Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville Part 11

1843

The canoe manned by four paddlers in which I had crossed the bar at Guet-n-dar was carried high up on the sand on the crest of a huge wave.

A crowd of blacks rushed forward before the wave could come back, lifted me out, and put me down, with loud shouts of "Pet.i.t roi pas goutte d'eau" (Not a drop of water on our little king), at the feet of Bobokar, King of Guet-n-dar, a tall negro, dressed in a striped cotton gown, and with a laced c.o.c.ked hat on his head, which had seen better days on a general officer's or a coachman's.

As soon as I was landed, the King of Guet-n-dar (I only call him king in obedience to the African custom which bestows the t.i.tle on every chief who has a right to beat other people)--the King, I say, set himself to work to make way for me through his subjects crowding round, with heavy blows from his cudgel, and crossing the tongue of sand between the Senegal river and the sea, which forms his kingdom, I entered St. Louis, the capital of our possessions on the West African coast. While n.o.body talks anything but sugar at Martinique, nor cod in Newfoundland, at St. Louis the only subject of conversation is GUM. It is its staple product, and indeed is found nowhere else, except in Arabia.

The gum forests are in country belonging to the Arabs, on the right bank of the Senegal river, and are consequently in the hands of the Moors, who carry the produce to the river. The various stations we have established along its course are intended for the protection of the traders or coloured agents, acting as intermediaries between the natives, and the white merchants, unable themselves to face the deadly climate, and also to close the road to the British markets on the Gambia river to the Moors. To the garrisons of these stations, regular charnel-houses, our officers and men come out to die, or else to catch the germ of some incurable illness. I learn that nowadays, by dint of using quinine as a preventive, and of improvements in some other respects, the effects of the unhealthy climate have been somewhat reduced, but when I was there the condition of things was really terrible. So my first care, when I reached St. Louis, was to go and see the victims of duty in the hospital into which they were crowded, and my heart swelled at the sight of all the poor yellow wasted faces many of them already bearing the signs of approaching dissolution. Poor brave fellows! How I wished I had crosses to pin on all their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, to soften the last moments of the life they had given for their country, by a sign of its remembrance of them! But I had not one, and I could not help feeling furious at the thought that we were close on New Year's day, and that a perfect rain of honours was about to fall on a heap of theatrical directors who had done special service to the government, and private secretaries, and political writers, who had never been off the Boulevards, the favoured elect of the world of politics--those odious politics! The dismal, ill-built, rickety hospital was perfectly well managed at all events, thanks to our naval surgeons, and also to our admirable sisters of charity, whose names I cannot p.r.o.nounce without indulging in another and an indignant digression.

Can we really have fallen so low as to tolerate that these holy and n.o.ble women, who have lightened so much suffering, and so worthily sustained the good name of France all over the world, should be sacrificed in these latter days to a pack of public-house reformers and would-be strong-minded freethinkers?

From the hospital, that ante-chamber of death, I went to the barracks for the living, mere dens, built by St. Routine to sealed pattern, at so much a foot, identically the same in every climate, and absolutely unsuitable for any. How different from the s.p.a.cious, airy, comfortable edifices raised by the English for the comfort and well-being of their colonial garrisons!

St. Louis is built beside a river, the flat banks of which are seen stretching away hedged in by ma.s.ses of green vegetation. In the mornings the town is usually wrapped in an unhealthy fog. Yet this is the moment at which the inhabitants are to be seen languidly dragging themselves along the straight sandy streets, between the negro huts and a few white houses with terraces before them. When the fog lifts the place is nothing but a scorching desert. I was to have gone up the river to inspect our military stations and their garrisons, but the only available boat was detained outside the bar across the mouth of the river, which was absolutely impa.s.sable. After waiting for it in vain for several days, I left St. Louis for Goree and Dakar.

At Goree I once more saw the pretty signares, a regularly enlisted company of mulatto women, which furnishes our officers, civil and military, with wives and housekeepers during their turn of colonial service. Then I came again upon my friend the King of Dakar, an old acquaintance of mine, who sent me his compliments by his "general of cavalry," a perfect giant in stature, excessively thin, who wore a stock and a c.o.c.ked hat, and no breeches.

