Chapter I: From Lagos to Abeokuta (2)

For my part I must attribute it to the almost invariable custom which the savage man possesses, and which his civilized brother abandons. Amongst ancient races, such as the Hebrew and the Persian, it was the rule of religion for the husband to separate from the wife during the period of gestation and lactation. A modified monogamy amongst the Greeks and Romans introduced abuses which the nations of the barren north, especially those of Europe, who cannot afford a plurality of wives, have perpetuated. On the coast and in the interior of Africa the instinctive law of nature is almost universally obeyed, and the people are necessarily polygamous. Speaking of Mandenga-land, Mungo Park says, ‘Three years’ nursing is not uncommon; and during this period the husband devotes his whole attention to his other wives.’ In Hausa, as in Yoruba, the period of lactation extends to the third year.[23] The West African and the Kafirs of the southern continent practise this abstinence, and prove in their persons the beneficial effects of it. Europeans, violating the order of the animal creation, lay to their souls the flattering unction that they are the largest and the strongest of races, forgetting that by conforming to this African custom they might become both larger and stronger. Besides, it would necessitate polygyny[24]—that is to say, a love of offspring warmer than the sexual feeling. The Mormons have tried it with success; and to the excellent letter of Mrs. Belinda Pratt[25] I must refer the reader for more information upon this momentous subject than could be conveyed in these pages.

On the Ogun River we had ample opportunities of forming judgment concerning

‘The naked negro panting on the Line.’

I have travelled amongst wild tribes from the North American Indians to the Bhils of Hindostan, but I never saw such an utter absence of what we conventionally term modesty as amongst these Egbas. The women will stand up and bathe publicly in the river, without a vestige of dress or shame; and the niggerlings are as much clad as the Promutuans and the sons of the Coral Islands. Can this be innocence, as some think? or is it the mere absence of all ideas of propriety? I confess myself unable to decide.

Resuming our task, after twenty minutes’ halt, we noticed a gradual change in the scenery. The bush thinned out, the trees shrank in size and showed boles rather brown than white, and the banks of clay and stone gained in size. The number of fishing-ropes denoted the vicinity of a village, and in shooting one of them the ‘doctor’ managed to be knocked overboard. At 1·10 P.M. we halted for an hour and a quarter to refect at Obba. The Krumen were sadly slow, loitering about munching ship-biscuit and lighting their clays before they thought of putting our yam-pot on the fire. At Obba signs of improvement were observed. The landing-place had earth steps and a kind of railing; the village interior showed neat fields of tania or koko (_C. esculenta_)[26] and the remnant of a cotton gin and press—bearing, of course, the mark of Manchester—lay near one of the houses. The people, carrying fly whisks, assembled round us under the usual tree, and in the best of humours begged tobacco, and drank our tea with a relish, whilst the boys, for our especial delectation, threw somersets[27] in the air.

