Chapter VIII: The De Omnibus and Cotton Chapter

Of Egba society it cannot be said to be ‘based upon slavery.’ It has a variety of ranks. Omo bibi, a child born born, _i.e._, twice born, the Hindu ‘dwija,’ is one whose parents are both free Egbas. The son of a free mother by a domestic slave is called omo ohi wabe. Omo odo, or ‘the child of presence,’ is a domestic, and eru a common slave. Either of the two, when manumitted after the master’s death, is called eru edili, which is also the name of the progeny of a slave girl by a free father. Those pawned by others—a custom reminding us of the old Roman Nexum—are termed ofá, or wafa, apparently an Arabic derivative; one pawned by himself is faru so fá. Of the population, probably four-fifths are free,—a large proportion in this part of Africa.

There are, therefore, three great classes of Egbas. The first is the rich free man, the second the poor free man, and, thirdly, the serf, colonus, or slave. If we reckon the fetish men as the fourth class, we obtain that quadruple division which prevailed amongst the old Egyptians, Hindus, Greeks, &c., and which, under the name of caste,[165] has so often and so ignorantly been abused. The license of liberty to be observed amongst the Egbas probably results from their habits of domestic slavery. As was said of the citizens of Athens and Sparta, and in the later days of the Southern States of the American Union, the masters of slaves, if free themselves, are ever the freest of the free.[166]

African slavery here, as elsewhere, results from four causes—famine, captivity in war, debt, and crime. Captives of course prefer the chain to the sword, and insolvents and felons would be imprisoned in Europe. The Egbas are, now, too much of a trading people to sell their brethren except for the best reasons. Whilst our cruisers cut down the branches of slave export, trade in cotton and oil—the ‘little palm-nut’ has been described as the ‘true emblem of peace in Africa’—fells the trunk and digs up the stumps of this Shajrat el Zukkum. But the development of commerce naturally increases the necessity for slave labour in a land where hired labour is expensive and uncertain, whilst the increased price of provisions greatly adds to the miseries of the servile.[167] Thus the Abeokutans—who are far from being disciples of Clarkson and Wilberforce, Acland and Buxton—took the earliest opportunity of enriching themselves at the expense of their allies the Ijayans. Of this unhappy tribe no less than twenty thousand have, it is said, disappeared. But the Egbas are fighting without pay or rations, consequently their friends form their commissariat. The enemies, of course, vend their captives, and even the Ijayans sell themselves for provisions, or are sold by their chiefs as a penalty for shirking the war. Kidnapping is severely punished by the Egbas, who, in April 1847, passed a law making the penalty death. Once it was so common that at Badagry and other places no poor man could sleep in peace. Lagos was then one of seventy exporting points on this ill-fated coast, extending three thousand six hundred miles, from Cape Verde to where the shores of the Camaroons deflect to the south. The traffic has naturally diminished. In 1825 the export was probably two hundred thousand; in 1839 Lord John Russell announced that the number of slaves annually introduced into America and the West Indies exceeded one hundred thousand; now it has diminished to a maximum of half the latter total, and north of the equator it is almost entirely confined to the Slave Coast, or the western half of the Benin Bight.

The Yorubas have a marked national character. Divided into a number of little states, or independent cantons, they are eminently clannish. An Egba will feel hurt if his people be not properly appreciated, and the ‘Aku’ race at Sierra Leone produces the most dangerous because the most intelligent recaptives. They have strong virtues and vices, and, by dwelling upon one side, to the neglect of the rest of the moral development, it would be easy to make them the best or the worst of men.[168] They are kind and courteous, hospitable and not eminently dishonest, except in and around the cities. On the other hand, they are covetous, cruel, and wholly deficient in what the civilized man calls Conscience. With considerable shrewdness in business, they are as simple in some points as children. They believe that white men fabricate cowries, and an old farmer, seeing a cloud, will say to a missionary, ‘Please let it rain for us!’ There is the usual African want of invention; a plough, a saw, or an alphabet are equally beyond the limits of their organization. They are somewhat litigious, and there is a numerous judiciary, whilst private disputes are settled by a kind of _consiglio di famiglia_. Their cruelty is shown rather in their religion than in their laws. Murder, treason, and arson, sometimes adultery and theft, are punished by death, the offender being beheaded or garotted with a rope. In Ilori the neck is broken with an iron mace. Minor offences are visited with the whip, fine, or imprisonment.

Men amongst the Egbas are farmers, tillers of ground, blacksmiths, wood- workers, carpenters, weavers, tailors, and barbers. Women do the housework and sell at market; between whiles they spin, wash, cook, draw water, dye cloth, and make soap and pottery. The Egba rises with the dawn, brushes his teeth, bathes at home or in the brook, and repairs to the jungle, which, as in India, is twice visited; if once only, the exception would be attributed to disordered health. The breakfast, or first of the three meals, is usually eaten round the pots of the market women. It is a light affair, of the hot diluted paste, or burgoo, here called ekko. The farmer then repairs to his fields, and the townsman to his business, whilst the gude-wife either busies herself at home or sits selling in the bazar. Dinner, from 10 A.M. to noon, is eaten either in the farms or the streets. The farm-wives and hill-wives bring in the material and the townswomen prepare it. It is something hot and simple, yam balls or Indian corn cakes, with a ‘kitchen’ of the highly-seasoned palaver sauce: the trash in which Europeans delight, papaws and pineapples, plantains and oranges, are mostly left to the monkeys. Vegetables, farinaceous food, and meat, especially the two latter, are the general favourites. The rich will eat rats and snails, and the poor carrion, rather than condemn themselves to become vegetarians. Meat, however, as in Asia, is rarely cooked solid, hashes and stews being preferred to roast and boiled. Those of easy means pass the greater part of the day in dressing their hair, consulting Ifa, saluting friends, and visiting the Ogboni lodges. After dark they eat once more, sometimes in the streets, more generally in the house, and then gossip, play, if not gamble, see dances or dance themselves, smoke, snuff, drink palm-wine, maize-beer, and trade-rum, and retire to rest when they can do no more.

