SAVAGE AFRICA.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 70, 9 November 1864, Page 5 (Supplement)

SA VAG E AFRICA.

(By W. WrNvrooD Readt:.) ' The lan [of fable, the stronghold of geographical mystery, seems at last about to yield to the '^feftergotic assaults of this "fcravellinsr generation. - J*rom North and -SonHi, Eftsfc nnA Wost, TOSoUlte invaders penetrate • eacOi -. Tear, further beyond tile narrotr. coast belt which has so long bounded. our view ; and report their experiences in volumes of every size and quality ; from the solid quarto, weightyrin matter as in bulk, conscious of merit, and not afraid to be dull, — an intellectual camel that bears us slowly indeed, and not without weariness to the flesh, but safely, and with ample fc : me for profitable reflection, over wide tracts of unknown lands,: — :to the two- volumed octavo, : — the literary Yighb skirmisher, who tatO9 US Up bohmd him in sudden raids over the borders of civilisation, showing us, with the minimum of trouble on our part,' strange countries and thsir stranger inhabitants in glimpses so hurried that we scarcely : know how to trust the impressions we receive, yet bo vivid that those impressions— true or false— . ' remain with us, and become part of the somewhat heterogeneoiis mass of fact and fancy that make up the popular idea of Africa. The book we have now before us might easily be mistaken at first sight for one of the heavy phalanx in the march of Anglo-African invasion ; but a nearer view "will reassure the most timid reader, and a few minutes' perUSftl will COTJViuCO him that he has fallen in with one of the most entertaining of all the notes of travel, journals, narratives, and wanderings it may have been his lot to encounter within the last few years. Whatever may be the worth of Mr. Reade's theories, the facts " ripened "in hit brain, from which,, he tells us,. they have, been "prepared," are more amusing than many a novel ; so much so indeed as to suggest a doubt how far that ripening process in the intelleccual store-house may not have aifected the native flavor of the wild fruit. The contrast between civilised life in its most artificial form and fie naked barenness— we cannot call it simplicity —of savage existence, Trliich is the charm of his book, suffers for an aiming at theatrical effect in the setting forth of that contrast: — some parts indeed have a got-up air I hat shakes our confidence v-in ttierest. Mr. Reade is fond of exhibiting himself in'Strikmg positions, and we have an uneasy sense, that the other members of these living tableaux vivants are grouped with an especial eye to the central .figure. - The.- episodes of the pretty savage Ananga, and of Joachim, his Swiss guide froniLoando to Ambaka (the latter of which had been better omitted, since it is a pure digression of no value in itself), are cases in point. Hia Style is too ambitiously clever, and o£ten m false taste ; but on the -whole (colloquial and vivid) it suits well with the half philosophical, halfsarcastic tone of mind of a man about town, pondering among negro huts on social usages and codes of morality far enough removed from those >of the polite world. "To Jlaner in the virgin .'forest, to flirt with pretty savages, and to smoke his ci^ar amongst cannibals," such was the role Mr Reade marked out; for himself, and we are "bound to testify that he has played it out with •pirit and success. His chief feat in the character of an explorer (Mr Reade evidently, holds with the satirist that the " proper Study of mankind is man," and bestows comparatively little attention on nature) •was an ascent of the Gaboon to the rapids above its junction with the Bbque, after which it is known, to the Fans who live on its banks, under the name of the Ncomo. " Here," he exclaimed with much exultation, seeing (in which we. are disposed to agree with him) nothing more wonderful in the foaming rapids and the forest covered mountains beyond, than the fact ofhis own presence there. "Here have men striven to come, and none have succeeded but nirself. For the fivat time the breath of a white man mingles wifch this atmosphere ; for the first time a being who had heard Grisi, and who faintly remembers the day •when he wore kid gloves, invades this kingdom of the cannibal and the ape." During Las fourteen months' travel Mr Reade made excursions into the Camma country, where he joined in an ineffectual hunt after the gorilla, — into the interior of Congo,— to the Cape Verde Islands, whither he was driven by a sharp attack of -fever, — up the Casemanche, where he shared in a Christmas dinner enough. to make the mouth of a member of the Acclimatisation Society, water:— T* oysters gathered from trees, African sole, cap and mullet, cutlets of gazelle, small monkeys served cross-legged on toast (elsewhere- he dilates con amore.on the delicious flavor of stewed monkeys arid stewed iguani) ; crocodiles' eggs, smoked elephant flesh, fried locusts, the breasts, of "amanati; boiled alligator and hippopotamus steaks were amon"- the dishes at this epicurean repast. Overnighfclic had seen the feast of lanterns held by the ■ n "n-oes of the Casemanche, and heard Christmas Cifois in the interior of Africa !