After leaving Obba the southern sky began to bank up, threatening a repetition of yesterday’s tornado. Presently a stream of cold wind poured through the tepid air, reminding me of a phenomenon not a little to be feared upon the Zanzibar Seas and the Tanganyika Lake. But though thunder growled gruffly, and the well-known haze filled the atmosphere, and the warm sensation, attributed, I believe, to development of ozone, warned us of what might be, the only result was a dry storm, for whose obscurity we had reason to be thankful. The doctor exercised himself upon parrots, lapwings, and paddy birds; Commander Bedingfield shot a crocodile upon a tree stump—the favourite basking-place—and the Krumen lamented being unable to secure the prize. Its gall is here, as in most other parts of Africa, held to be a deadly poison; in some places a man with such medicine in his possession would be sure to lose his life. Dr. Clarke of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast administered it to a dog in soup and beef; the only effect, as might be expected, was emetism. There is probably something of fetish in the idea; and similarly, the Hindus still firmly believe in the poisonous properties of diamond powder, apart from any mechanical action. In some of the river reaches there was hardly any tide, and we soon passed our first sand-bank, arguing increased shallowness in the bed. On the right bank the land became open and gravelly; the left side, however, was still thickly wooded. At 4·15 P.M. we halted at Mabban, the place named for our nighting. It was a miserable village, surrounded by an almost impenetrable bush; and the emaciated population, showing elephantiasis and scars of cutaneous disease, evidenced the unhealthiness of the situation. The chief was absent, but we easily obtained permission to occupy the fetish house, a square box seven feet by seven, open only towards the verandah, and garnished with pots and basins of crockery ware, with an altar, upon which stood three little wooden doll-gods, far more bestial than human, save that they wore proportional cables of beads upon their necks and wrists. Besides these Penates there were none but ourselves. In the adjoining quarters the absent chief’s three wives—one light skinned, and by no means unattractive—slept together under a canopy of thick matting, hung by strings from the roof, and acting as mosquito bars. We managed to avoid Mabban on our return: the night passed there was one of sultry, sweltering heat; during day the subjects of King Beelzebub fed upon us, and after dark the Maringouins sang a doleful ditty, which was drowned only by the occasional yelping of negro babyhood. In the distance the long, loud cries of the Pataku, or bush-dog—a small species of hyæna, well known on the Gold Coast, but dangerous only to pigs and children—reminded me of the jackal, the coyote, and the Australian ‘native dog.’ It throws its voice out, at one minute appearing close by, then a mile off. The only ferocious animal hereabouts to be found is the leopard, which is as dangerous as his congener in Eastern Africa; and a man’s arm dangling from the hammock side is very likely to be taken off somewhere about the elbow. Our run that day had been six hours, say eighteen miles.

At 5·30 A.M. on Thursday, the 31st, we set out in a spitting rain, with a cold and heavy mist, which, attached to the river, drifted past us as we broke through it like thin cloud. On a sandspit we saw signs of native travellers in the shape of matted sheds, and we vainly inquired for the interpreter Williams, who had preceded us for his own purposes. There were also bundles of firewood, tabooed from the prigger by grass- crowned canes planted around them, thus forming a strong fetish. After an hour and a half we ran into a little creek on the left bank, and disembarked at Ojegu, a village differing from its neighbours in no wise save that it was somewhat more uniform. It has, as usual in Africa, a bazar or market, where women squatted before baskets under a tree, and sold beads, thread, and similar utilities, besides various edibles, of which, at this hour, the favourite is ekko,[28] answering in these lands to our tea and bread and butter.

The breakfast occupied us an hour and three-quarters, still showing that the party was not half in training, and we resumed rowing through sunshine tempered by sprinkling rain. We passed the mouth of the Iro River, a considerable influent from the west, and shortly afterwards, on the east, appeared the village of Molokokki, where the river banks were of rough sandstone. Beyond it are ledges of black rock, forming a projecting point, which by compression doubles the velocity of the stream. Lime was nowhere seen, nor does it, I am informed, exist in this part of Yoruba. Large canoes lumbered the river, some laden with ten bales of cotton. Making our mooring at Ajido, a knot of three hovels, we slept upon waterproofs under the bush shade. A little beyond this place the stream bifurcates, forming in the centre a clump of grassy bush. Our way lay through the western branch, and its channel—the current ran swiftly—did not extend eighteen yards in width, till presently the two streams are anastomosed above the islet. Again, a tornado-like cloud worked up its way against the southerly wind, and once more it proved itself that blessing of all blessings, a dry storm. Passing the village of Okpuba, we remarked that the groves of trees, scattered upon banks some twenty feet high, would be charming if the underlying bush could be cleared. Presently cultivation showed itself, the tall tops of the maize waving gracefully in the wind. At 4·30 P.M., we sighted our terminus, the large village of Takpana—pronounced Tapana, the Egba _kp_ and _gb_ not being naturally articulable to English organs. Our day’s row had been eight hours, but the Krumen were breaking down, and the distance was probably not more than twenty-two miles.

