and then hung the man 
 up by his heels. After hanging thus for a short 
 while, the blood gushed from their mouths and 
 nostrils, and in much agony they died. 
 
 But the last of these men, when the executioner 
 was wrestling with him, bit him several times in the 
 arms, so that he took out pieces of flesh with his 
 teeth, and this so enraged the executioner that he 
 changed the mode of punishment. 
 
 With the help of his attendants, he drew the rope 
 through the man's armpits and then slung him up to 
 the tree, so that his feet were a few inches from the 
 ground. And when he was thus hung up perpen- 
 dicularly, and swinging to and fro and turning round, 
 the executioner took his sharp sword, and slowly cut 
 the man to bits in little pieces, first lopping off the 
 toes and then the fingers and the nose, and then 
 slices from his arms and thighs, and every now and 
 then he turned and made a jest to the people, who 
 roared with laughter and clapped their hands in ap- 
 plause, after the Zinder fashion, and all the while the 
 man who was being killed was screaming till my 
 ears were deafened, and the vultures were nearly 
 tripping up the executioner in their eagerness to 
 
138 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 snatch at the morsels that he hacked from the 
 man. 
 
 Atdast the man had bled to death, and the ex- 
 ecutioner had cut off everything below his middle, 
 and left the upper half of him still hanging to the 
 tree. The people shrieked and applauded, and said 
 there "never was such an executioner in any town 
 like theirs. But for my part I thought this a bad 
 people, and surely such pastimes must be displeasing 
 to Allah. 
 
Al-Haj-Ayub. 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 i39 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 We had been in Zinder some three weeks, and still 
 the Sultan had not got ready his letter and his gift 
 for Kano, and there seemed no chance of selling our 
 slaves profitably. And I liked not this place, and 
 ever felt; fearsome and uneasy, for its people were 
 insolent ; and some who had seen me walk under 
 the Tree of Death would tease me, and tell me that 
 by rights I too should be executed. 
 
 This being so, I listened not unwillingly to my 
 Fezzani friend, who proposed that I should join his 
 caravan, and cross the Great Desert with him, as- 
 suring me that I should sell my slaves at great ad- 
 vantage at Murzuk, where the price is nearly ten 
 times that of Zinder. Moreover, I might afterwards 
 journey to the Turks' country on the sea coast, 
 where I should see the wonders of the ' Nasrani,' and 
 the great water, and the ships, and other things, the 
 like of which I had never seen before. 
 
Ho THE H1ST0R Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 The Fezzani, Al-Haj-Ayub, was a wise man, 
 who had travelled far, and had been in Mekka, and 
 even in the Balad-al-Hind, 1 and he told me privately 
 the land of the blacks was ' batal ' — worthless — and 
 not to be named beside the lands of the Arabs and 
 the Hindis, where the great Engrizi ruled. So he 
 advised me to secretly make all ready for my de- 
 parture without arousing the suspicion of the leader 
 of our expedition, the Sarki-n-bai ; and then, when 
 he sent me word to join him, to slip away from 
 Zinder at night, and travel with the Airi 2 caravan, 
 that he himself would accompany as far as the 
 country of Azben ; and to render this easier, he sug- 
 gested that I should make a feint of selling to him 
 the four slaves I possessed, and should also make 
 over to him the camel I was to buy with the dollars 
 and kauris I had hoarded in Kano and brought with 
 me to Zinder ; thus he could join my possessions to 
 his own and take them out of Zinder in the caravan 
 without arousing suspicion, and after I was well out 
 of danger, on the road to Azben, he could return to 
 me my own. This seemed to me a good plan, and 
 I did as he directed, pretending to the Sarki-n-bai 
 
 1 India. 2 Air or Airi, the name of the inhabitants of Azben. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 141 
 
 that I was tired of keeping the slaves, and had got 
 a good price from Al-Haj-Ayub. 
 
 When the Airi caravan was ready to start — it 
 was principally composed of Fezzani merchants and 
 Ghadamsi traders returning across the desert with 
 their slaves, and was escorted by Tawarek, who 
 were paid to guard it safely as far as Agades — I 
 received a secret message from Al-Haj-Ayub, 
 telling me to leave Zinder at nightfall without 
 arousing suspicion, and ride out to a small village 
 under the hills to the north of the town, where I 
 could join the caravan, which would halt there for 
 the night. Accordingly I saddled my horse in the 
 afternoon, and asking permission of the Sarki-n-bai 
 to ride to the other end of the town and pay a visit 
 to one of our friends, at whose plantation I said I 
 would pass the night, I started, and when once 
 outside the town rode rapidly to the village where I 
 had appointed to meet Al-Haj-Ayub. 
 
