Chapter I: From Lagos to Abeokuta (1)

After a flying survey of the ‘Oil Rivers’ in the amene delta of the lovely Niger, I found myself stranded at Fernando Po Island, Bight of Biafra, Gulf of Guinea, Western Intertropical Africa, and divided by the thinnest of party-walls from Anti-Paradise. Nothing to do, and no prospect of doing anything, which pleasant state of things endured (_ohimè!_) from Wednesday the 2nd to Wednesday the 9th of October, 1861—a long, long, a very long week.

On the day last mentioned the commodore and senior officer of the West African squadron compassionately offered me a lift to Lagos, the nearest point where certain necessaries—a ‘cook-boy’ and a _batterie de cuisine_, a carpenter, a diwan—the mention of this article nearly revolutionized the colonist part of the island of Fernando Po—and many other things were procurable. Before the next mail could arrive there would be ample time to reach Abeokuta, and after enforced rest, the prospect of such a visit was a joy. I had read much and heard more about the ‘Town under the Stone,’ and the glowing hues in which the subject had been depicted had conjured up in my mind a host of doubts that could be laid only by means of that accurate organ, the eye. A nautico- diplomatico-missionary visitation was, it had been rumoured, about to take place, so there remained only to go and ‘see the fun.’ May the reader find it as funny as I did!

About sunset-time of Thursday, H.M.S. ‘Arrogant,’ with, besides her usual equipage, a certain person on board, glided out of the little cove called Clarence, where she had anchored, past the Adelaide Islands, alias Islas de Santa Isabel; past Cockburn, popularly called Kokpo Cove, and more prettily Enseñada de Venus; past dwarf cliffs of red clay, with a tall, thick capping of tangled trees; past Coal Bay, alias Bahia de Carbon; past Point Bullen, alias Punta de los Frailes, with its _chevaux de frise_ of tree trunks and its thick back-wall of blackish verdure; and finally heading W.N.W. out into the open, where we once more welcomed the bounding waves and the breathable atmosphere of old Neptune’s domains. It may be here observed, that there are at present three known names for every part and portion of the island. The Portuguese and the older Iberian nomenclature having, as might be expected, fallen into complete oblivion, the English settlers naturally called things after their own fashion, neglecting the Bubis, or _indigènes_, who, as usual with barbarians, have a profusion of terminology for every feature that attracts the eye; whilst, in their turn, the Spaniards equally and naturally preferred Castilian to the ‘harsh Runic’ of their predecessors.

Fernando Po still haunted us with its presence next morning, though we had run upwards of one hundred miles: at times it may be distinctly seen from Corisco Island, distant some forty-five leagues. To us the only sign of its existence was a mysterious pile of slaty-blue nimbus looming on the horizon, based broadly upon the main, and towering and tapering high into the heavens. Such, doubtless, was the spectacle, Tristaõ vaz Teyxeyra, called by the king for honour ‘O Tristaõ,’ which terrified the crew whom stout-hearted Da Camera, surnamed Zargo, commanded.[1] The days sped swiftly among the hospitable ‘Arrogants.’ On Monday the 14th we were rocking and swinging in the eternal roll of the Lagos roadstead, and on Tuesday the certain person, after kindly farewells, transferred himself on board H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ Commander Bedingfield, R.N.

The day after—it was nearly full moon—brought forth a phenomenon whereat I had reason to rejoice. All ‘old hands’ tell you that the sooner ‘seasoning fever’ introduces himself, the better. After long delay, he appears in the shape of a bilious remittent, which probably will see the last of you, and must, even, if merciful, leave you in a sad state of what is popularly called ‘pull-down.’ The attack came on at 8 A.M. Preceded by full head, dry skin, blue nails, cold finger tips, and other normal symptoms, it was succeeded by nausea, by a rigor that lasted barely thirty minutes, and by the pyrectic stage, which after an hour and a half passed off in a profuse perspiration. There is nothing unpleasant in these attacks; rather the contrary. The excitement of the nerves is like the intoxication produced by a plentiful supply of strong green tea; the brain becomes uncommonly active, peopled with a host of visions, and the imagination is raised almost to Parnassus. There are persons who rhyme under the inspiration of Musa Quartana, and M. Alexandre Dumas _père_, in the wildest of his romances, the ‘_Voyage au Caucase_,’ declares that his artist’s most dashing sketch was done with a pulse beating higher than a hundred. Of course, the patient pays for it when the fit passes off. The treatment adopted by Mr. Eales, surgeon of H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ was simple, and so successful that I am induced to publish it for the benefit of future feverists.[2]

At 8 A.M. on the morrow, the attack did not return—it is a favourable sign when it defers itself: it delayed twelve hours, and then appeared precisely in the same way, but not nearly so agreeably, pain in the temples being now a decided characteristic, and it continued till 12 noon, causing a sleepless night. Next day showed its effects in a surprising weakness and languor, which endured for a full week, making one feel much in the condition of a pony that has passed its third year in Sierra Leone. The vigorous treatment completely expelled the fiend: it did not show on the third day, which, with the fifth, the seventh, and the ninth, is held to be critical. Such attacks are by no means so dangerous as an English bronchitis or influenza, but the debility induced by them often leads to frequent relapses, and people will act up to the bad old nursery rule, ‘starve a fever and feed a cold.’ My experience in East Africa long ago untaught me that tenet, and I have ever since preferred to support exhausted nature with essence of meat, beef-tea, and, when such things are procurable, with champagne, brandy- cum-soda, and ‘ye oldest hoc in ye cellar,’ _non sine_ tobacco if it can be enjoyed. The Anglo-Indian superstition touching recurrence at ‘the springs’ is here unknown, yet inveterate habit will make me careful to prepare for _luna piena_ with a prophylactic—a fortnight of chinchonized wine.

