The African Sketch-Book. With maps and illustrations

Preface

This work contains a brief recapitulation of my previously published travels in Equatorial Africa, Angola, and Senegambia during 1862 and a part of 1863 ; essays on the slave trade, African exploration, and the progress of Islam in Negroland ; several tales in tended to illustrate the manners and customs of the natives ; and, finally, my recent travels. In 1868 I visited Africa a second time, spent some months on the Gold Coast and Slave Coast, and then made a ten months' exploring journey from Sierra Leone, opening a new country and obtaining im portant geographical results. I also made two trips to the backwoods of Liberia, which is almost un written ground, and carefully studied the Negro Republic. I returned home in 1870, having passed two years on the coast or in the interior, indus triously working, with my note-book always in my PREFA CE VI hand, and engaged in no other pursuit but that of collecting information.

If, therefore, I have introduced the tales, essays, and resume of previous travels, men tioned above, it has not been from want of material, but from a desire to render this work comprehensive and complete. It is not only a narrative of travel I offer to the public, but a sketch-book of African life ; and though the texture of the work is light, the labour bestowed upon it has been immense. Since my return from the coast, in 1863, I have never ceased to study African literature ; and, setting aside my three years' travels in that country, I have devoted to the perusal of African books as much time and toil as most men devote to the study of a profession. If all the extracts I have made with a view to this work were to be printed, they would equal in bulk the common-place book of Buckle, recently published.

I enter into these personal details, as readers are apt to suppose that if a book of this kind is light itcannot be solid; and I therefore give these facts as my credentials. Eleven years I have studied Africa : three years from the life and eight years from books. The tales contain much material drawn both from books and from life, but are otherwise entirely ficti- PR EPA CE vii tious. I must beg to observe that no fiction exists outside the tales ; my narrative of travel is true, every word, and, like most true narratives, does not abound in startling incidents or remarkable adventures. I hope to have many lady readers, and therefore reserve for a future publication much matter of a purely scientific nature. In a popular work the man ners and customs of a savage people cannot be fully described ; and many problems of importance for the Science of Man are not yet interesting to the public at large. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME

Book I. The Gorilla Country Page

A Carthaginian Log-Book i The Coast . . . . . . . . ii The Forest . . . . ' . . . ... .18 The Witch 44 Turtle . . , 56 The Creditor 61 The Tornado 72 The Cannibals 87 The Elephant 120 The King ov the Rembo 131 The Gorilla '44 Detained CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME X

Book II. The South Coast Page

Hollowayphobia. A Tale 169 The ' Emilia ' 202 The Slave 'Trade. An Essay . . . ■ '■ . .217 The Capuchin of the Congo. A Tale 229 The Ruins of the Portuguese 250 Ananga. A Tale 264

Book III. Senegambia

Moslem Africa 295 The Story of Solima. A Tale . . . . ' . . 320 The African Pioneers. An Essay . ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FIRST VOLUME MAPS PAGE The Gorilla Country to face i The Slave Trade of Africa ,, 217 Portuguese Africa ,,251 Senegambia ,, 295 The Religions of Africa ,, 313 The Pioneers of Discovery in Africa . . ,, 407 WOODCUTS Elephant Frontispiece The Tornado to face 82 Gorillas and Nest ,,152 By Ox and Hammock ,, 258 The Djikijunka ,, 3°8 A Flood in Senegambia . . . . . . ,, Till-: GORILLA COUNTRY. This country is all thick forest Little ia known of the coast between Camaroona and Gaboon. Tribes savage, and resembling those west of Tanganyika. Food. Chiefly plantains. No Moslems have ever entered this region : for their nearest approach to it see Barth. Authorities. For the Oaniaroon s, Barton.

Fer Gaboon and Fernand Vaz, Bowditch (in Appen dix to Ashanti"), Leighton Wilson, and especially Da Chatllu. For Loango, Battel in Purcbas, and Proyart in Pinkerton. Trade. Ebony, redwood, india-rubber, ivory, and a little palm oil. The French have most power. London.; Smith, Elder & ("-' THE AFRICAN SKETCH-BOOK

Book I. The Gorilla Country. A Carthaginian Log

BOOK I WAS

staying at a country-house in the autumn of 1861. The harvest had been gathered in, and the stubbles were being ploughed, yet the heat was that of summer, and we were lying at full length in the shade of ancient elms. Above us the black roc flapped and fluttered, and painted leaves floated downwards through the air. Faintly the distant church-bell tolled, and the servants, starched and bedizened, were crossing the park in the direction of the sound. Then came the decree of Fate. My young host proposed that we should drive over to Farm, and see a friend of his who had just returned from his first voyage VOL. I. B as surgeon on board a mail steamer to the West coast of Africa. I said ' Yes,' and my future was decided. The doctor received us in his shirt-sleeves, coast fashion. Tea and toast, home-baked bread and home brewed beer, yellow butter and rich milk, "jars of tobacco and churchwarden pipes, all the luxuries of rural life, were placed upon the table, and as soon as we were settled down for the evening, Africa was introduced.

