Page 462: “The manners of the people of Souakim are the same as those I have already described in the interior, and I have reason to believe that they are common to the whole of eastern Africa, including Abyssinia, where the character of the inhabitants, as drawn by Bruce, seems little different from that of these Nubians. I regret that I am compelled to represent all the nations of Africa which I have yet seen, in so bad a light.”
We next quote from the Family Magazine, 1836, page 439, as follows: “Many of the Dayaks have a rough, scaly scurf on their skin, like the Jacong of the Malay Peninsula. * * * The female slaves of this race, which are found among the Malays, have no appearance of it. * * * With regard to their funeral ceremonies, the corpse * * * remains in the house till the son, the father, or the next of blood, can procure or purchase a slave, who is beheaded at the time the corpse is burned, in order that he may become the slave of the deceased in the next world. * * * Nobody can be permitted to marry till he can present a human head of some other tribe to his proposed bride. * * * The head-hunter proceeds in the most cautious manner to the vicinity of the villages of another tribe, and lies in ambush till he can surprise some heedless, unsuspecting wretch, who is instantly decapitated. * * * When the hunter returns, the whole village is filled with joy, and old and young, men and women, hurry out to meet him, and conduct him, with the sound of brazen cymbals, dancing, in long lines, to the house of the female he admires, whose family likewise come out to greet him with dances, and provide him with a seat, and give him meat and drink. He holds the bloody head still in his hand, and puts part of the food into his mouth, after which the females of the family receive the head from him, which they hang up to the ceiling over the door. If a man’s wife die, he is not permitted to make proposals of marriage to another till he has procured another head of a different tribe. The heads they procure in this manner, they preserve with great care, and sometimes consult in divination. The religious opinions connected with this practice are by no means correctly understood: some assert they believe that every person whom a man kills in this world becomes his slave in the next. * * * The practice of stealing heads causes frequent wars among the tribes of the Idean. Many persons never can obtain a head; in which case they are generally despised by the warriors and the women. To such a height is it carried, however, that a person who has obtained eleven heads has been seen, and at the same time he pointed out his son who, a young lad, had procured three.”
James Edward Alexander, H.L.S., during the years 1836 and 1837, made an excursion from the Cape of Good Hope into the interior of South Africa and the countries of the Namaquas, Boschmans, and Hill Damaras, under the auspices of Her Majesty’s Government and the Royal Geographical Society, which has been published in two volumes; from which we extract, vol. i. page 126: “I was anxious to ascertain the extent of knowledge among the tribe (Damaras) with which I now dwelt; to learn what they knew of themselves, and of men and things in general; but I must say that they positively know nothing beyond tracing game and breaking in jack-oxen. They did not know one year from another; they only knew that at certain times the trees and flowers bloom, and then rain was expected. As to their own age, they knew no more what it was than idiots. Some even had no names. Of numbers, of course, they were nearly or quite ignorant; few could count above five; and he was a clever fellow who could count his ten fingers. Above all they had not the least idea of God or of a future state. They were, literally like the beasts which perish.”
Page 163, 164, and 165: “At Chubeeches the people were very poor. * * * Standing in need of a shepherd, I observed here two or three fine little Damara boys, as black as ebony. * * * I said to the old woman to whom Saul belonged, ‘You have two boys, and they are starving; you have nothing to give them.’ ‘This is true,’ she replied. ‘Will you part with Saul?’ said I; ‘I want a shepherd, and the boy wants to go with me.’ ‘You will find him too cunning,’ returned the old dame. ‘I want a clever fellow,’ said I. ‘Very well,’ she replied; ‘give me four cotton handkerchiefs and he is yours.’ ‘Suppose,’ said I, ‘you take two handkerchiefs and two strings of glass beads?’ ‘Yes! that will do;’ and so the bargain was closed; and thus a good specimen of Damara flesh and blood was bought for the value of about four shillings. * * * I told him to go and bring his skins; on which he informed me that he had none, saving what he stood in—and that was his own sable hide, with the addition of the usual strap of leather around his waist, from which hung a piece of jackal’s skin in front. Constant exposure to the vicissitudes of the weather, without clothes, hardens the skin of the body like that of the face; and still it is difficult to sleep at nights without proper covering. In cold weather, the poor creatures of Namaqua Land, who may have no karosses, sit cowering over a fire all night, and merely doze with their heads on their knees.”
Vol. ii. page 23: “Can any state of society be considered more low and brutal than that in which promiscuous intercourse is viewed with the most perfect indifference; where it is not only practised, but spoken of without any shame or compunction? Some rave about the glorious liberty of the savage state, and about the innocence of the children of nature, and say that it is chiefly by the white men that they become corrupt. The Boschmans of Ababres had never seen white men before; they were far removed from the influence of the Europeans.”
Vol. i. page 102: “Notwithstanding that some people maintain that there is no nation on earth without religion in some form, however faintly it may be traced in their minds, yet, after much diligent inquiry, I could not discover the slightest feeling of devotion towards a higher and invisible power among the Hill Damaras.”
In Mohammedan countries, the most unfavourable portions of the slave’s existence, as such, is while in the hands of the geeleb, or slave-merchant, and until he is sold to one who designs to keep him permanently. In the first instance, if negroes, they suffer much in the journey from the place of purchase to that of sale. For instance, it has been known, in the journey from Sennaar and Darfour to the slave-mart at Cairo, or even the intermediate one at Siout, the loss in a slave caravan, of men, women, camels, and horses, amounted to not less than 4000. The circumstances of the mart itself scarcely appear in a more favourable aspect than those of the journey,—whether we regard the miserable beings, as in the market at Cairo, crowded together in enclosures like the sheep-pens in Smithfield market, amid the abominable stench and uncleanness which result from their confinement; whether, as at another great mart at Muscat, we perceive the dealer walking to and fro, with a stick in his hand, between two lots of ill-clothed boy and girls, whom he is offering for sale, proclaiming aloud, as he passes, the price fixed on each; or else leading his string of slaves through the narrow and dirty streets, and calling out their prices as he exhibits them in this ambulatory auction. * * * The slaves, variously exhibited, usually appear quite indifferent to the process, or only show an anxiety to be sold, from knowing that as slaves, finally purchased, their condition will be much ameliorated. * * * How little slavery is dreaded is also shown by the fact that even Mohammedan parents or relatives are, in cases of emergency, ready enough to offer their children for sale. During the famine which a few years since drove the people of Mosul to Bengal, one could not pass the streets without being annoyed by the solicitations of parents to purchase their boys and girls for the merest trifle; and even in Koordistan, where no constraining motive appeared to exist, we have been sounded as to our willingness to purchase young members of the family. Europeans in the East are scarcely considered amenable to any general rules, but Christians generally are not allowed to possess any other than negro slaves.” London Penny Mag. 1834, pp. 243, 244; also, Sketches of Persia, and Johnson’s Journey from India.
LESSON XV.
Quotations from books of authority, portraying the universal state of degradation of the African hordes, may be made to an unlimited extent. Our object has been to present some idea of what the negro is in his own country, when beyond the influence of American slavery. We will now advance some views of him and his race, as they present themselves in this American slavery. And here let us premise that the population of the African tribes is estimated at 50,000,000, 40,000,000 of whom are deemed to be slaves, that the wars among them are not so much wars to make freemen slaves, as they are to appropriate the slaves of one owner to the rightful ownership of another, according to their notions of law and their customs of right. Among them, conquest always subjects to slavery. When slaves take a captive, he is the property of their master. Slavery exists there according to their laws and customs; and there is no evidence, nor in fact is it probable, that even the slave-trade with America has ever increased the extent or degree of slavery in Africa.