The Niger Delta—Gloomy Region—Cannibals—King Pepple—Bonny-town—Rival Chiefs—Dignitaries of the Church—Missions—Curlews—A Night Adventure—A Bonny Bonne Bouche.
From Lagos I went on to the Oil Rivers, as the numerous outlets in the Niger delta are termed. The Nun mouth is now the recognised entrance of the Niger; its ten western openings are Benin, Escardos, Forcardos, Ramos, Dodo, Pennington, and Middleton rivers, Blind Creek, and Winstanley and Sengana outfalls, and its nine eastern are Brass River or Rio Bento, San Nicolas, Santa Barbara, Sombreiro, San Bartolomeo, New Calabar, Bonny, Antonio, and Opobo rivers. The New Calabar and the Bonny or Obané Rivers discharge into one estuary; and some authorities consider that the latter is not an outfall of the Niger at all.
The trade in these rivers is almost entirely in British hands, and regular trading stations are found at Bonny, New Calabar, Brass, Opobo, and Benin. The natives are independent of British rule, but from time to time treaties have been made for the regulation of trade, and for the protection of traders. In each river or outfall the traders form a Court of Arbitration, which settles all trade disputes arising between themselves and the natives; and cases of moment are submitted to the consul of the Bights of Benin and Biafra, who resides in the island of Fernando Po. The principal exports are palm-oil, kernels, camwood, and ivory, and it is from the immense quantities of the first commodity annually shipped to England, and there used in the manufacture of tin, butter, soap, and pomade, that the title of Oil Rivers is derived.
It would be difficult to imagine a more depressing and gloomy region than that of the delta of the Niger. On all sides, as far as the eye can reach, one sees nothing but swamp after swamp of countless mangroves, intersected in every direction by foul creeks of reeking and muddy water; while, when the tide is out, vast expanses of black, slimy mud, on which hideous crocodiles bask, are exposed to the sun. It is indeed a horrible and loathsome tract, and it is a matter for wonder that Europeans can be found willing to pass the best years of their lives in such a place. Yet such is the case, and though a large percentage of the white residents annually succumb to the pestilential climate, and all suffer more or less from its effects, the survivors jog along uncomplainingly, and some even seem in a measure to enjoy their existence—one can hardly call it life.
Wherever any dry land is found on the banks of these rivers, there are established native towns; and opposite these are moored the hulks in which the traders live. Some of these hulks have been fine vessels in their day, and all are very comfortably fitted up and roofed over: the finest is that of the African Steamship Company, the “Adriatic,” which formerly belonged to the White Star Company, and is now moored in Bonny river. Morning after morning the Europeans doomed to a wretched existence in these floating prisons wake up with a feeling of weariness and depression, and look out daily on the same muddy river with its banks of reeking ooze and interminable mangrove swamps. At night time the miasma creeps up from every creek and gradually enfolds all objects in a damp white shroud; while the croaking of the bull-frogs, the cry of a night-bird, and the lapping of the restless tide against the sides of the hulk, are the only sounds that break the oppressive silence. If ever a man were justified in seeking consolation from the flowing bowl it would be in these rivers, which used to be the habitat of the Palm Oil Ruffian, a creature that would not have been tolerated even in Alsatia; but the genus is now rapidly dying out, and soon bids fair to be classed with the Plesiosaurus and other extinct reptiles. Death seems ever at hand, and here he does not appear, as in some parts of West Africa, clothed with sunlight and the beauties of tropical vegetation, but accompanied by all the imperfections of a sewer-like and miasmatic swamp.
The natives of the Niger delta are, with the exception of the Boobies of Fernando Po, the most degraded and barbarous people found on the West Coast of Africa. They are nearly all cannibals, and devour the prisoners whom they capture in their internecine wars. The horrible climate influences even the aborigines, nearly every second man or woman one sees being covered with sores, or suffering from yaws, elephantiasis, or some equally loathsome disease; and their religious belief and fetish customs are tinged with the gloom which seems to settle over the whole delta.