We were in the depth of the tornado season, and we were made to feel it. Hardly had we returned to the ‘Prometheus’ on the night of the 21st, than rain from the masses gathering in the north-east—here as in Fernando Po it is _the_ quarter—began to fall in the usual sheets and columns. Then came a premonitory thunder-crash, single, and sounding as if the _fractus orbis_ were falling in. These solitary outbreaks of violence are common on the coast, but they appear strange to Europeans. After a few moments, a flash of lightning filled the firmament with liquid blue fire, and a queer whizzing, like the shock of an aëriform mass, or the ‘whistling Jack’ of a Lancaster gun, was succeeded by the deafening booming report of a battery of Armstrongs, and detached noises like the upsetting of stone waggons by the thousand. The bolt or fluid had struck the fore-topmast; neglecting the vane, it had run down the conductor, which it ripped away from its bearings—what would Sir S. H. think of this?—and passing along the wire forestay, had separated into two currents. One traversed the port nightheads, the other, following the starboard chain-cable into the locker, filled the deck with rust- dust, and gambolling playfully within three feet of the powder magazine, that contained some two tons, made the men on watch think that they saw smoke, and levant ‘in short metre.’ After taking this improper liberty, the storm-king hauled off, and we heard him in the distance grumbling like an old man-of-war’s man. A splinter from the foremast made a very neat paper-knife for my wife.

The period between the 23rd and the 28th of October was passed—under the hospitable but not water-tight roof of my friend Mr. M‘Coskry, then acting-governor of Lagos—in various preparations for travel, and in the enjoyment of Moslem society. ‘A small knot of us gathered to interchange pleasant communings, whilst grace gave a fresh intenseness of longing.’ Yet El Islam is under a cloud in these regions: the young and vigorous creed has still the proportions of a child. The number of converts has been stated at 2000; it can hardly exceed 800. The mosque is still a hut, the musical call of the Muezzin—how much more human and heart- stirring than the clang of the brazen-tongued bell![3]—is yet unheard, and the women of the Kafirs are allowed to display their bosoms in the market-place. There were, however, several of the Safe Faith[4] who had pilgrimaged to Meccah, and one man, a servant of the ‘Caboceer’ Kosoko, had resided a dozen years at El Medinah, and had returned to infidel Ekko, viâ Sawakin, Kordofan, Darfur, Wádái, Burnu, and Rabba. Many had also travelled over the northern line from Kano and Sokoo to Tarabulus or Tripoli. There were books amongst those Moslems, a Koran of Bombay lithography, and sundry _risálát_ (treatises) of the Maliki school, to which they all belong. Their manuscripts are written in the curious semi-Cufic character, which is to them like what the Tondo-Mezzo-Gotico is to these sheets. The ‘Allamah,’ or most learned, was the Muallim Dáudá, who knew a little of the grammatical sciences, but who had not reached the height of interpreting the Koran.

As our journey was to be by water, few impediments were necessary—a collection of pots and pans, and supplies for the way. Only one servant was required, and he was found in the person of Selim Aga. A native of Tegullet, he had been carried when of tender years to Egypt, where he had found a patron in my old friend, the benevolent Mr. Robert Thurburn of Alexandria, now deceased. He had lived twelve and a half years in Europe—where he had forgotten his mother-tongue—chiefly at a Scotch school near Murtho, Aberdeenshire, and he returned to Africa in 1857 with that failure of failures, the Niger expedition. He proved himself perfection; a Figaro, but—un-Figaro-like—honest, civil, and unpresuming: he could cook, doctor, shave, ‘valet,’ garden, carpenter, shoot and stuff birds, collect spirit specimens—in fact, he took all the trouble of life off my hands. I at once made him my factotum, regretting to see such a man wasted upon the barbarism of Lagos. Some years hence, when we also shall have topographical engineers, and when exploration shall become a profession, not, as at present, an affair of mere amateurship, Selim Agas will be useful in cutting a path for the European pioneer through outer Asia and Central Africa.[5]

After a fortnight all was ready for departure. The little party consisted of Commander Bedingfield,—who, with that condescension which characterizes every truly great man, had permitted me to form part of his suite or train—Mr. Eales, and myself. The dog Sancho must precede Mr. Williams, a ‘sassy,’ half-educated Egba interpreter to the Government at Lagos, who, in his quality of interpreter, went on in a canoe, preferring, _more Africano_, lying at full length to sitting upright, and who intrigued like a black Talleyrand throughout the week. Commander Bedingfield, who, and who only, believing in his own omniscience touching African affairs, had, as will appear, sundry affairs to settle, and was destined not to succeed in all and every of them. The second, Mr. Eales, added to the natural wish of sight-seeing, the _idée fixe_ that unicorns abound in Northern Yoruba. He had heard of the animal from certain merchants resident at Lagos—one of them had promised to provide him with a specimen—and he had read of it in the matter-of-fact and highly imaginative pages of Mr. Bowen.[6] The tales reported by this missionary-militant remind one of the Chinese tiger with nine human heads, the ‘intelligent creature of a thousand souls,’ the dog-headed rhinoceros with six horns, the five-headed crocodile, the bird with one eye, and the horse-like deer with leopard’s spots, white head, and red tail. We read in ‘Central Africa’ of the Alakere, a tribe three feet high, who surround their towns—as England is investing her ships—with iron walls. Beyond them, and eastward of the Niger, are the Alabiru, also clever smiths, and manufacturers of all the finest Sudan blades: having inflexible tails, about six inches long, before sitting down to work they with sharp sticks dig holes in the ground. Mr. Barnum may save himself the 100,000 dollars which, as the story runs, he has offered to a certain African traveller who told him how easy it would be to engraft a simian termination to the human frame. There is also the ashori-tree, a upas, under which plants will not grow, and which kills birds when flying too near. Of course the gorilla exists, and is called ‘nákí.’ The Yorubans declare that it tears asunder the fingers of captives, even as the Mpongwe of the Gaboon River make it pull the nails from the human victims’ fingers and toes. The chimpanzee is certainly found in dense forests, and being four feet high, is feared by the people; as yet, however, we are so ignorant of the anthropoid apes that the nákí may be a new and more formidable species of troglodytes. There are subterranean races, humans, with four eyes, living south of Mandara; and, finally, the Alabiwo, men-unicorns, with a small goat-like horn projecting from the middle of the forehead. They are black, very intelligent, and when captured, becoming ashamed of what some men wear with such complacency, they hide the formation under a kerchief.