 He arrived with the caravan soon after me, and 
 paid me many compliments on my dexterity, telling 
 me that I might rise to be a great man some day in 
 the land of the Turks. I proposed that he should 
 now restore me my camel and my four slaves, to 
 
1 42 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 one of whom, who was a girl from the town of 
 Katagum, I had become much attached, and had 
 resolved not to sell her. But Al-Haj-Ayub advised 
 me in my own interest not to press such a request, 
 for, he said, ' I have told the leader of the caravan 
 that these slaves and this camel are mine, and that 
 thou art my friend, who will accompany me as far 
 as Azben on business for the Sarki of Kano, so it 
 will be better not to alter this arrangement till we 
 arrive at Azben ; otherwise, knowing that thou wert 
 a slave belonging to Kano, they might send thee 
 back to the Sarki-n-bai at Zinder.' 
 
 This advice seemed reasonable, so I held my 
 peace, though I was rather vexed that my woman- 
 slave was placed with the women that accompanied 
 Al-Haj-Ayub ; but my Fezzani friend so talked me 
 over that I resolved not to make any fuss until we 
 were well beyond the limits of the Zinder territory. 
 In this manner, appearing as the friend and com- 
 panion of Al-Haj-Ayub, I travelled without incident 
 of note, as far as the country of Damergu, and here 
 my friend advised me to sell my Kano horse, telling 
 me that it would surely die in the Great Desert 
 beyond, and directed me to exchange it for a camel, 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 143 
 
 which I did. For the space of two weeks we 
 travelled through the Desert beyond Damergu, and 
 the like of such country I never saw before. It 
 filled my heart with terror. 
 
 Except at the wells and drinking-places, which 
 were few and far between, there was not a sign of a 
 tree or bush — nothing but sand, and hills made of 
 sand. Although the land we crossed was so dry 
 and parched and sandy along the line of the caravan, 
 yet ever and anon, where the sky met the earth, I 
 could see large lakes of water in the far, far distance, 
 and groves of trees ; but whenever I pointed these 
 out to my companions, and asked why, when we 
 were suffering from thirst, we should turn from 
 these lakes, they would laugh and jeer at me for a 
 know-nothing pagan, and tell me that these lakes 
 were shams, and the work of the Jann who inhabit 
 the Desert, and that, if anyone went in that direc- 
 tion, he would simply lose himself in the sand and 
 die. 
 
 The farther we travelled the less I liked the 
 Fezzani, Al-Haj-Ayub. He became rude and 
 insolent to me, for each time I hinted at his 
 handing over my slaves or paying me for the use 
 
i 4 4 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 of my camel he threatened to betray me to the 
 leader of the caravan, and have me sent back to 
 Zinder. 
 
 At length we arrived at Agades, and here I 
 loudly demanded my slaves and camel from Al-Haj- 
 Ayub, and he replied, ' Assuredly, on the morrow, 
 when we have rested, I will restore to thee what is 
 thine own, but speak not of this in the hearing of 
 the Tawarek that came with us, lest they find out 
 thy secret and inform the Sultan of Azben.' Ac- 
 cordingly, I waited with impatience for the morrow, 
 but on the morrow the Fezzani sent me word that 
 he was very sick with the fever, and could not 
 transact business, and, moreover, it would be better 
 to wait till the Tawarek guard was dispersed ; but 
 he asked me to meet him on the next day in the 
 market-place, and he would make over to me my 
 property. So on the morrow I met him, and he 
 said, ' For safety I have stored thy slaves and thy 
 camel in another part of the town : do thou come 
 with me and I will show thee where they are.' 
 Then he led me through many streets to the house 
 of a Ghadamsi merchant, and when we entered 
 he spoke to this man in the language of Ghadames, 
 
' Then he led me through many streets to the house of a Ghadamsi mera 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 145 
 
 which I did not then understand, and the Ghadamsi 
 looked very hard at me, and said to me in Hausa, 
 ' All right, I will show thee where thy slaves and 
 camel are put, and thou shalt dwell with me till the 
 starting of the caravan for Ghadames.' 
 
