Chapter IV: Touching Matters Religious at Abeokuta (1)

The rains had not yet ended, and the mornings were damp and misty, whilst a worse than English fog moved for hours after sunrise through the cloudy air. Captain Parry found the heat uncomfortable at 23° (Fah.) above zero; the Abeokutans shuddered with cold when the mercury showed 65°.

On such a morning, accompanied by the boy Olufanobbi, alias Robert Fisher, Egba, Ogbone, Christian convert, and printer’s devil in the Church Missionary establishment at the salary of four dollars per mensem, I sallied forth to inspect the father of the settlement, the Rock Olumo.

Our route lay to the west, with a little northing, along a rough road, and the town was at this hour one vast latrine. The perfume from the bush must not be described. The men, and even the women, again showed a wonderful absence of all that with us goes by the name of decorum. As on the Gold Coast, the sable fair ones bathe publicly _in purissimis_.[86] There is not a public woman in the town, which some, as forgotten Mandeville, say speaks well, and others badly, for private morality; and Mr. Bowen only met one bastard. As in Ashanti, here, even in the highest ranks, that form of the social evil known to civilization, especially trans-Atlantic, as the ‘panel dodge,’ is said to be sometimes practised. The wives of the highest chiefs will bring on intrigues with young men, and betray them to the husbands, who either get their money or sell them. In shaking hands, the emphatic gesture is to touch the lady’s palm with the dexter index; but the amourist risks, if unlucky enough to displease, a seat upon the stool of repentance, and an _exposé_ to public ridicule.

The wells lying by the paths were shallow pits; rain-water arrested by tenacious potters’ clay a few feet below the surface. Where they are private property, women pay to the owner two to three cowries per potful, or one cent for fifty gallons. The water is good, but requires cooling; the bucket is half a calabash-gourd, lashed to strings, and requiring an hour to fill a large vessel. Time, however, is of little value in these regions, and the people love to gossip round their meeting-place, the well. I need hardly point out how unwholesome these sites are. Concealed water, and a hot, dry surface, must produce the most deadly miasma.[87]

On the road we passed by the five great crafts of Abeokuta—the blacksmith, the carpenter, the weaver, the dyer, and the potter. I turned in to inspect their several workshops, and to see their appliances, which merit description on account of their similarity to, or rather identity with, those in the distant centre, the east and the south. By a collection from the works of different travellers in the remotest parts of the dark Continent, it would methinks be easy to prove a close connection in ancient times between nations and peoples now ignoring one another’s existence. Indeed, so exactly the same are many of the articles—the bellows, for instance—and so artificial, forbidding the idea of an instinctive invention, that one almost suspects a common centre to all the races amongst whom they are common.

The blacksmith, who is also goldsmith, silversmith, copper-worker, and tinman, sits under an open shed of leaf-mats. His fire is of palm-nut husks—as good as charcoal. His bellows is that of ancient Egypt and Greece, and is described by every African traveller, from Mungo Park downwards; from Unyamwezi to the lands of the Ovampo. Two bags of rough goatskin are secured in troughs cut out of a single piece of wood. The upper part of each skin has a handle, or stick, two feet long, so that it can be worked by one standing or sitting. There is an earthen pipe leading from the wooden pipe which projects from each trough, and the junction is not air-tight. The handles are raised alternately by the blower; consequently, when one ‘follis’ receives air, the other ejects it. The forge is, like that of the Gold Coast, a perpendicular screen of dried clay, through which the nozzles of the bellows pass, supplying a regular blast; the larger anvil is a stone, and the smaller a lump of iron. The craftsman has spindles for drilling, and rough files, with a better sort from Europe, which he keeps carefully wrapped up in greasy rag. His native hammers, pincers, and hooks are exceedingly artless tools. He makes little clay crucibles for melting hard metals; puts the material in without flux; buries it in the glowing husks, and casts it into bars by means of an oiled mould. He buys a kind of carbonized iron from the interior, and he forges from it rude keys, chains and staples, swords and knives, sickles and hoes, inserted in large clumsy handles, and adzes and axes two inches wide, with the iron driven through the wooden handle as it should be, not the wood driven through the iron.[88] The repairing of a ‘long Dane,’ or buccaneer gun, is about the measure of his knowledge; he has never learned to temper iron, and even when running leaden plugs for bullets, he loses half the material by not stirring a little grease with the melted metal, and removing the dross with his knife.

The carpenter is a century behind the blacksmith, probably because every man in these regions can use an axe without professional aid. He has an adze and splitting wedges, but neither hooks nor saws. He must hold the wood with hand or foot, and when making a plank, he must hack away the rest of the tree-trunk. His industry is confined to doors and shutters, bowls, and mortars for pounding grain.

Men in Abeokuta, as in ancient Egypt, weave, which the old Greek held to be an effeminate occupation; they are also the best, if not the only, needle-workers. The cotton, cleared of seed by an iron cylinder rolling on a block of wood, and bow-whipped as in India, is spun into yarn-balls by means of the old distaff, and is sold every evening in the market. The weaver employs his mornings in winding off the portion which he will require for the day. The loom, standing under the usual open shed, differs little from the horizontal structure of Eastern and Central Africa. Like the bellows, the principle extends throughout the continent. It is perpendicular, as in ancient Egypt, where, however, both forms were used. A framework of sticks, about four feet high, with eighteen inches of extreme breadth, is planted in the ground. The twist for the warp is passed over the upper and under the lower connecting bar, and the thread for the weft or woof is shot between with a shuttle and a ‘sley,’ here called ‘assá,’ a reed used to beat the woof tight. It is a rude implement, and makes narrow strips of ‘tree-wool’ cloth, six inches or so wide, which, to form a garment, must be sewn together. Dyeing with indigo is done by women, much in the way described by Mungo Park amongst the Mandengas. It produces a beautiful tint, with a finer purple gloss than the Indian can show, and the people colour thread with every tinge, from the lightest blue to what closely approaches black. Freshly-pounded leaves—the dry are rarely used—are placed in an earthen pot till it is half full; it is then filled with a lye prepared from the potash of various wood ashes. After soaking for some days, till fermentation throws up an iridescent scum—at this time is the chief danger of failure—it is ready for use. The cloth, wetted in cold water, and wrung out, is placed in it for two hours, sun-dried by hanging across a pole, beaten with a stick, washed in water to remove impurities, again wrung out, and returned to the pot. No mordant is used; the operation is repeated ten or twelve times during four days, when the dye becomes permanent.

