Calling his words to memory, I resolved to trust to none of these fatal phrases, for I had passed through too many perils not to hope that a few more might be surmounted.
An old writer says, "The King of Benin has men in pay to furnish travellers with water, and these keep great pots full of that which is fresh and clear at convenient distances, with a shell to drink it out of; but no person must take a drop without paying for it; and if the waterman is absent, they drink, leave the money, and pursue their way."
It may have been so when old Dapper wrote or romanced, but not a drop of water found we on the weary track to quench our burning thirst, save in stagnant tarns by the wayside.
It was towards the close of a day when we had been nearly choked by the sulphurous heat which filled the air after a violent thunderstorm, that we approached the city of Benin, and saw its long lines of huts, or wigwams, each one story high, covering for many miles the right bank of the Formosa, one of the greatest estuaries which disgorge their waters into the Bight of Benin.
Groves of beautiful wood, orange, lime trees, cotton and pepper bushes, spread along the banks of the river, and many floating islets, covered with flowers and unknown fruit trees, are constantly borne past by its waters, from the unexplored lands through which they flow.
The city and its walls too were unlike aught I had ever seen before; yet their extent was great, and the dusky hordes that peopled them are probably unnumbered and unknown.
We were admitted through a wooden gate in the ramparts, which were composed of the trunks of trees pegged together, as palisades are in America, but loopholed for arrows or musketry; and the guard at this gate, as at all the others, was composed entirely of women armed with bows, lances, and old firelocks, for, like his royal brother of Dahomey, the sovereign of Benin has somewhere about four thousand wives, whom he has armed and formed into troops, and who—when off duty—make crocks, pots, and pipkins of clay, from the sale of which he derives his principal revenue.
They were all stout and handsome negresses, attired in a species of petticoat which reached below the knee, with a vest to cover the breast; their hair was dyed into alternate red and white locks, and they had great rings of polished metal on their otherwise bare arms.
Through this guarded gate our long cavalcade of laden camels, dromedaries, negroes, and slaves, passed down a populous street of great width, and nearly three miles in length. The houses, or huts, on either side, were alike singular in aspect and construction, being built of red clay, and having behind or around them spacious gardens and shady groves of lime and orange trees. Vast crowds of male and female blacks followed us, but in solemn silence, as the cavalcade bore a double tribute to the dead king and his successor, towards whose royal palace—if the odd collection of fantastic buildings could so be called—we now proceeded.
We passed through a kind of square, which Amoo described to me as the market-place; and there the king's female guards were exposing for sale great quantities of their clay pots and pipkins, gourd bottles, calibash basons, wooden spoons and ladles of all sorts and sizes, at their own prices; for these industrious Amazons enjoyed the entire monopoly of this branch of trade; and as a hint that none might interfere with them, there hung by iron hooks upon a gibbet the headless bodies of four men, in a frightful state of decay, with turkey buzzards feeding on the fragments that dropped from them, as they sweltered in the burning sunshine.