Yet after all the unicorn, like the great sea-serpent, has its advocates; and it is not a little curious that many African tribes have a distinct name for it.[7] However it may be, Mr. Eales left Abeokuta _sans_ unicorn, and he has not yet, I believe, found it.

Three lines of road on the west of the Ogun River connect Abeokuta with the youngest of our colonies, Lagos. The shortest, _viâ_ Ota and Agbameya, is laid down at sixty-five miles in length. It is rugged, and unfit for beasts of burden. Further west is the middle path, also swampy and comparatively useless. The westernmost is the best, and can at times be travelled on horseback. All of these routes, however, are flooded during the rains, when the waters cut deep ruts in the hard clay. Even at this season the best is hardly passable, mud and morass forming the chief obstacles: it however opens in December, and remains so till March. It would be worth while to explore for some line to the east of the Ogun, which might reduce the land journey from sixty-five to forty- eight miles. All attempts at road-making, however, in the present state of independent Africa must fail; the people, assisted by their climate, would in a few months reduce the finest macadam to a mere bridle path—a long, deep cunette threading grassy banks. Moreover, the Abeokutans are by no means anxious for a more direct route, which they have been persuaded would soon deliver them into the hands of the great devourer. They have coquetted with us for years on this point; and although they must eventually yield to civilized pressure, they will defer the bad day as long as possible.

We therefore determined to take the usual line from Lagos to Abeokuta, across the Ikoradu Water, through the Agboi Creek, and thence up the Ogun River.

At 9·15 A.M. on Tuesday, the 29th October, 1861, we left our temporary homes in highest spirits, and were duly escorted to the beach by Mr. M‘Coskry and M. Maser, a most worthy member of what calls itself _The_ Church Missionary Society. Our conveyances were the first and second gigs of H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ manned by Krumen, who, demoralized by an education at Sierra Leone, and by the overpay and the over-kindness of a fighting craft, proved the idlest and the unhandiest of their tribe. In the state of nature they will row forty miles without other refreshment but a ‘snack,’ eaten whilst lying upon their oars. Artificialized, they must halt, ‘chop water,’ and cook after every third hour; otherwise they will dawdle, give answers, or, with far-protruded lips, sulk. Our fellows once saw their captain standing alone on the river bank awaiting his breakfast, and yet they sat down to ‘yam.’ I could not pity him, it was his own doing. But one cannot wonder that no merchant vessel will employ a Kruboy who has been known to serve on board a man-of-war.

And so we rowed up the Osa, or Victoria Water, connecting the Ikoradu or Cradoo Lagoon with the sea, along the pestilent island of Lagos, which, probably founded by driftage, and finished with eddy-carried sand, rises a few feet above sea-level.[8] Our course after leaving the beach lay westwards, through slack water, along the densely-wooded “Takpa’s” Point, where, in 1851, El Re Kosoko’s premier had erected _chevaux de frise_ to prevent the landing of the assaulting Briton. On our right lay Lagos, which in this, its city end, showed a disorderly mass of hut and house with mud walls and lumber walls, barred casements and holes for windows, and huge sloping roofs of dry palm-leaf, inevitably capital tinder. Then came Fetish Point, where a growth of gigantic trees—the Egbas still, like the Canaanites of old, worship in the bush—notes that the land is ‘holy ground.’ Fetish Point has, like the trans-Temple Bar region, London, a government all its own, an _imperium in imperio_, not subject to the more aristocratic Lagos: the chief must never be a fetish or reverend man, and his state is kept up by the voluntary contributions of the river fishermen, who, at this moment, are in palaver, having refused to pay church rates. The unlovely channel was scummed over with a whitish froth, borne along by the strong embrace of the tide: the surface was broken by long walls of shrimp baskets, sharp, tapering cones of bamboo strips, attached to strongly-driven poles, and so placed that the animals, once inside the _camera di morte_, cannot escape by reason of the violent current. This is a conspicuous feature upon the smoother surface of the lake beyond: the produce, sun-dried and packed, is a lucrative branch of native trade, and penetrates inland far north of Abeokuta. The old travellers remarked the quantity of shrimps produced in these streams, and gave their name, Camaroẽs—Anglicè, Camaroons—to a river, and to the magnificent mountain pile which will form the subject of future pages. As we emerged from the gut, conspicuous on our right hand, and boldly heading the body of Lagos, was the mediatized King Dosumo’s ‘palace,’ a red-tiled and partially whitewashed barn, backed by trees of the noblest stature, and fronted by water perilously deep, from three to four fathoms, where gunboats have been known to trust themselves. In equally sunken soundings, and a little off the town, lay detached ‘pontons,’ or lumps of land, once mangrove-drifts, then sand-banks, and now clumps of bush: they are three, and presently they will be four. These are called the ‘Sacrifice Islands,’ from the executions common in the good old times: the victim to Oro—of whom more anon—was fastened to a rude cross, clubbed, and impaled. The latter operation seems to have been a favourite: the travellers of the last generation describe the ‘horrid custom of impaling alive a young female,’ and this annual sacrifice, which took place about the vernal equinox, was supposed to breed plenty in the land.[9] But Lagos has learned to hide her horrors. We no longer observe male dogs which, banished to the towns beyond, have ventured to revisit their homes, strangled as fetish against evil influences, ‘split, trimmed like sheep, and hung up at the door of some great man, where rows of the putrid carcases of their canine brethren are often to be seen;’ nor at the east end of the town do we find large trees covered with the heads of malefactors, ‘the skulls nailed to the trunks and large limbs, and presenting a very appalling spectacle.’[10] On the left, and nearly opposite ‘Sacrifice Islands,’ lies Bruce’s,[11] more modernly termed Picnic, Island, garden soil beautifully clad in the green ceiba, or bombax-tree, dotted with the rose-shaped yellow blossoms of the African mallow. Between this ‘cay’ and the mainland runs a narrow channel, crossed by a ferry-boat, and on its banks a yellow line of clay points out the terminus of the nearest western route to Abeokuta.

