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Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
As this place was not far from Wow-wow, Richard Lander sent a message to the king of that town, who, however, declined to deliver the canoe which had been purchased of him. The messenger failing in his purpose, the brothers were compelled themselves to visit the king, but as they expected, they got only evasive answers. They had now no choice, if they wished to continue their journey, but to make off with the canoes which had been lent them at Patashie. On the 4th October, after further delays, they resumed their course, and being carried down by the current, were soon out of sight of Lever, or Layaba, and its wretched inhabitants.
The first town the brothers came to was Bajiebo, a large and spacious city, which for dirt, noise, and confusion, could not be surpassed. Next came Leechee, inhabited by Nouffe people, and the island of Madje, where the Niger divides into three parts. Just beyond, the travellers suddenly found themselves opposite a remarkable rock, two hundred and eighty feet high, called Mount Kesa, which rises perpendicularly from the centre of the stream. This rock is greatly venerated by the natives, who believe it to be the favourite home of a beneficent genius.
At Belee, a little above Rabba, the brothers received a visit from the "King of the Dark Waters," chief of the island of Zagoshi, who appeared in a canoe of great length and unusual cleanliness, decked with scarlet cloth and gold lace. On the same day they reached the town of Zagoshi, opposite Rabba, and the second Fellatah town beyond Sackatoo.
Mallam Dendo, chief of Zagoshi, was a cousin of Bello. He was a blind and very feeble old man in very bad health, who knew he had but a few years longer to reign, and his one thought was how best to secure the throne to his son.
Although he had received very costly presents, Mallam Dendo was anything but satisfied, and declared that if the travellers did not make him other and more valuable gifts, he would require their guns, pistols, and powder, before he allowed them to leave Zagoshi.
Richard Lander did not know what to do, when the gift of the tobé (or robe) of Mungo Park, which had been restored by the King of Boussa, threw Mallam Dendo into such ecstasies of joy that he declared himself the protector of the Europeans, promised to do all he could to help them to reach the sea, made them a present of several richly-coloured plaited mats, two bags of rice, and a bunch of bananas. These stores came just in time, for the whole stock of cloth, looking-glasses, razors, and pipes was exhausted, and the English had nothing left but a few needles and some silver bracelets as presents for the chiefs on the banks of the Niger.
"Rabba," says Lander, "… seen from Zagoshi, appears to be a large, compact, clean, and well-built town, though it is unwalled, and is not otherwise fenced. It is irregularly built on the slope of a gently-rising hill, at the foot of which runs the Niger; and in point of rank, population, and wealth, it is the second city in the Fellatah dominions, Sackatoo alone being considered as its superior. It is inhabited by a mixed population of Fellatahs, Nyffeans, and emigrants and slaves from various countries, and is governed by a ruler who exercises sovereign authority over Rabba and its dependencies, and is styled sultan or king… Rabba is famous for milk, oil, and honey. The market, when our messengers were there, appeared to be well supplied with bullocks, horses, mules, asses, sheep, goats, and abundance of poultry. Rice, and various sorts of corn, cotton cloth, indigo, saddles and bridles made of red and yellow leather, besides shoes, boots, and sandals, were offered for sale in great plenty. Although we observed about two hundred slaves for sale, none had been disposed of when we left the market in the evening… Rabba is not very famous for the number or variety of its artificers, and yet in the manufacture of mats and sandals it is unrivalled. However, in all other handicrafts, Rabba yields to Zagoshi."
The industry and love of labour displayed by the people of the latter town were an agreeable surprise in this lazy country. Its inhabitants, who are hospitable and obliging, are protected by the situation of their island against the Fellatahs. They are independent too, and recognize no authority but that of the "King of the Dark Waters," whom they obey because it is to their interest to do so.
