CHAPTER XX. THE EQUATORIAL SAVAGE. His Education.-Religion.-Witchcraft.-Government.-Code Moral. AMONG the natives of Equatorial Africa one finds as little variety as among its features and natural productions. There appears to me to be no difference between the Mpongwe, Benga, Bakali, Shekani, etc., except such as can be attributed to circumstance and climate. Their strength, stature, complexion, manners, and dialects are modified by their locality, their food, their isolation from their fellows, and their intercourse with white men. The dialect of a great city is usually more soft than that of a provincial town; the latter less harsh and rugged than the scarcely intelligible sounds which one hears in remote mining or agricultural districts. The court lady is tall and elegant; her skin smooth and transparent; her beauty has stamina and longevity. The girl of the middle classes, so frequently pretty, is very often short and coarse, and soon becomes a matron; while, if you descend to the lower classes, you will find good looks rare, and the figure angular, stunted, sometimes almost deformed. The Mpongwe, with their melodious dialect, their courteous manners, and their graceful forms, inhabit Gaboon, the metropolis of Equatorial Africa. Securing the best situations on the rivers, they laugh at the poor Bushmen who plant their villages so far from these high-roads of commerce, and who, with their guttural tongue and their degraded appearance, are the rustics of the country. The Benga of Corisco and the Commi of the Fernand Vaz form the middle-class link between the two. The Fans would appear to be the exceptional race, and to have descended from the north; while the others, as far as I could learn, had originally migrated from the south. In their manners and customs the Fans do not appear to differ much from the rest: like them, they are circumcised; like them, the women wear brass rings on their legs and beads in their hair. But their appearance, with their light complexions and rabbit-mouths, is peculiar; and when I first entered a Fula village, I was much struck by the resemblance of the races. They have a metal currency similar to that which is used on the Niger; their method of killing elephants I have already proved by Leo Africanus to have been practiced in Nigritia; and it seems to me extremely probable that these Fans are an offshoot of that powerful race who have extended their conquests over so great a part of Africa. I shall now attempt to describe the real existence of the savage; his progress from the womb to the grave; the woman whom he rules; the laws which he obeys, and the gods whom he worships. If a negro of Equatorial Africa possessed an entailed estate, and detested his heir-at-law, he could not wish more earnestly for children. Owing to the evil climate of this country, to the poor food and vicious habits of its people, propagation is a perfect struggle; polygamy becomes a law of nature; and even with the aid of this institution, so favorable to reproduction, there are fewer children. than wives. The child is introduced into the world without medical assistance, and is cordially welcomed. It is rubbed every day with palm-oil, especially on its neck, back, and loins. The mother is treated with great respect, and is exempt from all labor while she continues to suckle her child, which she continues to do while her milk lasts—generally two or three years: I have seen a child tall enough to take the breast standing by its mother's side; but that, I imagine, must be an exceptional case. During this time, and also from the moment that impregnation becomes apparent, the mother no longer cohabits with her husband. Otherwise, say the natives, the child would be born sickly or crippled (in which case it would be killed), and the milk would be spoiled. There are, unfortunately, no such sanitary precautions for the preservation of the child when once born. Carried in a sling across the breast, or perched on a bustle behind, it is exposed to all weathers; and a large proportion of infants perish. Babies, which in England resemble skinned rabbits, soon lose that carnation hue in Africa. It rapidly changes to a yellow frogcolor, and then deepens into black. After a certain period they are released from the sling or bustle, which is their only cradle, and are left to crawl about on the ground till instinct teaches them to walk. Then a string is tied round their waist, and their edu cation commences. Both sexes are taught at the tenderest age to drink palm wine, as if intoxication were a virtue; and little girls are given lessons in dancing. I no longer wondered at the intricate steps which these women perform when I saw a child of two years old circled by women, who were clapping their hands and singing the nursery refrain, Fear the he-goat, ya! ya! ya! Fear the he-goat! ya! ya! ya! while it wriggled its little body into the queerest shapes imaginable. These children are absurdly precocious. Africa is a great hothouse, in which they are forced by the sun, and in which they perish prematurely. They can always talk when they are twelve months old. At four or five years I have seen them listening with twinkling eyes to the immoral songs of their seniors, and at eight or nine nature permits them to put in practice those theories which, incredible as it may seem, they have actually studied beforehand. So much for savage chastity; and I fear that I can say as little for parental affection. The father wishes to have a child partly because nature has planted within his breast an instinct for reproduction second only in power to that of self-preservation, and partly because that child, if a son, will help him to hunt or fish, or paddle his canoe, and will give him food when he is old: if a daughter, he will sell her to a suitor, and will receive sufficient in return to make him a man of