WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA
LIVERPOOL TO FERNANDO PO.
WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA
FROM
LIVERPOOL TO FERNANDO PO.
BY A F.R.G.S.
S2itfj fHap anS EDustratum.
TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON :
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1863.
[The Rigid of Translation is resewed.]
LONDON :
BRADBUBT AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFBIARS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI. (continued},
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OP COCOA PALMS ... 1
CHAPTER VII.
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AT CAPE COAST CASTLE . . . 39
CHAPTER VIII.
GOLD IN AFRICA 104
CHAPTER IX.
A PLEASANT DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS . . . . 132
CHAPTER X.
A DAY AT LAGOS. . .* 186
CHAPTER XI.
BENIN NUN BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO Po 242
WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
CHAPTER VI. (continued.)
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF COCOA PALMS.
" Cape de las Palmas, a fair high land ; hut having on the eastern
side some low places by the shore which look like red cliffs, with white
streaks resembling highways, reaching the length of a cable."
Capt, JOHN LAKE, the first English visitor at this place in 1554.
16TH SEPTEMBER, 186 .
AFTER subscribing to the Cavalla Messenger,* and
taking leave of Mr. Hoffman, with gratitude for his
kindness, indeed highly pleased with the civility of all
after our short but sharp experience at S'a Leone, we
walked back to the Hotel, where we found a luncheon
provided for us by Mr. John Marshall. Our leave of
absence was soon ended ; we unfolded umbrellas a pre-
* It is published monthly at Cavalla, the head-quarters of Bishop
Payne. The printing, which is tolerable, is "done" by two native
youths. The subscription, payable in advance, is fifty cents (two
shillings) per annum ; or, including postage per steamer, seventy-five
cents.
2 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
caution never to be disregarded in these latitudes, where
the more you know of the sun the more you respect him
and took our way to the boats. On the steps a docu-
ment was handed to me : it bore the novel direction :
For Nanpopo (Fernando Po),
MR. FRIDAY,
In the care of one* Crewman (Kruman).
The Consul had failed in recruiting men. " Nanny
Po/' was a word of fear to the Krumen ; they had been
made to work in gardens and on the roads, and they
complained most falsely, I afterwards found of "^toco
comer, mucho trabajo." Some of them had been engaged
for one year, not two, and had been kept for three the
usual time to the great sorrow of their mammies and
to the abiding resentment of themselves. Hearing the
Consul speak a few words of Spanish, they decided him
to be " a Tanyer," and resolutely refused, with charac-
teristic independence, to accompany him. One man
came down to the wharf and expressed willingness to
engage; he asked, besides passage to and from his country,
and food, clothes, and lodging, $4 and 2 pezetas per
mensem $2 being the usual wages. His terms were
agreed to, but he forgot to come on board. We also
failed in buying Kru canoes, which are useful for fishing
and for sending notes to ships in harbour. They are
usually plentiful, and sell for II. each; the people,
however, in actual sight of " siller/' declared that they
* The African language has no indefinite article : hence one is always
used for our a.
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 3
wanted all their craft, and I know the African too well to
waste time when he urges that plea and takes that stand.
Cape Palmas, called Bamnepo by the natives, is in
the county of Maryland, the easternmost of the five into
which the Liberian Republic is divided, beginning from,
the east Sinoe, Bassa, Mesurado, in which the capital
stands, and Kassa, the northernmost which contains the
much-vexed Gallinhas River. It was begun in 1834 by
the Maryland State Colonization Society, which granted
to it an annual sum of 2000^ from the treasury. The
Governor, or, as he is here called, the Superintendent
of Public Affairs at Cape Palmas Station, is Hon.
J. C. Gibson, who is under the present President of
Liberia, Hon. S. A. Benson, who succeeded ex-Presi-
dent Eoberts, a good working man, but as arbitrary as
democrats when in power are apt to be. There are two
senators Hon. J. Marshall, and Hon. J. Moulton.
Whenever a dispute arises between the colonists arid the
natives, a council, composed of the Superintendent and
the Senators, together with the African Headman, holds
"palaver" upon the subject. The Krumen have as
yet shown a rooted aversion to all taxation ; they prefer
to be plundered wholesale, at uncertain periods, by their
own people, than pay a certain and invariable, though
trifling assessment, for law, order, and protection. Con-
sequently Harper is rather depressed for want of means.
The principal income is from ships entering the harbour;
they are charged 3 Is. for anchorage and lighthouse
dues. Another tax might be put upon water, of
B 2
4 . WANDEEINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
which there are good, but not abundant, springs at the
Cape. The number of Krumen who flock to this station
for employment seldom falls below 1500, and of course
it is made a source of profit to individual colonists. The
Republic desires that trade be restricted to six ports of
entry, of which Harper is one.*
The Methodists who, about eight years ago, established
themselves in these lands, number the largest body of
Christians in Liberia their annals, however, are a necro-
logy. The reader may see below the state of the Protes-
tant Episcopal Mission at the time of my visit.f In the
* Of these six, three are in one county, and one in each of the
others, viz. :
Roberts Port, J
Monrovia, I Mesurad County.
Marshall, \
Buchanan, Bassa County.
Gxeenhill, Sinoe County.
Harper, Maryland County.
+ " The Mission Field about Cape Palmas.
"It was a wise and merciful Providence which first directed the
Protestant Episcopal Mission, and others, to Cape Palmas and parts ad-
jacent. It was the healthiest of the settlements then made on the
coast. Unlike some other portions of the Liberian coast, the tribes
around had not been thinned or broken up by the slave trade and
domestic wars which it ever excites. While the Cavalla River, alive
with an active trade, opened a highway eighty miles into the interior.
"These favourable circumstances, made known by Dr. James Hall,
then Governor at Cape Palmas, and Rev. Dr. Wilson, who accompanied
him on his expedition to purchase land for the colony, determined the
Foreign Committee of the Protestant Episcopal Church to commence
their missionary work at Cape Palmas.
" In the autumn of 1836, Rev. Dr. Savage arrived at Cape Palmas,
Mr. James M. Thomson, a Liberian, had been employed by the Foreign
Committee to make preliminary arrangements, and had so well
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 5
several settlements of Rocktown, Fishtown, and Springhill
there are about 130 catechumens, who are instructed by
occupied his time that when Dr. Savage arrived, the lot at Mount
Vaughan was partially cleared, and Mr. Thomson had gathered a small
native school in a thatched house on the premises.
"On July 4th, 1837, Rev. Messrs. Minor and Payne joined Dr.
Savage. By this time the first Mission House at Mount Vaughan was
so far completed that, by putting up curtains, we managed to make out
three rooms for the Mission family.
"In the Mission field they found Rev. Dr. Wilson and associates of
the American Board occupying Cape Palmas, Rocktown, Fishtown, and
Half Cavalla ; and Rev. F. Burns, of the Methodist Mission, regularly
in the colony.
"The field immediately about the Cape being so well occupied, the
Protestant Episcopal Mission at once directed its efforts towards the
interior. Accordingly, while Mr. Payne officiated for a small colonist
congregation, and occasionally at ' Joe War's Town ' (not Hoffman
station), Grahway and Perebo, Mr. Minor was sent to make arrange-
ments to open a station at DihnS (Dinnah), on the Cavalla, thirty miles
from its mouth.
"The lot had been selected for the building and the plan of the house
decided upon when the people of Bareke, a larger town midway between
Mount Vaughan and Dihne, insisted upon our having a Mission station
at their place before going beyond them.
" As they commanded the road, we could do no better than fall back
on Bareke. Here, again, Mr. Minor had gone and selected a Mission
lot ; and King Tedi Blia had visited Mount Vaughan to complete arrange-
ments for building, when suddenly war broke out between Bareke and
the colony, and our progress was again arrested. Soon after this, Dr.
Wilson, of the American Board, and associates determined to remove
their Mission to the Gaboon River, and their stations about Cape
Palmas were gradually transferred to the Protestant Episcopal Mission."
"General Statistics of the Protestant Episcopal Mission at Capes
Palmas and Parts adjacent.
"We give this month the general statistics of our Mission. We
shall be most happy to receive from our brethren the coast statistics of
their Mission, and any items of intelligence connected therewith.
6 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
three Anglo- Americans and their families. With excel-
lent sense the missionaries employ their pupils for a
short time in reading and writing, ciphering, and
psalmody, and for a long time in learning trades and
handicraft. Education is cheap; the poor pay but
2 cents, the rich $5, a year. They thus form a Civili-
zation Society; whilst others, neglecting all things save
the cure of souls, are successful in producing, as the
phrase is, more convicts than converts. They possess
however a great advantage in the collaboration of a
coloured population, not from Jamaica, or from what
"Stations. Colonists, 6 ; natives, 15. Total, 21.
" These Stations extend 270 miles along the coast, from Monrovia to
Taboo ; and seventy-five miles interior, from Cavalla to Bohlen.
"Missionaries. Foreign, 4; colonists, 4. Total, 8.
"Catechists, Teachers, and Assistants. Foreign, 5; colonial, 8.
and native, 18. Total, 31.
" Baptisms (past year returns imperfect). Infant, 13; adult, 21.
Total, 34.
" Confirmations (past year), 37.
"Communicants. For eign and colonists, 211 ; native, 158. Total,
369.
"Boarding Scholars. Colonists, 37; natives, 104. Total, 140.
"Day Scholars. Colonists, 133 ; natives, 250. Total, 383.
"Sunday Scholars. Colonists, 334 ; natives, 150. Total, 484.
" Candidates for Orders. Foreign, 1 ; colonists, 4 ; natives, 2.
Total, 7.
"Field of labour of Liberia. Three counties, eight native tribes
aggregate population, 16,000.
"The Grebo language reduced to writing: Genesis, four Gospels,
Acts, Common Prayer Book (in part), Bible History, Life of Christ,
Hymn Book, Primer, Grebo History and Dictionary published in the
language. Also, printing press; paper the 'Cavalla Messenger'
published monthly,"
SIX HOUES AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 7
may perhaps be worse, Barbadoes, but from the United
States. Civilized and perfectly capable of managing
and utilizing their wild congeners, the colonists appear
in a most favourable light after the semi-reclaimed Akus
and Ibos, their northern neighbours. They have even
proposed to take charge of S'a Leone ; and I doubt not
that, if permitted, they would soon effect important
changes. Liberia is a Republic, that is to say, she is
pretty far gone in the ways of despotism the only fit
government for " Africa and the Africans/' "Mort-e alia
constituzione !" (in these lands) I exclaim with the un-
happy Florentines, when they marched in arms through
their streets and put a forcible end to a system which
imposed upon them by an ambitious and unscrupulous
media ceto, a dynasty of doctors, lawyers, professors, and
professional politic-mongers, enslaved them to 1000
rogues in esse, instead of to possibly one.
Liberia is at present in trouble; we heard many
rumours of wars, and saw martial preparations when on
shore. The Spanish vice-consul of Accra, who was on
board, did not disembark at Cape Palmas. At S'a Leone
our Frenchman there is always one on board in these
steamers had blurted out something which might not
have pleased H,I.M.S.S. La Ceres. According to him this
gun-boat had sailed from Fernando Po to settle a dispute
touching the Gallinhas River. She had entered the
harbour and had attacked the " Quail/' generally known
as the " Lively Quail/' in the harbour of Monrovia, and
had sunk her and her crew, receiving but a single shot
8 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
through her cabin door. The " Quail" is an old schooner,
now carrying three guns one 32 -pounder and two
12-pounder carronades. She was presented by the
British Government to assist in the suppression of the
slave trade. She is one of the two that compose the
"Liberian Navy;" the other vessel, a gift from the
United States, never puts out to sea.
Now all this was a canard. The facts proved to be as
follows. Of course there are two versions of the affair :
that of the Spaniards, and that of the Liberians. I will
give precedence to the former.
The Spaniards assert that a small vessel named the
"Buenaventura Cubano," touched, on her way from Tene-
rife to Fernando Po, at the Gallinhas River, and was cast
upon rocks inside the bar. That the master, seeing an
opportunity, began to trade for palm-oil, when the "Quail"
of Liberia attacked her, hauled down the Spanish flag,
plundered the cargo, and compelled the master and men
to fly from assassination. That the goelette "La Ceres "
was sent for the purpose of demanding satisfaction at
Liberia, where, finding batteries and ships prepared to
attack her, she fired into the " Quail" and retired. They
deny the right of Liberia to the Gallinhas waters, and
they assert that were the contrary the case, as they have
neither treaties nor established usages with Liberia, that
the latter cannot be allowed to molest their subjects.
Finally, they demand suitable reparation for the offence,
and indemnification for the loss of the cause of dispute.
The Liberiaiis, on the other hand, declare that Prince
SIX. HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 9
Mannah, the Chief of Gallinhas, reported to head-quarters
that a Spanish ship was in the river with slave gear on
board, and collecting her live cargo. That the " Quail/'
having ascertained these facts, captured her on the 30th
May, 1861, and was about to tow her to Monrovia
for judgment at the Admiralty Court, when the officer
commanding Her Majesty's ship "Torch" sent the prize
crew away, and hauled down the (single) star-spangled
banner of the Republic, and on the 13th June, 1861,
burned the Liberian prize. That, so far from injuring
the Spanish subjects, they had been permitted to go
to S'a Leone, where there is a Spanish consul-general,
and to take with them all necessary supplies ; moreover,
that Prince Mannah had provided them with a large canoe.
That the "Ceres/' having recounoitered the harbour
of Monrovia, returned about fourteen days afterwards,
and steamed in under pretext of visiting the President.
That without any warning she began firing, on the llth
September, 1861, into the " Quail," when the batteries
gave her such a dose that she was glad to make her
escape.* That the Gallinhas is within the Republic's
jurisdiction, and she is- bound by treaties with Great
Britain to suppress slavery within her dominions.
Finally, that her weakness is her strength quoad the
great Powers of Europe ; that one of them has weakened
her authority with the aborigines, and that she is entitled
* The "Cavalla Messenger" confirms this: "The ' Ceres' received so
spirited a response from the ' Quail, ' which was anchored under the
fort's guns, that she withdrew, having suffered, it is said, considerably."
10 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
to reparation for the attack of the " Ceres" and remunera-
tion for the legal prize burned by the British officer.
This great question evidently turns upon the owner-
ship of the Gallinhas waters. In 1842, block-houses
were recommended to the British Government for the
suppression of slave trade evidently showing that in
those days it was not Liberian territory. In 1848 took
place the after-dinner conversation between Lord Ashley
and Mr. Gurney with Mr. President Roberts, and the
wily negro persuaded them that by paying 2000, slavery
would be eradicated from the Gallinhas River and,
700 miles annexed to the Republic. In 1849, H.M.S.
" Albert," Commander Dunlop, broke up the slave
factories they had been previously injured by Captain
Denham, R.N. and carried off European traders and
1200 slaves to S'a Leone. The Republicans, however,
insist that the land and the several points known as
the Gallinhas were bought on the 13th April, 1850,
from Prince Mannah and the other chiefs. On the
other hand, it is believed that the Prince totally denies
the transaction. As has already been said, Africans
have no idea of permanently alienating land which is
common property, not that of the king or chiefs ; even a
written contract implies, according to their ideas, only that
the stranger has the rights of citizenship and of personal
occupancy.* A joint commission is, I believe, in orders
* Of course our popular writers in "Chambers" and so forth assert that
the native chiefs transferred the sovereignty of their country to the
Liberian Government, and general readers believe them. It is thus
that history is written. Evidently the natives should be consulted,
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 11
to settle the north-western limits of Liberia. Should
the Gallinhas fall to them, they purpose to establish
another port of entry either on that river or on the
Shebar, and where it would not be too near Roberts
Port, and to name it Gurney, after their late bene-
factor.
It would hardly be fair to leave Cape Palmas without
saying something touching its peculiar population. The
theme has been treated by every writer upon the subject
of this coast, Owen, Boteler, Smith, Wilson, Hutchinson,
and Durrant, not to mention dozens of others. Yet
there is more to say than has been said.*
The word Kru written Croo, Kroo, Krou, and, by
other writers, Carow and Crew, upon the principle that
Sipahi became Sepoy, or Seapie is a corruption of the
name by which the people call themselves " Krdo." It
is a small tribe, living about half-way between Cape
Mesurado and Cape Palmas, about seventy-five miles
above or to the north-west of the latter. The district
extends from twenty to thirty miles along the coast, and
and if the sale be bond fide it should be confirmed to Liberia, and vice
versd. At present, uncertainty causes much irritation, and the mer-
chants of Sierra Leone are preparing to assert their joint rights to the
Gallinhas by force if necessary.
* The following remarks concerning the origin of the Kru are derived
from information received from Bishop Payne, and from the Introduc.
lion to Ms Dictionary of the Grebo Language. New York : Jenkins,
Frankfort Street, 1860.
The little volume contains about 2500 words, or nearly half the
language. It is to be hoped that this excellent Minister of the Gospel
will soon publish his expected Grammar of the Grebo tongue.
12 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
perhaps, as much into the interior. They had originally
five chief settlements, which, beginning from the north-
west, are Little Kru; Settra Kru the chief town, Krubah,
Nanna Kru, or Kru Settra, and King Will's Town. They
were the first to go to sea, and, as some twenty other
tribes, numbering, perhaps, 150,000 souls, followed their
example, all are now known by -the common name
Krumen. As Mr. M'Queen says, they never enslave one
another; yet they were the life and soul of the Spanish and
Portuguese slavers, and they proved themselves probably
the greatest kidnappers on the coast. They first began the
peculiar tattoo, which the adjoining tribes soon imitated,
and now they are in the habit of buying bushmen and
boy-slaves, and marking them like themselves, thus
transforming them to " Krumen," that they may be
engaged as seamen. When the slave-trade began to
decline, they preferred the service of ships of war and
merchantmen, they visited S'a Leone in considerable
numbers, and they became the Coolies and Lascars
of West Africa. They seem to be created purposely
for the oil trade.
The chief tribes that followed their example were the
people of Niffu, or Piccaninny Sess; the Bwidabe, or
Fishrnen; the Menawe of Grand Sess, the Wi&bo of
Garoway, the Babo below Cavalla River, the Plabo,* and
* On this part of the coast, all the places and tribes have double
names. The Cavalla River is called Dokrinyun ; Cape Monrovia,
Trubo ; Cape Mount, Chepe ; Drewin, Wayra ; St. Andrew's, Nisonti ;
and Settra Kru, Wete. Of individual names, more hereafter.
SIX HOUES AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 13
others, extending to Cape St. Andrew's, and about forty
miles into the interior. Of these tribes, who are all
cognate, as their language and physique prove, the most
influential are the Grebos of Cape Palmas : the total
number, however, probably does not exceed 40,000.
Like the peoples generally upon the African coast, they
have lately come from the interior. Their own tradition
is, that a Kobo Kui, or foreign house no doubt some
European slave factory was found by them on arrival
at Cape Palmas. Their earliest settlements near the sea
were behind Berebi, sixty miles to the eastward. After
becoming too numerous for their narrow limits, a portion
of them determined, Irish-like, upon a kind of exodus
to the west. The movement was secretly managed,
because it was opposed to the wishes of the majority.
Whilst embarking, a number of canoes were capsized,
and those in them were left behind. They were called
Woribo, or the Capsized, from the verb Wore. The
others, who succeeded in bounding over the waves, took
the name of Grebo, from the jumping grey monkey,
Gre or Gri.
Proceeding up the coast, the Grebos landed detached
parties in the country now inhabited by the Bubos, at
Cavalla and at Cape Palmas, where they built small
temporary settlements. They continued their migration
as far as Grand Sesters, forty miles above Cape Palmas :
at length, directed by an oracle, they all gathered together
and built on the Cape of Cocoas a large town, called
Bwini, or Bwirnli. These wanderings account for the
14 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
close analogy of the Grebo tongue and that of Sino
(written Siuori, or Sinoe), in N. lat. 5 l', or about
ninety miles to the north-west of Harper. At Grand
Sesters there are still large branches of the Grebo
family, and many merchant-ships prefer them as being
the best-conducted men. After them are the people of
Niffu, or Piccaninny Sesters. For fishing, the Fish-
men are the best servants.
Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to call the Grebo
"Krumen." As, however, the people of this coast
readily converse together, hold constant intercourse, and
are remarkably like one another in physique, as in
morale, they may be described as one, and the best
name for them is that which custom sanctions
Krumen.
The peculiar contrast of feature and figure which dis-
tinguishes this people has already been described.
The features are distinctly African, without an ad-
mixture of Arab; the conjunctiva is brown, yellow, or
tarnished, a Hamitic peculiarity ; and some paint white
goggle-like ovals round the orbits, producing the effect
of a " loup." This is sometimes done for sickness, and
invalids are rubbed over with various light and dark
coloured powders. The skin is very dark, often lamp-
black ; others are of a deep rich brown or bronze tint,
but a light-complexioned man is generally called Tom
Coffee ; and people put waggish questions touching his
paternity. They wear the hair, which is short and
kinky, in crops, which look like Buddha's skull-cap ;
SIX EOUES AT TEE CAPE OF PALMS. 15
and they shave when mourning for their relations : a
favourite "fash." is to scrape off a parallelogram behind
the head, from the poll to the cerebellum ; and others
are decorated in that landscape or parterre style which
wilder Africa and Germany love. The back of the
cranium is often remarkably flat, and I have seen many
heads of the pyramidal shape, rising narrow and pointed
high to the apex. The beard is seldom thick, and never
long ; the moustachio is removed, and the pile, like the
hair, often grows in tufts. The tattoo has been described :
there seems to be something attractive in this process
the English sailor can seldom resist the temptation.
They also chip, sharpen, and extract the teeth. Most
men cut out an inverted Y between the two middle
incisors of the upper jaw ; others draw one or two of
the central and lower incisors ; others, especially the St.
Andrew's men, tip or sharpen the incisors, like the
"Waliiao, and several Central African tribes. Odonto-
logy has its mysteries. Dentists seem, or rather seemed
to hold as a theory, that destruction of enamel involves
the loss of the tooth ; the Krumen hack their masticators
with a knife, or a rough piece of hoop iron, and find
that the sharpening, instead of producing caries, acts
as a preservative, by facilitating the laniatory process.
Similarly there are physiologists who attribute the pre-
servation of the negro's teeth to his not drinking any-
thing hotter than blood heat. This is mere empiricism.
The Arabs swallow their coffee nearly boiling, and the
East African will devour his agali, or porridge, when
16 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the temperature would scald the hand. Yet both these
races have pearls of teeth, except when they chew lime
or tobacco.* The Krumen, like most other wild people,
always wash the teeth after eating. A cleanly race, and
never passing a day unless it be very cold without
bathing, the African fetor is not always perceptible, but
it exists. f The hands and feet are large and coarse, but
not such outrages to proportion as the races further south.
The Krumen show all that propensity to ape Euro-
peans which characterizes the African generally. A noble
savage enough in his semi-nudity, when a single shukkeh
covers his middle the women wear even less with a
bead necklace, and coarse iron, ivory, or brass rings round
his wrists and ankles ; he is fond of making himself
grotesque, as an old-clo' man. The hat is borrowed from
the sailor ; it is of every form chimney-pot, Kossuth,
skull-cap, naval casquette, red nightcap, straw or broad-
brimmed wide-awake ; not ^infrequently it surmounts a
bandanna, or some gaudy kerchief. A tooth-stick is in
every mouth, and not a few snuff or chew. The neck is
variously decorated, from the band of hairy skin to
the Popo, or Aggri bead,J which, on the Gold Coast,
* On the other hand, it is said of the Guanches at Tenerife that
"they drank nothing hut water, and that only at a certain period after
eating anything heated, for fear of destroying their teeth."
+ The Persians find a similar fetor in the Jewish race, and call it hy
a peculiar name "bui shimit." This, however, arises probably not
so much from the conformation of the skin, as from the extreme impurity
of the race.
t Much has been written touching these beads, which are dug from
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 17
is more valuable than gold. The favourite ornaments
are strings of leopards' teeth, small chains of brass and
iron, and beads of every form and substance glass and
porcelain, white and black, blue, green, and yellow ; the
necklace is used to hold the clay dudheen, of European
make. The wrists bear from one to half a dozen ivory
bracelets, rings painfully cut out with a knife, and turned
with a wet cord rubbed to and fro ; the most pretentious
of these decorations have the wearer's name engraved
upon the ivory in coloured letters, or upon a brass-plate,
or expressed in metal tacks forming the words ; they are
at once passports and characters for future service. On
the arm, also, is the Gri, or Petish, leopards' teeth, or
the smallest deer-horns, with cowries and other " medi-
cine " bound on by a bit of string. Ligatures round the
ankles are similarly fetished, and some are drawn so
tight that the cord leaves a deep mark upon the skin.
I presume that, like the tribes of the Arab Bedouins,
these are intended for ligatures in case of snake bites ;
they are certainly the only alleviation when suffering from
cramp, a painful nervous disease in these lands, ever
liable to be induced by cold, wet, or confined positions.
They are fond of finger-rings, but care little whether
they are gold, silver, or brass. The pagne, or loin cloth,
is generally a cheque of white and pink or blue ; it is
tied round the waist, or tucked into a cord : and only
great swells have cricket, military, or elastic belts. Some
the ground. Many are found upon the Liberian coast, and cannot be
imitated in Europe. Some travellers have derived them from Egypt.
VOL. n. c
18 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
carry sticks of peculiar shape, edged and notched like
certain Hindostani swordblades. The few women whom
we saw were shaven-pated and nude to their loins, which
were covered with the scantiest cloth : they showed a
decided steatopyga and the pulpy African development.
Their principal ornaments were massive brass anklets; and
all were at work, carrying upon their heads rice-bags in
wicker cradles, and freshly-caught fish in the bark band-
boxes described by Central African travellers. The chil-
dren are attired secundum naturam, except the mission
boys, who are decently clad in loose jackets and panta-
loons : they have all two "given names," <?. g., A. B.
Smith ; and the negrillons about the house are also
promoted to shirt and loin-cloth.
The Rev. Mr. Wilson, late of the Gaboon Mission,
who, some thirty years ago, took so active a part in
purchasing land for the colony, has well and accurately
described in a book to which the reader is referred,* the
curious polity of this people. Like the Guanches of
Tenerife, and indeed most primitive people from Etruria
to India, the Kru Republic is divided into four classes,
which can hardly, however, be called castes. These are
the elders, the middle-aged men who form the sol-
diery ; the youth who aspire to become warriors ; and
the demon doctors, priests, and physicians. As amongst
* Western Africa ; its History, Condition, and Prospects. New
York : Harper and Brothers, 1856. Chap. 6 is the best treatise on the
Kru Republic that I know. Generally the work abounds in flaws, but
if properly edited it would form a good handbook of Western Africa.
SIX HOURS AT THE GAPE OF PALMS. 19
the Wanyika of the Eastern Coast, there appears to be
a regular initiation to each step in rank.* The two
first classes meet in deliberative assembly when any mea-
sure touching the public interests is proposed ; the juve-
niles, however, are expected to be seen and not heard,
except when the subject discussed has special reference
to their own body. Oratory, as amongst all African
tribes, is greatly cultivated, and to judge from its effects
upon the audience, with success. A highly aristocratic
form is secured by the preponderance of the first class
in the commonwealth. The youths are hardly per-
mitted to hold property ; if they return wealthy from
beyond the sea their gains are systematically appropriated.
Nay, more : even an elder who presumes to excel his
fellows in riches or importance is at once reduced, for
"too much sass," to the general level. The "sauce-
wood," or red wood of the giddu tree, ordeal is fearfully
prevalent amongst them, killing its thousands ; the only
check is, that if the defendant survives the poisonous
draught, the plaintiff must drink it in his turn. Capital
punishment is rare, except in cases of murder or witch-
craft, where the criminal is beaten to death or drowned.
As usual amongst uncivilized people, even the Chinese,
little difference is made between wilful murder and
justifiable homicide : the object seems to teach the value
of human life. Adultery and theft are punished by fine,
* "Among the Wanyika the orders are three in number : Nyene, the
young ; Khanbi, the middle-aged; and Nfaya, the old." Zanzibar, and
Two Months in East Africa. Blackwood's Magazine, Feb., 1858.
c 2
20 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
and the informer is regarded with general contempt.
Another check upon crime is the system of headmen.
The eldest male member of the several families into
which the tribes are divided, is at once their representa-
tive in palavers, and their security for good behaviour.
Property is held as a kind of joint-stock, and from it
fines and other penalties for misdemeanors must be
paid.
The morale of this people appears to the European
exceedingly contradictory, not to say unintelligible. The
same, however, may be affirmed of all barbarous tribes,
where viewed with purely civilized eyes. For instance,
the Krumen have, for the last two centuries, been a race
of sailors ; they have chosen what is by no means an un-
dangerous profession, and they are accustomed to cross
the perilous bars, and to trust themselves to the mercy
of the sharks and the breakers. Yet they are arrant
cowards. When real firing begins on board ship, they
will run and hide themselves in the coal bunkers.
During the descent of the Niger, in 1859, \vhen the
hostile villages below Abo shot at the Government Con-
tract Steamer "Bainbow," Captain Creen, it was neces-
sary to drive the Krumen from their retreat behind
the paddle-boxes. They will desert their master upon
the least appearance of danger. It is impossible to
mistake their state of panic : if a roller strikes a boat
anexpectedly, they will lay oars by, gaze with a blank
face, and if the stick be not used, rise to spring over-
board. The least corporal punishment makes them
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 21
scream like women, and, unlike most Africans, they are
exceedingly sensitive to pain. Sickness afflicts them
mentally as well as bodily ; and if one of a boat's crew
be lost off a bar, or devoured by sharks, it is found
advisable to send the others home. The canoe men or
Guinea men on the other hand, if supplied with a gallon
of rum, will forget the mishaps by the next day. Kru
poltroonery is open and unaffected ; other African tribes
appear ashamed to show it; the Kruman, however,
boasts of it. If you ask him to fight, he replies uri-
blushingly that he has but one life, and wishes again to
see " we country." I have no doubt that excessive affec-
tion for their own land and for their parents especially
for the mother partly causes this loathing to face danger.
But though there are exceptions amongst them, and
some few are brave, even to ferocity, as a rule there is
110 mistaking their timidity. During the Indian mutiny,
it was proposed to levy a Kru battalion, and officers
were selected for that purpose. The project suddenly
fell to the ground, owing, it is said, to the contra-
dictory statements of the best authorities ; some recom-
mending the Krus as excellent food for powder, others
reporting them as far readier to run away than to do
battle. I made many inquiries upon the subject, and
after seeing much of the Krumen, and learning some-
thing of their language, I satisfied myself that they
would be quite useless as soldiers ; they would not fight,
they prefer ship-work to shore- work, and as their women
never travel, they would not willingly engage themselves
22 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
for any length of time. " Un des plus grands malheurs
des honnetes gens" says a French author, with great
truth, "cest quils sontdes laches;" this, however, cannot
be applied to Krumen. Besides cowardice, their prin-
cipal fault is thieving, a disposition which they never
fail to evince ; and nothing comes amiss to them, from
wholesale robbery to petty prigging. Like the true
coward, too, they are bullies when they meet those more
timid than themselves. Some years ago they seized the
north-west part of Fernando Po, from the feeble Bubes,
plundered the people, carried off the women, and were
defeated only by the combined action of the natives by
land, and Governor Beecroft who attacked them from
the sea. When the Niger expedition was encamped at
Jeba, in 1857-58, the Kru seamen stole from them
about 140/. worth of cloth, cowries, mirrors, and small
ware. The robbery was discovered by the natives firing
the grass, and the whole was consumed. Fanaticism
ruined the unfortunate Niger expedition of 1841 Phi-
lanthropy and disputes that of 1857-62 : these rascally
Krumen were actually allowed to remain unflogged. Their
favourite style of thieving, however, is on the smallest
scale : knives, penknives, and scissors, will be taken
out of the master's room, turnscrews and brass-tipped
ramrods will disappear most inexplicably. They have
no hesitation in robbing from one another's boxes, arms,
and ammunition, wire, padlocks, and similar articles.
"When a crew is dismissed, the master usually insists
upon the large chests in which they have stowed away
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 23
their goods, being examined, and finds nothing: the
cunning villains have either trusted their spoils to a
comrade, or they have sent them on by another ship.
They never, except when soundly flogged, "peach" upon
one another ; and if one of a gang commits a robbery,
all expect to benefit by it. Similarly, if rations be given
to one out of twenty, he will share it with the other
score. Provisions are never safe from them. Goats
hungrily browsing will be brought in dead by them an
hour or two afterwards, strangled secretly, and made to
appear as if bitten by snakes. AYhen this is done, the
only way is to throw the body into the sea ; if buried
they will exhume and devour it. My plan was to dig a
hole, and after heaping the earth up, write upon it in
large letters, " Thou shalt not steal ! " Poultry can-
not be preserved from them. They are fond of drink,
and will suffer even bodily pain to obtain it. In various
journeys I have never drunk my own last bottle of cognac:
that operation has been performed by some Kruboy of
the party. The greatest robbers are the St. Andrew's
men; they are hard-working fellows; honesty, how-
ever, never seems to suggest itself to them. I have
no belief in punishment as regards the individual
punished, not a shade of faith in its ever doing him
good. As an intimidation to others, if properly
managed, it may possibly have its uses. Its real
objects, however, should be to repay society for the loss
that it has sustained, and to defend the body social from
further attacks by the same hand. But to manage it
24 . WANDEEINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
properly, it must everywhere be modified. In England
we still practise the barbarous and useless system of
capital punishment in case of murder, and we make the
penalty lighter for theft. In most parts of Africa I
would treat the robber much more severely than the
assassin.
As regards morality, in its limited sense, the Krumen
are not bright in the scale of creation. Adultery is
punished, it is true, by a fine, and in the case of a
wealthy or powerful man, there may be a "great palaver."
The European stranger, however, travelling in their
country is expected to patronise their wives and daugh-
ters, and these unconscious followers of Lycurgus and
Cato feel hurt, as if dishonoured, by his refusing to
gratify them. The custom is very prevalent along this
coast. At Gaboon, perhaps it reaches the acme ; there
a man will in one breath offer the choice between his
wife, sister, and daughter. The women of course do as
they are bid by the men, and they consider all familiarity
with a white man a high honour.*
The Kruman believes in the "education of travel." He
leaves home early, learns a little waiting, and perhaps
makes a voyage to England ; he never, however, returns
there, dreading the cold. At the age of puberty he
ships under some headman, who began life in the same
* Dr. Livingstone, chap. 25, asserts, "I have heard women speak-
ing in admiration of a white man, because he was pure and never was
guilty of any secret immorality." This is amongst the Makololos : he
would have heard them speak in anything but an admiring way about
continence in these regions.
HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 25
way, and who having learned a little English, and the
handling of a rope, engages a gang of youngsters. A
good headman takes as much from his dependents as
possible, stopping their pay on all occasions; he is
expected to defend the master's property from them
which often he does not do and to punish them
severely with his own hand. It is this comparative
energy and willingness to do work, which together with
their independent bearing, has given the Krumen such
a name on the coast ; bad as they are, all the rest are
worse. We are rapidly, however, spoiling these men.
About ten years ago they were happy to receive 5*.
per month, in goods, which reduced it to 3*. As in
India, however, so here, servants' wages are increasing,
till they threaten to become exorbitant. Now, on board
H.M/s ships they are paid the wages of ordinary able
seamen, 11. 10*. per month, or 18/. per annum. Be-
sides which, they are entitled to the rations of a white
man, and their compensation money will probably run
up to another 121. per annum. The pay might be re-
duced to $5 per month, and rice rations, with beef every
two days ; thus the cruisers would not injure the trade.
There is for them an inexplicable charm on board a man-
of-war. They are very proud of their uniform; which,
however, renders them effeminate and more subject to
disease, than those who are less clothed ; they would, I
think, look much better with shaven heads, red caps,
and short blue drawers. They treat with a certain
contempt the "river boys." Yet, African like, they must
26 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
desert at times, especially after a good flogging from
the headman, for not keeping a bright look out. On
the other hand, a vessel of war wanting Krumen, has
only to give a hint to those of the nearest merchantman,
and they will be smuggled on board presently ; tin's has
been done by fellows, who wrapped up in navy shirts,
and with caps pulled over their faces, have passed out
unrecognised, even by captains of the mail steamers.
But a Kruman who has once served on board a ship of
war, is like a foreign domestic in an English family,
useless for all other purposes. When shipped at S'a
Leone for merchant service, their wages are more than
those who embark at Cape Palmas ; nominally the former
now receive 30*., the latter $2 per month in goods,
which reduce it to $1. Some picked gig-crews in the Oil
Eivers, receive $5, besides additional clothes and caps ;
the average pay, however, is from $3 to $4. A crew,
well picked out of a number of men, is wonderful to
look at ; their muscles stand out almost like those of
that caricature, the Farnese Hercules; they row at a
stretch 40 miles, pulling as if for dear life, and at the
end they seem as little fatigued as white ants. Generally
the headman's pay is double that of his boys, and coin
is never given. Their rations are 1 \ Ib. of rice or yams
a day, with salt meat or fresh steak once or twice a
week ; they usually eat three times, breakfast at 9, dine
at 2, and sup at 7 P.M. ; when working hard, they are
allowed a liberal allowance of rum. Tobacco depends
greatly on the master ; it is, however, a favour, not a
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 27
right; they expect to receive a clean cloth worth,
say ISd., every Sunday; it is more general, however,
to give them the Sunday cloth, as they call it, every
three weeks. They will ship for long voyages, but
scarcely ever engage themselves for more than three
years. On the other hand they dislike all shore work,
and will not act as servants for more than two years.
Their favourite period of engagement here, as in India,
steam navigation shortens service and prolongs furloughs
is " one time yam come up, twel' moon." If kept
beyond their limits, they begin by waxing surly, they
proceed to refuse work, and they end, African like, by
taking the law into their own hands. I have known
cases where they have threatened to fire a factory, and
many in which they have plundered the store, launched
a boat, and gone off no one knows where.
The object of the Kruman's expatriation is to make
money, with which he can return home the thing has
been done in England enact the gentleman, and marry
a wife ; when his purse is empty he sets out once more ;
not willingly, for to use his own phrase, he is " nigger
for ship, king for country ." After four or five voyages,
he has learned English enough to become a headman,
and by peculating in his turn, he lays the foundation
of a large family. Until then, he has ever been received,
as he returns, with noisy festivity, but his gains have
been appropriated by the family council, and applied to
the common stock. Now he spends his own money,
chiefly in purchasing wives. The whole superstructure of
28 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Km society is built upon polygamy, which is much after
the Mormon principle, a division of labour.* Servants
do not exist, the language has no name for them, and
domestic slavery is very limited ; moreover, as no gentle-
man in Africa can demean himself by work, which he
considers in the light of convict labour, the institution
winds itself round every heart. He is a " small boy "
when yet unmarried ; he begins life with one wife, and
he hopes to end it with a dozen or two, when he retires
* The Rev. Mr. Wilson remarks : " It is not a little singular, however,
that the females, upon whom the burden of this degrading institution
(polygamy) mainly rests, are quite as much interested in its continuance
as the men themselves. A woman would infinitely prefer to be one of
a dozen wives of a respectable man than to be the sole representative of
a man who had not force of character to raise himself above the one-
woman level." Western Africa, chap. 1-4.
There is nothing singular in this : the polygamy of the Latter Day
Saints derives all its force from the preference of the women. Were
they to oppose it, nothing could preserve the institution.
Moreover, it appears that in the various branches of the human
family, the relative development of the female to the male greatly
varies. In some, the Africans for instance, the woman's inferiority is
constant and salient. In others, as the Anglo-Saxon, there is a far
greater amount of equality between the sexes. We see the same thing
in the lower animals : whilst in the Gallinse the male has a marked
superiority over his mate ; in the Falconidfe the female is superior in
strength, size, and courage ; and in others the Canidse and Solidun-
gulse the powers are as equally balanced as possible.
It is, doubtless, this superior physical and mental development which
has placed the women of the Indo-Germanic family in their present
exalted position. Yet they willingly abdicate it. There are no more
submissive polygamiste than the Englishwomen at Great Salt Lake City,
except, perhaps, the Americans, who I speak only of those whose
fathers were born and bred in the New World are somewhat highly
coloured copies of their English cousins.
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 29
from business, a consummation most devoutly wished
for. This seldom happens before he has reached the
age of fifty. There is nothing peculiar in Km nuptials.
The girl-wife's mother is first propitiated with small
presents ; then the dowry is settled with her father and
his family, who are the real owners of the property.
The senior wife is the first in rank, and respectable men
always keep a separate establishment for each spouse.
On the husband's death, the wives become the property
of the brothers, who can transfer them if they please.
When a woman is ill-treated, she runs away to her
father's family, but a "big palaver" is sure to follow
this elopement. The children of course love the mother
better than the other parent, but they must follow their
father should a split take place between the tribes.
The religion of the Kruman is a fanaticism so vague
and undeveloped that no writer has, I believe, ventured
to treat upon it. It has been already mentioned that
they have Diyabo* sing. Diya or "Devil Doctors,'*
as Europeans call them, whose preparation for the mi-
nistry and position in the community is precisely that of
the North-American Indian's medicine-man. Their oracle
at the Grand Devil has also been alluded to. The common-
alty however appear to have few, if any, exercises which
can properly be called religious. During the whole of
the Niger expedition, from 1857 to 1862, only one case
was observed ; on the night of the " Dayspring's" wreck,
Grando, the second headman, stood near the bank, quite
* The syllable -bo means, I believe, a class.
30 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
upright, with his face to the West, and howled till
dawn, occasionally waving the right arm. Two or three
sat around him, but no one joined with him. They will
not eat blood nor the heart of cattle; they swear, by
dipping the forefinger in salt, pointing to earth and
heaven, and then tasting the condiment. This custom
reminds one of the Salt Eaters, i.e., Rice Christians of
the Kongo River, and the various salt-incantations of
Asia.
When a man dies a fire is kindled every evening
before his house to warm his KU,* i.e., his ghost or
himself, and food is placed at his grave. He may
appear in one or in several children. Or leading the
goat or the bullock slain at his funeral, he may wend
his way to Menu of the Kwi Ghostland, which some
place at Gedeye, in the remote interior where, after con-
fessing his misdeeds, he will take rank according to the
sacrifice made and his means. But if a wizard, he must
wander about the gloomy swamp and fetid marsh for
ever. These ideas show a dawning of the " continuation
theory;" but the West African, unlike the Egyptian, who
probably invented the idea, has no conception of a
corporeal resurrection.
The Rev. Mr. Bowen (" Central Africa '), asserts that
a Kruman who attempted to learn reading would be
* In Bishop Payne's Grebo Yocabnlary, Ku, plur. Kwi, is explained
devil, dream, departed spirit. Menu, or menuke, is the intermediate
place through which persons are said to pass to their final destiny, and
where they review all their past deeds, before going into Kwiya
Oran, the City of the Manes.
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 31
killed; this is far from being the fact now, if it was
then. Of all the Pagans on the coast, the Km have
been found the most difficult to convert on account of
the dishonour and expulsion from the tribe which such
conduct entails. Of late years there have been a few
cases, and in a future page the reader will see a fine
specimen of superior rascality on the part of the " divert."
In the neighbourhood of the mission stations, near
Cape Palmas, the more civilized Grebos do nothing on
Sundays; but, as I have said before, an African will
ever be most happy to practise as much idleness as you
choose to preach.
Like the negro race generally, the organs of language,
as well as of time and tune, are well developed in the
Krumen. They find no difficulty in picking up a few
words of English, though they speak it with a savage
accent ; of course, correctness or extent of vocabulary is
beyond their powers, yet they can distinguish a brogue or
a provincial accent, and they call Scotchmen " bush Eng-
lishmen" a definition that would come home to Dr. John-
son's own heart. They have no poetry, and few legends ;
whilst their music is monotonous to a degree. Yet they
delight in it, 'and often after a long and fatiguing day's
march they will ask permission to "make play," and
dance and sing till midnight. When hoeing the ground
they must do it at the sound of music ; in fact, every-
thing is cheered with a song. The traveller should
never forget to carry a tom-tom, or some similar instru-
ment, which will shorten his journey by a fair quarter.
32 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
They are good mimics, and I have seen some laughable
caricatures of various European nations. "Chaff" is
with them as favourite an exercise as in civilised London,
and they can say the most biting and sarcastic things ima-
ginable. I have met fellows whose remarks, conveyed in
broken English, were as humorous as those of any Irish-
man. They are great at pantomime, and with some twenty
English words can tell a long story, as well as a Sioux
of the Prairies. There are no noisier people on the coast ;
in our stations they are relegated to outhouses, placed
well out of hearing.
The Kru language, as has been seen, possesses about
5000 vocables. The grammatical forms are simple, and
by no means numerous. Most writers declare the tongue
to be exceedingly difficult of acquisition. I found it quite
the contrary ; and the Liberiau colonists, if they cannot
speak it, are generally able to understand it. Mr. Smith,*
in a most amusing little work, asserts that every Kru
word is made to end in O; he has misconceived the
sign of the vocative to be an integral part of the word.
He also opines that the " Kroo language seems to be
composed of vowels only," whereas in few tongues are
there more explosive consonants, harsher gutturals, or
a stronger nasalization that half masters the articula-
tion. We find in it also the duplicated initial consonants,
as nn and mm, which an Englishman would pronounce
with a semi-elision of a prefixed indefinite vowel. Its
* Chap. 10, Trade and Travels in the Gulf of Guinea. By J. Smith.
London : Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1851.
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 33
chief merit seems to be the facility with which a Kru-
man can make himself heard at a distance, when a
European would require a speaking-trumpet. The
Eev. Mr. Wilson, who discovers a similarity between
one-fifth of the words in the Mpongwe of the Gaboon
and the Kisawahili of Zanzibar and of the eastern
shores of the continent, detects none between the
Mpongwe and the Kru dialects.* Yet I cannot but
find most distinct resemblance, not so much in voca-
bulary, however, as in the grammar and the spirit of
the language.
" Blackmail's English," opposed to " high English,"
or " deep English," in this part of the world is a litera-
ture whose professor has hitherto been the British
sailor. I leave to the reader's imagination the style
of expression which it has engrafted upon the African
mind. Queer tales are told of words starting up in the
presence of ladies words which, falling amongst an
English assembly, would act like a 10-inch shell. Every
traveller has made merry with the ridiculous names
which the Kru boys have borrowed for themselves from
the English, e.g., Nix, Black Trouble, Salt water, Bottle
o' beer, and Six-finger Jack.f Yet their own names are
by no means unpleasant or difficult to learn, nor can I
see the force of calling Kabwe, Kofa, Tiya, and
* Western Africa, chap. 4.
t On the Gold Coast, children born with six fingers are strangled :
amongst the Kru ai,d other tribes of Lower Guinea they are not
injured.
YOI.. II. D
34 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Ndkti, Black Will, Two Glass, Seabreeze, and Tom
Brass.*
Eemains to consider the Kruman in the light of a
domestic servant. In this phase he does not shine a
more clumsy-handed, pig-headed clown could not be
found even in Europe. He steals anything he can lay
his hands upon ; he becomes idle to the last degree, and
though personally clean enough, his ideas touching that
virtue in respect to plate and porcelain are still embryotic.
He either breaks or he mislays everything entrusted to
him, and he never works except when the master stands
over him ; he never attends to an order, and he would see
all "master's" property eaten by white ants rather than
take the trouble to remove it. There are worse servants
on this coast even than the Kruman, I own; for in-
stance, the Camaroons and the Calabar men; yet even
with him, your house is as uncomfortable as fancy could
conceive.
About noon on the 16th August we set out once
more, and steamed down the coast, which was bright
with the delightful air of the fine season. "We had
shipped at Cape Palmas about 5000 worth of Krumen,
who were proceeding to the Oil Rivers ; they, or rather
their employers, pay for their diet and passage $10 per
head. Their supper on board was a study of savagery.
Their favourite food is ever rice, and they prefer it to
the best bread, and pine for it at times when they cannot
* At the end of this chapter the reader will find a specimen of Kru
vocabulary, kindly supplied to a friend by Bishop Payne.
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 35
obtain it. It must be far more nutritious than that of
India, for they eat it dry and get through an immense
amount of labour without other sustenance. A large
cauldron, containing a pint per man, was brought on
deck and portioned into five messes, around which, after
a furious chatting and gesticulating like excited ba-
boons, all squatted. They balFd the rice by squeezing
it with either hand, left as well as right, thrust it into
their mouths, looking like chickens being crammed, and
swallowed it almost whole with a powerful action of the
oesophagus. They did not drink till after the meal, as
is the custom of Asia ; when full they satisfied their
thirst at the tank. If meat appears, it is a signal for a
scuffle ; the strongest manage to snatch a few mouthfuls
each, and the weaker get none.
Though fresh from home they are in good spirits;
they love a change, and the world is all before them.
Eeturning after two years or so, they will be in the
state described as being "strung upon wires." They
have boxes to protect and their property will not be safe
from thieves and the ocean till it is lodged in their
huts. They have pitiably suffered in health, and are
allowed no medical luxuries on board; even a change of
diet is unattainable, and the attendance of a doctor is a
matter of personal humanity. Some of them by touch-
ing the railings have given to the passengers craw-craw,
and other horrid skin-diseases, which have found their
way into English homes. It is a touching sight to see
some poor fellow, with the death rattle in his throat, lying
D 2
36 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
unheeded upon the deck, whilst all others are craning
their necks over the bulwarks, and stepping over his
almost unconscious body to get the first glimpse of " we
country." Should he die, the corpse must be taken
on shore, or there will be what the African dreads, a
"palaver." And when "Jack Kruman " reaches his hut
and greets the wives of his bosom, he cannot love them
till he has perfectly satisfied himself with the strictness
of their conduct during his absence.
Beyond Cape Palmas, the coast line is a beach of
bright white sand, from which the slave barracoons have
now disappeared ; in the foreground an occasional rock
or ledge rises awash from the level, and the background
is a deep strip of black forest, here and there broken by
tall trees. We are soon fairly beyond Liberia, formerly
called the Grain Coast. This ambiguous name has
caused many a mistake, but the grain in question is
not a cereal but a condiment rejecting, at least that
etymology, which supposes it to have been derived
from cochineal, which in those days was considered
not an animal but a vegetable. It is a real cardamom
(A. Grana Paradisi), of which many varieties grow
along the whole length of the western coast of inter-
tropical Africa. The flower is of great beauty on ac-
count of the glowing pink bracts ; the shrub is cane-
like, and the fruit, which appears close to the ground, is
a pyriform pod with crimson skin enclosing black brown
seeds, surrounded by a juicy placenta. Nothing is more
pleasant or reviving on a long, thirsty march, than a
SIX HOURS AT THE CAPE OF PALMS. 37
handful of these cardamoms; the acidity of the pulp
contrasts most pleasantly with the pungency of the
spice. By the Dutch they were called Guinea
Grains; by the trade, Malaguetta pepper; and the
demand in Europe in the sixteenth century led to the
discovery of many ports on " the coast." It was then
principally used for giving fire and flavour in spirit-
uous liquors, and especially for adulterating beer. At
last its importation into England was forbidden, cases
of poisoning being attributed to it ; and Europeans in
these regions still believe that some species are injurious,
and that they were mixed with the true grains. The
natives use this cardamom extensively as a condiment
and a medicine : it is a stomachic, a carminative, and an
'
external irritant. The people of the Gold Coast, when
suffering from headache, rub over the forehead a paste of
Malaguetta pepper. The powder is applied during the
hot fit of fever, as ginger is in India for rheumatism and
for fugitive pains. It is spirted out of the mouth over
the part affected, or a paste made with water is rubbed
on like a poultice, or applied in streaks. The dead also
are perfumed with this pepper and sweet scented plants.
Inasmuch as when bruised and soaked in sherry, it
makes excellent bitters, it will, once more, I believe, find
its way into the European markets.
NOTE. For the following specimen of the real Krao language, I am
indebted to the kindness of Bishop Payne :
38
WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
KKU AND ENGLISH.
