The royal ladies are divided, according to age and seniority, into several classes. The elder matrons occupy villages built for their accommodation at some distance from the residence; their number amounts to several hundred, for, besides his own wives of the first and second rank, Munza is bound to maintain the ladies inherited from his father, and even those belonging to a deceased brother. It is a long-established African custom that at a king’s death his wives should fall to the lot of his successor, who never fails to annex to their number a large addition of his own. In the sixteenth century the wives of the King of Loango were estimated at 7000.
Whenever at night the king leaves his private apartments to visit his wives, the place re-echoes with the shouts of the courtiers, accompanied by the strains of horns and kettledrums, and then, too, may be heard the Monbuttoo hymn, “Ee, ee, Munza, tchuppy, tchuppy, ee.” Eye-witnesses state that the king spends his night in passing from one hut to another, and without favouring any with an especially long visit; but it is all done in the strictest incognito and under cover of the darkness. Besides the courtiers, the royal household contains many officials appointed to some peculiar functions; there are the private musicians, trumpeters and buglers, whose productions testify to the time and labour spent upon their acquirement; there are eunuchs and jesters, ballad-singers and dancers, who combine to increase the splendour of the court, and to provide general amusement for the festal gatherings. In addition to these there are numbers of stewards, who keep order at the feasts and, by a free use of their rods, restrain the over-obtrusiveness of the younger portion of the community.
The king’s private residence consists of a group of several large huts, each of which is set apart for one of his daily occupations. They are enclosed, like a Seriba, with a palisade, and are shaded by plantations of well-kept trees. The king’s food is always prepared by one of his wives, who perform the office in turn, relieving one another at stated intervals. Munza invariably takes his meals in private; no one may see the contents of his dish, and everything that he leaves is carefully thrown into a pit set apart for that purpose. All that the king has handled is held as sacred, and may not be touched; and a guest, though of the highest rank, may not so much as light his pipe with an ember from the fire that burns before his throne. Any similar attempt would be considered as high treason and punished with immediate death.
As permission was granted me to inspect the internal arrangements of the royal palace, I was enabled to survey the whole series of huts. The king’s wardrobe alone occupied several apartments. In one room I saw nothing but hats and feathers of every variety, special value being laid upon the red parrot’s feathers, which are arranged in great round tufts. One hut there was in which were suspended whole bundles of the tails of civets, genets, potamochœri, and giraffes, together with skins and thousands of the ornaments with which the king was accustomed to adorn his person. I observed also long strings of the teeth of rare animals captured in the chase. One ornament alone, composed of more than a hundred lions’ fangs, must have been a costly heirloom to be handed on from father to son. For the first time I noticed the skin of the Galago Demidoffi, an animal hitherto only observed in Western Africa.
A little conical hut that I was shown was set apart for the privacy of the royal retiring-room, the only one of the kind that I came across in Central Africa. The internal arrangements of this corresponded exactly with what is seen in Turkish dwelling-houses. The heathen negroes are generally more observant of decorum in this respect than any Mohammedan.
On another occasion I was conducted through the armoury. The store of weapons consisted principally of lances tied up in bundles of two or three hundred together, which in times of war are distributed amongst the fighting force; there are also piles of the knives and daggers which are borne by Monbuttoo warriors. In the same place were kept the ornamental weapons which are used for decorating the royal halls on festal occasions, consisting for the most part of immense spears, formed head and shaft alike of pure copper, and brightly polished.
The storehouses and corn-magazines were provided with well-made, water-tight roofs, and Munza spends a portion of every day in the several sections, personally superintending the distribution and arrangement of the stores.
MONBUTTOO CIVILIZATION.
From these details it may be understood that the Monbuttoo are subject to a monarchical government of an importance beyond the average of those of Central Africa; and in its institutions it appears to correspond with the descriptions of negro empires long since passed away. The half mythical empire of the powerful Mwata Yanvo, whose influence doubtless extended to the Monbuttoo lands, may probably, to a certain extent, have furnished the type for many of these institutions; but be that as it may, it is an indisputable fact, that of all the known nations of Central Africa the Monbuttoo, without any influence from the Mohammedan or Christian world, have attained to no contemptible degree of external culture, and their leading characteristics prove them to belong to a group of nations which inhabit the inmost heart of Africa, and which are being now embraced in the enlarging circle of geographical knowledge. The land of the Manuyema, visited by Livingstone, and the states of Mwata Yanvo, frequented by the Portuguese traders, form respectively the south-western and south-eastern limits of this immense territory, which in area surpasses half of European Russia.
In turning to the national characteristics of this people, we may notice in the first place that their complexion is of a lighter tint than that of almost all the known nations of Central Africa, the colour of whose skins may be generally compared, by the test I have frequently adopted, to that of ground coffee. It is this peculiarity that forms a great distinction between the Monbuttoo and the Niam-niam, whose complexions are more aptly compared to cakes of chocolate or ripe olives. It cannot fail to strike the traveller as remarkable that in all African nations he meets with individuals with black, red, and yellow complexions, whilst the yellow tribes of Asia and the copper-coloured tribes of America each present a remarkable uniformity in the tone and shade of their skins. Barth observed this peculiarity among the Marghi; he noticed some individuals who were quite black, and others who had coppery-red skins, or, as he describes them, rhubarb-coloured, in distinction to those which he compared to chocolat-au-lait. His supposition that an intermingling of races was the sole cause of this diversity of complexion is probably incorrect, as it appears to be a characteristic of the entire series of the red-skinned races of Africa.