The doctor's descriptions were picturesque, and as he discoursed on the wonders of a country which resembles no other in the world, a sudden fancy came into my head, and I declared I would go to Africa myself. He said that it was just the place for a literary man, and that I should be able to write a capital book when I came back — if I ever did. Next we discussed as to which region of the coast should be honoured with my investigations, and possibly with my remains. Just at that time a controversy was raging in the ' Athenæum ' respecting M. Du Chaillu's book ; and it had become painfully apparent that nobody in London knew anything about the matter. The truth could be only ascertained by a trip to Gorilla-land itself, and so I determined to begin my African rambles with a critical journey on Du Chaillu's route, and an ex amination of his native companions and guides.

My destination was, therefore, the GABOON — a West African river near the Equator, belonging to the French. The African mail steamers did not go farther than Fer nando Po, but thence to Gaboon a passage could always Book I] A CARTHAGINIAN LOG-

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be procured in some trading vessel, or a French man of-war. I left Liverpool with the December mail, which touched at all the British settlements along the coast — Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cape Coast Castle, Accra, and Lagos ; also at certain rivers still belonging to the natives — Benin, Bonny, the Calabars, and Camaroons, where the traders dwell on shipboard, and pay customs to the kings as in the olden time. The Settlements were originally fortified factories, half-castle, half-shop, constructed by the Royal African Company for the protection of their servants and the warehousing of their slaves. When the Company was dissolved these forts became the property of Govern ment, and were garrisoned by black regiments imported from the West Indies by rotation. The commandant was governor, chief justice, and commander-in chief; he made treaties with the neighbouring Powers, adjudicated between the negroes and the traders, and sometimes conquering a turbulent chief, put a slice of coast into the Downing Street larder, unnoticed by the nation.

As the settlements expanded, civilians were appointed — governors, judges, collectors of customs, and colonial surgeons ; gaols, post offices, bonding warehouses, and other public buildings were erected ; the factories increased in number, the church and mission-house appeared. A few years ago the Governor of Sierra Leone was made the Governor-in-Chief, and the other E governors ceased to be styled ' Your Excellency,' and were named Administrators. The trade of West Africa is important and rapidly increasing; in 1862 steamers ran to the coast once a month ; they now run once a week, and yet their saloons are often half-filled with cotton bales, and their decks choked up with barrels of palm oil. The first part of our voyage was delightful : we rose in the early morn and watched the outline of the coast ; we sat beneath the awning and imbibed refrigerating drinks ; the ice had not all melted, the South Downs and Dorkings had not all been eaten ; our appetites were unimpaired.

We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, and dined at four ; these repasts being served on dishes and plates adorned with a beautiful design — a negress offering fruit to an angel, and underneath the words Spcro mcliora. The angel represented the African Steam Ship Company, the motto a humane wish for larger profits. There was a missionary on board who had been ordained by colonial hook or crook, and whose sweet simplicity endeared him to us all. Among other things he anxiously enquired of the captain whether the anchor went to the bottom, and then wished to know how it was kept there : was it tied with a piece of string ? With such a companion we could not fail of entertainment ; and twice a week or so we touched at a settlement and were able to go on shore. No hotels were Book I] A CARTHAGINIAN LOG-

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to be found, but all houses were open on the arrival of the steamer, and all of them resembled taverns. But when we had passed Lagos, we only lay off the mouths of rivers, and took in palm oil. Never shall I be able to forget those latter days on board the steamer. Unhappily the memory is in some mysterious manner connected with the sense of smell, and so whenever I pass a dead cat or a foul drain I think of S. S. ' Armenian.' At last we arrived at Fernando Po, which is not a river, as some authors have supposed, but an island, and the only settlement the Spaniards possess in Western Africa. It has been chosen, like Cayenne, on account of its salubrity, for the reception of political offenders, who are imprisoned in the harbour on board a man-of war. This method of confinement in a hot climate seems to be severe, but it is only fair to state that it is seldom protracted for any length of time.

