If, however, the patient be an exacting individual and inclined to avail himself to the fullest of Koossan law, he, although quite restored to health through the witch’s agency, may still refuse to pay her her fee till she discovers and brings to justice the person who enchanted him. As this, however, is a mere matter of hard swearing, combined with a little discrimination in the selection of the victim, the witch-doctress is seldom averse to undertake this latter business. The whole tribe is collected on a certain day, and in their midst a hut is built. To this hut the witch retires on the pretence that before she can reveal the name of the malefactor she must sleep, that he may appear before her in a dream. The people without in the meantime dance and sing for a while, till at length the men go into the hut and beg the enchantress to come forward. At first she hesitates; but they take her a number of assagais as a present, and in a little while she makes her appearance with the weapons in her hand. While staying in the hut she has busied herself in painting her body all sorts of colours, and with scarcely any other covering she stalks into the midst of the assembled throng.
With loud compassion for her nudity the people hasten to pluck their ox-hide mantles from their own shoulders and cast them on those of the witch, till she is nearly overwhelmed by these demonstrations of their solicitude. Suddenly, however, she starts up, flings off the cover of mantles, and makes a rush towards a certain man or woman, striking him or her with the bundle of assagais. For the unlucky wretch to protest his innocence it is utterly useless. The rabble, chafing like other beasts, seizes the evil doer and impatiently await the good witch’s decision as to what had best be done with him—whether, for instance, he shall be buried under an ant heap or put in a hole in the ground and covered with large hot stones. Should the ant hill be his doom, lingering torture and death are certain; but if he be a very strong man he may resist the hot stone torture, and when night arrives may force the terrible weights from off him, and dragging his poor scorched body out of the hole make his escape. Never again, however, must he venture among the people, who in all probability number among them his wife and children; for should he do so he would be executed off hand and his body thrown out to the hyænas.
In certain parts of the interior of Africa the custom of “waking” the defunct is ordinarily practised. Du Chaillu had a serving man named Tonda, and one day Tonda died, and the traveller having a suspicion of the ceremony that would be performed visited the house of Tonda’s mother, where the body lay. The narrow space of the room was crowded; about two hundred women were sitting and standing around, singing mourning songs to doleful and monotonous airs. “They were so huddled together that for a while I could not distinguish the place of the corpse. At last some moved aside, and behold! the body of my friend. It was seated in a chair, dressed in a black tail coat and a pair of pantaloons, and wore round its neck several strings of beads. Tonda’s mother approaching her dead son, prostrated herself before him and begged him to speak to her once more. A painful silence followed the of course fruitless adjuration; but presently it was broken by the loud hopeless wailing uttered by the bereaved woman, the rest of the company making dolorous chorus.”
African Wake.
The savages of Central Africa do not wear black for their departed relatives, unless indeed an accumulative coat of dirt may be so called; for it is a fact that among these people the way to express extreme sorrow is to go unwashed and very dirty. Besides, they wear about their bodies any ragged cloth that comes handy, and altogether evidently endeavour to convey the idea that now so-and-so is dead their relish for life is at an end, and that the frivolous question of personal appearance is no longer worth discussing. To their credit be it named, however, they are not guilty of the monstrous civilized custom of half-mourning. They don’t immediately on the death of a friend don attire and virtually proclaim, “See how sorry I am!—see my jetty gown or coat and the black studs in my shirt-front!” nor do they, when the deceased has passed away three months or less, streak their black with white and proclaim, “I am a little more cheerful—you may see how much by the breadth of the white stripe in my ribands.” The African is happily ignorant of these grades of grief; when he sorrows he sorrows to the very dust, but between that mood and boisterous merriment is with him but a single skip. Thus when the mourning period has expired (it varies from one to two years) a day is appointed for the breaking-up of mourning-time and a return to the bright side of the world. The friends and relatives and the widows (there are often six or seven of them) come in gangs of ten or a dozen from villages far off—some by the road, and some in their canoes, and none empty-handed. Each one is provided with a jar of mimbo or palm wine, and something that will make a row—gunpowder, kettles with round stones to shake in them, drums, tom-toms, and whistles made of reed. The row is the leading feature of the breaking-up, and is called bola woga. Virtually the mourning is over the evening before the ceremony commences, for the company have all arrived, as has the dead man’s heir (who, by-the-by, can, if he chooses, claim and take home every widow on the establishment), and the bereaved wives, albeit as yet uncleansed from their long-worn and grimy mourning suit, are full of glee and giggle, and have pleasant chat among themselves concerning the gay rig out they will adopt to-morrow.
To-morrow comes. Early in the morning the village is informed that the widows are already up and have already partaken of a certain magic brew that effectually divorces them from their weeds. The gun firing is likewise the signal for as many as choose to come and take part in the jollification, and as it invariably happens that as many as like unlimited mimbo accept the invitation, the entire population may presently be seen wending one way—toward the feast house. There they find mats spread not only about the house, but down the street that leads to it, and there they find the cleanly-washed widows decked in spotless calico and wearing anklets and wristlets heavy enough to account for their sedate mien. Then all the guests, having taken care that floods of mimbo are within easy reach, take their seats, and more guns are fired, and the orgie commences, and concludes not till every jar of palm wine has been broached, all the gunpowder expended, every drum-head beaten in, and every kettle hammered into a shapeless thing by the banging of the stones within. The rising moon finds them to a man huddled in every possible attitude about the wine-stained mats, helplessly drunk and with each other’s carcases, and cooking pots, and jars, and fractured drums as pillows. Next day the house of the deceased is razed to the ground, and the mourning for the rich man with many wives is at an end.
While Du Chaillu was sojourning at Sangatanga, the domains of a certain African king named Bango, whose chief revenue is derived from dealing in slaves and by taxing the slave “factors” whose “barracoons” (as the slave warehouses are called) are situated on the coast there; he was witness to the disposal of the body of a poor wretch who had fortunately died before he could be bought, hauled aboard a slaver, and “traded-off” anywhere where the market was briskest. If anything can be told in connexion with the hideous system further to disgust its enemies—which happily includes every man in England’s broad dominions—it is such stories as the following:
“During my stay in the village, as I was one day shooting birds in a grove not far from my house, I saw a procession of slaves coming from one of the barracoons towards the further end of my grove. As they came nearer I saw that two gangs of six slaves each, all chained about the neck, were carrying a burden between them, which I presently knew to be the corpse of another slave. They bore it to the edge of the grove, about three hundred yards from my house, and there throwing it down upon the bare ground returned to their prison, accompanied by their overseer, who with his whip had marched behind them hither. Here, then, is the burying-ground of the barracoon, I said to myself sadly, thinking, I confess, of the poor fellow who had been dragged away from his home and friends to die here and be thrown out as food for the vultures, who even as I stood in thought began already to darken the air above my head and were presently heard fighting over the remains.
“The grove, which was in fact but an African aceldama, was beautiful to view from my house, and I had often resolved to explore it and rest in the shade of its dark-foliaged trees. It seemed a ghastly place enough now, as I approached it to see more closely the work of the disgusting vultures. They fled when they saw me, but only a little way, sitting upon the lower branches of the surrounding trees watching me with eyes askance, as though fearful I would rob them of their prey.