“Besides throwing gifts to the soldiers, His Majesty was all smiles and liberality in his donations to the ministers and a number of others; but to no one was any large sum given. At one time he sent us a basket containing ten heads of cowries and two pieces of cloth as a present, and at another a constant supply of cowries and cloths to scramble among the mob.
“Among the recipients of the royal bounty were two kings and several ambassadors, including one from Ashantee called Cocoa Sautee.
“Towards noon the brigantine on wheels put off to discharge her cargo of rum, tobacco, and cowries, which were added to the heaps on the platform. The king’s party of soldiers keeping together, were evidently the principal recipients, and we soon found that something like an equal distribution among them was aimed at. A captain of musquetoon-men, named Poh-veh-soh, at once a military officer, court fool, and headsman, caught my attention, and I threw him three pieces of cloth full of cowries; on receiving the third he was ordered off the ground. Rum was distributed to the élite on the platform, and a breakfast provided for us, besides food for the ministers and wives.
“By two o’clock one of the heaps of one thousand heads of cowries had been thrown away and part of another given to the higher classes. Some three or four hundred pieces of cloth, a few kegs of rum, and rolls of tobacco, having all disappeared, His Majesty retired to rest awhile.
“Would to God that I could here close the account of this day’s proceedings, simply detailing the barbarous policy of raising the worst passions of man in order to make people believe in the profuse distribution of a pay which if doled out individually would be a mere pittance. The crowd can have no idea of the sum scrambled for; all they know is that a continuous shower is kept up for seven hours, and they consider it must be immense. Even if a man gets none he is content to know that he has been unfortunate, and should he proclaim his ill-luck he would not be believed, each supposing the other to be disguising the real quantity he has gained.
“During the royal absence a dead silence reigned as if by general consent; when by accident it was broken it was reinforced by the eunuchs sounding their metal bells, tolling the knell of eleven human beings. Out of fourteen now brought on the platform, we, the unworthy instruments of the Divine will, succeeded in saving the lives of three. Lashed in their baskets these sturdy men met the gaze of their persecutors with a firmness perfectly astonishing. Not a sigh was breathed. In all my life I never saw such coolness so near death. It did not seem real, yet it soon proved frightfully so. One monster placed his finger to the eyes of a victim who hung down his head, but finding no moisture drew upon himself the ridicule of his fiendish coadjutors. Ten of the human offerings to the bloodthirsty mob, and an alligator, and a cat, were guarded by soldiers, the other four by amazons.
“In the meantime the king returned, and calling us from our seats at the further end of the platform, asked if we should wish to witness the sacrifice. With horror we declined, and begged to be allowed to save a portion of them. After some conversation with his courtiers, seeing him wavering, I offered him a hundred dollars each for the first and last of the ten, while at the same time Mr. Beecroft made a similar offer for the first of the four, which was accepted, and the three were immediately unlashed from their precarious position, but forced to remain spectators of the horrid deed to be done on their less fortunate countrymen. What must have been their thoughts?
“The king insisted on our viewing the place of sacrifice. Immediately under the royal stand within the break of acacia bushes stood seven or eight fell ruffians, some armed with clubs, others with scimetars, grinning horribly. As we approached the mob yelled fearfully and called upon the king ”to feed them—they were hungry.” It was at a similar exhibition that Achardee (President of Jena) while looking into the pit with the king was seized, thrown down, and murdered on the spot. Disgusted beyond the power of description we retired to our seats, where also the cha-cha had retreated; not so his brothers, for I regret to say they remained delighted spectators of the agonies of the death of these innocent victims. As we reached our seats a fearful yell rent the air. The victims were held high above the heads of their bearers, and the naked ruffians thus acknowledged the munificence of their prince. Silence again ruled, and the king made a speech, stating that of his prisoners he gave a portion to his soldiers, as his father and grandfather had done before. Having called their names, the one nearest was divested of his clothes, the foot of the basket placed on the parapet, when the king gave the upper part an impetus and the victim fell at once into the pit beneath. A fall of upwards of twelve feet might have stunned him, and before sense could return the head was cut off and the body thrown to the mob, who, now armed with clubs and branches, brutally mutilated and dragged it to a distant pit, where it was left as food for the beasts and birds of prey. After the third victim had thus been sacrificed the king retired and the chiefs and slave dealers completed the deed which the monarch blushed to finish.”
Again I would remind the reader that this horrible business is not a thing of the past but of the present. True it was in the years 1849–50 that Mr. Forbes witnessed the horrors he describes, but had he been in Dahomey in 1859–60 he would have witnessed as bad, or worse. Here indeed, and taken from the Times newspaper, is an account of the very last Dahoman “Grand Custom.”
“The following information from Dahomey has been received at the Church Missionary House, from the commander of Her Majesty’s ship Griffin, at Little Popo, August 6th, 1862:—