On the 16th October, the Landers at last started in a wretched canoe, for which the king had made them pay a high price, with paddles they had stolen, because no one would sell them any. This was the first time they had been able to embark on the Niger without help from the natives. They went down the river, whose width varies greatly, avoiding large towns as much as possible, for they had no means of satisfying the extortions of the chiefs. No incident of note occurred before Egga was reached, if we except a terrible storm which overtook the travellers when, unable to land in the marshes bordering the river, they had allowed their boat to drift with the current, and during which they were all but upset by the hippopotami playing about on the surface of the water. All this time the Niger flowed in an E.S.E. direction, now eight, now only two miles in width. The current was so rapid that the boat went at the rate of four or five miles an hour.
On the 19th October the Landers passed the mouth of the Coudonia, which Richard had crossed near Cuttup on his first expedition, and a little later they came in sight of Egga. The landing-place was soon reached by way of a bay encumbered with an immense number of large and heavy canoes full of merchandise, with the prows daubed with blood, and covered with feathers, as charms against thieves.
The chief, to whom the travellers were at once conducted, was an old man with a long white beard, whose appearance would have been venerable and patriarchal had he not laughed and played in quite a childish manner. The natives assembled in hundreds to see the strange-looking visitors, and the latter had to place three men as sentinels outside their door to keep the curious at a distance.
Lander says that Benin and Portuguese cloths are sold at Egga by many of its inhabitants, so that it would appear that some kind of communication is kept up between the sea-coast and this place. The people are very speculative and enterprising, and numbers of them employ all their time solely in trading up and down the Niger. They live entirely in their canoes, over which they have a shed, that answers completely every purpose for which it is intended, so that, in their constant peregrinations, they have no need of any other dwelling or shelter than that which their canoes afford them…
"Their belief," says Lander, "that we possessed the power of doing anything we wished, was at first amusing enough, but their importunities went so far that they became annoying. They applied to us for charms to avert wars and other national calamities, to make them rich, to prevent the crocodiles from carrying off the people, and for the chief of the fishermen to catch a canoe-load of fish every day, each request being accompanied with some sort of present, such as country beer, goora-nuts, cocoa-nuts, lemons, yams, rice, &c., in quantity proportionate to the value of their request.
"The curiosity of the people to see us is so intense, that we dare not stir out of doors, and therefore we are compelled to keep our door open all day long for the benefit of the air, and the only exercise which we can take is by walking round and round our hut like wild beasts in a cage. The people stand gazing at us with visible emotions of amazement and terror; we are regarded, in fact, in just the same light as the fiercest tigers in Europe. If we venture to approach too near the doorway, they rush backwards in a state of the greatest alarm and trepidation; but when we are at the opposite side of the hut they draw as near as their fears will permit them, in silence and caution.
"Egga is a town of vast extent, and its population must be immense. Like all the towns on the banks of the Niger, it is inundated every year. We can but conclude that the natives have their own reasons for building their houses in situations which, in our eyes, are alike so inconvenient and unhealthy. Perhaps it may be because the soil of the surrounding districts consists of a black greasy mould of extraordinary fertility, supplying all the necessaries of life at the cost of very little trouble. Although the King of Egga looked more than a hundred years old, he was very gay and light-hearted. The chief people of the town met in his hut, and spent whole days in conversation. This company of greybeards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invariable practice, when any one passes by, to stop and listen outside, and they add to their noisy merriment so much good-will, that we hear nothing from the hut in which the aged group are revelling during the day but loud peals of laughter and shouts of applause."
One day the old chief wished to show off his accomplishments of singing and dancing, expecting to astonish his visitors.
"He frisked," says Lander, "beneath the burden of five-score, and shaking his hoary locks, capered over the ground to the manifest delight of the bystanders, whose plaudits, though confined, as they always are, to laughter, yet tickled the old man's fancy to that degree, that he was unable to keep up his dance any longer without the aid of a crutch. With its assistance he hobbled on a little while, but his strength failed him; he was constrained for the time to give over, and he set himself down at our side on the threshold of the hut. He would not acknowledge his weakness to us for the world, but endeavoured to pant silently, and suppress loud breathings, that we might not hear him. How ridiculous, yet how natural, is this vanity! He made other unavailing attempts to dance, and also made an attempt to sing, but nature would not second his efforts, and his weak piping voice was scarcely audible. The singers, dancers, and musicians, continued their noisy mirth, till we were weary of looking at and listening to them, and as bedtime was drawing near, we desired them to depart, to the infinite regret of the frivolous but merry old chief."
