Читать книгу The Land of Fetish - A. B. Ellis - Страница 4

Table of Contents

British Combo—An interesting Conversation—Bakko—A small Account—Sabbajee—Peculiar Governors—The Gambia Militia—A new Field for Sportsmen.

Until I had visited British Combo I never could understand why it was that old officers always spoke of the withdrawal of troops from the Gambia with regret, and talked of that colony fondly as the best station in West Africa; but after I had seen it, though shorn of its former glories, it was quite comprehensible. Having borrowed from a friend one of those diminutive but thoroughbred Arab horses common to the country, I started from Bathurst one morning soon after daybreak on my expedition. Passing the disgraceful burial-ground, and leaving to the right Jolah town, which is inhabited by a race of outcasts supposed to have no moral or religious code of any kind, and to possess their women in common, I crossed a level tract of cultivated country, and halted for a few minutes in the grove of palms at Oyster Creek. This creek used to be the resort of the sporting members of the garrison, who would supplement the somewhat scanty food supply of the colony with green pigeons, wild ducks, curlew, and snipe from this place; but now the report of a gun but rarely awakes its echoes.

On the other side of the creek I entered upon a swampy region, consisting of stretches of sand and small lagoons surrounded by dwarf mangroves; and after splashing through the last of these I found myself in front of a dense growth of grass, eight or nine feet high. I thought that if all the open country of which I had heard were like this I should not care much about it, and rode into the narrow path which lay before me. The grass closed overhead, and I could see nothing in front but a long green tunnel, with occasional flecks of gold on the sand where the sunlight broke through. The grass was heavy with dew; a continual shower-bath of drops fell on me from above, and the long wet stems brushed my legs on either side. I should have enjoyed it very much if I had been unprovided with clothes, but I had not anticipated this bath, and was consequently dressed.

After a couple of miles of this I emerged into an open plain, as thoroughly wet through as if I had been towed behind a boat for a quarter of an hour; but the view compensated for any little discomfort. The country was of a dead level, covered with waving grass of a most brilliant green, and dotted with clumps of palm and monkey-bread trees; plantations of corn and ground-nuts appeared here and there; the deserted barracks of Cape St. Mary glistened white in the sun from a sand-ridge in the front; while to the left was the dense vegetation and rich colouring of a tropical forest. In the foreground were several of those peculiar trees which bear no leaves when in blossom, covered with their scarlet tulip-like flowers, while herds of cattle in the distance gave the scene almost a pastoral aspect. There may not seem very much in this to cause ecstasy, but nobody who has not sojourned for some months on the Gold Coast, surrounded by its interminable and depressing bush, can understand the delight with which a little open country may be greeted. The monkey-bread is not a handsome tree, and might be compared to a distorted semaphore or a corpulent sign-post. The trunks of these trees are sometimes immense, measuring from twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference, but they only throw out two or three stunted limbs, which can boast of but few twigs, and produce no leaves to speak of.

I had reined in my horse near a conical ant-heap to look at a flock of green parrots that were screaming round a crimson flowering shrub when I observed two gorgeously-appareled Mandingos approaching me. One wore a most elaborate turban, and his robe and sandals were highly embroidered. He was apparently a chief, as the other, who was not much behind-hand in the matter of brilliancy, was carrying, in addition to his own spear, the curved sword and leather purse-bag of the former. Both, it is needless to say, wore strings of leather-covered grisgris, or amulets. I was anxious to air the little Arabic I knew, so as they drew nigh I said,

“Salaam Aleykoum.”

They replied as one man, “Haira bi, haira bi,” and then stopped, evidently waiting for more, while the spearman stirred up the sand with the shaft of his weapon.

I was non-plussed, and thought that they were taking an unfair advantage of me; but, as they both remained gazing upon me in an attitude of earnest expectancy, I let off at them again my solitary phrase, “Salaam Aleykoum.”

“Jam-diddi toh-chow haira-slocum-doodledum,” said the chief, or something that sounded like it.