The potter is also a woman. The earthenware is a very poor article, better than that of Lagos and Ikoradu, but far inferior to the produce of Wari. The reddish clay is brought from a place about two and a half miles to the north-east of the city. The wheel being unknown, it is fashioned by hand, and so neatly that strangers will hardly believe it. Being but half burned, it seldom lasts. This handicraft is depressed by the competition of the calabash-maker. The gourd, a congener to the pumpkin, varies in size from a snuff-box to a milk-churn. When the fruit ripens, a hole is made in the smaller end, and the air decays the pulp, leaving the hard rind intact. When a lid is wanted, the fruit is sliced off on a plane, one-third from the smaller end. It is then neatly cut and carved with a hand-knife, and this ‘ornamental engraving’[89] is said to be a lucrative trade. The cost of a good article is about twenty-five strings, or one shilling. The manufacture of glass is unknown in Yoruba; it is, however, if native accounts are to be believed, at Nupe, and especially at Rabba, once the capital of that interesting region.

About half way I saw a mosque—an oblong hut, with blackened walls, and a thatched roof of mat and leaves; it fronted Meccah pretty correctly. The door was closed, and all my Arabic could not procure me admission, although a talib—a ‘scholar,’ who should have known better—was lying under the verandah, learning _memoriter_ the last verslets of that beautiful and most edifying chapter, the Ya Sín. A little beyond, we passed an Ogbone lodge, remarkable only for its painted and carved door, upon which distinct symbols of Phallic worship—not disguised as in Egypt by the sacred Tau—appeared in natural size. A little beyond was a large slab of gneiss, which bore upon its summit what appeared to be the trace of ichnites; a little inquiry proved them to be the work of man—the hollowness being formed by pounding and grinding.

After about a mile and a half of up and down, sand and boulder, midden and offal, we ascended a short steep pitch, and stood near and opposite the Rock Olumo. Surmounting an abrupt hill, with falls on all sides, it is a conspicuous landmark in the scenery. It has the honour of giving a name to the city clustering at its feet, Abe-okuta ‘(the town) Underneath the rock,’ by us called Understone. The Builder—for such is the meaning of its name—is some two hundred yards in length, divided about midway by a fissure that affords an easy ascent, and overhanging on all sides except the north, where a neighbouring tree acts as a natural ladder. Many have mounted to the summit, and, according to my informants, a cannon has been fired there. On another occasion, a small party climbed it with Commander Bedingfield, in jack-boots, _viâ_ the tree. I confess that, with the view of keeping legs and ankles unbroken until after the ascent of the Camaroons Mountains, this feat did not appear advisable. It has been dedicated to Oro. No one objects, however, to strangers taking liberties there, although it has been tabooed to the people for fear of accidents. Cavern, as described in books, there is none. The projecting sides, however, form tall, deep ledges, beneath which people can find shelter; and under the eastern side dwarf walls of red clay have converted it into troglodyte abodes. Besides human bipeds, the swallows flock and nest there in numbers.

Walking round to the left side, which I should advise future travellers to avoid, I saw the point of view chosen as a frontispiece to ‘Sunrise within the Tropics.’ Either the amateur artist or his engraver has succeeded in making it as unlike reality as possible. The view, however, is quite in character with the book itself, essentially Anglo-African, and well fitted for the delectation of the Hall, once more appropriately known as Exeter Change. The right-hand foreground is adorned with the customary clump of typical palm-trees and aloes, and a group of natives, white men drawn black, most European in bearing and civilized in gesture, reminding us of our ‘own artist’ in the ‘Illustrated News,’ who, with praiseworthy catholicity of art, makes as little possible distinction between humanity in its opposite hemispheres. Below lies the town, neat, rural, pretty, white-walled and red-tiled, built with all the symmetry of Clapham, and backed by a glorious lake-like river with little green islets—and, doubtless, eel-pie houses;—whilst in the distance a fair expanse of rolling hills, green and blue, fills up the scene.

Let me describe what I saw and sketched. Beyond the barren mass of stern grey stone—filthily dirty—which afforded me a standing-place, there was a perpendicular drop of some fifty feet, disclosing part of the city below and in front. It was a grisly mass of rusty thatching and dull red-clay wall, with narrow winding lanes and irregular open spaces, a ragged tree rising here and there. The only comparison which the scene suggested was that of a huge anthill scattered over with dead leaves and dwarf shrubs. On the left was a high tongue of land, with top sinking towards the foreground; it supports Bagura, one of the most populous townships; and here the houses that crowd one another prevent the ground from being seen. It is separated by a stony stream-bed, the usual fence in this part of Africa, from the neighbouring settlements, Ikereku and Ikijá, Iláwo and Ikporo. In the distance is a narrow line representing the Ogun River above the rapids, and the horizon is shut in by rising ground which appears barren and sterile. In the magnificence of its distances Abeokuta greatly resembles Washington, but there the similarity ends. The main peculiarity of the scene is the shape of the houses—large irregular squares, with huge thatches raised high at the angles to throw off the rain. There are but two which attract the eye by superiority of size, viz., those of the late Ogobonna, and of the waggish savage Ogodippe.

