PRESENTED AT COURT.

Much to do, and little time to spare.

The morning after arrival at Understone saw me on foot at 5 A.M.; an hour and a half, however, elapsed before the party was collected for a stroll to Aro. I need hardly say that they did not expect

‘The blooming pleasures that await without

To bless the wildly devious morning walk.’

Aro, the terminus of the Ogun’s navigable portion, is the nearest port of Abeokuta, about five miles from the missionary compound at Ake and one and a half from the Badagry gate.

Starting in a south-westerly direction we struck into the European road, and passed the two eyes in the granite rock before described. The ‘Do- the-bachelors-good’ market led to another Church Missionary establishment, directed by Mr. King, a native catechist, with its long garner-like room used for pedagoguery and place of worship. To-day being Saturn’s day, the bell rang ‘_Boys_ and girls _come_ to school! _boys_ and girls _come_ to school!’ The fine ears of the African vulgar attribute special words to every unusual or artificial sound. The horn and the tom-tom, for instance, express to them a great complication of ideas by onomatopoetic language; such as—rise to fight! sit down all! take hold, take hold!—which would hardly be appreciable to the coarser senses of the uneducated European. A long stretch down-hill led to the establishment of Mr. Champness, a respected Wesleyan missionary, who fortunately escaped the terrible Sierra Leone epidemic of 1858-59.

‘The captain,’ alleging a suspicious blister on the heel, lagged behind till he found a mount. The path was by no means bad; the gravelly soil allowed the water to run off on each side, and high-wheeled American ‘trotting-wagons’ would safely pass over it. The exceeding impurity of the place however at once struck us, and it was an impression which Time strengthened. The surface was a wave of rising ground, broken into steep ridges and deep hollows, through which streamlets flow—Yoruba is ‘a land of waters’—and these again require bridges. Alongside of the road were rare fields and frequent patches of tangled bush. The fetid tiglium or croton-oil plant, and the wild senna, whose leaf is unfit for exportation, the uncultivated indigo, the beautifully-blossomed mallows, the datura and other medicinal plants were backed by the tall Oro hedges, whose material is that cactus which the elephant loves, and which, in this part of Africa, is mainly used as a mordant for arrow- poison.

The people had already left their sleeping mats, and were loitering towards the little labours of the day. Mr. Campbell ‘asserts, and appeals to every one who has visited this section of Africa to verify his assertion, that there is not a more industrious people [than the Egbas] upon the face of the earth!’ Making due allowance for the Americanism that concludes the sentence—‘the face of the earth’ and ‘the whole globe’ are perfectly familiar to every denizen of the once United States—I must, however, so far differ as to declare that there is not one white man in Abeokuta who will endorse this dictum. It is true that all Egbas, from the lowest to the highest, must, like the Sultan of Stamboul, practise some handicraft; that the boys are trained to work, after their gentle fashion, and that the people, unlike their neighbours, are, for Africa, tolerable farmers; but an English navvy, fed on beef and beer, will, it is said, work out 2·5 Frenchmen; he would certainly knock up a dozen Egbas. And how can it be otherwise in these malarious, fever-stricken, enervating, effeminizing lands? Idleness is not ‘the root of all evil,’ the bane of society in the tropics; it is the condition imperatively imposed by a thermometer generally above 70° (Fah.), where labour is a curse, and where work, if it shortens man’s days, must also shorten his life.

The people were tolerably well clothed, and, as usual at this hour, every one was working at the chew-stick, a bit of guava, or of some other soft wood. ‘Dressy men’ wore shogoto (African knicker-bockers), or loose cotton drawers, fastened above the hip, and extending, like those of the Madeiranese peasantry, to the knee. The body was covered with a cloth gracefully thrown like a plaid over the shoulder, generally the left, and a second ‘pagne’ was frequently wrapped, shawl-like, round the waist. The poor dispense with the shogoto and the shoulder-cloth, retaining nothing but the diggo, or loin-wrap. The women had three cloths—one on the shoulders, and the other round the body below the bosom, concealing the third, which is shorter and scantier. These attires were mostly dyed with indigo, but of different tints, the sky- blue being apparently the effect of wear. Those who cannot afford such toilette wear scrimp wrappers, which develop forms not altogether untempting. The men had caps of every colour, form, and material; travellers and the ogboni, or elders, who are forbidden to use ‘filá,’ wore large hats of woven palm-leaf, like the Moors, the Mandengas, and the people of Zanzibar, who, more sensible than Europeans, carry their umbrella, not in hand, but upon head.

The women, who can rarely grow side ringlets to any length, confined their hair with a fillet of indigo-dyed cloth, and those who were in mourning walked about with naked scalps. All went barefoot, except those who rode. The flasher sort, however, had their feet, like their hands and arms, adorned with red or camwood,—the henna of this part of Africa. Some few male exceptions were dressed in Frankish costume, and formed a hideously respectable contrast to their semi-nude neighbours. The best looking were decidedly the Moslems, here called ‘Imale,’ probably a corruption of ‘Muallim.’ They were conspicuous for their decent dress—turbans, or Hausa head-dresses, gay calico calottes, like the kantop or ear-cap of India, with the large loose tobe, or shirt, called Ewu, ‘the Guinea-fowl,’ from the handsome embroidery in spots, which often renders the article worth five pounds; and shalwars, or trousers, ample, but gathered in at the ankle. Some Moslems wore long side-locks, the ‘corners of the beard,’ as the Scripture has it, and which are still affected by the Jews of Bagdad. They carried large double-edged swords, which, however, can hardly be drawn; and repining at their subject position, they are said to dislike white men. None, however, refused to return the Moslem salutation; and I heard one exclaim to the other, ‘Báriki!’ ‘May it be fortunate to you!’ a phrase usually addressed to one who sneezes. This is a custom still prevalent throughout Asia, and not wholly obsolete in Europe, where a ‘_Dieu vous bénisse!_’ is required by an infirmity threatening, they believe, aneurism, hernia, hemorrhage, and similar amenities. I remarked that many of the pagans bore about in their hands bright iron chains, which are religious implements here, as at Benin. Almost every man had his oggo (oggau) club, or shillelagh. It is the knobkerry of the Kafirs, the Somal, and the Fijian Islanders, and it extends throughout the African interior. Here it is modified to a hockey-stick, about eighteen inches long, with a twist of strong iron wire round the neck, and nails along the line of percussion; sometimes it is distinguished by thongs of horny hide, brass or copper tacks, and other barbaric decorations.

There was a vast variety of tattoos and ornamentation, rendering them a serious difficulty to strangers. The skin patterns were of every variety, from the diminutive prick to the great gash and the large boil- like lumps. They affected various figures—tortoises, alligators, and the favourite lizard, stars, concentric circles, lozenges, right lines, welts, gouts of gore, marble or button-like knots of flesh, and elevated scars, resembling scalds, which are opened for the introduction of fetish medicines, and to expel evil influences. In this country every tribe, sub-tribe, and even family, has its blazon,[46] whose infinite diversifications may be compared with the lines and ordinaries of European heraldry—a volume would not suffice to explain all the marks in detail. The chief are as follows:—The distinguishing mark of the Egbas is a gridron of three cuts, or a multiplication of three upon each cheek. Free-born women have one, two, or three raised lines, thread-like scars from the wrist up the back of the arm, and down the dorsal regions, like long necklaces. They call this ‘entice my husband.’ The Yorubas draw perpendicular marks from the temples to the level of the chin, with slight lateral incisions, hardly perceptible, because allowed soon to heal. The Efons of Kakanda wear a blue patch, sometimes highly developed, from the cheek-bones to the ear. The Takpas of Nupe make one long cut from the upper whorl of the nostril, sweeping towards the ear. At Ijesha, a country lying east of Yoruba Proper, the tattoo is a long parallelogram of seven perpendicular and five transverse lines. Those called Brechi[47] wear a flap of skin taken from the forehead, and overlapping eyebrows, nose, and eyecorners. This style of scalping kills many, but the survivors are greatly respected. I observed a thing novel to me; the areola in the women was not unfrequently tattooed a dull dark blue, the colouring matter being native antimony, found in Yoruba and on the Niger, and levigated with pepper and natron upon a stone. The _bijouterie_ was coral, in necklaces and wristlets, heavy bangles, and anklets of copper, iron, tin, or brass, and various rings upon the thumb, the middle finger, and the toes. Most people carry beads of various sizes and colours, denoting their peculiar worship. Necklaces of large, many-coloured beads, with three bigger than the rest, show the devotees of Yemaya, goddess of brooks and streams. Pure white beads are worn by those who adore Obatala; black and white, alternating with red, by the worshippers of Shango—Vulcan, or Jupiter Tonans. Small white Indian cowries are the ornaments of idols, and as such are worn by their servants, especially by those who adore the god Burukú[48] and the goddess Amanlu, who, like the Hindu Shiva and Bhawani, slay without weapons. The worshippers of Ifa, called ‘palm-nut priests,’ wear wristlets of palm-nuts strung on fibre. Brass bracelets, and all ornaments of the same colour, are symptoms of adoring the female river god Oshun. Snake worshippers, and, according to others, those who pray to the Ogun River, have an iron ring round the left wrist. Those who bear upon their foreheads a painted mark like the Hindoo Tilak (or the ashes which Roman Catholics daub on on Ash Wednesday) are the votaries of the aristocratic and expensive god Orishako.