As regards the Yoruba language, spoken by the Egbas, Egbados, Ijebus, Iketus, and Otas, as well as by many of the people of Badagry and Lagos, and said to extend along the coast to New Calabar, and internally to the Niger, I know nothing of it except what the two grammars, Mr. Crowther’s and Mr. Bowen’s, teach.[169] As many people have not read even these, I may still be able to offer something new to them. The language is decidedly difficult. In other countries missionaries expect to speak fluently after the second year; here they usually take five. Mr. Bowen is said to have learned it in eighteen months; but he was uncommonly ’cute in picking up languages, though he turned his knowledge to scant account. Learning the Yoruba dialect is a severe exertion to a brain relaxed by the climate, and students complain that all books published upon the subject are mere sketches, leaving the learner to fill in details. Something of the same kind was asserted touching Persian by Sir William Jones. And it certainly is now time for a work upon the scholarship, not the mere accidence, of African speech.

Mr. Bowen finds in the Yoruban language affinities with Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Pahlivi, Persian, German, Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, Saxon and English, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Esquimaux, Basque, Welsh, Celtic, Slavonic, Albanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Celebes, Philippines, Brazilian, besides a host of African languages, Okem, Opandi, Kufa, Nupe, Uchan, Isubu, Ashanti, Oloma, Accra, Kru, Dahome, Mahi, Opaddi, Fula, Mbariki, Kaniki, Mbe, Wolof, Mose, Dey, Shoa, Filham, Bullom, Mandenga, Goali, Bassa, Golal, Benin, Melou, Kakanda, Madagascar, Galla, and others. This is not the way to treat philology, we may not argue radical affinity from a chance resemblance of words. I must also differ in opinion with the learned Bishop Vidal,[170] who wrote his ‘Introduction’ before the Yoruba was classified, and before the alliteral languages of Southern Africa, of which the types are the Kongoese and the Zulu, were sufficiently studied. The bishop, by the absence of classified prefixes and modifications of the particles contained in the verb, judges Yoruba to be unconnected with the large family of Kafir tongues.[171] On the other hand, there is an artful system of prefixes and a purely conventional euphony, which, to say nothing of minor points, denotes a similarity of origin.

The Yoruba language is mostly one of intonation, and in many cases the accent and the articulation determine the sense of the words. This is trying to the dull ear of the northern race, and many are unable to master the difficulty; yet a stranger, with the organs of tune highly developed, finds little difficulty in separating the words, which do not, as in Popo and in English, run into one another. The sounds peculiar to the tongue are _pk_ and _gb_, sounded almost like a single consonant, and, like Arabic, it wants the _v_ and the _p_. There is neither passive voice nor variation for number and person, nor indefinite article, in which the Greek and Latin are also deficient. It seems to be built upon a century of biliteral roots, and Mr. Bowen’s vocabulary contains about twelve thousand vocables. The language is therefore sufficiently rich for the wants of a simple and barbarous race.

It is noted as a curious point that the Yoruban is wealthy in abstract terms, that it possesses distinct words for such far-fetched ideas as sin, guilt, honour, atonement, faith, mediation, repentance, pardon, adoption, salvation, perdition, justification, and sanctification. The same, however, according to the Rev. Mr. Walker, is true of the Mpongwe, or Gaboon dialect; and, indeed, we may expect it to be an invariable characteristic of these languages, which have a regular system of compounding words, equally intelligible, root and branch, to all speakers.

The Yoruban tongue has no poetry, like the Hausa, nor are words set to tunes as amongst the musical Fulas, except a few artless attempts like the corn-songs of the American negroes. But the African development of the language-power fills it with riddles and childish puzzles; moreover, it is rich in proverbs, the infant literature of the world. Bishop Vidal seems to have thought the Yorubas distinguished amongst the nations of the world by the number and terseness of their proverbial sayings. So far from this being the case, there is hardly a tribe upon the West African coast which has not as many and as good. The same philologist also sees a high standard of morality in this popular code, if it can so be called, a vestige of the ‘Universal Conscience bearing witness amongst men.’ There is, according to him, no virtue, sin, nor human relation which is not enforced, described, or forbidden by some pithy dictum. As a rule, methinks, the most exalted views in proverbs and poetry evidence a rather low actuality. Thus the unwarlike delight in tales of slaughter, liars hold high theories touching truth, universal selfishness proclaims aloud mutual dependence, the most reckless of human life have a hundred reasons for not taking it, and no nation more despises the poor, or has more saws against a right to despise him, than the Yoruba. Moreover, all the world over, proverbs run in pairs, and pull both ways: for the most part one neutralizes, by contradiction, the other. Thus the Englishman bids him who would thrive to consult his wife, and warns him at the same time that women, being unreasonable as spaniels, are greatly improved by being beaten.

The Yoruba proverbs have been divided into three kinds, firstly, the paranomasia, play upon words, or, in simple English, pun; secondly, sprightly descriptions of natural phenomena and visible objects; thirdly, moral truths and rules for conduct. The Bishop of Sierra Leone naturally saw in them a touching resemblance to the parallelism of Hebrew national poetry, and divided them into the gradational, the antithetic, the synthetic, and the introverted. But parallelism is natural to the Semitic mind, one of whose rudest but sublimest expressions is in the northern dialect called Hebrew. Every page of the ‘Thousand and One Nights’ will supply instances of it. The other more artful divisions may be found not only in Hebrew and the Yoruba, but in all the Asiatic languages with which I am acquainted.

