About noon the slaves return from handling their trowel-shaped iron hoes, and the "gentleman" takes a siesta proportioned to his drink. The poorer classes sit at home weaving, spinning, or threading beads, whilst the wives attend to household work, prepare the meals, buy and sell, dig and delve. Europeans often pity the sex thus "doomed to perform the most laborious drudgery;" but it is a waste of sentiment. The women are more accustomed to labour in all senses of the word, and the result is that they equal their mates in strength and stature; they enjoy robust health, and their children, born without difficulty, are sturdy and vigorous. The same was the case amongst the primitive tribes of Europe; Zamacola (Anthrop. Mem. ii. 38), assures us that the Basque women were physically powerful as the men, with whom they engaged in prize-fights.
The master awakes about 3 P.M. and smokes, visits, plays with his children, and dawdles away his time till the cool sunset, when a second edition of the first meal is served up. If there be neither dance nor festival, all then retire to their bens, light the fire, and sit smoking tobacco or bhang, with frequent interruptions of palm wine or rum, till joined by their partners. Douville (ii. 113), says that the Pangué or chanvre, "croît naturellement dans lepays" I believe the questions to be still sub judice, whether the intoxicating cannabis be or be not indigenous to Africa as well as to Asia; and whether smoking was not known in the Old World, as it certainly was in the New, before tobacco was introduced. The cannabis Indica was the original anæsthetic known to the Arabs and to civilized Orientals many centuries before the West invented ether and chloroform.
Our landlord has two wives, but one is a mother and will not rejoin him till her child can carry a calabash of water unaided. To avoid exciting jealousy he lives in a hut apart, surrounded by seven or eight slaves, almost all of them young girls. This regular life is varied by a little extra exertion at seed-time and harvest, by attending the various quitandas or markets of the country side, and by an occasional trip to "town" (Boma). When the bush is burning, all sally out with guns, clubs, and dogs, to bring home "beef." And thus they dwell in the presence of their brethren, thinking little of to-day, and literally following the precept, "Take no thought for the morrow." As the old missioners testify, they have happy memories, their tempers are mild, and quarrels rarely lead to blows; they are covetous, but not miserly; they share what they have, and they apply the term "close-fist" to the European who gives "nuffin for nuffin."
The most superstitious of men, they combine the two extremes of belief and unbelief; they have the firmest conviction in their own tenets, whilst those of others flow off their minds like water from a greased surface. The Catholic missioners laboured amongst them for nearly two hundred years; some of these ecclesiastics were ignorant and bigoted as those whom we still meet on the West African Coast, but not a few were earnest and energetic, scrupulous and conscientious, able and learned as the best of our modern day. All did not hurry over their superficial tasks like the Neapolitan father Jerome da Montesarchio, who baptized 100,000 souls; and others, who sprinkled children till their arms were tired. Many lived for years in the country, learning the language and identifying themselves with their flocks. Yet the most they ever effected was to make their acolytes resemble the Assyrians whom Shalmaneser transplanted to Assyria, who "feared the Lord and served their graven images" (2 Kings, xvii. 33-41). Their only traces are the word "Deus," foully perverted like the Chinese "joss;" and an occasional crucifix which is called cousa de branco—white man's thing. Tuckey was justified in observing at Nokki that the crucifixes, left by missioners, were strangely mixed with native fetishes, and that the people seemed by no means improved by the muddle of Christian and Pagan idolatry.
The system is at once complicated and unsettled. There is, apparently, the sensus numinis; the vague deity being known as Nzambi or Njambi, which the missionaries translated into God, as Nganna Zambi—Lord Zambi. Merolla uses Zambiabungù, and in the vocabulary, Zabiambunco, for the "Spirit above" (Zambi-a-npungo): Battel tells us that the King of Loango was called "Sambee and Pango, which mean God." The Abbé Proyart terms the Supreme "Zambi," and applies Zambi-a-n-pongou to a species of malady brought on by perjury. He also notices the Manichæan idea of Zambi-a-Nbi, or bad-God, drawing the fine distinction of European belief in a deity supremely good, who permits evil without participating in it. But the dualism of moral light and darkness, noticed by all travellers,[25] is a bonâ fide existence with Africans, and the missionaries converted the Angolan "Cariapemba" into the Aryo-Semitic Devil.