At Goree I embarked on board the colonial despatch boat Galibi to inspect our stations on the Gambia and the Cazamanze. This vessel was herself a curiosity, not indeed as a ship of war, for she was a fine little steam despatch boat, armed with four guns, but on account of the organisation and composition of her crew. There were only four whites on board--the lieutenant in command, a poor fellow who was soon to fall a victim to the climate and die at his post, a clerk, an engineer, and a master-gunner. All the rest of the crew were negroes, hypocritically denominated Government prisoners, whose whole costume, as a rule, consisted of a monkey-skin cap and a string of grigris, or charms, round their waists. "Haven't you ever tried to dress them?" said I to the lieutenant.

"Oh yes, but as soon as they get on sh.o.r.e they instantly sell their things, or give them away to their women, and come back naked. So I have given it up."

When it was time for us to start, the captain owned to me that none of the crew had ever known how to steer, except one negro, who acted as his butler, and he could only steer in a river, by keeping the ship at an equal distance from the two banks. He had never been able to understand anything about steering by the compa.s.s at sea. As we had to go a certain distance at sea before reaching the mouth of the rivers, I took on board a whaler and crew from my frigate, and my men went to the wheel. But now a fresh difficulty arose. The single engineer could not stop by his engine for ever, without taking any rest. Now and then the care of the machinery had to be confided to a negro, whom he had trained after a certain fashion, and I confess I felt far from easy when I saw him handling the levers and taps with all the self-confidence of a monkey showing off a magic lantern. Besides our negro crew, there was a perfect menagerie of creatures loose on board.

Gazelles, which were inoffensive enough, I must grant, a legion of ill-behaved monkeys, and a tame civet. The monkeys never stopped playing spiteful tricks on everybody all day long, and at night they all huddled together, clasping each other, with their tails sticking out like the rays of a star or the spokes of a wheel. If by anybody's fault or misfortune one of those tails got trodden on, the whole cl.u.s.ter of monkeys yelled for an hour, just as journalists do if a finger is laid on one of their fraternity. As for the civet, she used to offer her company as bed-fellow to each of us in turn, and it was of the most stinking and disagreeable kind.

We soon reached the mouth of the Gambia River, and, entering it through a labyrinth of sandbanks, we saw a wide stream with flat sh.o.r.es covered with mangrove swamps, behind which aquatic form of vegetation huge trees rose, fantastically tall, and in all the splendour of their tropical growth. All the rivers of the West African coast present this identically same appearance. We had hardly entered this one before we were confronted by one of those international questions which swarm on the coast in this part of the globe. The Gambia is a British river, but on its banks is a territory belonging to us, called Albreda, which I was about to visit. Had we a right to go there direct, up the English waters of the Gambia, or ought we to stop first of all at St. Mary Bathurst, the capital of the British possessions on the river, to ask permission to do so? If a merchant vessel, French or otherwise, tried to get up to Albreda, the British stopped her by fair words or force, to maintain their right. But this we were contesting, and as the business was still in suspense, I pa.s.sed St. Mary Bathurst without stopping, and anch.o.r.ed at Albreda. It is not a very important factory.

I was received by four white men and a crowd of negroes. The white inhabitant stretched on a couch under the veranda of the one-storied house in which he dwells, has no society beyond that of the signare, who acts provisionally as his wife, and the crowd of slaves of both s.e.xes who go and come around him. Fever lurks on every side, and carries him off on the slightest imprudence. But it is a rich country, for it is inhabited by a race of negroes, fervent Mussulmans, who are industrious workers, and the produce of their industry is a lucrative article of barter. In the evening, after a long walk through the woods, balmy with a thousand sweet scents, where flights of lovely birds, long-tailed parrokeets, and black-plumaged widow birds, perched in the trees, I saw a small British vessel approach, and an officer put off from her. He had been sent by the governor, who was on board, and had been going up the river to call on the captain of the French ship, and express his regret at not having seen him at Bathurst in the morning--a covert complaint, in fact. On hearing who I was, and that I expected to go to Bathurst the following day, he sent me word that he would return and receive me there.

The flagstaff on which our colours had been hoisted having fallen down, I had it set up again. It was necessary in a disputed country, such as this was, and pending the Government's decision, that our flag should wave over our colonists, and protect them from all insult.

Then I landed at Bathurst. Our captives, anxiously directed by the master-gunner, contrived somehow or other to fire a salute of twenty-one guns, which was instantly returned from the British forts, and I went ash.o.r.e in the whale-boat I had brought from the Belle-Poule.