 Then my Fezzani friend said to me, ' I have a 
 matter of business to attend to, I will leave thee 
 here,' and he departed. And when he had gone 
 the Ghadamsi directed me to follow him, and led 
 me into a dark chamber, and said, ' Look within 
 that inner apartment and thou shalt see thy four 
 slaves.' And when I turned from him to look, 
 something struck me violently on the head, and I 
 swooned. 
 
 I know not how long I remained in that con- 
 dition ; but, when I awoke, I felt very ill, and found 
 my head covered with blood, and my wrists and 
 ankles tied. I was stripped naked, and my dagger 
 had been taken from me. 
 
 I began then to understand the trick that had 
 been played on me ; and, as I looked round, I found 
 myself in the same dark chamber where the Gha- 
 damsi had told me to look for my slaves. I stag- 
 gered to my feet, and tried to find the door with my 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 THE HIS J OR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 hands. But it was shut and bolted ; and I struck 
 it with my hands, and called loudly many times ; 
 but the exertion made me swoon again. 
 
 When I once more came to myself, I found the 
 door open, and the Ghadamsi standing over me ; 
 and, when I looked at him, he spoke to me slowly 
 and distinctly in Hausa, saying : 
 
 ' It is time for thee now to know the truth. Thy 
 friend the Fezzani has played thee a trick. Here 
 are no slaves of thine, nor yet a camel ; and I doubt 
 much whether thou hast ever possessed any, for the 
 Fezzani said thou wert a mad fellow that pestered 
 him with thy tales, and he paid me to detain thee 
 here until such time as he should have started well 
 on his return to Ghadames. Now, hearken care- 
 fully to what I say. Whether or no thou hadst 
 slaves is a matter of no interest to me. Thou art 
 now my slave. If thou art disposed to work for me 
 without noise or clamour, it is well. I will give 
 thee food and clothing, and treat thee well. But if 
 thou art going to make a rumpus and bother with 
 thy talk of slaves and camels, it were better that I 
 put an end to thee at once before thy strength comes 
 back.' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 147 
 
 And here he held above me my own dagger, 
 and made a feint as it were to plunge it into my 
 breast; but I, feebly staying him with my hand, 
 begged for mercy, and told him that since I could 
 not recover my property, and had nowhere to go for 
 protection, I would remain with him, and serve him 
 faithfully as his slave. 
 
 At these words he put the dagger back into its 
 sheath, and lifted me up and led me into an outer 
 court, where he bade me wash my wounded head in 
 a tank of water, and, afterwards, he gave me a mess 
 of porridge and an old shirt. 
 
 And in this sorry condition I abode with the 
 Ghadamsi for a space of three months. And then 
 he concluded his business in Ghadames, and, having 
 gathered together a large convoy of slaves, he made 
 ready to return to his native town. So we set out 
 with the next Ghadames caravan. 
 
 Whilst we journeyed through the country of 
 Azben my life was bearable, for although I had to 
 walk on foot, the marches were short, and there was 
 plenty of water at each place we stopped at ; but 
 when we entered the Great Desert beyond our 
 sufferings were terrible, for all we slaves had to 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 walk on foot through the hot sand, and it was so far 
 to go from well to well that many slaves died by the 
 way ; some would be able just to reach the drinking- 
 place, and then would sink down and die before the 
 water reached their lips. And if any slave was loth 
 to start when the caravan was ready, he was either 
 shot or left to die of hunger. 
 
 And in this way I nearly perished too, for when 
 we had been journeying some thirty days a sickness 
 of the bowels overtook me so that I could hardly 
 drag myself along with the rest of the slaves, and I 
 felt it was better to die quietly in the Desert than 
 to endure this agony day after day. So when we 
 had reached a certain well, where there was a broad 
 wadi and many rocks, I managed to conceal myself 
 among the boulders, and the rest of the caravan, 
 hearing an alarm of the approach of some Tawarek 
 robbers, hurried off, and no one searched for me. 
 