“Quite so,” I replied.

“Kara noona chi dodgemaroo,” he continued, excitedly.

“C’est vrai,” I responded, breaking out into another language in my agony.

“Hanu sah daday,” he shouted, advancing towards me.

“Verbum sap,” I yelled, in despair.

“Ri-tiddi, to tolli, soh gamma,” they both shouted, and, bowing almost to the earth, extended their hands deferentially towards me.

I shook them with unction, and they both passed on, highly gratified with our interesting conversation, and pleased with the information that I had given them. Really the Mandingos are a most intelligent race, and how well these two understood what I had been telling them.

Riding on, I shortly arrived at a small village surrounded by a fence made of palm-sticks, and further fortified on the exterior by hedges of thorned acacia and prickly pear. This was the Mandingo town of Bakko, and here the individual in whose honour the stone advertisements of which I have spoken were erected was, during one of his numerous petty expeditions, defeated with considerable loss by the natives under Hadji Ismail, the black prophet. On that occasion a portion of the colonial force was cut off and annihilated, while the remainder fell back with considerable difficulty upon Bathurst, where, as the victorious Mandingos followed up their success, and received large accessions to their number from their warlike neighbours, the governor was obliged ingloriously to apply to the French to save him and the colony.

I dismounted here, and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of naked and grisgris-covered children, while three or four men lounging about suspended their yawning and regarded me with stoical indifference. I did not discharge my sentence at these, because I had learnt all the news from the two with whom I had already conversed; and, besides, I was rather fatigued with the previous conversation. After a few moments a negro, clothed in the remnants of European garments, and whom in consequence I inferred was not a Mohammedan, came up to me and said, “Good morning.” He asked me what was my name, address, and occupation, whether I was married or revelling in single bliss, if I had any rum with me, and why I had come to Bakko; and in return vouchsafed the information that he was a farmer. He said he would show me round the town if I liked, so I left my horse in charge of a Mandingo and went inside the fence.

The interior was a perfect labyrinth, and the houses similar to those in the town of Yahassu, on the Barra side of the river, but smaller and dirty. My guide pointed out to me several small edifices of palm-sticks and bamboo, like miniature houses, raised upon piles inside the village gate, and informed me that these were where the people kept their corn. The doors to these granaries were merely bolted, and a piece of paper, inscribed with a verse from the Koran in Arabic characters, was fastened to each as a protection from thieves. My cicerone said,

“These are very foolish people, sar.”

“Are they? How?”

“They put dem writings on the bolts, and then think nobody can open the doors.”

“Oh!”

“Yes; and them Mandingos won’t touch them when they’re leff so—they ’fraid to.”

“You’re not afraid, I suppose?”

“Me? No, I don’t care for grisgris. By’mby I show you my farm; when these foolish people sleep on dark night, I take as much corn as I want for planting time. They think it must be devil,” and he chuckled at the joke.

“What religion are you then?”

“Oh! I b’long to the Wesleyans.”

“Ah! I thought so.”

My co-religionist informed me that the deer usually devoured half his crops, and that leopards, and animals “that howled like drunken men at night,” by which graphic description he meant hyenas, were so numerous and bold in their raids on the poultry and dogs that the thorn hedges, which I had noticed surrounding the village, were erected for their special behoof. Beguiling the time with such artless conversation, he led me round the village, and finally halted before a hut, which he asked me to enter, saying it was his. As I thought he had been unusually civil and obliging for an English-speaking negro, I did not like to refuse, though I do not care to invade the sanctity of such houses and inhale the odour thereof. I saw some six or seven women suckling babies and pounding kous-kous, whom I learned were the wives of my host, and sat down as far from them and as near to the door as possible; while their lord and master produced a dirty-white piece of paper and a lead pencil, and began writing away most laboriously.

After waiting a few minutes, and finding that my obliging friend was still hard at work, I got up and said I was going. He added a few finishing touches to his manuscript, came forward, and handed it to me. I read as follows:—

Thomas Henry, services to European stranger from steamer.

