Captain Canot Part 15

For three days we journeyed through the forest, pa.s.sing occasionally along the beds of dried-up streams and across lonely tracts of wood which seemed never to have been penetrated, save by the solitary path we were treading. As we were anxious to be speedily reunited with our companions, our steps were not hastened; so that, at the end of the third day, we had not advanced more than thirty miles from the scene of capture, when we reached a small _Mandingo_ village, recently built by an upstart trader, who, with the common envy and pride of his tribe, gave our _Fullah_ caravan a frigid reception. A single hut was a.s.signed to the chief and myself for a dwelling, and the rage of the Mahometan may readily be estimated by an insult that would doom him to sleep beneath the same roof with a Christian!

I endeavored to avert an outburst by apprising the Mandingo that I was a bosom friend of Ali-Ninpha, his countryman and superior, and begged that he would suffer the "head-man" of our caravan to dwell in a house _alone_. But the impudent _parvenu_ sneered at my advice; "he knew no such person as Ali-Ninpha, and cared not a snap of his finger for a Fullah chief, or a beggarly white man!"

My body-servant was standing by when this tart reply fell from the Mandingo's lips, and, before I could stop the impetuous youth, he answered the trader with as gross an insult as an African can utter.

To this the Mandingo replied by a blow over the boy's shoulders with the flat of a cutla.s.s; and, in a twinkling, there was a general shout for "rescue" from all my party who happened to witness the scene.

Fullahs, Mandingoes, and Soosoos dashed to the spot, with spears, guns, and arrows. The Fullah chief seized my double-barrelled gun and followed the crowd; and when he reached the spot, seeing the trader still waving his cutla.s.s in a menacing manner, he pulled both triggers at the inhospitable savage. Fortunately, however, it was always my custom on arriving in _friendly_ towns, to remove the copper caps from my weapons, so that, when the hammers fell, the gun was silent. Before the Fullah could club the instrument and prostrate the insulter, I rushed between them to prevent murder. This I was happy enough to succeed in; but I could not deter the rival tribe from binding the brute, hand and foot, to a post in the centre of his town, while the majority of our caravan cleared the settlement at once of its fifty or sixty inhabitants.

Of course, we appropriated the dwellings as we pleased, and supplied ourselves with provisions. Moreover, it was thought preferable to wait in this village for Ali-Ninpha, than to proceed onwards towards the borders of the Sanghu. When he arrived, on the second day after the sad occurrence, he did not hesitate to exercise the prerogative of judgment and condemnation always claimed by superior chiefs over inferiors, whenever they consider themselves slighted or wronged. The process in this case was calmly and humanely formed. A regular trial was allowed the culprit. He was arraigned on three charges:--1. Want of hospitality; 2. Cursing and maltreating a Fullah chief and a white Mongo; 3. Disrespect to the name and authority of his countryman and superior, Ali-Ninpha. On all these articles the prisoner was found guilty; but, as there were neither slaves nor personal property by which the ruffian could be mulcted for his crimes, the tribunal adjudged him to be scourged with fifty lashes, and to have his "town-fence or stockade destroyed, never to be rebuilt." The blows were inflicted for the abuse, but the perpetual demolition of his defensive barrier was in punishment for refused hospitality. Such is the summary process by which social virtues are inculcated and enforced among these interior tribes of Africa!

It required three days for our refreshed caravan to reach the dry and precipitous bed of the Sanghu, which I found impossible to pa.s.s with my horse, in consequence of jagged rocks and immense boulders that covered its channel. But the men were resolved that my convenient animal should not be left behind. Accordingly, all hands went to work with alacrity on the trees, and in a day, they bridged the ravine with logs bound together by ropes made from twisted bark. Across this frail and swaying fabric I urged the horse with difficulty; but hardly had he reached the opposite bank, and recovered from his nervous tremor, when I was surprised by an evident anxiety in the beast to return to his swinging pathway. The guides declared it to be an instinctive warning of danger from wild beasts with which the region is filled; and, even while we spoke, two of the scouts who were in advance selecting ground for our camp, returned with the carca.s.ses of a deer and leopard. Though meat had not pa.s.sed our lips for five days, we were in no danger of starvation; the villages teemed with fruits and vegetables. Pine-apples, bananas, and a pulpy globe resembling the peach in form and flavor, quenched our thirst and satisfied our hunger.

