GOING TO THE FUNERAL.
Less than an hour brought us in view of a little collection of huts, grouped on the shore, under the shadow of a cluster of palm-trees, which, from a distance, presented a picture of entrancing beauty. A large group of natives had already collected on the shore, and, as we came near, we heard the monotonous beating of the native drum, or tum-tum, relieved by an occasional low, deep blast on a large hollow pipe, which sounded more like the distant bellowing of an ox than any thing else I ever heard. In the pauses, we distinguished suppressed wails, which continued for a minute perhaps, and were then followed by the monotonous drum and droning pipe. The descriptions of similar scenes in Central Africa, given to us by Clapperton and Mungo Park, recurred to me with wonderful vividness, and left the impression that the ceremonies going on were rather African than American in their origin.
On advancing to the huts, and the centre of the group, I found a small pitpan cut in half, in one part of which, wrapped in cotton cloth, was the dead body of a man of middle age, much emaciated, and horribly disfigured by what is called the bulpis, a species of syphilitic leprosy, which is almost universal on the coast, and which, with the aid of rum, has already reduced the population to one half what it was twenty years ago. This disgusting disease is held in such terror by the Indians of the interior, that they have prohibited all sexual relations, between their people and the Sambos of the coast, under the penalty of death.
A MOSQUITO BURIAL.
Around the pitpan were stationed a number of women, with palm branches, to keep off the flies, which swarmed around the already festering corpse. Their frizzled hair started from their heads like the snakes on the brow of the fabled Gorgon, and they swayed their bodies to and fro, keeping a kind of tread-mill step to the measure of the doleful tum-tum. With the exception of the men who beat the drum and blew the pipe, these women appeared to be the only persons at all interested in the proceedings. The rest were standing in groups, or squatted at the roots of the palm-trees. I was beginning to get tired of the performance, when, with a suddenness which startled even the women around the corpse, four men, entirely naked excepting a cloth wrapped round their loins, and daubed over with variously-colored clays, rushed from the interior of one of the huts, and hastily fastening a piece of rope to the half of the pitpan containing the corpse, dashed away towards the woods, dragging it after them, like a sledge. The women with the Gorgon heads, and the men with the drum and trumpet, followed them on the run, each keeping time on his respective instrument. The spectators all hurried after, in a confused mass, while a big negro, catching up the remaining half of the pitpan, placed it on his head, and trotted behind the crowd.
The men bearing the corpse entered the woods, and the mass of the spectators, jostling each other in the narrow path, kept up the same rapid pace. At the distance of perhaps two hundred yards, there was an open place, covered with low, dank, tangled underbush, still wet from the rain of the preceding night, which, although unmarked by any sign, I took to be the burial place. When I came up, the half of the pitpan containing the body had been put in a shallow trench. The other half was then inverted over it. The Gorgon-headed women threw in their palm-branches, and the painted negroes rapidly filled in the earth. While this was going on, some men were collecting sticks and palm-branches, with which a little hut was hastily built over the grave. In this was placed an earthen vessel, filled with water. The turtle-spear of the dead man was stuck deep in the ground at his head, and a fantastic fellow, with an old musket, discharged three or four rounds over the spot.
This done, the entire crowd started back in the same manner it had come. No sooner, however, did the painted men reach the village, than, seizing some heavy machetes, they commenced cutting down the palm-trees which stood around the hut that had been occupied by the dead Sambo. It was done silently, in the most hasty manner, and when finished, they ran down to the river, and plunged out of sight in the water—a kind of lustration or purifying rite. They remained in the water a few moments, then hurried back to the hut from which they had issued, and disappeared.