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From the shore he may still perceive the European coast, but he experiences a sensation of immeasurable removal, as if this narrow ann of the sea were an ocean and the distant blue mountains a mirage. In the space of three hours he has accomplished the most marvelous transformation possible on this earth. This great division of the globe upon which he has set foot is almost the only land of nnstery left on this much-explored world. The all-but-attained North Pole and the twenty degrees of desolation that defend the Southern, are the only other unconquerable regions. The mystery of the African continent, however, has been much diminished in modern times by the enterprise of explorers, the zeal of missionaries, the perseverance of commercial speculation and the military aggressions of Europeans. These discoveries have been much facilitated by the nearness of Africa to Europe. Its most remote harbors are almost as near as 8 AFRICA ILL US TRA TED. North America, nearer than Brazil and much nearer than British India before the Suez Canal. A sailing vessel from Bristol can reach the river Senegal in about t%veut\- days, Sierra Leone m thirty. Cape Coast in tlnrt>-five. and the Congo in fifty. Steam communication, of course, is far more rapid. Africa is the second, in point of size, of the great divisions, but by far the least important as regards the civilization and progress of the human species— Egypt, Carthage and the Moors not\v?thstanding. It is bounded on all sides by the sea, and since the excavation of the canal through the Isthmus of Suez, by which it was formerly connected with Asia, is completely insular. It extends through more than seventy-two degrees of latitude from Cape Blanco in 37° 20' N. to Cape Aguilhas in 34° 50' S., and through nearly sixty-nine degrees of longitude, from Cape Verde in 17° 34' W. to Cape Guardafui in 51° 16' E. The distance between the two former points is about 5000, and that between the two latter about 4800 miles. The total area, including the islands, is estimated at about 11,550,000 square miles, or almost exactly three times as great as that of Europe ; the three continents of the Old World, Europe, Africa and •Asia, being proportioned to one another, in respect of area, as 42, 128 and 191, the area of Great Britain being taken as unit>-. Two-thirds of the area of Africa belong to the northern hemisphere. The coast-line is more regular than that of any of the five continents of the world. Its total length, estimated at 16,000 miles, is one-fifth less than that of Europe, or in A Moorish Plowman. other words, Africa has only one mile of coast for every 720 square miles of surface, while Europe has one mile of coast for every 190 square miles. The north-western extremity of this great continent, upon which we will suppose our traveller to have first landed, is known as the empire of Marocco, or Morocco, the ancient Mauretania. It is known to its inhabitants only by its Arabic name, Maghrib-el-Aksa, the E.xtreme West, or briefly Maghrib ; in Algiers it is called El Carb, the West. Its boundaries towards the desert are, like those of the other States of Northern Africa, very indefinite. Large tracts in this quarter are quite uninhabitable, and even in the habitable regions, in which nomadic tribes herd their flocks, the tribute claimed from them by the ruler of Morocco is very irregularly paid, so that the authority of that ruler is scarcely more than nominal over nearly two-thirds of the area a.ssigned as his dominions. The whole of that area, including the Oasis of Twat in the south-east (lat. 27° N.), which stands to Morocco in a very loose political relation, is given as about 313,000 square miles by soTue authorities and as about 230,000 by others. The estimates of the population var>- from 2,750,000 to 8,500,000. The region of accurate statistics has been left north of the Straits of Gibraltar. At the present day Morocco includes the three former kingdoms of Maghrib, Fez and Tafi- lelet ; the geographers have given it a nominal bomidary on the south by a line which runs from Cape Nun (lat. 28° 45' 43" N.) in an easterly direction through the Sahara to the Algerian frontier in long. 2° E. The maritime region, sometimes called as in Algeria the Tell, has an AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. area of about 76,000 square miles and contains at least five-sixths of the total population, the density being about seventy to the square mile. The inhabitant^, like those of the North African States generally, consist of pure Berbers — here known as Amazirghi, pure Arabs, mixed Arabs and Berbers— the race generally known as Moors, Jews and negroes from Central Africa, as well as mixed offspring of Berbers and negroes, the last generally sprung from the harems of the great, since the common Arab seldom marries a woman of negro race, and the Berber would disdain to do so. In physical appearance the pure Berber and the pure Arab have a strong resemblance to each other. Both have a somewhat bronzed complexion, a European type of face with little beard, and both are of slender, sinewy, muscular frame. What chiefly distinguishes them is their language, although each has naturalh' borrowed a good many words from the other. The language of the Berbers is the same as that of the Tuaregs of Sahara, and is heard even in the Oasis of Jupiter Amnion ; but the Berbers of Morocco have no alphabet, which has long been possessed .by the Tuaregs. The IMoors form the most numerous portion of the population and are the dominant race ; next to them are the Berbers, including those of the Riff coast, and the Shelluhs of the Great Atlas. Very few Europeans reside in Morocco ; excepting them and the few Jews, the whole population is IMohammedan. The state of civili- zation is very low, and many of the Amazirghi, or Amaziyehs, are complete savages. The negroes are generally brought into the country as slaves from the Soudan. The Jews, which number in all perhaps 200,000, are a despised and oppressed race generally, and are mostly confined to certain quarters (rnilhas) in all the towns, as they were in most parts of Europe during the Middle Ages and, till recently, in other parts of Northern Africa. Some of them are descended from those who in former times were driven out of Spain, and by them Spanish is still spoken, by the others only Arabic, or sometimes the language of the Berbers. Morocco is divided into four territories — Fez, Morocco, Suse and Tafilelet. For convenience of administration the empire is subdivided into thirty-three governments or districts {amniald), each under the superintendence of a "caid, " whose chief duty it is to collect the imposts ; but the semi-independent tribes are ruled by their own chiefs and scarcely acknowledge the authority of the sultan. The government is purely despotic, and in the absence of written laws the will of the sultan and his subordinates decides everj'thing. The public officials eke out their allow- ances by practising extortion on those under their charge, and are in turn plundered by their superiors. The sovereign, called by Europeans the Emperor of Morocco, is known among his subjects as sultan, and assumes the titles of Eiiiir-nl-ntiimciiin, or Prince of the Believers, and Khalifeh-allah-fichalkihi, or Vicegerent of God upon Earth. He is ordinarily called by his subjects simply Seid-na^ our Lord. He is absolute in the strictest sense ; the lives and properties of his subjects are at his disposal ; from him alone proceed the laws, which he makes and unmakes at his pleasure. The imperial revenues are derived from arbitrary imposts on property, from duties on imports and exports, from monopolies and from fines or confiscations. The sultan's title is hereditary in the male line, but does not necessarily descend to the eldest son. The military force maintained by the sovereign does not ordinarily exceed 20,000 men, of whom half are blacks. There is also a sort of militia, amounting to 80,000 or 100,000 men, which is occasionally called out. The navy is now insignificant ; but in former times, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was very fonnidable to the maritime powers of Europe, and was chiefly occupied in piratical expeditions. Spain has for centuries possessed in Morocco four strongly fortified places, the so-called Presidios, Centa, Penon de Velez, Alhucemas and Melila. A MooKisH Shop. lO AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. The education eiven at the schools in the chief towns, and con.pleted at the University of Fez dLf no go fevond the theology of the Koran. The public Hbranes, once f-nous a e now diTpirscd; true science is unknown; and whatever monuments of art are to be found m the country puiiu to the time when literature and art flourished iinder the Arabian dynasties in Spain. Music is the only art for which the Moors are said to manifest a decided taste, but they have not, as yet, arrived at any proficiency in it. The art of printing is unknown ; the only AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. II Moorish Lovers. industrial arts prosecuted to any considerable extent are the manufactures of caps, fine silks and leather, which, in the towns, still preserve their old celebrity. Fez makes and exports great quantities of the red cloth caps, which bear the name of the city and which are so universally worn in Turkey. The tanners of Mekinez have a great reputation ; and those of Morocco can render any kind of skin as white and as soft as silk by means, it is said, of two plants unknown to Europeans. In the production of brilliant colors in leather the Moors also excel ; of the fine Morocco leather, Fez furnishes the red, Tafilelet the green, and the city of Morocco the yellow. The Morocco carpets, so much esteemed in Europe, are made chiefly in the province of Ducalla. The commerce of Morocco is carried on by means of the caravans to Mecca, which have at once a mercantile and a religious character ; with Soudan or Negroland across the Great Desert, and by the maritime trade with European States. Mules, horses and camels furnish the internal means of transport. Much of the Arabian trade is carried on by means of coasting vessels between Tangier and Egypt, as the carriage across the desert is very costly. At the present day, two-thirds of the entire trade of Morocco is in the hands of British merchants. From the ,a AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. East are brought silks, perfumes, spices, cotton, etc., for which are exchanged cochineal, indigo, skins, fine leatlier, woollen cloths and ostrich feathers. From the Soudan are obtained ivorj-, gold-dust, ostrich feathers, asafcetida, gums, Guinea pepper, indigo and slaves. Five cities, Fez, Morocco, Mekinez, Rabat and Tetewan or Tetuan, have mints and coin gold, silver and copper. Morocco is supposed to be rich in mineral treasures ; plentiful supplies of copper are obtained at Tcselcgat ; near the source of the Assaker, iron and lead are present in abundance ; antimony, silver and gold are also found — the gold in the rivers of the south, and among other mineral products are sulphur, saltpetre, salt and fuller' s-earth. The sherifs, or descendants of Mohammed, are here a peculiarly privileged class, almost as much so as at Mecca itself. The high-sherif, "the Morocco pope," has his residence at Wazan. The majoritv of the villages are composed of tents, and are then called duars, villages of houses being distinguished as chars. The tents are made of camel's hair or the fibres of the dwarf- palm, and in form resemble a gable-roof, which is no doubt the same form as those of ancient Numidia, which Sallust likened to inverted ships. The position of women among the Berbers of Morocco is a higher one than among the Arabs, but throughout the empire the women go unveiled and are subject to fewer restraints than in many other Mohammedan countries. Monogamy is the rule, polygamy a rare exception. Owing to the character of the country and its thin population Morocco is much infested with wild animals ; lions, panthers, hyenas, wild- boars, and various kinds of deer, gazelles, etc., abound in suitable localities, and occasional devastations are committed by locusts. Ostriches are found in Tafilelet. The Moorish horses, formerly so famous, are now much degenerated. The breeding of sheep, oxen, goats, camels, mules and asses, forms an important item of national industry. Oxen and bulls are chiefly employed in field labor, but an Italian traveller relates that in his explorations around the city of Tangier he saw, on the only occasion on which he did see any agricultural labor going on, an Arab urging over his field a goat and a donkey attached to a very small plow, "of a grotesque shape, constructed after the mode of those of four thousand years ago, and which traced a scarcely visible furrow in his field sown with stones and weeds." It is related that it was formerly a not unusual sight to see a woman and an ass harnessed to a plow. The only manure generally used is the ashes of the straw burned after the harvest, and the only precaution taken to prevent the exhaustion of the soil is to let it go into grass the third year, after having been sown with grain and maize the two previous years. Despite this measure the soil is impoverished after each crop, and tlie nomad agriculturists abandon it after a few seasons for new fields, which in their turn are forsaken for the first ones again. Consequently there is only a small portion of the soil under cultivation at a time in each district, and yet the soil, it is said, returns a hundred-fold the seed committed to it. The cereal crops are durrah, wheat, barley and maize, the first- mentioned constituting the chief support of the population, though beans, the esculent arum, and even canary-seed are much eaten by the poorer classes. The vine grows wild, and is also cultivated near towns, both for the sake of the fresh grapes and raisins and for the sake of the wine, in the use of which the people are apt to indulge immoderately. Tobacco, hemp and cotton are also found, both wild and cultivated ; indigo grows wild, and the other vegetable pro- ducts include capers, truffles and archil. The flora of Morocco includes the esculent oak and cork oak; in the higher regions of the Atlas the cedar and Aleppo pine, with many varieties of oxycedrus and juniper yielding fragrant giims; also the date-palm and the dwarf-palm, east and south of the Atlas; and the argan, a tree which grows in south-western Morocco between Wady Sus and Wady Tensift, and nowhere else in the world, and which yields from the kernel of its fruit an oil. largely consumed b\- the inhabitants. Its timber is so close in the grain as to sink in water. The seaport at which our travellers generally first set foot on the soil of Morocco and of Africa is that of Tangier, on a small bay or inlet of the Straits of Gibraltar, thirty-eight miles south- west of the town of that name. It is a .small ill-built town, situated on two hills; the houses— with the exception of the residences of foreign oflScials— being, as a rule, miserable edifices and the streets being narrow and dirty The town is surrounded by old walls and protected by several forts. The ancient Tingis it has been successively in the hands of the Romans, Vandals, Greeks, Visigoths, and Arabs. It was taken by the Portuguese in 147 1, ceded to the English in 1662 and held by them for twenty-two years, but was abandoned as expensive and useless. Our AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 13 Italian traveller, already quoted — Signer Edmondo de Aniicis, who, in 1875, accompanied to the capital of Morocco the first Italian embassy ever sent there, that to the young Sultan Muley el Hassan — thus relates his first experience on the soil of Africa. "The emotion which one naturally feels in setting foot for the first time on this immense and mysterious continent, which has excited our imaginations from our childish days, is somewhat enhanced by the peculiar manner in which one is brought to shore. From the bridge of the vessel we began alread}' to perceive distinctly the white walls of Tangier, when a Spanish lady behind me exclaimed in an affrighted voice, 'What do those men want?' I looked in the direction which she indicated and saw, behind the boats which were approaching for the passengers, a crowd of tattered Arabs, half-naked, wading in the water up to the middle of their thighs and advancing towards the vessel with the gestures and cries of maniacs — just like a troop of pirates who exclaim, ' Here is our prey!' Not knowing who they were, nor what they proposed, I descended in some trepidation into a canoe with some other passengers. When we were still some twenty paces from the shore the whole of this terra-cotta-colored horde precipitated itself upon us, laid hands upon us and proceeded to vociferate in Arabic and in Spanish until we managed to comprehend that, the tide being too low to permit us to approach closer, it was necessary for us to finish the voyage upon their shoulders. This infonnation dissipated our fears of being plundered, but awoke strong apprehensions of being invaded by vermin. The ladies were transported, as in a triumph, in chairs ; as for myself, I made my entry into Africa astride of an old mulatto, my chin on top of his head and the bottom of my feet in the water. ' ' A Moorish Interior. ,^ AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. The traveller Roes on to relate his first impressions of the country, after his Arab porter had safelv deposited him upon the shore, and his experiences may be taken as a type of those of other Furopeans, fiudin- themselves for the first time in this land of strangeness. The populace in the streets presented themselves to his view all enveloped in a sort of long, white, woollen cloak with a large cowl, generally straight up upon the head, so that the whole city presented the asjiect of a convent of Dominican monks. Of this hooded population, some passed gravely, slowly and silentlv, as though thex- were endeavoring to esc&pe notice ; others remained seated or crouching along the walls, in the shops or at the corners of the houses, immovable and with fixed eyes, like the enchanted folk of the Arabian Nights. The carriage, the gestures, the manner of looking, were all entirely novel— everything denoted an order of sentiments, of usages completelv different from those of Europe, a radically different manner of considering the great matters of time and of life. This people seemed to entertain no special interest in their own affairs, nor in the place in which they found themselves, nor of that which was passing around them. All wore on their countenances an expression apparently at once vague and pro- found, as of one possessed by a fixed idea, of his own country, or of ancient times, or dreaming with his eyes open. At the same time, as the traveller penetrates into tliis crowd, he becomes aware of a certain odor entirely different from that of European crowds, very peculiar, not at all agreeable, but which he commences to accept as promising him the solution of some mystery. Moreover, the crowd, which at a distance had seemed so uniform in its appearance, now betrays the greatest variety. The faces are black, white, yellowish and bronzed; the heads are orna- mented with long tufts of hair or shaven close and glistening like metal; there are figures as dried as mummies, old men whose old age is horrible, women with their faces and figures enveloped in a formless mass of rags, and children with long tresses. Visages of sultans, of savages, of necromancers, of anchorites, of bandits, of souls oppressed by an unmeasurable sadness or bv a mortal ennui; very few, or none at all, seem to smile — all follow, one after the other, silently, slowly, like a procession of spectres through the alleys of a cemetery. . The city itself is a labyrinth of narrow streets, or rather of corridors flanked by small white houses, without windows and with a narrow doorway through which a man can scarcely enter ; houses which seem constructed rather for concealment than for habitation and which are half- way between a convent and a prison. In very many of the streets nothing is to be seen but the whiteness of the walls and the blue sky overhead ; occasionally there appears a Moorish arcade, a window ornamented with arabesques, a band of red at the foot of a wall or a hand painted in black on a doorway and serving to drive away evil influences. Nearly all the streets are littered with rotting vegetables, with feathers, rags, bones, and sometimes with deceased cats and dogs that help to poison the air. At long inter\-als may be encountered some group of Arab children playing or chanting in na.sal voices verses from the Koran, a squatting beggar, a Moor mounted on a mule, an overloaded donkey which a half-naked Arab overwhelms with blows, some mangy and tailless dogs or cats of an extraordinary leanness. Here and there, in passing, the pedes- trian is a.ssailed by an odor of garlic, of the smoke of krif^ of burnt aloes, of benzoin or of fish. And thus it is throughout the entire town, the same dazzling whiteness and the same aspect of mystery, of melancholy and of ennui. The principal square of Tangier is traversed by a long street which ascends from the sea- landing and goes the entire length of the town. The square is a little rectangular place, surrounded by shops which would appear mean in the poorest European village. At one side tlu-re is a fountain, around which is always a crowd of Arabs and negroes occupied in drawing water in various vessels ; at the other may be found all day long eight or ten women, carefully veiled, .seated on the ground and offering bread for sale. In the vicinity of the open place are situated the modest houses occupied by the members of the foreign legations, which, however, have the appearance of palaces in the midst of the paltry- dwellings by which they are surrounded. In this narrow place congregates the entire life of Tangier, the life of a village. Here may be found the only tobacco-shop in the town, the only grocery, the only cafe — wliich is merely a poor room with a billiard-table, and the only spot where may be occasionally seen printed notices posted up. Here assemble the almost naked vagabonds, the rich Moors in their idleness, the Jews discussing their affairs, the Arab porters who watch for the arrival of the steamer, the employees of the legations awaiting the hour of dinner, the strangers just landed, the interpreters AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 15 and the beggars. Here encounter each other the courier who arrives from Fez, from Mekinez or from Morocco, with the orders of the sultan, and the servant coming from the post with the journals of London or Paris; the favorite of the harem and the wife of the European minister; the camel of the desert and the lap-dog of the saloons; the turban and the pot-hat ; the sounds of a piano escaping through the windows of a consul's house and the melancholy call to prayer from the mosque. It is the spot where the last wave of European civilization breaks and disappears in the vast dead ocean of the barbarism of Africa. In fact, Tangier is considered by its sister cities as a place set apart and profaned by the presence of Christians — even though all traces of the churches and monasteries founded by the Portuguese have disappeared and the Christian religion is there represented only by one or two small chapels in the neighborhood of the consular dwellings. The Moorish shops, like those of Egypt and other Mohammedan countries, offer a singular contrast to those of Europeans. They are nearly always a species of alcove, elevated about a yard above the level of the footwalk, with a single opening on the street at which the customer presents himself as at a window. The merchant, seated cross-legged inside, with his wares disposed around him, rests motionless in his cell, like a statue in its niche or like a specimen curiosity in a booth at a fair. The inquisitive traveller finds himself speculating as to whether these merchants are living or merely wooden; where is the mechanism that will presently make them disappear. They seem to be able to pass entire hours, days even, in this immobility and silence — at most picking at a chaplet of beads or muttering words of prayer. Their aspect of solitude, of ennui, of sadness, is past description; it might be thought that each of these shops was a tomb in which the owner, having renounced the world, awaits only the inevitable hour of death. Our illustration, on page 9, is from a sketch taken in Tangier, but the type is the same in all the towns of Morocco. Another of the "institutions" of this strange city and country is illustrated by a sketch from nature in the street which leads to the gate of Sokko from Barra; the silence of the night is broken by the sounds of a distant fusilade which brings the inhabitants to their doors and windows, and which, as it draws nearer, is seen to proceed from a surging crowd, lit up bv the glare of innumerable torches and which surrounds something in the shape of an upright coffer mounted upon the back of a horse. This procession advances slowly, accompanied by the sounds of a plaintive music, by a droning and nasal chant, strident cries, the firing of guns and the barking of dogs. The explanation of the whole is, however, very simple, the casket contains nothing more dreadful than a newly married young girl, and the attendant crowd is composed of her parents and friends, who are accompanying her to the house of the bridegroom. For, despite the strangeness of creed and climate, the eternal human passions and needs are w h ,6 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. still present in this African empire, and the great business of love and marriage, or or marriage without love, is not neglected. I^overs exchange glances of desire and barter lawful or unlawful kisses, by moonlight or otherwise, as in other lands ; the necessary amount of intrigue and passion is not neglected even among this apparently immovable people. As h^ already been noticed, the habit of drinking wine is by no means unknown, despite the prohibition of the Prophet, and the travellers' reports of the feasts of some of the richer of these Moorish interiors furnish a curious medley of things unfamiliar and familiar. The master of the house generally receives his guests in the square courtyard in the centre of his mansion ; out of this court open two high and large chambers, without windows and with a single large arched door closed with a ciirlain. The exterior walls are as white as snow, the arches of the doorways are denticulated, the pavements in mosaic. Here and there may be seen a small window, or a niche for slippers. The tiles are probably covered with carpets and rugs; on each side of the doorways are placed large chandeliers with red, yellow and green caudles; on the tables are mirrors and masses of flowers. The effect of the combination of these objects is exceedingly novel when seen for the first time — "it partook, at the same time, of the character of the ornamentation of a church, of the decorations of a theatre, of a ball-room and of an imitation of a royal palace; but the eusemhle was full of grace and elegance, and the distribution of the lights, the combination of colors, gave to the spectacle a novelty, a profound signification which corresponded wonderfully with that which we had previously thought and felt in a confused way about this people — it seemed to us that here, as it were, we had found the light and the tone of their philosophy and of their religion, and that in seeing the interior of this house we had been able to understand more intimately the spirit of this race." On this particular occasion, our traveller relates, considerable time was expended in the reception of the guests by Oriental reverences and European handshakings, and they were then invited to inspect the chamber of the newly married couple. This was a long, high and narrow room, with a door opening on the court. On one side, at the back, was the bed of the young bride; on the opposite side, that of her husband, both of them covered with rich stuffs of a dark red color and set off with laces. On the floor was a thick carpet from Rabat ; the walls were hung with yellow and red tapestries, and the entire wardrobe of the bride was displayed between the two beds — corsets, petticoats, trousers, vests of unknown shapes, of all the colors of a bed of flowers, of woollen, silk, velvet, braided and starred with gold and silver — "the trousseau of the doll of a princess, a view to turn the head of an opera-dancer and to make 2. figurante expire with env>-." From this room the guests were conducted into the dining-room, where they found more carpets, tapestries, masses of flowers, grand chandeliers set on the floor, matresses and cushions of a thou.sand colors placed against the walls and two beds ornamented with great luxury, as this was the nuptial chamber of the father of the groom, the master of the house. Near one of these couches was prepared a table, contrary to the customs of the Arabs, who serve their dishes on the floor and eat without knives and forks. On this table glittered, in scorn of the Prophet, a group of bottles of old wine specially provided for his Christian guests by this Moorish gentleman. Before placing themselves at table all the part\- seated themselves cross- legged on the floor around the secretary of the master of the house, a handsome Moor in a turban, who prepared the tea for their use, according to custom, three cups for each, tremendously sweetened and perfumed with mint. Thrusting himself among these strangers was a little boy of four years of age, the youngest son of the house, with a shaven head and a top-knot, who occupied himself in counting furtively the fingers of the Christian guests to assure himself that they had five on each hand— just like the true believers. After the tea every one took his place at table, the host, at their invitation, doing the same in order to keep compan\- with his guests, and the native dishes— the objects of their lively curi- osity—commenced to be served. Our traveller relates that he tasted the first with the greatest confidence— "but, grand Dicu! my first impulse was to murder the cook ! . All the emotions that might produce themselves on the countenance of a man taken suddenly with a colic, or who 1 hears suddenly of the failure of his banker, reflected themselves. I am sure, on my countenance, J I comprehended at that moment perfectly how those who ate of such dishes were able to believe ■ HI another (iod and to regard, in an entirely different manner, all the things of human life. I do ~ not know better how to explain the sensations of my palate than by comparing myself to a AFRICA ILL I 'S TRA TED. 17 mip^:^ Scene in Fez. wretch condemned to nonrish himself with the contents of a hair-dresser's pots. It was in truth a savor of pomade, of cerate, of soap, of ointments, of tinctures, of cosmetics, of everything that can be imagined as the most impossible to pass over the human tongue. At each dish we exchanged glances of astonishment and of fright. The original substances should have been good; there were pullets, mutton, game, fisb, enormous dishes of an excellent appearance, but all of them swimming in abominable sauces — greasy, perfumed, pomaded, and cooked in a fashion that would have made it much more natural to serve them with a comb rather than a fork. "However, it was necessary to swallow something, and I exhorted myself to make the sacrifice by repeating the verses of Aleardi : 'Alas ! in our lifetime What unknown crimes settle upon our heads That Destiny makes us to expiate!' " But it is Fez, the grand metropolis, the African Rome of the younger men of Tangier — like the bridegroom of this feast — that all travellers must see who hope to gain a fair knowledge of an important city of the Moorish sultan's dominions. It was founded by Muley Edris II., in the year 808 A. D. , and was considered during the Middle Ages — when it was the capital of the kingdom of Morocco — one of the largest and most magnificent cities in the Mohammedan world. It is said to have contained ninety thousand dwelling-houses and about seven hundred mosques, ,8 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. and was celebrated for its splendid public buildings, schools and scientific institutions. On the removal of the court to Morocco, about the middle of the sixteenth century, Fez gradually fell into decay. It is still, however, a i)lace of considerable importance and the capital of the chief and most northerly province of the empire, that which lies between the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean. The situation of the city is somewhat singular; it lies in a valley formed by the surrounding hills into a sort of funnel, the higher portions of which are co\ered with trees— orange gro\es and orchards. It is divided into Old and New Fez b>- one of the upper branches of the Sebu, or the river of pearls, and has a population variously estimated at from twenty thousand to nearly ninety thousand souls. There are still a hundred mosques, of which the most important is that built by the Sultan' Muley Edris, which contains his monument and is an inviolable refuge for criminals, however guilty. On account of its numerous mosques and relics Fez is regarded as the Holy City of the western Arabs. The old palace of the sultan is large, but is now falling into decay. In other respects the external aspect of Fez, with its numerous baths, caravanseras — of which there are about two hundred — and bazars, resembles that of Mohammedan towns in general ; the multitude of hotels and shops alone imi^arting to it a peculiar and more European character. A considerable trade is still carried on, by means of caravans, with the adjoining countries on the south and east, extending as far as Timbuktu. The illustration gives a good idea of the aspect of the cit\- and of the old crenated walls and great towers of limestone, crumbling in man)- places, that surround both the old town and the new. In the neighborhood of the gates and on the heights for a great distance around the country are monuments and ruins, tombs, arches of aqueducts and traces of foundations which seem the vestiges of a city razed by cannon and devoured by flames. On entering the town the traveller finds the crowd increasing — the men pausi:ig to regard him with an astonished air, the women turning or endeavoring to conceal themselves, the chil- dren crying and fleeing in terror. He will behold fountains ornamented with rich mosaics, doorways surroimded by arabesques, some courts with arcades and some remnants of the fine Arab architecture blackened by time. At intervals he will find himself plunged in the obscurity of covered passages and then emerging into the light onh- to enter again into shadows. The principal streets, some seven feet in width, are thronged with the populace; to right and left open bazars filled with animation, the courts of inns encumbered with bales of merchandise, the entrances of mosques through which may be seen the long perspectives of white arcades and the figures of the worshippers prostrated in prayer. The air is impregnated with the penetrating odor of aloes, of aromatics, of incense and of kif\ it seems as though one were passing through the aisles of an immense establishment of drugs. Everywhere is an accumulation of filth that is appalling, a dust that is asphyxiating. One of the sights that may still be seen at the gates of this city is thus related by a traveller: "We were approaching the gate Bab-el-Maroc in order to enter the city, when the vice-consul uttered an exclamation that made me shudder, ' Two heads !' I lifted m>- eyes tow-ards the wall and caught a glimpse of two long streaks of curdled blood, but I had not the courage to look higher. I was told that there were two heads suspended over the gate by the hair ; one, appar- ently, that of a young man of fifteen, the other that of a man of twenty-five or thirty years of age, both of them Moors. We learned later that they had been suspended there during the night and they were the heads of two rebels from the provinces on the frontiers of Algeria which had been brought to Fez the evening before. But the blood which was still flowing gave rise to the suspicion that they had been struck ofi" in the city, and perhaps before this very gate. However this may have been, we learned from this that the heads of rebels were always brought to the seat of government and presented to the sultan. After which the imperial soldiers seize by the hair the first Jew that they encounter and compel him to empty the skull and fill it with tow and salt. The heads are then suspended at one of the gates of the city, at Fez, for instance, then after the lapse of some days a courier puts them in a basket and carries them to IMekinez, where they are exposed again, then to Rabat, and thus from citv to city until complete putre- faction has set in." A nnich pleasanter spectacle is that of the terraces ou the house-tops in the cool of the day, which at Fez, as in other cities of the empire, are reserved for the women aiid are considered as in some measure a dependence of the harem. These terraces are verv high and are defended in Fhk Gate Bab-el-Maroc, Fez. 19 20 AFRICA IL L US TRA TED. man> ly cases bv a wall liigher than a man and pierced with looplioles. The imperial palace being very ioftv and sitnated upon an eminence, the view from its top discloses thousands of terraces, all of them white, the hills which encircle the city and the distant mountains. On these terraces may be seen a great number of the Moorish women, the greater part of them richly dressed ; some are seated upon the parapets, some of them are walking backwards and forwards, others, of the younger sort, leap with the agility of squirrels from one terrace to another, hiding them- selves, reappearing and throwing water in each other's faces, laughing the while like children. There are to be seen the old, the young, children of eight to ten years of age, all arrayed in strange costumes of vivid colors. The greater number wear their hair loose on the shoulders, a red or green handkerchief bound around the head, a species of robe of various colors, with large sleeves and girt around the waist by a blue or red sash, a velvet jacket open over the chest, large trousers, vcllow slippers and great anklets of silver. Man\- of these beauties are elaborately painted ; antimon\- black under the eyes, rouge on the cheeks, white on the neck, henneh on the fingers; their eves are almond-shaped, veiled with long lashes and full of languor, the nose slightlv curved, the mouth small and round. Their mental resources are naturally of the slightest, and their lives are one long ennui. The interior of one of these rich mansions is thus described by a European: "The Moor Schellal induced us to take tea at his house. We entered by a narrow corridor into a little dark court, very pretty, but as dirty as the dirtiest house in the Ghetto of Alkazar. Excepting the mosaics of the pavement and the pilasters, everything was black, squamous, viscid, disgusting. On the first floor there were two sombre little chambers, around the second floor a gallery, and at the summit of the walls, the parapet of the terrace. Our fat host caused us to seat ourselves before the door of his bedchamber, ser\ed us with tea and comfitures, burned aloes before us, sprinkled us with rose-water and presented to us two of his children, who approached us pale with fright and trembled like leaves under our caresses. On the side opposite the courtyard was a young negress of some fifteen years of age, a slave, leaning against a pilaster, the arms cros.sed on her breast; she regarded us with an air of supreme indiff"erence. Soon after, another negress issued from a little door, a woman of thirty years, tall of stature, an austere countenance, a robust form and straight as a twig of the aloe. Looking upwards we perceived all the galler>- of the second floor and all the parapet of the terrace crowned with female heads which immediateh- disappeared. It was not possible that they all belonged to the house of our host ; it was evident that the ladies of the mansion had announced the visit of the Christians to their neighbors and that the latter had climbed or leaped from their own terraces to that of Schellal." Mekinez, the summer residence of the sultan, is situated about forty miles west of Fez, lies in the midst of olive plantations, has broad streets plentifully shaded with foliage, and altogether presents an agreeable contrast to the interior of the larger city. It is surrounded by a triple row of crenated walls, and on approaching it at midday presents to view its thousands of white terraces relieved against the deep blue of the sky. Not a column of smoke ascends from this multitude of houses ; not a soul is visible, either on the terraces nor before the walls ; not a sound is heard— one would sa\- that it was a city uninhabited, or that it was only an immen.se scenic painting. In Mekinez, the natives assert, are found the most beautiful women in Morocco, the most beautiful gardens in Africa, the finest imperial palace in the world. "The palace, founded by Mule\-Ismael, who in 1703 there possessed four thousand wives and had eight hun- dred and seventy-seven sons, was two miles in circuit and was ornamented with columns from the ruins of the city of Faraone, a neighbor of Mekinez, from Livournia and from Marseilles." Mogador, farther south, and directly west of the city of Morocco, is the important port of the empire on the Atlantic. Its European name is derived, it is said, from a native saint, Mugdul or Modogul. The inhabitants, who are very proud of their city, call it Showerah, that is to say, square; it is, however, rather in the form of a triangle. The town is entirelv modem, having been laid out by a French engineer, Cornut, in 1760, during the reign of Sidi-iMohammed. It is built on a sandy beach which has a rocky foundation ; the houses are regular, the streets straight and well arranged, though they are somewhat narrow. The town is divided into two quarters,— one in which are the citadel, the public establi.shments, the palace of the governor and the residences of the consuls and of the European merchants— this quarter is the property of the emperor. The other portion of the city is inliabited by Moors and Jews, the latter in a AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 21 special quarter, villah, which the police close at night. The walls which surround the town are not very higli nor very strong, but they serve as a defense against the attacks of the mountain tribes and the Arabs of the plains. The population is estimated at from thirteen to fifteen thousand souls, including four thousand Jews and fifty Christians. The harbor is formed by a bay which is closed by the island of Mogador, situated some two miles from the mainland; this island contains some slight fortifications and a mosque. It was easily taken by the French in August, 1844. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 23 The town is surrounded by movable dunes, which present a very strange appearance to the traveller arriving from the interior ; they seem to be immense pyramidal batteries constructed to defend the approaches to the cit>-. A small river fills the aqueduct which supplies the inhabi- tants with water. The climate is ver)- healthy, there being no lowlands, no marshes to exhale miasma ; it rains but seldom, but the chain of the Atlas Mountains on one side and the sea- breezes on the other, temper the dryness of the air. The suburbs are nothing but desolate sand wastes ; here and there ma>- be seen a garden in which are growing a few vegetables and rare flowers. These are all cultivated in the midst of the sand, and demonstrate the good results of man's industry even in so sterile a land. On one side of the city are the two cemeteries, Christian and native. The former is one of the most forlorn resting-places that the imagination can conceive ; no sign of greensward, of trees, not even a single cypress to cast its shadow over a tomb. A veritable place of desolation it is swept over by the lonely winds of the ocean ; and the Moorish burial-ground by night is even more repelling. The pale light of the moon serves Cemetery at Mogador. only to reveal the forlornness of this abode of the dead, and in the gloom may be discerned certain furtive shadows which are hyenas, the violators of the graves. This dreary scene symbolizes not unworthily the empire of Morocco. THE first important point that the traveller strikes in journeying eastward from Morocco into Algiers is the town of Tlemcen, of which the illustration gives the general view. The first appearance of the town is very pleasing ; the avenue of Mechonar, by which the gate Bon- Medina is reached, is shaded by a triple row of white poplars, plane trees, acacias, nettle trees and a species of bead tree of which the foliage is so thick that no sunbeam can pierce it. To the left are the old walls of Mechonar, the citadel of Tlemcen ; to the right — the reverse of the picture — the houses, with but few exceptions, are of a sufficiently squalid appearance. The ,^ AFRICA JLLLSTRATED. town is accessible only from the south-west, the other sides presenting steeply escarped fronts. The district around is covered with fruit-trees of all kinds, of which the olive is one of the most valuable, and there is much cultivated land producing cereals, tobacco, etc. The town is the capital of the province of Oran, and is situated eighty miles south-west of tlie city of that name, in an undulating country, everywhere irrigated and brought completely under cultivation. It is protected from the south wind by a range of hills, four thousand two hundred feet in height. In it are both Catholic and Protestant churches, mosques and synagogues, and there are numerous educational establishments, including schools for Arabs and Jews. Ostrich feathers and corks are exported, but the trade is for the most part in cloths, hides, grains and oils. Kesides the special markets, a daily market is held, at which cattle, wool, grain and oil are largely sold. Tlie climate of Tlemcen is remarkable for the sudden changes of temperature — changes which are as decided from one day to another as from one season to another, and which often succeed each other rapidly in the course of the same day, especialh- in summer. The rains are abundant ; they commence generally in October and continue, with occasional intervals of fine weather, until May and June. The spring rains and the very frequent morning fogs contribute to give a luxuriance of growth to the vegetation that surprises the traveller even in the heats of summer. He is astonished to find this freshness of verdure around the city after traversing the extensive districts in which all vegetation is dried up in the month of June. The sirocco, or wind from the .south, is seldom felt at Tlemcen, and never for more than two or three days at the most. And other great atmospheric manifestations are equally rare ; the thunder is only occasionally heard in winter and in spring or at the end of an occasional day that has been too hot for the season ; storms pass rapidly over the city, drawn away— generally towards the south- east — by the currents of air. The citv, though thus privileged, cannot be said to be beautiful within the walls. It has, however, mucli improved since the French conquest of Algeria. The usual native disregard of all the laws of sanitary .science was here manifested in full force, and the quarter of the Jews, near the fine avenue of Mechonar, surpassed all the others in filth and in unhealthiness. Since 1842 some edifices have been built, but the cost of construction — twenty times as great as at Oran — has been such that they do not add much to the appearance of the town. The native quarters are still hideous ; they are often not much more than ruins, and it is not uncommon to .see wretched habitations constructed from the debris of larger ones. Behind the Military Circle there is a perfect labyrinth of wretched buildings. Nearly all the interiors are equally miserable ; a mat serves for a bed, a chest of painted wood {scndouk) contains the garments and the linen; two or three kitchen utensils, an earthen chafing-dish and plates of poplar wood comprise all the furniture. The Jews, though crowded together in lodgings much too small for their innumerable progeny, are somewhat more comfortably installed. Their household goods are le.ss rudimentary; their position tends to improve itself while that of the Mussulmans steadily declines. The division between the two classes of the native Mohammedans is strongly marked at Tlemcen. These two classes are not only different, but hostile, and it is owing to this antagonism that the French are able to maintain their hold on the country in security. The Koulouglis, born of Turkish fathers and Arab mothers, are the oppressed race. It is to the French that they owe their freedom from active persecution and, in consequence, the\' regard the foreigners with a lively sense of gratitude. They have not been wanting in active cooperation, as at one time when they joined the French forces besieged in the citadel of Mechonar and gave them active support. They are, for the most part, men of tall stature, vigorous in body, better and more cleanly clad than their rivals, and more industrious. It is owing to their labor that the fine gardens which surround the city are kept green ; the native trade is entirely in their hands ; they keep the provision stores that are well patronized ; as butchers they are active competitors with the French and the .Spaniards; they sell at reasonable prices; they speak French and sometimes Spanish. The Haddars, on the contrary, of pure Arab blood, are degenerate, poor, indolent ; they are plnsically smaller than their ri\als and have a bronzed complexion and black hair, while the Koulouglis are whiter and have often blonde hair. The latter also take a certain pride in rebuilding their dwellings whenever their resources permit. There are among them some skilful Id > u X 26 AFRICA IL L I 'S TRA TED. The Ksar of Tadjerouna. masons wlio preserve the traditions of the fine Moorish architecture, but they do not often find occasion to exercise tlieir talents. Large fortunes are rare amon.y; the JMohammedans, and when they have occasion for building they employ European workmen. The Israelites are very numerous, and their community dates back to a distant epoch. Accord- ing to a writer in the Revue africaine^ JVI. Darmon, it was after the destruction of the temple of Onias, in Alexandria, that the Egyptian Jews sought refuge in great numbers at Tlemcen. The persecution of the fifteenth century also caused many to flee to Algeria, particularly in the province of Oran. The rabbi Ephraim Ankaoa, who died in 1442, fifty years before the expul- sion of his race from Spain, is considered to have been the founder of this community. He cured, it is said, of a dangerous malady, the daughter of the king of the family of the Beni-Zian ; this was considered as something miraculous, and assured the security of his co-religionists. Tlie Jewish quarter was located in the neighborhood of M^chonar, so as to find an additional protection in the neighborhood of the royal palace. A synagogue was erected in the midst of the habitations, which the French found still standing, in 1842, and repaired, as is commemorated b\' a tablet placed over the portal of the edifice. Hy the treaty of May 30, 1837, between Abd-el-Kader and General Bugeaud, the former recognized the sovereignty of France over the regency, and recei\ed in return the government of the provinces of Oran, Titeri and Algiers, with the exception of certain cities. In exchange for Tlemcen he delivered to the French army sixty thousand sacks of grain and five thousand oxen, and he was likewise permitted to buy arms and ammunition in France. In this year, seven years after the first landing of the French on the coast of Algiers, the condition of the colony was desperate, for the disgraces which had followed the rash and even reckless measures of Marshal Clausel had everywhere lowered the prestige of the French army. The duty of the new governor-general, Damremont, was clear; he had to wipe out the stain which attached to the honor of his soldiery and to re-create the conviction of their superiority. It was a critical moment in the long, sanguinary and often disgraceful story of the French conquest. General Damremont first attacked the Kabyles of the province of Algiers and chastised them with severity, and then commenced his great task of taking Constantine, from which his predecessor had been compelled ignominiously to retire. In the month of Ma\- he marched against this city with an army of twelve thousand disciplined troops, besides Ziiaz'i (originally light infantry raised among the natives), Bataillons d' Afrique (convict battalions at first), the Tirailleurs d'Afriqiic and the Chasseurs d'' Afrique as well as the Spahis (a cavalry corps composed of native soldiers commanded by French officer.s). Notwithstanding fearful weather he succeeded in carrying the town by storm on the i3tli, and this victory laid the foundation for the entire subju- gation of the province of Constantine which was completed in the course of the two following years. On December i, 1837, General Valde was appointed governor-general in the place of Damre- mont, who had fallen at the storming of Constantine. New treaties were made with Abd-el-Kader, which only delayed hostilities. I\Ieanwhile the work of colonization went on in spite of numerous obstacles. The pro\ince of Constantine was much improved by the building of towns and the making of roads, but the sudden outbreak of Abd-el-Kader in October, 1S39, took the French AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 27 by surprise, and by the 24th of Xoveniber their dominion was confined to the fortified