Gelele is a fine-looking man, with a right royal aspect. He is more than six feet in height, thin, broad-shouldered, active, and powerful. His hair is nearly all shaven except two cockade-like tufts, which are used as attachments for beads and other trinkets of brass and silver. Contrary to the usual form, he has a firm and well-pronounced chin, and a tolerably good forehead, and, in spite of his cruel and bloodthirsty nature, has a very agreeable smile. He wears his nails very long, and is said, though the statement is very doubtful, that he keeps under his talon-like nails a powerful poison, which he slily infuses in the drink of any of his Caboceers who happen to offend him. His face is much pitted with the small-pox, and he wears the mark of his race, namely, three perpendicular scars on the forehead just above the nose. This is the last remnant of a very painful mode of tatooing, whereby the cheeks were literally carved, and the flaps of flesh turned up and forced to heal in that position.
He is not nearly so black as his father, his skin approaching the copper color, and it is likely that his mother was either a slave girl from the northern Makhi, or a mulatto girl from Whydah.
On ordinary occasions he dresses very simply, his body cloth being of white stuff edged with green, and his short drawers of purple silk. He wears but few ornaments, the five or six iron bracelets which encircle his arms being used more as defensive armor than as jewelry.
Still, though dressed in a far simpler style than any of his Caboceers, he is very punctilious with regard to etiquette, and preserves the smallest traditions with a minute rigidity worthy of the court of Louis XIV. Although he may be sitting on a mere earthen bench, and smoking a clumsy and very plain pipe, all his court wait upon him with a reverence that seems to regard him as a demi-god rather than a man. Should the heat, from which he is sheltered as much as possible by the royal umbrella, produce a few drops on his brow, they are delicately wiped off by one of his wives with a fine cloth; if the tobacco prove rather too potent, a brass or even a gold spittoon is placed before the royal lips. If he sneezes, the whole assembled company burst into a shout of benedictions. The chief ceremony takes place when he drinks. As soon as he raises a cup to his lips, two of his wives spread a white cloth in front of him, while others hold a number of gaudy umbrellas so as to shield him from view. Every one who has a gun fires it, those who have bells beat them, rattles are shaken, and all the courtiers bend to the ground, clapping their hands. As to the commoners, they turn their backs if sitting, if standing they dance like bears, paddling with their hands as if they were paws, bawling “Poo-oo-oo” at the top of their voices.
If a message is sent from him, it is done in a most circuitous manner. He first delivers the message to the Dakro, a woman attached to the court. She takes it to the Meu, and the Meu passes it on to the Mingan, and the Mingan delivers it to the intended recipient. When the message is sent to the king, the order is reversed, and, as each officer has to speak to a superior, a salutation is used neatly graduated according to rank. When the message at last reaches the Dakro, she goes down on all-fours, and whispers the message into the royal ears. So tenacious of trifles is the native memory, that the message will travel through this circuitous route without the loss or transposition of a word.
When any one, no matter what may be his rank, presents himself before the king, he goes through a ceremony called “Itte d’ai,” or lying on the ground. He prostrates himself flat on his face, and with his hands shovels the dust all over his person. He also kisses the ground, and takes care when he rises to have as much dust as possible on his huge lips. Face, hands, limbs, and clothes are equally covered with dust, the amount of reverence being measured by the amount of dust. No one approaches the king erect: he must crawl on all-fours, shuffle on his knees, or wriggle along like a snake.
Wherever Gelele holds his court, there are placed before him three large calabashes, each containing the skull of a powerful chief whom he had slain. The exhibition of these skulls is considered as a mark of honor to their late owners, and not, as has been supposed, a sign of mockery or disgrace. One is bleached and polished like ivory, and is mounted on a small ship made of brass. The reason for this curious arrangement is, that when Gezo died, the chief sent a mocking message to Gelele, saying that the sea had dried up, and men had seen the end of Dahome. Gelele retaliated by invading his territory, killing him, and mounting his skull on a ship, as a token that there was plenty of water left to float the vessel.
The second skull is mounted with brass so as to form a drinking cup. This was done because the owner had behaved treacherously to Gelele instead of assisting him. In token, therefore, that he ought to have “given water to a friend in affliction”—the metaphorical mode of expressing sympathy—Gelele and his courtiers now drink water out of his skull. The third was the skull of a chief who had partaken of this treachery, and his skull was accordingly mounted with brass fittings which represented the common country trap, in order to show that he had set a trap, and fallen into it himself. All these skulls were without the lower jaw, that being the most coveted ornament for umbrellas and sword-handles. Sad to say, with the usual negro disregard of inflicting pain, the captor tears the jaw away while the victim is still alive, cutting through both cheeks with one hand and tearing away the jaw with the other.
The same minute and grotesque etiquette accompanies the king as he proceeds to Agbome, the real capital, to celebrate the So-Sin Custom, and it is impossible to read the accounts of the whole proceeding without being struck with the ingenuity by which the negro has pressed into the service of barbarism everything European that he can lay his hands upon, while he has invariably managed thereby to make the rites ludicrous instead of imposing.
First came a long line of chiefs, distinguished by their flags and umbrellas, and, after marching once round the large space or square, they crossed over and formed a line of umbrellas opposite the gateway. Then came the royal procession itself, headed by skirmishers and led by a man carrying one of the skull-topped banners. After these came some five hundred musketeers, and behind them marched two men carrying large leathern shields painted white, and decorated with a pattern in black. These are highly valued, as remnants of the old times when shields were used in warfare, and were accompanied by a guard of tall negroes, wearing brass helmets and black horse-tails.