Captain Canot; Or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver
third day, we had not advanced more than thirty miles from the scene
of capture, when we reached a small _Mandingo_ village, recently built
by an upstart trader, who, with the common envy and pride of his
tribe, gave our _Fullah_ caravan a frigid reception. A single hut was
assigned to the chief and myself for a dwelling, and the rage of the
Mahometan may readily be estimated by an insult that would doom him to
sleep beneath the same roof with a Christian!
I endeavored to avert an outburst by apprising the Mandingo that I was
a bosom friend of Ali-Ninpha, his countryman and superior, and begged
that he would suffer the "head-man" of our caravan to dwell in a
house _alone_. But the impudent _parvenu_ sneered at my advice; "he
knew no such person as Ali-Ninpha, and cared not a snap of his finger
for a Fullah chief, or a beggarly white man!"
My body-servant was standing by when this tart reply fell from the
Mandingo's lips, and, before I could stop the impetuous youth, he
answered the trader with as gross an insult as an African can utter.
To this the Mandingo replied by a blow over the boy's shoulders with
the flat of a cutlass; and, in a twinkling, there was a general shout
for "rescue" from all my party who happened to witness the scene.
Fullahs, Mandingoes, and Soosoos dashed to the spot, with spears,
guns, and arrows. The Fullah chief seized my double-barrelled gun and
followed the crowd; and when he reached the spot, seeing the trader
still waving his cutlass in a menacing manner, he pulled both triggers
at the inhospitable savage. Fortunately, however, it was always my
custom on arriving in _friendly_ towns, to remove the copper caps from
my weapons, so that, when the hammers fell, the gun was silent. Before
the Fullah could club the instrument and prostrate the insulter, I
rushed between them to prevent murder. This I was happy enough to
succeed in; but I could not deter the rival tribe from binding the
brute, hand and foot, to a post in the centre of his town, while the
majority of our caravan cleared the settlement at once of its fifty or
sixty inhabitants.
Of course, we appropriated the dwellings as we pleased, and supplied
ourselves with provisions. Moreover, it was thought preferable to wait
in this village for Ali-Ninpha, than to proceed onwards towards the
borders of the Sanghu. When he arrived, on the second day after the
sad occurrence, he did not hesitate to exercise the prerogative of
judgment and condemnation always claimed by superior chiefs over
inferiors, whenever they consider themselves slighted or wronged. The
process in this case was calmly and humanely formed. A regular trial
was allowed the culprit. He was arraigned on three charges:--1. Want
of hospitality; 2. Cursing and maltreating a Fullah chief and a white
Mongo; 3. Disrespect to the name and authority of his countryman and
superior, Ali-Ninpha. On all these articles the prisoner was found
guilty; but, as there were neither slaves nor personal property by
which the ruffian could be mulcted for his crimes, the tribunal
adjudged him to be scourged with fifty lashes, and to have his
"town-fence or stockade destroyed, never to be rebuilt." The blows
were inflicted for the abuse, but the perpetual demolition of his
defensive barrier was in punishment for refused hospitality. Such is
the summary process by which social virtues are inculcated and
enforced among these interior tribes of Africa!
* * * * *
It required three days for our refreshed caravan to reach the dry and
precipitous bed of the Sanghu, which I found impossible to pass with
my horse, in consequence of jagged rocks and immense boulders that
covered its channel. But the men were resolved that my convenient
animal should not be left behind. Accordingly, all hands went to work
with alacrity on the trees, and in a day, they bridged the ravine with
logs bound together by ropes made from twisted bark. Across this frail
and swaying fabric I urged the horse with difficulty; but hardly had
he reached the opposite bank, and recovered from his nervous tremor,
when I was surprised by an evident anxiety in the beast to return to
his swinging pathway. The guides declared it to be an instinctive
warning of danger from wild beasts with which the region is filled;
and, even while we spoke, two of the scouts who were in advance
selecting ground for our camp, returned with the carcasses of a deer
and leopard. Though meat had not passed our lips for five days, we
were in no danger of starvation; the villages teemed with fruits and
vegetables. Pine-apples, bananas, and a pulpy globe resembling the
peach in form and flavor, quenched our thirst and satisfied our
hunger.
Besides these, our greedy natives foraged in the wilderness for
nourishment unknown, or at least unused, by civilized folks. They
found comfort in barks of various trees, as well as in buds, berries,
and roots, some of which they devoured raw, while others were either
boiled or made into palatable decoctions with water that gurgled from
every hill. The broad valleys and open country supplied animal and
vegetable "delicacies" which a white man would pass unnoticed. Many a
time, when I was as hungry as a wolf, I found my vagabonds in a nook
of the woods, luxuriating over a mess with the unctuous lips of
aldermen; but when I came to analyze the stew, I generally found it to
consist of a "witch's cauldron," copiously filled with snails,
lizards, iguanas, frogs and alligators!
CHAPTER XX.