status in his tribe. He kills the sickly or crippled child because it will cost him one more mouth to feed without affording him any thing in return. The maternal instinct which we see so powerful in the mere animal creation is not absent from the negress. Ananga accompanied her father, Quenqueza, when I left Ngumbi. She and her mother both cried very much when she went, although it was only for a few days. By secluding mothers during the nursing period, the child has no rival, while the respect which is paid to the woman because she is a mother must increase her love for her offspring, as the miseries which some poor girls endure in our own country have been known to sour all those feelings which nature has planted within their breasts. The prettiest song which I ever heard was sung by a mother to her child in the Balengi country. If we can believe it, fathers also have sometimes a little love for their infants: Why dost thou weep, my child? The sky is bright; the sun is shining: why dost thou weep? Go to thy father; he loves thee: go, tell him why thou weepest. Before they are permitted to wear clothes, marry, and rank in society as men and women, the young have to be initiated into certain mysteries. I received some information upon this head from Mongilomba, after he had made me promise that I would not put it in my book-a promise which I am compelled to break by the stern duties of my vocation. He told me that he was taken into a fetich-house, stripped, severely flogged, and plastered with goat-dung; this ceremony, like those of masonry, being conducted to the sound of music. Afterward there came from behind a kind of screen or shrine uncouth and terrible sounds such as he had never heard before. These, he was told, emanated from a spirit called Ukuk. He afterward brought to me the instrument with which the fetich-man makes this noise. It is a kind of whistle made of hollowed mangrove wood, about two inches in length, and covered at one end with a scrap of bat's wing. For a period of five days after initiation the novice wears an apron of dry palm-leaves, which I have frequently seen. The initiation of the girls is performed by elderly females who call themselves ngembi. They go into the forest, clear a place, sweep the ground carefully, come back to the town, and build a sacred hut which no male may enter. They return to the clearing in the forest, taking with them the igonji, or novice. It is necessary that she should have never been to that place before, and that she fast during the whole of the ceremony, which lasts three days. All this time a fire is kept burning in the wood. From morning to night, and from night to morning, a ngembi sits beside it and feeds it, singing with a cracked voice, The fire will never die out! The third night is passed in the sacred hut; the igonji is rubbed with black, red, and white paints, and, as the men beat drums outside, she cries Okanda, yo! yo! yo! which reminds one of the Evohe! of the ancient Bacchantes. The ceremonies which are performed in the hut and in the wood are kept secret from the men, and I can say but little of them. Mongilomba had evidently been playing the spy, but was very reserved upon the subject. Should it be known, he said, that he had told me what he had, the women would drag him into a fetich-house, and would flog him, perhaps, till he was dead. It is pretty certain, however, that these rites, like those of the Bona Dea, are essentially of a Phallic nature; for Mongilomba once confessed that, having peeped through the chinks of the hut, he saw a ceremony like that which is described in Petronius Arbiter. I do not think that Mongilomba's fear of the ngembi was affected. They are really a powerful body, and are held in great respect, perhaps in a little terror, by the men. They pretend to find out the secrets of their enemies, and to detect thieves; and I am inclined to believe that the origin of this institution was to protect wives from being harshly treated by their husbands. During the novitiate which succeeds initiation, the girls are taught religious dances, the men are instructed in the science of fetich. It is then that they are told that there are certain kinds of food which are forbidden to their clan. One clan may not eat crocodile, nor another hippopotamus, nor a third buffalo. These are relics of the old animal worship. The spirit Ukuk (or Mwetyi, as he is called in the Shekani country) is supposed to live in the bowels of the earth, and to come to the upper world when there is any business to perform. He is then supposed to dwell in the fetich house, which is built in a peculiar form, covered with dried plantain-leaves, and is always kept perfectly dark. Thence issue strange sounds, like the growling of a tiger, which make the women and children shudder and run to their houses. When the mangrove-tube is thus heard to be at work, the initiated repair to the house, and "a lodge" is held. tance. The natives of Equatorial Africa worship also the spirits of their ancestors, a worship for which their minds are prepared by the veneration which they pay to old age. Young men never enter the presence of an aged person without courtesying,* and passing in a stooping attitude, as if they were going under a low door. When seated in his presence, it is always at a humble disIf they hand him a lighted pipe or a mug of water, they fall on one knee. If an old man, they address him as rera-father; if an old woman, as ngwe-mother. It is customary for only the old people to communicate bad news to one another; and it is not to be wondered at that we find the negroes such perfect courtiers, since it is the etiquette of the country that the aged should only be addressed in terms of flattery and adulation. When they die their relics are honored. In the Congo country * A genuine courtesy like that of a charity-school girl. |