The physical conformation of the Egbas is not very promising in an intellectual point. The cranium is small[49]—as a European can find by putting on a native cap—wedge-formed, with compressed brow, almost always prognathous, hardly ever pyramidal or oval. There are some who hold prognathism—a peculiarity observable in almost all negro and negroid tribes—to be exaggerated by lactation unduly prolonged at an epoch when the bones are still plastic. But such suckling is still the custom in Southern Italy, without the hideous African development. The external auditory process projects in a ring of bone round the canal, seeming to bury or overlap the foramen more than in Europeans,[50] whilst the protrusion of the lower face and the receding of the chin give, when carried to excess, a truly bestial appearance. The skeleton is usually well put together in the upper part; in the lower, the hips are too narrow for beauty; the shin, probably from sitting at squat in youth, is convex, and the heel projects behind—a negro should therefore wear sandals, never patent leathers. The nose is sometimes hooked, but the nostrils are expanded and elevated at the alæ; in the plainer sort it is broad and squatting upon both cheeks, with an absence of rigidity and of dividing apex in the cartilage. The cheek-bones are high, and the face is frequently lozenge-shaped. The blue eye, seen upon the Niger, is unknown. Here the sclerotica is rarely clear, except in women and children; usually it is bloodshot, from the relaxation of the minor blood-vessels, or of a pale dirty yellow, as from over-activity of the liver, or speckled with hazel spots. The iris is more frequently a dark or a light brown, with a sea-green shade, than black; and the brows and lashes are removed, like the beard and the axile pile. The lips are large; the circum-oral region tumid; there is an ugly blue-black ridge between the gums and the teeth; the former are frequently discoloured by snuff, and the latter, though set off by the blackness around, are neither whiter nor finer than those of Europeans generally.[51] The hair is short, scant, crisply-curled, often growing from the scalp like peppercorns, and rather dull or reddish-brown than black. The heads of the men are trimmed in landscape or parterre fashion—indescribable. The prevailing style amongst the women is to plait it up into thin longitudinal ridges, like those of a musk melon, and to tie the residue in a small tight knot at the sinciput. The skin is generally rough, sometimes like shagreen; and in the poor the epidermis of the hand is as hard as the foot of the domestic fowl. It varies from a dark coffee colour to a _café au lait_ light as a Mulatto’s; I especially remarked this peculiarity in the chiefs and fetish men, whose hair also sometimes verged upon a dirty sand colour. There is not, however, any red race, as amongst the Fula. Albinism is sporadic and distinct, nor did I see at Abeokuta that modification of the xanthous temperament afterwards observed in the Brass River, and at Batanga.

The Abeokutan, when taken at his best, is tall and well made, ‘black, but comely.’ When not so, he is hideously chimpanzee-like. The male figure here, as all the world over, is notably superior, as amongst the lower mammals, to that of the female. The latter is a system of soft, curved, and rounded lines, graceful, but meaningless and monotonous. The former far excels it in variety of form and in nobility of make, in strength of bone and in suppleness of muscle and sinew. In these lands, where all figures are semi-nude, the exceeding difference between the sexes strikes the eye at once. There will be a score of fine male figures to one female, and there she is, as everywhere else, as inferior as is the Venus de’ Medici to the Apollo Belvidere. In Africa also, where the female figure lacks support, it is soon destroyed. The mammæ in women are naturally large; after the first child they become pendent and flaccid, and in old age they shrink to mere purses and lappets of skin. It is a curious fact that these withered crones will sometimes suckle children, and that the grandam is used as wet nurse.[52] In some cases I remarked that, after the fashion of the true Amazons, one breast was well developed, whilst the other hardly appeared—probably for want of use.

Life in the open air, light clothing, and an abundance of dirty soap, compounded of palm-kernel oil boiled with ashes, prevent amongst the Egbas an over-development of the true African effluvium; yet it is there. The negro’s skin—or rather the bulbs situated in the cellular web under the cutis—is a more active organ of depuration than the European’s, importantly aiding the respiratory and other processes in eliminating effete matter from the blood. Dr. Stark proved that the white colour imbibes odours in the lowest, the black in the highest degree. The disorder—for such at times it is—is increased by frequent anointings, foul food, and visceral disorders; and when to these is added want of cleanliness—the oily particles of the perspiration, so difficult to remove, remaining upon the skin, whilst the watery disappear[53]—the effect becomes truly intolerable. Even amongst Europeans in the tropics, the transpiratory secretion often becomes acrid; and as the old Dutch traveller quaintly remarks, they can never expect health until their ‘bodies open’—in other words, till their pores act freely.

As we advanced we were plentifully greeted—more, however, by the women than the men, and most by the children—with the common word Akabo, _i.e._, Aku abo, used to a person returning from a journey. The answer is simply an indefinitely prolonged _o_, which serves on all and every occasion; if not returned it is a slight. Equals say to one another Aku,[54] meaning, properly, may you not die, thus showing the real African dread of death. The life-loving southern European would say, ‘Viva mille anni!’ All these people, from Benin to Dahome, when heard thus saluting at Sierra Leone, were called Akoos, with as much correctness as if Englishmen were termed God-bless-yous.[55] More modern writers have named them Hios,[56] or Eyeos, from Oyo (Auyan), the great capital of the Yoruban nation, about 2° (N. lat. 9°) N.N.E. of Abeokuta.[57] The best conventional name of the language, however, despite Mr. Koelle, is Yoruba; of the country’s P.N. more anon.

All national salutations are tolerably ridiculous; the Englishman cannot laugh at the African except for his unreasonable ceremoniousness. As the old joke has it, ‘How do you do?’ can only be answered grammatically by ‘Do what?’ ‘How do you find yourself?’ by ‘I never lost myself!’ ‘How do you feel?’ by ‘With my hands!’ The Egbas, who are gifted with uncommon loquacity and spare time, have invented a variety of salutations and counter-salutations applicable to every possible occasion. For instance, Oji re, did you wake well? Akwaro, good morning! Akuasan, good day! Akwale, good evening! Akware, to one tired. Akushe, to one at work. Akurin (from _rin_, to walk), to a traveller. Akule, to one in the house. Akwatijo, after a long absence. Akwalejo, to a stranger. Akurajo, to one in distress. Akujiko, to one sitting. Akudaro, to one standing. Akuta, to one selling. Wolebe (be careful!) to one met, and so forth. The servile _shashtanga_ or prostration of the Hindus is also a universal custom. It is performed in different ways; the most general is, after depositing the burden, and clapping hands once, twice, or thrice, to go on all-fours, touch the ground with the belly and breast, the forehead and both sides of the face successively; kiss the earth, half rise up, then pass the left over the right fore-arm, and _vice versâ_, and finally, after again saluting mother Hertha, to stand erect. The inferior prostrates to the superior, the son to the mother, the younger to the elder brother, and I have been obliged to correct a Moslem boy of the evil practice of assuming a position in which man should address none but his Maker. The performance usually takes place once a day on first meeting, but meetings are so numerous that at least one hour out of the twenty-four must thus be spent by a man about town. Equals kneel, or rather squat, before one another, and snap the fingers in the peculiarly West African way, which seems to differ in every tribe.

As we advanced we saw unmistakable signs of idolatry. To many trees bits of pottery, snail shells—Achatinæ six inches long—were attached: a fence here consists of a few light sticks tied together with strings, from which these harmless articles were suspended. In places were pointed out to us a stalk of Indian corn with a yam or a gourd on the top. The idea is that, whoever touches these things, the disease or the misfortune of the placer will be transferred to him. There is the same superstition in Hindostan, and terrible tales of thus inoculating complaints are current amongst Europeans.[58] There were broken pots full of fragments of crystallized quartz and iron conglomerate, which last is said to be a holy stone. A traveller piling a handful of sand upon his luggage leaves it under the protection of a medicine, or magic, which Mungo Park calls ‘kwong.’ A hatchet is placed in houses that have been lightning struck, and water is worshipped in small earthen pots, over which the women kneel and smite the palm of the hand with the fingers. We are reminded of Apuleius, who describes the traveller being delayed by ‘an altar garlanded with flowers, or a cavern overshadowed with leaves, or an oak laden with horns, or a beech-tree crowned with hides, or a hillock consecrated by a hedge, or the trunk of a tree chipped out by the hatchet, or a turf moistened with libations, or a stone drenched with unguent.’ Strangers connect these mysteries with Oro. The truth is, few know anything beyond the fact that they are superstitious observances—many of them, doubtless, quite as efficacious as the horseshoe or mistletoe in England, or the Pishog, which transferred cream and butter from one churn to another, in Ireland, where, as in Abyssinia, old women were burned for becoming grey cats.

We found no difficulty in fording two of the waters on the line of road; the third, however, was more formidable. Mr. Consul Foote fell there, his horse having placed its hoof in a deep hole, whence earth had been taken for building purposes; and he then laid in the germs of the disease which carried him off in the prime of life. Several old women, in purest Guinea costume, were washing their clothes and persons, and, not wishing to wet our feet, we attempted by ‘sweet mouth’ to secure a mount. The reply was characteristically African, viz., ‘What will you give me?’ Having neither cowries nor tobacco, we waited till a man came up, and he was more obliging than the veterans of the other sex.