A journey to the interior of Africa would be a rural jaunt, were it
not so often endangered by the perils of war. The African may fairly
be characterized as a shepherd, whose pastoral life is varied by a
little agriculture, and the conflicts into which he is seduced, either
by family quarrels, or the natural passions of his blood. His country,
though uncivilized, is not so absolutely wild as is generally
supposed. The gradual extension of Mahometanism throughout the
interior is slowly but evidently modifying the Negro. An African
Mussulman is _still_ a warrior, for the dissemination of faith as well
as for the gratification of avarice; yet the Prophet's laws are so
much more genial than the precepts of paganism, that, within the last
half century, the humanizing influence of the Koran is acknowledged by
all who are acquainted with the interior tribes.
But in all the changes that may come over the spirit of _man_ in
Africa, her magnificent external _nature_ will for ever remain the
game. A little labor teems with vast returns. The climate exacts
nothing but shade from the sun and shelter from the storm. Its
oppressive heat forbids a toilsome industry, and almost enforces
indolence as a law. With every want supplied, without the allurements
of social rivalry, without the temptations of national ambition or
personal pride, what has the African to do in his forest of palm and
cocoa,--his grove of orange, pomegranate and fig,--on his mat of
comfortable repose, where the fruit stoops to his lips without a
struggle for the prize,--save to brood over, or gratify, the electric
passions with which his soul seems charged to bursting!
It is an interesting task to travel through a continent filled with
such people, whose minds are just beginning, here and there, to emerge
from the vilest heathenism, and to glimmer with a faith that bears
wrapped in its unfolded leaves, the seeds of a modified civilization.
* * * * *
As I travelled in the "dry season," I did not encounter many of the
discomforts that beset the African wayfarer in periods of rain and
tempest. I was not obliged to flounder through lagoons, or swim
against the current of perilous rivers. We met their traces almost
every day; and, in many places, the soil was worn into parched ravines
or the tracks of dried-up torrents. Whatever affliction I experienced
arose from the wasting depression of heat. We did not suffer from lack
of water or food, for the caravan of the ALI-MAMI commanded implicit
obedience throughout our journey.
In the six hundred miles I traversed, whilst absent from the coast, my
memory, after twenty-six years, leads me, from beginning to end,
through an almost continuous forest-path. We struck a trail when we
started, and we left it when we came home. It was rare, indeed, to
encounter a cross road, except when it led to neighboring villages,
water, or cultivated fields. So dense was the forest foliage, that we
often walked for hours in shade without a glimpse of the sun. The
emerald light that penetrated the wood, bathed every thing it touched
with mellow refreshment. But we were repaid for this partial bliss by
intense suffering when we came forth from the sanctuary into the bare
valleys, the arid _barrancas_, and marshy _savannas_ of an open
region. There, the red eye of the African sun glared with merciless
fervor. Every thing reflected its rays. They struck us like lances
from above, from below, from the sides, from the rocks, from the
fields, from the stunted herbage, from the bushes. All was glare! Our
eyes seemed to simmer in their sockets. Whenever the path followed
the channel of a brook, whose dried torrents left bare the scorched
and broken rocks, our feet fled from the ravine as from heated iron.
Frequently we entered extensive _prairies_, covered with blades of
sword-grass, tall as our heads, whose jagged edges tore us like saws,
though we protected our faces with masks of wattled willows. And yet,
after all these discomforts, how often are my dreams haunted by
charming pictures of natural scenery that have fastened themselves for
ever in my memory!
As the traveller along the coast turns the prow of his canoe through
the surf, and crosses the angry bar that guards the mouth of an
African river, he suddenly finds himself moving calmly onward between
sedgy shores, buried in mangroves. Presently, the scene expands in the
unruffled mirror of a deep, majestic stream. Its lofty banks are
covered by innumerable varieties of the tallest forest trees, from
whoso summits a trailing network of vines and flowers floats down and
sweeps the passing current. A stranger who beholds this scenery for
the first time is struck by the immense size, the prolific abundance,
and gorgeous verdure of every thing. Leaves, large enough for
garments, lie piled and motionless in the lazy air: The bamboo and
cane shake their slender spears and pennant leaves as the stream
ripples among their roots. Beneath the massive trunks of forest trees,
the country opens; and, in vistas through the wood, the traveller sees
innumerable fields lying fallow in grass, or waving with harvests of
rice and _cassava_, broken by golden clusters of Indian corn. Anon,
groups of oranges, lemons, coffee-trees, plantains and bananas, are
crossed by the tall stems of cocoas, and arched by the broad and
drooping coronals of royal palm. Beyond this, capping the summit of a
hill, may be seen the conical huts of natives, bordered by fresh
pastures dotted with flocks of sheep and goats, or covered by numbers
of the sleekest cattle. As you leave the coast, and shoot round the
river-curves of this fragrant wilderness teeming with flowers, vocal
with birds, and gay with their radiant plumage, you plunge into the
interior, where the rising country slowly expands into hills and
mountains.
The forest is varied. Sometimes it is a matted pile of tree vine, and
bramble, obscuring every thing, and impervious save with knife and
hatchet. At others, it is a Gothic temple. The sward spreads openly
for miles on every side, while, from its even surface, the trunks of
straight and massive trees rise to a prodigious height, clear from
every obstruction, till their gigantic limbs, like the capitals of