CHAPTER VIII.
Old Calabar—Duke Town—Capital Punishments—Moistening the Ancestral Clay—A Surgeon’s Liabilities—Man-eaters—A Mongrel Consul—Curious Judgments.
From Bonny I went on to the Old Calabar river, called by the natives Kalaba and Oróne, which, though always included with the outfalls of the Niger under the general title of Oil Rivers, is an entirely distinct stream. After twenty hours’ steaming from Bonny we entered the estuary of the river, and, crossing the bar, ascended the stream, which, in comparison with the wide reach of Bonny river, seemed small and contracted, though it is of fair size, and very deep. About ten miles from the bar we passed Parrot Island, an isle in the centre of the river, covered with a dense growth of mangrove trees, and entered upon a narrower channel to the right of the island. The banks were thickly wooded, and it was a strange sight to see a large steamer pursuing its way in the midst of a dense forest, and within a stone’s throw of the bank. The far-spreading branches brushed the yards of the ship, and the alligators, disturbed by the stroke of the propeller, lazily crawled out of the black mud in which they had been wallowing. As at this part of the stream the navigable channel follows very closely the eastern bank, it is no uncommon occurrence for sailing-ships ascending and descending to get their rigging fouled with the overhanging branches.
Thirty miles from the entrance of the river we anchored off Duke-town, where lie the hulks of the traders: the stream here is half-a-mile in breadth, and there is sufficient draught of water for vessels of 2,000 tons.
Duke-town is more pleasantly situated, better built, and larger, than Bonny-town, and the natives are of a less barbarous type. The town stands on a hill which slopes gently towards the river, and behind it the ground rises into a kind of plateau, a good deal of which is under cultivation, and where there is a thriving American Mission station. For the European traders, however, who live in hulks and very rarely go ashore, Old Calabar is perhaps a more unpleasant place of residence than Bonny. Opposite and below Duke-town are the same mangrove swamps, at low water the same reeking mud, at night the same malarial fog; while the water of the river is of a more filthy description than that of Bonny (to bathe in it is said to cause a loathsome skin disease); the stream is only one-third of the width of the former, and Duke-town, being so far inland, is deprived of the sea-breeze, which at Bonny helps one to drag out a miserable existence; the heat, therefore, is most oppressive.
The name of Duke-town is derived from a native family of high rank which has adopted the European patronymic of Duke, and two principal members of which, Prince Duke and Henshaw Duke, are among the leading chiefs of the place. As the possession of Armstrong guns and munitions of war is considered a sign of wealth and authority in Bonny, so here a man’s status is fixed by the style of house he inhabits. This hobby is carried to such a length that the chiefs have wooden houses sent out to them from England and Germany, and keep European carpenters in their pay to erect them and keep them in repair. Some of these houses bristle with turrets, porticoes, verandahs, and bow-windows, and the chief whose residence has the largest number of these appendages is the one who makes the greatest show of wealth and influence.
Although in this respect the natives of Old Calabar seem more amenable to civilising influences than those of Bonny, there is not equal superiority displayed in their customs, except in the absence of the practice of cannibalism. Their treatment of criminals, for instance, is marked by great cruelty. When a native is detected in the commission of any serious offence, such as murder or theft, he is gagged, laid across an upturned canoe, his back broken by blows from heavy clubs, and his body thrown into the river. Sometimes they vary their modus operandi, and, after gagging the culprit, they truss him like a fowl, and fastening him to stakes driven into the mud at low water leave him to be drowned or devoured by alligators.
A curious local custom is that called “Feeding the Dead.” When they bury their dead, the relatives, before the earth is filled into the grave, place a tube, formed of bamboo, or pithy wood with the pith extracted, and sufficiently long to protrude from the earth heaped up over the body, into the mouth of the deceased; and down this they pour, from time to time, palm wine, water, palm oil, &c. They appear to imagine that dead men do not require solid food at all, and, as they only pour the liquids down two or three times a month, are not very thirsty souls. They believe that after death the deceased suffers from the same bodily ailments as he did in life, and sometimes very filial natives will go to the doctor of a steamer, and simulate the complaint from which the paternal or maternal ancestor suffered, in order that they may obtain the requisite medicine to pour down the grave. One day a lad, son of a late chief, came to the resident doctor of the river and said:—
“Doctor, my foot sick. Gimme some med’cine.”