Abeokuta lies in the zone of almost constant rain. The warmest months, which are also comparatively dry, are December, January, February, and early March. In January trees cast their leaves, and thus enjoy their annual repose. February is essentially a spring month, as the greenness of the country shows. At the end of that time the Harmattan wind will blow from the north and the north-east for two or three days, and perhaps bring on a few light showers. April and May are distinguished by tornados, thunderings, and the ‘former rains,’ which are now heavy and continuous, reaching a crisis when the sun attains the tropic of Cancer, whilst storms are frequent and severe, and Shango does considerable damage. Here the heaviest downfalls are not when the sun is directly vertical, but when he is northing or southing. On this coast of Africa, however, the ‘rainy monsoon’ is not constant and persisting, as on the eastern shores of the continent, upon which Trade-winds from the South Atlantic directly impinge. Four inches at a time is severe, and twenty inches is the rare extreme. June is generally the wettest month in the year. About mid July and August there is mostly an intermission in the rains, but not so marked as in the Gaboon country and the coast south of the equator. This second dry season is cool and pleasant, broken only by a few showers. September is again pluviose: the ‘latter rains,’ however, are rarely heavy, but mostly short and sharp. From October to mid- November is the second tornado season, whose storms are more violent and dangerous than those of the first, and December recommences the dry season.

Thus there are four dry and eight wet months, the former corresponding with our winter, the latter with our spring, summer, and autumn. That, however, is the hot, and this the cool time of the year. The rainy is also the healthier season. From the days of Mungo Park, who attributed most of his misfortunes to the hot weather, the dry season has been assumed as the fittest for African travel, and the idea has led to many a loss. In the West Indies, the rule is, that both dry and wet weather are healthy, whilst irregular rain and sunshine are feverish. Here, as in most parts of intertropical Africa, the worst months are those immediately before and after the rains, the middling is the dry season, the best is the wet, especially August and September. There is but one serious disadvantage to those explorers who are compelled to walk their journeys, the inundations will certainly cause swollen feet, a trivial evil, but which may arrest progress. Still there is less malaria, that mysterious agency which, like the pestilence walking in darkness, ever hides its origin from the world, and leaves us to grope for its origin in cosmical causes,—vegetation, geology, geographical position, and a rarefied atmosphere deficient in oxygen. Happily for us the old African treatment—‘A. B. caught fever, gave him calomel, bled him, blistered his feet, died on the third day’—is now obsolete: I would not, however, advise any white man to expose himself for more than two or three consecutive years to the climate of Western Intertropical Africa.

At Abeokuta the nights are not oppressive; sometimes they are even chilly, with damp and heavy dews:[172] inland they are hotter and more trying. The heat of the day is between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M.: near the coast, however, there is a strong and regular sea breeze, charged with vapour, and blowing from the south, the west, or the south-west. The average of summer heat may be 80° Fah. in the shade. During our three weeks’ stay we had three violent storms in five days, and a heavy fog every morning. The difference between the wet and the dry bulbs varies from 0° 2′ Fah. in the rainy season to 25° Fah. during Harmattan winds.

We will conclude with the commerce and the productions of Abeokuta. I have shown that at present she aspires to become the great highway of transit between the Sudan—that is to say, the countries north of Guinea—and the coast; and that it is our object to give the unmaritime peoples direct communication with our markets on the seaboard.

For the twenty years previous to 1787, the whole import trade of Western Africa, Morocco included, with England, fell short of 72,000_l._ In 1810 it had increased to 535,577_l._ It may now safely be assumed at three millions sterling.[173] And there is hardly any limit to its future development. Yoruba is a valuable and an unexploited field. Its products are cereals (maize and millet), vegetables (peas, beans, cassava, yams, and koko, onions and sweet potatoes), sugar-cane, ginger—in small quantities, and lately introduced—cubebs, and various oil seeds, bene or sesamum, telfaria, castor plant, ground nuts, cocoa-nuts, and physic nuts (_Corcos purgans_): coffee has been grown, but it has been allowed to die out. Copper abounds in places. Indigo and coarse tobacco would flourish anywhere,[174] and the minerals have not been explored. The present exports are palm-oil from the nut, now worth 11 heads per measure of 10 imperial gallons, and black oil from the kernel, worth 7 to 7½ heads; ground-nut oil and shea butter or ‘Niger grease,’ which has been almost stopped by the war; indigo in balls of ¼ lb. each, worth 2½ strings; and lubi (natron), worth 1 head 10 strings per pound; a few hides; cotton; ivory, costing, when prime, 3 heads per lb.; country cloths sent to Bahia and up the coast, and Niger mats worth 2 heads 25 strings to 3 heads each. The minor imports are hardware, pottery, velvets, red caps, silks, beads, and coral, especially the red; trinkets, fancy looking-glasses, mostly German.[175] The chief objects are cowries from East Africa, and a few from England, manufactured roll tobacco from Brazil, and leaf tobacco from the Anglo-American States, either _viâ_ England or direct; Manchester cottons, rum and spirits, arms and ammunition.

