CHAPTER X.
We are now entering upon the narrative of a series of the most extraordinary adventures which ever befel the African travellers, in the person of an illiterate and obscure seaman, of the name of Robert Adams, who was wrecked on the western coast of Africa, in the American ship Charles, bound to the isle of Mayo, and who may be said to have been the first traveller who ever reached the far-famed city of Timbuctoo.
The place where the Charles was wrecked was called Elgazie, and the captain and the whole of the crew were immediately taken prisoners by the Moors. On their landing, the Moors stripped the whole of them naked, and concealed their clothes under ground; being thus exposed to a scorching sun, their skins became dreadfully blistered, and at night they were obliged to dig holes in the sand to sleep in, for the sake of coolness.
About a week after landing, the captain of the ship was put to death by the Moors, for which the extraordinary reason was given, that he was extremely dirty, and would not go down to the sea to wash himself, when the Moors made signs for him to do so.
After they had remained about ten or twelve days, until the ship and its materials had quite disappeared, the Moors made preparations to depart, and divided the prisoners amongst them. Robert Adams and two others of the crew were left in the possession of about twenty Moors, who quitted the sea coast, having four camels, three of which they loaded with water, and the other with fish and baggage. At the end of about thirty days, during which they did not see a human being, they arrived at a place, the name of which Adams did not hear, where they found about thirty or forty tents, and a pool of water surrounded by a few shrubs, which was the only water they had met with since quitting the coast.
In the first week of their arrival, Adams and his companions being greatly fatigued, were not required to do any work, but at the end of that time, they were put to tend some goats and sheep, which were the first they had seen. About this time, John Stevens arrived, under charge of a Moor, and was sent to work in company with Adams. Stevens was a Portuguese, about eighteen years of age. At this place they remained about a month.
It was now proposed by the Moors to Adams and Stevens, to accompany them on an expedition to Soudenny to procure slaves. It was with great difficulty they could be made to understand this proposal, but the Moors made themselves intelligible by pointing to some negro boys, who were employed in taking care of sheep and goats. Being in the power of the Moors, they had no option, and having therefore signified their consent, the party consisting of about eighteen Moors, and the two whites, set out for Soudenny.
Soudenny is a small negro village, having grass and shrubs growing about it, and a small brook of water. For a week or thereabouts, after arriving in the neighbourhood of this place, the party concealed themselves amongst the hills and bushes, lying in wait for the inhabitants, when they seized upon a woman with a child in her arms, and two children (boys), whom they found walking in the evening near the town.
During the next four or five days, the party remained concealed, when one evening, as they were all lying on the ground, a large party of negroes, consisting of forty or fifty made their appearance, armed with daggers, and bows and arrows, who surrounded and took them all prisoners, without the least resistance being attempted, and carried them into the town; tying the hands of some, and driving the whole party before them. During the night above one hundred negroes kept watch over them. The next day they were taken before the governor or chief person, named Muhamoud, a remarkably ugly negro, who ordered that they should all be imprisoned. The place of confinement was a mere mud wall, about six feet high, from whence they might readily have escaped, though strongly guarded, if the Moors had been enterprising, but they were a cowardly set. Here they were kept three or four days, for the purpose, as it afterwards appeared, of being sent forward to Timbuctoo, which Adams concluded to be the residence of the king of the country. At Soudenny, the houses have only a ground floor, and are without furniture or utensils, except wooden bowls, and mats made of grass. They never make fires in their houses. After remaining about four days at Soudenny, the prisoners were sent to Timbuctoo, under an escort of about sixty armed men, having about eighteen camels and dromedaries.
During the first ten days they proceeded eastward, at the rate of about fifteen to twenty miles a day, the prisoners and most of the negroes walking, the officers riding, two upon each camel or dromedary. As the prisoners were all impressed with the belief that they were going to execution, several of the Moors attempted to escape, and in consequence, after a short consultation, fourteen were put to death by being beheaded, at a small village at which they then arrived, and as a terror to the rest, the head of one of them was hung round the neck of a camel for three days, until it became so putrid, that they were obliged to remove it. At this village, the natives wore gold rings in their ears, sometimes two rings in each ear. They had a hole through the cartilage of the nose, wide enough to admit a thick quill, in which Adams saw some of the natives wear a large ring of an oval shape, that hung down to the mouth.
They waited, only one day at this place, and then proceeded towards Timbuctoo. Shaping their course to the northward of east, and quickening their pace to the rate of twenty miles a day, they completed their journey in fifteen days.