 In the shade of these rocks I fell asleep, and I 
 must have slept a long time, perhaps a whole day 
 and part of a night, for it was morning when I lay 
 down, and the moon was high when I awoke, and 
 instead of dying, as I expected. I felt somewhat 
 recovered, though my body was wet and cold with 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE J49 
 
 the heavy dew ; but I cooled my parched tongue by 
 licking the drops of moisture from my arms, and, in 
 spite of my weakness, I managed to totter to the 
 well which had been dug in the wadi and fetch up 
 some water in a broken cooking-pot that lay near. 
 I also found some dates and a piece of maize-bread, 
 which some one in the caravan had left behind in 
 the hurry of departure. 
 
 Whilst I sat eating I had a great fright, for there 
 was all at once a clamour amongst the rocks, and I 
 thought it must either be the Tawarek coming, or 
 the caravan returning. Then it seemed to me that 
 it was not men that I saw leaping over the stones, 
 but Janns or Ghuls of the Desert, and I was so 
 scared with fright that the sweat poured out over 
 me. 
 
 But when these creatures came nearer — I being 
 too dazed to think of flight — I saw they were only 
 baboons, of a kind not unlike those which were 
 found in my own country. And they, too, were 
 scared when they beheld me, and hesitated to come 
 to the well to drink. But, finding I heeded them 
 not, and seeing that I was unarmed, they gradually 
 took courage and satisfied their thirst. And, when 
 
THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 they had left, I again fell asleep, and did not awake 
 till it was morning ; and then I rubbed my eyes, and 
 wondered whether I was under any more delusions, 
 for I saw men standing and squatting round about 
 me, and a number of camels tethered at a little 
 distance, and these men had all of them face-veils, 
 and I knew they were Tawarek ; and when they 
 saw me move and look on them, some of them 
 started up and came towards me, and one said to 
 me, in the Hausa language, ' We took thee for a 
 dead man. How earnest thou here ? ' 
 
 Then I told them so much of my history as 
 would serve my purpose ; and, after consulting some 
 time among themselves, one of them that had a 
 spare camel that carried a little baggage mounted 
 me thereon, and we rode away. After several days' 
 travelling, during which the Tawarek treated me 
 kindly and gave me a sufficiency of food, we entered 
 a broad wadi, where there were many date-palms 
 growing, and this, I was told, was on the outskirts 
 of Ghat. 
 
 The Tawarek camped outside the town for a few 
 days, and then took me into Ghat, and sold me in the 
 slave-market to a Ghadamsi merchant, named Sidi 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 151 
 
 Bu Khamsa. And here, in Ghat, I first saw the 
 Turks. The Governor of the town and some 
 soldiers who live in a fort are Turks, but the 
 Tawarek are masters of the place. I do not think, 
 although you are expert at travelling, that you 
 would ever be able to reach Ghat, for the Tawarek 
 will let no Christian come into the place ; and, 
 indeed, men that I met there would boast in my 
 hearing of the number of Christians they had killed. 
 Some they said were Fransawi, 1 who had come from 
 the north, where the Fransawi ruled, and the 
 Tawarek would tell how they had killed some with 
 their spears, and had made others drink of poisoned 
 wells, and for this the Turks never punished them, 
 for they had not the power. 
 
 1 French 
 
152 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 I led a quiet life in Ghat, and grew fat and strong, 
 for there was plenty of food. My master, Sidi Bu 
 Khamsa, was a mild man, and treated me kindly, 
 seeing that I was a hard worker. He principally 
 employed me in his gardens, which were in the wadi 
 among the palm-groves, some distance from the 
 town. Here I worked a noria, 1 which a camel 
 turned round and round to bring up the water, and 
 I tended the herbs and vegetables in the garden 
 which the Ghadamsi was wont to sell in the Suk 2 at 
 Ghat. I was happy here, and began to forget all 
 my troubles, for my master, taking me into favour 
 for the willingness with which I worked, gave me 
 one of his slaves to wife, who was a native of Bornu. 
 I lived in the plantations, and so little troubled me 
 that I should have been content to have remained 
 there all the rest of my days. But after about three 
 
 1 Waterwheel. 2 Market. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 153 
 
 years, Sidi Bu Khamsa died, and all his property was 
 divided amongst his heirs. I, and my wife, and a 
 lot of other slaves, were all to be sold in the market, 
 because there was some dispute among the young 
 men who claimed the property ; therefore a day was 
 appointed when the sale should take place. 
 
