The priest, conjurer, or medicine man still preserves an unshaken authority over the superstitious minds of the Bonnians, and appears most despicable in the character of a judge, for his verdict always inclines to the side of the party which offers him the largest bribe, and a cruel punishment awaits the wretch who has nothing but his innocence to plead in his favour. The accused is either obliged to undergo the ordeal of swimming across a creek, where he becomes the sure prey of the alligator or the shark; or he is led to execution on a sandpit at its mouth, where he is bound at ebb tide to two poles fastened in the sand. One limb after another, proceeding from the hands and feet to the shoulders and hip joints, is now separated from the bleeding trunk which is finally hewn down from the stake. While this horrid scene is performing, the impatient alligators already protrude their monstrous jaws out of the water, and the sharks are also in attendance waiting till the returning flood brings them their share of the feast. At the next ebb the sea has washed away every trace of the disgusting spectacle.
Sometimes a cruel sacrifice is offered to the sea. As the Bonnians chiefly subsist by their trade with the Europeans, which enables them to procure provisions from the interior, the arrival of the foreign ships is to them of the greatest importance. But large vessels are in the dry season often prevented for weeks together from passing the bar by low water, fogs, calms, or contrary winds. A sufficient depth of water across the bar is therefore the great desideratum of the traders or ‘gentlemen,’ as they call themselves, of Bonny. To obtain this they sail with several large canoes down the river close to the bar, where they throw several of their best male and female slaves into the water as a propitiatory offering to the sea, so as to induce it to rise, or, as they call it, to make ‘big water.’
The aspect of the capital town of Bonny, or Okolloma, which may contain about 5,000 souls, corresponds with the barbarous state of its inhabitants. On account of its low situation, scarcely elevated above high-water mark, the streets are constantly muddy, so that a stranger visiting the place is obliged to be carried over the worst places on the unctuous back of a negro, the only vehicle in Okolloma. The streets or rather lanes form a complete labyrinth, as every man erects his hut where he thinks proper, without any regard to regularity. The clay floor of these dwellings, which, though varying in size, are all built on the same plan, is raised about a foot above the level of the streets, and is undermined in all directions by a multitude of burrowing crabs. The walls are generally only six or seven feet high, but the roof, thatched with palm leaves, rises without any partition twenty feet or more above the floor. Generally the hut is without any window, so that in the obscurity which reigns within, it is difficult for the stranger to find his way to the smaller rooms or compartments into which the interior is subdivided. Some gourds and water-jugs, a few cases filled with clothes, arms, and other valuables, and low wooden stools for the master and his chief attendants, form the only furniture. The dwellings of the ‘gentlemen’ have no more pretension to architectural beauty than those of the humblest ‘freeman,’ consisting merely of several of the huts above described clustered together in the strangest confusion and communicating with each other through door openings in the interior.
If idleness were bliss the tribes inhabiting the fertile Lake Regions of Central Africa must be reckoned among the happiest of mankind. Rising with the dawn from his couch of cow’s hide, the negro usually kindles a fire to keep out the chill of the morning from his hay-stack hut, and addresses himself to his constant companion the pipe. When the sun becomes sufficiently powerful he removes the reed screen which forms the entrance to his dwelling, and issues forth to bask in the morning beams. After breaking his fast with a dish of porridge or curded milk, he now repairs to the Iwanza, or village ‘public,’ where in the society of his own sex he will spend the greater part of the day talking and laughing, smoking or indulging in copious draughts of a beer without hops, called pombe, the use of which among the negro and negroid races dates back as far as the age of Osiris. To while away the time he sits down to play at heads and tails; gambling being as violent a passion in him as with the Malay or the Americian Indian. Many of the Wanyamwesi have been compelled by this indulgence to sell themselves into slavery, and, after playing away their property, they even stake their aged mothers against the equivalent of an old lady in these lands—a cow or a pair of goats. Others, instead of gambling, indulge in some less dangerous employment, which occupying the hands, leaves the rest of the body and the mind at ease; such as whittling wood, piercing and airing their pipe-sticks, plucking out their beards, eyebrows, and eye-lashes, or preparing and polishing their weapons. At noon the African returns to his hut to eat the most substantial and the last meal of the day, which has been cooked by his women. Eminently gregarious, however, he often prefers the Iwanza as a dining-room, where