I went up one of the arms by which the Niger pours it waters into the Gulf of Guinea on board the Fine, a schooner belonging to the station, commanded by Captain Lahalle. This arm, known as the Bonny River, is the trading branch, the one down which passes all the produce which the mighty Niger—a completely navigable river, with neither cataracts nor rapids, the great future artery of Equatorial Africa—brings from the interior of the continent. A negro king of the name of Pepel, more intelligent than his fellows, had constituted himself broker to this important trade. The European merchantmen coming up the river anchored before his town, made over their cargoes to him, and shipped palm-oil, the chief riches of the country, in their stead. The drawback was that anything you do with negroes is slow work. Whether it was that the palm-oil, which came in canoes, and very irregularly, from high up the river, did not arrive in sufficient quantities, or whether it was deliberate delay on Pepel's part, a year would sometimes elapse before the return cargo was completed, and sickness was meanwhile decimating the crews. Some cases there had been in which everybody had died, in others, ships had set sail in despair, without completing their full cargo, and Pepel had triumphed in his bad faith, until a man-of-war came and made him disgorge. Several times already the authorities oft the French station had had to chastise him, and it was a service to the trade of every nation to go and show him one's teeth now and again. This object it was, together with a certain amount of curiosity, which had brought us to the Niger River.
When we got to Pepel's town we found eight large Liverpool merchantmen, partly dismantled, and covered with roofs made of plantain leaves, surrounded by canoes going incessantly to and from the shore, where hundreds of negroes loaded them with casks of palm-oil. There was a stir and commercial activity such as I had not yet seen anywhere on that coast. The whole trade was exclusively English. To avoid the mortality to their crews, the English captains had their ships dismantled as soon as they got into the river, roofed the decks over, and sent their sailors back to England. The unloading and loading of the ships were then done by negro labour, as soon as a ship's cargo was completed, she was manned and sent back to Liverpool with the crew of some new arrival, and so on ad lib. It was very sensible, very well suited to the circumstances of the case; but to carry out such a plan the commercial houses must have had a great many ships, very large capital, and a spirit of consistency in business affairs no longer existing in our country. What with our unstable regime, and the invariably provisional conditions under which we live, we could never think of such a continuous struggle.
As soon as we had anchored and were preparing to go ashore, a great uproar attracted my attention, and caused me to hurry out of my cabin on deck. An unhappy negro who had been bathing close to us, with numerous companions of both sexes, had just been seized and carried off by a shark. We could still see the eddy above the spot where the monster was devouring him. It was the second time I had witnessed such a scene. These horrible creatures are "fetish" at the mouth of the Bonny, where its waters join those of the new Calabar River, and human sacrifices are offered to them. In other words, on certain days of the year, the people go in procession to the river bar and throw in some wretched children, who have been told they were being taken to a festival. The sharks have a fine feast, to the joy of the onlookers, and amid much beating of tom-toms. This Jew-Jew, or shark-worship, is one of the most abominable superstitions I have ever met with. At Widah the snakes were "fetish." Here at Bonny it was the lizards, which is less cruel. Yet they are hideous enough, those Bonny lizards, huge creatures over a yard or a yard and a half long. They have temples of their own, where they are fed, and whence they sally out for walks, constantly waving their rose-coloured forked tongues, and walking all sideways, so as not to set their feet on their huge bellies, like great bags, which they drag after them like trawl nets. One has to go about with lanterns at night, for to step on these "fetish" gentry would excite the population into taking the law into its own hands.
During a visit to the English sea-captains, we heard that a French ship, the Julie of Bordeaux, had just sailed in despair, without having completed her cargo, paid for in advance, after waiting nine months in the river, and that Pepel, thinking that we had come on that account, was shaking in his shoes. But on making inquiries we could find no trace of any complaint, official or semi-official, having been made, and further, the Julie was accused of having tried to dabble in the slave trade. Here was a puzzle for us. What were we to do? Say nothing to Pepel? Then he would laugh us to scorn, for his conscience pricked him, we knew. All his canoes had taken to flight when we arrived, and not a single negro had boarded us. Threaten him? But with what? And why? To tell how we got out of this hole would be to betray… a professional secret. All I can say is, that the next morning, in a huge straw hat, and with a big striped parasol in my hand, I performed the functions of dragoman to his Excellency Commander Lahalle, full lieutenant, representing France and the French navy.
We began by crossing a swamp, covered with huge mangrove trees, through which small canals had been cut to allow of the canoes getting up to the houses. Under the dark mangrove shadows the long canoes, full of fierce-looking stark-naked blacks, looked like huge crocodiles, ready to fly at us. After a time we came alongside Pepel's house, a sort of labyrinth of clay and straw-built huts. I announced his Excellency the Commander to a negro who spoke Spanish. We were invited to sit down, a crowd of blacks assembled, and the elders of the tribe arrived. Lastly appeared a tall young man wearing a blue cotton shirt and trousers, with amulets strung round his neck, and a sceptre covered with a tigerskin in his hand. This was Pepel himself. He understood English and spoke it a little. We had what is called in those parts a palaver with him. I spoke very slowly, and the King answered me. We went over a great many subjects. We were severe—but just! Nothing concerning the result of this conference ever transpired, but the diplomatic action of France made itself felt. Something else made itself felt as well, and that was the horrible smell in Pepel's town, a filthy place, inhabited by a numerous and hideous population.
When I got outside it I stopped short before a striking sight—a semi-circular clump of trees so huge that men looked like pigmies beneath them, giving me much the same impression as the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople had formerly made on me. The trunks of these trees were like the pillars of some strange cathedral, and it was as dark beneath them as in some ancient church. The bare sandy soil swarmed with women, some naked, some clothed, and all tattooed and painted and striped in various colours, scraping up the earth to find fresh water, the rarest of all commodities on the African coast. It was a picture worth painting.
On leaving the Niger (which is British, irrevocably British), fierce tornadoes drove us swiftly to Fernando Po, a lovely island covered with forests, over which rises a huge peak, much like the Peak of Teneriffe, and like it too, almost always lost in the clouds. I anchored close in shore in an excellent haven, and seized the opportunity to send my crew to amuse themselves and do their washing on shore. A pretty stream, which tumbled in one waterfall after another through the masses of tropical growth, was soon the scene of numerous laundry operations, in which all the negresses in the neighbourhood insisted on joining, incited thereto no doubt by the desire of seeing how my four hundred strapping fellows set about their work.
[Illustration with caption: CITIZEN OF FERNANDO PO.]
From the top of the hill to its foot there rose one great Africo-European shout of laughter and shriek of delight, which it was a downright pleasure to listen to.
Officially speaking, Fernando Po was a Spanish possession But not a single Spaniard lived on the island, and no Spanish flag floated over it. The English indeed had landed several cargoes of their "liberated Africans" on it, and an individual, whether official or not I cannot tell, had also come to govern them. He had built himself a comfortable house, before which he had planted a flagstaff, from which the Union Jack waved. After a time he had assumed the style and title of governor, and I was requested to call on him as such, which I absolutely refused to do. On my return to Europe, chancing to meet Comte Bresson, our ambassador in Spain, I mentioned the state of matters at Fernando Po to him, and soon after received a letter from him from Madrid, in which he told me the Spanish Government had just despatched a warship to retake possession of the island. It was well worth while, for if the British Niger, the German Cameroons, and the French Gaboon are some day to develop commercially and colonially, as they seem to give promise of doing, Fernando Po, with its insular position, its comparatively healthy climate, and its excellent anchorage, lying as it does at an equal distance from the three centres of activity, cannot fail to become a most important place both from the commercial and the military point of view.