Olumo, however, is classic ground in these regions, the Arg, the Capitolium of the Egba race, the Rock against which the gates of Ibadan have not yet prevailed. It was the _point de réunion_ of the people of Egba, who, about 1820-1822, had been scattered to the winds by intestine tumults and the fury of their enemies.[90] Some thirty-five or forty years ago, say in 1825, a few of the better sort, flying from their new masters, took refuge under ‘the Builder,’ where, it is said, they found robbers—probably their own countrymen—who had preceded them. As in classic Rome, the sanctuary was joined by other fugitives and villains. When the new-comers found themselves strong enough, they drove out the original bandits, and then laid the foundations of a city which, after Olumo, they called Abeokuta. It grew apace. In memory of their former settlements, they gave to the new seats the names of their ancient townships—Ake, for instance, was the old capital of Egba-land in the days when it was a province of Yoruba—and they conferred upon their military and civil chiefs titles familiar to their ears in olden times. They hung up their harps by the side of Olumo, and holding the soil to be hard and sterile, they sighed for a return to the lands flowing with milk and honey.[91]

Presently Abeokuta became a fenced city, and was girt with a moat and a clay wall, after the approved fashion of African fortification. Its population waxed numerous. Mr. T. B. Freeman, in 1842, estimated it to contain forty-five thousand souls. In 1858, Mr. Bowen gave it eighty thousand: more modern travellers have raised the number to one hundred thousand; and, looking at the extent and the thickness of the population, I should not wonder if, when the soldiers return from the Ibadan war, it was found to contain one hundred and fifty thousand souls, nearly equal to the entire population of redoubted Dahome. It contains the remnants of some one hundred and fifty townships—some say one hundred, but they diminish for fear of exaggeration, and others, too sanguine, raise it to two hundred and eighty-five—which all retain their own peculiar institutions. The constitution, in fact, is that of a federal republic under a perpetual president.[92]

The Abeokutans still aspire to regain the lands of their forefathers, and they swear that they will come to their own again. I doubt the probability of their so doing. The weak outlying states of El Islam, Ilori, for instance—now the last ripple of the mighty wave urged southwards by an irresistible current—though at present unable to sweep away the barriers of Paganism, is strong enough to resist any encroachments. And the day will come when the Law of the Prophet shall rule throughout the lands, when Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto Allah, and shall thus rise to her highest point of civilization. Meanwhile, those who support Abeokuta are but shoring up a falling wall. The only thing they can say is that, like Turkey, she may take some time to fall: on the other hand, when the Moslems succeed to the land, they will find it rich in cotton and palm oil.

The sun having lost his strength, I proceeded, in company with Mr. Hughes, a thoroughly Yorubanized Englishman, to ascend the rocks of Ake, the hill immediately behind the Church Missionary compound. The path led along the burial-ground and near a foul wet hole, whence the clay for building houses had been excavated. Ascending, we remarked an Oro-, or wild mango-tree,[93] whose trunk had been gashed apparently for the purpose of letting out the turpentine. After losing our way in the thick grass—it should be kept clear for the benefit of those who desire a breath of fresh air—we fell into sundry lanes bordered by the unwholesome tiglium, whose odour after sunset denotes its dangerous qualities. Passing through a blocked-up gap in a hedge, we entered a field of tobacco; the herb which Niwt named and which Thevet ought to have named—an analogy of Colon and Amerigo—grows wild in the streets of Lagos and Abeokuta: the people, however, prefer to import it from the Brazils. The land has usually been considered too worn out to support so exhausting a crop; in places, however, it flourishes. The people have learned to top the plants, and the American missionaries have taught them to cure it by hanging the leaves for a day or two in bunches to dry, and then piling up and sweating it for two or three days. It thus becomes tolerable smoking, with a little Cavendish or gold-leaf by way of ‘kitchen’ to its mildness, and the highest price is about 5_d._ per pound. The people, however, are not great smokers. Both sexes and all ages prefer a pinch of natronized snuff between the lower lip and the gums—in fact, where it can best excite the salivary glands. Pure snuff is also made, and though a little deficient in flavour, it is by no means despicable. The favourite snuff-box is a hollowed hard-shelled fruit called ‘agbar.’ Curious to say, these Africans have not learned the use of smoking or eating datura, a poison which overruns the land, and I saw no bhang growing in the country.

Ascending a dwarf slope of koko field, we clambered up some rocks, and reached a place where Egugun, literally ‘Bones,’ is worshipped. The king of ghosts here receives sacrifice in honour of the manes of the ancestor in whose behalf the offering is made—it is in fact an African prayer for the dead. The place shows only a dwarf enclosure of red clay walls, whose roof is a gneiss boulder resembling Olumo. It was blackened with smoke, and as we perched there to rest we were curiously inspected from below by the meddlesome Christian populace of Wasimi.