N.B. The vowels are written after the system of Sir W. Jones, modified
as used in Lane, Richardson's Persian Dictionary, &c. : g is always
hard, as in get ; the letters c, q, x, and y are supplied by i, ks, and i.
Ni-o-ju
Man Bla-bi
Sheep
Ni-o-no
Woman
Bok-er-o
Goat
Di-n-be
Child
Mi
Father
Na-ji-o
I see
Ni
Mother
Na-uo-i
I hear
Mi-e-jn
Brother
Na-u-ru
I speak
No-ra
Sister
Ma
Go
Ni
Water
Gi
Come
HI
Fire
Di-e
Eat
Ser-a
House
Na-ni
Drink
Bun-go
Door
Na-mn
Sleep
Bu-6m-bi
Window
Na-dub-i
Wash
Nam-bu-ri
Seat
Ma-na
Walk
Kri
Farm
Na-pin-de
Coo
Ku-o
Rice
Mu-ne
Carry
Kin-a
Oil
Na-nu-de
Make
To
Salt
Na-ni-em
Give
Po-pa
Bowl
Na-uk-be
Take
Ja-bi
Jar
Na-ti-e
Buy
Ja-bi
Boiler
Pu-ri-em-bu
Sell
Gi-u-ro
Sun
Bi-si-um
Thank
Tsho
Moon
Gi-rum
Love
Na-pi
Star
0-ro-de
Well
Ni-ba
River
Na-po-pa
I am sick
Ku-ra
Field
Tu
Tree
II
Yes
Bu-ru-a
Grass
le
No
Nne
Wood
So-na-to
To-day
So-ba
Stone
Po-pla-ka
To-morrow
Du-bo
Head
So-ra-ma
Yesterday
Nu-me
Bird
Kre-kre
Quickly
Ni
Fish
Da-ka
Long since
Song
Fowl
Gi
Above
Bi-li
Cow
Bre
Below
CHAPTER VII.
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AT CAPE COAST CASTLE.
18iH SEPTEMBER, 186
" If you cannot swim,
Beware of Providence."
Shelley.
To the east of the Grain Coast in maps lies the
Ivory Coast, now a misnomer. Hardly a tusk has been
exported from it for the last score of years ; the animals
having been driven away by the "hot mouthed weapon."
The present Ivory Coast is the region south of the
Camaroons Mountains, extending to the Gaboon Eiver
and Cape Lopez. The old Ivory Coast had but four
settlements Fresco, Cape Lahou or Nifa, Jack-a-Jack,
Grand Bassam and Assini, the two latter French;
After passing these we enter the Gold Coast ; it was
once a celebrated region, which produced the GUINEA
for England ; now, all known about it by the public at
home is, that it is somewhere about Africa.' 56 ' How little
* That popular book, Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, is the best
proof. The ninth edition, published in 1860 by Mr. Moxon, informs us,
under the word "African Company," that "the rights vested in the
present company are by 23 George II., 1749," whereas that company
expired about forty years ago. Another well-known book Brookes'
"Gazetteer," revised by Mr. Findlay, and published 1861 omits the
40 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
it deserves this neglect, and how much may be made of
it, will be shown in a following page.
There is a question of great interest touching the
discovery of this coast. The Portuguese have claimed
and secured the whole honour: in our encyclopedias
and school-books, which are copied one from the other,
no other nation is even mentioned. Their own account
of it* is that Fernao Gomes, a worthy and honest
citizen of Lisbon, obtained from the Portuguese Govern-
ment, in 1471, permission to trade on these coasts for
five years, with this proviso : that he should pay to the
Portuguese Government the annual sum of 44 9*.
Also that he should make annual voyages of discovery
from Sierra Leone along the coast to the distance of
300 miles ; so that, at the expiration of the stipulated
period of five years, 1500 miles should have been ex-
plored. In consequence of this agreement, El-Mina
date (Appendix, 926) at which the Gold Coast became an independent,
government. When shall we have in England a good set of popular,
and especially educational works, in which our youth will not learn that
of which they must unlearn half ? Not long ago I found some young
friends painfully impressing their brains with the fact that the United
States ' ' contained nearly thirteen millions of souls."
* This is quoted from "Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western
Africa." By Francisco Travassos Yaldez. Two vols. Hurst and
Blackett, London, 1861.
The book should have been called " Voyager's Life." It is nothing
but a coasting from Lisbon to Loando and its dependencies, with an
occasional rddche at the islands on the way. The frontispiece of the
first volume is copied from M. Gamitto's " Muata Cazembe ; " the
frontispiece of the second is taken from the same. It is about a parallel
to Mr. Macbriar's "Africa and the Africans,"
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 41
was discovered, and also Cape Catherina, in 1 50'
south latitude and 9 2' west longitude.
On the other hand it has been seen that Norman
Knight conquered part of the Canary Islands in 1400,
and that M. Bouet-Willaumez has successfully inter-
preted the corrupted name, Boutou, on the Kru coast,
by referring it to the old Norman establishments which
were founded at " all the Bassas, great and little." The
Pere Labat, the Sailor Villaud de Belfons, and many
writers, of whom Barbot is the most known, claim for
the French, exclusively, the honour of being the first
explorers of this coast. According to them a company
of Dieppe merchants, in the reign of Charles the Fifth,
between 1364 and 1413 nearly a century before the
Portuguese entered upon their grander career of discovery
sent an expedition to the Gold Coast, which founded
commercial colonies at Goree and Cape Verde, at Sestro
Paris, now Grand Cestros, at Petit Dieppe, near Basa or
Bassa, on the mouth of the St. John's River, and at " the
Bay of France," now Rio Fresco. This is repeated in the
" M&moire sur le Commerce Maritime de Rouen, par Ernest
de Freville," who states the date to be November, 1364,
and the number of vessels to have been two of one hun-
dred tons each. In 1382 the merchants of Dieppe and
Rouen combined sent three exploring ships, of which one,
the "Virgin," reached Commenda and Mina, so called
from its " gold mines," from which the blacks brought
large supplies of the precious metal. In 1383 others say
1386 they built a strong factory, and left a garrison of
42 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
ten or twelve men, and in 1387 the settlement, \vhich
had further been enlarged, was provided with a chapel.
Large imports of gold, ivory, and pepper, found their
way from these places to Trance, and an active trade
continued till the European war in 1413 caused them
all, after a career of fifty years, to be abandoned. Even
in Barbot's time (1700), one of the El-Mina castles
was called Bastion de Prance, and there was an old
inscription beginning with M.C.C.C. the rest defaced.
At Goree there were, it is said, similar remains. These
wars continued to agitate France till 1490, nearly eighty
years after the abandonment of their "West African
colonies. Meanwhile ihe Portuguese, who had learned
the way, had taken the place of the explorers, and have
ever since claimed the honour of discovery.
The Portuguese are naturally wroth at this attempt to
pluck a leaf from their laurels. Let me quote M. Val-
dez : " Respecting the early settlers, ridiculous follies
were propagated by Pere Labat, and the seaman Yillaut-
belle-fond (sic), but these were invented 270 years after
the Portuguese historian, Gomes Ennes d'Azurara,* who
was contemporary with the discovery of Canaga, or
Senegal, and who was honoured with the confidence of
the celebrated Infante D. Henrique ; and therefore we
* Chronica de Descobrimento e Conquista de Guine, escrita por
Mandado de El Rei D. Affonso V., pelo Chronista G. E. de Azurara,
precedida de una introduc9ao e illustrada com algumas notas pelo Vis-
conde de Santarem, 8vo., Paris, 1841. Also, Memoria sobre a prior-
jdade dos Descobrimentos Portugueses n' a costa d' Africa Occidental,
pelo Visconde Santarem, Paris, 1841.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 43
must believe ("/<? n'en voispas la ncessit"} the assertion
made by this writer in his ' Chronicle of the Discovery
and Conquest of Guinea/ that the Portuguese were the
first who discovered the entrance of the Senegal. The
claim of the Norman pirates of the fourteenth century
(N.B., this is hardly fair) to the discovery is supported by
an allegation that Norman words may be traced in the
language of the natives, and that an inscription has been
discovered as follows ' M.C.C.C.' ! ! ! Now I defy
the quickest ear to discover anything resembling the
Norman in the language of the Mandingoes, Jaloffes,
Cassangas, Bauhans, or Feloupes ; but he whose eye is
so clear as satisfactorily to decipher the inscription above
mentioned, may possess an ear capable of defining sounds
such as those referred to. So much for national enthu-
siasm and fanaticism ! " Such verbiage is by no means
satisfactory in face of M. Bouet-Willaumez. Nor is the
Eev. Mr. Wilson's remark at all more conclusive :
" This account of French discovery in Africa is not sus-
tained by any contemporaneous writers, either French or
Portuguese. The natives of Africa have no traditionary
knowledge of any such visitors to their country; and
what discredits the picture still more is, that Azembuja,
the man sent out by the Portuguese government to build
the castle at Elmina, found no traces whatever of any
fort or castle at that place." As if Africans in 1856 had
any tradition extending back for centuries, or as if a
Portuguese or any other official of those days, \vhen
ordered to erect a fort for his sovereign in the Land of
44 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
.Gold Mines would confess priority of claim on the part
of another and a rival nation !
It is to be hoped that a question of such historical
importance will not be dropped. A priori, the claims of
the French are strong, but they have been suffered to
rest in obscurity. Their weak point at present is the
absence of contemporary evidence. But the Bayeux
tapestry, a chronicle of far older date, has been found,
and perhaps some fortunate discoverer may alight upon
a document which shall set the question at rest.
The history of English transactions on the Gold Coast
is equally interesting. The first commercial voyage made
by our countrymen was in 1551, when Captain Thomas
Wyndham, who afterwards died of fever in the Benin
Eiver, after loading his ships with Malaguetta pepper
at the Cestos River, reached the Golden Land and re-
turned to England with 150 Ibs. of dust. On the 10th
January, 1662,the Royal Company, or Company of Royal
Adventurers of England trading to Africa, was incor-
porated under patronage of the Duke of York, afterwards
Charles II., and in the same year James Fort was built at
Accra. Its object was nearly entirely the carrying on of
the slave trade, and the attacks of the Dutch under the
great De Ruyter compelled it, in 1667, to surrender
its charter to government. The second, or Royal
African Company, was incorporated on the 27th Septem-
ber, 1672, with powers and privileges to maintain and
extend the African trade. It entered upon its functions
with vigour, and soon possessed fifteen forts and factories
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 45
on the coast, of which, however, Bosnian* gives a poor
account. Despite the Assiento contract the company
became indebted, and followed in the way of its prede-
cessor. In 1752-4 the "African Company" was estab-
lished with free trade^ on the Gold Coast to all His
Majesty's subjects : this bound them not to interfere as
before with private adventurers, or what was then called
"interlopers." This was the first blow to the prosperity
of the coast. The American Eevolution ensued; the
Abolition movement followed, and the establishment of
Sierra Leone struck the final blow. In 1821 the
African Company, being bankrupt, was abolished : the
British forts, settlements, and possessions on the Western
coast of Africa from 20 N. to 20 S. lat. were made
dependencies on the colony of Sierra Leone ; and the
bill passed through Parliament in 1821. In 1827,
owing to the expenses of Sir Charles McCarthy's
Ashantee war, the home government gave up the forts
to the merchants as factories on various conditions,
especially that Cape Coast Castle and James Fort, Accra,
should remain dependencies of Sierra Leone, and that
affairs should be managed by an African committee of
three merchants, and a paid secretary, resident in London
and appointed by government. A parliamentary grant
* William Bosman was chief factor for the Dutch at Elmina, in the
days of the Eoyal African Company, and he seems not a little to have
despised his neighbours. He was an active and most efficient man,
and his "Description of the Coast of Guinea," is equally valuable for
its observation, and amusing by its dry humour.
46 WANDEEINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
of 4000 per annum was allowed for the repair of forts,
the maintenance of schools, and presents to the various
Eanti chiefs. The local establishments were a lieutenant-
governor and president of the council, a council, justices of
the peace, civil commandants at Annamaboo, British Accra
and Dixcove, and the officers of the guard 100 men
with surgeon, schoolmasters, and interpreters. Pending
these arrangements, Mr. John Jackson was made presi-
dent, but as it was considered desirable to choose an
officer wholly unconnected with trade, Mr. George Mac-
lean, who had served in the African corps, and had
accompanied, in 1826, Colonel Lumley as military secre-
ary to the Gold Coast, of him more anon, was
made lieut.-governor and president in 1830. The crown
resumed possession of the Gold Coast in 1844, and the
first governor was Commander Hill, E.N.
The East Indies and Western Africa both began to
attract the attention of England in the days of the
Virgin Queen. Her Majesty granted, in 1585, a patent
to Lords Leicester and Warwick, allowing them to treat
with the Barbary States for twelve years, and in 1600,
two hundred persons petitioned their sovereign to estab-
lish the Governor and Company of Merchants of London
trading with the East Indies. But West Africa is dis-
tant 3000, India 10,000 miles from England, and the
.difference enabled the company that ruled the land from
the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, though younger by 15
years, to outlive for 37 years the company that ruled 40
of intertropical Africa.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 47
The annals of the two great rivals are instructive:
British Africa being near home has been greatly
neglected, because mostly under home orders; it is,
and long lias been, a string of ruinous forts and
settlements. British India, on the other hand, being
beyond the range of interference from head- quarters,
soon became the most splendid possession ever held by
a European nation.
India, I may observe, has been conquered despite
of England. Had het steamers and the electric wires of
the present day been in operation a century ago, we
should still have had a comptoir at Calcutta, Madras, and
Bombay, with perhaps a strip of protected territory ; our
possessions, in fact, would have been like Bathurst,
Sierra Leone, and Cape Coast Castle. But happily for
England, a letter in those good old times took a year
before its answer came. Every new governor or gover-
nor-general was tempted to war by some native king
or chief ; perhaps he was not unwilling to distinguish
himself, and rich men rarely ran the risks of climate
he might sometimes have had an eye to profitable results.
Thus, hostilities were declared and duly reported to the
Court of Directors. At the end of a year arrived a loud
objurgation from those elderly ladies, rating at all aggres-
sive measures, repudiating a policy of territorial aggran-
dizement, and much " bunkum " of the same manner.
But it reached too late. A province, in which probably
you could wrap up Great Britain, had been in turn fought
down, well looted, and annexed with the tax-gatherer
48 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
in full activity. Nothing more of course was to be said
about the matter. The Court of Directors saw before
them new patronage for sons and nephews, and the
Imperium in Imperio became great malgre lui.
I am now firm astride upon India, an old hobby which
will take the lead; in truth may the reader pardon me !
India was once the "gorgeous East;" a bit of the "Arabian
Nights/' which home people delighted in, and highly
overvalued. This was followed by a reaction. The Indian
uncle died out : the old Nabob was found to look at
every sixpence. The Pagoda-tree, when struck, yielded
no rupees. Presently the Public shrewdly suspecting
that their Eastern Empire, far from being worth untold
sums, was actually in arrears, (despite all its gold bed-
steads and jewelled saddles,) some 2,000,000/. per an-
num waxed wroth, rose up, laid hands upon it, and,
after discussing the idea of giving it up, began to treat
it by administering to it homoeopathic doses of scientific
political economy.
Were Russia or France blessed with such a field for
labour, they would soon make it pay five or six millions
of pounds sterling, by some such "unconstitutional"
means as these :
They would at once clear off two governors, who are
mere head -clerks two commanders-in-chief, mere
major-generals and two councils, viz., those of
Madras and Bombay: in both these places
business could be transacted quite as effec-
tually by a secretary to the Supreme Govern-
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 49
ment and a major-general in command of sundry
brigadiers.
They would abolish the civilian system and its high
salaries, recruiting the ranks from military officers,
who could be eligible after suitable examinations.
They might retain Suddur and Supreme Courts, and
organise Cassations, and even Chancery Courts, at
the several Presidencies, for the benefit of wealthy
natives who wish to ruin themselves by law ; but
these luxuries should not extend beyond a radius
of fifty miles.
They would cherish the Panchayat, or native jury,
merely superintending it to obviate unjust decisions.
They would not inflict upon the natives their own
taxes, income-tax, licence-tax, stamp duties, heavy
import dues, and other hateful foreign appliances.
They would prefer the indigenous system of a capi-
tation or poll-tax, the house-tax, the Nazaranah or
succession duties, and benefices levied from each
Pergunnah, according to popular settlement, and in
due proportion, as did the English of the old day
when burghers were first returned to Parliament.
They would transform all their regular black army
into irregulars, and never allow an East Indian to
learn the scientific branches of the service artillery
and engineering.
They would systematically disarm the population, by
transporting all those who fabricated, and by impri-
soning all who possessed, weapons of war.
50 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Finally, they would cleave to hereditary offices
which would create a conservative party in the
country, and confirm all tenures of "hak" or
vested rights.
But a constitutional people would not attempt even
the first of these measures. Its idea of economy and its
policy must be to cut down the pay and allowances of
the ensign and the assistant-surgeon, and to spend some
30,000 a year upon local governors, commanders -in-
chief, and members of council.
I now return to the Gold Coast.
During the night of the 1 8th August we steamed past
the mouth of that queer formation, called picturesquely,
and not unaptly, the Bottomless Pit. Here the great
bank of gradually shelving sand is split by a submarine
valley, funnel-shaped, and opening seaward. At the
head of this gully, close to the beach, there are twenty
fathoms of soundings, with a soft bottom of bluish mud.
At one mile off shore the breadth between the two sides
of the ravine is less than a quarter of a mile, with 100
fathoms of depth ; at three miles' distance it is about
one mile by 200 fathoms. As the lead brings up pieces
of coralline, and a madrepore formation is observable in
most places east of Accra to the river bottom, this valley
may be a depression, like the submerged Coral Islands
once known to exist near Zanzibar.
The next point of interest was Grand Bassam, a clump
of villages at the mouth of the Costa River, where the
Trench, in 1843, built Fort Nemours. According to
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 51
some, the experiment was a failure ; others declare that
a good business in gold is still done there. The same
may be said of Assini, or Fort Joinville, another Gallic
possession about twenty-seven miles east of the Costa
River. Three miles to the west of the latter is the
Gold River, which Bosman makes the western boundary
of the Gold Coast. Beyond Assini lie the Four Hills,
or Hummocks, of Apollonia, called by seamen Cape Apol-
lonia; the name reminds one of the Apollo Bunder,
which should be named Palawa, at Bombay ridiculously
classical. Here the English had a fort, which is now
crumbling to ruins. In 1848, Captain Winniett, who
succeeded Captain Hill as governor, attacked " Quawe
Accah," King of Apollonia, who had killed the French
Commandant of Assini, and took him prisoner, and
became Sir William Wiimiett.
We are now oil' the Windward, which is here the west-
ern division of the Gold Coast.* It extends from Cape
Apollonia (2 35' W. long.) to the mouth of the Secoom
River (0 3 '2" W. long.), about eight miles west of Fort
James, Accra, about 170 nautical miles. The leeward, or
eastern districts, begin at the Secoom Eiver, and stretch
to the mouth of the Volta, in 41' 2" of east longitude,
or 44-4 miles of direct distance. Thus, in modern times,
the Gold Coast, bounded by Cape Apollonia, and the
Volta River, has a sea front of 225 miles. In Bosnian's
* It is regrettable that geographers encourage this most ambiguous
style of moiuenclature. Thus the "Windward Islands in the West
Indies are the western ; in Eastern Africa, windward means eastern.
E 2
52 WANDERINGS IN WEST 1 AFRICA.
day it had narrow limits ; " the Gold Coast, being a part
of Guinea, is extended about sixty miles, beginning with
the Gold River, twelve miles above Axim, and ending
with the village Ponni, seven or eight miles east of
Accra."
The gold export, and afterwards the slave-trade,
studded this coast with forts and factories \ twenty-five
are mentioned about one to each eight miles ; of these,
three were Danish, two Brandenburghers, and the rest
belonged to the English and Dutch. At present seven
English and four Dutch establishments are kept up ;*
* In the windward coast the English possessed, going from the
West, Apollonia, Dixcove, British Secundee and Commendah, Cape Coast
Castle, Annamboo, Fort Coroinantine, Tamtamquerry, Gumwah, Muin-
ford, and Winnebah. The latter place was destroyed in 1812, when
the frigate "Amelia," Capt. Irby, revenged the murder of the com-
mandant Mr. Meredith, who had been tortured to death by being
compelled to walk over burning grass and shrubs. The fort was blown
up, and "for many years afterwards, English vessels passing Winne-
bah were in the habit of pouring a broadside into the town, to inspire
the natives with the idea of the severe vengeance which would be
exacted for the spilling of European blood " (Mr. Brodie Cruikshank's
" Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast," London, 1853). To which may
be added, that they fired into the wrong place, the rearculprits being
the people of a neighbouring village, who remained unhurt.
On the windward coast the Dutch had Axim, Brandenburg, Hol-
landia, Accoda, Bootry, Tacorady or Tacorary, Dutch Commendah,
Chuma, Mouree, Dutch Coroinantine, Apam near the Devil's Hill, and
Barracoe.
On the leeward coast the British had only Fort James, Accra ; the
Dutch, Dutch Accra, Labaddi, Pona, Temma, and Prampram or
Kbupran, or Kpukpran ; whilst five belonged to the Danes, viz.,
Christiansborg with its out-station Fredericksborg, Augustenborg
near Tesha or Tassy, Fredensborg at Great Ningo, Kongenslein at
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 63
the other fourteen issues for the life-blood of Africa
which these leeches sucked to some effect, have been
abandoned with the traffic which called them into being.
These deserted forts and ruined castles affect the voyager
with melancholy as he passes these sunny shores. And
even the posts, which are still maintained, appear ruinous
and squalid; really, for appearance' sake, Britannia
ought to look after this out-of-the-way corner of her
estate, or give it up altogether. Half of the sum
now wilfully wasted upon the Dover harbour, a work
pronounced practicable by those engineers who main-
tained the Suez Canal to be impossible, would pre-
vent our being ashamed of out-stations, than which
Adda on the Volta, and Prindsenstein at Quittah. Slavery being
abolished throughout their colonies by the Danes in 1803, these places
beeame useless. On the 17th August, 1850, the king of Denmark
sold his forts on the Gold Coast to the British Government for 10,0001.
England thus obtained exclusive possession of all the seaboard from
Accra to the Volta, a rich country, of which, hitherto, no use has been
made.
The real site for a settlement would be at Addah, near the
mouth of the Volta, and on its right bank, where the Danish fort is
fast falling to ruins. The river called by the Accras Shilau, by the
Akwimbas Ainza", by the Addas Job. or Firao, and by the Portu-
guese, on account of its windings, Rio Volta, is a good highway into
the interior. On '28th October, 1861, Lieut. Dolben, R.N., ascended
it in boats for 120 miles, until near theKpong Rapids, where he turned
back. He reported the couatry on the banks to be fertile and well
cultivated, and the people, though a slave trade was still established
amongst them, in the main, friendly. Lieut. Dolben was of opinion that
the rapids could be passed by a short portage, and that the upper
course of the river is of considerable length. Kow that Accra has
been ruined by the earthquakes of 1862, the head-quarters might b e
more easily transferred to Addah.
54 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
at present even Portuguese India shows nothing more
wretched.
At sunrise we were off Cape Trespuntos, or Three
Points, an excellent land-mark, the three headlands of
which the central is the proper Cape lie, respectively,
fifty, forty-five, and forty miles from Cape Coast Castle ;
the two more distant from the stream are densely
wooded; the third, or nearest, is a bare "neat's
tongue," backed by a growth of forest. A little to the
west lies Axim Bay, where the Portuguese built Fort
St. Anthony, which soon fell into the hands of the
Dutch, who also became finally possessed of Fort Bran-
denburg, originally belonging to the Elector of that
name. In 1700 it was a large depot of gold trade;
now it is a crumbling rnin, perched on an eminence,
and backed by black bush and tree, which stand out
from the glistening white sea-sands on both sides.
East of the Cape is another Dutch ruin Acquidah, or
Accoda. The seas about Trespuntos were animated with
shoals of fish pursued by gulls, and fishermen with huge
straw hats were casting large seines from small
canoes.
After doubling the third point, we sighted Dixcove,
originally Dick's Cove. At this point begins the
Ahanta, or Anta Country, once rich in gold, which may
still be procured there, and ever gifted with a rich and
fertile soil. It extends to near Seconda, with about
forty miles of seaboard, and thirty of depth, being
backed by the equally rich, but turbulent, " "\Yassaw "
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 55
Country, which the English have named after "Thad-
deus of Warsaw." Behind that, again, lies the land of
Dinkira, whose early battles with the Ashantee kings were
famous in their day. Dixcove dates from 1681 j it was
finished in 1688, and became the strongest outpost on the
coast ; it has a territory totally independent of Ahanta,
about five miles of sea-shore, and twenty miles inland.
From the sea we could distinguish the large white-
washed building some ninety feet above the water, and
about the dwarf bay were some apparently fine houses.
The place contains an officer and four men, together with
an assistant-surgeon all supplied by the Gold Coast
Artillery, and the little garrison ever feels suicidal. It
is well backed with wood, which, however, the people
are unwilling to see felled ; and upon the glassy road-
stead floated a single French brig. The coast now
becomes a succession of settlements. Within sight of
Dixcove, and separated by a black islet and reefs, called
Sanco Stone, lays Boutry, upon whose ruins Fort Bar-
tenstein, an enceinte apparently half way up a hill, still
flies at times the Dutch flag. Five miles, going westward
placed us opposite Pompendi, a native town guarded
by a treacherous formidable reef, upon which the waves
dashed with a long swell. About six miles from Pom-
pendi was Takorady Point, a long, low tongue, dark at
this distance, but when nearer, red : a native town
appeared from the sea in the shape of a few huts ; a single
schooner composed the shipping, and the Dutch fort,
once a place of importance, could hardly be distin-
66 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
guished. It was the scene of severe troubles in 1837,
when, on 23rd October, the Dutch military commandant
of Boutry and his assistant were treacherously slain by
one Bonsoo, chief of the Ahantas. The latter followed
up their success by attacking the Dutch troops at the
pass of Takorady, and killing many men and four or five
officers. In July, 1838, Governor Terveir revenged the
outrage by capturing Bonsoo, and dispersing his men.
Within the seaboard is the "Adoom country" of old
geographies. Another four miles placed us off Point
Secondee, where the whitewashed remains of Fort Orange
occupy a bold rocky cliff, some fifty feet above sea level.
The next point of interest was Chama, also written
Chumah and Essama, and by the people pronounced
Ishama. Its fort, St. Sebastian, built by the Portu-
guese, fell as usual into the hands of the stout Hol-
landers. We could plainly distinguish from our deck
a large and solid European building, overlooking a native
town. About a mile eastward of the fort, a sudden de-
pression in the long wavy curtain of cliff from seventy to
300 feet high, denotes the position of the two lagoons,
between which the Chumah, or St. John's River, finds its
way into the sea. The Chumah people call it Prah, and
prefix to it the word Bossum, meaning fetish, or sacred.
Little is known of this, the largest stream on the Gold
Coast, except that the bar at the mouth, being barely
two feet deep, renders it useless. Col. Stahrenberg, as
reported by Bowdich, ascended it for three days in a
canoe, till stopped by a large cataract, near which his
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 57
men would not venture ; and it is reported as flowing
through fertile plains, between banks clothed with mag-
nificent timber. The outfall discoloured with bubbly
green the pure blue waters off the mouth, and the bot-
tom was the soft mud, which navigators prefer to the hard
sand. They can plough a way through the former; the
latter, aided by the surf, s^)on breaks, by bumping,
the ship's back.
The Bossumpra River is the western boundary of the
Fanti people,* and separates them from their powerful
neighbours, the Santi or Ashantees. The former country
is now, like the Ionian Islands, under British protecto-
rate, the general nature of our tenure being a ground-
rent paid to Caboceers and headmen ; the former media-
torial influence, rendered necessary by the slave trade, has
of course ceased. Crossing the Prah, on the part of the
Ashantees, is considered equivalent to a declaration of
war, as passing the Border was in the olden time, when
England and Scotland amused themselves by invading
each other. It is the general opinion in the colony that
the Volta is an arm of the Prah ; if this be the case,
our maps require considerable alteration. Strange that
during two centuries of residence in these regions we
should not have taken the trouble to lay down so crucial
* The "Ethiopia Directory" (p. 390), asserts that "the Fanti
country, after a dreadful war of extermination, may be now consider^
as incorporated with the kingdom of Ashautee," and that "in ]82i
the Fantis were nearly annihilated." They are still, however, a
powerful tribe, wholly independent of the Ashantees.
58 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
a point. Should the Prah and the Volla prove to be
one, anastomosing at some place to the north-east of
Kumasi, the capital of Ashantee, and south of the Sarem
country, we have a gold country in equilateral-triangular
shape whose base is a sea-line of 150 miles, and whose
sides may conjecturally be laid down at 220 miles, or an
area of more than 15,00^0 square miles, of which the
greater portion is rich in hitherto partially exploited
gold.
The history of Ashantee wars, which began in 1807,
is that of the African coast generally. In these lands
there are two great axioms of native policy. The first
is never to admit strangers into the interior for trade,
which it is the interest of the maritime tribes to monopo-
lise, and they live in idleness at the expense of the
" Bushmen/' or people of the interior. For this point,
which is first in life to them, they will fight to the last,
and hence the main difficulty of opening up the " Dark
Continent." The second is the ambition of the inner
peoples to obtain a point d'appui upon the coast, where
they can sell their goods at their own price. This ex-
plains the frequent wars and irruptions of Ashantee and
Dahomey against the maritime people, and the want of
permanency in the latter. They become demoralised
by indolent living, intercourse with white men, the
disuse of arms, and the deleterious climate of the low-
lands, and thus they are less fitted to resist the hardier
and more warlike tribes that pour down upon them.
Dr. Livingstone (chap. 21) asserts "no African tribe
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 59
lias ever been destroyed." Nothing but the profoundest
ignorance could have dictated such a declaration. I
affirm, on the contrary, that from the Kru country to the
Gaboon, there is not an ancient people now settled on
the seaboard, including even Dahomey ; that they sup-
planted the races who formerly possessed those civilized
jseats ; and that many, the Mpongwe and the old Cala-
bar people, are likely to become extinct before the close
of another century. The margin of Africa, in fact,
like that of other solid bodies, is continually wearing off.
The Ashantees fought hard for their primal African
desideratum. Their first southerly movement, in 1807,
was headed, according to Bowdich, by Sai Tootoo Qua-
mina. Mr. Meredith ("Account of the Gold Coast") has
accurately described the siege of Annamaboo, in which,
though our countrymen showed the greatest possible
gallantry, the Ashantees had the upper hand, and Col.
Torrane's concessions encouraged them to repeat the
attempt. In 1811 they again defeated the Fantis at
Apam, and carried to Kumasi the bell of the Danish
Fort at Addah. In 1816 the Fantis were obliged to
own their supremacy, and to pay an annual tribute.
The mission of Messrs. James, Bowdich, and Hutchin-
son, in 1817, kept the peace by means of a treaty for
six years. On the llth March, 1822, Brigadier-Gene-
ral Sir Charles Macarthy, who had long served upon the
coast, returnee! to it as Governor of Sierra Leone and
its dependencies, and proceeded on board H.M.S.
"Iphigenia," Commodore Sir Robert Mends, to take
60 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
possession of the forts on the Gold Coast. He encou-
raged the Fantis to resist the annual subsidy paid to the
King of Ashantee, and when that monarch marched
down with 15,000 warriors in January, 1824, he pro-
ceeded to meet him with about 1000 white soldiers and
a mob of native auxiliaries. The Governor seems to
have fallen into the mistake of despising his enemy. A
fight took place at Assamacow, near the Bossumpra
River, on the 21st January, and Sir Charles Macarthy
was killed, together with eight officers of the 2nd AYest
India regiment and the Cape Coast militia.* Accord-
ing to Major Eicketts ("Narrative of the Ashantee War"),
" his heart was eaten by the principal chiefs, that they
might imbibe his bravery; his dried flesh and bones
were divided amongst the Caboceers, who always carried
them about as fetishes for courage, and there is a local
tradition that his head, with his spectacles on, was ex-
posed upon a pole." The Ashantees ravaged the coast,
and through the year fought with British native forces
now successfully then with loss ; but failing to take the
castle, they were compelled by sickness and want of pro-
visions to retire. In 1826 they again advanced upon
the seaboard, but on the 7th August they were utterly
routed though they attacked on Monday, their lucky
day at the fatal field of Dodowah, so called from a
village on a bushy plain, about twenty-four miles north-
east of British Accra. According to Major Eicketts,
* As has appeared in a previous chapter ; the people of the Gold
Coast assign to their beloved Macarthy the fate of Cato.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 61
" among the sad trophies of the day was supposed to be
the head of Sir Charles Macarthy, which was sent to
England by Lieutenant-Colonel Purdon; it was taken
by the Aquapim chief. The king carried it always
with him as a powerful charm, and on the morning 01
the battle he poured rum upon it, and invoked it to
cause all the heads of the whites on the field to He
beside it. The skull was enveloped in a paper covered
with Arabic characters and a silk handkerchief, over all
was a tiger skin, the emblem of royalty." The skull,
however, was subsequently suspected to be that of the
King Tootoo Quamina, who perished in the action. The
people of Cape Coast Castle still swear by Karte
Ukuda, or Macarthy's Wednesday, a strong oath with
high penalties for perjury.* Finally, peace was con-
cluded with the Ashantees, and trade with . the interior
was reopened on the 27th April, 1831.
Since that time, though there have been many rumours
of wars, the Ashantees have remained at peace with us;
but, as in the case of Russia and Turkey, such a state of
affairs can hardly be expected to continue.t
East of Ishama lay a line of reddish cliffs, here
* All the tribes upon this coast have a different oath. The Ashan-
tees swear by Meminda Kormanti (Coromanti .Saturday), when their
great king Osai Tootoo was slain by the Akims. The Fanti chief of
Abra, by the "rock in the sea," near Annamaboo, where he took refuge
from the Ashantees in 1807. The Annamaboo chief, by Igwah, or Cape
Coast Castle, which protected him when he fled from the Ashantees.
t This was written more than one year ago ; 1863 provee the pre-
diction to be correct.
62 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
patched with wood, there bare of forest?, springing from
a straight sea beach, in which baylets with dwarf arms
and shallow chords succeeded one another. About noon
we passed Commeuda Point, which before 1820 was an
important post to English and Hollanders ; the former
chose the eastern, the latter the western bank of the little
River Soosn. Native huts cluster around them both, and
a background of lagoon poisons the air. Viewed from the
westward, Commendah, or, as the natives call it, Ekky-
Tikky, some write Akataykin is backed by a high arm,
an insulated formation known by the promising name
of Gold Hill. One feels once more in " Californy."
At 1 P.M. we were abreast of the castle of St. George
del Mina, popularly known as Elmina, the first European
establishment upon the Gold Coast.* All the landing-
places upon these shores are infamously bad, causing
great loss of life, except at Elmina and Apam, both be-
longing to the Dutch. Here the little rwer Beyah
(Byham ?) allows light vessels to unload in safety under
the castle walls, and supplies good water ; the want of
which, causing dysentery and various diseases, has given
to Guinea what Bosman calls its " dreadful mortal
name." The lower fort, called St. George, stands ob-
liquely fronting the sea, on a black rock a little above
water level ; it has double walls and long batteries,
with rectangular towers instead of bastions, and a tall
* Built by the French in 1383, rebuilt by the Portuguese in 1481,
captured by the Dutch in 1637, and finally ceded to them with its
dependencies in 1641.
A DAY AT CAPE 'COAST CASTLE. 63
dungeon-looking work in the rear. Above it, on a hill
about 100 feet high, and commanding both fortress and
tower, stands Fort St. Jago (St. James), a parallelo-
grammic whitewashed pile, with a single central tower,
and somewhat resembling a hospital with its chapel; it
is, however, strongly laid out. The large native town,
with its red-brown mud walls and bistre thatching, is
divided into two parts : one on the peninsula formed by
the embouchure of the little river, and under the guns ;
the other extends along the beach to the westward of
the stream. These defences have repeatedly resisted the
whole force of Ashantee. A single schooner, the
"Ionian," of Salem, lay off the port, which in the early
part of the eighteenth century exported 3,000,000/. of
gold. The settlement contains a governor, secretary,
and a commandant of troops, about seventeen white
officers, and sixty men, who are clad in blue dungaree.
They are by no means healthy; the high walls exclude
the air, " sopies" induce liver-complaint, and " personal
economy " is neglected. According to Dr. Robert
Clarke, late of H.M.'s Colonial Medical Service,* no
less than twelve officers died in the eight years between
1851 and I860. They are on the best of terms with
their neighbours of Cape Coast Castle, but intercourse
is necessarily rare. Animals being wanted wholly
* "Remarks en the Topography and Diseases of the Gold Coast : " an
excellent paper read before the Epidemiological Society, Monday,
7th May, I860, and partly published in No. II. of the Parliamentary
Reports of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, issued February, 1861.
64 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
unable to live on this part of the coast they must call
upon one another in hammocks ; the distance along the
beach, only eight miles, thus takes three hours, and the
expense is about ten times that of a London Hansom.
Dr. Clarke calculates the expense of locomotion by
" dawk," that a journey of some ten miles on the Gold
Coast costs nearly as much as to travel by third-class
train from Aberdeen to London.
Beyond Elmiiia we passed a small bay, with its
country residences and farms, where the governor and
the principal merchants live, and the Sweet River and
its village that divides the English protectorate from the
Dutch. The country behind was a line of downs, a broken
surface of little wooded hills and intervening basins,
which tells distinctly its tale of gold, and which morning
fogs prove to be swampy. The mysterious malaria we
know is there, and men die off as if in a scurvied ship,
yet it shows no sign. The German traveller Monrad,
asserts that he never saw on this Costa Rica a European
past fifty. In such places all officials ought to be in
couples, one present, the other on leave in England ; nor
ought residence ever to be prolonged beyond three years.
This is the system which is gradually growing up in the
Oil Rivers further south, and until lands are drained and
water is distilled, it would be advisable to try it here.
Presently the profile of Cape Coast Castle became
"Distinct in the light clear air, with
A flood of such rich dyes
As makes earth near as heavenly as heaven."
A DAY AT GAPE COAST CASTLE. 65
It charmed our senses after the foul, gloomy reek of
the S'a Leone coast. At a distance it was a long green-
grown tongue of reddish land, broken with dwarf cliffs
and scaurs, and lined below with clean sand. Upon the
outline appeared three projections : a fort at the root, a
second about the centre, and a castle with a mass of
native huts at the tip. The first, which lies north-west
of the settlement, is Phipps' Tower, alias Fort Yictoria ;
a martello thing, abandoned, but kept in repair, and so
placed in defiance of Vauban, that in the hands of an
enemy it would command castle and town. The second,
or central post, is Smith's Tower, now Fort William,
built by Mr. President Maclean, another artless martello,
pretty, but circular below, and, in defiance of all archi-
tecture, square above, mounting twelve guns, commanded
by No. 1, and commanding No. 3. It has a lighthouse,
1 92 feet above sea level, but skippers declare that the
light never fails to disappear at two A.M., and that a
harbour master being, like York, "wanted," the reflec-
tors will not reflect ; whereas those at S'a Leone, under
opposite conditions, have lost all their silver by over-
burnishing. Also a ball used to be dropped from the
castle's flagstaff at the instant of Greenwich mean solar
noon ; but since the death of the patron-saint of the
place, Mr. Maclean, few of the governors of Cape Coast
Castle have been addicted to astronomy. The principal
castle is upon the tip of the tongue and the native
town clusters behind it.
At two P.M. we anchored one mile off the landing-
66 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
place ; the water was low, no bad condition, and tlie day
was that of the dry season. A local superstition, how-
ever, declares that the surf is always worst between the
new and full moon. Presently we were surrounded by
canoes, wall-sided rudderless troughs, from twenty to
forty feet long, with gunwales rather bending inwards
from the right angle. All had weatherboards in the bow,
planks raised two or more feet out to keep out the seas,
such as the forec'sle of the British navy in the days of
Henry VIII. Others are provided with a funnel of
woodwork at the fore, in the shape of a huge thimble.
The only danger of this craft is of their "turning turtle."
The paddles are small trefoils, short and stoutly made,
to lift the vessel over shallow water. In the smooth,
deep rivers of the South we shall find them with long
and broad lanceolate blades, the better to hold water.
The crew are Fantis, once a currish race, thoroughly
cowed by the more warlike Ashantees ; under our peace-
ful rule, however, they have waxed rather insolent. They
catch us dexterously from the dangerous ladder, and, as
they make for the shore, all sing " Whi* man cum agen,"
White men come again, with remarks, in their ver-
nacular, doubtless highly personal. The great art of
landing without a sea is to watch when the wave
breaks, backing water, if necessary ; a calm interval is
found, all " clap on steam," and riding over the crest
of a billow, run upon the sand before the rise of the
next breaker. They all then tumble out, land the pas-
sengers upon their shoulders, and haul up the canoe.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 67
On this occasion, however, we did not escape well, there
were too many in the boat to be carried off pick-a-back
at one trip, and we were received upon the beach by a
host of starers.
The rollers are feared at Cape Coast Castle. The
landing-place is a small bay under the north-east
bastion, protected by a reef jutting out from a ledge of
rocks. The Harmattan season, December, January,
and February, shows the smoothest seas ; from May to
August there is generally a terrific surf, the fall violence
of the Atlantic rolling in from the south and west, and
for days together canoes cannot put out. An excellent
landing-place and a wet dock might be made behind the
main outcrop : it has often been proposed the excuse
is that there would be difficulties. The fact is, that,
after the sand has been removed, the rock would re-
quire a little blasting, which would be too much for
Cape Coast energy.* What can be expected, when a
colonial engineer passes some twenty years at a place,
and leaves, as the only memory, a temple of Cloacina,
already hastening to decay ? Again, at the disem-
barking place, about twenty yards from the castle and
sea-gate, lies a lot of thirty-two pounders. They
were landed here some fifteen years ago, and have
been left to rust away because no one had industry
enough to remove them. Throughout the castle indeed
I would rather fire with blank cartridge than with ball ;
* I am hrppy to say that mauy of these remarks are obsolete in
1863. .,
68 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
paint fills up honeycombs, but is a poor protection
against gunpowder.
Ascending the few feet of ramp, we entered the long
gateway of the Cruizing Cape Castle.* The foundation
is called Tabara, alias Tahbil, alias Tabirri Rock, and
a similar solitary outcrop to the westward is known as
Tabara's Wife. The former is the supposed residence
of a great fetish, who comes forth at night white and
giant-like, to drive away malicious ghosts. During the
yam season, sacrifices of goats, fowls, and vegetables are
made to it, and they attract a multitude of " turkey-
buzzards." The material is a dark gneiss, through which
granite and quartz have protruded. It rises eighteen to
twenty feet above sea level, yet in violent storms, the
rollers, dashing clean over the rock, which echoes to
their thundering roar, sweeps heavy spray over the out-
lying batteries of the southern front up to the mess-
room windows, forty feet high. The castle is a most
irregular building, of quadrangular shape, if any, with
bastions at each angle, and batteries originally intended
for 100, but now mounting some sixty to seventy useless
old iron guns. It is comfortable enough as quarters,
* The Portuguese called it Cabo Corso, the latter a sea-term, mean-
ing a cruizing ; Bosnian uses the word Cabocors, and the English
ridiculously perverted it into Cape Coast Castle. (S. Lopez de Lima,
Ensaios sobre a Statistica das Possessaos Portuguezas, Libr. II. part i.
p. 7.) He also corrects the following English inaccuracies : Biafra,
St. Thomas, Annobona, Escardos, Chama, Axim and Cabo Lopez into
Rio das Maffras, San Thome", Annobom, Escraros, Sarna, Axem and
Cabo de Lopo Goncalves.
A DAT AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 69
but useless for modern warfare; it has all the vastness of
Europeo-Oriental architecture in the olden time. Such
erections in these days are impossible. Probably built
piecemeal, it covers several acres of ground ; in parts it
is four stories high. The gateway leads into a large
triangular space, occupying the east of the enceinte, used
for drill, and adorned with two thirteen-inch mortars,
and five fine old Danish brass guns, lately brought from
Quittah. To the north of this terre pleine are double-
storied buildings, used as barracks and for other pur-
poses; on the south is a sea wall, twenty feet high
with the Tabara bastion mounting two mortars and
nine guns; which fortification unmistakeably wants
casemates. The west is flanked by a long transverse line
of double-storied buildings, that divide the castle into
two unequal parts : they contain the council chamber, or
the palaver hall, and the civil quarters. A double flight
of steps leads to this north and south range of buildings,
which are high, solid, and roomy, and are not destitute
of a certain magnificence. The western gallery is paved
with squares of black and white marble, like the Sayyid's
Palace at Zanzibar, and His Excellency still occupies the
office where President Maclean used to transact busi-
ness, at the head of a small staircase separating it from
the old observatory, a kind of cockloft, afterwards the
dressing-room in which Mrs. Maclean was found by her
servant lying dead across the door. Passing through
this central building by an arched gateway, guarded
by two cohorns, you enter a smaller triangular space
70 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
called the spur battery ; casemates in its northern side
are used for stores, and in those opposite some of the
troops are lodged ; the centre is occupied by a guard-
room, built over one of the best tanks in the place, and
there is a gateway opening upon the town.
Before mess, which was at the unnatural hour of four
P.M., we went forth to attend a cause cetebre in the
Court-house. Walking along the main portion of the
building, which, fronting the sea, forms the conspicuous
curtain between the two bastions at the flanks, we
walked into the barracks, and found the men in a state
more merry than wise. This is the Yam Feast, or Black
Christmas ; a ceremonial intended, it is said, to impress
upon the native mind the risk of using the unripe, or
even the young vegetable whilst it continues soft and
waxy. It may not be gathered under severe pains and
penalties before the day appointed by the chief. On
such festivals the Kings of Ashantee and Dahomey put to
death a certain number of their subjects, the better to
teach Hygiene to the rest. The harvest-home is in Sep-
tember, at which time all who can afford it enter the
state known as "half-seas over." Armed companies, com-
manded by their captains, carrying their flags like regi-
ments in New York, promenade the streets, and faction
fights are disagreeably common. It has not been found
possible to abolish this system of "companies," which
causes great disorders on the Gold Coast. The barracks
are decidedly overcrowded, and than overcrowding no
fault can be more fatal in these lands. We saw, also, a
A DAT AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 71
reading and billiard-room, the table of which was, at any
rate, superior to that of S'a Leone ; a better one, how-
ever, has been proposed. The officers' quarters are in
the northern line of buildings fronting the sea ; in the
basement of the same is the hospital, tolerably light and
well ventilated. The old slave dungeons are visited by
those only who enjoy such mild morbidities as slave mar-
kets and old barracoons. Dr. Clarke describes these black
holes as being under the south or sea battery, and
" access to them is obtained through a winding archway,
which opens into crypts formed by the divisional sup-
porting walls of the battery, being feebly lighted and
ventilated through grated apertures in the sea wall,
which reeks with dank ness from the percolation of
water."
The Court-house, or rather room, is at the eastern
extremity of the tall curtain fronting the sea; it is a
dirty little hole, thronged almost to suffocation with a
rough crowd busy as wasps. A certain captain of ma-
rines, lately appointed postmaster and receiver-general
of revenue at Cape Coast Castle, had fallen out with an
" African," formerly a tax-gatherer, then a civil com-
mandant, and now . The European called the
African an embezzler of customs revenue. The African
instituted a counter-charge against the European of
neglecting his duty, and began a civil action for defama-
tion of character; the result of which was, that the
Englishman was fined 25/. Of course the place was
split in two. ome declared that Japhet was rightly
72 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
served for saying anent Ham things that could not be
proved. Others declared that a noted truth had been
twisted into a libel by men jealous, because a local ap-
pointment had been given out of the colony. Touching
juries at this place, the editor of the "West African
Mail," then published at Cape Coast Castle, thus con-
firms the assertion of his S'a Leone brother, and
being, as he says himself, " an African from scalp to
s*****m," he is entitled to belief and deference on the
part of a British public :
" JURIES. We must say a word about juries in Cape
Coast. We consider juries here a mistake ; the respect-
able people don't like to sit. If they can avoid it, they
won't sit. Often persons are summoned to sit as jurors
who are in fact mere ragamuffins. These never refuse.
Their verdict can be bought for a glass of beer or three-
penny worth of tobacco. We think it would be well for
the court to order a list of householders to be made out
and kept in the court, and when a jury is required, the
clerk of the court should be directed to summon some
dozen of these householders, whose names should be
written on slips of paper, and put into a hat or a box, and
then the names of six (the legal number of a jury on the
Gold Coast) drawn out. In a very important case that
was heard a few days ago, a man was put into the jury
box who was a notorious swindler and rogue. On one
occasion the defendant nominated all the jurymen, and
the court permitted this. It seems to us, that in all
this there is much that calls for reform ; but, unfortu-
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 73
nately, what is everybody's business is nobody's business.
There are now so many judges, and each judge is so
wretchedly paid, that we cannot be astonished if their
Honours decline to be bothered with more court work
than they can help/'
There is no part of the world, I may assert, where
there is a worse feeling between black and white than
upon the Gold Coast. The arrogance de part et d'autre
is most comical to a stranger. There are about 100
Europeans in the land : amongst these there are many
excellent fellows, but it is an unpleasant confession to
make the others appear to me inferior to the Africans,
native as well as mulatto. The possibility of such a
thing had never yet reached my brain : at last, in colloquy
with an old friend upon the Coast, the idea started up,
and after due discussion we adopted it. I speak of
morale ; in intellect the black race is palpably superior,
and it is fast advancing in the path of civilisation. It
cries for " regular lawyers," and is now beginning, even
at the out-stations to file schedules of bankruptcy.
We dined at the mess of the Gold Coast Artillery.
Hereabouts begins the compulsory semi-starvation which
afflicts "West Africa as far south as Loando. Food is
scarce, and what there is affords but little nutriment.
Moreover, cooks are detestable, and there is a terrible
sameness of diet. As a rule, it is all fowl, till the lean
poultry about the size of an English pigeon ends by
giving one the scurvy. Beef is not to be had, and the
tasteless goat's flesh must take the place of mutton.
U WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Turkeys are sometimes brought from the neighbourhood
of Quittah ; and even fruit is rare. Fish, however, is
plentiful, and the older residents upon the coast adhere
mainly to this lenten diet. The country-made dishes are
good and wholesome, but somewhat too finely pounded
and too much worked to suit the English palate.
But, if rations were scarce, hospitality, Steinvvein, and
Moselle were not; and upon these we contrived to
rough it. The mess reminded the consul of the old
camping days at Kurrachee, in Scinde, or the Unhappy
Valley.
The G. C. A., which initials, by-the-by, the facetious
grumbler interprets Great Curse of the Army, because
promotion is so easily obtained in it, dates from 1851 ;
in that year it succeeded the Royal African corps of
three companies, each 100 men, stationed at S'a
Leone, the Gambia, and Fernando Po. This artillery
corps began with 300 men, commanded by seventeen
European officers, and it was further increased by a band
of fifty supernumeraries. About 120 are stationed at
head-quarters ; the same number at and about Accra ;
whilst the rest are scattered over the out-stations, and
are supposed to co-operate with the Pynims petty head
men, who act as police. The main object of the levy
was to act as a preventive to slavery and human sacri-
fice, which is effected by breaking through the influence
of the chiefs ; and so far have we been successful, that
even the Okros, or Fetish boys, are no longer put to
death. The cost, however, cannot be less than 20,000^.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 75
per annum, and I suspect that Irregulars would cost
much less, and be equally efficient. The men are chiefly
runaway serviles, for whom a compensation of $40 is
paid to the owners another proof, if aught were needed,
how difficult it is to avoid slave-dealing, and the sol-
dier's price is deducted by instalments from his pay. The
men have a standing grievance touching salary ; they
receive Id., whereas the West Indian private's pay is 1*.
a day; moreover, they are liable to "cuttings," and their
uniform is a useless expense to them. They are armed
with an efficient Enfield carbine and sword-bayonet, and
they wear the Zouave uniform. Though often ragged
and incomplete, wanting stockings, for instance it
looks gorgeous near the blue tuft and yellow facings of
the Dutch. It is, however, cumbrous, comfortless, and
unhealthy, admirably adapted for Tripoli, equally ill-
suited to the Tropics. Sad tales are told of their state
of discipline, and few expect to see the corps live long.*
* Since this was written, an open mutiny broke out. On the 3rd
October, 186 , the troops, after vainly attempting to murder certain of
the officers, fled to Napoleon, an out-station distant about four miles.
