Chapter III: Presented at Court (1)

Much to do, and little time to spare.

The morning after arrival at Understone saw me on foot at 5 A.M.; an hour and a half, however, elapsed before the party was collected for a stroll to Aro. I need hardly say that they did not expect

‘The blooming pleasures that await without

To bless the wildly devious morning walk.’

Aro, the terminus of the Ogun’s navigable portion, is the nearest port of Abeokuta, about five miles from the missionary compound at Ake and one and a half from the Badagry gate.

Starting in a south-westerly direction we struck into the European road, and passed the two eyes in the granite rock before described. The ‘Do- the-bachelors-good’ market led to another Church Missionary establishment, directed by Mr. King, a native catechist, with its long garner-like room used for pedagoguery and place of worship. To-day being Saturn’s day, the bell rang ‘_Boys_ and girls _come_ to school! _boys_ and girls _come_ to school!’ The fine ears of the African vulgar attribute special words to every unusual or artificial sound. The horn and the tom-tom, for instance, express to them a great complication of ideas by onomatopoetic language; such as—rise to fight! sit down all! take hold, take hold!—which would hardly be appreciable to the coarser senses of the uneducated European. A long stretch down-hill led to the establishment of Mr. Champness, a respected Wesleyan missionary, who fortunately escaped the terrible Sierra Leone epidemic of 1858-59.

‘The captain,’ alleging a suspicious blister on the heel, lagged behind till he found a mount. The path was by no means bad; the gravelly soil allowed the water to run off on each side, and high-wheeled American ‘trotting-wagons’ would safely pass over it. The exceeding impurity of the place however at once struck us, and it was an impression which Time strengthened. The surface was a wave of rising ground, broken into steep ridges and deep hollows, through which streamlets flow—Yoruba is ‘a land of waters’—and these again require bridges. Alongside of the road were rare fields and frequent patches of tangled bush. The fetid tiglium or croton-oil plant, and the wild senna, whose leaf is unfit for exportation, the uncultivated indigo, the beautifully-blossomed mallows, the datura and other medicinal plants were backed by the tall Oro hedges, whose material is that cactus which the elephant loves, and which, in this part of Africa, is mainly used as a mordant for arrow- poison.

The people had already left their sleeping mats, and were loitering towards the little labours of the day. Mr. Campbell ‘asserts, and appeals to every one who has visited this section of Africa to verify his assertion, that there is not a more industrious people [than the Egbas] upon the face of the earth!’ Making due allowance for the Americanism that concludes the sentence—‘the face of the earth’ and ‘the whole globe’ are perfectly familiar to every denizen of the once United States—I must, however, so far differ as to declare that there is not one white man in Abeokuta who will endorse this dictum. It is true that all Egbas, from the lowest to the highest, must, like the Sultan of Stamboul, practise some handicraft; that the boys are trained to work, after their gentle fashion, and that the people, unlike their neighbours, are, for Africa, tolerable farmers; but an English navvy, fed on beef and beer, will, it is said, work out 2·5 Frenchmen; he would certainly knock up a dozen Egbas. And how can it be otherwise in these malarious, fever-stricken, enervating, effeminizing lands? Idleness is not ‘the root of all evil,’ the bane of society in the tropics; it is the condition imperatively imposed by a thermometer generally above 70° (Fah.), where labour is a curse, and where work, if it shortens man’s days, must also shorten his life.

The people were tolerably well clothed, and, as usual at this hour, every one was working at the chew-stick, a bit of guava, or of some other soft wood. ‘Dressy men’ wore shogoto (African knicker-bockers), or loose cotton drawers, fastened above the hip, and extending, like those of the Madeiranese peasantry, to the knee. The body was covered with a cloth gracefully thrown like a plaid over the shoulder, generally the left, and a second ‘pagne’ was frequently wrapped, shawl-like, round the waist. The poor dispense with the shogoto and the shoulder-cloth, retaining nothing but the diggo, or loin-wrap. The women had three cloths—one on the shoulders, and the other round the body below the bosom, concealing the third, which is shorter and scantier. These attires were mostly dyed with indigo, but of different tints, the sky- blue being apparently the effect of wear. Those who cannot afford such toilette wear scrimp wrappers, which develop forms not altogether untempting. The men had caps of every colour, form, and material; travellers and the ogboni, or elders, who are forbidden to use ‘filá,’ wore large hats of woven palm-leaf, like the Moors, the Mandengas, and the people of Zanzibar, who, more sensible than Europeans, carry their umbrella, not in hand, but upon head.

The women, who can rarely grow side ringlets to any length, confined their hair with a fillet of indigo-dyed cloth, and those who were in mourning walked about with naked scalps. All went barefoot, except those who rode. The flasher sort, however, had their feet, like their hands and arms, adorned with red or camwood,—the henna of this part of Africa. Some few male exceptions were dressed in Frankish costume, and formed a hideously respectable contrast to their semi-nude neighbours. The best looking were decidedly the Moslems, here called ‘Imale,’ probably a corruption of ‘Muallim.’ They were conspicuous for their decent dress—turbans, or Hausa head-dresses, gay calico calottes, like the kantop or ear-cap of India, with the large loose tobe, or shirt, called Ewu, ‘the Guinea-fowl,’ from the handsome embroidery in spots, which often renders the article worth five pounds; and shalwars, or trousers, ample, but gathered in at the ankle. Some Moslems wore long side-locks, the ‘corners of the beard,’ as the Scripture has it, and which are still affected by the Jews of Bagdad. They carried large double-edged swords, which, however, can hardly be drawn; and repining at their subject position, they are said to dislike white men. None, however, refused to return the Moslem salutation; and I heard one exclaim to the other, ‘Báriki!’ ‘May it be fortunate to you!’ a phrase usually addressed to one who sneezes. This is a custom still prevalent throughout Asia, and not wholly obsolete in Europe, where a ‘_Dieu vous bénisse!_’ is required by an infirmity threatening, they believe, aneurism, hernia, hemorrhage, and similar amenities. I remarked that many of the pagans bore about in their hands bright iron chains, which are religious implements here, as at Benin. Almost every man had his oggo (oggau) club, or shillelagh. It is the knobkerry of the Kafirs, the Somal, and the Fijian Islanders, and it extends throughout the African interior. Here it is modified to a hockey-stick, about eighteen inches long, with a twist of strong iron wire round the neck, and nails along the line of percussion; sometimes it is distinguished by thongs of horny hide, brass or copper tacks, and other barbaric decorations.