“What’s the matter with it?” inquired the doctor.
“Him swell up—fit to burst—can’t walk no more.”
The Galen of the river examined the foot, and, finding it perfectly sound and healthy, and not swollen in the least, assumed an enraged aspect, and demanded fiercely—
“What d’you mean by telling me these lies?”
“Please, master, not my foot sick, my fader foot sick.”
“Then tell him to come here himself.”
“He can’t come—they put him ground already.”
“D’you mean he’s dead?”
“Yes, master—him dead now ’bout three month.”
“Then what d’you mean by coming here? Get out of this.”
“Master, I want the med’cine for sick foot same as I tell you. I want to give him my fader, he no get med’cine since he put in ground. I know him foot plenty sick now.”
“Well, I’ll give you some if you pay for it.”
“I no get money, master.”
“Then you won’t get any medicine.”
The filial affection of these people is not such that they will expend coin of the realm in the purchase of medicine or drink for their dead parents. They do not give them rum for instance. The ancestral clay only gets moistened with palm wine or water, while the more exhilarating beverage goes down their own throats. Perhaps they think that ghosts have weak heads and cannot stand mundane spirits.
The natives of Old Calabar extend the liabilities of a surgeon to an extent that would be most appalling to practitioners of surgery if it were generally adopted in Europe. A doctor on this river was once called to a case in which a boy had had his leg crushed and fearfully lacerated by an alligator, and, to save the boy’s life, amputated the leg above the knee. It was a very complicated case, as there were other injuries besides; but after much trouble and hard work his efforts were crowned with success, and the patient was declared out of danger. Not many days after he had ceased visiting the wounded boy he descried, while sitting on the deck of the hulk in which he resided, a canoe being paddled towards him; which, as it drew nearer, he could see contained the parents, brothers, and sisters of his late patient and the patient himself. He thought they were coming to express their gratitude and thankfulness to him for saving the life of their beloved relative, and with the pleased self-consciousness of having performed a virtuous action prepared to receive them. When the family had climbed up the ladder on to the deck they solemnly and sadly, and in dead silence, supporting the crippled boy in their midst, approached the doctor; and then, depositing their burden at his feet, retired hurriedly to the ladder as if to go away again. The astonished benefactor, wondering what this could mean, called them back and asked for an explanation of their behaviour. Then broke forth a torrent of woe; they lifted up their voices in lamentation, and said that he had cut off the leg of their poor son and brother; he had crippled him for life, so that now he could not work or be of any use to them; he had taken all the joy out of their beloved relative’s life, and maimed him so that he had become a bye-word and a jest, and that consequently he must support him. They added thoughtfully that if he liked to pay a daily sum for the boy’s subsistence they would take care of him and not make any charge for lodging. The doctor was at first overwhelmed by this unexpected assault, but soon recovering himself, he, in an injured tone, taxed them with ingratitude, pointed out to them that he had only taken off the leg to save the boy’s life, and that if he had not done so the child would have died, and have been lost to them altogether. Upon this the family with renewed tribulation declared that it would have been better if the boy had died, as then they would only have incurred the comparatively trifling expense of the funeral custom; whereas now they would have to keep him all his life if his mutilator did not do his duty and support him; and all this time the boy himself lay silent on the deck, looking at his saviour with mournful and reproachful eyes, that seemed to say “look at the condition to which you have reduced me.” The argument was carried on until at last, finding that the family was not amenable to reason, the doctor had the whole of them turned out of the ship. After that he thought that the matter was settled and that he would hear no more of it, but these poor injured people were not going to let him off so easily. A few days later, when he went ashore, they met him in the street, laid the cripple at his feet, and again filled the air with cries of woe and abuse of the doctor. He tried to escape them, but when he moved on they followed wailing with their maimed boy; if he walked fast, so did they; when he stopped they stopped too, and formed a lamenting circle round him; when he went into a house they congregated on the doorstep and made conversation impossible with their complaints; and at last he had to fly for refuge to his hulk. Every time he went on shore this was repeated; until at last he had to give up going out, and was confined to the ship altogether. When the importunate parents discovered this they came out in a canoe, and day after day paddled round the vessel, yelling out their grievances in discordant and dismal tones. It was too much for the unfortunate doctor, his life became a misery to him, and at last he flung up his lucrative practice, exchanged with another doctor, and went off to one of the Niger outfalls. Surgical operations are not now in high favour with doctors on the Old Calabar river.