The commander of the Galibi, who wanted to escort me, had manned a boat and rigged out his men for the nonce in smart striped shirts and red caps. Wonderful to relate, they were so electrified by the reception I was given, and the example of my white crew, that they brought both shirts and caps faithfully back! I was received on the beach by a company of what in those days was called the Royal African Corps--splendid black troops, officered by white men. I had a great deal of conversation with the governor, a very sensible man, who expressed the hope that my visit would result in a prompt settlement of a state of local affairs which might give rise to the most serious difficulties. He was exceedingly civil to me, and gave me a very fine dinner-party, before which I was somewhat astonished to see "the ladies" appear in the drawing-room, in the shape of three very dark mulattoes, in full evening dress--low bodices, lace pocket-handkerchiefs, and fans. The doors of the dining-room having just been thrown open, the governor indicated to me by a gesture that I was to take one of these ladies into dinner. Not knowing which of them should take precedence, I held my arm out in the middle of the drawing-room, and one of the dark-skinned ladies blushingly put hers within it. Many years afterwards, dining at Washington with that agreeable man, Charles Sumner, the great abolitionist, and some very charming ladies, I amused myself by telling him about my Bathurst dinner, and asked him whether HE had ever given his arm to a negress. I awaited his answer with some curiosity, to see whether he would dare answer in the affirmative before the American ladies, who are so sensitive on the colour question, but he got out of it very adroitly.

"My dear Prince," said he, "in every religion each man has his own share of work. I preach and you practise. Don't let us mix the two things up together."

As we were steaming out of the Gambia I saw the commander of the Galibi on his bridge, in a state of violent excitement, with all his crew mustered before him, and appealing in the most vehement manner to his capitaine de riviere (river captain), the t.i.tle borne by the chief of the negro crew. I joined him, and he said, "I've just been mustering the men. I can't recollect all the fellows' names, so I count heads.

I've done it over again four or five times, and there is always one man too many." And then he began to yell again, "Capitaine de riviere!

What's the meaning of this? There's a man too many!" The capitaine de riviere, who had stationed himself well forward, pretended not to hear, but, driven at last from his refuge, he came aft, pulling off his bell-crowned hat, the distinctive sign of his authority, and, uncovering his shock of gray hair, like a woollen travelling cap, murmured in his gentlest tones, "Please, sir, he's a LITTLE PRESENT I was given at Bathurst!"

We were soon in the Cazamanze, after having very nearly been lost on the sandbanks obstructing the entrance to the river, on which the sea breaks furiously. The river is a fine one, wide and deep. I steamed up it for about a hundred miles. After the few villages near the mouth we came to a desert country, covered with impenetrable forest and jungle.

We steamed along between two walls of green, and our only excitement as we went was to watch the numerous hippopotami, who seemed very much put out by the pa.s.sing of the Galibi. As we neared our station at Sedhiou, which I was going to inspect, we noticed several villages, the inhabitants of which greeted us with yells. The jungle had been cleared around the houses, over which the great trees stood like huge parasols.

So gigantic was the growth, that sometimes a whole village was sheltered by one and the same tree. The post of Sedhiou--a brick-built fort, with a little bastion armed with a gun at each corner--is placed at a point of great importance on the caravan line from the interior. I was received by an infantry captain, M. Dallin, who had done the most excellent service there, but ruined his health, and by two white soldiers, both wasted by fever. The rest of the garrison consisted of black soldiers, splendid fellows, brave and faithful, and excellent workmen, who had done, and were still doing, all the work on the station.