The four latter articles are a serious injury to the country, and present a sad contrast between the West African coast, whose commerce is in the hands of Christian merchants, and the Eastern shores, which the Moslems and Hindu Banyans supply with foreign goods. On the shores of Zanzibar, until the Messrs. Oswald and other Hamburgers settled in the island of the same name, muskets and gunpowder—used almost entirely for slave-driving—were unknown except amongst the Beloch and Arab subjects and mercenaries of the local government. That house sold off, it is said, 13,000 guns in one year. The interior—Unyamwezi, and the regions about the Tanganyika Lake—is still in the hands of Arab traders, who never allow the natives to become possessed of civilized weapons, and who would incur eternal infamy if they sold ardent spirits to the people. I shall never cease to protest against the sale of rum, guns, and gunpowder, when an innocent trade of worked cottons, salt, and the minor luxuries of life would be equally profitable.[176] It is my sincere belief that if the slave export trade were revived, with all its horrors, and that rum, guns, and gunpowder were things unknown, the country would greatly gain in happiness by the exchange.

Abeokuta, like Lagos, has been inundated with cowries, which, used in Europe for the arts, here become a coin.[177] Formerly the small white Indian shell, costing 60_l._ per ton at home, and 80_l._ on the African coast, was the currency, which extinguished the round trade or barter. Presently the Hamburg merchants settled at Zanzibar, where the cypræa can be collected for a mere trifle, made a speculation which succeeded; the large, coarse, blue African, being much cheaper, arrived in shiploads, brought fifty per cent. to the importer, and supplanted the small Indian, which are now rare, and bought up by chiefs and fetish- men. At present there is a glut, and in every village you tread upon bits of cowries. Moreover, fewer are found, and therefore fewer are sent.

The ‘plump-breasted dove,’ as the Yorubas call it, is a vile currency, an intolerable burden. Lycurgus did not fetter the commerce of Sparta more effectually with his iron bars. Every shell must be pierced and strung upon grass or palm fibre, which takes no short time. At Dahome a hundred slaves will be engaged in this occupation, and a merchant at Lagos must employ eight or ten ‘cowrie-girls.’ The weight of each bag of 2000 blue Africans will be from 80 to 90 lbs., and of white Indians from 35 to 45 lbs., and yet it is barely worth one pound sterling. Mungo Park, when he opened a shop during his second journey at Sansanding, was obliged to employ three tellers to count his cash—25,756 cowries, worth at Lagos 1_l._ 5_s._[178] Lieut. Forbes complains that to carry 50 dollars, he had to hire five women. A horse will cost 60,000 to 120,000, a sheep 4000 to 6000, and a fowl 200 to 250 of this barbarous small change.[179]

It is fully time to change the system. At Zanzibar and Maskat, the late Sayyid Said found no difficulty in so doing. He applied to the East Indian Government for some tons of pice or copper coins, and the improvement was readily adopted by his subjects. The experiment should be tried without delay at Lagos, and, if successful, it would probably soon extend into the interior.

At present the country has the nuisance of twelve different dollar- coinages in circulation, and when these different dollars have been got rid of there still remains the inconvenience of two currencies, English money and cowries, which, as has been seen, bear no fixed relative proportion. And the Abeokutans are little aware of their losses by the system of barter to which the retail purchaser is sometimes driven: it obliges them to pay one hundred per cent. above the invoice price for English goods, which, if the currency were settled, could be profitably sold by the merchant at a maximum of fifty per cent.

Provisions are somewhat expensive at Abeokuta—the luxuries of life especially so. The price of maize or Indian corn,[180] of which 15 to 25, and in the best lands 30 bushels, are produced by the acre, varies from 20 to 75 cents per bushel. At present the bushel of 60 to 70 lbs. costs from 2 heads 25 strings to 3 heads, and it has fetched 5 in times of scarcity. Guinea corn (_H. sorghum_) is rare, and sells at fancy prices; the measure is a calabash, containing about one gallon, and is usually worth double the price of maize. Rice and farinha, or cassava flour, are being introduced; the latter fetches 10 to 20 strings per basket, and makes tolerable tapioca. True arrowroot is as yet unknown. The indigenous yam[181] is here the staff of life: a dozen costs from 1 head to 1 head 5 strings. Native beans, per basket of 40 lbs., fetch from 2 heads 25 strings to 3 heads. Sugarcane is sold in bundles of 40 canes, four feet long, for from 40 strings to 1 head. Fruits, being despised, are cheap: there are grape-vines of several varieties, but all with produce equally dry and insipid: limes, papaws, and pineapples command 2 cowries each, oranges 10, and bananas 15 to 20 strings per bunch. Europeans use milk; the negroes, more sensible, do not.[182] Butter and ghi, the clarified butter of India, is here supplied by the butyraceous çe or shea butter.

Large and, for Africa, well-bred cattle are as common in the country as the buffalo—the ‘jackass cow’ of Sierra Leone—is rare. The common cow may be bought for 4 to 5 bags: the ox of course costs less. The price of beef varies from 5_d._ to 6_d._ per lb. The sheep—after the first hot season it becomes hairy, not woolly—is worth 7, and if full grown 20 heads. The goat, which, unlike that of the Oil Rivers, is here cheaper, averages from 6 to 15. The hogs are black and heavily built, and the professional hunters bring wild boars to market. Poultry is common, fetching 10 to 20 strings, and a fine fowl may be had for 25. Guinea fowls are dearer and better, costing from 1 to 1½ heads: there is a wild species with a black silky tuft.

Horses are of fancy prices, and are never used for packs or _bât_: asses, mules, and camels, common in the regions north and south of the confluence, are as yet unknown. Ladies and children use a peculiar kind of palanquin—a chair fastened by woodwork to the carrying pole, and covered with an umbrella-like awning. Domestic slaves are always in the market: men, women, and girls fetch from 8 to 10 bags, but being preferred for exportation, are worth from 12 to 16 bags.