Presently we emerged from the river into the mirrory expanse of the Lake glistening in the bright sunshine. North-eastward lay a sea horizon fringed with dots, denoting tall groves distance-dwarfed and raised in the air by force of mirage; whilst some ten miles distant, Point Lambassa, fronted by its own islet, was poised between sea and sky. The lagoon is called in our maps the Cradoo Waters, doubtless a corruption of Ikoradu, a town near its banks, and readily visited by Europeans. Though unsurveyed, it is believed to be of considerable extent, and to connect the Benin with the Volta River:[12] the formation, however, is simple; it is merely a general reservoir for the numerous streams, which rapidly pouring down from the mainland, and lacking watershed near the coast, here collect within two miles of the surf, and when swollen by the rains force a tumultuous passage into the Atlantic. According to some it is connected with the Ardrah Lake near Whydah, which they say can thus be made from Lagos by water: others declare that the continuity of its arm, the Osa,[13] or Victoria Lagoon, is broken at Godemé, a place beyond Porto Novo. It is shallow, but intersected by channels, some of which are known to be eight fathoms deep: in a setting of mountain land it would be beautiful; its low shores and its clay- coloured water, however, render it tame and uninteresting. The bottom is alternately muddy and sandy. It produces oysters, differing from the mangrove species, before which every fresh African traveller stands with open mouth; and amongst the variety of its fishes, one locally called the mullet stands unrivalled.

We advanced steadily, hugging, as much as the shallows would allow, the right bank of the long ‘flash,’ or river-bay, where the amphibious vegetation was indented with covelets, upon whose dwarf precipices of red clay sprang another and already a less malarious growth. Presently we descried the market-place of Ikoradu town, in the land of the Ijebu Remo.[14] This is a people with a chief, but without a king, bordered eastward by rivals and cognates, the Ijebu Ode, so called because their Awajáli, or monarch, resides at the city of Ode.[15] In happier times the Ibadans of the interior made at Ikoradu their barters of gunpowder and similar necessaries for ivory and palm-oil. They, however, no longer visit the coast: the war with Abeokuta prevents their taking the western road, and the eastern, that abuts at Ekpe, besides being indirect, lies through the lands of their enemies the Ijebu Ode, who have fraternized with Abeokuta. The market-place on the Lake shows a few ragged sheds at the bottom of a deep indentation bounded by projecting points, and looking like the estuary of a considerable stream—which, as will be seen, it is not. Opposite us was a tall and uniform forest of mangroves, in whose dark depths a line of lighter-tinged green, backed by a deeper hue than usual, was the only sign that a channel ran through it. Selim was the only one of the party who knew the way by experience, and with his aid we shot into the Agboi Creek at 11·20 A.M., after two hours of rowing. The entrance of this normal short cut must be set down at a distance somewhat shorter than that usually assigned to it, twelve miles—our Krumen assuredly did not exceed five knots an hour.

Before entering the Agboi Creek, a word or two concerning the land formation which we leave behind us. The coasts of the world have been divided into the rocky (exclusively or alternating), the coralline, and the alluvial. The two former are exemplified in Eastern Africa about the latitudes where we now are: Zanzibar is essentially coralline, the Ajan is stony. This portion of the West African coast is at present

‘Neither sea

Nor good dry land.’

Essentially alluvial, it is a false coast, a mass of continental islands fringing the continent, the gift of the rivers, hardly habitable now, but destined in the progress of time to become fitted by secular upheaval for human occupation. It wants only altitude. The material is the finer sand of an immense drift, whose coarser particles have been left, and will be met with inland. The presence of saline matter by no means affects the soil, which mainly requires clearing, and in parts much of the ground is as reclaimable as the alluvial flats of the Nile.

The Agboi Creek, I have said, is a short cut. It is a chord running directly from the north, whereas the Ogun River, our destination to-day, bends round in an arc from north-west to east, and eventually south- east. This narrow ditch is an excellent study of mangroves. The tree, whose only object in life seems to be emergence and escape from ‘the briny,’ rises tall, feathery, white-bolled, overarching the wave, based upon a cone of aërial root and rootlet, infinitely intricate and cage- like, and steadied by dropping long suckers, which, taking the ground, rise for themselves in independent sprigs or shoots, whose cap of green leaves nods over the flow of the graveolent tide. I could not hear that the fruit is here used as an article of human diet; the trunk, however, makes excellent firewood, and the bark is used for tanning. Its complications of bole and branch are further complicated by huge llianas, chiefly cucurbitaceous, whose ropes, sometimes sixty feet long, are so fragile that, as we shoot the natural bridges of inclined or fallen trunks, a brush with the gig’s awning-stanchions brings down the long length upon our heads. The colour of the ditch-water is that of cocoa-nibs and milk, whilst here and there tufted leaves, like enormous water-cresses, float down the stream. Animal life is scarce. At times a sandpiper starts with its wild twitter, a beautiful little blue marten (_Cypselus_) flutters over us, screaming hornbills (_Buceros_)—here their heads are worth half a dollar for charms—form a cross high in the air, or a pair of glorious purple-robed halcyons (_A. Senegalensis_) occupies a stump to peer curiously below, and presently to take a ‘header,’ like a handful of gems, into the clayey tide. Now a jumper fish springs up and flashes in the sunbeams; then a monkey, with wonderful agility, falls as if shot from one bough to another; then a crab, with brightly painted claws, scuttles over the dull brown mud. We pass, however, numerous canoes ascending with empty and descending with filled oil puncheons, the master seated upon a box amidships, astern the mistress or mistresses squatting under a mat-awning, whilst the more than three-quarter-naked boatmen cease poling, doff their head-gear, whatever it may be, and salute us with word and gesture courteously, as if they had taken lessons of Madame Michaud, who teaches ladies from the country to curtsy at court.