Two days afterwards, the place was visited by H.M.S. " Wye," and on
the 7th, Major De Ruvignes, civil commandant at Accra, whose energy
probably saved the Coast, sent up some 50 suspected men in H.M.S. S.
"Brisk" and "Mullet." The Europeans, 15 in all, not to mention
six or seven mulatto gentlemen, were in the fort, and the mutineers
had entrenched themselves in their new quarters. The serjeant-major
was sent to them, but they refused all terms. Being hated like poison
by the natives, and aware that the chiefs and people generally would
unite to destroy them, they gave up their arms on the 9th, and on the
next day they were persuaded by Mr. Usher of the commissariat, to
V6 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
It would scarcely be fair to judge of the morale of men
who are almost in open mutiny ; these Fantis, however,
are said at times to have fought pretty well at least
not worse than their neighbours. With very few
exceptions, such as the Bijugas, the Ashantees, and
the Dahomans, there is no more timid race than the
maritime tribes of Western Intertropical Africa; even
the three above mentioned are not more remarkable for
valour than the Hindu, who, " meak and mild/' as we
called him, could prove himself a tiger at a pinch. It
is otherwise on the Eastern Coast, and I attribute the
difference to the intermixture of Arab blood.
The officers of the Cape Coast army expect a com-
pany after a period of three years' service from the date
of lieutenant's commission, and after six years of actual
service they are entitled to a majority; moreover, a
captain may retire upon 150/. a year. This is being
liberal of promotion with a witness : the least precaution
embark for trial at S'a Leone. Capt. Lace of H.M.S. "Brisk,"
carried between 80 and 90 to their destination ; of these one was shot
at S'a Leone, and another was landed for the same purpose on the
day when I left Cape Coast Castle (13th Nov. 186). For protection
against farther outrage, Capt. Luce left in the castle a party of 21
marines, with Lieut. Ogle, Royal Marine Artillery. They had rations
for five weeks, and were confined to barracks between 9 A.M. and
4 P.M. Great care was taken of them, and the only loss was one
man, by an accidental fall from a window. No subsequent outbreak
occurred. The only danger, in these cases, is the first " flare-up."
Thus ended the great Gold Coast mutiny, which, though almost blood-
less, should methinks be a standing warning against employing men in
their own country. We know it in England and Ireland ; in Africa
they have still to learn this simple wisdom.
A DAT AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 77
that should be taken would be to make all colonial officers
of the scientific branches pass examinations before
entering the home establishments. The Dutch have
made six years their minimum term of service on the
Gold Coast : after twelve years an officer retires on full
pay. Their system is in some points superior to ours.
A man will not interest himself in the progress of a place
where he pitches tent for a short time ; he retires before
learning a sentence of the language, or becoming at all
acquainted with the people, much less with the capa-
bilities of the country. To these short periods of
service I ascribe the undeveloped, or rather the wholly
neglected, state of the Gold Coast, whose resources are a
matter of mystery ; and such will be the probable effects
of frequent furloughs to the future Anglo-Indian. On the
other hand, there is the climate, against which English-
men, apparently by reason of their habits, are unfitted
to contend. "Whilst Americans, Germans, and Ham-
burghers have passed safely through years of residence
in the Island of Zanzibar, it has not a single English
house, the difficulty being, to speak plainly, that of
finding a man who will not drink. In these days of
monthly steamers and circulating libraries, breaking the
monotony of existence, when the semi-starvation of which
men whose vital powers are lowered by a tropical
climate, die, can now be replaced by generous living ;
when it is known that quinine, liberty, and constant
occupation rob the most dangerous climate of half its
risk ; the climate of the Gold Coast has lost nothing of
78
WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
its sting or of its victory. Bosnian's remark still, I fear,
applies to the English : " Their forts are very meanly
garrisoned, as if it were sufficient to build forts, furnish
them with cannon and necessary provisions, without men,
in which the English are everywhere deficient." Besides
which, he adds, that in those days our people took six
years to build a fort.
No one lands at Cape Coast Castle without pil-
grimaging to the "last resting-place of the poetess
' L. E. L./ " and, of course, without inquiring into her
" sad, eventful history," which has, however, nothing of
romance. For " L. E. L." is known where Miss Lan-
don is not, and her fate has been the subject of curiosity
to many that have never read the " Improvisatrice," or,
" Eomance and Reality." The graves of Mrs. Maclean
and her deeply-injured husband are on the large trian-
gular drill-ground of the Castle. It is a local practice to
bury the dead in dwelling-houses, and the custom is
A -DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 79
not confined to Pagans ; the floor of the surgery, the
kitchen, and the medical store-rooms of the colonial
hospital have all been used for interment. The tramp-
ing of soldiery upon the pavement had well nigh
defaced all the traces of the tombs,* when the pious
hand of Governor O'Connor restored them. The
graves now lie parallel to each other as in p. 78 :
the St. Andrew's Cross denotes the nationality of the
deceased.
On the wall of the north and south buildings a Latin
inscription, on a neat tablet of white marble, records the
death and the survivor's grief. I had always believed
that upon the groundwork of a statue intended for
Washington the Great, and representing a more than
half-nude figure, extending its arm towards the Capitol,
as if the latter had been a barber-surgeon intent upon
phlebotomy, I had discovered the very worst Latin in-
scription in the world. My natural exultation at the
success was justified by a sentence beginning with
" monumentum istud " ending with faciebat. But
great is the use of travel. Cape Coast Castle sup-
plied me with a further bathos of Latinity in the
neat tablet above alluded to.
* The Rev. Mr. Wilson, in "Western Africa," curiously says, "that
Governor Maclean and his distinguished partner lie side by side under
the cold sod of this African fort." This reminds one of Sir William C.
Harris's description of Eve's grave at Jeddah, being a green sod, -where
there is not a patch of grass. I much wonder what these gentlemen
understood by sod ?
80 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
" Hie jacet sepultum
Omne quod mortale fuit
Letitiae Elizabeths Maclean,
Quam egregi omatum indole," &c., &c.
There was a sister tablet a few yards off, placed,
I believe, in honour of Mr. Swaiizy, here a well known
colonial name. It was shivered by the shock of the
huge mortar fired in front of it.
The true history of Mrs. Maclean's death is known
to many, but who, in writing the life of " L. E. L.,"
would dare to tell it ? Owning that de mortuis nil
nisi verum should be our motto, how would it be possible
to publish facts whilst actors in the tragedy are still
upon the stage of life ? And after their death it will
be forgotten. The author of a certain report on the
Gold Coast, during his short and feverish residence as
Commissioner, a guest of President Maclean, succeeded
in casting upon his host's public efficiency a serious slur,
which was afterwards satisfactorily removed by a select
committee of the House of Commons. On the other hand,
the author of "Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast,"
showed himself an injudicious friend, far worse than any
foe, by asserting that, after a certain esclandre, the house-
hold was very successful. But enough of these private
matters. Mr. Forster, M.P. for Berwick, the warmest
of President Maclean's well-wishers, openly asserted
that the flood of calumny poured upon him arose from
the enmity of an individual in the Colonial Office, who
was pettily jealous because affairs at the Gold Coast,
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 8]
with a miserable pittance of 400 0, were managed
far more effectually than at the pet S'a Leone, where
economy has never been the order of the day. Hence
the "President of the Council of Government/' than
whom a better servant of Government was never known
on this coast, was charged with having encouraged
slavery under the local name "pawning" a fatal accusa-
tion in those days and with neglecting official duty for
private correspondence.
Standing over the graves we heard the story of Mrs.
Maclean's death, and nothing could be less probable
than the popular version. A homeward-bound vessel
was preparing to sail. At 7 A.M. she left her hus-
band's room, and proceeded to write letters before
dressing in the little room opposite, once used as an
observatory. A Mrs. Bailey, her servant, had been
sent to the store-room to fetch some article; she re-
turned after a few minutes, and found against the door
a weight, which proved to be the corpse of her mistress.
The servant distinctly asserted what has been since
denied, that a phial was still in the dead woman's hand,
and that the phial contained a preparation of prussic
acid. But here comes the rub. The authoress's
spirits had been weakened, she had ceased to play at
ball, and she was suffering from a heart disease which
produced fits or spasms. The local account, however, is,
that she was in the habit of taking prussic acid to stimu-
late her energies, a use probably unknown to Scheele.
At any rate, calumny found its way home, and the
82 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
President was reduced to the secondary position of Judi-
cial Assessor at Cape Coast Castle. There he died in
May, 1847, to the deep and lasting regret of the whole
population, black and white.
The " balance," as Yankee Doodle says, of the twenty-
four hours, was pleasantly spent at the quarters of Mr.
Usher, a commissariat officer, who was serving out his
two years de rigueur upon the coast of Western Africa.
The profound quiet of a tropical night, derived a stillness
deeper still from the contrast with the noisy rattle of the
tiller-chains, whose perpetual jiggerty-jig made one long
for a mild anaesthetic of turpentine.
Betimes in the next morning we sallied out to see the
town. After 10 A.M. a European becomes a prisoner at
home for the day, until his jailor, the sun, has disappeared.
As there are no riding animals, and hammocks conceal
the view, we used what I have heard called " Shanks his
mare." We issued from the gateway at the north of
the western, or spur battery, and slowly sauntered into
the open. Opposite the gate is the esplanade, a cleared
space for parading ; from this a broad street, lined with
ragged umbrella-trees, a kind of ficus, runs towards
the north, dividing the town into two parts. Imme-
diately on our left was the unfinished Protestant church,
of which 600. were granted by the Colonial Office and
the War Department. This Africo-Gothic aspires to
the honour of consecration by the Eight Reverend the
Bishop of Sierra Leone, and meanwhile much resembles
the porter's lodge in the new style of cemetery. A large
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 83
room in the upper part of the castle's northern range, or
sea front, was formerly used as a chapel ; it was, how-
ever, secularized into officers' quarters by the recommen-
dation of a sanitary report published by the Commission-
ers 30th June, 1857. At the upper end of the main
street, which rises gently, is the substantial and sober
looking meeting-house of the Wesleyaus, a body that is
owned to have done some good in this part of Africa
by abstaining from politics, and by teaching, not only
Christianity, but trade. The sides of the highly irre-
gular street are incongruous mixtures of whitewashed
houses and red-brown clay huts, some double storied,
and of superior dimensions, after the fashion of the
olden times, but most of them palpably native ; those of
Europeans may show green jalousies, but the earth walls
and dingy roofs of dull grey thatch, are like the Africans.
The right, or east side of main street, is a straggling
line of habitations that slope down into a rugged rocky
hollow, and thence upwards to the side of a correspond-
ing eminence. The shape of the native house is a hollow
square; here, however, the form is undeveloped, com-
pared with what we shall see at Abeokuta and Benin.
As in all tropical countries, there are attached com-
pounds where women do domestic work and where chil-
dren gambol under the umbrella-tree. On the Gold
Coast intermural sepulture has reached its climax. The
pernicious practice of burying in the basement of the
dwelling places, renders any improvement of the town
a matter of the greatest difficulty. The custom appears
G 2
84 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
to have arisen from a barbarous vain-glory ; the corpse
is placed in the handsome abode which it built for itself,
and survivors point to the last home of a wealthy man.
"With the dead body, which is sprinkled with gold dust,
are interred pearls, precious metals, and ornaments,
Aggri, or Popo beads, and clothes of the greatest value ;
thus, Lombard Street being in the future, whilst the
material exists everywhere, these tombs become banks
of deposit, as it were, and the family, especially the
eldest son, draws from them when required. The idea
of burying treasures with the dead dates from the
earliest days of history, and the Jews, whose rites and
ceremonies show distinct traces of African fetissism,
long preserved the custom. The wise king placed
treasures in his father David's grave, and when Asa
died, he was " laid in the bed which was filled with sweet
odours and divers kinds of spices, prepared by the
apothecaries' art." On the Gold Coast, even when the
family vault is exhausted, they are as unwilling to part
with the tomb -home, as a wild Irishman with his wretched
shanty on the hill-side. The material of the walls is
sun-dried brick, or more often swish, clay puddled with
water; this red mixture is built in courses which are
allowed to harden before others are added, and they
easily dry during the hot season. They require, how-
ever, a substantial thatch and overhanging eaves, other-
wise they are cut and channelled by the rain, and in
damp places the foot of the walls should be protected by
stone work, or by cactus, from burrowing animals. As
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 85
timber is not used, it is no wonder that the habitations,
after a heavy downfall, subside like the puddle palaces
of Scinde.
The floors are of mud, daubed over strong lathing,
the equivalent of our English "post and plaster;"
the rooms are dark, damp, rarely washed, and ill-venti-
lated ; foul linen lies upon the bed or hangs against the
wall ; offals, and bits of putrid fish strew the ground and
encumber the corners ; whilst outside, dirty green pools,
and all manner of refuse taint the air. The houses are
over-crowded, there are 6000 to 7000 souls in the place,
and they are not sufficiently scattered. The usual
number inhabiting a small two-storied tenement will be
twenty; and as lodging is scarce, respectable people
must live separated by a thin party-wall, if any, from
some disreputable fellow, drunk all day and half the
night with cheap spirits from the United States or the
Brazils. Cloacinse, public and private, are unknown ;
and the Galinazo and the Pariah dog are hardly
numerous enough to remove the garbage about the huts.
There are municipal corporations both at Cape Coast
Castle and at Accra; there are also detailed police
regulations for the removal of such impurities. They
are, however, a dead letter, and the nuisance cannot be
abated without the direct interference of the authorities,
who stop their noses and say no more about it. A walk
through the north-east of the town at once shows the
cause of its high death rate. Those who are curious
to see what an hotel may be, have only to visit Dick's or
86 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
Sam's the locanda of the Apennines is a palace com-
pared with them.
The men I do not speak of the "native gentle-
men " are dressed after the African fashion, in a loin
cloth and a larger sheet, both of cotton. The latter is
removed from the shoulders on meeting or addressing a
superior, and its picturesque folds assume the shape of
the Roman toga. They are a tall and not ill-formed
race, when they have no skin diseases, with chocolate
coloured skins, noses rather high at the bridge, and a fair
development of the facial angle which escapes the quasi-
gorillahood of the real " nigger." The women would
not shine in Mr. Barnum's beauty show ; when young,
however, they have the usual leautt du dlable, and if
their features are not Grecian, their limbs are. I wish
" figures" might be added ; unfortunately their bosoms
are unsupported, and as they wear the same dress as the
men, defects become painfully prominent. The Fantis
are perhaps the most civilized people on this coast;
unfortunately El Islam has not yet taught womankind
the propriety of veiling their bosoms. Under the loose
cloth all wear the " Shim " smallest of " languti" or T-
bandages, secured round the waist by a string of large
gold beads when the wearer is wealthy, of glass or clay
when the contrary is the case. These articles are hung
in numbers about the houses, and often puzzle strangers.
When due attention is paid to this article it must be
beneficial to health. They have the feminine ornaments
usual ill semi-civilized and half-clad lands, ear-rings,
A DAT AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 87
necklaces, bracelets, armlets, finger and toe rings of brass,
if not of gold, and metal anklets, oval shaped, and
drooping over instep and heel. There are, however, in
their toilettes, two very decided novelties to an English
eye whether to be recommended or not to the Hebes
at home, the reader may judge. The head-dress in
married women is that described by Park among the
"ladies of Karta and Ludamar." The hair, which,
though curly, grows eight to eleven inches long, is shaved
or cleared away round the head to remove straggling pile,
and to define the line of departure. The rest of the
locks, well combed and greased, are drawn tightly up
to a tall ridge, either wholly natural or blown out with
padding. There is a back comb of gold or jewellery,
if possible, and some coiffures have a terminal top-knot,
whilst others end abruptly like a pillow turned upon its
edge.* Women of rank would be ashamed if this mon-
strous Ckinoise were not exaggerated to the utmost. In
the fifteenth century, however, our ancestresses must have
been as much troubled. The other nouveaute is a " nice
thing" in "bussles." The "cankey," as it is called, is a
huge pincushion, a stuffed oblong of calico, provided with
two tapes, and so fastened round the waist that the two
loose corners and the edge between them stand shelving
upwards from the owner's back. It thus forms a con-
tinuation to the person suggesting that the caudal region
has been very lately suppressed. This racing-like pad
* At S'a Leone, when people suffer from scurvy and relaxed uvula,
they tie a bunch of ha,ir, en toupet, tightly on the top of the head.
88 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
is supposed to act as a saddle for the baby to ride upon ;
unfortunately for the explanation, it is worn by little
misses hardly in their teens. I therefore attribute it
not purely to fashion, but to that natural and instinctive
admiration of Steatopyga from which the Authoress of
Crinoline does not appear to be free.
We passed one of the two graveyards lying to the
windward of the castle. These enclosures are, as usual,
foul places of wet sepulture, dank with fetid vegetation,
and poisoning the air of the houses and huts around
them. The other, I am told, is equally badly situated, and
also surrounded by a dense population. Besides these
cemeteries, which are appropriated to Christians, graves
for Pagans are dug about the beach, and the slaves,
when not thrown into the sea, are buried " promis-
cuously " along the lanes or pathways of the faubourgs.
Dr. Clarke recommended "that the Christian burial-
ground should be closed up, and that cemeteries should
be opened to the leeward of the town, where there is
abundance of land lying waste suitable for the purpose,
and where a piece of ground might also be set apart
wherein to bury the dead of the Pagan and slave popu-
lation."
Leaving this burial-ground stained and dreary, we
passed out of the town into the bush, where gamboge
trees, with flowers like hollyhocks, were conspicuous, and
we breasted the rough ascent leading to Tort Yictoria.
The soil was a reddish-brown argile, thinly clothed with
quartz nodules, mica flakes, and feldspar; in places
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 89
thin rivulets had furrowed the surface, and bands of
quartzose rock crossing the course, would have conveyed
an intelligible hint to a Californian or Australian
prospector. Ascending the eminence, which is about
a mile from the castle, we found an extensive pro-
spect, bounded southwards by the sea, and northwards,
or inland, the horizon was a wavy mass of little hills,
paps, and hummocks, all bushy, and prolonged in
crescent-shape towards the Atlantic. A few were
rounded at the summits, others had table-tops; none,
however, showed signs of cultivation, being shaggy and
with trees between ; and the only road in sight was the
narrow ribbon winding through the valleys, and taking
the direction of Kuuiasi. It is now easy to follow in
the path of Bowdich, Dupuis, and Hutchinson. The
King of Ashantee, however, can hardly be visited
without a dash of at least 100, for which he will
probably return 40 in gold dust, and, as has been
said, hammock travelling, especially over mountains and
on long journeys, is very expensive. Besides which,
an unknown visitor is compelled to await at the
frontier permission to visit the capital, and etiquette
will not allow this to arrive for some days, when in
Kumasi, various pretexts will prevent you seeing the
king till a second delay ceremonious has taken place.
And, lastly, it is said that his Majesty has invariably
refused a transit northward to all travellers, fearing lest
they should make some arrangements for trade with the
"people on horses," probably Moors or Africo- Arabs,
90 WANDERINGS IN WEST 'AFRICA.
who, the tradition is, are impatiently expecting the
arrival of white men. It was the same at Dahomey,
and the reader will readily remember the difficulty with
which Mr. Duncan* penetrated into the interior from
Abomey. A large lake, and other geographical curi-
osities, are reported to exist between Ashantee and the
" Kong Mountains." The country is described as con-
sisting of rich grassy plains and savannahs, contrasting
with the thick bush-forest of Ashantee, and the people
are said to furrow the land with ploughs. Perhaps, in
these days, by proper management and by liberal pre-
sents, the interdict might partially be removed, and the
explorer permitted to advance under an escort of the
king's guards.
On our left, or northward of the castle, Tort Macarthy
occupies the crest of a detached little hill. Below us,
and about one mile north-west of the city, lies a lagoon,
like those which deform the environs of James Fort and
Christiansborg, a " silver liquor " to the bird's-eye view,
but nearer a pond prevalent with foulness and fever,
and full of crabs more than suspected of anthropophagy.
This intensely salt " marigot," which in the dry season
is about one mile in length by half that breadth, is sepa-
4
* Mr. Duncan was sent as Vice-Consul to Aboraey in the days of
Gezo, father of the present sovereign. He was an adventurous traveller,
but by no means an educated man or a man of the world, and the
Dahoman used to say of the Englishman that he wished the King of
England would "send him a man with a head." Gezo was, although we
consider him a barbarian, a very remarkable man, dignified, and gifted
with uncommon penetration : as my informant, who was on friendly
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 91
rated from the Atlantic by a narrow strip of sand.
During the rainy season, when freshened and swollen
by the drainage of the hills, and the streams that flow
from the spongy and reedy morass at its landward
extremity, it partially discharges itself into the ocean.
Warping will be difficult, and drainage impossible here ;
the sole's level is below the sea. Kurrachee has its
" Clifton," and similarly this lagoon has been provided
with a " Mount Edgcumbe," a pigmy scaur overhanging
the impure lake. Another bad formation calling
loudly for reform is impartially placed at the east end of
the town and intersecting part of the suburbs a deep
fiumara cribbled with water-holes and gold-diggers'
pits, strewed with animal and vegetable refuse, and
dammed by a sand-bar across the mouth. Whilst these
things continue in loco, Cape Coast Castle must expect to
retain as evidence maladies which, like dracunculus and
dysentery, are sporadic at deadly Bathurst and S'a
Leone. It can hardly wonder that scrofula, ulcers, kra-
kra,* herpes, noli-me-tangere, leprosy, and foul defce-
terms with him, said, he could tell a visitor's calibre in half an hour.
His son, Badahong, the present ruler, gave promise of superior civilisa-
tion, but he has followed in the ways of his ancestors. How little the
general public at home know of this class of people may be gathered
from this fact : An enthusiastic lady I will spare her name wrote,
strongly urging me to take her with me to the City of the Amazons.
She intended, by a magic lantern, and by pronouncing some words iu
the vernacular (the list desired was duly specified), to terrify the king
into abolishing human sacrifices to become a Christian and a Iloinan
Catholic ! It is incredible, but it is true.
* A bad kind of scabies, commonly written Craw Craw. It is not
92 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
datious, are rather the rule than the exception. For
the unusual frequency of ophthalmia, deafness, land-
scurvy, and elephantiasis, the people have mainly to thank
their own indolence. Medical men find the atmosphere
surcharged, they say, with that specific poison which
breeds "Yellow John" at S'a Leone and the Gambia. I
should be astonished if it were otherwise. Yet even
here Nature, as is her wont, has planted a remedy where
she has placed the poison. " Connor Hill," or " One-
tree Hill," on the north-east of the town, is said to be
a sanitarium ; there, and there only, Europeans should
be stationed. There is a dwarf platform on the summit
which is capable of accommodating all the Europeans in
the station, and if the castle is ever to be defended, this
is the position for a strong battery of Armstrongs. Were
I governor of Cape Coast Castle, my hut should be built
there during the first month.
Returning homewards, we passed, on another emi-
nence to the west of the town, a house and school
belonging to the "Wesleyan establishment ; both appeared
neat and clean. Standing upon the balcony was his
Reverence Prince John, alias Usu Ansali, who, with his
cousin Kwantibisa, son of the King of Ashantee, were
given as hostages to Mr. Maclean in 1830. The youths
were forwarded to England for education. When they
returned to Africa in the Niger expedition, they settled
confined to mankind ; goats, and other animals, often die of it a
few days after arrival at Fernando Po ; it is most easily communicated,
and on board ship it has run through the whole crew.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 93
at Cape Coast Castle, where Prince John remained as
" interpreter, class-teacher, and local preacher." He
appeared in the shape of a very black man with a white
necktie, more Africano; as Mr. Paul says of the Maori,*
he looked " snobbish, so to speak, when clad in European
costume." I could not but admire the vastness and the
barbarous splendour of the houses, built by residents in
the days before steamers, when men expended hundreds,
whereas they now grudge a "flimsy." They reminded
me of Richard Lander's description of Mr. Hutchinson's
style of living at Annamaboo, " His silken banners, his
turreted castle, and his devoted vassals recalling, the
manners and way of life of an old English baron."
One stone pile, " Gothic Hall," built by Mr. Hutton,
would be considered a handsome residence even near
London. The two stags on the columns flanking the
gate, and wearing crowns around their necks, are in the
style of a certain tall house near Rotten Row, in the
palmy days of those honoured animals.
Under the western walls of the castle women were
panning the sand of the shore for gold ; as in Ashantee,
this washing is the peculiar office of the weaker sex.
They shovelled up with their hands the finer " stuff"
the metal sinks through the coarse material and filled,
with three parts of it to one of sea water, a calabash, a
wooden bowl, or a metal pan. The implement was then
whirled, as in California, Australia, and all gold-washing
* New Zealand, as it was and as it is. By E. B. Paul, M.A., late
Archdeacon of Nelson. London : Stanford, 1861.
94 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
countries, to and fro, with and against the sun. The
lighter contents were thrown out by dexterously canting
up the vessel, and after repeated washings, the precious
metal appeared in flakes and dots, with an occasional
grain shining out of the black emery that remained at
the bottom. At Cape Coast Castle the scarlet beans of
the Alrus precatorius, used from Senegal to Calcutta by
goldsmiths Ca da Mosto observed them in 1454,
are the customary weight. Bosnian calls them Dambas.*
In Ashantee they still employ for the purpose little
figures of labourers and mechanics, the "Fetishes" of the
old Dutch writers. At the end of five minutes one of
the women produced a small pinch of gold, which she
sold to us for sixpence.
After that I lost all patience with Cape Coast Castle.
Will our grandsons believe that in these days a colony
which cannot afford 150 per annum for a stipendiary
magistrate, that men who live in a state of poverty, nay, of
semi-starvation, are so deficient in energy as to be con-
tent with sitting down hopelessly whilst gold is among
their sands, on their roads, in their fields, in their very
walls? That this Ophir that this California, where
every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock
is a gold hill does not contain a cradle, a puddling-
* He makes 1 damba = 2 stivers,
24 = 1 angel,
16 or 20 angels = 1 ounce.
There is also mention made of black and white beans heavier than
the above, and called Tacoes.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 95
machine, a quartz-crusher, a pound of mercury ? That
half the washings are wasted because quicksilver is
unknown, and that pure gold, selling in England for
Si. 17*. to 1., is here purchasable for 31. 12*.? That
whilst convict labour is attainable, not a company has
been formed, not a surveyor has been sent for? I
exclaim with Dominie Sampson, " Pro-di-gious ! "
The population of the Gold Coast is rudely estimated
at 400,000 souls, scattered over a surface of 8000
square miles; its scantiness and its slow increase are
attributable to the destructive slavery of the last, and
the bloody wars during the first decennia of the present
century, with other minor causes, uncleanliness, drunk-
enness, neglect of hygienic precautions, and the mis-
management of children. Their occupations are agri-
culture, mechanics, and fishing, and the wealthier
classes are acute traders. The principal manufactures
are cloth weaving, mat and basket making, and working
in metals ; their goldsmith craft, however, is not to be
compared with the rudest East Indian work. Native
rings and watch-chains are bought by Europeans as
curiosities ; their only value, however, is in the weight
of metal. They can pan salt, mould bricks, and many '
have learned the arts of masonry, carpentering, and
cabinet work. In these trades they are far superior
to the Krumen and other wilder races, but they yield
to the S'a Leone men, because the latter have
more European tuition. The fishermen use hand-
seines and deep-sea lines, and as canoe-men they are
V
96 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
valued at Lagos and other places on the southern
coast.
There is sufficient civilisation to produce a very marked
distinction of classes. Bosman divides the people into
five orders, viz. :
1. Kings or captains, synonymous words : under our
protectorate, however, this class naturally languishes.
Krensil, for instance, is the reigning chief of Cape Coast
Castle, but the people describe him as a poor devil.
2. The Headmen, or civil fathers, called Caboceros, or
Caboceers, from the Portuguese Caboceiros, with the
Pynims, or sub-chiefs, policemen, who promulgate edicts
and who act as criers. The former are the hereditary official
representatives of towns, who keep order, appease tumults,
direct the operations of their subordinates, and lead in
the superstitious rites which each season brings round
with it. They issue summonses by peons, who carry
message-canes long staves, with gold or silver heads,
and corresponding with the chob of Hindostan or by
way of token they bear their master's gold-handled
sword. These men have large households, consisting of
three classes blood relations, dependants and slaves, or
pawns ouvriers litres.
3. Those enriched by inheritance or trade: though
slaves, they are treated by the better class as a, rich
Pariah by a Brahman, who risks pollution for profit.
Bosman thus quaintly derides the authors who call this
class noblemen: "It will not a little redound to my
honour, that I have for several years successively been
A DAT AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 97
waited on by these noblemen in the capacity of a foot-
man, without having the least respect to his nobility."
4. Peasants and mechanics.
5. Slaves, either sold by their relatives or taken in
war, or come so by poverty. As Sir Benjamin Pine,*
then Governor of the Gold Coast, justly denned it, the
whole social fabric, " woof and warp," is slavery. The
mutual relation of master and servant, especially in case
of the home-born, is much the same as in the days
of Abraham; the slave may accumulate wealth, and
theoretically what is his is his master's. Popular custom
draws a broad line, and desertion in case of cruel usage
is a never -failing remedy. The bush slaves, called
Donkos, are brought mostly from the country north of
Ashantee ; they are brave and hardy, and their services
in the "Krobo campaign' 1 of 1858, and the troubles
in Abrah (1859), proved them to be superior to the
Fantis, their proprietors. Some wealthy men have great
numbers of these chattels, and cases have been known
in which claims wholly without foundation have been
set up by individuals to whole families. As has been
said, the okra is no longer slain; arid the custom of
Panyarring,t seizing one man for the fault of another
once common along the whole western coast is sys-
tematically discouraged.
The Fanti of Cape Coast Castle, or, as purists write
* It is no small satisfaction to the Gold Coast that the brother of
this excellent officer now holds the same position.
t The word is said to be Portuguese, but I have been unable to
trace it.
VOL. II. H
98 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
the wore!, Fante, are a cognate race to the Ashantee.*
The tradition of their separation is as follows. When at
war with the Akim country, a great famine occurred in
the land. The Fanti lived on fan, herbs or cabbage,
hence they were called, from didi, to eat, Fanti. The
others were eaters of son, barn stores, Indian corn,
yam, &c., hence Sandidi, Santi, Ashanti. The connec-
tion between the races now separated by such fierce
feuds is proved by community of language the Oji, or,
as others write it Otyi. The Fanti dialect, however, is,
less soft and agreeable than the Ashantee. It has all
the characteristic features of the Ga of Accra tongue,
the Ewe of Dahomey and the Yoruban families, and it
belongs to the Hamitic class, which extends, with many
varieties, from south of the Sahara to the Cape of Good
Hope. The other countries in which the Oji is spoken
are Akim, Akwapim, and Akwam, called by the English
Akwambu. As usual in these African languages which
delight in individualising general ideas, their proverbs
form an extensive and curious literature.t
The habits of the people have been greatly modified
by the century and a-half which elapsed since Bosman
* I have not thought it advisable to change such words as Ashantee,
Accra, and others, which have been naturalised amongst us by long
residence, ntterly incorrect as they are. Bosman and the other
travellers write, with comparative accuracy, Asianti. The proper
form is Asante, in which we first converted the difficult palatal aspira-
tion into Ashante, and then added another error, Ashantee, accenting
like absentee the ultimate instead of the penultimate vowel.
f " Grammatical Outline of the Oji Language." By Rev. H. N. Riis
of the Basle Missicn. Bas'.e: C. Ditloff, 1854. Pp 111-136.
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 99
described the " Fantynean negroes," who " so horridly
plagued the English/' though to meet jaerfide Albion
was like " going to the devil to be confessed." Many
of the old Hollander's descriptions, however, are still to
be recognised. The mass of the people are pestilent
pagans, and, considering their intercourse with us, few of
them speak English. The sexes eat separately, and both
are equally fond of tobacco. All who can afford the
luxury are polygamists, and the first wife rules the
roast ; but all are equally the absolute property of the
husband. The men are jealous of one another, and
fatal quarrels often arise. The boys are circumcised
before puberty.* This rite, however, is confined to cer-
tain families, arid is performed with peculiar ceremonies.
At Accra, for instance, a rock rising from the sea is the
proper spot. The sister's son inherits to the prejudice
of direct descendants, telling with a fatal significance
that it is a wise child indeed that knows its own father.
There are various ceremonies for girls arriving at a mar-
riageable age,, and for women about to become mothers
for the first time. During gestation there is a complete
separation of the sexes, not only here, but almost every-
where up the AYest African coast. When a woman dies
in childbed, the body is cast out into the bush. The
funeral customs resemble the wakes of the Jews and the
Irish ; there are hired prseficse, and the men shave the
head in token of mourning. For some time the shoulder
* For curious information upon this subject, see Dr. Clarke's " Sierra
Leone," p. 49.
H 2
100 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
bone of a sheep, slaughtered to make the funeral feast,
is placed upon the new grave. If a man die insolvent, his
body is kept above ground till his debts are paid, and
this often happens in a country where the legal interest
is fifty per cent, per annum, or per diem. Travellers on
the Gold Coast have often remarked corpses placed on
platforms, and covered with a cloth, till reclaimed by the
debtor-heirs. No one would bury a chance corpse,
because, though such Samaritan inherits the property of
the deceased, he also becomes liable for all the liabilities.
Nothing would be easier than to do away with so
barbarous a practice "East Lynne" informs us that
England is not wholly free from it by a promise of
indemnity on the part of Government to the debtor.
^ itch craft is exceedingly common, especially the form
called "putting into Fetish," which is rendered penal by
Government. To these spells they attribute death and
all manner of diseases, including the much dreaded
" broke back/' for which that part of the body must be
treated by aphrodisiacs. The charge of sorcery must
be purged by ordeals, of which there are many; amongst
them the corsned, or consecrated cake, of our Anglo-
Saxon progenitors. An infusion of the mellay tree,
or a decoction of the Edum bark, are swallowed by the
accused, who if they escape are pronounced guiltless.
The religious ideas of the Fanti are, as usual in Africa,
vague and instinctive. Each person has his Saman
literally a skeleton or goblin a private Fetish, an idol,
rug, fowl, feathers, bunch of grass, bit of glass, and so
A DAY AT CAPS COAST CASTLE. 101
forth : to this he pays the greatest reverence, because it
is nearest to him. The Bosoms are imaginary beings,
probably of ghostly origin, called " spirits " by the mis-
sionaries. Abonsam is a malevolent being, that lives in
the upper regions ; Sasabonsam is the friend of witch and
wizard, hates priests and missionaries, and inhabits huge
silk-cotton trees in the gloomiest forests ; he is a mon-
strous being of human shape, of red colour, and with
long hair.* Ny ant upon, t or Nyame, is the supreme
deity, but the word also means the visible firmament or
sky, showing that there has been no attempt to separate
the ideal from the material. This being, who dwells in
Nyankuponfi, or Nyankuponkru,J is too far from earth
to trouble himself with human affairs, which are com-
mitted to the Bosoms ; this, however, is the belief of the
educated, who doubtless have derived something from
European systems, the vulgar confound him with sky,
rain, and thunder. Kra, which the vocabularies translate
"Lord," is the Anglicised okro, or ocroe, meaning a
* The reader will not fail to remark the similarity of Sasabonsam
to the East Indian Kakshasa, the malevolent ghost of a Brahman,
brown in colour, and inhabiting the Pipal tree.
t Mr. Beecham ("Ashantee and the Gold Coast," pp. 171-2) explains
this word to mean greatest friend, a poetical and phonetical misappre-
hension. Mr. Riis derives it from Poii (pong), a common termination
in Oji words, and signifying high, great ; and from Nyari, to rise, raise ;
the whole meaning the very great, or the most high.
J The vocabulary explains these words to mean Heaven, the house, or
habitation, of God, and of the departed spirits of good men ; opposed to
Abonsamkru, hell, where the devil Aboiisam rules over the wicked. I
suspect these to be purely European imported ideas.
102 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
favourite male slave, destined to be sacrificed with his
dead master, and " sunsum/' " spirit," means a shadow,
the man's umbra. The Fantis have regular days of rest-
Tuesday for fishermen, Friday for bushmen, peasants,
and so on.
The first missionaries to the Gold Coast were the
Portuguese ; about a century ago they were followed by
the Moravians, but of these ancient establishments there
is now not a trace. The first English missionary in
these diggings was the Rev. Thomas Thompson (1751).
After cultivating the field for four years he returned to
England, taking home with him several natives for
education at Oxford. Of these, Philip Quako occupied
for fifty years the chaplaincy of Cape Coast Castle, and
died in the savour of Fetishhood. In the autumn of
1834, the committee of the Wesleyan Missionary Society
sent the Eev. Joseph Dunwell, a man spoken of as highly
as Brainerd and Martyn, to the Gold Coast. He died
there in 1835, and was followed by Mr. Thos. Freeman
in 1838 ; but this is entering upon modern times, when
the men who "make history" still survive. The Wes-
leyans have extended themselves on the sea coast of the
Gold Region, and they monopolise the field as do the
Church Missionaries at Sierra Leone and Abeokuta;
the American Episcopals at Liberia and Cape Palrnas,
and the Baptists at Fernando Po and the Camaroons.
Besides \Yesleyans there are Basle Missionaries about
Accra and Akim, and Bremen men to the east and
north of the River Volta. Mr. East ("Western Africa,"
A DAY AT CAPE COAST CASTLE. 103
p. 289), speaking of his own sect, says, " The beneficial
effects of this mission are very conspicuous." It requires
a perspicacious and microscopic eye to discern them.
On the evening of the 19th August, after taking
kindly leave of our good hosts, we soon passed over,
under a full head of steam, the seventy miles between
Cape Coast Castle and Accra. I could think of nothing
but gold, and perhaps the reader may not be unwilling
to receive a few details concerning the precious metal,
in a continent which, when opened up, will supply us
with half-a-dozen Californias.
CHAPTER VIII.
GOLD IN AFEICA.
" Slave of the dark and dirty mine :
What vanity has brought thee here ? "
Leyden.
" Gold ! gold ! gold ! gold !
Bright and yellow, hard and cold ;
Molten, graven, hammer' d, and roll'd ;
Heavy to get and light to hold."
Hood.
BARON HUMBOLDT first announced the theory, that
gold is constant in meridional ranges of the paleozoic
and metamorphic formation. In this he was followed
by Sir E. Murchison, and he was not followed by
Professor Sedgwick. The latter "has no faith what-
ever in the above hypothesis, though it led to a happy
anticipation," which followed erroneous premises. He
continues, "what we seem to know is, that gold is
chiefly found among paleozoic rocks of a quartzose
type," and, moreover, that, "some of the great physical
agencies of the earth are meridional, and these agencies
may probably and in a way we do not comprehend
have influenced the deposit of metals on certain lines of
bearing." He thinks, however, it would be a " hypo-
thetical misdirection " to say that a quartzose paleozoic
rock cannot be auriferous, because its strata is not north
GOLD IN AFRICA. 105
and south/' and that <e experience must settle this point."
The supporters of the meridional theory may quote as
instances East African Ghauts, the Oural Mountains,
the Sierra Nevada of California which includes the
diggings in British Columbia the Australian Cordillera,
the New Zealand ranges, and the Western Ghauts of
India. On the other hand, there are two notable ex-
ceptions the Central Indian region, in which Sir E.
Martin and others, as long as thirty years ago, were
convinced that the natives washed for gold; and, still
more remarkable, the highly productive African chain,
which, for want of a better name, we still call the Kong
Mountains.*
The fact is, that gold is a superficial formation, and
has been almost universally distributed over the surface
of earth's declivities. This want of depth, Sir R.
Murchison is fond of illustrating by the hand with the
fingers turned downwards; these represent the golden
veins, whilst the palm denotes the main deposit. It is
* A similar imperfect generalisation is the old theory, that gold per-
tains not to islands. Malachi wore a collar of Irish gold, probab'y
from Wicklow. It has been found in Cornwall and other parts of
England, and in Scotland ; and there are few Californians who do not
believe that Queen Charlotte's Island will form rich diggings.
Another remark has lately been made, which pretends to no more
than to discover a curious coincidence. The Oural chain lies 90 west
of the Australian diggings, and the Californian Sierra Nevada 90 west
of the Oural. But, on the other hand, the fourth quadrantal division
falls into the Atlantic between Western Africa and the Brazils ; and
Eastern Africa, a highly prolific metallic region, is 20 west of the
Oural, and 120 east of California.
106 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the contrary with other metals. Gold mines, therefore,
are now rare except in newly explored or exploited lands
of primitive formation, where it is common, nay almost
universal ; the article, whose utility was early recognised,
soon disappeared from the older workings. The Californian
digger, provided with pick, pan, and shovel, made $10
per diem in 1852; in 1862 he still makes $2'50
and in 1872 he probably will make $0. The anciently
auriferous countries, especially Arabia, have been stripped
of their treasures, perhaps before the dawn of what is
called true history ; * and if they linger in Sofala, it is by
reason of the people's ignorance ; t they never traced
the metal to its matrix.
* I allude to the Hammaenm littus of Pliny, which appears to coin-
cide with the modern Hazramant. Perhaps, however, the gold f of
Arabia is not wholly exhausted : it is difficult to believe that the rude
appliances of savages and barbarians can extract anything but the
coarsest particles from the dirt.
Some years ago, an English traveller, who had seen gold dust brought to
Cairo from tbe coast of Western Arabia, north of Yambu, applied to Dr.
Walne, then Her Majesty's consul, for facilities of exploring the place.
The sage reply of that official was, that gold appeared to be becoming
too common. Other officials, equally sage, have since made the same
remark. I refer them to the end of this chapter for my reply.
} In Eastern, as in parts of Western Africa, the natives have a
curious superstition, or, rather, a distorted idea of a physical fact.
They always return to the earth whatever nuggets are found, under
the idea that they are the seed or mother of gold, and that if removed
the washing would be unprofitable. They refuse to dig deeper than the
chia, for fear of the earth ' ' caving in ; " and quartz-crushing and the
use of quicksilver being unknown, they will not wash unless the gold
appears to the naked eye. As late as Mohammed Ali Pasha's day an
Egyptian expedition was sent up through Fayzoghlu in search of the
precious metal, brought dowu.by the eastern tributaries of the Nile : it
GOLD IN AFRICA. 10f
Setting aside the vexed question of the identity of
Ophir and Sofala, and the fact that in early times gold
was brought down from the eastern regions of the upper
Nilitic basin, Western Africa was the first field that
supplied the precious metal to Europe. The Trench
claim to have imported it from El Mina as early as
A.D. 1382. In 1442, Goncales Baldeza returned from
his second voyage to the regions about Bojador, bringing
with him the first gold. Presently a company was
formed for the purpose of carrying on the gold trade
between Portugal and Africa ; its leading men were the
D f O
navigators Lanzarote and Gilianez, and the great Prince
Henry did not disdain to become a member. In 1471,
Joao de Santarem and Pedro Escobar reached a place on
the Gold Coast to which, from the abundance of gold found
there, they gave the name of Oro de la Mina, the present
El Mina. After this a flood of gold poured into the lap
of Europe, and at last, cupidity having mastered terror
of the Papal Bull, which assigned to Portugal the exclu-
sive right to the Eastern hemisphere, English, French,
and Dutch adventurers hastened to share the spoils.
The Portuguese, probably foreseeing competition in
the Atlantic waters, but sure of their power in the
failed, because the ignorant Turks expected to pick up ounces where
they found only grains. There are many traditions still extant in
Egypt, of mysterious travellers floating down the Nile in craft of antique
build, accompanied by women of blackest colour, but with Grecian or
Abyssinian features, and adorned with rings, collars, and bracelets of
pure gold, in shape resembling those found in the tombs of ancient
Egypt.
108 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Indian seas, determined, about the middle of the 1 6th
century, to seek gold, of which those who preceded them
had heard, in Eastern Africa. The Rev. Father Joao
dos Santos, of the order of San "Domingo, has left us, in
his " History of Eastern Ethiopia/' a detailed account of
the first disastrous expedition. According to him, Dom
Sebastian was scarcely seated on the throne of Portugal*
before he sent to Sofala an expedition under command of
Francis Baretto, who, " penetrating into ' Macoronga 'f
and 'Manica/ discovered mines of gold in these kingdoms,
of which, by his prudence and valour he made himself
master." Baretto, having successfully passed through,
despite a harassing warfare, the territories of the Qui-
teva or sovereign of Sofala, who fled from his capital,
Zimboo, and having contracted with the ^Moorish or
Arab sultan J of Manica a treaty of amity, which included
* Don Sebastian, grandson of Don Joao III., was born July 20th,
1554, and at three years of age ascended the throne of Portugal. His
subsequent romantic history is well known.
"t* Mr. Cooley ("Geography of Ifyassi," p. 16) has confounded the
" Mucaranga" with the "Monomoezi." Captain Burton (" Lake Kegions
of Central Equatorial Africa," pp. 228-9) found the Wakarau^a, a people
wholly distinct from the Wanyamwezi : the former being a small tribe
living near the Tanganyike Lake, south of the Wajiji. Mr. Cooley
still, I believe, keeps his own opiaion, and persists in writing these
tribal names with an initial, M or Mu, which, being an abbreviation
of Mtu, a man, signifies only the individual.
I In the " Periplus" attributed to Arrian (A. D. 64-210), chap. 16, we
are told that Rhapta, probably Kilwa (Quiloa), and the adjacent regiots
were held by colonists from Muza, i.e., Bundar Musa, near Aden. Gold
is not mentioned amongst the exports, which are confined to ivory,
rhinoceros' horns, and tortoiseshell.
GOLD IN AFRICA. 109
the article that the King of Chicanga should admit the
strangers to trade throughout his territories for gold dust
and other merchandise, reached at length the goal of his
ambition. His proceedings are told as follows : *
"The Portuguese were enchanted at having in so
D O
short a time concluded a treaty of such advantage to
their sovereign, and so beneficial to the realm; they,
moreover, flattered themselves with the hope of acquiring
store of gold, with which to return enriched to their
country ; but when they saw what toil was requisite for
extracting this precious metal from the bowels of the
earth, and the danger incurred by those who worked in
the mines, they were speedily undeceived, and no longer
regarded their fortunes as instantaneously made. At the
same time they were induced to reflect that the labour
and risk of digging the gold from the abysses whence it
is drawn, are such as to stamp that value on it which
it bears from its consequent rarity.
" These people have divers methods of extracting the
gold, and separating it from the earth with which it is
blended ; but the most common is to open the ground,
and proceed towards the spot where, from certain indi-
cations, ore is supposed to abound. For this purpose
they excavate vaults, sustained at intervals by pillars,
and notwithstanding they make use of every possible pre-
caution, it often happens that the vaults give way, and
bury the subterranean sappers beneath their ruins
* Dos Santos, "History of the Ethiopians," Book II, chap. 1-3.
110 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
When they reach the vein in which the gold is found,
mixed with the earth, they take the ore as it is, and put
it into vessels full of water, and by dint of stirring
about k the water the earth is dissolved, and the gold
remains at bottom. *
" They likewise take advantage of heavy rains, which,
occasioning torrents, carry before them whatever loose
earth they meet in their way, and thus lay open the spots
where gold is embedded in the ravines. This the Caffres
collect, and wash with care to purify from the grosser
parts of its earthy admixture.
"Those people, also, however unpolished they may
seem, yet possess a secret peculiar to themselves for dis-
covering the gold concealed in certain stones, which they
likewise have the ingenuity of extracting, constantly
observing the same practice of washing it well to separate
all earthy particles from the metal, and thus rendering
it equally lustrous with that obtained from the earth.
This gold is, however, much cheaper than the other,
either owing to its being more common, or to its being
obtained with more facility and at less expense than that
exfodiated from the bowels of the earth.
" It is a matter of fact, that this country is rich in
gold and silver mines, but these metals are not so easily
obtained as is imagined \ for the Caffres are prohibited,
under penalty of death and the confiscation of their
The reader will remark that at all times, and in all places, gold
has teen washed or procured in the same way a fair instance of the
instinctive faculty in mankind.
GOLD IN AFRICA. Ill
property, from discovering the site of the mines, either
to their neighbours, or to those who pass through their
country. "When a mine is discovered, the persons finding
it make wild outcries, to collect witnesses round them, and
cover the spot, above which they place some object to
denote the site; and far from being susceptible to be
prevailed upon by strangers to point out these spots,
they avoid encountering them as much as possible, for
fear they should even be suspected of such a deed.
" The motive of the sovereign for enacting these pro-
hibitory laws, and for exacting a declaration to be made
to the Court of all mines discovered, is that he may take
possession of them,* and by preventing the Portuguese
from becoming masters of one portion, give no room
for succeeding warfare on their part to seize on the
remainder."
* The same was the practice of the Indian Kajahs. Whenever a
ryot discovered either treasure or gold in situ, he was most cruelly
treated, to compel him to confess and to give up what he had secreted.
As, of course, he bad secreted a part of his trouvaille, it was a hard
struggle between his cupidity and the ruler's bastinado. About 1840,
some peasants near Baroda, in Gmerat, found lumps of gold, which they
carried before His Highness the Gaikwar, and received in return a
terrible flogging. The Hindu, with that secretiveness which has ever
been his shield against the tyranny of rulers and conquerors, resolved
for the future to keep his good fortune to himself. The quantity of
gold which from time to time has appeared amongst these people, made
the shrewder sort of European suspect. But the inertness, or, rather,
the terror of new things, that possessed the then rulers of the land,
"threw cold water" upon all attempts to trace the diggings, which,
accordingly, were worked by the people till the present year. This is
the simple history of " gold mining in the Deccan."
112 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
The melancholy fate of this expedition deserves men-
tioning After passing through Zimboe,* where the
Quiteva received him with open arms, Baretto returned
to Sofala. Being now on good terms with the sovereign
of that place, and Chicanga, he resolved to open a road
into the kingdom of Mongas, the dominions of the
Monomotapa, who opposed him with a large army.
* De Barros, describing the ruins of Zimboe, mentions an inscription
over the gateway of a fort built with well-cut stones anl no lime, whose
surface was twenty-five palms long and a little less in height. Around
this building, which, like the Raabah, might have been a pagan Arab
temple, are bastions also of uncemented lime and the remains of a
tower, seventy feet high. The inscription was probably in the Himyaritic
character, as "Moors well versed in Arabic" could not decipher it.
This was repeated to Mr. Lyons M'Leod (" Travels in Eastern Africa,"
Vol. I., chap. 10) at Mozambique. Dr. Livingstone ("Travels in South
Africa," chap. 29) discovered Zumbo in lat. 15 37' 22" S., long.
30 32' E., about 8 W.N.W. of Kilimani. At the confluence of the
.Loangwe and Zambezi, he found the remains of a church, a cross, and
a bell, but no date and no inscription. The people of Seni also state
that there are remains of large edifices in the interior ; unfortunately
they place them at a distance of 500 leagues, which would lead them
nearly to the equator north, and to the Cape of Good Hope south.
f Dr. Livingstone ("Travels in South Africa, " chap. 30) explains the
word Monomotapa successfully, I think, to mean the " Lord (mone,
muene, mona, mana, or morena, are all dialectic varieties, synonymous
with the Kisarahili muinyi, which means master, sir, kyrios, &c.), and
Motapa," the proper name of the chief. The ancient Portuguese
assigned to the Monomotapa the extensive regions between the Zambezi
and the Limpopo rivers, 7 from north to south. The African traveller,
however, is not so successful in explaining the corrupted term, Mono-
moizes, Monemuiges, and Monomuizes for which, see Journal of
Koyal Geographical Society (Vol. XXIX., pp. 166 et seq.)