There was a vast variety of tattoos and ornamentation, rendering them a serious difficulty to strangers. The skin patterns were of every variety, from the diminutive prick to the great gash and the large boil- like lumps. They affected various figures—tortoises, alligators, and the favourite lizard, stars, concentric circles, lozenges, right lines, welts, gouts of gore, marble or button-like knots of flesh, and elevated scars, resembling scalds, which are opened for the introduction of fetish medicines, and to expel evil influences. In this country every tribe, sub-tribe, and even family, has its blazon,[46] whose infinite diversifications may be compared with the lines and ordinaries of European heraldry—a volume would not suffice to explain all the marks in detail. The chief are as follows:—The distinguishing mark of the Egbas is a gridron of three cuts, or a multiplication of three upon each cheek. Free-born women have one, two, or three raised lines, thread-like scars from the wrist up the back of the arm, and down the dorsal regions, like long necklaces. They call this ‘entice my husband.’ The Yorubas draw perpendicular marks from the temples to the level of the chin, with slight lateral incisions, hardly perceptible, because allowed soon to heal. The Efons of Kakanda wear a blue patch, sometimes highly developed, from the cheek-bones to the ear. The Takpas of Nupe make one long cut from the upper whorl of the nostril, sweeping towards the ear. At Ijesha, a country lying east of Yoruba Proper, the tattoo is a long parallelogram of seven perpendicular and five transverse lines. Those called Brechi[47] wear a flap of skin taken from the forehead, and overlapping eyebrows, nose, and eyecorners. This style of scalping kills many, but the survivors are greatly respected. I observed a thing novel to me; the areola in the women was not unfrequently tattooed a dull dark blue, the colouring matter being native antimony, found in Yoruba and on the Niger, and levigated with pepper and natron upon a stone. The _bijouterie_ was coral, in necklaces and wristlets, heavy bangles, and anklets of copper, iron, tin, or brass, and various rings upon the thumb, the middle finger, and the toes. Most people carry beads of various sizes and colours, denoting their peculiar worship. Necklaces of large, many-coloured beads, with three bigger than the rest, show the devotees of Yemaya, goddess of brooks and streams. Pure white beads are worn by those who adore Obatala; black and white, alternating with red, by the worshippers of Shango—Vulcan, or Jupiter Tonans. Small white Indian cowries are the ornaments of idols, and as such are worn by their servants, especially by those who adore the god Burukú[48] and the goddess Amanlu, who, like the Hindu Shiva and Bhawani, slay without weapons. The worshippers of Ifa, called ‘palm-nut priests,’ wear wristlets of palm-nuts strung on fibre. Brass bracelets, and all ornaments of the same colour, are symptoms of adoring the female river god Oshun. Snake worshippers, and, according to others, those who pray to the Ogun River, have an iron ring round the left wrist. Those who bear upon their foreheads a painted mark like the Hindoo Tilak (or the ashes which Roman Catholics daub on on Ash Wednesday) are the votaries of the aristocratic and expensive god Orishako.

The physical conformation of the Egbas is not very promising in an intellectual point. The cranium is small[49]—as a European can find by putting on a native cap—wedge-formed, with compressed brow, almost always prognathous, hardly ever pyramidal or oval. There are some who hold prognathism—a peculiarity observable in almost all negro and negroid tribes—to be exaggerated by lactation unduly prolonged at an epoch when the bones are still plastic. But such suckling is still the custom in Southern Italy, without the hideous African development. The external auditory process projects in a ring of bone round the canal, seeming to bury or overlap the foramen more than in Europeans,[50] whilst the protrusion of the lower face and the receding of the chin give, when carried to excess, a truly bestial appearance. The skeleton is usually well put together in the upper part; in the lower, the hips are too narrow for beauty; the shin, probably from sitting at squat in youth, is convex, and the heel projects behind—a negro should therefore wear sandals, never patent leathers. The nose is sometimes hooked, but the nostrils are expanded and elevated at the alæ; in the plainer sort it is broad and squatting upon both cheeks, with an absence of rigidity and of dividing apex in the cartilage. The cheek-bones are high, and the face is frequently lozenge-shaped. The blue eye, seen upon the Niger, is unknown. Here the sclerotica is rarely clear, except in women and children; usually it is bloodshot, from the relaxation of the minor blood-vessels, or of a pale dirty yellow, as from over-activity of the liver, or speckled with hazel spots. The iris is more frequently a dark or a light brown, with a sea-green shade, than black; and the brows and lashes are removed, like the beard and the axile pile. The lips are large; the circum-oral region tumid; there is an ugly blue-black ridge between the gums and the teeth; the former are frequently discoloured by snuff, and the latter, though set off by the blackness around, are neither whiter nor finer than those of Europeans generally.[51] The hair is short, scant, crisply-curled, often growing from the scalp like peppercorns, and rather dull or reddish-brown than black. The heads of the men are trimmed in landscape or parterre fashion—indescribable. The prevailing style amongst the women is to plait it up into thin longitudinal ridges, like those of a musk melon, and to tie the residue in a small tight knot at the sinciput. The skin is generally rough, sometimes like shagreen; and in the poor the epidermis of the hand is as hard as the foot of the domestic fowl. It varies from a dark coffee colour to a _café au lait_ light as a Mulatto’s; I especially remarked this peculiarity in the chiefs and fetish men, whose hair also sometimes verged upon a dirty sand colour. There is not, however, any red race, as amongst the Fula. Albinism is sporadic and distinct, nor did I see at Abeokuta that modification of the xanthous temperament afterwards observed in the Brass River, and at Batanga.