 Now some merchants had come from Murzuk 
 for the purpose of trading, and when the auctioneer 
 was leading us through the bazaars to show us to 
 people who might wish to buy slaves, some of these 
 Fezzani traders came forward to inspect us, and 
 when one of them began to ask questions, I recognised 
 the voice as a voice I had heard before, and, looking 
 into the face of the man who had spoken, I saw it 
 was none other than the Fezzani who had so well 
 tricked me in the country of Azben, and nearly 
 brought about my death. But I gave no sign of 
 having recognised him, thinking it better to bide my 
 time and take my revenge surely. And he, looking 
 into my face, knew me not, for I had grown a beard 
 and was otherwise much changed during the time 
 which had passed since we had last met. More- 
 over, the Fezzani was suffering from the eye-sickness 
 which was common in Fezzan, and could not see 
 
i 5 4 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 clearly, so that when I was offered him for sale he 
 was obliged to touch my body with his hands to 
 ascertain that I was strong and well-made. 
 
 And the auctioneer, who was a kindly-hearted 
 man, wished that I should not be separated from my 
 wife, so he asked of the Fezzani a lower price if he 
 should buy the two of us. And after much haggling 
 he consented, and I was handed over to him, together 
 with my wife, for a sum of two hundred riyalat. 
 Then he took me away with him to the house in 
 which he lodged, and told me that he should return 
 in a few days to Murzuk, and that if I proved my- 
 self an honest and capable man he should put me in 
 charge of one of his plantations there. And to all 
 that he said I replied with sweet-sounding words ; 
 and though he asked me many questions, and told 
 me he had a fancy we had met before, I said nothing, 
 but concealed my thoughts from him. But to my 
 wife I told everything, and we arranged that we 
 would wait for a good opportunity to revenge our- 
 selves on this man. 
 
 When he had got together all his merchandise 
 and slaves, and loaded his camels, we set out for 
 Murzuk. Now the Fezzani had taken a fancy to 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 155 
 
 my wife, and resolved to make her his concubine, 
 and she conferring on this with me, I advised her 
 what she should do. In the gardens that we passed 
 through outside Ghat I plucked the berries from a 
 certain tree, 1 and at the first halting-place I gave 
 these to my wife, telling her to bruise them and put 
 their juice into the Fezzani's drink, so that he might 
 become stupefied. This she was not able to do 
 until several days were passed, for the Fezzani sent 
 not for her to come to him until we had arrived at 
 a great wadi between two high cliffs, where there 
 was much vegetation and abundance of fresh water, 
 for it had been raining in the mountains. Here 
 Al-Haj-Ayub, who was ailing, resolved to rest for 
 a while, as in this place there were a few aban- 
 doned huts, where some black people had at one 
 time lived, and in the middle of the first night after 
 we arrived here my wife came to where I was 
 sleeping and said : 
 
 ' I have done it. The Fezzani is now a dead 
 man, or likely to die. I ground up these berries 
 with the coffee that he bade me prepare for him, and 
 now he is lying in his tent like a corpse.' 
 
 1 Possibly the Datura or Thorn-apple. — H. H. J. 
 
156 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 The other slaves were all sleeping, except two 
 Fezzani servants, and these seemed to take little 
 note of what was going on near their master's tent. 
 So I crept in with my wife, and found Al-Haj-Ayub 
 still living. He had vomited much of the stuff my 
 wife had given him, and when I crawled into the 
 tent he was making some effort to raise his head. 
 
 Fearing lest he should recover, I seized a big 
 stone that kept down one side of the tent, and with 
 that smashed in the Fezzani's skull before he had 
 time to cry out. And after this, afraid for what I 
 had done, I hastily took such small things as I 
 could lay my hands on — pistols and such like — and, 
 beckoning to my wife to follow me, we crawled out 
 of the tent together and made our way very quietly 
 back to the place where I had been sleeping. And, 
 being accustomed to this moving about of slaves 
 at night-time within the camp, the two Fezzani 
 sentinels paid no heed to our movements — perhaps 
 even they were asleep. So I passed round among 
 the other slaves, such of them as were men, and 
 told them how and why I had killed the leader of 
 the caravan. And we consulted together in whis- 
 pers as to what we should do. I asked them why 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 we should always remain slaves to these Fezzani 
 and Ghadamsi people. Now that our master in 
 Ghat was dead, why should we not become free- 
 men ? And they all agreed that these words were 
 just. 
 