Nearing the walls we saw a house in the process of preparation for Mr. Savage, a native merchant. Numbers of labourers were at work, for Africans, like Asiatics, are great at division of labour, which, indeed, they often so divide that the remainder is imperceptible. Some hoed a deep hole,—here as at Benin and in Sokoto, where they are scattered over the town, a standing nuisance,—which afterwards remains to be filled with rain and drainage, filth, offal, and sometimes with the corpse of a child or a slave. The effect of these pits upon the climate may easily be imagined. Another gang was working the clay, and converting it into the swish or dab required for the walls; whilst a third party was engaged in preparing grass thatch and palm leaves for the roof. When the actual building begins there will be one gang to carry clay balls to the scene of action, a second of labourers who fling the same balls into wall shape and pat them down, a third, boys and girls, who hand other balls from the ground or the scaffolding to the masons above, a trimmer to plumb and set things square with his wooden shovel, and finally thatchers to finish off. The shell is usually made in three horizontal layers, which must dry for a day or two in the sun and wind before receiving another addition; the builders, however, will await for the last touch the month of December, when the hard, dry breath of the harmattan will harden their work to the consistence of concrete. This desert wind, which Captain Maury and his Ehrenberg bring from impossible places, is enjoyed like the Neapolitan scirocco by new comers, and is much feared by natives and old stagers. It is, therefore, supposed to be a giant, an African Æolus, who sits upon a mountain far in the interior, blowing dust and cold—the elements of discomfort—over the world.

Presently we arrived at the Aro, or the Badagry or the south-western gate. It is not unlike that of Agbameya, but, for valid reasons, it is, or rather it was, on a somewhat more extensive scale. Long quiet—lately broken—has, however, demoralized the people; ten years ago it was the same in Great Britain. The wall is hardly eight inches thick, there is no weather-thatch, the guard-house is almost in ruins, and the moat is a mere ditch. Victory has made the Egbas too secure.

But a truce to criticism. We are now upon classic ground, the local Marathon. Here was fought, on the 3rd of March, 1851, the great battle between the Dahomans and the Abeokutans. The quarrel was of old standing. Gezo, King of Idáhame, as the land of the Lord of Amazons is here called, had been defeated at Ado—a town nearly half-way between Badagry and Abeokuta—by the Ibashorun, or commander-in-chief, of Abeokuta; and he had lost, besides the town, his stool, which in these regions means the throne. The Dahomans, holding themselves to be a military as well as a warlike nation—we have lately been lectured upon the distinction, which is no difference—and burning for revenge, determined to destroy Abeokuta, for which purpose they advanced with the full force of the empire.

Their plans were ill laid, and their boasted secrecy appears to have been a lamentable failure. Arrived at Ishagga, a small Egbado town fifteen to seventeen miles south-west of their destination, they were duped by special treaties, oaths, and sacrifices, and were persuaded to attack, not the north-western gate, which was the weakest, but the south-western, which had already been fortified. Their plans of a night surprise were also overruled by their treacherous allies, who persuaded them that midday would find the defenders either sleeping or working at their farms; and finally, the Ishaggans pointed out a ford which wetted all the cartridges of their friends.

Baddahun or Glele,[59] son of the late King Gezo of Baddahun Dahome, revenged this treachery, as he was expected to do. After patiently waiting ten years with annual threats against Abeokuta, which threw the people off their guard, he suddenly, in the spring of 1862, fell upon Ishagga with a force not exceeding 6000 men—the town numbered about 3000 souls—massacred all he could not carry away, and departed, laden with prisoners, amongst whom were seventeen or eighteen Christian converts, and a Mr. Doherty of Sierra Leone, one of the Scripture readers of the Church Missionary Society.

The Rev. Mr. Bowen, missionary and quondam Texas ranger, who used, they say, a good rifle in the fight, thus describes the Dahoman attack of 1851 upon Abeokuta:—About noon, in the bright month of March, the Egbas, some 15,000 strong—these numbers must be taken _cum grano_—marched out of the Aro gate to meet the enemy. They then divided into three parties: the first proceeded to the ford on the Badagry road, the second, under Ogubonna, the bravest of the Baloguns, now deceased, crossed the river near the wall, and the third remained not far from the Aro gate. Meanwhile the Dahomans moved across the prairie with colours flying, in heavy columns, numbering 10,000 men[60] and 6000 women. They also formed two divisions, one of which fell upon the Abeokutan force guarding the ford, whilst the other, under Gezo,[61] their king, charged furiously upon Ogubonna, and drove him back upon the rocks and rapids of the Ogun River. Mr. Bowen sent the 3rd brigade to his support, when he rallied, and even made head against the enemy. The Abeokutans at the ford were also flung back by the Dahomans; they flocked, however, into the gate, and effectually checked the enemy, who, in this attack, were mainly ‘Amazons.’[62] There had been some dispute between the male and female soldiery, and both laboured under considerable dissatisfaction: the latter had claimed the right to storm, which the former obtained, and were left to lose the day by their sulking rivalesses.

Then the women, fearing the taunts of the men, pressed hotly forwards, and many were killed close to the gateway. Here, and here only, there was something like a stand-up hand-to-hand fight, muskets being clubbed for want of bayonets; the rest was all skirmishing. After six hours ensued a purely African scene. King Gezo’s division rested upon the battlefield half-way between the Aro gate and the river, and Ogubonna’s did the same. A resolute advance along the whole line, and a single charge by the one would have settled the fate of the other army—both preferred, however, to sleep upon the field. During the night King Gezo’s division moved off, followed by the other Dahoman troops, carrying their wounded in orderly retreat. The Egbas, enraged by being attacked by women, pursued them hotly with discharges of musketry, galling their rear. At Ishagga the Dahomans faced about, fought for a while, and fled—the treacherous Ishaggans doing their best to destroy them.

Mr. Bowen estimates the Dahoman loss at 1200, others exaggerate it to 3000 killed and 1000 prisoners. Mr. Crowther, senior, counted 75 women and 5 men lying within a few yards between the river and the wall. As might be expected, the women suffered most; the flower of the army was believed to have perished. The Egbas’ loss was comparatively trifling. The effect of the ‘Battle of Aro’ was to place in possession of the Egbas the Ogun River line and direct communication with Lagos and the coast, the one thing needful to an African inland nation. The Dahomans have ever since been burning with rage, and loudly threatening revenge. Early in 1861 they collected another force—the number was set down at 22,000, which I would divide by three—and marched upon Abeokuta. On the road, however, small-pox broke out—it is said to have killed 8000!—after which the remnant found their way home. The Abeokutans, before Gezo’s attack, dreaded their foe; and had, they say, resolved to burn their houses and bury themselves in the ruins rather than be taken alive. At present they despise him, and loudly boast of their power to ‘whip’ him. Now, therefore, is their danger; and if demoralized by relying upon English assistance rather than upon their own energies they may one day come to grief.

But Dahome, in its actual state, is to some extent a bugbear. The mighty warlike empire of which Bosman dimly heard, and even the strong military kingdom over which Gezo ruled, is now _en décadence_. Its very institutions must cause its decline: it lets its own blood, and, though the drops are few at a time, it cannot but suffer in the long run. The troops are poorly armed with trade muskets, ignorant of bayonets, and with short falchions of stuff like hoop-iron. The ‘Amazons’ boast themselves invulnerable, but readily retreat: an equal number of British charwomen, armed with the British broomstick, would—I lay, to speak Yorkishly—clear them off in very few hours.[63] The male soldiery make, like the French, a noisy, fiery onslaught, but, repulsed with vigour, they do not readily return to the charge. Their wars are mere slave hunts; their object is to capture, not to kill, and surprises, not attacks, form their favourite strategy. The terrible reports current concerning Dahome and its ‘blood-stained despot’ may be traced to certain Europeans and Brazilians, whose interest it is to deter slave- emancipators from investigation. They have lately rumoured that the King of Dahome is resolved to capture an English officer to hold his stirrup. We hear occasionally of a white man being sent to Agbome, ‘rolled up like a cigar,’ and a certain M. Medeiros was, it is said, compelled, for punishment of his recusancy, to walk the way barefoot.[64] But these are slavers, who are thoroughly despised by the king, and who, he knows, must eat any dirt to please him. It is, however, a fact that neither Baddahun nor Gezo, his father, ever put to death a white man. We have no good modern account of this interesting despotism. Commander Forbes is said to have copied from previous publications. There is no doubt that a man well conversant with Africa, and known to have friendly intentions—Mr. M‘Coskry of Lagos, for instance—would find no difficulty in visiting and in returning safe from Dahome. I would gladly accompany him.[65]

At the several gates of Abeokuta octroi or customs are raised. The two articles most taxed are cowries and corn—the latter taken in kind. Other sources of revenue are police dues, trade taxes on imports and exports, _corvée_ or forced labour—the _begar_ of India—and, on emergency, an impost equivalent to five shillings on each household. It is by no means easy to ascertain the amount of Asiatic or African revenue; the missionaries, however, set down that of Abeokuta at one per cent. These decidedly moderate proceeds belong not to the Alake, or king, but to the chiefs; a system which the local paper, the ‘Iwe Irohin,’ thinks—with scanty popular good-will in consequence—should be altered. The change would possibly strengthen the hands of the monarch, who certainly requires support; on the other hand, it would lengthen interregnums, which are already long enough. The late Mr. Consul Foote strongly advised the Abeokutans to place an impost upon imports, but to send out exports free of tax. They did not agree—nor can we wonder, as Lagos has since followed their example—on the same principle as England prefers the unjust income-tax to the just property-tax or capital-tax. For in Abeokuta, as in England, the law-giver would lose by doing justice to the law-receiver.