The Abeokutan, when taken at his best, is tall and well made, ‘black, but comely.’ When not so, he is hideously chimpanzee-like. The male figure here, as all the world over, is notably superior, as amongst the lower mammals, to that of the female. The latter is a system of soft, curved, and rounded lines, graceful, but meaningless and monotonous. The former far excels it in variety of form and in nobility of make, in strength of bone and in suppleness of muscle and sinew. In these lands, where all figures are semi-nude, the exceeding difference between the sexes strikes the eye at once. There will be a score of fine male figures to one female, and there she is, as everywhere else, as inferior as is the Venus de’ Medici to the Apollo Belvidere. In Africa also, where the female figure lacks support, it is soon destroyed. The mammæ in women are naturally large; after the first child they become pendent and flaccid, and in old age they shrink to mere purses and lappets of skin. It is a curious fact that these withered crones will sometimes suckle children, and that the grandam is used as wet nurse.[52] In some cases I remarked that, after the fashion of the true Amazons, one breast was well developed, whilst the other hardly appeared—probably for want of use.

Life in the open air, light clothing, and an abundance of dirty soap, compounded of palm-kernel oil boiled with ashes, prevent amongst the Egbas an over-development of the true African effluvium; yet it is there. The negro’s skin—or rather the bulbs situated in the cellular web under the cutis—is a more active organ of depuration than the European’s, importantly aiding the respiratory and other processes in eliminating effete matter from the blood. Dr. Stark proved that the white colour imbibes odours in the lowest, the black in the highest degree. The disorder—for such at times it is—is increased by frequent anointings, foul food, and visceral disorders; and when to these is added want of cleanliness—the oily particles of the perspiration, so difficult to remove, remaining upon the skin, whilst the watery disappear[53]—the effect becomes truly intolerable. Even amongst Europeans in the tropics, the transpiratory secretion often becomes acrid; and as the old Dutch traveller quaintly remarks, they can never expect health until their ‘bodies open’—in other words, till their pores act freely.

As we advanced we were plentifully greeted—more, however, by the women than the men, and most by the children—with the common word Akabo, _i.e._, Aku abo, used to a person returning from a journey. The answer is simply an indefinitely prolonged _o_, which serves on all and every occasion; if not returned it is a slight. Equals say to one another Aku,[54] meaning, properly, may you not die, thus showing the real African dread of death. The life-loving southern European would say, ‘Viva mille anni!’ All these people, from Benin to Dahome, when heard thus saluting at Sierra Leone, were called Akoos, with as much correctness as if Englishmen were termed God-bless-yous.[55] More modern writers have named them Hios,[56] or Eyeos, from Oyo (Auyan), the great capital of the Yoruban nation, about 2° (N. lat. 9°) N.N.E. of Abeokuta.[57] The best conventional name of the language, however, despite Mr. Koelle, is Yoruba; of the country’s P.N. more anon.

All national salutations are tolerably ridiculous; the Englishman cannot laugh at the African except for his unreasonable ceremoniousness. As the old joke has it, ‘How do you do?’ can only be answered grammatically by ‘Do what?’ ‘How do you find yourself?’ by ‘I never lost myself!’ ‘How do you feel?’ by ‘With my hands!’ The Egbas, who are gifted with uncommon loquacity and spare time, have invented a variety of salutations and counter-salutations applicable to every possible occasion. For instance, Oji re, did you wake well? Akwaro, good morning! Akuasan, good day! Akwale, good evening! Akware, to one tired. Akushe, to one at work. Akurin (from _rin_, to walk), to a traveller. Akule, to one in the house. Akwatijo, after a long absence. Akwalejo, to a stranger. Akurajo, to one in distress. Akujiko, to one sitting. Akudaro, to one standing. Akuta, to one selling. Wolebe (be careful!) to one met, and so forth. The servile _shashtanga_ or prostration of the Hindus is also a universal custom. It is performed in different ways; the most general is, after depositing the burden, and clapping hands once, twice, or thrice, to go on all-fours, touch the ground with the belly and breast, the forehead and both sides of the face successively; kiss the earth, half rise up, then pass the left over the right fore-arm, and _vice versâ_, and finally, after again saluting mother Hertha, to stand erect. The inferior prostrates to the superior, the son to the mother, the younger to the elder brother, and I have been obliged to correct a Moslem boy of the evil practice of assuming a position in which man should address none but his Maker. The performance usually takes place once a day on first meeting, but meetings are so numerous that at least one hour out of the twenty-four must thus be spent by a man about town. Equals kneel, or rather squat, before one another, and snap the fingers in the peculiarly West African way, which seems to differ in every tribe.