Thinking of those fine soldiers, and then casting back my memory to the services recently rendered by their successors, the Senegalese Riflemen--first-cla.s.s troops, useful anywhere, like our Algerian Turcos, who have already proved what they are worth--I ask myself why we should not utilise the considerable recruiting opportunities Western Africa offers us to raise a number of negro battalions. They might if properly enlisted be most usefully employed, especially in those unhealthy countries where we now squander so many invaluable lives. I will even go further, for it is my conviction that in thus acting we should be preparing for the future, and outstripping the march of events. The state of armed preparation which now exists in Europe--with every man a soldier, and forced to be a soldier, with every man's career interrupted, and each man's existence hanging on the chance of an electoral surprise or a parliamentary incident--cannot possibly last. It is unhappily to be feared that to escape from this insane condition of things some violent shock will be necessary, which will make a clean sweep of the false notions dressed up in fine names which we have been acc.u.mulating for the past century. When that crisis is over, people will want to be free, as Americans are free--free to do and to be WHAT THEY CHOOSE, and, especially, free not to be soldiers UNLESS THEY CHOOSE. There can be no doubt at all that those inventions of revolutionary tyranny, conscription and compulsory service, will become the object of universal horror, and that the first person who dares to take the initiative in abolishing them will be saluted by the blessings of the entire human race. Wherefore every government will perforce have to come to what is right and just--to armies consisting of volunteers and auxiliaries. And who knows whether we shall not then find the real strength of our army in our black regiments, just as Russia would in her yellow-skinned ones and Great Britain in her Indian troops? But I must bring this digression to a close.

As we steamed down the Cazamanze we ran aground, and while the ship was being got off I went ash.o.r.e, in a creek, where at the very outset I disturbed the slumbers of a couple of crocodiles sleeping on a stone. A moment later I was nearly knocked over by a big boar with reddish bristles and up-curved fangs, a "wart hog." Then I got into the brush, tall gra.s.s much higher than myself, above which hung the green roof of the giant trees. Pushing my way along I came to a place where the ground was trodden and the branches broken, and on which I saw the traces and fresh tracks of a herd of elephants. Close to me, too, I heard the crackling caused by the pa.s.sage of some big animal which I could not see. We followed the elephants' path, but hindered by the gra.s.ses they had trodden down, and our feet catching in the holes made in the damp soil by their huge feet, we were soon forced to beat a retreat. Another wild beast's track led us to an immense glade, like a small plain, hemmed in by the woods, where we saw herds of antelope quietly feeding. We started in pursuit of them, but like the ducks on the ponds, the creatures seemed to have a very correct appreciation of the distance our guns would carry and the impotent fire we poured on them disturbed them not. Not a single beast even left the plain to take shelter in the woods, where we could hear the greater wild ones howling. Ah! if we had possessed long-range weapons, what a shoot we should have had, and what a paradise of sport that virgin country was!

But one victim only fell to our rifles, a big monkey, which one of our sailors killed, and which he and his comrades eat. It was, so it would appear, a dish to lick your lips over!

For want of game we brought something else back with us from this expedition up the Gambia and Cazamanze rivers--fever. Not a soul escaped it, and in spite of the care of the surgeon-major of the Belle-Poule, who was particularly skilful in treating the malady, we took a long time to get over it. I went back to Goree, where I was to see another sad sight. One of our gunboats had come in from a river-station with only four healthy men out of seventy-five. Typhus fever was decimating the crew. I had to present the Cross of the Legion of Honour to the lieutenant in command, M. de Langle, who had behaved like a hero. I went alongside his ship to see him in the lonely creek to which the infected vessel had been relegated. A crowd of spectral figures crept to the ports to look at me. It was a pitiful scene.

I had by this time gone the round of nearly all our possessions along the West Coast of Africa, and the impression I was carrying away was far from being a good one. On this coast, as elsewhere, France originally outstripped all other nations, and the first European expeditions to the Black Continent were sent out from Dieppe during the fourteenth century. The princ.i.p.al merchandise they brought back consisted of ivory, and the branch of industry occupied by working this substance still exists in that town at the present day. Up to the eighteenth century all the important factories on the coast were in our hands. After that date, just as in India and America, where also we had been the earliest colonists, everything began to go to ruin, and our possessions dwindled to the unimportant posts I had just been to see.

Since my visit an effort has been made to recommence some extension of our factories and trade in the locality. The question is whether it will be successful, and, above all, whether, amidst the vicissitudes of our politics and the constant state of provisional arrangement in which we live, we possess the coherence and connectedness of design and system necessary to that success. I pray it may be so! But there are two insurmountable obstacles which will always prove stumbling-blocks to us--the unhealthy climate, deathly indeed to white men, and the black population, a childish race, who may be disciplined into being good soldiers, but who will never work except when made to by force, and that brute force.