Besides these, our greedy natives foraged in the wilderness for nourishment unknown, or at least unused, by civilized folks. They found comfort in barks of various trees, as well as in buds, berries, and roots, some of which they devoured raw, while others were either boiled or made into palatable decoctions with water that gurgled from every hill. The broad valleys and open country supplied animal and vegetable "delicacies" which a white man would pa.s.s unnoticed. Many a time, when I was as hungry as a wolf, I found my vagabonds in a nook of the woods, luxuriating over a mess with the unctuous lips of aldermen; but when I came to a.n.a.lyze the stew, I generally found it to consist of a "witch's cauldron," copiously filled with snails, lizards, iguanas, frogs and alligators!

CHAPTER XX.

A journey to the interior of Africa would be a rural jaunt, were it not so often endangered by the perils of war. The African may fairly be characterized as a shepherd, whose pastoral life is varied by a little agriculture, and the conflicts into which he is seduced, either by family quarrels, or the natural pa.s.sions of his blood. His country, though uncivilized, is not so absolutely wild as is generally supposed. The gradual extension of Mahometanism throughout the interior is slowly but evidently modifying the Negro. An African Mussulman is _still_ a warrior, for the dissemination of faith as well as for the gratification of avarice; yet the Prophet's laws are so much more genial than the precepts of paganism, that, within the last half century, the humanizing influence of the Koran is acknowledged by all who are acquainted with the interior tribes.

But in all the changes that may come over the spirit of _man_ in Africa, her magnificent external _nature_ will for ever remain the game. A little labor teems with vast returns. The climate exacts nothing but shade from the sun and shelter from the storm. Its oppressive heat forbids a toilsome industry, and almost enforces indolence as a law. With every want supplied, without the allurements of social rivalry, without the temptations of national ambition or personal pride, what has the African to do in his forest of palm and cocoa,--his grove of orange, pomegranate and fig,--on his mat of comfortable repose, where the fruit stoops to his lips without a struggle for the prize,--save to brood over, or gratify, the electric pa.s.sions with which his soul seems charged to bursting!

It is an interesting task to travel through a continent filled with such people, whose minds are just beginning, here and there, to emerge from the vilest heathenism, and to glimmer with a faith that bears wrapped in its unfolded leaves, the seeds of a modified civilization.

As I travelled in the "dry season," I did not encounter many of the discomforts that beset the African wayfarer in periods of rain and tempest. I was not obliged to flounder through lagoons, or swim against the current of perilous rivers. We met their traces almost every day; and, in many places, the soil was worn into parched ravines or the tracks of dried-up torrents. Whatever affliction I experienced arose from the wasting depression of heat. We did not suffer from lack of water or food, for the caravan of the ALI-MAMI commanded implicit obedience throughout our journey.

In the six hundred miles I traversed, whilst absent from the coast, my memory, after twenty-six years, leads me, from beginning to end, through an almost continuous forest-path. We struck a trail when we started, and we left it when we came home. It was rare, indeed, to encounter a cross road, except when it led to neighboring villages, water, or cultivated fields. So dense was the forest foliage, that we often walked for hours in shade without a glimpse of the sun. The emerald light that penetrated the wood, bathed every thing it touched with mellow refreshment. But we were repaid for this partial bliss by intense suffering when we came forth from the sanctuary into the bare valleys, the arid _barrancas_, and marshy _savannas_ of an open region. There, the red eye of the African sun glared with merciless fervor. Every thing reflected its rays. They struck us like lances from above, from below, from the sides, from the rocks, from the fields, from the stunted herbage, from the bushes. All was glare! Our eyes seemed to simmer in their sockets. Whenever the path followed the channel of a brook, whose dried torrents left bare the scorched and broken rocks, our feet fled from the ravine as from heated iron.

Frequently we entered extensive _prairies_, covered with blades of sword-gra.s.s, tall as our heads, whose jagged edges tore us like saws, though we protected our faces with masks of wattled willows. And yet, after all these discomforts, how often are my dreams haunted by charming pictures of natural scenery that have fastened themselves for ever in my memory!

As the traveller along the coast turns the prow of his canoe through the surf, and crosses the angry bar that guards the mouth of an African river, he suddenly finds himself moving calmly onward between sedgy sh.o.r.es, buried in mangroves. Presently, the scene expands in the unruffled mirror of a deep, majestic stream. Its lofty banks are covered by innumerable varieties of the tallest forest trees, from whoso summits a trailing network of vines and flowers floats down and sweeps the pa.s.sing current. A stranger who beholds this scenery for the first time is struck by the immense size, the prolific abundance, and gorgeous verdure of every thing. Leaves, large enough for garments, lie piled and motionless in the lazy air: The bamboo and cane shake their slender spears and pennant leaves as the stream ripples among their roots. Beneath the ma.s.sive trunks of forest trees, the country opens; and, in vistas through the wood, the traveller sees innumerable fields lying fallow in gra.s.s, or waving with harvests of rice and _ca.s.sava_, broken by golden cl.u.s.ters of Indian corn. Anon, groups of oranges, lemons, coffee-trees, plantains and bananas, are crossed by the tall stems of cocoas, and arched by the broad and drooping coronals of royal palm. Beyond this, capping the summit of a hill, may be seen the conical huts of natives, bordered by fresh pastures dotted with flocks of sheep and goats, or covered by numbers of the sleekest cattle. As you leave the coast, and shoot round the river-curves of this fragrant wilderness teeming with flowers, vocal with birds, and gay with their radiant plumage, you plunge into the interior, where the rising country slowly expands into hills and mountains.