As we advanced we saw unmistakable signs of idolatry. To many trees bits of pottery, snail shells—Achatinæ six inches long—were attached: a fence here consists of a few light sticks tied together with strings, from which these harmless articles were suspended. In places were pointed out to us a stalk of Indian corn with a yam or a gourd on the top. The idea is that, whoever touches these things, the disease or the misfortune of the placer will be transferred to him. There is the same superstition in Hindostan, and terrible tales of thus inoculating complaints are current amongst Europeans.[58] There were broken pots full of fragments of crystallized quartz and iron conglomerate, which last is said to be a holy stone. A traveller piling a handful of sand upon his luggage leaves it under the protection of a medicine, or magic, which Mungo Park calls ‘kwong.’ A hatchet is placed in houses that have been lightning struck, and water is worshipped in small earthen pots, over which the women kneel and smite the palm of the hand with the fingers. We are reminded of Apuleius, who describes the traveller being delayed by ‘an altar garlanded with flowers, or a cavern overshadowed with leaves, or an oak laden with horns, or a beech-tree crowned with hides, or a hillock consecrated by a hedge, or the trunk of a tree chipped out by the hatchet, or a turf moistened with libations, or a stone drenched with unguent.’ Strangers connect these mysteries with Oro. The truth is, few know anything beyond the fact that they are superstitious observances—many of them, doubtless, quite as efficacious as the horseshoe or mistletoe in England, or the Pishog, which transferred cream and butter from one churn to another, in Ireland, where, as in Abyssinia, old women were burned for becoming grey cats.

We found no difficulty in fording two of the waters on the line of road; the third, however, was more formidable. Mr. Consul Foote fell there, his horse having placed its hoof in a deep hole, whence earth had been taken for building purposes; and he then laid in the germs of the disease which carried him off in the prime of life. Several old women, in purest Guinea costume, were washing their clothes and persons, and, not wishing to wet our feet, we attempted by ‘sweet mouth’ to secure a mount. The reply was characteristically African, viz., ‘What will you give me?’ Having neither cowries nor tobacco, we waited till a man came up, and he was more obliging than the veterans of the other sex.

Nearing the walls we saw a house in the process of preparation for Mr. Savage, a native merchant. Numbers of labourers were at work, for Africans, like Asiatics, are great at division of labour, which, indeed, they often so divide that the remainder is imperceptible. Some hoed a deep hole,—here as at Benin and in Sokoto, where they are scattered over the town, a standing nuisance,—which afterwards remains to be filled with rain and drainage, filth, offal, and sometimes with the corpse of a child or a slave. The effect of these pits upon the climate may easily be imagined. Another gang was working the clay, and converting it into the swish or dab required for the walls; whilst a third party was engaged in preparing grass thatch and palm leaves for the roof. When the actual building begins there will be one gang to carry clay balls to the scene of action, a second of labourers who fling the same balls into wall shape and pat them down, a third, boys and girls, who hand other balls from the ground or the scaffolding to the masons above, a trimmer to plumb and set things square with his wooden shovel, and finally thatchers to finish off. The shell is usually made in three horizontal layers, which must dry for a day or two in the sun and wind before receiving another addition; the builders, however, will await for the last touch the month of December, when the hard, dry breath of the harmattan will harden their work to the consistence of concrete. This desert wind, which Captain Maury and his Ehrenberg bring from impossible places, is enjoyed like the Neapolitan scirocco by new comers, and is much feared by natives and old stagers. It is, therefore, supposed to be a giant, an African Æolus, who sits upon a mountain far in the interior, blowing dust and cold—the elements of discomfort—over the world.

Presently we arrived at the Aro, or the Badagry or the south-western gate. It is not unlike that of Agbameya, but, for valid reasons, it is, or rather it was, on a somewhat more extensive scale. Long quiet—lately broken—has, however, demoralized the people; ten years ago it was the same in Great Britain. The wall is hardly eight inches thick, there is no weather-thatch, the guard-house is almost in ruins, and the moat is a mere ditch. Victory has made the Egbas too secure.

But a truce to criticism. We are now upon classic ground, the local Marathon. Here was fought, on the 3rd of March, 1851, the great battle between the Dahomans and the Abeokutans. The quarrel was of old standing. Gezo, King of Idáhame, as the land of the Lord of Amazons is here called, had been defeated at Ado—a town nearly half-way between Badagry and Abeokuta—by the Ibashorun, or commander-in-chief, of Abeokuta; and he had lost, besides the town, his stool, which in these regions means the throne. The Dahomans, holding themselves to be a military as well as a warlike nation—we have lately been lectured upon the distinction, which is no difference—and burning for revenge, determined to destroy Abeokuta, for which purpose they advanced with the full force of the empire.

Their plans were ill laid, and their boasted secrecy appears to have been a lamentable failure. Arrived at Ishagga, a small Egbado town fifteen to seventeen miles south-west of their destination, they were duped by special treaties, oaths, and sacrifices, and were persuaded to attack, not the north-western gate, which was the weakest, but the south-western, which had already been fortified. Their plans of a night surprise were also overruled by their treacherous allies, who persuaded them that midday would find the defenders either sleeping or working at their farms; and finally, the Ishaggans pointed out a ford which wetted all the cartridges of their friends.

Baddahun or Glele,[59] son of the late King Gezo of Baddahun Dahome, revenged this treachery, as he was expected to do. After patiently waiting ten years with annual threats against Abeokuta, which threw the people off their guard, he suddenly, in the spring of 1862, fell upon Ishagga with a force not exceeding 6000 men—the town numbered about 3000 souls—massacred all he could not carry away, and departed, laden with prisoners, amongst whom were seventeen or eighteen Christian converts, and a Mr. Doherty of Sierra Leone, one of the Scripture readers of the Church Missionary Society.

The Rev. Mr. Bowen, missionary and quondam Texas ranger, who used, they say, a good rifle in the fight, thus describes the Dahoman attack of 1851 upon Abeokuta:—About noon, in the bright month of March, the Egbas, some 15,000 strong—these numbers must be taken _cum grano_—marched out of the Aro gate to meet the enemy. They then divided into three parties: the first proceeded to the ford on the Badagry road, the second, under Ogubonna, the bravest of the Baloguns, now deceased, crossed the river near the wall, and the third remained not far from the Aro gate. Meanwhile the Dahomans moved across the prairie with colours flying, in heavy columns, numbering 10,000 men[60] and 6000 women. They also formed two divisions, one of which fell upon the Abeokutan force guarding the ford, whilst the other, under Gezo,[61] their king, charged furiously upon Ogubonna, and drove him back upon the rocks and rapids of the Ogun River. Mr. Bowen sent the 3rd brigade to his support, when he rallied, and even made head against the enemy. The Abeokutans at the ford were also flung back by the Dahomans; they flocked, however, into the gate, and effectually checked the enemy, who, in this attack, were mainly ‘Amazons.’[62] There had been some dispute between the male and female soldiery, and both laboured under considerable dissatisfaction: the latter had claimed the right to storm, which the former obtained, and were left to lose the day by their sulking rivalesses.