Zambi is the Anyambia of the Gaboon country, a vox et præterea nihil. Dr. Livingstone ("First Expedition," p. 641), finds the word general amongst the Balonda, or people of Lunda: with the "Cazembes" the word is "Pambi," or "Liza," and "O Muata Cazembe" (p. 297) mentions the proverb, "Ao Pambi e ao Mambi (the King) nada iguala." In the "Vocabulario da lingua Cafrial" we see (p. 469) that "Murungo" means God or thunder. It is the rudimental idea of the great Zeus, which the Greeks worked out, the God of Æther, the eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient, "who was, who is, and who is to come," the Unknown and Unknowable, concerning whom St. Paul quoted Aristæus on Mars' Hill. But the African brain naturally confused it with a something gross and material: thus Nzambi-a-Npungu is especially the lightning god. Cariambemba is, properly, Kadi Mpemba or Ntangwa, the being that slays mankind: Merolla describes it as an "abominable idol;" and the word is also applied to the owl, here as in Dahome the object of superstition. I could trace no sign of worship paid to the sun (Tangwa or Muinyi), but there are multitudes of minor gods, probably deified ghosts, haunting particular places. Thus, "Simbi" presides over villages and the "Tadi Nzazhi," or Lightning Rock, near Boma; whilst the Yellala is the abode of an evil being which must be propitiated by offerings. As usual amongst Fetish worshippers, the only trace of belief in a future state is faith in revenants—returning men or ghosts.
Each village has an idol under a little wall-less roof, apparently an earthern pot of grease and feathers, called Mavunga. This may be the Ovengwa of the "Camma people," a "terrible catcher and eater of men, a vampire of the dead; personal, whilst the Ibamba are indistinct; tall as a tree; wandering through the woods, ever winking; whereas the Greek immortals were known by their motionless eyelids. "Ngolo Wanga" is a man-shaped figure of unpainted wood, kept in the hut. Every house is stuck inside and outside with idols and fetishes, interpreters of the Deity, each having its own jurisdiction over lightning, wind, and rain; some act as scarecrows; others teach magic, avert evils, preserve health and sight, protect cattle, and command fish in the sea or river. They are in all manner of shapes, strings of mucuna and poison-beans; carved images stuck over with feathers and tassels; padlocks with a cowrie or a mirror set in them; horns full of mysterious "medicine;" iron- tipped poles; bones; birds' beaks and talons; skins of snakes and leopards, and so forth. We shall meet them again upon our travels.
No man walks abroad without his protecting charms, Nkisi or Nkizi, the Monda of the Gaboon, slung en baudrier, or hanging from his shoulder. The portable fetish of our host is named "Báká chyá Mázínga: Professor Smith (p. 323) makes "Mázengá" to be "fetishes for the detection of theft." These magicæ vanitates are prophylactics against every evil to which man's frailty is heir. The missioners were careful not to let their Congo converts have anything from their bodies, like hair or nail parings, for fear lest it be turned to superstitious use; and a beard (the price of conversion) was refused to the "King of Micocco." Like the idols, these talismans avert ill luck, bachelorhood, childlessness, poverty, and ill health; they are equally powerful against the machinations of foes, natural or supernatural; against wild beasts, the crocodile, the snake, and the leopard; and against wounds of lead and steel. They can produce transformation; destroy enemies; cause rain or drought, fine or foul weather; raise and humble, enrich and impoverish countries; and, above all things, they are sovereign to make man brave in battle. Shortly before we entered Banza Nkaye a propitiation of the tutelary gods took place: Coxswain Deane had fired an Enfield, and the report throughout the settlement was that our guns would kill from the river-bank.