Beyond the Aro gate superstition again shows itself. The adit and the exit are by two parallel but separate paths. At Agbome one thoroughfare would be for royal, the other for public convenience; here, however, one is used each month, and if an accident happens it is charged to the wrong path, much as in England the day’s good or bad temper depends upon putting the right or the left foot first out of bed. The grass waved tall and lush over the Dahoman clay; the expanse was broken by sundry graves, some thatched over like dwarf or ‘fause houses,’ others had a rude cross, to which articles of clothing were suspended, and an elephant’s jawbone—the buried man’s idol—hung over the huntsman, who, like the fisherman, must be buried outside the walls. These two crafts form separate guilds, which almost become castes, worship the god Ogun, and meet in separate Ogboni lodges.

About a mile and a half along the Badagry road—a mere pathway worn by market-people in the bush—placed us at Aro. It is the port and landing- place of Abeokuta in the rainy season; during the dry season, from the end of November to the middle of March, Agbameya is preferred. The outlying village already shows signs of civilization in a ferry, palm- oil puncheons, and cask-houses. Messrs. M‘Coskry and Wike, and M. Bergmeyer and Scala, with Robbins, the agent, have depôts there, and they will probably be followed by others. A little above Aro we see the ridge of slabs and boulders which, stretching with breaks across the river, render its rapids un-navigable. The material of the obstruction is a gneiss, banded with thin lines of snowy quartz, and substratified, the strata being for the most part highly tilted up. Portages are useless, for these rapids perpetually recur. The banks of the Ogun are here perpendicular, and composed of stiff clay; in Egypt, as in Asia, they would be sonorous with the sakiyah or Persian wheel; in this place they are silent.

After sitting for a few minutes in the house of a negro, who politely offered us a dram of trade rum, which was as politely declined, we found by the stinging sun that it was time to re-start, if we intended to reach Ake at 9 A.M. On the way we passed a young person in great distress. She had dropped her pot of black oil,[66] worth at least four heads of cowries[67] equal to seven shillings—no small loss to the poor devil—and she was expressing her grief in the long, loud song which I remember in the Lake Regions of Central Africa. Tears rolled down her sable cheeks, yet in the intervals of sobbing it would flow on, that curious bawling cry which one unaccustomed would take to be the expression of lively joy. It is long before the European ear distinguishes between the sounds of mirth and the voice of woe proceeding from Asiatic and African lips. Returning through ‘Do-the- bachelors-good,’ we found the market warm, as the Hindostanis say. At a distance we heard a murmur like that of a distant sea, and as we sighted the open sheds that form the bazar it swelled to a roar. The market opens from dawn till 9 P.M.; it is fullest, however, a little before sunset, and the more industrious light lamps, instead of going home with the darkness. The bazar is a great institution in Yoruba, and, indeed, throughout the Nigerian Valley. It is also a civilizing agent, and by giving occupation to the women—it is disreputable for them to work on the farms, but not to carry the produce for sale—it tends to repress disorders. Porters are a hardly-used race in this region: men carry 40 lbs. to 80 lbs. burden for weeks’ journeys, and the women may be seen staggering, as if about to faint, under a bale of cotton 112 lbs. in weight. Men were tramping off towards the seat of war, sixty miles distant, laden with all manner of provisions, which they bore upon the head, not, like East Africans, upon the shoulder. The burden is fastened to a neat wicker-work cradle, flat, and garnished with side handles. I would suggest to bumpkins, who take hours in driving a recusant pig to market, the advisability of lashing it to a plank—should no better conveyance be procurable—and of carrying it upon the head. We are once more in the land of caravans: they number hundreds or thousands, each man carrying his sleeping-mat, cotton-sheet, or wrapper, provision bag, and earthen pipkin, to warm the ‘kitchen’ for his maize or yam; and they are old, expert travellers. They make when starting the _nakl safar_, as the Arabs call the short, initiatory march, at Atade, on the Ibadan, and Awoyade, on the Badagry road.[68]

Under the long rows of umbrella-trees sat a multitude of black women—selling appears to be their peculiar privilege—with scions of every age, from the big-eyed babe hardly a week old to the bold bare bairn aged ten. Cowries were placed near the goods, and, as in the Egyptian coffee-house, the buyer’s honour is trusted. The principal articles were provisions for present consumption, hardware, dry goods, earthenware, and ‘notions.’ Of the former, we found ready-made soups, obbe or palaver sauce—so called because eaten in council—which, by the mixture of mulookhiyah (_Corchorus olitorius_), reminds us of Egypt;[69] ekko or mush; huge snail shells, here relished as much as in Sierra Leone; kankie or maize cakes, and fufu balls of levigated corn or boiled yam; grated cassava or ‘wood flour,’ as it is generally called—a favourite, because on journeys this farina can be mixed up with cold water and eaten without cooking—balls of beans ground on a stone, mixed with spices, and placed to fry in purified black oil; dried rats; pots of black and yellow palm oil, here far cleaner than in the Oil Rivers; shea or tree butter, which will become one of the most considerable of Africa’s many products;[70] sesamum oil; cereals of sorts, especially Indian and Guinea corn; eggs, terapins, and dried fish from Lagos, especially shrimps; Telfaria seeds;[71] pink kola nuts, displayed on a white napkin, neatly covering a basket; ground-nuts of pindar, the _pistache_ of old French travellers, and now called _arachide_; tobacco of sorts, chiefly Brazilian; wet goods and drinkables, such as palm wine and _pitto_, _oli_, or native beer, and well-diluted rum,[72] which is sold by men; ‘bullock milk for true;’[73] fruits mostly relished by Europeans—okpaimbo, ‘the white man’s palm,’ _i.e._, pine-apples, bananas, papaws, oranges, known as the white ‘man’s mango,’[74] and watermelons, which are exceedingly poor; condiments, pepper and bud pepper, ginger and other spices; and various vegetables, sweet potatoes, kokos, okros (_Hibiscus esculentus_), sugar-cane and onions, especially the bulbless sort, called chives in England and violet onions in India. The hardware was represented by bracelets of brass, iron,[75] tin, and copper;[76] and ‘Europe goods,’ knives and cutlasses, scissors and pins, needles, hoes and bill-hooks. The dry goods were raw silks, broadcloths, and velvets, of which the green are preferred; country cloths of grass and various fibres, some composed of pieces not broader than a riband, and sewn together; calico, shirtings, and cottons of sorts; red, blue, and white tapes; Hausa and other caps; ropes and lines; threads, especially red; yarns and reels of cotton. The leather-work was excellent; black and white, red and yellow, like that of Morocco; and the people make good flasks and saddle-straps, saddles and embroidered cushions. The earthenware was not remarkable; gourds and calabashes, some of them neatly and prettily carved with the knife, serving for crockery, earthen bowls, and china cups, plates, and dishes. There was a vast variety of beads, sold singly or by the string, and native imitations composed of broken palm-kernels and jasper. The ‘notions’ were balls of dirty soap, snuff-boxes, gunpowder, and ammunition; chalk, found on the Ijaye road; tobacco, roll and leaf; snuff; balls of indigo and liquid dye; camwood pounded with water and moulded into lumps; horse and cow dung, here used for plastering floors and walls; little cones of native salt, nitre, or saltpetre; baskets of leaves, used as brown paper for wrapping; provisions and firewood, brought by the women six to eight miles from the bush; stationery of various sorts; brooms, baskets, raw cotton, and cowries, in any number. Briefly, it was a heterogeneous mass, whose combined aroma on a warm morning and an empty stomach, after eight miles of sunny walk, was as startling to the olfactories as the awful hubbub—chiefly feminine and infantine—of saluting and laughing, squabbling and cursing, hailing, and howling, was to the auditory nerves. Pure swearing is European, not Asiatic or African. They anathematize, however, idiomatically enough, as—‘Oro (the devil) take you!’ ‘Egugun (king of ghosts) chop you!’ ‘May you die in the bush!’ _i.e._, remain unburied, whereas every man hopes to die in, or rather on, his bed; ‘May small-pox kill you!’[77] reminding one of an English exclamation now working itself out. And as usual amongst barbarians, the mother and the female relatives are abused with an indecency which beggars description. We lost no time in making the best of our way out of the range of ‘Do-the-bachelors-good.’

