The Land of Fetish

by A. B. Ellis

I left hastily. That man was not going to let his fame languish and die for want of a few monumental inscriptions.

The Gambia river is a magnificent highway to the interior of this portion of Africa. Its estuary measures twenty-seven miles in breadth from Bald Cape to Punshavel, and though it is only two miles across from Bathurst to Barra Point, directly opposite, it widens out to a breadth of seven miles immediately above St. Mary’s Island. At Macarthy’s Island, one hundred and forty-seven miles up the stream, the river is four hundred yards broad; and vessels drawing ten feet of water can ascend even up to some seventy miles above Yahlahlenda. Here, as in our other West African possessions, we have been retrograding of late years. Only some twelve years ago, Macarthy’s Island was garrisoned by troops, European traders had factories there, and small steamers went up the river as far as the falls of Barraconda; while the British name was respected, and the British power dreaded, far and wide among the warlike tribes dwelling upon the river banks. Now the troops have been withdrawn from the Gambia, Macarthy’s Island is deserted, and the natives laugh at the idea of England being a powerful kingdom, since her might is only represented in Bathurst by a miserable force of one hundred policemen. In fact the colony is quite at the mercy of the native chiefs, and but for their internecine squabbles and jealousies would have already fallen a prey to them.

In 1869 the Third West India Regiment, then stationed in the Gambia, was, as a measure of economy, disbanded by the Liberal Government then in power, the Minister for War stating that £20,000 a year would be saved by the transaction. The immediate result of this measure was, that when, in the same year, Bathurst was threatened by hostile tribes from the mainland, the Administrator had no garrison for the protection of the lives and property of British subjects, and was compelled to apply for assistance to the French at Goree. Two French men-of-war were at once sent, and the colony was saved. The effect of this incident was that the British Government, without consulting the inhabitants of the Gambia, or mooting the subject in Parliament, offered the colony to France; and, in spite of the protests of the people, who represented that they were Protestants and did not wish to be subject to a Roman Catholic power, the transfer would have been completed but for the outbreak of the Franco-German war. In 1874-5 the subject again cropped up, and, as a Conservative ministry was then in office, the French offered their settlements at Grand Bassam, Assinee, and Gaboon, in exchange for the Gambia. It is probable that this exchange, which would have been most advantageous for England, as through the acquisition of Assinee we should be able to control the importation of arms to Ashanti, would have been effected, had not the matter become entangled with the religious question. The Exeter Hall party brought all their influence into play, and the French offer was declined.

A more serious result of the disbandment of the Third West India Regiment was the Ashanti war of 1873-4. When the Ashanti invading army crossed the Prah, the Administrator of the Gold Coast had only two hundred soldiers with which to defend a colony of more than two hundred miles in extent. Had the Third West India Regiment been then in existence, and been sent to the Gold Coast with the same promptitude that characterized the despatch of the Second West India Regiment in 1881, the war of 1873 would equally have been nipped in the bud. As it turned out, the interest of the money expended in that war would have more than sufficed to keep up the Third West India Regiment; so that no saving was effected after all.

Our possessions in the Gambia consist of St. Mary’s Island, a strip of land one mile in breadth on the river bank opposite, called “the ceded mile,” about three square miles of unoccupied bush and swamp higher up on the western bank of the river known as Albreda, Macarthy’s Island, and British Combo. Bathurst alone is inhabited by Europeans, nearly all of whom are French. The trade is entirely in French hands, the exports consisting principally of ground-nuts, hides, and beeswax, of which the first are shipped to France and used in the manufacture of olive oil. From a commercial point of view we have nothing to lose by exchanging the Gambia; and should France again broach the subject, as the present Government is now, 1881, almost identical with that which offered the settlement unconditionally in 1869, it could now hardly refuse to part with it without stultifying its former action. At present we are playing the part of the fabled dog in the manger: we will not make use of the Gambia as a means of opening up the interior, nor expend any money on the colony; and, although it is of no value to us as it is, we will not give it up to another nation, to which it would prove exceedingly useful, and which is willing to make the necessary outlay for unclosing this long-closed artery.