Before continuing our cruise along the African coast, the squadron (the Belle Poule and Africaine, frigates, and Coquette, corvette) went to the Cape Verd Islands, both to give the crews change of air, to test the speed of the various vessels, and to take in fresh provisions. This last object was defeated, in consequence of a curious circ.u.mstance. A Portuguese station in the Bissago Archipelago had been attacked by the negroes, and when reinforcements had been asked for, the government at Lisbon had answered by sending two transports to fetch troops from the Cape Verd Islands,--from Porto-Praya, where we had anch.o.r.ed, in particular,--and to convey them to the threatened spot. But before embarking troops they had to be found, and there were none, or rather they existed on paper only. To supply the want and respond to the pressing appeal made to him the governor could devise no better plan than to set an ambush at the gates of the different towns, seize the country people as they came in, and send them away as soldiers. Of course, when once wind of this got about, n.o.body came in, the markets were deserted, and the towns were famine-stricken. Although the Cape Verd Islands appear from sea to be nothing but arid mountains, with bare rocks and rugged slopes, they really are furrowed with delightful valleys, covered with leafy woods, where innumerable monkeys peacefully dwell, and in which the flocks of guinea-fowl inhabiting the open s.p.a.ces on the islands take refuge from pursuit. There is no more curious sight to be seen than these mobs of birds, two or three hundred of them together, tearing along like a contingent of Arab hors.e.m.e.n, at such a rapid pace that it is impossible to come up with them, on that rocky soil, even with the best of horses. A native of the island gave us a luncheon in one of the valleys of which I speak. His house, which was reached through an avenue of cocoa-palms, stood in the middle of a grove of enormous orange-trees, over sixty feet in height. We were waited on at table by handsome negresses, slaves; and these, according to our host, were the conditions of their life. Their time, except on Sundays, belonged to their master, who, in return, gave them their food, and, when necessary, an occasional beating. They dressed themselves out of the money they earned--Heaven knows how!--lodged where they best could, and were given a bonus whenever they had a child--a young slave to add to their owner's stock. It was a simple arrangement enough. On my return to the African coast, I was to tumble headlong into all the questions contingent on the slave system, the suppression of the slave trade, which still existed, and the whole future of the negro race.

Sierra Leone, our first port, differs from the rest of the invariably flat African coasts by reason of its background of high mountains, and the green hills which run down right to the seash.o.r.e. Between these hills lies the mouth of a great river, forming an excellent haven, and a first-rate military and commercial station. But the place is terribly unhealthy. To give us a taste of local colour, we were surrounded, before we got into the river, by hosts of sharks, and in a few minutes we had hoisted five of the huge fishes on board. Then no sooner had we cast anchor before Freetown, than a gentleman of a certain age, in a blue coat and white nankeen trousers and a top hat, appeared, asking speech of the captain. He was sent to me. "Captain," said he, "I've come to know how many ladies will be wanted for the frigate?"

"Why, sir," I replied in some astonishment, "I don't know; I've not thought about it yet."

"You see I make it my business, sir, when a man-o'-war comes into port, to come and offer my services."

"Well, sir, I'm much obliged to you, I won't give you any special order; I'll leave the business completely to itself."

I never heard why he was so anxious to make sure of a monopoly in his line of business. Apart from this little incident, our stay in this port, during which we were treated in the most friendly manner by the kindliest of governors and his lady, was in no way different from any other.

Yet Sierra Leone was interesting as being the headquarters of the British naval station, established to suppress the slave trade, and as being the place where the slave cargoes found on board the captured slavers were landed. Freetown and its neighbourhood was full of these poor wretches, who were denominated, somewhat hypocritically, liberated Africans; but the government took good care not to liberate them, and there indeed it was right. To have turned out these human cattle, swept up in distant raids, now far from home and country, would have been to cast them infallibly into the clutches of cruel and pitiless native masters, who would keep back what they could not sell for human sacrifices or cannibal banquets. It was mere common humanity therefore, to keep them safe, once they had been caught. But to avoid feeding useless mouths, the finest men were enrolled as soldiers--the British government, ever in advance of others, applying a law of compulsory service, unlimited in period, to their case. The recruiting service once satisfied, the rest of the poor devils were turned, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, into "free labourers," and the greater part of them were sent as such to the British Antilles. The ship that bore them thither was no longer called a slaver, and her cargo were not slaves. But if the names were changed, the things themselves were terribly alike. Yet philanthropy and sentimentality were satisfied. And so were the captains and crews of the British cruisers, for hunting slavers is a lucrative business, and the prize money earned made them forget the unhealthiness of the climate and the monotony of the blockade.