Upon their arrival at Timbuctoo, the whole party were immediately taken before the king, who ordered the Moors into prison, but treated Adams and the Portuguese boy as curiosities; taking them to his house, they remained there during their residence at Timbuctoo.
For some time after their arrival, the queen and her female attendants used to sit and look at Adams and his companions for hours together. She treated them with great kindness, and at the first interview offered them some bread baked under ashes.
The king and queen, the former of whom was named Woollo, the latter Fatima, were very old grey-headed people. Fatima was like the majority of African beauties, extremely fat. Her dress was of blue nankeen, edged with gold lace round the bosom and on the shoulder, and having a belt or stripe of the same material, half-way down the dress, which came only a few inches down the knees. The dress of the other females of Timbuctoo, though less ornamented than that of the queen, was in the same sort of fashion, so that as they wore no close under garments, they might, when sitting on the ground, as far as decency was concerned, as well have had no covering at all. The queen's head dress consisted of a blue nankeen turban, but this was worn only upon occasions of ceremony, or when she walked out. Besides the turban, she had her hair stuck full of bone ornaments of a square shape, about the size of dice, extremely white; she had large gold hoop ear-rings, and many necklaces, some of them of gold, the others made of beads of various colours. She wore no shoes, and in consequence, her feet appeared to be as hard and dry "as the hoofs of an ass."
The king's house or palace, which is built of clay and grass, not whitewashed, consists of eight or ten small rooms on the ground floor, and is surrounded by a wall of the same materials, against part of which the house is built. The space within the wall is about half an acre. Whenever a trader arrives, he is required to bring his merchandize into this space, for the inspection of the king, for the purpose of duties being charged upon it. The king's attendants, who are with him during the whole of the day, generally consist of about thirty persons, several of whom are armed with daggers, and bows and arrows. Adams did not know if the king had any family.
For a considerable time after the arrival of Adams and his companion, the people used to come in crowds to stare at them, and he afterwards understood that many persons came several days journey on purpose. The Moors remained closely confined in prison, but Adams and the Portuguese boy had permission to visit them. At the end of about six months, a company of trading Moors arrived with tobacco, who after some weeks ransomed the whole party.
Timbuctoo is situated on a level plain [*], having a river about two hundred yards from the town, on the south-east side, named La Mar Zarah. The town appeared to Adams to cover as much ground as Lisbon. He was unable to give any account of number of its inhabitants, estimated by Caillié to amount to 10,000 or 12,000. The houses are not built in streets, nor with any regularity, its population therefore, compared with that of European towns, is by no means in proportion to its size. It has no wall nor any thing resembling fortification. The houses are square, built of sticks, clay, and grass, with flat roofs of the same materials. The rooms are all on the ground-floor, and are without any of furniture, except earthen jars, wooden bowls, and mats made grass, upon which the people sleep. He did not observe a houses, or any other buildings, constructed of stone. The palace of the king he described as having walls of clay, or clay and sand, rammed into a wooden case or frame, and placed in layers, one above another, until they attained the height required, the roof being composed of poles or rafters laid horizontally, and covered with a cement or plaster, made of clay or sand.
[Footnote: This account of Timbuctoo, as given by Adams, by no means corresponds with that which was subsequently given by Caillié. The latter makes it situated on a very elevated site, in the vicinity of mountains; in fact the whole account of that celebrated city, as given by Caillié, is very defective.]
The river La Mar Zarah is about three quarters of a mile wide at Timbuctoo, and appeared in this place to have but little current, flowing to the south-west. About two miles from the town to the southward, it runs between two high mountains, apparently as high as the mountains which Adams saw in Barbary; here the river is about half a mile wide. The water of La Mar Zarah is rather brackish, but is commonly drunk by the natives, there not being, according to the report of Adams, any wells at Timbuctoo.
It must be remarked in this place, that at the time when Adams related the narrative of his residence in Africa, and particularly in the city of Timbuctoo, a very considerable degree of distrust was attached to it; and in order to put the veracity of Adams to a decisive test, the publication of his adventures was delayed until the arrival of Mr. Dupuis, then the British vice-consul at Mogadore, to whose interference Adams acknowledged himself indebted for his ransom, and who, on account of his long residence in Africa, and his intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of the natives, was fully competent to the detection of any imposition which it might be the intention of Adams to practise upon those, who undertook the publication of his adventures. From this severe ordeal Adams came out fully clear of any intention to impose, and the principal points of his narrative were corroborated by the knowledge and experience of Mr. Dupuis. Thus that gentleman, in allusion to the description which Adams gave of La Mar Zarah, mentions that the Spanish geographer Marmol, who describes himself to have spent twenty years of warfare and slavery in Africa, about the middle of the sixteenth century, mentions the river La-ha-mar as a branch of the Niger, having muddy and unpalatable waters. By the same authority, the Niger itself is called Yea, or Issa, at Timbuctoo, a name which D'Anville has adopted in his map of Africa.