We manifestly stood on holy ground. Many stones bore signs of medicine—yams, dabs of palm oil, broken calabashes, and cowries in strings. Above us rose the ‘logan-stone,’ the remains of an older world, now washed down into the deep Atlantic. Descending through a dense bush, where long sharp thorns and the chance of meeting a snake made us ‘look alive,’ and hopping from boulder to boulder, we presently entered the mysterious Oro grove: a little further north it would be called a ‘Debbil-bush.’ The Egbas, like the ancient Persians, and most of the modern pagans, combine a propensity for worshipping in high places with fondness of the concealment which the shady forest affords. There was nothing to distinguish the place from a jungle camp—though I have little doubt that at no great distance we might find a skeleton or two with the fatal cord still unrotted around its neck. Three dwarf sheds, short smoke-stained mud walls with roofs of decaying palm-leaf, brown and bald, a grassy patch broken here and there by boulders and enclosed within a wall of bush verdure, capped by tall overhanging trees—this was all that met the eye. To fill in the picture, you must suppose the place restored and occupied by twenty or thirty ancients, villainous-looking as Spanish inquisitors in caricature, with countenances expressing the cold cruelty of the _castrato_ and the bloodthirsty joy with which the cat plays with her prey; some sitting under the shade drinking pitto, palm-wine, and fire-water, others standing, staff in hand, chanting, gesticulating, and dealing out the words of wisdom, with, perhaps, the material for torture or human sacrifice lying bound on the sward at their feet. Such was the scene described to me by a gentleman who unwittingly had passed by the Oro grove when council had met, and who had bowed to its inmates.

Returning towards Eruwan, I was shown by Mr. Hughes a house from which he had saved an old man. The building had caught fire by the carelessness of some women. The people however supposed it to be the work of Shango—god of thunder and lightning: had no European been there, or one without the pluck to break through the crowd and to harangue them with explanations, there would have been an Egba _de moins_. As we passed the Church Missionary compound there was a ‘pow-wow.’ A circle of converts, clad in quasi-European toggery, squatted upon the ground, and in the centre stood the speaker, who threw out his upper limbs and gesticulated, walking up and down like a Hindu preacher. At first I thought it was a young ‘camp meeting:’ presently the occasion was explained to me. The chiefs at the seat of war had sent to the city a message complaining that the Christians were not nearly so ready to fight, and _pro patriô mori_, as they had promised, and as they ought to be. It was a curious contrast to the scenes that had passed during the day within the walls of the sacred building hard by—tidings of peace and goodwill to all men delivered in the morning; in the evening, a summons to kidnap, plunder, and kill. Yet, ταῦτα οὔτως ἔχει, as the Romaic epitaph pathetically has it.

I now proceed to a short account of the Yoruban mythology as far as it is known—few of the people are conversant with its details—to books and to my various informants. Like all these religions, if such they can be called, there is in it a vagueness and a variety of explanation which, despite the advantage of alphabets and of a far superior organization, appears strikingly in the worship of ancient Greece and Rome, and of modern India. The minor details are never to be trusted; the main points are better fixed in the public mind—before two days’ residence in the city you hear of Shango and Oro, and after a week they have become ‘household words.’ The mythology of Yoruba is not far from being as extensive as that with which Assyria, Egypt, and India overspread the Indo-European world, and its gods are numerically strong, mustering from three hundred to four hundred. Like all other similar systems, it is a syncretism, the deities being collected from the various lands to which they were peculiar: thus Shiva, the Indian, is a local god, posterior to Brahma and Vishnu, the other members of the triad; thus Bacchus came from the banks of the Ganges or the Indus; and thus Osiris was imported from Egypt into Rome. As I have before said, touching things material, everywhere we see traces that Africa was once as closely united as Italy. It is, therefore, difficult to say how much of the Yoruban faith is original. The Romans penetrated through the northern desert, the Jews had a powerful kingdom in Abyssinia, the Portuguese missionaries invested the eastern and the western coasts, and the Moslems have gradually been hemming in the heathenry. Such influences must have been strong upon the plastic and conforming mind of the polytheist, but the measure of their strength is not appreciable.

Long ago Dr. Vanderkemp asserted that the Kafirs of the Cape were ‘pure atheists,’ without the idea of the existence of a God. Mr. Casalis (p. 238) tells us that the Kafirs ‘had entirely lost the idea of a Creator;’ that ‘it never entered their’ (the Kafirs’) ‘heads that the earth and sky might be the work of an invisible being;’ and that in their languages the word for world signified ‘having always been—to exist in an incomprehensible manner.’ Bishop Colenso ascribes to them a distinct traditionary belief in the Supreme Being, whom they acknowledge under the twofold titles of Umkulumkulu—the Great Essence, and Umvelinquanze—the First Comer Out; but of him and his attributes they understand nothing, and neither worship nor invoke him.’ Dr. Livingstone, with his usual peremptory and unsatisfactory way of laying down the law upon every question, affirms that ‘the existence of a God and of a future state has always been admitted by all the Bechuanas.’ A far better authority, Dr. Moffat (‘Missionary Labours,’ p. 245), remarks concerning the Bachwanas (Bechuanas), whilst owning that they ‘are acute reasoners and minute observers of men and manners,’ that ‘to tell them, the greatest of them, that there was a Creator, the Governor of the heavens and earth—of the fall of man, or the redemption of the world—the resurrection of the dead, and immortality beyond the grave—is to tell them what appeared to be more fabulous, extravagant, and ludicrous than their own vain stories about lions, hyænas, and jackals.’[94] I can easily understand this. Perhaps the illustrious Humboldt, the greatest philosopher of our age, sympathized in their touching confession of ignorance concerning all things beyond man’s actual reach. And it is undoubted that, by the force of their rationalism, these men, gifted with the ‘docility of a child, but the reasoning powers of mature age,’ were able to suggest to the Bishop of Natal that his misgivings touching the historical character of the books attributed to Moses were founded on fact. The same missionary (p. 257) declares that the Kafirs have no word in their language expressing the conception of a Deity: he found no altars, legends, or unknown gods, and his _soi-disant_ converts would often declare to him that he had taught them the rudimental conception of a Deity. He believes, like the Jesuits in China—who accounted for Buddhism, the origin of their faith, as Satan’s caricature of it—that it was the Devil who erased every vestige of religious impression from the heathen mind. Setting aside the great fact, that of all unsuccessful characters in history Sathanas is probably the greatest failure—in other words that ‘the Devil _is_ an Ass’—I must differ from him in holding atheism to be the natural condition of the savage and uninstructed mind, the night of spiritual existence, which disappears before the dawn of a belief in things unseen. A Creator is to creation what the cause of any event in life is to its effect: those familiar to the sequence will hardly credit its absence from the minds of others. And only the brain supersaturated with its own prejudices and impressions can force itself into explanations of the seeming mystery by referring it to diabolical and similar mythical agencies.