The pa.s.sion for lucre excited on both sides gave rise to actions which bordered on sheer piracy, concerning which many a tale fell on my ear all along the Guinea coast. Thus one Frenchman I met had been in command of a Spanish slaver, which was lying becalmed. He victoriously repulsed the attacking boats of a British cruiser, and killed the lieutenant in command of her, who was the first to board the slave-ship, with his own hand. A slight breeze and the fall of night enabled him to make good his escape. But no more of this. The negro trade and the suppression of it, the abuses on both sides, are all of them bygone things, bereft of interest. Slavery is the one thing that remains. It always has existed in Africa, and the steady progress made in that part of the globe by the Mohammedan religion, which admits slavery, as the basis of the social system, will no doubt still further help to perpetuate it. Should all the black tribes merge into one huge Mussulman body, stirred at once by religious fanaticism and by a pa.s.sion for slavery, a formidable difficulty will be added to those which already confront European action in the continent inhabited by the sons of Ham.

From the liberated Africans of Sierra Leone we came to another category. A negro republic, with all the necessary impedimenta--elections, a.s.semblies, newspapers, and the most exaggerated form of Protestant Puritanism to boot. This Liberian Republic, founded by an American religious body, is a sort of El Dorado for the exclusive benefit of freed negroes from the United States, and is absolutely forbidden ground to the white race. After great difficulties to begin with, after being abandoned and repopulated more than once, after times of scarcity during which the miserable freed men bitterly regretted their lost servitude, the republic has ended by taking root. There were about ten thousand inhabitants, doing nothing at all, for the free negro thinks and says, like his slave brother, "Work no good!" What did they live on then? First of all, on the sunshine, and then by doing a kind of broker's work between pa.s.sing ships and the natives. They vegetated in fact, and if they did not actually rot in idleness, they owed it to a tall Virginian mulatto, a very intelligent fellow, extraordinarily like Alphonse Karr in appearance, "Governor Roberts," with whom I had several long and interesting talks. He had been sharp enough to get hold of the key of the cashbox, and by that act had become the sole representative of the sovereign people. In spite of the const.i.tution, in spite of laws and regulations, all power was concentrated in his hands, and, save for the name, his republic was transformed into a tidy little dictatorship.

Leaving Liberia, we slipped away down the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast, driven gently along by a scorching wind called the Harmattan.

Our charts were primitive and incomplete, the information they gave quite inadequate. We had to steer by soundings, very cautiously. The coast was uniformly low and green, with no distinctive signs upon it.

If we wanted to know where we were, we had to go after some canoe full of fishermen, and ask our way, hat in hand, as one does in the street.

It was a funny sight to see the great black hull of the Belle-Poule, with her white sails scarcely filled by the light breeze, hugging the land, amongst a crowd of canoes full of noisy stark naked savages, hung with necklaces, and with arrows stuck in their heads of fuzzy hair, looking like handfuls of horse-hair pulled out of a mattress and clipped into any number of different shapes. A regular market went on alongside. Our sailors would pa.s.s down a biscuit or some other thing in their caps, and haul them up again with pineapples, or bananas, or fish, or perhaps a gray parrot. Thus we sailed along till we came to some great forts, whose white walls bristled with cannon--Axim, Elmina, Cape Coast Cattle--the two first flying the Dutch, the last one, the British flag. All along the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast we were to come upon these forts, originally constructed to ensure the humane management of the slave trade, nowadays become very burdensome stations, of no value but as marts for the barter of palm oil, oleaginous nuts, and ivory on the one part, against gunpowder, brandy, gla.s.s beads, matches, and the blue cotton cloth known as "guinea cloth"

on the other. I went from Elmina, where the Dutch officers were most friendly, to Cape Coast, by land, in a palanquin. My companions travelled in baskets shaped like Egyptian mummies, which tall negroes carried on their heads, without putting their hands to them. It was not safe to stir! At Cape Coast, I found yet another mode of locomotion.

