Regarding the ethnological information we have of the Gold Coast natives, the most important works are those by the late Sir A. B. Ellis. His books are almost models of what books should be that are written by people studying native customs in their native land. We have also the results of scientific observers in the works of Buckhardt and Bastian, besides a mass of scattered information in the works of travellers, Bosman, Barbot, Labat, Mathews, Bowditch, Cruickshank, Winwood Reade, H. M. Stanley, Burton, Captain Canot, Captain Binger, and others, and quite recently a valuable contribution to our knowledge in Mr. Sarbar’s Fanti Customary Laws.[28] I think that every student of the African form of thought should master these works thoroughly, and I fully grant their great importance; but, nevertheless, I am quite unable to agree with Mr. Jevons (Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 164) when he says, regarding Fetishism, that “it is certainly amongst the inhabitants of the Gold and Slave Coasts that the subject can best be studied.” These two Coasts are, I grant, the best place for a student who is resident in Europe, and therefore dependent on the accounts given by others of the things he is dealing with, to draw his information from, because of the accuracy and extent of the information he can get from Ellis’s work; but, apart from Ellis the value of these regions to an ethnologist is but small, and for an ethnologist who will go out to West Africa and study his material for himself, the whole of the Coast regions of the Benin Bight are but of tenth-rate importance, because of the great and long-continued infusion of both Mohammedan and European forms of thought into the original native thought-form that has taken place in these regions. This subject I will refer to later, and I will return now to the history, confining myself to the earlier portions of it, and to that which bears on the early development of trade.
I sincerely wish I could go into full details regarding the whole history of the locality here, because I know my only chance of being allowed to do so is on paper, and it would be a great relief to my mind; but I forbear, experience having taught me that the subject, to put it mildly, is not of general interest. For example, person after person have I tried to illuminate and educate in the matter of our relationships with the Ashantees; always, alas, in vain. Before I have got half through they “hear a voice I cannot hear that’s calling them away;” or remember something “that must be done at once;” or, worst of all, go off straightway to sleep, after once or twice feebly enquiring, “Where is that place?” Of course I am glad that my little knowledge has been the comfort it has to several people. Once, when I was homeward-bound along the Gold Coast, three gentlemen came on board very ill from fever, and homeward-bound, too. Their worst symptom was agonising insomnia. “Not a wink,” they assured my friend the Irish purser, had they had “for a couple of months.” “We’ll soon put that right for you on board this boat,” he said, in his characteristically kind and helpful manner. To my great surprise, that same afternoon he deliberately tackled me on the subject of the real reason that induced Osai Kwofi Kari Kari to cross the Prah in January, 1873. I was charmed at this unwonted display of interest in the subject, and hoped also to gain further information on it from those recently shipped Gold Coasters in the smoking-room. I was getting on fairly well with it; and my friend the purser, instead of having “some manifests to write out,” as was usual with him, nobly battled with the intricacies of the subject for a good half hour and more; and then, just when I was in the middle of some topographical elucidation, accompanied by questions, up that purser rose, yawned and stretched himself, and hailed the doctor, who happened to be passing by. “What do you think of that, doctor?” he said, pointing to the settee. “Do them a power of good,” says his compatriot the medico. Turning round, I saw the three victims of insomnia grouped together; the middle man had his head pillowed on the oilclothed top of the table, and reclining, more or less gracefully, against him on either side were his two companions, their half-smoked pipes fallen from their limp fingers—all profoundly, unquestionably asleep. “Oh, yes! of course, I was delighted,” but not flattered; and, warned by this incident, I will here only say that should any one be really interested in the eventful history of the long struggle between the English, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Brandenburgers, with each other and with the natives, for the possession of the country where the black man’s gold came from, they will find a good deal about it in the works already cited; and should any medical man—the remedy is perhaps a little too powerful to be trusted in the hands of the laity—require it for the treatment of insomnia as above indicated, I recommend that part of it which bears on the Ashantee question in small but regular doses.
