It is a very curious trait in the character of these savage kinglets of Western Africa how little they seem to have been impressed by the downfall of their brethren in neighbouring districts. Though they were well acquainted with all that was passing around them. Thus the fall of Ashantee in 1873 was well known to the King of Dahomey, yet he continued on his way and could not believe the French could ever upset him. Nana, the governor of the lower Benin or Jakri, could not see in the downfall of Ja Ja that the British Government were not to be trifled with by any petty king or governor of these rivers; though Nana was a most intelligent native, he had the temerity to show fight against the Protectorate officials, and of course he quickly found out his mistake, but alas! too late for his peace of mind and happiness; he is now a prisoner at large far away from his own country, stripped of all his riches and position. Here was an object lesson for Abu Bini, the King of Benin, right at his own door, every detail of which he must have heard of, or at least his Ju-Ju priests must have heard of the disaster that had happened to Nana, his satrap.
Nothing daunted Abu Bini and his Ju-Ju priests continued their evil practices; then came the frightful Benin massacre of Protectorate officials and European traders, besides a number of Jakris and Kruboys in the employment of the Protectorate.
The first shot that was fired that January morning, 1897, by the emissaries of King Abu Bini, sounded the downfall of the City of Benin and the end of all its atrocious and disgusting sacrificial rites, for scarcely three months after the punitive expedition camped in the King’s Palace at old Benin.
The two expeditions that have had to be sent to Benin River within the last few years have been two unique specimens of what British sailors and soldiers have to cope with whilst protecting British subjects and their interests, no matter where situated.
I do not suppose that there are in England to-day one hundred people who know, and can therefore appreciate at its true value, the risk that each man in those two expeditions ran. In the attack on Nana’s town the British sailors had to walk through a dirty, disgusting, slimy mangrove swamp, often sinking in the mud half way up their thighs, and this in the face of a sharp musketry fire coming from unseen enemies carefully hidden away, in some cases not five yards off, in dense bush, with occasional discharges of grape and canister. But nothing stopped them, and Nana’s town was soon numbered with the things that had been.
It was the same to a great extent in the attack on Benin, only varied by the swamps not being quite so bad as at Nana’s town, but the distance from the water side was much farther; in the former case one might say it was only a matter of minutes once in touch with the enemy; in the attack on Benin city it was a matter of several days marching through dense bush, where an enemy could get within five yards of you without being seen, and in some places nearer. Almost constantly under fire, besides a sun beating down on you so hot that where the soil was sandy you felt the heat almost unbearable through the soles of your boots, to say nothing of the minor troubles of being very short of drinking water, and at night not being able to sleep owing to the myriads of sand-flies and mosquitoes; getting now and again a perfume wafted under your nostrils, in comparison with which a London sewer would be eau de Cologne.
I was once under fire for twelve hours against European trained troops, so know something about a soldier’s work, and for choice I would prefer a week’s similar work in Europe to two hours’ West African bush and swamp fighting, with its aids, fever and dysentery.
Before I quit Benin I want to mention one thing more about Ju-Ju. When the attack was made on Benin city, the first day’s march had scarcely begun when two white men were killed and buried. After the column passed on, the natives came and dug the bodies up, cut their heads and hands off, and carried them up to Benin city to the Ju-Ju priests, who showed them to the king to prove to him that his Ju-Ju, managed by them, was greater than the white man’s; in fact, the king, I am told, was being shown these heads and hands at the moment when the first rockets fell in Benin city. Those rockets proved to him the contrary, and he left the city quicker than he had ever done in his life before.
To point out to my readers how all the natives of the Delta believed in the power of the Benin Ju-Ju, I must tell you none of them believed the English had really captured the King until he was taken round and shown to them, the belief being that, on the approach of danger, he would be able to change himself into a bird and thus fly away and escape.