The forest is varied. Sometimes it is a matted pile of tree vine, and bramble, obscuring every thing, and impervious save with knife and hatchet. At others, it is a Gothic temple. The sward spreads openly for miles on every side, while, from its even surface, the trunks of straight and ma.s.sive trees rise to a prodigious height, clear from every obstruction, till their gigantic limbs, like the capitals of columns, mingle their foliage in a roof of perpetual verdure.

At length the hills are reached, and the lowland heat is tempered by mountain freshness. The scene that may be beheld from almost any elevation, is always beautiful, and sometimes grand. Forest, of course, prevails; yet, with a gla.s.s, and often by the unaided eye, gentle hills, swelling from the wooded landscape, may be seen covered with native huts, whose neighborhood is checkered with patches of sward and cultivation, and inclosed by ma.s.sive belts of primeval wildness. Such is commonly the westward view; but north and east, as far as vision extends, n.o.ble outlines of hill and mountain may be traced against the sky, lapping each other with their mighty folds, until they fade away in the azure horizon.

When a view like this is beheld at morning, in the neighborhood of rivers, a dense mist will be observed lying beneath the spectator in a solid stratum, refracting the light now breaking from the east. Here and there, in this lake of vapor, the tops of hills peer up like green islands in a golden sea. But, ere you have time to let fancy run riot, the "cloud compelling" orb lifts its disc over the mountains, and the fogs of the valley, like ghosts at c.o.c.k-crow, flit from the dells they have haunted since nightfall. Presently, the sun is out in his terrible splendor. Africa unveils to her master, and the blue sky and green forest blaze and quiver with his beams.

CHAPTER XXI.

I felt so much the lack of scenery in my narrative, that I thought it well to group in a few pages the African pictures I have given in the last chapter. My story had too much of the bareness of the Greek stage, and I was conscious that landscape, as well as action, was required to mellow the subject and relieve it from tedium. After our dash through the wilderness, let us return to the slow toil of the caravan.

Four days brought us to Tamisso from our last halt. We camped on the copious brook that ran near the town-walls, and while Ali-Ninpha thought proper to compliment the chief, Mohamedoo, by a formal announcement of our arrival, the caravan made ready for reception by copious, but _needed_, ablutions of flesh and raiment. The women, especially, were careful in adorning and heightening their charms.

Wool was combed to its utmost rigidity; skins were greased till they shone like polished ebony; ankles and arms were restrung with beads; and loins were girded with snowy waist-cloths. Ali-Ninpha knew the pride of his old Mandingo companions, and was satisfied that Mohamedoo would have been mortified had we surprised him within the precincts of his court, squatted, perhaps, on a dirty mat with a female scratching his head! Ali-Ninpha was a prudent gentleman, and knew the difference between the private and public lives of his ill.u.s.trious countrymen!

In the afternoon our interpreters returned to camp with Mohamedoo's son, accompanied by a dozen women carrying platters of boiled rice, calabashes filled with delicate sauce, and abundance of _ture_, or vegetable b.u.t.ter. A beautiful horse was also despatched for my triumphal entry into town.

The food was swallowed with an appet.i.te corresponding to our recent penitential fare; the tents were struck; and the caravan was forthwith advanced towards Tamisso. All the noise we could conveniently make, by way of _music_, was, of course, duly attempted. Interpreters and guides went ahead, discharging guns. Half a dozen tom-toms were struck with uncommon rapidity and vigor, while the unctuous women set up a chorus of melody that would not have disgraced a band of "Ethiopian Minstrels."

Half-way to the town our turbulent mob was met by a troop of musicians sent out by the chief to greet us with song and harp. I was quickly surrounded by the singers, who chanted the most fulsome praise of the opulent Mongo, while a court-fool or buffoon insisted on leading my horse, and occasionally wiping my face with his filthy handkerchief!