The water-way became so narrow that the oars were presently stowed in and the straight-bladed paddles of the Krumen—poles would have been better—were called into requisition. After a little more than a mile we reached a fork of the creek, upon which are built the cocoa-dotted settlements; Agboi on the right, and to the left Oruba. The villages were Lagos on a reduced scale; roofs of dried palm-leaf and walls of African ‘post and plaster,’ swish supported by a framework, in small squares, of stout cocoa-rib wattling. The foundations, raised but a few feet above water-level, must become in the rainy season a bed of soppy treacle-like mire. Yet these people, thus living in the midst of miasma, are said not to suffer: they look fat and well, they have children at their desire, and they breed dogs, sheep and goats, pigs and poultry. They appear but little surprised at our appearance, merely looking up for a moment from their work, which they resume a minute afterwards. They are an industrious race: pottery is abundant, nets are hung everywhere, canoes are numerous; the men have studded the little creek with fish-traps—open-topped squares of bamboo splints, each with its trap-door up-current—the women ply the paddle—in every other part of Egba-land a disgrace to women—and both sexes show a serious turn of mind by striking the jaw-bone of a sheep upon a stake. Truly it is said that one half the world knows not how the other half lives.

As we advanced, taking the left, or western, division of the Agboi Creek, the outfall became heavy against us. It is no tidal stream, and the current runs some three knots an hour, sweeping the boats round at the acute angles. At times we tremble for the awning, and we always keep a sharp look out for the dangerous snags. Our visitors are not pleasant. The huge ‘mangrove-fly,’ supposed by the people to have eyes under the wings, draws blood when it can with its sharp stilet; the black mangrove-ant, showered down by the brushed foliage, as unpleasant to man as it is fatal to cockroaches; gadflies, like the English horse-fly—they may be the tsetse, hitherto most ignorantly limited to the southern regions of intertropical Africa[16]—and the microscopic but vicious sand-flies attack the ankles, and employ the Krumen in long diversions of scratching and slapping. _Pour comble de bonheur_, a jagged line of black nimbus, raising its bosom high above an ominous mass of lurid- white, cloudy substance, charges across the sky from the north-west, and warns us to prepare for an African shower.

Presently it came on. A fierce rattling of thunder, a red flicker of lightning, a volley of drops like shot from above, pitting the creek’s face, bore down upon us with the speed of the wind, and ended with a cross between a douche and a shower-bath. The canvas awning, though at once tilted up, was wet through after the first five minutes, the waterproof struggled hard but in vain against the intruder, and the boat began to fill apace. We landed for facility of baling, and, saved by umbrellas from the distillings of the trees, we guarded against the dangers of cold fresh water with a liquid considered a panacea in these lands. The tornado passed off after half an hour, but it departed under protest as it were, growling, and occasionally returning to bespatter us. The odour of the vegetation waxed faint and sickly. Briefly, we experienced many of the proverbial advantages of a ‘short cut.’

Two or three miles more brought us to a change of scenery. The Agboi’s stream, flowing swiftly, often jammed us against the well-wooded banks; the snags and sawyers became more frequent, and the creek broader and shallower. Our men were frequently obliged to dislodge the boat—it drew about thirteen inches—and, ‘tumbling out,’ to shove her by main force over the bars that connected the deeper waters, which were seldom more than four feet. Gradually the mangrove belt disappeared, giving way to wild bananas, dwarf flabellate palms (_P. spinosa_?), the calamus, with black prickly stem and long green lines like snakes, and various wild fruit trees, the African hog-plum (_Spondias Birrea_), and others that not inaptly simulated cherries. Contrasting with the deep, dark, dense foliage of the bush, the water-lily of virgin white—the nymphæa, which ancient Egypt borrowed from the Hindu and then allowed to die out—floated upon its cradle of emerald green, and, in embayed places, formed dwarf prairies that rose and fell as the paddles plunged into the water. Rushes and enormous grasses of the lightest leek tint in places secured the soil and afforded a third shade of colour. After so much of Rhizophoræ and Bruguieræ, the banks became to us sylvan glades, with avenues like those of the old French post road. They were crowned in places with trees whose towering stature would shame the giants of Bushy Park: upon them the most ambitious of schoolboys might look with despair, and from their topmost branches the birds gaze down with perfect safety at the levelled shot-gun. Here and there a curl of blueish smoke argued a fishing village in the bush. We had been told that the creek was two miles long, and after two hours and three- quarters of hard work, five or six miles in space, we began to wonder if these truly German _meile_ were ever coming to an end. Presently, however, the sides widened farther out, the depth became less, we sighted, in front of us, a grove even larger than its neighbours, and then we emerged into the River Ogun, which event we duly inaugurated with a ceremony which I will classically describe as a libation to Bacchus.