Mallam-Dendo, however, tried to dissuade the English from continuing the descent of the river. Egga, he said, was the last Nouffe town, the power of the Fellatahs extended no further, and between it and the sea dwelt none but savage and barbarous races, always at war with each other. These rumours and the stories told by the natives to the Landers' people of the danger they would run of being murdered or sold as slaves so terrified the latter, that they refused to embark, declaring their intention of going back to Cape Coast Castle by the way that they came. Thanks to the firmness of the brothers this mutiny was quelled, and on the 22nd October the explorers left Egga, firing a parting salute of three musket-shots. A few miles further down, a sea-gull flew over their heads, a sure sign that they were approaching the sea, and with it, it appeared all but certain, the end of their wearisome journey.
Several small and wretched villages, half under water, and a large town at the foot of a mountain, which looked ready to overwhelm it, the name of which the travellers could not learn, were passed in succession. They met a great number of canoes built like those on the Bonny and Calabar Rivers. The crews stared in astonishment at the white men whom they dared not address. The low marshy banks of the Niger were now gradually exchanged for loftier, richer, and more fertile districts.
Kacunda, where the people of Egga had recommended Lander to halt, is on the western bank of the river. From a distance its appearance is singularly picturesque. The natives were at first alarmed at the appearance of the travellers. An old Mallam acting as Mohammedan priest and schoolmaster took them under his protection, and, thanks to him, the brothers received a warm welcome in the capital of the independent kingdom of Nouffé. The information collected in this town, or rather in this group of four villages, coincided with that obtained at Egga. Richard Lander therefore resolved to make the rest of the voyage by night and to load his four remaining guns and two pistols with balls and shot. To the great astonishment of the natives, who could not understand such contempt of danger, the explorers left Kacunda with three loud cheers, committing their cause to the hands of God. They passed several important towns, which they avoided. The river now wound a great deal, flowing from the south to south-east, and then to the south-west between lofty hills.
On the 25th October, the English found themselves opposite the mouth of a large river. It was the Tchadda or Benuwe. At its junction with the Niger is an important town called Cutum Curaffi. After a narrow escape from being swallowed up in a whirlpool and crushed against the rocks, Lander having found a suitable spot showing signs of habitation, determined to land. That this place had been visited a little time previously, was proved by two burnt out fires with some broken calabashes, fragments of earthenware vessels, cocoa-nut shells, staves of powder-barrels, &c., which the travellers picked up with some emotion, for they proved that the natives had had dealings with Europeans. Some women ran away out of a village which three of Lander's men entered with a view to get the materials for a fire. The exhausted explorers were resting on mats when they were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of half-naked men armed with guns, bows and arrows, cutlasses, iron barbs, and spears. The coolness and presence of mind of the brothers alone averted a struggle, the issue of which could not be dubious. "As we approached," says Lander, "we made all the signs and motions we could with our arms, to deter the chief and his people from firing on us. His quiver was dangling at his side, his bow was bent, and an arrow which was pointed at our breasts already trembled on the string, when we were within a few yards of his person. This was a highly critical moment, the next might be our last. But the hand of Providence averted the blow; for just as the chief was about to pull the fatal cord, a man that was nearest him rushed forward, and stayed his arm. At that instant we stood before him, and immediately held forth our hands; all of them trembled like aspen leaves; the chief looked up full in our faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark, rolling eyes, his body was convulsed all over, as though he were enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous yet undefinable expression of countenance, in which all the passions of our nature were strangely blended, he drooped his head, eagerly grasped our proffered hands, and burst into tears. This was a sign of friendship; harmony followed, and war and bloodshed were thought of no more. It was happy for us that our white faces and calm behaviour produced the effect it did on these people; in another minute our bodies would have been as full of arrows as a porcupine's is full of quills. 'I thought you were children of heaven fallen from the skies,' said the chief, in explanation of this sudden change."