Our connection with the Gambia dates from 1588, in which year Queen Elizabeth granted a patent to some Exeter merchants to trade there. Thirty years later a company was formed for the purpose of carrying on this trade, which almost entirely consisted of “trafficking in black ivory,” as slave-dealing was euphonically termed. After the abolition of the slave-trade this settlement, in common with the others in West Africa, declined, and the colony was almost abandoned, until in 1816 a new mercantile company was formed by British traders from Senegal. A dependency of the Gambia is Bulama Island, which lies to the east at the mouth of the river Jeba, and where Captain Beaver established a settlement in 1791 at Dalrymple Bay. There used to be a small garrison kept up here under a subaltern officer, but after nine officers, in succession, had died at their post from the effects of the climate, the Government seemed to think the experiment had had a fair trial, and the troops were withdrawn. The Jeba river is unapproachable from the Gambia by land, as between the two lies the Casamanza river with its dense forests and swamps, and the inhabitants of that cheerful region are ferocious savages and cannibals. The Administrator of the Gambia exercises no jurisdiction of any description over the tribes dwelling in the vicinity of the British settlements.

The Jolloffs are a musical race. Besides being the happy possessors of the tom-tom, or native drum, the six-stringed native banjo, and the long reed-instrument which seems universal in West Africa, they are the inventors of various musical machines peculiar to themselves. The most curious of these is one formed of slabs of a dark, heavy, and close-grained wood, which when struck emits musical sounds, varying in depth of tone according to the size and thickness of the piece of wood, the larger pieces giving forth bass notes and the smaller treble. These are arranged in regular order so as to form a complete gamut, and fastened above the halves of calabashes. It is in fact a native dulcimer, in which wood takes the place of glass. They have also a kind of kettledrum, in which the skin is stretched across half an enormous calabash, highly polished and sometimes elaborately carved. Another instrument is a species of zither, having ten strings, all of which are made of some vegetable fibre, though I have somewhere read that it is considered impossible to obtain strings suitable for stringed instruments from such a source. Some of their tunes are rather pleasing, though perhaps monotonous; but if, as some musicians assert, repetition may be considered a beauty, the Jolloffs may be well satisfied with their national music.

The Jolloffs have a curious burial custom. The body of the deceased is laid out in the inclosure, or yard, which surrounds every Jolloff house, where the ladies of the family prepare the kous-kous, and their lord and master prays at morning and evening; and, when it is about to be carried out for sepulture, the funeral party, instead of taking it through the gate, proceed to demolish the whole fence. They consider that it would be fatal to the deceased’s hopes of future bliss if his body passed through any gate before he crossed the bridge of Al Sirat and knocked at the door of paradise. Expectoration seems to be the commonest form in which grief is exhibited by Jolloffs. Of course the men never show even this sign of weakness; but the women at funeral customs, or when they are grieved about anything, fill up the pauses of their dirge, or complaint, with vigorous discharges of saliva. Any fly within a radius of ten feet has but small chance of escape.

The Jolloff country extends from the Gambia to the French possessions on the Senegal river, and is divided into three independent kingdoms, viz. Senaar or Senegal, Saulaem, and Ballah. A late king of Senaar, Jumail by name, was a source of considerable anxiety to the French, and kept up a standing army of ten or twelve thousand cavalry, with which he made frequent raids on the settlements. The religion of these people is purely Mohammedan.

During one of my visits to the Gambia I crossed the river to look at the country of the “ceded mile,” opposite Bathurst. At the extremity of a promontory, where the visitor is usually landed, are the remains of a small fort, called Fort Bullen, which has fallen into disuse since the withdrawal of the troops; and from the summit of its walls one can enjoy the pleasing prospect of miles upon miles of dwarf mangrove, bounded on the horizon inland by a mass of tall cocoanut palms and silk-cotton trees. To the east of the ceded mile lies the Mandingo state of Barra, and to the west the country of the Shirirees, who are idolaters.