I have said that the original cause of all this trouble was an alligator who had been seized with an uncontrollable desire to dine off the leg of a boy, and man-eaters of this description are not by any means uncommon in this part of the world. Women washing clothes, men fishing, and children dabbling about by the edge of the water, are frequently seized and dragged into the river by alligators. Sometimes these monsters will even attack men on shore, and, a few days before my arrival, a watchman, who was on duty over a corrugated iron store on the river bank, was seized in the night, some thirty yards from the brink of the water, by an alligator, and dragged into the stream. The cries of the man alarmed the neighbourhood, but those who hastened to his assistance found nothing to show what had become of him but pools of blood and the trail of the alligator in the mud. A short distance above Duke-town are the remains of two or three old hulks, lying rotting in the mud, which are a favourite resort of these alligators; and any one dropping down with the tide in a boat can see scores of these disgusting creatures, from fifteen to twenty feet long, basking on them. They are very wary, because they are so often shot at, and at the slightest creak of an oar in a rowlock all will stand up to their full height, moving their heads up and down in exactly the same manner as do lizards when alarmed; and directly they catch sight of a boat they plunge into the water.
I went up the river one day to get a shot at these, or any others I might see, but it was under circumstances that made success as probable as it would be if one went out alligator-shooting accompanied by a brass band in full blast. I went with a youth, who, from having been a clerk to one of the traders in the river, had, by the death of Consul Hopkins, a man universally admired and respected in West Africa, been suddenly thrust into the position of Acting Consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra. I never saw a better illustration of the old saying about being clothed in a little brief authority. In the eyes of this hybrid official the paraphernalia of office were of paramount importance, and, as he had no consular uniform of his own, he had donned, despite the unsuitableness in point of size, the garments of the late consul. The new man was very tall, whereas his predecessor had been short; the consequence of which difference was that there was a woeful hiatus between the termination of the short jacket with brass buttons and the band of the continuations, which gap exposed to view a vast region of not very clean shirt. The gold-laced cap of office was too small, and on the head of the gallant youth presented very much the same appearance as would a thimble upon the top of an orange. He wore it in and out of season; and I shall never forget the consternation and horror which was depicted on his countenance, when, through yawning in a moment of forgetfulness, it slipped from its perch and fell into the river; nor how he strove to console himself, and make the best of his loss, by rushing to the purser of the homeward-bound steamer, and asking him to bring out three new ones for him next trip. It was in the boat of this magnificent official that I went up the river. It was a gorgeous gig, with an awning astern and brass fittings; he would abate none of his glory, and took his six oarsmen, in consequence of which the splashing of the oars and the creaking of the rowlocks awoke the echoes of the forest, and frightened every bird, beast, and reptile within half-a-mile. Of course we saw nothing, and did not fire a shot.
While I was at Old Calabar this “Jack in Office” had an opportunity of displaying his judicial authority and legal acumen. Two Kroomen on board the mail steamer were charged by the Captain with having broken open a bale out of the cargo, and appropriated the contents. The accused protested their innocence, and the only evidence against them was that of another Krooman, who said that he had found the covering of the missing bale, which was easily known by its marks, in a part of the hold near which he had seen the two prisoners, but to which any one in the ship had access. This was quite enough for the Acting Consul: he sentenced the men to three dozen lashes each, which he waited to see administered, and then he handed them over, though they were natives of Sierra Leone and consequently British subjects, to an independent native chief to be kept in slavery. This was tantamount to giving an official approval to the practice of slavery; and had it occurred in any other part of the world more would have been heard of it, but no one troubles himself about such things in West Africa.