The coming exportation from this region will be the shea butter-nut, an indigenous bassia. However much the palm and palm-kernel oils may fall before the earth oils of America, shea butter will maintain its price, from 50_l._ to 52_l._ per ton of 2252 lbs.—about 5_l._ per ton more valuable than tallow. The tree, which is mentioned with enthusiasm by Mungo Park, grows in immense forests: there is one between Ilori and Bida, of nine days’ march; and between Ilori and Sai there are plentiful scatters, here thick, there thin. It is a fine, large growth, producing an emerald-green plum, whose pulp is sweet and edible. For butter, the fruit is gathered in April or June, and smoke-dried in a country oven; a cone of clay, with the smaller end downwards, containing the fire, and divided from the nut by a wall of pierced clay. It is subsequently reduced to powder in a mortar, but so carelessly that the husk is not removed: it is hand-washed and worked in three or four waters, and when it rises to the surface it is ladled off. It is then boiled in large country jars, and stored in smaller earthen pots, after which it will keep untainted for years. This ‘Niger grease,’ as Europeans call it, is beautifully white, hard, and subaromatic. Park prefers it, when fresh, to ‘butter from the cow.’ It is used by the people for all the purposes of cookery, and, as an unguent, it is considered invaluable for alleviating rheumatic pains. At Abeokuta, owing to the war, there is but little in the market. At Ilori it still commands a price of one shilling per pound—far too expensive for commerce. The opening of the Niger will bring this valuable vegetable butter in enormous quantities to our shores; and the varieties of butyraceous nuts are almost wholly unknown: there are several even upon the Niger, whilst the Gaboon River and the coast south of the equator abound in tallow-nuts, with which the people are acquainted, whilst we are not.

It remains to consider the subject of cotton-growing about Abeokuta, and throughout Yoruba generally.

The shrub is of various qualities, and, as in Africa generally, all are of tolerable staple. The ‘black-seed’ resembles the sea-island (_G. arboreum_), and the ‘green-seed’ (_G. herbaceum_) is the short staple or upland cotton of the Southern States of Anglo-America. Besides which, there are many hybrids, and all the varieties are grown in the same field. There is brown cotton, but not the red, long-stapled species, with small boll and leaf, which flourishes in Hausa. The best kind is called akashe, and is too expensive for exportation, a penny being the price of eight seeds. It is not uncommon, however, round Abeokuta, and it merits a trial in a _jardin d’essai_. The feel is as soft as silk, and the seed is white: the yarn shown to me was dyed grey. Nothing can be worse than Abeokutan manufactures, even those made from the finest cottons. The Egbas are as far from the jenny of James Hargreaves as from the power-loom. Their materials are still a distaff and spindle, exactly resembling the artless implements of India and East Africa. The bhaunri is a bit of wood, weighted with a lump of clay, and painted with the brightest colours.

Cotton must ever be an interesting subject to a country in which five millions of souls—about one-sixth of the population, and a number exceeding the total of Holland and Portugal—are or were interested directly or indirectly; which possesses 200,000,000_l._ of fixed and floating investments; which, in 1860, produced an interest of 80,000,000_l._[183]—more than equal to the whole revenue of the empire; which imported from one country alone 35,000,000_l._ per annum,[184] and manufactured to the value of 55,000,000_l._; which, in less than a century, has increased its operations three-hundred-fold—from 4,000,000 lbs. in 1767 to 1,200,000,000 lbs. in 1861; which, during the last fifty years, has consumed 20,000,000,000 lbs., equal to 750,000,000_l._, or nearly the national debt; and which for years has paid at least twopence per lb. over-price to the Southern States of America.[185]

The wars of secession have brought two great rivals in the field, India and Africa. Despite the persevering efforts of adventurer and speculator to extract money from the pockets of the British capitalist, little can be expected from the former. The old Court of Directors spent lac after lac in improving the staple, and failed. After a few months the produce returned to the old stock as surely as the English bull-dog became a pariah and the English child a degenerate. It is a law of nature—mysterious, unintelligible, yet not to be mistaken. Wherever—as in Mekran or Zanzibar—the American ‘domestics,’ which are all made of medium staple, met our cottons, in which medium staple was eked out with Indian or short staple, the former invariably beat the latter out of the market. Hindostan and the East certainly did miracles in the olden time, as the Dacca fabrics and the Mosul muslins prove. These textures, however, were, like the shawls of Kashmir, hand-woven, at an enormous expenditure of time and trouble, and it is folly to expect them to be imitated by the coarse appliances of machinery.

When Indian cotton is cried up for the English market, and is represented as likely to supersede American, either ignorance or deceit should be suspected. Mr. H. R. Cassels,[186] a most competent observer, shall be placed in the witness-box. Leaving other presidencies to speak for themselves, that gentleman maintains that the experience of half a century of cotton cultivation in Bombay teaches that—

‘1. Exotic cotton cannot be successfully cultivated on a large scale in the Bombay Presidency, except in a limited portion of its southern districts.

‘2. Indian cotton may be improved in clearness, and somewhat reduced in cost, but the general characteristic of the staple will not be materially altered.

‘3. In so far as this quality of cotton is serviceable to the manufacturers of England, India can compete with America; but if a finer description be required, India cannot adequately supply it.

‘4. Unless, therefore, such alterations in machinery can be devised as may render the manufacturer indifferent to length and fineness of staple (and of the probability of this others must judge), India is not likely to replace the United States.[187]

‘5. It seems evident, then, that Indian cotton must continue to hold a subordinate place in European markets, and that there is a point at which its competition with other growths entirely ceases.’

Here, then, is the whole truth. From such cold comfort as this let the political statistician turn to Africa.