Ascending the bank, and walking through the first straggling village, where the turkey-buzzard is the only nightman, we found on the outskirts an uninhabited house in decent condition, and there we were installed by the civil old chief. He visited us repeatedly, gave us every assistance in the matters of wood and water, nor did he disdain to join us in a social glass. The children, and not a few of the adults, spent the evening over a game known in Ashanti as ‘worra,’ in Sierra Leone ‘wari,’ in East Africa ‘bao,’ and here ‘ayo.’ It is played upon a rude kind of ‘table,’ a solid oblong board, with a little handle at one end, and down the length run two parallel rows of six little cups. The game is played by distributing counters, one by one, into each cup, beginning from the starting-place whence they were taken; and if a single counter be found, it is removed from the board. In the ‘men’ I at once recognized the _Guilandina Bonduc_, so well known in eastern medicine, and used for other purposes at Zanzibar and in India. The game, we presumed, was for love, gambling being prohibited by ‘Ogboni law,’ which all obey, or ought to obey. Night sped pleasantly in the new lodgings, which were comparatively free from mosquitoes and other vermin; perhaps, also, the last two _veilles_ had made our skins proof against them. The list of small tenantry is somewhat extensive in these huts. There are flies and fleas, centipedes—ugly, but little feared—harmless spiders, not like the tarantula of Mendi city, west of Gallinas; large, black, and green scorpions, sometimes six inches long, and a yellow species, smaller, but fiercer. The ants are numerous and interesting; they would amply repay the labour of collection. There is ota, ‘the stinger,’ who is particularly hostile to the bug-a-bug, or termes, and especially there is ijálu, ‘the fighter that makes man go,’—in old Anglo-African called ‘driver,’ because an army of these little wretches, a riband of small red lines-men, flanked by a light infantry of black warriors, with bull- dog heads, easily clears the kitchen. On the Gold Coast there are horrible tales of the fatigued huntsman being set upon and murdered by them in his sleep; and in the case of a sick man such an event is greatly to be feared.[29]

The next morning saw us _en route_ at 4·45 A.M., through a fog that not a little interfered with the flying survey in which we were engaged. The open earth-banks of the river—here less than fifty yards broad—are well raised, showing tall Guinea grass and plots of cultivation, with a South African shrubbery, which not a little reminded my companion—a quondam member of the unfortunate Zambezi expedition—of that splendid but useless stream, which promised, with giant might of humbug, to supply, besides quinine,[30] ‘cotton, indigo, and other raw material to any amount.’ I say unfortunate, for 5000_l._ per annum, a sum sufficient to defray with due economy the expenses of half a dozen expeditions, has been literally thrown away upon this remote corner of South-Eastern Africa. A vile bar—there is no worse on the coast—a shifting channel, shallow water, dangerous rocks, and a labyrinth of shoals and sandbanks, with numerous small islands, considerably detract from the chances that ‘this noble river is capable of being made a great highway for commerce, civilization, and Christianity.’ The very fact that it is only approachable through the possessions of another power, who has every right to impose any conceivable export and import duties, ought alone to have been considered sufficient obstacles. Add to this, the sparseness of the population, the villany of the natives, more especially the ‘faithful Makololo,’ and the absence of all conveyance, which, with the length of the marches, must prevent the transport of even ivory, except on the shoulders of slaves destined for the coast markets, being remunerative. An unhappy and ill-judged mission has been the result of the labour of years; and, as all who knew the subject foresaw from the beginning, it came to a wretched and untimely end.[31] Bishop and chaplain, missionaries and their wives and children, all perished miserably. Ships and boats have been lost—worse still, the blood of the natives has been shed by those who went to save them—and the unfortunate promoter of the scheme has suffered even more than he deserved, for want of moral courage to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’[32] Cotton, sugar, and indigo flourish, it will be remembered, in Western Africa, at one-third of the distance which divides Liverpool from Kilimani; the quality is better, the country is more settled, and the people are far less unmanageable; yet it is my sincere belief—founded on facts which will appear in the course of this narrative—that years must elapse before even Western Africa can supply with cotton the mills of England for one week of work in the twelve months. These may be new views—I am convinced that they are true views.

