The Life of Sir Richard Burton Part 11

48. The Amazons.

Gelele's permit having arrived, the mission lost no time in proceeding northward. Burton was accompanied by Dr. Cruikshank of the "Antelope,"

a coloured Wesleyan minister of Whydah, named Bernisco, and a hundred servants. At every halting place the natives capered before them and tabored a welcome, while at Kama, where Gelele was staying, they not only played, but burst out with an extemporaneous couplet in Burton's honour:

"Batunu [205]he hath seen the world with its kings and caboceers, He now cometh to Dahomey, and he shall see everything here."

Burton presently caught sight of Gelele's body-guard of 1,000 women--the famous Amazons, who were armed with muskets, and habited in tunics and white calottes. With great protruding lips, and no chin to speak of, they were surely the ugliest women in the world. Of their strength, however, there was no question, and Burton says that all the women of Dahomey are physically superior to the men, which accounts for the employment of so many of them as soldiers. The Amazons were bound to celibacy, and they adhered to it so scrupulously that when Burton arrived, there were only 150 under confinement for breaking their vow.

Gelele who was 45 years of age, and six feet high, sat under the shade of a shed-gate, smoking a pipe, with a throng of his wives squatted in a semi-circle round him. All were ugly to a wonder, but they atoned for their deplorable looks by their extreme devotion to, or rather adulation of their master. When perspiration appeared upon the royal brow, one of them at once removed it with the softest cloth, if his dress was disarranged it was instantly adjusted, when he drank every lip uttered an exclamation of blessing. Gelele, drowsy with incense, received Burton kindly, and treated him during the whole of his stay with hospitality.

He also made some display of pageantry, though it was but a tawdry show. At the capital, Abomey, "Batunu" was housed with a salacious old "Afa-diviner" [206] called Buko-no, who was perpetually begging for aphrodisiacs.

49. "The Customs."

Upon Gelele's arrival at Abomey the presents from the Queen were delivered; and on December 28th what was called "The Customs" began, that is the slaughtering of criminals and persons captured in war.

Burton begged off some of the victims, and he declared that he would turn back at once if any person was killed before his eyes. He tells us, however, that in the case of the King of Dahomey, human sacrifice is not attributable to cruelty. "It is a touching instance of the King's filial piety, deplorably mistaken, but perfectly sincere." The world to come is called by the Dahomans "Deadland." It receives the 'nidon' or soul; but in "Deadland" there are no rewards or punishments. Kings here are kings there, the slave is a slave for ever and ever; and people occupy themselves just the same as on earth. As the Dahoman sovereign is obliged to enter Deadland, his pious successor takes care that the deceased shall make this entrance in royal state, "accompanied by a ghostly court of leopard wives, head wives, birthday wives, Afa wives, eunuchs, singers, drummers, bards and soldiers." Consequently when a king dies some 500 persons are put to death, their cries being drowned by the clangour of drums and cymbals. This is called the "Grand Customs." Every year, moreover, decorum exacts that the firstfruits of war and all criminals should be sent as recruits to swell the king's retinue. Hence the ordinary "Annual Customs," at which some 80 perish.

Burton thus describes the horrors of the approach to the "palace"--that is to say, a great thatched shed--on the fifth day of the "Customs."

"Four corpses, attired in their criminal's s.h.i.+rts and night-caps, were sitting in pairs upon Gold Coast stools, supported by a double-storied scaffold, about forty feet high, of rough beams, two perpendiculars and as many connecting horizontals. At a little distance on a similar erection, but made for half the number, were two victims, one above the other. Between these substantial structures was a gallows of thin posts, some thirty feet tall, with a single victim hanging by the heels head downwards." Hard by were two others dangling side by side. The corpses were nude and the vultures were preying upon them, and squabbling over their hideous repast. All this was grisly enough, but there was no preventing it. Then came the Court revels. The king danced in public, and at his request, Burton and Dr. Cruikshank also favoured the company.

Bernisco, when called upon, produced a concertina and played "O, let us be joyful, when we meet to part no more." The idea, however, of getting to any place where he would never be separated from Gelele, his brutish court, his corpses and his vultures severely tried Burton's gravity.

Gelele, who was preparing for an unprovoked attack upon Abeokuta, the capital of the neighbouring state of Lagos, now made some grandiose and rhapsodical war speeches and spoke vauntingly of the deeds that he and his warriors meant to perform, while every now and then the younger bloods, eager to flesh their spears, burst out with:

"When we go to war we must slay men, And so must Abeokuta be destroyed."

The leave-taking between Gelele and "Batunu" was affecting. Burton presented his host with a few not very valuable presents, and Gelele in return pressed upon his guest a cheap counterpane and a slave boy who promptly absconded.