I will not delay to prove that, whereas India yields short staple, medium staple and long staple are indigenous in Africa. It is also evident that the cultivation can be developed in a short space of time. Cotton culture began under the orders of Mohammed Ali in 1818: the first exportation was in 1823, and in 1855, besides five or six millions of lbs. worked in the country, it exported 56,874,300 lbs. The United States of America exported, we know, eight bales in 1784, and it was doubted at Liverpool that so much could be produced in the country: in 1850, or within the assumed time of a man’s life, America grew 550 millions out of the 1000 millions of lbs. which the world affords. Algeria is another case in point, proving the adaptability of Africa for cotton-growing, and Natal will be.[188]

Africa can produce the ‘tree wool’ which England so greatly requires: she has, however, two grand drawbacks. The first is the inadequacy of regular labour, the second is the want of roads, tramways, and canals, and the expensiveness of freight.

The first is a most serious difficulty. It is clear that, without slaves or quasi-slaves, like the Hindu ryot and the Egyptian fellah under Mohammed Ali, cotton has not yet anywhere been cultivated in any considerable quantities, or with any great success. There are certain stages of the growth when a war, a strike, or anything that removes the labourer, is fatal to the year’s harvest. Africa, as will be seen by the example of Abeokuta, cannot depend upon herself; she must look elsewhere. We have, though tardily, recognized the fact that nothing can be more suicidal than the emigration of Kulis (coolies) from a land which, instead of being over-stocked, really suffers from a paucity of population. From Southern China, however, we can draw supplies of hands almost _ad libitum_. At present the best fields yield about one-fourth of the average of the United States, and the prosperity of the crop will depend upon careful manuring and selection of seed. I have every confidence in the eventual triumph of free _versus_ slave labour, but it is hard to say how, at present, any extensive movement of the kind can be organized, at any rate for the use of Africa.

Transport and freight remain to be considered. There is a difficulty about road-making in Africa which appears strange to the English reader; yet it is not a little real. The habits of the natives, and the power of the climate, would reduce in a few months the best macadam to the condition of a bridle-path. Beasts of burden are wanting; carts have to be invented; the country is unfit for canalization, and tramways are long before its civilization. Finally, freight from the coast is one penny per pound by steamer, and three-farthings by sailing ship—equal, in fact, to the Indian, and double the American.

As might be expected, the attempts to develop African cotton have hitherto been desultory in the extreme. We have tried the ridiculous Zambezi, and the Spaniards have talked of Fernando Po.[189] Abeokuta has had a fair trial, and hitherto has failed with an almost total failure. In the immediate neighbourhood of the city, where farm land lies, there is little grown, and that little is brought to market in baskets and blies by the women. The country to the north, especially about Ilori, supplies the best and the largest quantities. Planted after the harvest in July, the shrub lasts, they say, for several years, and not being lopped, attains a height of ten feet. Abeokuta entered the lists with every prospect of success. She was presented with machinery, agents were sent to her, she doubled her produce every year, and the Manchester Association published their expectations for 1859-1860 at 20,000 bales (112 lbs. to 125 lbs. each). But the war with Ibadan broke out, the yield fell to 3447 small bales, and between 1st October and 1st January of the present year (1861) only 500 bales reached Lagos. This, too, in despite of famine prices in Lancashire and elsewhere. The prime cost at Abeokuta was 3_d._ to 3½_d._ per lb., and 3_s._ 6_d._ for packing each bale. Ready for exportation, the bale was worth twenty-eight head of cowries = 9·60 dollars = 2_l._ 4_s._; it has, however, risen to 2_l._ 12_s._ in very scarce times. But peace in America will restore the balance of the English market, and reduce inferior cottons to a maximum and minimum of 6¾_d._ and 2_d._, whilst the best qualities will range between 9_d._ and 5_d._ Under these circumstances, what would become of cotton culture in Africa?

I presume that the benefits of the cotton famine more than counterbalance to capitalists its disadvantages, otherwise they would not sit still calling upon Hercules. It is from them that enterprise must originate. At present it is confined to trusting a few hundreds of pounds sterling to any black face with a glib tongue that promises to procure the article cheap. Combination is wanted, and, still more, before Europeans expend time and money in Africa, a distinct pledge that, for so many years, their produce will command a certain price in the market, which is of course impossible. At present, to tell a plain, unvarnished truth, we are convinced that if Manchester could once more buy all her cotton from the Southern States of America at one penny a bale cheaper than she could obtain it from English territory she would do so.

The conclusion which I draw from my brief visit to Yoruba is, that it can produce cotton, and that, for the present at least, it will not. The public is respectfully advised not so readily to believe those who find for it cotton districts in every corner of Africa. The Niger River and Valley offer, perhaps, the best of all sites, and are of all the most neglected. This part of the subject however must, for the best of reasons, be reserved for future consideration.

END OF VOL. I

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING
CROSS.

[Footnote 165: Caste is one of the most enlightened inventions of the civilized East. It supplies an admirable system of police, acts as practical conservatism, and leads to high excellence in the crafts, arts, and sciences, by breeding generation after generation, till an instinctive superiority is acquired. The Englishman exclaims, ‘What a shame it is, because my father is a tinker, that I am forbidden by the laws of the land to be prime minister;’ and he objects to caste because it ‘keeps the people down.’ He forgets, however, that he is talking, not of petty European kingdoms of twenty or thirty millions, but of some two hundred millions of human beings, and that each caste is quite numerous enough to form by itself a first-class nation.]