cities and camps. In the following spring campaign their successes were complete and their prestige raised higher than ever ; Lientenant-General Bugeaud, who arrived in Februar\', 1841, to take charge of the affairs of the province, adopted a new system which was completely successful. Abd-el-Kader, defeated and compelled to retire into Morocco, issued from there a second time in the summer of 1842, and contrived to maintain a fierce but desultory warfare for two or threi years, aided by the Sultan of Morocco. At last, however, deserted by most of his followers, pursued by his late ally, and, in fact, hemmed in on all sides, he was forced to surrender to General Lamoriciere, at the close of December, 1847. The revolution of 1848 somewhat disturbed the progress of conquest and subjugation in Algeria. That superb race of mountaineers, the Kabyles, the descendants of the ancient Numidians and possessed of the same fiery and dauntless spirit, broke out in a new insurrection, Reception in the House of Death. which, however, was speedily quelled. The work of conquest, colonization and, in some respects, civilization, went on. The French troops penetrated into the far south, almost to the borders of Sahara, steadily reducing to obedience the desert tribes despite their obstinate resistance. Since 1850 the successive French governments have devoted considerable attention to Algeria; but the French are proverbially bad colonists. Of late their success has exceeded general expec- tation, but the enormous military establishments maintained and the numerous civil functionaries employed to administer the affairs of the colony, "divert the stream of help from the colonists and embarrass the treasury." The Kabyles, who inhabit the mountainous region lying between Algiers and Constaritine, and number a hundred and fifty thousand fighting men, are, or rather were, the great foes of the French. Most of the tribes are now subdued ; but the struggle has been a sanguinary and barbarous one on both sides. These Kab>les are by far the most intelli- gent and industrious of the Algerian tribes. Every inch of their ground that will respond to ^""mu'Wff. W a: < o H > > a: o < AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 29 cultivation is made use of; their carpets are superb, their woollens almost as good as the English; while their own gunpowder was believed by the French to be of English manufacture. Yet these fine highlanders, who naturally love liberty with the passion of a high-spirited race, have been subjected repeatedly to horrors that cover the French army with disgrace ; their homes burned, their women violated, and their land rendered desolate. Their retaliations have, doubt- less, been savage enough — mutilating and roasting those of the enemy who fell into their hands — but nothing can excuse the brutal excesses of the French troops. With the exception of the few Kabyle districts that still maintain a precarious independence, the whole of Algeria is now so completely subdued that one may travel through any part of it with perfect security. The province has been divided into districts which are ruled by both French and native officers, who are responsible for all offenses committed within the region over which their authority extends. A native chief possessed of this perilous dignity is sometimes deposed, fined or imprisoned for negligence in the performance of his duty, or connivance at the escape of the offender. The conquest of Algeria has cost France the enormous sum of 5,000,000,000 francs. The government of the colony is in the hands of a civil governor-general. Four kinds of taxes are levied on the natives : the ackour, a tithe upon cereals ; the hockor, the rent of the land (not levied generally) ; the zckkat, an impost upon cattle, and the lezma^ a sort of tax upon capital, levied only on tlie nomadic tribes of the Sahara. All the taxes are levied in money. The French government has acted neither very liberally nor very promptly towards the settlers, and the number of formalities which have to be complied with before the colonist can properly secure the land which he has purchased, often disgusts the poor farmer. Labor is dear, and, in consequence, provisions are the same. Both agriculture and commerce are, however, improving. Attention is given by the government to the spread of education, both French and Arabic-French schools are increasing in number, and various establishments for higher education, including a prosperous lyceum at Constantine, have been instituted. The military expenditure and the expenditure for the administration of justice and public wonship, are included in the general budget of France. Algeria is represented both in the senate and chamber of deputies of the mother country. Among the important benefits which the French have conferred upon the colonists and native tribes not the least important has been the digging of artesian wells in districts formerly destitute of water, by means of which waste lands have been reclaimed and made richly fertile. In May, 1856, a boring was commenced in an oasis of the Sahara or desert of the province of Constantine. A civil engineer, a sergeant of Spahis and a detachment of soldiers of the Foreign Legion succeeded in bringing to light a splendid fountain or river, yielding not less than 4010 quarts of water per minute, at a temperature of 70° F. The work was considered a miracle. From all quarters the Arabs flocked to behold and enjoy it. The native priests blessed it, naming it "The Fountain of Peace." Another well was termed "The Fountain of Benediction." In the oasis of Sidi-Rached, unproductive for want of water, a well was dug and at a depth of fifty-four metres yielded 4300 quarts per minute. It is known as "The Fountain of Gratitude." The enthusiasm excited at its opening was boundless. "The Arabs," says a writer, "sprang in crowds to the spot, laving themselves in the welcome abundance, into which mothers dipped their children, while the old sheikh fell upon his knees and wept, returning thanks to Allah and the French." Elsewhere, the new wells have been made the centres of settlements by previously nomadic tribes, who have constructed villages and planted date trees in the vicinity. The wandering habits of many of the tribes are disappearing, and an attachment to French rule is slowly springing up. The idea of providing such wells has rightly been considered "a stroke of strong political wisdom. ' ' One of these fertile spots in the wastes of the Algerian Sahara is the little oasis of Tadjerouna, on the route from Geryville to Ouargla or Wargla, of which the illustration shows the exterior of the ksar, and which may be taken as a type of them all. Ksar, of which the plural is ksour, signifies a fortified town ; the oases are generalh" surrounded bv walls, and these strong places ser\'e as magazines and warehouses for the nomadic tribes who deposit in them their stores of grain and other treasures when they have gone to a distance in search of fresh pasturage for their flocks. Tadjerouna is an oasis without verdure and without palm trees, which is lodged in a depression like a conch-shell in the plains which surround it. Its richness consists in certain 30 AFRICA ILL USTRA TED. cultivated spots fertilized by the waters of the stream Oued-Mel'h. A dam across this river, at the rainy season, permits it to overflow the depression; the land thus irrigated is sown and plowed and at tlie end of two months yields its harvest. lu addition to this resource the inhabitants of Tadjerouna are the storeliouse-keepers of the Ouled-Jagoub, a powerful tribe with which they are allied both by blood and by interest. Whilst the ksar preserves the grain of the nomads, in con- ideration of a slight rental paid, the latter graze the flocks of the oasis-dwellers with their own. The Kabvle is not an Arab, but an original African possessor of the soil — a Berber. The derivation of this word seems to be from the Latin barbari, the Greek barbaroi, the Arabic biraht-r and bcrabra. All these words possibly come from the Sanscrit zvm-wara, a hostile appellation for a stranger. The different races that have in turn occupied the coast of the Mediterranean have somewhat modified the original Berber, but they have never been able to completelv change his manners nor to assimilate him to themselves. Traces of all of them may perhaps be found in the present tribes ; the variations of color in the skin, hair and eyes are often considerable, but the Roman, the Vandal and the Arab have all disappeared in the tenacious tvpe of the Berber. Their social organization is peculiar in some respects. In each village the authoritv is exercised by an amin^ chosen by election and alternately from each family or kharotiba. This chief is charged to watch over the execution of the written laws, classified under the name of khaiioiin and which are the outgrowth of customs known among the Kab>les from time immemorial. The amin cannot make any decision nor impose any penalty without consulting his counsellors or dhawans, always selected from among the notables. This tribunal chooses a secretary {k/iodja), who is charged to keep an open record of all their deliberations and to have charge of all the correspondence with the French authorities. These functions of the khodja are remunerated by certain fees of figs, olives, etc. Kabyles seeking Refuge in a Cave. AFRICA TL L US TRA TED. 31 The command of the tribe is given by the French authori- ties to an amin-el- oumena, whose prin- cipal function is the surveillance of the tribe in the interests of public order. He is not expected to take any part in the domestic affairs of the village, which are regulated each one by its khanoun. Each village is divided into two par- ties or soff., who are generally hereditary enemies. It ma\- readily be believed that the extremities to which the passions of these rival factions lead them are not conducive to the pub- lic tranquillity. The elections of the amiu are a constant source of disturbance ; the firearms are generally called upon to play a part in the discus- sion, and, to use the local phrase, the powder speaks. The disposition of the vil- lages, of which the buildings nearly always overtop each other, renders these skirmishes sufficiently bloody. Some of the houses are crenated, others are pierced with loop-holes, and the djama or mosque becomes, in consequence of the military importance of its ground floor, a veritable fortress, the possession of which assures success. There are brighter sides, however, to the life of these villagers, and on a clear morning of spring nothing can be more animated than the Kabyle footpaths leading to a popular market. Under the foliage, along the roads, through the fordable parts of the rivers, swarms an endless crowd — men, women, children and animals. The head of the family generally leads the way, the smallest children perched upon his shoulders, and it is but seldom that a Kabyle husband has the civility to lend his mule or his ass to his wife, even though she be compelled to wade through fords up to her knees. A French officer, however, relates having been a witness to the scene represented in the illustration on page 28 ; the unwonted consideration here displayed for the young mother he ascribed to the fact that she was evidently not over seventeen years of age and that she was burdened with two very young infants. The donkey which she rode, pulled along by his halter despite his evident unwillingness, decided the pas.sage of the rest of the troop — the sheep first, and behind them the larger cattle. This caravan was on the way to the market of Beni-]\Ienguellet, one of the most important of the grand Kabyle, and which is held 32 AFRICA I L LUST RAT ED. on the ri-ht bank of the O.ied Djeniaa. It is held on a vast plateau surrounded by heights covered with fine olive trees. AH tlie neighboring tribes of Dra-el-Mizan bring to it then various pro-l'V- *ii?** The gay and pleasant aspect which these villages present when viewed from a distance is by no means confirmed on a closer inspection. The state of carelessness, dirt and disorder in which the inhabitants dwell strikes the traveller with dismay, and frequently leads to epidemics of typhus and other fe\'ers that devastate the population. The houses are built close together, on streets frequently unpaved and so narrow that only one person can pass at a time without turning sideways. A small court leads to the entrance of one or more dwellings ; these latter consist of a single room on the ground floor, having no other opening than the door. An excavation in the floor serves for a fireplace, to which there is no chimne\-; the narrow streets and the courts are used as places of deposit for filth of all kinds. In some villages each house contains nine or ten persons who inhabit the common chamber with the domestic animals. The earthen floor, unpaved, soiled with filth and rarelv covered with a mat, serves as a couch for the AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. OJ members of the family ; the garments are greasy rags ; the food is coarse and insufficient. Even in death no more state is allowed; the corpse is stretched out on the bare floor, sometimes covered with a cloth or rug ; the neighbors called into the house of mourning squat around in a circle, and the cattle remain as passive spectators. Duriag their long and sanguinar\- strug- gle with the French these mountaineers frequently sought ref- uge in the caverns of their rocky country with their treasures and flocks, and the district of Dahra has acquired a melancholy celebrity as the scene of a frightful massacre perpetrated by the French in June, 1845, in one of these im- mense caverns. The tribe of Ouled-Riahs, hotly pursued by the forces under the com- mand of Colonel, after- wards Marshal, Pelis- sier, took refuge in one of them ; the}- were ordered to sur- render their arms and horses, and were promised, in return, life and liberty. On their refusal, fascines were made up, kindled and placed at the en- trance of the caves. Thrice Colonel Pelis- sier sent a flag of truce, exhorting the imprisoned Kabyles to accept his terms, but in vain — the last mes- senger being received with a discharge of musketry. The fire was again kindled in all its intensity, and gradually the cries of agony from the inte- rior of the caverns, ceased, until nothing broke the dead silence but the occasional crackling of the green wood of which the fascines consisted. When the caverns were examined, about six hundred dead bodies were found scattered here and there ; but it was calculated that in all— including th^se who o U_ O u u < 1: O O 'A .>4 AFRICA ILIA 'S TRA TED. Moorish Cafe at Sidi-bon-Said, near Tunis. afterwards died and those who could not be got at — about eight hundred had been suffocated by smoke, or gored to death by the maddened cattle which they had brought with them into their fatal asylum. The news created a great sensation in Paris. Marshal Soult, then minister of war, formally condemned the deed ; but Marshal Bugeaud, the governor of Algiers, affirmed that Pclissier had only acted under positive orders. The capital of the colony is Algiers, with a population of about fifty-five thousand. It was built about 935 A. D. by an i.rab chief. It rises from the seashore up the sides of a precipitous hill in the form of an equilateial triangle. The apex is formed by the Casbah, the ancient fortress of tlie deys, which is five hundred feet above the sea-level and commands the whole town. The modern town is handsomely built on the lower ground and on the side of the sea, strongly defended. Its port has been improved at great expense by the French. Oran and Constantine, the other two capitals of departments, are likewise coast towns; the former in the west, the latter in the east. Oran is a strongly fortified place with quite a European aspect, and its port, Mers-el-Kebir, about five miles to the north, has one of the finest harbors on the north African coast. Constantine is chiefly remarkable for its .striking and picturesque situation, occupying as it does the summit of a lofty mass of grayish-white limestone, which sinks precipitously on all sides, and on three sides is washed by the foaming waters of the Wed Rummel. The town and neighborhood are rich in remains of ancient Roman structures, and the walls which surround the town were constructed by the Arabs out of Roman sculptured stones. A fine old Roman bridge spans the ravine on one side. Constantine was anciently one of the most impor- tant towns of Numidia, called Carta by the Carthaginians, Cirta by the Romans, and was long a royal residence. It was destroyed in the wars of Maxentius against Alexander, about 311 A. D., but was soon rebuilt by Constantine the Great, from whom it derives its present name. The palace of Constantine is, of all the public monuments of Algeria, the most interesting, not only on account of its antiquity but also because of its value as an architectural example. It is not that it is of an imposing aspect, of a rare finish in the details, nor of a perfect harmony AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 35 in all its parts, but compared with the other sumptuous buildings of the Turkish epoch, its superiority is manifested by its elegant and handsome proportions, and in its interior decorations may be found all that the taste for ostentation and Algerian luxury could produce to satisfy the eye. It is, in a word, the type the most complete in architecture adapted at once to the necessities of manners and customs and of the climate. It was constructed by the bey El hadj Ahmed, about 1830, and is now occupied as a headquarters by the general commanding the province of Constantine. One of the most characteristic apartments is that figured in the illus- tration and known as the Saloon of Trophies, entered by a lateral door from the grand reception saloon. The first view of this smaller room is delightful ; three columns of marble, slender and twisted in spirals, serve to support the rafters of the ceiling, from which are suspended various- colored lanterns, verA- handsome in shape, and two lustres or chandeliers in glass in the Italian style of the time of the bey. In the centre of the length of the apartment is an oubou, or alcove, surrounded by divans, and at right and left the panels are entirely covered with large mirrors set in gaily decorated woodwork. The lateral walls are covered with large rose-work in brilliant colors ; the floors and a portion of the walls between the windows, with varnished tiles, and the windows are defended by double shutters, ornamented with mirrors on the interior and with admirable arabesques in cedar on the opposite sides. There may still be seen in this chamber, which was formerly the apartment of Fathma, the daughter of the bey, a curious specimen of the ancient furniture — a stand for candles, having the form of an egg-cup, which has been sur- mounted by an ostrich ^%%. This stand is in gilded bronze, with three branches on which are placed the candles. That which gives the room its distinctive title, however, is the collection of trophies of arms and flags which decorate its walls and which serve to commemorate the various expeditions and feats of arms of the conquerors in the province of Constantine. The initiative of this collection was taken by Marshal MacIMahon, and it has been continued by his successors. Guns, sabres, pistols and maces, of the most diverse forms, compose these trophies ; several of them are surmounted by banners in red, yellow or green silk, under which the fanatic marabouts have called their coimtrymen to the holy war against the invaders. Fathma, the daughter of the bey, who had formerly occupied this Saloon of Trophies, was the favorite daughter of her father, and gave occasion for the exercise of his cruelty more than once. It was intended that she should be given in marriage to El hadj Hussein Tourki, but the bey learned that this \'oung man had become enamored of a beautiful young widow, Qohra, whereupon he caused her to be arrested, tied up in a sack and thrown from the top of the Kaf Chekora, a precipice at the extremity of the Casbah, "five times the height of the column Vendome." In 1834 the bey sent to Europe one of his mamelukes, a renegade Italian named Seliman, with a large sum of money to buy jewels and trinkets for Fathma. His first purchase, from a butcher of Leghorn, was three enormous dogs, at three hundred francs apiece, to guard the harem during the night. One day in traversing the streets of Leghorn he happened to see a cripple drawn along in a small wagon by some dogs ; the idea occurred to him to procure this vehicle for the entertainment of his mistress, which he did, for the sum of a thousand francs — and great was the joy in the palace when the equipage arrived. Not only were the ladies of the seraglio transported with the novelty of riding in it, but the bey himself took occasion to mount his gravest ministers and graybeards in it, and laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the figure they cut as they were transported around the halls at full gallop by the canine team. The court called that of the Genii, of this palace, is surrounded by a peristyle of five pointed arches .on each side, and, being somewhat isolated, served as a vast basin in which the women of the bey's harem took their baths. The fountain springing out of this reservoir to a great height fell back into a series of basins, one above the other and of unequal dimensions, on the edges of which a skilful artist had carved rose-work and intertwining ornaments. In the waters of the reser\'oir lived a large number of fishes, of w^hich the ladies took care. On one side of this court a stairway descends into some large vaulted chambers which extend under the palace. Here was found an etii've, or jMoorish bath, exclusively for the use of the bey and his ladies. Each day a certain number of mules, laden with great water-skins of oxhide, transported to the palace the water from the river that flows at the foot of the city. This water, poured into a sort of conduit, reached the interior of the palace through pottery pipes. Over this bath were 36 AFRICA ILLCSTRATED. Carthage. chambers for the repose of the bathers, one of them containing an immense bird-cage in which were confined nightingales, finches, parrots, canaries and other birds for the anuisement of the harem. When the bey fled from his palace these ladies fell into the hands of the French, and thongh most of them were snfficiently fat and ugly, some few of the younger ones were described as being as attractive as the fair bather of our illustration. Many of them succeeded in effecting their escape through a hole in the wall of the building. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 37 THE territories of ancient Carthage included those of the modern state of Tunis, and the ruins of that city lie about ten miles to the north-west of the town of Tunis, close to the country residence of the bey. The ancient cape of Carthage is now Cape Sidi-bon-Said ; of the great Punic capital nothing now remains but some dismantled piles of stones and two crumbling arcades; of the trace she left on the fears and memories of men nothing but some pages of history and some figures re-created by the imagination, like the "Salambo" of Gustave Flaubert, repro- duced in marble by his compatriot, the sculptor Idrac. "The serpent was for the Carthaginians a fetish at once national and particular. He was believed to be the offspring of the slime of the earth, since he had emerged from its depths and had no need of feet to traverse its surface : his progress recalled the undulations of the waves ; his _ temperature, the ancient, viscid shadows, full of fecundity; and the circle which he describes in biting his own tail, the totality of the planets, the intelli- gence of Eschmoun." Some of this ancient slime of the earth may still be found in the streets of modern Tunis, "narrow and unspeakably dirty" — the town being one of those as \-et but little affected by the touch of modern civili- zation. A great variety of appellations, injurious and otherwise, have been bestowed upon it ; Diodorus Siculus calls it "Tunis the white," the Arabs have surnamed it alternately "the glorious," "the veri- table," "the flourishing," "the industrious," "the well-guarded" and "the sojourn of felicity." A French physician, L,ouis Franck, doctor to the bey Hamoudah, proposed to substitute for all these epithets %\\xii^\y fassedch^ "the fetid." It lies on the Mediter- ranean, the only large town in the State, at the extremity of a salt lagoon about twelve miles in circumference, connected with the Bay of Tunis by the narrow channel of Goletta; a town at the mouth of which, also called Goletta, serves as the port of Tunis. The capital itself has been compared to a vast bournous extended on an inclined plane. The Casbah occupies the place of the capuchin, or hood. The upper city is inhabited by the Mussulmans ; the quar- ters of the Italians, ^Maltese, French and Jews are in the lower town and the suburbs. The dar-el-bey, the palace of the bey, which is not remarkable externally, is decorated in the interior with great luxury in the Moorish style, and is used as a residence for illustrious foreigners. The bey has his ordinary residence at El-mersa, on the sea-coast, three leagues from the city. The official .seat of the government is the Bardo, a vast building, flanked with towers and bas- tions, about two miles north-west of the town. The polytechnic school, the State prisons, an entire garrison, are included in this fortress, where may also be found a street of shops. Between the city and the Bardo extends a lake, the sebkat-h-seld joung, which is nearly dried up during the heats of summer. At Sidi-bon-Said, near the cape, is the picturesque Moorish cafe shown in the illustration. Next after Tunis, with Goletta, the principal ports are Susa and Sfaks, on the east coast. The trade with different parts of Europe— principally Marseilles, Genoa and Leghorn, as well as the ports of the Levant — consists principally in exporting the products of inner Africa. Among the means of internal communication may now be included railways ; the city of Tunis being connected by rail with several of the other chief towns of the neighborhood. The SalambA. ^^^ AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. principal line is one recently constructed from Tunis to the Algerian frontier, a line belonging to a French company. The manufactures consist chiefly of woollen fabrics, more especially bournouses and the red caps, which are known all over the Mediterranean, soaj), earthenware and ordinar>- and morocco leather. An intoxicating drink made from dates, and another made from the Indian fig, are in great favor with the people, not being forbidden by the Koran. The only minerals are lead ores, said to exist in various parts of the mountains, quicksilver, which is not worked, and deposits of saltpetre on the plateau of Kairwan. Salt is obtained on the coast. Some of the coast fisheries, as those of coral and sponges, are valuable. The government is a despotism, the ruler having the title of bey. From 1575 the suzerainty of the State has been claimed by Turkey, but the French having in the spring of 1881 invaded the State, under the pretext of punishing the Kroumirs, or Berber inhabitants of the mountains in the extreme north-west, for their inroads on French territory, compelled the bey to accept a treaty which made French authority supreme in Tunis. In this treaty the right is secured to France of occupying all such positions as the French military authorities deem necessary for the maintenance of order and the security of the coasts ; the bey undertakes not to conclude any international convention without a previous understanding with the French government, and the financial system of Tunis — previously, from 1869, under a European commission — is declared to be regulated henceforth by France in concert with the bey. The revenue is mainly derived from export duties, ta.xes and tithes on olive plantations, the monopolies of salt and tobacco, and stamp duties. The inhabitants are generally well formed ; the men are of dry and thin figures, and there are comparatively few diseased and malformed ; the Moorish women are handsome when young, their complexions are lively, their eyes are large, well opened and have much expression, their hair is nearly always of a fine bluish black — they dress it and let it float on their shoulders. The embonpoint is in Tunis, as in most other Oriental countries, one of the essential conditions of beauty, and it is said that the ladies of this nation have an infallible recipe for becoming fat — to eat young dogs. The women of the richer classes cover themselves with ornaments of gold and silver, with mirrors, precious stones, scent-boxes, chains and corals. The poorer Arab women load themselves with glass beads and copper jewelry. The children, when born, have the skin as white as that of Europeans, or rather, of a dull white, but exposure to the sun gives them little by little a darker shade, which, however, is not displeasing. The costume of the Jewesses of Tunis diflfers \'ery considerably from those of Algeria and Morocco. Its decided originality, rendered still more striking by the excessive embonpoint of the fair wearers, fills the traveller with surprise on first view, and to the strangeness of fashion "if^ *'>' 0^ BaC "SillDlBR The Bardo, Government Buildings, Tunis. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 39 Dancing-Girl in a Cafe. is added a combination of the crudest and most brilliant colors. According to tradition they have preserved the identical costume of the Hebrews of Scriptural times. The principal features of this venerable costume may be described as a pointed cap set on the head, a very loose jacket or sack, frequently richly embroidered, which descends but a little below the waist, and tight hose to cover the legs, terminating in slippers or in a sort of Hessian boot with tassels. The costume of the men is much more like that of the Turks, excepting that their loose trousers do not come much below the knee. Two French travellers, the doctors Rebatel and Tirant, who made a journey of exploration through the country in 1874, have left a detailed account of the country as it was before the French occupation. In the encampment of the Methilits, near Sfaks, they encountered an unusual specimen of Arab hospitality; the chief, Si-Salah-Embarek, doing the honors of his douar. "He offered us welcome under a tent of English tent-cloth, an unheard of luxury in Tunis ; he displayed to us his treasures — his war-horse, a magnificent Arab stallion of inesti- mable beauty and value, and his sabres, pure Damascus, with which he had amused himself, in his youth, by cutting a young camel in two at one stroke. . . . He even pushed his cordiality so far as to introduce us into his private tent in which were his wives, his negresses, and all his riches, not omitting, however, to call our attention to his remarkable mark of confidence." The position of women in Tunis, indeed, as in all Mohammedan countries, is rather that of valuable property than that of companions or helpmeet— those enjoying the greatest freedom being the dancing-girls, who have much the same license as the Almeh of Egypt. WHEN the wind is favorable, and the master of the Maltese schooner or the Arab xebec is a good sailor, the walls of Tripoli may be seen rising out of the sea forty-eight hours after leav- ing Malta. The shore is low and can only be seen when very near, but while still ten miles out at sea the voyager may discern the mountains of the interior which serve as a signal to navigators. As the vessel approaches the shore a more distinct line may be seen, emerging out of the waves 40 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. and gradually defining a long crescent, in the middle of which may be seen the white mass of the town. The eastern point is covered with a sombre grove of palm trees which advance to the edge of the water ; the western extremity reveals only the yellow sand of the desert spotted here and there with stunted growths. Nature has thrown across the front of the little gulf, which forms the harbor of the city, a reef of low rocks which seem to invite the hand of man to construct on them a breakwater ; but the indolent Arab has only accepted the invitation as far as building a feeble rampart — probably upon Roman foundations — for a sliort distance from the shore, and on this has mounted some rusty cannon, whose empty menace recalls the days when the power of this piratical kingdom was a terror to the maritime nations of Europe. Like all the cities of the Orient— Smyrna, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria— like the gorgeous East itself, Tripoli, beautiful from the distance, is far from enchanting when viewed ancar. A disillusioned French traxeller declares that Paris is a near enough point from which to contemplate the Orient. As soon as the voyager has set foot on the little quay in masonry, striped with green, yellow, blue and red, which serves as the custom-house landing, his poetical imaginings all disappear, and his eye aud nose are assailed with the most disenchanting of impressions. As soon as the gate of this little fortress is thrown open he emerges into a laby- rinth of narrow, irregular aud very dirty streets, lined with miserable shops and crumbling houses, and littered with all manner of dirtiness. There are, however, moments of reform : Tripoli is still a vilayet of the Turkish Empire, and whenever a new pacha arrives from Constan- tinople and enters on the duties of his government, he publishes an eloquent manifesto on the benefits of public decorum and the necessity of public cleanliness. In the interest of all, each subject is requested to forthwith scour, and keep thereafter cleaned, his own property, under penalty of the severest punishment. Then ensues a great emulation : each proprietor clears the front of his own shop or his own house of all impurities and carefully piles them in a little mound in the street, to be removed out of the city immediately. But somehow the removal is indefinitely postponed ; the little piles of filth grow larger and larger and are then graduall}- scattered again as before, and all things go on in the old way. The greater part of the houses are united to each other at the distance of every few paces by arches of masonry, a yard or so in thickness, which hinder the facades from approaching each other still nearer; often, after the heavy rains, these supports are strengthened by rafters of timber — all of which does not prevent the crumbling to pieces of many dwellings in the course of the year. Whether it is owing to the badness of the lime employed, or the fact that the stones are mosth- a sort of compressed sand, or to the brackishness of the water, it happens that the space of a year is generally enough to reduce a new building to a state of menacing ruin. The rapidity of this disintegration is Off the Sea, Tripoli. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 41 not without its discouraging influence upon architects and builders. With the exception of the convent of the Mission, the consular dwellings and the residences of a few European negociants, there are scarcely any handsome buildings in the town. The arrangement of nearly all the dwellings is the same ; a square court {impliivmm), around which extends a covered gallery, a sort of cloister supported by slender columns, and long and narrow chambers — the, scarcity and dearness of wood rendering the employment of long beams too costly. The rooms have generally the form of a Latin cross with the foot cut ofif, that is, a corridor from which issue at right angles two larger rooms. Each chamber thus forms in reality three apartments, which are generally separated by curtains. That part of the town which lies nearest the quay is mostly occupied by the Christian population, grouped around the churches, of which there are two or three, and the consulates ; the western portion is given over to the Jews, and is rather the dirtiest of the whole town. There are several ancient remains, among the most important of which is a triumphal arch erected in the second century of our era to the Roman emperors Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus, and before which you pass in entering the city by Bal-el-bakr, the sea gate. There are some beautiful gardens within and without the walls ; and there are important manufactures of leather, carpets, scarfs, etc. From here the caravans passed through the Desert of Sahara to Timbuktu, Bornu and other points, to obtain Tripoli, from the North. the products of the Soudan, but this overland trade has greatly fallen ofif of later years. Tripoli being the centre of a large agricultural population, the native capitalists occupy themselves in money-lending to the peasantrj-. Nowhere else in the northern part of Africa does the great desert come down so near to the sea as in this State. The chain of the Atlas Mountains, which from the Atlantic coast has protected the Mediterranean shore from the invading sands, here sinks into a low range of hills and finally disappears in the little gulf of Syrta, west of the city of Tripoli. Here is the natural sea-port of the Soudan, the Barr-el-aabid, the easiest route to the centre of the conti- nent, and it was by this road that Dr. Barth commenced his explorations to the Soudan, leaving Tripoli in 1850. The boundaries of Tripoli, especially on the south, are far from being definitely fixed, but the whole area of the State, including Fezzan and Barca, has been roughlv estimated at about four hundred thousand square miles. Some geographers include the oasis of Kufra, to the east of Fezzan, in the Tripolitan territory; but according to a communication addressed by Gerhard Rohlfs to the editors of the Erdbevdlkernng, this oasis is entirely independent. The total population of the territory is estimated at about one million, of whom about three hundred thousand belong to Barca. The coast-line, which is from seven to eight hundred miles long, has only one harbor, that of the town of Tripoli. The eastern part of the interior, mostly a AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. continuation of the desert, partakes of its character, and contains large tracts of almost barren sands. In the south, how- ever, it is partly traversed by the Black Mountains, an eastern offset of the Atlas, which, descending in successive terraces, enclose many valleys and plains of con- siderable fertility. Farther to the west, the surface becomes still more diversified, and presents scenery which is not deficient either in beauty or grandeur. The richest tract of Tripoli, by far, is that of the Mesheea, which stretches about fifteen miles along the coast, with a width not exceeding five miles, and has the capital nearly in the centre. The whole of this district is occupied with fertile fields, on which wheat, barley, millet and Indian corn, besides madder, saffron, and other crops, are grown, and with olive-yards, vineyards and orchards — the last pro- ducing all kinds of southern fruit. This fertile zone is divided up into little enclosures, in the centre of each of which may be seen two upright piles of masonry, like those shown in the engrav- ing, between which is hung a great pulley from which a pointed leathern bucket mounts and descends, discharging at each ascent a volume of limpid water. The motive power is generally a meagre cow, conducted by a half-naked negro, who toils up and down an inclined plane, the lowest part below the level of the soil. Day and night this movement continues, from the end of the rainv season to its commencement. Durino; eight months the gardens are so inanv basins, regularly inundated, and they are called by the general name of shii^^ a word derived from an Arabic verb which signifies "to inundate a piece of earth with water drawn by a beast of burden" — a very comprehensive word. When the sap begins to mount in the date palm, under the genial warmth of spring, a man mounts the lofty trunk of the tree without other aid than that afforded by his naked feet and a girdle whicli unites him to the stem, until he arrives at the crown of the tree where the branches spring out. These he cuts off remorselessly with a sharp hatchet, leaving only four, which stretch themselves out horizontally as if to indicate the cardinal points of the compass. Over the insertion of one of the.se he passes a fine cord, the two ends of which touch the earth, and between two of the scars left by the shorn branches he wounds the tree by a deep incision. Then he descends, and a ves.sel to receive the flowing sap is run up by means of the cord and suspended just below the incision. Twelve hours afterwards it is brought down and another sent up to take its place. The first is full of a pale gray liquid, not quite clear, somewhat similar to barley water— this is the /aqby—ix&s\\, almost tasteless, slightK- sweet and an excellent purgative to take in tlie morning. Some hours afterwards a slight sound may be heard in the vessel, the liquid is found to be clearing and seems to boil ; innumerable bubiDles of air are seen coming to the surface and sparkling there— if tasted, it is found to prick the palate .slightly, and the drinker finds himself able to think without regret of the best champagne he has ever known— if the travellers are to be believed. No inconveniences attend the free partaking' of this charming beverage ; the sli^jlit fermentation has given it a refreshing quality while quite destroying its Wkm. i.. 1 I.. "Ill L, r..\. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 43 laxative properties. But if left to stand a half day longer this beautiful liquid becomes thick and white like milk, assumes a penetrating odor and a slighth- acid taste, and is as intoxicating as brandy. The fine champagne has been changed into a white beer of remarkably alcoholic qualities. It is in this state that the natives prefer it — drunkenness being the thing desired, and the most rigid I\Iussulman, who .turns with horror from a glass of wine, drinks without scruple and publicly his cup of laqby, which is only the sap of the palm. It is necessary to empty the vessel, for to-morrow it will be found to contain only a nauseating liquid, filled with little reddish spots, viscous as oil and good only to be thrown away. The laqby is thus the most ephemeral of beverages ; it is necessarj' to drink it in the shadow of the tree that produces it. Ever}' means that has been tried to arrest the fermentation has proved futile ; it either breaks the bottles, or, if they prove strong enough, the deterioration is found to have been accomplished just the same and the vintage is ruined. It is an eloquent pleader for the philosophy of Horace, "Enjoy the day which passes, and leave nothing till to-morrow!" The eastern division of Tripoli is Barca, lying between the Great Syrtis — now called the Gulf of Sidra — and Eg\'pt. From the latter it is separated b}' no definite line, but b)- a number of roving, independent tribes. On the south is a desert plain which descends to the northern depressions of the Libyan Desert. The oval plateau, which forms the greater part of the province, was the ancient Cyrenaica, held successively by the Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Persians and Arabs, and many remains of ancient towns, especially in the north-western part, testify to its former importance and the celebrated fertility of the soil. At present the fertile districts extend over only about a fourth of the countr}-; the east exhibits only naked rocks and loose sand. Rice, dates, olives, saff"ron, etc., are produced ; the pastures are excellent and the horses still celebrated as in ancient times. The climate is healthy and agreeable in the more elevated parts, which reach a height of about twelve hundred feet, and in those exposed to the sea-breeze. Ancient Cyrenaica was much exposed to the ravages of loci:sts. Southward of Tripoli, on the route to the Soudan, is the great oasis of Fezzan or Fessan, extending far into the heart of the great desert and defended on the north by the rocky plateau of the Hammada. To the many obstacles which nature has placed on this road the superstitions of the native Bedouins have added one more formidable to them than distance, heat or thirst. This is the Boji-chcbr^ through which not even the flocks of cranes may pass. The legend relates that these terrible Djin, who have been imprisoned for all eternity in the stony Hammada by the great Solomon — on whom be peace ! — were formerly the souls of a great people inhabiting that district, numerous and powerful, feared of their neighbors, and disdainful of all humanity and of all justice. When Solomon sent them an apostle, to bring them to the worship of the one God, they put him to death, and even turned to derision the precepts and observances which this envoy had taught them. They placed a pig in their temples, in imitation of the mihrab or niche in the wall of the mosque to indicate the direction of Mecca, and they made the sacred ablutions with camels' urine. Coimting on their isolation and the distance which separated them from all their neighbors, they had no fear of any news of their impiety reaching the ears of Solomon. But, as it happened, there were a great number of cranes in the land of the Bou- DrINKERS of La(i1!V. 44 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. chdbr, and these, scandalized at the actions they witnessed, deputed one of their number to carry the tidings to the prophet. The latter, filled with indignation at the recital, summoned the lapwing, his favorite bird, and commanded him to gather together all the cranes on the face of the earth. When these were assembled they fonned a cloud which threw the earth into shadow from Misda, near Tripoli, to Murzuk, the capital of Fezzan. Each one was provided with a stone in his beak, and dropping these all at once, the infidels all perished of this lapida- tion. Hut llicir wicked .souls, thus set free, continue to wander about over these solitudes, and no crane has ever since been able to wing through that tormented air. In this curious Mohammedan legend seems to be revived the old story of the Pigmies and the cranes. Bou-chebr means, literally, the father of the span, or handsbreadth, that is, the man who is measured by a span, or the distance between the thumb and little finger, separated as widely as possible. The Hills of Barca (Ancient Cyrenaica). Fezzan has a population estimated b\ Dr. Nachtigal at about thirty-three thousand, divided among some ninety villages, and a nomadic population of about one-fourth or one-third that number. The northern part of the district is for the most part hills, perfectly bare, black quartz sandstone, with no rivers or brooks among them, and the south is mainly a level waste of dry sand. Not more than a tenth of the soil is cultivable. In the neighborhood of the villages, which are situated mainly in the wadies, wheat, barley, etc., are cultivated. Camels and horses are reared in considerable numbers. Lions, leopards, hyenas, jackals, wildcats, porcupines, vultures, ostriches and buzzards are found in abundance. The inhabitants are a mixed race, of a brown color, in many respects resembling the negroes, but are generally well fonned. The original inhabitants belonged to the Herbcr family, but since the invasion of the country by the Arabs in the fifteenth century the traces of this native North African elenient have ^raduallv become AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 45 ven- faint. The language spoken is a corrupt mixture of Berber and Arabic. The people are far behind in civilization, and occupy themselves with gardening and the manufacture of the most indispensable necessaries of life. Considerable trade is carried on by means of caravans between the interior of Africa and the coast. Fezzau is the Phazania of the ancients, against which the Romans, under Cornelius Balbus, undertook a campaign about 20 B. C. During the classic period, as well as in the middle ages, it was governed by its own princes, who were at first independent, but afterwards became tributary' to the pachas of Tripoli. In the year 1842, it was conquered by the Turks, and since that time has remained a Turkish pachalic. Earth found the town of Murzuk, or Mourzouk, the capital, to be situated at the bottom of a plateau surrounded by dunes, at four hundred and fifty-six metres above the level of the sea. Notwithstanding the picturesqueness of the situation, the traveller is struck, at first sight, with the extreme aridity of the scene, and this impression is deepened by a residence of some days 46 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. in the town or its neigborhood. It is only in the shadow of the date palms that any cultivation is possible ; here are raised some fruits— pomegranates, figs and peaches ; vegetables are extremely scarce, and the milk of the goat is the only one known. The population of the town is about twenty-eight hundred, but the quarters of the city distant from the bazar are almost deserted. A broad street, called dendal, extends from the eastern gate to the citadel, and demonstrates that the city has closer relations with Negroland than with the Arab territories on the north. "Murzuk," says Earth, "is not, like Gadames, inhabited by rich merchants; it is less the seat of a considerable commerce than a place of transit. For us it was the first station of our journey and our true point of departure, so that we asked nothing better than to start — but who can lea\-e, at his own will, an African city when it is a question of hurrying individuals for whom time does not e.xist? Our departure, which was originally fixed for the 6th of June, was finally set down for the 13th ; and we really got off on that day. But after having halted at Tasaoua in order to come to an understanding with two chiefs of the Tuaregs, those mysterious and silent pirates of the desert, it was necessary to turn back on our steps and re-euter Murzuk ; and it was not until the 25th that our little caravan, returned to Tasaoua, finally set out, climbed the mountains of sand and entered on a firmer soil of which the heights were crowned with tamarisk. It even seemed that a violent flood of water had at some time carried away the earth which had united the hills, leaving them isolated. We soon found again the pebbly soil of the hammada, then the succession of green valleys and arid plains that had preceded our arrival at Murzuk." The route followed was, at first, nearly due west, towards Ghat, and in entering the valley of Tanesof they saw, rising before them, the mountain Iniden, or "of the Demons," lit up by the rays of the setting sun. The following day found them still advancing towards this enchauted height which the accounts of the natives endowed with a most formidable character. Despite the warnings of the Tuaregs, or — as he says himself — possibly because they united in advising him not to risk his life in the attempt to climb this demoniac peak, Earth determined to make the attempt. Not being able to obtain any guide, he set off alone for this infernal sojourn, finnly persuaded that it had been formerly the seat of some strange worship and that he should find there some traces of ancient sculpture or curious car\'ings. Unfortunately he carried with him no other provisions than biscuits and dates, the most unsuitable kind when water fails. He climbed the dunes and entered on an entirely naked plain, strewn with black pebbles and spotted with small mounds of the same color ; after this he crossed the bed of a torrent carpeted with grasses, and which seemed to rejoin the valley. Here he encountered the first signs of life: a couple of antelopes, which, having their young near by probably, did not fly at his approach but contented themselves with staring at him and flourishing their tails. He now found himself at the mouth of a ravine, and the enchanted palace seemed as far away as ever ; he changed his direction only to find his progress barred by a precipice. The heat of the sun was overpowering, and it was only when almost spent with fatigue that he finally attained the summit of the mountain, the pinnacle of which, only a few feet in extent, displayed neither sculptures nor inscriptions. Notwithstanding the extended view to be obtained from this summit he could discern no trace of the caravan. His hunger and thirst had become devouring; he was unable to eat his biscuit and dates, and so little of his water was left that he restricted himself to mouthfuls. It was necessary to descend immediately, in spite of his feebleness, and when he reached the plain again his supply of water was exhausted. And he had not proceeded far when he discovered that he was lost, and fired his pistol in the vain hope of attracting help. Straggling onwards in the hope of discovering some clue to his whereabouts he remembered that there were grasses at the place where he had first arrived at the foot of the mountain ; then he discovered some little huts near a tamarisk, but when he reached them they were deserted. Then he saw pass in the distance a string of camels ; it was but an illusion, and he was losing his head. When the night came he perceived the gleam of a fire through the du.sk, which must be that of the cara- van ; he fired his pistol again without any response. The flame could still be seen mounting in a thin line towards the sky, but he was unable to reach it and was obliged to wait the davbreak. When the light at length reappeared he loaded his pistol with a double charge and discharged It once more; tlip detonation rolling from rock to rock seemed to him to be rousing the dead; but AFRICA TLL US TRA TED. 47 The Oasis of Asben. no living help appeared. The sun which he had wished for so ardently soon began to assert his power, the heat was frightful, and the unhappy traveller crawled along the sand to seek the scanty shadow of the naked branches of a tamarisk ; at noon he