The Gambia—Bathurst—Jolloffs—Novel Advertisements—A Neglected Highway—False Economy—History of the Gambia—Musical Instruments—Burial Custom—Yahassu—St. James’ Island.
My first visit to the Gambia took place in March 1877, from Sierra Leone. After two days’ steaming from the latter place we passed Cape Bald, with the two queer little Bijjals Islands in front of it, and sighted Cape St. Mary at the entrance of the river. On the high ground, at the point, could be seen the long low white building of the deserted barracks, and the tops of mangrove trees could be faintly distinguished above the level of the sea in the distance to the right and left as we entered the estuary; while, making a long sweep of two or three miles, we reached the Fairway buoy, picked up a pilot, and steamed up the river.
Bathurst, St. Mary’s Island, does not appear to advantage from the anchorage. The island is low-lying and flat; in front is a row of staring white houses, with a few stunted silk-cotton trees and hearse-plume like cocoa-nut palms mounting guard over them, and—and that is all. The prospect was not inviting, but, hoping that it might prove better than it looked, I hailed a boat, and was pulled to the shore. On the way several curious Shiriree canoes, fashioned like crocodiles, and full of men, passed down the river. The bows were filled with wooden idols, and in each canoe was a man beating a tom-tom, and howling some monotonous ditty in a minor key.
The island of St. Mary is a mere sandbank, barely raised above the level of the river, (in fact a considerable portion of it is below high-water mark,) and is separated from the mainland by a narrow mangrove swamp, dignified by the name of Oyster Creek, which is fordable at low water. The centre of the isle can boast of a little solidity, as a ridge of rock, covering about twenty square yards, there crops up through the sand, and is pointed out to strangers by the inhabitants with much pride, as a proof that their demesne has a stable foundation. The island has apparently been formed of the sand thrown up by the meeting of the inflowing tide with the current of the river. A bar, or sandbank, is now in course of formation to the south of the island from the same causes, and in a few centuries the British possessions in the Gambia will receive a considerable accession of territory in that direction.
The town of Bathurst is small and insignificant: there is a row of habitable buildings, principally stores, built of brick and stone, facing the river, and behind this lies the remainder of the town, which consists of native huts built of palm-leaves, old boards, and matting. There are no made roads, and every street is ankle-deep in sand. To one side of an open space in the centre of the town stand the old barracks, in which the West India troops were formerly quartered, and this, with Government House, which though small is perhaps the most comfortable in West Africa, are the only two buildings in Bathurst worth a second glance.
The natives of the country north of the Gambia are Jolloffs, an entirely distinct race of negroes, and, as far as my experience goes, the only really black people to be found in West Africa. The colour of the ordinary negro is a deep brown, but the skin of the Jolloffs is of a dead dull black. Their features differ from those of other races on the coast: the eyes are slightly oblique and almond-shaped, the nose long and inclined to be aquiline, and the lower part of the face less prognathous than is usual amongst Africans. There is a tradition amongst them that they were once white, and it may be a fact that in the dim past their ancestors were of Arab blood, and that their colour may be accounted for by a succession of marriages with the aboriginal women of the country. Many of them are remarkably like Arabs in every other respect, and both sexes wear the Arab costume. The women dress their wool, which they suffer to grow long, into innumerable ringlets, each about a foot in length and of the thickness of a pencil, which hang down in a mass on their necks; some of them are rather handsome, and have regular features.
There is a colony of Jolloffs in Bathurst, but the majority of the people of that race that one sees in the town are traders from the interior, who bring down their ground-nuts to exchange for powder, muskets, and Kola nuts. In the one street of stores, of which I have spoken, long lithe Jolloffs may be seen coming out of the shops with trade muskets, the stocks of which are painted a brilliant red, and the barrels made of renovated pieces of old gas-pipe. Into these unquestionably deadly weapons they pour two or three handfuls of powder, and then fire them off in the road to test them. The test frequently leaves nothing remaining but a fragment of barrel and stock, and the practice is one that is rather startling to strangers who may happen to be passing by. The Kola nuts (Sterculia acuminata) are eaten by the natives habitually, as sailors chew tobacco. They are said to be particularly useful to travellers, as they prevent all sensations of hunger, thirst, or weariness. I ate two or three as an experiment, but I did not find that I was any the less ready for my dinner at the usual hour. They are imported from the Timmanee country, near Sierra Leone, principally in the neighbourhood of the Great and Little Scarcies rivers, to which part, though distant three hundred miles from the Gambia, large canoes and boats resort solely for the purpose of obtaining them.
The English-speaking and Christianized negroes in Bathurst, most of whom are emigrants from Sierra Leone, are a vast improvement upon their compatriots in that negro paradise. They positively do a little work occasionally, and some few of them might even be called industrious. I could not discover the cause of the improvement. Perhaps it is owing to the good example of the Jolloffs, or to there not being such a redundancy of missionaries in the Gambia; but I think it is more probably due to the fact that the island is so small that there is no spare land on which they can squat and do nothing (even if there were any soil to produce anything), so that they are obliged to work or starve. They build cutters of from twenty-five to sixty tons’ burden, which are used by the French merchants for bringing produce down the river from their outlying factories, and for carrying cargo between Bathurst and Goree or Dacar.
In the one street of Bathurst there is a fairly good market-shed for native vendors of fruit and green-stuff, and I was going to look round and see what there was to buy when I caught sight of a large slab of marble let in to the rubble wall of the gateway. It bore the following legend:—