The Ogun,[17] or Abeokuta River, is said to rise in a latitudinal range of mountains whose northern watershed is to the Kwara.[18] The source is supposed to be three thousand feet above sea level, and the upper part of the bed is rendered useless by rocks. Like other streams in this mythological land, a deity,[19] or rather a god, the younger brother of the divinity Shango, is attached to it. The Ogun fell into the hands of the Egbas, or Abeokutans, about 1852, and free communication with Lagos has added greatly to their influence and their development.

As yet, however, Yoruba has but little inland navigation. It is well fitted for tramways, hard wood being everywhere procurable and the land level. Until their day comes, the rivers should be utilized, and the first step ought to be a survey. The Oshun, in the Ijebu country, near Ekpe, extends, according to some authorities, within nine hours’ march of Ibadan; others declare that it cannot be navigated by canoes; others, that the people have a superstition which permits boats to cross, but not to ascend or to descend it. West of the Ogun is the Ota Creek, and beyond this the Yerewa, leading to the market-towns of Okeadon and Ado—a water-line as yet little known, but said to have thirty miles clear for canoes. Beyond this again, and more important still, is the Okpara, which enters the Lagoon between Porto Novo and Badagry.[20]

Father Ogun, at the confluence of the Agboi Creek, is a goodly stream, little less than one hundred yards broad, deep, smooth, sluggish, and scarcely affected by the tide. Here it aspires to the honours of what the Africans call ‘a ship made of iron, and moved by fire,’ _i.e._, a steamer—if possible flat-bottomed. We were all deceived in our expectations. We had pictured to ourselves—heaven knows why—a clear and rapid river running through a high and dry land, with tall and rocky marge. We found a broad, placid surface, milky with potters’ clay, and low banks, whose last watermark showed a considerable fall, bearing walls of verdure broken by the tall white trunks of various unknown trees, with creeks, landing-places, and hollows, like bowers, between. Presently, however, we saw rises of reddish earth, here favourite sites for settlements. We passed two villages, Orichá and Isheri; the latter, which is considerable, was backed by plantains and fronted by canoes. We were told by a negro, habited in European toilette, that a better nighting-place lay close ahead, and we somewhat reluctantly left Isheri behind. It was, as suspicion suggested it would be, dark night before we passed the landing-place, and, guided by the sounds of song and drum, set foot within the next collection of huts—Igaon. Our day’s journey had been eight hours, halts not included, and the distance covered must have been twenty-five to twenty-six miles.

It is hardly worth while to describe these places; straggling settlements, surrounded by bush on all sides except the river, which they overlook from banks more or less elevated, they compare favourably with many a fishing village in England, and are more comfortable than some manufacturing townlets in Lancashire. Igaon is subject to the Alake or chief of Abeokuta, and numbers perhaps two hundred souls. It is well known as being the terminus of river navigation in the ‘dries;’ beyond which travellers must journey through the wet and feverish bush.

Ascending a rugged clay bank, about one hundred and fifty feet high, we entered the village, and found entertainment at the house of Mr. Johnson, a Sierra Leone Egbanized Christian black, habited in white man’s clothing, excepting coat and shoes. He expressed in a little English his pleasure at seeing us, but his manner was at variance with his words. We presently discovered the reason of his expatriation to Igaon, which he explained to be for facility of buying palm-oil—half a dozen summonses were awaiting him at Lagos. However that may be, he made us comfortable in his verandah and upon the hut floor, where, after a copious feed—sitting in a boat is most appetizing work—we and Sancho, despite the tom-tom and the clammy cold, slept like the Seven Idlers of Ephesus, and Kitmir their dog. In the morning all was settled with a dollar; Mr. Johnson was satisfied, ‘and so,’ I hope, ‘was Mrs. Johnson.’

The second day saw us afoot at 5 A.M., and after the initiatory preserved chocolate, called cocoa—most valuable of tins on these occasions—we found ourselves afloat at the end of another hour. A dense and dripping fog from the river almost concealed the water, and this was a never-failing feature of the morning, which during the day yielded to something worse. The irregularity of the seasons is not more conspicuous in Eastern than in Western Africa. The tornados and rains of the year should now cease, whereas the land still thirsts, and the storms are apparently setting in. Under cover of the mist, we passed on the right hand the shallow Akisa Creek, which, joining the Ogun River at Isheri of the Ijebu Remo, islandizes the situation of Igaon. There we began to suffer from an annoyance that lasted till the end of the journey—numerous fishing-ropes of calamus and reeds stretching from bank to bank. Five or six lengths, joined with a shroud-knot, are secured to trees or posts on the bank, and are stayed with stout stakes about mid- stream. Exceedingly tough and strong, they serve to attach wicker cones, traps for fish; and at times some elderly and idle African Izaak Walton lashes his canoe to them, and squats upon his hunkers, with an umbrella hat on his head, peaceably bobbing for the smallest bite, like those, to me, inexplicable beings in punts who find excitement in hooking minnows upon the Thames. Where these ropes are thick, boats can be lifted over them with the oar, without catching the rudder: near the mouth of the Ogun they are small, and cause accidents. The other way is to shoot them, passing under either end—no convenient thing when the rush of the water is like a mill-race, and where there is often not quite room to row. At the present season the central sag is a foot under water; in the ‘dries,’ laden canoes will pass beneath it.