had scarcely enough to cover his head. His thirst was devouring him ; he opened a vein, drank a little of his own blood and lost consciousness. When he regained his senses the sun had already sunk behind the mountains; with difficulty he dragged himself a few paces from the friendly tamarisk and cast his eyes over the desolate plains, as he thought for the last time, when he heard the voice of a camel — "the most delicious music that I ever had heard." He was rescued after twenty-four hours of agony by one of the Tuaregs of the caravan, who was searching for him. The demons of the mountain had taken an ample revenge. The caravan rested for six days in the double oasis of Ghat and of Barakat, in the cultivated fields of which the barley and wheat giving place to millet announced the approach to Negroland. Our travellers found here well-kept gardens, surrounded by palisades, turtle-doves and wood pigeons on all the branches of the trees, comfortable habitations surmounted with flat roofs, men working with commendable industn,-, swarms of children and almost every woman with a baby on her shoulders. The population, black but well formed, seemed much superior to the mixed inhabitants of Fezzan. But from this pleasant land it was necessary to take up the march again for the desert, which in this locality is a veritable chaos of rocks. South of these oases is the immense one of Asben or Ahir, which has been called the Switzerland of the desert, and the route followed by Earth on his way to Agades traversed a region extremeh* picturesque — at each instant a new view opened through the mountains and 48 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. revealed glimpses of winding gorges, fertile valleys and detached peaks which overlook the landscape. This immense oasis was formerly the countr_\- of the Goberaoua, the noblest branch of the blacks of Haoussa, who appear to have had, in ancient times, some ties of consanguinity with the races of the north of Africa. The Berber rule was already established in the fourteenth century in several of these towns. Leo Africanus says, positively that Asben was, at the time of his travels, occupied by the Tuaregs ; it was they who gave the province the name of Ahir. The conquerors took the native women for wives, and this crossing of the grave Berbers with the light-hearted carelessness of the negroes has given rise to a new type. In the freshness of the morning of the 7th October, as the caravan took its departure through the valley of Tiggeda, the air was filled with flocks of pigeons ; the rocky mountain which separated them from the valley of Erazar-en-Asada was crossed, and to the eastward rose the imposing mass of the Dogem. The tropical vegetation grew so thickly that the camels could with difficulty force their way through, but once this luxuriance passed the route led over a pebbly plain covered with a thicket of mimosas, in which were to be discovered the frequent trail of lions, very numerous in these waste places, but not ver\' ferocious, according to Earth. After this came the valley of Taghist, sprinkled with basaltic stones of the size of a child's head, and of which the rocky slope is entirely bare. This lugubrious strait was consecrated to prayer bv Mohamined-ben-Abd-el-Kerin, from Touat, who first introduced Islamism into the central Soudan. From here they passed into the celebrated valley of Auderas, where the sky is pure, and the valley, surrounded by abrupt slopes, basks in a green luxuriance of woods, thickets and grass. Like all those which succeed it, this valley is capable of producing not only millet, but also wheat, grapes, dates and nearly all kinds of vegetables ; it is said to enclose fifty gardens around the village of Ifarghen. Earth records that this was, he believed, the most southerly place in Africa, north of the equator, where the plow was still in use. In all Negroland this useful implement is replaced by the hoe. From this terrestrial paradise, ascending through the Boudde valley, they reached at last the stony plateau on which is built the city of Agades on the frontiers of the Soudan. This town stands on a flat stretch of ground covered with piles of rubbish and filth ; it was formerly the seat of a considerable commerce, but since the close of the last century, the period of the conquest of Gogo by the Tuaregs, the population has fallen from sixty thousand souls to seven or eight thousand. The greater part of the houses are in ruins ; the twenty or twenty-five buildings which constitute the palace are themselves crumbling in neglect ; of the seventy mosques of former times there now remain not more than ten, and the numerous vultures on the walls which surround the town serve to emphasize decay. Here Earth succeeded in procuring from the sultan, Abd-el-Kader, letters of recommendation to the governors of Kano, Katchena and Daoura. From Agades the route led over a mountainous region, interspersed with fertile valleys, into the plain which separates the rocky waste of the desert from the fertile region of the Soudan. This plain gradually becomes more and more covered with thickets and broken in surface and finally descends a steep slope to the smiling fields of the frontier province of Damerghon. From Tagelel, the first town they reached, Barth set out for Kano, the capital of the province of the same name, by way of Katsena, an enormous city which now only contains some eight thousand inhabitants. During the last two centuries, the seventeenth and the !ghteenth, this seems to have been the most important city of this part of the Soudan ; the , jcial state, developed by contact with the Arabs, had attained its highest degree of civilization; the language, its richest development and most perfect pronunciation, and the inhabitants were distinguished by their refined and polite manners among all the other cities of the Haussas. But the greater part of this prosperity is now transferred to Kano. The population of this great manufacturing and mercantile town is estimated to be about fifty thousand, and that of the province, about half a million. The latter, from its beauty and wealth, has been called the "Garden of Central Africa." The wall which surrounds the town is fifteen miles in circuit, and between it and the town, which is circular in shape and about three miles in diameter, a space inter\'enes, large enough to supply the inhabitants with grain in case of a siege. The houses are built with clay ; the industr>' consists chiefly in the weaving and dyeing of cotton cloths, which are exported to the value of $150,000 annuallv, to Timbuktu and to Tripoli over Bomu. o 7. < 50 AFRICA ILL USTRA TED. Earth's description of his first impressions of the city is worth qnoting: "The sky was pure, and the city with its various dwellings, its green pastures traversed by horses, camels, doukcNS and goats, its ponds covered with water-plants, its magnificent trees and its population in the most diverse costumes, from the scanty apron of the slave to the floating draperies of the Arab, formed a picture animated by a world complete in itself — entireh- different apparently from that of Europe, but exactly similar in reality. Here is a row of magazines filled with merchan- dise, both foreign and domestic, the buyers and the sellers, of all shades, who endeavor each to gain the utmost possible, and to deceive his neighbor ; down there, some open places where are huddled together half-naked slaves dying with hunger, and whose despairing regards seek to discover the master to whom they are to be delivered. Elsewhere, everything that is necessary to life; the rich possessing themselves of all that is most dainty, the poor stooping with greedy looks over a handful of grain. Then a high dignitary, mounted on a blooded horse, brilliantly caparisoned, followed by insolent attendants, brushes against a poor blind man in peril at each step of being trodden under foot. "In this street is a charming cottage, at the bottom of a court surrounded by a palisade of roses ; a date palm protects this retreat against the heat of the day ; the mistress of the house, clad in a black robe gathered around the waist, her hair carefully dressed, is spinning cotton, watching with a careful eye the while the grinding of the millet ; the children, naked and happy, roll in the sand or run in pursuit of a goat ; in the interior, the earthen vases, the sebilla or wooden bowls, shining with cleanliness, are ranged carefully in a row. Farther on a courtesan, without family, without refuge, with a forced and discordant laugh, her throat covered with necklaces and her disordered hair partly retained by a diadem, trails over the sand her skirt of gay colors loosely attached under her bosom ; behind her, a wretch covered with sores, or deformed by elephantiasis ; on an uncovered spot, a dyeing establishment with its numerous workmen; two paces farther on, a blacksmith finishing a blade, the edge of which would surprise the stranger who mocks at the clumsy tools ; in a little unfrequented street, some women spreading skeins of cotton on a hedge." ALEXANDRIA is the doorway through which Africa has been entered for many centuries, and the traveller of to-day with his luxurious steamer and his passport finds in this port an easy transition from the comforts of European civilization to the picturesqueness Cleopatra. From the Painting by Cabanel. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 51 of Africa. Seen from the harbor the city, however, is not particularly majestic. Built on a flat plain it offers no special ensemble to the eye, excepting a double row of windmills extending' to right and, left. These are said to be a remnant of the French expedition, a present from the soldiers of Kleber, and were much appreciated by Mehemet-Ali, who considerably increased their number. As far as the eye can carry they may be seen, diminishing in perspective and endlessly turning. Some graceful minarets, however, and a column of the time of the Romans lift themselves as if in protest against these commonplace intruders ; but they are not sufficient to render the view imposing. The ancient city of the Ptolemies has disappeared, and the modern town is not situated exactly on the site of the ancient one, but is built in great part on the mole called the Heptastadium, which has been increased by alluvial deposits till it has become a broad neck of land between the two harbors, of which the eastern is called the New Port and the western the Old Port. The largest steamers are moored to the eastern quay; and this is the first soil trodden by the stranger on arriving. The modern city does not reproduce the splendor of the ancient one, and has, indeed, an entirely different character. The Alexandria of the Greeks and Romans was a city built and decorated in the service of philosophy and letters; the new town is devoted exclusively to commerce. The history of the ancient one goes back to its founding by Alexander the Great, in the autumn of the year 332 B. C. It was situated originally on the low tract of land which sepa- rates the lake Mareotis from the Mediterranean, about fourteen miles west of the Canopic mouth of the Nile. Before the city, in the Mediterranean, lay the island of Pharos, upon the north-east Ancient Alexandria. point of which rose the famous lighthouse constructed by the architect, Sostratus of Cnidus, under the orders of Ptolemy Philadelphus. It is said that the builder cut his own name deep in the rocky foundation, and then covered this with concrete in which appeared that of his royal master — to the end that when the more perishable material had disappeared the true name of the author of the work should appear. The island was connected with the mainland by the mole called the Heptastadium, or "Seven Furlong" mole, from its length, thus forming the two harbors. The plan of the city was designed by the architect Dinocrates, and its original extent is said to have been about four miles in length, with a circumference of fifteen miles. It was intersected by two straight main streets, crossing each other at right angles in the centre of the cit\-. Colonnades adorned the whole length of these streets, which were in general very regularly built. The most magnificent quarter of the city was that called the Brucheium, which was situated on the eastern harbor. This contained the palaces of the Ptolemies, v^ath the Museum and the old library-, the Soma or Mausoleum of Alexander the Great and of the Ptolemies, the Poseidonum and the great theatre. Farther west was the emporium, or exchange. The Serapeion, or temple of Serapis, stood in the western division of the city, which formed the Egyptian quarter, and was called Rhacotis ; a small town of that name had occupied the site before the foundation of Alexandria. To the west of the city la)- the great Necropolis, and to the east the race-course, beyond which was the suburb of Nicopolis. The greater part of the space under the houses was occupied by vaulted subterranean cisterns, which were capable of containing a sufficient quantity of water to supply the whole population of the city for a year. 52 AFRICA n. L I 'S TRA TED. From the time of its foundation Alexandria was the Greek capital of Eg}pt. Its population, in the time of its prosperity, is said by Diodorus to have amounted to about three hundred thou- sand free citizens, and if we take into account the slaves and strangers, that number must be more than doubled. This population con- sisted mostly of Greeks, Jews and Egyptians, together with settlers from all nations of the known world. After the death of Alexander the Great the city became the residence of the Ptolemies. They made it, next to Rome and Antioch, the most magnificent city of antiquity, as well as the chief seat of Grecian learning and literature, which spread hence over the greater part of the ancient world. The situation of the city, at the point of jiniction between the east and the west, ren- dered it the centre of the commerce of the world, and raised it to the highest degree of prosperity. It had reached its greatest splendor when it came into the possession of the Romans, about 30 B. C. From this moment its prosperity began to decline — at first almost imperceptibly, but afterwards more rapidly in consequence of the removal of the works of art to Rome, the massacres of Caracalla, the laying waste of the Bru- cheium by Aurelian, the siege and pillage of the city by Diocletian, and, lastly, the rising prosperity of the rival city of Con- stantinople. All these causes combined to destroy Alexandria so speedily that in the fourth century no building of any impor- tance was left in it except the temple of Serapis. The strife between Christianity and heathenism gave rise to bloody con- C^^fcv^Uf'^y^rf'ffi^^^^^^^B 3 fiicts; the Serapeion, the last seat of heathen tt, .-^^PIrs^^mIBVJ^^HH theology and learning, was stormed by the '•*^**®'*^' ^t^j^iH^iK^* ^^Vm Christians in 389 A. D., and converted into a church. This put an end to heathenism, and Alexandria became, henceforth, a chief seat of Christian theology, and continued to be so until it was taken by the Arabs, under Amru, in June, 638 A. D. This siege, and still more its conquest by the Turks in 868 A. D. , completed the destruc- tion of the city. It revived, indeed, in .some degree under the Egyptian califs, and continued during the middle ages to be the most important emporium of trade between the east and the west ; but the discovery of America, and the passage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope, very much diminished the trade of Alexandria. The dommion of the Mamalukes, and the conquest of the Osmanli, annihilated even the little which the Arabs had restored. The result was that in 1778 A. D. the citv contained no more than six thousand inhabitants. After the conquest of Egvpt bv the French, in the end AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 53 I I I of the eighteenth century, it once more began to revive, and under Meheniet-Ali, who resided in it a part of every year, it prospered to such a degree that it nia>- now be reckoned one of the most important commercial places on the Mediterranean. In consequence of steam navigation, the communication between Europe and the East Indies has once more begun to pass, as it formerh- did, through Alexandria. It is connected with Cairo by the canal of Mah- moudieh, constructed between 1818 ar'' 1820, and by railrof with Suez, whicl until recently, w; the means of trans for passengers ar freight destined f( India. The popul; tion is now about hundred and seveni thousand — Arabian Turks, Copts, Jew Greeks and Franks. It was to Alexai dria that the gre; l Julius Caesar cam in 48 B. C, to inte pose in the quarr 1 that had arisen ov the succession to tl throne of the Egy] tian Ptolemy Aulete By the terms of h will this successic should have gone t his daughter, Cleop tra, and her brothei husband, Ptolem D i o u }■ s u s. In th Alexandrian W Ptolemy Dion y si fell, and Cleopat finally became seat( I on the throne, ai 1 married to Ik younger brothe Ptolemy, a boy 1 eleven years. Tl son she bore to Ca sar was named Cses rion. It was i Alexandria that she and Antony spent the winter of 41-40 B. C. in riotous luxuriance ; and it was in the took the asp to nurse when she fell into the power of Octavianus, 30 B. C. Of the innumerable reproductions which art has essayed of this famous queen, our illustrations give two — one of which is Makart's glowing and decorative piece, a sort of allegory of her beauty, her sumptuousness and her power; and the other, Cabanel's canvas — the last important composition of his life— in which he depicts her experimenting with death, her I I I I I ll I'l O < -I > same citv that she I '*|pli''';|i . ■ x; II, ' ^- AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 55 WuKka OF IHE Slez Canal Cu.mpa.w, I'ukr Said. trial of the poisons on the bodies of her slaves. It was at the Salon of 1887 that this latter picture first appeared. East and south-east of Alexandria lies the great Nile delta, the alluvial deposit formed at the mouth of the river from the deposition of the particles which it has held in solution, but which was considered by the ancients to have been gained from the sea. The formation of deltas, as is well known, depends more upon the presence or absence of currents met with at the mouth of a river than upon the quantity of sediment held in solution when it reaches the sea, and they are of almost invariable occurrence in inland lakes and in the quiet estuaries of the nearly tideless Mediterranean. That of the Nile is a flat district intersected by a network of primary and secondary channels and by numerous canals. A few miles north of Cairo the river divides into two main streams, forming the Rosetta and Damietta branches. It has a current of two and a half or three miles an hour, constantly running towards the sea, and the stream is always deep enough for navigation. The water is usually of a deep blue color, but it becomes a reddish brown during the annual overflow, the cause of which, long problematical, is now known to lie in the periodical rains which fall within the tropics. In all the lands bordering on the Nile the rocks are covered by the alluvium deposited during the inundations, and which consists of an argillaceous earth or loam, more or less mixed with sand. There are unmistakable signs of a sinking of the ground at the Delta. The Baths of Cleopatra at Alex- andria are already submerged. In 1784 a lagoon was formed at Aboukir by an inroad of the sea, and the surface now occupied by Lake Menzaleh was once a thickh- inhabited region, the sites of the towns and villages in which are still discernible under water. At the time of the annual inundation the Delta looks like an immense marsh, interspersed with islands, villages, towns and plantations, just above the level of the water. In these villages the huts of the fellaheen are constructed of Nile mud and roofed with palm stems and leaves daubed over with earth. The richer peasants live in houses built of sun-dried bricks, while the magistrate of the village not unfrequenth' has a handsome dwelling of properly burnt bricks. A minaret often towers above the houses and hovels, and a few umbrageous sycamores spread their leafy crown, the chief ornament of the village ; slender date palms sway in the breeze ; the long racemes of the acacia shed their delicate perfume by the side of thorny sont trees ; evergreen tamarisks and the carob with its long pod of seeds — the St. John's bread or locust bean — mingle M M mi -3-13 O C c o — o Si^a! S •5-^S 5*' ii .^ " ,t " C = f V. a E «^ -^ ?~ ■^1 J5ai£^ XX f^ ■* invo t^CO C/2 u i c u y S S oT G — -u > o - * Sffl "^ Sj> o H§ *rt c n U o . - J u c 2 o'S i: r =3 ■i; ^'i _ u-^ S^E- («-lffl i/tO t^OO 9t es 5 ='S 2 o -•SSjjE.gvO o AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 57 with that stranger from distant India, the lebbek tree {albizzia lebbek), which has been natural- ized here only within the last twenty or thirty years. Notwithstanding the extreme poverty of such villages, beggarly misery is seldom met with. The climate of Egypt is extremely clear and dry, especially south of the Delta ; and in the desert, from Cairo to Alexandria, the air contains more moisture than to the south. From the middle of August to December, west winds prevail ; east winds from that time till March ; after that, unhealthy south winds, or Khamsin, till June ; and from June till August the north or Etesian winds that enable vessels to ascend the river against the stream. The winter months are the most delightful part of the year, the air being cool and balmy and the ground covered with verdure. It rains but rarely, except near the sea-shore ; but at night the dews are heavy and the air cool and refreshing. Earthquakes are occasionally felt. The tropical rains, which cause the rise of the Nile, commence in ii° north latitude in the spring; and falling first into the White, and then the Blue Nile, reach Egypt in the middle, and the Delta in the end, of June. In the middle of July the red water appears, and the rise may be dated from that time ; it attains its maximum at the end of September and begins to decline visibly in the middle of October, subsiding to its minimum in April. At the end of November the irrigated land has dried and is sown, and is soon covered with green crops which last till the end of February. In March is the harvest. Egypt is by no means a remarkably healthy countr\-, as, in addition to the visitations of the plague and cholera, ophthalmia, diarrhoea, dysentery and boils often prevail, and European, and even Nigritic races cannot be acclimatized. The Suez Canal is one of the last of tHe long series of man's triumph over the forces of nature which this historic land has witnessed, and one of the proudest. By it one of the most daring schemes of antiquity has been realized, and French enterprise and French science scored a victory rendered all the more brilliant by their later complete defeat at Panama. It seems to be certain that in ancient times a canal connected, indirectly, the Red Sea with the Mediter- ranean. At what period it was constructed is not so certain. Herodotus, a doubtful authority, ascribes its projection and partial execution to Pharaoh Necho, about 600 B. C. Aristotle, Strabo and Pliny less felicitously fix on the half-mythical Sesostris as its originator. The honor of its completion is assigned by some to Darius, king of Persia ; by others, to the Ptolemies. It began at about a mile and a half from Suez, and was carried in a north-westerly direction, through a remarkable series of natural depressions, to Bubastis, on the Pelusiac or eastern branch of the Nile. Its entire length was ninety-two miles, of which sixty were cut by human labor ; its width from a hundred and eight to a hundred and sixty-five feet, and its depth fifteen feet — Plinv savs thirtv. How long it continued to be used we cannot tell ; but at length Village OF Tel-el-Keeir. -8 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. it becaiiic clioked up with sand, was restored by Trajan earh- in the second century of our era, and again became useless from the same cause, and so remained until the conquest of Eg}'pt by Amron, the Arab general of the calif Omar, who caused it to be reopened, and named it "The Canal of the Prince of the Faithful." Under this designation it continued to be employed for upwards of a century, but was finally blocked up by the unconquerable sands, 767 A. D. In this condition it has ever since remained. The attention of Europe was first turned to it in modern times during the invasion of Egypt by Bonaparte, who caused the isthmus to be sur- veved b>- a body of engineers, who reported that the level of the Mediterranean Sea was thirty feet below that of the Red Sea at Suez, an opinion which a subsequent survey proved to be erroneous. From this time the question continued to be agitated at intervals, especially by the French, and various plans were proposed, but nothing definite was arrived at till 1847, when France, England and Austria sent out a commission to measure accurately the levels of the two seas. The commissioners, \I. Talabot, Mr. Robert Stephenson and Signor Nigrelli, ascer- tained that, instead of a difference of thirty feet, the two seas have exactly the same mean level. The only noticeable difference was, that there is a tide of six and a half feet at the one end and one and a half feet at the other. Another examination, leading to similar results, was made in 1853. Mr. Stephenson expressed him.self very strongly against the feasibility of a canal — that is to sav, a canal of such dimensions as would suit the requirements of modern commerce — and planned, instead, a railroad from Cairo to Suez, which was opened in 1858, and was used to convey overland the British, Indian and Australian mails. The French, however, were not satisfied with Mr. Stephenson's conclusions, and M. Talabot, on his return to Europe, published in the Revue des Deux Mondes a plan for connecting the two seas by way of Alexandria and Suez — or, rather, a point six miles below Suez. In 1854 a ne\y experimenter appeared, in the person of M. de Lesseps, a member of the French diplomatic service in Egypt, who, two years later, obtained from the pacha the "concession," i.e., the exclusive privilege, of executing a ship-canal from Tyneh — near the ruins of ancient Pelusium — to Suez. The peculiarity of M. de Lesseps' plan lay in this, that instead of following an oblique course, and uniting his canal with the Nile, as the ancients had done, and as all the modern engineers had thought of doing, he proposed to cut one right through the isthmus to Suez. This canal was to be three hundred and twenty-eight feet wide and a hundred miles long ; the bottom to be twenty-si.x and a quarter feet under low-water mark, arid seventy-two and two- tenths feet in breadth, and at each end there was to be a sluice-lock three hundred and twenty- eight feet long by seventy feet wide. By taking advantage of the tides at Suez, it was hoped that an additional depth of three or four feet might be obtained. But the colossi feature of his plan was the artificial harbors which he proposed to execute at the two ends, Tyneh and Suez. That at the Mediterranean end was to be carried out five miles in order to obtain a permanent depth of water for a ship drawing twenty-three feet, on account of the enorn:ous quantity of mud-sand which the Nile annually pours out — thirty million cubic feet, it is said — and w'hich the prevailing winds drive eastward along the shore towards the southern coast of Palestine. The quantity of stone required to construct this harbor was calculated variously at from three to twelve million cubic yards, and there are no stone-quarries except at a great distance from Tyneh. The pier at Suez was to be carried out three miles, and in other respects the difficulties, though great, were not, as on the Mediterranean coast, almost insurmountable. The English, for political as well as for practical reasons, looked with aversion on M. de Le.sseps' scheme ; but in 1855 the question was again taken up in an international spirit, a new European commission was appointed, which reported that M. de Lesseps' scheme, somewhat modified, was practicable, and that a canal might profitably be constructed. The result of the report was the formation of a company, and after four years' work the canal, which has its Mediterranean entrance at Port Said, about the middle of the narrow neck of land between Lake Menzaleh and the sea, in the eastern part of the Delta, was completed. From Port Said the canal crosses about twenty miles of this lake— which is a salt-water shallow, closely resembling the lagoons of Venice, and with a depth of from one to ten feet. Beyond this, heavier work began; the height of the ground above the level of the .sea ranging from fifteen to thirteen feet. The distance to Abu Ballah Lake is eleven miles, and from there to Temsah Lake, another eleven, the ground varying from thirty to eighty feet in height. This lake is three miles across. AFRICA ILL US TRA TED. 59 Ismailia, ou Temsali Lake, is regarded as the central point of the canal. While the work was in progress it grew rapidly from an Arab village to a French town, with the houses of engineers and managers, hotels, shops, cafes, a theatre and a central railwa\' station — the tents of the native labor- ers forming a distinct town at a little distance. A fresh-water canal was constructed from the Nile to Temsah Lake to sup- ply with water the population accumulated at various points along the canal, and it was also temporarily* used for naviga- tion. One section extended north-easterly from the Nile to Ismailia, another nearly south from this point to Suez, and the third nearly north from Ismailia to Port Said. Both the latter sections were on the western side of the great canal; the first and second are really canals, large enough to accom- modate small steamers and barge traffic, but the third section consists merely of a large iron pipe through which the water is conveyed to the several stations. Plugs are in- serted in the pipe, wherever needed, to allow water to be drawn off for every-day wants. The canal crosses Temsah Lake to Toussoum and the Serapeum, cutting through a ^"^ plateau forty-six feet above the sea. Southward of the central point at Ismailia, there is a space of eight miles from Temsah Lake to the commencement A Cat-Father on a Pilgrimage to Mecca. of depth varying from thirty to sixty-two feet. the Bitter Lakes, which had to be excavated to a In these deep cuttings, owing to the great widi^h of the canal, the quantity of sand— for it is nearly all sand, though sometimes agglomerated with clay — to be dug out was enormous, requiring the constant labor of a large number of powerful dredging machines and elevators. In passing through the Bitter Lakes, on the contrary, the work was rather embanking than excavating — the bottom of this region being only two or three yards above the bottom of the canal. From the southern end of the Bitter Lakes to Suez, a distance of about thirteen miles, there is another series of heavy cuttings through the stony plateau of Chalouf, varying from thirty to fifty-six feet in depth. Where the cutting is thus difficult, the surface width is reduced considerably from the regular width of three hundred and twentv-seven feet. On the iSth of March, 1869, the waters of the Mediter- 6o AFRICA IL L I \S TRA TED. ranean were admitted into tlit- Bitter Lakes witii complete success, in the presence of the Viceroy of Egypt. In September, a steamer, with M. de Lesseps on board, made the passage along the whole lenj,'th of the canal in fifteen hours, and the practicability of the great work, which English politicians had labored to prove the most costl\ and extravagant of chimeras, was conclusively proved. Earlv in Xovcmber M. de Lesseps gave formal notice that the canal would be opened through- out on Xovenibcr 17, 1S69, and extended an invitation to some of the crowned heads of Europe. The preliminaries commenced on the 15th, when the Emperor of Austria landed at Port Said. On the i6th the Empress Eugenie arrived, and on the 17th the French imperial yacht L'Aigle, followed by tbrtv vessels, anchored at Ismailia, having pa.ssed through the first part of the canal in eight and a half hours, and was here met by four steamers from Suez, the southern terminus of the canal ; on the 19th of November the fleet sailed for Suez, and on the 2 1st arrived in the Red Sea. The water was twenty feet deep at the shallowest part of the canal, and generally not less than twenty-five feet. The canal is open to vessels of all nations, and the transit can be made in fifteen hours. It had cost about sixty million dollars. The English goveniment, believing the route to India menaced, soon took measures to secure possession of a controlling influence in the canal company. Port Said or Said, a town which had no existence in 1862, contained ten thousand inhabitants in 1875. It was the depot of the company, the metropolis of vast bodies of laborers and other persons employed on the works of the canal. The illustration, from a view taken in 1862, shows the works of the company on the present site of the town, where the canal issues from Lake Menzaleh. .Vs the Mediterranean Sea is very shallow near this point, an artificial deep channel had to be made, bounded east and west by piers stretching far out into the sea. Stone for these piers was, in the first instance, brought from a long distance ; but artificial stone was afterwards made on the spot. It was composed of two parts of sand and one part of hydraulic lime, ground into a paste, and poured into wooden boxes, or moulds. When the mixture was solidified, the 1I|;iI'a1 ii!ifm(l'l,iiil!', i!i*iii"'' If; I' "liiill 62 AIKICA ILL L STRA TED. Schoolmaster of Cairo. mould-boards were reiiio\'ed and the solid blocks left from three to six months in the open air to dry and harden. They contained ten cubic metres each, weighed twenty tons, and were made at a contract price of fort\-two francs per metre cube. The western pier has a length of seven thousand feet, and the eastern, of six thousand ; they are four thousand six hundred feet apart at the shore, but gradually approach each other, so that at the outer ends they are only twentv- thrcc hundred feet apart. The western pier is continued in an arc of eleven hundred yards' extent, so as, with the eastern pier, to shelter the harbor from all winds. Within this outer harbor is an inner port which is kept at a uniform depth of thirty feet by means of steam- dredging. The lighthouse, with its electric light, is one hundred and eightv feet high. Suez was, until recently, a small, ill-built, wretched town, on an angle of land near the northern extremity of the Gulf of Suez, seventy-six miles from Cairo, with which it is connected by a railroad. It is walled on all sides but that toward the sea, and had an indifferent harbor, but a tolerably good quay. It is now greatly improved. English and French houses, offices |and warehouses have been erected in every direction, and the bazars have assumed a respectable appearance. The.se bazars are supplied with clarified butter from Sinai, with fowls, grain and vegetables from the Egyptian province of Sharkijeh, and with wood, dates and cotton. Rain falls but seldom ; sometimes not once in three years. All around stretches a burning waste of sand. The isthmus of Suez, though now but a sandy waste, embraces within its limits, according to the commonly received opinion, the fertile land of Goshen of antiquity. The large engraving of a panorama of the isthmus will give the reader a clear idea of the situation of the canal. About half-way between Ismailia and the Nile, on the route of the fresh-water canal, is the little village of Tel-el-Kebir, the chateau of which, constructed in 1823 by Mehemet-Ali, was occupied by the principal manager of the company during the construction of the canal. This village acquired a greater renown by the victory won there, September 13, 1882, by the English, under Gen-'-al Wolseley, over the Egyptian forces of Arabi Pacha. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 63 Still nearer the Nile, about fourteen miles north of Belbeys, are the ruins of the famous ancient cit}' of Bubastis, the modern Tel Basta, the Pi-beseth of Scripture, which derived its name from the Egyptian goddess Bubastis. When the gods fled into Egypt, Diana Bubastis is said to have changed herself into a cat, and those animals were, in consequence, held in great veneration here. Ovid speaks of the goddess as an attendant of Isis, in the nocturnal visit which the latter divinity pays to the anxious wife of Ligdus ; Diodorus Siculus represents her to have been the same as Isis ; Herodotus says that Diana was worshipped by the Egyptians under her name, and the modern Egyptologist, Ebers, identifies her with Sekhet, the lioness-headed daughter of Ra. Under certain auspices, the head of the latter terrible divinity is represented as that of a cat; surmounted by the solar disk she personifies the devouring heat of the sun; as a cat or a lioness she tears burning wounds in the limbs of the guilty in the nether world, and her gifts are drunkenness and pleasure. She incites men to the hot and wild passion of love, and she was also named Bast and Astarte, after her sister divinity among the Phoenicians. Historians, to whom we owe the description of her festivals at Bubastis, tell us that dead cats were embalmed and then sent to be buried in this city. No trace remains of the tombs of the cats, but the memory of the ancient sanctity of the animal has not altogether died out in modern times. It is not very long since that, in Cairo, a considerable sum was bequeathed by will for the maintenance of starving cats. Until within a few decades, each caravan of pilgrims to Mecca was accompanied by an old woman, who carried with her a number of cats, and was known as "the mother of cats ;" and to this day, a man with cats tra\-els with each caravan to Mecca. This singular custom is probably a relic of the ancient faith which caused the bodies of cats to be brought to Bubastis. Herodotus declares that the temple of the goddess here was one of the most beautiful in Eg>-pt, and that vast numbers of persons were wont to make annual pilgrimages to it. Nothing but some stones — which are of the finest red granite — now remain of this temple. There are some other ruins, and mounds of great extent, consisting chiefly of the remains of brick houses and heaps of broken pottery. The capital of Egypt, Cairo — in Arabic, Mtisr el Kaherah, "the victorious capital" — is situated on a sandy plain, between the right bank of the Nile and the ridge of Mokattam, about ten miles above the point where the river divides. As the houses are generally low — from one to three stories in height — it occupies a large extent of ground in proportion to its population. From Arab Conversation. 64 AFRICA ILL US TRA TED. Abyssinian Female Slave. the foundation of the cit\-, in 969, the Fatimite califs of Africa, who brought the bones of their ancestors with them from Kairon, reigned for ten generations over the land of Egjpt. The calif Hakem, who built a mosque near Bab-el-Nassr, and who is the supposed founder of the Druse religion, was the third in this succession. In the year 1171, Saladin usurped the throne from the last of the Fatimites. His descendant, Moosa-el-Ashref, was dejDosed in his turn in 1250; and from that time till 151 7, when the city was stormed and. taken by Sultan Selim, Cairo was governed by a succession of Mameluke kings. It has been to a considerable extent Europeanizcd under the last khedive, whose ambition it was to make of his capital an Eastern Paris. It still preser\'es, however, in its labyrinth of narrow lanes, its flat-roofed houses without gables, chimneys or window-panes, its large bazars, in which all kinds of Oriental wares are exposed for sale, its forest of minarets rising above the mosques on all sides, thoroughly Arabic characteristics. The narrow, dark and unpaved streets are in some places arched over ; the bazars are dark and gloomy, and AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 65 the houses are built of variegated brick, with interlinings of wood. The city is divided into different quarters; one being appropriated to the Turks, one to the Christians, one to the Jews, etc., — each separated from the adjoining one by a strong gate at the end of the streets. These gates are closed by night and are guarded by a porter, who opens when anyone wishes to pass. The general aspect of the city, viewed from the eminence on which the citadel stands, is a o U < la O o o a o g S Q U striking one — one of the grandest, indeed, that the East aflfords. For, besides the picturesque city itself, that eminence commands a view of the green plain watered by the Nile behind the city, the gigantic pyramids of Gizeh in the immediate neighborhood, the pyramids of Sakkara farther off, the white mountains of Mokattam and the graves of the califs, and the wide and dreary expanse of the desert. The most remarkable buildings in the city are the minarets and mosques. The minarets are the most beautiful of any in the L,evant, of a prodigious height, and built of 66 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. alteruate layers of red aud white stone. The most ancient of them all is that attached to the creat mosque of Sultan Tayloon. This mosque was built in the year of the Hegira 265 (870 A D ) before the foundation of the city, and consists of an immense cloister, or arcade, built on pointed arches, being the earliest extant in that form. Another magnificent mosque is that of the Sultan Hassan, situated in the place of the Roumayli, near the citadel, and which was finished about the year 1362 A. D. It has two very high and elegant minarets ; and the mosque, in consequence of its size and the thickness of its walls, was frequently seized and made use of as a fortress by the insurgents in the numerous rebellions aud insurrections which were always taking place at Cairo under the rule of the Mameluke kings. Stains of blood are still to be traced on the marble walls of the courtyard. The population of the city consists of the ruling class — who are all Turks; Arabs, the AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 67 former conquerors of the land, who form the bulk of the population — all the petty tradesmen and cultivators of the soil being of Arab origin ; Copts, who are descended from the original lords of the soil, the ancient Egyptians ; Jews, Armenians, Syrians, Africans and Europeans. Among the crowds that throng the streets are an extraordinary proportion of blind persons; the people of Egypt being very liable to be afflicted with ophthalmia. Among every four Egyp- tians, it has been said, there will be one blind man, one with only one eye, one blear-eyed and the fourth with perfect eyesight. It is not the intensity of the light that blinds ; it is owing a little to the dust and a great deal to want of care in infancy. He who would teach the cure of the eye to the race of Pharaoh would, in twenty years, double the number of useful men, as well as the riches of Egypt. The one-eyed men were, formerly, for the most part, unfortunate wretches, mutilated by themselves or by the cowardice of their parents. In the days of Moham- med, Ibrahim and Abbas, everyone was so fearful of being employed as a soldier that fathers destroyed their children's eyes, or cut the pupils, in order to unfit them for military service. Of the objects most worthy of note in the environs of Cairo are the mausoleum of Sultan Bergook, a triumph of Saracenic architecture, and the tombs of the califs, the latter situated about a mile beyond the walls — magnificent and imposing buildings, beautiful specimens of Arabian architecture. The public gardens, which consist of groves of orange, citron, palms and vines, are also very heautiful. Cairo is the seat of learning for the East, and is celebrated for the eminence of its professors, especially those of Mohammedan theology and jurisprudence. There is a university or college attached to the mosque of Ezher, and a considerable Oriental library. In this university, grammar, arithmetic, algebra, rhetoric, etc., are taught, and lectures delivered on logic, theology, the exposition of the Koran, moral, criminal and civil law, etc. The number of students, who congregate here from all parts of the Mohammedan world, is about two thousand, and the instruction is given gratuitously, the professors subsisting on private instruction and on presents from the wealthy. Besides this university there are other schools where gram- mar, writing and arithmetic are taught, and others devoted to arts and sciences, and engineering. At Abou Zabel there is also a school of anatomy, medicine and surgery. The language spoken at Cairo is Arabic, which, though not the purest, is superior to that spoken in Syria. The city is the official residence of the Khedive, and the resi- dence of a consul-general from Great Britain, France and other countries. A railroad now connects it with its seaport, Alexandria. The manners aiid customs of Cairo may be taken as a type of those of the more cultured parts of the Mohammedan world, and are marked with a seriousness in the minor affairs of social life and an attention to the precepts of their religion in all its details that render them in this respect, as in most others, a curious contrast with those of the most enlightened nations of Europe. In few cases are the Mohammedans so much fettered by the directions of their Prophet and other religious institutors as in the rearing and education of their children. In matters of the most trivial nature, religious precedents direct their management of the young. One of the first duties is to wrap the new- born infant in clean white linen, or in linen of some other color, but not yellow. After this, some person, not a female, should pronounce the adan in the ear of the infant, because the Prophet did so in the ear of El-Hasan when Fatimeh gave birth to him; or he should pronounce the adan in the right ear and the ikamch, which is nearly the same, in the left. The adan is the call to prayer which is chanted from the minarets of the mosques. It is as follows: "God is most great !" repeated four times ; "I testify that there is no deity but God !" twice ; "I testify that Mohammed is God's apostle!" twice; "Come to prayer!" twice; "Come to security!" twice; "God is most great !" twice; " There is no deity but God I" Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid. ^■^%J! AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 69 It was formerly a custom of many of the Arabs for the father to give a feast to his friends on seven successive days after the birth of a son, but that of a daughter was observed with less rejoicing. The general modern custom is to give an entertainment only on the seventh day, which is called Gom es-Subooa. On this occasion, the mother, having left her bed, receives her guests; the child is exhibited to them, and they give presents of gold or silver coins, which are generally used to decorate the infant's head-dress. The father entertains his friends in the evening. The children of Mohammedans are taught to show their fathers a degree of respect that might be deemed incompatible with the existence of a tender mutual affection ; but this is not generally the case. The child greets the father in the morning by kissing his hand, and then usually stands before him in a respectful attitude, with the left hand covered by the right, to receive any order or to await his permission to depart ; but, after the respectful kiss, he is often taken on the lap. After the period of infancy the well-bred son seldom sits in the presence of his father ; but during that period he is generally allowed much familiarity. Mr. Edward William Lane, the distinguished translator of the "Thousand and One Nights," relates that one of his near neighbors in Cairo, a Syrian merchant, had a child of exquisite beauty, commonly supposed to be his daughter, whom, though he was a most bigoted Moslem, he daily took with him from his private house to his shop. The child followed him, seated upon an ass, before a black slave ; and, until about six \-ears old, was dressed like most young ladies, but without a face-veil. The father, then thinking that the appearance of taking about with him a daughter of that age was scandalous, dressed his pet as a boy, and told his friends that the female attire had been employed as a protection against the evil eye ; girls being less coveted than boys. It is not surprising that the natives of Arabian countries, where a very trifling expense is required to rear the young, should be generally desirous of a numerous offspring. A motive of self-interest conduces forcibly to cherish this feeling in a wife, for she is commonly esteemed b\- her husband in proportion to her fruitfulness. And a man is seldom willing to divorce a wife, or to sell a slave, who has borne him a child. A similar feeling also induces in both parents a desire to obtain offspring and renders them, at the same time, resigned to the loss of such of their children as die in tender age. This feeling arises from their belief in certain services, of greater moment than the richest blessings this world can bestow, which children who die in infancy are to render to their parents. The Prophet is related to have said that when the infant children of the true believers shall have assembled, with all other creatures, at the scene of judgment on the day of the general resurrection, they will refuse to enter Paradise without their parents, and that the latter will then all be admitted on the children's prayer. To this tradition the following anecdote is added: A certain man, who would not take a wife, awoke one day from his sleep and demanded to be married, saying, as his reason, ' ' I dreamt that the resurrection had taken place, and that I was among the beings collected at the scene of judgment, but was suffering a thirst that stopped up the passage of my stomach ; and lo ! there were youths passing through the assembly, having in their hands ewers of silver and cups of gold, and giving drink to one person after another; so I stretched forth my hand to one of them, and said, 'Give me to drink, for thirst overpowereth me;' but they answered, 'Thou hast no child among us: we give drink only to our fathers.' I asked them, 'Who are ye?' They replied, 'We are the deceased infant children of the Moslems.' " Especial rewards in heaven are promised to mothers. "When a woman conceives by her husband," said the Prophet, "she is called in heaven a martyr \i.e. she is ranked as a martyr in dignity]; and her labor in childbed and her care for her children protect her from hell-fire." As soon as a son is old enough, his father should teach him the most important rules of decent behavior. Placing some food before him he should order him to take it with the right hand (the left being employed for unclean purposes), and to say on commencing, "In the name of God ;" to eat what is next to him, and not to hurry, nor spill any of the food upon his person or dress. He should teach him that it is disgusting to eat much. He should particularly condemn to him the love of gold and silver, and caution him against covetousness as he would against serpents and scorpions ; and forbid his spitting in an assembly, and committing any similar breach of good manners, talking much, turning his back upon another, standing in an indolent attitude, and speaking ill of any person to another. He should keep him from bad companions, teach him the Koran and all requisite divine and prophetic ordinances, and instruct 70 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. him in the arts of swijnming and archer}-, and in some virtuous trade — for trade is a security from poverty. He should also command him to endure patiently the chastisements of his teacher. Circumcision is generally performed before the boy is submitted to the instruction of the schoolmaster. Previously to the performance of this rite, he is, if be- longing to the higher or middle rank of society, usually paraded about the neighborhood of his parents' dwel- ling, gaily attired, chiefly with female habit and orna- ments, but with a boy's turban on his head, mounted on a horse, preceded by musicians and followed by a group of his female relations and friends. This cere- mony is observed by the great with much pomp and with sumptuous feasts. The historian El-Jabartee mentions a fete celebrated on the occasion of the circumcision of the son of the Kadee of Cairo, in the year of the Flight 1179 (A. D. 1766), when the grandees and chief merchants and ulama of the city sent him such abundance of presents that the magazines of his mansion were filled with rice and butter and honey and sugar ; the great hall, with coffee, and the middle of the court, with firewood. The public were amused for many days by players and performers of various kinds; and when the youth was paraded through the streets he was attended b}- numerous mamelukes with their richly caparisoned horses and splendid anns and armor and military band, and by a number of other youths, who, from compliment to him, were afterwards circum- cised with him. This latter custom is usual on such occasions, and so also is the sending of presents, such as those above mentioned, by friends, acquaintances and trade.s-people. At a fete of this kind, when the Calif El Muktedir circumcised five of his sons, the mone\- that was scattered in presents amounted to six hundred thousand pieces of gold, or about $1,500,000. Many orphans were also circumcised on the same da>-, and were presented with clothes and pieces of gold. At the more approved entertainments, which are given in celebration of a circumcision, a recital of the whole of the Koran, or a siki\ is performed ; at some others, male or female public dancers perform in the court of the house, or in the street before the door. Few of the children of the Arabs receive much instruction in literature, and still fewer are taught even the rudiment of any of the higher sciences ; but there are numerous schools in their towns, and one at least in almost every moderately large village. The former are mostly attached to mosques and other public buildings, and, together with these buildings, endowed by princes or other men of rank, or wealthy tradesmen — like that attached to the mosque of Ezher, in Cairo. The schoolmaster generally teaches nothing more than to read and to recite by heart the whole of the Koran. After committing to memory- the first chapter of the sacred volume, the boy learns the rest in the inverse order of their arrangement, as they generally decrease in length. Writing and arithmetic are usually taught by another master. One more duty of the father to the son is considered to be very important — that is, to procure for him a wife as soon as he has arrived at a proper age. This age is decided by some to be twenty years; though many young men marr>' at an earlier period. It is said, "When a son has attained the age of twenty years, his father, if able, should marry him, and then take his hand, and .say, ' I have disciplined thee, and taught thee, and married thee : I now seek refuge with God from thy mischief in the present world and in the next.' " Tlie female children of the Arabs are seldom taught even to read. Though they are admis- sible at the daily schools in which the boys are instructed, verj- few parents allow them the Head of Queen Nefer-t-ari. From THE Temple Abu Simbei.. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 71 benefit of fhis privilege ; preferring, if they give them any instruction of a literar>' kind, to employ a sheykhah (or learned woman) to teach them at home. She instructs them in the forms of prayer, and teaches them to repeat b)- heart a few chapters of the Koran, very rarely the whole book. Parents are, indeed, recommended to withhold from their daughters some portions of the Koran. Needle-work is not so rarely, but \et not generally, taught to Arab girls ; the spindle frequently employs those of the poorer classes, and some of them learn to weave. The daughters of persons of the middle and higher ranks are often instructed in the art of embroidery and in other ornamental work, which are taught in schools and in private houses. Singing and playing upon the lute, which were formerly not uncommon female accomplishments among the wealthy Arabs, are now almost exclusively confined, like dancing, to professional performers and a few of the slaves in the harems of the great. It is very seldom now, it is said, that any musical instrument is seen in the hand of an Arab lady, except a kind of drum, called darabukkeh, and a tar, or tambourine, which are found in many harems, and are beaten with the fingers. Some ■iV ^^ms^^ je^ Greater Temple at Abu Simbel, South Side. care, however, is bestowed by mothers in teaching their daughters what they consider an elegant gait and carriage, as well as various alluring and voluptuous arts with which to increase the attachment of their future husbands. Marriage is regarded by the Moslems in general as a positive duty; and to neglect it, without a sufficient excuse, subjects a man to severe reproach. "When a servant [of God]," said the Prophet, "marries, verily he perfects half his religion." The number of wives whom a Mohammedan may have at the same time is four. He may marry free women, or take concubine slaves, or have of both these classes. The custom of keeping an unlimited number of concubines, however, was common among wealthy Moslems in the first century of the Mohammedan era, and has so continued. The true believer may divorce his wife twice, and each time take her back. This he may do, even against her wish, during a fixed period, which cannot extend beyond three months, excepting under certain conditions. If he divorce her a third time, or by a triple sentence, he cannot take her again unless with her 72 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. own consent, and by a new contract, and after an- other marriage has been consummated between her and another husband, and this husband also has divorced her. It is not a common custom, especially among the middle ranks, for an Arab to have more than one wife at a time ; but there are few men of middle age who have not had several different wives at different periods, tempted to change by the facility of divorce. The Arab writers mention several cases, some of them among the companions of Mohammed, of men who were very frequently married: Mugheyreh Ibn- Shedbeh married eighty women in the course of his life ; Mohammed Ibn-Et-Teiyib, the Dyer, of Bag- dad, who died in the year of the Flight 423, aged eightv-five vears, married during his lifetime more than nine hundred women. The women, in general, cannot, of course, marry so many husbands ; not only because a woman cannot have more than one husband at a time, but also because she cannot divorce her husband. There have been, however, many instances of Arab women who have married a surprising number of men in rapid succession. Among these may be mentioned Umm-Kharijeh, who gave occasion to a proverb on the subject. This woman, who was of the tribe of Bejeeleh, in El-Yemen, married upwards of forty husbands; and her son Kharijeh knew not who was his father. She used to contract a marriage in the quickest possible manner: a man saying to her, "Khit- bun" (betrothal), she replied "Nik-hun" (mar- riage), and thus became his lawful wife. She had a very numerous progeny, several tribes origi- nating from her. For the choice of his wife a man generally relies on his mother, or .some other near female relation, or a professional female betrother (who is called Khatibch) ; for there are many women who perform this office for hire. The law allows him to see the face of the female whom he proposes to marry, previously to his making the contract; but in the present day this liberty is seldom obtained, except among the lower orders. Unless in this case, a man is not allowed to see unveiled any woman but his own wife or slave, and to those women to whom the law prohibits his uniting himself in marriage. According to some authorities, he is not allowed to see his own niece unveiled, though he may not marry her. A slave may lawfully see the face of his own mistress ; but this privilege is seldom granted in the present day to any slave but a eunuch. An infringe- ment of the law above mentioned is held to be extremely sinful in both parties. "The curse of God," .said the Prophet, "is on the seer and the .seen." Yet it is ver>' often disregarded in cases of women of the lower orders. A man may not have at the same time two wives who are sisters, or aunt or niece ; he is forbidden also to marry his unemancipated slave, or another man's slave if he has already a free wife ; and to marry any woman but one of his own faith, or a Christian or a Jewess. A Mohammedan woman, however, may only marry a man of her own faith. A girl is often married at the age of twelve years, and sometimes at ten, or even nine ; the usual period is between twelve and sixteen years. At the age of thirteen or fourteen she may be a mother. The most important requisite in a wife is considered to be religion, and after that, agreeable- KamesEs and Anukeh. Fko.m B.mt-el-WaU. 74 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. ness of temper and beautv of form, moderation in the anionnt of dowry required and good birth. It is said bv high authority, "If thou marry not a virgin [which is most desirable], marry a divorced woman, and not a widow ; for the divorced woman will respect thy words when thou sayest, 'If there were anv good in thee, thou hadst not been divorced;' whereas the widow will say, 'May God have mercy on such a one! He hath left me to one unsuited to me.' " But, according to another of these selfish maxims, the woman most to be avoided is she who is divorced from a man by whom she has had a child ; for her heart is with him, and she is an enemy to the man who marries her afterwards. Modesty, fruitfulness and contentment are also desir- able qualities in a wife, and to secure the latter virtue, many men make their selection from among the classes inferior to them in rank. Others, with a simi- lar view, prefer a concubine slave in the place of a wife. The consent of a girl not arrived at the age of puberty is not required ; her father, or, if he be dead, her nearest adult male relation, or a guar- dian appointed by will or by the cadi, acts as her zuekeel, or deputy, to effect the marriage-contract for her. If of age, she ap- points her own deputy. A dowry is required to legal- ize the marriage ; and the least dowry allowed by the law is ten dirhems, or drachms of silver, about a dollar and a quarter. Mo- hammed married certain of his wives for a dowry of ten dirhems and the household necessaries, which were, a handmill to grind the grain, a water-jar and a pillow of skin or leather stuffed with the fibres of the palm tree, which are called /rcf; but some he married for a dowry of five hundred dirhems. With the increase of wealth and lu.xury dowries have increased in amount; but, to our ideas, they are still trifling; a sum equivalent to about a hundred dollars being a common dowry among Arabs of the middle class for a virgin, and half, or a third, or a quarter of that sum for a divorced woman or a widow. Two-thirds of the sum is usually paid before making the contract, and Rubbish-Bearer, Abvdos. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 75 the remaining portion held in reserve to be paid to the woman in case of her divorce, or in case of her husband's death. The father or guardian of a girl under age receives the former portion of her dowry; but it is considered as her property, and he generally expends it, with an addi- tional sum from his own purse, in the purchase of necessary furniture, dress, etc., for her, which the husband can never take from her against her own wish. The bride is conducted to the bridegroom's house in the afternoon immediately preceding the night of consummation. On the day before this, she goes to the public bath, accompanied by a number of her female relations and friends. The procession generally pursues a circuitous route, for the sake of greater displa>% and on leaving the house turns to the right. Following the time-honored custom, this promenade is performed on foot; the European carriages, so much in favor with the Arabs of late years, are on this occasion discarded. Very slowly, often coming to a standstill in the busy thoroughfares, do they wend their way. The procession is headed by Arab musicians with lutes, tambourines, flutes and a clarionet; then follow the married women, looking like bats in their black silk wrappers. Behind them come the young girls in white veils, and close upon these follows the bride herself, so closely and carefully enveloped in a red cashmere shawl that it is hardly possible to discover the faintest outline of her figure. The only ornament she wears is a handsome gold coronet. Two of her relations walk on each side of her with much dignity ; a canopy of bright red stuflT, borne on four poles, waves over her, and embroidered scarfs hang from it and flutter in the wind ; more musicians follow in the rear. This procession halts from time to time, with much complacency, to afford a treat for the ears and eyes of the inhabitants of the street through which it passes, and it finally disappears in the bath-house, which has been hired for the occasion, and where a handkerchief fastened up over the doorway indicates that it is to be visited by women only. In the case, however, of a bride of high rank, or of wealth, and often in the case of one belonging to a family of the middle class, the ladies ride upon high-saddled asses, without music or canopy; and the bride is only distinguished by a cashmere shawl instead of the usual black silk covering ; one or more eunuchs sometimes riding at the head. In the bath, after the ordinary operations of washing, etc. , a feast is made, and the party are often entertained by female singers. Having returned in the same manner to her home, the bride's friends there partake of a similar entertainment with her. Her hands and feet are then stained with henna, and her eyes ornamented with kohl ; and her friends give her small presents of money, and take their leave. The following day the procession sets out for the bridegroom's house with similar pomp. The train is usually headed by buffoons and musicians playing Arab melodies on European brass instruments — a hideous and ear-splitting innovation. Two half-naked wrestlers generally ornament the head of the procession, and a water-carrier loaded with a goat-skin filled with sand and water, of very great weight, which he has carried already several hours and with which on his back he dances and postures to amuse the spectators. A third characteristic personage sometimes joins the wedding procession — a tumbler, who can stand on his head, or more com- monly, walks backward and forward with a face of tragic dignity, balancing his long pole with marvelous skill, or making it quiver and spin between his fingers. Then follow, interrupted by groups of male or female dancers, jugglers, etc., numerous decorated open wagons, or cars, each of which contains several members of some particular trade or art, engaged in their ordinary occupations, or one such person with attendants. The bride and her party, having arrived at the house, sit down to a repast. The bridegroom does not yet see her. He has already been to the bath, and at nightfall he goes in procession with a number of his friends to a mosque to perform the night-prayers ; he is accompanied by musicians and singers, or by chanters of lyric odes in praise of the Prophet, and by men bearing lighted cressets ; and on his return most of his other attendants bear lighted wax candles and bunches of flowers. Returned to his house, he leaves his friends in a lower apartment and goes up to the bride, whom he finds seated, with a shawl thrown over her head, so as to conceal her face completely, and attended by one or two females. The latter he induces to retire, by means of a small present. He then gives a present of money to the bride, as "the price of uncovering the face," and having removed the veil— saying, as he does so, "In the name of God, the Compas- sionate, the Merciful," — he beholds her, generally for the first time. On the occasion of this first visit, which is called the dukhool or dukhleh, he is recommended to perfume himself, and to 76 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. sprinkle some sugar and almonds on the head of the bride and on that of each woman with her; this practice being established by existing usage and by traditions ; also, when he approaches the bride he should perform the prayers of two rek'ahs; and she should do the same, if able ; then o v.Xn':-\ ,:',_,. ,'liil(ir:iiU. he should take hold of the hair over her forehead, and say, "O, God, bless me in mv wife, and bless my wife in me! O, God, bestow upon me [offspring] by her, and bestow upon her [offspring] by me! O, God, unite us, as Thou hast united, happily, and separate us, when Thou separatest, happily!" AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 77 Junction of the White and Blue Niles. A slave, among the Mohammedans, is either a person taken captive in war or carried off by force, and being at the time of capture an infidel ; or the offspring of a female slave by another slave, or by any man who is not her owner, or by her owner, if he does not acknowledge himself to be the father ; but the offspring of a male slave by a free woman is free. A person who embraces the Mohammedan faith, after having been made a slave, does not by this act become free, unless he flees from an infidel master to a Moslem country, and there becomes a Mohammedan. A man cannot have as a slave one whom he acknowledges to be within the prohibited degrees of marriage. The slaves of the Arabs are mostly from Abyssinia and the Negro countries ; a few, mostly in the houses of wealthy individuals, are from Georgia and Circassia. Abyssinian and white female slaves are kept by many men of the middle and higher classes, and often instead of wives, as requiring less expense and being more subser\-ient ; but they are generally indulged with the same luxuries as free ladies, their vanity is gratified by costly dresses and ornaments, and they rank high above free ser\-ants, as do also the male slaves. They are mostly kidnapped and sold by their own coxmtrymen. Many of them are very beau- tiful. The negro female slaves, few of whom have considerable personal attractions, are usually employed only in cooking and other menial offices. The female slaves of the higher classes are often instructed in plain needlework and embroidery, and sometimes in music and dancing. Formerly, many of them possessed sufficient literary accomplishments to quote largely from favorite poems, or even to compose extemporan.' verses, which they would often accompany with the lute. The condition of many concubine slaves is happy, and that of many quite the contrary-. These, and all other slaves of either sex, are generally treated with kindness ; but at first they are usually importuned, and not infrequently used with much harshness, to induce them to embrace the Mohammedan faith ; which almost all of them do. Their services are commonly light ; the usual office of the male white slave, who is called memlook or mameliike, is that of a page or military guard. Eunuchs are employed as guardians of the women ; but only in the houses of men of high rank or great wealth : on account of the important and confidential office which they fill, they are generally treated in public with especial considera- tion. Mr. Lane says, "I used to remark, in Cairo, that few persons saluted me with a more dignified and consequential air than these pitiable, but self-conceited, beings." Most of them are Abyssinians or Negroes. Three miles west-south-west from Cairo, on the opposite side of the river, lies the village of Ghizeh, or Gizeh, the Coptic Tpersioi. In the immediate vicinity is the northern boundary' of Middle Eg>'pt, and here the line of the great pyramids begins. In this neighborhood, also, the fate of Egypt has been twice decided in battle — once by the Fatimide army of Djauhar, in 78 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 969 A. D., and once by the French, under Bonaparte, in 1798. Ghizeh, formerly adorned with beautiful pahices and mosques, the pleasant retreat of the Cairo merchants, is now a mere village, and mounds of rubbish are almost the only indication that buildings of some pretension once'existed here. One remnant of its antiquity remains, however, the process of egg-hatching in ovens, a practice that has been continued from the time of the Pharaohs to the present day. The Great Pyramid of Ghizeh is situated on a hill six miles west of the Nile and ninety miles from the Mediterranean. Its base is two hundred and fifteen feet above the sea- level. The builder was Cheops, of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, the Chembes, or Chemmis, of Diodorus, and the Suphis of Manetho and Eratosthenes, and the p>Tamid is supposed to have been his sepulchre. The height was four hundred and eighty feet nine inches, and the base, seven hundred and sixty-four feet square; the slope, or angle, 51° 50'. The original sepulchral chamber, called the Subterranean Apartment, forty-six by twenty-seven feet, and eleven feet six inches high, is hewn in the solid rock, and was reached by the original passage, three hundred and twenty feet long, which descended to it by an entrance at the foot of the pyramid. The excavations in this direction were subsequenth- abandoned, on account of the vast size attained by the pyramid, which rendered it impracticable to carry on the entrance on a level with the natural rock, which had been cut down and faced for that purpose. Accordingly, a second chamber, with a triangular roof, was constructed in the masonry of the pyramid, seven- teen by eighteen feet nine inches, and twenty feet three inches high. This was reached by a passage rising at an inclination of 26° 18', terminating in a horizontal passage. It is called the Queen's Chamber, and occupies a position nearly in the centre of the pyramid. The monument — probably owing to the long life attained by the monarch — still progressing, a third chamber, called the King's, was finally constructed, by prolonging the ascending passage of the Queen's Chamber a hundred and fifty feet farther into the very centre of the pyramid and, after a short horizontal passage, making a room seventeen feet one inch by thirty-four feet three inches, and nineteen feet one inch high. To diminish, however, the pressure of the superincumbent masonry on the flat roof, five small chambers were made vertically in succession above the roof, the last one pointed, var}'ing in height from one foot four inches to eight feet seven inches, the apex of the top one being rather more than sixty-nine feet above the roof of the King's Chamber. The illustration shows the lower landing-place of the ascending' passage leading to the King's Chamber, called the Grand Gallery, and the construction of which is very remarkable. It is a hundred and fifty feet long, fifty-eight and three-quarter inches wide, and twenty-eight feet high. Its walls are divided into seven sections, one overtopping the other, the space between the walls diminishing towards the roof On either side is a long stone bench, or "ramp," each with twenty-eight precisely cut square holes, the purpose of which is a mysterj'. The end of the horizontal passage was finished in a superior style, and cased with red syenitic ; and in the King's Chamber is the granite sarcophagus of Cheops, seven feet six and a half inches long, three feet three inches broad, and three feet five inches high. As the heat of this chamber was stifling, owing to want of ventilation, two small air-channels, about nine inches square, were made, ascending to the north and south sides of the pyramid. They perfectly ventilate the chamber. Three hundred feet east of the second pyramid of Ghizeh is the great Sphinx, sculptured out of a spur of the natural rock and built up with masonry to complete the form. It is a hun- dred and fifty-five feet long, and sixty-three feet high. Immediately in front of the breast, Caviglia found, in 1S16, a small uaox, or chapel, formed of three hieroglyphical tablets, dedicated by the monarchs Thotmes III. and Rameses II., to the Sphinx, whom they adore under the name of Haremakhu, or Harmachis, as the Greek inscriptions, found at the same place, call it, i.e.y the Sun on the Horizon. Recent excavations have again revealed between the mason-built paws, and running underneath its body, a curious "temple," with six compartments, one above the other, with a grand staircase leading to it from the plain. A writer in the English hiter- natioiial S/andard, in 1887, says of the latest discovery: "There is a passage leading from between the paws of the Sphinx, running diagonally to the Great Pyramid, the entrance to which is covered by a large stone. Underneath the pyramid is a spacious chamber supported by car\-ed pillars. There is also an entrance to the pyramid on the west side. In. the King's Chamber there is a stone behind the coffer which revolves on a pivot, but which is fastened on the outside by two bolts. This is on the west side." These assertions are accompanied by the '^^^ . ■'lllllil'''' If '''Ill; '■ ' :' i' I ■ .:i:;i' ipr.,,i!! I Mm, >■ iH:il M. mm mm mm 'iLl'J!,ll!Jjl,|!' .:(, <[,\; I '' i" ' iP lil i!i'i' '"ier 1*1 1" • w ' in I ni'immiiiliiDnii aiiiiiiiiiinimmmi iijiiiuiiiumiP'Hri! >n8JHiii« i -af'a'iSte^ 8o AFRICA ILLJSTRATED. following, from an old manuscript: " In a tomb behind the Sphinx, from the mouth of a mummy- pit cijjhty feet deep, the echoes, prolonged, of a gun fired in the heart of the pyramid were heard, while the gun fired at the foot of the pyramid was scarcely audible. This fact proves a hidden labyrinth beneath the table-land." The limits of the present volume do not permit of any but the briefest allusion to the vestiges of the most ancient civilization. Those of the island of Phikc in the Nile, though not of the most ancient, are distinguished for their great architectural beauty. The full-page illustration shows the oldest, the ruins of the hypa-thral, or roofless hall, built in the reign of Nectanebus I., 377-357 ^- C-. and dedicated to Isis. The principal remains consist of the great temple of Isis, erected by Ptolemy II., or Philadelphus, and continued by his successors, especially by Ptolemy III., Eurgetes, 247-222 B. C, with propylseums constructed by Ptolemy VII., or Philonieter, and Lathyrus. The beautiful little temple, the Mastabat cl Pharaouti, or "Pharaoh's Bed," of the Arabs, was built in the reign of Trajan, 100 A. D. The temples are principally important as containing the principal representations of the story of Osiris, his birth, bringing up, death, and embalmment by Isis. Commenced in the reign of Nectanebus I., and continued by the Ptolemies and Romans, the worship of Isis lingered here till 453 A. D., or sixty years later than the edict of Theodosius. After the subjection of the Blemmyes to the Nubian Christians, the temple was converted into a church and the paintings daubed with mud ; and, in 577 A. D., the bishop Theodorus changed the pronaos of the temple of Isis into the church of St. Stephen; and a Coptic church, at a later period, was built out of the ruins. The whole area of the ancient temple was about four hundred and thirty-five feet long by a hundred and thirt3'-fi\'e broad, in the centre of the dromos. At the present day, the island is deserted. Of temples excavated in the solid rock, two fine examples are found at Abu Simbel, in Nubia. Belzoni says that the larger was excavated by Rameses II. , the Great, in honor of Amun and Phre ; while his wife Nofre Ari, or Nefer-ari, dedicated the other to Hathor. The facade of the larger temple is shown by the illustration on page 71, and is guarded by four seated colossi, likewise carved out of the living rock, and representing the king and the gods Ra and Isis and Ptah — all of them with the countenance of Rameses. And, strange to say, not only here but in all the many sculptured portraits of this Pharaoh may be traced a strong resemblance to his well-preserved mummy, now in the museum at Bulaq. The fagade of this great temple measures about one hundred feet in height, and in width the same. The length of the head of one of these figures is ten feet six inches ; that of the ears, three feet five inches ; the width of the shoulders, twenty-two feet two inches ; the inside length of the fore- arm, fifteen feet ; from the hip to the front knee, twenty-six feet six inches ; from the top of the knee to the sole of the foot, twenty-two feet ; length of one of the feet, thirteen feet six inches. The famous so-called statue of Memnon, one of the wonders of the ancient world, is one of two colossi seated on the plains of Thebes, on the left bank of the Nile, at a place called Koum- el-Sultan. Both are seated on thrones, and represent the monarch Amenophis III., of the eighteenth dynasty, whose name and titles are inscribed on the plinths behind. At the sides of the throne are sculptured the wife and mother of the monarch, about eighteen feet high. The height of each of these colossi appears to have been originally sixty feet, and they are made of a coarse, hard gritstone, or breccia. They were originally placed before the propylon of an Amenopheion, or palace-temple of Amenophis III., in this quarter at Thebes. The easternmost of the two is the celebrated vocal statue, distinguished from its companion by having been anciently broken and repaired from the lap upwards with blocks of sandstone, placed horizontally, in five layers. The statue was either injured by Cambyses, to whom the Egyptian priests ascribe most of the mutilations of the Theban temples, or else thrown down by an earthquake. The peculiar characteristic of this statue was its giving out, at various times, a sound resembling the breaking of a harp-string or a metallic ring ; and considerable difference of opinion has prevailed as to the reason of this sound — which has been heard in modern times — it being ascribed to the artifice of the priests, who struck the sonorous stone of which the statue is composed, the passage of light draughts of air through the cracks, or the sudden expansion of aqueous particles under the influence of the sun's rays. This remarkable quality of the statue is first mentioned by Strabo, who visited it in company with ^lius Gallus, about 18 B.C. ; and upwards of a hundred inscriptions of Greek and Roman visitors incised upon its legs, record the visits of ancient 2; o 3 Pi en 82 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. travellers to witness the phenomenon, from the ninth year of Nero 63, A.D., to the reign of the Emperor Severus, when it became silent. Amongst other visitors whose names are recorded arc those of the Emperor Hadrian and his wife Sabina ; Septimus Severus also visited the statue and is conjectured to have restored it, for Juvenal speaks of it as broken in half, and no notice of it occurs under the Pharaohs or Ptolemies. The identity of this statue as Memnon is mentioned in the gloss upon Manetho, and by Pausanias and the inscriptions. Memnon was the son of Tithonus and Eos or Aurora, and led to Troy a host of ^Ethiopians to support the Trojan cause after the fall of Hector, and was killed by Ajax or Achilles. By others he is supposed to have been a ruler of the nations between Susa and Troy, or a vassal of the Assyrian monarch Teutamus, who sent him with ten thousand Ethiopians and as many Susians to the Trojan war. The laboring agricultural Egyptians are known as fellahs. They are the original inhabitants much mixed with Arab blood, and are a long-suffering and most down-trodden race. Denon, in his "Voyage en Eg>-pte," thus describes the physical characteristics of the modern Egyptians: "Full, but delicate and voluptuous forms; with eyes, long, almond-shaped, half-shut, and languishing, and turned up at the outer angles, as if habitually fatigued by the light and heat of the sun; cheeks round; thick lips, full and prominent; mouths large, but cheerful and smiling; complexions dark, ruddy and coppery, and the whole aspect displaying — as one of the most graphic delineators among modern travellers has observed — the genuine African character, of which the negro is the exaggerated and extreme representation." The fertile valley of the Nile and the desert regions which enclose it are very different, not onh' in their botany, but in their zoology. One of the most notable Egyptian quadrupeds is the hippopotamus, which formerly reached the Delta, but is now to be seen only in the more southern parts of the Nile. The giraffe is occasionally found within the southern borders of Egypt. The jackal and the hyena are common; also the ichneumon, so much celebrated among the ancients, and the jerboa. The one-humped camel was originally introduced by the Ptolemies for the transit of the Indian trade. The other usual domestic quadrupeds have existed from the most ancient times. The buffaloes, which were formerly in great numbers, have been of late years greatly reduced. They were formerly watched in herds by the fellah boys, and ridden into the Nile for water by women, but the pressing demand for cotton during the American war and the introduction of new breeds of cattle have led to their diminution. Nubia, the ancient Ethiopia, is now merely a geographical term, the country- having been politically incorporated with Egypt by Mehemet Ali, in 1820. It extends from the southern fron- tier of Egypt proper to the Egyptian Soudan — about 15° N. — and consists essentially of a narrow Nile valley bordered by deserts, intersected by numerous occasional watercourses — wadys or kJwrs. The inhabitants of Nubia, and especially ^those between the Nile and the Red Sea, the Ababdeh, etc., are a very fine type of men, belonging mostly to the Hamitic division of the Caucasian or Mediterranean race, but containing an admixture of Arabic and Negro elements. Tliey are powerful, industrious, and of considerable intellectual ability; in their mode of life they are chiefly nomads. Their villages consist of conical straw huts — tokitis — or quadrangular dwellings built of branches of trees and covered with leaves. The\' rear fat-tailed sheep, hump- backed cattle, and, above all, camels, and grow durrah and tef. Dates and milk form the other chief articles of food. The principal towns are Berber, New Dongola or El Ordeh, and Korosko on the Nile, and Suakin, the terminus of a large caravan trade and the scene of one of the last fierce conflicts between the English army and the forces of the Mahdi, on the Red Sea. Egyptian Soudan is the name now commonly given to the Egyptian territory' immediately to the south of Nubia — Sennar, bounded on the west by the White Nile and on the east by Abys- sinia, and Kordofan and Darfur, west of the Nile. When General Gordon was Governor-General of the Soudan in 1873-78, a chain of Egyptian garrisons, of which Gondokoro was the principal, was established as far south as the great lakes. Now all this territory, as far north as Suakin, is under the power of El Mahdi, the mysterious False Prophet of the Soudan, and the power of England was unable to rescue the brave General Gordon, shut up in Khartoum. This town, the capital of the Soudan, situated near the junction of the White and Blue Niles, is estimated to contain a population of between fifty and sixty thousand, and has long been the commercial centre of the Soudan trade. An important branch of this commerce has always been the slave trade, which even the authority of General Gordon, backed by the most stringent orders from AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 8- the Khedive Ismail Pacha, was unable to suppress. Gordon, as is well known, succeeded Sir Samuel Baker in his efforts to abolish this traffic, which for many years has been carried on by armed and organized bands of Arabs, mostly subjects of the Khedive. Baker's expedition up the Nile was organized in 1869. After innumerable delays, occasioned mostly by the secret hostility of the officials, the start was made from Khartoum on February 8, 1870. Eight days afterwards, the junction of the Sobat with the White Nile was reached, six hundred and eighty- four miles, by Baker's dead reckoning, from Khartoum. The expedition now entered upon "the region of immense flats and boundless marshes, through which the White Nile winds in a labyrinth-like course for about seven hundred and fift}- miles to Gondokoro. " they arrived at the junction of the Bahr Giraffe, and turned into that river, having become completely obstructed by masses of vegetation that had formed a solid dam. And ou February 25th, the same obstacle was encountered on the new route, an impenetrable grassy marsh, that was also met in this region by Schweinfurth in 1872, and that constitutes one of the most remark- able characteristics of the country. Baker ordered fifty swords to be sharpened, and set his men to cutting a canal through this obstacle. Under date of Februar}- 28th, he records in his diary: "The canal progresses, the men having worked well. It is a curious collection of trash that seriously impedes navigation. The grass resembles sugar-canes; this grows from twenty to thirty feet in length, and throws out roots at every joint ; thus, when matted together, its roots still increase, and render the mass a complete tangle. During the wet season the rush of water tears off large rafts of this floating water- grass, which accumulates in any favorable locality. The difficulty of clearing a passage is extreme. After cutting out a large mass with swords, a rope is made fast and the raft is towed out by hauling, with thirty or forty men, until it is detached and floated down the stream." Long lines of men were attached by ropes to the small steamers of the expedition, and they were hauled by main force through the narrow channels which the exertions of the swordsmen had partially cleared. SOUTH and east of the plains of Nubia and Kordofan rise the highlands of Abyssinia, the Habesh of the Arabs. From the Red Sea, on the north-east, the land rises in a succession of terraces towards the south-west. Between the highlands and the Red Sea lies a flat tract, called Adal, narrow at the north and widening towards the south. The The next day the White Nile Water-Carrier, Monkoullo. country of Abyssinia consists of high table-lands, intersected by deep ravines formed by the rivers, and steep sandstone terraces. Numerous mountain chains, mostly of volcanic origin, rise above the table-lands; the highest are the mountains of Samen, or Samien, rising to about fifteen thou- sand feet above the sea-level. Some of the plains have an elevation of from seven thousand to ten thousand feet. Abvssinia gives birth to numerous rivers ; the largest of which are the Abai, or Blue Nile, and the Takkazie, "the Terrible," an affluent of the Nile. In the south is the Hawash— from which the country takes its name— which flows eastward into the salt lake of Assal in Adal. The largest lake is that of Tzana, or Dembea, through which the Blue Nile 84 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. flows. The climate in the elevated tracts of Abyssinia is temperate and salubrious ; in the low districts along the coast, and in the north and north-west, the heat is excessive and the climate noxious. (_)n the whole, the country is one of great fertilit>-; but, like the climate, the produc- tions of the soil vary greatly with the different degrees of elevation. Wheat, barley and maize are cultivated, also the grain called tcff, tocusso, various leguminous plants, cotton, coffee, sugar-cane, tobacco, etc. The coffee-plant grows wild. Among the carniverous animals, the lion, leopard, hyena, wolf and jackal are found. There are also elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, zebras, etc. The people of Abyssinia belong mostly to the Shemitic race, and resemble the Arabs both in physical characteristic and structure of language. The ethnology of the country is variously given by different authorities. According to Riippell, there are three principal races. The aboriginal Abyssinians, inhabiting the greater part of Amhara, and numerous also in Tigre, are of middle size, with oval faces, lips not thicker than those of Europeans, pointed noses and straight or slightly curled hair. In this race he includes the Falashes, or Jews, the Gamant and the Angows. A second race, abounding most in the north of Tigre, have thick lips, noses blunt and somewhat curved, and thick hair, verging on woolliness. The third are the Gallas, inhabiting the south of Shoa and the regions west of Lake Dembea and the Abai ; a large- bodied race, round-faced, short-nosed, with a depression between the nose and brow, deep-set, lively eyes and thickish lips. The color of these races is brown of various shades. The only negroes in Abyssinia are slaves from the country of the Shangallas, to the west. The religion of Abyssinia is a sort of degraded Christianity, mixed with many Jewish observ'ances. The inhabitants acknowledge a bishop, or abuna, selected and consecrated by the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, make use of a system of law based on the code of Justinian, and have otherwise preserved some of the civilization of ancient Rome. The Abyssinian Empire was at the height of its power in the sixth century, when it extended to the shores of the Red Sea, and even included a part of southern Arabia. The Mohammedan conquests drove back the frontier to the limits of the table-land ; and since the seventh century the inhabitants have been engaged in a ceaseless warfare with negro tribes and with the gieat Mohammedan powers. They have been surrounded on all sides by hostile races. The tradition of the great power of the negus, or emperor, of Abyssinia lingered in Europe throughout the middle ages ; and, although separated from the West, the Abyssinians continued to consider themselves as one of the Christian and civilized communities. In the fifteenth century, when on the point of yielding to the invaders, they appealed to the Portuguese for assistance, and it was granted, on condition that they should abandon the rites of the Coptic Church and yield unqualified submission to the Pope. The promise was given, and the invaders were driven back. The royal family received the Roman Catholic priests, and professed the tenets of the Latin Church. They could not, however, induce the native clergy and the people to follow them ; and their adoption of a foreign creed was the first step towards the weakening of the rojal power, which had been absolute for ages and which rested on a firm basis of tradition and custom— particu- larly strong among a people in the stage of progress attained by the Abyssinians. The royal family, still represented, are of great antiquity, and are devoutly believed by their subjects to have sprung from Menelek, a son of Solomon and the queen of Slieba. The Abyssinian Church certainly dates from the fourth century, when the first bishop, or abuna, settled at Axum. The great natural features of the region caused it to be divided permanently into three important parts, i. The kingdom of Tigre, extending between the river Takkazie and the mountains of Samen on one side, and the district of Samhara on the other. This in the northern promontory of the table-land, where the Geez, a Semitic dialect, is spoken, and through which passes the chief route to the Red Sea. The principal towns are Antola and Adowa. 2. The kingdom of Gondar or Amhara, extending on the west of the Takkazie and the Samen moun- tanis. Here the language is the non-Semitic Amharic, and the capital, Gondar, is situated on the north-east of the plain of Dembea, or Gondar, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand five hundred feet. 3. The kingdom of Shoa, including Efat, lying south of Amhara, but which is separated from the rest of the country by intruding tribes of Gallas, an alien race. Here the language is also Amharic. This seems to be the most powerful and best organized State now existing in Abyssinia. The capital, Ankobar, at an elevation of eight thousand two hundred feet, contains from eight to ten thousand inhabitants, and enjoys a delightful climate. The Gallas, a savage 86 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. but enterprising race, effected a settlement in the south of Abyssinia in the sixteenth century. They inhabit the whole of the eastern part of tropical Africa. Several of their tribes have been modified in character and customs by conversion to Mohammedanism, and have founded kingdunis— such as Enarea, one of the highest mountain countries of Africa, and rich in produce ; Kusha, on the river Goshob, v/here the slave trade was actively carried on by the Portuguese, and several smaller independent states, of which little is known. Among the minor provinces of Abjssinia are Lasta and Waag, Semen, Godjam and Kuara. The full-page illustration gives an accurate view of the royal palace at Gondar, already falling into ruin in the time of the terrible king Theodore, and which that monarch, who had no affection for the capital, took no measures to remedy. The principal damage done to this palace, the Negus-Ghimp., however, is due to the mother of Ras Ali, the famous Waizero Menin, who, furious at the hatred of her subjects, threw down whole portions of the building, saying, as it is reported, "Since we cannot leave any monument of our own power, it is unnecessary to leave that of others." This enterprising woman is one of the most striking figures in Abyssinian history. She espoused one of the last of the powerless reigning kings, in order to become possessed of a title, but almost immediately took occasion to secure a divorce and retained, as her dowry, the city and province of Gondar, which she governed herself, commanding her own armies. She took for captain of her guards a young soldier of fortune, named Kassai, but soon contrived to quarrel with him over a cow, or some such trifle. The dispute was decided in pitched battle, and Kassai was ungallant enough to wound the queen in the thigh with his lance, to take her prisoner, and not to release her mitil she had purchased her ransom with the city of Gondar. This ofllicer afterwards became the king Theodore. In the last century, Gooska, a Galla adventurer, entered Amhara, the central province, and securing possession of the puppet emperor, assumed the title of Ras, and fixed his family in power at Debri Tabor. He was succeeded by his son and his grandson Ras Ali, who confirmed the power of his family by successful military enterprises against the frontier tribes, and by the marriage of his beautiful and clever mother to the nominal emperor Johannes. Such was the success of Ras .\li that his supremacy was acknowledged by all the great chiefs except Dejaj Berro of Godjam, and that anarchy seemed about to cease for a time in Abyssinia. It was then for the first time that relations were opened between the central province and England. So early as 1810, while Great Britain was engaged in her struggle with Napoleon, Mr. Salt was sent as her envoy to Abyssinia ; but he went no farther than Tigre, the Ras of which was treated as an independent sovereign. When the power of the French was destroyed in the eastern seas by the capture of the "Mauritius" and the destruction of the French settlements in Madagascar, the English government ceased to take any interest in Abyssinia, and Mr. Salt was recalled. Negotiations were afterwards set on foot, however, chiefly through the influence of John Bell, an officer of the Indian navy, who had married an Abyssinian, the daughter of a chief, and settled in the country, and his friend Walter Plowden, a Calcutta merchant. On the 2d of November, 1849, ^ treaty was entered into between Ras Ali and Mr. Plowden, and there seemed every prospect of a close connection being established with England, when all that had been done was rendered useless by the rise of Theodore and the entire destruction of the power of Ras Ali. In the early part of the century, Kuara, a district of Amhara, south-west of Lake Tzana, was ruled by Dejaj Cemfu. The brother of this frontier chief died young, leaving a widow in great poverty and a son born in 1820, named Kassai, afterwards Theodore. She was compelled to seek refuge with her boy in Gondar. There she lived in great obscurity, earning her bread by selling kosso, a specific against tapeworm. What her rank was is doubtful ; and it is not known how far her son was justified in claiming for her descent from the family of the titular kings. Kassai was admitted to a monaster)-, where he spent many }ears ; but his asylum was afterwards attacked by an insurgent chief, and he escaped with difficult)- to Kuara. He joined the army of his uncle, then fighting against the Turks; and he distinguished himself so much by courage, intelligence, activit)- and tact, that he obtained a wonderful influence over his fellow soldiers. Dejaj Cemfu died suddenly, and his three sons quarreled. To settle their dispute, Birru Goshu, chief of Godjam, was called in. He entered Kuara, and conquered the best part of it. Kassai, however, resisted him, and at the head of a numerous band of soldiers took refuge in the mountains. Here he became embroiled with Waizero Menin, the mother of Ras Ali ; 88 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. made peace with her, was acknowledged as governr^r of Kuara, and received a daughter of Ras AH in marriage. Hostilities broke out again, Wai^ero Meniu was captured by Kassai, and her sou determined to crush the adventurer, once for all. In this, however, he was completely unsuccessful, and Kassai became possessed of the whole of Amhara. He also secured possession of the titular emperor, defeated Dejaj Oubie of Tigre and Semen, captured him as well as the Abuna Salama, and obtained the consent of the latter to acknowledge his descent from Solomon and the queen of Slieba, and to crown him emperor. The conditions exacted were, that Kassai should support the Coptic Church, and banish the Roman Catholics. A few da\s after the battle Kiissai was accordingly crowned by the abuna as Theodore of Abyssinia. It was not without reason that this name was chosen. According to an old tradition, a King Theodore was to reign in Abyssinia, conquer the kingdom of Solomon and restore the ancient glory of Ethiopia. Kassai, believed, or affected to believe, himself the man thus announced. He proclaimed himself a descendant of Solomon. But it does not appear that he ventured to ignore the titular king; on the contrary, after his coronation, he was represented as standing in the presence of the latter, naked to the waist, as is the custom of an Abyssinian servant in presence of his master. On the annexation of Tigre, Theodore resolved to attack Shoa, the third great province of the old empire. The people frightened at the sudden death of their king, submitted without a struggle, and Theodore resolved to extend his conquests to the Red Sea, and to enter on a crusade against the Turks for the recovery of the seaboard. He had treated up to this time the conquered provinces with great leniency, generally leaving one of the ruling family in power, and to Mr. Bell and Mr Plowden he extended the same protection they had had from Ras AH. He heartily adopted many of their schemes, and was anxious to open up intercourse with England. It was difficult, however, to negotiate with him. He believed himself to possess the same claim to respect as a European monarch, and was kept in perpetual torment by imaginary slights, and more especially by the respect shown to the Turks, whom he regarded as barbarians. His vanity and touchiness were aggravated by reverses. The conquest of Shoa had not long been completed when the Dejaj of Godjam and the prince of Tigre rebelled, the latter being supported by the French. At the time when the Roman Catholic missionaries were banished by Theodore, Dr. Krapf and the Rev. Martin Flad entered Central Abyssinia to found a Protestant mission under the auspices of Bishop Gobat of Jerusalem. They proposed to intro- duce handicraftsmen, not priests, who were to follow their usual avocations, and, in addition, merely to read the Scriptures, and distribute copies in the native languages. The scheme met with Theodore's approval. In April, 1856, the first members of the mission arrived, and others followed. Encouraged by their success, the Rev. H. A. Stern afterwards went to Abyssinia as agent of the Society for promoting Christianity among the native Jews, or Falashas, and obtained the consent of the king and abuna to found another mission. He went back to Europe, but returned early in 1863, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Rosenthal. A third, known as the Scotch mission, was founded, and all were well received. The first quarrels of Theodore were with the diplo- matists. He was indignant at the proposal made by the English Foreign Office to exercise jurisdiction over criminals in Abyssinia without granting him reciprocal rights. In November, 1855, he was still further irritated by the refusal of the English to receive any embassy from him without an assurance that he was to renounce all idea of reconquering from Egypt the Abyssinian territory of which it had taken possession. If Mr. Plowden had lived, all these difficulties might have been tided over, but as he was returning to Massowah from Gondar, he and a company of fellow-travellers were attacked by Garod, a rebel chief, Mr. Plowden was wounded, and died of the injur>'; the king and Mr. Bell marched against Garod, and killed him ; Garod's brother then killed Mr. Bell, and a horrible slaughter of the insurgents ensued. After the death of Mr. Plowden, Captain C. D. Cameron was appointed consul. Theodore was not consulted, and the new consul was coldly received in October, 1862. The Egyptians were at the time advancing within the northern frontiers of Tigre, and Abyssinian Christians had been subjected to indignities at Jerusalem. Theodore resolved to appeal to the English and French governments, and wrote letters claiming their protection. That to the Queen was forwarded to Aden, but, unfortunately, did not reach England until February, 1863, when it was thrust into a pigeon-hole and ignored or forgotten. Consul Cameron further aggravated tlie king by a AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 89 1 1 fi >:(| 'J Ifi Women grinding Grain for Prisoners. visit to Sennar, and on his return was detained as a prisoner at Gondar, till an answer should be received to the letter. The French reply, read to the king by M. Lejean, was torn and trampled upon, and the agent, imprisoned for a few days, was ordered ofiFto Massowah. In October, 1863, Consul Cameron sent letters to Massowah; his messengers were stopped, deprived of their despatches and beaten. On the same day Mr. Stern happened to pay a visit of ceremony to the king, the fatal consequences of which can be best related in his own words : "A page of the negus (the emperor) came to notify me that the repast of His Majesty was finished. In the royal tent the last jar of hydromel was indeed emptied, the last morsel of raw meat devoured ; the last batch of drunkards had disappeared when the barriers, which had surrounded the tent, were removed and Theodore appeared in the open air, surrounded by some five or six officers and several pages, and strutting pompously. My companions immediately prostrated themselves in the dust, and, without imitating their servile attitude, I made an humble and respectful salute. " 'Approach!' cried to me several of the king's attendants. I obeyed and advanced several steps. " 'Still nearer!' repeated the stentorian voices. I made another movement in advance. " 'What do you want?' harshly demanded the negus, who was evidently heated and excited by drink. " 'I saw the tent of Your Majesty,' I replied, 'and I have come to offer my humble salutations and my respects to Your Majesty.' " 'Where are you going?' " 'I have the intention, if Your Majesty will authorize me, to return to Massowah.' " 'And why have you come to Ab>'ssinia?' " 'The wish to spread the Word of God among the subjects of Your Majesty suggested to mr this enterprise,' I replied. ' ' ' Can you make cannon ?' '"No, Sire.' '"You lie!' "This was his laconic reply, and then turning an angr}' look towards N6gusee, one of my companions and one of the servants of the consul Cameron, he demanded of him, in an imperious tone, the name of his country. " 'I am of Tigre,' replied the poor man, trembling. " 'And you are the servant or interpreter of this white man?' " 'No, Sire; I am in the service of the consul Cameron, and I am only going as far as Adowa to see my family.' " 'Vile carcass! Despicable dog! Rotten ass! do you dare to dispute with your king? Throw 9° The March of the English Akmy. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 91 Mombasa. him to the earth, this miserable ; and, by my death, beat him till there is no longer any breath left in his worthless skin !' "The order was promptly executed, and the poor, inoffensive man, without a struggle, without a cry, without a moan, was thrown to the ground and, amidst the clamor of the savage monarch, his bodv, so full of life and health, was so beaten by the rods of the executioners that it became in a moment a shapeless and mutilated corpse. " 'There is another man down there,' shouted the tyrant, 'kill him also!' "The other unfortunate, who was at a considerable distance, was immediately dragged to the side of his murdered companion, and, without having uttered a word, not even a syllable, that could in any manner have irritated the sanguinar}- tyrant, put to the same cruel death. I was horrified, bewildered, completely stupefied. In my trouble I probably unconsciously carried my hand or my finger to my mouth— an act which the cruel despot construed into a gesture of defiance and, without any notice, without any uttered reproach, he rushed upon me with a pistol in his hand. For an instant I saw the weapon glitter in the rays of the setting sun, but then, as if arrested in his bloody design by an invisible power, the pistol disappeared in the case suspended at his waist. " ' Down with him! blow out his brains! kill him !' were the words that struck fatally upon my ear. In the twinkling of an eye, I was stripped of my clothes, thrown on the ground, and I lost consciousness. Overwhelmed, senseless, almost lifeless, the blood escaping in torrents from my wounds, I was dragged into the camp, not to be put in irons, as my guards had been com- manded, but to be buried, as they thought, and as I heard them say with their own mouths." Surviving as by a miracle this savage outrage, Mr. Stern while still feeble and bleeding was put in irons and taken to the amba, or fortress, of jMagdala, where he was thrust into the common jail, already cr-owded with native prisoners. The cause of the king's sudden outbreak against him was attributed to the allusion in Mr. Stern's book, "Wanderings among the Falaschas in Abyssinia," to the early poverty and obscurity of Theodore's mother and to her trade in kosso — a disparagement of his claim to descent from Solomon— which the tyrant fiercely resented. Mr. Stern and Mr. Rosenthal, on the 20th of November, were publicly tried with all the formalities of Abyssinian law, on a charge of having committed the crimen Iccscz majesiaiis — Mr. Rosenthal's offence consisting in having said that the country would fare better under the Turks than under Theodore. The prisoners were condemned to death, but the sentence was not carried out. Two days after the trial, despatches arrived for Captain Cameron, but there was among them no reply to Theodore's letter. The consul was injudicious enough to ask for permission to leave, and in reply was arrested and thrown into the prison at Gondar with the missionaries, where they remained 92 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. until the following summer, when they were removed to Magdala. The English government did not seem to interest itself about the consul ; but the case of the missionaries was warmly taken up by Lord Shaftesbury and the religious public. The subject was brought before Parlia- ment, and the government was compelled to search for the original of Theodore's letter. It was finally found in the pigeon-hole in which it had been put, endorsed by Lord John Russell. It had been written in 1862 ; it was answered in June, 1864. The reply was intrusted to Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a native of Mosul, who had been employed in the diplomatic service at Aden. But this choice was unfortunate, the envoy being, in the eyes of Theodore, a mere Turk, and therefore a spy and an enemy. He was not received till January, 1866, and then — not being provided with a gift equal in value to that of the king's — he was arrested and sent to prison with the other captives. To this breach of the law of nations, Theodore added a long list of crimes that seemed like those of a mere madman ; — he tortured, burned alive and starved his unoffending subjects. "Out of three million inhabitants," said Dr. Blanc, in June, 1867, "he has destroyed more than a third by war, famine and murder." The European prisoners, neglected, filthy, half starved on the scanty and coarse food furnished them, lived in hourly apprehension of the death that was awarded to hundreds of the native captives. After some unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with Theodore through Mr. Flad, in the early part of 1867, Lord Stanley, in April, ordered him within three months to deliver up the prisoners. He took no notice of the communication, and accordingly, an expedition was fitted out at Bombay for the invasion of the table-land. The force consisted of ten thousand soldiers. Early in November, the advanced brigade landed at Gulla, on the Red Sea. From this point the expedition advanced successfully, in spite of many difficulties, through the defiles, and in the beginning of April, 186S, came in sight of Magdala, the king's last stronghold. On the loth he attacked the English anny, and sustained .so decisive a defeat that he forthwith made submission to the extent of surrendering all the European captives ; but his conciliator}' present of a thousand cows was not accepted by Sir Robert Napier, the English general, and Theodore was unwilling to surrender himself on the promise of honorable treatment. The few chiefs that remained faithful to him counselled submission in vain. Magdala was stormed on the 13th, without any loss of life on the British side, and the Abyssinian king, who had in vain attempted to escape, set the muzzle of a pistol to his ear, as he saw the Redcoats topping the wall of his last defense, and blew out his own brains. IN Africa, as in other parts of the world, language appears to offer the best guide for marking out the divisions of races, but ethnographers seem to be now agreed in referring the peoples having Semitic and Hamitic — as well as Arj-an — languages to one race, the Caucasian, or Mediterranean. To this race belong, in Africa, three Semitic peoples — Abyssinians, Arabs and Jews. The first settled in the land which gives them their name; the second spread as conquerors over the whole of northern Africa; the third established at various points all along the north coast. Politically, the Gallas do not fonn a single nation. The wandering Gallas are mainly engaged in hunting and the slave trade. Their name has been applied to them by the Abyssinians — the word "Galla" meaning "invader;" by theuLselves they are called Orma. Their houses are hardly so good as those of the Abyssinians, being merely conical thatched huts. The women are better-looking than the men, and are clothed in cotton garments and a leathern petticoat with sandals of ox-hide; their whole dress being smeared and saturated with the castor-oil with which they dress their frizzly locks. Their hair they wear in tresses, which fall over their shoulders. Their religion is a rude paganism, for the most part. They are said to have no priests — however, in respect to this statement, travellers differ — but each head of a house makes sacrifices, of his own free will, of cows or sheep to Wak, their chief divinity. "Occasionally — not regularly — the Gallas pray to Wak, and expect from him the accomplishment of their benedictions and anathemas. They have no distinct idea of what Wak is, but to his priests he reveals himself in dreams. Their oaths are characteristic : they sit down upon a pit covered with hide, and imprecate upon them- selves that, if they do not perform their vows, they may fall into such a pit. They have funeral ceremonies, and believe in a future state, which is one of moral retribution." From all quarters the pagan Galla tribes perform pilgrimages to a tree called tvodanabe, on AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 93 the banks of the Hawsah River, south of Shoa, to offer prayers to it for long life, riches, health, and every other mundane blessing. Women are not, however, allowed to approach it. The Latookas, whom Sir Samuel Baker describes as the finest savages he had ever seen — their average height being five feet eleven and a half inches, and splendidly proportioned — are believed to be of Galla descent. Their toilet is a very simple affair ; that of the men consisting, with the exception of the head covering, of nakedness. They are nude from the soles of the feet upwards. " It is curious to observe among these wild savages the consummate vanity displayed in their head-dresses. Every tribe has a distinct and unchanging fashion for dressing the hair ; and so elaborate is the coiffure that hair-dressing is reduced to a science. European ladies would be startled at the fact that to perfect the coiffure of a L,atooka man requires a period of from eight to ten years ! However tedious the operation, the result is extraordinary." Though the men are exceedingly handsome, the Latooka women are, on the contrary, very plain-looking, being "immense creatures" — few under five feet seven in height, and with ' ' prodigious limbs. ' ' They are very strong, and carry with comparative ease ten-gallon water- jars from the stream, a mile distant from the town. Their chief ornament consists of a very long tail, made of fine twine, rubbed with red ochre and grease, and shaped precisely like that of a horse. A large flap of tanned leather in front completes their dress. Polygamy, of course, prevails among the Latookas, and, if all tales are true, is not productive of universal peace of mind. The Danakil, calling themselves Affar^ Ophir and Ghibcrti — the latter name being a compli- mentary one, in allusion to their adherence to Mohammedanism, and meaning "strong in the faith" — are a wide-spread race. At one time their kingdom comprised, according to the late Mr. Macqueen, an enthusiastic student of African geography, the whole Mohammedan population of East Africa. There is a probability that they are a branch of the Amharic race, who embraced the faith of the Prophet, and were, accordingly, both owing to religious and political prejudices, the never-sleeping enemies of the Abyssinian empire. Closely allied to the Gallas are also the Somauli, who inhabit the African coast from the equator northward to Cape Guardafui and the Straits of Babelmandeb. In habits they are a pastoral people ; but when there are seaports in their vicinity, they follow commercial pursuits and navigation. Their arms are light bows, and arrows contained in a large quiver made out of a gourd. Each arrow is almost a foot in length and armed with a steel point, which is poisoned, and easily removed from the shaft, as the latter is simply aflSxed to it by a socket. A long- bladed knife completes the Somauli warrior's equipment. Their dress is a waist-cloth (or fotaJi) and a robe (or sarree) eleven feet in length. Their country was traversed, in 1885, from Berbera, on the south coast of the Gulf of Aden, to the river Webbe by an English exploring party, without exciting the hostility of the natives. The name Zanzibar or Zanguebar, is applied to the east coast from 4° N. to 12° S. latitude, but the territories of the Arabic Sultan of Zanzibar, who pays tribute to the Iman of Muscat, extend from 2° N. to Cape Delgado. The inhabitants, the Suaheli, now contain so great an admixture of Arab blood that they usually call themselves Arabs. In religion they are all Zanzibar, from the Sea. 94 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. zealous Mohammedans, and they are an energetic trading people — the island of Zanzibar, with the town of the same name on the west side, the capital of the sultanate, being the chief centre of commerce for the whole of Eastern Africa. The territories on the mainland have no defined limit towards the interior, being occupied by heathen tribes, over whom the sultan's authority is hardly even nominal beyond the seaboard. The soil along the coast is fertile in rice, millet, peas, beans, melons, pumpkins, the sugar-cane, cocoauut, banana, plantain, etc., and the forests suppl>- the caoutchouc tree and many valuable species of limber. Cattle, sheep and fowls are plentiful, and tropical wild animals abound. Rice, sugar, molasses, ivory, gums, gold and cowries are exported. The heat on the coast is excessive, and the climate very unfavorable to Europeans. Four days easy sailing north of the island of Zanzibar lies the small one of Mombasa, on which is situated the town of the same name. This islet, situated in the delta formed by the rivers Rabbai and Rib^, is only a few hundred yards distant from the mainland. The luxuriant tropical vegetation, which covers the greater part of it, gives it the appearance of a pleasure park; only on the side facing the ocean, low and very dense thickets offer an inhospitable aspect. The natives give it the name APvi/a, signifying "war," but the derivation is unknown, unless the Ladha-Ramji, Indian Merchant at Zanzibar. souvenir of the conflicts attending the Portuguese conquest is thus perpetuated. The little town faces the north and the continent. The stone houses of the Arab inhabitants are aligned along the seashore, like those of the capital at Zanzibar, but they conceal behind them a wilderness of low huts, thatched with palm leaves, to which access is gained by a labyrinth of footpaths. The town boasts over the capital, however, the possession of a main street which traverses its entire length, parallel to the sea, and gives it a certain air of grandeur, while it permits the free access of light and air. Some of the few mosques are ornamented with a corridor which ser\'es as a portico, and a low minaret. The Portuguese ruins are numerous and attest the importance of the effort made by that nation to retain its foothold here, and the Arabs— whose conquest, more enduring, seems in its turn about to yield to the inroads of the European powers— have occupied many of these abandoned edifices, and, in some cases, disfigured them, when thev bore emblems of the Christian religion. The harbor of the town is formed by an arm of the sea, which affords a safe anchorage to vessels of all sizes ; on the side next the continent rises a sloping sandy hill, planted in straight lines with cocoa trees which shelter a number of necTo cabins. ^ The island of Zanzibar, by far the richest and most important part of the sultan's dominions, AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 95 I-DIBRJIJO The Slave-Market at Zanzibar. is distant from twenty to thirty miles from the African coast. It is about forty-eight miles in length and from fifteen to thirty in breadth. It contains an area of about four hundred thousand acres, and the soil is, in most parts, of exceeding fertility; being covered with woods and planta- tions, and the frequent rains causing perpetual verdure, it everywhere presents a delightful appearance. It is very flat, the highest point not being more than three hundred feet, composed entirely of coral, and abundantly watered by rivulets, which flow at all seasons of the year. The principal products are cocoanuts, cloves, rice, sugar-cane, manioc, millet, and fruits in the utmost abundance, especially oranges of the finest quality. The island is intersected by paths and green lanes in every direction, affording a never-ending variety of pleasant walks and rides. The country houses of the Arab proprietors, and the huts of their slaves, are thickly dotted over the surface, surrounded with gardens and fields. The hedgerows are covered with flowering creepers, and pineapples grow amongst them in wild profusion. In many parts are glades of undulating grass-land, of park-like appearance, dotted with gigantic mango trees ; the ponds are covered with rushes and water-lilies ; and the air is perfumed with the blossoms of the orange and clove. The population is estimated at about two hundred and ten thousand. The town contains about sixty thousand permanent inhabitants ; while probably from thirty to forty thousand strangers come from Arabia, India and the northern parts of Africa during the season of the north-east monsoon. Seen from the sea the town has rather a handsome appear- ance, its white stone houses standing out against the background very conspicuously; but the interior aspect is not so agreeable, the streets being narrow, crooked and tisually filthy. The houses of the principal inhabitants and of the European residents are large, flat-roofed buildings, generally with an interior courtyard ; and some of them, and especially the palace of the sultan, may almost claim to be magnificent. The chief people are the Arab landed proprietors, who form a sort of aristocracy', possessing large plantations and numerous slaves ; besides these there are slaves, free blacks, natives of the Comora Islands and Madagascar, and from five to six 96 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. thousand natives of India (Banyans), who keep nearly all the shops in the town and through whose hands nearly all the foreign trade passes. Their vessels, called dhows, are found in all seas in this part of the world, and their agents— principally Arabs— travel far into the interior of the continent. The illustration on page 94 gives the portrait, as he appeared in his office, of one of these Indian negotiants, Ladha-Rainji, who was collector of customs in Zanzibar in i860, and of great service to Captain Speke in securing him a number of native porters for his expedition into the interior. The language of the court and of the Arab population is Arabic, while the slaves and the free black population speak a dialect called Kisaivahcli, one of the great family of South African langiiages. Since January, 1873, the British Indian Steamship Company has maintained monthly comnmnication between Aden, Zanzibar and Madagascar, and the trade is steadily increasing. The principal exports are ivory, cloves, pepper and skins ; and among the imports, cotton. Formerly the great staple of the town was slaves, and the mart where these unfortunates were exposed was one of the sights of the business quarter. An entry in Livingston's last journal, under date of March 2, 1866, after alluding to the noxious odors which infested Zanzibar, says: "I visited to-day the slave market. Three hundred individuals, nearly, were offered for sale ; the greater number of them from Shire and Nyassa. Excepting the children, all seemed to feel the degradation of their position. Their teeth were examined, their clothing lifted to inspect the legs, and a stick thrown down that in picking it up the slave might show his action. Some of them were dragged about through the middle of the crowd with the price demanded for them continually shouted aloud. The greater number of the buyers were Persians or Arabs. These last, as well as the natives, treat their slaves, it is said, with kindness, which is to say, that they share in the general indolence. But the high rank of the master does not tend to ameliorate the condition of his slave; on the contrary, the nearer the former approaches his chattel in social standing, the less is demanded of the latter. In proportion as society becgmes more complex, the daily needs augment and servile labor is increased." Of the horrors of this traffic two or three quotations from his journal, on this last march into the interior, will testify: "June 19. Passed to-day by the body of a woman fastened to a tree, and by the neck ; she was dead. The people of the country relate that she was unable longer to follow the band, and that the slave trader was unwilling that she should become the property of anyone who might find her, in case she should recover. Another had been stabbed, or killed with a bullet. The reason is always the same ; furious at the loss of his money the trader assuages his wrath by killing the slave who can no longer walk." "June 27. Saw a man who must have died from exhaustion, as the body was nothing but a skeleton. One of our men had strayed from the path and found a number of slaves, their necks in the yoke and abandoned by the purchaser, for lack of provisions. They no longer had strength to speak ; some of them were very young." The towns in the interior of the continent are mostly aggregates of lightly constructed wooden huts, and in almost every case are surrounded by stockades designed to serve as a defense. "These villages are all as jealous of their independence as if their petty chiefs were all Percys and Douglases," says Stanley; "each bravely perched upon a little knoll or the ridge of a valley, with the air of defiance of a cock upon his own dunghill." The tcrnbes or houses of the Arabs settled in the interior to the west of the Zanzibar coast are of greater pretensions than the native huts. Those of Ujiji are described by Stanley as "solid, spacious, flat-roofed structures, with broad, cool verandas facing the public roads." Among the Waholcomo, on the banks of the river Tana, it is the custom, according to Denhardt, a recent explorer in that region, for the youths to live together in large huts separate from their parents. On the fertile banks of the Congo, above the lower falls, the villages, or rather towns — some of them being two miles in length — are described by Stanley as having broad streets bordered by rows of well- built houses, far superior to those of the more easterly parts of Africa. The long search for the sources of the Nile, handed down from generation to generation, was finally ended by the discovery of the great fresh-water lake, the Victoria N'yanza, by Captain Speke in 1858. More fully explored by Speke and Grant in 1862, it was circumnavigated by Stanley in 1875. The native name N'yanza signifies simply "the water," but Speke named it the Victoria N'yanza, in honor of his sovereign. Its southern point is in lat. 2° 44' S., long. Killing Exhausted Slav 98 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. Gate of a Village. 33° E. Its northern shore rnns nearly parallel to the eqnator and is abont twenty miles north of it. Speke supposed that it formerly covered a larger area ; at present it is estimated to be two hundred and twenty miles in length and fully as much in breadth. It is of no great depth ; the surface is three thousand seven hundred and forty feet above the sea-level. There are fleets of canvas on the lake, and yet there is no communication between the tribes on its opposite shores, who are quite unknown to each other. North-east of it lies Lake Baringo, described by the natives as a long, narrow basin, and probably connected with the N 'yanza. The countries on the west shores of the lake enjoy a mild and genial climate, equal to that of England in summer. The natives of Karangu^ and Uganda, on the western shores, are superior races, with a considerable degree of civilization. The banana, coffee and date palm abound, and hundreds of white, hornless cattle were seen browsing in the richest pasture lands. The principal feeder of the N' yanza on the west is the Kitangnle, and from its northern side issue several streams which unite to form the Nile. The principal of these flows through Napoleon Channel, over the Ripon Falls. North-west from this lake lies the Albert N'yanza, discovered in 1866, and connected with Victoria N'yanza by the Victoria Nile, which flows through Lake Coja. The White Nile issues from the Albert N'yanza, and as the region receives an immense rainfall, this is thought to be the really efiective cause of the annual overflowing of the Nile. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 99 On the 8th of March, 1875, Stanley set sail, in the "lyady Alice," from the Gulf of Speke, which he so named, to sail around the shores of this great lake — a literal voyage into the unknown. "Afloat on the Victoria!" says his journal ; "the sky is sombre, the water is gray, the rocks are naked and frowning, the shore is gloomy and solitary. My companions sigh dolorously ; their rowing is that of men who believe themselves going to certain death. From time to time they look at me long and earnestly, as though they hoped to receive the order to return." On the eastern shore of the lake, near its northern extremity, they visited the beautiful little island shown in the illustration, the ' ' Island of the Bridge, ' ' so called from ' ' a basaltic arch, of an irregular shape, twenty-five feet long and twelve high, which unites the two ends of the island. lyow-trunked trees, bushes and tall grasses drape this curious island ; and in the interstices of the rock, where a thick mould has collected, spring fine mangrove trees. From the summit, which is fifty feet above the surface of the lake, may be had a fine view of the island of Uginngo, proud in its isolation, and of the steep mountains of Ugeyeya. To the east extend the plains of the Vouagannsou and the Vouagassi. To the north appear vaguely unknown lands of which the lines are broken by domes and peaks, and to the left extends a sea without limits. ' ' After the explorers come the hunters — the men who care little for the mysteries of unknown lands, but who eagerly embrace the opportunity to brave hardship and danger of all kinds in the pursuit of the great game which haunt these remote countries. Among the most celebrated of these is William Charles Baldwin, member of the Geographical Society of London, and who, as he relates in his "African Hunting," was induced to visit the hunting fields of South Africa by the example of two of his friends and the perusal of the narrative of Gordon Gumming. He arrived at Port Natal in December, 1851, and joined an expedition which was being prepared by a Mr. White for the country of the Zulus. From there their route led irregularly northward as far as the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, and the hunting was all that the most ardent Nimrod Island of the Bridge, Victoria N'yanza. ,02 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. could desire. One or two of Mr. Baldwin's episodes may give some idea of the nature of his sport. Under date of the iSth of December he records : "We encountered yesterday a quantity of game, killed two giraffes, four rhinoceroses, and had the most amusing hunt since leaving Mexico. A troop of buffaloes, a hundred of them at least, roused themselves on the right, just ahead of tiie giraffe that I had separated from the others ; but they were soon distanced, for we went at a devil of a pace. IMy giraffe took to the left and continued in that direction ; I had at fifty feet behind me the buffaloes, who came on at full speed. The situation was not altogether reassuring; if mv horse had fallen the whole mass would have gone over my body and I should have been reduced to powder. But thanks to the rapidity of our course, we soon distanced the buflliloes. I fired at the giraffe; Swartz arrived in the meanwhile and finished the animal which I had wounded somewhat too low. I afterwards fired at a great female rhinoceros who was flee- ing at top speed, and rolled her over in fine style ; the ball broke the spinal column — a very rare occurrence." Occasionally, especially when pressed for fresh meat, the hunter had recourse to the plan of watching at night by the drinking places where the wild beasts came to quench their thirst:; but he makes it his boast that nearly all his grim game were bagged openly in daylight, in what might be called a fair fight. Some of his nocturnal adventures were sufficiently perilous; lions, elephants and occasionally a rhinoceros fell before his rifle. On one occasion, the lion in his bound knocked both Baldwin and his companion heels over head off the top of the hut where they were stationed ; on another, one of his native attendants was obliged to flatten himself in one corner of his nocturnal rifle-pit, while the elephant carefully explored with his trunk every other foot of the ditch in search of the hunter. Fortune favors the adventurous, however, and our hunter survived all the chances of his expedition, and returned safely to England, in March, 1861. The attention of Europe has been called to the island of Madagascar, within the last few years, by the claims which the French have been making upon the government of Queen Rana- valona II., of a protectorate over the northern part of the island, of certain general rights over the whole island and of the payment of an indemnity of one million francs — all in pursuance of that system of colonial enterprise which the successive rulers of France have so favored within the last decade or two. In 1S82 the envoys of the Malagasy government visited France, Germany and England, and in March, 1883, the United States, where they had no difficulty in negotiating a treaty, ratified by the State Department on March 13th. The government of Madagascar is a monarchical despotism, but the authority of the supreme ruler weakens as the distance from the capital increases. Public assemblies are still called and addressed by the sovereign, but not consulted. A body of judges sits constantly in public to hear complaints and settle disputes, but they are not guided by any written code of laws. Of late years Christianity has made considerable progress in the island. The first missionaries appeared in 1818, but some years after, they were banished and the native Christians persecuted. The island was not reopened to Europeans till 1862. Since then Christianity has been recognized by the govern- ment, thousands of converts have been made and numerous native churches built. The inhabitants, who are known by the name of Malagasy, appear to form substantially a single race, though they have received a considerable admixture of African blood, chieflj- through the importation of slaves, and also a certain amount of Arab intermixture. All the tribes speak substantially the same tongue, are — if pure blooded — of the same color, a light olive, and have much the same customs. The Horas are the ruling tribe ; their proper country- is the elevated region of the interior, but they have extended their sway over most of the island. The total population of the island is estimated at four millions, or about seventeen and a half to the square mile, a density far below what the island is easily capable of sustaining. Its length is a thousand and thirty miles; its greatest breadth, three hundred and fifty, and the total area is larger than that of Great Britain. It is traversed throughout its entire length by a mountain range, rising in several of its summits to ten or twelve thousand feet, and sending off branches towards the shores, which, however, are generally low. The most striking feature in the vegetation of Madagascar is a belt of dense forest, with an average breadth of fifteen miles, passing round the whole island and broken only by a gap in the north-west, where the two ends of the forest overlap. The capital is Antananarivo or Tananarivo, the "City of a Thousand Towns," situated on a rocky ridge near the centre of the island, and containing AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 103 lit, iji,^>ii Antananarivo, the Capital of Madagascar. upwards of a hundred thousand inhabitants. The approach to it from Tamatave, the chief seaport, is extremely tedious and difficult, owing to the want of good roads. The royal palace occupies the summit of the hill ; adjoining are the dwellings of the chief officers of government, and below these, covering the slope of the hill, the houses of the other inhabitants, constructed almost entirely of wood. The uniform shape of the houses, which are just plain huts covered with brown thatch, gives a sombre appearance to the place. A few trees, apparently a species of fig tree, are visible here and there in the higher part of the city. Cx\PE COLONY is a British colony at the south of Africa, consisting in a strict sense of the area bounded mainly by the Orange and Great Kei rivers on the north, and on all other sides by the sea, and thus extending about four hundred and forty miles from north to south, and about six hundred from east to west, and having an area more than twice that of Great Britain ; but in a wider sense it includes also the Transkeian Districts, Griqua Land West, Basuto Land and Kaffi-aria, all of which are under the governor of the Cape Colony, bringing the total area of the colony and its dependencies up to about two hundred and forty-one thousand square miles. The colony takes its name from the Cape of Good Hope, popularly regarded as the most southerly pro- montory of Africa, though it is half a degree to the north of Cape Agulhas. The latter is merely a projection on a coast line which diverges inconsiderably from a parallel ; but the former is really the turning point from south to east on the voyage from Europe to India. This celebrated promontor}' is in lat. 34° 22' S., and long. 18° 29' E., being the termination of Table Mountain, which, as it recedes towards the bay of its own name, rises from the height of a thousand feet above the sea to that of thirty-five hundred. The Cape — for so it is called by way of eminence — was discov- ered and doubled by Diaz, a Portuguese navigator, as early as i486 — six years before Columbus, in aiming at the same goal by a different route, led the way to America. But it was only in 104 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 1497 that Vasco de Gama realized the value of Diaz's discove-n- by rounding it on his adven- turous voyage from Lisbon to Calicut. The result was not merely to open a new channel for the traffic of the East, but it was also to transfer trading superiority from the republics of Italy to the states of Western Europe. The Portuguese, possessing in Brazil a more central house of call in the direction of India, were comparatively independent of Table Bay as a halting place. In like manner the Dutch, who had supplanted the original discoverers at once in India and in Brazil, must have felt some- thing of the same indifference. It was, therefore, only in 1652, when they were on the ver>' point of being expelled from South America, that they founded Cape Town, as the first settle- ment of Europeans in South Africa. The Dutch contemplated at first but little more than what they found among the Hottentots — the tending of flocks and herds; and this would be all the more likelv to provoke and aggravate animosities and collisions between the intruding strangers View of Cape Town. and the natives. In 1795 this dependency of Holland, threatened with the revolutionar>- tide which had already overwhelmed Holland itself, was seized by a British force on behalf of the Prince of Orange. Restored in 1802 to the Dutch, under the treaty of Amiens, the Cape Colony was once more captured, and that finally, by the English in 1806. The new masters of the countrj-, inheriting from their predecessors a ready-made feud, fronted on the east the Kaffirs, a warlike and proud race, which, with the exception of pastoral pursuits, had nothing in common with the Hottentots. The almost inevitable results followed — a normal state of insecurity and strife on the border, diversified by at least three actual wars. After twice advancing to the Kei, the colony, as a whole, has receded to the Keiskamma, retaining, however, the port of East London ; while the rest of the intermediate region has been placed, as British Kaffraria, under the military authorities of the Empire. But during brief periods the country- extended farther, embracing, from 1842 to 1847, Port Natal beyond Kaffraria, and from 1848 to 1854 what is now AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 105 In the Drakenstein Mountains. the Free State, between the Orange and its main affluent, the Vaal. Across the last-mentioned stream, too, discontented or adventurous settlers, ahnost exclusively of Dutch origin, have planted, under the name of the Trans- Vaal Territory, a prosperous republic. Cape Town, the capital of the colony, faces the south-west, or best sheltered, side of Table Bay, having at its back Table Mountain. It was founded in 1652 by Van Riebeek, the founder of the colony, and abounds in straight lines and right angles, the principal streets being threaded by canals. The houses generally are flat-roofed, with terraces in front. The castle, a regular fortification, with bastions and outworks, occupies the extreme east. Besides the government house and the courts and government offices, there is a university, a botanic garden with a fine collection of plants, and an observatory. The port has been provided with a breakwater two thousand feet long, inside of which ships can safely ride at anchor. A large graving-dock has also been constructed. The situation of the city has been compared to that of Valparaiso. An English lady, travelling with her husband to the diamond fields, thus records her first impres- sions of the town and the colony: "After a fatiguing voyage, which had much exceeded the time usually employed in the passage from Southampton to the Cape of Good Hope, we arrived in Table Bay, June 17, 1S72, at five o'clock in the morning, in frightful weather and a deluge of rain. We were obliged to come to anchor, it being impossible to enter the harbor. Numerous small boats came out to offer us fruits, oranges, guaiavas, pomegranates and bananas. With the exception of the oranges, which were as sour as vinegar, all these fruits had a sufficiently strong flavor of turpen- tine. We were told that in Cape Town they were eaten with a knife and fork and seasoned with salt. After every variety of disagreeable experience we finally landed, my husband and mvself, and I experienced an inexpressible emotion at thus setting foot in an unknown country-, where I was to live among savages. "Through pouring rain and frightful mud, wet to the skin, not having been able to find io6 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. accommodations either at the Royal Hotel nor the Masonic Hotel, we finally secured lodgings at the Commercial Hotel. We found the whole city excited over the news of an extraordinary robbery, which had been committed by a man named Hopkins, in the mail-coach of West Griqua Land, the diamond country. He had been arrested just as he was about to sail for Europe, and diamonds to the value of four hundred thousand dollars had been found secreted in his gun. "I will not give any description of Cape Town ; we only passed through it, and the weather was so atrocious that ever)'thing around us was only seen through a mist. The greater part of the houses are large ; the shops have no show-windows, as in Europe, and they are closed at five o'clock in the afternoon. The fashions seem to be somewhat out of season ; the wife and the daughter of the governor, who were pointed out to me, were wearing velvet and merinoes in a tropical heat. We secured two places in the 'Inland Transport Company,' for the sum of one hundred and twenty dollars. The coach, which we took at Wellington, the temporary terminus of the railway, we were told was a grand affair, with places for twelve persons on four seats ; it was covered with canvas attached with thongs, as a protection against rain and sun. Only eighty pounds of baggage could be carried ; the remainder must follow by another conveyance. "The weather continued pitiless ; it rained the entire night. At five o'clock in the morning we took our way to the railway station on foot, through a sea of red mud — there being no vehicles obtainable at that early hour. At the depot everybody was asleep. As we could not make the sleepy clerk attend to us, we secured a pastepot and labelled our baggage ourselves, ' To the Diamond Fields. ' Somehow or another, we managed to install ourselves in a compart- ment, where we found — not much to our satisfaction — Messrs. Moses and Moss, two Jews of very slight education, who had been our fellow-passengers on the steamer. "At Wellington we took the stage-coach, a horrible machine, with Moses, Moss, WolflF and Cohen, three other persons, and a woman who was going to rejoin her husband at Du Toit's Pan. I cannot give you any idea of the abominable odor which exhaled from the wet India rubber, the leather, the brandy- and the sausages with which these people had liberally pro- vided themselves. And remember that we were shut up seven days at least in this box. We were drawn by fourteen miserable horses driven by two men — one held the reins and the other a whip eight yards in length, very skilfully handled. These drivers, who were certainly expert, were Malays. For the space of two hours we followed a sufficiently wide and handsome road; then we arrived at a mountain traversed by a deep ravine. This road had been constructed, or rather sunken, in the flanks of the mountain by an engineer, Mr. Bain, who had no other laborers than convicts from the Cape. The work had taken seven years to execute, and was known as Bain's Kloof." After a week of this most fatiguing and uncomfortable journey our travellers arrived at Du Toit's Pan, in the diamond fields, and hired a small claim which they set to work on shares. Of the innumerable little and big miseries and inconveniences of all sorts which attended their first experience in this mining, the narrator gives a forcible description ; at the end of a year they were glad to sell for forty-five dollars the claim for which they had paid a hundred and in which they had found almost nothing. In the hopes of bettering their fortune they broke up their modest housekeeping and set out for the Kimberley Mine, where, they had been informed, considerable sums had been gained by the process of washing out again earth that had once before been gone over. The first miner they questioned, on their arrival at this -place, assured them that with three small machines he had been able in seven months to put four thousand dollars in bank. But no such good fortune awaited our couple, and at the end of nearly five years, completely discouraged, they abandoned all hopes of any better chance and determined to return to England. To get back to Cape Town, they procured a wagon for themselves, drawn by oxen, and thus avoided the risks of dependence upon the uncertain hospitality of the Boer farmers. Their route dififered slightly from that which they had taken when first going out; they left it just before arriving at the Drakenstein Mountains, which they crossed by the pass known as Mitchell's, but without any adventures. On their arrival in Cape Town, anxious as they were to embark, they yet devoted some days to a visit to the celebrated vineyards of Constance, on the urgent recommendation of the proprietor from whom they had hired their first claim at Du Toit's Pan. The fame of this establishment dates from 1685. It is said that the governor Simon van der Steel, who took a great interest in agriculture, resolved to find some AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 107 suitable place, if possible, for the culture of the vine, and for this purpose caused comparative analyses to be made of French and Rhine wines and of those of Rondebosch, of Boscheuvel, of Tygerberg and of Constance, and instituted a search through the colony for a soil similar to that -which produced the last named. He obtained of the Baron Van Rheede van Drakenstein, commissioner of the Holland Company and who had given his name to the district, a concession of the land comprised in that which is now known as Great and Little Constance, Witteboom, Bergoleit, etc. ; he procured choice plants and with the stock of Muscat and that of Catalogue he succeeded in giving to the wine grown at Constance those qualities which in,ake it so valued by connoisseurs to-day. The establishment was sold in 1715 with the princely mansion, around which Van der Steel had laid out his handsome vineyards. The place has preser\'ed the name of Grand Constance ; Mr. Sebastian Vanrenen acquired the adjoining one of Witteboom, and as the soil on each is the same, his wines possess the same celebrity. These two fine properties are one of the best-known sights of the colony, and are visited by all strangers arriving at Cape Town. The native inhabitants of the Cape Colony, at the time of the first European settlements in the seventeenth century, were Hottentots and their kinsmen, the Bushmen. These form a race At the Bottom of the Kimberley Mine. loS AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. The Vineyards of Constance. by themselves, having in common marked physical features, and speaking dialects quite distinct from all other languages spoken elsewhere. The name Hottentot was originally applied to the race by the Dutch ; they calling themselves Koi-Koin or Quae-Quae, that is, the people. They support themselves chiefly as nomadic cattle raisers, and their kraals or villages are composed of huts made of branches and twigs, covered with mats or sheepskins. Their language is remarkable for the prevalence in it of sounds known as clicks or clucks, which are produced by pressing the tongue against the teeth, or some part of the palate, and then smartly withdrawing it. The Bushmen or Bosjesmans, or, as they call themselves, the Saan, are the most degraded section of the race to which they belong, and indeed one of the most uncivilized tribes on the face of the globe. They are found not only in the Cape Colony, where they are thinly scattered over the territory within the innermost range of mountains, but also throughout the middle region of the Kalahari Desert, and even as far north as the districts about the Ovambo River in lat. i8° S. They live entirely by hunting, and show so strong a disinclination to give up their vagabond mode of life that they have been called the gipsies of South Africa. With equal propriety they may be called the Ishmaelites of that region, since their hand is against every man and every man's hand against them. All the adjoining native tribes look uiDon them as their natural enemies, and in earlier times they were captured for slaves by the Boers, or Dutch settlers. The Bushmen with whom the settlers in the South African colonies come most in contact are remarkable for the smallness of their stature, averaging only about four feet six inches in height; but those dwelling farther north are said to possess a fine physique. The dwellings of the Bushmen, as might be expected, are even more rude than those of their kinsmen, the Hottentots proper. In the mountains they are often content with hanging up a few mats in front of the rocks on the windward side. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 109 THE Frencli settlement on the Gaboon River, nnder the equator, was established in 1842 for the sake of the rich trade in ivory and palm-oil. Negotiations had been opened the preceding year with the chiefs of the neighboring tribes by the commandant Bouet-Willaumez, and it was without opposition that Captain de Montleon landed a company of marines, some workmen and the material for a fortified post, and took possession in the name of France of the bay of the Gaboon and of the region watered by its numerous affluents. In order that the country should be the more thoroughly Gallicised, the more important points were re-baptized with the names of the various members of the then reigning Orleans famih-; but this innovation was but temporary. The object of the colony was announced to be to take possession of the excellent harbor for the purpose of establishing a commercial depot of supplies for the numerous small vessels engaged in patrolling the coast to suppress the slave trade. This bay, which lies in latitude about 0° 30' N., is ten or twelve miles long and from seven to fifteen in width, and offers to the voyager — fatigued with the monotonous bareness of the sandy coast, where a single tree often sei-ves as a noted landmark to the sailor — a refreshing spectacle. The verdure of the inland districts here comes down to the water's edge, and the native villages appear half hidden in the dense foliage. The basin in which the bay lies is bounded on the east by a range of mountains which the Portuguese called Sierra del Crystal, and from which issue several French Settlement on the Gaboon. rivers. South and east of it is a much more important stream, the Ogowe, which discharges its waters into the Atlantic through numerous mouths ; in their delta is the well-known head- land, Cape Lopez. The Gaboon River, which rises in the Crystal Mountains and is said to be about a hundred and twenty miles in length, is a deep and sluggish stream, its waters being mostly tidal. Sixty miles from its mouth the tide rises to a height of from seven to nine feet. At Baraka, about eight miles up the river, is an American mission, established in the same year as the French settlement on the bay. The pleasure with which the newly arrived traveller greets this verdurous spot is not destined to be lasting. The climate — like that of the great lakes from which the Nile issues and which lie in the same latitude as the Gaboon — is one of great heat and great rains. The annual downpour commences on the 15th of September, with singular exactness, and lasts till the first days of January; it then ceases during about six weeks, a period known as the little dr}- season, but which is nevertheless ven,- humid, debilitating and unhealthful. At the end of this time the rains begin again and fall in incessant torrents and tremendous storms, exercising a most deplorable eflTect on the health. Three months of dry weather, the only fine season of the year, terminate this annual round. Notwithstanding its position directly under the equator, the heat of the region is not very great, but it is constant, 1 lO AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. JioreuiN^ Women of the Fan Tribe. iiid the humidity, the electrical tension of the air, the miasma arising from the numerous swamps, engender malarial fevers and a constant sense of debility and weakness, which render it impossible for the European race to become acclimatized. For white women the climate is particularly deadly, and the perils of maternity become much too great to be undertaken under any circumstances. The tribes of the country are numerous, but they may be all classed under four general groups: The M'pongwfe, who live on the seacoast at the entrance to the rivers ; the Shekianis, doulons, or men of the woods, whose home is in the forest land of the surrounding regions ; the Bakalais, and the Fans, or Pahouins, whose cannibalistic reputation has of late years brought them prominently into notice. All these tribes must have originally come from a distance ; they are not the aborigines of the Gaboon district, but most probably have advanced from the interior to the coast. The Fans, for instance, only made their appearance a few years ago, AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. Ill driving the Bakalais — who originally possessed the part of the country they now inhabit — before them. In time they will dispossess, or at least commingle with, the M'pongwes, or Gaboonese proper, as their passion for colonization and their power to onst the original inhabitants are two very well-marked characteristics of this not particularly amiable people. The M'pongwes have been described as a lazy race, a nation of middle-men, who conduct long haggling bargains with the palm-oil traders — who, in their own opinion, were formed for something higher than work, which the good God only intended for white men and Kroomen — whose canoes are their only mode of communication and the beach their only highway. Dress is not one of their weaknesses ; the climate effectually checks this piece of original sin in the M'pongwe bosom. The women wear a pair of cotton drawers, tied round the waist and reaching to the middle of their legs, and nothing more. On great occasions they may indulge in a piece of cloth thrown over the shoulders, and falling nearly to the ground, but such an extravagant wardrobe is not often in use. The young girls walk with a light elastic step; but the married women move heavily, owing to the load of copper bracelets on their legs and copper rings on their toes. So many bracelets are worn on the legs that they look as if encased in metal boots. The M'pongwe man, according to the Revue Coloniale^ 1856, is, "generally speaking, tall and well proportioned. His developed muscles betoken great strength. The leg is better Young Fetish Boy of the Lake Ionanga. I I 2 4 1' RICA ILL USTRA TED. YoNDOGOwiRO, King of the Sacred Islands. formed than is usually the case among the blacks ; the foot is flat, but the instep is arched ; the hand is small and well set on ; the shoulder too short in proportion to the fore-arm ; the eyes are generally fine and expressive ; the nose is small and flattened ; the mouth moderately large ; the lower lip is thick without being pendent; the teeth are generally fine and regular. The prognathous form is very rare. The color is bronzed rather than black. The growth of hair is comparatively luxuriant. The greater number shave a portion of the head in various patterns, and most of them are altogether without beard ; and lastly, their chests are large and well developed." The Shekiani, Chekiani, or Rontons, occupy a tract of country lying between the Muni and Gaboon Rivers. They are, like all these West African tribes, divided into numerous sub-tribes, M'bousha, M'boundemo, M'becho, etc. Their character is far from good; they bear the reputation of being quarrelsome, passionate, revengeful and careless of inflicting pain or death. The Bakalais comprise a large and powerful tribe, wide-spread between the equator and two degrees south of it, and between long. io° and 13° E. They are a wandering people and colonize and intermingle with other tribes. Ebony and the usual products of tropical Africa form their commerce. In disposition they are watchful and suspicious, as becomes a people who live merely on terms of armed neutrality with neighbors into whose country they have wormed their way. Their chief homes are found all along the Rembo River. In complexion they are not so black AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. IJ3 as most of the neighboring tribes, but are dirty in the extreme. The Bakalais and the Fans, or Pahouns, are close neighbors. The villages of the latter present in the majority of cases the appearance of a sort of fortress, the two or three hundred houses forming them being arranged in two long parallel lines on each side of a broad street, each extremity of which is defended by a guard. The appearance of the population is striking and quite different from that of their neighbors. The children are lively, alert and intelligent, with an agreeable and regular countenance. The head is long ; the forehead, large and prominent ; the eyes, large and soft. Unfortunately, these characteristics become greatly modified at the age of puberty; the roundness of form disap- pears, the cheekbones become extremely prominent, the temples recede and the forehead acquires in a greater and greater degree that remarkable protuberance which is one of the most striking physical characteristics of the race. The women have also the long head and the prominent forehead, but they seldom show the thin and bony visage of the men. They are often plump in figure, but never very fat — an infirmity almost unknown among the blacks. Their hands are often surprisingly fine and beautifully attached; but these qualities do not prevent the Fan ladies from being, with some rare exceptions, exceedingly ugly. The arts of their scanty toilette are not adapted to increase their charms — at least in the eyes of a European. They cover their chests with necklaces, and attach to the ends of their tresses a number of small pearls which fall on the shoulders or over the face ; their arms and legs are adorned with bracelets in copper or polished iron, generally in the shape of spiral springs, and the young mothers cover themselves from foot to head with a sort of wash made from a decoction of red wood. They carry a large sash or scarf, covered with cowrie shells and in the loop of which reposes the sucking infant. Due south of the country of the Fans, on the southern side of the Ogowe River, lies the lake lonanga in which are situated the "sacred isles," celebrated for their fetish worship and for the singular phantom-like mirages which are said to be seen there at certain times during the rainy Encampment of Slaves among the Okanda. 