On the day of our arrival, Mr. Williams, a most forward specimen of the ‘nigger,’—these people can be respectful until spoiled by Europeans, after which they are insufferable—had been sent to announce to H.M. the Alake, the great fact of Commander Bedingfield having arrived at Abeokuta, and to request an audience _au plutôt possible_. The king was pleased to reply that he would see us on the next day, Saturday, shortly after 10 A.M. The walk to Aro, therefore, led directly to a toilette for the levée.

But 10 A.M. sped, then 11, then 12. Various messages went and came; still the great man’s dignity required us to wait, and 1 P.M. had struck before we were permitted to hope for the possibility of beholding him. Under these circumstances, had it been my ‘palaver,’ I should have deferred the visit till 3 P.M., and I should not have appeared before 5 P.M. I have no doubt that more civility would have been the result, and that the impression would have lasted longer. But this is to lecture omniscience. Armed with umbrellas—here they represent the ‘quality’—we walked over the few hundred yards that separate the palace from the mission compound of Ake. We were suddenly told that we had arrived; turned to the left into a ragged clay house, long and rambling, with a shallow verandah formed by posts supporting the eaves, under which female slaves, called—to magnify his importance—king’s wives, sat before articles for sale. The establishment was as mean-looking for Abeokuta as is St. James’s for London. Stooping to avoid injuring the coronal region, we crossed a hollow court-yard, in which there was nothing remarkable beyond a peculiarly neat pair of stocks, we entered through a second gate, an inner and a smaller court, and there we found a cluster of negroes seated at squat _sub divo_ to receive us.

We naturally looked around for the presence-chamber, when we were motioned to bend double, and thus to insert ourselves under the long, low verandah that subtended the side of the inner court. Five hexagonal columns of ultra-Egyptian massiveness, and about four feet high, divided the house-wall behind the verandah into as many compartments. Of these ‘loose boxes’ the two at either end were open, leading into the house; the three central were masked by a native cloth; in the middle was an old brocade bed-hanging—behind which we were told lay H.M., invisible—and lastly, was a curtain of scarlet velvet. The Awajali of Ijebu Ode is never allowed to see or to converse with strangers, except through his ministers; and that the cabinet may have it all their own way, when the monarch dies, all the _personnel_ is carefully put to death. The whole space, including the columns, was ‘beautifully black, like the rain-cloud,’ as the Egbas say, with horse or cow-dung, mixed with some leaf which may be indigo. This is the gobar of India, and though it is unknown in Eastern, it has been observed in Western Africa.[78] Happily we had brought our own chairs; the palace contains, I am told, but two, and we had time indeed to sit. The rest of the verandah was full of chiefs, ‘niggers,’[79] and a few Moslems, a total of about one hundred and fifty, and all adult males. Never have I seen such villainous crania and countenances as amongst the seniors of Abeokuta. Their calvaria depressed in front, and projecting cocoa-nut- like behind, the absence of beards, the hideous lines and wrinkles that seamed and furrowed the external parchment, and the cold, unrelenting cruelty of their physiognomies in repose, suggested the idea of the eunuch torturers erst so common in Asia. One felt the same _frisson_ at the sight as when looking upon the Gallic ladies who, in rainy weather, haunt the County Fire Office at the end of Regent Street, and one was sure that from pity or mercy it would be as well to address the wounded mandril. I afterwards observed the same amongst the elders of Benin, and I should not be surprised to find it at Agbome and Komasi. The atrocities which these ancients have witnessed, and the passion which they have acquired for horrors, must have set the mark of the beast upon their brows. There was not a vestige of splendour. The chiefs were bareheaded, naked to the waist, wholly unornamented, except with a few cheap beads, and clothed with a common native loin wrap, or a bit of unbleached ‘domestics.’ To retain wealth in such lands requires care and caution: an ostentatious man, however rich, will die poor.

We were beginning to wax impatient at this impertinent blending of misery and pretentiousness, when it was suggested that H.M.’s linguist, alias Mr. Wilhelm, the Church Missionary interpreter, had not appeared—a fresh reason for standing upon ceremony. It is contrary to etiquette for an Alake to show himself too freely either to his people or to strangers: the King of Oyo, at the first interview, remains hidden behind the curtain, and the Alaketu or chief of Iketu is known by a hole in the wall. Mr. Wilhelm is one of the earliest Egba recaptives who left Sierra Leone for Abeokuta: he has remained faithful amongst the faithless, and whilst the others have relapsed into the wildest heathenry, he has become the senior ‘Christian visitor’—_il a passé caporal sur le champ de gloire_. To quiet us, I suppose, a very dirty table of plain deal was set opposite H.M.’s bed-hanging; presently it was invested with an unwashed native cloth, and, lastly, after a long delay, it was richly spread with two wash-hand basins. One was ‘blue mandarin,’ the other, French Faïence, coarser than majolica, true pot- house appointments, in each of which were two tumblers and two wine- glasses—the materials for a carouse—at midday in the tropics!—then came upon the _tapis_ four bottles of maraschino, prepared for commerce; an ordinary high-shouldered, black gin-bottle, containing the normal mixture of vitriol, turpentine, and aqua pura; two large case-bottles of Brazilian rum, the offal of molasses, which, however, these people prefer to the Jamaica; and water in a ‘lustre jug,’ as the trade calls it, a thing of obsolete make and colour, such as thirty years ago was common in English farm-houses.

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All this splendour, however, did not so dazzle us as to make us forget that H.M. was treating us most slightingly, and our murmurs were not spared. At length, the confidential young slave who had drawn the corks, and who bore a bunch of keys, European and country made, and large enough for half a dozen chatelaines, drew back the old brocade bed- hanging. Thereupon H.M. appeared, encaged, like Clapperton’s portrait of the Bornuese Sultan; or, to choose a comparison nearer home, like a denizen of one of the larger dens in the Zoological Gardens. The shape and appearance of the apartment was exactly that of Mr. Punch, magnified perhaps a score of times; and it was a hole in the wall, under whose outside verandah we were sitting. The loose box was full of women and children, probably part of H.M.’s fine family. He is said to have twelve young and fifty old wives, but lately he has ceased to be a father, and is disposed, it is whispered, to resent any symptoms of impending paternity. One of the spouses sat before him, fanning him with a circle of hairy cowhide rudely set in a hairy handle, differing from the flag- shaped instrument of the further east. She wore a strand of red coral, and an indigo-dyed loin wrap, about which she was needlessly coquettish. In the verandah, dangling over the Alake’s head, were two Moslem charm- calabashes, covered apparently with many-coloured threads, white and red, light blue and dark blue, with hangings of written characts and talismans—their appearance was not familiar to me. The right arm of majesty reposed upon a long bolster covered with crimson silk velvet; and two mats, whose ends projected into the verandah, supported the portly person, which was disposed in a free and easy way upon the dexter side, with the limbs lazily drawn up. Upon the mat ends were placed a huge leathern cowrie purse, not unlike the old French _gibecière_; the royal stick, so enriched with beads that the material was invisible; an artful animal—done in cotton, with a harlequin suit of beads—intended for a dog, but resembling an armadillo; two chauris, or fly-flaps, of white oxtail—H.M. held a third, which rejoiced in a handle of beads—and a pair of unsheathed swords. One was a blade like the ancient falchion with which the Osmanli captured Rhodes, only it had a brass head of some beast, found possibly in heaven above, but certainly not on the earth below. The other was an antique Toledo, much worn down, but still bearing in distinct letters the noble Castilian motto, ‘No me trajas sin razon;’ on the other side, ‘No me degaines sin honor.’ Weapons of this kind often travel far: when the 18th Regiment, Bombay N. I., attacked and defeated the Beni Bu Ali Bedouins near Maskat, they found amongst the spoils, European swords, daggers, and gun-barrels, which had been handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation.

Such was the setting that enclosed the picture. The picture itself was as curious. Okukeno, Alake of Abeokuta, is said to be between sixty and seventy years old, and his contemporary, Ogubonna, had been a balogun, or high military officer, which implies an elderly man, during the Egba dispersion, some forty-five years ago. His head, partially shaven, and his beard, were grizzled; but judging from the plumpness of his arms, and the absence of wrinkles, Dr. Eales and I concluded that he was not much beyond fifty. He was a large and massive man, blind of one eye, which imprudently encountered a stone when attempting to arrest a faction fight; heavy featured, coarse, and unprepossessing. The loss of his upper teeth, except the canines, which recalled the Wild Boar of Ardennes’ fangs, caused a disagreeable indentation of the upper lip; the lower incisors have been destroyed by snuff, and the tongue-tip habitually protruded in a manner the reverse of kingly. Altogether he suggested the idea of an old, very damaged and very rickety lion. His dress was a tall fez-like cap of crimson velvet, disfigured by a pendant fringe of small blue porcelain beads round the upper third.[80] A necklace of red coral—pink is little valued by these lovers of the gorgeous—and a double string of the same material round each wrist, were the regal ornaments. This fondness for coral seems to have been borrowed from Benin, where even in Bosman’s day it was a decoration of state. His only body-cloth which appeared in view was a toga, of white watered silk, striped with broad crimson bands; and it sat upon him incongruously enough. His manner was as peculiar as his audience-chamber and his appearance. He seemed more than three parts asleep, and we could never decide whether the cause was old age, affectation of dignity, or the two greenish glasses of strong waters placed before him on a silver or silvered tray, now lead-coloured for want of plate-powder.