On this day and the next we enjoyed a fine opportunity of studying African river scenery, so impressive at first, and, until the eye becomes accustomed to it, so greatly diversified. But presently it waxes palling and monotonous: it is the face of an Irish beauty—every feature faultless, too faultless, and the whole expressionless and inanimate. The trees were externally of three aspects,—the feathery, the densely foliaged, and the creeper-clad. In the stream lay logs, snags above and below, and sawyers dancing upon the wavelet; here a vast trunk, like some dead plesiosaurus cumbered the bed, causing slack water to leeward; there stood a stub, upon which baby alligators stretched and sunned themselves; here a fallen tree, supported by the stream, had shot up fresh shoots, themselves trees—the very fishing-ropes had in places put forth _bourgeons_; there a green-robed patriarch was beginning to totter upon the water-mined bank that showed a cave beneath. The wild plantain, with wind-torn leaves, bent its purple flowers earthwards. The palms were of many kinds, the cocoa-nut, the palmetto, the wine-palm (_R. vinifera_), and chiefly the spiny flabellate species, which haunted the lower levels, whilst the others waved their tall plumed heads on the higher ground. The date and the _ronnier_, or _Palmyra nobilis_, were not yet seen; they are signs of an improvement in the climate. The ratan, however, grew everywhere. We detected, I thought, a real bamboo, which, however, must be an importation into these lands;[21] and, rustling above the others, the African locust, or acacia, whose enormous pods are used in ‘palaver-sauce,’ claimed a conspicuous place. The river-sides were solid walls of trees, sweeping in glorious folds towards the water’s edge, a boundless continuity of shade, many- coloured, from the darkest spinach—the prevalent hue—to the lightest green. The dense bank of foliage threw softened summits athwart the bluest of skies, and the mid height was broken by tall, straight shafts—they looked limed or whitewashed—shining like the bark of the silver beech, and ghastly enough in the shades of evening. The African oak was there, and the stunted kola nut (_C. acuminata_); no one, however, could point out to us the ashori, or egginha, the local upas; or the iroko, called the ‘sassa wood,’ and worshipped in Yoruba because it cracks soundingly at night. The monarchs of the forest were the bombax, or silk-cotton trees—many of them were one hundred feet high, and ten in diameter, upright canoes, ready for felling—with boles, near which the tall and tapering palm, straight as an arrow, attempted rivalry, but in vain. They were girt below and often about the waist with anfractuosities, fluted and channelled like Doric columns; these buttresses show that the timber, being weak, demands support. Many of these ceibas were intensely green and densely leaved; others were bare and twiggy; for here, as in other lands, the seasons affect what appear to be non-deciduous trees, and not a few bore what a European would hardly expect from so large a growth, a spangling of beautiful blossoms, white as the snow on Camaroons. The same may be said of the bigonia, locally called ‘tulip-tree,’—Who would be prepared to see, pinned to those sombre, yew-like forms, flowers like tiger-lilies, and at a distance looking as if red-hot cinders had been scattered upon them? The llianas were especially eccentric, varying from the thickness of twine to cable; here straight, there arched; now twisted by the wind into cordage; then forming a ‘true lover’s knot,’ dangling in the air, or rooted to earth; here they depended, from cords as fine as the chorda filum, or dead man’s ropes, gourd-like over the voyager’s head; there they strangled some Laocoon of the woods with a desperate gripe, ‘the Scotchman hugging the Creole;’ whilst the sarsaparilla vine clung tenderly to the trunk, as though she loved it. Towering and climbing herbaceous plants, formed by successive accretions, surrounded a mother stem with thick vegetable masses,—mysterious columns, so covered that the eye could not distinguish the support: these immense growths hung their mantles of parasite, with ribs, folds, and flounces, from the shoulders to the feet of the tallest trees; their middle was adorned with the bright blossoms of sundry convolvuli, cucurbitaceæ, asclepiadæ, and the white-flowered chailletta; and they supplied the watery maze with arches and ogives, bowers, and fairy retreats, showing the arabesques and the delicate tracery of a natural Alhambra. The grotesques were somewhat like the tree-ferns of Fernando Po, finely pinnated, and flaunting angular tufts upon the summit of the thinnest stems, often thirty feet high. In one place a palm had raised itself upon the trunk of a dead tree, and showed every root to the air, as it drew sustenance from its support. In another, where the parent’s head had been struck off by the lightning, the lateral branches, extending horizontally, had put forth a dozen fresh shoots at right angles. In a third, a giant with blasted top and thunder-rifted stem, had been hurled down by the breaking tornado, and pitched, branches forwards, upon the earth. Mr. Bowen asserts that in Egba-land he has never seen a tree that has suffered from the thunderbolt. I believe, however, accidents to be, as one might expect, of constant occurrence, and, moreover, that the palms are peculiarly liable.[22] Almost every large growth had its little family of orchids snugly nestling in its arms, and in not a few the topmost boughs were bearded like old goats or Israelites. Nor were flowers absent from the scene. The glorious nymphæa was there, and the lower bush was gemmed with the ipomæa, and a large white flower, said to be selenitic, and opening only to the moon.