Governor Maclean took me for a long expedition along the road towards Cooma.s.sie, the Ashanti King's capital. We travelled in a small victoria, to which was harnessed a four-in-hand of splendid negroes, whose backs bore the marks of terrible floggings. In spite of the sandy road, the team went gaily along full trot, urged forward by the Governor's incessant cry of "Get on faster, boys!" Then I went back on board and steered for Accra, another group of forts. Thence to Crevecoeur, a Dutch fort, and Christianborg, a Danish one, the governor of which, a charming young fellow, came off to see me. Living as he did alone amongst the blacks, he was delighted to find himself amongst people of his own kind again, for a few minutes.

The following day we landed in canoes, for the bar was rough, and I had been charitably warned not to put my arm or hand into the water. Only a few days previously an unlucky French sailor, who had wanted to get back his hat, which had fallen into the water, had had an arm seized and taken off by a shark. I did as I was bid; we plunged into the surf, and got through without any drawbacks. Just as I reached the sh.o.r.e a tremendous fusillade began. It was a reception after the local fashion, which had been prepared for me: over three thousand dancing natives doing a sort of Arab fantasia on foot. They wore sh.e.l.l necklaces and bracelets on their arms and legs. Some had caps made of wild beasts'

skins, or circlets of turkey's feathers on their heads; others again had gold horns on their foreheads. Everybody was shouting and writhing about and firing off guns; the elders of the tribe pressed round me with dancing attendants behind them, who held huge coloured parasols over their heads. The women exerted themselves as much as the men, performing the most extravagant and peculiar dances to the sound of twenty or thirty tomtoms, or great drums, six feet long. The whole thing made the most extraordinary clatter and uproar. When we got near the fort, the crowd executed a sham a.s.sault on it, the big gun in the citadel was fired, and I made my triumphal entry between two rows of soldiers in red Danish uniforms. Nothing could have been more picturesque.

The governor gave us a splendid lunch, in the European style, in a big room in the fort. The only thing that was African about it was the waiting, which certainly did not lack local colour; for it was done by a score of young negresses, selected for the irreproachable beauty of their forms, which no veil, not even the very tiniest, concealed. There they stood, plate in hand, and napkin under arm, without the smallest shyness, seeing indeed they wore the dress(!) of the country. Imagine the bronze caryatidae round the new Paris Opera House come down off their pedestals, and handing round the dishes at a big Parisian dinner-party! All these young ladies' coquetry had gone to the dressing of their woolly hair, which was clipped, like garden shrubs, into the most fanciful shapes, and to the fineness of their skins, which were as soft and shiny as satin. This resulted from the daily baths they were in the habit of taking, rubbing themselves also with fine sand. But, unluckily, the rubbing could not get rid of the negro scent. I have never been able myself to endure the odour of negroes of either s.e.x; but I have known people whom it quite intoxicated, and who were always trying to get reappointed to Senegal, so as to get back to it, in spite of having had their health shattered by African fevers. It is said, too, to attract sharks, and that if a white man bathes with a negro where they swarm, the negro is always seized first. I have no personal experience of this fact.

A hundred miles west of the forts of Accra we found ourselves opposite Widah, the chief mart of the kingdom of Dahomey. From the sea we looked on a sort of sandy d.y.k.e, on which the waves broke furiously. Behind the d.y.k.e lay a wide lagoon, some of it a mere marsh, and beyond the lagoon the flags of France, Spain, and Brazil floated over some forts and large white European houses. It was the first time we had seen our flag waving on any spot on the coast since leaving Senegal, and we were very eager to go and see the station it sheltered. Landing was no easy matter, and I waited a long time in a big canoe, manned by twenty paddlers kneeling forward, before the old negro in the stern decided the attempt to be possible. He never stopped invoking every fetish under the sun, and sprinkling the sea out of a brandy bottle, keeping his eye the while on the waves as they came rolling in. Then all at once he gave a great shout, loudly responded to by the twenty paddlers, who yelled in cadence, while the canoe flew before the united and frenzied strokes of their paddles. Two enormous waves pa.s.sed, leaving us undamaged; but a third approached, huge and threatening. Should we get to the sh.o.r.e before it? Would it rise upright and capsize us, or would it break on us and swamp us? Neither. It did reach us, indeed, but the old steersman had calculated well; it lifted us up unharmed and carried us on to the beach, where a hundred negroes laid hold of the canoe and dragged it high and dry. I was seized myself before I had time to collect my ideas, and put into a hammock hung upon a long pole, which five or six tall negroes held horizontally, with arms outstretched above their heads, during the time it took to cross the lagoon, where the water was waist high. They set me down at last, at the gate of the French fort, in the middle of an immense crowd, much excited at the arrival of a French squadron--there were three ships.

