The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, And Explorations of the Nile Sources

by Sir Samuel White Baker

During the absence of the traders' party upon various expeditions, about fifty men were left in their camp as headquarters. Nothing could exceed the brutality of the people; they had erected stills, and produced a powerful corn spirit from the native merissa; their entire time was passed in gambling, drinking, and fighting, both by night and day. The natives were ill-treated, their female slaves and children brutally ill-used, and the entire camp was a mere slice from the infernal regions. My portion of the camp being a secluded courtyard, we were fortunately independent.

On one occasion a razzia had been made; and although unsuccessful in cattle, it had been productive in slaves. Among the captives was a pretty young girl of about fifteen; she had been sold by auction in the camp, as usual, the day after the return from the razzia, and had fallen to the lot of one of the men. Some days after her capture, a native from the village that had been plundered confidently arrived at the camp with the intention of offering ivory for her ransom. Hardly had he entered the gateway, when the girl, who was sitting at the door of her owner's hut, caught sight of him, and springing to her feet, she ran as fast as her chained ankles would allow her, and threw herself in his arms, exclaiming, "My father!" It was her father, who had thus risked his life in the enemy's camp to ransom his child.

The men who were witnesses to this scene immediately rushed upon the unfortunate man, tore him from his daughter, and bound him tightly with cords.

While this was enacting, I happened to be in my hut; thus I was not an eye-witness. About an hour later, I called some of my men to assist me in cleaning some rifles. Hardly had we commenced, when three shots were fired within a hundred paces of my hut. My men exclaimed, "They have shot the Abid (native)!" "What native?" I inquired. They then related the story I have just described. Brutal as these bloodthirsty villains were, I could hardly believe in so cold-blooded a murder. I immediately sent my people and the boy Saat to verify it; they returned with the report that the wretched father was sitting on the ground, bound to a tree, dead; shot by three balls.

I must do Ibrahim the justice to explain that he was not in the camp; had he been present, this murder would not have been committed, as he scrupulously avoided any such acts in my vicinity. A few days later, a girl about sixteen, and her mother, who were slaves, were missing; they had escaped. The hue and cry was at once raised. Ibrahimawa, the "Sinbad" of Bornu, who had himself been a slave, was the most indefatigable slave-hunter. He and a party at once started upon the tracks of the fugitives. They did not return until the following day; but where was the runaway who could escape from so true a bloodhound? The young girl and her mother were led into camp tied together by the neck, and were immediately condemned to be hanged. I happened to be present, as, knowing the whole affair, I had been anxiously awaiting the result. I took this opportunity of explaining to the Turks that I would use any force to prevent such an act, and that I would report the names of all those to the Egyptian authorities who should commit any murder that I could prove; neither would I permit the two captives to be flogged—they were accordingly pardoned. [It will be observed that at this period of the expedition I had acquired an extraordinary influence over the people, that enabled me to exert an authority which saved the lives of many unfortunate creatures who would otherwise have been victims.]

There was among the slaves a woman who had been captured in the attack upon Fowooka. This woman I have already mentioned as having a very beautiful boy, who at the time of the capture was a little more than a year old.