— relics he thinks • of our sway over Senegambia. A visit to the Moorish negroes of Senegal completes the outline O " his travels. Of Mr. Reade's flirtation with the Princess Ananga, a copper-colored beauty of Ngumbi on fie Fernand Vaz, we have already spoken. W<* we will show him among the oelles of the Cannibal Fans of the Ncomo : — "I foundmyself looked upon aa astrikinglikeness of their Evil Spirit; who is said to be white and to be dressed in unknown garments, as ours is said to be black and not dressed at all. So c when I appeared at a Bush village, the women and children fled from me in tears, and the dogs with dismal howls not knowing how to bark It was not long before they contrived to conquer their timidity. I observed two or three girls whispering to getherandlookingatme. Presently I felt an inquisitive finger on my coat, and heard the sounds of dark feet running away. I remained in the same position. Then one older than the rest approached me and spoke to ms smiling. I assumed as amiable »n expression as nature would permit, and touched my ears to show that I did not understand. At this they had a great laugh as if I had said something good, and the two others began to draw near like cats. One girl took my hand between her 3, and stroked it timidly, the others raised towards me their beautiful black eyes, and with smiles allowing teeth, which were not filed, and which were as white as snow, demanded permission to touch this hand which appeared to them so strange. And then they all felt my cheeks and my straight hair and looked uponme as atame prodigy sent to them by the gods. And all the while they chattered, the pretty things, as if I could understand them.' 0 "fine men," he says, " reminded me of the pictures of Red Indians which I had seen in books. They wore Coronets on then- heads adorned with the red tail-feathers of the common grey parrot. Their figures are slight ; their complexion coffeecolored; their upper jaws protruding gave them a rabbit-mouthed appearance; their hair was longer and "thicker than that of the coast tribes ; on their two-pointed beards were strung red and wfiite beads. Their only covering was a strip of goat skin, orsometimes that of a tiger cat hanging tail downwards; more often still a kind of cloth made of the inner bark of a tree, and which is by no means' a contemptible fabric. On the upper arm a bracelet of fringed skin." " Their physiognomy expressed gooi-natured stupidity— which, as far as I had means ofjudging, Ttas entirely borne out by their behaviour." Yet he has no doubt that these good-natured lookin" people do practice cannabilism : or,^as his fegh'te'ned crew asserted, " chopped men,"—" I resolved, "he says, to exercisers little finesse in nthe investigation of this matter, arid after passing the villages which had previously been visited by white men, I called a veteran cannibal, to me. and .questioned him about the people beyond the mountains towards the East. Pid they eat men? . Oh yes, they all ate men, and he ate men himself. .As he volunteered this ■tatement he burst into a loud roar of laughter, iwhich we all joined very ., heartily. I asked him 'if mahvr&s good. He replied with a rapturous eauturey that /it was like monkey; all fat. I then wisned to learn the class of persons ho ha;l booiv in tho habit of discussing. He said only prisoners Of trarV that some of his frionds wore in the habit ofeatirig witches condemned to death, butthatforhia; Bttrfc he did »ot think thorn wholesome. The IJrtofit wa 3 that thought I , was a canniboV £,9 j ft bjjUbf vhicU is univevsal.aawng tin bwaU:

trade lias been the cause. I remember that when j L was in tiie Caraina country a Bakeli slave, \yho j had never seen a white man before, squatted' before "me a long time, with his great, round, prominent eves on my face, aiivl his mouth wide open. At last lie heaved a gasp of wonler, ci'ying, " And are these the men that eat us ?" lie. is., however, far from confirming Mi*. Dv , Cliaiilu's report of the ferocity of the Fan tribes ; ; tie assures us that, on the contrary, that they are " extremely courteous and amiable," and that an unarmed traveller may sojourn among them, as he did, without fear of injury. Indeed, on all points, except as to his being a successful and indefatig- , able collector of rare skins, he throws discredit ? \ipon Mr. Dv Chaillii's achievements ; holding the / truth to be (as we have always believed) that a small nucleus of fact has been made the centre of much imaginative ingeiiuiby in- Ins amusing explorations.. ■ Mr. Keacle even asserfs that Mr. Dv l . Chaillu never killed a gorilla. "His book (he . writes in a foot-note to his digression upon that ; much-discussed animal) is in other respects a '. medley of truth and fiction, and of which I can give ; a minute analysis if required." « " After five months' careful investigation," Mr. Reade comes : to the conclusion that the gorilla is . not the.formidablebeast.it has been represented. r Its size and strength are indeed great, but it never . willingly attacks a man ; where driven to turn at [ bay it charges on all fours, bites fiercely, andruns j away. He witnessed a dance of ne^-oes in which t tl\e various altitudes of the beast were copied ; the beating of the drum- like cavity of the chest ' t was not jie of these. This and the ripping open of the victim by one stroke of the beast's piws Mr. Reade dismisses as exercises of the imagina- ! tion. He could find _np record of a man's having j been killed by the gorilla, and doubts, if there is [ such a case ; -but ho did. see hunters-, with severe , bite wounds on their arms and legs, and one case [ in which the man's hand was crippled for life. ; Mr. Readejs theories are far too numerous and [ wide-reaching for us to enter upon them here. r Wo can do little more than allude to their , chief direction, which is neither geographical , commercial, nor humanitarian ; but as becomes a , member of the Anthroplulogical Society, ethno- > logical with a strong bias against the dark races. ' To do him justice, however, he does not consider , the negro, whom he considers unfit i or complete r freedom, and incapable of much eiucatioiiai I development, as typical of the African race. The:; r true type, he maintains, must be sought for' in the . higher regions beyond the malarious coast districts: [ here are to be found Red .Africans, ''a race little known, but I believe far superior to the Red Indians of America." The Black .African lie believes to [ be the degenerate result of evil climatic influences, his blackness being a proof and consequence of disease. '• Thousands of Red Africans," he writes, " must have poured over the mountain wall to. enter the swamps, to degenerate, and to die. . The ', Mpongwe, that graceful, that beautiful tribe, are ' fast perishing away. The Fans are-taking their [ place ; and in a few generations they also will be i gone A stream of life still pours over that ', mountain wall. It is certain that the sourcesof- ', this stream must be very abundant, and that Central Africa is a prolific, and perhaps over- . populated country." When civilisation shall have penetrated to [ these " true Africans," the regeneration of Africa will be acromplislied. "Her morasses , shall be drained, her deserts shall be watered by \ canals, her forests shall be reduced to firewoo.l. . Her children shall do this." But how ! By I means, not of Christian missionaries (respecling whose labours Mr. Reade is more just but scarcely more hopeful than Captain Burton), but of the followers oi Mohammed. The Koran , he declares is more suited to the present condition I of the negro savage than.; the New Testament. " Let Us jw'ge things," he writes, '• by th -ir results. It save^.sjt-gumenf." The; result, as he sees it, is this, vlih'aV the Mohammedan coneeri. is a " practical Christian; sober, truthful, constant ■ in his devotion, strictly honest :" the Christian convert too often lies, drinks, and steals like his savage brother, while the "lives pure auJ laborious," and " the unceasing efforts" of the missionaries have " made no palpable progress towards converting the African." The negroes, like the Jews of old, need a " schoolmaster -to, bring them to Christ." They must bj3, for a time under the law before they are fit tpi-feceive the Gospel of grace. Thk^as- far we ,can,jnake it; out, i.s Mr. Reade's theory, and the practical" conclusion he draws from it is, that, : p ; utting ; aside all religious jealousies, we are to .'vald^tl^.: Mohammedans. hi. .their great work, the -Reg£M«Fcv ation of Africa;" ...The interior is in.^ne'irT hands. '; We. have- only to gain them as" our allies, to obtain the entree to its .mysteries and its treasures'." — Economist.