	£s. d.
1.	To showing city of Bakko and houses	0 15 0
2.	To hunting information given as to deer	0 2 6
3.	Use of house for purpose of resting	010 6
4.	To loss of time in performing above services	0 1 0
	———
	£1 9 0
	———

I said: “What does this mean? You don’t think I’m going to pay this, do you?”

All the civility dropped from my guide’s manner like a mask, and he said, jeeringly—

“I ’spose you call yourself a gen’leman.”

“I shall pay nothing of the sort,” I continued. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

“Yes!”

I looked about for some implement of castigation, more weighty than my light riding-whip, and said—

“What d’you say?”

He moved off to a safe distance, and replied:

“If you not a fool, I like to know what you come to this town for nuffin for. You must be a fool, man.”

I saw there was nothing to be gained by following up this branch of the discussion, so I returned to the original subject, and said, decisively—

“I shall not pay you anything, for your impertinence.”

“’Spose you no pay, I keep the horse.”

The thought of what my friend’s face would be like if I returned to Bathurst without his steed, was quite enough, and I hurried out of the village to the spot where I had left the animal. He was nowhere to be seen.

I felt then that I was up a tree of considerable altitude. If I went back to Bathurst for police, the thief would decamp in my absence; and, even if he obligingly remained to be caught, the delay of the law is such that I should miss my passage by the steamer, which was to sail next day. When I thought of my stupidity in leaving my horse, I began to have an uncomfortable conviction that my guide’s estimate of my character was correct; and I thought I should have to submit to his extortion after all. While still deliberating on the probable results of a violent assault on this amiable negro, a happy idea occurred to me. I knew that in every Mohammedan town there was a head-man, or alcaid, who, in those that were independent, was magistrate, governor, and arbitrator in general, and answerable for the preservation of order to the Mandingo king; while in those nominally subject to the British, such as Bakko, he settled disputes between the natives, and regulated the charges made against strangers for food and lodging; so I said to my extortioner, who had followed me out of the village—

“I shall go to the head-man.”

My forlorn hope told; his countenance fell almost to zero; and without waiting to consider that I did not know the alcaid, or where to find him, and that if I did succeed in finding him I could not make him understand my complaint, as I could not speak his language, he said, sulkily,

“Well, I don’t want to make trouble, you can pay half.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort.”

“Give me five shillings, and the palaver’s set.”

“Certainly not.”

“Master, dash me two shillings for the boy that hold the horse, and I go fetch him.”

I thought it would not do to push my advantage too far, so I agreed to these terms, and in a few minutes this scoundrel brought out, from the penetralia of some hovel in the village—my missing steed.

I climbed into the saddle, threw the money at the man’s head, and then, with my whip—but no, I won’t say what I did, or I shall have the “poor black brother society” of Exeter Hall down on me. It is sufficient to say that I rode off in a more happy frame of mind, though still annoyed to think that after the many years during which I had been acquainted with the negro I should have been such an idiot as to imagine that a Christianized and English-speaking low-class specimen of the species could be polite and obliging without having some ulterior scheme of insult or extortion in view.

On my return to Bathurst I learned that Bakko enjoyed anything but an enviable reputation. It appeared that its inhabitants were outcast Mandingos, who had found it advisable to leave their native country, and who, while thoroughly grasping the full meaning of meum, had but hazy and unsatisfactory notions as to the interpretation of tuum, in consequence of which their society was rather avoided, and they were rarely seen in the haunts of civilisation, except on those few occasions on which the intelligent police might be observed escorting them towards a public building yclept the jail.