Dr. Beke ("On the Mountains forming the Eastern side of the Basin
of the Nile," p. 14) defends, against Mr. Cooley and Captain Burton,
M. Malte Brun's "Mono-emugi, ou scions un orthographic plus
GOLD IN AFRICA. 113
Baretto signally defeated the " Caffres," and reached
Chicona, where he found no gold mines. An artful
native, however, buried two or three lumps of silver,
which when discovered brought large presents to the
cheat and dreams of Potosi to the cheated.* Baretto,
in nowise disheartened by discovering the fraud, left
two hundred men in a fort at Chicona, whilst he and
the remainder of his forces retired upon Sena, on the
Zambezi. The Caffres then blockaded the fort, and
having reduced the gallant defenders to a famine,
compelled them to make a sortie, in which every man
was slain.
The ruins of Mani9a, north-west of Sofala, and west
of and inland from the East African ghauts, are described
as being situated in a valley enclosed by an amphi-
theatre of hills, having a circuit of about two miles.
According to Mr. Macleod, the district is called Ma-
authentique Mou-mimigi." The defence is operated by enclosing after the
latter, in italics, another version in parenthesis, and with an interrogation,
thus [Nimougi ?] ; and the French geographer's orthography " being
fortunately based on the theoretic root," is pronounced " more authentic
than any hitherto proposed in its stead." How often will it be
necessary to repeat, that Mono-emugi and Mou-nimigi are merely
corruptions of M'nyamwezi, a man or individual of the Land
Unyamwezi ?
* A French adventurer tried a similar trick upon the Imam Sayyid
Said, father of the present Prince of Zanzibar. He melted a few-
dollars and ran the fluid upon bits of stone, which were duly shown to
His Highness. But the old Imam, whose cupidity was equalled only by
bis cunning, took them to his friend, Colonel Hamerton, Her Majesty's
consul, who, finding the matrix to be coralline, had no difficulty in
detecting the fraud.
VOL. n. i
114 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
touca (the Matuka of Dr. Livingstone's map), and the
gold washing tribes Botongos.* The spots containing
the metal are known by the bare and barren surface.
The natives dig in any small crevice made by the rains
of the preceding winter, and there find gold dust. These
pot-holes are rarely deeper than two or three feet, at
five or six they strike the ground-rock. In the still
portions of the rivers, when they are low, the natives dive
for nuggets that have been washed down from the hills.
Sometimes joining together in hundreds, they deflect the
stream, and find extensive deposits. Mr. M'Leod
heard of mines 400 to 500 miles from Sofala, where the
gold is found in solid lumps, or as veins in the rocks
and stones.
The result of Dr. Livingstone's travels is, that whilst
he found no gold in the African interior, frequent
washings were met with in the Mashinga mountains!
and on the Zambezi river ; no silver, however, was met
with, nor could the people distinguish it from tin, which,
however, does not establish its non-existence ; he heard
from a Mashinga man, for the first time, a native name
for gold, "Dalama/'t The limits of the auriferous
* Dr. Livingstone places the Batonga people west of Zumbo, and 4
to 5 N.W. of Matuka, or Manisa.
f These elevations are on the western frontier of the great Marave
people.
J In Kisawahili they have but one word for gold, Zahabu, which is
palpably derived from the Arabic >--*}. None of the people living
in the interior, or even the tribes beyond the coast line of Zanzibar, are
acquainted with the precious metal : they would prefer to it brass or
copper. The appreciation of gold on the part of the BO called " Kafir "
GOLD IN AFRICA. 115
region are thus laid down : "If we place one leg of the
compasses at Tete, and extend the other 3 30', bring-
ing it round from the north-east of Tete by west, and
then to the south-east, we nearly touch or include all the
known gold-producing country." This beginning from
the north-east would include the Marave country,* the
now "unknown" kingdom of Abutua, f placed, however,
south of the Zambezi, and coming round by the south-
west, Mashona, or Bazizulu, Maniga, and Sofala. Gold
from about Manica, is as large as wheat grains, whilst
that found in the rivers is in minute scales. The pro-
cess of washing the latter is laborious. " A quantity of
sand is put into a wooden bowl with water, a half ro-
tatory motion is given to the dish, which causes the
coarser particles of sand to collect on one side of the
bottom. These are carefully removed with the hand,
and the process of rotation is renewed until the whole
races points to an extensive intercourse with Arabia, if not to a con-
siderable admixture of Arab and Asiatic blood.
* Dr. Livingstone gives six well-known washing-places, east and
north-east of Tete, viz. : Mashinga, Shindundo, Missala, Kapeta,
Mano, and Jawa.
+ Mr. Cooley ("Geography of N'yassi") questions whether there be
such a kingdom as Abutua, or Butwa. He derives it from Batua plur.
of Motua (in Kisawahili wdtu plur. of M'tu), signifying men. The
Amazulu, when they attacked Delagoa Bay, were called by the same
name ; but the Portuguese throwing back the accent changed that
word to Viltua, of which Captain Owen made Fetwah. So, in 1822,
the tribe that fell upon the Bachwani (Bechuana) were, we are told,
called Batua, but the missionaries recognised the meaning of the word.
Though it is "now unknown," Dr. Livingstone has inserted it into his
map.
I 2
116 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
of the sand is taken away, and the gold alone remains.*
Mercury is as usual unknown. Formerly 130 Ibs. of
gold were submitted to the authorities at Tete for taxa-
tion, but when the slave trade began, the Portuguese
killed the goose with the golden eggs, and the annual
amount obtained is now only eight to ten pounds.
It is evident that gold is by no means half worked in
Eastern Africa. As in California, it appears to be found
in clay shale, which for large profits requires " hydrau-
licking." The South African traveller heard that at the
range Mashinga, the women pounded the soft rock in
wooden mortars, previous to washing; it is probably
rotten quartz, and the yield would be trebled by quick-
silver and crushers.
It is highly probable that the gold formations in
those East African ghauts, which Dr. Beke is com-
pelling to become the " Lunar Mountains/' are by no
means limited to the vicinity of the Zambezi. In gold
prospecting, as every geologist knows, the likeliest
places often afford little yield and sometimes none.
The author of " The Lake Eegions of Central Africa,"
describes a Cordillera which he struck, about 100
miles from the Eastern coast, as primitive, quartzose, and
shaly ; unfortunately time and health hindered him from
exploring it. The same writer, in " First Footsteps in
East Africa" (p. 395), indicates such formation in the
small ghauts, and on the western side of that range he
* This is absolutely the present practice on the Gold Coast, and
perfectly agrees with Slungo Park's descriptions.
GOLD IN AFRICA. 117
is reported to have found gold. What steps he took
do not appear ; he was probably disheartened by the
reflection that all his efforts would be opposed with
might and main in official circles. Possibly he feared the
fate of Mr. Hargreaves, of Australia, who obtained a
reward of 10,000^., when 1 per cent, of export would
have made him master of eight millions. Local jealousies
at Aden also certainly would have defeated his plans, if
permitted to be carried out ; and the Court of Directors
had already regarded with a holy horror his proposal
to build a little fort, by way of base upon the sea-
board near Berberah. Leaving, however, these consi-
derations, we are justified by analogy of formation and
bearing in believing that at some future time gold
may be one of the exports from Eastern Intertropical
Africa.*
Returning to "Western Africa, we find in Leo Afri-
canus, who is supposed to have died about 1526, that
the King of Ghana had in his palace " an entire lump of
gold " a monster nugget it would now be called not
cast nor wrought by instruments, but perfectly formed
by the Divine Providence only, of thirty pounds weight,
* I cannot, however, understand the final flourish of Dr. Beke's
paper above alluded to. He declares that the discovery of gold in his
"Mountains of the Moon" will occasion a complete and rapid revo-
lution, and ends thus : " We shall then,, too, doubtless see in Eastern
Africa, as in California and in Australia, the formation of another new-
race of mankind." We have seen nothing of the kind in Western
Africa, where for four centuries the richest diggings have been known.
In fact, they have rather tended to drive away Europeans. Why then
expect this marvel from Eastern Africa ?
118 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
which had been bored through and fitted for a seat to
the royal throne.* The author most diffused upon the
subject of gold, is Bosnian, who treats, however, solely
of the Gold Coast.
The first region which he mentions is Dinkira, under
which were included the conquered provinces of "Was&
(our Wassaw, or Warsaw), Encasse and Juffer, each
bordering upon one another, and the last upon Commany,
(Commenda). There the gold is fine, but much alloyed
with "fetishes," oddly shaped figures used for orna-
ments, and composed sometimes of pure mountain gold,
but more often mixed with one-third, or even half, of
silver and copper, and filled inside with half weight of the
heavy black earth used for moulding them. The second
was Acanny, the people of which brought the produce
of their own diggings and of their neighbours of Ashantee
and Akim : it was so pure and fine, that the negroes called
all the best gold " Acanny Sika," or Acanny gold. The
third was Akim,t which " furnishes as large quantities
of gold as any land that I know, and that also the most
valuable and pure of any that is carried away from this
coast; it is easily distinguished by its deep colour."
The fourth and fifth are Ashantee and Ananse, a small
province between the former empire and Dinkira. The
sixth and last is A wine, our Aowin, % which formerly used
* Similarly, the king of " Buncatoo " had a solid gold stool, which
caused his destruction at the hands of his neighbours of Ashantee.
+ It still supplies gold, and will be alluded to in a future page.
I The old traveller, however, is wrong, when he savs, ' ' I take it
GOLD IN AFEICA. 119
to export large quantities of fine and pure gold, and
they " being the civilest and the fairest dealers of all the
negroes," the Dutch "traded with them with a great deal
of pleasure." They were, however, finally subdued by
the Dinkiras.
According to Bosman (Letter vi.) " the illustrious
metal " was found in three sites. The first and best was
" in or between particular hills :" the negroes sank pits
there and separated the soil adhering to it. The second
" is in, at, and about some rivers and waterfalls, whose
violence washeth down great quantities of earth, which
carry the gold with it. The third is on the sea shore,
near the mouths of rivulets, and the favourite time for
washing is after violent night rains.* The negro women
are furnished with large and small troughs or trays,
which they first fill full of earth and sand, which they
wash with repeated fresh water till they have cleansed it
from all its earth ; and if there be any gold its pon-
( A wine) to be the first on the Gold Coast, and to be far above Axim.''
Aowiu is the region to the west of the Assini river, whereas Axim is
to the east of the Ancobra river ; thus the two are separated by the
territory of Apollonia. He apologises, however, in the same page for
any possible errors. ' ' I cannot inform you better, because the negroes
cannot give any certain account of them (the various diggings), nor do
any of our people go so far ; wherefore I must beg of you, my good
friend, to be contented." Despite which, however, he may yet be
right, and his critic wrong.
* So, " in Coquimbo of Chili," says Sir Richard Hawkins, " it
raineth seldom, but every shower of rain is a shower of gold unto
them, for with the violence of the water falling from the mountains, it
bringeth from them the gold."
120 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
derosity forces it to the bottom of the trough, which, if
they find it, is thrown into the small tray, and so they
go on washing it again, which operation generally holds
them till noon ; some of them not getting above the
value of sixpence ; some of them pieces of six or seven
shillings, though not frequently ; and often they entirely
lose their labour."
The gold thus dug is of two kinds, dust gold and
mountain gold. The former is " fine as flour," and the
more esteemed because there is no loss in melting.
The latter, corresponding with our modern " nugget,"
varies in weight from a farthing to 200 guineas ; it
touches better than gold dust, but it is a loss from the
stones adhering to the stone.
The natives, in Bosnian's day and to the present
time were "very subtle artists in the sophisticating of
gold." The first sort was the Fetish before alluded to.*
They also cast pieces so artificially, that whilst outside
there was pure gold thick as a knife, the interior was cop-
per, and perhaps iron then a new trick and the most
dangerous, because difficult to detect. The common
" false mountain gold " was a mixture of the precious
metal with silver and copper, extremely high coloured,
and unless each piece was touched, the fraud passed un-
detected. Another kind was an artificially cast and
* We are also informed that the same Fetishes were cut by the
negroes into small bits, worth one, two, or three farthings, and the
people could tell their value at sight. These Kakeraa, as they were called,
formed the small change of the country, as our 3c?. and id. bits do now.
GOLD IN AFRICA. 121
tinged powder of coral mixed with copper filings : it be-
came tarnished, however, in a month or two.
The official tests of gold were as follows : If offered
at night or in the evening large pieces were cut through
with a knife, and the smaller nuggets were beaten with
a stone, and then tried as above. Gold dust was cast
into a copper brazier, winnowed with the fingers, and
blown upon with the breath, which caused the false gold
to fly away. These are not highly artificial tests.
Bosman, however, strongly recommends them to raw,
inexpert people (especially seafaring men), whom he
bids to remember the common proverb, that " there is
no gold without dross." These greenhorns, it seems,
tested the metal by pouring aquafortis upon it, when
ebullition or the appearance of green proved it to be false
or mixed. " A miserable test, indeed ! " exclaims old
trunk-hose, justly remarking that an eighth or tenth
part of alloy would produce those appearances, and that
such useless niceness, entailing the trouble of drying,
and causing the negroes to suffer, is prejudicial to
trade.
With respect to the annual export from the Gold
Coast, Bosman reckons it in peaceful times, when trade
They were current all over the coast, and seemed to pass backwards and
forwards without any diminution. The reason for this was, that they
sold in Europe for only 40s. the ounce : the natives mixing them with
better gold tried to palm them upon the purchasers, but the clerks were
ordered to pick them out. A similar custom down the coast, was to cut
dollars into halves and quarters, which thus easily became florins and
shillings.
122 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
is prosperous, to be " 23 tun." The 7000 marks are
disposed of as below.* Mr. M'Queen estimates this
exportation at 3,406/275. The English trade has now
fallen to 360,000 to 400,000 per annum.f
The conclusion of Bosnian's sixth letter may be
quoted as highly applicable to the present day. "I
would refer to any intelligent metallist, whether a vast
deal of ore must not of necessity be lost here, from
which a great deal of gold might be separated, from
want of skill in the metallic art ; and not only so, but
I firmly believe that large quantities of pure gold are
left behind, for the negroes only ignorantly dig at
random, without the least knowledge of the veins of the
mines. And I doubt not but if this country belonged
to the Europeans, they would soon find it to produce
much richer treasures than the negroes obtain from it ;
* The Dutch West India Company yearly exported, Marks 1500
The English African Company . ,, 1200
The Zealand interlopers as much as the Dutch, viz. ,, 1500
The English interlopers about 1000, usually, which
they have doubled . . . . . . ,, 1000
The Brandenburghers and Danes together, in times
of peace ,, 1000
The Portuguese and French, together . . . ,, 800
Which makes 7000
For several years before Bosnian's time, the Dutch export had been
reduced by one-half (750 marks). Mr. Wilson, however ("Western
Africa," chap. IV.)> is evidently in error, when he makes Bosman to
estimate the "amount of gold exported from the Gold Coast at 800
marks per annum."
t Dr. Clarke ("Remarks," &c.), gives 100, 000 ounces. This was the
GOLD IN AFEICA. 123
out it is not probable that we shall ever possess that
liberty here, wherefore we must be content with being so
far masters of it as we are at present, which, if well
and prudently managed, would turn to a very great
account."
In several countries, as Dinkira, Tueful, "Wasd,* and
especially Akim, the hill region lying due north of
Accra, the people are still active in digging gold. The
pits, varying from two to three feet in diameter, and
from twelve to fifty feet deep, are often so near the
roads that loss of life has been the result. " Shoring-
up" being little known, the miners are not unfre-
quently buried alive. The stuff is drawn up by ropes
in clay pots, or calabashes, and thus a workman at the
bottom widens the pit to a pyriform shape : tunnelling,
however, is unknown. The excavated earth is carried
down to be washed. Besides sinking these holes, they
pan in the beds of rivers, and in places collect quartz,
which is roughly pounded. The yield is very uncertain,
calculation of Mr. Swanzy before a parliamentary committee in 1816.
Of course it is impossible to arrive at any clear estimate. Allowing
the African Steam Ship Company a maxinmm of 4000 ounces per
month, we obtain from that source 48,000 ounces. But considerable
quantities are exported in merchant ships, more especially for the
American market. Whilst, therefore, some reduce the total to 60,000
ounces, others raise it to half a million of money.
* Wasa (Wassaw, Warsaw, Wossa, Wasau, &c., &c.) has been worked
both by Dutch and English ; they chose, however, sickly situations,
brought out useless implements, and died. The province is divided into
eastern and western, and is said to be governed by female chiefs
Amazons?
124 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
and the chief of the district is entitled to one-third of
the proceeds. During the busy season, when water is
abundant, the scene must resemble that described by
Dr. Livingstone near the gold-diggings of Tete ; as in
California and Australia, prices rise high, and gun-
powder, rum, and cotton goods soon carry off the
golddust. During the repeated earthquakes of July,
1862, which laid waste Accra, the strata of the Akim
hills were so much shaken and broken up, that, ac-
cording to report, all the people nocked to the
diggings and dispensed with the shafts generally sunk.
There are several parts of the Gold Coast where the
precious metal is Fetish, and where the people will not
dig themselves, though perhaps they would not object
to strangers risking their lives. One of the most
remarkable is the Devil's Hill, called by Bosnian, Monte
de Diablo, near Winnibah, in the Aguna (Agouna)
country. In his day, a Mr. Baggs, English agent, was
commissioned by the African Company to prospect it.
He died at Cape Coast Castle before undertaking a
work which, in those days, would have been highly
dangerous. Some authorities fix the Seecom river as
the easternmost boundary where gold is found. This
is so far incorrect that I have panned it from the sands
under James Fort. Besides which it is notorious that
on the banks of the upper Volta, about the latitude
of the Krobo (Croboe) country, there are extensive
deposits, regarded by the people as sacred.
The Slave Coast is a low alluvial tract, and appears to
GOLD IN AFRICA. 125
be wholly destitute of gold.* According to the Eev.
Mr. Bowen, however, a small quantity has been found
in the quartz of Yoruba, north of Abeokuta; but, as in
the Brazils, it is probably too much dispersed to be worth
working. And the Niger, which flows, as will presently
be seen, from the true auriferous centre, has at times
been found to roll down stream-gold. f
The soil of Fanti and the seaboard is, as has been
seen, bat slightly auriferous.
As we advance northwards from the Gold Coast the
yield becomes richer. In Ashantee the red and loamy
soil, scattered with gravel and grey granite, is everywhere
impregnated with gold, which the slaves extract by
washing and digging. It is said that in the market-
place of Kumasi there are 1600 ounces' worth of gold
a treasure reserved for State purposes. The bracelets
of rock-gold, which the caboceers wear on state
occasions, are four pounds in weight, and often so
heavy that they must rest their arms upon the heads of
their slave boys.
In Gaman, the region to the north-west of the
capital, the ore is found in large nuggets, sometimes
weighing four pounds. The pits are sunk nine
feet in the red granite and grey granite, and
* Some years ago the late Consul Campbell, of Lagos, forwarded to
Her Majesty's Foreign Office bits of broken pottery, in which he detected
gold. When submitted to the School of Mines, the glittering par-
ticles proved to be mica.
t Silver is also said to be found near the Niger, but of this I hare
no reliable notices.
126 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the gold is highly coloured. From 8000 to 10,000
slaves work for two months every year in the bed of the
Barra river. There, however, as on the Gold Coast,
the work is very imperfect, and in some places where
the metal is sacred to the Fetish, it is not worked at all.
Judging from analogy, we might expect to find the
precious metal in the declivities inland and northwards
from Cape Palmas, and in that sister formation of the
East African ghauts, the "Sierra del Crystal." The
late Captain Lawlin, an American trader, settled on an
island at the mouth of the Eernan Yaz, carried to his own
country, about the year 1843-44, a quantity of granular
gold, which had been brought to him by some country
people. He brought back all the necessary tools and
implements to the Gaboon River, but the natives became
alarmed, and he failed to find the spot. Finally,
according to the tradition of native travellers, the
unexplored region called Ruma,* and conjecturally
placed south of the inhospitable Waday, is a land
of goldsmiths, the ore being found in mountainous
and well-watered districts. It is becoming evident
that Africa will some day equal half-a-dozen Cali-
fornias.
Mungo Park supplies the amplest notices of gold in
the regions visited by him north of the Kong Moun-
tains. The principal places are the head of the Senegal
* This may be the "Runga," of our maps, with whose position
Ruinu corresponds. My informant wrote down the name from tie
mouth of a Waday man at Lagos.
GOLD IN AFEICA. 127
river, and its various influents; Dindiko, where the
shafts are most deep, and notched, like a ladder;
Shronda, which gives two grains from every pound of
alluvial matter;* Bambuk and Bambarra. In Kong-
kadu, the "mountain land," where the hills are of
coarse ruddy granite, composed of red feldspar, white
quartz, and black shale, containing orbicular concretions,
granular gold is found in the quartz, which is broken
with hammers ; the grains, however, are flat. The dig-
gings at present best known are those of Handing.
The gold, we are told, is found not in mines or veins,
but scattered in sand and clay. They vary from a pin's
head to the size of a pea, and are remarkably pure.
This is called Sana Manko, or gold-powder, in contradis-
tinction to Sana birro, or gold stones, nuggets occasionally
weighing five drachms. In December, after the harvest-
home, when the gold-bearing Fiumaras from the hills have
shrunk, the Mansa or Shaykh appoints a day to begin
Sana Ku gold-washing. Each woman arms herself with
a hoe, two or three calabashes, and a few quills. On
the morning before departure a bullock is slaughtered
for a feast, and prayers and charms are not forgotten.
The error made by these people is digging and washing
for years in the same spot, which proves compara-
tively unfruitful unless the torrent shifts its course.
* This would be 3^3 (avoirdupois), -whereas the cascalhao, or alluvium,
of Brazil is ^j^, and remarkably rich and pyritical ores in Europe
give zs^iw- Yet M. D'Aubrie estimates the gold in the bed of Father
Rhine at six or seven millions of pounds sterling.
128 WANDEEINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
They never follow the lead to the hills, but content
themselves with exploring the heads of the water-courses,
which the rapid stream denudes of sand and clay, leaving
a strew of small pebbles that wear the skin off the finger-
tips. The richest yield is from pits sunk in the height
of the dry season, near some hill in which gold has
been found. As the workers dig through the several
strata of sand and clay, they send up a few calabashes
by way of experiment for the women, whose peculiar
duty it is to wash the stuff, and thus they continue till
they strike the floor-rock. The most hopeful formation
is held to be a bed of reddish sand, with small dark
specks, described as "black matter, resembling gun-
powder," and called by the people Sana Mira, or gold-
rust : it is possibly emery. In Mr. Murray's edition of
1816, there are illustrations of the various positions, and
along description (Vol. I. p. 450, and Yol. II. p. 75) of
the style of panning. I will not trouble the reader
with it, as it in no way differs from that now practised
on the Gold Coast and Kaffir lands. There is art in
this apparently simple process. Some women find gold
when others cannot discover a particle; and as quick-
silver is not used, at least one-third must be wasted,
or rather, I may say, it is preserved for a better
day.
The gold dust is stored in quills, stopped with cotton,
and the washers are fond of wearing a number of these
trophies in their hair. The average of an industrious
individual's annual collection may be two slaves. The
GOLD IN AFRICA. 129
price of these varies from nine to twelve minkali,* each
of 12*. Qd., or its equivalent in goods, viz., eighteen
gun-flints, forty-eight leaves of tobacco, twenty charges
of gunpowder, a cutlass, and a musket. Part of the
gold is converted into massive and cumbrous ornaments,
necklaces, and ear-rings, and when a lady of consequence
is in full dress, she bears from 50 to 80. A propor-
tion is put by to defray expenses of travelling to and
from the coast, and the greater part is then invested
in goods, or exchanged with the Moors for salt and
merchandise.
The gold is weighed in small balances, which the
people always carry about with them, and they make,
like the Hindus, but little difference between gold
dust and wrought gold. The purchaser always uses his
own " tilikissi," beans, probably, of the Abrus, which are
sometimes soaked in Shea butter, to increase their weight,
or are imitated with ground -down pebbles. In smelt-
ing gold, the smith uses an alkaline salt, obtained from
a ley of burnt corn stalks. He is capable, as even the
wildest African tribes are, of drawing fine wire. When
rings the favourite form in which the precious metal
is carried coastward are to be made, the gold is run
without any flux in a crucible of sun-dried red clay,
which is covered over with charcoal or braize. The
smith pours the fluid into a furrow traced in the ground,
by way of mould. When it has cooled, he reheats it,
* May not this word be an old corruption of the well-known Arabic
weight, miskdl ?
VOL. II. K
130 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
and hammers it into a little square ingot or bar of the
size required. After a third exposure to fire, he twists
with his pincers the bar into a screw shape, lengthens
out the ends, and turns them up to form the circle.
It must now be abundantly evident to the reader that
the great centre of West African gold, the source which
supplies Manding to the North, and Ashantee to the
South, is the equitorial range called the Kong. What the
miueral wealth must be there, it is impossible to estimate,
when nearly three millions and a half of pounds sterling
have annually been drawn from a small parallelogram be-
tween its southern slopes and the ocean, whilst the other
three quarters of the land without alluding to the equally
rich declivities of the northern versant have remained
as yet unexplored. Even in northern Liberia colonists
have occasionally come upon a pocket of $50, and the
natives bring gold in from the banks of streams.
Mr. Wilson* remarks upon this subject, " It is best
for whites and blacks that these mines should be worked
just as they are. The world is not suffering for the
want of gold, and the comparative small quantities that
are brought to the sea-coast keep the people in con-
tinual intercourse with civilised men, and ultimately, no
doubt, will be the means of introducing civilisation and
Christianity among them."
I differ from the reverend author, toto coelo. Tor
such vain hope as that of improving Africans by Euro-
* "Western Africa," Chap. X.
GOLD IN AFRICA. 131
pean intercourse, and for all considerations of an " ulti-
mately "vaguer than the sweet singer of Israel's "soon/'
it is regrettable that active measures for exploration and
exploitation are not substituted. And if the world
including the reverend gentleman is not suffering for
the want of gold, there are those, myself for instance,
and many a better man, who would be happy at times to
see and to feel a little more of that " vile yellow clay."
K 2
CHAPTER IX.
A PLEASANT DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS.*
20TH SEPT., 186.
VERY early in the morning of Friday we arose,
and walked the quarter-deck, wihsing to see as much as
possible of the coast of gold. The land about "Win-
nibah, " the Forest Country," as it is called, extending
as far west as Cape Apollonia, is a curtain of undulating
rocky hills, none apparently above 200 or 800 feet in
height, with deep grassy valleys, swampy, and dis-
charging little rills. The vegetation, which clothes
almost every foot of soil, is of that dense oily kind
most fit to sustain life under alternations of excessive
humidity and of extreme drought. We could easily
distinguish from the quarter-deck acacias and mimosas,
wild dates, adansonias, and guinea palms. Most con-
spicuous in the morning grey was the Devil's Hill,
a tall cone between Apam and "Winnibah, a celebrated
mining locality, dignified by many a local legend. Then
came the woody hill, on whose seaward flank is the
* I cannot swear that Accra means the Land of Ants, nor that
Mnyarawezi signifies the Land of the Moon, still there is a certain
significance about them both which justify me in using them, at least,
when not writing a report to the Eoyal Geographical Society.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 133
ancient Dutch port of Barraco. Lastly, Cook's Loaf,
much in the shape of a petit pain, introduced us to the
shallow bay of Accra, where we cast anchor at nine A.M.
The scenery was a yellow shore, dotted with green, and
backed with pale blue hills. For landing on this coast,
there are no worse months than July, August, and
September. Fortunately for us it was a dull day, and
the wind had not power to raise the dreaded surf.
Eyes were cast anxiously towards the edge of the beach
at times, as thin white froth appeared above the
smooth but undulating sea, with its livid leaden tints,
but a glance was sufficient to satisfy us that in lauding
we risked nothing but wet jackets.
Seen from the offing, Accra is imposing, in its own
way. A jotting of azure blue hill, the threshold of the
Aquapim highlands, distant from sixteen to twenty miles,
rising 1500 to 2000 feet above the sea, and forming an
amphitheatre for the plain below, appears upon the
far horizon. The old capital of the leeward districts
stands upon a red beach, which pronounces itself, not
condescending to a slope, and its base is lined with
black rocks and ledges that chafe by opposing the in-
vading tides. The centre of attraction is James Fort,
a picturesque old building, which must have been re-
garded with awe in the days of falconets and culverins. The
"negro quarters," which spread out to the north-east
and north-west of the fort, do not show from this
offing, which confines our view to the large square and
parallelogramic houses that take open distance along the
134 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
sea frontage. There are two which attract every eye:
westward the castle-like pile called the Commodore, and
nearer to the fort, the Big House. Here and there a
wind-wrung cocoa, forming a natural vane, whilst bent
away tremblingly from the bullying south-west wind,
broke the somewhat bald and monotonous scatter of
habitations. On the eastward, or to the right of James
Port, lies the Dutch Crevecceur why it should so be
called I have not yet discovered, as an order to capture
it ought not to break a man's heart sedulously white-
washed, and more protentous in appearance than its
English neighbour; and further still, after a long narrow
strip of yellow sward, surmounted by a stratum of equally
bright green verdure, appears upon a jutting rock the
once magnificent castle of Christianborg. It rises boldly
from a black rock, at whose feet the tides ceaselessly
surge, and beyond it is a ledge upon which the waves
incessantly break in the calmest weather.
Landing in a canoe, with high weatherboards the surf
here is a litle worse than at Cape Coast Castle we made
for a dark reef to the westward of the fort, and we
passed behind it through a little channel which might
easily be improved; there is, however, a better place
nearer the fort. The sea-horses reared and shook their
foamy manes outside the rocks, inside we had nothing
more than a high tide at Dover or Weymouth. "We
were seated in chairs in the fore part of the canoe the
usual place in these landings and as she touched the
sands, our "pull-a-boys" springing into the water, carried
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 135
us all out high and dry. A dollar is well laid out
on such occasions ; a moment's delay may often see the
stern of the canoe half swamped by a breaker. Ascend-
ing the unclean bank by a stiff rampart or tranchee of red
clay, banded with strata of what is about to be sandstone,
we entered upon the Parade- Ground, or Esplanade,
an open space between James Fort and the white-
washed stone-box called the hotel. The "Grande
Place " did not look well : a rough square, with a few
gutters for drains, strewed with bits of brick and bottles,
and backed by negro quarters and shabby huts facing
the sea. Like Stamboul, the capital of the Leeward
Districts of the Gold Coast, loses all its picturesqueness
by closer inspection, and the place has the quiet, hope-
less, cast-down look of a veteran bankrupt.
Mr. Addoe, the African proprietor of the British
Hotel, was civil and obliging : the interior of his estab-
lishment was in Anglo-Indiau style, combining mena-
gerie with old curiosity-shop, and not without a touch of
Booksellers' Row, as I belie ve Putea-Sancta Street is now
called. In the unswept yard was sunk a large tank of
solid masonry, with mildewed walls, and a surface over-
grown with a broad-leaved duck-weed, which is supposed
to keep water sweet. Dysentery, according to Dr.
Clarke, is " by far the most fatal disease on the Gold
Coast, both to the European and native," and the
people consider it highly contagious.* I ceased to
* It is dangerous in the tropics to despise popular opinions touching
the contagiousness of a disease, which is notably not so in colder
136 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
wonder at this being the case; after tasting the water,
and a month or two subsequently spent in the country
climates, such as phthisis in Italy, and "morbus gallicum" without
actual contact in Persia. Central African travellers have also remarked
that in those old homes and birth-places of small-pox, it falls upon
a village or a caravan like a plague, and the Portuguese of Goa will
not pass to leeward of a house where a confluent case is known to be.
It may be presumptuous in a non-medical man to offer an opinion
upon such a point. I cannot, however, but concur in all the advice which
Dr. Clarke offers upon the treatment of the West African scourge, dysen-
tery. He informs us, p. '67 : " That whereas European medical officers
almost always prescribe soups, slops, and farinaceous substances ; the
natives diet the patient with dry and nutritive aliments, in fact, animal
food. And this," says Dr. Clarke, "is the secret of the great success
attained by the people of the country." In my experience, I always found
the same thing. The vital powers of the sufferer being greatly lowered,
he requires as much support as possible : good meat, beef tea, but no
slops, essence of meat, fresh fruit, and mild stimulants, port or cham-
pagne. These will not create acidity, the invariable effect upon a de-
ranged stomach of vegetable food ; moreover the latter does not support
the patient sufficiently. In all dysenteric cases, however, the first
point for consideration is the existence or non-existence of hepatic
complications, If these be absent, and the disorder be entirely
local, opium may be used ; it is a fatal treatment when an organic
derangement of the liver has given rise to the disease. Above all
things, relapse is to be guarded against.
In dysenteric cases the natives have another adjunct to their multi
farious simples and tisanes. The patient is directed to rise at daybreak,
and to sit wholly undressed in the cool and pleasant morning breeze
until 6 A. M. He is then washed in a cold unstrained infusion of mace-
rated plantain-roots, lime-tree leaves, cassava plant, and roots of the
water-lily ; the skin is anointed with Shea butter ; "pampa," a gruel
of Indian corn, is given to drink ; and the process is generally followed
by a sound and refreshing sleep. This cold "air-bath" is a form of
cleanliness which has yet to be adopted in England ; it will doubtless
follow in the wake of the Turkish bath. Its merits have long since
been discovered in India, where, after the sensation of living in a poul-
ticethe effect of European clothing the exposure of the skin is
greatly enjoyed.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 137
convinced me that the fatality of the climate might be
greatly diminished by a distilling machine. Mr. Addoe
does a little business in stock. Accra is better provided
than most part of the coast with supplies : small but
good turkeys are brought from the breeding-places
at the mouth of the Volta, Jellakofi, usually called
"Jelly-coffee," and Quittah, with its now deserted
fort. They are bought here for 6*., and a little down
the coast are worth at least $2 : at Fernando Po
one of them has cost a pound sterling. Pigs and
poultry are bred at head-quarters. The interior sup-
plies excellent farm laud, and a man might soon
make a small fortune by breeding sheep and goats,
and by selling milk and vegetables to mail-steamers and
cruisers. But " sun he be too hot, mas'er ! " There
are also curios at the British Hotel monkey-skins for
dames' muffs there are inland some pretty specimens,
jetty black, with pure white beard and whiskers ; they
are worth $1 per dozen. A fierce dog-faced baboon or
two, with a strong propensity for a bite at your tendon-
Achilles,* amuses himself in captivity with perambulating
a rail; and dozens of Guinea parrots little valued
because they cannot speak, though they want the
voicelessness for which the Greeks envied the wives of
the Cicadas twist and turn upon their perches on the
* It is this tendency in the monkey that induced the learned and
Rev. Dr. Adam Clarke, in his "Commentary on the Bible," to propose
that the ape should take the place of the old serpent in the Book of
Genesis, that most curious of cosmologies.
138 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
ground-floor piazza ; wLilst an eagle is chained to a post
in the yard corner.
Not much prepossessed by the appearance of the
establishment, where precocious urchins, hardly in their
teens, were chewing sapo,* and laying the cloth for break-
fast, the consul and I prepared for a walk round the
town. We were accompanied by poor Hollingworth, of
H.M/s ship " Prometheus/' one of the best and kind-
liest fellows that ever wore a blue jacket. Six months
afterwards he fell a victim to the deadly climate of
Lagos. Before setting out we had a palaver with a
"cook-boy," as Anglo-Indian ladies persist in calling
him, who was willing to engage himself for " Nanny Po."
The cook-boy, however, owning to a proclivity for
" sucking the monkey," and demanding as wages 5
per mensem, we did not subject him to expatriation,
In most parts of India a stranger, if wise, would have
hesitated to expose himself to the sun at 10 A.M. On
this coast, however, even Europeans enjoy immunity
from sun-stroke :f the natives, as the black-skin every-
where seems to do, enjoy themselves in the living "lowe."
* A bunch of fibres of the plantain and other trees, which, like the
lif of Egypt, is used as a sponge ; a mouthful is chewed to clean the
inner part of the teeth, and is then applied outside like a tooth brush.
Some of these fibres are bitter astringents, and doubtless beneficial.
+ Dr. Clarke attributes this immunity to the relaxation of the
system, by which profuse perspiration follows the least exertion,
thereby equalising the circulation and preventing local congestions. This
is true : it is dangerous to sit, though not to walk, in the sun. But I
would also suggest that the humidity of the atmosphere, forming at all
seasons a veil for the sun's rays, greatly mitigates the absolute heat.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 139
Our first walk was to the British. Salt Lake, as the
Accra Lagoon, lying west of the town, is called. These
formations are of two kinds, which I may term longi-
tudinal and latitudinal. The former is disposed at an
angle, more or less rectangular, to the coast; it is
usually in a sink between two waves or tongues of high
land, the lower bed of some watercourse, which flows
only during the rains, and which, being below sea-
level, is fed by percolations through the raised sand
strip which acts as its embankment. The latitudinal
is generally the formation of a permanent river, which
spreads out over the depressions on either side of its
bendings : the Yolta river offers the perfection of this
feature. Nothing can be worse than British Salt Lake,
which runs far into the interior ; it is historic ground,
the fatal field of Dodowah lying near its head. Though
fetid with decomposed mud, and haunted by sand-
flies and mosquitoes, it is the favourite walk and ride
with the Europeans of Accra. Between it and the sea
are a number of pits, where the natives fair and not fair
bathe in a touching approach to the pure Adamical
costume. Turning inwards past "the Commodore"
as the large and well-built pile belonging to the Bau-
nerman family its tank contains the purest water in
the place is called, we walked towards the north, and
had a fine view of the Aquapim and other hills, of
which two cones, named Mount Bannerman to the west-
north-west, and to the north-east, Kwabenyang, called
on our charts Mount Zahrtman, are the most conspicuous,
140 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
The nearer country was adorned with the Palmyra, the
French Bonnier, and it is everywhere a tree of good
omen. The roads were bordered with datura fortu-
nately the people ignore its poisonous narcotism and
with thick hedges of prickly pear, whose only fault is a
proclivity to extend itself unduly : the fruit is eaten by
children, but the whites have not yet learned to appre-
ciate the Maltese favourite.* The people whom we met
on the road were mostly she-"pawns," sauntering towards
the plantations; they did not, however, neglect to address
us with the normal Heni odse where thou comest
from ? To which we were taught to reply Ble-e-e-o
meaning softly tout doucement it is peaceful here.
At some distance from the town, stood Garden House,
once a shooting-box, whence sportsmen issued to slay
leopards and moose-deer probably the Koodoo. It
was a fine old building, but, like the rest, dark, deserted,
and sadly ruinous, whilst the grounds around it were
a mere waste of bush. We strolled into the cemetery,
whose hingeless, rusted gate offered no obstruction, and
found it on a par with the habitations of the living.
Returning by the north-east of the town, we passed by
the Big House, another stately pile, that belongs to the
Hansen family ; it is even more broken down than " the
* On the Mediterranean shores it is considered cooling and whole-
some, especially in summer. Englishmen at first dislike its insipidity,
but they soon accustom themselves to it. The only difficulty about it
is removing the thorny peel, which cannot be done without much
practice.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 141
Commodore." Mr. Addoe has married one of the
daughters of the house, which, as usual, has a burial-
ground on the lowest or ground-floor. Query, how is it
that these houses are never haunted ? What can become
of the ghosts ? It is said to have cost 12,000, in a
place where money is worth double what it is in England,
and the original proprietor died before he had carried
out his plans of purchasing and clearing the frontage.
A little beyond it was the French factory, and the Wes-
leyan Mission-house, bought from old Mr. Bannerman.
In the town the women had their legs stocking' d and
striped, like a clown's face, with some whitish, clayey
substance; they were "making custom." The men
as we passed bared themselves to the waist, which is
equivalent to a cavalry-man dropping his right arm.
All appeared civil and respectful : they are said to enjoy
English rule, and to wish that we were sole possessors of
the land a great contrast to the East Indian. The
pot-bellied children never appeared without a lump of
native bread in their hands, a circumstance which ac-
counts for the inordinate mortality of these juveniles
about one in three arriving at the years conventionally
termed "of discretion." The alleys streets they could
not be called were dirty and slovenly ; sweeping seemed
to be unknown; and the lank, sharp-snouted, long-
legged pigs that haunted the heaps, were engaged in
anything but rooting up truffles. This nuisance can
hardly be abated : at times private orders are issued to
cut short the days of Paddy's friend, as Pariah dogs aie
142 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
slaughtered in India ; but the people attributing it to a
porcine pestilence, send their pets into the country for
change of air. The houses were of the hollow square
form, more preserved than those of Cape Coast Castle,
but less so than the Yoruba habitations. In most court-
yards a female slave was bending, with pendent bosom
and perspiring skin, over a stone roller, which, working
along a concave slab, reduced the maize and obdurate
holcus to a fine flour. Nothing can be more gloomy
than these mud huts ; their never whitewashed walls and
seedy brown thatches are sad to behold. A few yards
placed us once more upon the parade-ground.
Be-entering the hotel, we refreshed ourselves with
brandy-pawnee, the pawnee being Patent Quinined
Water, which has a high local reputation. After a discon-
solate glance at the interior, and a gloomy anticipation of
breakfast, a bright thought suggested itself. "We walked
over to the fort, passed inside despite the lowering
glances of a shoeless Zouave, whose chestnut-coloured
stockings, not unmatched with toes protruding through
the tips, gave his legs the appearance that the English-
woman in Paris seems to love of two large chocolate
Sticks, and introduced ourselves to the Civil-Com-
mandant, Major De Euvignes, who, whilst finishing off
business for the forenoon, welcomed us most kindly.
He had brought to Africa a goodly stock of East Indian
campaigning experiences, and we found ourselves in for
pleasant day, when we had no right to expect any such
thing.
A DAT IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 143
I must break the thread of my tangled discourse to
moralise "some," as Jonathan, or rather the two
Jonathans, have it. In extensive travel there is catho-
licity of experience, especially in the cuisine. Pew
races, except the Esquimaux, the Hottentots, and the
Australians, possess not a dish or two that might pro-
fitably be naturalised at home ; whilst we in England
have too many, which might, equally advantageously, be
changed for others. Nor is the subject one of light
import. L'homme d' esprit seul salt manger. Only fools
and young ladies care nothing for the carte. Who but
the idiot would affront his polarity (as Mr. Emerson, if
I rightly understand him, terms man's individuality) by
adhibiting to powers exhausted in a tropical climate, a
refreshment of boiled mutton (proh pudor !} and caper
sauce,* or a stuff invented, when meat was dear, to choke
off appetite, and for which the speech of Europe hath no
name " pudding ?" " Religion," says the sage Soyer,
" feeds the soul, Education the mind, Pood the body."
La destinee des nations depend de la maniere dont elles
se nowrissent is the wisdom of another wise man. This
age of high progress is beginning to suspect a fact
of which it never doubted in its days of barbarism
namely, that the babe at the breast imbibes certain pecu-
liarities according to its nutrition.
* Well do I remember, in days of youth, our "elegant" and chival*
rous French chef at Tours, in fair Touraine, who at once retired from
the service because he was ordered to boil a gigot " Comment, madame t
un gigot 1 cuit & Veau, Jamais t Neverre ! "
144 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
These reflections, philosophical as good gastronomy is
the truest philosophy, emanate from the memories of
that day's breakfast. The people of Accra are notoriously
good cooks ; but, as amongst unpolished races, the men,
who in civilisation attain heights of excellence to which
the humbler sex may not aspire, are here notably inferior
to their partners. The best of cuisinieres are, of course,
those of birth and breeding, and in their places Madame
can direct the actions of her slave girls without compro-
mising herself, as would be the case in an English kitchen,
where we find Mrs. A , with arms akimbo, ruling the
roast, and brooking no rival luminary in her firmament. I
can name and describe the qualities of the dishes to which
we paid more particular attention, but their composition
is complicated and tasteful enough to puzzle the brains
of the lady who writes the cookery book. " Kankie" is
native bread : the flour, at first not unlike the " yaller
male" of the Land of Potatoes, must be manipulated
till it becomes snowy white : after various complicated
operations soaking the grain, pounding, husking,
triturating, and keeping till the right moment, it is
boiled or roasted and packed in plantain leaves. It is
as superior to the sour, brown, sodden mass tasting
of butter-milk like palm-wine and mildew, used by
Europeans on this coast and called bread, as a Parisian
roll to the London quartern loaf. "Fufu" is composed
of yam, plantain, or casava ; it is peeled, boiled, pounded,
and made into balls, which act the part of European
potatoes, only it is far more savoury than the vile tuber,
A DAT IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 145
which has potatofied at least one nation, and at which
no man of taste ever looks, except in some such
deep disguise as a maUre d'kotel. There were also
cakes, seasoned with the fresh oil of the palm kernel,
but they had a fault, over richness. En revanche, the
fish and stews were admirable ; the former is the staple
supply of the coast, and old residents live upon it.*
" Kinnau " is fish opened, cleaned, stuffed with mashed
green pepper, and fried in palm oil. The oil used for
these purposes must be freshly made, thoroughly purified
by repeated boilings, till free from water and fibre ; the
sign of readiness is a slight transparent yellow tint,
supplanting the usual chrome colour. "Palaver sauce "
is a mess of vegetables, the hibiscus, egg-plant, tomato,
and pepper, boiled together, with or without fowl or
fish. "Palm-oil chop" is the curry of the Western
coast, but it lacks the delicate flavour which turmeric
gives, and suggests coarseness of taste. After some time
Europeans begin to like it, and there are many who
take home the materials to Europe. Besides palm-oil,
it is composed of meat or fowl, boiled yam,f pepper,
* The fish is mostly a kind of herring, of -which large quantities are
cured and sent to the interior, even as far as Ashantee. Turtle is
turned in the Hamattan season, beginning with December : after March
they breed, and are unfit for food.
f* The West African yam is of two kinds white and yellow . the
former is sweet, the latter bitter, and consequently preferred by the
Datives and by old hands amongst the whites. It never has the internal
light purple tinge, nor the drug-like flavour which renders this
vegetable anything but a favourite in India. The best yams in thia
part of the world are grown by the Bubes of Fernando Po.
VOL. II. L
146 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
and other minor ingredients. I always prefer it with
rice; pepper, however, is the general fashion. The
best and only sensible drink with this "chop," is palm
wine, but the article is seldom to be procured sweet, and
it mixes very badly for the digestion with all other
fermented liquors. Next to it claret, but by no means
Burgundy, which would recall a flavour, perhaps already
too strong. And I advise the young beginner to con-
clude his " palm-oil chop," especially when eaten at a
native house, with a "petit verre" The last dish which
shall be mentioned it affects the palate of reminiscence
with a pleasant humidity is " kickie," a most intricate
affair of finely minced and strongly flavoured fish or
fowl ; it is served up in Accra-made pots of black porous
clay, into which the pepper sinks so thoroughly that
after a few months it heats its contents. It has the one
great advantage, like the West Indian " pepper-pot/' of
always coming up to table fresh from the fire.
After the dejeuner dinatoire, not without aliqito mero,
we walked round poor old James Tort, which dates from
the days of Charles the Martyr. It is an irregular
square, flanked by bastions, and provided with two
stories ; the eastern side contains, or rather contained,
a large saloon used for business purposes, and on the
ground floor are the dungeons in which prisoners were
immured. The sides of the fort proper are about 145
feet long ; outside the gateway, however, there are the
courts, surrounded by loopholed walls, and separated by
a tumble-down building called a court-house. It is
A DAT IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 147
built upon the outer extremity of Accra Point, on a
rocky foundation, about 36 feet above sea level. A low
ledge of reef projects far into the sea, and at an expense
of 5000/. 20,OOOJ. being annually wasted upon a local
corps a breakwater of rough stone might easily be
made there. It has been repeatedly recommended, and
it was even expected to be undertaken : but who cares
for Accra on the Gold Coast? This place, once the
great ambition of Europe, has now fallen fallen
fallen even from the memory of the Gazetteer. In
Brookes and Fiiidlay (MDCCCLI.) we read, for all informa-
tion
* "AGRA, or ACCARA," neither spelling admissible "a territory
of Guinea on the Gold Coast, where some European States have forts,
and each fort its village. N. lat. 5 25', W. long. 10'."
A fine -looking massive building it must have seemed to
the eyes of its own generation. It was the furthermost
of their works upon this Coast, which will never look
upon its like again. When I first saw it, however, the
gateway was bending humbly forwards, the walls were
lezardes, by rain dripping through the mortarless inter-
stices, the ramparts were in holes, the rooms ruinous, the
old iron guns, of some dozen various calibres, were scaly
as the armadillo, and the whole place wore the tristest
aspect of desolation. Some 1000<?. per annum would
have kept all these places Cape Coast Castle, Accra
Dixcove, and Christiansborg in proper order ; no great
addition to an expenditure of 24,0 DO or 30,000 per
annum. Now all is ruin. Books tell us that the coast,-
L 2
148 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
from El-Mina to Benin is still rising, and that rocks
and ledges, before below, are now flush with the water.
The earthquake of 1858 tended to hasten the growth.*
No one visits Accra without inspecting its neighbour,
Christiansborg. Our coach and six presently appeared
at the door; a quaint contrivance, a four-in-hand of
negroes to the fore, holding little cross-bars, and two
pushing in the rear. The late Lieutenant Forbes, of
Dahomian celebrity, used to wax extremely wroth at
this degradation of men to cattle. I regret to own that
it felt very refreshing after the banalities of hammocks,
palanquins, and sedans. Horses, which die at Cape Coast
Castle after a few months, here live for years : their
owners, however, are careful not to take them into the
bush. The reason generally given there is, that they
catch complaints which are fatal. I cannot, however,
but think that it is the tzetze, or some kindred fly, which
destroys them. Wherever the bush and the tall grass
are cleared away, these noxious animals, whose poison
seems to be derived from the rank vegetation surrounding
them, disappear. They are no longer upon the actual
seaboard, which, perhaps, has been too much denuded
of trees, Nature's screen-work against the malaria of
* About April, 1862, seventeen distinct shocks, extending through
six weeks, added increment to it, and on the 10th of June, 1862, when
the rolling of the ground split eveiy stone house in Accra, I distinctly
saw that the level of the rock ledge had been upraised from the sea.
The same day, however, was fatal to the three forts ; and the clerk
of the works, sent from England to report upon the state of those
belonging to us, declared that it was useless to attempt repairs.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 149
the inner marshes. Within five miles north of Accra,
I was severely stung by a large brown gadfly, of which
specimens were secured. They were unfortunately lost ;
but though without books of reference and preserved
specimens it is impossible for me to identify the animal,
my impression is that it is the true tzetze, which Dr.
Livingstone has limited to the southern branch of the
Zambezi. The author of the " West Regions of Central
Africa," brought home with him a fine large glossina,
which was pronounced at the British Museum to be the
true G. morsitans. Mules and asses might succeed
even where horses fail. The only trouble in keeping
these animals is the difficulty of finding proper attend-
ants. Nothing can be more inhuman or neglectful than
the West African stable-boy; he mounts his charge
when unobserved, and rides him like a beggar, wears
the cloths by night, and unless the master is present
robs the grain and kankie with which his charge is fed.
Besides which the fellows seem constitutionally unable
to keep a horse clean, and to ride an animal out of con-
dition and one quarter groomed is to drink Romane glace
out of a tin pannikin both lose all their pleasure.
