In his entertaining book on the Congo, H.H. Johnston says (423) of the races living along the upper part of that river: "They are decidedly amorous in disposition, but there is a certain poetry in their feelings which ennobles their love above the mere sexual lust of the negro." If this is true, it is one of the most important discoveries ever made by an African explorer, one on which we should expect the author to dwell at great length. What does he tell us about the Congo tribes? "The women," he says of the Ba-Kongo, "have little regard for their virtue, either before or after marriage, and but for the jealousy of the men there would be promiscuous intercourse between the sexes." These women, he says, rate it as especially honorable to be a white man's mistress:
"Moreover, though the men evince some marital jealousy among themselves, they are far from displaying anything but satisfaction when a European is induced to accept the loan of a wife, either as an act of hospitality or in consideration of some small payment. Unmarried girls they are more chary of offering, as their value in the market is greater; but it may be truly said that among these people womanly chastity is unknown and a woman's honor is measured by the price she costs."
These remarks, it is true, refer to the lower Congo, and it is only of the upper river that Johnston predicates the poetic features which ennoble love. Stanley Pool being accepted by him as the dividing line, we may there perhaps begin our search for romantic love. One day, the author relates, rain had driven him to a hut on the shore of the Pool, where there was a family with two marriageable daughters. The father
"was most anxious I should become his son-in-law, 'moyennant' several 'longs' of cloth. Seeing my hesitation, he mistook it for scorn and hastened to point out the manifold charms of his girls, whilst these damsels waxed hotly indignant at my coldness. Then another inspiration seized their father—perhaps I liked a maturer style of beauty, and his wife, by no means an uncomely person, was dragged forward while her husband explained with the most expressive gestures, putting his outspread hands before his eyes and affecting to look another way, that, again with the simple intermediary of a little cloth, he would remain perfectly unconscious of whatever amatory passages might occur between us."
Evidently the poetry of love had not drifted down as far as the Pool. Let us therefore see what Johnston has to say of the Upper Congo (423):
"Husbands are fond of their own wives, as well as of those of other people." "Marriage is a mere question of purchase, and is attended by no rejoicings or special ceremony. A man procures as many wives as possible, partly because they labor for him and also because soon after one wife becomes with child she leaves him for two or three years until her baby is weaned." Apart from these facts Johnston gives us no hint as to what he understands by affection except what the following sentence allows us to infer (429):
"The attachment between these dogs and their African masters is deep and fully reciprocated. They are considered very dainty eating by the natives, and are indeed such a luxury that by an unwritten law only the superior sex—the men—are allowed to partake of roasted dog."
The amusing italics are mine.
If Johnston really found traces of poetic, ennobling love in this region, surely so startling a novelty in West Africa would have called for a full "bill of particulars," which would have been of infinitely greater scientific value than the details he gives regarding unchastity, infidelity, commercialism, separation from wives and contempt for women, which are so common throughout the continent as to call for no special notice. Evidently his ideas regarding "poetic love" were as hazy as those of some other writers quoted in this chapter, and we have once more been led on by the mirage of a "false fact."[146]
In 1891 the Swedish explorer Westermarck published a book describing his adventures among the cannibal tribes of the Upper Congo. I have not seen the book, but the Rev. James Johnston, in summing up its contents, says (193):