Under Peculiar Guidance, And Subject To A Certain Restraint, The Negro
May Be An Important And Most Useful Being; But
If treated as an
Englishman, he will affect the vices but none of the virtues of
civilization, and his natural
Good qualities will be lost in his
attempts to become a "white man."
Revenons a nos moutons noirs. It was amusing to watch the change that
took place in a slave that had been civilized (?) by the slave-traders.
Among their parties there were many blacks who had been captured, and
who enjoyed the life of slave-hunting - nothing appeared so easy as to
become professional in cattle razzias and kidnapping human beings, and
the first act of the slave was to procure a slave for himself! All the
best slave-hunters, and the boldest and most energetic scoundrels, were
the negroes who had at one time themselves been kidnapped. These fellows
aped a great and ridiculous importance. On the march they would seldom
condescend to carry their own guns; a little slave boy invariably
attended to his master, keeping close to his heels, and trotting along
on foot during a long march, carrying a musket much longer than himself:
a woman generally carried a basket with a cooking-pot, and a gourd of
water and provisions, while a hired native carried the soldier's change
of clothes and oxhide upon which he slept. Thus the man who had been
kidnapped became the kidnapper, and the slave became the master, the
only difference between him and the Arab being an absurd notion of his
own dignity. It was in vain that I attempted to reason with them against
the principles of slavery: they thought it wrong when they were
themselves the sufferers, but were always ready to indulge in it when
the preponderance of power lay upon their side.
Among Ibrahim's people, there was a black named Ibrahimawa. This fellow
was a native of Bornu, and had been taken when a boy of twelve years old
and sold at Constantinople; he formerly belonged to Mehemet Ali Pasha;
he had been to London and Paris, and during the Crimean war he was at
Kertch. Altogether he was a great traveller, and he had a natural taste
for geography and botany, that marked him as a wonderful exception to
the average of the party. He had run away from his master in Egypt, and
had been vagabondizing about in Khartoum in handsome clothes,
negro-like, persuading himself that the public admired him, and thought
that he was a Bey. Having soon run through his money, he had engaged
himself to Koorshid Aga to serve in his White Nile expedition.
He was an excellent example of the natural instincts of the negro
remaining intact under all circumstances. Although remarkably superior
to his associates, his small stock of knowledge was combined with such
an exaggerated conceit, that he was to me a perpetual source of
amusement, while he was positively hated by his comrades, both by Arabs
and blacks, for his overbearing behaviour. Having seen many countries,
he was excessively fond of recounting his adventures, all of which had
so strong a colouring of the "Arabian Nights," that he might have been
the original "Sinbad the Sailor." His natural talent for geography was
really extraordinary; he would frequently pay me a visit, and spend
hours in drawing maps with a stick upon the sand, of the countries he
had visited, and especially of the Mediterranean, and the course from
Egypt and Constantinople to England. Unfortunately, some long story was
attached to every principal point of the voyage. The descriptions most
interesting to me were those connected with the west bank of the White
Nile, as he had served some years with the trading party, and had
penetrated through the Makkarika, a cannibal tribe, to about two hundred
miles west of Gondokoro. Both he and many of Ibrahim's party had been
frequent witnesses to acts of cannibalism, during their residence among
the Makkarikas. They described these cannibals as remarkably good
people, but possessing a peculiar taste for dogs and human flesh. They
accompanied the trading party in their razzias, and invariably ate the
bodies of the slain. The traders complained that they were bad
associates, as they insisted upon killing and eating the children which
the party wished to secure as slaves: their custom was to catch a child
by its ankles, and to dash its head against the ground; thus killed,
they opened the abdomen, extracted the stomach and intestines, and tying
the two ankles to the neck they carried the body by slinging it over the
shoulder, and thus returned to camp, where they divided it by
quartering, and boiled it in a large pot. Another man in my own service
had been a witness to a horrible act of cannibalism at Gondokoro.
The traders had arrived with their ivory from the West, together with a
great number of slaves; the porters who carried the ivory being
Makkarikas. One of the slave girls attempted to escape, and her
proprietor immediately fired at her with his musket, and she fell
wounded; the ball had struck her in the side. The girl was remarkably
fat, and from the wound, a large lump of yellow fat exuded. No sooner
had she fallen, than the Makkarikas rushed upon her in a crowd, and
seizing the fat, they tore it from the wound in handfuls, the girl being
still alive, while the crowd were quarrelling for the disgusting prize.
Others killed her with a lance, and at once divided her by cutting off
the head, and splitting the body with their lances, used as knives,
cutting longitudinally from between the legs along the spine to the
neck.
Many slave women and their children who witnessed this scene, rushed
panic-stricken from the spot and took refuge in the trees. The
Makkarikas seeing them in flight, were excited to give chase, and
pulling the children from their refuge among the branches, they killed
several, and in a short time a great feast was prepared for the whole
party.
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