Presently we reached the gates, thronged by pressing crowds of curious burghers. Men, women, and children, had all come abroad to see the immense _Furtoo_, or white man, and appeared as much charmed by the spectacle as if I had been a banished patriot. I was forced to dismount at the low wicket, but here the _empress.e.m.e.nt_ of my inquisitive hosts became so great, that the "nation's guest" was forced to pause until some amiable bailiffs modified the amazement of their fellow-citizens by staves and whips.

I lost no time in the lull, while relieved from the mob, to pa.s.s onward to "the palace" of Mohamedoo, which, like all royal residences in Africa, consisted of a mud-walled quadrangular inclosure, with a small gate, a large court, and a quant.i.ty of _adobe_ huts, surrounded by shady verandahs. The furniture, mats, and couches were of cane, while wooden platters, bra.s.s kettles, and common wash-basins, were spread out in every direction for show and service.

On a coach, covered with several splendid leopard skins, reclined Mohamedoo, awaiting my arrival with as much stateliness as if he had been a scion of civilized royalty. The chief was a man of sixty at least. His corpulent body was covered with short Turkish trousers, and a large Mandingo s.h.i.+rt profusely embroidered with red and yellow worsted. His bald or shaved head was concealed by a light turban, while a long white beard stood out in relief against his tawny skin, and hung down upon his breast. Ali-Ninpha presented me formally to this personage, who got up, shook hands, "snapped fingers," and welcomed me thrice. My Fullah chief and Mandingo companion then proceeded to "_make their dantica_," or declare the purpose of their visit; but when they announced that I was the guest of the Fullah Ali-Mami, and, accordingly, was _ent.i.tled_ to free pa.s.sage every where without expense, I saw that the countenance of the veteran instantly fell, and that his welcome was dashed by the loss of a heavy duty which he designed exacting for my transit.

The sharp eye of Ali-Ninpha was not slow in detecting Mohamedoo's displeasure; and, as I had previously prepared him in private, he took an early opportunity to whisper in the old man's ear, that Don Teodore knew he was compelled to journey through Tamisso, and, of course, had not come empty-handed. My object, he said, in visiting this region and the territory of the Fullah king, was not idle curiosity alone; but that I was prompted by a desire for liberal trade, and especially for the purchase of slaves to load the numerous vessels I had lingering on the coast, with immense cargoes of cloth, muskets, and powder.

The clouds were dispersed as soon as a hint was thrown out about traffic. The old sinner nodded like a mandarin who knew what he was about, and, rising as soon as the adroit whisperer had finished, took me by the hand, and in a loud voice, presented me to the people as his "_beloved son_!" Besides this, the best house within the royal inclosure was fitted with fresh comforts for my lodging. When the Fullah chief withdrew from the audience, Ali-Ninpha brought in the mistress of Mohamedoo's harem, who acted as his confidential clerk, and we speedily handed over the six pieces of cotton and an abundant supply of tobacco with which I designed to propitiate her lord and master.

Tired of the dust, crowd, heat, confinement and curiosity of an African town, I was glad to gulp down my supper of broiled chickens and milk, preparatory to a sleepy attack on my couch of rushes spread with mats and skins. Yet, before retiring for the night, I thought it well to refresh my jaded frame by a bath, which the prince had ordered to be prepared in a small court behind my chamber. But I grieve to say, that my modesty was put to a sore trial, when I began to unrobe.

Locks and latches are unknown in this free-and-easy region. It had been noised abroad among the dames of the harem, that the _Furtoo_ would probably perform his ablutions before he slept; so that, when I entered the yard, my tub was surrounded by as many inquisitive eyes as the dinner table of Louis the Fourteenth, when sovereigns dined in public. As I could not speak their language, I made all the pantomimic signs of graceful supplication that commonly soften the hearts of the s.e.x on the stage, hoping, by dumb-show, to secure my privacy. But gestures and grimace were unavailing. I then made hold to take off my s.h.i.+rt, leaving my nether garments untouched. Hitherto, the dames had seen only my bronzed face and hands, but when the snowy pallor of my breast and back was unveiled, many of them fled incontinently, shouting to their friends to "come and see the _peeled Furtoo_!" An ancient crone, the eldest of the crew, ran her hand roughly across the fairest portion of my bosom, and looking at her fingers with disgust, as if I reeked with leprosy, wiped them on the wall. As displeasure seemed to predominate over admiration, I hoped this experiment would have satisfied the inquest, but, as black curiosity exceeds all others, the wenches continued to linger, chatter, grin and feel, until I was forced to disappoint their anxiety for further disclosures, by an abrupt "good night."