 Then I proposed that we should take the two 
 Fezzani sentinels by surprise and kill them, and 
 then divide amongst ourselves the plunder, and 
 afterwards go our own ways. This being agreed 
 to, before the morning light had come, such of us 
 as were strong men armed ourselves, and, stealing 
 up to the Fezzani sentinels through the rocks, we 
 suddenly threw ourselves upon them ere they were 
 yet awake, and wrenched their guns away from 
 them. Then we stabbed them with knives and 
 smashed in their heads with stones, and they were 
 soon put an end to. And when the daylight came 
 we divided the goods of the caravan, not without 
 some wrangling and dispute amongst ourselves ; 
 and I, being the leader of the men, took Al-Haj- 
 Ayub's camel, while the camels of the two other 
 Fezzani fell to the lot of other slaves. 
 
iS8 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 When all these matters were settled we hardly knew 
 what to do. Some advised that we should return to 
 Ghat and tell a tale which should explain our case, 
 and others counselled that we should continue on 
 the road to Murzuk and enter the town separately. 
 But as none knew the road, and we feared to lose 
 ourselves in the Desert, I for one resolved to stop for 
 the present where we were, inasmuch as the rains 
 had left a great pool of water in the wadi and we had 
 certain provisions of our master's to feed on ; so, 
 finding me of that opinion, the remainder of the 
 people agreed to stay. 
 
 For the first few weeks everything went well. 
 We patched up the abandoned huts with branches 
 from the athal and talha trees of the wadi, and took up 
 our abode in them, dividing the women slaves among 
 such as were the stronger men ; and we killed with 
 stones and caught in snares the ducks and desert- 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 159 
 
 fowls that came to the pool of water to drink ; and 
 we laid in wait for the great wadan, 1 the big animal 
 with the mane something of the sheep-kind which 
 you may find in some places in the Desert. 
 
 These wadan would come down in the night-time 
 from the great cliffs that surrounded the wadi to 
 browse on the sweet pasture which had sprung up 
 round the pool. Our houses were away from the 
 pool some little distance, half way up the cliff, and 
 therefore the wadan were not disturbed by our 
 presence. 
 
 So, in the darkness, we would creep down and 
 lie among the rocks near the water, and, if the wind 
 was in the right direction, and the wadan did not 
 scent us, we would sometimes manage to kill them 
 with our guns. But, after awhile, whether it was 
 that these were scared away by our having killed 
 some of their flock, or whether the camels were con- 
 suming the herbage, I do not know, but they ceased 
 to come, and the ducks and other fowl, too, began to 
 leave the wadi now that the drought was commenc- 
 ing and the pool drying up. And in this way we 
 began to be short of food, and were forced to kill the 
 1 Ovis Tragelaphus. 
 
i6o THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 camels one after the other, to eat their flesh. And 
 when the scarcity of food was felt, before we had 
 killed the camels, some of us were urgent that we 
 should leave this wadi and proceed towards Murzuk. 
 But it would seem that our master, the Fezzani, had 
 chosen an unfrequented route, in order to avoid the 
 bands of Ajhar Tawarek, which are always ready to 
 prey on small caravans in these countries, and that 
 only he and his Fezzani companions knew in what 
 direction the way should be taken towards Murzuk, 
 for although we searched about in all directions we 
 could find no issue from the wadi, which seemed 
 like a track, and when we scaled the cliffs and looked 
 round the horizon we could see nothing but sandhills 
 and desert — no palm-trees or any sign of water, and 
 I for one felt my heart fail me at the prospect of 
 risking ourselves in the Desert with only three camels 
 between us. So I was persistent in my resolve to 
 stop, even though we should eat the camels one after 
 the other, for, firstly, we had found a bag of seed-corn 
 among the Fezzani's goods, and this we had planted 
 in the moist ground near the pool ; and, secondly, 
 there was always the chance that another caravan of 
 travellers might pass by to whom we could tell some 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 161 
 
 plausible tale, and whom we might follow out of the 
 wadi. 
 