The vessels used by the natives are small canoes for fishing, the largest of which are about ten feet long, capable of carrying three men; they are built of fig-trees hollowed out, and caulked with grass, and are worked with paddles about six feet long.
The natives of Timbuctoo are a stout healthy race, and are seldom sick, although they expose themselves by lying out in the sun at mid-day, when the heat is almost insupportable to a white man. It is the universal practice of both sexes to grease themselves all over with butter produced from goat's milk, which makes the skin smooth, and gives it a shining appearance. This is usually renewed every day: when neglected, the skin becomes rough, greyish, and extremely ugly. They usually sleep under cover at night, but sometimes, in the hottest weather, they will lie exposed to the night air, with little or no covering, notwithstanding that the fog, which rises from the river, descends like dew, and, in fact, at that season supplies the want of rain.
All the males of Timbuctoo have an incision on their faces from the top of the forehead down to the nose, from which proceed other lateral incisions over the eyebrows, into all of which is inserted a blue dye, produced from a kind of ore, which is found in the neighbouring mountains. The women have also incisions on their faces, but in a different fashion; the lines being from two to five in number, cut on each cheek bone, from the temple straight down; they are also stained with blue. These incisions being made on the faces of both sexes when they are about twelve months old, the dyeing material, which is inserted in them, becomes scarcely visible as they grow up.
With the exception of the king and queen, and their immediate companions, who had a change of dress about once a week, the people are in general very dirty, sometimes not washing themselves for twelve or fourteen days together. Besides the queen, who, as has been already stated, wore a profusion of ivory and bone ornaments in her hair, some of a square shape, and others about as thick as a shilling, but rather smaller, strings of which she also wore about her wrists and ankles; many of the women were decorated in a similar manner, and they seemed to consider hardly any favour too great to be conferred on the person who would make them a present of these precious ornaments. Gold ear-rings were much worn, some of the women had also rings on their fingers, but these appeared to Adams to be of brass; and as many of the latter had letters upon them, he concluded, both from this circumstance and from their workmanship, that they were not made by the negroes, but obtained from the moorish traders.
The ceremony of marriage amongst the upper ranks at Timbuctoo is, for the bride to go in the day-time to the king's house, and to remain there until after sunset, when the man who is to be her husband goes to fetch her away. This is usually followed by a feast the same night, and a dance. Adams did not observe what ceremonies were used in the marriages of the lower classes.
As it is common to have several concubines besides a wife, the women are continually quarrelling and fighting; there is, however, a marked difference in the degree of respect with which they are treated by the husband, the wife always having a decided pre-eminence. The negroes, however, appeared to Adams to be jealous and severe with all their women, frequently beating them apparently for very little cause.
The women appear to suffer very little from child-birth, and they will be seen walking about as usual the day after such an event. It is their practice to grease a child all over soon after its birth, and to expose it for about an hour to the sun. The infants at first are of a reddish colour, but become black in three or four days.
Illicit intercourse appeared to be but little regarded amongst the lower orders, and chastity among the women in general seemed to be preserved only so far as their situations or circumstances rendered it necessary for their personal safety or convenience. In the higher ranks, if a woman prove with child, the man is punished with slavery, unless he will take the woman for his wife, and maintain her. Adams knew an instance of a young man, who, having refused to marry a woman by whom he had a child, was on that account condemned to slavery. He afterwards repented, but was not then permitted to retract his refusal, and was sent away to be sold.
It does not appear that they have any public religion, as they have not any house of worship; no priest, and, as far as Adams could discover, never meet together to pray. He had seen some of the negroes, who were circumcised; but he concluded that they had been in possession of the Moors, or had been resident at Sudenny. On this subject Mr. Dupuis says, "I cannot speak with any confidence of the religion of the negroes of Timbuctoo; I have, however, certainly heard, and entertain little doubt, that many of the inhabitants are Mahommedans; it is also generally believed in Barbary, that there are mosques at Timbuctoo; but, on the other hand, I am confident that the king is neither an Arab nor a Moor, especially as the traders, from whom I have collected these accounts, have been either the one or the other; and I might consequently presume, that, if they did give me erroneous information on any points, it would at least not be to the prejudice, both of their national self-conceit, and of the credit and honour of their religion."