We tarried in Tamisso three days to recruit, during which I was liberally entertained on the prince's hospitable mat, where African stews of relis.h.i.+ng flavor, and tender fowls smothered in snowy rice, regaled me at least twice in every twenty-four hours. Mohamedoo fed me with an European silver spoon, which, he said, came from among the effects of a traveller who, many years before, died far in the interior. In all his life, he had seen but _four_ of our race within the walls of Tamisso. Their names escaped his memory; but the last, he declared, was a poor and clever youth, probably from Senegal, who followed a powerful caravan, and "read the Koran like a _mufti_."

Tamisso was entirely surrounded by a tall double fence of pointed posts. The s.p.a.ce betwixt the inclosures, which were about seven feet apart, was thickly planted with smaller spear-headed staves, hardened by fire. If the first fence was leaped by a.s.sailants, they met a cruel reception from those impaling sentinels. Three gates afforded admission to different sections of the town, but the pa.s.sage through them consisted of zig-zags, with loopholes cut judiciously in the angles, so as to command every point of access to the narrow streets of the suburbs.

The parting between Mohamedoo and myself was friendly in the extreme.

Provisions for four days were distributed by the prince to the caravan, and he promised that my return should be welcomed by an abundant supply of slaves.

CHAPTER XXII.

As our caravan approached the Fullah country, and got into the higher lands, where the air was invigorating, I found its pace improved so much that we often exceeded twenty miles in our daily journey. The next important place we were to approach was Jallica. For three days, our path coasted the southern edge of a mountain range, whose declivities and valleys were filled with rivers, brooks, and streamlets, affording abundant irrigation to fields teeming with vegetable wealth. The population was dense. Frequent caravans, with cattle and slaves, pa.s.sed us on their way to various marts. Our supplies of food were plentiful. A leaf of tobacco purchased a fowl; a charge of powder obtained a basin of milk, or a dozen of eggs; and a large sheep cost only six cents, or a quart of salt.

Five days after quitting Tamisso, our approach to Jallica was announced; and here, as at our last resting-place, it was deemed proper to halt half a day for notice and ablution before entering a city, whose chief--SUPHIANA--was a kinsman of Ali-Ninpha.

The distance from our encampment to the town was about three miles; but an hour had hardly elapsed after our arrival, when the deep boom of the war-drum gave token that our message had been received with welcome. I was prepared, in some measure, for a display of no ordinary character at Jallica, because my Mandingo friend, Ali-Ninpha, inhabited the town in his youth, and had occupied a position which gave importance to his name throughout Soolimana. The worthy fellow had been absent many years from Jallica, and wept like a child when he heard the sound of the war-drum. Its discordant beat had the same effect on the savage that the sound of their village bells has on the spirit of returning wanderers in civilized lands. When the rattle of the drum was over, he told me that for five years he controlled that very instrument in Jallica, during which it had never sounded a retreat or betokened disaster. In peace it was never touched, save for public rejoicing; and the authorities allowed it to be beaten _now_ only because an old commander of the tribe was to be received with the honors due to his rank and service. Whilst we were still conversing, Suphiana's lance-bearer made his appearance, and, with a profound _salaam_, announced that the "gates of Jallica were open to the Mandingo and his companions."

No _fanda_ or refreshments were sent with the welcome; but when the caravan got within fifty yards of the walls, a band of shouting warriors marched forth, and lifting Ali-Ninpha on their shoulders, bore him through the gates, singing war-songs, accompanied by all sorts of music and hubbub.

I had purposely lingered with my men in the rear of the great body of Africans, so that nearly the whole caravan pa.s.sed the portal before my complexion--though deeply bronzed by exposure--made me known to the crowd as a white man.

Then, instantly, the air rang with the sound of--"Furtoo! Furtoo!

Furtoo!"--and the gate was slammed in our faces, leaving us completely excluded from guide and companions. But, in the midst of his exultant reception, Ali-Ninpha did not forget the Mongo of Kambia. Hardly had he attained the end of the street, when he heard the cry of exclusion, and observed the closing portal. By this time, my Fullah friend had wrought himself into an examplary fit of Oriental rage with the inhospitable Mandingoes, so that I doubt very much whether he would not have knocked the dust from his sandals on the gate of Jallica, had not Ali-Ninpha rushed through the wicket, and commanding the portal to be reopened, apologized contritely to the Mahometan and myself.

This unfortunate mistake, or accident, not only caused considerable delay, but rather dampened the delight of our party as it defiled in the s.p.a.cious square of Jallica, and entered the open shed which was called a "_palaver-house_." Its vast area was densely packed with a fragrant crowd of old and young, armed with muskets or spears. All wore knives or cutla.s.ses, slung by a belt high up on their necks; while, in their midst surrounded by a court of veterans, stood Suphiana, the prince, waiting our arrival.