“July 22.—Taken to see the ‘Grand Customs’ at the palace of the late king, at the gate of which two platforms had been erected; on each platform sixteen men and four horses were placed; inside the house was placed another platform, on which were placed sixteen women, four horses, and one alligator. The men and women were all Sierra Leone people captured at Ishagga, and were dressed in European clothes; each group of sixteen men seated, or rather bound, in chairs placed round a table, on which glasses of rum were placed for each. The king then ascended the platform, where he adored the Dahomian fetish, and seemed to make obeisance to the prisoners, whose right arms were then loosed to enable them to take up the glass to drink the king’s health. After the king’s health had been drunk, the effects of the late king were paraded and worshipped by the people as they passed; a grand review of the troops then commenced, and as each marched past the king harangued them, and promised the sack of Abbeokuta in November. Nearly the whole of the troops wore fire-arms; a few select corps had rifles, but the greater part were armed with flint-lock muskets. The artillery consisted of about twenty-four guns (twelve-pounders). The number of troops altogether could scarcely be less than 50,000, including 10,000 amazons, all apparently well disciplined troops. After the review was over the prisoners were beheaded, their heads being hacked off with blunt knives; at the same time the horses and alligator were dispatched, particular care being taken that their blood should mingle with that of the human prisoners.
“When all was finished Mr. Euschart was permitted to leave Abomey, which, it is needless to say, he immediately did, having received the magnificent viatica of eight heads of cowries (16s.), one piece of country cloth, and two flasks of rum.
“Mr. Euschart firmly believes that Abbeokuta will, without doubt, be attacked by the whole Dahoman army towards the end of November.
“T. L. Perry, Commander.
“To the Governor of Lagos.”
It is instructive to turn from this, one of the last reports from this land of human butchery, to another letter written as long ago as November 27, 1724, by one Bullfinch Lamb, a “guest by compulsion” of Trudo Andati, at the time in question King of Dahomey. The epistle appears in “Dahomey and the Dahomans,” and would seem to be the effusion of a gentleman connected with the service of the British Crown, and who had got into a mess, rather through his urgent commercial spirit than through any unavoidable exigence of duty or voluntary adventure.
“November 17, 1724.
“Sir,—About five days ago the king of this country gave me yours of the 1st instant, and immediately required me to answer it in his presence, which I did, though in a very different manner, so that if I do not recall it, I hope that you will excuse that as well as this. As to the late conference I had with his majesty, on receiving your letter, I think he does not want to make a price to let me go, for when I pressed him much to tell me on what terms he would send me away, his answer was, he did not want to sell me, I was not a black man; but upon my again pressing him he made a sort of jesting demand to the sum of I think 700 slaves, about £10,000, or £14 a-head. Which strange ironical way of talking, as I told him, made my blood run cold in my veins; and, upon recovering myself, I asked him if he thought the king of my country would listen to such an outrageous proposal, and that you and the company would think that both he and I had lost our senses, should I have writ anything like what he said. Upon which he laughed, and told me not to put anything of that in the letter; for that he would order his head captain of trade to treat with you upon that subject, and that if you had not something very fine for him at Whydah you must write to the company. Upon which I told him I feared I must die in his country, and that I would only send for a few clothes and necessaries, which I desired he would let his people bring for me, and he agreed to it, so that I don’t find there is any other way of redeeming me than by the company sending him a present of a crown and sceptre, which must be paid for out of what remains due to the late King of Ardah. I know nothing else but what he will think mean, being stocked with great quantities of plate, wrought gold, and other rich things, and also all sorts of rich gowns, cloths, hats, caps, etc. He has likewise all sorts of common goods beyond measure, and gives away booges like dirt and brandy like water, for he is prodigiously vain and proud; but he is withal, I believe, the richest king and greatest warrior in this part of the world, and you may depend upon it in time will subdue most of the countries round him. He has already set his two chief palaces round with men’s skulls, as thick as they can lie on the walls, one by another, and are such as he has killed in war; each of which palaces are in circumference larger than St. James’s Park, about a mile and a half round. I hope my royal masters will take my case into consideration, and think of the long and many sufferings I have had in their service, and what a miserable condition I am still in, as it were, banished all the pleasures of this life, not only from my wife, and other friends, but all conversation in general; so that I am like one buried alive from the world, and think nothing can