Whydah was reached again on 18th February 1864, and within a week came news that Gelele, puffed up with confidence and vainglory, had set out for Abeokuta, and was harrying that district. He and his Amazons, however, being thoroughly defeated before the walls of the town, had to return home in what to any other power would have been utter disgrace.

They manage things differently, however, in Dahomey, for Gelele during his retreat purchased a number of slaves, and re-entered his capital a triumphing conqueror. Burton considered Gelele, despite his butcherings and vapourings, as, on the whole, quite a phoenix for an African.

Indeed, some months after his mission, in conversations with Froude, the historian, he became even warm when speaking of the lenity, benevolence and enlightenment of this excellent king. Froude naturally enquired why, if the king was so benevolent, he did not alter the murderous "Customs."

Burton looked up with astonishment. "Alter the Customs!" he said, "Would you have the Archbishop of Canterbury alter the Liturgy!"

To a friend who observed that the customs of Dahomey were very shocking, Burton replied: "Not more so than those of England."

"But you admit yourself that eighty persons are sacrificed every year."

"True, and the number of deaths in England caused by the crinoline alone numbers 72." [207]

50. Death of Speke, 15th September 1864.

In August 1864 Burton again obtained a few months' leave, and before the end of the month he arrived at Liverpool. It will be remembered that after the Burton and Speke Expedition of 1860 Speke was to go out to Africa again in company with Captain J. Grant. The expedition not only explored the western and northern sh.o.r.es of the Victoria Nyanza, but followed for some distance the river proceeding northwards from it, which they held, and as we now know, correctly, to be the main stream of the Nile. Burton, however, was still of the opinion that the honour of being the head waters of that river belonged to Tanganyika and its affluents. The subject excited considerable public interest and it was arranged that at the approaching Bath meeting of the British a.s.sociation, Speke and Burton should hold a public disputation upon the great question. Speke's att.i.tude towards Burton in respect to their various discoveries had all along been incapable of defence, while Burton throughout had exhibited n.o.ble magnanimity. For example, he had written on 27th June 1863 from the Bonny River to Staff-Commander C.

George, "Please let me hear all details about Captain Speke's discovery.

He has performed a magnificent feat and now rises at once to the first rank amongst the explorers of the day." [208] Though estranged, the two travellers still occasionally communicated, addressing each other, however, not as "Dear d.i.c.k" and "Dear Jack" as aforetime--using, indeed, not "Dear" at all, but the icy "Sir." Seeing that on public occasions Speke still continued to talk vaingloriously and to do all in his power to belittle the work of his old chief, Burton was naturally incensed, and the disputation promised to be a stormy one. The great day arrived, and no melodramatic author could have contrived a more startling, a more shocking denouement. Burton, notes in hand, stood on the platform, facing the great audience, his brain heavy with arguments and bursting with sesquipedalian and sledge-hammer words to pulverize his exasperating opponent. Mrs. Burton, who had dressed with unusual care, occupied a seat on the platform. "From the time I went in to the time I came out," says one who was present, "I could do nothing but admire her.

I was dazed by her beauty." The Council and other speakers filed in.

The audience waited expectant. To Burton's surprise Speke was not there. Silence having been obtained, the President advanced and made the thrilling announcement that Speke was dead. He had accidentally shot himself that very morning when out rabbiting.

Burton sank into a chair, and the workings of his face revealed the terrible emotion he was controlling and the shock he had received. When he got home he wept like a child. At this point the grotesque trenches on the tragic. On recovering his calmness, Burton expressed his opinion, and afterwards circulated it, that Speke had committed suicide in order to avoid "the exposure of his misstatements in regard to the Nile sources." In other words, that Speke had destroyed himself lest arguments, subsequently proved to be fundamentally correct, should be refuted. But it was eminently characteristic of Burton to make statements which rested upon insufficient evidence, and we shall notice it over and over again in his career. That was one of the glorious man's most noticeable failings. It would here, perhaps, be well to make a brief reference to the expeditions that settled once and for ever the questions about Tanganyika and the Nile. In March 1870, Henry M. Stanley set out from Bagamoro in search of Livingstone, whom he found at Ujiji.

They spent the early months of 1872 together exploring the north end of Tanganyika, and proved conclusively that the lake had no connection with the Nile basin. In March 1873, Lieutenant Verney Lovett Cameron, who was appointed to the command of an expedition to relieve Livingstone, arrived at Unyanyembe, where he met Livingstone's followers bearing their master's remains to the coast. Cameron then proceeded to Ujiji, explored Tanganyika and satisfied himself that this lake was connected with the Congo system. He then continued his way across the continent and came out at Banguelo, after a journey which had occupied two years and eight months, Stanley, who, in 1874, made his famous journey from Bagamoro via Victoria Nyanza to Tanganyika and then followed the Congo from Nyangwe, on the Lualaba, to the sea, verified Cameron's conjecture.