There are four tribes that have the right of giving what is called a king to the Egba nation, viz., Ake, Oshelle, Olewu, and Aguru. His Majesty of Abeokuta belongs to the first. His predecessor was that Shodeke of Ake who rose to power amongst his countrymen in time to ‘consolidate the heterogeneous mass,’ and to prevent the old blood-feuds breaking out afresh. Of the consolidator’s virtues all have something to say. Europeans speak respectfully of him, and his people almost worship him, as the Egyptians do Mohammed Ali Pasha—no great advantage to his successor. Shodeke dying in 1845, his brother Someye, the Ibashorun, premier, or commander-in-chief, was made temporary ruler of Abeokuta. After his death there was a hard race between Okukeno and his coeval Ogubonna. The former, however, had raised himself to the rank of sagbwa, or dictator. Having followed for years the plough, or rather the hoe, and at times acted as basket-maker—the Egbas are essentially farmers, whilst the Ijebus are traders—he had acquired the art of seeming humble. He had also the reputation of being poor—the usual affectation amongst ambitious chiefs—whilst he was rich in land and slaves. Thus the ‘mild and amiable sagbua,’ as a writer very wrongly calls him, had the cunning to defeat his rival, and in 1854 he was invested with the title of Alake, an honour never conferred upon an Egba prince since the great dispersion of the people. But he is waxing old; his lieges are weary of him; there is a report that he has made too much money, and signs appear that his subjects will send him a quiet message to ‘go and sleep.’[81]

The Alake is usually of calm and quiet demeanour, capable, however, of showing strong excitement, perfectly inveterate in vengeance, never forgetting and never forgiving, ever plotting and biding his time—an excellent thing in an African monarch. The following instance is given of his patience under injurious treatment: When the waggish savage Ogodippe, war chief of Ikijá—during the troubles at Lagos he sided with Akitoye against Kosoko, killed several Brazilian traders, and kidnapped a number of people—was reproved by the Alake, he arose, walked round him, and insulted him as anointed king was never insulted before, ending by asking if more was required. The Alake made no reply, but, _ultâ mente reponens_, stored up the injury for future discussion, and waits, like Saadi’s derwaysh, till he gets the insulter into his power.

When the curtain was raised, we were severally introduced by the interpreter, Lagos Williams, and Commander Bedingfield shook hands with the Alake. Our ‘mouf,’ as the linguist is here called, then opened the ‘palaver’ with sundry set and dreadfully sententious sentences; for example, that the Oibo, or white man, had come up from Lagos at the king’s request; that _vivâ voce_ was the best method of communication; that he hoped all would be well, and so forth.

In reply the Alake hung down his head, and affected to doze, which, to say the least, was not polite. No one had ever seen him so surly; many of the chiefs, therefore, had refused to attend, saying that the Alake must settle his own quarrels. The few then present attempted to encourage him by ejaculating certain words in an abrupt metallic tone, and one man, distinguished as a sycophant, sang out, ‘Ai-ku, don’t die!’[82] in a strain which still haunts certain fibres of my brain. The curtain was presently let down, and those outside began a new set of outlandish noises. Some uttered blessings; others beat the left breast with the right hand; whilst others, by joining the palms and sharply drawing back the two smaller fingers of the left hand, produced a snapping, which in this land signifies approval. All this apparatus was, we were told, provoked by the solemn occasion of the great man taking snuff. The ceremony was punctually repeated whenever the king drank, and his glass was tasted preliminarily by the confidential slave with the keys. The Egbas rob their rulers of as much of the reality, and leave them as much of the unreality of rule—the pomp and ceremony—as possible. This custom of concealing the king on such occasions appears to result from a compound idea. In some African places, as at Loango, the person of the ruler is so sacred that it is death to see him eat or drink. In other parts it is supposed that a man is most obnoxious to witchcraft when eating, drinking, and sleeping.

After an unconscionable time for digesting the last speech, there arose an old man, whose wrinkled face and dwindled stomach showed fully his sixty years. His dress was a white loin-cloth, a necklace of beads, and a leather talisman, like a ‘grigri bag,’ with two gold or brass rings sewn to its front. He was the Akpesi or Prince of Ikemta, one of the Abeokutan townships, the only other man of the same rank being the Apesi of Eruwan. The ‘king’s mouth,’ or, as he would be called further south, ‘ole parrot,’ is celebrated for eloquence and for a Sancho Panza-like knowledge of proverbs, and readiness in the use of them. He is therefore a useful man, but the whites declare that he is not to be trusted. He presently stood up, and without once referring to his master, delivered himself of a long speech, with frequent repetitions, the words ‘ki’ (signifying ‘salutation’) and ‘gi-di gi-di’ (‘very well’) being the most ear-catching. At the peroration he expressed the gladness of the Alake to see and welcome us at the capital; as for himself, he rubbed his bony hands on his lean stomach to show the yearning of his own proper bowels towards us. After which he sat down with the air of a man who can afford to say Dixi.

Commander Bedingfield rejoined with many thanks and return salutations, at the same time insinuating a wish that the ‘palaver’ might ‘come up’—in other words, to do something more than talkee-talkee.

The ‘king’s mouth’ again arose, welcomed us with even more effusion than before, repeated a prodigious number of ‘ki’s’ and ‘gi-di gi-di’s,’ and concluding by hinting that this was the happiest day in Abeokuta’s life—a day to drink, and chat, and make merry, leaving the future to take care of itself, though he owned that it—the future—was the properest time to work.

‘The captain’ accepted frankly and freely all offers of conviviality, but ventured to represent that as the morrow would be Sunday—a _dies non_—and as he could not afford to be long absent from his seat of government, H.M.S. ‘Prometheus,’ it might be as well to settle upon the next day but one for business purposes. Much, too, of the same kind.

The reply was again superlatively polite, agreeing to everything, except to fixing a day, which would to a certain extent be derogating.

Then the carousing began. My companions thought it their duty to imbibe some vile stuff in the shape of strong waters. I remembered Sir William Temple, who, when sent on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands, kept a friend to make head against the Dutchmen in beer. They were then induced to swallow some of the ‘king’s sweet wine,’ and by their looks it was apparent that they had not found it either Tokay or Lunel. All the bottles were opened with a perfect disregardlessness of expense, the Akpesi himself handing the tumblers of rum to the assembled crowd, each of whom sipped, and sent on. When any one passed the presence, he prostrated himself as ceremoniously as one kneels during presentation in London. After the drinking, we wanted to depart—I especially, who, after drawing out my sketch-book, had, at the request of those present, been obliged to put it out of sight. We were delayed, however, by the non- arrival of the king’s ‘dash,’ or present; and when it came it proved to be a sheep, a goat, and a bag of cowries—the latter now worth about eighteen shillings.[83] Three cases of excellent Hollands—far too good for such mouths—were afterwards forwarded as a counter-gift, two to the chiefs, and one to the Christian converts.

After expressing gratitude for the king’s liberality, we arose, shook hands, or rather squeezed palms, with the great man, whose temper seemed to have been mollified by his potations, and we left the hole—terribly hot it was—without delay.

The audience did not impress me favourably. Having heard much of progress and civilization at Abeokuta, I hardly expected to meet there the poorest reception on the West African coast. Presently I remembered that only twenty years ago the people of Egba had emerged from a low state of barbarism, and had become acquainted with the outer world through a few half-caste and European missionaries. Still my opinion is that their social state—which is about equal to that of the Bhils and Coolies of Guzerat—has been grossly misrepresented in England, and that they have been petted into believing themselves far superior to what they are.

The sulkiness of the old king, we afterwards heard, arose partly from a correspondence which had lately taken place. ‘The captain,’ in a letter which he addressed from the ‘Prometheus,’ Lagos, 3rd October, 1861, introduced the following effective words touching a ‘gross insult offered to her Majesty’s representative and to himself:’—

‘It seems to me that surely the Alake and chiefs cannot be aware of the purport of their letter.

‘If they are so, I would ask them a question or two, and request they will answer me.

‘Has England done anything for Abeokuta to entitle her representative to offer his advice without being insulted?

‘Is Abeokuta so strong that she will never more require the assistance of England, and that she can safely defy her power?

‘Does she consider it safe to pull the whiskers of a sleeping lion?’

This style, of course, appeared to the writer peculiarly impressive, Oriental, likely to come home to the feelings of the Africans, whom he knew so well. It wanted, however, the first recommendation of style—intelligibility. The first two questions were queer enough. Abeokuta, like other barbarous kingdoms, believes herself to be the strongest and greatest nation in the world; she may own that England has bigger canoes than she has, but she owns no belief in our superiority by land.[84] The third was a perfect enigma—a conundrum would have been more intelligible. Lions love the liberty of desert sands; they will not venture into the damp, dark forests of Guinea,[85] and—zoological gardens have not yet been introduced into Ake. So the simple Alake inquired what is a lion? And some Sierra Leone ‘gentleman’ had read in a book that it was the ‘king of beasts.’ ‘But what are his whiskers?’ It was suggested that he probably wore a beard. ‘Then, what the dickens’—or something to the same purport—asked poor Okukeno, justly indignant at being taken for a low caste huntsman, ‘have I to do with plucking the beast’s beard?’