Very little is known of this part of Africa beyond the actual coast line and the Niger river, up which steamers ascend for some hundreds of miles. Between Benin and the Nun mouth the numerous western outlets have not even been surveyed, and we find on the Admiralty Charts “natives hostile and cannibals.” In that portion of the delta the inhabitants will hold no friendly intercourse with white men. Even in those rivers in which the trading hulks are moored, Europeans are prevented by the chiefs from ascending the streams; and in the different treaties there is generally a stipulation that the traders shall not attempt to go beyond a certain distance. The reason of this is that the tribes that reside near the mouths of the rivers act as middle-men to the native oil-traders higher up, and they are afraid that if we penetrate beyond a short distance we shall be able to purchase the produce at first hand, and that they will thus lose their percentage or commission.
The chief town in the delta of the Niger is that of Bonny, of which George Pepple is the nominal king; he has, however, no power or influence of any kind, and the real king is old Oko Jumbo, a veteran chief, who has a large trading establishment by the riverside and is very rich and prosperous.
George Pepple is like the average of Christianized negroes in West Africa. A few years ago he was expelled from his kingdom by his subjects, on account of the trouble he was bringing on the community by his habit of obtaining goods from the traders and then repudiating the debt, and went to England to spend the money with which his peculiar method of doing business had provided him. In England he was baptized by the Bishop of London, and made much of by undiscriminating persons. One of his wives had accompanied him, and in London she acquired a liking for cordial Old Tom, under the influence of which she neglected to treat her liege lord with that deference which he considered his due. Under these circumstances George Pepple determined to execute her, and applied to the Lord Mayor for permission, merely as a matter of form and to show that he knew what was due to the prejudices of foreigners. He was much astonished and annoyed when he learned that such an execution would be deemed a murder, and that the law of England presumed to interfere in purely domestic episodes of this nature. Shortly after this Pepple returned to Bonny; but before leaving England he induced several credulous Englishmen to accompany him, promising them high and lucrative positions about his court and person, such as Master of the Horse, Chief Equerry, Groom in Waiting, and so on. After having made elaborate preparations and being put to the expense of the journey to Bonny, one can imagine the feelings of these men on finding that the palace consisted of a mud hut and the kingdom of a few acres of swamp, even in which limited monarchy his authority was nil. In 1876 Pepple returned to England to try his old plan of obtaining goods on credit, and was again treated as a great African potentate, being entertained by the Lord Mayor, and his daily doings being duly chronicled by the press. He has lately been released from the durance vile in which his subjects had been keeping him on account of some misdemeanour, but is still under a cloud, as his peculiarities are so well known, and he is treated with but scant ceremony by the natives and traders of Bonny river. As an instance of how little African royalty is in consonance with European, I may mention that Pepple’s eldest son was, until very recently, post-master at Accra with a salary of some 50l. a year.
Bonny-town is the worst and dirtiest to be found on the West Coast of Africa; the houses are small “wattle and daub” structures, and there are no streets even of the poor description that are found in towns on the Gold Coast. The huts are scattered about in indescribable confusion amongst pools of mud, heaps of refuse, and cess-pits; and one cannot walk more than a few hundred yards in any given direction without finding a bar to further progress in the shape of a muddy creek. The Bonny traders do not often honour the town with their presence, nor is there any inducement for them to do so. The Ju-ju house is the only “sight” in Bonny. It is a mud hut in a ruinous condition, in which, piled up in wattle racks, are innumerable human skulls, the remains of persons who have been sacrificed to the Ju-ju, or fetish. A glimpse of these, and of a number of rudely-carved wooden idols, can be obtained by peeping through an aperture in the broken-down wall of the house; and even this must be done by stealth, as the natives do not care to have white men prying into the mysteries of their religion; and, being quite an independent people, they could inflict any fine or punishment they might think proper on an inquisitive stranger.