Volume Ii Part 3 (1/2)
The demands for porterage were so exorbitant next morning, that we set out on foot under the guidance of Tom Peter. We pa.s.sed southwards over large tracts of bush and gramineous plants, with patches of small plantations, manioc and thur; and settlements girt by calabash-trees, cocoas, palmyra and oil palms. The people poured out, threatened impotent vengeance on those who brought the white men to ”make their country,” that is, to seize and settle in it. The only animals were fowls and pigs; small strong cages acting as hogstyes showed that leopards were dangerous; in 1816 Lieutenant Hawkey found signs of these animals, together with elephant, wild boar, and antelope. Now there is no sport below the cataracts, and possibly very little, except in the water, above them. Thence we debouched upon rolling land, loose and sandy waves, sometimes divided by swamps; it is the lower end of the high yellow band seen from the south of the river, the true coast of alluvial soil, scattered here and there with quartz and pebbles. Then the bush opened out, and showed to the north- east stretches of gra.s.sy land, where the wild fig-tree drooped its branches, laden with thick fleshy leaf.a.ge, to the ground; these are the black dots which are seen from afar studding the tawny desert-like surface. Flowers were abundant despite the lateness of the season, and the sterility of the soil was evidenced by cactus and euphorbia.
After a walk of six miles Tom Peter pompously announced that we had reached the church. We saw only an oblong furrow and a little worm-eaten wood near three or four of the most miserable ”magalia;” but a bell, hung to a dwarf gallows, was dated 1700, and inscribed, ”Si Deus c.u.m n.o.bis Qis (sic) contra nos?” The aspect of this article did not fail to excite Mr. Richards'
concupiscence: I looked into the empty huts, and in the largest found a lot of old church gear, the Virgin (our Lady of Pinda), saints, and crucifixes, a tank-like affair of iron that acted as font, and tattered bundles of old music-scores in black and red ink. In Captain Tuckey's day some of the Sonho men could read the Latin Litany; there was a priest ordained by the Capuchins of Loanda, a bare-footed (and bare-faced) black apostle, with a wife and five handmaids; and a mult.i.tude of converts loaded with crucifixes and satchels of relics. Our home march was enlivened by glimpses of the magnificent river seen through the perennial tropical foliage, and it did not suggest trite reflections upon the meanness of man's highest aspirations in presence of eternal Nature.
We had been treading upon no vulgar spot. We are now in the earldom of Sonho, bounded north by the Congo River and south by the Ambriz, westward by the Atlantic, and eastward by the ”Duchy of Bamba.” It was one of the great divisions of the Congo kingdom, and ”absolute, except only its being tributary to the Lord Paramount.” The t.i.tles of Portugal were adopted by the Congoese, according to Father Cavazzi, after A.D. 1571, when the king const.i.tuted himself a va.s.sal of the Portuguese crown. Here was the Pinda whose port and fort played an important part in local history. ”Built by the Sonhese army at the mouth of the River Zaire,” it commanded both the stream and sea: it was plundered in 1600 by four French pirates. According to Carli (1666-67) ”the Count of Sonho, the fifth dignitary of the empire, resided in the town of Sonho, a league from the River Zaire.”
Pinda was for a time the head-quarters of the Portuguese Mission, subject only to that of So Salvador; it consisted of an apartment two stories high, which caused trouble, being contrary to country custom.
At the French factory I found the employes well ”up” in the travels of the unfortunate adventurer Douville (”Voyage au Congo et dans l'Interieur de l'Afrique Equinoxiale fait dans les annees 1828, 1829, et 1830. Par J. B. Douville, Secretaire de la Societe de Geographic de Paris pour l'annee 1832, etmembre de plusieurs Societes savantes francoises et etrangeres. Ouvrage auquel la Societe de Geographic a decerne le prix dans sa seance du 30 mars, 1832. 3 tomes. 8vo. Paris, 1832”). Dr. Gardner, in his Brazilian travels, gives an account of Douville's murder, the consequence of receiving too high fees for medical attendance on the banks of the So Francisco. So life like are his descriptions of the country and its scenery, that no one in the factory would believe him to have been an impostor, and the Frenchmen evidently held my objections to be ”founded on nationality.” The besetting sins of the three volumes are inordinate vanity and inconsequence, but these should not obscure our vision as to their solid and remarkable merits. Compare the picturesque account of So Paulo with those of the latest English travellers, and the anthropology of the people, their religion, their ceremonies, their magic, their dress and costume, their trade, their manufactures, their maladies (including earth-eating), their cannibalism, the condition of their women, and the necessity of civilizing them by education before converting them, all subjects of the highest interest, with that of Mungo Park, for instance, arid we have a fair measure of the French traveller's value. The native words inserted into the text are for the most part given with unusual correctness, and the carping criticism which would correct them sadly requires correction itself. ”Thus the word which he writes mouloundu in his text, and mulundu in his vocabulary, is not singular, as he supposes, but the plural of loondu, a mountain” (p. 200 of the” Review”).