The River Ogun was shoaling rapidly. A bar connected diagonally every salient and re-entering angle, and frequent grounding now made the way tedious. We were doubtful as regards arrival: two days ago Mr. Johnson of Igaon told us that we should land on the morrow, and on this morning some named noon, others evening, as the time of our reaching the terminus. When asking the natives touching distances, we had but two replies: ‘Too much far,’ _i.e._ half the day; and ‘Not so far,’ _i.e._ something under. At 8 A.M. we halted for breakfast at Moroko, another thatch and mud village perched upon the sandstone bank, shaded by tall trees and surrounded by bush. The people were as usual most friendly; they assigned us a place in a large verandah, and they kept us company during the meal, after which all joined in a social glass of gin. To the children, however, raspberry vinegar was given as a substitute, the mothers also tasted it, and—it did not bite—a slight shade of disappointment might, methought, have been traced in the feminine and juvenile countenances. As we bade adieu dancing had begun, and we were followed out of the village with the song of farewell.

Proceeding with our journey at 10 A.M., we passed, on the right bank, sundry flourishing settlements. At Awoloko we saw women sitting at sale, men stowing puncheons of oil in canoes by sinking and baling out, cotton bales heaped up near the landing-place, and other signs of trade. The people flocked down to gaze, and the children clapped their hands. Beyond it lay Akolugo, on a tall bank, with a ledge of rock below, and a little further was a ferry, where crowds were crossing[33]—amongst them we remarked a tall negress, musket-armed and clad in the simple costume of the Dahoman ‘Amazons,’ as they are ridiculously called. The shallowness of the stream caused us even more trouble than before, and the crew were frequently obliged to tumble out, which they did like cats, as if afraid of wetting their legs. Presently we saw white faces in a canoe that bore down upon us; they proved to be Messrs. Wilcoxon and Roper of the Church Mission Society, who had kindly ridden out to guide the party. A few strokes of the oars placed us at the landing- place, ‘Agbameya.’ This is the great ferry, the passage between the lands of the Egbas and the Egbados, or Lower Egbas, and the terminus of the land-routes from Lagos and Badagry. It showed a market-place, canoes in numbers, a few mat sheds for shade, a dwarf grove of papaws (_C. papaya_), and the normal crowd of natives. Here we left the two gigs, with orders for their conveyance by the Krumen to Aro, the upper and higher landing-place, five or six miles distant from the lower port, Agbameya, and we took leave of water-travel for some days. Beyond Aro, rocks and rapids render Father Ogun impracticable even to canoes. Those who would cross it must take to their bosoms huge calabashes, which, like the earthen pots of the Indus, contain air enough to float two hundred to three hundred pounds. The ferryman, swimming alongside and pushing the floats, claims as his due two hundred cowries.

Our ascent of the Ogun River occupied us four days, from the 29th of October to the 1st of November inclusive, and during this time we made about sixty-four miles.[34]

[Footnote 1: O Capitão João Gonçalvez da Camera, a gentleman of the household of the then Infante, and nicknamed Zargo, or the one-eyed—he lost the other at the siege of Tangiers; but others say that Zargo was the name of a Moor whom he made captive—was sent in 1418 by his lord, _O Conquistador_, the Virgin Prince Henry, son of Don John (first of the name, and second king) by Philippa, grandchild of Edward III. of England, to examine the West African coast. Returning to Porto Santo, he was informed by the settlers, whom he had previously left there under the first Donatorio, or Donee, Bartholomew Perestrello, or Palestrello, that it was ‘_fama publica_’ that in one particular direction the sea was ever overhung with a thick impenetrable darkness, ‘_huma grande sombra_,’ or as De Barros has it, ‘_hum negrum tal e tam medonho e perpetuo que henhum se atrevia a chegar a elle_,’ denoting, according to the Jesuit Cordeyro, an abyss, and guarded by a perpetual smoke and strange noises, which seemed to issue from the mouth of hell. Zargo was encouraged to explore it by observing that the blackness in question disappeared during the changes of the moon. The crew, excepting the pilot, were so frightened that they repeatedly begged to be allowed to return. Queer times when explorers could be frightened by a fog! Zargo landed in Madeira 2nd July, 1419, the day of Santa Isabel.]

[Footnote 2: During the first fit, 4 grains ext. colocynth, 4 ditto jalap, 4 ditto quinine, and ¼ gr. tart. emetic—the latter to induce perspiration; followed by 6 grs. sulph. quinine and 6 grs. sulph. magnesia; and 4 grs. nit. potash and 6 grs. sulph. magnesia. On the next day 1 dr. Epsom salts and 2 grs. quinine, every three hours, which will probably settle the affair; at least it did in my case.

