The marks are produced by the flesh being cut and charcoal placed in the incision.
There is also a kind of payment in advance, to facilitate the process of exchange. If a village sends a corpse or two, the receiving parties hand over any persons who are very old or extremely ill. That saves the visitors, who have perhaps come 5 or 10 miles, a double journey. It is considerate and courteous. Whether the tramp to their new abode improves the health of the departing ones is another question.
Some tribes are gallant enough not to eat women.
CHAPTER XXXIII
SOLDIERS AND THEIR SPORTS
British-trained troops—Little-known Mr Atkins—Swearing-in recruits—Hausa and Pagan oaths—Native priests on active service—Number of wives allowed—Artillery on men’s heads—Gun drill—Dipping for toroes—Mounted infantry—Signalling tuition—Teaching the band—Inculcating self-reliance—The military classification of white civilians.
Northern Nigeria is 255,700 square miles in extent, more than twice the size of the United Kingdom and Ireland. A few years ago nearly the whole of Northern Nigeria, with its 10,000,000 inhabitants, was more or less hostile: at the best, that portion in British occupation no more than sullenly acquiescent to the condition and quite “good enough” to eject the white intruders at a suitable chance. That stage has been passed, and, although a considerable territory remains merely nominally occupied, most of the country has been brought within thorough control. Warlike tribes, spending much of their lives in systematic exercise of arms and periodically engaged in severe battles, have been overthrown. They are now entirely engaged in agriculture or trading. The land is pacified.
The position has been attained without employing as much as a Corporal’s guard of white troops as a separate unit. The wonder has been attained by using natives, not as auxiliaries and in loosely-formed bodies for merely scouting or outpost purposes, but in properly disciplined and strictly supervised regiments prepared to withstand the shock of an onslaught from hordes of formidable warriors. Not least remarkable has been the breaking up in combat of large armies by comparatively small numbers of Nigerian soldiers. The secret of this superiority has been firmness, steadiness in defence, daring in attack; qualities due to British schooling and leading in the field.
The regular military force of Northern Nigeria consists of the 1st and 2nd Battalions Northern Nigeria Regiment, a battery of 6 guns and a company of Mounted Infantry. The corps are entirely unknown by sight in England. They have taken no part in royal processions and a detachment has never figured at the Military Tournament. There are less than 1,000 whites in the whole of Northern Nigeria, and only comparatively few have seen the troops with which we have won the country.
A widely-prevalent practice at home is to speak of West Africa comprehensively, as one would of Europe. There are greater differences between peoples in the former regions, though of the same race, than there are between the Scot and the Turk or the Celt and the Circassian. Neither the West India Regiment—one battalion of which is usually quartered at Sierra Leone—nor the Gold Coast Regiment are Northern Nigeria men, notwithstanding that representatives of the first two sometimes figure in London picture-shop windows as “Our Army in West Africa.”