Firstly, Douville has warned the reader that the former is the spelling best adapted to French, the latter to Portuguese.
Secondly, ”mulundu” in Angolan is singular, the plural being ”milundu”--a handful, the Persians say, is a specimen of the heap. The excess of female births in low and unhealthy places (1, 309) and as the normal result of polygamy (3, 243), is a highly interesting subject still awaiting investigation. I do not mean that Douville was the first to observe this phenomenon, which forced itself upon the notice of physiologists in ancient times.
Foster (”Cook's Third Voyage”) remarks that, wherever men and animals have many females, the feminine births preponderate over the masculine; a fact there explained by the ”organic molecule”
of Buffon. Pigafetta, the circ.u.mnavigator, gives the King of Tidor eighteen daughters to eight sons.
The French traveller does not pretend to be a mineralogist, but he does his best to lay open the metallic riches of the country; he gives careful observations of temperature, in water as well as air, he divines the different proportions of oxygen in the atmosphere, and he even applies himself to investigating the comparative heat of the negro's blood, an inquiry still far from being exhausted. The most remarkable part is certainly the medical, and here the author was simply in advance of his age.
Instead of the lancet, the drastic cathartics, and the calomel with which our naval surgeons slew their patients, he employed emetics and tonics to an extent that would have charmed my late friend, Dr. d.i.c.kson, the chromothermalist, and he preceded Dr.
Hutchinson in the use of quinine wine. Indeed, the peculiar apt.i.tude for medicine shown in these pages led to the traveller's adopting the destructive art of healing as a profession, and caused his unhappy end. The curious mixture of utter imposture and of genius for observation which a traveller can detect in Douville renders him worthy of a monograph.
Chapter VI.
Up the Congo River.--the Slave Depot, Porto Da Lenha.--arrival at Boma.
M. Parrot was as good as his word. By August 31st, ”L'Esperance,”
a fine schooner-rigged palhabote (launch) of thirty-five tons, heavily sparred and carrying lots of ”muslin,” was ready to receive my outfit. The party consisted of the commander, Mr.
Bigley, and five chosen ”Griffons,” including William Deane, boatswain's mate, as good a man as his namesake in Blake's day, and the estimable Friend, captain's cook and Figaro in general.
M. p.i.s.sot, an Arlesien, clerk to the factory, went up on business with a crew of eight useless Cabindas under Frank, their pagan ”patron,” who could only run us aground. Finally, there was a guard of half-a-dozen ”Laptots,” equally good sailors and soldiers. The French squadron in West Africa has the advantage over ours of employing these men,
086--- who are clean, intelligent, and brave; whilst we are reduced to the unprogressive Kru-man, who is, moreover, a model coward, a poltroon on principle.
At 5 P.M. our huge canvas drove us rapidly over the shoals and shallows of this imperfectly known sea: the Ethiopic Directory justly grumbles, ”It is a subject of regret that navigators who have had occasion to enter the Congo, and to remain there some time, have not furnished us with more information about the tides.” This will be a work of labour and endurance; detached observations are of very little use. We at once remarked the complication caused by the upper, surface, or freshwater current of 3 to 4 knots an hour, meeting the under, or oceanic inflow.
There is a short cut up Pirate's Creek, but we avoided it for the usual reason, fear of finding it very long. Pa.s.sing a low point to port, subtended north and south by the Bana.n.a.l River and Pirate's Creek, after some six knots we were abreast of Bulambemba (the Boulem beembo of Tuckey's Vocabulary). It is interpreted ”Answer,” hence our ”Echo Point”(?); but others render it, ”Hold your tongue.” The former is correct, and the thick high screen of trees explains the native and English names.
Old writers call it Fathomless Point, which it is not now; a bank, the south-eastern projection of the great Mwana Mazia shoal, has formed a few feet below the surface; but the term will apply at the distance of a mile further south. This acute angle shows a glorious clump, the ”Tall Trees,” white mangroves rising a hundred feet, and red mangroves based upon pyramidal cages of roots; and beyond it the immediate sh.o.r.e is covered with a dense tropical vegetation, a tangle of bush, palms, and panda.n.u.s, matted with creepers and undergrowth, and rhyzophoras of many varieties delighting in brackish water. We pa.s.sed on the right the Ponta de Jacare (Point of the Crocodile), fronting Point Senegal on the other side. The natives call the former Ngandu (li. Jigandu), and farcical tales are told about it: in the lower settlements Europeans will not go abroad by night without a lantern. During my trip I sighted only one startled crocodile that floated log-like a mile off, and Captain Baak, of the Dutch house, had not seen one during a whole year at Banana Point.