Our earliest authorities mentioning Africa with the knowledge in them that it is surrounded by the ocean, save at Suez, are Theopompus and Herodotus. Unfortunately all Theopompus’s works are lost to us, voluminous though they were, his history alone being a matter of fifty-eight volumes, while before he took up history he had won for himself a great reputation as an orator, during the reigns of Philip and Alexander the Great. He is perpetually referred to, however, though not always praised, by other great classical writers, Cicero, Pliny, the two Dionysiuses and others, and was evidently regarded as a great authority; one particular fragment of his works that refers to Africa is preserved by Ælian, and consists of a conversation between Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia. Silenus says that Europe, Asia, and Africa are surrounded by the sea, but that beyond the known world there is an island of immense extent containing large animals and men of twice our stature. This island Mr. Major thinks, and doubtless rightly, is connected with the tradition of our old friend—you know what I mean, as Captain Marryat’s boatswain says—the Atlantis of Plato. This affair I will no further mention or hint at, but hastily pass on to that other early authority, Herodotus, who was born 484 years before Christ, and whose works, thanks be, have survived. He says: “The Phœnician navigators under command of Pharaoh-Necho, King of Egypt, setting sail from the Red Sea, made their way to the Southern Sea; when autumn approached they drew their vessels to land, sowed a crop, waited until it was ripe for harvest, reaped it, and put again to sea.” Having spent two years in this manner, in the third year they reached the Pillars of Hercules, (Jebu Zatout, and Gibraltar), and returned to Egypt, “reporting,” says Herodotus, “what does not find belief in me, but may perhaps in some other persons, for they said in sailing round Africa they had the sun to the right (to the North) of them. In this way was Libya first known.”[29]
Much has been written regarding the accuracy of these Phœnician accounts; for, as frequently happens, their mention of a thing that seemed at first to brand their account as a lie remains to brand it as the truth—and although I have no doubt those Phœnician gentlemen heartily wished they had said nothing about having seen the sun to the North, yet it was best for them in the end, as it demonstrates to us that they had, at any rate, been South of the Equator; and we owe to Herodotus here, as in many other places in his works, a debt of gratitude for honestly putting down what he did not believe himself; he also has suffered from this habit of accuracy, becoming himself regarded by the superficial people of this world as a credulous old romancer, which he never was. Good man, he only liked fair play. “Here,” he says as it were, “is a thing I am told. It’s a bit too large for my belief hatch, but if you can get it down yours, you’re free and welcome to ship it.” Herodotus, however, accepts the fact that Africa was surrounded by water, save at its connection with the great land mass of the earth (Europe and Asia) by the Isthmus of Suez.
Several other attempts to circumnavigate Africa were made prior to Herodotus’s writings. One that we have mention of[30] was made by a Persian nobleman named Sataspes, whom Xerxes had, for a then capital offence, condemned to impalement. This man’s mother persuaded Xerxes that if she were allowed to deal with her son she would impose on him a more terrible punishment even than this, namely, that he should be condemned to sail round Libya. There is no doubt this good lady thought thereby to save her son; but, as events turned out, Xerxes, by accepting her suggestion, did not cheat justice by granting this as an alternative to immediate execution. However, off Sataspes sailed with a ship and crew from Egypt, out through the Pillars of Hercules, and doubling the Cape of Libya, then named Solois, he steered south, and, says Herodotus, “traversed a vast extent of sea for many months, and finding he had still more to pass he turned round and returned to Egypt and then back to Xerxes, who had him then impaled, because, for one thing he had not sailed round Libya, and for another, Xerxes held he lied about those regions of it that he had visited; for Sataspes said he had seen a nation of little men who wore garments made of palm leaves, who, whenever his crew drew their ships ashore, left their cities and flew into the mountains, though he did them no injury, only taking some cattle from them; and the reason he gave for his not sailing round Libya was that his ships could go no further.” Sataspes’s end was sad, but one cannot feel that he was a loss to the class of romancers of travel.
Another and a more determined navigator was Eudoxus of Cyzicus (B.C. 117). The scanty record we have of his exploration is of great interest. While he was making a stay in Alexandria, he met an Indian who was the sole survivor of a crew wrecked on the Red Sea coast. He is the Indian who persuaded Ptolemy Euergetes to fit out an expedition to sail to India, and off they went and succeeded in it greatly, but on their return the king seized the cargo; so therefore, as a private enterprise, the thing was a failure. However, Eudoxus was a man of great determination, and on the death of Ptolemy VII. in the reign of his successor, he set out on another expedition to India. On his return voyage he was driven down the African Coast, and found there on the shore amongst other wreckage the prow of a vessel with the figure of a horse carved on it. This relic he took with him as a curiosity, and on his successful return to Alexandria exhibited it there in the market place, and during its exhibition it was recognised by some pirates from Cadiz (Gades) who happened to be in that city, and they testified that the small vessels which were employed in the fisheries along the West African Coast as far as the River Lixius (Wadi al Knos) always had the figure of a horse on their prows, and on this account were called “horses.” The fact of this wreck of a vessel belonging to Western Europe being found on the East Coast of Africa joined with the