[Footnote 166: The ‘Iwe Irohin,’ appearing October 1862, has the following sensible but curious article upon the subject of slavery: ‘It is the boast of Englishmen of the present day that no one is a slave on British ground; and they have a right to be proud of it, for in 1834 they gave the large sum of twenty million pounds sterling as a compensation to the slave owners; but though there is no doubt that a land where every man is free is in a better state than where slavery exists to a large extent, yet we must remember that slavery is recognized throughout the Bible, not only in the patriarchal times and under the Mosaic law, but also very distinctly by St. Paul, who lays down the relative duties of masters and servants to the Churches of Ephesus and Colosse, and exhorts Timothy to teach the slaves at Ephesus to count their own masters worthy of all honour, especially if their masters were Christians, 1 Tim. vi. 1, 2; and sent back to his master, Philemon, Onesimus who had been converted under his ministry at Rome, St. Paul had fully acknowledged the right of Philemon to his servant, though he thought it convenient for him as a Christian to release him; and he insists upon the duty of Christian servants to obey their masters, though he wished them to obtain their freedom if they could, 1 Cor. vii. 21. The tendency of Christianity is no doubt to diminish slavery, but it does not do this by exciting the slaves to revolt or run away; on the contrary, it commands them to please their masters well in all things, but it exhorts masters, as it does all other Christians, to do to others as they would they should do to them.’]

[Footnote 167: Upon the present state of things that results from cutting off all slave export, I shall have more to say at some future time when treating upon the Oil Rivers of West Africa.]

[Footnote 168: As a case in point, compare Richard Lander’s and the Rev. Mr. Bowen’s estimates of the race.]

[Footnote 169: Mr. Crowther’s is copied too servilely from Murray, itself an Anglo-Latin modification.]

[Footnote 170: Introductory remarks to Mr. Crowther’s Vocabulary of the Yoruban language.]

[Footnote 171: The peculiarity which the bishop notices in the adverbs, viz., that there is a distinct word to express the quality or degree of each substantive, is already found in Arabic adjectives, especially those of colour.]

[Footnote 172: New comers are apt to expose themselves needlessly at night by sleeping in open rooms, and thus by checking perspiration, when the temperature changes after midnight, to awake with fever or dysentery. The only Spanish officer who has escaped fever at Fernando Po attributes his immunity to sleeping in a well-closed apartment. We read in ‘La Médecine des Prophètes’ (Traduit de l’Arabe par M. le Docteur Baron. Paris, 1860.): ‘Le sommeil refoule les esprits à l’intérieur du corps, et alors l’extérieur se refroidit; aussi a-t-on besoin dans le sommeil de se couvrir davantage.’]

[Footnote 173: The following is an extract of the Returns made to Parliament of the West African imports and exports:—

There was imported into the United Kingdom, in the year ended 31st December, 1861, from the Western Coast of Africa, produce of the value, in round numbers, of one and a half million sterling. This amount is exclusive of the imports from the British, French, and Spanish possessions on that coast.

Palm-oil is the chief article of commerce brought into this country from thence, the value of which, in 1860, was not less than 1,684,532_l._ The other articles, consisting chiefly of dye woods, cotton, ebony, and elephants’ teeth, had a total value of only 92,000_l._

The last made-up returns are given below, as well as the increase or decrease as compared with 1859:—

1860. Increase. Decrease.

£ £ £

Barwood 8,939 2,046

Camwood 7,370 519

Copper ore 648 515

Cotton 6,094 405

Ebony 3,797 1,184

Guano 2,590 1,186

Gum animi 222 531

„ copal 865 727

Oil (palm) 1,684,532 263,503

Orchil 29

Teeth (elephants’) 35,672 6,203

Wax (bees’) 2,134 5,590

All other articles 23,702 4,147
--------- ------- ------
Total 1,776,565 272,990 13,602

13,602
-------
Increase in 1860 over 1859 259,388
-------

The exports of British produce and manufactures were valued at 865,804_l._ for the year 1861, which is less by 85,491_l._ than for the preceding year.

By the subjoined table it will be seen that the largest shipments in 1860 were cotton goods, gunpowder, guns, spirits, and earthenware, and that with one exception all the articles exhibit increases over 1859:—

1860. Increase. Decrease.

£ £ £

Apparel 24,158 6,582

Guns 61,613 22,230

Gunpowder 100,169 28,785

Beads 8,338 5,264

Brass manufactures 20,820 1,846

Cottons 464,661 138,216

Earthenware 23,227 11,418

Hardware 50,314 2,405

Iron and steel 25,147 4,442

Silk manufactures 14,421 6,429

Spirits (British) 15,695 12,078

Staves 56,538 1,909

Woollens 11,074 4,032

All other articles 75,120 13,450
------- ------- -------
Total 951,295 257,177 1,909

1,909
-------
Increase in 1860 over 1859 255,268
-------

Of foreign and colonial produce and manufactures exported from this country to the Western Coast of Africa the value in 1860 was 194,139_l._ The principal articles were beads, cowries, silk manufactures, spirits, and tobacco.]

[Footnote 174: The tobacco, like that of Africa generally, lacks strength and flavour: whether cultivation would improve it remains to be seen.]

[Footnote 175: The traveller’s best outfit would be grey domestics, a few striped ditto, some silk velvets (red and green, with white stripe), a little coral, some fez or tarbushes, a few umbrellas, and trifles like needles, scissors, and little looking-glasses.]