We anch.o.r.ed for the night off the south side of the Zunga chya Ngombe, in Portuguese Ilha do Boi (Bullock), the Rhinoceros Island of our early charts. It emerges from the waters of the right bank, a mere ”ponton” plumed with dark mangroves and streaked with spar-like white trunks. This is probably the ”Island of Horses,” where the Portuguese, flying from the victorious Hollanders, were lodged and fed by the courteous Count of Sonho; perhaps it is Battel's ”Isle Calabes.” The place is backed by the Monpanga or Mombang, the ”Look-out Islands” of the chart, which has greatly changed since the beginning of the century; the dark ma.s.s of mangroves is now apparently part of the northern sh.o.r.e. Almost due south of the Ilha do Boi is the Zunga chya Kampenzi, whence our word chimpanzee: in the hydrographic chart it is miswritten Zoonga Campendi, and in Tuckey's map, which contradicts his text, ”Zoonga Casaquoisa.” His ”Zoonga Kampenzey,” also named ”Halcyon Island,” appears to be the Draper's Island or the ”Monkey Island” of Mr. Maxwell: the latter in modern charts is more to the north-east, that is, above Porto da Lenha, than the former. The Simiads have been killed out; Captain Tuckey going up the river saw upwards of twenty which, but for their tails, might have been mistaken for negroes.
Merolla says that wild men and women (gorillas?) have been captured in Sonho, and he carefully distinguishes them from baboons: one of them was presented to a friar of his order, who ”bestowed it on the Portuguese governor of Loanda.” Chimpanzee Island may be the Zariacacongo of Father Merolla, who makes Cacongo (Great Congo) a large and independent kingdom” lying in the middle between Congo and Loango.” He describes Zariacacongo, ”none of the smallest, and situate in the midst of the River Zaire.” It abounded in all sorts of provisions, was well peopled, consisted of a plain raised eight fathoms above water, and was divided from the kingdom of Congo by a river, over which there was a bridge.
After a pleasant breezy night upon the brown waters, on September 1st we hove anchor betimes and made for Scotchman's Head, a conspicuous mangrove bluff forming a fine landmark on the left bank. The charts have lately s.h.i.+fted it some two miles west of its old position. Six or seven miles beyond it rise the blue uplands of the ”Earldom of Sonho.” On our right, in mid-stream, lay a ”crocodile bank,” a newly fixed gra.s.s islet, a few square feet of green and gold, which the floods will presently cover or carry away. To the left, above the easternmost ”Mombang” and the network of islands behind it, opens the gape of the Malela River, a short cut to French Point, found useful when a dangerous tide- rip is caused by the strong sea-breeze meeting the violent current of the Thalweg. Above it lies a curious formation like concentric rings of trees inclosing gra.s.s: it is visible only from the north-east. Several slave factories now appear on either sh.o.r.e, single-storied huts of wood and thatch, in holes cut out of the densest bush, an impenetrable forest whose sloppy soil and miry puddles seem never to dry. The tenements serve as videttes and outposts, enabling cargoes to s.h.i.+p without the difficulties of pa.s.sing Palm Point, and thus to make a straight run down stream. There are three on the north bank, viz. M. Ragis (aine), now deserted, Sr. Lima Viana, and Sr. Antonio Fernandez; and three on the left side, Sr. Alessandro Ferreira, Sr. Guilherme, and Sr. Fonseca. Those on the southern or left bank facilitate overland transit to Mangue, Ambrizette, and other depots. At present it is ”tiempo seco” (dull time), and the gerants keep their hands in by buying ground-nuts and palm oil. The slave trade, however, makes 500, not 50, per cent., and the agents are naturally fond of it, their mere salaries being only some 150 francs a month.
Landing at the factory of Sr. Fernandez, we were received by his agent, Sr. Silva, in a little bungalow of bamboo and matting, paved with tamped earth and old white ostreoid sh.e.l.ls, a kind of Mya, relished by the natives but not eaten by Europeans. To these, doubtless, Mr. W. Winwood Reacle refers (”Savage Africa,”
chap, x.x.xvii.), ”The traders say that in Congo there are great heaps of oyster-sh.e.l.ls, but no oysters. These sh.e.l.ls the negroes also burn for lime.” I did not hear of any of these ”ostreiras,”
which, if they exist, must reflect the Sambaquis of the opposite Brazilian sh.o.r.e. The house was guarded by three wooden figures, ”clouterly carved,” and powdered with ochre or red wood; two of them, representing warriors in studded coatings of spike nails, with a looking-gla.s.s fixed in the stomach, raised their hands as if to stab each other. These figures are sometimes found large as life: according to the agents, the spikes are driven in before the wars begin, and every one promises the hoped-for death of an enemy. Behind them the house was guarded by a sentinel with drawn sword. The unfortunate tenant, who looked a martyr to ague, sat ”in palaver” with a petty island ”king,” and at times the tap of a war-drum roused my experienced ear. The monarch, habited in a shabby cloth coat, occupied a settee, with a ”minister” on either side; he was a fat senior of light complexion, with a vicious expression upon features, which were not those of the ”tobacconist n.i.g.g.e.r,” nor had he the effeminate aspect of the Congoese.
I looked curiously at these specimens of the Musulungu or Musurungu, a wilder race than that of Shark Point: the English, of course, call them Missolonghi, because Lord Byron died there.