 There were also date-palms growing near our 
 house, but these being all females, and no one having 
 fertilised them with the pollen of the male at blos- 
 soming time, they were without fruit, and all we 
 could do with them was to cut them down one after 
 the other and eat their hearts and young leaves. But 
 as three or four months had passed, we began to be 
 in sore straits — less from the want of food, though, 
 than from the lack of water- — for the great pool 
 which had been formed in the middle of the wadi 
 from the rains on the mountains began rapidly to 
 dry up under the hot sun, and soon there was no 
 more water left in it ; and then for awhile we began 
 digging holes in the sand to reach the water, which 
 sank ever lower and lower. And as the water be- 
 came harder to reach, and more and more precious, 
 so bitter quarrels arose among us for its possession, 
 and we fought for each water-hole, and, although I 
 tried to keep order amongst the people, we were all 
 mad with thirst and longing to drink, and in these 
 fights one after the other was slain, and all the women 
 except my wife died from want of water, for the men 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 were greedy of what little water they brought up from 
 the water-holes, and would give none to their wives, 
 though with my wife I always shared what little I 
 could get. At last matters got to such a strait that I 
 said to those men that would listen to me : 
 
 ' Rather than wait here till every drop of water 
 is gone, let us start this night as soon as the sun is 
 down, and it is cool, and walk over the Desert as 
 fast as we can towards the west, so that we may per- 
 chance alight upon the first place we camped at be- 
 fore we reached this spot, where we may find water 
 or meet travellers, and better were it even that the 
 Tawarek should catch us, and hold us as slaves, than 
 that we should die of thirst or kill one another.' 
 
 Most of them agreed that there was sense in 
 these words, so we hastily threshed some of the 
 corn which was ripe, and carrying a store of food 
 and our guns, and such things as we could readily 
 carry about our persons, we set out and walked as 
 fast as we could, for the thirst that tormented us ; 
 but whether it was that in the darkness we could 
 not find the traces of our former route, or whether 
 the winds of the Desert had covered them over with 
 sand, I do not know, but in the morning we could 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 163 
 
 not tell what place we were in, or recognise any of 
 our surroundings, and there was no trace of water 
 anywhere. Our mouths were so parched that we 
 could hardly speak. 
 
 When I dragged myself to the summit of one of 
 the sandhills I could only recognise one feature in 
 the country round me, and that was the great cliffs 
 of the wadi, which we had left the evening before. 
 And now we were in a sorry case; we knew not 
 what to do. The heat of the day was so great that 
 the sand seemed to burn us, and make our thirst ten 
 times more dreadful, and some of the men were 
 struck down by the way with thirst and the heat of 
 the sun, and when we saw they were likely to die, 
 we, who still had strength to move, threw ourselves 
 on them and cut their throats, and then sucked 
 greedily such blood as flowed from them. 
 
 In such a manner very few of us kept ourselves 
 alive, and were able to walk a short distance, lying 
 down every now and then to rest in the shade of 
 such rocks as could protect us from the sun, and by 
 nightfall we had arrived at the base of a small hill, 
 where there were growing a few talha-trees. The 
 dew that night was heavy, and in some places, 
 
] 64 
 
 THE HISTOR Y OF A SLA VE 
 
 where the rocks were smooth and free from sand, it 
 lay almost as if rain had fallen, and here we ob- 
 tained some relief by passing our tongues over the 
 wet rock. Having moistened our mouths, we pro- 
 cured a little corn and swallowed it. When it was 
 morning, we saw some Dum palms far away, grow- 
 ing in a little hollow. Our hearts were gladdened 
 by this sight, because we knew it to be a sign that 
 water should be there, and so we set out in that 
 direction. 
 
 Now every day since we had left the wadi, 
 where we had lived several months, when the day 
 was at its hottest we would ofttimes see in the dis- 
 tance before us what appeared as great lakes of 
 water, with palm-trees on their shores. This is 
 some trick that the Jann of the Desert play on such 
 men as are lost in those regions, for it is only a de- 
 ception, as I have already told you. The further 
 and further one walks after these lakes, the more 
 they recede, until, when the sun sinks, they vanish 
 altogether. 
 