The Egbas have progressed more than one step beyond this savage atheism. With ‘gods many and lords many,’[95] and a considerable mixture of idolatry, they have a distinct name for a Creator. They call him Olorun, an abbreviation of O li Orun—lord or owner of the sky or firmament. It might also be translated Lord of Ghostland; Oki Orun, ‘Hill Ghostland’ being, Anglicised, ‘Heaven,’ opposed to Orun Akpadi, which some translate ‘Crucible Hades,’ _i.e._, Hell. Thus, the name of the town Bi Olorun Kpellu, ‘Si Deus nobiscu’ (quis contra nos?). He is also known as Eleda—the Creator, Olo-Dumare—the Ever-Righteous, Oluwa—the Lord, and Oga-Ogo—the Glorious High One. These, however, are palpable attributes of a vague being without personality and without objectivity: at best the name is used like the Hindu Pariah employs the word Bhagwan—Deity—whilst he worships some low incarnation which he considers infinitely inferior in dignity to a live Brahmin. I much doubt, also, whether the word conveys at all to their minds the Ens Entium, an existence disseverated from some natural object—sun or sea, rain or firmament.[96] The use of the name, however, is clear and distinct. The Egbas say Olorun—not Orishako or Obatala—bless you! Olorun give you children, farms, cowries! and so forth. Olorun aku!—salutation to God!—is the highest expression of submission. Essentially simple, the prayer has nothing to do with the metaphysics of faith—confession of aboriginal sin, prayer for pardon, or thanksgiving for redemption. They talk of seeing Olorun after death, and are said not to be without the idea of a vague and obscure futurity, a continuation in which rewards and punishments will be distributed. In Orun and its several modifications it would not be difficult to discover a tripartite kingdom of the dead, corresponding with the Elysium, the Hades, and the Tartarus of ancient Europe. Only, as amongst the more polished Greeks and Romans, the future is held by them to be, from its exceeding uncertainty, and from the total absence of all judicial proof of its existence, much less important than the present. As has been remarked, the Egbas have long dwelt in the presence of a monotheistic people, the Moslems, and of late years they have had Christians amongst them. But even without these advantages the ease of an agricultural state, and the existence of a distinct priestly body, would tend to promote the study of that which comes, or is made to come, after the material world.

Similarly the East Africans near the Moslems of Zanzibar have their Mulungu; in the South-east, where the Portuguese are, their Murimo; and in Kongo, also colonized by Europeans, their Zambi and Nganna Riossu. Mungo Park also remarks of the negroes bordering upon Moslem Mandeng that ‘the belief of one God, and of a future state of reward and punishment, is entire and universal among them.’

To quote the same traveller, ‘The Africans represent the Deity indeed as the creator and preserver of all things; but, in general, they consider him a being so remote, and of so exalted a nature, that it is idle to imagine the feeble supplications of wretched mortals can reverse the decrees and change the purposes of unerring wisdom.’[97] That the gods take but little interest, and exercise scant interference in human affairs, is an idea as old as Confucius and Epicurus—they meddle, indeed, so little that a future state must be hypothesised in account for their incuriousness. The Africans, like many other ancient peoples, seem to think that the Deity has retired from business, and has deputed his functions to inferior officers. Besides, as much of their religion is modified by and modelled upon their private life and the ceremonies of their courts, they hold the courtiers completely distinct from and somewhat independent of the king. They therefore use the name of, but do not pray to, Olorun; and holding him so far above and beyond mankind that he must be addressed through intermediate agencies, they satisfy the yearnings of their human nature by the adoration of subordinate beings. Thus the ancient Christians, whilst asserting that latria, altars, and sacrifice were due to God alone, sanctioned addresses to saints and martyrs, in order to be assisted by their prayers. Hence the worship of Orisha or idols.

The word Orisha is derived by some—Europeans will find the root of everything—from Asha, ‘customs’ or ‘religious ceremonies.’ It is also called Alaybawi—a mediator or intercessor. The saint system and prayers to the Virgin are the vestiges of this idea in Christianity; in El Islam the doctrine of Imams and Walis are fragments of the older creed set, like the Black Stone which was once white, in the corner of the modern faith. Of course the symbol is confounded with the thing symbolized; and the statue or picture, which the enlightened look upon as they would a portrait or a memento, becomes amongst the vulgar an object of absolute worship.[98]