Our novel go-cart dashed through the streets at full
speed. We passed through the Salt Bazaar, a kind of
market, where women were sitting, before them were
stores of fish and vegetables, ground-nuts, and palm-oil,
and large flat baskets filled with the infinity of small cheap
articles chiefly required in barbarous life. This led us to
another square. On its seaward side stands the Dutch
150 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
fort Creve-cceur, \vhich M. Bouet-Willaumez described as
an " abandoned ruin." It is a large pile of building,
at the edge of the cliff, with a tall turret and a large
courtyard. Being freshly whitewashed it wore an
aspect somewhat superior to our ruin, but during the
earthquakes it fared much worse, which was bad indeed.
A Dutch negro soldier or two sat at the door, but never
ventured upon the least sign of salute, eyeing us with all
the repose which marks the caste of Canaan bin Ham.
We also found a Wesleyan chapel, standing solitary at
the landward side of a square, not unlike the parade-
ground. Its style of architecture was that of the olden
meeting-house, generally copied from that useful but
not ornamental tenement, a barn. It disdained steeple,
and being a week-day the doors were of course shut.
Under its shade a small party of young negresses were
enjoying their favourite relaxation of a dance. Nothing
is more grotesque than their style of saltation. A
couple stands up vis-a-vis, and raising the foot alternately
both stamp upon the ground as bears are taught to do.
This presently becomes a leap in the air, during which
the hands are thrown out, palms forwards, and are met
by the partner opposite. If there is any failure the
couple breaks off with loud shouts of laughter, and
another set stands up in their stead. On great occasions
at Accra there are, I believe, dances which are as ceremo-
nious as the East Indian Nautch ; we had not, however,
time to see them.
Presently we emerged from the town upon a level high
A DAY IN THE LAbD OF ANTS. 151
road of no despicable construction. Originally the work
of the merchants at Accra, it is now kept in order by
the civil commandant. The hard red clay, often the
debris of ant masonry, dispenses with the necessity of
metalling, though riot with that of repairing at the end
of the rainy season. The avenue of umbrellas and
tamarinds which, bending to the N. E., acted as natural
waves, gave it almost a south-European look. The
country around, although in the heart of the dry season,
afforded me an unexpected pleasure. Not a trace of
bush, jungle, or mangrove swamp around: in the
yellow daylight the rolling surface, here gently swelling,
there sinking with a graceful curve, was clothed with
golden grass ; and here and there a tall tree, a " motte "
of underwood, a solitary cactus, or a clump of evergreen
woo'd the traveller to its green shade. Herds of cattle
browsing in the distance gave it a pastoral appearance,
and beyond the prairie formation of the lowlands rose
forest, not primeval, as Dr. Daniell calls it, but rather
land that has lain fallow for some scores of years. The
people call this Ko, as opposed to Na, the grassy
savannah. The consul had never seen so many ant-
pyramids since leaving the Somali country : they studded
the land ; tall broken cones of red ferruginous earth, tho
favourite building material of the white termes belli-
cosus, the bug-a-bug of S'a Leone, which gives to the
region a mistaken name.* There is game to be found
in the land "horse-deer/' 13 to 14 hands high, ante-
* Accra is derived, through the Portuguese, from Inkran, or
152 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
lopes, the noble African partridge, and the "bush-
turkey," which I believe to be a floriken : the animals,
however, take to cover at once, and cannot be dislodged
without curs. There is a kind of wild cattle, called on
the Gaboon river, Nyara : it seems to exist everywhere
in the maritime region I found the same animal on
the Gold Coast. Mr. Thompson (" Palm Land, or West
Africa," p. 168) mentions it in the grass plains near
Sherbro, and Mr. Yaldez calls it Empacasso in Portu-
guese Africa, Empacasseiros are the huntsmen who
make a profession to kill it. Leopards are only too
numerous. Hippopotami and crocodiles are plentiful in
the Volta river. Spur-fowl exist in the bushes. I
prefer, small as they are, the delicious curlews that pace
the sands. Wild geese appear at certain seasons ; the
meat is fat, rich, and juicy. Elephants must exist in
the interior, as the people are plentifully supplied with
scrivellos and tusks of moderate dimensions. The only
drawback to a gallop over this fine open country is the
number and size of the crab holes, which rival the
biscacheros of the South American pampas. During
the rains, when verdure invests these charming slopes,
and a thicker herbage clothes the woodland, the view
must be a repose to the eye.* The horizon in the
north showed a distant line of fading blue hill, the
" drivers," not white ants. Others say it was so called on account of
the ant-like swarming of its numerous population.
* Compared with S'a Leone the rains in Accra are light, averag-
ing a little above 80 inches. They are sufficient, however, to flood the
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 153
threshold of Ajumanti, Akim, and Ajuapim. In the
latter, Akropong, the king's residence, and Abude, are
now stations of the Basle mission : the distance is laid
down at 20 to 30 miles from Accra, the height is 2000
to 2500 feet above sea level, and the climate is described
to be delightful. The Ajumanti range is a day's ham-
mock march from James Town, and being drier, is pre-
ferred by many to Akropong or Abude : the air is deli-
cious, the water pure, and abundant stone and timber
everywhere, whilst mechanics and supplies, at slightly
advanced prices, are readily procurable from Accra. On
the seaward slopes there is still a Danish ruin, bearing
the inscription
Frederiksgave
VI.
1832.
and intended as a sanitarium for the officers of Christians-
borg. The fine estate around it, called the Queen's
Plantations, has been granted to Major De Ruvignes, the
civil commandant, on consideration of his paying annu-
ally a pine-apple quit-rent. Anything from coffee 7 to
cotton would grow here, and will grow well, whilst the
air is pure and cool, and the mosquito plague of Accra is
unknown. At the foot of the range is Abokobi, another
station of German missionaries, and in the hills various
farms and plantations belonging to the merchants of
Accra. Coffee has been grown there, but all has now
run wild. Mr. Freeman has been much more successful
lowlands, and as the soil is clayey, to stop travelling. The best season
for excursions into the interior is the Harmattan.
154 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
near the Secoom river : at this time he has, I suppose,
10,000 plants. The German missionaries in Ajuapim
also attempted it, but want of gardening skill made their
efforts vain. Cotton was tried, and succeeded admirably.
Mr. Swanzy, an eminent merchant, laid out large sums,
and produced an excellent staple ; since his day, however,
the trees have been entirely neglected. The Accra copal
is of poor quality, and fetches in the market far lower
prices than that of Angola, Beuguela, Kongo, or S'a
Leone. Guinea grains are procured spontaneously
everywhere in the hills, but this once celebrated spice,
like the Balm of Meccah, has now become a weed.
The mountain land of Akim lies about a week's easy
travel to the north, with a little westing from Accra j
it is divided into two districts, the eastern, of which
Ojadan is the capital, and the western, whose capital is
Ciiebi. The people, who know, though they cannot
avail themselves of, their country's resources, are de-
sirous of seeing it colonised by Europeans. Two very
rich diggings have lately been discovered in Akim.
There is no doubt that by paying a certain per-centage
to the king and his Pynims, Europeans would be
allowed to work them. It is described as a beautiful
region, abounding in fruits and flowers : its botany
would doubtless instruct Europe, but where are the
botanist, the geologist, and the student of natural
history on the Gold Coast ? The great industry through-
out Akim is gold. According to travellers the local
fetish is called Kataguri ; it appears in the shape of a
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 155
large brass pan, which dropped down from heaven ; in
token of its high descent it is secured with all mystery in
a fetish house, and is surrounded by drawn swords
and axes overlaid with gold.*
After a two miles' drive through a country which it
was a pleasure to look at, we reached the outposts of
Christiansborg. The first sign was a cemetery, where the
missionaries lie apart from " dee hayden" with whom they
have associated during life. Ensue some quasi-European
houses in which the " consort," such is the ambiguous
term which the native " housekeeper " enjoys in these
lands, is located by the absent "householder." A
martello tower, once considered a strong defence, stands
sentinel on this approach to the main work. Around
it, and to the northwards, clusters a native town, rising
phcenix-like from it ruins. It was bombarded to correct
a mutinous tendency, in 1854, by H. M. S. Scourge,
followed by a squadron of six English vessels, and a large
native force, which had collected, was easily dispersed.
Unfortunately the lines of streets have been carelessly laid
down, and, as has been explained, it is more difficult to
remove a Gold Coast town than a West Africo-English
* At Accra the commandant showed me some of these swords, which
had been sent in token of submission by one of the chiefs of Krobo, a
highland about 60 miles north-east of James Town. They were short,
broad, and heavy falchions, apparently of rusty hoop iron, in shape some-
what like the dreaded Turkish scimitar of the olden time now known
only in pictures but adorned with open work near the end, like f sh-
slicers or Highland dirks, the handles and pommels being thinly
plated with worked gold sewn together, and hammered close to the wood.
156 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
settlement. The holes from which the earthen material
of the houses was excavated are allowed to remain, and,
filled by every rainy season they must be small hotbeds
of malaria. The native town showed us a peculiar sight.
" Can the Ethiopian change his skin ? " is a question
which has been asked some time ago, in distinct expec-
tation of a negative reply. My day at Accra enables
me modestly, but decidedly, to reply that he can. Outside
a hut sat a strange-looking being, a spotted man, such as
we read of in books that treat of ethnology and of skin-
diseases. The ground-colour of his superficies was an
unwholesome pink white, and the rest was a series of
deep black splotches. He was well-known to all in the
place; a few years before he had been a negro; he
gradually changed to a white man, and when we saw him
he was again recovering his rete mucosum. I saw
another anthropological curiosity at Accra. The Albino
in Africa has been noticed by every traveller, the semi-
Albino has not. My specimen was a man with features
and cranium distinctly belonging to the "poor black
brother." His complexion, however, was cafe au lait,
his hair a dull dead yellow, short and kinky as that of
all his tribe, and his eye-pupils were of a light and lively
brown. I afterwards saw many of the same temperament
at Benin, and one the chief Sandy at Batanga : my
little "Travellers' Library," however, does not allude to
this lusus naturae.
Near the entrance of the old Danish castle there are
some large whitewashed quarters, occupied by the Basle
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 157
Mission's Gesellschaft, and a number of white-haired
children broke the monotonous prospect of little wad-
dling niggers and long-legged trotting pigs. This
Mission holds the hill-country, and by combining
commerce with Christianisation, has succeeded in esta-
blishing half a dozen stations. The members arrive in
Africa like timid sheep, very humble ; they wax bolder in
time, as the fox in that fable where he met the lion,
and they end by being as offensive to the community as
were the frogs to King Log. An abominable charge
was brought by their superior against a highly respect-
able English merchant at Accra: an action for libel of
course ensued, the cause came into court, and the de-
fendant altogether failed to substantiate his calumny.
Yet the jury partly negroes and partly whites, lower in
the scale of creation than black men brought in the
peculiar verdict that the accusation was a libel, but
that it had been made without malicious intent. These
Germans carry matters with a high hand. An English
brother happening to come under their displeasure, they
took from him his wife and children by a process of
divorce which they had no right to pronounce and
actually married her to one of their own number. I
will not mention names unless the truth of this assertion
be disputed by the culprits, in which case I will.
Christiansborg Castle, like its brethren Creve-coeur and
James Eort, is founded upon a rock, and bears upon its
walls the date of erection, A.D. 1094. This strong
point, flanked on both sides by sandy bays, stands some
18 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
thirty-five feet above sea-level ; it is fronted by scattered
ledges and outliers, upon which at most seasons, a heavy
surf breaks, consequently the landing is fit only for
canoes. Built by degrees, it has grown into a large but
irregular building, a square of 190 feet on each side,
with a variety of party-walls, ramparts, bastions, and
outworks, all of solid stone masonry, which must have
cost a " pretty penny." The first room is a fine
salon, called the council-chamber, enlivened with
bright blue bands of paint; under it, however, are
noisome dungeons. Besides this there is a chapel, now
closed, a hospital, sundry store-rooms, and officers'
quarters. It is garrisoned by a detachment from Accra,
and so scanty are supplies, that the Europeans never
miss mail-day, and generally dine away from home; no
skipper can pass the place without being mulcted in a
bit of fresh beef, or, that failing, salt pork. The air is
damp and unwholesome ; articles hung against the walls
generally mildew, and the human animal fares even
worse. The fort was built originally by the Portuguese,
but after repeatedly changing masters, it was confirmed
to the Danish crown in the year inscribed upon its
walls. In 1850, the King of Denmark, as has been
said, sold all his northern provinces for the sum of
10,000^., to the English. I should have preferred pay-
ing these moneys for the archives ; they were, however,
removed with the establishment. The Danish trace is
still met with in the interior, although the names of the
towns do not end in by. You meet, however in out-
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 159
of-the-way villages, with Miss Hesse, Miss Engmami,
and other unmistakeable signs of the Danes.
The view from the ramparts is extensive and pic-
turesque. Under the north-eastern walls of the Fort is
a clump of cocoa-nut trees, where the " wa 'ful waddie "
is erected when required. A little beyond it is a lagoon,
or rather a hole of stagnant water, fit only for croco-
diles, and well accounting for the unsanity of the
place. Looking eastward, about two and a-half miles
along the sandy tract which runs uninterrupted as far
as Sandy Bluff, the western point of the Volta's embou-
chure, we see a clump of trees on rising ground, denoting
the site of a well-known village, Labaddi, by the natives
called La, and the seat of the Great Fetish La-Kpa.
The people are fierce and fanatic, and show a dis-
position to be troublesome. The commandant had
pointed out to me, within the enceinte of St. James
Fort, the grave of a Labaddi fetishman, who had been
lately hung for a barbarous murder. The operation,
owing to the struggles of the patient, had been long and
severe, and the corpse had been buried and kept under
surveillance in James Fort, lest the people should be-
lieve in a local Resurrection. The fellow had declared
under the death-tree that he would return and haunt
the man who caused his destruction, and there are those
who believe that he has returned once at least. Three
miles beyond Labaddi is a country whose prettiness is
difficult to describe ; in a charming stretch of park land,
tapestried with grass, and relieved by clumps and scat-
160 WANDEEINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
tered trees, lies Tesha, or Tassy, properly Tesi, once
guarded by Augustenborg, a Danish fort. But no more
shall European eyes view these charming scenes from
that point de vue ; the inexorable earthquake came,
shook Christiansborg down to the rock, and breaking
the head of an assistant-surgeon, compelled the garrison
to camp out upon the plain.
Bidding adieu to this "Castle o' Balwearie," we
walked to tlie north and entered a large building, not
unworthy of comparison with the Commodore and the
Big House. The owner was not at home, so we as-
cended the stairs, and sitting in the saloon, made our-
selves comfortable with cocoa-nut water, " laced " with
cognac. The house, which had all the qualifications for
a Governor's palace, belonged to a Mr. Richter, a Danish
merchant, one of the wealthiest. His portrait still
hangs upon the wall, a kitcat, showing a mild and
gentlemanly unmoustachioed face, supported by a swathe
of muslin, around which was a high horse-collar, that
formed part of a blue cloth coat, and brass buttons ; as
the intelligent reader will have anticipated, a bunch of
seals hung from the fob. And yet this quiet old gen-
tleman must have been a terrible Turk skeletons have
been found in his under-ground dungeons, and his name
is like that of " Draque " in the New World.
After this we walked still further north for about half
a mile, to the old Frederick sborg. On the road we passed
a most forbidding-looking German missionary, who was
driving before liim a herd of little negroes, habited in
A DAT IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 161
striped calico. Not a hand was raised to the hat: in a
country "croom" not a soul would have passed us without
a kindly greeting. It is one of the worst points in these
Christianisers that they are ever endeavouring to raise
man against man ; their theory is " love one another,"
their practice is jealousy and hate. After a quarter of an
hour we came upon the outskirts of the place, where our
men began to tread cautiously. Serpents in exceptional
numbers come forth to bask in the burning sun, and
some are so full of fight, that, instead of running away,
they will, it is said, rise and fly at an intruder. The land
also is covered with a tall growth of spear-grass, which
at once works its way through serge, and hooks its barbed
points into the flesh ; crede experto, and never travel in
the inner Gold Coast without antigropelos (is that rightly
spelt ?) or top-boots. Frederiksborg contained only two
stone houses, but they were handsome and well built of
cut slabs. They are now uninhabitable; the material
has been filched by the garrison at Christiansborg, and a
wall half-pulled down in these regions is soon level with
the ground. It was not safe to enter the debris ; we
therefore contented ourselves with an outside view. The
Gold Coast has already more remnants of antiquity than
the American Republic, where the Nauvoo Temple is the
only ruin between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
We then remounted our coach and six, and proceeded
at a spanking pace, which spoke well for the wind and
bottom of our cattle, towards James Town. The beauty
of the view, the contrast of ruin and perennial growth^
162 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the terrible sereneness of Nature, unchanged, inexorable,
so utterly beyond the emmets, black and white, that
burrow and nest upon earth's surface, filled my mind
with a sudden and profound sadness. Like the builders
of these deserted homesteads, I have sought this coast,
determined to show what can be effected by energy not
undirected by intellect. And now, under that glowing
sun, and with that ever-smiling prospect before me, a
voice seems to say that all my efforts shall be vain, per-
haps even vainer than theirs. I felt relieved when we
had plunged into the alleys of James Town.
A succulent dinner prepared us for the ever-increas-
ing disette of the A. S. S. We are now lapsing into
tropical diet, beef that looks like dead horse, fowls
barely the size of pigeons, and turkeys whose breast-
bones pierce through their skins. The gallant captain
of the " Blackland" began to bang his pop-guns before
the ground-nut soup was off the table the only object
of which proceeding was to double-shot a 24-po under,
in case he might be disposed, contrary to contract, to
give us the slip. Nothing so unpleasant, however,
occurred. We dined in peace ; and I bade adieu to my ex-
cellent host with a regret, lightened only by his promise
to accompany me, at the first opportunity, to Kumasi,
capital of Ashantee. A rush through the breakers, and
a frantic paddling ; in half an hour more we were on
board.
The tribes of the eastern Gold Coast, Accras, Krobos,
Krepis, Agotiins, Awunahs, and Addahs, differ greatly
A DAY IN TEE LAND OF ANTS. 363
from the Akan, or western races, in morale and physique.
There the people are larger and finer men than on
the windward coast ; I have never seen such tall, mus-
cular, and powerful negroes as at Addah. The women
are equally well-grown, and withal remarkably hairy.
Their complexion is rather a dark red than black.
Placed between the two great despotisms of Ashantee
and Dahomey, they are free even to anarchy, and though
fierce as cogs de combat they are disunited, or rather
hostile. According to Bowdich, the people of Accra,
like those of Mombas, rose up against the Portuguese,
they had settled here in 1492, and were guilty of great
cruelties, executed the governor and the garrison on
the spot where they still take the earth to rub on a
new-born child, in memory of the event. They show
considerable improvability. The children on the Gold
Coast are named after the days on which they are
born. Kwashi, or Sunday, our well-known Quashie;
Kajjo (Cudjoe), Kwabino, Kwako (Quacco), Kwaw, Kofi,
and Kwamina, or Saturday. The same is the case in
Ashantee, where the king's last name is the birthday,
which necessarily returns once a week, and the first is
the title Sai or Osai, borne also by the principal nobles.
Here the first-born son is Tete, the corresponding
daughter Dede ; the second pair are Tete masculine, and
Koko feminine; the third, Mesa and Mansa; fourth,
Anan and Tsotso; fifth, Anum and Mauum; sixth,
Nsia and Sasa ; seventh, Ason, masculine and feminine ;
eighth, Botfe ; ninth, Akron ; tenth, Badu. The three
M 2
164 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
latter are common to both sexes. "With few exceptions,
they are taken from Oji numerals, as amongst the
Romans, Quintus, Decimus, &c. European officials get
a native prenomen from the day on which they land ;
the real nomen is some nickname, which the witty
knaves choose with peculiar felicity. Thus an esteemed
friend of mine rejoices in the style and title of Kajjo
(Cudjoe) Frafra "Monday Ratface." They respect
Europeans beyond their fellows; there is no personal
risk in travelling through the wildest parts of the
country, and the people would willingly see our power
extended. In the smallest crooms, or country villages,
a house is cleared for the traveller, and in the larger
settlements there is always a guests' room set apart for
strangers. Where the chief resides he will prepare an ex-
cellent breakfast of pepper-soup, kankie, and native stews,
and the table will be loaded with champagne and claret,
gin and cognac. If they find any fault with our policy,
it is the lax hand with which the reins of government
are held ; they respect the Dutch, because these treat
them with greater severity. Under President Maclean
the Krobo troubles would have been settled in six weeks,
now they have lasted four years.* These shortcomings
* Krobo is a protected territory, a mass of highlands about 10
miles west of the Yolta, and 45 from its mouth. There are two main
divisions of the mountain, eastward or near the river, including Kpong
(Pong) and Mamya, is under the chief Odonko Azu. Westward i g
Tilau, the capital of the chief Ologu Patu. The troubles began in
1858, with a turmoil between the rivals, arising, it is said, from a
dance at a festival, in which a neighbouring village interfered, and they
A DAY IN TSE LAND OF ANTS'. 165
On our part are doubtless owing to the frequency of
" gubernational changes," necessitated by the nature of
the climate.*
It is not a little curious that on this coast several
heathen tribes practise circumcision, f whilst their neigh-
are not settled. Odonko Azu and his principal chiefs were taken
prisoners, and kept for nine months in captivity. They escaped from
Christiansborg by the unjustifiable carelessness of the officer who had
charge of them, and who escaped all injury concerning a transaction
which would have cost him in India his commission.
* The following is a list of the governors and the acting governors
up to the present time :
1. Commander Worsley Hill, R.N., made in 1844. Lived to return
to England.
2. Dr. Lilly (acting), 1845. Superseded.
3. Commander afterwards Sir William Winniett, 1846. Returned
home.
4. J. C. Fitzpatrick, Esq., Jan. 1849. Superseded.
5. Sir William Winniett, Jan. 1850. Died at his post. He wag
one of the best of governors, and steadily pursued his favourite scheme
of making the colony self-supporting, till it was cut short by death.
6. J. Bannerman, Esq. (acting), Oct. 1851. Superseded.
7. Major G. J. Hill, Dec. 1851. Returned to England.
8. J. C. Fitzpatrick, Esq. (acting), June 1853. Superseded.
9. B. G. Cruikshank, Esq. (acting), Aug. 1853. Ditto.
10. Major G. J. Hill, Feb. 1854. Returned home.
11. Henry Connor, Esq. (acting), Dec. 1854. Ditto.
12. Sir Benjamin C. C. Pine, March 1857. Ditto.
13. Col. Bird (acting), 14th April, 1858. Superseded.
14. E. B. Andrews, Esq., 20th April, 1860. Returned to England.
15. W. A. Ross, Esq. (acting), 14th April, 1862. Superseded.
16. Mr. Pine, 20th Sept., 1862. Still tfiere.
Thus it will be seen there have been 16 governors, commanders-in-
chkf, and vice-admirals in 18 years ; and the almost total disorganisa-
tion of the colony, or rather the garrison for colony it is not can hardly
be wondered at.
t The rite is called Eeteafo, or shortening. It is practised by both
166 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
bours do not. A similar circumstance of sporadicity in
the rite is noticed by a late traveller in the Lake Regions
of Central Africa. Morality, despite the precaution,
appears to be at a low ebb. The morbzcs gatticum and its
varieties are almost universal in some places, delirium
tremens is by no means rare, poisoning is common, and
abortion is generally resorted to, when a woman nursing,
contrary to the custom of the coast and the dictates
of Nature, is threatened with once more becoming a
mother. There is no difficulty in procuring a tem-
porary native wife, locally called a " consort," by the
week or " by the run," as it is termed. The principal
diseases are dysentery, fever, and dracunculus.* Owing
Ga and Adanme tribes, and is in the keep of a certain family, though
not directly connected with religion. The boys not the girls, as some
authors represent are circumcised about 13 years of age. The mis-
sionaries believe this to point out a Hebrew or a Moslem origin ; I think
not. They should bear in mind that the Jews derived the rite from
Egypt, that is to say Africa, where it had been used for ages im-
memorial, and that in the very depths of the Dark Continent, where
Jew or Arab never penetrated, it is practised under a variety of
modifications.
* The Vena Medinensis was called from this coast the "Guinea
worm." The natives deny that it is produced by drinking impure water,
and they are right. It is doubtless the product of some animal which
deposits its ova in the skin. The Gold Coast people say that it prefers
those with sweet flesh, avoiding acid and acrid skins. The great proof
of its external origin is that the legs and feet are the parts most
affected, cases occur most frequently during the rains, when the lower
extremities are liable to be wetted, and those who sleep on the ground or
on mats are more liable to the disease than those who use cots. The
people, according to Dr. Clarke, believe in a male and a female Guinea-
worm ; the former is the thickness of a crow's quill, the latter of a
stout linen thread. The only part of the body not liable to dracuuculua
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 167
to the relaxing nature of the climate, unexciting life, un-
nutritious and unchanged dietary, unwholesome water,
and absence of cold weather, a man once " down "
remains so for a long time.
A rude native smith-craft is the favourite industry at
Accra, where zodiacal rings may be found upon every
one's finger. The gold is first melted and reduced .to
proper size ; it is polished by a mixture of nitrate of
potash, soda, and water, boiled together in a large
limpet shell (Achatina). The mould is cut out in
the soft part of the dead cuttle-fish, and the ring, when
made, is polished with borax and lime-juice, forming a
weak acid. They also make studs, watch-chains, and
other ornaments, which, to say the truth, are utterly
destitute of artistic beauty. The sonmesi, or black-
smith's shop, as in parts of Europe, is a weird place,
where thieves are detected, wounds healed, and so on.
The land is full of tales and legends of gold-dust and
doubloons buried under trees, and the people are
credulous upon this point as the Hindus.
The Accra English is superior to "Black-man's
mouf" generally. In addressing them it is not neces-
sary to use, for comprehension, the horrid jargon of the
S'a Leone man or the Kruboy. There are, however,
is the hairy scalp. Some persons have been known to have 30 Guinea-
worms at the same time. The average time of cure is laid down at
three months, but if the worm be broken, it will last six. Lameness
is sometimes caused by it, the Tendo Achilles and other sinews becoming
permanently fixed and contracted by the inflammation.
168 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
many English expressions which no Englishman would at
first understand. " Put him in log," means fasten his
leg to a log ; a " house master " is the proprietor of the
house; to "put in fetish," is equivalent to our old
excommunication ; to " make customs/' is to mourn for
and wake the dead ; and, to quote no more specimens of
tlu's quaint and queer old trading English, a " tail-girl "
is a young woman whose only dress is a T-bandage,
with a long extremity pendant behind. It is, say
Europeans, as usual wrongly, a sign of fetish.* All
such names of places as Accra or Jamestown, Dutch
Accra, Christiansborg, Labaddi, Tassy, and others have
their native duplicates in Ga, Kinkd, Osu, La, and
Tesi, and the names are mostly significant ; the latter
would mean, for instance, " stone land."
The languages, or rather dialects, spoken upon this
leeward coast are, like the Eanti, of Hamitic origin, and
cognate with the tongues of Ashantee, Dahomey, and
Yoruba. As all the family, they have no peculiar
character, and they were probably never written till
Moslems and Europeans appeared. Of late years
speeches, histories and legends, proverbs and tales, of
which there are thousands, have been published by mis-
* Girls amongst the Accras and eastern tribes are not properly
allowed to wear any cloth but a narrow strip. When marriageable,
they are taken home, kept from work, highly fed, well dressed, and
profusely ornamented. After many ceremonies, they are exhibited in
the town by the advertisements of finery, dancing, and playing ; thus
it is pretty mnch the same in barbarous Medidsiasikpong (Africa) as
in civilised England.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 169
sionaries and others. So extensive is this literature,
that the people have a name for a single branch, e.g.,
Anansesem, or spider-stories.* This insect (ananu)
plays a principal part in animal fables; it has a bad
influence upon children sleeping in the same room, it
speaks through the nose like a malignant ghost, and its
hobbling gait, and other fancied peculiarities, are cor-
rectly imitated by the gestures of the relater.f On
moonlight nights, when men, like other animals, feel
gay and frisky, they sit in circles, and listen to these
wild tales, which are recounted with an appropriateness
of gesture, a power of imitation, and an amount of fun
worthy of Mathews and Robson, The people are fond
of singing, and compose extempore, whilst playing,
dancing, or working, the African can do nothing
without a chant, short sougs, often highly satirical,
and much relished by the listeners. The children in
* See a "Grammatical Sketch of the Akra or Ga Language," by
the Rev. J. Zimmerman. Stuttgart : J. F. Steinkopf, 1858. It is a
useful publication, but ineffably tedious, as such German "sketches'*
ever are, and not without a fair share of linguistic arrogance another
Teutonic peculiarity. The spelling is abominable, in parts unintelli-
gible ; but what can be expected from Stuttgart English ?
f There is a large Arachnis upon this coast, which may become of
commercial importance. It is black with a broad golden band down
the back, and the web is not circular, but in long lines thrown from
tree to tree, as if it did not prey upon flies. The thread is a deep
yellow, stronger than silk, moreover a single insect easily produces more
than the largest cocoon. There is no reason why this spider should not
be naturalised in Europe, and though my specimens of spider-silk have
hitherto been lost, I still hope to send home sufficient for a veil or a
lace shawl.
170 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the Krobo mission schools are said to have extem-
porised little hymns sung to very sweet native tunes.
This shows linguistic powers which few European
children possess. Perhaps, however, I am not pre-
pared to support the thesis, precocity of intellect, as
a rule, results in inferiority in later life.
There are two main languages upon the leeward
coast, Ga proper, and its mother tongue, the Adanme ;
the general language, however, is called the Ga family,
and is spoken by about 100,000 or 120,000 out of
400,000 souls.
The G Akpa, or Ga Proper, is the speech of the
sea-towns, from the Sakumofio or Secoom, west of Accra,
to the town of Tesi, about five miles east of Christiaus-
borg. It is spoken by about 40,000 or 50,000 people,
and is bounded on the east by the Adanme, on the west
by the Oji of the Akan tribes.
The Adanme, or Ada-gbe, " voice," or " language of
the 'Add people," extends from Tesi on the west, east-
wards, to the Yolta; northwards, its area includes
the Krobo country and towns at the foot of the Aqua-
pirn mountains : to the north-east, on the Volta's
left bank, it is spoken by three towns of the Agotim
people. It is used by 50,000 or 60,000 souls; but,
though more extensively spread, it is by no means so
important a tongue as the Ga, which is the speech of
tribes enjoying both moral and political supremacy.
The missionaries found their assertion that the language
of 'Ada is the mother dialect of the Ga, upon these
A DAT IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 171
reasons : it is harder and shorter, purer, and unmixed
with Oji ergo, it is more primitive. The difference is
described to be as great as that between the Saxon, or
High Deutsch, and the German of Switzerland or
Suabia.
The missionaries thus briefly state the theology of
the Ga tribes. God, called "Nyonmo" and other
names, is the highest being, the only one, Creator of
heaven and earth. The Fetishes (Wodsi) are spiritual
and personal beings, either sub-deities who govern, or
demons who disturb, the world. There are such Fetishes
e.g. earth, air, and sea common to all men; others,
as rivers and trees, peculiar to distinct tribes, towns,
families, or individuals. A person may possess a Fetish,
or bai^cov, and is called Wontse, which is translated
by Fetish man or priest. Or he may be possessed by
some one, which possession is called Wonmomo, or
Fetish-fury.* Besides these there are innumerable
things sacred to, belonging to, or made effectual by a
Fetish.f Such tilings are cords (wonkpai) tied about
* Cases of this affection are frequently seen even in the streets of
Accra. If hysterics denoted possession in modern, as epilepsy did in
olden times, what ahigh development of demonism Europe would present !
f This is poorly explained. The West Africans, like their brethren in
the East, have evil ghosts and haunting evestra, which work themselves
into the position of demons. Their various rites are intended to avert
the harm which may be done to them by these Pepos or Mulungus,
and perhaps to shift it upon their enemies. When the critical moment
has arrived, the ghost is adjured by the Fetish -man to come forth from
the possessed, and an article is named a leopard's claw, peculiar beads,
or a rag from the sick man's body nailed to what Europeans call the
172 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the body or the house, teeth, skins, rings, chains, and
other similar articles, which gave, rise to the absurd
belief that the African makes everything, even a rag or a
bit of glass, his god ; and the missionaries assert that
"a comparison with religious things" I presume that is
Stuttgart English for "relics" "and superstitions in
the heart of Christendom, would have fully explained the
matter, without casting the Africans together, no more
with men, but with brutes." *
I am ready to concede that the people of the Gold
Coast have emerged from the utter atheism which
characterises the so-called Kafirs and other tribes of
Eastern Africa. But as yet their ideas are too vague,
and connected with material objects, to rank them with
deistical peoples. They have neither a personal and local
Deity like the heathens, nor the atomic gods of Epicurus.
" Nyonmo " is their word for the Almighty, but the
same means the sky, the rain, and even thunder and
lightning ; thus they say God drizzles or God knocks,
i.e., it thunders. The missionaries explain this by the
people considering God to be the "spirit or soul of
heaven, or heaven the face or outward appearance of
" Devil's Tree," in which, if worn about the person, the haunter will
reside. It is technically called Kehi or Keti, a "chair" or " stool."
See "Zanzibar and two Months in East Africa," Black wood's Magazine,
February, 1858, pp. 220, 221.
* The preceding note will illustrate the difference between the two
absurdities, the African Fetish-chain and the European relic. It must
ever be borne in mind that the former is haunted by an evil influence,
whereas the latter carries with it a blessing.
A DAT IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 173
God." This, however, sounds much like applying
German metaphysics to the absurdities of heathen
fable. When men associate in language and idea the
material with the immaterial, the former is the real
thing worshipped. Thus we also find " Sikpon,"
earth, considered a personage, and adored as well as
"Nyonmo," sky, perhaps with more reason, as the
former exists, whereas the latter does not. There is the
usual African tradition to account for the superiority of
Japhet over Ham. God, say the people, made two men,
one white, the other black. To these he presented for
choice a calabash full of writing materials, and another
full of gold it is needless to say how the selection was
made, and what the results were. For this reason the
people of the Gold Coast always consider the precious
metal their peculiar property, and resent all attempts
on the part of foreigners to work it without some
royalty. And they mightily despise the mulatto the
"white blackman," they say, is silver and copper, not gold.
In the land of the Akan and Ga races there is a
curious dawning of a belief, not in metempsychosis, but
in transmigration, not of soul, but of life. The 'Kla
or 'Era* of a person is the principle which animated a
* The word is better known as Okla or Okra, which some authors
write Occro or Ocro, and translate Fetish or Sanctified boy. It is a
slave chosen by his master to be his companion in this life, and to be
sacrificed over his grave, that he may accompany him, not in the world
to come, but in that state in which man exists if I may use the word
after death. Most Africans are real Swedenborgians as regards
"continuation." I cannot but reflect with horror upon our future
174 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
relative or other person before dead. When parents
have lost several children, they sometimes cast the
body of the child that died last into the bush, any con-
genital deformity or defect in the next infant, which
they believe to be the same child whose corpse is thrown
away, is attributed to injuries received from wild beasts
or other influences in the jungle. Hence, children born
with supernumerary fingers or toes, have been strangled
or burned alive. When one or two infants have been
lost by death, they mark the next born by making one
indelible cut on each cheek. If that fails, they make
one vertical and three transverse incisions, and so on.
The pregnant woman always visits the Fetish-priest, and
asks the 'Kla of her child that is to be; the priest
summons it, listens to its voice, and answers her ques-
tion. A man's 'Kla is considered partly himself and
partly not ; it is a being like the demon of Socrates,
who gives him good advice, and receives thanks and
thank-offerings as a Fetish. Moreover, every person has
two 'Kla, male and female, the former of a bad, the
prospects, if we are to be for ever liable to a summons from Mr. Hume,
if we are doomed to communicate with friends by rapping, and if we
are, like Shakspeare and Milton in their ghostliness to rap out the
feeblest nonsense imaginable. Revenantz in Africa are at any rate
dreaded. In Europe the " spirit " becomes a thoroughly contemptible
being, whose knuckles must supply the want of tongue, and who has
apparently a mania for prophecy despite perpetual self-stultification.
After all, superstition, like happiness of which perhaps it is a
branch is equally divided amongst men, and the civilised, generally,
Lave not a tittle of right to deride the most ignorant or the most
barbarous of their brethren.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 175
latter of a good disposition. This recals to mind the
Jewish and Muslem Kiram el Katibin, the two mysterious
beings who, sitting upon man's right and left shoulder,
whisper their virtuous or vicious suggestions into his
ears. For El Islam, despite the sublimity of its truths
and the higher law of unselfishness, which is its real
spirit, has retained as all of human must some old
leaven of superstition, directly derived from man's
earliest dawn of belief in things unseen Fetishism.
The Yara, or funeral customs of the Gold Coast are
not less barbarous than those of their neighbours. They
consist of washing, dressing, and providing necessaries
for the corpse, which is then interred by the burial
women, or "Klageweider" (Keeners). Weeping and
lamentation, singing and dancing, all accompanied with
copious rum drinking, are kept up sometimes for weeks
together, and at certain stated periods are repeated.
Formerly 'Klas and wives were slaughtered on the graves
of people of importance a custom almost universal
amongst barbarians from the days of Homer down-
wards. So the ruffian Achilles, addressing the ghost of
Patroclus, promises him that
AoiSeKa t*.(v fptatav
Tons a.fj.0, <TOL iravTas irvp
It is now as difficult and dangerous
Sati in Hindostanj yet it is secretly practised whenever
found possible.
The principal festival in the year is the Yams Custom,
which Europeans call native, or black Christmas. It is
176 TTANDEEINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
celebrated at the end of August or the beginning of
September, and at the same time their New Year's Day
occurs. The first eating of that vegetable is connected
with many ceremonies; the Fetish must begin, then
the king, and so on.* This is called Yereyelo. Pol-
O' /
lows Homowo, literally the " outcrying" or " mocking of
hunger;" a harvest-home, celebrated on the coast with
gun-firing, singing, dancing, music, eating, drinking,
and merrymaking, in the interior with the human sacri-
fices now familiar to Europe.
I proceed now to discuss the three great obstacles to
improvement on this coast, the presence of the Dutch,
the peculiar style of taxation, and the use of a military
instead of a police corps.
The forts and stations of the British and Dutch govern-
ments closely intersect one another from Apollonia to
Accra, and this causes endless troubles. Our Nether-
landish neighbours have not much improved since the
days of Jonathan Swift ; they are still in Africa at
least the most selfish and obstinate of colonists. If
the English place a duty of 2 to 2'50 per cent, upon
the invoice price of landed imports, the Dutch establish
a free port. Overtures have, it is said, been made to
give up our windward for their leeward territories;
though heavily in our debt, they have turned a deaf
* The custom has been explained as a hygienic measure ; and Fetish
law generally is resorted to when some measure beneficial to the com-
monwealth is to be strictly carried out ; such as the prohibition of
eating pork, cutting down trees, or collecting gold.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 177
ear to all our proposals, and have even prepared to
re-occupy their deserted posts. Whilst the English
make 7000 per annum, and expend nearly 30,000^. a
year a little more than the Maynooth grant upon
their possessions in this quarter of the world, the Dutch,
defended by the moral influence of our squadron and
troops, require only two officers, commanding 200
negroes in " blue baft," and including their civil depart-
ment, maintain themselves for 6000/. to 8000 per
annum. Tree trade would evidently not dislodge
them.
At Accra, where the British Jamestown and the Dutch
Kinka are dovetailed into one another, only an imagi-
nary line separating St. George and Tricolor, the work-
ings of the two systems become apparent. After Dutch
Accra had been captured by us, the Netherlands were
allowed as a favour to rebuild their factory, but not to
appoint a commandant. When old Mr. Hanson, origin-
ally Hansen, a Danish mulatto, who at one time had
charge of both factories, died, our rivals began to exer-
cise jurisdiction, and we "let it slide." At present they
claim almost all Jamestown, except a few houses near
the fort, because Kajjo, the king of Dutch Accra, is
king over the kinglets of Ga, Osu, Krobo, Akim, and
Aquapim. They keep a commandant, a sergeant, and
four to six men. English ships are charged SI., and
foreign bottoms 3^. 18*. 4< for wharfage at British
Accra. The Dutch take 12., but there is neither wharf-
age due nor import- tax ; ships therefore naturally prefer
178 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the Dutch roads.* Our merchants are charged even
for imported machinery, here more wanted than in
America : it is a suicidal policy. t Of course they are
unable to compete with their Dutch rivals, whose free
ports are frequented by Akims, Ashantees, and the
inland tribes generally, who would rather travel a month
than waste a dollar. They have even rejected all pro-
posals to co-operate in the imposition of duties, and
they are contented to remain a thorn in our side, and to
collect occasionally a heavy fine, as $12,000, which was
lately imposed on the occasion of a manslaughter.
Were the Dutch to be removed, even at the price of
100,000^ our deficit of 23,000/. would soon change to
a surplus of 50,000^. The duties on rum, spirits, arms,
and ammunition might gradually be raised to 50 per
cent. : a measure a hundredfold more beneficial to the
natives than even to ourselves, and gold exploiting might
commence in real earnest.
And now for taxation. In April, 1852, a council of
British officials and native chiefs was assembled at Cape
Coast Castle, to " take into consideration the advantages
* The Dutch roads, however, are not so safe as the English. South
of Fort James, according to the Directory, there are eight or nine
fathoms water with very soft clay, which requires a light anchor, as a
heavy one could not be drawn up from the ground.
f There are men who object to using labour-saving contrivances in
Africa, because these would foster the indolence of the people ; the
idea appears to me exceedingly absurd, Methinks it is better that
men who will not work much, should work a little rather than not
work at all. But possibly this is not an "elevated view" of the
case.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 179
which the country derives from the protection afforded
to it by Her Majesty's Government, by submitting, from
time to time, to pay such taxes as may be determined on
by the majority of chiefs assembled in council with His
Excellency the Governor." Hence the poll-tax on fami-
lies, of which the " house-master," or the pater-familias,
was made responsible for each member after the fashion
of Mahommed Ali in Egypt. It began with the Good
Intentions which are said to pave the way to a Certain
Place. " The revenue derived from the tax, after paying
the stipends of the chiefs, and other expenses attending
its collection, shall be devoted to the public good, in the
education of the people, in the general improvement and
extension of the judicial system, in affording greater
facilities of internal communication, in increased medical
aid, and in such other measures of improvement and
utility as the state of the social progress may render
necessary." A poll-tax collector at Christiansborg in-
formed Mr. Consul Hutchinson (" Impressions of
"Western Africa"), that he had received in 1855 about
337 ounces of gold, at the rate of a shilling a head, and
that in the Akim districts the people would pay more if
they received for it value in protection or information.
As our fine words buttered no parsnips, the natives
began to murmur. In the earlier Italian railways there
was little to gain because of the impossibility of finding an
honest employe. So on the Gold Coast, the poll-tax was
collected, but instead of going to judges, schoolmasters,
and roads, it restored bankrupts to wealth and position.
180 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Letters upon the poll-tax and taxation in general appeared
in the local papers, headed with the safe but not novel
reflection on the part of a writer, who signs himself,
" Tours obediently, an African," " a nation is only the
aggregate reflex of 'the man's a man,' the minutial agglo-
meration of a nation." It "Lord Grey's pet tax"
is described to be an " oppressive, invidious and ill-
managed impost, signifying thraldom and oppression,
causing children to be sold or pawned." As regards the
promises of the local Government, they are stated to be
"false and deceptive as moonshine." The consequence,
however, of the " dwarfish demon convention " was that
the native towns of Christiansborg, Labaddi and Tesi
were demolished by bombardment in 1854 ; that in 1855
Accra was threatened with the same fate, because she also
would not pay; that in 1856 a commissioner, sent to
inquire into the state of affairs, reported that although
Kajjo (Cudjoe), King of Kinka, and his subject chiefs,
were all loyally disposed towards our Government, they
would not pay poll-tax, and that in 1857 a mob plun-
dered the Trench factory at James Town.
However presumptuous may be the supposition, one
is almost disposed to think that our AYilsons and Laings,
so admirable in the algebra, have not mastered the
elemental arithmetic, of tax-gathering. Mr. Wilson left
his home, after enunciating in many a postprandial
oration the farcical sentiment, that " what is good for
England is good for the world." Mad as a hatter, he
gave India an income tax and a flood of paper money.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 181
No subaltern in a native corps would have made such a
blunder. Peace to his manes, for
" To his iiatal shore,
Enriched with knowledge, he returned no more,"
dying just in time to escape seeing the failure he had
made.
The true art of taxation, allow me to say, is honestly
to speak out what you want, and less to regard the
theoretical excellence of the tax than the practice which
the people have had in paying it. For taxation shows
the genius of a nation quite as much as its ballads :
what men have imposed upon themselves, they will
prefer to the political economy of the stranger, however
cunning. There are those who like indirect taxation,
which to others seems the dealing of a vampire that
sucks your blood whilst you sleep. In my humble
opinion, the main, if not the only, injury which Ame-
rican Secession has done to the world, is that it has
prevented the trial on a gigantic scale in a highly
civilised and commercial people of direct, and the total
abolition of all other, imposts. In the meantime the
items must be sedulously studied and subjected to the
local popular system. The Hindu, I have said before,
will contribute half his income in the familiar forms of
poll-tax, succession dues," benevolences," and local imposts
raised in the Pergunnahs. The African will pay fifty
or perhaps cent, per cent, upon imports of arms and
ammunition, salt and tobacco, whilst rum is his incense
182 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
and his eucharist, without which the necessaries of
worship cannot be supplied to him.
To conclude with police considerations. I will not
insult the reader's, understanding by treating upon the
inapplicability of soldiers to police purposes under an
English Government. Two companies of any West
Indian regiment would be amply sufficient for the general
military wants of a colony like this ; besides which, the
police corps might be armed, drilled, and trained to
working the guns of the several forts. The present
expense of the Gold Coast Artillery, including all
charges, cannot be less than 20,000 per annum. For
this we have seventeen European officers and 300 men,
who are worse than useless for protection duties. Being
regularly enlisted soldiers, it is difficult to punish them,
and the jealousy of rival departments has enabled them
to show a bold front to the Colonial Secretary, who on
this coast stands next in rank to the Governor. The
officers who fail in securing civil appointments naturally
prefer a sick certificate for England or Tenerife to living
a wretched, starveling life at Cape Coast Castle or Accra;
and though the warrant under which they obtain pro-
motion requires them to serve three years on the Gold
Coast, it is generally considered enough to have served
for that period in the Gold Coast Corps.
The following distribution of, and estimate for, a police
corps of 355 officers and men was drawn up by a friend
whose judgment and experience justify my introducing
it to the public.
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 183
The distribution would be as follows :
Stations. Head Constbls. Constables. Sub-constables. Policemen.
1 Dixcove .... 1 1 3 30
2 Cape Coast Castle .1 2 6 90
8 Annamaboo ... 1 1 8 20
4 Winnebah ... 4 6 25
5 Accra, &c 1 3 6 90
6 Addah . .1 4 6 35
Total ... 5 15 30 290-300
A grand total of 855.*
At five of these stations Cape Coast Castle does not
require one there would be commandants acting as
magistrates and collectors of customs. Addah has been
included, because it now equals Whydah in slave expor-
tations. There are shiploads hid in the town, even
within cannon-shot of our cruisers. It is a pity that this
fine port is not taken up by some English company ; it
is the only point from which a future can be expected.
The annual estimate for the commandants and the
police force would be as follows :
s. d.
1 Chief Civil Commissioner, including table allowance . 600
Ditto, ordinary travelling allowance . . . 150
5 Commandants (each 350Z. per annum) . . . 1750
Ditto, ordinary travelling allowance (each 751.) . 375
5 Head Constables (each 30Z. per annum) . . . 150
15 Constables (each 181.) 270
30 Sub-Constables (each 1BI. 10s.) . . . . 405
300 Policemen (each 91.) 2700
Clothing, at rate of three suits each man . .1000
House rent . 100
Total .... 7500
* In these sickly climates there must always be supernumeraries : I
allow, therefore, five extra officers and ten men.
184 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Eor complete efficiency this police corps should be
placed entirely under the civil power, which has ample
jurisdiction to punish those offences plundering the
natives and living upon threats of accusation which are
now committed with all impunity on the outstations.
The five commandants should transmit monthly estimates
for the pay of their establishments to the Chief Civil
Commissioner ; the latter, after checking and signing
them, would forward them to the Colonial Secretary, who,
in his turn, would submit them to the Governor. This
functionary should not, of course, be commander of the
corps, as he is Commander-in-chief of the Coast, but he
should be charged with drawing up a code of regulations
for the force.
I am certain that by such happy changes order would
soon grow out of confusion and misrule upon the Gold
Coast.
##**##
At Accra we left our Spaniard, who, suffering severely
from sea-sickness, appeared nothing loth to quit us.
He was a gentleman fond of his bed and also of his
Madeiran wicker-work arm-chair. He read a little;
but, when excited, which was rare, he would declaim
loudly against the practice of "lecture" as worthless,
touching the main enjoyments of human life eating,
drinking, visiting friends, and attending the theatre.
According to him the summum lonum of human life
was to lie upon his back smoking cigarettes a7id look-
ing at the moon or at all the stars. He once, but
A DAY IN THE LAND OF ANTS. 185
only once, gathered energy to sermon me upon the
subject of over-curiosity. I had remarked that the
thermometer stood unusually high. " To me," quoth
Don , "it is hot when I am hot; it is cold
when my body feels cold. What do I want to know
more?" Perhaps that Don was not so far wrong.
As the "Blackland" steamed along the coast we
could see a long succession of open grassy savannahs
backed by dark curtains of bush and forest, and many a
tongue of land, forming by its gentle rise little valleys
which would become swamps during the rains. About
three to four miles beyond Tesi, on the eastern end of
a little ledge, stands a small black boulder Greenwich
Rock : it transported us in thought far enough north
of the Gold Coast. During the night we passed Cape
St. Paul's, the western boundary of that ill-omened
region the Bight of Benin. And whilst sleep sealed
our eyes, the indefatigable ship how superior is her
continual diligence to the best of travelling even by
railroad was bearing us past the infumtus regions of
Little Popo, Great Popo, and Whydah.
CHAPTER X.
A DAY AT LAGOS,
WHERE
" In July you mast die,
August go you must ;
In September remember,
October it's all over."
Old Rhyme describing Rainy Season.
FORMERLY the great centres of the export slave trade
from Africa were these three :
1st. The Semiticised and often Moslem negroes, ex-
tending from the Gambia and Senegal, as far inland as
Takrur or Sokotu. They were principally Mandengas,
Jolofs, and that pseudo-punic tribe of Africa whom
men have derived from the lost Cyrenaican Psylli
or Psulloi, and called by a variety of names Peul, Pula,
Puloh,:Fula, Phiila,Pulbe or Fulbe, Felatah and Fellani *
All these people drove the heathen negroes of the
Sudam to the coast, although they did not sell or
enslave their brother religionists.
* M. Koelle ("Polyglotta Africana") calls the language Pulo, and the
people Pula, which is properly an adjective, "yellow," or "brown."
Fulbe is the plural of Pulo ; Fulanl is the plural of the Hausa name
Fuladsi, and Fulatah is Bornuese. The original home of this people is
said to have been near Futa Toro, and in the eighteenth century they
moved to Hausa, and built Sokotu.
A DAY AT LAGOS. 187
2nd. The despotisms of Ashantee and Dahomey,
Yoruba and Benin, large pagan states, which maintained
standing armies well armed and disciplined, and used
chiefly for the purpose of forays and slave commanders ;
all, except Dahomey, have fallen from their former
power, and Dahomey will, by self-exhaustion, if not
by a foreign blow, follow their example.
3rd, and last. The whole coast about the mouth of
the Kongo River, one of the great African four, the
others being the Nile, the Niger, and the Zambezi, and
without any exception the most neglected. Known to
the natives as the Zaire, its name is to be traced, I
believe, in Claudius Claudianus, . himself an African,
born at Alexandria, and who wrote about A.D. 400.
" Gir, ditissimns amnis
Jthiopium simili mentitus gurgite Nilum."
De Laudib. Stilich. lib. i. T. 252.