The only ceremony which Adams saw, that appeared like the act of prayer, was on the occasion of the death of any of the inhabitants, when the relatives assembled and sat round the corpse. The burial is not attended with any ceremony whatever; the deceased are buried in the clothes in which they die, at a small distance to the south-west of the town.
Their only physicians are old women, who cure diseases and wounds by the application of simples. Adams had a wen on the back of his right hand, the size of a large egg, which one of the women cured in about a month, by rubbing it and applying a plaster of herbs. They cure the tooth-ache by the application of a liquid prepared from roots, which frequently causes not only the defective tooth to fall out, but one or two of the others.
On referring to the notes of Mr. Dupuis on the subject of the cures performed by the negro women, we read, "I may take this opportunity of observing that he (Adams) recounted, at Mogadore, several stories of the supernatural powers or charms possessed by some of the negroes, and which practised both, defensively to protect their own persons from harm, and offensively against their enemies. Of these details I do not remember more than the following circumstance, which, I think, he told me happened in his presence:—
"A negro slave, the property of a desert Arab, having been threatened by his master with severe punishment, for some offence, defied his power to hurt him, in consequence of a charm by which he was protected. Upon this the Arab seized a gun, which he loaded with a ball, and fired at only a few paces distant from the negro's breast; but the negro, instead of being injured by the shot, stooped to the ground and picked up the ball, which had fallen inoffensive at his feet."
It seems strange that Adams should have omitted their extraordinary stories in his narrative; for he frequently expressed to Mr. Dupuis a firm belief, that the negroes were capable of injuring their enemies by witchcraft; and he once pointed out to him a slave at Mogadore, of whom on that account he stood particularly in awe. He doubtless imbibed this belief, and learned the other absurd stories, which he related, from the Arabs, some of whom profess to be acquainted with the art themselves, and all of whom are, it is believed, firmly persuaded of its existence, and of the peculiar proficiency of the negroes in it.
It is perhaps not unreasonable to suppose, that having found his miraculous stories, and his belief in witchcraft discredited and laughed at, both at Mogadore and Cadiz, Adams should have at length grown ashamed of repeating them, and even outlived his superstitious credulity. This solitary instance of suppression may rather be considered as a proof of his good sense, and as the exercise of a very allowable discretion, than as evidence of an artfulness, of which not a trace had been detected in any other part of his conduct.
Dancing is the principal and favourite amusement of the natives of Timbuctoo; it takes place about once a week in the town, when a hundred dancers or more assemble, men, women, and children, but the greater number are men. Whilst they are engaged in the dance, they sing extremely loud to the music of the tambourine, fife, and bandera, [*] so that the noise they make, may be heard all over the town; they dance in a circle, and when this amusement continues till the night, generally round a fire. Their usual time of beginning is about two hours before sunset, and the dance not unfrequently lasts all night. The men have the most of the exercise in these sports while daylight lasts, the women continuing nearly in one spot, and the men dancing to and from them. During this time, the dance is conducted with some decency, but when night approaches, and the women take a more active part in the amusement, their thin and short dresses, and the agility of their actions are little calculated to admit of the preservation of any decorum. The following was the nature of the dance; six or seven men joining hands, surrounded one in the centre of the ring, who was dressed in a ludicrous manner, wearing a large black wig stuck full of kowries. This man at intervals repeated verses, which, from the astonishment and admiration expressed at them by those in the ring, appeared to be extempore. Two performers played on the outside of the ring, one on a large drum, the other on the bandera. The singer in the ring was not interrupted during his recitations, but at the end of every verse, the instruments struck up, and the whole party joined in loud chorus, dancing round the man in the circle, stooping to the ground, and throwing up their legs alternately. Towards the end of the dance, the man in the middle of the ring was released from his enclosure, and danced alone, occasionally reciting verses, whilst the other dancers begged money from the by-standers.
[Footnote: The bandera is made of several cocoa-nut shells, tied together with thongs of goat-skin, and covered with the same material; a hole at the top of the instrument is covered with strings of leather, or tendons, drawn tightly across it, on which the performer plays with the fingers, in the manner of a guitar.]
It has been already stated, that Adams could not form any idea of the population of Timbuctoo, but on one occasion he saw as many as two-thousand assembled at one place. This happened when a party of five hundred men were going out to make war on Bambarra [*]. The day after their departure, they were followed by a great number of slaves, dromedaries, and heiries laden with previsions. Such of these people as afterwards returned, came back in parties of forty or fifty; many of them did not return at all whilst Adams remained at Timbuctoo; but he never heard that any of them had been killed.