This scene took place in the famous market-town of Bocqua, of which the travellers had so often heard, whither the people come up from the coast to exchange the merchandise of the whites for slaves brought in large numbers from Funda, on the opposite bank.
The information obtained at Bocqua was most satisfactory; the sea was only ten days' journey off. There was no danger in going down the river, the chief said, though the people on the banks were a bad lot.
Following the advice of this chief, the travellers passed the fine town of Atta without stopping, and halted at Abbagaca, where the river divides into several branches, and whose chief showed insatiable greed. Refusing to halt at several villages, whose inhabitants begged for a sight of the white strangers, they were finally obliged to land at the village of Damuggo, where a little man wearing a waistcoat which had once formed part of a uniform, hailed them in English, crying out: "Halloa, ho! you English, come here!" He was an emissary from the King of Bonny come to buy slaves for the master.
The chief of Damuggo, who had never before seen white men, received the explorers very kindly, held public rejoicings in their honour and detained them with constant fêtes until the 4th November. Although the fetich consulted by him presaged that they would meet with a thousand dangers before reaching the sea, this monarch supplied them with an extra canoe, some rowers, and a guide.
The sinister predictions of the fetich were soon fulfilled. John and Richard Lander were embarked in different boats. As they passed a large town called Kirree they were stopped by war-canoes, each containing forty men wearing European clothes, minus the trousers.
Each canoe carried what at first sight appeared to be the Union Jack flying from a long bamboo cane fixed in the stern, a four or six pounder was lashed to each prow, and every black sailor was provided with a musket.
The two brothers were taken to Kirree, where a palaver was held upon their fate. Fortunately the Mallams or Mohammedan priests interfered in their favour, and some of their property was restored to them, but the best part had gone to the bottom of the river with John Lander's canoe.
"To my great satisfaction," says Lander, "I immediately recognized the box containing our books, and one of my brother's journals; the medicine-chest was by its side, but both were filled with water. A large carpet bag, containing all our wearing apparel, was lying cut open, and deprived of its contents, with the exception of a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a waistcoat. Many valuable articles which it had contained were gone. The whole of my journal, with the exception of a note-book with remarks from Rabba to this place, was lost. Four guns, one of which had been the property of the late Mr. Park, four cutlasses, and two pistols, were gone. Nine elephants' tusks, the finest I had seen in the country, which had been given us by the kings of Wow-wow and Boussa; a quantity of ostrich feathers, some handsome leopard skins, a great variety of seeds, all our buttons, cowries, and needles, which were necessary for us to purchase provisions with, all were missing, and said to have been sunk in the river."
This was like going down in port. After crossing Africa from Badagry to Boussa, escaping all the dangers of navigating the Niger, getting free from the hands of so many rapacious chiefs, to be shipwrecked six day's journey from the sea, to be made slaves of or condemned to death just on the eve of making known to Europe the results of so many sufferings endured, so many dangers escaped, so many obstacles happily surmounted! To have traced the course of the Niger from Boussa, to be on the point of determining the exact position of its mouth and then to find themselves stopped by wretched pirates was really too much, and bitter indeed were the reflections of the brothers during the interminable palaver upon their fate.