It is, I confess, intolerably presumptuous in me to offer suggestions to those who are so much better acquainted with the African than myself. But in a few words, when the object is to _embrouiller_ an affair in this part of the world, there is nothing better than a letter. On the other hand, if a peaceful solution of the question at issue be required, a trusty messenger, or, better still, a personal interview, is the one thing needful. The only interpreters of letters will be either Sierra Leone men, or perhaps white confidants. The chances are that both are imperfectly acquainted with one of the two languages, and the certainty is that both will have their own ends to serve.

After leaving the presence, we visited another place between the Alake’s palace and the Ogbone Lodge of Ake—the state prison. It was then unusually empty. The captives, mostly women and mere boys, sat under a verandah, with their ankles fast in the stocks, which are a pair of horse-shoe shaped iron staples fitting closely round the limb, and with the points driven into a heavy wooden billet. Our object was to see an African Gasparini, an Egba, who, after having been sold four times for various crimes, had as often escaped, and returned to his own country. At midnight of Thursday last he had hid himself in the house of the agent Robbins, and after collecting his plunder in a blanket, he had sat down to supper with the effrontery of a London ‘cracksman.’ The master of the house came in, when his visitor seized his knife and stabbed two of the servants before he could fairly be secured. This time, men say, he may again escape; intercession will save the most notorious offender; and effectually I did not hear of his execution. The punishment for theft is here severe, as amongst the Moroccans; at first, the bastinado, then mutilation, and lastly death. In Africa the penalty of robbery ought to be heavier than that of murder, the former offence being frightfully prevalent, whilst the latter is comparatively rare. A few men hung for stealing even trifles would soon make an African settlement safe from all attempts upon property—always provided that the doom is certain, not problematical, as in the native states. At Abeokuta executions are seldom public, and they follow conviction somewhat too closely to please European ears. The work is usually done at night, in the king’s compound; a peculiar sound of the drum at the time, and next morning a fresh skull nailed to one of the trees opposite the palace, are the sole announcers of the event. ‘Ilejo,’ the present Calcraft, is said to strike the victim with a club, like the old Italian _ammazatore_, and the head is then severed from the body.

After the first ‘palaver’ was duly concluded, we returned to the house of Mr. Wike, and refreshed. Presently appeared a deputation sent by the Christian converts, and headed by another Williams—the name is here as common as in Wales—not an interpreter, but a Church Missionary schoolmaster. The several orders of this hierarchy are, beginning from the lowest, the Christian visitor; he goes about and flushes the game, which is then handed for training and reclaiming to the schoolmaster and the catechist—natives all. Above them begins the white rule of deacons and priests. This Williams had been acting secretary to the Alake, and in that capacity he had addressed to the acting governor of Lagos a letter full of low, puerile impertinence, which was naturally supposed to express the bile and venom of the breed. Mr. M‘Coskry, by systematically denouncing slavery, and by taking more active measures, had incurred all the enmity of these recaptives. But Williams showed a tolerable reputation; he was not known to feel any special grudge against the Acting Governor; he was a schoolmaster, and therefore could hardly be expected to write idiomatic English; and lastly, it was evident, even by his conversation, that a little learning had made him mad, like most of his compatriots, in the way of fine words. So when Williams showed due contrition, his error was set down to the score of ignorance, and he was dismissed with Lord M——’s ‘short answer.’

Horses were brought to us for sale. I saw nothing at Abeokuta but the poorest ponies, twelve hands or so high, neatly enough made, but liable to disease, and uncommonly vicious. One, however, was a Borneo horse, with the high withers that characterize the breed, and the lowest price was set down at twenty-eight bags (about twenty-five pounds), in a country where money is worth four times as much as in Europe. The animal, moreover, was miserably thin, and the experienced determined that something must be wrong, or that it would not have been for sale. Good horses used to be brought down the country from Yoruba; since the war, however, the Iloris and Ibadans, like Abbas Pasha of Egypt, have laid an embargo and a prohibitory duty upon exporting them. Even an Englishman would be compelled to obtain permission from the chief. The war has greatly raised the price of beasts; they are in all about six hundred, and the best have been sent to the camp. Yet the warriors on both sides are ignorant of the simplest forms of cavalry, and this arm, if introduced, would soon decide the fortunes of the field.

Ponies formerly cost two bags, or thirty-six shillings. The same now sell for fifteen to twenty bags; even a colt of known name will fetch that price. A tolerable nag for a European may be bought for thirty bags; the sum rises to two hundred dollars where size is required—as in the Arab, a hand’s height makes an enormous difference—and in fancy cases three hundred dollars would be asked. They are much valued, and require the greatest care in these hot, damp regions. Their food is Guinea corn and grass, cut and brought in by the boys; the head ‘syce’ selects the food, and bathes and grooms his beast. Every day, or every second day, it has a handful of kaón, an impure saltpetre—in Sierra Leone called lubi—and, by way of anthelmintic, a quantity of spices, recalling the celebrated East Indian nostrum, _battísí_. Before going to war the animal is prepared by drugs for a constipation which will last four days, and thus conceal the trail from the enemy. The trappings are rough and heavy, huge demi-piques of morocco leather, with shovel-shaped iron stirrups, sharp at the corners, and points projecting, by way of spur. The bridle has the cruel ring-bit of the Arab Bedouin, and twisted leather thongs, forming a whip at the end. Poitrail and crupper are not wanting, and a variety of ropes and tethers, charms and talismans, are bound round the neck. The animals, however, are not shod.

This evening, as on the previous, we heard loud shouts, broken by an occasional musket-shot, and accompanied by the usual tom-tom. A large crowd of _badauds_ and _flaneurs_ stood or squatted at the gate. They were celebrating the obsequies of the Akpena or messenger of Ijemma, a high official who had lately died, not without strong suspicions of poison. He had been engaged in a quarrel with his superior, the Ibashorum of his town. The people found business at a stand-still; they therefore sent to the less useful personage—the messenger—their compliments, and a humble request that he would ‘go to sleep.’ So to sleep he went. What a charming way of settling the ridiculous squabbles and the injurious jealousies of rival and hostile departments and _ministères_! Am I not justified in suggesting to the civilized peoples of the world so natty a mode of preventing private feeling from interfering, as it now so fatally often does, with public duty?

[Footnote 46: ‘Ogubonna’s’ family, for instance, have three small squares of blue tattoo upon each cheek, combined with the three Egba cuts.]

[Footnote 47: Capt. John Adams (pp. 133, 134) well describes this people:—‘A class of Heebos (the Ibo or Eboe, whose chief town is Abo, at the head of the Nigerian Delta), called Breeche, and whom many have very erroneously considered to be a distinct nation, masters of slave-ships have always had a strong aversion to purchase, because the impression made on their minds, by their degraded situation, was rendered more galling and permanent from the exalted rank which they occupied in their own country, and which was thought to have a very unfavourable influence on their shipmates and countrymen in misfortune.

‘Breeche, in the Heebo language, signifies “gentleman,” or the eldest son of one, and who is not allowed to perform, in his own country, any menial office. He inherits at his father’s death all his slaves, and has the absolute control over the wives and children which he has left behind him. Before attaining the age of manhood his forehead is scarified, and the skin brought down from the hair to the eyebrows, so as to form a line of indurated skin from one temple to the other. This peculiar mark is distinctive of his rank, the ordinary mark of the Heebo being formed by numerous perpendicular incisions in each temple, as if the operation of cupping had been often performed.’]

[Footnote 48: Burukú causes fits, and kills by small-pox—distinctly an East Indian idea.]

[Footnote 49: Some authors state that the gyri and sulci are shallow and infirm, but what may be their opportunities of autopsy I know not.]

[Footnote 50: Phrenologically speaking, I believe this denotes either great destructiveness, or power of abstaining from food, whereas the Egbas are remarkable for neither.]

[Footnote 51: A man with a theory once accounted to me for the superiority of the negro’s teeth, by his never drinking anything hotter than at blood heat. A pot of ekko (gruel) would rather have startled him; and generally, the semi-civilized African is as fond of heated aliments as the European. But the barbarian, having no dentist, takes more care of his teeth; hence the occasional difference.]

[Footnote 52: I can hardly, however, rely upon the case quoted by Dr. Clarke, of Sierra Leone (p. 118), viz., that the stimulus of suckling an orphan monkey caused a lacteal flow from the breasts of a virgin negress; yet there is no reason for disbelieving the possibility. Embrocations of virgin’s milk are not uncommon in the Asiatic and the African pharmacopœia.]

[Footnote 53: The _fanatici_ for the Turkish bath, who contend that perspiration makes the ploughman cleaner than the prince, are apt to forget this part of the process.]

[Footnote 54: Also written ‘Oku’ and ‘Aiku,’ properly ‘Ai-ku,’ from _ai_ ‘negative,’ and _ku_ ‘to die.’ ‘Aiku’ is a noun, signifying ‘immortality,’ or, rather, ‘unquenchableness.’ ‘Aku’ is also a noun, signifying a salutation.]