The Nganga of Congo-land, the Mganga of the Wasawahili and the Uganga of the Gaboon, exactly corresponds with M. Michelet's Sorcière of the Middle Ages, "physicienne," that is doctor for the people and poisoner; we cannot, however, apply in Africa the adage of Louis XIII.'s day, "To one wizard ten thousand witches." In the "Muata Cazembe" (pp. 57, et passim) we read "O Ganga or O Surjão;" the magician is there called "Muroi," which, like "Fite," is also applied to magic. The Abbé Proyart opines of his professional brother, "he is ignorant as the rest of the people, but a greater rogue,"—a pregnant saying. Yet here "the man of two worlds" is not l'homme de révolution, and he suffices for the small "spiritual wants" of his flock. He has charge of the "Kizila," the "Chigella" of Merolla and the "Quistilla" of James Barbot—Anglicè putting things in fetish, which corresponds with the Tahitian tapu or taboo. The African idea is, that he who touches the article, for instance, gold on the eastern coast of Guinea, will inevitably come to grief. When "fetish is taken off," as by the seller of palm wine who tastes it in presence of the buyer, the precaution is evidently against poison. Many of these "Kizila" are self-imposed, for instance a water melon may never enter Banza Nokki, and, though slaves may eat bananas upon a journey, the master may not. Others refuse the flesh of a fowl until it has been tasted by a woman. These rules are delivered to the young, either by the fetishman or the parents, and, when broken, they lead to death, doubtless often the consequence of strong belief. The Nganga superintends, as grand inquisitor, the witch-ordeal, by causing the accused to chew red-wood and other drugs in this land ferax venenorum. Park was right: "By witchcraft is meant pretended magic, affecting the lives and healths of persons, in other words it is the administering of poison." European "Narratives of Sorcery and Magic" exactly explain the African idea, except in one point: there the witch "only suffered from not being able to prove to Satan how much she burned to suffer for his sake;" here she has no Satan. Both European and African are the firmest believers in their own powers; they often confess, although knowing that the confession leads directly to torture and death, with all the diabolical ingenuity of which either race was capable. In Tuckey's time a bargain was concluded by breaking a leaf or a blade of grass, and this rite it was "found necessary to perform with the seller of every fowl:" apparently it is now obsolete. Finally, although the Fetish man may be wrong, the fetish cannot err. If a contretemps occur, a reason will surely be found; and, should the "doctor" die, he has fallen a victim to a rival or an enemy more powerful than himself.
A striking institution of the Congo region is that of the Jinkemba, which, curious to say, is unnoticed by Tuckey. It is not, however, peculiar to the Congo; it is the "Semo" of the Susus or Soosoos of the Windward Coast, and the "Purrah" of the Sherbro-Balloms or Bulloms, rendered Anglicè by "free-masonry." The novitiate there lasts for seven or eight years, and whilst the boys live in the woods food is placed for them by their relations: the initiation, indeed, appears to be especially severe. Here all the free-born males are subjected to the wrongly called "Mosaic rite." Merolla tells us that the wizards circumcise children on the eighth day (like the Jews), not out of regard for the law, but with some wicked end and purpose of their own. At any time between the ages of five and fifteen (eight to ten being generally preferred), boys are taken from their parents (which must be an exceeding comfort to the latter), and for a native year, which is half of ours, they must dwell in the Vivála ya Ankimba, or Casa de Feitiço, like that which we passed before reaching Banza Nokki. They are now instructed by the Nganga in the practices of their intricate creed; they are taught the mysteries under solemn oaths, and, in fine, they are prepared for marriage. Upon the Congo they must eat no cooked food, living wholly upon roots and edibles; but they are allowed to enter the villages for provisions, and here they often appear armed with matchets, bayonets, and wooden swords. Their faces and necks, bodies and arms, are ghastly white with chalk or ashes; the hair is left in its original jet, and the dingy lower limbs contrast violently with the ghostlike absence of colour above. The dress is a crinoline of palm-fronds, some fresh and green, others sere and brown; a band of strong mid-rib like a yellow hoop passed round the waist spreads out the petticoat like a farthingale, and the ragged ends depend to the knees; sometimes it is worn under the axillae, but in all cases the chalked arms must be outside. The favourite attitude is that of the Rhodian Colossus, with the elbows bent to the fore and the hands clasped behind the head. To increase their prestige of terror, the Jinkomba abjure the use of human language, and, meeting a stranger, ejaculate with all their might, "Hár-rr-rr-rr-rr!" and "Jojolo! Jojolo!" words mystic and meaningless. When walking in procession, they warn the profane out of the way by striking one slip of wood upon another. They are wilder in appearance than the Hindu Jogi or Sanyasi, who also affects the use of ashes, but neglects that of the palm-thatch. It is certainly enough to startle a man of impressible nerves— one, for instance, who cannot enter a room without a side-long glance at an unexpected coffin—to see these hideous beings starting with their savage cry from the depths of an African forest. Evidently, also, such is the intention of the costume.