knowledge that these vessels did not pass through the Mediterranean Sea, gave Eudoxus the idea that the vessel he had the figure head of must have come round Africa from the West Coast, and he then proceeded to Cadiz and equipped three vessels, one large and two of smaller size, and started out to do the same thing, bar wrecking. He sailed down the known West Coast without trouble, but when he came to passing on into the unknown seas, he had trouble with the crews, and was compelled to beach his vessels. After doing this he succeeded in persuading his crews to proceed, but it was then found impossible to float the largest vessel, so she was abandoned, and the expedition proceeded in the smaller and in a ship constructed from the wreck of the larger on which the cargo was shipped with the expedition. Eudoxus reached apparently Senegambia, and then another mutiny broke out, and he had to return to Barbary. But undaunted he then fitted out another expedition, consisting of two smaller vessels, and once again sailed to the South to circumnavigate Africa. Nothing since has been heard of Eudoxus of Cyzicus surnamed the Brave.[31]
On his second voyage he fell in with natives who, he says, spoke the same language that he had previously heard on the Eastern Coast of Africa. If he was right in this, some authors hold he must have gone down the West Coast, at least as far as Cameroons, because there you nowadays first strike the language, which does stretch across the continent, namely, the Bantu, and we have no reason to suppose that the Bantu border line was ever further North on this Coast than it is at present; indeed, the indications are, I think, the other way; but as far as the language goes, it seems to me that Eudoxus could have heard the same language as on the East African Coast far higher up than Cameroons, namely, on the Moroccoan Coast, for in those days, prior to the great Arab invasion, most likely the language of the Berber races had possession of Northern Africa from East Coast to West. However, there is another statement of his which I think points to Eudoxus having gone far South, namely, that the reason of his turning back was an inability to get provisions, for this catastrophe is not likely to have overtaken so brave a man as he was until he reached the great mangrove swamps of the Niger. The litoral of the Sahara was in those days, we may presume, from the accounts we have far later from Leo Africanus and Arab writers, more luxuriant and heavily populated than it is at present.
Of these voyages, however, we have such scant record that we need not dwell on them further, and so we will return to about 300 B.C., and consider the wonderful voyage made by Hanno of Carthage, of which we have more detailed knowledge; although there still remains a certain amount of doubt as to who exactly Hanno was, mainly on account of Hanno apparently having been to Carthage what Jones is to North Wales—the name of a number of individuals with a habit of doing everything and frequently distinguishing themselves greatly. The Carthaginians were to the classic world much what the English are to the modern, a great colonising, commercial people—warlike when wanted. They planted colonies in North Africa and elsewhere, and had commercial relationship with all the then known nations of the world, including a trans-Sahara trade with the people living to the South of the Great Desert. We shall never know to the full where those Carthaginians went, from the paucity of record; but we have record of the voyage of this Hanno in a Periplus originally written in the Punic language and then translated into Greek.[32] Hanno, it seems, was a chief magistrate at Carthage, and Pliny says his voyage was undertaken when Carthage was in a most flourishing condition.[33] From the Periplus we learn that the expedition to the West Coast consisted of sixty ships of fifty oars each, and 30,000 persons of both sexes, ample provisions and everything necessary for so great an undertaking. The object of this expedition was to explore, to found colonies, and to increase commerce. The expedition, after passing the Pillars of Hercules, sailed two days along the coast and founded their first colony, which they called Thymatirum. Just south of this place, on a promontory called Soloeis, they built a temple to Neptune. A short distance further on they found a beautiful lake, the edges of which were bordered with large reeds, the country abounding in elephants and other game; a day’s sail from this place, they founded five small cities near the sea called respectively Cariconticos, Gytte, Acra, Millitea, and Arambys. The next most important part of their voyage was their discovery of the great River Lixius, on the banks of which they found a pastoral people they called the Lixitae. These seem to have been a mild people; but there were in the neighbourhood tribes of a ferocious character, and they were also told there were Trogloditae dwelling in the mountains, where the Lixius took its rise, who were fleeter than horses. Unfortunately we are not told how long the Carthaginians took in reaching this River Lixius; but if the Carthaginians had been keeping close in shore they would not have met with a river that looked great until they reached the mouth of the Ouro (23°36' N. lat), which is four miles wide, but only an estuary; but as the Carthaginians do not seem to have gone up it, they may not have noticed its imperfections, and so, pursuing that dangerous method of judging a West African river from its mouth, regarded it as a great river. However this may have been, they took with them as guides and interpreters some of the Lixitae, and continued their voyage for three days, when they came to a large bay, an island in it containing a circle of five stadia, and proceeded to found another colony on that island, calling it Cerne, where they judged they were as far from the Pillars of Hercules as these were from Carthage. So it is held now that Cerne is the same as the French trading station Arguin (about 240 miles north of Senegal River), on to whose shoals the wreck of the French frigate La Méduse drifted in 1816, the tragedy of which is familiar to us all from Géricault’s great painting.