[Footnote: This statement, which is in opposition to the usual opinion, that Timbuctoo is a dependency of Bambarra, receives some corroboration from a passage in Isaaco's journal (p. 205.), where a prince of Timbuctoo is accused by the king of Sego, of having, either personally, or by his people, plundered two Bambarra caravans, and taken both merchandise and slaves.]
About once a month, a party of a hundred or more armed men marched out in a similar manner, to procure slaves. These armed parties were all on foot, except the officers; they were usually absent from one week to a month, and at times brought in considerable numbers. The slaves were generally a different race of people from those of Timbuctoo, and differently clothed, their dress being for the most part of coarse white linen or cotton. He once saw amongst them a woman, who had her teeth filed round, it was supposed, by way of ornament, and as they were very long, they resembled crow quills. The greatest number of slaves that Adams recollects to have seen brought in at one time, were about twenty, and these, he was informed, were from a place called Bambarra, lying to the southward and westward of Timbuctoo, which he understood to be the country, whither the aforesaid parties generally went out in quest of them.
The negro slaves brought to Barbary from Timbuctoo appear to be of various nations, many of them distinguished by the make of their persons and features, as well as by their language. Mr. Dupuis recollects an unusually tall stout negress at Mogadore, whose master assured him that she belonged to a populous nation of cannibals. He does not know whether the fact was sufficiently authenticated, but it is certain that the woman herself declared it, adding some revolting accounts of her own feasts on human flesh.
Adams never saw any individual put to death at Timbuctoo, the punishment for heavy offences being generally slavery; for slighter misdemeanours, the offenders are punished with beating with a stick; but in no case is this punishment very severe, seldom exceeding two dozen blows, with a stick of the thickness of a small walking-cane.
The infrequency of the punishment of death in a community, which counts human life amongst its most valuable objects of trade, is not, however, very surprising; and considerable influence must be conceded to the operation of self-interest, as well as to the feelings of humanity, in accounting for this merciful feature, if it be indeed merciful, in the criminal code of the negroes of Soudan.
During the whole of the residence of Adams at Timbuctoo, he never saw any other Moors than those whom he accompanied thither, and the ten by whom they were ransomed; and he understood from the Moors themselves, that they were not allowed to go in large bodies to Timbuctoo. This statement bears on the face of it a certain degree of improbability; but it loses that character when it is considered that Timbuctoo, although it is become, in consequence of its frontier situation, the port, as it were, of the caravans from the north, which could not return across the desert the same season, if they were to penetrate deeper into Soudan, is yet, with respect to the trade itself, probably only the point whence it diverges to Houssa, Tuarick, &c. on the east, and to Walet, Jinnie, and Sego, on the west and south, and not the mart where the merchandise of the caravans is sold in detail. Such Moors, therefore, as did not return to Barbary with the returning caravan, but remained in Soudan until the following season, might be expected to follow their trade to the larger marts of the interior, and to return to Timbuctoo only to meet the next winter's caravans. Adams arriving at Timbuctoo in February, and departing in June, might therefore miss both the caravans themselves and the traders, who remained behind in Soudan; and, on the same principle, Park might find Moors carrying on an active trade in the summer at Sansanding, and yet there might not be one at Timbuctoo.
Adams never proceeded to the southward of Timbuctoo, further than about two miles from the town, to the mountains before spoken of; he never saw the river Joliba or Niger, though he had heard mention made of it. He was told at Tudenny, that the river lay between that place and Bambarra.
This apparently unimportant passage, affords on examination a strong presumption in favour of the truth and simplicity of this part of Adams' narrative.
In the course of his examinations, almost every new inquirer questioned him respecting the Joliba or Niger, and he could not fail to observe, that because he had been at Timbuctoo, he was expected, as a matter of course, either to have seen, or at least frequently to have heard of that celebrated river. Adams, however, fairly admitted that he knew nothing about it, and notwithstanding the surprise of many of his examiners, he could not be brought to acknowledge that he had heard the name even once mentioned at Timbuctoo. All that he recollected was, that a river Joliba had been spoken of at Tudenny, where it was described as lying in the direction of Bambarra.
They who recollect Major Rennell's remarks respecting the Niger, in his Geographical Illustrations, will not be much surprised that Adams should not hear of the Joliba, from the natives of Timbuctoo. At that point of its course, the river is doubtless known by another name, and if the Joliba were spoken of at all, it would probably be accompanied, as Adams states, with some mention of Bambarra, which may be presumed to be the last country eastward, in which the Niger retains its Mandingo name.