Then the women, fearing the taunts of the men, pressed hotly forwards, and many were killed close to the gateway. Here, and here only, there was something like a stand-up hand-to-hand fight, muskets being clubbed for want of bayonets; the rest was all skirmishing. After six hours ensued a purely African scene. King Gezo’s division rested upon the battlefield half-way between the Aro gate and the river, and Ogubonna’s did the same. A resolute advance along the whole line, and a single charge by the one would have settled the fate of the other army—both preferred, however, to sleep upon the field. During the night King Gezo’s division moved off, followed by the other Dahoman troops, carrying their wounded in orderly retreat. The Egbas, enraged by being attacked by women, pursued them hotly with discharges of musketry, galling their rear. At Ishagga the Dahomans faced about, fought for a while, and fled—the treacherous Ishaggans doing their best to destroy them.

Mr. Bowen estimates the Dahoman loss at 1200, others exaggerate it to 3000 killed and 1000 prisoners. Mr. Crowther, senior, counted 75 women and 5 men lying within a few yards between the river and the wall. As might be expected, the women suffered most; the flower of the army was believed to have perished. The Egbas’ loss was comparatively trifling. The effect of the ‘Battle of Aro’ was to place in possession of the Egbas the Ogun River line and direct communication with Lagos and the coast, the one thing needful to an African inland nation. The Dahomans have ever since been burning with rage, and loudly threatening revenge. Early in 1861 they collected another force—the number was set down at 22,000, which I would divide by three—and marched upon Abeokuta. On the road, however, small-pox broke out—it is said to have killed 8000!—after which the remnant found their way home. The Abeokutans, before Gezo’s attack, dreaded their foe; and had, they say, resolved to burn their houses and bury themselves in the ruins rather than be taken alive. At present they despise him, and loudly boast of their power to ‘whip’ him. Now, therefore, is their danger; and if demoralized by relying upon English assistance rather than upon their own energies they may one day come to grief.

But Dahome, in its actual state, is to some extent a bugbear. The mighty warlike empire of which Bosman dimly heard, and even the strong military kingdom over which Gezo ruled, is now _en décadence_. Its very institutions must cause its decline: it lets its own blood, and, though the drops are few at a time, it cannot but suffer in the long run. The troops are poorly armed with trade muskets, ignorant of bayonets, and with short falchions of stuff like hoop-iron. The ‘Amazons’ boast themselves invulnerable, but readily retreat: an equal number of British charwomen, armed with the British broomstick, would—I lay, to speak Yorkishly—clear them off in very few hours.[63] The male soldiery make, like the French, a noisy, fiery onslaught, but, repulsed with vigour, they do not readily return to the charge. Their wars are mere slave hunts; their object is to capture, not to kill, and surprises, not attacks, form their favourite strategy. The terrible reports current concerning Dahome and its ‘blood-stained despot’ may be traced to certain Europeans and Brazilians, whose interest it is to deter slave- emancipators from investigation. They have lately rumoured that the King of Dahome is resolved to capture an English officer to hold his stirrup. We hear occasionally of a white man being sent to Agbome, ‘rolled up like a cigar,’ and a certain M. Medeiros was, it is said, compelled, for punishment of his recusancy, to walk the way barefoot.[64] But these are slavers, who are thoroughly despised by the king, and who, he knows, must eat any dirt to please him. It is, however, a fact that neither Baddahun nor Gezo, his father, ever put to death a white man. We have no good modern account of this interesting despotism. Commander Forbes is said to have copied from previous publications. There is no doubt that a man well conversant with Africa, and known to have friendly intentions—Mr. M‘Coskry of Lagos, for instance—would find no difficulty in visiting and in returning safe from Dahome. I would gladly accompany him.[65]

At the several gates of Abeokuta octroi or customs are raised. The two articles most taxed are cowries and corn—the latter taken in kind. Other sources of revenue are police dues, trade taxes on imports and exports, _corvée_ or forced labour—the _begar_ of India—and, on emergency, an impost equivalent to five shillings on each household. It is by no means easy to ascertain the amount of Asiatic or African revenue; the missionaries, however, set down that of Abeokuta at one per cent. These decidedly moderate proceeds belong not to the Alake, or king, but to the chiefs; a system which the local paper, the ‘Iwe Irohin,’ thinks—with scanty popular good-will in consequence—should be altered. The change would possibly strengthen the hands of the monarch, who certainly requires support; on the other hand, it would lengthen interregnums, which are already long enough. The late Mr. Consul Foote strongly advised the Abeokutans to place an impost upon imports, but to send out exports free of tax. They did not agree—nor can we wonder, as Lagos has since followed their example—on the same principle as England prefers the unjust income-tax to the just property-tax or capital-tax. For in Abeokuta, as in England, the law-giver would lose by doing justice to the law-receiver.

Beyond the Aro gate superstition again shows itself. The adit and the exit are by two parallel but separate paths. At Agbome one thoroughfare would be for royal, the other for public convenience; here, however, one is used each month, and if an accident happens it is charged to the wrong path, much as in England the day’s good or bad temper depends upon putting the right or the left foot first out of bed. The grass waved tall and lush over the Dahoman clay; the expanse was broken by sundry graves, some thatched over like dwarf or ‘fause houses,’ others had a rude cross, to which articles of clothing were suspended, and an elephant’s jawbone—the buried man’s idol—hung over the huntsman, who, like the fisherman, must be buried outside the walls. These two crafts form separate guilds, which almost become castes, worship the god Ogun, and meet in separate Ogboni lodges.