[Footnote 176: According to the ‘Iwe Irohin’ (Appendix, Oct. 1862), ‘the chiefs of Abeokuta are beginning to feel the evils which are being inflicted on the town by rum-selling.’ The obvious means of discouraging the importation would be to impose a duty of 5 per cent., gradually and by very slow degrees, raised to 50, and even to cent. per cent. on ardent spirits, and with great prudence to make the imposts on gunpowder so heavy as to be almost prohibitory. To effect such innovation, however, we must be free from the presence of rivals; upon the Gold Coast, for instance, and at Lagos, under present circumstances, hasty steps would lead to ruinous consequences.]

[Footnote 177: The following is the usual computation:—

40 cowries = 1 string (ojo), which varies, according to the market, from 1_f._ to 1_d._ The string of 50 cowries is called Adotta.

5 strings = 1 bunch.

10 bunches = 50 strings, or 2000 cowries 1 head (Egba or Egbawa) = $1, whence probably the word ‘head’ was derived in former times, but now varying from 2_s._ to 1_s._ 5_d._

10 heads, or 20,000 cowries = 1 bag (okkekan), now worth 18_s._

20 heads = 1 oz. gold dust = £4.

Thus assuming the dollar to be at the old value 4_s._ 6_d._ (it has lately been reduced to 4_s._ 2_d._)—

_s._ _d._ Bags. Heads. Strings. Cowries.

One bag, worth 18 0 contains 1 0 0 0

„ dollar „ 4 6 „ 0 2 25 0

„ head „ 1 9½ „ 0 1 0 0

„ shilling „ 1 0 „ 0 0 27 31

The natives, as might be expected, have a number of names and minor subdivisions, even a single cowrie being made to buy snuff and similar small articles. The following are the names generally known:—

Ogonu (_i.e._ one hundred) = 2½ strings.

Igbio = 5 strings; in Portuguese, Gallinha; Anglicè, ‘bunch,’ or
smaller bundle.

Ojuluba (5 strings and 1) = 6 strings.

Enowo = 10 strings.

Egbeta = 15 „

Egbeni = 20 „

Egbenu = 25 „

Egbefa = 30 „

Egbejje = 35 „

Egbejja = 40 „

Egbisi = 45 „

After which comes the head = 50 strings.]

[Footnote 178: At Sansanding, however, 3000 cowries were = 1 minkalli of gold = 12_s._ 6_d._]

[Footnote 179: The only thing in its favour is that it teaches the children arithmetic. Mr. Crowther informs us that they begin by counting one by one, then by twos, and lastly by fives. It is a taunt to say ‘_O daju danu o o’mo essan messan_’—with all your cleverness, you do not know nine times nine.]

[Footnote 180: Maize, called muhindi, _i.e._ Indian or Hindostan corn, in East Africa, is here called yangan or agbado, _i.e._ agba odo, ‘what is beaten in the mortar.’ It is said to have been brought from the eastward, beyond the Niger, by a yellow monkey—the Oibo, or white man, according to the boys, is the ‘old baboon,’—which tends to show that it is not a native of the land. We cannot however as yet answer the question whether maize and the arachis be African or purely American growths.]

[Footnote 181: Mr. Bowen mentions a Yoruban tradition, that yams were the primitive human food. The first man vainly attempted to eat it raw: he afterwards found one accidentally roasted before the fire—somewhat like Elia’s genesis of the sucking pig—and succeeded better. Europeans, less sensible, eat the yam boiled, in which state it is detestable, though far superior to potato when roasted.]

[Footnote 182: It is considered heating and bilious, especially if drunk whilst the sun is hot. The Portuguese, on both coasts of Africa, carefully avoid it. I prefer tea _à la Russe_, with a small quantity of sugar, if procurable, and a slice of lemon instead of ‘bullock milk.’]

[Footnote 183: 25,000,000_l._ consumed, and 55,000,000_l._ exported.]

[Footnote 184: England takes 85 per cent. from America, 8 from foreign, and 7 from British territory.]

[Footnote 185: And it is said landowners have often sold for 9_d._ what they have raised for 3_d._ per lb.]

[Footnote 186: ‘Cotton; an Account of its Culture in the Bombay Presidency, prepared from Government Records, and other authentic sources, in accordance with a resolution of the Government of India.’ (London: Smith, Elder, and Co.)]

[Footnote 187: It has been contended that an improvement of machinery will make short staple do the work of medium staple. This, if true, only shifts the difficulty; the same amount of alteration in machinery will make medium staple do the work of long staple.]

[Footnote 188: Natal has all the constituents of climate which render the coast of Georgia so famous for cotton-growing: it is not too constantly hot for seaboard or upland, and its current is a fac-simile of the Gulf Stream.]

[Footnote 189: Early in 1862 I sent, kindly assisted by D. Pellon, four samples of cotton, growing almost wild about Clarence, to the African Association at Liverpool. They were described as follows:—

1. _Gossipium vitifolium_, good colour, uneven, staple equal to
middling Orleans, considered worth 13¼_d._ to 14_d._

2. „ „ good staple, rather yellow, very clean; value
the same.

3. _Gossipium tricuspidatum_, dull colour, uneven staple, mixed with
short; clean, worth 12½_d._

4. „ „ colour too yellow, good strong staple, equal
to Egyptian; when clean worth 16½_d._]

Transcriber's note:

Page 12, footnote 6, Changed: "what the Hansa people call Bature Dudu"
to: "Hausa"

Page 103, Changed: "turbans, or Hauea head-dresses" to: "Hausa"

Page 167, Changed: "his engraver has succeded" to: "succeeded"

Page 206, Changed: "I have something n a future page" to: "in a"

Page 229, footnote 140, Changed: "and Vocabulary or the Yoruba
Language" to: "of the"

Page 229-230 footnote 140, Changed: "with something tired up in it"
to: "tied"

Page 265, Changed: "morever, a deeper cause of quarrel" to: "moreover"