the company of relatives and friends adds the pleasure of society to the enjoyment of beef or mutton. With him food is the all-in-all of life—his thought by day, his dream by night. The civilised European can hardly comprehend the intense delight with which his wild brother satisfies the wants of his stomach, or the envious eye which he casts on all those who live better than himself. After eating, the East African invariably indulges in a long fit of torpidity, using the back, breast, or stomach, of his neighbour as a pillow, and awakening from his siesta, passes the afternoon as he did the forenoon, chatting, playing, smoking, and where tobacco fails, chewing sweet earth, or the clay of ant-hills. This probably contains some animal matter, but the chief reason for using it is apparently the necessity to barbarians of whiling away the time when not sleeping, by exercising their jaws. Towards sunset all issue forth to enjoy the coolness; the men sit outside the Iwanza, whilst the women and the girls, after fetching water for the household wants from the well, collect in a group upon their little stools, and indulge in the pleasures of gossip and the pipe. This delightful hour in the more favoured parts of the country is replete with enjoyment, felt by the barbarian as much as by civilised man. As the hours of darkness draw nigh, the village doors are carefully closed, and after milking his cows, each peasant retires to his hut, or passes his time squatting round the fire with his friends in the Iwanza. He has not yet learned the art of making a wick, and of filling a bit of pottery with oil. An ignited stick of some oleaginous wood, which will keep burning for a quarter of an hour with a brilliant flame, serves to light him home. Such is the African’s idle day, and thus every summer is spent; but as the wintry rains draw nigh, and provisions become scarce, the necessity of providing for his daily bread suggests itself, and labour in the fields occupies a great part of the day, which would otherwise have been spent in the Iwanza.
When the moon shines bright, the spirits of the East African rise to their highest pitch, and a furious drumming, a loud clapping of hands, and a drowsy chorus summon the lads and lasses of the neighbouring villages to come out and dance.
The style of saltation usual in these parts is remarkable only for the excessive gravity which it induces, for at no other time does the East African look so serious, so full of earnest purpose, as when about to practise the art of Terpsichore. At first the dancers tramping to the measure with alternate feet, and simultaneously performing a kind of treadmill exercise, with a heavier stamp at the end of every period, sway their bodies slowly from side to side; but as excitement increases,
‘The mirth and fun grows fast and furious,’
till the assembly, with arms waving like windmills, assumes the semblance of a set of maniacs. The performance often closes with a grand promenade, all the dancers being jammed in a rushing mass, with the features of satyrs and fiendish gestures. The performance having reached this highest pitch, the song dies, and the dancers with loud shouts of laughter, throw themselves on the ground to recover strength and breath.
What a contrast to this life of easy indolence when the Negro villager, violently torn from home, is led away into hopeless slavery! This, however, is but too often his lot, for throughout the whole length and breadth of torrid Africa, from the coast of Guinea to the borders of the Nile, we almost universally find man armed against man and the stronger tribes ever ready to kidnap and capture the weaker wretches within their reach. Every year sees new gangs of slaves driven to the great mart of Zanzibar, or on their melancholy way across the desert to Chartum; every year witnesses the renewal of atrocities, which, to the disgrace of man, date back as far as the time of the Phœnicians, and may possibly outlast the nineteenth century.[42]
An Egyptian Razzai, or slave-hunting expedition, after long toilsome marches across the desert or through the primeval forest, at length succeeds in surprising a Negro village. The soldiers, in whom their own sufferings have long since extinguished every spark of humanity, rush with tiger-like ferocity upon their prey; their fury spares neither age nor infancy; all who are deemed unfit for a life of bondage are mercilessly butchered. The Scheba, a heavy wooden collar, shaped like a fork, rests upon the neck of the adult captives, and prevents their escape or their desperate attempts at suicide. Being neither planed nor covered with soft rags, it wears deep wounds into the skin, and causes painful ulcers which last as long as the journey, for the Scheba is not removed before the place of destination is reached. More goaded and more brutally treated than a herd of cattle, the miserable pilgrims now set forth on their eternal separation from all that rendered life of any value in their eyes. Before the burning village fades for ever from their sight, the commander orders the caravan to halt. Little cares he, if, under those smoking ruins some wounded wretch unable to move, sees the flames advance nearer and nearer to consume him; if some infant left in a conflagrated hut utters its piercing cries for help.