There are three principal Orisha, which word, thus used, does not mean idols, but rather the Di majorum gentium of the Romans, and which appear to be deified heroes and ancestors. This triad consists of Obatala, Shango, and Ifa. It does not, like the Hindu Trinity, express a metaphysical idea of the Demiurgos in his great triune operations—creating, preserving, destroying; nor does it typify the family, as the Egyptian Osiris, Isis, and Horus; nor does it deify the elemental worlds, like the Romans, who personified them by Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto. And it will be remarked that for the grace and beauty of Greek fable these Africans substitute a grotesqueness—the reflex of their own physical and moral peculiarities. It is to be hoped that those enthusiasts who declare that ‘le dogme de la Trinité de Personnes, dans l’Unité de l’Etre, se trouve dans la conscience des peuples,’ will not find the idea in the Yoruban triad as they have in the ‘three perpendicular lines of the Egyptians, the Chinese word equivalent to Jehovah (!), the Tibetan Trabat, the savages of Cuba, the Tanga-tanga of the Peruvians, the Celtic druids, the Odin, Wilo, and We of the Scandinavians, and the book of Zohar.’ A past, present, and future—a creation, preservation, and destruction—are easy mental sequences, starting up instinctively. Besides, the Indo-European race, to which the triad-belief belongs—as opposed to Semitic monotheism—shows, from the most ancient times, the closest connection of thought and derivation of language.

Obatala is derived from Oba ti nla, the King of Greatness, also called Orisha Klá, the great Orisha. Others deduce the word from ‘Oba ti álá,’ King of Whiteness or Purity, whence his worshippers always wear white garments. His other titles are Alamore, ‘owner of the good clay,’ and Orisha Kpokpo, or Idol of the Gate—a guardian and a Janus. In this view he is the first and greatest of created things; some, however, believe him to be an ancient king of Yoruba, and quote the name of his father. Thus Shodeke, as has been said, is in a fair way of becoming a demigod.[99] He is sometimes represented as a warrior on horseback, holding a spear; at other times as an androgyne, which white men philosophize about as representing the male and female energies of nature, whose god is Olorun or Eleda, the creator. Obatala’s wife is Iyangba, or the receiving mother, and is denoted, like Isis and the Madonna, by a woman nursing a child.[100] His sacred symbol is Okko, a ship—the vessel, according to the rationalists, in which the Yoruban people crossed the Niger: it is the Ark of that faith. Obatala created the first man, Okikishi—so called from Okiki, fame, or Obalofu, the lord of speech, equivalent to the Adam of the Hebrews; and the first woman was his wife Iye, or life, from ‘ye,’ to live; in sound and idea curiously resembling Hawwa or Eve. They came from heaven, an idea also found in the book of Genesis. No Hebrew or Moslem believes the garden of Eden to have been upon earth, but in the first or lowest of the Seven Heavens, which is an exact fac-simile of these sub-lunary scenes;[101] with them, therefore, the ‘Fall’ of man is literally a fall. Obalofu and Iye had many children. Their first settlement was at Ife; they then successively removed to Ikose, Igboho (Lander’s Bohoo), and Oyo or Eyeo.

The second great Orisha is called Shango—he is a well-known god.[102] This demi-deity—at once Vulcan, Tubal Cain, Thor, and Jupiter Tonans—was born at Ife, and reigned at Ikoso, a town lately destroyed; others say that he is a Nupe god. He had a palace of brass, and kept 10,000 horses in his stables, showing him, by the analogy of Hercules, and Castor and Pollux, to have been originally a mere mortal. Like certain Hebrew worthies, he went alive to heaven, where he reigns in state, hunts, fishes, markets, and wars. The abstract Shango is the grandson of Aganju, the desert or firmament, a descendant from Okikishi: his father is Orungan, or midday, and his mother is Yemaya or Ijemoja, ‘mother of fishes,’ an unimportant river in Yoruba.[103] His elder brother is Dada, or nature—from ‘da,’ to create; his younger is the River Ogun; his friend and associate is Orishako, god of farms; his slave, Biri, or darkness; his wives are the Rivers Oya (Niger), Oshun, and Obba; and his priest is Magba, the Receiver—not a bad name. His worshippers carry a bag, because he was fond of predatory wars. Practically, Shango is the deity of thunder, lightning,[104] and fire: he is also called Jákuta, or the stone-thrower, and he favours the good, especially protecting hunters, fishermen, and warriors. Wherever lightning has struck, or an aërolite[105] has fallen, there Shango has been; when a house is fired, or is struck by lightning, the priests and mob rush in to find the stone, and seize the opportunity of plundering; besides which, they claim a general right to steal goats and chickens. Shango’s symbol is a small wooden bat, called ‘ose,’ with a handle one foot long. He is consulted by throwing sixteen pierced cowries: if eight fall upwards and eight downwards, it is peace; if all are upwards, it is also a good sign; and, _vice versâ_, if all fall with their teeth to the ground, it is war.

The last of the triad is Ifa, which appears to be not a person, but a myth, originating at the town of Ife.[106] He is the revealer of futurity, and the patron of marriage and childbirth. His high priest—the head of the Babbalawo, or Fathers of Secrets—is said to live upon a mountain near Awaye, a gigantic cone of granite eight to ten miles in circumference, seen from the distance of several days’ journey towering solitary above the landscape, and surmounted, it is said, by a palm- tree, bearing sixteen boughs, produced by the sixteen nuts planted by the sixteen founders of the Yoruban empire. His chief priest at Abeokuta is known as Obba Limore, King of the grove; and none but the secret- keeping sex is initiated into the mysteries. As the great oracle, Ifa supports a large family, who live gratis upon the offerings of the devotees—sheep and goats, fowls and pigeons.[107] The priests are known by their bead necklaces, small strings twisted together, with ten large white and green beads, some inches apart. They officiate in white, and constantly use a fly-whisk. Their deity being called Bángá, God of Palm- nuts, they choose as his symbols those that are placental with four holes. The operation of casting lots is intricate, and is variously described by different observers: odd and even, and ‘heads or tails,’ appear to be the ruling principles.[108] Ifa proved unexpectedly—if not paid for the purpose—a friend to the white man at Abeokuta. When consulted whether missionaries should be admitted, he answered, ‘Yes.’ When it was further inquired whether a church might be founded at Igbeni, he replied in the affirmative. The pious of Understone refer his general correctness to the operation of evil spirits: on this occasion, however, as in many others, Satan seems to have amused himself with casting out sin.