About a mile and a half along the Badagry road—a mere pathway worn by market-people in the bush—placed us at Aro. It is the port and landing- place of Abeokuta in the rainy season; during the dry season, from the end of November to the middle of March, Agbameya is preferred. The outlying village already shows signs of civilization in a ferry, palm- oil puncheons, and cask-houses. Messrs. M‘Coskry and Wike, and M. Bergmeyer and Scala, with Robbins, the agent, have depôts there, and they will probably be followed by others. A little above Aro we see the ridge of slabs and boulders which, stretching with breaks across the river, render its rapids un-navigable. The material of the obstruction is a gneiss, banded with thin lines of snowy quartz, and substratified, the strata being for the most part highly tilted up. Portages are useless, for these rapids perpetually recur. The banks of the Ogun are here perpendicular, and composed of stiff clay; in Egypt, as in Asia, they would be sonorous with the sakiyah or Persian wheel; in this place they are silent.

After sitting for a few minutes in the house of a negro, who politely offered us a dram of trade rum, which was as politely declined, we found by the stinging sun that it was time to re-start, if we intended to reach Ake at 9 A.M. On the way we passed a young person in great distress. She had dropped her pot of black oil,[66] worth at least four heads of cowries[67] equal to seven shillings—no small loss to the poor devil—and she was expressing her grief in the long, loud song which I remember in the Lake Regions of Central Africa. Tears rolled down her sable cheeks, yet in the intervals of sobbing it would flow on, that curious bawling cry which one unaccustomed would take to be the expression of lively joy. It is long before the European ear distinguishes between the sounds of mirth and the voice of woe proceeding from Asiatic and African lips. Returning through ‘Do-the- bachelors-good,’ we found the market warm, as the Hindostanis say. At a distance we heard a murmur like that of a distant sea, and as we sighted the open sheds that form the bazar it swelled to a roar. The market opens from dawn till 9 P.M.; it is fullest, however, a little before sunset, and the more industrious light lamps, instead of going home with the darkness. The bazar is a great institution in Yoruba, and, indeed, throughout the Nigerian Valley. It is also a civilizing agent, and by giving occupation to the women—it is disreputable for them to work on the farms, but not to carry the produce for sale—it tends to repress disorders. Porters are a hardly-used race in this region: men carry 40 lbs. to 80 lbs. burden for weeks’ journeys, and the women may be seen staggering, as if about to faint, under a bale of cotton 112 lbs. in weight. Men were tramping off towards the seat of war, sixty miles distant, laden with all manner of provisions, which they bore upon the head, not, like East Africans, upon the shoulder. The burden is fastened to a neat wicker-work cradle, flat, and garnished with side handles. I would suggest to bumpkins, who take hours in driving a recusant pig to market, the advisability of lashing it to a plank—should no better conveyance be procurable—and of carrying it upon the head. We are once more in the land of caravans: they number hundreds or thousands, each man carrying his sleeping-mat, cotton-sheet, or wrapper, provision bag, and earthen pipkin, to warm the ‘kitchen’ for his maize or yam; and they are old, expert travellers. They make when starting the _nakl safar_, as the Arabs call the short, initiatory march, at Atade, on the Ibadan, and Awoyade, on the Badagry road.[68]

Under the long rows of umbrella-trees sat a multitude of black women—selling appears to be their peculiar privilege—with scions of every age, from the big-eyed babe hardly a week old to the bold bare bairn aged ten. Cowries were placed near the goods, and, as in the Egyptian coffee-house, the buyer’s honour is trusted. The principal articles were provisions for present consumption, hardware, dry goods, earthenware, and ‘notions.’ Of the former, we found ready-made soups, obbe or palaver sauce—so called because eaten in council—which, by the mixture of mulookhiyah (_Corchorus olitorius_), reminds us of Egypt;[69] ekko or mush; huge snail shells, here relished as much as in Sierra Leone; kankie or maize cakes, and fufu balls of levigated corn or boiled yam; grated cassava or ‘wood flour,’ as it is generally called—a favourite, because on journeys this farina can be mixed up with cold water and eaten without cooking—balls of beans ground on a stone, mixed with spices, and placed to fry in purified black oil; dried rats; pots of black and yellow palm oil, here far cleaner than in the Oil Rivers; shea or tree butter, which will become one of the most considerable of Africa’s many products;[70] sesamum oil; cereals of sorts, especially Indian and Guinea corn; eggs, terapins, and dried fish from Lagos, especially shrimps; Telfaria seeds;[71] pink kola nuts, displayed on a white napkin, neatly covering a basket; ground-nuts of pindar, the _pistache_ of old French travellers, and now called _arachide_; tobacco of sorts, chiefly Brazilian; wet goods and drinkables, such as palm wine and _pitto_, _oli_, or native beer, and well-diluted rum,[72] which is sold by men; ‘bullock milk for true;’[73] fruits mostly relished by Europeans—okpaimbo, ‘the white man’s palm,’ _i.e._, pine-apples, bananas, papaws, oranges, known as the white ‘man’s mango,’[74] and watermelons, which are exceedingly poor; condiments, pepper and bud pepper, ginger and other spices; and various vegetables, sweet potatoes, kokos, okros (_Hibiscus esculentus_), sugar-cane and onions, especially the bulbless sort, called chives in England and violet onions in India. The hardware was represented by bracelets of brass, iron,[75] tin, and copper;[76] and ‘Europe goods,’ knives and cutlasses, scissors and pins, needles, hoes and bill-hooks. The dry goods were raw silks, broadcloths, and velvets, of which the green are preferred; country cloths of grass and various fibres, some composed of pieces not broader than a riband, and sewn together; calico, shirtings, and cottons of sorts; red, blue, and white tapes; Hausa and other caps; ropes and lines; threads, especially red; yarns and reels of cotton. The leather-work was excellent; black and white, red and yellow, like that of Morocco; and the people make good flasks and saddle-straps, saddles and embroidered cushions. The earthenware was not remarkable; gourds and calabashes, some of them neatly and prettily carved with the knife, serving for crockery, earthen bowls, and china cups, plates, and dishes. There was a vast variety of beads, sold singly or by the string, and native imitations composed of broken palm-kernels and jasper. The ‘notions’ were balls of dirty soap, snuff-boxes, gunpowder, and ammunition; chalk, found on the Ijaye road; tobacco, roll and leaf; snuff; balls of indigo and liquid dye; camwood pounded with water and moulded into lumps; horse and cow dung, here used for plastering floors and walls; little cones of native salt, nitre, or saltpetre; baskets of leaves, used as brown paper for wrapping; provisions and firewood, brought by the women six to eight miles from the bush; stationery of various sorts; brooms, baskets, raw cotton, and cowries, in any number. Briefly, it was a heterogeneous mass, whose combined aroma on a warm morning and an empty stomach, after eight miles of sunny walk, was as startling to the olfactories as the awful hubbub—chiefly feminine and infantine—of saluting and laughing, squabbling and cursing, hailing, and howling, was to the auditory nerves. Pure swearing is European, not Asiatic or African. They anathematize, however, idiomatically enough, as—‘Oro (the devil) take you!’ ‘Egugun (king of ghosts) chop you!’ ‘May you die in the bush!’ _i.e._, remain unburied, whereas every man hopes to die in, or rather on, his bed; ‘May small-pox kill you!’[77] reminding one of an English exclamation now working itself out. And as usual amongst barbarians, the mother and the female relatives are abused with an indecency which beggars description. We lost no time in making the best of our way out of the range of ‘Do-the-bachelors-good.’