For dit- some read not " notissimus," but not so
correctly ; at any rate, it is far from being the superlative of
" notus " now. The name again occurs in a Latin form.
" Domitorque ferarum
Guirrseus, qui vasta colit sub rupibus antra,
Quiramos ebeni, qni dentes vellit eburnos."
Idyl. iv. v. 20.
And be it further remarked that the Zaire still gives the
best ebony a tree which does not extend beyond 4
north latitude : thus rendering the common theory
which identifies it with the Nt'yetp or Ni'ytp, untenable
that river notoriously wanting ebony. Pliny (Nat. Hist.
188 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
lib. v. 10) makes the Nile, after an underground march
of twenty days, spring again from the source called
Nigris, and form the limit between Africa and Ethiopia.
He adds : " cui quoque e.tiamnum Giris, ut ante, nomi-
natus per aliquot millia, et in totum Homero .zEgyptus
aliisque Triton." A modern writer identifies Giris or
Gir, with Wed Mzi or Djidi of the Sahara, but
nothing can be more unsatisfactory than his remarks.*
The negroes on this part of the coast are savage and de-
graded, and, as in northern Guinea, are settled in small
independent communities of 1000 to 5000 bodies. The
first treaty between England and Portugal restricted our
squadron to the north of the equator, and enabled the
export trade, assisted by an admirable waterway, to
recruit itself from the very heart of the continent.
These three great centres are now reduced to two,
which, separated by a long interval, are incapable of
mutual support. The first is the Bight of Benin, still
* I allude to the Rev. Mr. Tristram's "Great Sahara," appendix I.,
p. 262. Barbarously as eastern languages are treated, the exceeding
cruelty of this gentleman's practice beats belief. Who could believe
that Beni Yssou could mean Beni Isa, sons of Jesus ? When the Arab
"looked sadly disconcerted "at his hearer's want of sympathy, and his
assurance that Inglez mafish hinne arrkua "that the English never
would come here " the expression of countenance must have been that
of utter despair. What would even an English guide understand by
" English there is none eer (for here) I go away ? " And so through-
out the book, the names of animals : e.g., Nemeur, for Nimr, a
leopard ; and el Guett' ha, for KatA, a sand-grouse ; and hundreds of
other horrors are perpetually offending ears and eyes. Had not the
reverend gentleman a spare hour for submitting his cacography to any
one who has read Arabic for a few months ?
A DAT AT LAGOS. 189
appropriately termed the Slave Coast, and extending from
the Cape of St. Paul's to the Nun outlet of the Niger, a
coastal length of 3oO miles. The root of the evil lies
between Little Popo and Whydab, which are separated
by not more than thirty miles. Public attention has
been drawn to it, and it is now in a fair way of being
extirpated. During the last year steps have been
taken in the right direction, the bombardment of Porto
Novo, and the annexation of Lagos with its old depen-
dency, Badagry. The next year, I hope, will see the
submission or the capture of Whydah and the two
Popos.* The Kongo river still awaits modern explora-
tion, and the difficulties thrown in the way are so great,
that without assistance from Government it would be
vain to attempt it.
The slave coast offers peculiar facilities for shipping
cargoes. Low, marshy and malarious, it could hardly
be held by foreign garrisons. The dreadful surf which
beats upon the shore defends the barracoons from land
* At Great Popo there is an inlet which leads up the lagoon to
Whydah direct. If it be proved the point, however, is not yet settled
that there is a beach between the Victoria Lagoon of Lagos and the
water that passes Whydah, this entrance, distant only ten hours from the
great slave market, will be the best line of attack.
Whydah is perfectly protected from the sea by a strip of land half a
mile broad, and it lies north of the lagoon, which is here four feet deep.
It is within shot. The people show as Fetish a cannon-ball, fired by a
British cruiser seventeen to eighteen years ago, and embedded in earth.
Shipping must lie outside the sand-bank when the surf is very heavy.
The town is described as poor and squalid, and the people suffer from
intermittent fever.
190 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
attack, and can be safely braved in canoes only. The
bush and jungle conceal the movements of those on
land, and the succession of lagoons forming natural
canals along the seaboard, enables the trader in human
flesh and blood to ship his cargo where and when least
expected. The Trench and English, Spaniards, Portu-
guese, and Brazilians established themselves there in old
times, and by rich presents persuaded the " tyrant " of
Dahomey to supply them with the fruits of his annual
raids. In 1842, Captain Broadhead saw "thirteen
vessels lying in the roads of Whydah at one time." Of
late years the vigilance of the cruisers has tended ma-
terially to check the traffic, and nothing can now be
done openly. Still shipments take place. But lately
a large vessel, the "African," carrying 500 to 700
negroes, ran the gauntlet of the coast-guard, passing the
African steam-ship " Armenian." Her captain politely
raised his hat to his agent, M. Soarez, who, the late
Lt. Hollingworth told me, was so delighted with the
* Her Majesty's Commissary Judge, Havana, -writing in Februnry,
1861 (Class A. "Correspondence with the British Commissioners"),
estimates that the safety of one adventure amply repays the loss of
ten empty, or five full ships. These are the figures :
Cost of vessel and provisions . . . $25, 000
Cost of 500 negroes at $50 . . . 25,000
Ten per cent, mortality .... 2,500
Wages and presents to master and crew . 30,000
Expenses of landing 450 slaves, at $120 each 54,000
Total $136,500
A DAY AT LAGOS. 191
present prospect of lOOjOOO/.,* the normal profit of a
full cargo, that he offered to " stand champagne " to
all on board.
The English and Dutch had formerly fortified facto-
ries, which still await our return to Whydah, Some
years ago the French restored their establishment, and
used it as a palm-oil store. They have missionaries
there,* and according to our Frenchmen, the King of
Brought forward .... $136,500
Add one year's interest, ten per cent. . . $13,650
Total expenditure . . . . $150,150
Sale of 450 slaves, at $1200 ahead . . $540,000
Profit on the adventure . . . $389,850
The loss of an empty slaver is estimated at $27, 500 only, the cost of the
ship, provisions, and interest thereon ; the wages, &c., being contingent
on success. If the negroes are on board, it would amount only to
$55,000, These figures perfectly account for the continuance and per-
sistency of the traffic.
* "Annalesd'Afrique," Nos. XI. and XII., of November and Decem-
ber, 1861. Lettre de M. Frangois Borghero, supe'rieur de la Mission
de Dahomey, a M. Planque, supe'rieur du Se'minaire des Missions
Africaines, a Lyon. ' ' Whydah, 28th April, 1861. We learn that the
reverend fathers were well received by what they call the Jevoghan
(Yavogar) of Whydah, and celebrated their first mass on the 21st inst.,
in the long-abandoned Portuguese Fort, before a hundred men." An
old steeple with two bells, and ornamented statuettes in the sanctuary,
showed that Fetishism had not quite won the day. The people of Whydah
were estimated at 20,000, of whom 300 have been baptised ; but they
live in utter ignorance, ' Quomodo audient sine predicante ? ' The snake-
worship is well described, and it will be remarked that whilst the men
of Whydah worship, those of France curse ' 1' abominable animal.'
May not the poor serpent, when he speaks, exclaim with Friday
' Je n'ai merite'
Ni cet exces d'hommage ni cette indignit^.'
192 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Dahomey had sent two of his ' l sons " * for education to
Marseilles.
About midday on Saturday/ the 21st of September,
we were off Porto Novo, sixty miles distant from Lagos,
and separated from the sea by the lagoon and sandbank.
This town and the little province around are called
" Ajashi : " properly speaking " Newport" is the name of
a factory, barracoon, and village built upon the shore by
the celebrated, or rather the notorious successor of Da
Souza, who died in 1849, the Brazilian, Domingo Jose
Martinez, who used to receive at times from the King of
Dahomey a present of 600 negroes, a bakshish worth a
" plum." The town itself was founded on the south-east
frontier of Dahomey, by Huenbomu, a younger brother of
Takudumu, the first recognised Dahomian King, and the
At Great Popo, we are told, the boa, like the Irish pig, is allowed
to eat small children. Poison is said to be profusely used. Of the
"roi Badou" i.e., Badohong, the present king a great truth is told,
"Quandnous lui demanderons de permettre a ses sujets d'erabrasser le
Christianisme, nous anrons autour lui les feticheurs, devant lesquels le
roi lui-meme doit se courier." The King of Dahomey has no more
power to prevent human sacrifice than the Prince of Wales has to for-
bid morning service on Sunday. These customs are admirably described
by the superior as "usages consacre's par des siecles, fonde's sur
des croyances reMigieuses, et soutenus par un puissante hierarchic
d'imposteurs." On the other hand, the number of victims is
ridiculously estimated to be 3000, from which at least one ought to
be struck off.
* The King's sons, in African parlance, probably means some of his
slavelings. In Europe they will doubtless become "African princes"
by the blessings of the black skin. The "princess" is also an
institution on this coast : two friends of mine have married prin-
cesses.
A DAY AT LAGOS. 193
capturer of Abomey, who loved the senior as little as
such junior usually does. It is distinctly despotic,
orderly, and subordinate, even when surrounded by the
turbulent semi-republics of Lagos, Badagry, and others.
The people prostrate themselves in the streets when the
messenger, bearing the king's cane, passes. The land
is of fine soil, rich, loamy, and well filled for agriculture,
and the natives are fond of fishing and trade. The
population is estimated at 12,000 to 20,000. It was
attacked by Abeokuta in 1839; and in 1810 the Eglas
again assaulted Adu, a Popo town, tributary to Porto
Novo, and lying on the road between the two capitals.
Hence the old enmity between Dahomey and Abeokuta,
which ten years afterwards resulted in the destruction
of Ishagga, and in the crucifixion of the S'a Leone mis-
sionary Doherty.
The coast about Porto Novo showed a strip of land,
backed by a thick bush. A single house or barracoon,
with a flag flying, against the higher lands, marks the
situation; and the town, which is some distance from the
beach, is denoted by a grove of tall trees, appearing
through an opening in the foreground.
It is said that Great Britain is never without her little
war ; as far as West Africa is concerned, this dictum is
certainly true. And why not ? She can no more expect
to be at peace with her thousand neighbours, than a man
of 50,000/. per annum in landed property, to be with-
out a dispute or lawsuit. These little wars cost less
than Aldershotts, and are ten times better schools for.
194 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
soldiering; the military nations of Europe, France and
Russia, always keep up their tilting-lists, Africa and the
Caucasus. These considerations arise from the view
of a place where lately was fought the battle of Porto
Novo. It happened after this wise :
The late lamented Mr. Foote, Her Majesty's consul at
Lagos, in February, 1861, visited, in H.M.'s S. tender
" Brune," Lieutenant Stokes, R.N., commanding, the
town of Porto Novo, where oil belonging to British sub-
jects had been seized. The object of the consul was to
add a few more stringent clauses to the already-existing
treaty of 1852; but the King " Soji," backed, it is sup-
posed, by Dahomey, behaved with great insolence, re-
fusing to come on board or to treat upon the subject of
slavery, which ten years before he had stipulated to abolish.
After some va-et-vient, "Brune " fired a shot, first over,
then into, the town. The people replying with energy,
the crew of Krumen sensibly betook themselves to the
coal-bunks and behind the paddle-boxes, whence they
were with difficulty removed by their energetic com-
mander Lieutenant Stokes. The gun-boat found it
necessary to retire upon Badagry. The Porto Novians,
after African fashion, danced, drank, sang out their
" strong names," and swore that if she ever appeared
again, they would convert her into a war-canoe for their
king. The European population of Lagos, mostly
veteran slave-traders, condemned by hard times to such
grovelling work as selling palm-oil, exulted over our
retreat, and fondly hoped to see the operation repeated.
A DAY AT LAGOS. 195
From Badagry, Mr. Consul Foote, who could obtain
no concessions from the king, applied for assistance to a
"big brother/' and this time tilings were better arranged.
On the 26th April, Commodore Edmonstone, of H.M.S.
"Arrogant/' then commanding the West African
squadron, accompanied by Mr. Foote in the " Brune,"
and followed by the hired steamer "Fideliter" the
"Bloodhound/' drawing too much water, found herself
aground proceeded with two divisions, of five boats
each, armed with howitzers and rockets, up the Ossa
River, or Victoria Lagoon, whose mouth is nearly oppo-
site Lagos. Above Badagry they were stopped by a
barrier composed of two rows of stakes and floating
green islets between showing that the Porto Novians
had not been idle. The work of six weeks, however,
was demolished by the " Fideliter" and the boats in two
hours and a half, and the fragments threatened to injure
the navigation of the lagoon. Then appeared the
vaunted Isso canoes, and their fighting owners, who,
according to the croakers of Lagos, were to eat up the
Englishmen for breakfast. Each long, narrow, and
shallow barque carries two fellows, one paddling or
poling with a spear, the other occupied with a bunch of
shillelaghs and javelins, that are placed at his feet.
They hurl the club, and when the adversary " ducks "
his head, he is then transfixed with the assagai. The
Isso are a tribe subject to Dahomey, and are located to
the west of Porto Novo. They acted as a contingent
against Badagry in 1851 1854. They are a fierce and
o 2
196 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
lawless brood, originally, it is said, fugitives from Da-
homey, and joined by kindred ruffians, the kidnappers and
pirates of the coast. Their villages, which are mostly
on the sea-side of the Lagoon, are described as embryo
Venices, huts of bamboo and grass thatch, perched upon
poles four to five feet above the level of the tide, and
forming a boat-house below. They are remarkable for
nothing but their teeth, blackened with snuff. They act
as fishermen in peaceful times, and, like the Arabs of
maritime Oman, they plunder when they can. A few
rockets easily dispersed these braves, who preferred
paddling into the rushy shore to standing up in the open.
At 7 A.M. on the next day the flotilla reached Porto
Novo, which had never seen such an armada before.
After a hot, but harmless, shower of balls, which all
dropped short, both divisions replied with shot, shell,
and rocket, doing awful damage. The Porto Novians,
especially the Moslems, were no cowards; there were
men in white turbans here called " white-cap chiefs "
but I believe no Russians amongst them ; they fought only
too well, willing to be slain in the vain hope of killing
some whites. The brave Isso retired beyond gunshot, and
philosophically contemplated the disasters of their friends.
After an hour or so, the town and the king's palace
were on fire, the flames rising high. Captain Raby, Y.C.,
of H.M.S. " Alecto," and commanding one of the boat
divisions, landed in his gig, with two men, and spiking
a gun, caused it to explode, singeing his face. It is
curious how often experienced men will try this green
A DAY AT LAGOS. 197
trick : when you nail up a gun, please do not place your
nose within a few inches of the touch-hole. The Com-
modore then sent, under command of Captain M f Arthur,
of the Marines, and A. T. Jones, of the " 2nd "West "
a promising young officer, now, unhappily, deceased
some fifty blue-jackets and small-arms men, to fire the
well-built houses which were still standing. This pro-
ceeding, on his part, won for Captain Edmonstone the
lasting resentment of certain Europeans at Lagos, who
deferred a proposed picnic, because they wanted no such
smashing guest.
After this harmless little brush, the heroes, fasting, re-
embarked at 11.30 A.M., to became heroes full. Dinner
being over, at the German hour of 1 P.M., and fresh
ammunition having been served out to all hands, Captain
Baby's division formed in line within twenty yards and
abreast of a point where the natives had made an am-
buscade. These negro strategists expected us to land,
another verdant trick, often tried by Englishmen, even
where guns can be brought to bear. An action which
begins with artillery, which proceeds with infantry
charges, and which ends with a rush of cavalry, has
never been unsuccessful in India. Victory under such
circumstances being inevitable, we can hardly wonder
that the plan has not been universally adopted, common
sense being uncommon. Finding themselves discovered,
the natives, who were in force, kept up a brisk fire from
the reeds and rushes. They were soon mowed down by a
feu d'enfer of grape and musketry, case and canister,
198 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
rockets and howitzer-shells, and many fugitives were
killed whilst retreating. Captains Raby, M'Arthur,
and Jones then landed, spiked another gun, carried off a
white flag ; and the West Indian shot with his revolver
the only man killed in the hand-to-hand fight. The firing
afterwards became desultory, and when the place was
destroyed, even the metal heads of the king's canes were
melted, the flotilla disappeared, and the men rejoined
their ships outside Lagos bar. Thus ended the battle of
Porto Novo, in which we lost but one seaman, of the
"Alecto," killed by a shot through the brain, and had
five or six others slightly wounded. The number of the
enemy was estimated at 10,000 well-armed soldiery, and
their casualties, which were ridiculously exaggerated,
were doubtless numerous :*an officer present in the action
old me that he had counted twenty bodies lying within
a few yards. It was rumoured that a white man was
found amongst the slain, and that another had been seen
directing the operations of the enemy. Perhaps these
might have been Brazilian mulattos, whom the King of
Dahomey it will be observed, that this great bugbear
never killed a white man, nor did his father occa-
sionally orders to his capital rolled up like cigars, or,
if recalcitrant, walking barefooted. But there is no folly
which excited eyes will not see, and cause others to see,
and of late years it has been the fashion to report the
presence of hostile white men from China to Morocco.
On the 13th June the king reluctantly signed the treaty
permitting to all Porto Novians free trade with the
A DAT AT LAGOS. 199
British. The town people were, as usual, middlemen
between the merchant and the producer, consequently
they are ever opposed to extension of traffic. Old Soji's
palace had suffered the most, and all his property was
lost. His people confessed to having had a bellyful,
the African, unlike the Asiatic, will own to a "thrashing,"
although he says, with some truth, that the English
cannot fight on shore, and promised to be for the future
a good boy.' Mr. M'Coskry, Acting- Governor of Lagos,
kindly promised to procure for him new sticks. The de-
struction of this noted slave depot has already borne fruit.
Other towns for instance, Adu wavering between Da-
homey and Lagos they are all nests of slavery now
request permission to " come in/' and treaties are being
prepared for them. Thus, by degrees, the black Spartans
of "Dah's Belly" will be shut out from the sea, the
greatest calamity that can befal an African power, and
will be broken up by foreign attack, or will abandon
their annual breaches of the peace. Finally, the gallant
members of the little expedition had the high honour of
being grossly abused by a portion of the Manchester
press, from which officers and gentlemen have nought to
fear save praise.
Mr. Consul Foote died before he heard of this
"crowning mercy." A most energetic and useful
officer, he had seen long and hard service in the tropics,
India, China, the Mosquito Coast, Greytown; and Salva-
dor. After passing
" Per varies casus, par tot discrimina rerum,"
200 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
he was appointed to the Slave Coast in September, 1860,
on the death of Mr. Consul Brand. Lagos seems to
claim a good man and true every year. Like many
others that have passed safely through pestilential lands,
he imagined himself fever-proof. He who wants to live,
so far from waxing careless, will gain at every step
increased respect for the sun, the dews, and the night
breeze. Mr. Foote entered without delay upon a course
of bodily and mental work, most trying to new comers in
these regions. The " Brune " grounding in the lagoon
above Lagos, he set out, though unwell, in an open
canoe to reach his post in time for writing by mail,
exposed himself to the night air and the rain, and sank
under a complication of fever and dysentery on the 17th
May, 1861.
Mr. Foote was presently followed by Captain Jones,
of whom more at a future time.
Along the straight dull coast we steamed eighteen
miles, from Porto Novo to Badagry. By lagoon it is
reckoned forty, and may be done in six to eight hours.
Travellers usually avoid the sun by starting at night,
and thus lose the beautiful scenery of the Ossa River,
or Victoria Lagoon. This breakwater is one of the
many that extend from the Volta, the westerly end of
the Bight of Benin, to the Bonny River, in the Bight
of Biafra. They form a huge reservoir, into which the
streams from the upper country discharge themselves,
and during the rains they burst through the sand em-
bankments, which at other seasons defend them from
A DAY AT LAGOS. 201
the Atlantic. As a rule, they are river-like streams,
rather brackish, and therefore garnished with mangroves.
In places there are depressions in the land, causing
widenings of the bed, with larger lakes ; such are,
beginning from the west, the Avon waters, the Denham
waters,* and the Ikoradu, so called from a mart north
of Lagos, and by us corrupted into Cradoo. I reserve
a more particular description of these lagoon streams
till we find ourselves upon one of them.
There is no landmark to show the position of Badagry
save the mound which appears as a pyramidal clump of
bushy trees. There were but three canoes and three
merchant ships lying off this once lively, now dull and
deserted place, where the landing is detestable and where
the surf never seems to rest. It was founded by refugee
Popos in 1727, when the King of Dahomey had con-
quered Whydah. It is therefore not directly mentioned
by Bosman, who also ignores Dahomey, t whilst he dwells
at length upon Fida, our "Whydah, and upon Ardra,
which Mr. Lamb calls Ardah. It was the landing-
* Captain Denham. who gave his name to one lagoon, in chart xv.
places on it " City of Styche," probably a mistake, or a misprint for
Stakes (fishing).
f In Letter twenty, however, Bosman speaks of a " potent kingdom
farther inland," which uses certain customs of war well-known in
Abyssinia, and " strikes such a terror into all the circumjacent negroes,
that they can scarcely hear it mentioned without trembling ; and they
tell a thousand strange things of them." This must be Dahomey, whose
king Takudumu, Chief of Fohi, captured the present capital about
A.D. 1700. The intercourse between the Dahornians and Europeans is
supposed to have begun hi 1724,
202 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
place of the two Landers, who, in 1830, made their
celebrated discovery of the Niger's true mouth. The
picturesque narrative of what reception they met there,
of King Adooly, of the tetrarchy of Mr. Hutton of Cape
Coast Castle, and of the terrible Fetish tree, which caused
the traveller to fall senseless into the arms of " Jowdie,
his faithful slave," are fresh in the memory of this gene-
ration. Presently Badagry became so unsafe for Euro-
peans, and kidnapping in the sandy streets, when the
victim was noiselessly seized, gagged, or garotted, and
carried off to the canoe, became so common, that in
1843 Mr. President Maclean and Commodore Foote
thought right to hoist the British flag for the protection
of the English. About that time Badagry became a
large missionary establishment; and in 1861 it under-
went the fate of Lagos at the hands of
The web-footed lion that swims ev'ry sea.
*-,.:.*,.*;'..*
Evening placed us in the roads of Lagos. A mild
evening : the wind was hushed, and the heat oppressive.
It is said to average 10 Fah. hotter at this place than
in Lagos town. Against the purple-black surface of the
eastern sky the bar was smoking forth a white vapour,
as if afraid to break, and we could hear from afar the
muffled roar of the sullen surf. We and our fellow-
sufferers, six or seven merchantmen, lay broadside on,
with a monotonous ceaseless roll, which seems to drive
comfort out of a ship. Many must pass months in
this most unpleasant swing-swong till they have taken
A DAT AT LAGOS. 203
in cargo. "We are lying in the French roads,* four
miles eastward of the entrance or English roads. As
night was near, not a canoe would put off from the
shore. I spent my soiree in the study of bars.
The bar is a notable formation in Western, as in
Eastern Africa. It seems placed by Nature one of her
many contrivances to favour the pristine barbarity of
the people. Many rivers are provided with one, the
chief exceptions being the Gambia, the Rokel, the
Cacheo, the Rio Grande, and the Kongo. A majestic
stream like the latter will not tolerate such puny
obstacles ; others, on the other hand, like all the rivers
between the Brass and the New Calabar branches of the
Niger, are rendered useless by them. In riverless places,
like Cape Coast Castle and Accra, the surf is sometimes
dreadful as the upright walls of water on the Cornish
coast, but it will not pile up a bar.
The favourite seat of a bar is at the mouth of a river
or an outfall which is liable to be much swollen by the
rains. From the inland comes a mass of matter me-
chanically suspended, and sometimes floating islets, which
will trip vessels from their anchors ; when the emission
meets the tide, deposition takes place, and goes on in-
creasing. Some bars are therefore of mud; others,
where the sea has greater power, are sand hard as stone.
The heaviness of the ocean swell is attributed by certain
writers to distant storms; others, especially Captain Fish-
* These names are now obsolete on the coast.
204 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
bourne, to a "want of hydrostatic equilibrium." As the
sun shifts its place, the rarefaction of the atmosphere
produces an ascending and relieving movement, inducing
"a wave from the point of greatest to that of least
pressure." This hypothesis is favoured by the general
belief in the exceptional warmth of the air about Lagos
roadstead, but it is hardly borne out by the generality of
the coast. The seas at S'a Leone are worst between
December and April; in the Bights of Benin and Biafra,
from April or May to October or November; and in As-
cension from February till June ; at the latter place the
rollers cease in September, and in December they come
from the north.
Lagos bar or rather bars, for, as usual, there are t\vo,
an outer and an inner, the latter of which is little
feared is the best study on this part of the coast,
with the exception, perhaps, of Benin. It is the bugbear
of the Bights, and really dangerous. The average deaths,
not including whites, are fourteen per annum ; in 1858
there were forty-five casualties. This year nine were
drowned in three months ; amongst them, an English-
woman, the wife of a merchant-captain, who preferred
risking his life to paying a few dollars by steamer.
Escapes are rare, and yet the Acting-Governor has been
capsized in it three times. The principal danger to a
strong swimmer is the shark. It is not every squalus
nor every tiger that will attack a man. I have seen a
sailor picked up unhurt from amongst a school of them
in Suez harbour. This plague is not others say rarely
A DAY AT LAGOS. 205
found in the waters off Badagry and Porto Novo. But
in places like the sacred Dwarka in Western India, where
dead Hindu pilgrims are cast into the bay, and at
Lagos, where the corpses of slaves are allowed to float
down the river, the shark never hesitates to seize a live
man. The crocodile and alligator are to be beaten off
by gouging or "purring," as the Lancashire inventors
of a practice, supposed to be purely Transatlantic, call
the operation. The shark, here at least, is far more ter-
rible ; even when he wriggles himself up to the beach
sand, apparently for the purpose of scratching off para-
sites, all the people run away from the glare of his dull,
ferocious, pale-blue eye, whilst the beast, as if conscious
of power, never thinks of retiring till the desideratum
has been leisurely completed. Tew men survive a shark
bite, and when seized, they usually lose their hands by
snatching mechanically at the limb first hurt. I spare
the reader some horrid cases which have come under my
immediate notice. There is a small blue shark, which,
when young, is eaten by the people. They do not, how-
ever, like the Arabs of Sur and Maskat, relish a tough
old patriarch, whose taste is something between bull beef
and tunny. To end with the shark, this evil might ' be
diminished by spearing and poisoning the animals, and
especially by rendering it penal to throw a corpse night
is the favourite time into the Ossa. And the little
" Advance " has already, it is said, done much towards
frightening them from their haunts.
Lagos is the largest permanent break in the long line
206 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
of coast between the Yolta and the Benin Rivers, and
the greater part of the waters collected during the rains
find their way in a tumultuous current through the sand-
spit that parts the lagoon from the Atlantic. The
safest months are December, January, and February,
when at times it is smooth as glass. The most dan-
gerous are those of the rainy season it begins to be
bad in March, and it wages war from May to October.
The epochs of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes ac-
cording to some, the days when the mail arrives accord-
ing to others, are the worst; some declare that the
new moon, others that the moon at her full and change,
exasperates the bar. One may always expect bad bars
during the violent rains in June, July, and August, when
the struggle between the inner inundation and the outer
surf is tremendous, closing ingress and egress sometimes,
though rarely, for a fortnight. High tide is the safest
time for attempting passage ; then half-tide ; and the
worst of all is low water. "The African Pilot"* reckons
the rise of the tide five to six feet at the full and
change on the bar, and says that within the river one foot
must be allowed in the dry and three in the rainy sea-
son. The people of Lagos assert that three to four feet
is nearer the truth, and that there is little difference
between the inside and the outside of the bar. The
capricious and treacherous rollers will curl in five
fathoms and break in three, and even four fathoms, on
* P. 175.
A DAT AT LAGOS. 207
the radius of a mile from the middle of the entrance.
The height of the wave may be fifteen feet when the
surf is bad, and it breaks when perhaps you least expect
it. The shifting sand of the bar is ever changing place
and dimensions. On the 26th July H.M.S. " Prome-
theus " found but eleven feet under her bow off the
eastern spit, where she had most unadvisedly been run :
to-day we hear that there are eighteen feet, and that the
spit has been nearly washed away; and this time next
year there will be a hollow, bounded by a dwarf sand-
bank upon the place where the good old ship was re-
ported to have broken her back. Tor the same reason
the breadth of the entrance is ever varying ; the "African
Directory (1855) " gives it from 500 to 600 yards; the
"African Pilot (1856)," half a mile from point to point.
When I first saw it the width was not more than half a
mile, but soon afterwards it greatly increased. The
length is calculated to be 300 yards. The outer or sea
bar is separated from the inner by a distance of six
cables ; both are of the hardest sand.
Across this pleasant formation there are three high
ways : the canoe passage, which hugs Le Greslie or
the eastern point ; it is very dangerous, but sometimes
practicable when the other entrances are not. The
perils of the Calemars or Kaz de Maree, however, are
greatly increased by the strong easterly current, which
often carries small craft down the dangerous and inhos-
pitable coast. The boat or central passage comes next :
many accidents have happened from the use of gigs
208 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
manned by Krumen, who drop their oars and are ready
to spring on board the moment there is a chance of
swamping. Why the Masoolah surf-boats used at Ma-
dras are not introduced here I puzzle my brains to
conceive. Large ships lay at Beecroft or the western
point abreast, and then turning to the north-north-east,
make for the entrance. The landmarks, however, of
course change with the bar every year, and without a
pilot no one but a madman or those interested in barra-
try would attempt to run in. Usually the entrances are
two, the ship or western, and the canoe or eastern
passage.
No one seems to visit Lagos for the first time without
planning a breakwater. About three years ago an
American company proposed to make floating break-
waters, upon the condition of receiving the harbour dues
for twenty years ; Jonathan, however, was refused. But
as from Ningo on the Gold Coast to Gamaroons, there
is hardly a pebble upon the loose sands, and no stone
for many miles inland, the construction will probably
keep till the wealth of the place enables it to afford a
floating work. It is dangerous to meddle with such
formations. About 1856, a little iron steamer from
Benin sank whilst attempting to raise the guns which
had been thrown overboard by Her Majesty's steam-sloop
" Hecate ;" and the bar, it is said, became worse in con-
sequence. Walling the sides, especially the eastern, with
a small " stone fleet/' might be tried, but the measure
would probably do no good ; the outpour, strengthened
A DAY AT LAGOS. 209
by narrowing the mouth, would soon cut a new channel.
The experiment, tried at Charleston, is said to have im-
proved the passages there : here there are other forces at
work. Some have tried landing upon other parts of the
coast, but they have generally fared worse from the
heavy breakers on the shore ; consequently, the bar has
become a necessary calamity. The merchants of Lagos
were much pleased when they heard that a harbour-
master had been appointed, expecting to see buoys laid
down ; at the end of the year, however, they had to
congratulate themselves only upon a perch stuck in the
sands of Beecroft Point. Loath, however, to break
through a time-honoured custom, I venture to propose
a system of "camels," by which the violence of the
breakers would be greatly broken. We turned in early,
hoping that the morrow would not prove a rainy day.
Betimes on Sunday morning we were visited by the
"Advance," an iron steamer owned by Mr. McCoskry,
now acting as Governor. Built as a tug for the
Clyde, her tonnage is 120 tons, she draws six feet,
with horse power variously estimated at 80 to 160,
and her cost was G000 The mails no longer require
to be headed up, an operation which recalls to mind the
now classical English pipe-office. She is nearly lost
about once a year, and the engineers cannot be kept
alive even by drink. Still she makes shift to ply for
papers and cargo whilst other vessels cannot. The
tender " Brune " lost her funnel shortly after our de-
parture ; the " Handy " is pronounced unhandy to cross
210 WANDEEINaS IN WEST AFRICA.
the bar; and the " Investigator" does not appear to relish
the process of investigating. Besides which, the former
is a "screw/ 1 and when these craft show their stern
keels to the sky, the violent jerk almost always injures
the gear. So the stout "Advance" is really in advance
of Admiralty ships, and is a great boon to those who
visit Lagos.
After breakfast the consul and I prepared to land by
the ship passage. The "Advance " steamed steadily on,
under the hands of two helmsmen ; the wheel is on the
bridge, the favourite station for travellers who do not
like the look of the sea from the quarter deck. After
getting the direction and breasting the smooth waters
outside, we prepared for the run in. This time the much-
dreaded bar disappointed me; on certain subsequent
occasions it did not. The rapids of the St. Lawrence
must be grand enough in an Indian "birch," which
shows the wonderful ridge of waters cylindrically piled
up in the centre of the stream. Nothing can be tamer
when looked down upon from the first floor of a large
floating-house river-steamer. I can imagine their emo-
tion men with a triple coat of brass round their prse-
cordia who first attempted this bar in the dinsry of a
caravel or in a wretched cutter. Indeed, even from the
vantage ground of the bridge, where we stood high
raised to see and sketch, we looked up as it were at the
light-green foam -fringed waves swelling, rising, and
towering like a concave wall about to tumble in and poop
us, whilst the send of the break drove us forward as if
A DAY AT LAGOS. 211
lifted in strong men's arms, and required all the force of
the helmsmen to prevent, as the seas combed under the
quarter, the little steamer broaching broadside on
the great danger when crossing a bar. The background
to this fierce ocean was a black and lowering surface of
younger breakers, the nearer rushing like the waters
above Niagara to the fray, and the more distant sub-
siding into the surface .of a horizon where the slaty
heavens mingled with the leaden-coloured sea.
After shuddering and staggering over the first bar,
which is about 900 feet long, and enduring the normal
break of three which may be thirty seas, the brave
little " Advance " fell into deep water, four fathoms or
so, and I did not condescend to sketch the second or
inner, which outlies the entrance. And now the set-
tlement, before veiled by smokes, as fogs in these regions
. are called, began to appear. Upon Le Greslie, or
Eastern Point, a low sandy formation, capped with
stunted bush and bearing a few palms, stood a few out
factories, looking very like negro barracoons. Twenty years
ago boats floated over this Clifton of the Slave Coast. A
flag was hoisted to inform the town that the bar was
practicable. Two tide gauges had been set up, one at
Le Greslie Point, the other inside the river, opposite
the house of a M. Carrena, that the maximum rise might
be indicated by signal. As we passed Beecroft Point,
where curlews and plovers rose screaming wildly, and
passed alongside of the shrimp stakes, the town came
up to full view. It was a striking illustration of the
p 2
212 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
difference between the pro-pyroskaphian and the epi-
pyroskaphian settlement; no fort, no gothic hall, no
big house, nothing but the plain bungalow built for an
inn, not for a house. Here, as at Zanzibar, flagging
appeared to be the custom ; every factory flies a bit of
bunting, and some fly two.
The site of the town, four miles from the entrance, is
detestable ; unfortunately, there is no better within many
a league. It occupies the western side of an islet about
three miles and a half long from north-east to south-
west, by one broad from north to south ; it is formed
by two offsets from the Ikoraclu (Cradoo) coast, namely,
the Ossa River, opposite, and Five Cowrie Creek behind
the settlement.
The first aspect is as if a hole had been hollowed
out in the original mangrove forest that skirts the
waters, where bush and dense jungle, garnished with
many a spreading tree, tall palms, and matted mass of
fetid verdure rise in terrible profusion around. The
soil is sandy, and in parts there are depressions which
the rains convert into black and muddy ponds; the
ground, however, is somewhat higher in the interior,
where the race-course lies. The gap of the Ossa or
Bad agry Lagoon, is nearly opposite the town; and on the
other side there is low, swampy ground, a clay forma-
tion, which retains the water, and which adds something
more to the evils of the place. The thin line of European
buildings that occupy the best sites, fronting the water,
are, first, the French comptoir, prettily surrounded with
A DAY AT LAGOS. 213
gardens; then a large pretentious building, white and
light yellow, lately raised by M. Carrena, a Sardinian
merchant it is said to be already decaying ; then the
Wesleyan Mission-house; the Hamburghers' factory; the
Wesleyan chapel, with about five times its fair amount
of ground ; the British Consulate, like that at Fernando
Po, a corrugated iron coffin or plank-lined morgue, con-
taining a dead consul once a year ; the Church Mission-
house, whose overgrown compound caused such pretty
squabbles in days gone by, and which, between whiles,
served as a church ; another Sardinian factory ; a tall
whitewashed and slated house, built by Mr. McCoskry ;
and at the furthest end, another establishment of Ham-
burghers, who at present have more than their share of
the local commerce : these are the only salient points of
the scene. They are interspersed with tenements of less
pretensions, " suam quisque domum spatio circumdat" a
custom derived by the Anglo-Indians through the Eng-
land and the Germany of Tacitus' s day ; and the thin
line is backed by a large native town, imperceptible from
the sea, and mainly fronting the Ikoradu Lake. Some
of the houses extend their grounds to the back, and the
cumbered sands are alive with impurities ; the Acting
Governor, however, has wisely determined to have one
decent walk. He persevered in clearing a broad line along
the water, fitted for riding or driving, despite the insolent
opposition of sundry liberated or rather licensed Afri-
cans. One fellow who calls himself Captain, upon the
strength of having bought a condemned hull, has gone
214 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
so far as to drive away the workmen : he has been
threatened with a special constable, in the shape of a
fighting doctor, and as usual with these people, who have
got to produce their John Hampden, he subsided. The
only ships inside the bar are H.M.S. " Prometheus,"
Prometheus Vinctus now the tender, " Brune," and a
small Hanoverian steamer. The two former are re-
quired to defend the new occupants, and the town is in
a considerable state of excitement.
For Lagos was born in the British family, the young-
est member of her colonies, on the 6th day of August,
A.D. 1861. Commander Bedingfeld, R.N., after a hard
bumping on the bar off the east spit, had by high direc-
tion entered into a palaver with Docemo, King of
Lagos, and after "jamming heads" excuse the phrase,
but the " Captain," as the earnest and Rev. M. Monk*
insists upon calling him usque ad nauseam, piques
himself exceedingly upon a very moderate knowledge of
the coast informed him that permanent occupation (a
nicer word than annexation) was determined upon, and
that he, Docemo, was to be pensioned, and become one
of the many kings lately "retired from business." That
barbarous person, curious to say, was not delighted by
the intelligence. In fact, he made some difficulties.
He proposed to meet Her Majesty's consul, " the
Captain," and all the British merchants at Palma, a
Trench station some thirty miles east of Lagos, where
* See prolegomena to Dr. Livingstone's letters, and ask "the Captain "
what he thinks of them.
A DAT AT LAGOS. 215
he probably intended to give them something more than
a bit of his mind. They politely declined a trip so far
out of the range of the Promethean fire. The caboceers
and chiefs also demurred, and foreseeing an embargo
upon their bribes and presents, waxed surly. At the
bottom of the discontent were the liberated Africans,
"Sharp rogues all, both great and small,"
as the Cape Coast Castle song hath it. The worst by far
were the S'a Leonites ; they were in debt to the natives,
and debt under English is a very different thing from debt
under native rule. Besides which, all of them had slaves,
and most of them, when occasion served, were slave-
dealers. Mr. Consul Foote, shortly after his arrival,
had summoned before him some of these pets of philan-
thropy. When the nice point of domestic slavery was
mooted, and they were asked touching their nationality,
the popular answer declared King Docemo of Lagos and
the Alake of Abeokuta to be their sovereigns. They
at once began to make mischief at another of our pets,
Abeokuta how can learned Professor Kingsley in
" Westward Ho ! " call it "Christian Abeokuta/' when
it numbers barely one " professor " to 500 heathen?
They hinted, not obscurely, that wherever an English-
man plants his foot the people of Scinde said the same
when they pelted off Sir Alexander Burnes he makes
the land his own. Abeokuta took the hint with all the
readiness of the suspicious African. Distant but sixty
miles from the sea, she once wanted a road ; presently
216 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
she became curiously incurious about any communica-
tion more direct than the winding but defensible river ;
and she ended next year by violently expelling a British
vice-consul, threatening if he followed the example of
"Monsieur Qui-se-Leve," that they would "burn the
house about his ears," or its African equivalent.
So matters ran till the 5th of August, when a flag-
staff was slipped and rigged near the British consulate,
and Commander Bedingfield landed with his marines.
A crowd of people and some chiefs were assembled at
the palaver-house. The king, when civilly asked to
sign away his kingdom, consented and refused, as the
negro will, in the same breath. On the next day he
affixed his mark, for of course he cannot write ; and
there is no African king who will not, in full view of
a gallon of rum, " put his name for book," no matter
what that book may be, provided that he ignores its
contents. In so doing he of course concludes that a
bit of paper so easily cut through with a pair of scissors
can have no binding force, and a few hours afterwards
he will tell you that he can tear it to pieces. Without
awaiting, however, the ceremony of signature, possession,
nine-tenths of the law, was at once entered upon.
The " Captain " read out an English proclamation, very
intelligible to the natives, confirming "the cession of
Lagos "and its dependencies " a pleasantly vague fron-
tier. ' Then followed a touching scene. One Union
Jack was hoisted in the town, another on the beach.
Prometheus Vinctus" saluted with twenty-one guns.
A DAT AT LAGOS. 217
The marines presented arms, three hundred fetish, or
sanctified boys, as the convert people call them, sang a
hymn, headed by their missionaries. It was not
" Dies iies, dies ilia, &c."
And as we Englishmen must celebrate every event with
a dinner I believe that if London were to follow
Lisbon's suit, Londoners would dine together amongst
the ruins of " Willis's " or the " Tavern " forty-four
Oyibos, Europeans, and Africo- Europeans, officials
and merchants, sat down to meat upon the quarter-
deck of the "Prometheus/' and by their brilliant
speeches and loyal toasts added, as the phrase is, eclat
to the great event. Thus Lagos rose.*
* The following is the official announcement of
THE CESSION OF LAGOS.
"Foreign-Office, Sept. 19.
"Earl Russell, Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, has received a despatch from Mr. McCoskry, the Acting British
Consul at Lagos, dated the 7th of August, enclosing a treaty concluded
by him and Commander Bedingfeld, R.'N., commanding Her Majesty's
sloop 'Prometheus,' with Docemo, King of Lagos, for the cession of
the isle and port of Lagos to Her Majesty. The treaty is as follows :
' ' ' Treaty between Norman H. Bedingfeld, Commander of Her Majesty's
sloop " Prometheus," and senior officer of the Bights Division,
and William McCoskry, Esq., Her Britannic Majesty's Acting
Consul, on the part of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain,
and Docemo, King of Lagos, on the part of himself and chiefs.
" ' ARTICLE i.
" ' In order that the Queen of England may be the better enabled to
assist, defend, and protect the inhabitants of Lagos, and to put an end
to the slave-trade in this and the neighbouring countries, and to pre-
vent the destructive wars so frequently undertaken by Dahomey and
218 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
King Docemo was persuaded, on the next day, by a
guard of marines, who grounded arms with a most
ominous rattling in his presence, to be duly mediatised.
He was also assured of a pension amounting to some-
thing less than 2000. per annum, This sum is
ethers for the capture of slaves, I, Docemo, do, . with the consent and
advice of my council, give, transfer, and by these presents grant and
confirm, unto the Queen of Great Britain, her heirs and successors, for
ever, the port and island of Lagos, with all the rights, profits, terri-
tories, and appurtenances whatsoever thereunto belonging, and as well
the profits and revenue, as the direct, full, and absolute dominion and
sovereignty of the said port, island, and premises, with all the royal-
ties thereof, freely, fully, entirely, and absolutely. I do also covenant
and grant that the quiet and peaceable possession thereof shall, with all
possible speed, be freely and effectually delivered to the Queen of Great
Britain, or such person as Her Majesty shall thereunto appoint, for her
use in the performance of thia grant ; the inhabitants of the said
island and territories, as the Queen's subjects, and under her sove-
reignty, crown, jurisdiction, and government, being still suffered to
live there.
" 'ARTICLE n.
' ' ' Docemo will be allowed the use of the title of king, in its usual
African signification, and will be permitted to decide disputes between
natives of Lagos, with their consent, subject to appeal to British laws.
" 'ARTICLE in.
" ' In the transfer of lands the stamp of Docemo affixed to the docu-
ment will be proof that there are no other native claims upon it ; and
for this purpose he will be permitted to use it as hitherto.
" ' In consideration of the cession, as before mentioned, of the port
and island and territories of Lagos, the representatives of the Queen of
Great Britain do promise, subject to the approval of Her Majesty, that
Docemo shall receive an annual pension from the Queen of Great Britain
equal to the net revenue hitherto annually received by him : such
pension to be paid at such periods and in such mode as may hereafter
be determined.
[Here follow the signatures.]
'"Lagos, Aug. 6.'"
A DAY AT LAGOS. 219
equivalent to his annual revenue, but it is subject to
revision. He ungratefully forwarded, on dit, an expos-
tulation to Europe; so did his chiefs. On the other
hand, the merchants of all nations were highly pleased
with the result. Thirteen of them, foreigners as well as
Britishers, signed a petition praying the " Prometheus "
to remain inside the bar, for the protection of English
life and property. She was nothing loath : her copper
had been scraped off, her deck had an interesting but
suspicious convexity about the middle region, and the
divers brought up some tubes nearly sixteen inches
long, with which the Teredo navalis had lined his dwel-
ling-place. She was subsequently reported not sea-
worthy; an obstinate man, Mr. Master Scudamore,
thought otherwise, and she reached home safely, where
she will die of a respectable old age. The " Captain "
took a lively interest in the baby colony, and perhaps
cherished an idea that his various merits might pro-
mote him to the proud position of being its nurse.
Calumny declared him guilty of a plebiscite, but I can
hardly believe this. He was disappointed in this coup
d'etat, but he was duly promoted, as every man who
loses, or who nearly loses, his ship ought to be. A
French naval officer presently entered the harbour, and
when he heard of the cession, departed in a pet, which
was not raisonnable. The decennial treaty with our old
rivals, in which the " high contracting powers " pledged
themselves to refrain from picking and stealing further
territory in Africa, expired in 1855. The Gaul will, it
220 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
is reported, lay main forte upon the Benin River.
Tant mieux ! The civilisation of the coast, or rather its
redemption from a worse state than the merest savagery,
can be effected only by its passing into the hands of
Europe. Japhet must not only live in the huts of
Ham, he must gird his loins for a harder task than he
has ever dreamed of in the idle tents of his brother
Shem.
Before landing at the dwarf pier in front of the Con-
sulate no mean precaution where the crocodiles are so
uncommonly " spry/' we accompanied poor Holling-
worth on board the " Prometheus," for a visit of
ceremony. We were received with that condescension
which sits so gracefully upon the shoulders of Greatness,
and hurried off to the shore. The ship had enjoyed
remarkably good health under an experienced and active
surgeon ; only three men out of her hundred whites had
died during the last year. We little guessed, however,
that of those sturdy fellows only sixteen would be left
all the rest had been carried off by fever (twenty actual
deaths), or had been sent sick to Ascension at the end
of March, in four months. Thus, after long indemnity,
she eventually found herself no exception to the rule of
the Coffin squadron. Mr. McCoskry was fortunately at
home, and I had the pleasure of making an acquaintance
which I hope may become a friendship.
After an excellent dinner, in which the presence of
palm-oil chop argued the old "African/' I was shown a
symbolical letter, which, on August 24th, had found its
A DAT AT LAGOS. 221
way from Dr. Baikie's camp at Mount Patta, near
Laird's Town, and opposite Igbebe, at the confluence of
the Kwara and the Binue.* This style of writing has
been described by Mr. Crowther as being common on
the Lower Niger, and Miss Barber, of the " Coral
Fund," has obliged the public with a sketch of it. It
is inferior to the Mexican symbols, the rudest form of
correspondence, showing a great gulf between the
African mind and that of the lowest Asiatic. The
" letter" consisted of two pockets from an old pair of
Calico pantaloons, and a "flap," from which the but-
tons had been removed ; it was empty, and significant
enough. There was a little bundle of twine, European
and native wound together, to show that white and
black, even in their poverty, were not divided. An Arab
Taawiz, or talisman here barbarously called Grigri,
hinted that the bearer was a Moslem, and little pellets
of paper containing writing, and whipped round with
* I -would propose to brother Fellows that the river below the conflu-
ence retain the classical name, Niger Joliba is Park's name for the
upper waters, and its extension ; that the western influent be called, as
by the Kanuri named, Kwara ; and the eastern, Binue, a term well
known to the Hausas, "Chadda," founded only upon the misconcep-
tion that the stream drains Lake Chad, should be formally dismissed
from our vocabulary. Lake Chad, like the Tanganyika, the Caspian,
and many others, receives many tributaries, and sends forth none eva-
poration does all the work of drainage. This is hard to instil into the
mind of the theorist, who determines, despite the direct evidence of
Lake Chad, that all such formations, if undrained, must be salt. The
natives have, of course, no general name for the stream, save Water,
or Great ^Yater, which, as usual in such cases, varies with every dialect.
222 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
string, showed that the path was dangerous. Three
broken cowries, loose and scattered, insinuated that the
sooner a fresh supply was sent the better; half a
Malaguetta pepper, or Cardamom, gave comfort, showing
that the traveller's heart was still warm. The thing
had all the savage ingenuity that goes to making an
assagai and a war-club. Whilst upon this subject it
may be as well to state that the confluence of the
Kwara and the Binue is distant only twenty days of
quiet marching from Lagos, without running the risk of
climate and the now hostile villages that fringe the
banks below the apex of the Delta. It will be the
favourite route of explorers. At present the Egbas are
fighting one of those ridiculous fights they almost put
to shame the earlier Yankee battles with the Ibadans,
their northern neighbours.
The afternoon was devoted to inspecting the town,
which is native to the last degree. Is is said to be five
miles in circumference, and containing 30,000 inhabi-
tants, of whom 700 to 800 are Moslems. Like the
people of Badagry and Porto Novo, the Lagosans are of
Popo race, and many of them are originally Beninese.
The eastern is here the "west end/' and there have
been the usual quarrels for frontage, each factory and
mission-house wishing to secure for itself as much, and
to leave its neighbour as little, as possible. The native
town, which is divided into sundry quarters, Okofaja,
Obebowo, Offi, and Egga, which contains the palace
of the now destitute Docemo, is to the west of the
A DAT AT LAGOS. 223
" Garden Reach/* and stretches over the interior of the
island. The streets want only straightening, widening,
draining, and cleaning. Ibrahim Pasha's excellent
means of confiscating a house that would not keep its
environs clean should be applied here at once. There
are irregular buildings intended for market-places, and
called, I suppose, squares, into which the narrow
lanes abut ; they are dotted with giant heaps of muck
and mixen, and in hot weather wooden pattens are
required. The houses, not the factories, are of switch
or puddled clay, built in courses, and fished- out of the
river : apparently they are all roof, a monstrous thatch,
like that of Madagascar, making, as it were, the brim too
broad for the face. These things burn like tinder when
Shango the fire-god pays a visit to Lagos ; so fast, in
fact, that little harm is done to the interior. Europeans
prefer, for the same reason, slates and tiles. Even the
garden-walls must be protected by a weather-thatch of
palm-leaves, or they would be washed away. Everything
has the squalid, unclean look of an idle people, and what
can be expected from men to whom Pomona has been so
indecently kind, whose bread and butter, whose wine and
oil, grow for them in the trees around? The redeeming
feature was the mixture of country with town, the vestigia
runs, which all admire. Like Jericho, it is a city of
palms : the cocoa grows almost in the salt water ; the
broad-leaved bread-fruit, introduced from the far Poly-
nesian lands, has taken root like an indigen; and in
the branches of the papaw nestle amadavats, orioles, and
224 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
brilliant palin-birds. The people struck me as being of a
lower caste than those of the Gold Coast, more approach-
ing the typical genuine nigger of the Southern republic.