Besides these three great Orishas, there are many Di minorum gentium, who are, even more palpably, men and women of note in their day—of whom only the principal will be noticed.

Ogun is the god of blacksmiths and armourers. He is also the patron of hunters and warriors, in which quality human sacrifices are offered to him. The victim is decapitated, the head is affixed to a tree, and the body is placed publicly before the symbol, a dwarf, spear shaped, iron or copper, to which a chain is attached.

The sun and the moon are worshipped at Ife, ‘the Pantheon of Yoruba,’ where a brazen chair and brass images of these objects fell from heaven.

A peculiar worship in this country is Ori, which means the worshipper’s own head, seeming to involve the idea of luck or good fortune. Other parts of the body are worshipped; the foot, for instance, before proceeding on a journey—and most African travellers will sympathize with this sentiment. The symbol of Ori is half a calabash stuck with almonds, like a pudding, till the substance can hardly be seen, and hung about with long strings of the same shell. This is placed upon the ground, and duly adored. A similar emblem belongs to Dada, whom the missionaries translate Nature, but who is rather the god or genius of newly-born children. His sign is a cawl, and he is worshipped as a calabash, provided with longer strings than those of Ori.

Odua or Odudua, the universe, or the goddess of earth and sky, is located at Ife.[109] Oye is the Yoruban Æolus, the Harmattan, a giant, residing in a cave of the winds at Igbetti, one of the highest mountains in Yoruba, between Igboho and Ilori: during the dry season he rushes out and breathes cold over the land: in Hausa ice is not unknown.

The idol Oriskako—_i.e._, Orisha Oko—patron of farms, has its head- quarters—_i.e._, its priests and sacrifices—at Irawo, a town in Western Yoruba. Its symbol is a large iron bar, and its worship is very expensive. The people have a tradition that in the olden time a six- fingered giant dwelt at the Egba town of Igbehi. When summoned to swear by Oriskako, at Irawo, he waxed wroth, slew the priests, and carried off ten of the sacred bars, for which reason no native of Igbehi is allowed to enter Irawo.

The ‘Orisha of children’ is a truly hideous little image, carried about by women, in their waist-clothes, when one of twins dies or is destroyed:[110] consequently these idols are of two sexes. The male, about a span and two fingers high, is in the rudest semblance of a man, mounted on a little circular pedestal, with a head like a Pongo’s, a top-knot of hair, huge ears, prognathous jaws, projecting lips, and thin lozenge-shaped cuts on the forehead, and on each cheek three similar horizontal and three perpendicular. The body—but little longer than the head, or broader than the feet—is in the style of the coarsest Hindu idol: a kind of pent-roof descends from the waist, exposing the legs, which are much shorter than the forearm. The feminine figure is wholly nude, in equally symmetrical proportions, finished as certain statues outside the Pitti Palace at Florence, and with a bosom of the largest dimensions, showing the true African _beau-idéal_. These idols are both adorned with rings and bracelets of beads: they are hardly to be bought at Abeokuta: at Lagos, however, two men make them, at the rate of three shillings each. I sent a pair for the edification of those at home.

With all these beneficent deities, it would be curious if the Egbas neglected the worship of the bad god—the Guebre’s Ahriman. Accordingly, we find they have a terrible evil entity, whom they call Eshu, the Rejected—from ‘shu,’ to cast out—and whom the missionaries identify with the Devil, who is palpably a Semite. Eshu is probably some bad ghost, who has made a name amongst the million. Of the same kind is Akilasho. Eshu is also called Elegbárá, the mighty and evil being, stronger than good: he is propitiated by small offerings; his symbol, erroneously called an altar, is a bit of stone—a rude conglomerate of pebbles set in clay, tinged with oxide—and upon this palm oil is poured. Vestiges of this ‘devil worship’[111] are everywhere to be seen in the streets of Abeokuta. The Egbas have borrowed from the Moslem Fula the word Ibilisi, the Arab Iblis or Sathanas; amongst the latter, however, it is concrete and objective, not so with the former. Orun Akpadi represents the rude beginning of a future place of punishment; at present, however, it seems to convey to their minds the next world—a faint idea of continuation is familiar to most Africans, except to the most material tribes—where evil-doers will expiate the sins of this life.

We now proceed to a third class of deities, which distinctly shows the power of religion as a substitute for police or gendarmerie amongst a barbarous people. The two principal persons—if they can so be called—are Egugun and Oro.