[Footnote 55: The inverted form of blessing would perhaps be more intelligible. The Somalis know our men as ‘Godam,’ and the Spaniards named their mustachios, from a favourite military oath, ‘bigotes.’]

[Footnote 56: Captain John Adams (p. 92, &c.) gives a long notice of the Hios—he seems to have been hard on the letter _h_—and their king. He places the country between Hausa and Dahome, hardly believing that its army is 100,000 men, but declaring that its influence extends to the sea by way of Ardrah.]

[Footnote 57: The maps usually write it ‘Eyeo.’ It must not be confounded with Oyo, in Yoruba Proper, lying one degree N.N.E. (N. lat. 8°) of Abeokuta.]

[Footnote 58: My friend Dr. Arnott, a surgeon in one of the East Indian regiments, showed me what appeared to be a true syphilitic sore, communicated to his horse, doubtless, by some native so afflicted.]

[Footnote 59: Baddahun, usually written Badohong, was his princely name; Glele, or Gleli (the jawbone), is one of his strong names.]

[Footnote 60: Others say 8000 men and 4000 women, which is more likely.]

[Footnote 61: According to Mr. Freeman, a missionary, who has frequently visited Abome and Komasi, Gezo of Dahome was one of the greatest of African kings. He reigned some thirty-five years, and in 1858 died of fever. When Mr. Duncan—the Life-Guardsman—was sent to him as vice- consul, he was much pleased with the size of the person; but after a fortnight or so, he inquired of a friend why the King of England ‘did not send him a man with a head.’]

[Footnote 62: Much nonsense is afloat touching these ‘Amazons.’ They are simply, like the Urdubegani of the Deccan and of other Asiatic courts, the slaves of the palace organized as royal property, and weaponed by the late King Gezo—who feared treason from the men. Most of them are women taken in adultery or too shrewish to live with their husbands, who ‘dash’ them to the king, instead of killing them. Once, however, royal slaves they become vestals. They are bound, like the female priests of Grewhe, under penalty of death, to chastity and celibacy, and this naturally communicates a certain amount of ferocity to their minds—‘horrors’ are, with the eunuch, their succedaneum for love. Upon this subject I am tempted to quote a few lines from Captain John Adams (p. 74), who says of Dahome: ‘One of the conditions by which a female is admitted into the order of priesthood, is that of leading a life of celibacy, and renouncing the pleasures of the world; and but few are admitted to enter it at all; for during a residence of many months at Grewhe, one ceremony only of this kind was performed, at which I was present.

‘There is a striking similarity in the conditions imposed on those poor deluded African women who are admitted into the priesthood, and many of those nuns who in Catholic Europe are forced to take the veil; only the former are instruments in the hands of fraud and oppression, while the others are too often the victims of domestic tyranny and ambition. But the lot of the savage African is far superior to that of the civilized European. For the former, notwithstanding the restraints imposed on her, can enjoy the sweets of personal liberty, and has some scope for the play of her natural affections; whereas the latter is shut within the gloomy walls of a prison, where her short life is passed away in vain regret, and in the society of immolated beings who are as melancholy and desponding as herself.’

To which we may add, another advantage to the African woman, that her feelings, like those of barbarians and the uncivilized generally, are by no means so highly developed as amongst Europeans. A scanty diet, a life of toil, and the petty cares of domestic duties, blunt, if they do not destroy, the _besoin d’amour_. She is not even—

‘Commanded

By such poor passion as the maid that milks,

And does the meanest chares.’

Female soldiery, as a rule, is a failure; or rather, like female labour in all departments of industry, it produces a worse article at a cheaper rate. The Amazons, I believe, are no exception. They cannot be estimated at more than 2000, although many travellers—Dalziell, Cruickshanks, Winniett, Duncan, and Forbes—have raised the number to 4000, and even 6000. In the case of Messrs. Duncan and Forbes, the Amazons were marched round the palace yard, in at one and out at the other gate, like the commissariat cattle in Afghanistan. Captain John Adams (p. 93) mentions the same manœuvre on the part of the King of Hio (Yoruba), adding, ‘This was a political stratagem that would hardly have been expected from an African savage.’]

[Footnote 63: It is, however, only fair to the Amazons to state, that Mr. Bowen, on the day after the battle, saw several hundreds of them lying dead on the field, where they had fought with great fury. Commander Forbes, on the other hand (vol. i., p. 81), says of the Dahoman army, ‘These soldiers, being yearly at war, have gained a fame that, if fairly tried, would soon be found wanting.’]

[Footnote 64: It is a dire insult to refuse the invitation of an African king to visit his capital. Captain John Adams (p. 63, &c.) tells how seven English seamen, cast ashore four or five miles from ‘Grewhe,’ were sent up ninety miles to the king at Agbome. One man, affecting lameness to escape the journey, ‘had his hands and feet tied together, and a pole introduced between them, and in this way they were going to Abomey; when, to avoid so painful an alternative, he found the use of his limbs, and marched along with his unfortunate companions.’ They seem all to have been well treated at the capital. The king tried, by promises and threats, to persuade the man who had affected lameness to stay with him. But when the fellow answered that, ‘“if his shipmates went away without him he would destroy himself,” the king seemed to feel uneasy at this, and consulted one of his principal men, who advised him to permit the man to return with his companions, which was granted.’]

[Footnote 65: This was written in 1861. At present (Feb. 1863) we hear that Commodore Wilmot, Captain Luce, and Dr. Haran have set out on a journey to Agbome, where I may venture to predict they will be received as honoured guests.]

[Footnote 66: The palm-kernel oil, which is so fast becoming an important article of traffic, is of two kinds. The white oil is that expressed from the kernel after it has been cracked. The black oil is that which drips through the husk when toasted with the kernel inside. This is done to save labour. As yet no efficient crusher has been invented, consequently every kernel must be broken by manual labour. When machinery shall be invented, the trade will assume a new standing. It is now worth 50_l._ per ton.]

[Footnote 67: One head of cowries, = 1_s._ 9_d._, here keeps a man for a week.]

[Footnote 68: So travellers from Badagry pass the first night at Mo, a place not far distant from the sea.]

[Footnote 69: It is almost as complicated as the Hindu’s curry, though far inferior in delicacy of taste. The material is fish, flesh, and boiled fowl, with yam or koko, flavoured with onions or shalots, ground cocoa-nut, malaguetta and other peppers, red and green okros or occros (_Hibiscus esculentus_) in large quantities, and lastly, refined palm oil, which gives the _goût_. In black man’s palaver sauce they insert ‘affitti’ or ‘ogiri,’ a condiment about as aromatic as bad asafœtida.]

[Footnote 70: Of this valuable nut more hereafter.]

[Footnote 71: They are oleaginous, and produced by a gourd one to two feet long, growing upon a climber.]

[Footnote 72: The ‘pombo’ of Eastern Africa. Maize is here macerated for three days, till germination takes place. It is then spread on leaves for fermentation, sun-dried on mats, and bruised. Mixed with cold water, in a pot, it is well stirred for two hours, and boiled for twenty-four hours; on the next day it is again boiled, and afterwards strained, cooled, and stored in calabashes.]

[Footnote 73: This is Anglo-Africa for cow’s milk.]

[Footnote 74: The mango seems to have been known here of old.]

[Footnote 75: Tolerable native iron is brought from the northern country.]

[Footnote 76: Copper is said to be found in the mountains to the east of Abeokuta.]

[Footnote 77: There is also an independent expletive—‘Small-pox!’ ejaculated as if the speaker believed in the Sitla Devi, or the small- pox goddess of India. Yet the disease is rarely fatal in these parts, as on the sea-board west of and about Lagos.]

[Footnote 78: ‘A singular custom prevails here (Ardrah), that of anointing, occasionally, the interior walls of houses with fresh cow- dung; a useful practice, for it dries quickly, has by no means an unpleasant smell, and fills up crevices which would otherwise be tenanted by noxious and troublesome insects.’—(Captain John Adams, p. 81.)]

[Footnote 79: In these lands, ‘nigger’ always means a slave.]

[Footnote 80: Shodeke, concerning whom more anon, wore, we are told by Mr. T. B. Freeman, a scarlet cloth coat and a large blue tassel.]

[Footnote 81: Which is the polite way of directing him to retire to his harem, and then and there to poison himself, unless he wishes a worse fate. This constitutional proceeding is the Harikari, or ‘happy release’ of the Japanese, and in practice is not unknown in Europe. In Africa, hasty deposition is checked, however, by the custom of slaying openly, or secretly, the high officer called the ‘king’s father,’ and other great chiefs, to meet him in Orun or Hades. Since the above was written the Alake died on the 1st September, 1862.]

[Footnote 82: Mr. Hughes thought the word was ‘Ekun’ (a leopard), one of the king’s strong names, but he was in error.]

[Footnote 83: In 1863 it has diminished to fifteen shillings.]

[Footnote 84: I have repeatedly heard the same assertion from the lips of the cowardly Krumen.]

[Footnote 85: The king of beasts is found above Macarthy’s Island, in the Gambia River, and Lander mentions him in Barba and Upper Yoruba. Mr. Bowen ignores his existence east of the Ogun River.]