They suffer much from cutaneous complaints, krakra,
yaws (frambcesia), lepra, elephantiasis, and a phagoedenic
ulcer common at Fernando Po, and from which even Euro-
peans have no immunity.* The other diseases are fever,
dysentery and dracunculus ; they have not yet had an
attack of true vomito, but it is gradually on its way down
from S'a Leone. This yellow fever differs but little in
quality from a violent bilious remittent, and the peculiar
feature from which it derives its Spanish name, seldom
appears till dissolution approaches : the course is rapid,
fever, delirium, cramp, convulsions, emetism, death. At
times the place becomes a charnel-house. This mangy
people appeared to me a merry race of pagans ; even at
this early hour I saw a man sitting upon the little raised
step of clay, the East Indian chabutarah, and shamelessly
making himself drunk with "hashish." The instru-
ment is a calabash with tubes and clay chillam or head,
and, as usual, the leaf is inhaled through water. This
smoking Diamba or Liamba, as the local European
name is, is a practice which has probably spread from
the East Egypt and her neighbours. There are
travellers who contend that in Western Africa cannabis,
* It is often fatal. 'Amputation must be resorted to, and the patient,
who has probably suffered from dysentery and other debilitating diseases,
cannot support the shock : sometimes there is an oozing of blood from
the cut bone.
A DAY AT LAGOS. 225
or bhang, never grows wild, and that, like the lotus, it is
an exotic which, without much care, would die out.
This may be true touching the lands about the Gaboon
River's mouth ; the plant, however, is certainly an indi-
gene of the African continent, the Moroccans have their
fasukh, the Hottentots their dakha, the Eastern people,
mbangi, and the Western, diambd.
An unexpected pleasure was in store for me. Lagos
contains, as has been said, some 800 Moslems, though
not yet 2000, as it is reported. Though few, they have
already risen to political importance; in 1851 our
bravest and most active opponents were those wearing
turbans. Among these are occasionally found " white
Arabs." One had lately died at Ekpe, a village on the
" Cradoo waters/' where the ex-king Kosoko, lives, and,
though a pagan, affects the faith. I was presently
visited by the Shaykh Ali bin Mohammed El Mekkawi.
The reverend man was fair of face, but no Meccan; he
called himself a Maliki, as indeed are most Moslems in
this part of El Islam, and I guessed him to be a Morocco
pilgrim, travelling in the odour of sanctity. He was
accompanied by the Kazi Mohammed Ghana, a tall and
sturdy Hausa negro, with his soot-black face curiously
gashed and scarred : he appeared to me an honest man
and good Moslem. The dignitaries were accompanied
by a mob of men in loose trousers, which distinguished
them from the pagan crowd ; one of them, by trade a
tailor, had learned to speak Portuguese in the Brazils.
Yery delightful was tliis meeting of Moslem brethren,
VOL. II. Q
226 WANDEEINaS IN WEST AFRICA.
and we took " sweet counsel " together, as the missionaries
say. The Shaykh AH had wandered from Tripoli south-
wards, knew Bornu, Sokotu, Hausa, and Adamawa
the latter only by name, and he seemed to have suffered
but little from a long journey, of which he spoke
favourably. He wished me to return with him, and
promised me safe conduct. I refused, with a tightening
of the heart, a little alleviated, however, by the hope that
Fate may spare me to march at some future day through
Central Africa homewards. And in that hope I purified
my property by giving the Zakat, or legal alms, to the
holy man, who palpably could not read nor write, but who
audibly informed his followers that " this bondsman " is
intimately acquainted with Jcull'ilm omnis res scililis.
The Shaykh then presented me with a handful of kola
nuts,* which have been called the African coffee. They are
the local " chaw/' the succedaneum for tobacco, betel nut,
mastick, and sweet earth. The tree, which grows every-
where in the damp and wooded regions of the tropical
seaboard, and on the islands of West Africa (where,
however, the people ignore its use), is a kind of sterculia,
in leaf not unlike the magnolia, but a stunted scrubby
tree ; the flower is small and white, with a polypetalous
corolla, and the fruit is a large pod, like a mis-shapen
cucumber. The edible parts are the five or six beans,
which are compared to Brazilian nuts, and to horse
* The Kola (Sterculia acuminata) is written in many ways Cola,
Colat, Khola, Gura, Goora, and Gooroo ; the latter three are the names
given by the older travellers.
A DAY AT LAGOS. 227
chestnuts ; they are covered with a pure white placenta,
which must be removed with the finger-nails, and then
appears the rosy pink skin some varieties are yellow
which gradually becomes rusty by exposure to the air.
The nut is easily divided into several, generally four
sections, of which one is eaten at a time. The taste
is a pleasant bitter, and somewhat astringent. Water
drunk " upon it," as the phrase is, becomes, even if before
offensive, exceptionally sweet. It must be a fine tonic in
these relaxing climates. I am not aware of an extract
having been made from it : if not, it would be as well to try.
Travellers use it to quiet the sensation of hunger and to
obviate thirst. In native courts eating kola nuts forms part
of the ceremony of welcoming strangers, and the Yorubas
have a proverb : "Anger draweth arrows from the quiver:
good words draw kolas from the bag." It is held to be
aphrodisiac of these half the African, like the Asiatic,
pharmacopeia is composed and like the betel to be
" A detergent, and a kindler of Love's flame that lieth dead."
A powder, or an infusion of the bark and leaves,
promptly administered, is used on the Gold Coast as a
cure of snake bites. There, also, kola powders finely
ground are drunk in a wineglassful of limejuice by those
who do not wish to become mothers. And a decoction
of the leaves, like the terebinthinate palm vine, acts as a
substitute for copaiba.
On the morning of the 23d September the fair-weather
flag was not hoisted at the beach : to go or to lose one's
42
228 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
passage became the serious question. In due time,
however, the bit of bunting flew up, and the " Tender
Brune," Lieut. Forrest, R.N., was under steam. After
taking a temporary leave of our kind host, we transferred
ourselves on board, and ran merrily down the Lagos
waters, past the tide-rip of the influent Badagry Lagoon,
and past the three salient points Bruce, Beecroft, and
Le Greslie. The bar was like that of yesterday, half angry,
but it is easier, methinks, and safer to front these forma-
tions than to turn back upon them. Although the wind
was dead ahead we shipped only four seas, of moderate
dimensions the danger is of their putting out the fires
and the soundings were never less than eleven feet.
At Lagos we dropped our Frenchman a typical
Frenchman in all points but one, he avoided all mention
of the fair sex. A Gascon and a Jesuit, bound for the
Whydah mission, he represented himself, for what reason
beyond "keeping his hand in" no one knows, as a clerk
in the establishment of Messrs. Regis & Co., Marseille.
A thorough miso-Albion, he was our favourite butt.
Being of a serious turn of mind he dwelt long and
loudly upon the revolting selfishness of the British
Government ; the unscrupulousness with which it carries
out even its plans of philanthropy, and the grinding
tyranny inflicted upon the wretched Roman " Cats." He
said it was a horror that priests were not paid like
les ministres Protestants, by le Government, and that
Ireland is not permitted to send members to le Parla-
ment. French tobacco was superior to English, French
A DAY AT LAGOS. 229
manufactures beat the world ; la France was the cream
of creation, and Paris was the cream's cream. Monsieur
had travelled leaucoup and knew the world ; he had even
visited Switzerland, and therefore, as in the case of the
"Fall of Kars," he could tell you all about China.
Londres was le plus sale endroit that he had ever seen,
and as for Liverrepoule he would only exclaim with
M. de P , "Ah ! bah! poof!" He wore one shirt
apparament from Madeira to Lagos ; he never removed
his hat or cap in the salon probably to show his con-
tempt for ces Anglais and he walked the quarter-deck
bareheaded. We parted, however, on the best of
terms ; he promised me un diner in case of my visiting
Whydah, and I, as the Yankee saith, " re-ciprocated."
At Lagos, too, we parted with another queer lot our
slavers. They are dark, but European or Brazilian ; they
speak Portuguese, travel under aliases to-day Soarez,
to-morrow Pieri and they herd together. One claims
to have been a lieutenant in some royal navy. They
have visited England to lay in a further stock of money
for the next cargo of casimir noir, and with a view to
medical assistance. They are worn out by excessive
devotions at the shrine of Venus, and they seem to live
chiefly on tobacco smoke. Part of their game is to
supply naval officers with champagne and excellent
cigars; to ask them to dinner, and to affect equality
with them, as if both were of the same trade. The new
comer on the coast sometimes associates with them,
thinking he will discern their secret, whilst they are
230 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
reading his, and are persuading the natives that he is in
league with them. I should strongly exhort officers to
be very wary of such society, and certainly not to trust
ihemselves to a dinner on shore, where a cup of coffee
would materially assist the departure of a cargo. As for
the fiction that they are to be treated like gentlemen,
whilst plying a trade which our law makes felony, it is
easily disposed of. The pickpocket or the burglar might,
with equal reason, claim equal respect for his "profession."
About midday we found ourselves on board the
"Blackland," and we entered slowly upon the short
stage of about 100 miles which separated us from our
next station, the Benin river.
Lagos, according to native tradition, was founded by
a body of Beninese warriors, sent by their king, who
claimed suzerainty over these parts, to reduce the rebels
of Ogulata, or Abulata, a place on the mainland north
of the islet. Their leader whose name is not quoted
having failed in his enterprise, and fearing to return,
settled upon the then desert bit of sand, made friends
with European travellers, and rejected all promises of
pardon. Islands in Western, as in Eastern, Africa
are ever the favourite places of settlements; they are
defended by the sea, and the habit of fishing raises a
generation pf canoe-men who have many advantages
over the inland peoples. Presently the Ogulata people
recognised the chief, and the King of Benin made Lagos
a dependency, with annual tribute, which ceased when
the slave dealers had strengthened it to resist the
A DAY AT LAGOS. 231
mother city. Hence the island's native name, Aonin, or
Awani, corrupted to Oni by Europeans, alluding to its
connection with Ini, Bini, Ibini, or Benin. There is
another name, Daghoh, mentioned by the slave Abu-
beko ; but is probably a native corruption of " Lagos "
the Lakes a name given by the Portuguese, probably
in memoriam of their Lusitanian home. The old chart-
names for the islands Curamo and Ikbekou are not to
be met with here. The town is known to its population
and throughout Yoruba as Eko, of which some make
Ichoo. The settlement must be modern : it is not
mentioned by Bosman in 1700.
The great development of the slave trade at Lagos took
place about the beginning of the present century. In
1839-41, emigrants to Abeokuta, 265 in number, were
plundered and maltreated by the people. In August,
1845, Kosoko (Co9ioco), cousin of the King, a power-
ful slave-trading chief, after twenty-four days' fighting,
drove out the liege lord Akitoye, who favoured the
English, and murdered, in the market place, his brother
Letida and two of the Chief Aduli's sons. Akitoye,
a weak man and a foolish, fled to Abeokuta, but the
great warrior Shodeke was dead, and the encampment at
the town of Adii was broken up. Several missionaries
remained at Badagry, the road to Abeokuta, their
destination, being unsafe. The first who entered " Un-
derstone " was the Rev. T. B. Freeman, on Sunday, the
llth December, 1842, and he was not followed until
the 27th July, 1846, when Messrs. Townsend and
232 WANDEEINQS IN WEST AFEICA.
Crowther were enabled to reach it. A coalition between
Lagos and Porto Novo, backed by Dahomey, threatened
the British establishments at Badagry. Under Kosoko,
who ruled at Lagos for six years, an attack was actually
made upon the place ; it was, however, beaten back by the
Egbas and their General Shomeye, who afterwards became
principal captain of war at Abeokuta. This outrage, which
took place in June and July of 1851, led to reprisals.
On the 25th November of the same year, a force of
260 men, in twenty-three boats, under the command of
the late Commander Forbes, Her Majesty's ship "Phi-
lomel," preceded by the late Mr. Beecroft, carrying a
flag of truce, entered the river. About 5000 armed
men were assembled, they kept up a sharp fire from
behind the houses and trees. Our men landed; but
they were soon compelled to retreat, with the loss of two
killed and several wounded. The Rev. Mr. Bowen
(" Central Africa"), who was near the scene, and shows
scant regret at the English being " whipped," we were
risking our lives for the pretection of him and his,
describes it as a pretty considerable (John) Bull's run.
Being somewhat more enthusiastic about slave-
trade matters in those days, we determined effectually
to scotch the serpent at Lagos. On the 26th and
27th December, 400 men, from four ships, and
headed by the commodore, Captain R. W. Bruce,
Her Majesty's ship "Penelope," his name is pre-
served in Bruce Island (Iddo), a green spot in the
" Cradoo Waters " to the north of the town, attacked
A DAT AT LAGOS. 233
the place. Kosoko had prepared it with stockades,
cannon, and all the material for a determined resistance.
The principal fighting was a little beyond the house
occupied by Mr. M'Coskry ; here the walls of vegetation
enabled the defenders to fire unseen upon the assailants.
We lost sixteen men killed and seventy-one wounded, a
fair proportion out of 400 ; the destruction of the natives
was much greater. Kosoko and his party, after doing
their best to no purpose, fled to Jjebu, where he re-
mained four years, and his cousin Akitoye was rein-
stated. The latter was not fated to live without troubles.
In July, 1853, two slave chiefs Aginia and Pellu
rebelled, and joined their master Kosoko ; and on the
5th of August was fought a drawn battle, during which
the English Branch Mission and School House was
burned. In September of the same year Akitoye
poisoned himself at midnight, in the presence of two
slave boys the local custom when the King ceases to
give satisfaction to his subjects.
Through the influence of the late Mr. Campbell, Her
Majesty's Consul, Docemo succeeded his father in 1853,
to the/ prejudice of Kosoko. This fine old chief event-
ually took up his abode at Ekpe, upon the Ikoradu
Lagoon, and at periods filled the mind of Lagos with a
panic. In 1852, the English residents at Badagry, con-
quering their alarm, visited Lagos, and were followed in
a few weeks by the Church and the Wesleyan Missions,
the Baptists remaining to till the field. In 1855, most
Europeans believed that a plot had been made to murder
234 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the Consul and all opposed to tlie slave trade. Docemo,
however, proved himself superior to his father, and not
unfriendly to the stranger. But the wheel of Fate
revolves at Lagos as elsewhere ; kings' heads, according
to the Arab saying, now touch the stars, then are
under the stones. Docemo was dethroned on the 6th
of August, 1861, and Kosoko, for years the horror and
lete noire of Consul Campbell and the missionaries,
is again growing into favour ; it has even been thought
of readmitting him to his country.
As late as the year of grace 1851, when Mr. M'Coskry
first came to Lagos, there were thirty Portuguese, and
but four English: not one of the whole number, save
himself, survives, or at least has remained here. Those
were merry days ; the slavers had nothing to do but sleep
and smoke, with an occasional champagne tiffin on the
beach. The trade-man made all the bargains ; the doctor
examined the " contrabands ; " they were shipped off by the
captain and crew, and in due time came a golden return.
Then followed, in 1851, the palmy days of palm-oil. Ten
gallons were then bought for two and a half heads of
cowries = five shillings, and sold per ton of 300 gallons
at 4:01. Every year the price has increased, owing to
concurrence, jealousy, and want of combination among
the traders, who enjoy " cutting one another's throats,"
as the phrase is. The oil has now risen from 2'5 to 10
heads, and threatens to rise still higher.* The Lagos oil
* The cowrie currency, assuming the dollar at 4*. 6d, its normal
price in these regions, is as follows :
A DAY AT LAGOS. 235
is celebrated as the best and clearest upon the "West African
coast, and the tree extends to at least sixty miles in the
interior. The " puncheon " is not, as in the " Oil Rivers,"
of a fixed size ; it may be anything, from a breaker up-
wards. The amount of oil exported from Lagos this year is
about 3,800 tons, worth (at 40 per ton) some 152,000^.,
and here, as elsewhere, the trade is only in its fitful infancy.
Lagos is a young and thriving place. Its position
points it out as the natural key of this part of Africa,
and the future emporium of all Yoruba, between the
Niger and the sea. It cannot help commanding com-
merce : even under the wretched management of the
native princes, it attracted the whole trade of the Benin
country. In proper hands it will be the sole outlet of
trade from Central Guinea and the Sudan,* lands teem-
ing with various wealth palm-oil, cotton, shea-butter,
metals, native cloths, sugar, indigo, tobacco of good
quality, and ivory; in the neighbourhood of Ilorin,
about eight days' journey north of Abeokuta, it is not
worth their while, on account of the heavy tolls, to export
their tusks. At present the bar is an obstacle to im-
40 cowries = 1 string = 3 farthings to Id.
5 strings = 1 bunch = 3d. to 6d.
10 bunches = 1 head = Is. 9^d. to 2s.
10 heads = 1 bag = 18s. to $4 = 16s. 8d.
The bag contains 20,000 cowries, and the rates are exceedingly
various.
* Sudan properly means negroes : it is an ellipsis for Bilad el Sudan ,
i.e., negroland. Moslem nations call the negroes of the interior, the
Sudan : thus the negroland of Egypt lies south, and that of Lagos
north.
236 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
provement ; time, however, will remedy that. The roads
require attention, but they are hardly so important to
Africa as people at home suppose. In these prairie
lands a path is easily cut, and soon becomes a rut im-
practicable to an Englishman or a horse, but perfectly
fitted for the African. Were you to give him the finest
highway in Europe, after a year he would have worn a
deep track by marching in Indian file, and the rest
would be a bright expanse of verdure. These remarks
will apply to the special fund of 200, of which an ad-
vertisement, " Aquapem Mountain Road," appears once
per month in the "African Times," a methodistical
publication, whose tone and spirit, venerable cant, and
worn-out declamation, take us back to the days of
A.D. 1800.
I should like to see, but have very little chance of
seeing, Lagos (now that she has become part and parcel
of the empire upon which Dan Phoebus must be some-
what weary of gazing) become a model colony. We
have learned " what to avoid " in West Africa : as the
subjoined extract from the returns of expenditure for the
year ending December 31, proves, S'a Leone barely
pays itself, whilst Gambia shows a deficit of one-third,
and the Gold Coast of nearly half.
PAYMENTS FOB SLAVE AND TONNAGE BOUNTIES.
s. d. *. d.
To officers and crew of H. M.S. Viper - 4,22310
,, ,, Spitfire - 2,674 10
,, Plato - 4,382
Carried forward .... 11,180 Q . 0.,
A DAT AT LAGOS. 237
s. d. g. d.
Brought forward .... 11,180
To officers and crew of H. M.S. Archer - 2,00710
Triton - 5,609 10
Arrogant 946
,, ,, Alecto 1,375
To Colonel Hill, Sierra Leone - - 1,610
To Mr. Pike, harbour master, Ditto - 170
Transferred to Civil Contingencies in
repayment of advances on account of
votes for the service - - - 8,69810
20,416 10
31,596 10
Paid for support and conveyance of captured negroes - 19,388 18 11
Paid to Commissioners for suppression of the slave
trade, including Commissioner at Loando, 1,300Z.;
arbitrator, SOOZ. ; clerk, 400Z. - - - . 10,750
Total expenses of slave suppression - 61,735 8 11
COLONIAL REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE, 1860.
Sierra Leone Expenditure - 29,146
Revenue - - - 29,912
Gambia Expenditure ... 15,273
,, Revenue .... 10,190
Gold Coast Expenditure - - - 9,55.8
Revenue - - - - 6,004
Total expenditure over revenue ... 8,871
SPECIAL SERVICE.
Niger Dr. Baikie, salary - . - 500
Expenses at the Confluence ... 1,000
1,500
ESTIMATE OF CONSULS' SALARIES, &c., FOR THE YEAR,
1862.
Lagos Consul (allowance, 200Z.) - 500
Abeokuta Consul (allowance, 100Z.) - 400
Fernando Po Consul (allowance, 20W.) 500
Sherbro Consular agent -' 250
Quillimane Consul .... 500
2,650
Grand Total 74,756 8 11
238 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
It wants a Civil Governor, who should be a mili-
tary or a naval man; a secretary ditto, ready to act
as principal when necessary; a staff surgeon, with
a relief ready at home when required; a harbour-
master a lieutenant R.N., if possible; a surveyor;
and, without ambition of shining as a politician, a
civil engineer to lay out the town; three police ma-
gistrates; but, in the name of all that is name-
able, no civil courts, no courts of appeal, no " regular
lawyers," no lawyers' clerks. The one thing needful is
a military force, sufficiently strong, not for offence, but
to back our authority, and to keep the peace amongst
a number of petty, quarrelsome tribes around. A force
of 200 men has been proposed ; it is about one-third of
what is required. Some have advocated Sepoys, who would
not live here a month ; what is unhealthy to the Euro-
pean would be doubly so to them. Hindus of caste
would die on .the voyage ; Moslems shortly after arrival.
Chinese would be excellent, but their day on this coast has
not yet come ; we are only beginning to learn their value
as soldiers in their own land. Others advocate West
Indians, the refuse of Jamaica and S'a Leone, fellows
little calculated to resist climate, and despised by the
black people because of themselves ; their conduct in
camp is complained of, and only the bravery of their
officers enables them to behave even tolerably in the
field. The Hottentots might be tried, but, as Captain
Speke's imprudent example shows, they are not to be
relied upon out of their own country, and little even
A DAY AT LAGOS. 239
there. The best men would be from the Gold Coast
mixed with Moslems from the north, Horins, Fulas,
and Gambari, or Hausamen : the greater the mixture
and the further the soldier's country, the better. The
military establishment requires one small troop of horse
artillery, armed with rockets and Blakeley's guns;
another troop of eighty cavalry, and a weak regiment of
400 infantry. The latter would be divided into half
companies, and besides mere drilling and parading, should
fortify the place and make military roads ; so shall we
escape the sight of those soldier-drones that now infest
the colonies. The error to be avoided lies in the multi-
tude of officers : the forces should be irregulars, with a
commandant, a second in command, an adjutant, a quar-
termaster, a full surgeon, and an assistant surgeon no
captains, lieutenants, nor ensigns ; if these are wanted
they might be kept at home as duplicates.
The custom-house officers would be two in number
and the taxes at once changed. To the present time
the only impost levied by the King has been export duty
of 2' 5 per cent, on ivory and oil; and of these the place,
probably never exported more than 180,000^. per annum,
whilst now, in consequence of the protracted war, it
exports still less. This is a truly suicidal proceeding :
the only possible tax for the present is 2'5 per cent, on
imports, which, assuming them at 190,000^. per annum,
already realises 47 97/. a year,* without causing the
* Mr. Consul Campbell reported in 1858 that Lagos exported 4,612
tons of palm oil (184,4802.), 5,776 Ibs. of ivory (1,5002.), and 2,108
240 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
natives to feel it. The Gold Coast has warned us
against a poll-tax, and though the whole seaboard is
virtually in our hands, it would hardly be prudent as
yet to lay a duty of fifty per cent, on arms, ammunition,
and alcohol, a consummation which I most devoutly
desire may become universal in Western Africa. We
might, however, begin with ten per cent.
The town of Lagos is certainly one of the most un-
healthy spots on these malarious shores, but the climate
may be mitigated. As the people do not bury in their
ground-floors, it is here easy to remove a house. Broad
streets, admitting free currents of air, and perfectly drained,
should run the whole length of the settlement parallel with
the Lagoon, and at right angles to these, cross ways from
the water side to the interior would supply ample venti-
lation. The site has a good slope towards the flowing
stream which is a ready-made cloaca maxima, and very little
cutting would draw off the rains, which now stand long
upon the stiff hardened sand. Another abuse calls loudly
for correction. The town is filled with deep holes, from
which the sand mixed with swish for walls has been dug
Clapperton found Sokotu in the same state; these
become favourite stores for offal and rubbish, and the
bales weighing 263,500 Ibs. of cotton (5,912Z. 10s.) The total of
export in that year was, therefore, 191,892Z. 10s. Although shea-
butter had appeared in the market, the native chiefs had organised a
powerful opposition to the palm-oil trade, hoping a return to the old
state of things. In 1859 the deficiency in the whole export trade of
palm oil from the Bight of Benin was expected to reach at least
10,000 tons.
A DAY AT LAGOS. 241
hot weather fills them with putrefaction. And, finally,
the natives should be taught, or rather forced, to learn
something like purity in their habits.
With this little establishment, and with such simple
precautions, I am certain that Lagos, when ten years old,
will be able to provide for itself, and that in ten more it
would become the emporium of the great and rich
Yoruba and Dahomian countries, whose natural adit and
issue it is.
CHAPTER XI.
BENIN NUN BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO.
" Ye banks and braes o' Bonny - "
24iH SEPTEMBER, 186 .
IT is September, and one whole month from home
how short a time, and how great a change ! Within
that limited period we have passed through summer,
autumn, winter, and spring, and now we are in the
brumal season once more. A cold and drizzling Irish
rain, driven by the wind across decks, makes every-
thing comfortless. As yet, however, we have been
unable to complain of heat. The " unapparent fount of
glory " is shorn of his beams by the gaseous steamy air,
which fends off the heat from earth. So different is ra-
diation in the dry air of the desert, that, after an expe-
rience of Scinde and Aden, the consul declared he had
not yet felt a hot day ; the climate is that of Naples
during the sirocco. Touching the four seasons which
we have endured within the last thirty days, it is usual
to make in West Africa a very different distribution of
the year, little intelligible to the pure European, e. g. y
the dries, the tornadoes, the early rains, the little dries,
the later rains, the later tornadoes, and the smokes. Yet,
BONNY EIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 243
by minute inspection, he can discover something of the
mechanism of the European year. The decay of old, and
the substitution of new growths, even in a land of ever-
greens, show a distinct demarcation. Spring opens with
its thunder-storms in October and November ; the hot
dry summer lasts till May ; and from June till late in
September, autumn and winter fill up the year.
At 8 P.M. on Tuesday, the 24th September, we find our
pop-guns off the mouth of the Benin river, or Great
Bio Formoso, conspicuous by its high north-western
bank. The vessels were rolling in the long surf, which is
here worse than even at Lagos. We took in two passen-
gers, Doctor and Mrs. Henry little thought we at
that time that she was destined to an untimely death !
As the steamer never touches here on her way home,
passengers from Benin must perforce endure a long and
dangerous week's trip round the " Oil Rivers." Benin
assumes the dignity of almost classic ground. It was
visited in 1485 by the Portuguese Affonso de Aviro,
who returned home, bearing a demand for Christian mis-
sionaries on the part of the King. Fernao de Poo, after
discovering the " Beautiful island " which has taken his
name, sailed up the "Great River Beautiful," which he
probably so named from the family likeness of the
scenery : he founded a settlement at Gwato, and it
speedily numbered one thousand converts. According to
Barbot, who takes, as will be seen, the story from
Merolla, the King of Great Benin City offered, for the
very small consideration of a white wife, to drive all his
a 2
244 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
subjects into the pale of the Church. At the island of
San Thome, "a strong appeal/' to use Mr. Wilson's
words,* "was made to the Christian feeling of the sister-
hood, one of whom had the courage to look the matter
in the face, and actually accepted the hand of his sable
Majesty. She ought to have been canonized, but it is
not known that this deed of self-sacrifice ever received
any special notice from the Father of the Church." I
may add, that if the then King was as fine-looking a
negro as the present occupant of the " Stool/' which
here is synonymous with the "Throne/' the young
lady lost little by exchanging him for an ex -sanguined
white of San Thome.f Here, however, the matter ended,
the country was found unwholesome, and at last, after
many a struggle, Christianity died out. Benin was visited
by Captain Thomas Wyndham in 1553, and in 1823,
* "Western Africa," p. 192.
*( Bosman, Letter XX., calls San Thome the Dutch churchyard, and
attributes the excessive mortality to three causes : the scorching heat,
the "thick and stinking mists," and, thirdly, the " excessive phle-
botomy of the Portuguese;" adding, "they have recourse to this on
the very least occasion, some of them letting blood above five times in
a year, and this it is which I believe makes them look more like
walking ghosts than men ; and this practice, the longer continued,
must necessarily the more weaken the constitution, for the nature of the
country is not snch as to supply them with hasty recruits of new blood."
Captain Owen ("Narrative of Voyages," Vol. II. p. 383) asserts that
during his whole experience on the African coast, there was not one
instance of perfect recovery after a liberal application either of the
lancet or of calomel " decidedly the most deadly enemies in a tropical
climate." And yet, in the same page, he recommends these two
destroyers, the one as a prevenlative, and the other as a restorative.
" I pray you avoid them."
EONNY RIVEE TO FERNANDO PO. 245
Belzoni of the Pyramids left his bones near its banks.
The lowlands are rich in palm-oil ; a little gold is found
in the uplands, despite the theory which limits the pre-
cious metal to the Secoom river, west of Accra, and
the interior exports a few ivories; piper cubebs and
Malaguetta pepper grow wild, and the soil might be
taught to bear coffee and cocoa, indigo, sugar, and cotton.
At present it is a mere waste.
I had no opportunity of entering the Benin river. At
the time piracy and murder had been reported, the people
of Eishtown had slaughtered a Kruboy or two, belong-
ing to the Messrs. Harrison. A cruizer was hourly
expected by the natives to " break town," and they had
prepared for it by running all their valuables into the
bush. The fault, as usual, lies with the traders, who
will not " pull together." There is no " king"
Africanice for "head native" in the lower river. Benin
was in old times divided into two separate states, Benin
Proper and Wari (Warree). The royal family of the
former place becoming too numerous, divided, and settled
at the latter, which was of course tributary and depen-
dent, till the Portuguese persuaded it to throw off the
yoke. Some years afterwards, one of the Wari family,
or according to others, a slave of the King of Benin,
founded a town on the Jakwa (Jackwaw) creek,
which also, in due time, became independent. Alusa,
the King of Wari, died in 1848; Jambra, the present
sovereign of Benin, has little power, and " Governor
Jerry," of Jakwa, is an effete old man. The state of
246 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the river is that of perfect anarchy. Some Europeans
sigh for the order and the responsibility of a single
ruler others, and they are in the majority, prefer not
to pay the comeys or customs which royalty would
demand and enforce.
I inquired of an intelligent fellow-passenger con-
cerning the Joemen, or Ijomen, to whom Mr. Consul
Hutchiuson has given, by hearsay, so vile a reputation.
Next to the tribes of Fernando Po, they are the best
abused race in this part of Africa, and both deserve a
better fate. Lieut. Forbes* calls them the Joh pirates,
and makes them the chief carriers of the human cargoes
exported from the Beninese interior to Lagos. A refer-
ence to Mr. Henry, of Benin, enables me to deny that
Mr. Henry had ever asserted that the " Ejoemen " had
eaten two Kruboys, that had deserted from a Liverpool
ship. It has not been proved that the Ijos ate the two
young officers of Captain Denham's ship, who impru-
dently boated up the river without sufficient force. ISor
can it be established that the West Indian, Carr, who in
1841 (SecondNiger Expedition) was returning to Aboh, on
the Niger, via Bonny, was "killed by these people, or King
Boy, an Ejoeman."t He was most probably murdered by
the Ibos, at the suggestion of some Christian trader.
Cannibalism is an interesting, though somewhat morbid
subject. Once, all anthropophagous tales were greedily
swallowed ; they are now fastidiously rejected. The pages
* "Dahomey and the Dahomians," chap. 1.
t " Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians," chap. 5.
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 247
of many African travellers show so much hearsay and
little eye-sight, they supply, moreover, such ridiculous
details, that the public is justified in doubting anything
but personal evidence. But to deny, as some very silly
philanthropists of the Ethnological Society have denied,
its existence in West Africa, is to maintain, like the old
African, the impossibility of water becoming hard because
he had never seen it so.
After leaving Lagos, the low lands become a " false
coast," the gift of the Niger, whose western branches
extend as far as our new colony. Eastward, the furthest
limit is the Bonny, and possibly its eastern neighbour
the Andoni River, and the Ahombola ( Humballah) creek,
an inlet not named, though placed, in our charts.*
Nothing is more simple than to sketch the view as seen
from the sea. Above, an azure space based upon a
band of dull and bright greens, resting upon a thin line
of golden sand, and in the foreground a little deeper
ultramarine than in the air. In the rainy season, change
the blue above to a heavy mass of clouds, reposing upon
the land, and the blue below to a brown olive. Where
a river gap exists it will be denoted by an uneven notch
in the land, and as a rule the proper right point, that
is to say, the western, will be somewhat higher than the
other. The apparent continent will be found divided
into islands, and sub-divided into islets, by river-like
* The direct connection of the Bonny River with the true Niger is
still a subject of geographical speculation : I hope to solve the problem,
despite all its difficulties.
248 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFEICA.
mangrove-haunted creeks, which I prefer to describe
when upon them.
About noon, on the 24th of September, we were off
the " Escravos," Slave river, corrupted to " Escrados,"
the first stream lying southward of the Benin : it has a
bad bar, and is shallow, fit only for the humbler sort
of slavers. Next to it is the Eio dos Porcados " of
Galley- Slaves/'* a bathos it is called by our pilots,
with scanty reason, the " Warree river." "With a bar
that carries thirteen feet at low water, some say
twenty feet, and with a very narrow slope, this noble
estuary is wholly neglected. Its next neighbour is the
Kamos, or Bough river, which has twelve to fifteen feet
on the bar. Up this stream there are fine clay banks,
raised twenty to twenty-five yards above the water, and
bearing noble trees ; the people, contrary to the usual
habits of the "Creekmen/' cultivate the ground. Of
the Dodo I could hear nothing, and will not quote the
Directory. Next in order is the Pennington river,
so called from the young officer of Her Majesty's ship
"Avon," surveying the coast under Captain Denham,
in 1846, who was treacherously murdered by the afore-
said Creekmen. The Middleton is as unimportant and
little known as the Dodo ; it was christened after the
assistant-surgeon of the " Avon." The next is the
Winstanley outfalls, so called from another murdered
man here, as in the prairies of North America, death
* These descriptions, as far as the Niger, are mere hearsay : I have
not visited the mouths of the above-mentioned streams.
SONNY EIVEE TO FEENANDO PO. 249
seems to be the only thing that can be recorded of
localities belonging to the " Avon " : the people pro-
bably supposed her to be a slaver, awaiting opportuni-
ties of capture, and fought accordingly. It was too late
for vision when we were off the Sengana, or Sengma,
the westernmost direct outlet of the Niger, and it was
midnight before we steamed across the mouth of " Black-
lands' Nile."
The obvious projection of the land at the base of the
immediate delta, has been called by old travellers, w r hose
eye for beauty appears to have been keen, " Cabo
Eormoso ; " with us it is " Cape Formosa," upon the
principle that the prima donna is ever saluted with Bray-
vo, and geographers differ as to whether it is to the east
or to the west of the river's mouth. The Nun, or Non,
was possibly so called by the Portuguese, who seem
to have denoted by a negative the several ne plus ultras
of their course from Lisbon to Australia.* It was pro-
moted to the dignity of principal outlet within our
memory; the last century and the first quarter of the
present, held four theories touching the course and issue
of the mighty Niger.
1. The ancients,t who, unlike the moderns, made
their chief explorations by land, and not by sea, held
* Cape Non, in Morocco, may be derived from the Arabic Has Nun
of Fish as Jonah is called Zu'l N6n, master of the fish.
f Pliny shows a certain knowledge of the Nigir, Nigeir, or Nigris, ita
divergence into many streams (OCTCTTCS, as Ptolemy says), and its rise,
like the Nile, after tropical rains. Ptolemy adds some remarkable
details, which, if mere coincidences, deserve to be considered marvellous.
250 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
that the Niger flowed from past the centre of the conti-
nent to the eastward, losing itself in a great central
reservoir, like the Caspian Sea, called Wangara, or
Ghana,* where it was lost in the sands or evaporated
by the sun. This theory became popular after the first
journey of Mungo Park, whose very short experience had
only taught him that the course of the Niger was easterly.
This theory had one merit, it anticipated the discovery
of the Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa, con-
cerning which the geographical world is now so curious.
2. Others opined that the Niger terminates in the
White Nile, which D'Anville had then traced to the
south-south-west of Senaar. Mr. Grey Jackson, of
Moroccan celebrity, published the interesting fact, that
in 1780, seventeen native travellers from Tinbuktu
reached Cairo by water the whole way in eighteen
months, passing 1200 towns and cities. Major Rennell,
by a comparison of Mr. (Darfur) Browne's altitudes,
found this to be physically impossible.
3. Mr. George Maxwell, an experienced African trader,
who had lived long at the mouth of the Kongo, and who
had planned a boat exploration of the river, persuaded Mr.
Park contrary to his better judgment, we must hope
that the Zaire, or Kongo river, is the mouth of the
Niger.f Many objections were raised to this theory, e. g.,
that it would make the stream cut the " Kong Moun-
* In Captain Tuckey's map the Zaire, or Kongo, is also made to issue
from a great marsh.
t Park, writing to Sir Joseph Banks, makes his Kasson guide state
BONNY EIVEE TO FEENANDO PO. 251
tains " which it does and give the Niger a course of
4000 miles, or 500 longer than the Amazon. The theory,
however, led to the fatal expeditions of Park and Tuckey.
4. The two latter were pre-eminently English and erro-
neous opinions ; the fourth was French, and correct.
M. Reichard ("Ephemerides Geographiques," Weimar,
1808) was sanctioned in 1813 by the great Malte-
Brun ("Precis de la Geographic Universelle," vol. 4, p.
635), in opining that the Niger falls into the Gulf of
Guinea by a great delta, the Rio del Rey being the
eastern, and the Great Rio Formoso, or Benin,* being
its western, limits. This remarkable hypothesis, right
in the main, whilst wrong in detail, and characterised at
the time as " hazardous and uncertain," was probably
suggested by native testimony, the coasts of the Gulf of
Guinea being well known to French traders. It is hard
indeed to comprehend how an intelligent sailor could
pass by these shores without suspecting them to be the
delta of some great stream. Caillie, the much-abused
discoverer of Tinbuktu, wrote in 1828 these remarkable
words " If I may be permitted to hazard an opinion as
to the course of the River Dhioliba, I should say that it
that the Niger, after passing Ivashna, runs directly to the right hand,
or southwards, and that he was certain that it did not end anywhere
near Kashna or Bornu. This shows a glimmering of light.
* I quote the above memoriter. If correct, the limits of the
Nigrotic delta thus given are totally incorrect. The Rio del Eey is
wholly unconnected with the Niger ; even the nearer Calabar and Cross
rivers do not flow from it. The same is the case with the Benin river :
its source was placed by Mr. Beecroft in the highlands to the westward
of the Niger.
252 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
empties itself by several mouths into the Gulf of
Benin." In 1829 longo intervatto Mr. Macqueen,
after collecting a large amount of evidence on the sub-
iect, recommended a careful examination of the rivers
between the Rio Formoso and Old Calabar, neither of
which, by the bye, are directly connected with the Niger.
I have given below* a summary of northern West
* In 1553, Capt. Thomas Wyndbam, the Portuguese Anes Pinteado,
entered the Benin river.
In 1558, Mr. Thompson reached Tenda by the Gambia, and was
followed there in 1620 by Robert Jobson,
In 1637, Jannequin ascended the Senegal.
In 1670, Paul Imbart attempted Tinbuktu via Morocco.
In 1698, the Sieur de Brue visited Galam on the Senegal.
In 1715, M. Compagnon reached Bambuk vid St. Louis de Senegal.
In 1723, Stables reached Bambuk vid the Gambia ; the same journey
was repeated by Moore in 1731.
In 1742, M. de Flandre reached Bambuk by St. Louis, and he was
followed in 1749 by the celebrated M. Adanson.
In 1748, M. Follier reached Bambuk by the Cape Nun Coast.
In 1785, MM. Sanguier and Brisson made the same journey.
In 1786, M. Ruband reached Galam via St. Louis.
In 1786-7, M. de Beauvois explored Benin and Wari.
In 1787, M. Picard struck Futa Toro vid St. Louis.
In 1791, Major Houghton ascended the Gambia river, and died at
Jarra in Ludamar.
In 1794, Messrs. Yates and Winterbottom reached Timbo by the
Rio Nunez.
In 1795-7, Mungo Park's first journey to Silla on the Joliba or
Kwara river.
In 1804, Mr. Nicholls died in the interior of Old Calabar.
In 1805, Mungo Park's second expedition : all his 44 companions,
including Lieut. Martyn, and Messrs. Anderson and Scott, died.
In 1809, M. Roentgen reached Busa vid Mogador.
In 1810, Robert Adams, alias Benjamin Rose, an American, was
carried prisoner to Tinbuktu.
BONNY RIVEE TO FERNANDO PO. 253
African, including Nigritic, exploration, brought down
to the present date. The reader may see, by casting his
In 1815, Mr. James Riley, another American, master and supercargo
of the brig "Commerce," reached Tinbuktu by the western coast.
In 1816, Capt. Tuckey, R.N., accompanied by Lieut. Hawkins, Mr.
Fitzmaurice, master and surveyor, Dr. McKerrow, with petty officers
and marines, besides supernumeraries ; Professor Smith, botanist ; Mr.
Cranch, zoologist ; Mr. Tudor, anatomist ; and Mr. Lockhart, gar-
dener ; visited the lower Kongo ; of his 54 white men, a party of 30
set out on the land journey beyond the cataracts, and of these only
nine returned home.
In 1817, Major Peddle and Capt. Campbell reached Kakondi via the
Nunez river.
In 1817, M. Bandia reached Panjikot vid Egypt.
In 1817, P. Rouzie travelled into the interior.
In 1818, M. Mollieu reached Timbo vid St. Lotus.
In 1818-19, Capt. Gray, Royal African Corps, reached Bulibani, the
capital of Bondu.
In 1819, M. Dochard reached Yamina vid the Gambia.
In 1819, Mr. Bowdich visited Kumasi in Ashantee.
In 1820, M. Cachelot reached Wad Nun by the west coast of Africa.
In 1822, Major Laing reached Falaba vid Sierra Leone.
In 1822-5, Major Denham and Lieut. Clapperton explored Mandara
and Sokotu of the Sudan, losing Dr. Oudney and other Europeans.
In 1825-6, Captains Clapperton and Peace and Dr. Morrison lost
their lives in penetrating from the Bight of Benin ; Richard Lander
being the sole white survivor.
In 1827-8, Ren6 Caillie visited Tinbuktu and returned vid Morocco,
and in the same year Major Laing was murdered on his way from
Tinbuktu.
In 1830-1, Richard and John Lander entered Africa vid Badagry,
and discovered the embouchure of the Niger.
In 1832-4, the first, or Liverpool merchants' expedition, under the
late Messrs. Laird and Oldfield, and accompanied by Richard Lander,
ascended the Kwara to Rabba, and the Binue (Chadda) to Dagbo. Of
the 49 European crew in the steamers Qworra and Alberkah the latter
is Anglo- Arabic for a blessing only nine lived to return. Richard
Lander was shot with a bullet in the groin, by some people of Anjama,
254 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
eye upon the map, that discovery has but begun. At
present, as in Arctic travelling, there is a lull, but it cer-
in the Oru country, as he was descending the river in a canoe full of
cowries, and died at Clarence, Fernando Po.
In 1836, 1840, and 1845, the late Mr. Beecroft, under Mr. Jamieson
of Liverpool, ascended in the "Ethiope" the Benin, Wari, Niger, Old
Calabar, and Cross rivers : he reached within 30 miles of this side of
Busa.
In 1841, the Government expedition under Captain the late Admiral
H. D. Trotter, in the "Albert," and Commander W. Allen in the
*' Wilberforce," accompanied by the "Soudan," Commander B. Allen>
ascended to Egga, 150 miles above the confluence, losing in 64 days (the
" Soudan " remained only 40) 48 out of 145 white men. The late Mr.
Consul Beecroft ran up the river in the "Ethiope," and succeeded in
saving the "Albert," conveying her to Fernando Po.
In 1845, the late Mr. Duncan visited Abomey.
In 1852, the African Steam-Ship Company was formed, and in 1856-
57 an intercolonial steamer was sent to promote the establishment of a
regular steam communication between Fernando Po and the confluence
of the Kwara and Binue rivers.
In 1854, the Chadda mixed expedition, sent by the late Mr. M.
Laird, who received 5000Z. from the Admiralty for the expenses of the
voyage, under Dr. Baikie, R.N., the senior Government officer after the
death of Mr. Consul Beecroft, Mr. D. J. May, master R.N., Dr. Hutch-
inson, Mr. Taylor, afterwards vice-consul at Abeokuta, representing
Mr. Laird (the reader has probably perused Dr. Baikie's "Journal"),
explored in the little steamer "Pleiad," built by Mr. J. Laird,
on the lines of the yacht " America" 150 miles of virgin ground, and
remained in the river 118 days, with 54 Europeans, of whom not a man
died ; a new era in African exploration.
In August, 1857, the Niger mixed expedition, missionary, scientific,
naval, and commercial, began under Dr. Baikie, Mr, D. J. May, mas-
ter, Lieut. Glover, Dr. Davis, Mr. Barter, botanist (dead), and Mr.
Dalton, zoologist. In opposition to this Government party was Mr.
Laird's commercial venture, Captain Alexander Grant (died at Benin),
supercargo, Mr. Howard (dead), purser, and Dr. Berwick. The "Day
Spring," which carried them, was lost on a ledge near the Jebba rock,
16 miles above Rabba. Her commander, by means of his steward,
BONNY EIVER TO FEENANDO PO. 255
tainly will not last. The Niger, as has been M r ell
observed, is not a lottery in which men may win for-
Selim Agha, returned overland to Lagos in February, 1858, recruited
outfit, and once more made the camp.
In 1858, the African Steam-Ship Company's ship "Sunbeam," Capt.
Fairweather, went to Fernando Po. Lieut. Glover made a second over-
land journey to Lagos, and finding the ship to draw nine feet of water,
despaired, and once more returned to the camp. The "Sunbeam" was
successfully taken up to Rabba, in July, 1858, by Capt. Fairweather and
Mr. May, master R.N., an excellent officer. At the end of September,
1858, came out the African Steam-Ship "Rainbow," Capt. M'Nivan, and
the latter returning home, she was commanded by Capt. Walker, whose
interesting narrative may be found in the Blue Book of 1861.
In April, 1859, Dr. Baikie and Mr. Baiter, followed during the next
month by Mr. Dalton, Lieut. Glover, and Selim Agha, rode up to
Rabba, and descended the Niger in the "Rainbow" and the "Sun.
beam " to the Confluence, where Dr. Baikie has remained ever since.
In Nov. 1859, Lieut. Glover, during the "battle of the depart-
ments," left the Niger, having "differed in opinion" with, or been
differed with by, every other in the river.
In 1860, Mr. Macgregor Laird, the main-spring of the Niger move-
ment, died ; he had not reaped where he had sown, and his executors
have, it is said, resolved to end the present expedition before the spring
of the year 1862. Meanwhile there is little doing. Dr. Baikie is
still at the confluence, and his only white companion, Mr. Dalton, was
preparing to return to England ; the "Sunbeam," Capt. Walker, was
also about to leave; H.M.S. "Espoir," Commander Douglas, is said
to be hard and fast near Tuesday Island, about 80 miles from the
mouth, and on dit H.M.S. " Bloodhound," Lieut. -Commanding Dolben,
though drawing 10 feet of water, will be sent up with supplies for her.
It is to be hoped that Dr. Baikie will not remain unsupported.
Knowingly or unknowingly he has adopted the true plan of civilising
Africa, by abandoning the deleterious and impracticable coast to mis-
sionaries, and by settling in the interior. He has collected a large
town around him, and with a constitution which seems proof against
any hardship, privation, or fatigue, he remains there, maturing fresh
plans for opening up the African interior.
Without entering into lengthy details touching the produce of the
256 WANDEEINaS IN WEST AFRICA.
tunes, but a field of labour in which they may earn
them. It is directly connected with the twenty or thirty
Nigerian regions, I may be allowed to quote the following list of the
Central and Western African articles sent by him and others to the
Exhibition of 1862, extracted from the Catalogue :
AFRICA, CENTRAL.
Under Staircase, near Central Entrance to Horticultural Gardens.
Baikie, Dr. W. Balfour, R.N.
I, 2. Striped men's cloth, from Hausa.
3, 4. Cloth made of fibres of the wine-palm and cotton, from the
right bank of Kwarra.
5. A tobe, poorest quality, made in Nupe.
6. A tobe of finer quality.
7. A white tobe with plaits, from Nupe.
8. Striped trowsers, Nupe or Hausa make.
9. 10. Common cloth, for women from Bonu.
II. A woman's wrapper, made in Nupe.
12. A woman's wrapper, from Nupe.
13. A woman's wrapper, not made up, called " Locust's tooth."
14. A wrapper containing red silk, called Maizha'n baki, or "red
mouth."
15. An inferior wrapper, from Nupe.
16. Blue and white cloth, from Nupe.
17. 18. Cloth made in Yoruba.
19, 20. Cloths from Nupe,
2125. Cloths from Yoruba.
26. Small cloth for girls, from Nupe.
27. Bag from Onitsha.
28. Mat, from right bank of Kwarra.
29. Tozoli (sulphuret of lead), applied to the eyelids.
30. Man's wrapper, from Ki, in Bonu.
32. Woman's head-tie, or alfuta, from Nupe.
33. Bags for gunpowder, from Onitsha.
34. 35. A calabash and ladle.
37. Red silk, or " Al harini," of Hausa.
38. Sword hangings, or " Amila," made at Kano, in Hausa.
39. Siliya, or red silk cord, from Kano.
40. Rope, from Onitsha.
41. 42. Bags.
SONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 257
millions of people in the Sudan ; the centres of trade
are upon the stream, yet the long and terrible caravan
43. White cloth, or fari, made in Nupe and Hausa.
44. White cloth, from below the confluence.
45. A white tobe, from Nupe.
46. Four calabashes, for pepper, &c.
47. A small calabash and lid, for food.
48. 49. Pinnae of leaves of the wine-palm, dried and used for
thatching.
50. Fruit of a leguminous plant, which buries its fruit like Ara-
chis hypoycea.
51. Grass cloth, of wine palm.
52. Two cloths, from Okwani.
53. White cloth, from below the confluence.
54. White perforated cloth, from the Ibo country.
55. Mats from Onitsha.
56. Large man's wrapper, from Nupe.
1. A white mat of leaves of the fan-palm, from Bonu.
2. Mats of the fan-palm, from Bonu. Fan -palm mats, called guva,
or, "Elephant mats."
3. Fine mats and hats, of leaves of the Phcenix spinosa, dyed.
Circular mats of the same material, used by chiefs, from Nupe.
AFRICA, WESTKBN.
Northern Courts, under Staircase, near Central Entrance to Horti-
cultural Gardens.
Commercial Association of Abeokuta.
1. Oils : Of beni seed, obtained by fermentation and boiling. 2. Of
Egusi, from wild melon seed. 3. Of palm, for home consumption ; 4.
for exportation, obtained by beating, pressing, and boiling the fruit.
6, 7. Of palm nut, for home consumption ; 6. for exportation. 11.
Shea butter. 10. Egusi, or wild melon, fruit. 8. Beni seed. 9. Fruit
of the Shea butter tree.
1. White cotton thread ; 2. Dyed ; 3. Blue. 4. Fine spun cotton.
5. Coarse strong spun cotton, called "Akase." 6. Akase cotton,
cleaned and bowed ; 7. In seed. 8. Seed itself of Akase cotton. 9,
10. Ordinary native cotton. 11, 12, 13. Ordinary green, black,
and brown seeded cottons. 14. Silk cotton. 16. Country rope of bark.
VOL. II. S
258 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
march of four months still supplies articles more cheaply
than we can afford to sell them, via the Niger. Hitherto
all has been mismanagement. Government favoured the
African Steam-ship Company, which excited the jealousy
17. Palm fibre. 18. Red dyed native silk, from Illorin. 20. Fibre used
for native sponge. 23, 24, 25. Native silk, from a hairy silk-worm at
Abeokuta. 26. Leaves of the cotton tree. 27. Pine-apple fibre. 29.
Bow-string fibre. 30. Jute.
15. Long black pepper. 22. Senna. 21. A sample of native anti-
mony, from Illorin.
Sundry native manufactures.
