Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3. / The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century

by Jules Verne

"Egga is a town of vast extent, and its population must be immense. Like all the towns on the banks of the Niger, it is inundated every year. We can but conclude that the natives have their own reasons for building their houses in situations which, in our eyes, are alike so inconvenient and unhealthy. Perhaps it may be because the soil of the surrounding districts consists of a black greasy mould of extraordinary fertility, supplying all the necessaries of life at the cost of very little trouble. Although the King of Egga looked more than a hundred years old, he was very gay and light-hearted. The chief people of the town met in his hut, and spent whole days in conversation. This company of greybeards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invariable practice, when any one passes by, to stop and listen outside, and they add to their noisy merriment so much good-will, that we hear nothing from the hut in which the aged group are revelling during the day but loud peals of laughter and shouts of applause."

One day the old chief wished to show off his accomplishments of singing and dancing, expecting to astonish his visitors.

"He frisked," says Lander, "beneath the burden of five-score, and shaking his hoary locks, capered over the ground to the manifest delight of the bystanders, whose plaudits, though confined, as they always are, to laughter, yet tickled the old man's fancy to that degree, that he was unable to keep up his dance any longer without the aid of a crutch. With its assistance he hobbled on a little while, but his strength failed him; he was constrained for the time to give over, and he set himself down at our side on the threshold of the hut. He would not acknowledge his weakness to us for the world, but endeavoured to pant silently, and suppress loud breathings, that we might not hear him. How ridiculous, yet how natural, is this vanity! He made other unavailing attempts to dance, and also made an attempt to sing, but nature would not second his efforts, and his weak piping voice was scarcely audible. The singers, dancers, and musicians, continued their noisy mirth, till we were weary of looking at and listening to them, and as bedtime was drawing near, we desired them to depart, to the infinite regret of the frivolous but merry old chief."

Mallam-Dendo, however, tried to dissuade the English from continuing the descent of the river. Egga, he said, was the last Nouffe town, the power of the Fellatahs extended no further, and between it and the sea dwelt none but savage and barbarous races, always at war with each other. These rumours and the stories told by the natives to the Landers' people of the danger they would run of being murdered or sold as slaves so terrified the latter, that they refused to embark, declaring their intention of going back to Cape Coast Castle by the way that they came. Thanks to the firmness of the brothers this mutiny was quelled, and on the 22nd October the explorers left Egga, firing a parting salute of three musket-shots. A few miles further down, a sea-gull flew over their heads, a sure sign that they were approaching the sea, and with it, it appeared all but certain, the end of their wearisome journey.

Several small and wretched villages, half under water, and a large town at the foot of a mountain, which looked ready to overwhelm it, the name of which the travellers could not learn, were passed in succession. They met a great number of canoes built like those on the Bonny and Calabar Rivers. The crews stared in astonishment at the white men whom they dared not address. The low marshy banks of the Niger were now gradually exchanged for loftier, richer, and more fertile districts.

Kacunda, where the people of Egga had recommended Lander to halt, is on the western bank of the river. From a distance its appearance is singularly picturesque. The natives were at first alarmed at the appearance of the travellers. An old Mallam acting as Mohammedan priest and schoolmaster took them under his protection, and, thanks to him, the brothers received a warm welcome in the capital of the independent kingdom of Nouffé. The information collected in this town, or rather in this group of four villages, coincided with that obtained at Egga. Richard Lander therefore resolved to make the rest of the voyage by night and to load his four remaining guns and two pistols with balls and shot. To the great astonishment of the natives, who could not understand such contempt of danger, the explorers left Kacunda with three loud cheers, committing their cause to the hands of God. They passed several important towns, which they avoided. The river now wound a great deal, flowing from the south to south-east, and then to the south-west between lofty hills.

On the 25th October, the English found themselves opposite the mouth of a large river. It was the Tchadda or Benuwe. At its junction with the Niger is an important town called Cutum Curaffi. After a narrow escape from being swallowed up in a whirlpool and crushed against the rocks, Lander having found a suitable spot showing signs of habitation, determined to land. That this place had been visited a little time previously, was proved by two burnt out fires with some broken calabashes, fragments of earthenware vessels, cocoa-nut shells, staves of powder-barrels, &c., which the travellers picked up with some emotion, for they proved that the natives had had dealings with Europeans. Some women ran away out of a village which three of Lander's men entered with a view to get the materials for a fire. The exhausted explorers were resting on mats when they were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of half-naked men armed with guns, bows and arrows, cutlasses, iron barbs, and spears. The coolness and presence of mind of the brothers alone averted a struggle, the issue of which could not be dubious. "As we approached," says Lander, "we made all the signs and motions we could with our arms, to deter the chief and his people from firing on us. His quiver was dangling at his side, his bow was bent, and an arrow which was pointed at our breasts already trembled on the string, when we were within a few yards of his person. This was a highly critical moment, the next might be our last. But the hand of Providence averted the blow; for just as the chief was about to pull the fatal cord, a man that was nearest him rushed forward, and stayed his arm. At that instant we stood before him, and immediately held forth our hands; all of them trembled like aspen leaves; the chief looked up full in our faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark, rolling eyes, his body was convulsed all over, as though he were enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous yet undefinable expression of countenance, in which all the passions of our nature were strangely blended, he drooped his head, eagerly grasped our proffered hands, and burst into tears. This was a sign of friendship; harmony followed, and war and bloodshed were thought of no more. It was happy for us that our white faces and calm behaviour produced the effect it did on these people; in another minute our bodies would have been as full of arrows as a porcupine's is full of quills. 'I thought you were children of heaven fallen from the skies,' said the chief, in explanation of this sudden change."

This scene took place in the famous market-town of Bocqua, of which the travellers had so often heard, whither the people come up from the coast to exchange the merchandise of the whites for slaves brought in large numbers from Funda, on the opposite bank.

The information obtained at Bocqua was most satisfactory; the sea was only ten days' journey off. There was no danger in going down the river, the chief said, though the people on the banks were a bad lot.

Following the advice of this chief, the travellers passed the fine town of Atta without stopping, and halted at Abbagaca, where the river divides into several branches, and whose chief showed insatiable greed. Refusing to halt at several villages, whose inhabitants begged for a sight of the white strangers, they were finally obliged to land at the village of Damuggo, where a little man wearing a waistcoat which had once formed part of a uniform, hailed them in English, crying out: "Halloa, ho! you English, come here!" He was an emissary from the King of Bonny come to buy slaves for the master.