Of the following the faculty speak very favourably. It is the South African traveller,

_Dr. Livingstone’s Remedy for African Fever._

‘The medicines, which must be pure and unadulterated, are as follows:—Six or eight grains of resin of jalap, and the same amount of rhubarb, with four grains of calomel and four of quinine, made into pills with spirit of cardamoms: the whole is a full dose for a man. On taking effect, quinine (not the unbleached kind), in four-grain or larger doses, is given every two hours or so, till the ears ring or deafness ensues; this last is an essential part of the cure. The prescription, like some others of known value, is not strictly scientific, and the practice of giving quinine from the very commencement of the attack is not considered good. I was led into it by nervous anxiety to save my own children at Lake Ngami, in 1850, and have experienced its value so frequently since with Africans and Europeans, that I follow it, though opposed to the teachings of my superiors.’]

[Footnote 3: Whilst the ignorant Moslem believes that bells drive away good spirits from the abodes of men, the equally ignorant Roman Catholic _habitant_ of Canada holds himself safe from the devil only when within the sound of his _clocher_. Both cannot be in the right—perhaps neither is.]

[Footnote 4: The expression ‘saving faith,’ applied to El Islam, is apt to convey an erroneous idea: Moslems are wholly opposed to Christians in their notions touching salvation. With those, every man is sent into the world by a beneficent Deity to be blessed; with these, to be damned.]

[Footnote 5: In 1860 Selim Aga proposed to recover the papers of the late M. Vogel, who is generally believed to have been killed by the Sultan of Wádái, a perilous land, which an older hand, Dr. Barth, prudently avoided. According to the travelling Arab servant, who in 1859 was sent by the Niger expedition at Bidda, the present capital of Nupe, M. Vogel travelled from Bugharmi to a well-known well on the frontier of Wádái, a halting-place for pilgrims and trader caravans. He was there left by his servant, who had travelled with Dr. Barth, and he proceeded to the capital of Wádái. The Sultan hearing that the white man had gone at night to a neighbouring hill, with instruments for observing, forbade him strictly to repeat the operation. M. Vogel disobeyed the orders, and two men were sent to take off his head. His papers are said to be still in possession of Sidi Ali, religious chief of Kano, and there ought to be no difficulty in recovering them. Dr. Baikie, chief of the Niger expedition, proposed to do this himself. So Selim was thrown out, and Dr. Baikie has not yet done it.]

[Footnote 6: ‘Central Africa,’ Charleston, U. S., 1857—about which work more presently. The Doko race of which Mr. Bowen speaks is probably a corruption of ‘Donko,’ the slave race from the north of Ashanti, well known on the Gold Coast: a people with a single gash between the eye and the upper lip, on both cheeks, were shown to me at Abeokuta under this name. Mr. Bowen describes them as coming from the Mandara region, and having four eyes. ‘Doko,’ in Eastern Africa, is applied to the pigmies called Kimo in Madagascar, and by the Mombas missionaries, Wabilikimo, _i.e._, men two cubits high. Wayangara, the mythical Christian city, two months’ journey east of Sokoto, or more generally described as lying east of Yoruba, is inhabited by white men, who are probably what the Hausa people call Bature Dudu, black-white men, a Grecian-faced race that cross the African continent, and report that after three months’ march they arrive within a fortnight of the Salt Sea. There is a native tradition that they inhabit the lands of Gengira, Darmút, and Sidama.]

[Footnote 7: Dr. Baikie, writing to the ‘Athenæum,’ from Bida Nupe, the Nyffe of Richard Lander, in Central Africa, January 15, 1862, concerning this ‘romance of natural history,’ declares that five years of experience have shaken his scepticism; and that whereas he once looked upon the unicorn as a myth, he now ‘simply holds that its non-existence is not proven’—a giant’s step on the path of faith. The horn, he has heard, is long, black, and straight, or nearly straight, and the hunters of the one-horned rhinoceros carefully distinguish between this and the equine monoceros. Finally, he supplies the following list of names by which the animal is called in various countries, from Lake Chad to the Gulf of Guinea:—

Búndiá-ru and Kamárami in Kanuri (Bornu).