Hanno next called at a place where there was a great lake, which they entered by sailing up a river called by them Cheretes. In this they found three islands, all larger than the island of Cerne. One day’s sail then brought them to the extremity of the lake overhung by mountains, which were inhabited by savages clad in wild beasts’ skins, who prevented their landing by pelting them with stones. The next point in their voyage was a large and broad river, infested with crocodiles and river horses; and from this place they made their way back to Cerne, where they rested and repaired and then set forth again, sailing south along the African shores for twelve successive days. The language of the natives of these regions the Lixitae did not understand, and the Carthaginians could not hold any communication with them for another reason, that they always fled from them; towards the last day they approached some large mountains covered with trees. They went on two days further, when they came to a large opening in the sea, on land on either side of which was a plain whereon they saw fires in every direction. At this place[34] they refilled their water barrels, and continued their voyage five days further, when they reached a large bay which their interpreters said was called the Western Horn. In this bay they found a large island, in the centre of which was a salt lake with a small island in it. When they went ashore in the day time they saw no inhabitants, but at night time they heard in every direction a confused noise of pipes, cymbals, drums and song, which alarmed the crew, while the diviners they had with them, equivalent to our naval chaplains, strongly advised Hanno to leave that place as speedily as possible. Hanno, however, being less alarmed than his companions, pushed on South, and they soon found themselves abreast of a country blazing with fires, streams of which seemed to be pouring from the mountain tops down into the sea. “We sailed quickly thence,” says Hanno, “being much terrified.” Proceeding four days further they found that things did not improve in appearance from their point of view, for the whole country seemed ablaze at night, a country full of fire, and at one point the fire seemed to fly up to the very stars. Hanno says their interpreters told them that this great fire was the Chariot of the Gods. Three days more sailing South brought them to another bay, called the Southern Horn. In this bay they found a large island, in which again there was a lake with another island in it, having inhabitants who were savage, and whose bodies were covered with hair. These people the interpreters called the Gorillae—some were captured and taken aboard, but so savage and unmanageable did they prove that they were killed and the skins preserved. As most of the inhabitants of the Islands of the Gorillae seemed to be females, and as these ladies had made such a gallant fight of it with their Carthaginian captors, Hanno kept their skins to hang up in the Temple of Juno on his return home, evidently intending to be complimentary both to the Goddess and the Gorillae; but it is to be feared neither of them took it as it was meant, for Hanno had no luck from the Gods after this, having to turn back from shortness of provisions, and finally ending his career by, some say, being killed, and others say exiled from Carthage on account of his having a lion so tame that it would carry baggage for him; Punic public opinion held that this demonstrated him to be a man dangerous to the State. The Gorillae seem to have worked out their vengeance on white men by making it more than any man’s character for truth is worth to see one of them—except stuffed in a museum, with a label on.
How far Hanno really went down South is not known with any certainty. M. Gosselin held he only reached the River Nun, on the Moroccoan coast. Major Rennell fixed his furthest point somewhere north of Sierra Leone, and held the Island of the Gorillae to be identical with the Island of Sherboro’. Bougainville believed that he at any rate went well into the Bight of Benin, while others think he went at any rate as far as Gaboon. I cannot myself see why he should not have done so, considering the winds and tides of the locality and the time taken; indeed, I should be quite willing to believe he went down to Congo, and that in the most terrific of the fires he witnessed an eruption of the volcanic peak of Cameroon, a volcano not yet extinct. Indeed the name given to this high fire “that almost reached the stars” by his interpreters—the Chariot of the Gods—is not so very unlike the name the Cameroon Peak bears to this day, Mungo Mah Lobeh, the Throne or Place of Thunder, and this native name is also capable of being translated into “the Place of the Gods” or spirits. The thing I do not believe in the affair is that the Lixitae interpreters ever called it or any other place “a chariot”; for as Hanno was the first white man they had seen, and they had no chariots of their own, it is unlikely they could have known anything of chariots; and I think this Chariot of the Gods must have been an error of Hanno’s in translating his interpreter’s remarks. It is perfectly excusable in him if it is so, because to understand what an interpreter means who does not know your language, and whose own language you are not an adept in, and who is translating from a language regarding which you are both alike ignorant, is a process fraught with difficulty. I have tried it, so speak feelingly. It is true it is not an impossibility, as those unversed in African may hastily conjecture, because at least one-third of an African language consists in gesture, and this gesture part is fairly common to all tribes I have met, so that by means of it you can get on with daily life; but it breaks down badly when you come to the names of places. I myself once went on a long march to a place that subsequent knowledge informed me was “I don’t know” in my director’s native tongue. Still, if he did not know, I did not know, and so it was all the same. I got there all right, therefore it did not matter to me; but I was haunted during my stay in it by a confused feeling that perhaps I was flying in the face of Science by being somewhere else—being in two places at the same time.