114 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. season. They were visited by a French exploring party from the Gaboon, in 1865, despite the solemn warnings of the inhabitants of the inevitable fate that awaited them if they should dare even to approach the shores. On the island of Arouinbe, however, the only one inhabited, the\ were received by a number of young boys, devoted to the care of the mysteries of the fetish, and, as such, curiously dressed. The pagne, or very brief cotton drawers, were retained around the hips by a girdle of pearls and ornamented with arabesque patterns, some of pearls and some executed with a sort of red chenille ; to the borders were attached groups of blue pearls and little bells. Strino-s of large pearls of all colors were passed around the neck and crossed on the chest ; bracelets in red chenille on the arms and legs, and bangles of yellow copper on the wrists and ankles completed their cos- tume. The king of these mysterious islands, who came out to greet the strangers, was still more grotesquely arrayed : his principal garment was an old uniform coat of some European army, ornamented with yellow woollen epaulettes, the stripes of a corporal and buttons bearing in relief three cannon crossed and the motto, Ubiq^ie. An old Euro- pean hat and a native apron around his hips completed his apparel. As the emblem of his power, temporal and spiritual, he carried a bell, which he tinkled gravely as he accom- panied the travellers in their voyage around the two most sacred islands, on which they were not permitted to set foot. These islands were simply masses of tropical verdure, in- habited apparently only by a vast number of birds of all kinds, to whom the king made rev- erence as the canoes were slowly paddled by. The tribe immediately south of this lake is the Galoi, who regard these islands as the sacred places of their religion. In ascending the river Ogowe the traveller passes success- ively the countries of the Bakalais, the Okota and Yalimbongo, the Okandas and, still far- ther inland, near the head-waters of the stream, the Adouma, the Okota, the Obamba and the Adziana. The slave trade was for- merly the great curse of all this region, and is not yet entirely suppressed. A French traveller, M. Alfred Marche, who explored, for the first time, the course of the river in 1875-77, found the Obamba gathering slaves in the country of the Adziana and selling them to the Adouma, by whom they were in turn disposed of to the Okanda. The first sight that greeted his eyes upon his arrival among the latter was an encampment of slaves, of both sexes and all ages, who disappeared on his approach. This commerce is universal. In default of other material the natives do not hesitate to sell their own families, parents, brothers and sisters, to the traders. He who cannot find at least a child to dispose of is considered to be but an unenterprising parent. Vl. Marche says of these savages : "One would never imagine the amount of time that the women of this country devote to plastering themselves with white, yellow, red and even with black ; they paint the whole of the body with a vegetable red thinned with palm- oil, and the most greasy and most shiny of them is the greatest belle. I saw one of them who Okanda Woman at her Toilette. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. "5 had even contrived to make use of two mirrors in conjunction, so arranged as to form a sort of cheval glass, to dress her coiffure. Never would I have thought that the instincts of coquetry could thus render a negress ingenious enough to discover the laws of reflection. They also waste a good deal of time in pulling out their own eyelashes and those of the men, using for this pur- pose the point of a knife. When I inquired the reason for this proceeding they informed me that it was to enable them to see more clearly, and derided me because I did not do the same. 'The hairs which you have on your eyelids,' they said, 'must get in your eyes, and bother you greatly.' " THE northern shores of the Gulf of Guinea are occupied by regions known as the Ivor>' Coast, the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast, from the nature of the principal commodities which they formerly furnished to European commerce. All of these sections are unhealthy; the most The Temple of Serpents at Whydah. ii6 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. fever- infested is the Slave Coast. At its ports of Lagos and Whydah the slave-ships formerly loaded their human cargoes ; and here flourished and grew rich the potentates of this infamous traffic. Nowadays, the English have acquired the port of Lagos, while Whydah has to depend upon more legitimate traffic, now that the English cruisers and the almost exhausted demand have compelled the once famous slave barracoons — on which the captain of the war-ship often cast his eyes, in former days, to see what was stirring — to fall into decay. Whydah, now a straggling town or village of ruined factories, is the seaward outlet of the most celebrated of all the West African kingdoms, the dominion of the Ffons, or Dahomey. The kingdom itself is rather vaguely bounded, but may be said to lie between the river Volta on the west and Bagda- gany on the east; to extend northwards to the Kong Mountains, in lat. 8° N. — the whole country over which His Majesty of Dahomey rules being about four thousand square miles, of which only a small strip lies on the coast. The kingdom itself, now that the slave trade is virtually abolished, is unimportant, yielding, with the exception of palm-oil, almost nothing of great value to commerce. But the people, and especially the monarch, have long been notorious for the practice of some most abominable "customs," in regard to which stories more or less exaggerated have been circulated ; and only recently have we obtained anything like an accurate account of this extraordinary race. The capital, however, has been visited, and in recent times by several travellers, who have given us narratives of their observations. Chief among these must be enumerated Commodore Wilmot, in 1862 ; Captain Burton, the celebrated traveller, in 1865, and, more recently, an English naturalist, Mr. J. A. Skertchley, who was detained for nine months in a friendly manner by the king, avowedly in order that he might give to the English public a true account of the ways of life of his capital, His Majesty complaining that he had been grievously misrepresented in that country. A surgeon of the French navy, M. le Docteur Repin, also visited the country in 1S60, and has published a detailed and apparently accurate record of the manners and customs of the kingdom. The crumbling ruins of a fort, the last vestige of the power of the French Compagnie des lades, is situated in the western part of the port of Whydah; but the most famous building in the place, and the one to which the attention — if not the steps — of the traveller is first turned, is the serpent-house, in which are kept the sacred fetish serpents. This curious edifice consists simply of a round structure with a conical thatched roof, some ten or twelve yards in diameter and seven or eight in height. The walls are of dried earth, like those of the habitations, and are pierced on opposite sides by two doorways, through which enter and issue freely the ophidian divinities. From the roof depend strings of cotton yam, and on the floor, which, in common with the walls, is whitewashed, are placed several pots of water. The serpents, which Mr. Skertchley found reduced to twenty-two in number, at the time of Dr. Repin' s visit counted more than a hundred. They have all been rendered harmless by the removal of their fangs. Their length, according to the latter, varied from one to three metres. Their spindle-shaped bodies terminated gradually in a long tail, one-third of the entire length. "Their heads are large, flattened and triangular with the corners rounded off, and sustained by a neck a trifle thinner than the body. Their color varies from a clear yellow to a greenish yellow, perhaps according to their age. The greater number are marked on the back with two brown lines, while others are irregularly spotted. These difierent characteristics led me to suppose that they were all members of different species of those non-venomous reptiles which Linnaeus classified among the pythons and adders. . . . Some of them ascended and descended the tree-trunks placed for that purpose against the walls ; others, suspended by their tails, balanced themselves nonchalantly above my head, darting out their triple tongues and looking at me with their narrow eyes; others, rolled up asleep under the rafters of the roof, were occupied in digesting the last offerings of the faithful. Despite the fascinating strangeness of the sight, and the complete absence of danger, I could not but feel ill at ease in the midst of these viscous divinities, and — like one waking from a very bad dream — I could not suppress a sigh of satisfaction on emerging into the open air. " Every one of these reptiles is sacred, and when one is encountered by the negroes straying from its habitation — which frequently occurs — it is approached with the greatest reverence, frequently on the knees, taken up in the arms with great care and carried back to the temple with many apologies on the part of the worshipper for the liberty he is taking. In several AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 117 instances they have been killed by Europeans unaware of their sacred character, and it has been only with difficulty that the lives of the offenders have been saved from the wrath of the offended priests and fanatical people. It is said that the reason the snake is so reverenced in Whydah is because, during an attack on Ardro, it appeared to the army and so inspired it with courage that the victory was secured. It is still looked upon with equal veneration notwithstanding the fact that it did not avail to protect the conquering Dahomans, into whose kingdom Whydah is now incorporated. It is said that )oung women who are ill are taken to the snake temple to be cured, and that high fees are exacted for this service. Between Whydah and Abomey, the capital of the kingdom, lie two provinces that were formerly independent kingdoms under the names of Ardra and Whydah. Since their union under the government of the king of Dahomey these countries have lost in great part their original characteristics. Abomej^ is situated upon a level plateau, and the length of the walls that encircle it is about eight miles. These walls are of clay, pierced by four gates according to some authorities, and six according to others, each with a double opening — one for the exclusive passage of the king and the other for his subjects. The ditch is from four to six yards in depth, and the walls some twenty feet in height; the former is crossed by light wooden bridges, easy to Palace of the King of Dahomey. destroy in case of danger. The population, some thirty thousand, is not in proportion to the size of the city; the houses being widely spaced and in some cases surrounded by small farms. The streets are large and tolerably clean, but by no means crowded ; many of them are shaded by magnificent trees. Near the middle of the city is a small edifice, the round roof of which is sustained by a wooden colonnade. This is the building in which the human sacrifices formerly took place. In the same locality is the palace of the king, consisting of a number of ordinary dwellings separated from each other by courts and gardens and which serve as the lodgings of the king's female soldiers, of his wives and of his domestic slaves. These buildings are con- structed of clay dried in the sun, and roofed with bamboos, which extend over the fronts to form verandas ; one of them only, the doorway of which opens on the principal place, boasts of a second story. This is the ro>al treasure-house. The walls are festooned with strings of cowries, hanging from the eaves to the ground, an ornamentation which is found nowhere else. The king has no special apartment of his own; he lives alternately in those of his wives. A wall of clay, fifteen or twenty feet in height, surrounds all these buildings, pierced with several gates, and bristling at intervals with iron hooks from which are suspended human heads; some of them whitened by time, some with morsels of flesh still adhering to them, and some freshly decapitated. iiS AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. Enormous piles of elephant bones are heaped up in front of the doorways; probably as trophies of the chase, and yet which seem to be objects of superstitious fear to the natives. Tlie Uahomans are for the most part tall, well formed and intelligent, and for an African race, singularly honest and far advanced in agriculture. With the exception of a few Mohammedans, who.se religious belief is in no way interfered with, they are all pagans and practise fetish worship. The king is the most absolute of despots, having entire control over the lives and properties of his subjects. Wholesale murder was formerly one of the chief features in religious and state ceremonies, as many as two thousand victims being sometimes sacrificed at one "grand custom," and one of the late kings immolated seven thousand at the death of his father. Of the regular army of twelve thousand about one-half were formerly Amazons, devoted to celibacy, who are described as more effective soldiers than their male companions in arms. The flower of this corps, however, perished under the walls of Abeokeuta in 1867, and their number at present does not exceed four thousand, divided into three brigades, distinguished each by a peculiar mode of dressing the hair. The Gold Coast is claimed by the English, whose protectorate extends as far inland as the frontiers of A.shantee. This colony is under a governor who resides at Cape Coast Castle, with an administrator at Lagos. Both the Danes and the Dutch formerly possessed stations on the Gold Coast; but the former were purchased by the British in 1850 and the latter acquired in 1872. The population of the country around the great fresh-water lagoons of Cape L,ahou and of the Grand Bassam are more sociable and more commercially inclined than some of their neighbors. Their communications with the interior enable them to procure with comparative facility the palm-oil which is the principal object of the treaties made between them and the Europeans. The vessels engaged in this commerce anchor outside the bars which fringe the coast, while the negotiations are being carried on through the native intermediaries with the tribes of the interior — generally on the northern shore of the lagoons, in the neighborhood of the palm groves. A Harem of the King of Dahomey. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 119 Young Girls of the Grand Bassam. traveller, disembarking on the shore of the Grand Bassam and ascending the river some two miles to the village, records his surprise at the aspect of the place — "the wide streets and public places planted with numerous big-leaved trees that afford a most salutary shade. A numerous population, apparently cheerful and contented, thronged to see me on my arrival, without, however, manifesting that importunate curiosity with which the African traveller is so often beset." Four great centres of population are situated north of the Grand Bassam : Boudougou, which is the chief town of an independent state; Kong, Mosi and Selga, all three of them commanding the passes of the mountains which serve to communicate with the countries watered by the Niger. The grand entrepots of Adingra, of Coomassie and of Baoure, more or less celebrated, are nearer the coast. The great river of North-western Africa is the Niger, the name of which, according to Barth, is a contracted form of one of the native names, N-eghirreii, which means simply "the river." The principal head-water rises on the slopes of Mount Loma, a peak of the Kong I20 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. Mountains, in a barren, desolate and treeless region, about six hundred feet above sea-level. It flows north-east to Timbuktu, where it bends eastward, and after flowing in that direction for about two hundred and fifty miles, it curves towards the south, and proceeds in a general south-south- east course until, arriving at the head of its delta, in latitude about 5° 30' N., it separates into many branches and enters the Gulf of Guinea, between the bights of Benin and Biafra. It is called the Timbri for the first seventy miles of its course, after which it receives the name of the Joliba, or, more correctly, Dhiidiba; and after passing Timbuktu it is known principally as the Quorra. In lat. 14° 10' N., the river separates into two branches; the western is called the Joliba or Mayo, the eastern the Bara-Isa. These, as they proceed, are known as the White and Black Rivers respectively; and they unite after inclosing the island of Jimballa, two hundred and twenty miles in length, and from two to twenty in breadth. The river again bifurcates before arriving at Timbuktu, and after passing that town the two branches— on one of which, the northern, Cabra, the port of Timbuktu, is situated— again unite. In the district of union south-west of Timbuktu the country far and wide is intersected by numberless streams, forming a complicated network of watercourses. The river then flows east, sending off many creeks and branches, to Bamba ; at Burrum it curves to the south-east, and from this point- called from the bend, the Knee of Burmm — W. bears the name Kwara or Quorra until it reaches the delta. The latter consists of an immense mangrove forest, cut up into islands by the numerous branches— twent}--two in all— of the river. The principal mouths are the Bonny, Mari and Nun. The famous city of Timbuktu occupies a position of the highest commercial importance on the great north-western bend of the Niger. It stands only a few feet above the level of the river, and at a distance of about six miles from its principal branch. It is triangular in shape, from two and a half to three miles in circumference, and at present without walls, though in former times it covered a much greater area and was defended by walls. It is laid out mostly liy\fiis^ General View of Timbuktu. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 121 in straight, but partly in winding, streets of hard sand and gravel, and having a sort of gutter in the middle. There are three chief squares, about a thousand clay houses — some low and unseemly and others rising to two stories and exhibiting architectural adornment — and about two hundred huts of matting. In the north of the city is the mosque of Sankore, an edifice of great grandeur and which imparts an imposing character to the whole district in which it stands. The other chief buildings are the "Great Mosque," an immense edifice of stately appearance, and a few smaller ones. The climate is not considered very healthy. Timbuktu is not a manufacturing town, almost the whole life of the city being based upon foreign commerce. There are three great highways for this commerce — down the river from the south-west, and by two roads from the north, from Morocco and from Ghadames respectively. Of this commerce, gold, which arrives here chiefly in the form of rings, is the staple ; and the amoimt which the city exports is set down at about one hundred thousand dollars yearly. Salt and the kolanut, which is used in the place of coffee, are also largely imported and re-exported, as are also tobacco and dates. Rice and corn are brought from Sansanding. English manufactures consisting of red cloth, sashes, looking-glasses, cutlery and calico arrive from the north and north-west. The fixed population of the town is only about thirteen thousand, but during the trading season — which lasts from November to January, when the numerous caravans come from Morocco and Ghadames to meet the merchants who descend from the Upper Niger — this number is increased by from five to ten thousand. THE navigator who descends from the north the western coast of Africa need not expect to find, south of Morocco, the picturesque landscapes, the grand outlines of earth and sea, the distant glimpses of the snowy Atlas Mountains, which he has contemplated at intervals between Cape Spartel and the Bay of Agadir. After he has doubled the promontory of Nun, that redoubtable headland of the ancient navigators, he no longer sees on his left hand anything but a ranw of high and naked cliffs, the base of which is incessantly washed bv the surf and the crest calcined by an implacable sun. This is the seaward border of the great desert, the rampart which it opposes to the waves of the Atlantic. Those who have escaladed this wall of the Sahara — shipwrecked mostly — have been able to see from the top nothing but a smooth surface, dreary as that of the sea in a dead calm, stretching away into a limitless horizon, immense, burning, arid, without a bush or a blade of grass, without the least sustenance for human life. In the neighborhood of Cape Blanco, this wall, some seven hundred miles in length, gradually sinks down into a chain of dunes, and these growing lower and lower towards the south, finally subside, in the neighborhood of the sixteenth degree of north latitude, into a long and narrow tongue of sand, across which a great river, issuing from the true tropical regions of Africa, makes its way to the Atlantic. This river is the Senegal, which gives to-day to a large and important country the name which it received itself from a barbarous people, the Z^n^ga, established along the right bank at the time of the first discovery of the region by the Portuguese Lancerote or Lancelot, in 1447. It has been supposed that this river was visited by the expedition which, six or eight centuries before the Christian era, the Carthagenian Hanno conducted beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Some geographers have endeavored to identify it with the Stachyris of Ptolemy. The Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth century, however, concerned themselves very little with these specu- lations ; the objects which they sought were gold and slaves, and — incidentally — the conversion of the natives. From the period of the first discovery of the Senegal up to the middle of the sixteenth century the Portuguese were the only Europeans who navigated and traded in these seas : their influence is testified to to this day by traces of their language in certain words of the native idioms. Their heritage — when they became exhausted by their century of gigantic efforts — fell to the French ; laut it does not appear that the eight companies, successively organized in that nation, between 1626 and 1758, for the exploitation of the trade of the Senegal, were actuated by any larger motives than those of the Portuguese. Their establishments in this region fell into the hands of the English in the latter year, were re-conquered in 1777, and again lost during the wars of the First Empire. In 181 7 they finally returned to the French, but the celebrated wreck of the frigate La Meduse^ which was carrying out the officials and the 122 SiGNARE AND SLAVES AT THE SEA-BaTHS, SAINT-LOUIS. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 12' troops which were to receive them from the hands of the English, was long regarded as a sinister type of the fate reserved for the French power in these latitndes. At the end of two centuries of occupation, indeed, the establishment is not yet a veritable colony. No emigrants are attracted by the fertility of the country. The few European residents, some hundred at the most, dwell upon a sandy island, without soil, without trees or herbage. They are not proprietors of the soil, and have no wish to be. They are there but for the doubtful profits of a commerce that does not prosper, and they leave the spot the moment their means enable them to do so. The city of Saint-L,ouis was founded by the original French companies, who made great efforts to develop its commerce. The ancient fort of Saiiit-Eouis, which is situated on the island of the same name, to-day a barracks and warehouse, was the beginning of the town. The residence of the governor, which has been erected on one of its facades, is in urgent need of repair. The streets follow as closely as possible the shore, and were formerly so near the level of the water that they were frequently submerged. Large storehouses, filled with merchandise, are ranged along the quays, and there are two bridges that communicate with the adjoining shores. That of Guet-N'dar is permanent; but that thrown across the large arm of the sea, in 1865 — shown in the illustration — is supported on boats and serves as a drawbridge. The native population presents specimens of most of the types that inhabit the shores of the Senegal. The mixture of Europeans and natives has produced a race of mulattoes that carefully The Bridge of Sor, Saint-Louis. preserve the modes of life of their fathers. The women are designated by the Portuguese name of Signares (Ladies), and cover with some of the old aristocratic names of France, "the unrestrained luxury, the easy morals, the profound ignorance and the dangerous fascinations of these Eves, black, brown and yellow, of Africa and the Orient." The traders and the signares formerly possessed a multitude of slaves, who were emancipated in 1848, and who have gone to swell the ranks of the martgoHers, the small traders who traverse in their boats the inland rivers to barter with the natives. The whole of the region lying north of the Gulf of Guinea, including Senegambia, consists of a strip of flat country backed by mountains. The breadth of this flat strip varies from about thirty to seventy miles; and the first break in the level consists of ranges of hills from the tops of which can be descried the rugged and densely wooded table mountains of the interior. The shore itself is almost uniformly low and flat, the principal exception being the rocky peninsula of Sierra Leone, which owes its name — meaning "lion's ridge" — to the constant roaring of the surf which beats against its sides. Where the coast turns southward the mountains — the lofty Cameroon Mountains and those to the west of the Fan country — advance. nearer to the shore, although here also, at the mouths of the rivers, there are considerable plains. This region of Western Africa is one of the hottest parts of the globe, and one of the most unhealthy for Euro- peans; dangerous even for natives of the African interior. In Senegambia the temperature in the shade rises to 97° Fahr., and in some parts of Guinea to 102°. On all this coast south-west 124 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. I'oRT Bakel, Senegal River. winds prevail the whole jear round; but during our winter months they are feeble and often local, and occasionally during this period different parts of the coast are visited by a violent wind, called the hariuallan, which blows from the interior and is heavily charged with choking dust. During our summer months the south-west winds blow with much greater strength and violence, and discharge immense quantities of rain accompanied by tremendous thunder-storms. The course of the Senegal was explored in 1863 by a French na\al officer, M. Mage, who was charged with the mission of opening up, if possible, a line of communication between the posts on the upper Senegal and those on the upper Niger, especially with Bamakou, which seemed to offer the most promising results. The object of the expedition was to determine the feasibility of supplanting by this route the commerce of Morocco with the Soudan, which is forced to cross the entire width of the Sahara. M. Mage left Saint-Louis, the 12th of October, on a small gunboat. La Couleirjriiie, with a part of his stores, the remainder having preceded him in charge of his laptots^ or native sailors. On the igtli he arrived at the fort of Bakel, where he purchased the only available horse, and received his last instructions — "Depart as quickly as possible and proceed as rapidly as 3'ou can before the hot season arrives, and endeavor to reach the Niger." On the 26th he left Bakel for Medine, the last French station on the river, and where alone he could hope to organize definitely his little caravan. On the loth of January, after innumerable fatigues, he abandoned the course of the river and struck off east- ward, through an unknown country, towards the important town of Sego, on the Niger. The region he traversed had never before been visited by Europeans, excepting in some places by Mungo Park. The inhabitants received him generally with great curiosity, but hospitably, and his route was only obstructed by the innumerable minor inconveniences that always attend the march of explorers. The first place of importance at which he halted was Diangounte, formerly an independent kingdom, but then tributary to Sego ; the Bambaras, the ancient lords of the soil, living in straw huts outside the walls of the capital city. The other natives were mostly Soninkds. The population of the large village of Tidfougoula, a few marches farther eastward, was composed entirely of these people, with a few Peuhls and Moors ; the latter being merely salt traders passing through the country. The former were distinguished by having adopted what might be designated as the Bambara blazon, i.e., three gashes in the cheek, from the temple to the chin ; and they also wore the boioque, a ring of gold, of copper, or even of wax. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 125 passed through the cartilage of the nose, exactly in the manner of that used in civilized countries for cattle. This custom seems to be prevalent throughout Western Soudan, from Timbuktu to the Kong Mountains and the basin of the Senegal. At Toumboula, a town till then unmarked on any map, and the chief place of the little fertile province of Laraba-lake, the route of the expedition changed from eastward to southward, heading for the important town of Yamina, a short distance above Sego, on the upper Niger. At his first view of this river M. Mage was much disappointed. Instead of the immense stream which Mungo Park had described, he saw only a current of some six hundred yards' width flowing between two long banks of sand. It was not till later that he reflected that Mungo Park, on both his visits, had seen the river in the middle of winter, when it is swollen by the rains and when it attains the width of two thousand yards. In Yamina the travellers were received with overwhelming curiosity by the populace, Soninkes and Moors, and with great courtesy by one of the chiefs of the town, Simbara Sacco, the aged chief of all the Saccos, a clan or great family among the Soninkes. After having recovered somewhat from his fatigue and performed some very uecessar)- ablutions, the explorer proceeded to view some of the sights of the town, beginning with the markets and the butcher-shops. The proprietors of the various small shops ranged around a large, square, open place, sat on mats, and displayed on other mats in front of them, or suspended by hooks on the walls, the objects of their commerce — salt, glass beads, stuffs, paper, sulphur, flintlock muskets, rings of copper or silver for the ears, the nose, the fingers or the toes, collars and girdles, bands for the forehead ornamented with small pearls, and native cotton stuffs woven, from the finest to the coarsest. In one corner was a ,^ public barber who wielded, with marvellous adroit- ness, razors brought from Sierra Leone, which he had softened in the fire to sharpen. He even shaved the head of a baby, hung on its mother's back, and, despite its piercing cries and its constant move- ments, without a cut — and without anything in the shape of soap. Farther on was a mender of cala- bashes; next him a salt merchant, who was occupied in breaking up methodically, with a species of very small adze, his merchandise, which he then ranged regularly in little piles, of which the price varied from five cowries to one and two hundred. The butcher-shops were not the least curious part of the market. They were ranged all on one side of the square, and differed from the others in their arrangement only by the stakes, furnished with natural hooks on which the meat was suspended, and by the furnaces placed either under their hangings or just before, and on which the flesh was being grilled, from the smallest pieces up to the largest. These furnaces were circular in shape and built of clay. On top were placed transverse pieces of hard wood, which served as gridirons and on which the meat cooked with much smoke. Generally the ox is killed before the shop, in the middle of the market-place. According to the Mohammedan custom, the legs are fettered and the beast thrown down, the head facing the east. A marabout — who receives in payment a portion of the meat — then cuts the throat, murmuring an invocation or simply the word Bissimilahi. Some of the butchers afterwards "blow" the beef with their mouths ; but this is a refinement that is not always prac- tised, even in the market, and scarcely ever elsewhere. The carcass is then skinned and cut up. The blood is saved with much care in calabashes. That which escapes is conducted by a trench into a hole, where is sometimes placed an earthenware vessel to receive it. Nothing is wasted ; not the intestines, which go to make a sort of black pudding in which no blood is used but pieces of tripe, nor the spleen, nor the lungs, which are dried in the sun to serve, when ver>' "high," as seasoning for the national dish of lack-lallo. The blood is boiled and clotted, and Young Woman of the Soninkes. 126 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. sold in small portions to be used either as seasoning for other dishes or to be eaten by itself. The liver is grilled and eaten au nature!. These portions, which are sold cooked, are those bought by the poor. In the villages along the Senegal no one will eat any meat that has not been killed either on his own place or that of his relatives; and whoever has any money may eat of such portions as his means allow. After a repose of two or three days, M. Mage set out again, this time in two pirogues, or native boats, to descend the river to Sego. He was much disappointed at first to find the channel so shallow at that season of the year— February— as to forbid the passage of the lightest draught steamer; but from the village of Mamauabougou, a short distance below Yamina, the depth was o-reat enough to allow barges of twenty tons to pass during the entire year. The travellers found Sego to differ materially from the description given by Mungo Park, and their appearance excited even more attention from the crowd than it had done in Yamina. The banks of the river in front of the town presented a spectacle of animation unlike anything they had seen since leaving Saint-Louis. After having paid their respects to the king Ahmadou, who received them civilly, they were conducted by His Majesty's chief oflficer and engineer. Samba N'diaye, to his own house, where they were to be lodged. This they found to consist of a series of one-story dwellings built of clay, with a sort of scaffolding of hard wood and a terrace on top; the whole tolerably well constructed. "The doors, excepting those of entry, were no more than a metre sixtv centimetres in height. They were closed by panels of wood composed of two or three planks held together by wooden bars and iron nails. Iron locks that had come from Saint-Louis had been provided for them. The first court, into which we entered by a little shed serving as a doorway, had been set aside for our use. On the right was the communication with the dwelling or court of the women ; on the left a long shed forming a gallery the whole length of the court- yard, that is to say, six metres long by two metres and a half in width. This shed conducted to our particular dwelling, a chamber three metres in length by four in width, in one corner of which I noticed a sort of chimney. Two beds furnished with mats of millet straw had been prepared for us. A second low doorway, opening out of the chamber, gave access to another courtyard, in one corner of which opened a passage covered with mats,.which led to a storehouse, or millet granary, in which I placed our merchandise. My men installed themselves in the court and luider the veranda, and for greater convenience dislodged Samba N'diaye's horse, The Butcher-Shops at Yamina. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 127 The House of Samba N'diaye, at Sego. which was fastened in the middle of the court. A ladder of rough wood, composed of two twisted sticks to which the rounds were fastened by thongs of iintanned leather, served to ascend to the terrace on top, where our host had constructed a wooden shelter, covered with a matting roof, in which to sleep in the fresh air without danger from the humidit)-. All this, though somewhat rough, showed intelligence. There were, in the iron locks to the doors and in certain other details, reminiscences of that which Samba N'diaye had observed in the dwellings of the whites."- In this city M. Mage was detained by the king for nearly two years, and it was not until after exhausting all the resources of his diplomacy, backed by presents and further instructions from the French authorities in Senegal, accompanying Ahmadou on two of his campaigns, and seeing the army of one of his allies. El Hadj, totally destroyed by the powerful tribe of the Macina, to the eastward of Sego, that he succeeded in procuring permission for his departure. Previously, however, he negotiated with the king a treaty of friendship, securing the free passage through the royal territories of goods and travellers ; and on his return to Saint-Louis, May 28, 1866, was gratified to learn that he had been rewarded with the grade of Officer of the Legion of Honor. The British settlements on the west coast of Africa are tho.se at the mouth of the Gambia, those on the Sierra Leone coast, including the peninsula of Sierra Leone itself, the whole of the Gold Coast, and the coast on each side of Lagos, with Lagos itself The Gambia and Sierra Leone settlements form together the West African settlements, which are under a governor resident at Free Town. Sierra Leone consists chiefly of a peninsula, about twenty-five miles long from north to south, and about twelve broad ; but several islets, as the Isles de Loss and the Banana Islands, belong to it. The area is about three hundred square miles. The population includes only a very few whites. The peninsula is bounded on the north by the Sierra Leone River, and on the south by Calmont Creek and Yanry Bay. Along the coast stretches a belt of rich, low-lying land, and elsewhere in the colony there are fertile tracts ; but the interior is a mass of rugged mountains with a generally barren soil. The climate is humid and unhealthy; the wet season, lasting from May to November, being specially pestilential. Tropical fruits and plants grow luxuriantly in the more favorable regions, and coffee, sugar, indigo and cotton have been introduced by the English. The colony is divided into numerous parishes, ministered to by about twenty clergymen, and superintended by the bishop of Sierra Leone. The govern- 128 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. ment rests in tlie liands of a Crown-appointed governor, assisted by a council, of a ver}- limited number of members. The settlement of Sierra Leone was established in 1787, when four luindred and seventy destitute negroes were removed to it from London by a body of philanthropists, and one thousand one hundred and ninety-six negroes were sent to it from Nova Scotia — the climate of which had proved too severe for them — in 1790. The population was also increased by other bandsof people of color; and after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the slaves captured by British cruisers were put ashore and settled here. In 1820 the settlement contained only twelve thousand inhabitants, or less than a third of the present population. Between 1830 and 1848 thirty-five thousand captured slaves were landed here. It has been calculated that, taking the sixty thousand in all that were released during these eighteen years as a basis, not less than one hundred and forty thousand blacks were delivered during the fift)' years in which the slavers were hunted by the European navies. These captives, as we have seen, became the foundation of the colonv of Sierra Leone; but the extreme mortality that prevailed among them has served to diminish ver\- greatly the present population. The charity of the English people has done a %, \ Women of the Macina Tribe. great deal for these unfortunates. The numerous schools and churches that ornament the streets of Free Town testify to the zeal and the power of the religious and charitable organizations that have interested themselves in this work. All religious beliefs are tolerated in the colony; and its trade is open to all the world. Free Town, the capital, is situated upon a little bay, formerly known as the ba\- of the French. The mountains which surround it have been, within the last forty years, almost entirely cleared of the forests which formerly clothed them from base to summit. The white walls of the town offer a striking contrast to the sombre color of the huts of the freed slaves and of the Kroomen, who come to Sierra Leone to seek service on the coasting vessels. "As soon as the anchor is dropped, a fleet of small boats," says a traveller, "swarm around the steamer, awaiting with impatience the moment when the commissioner of quarantine shall have completed his examination of the captain. It is truly curious to see the imperturbability with which this commissioner fulfils his functions, and it seems to be a purely superfluous operation, for the germs of the most virulent character develop themselves spontaneously in the climate of this African metropolis. Situated at the limit of the trade-winds, the climate is subject to periodical AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 129 calms preceding aud following the changes of the winds which alternate in these latitudes and give birth to the most terrible epidemics. Scarcely is the signal of free entry hoisted on shore than this hybrid population precipitates itself on board like a torrent. You need not be surprised if, descending into your state-room, you find a fat negress comfortably installed there. It is only the washerwoman, come to offer you her services. ' ' The land on which the freed slaves are established was ceded to the African Company by the Timanies, whose country, small in extent, is bounded on the north and the east by the Kouranko and the Soulimana, and is divided among four chiefs. The principal towns are Rokon and Maboury, of which the population does not exceed two or three thousand souls. All inheritance is collateral among them; the nation is prepossessing, and the women are pretty and amiable. In the villages of the interior the boys go naked to the waist ; a light stuff around the hips is tied behind. The girls are quite nude up to seven or eight years of age, when they put on a light floating scarf around their hips, which they tighten when they marry. The women were formerly often obliged to go uncovered from the impossibility of procuring sufficient covering for them- selves. The married men wear cotton drawers and a hat. The "Grain Coast" — so called not from the presence of any kind of cereal, but because it is the region whence are exported cardamoms, or grains of paradise — extends from Sherboro to Cape Palmas. It is inhabited by three or four tribes which differ but little from each other. These are the Weys, the Deys and the Golas, the Menas, or, as they are more commonly called, the Kroomen, and the Grebos. The traits which these peoples possess in common are the facility with which they enter into communication with Europeans and their willingness to serve as sailors in the white man's ships. On board every vessel navigating the sea which washes the west coast of Africa, specimens of this race may be found. They are the seamen, canoe-men and porters of the Coast ; the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the languid seamen, and about the only West African race which is at once able and willing to work, either for the white man or for itself They are said to have originally come from the far interior, into which they stretch for some distance. Whether this is so or not — and there is great probability that, like many of the Coast tribes, they have originally pushed their way from the east — a number of small tribes have now merged into them, and in course of time, owing to their habit of taking ser\-ice on board the ships navigating the Coast, they have become partially civilized. They are excellent boatmen, and navigate through the wild surf, which lines the West African coast like a wall, their long, narrow canoes with a skill which excites the admiration of all who have ever seen it. Their general appearance has been graphically described by Captain Burton. "Conceive," he says, "the head of a Socrates or a Silenus upon the body of the Antinous or the Apollo Belvedere. Free Town, the Capital of Sierra Leone. I30 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. A Krooman Village. A more magnificent development of muscle, such perfect symmetry in the balance of grace and strength, my eyes have never yet looked upon. But the faces ! Except when lighted up by smiles and good humor — expression to an African face is all in all — nothing could be more unprepossessing. The flat nose, the high cheek-bones, the yellow ej'es, the chalky white teeth, pointed like the shark's, the muzzle protruding like that of a dog-monkey, combine to form an unusual amount of ugliness. To this may be added the tribe-mark — a blue line of cuts, half an inch broad, from the forehead scalp to the nose-tip, in some cases extending over both lips to the chin, whence they are called 'blue noses;' whilst a broad arrow or wedge, pointed to the face, and also blue, occupies each temple just above the zygomata. The marks are made with a knife ; little cuts into which the oily husk of a gum is rubbed. Their bodies are similarly orna- mented with stars and other European emblems, especially with broad double lines down the breast and other parts." They work hard and live sparingly, so as to be able, when they are discharged, to go home, purchase a wife or two, and live like "Jack ashore" for a time, until their money is all spent, when they again ship in the first vessel that requires their ser\-ices. Hence the\- say of them- selves that they are "nigger for ship, king for country." On board the English men-of-war they usually ship for a term of three years. Longer than this period they do not usually care to serve, as at the expiration of that time their longing for "me country" has become so strong that tliey nmst once again taste the delights of shore life. The Grebos, or Greboe, are a branch of the Krooman stock, somewhat taller and more slender, in general. Their tribe is divided into a dozen families, each one under the authority of the most aged man. Theirs is a common treasun,-, replenished by the earnings of the younger men who serve as sailors on the European vessels. Polygamy is universal among all these tribes. Tlie influence of a man is proportioned to the number of matrimonial alliances which he can make ; and a large number of fathers-in-law contributes greatly to his social standing. ]\Iore- AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 131 over, the domestic economy, they claim, requires more than one worker ; a single wife would be overwhelmed with the duties of her household. "When there are only two of them," explained one of these husbands, "they are always disputing; hence we are obliged to get another to furnish a counter- weight. Then they range themselves two against one, and the equilibrium is not re-established till we furnish a fourth. The number four symbolizes the harmony perfect." It is the opinion of more disinterested witnesses, however, that the four wives do not long delay to set. themselves in pitched battle, two against two; for the African woman is generally of a combative disposition. The houses of the Grebos and Kroomen are large, well ventilated and surrounded with little enclosures and plantations ; they are quadrangular in form and show some evidences of architectural skill. This is generally true as far south as the Gaboon. On the Gold Coast the walls of the houses are ornamented with various designs. One of the institutions of the Ivory Coast — on the river Gle, or Baoule, or Baoure — is an establishment of fetish women. The French Vice- Admiral Fleuriot de Langle says that he was informed by his Krooman chief that the fetish queen applies to her legs a sort of cautery, which induces a species of artificial elephantiasis, and that the adventurous native who desires a talisman against all dangers applies to her for an infallible one, which she furnishes from the issue of her swollen limbs. The establishment of which she is chief is named Bojtlingbe. It is inhabited by women vowed to celibacy, and who live in couples in separate huts. The male sex is strictly forbidden to enter these precincts, which are surrounded by high tapades. The tapade is a screen of straw, supported by stakes driven into the ground, and at least six feet in height. Each head of family surrounds her dwelling with this screen, and the fear of the fetish amulets combines with the law and custom to keep these precincts inviolable. As the numbers of these nuns have to be perpetuated, however, the inference is strong that the law is not always observed. The girls that are born in this community are educated with care for their future profession; but the boys are sacrificed to this African Moloch. The mountains of the Grebo country abound in sacred grottoes; one of them being celebrated in all the neighboring districts for its efficacy in giving fruitfulness to wives. The natives, for the most part, have little religion of an}- kind. By long contact with the whites many of them have learned to give up their old superstitions, and the}- have adopted little in their place. A good deal of the old religion, common to all West Africa, still remains, however, in the inland districts. Fetishes are, of course, an institution ; and demons, or evil spirits, to whom offerings of beads, tobacco and rum are made, are regarded with great awe. The Kroomen will not eat the hearts of animals, nor drink their blood. Though a great liar in the ordinary' walks of life, yet on high occasions he considers his word binding if fortified by an oath in the following manner : He dips one of his fingers in salt, points first to the sky, then to the earth — as if invoking both heavenly and terrestrial powers to witness the vow — and finally A Fetish Woman. ,32 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. puts tlie tip of the finger in his mouth. This oath is looked upon as one of great sanctity, and is not usually broken — unless under circumstances of great temptation. After a Krooman dies, a fire is kept up beside his house and food is placed beside his grave ; both the fire and the food being intended for the use of the spirit either before or while it is journeying to the land of the hereafter. Cattle are also sacrificed at his funeral; for he will take rank in the land of spirits in e.