So determined was her character, that she had run away five times with her child, but on every occasion she had been recaptured, after having suffered much by hunger and thirst in endeavouring to find her way back to Unyoro through the uninhabited wilderness between Shooa and Karuma. On the last occasion of her capture, the Turks had decided upon her being incorrigible, therefore she had received 144 blows with the coorbatch (hippopotamus whip), and had been sold separately from her child to the party belonging to Mahommed Wat-el-Mek. Little Abbai had always been a great pet of Mrs. Baker's, and the unfortunate child being now motherless, he was naturally adopted, and led a most happy life. Although much under two years old, he was quite equal in precocity to a European child of three; in form and strength he was a young Hercules, and, although so young, he would frequently follow me out shooting for two or three miles, and return home with a guinea-fowl hanging over his shoulder, or his hands full of pigeons. Abbai became very civilized; he was taught to make a Turkish "salaam" upon receiving a present, and to wash his hands both before and after his meals. He had the greatest objection to eat alone, and he generally invited three or four friends of about his own age to dine with him; on such occasions, a large wooden bowl, about twenty inches in diameter, was filled with soup and porridge, around which steaming dish the young party sat, happier in their slavery than kings in power. There were two lovely girls of three and eight years of age that belonged to Ibrahim; these were not black, but of the same dark brown tint as Kamrasi and many of the Unyoro people. Their mother was also there, and their history being most pitiable, they were always allowed free access to our hut and the dinner bowl. These two girls were the daughters of Owine, one of the great chiefs who were allied with Fowooka against Kamrasi. After the defeat of Fowooka, Owine and many of his people with their families quitted the country, and forming an alliance with Mahommed Wat-el-Mek, they settled in the neighbourhood of his camp at Faloro, and built a village. For some time they were on the best terms, but some cattle of the Turks being missed, suspicion fell upon the new settlers. The men of Mahommed's party desired that they might be expelled, and Mahommed, in a fit of drunken fury, at once ordered them to be MASSACRED. His men, eager for murder and plunder, immediately started upon their bloody errand, and surrounding the unsuspecting colony, they fired the huts and killed EVERY MAN, including the chief, Owine; capturing the women and children as slaves. Ibrahim had received the mother and two girls as presents from Mahommed Wat-el-Mek. As the two rival companies had been forced to fraternize, owing to the now generally hostile attitude of the surrounding tribes, the leaders had become wonderfully polite, exchanging presents, getting drunk together upon raw spirits, and behaving in a brotherly manner—according to their ideas of fraternity. There was a peculiar charm in the association with children in this land of hardened hearts and savage natures: there is a time in the life of the most savage animal when infancy is free from the fierce instincts of race; even the lion's whelp will fondle the hand that it would tear in riper years: thus, separated in this land of horrors from all civilization, and forced by hard necessity into the vicinity of all that was brutal and disgusting, it was an indescribable relief to be surrounded by those who were yet innocent, and who clung in their forsaken state to those who looked upon them with pity. We had now six little dependents, none of whom could ever belong to us, as they were all slaves, but who were well looked after by my wife; fed, amused, and kept clean. The boy Abbai was the greatest favourite, as, having neither father nor mother, he claimed the greatest care: he was well washed every morning, and then to his great delight smeared all over from head to toes with red ochre and grease, with a cock's feather stuck in his woolly pate. He was then a most charming pet savage, and his toilette completed, he invariably sat next to his mistress, drinking a gourd-shell of hot milk, while I smoked my early morning pipe beneath the tree. I made bows and arrows for my boys, and taught them to shoot at a mark, a large pumpkin being carved into a man's head to excite their aim. Thus the days were passed until the evening; at that time a large fire was lighted to create a blaze, drums were collected, and after dinner a grand dance was kept up by the children, until the young Abbai ended regularly by creeping under my wife's chair, and falling sound asleep: from this protected spot he was carried to his mat, wrapped up in a piece of old flannel (the best cloth we had), in which he slept till morning. Poor little Abbai! I often wonder what will be his fate, and whether in his dreams he recalls the few months of happiness that brightened his earliest days of slavery.

Although we were in good health in Shooa, many of the men were ill, suffering generally from headache; also from ulcerated legs;—the latter was a peculiar disease, as the ulcer generally commenced upon the ankle bone and extended to such a degree that the patient was rendered incapable of walking. The treatment for headache among all the savage tribes was a simple cauterization of the forehead in spots burnt with a hot iron close to the roots of the hair. The natives declared that the water was unwholesome from the small stream at the foot of the hill and that all those who drank from the well were in good health. I went down to examine the spring, which I found beautifully clear, while the appearance of the stream was quite sufficient to explain the opposite quality. As I was walking quietly along the bank, I saw a bright ray of light in the grass upon the opposite side; in another moment I perceived the head of a crocodile which was concealed in the grass, the brightness of the sun's reflection upon the eye having attracted my attention. A shot with the little 24 rifle struck just above the eye and killed it; —it was a female, from which we extracted several large eggs, all with hard shells.

The shooting that I had while at Shooa was confined to antelopes; of these there was no variety excepting waterbuck and hartebeest. Whenever I shot an animal the Shooa natives would invariably cut its throat, and drink the hot blood as it gushed from the artery. In this neighbourhood there was a great scarcity of game the natives of Lira described their country as teeming with elephants and rhinoceros; a fine horn of the latter they brought with them to Shooa. There is only one variety of rhinoceros that I have met with in the portions of Africa that I have visited: this is the two-horned, a very exact sketch of which I made of the head of one that I cut off after I had shot it. This two-horned black rhinoceros is extremely vicious. I have remarked that they almost invariably charge any enemy that they smell, but do not see; they generally retreat if they observe the object before obtaining the wind.

In my rambles in search of game, I found two varieties of cotton growing indigenous to the country: one with a yellow blossom was so short in the staple as to be worthless, but the other (a red blossom) produced a fine quality that was detached with extreme ease from the seeds. A sample of this variety I brought to England, and deposited the seed at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. A large quantity was reported to be grown at Lira, some of which was brought me by the chief; this was the inferior kind. I sketched the old chief of Lira, who when in full dress wore a curious ornament of cowrie shells upon his felt wig that gave him a most comical appearance, as he looked like the caricature of an English judge. The Turks had extended their excursions in their search for ivory, and they returned from an expedition sixty miles east of Shooa, bringing with them two donkeys that they had obtained from the natives. This was an interesting event, as for nearly two years I had heard from the natives of Latooka, and from those of Unyoro, that donkeys existed in a country to the east. These animals were the same in appearance as those of the Soudan; the natives never rode, but simply used them to transport wood from the forest to their villages; the people were reported as the same in language and appearance as the Lira tribe.