 The falseness of these seeming lakes and groves 
 was known to us, and we never diverted our steps 
 to reach them ; but on this morning, when we set 
 
' And she, too, ajier running for some distance, threw up her hands and 
 fell down in a heap. ' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 165 
 
 out to reach the Dum palms, my wife was distraught 
 in her head, and as the day grew hot and the Jann's 
 water began to show on the horizon, she would have 
 it that a great lake lay before us, and, indeed, think- 
 ing she was back in her own country, she pointed to 
 it, and called it the Tshad, imagining it to be the 
 great sea of Bornu. In vain I reasoned with her as 
 well as my dry tongue would permit. She would 
 pay no heed to what I said, and although we were 
 convinced that we should find water at the Dum 
 palms she would hear nothing of this, but set off full 
 pelt in the opposite direction, crying out that she 
 could see her mother and the house she used to live 
 in. My strength was too little to enable me to 
 follow her and bring her back by force, and she, too, 
 after running for some distance threw up her hands 
 and fell down in a heap. And then the others, my 
 companions, crying out that her death-hour was at 
 hand, ran up and threw themselves on her and cut 
 her throat, and greedily sucked the blood. But I, 
 in spite of my thirst, had not the heart to join them, 
 for even in that time of madness I remembered that 
 she was my own wife. And after awhile a stupor 
 came over me whilst I watched them, and I slept. 
 
1 66 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 When I awoke it was late afternoon, and there 
 were none of my companions round me. For some 
 time I could not remember what had happened, but 
 when I gathered my thoughts together I got up and 
 made my way with such speed as I might to the 
 place where the Dum palms were growing, and here 
 I found my companions digging at a hole in the 
 sand, near the base of one of the palms, and the 
 sand they were scooping out was wet, and they 
 were dashing it in their faces, and even cramming 
 it into their mouths. I did the same to cool my 
 tongue. Presently the water seemed to rise up 
 between our hands, and at the bottom of the hole we 
 had scooped there lay a small pool of water. With 
 this we filled our mouths, washed out all the sand, 
 loosened our tongues, and cooled our palates, and 
 then each in turn stooped down to the hole and 
 drank largely of the water. When our thirst was 
 quenched, we ate of our store of corn and lay down 
 to sleep. 
 
 The next morning we again drank our fill from 
 the water-hole, and were loth to quit the place after 
 all we had suffered. Two or three days went by 
 like this until we were beginning to feel the pangs of 
 
' For at this hour he is wont to leave the Mosque of the Olive Tree.'' 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 167 
 
 hunger, and then we filled our gourds full of water 
 and journeyed again westward, looking for some 
 track we might follow. 
 
 Before we had gone half-a-day's journey we 
 sighted a caravan, and with great joy made up to 
 them. We found them to be Fezzani merchants 
 travelling to Murzuk, and to them we related how 
 our master's caravan had been attacked and dispersed 
 by Tawarek, and that we were the sole survivors. 
 Then the leader of the caravan took me as his slave, 
 and distributed the rest of my companions among 
 other big men of the caravan, telling us we should 
 be fed and well treated if we behaved ourselves in a 
 befitting manner. 
 
 After several days' journeying with no mishap 
 we reached Murzuk, and here the leader of the 
 caravan sold me to my present master Sidi Abd- 
 al-Ghirha, who was a great man of the Senusiya 
 brotherhood, and a Kaid under the Turks at Murzuk. 
 Sidi Abd-al-Ghirha set me to work in his planta- 
 tions, and being pleased at my behaviour, when he 
 resolved to leave Fezzan and settle in Tarabulus, he 
 took me with him, for he is in favour with the Turks, 
 and, as you know, a great man in this place. Is he 
 
1 68 THE HISTORY OF A SLAVE 
 
 not a Sherif — a descendant of the Prophet and 
 learned in Mohammedan law ? I have now been in 
 Tarabulus perhaps six months. 
 
 This is the end of all I can relate to you of such 
 things that have happened to me as are worthy of 
 remembrance. I have talked too long to you to-day. 
 Already it is time I saddled my master's baghala (she 
 mule), and went to meet him, for at this hour he 
 is wont to leave the Mosque of the Olive Tree. 
 Now if I have pleased you by all the words I have 
 spoken, show it to me in your generosity. What is 
 this? Six — seven — eight riyalat ! Alhamchi- lillah ! 
 Nasrani kulluhum karam ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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