N.B. Cotton is obtainable in any quantity, and is now grown
extensively throughout the Yoruba country, especially to the east and
north. Great quantities of cotton cloths, of a strong texture, are
annually made, finding their way to the Brazils, and into the far
interior. To obtain a largely increased supply of cotton, it is only
necessary to open roads, and bring money to the market. Upwards of
2000 bales have been exported this year, and the quantity would have
been doubled or trebled if the country had been at peace . The present
price is 4Jd. per Ib. The other fibres are not at present made for
exportation, though, doubtless, some of them jute, for instance
frould be, if in demand. Of the native manufacture, the grass cloths,
made from palm fibre, and the cotton cloths, are most prominent.
Very nice leather work is done. The art of dyeing Morocco leather
iifferent colours has been introduced from the interior. Indigo is
ilmost the only dye which can be obtained in considerable quantities.
The natives manufacture all their own iron implements, and the
quality of the metal is considered good.
2. McWilliam, the late Dr. C. B. 1. Cloth, from the Confluence of
the Niger and Tchadda. 2. Eaw silk from Egga. 3. Cotton from
the confluence. 4. Fishing spear, used by the natives of Kakunda.
5. Spoons, from Gori market. 6. A curved horn for holding galena,
used to paint the eyelids. 7. Cloths, from towns on the Gambia. 8.
Grass mat, from Angola. 9. Grass mat, from Binguela.
3, Walker, R. B. Gaboon. A collection of mats, fibres, commercial
products, skins, native arms, musical instruments, &c., of the Ba Faa
tribes.
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 259
of others, especially the traders of the Brass river, who
urged the villagers in the lower course to acts of direct
hostility. The last 40(W. a year, however, have been
granted, and a much larger subsidy, say 9000/. or
10,000, should take its place. Mixed expeditions have
been sent out only to fail : where naval officers, mission-
aries, and mercantile men are all urging their several
interests, success can hardly be expected. The quarrels
between the members of the last expedition completely
crippled it : moreover, it was managed on Exeter Hall
principles. Captain Trotter frightened his sailors to
death by chalking up, it is said, "PREPARE TO MEET
THY GOD," and similar consolatory recipes, in the
largest letters, all about the ship. The next exploration
allowed the Krumen to rob what they pleased, and the
lieutenant who managed nav^l matters is said to have
encouraged slaves to desert from their masters a pro-
ceeding sufficient to account for any failure,
We shall never drop the Niger : the main artery of
Western Africa north of the Line must not be neglected.
All agree that it will pay pounds, where pence are now
collected, though people differ as to the means of making
it pay. After many a long " talk " with those whose
opinions are worth most, I propound the following as
the directest way of opening up the stream. A large
armed hulk, manned by Krumen, under military or naval
law, and carrying an outfit like that sent to the Brass
river, would be stationed at Akassa, within the Nun
bar. The next measure would be to make treaties with
260 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
the hostile chiefs of the delta, settling a certain Comey*
upon them : the want of this is the principal cause of
disturbances. The great requisite would be a comman-
der ready to act with energy, and not " mickonary ;"
two gunboats would be safer, in case of grounding, than
one, and they should not enter the river later than the
first of June. After making or forcing a peace, postal
and intercolonial steamers might begin plying; they
should visit the river every month or six weeks, and
steam as high as the Confluence, where they could run all
the year round, if built after the American fashion, flat-
bottomed, drawing two to three feet, with stern wheels,
and with walking-beam engines ; the furnaces should be
able to burn wood, the bulwarks high and musket-
proof, and the armament wall-pieces, and a few culverias.
After the steamers would come depots and trading-
houses, at the five following points :
1. Anjama, at the head of the lower delta.
2. Aboh, at the head of the upper delta.
3. Oricha, midway between the sea and the Confluence.
4. Idda, between the Onicha and the Confluence.
5. Ibegbe, or the Confluence of the Kwara and Binue.
Thus, and thus only, can considerable collections of
cotton be made upon the Niger ; and thus the traffic of
the Great Artery, which injured, it is to be feared, the
fortunes of the intrepid explorer, will, after a few years,
become of importance to England.
On the morning of the 25th September I inspected,
en passant, what is supposed to be the " Beautiful Cape/'
SONNY EIVEE TO FERNANDO PO. 261
To the leeward, or eastward, is " Cape Filana," by the
English called Palm Point, a fine clump of feathery trees
springing from a thin line of the blondest sand. Here
was the old Portuguese town of Akassa, long since in
ruins : it is said that a tomb was lately found there,
bearing the date A.D. 1635. If this be the case, the
Portuguese must have known the upper Niger centuries
before we did, and must have kept it a mystery as pro-
found as the Kongo is in the year of grace 1861. Point
Trotter, a blue line of tree-clad bluff, rises within Filana,
and opposite the latter, or to the westward, is Cape Nun,
which we know as " West Point." The bar is said to be
one of the best on this coast : it has shifted, however,
since the date of the last chart.
We are now fairly inside the Bight of Biafra, or
Biaffra, an English corruption from the Portuguese Rio
de Maffras, a name which they gave to one of the rivers.
It is the innermost part of the Guinea Gulf, extending
from Cape Formoso, or the Delta of the Niger, in N. lat.
4 16' 17" to Cape St. John, in N. lat. 1 9' 7". A
straight line, uniting both these promontories, and
passing near Prince's Island, would measure about 450
miles along the coast about 650. It is divided into two
very distinct sections by the mass of mountains called
the Camaroons. The country to the north of that
glorious pile is a false coast, a succession of continental
islands and land in a state of formation. The expanse
of mud and mangrove forms a fit habitation for the
iguana and crocodile, with flats and fetid lagoons haunted
262 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
by crabs and craw-fish ; whilst a few villages, at long
intervals, lurk at the bottom of blind channels and tidal
inlets, where they can preserve themselves by fight or
flight. The creeks and rivers, outspread as a network
over the mass of dense and rotten vegetation, are kept
in loco by the strong and steady tides which dredge the
beds without sweeping away the mangroves that hedge
them in. A glance shows you that all around is literally
a young country, which, perhaps, in ages to be may con-
stitute a Nigrotic empire. To the south, beginning even
at the Camaroons river, there is a change : the banks
are high and clayey, the palm-oil tree (Elseis Guineen-
sis) becomes rarer, yielding in traffic to ivory, and
the people are, though wilder, a finer race than those
of the Delta. This gradual improvement continues
through the Gaboon river to Angola, where provisions
are procurable, horses will live, and human life has some
enjoyment. The southern section of the Bight of Biafra
contains, also, two little coves, known in charts as the
Bights of Pannavia and Bata; the words, however, are
now little used. Pannavia lies to the north of the
Batanga country, whose river, the Elobe, forms its
southern extremity. The Bight of Bata is between the
Campo and the Benito rivers ; it is the seat of those
remarkable foundations the Seven Hills or Sisters.
Of the twenty-five streams which discharge themselves
into this great Bight, there are six Oil Rivers viz., the
Nun, or Niger, the New Calabar, Bonny, Old Calabar,
Camaroons, and Malimba : those to the south are visited
EONNY EIVEE TO FERNANDO PO. 263
for ivory, gum-elastic, and timber, especially ebony,
African cedar, and mahogany, cam-wood and dye-wood.
As yet nothing is known of the interior.
At 7 A.M. on the 25th September we found ourselves
off the Brass river.* In this part of the coast every
stream appears to have received, from its christeners
Diego Cam, or Fernao de Poo as many names as that
Portuguese hidalgo to whom, as the old Spanish story
relates, the innkeeper refused to open his gates, stating
that he could not accommodate so many people. The
Brass is called Second River, because in old times ships
bound for the New Calabar and Bonny estuary used to
coast down the six rivers, along the 60 to 70 miles east-
ward from the Nun or Niger. It is also known to the
English as St. John ; to the Portuguese as Hio Beuto; and
some books call it the Oddy, Fonsoady, and Malfonsa.
The land is mangrove, the sky cloudy nimbus and
cumulus disposed meridionally, as they love to be in the
tropics, necking patches of a pale milk-and-water blue
and the dangerous bar chafes and seethes across a dwarf
indent, whose bluff and wooded banks open like portals
into the azure region within. The next, passed at almost
an equal distance ten to eleven miles with surprising
regularity of shelve, one fathom of depth representing
one mile of distance off shore, is the St. Nicholas, Filana
or Tilana, Sempta or Lempta,f Juan Diaz, or Third
* It was so called from the then favourite object of traffic "Nep-
tunes " or brass pans.
t Some apply the last two names to the Fourth River, the Santa
Barbara.
264 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
River; its double bar, which breaks right across, was
afterwards crossed by the Consul and Lieutenant Dol-
ben, H.M.S. " Bloodhound/' under direction of the late
Captain Alexander Grant; they found this stream to
be a branch of the Brass river, and there is a well-
known creek which threading the " Mosquito Country/'
as it is called, leads into the New Calabar. Leaving the
St. Nicholas, whose coast projects somewhat seawards,
we made the broad Santa Barbara, Meas, or Fourth
Eiver, another fine study of a bar. The Consul and
Lieutenant Dolben were nearly swamped in an attempt to
cross it, but escaped, much to the regret of certain gentry
on board H. M. S. "Bloodhound," who would willingly
have quitted the Bights and the Oil Rivers for the
" South Coast Station."
It was almost too far to distinguish the gap
of the half-way stream, Rio San Bartolomeo, or the
Fifth River. The glass, however, showed us from the
southwards an island in mid-channel, formed by two
narrow arms ; and the bar was seen bursting with rollers,
whose "wall-like sides and hairy heads" looked peculiarly
unprepossessing. Then came the Rio Sombreiro, also
called the Rio dos Tres Irmaos, of the Three Brothers
and Sixth River : the first name is derived from a patch of
trees on the bluff western entrance, resembling a priest's
shovel-hat ; they have of course disappeared long ago.
Another seven miles took us to our present destination,
the broad estuary of the New Calabar, or Kalabar, alias
Rio Real, alias Calbarine, alias Neue Calborgh, alias.
BONNY EIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 265
Calbary.* The brother stream, Bonny, or Grand Bonny,
is at least as rich in nomenclature. f Its present popular
English name is doubtless derived through the native
word " Obani." The contrast between name and nature
must have rendered the easy corruption a fashionable
pleasantry nothing can be more categorically unbonny
and possibly the foul sky, fouler water, and foulest
land, may have reminded some irate Scotchman of Bonny
Dundee, thereby giving so debonnaire a sound to so
ungodly a hole. " Grand " it is in abominations, moral
and physical.
The approach to the Bonny from the west is denoted
by Fouche, or Foche, Gap, a deep indentation in the
wooded seabank, three miles to westward of the estuary.
Then comes the village and the Point Fouche. Barbot
calls the former Foko, and says that the Dutch named it
" Wyndorp," on account of its abundance of palm wine :
he places it on an island and numbers 309 houses. Dr.
Daniell reckons above 300 souls, pilots and fishermen.
They are under King Amakree, of New Calabar (from
* The name is said to date from almost two centuries back, when one
of the Ephraim Duke family from old Calabar settled here.
t Barbot, 1678-1 706, calls it Bandy, or Great Bandy river. The
people's own word is Okoloma ; the Ibos call it Obani, Ibani, and
Okoloba ; and the Abo tribe of Ibos call it Osiminika.
All is changed since 1826, when H. M. S. ' ' Barracouta " surveyed
it. Sualo Island, east of New Calabar mouth, is now covered with
trees, and is growing to be part of the main land. Monkey Creek and
Young Town are not laid down at all ; Breaker Island is laid down as
a mere shoal it is now overgrown with vegetation, and is rapidly
rising from the sea.
266 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
whose rule, however, they would willingly escape), and
they want a lesson, as do most of the negroes in these
parts; but, ten to fifteen years ago, the "Juju-king"
Awanta was deported to Ascension Island for firing
upon ships' boats. "We passed the mouth of the New
Calabar, about one mile broad, and divided from the
Bonny by the Middle Bank, or Calabar Flat. "We then
crossed over, passing by Breaker Island in the centre
to near Rough Corner, the east end of the estuary :
Barbot places his Bandy Point four leagues east of
Fouche Point ; it is usually reckoned seven miles across.
The proper Bonny mouth is two to three miles broad,
bounded by Rough Corner, which from its clump of
trees the Portuguese called Fanal, or the Light-
house, and Breaker Island, a low sandy bushy patch,
distinctly above high water, and commanding a fine view
of the outer bar. Portuguese Channel and Man-of-"War
Channel being unbuoyed, are left to starboard ; they are
never used by the mail steamers. There are three chief
banks, the Western, the Baleur, connected by a sandpit
with the former, and separated by deep water from the
third or Portuguese Bank. The shifting of the swash-
ways and channels makes this river, even with the best of
lead and look-out, a place of cold perspiration to ship-
owners ; and so it will remain, until some acute oificial
fines the negroes 100 puncheons, and buoys the entrance.
The A. S. S. Company is most unwise in stationing its
large steamers within this river, whose adit presents more
dangers than all the rest of the voyage together, whilst
ONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 267
the salt water affects the ships' bottoms, and materially
interferes with their rate of progress.
At 1 P.M., when we prepared to run in, the amphi-
theatre of bar and breakers roaring, foaming, and burst-
ing everywhere ahead of us, and on both sides looked
uncommonly threatening. We followed, however, the
usual rule, avoided the Baleur bank, by keeping Peter For-
tis, or Peterside, a village on the river's right bank, a sail's
breadth open from Juju Point, a projection of the left
shore. The buoys were in good order ; we left the outer
one on our left, the "Red JSun" and the "Black Can"
a little bucket-like affair on our right, and we looked
vainly for the Black Beacon of the charts. We carried
five feet of water clear over the outer bar, which is not
so long as that of Lagos ; and the inner, here, as in all
other African rivers, presents no terrors. Rough Corner
is known by an unwhitewashed framework, representing
the fanal. A native house or two subsequently added
represent embryo defences against possible Yankee pirates.
When troubles with America M r ere expected, the super-
cargoes proposed raising a battery at Eough Corner, to
command the run in; the clear way was, however,
nearly three miles broad, and would require at least a
floating battery. The bar was not unduly violent : per-
haps the annual little girl had just been sacrificed to it.*
Behind the low, jagged line of trees, called Breaker Island*
* According to Dr. Madden (Parliamentary Report, 1842), this bar-
barous custom was kept up as late as 1840, and it is more than probable
that the sacrifice is still privately performed.
268 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
a giant cloud, purple with wrath, usurped one quarter of
the heavens, and threatened trouble.
The Bonny fleet then drew in sight, tall ships that are
pleasant to look at little profitable, however and seven-
teen in number. There were seven or eight hulks, four
of them beached, all whitewashed and thickly thatched
over ; the most conspicuous was the " William Money,"
an old Indiaman, teak -built and Dutch-like ; she is about
seventy years old, and now acts coal-hulk to the A. S. S.
Company. The merchantmen rode high up the stream ;
lower down, in the men-of-war anchorage, lay a single
paddle-wheel,which proved to be H. M. S. "Bloodhound,"
Lieut.-Commanding Dolben, bound for the Niger, with a
cargo of two score black missionaries, male and female,
who managed to oust him from his cabin, and to beg
provisions till he had not the heart to refuse. As we
passed Rough Corner on our starboard side we remarked
the excessive deuseness of the bush ; near the framework
of whitewashed scantling that acts landmark, is a small
platform, where it is said sporting skippers have spent the
night, waiting for leopards, here called " tigers." Euro-
pean sailors were seen perambulating the sands ; it was
low tide then; at the flow this "marine parade" is under
water, and decks form the only promenade. Within
Hough Corner, and separated by a mile of bend, or
baylet, lies Juju Point the white man's grave before the
cemetery was removed to the former place : now it is oc-
cupied by witch houses and holy trees. From this point
three giants of the forest, rising side by side, mark the
BONNY EIVEE TO FERNANDO PO. 269
site of Bonny Town one smells it, however. Traces
of old barracoons are shown on the other side of the
creek, which leads up to Juju Town; occasionally a
ship's gig, with a white face in the stern, and six Krumen
rowing, may be seen stealing along like cat on house-
top that way. " The sex " is not fetish at Juju Town,
and King Jack is a &on enfant, a Gunjisk i tildi, or
" Golden Sparrow," as the Persians call it. A little
beyond this lies Srnoke Town, so called from the curls of
vapour that alone denote its existence ; there were, how-
ever, sundry palms, everywhere in Africa the symbol of
population. On the other side of the broad channel is a
low dark bank of vegetation, " Deadman's Island/' thus
grimly called from the feud between the Bonny people and
the New Calabars. We pass in succession Tallifer (1000
souls), half hidden by bush; Fishtown, and the village
of Peter Portis, the latter opposite the Bonny creek.
But, where is Bonny itself? The experts reply by
pointing to a few rugged wash-houses on the beach, and
by telling you that the town, being in a hollow, shows
only the top of its smoke to the river.
Prom the sixteenth century almost to the present day,
Bonny was the great slave market of the Bights, seldom
exporting less than 16,000 souls a year. According to
the philanthropic Clarkson (" History of the Abolition
of the Slave-Trade "), this river and Old Calabar
exported as many " contrabands " as all the, rest of the
coast together. Hence the " Eboe " (Ibo) woman of
the United States. This lasted till 1832, when it came
270 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
abruptly to an end; from 1825 it had begun to
decline. There are still men on the river who can re-
member the blockade of boats at the mouth, and tell with
gusto how the jolly slavers often managed to make a
run. The fate of Bonny is now changed. The old slave
river has now become the great centre of the palm-oil
trade, seldom exporting less than 16,000, and some-
times 18,000, tons per annum, or nearly three-quarters
of a million of pounds sterling, to be divided amongst
ten or twelve houses.*
An old collier-like craft, painfully bluff, looked sadly
misplaced near the noble Bonny fleet. She proved to
be the brig " Bewley," Captain Le Marquand (Jersey
man), of 184 tons new register, twenty -eight years old,
and hardly worth 400. Messrs. Gammon, Sons, and
Carter, coal merchants at Ratcliffe, chartered her, with a
crew of twelve articled seamen, for the snug sum of
200 per mensem receiving 900 in advance to the
King Pimento of these Cannibal Lands, who has come
to his own again. On the 18th August, 1861, his
Majesty reached the river, without a poet-laureate, but
accompanied by nine men a premier, a secretary, an
assistant-secretary, three clerks, and one doctor, who,
before leaving home, expressly stipulated that he was to
" hold his proper position at court," a farmer to trim
mangroves, and a valet for the royal person. The
salaries varied from 600 a-year, plus 15 for naval
* The Bonny puncheon is thirty-eight inches in head, and forty-two
in stern, and contains 240 gallons.
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 271
uniforms, to 60, and some of these imprudent green-
horns were men with families at home, and perhaps in
want. I regret to say that there were two English-
women, Mrs. Wood, the gardener's wife, who was to
act schoolmistress, and " Miss Mary," a servant girl,
who became maid-of-honour to Eleanor, alias Allaputa
Queen Pimento. The suite, on seeing the real state of
affairs, became highly indignant ; they were half-starved
on board, and when they reached the unbonny
river, the store of doubloons, supposed to be concealed,
was not forthcoming ; nor was the sum of 12,000, owed
by the King of Calabar, paid. One of them was too
glad to compromise a debt of 120 on the receipt of
half-a-sovereign, the only specie in the royal exchequer.
The captain wanted 1829, arrears of pay, and retained
the king's kit, which royalty valued at 1676, the last
figure removed would probably be nearer truth. Mean-
while there was a scene on board the " Bewley " that
would hardly bear describing; the less said about the
"inner life of an African king," and his suite also, the
better.
About eighty or ninety years ago, an Ibo chief settled
with his slaves on the Bonny river. This Opubo, or
Obullo, the " Great Man," was grandfather of the present
chief : his son took the name of Pepper, which he now
spells with a change, and married a woman from the
Abilli (Billa) country, west of the New Calabar river.
Their progeny, the "king," in the African accepta-
tion of the word, also espoused a bush-woman. He
272 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
is one of the three free men in this part of the river,
the others being Ben Pepple, a half -idiot, and our
friend Jack Brown, of Juju Town ; this is a small pro-
portion to about 9000 serviles, of whom some few are
" Bonny free," but none "proper free."* This popu-
lation of Ibo slaves speaks the Okoloma, or Bonny
language; but all the slave "gentlemen" know a kind
of English. On the 21st November, 1848, he made a
treaty for the suppression of slavery with Captain Eden,
of Her Majesty's ship " Amphitrite," for an annual pre-
sent of $2000 till 1854. In 1853 a stroke of paralysis,
induced by over-indulgence, crippled King Pimento's
right side, and from this hemiplegia he has never
recovered. Two of his men, Ishakko, alias Fred
Pepple, and Yanibu, were then appointed as chiefs and
regents. On the 23rd January, 1854, Mr. Consul
Beecroft, at the request of all the native chiefs and
traders, deposed his Majesty, who was ruining the river
by his wars with Calabar, and substituted for him
Prince Dappa, or Dapho, son of Pimento's elder brother,
and therefore rightful heir to the stool. Pepple was
carried to Fernando Po, and his protector died there.
At last it was resolved by Commodore Adams and Mr.
Acting-Consul Lynslager to send the king, with Alla-
puta, his wife, and his family, to Ascension Island. On
the 7th of December, however, he fled into the bush
* The population of Bonny is calculated to be 5000 to 6000 ; of
Juju Town, 1500 ; Tallifer, 1000 ; and the rest are less. New Calabar
numbers some 4000.
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 273
a la Charles, and sat under two large trees surrounded
by bushwood. The royal oak, however, was not here,
and Pimento was sent off the next day on board Her
Majesty's ship " Pluto," Commander Clavering, begging
hard that if he died his body might be headed up in a
cask of rum, and sent to lie near his fathers. Since
that time he has enjoyed the memory of Ascension,
which he has learned to call his St. Helena.
Prince Dapho died 13th August, 1855, surgeons say
of iuter-susceptio, others of poison, administered by
friends of the ex-king. Fred Pepple and Yanibu were
saved with difficulty from the fury of the mob by Cap-
tain Witt, of the " Ferozepore," when a shocking
massacre commenced; 600 to 700 friends of the "king"
were murdered; many blew themselves up; the white
man's house used by the court of equity, and also as
a chapel was razed to the ground, and trade was
stopped by the people, because the supposed poisoners
were carried by Mr. Acting-Consul Lynslager to Fer-
nando Po. On the 1st September, 1855, the same
official visiting the river in Her Majesty's ship
" Philomel," Commander Skene, appointed four regents,
viz., Annie (alias llola) Pepple, Captain Hart (alias
Affo Dappa ?), Ada Allison,* and Manilla Pepple.
* These ridiculous names are taken from English ships. The slave
chiefs have all their own native names, e.g., Manilla Pepple is known
as Erinashaboo. All were the property of old King Pepple, who, when
dying, appointed Annie Tepple as guardian of his son's wealth. He
fought with Manilla Pepple, was beaten, took to drink, and died.
His son is the present Annie Pepple.
YOL. II. T
274 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Meanwhile, King Pimento was so persevering a
petitioner that he was allowed, in November, 1855, to
quit Ascension for S'a Leone, where he arrived some
time in 1856. After another bout of correspondence he
reached London in 1857 ; there he resided four years,
was baptised, and became a temperance man, sitting
under the great George Cruikshank. He abandoned
his favourite dish, a boy's hand-palms, and was admitted
to the Upper House, where doubtless he graced les
nobles lords as much as Sir Jung Bahadur does the
Christian Knights of the Bath. He became very pious;
he begged 20,000 to raise a missionary establishment
the traders declare it is the one thing wanted for total
ruin to the river, and he roughed it in champagne and
sherry. The application for a mission was celebrated by
a missionary periodical in some fearful verse, beginning
with
" Oh, who shall succour Benny's King ? "
lie seemed to me, however, to have a little neglected his
English. The answer to my question touching her
sable majesty's health, was "He lib \" meaning thank
you, she is quite well.
Pimento, permitted to return home, arrived in the
Bonny river on the 18th of August. Instead of land-
ing at once, as expected, he lingered coward-like on
board till the 15th of October, although several of the
supercargoes had offered to accompany him. Instead of
going to the Juju-House, it fell, by-the-by, a terrible
bad omen, on the day of his disembarkation he used
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO, 275-
to send for supercargoes to read the Scriptures to him.
By way of contrast, he despatched his assistant-secretary
and chief clerk, in naval uniforms, swords included, to
invite the four regents and chiefs on board the " Bewley."
The influential slave, Ilola, alias Annie Pepple, whose
father was a confidential chattel of the former king,
whose body is buried in his house, and Affo Dappa,
head slave to the late Prince Dapho, and one of the
four regents, steadily refused.
After two or three meetings, King Pimento sent his
ship's captain, with the same gentlemen one of these
had been twenty-eight days in Paris, vainly trying to ne-
gotiate a French treaty armed with revolvers, to fetch
Ilola by force, if necessary. Seven of the Manillas
were combined against Pimento, about seventeen for
him, and by striking this blow at Ilola, all would
have been brought round. The white men went to the
black man's house, and offered a document for signature,
which was refused. Presently a pistol dropped out of a
certain pocket. About fifty negroes had assembled, but
Ilola quietly promising to return, left the house and
quitted the town. He had hemiplegia of the left side
shortly afterwards, and died, probably poisoned.
When King Pimento landed, all his whites were dis-
missed. The unhappy doctor, who had stipulated about
his "position at Court," was only too glad to take a free
passage to Fernando Po, and his majesty was with
difficulty persuaded to pay the fare. The supercargoes
most kindly contributed 10 to remove the unfortunate
T 2
276 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
Englishwomen from the pollution of such a position.
" Miss Mary " left in October, on board the " Golden
Age." Mr. "Wood and his wife followed a month after-
wards, in the " Star of the Sea," and the premier, the
head secretary, and the last of the clerks disappeared
in December. The wretched valet was the only one per-
manently left, a rosy-faced English William ; he had died
of semi-starvation and discomfort. Yet Pimento has done
nothing towards recovering power. Perhaps it is better
he should not ; he has learned a trick or two in Europe,
and he only awaits his opportunity ; he threatens with
the lawyer or the missionary on all occasions. He
lately asked permission to establish a consul for Bonny
in London, at a salary of 500<. : and he gave as a reason
for the indulgence, that he had always permitted Her
British Majesty's consul to visit his dominions in
the Bights of Benin and Biafra. This is not bad for an
individual who dares not stir a cannon shot from his
townlet, and whose name and fame amongst his fellow
chiefs are about equal to the area of his territories. Of
course the strings of this poor old black puppet are
pulled by gentlemen " quifont T Industrie " nearer home.
The African Steam Ship " Blackland," was to re-
main two days at Grand Bonny, we therefore took the
opportunity of visiting its celebrated Juju House.
Taking heart of grace, and stuffing our noses with
camphored cotton, we rowed up the river ; it was neap
tide, and the waters had left a terrible sight of bare mud
and naked slime. The stream runs apparently north
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 277
and south ; it is foul and feculent as Father Thames of
the Tom cats, and the atmosphere around it forms a
bouquet d'Afrique, worse than that of a London ball-
room, which I had hitherto believed to be the ne plus
ultra of supportable decomposition, animal and vege-
table. Reaching a creek about four miles from the
mouth, and connected with the Andoni, corrupted from
San Antonio, and the Kom Toro, or Kom river, whose
place is marked in our hydrographic charts, but remains
nameless,* returned to the east, and fronted the town of
Bonny, or as the people call it, Kalomi. It was rising
from its ashes, having been burned down about one month
before. This is the north or west end, the site is best de-
scribed by a former observer to be "all water, mud banks,
and mangroves mangroves, mud banks, and water."
The houses are Africanised models of the Swiss cottage,
the sharpest gables, the most acutangular ridge roofs,
with all the exaggerated goniology of the last Neo-
Gothic. The roofs are of dirty thatch, sometimes with
a misplaced glass window half way up, and the sides
are smeared with a sickly yellow clay taken from the
creek. There were some fine canoes, matted over against
the sea and rain, and provided with a sand hearth
for fire, when cold is felt. Some of them are sixty to
seventy feet long, and easily carry twelve puncheons of
palm oil ; there may be 100 pull-a-boys, or paddlers, of
whom fifty will be fighting men, and the sides bristle
* In old maps the Andoni is called Rio de San Domingo, Loitomba,
or Laitomba : the Kom Toro (or Kan Toro) is called Bio.
278 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
with swords, falconets, and wall pieces, whilst a long
carronade is lashed to strong cross-pieces in the bow.
We turned into a much smaller back-water, which leads
a few yards to the south ; at low water it will be a sheet
of putrifying slime, in which a man would sink knee
deep, and in places women and boys were washing them-
selves with their waist clothes, which they will presently
wring out and restore. It was the most squalid of
sights ; no relieving feature but a few large cotton-trees
and masses of parasites, which hem in the other side of
Bonny. Nothing easier than to find a better site for
Bonny, but it is " Bonny fash " to stick to Bonny.
We forced the boat upon this sewer, and soon reached
the landing-place, a rude scaffold of rough round tree-
trunks lashed to uprights, and leading up the slippery
clay embankment. After this spectacle of filth, I re-
solved to avoid even the 'Nda, or Bonny salmon, of
which writers speak so highly.
Landing, M e observed the effects of the fire, which has
been highly beneficial in removing scorpions, centipedes,
and whip-snakes, the myriads of mosquitoes and sand-
flies, which, too minute almost to be seen, cannot be
guarded against. The houses were rising rapidly. The
chiefs collect, on such occasions, their families and
dependents, and dividing them into companies, apply
them to different work in rebuilding. Some cut
stakes in the bush, others sharpen and plait them with
withies and wattles, others apply the dab, whilst the
rest prepare beams and thatching for the roof, or
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 279
break up old boxes to make doors and shutters.
The floor is of tamped earth. Small houses have
but three compartments, kitchen, salon, and Juju-room,
or private chapel. Great men have most intricate estab-
lishments, all a congeries of rooms, oubliettes, cuts de
sac, and passages, more like a labyrinth than a dwelling-
house. The outer entrances and the interior doors
which must serve as chimneys are fortified with strong
staked thresholds, eighteen inches high. They are pos-
sibly intended to keep out animals; the "housemaster"
is fond of sitting there, and if you cross the step whilst
he is so doing, he will have a sickness, and complain of
" poison for eye/' that is, you have bewitched him. The
women's and the men's apartments are distinct, and fur-
niture, such as it is, is always either of the commonest
kind or broken by the awkward slaves. The wealthy
make their houses Old Curiosity Shops, everything, in
fact, from gold cloth to a penny print. The greater
part of their wealth, however, is packed up in boxes,
huddled into a lumber room, or buried, so that it never
lasts long. The bed is a grass mat, and a fire of embers
enables men to dispense with bedding. Every gentle-
man must have his "Juju-room," and every little
rentier his altar. The Lares and Penates are anything
between a sheet of Punch and a tobacco pipe. This pri-
vate chapel is a favourite place for stowing away things,
especially rum, as no one will then steal it. Kings
and chiefs are buried in the grand Juju-houses.
After walking through the rising town, we pursued
280 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
our way towards the " Grand Juju." Nothing worse
than the streets, narrow, filthy, pool- dotted paths, that
wound between the houses and the remnants of rank
bush. Some of the people there met, were curiously
fair, when compared with the coal-black Ejo men, and all
were scantily clad, even adult girls had not a trace of
clothing. The slaves wore a truly miserable appear-
ance, lean and deformed, with krakra lepra and fearful
ulcerations. It is in these places that one begins to
feel a doubt touching the total suppression of slavery.
The chiefs openly beg that the rules may be relaxed, in
order that they may get rid of their criminals. This is
at present impossible, and the effects are a reduplication
of misery we pamper our convicts, Africans torture them
to death. Cheapness of the human article is another
cause of immense misery to it. In some rivers a canoe
crew never lasts three years. Pilfering "Show me
a black man and I will show you a thief," say the
traders and debauchery are natural to the slave, and
they must be repressed by abominable cruelties. The
master thinks nothing of nailing their hand? to a water-
cask, of mutilating them in various ways many lose
their eyes by being peppered, after the East Indian
fashion, with coarsely powdered cayenne their ears are
cut off, or they are flogged. The whip is composed
of a twisted bullock's or hippopotamus's hide, sun-dried,
with sharp edges at the turns, and often wrapped with
copper wire; it is less merciful even than the knout,
now historical. The operation may be prolonged .fur
EONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 281
hours or for a whole day, the culprit's arms being tied to a
rafter, which keeps them at full stretch, and every fifteen
minutes or so, a whack that cuts away the flesh like a
knife, is administered. This is a favourite treatment for
guilty wives, who are also ripped up, cut to pieces,
or thrown to the sharks. If a woman has twins, or
becomes mother of more than four, the parent is
banished, and the children are destroyed. The greatest
insult is to point at a man with arm and two fingers
extended, saying at the same, Nama Shubra, i.e., one of
wins, or a son of some lower animal. When a great
man dies, all kinds of barbarities are committed, slaves
are buried, or floated down the river bound to bamboo
sticks and mats, till eaten piecemeal by sharks.
The slave, as might be expected, is not less brutal
than his lord. It amazes me to hear Englishmen plead
that there is moral degradation to a negro bought by a
white man, and none when serving under a black man.
The philanthropists, doubtless, think how our poorer
classes at home, in the nineteenth century, would feel
if hurried from liberty to eternal servitude by some
nefarious African. But can any civilised sentiments
belong to the miserable half-starved being, whose one
scanty meal of vegetable per day is eked out with
monkey and snake, cat and dog, maggot and grub ;
whose life is ceaseless toil, varied only by torture, and
who may be destroyed at any moment by a nod from his
owner ? When the slave has once surmounted liis dread
of being shipped by the white man, nothing under the
282 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
sun would, I believe, induce him willingly to return to
what he should call his home. And as they were, our
"West Indian colonies were lands of happiness compared
with the Oil Rivers ; as for the " Southern States/' the
slave's lot is paradise when succeeding what he endures
on the west coast of Africa. I believe these to be
facts, but tant pis pour les faits. Presently, however,
the philanthropic theory shall fall, arid shall be replaced
by a new fabric built upon a more solid foundation.
The Juju-house, now a heap of ruins, was a wattle
and dab oblong of 30 to 40 feet. At the head of the
room rose a kind of altar, with mat eaves to throw off
the rain, and concave, bulging out behind. Across the
front, underneath the roofing, in lines impaled together,
were fleshless human skulls, often painted and decorated :
one had a thick black imitation beard, doubtless a copy
of life. Between these two rows were lines of goat's
heads, also streaked with red and white, whilst an old
bar shot, probably used as a club for felling the victims,
hung from a corner. Near the ground there was a
horizontal board, striped like the relics, and a sweep of
loose thatch from below it formed a base to the altar,
and left a central space in which was a round hole, with
a raised rim of clay, to receive libations and the blood
of victims. There were scattered skulls and spare rows
of crania, impaled like Kababs, and planted with their
stakes against the wall. As there had been no prisoners
of late, I saw none of those trunkless heads "which
placed on their necks, with their faces towards the Juju-
BONNY EIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 283
house, present a dreadful and appalling appearance, as of
men rising from the ground." To a small framework
of sticks outside, were nailed those relics \vhich the
Abyssinians prefer as trophies. The foul iguana, as
appropriate to this land as is the shark to these waters,
crawled about all this wreck of humanity with perfect
fearlessness. Some years ago the monkey was Juju, but
he was degraded for theft, a battue took place, and all
were " chopped." So these people not only eat each
other's gods, but, like certain Christians, their own god.
The iguana has since been in favour, and the stranger
who maltreats one would be roughly handled. White
cloth is also Juju, and the Fetishman's caprice can
invent as many other such ordinances as the religion of
the place may require.
There is apparently in this people a physical delight in
cruelty to beast as well as to man. The sight of suffer-
ing seems to bring them an enjoyment without which the
world is tame ; probably the wholesale murderers and tor-
turers of history, from Phalaris and Nero downwards,
took an animal and sensual pleasure all the passions
are sisters in the look of blood and in the inspection of
mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the
phenomena which meet my eye in Africa. In almost
all the towns on the Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying
animals fastened in some agonising position. Poultry is
most common, because cheapest eggs and milk are Juju
to slaves here they are tied by the legs head down-
wards, or lashed round the body to a stake or a tree,
284 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
where they remain till they fall in fragments. If a
man be unwell, he hangs a live chicken round his
throat, expecting that its pain will abstract from his
sufferings. Goats are lashed head downwards tightly to
wooden pillars, and are allowed to die a lingering death ;
even the harmless tortoise cannot escape impalement.
Blood seems to be the favourite ornament for a man's
face, as pattern-painting with some dark colour like
indigo is the proper decoration for a woman. At fune-
rals numbers of goats and poultry are sacrificed for the
benefit of the deceased, and the corpse is sprinkled with
the warm blood. The headless trunks are laid upon
the body, and if the fowls flap their wings, which they
will do for some seconds after decapitation, it is a good
omen for the dead man. When male prisoners of war
are taken, they are brought home for sacrifice and food,
whilst their infants and children are sometimes sup-
ported by the middle from poles planted in the canoe.
The priest decapitates the men for ordinary executions
each chief has his own headsman and no one doubts
that the bodies are eaten. Mr. Smith and Dr. Hutchin-
son both aver that they witnessed actual cases. The
former declares that when old Pepple, father of the
present man, took captive king Amakree, of New Calabar,
he gave a large feast to the European slave-traders on
the river; all was on a grand scale, but the reader
might perhaps find some difficulty in guessing the name
of the dish placed before his Majesty at the head of the
table. It was the bloody heart of the King of Calabar,
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 285
just as it had been torn from the body. He took it in
his hand and devoured it with the greatest apparent
gusto, remarking, " This is the way I serve my
enemies ! "
Shortly after my first visit, five prisoners of war were
brought in from the eastern country. I saw in the Juju-
house their skulls, which were suspiciously white and
clean, as if boiled, and not a white man doubted that
they had been eaten. The fact is that they cannot afford
to reject any kind of provisions, and after a year or two
amongst the people, even a European would, I suspect,
look somewhat queerly upon a fat little black boy.
Living at Bonny is exceedingly expensive, and at the
end of the season a cloth worth 3*. has been known
to fetch only three small yams. Of course if a stranger
asks about their anthropophagy they will invariably
reply anemea I don't know !
The climate of the Bonny is exceedingly debilitating ;
like that of Baghdad and Zanzibar, it is celebrated for
developing latent diseases. The Harmattan, or dry season,
locally called Ikringa, begins in early December, and lasts
three months ; old stagers usually find it the most un-
healthy ; it is invigorating, however, to the stranger, who
admires the cool grey look of the sky, and the sensation
of dry cold which reminds him of the north. March,
April, and May are the healthiest months, calm and serene,
with pleasant breezes, and highly fitted for travelling. The
rainy season sets in about latter May, and continues till
the end of September ; during July and August it rains
286 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
almost incessantly, except for an hour or two in the
middle of the day. September is a fine month, and iu
October and November begin the tornadoes, which con-
tinue till the Harmattan sets in.
The Bonny, like all regions on this coast, is subject
to periodical epidemics, which clear off almost all the
white population. Such a year has just happened.
The tornadoes had been scanty, and it was observed that
the land wind had taken the place of the sea breeze.
A typhus, which was rather a yellow fever, soon deve-
loped itself. The first case happened on the 14th March,
1862, and was speedily followed by a crisis in May.
The last cannot be said to have occurred. Yet, between
the middle of March and July, out of a total of 278 to
300 Europeans, there died six supercargoes, five doctors,
five clerks, and 146 men, a total of 162. One ship, the
"Osprey," lost all her crew sixteen to seventeen men
except the master. During that fatal year the vomito,
of late confined to Northern Guinea, Gambia, and
Sierra Leone, descended the West African coast as far
as Fernando Po, and extended northwards to Tenerife.
It was not confined to Europeans, the Bonny men died by
hundreds. The "coffee-grounds" and the yellow colour
of the corpse showed what the disease was. And in
some places it was followed by a typhus of exaggerated
type, the patient sinking at once, and dying after a few
hours of low muttering delirium.
The usual Bonny working day is simple. The "gentle-
man" comes on board as early as possible after daylight,
BONNY EIVEE TO FERNANDO PO. 287
and begins the usual process of "round trade/' chaf-
fering and dodging with all his might, now "ryling up"
the agent, then sawdering him down, but never going to
extremes. He breaks his fast when he can. lounges
9 O
about, sitting as if at home, using tobacco, and occa-
sionally begging for this, that, and the other thing.
After the forenoon thus profitably and energetically
spent, he disappears about midday, and is seen no more
till the morrow.
The holiday is one of unmixed laziness : the gentle-
man dozes till late in front of the dead fire that
went out before " Cockerappeak." Sending back his
night companion to the women's apartments, he passes
into a court, sits upon the high threshold and enjoys an
air bath, chewing the while pieces of fibrous wood or
the plantain fibres, called sapo in the dialect of the Gold
Coast. This is followed by the tooth stick, now be-
coming used in England; it has the advantage over the
brush that every separate tooth obtains a careful attention,
inside as well as outside, "Whilst thus cleansing mouth
and throat from the hesternal fumes of tobacco and palm
wine, he cracks his joints and equivalent to European
stretching he twists his neck as much as possible with-
out dislocation.
The whole fabric of society is naturally founded on
polygamy. Some of the head chiefs have as many as
fifty wives all, as usual, under the head wife or queen,
who is usually the daughter of some great house.
There is the customary anxiety for a numerous off-
288 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
spring; yet, contradictorily enough, there are many
ways of limiting propagation, such as for instance the
destruction of twins, and the banishment of the too
prolific mother.
The gentleman presently steps into his bathing room,
and undergoes, in the hands of his favourite wives, a
thorough soaping from head to foot. The apartment
has usually a strong floor of raised rafters, which allow
the water to drain off, and the seat is an empty box or a
block of wood. There are neither baths nor tubs ; cala-
bashes of cold water are poured upon the head, after the
fashion of the East Indian "Ghara," and hands are
used as flesh brushes to rub the back. He then indulges
in a practice popularly known as " wash um belly."
During these operations audiences are given to favourites
and other persons coming on business.
After being duly scrubbed the gentleman proceeds to
his robing court, where sundry large boxes, like sea
chests, contain his dresses and ornaments. He is ex-
tremely fastidious about the choice of his toilette, open-
ing, and perhaps tying on, a dozen cloths before one
suits his fancy. He will kiss it in token of admiration
or respect if it has belonged to his ancestors. A silk
pocket handkerchief is then folded triangularly and
passed through a loop in the knife scabbard like the
British sailor they are abandoning the clasp knife for
the bowie form which is thus attached to the right
side. His skin is then polished up with a little palm
oil, and his neck, wrists and ankles are adorned with
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 289
strings of coral or beads, and substantial metal or ivory
rings, sometimes decorated with his English name cut
out, or " fixed " in various coloured tacks. Finally, his
wool is carded, -with a comb made of bamboo, whose*
three or four long prongs are fit only for a horse's mane, *
and a casquette of broadcloth supplants the scarlet
night-cap, fashionable in former days. The kerchief
intended for hand use is hung, cravat or scarf-like,
round the neck or wrist. Here, as in the Highlands,
pockets are wanting.
The toilette being thus finished, breakfast is served.
It is a little dinner, ordinarily consisting of obeoka, nda,
fufu, fulu and tomeneru, Anglice, fowl, fish, mashed
yam, soup i.e. (the liquid in which the stews have
been boiled), and tombo, or palm-wine, the latter, how-
ever, hard, tasting like soapsuds, and very intoxicating.
The cooking is excellent, when English dishes are not
attempted. All families have some forbidden meat,
which Captain Owen and Dr. Livingstone call motupo
and Boleo ki bo, such as fowl or fresh beef. The race,
however, is carnivorous, eating, when wealthy, fish,
poultry, goats, deer, elephant, tortoise and crocodile,
the two latter of which are said to be not unlike turtle.
Most of the dishes are boiled, and copiously peppered
with cayenne and green chili pods to induce thirst. There
are many savoury messes of heterogeneous compounds,
fish, fresh and dried, oysters, clams, and cockles, poultry,
goat and deer, salt beef or ship's pork, yams, plantains,
and palm oil. Smoked shrimps are pounded in a
290 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
wooden pestle and mortar, with mashed yam for con-
sistency, and are put into the soup like forcemeat
balls. *
The meal always concludes with an external application
of soap and water.
After the breakfast tombo is drunk, the warm and
savoury nature of the food requiring copious draughts.
It is a diuretic, and promotes perspiration, so many a
gallon will disappear in the course of a day. "When the
natural appetite fails, they suck slices of the acid lime,
or chew kola nut, or eat ossessossa, a tasteless yellow
berry, with a large stone and little pulp, which is said to
increase intoxication. When half-drunk the gentleman
retires to a cool room, where, fanned by young girls
in a state of nature, he sleeps away the sultry hours
of noon.
After the siesta he receives or pays visits to his
friends, being careful not to appear without armed slaves
carrying his large Juju and his snuff-box. He does not
dip linger and thumb into the latter, but pours it into
the palm of the hand, and leisurely makes up a pinch.
Whenever he meets a white man he shakes hands, or
rather cracks fingers, holding the crackee's index be-
tween the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, the
left is devoted to another purpose, and loosing snaps
them together. It is a knack somewhat difficult to
acquire properly. The inferior chiefs and upper slaves
are devoted to gambling ; all cheat when they can, and
a man after losing his supplies, which represent coin, will
SONNY EIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 291
part with his beads, armlets, and anklets, next follow his
knife, red nightcap, and loin cloth, and lastly his wives,
relations, and himself. Some of them have proved adepts
at European games, especially draughts. "When the
gentleman stays at home, he performs upon some native
instrument, grinds a barrel organ, or enjoys a musical
box, a throng of his wives and children peeping through
the doorway. Or he looks at conjuring tricks, and per-
chance jokes with his jester, some slave, whose dry
humour, sharp tongue, salt wit, and power of mimicry
have made him a favourite. Africans are uncommonly
keen in perceiving and in caricaturing any ridicule; they
have never, however, attained the dizzy height of Art in
the days of Thespis.
A dinner similar to breakfast is eaten at 4 to 5 P.M.
Soup and stews are the favourite mnu, and mashed
yam acts substitute for bread. It is also made into a
spoon by a deep impression of the thumb, and thus it
carries a thimblefull of soup with every mouthful of yam.
The evening is passed by the aid of music, chatting with
the women, and playing with the children. It is wound
up by smoking and drinking tombo, to which, however,
at this hour, the "damned distillation" is preferred, and
the gentleman turns in drunk at midnight.
The women and children pass their day in a far
humbler manner : they begin at dawn by washing in
the creek ; they then repair to the artistess who performs
the mysteries of body painting. The favourite colour is
blue, red, however, is also used. The tints are the indi-
292 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
genous indigo and dye wood, laid on with a hard, flat,
sharp-pointed stick. They do not, as our sailors do,
depict ships, animals, or figures ; they prefer the chequer
pattern, and the arabesque, curves and scrolls, beginning
and ending with the finest hair strokes, and swelling
out, leech-like, to half an inch in the middle. The head
woman, whose face and body, arms and legs, have thus
been decorated, dresses herself in beads and shawls, or
fine cloths, and sallies out after breakfast to see her
friends. Sometimes she is received with a nautch, than
which no cancan can be grosser : the more literal it is, the
more she enjoys it. Men and women prance promiscu-
ously, and the children look on with uncontrollable
delight.
Women of the poorer sort pass their time in making
nets, hats, fishing-lines, and little mats. During the
greater part of the forenoon, and again in the afternoon,
they sit in the market-place, selling rum, yams, and
plantains. Those who are trusted by their husbands
are put in charge of the villages on the banks of the
river, and of the " small countries/' eight to ten miles in
the interior, where superfluous goods and valuables are
kept, beyond the reach of bombardment or fire. Some-
times the King invites white traders to his " seat/ 3 for
the purpose of shooting bullocks that have run wild.
The sport is exciting, but as there are no riding animals
over-fatigue will probably induce fever. There are, it is
said, horses a few days' journey in the interior, and be-
yond that point they are used as beasts of burthen.
BONNY RIVER TO FERNANDO PO. 293
Once a year every great house with its chief repairs to
the bush, and makes a surround of men and boys to
trap gazelles and antelopes : at times they catch a tar-
tar, in the shape of a leopard, and as few are armed
with anything but clubs, a hole is opened in the human
ring-fence, allowing it to pass. The evening of the
battue is spent in devouring its proceeds and in hard
striving with strong drinks.
Ladies who are not favourites with the lords their
husbands, and all wives of poor men, perform servile
work, fetching water, cutting and carrying fuel, fishing
with seines, and smoking and drying the proceeds. The
younger children are kept at home ; after a certain age
they resort for education to the streets, or accompany
their fathers on business, and when ten years old they
are as wise, touching most things and one thing in
particular, as their parents.
After this hurried but by no means exaggerated sketch
of Bonny Town and the Bonnymen, the reader will
perhaps join me in admiring the 'cuteness (Dred, p. 17)
which has laid open " the wonderful and beautiful
development locked up in the Ethiopian race/'
* * * * *
The A. S. S. "Black! and," left this African Styx
precisely at her contract time, 4 P.M. on the 26th
September. Early on the next morning, when we ap-
peared on deck, all eyes were turning towards the beau-
tiful Peak of Fernando Po, which, after the dull swampy
scenery through which we had passed, appeared of giant
294 WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA.
dimensions. Separated by a narrow channel of nineteen
miles from its still more glorious sister, the Camaroons,
or, as the savages more poetically call it, the " Mountain
of Heaven," it forms the western staple of a Gate that
stunts to a nothing the columns of Hercules. The
distance-dwarfed grassy cone, superimposed upon the
huge shaggy shoulders of the towering ridge, glowed
sweetly rosy in the morning sun, and night still brooded
in the black Caldera, or chauldrou, which, sheer falling
for thousands of feet, breaks the regularity of the ascent
on the north-eastern side. Upon the flanks, where dark
and umbrella-shaped trees rose tier by tier in uninter-
rupted succession from the base to the foot of the
highest crater-cone, heavy white mists, gently rising in
the morning air, clung like flocks of cotton to a quickset
hedge. We are now entering the tornado season, when
the views are almost without atmosphere, and conse-
quently without distance ; one supposes the Peak three
or four miles off; by directest route it is a good dozen.
I had eyes for little else that morning. The " Black-
land " lay in Clarence Cove, a small semicircular bight,
with a brace of islets at the mouth, and a perpendicular
seabank of stiff yellow clay, ninety-eight feet, ascended
by a double and diverging Jacob's ladder, and showing
to the sea front a scattered line of about a dozen white-
washed and thatched bungalows. The background was
a glorious host of palms, with cotton woods and African
cedars, the noblest of their noble family.
Enfin we are here. This is our destination ; the Ilha
BONNY EIVEE TO FERNANDO PO. 295
Formosa, or Beautiful Island, afterwards called after its
Portuguese discoverer, Fernao de Poo, and lately known
as the "Madeira of the Gulf of Guinea," or the
" Foreign Office Grave." It is vain to attempt fixing
its locality in the public brain. The secretary of the
Hakluyt Society is perhaps capable of telling you
that it is a modern discovery. Sundry friends asked
the new Consul how he liked the prospect of the
Pacific Coast of South America ; he was puzzled, till he
remembered that as all have read Kobinson Crusoe so
all must have heard of Juan Fernandez. I may add
that the name is infamous in civil and military exami-
nations ; when a coup de grace has to be administered,
young Bceoticus is questioned touching Fernando Po.
He returns " plucked " to his papa, who, equally per-
plexed, employs himself for that day in asking his friends,
" Who the deuce is Fernando Po ? " to which the natural
answer comes ' ' How the devil should I know ? "
So closed my voyage outward-bound. Arriving in
these outer places is the very abomination of desolation.
I drop for a time my pen, in the distinct memory of our
having felt uncommonly suicidal through that first night
on Fernando Po. And so, probably, did the Consul.
THE END.
LONDON: BRADBURY AND BTAUS, PRINTERS, wuiTE7p.iAR?.
University of California
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from which it was borrowed.
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