Egugun—literally meaning ‘Bones’—is supposed to be a dead man risen from the grave: he is called by Europeans the Aku Devil.[112] He is not unknown at Lagos, but his powers are greater at Abeokuta and in the northern parts of Yoruba. He is the local Mumbo Jumbo, the Ndá and Kuhkwi of Southern Guinea, the Okuku of the Mpongwe, Bakele, and Shekani tribes, the Makoko of Batanga, the Lú of Bambarra, and the Simo of the Rio Nunez. ‘Egugun sha’au’—‘Egugun chop you!’—is the equivalent of our ‘Devil take you!’ I once met this ‘party’ in the streets. He was a tall fellow, without the drawn sword mentioned by Mr. Bowen, but otherwise most fantastically clad. His face was covered with a plaiting of net- work, like a mask, and his head with a hood, whose streamers of red scarlet crimson and dirty white hung down and mixed with the similar tatters and patches of his lower dress. To his back, between the shoulders, was suspended a German penny mirror, and his shoes, like moccassins, completely hid his feet. The latter members he is not supposed to possess; and the same was thought of Europeans before they were seen to remove their boots and stockings. Egugun replied with a curious and studied grunting to our facetious salutations, and moved out of the way of the horses. It is said that if any one—even the king—touches him, the man must die. Adult males, and even the free-born boys, know Egugun to be a mortal; but if a woman swears falsely by him, or even says that he is not a tenant of the grave, she would lose her life. The missionaries have declared that ‘even Mohammedans and Christians are obliged to conceal their knowledge of the imposture under penalty of martyrdom’—but this, I think, is hardly probable. Egugun, then, is a ‘Raw bones and bloody head,’ apparently intended to keep slaves, women, and children in a state of due subjection: he is the whip and the cucking-stool apotheosised. In Southern Guinea the women have a counteracting institution called Njembe.

If Egugun represent the domestic, Oro personifies the public police; and it is explained as ‘the executive or vindictive power of civil government deified.’ The word properly means pain, torment, punishment. The derivation has naturally been sought in ‘Orun, the sun; in the Hebrew Aur; in the Ur of the Chaldees; in οὐρανὸς; in the Egyptian Pharaoh; in the Orotalt or Urrat-Ilat (fire-goddess) of the Pagan Arabs; in Aurora and Aurum, and, more remote still, in the Madagascan Auru, the Philippine Arao, and the Peruvian Uru;’ but apparently, by going farther, philological vagary has fared worse. We will rest contented, then, with its primary meaning, ‘punishment’—when a criminal is killed, he is ‘given to Oro,’ and thus the penalty assumes a Macchiavellian mystery—and we will conclude that it represents to the Egba what Nemesis did to the Greek and Roman.

Oro is a _vox et præterea nihil_, and an idea common to Yoruba; I afterwards found him flourishing at the city of Great Benin. Like Egugun, he is supposed not to be known to the women—as if that were possible!—and I have seen an Egbanized Englishman show terror on hearing his name mentioned in public. Mr. Bowen has been greatly blamed by the Abeokutans for revealing the great secret in print. Oro is supposed to haunt the woods, and when he appears it is for the purpose of striking terror. Nightly, about 7 or 8 P.M., the cry of ‘Oro’ (the voice of my father) resounds in the streets; at this savage tocsin the women must fly within doors, under the usual penalty, a violent death. It was not without trouble that the missionaries obtained permission for their female converts to attend service on Sunday evenings. Oro, however, does not visit the market-places, and he disappears before a party of men with lanterns. This African curfew is produced by a thin slip of wood, about one foot long by a few inches in breadth, fastened to a stick by a long string, which allows it to ascend and descend, thereby raising and lowering the tone. I recommend this utensil—whose curious booming noise, as it sounds through the shades of night, is imposing enough—to Mr. Hume and the Spiritualists. It is as superior to the silk kerchief and the easy-tongs as the Thug’s silken cord is to the foul fustian sleeve of the English garotter. The voice of Oro is accompanied by a terrible caterwauling, in imitation of wild beasts; and he appears to be everywhere—the fact is, he is stationed in all the different quarters of the city. As a _vox_, he curbs the irregularities which would be favoured by the darkness of night and the shading trees. He is certainly armed, and probably he consists of a strong party. A corpse whose throat has been cut, and whose shin-bones have been broken with fearful violence by this ‘spirit,’ may at times be seen.

I was not fortunate enough to witness an Oro day; the ceremonies, however, were lengthily explained to me. It takes place only on occasions of great palavers. The principal requisite is that no woman must be seen out of doors; and the object is obvious—to insure a decent silence during debate. We read in ‘Appleton’[113] that the old Mohawks always avoided speaking whilst paddling across the Saratoga Lake. On one occasion an Englishwoman persuaded them to ferry her over, which they did with the promise that their custom should be respected. The strong- minded Britoness, when half way over, determined to ‘show the savages the weakness of their superstition,’ and to that effect uttered a loud cry. Nothing followed, and the chief was rallied upon the subject of his fears. ‘The Great Spirit,’ replied the Mohawk, with much truth, ‘is merciful; he knows that a white woman cannot hold her tongue.’ Now the Egbas have found in their simplicity the method of doing what the Eastern proverb declares to be impossible—of curbing a certain member of a certain sex.

When the town is ‘given to Oro,’ as the phrase is, criers go about shouting, ‘Atolo! Atolo! Ozez! Ozez!’ and striking clapperless unbrazed bells like extinguishers. The women rush within the house—the gates are apparently built for the purpose—and pass their hours in ‘knagging’ and quarrelling. The men and boys go abroad; in places the streets are desert as those of New York on Sundays, whilst others are crowded with dancers and tumblers, processions and stump orators—in fact, with all the material of a ‘palaver.’ The Ogbone lodges are filled with their members, who discuss the important measure after the African fashion, every one freely giving his own opinion, however far-fetched or ridiculous. According to Mr. Campbell, severe whippings are then and there administered to those offending with the fair sex. Breakers of the seventh commandment, says Mr. Bowen, are obliged to run the gauntlet in the public square. After sunset the firing of guns—which are not allowed to be discharged during the hours of light—announces the conclusion of an Oro day, when the town returns to its normal occupations.