come near my unhappy fate, to lose my time and spend my youth, as it were, for nothing in such a cursed place as this, and not see a likelihood of getting out of it, but that I must end my days here. To prevent all which, I hope that they and you, in their behalf, will use your utmost endeavours, by such means as are requisite, for my deliverance, which I shall very impatiently pray to God to bring to pass. Governor Baldwin promised me in his last, upon his arrival in London, he would lay my case before our royal masters. Therefore, when you, write, I beg you will remind him and them thereof, and note the contents of what I now write. If any letters come from England for me, I believe either them or anything else will come safe to my hands by the king’s people. He is very willing I should have letters come to me, or anything else. Nor will he be guilty of any mean action in keeping anything from me, if it were twenty slaves. Neither do I believe he would detain any white man that should come here, but me whom he deems a captive taken in his wars. He sets a great value upon me, he never having had a white man here before, only an old mulatto Portuguese, which he had bought of the Popoe people, at the rate of about £500, as near as I could compute. And though this white man is his slave, he keeps him like a great carboceer, and has given him two houses, and a heap of wives and servants. It may be that once in two or three months he mends (he being a tailor by trade) some trifle or other for his majesty, but after the devil of a manner. So that if any tailor, carpenter, smith, or any sort of white man that is free, be willing to come here, he will find very good encouragement, and be much caressed, and get money if he can be contented with his life for a time; his majesty paying everybody extravagantly that works for him. And then it might be one means of letting me go with a promise of returning to trade with him; but he now says, if I go, he does not know whether he shall see any more white men, thinking they add to his grandeur; so that if any fellow whatsoever comes up and goes down again, it will possess him with a notion that more white men will come, and so let me go in order to encourage their coming. Or, if my little servant, Henry Tench, he at Whydah, and is willing to come to me, it may in time be much for his interest, as now being a boy, the king will be entirely fond of him, for, though I do nothing for him, he has put me into a house and given me half-a-dozen men and women servants, also a constant supply to maintain myself and them. If I loved brandy, I might soon kill myself, having enough of that, also of sugar, flour, and the like. And when he kills oxen, which is often, I am sure of a quarter, and sometimes a live hog, sheep, or goat; so that I shall not starve (but this is nothing, I still want content). And when he comes out in public, the Portuguese and I are called out to sit all day in the sun, only our boys are permitted to hold our kideysols or umbrellas over our heads; but then he pays us pretty well for it, sometimes giving us two, sometimes three or four grand cabess apiece, and a huge flask of brandy to drink there, besides one or two more for each to carry home. Most of the ink you sent me being unfortunately spilt, I beg you will send me a packet of ink powder. His Majesty has likewise got from me the greatest part of the paper, having a notion in his head of a kite, which, though I told him was only fit for boys to play with, yet he says I must make one for him and I to play with, so I beg you will send me two quires of ordinary paper and some twine for that use, and a score of matches, his majesty requiring me sometimes to fire his great guns; and I am much in fear of having my eyes put out with the splinters. He has twenty-five cannon, some of which are upwards of a thousand weight, so that a man would think the devil helped to bring them here, this place being about two hundred miles distant from Whydah, and at least one hundred and sixty from Ardah. His Majesty takes great delight in firing them twice round every market day, only now that his people are making carriages for them. And though he seems to be a man of as great natural parts and sense as any of his colour, yet he takes great delight in trifling toys and whims, so that if you have anything of that kind, I pray you will send them me, or any prints or pictures, he much loving to look in a book, and commonly carries a Latin mass book in his pocket, which he had from the mulatto; and when he has a mind to banter anyone out of their requests, he looks in his book as studiously as if he understood it, and could employ his thoughts on no other subject; and much affects scrawling on paper, often sending me his letters, but then he sends an interpreter with a good flask of brandy and a grand cabess or two.—Your humble servant,
“Bullfinch Lamb.”
So that on the whole one cannot help wondering why it is that Master Bullfinch—who in the course of his letter shows himself such a selfish individual—cannot settle down and make himself comfortable. Whether or no he ever escaped, the chronicle sayeth not; probably not; and no great matter either, perhaps, considering Mr. Lamb’s unscrupulous suggestion that half-a-dozen of his wretched countrymen might be induced to thrust their heads into the mouth of this Dahoman lion, that he, Master Lamb, might be enabled to escape.