The denizens of the bush were worthy of it. The red-grey polly (_P. erythacus_), the only parrot seen near the Ogun, sat higher than popinjay ever did, whistling what sounded at that distance a mellow note, and looking a distinct refusal to put the kettle on. She possibly divined our intentions: parrot-soup and monkey-fry are not to be despised. The wild bird is a far finer animal than the tame, but you must be careful to remove the skin. The gay crested touraco (_Corythrix_), with its jay-like manners, beautiful and harsh-voiced as the Maids of Athens, aired its gorgeous coat in the sunbeams upon the tree-top; the goatsucker whirred, the ibis screamed amongst the branches, and the Malabar pheasant, or rather cuckoo, flitted into the darker shades. The lively little marten was surpassed only by the kingfisher; the yellow-billed blackbird sought something to fight; the Whydah finch (_Vidua Paradisiaca_) looked as pretty and behaved as shrewishly as her featherless sister ever could; and the oriole, all _rouge et noir_ in strata, lit up the shade like a touch of vermilion in the normal buoy that occupies the normal corner of a sea-piece. The nest of the latter bird (_Sylvia pensilis_) is a purse, which, swinging in the wind, is safe from the mischievous monkey: it may have suggested the idea of a hammock. The Guinea-fowl called ‘come-and-eat-me’ from the brake; rock-doves of great beauty cooed hoarsely on higher grounds; the bittern sprang frightened from the bank; and lower down, the savoury stripe-throated lapwing (_Vanellus strigillatus_, the ‘kiki dodo’ of the Gold Coast), with two yellow flaps of dark-lined skin springing from the base of the beak, walked the sand-banks in pairs, or rose loudly clattering in the air. On the larger river-islets we saw grisly turkey- buzzards sunning their expanded plumes, mixed with paddy-birds and Senegal crows (_C. leuconotus_), the latter impudently pursuing and pecking at them; whilst brown kites, the Indian chíl (_F. chilla_), stood up to their thighs in the cool wave. Once, and once only, a flight of the fine cullum crane passed within shot over our heads; and often in the blue empyrean black speckles, like _muscæ volitantes_, told us that all was not desert there. The water-elephant, as the hippopotamus is called upon the Niger, has long been killed out of the Ogun River, and its stream contains nothing but fish and fish-eaters.

About 8 A.M. we halted for an hour and a half to breakfast at Illagu. There is little of roughing in this style of travel. The fire was soon lighted, the teapot was boiled, the eggs and ‘Europe mutton’ were fried, the table, a gangway between two breakers; the chairs—boxes and canteen—were duly disposed; and after a somewhat long delay, such as may be excused at the beginning of a journey, when twenty minutes would merit chastisement at the end, a pleasant picnic was the result. The Krumen found a dessert for their meal of pork and biscuit in a species of cardamom—not quite our old friend, _Amomum granum Paradisi_—whose aromatic seeds they chewed with pleasure. A mishap, however, befel us at Illagu. After starting, we missed the dog Sancho, and we sent back a message requesting that he might be forwarded without delay to the nearest village. He was a most amiable animal; when tied up, he barked and howled most musically all the way, and when loose he insisted upon springing overboard, stopping the boat, and exciting different emotions amongst those in it. A St. Helena pointer—he pointed even at butterflies—and he was just recovering from an attack of mange. Of course we made on the way down all inquiries for so pleasant a companion, but we had to mourn his loss. ‘The captain,’ his master, was sorely discomfited.

We then resumed our way up the now nut-brown river, garnished with its various green and white boled trees—the current running against us 2½ to 3 knots an hour. Though fanned by a gentle breath from the north, there was a decided sting in the sun, and an overkept leg of mutton in the third locker made us unjustly accuse Africa of unsavoury smells. At 11·30 A.M., the effeminate ‘pull-a-boys’ showing symptoms of fatigue, we put into the high right bank—the land becomes dry and gravelly, already showing fragments of quartz—beaconed by the little village of Baragu, whose appearance, however, was the reverse of novel. Under the circumstances, a little ‘gooseberry’ was perfectly justifiable, and we could hardly be so churlish as to refuse a few sips of trade ‘fire- water’ to our hosts, whose spreading palaver-tree—the local _bentang_—afforded us a seat in the cool shade rained down by its horizontal boughs. The people evinced an exemplary amount of gratitude, and a fondness for the material quite curious; even the small boys never balked at a wine-glassful. All seemed comfortable and in good condition; they had sheep and goats, ducks, fowls, and pigeons, whilst the fetish- house showed signs of fresh whitewash. The women consider elongated bosoms a charm, and even the men show flaccid mammary glands. This ‘bestial exposure of the sacred part of woman’s form,’ as some term it, first disappears permanently amongst the Moslem converts from heathenry. The good-wives had little remarkable, save a plug of pipe-stem-shaped coral worn in the left nostril: it may serve the purpose of the Indian nose-ring. Many of them wore their hair upstanding in little tufts of wool, which coiffure, says a German traveller, ‘made them look more like horned fiends than human beings.’ Some of the tattoos were painfully ugly—lines of scars and dreadful knobs and marbles raised in altissimo relievo by some encaustic process. Severe scalds were common; and one woman had her back adorned with what appeared to be an imitation in thickened skin of gouts and streamlets of blood. Many of the children were marked from head to foot with little gridirons of cuts, dyed dark blue by means of native antimony. They are all more or less exomphalous, yet they will grow up like their sires—remarkably sharp when under puberty,—that epoch, as amongst the Hindus, seeming to addle their brains. They are placed for discipline under some old and trusty hand, who compels them by force of stripes to industry; they amused themselves by remarking on the sly, ‘Oibo akiti agba—The white man is an old ape.’ The African will say of the European, ‘He looks like folks,’ and the answer will often be, ‘No, he don’t.’ Thus we observe, that whilst the Caucasian doubts the humanity of the Hamite, the latter repays the compliment in kind.

This race—the Egbado or Lower Egba—is distinctly negroid, without showing the characteristics of the full-blooded negro. The skin is of a dark dilute copper, sometimes black, whilst several of the chiefs are almost light coloured. When the eyelashes and brows are not plucked, the eye is fine; and those who hold, like Aurora Floyd, that ‘the glorious light of a pair of magnificent optics makes a divinity, a Circe,’ can here see the flattest contradiction to this opinion. The lips are not thick, but the gums are blue, and the teeth are by no means improved by the process of chewing. One cannot, however, but be struck by the contrast between the prognathous, chinless, retreating face, simulating the Simiadæ, and the admirable forms and figures of the people, who compare most favourably with those of the xanthous complexion. Their diet is poor, their climate poorer; calisthenics are unknown; they are not boxers or runners, like the people of Nupe; and even gymnastics, except tumbling, are little practised. What can then account for the beauty of their conformation?