On the day of our arrival, Mr. Williams, a most forward specimen of the ‘nigger,’—these people can be respectful until spoiled by Europeans, after which they are insufferable—had been sent to announce to H.M. the Alake, the great fact of Commander Bedingfield having arrived at Abeokuta, and to request an audience _au plutôt possible_. The king was pleased to reply that he would see us on the next day, Saturday, shortly after 10 A.M. The walk to Aro, therefore, led directly to a toilette for the levée.

But 10 A.M. sped, then 11, then 12. Various messages went and came; still the great man’s dignity required us to wait, and 1 P.M. had struck before we were permitted to hope for the possibility of beholding him. Under these circumstances, had it been my ‘palaver,’ I should have deferred the visit till 3 P.M., and I should not have appeared before 5 P.M. I have no doubt that more civility would have been the result, and that the impression would have lasted longer. But this is to lecture omniscience. Armed with umbrellas—here they represent the ‘quality’—we walked over the few hundred yards that separate the palace from the mission compound of Ake. We were suddenly told that we had arrived; turned to the left into a ragged clay house, long and rambling, with a shallow verandah formed by posts supporting the eaves, under which female slaves, called—to magnify his importance—king’s wives, sat before articles for sale. The establishment was as mean-looking for Abeokuta as is St. James’s for London. Stooping to avoid injuring the coronal region, we crossed a hollow court-yard, in which there was nothing remarkable beyond a peculiarly neat pair of stocks, we entered through a second gate, an inner and a smaller court, and there we found a cluster of negroes seated at squat _sub divo_ to receive us.

We naturally looked around for the presence-chamber, when we were motioned to bend double, and thus to insert ourselves under the long, low verandah that subtended the side of the inner court. Five hexagonal columns of ultra-Egyptian massiveness, and about four feet high, divided the house-wall behind the verandah into as many compartments. Of these ‘loose boxes’ the two at either end were open, leading into the house; the three central were masked by a native cloth; in the middle was an old brocade bed-hanging—behind which we were told lay H.M., invisible—and lastly, was a curtain of scarlet velvet. The Awajali of Ijebu Ode is never allowed to see or to converse with strangers, except through his ministers; and that the cabinet may have it all their own way, when the monarch dies, all the _personnel_ is carefully put to death. The whole space, including the columns, was ‘beautifully black, like the rain-cloud,’ as the Egbas say, with horse or cow-dung, mixed with some leaf which may be indigo. This is the gobar of India, and though it is unknown in Eastern, it has been observed in Western Africa.[78] Happily we had brought our own chairs; the palace contains, I am told, but two, and we had time indeed to sit. The rest of the verandah was full of chiefs, ‘niggers,’[79] and a few Moslems, a total of about one hundred and fifty, and all adult males. Never have I seen such villainous crania and countenances as amongst the seniors of Abeokuta. Their calvaria depressed in front, and projecting cocoa-nut- like behind, the absence of beards, the hideous lines and wrinkles that seamed and furrowed the external parchment, and the cold, unrelenting cruelty of their physiognomies in repose, suggested the idea of the eunuch torturers erst so common in Asia. One felt the same _frisson_ at the sight as when looking upon the Gallic ladies who, in rainy weather, haunt the County Fire Office at the end of Regent Street, and one was sure that from pity or mercy it would be as well to address the wounded mandril. I afterwards observed the same amongst the elders of Benin, and I should not be surprised to find it at Agbome and Komasi. The atrocities which these ancients have witnessed, and the passion which they have acquired for horrors, must have set the mark of the beast upon their brows. There was not a vestige of splendour. The chiefs were bareheaded, naked to the waist, wholly unornamented, except with a few cheap beads, and clothed with a common native loin wrap, or a bit of unbleached ‘domestics.’ To retain wealth in such lands requires care and caution: an ostentatious man, however rich, will die poor.

