No precautions seem to be available against their restless cunning, and the unwary traveller is often surprised, when he feels ill and wants some brandy as a medicine, that not a drop is to be found, and yet, to all appearance, his spirit-case has been under his own eyes, and so have the rascals who have contrived to steal it. Even so experienced a traveller as Captain Burton, a man who knows the negro character better than almost any European, says that he never had the chance of drinking his last bottle of cognac, it always having been emptied by his Krumen.
Provisions of all kinds vanish in the same mysterious way: they will strangle goats, and prepare them so as to look as if they had been bitten by venomous serpents; and as for fowls, they vanish as if they had voluntarily flown down the throats of the robbers. Anything bright or polished is sure to be stolen, and it is the hardest thing in the world to take mathematical instruments safely through Western Africa, on account of the thievish propensities of the Krumen.
Even when they steal articles which they cannot eat, it is very difficult to discover the spot where the missing object is hidden, and, as a party of Krumen always share their plunder, they have an interest in keeping their business secret. The only mode of extracting information is by a sound flogging, and even then it often happens that the cunning rascals have sent off their plunder by one of their own people, or have contrived to smuggle it on board some ship.
We now come to the domestic habits of the Krumen as summed up in marriage, religion, death, and burial.
These people are, as has been seen, a prudent race, and have the un-African faculty of looking to the future. It is this faculty which causes them to work so hard for their wives, the fact being, that, when a man has no wife, he must work entirely for himself; when he has one, she takes part of the labor off his hands; and when he marries a dozen or so, they can support him in idleness for the rest of his days.
So, when a young man has scraped together sufficient property to buy a wife, he goes to the girl’s father, shows the goods, and strikes the bargain. If accepted, he marries her after a very simple fashion, the whole ceremony consisting in the father receiving the goods and handing over the girl. He remains with her in her father’s house for a week or two, and then goes off on another trip in order to earn enough money to buy a second. In like manner he possesses a third and a fourth, and then sets up a domicile of his own, each wife having her own little hut.
However many wives a Kruman may have, the first takes the chief rank, and rules the entire household. As is the case in most lands where polygamy is practised, the women have no objection to sharing the husband’s affections. On the contrary, the head wife will generally urge her husband to add to his number, because every additional wife is in fact an additional servant, and takes a considerable amount of work off her shoulders. And an inferior wife would always prefer to be the twelfth or thirteenth wife of a wealthy man, than the solitary wife of a poor man for whom she will have to work like a slave.
Although the women are completely subject to their husbands, they have a remedy in their hands if they are very badly treated. They run away to their own family, and then there is a great palaver. Should a separation occur, the children, although they love their mother better than their father, are considered his property, and have to go with him.
Their religion is of a very primitive character, and, although the Krumen have for so many years been brought in contact with civilization, and have been sedulously taught by missionaries, they have not exchanged their old superstitions for a new religion. That they believe in the efficacy of amulets and charms has been already mentioned, and therefore it is evident that they must have some belief in the supernatural beings who are supposed to be influenced by these charms. Yet, as to worship, very little is known of it, probably because very little is practised. On one occasion, when a vessel was wrecked, a Kruman stood all night by the sea-side, with his face looking westward, waving the right arm, and keeping up an incessant howling until daybreak. The others looked at him, but did not attempt to join him.
There is one religious ceremony which takes place in a remarkable cavern, called by the euphonious name of Grand Devil Cave. It is a hollow in an enormous rock, having at the end a smaller and interior cavern in which the demon resides. Evidently partaking that dislike to naming the object of their superstitions which caused the believing in fairies to term them the “Good people,” and the Norwegians of the present day to speak of the bear as the “Disturber,” or “He in the fur coat,” the Krumen prudently designate this demon as “Suffin,” i. e. Something.