Widah had been, and still was, a very important slave station. France, England, and Portugal had in former days possessed forts there, and had successively abandoned them. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Brazilian factories alone remained in possession of the trade in that country.

They sold European goods to the King of Dahomey, taking slaves, of whom they had formerly exported large numbers, in exchange, and this was a source of great riches. But at the time I speak of, with the British cruisers about, hardly one slaver got through out of every ten. The King of Dahomey had a glut of slaves on his hands, and cleared them off by ma.s.sacring them as human sacrifices at idol feasts. One Frenchman, M. Provencal, of the firm of Regis, at Ma.r.s.eilles, had lately rehoisted the national colours at the French fort, rebuilt the dwellings, and set to work to do legitimate trade, offering his goods to the King of Dahomey, and taking nothing in exchange but palm-oil and similar produce. If the slave trade is put down--and when I was on that coast its days seemed already numbered--that enterprising and plucky Frenchman will have done more to civilise those countries than all the more violent measures have accomplished. I was very glad to notice his action, and gave him the heartiest encouragement to persevere in it.

The courtyard of the station was already full of casks of palm-oil, which augured well.

Immediately on my arrival I received a visit from the Avogal, the King of Dahomey's governor at Widah, a big healthy-looking negro, with whom the only conversation I had was of the most commonplace description. He was accompanied by two other blacks, with intelligent faces and sharp eyes, who sat on each side of him without speaking a word, and departed equally silently. "Those are the censors," said M. Provencal. "Each of the King's officials is always attended in that fashion to report all he says and does. If the King should be dissatisfied with him he has his head cut off." If this habit was universal there would be fewer office seekers. This king ruled after the antique pattern. He had kept all his seignorial rights. If any of his subjects married a wife the lady had first to be presented to him, and if he liked her he kept her.

His authority was unlimited in fact; nevertheless, powerful though he might be, he was likely to find it hard to change his subjects from slave-hunters into oil growers.

After the Avogal's visit I went to pay one in my turn to a strange individual, more of a king in Widah than the King of Dahomey himself, who could not do without him,--for he supplied him with guns and gunpowder for his wars, and brandy wherewith to intoxicate his Amazons.

This personage, a Brazilian of the name of Don Francisco de Souza, but known invariably as Cha-Cha, had been settled at Widah for forty-three years. He was a veteran slaver, from whom the British had captured thirty-four ships, two of them quite recently. A little old man, with quick eyes and an expressive countenance, he was credited with having two thousand slaves in his barrac.o.o.ns, and with being the father of eighty male children--the girls had never been thought worth reckoning up. All his sons had been properly brought up. I saw them walking about in all directions, uniformly dressed in white suits, and wearing Panama hats. Most of them were very handsome mulattoes.

The state of the surf, which was impa.s.sable, prevented me from getting back on board, so it was settled that I should dine with Cha-Cha, and sleep at the French fort, where I installed myself in the former quarters of the governor, which I shared with M. Provencal. Rather a comical adventure befell me there. A very aged negro, formerly gatekeeper of the fort, when M. Dagneau commanded it for the King of France, had been to pay his respects to me in the morning, and I had caused him to be given a present for himself and his family in the shape of a demijohn of brandy, which they first danced round and then carried off, with great rejoicings. Well, the enthusiasm increased in measure as the contents of the demijohn disappeared, and towards evening the courtyard within the fort was invaded, to a great beating of tomtoms and clucking of women's tongues, by a huge crowd of Dahomeyan negroes, preceded by a sort of corps de ballet of young negresses, wriggling themselves about in every conceivable manner. At their head marched the ci-devant porter in a great state of excitement.

He began a fresh harangue in negro French.

"Croire Anglais tues tous Francais. Voir Francais. Trouver pere.

Contents, tous contents. Envoie commandant a nous. Pit.i.t-Roi. Contents, tous contents. Tous femmes, tous filles a toi, tous contents!" "Think English killed all French. See Frenchman. Find father. Glad, all glad.