Maríri in Hausa.

Yílifú and Dákarkúlewal in Fulfulde, or Filáni.

Kárafitu in Márgí.

Pānlíli in Núpe.

Agába in Bonu (where a skull is said to be).

Iwú in Yoruba.

Tenesek in A’zbentsi (Tawárek).

M. D’Abbadie alludes to it in Kordofan under the name of A’nasa. Mr. Bowen’s agbangrere was described as having the form of a sorrel horse with the feet of a cow, and with a single horn like that of an antelope. A horn was produced, ‘black in colour, coarsely rugose below and smooth towards the top;’ possibly it was a kudu’s. The unfortunate slayer is sure to die within a year.]

[Footnote 8: According to Captain John Adams, who, as has been said, wrote in 1823, Lagos Island is ‘a foot only above the level of the lake at high water, which is so shallow that boats of only 10 or 15 tons burden can approach the town.’ If his observations be correct, the island has risen and the channel has sunk.]

[Footnote 9: I afterwards saw at Benin city a young woman lashed to a scaffolding upon the summit of a tall blasted tree, and being devoured by the turkey-buzzards. The people declared it to be a ‘fetish,’ or charm for bringing rain.]

[Footnote 10: This will remind the reader of Richard Lander’s celebrated description of the Tree of Death at Badagry; and, as will be seen, the custom has not yet died out of Yoruba.]

[Footnote 11: On the 25th November, 1851, a force of 260 men in 23 boats, commanded by Commander Forbes, H.M.S. ‘Philomel,’ entered the river to repress the disorders caused by the ‘usurper Kosoko.’ They were preceded by Mr. Beecroft, H.M. Consul for Fernando Po, carrying a flag of truce. About five thousand people manned the bush, and though a landing was effected and a few houses were fired, the expedition was ‘whipped’—as it deserved, for not shelling or rocketing the town: two poor fellows were killed, and several were wounded. In January, 1852, the Commodore, Captain R. W. Bruce, revenged the affront, and his name has been perpetuated in ‘Bruce’s Island.’]

[Footnote 12: If this surmise be correct there is an uninterrupted line of natural canalization between the Volta, the Niger, and the Bonny River, a distance of nearly 400 direct miles.]

[Footnote 13: Mr. Bowen says that the lagoon, or lake, is called Ossa by the natives, Cradoo by the English. If I understand them aright, ‘Osa’ is the arm which joins the Lagos River, and extends westward to Badagry; ‘Cradoo’ is the lagoon itself.]

[Footnote 14: The former word is variously written, and most generally Jaboo or Jebu: the Germans prefer Dshebu.]

[Footnote 15: Ode lies some 30 miles south of Ibadan. From Lagos you sail 20 miles eastward upon the Ikoradu waters, and thence march 22 miles north.]

[Footnote 16: South African travellers have limited the insect’s habitat to the Zambezi’s banks. I supplied the British Museum with specimens brought from the vicinity of the equator, and I expect to find the animal throughout the low and bushy regions of intertropical Africa.]

[Footnote 17: There are three several meanings to this word, and the Egbas often drop the nasal terminating _n_ which is pronounced by neighbouring peoples, _e.g._ Ilorí for Ilori_n_. Ŏgŭ_n_ is the P.N. of the river, Ŏgú_n_ is a god—some writers, however, as Mr. Bowen, spell both these words Ógú_n_, writing the river and the god the same, and making Ŏgŭ_n_ signify an army or battle—and Ógŭ_n_ is a charm, or medicine.]

[Footnote 18: I propose for the future to call the whole of the great artery of tropical Africa north of the equator by its classical name Niger, and Nun from the ocean to its confluence; the eastern fork, Binue, not Chadda, or Tsadda—a term based on the false theory that it flows out of Lake Chad or Tsad—and the western branch, Kwara.]

[Footnote 19: Similarly, Oya, the Niger, or more properly the Kwara, the Oshun, and the Obba, are the wives of Shango; concerning whom see