The prisoners, as a rule, are soon released, and when the happy day arrives nothing can equal the attention and politeness which they then receive. The drum beats to quarters, military music plays, a priest recites prayers on their behalf, and they are lowered over the side in a long narrow box which the carpenter has been ordered to make expressly for their accommodation. In other words, it is Death, and Death alone, that sets them free. Who that possesses an imagination and a heart can look without a shudder on that Ship of Woe ? Men of intellect and birth are there, guilty perhaps of an indiscretion and no more, torn away from their loved ones and their fatherland. Never more will they behold the orange orchards of their childhood, or the balconies sacred to music and to love. On pallets they lie in their wooden cells, and hear the washing of the waters against their prison walls, and gaze through the port holes on a mass of lifeless green, and so drift down the sad stream of existence and over the rough bar into the boundless sea.

That dark green mass filling up the prisoners' range of view so that only when the ship rolls can they see a strip of blue sky above and a strip of blue sea beneath, is the Peak of Fernando Po, a pyramid of granite, 10,000 feet above the level of the ocean, and clothed to its summit with gigantic trees. On the mainland opposite, twenty miles across, is the Peak of Camaroons. These two mighty columns form The Gate of the Equator, a portico worthy of the new heavens and the new earth beyond the Line. When I arrived at Fernando Po, Captain Burton, its consul, was climbing the Camaroons, which is the loftiest mountain in West Africa, being higher than the Peak of Teneriffe. It is a volcano, and has been lately in eruption ; but Burton found it quietly smoking, its head powdered, with snow.1 By some it is supposed to have been the Burning Mountain which Hanno, the Captain Cook of Carthage, mentions in his Log — a document 1 See Burton's 'Abbeokuta and the Camaroons.' Book I] A CARTHAGLNLAN LOG-

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of great antiquity and value, the sole relic of those archives which the Romans when they took the city presented to their allies the Berber chiefs. But not in the latter days of Carthage was that Periplus indited, not in the days of her weakness and her shame. When Rome was merely a Latin town, Carthage was a great commercial city, the metropolis of the West. Her temples were adorned with Greek statues, trophies of the Sicilian wars ; her nobles kept their elephant studs, and were waited on by slaves in herds ; her streets were lined with workshops of weavers preparing the celebrated purple cloth ; asses and mules laden with the timber of the Atlas drew up before the glowing glass-houses in which were manufactured the blue bugles and the speckled beads. Merchants of all nations met in her Exchange ; ships from all countries lay at anchor in her port.

She levied soldiers wherever she had enemies or friends ; she forced or bribed all people to serve beneath her flag. In the great market square might be seen Greek mercenaries dressed in bronze, Spaniards in white tunics edged with purple, and wearing the short broad-pointed swords afterwards adopted by the Romans ; blue-eyed, red-haired Gauls naked to the waist, and armed with cutlasses of soft iron which had to be straightened after every blow ; the slingers of Majorca and Minorca, and the Ber ber horsemen galloping to and fro upon their barbs without saddle or bridle, mantles of bearskin floating from their shoulders, long spears in their hands, and shields of elephant-hide strapped to their left arms. The war-galleys of Carthage destroyed the Etruscan rovers, drove back the Greek ships into Eastern waters, protected the colonies and merchant-marine.

Her vessels traded to the ice-creeks of the Baltic, and obtained from Alexandria the riches of the East. Elba fed Carthage with iron, Spain supplied her with silver ; Malta was her cotton plantation, Sicily her olive orchard. The lands around the city were covered with vineyards and mea dows and fields of waving corn. Agriculture was studied as a science, but Carthage was a gigantic city, her population overflowed, and a system of Government emigration was organised in consequence. Thousands of the humbler classes were sent out west along the coast and down south into the interior, where they founded cities and intermarried with the Berbers, who were white people like themselves and possibly of a kin dred, that is to say of a Shemitic race. Emigrants were also sent away by sea, and Hanno, it seems, had charge of such an expedition.

He commanded sixty vessels of fifty oars each, containing altogether thirty thousand souls ; and his orders were to establish colonies along the Morocco coast beyond the straits. This coast is fertile and watered by rivers as low down as the latitude of the Canary Isles. But there the Sahara begins, dividing Barbary from Guinea ; and there Hanno, having landed in various places the emi grants entrusted to his care, altered the character of his expedition, and commenced that grand exploring Book I] A CARTHAGINIAN LOG-