We were beginning to wax impatient at this impertinent blending of misery and pretentiousness, when it was suggested that H.M.’s linguist, alias Mr. Wilhelm, the Church Missionary interpreter, had not appeared—a fresh reason for standing upon ceremony. It is contrary to etiquette for an Alake to show himself too freely either to his people or to strangers: the King of Oyo, at the first interview, remains hidden behind the curtain, and the Alaketu or chief of Iketu is known by a hole in the wall. Mr. Wilhelm is one of the earliest Egba recaptives who left Sierra Leone for Abeokuta: he has remained faithful amongst the faithless, and whilst the others have relapsed into the wildest heathenry, he has become the senior ‘Christian visitor’—_il a passé caporal sur le champ de gloire_. To quiet us, I suppose, a very dirty table of plain deal was set opposite H.M.’s bed-hanging; presently it was invested with an unwashed native cloth, and, lastly, after a long delay, it was richly spread with two wash-hand basins. One was ‘blue mandarin,’ the other, French Faïence, coarser than majolica, true pot- house appointments, in each of which were two tumblers and two wine- glasses—the materials for a carouse—at midday in the tropics!—then came upon the _tapis_ four bottles of maraschino, prepared for commerce; an ordinary high-shouldered, black gin-bottle, containing the normal mixture of vitriol, turpentine, and aqua pura; two large case-bottles of Brazilian rum, the offal of molasses, which, however, these people prefer to the Jamaica; and water in a ‘lustre jug,’ as the trade calls it, a thing of obsolete make and colour, such as thirty years ago was common in English farm-houses.

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All this splendour, however, did not so dazzle us as to make us forget that H.M. was treating us most slightingly, and our murmurs were not spared. At length, the confidential young slave who had drawn the corks, and who bore a bunch of keys, European and country made, and large enough for half a dozen chatelaines, drew back the old brocade bed- hanging. Thereupon H.M. appeared, encaged, like Clapperton’s portrait of the Bornuese Sultan; or, to choose a comparison nearer home, like a denizen of one of the larger dens in the Zoological Gardens. The shape and appearance of the apartment was exactly that of Mr. Punch, magnified perhaps a score of times; and it was a hole in the wall, under whose outside verandah we were sitting. The loose box was full of women and children, probably part of H.M.’s fine family. He is said to have twelve young and fifty old wives, but lately he has ceased to be a father, and is disposed, it is whispered, to resent any symptoms of impending paternity. One of the spouses sat before him, fanning him with a circle of hairy cowhide rudely set in a hairy handle, differing from the flag- shaped instrument of the further east. She wore a strand of red coral, and an indigo-dyed loin wrap, about which she was needlessly coquettish. In the verandah, dangling over the Alake’s head, were two Moslem charm- calabashes, covered apparently with many-coloured threads, white and red, light blue and dark blue, with hangings of written characts and talismans—their appearance was not familiar to me. The right arm of majesty reposed upon a long bolster covered with crimson silk velvet; and two mats, whose ends projected into the verandah, supported the portly person, which was disposed in a free and easy way upon the dexter side, with the limbs lazily drawn up. Upon the mat ends were placed a huge leathern cowrie purse, not unlike the old French _gibecière_; the royal stick, so enriched with beads that the material was invisible; an artful animal—done in cotton, with a harlequin suit of beads—intended for a dog, but resembling an armadillo; two chauris, or fly-flaps, of white oxtail—H.M. held a third, which rejoiced in a handle of beads—and a pair of unsheathed swords. One was a blade like the ancient falchion with which the Osmanli captured Rhodes, only it had a brass head of some beast, found possibly in heaven above, but certainly not on the earth below. The other was an antique Toledo, much worn down, but still bearing in distinct letters the noble Castilian motto, ‘No me trajas sin razon;’ on the other side, ‘No me degaines sin honor.’ Weapons of this kind often travel far: when the 18th Regiment, Bombay N. I., attacked and defeated the Beni Bu Ali Bedouins near Maskat, they found amongst the spoils, European swords, daggers, and gun-barrels, which had been handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation.

Such was the setting that enclosed the picture. The picture itself was as curious. Okukeno, Alake of Abeokuta, is said to be between sixty and seventy years old, and his contemporary, Ogubonna, had been a balogun, or high military officer, which implies an elderly man, during the Egba dispersion, some forty-five years ago. His head, partially shaven, and his beard, were grizzled; but judging from the plumpness of his arms, and the absence of wrinkles, Dr. Eales and I concluded that he was not much beyond fifty. He was a large and massive man, blind of one eye, which imprudently encountered a stone when attempting to arrest a faction fight; heavy featured, coarse, and unprepossessing. The loss of his upper teeth, except the canines, which recalled the Wild Boar of Ardennes’ fangs, caused a disagreeable indentation of the upper lip; the lower incisors have been destroyed by snuff, and the tongue-tip habitually protruded in a manner the reverse of kingly. Altogether he suggested the idea of an old, very damaged and very rickety lion. His dress was a tall fez-like cap of crimson velvet, disfigured by a pendant fringe of small blue porcelain beads round the upper third.[80] A necklace of red coral—pink is little valued by these lovers of the gorgeous—and a double string of the same material round each wrist, were the regal ornaments. This fondness for coral seems to have been borrowed from Benin, where even in Bosman’s day it was a decoration of state. His only body-cloth which appeared in view was a toga, of white watered silk, striped with broad crimson bands; and it sat upon him incongruously enough. His manner was as peculiar as his audience-chamber and his appearance. He seemed more than three parts asleep, and we could never decide whether the cause was old age, affectation of dignity, or the two greenish glasses of strong waters placed before him on a silver or silvered tray, now lead-coloured for want of plate-powder.