At the end of the year 1864 the Burtons made the acquaintance of the African traveller Winwood Reade; and we next hear of a visit to Ireland, which included a day at Tuam, where "the name of Burton was big," on account of the Rector and the Bishop, [209] Burton's grandfather and uncle.

Chapter XIII. September 1865-October 1869 Santos, Burton's Second Consulate

Bibliography:

25. Speech before the Anthropological Society. 4th April 1865. 26. Wit and Wisdom from West Africa. 1865. 27. Pictorial Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. 28. Psychic Facts, by Francis Baker (Burton). 1865. 29. Notes...

connected with the Dahoman. 1865. 30. On an Hermaphrodite. 1866. 31.

Exploration of the Highland of the Brazil. 2 vols. 1869.

51. To Santos.

Owing mainly to Mrs. Burton's solicitation, Burton was now transferred from Fernando Po to Santos, in Brazil, so it was no longer necessary for him and his wife to live apart. He wrote altogether upon his West African adventures, the enormous number of 9 volumes! namely: Wanderings in West Africa (2 vols.), Abeokuta and the Cameroons (2 vols.), A Mission to the King of Dahome (2 vols.), Wit and Wisdom from West Africa (1 vol.), Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo (2 vols.). Remorselessly condensed, these nine might, with artistry, have made a book worthy to live. But Burton's prolixity is his reader's despair. He was devoid of the faintest idea of proportion. Consequently at the present day his books are regarded as mere quarries. He dedicated his Abeokuta "To my best friend," my wife, with a Latin verse which has been rendered:

"Oh, I could live with thee in the wild wood Where human foot hath never worn a way; With thee, my city, and my solitude, Light of my night, sweet rest from cares by day."

In her own copy Mrs. Burton wrote close to the lines, "Thank you, sweet love!" [210]

Burton and his wife now set out for Lisbon, where they saw a bull-fight, because Burton said people "ought to see everything once," though this did not prevent them from going to several other bull-fights. Mrs.

Burton was not at all afraid of the bulls, but when some c.o.c.kroaches invaded her apartment she got on a chair and screamed, though even then they did not go away. More than that, numbers of other c.o.c.kroaches came to see what was the matter; and they never left off coming. After "a delightful two months" at Lisbon, Burton set out for Brazil, while his wife returned to England "to pay and pack." She rejoined him some weeks later at Rio Janeiro, and they reached Santos on 9th October 1865. They found it a plashy, swampy place, prolific in mangroves and true ferns, with here and there a cultivated patch. Settlers, however, became attached to it. Sandflies and mosquitoes abounded, and the former used to make Burton "come out all over lumps." Of the other vermin, including mult.i.tudinous snakes, and hairy spiders the size of toy terriers they took no particular notice. The amenities of the place were wonderful orchids, brilliantly coloured parrots and gigantic b.u.t.terflies with great prismy wings. The Burtons kept a number of slaves, whom, however, they paid "as if they were free men," and Mrs. Burton erected a chapel for them--her oratory--where the Bishop "gave her leave to have ma.s.s and the sacraments." Her chief convert, and he wanted converting very badly, was an inhuman, pusillanimous coal-black dwarf, 35 years of age, called Chico, [211] who became her right-hand man. Just as she had made him to all appearance a good sound Catholic she caught him roasting alive her favourite cat before the kitchen fire. This was the result partly of innate diablery and partly of her having spoilt him, but wherever she went Mrs. Burton managed to get a servant companion whom her lack of judgment made an intolerable burden to her. Chico was only the first of a series. Mrs. Burton also looked well after the temporal needs of the neighbourhood, but if she was always the Lady Bountiful, she was rarely the Lady Judicious.

52. Aubertin. Death of Steinhauser, 27th July 1866.

The Burtons resided sometimes at Santos and sometimes at Sao Paulo, eight miles inland. These towns were just then being connected by railway; and one of the superintendents, Mr. John James Aubertin, who resided at Sao Paulo, became Burton's princ.i.p.al friend there. Aubertin was generally known as the "Father of Cotton," because during the days of the cotton famine, he had laboured indefatigably and with success to promote the cultivation of the shrub in those parts. Like Burton, Aubertin loved Camoens, and the two friends delighted to walk together in the b.u.t.terfly-haunted forests and talk about the "beloved master,"

while each communicated to the other his intention of translating The Lusiads into English. Thirteen years, however, were to elapse before the appearance of Aubertin's translation [212] and Burton's did not see print till 1880. In 1866 Burton received a staggering blow in the loss of his old friend Dr. Steinhauser, who died suddenly of heart disease, during a holiday in Switzerland, 27th July 1866. It was Steinhauser, it will be remembered, with whom he had planned the translation of The Arabian Nights, a subject upon which they frequently corresponded. [213]