Although their stolen property was partially restored to them, and the negro who had begun the attack upon them was condemned to be beheaded, the brothers were none the less regarded as prisoners, and they were marched off to Obie, king of the country, who would decide what was to be done with them. It was evident that the robbers were not natives of the country, but had only entered it with a view to pillage. They probably counted on trading in two or three such market-towns as Kirree if they did not meet with any boats but such as were too strong to be plundered. For the rest, all the tribes of this part of the Niger seemed to be at daggers drawn with each other, and the trade in provisions was carried on under arms. After two days' row the canoes came in sight of Eboe, at a spot where the stream divides into three "rivers" of great width, with marshy level banks covered with palm-trees. An hour later one of the boatmen, a native of Eboe, cried, "There is my country." Here fresh difficulties awaited the travellers. Obie, king of Eboe, a young man with a refined and intelligent countenance, received the white men with cordiality. His dress, which reminded his visitors of that of the King of Yarriba, was adorned with such a quantity of coral that he might have been called the coral king.
Obie seemed to be affected by the account the English gave of the struggle in which they had lost all their merchandise, but the aid he gave them was by no means proportioned to the warmth of the sentiments which he expressed, indeed he let them all but die of hunger.
"The Eboe people," says the narrative, "like most Africans, are extremely indolent, and cultivate yams, Indian corn, and plantains only. They have abundance of goats and fowls, but few sheep are to be seen, and no bullocks. The city, which has no other name than the Eboe country, is situated on an open plain; it is immensely large, contains a vast population, and is the capital of a kingdom of the same name. It has, for a series of years, been the principal slave-mart for native traders from the coast, between the Bonny and Old Calabar rivers; and for the production of its palm-oil it has obtained equal celebrity. Hundreds of men from the rivers mentioned above come up for the purpose of trade, and numbers of them are at present residing in canoes in front of the town. Most of the oil purchased by Englishmen at the Bonny and adjacent rivers is brought from thence, as are nearly all the slaves which are annually exported from those places by the French, Spaniards, and Portuguese. It has been told us by many that the Eboe people are confirmed anthropophagi; and this opinion is more prevalent among the tribes bordering on that kingdom, than with the natives of more remote districts."
From what the travellers could learn, it was pretty certain that Obie would not let them go without exacting a considerable ransom. He may doubtless have been driven to this by the importunity of his favourites, but it was more likely the result of the greed of the people of Bonny and Brass, who quarrelled as to which tribe should carry off the English to their country.
A son of the Chief of Bonny, King Pepper, a native named Gun, brother of King Boy, and their father King Forday, who with King Jacket govern the whole of the Brass country, were the most eager in their demands, and produced as proofs of their honourable intentions the testimonials given to them by the European captains with whom they had business relations.
One of these documents, signed James Dow, captain of the brig "Susan" of Liverpool, and dated from the most important river of the Brass Country, September, 1830, ran thus: —
"Captain Dow states that he never met with a set of greater scoundrels than the natives generally, and the pilots in particular."
It goes on in a similar strain heaping curses upon the natives, and charging them with having endeavoured to wreck Dow's vessel at the mouth of the river with a view to dividing his property amongst them. King Jacket was designated as an arrant rogue and a desperate thief. Boy was the only one of common honesty or trustworthiness.
After an endless palaver, Obie declared that according to the laws and customs of the country he had a right to look upon the Landers and their people as his property, but that, not wishing to abuse his privileges, he would set them free in exchange for the value of twenty slaves in English merchandise. This decision, which Richard Lander tried in vain to shake, plunged the brothers into the depths of despair, a state of mind soon succeeded by an apathy and indifference so complete that they could not have made the faintest effort to recover their liberty. Add to these mental sufferings the physical weakness to which they were reduced by want of food, and we shall have some idea of their state of prostration. Without resources of any kind, robbed of their needles, cowries, and merchandise, they were reduced to the sad necessity of begging their bread. "But we might as well have addressed our petitions to the stones or trees," says Lander; "we might have spared ourselves the mortification of a refusal. We never experienced a more stinging sense of our own humbleness and imbecility than on such occasions, and never had we greater need of patience and lowliness of spirit. In most African towns and villages we have been regarded as demigods, and treated in consequence with universal kindness, civility, and veneration; but here, alas, what a contrast! we are classed with the most degraded and despicable of mankind, and are become slaves in a land of ignorance and barbarism, whose savage natives have treated us with brutality and contempt."