From Bakko I rode on over open country, adorned with herds of short-horned cattle and solitary pie-bald sheep with long tails, and where occasionally the wild ostrich may be seen, to Josswang, close to Cape St. Mary. There are a few houses here, which, in the palmy days of the colony, were the country residences of the Bathurst merchants, but which now are affected by the universal blight which has fallen upon the settlement and fast becoming ruinous. Ten miles from Cape St. Mary is the Mandingo town of Sabbajee, now belonging to British Combo, which was the scene of one of the glorious exploits of the great advertiser Colonel Luke S. O’Connor, who commanded a force which took the town, stockaded like all such, by assault. That individual’s mania for self-laudatory memorials was so great that on this occasion he, as Governor, took away two large kettledrums which had been captured by a West India Regiment, and, after a short interval, returned them to the regiment, embellished with two silver plates, which set forth that he, during his administration of the government, had presented these drums to it for gallantry in the field; and then sent in a bill for the plates.

He is not the only peculiar governor with which the Gambia has been afflicted; one in particular I can remember who was notorious for his parsimony throughout West Africa. I had known this potentate when he revolved in a more humble sphere, and during one of my visits to Bathurst (I shall not say in what year) I allowed myself the honour of calling on him. At about 1 p.m. I presented myself at the door of Government House and knocked; not a soul was to be seen anywhere, and the place might have been deserted. I kept on knocking louder and louder for some minutes, and then as nobody answered and the door was wide open I walked in. I traversed one room, and, turning round the corner of a screen, discovered a person attired in very seedy garments employed in cutting mouthfuls off a slab of mahogany-coloured meat which lay in a plate on a chair. This was the governor, but I should never have recognised him in that position had it not been for the suit of clothes he was wearing and which I remembered having seen on him some years before. He received me with great affability, asked me to sit down, and conversed about mutual acquaintances. He did not ask me to join him in his lunch, for which I was not sorry, but he did ask me to have a glass of wine. He said:

“Can I offer you a glass of pam wine?”

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t quite catch....”

“Will you take a glass of pam wine?”

I said, “I don’t quite know what you mean.”

“You don’t know pam wine? It is the sap of the pam tree; the natives bring it round to sell. It is very refreshing.”

He meant that horrible emetic known as palm wine, and I declined with thanks.

The subjects of this monarch said that he kept no servants, and made a police orderly do all the housework. I saw nobody at all. They added that he gave a small dinner once a quarter, and that everybody ate a good square meal before going to it, because they knew that they would not get enough to satisfy hunger at his table. All these West African Governors neglect their duty in the matter of entertaining, though they receive a special table allowance of £500 a year for that purpose. A circular from the Colonial Office pointing out that that money is intended for entertainment, and not for the defraying of ordinary household expenses, would not be out of place.

The Gambia boasts of a local corps of militia. It is not often called out, principally because there is no particular uniform for it, no officers, except two unmilitary Colonial officials, and no arms, except old trade muskets, for the men. As the latter are mostly decrepid old pensioners and discharged men, all Africans, from the disbanded West India regiments, it is not a very formidable body. It is a curious fact that Africans cannot, as a rule, be taught to shoot straight: the practice of the Houssa Constabulary on the Gold Coast is deplorable, and it is well known that it is the bad shooting of the few Africans who still remain in the existing West Indian Regiments that pulls down the figure of merit in those corps. There is no such difficulty with West Indian negroes, for the average recruit from the West Indies is as good a shot as the British recruit, and this almost seems to show that a certain amount of cultivation and civilisation is necessary for making a marksman. In these days of long-range firing it is fortunate that recruiting in Africa has ceased.

Should any of my readers feel tempted to visit the Gambia, I believe that they would find a hitherto unopened field for sport at the upper waters of that river. Certain it is that elephants abound some distance above the falls of Barraconda, the river is full of hippopotami and crocodiles; while leopards, hyænas, antelopes, and civet-cats are easily found, by any one who knows how and where to look, in the vicinity of Bathurst itself. Of the feathered tribes, quail, curlew, snipe, duck, and the usual varieties of cranes and parrots, are common; while the valuable marabout bird and the ostrich are frequently bagged by the badly-armed and worse-shooting Mandingos and Jolloffs.