It was Boy who finally achieved the rescue of the Landers, for he consented to pay to Obie the ransom he demanded for them and their people. Boy himself was very moderate, asking for nothing in return for his trouble and the risk he ran in taking the white men to Brass, but fifteen bars or fifteen slaves, and a barrel of rum. Although this demand was exorbitant, Lander did not hesitate to write an order on Richard Lake, captain of an English vessel at anchor in Brass river, for thirty-six bars.
The king's canoe, on which the brothers embarked on the 12th November, carried sixty persons, forty of whom were rowers. It was hollowed out of a single tree-trunk, measured more than fifty feet long, carried a four-pounder in the prow, an arsenal of cutlasses and grape-shot, and was laden with merchandise of every kind. The vast tracts of cultivated land on either side of the river showed that the population was far more numerous than would have been supposed. The scenery was flat, open, and varied; and the soil, a rich black mould, produced luxuriant trees, and green shrubs of every shade. At seven p.m. on the 11th November the canoe left the chief branch of the Niger and entered the Brass river. An hour later, Richard Lander recognized with inexpressible delight tidal waves.
A little farther on Boy's canoe came up with those of Gun and Forday. The latter was a venerable-looking old man, in spite of his wretched semi-European semi-native clothing and a very strong predilection for rum, of which he consumed a great quantity, although his manners and conversation betrayed no signs of excessive drinking.
That was a strange escort which accompanied the two Englishmen as far as the town of Brass.
"The canoes," says Lander, "were following each other up the river in tolerable order, each of them displaying three flags. In the first was King Boy, standing erect and conspicuous, his headdress of feathers waving with the movements of his body, which had been chalked in various fantastic figures, rendered more distinct by its natural colour; his hands were resting on the barbs of two immense spears, which at intervals he darted violently into the bottom of the canoe, as if he were in the act of killing some formidable wild animal under his feet. In the bows of all the other canoes fetish priests were dancing, and performing various extraordinary antics, their persons, as well as those of the people with them, being chalked over in the same manner as that of King Boy; and, to crown the whole, Mr. Gun, the little military gentleman, was most actively employed, his canoe now darting before and now dropping behind the rest, adding not a little to the imposing effect of the whole scene by the repeated discharges of his cannon."
Brass consists of two towns, one belonging to Forday, the other to King Jacket. The priests performed some curious ceremonies before disembarking, evidently having reference to the whites. Was the result of the consultation of the fetish of the town favourable or not to the visitors? The way the natives treated them would answer that question. Before he set foot on land Richard Lander, to his great delight, recognized a white man on the banks. He was the captain of a Spanish schooner at anchor in the river. The narrative goes on to say: —
"Of all the wretched, filthy, and contemptible places in this world of ours none can present to the eye of a stranger so miserable an appearance, or can offer such disgusting and loathsome sights, as this abominable Brass Town. Dogs, goats, and other animals run about the dirty streets half-starved, whose hungry looks can only be exceeded by the famishing appearance of the men, women, and children, which bespeaks the penury and wretchedness to which they are reduced; whilst the persons of many of them are covered with odious boils, and their huts are falling to the ground from neglect and decay."
Another place, called Pilot Town by the Europeans, on account of the number of pilots living in it, is situated at the mouth of the river Nun, seventy miles from Brass. King Forday demanded four bars before the Landers left the town, saying it was customary for every white man who came to Brass by the river to make that payment. It was impossible to evade compliance, and Lander drew another bill on Captain Lake. At this price Richard Lander obtained permission to go down in Boy's royal canoe to the English brig stationed at the mouth of the river. His brother and his servants were not to be set free until the return of the king. On his arrival on the brig, Lander's astonishment and shame was extreme when he found that Lake refused to give him any help whatever. The instructions given to the brothers from the ministry were read, to prove that he was not an impostor; but the captain answered, —
"If you think that you have a – fool to deal with, you are mistaken; I'll not give a – flint for your bill. I would not give a – for it."