\act proportion to the amount of property with which he enters it. How otherwise is his former condition in Krooman's land to be known? Sometimes he will return to earth — his soul having entered into a little child. This is only, however, if he has been a good man. If a bad one — a wizard practising the black art illegally, for example — he is doomed to wander through dismal swamps and drear\- wastes for an indefinite period. No man, however, enters directly into the land of spirits ; there is a transitionary purgatory through which he must pass. This is Kwiga Oran, or the City of Ghosts. In it the best of men must pass a certain time before the gates of the Krooman paradise open to him. This belief in the transmigration of souls is common to many African tribes. The Ashantees, for example, say that "Kra," or the soul of man, existed before the body, and is transmitted from one man to another, so that the soul which left the body of an old man may have entered that of the child just bora. The priest will augur in regard to the destiny of the babe yet unborn, by asking its future Kra as to its fortune in life. The soul is even distinct from the body, and can give advice — either good or bad — according to its sex (for there are male and female Kras), to the body which it inhabits. Evil spirits and ghosts are what the West Africans mostly fear ; and to avert their displeasure, resort is had to charms and fetishes, which may be anything, from a human sacrifice to a pot of filth compounded by the fetish priest. At the entrance to towns, dwellings and all places of public resort are fetishes to avert evil ; and the pathway of the English army, in the Ashantee war, all the way to Coomassie, the capital, was strewn and littered with fetishes to avert calamity from the nation and to prevent the sacred city being reached by the invaders. THE prevailing characteristic of the surface of Africa is the extent of its plateaux. These cover much more than three-fourths of the entire surface, and though they vary greatly in elevation, often present vast areas of nearly uniform level. The lowlands are found chiefly in the west and north of the Sahara and in narrow strips on the coast; and the mountain chains are comparatively insignificant. The latter seldom rise to any great height above the surrounding plateaux, and in one case only — the range behind the Zanzibar coast, including Mounts Kenia and Kilimanjaro — do they attain an absolute elevation exceeding that of the Alps. Even the Sahara, the great rainless desert of northern Africa, is now known to resemble in its superficial features the continent as a whole. Formerly, this region was conceived as an undeviating sandy plain dotted over here and there with speck-like oases ; but recent explorations have shown it to consist mainly of plateaux, surmounted in some places by isolated summits and traversed in others by mountain chains, while its surface exhibits great diversity in other respects beside that of elevation. As to its physical geography, it has been subdivided into the following districts: r. The Hants Plateaux, or Steppes, a series of high levels skirting the base of the Atlas Mountains. 2. The land of the Dayats, or waterless oases, stretching south to the high- lands on the south bank of the Wed Mzi, or Djidi. 3. The region of the southern oases, to the south of the former, and extending south till it loses itself in the desert. The principal feature of the Sahara is the Wed Mzi, which rises in the Djebel Amour, and after an east, north-east and finally south-east course, falls into the Chott Melr' hir. Throughout almost the whole of its course, which is about four hundred miles long, it flows under ground. Its waters seem to rest on a bed of hard limestone, from thirty to sixty feet below the surface. The Libyan Desert, though it contains a series of depressions below sea-level running east and west, yet lies in great part at a considerable height above sea-level. From the depressions just mentioned it rises very gradually, to the eye imperceptibly, towards the south, and in the oasis of Kufra, in about lat. 25° N., attains an elevation of about thirteen hundred feet. The most extensive areas below a thousand feet in height lie in the west, to the south of Morocco, and in the north, between southern Algeria and the Nile. In the north-west of Timbuktu a AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 133 large area known as El Jouf (the body of the desert), an area partly occupied by sand-downs and partly covered with saline incrustations, is suspected to be below sea-level. This has not yet, however, been definitely ascertained, and — besides the depressions in the Libyan Desert already mentioned — the chotts^ or shotts, of Tunis and Algeria extending westward from the Lesser Syrtis, are the only areas belonging to the Sahara actually known to be below the level of the sea. With regard to the diversity exhibited by the surface of the Sahara, apart from mere differ- ences of elevation, it may be said that the desert is very far from being composed entirely of sand. In the highest elevations of the Sahara the sandy tracts are comparatively limited in extent. But the region is in most parts none the less desolate on that account. Enormous areas consist either of hammada or serir ; the former being tracts in which the surface consists entirely of rocks or sharp-edged stones; the latter, those in which the surface is entirely covered with pebbles. Both are perfectly destitute of vegetation. The principal sandy areas form a girdle around this central triangle, but a girdle which is far from being continuous. Even in the Libyan Desert, where, if anywhere, real sand oceans — according to Gerhard Rohlfs, the explorer most intimately acquainted with this part of the desert — are to be found, such tracts are considerably less extensive than the vast expanses of serir, or pebbly wastes, while in the west and north of the Sahara the sands are far surpassed in extent by the hammadas. The habitable spots within the area of the desert are known as oases, or wadies, and these spots owe their existence to various conditions. They cannot exist except where water is present and the surface of the ground fit for vegetation, but sometimes this combination is furnished by nature, and sometimes it can be brought about by artificial means — as we have already seen. In the former case, the water is supplied either by superficial or subterranean streams. Oases of the first kind are the most luxu- riant of all, but they are found only on the slopes of the great mountain ranges, especially on the south slopes of the Atlas. The number and extent of oases in the Sahara have been found by recent travellers to be much greater than was formerly sup- posed. Even in the dreary Libyan Desert Rohlfs was surprised at the diversity of surface which he found to exist, and the number of oases that he visited or otherwise learned the existence of Between about 24° and 26° N. and 21° and 22,%° E. in this desert there are a whole group of oases, the cultivable area of which has been estimated at nearly seven thousand square miles, or considerably greater than the kingdom of Saxony and not very far short of that of Wales. The date palm, the special characteristic of the oases of the Sahara, has its home, according to Rohlfs, in these fertile spots of the Libyan Desert, the only places in which it is still to be seen in a wild state. But throughout the Sahara it now forms the r-^x^x Date Palm in uasis. '34 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. NicHT IN THE Desert. principal means of subsistence. There are numerous salt lagoons in the northern part of the Sahara. The climate of Africa is mainly influenced by the fact that, except the countries on the north and south coasts, it lies almost entirely within the tropics. It is the only continent that extends unbroken frcn the northern to the southern tropic, and is, consequently, the hottest of all. In the belt immediately under the equator, both north and south, extending for about ten degrees each way, rain is abundant, and remains standing in pools for months. To the north and south of this equatorial belt the rainfall diminishes -till we come to the rainless regions of the Sahara, as well as the Nile valley on the north and to the Kalihari Desert in the south, extending beyond the tropics and bordering on the agricultural and pastoral countries of the north and south coasts, which lie entirely in the temperate zones. The whole region of Sahara is not, however, abso- lutely rainless. Regular, though very deficient, rains fall both on the western strip contiguous to the Atlantic, and on the south, within an arc of a circle whose highest point is about 19° N. and 6° E. This area is said to be steadily increasing. The winds and rains in Africa are chiefly produced h\ the successive exposure of the various intertropical belts to the vertical rays of the sun. The monsoons of the Indian Ocean exercise the principal modifying influence. From March to September the south-west monsoon blows from Africa to Asia, and during the remaining months the north-east monsoon blows towards the African coasts. The chief cause of the rainlessness of the desert is the direction of the winds. In the Sahara the prevailing winds are more or less easterly, which is due to the fact that the uniformity of level, which generally characterizes large areas of the desert, admits of the trade-winds blowing over its surface with almost the same regularity as over the ocean. And these winds have in both cases the same rainless character. Coming from the dry regions of Central Asia they have not nnich moisture to begin with, and owing to the direction in which they blow they are always moving farther and farther from the point of saturation, and, con- sequently, even the mountains which they meet wirii in their course over the desert are not sufficient to produce local condensation. In the Kalihari, again, the prevailing winds are from the south and south-west, which is due to the influence of the cold current that ascends along the west coast of Africa. There is an almost constant indraught of cold air from above this current towards the heated and rarefied atmosphere of the Kalihari, and as this current also, like that which blows over vSahara, is charged with little moisture and at the same time moves farther and farther from the point of saturation, it lets fall no rain over the inland region towards which it blows. And even when the influence of the south-east trade-wind is felt in this area, no rain is received in consequence, for that wind has previously been drained of its moisture by the mountains of the Cape region. The absence of rain is, however, to some extent compensated by liBKl i ::■'-;: is J ft*'' ''-Fill If 1- ft!;!:' v'l,!iii'- i;6 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. the deposition of dew. The rapid radiation of heat in the desert causes a ver}- great fall of temperature after the sun is down, so that sometimes frosts are generated, and a fall of dew is the consequence. Another characteristic of the desert regions is the generation at times of scorching winds, those of northern Africa — which blow from the south and are called in different localities ^r/^// or XV/^wj/'//— afflicting Egypt and the countries on the IMediterranean coast. Fez- zan, on the contrary, enjoys periodic rains from the moist winds of the IMediterranean, which extend farther into the continent here than elsewhere. The average breadth of the Sahara, from north to south, is about a thousand miles. Its length, from the Atlantic to the western edge of the valley of the Nile, is two thousand. The caravans which carrv- on the commerce of the desert frequently consist of from five hundred to two thou- sand camels, with their attendants. The easiest route southward to Soudan runs from Tripoli through the kingdom of Fezzan to Lake Chad. Some of the larger oases support thousands of inhabitants— independent tribes of Moors, Berbers and Arabs — living in villages. The Nubian deserts are those of Korosko and Bahiuda, or Bayudah. The natives of this region and the Soudan divide their deserts into two classes, eljebel., the mountain, and cl barriyeh, the wilderness. The Arabs give the name of the atmoor to the utterly barren kind of desert. "This is trulv the ideal desert, consisting mainly of hard gravel plains diversified by zones of deep sand, rocky ridges, sometimes of considerable altitude, and rugged defiles. It is absolutely destitute of all vegetation, and, consequenth-, of animal life. Only the ostrich and hyena cross it swiftly by night, and the vulture hovers over the caravans by day. Not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass relieves the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow sand. No one can resist the solemn impression of deep silence and infinite space produced by the desert. When night has come, and the soldiers and Bedouins are asleep in their bivouacs, walk away under the unequalled African moon beyond the first ridge of sand or rocks. Around you stretches a boundless sea-like horizon. The sand gleams almost as white as snow. Not a sound falls upon the ear, not the murmur of a breeze, not the rustle of leaf or grass, not the hum of the smallest insect. Silence — only silence — as profound as death, unless it is broken by the howl of a prowling hyena or the distant roar of the king of beasts." The desert of Korosko is crossed by the caravans which avoid the detour made by the great westerly bend of the Nile by leaving the river at Korosko — between the first and second cataracts — one of the chief towns of Nubia. The peculiar formations of this desert come up to the banks of the river ; an aggregation of mountains, constructed in horizontal layers and issuing from the sand in a wilderness of conical peaks, intersected by a labyrinth of tortuous defiles. A French traveller describes the effect of the sinking sun upon these peaks, at the end of his first f f1» ^T A * Mirage in the Desert — Mountains of Limestone. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. m Protecting the Crops. day's journey in the desert: "The summits of these crests and cones were all distinguished one from the other by slightly varying tints. Some shaded themselves in rose, in blue ; others in green, in gray, etc., and mingled with others of which the golden sand-covered tops pointed upwards. These accidental tints were more or less merged in the vapory hues of the sky, and produced the most charming effect. All this scene was crowned with the resplendent vault of the sky, in which gleamed the last rays of the sun. "I remained a long time on the summit, enjoying all the gradual transitions of this excep- tional scene of nature, and I witnessed one of the most magnificent sunset effects that it is possible to imagine. The great luminary, whose burning ardor during the day we had so cursed, tipped all these desolate peaks with tints so soft, so beautiful, that I could not take myself away, and I was tempted to repent of my first appreciation of a country in which the charms of the evening furnished so fair a compensation for the fatigues of the day." Even the desert has its beautiful aspects, and another of them is the well-known mirage, which, however, mocks the traveller while it enchants his eye. The reflection of the rays of light from the denser layer of air above him projects on the sandy plain before him pools of still water, palm trees, hillsides, fertile spots that quicken his already burning thirst. Sometimes they are mountain peaks of dazzling whiteness, as if of marble or limestone. Often they appear, several at a time, in all points of the horizon. The fertility of the oases is often in sudden and sharp contrast with the desolation that surrounds them. The fertile soil yields an abundant harvest to the scanty tilling. In some of the districts bordering on the Nubian Desert, however, this harvest is disputed with its legitimate owner by innumerable birds and tnonkeys. The latter are so many and so enterprising that the most active watchfulness will not always prevent their depredations ; even the houses are not exempt from their predatory incursions. If the householder turn his back to his door without 138 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. fastening it, or go oflF to a little distance, the monkeys embrace the opportunity to slip inside and lay their paws on whatever strikes their fancy. Provisions, even if hidden, are almost certainly discovered and carried off. If they are surprised in the midst of their larcenies they conceal themselves behind any available object and watch their chance to escape with a mar\-ellous quickness, even between the legs of the astonished owner. The multitude of birds is no less a constant danger to the growing crops. In order to preserve them for himself as they approach mattiritv, the husbandman is obliged to have recourse to a somewhat singular method. In the middle of his field he sets up on two or three uprights a perch high enough to enable him to overlook the space to be i^rotected. To this he mounts by rough steps or projections on the uprights, and overhead he constructs of branches a shelter from the burning heat of the sun. From the level of this little platform long cords radiate out to the confines of the field, where they are attached to high stakes or to convenient trees. To them are fastened various fluttering and glittering objects, calculated, when agitated, to scare the birds, and the watchman, sitting in this perch like a spider in the midst of his web, keeps these cords in agitation one after another, from morning to night, in order to keep at a distance the feathered thieves. Without this precaution, it is said, it would be impossible to secure the crops ; and even with it, a considerable portion of the harvest is often carried away. The wide stretches of the desert afford admirable facilities for coursing in some localities; and this method of hunting was formerly much in favor with the Arabs, as it was with the Persians. The game is usualh- antelopes, or gazelles; sometimes hares and partridges or other small birds. These are hunted with both hawks and hounds ; the former carried on the fist, and the latter held in leash by an attendant until the proper moment arrives to slip them. The antelope is one of the fleetest of quadrupeds, and the rapidity of the first burst of the chase is described as astonishing. The curse of Africa is the slave trade, and despite the efforts of the civilized nations to check it, it has flourished for three centuries and, so late as the commencement of the year 1889, signalized its vigor by a fresh outbreak, in which it secured tangible successes by the establish- ment of a great slave mart close to Bagamoyo, and the attack on the Dares-Sakem station, both on the coast of Zanzibar. In the latter, not only were a hundred captured natives sold into slaver}', but some of the missionaries themselves. Nearly the whole continent is scored over by the tracks of the Arab slave dealers, who penetrate far into the interior in search of slaves and ivory, and who have even depopulated entire districts in the interior with fire and sword. The magnitude of this evil has induced Germany, within the last few years, to present to the Relay of Hunting-Dogs in the Desert. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 139 great powers of Europe a plan for cooperation in its suppression. England, France and Portugal have resjjonded, and Cardinal Lavigerie took upon himself, in behalf of the Pope, to induce the other nations to join in the combined movement. It is to be regretted that the United States has, as yet, taken no action in this cause, although previous to the Civil War, Amer- ican war-vessels cooperated with those of Great Britain in the suppression of the slave trade between the west coast of Africa and America. The demand for slaves in the Mohammedan countries neces- sarily requires a supply, and this traffic has long been the most lucrative carried on in Africa. The attempt to destroy this traf- fic, by dealing with the supply alone, has proved to be very inef- fective. In three centuries, accord- ing to a careful French writer, more than fifty millions of slaves have been stolen from Africa. The principal coun- tries to which they are taken from East Africa are Turkey, Egypt, Persia, Tunis, Morocco and Madagascar. The rulers of each of these countries have at separate times declared their intention of suppressing the traffic within their respective dominions; yet it continues. The real reason of its existence is the indifference of the European powers. It is said that the second generation of negroes is rarely found in Turkey, and that the I40 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. The Slave March — the Abandoned Mother. third is never seen. Hence the demand for fresh victims creates an ever-flowing stream from Africa. Dnring 1888 the whole coast of Zanzibar was blockaded by the united fleets of England, Germany, France and Portugal ; and the English cruisers in the Red Sea have long been the terror of the Arab slave dliows, hundreds of which they have captured, and released the victims confined in their holds. During the latter part of this year the Arabs actually prepared a monster petition to the European powers, complaining of the damage done to their "business" by the Zanzibar blockade; and their outbreak against the German settlements in that state brought that colon)- to the verge of ruin. Tiie Arab dealers proceed in these inland expeditions by a mixture of treachery and force. Very often they combine with one tribe against another; or they suddenly turn on the one with which they have been living in apparent amity for several months. In either case, their fire-arms and superior discipline give them an easy victory. The natives are generally taken by surprise, are shot down without mercy; the survivors, mostly women and children, secured, and the long march to the coast then begun. The captives are usually secured by an adjustment called a shcba, made of a forked pole; the neck of the prisoner fitted into the fork, secured by a cro.ss-piece lashed behind, while the wrists brought together in front of the body are tied to the pole. Sometimes, when nearer the coast, they are merely chained together. The children are sometimes attached by a rope around their necks to their mothers, or trusted to follow them unbound, from natural instinct. To the tortures of thirst, hunger and fatigue, are added, on the march, that overwhelming homesickness wliich is one of the negro's most characteristic qualities, and which, combined with more material ills, serves to break him down in spirit and in body. The old and feeble that fail by the way are either butchered, as we have already seen, or left to a more lingering death in the desert. Pitiful tales have been told by explorers of the anguish of the mothers, thus left behind, at seeing their children carried off" before their eyes, and of the despair of the children thus torn away from their dying parents. Tlie Kalahari is a vast central and uearlv uninhabited tract of countrv Ivinsr between AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 141 Damara Land and Great Namaqua Land on the west and the South African Republic — the Transvaal — and the Orange Free State on the east, and extending from the northern bank of the Orange or Gariep River to the latitude of 21° S., or the verge of the Nganii region, a distance of about six hundred miles, with an average breadth of about three hundred and fifty. As the map of Africa is now divided up among the "claims" of the great European powers, this district is assigned to Great Britain, along with Cape Colon)-, Natal and Zulu Land. It presents some curious physical features quite distinct from other desert regions of the globe. It is a nearly waterless, sandy, but in many places well-wooded region,, on which rain seldom falls, intersected by dr}' water-courses, with a substratum of a tufaceous limestone, and, to all appearances, formerly the bed of an immense lake. Livingstone considered it remarkable for little water and considerable vegetation, and therefore very different from the karroos of the Cape Colony, which have neither water nor verdure, except after heavy rains, and from the bare and sandy deserts of The HoMBORi Mountains. North Africa and Arabia. No mountains or elevations of any considerable height are found in the Kalahari, the general level of which may be considered as about three thousand feet above the sea. The few springs or "sucking-places," which here and there are found, are generally carefully concealed by the Bakillhari, a miserable wandering race of the Betjouana, or Bechuana Bushmen, who roam through the desert in quest of skins of which they make the fur robes called carosses. After heavy rains, herds of elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes are found in the dense thickets, and feed on the succulent wild melons called kcngwe, which then abound there. In the northern parts are immense forests of thorn trees. The Bechuanas are generally of a peaceful, not to say cowardly, disposition and are divided into many tribes under the government of chiefs, who exercise a kind of patriarchal authority over them. According to Dr. Livingstone, the different tribes take their names from certain animals, "showing probably that in former rimes they were addicted to animal worship. The 14: AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. term Bakatla means 'they of the monkey;' Bakuena, 'they of the allij^ator ;' Batlapi, 'they of the fish ;' each tribe having a superstitious dread of the animal after which it is called. They also use the word 'bina,' to dance, in reference to the custom of thus naming themselves, so that, when you wish to ascertain what tribe they belong to, you say, 'What do you dance?' It would seem as if that had been part of the worship of old." Many tribes formerly existing are now extinct, as is evident from names that have now no living representatives. The Bechuaua have a vague notion of a Supreme Being, but no intelligent idea of his attributes. Livingstone describes the tribe to which he attached himself — the Bakuena, or Bakwains, who are favorable specimens of tlie nation — as generally slow "in coming to a decision on religious subjects; but in questions affecting their worldly affairs, they are keenly alive to their own interests." In agricultural matters they are very acute, exhibiting a surprising knowledge of the properties of the soil, as well as of the nature and habits of animals. In their superstitious reverence for their ' ' rain doctors, ' ' and in their inability to construct any but circular huts, they show their affinity with a great many other African tribes. A LARGE part of the interior of Africa is still very imperfectly known ; but at no period has its exploration been carried on with so much vigor by many civilized nations as it is at present. In 1876 an international association for the exploration of the interior of the continent was founded, under the presidency of the king of the Belgians ; and various expeditions have been sent out by this association to operate both from the east and the west coasts. The intention is to establish a number of stations in the interior to serve as bases for further operations. One of these stations has been established on the east side, on ground bought for the purpose, on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika, in about lat. 7° S. ; and another at Tabora, on ground purchased from Arab settlers, in the land of the Unvamwezi. And others have been established on the NiAM-NiAM Hamlet. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 143 Congo, on the west side. On this latter side the operations were under the direction of H. M. Stanley, who founded his first station at Vivi, at the foot of the Yellala Falls, at which point there is now a large trade carried on by means of steamers plying between this station and the mouth of the river. In the same quarter French stations have been founded by Savorgnan de Brazza ; one at Nghimi, near the water-shed between the Ogowe and the Congo, and another upon the Congo itself, at Meuma, or Ntamo, not far from Stanley Pool. On the east side a German station has been founded at Kakoma, in Uganda, between Unjamwezi and Lake Tanganyika. The African Lakes Company was formed in 1878, with the object of opening up and developing the regions of East Central Africa, from the Zambesi to Tanganyika. It has established twelve trading stations, manned by twenty-five Europeans and many native agents. It has started a flourishing coffee plantation in the interior; and it has a steamer on Lake Nyassa, and another on the river Shire. The numerous mission stations in the interior are also of some importance, not only for the immediate object for which they were founded, the Christianization of the natives, but also as bases of operation for the further exploration of the interior. Among the principal of these are : one founded by the Church Missionary Society in the kingdom of Uganda, on the north-west of Lake Victoria N'yanza, at the capital of King Mtesa, whom Stanley claimed to have converted to Christianity ; a station belonging to the same society at Mpwapwa, about a hundred and fifty miles west of Bagamoyo, on the Zanzibar coast ; and another founded in January, 18S1, at Mamboia, about forty miles east of Mpwapwa; a station founded at Urambo, in Unyamwesi, south of the same lake, by the London Missionary Society; another founded by the same society at Ujiji, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika ; and a third at Uguha, north of the Lukuga, on the western shore of the same lake ; several stations on the lower Congo, founded by what is called the Livingstone Inland ]\Iission ; a station named Livingstone, in honor of the celebrated Scotch missionary and explorer, founded on Lake Nyassa by the Free Church of Scotland, in 1875; and a station called Blantyre, after the Scotch village that was his home in boyhood, founded by the Church of Scotland, between the Shire and Lake Shirwa. A whole series of stations now exist between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika; and it is proposed to connect the two lakes by a road. The Victoria N'yanza Mission has introduced a steamer on that lake ; but the hostility shown by the natives, and even by King Mtesa himself, interferes seriously with the work of the mission. All these mentioned are Protestant missions ; but the Church of Rome has also entered the field. In 1879 missionaries, despatched by the archbishop of Algiers, founded a station at Urundi, on the north-west shore of Lake Tanganyika; and in the same year a Jesuit mission started for the Victoria Falls, on the Zambesi. Amongst the earliest of the modern explorers, to whom we owe our knowledge of the interior, is that Dr. Heinrich Barth already mentioned. Both his companions, Mr. Richardson and Dr. Overweg, succumbed to the climate; but Barth, undismayed, continued his explorations four years longer. When he retirrned to Tripoli, in September, 1855, the field of his explorations extended over twenty-four degrees of latitude and twenty of longitude; from Tripoli in the north to Adamawa in the south, and from Bagirmi in the east to Timbuktu in the west; upwards of twelve thousand miles. His researches are among the most extensive ever undertaken in Africa. It was on his return to Timbuktu, in 1855, from Kuka on Lake Chad, that he discovered the very remarkable range of mountains — south of the latter city — figured in the illustration, the first interruption to the general monotony of the landscape. "The 5th of August," he says, "the route becoming more and more marshy, we first perceived some detached cones appearing on the horizon to the north. No inhabitants were to be seen but some Foullanes, watching over their flocks. There was but little culture visible. Then came the picturesque constructions of the Sonray villages ; and, finally, the curious silhouette of the chain of the Hombori Mountains. Without having seen them it would have been impossible for me to have imagined this rampart, of which the highest peaks were not over eight hundred feet above the level of the plain. At first there was nothing particularly striking in their aspect, so that, from a distance, I took them for mere hills ; but very soon my attention was very forcibly drawn towards them. From the summit of a gentle slope, composed of the debris of the rock, rises a perpendicular wall, the top of which, crowned by a terrace, is inhabited b}- the natives, whom no one has been able to subdue. Some sheep and some growing millet, however, seemed to show that these proud mountaineers ,^4 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. sometimes descended from their loftv retreats. From this point a double series of fantastic crests rose along the edge .of the plain, resembling the ruins of mediEeval castles." Farther south in this region the surface is more diversified. In the west of the Soudan the principal tribes are the Man- dingoes, Bambarras and the Fonlbehs, or Fellatahs; the former two inhabiting the upper parts of the Niger basin, and the last, the region enclosed by the great northern bend of that river — a region which, however, is very little known. The Foulbehs also hold in sub- jection the Songhay, or Sonray, to the east of their own territory, and likewise form the dominant race in the states lying to the south-east — Gwandu, Sokoto and Adamawa — where the majority of the inhabitants consist of Haussas in the west and Battas in Adamawa. Both of these tribes are very intelligent and in- dustrious ; but neither of them seems to be endowed with much political abilit}-. The Battas are finely formed and have a skin of a yellowish red color. The Haus- sas are much darker, almost black. In disposition, the latter are sociable and lively ; and their language, the richest and most harmonious of all those of Mid- dle Soudan, is spoken as far north as Agades, and almost as far as Benin, in the south. The inhabitants of Bornu are mainly Kanouris; but in addition to these, there are numerous members of a nomadic Arab tribe called the Shua. The Kanouris are remarkably tall and strong- ly built, but in features are extremely ugly. In character they are described as good-humored, timid and indolent. But for all that, the State of Bornu is the most highly organized of all those of the Sou- dan. Their language appears to have some affinity to that of the Tibboos, in the Eastern Sahara. The people of Waday are said by Dr. Nachtigal to be remark- ably barbarous, and their land extremely poor. Of the Niam-Niam, lying south of Waday and west of the White Nile, much -' of our information has been derived from Dr. George Schweinfurth, who explored these regions of Central Africa from 1868 to 1 87 1. When first seen, their wild and warlike air, he says, impressed him greatly. "With their black poodle crops of hair, and the eccentric tufts and pigtails on their heads, they afforded a spectacle which to me was infinitely novel and surprising. Amongst the hundreds of Bongo and Mittoo, with whom the Dinka were associated as drovers, these creatures stood out like beings of another world; here were genuine, unmistakable Niam-Niam, neither circumcised nor crop-headed, such as NiAM-NiAM Warrior. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 145 other travellers have seen either in Khartoum or in the Seribas ; here they were, presenting all the features of wildness which the most vivid Oriental imagination* could conceive, a people of a marked and most distinct nationality, and that in Africa, and amongst Africans, is saying much. ' ' "The arrangements of the Niam-Niam huts," he says, "are much the same throughout the land. Two, or at most three, families reside close together. Generally from eight to twelve huts are clustered round one common open space, which is kept perfectly clean, and in the centre of which is reared a post, upon which the trophies of the chase are hung. Skulls of the rarest kind, splendid horns of antelopes and bufiFaloes, are attached to this standard, and, it must be added, skulls of men and withered hands and feet ! Close in the rear of the huts, upon the level ground, were the magazines for corn; behind these would be seen a circle of Rokko fig trees, which are only found in cultivated spots, and the bark of which is prized, far more than the handsomest of skins, as a material to make into clothing. Farther in the background might be noticed a perfect en- closure of paradise figs; then, in wider circumference, the plantations of manioc and maize; and, lastly, the outlying fields of eleusine extending to the compound next beyond. I sketched several of the huts, which are embellished ex- ternally with black and white decorations. Several of the dwellings have roofs which rise upwards in two points ; long poles projected from the peaks alike of huts and granaries, and on these were strung rows of great land-snails {achatind).^'' All these buildings are mounted on posts. The chief's hut Tail of the NiajiNiam. differs in no essential particulars from the others, and the possessions of each separate Niam-Niam are parted from the others, just in the same way as the territory of the diflferent tribes, by desolate intervals, void of any residents whatever, nominally for the purpose of security, so that the inhabitants may, by placing out a watch, easily guard against any sudden attack. The reputation of these people for cannibalism was confirmed by the further evidence of human bones amongst the piles of refuse close to the huts, and which bore unmistakable tokens of having been subjected to the hatchet or the knife. The duties of the Niam-Niam towards their chiefs seemed to be chiefly to assemble promptly at any signal, either for war or for hunting. The power of the rulers among a people of such unsettled habits and unpliant temper is neces- sarily limited. "The official emoluments of these chiefs are derived partly from an allowance made upon all the ivory that is secured, which is always paid without being contested, and partly from their having a right to half of all the elephant meat. But for their ordinary subsistence they have to turn their attention to the cultivation of the fields; and for this purpose they endeavor to increase their home establishments by the acquisition of as many wives and women-slaves as their resources will allow." The much-disputed question as to the existence of a race of men with tails in Central Africa was thought to have been settled affirmatively by the discovery of one of these appendages, in i860, on the body of a dead Nyambari, or Niam-Niam, a veritable tail — made of leather. The cut shows the interesting article in question, and the mode of wearing it. The little lines, or bars, in the drawing represent small pieces of iron, each three centimetres in length. The swelling in the middle is a sort of hollow pad. This is probably the original fan-shaped tail of which M. d'Escayrac speaks in his work on the Soudan. Long before ]\Iehemet All's expeditions up the White Nile, traditions had been current in Eg}'pt and in Europe concerning the existence of a people in Central Africa to whom were ascribed, by the Mohammedans of the Soudan, all the savagery which could be conjured up by a fertile imagination; but it was not until the records of the Italian traveller, Piaggia — who resided for a whole year amongst them — were published, that any definite information concerning them was obtainable. Schweinfurth's interest in the Niam-Niam at times deepens into almost admiration, and he devotes many pages of his book to their consideration. The name by which they are generally known is borrowed from the dialect of the Dinkas, and 146 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. means "eaters," or rather, "great eaters" — probably a reference to their cannibal propensities. This desij,Miation is* universally incorporated into the Arabic of the Soudan; but the name they apply to themselves is "Zandey." The neighboring nations have a variety of appellations for them. The greater part of their country lies between the fourth and si.xth parallels of north latitude, and a line drawn across the centre from east and west would correspond with the water- .shed between the basins of the Nile and Lake Chad. Their bodies are ordinarily inclined to be fat, but do not usually exhibit much muscular strength. The average height is not very great; the upper part of the figure is long in proportion to the legs, and the color of the skin, like that of the Bongo, Schweinfurth compares to "the dull hue of a cake of chocolate." As marks of nationality tliev "score themselves with three or four tattooed squares filled up with dots. They place these indiscriminateh- upon the forehead, the temples or the cheeks. They have, moreover, a figure like the letter X under the breasts; and in some exceptional cases they tattoo the bosom and the upper parts of the arm with a variety of patterns, either stripes or dotted lines, or zigzags. No mutilation of the body is practised by either se.x; but this remark must be subject to the one exception that they fall in with the custom, com- mon to the whole of Central Africa, of filing the incisor teeth to a point, for the purpose of effect- ually griping the arm of an adversary, either in wrestling or in single combat." Their covering is generally composed of skins, of the finest and most variegated they can procure; and the long, woolly tresses of the men are twisted and combined into the most complicated and extraordinary coiffures. The women dress their hair in a simpler but some- what similar manner. Their principal weapons are their lances and their tnimbashes. The latter word, which has been incorporated into the Arabic of the Soudan, is the term employed in Sennaar to denote generally all the varieties of missiles that are used by the negro race. It should, however, be restricted to a sharp, flat projectile of wood, a sort of boomerang, which is used for killing birds or hares, or any small game. When the weapon is made of iron it is called kulbeda. The trumbash of the Niam- Niam consists ordinarily of several limbs of iron, with pointed prongs and sharp edges. One of them may be seen in the left hand of the Niam-Niam warrior in the illustration. The trnmbashes are always attached to the inside of the shields, which are woven from the Spanish reed, and are of a long oval form, covering two-thirds of the body. They are ornamented with black and white crosses or other devices, and are so light that they do not in the least impede the combatants in their wild leaps. An expert Niam-Niam, by jumping up for a moment, can protect his feet from the flying missiles of his adversary. Not all of them are anthropophagi ; the explorer relates that some of the chiefs vehemently repudiated the idea of eating human flesh, and some of the people will even peremptorily refuse to eat out of the same dish with any one who is a cannibal. He finds a strong resemblance be- tween them and the great man-eating race of the west coast, the Fans, who, according to their own account, migrated from the north-east to the western coast. Both alike "file their teeth to sharp points; they dress themselves in a material made from bark, and stain their bodies with' red wood ; the chiefs wear leopard skins as an emblem of their rank; and all the people lavish the same elaborate care upon the arrangement of their tresses. The complexion of the Fan is of the same copper-brown as that of the Niam-Niam, and they indulge in similar orgies and wild dances at the period of every full moon; they moreover pursue the same restless hunter life. LouBA, Young Girl of the Niam-Niam. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 14; MONBUTTOO Man and Woman. Thev would appear to be the same of whom the old Portuguese writers have spoken under the name of ' Yagas,' and who are said, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, to have laid waste the kingdom of Loango." South of the territory of the Niam-Niam is that of another powerful cannibal people, the Monbuttoo, of whom only the vaguest rumors had reached Europe before Schweinfurth's expe- dition. From the stories brought back by the traders, it was first learned that in this region there was a river flowing towards the west, not a tributary of the Nile, and that its banks were popu- lated by a race quite distinct from the ordinary negro, having a brownish complexion and exhibitingf a degree of civilization considerably higher than was to be found anywhere else in Central Africa. These people were designated by the name of the Monbuttoo, and by the ivory- traders they were known as Gurrugurroo, an appellation that is derived from an Arabic word, which refers to their universal habit of piercing their ears. Their country, as it lies in the heart of Africa, does not cover an area of more than four thousand square miles, but the density of the population is hardh- exceeded by any region of the entire continent. The soil is very fertile and is shaded b}- unnumbered groves of plantains and oil-palms, well watered and far more diversified than in the eastern part of the Niam-Niam land. Their crops are confined mostly to fruits and tubers, as they are too indolent or careless to take the trouble of growing cereals, and their staple food is the plantain. Owing to the isolation in which they live, the art of weaving had not found its way among them at the period of Schweinfurth's visit, and their clothing was contributed by their fig trees, of which the bast from the bark, with the help of some strings and shreds, was worked into a substantial and en- during fabric. Hardly a hut could be seen without its own grove of fig trees, which, however, require considerable care and cultivation. The people do not wear .skins attached to their girdles, after the fashion of the Niam-Niam; the only occasion when skins are worn being when they are made into a fancy dress for dancers. Every kind of cattle-breeding is unknown to them ; their 148 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. live-stock consists of poultr>', the cominon little dogs known as the 7iessy, of the Niam-Niam breed, and, in a half-tame state, the potaniochcLTUs, a species of swine. From the marauding incursions, with which they harass their southern neighbors, they bring back a prodigious number of g<3als; but they make no attempt to rear them for themselves. Their hunting expe- ditions supply them with all the meat they need ; and their preference is for that of elephants, buffaloes, wild boars and the larger kind of antelopes. They have the art of preserving it so that it remains fit for food for a very considerable period of time. "But of most universal employment among them is human fat; and this brings our obser- vation to the climax of their culinary practices. The cannibalism of the Monbuttoo is the most pronounced of all the known nations of Africa. Surrounded as they are by a number of people who are blacker than themselves, and who, being inferior to them in culture, are consequently held in great contempt, they have just the opportunity which they want for carrying on expe- ditious of war and plunder, which result in the acquisition of a booty especially coveted by them — human flesh. The bodies of all who fall in battle are distributed upon the battle-field, and are prepared by drying for transport to the home of the conquerors. They drive their prisoners before them without remorse, as butchers would drive sheep to the shambles; and these are only reserved to fall victims on a later day to their horrible and sickening greediness. During our residence at the court of Munza, the general rumor was quite current that nearly every day some little child was sacrificed to supply his meal." The king's private residence consists of a group of several large huts, each of which is set apart for one of his daily occupations. They are enclosed with a palisade, and shaded by planta- tions of well-kept trees. His food is always prepared by one of his wives, who perform the office in turn, and he invariably takes his meals in private ; everything that he leaves being thrown into a pit set apart for that purpose. All that lie has handled is held as sacred, and may not be touched ; and a guest, though of the highest rank, may not so much as light his pipe with an ember from the fire that burns before the throne. Any similar attempt would be considered as high treason and punished with death. The harem, in the immediate vicinity of the palace, consists of eighty young women, who, with their attendant female slaves, occupy as many huts, erected in a wide circuit within the precincts of the royal halls and private apart- ments. The royal ladies are divided, according to age and seniority, into several classes. The 5^a.vw Children of the Kvtch Tribe. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 149 elder matrons occupy villages built for their accommodation at some distance from the residence. Their number amounts to several hundred, for besides his own wives of the first and second ranks, the king is bound to maintain those inherited from his father, and even those belonging to a deceased brother. It is a long-established African custom that at a king's death his wives should fall to the lot of his successor, who never fails to annex to their number a large addition of his own. In the sixteenth century it is said that the wives of the king of Loango were about seven thousand in number. The Monbuttoo have less fulness of muscle than the Niam-Niam, without, however, any appearance of debility. The growth of the hair is much the same, and the beard is much more developed than that of the Niam-Niam. Schweinfurth was surprised to observe that at least five per cent, of the population had light hair. "All the indi- viduals who had this light hair and complexion had a sickly expression about the eyes, and presented many signs of pro- nounced albinism ; they re- called a description given b)- Isaac Vossius, in his book upon the origin of the Nile, of the white men he saw at the court of the king of Loango. He says that ' they were sickly-looking and wan of countenance, with their eyes drawn as though they were squinting.' This combi- nation of light hair and skin gives the Monbuttoo a position distinct from that of all the nations of the northern part of Africa, with the single excep- tion of the various inhabitants of Morocco, amongst whom fair- haired individuals are far from uncommon. ' ' The women go almost entire- ly unclothed ; the}' wear nothing but a portion of a plantain leaf, or a piece of bark about the size of the hand, attached to the front of their girdle, the rest of the body being figured in labored patterns by means of a black juice obtained from a plant. The Dinka women, leaving perfect nudity as a prerogative to their husbands, are modestly clothed with skins ; the Mittoo and Bongo women wear a girdle of foliage, and those of the Niam-Niam an apron of hides. But though the Monbuttoo men are more fullv clothed than those of any of the surrounding nations, the women are content with this extreme scantiness of apparel. Whenever the women go out, they carry across their arm a strap, which they lay across their lap on sitting down. These straps, or scarfs, are about a foot wide, and something like a saddle- girth; and as they form their first attempt in the art of weaving, their texture is of the clumsiest order, possessing no other recommendation than durability. They are appropriated to the further His Majesty, King Katchiba, on his Travels. '50 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. use of fastening infants to tlieir mothers' backs. The women can be distinguished from one another by tlie different tattooed figures running in bands across the breast and back along the shoulders ; their bodies, moreover, are painted with an almost inexhaustible variety of patterns. "Stars and Maltese crosses, bees and flowers, are all enlisted as designs. At one time the entire M CQ -1 < < O OS u < a < n u. c/5 body is covered with stripes like a zebra, and at another, with irregular spots and dots like a tiger. I have even seen these women streaked with veins like marble, and even covered with ■squares like a chessboard. At the great festivals ever)- Monbuttoo lady endeavors to outshine her compeers, and accordingly applies all her powers of invention to the adornment of her AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 151 person. The patterns last for about two days, when they are carefully rubbed off and replaced by uew designs. ' ' Instead of this paint the men use a cosmetic prepared from pulverized cam-wood, which is mixed with fat and then rubbed over the whole body. The Niam-Niam also make use of this powder ; but the}- only apply it in irregular spots and stripes, delighting especially in staining the breast and face to increase the ferocity of their appearance. The coiffure of both sexes of the Monbuttoo is alike ; the hair of the top and back of the head is drawn up into a long cylindrical chignon, and, being fastened on the inside by an arrange- ment of reeds, slopes backward ; across the forehead, from temple to temple, the hair is twisted in thin tresses, which lie one above another, closely fitting the skull until they reach the crown of the head. Their own hair is rarely long enough to form this portion of the head-gear, but the deficiency is supplied from the heads of those who have fallen in war, or, since hair is an article of traffic in the country, is procured from the market. On the top of the chignon the men wear cylindrical straw hats, square at the top and without brims, adorned either with tufts of red parrot's feathers or with the long feathers of eagles and falcons. The hats, of course, follow the backward slanting direction of the chignons. The women wear no hat on their chignon, which is merely adorned with little hairpins attached to combs made of the quills of the porcu- pine. The only mutilation of the body consists in boring the inner muscle of the ear for the purpose of inserting a metal bar about the size of a cigar. In strong contrast to these capable and prosperous cannibals is the miserable pastoral tribe of the Kytchs, which Sir Samuel Baker describes as having visited on his expedition up the Nile, in 1862, in search of Speke and Grant. Their countr}- lies around Zariba, on the upper waters of the White Nile. At the time of Sir Samuel's visit it was a marsh which it was impossible to traverse until the subsidence of the waters. Under these circumstances the natives are driven to seek footing on the tops of the nests of the white ants, which, more foresighted than the human beings, rear their structures to the height of some ten feet above the ground, and seek refuge in the upper galleries themselves as the waters moimt. On the top of these solid structures the Kytchs assemble, build their fires, seek refuge in the smoke against the mosquitoes and rub their naked bodies with the ashes to keep them warm. Though they have cattle, they will not kill them for food, preferring to starve themselves. If any animal dies, how- ever, they devour it to the bones, which they crush between stones and convert into a sort of paste. "There is not enough left to feed a fly," says Baker. Their ordinary- food, in addition to these windfalls, consists of rats, lizards, serpents and fish which they sometimes capture by throwing their harpoons at random amongst the reeds. Occasionally they are fortunate enough to strike a monster of some two hundred pounds weight, which they are forced to secure by throwing themselves in the water to capture it by swimming, at the risk of being themselves captured by the crocodiles. The men are of a good figure, but excessively meagre ; the children were like skeletons, and in fact the whole tribe had a famished appearance. Their leanness gave to their arms and legs an apparently extravagant length, so that the explorer compared them to gnats. They besieged his camp, offering to exchange fagots of wood for handfuls of grain, or begging for small portions of flour, which they received in shells shaped something like gourds, and immediately devoured. The chief of the tribe wore on his shoulders a piece of leopard skin, attached in such a manner as to leave the rest of his body uncovered ; he carried a sort of iron pike, about two feet long, hollowed at one end and covered with a piece of the skin of the iguana. On his head he wore a skull-cap, ornamented with white pearls and ostrich feathers. His daughter, sixteen years of age, was. Baker declares, the prettiest negress he had ever seen. Her costume consisted of a scrap of tanned leather, about a foot square, and which was attached to a collar and hanging over the left arm ; in addition, she wore, like the other young girls, a girdle of tinkling iron ornaments. Polygamy is practised among this tribe, as it is among most of the natives of the warm climates. When a man grows too old, his numerous young wives become the property of his eldest son. At the head of each herd of their cattle, they put a sort of sacred bull, whose horns are ornamented with feathers, and sometimes with little bells. This bull is the chief of the herd, and each morning, when he issues from the kraal, the Kytchs address to him a species of prayer, entreating him to watch over his comrades, not to permit the cows to stray off", a z o < J o AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. _ 153 and to conduct them to the most fertile pasturages, in order that they may give a quantity of good milk. Still farther up towards the headwaters of the Nile, where it issues from Lake Albert N'yanza, are the Obbo, whose country borders on that of the Latooka already mentioned. The Obbo differ from the latter, both in dialect and appearance. They do not go entirely naked excepting when they are on a war expedition, then they tattoo the body in red and yellow stripes. Their ordinary' costume consists of the skin of a goat or an antelope, thrown over the shoulders like a cloak. Their features, especially the nose, are well formed. Their mode of dressing the hair differs from that of their neighbors ; their woolly locks confined with strings are brought back in a flat tail, something like that of the beaver; a very fine thong of leather retains this in form. This coiffure, like that of the Latookas, requires several years of care to bring to perfection. Their country is very fertile and produces in abundance yams, which have the taste of pota- toes, excellent fruits, among others, plums, grapes and pistachios, and tobacco flourishes, but the climate is humid and fever-breeding. Baker relates that he here, for the first time, adopted the habit of smoking the native pipes, which are smaller and more elegant than elsewhere, in hopes of counteracting the malarial influences. In addition to these pipes the Obbo make earthenware vases, badly baked and fragile, but very graceful in shape, though they are made entirely by hand, the potter's wheel not being known. The other domestic utensils, like those of nearly all the White Nile tribes, are of wood or of dried calabashes. The huts are constructed like those of the Baris. The women are much less dressed than the men, in general they content them- selves with attaching to a girdle around the waist a piece of leather, about four inches long by two wide. The young girls wear nothing at all, excepting, when their means permit, three or four rows of small white pearls, which form an apron about three inches long. As to the old women, they go, like Eve, with a bunch of dried leaves attached to a string around the waist. Some of the young girls also wear this leafy apron, for the styles are not very exactly defined. This costume has at least the advantage of being always fresh and clean. The women are all modest in countenance, many of them are described as pretty, and their noses are delicate in shape. In fact they are completely unlike the gross Latooka women. The chief of this tribe, at the time of Baker's visit, was a hale old gentleman named Katchiba, sixty years of age. He was partly sorcerer, partly buffoon, a sufficiently good musician, and mild of character. His wives were numerous, and distributed among the different villages, so that wherever his majesty went he was sure to find himself at home. Like the wives of the patriarchs, they considered it a reproach not to be mothers, so that Katchiba had a hundred and sixteen children, "all in good health." One of his sons was at the head of each village; the oldest of them, a well-made young fellow, was proposed as a guard of honor for Lady Baker while her husband was absent on a brief excursion towards the south with three of his men, and, in fact, she was installed in a fine hut, with a door four feet in height, very well treated and guarded night and day by one of the chiefs sons. Katchiba, who experienced some difficulty in walking, usually travelled mounted on the back of one of his vigorous subjects, accompanied by two others who served alternately as guides and as remounts. One of the royal wives also accom- panied this cortege, carrying a jar of beer from which, it was said, the king sometimes partook so freely that two men were required to carry him instead of one. One day, under the pretext of obtaining from his subjects a more liberal supply of chickens for the use of Lady Baker, Katchiba borrowed one of Sir Samuel's horses, but the animal, unused to such a rider, soon ended by throwing him. After that the chief concluded that his bodily health would be better served if he contented himself with mounting upon a donkey, which was conducted by two of Baker's men. Accompanied by his wife, the intrepid explorer left Obbo on the 5th of January, 1864, on his route southward, though at the time he was suffering from fever, and Lady Baker was far from well. They crossed the Attabi, and, three days afterwards, the Asona,- rivers flowing north- westerly into the White Nile. Their next halting place was Shona, southwest of the Obbo ; this they left on the i8th, and, five days later, reached the shores of the "Somerset" branch of the Nile, which flows from Lake Victoria N'yanza. Here, in the country of the Unyoro, they were detained a long time by the treachery or the cowardice of the chief, Kamrasi, and it was not until he had calmly proposed to the Englishman to forward him to the lake and back again •5-} AFRICA ILLUSTRA TED. Sir Samuel and Ladv Bakei* ckossing the Desert. to Sliona on consideration of receiving his wife as part payment, — a proposal which the offended husband received by leveling his revolver at the royal head, and Lady Baker herself with a tor- rent of indignation in good Arabic, — that they were finally enabled to depart. On the morning of the 14th of March, they at length came in sight of the long desired sheet of water, the second- ary source of the Nile, which Baker decided to call Albert N'yanza, as Speke had named the other, Victoria N'yanza. The point at which they had come out upon it was at a little fishing, village called Vacovia, situated on the eastern shore some distance from the head of the lake."" Baker decided to send his cattle to Magungo, farther up the shore, near the northern extremity, and to proceed there himself b\' water. After many delays he succeeded in procuring two canoes, in the larger of which he put most of his men, and in the smaller, manned by four rowers, Lady Baker and himself. On the thirteenth day after leaving Vacovia, and after narrowly escaping shipwreck in a violent storm, the voyagers landed at Magungo. Here the explorer resolved to ascend the Somerset branch of the Nile to endeavor, if possible, to identify it with the river which Speke had discovered flowing from Lake Victoria to Lake Albert, but after proceeding but a short distance he was stopped by the most imposing cataract yet discovered on tlie Nile, and to which, in honor of the President of the Royal Geographical Society, he gave the name of Murchison Falls. Here, exhausted bj- fatigue and fever, and having lost all their cattle by the bite of the tsets^ fl\-, the travellers were in danger of falling into the power of the natives, but saved themselves by a prompt crossing of the river and, a day or two afterwards, were joined by ten Arabs of their party who had been left with Kamrasi. At daybreak of the 17th November, the return march was commenced, and on the evening of the fifth day Shona was reached again. The almost daily rains of the Unyoro countr}' had been succeeded by fine weather, the grass was in good condition, and the weary travellers were established in a comfort- able camp. On the evening of their arrival the women of the vicinity came in crowds to congratulate Lady Baker on her safe return, and forming a ring in front of her danced round and round to do her honor. In acknowledgement of their demonstration, a cow was killed and presented to them. After remaining in this hospitable village till restored to comparative strength, the travellers set out again and reached without serious molestation Gondokoro and then Egypt. Before setting out on this expedition to discover the sources of the Nile, "or perish in the AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 155 attempt," Sir Samuel Baker devoted nearly a year to the exploration of the Abyssinian affluents of the river, and the results of which were to establish to his satisfaction the fact that though the main stream of the river is fed by the great equatorial lakes and the rains of that region, the annual inundation is due in great measure to the streams of the mountains of Abyssinia, which not only cause it to overflow its banks, but by stripping their own plateaux serve to carry down into it those earthy deposits which fertilize the soil of Egypt and form the Delta. In addition to these geographical investigations, the country through which the route lay was swarming with game, and furnished to the traveller some very interesting hunting expeditions. Instead of pro- ceeding south to Khartoum, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker therefore turned aside and ascended the Atbara for some two hundred and twenty miles from its mouth, then, leaving it to their right, they struck off to the south-east and reached Cassala, on the frontiers of Abyssinia, on the 9th of July, 1861. Notwithstanding the extreme heat, the travelling in the desert was not altogether intolerable. "The nights are fresh and pure," says the explorer, "the sky is covered with stars, the horizon seems to draw near, the hills in the moonlight take on strange forms, and the calm which surrounds you in those mysterious solitudes assumes a supernatural character which is full of charm. There is not a mosquito, not one of those insects which are the plague of hot countries. As soon as the sun disappears you may enjoy a delightful comfort." But the sun reappears, the plain is again limitless, the sands glitter and the rocks are like braziers. To the devouring ra>-s of the great luminar}' is added the deadly breath of the simoon. "The wood twists, the \\ory melts, the paper breaks as you touch it; the marrow of your bones dries ; the water vessels are empty. The dust fills the ears, the mouth and the nostrils ; it passes in thick clouds, forms colunms more than a thousand feet in height which traverse the plain in turning on themselves or fly in every direction before the whirlwind." Even on the borders of the streams, apart from the shade of the mimosas and doum palms which fringe the shores, it is still the same burning plain. And to traverse this furnace there is no means but that of a most execrable mount. "Of all fatigues," says Baker, "that which the motion of the camel produces is the most frightful ; a nauseating balancing which breaks your body. If, losing patience, you urge your beast into a trot, the torture of the wheel is as nothing compared with the action of your spinal column, which, as though struck by a sledge-hammer, drives into your skull." This is the ordinary camel of passage; it is said that the pure-blooded dromedary has a gentle amble which covers a mile in six minutes, and which can be endured without great fatigue for nine or ten hours; but the Arab values this animal much too highly to be willing to hire him to a stranger. Cassala was left on the 15th of July, the travellers turning their faces westward again to regain the Atbara. The rains had commenced the day on which they emerged from the desert, and they continued steadily, becoming more and more copious. They were surrounded by ver- dure, but the camels sank in the muddy soil which clogged their spongy feet, and necessitated incessant halts, so that the Arabs hastened to conduct them to a region of more solid footing. The route was encumbered by innumerable flocks of goats and sheep; by camels carrying women and children and curious household articles; and by fine- looking men draped in white and armed with sword and buckler, directing their dromedaries through the midst of the crowd. All were travelling towards the north, where fresh pasturage could be obtained, and where neither fever nor the cattle-fly were to be dreaded. The English travellers, on the contrary, were heading south, and despite the difficulties of the route, they succeeded in reaching Sofi fourteen days after leaving Cassala. This is but a miserable village of some thirty huts, but it has an admirable situation. A German mason had here constructed himself a small stone house, the only one in the place, and had resided in it for several years. He was a man strongly built, very pale, and whom constant labor and numberless maladies had left nothing but skin and bone. He had come out from Europe with some Austrian missionaries who had established themselves at Khartoum, but being of an enterprising disposition, he had left their establishment, bought a carbine and taken to hunting and to various occupations which procured him a livelihood. This worthy man, wlio was named Florian, had traversed much of the country which Baker proposed to explore, and it was to consult him that the latter had come to Sofi. The game was all on the other side of the Atbara, much of it, elephants and giraffes, in AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 157 plain sight; but the rain continued to fall in torrents, there were no boats and the river was impassable. Finally, the hunters succeeded in constructing a raft, which, directed by natives swimming on each side of it, safely transported them to the other side. The first animals to fall before Baker's rifle were two or three magnificent giraffes, but he had more dangerous game in view. "We had been in Sofi a month," he says, "when I received a visit from a band of hunters, whom I had had the greatest desire to meet. I had heard that certain Arabs, of the Hamran tribe, whose country lies to the south of Cassala, were in the habit of killing the most redoubtable wild animals with weapons of steel alone. I was not able to imagine how an elephant could be killed with a sabre, unless indeed he were surrounded by a great num- ber of hunters, and hacked at until he received his death-stroke. I was assured, however, that on a good coursing-ground, the most savage elephant had no chance of escaping from these (iggagii; for so are called these heroic swordsmen. I had decided to take into my em- ploy some of these extraordinary huntsmen, and retain them during the period of my explor- ations of the Abyssinian rivers. This determination had been made known in the country^, and to this I owed the visit of the aggagir." It is only in their style of dressing the hair, which they wear very long, and which, divided in the middle of the head, hangs in long tresses, that the Hamran differ from the other Arabs of this region. Like all the others, their arms consist of the sword and the shield. The latter is of two shapes, round and a narrow oval; the Hamran use the round shape. The sword is always of the same form, a two-edged blade, very long, and more than four centimetres in width, and having for hilt a cross, of which the transverse piece forms the only guard. The sword of the aggagir differs from the others only in having a cord wound tightly around the blade to the distance of nine inches below the cross piece, which permits of its being seized by the right hand while the left hand holds the hilt, thus converting it into a two-handed weapon. The Hamran who are not rich enough to own horses are in the habit of hunting the elephant two at a time. They endeavor to surprise the animal between the hours of ten and twelve o'clock in the morning, which is the period of the day at which it generally reposes, and if it is not actually asleep it is at least less vigilant and easier to approach. If found asleep, one of the hunters crawls cautiously towards the head and with one stroke severs the trunk, which is extended along the ground. The mighty beast starts to its feet, but bewildered by this fright- ful awakening he does not endeavor to pursue the hunters. The blood flows in torrents, and at the expiration of an hour he is dead. If, on the contrary, he is awake, his enemies ap- proach from behind, the two hamstrings are cut, one after the other, and, as in the first case, the hemorrhage soon deprives him of life. These, however, are the methods of the poorer hunters; as soon as the sale of their ivory permits them to procure horses, the aggagir exercise their vocation in a manner that is at once more lucrative and more brilliant. Three horse- men start before daybreak, and proceed slowly to the place where they hope to find the game. Once on the track, they quicken their pace — twenty miles may separate them from the quarry, but that matters but little. The herd is at length perceived, the old male who carries the biggest tusks is selected, and the chase is begun. After a short pursuit, the animal ttirns on his tormentors who scatter in every direction and fly before him ; as soon as he resumes his course they are again on his heels, and when he turns again, one of the hunters is selected to approach him and attract his attention. The exasperated beast charges with his utmost speed, and the hunters are under the necessity of summoning to their assistance all the coolness and all the skill they possess. The Arabs whom Sir Samuel Baker had taken into his employ, were able, some time afterwards, to give him a striking exhibition of their skill and bravery. A solitary male elephant which they discovered drinking at the river had turned on them when they pressed him too closely and scattered the hunters in every direction by his impetu- ous charge. For a few moments Baker himself was in extreme peril, the enormous beast being all but upon him. Then the latter abandoned the chase and disappeared in the thick brushwood, and it required some time to find him again. "As soon as he perceived the horses again, he proceeded deliberately to entrench himself on a rocky place where the fissures gave root to some scattered trees, about the thickness of a man's leg. Arrived in this forti- fication, he turned proudly and halted, evidently determined to make head against us. 158 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. " 'It will be difficult to run in such a place as that,' said Taher to me; 'better send him a ball.' "I declined the honor, wishing to see the combat terminated by the sword ; but I proposed to dis- lodge the elephant, in order to get him on a better piece of ground. In his turn, the hunter re- fused; 'no mat- ter, ' he said ; ' and God grant that we are not beaten ! ' Then he recom- mended me to re- main near him, and to be on my guard. "The elephant was still before us, motionless as a statue. Excepting his e}es which he kept constantly in motion to all sides, not a muscle moved. Taher and Ibrahim, the eldest and the youngest o f the four Ch^rifF, took one the right and the other the left of the elephant, to rejoin each other at twenty paces be- hind him. I ac- companied Taher, who placed me at the same distance, but at the animal's left. Hassan and Hadji-Ali, not being required, re- mained in the back- ground. Directly in front of the ele- phant were the two other brothers, one of them being the celebrated Ro- dar, with the with- ered arm. ' ' When ever\'one was at his post, Rodar advanced slowly towards the game, who waited to seize him. He was mounted upon a bay mare, admirably broken, who seemed to comprehend perfectly her perilous role. Slowly and coolly she approached her terrible adversary, until she was no farther than seven or eight yards from the head of the colossus. The latter had not made a movement, nor did he stir. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 159 "The mis en seine was superb ; each of us at his place, not a word, not a gesture ; the mare with her eyes fixed on the elephant before her, and seeking to foresee the attack; the hunter, calm and cool in his saddle, watching the enormous beast. "In the silence the mare suddenly commenced to snort, then advanced another step. I saw the eye of the elephant move. ' Look out for yourself, Rodar !' I cried. Uttering a shrill cry, the elephant suddenly precipitated himself on the hunter like an avalanche. "The mare wheeled, and, clearing stones and rocks, carried away her rider, who, leaning for- ward in his seat, watched over his shoulder the formidable chase bearing down upon him. I thought for a moment he was done for ; if his mare had stumbled he would have been lost, but in a few bounds she gained the advantage, and Rodar, his eyes always to the rear, contrived to preserve the same distance between him and the enemy, a distance so small that there were but a few feet between the croup of the horse and the trunk of the elephant. "During this time, rapid as falcons, Taher and Ibrahim followed the elephant, avoiding the trees and clearing all obstacles with extraordinary address. When they came out upon open ground they increased their speed and came up with the elephant which, absorbed in his pursuit, paid attention to nothing but the fugitives before him. When lie was on the heels of the flying colossus, Taher drew his sword and taking it in both hands leaped from his horse, which Ibrahim took charge of. He made two or three bounds, the blade flashed in the sun, a dull sound followed and the elephant suddenly halted ; the sword had severed the tendon and sunk deeply in the bone, twelve inches above the foot. "Taher had made a rapid bound to one side; in an instant he was in the saddle again. Rodar faced about, and, as at the beginning, found himself once more confionting the elephant. Without dismounting he gathered up a handful of sand, which he threw at the furious animal. The wounded beast endeavored to resume his charge, but in vain, the dislocated foot turned up in front like an old slipper. Leaving his saddle again, Taher struck the other leg ; this time it was the death-stroke, the artery was severed and the blood issued from the wound in spurts. I wished to finish the elephant by a ball behind the ear, but Taher protested. The elejshant, he said, would be dead before long, and without pain, and the report of the gun, otherwise unnecessary, might attract the attention of the Basds, who would carry off the game." In his later expedition up the head-waters of the Nile, at the head of the Khedive's forces to break up the slave trade, Baker gives an account of an entirely difierent species of hunting, but one only less exciting and dangerous than this. It consists in driving the game by fire towards a series of strong nets extending over a space of about a mile and a half in length; the ground in front of the nets being cleared of grass, and a man stationed before each section, both within and without, concealed behind a screen simply formed of the long grass bound together at the top. "The rule of sport decided that the proprietor of each section of netting of twelve yards in length would be entitled to all game that should be killed within these limits ; but that the owners of the manors which formed the hunt upon that day should receive a hind leg from every animal captured. This was fair play; but in such hunts a breach of the peace was of common occurrence, as a large animal might charge the net and receive a spear from the owner of the section, after which he might break back and eventually be killed in the net of another hunter ; which would cause a hot dispute. "The nets had been arranged in perfect stillness, and the men having concealed themselves, we were placed in positions on the extreme flanks with the rifles. Rifle-shooting was dangerous work, as the countrj- was alive with people who were hidden in every direction." Everything being in readiness, the signal was given by means of a shrill whistle, repeated at intervals to windward, and in a few minutes, a long line of separate thin pillars of smoke ascended into the blue sky, forming a row extending about two miles. These thin pillars rapidly thickened and became dense columns, until at length they united and formed a long black cloud of smoke that drifted before the wind over the bright yellow surface of the high grass. All kinds of game are beaten up by this effective means, from lions, leopards and rhinoceroses to the smallest. The sport becomes very exciting and sometimes dangerous towards the end, as the fire approaches the hunters and the nets. " Presently I saw a slate-colored mass trotting along the face of the opposite slope, about two hundred and fifty yards distant. I quickh- made out a rhinoceros, and I was in hopes that he ■■^'^^s^c"-"i 1 60 The GRArnuDE of the Bari Women. ~^,dU^ "^{^^'^ AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. i6i was coming towards me. Suddenly he turned to the right and continued along the face of the inclination. Some of the beautiful leucotis antelopes now appeared and cantered towards me, but halted when they approached the stream, and listened. The game understood the hunting as well as the natives. In the same manner that the young children went out to hunt with their parents, so had the wild animals been hunted together with their parents ever since their birth. "The leucotis now charged across the stream. At the same time a herd of liartbeest dashed past; I knocked over one, and with the left-hand barrel I wounded a leucotis. At tliis moment a lion and lioness, that had been disturbed by the fire in our rear, came bounding along, close to where Molodi had been concealed with the luncheon. Away went Molodi at a tremendous pace! and he came rushing past me as though the lions were chasing him ; but they were endeavoring to escape themselves, and had no idea of attacking. "I was just going to take the inviting shot when, as my finger was on the trigger, I saw the head of a native rise out of the grass directly in the line of fire ; then another head popjjed up from a native who had been concealed, and rather than risk an accident I allowed the lion to pass. In one magnificent bound it cleared the stream, and disappeared in the high grass. "The fire was advancing rapidly, and the game was coming up fast. A small herd of leucotis crossed the brook, and I killed another; but the smoke had become so thick that I was nearly blinded. It was at length impossible to see ; the roar of the fire and the heat were terrific, as the blast swept before the advancing flames, and filled the air and eyes with fine black ashes. I literally had to turn and run hard into fresher atmosphere to get a gasp of cool air, and to wipe my streaming eyes. Just as I emerged from the smoke, a leucotis came past, and received both the right and left bullets in a good place before it fell. " The fire reached the stream and at once expired. The wind swept the smoke on before, and left in view the velvety black surface that had been completely denuded by the flames. .... "It may readily be imagined that accidents frequently occur in the great luints already described, as it is quite impossible to speculate upon the species of animal that may be driven into the net. A fine little lad of about eleven years old was killed by a leopard within a mile of my Fatiko station. The grass had been fired, and the animals instinctively knew that they were piirsued. The boy went to drink at a stream close to some higli reeds, when a lc(;pard pounced upon him without the slightest warning. A native, who was close to the spot, rushed up to the rescue, and threw his spear with such dexterity that he struck the leopard through tlie neck while it had the boy in its mouth, killing it upon the spot. The boy was immediately brought to me, but the lungs were lacerated, and he died during the night." This beautiful animal is indeed one of the most formidable of the African jungles, and every hunter and explorer has tales to tell of its courage and ferocity. When brought to bay, it does not hesitate to turn and attack, always leaping at the throat if possible. One of Livingstone's men was mortally bitten by one, though it had received a spear through its flanks, entirely paralyzing its hind-quarters. One of Stanley's donkeys, on one of his marches through the dense forest of the interior, was, however, more fortunate — it was suddenly seized by the neck by a leopard, but it set up such a lamentable braying, in which all its comrades joined, that the frightened aggressor loosed its hold and slunk off into the thicket. Schweinfurth relates that the Niam-Niam, during his .sojourn among them, organized a great demonstration over the killing of one of these animals. "They succeeded in killing a leopard, an event that was deemed so great a triumph that old and young conspired to do honor to the occasion. The first intimation that we had of anything unusual having transpired was given by the war-trumpets, the notes of which were heard in the'direction of Uringama's villages. Our first impression was that the Niam-Niam, who were charged by the keen Kenoosian with the protection of his frontier, had been successfully repulsing some assault on the part of the Babuckur. But very soon the report was circulated that a noble present was being conveyed to Mohammed, and, true enough, ere long there appeared a formal procession, bearing on a litter of leaves the blood-stained carca.ss of the leopard. The offering was duly laid at Mohammed's feet as a tribute, betokening the respect and friendship of the behnky. Throughout the whole of Central Africa, the skin of the leopard is deemed a suitable adornment for persons of princely rank, and nowhere is it more readily admitted amongst the insignia of royalty than with the Niam-Niarti." Sir Samuel Baker's experiences in Africa were very varied, even for an explorer of unknown ^f^^^J, c> 162 Bongo Women. & AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 163 countries. As a contrast to these spirited hunting scenes, we give a softer story in which he figured as the hero, and which took place on his return from the expedition in which he had been commissioned by the Khedive to abolish the slave trade in the Nile Basin. On his march, he says, "I had taken under my especial protection a number of Bari women and young girls, whom Wat-el-Mek and Tayib Agha had pressed into their service to carry loads during their journey from Goudokoro to Fatiko. There can be no doubt that these poor creatures never would have been returned to their country, had I not delivered them; but seeing their condition upon their arrival at Fatiko, I had ordered them to accompany me, and to show me the position of their homes during the march. "On arrival at the broad dry bed of a stream, about two days' march from Gondokoro, we halted beneath the shade of a large tree for breakfast. The women and children now approached, and hesitatingly declared that this was their country, and that their villages were near. They evidently doubted my sincerity in restoring them, which hurt me exceedingly. " 'Go, my good women,' I exclaimed, 'and when you arrive at your homes, explain to your people that you were captured entirely against my will, and that I am only happy to have restored you.' "For a few moments they looked around them, as hardly believing the good news. In another instant, as the truth flashed across their delighted minds, they rushed upon me in a body, and before I had time for self-defense, I found myself in the arms of a naked beauty who kissed me almost to suffocation, and with a most unpleasant embrace licked both my eyes with her tongue. The sentries came to my assistance, together with the servants, who withstood the grateful crowd; otherwise both my wife and myself would have been subjected to this painful thanksgiving from the liberated Bari women. "Their freedom having been explained, we gave them a present of beads as a reward for the trouble they had undergone, and they went away rejoicing upon the road to their own homes." West from Gondokoro, and north of the Niam-Niam, lies the country of the Bongo, a people ruined by the unscrupulous greed of the slave traders, but originally one of the most important and numerous of this section of the country. The complexion of the Bongo in color is not dis- similar to the red brown soil upon which they reside. Their neighbors, the Dinka, on the White Nile, on the other hand, are as black as their own native alluvium. In journeying up this river, the traveller seems to have struck the commencement of a new series of races, extending far to the southward when he reaches the Bongo. The jet black Shillooks, Nueir and Dinka, natives of the dark alluvial flats, offer a strong contrast to the dwellers upon the iron red rocks, who — notwithstanding their diversity in dialect and in mode of life — possess many characteristics in common. Of this series, the most important tribes are the Bongo, the Mittoo, the Niam-Niam and the Kredy, all of which are equally remarkable for their entire indifference to cattle-breeding. The whole of these, especially the women, are distinguished for the reddish hue of their skin, which in many cases is almost copper-colored. Like the Niam-Niam, Mittoo and Kredy, the Bongo rarely exceed a medium height. They differ, however, in several respects from the Dinka and other people of the lowland plains. Their prominent characteristic, according to Schwein- furth, appears to consist in a more compact form of limb, a sharper development of muscle, a wider formation of the skull, and generally, a preponderating mass in the upper part of the body. Dinka and Bongo alike, afford very striking samples of the two great series of races which they severally represent, and each displays the principal characteristics of their particular race in the stature, the complexion and the formation the skull. Among the Dinka, the latter is long and narrow, a peculiarity unknown among the Bongo. The hair of the Bongo offers no peculiarity, either with regard to its culture or its growth, that is of any special interest; it is short, curly and woolly. Corresponding to the numerous gradations in complexion and formation of the skull among these races are the varieties in growth of the hair which are exhibited. Hair which is thick and frizzly is common amongst every race that has hitherto been discovered on African soil, and although there are a few unim- portant exceptions among the Arab tribes (the Sheigieh), who have settled in Nubia, and not- withstanding that the hair of the Ethiopians, as well as that of the North African people, may be termed curly more appropriately than woolly, yet straight hair is nowhere to be found. The real distinctions, therefore, in the growth of the hair in the nations of Central Africa, consist in 1 64 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. Bushmen Women. the color and length, which vary considerably in the different races. Beards predominate with some, whilst with others they fail entirely. In common with most other people of the red soil, the Bongo have hair which is perfectly black; but in its length it is ver)- different from that of the Niam-Niam. On the frontiers of that people, the Bongo have often tried to imitate their neighbors by twisting and plaiting their hair, but their attempts have been always failures. Whiskers, beards and moustaches have been cultivated in very rare cases, but the hair never grows to a length much exceeding half an inch. Bongoland is traversed from south to north by five important tributaries of the Bahr el Gazal or White Nile. With these are associated a number of smaller rivulets which are not permanent streams; nevertheless, from the pools which remain in their beds throughout the dry season, they furnish a sufficient supply of moisture to maintain the vegetation of the countr}\ Water for drinking never fails, although from November to the end of March a fall of rain is quite excep- tional. Dearth as a consequence of prolonged drought appears to be a condition quite unknown; the crops are far more frequently injured by superabundant moisture than by drought, and the continuance of wide inundations has been followed by famine. The Bongo are essentially an agricultural people. With the exception of some occasional hunting, and some intermittent AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 165 periods devoted to fishing, they depend entirely upon the produce of the soil for their subsistence. Upon the cultivation of the sorghum they bestow a very large amount of labor. Very few vege- tables are grown, but for these the people find a variety of substitutes in the wild plants and tubers which abound. During the rainy season the country is very prolific in many varieties of fungi. The Bongo have a great fancy for them; they keep them till they are on the verge of decay and then dry and pound them. They use them for the purpose of flavoring their sauces, which, in consequence, are enriched by a haul gout which Sclnveinfurth compares to rotten fish. Indeed it is quite incredible what these people are able to digest. Most of the bulbs and tubers are so extremely bitter that it is not until they have been thoroughly steeped in boiling water, or have had their pungent matter mollified by being roasted at a fire, that they can be eaten at all; they are gall to the taste. There is an entire deficiency of common salt throughout the district of the Gazal; the alkali, that is everywhere its substitute, is obtained by soaking the ashes of the burned wood of the Grewia mollis.^ a shrub common throughout Bongoland, and which is notoriously useful in another way by the quantity of bast whicli it produces. Tobacco is indis- pensable to the Bongo and is universally cultivated. The natives are greatly addicted to smoking, and are not content until they are utterly stupefied by its effects. At the period when the Khartoumers first made their way into this country, the Bongo, quite unlike the other tribes, inhabited extensive villages, which, similar to the present Seribas, were encompassed by. a palisade. At the time of Schweinfurth's visit, however, neither towns nor villages were to be seen, and the districts which were occupied at all were only marked by scattered enclosures and little groups of huts, as in the country of the Dinka and the Niam-Niam. "The communities in past times," says Schweinfurth, "seem to have had a preference for gathering round some great tamarind, ficus, or butter tree, which often still survives and constitutes the only relic of habitations which have long fallen to decay; and even 'to the present time the Bongo appear to retain this partiality, and more often than not, they may be found beneath the natural shade of a spreading roof of foliage, enjoying the light and space which are prohibited to their cramped and narrow dwellings. The ground, for a considerable circuit about the tree, is all well-cleared and levelled, its surface being the general scene of labor on which all the women perform their ordinary domestic duties. The corn is there threshed and winnowed; there it is brayed in the wooden mortars or pounded by the mill. There are the leaves of the tobacco plant, laid out to dry. There stand the baskets with the loads of mushrooms or supply of fruits; and there may be seen the accumu- lated store of nutritious roots. Dogs and poultry alike seem to revel in security under the majestic covering, while the little children at their play complete the idyllic picture of life in Central Africa." Upon the erection of their dwellings the Bongo bestow more pains than any other people in the Gazal district. Although they invariably adopt the conical shape, they allow themselves considerable diversity in the forms they use. The materials they employ are upright tree- stems, plaited fagots, canes of the bamboo, clay from the mushroom-shaped white ant hills, and tough grass, and the bast of the grewia. The diameter of the dwellings rarely exceeds twenty-two feet; the height being generally about the same. The entrance consists of a hole so small that it is necessary to creep through in order to get inside, and the door is a hurdle swung upon two posts so as to be pushed backward and forward at pleasure. The clay floor in the interior is always perfectly level; it is made secure against damp as well as against the entrance of white ants by having been flattened down by the women trampling upon broad strips of bark laid upon it. The common sleeping-place of the parents and smaller children is on the floor. The bedding consists only of skins, the Bongo having little care for mats. For the pillow of the family they generally use a branch of tree, smoothed by being stripped of its bark. In every dwelling-place there is found a conical receptacle for grain, named the gallo/oh, which is elevated on piles, var>'ing in height, so as to protect the provision from the damp of the soil, or from the ravages of rats or white ants. Magazines of this kind for the reserve of grain are in general use throughout Africa, from the Rumboo of Damerghoo, in the Central Soudan, right into the country of the Kaffirs and Bechuanas. All -the dwellings of the Bongo, whether large or small, are marked by one characteristic, which might almost be represented as a national feature. The peak of their huts is always furnished with a circular pad of 1 66 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. straw, very carefully made, which serves as a seat, and from which it is possible to take a survey of the country, covered with its tall growth of grain. The name of gony is given to this elevation, which is surrounded by six or eight curved bits of wood, projecting through the roof like horns. Iron is found in such quantities throughout the region that the inhabitants naturally devote much of their attention to its use. Although apparently entirely deficient in suitable tools and apparatus, they contrive to produce some wonderful results. With their rude bellows and a hammer which, more commonly than not, is merely a round ball of pebble-stone — though occasionall)- it may be a little pyramid of iron without a handle — upon an anvil of gneiss or granite, with an ordinary little chisel and a pair of tongs consisting of a mere piece of split green wood, they contrive to fabricate articles which might bear comparison, Schweiufurth declares, with the work of a European smith. The most important of the iron productions Belles of King Shinte's Court. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 167 are designed for the trade that the Bongo carry on with the tribes that dwell in the north, and which was formerly very active. The raw iron is exhibited in three forms: one is named maliee^ being spear-heads of one or two feet in length; the second is known as loggoh kolhitty^ and is simply a lot of black, ill-formed spades; the third is called distinctively loggoh, and consists of regular spades, which, under the market appellation of melot, have a wide sale everywhere along the course of the Upper Nile. The loggoh koUutty is the circulating medium of the Bongo, the only equivalent which Central Africa possesses for money of any description, but, rough-shaped as it is, it seems to answer in its way the purpose of regular coin. According to Major Denham, who visited Central Soudan in 1824, there were at that time some iron pieces which were circulated as currency in Loggon, on the Lower Shary, answering to what is now in use among the Bongo; but at the period of Earth's visit all traces of their use had long disappeared. The loggoh kollutty is formed in flat circles, varying in diameter from ten to twelve inches. On one edge there is a short handle; on the opposite, there is attached a projecting limb, somewhat in the form of an anchor. In this shape the metal is stored up in the treasures of the rich, and serves as well as the lance-heads and spades for cash and for exchanges, being available not only for purchases, but for the marriage portions. The ax of the Bongo consists of a flat, cumbrous wedge of iron, into the thick end of which is inserted a knobbed handle. It is an instrument differing in no particular from what may be seen throughout Central Africa. Besides these rough exhibitions of their craft, the Bongo produce arms, tools and ornaments of admirable quality, and, at the instance of the controllers of the Seribas, have manufactured chains and manacles for the slave traffic. Very elegant, it might almost be said artistic, is the work displayed on the points of their arrows and lances. Equal care is bestowed upon the production of the iron and copper ornaments which are worn, and the cutlery which is used by the women. For the purpose of plucking out their eyebrows and eyelashes, they employ a pair of little pincers called peenoh. Quite peculiar to the Bongo women are their tibbah, or elongated oval knives, with handles at either end, which are sharpened on both edges, and which are often ver}- elaborate in their workmanship. These knives are in constant use for all domestic purposes, being of especial service in peeling their tubers, and in slicing their gourds and cucumbers. The rings, the bells, the clasps, the buttons, whatever they affix to ■ their projecting lips or attach to the rims of their ears, the lancet-shaped hair-pins, which appear to be indispensable to the decoration of the crowns of their heads and to the parting of their locks, are all fabricated to supply the demands of the Bongo woman's toilette. The decoration of which the men are proudest is the daugabor, which simply means "rings one above another." The Dinka and the Dyoor both have an ornament very similar to this, composed of accumulated rings, which cover the arm below the elbow; but the Bongo finish oflT their article with much more elaborate work. Each separate ring is furnished with a boss of a height and strength to correspond with that of the ring next to it, the rings themselves being forged so as to become gradually larger in proportion as they are farther from the wrist. The arm is thus covered with what might be described as a sleeve of mail, each ring of which can be turned round or displaced at pleasure. Hardly inferior to the skill of the Bongo in the working of iron is their dexterity in wood-carving. Perhaps the most striking specimens of their art in this respect are the little four-legged seats or stools which are found in e\'ery household, and are called hegba. These are invariably made from a single block, the wood chosen for the purpose being that of the G611 tree, which is of a chestnut brown, and after use acquires an excellent polish. They are used only by the women, who are continually to be seen sitting on them in front of their huts; but they are altogether avoided by the men who regard every raised seat as an effeminate luxury. Other articles of their fabric in wood are the pestles, the troughs for oil-pressing, the flails for threshing grain, and, most remarkable of all, the goblet-shaped mortars in which grain is bruised before it is ground into flour upon the grinding-stones. Very graceful in shape are these mortars, not unlike a drinking goblet with a cut stem. They are not sunk below the ground, as is ordinarily the case with those of the Dinka and Dyoor, but they can be removed, whenever it is necessar\% from place to place. Their height is about thirty inches. Mortars of very similar design were noticed by Barth among the i AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 169 Musgoo, and they are also used by the Orambo, the Makolo, and other negro nations. They are worked by two women at once, who alternately pound away with heavy pestles in regular African fashion— that which may be seen immortalized on the walls of the monuments of ancient Egypt. Very cleverly, too, do the Bongo cut spoons of very choice design out of horn, of the same shape as may be found in nearly every market of Europe. Rude carved figures to set up over their graves, musical instruments of various kinds, basket work, fish-nets, creels and snares, bird-snares, pottery, and the rude preparation of skins, are also among the various handicrafts practised by this people, who may be taken as a type of the ingenious, industrious — for savages- tribes of Central Africa. In the matter of personal ornament, the savage is voluntarily even more of a slave to fashion than any of the most refined races of civilization. Here, as in every other quarter of the globe, the male sex desires to be externally distinguished from the female, but the negroes differ widely in their habits in this respect. There is, however, one ugly custom which is common to both sexes throughout the basin of the Gazal, which consists in snapping off the incisors of the lower jaw, an operation which is performed as soon as the milk-teeth have been thoroughly replaced by the permanent ones. Upon the south borders of the country, near the Niam-Niam, this custom ceases to be exactly followed, and there it is the habit, as with the Niam-Niam them- selves, instead of breaking them off, to file some of the teeth, and indeed, sometimes all of them, into sharp points. Occasionally the natives file off the sides of the upper teeth as well as clip off the lower; nor is it an uncommon thing for gaps to be opened at the points of contact of the central upper teeth, whilst every now and then individual cases occur where interstices have been made in the sides of all the four front teeth large enough to admit a good-sized tooth-pick. The men do not go about in a condition so naked as either the Dyoor, the Shillooks or the Dinka, but they wear an apron of some sort of skin, and of late years have adopted a strip of stuff, which they fasten to the girdle that is never missing, allowing the ends to hang over before and behind. All the sons of the red soil, as the Bongo, the Mittoo, the Niam-Niam and the Kredy, are called "women" by the Dinka, because, amongst them the females only are pro- tected by any covering of this description. The Bongo women, on the other hand, and especially those who reside on the highlands, obstinately refuse to wear any covering whatever, either of skin or stuflf, but merely replenish their wardrobe every morning by a visit to the woods. They are, therefore, in respect to modesty, less particular than the women of the Dinka; a supply bough with plenty of leaves, and perhaps a bunch of fine grass fastened to the girdle, is all they consider necessary. Now and then a tail, like a black horse-tail, composed of the bast of the Sanseviera, is appended to the back of the girdle. The rest of the body is allowed by both sexes to be entirely unclad, and no addition to the costume is ever seen, excepting the feathered head-gear, which is exhibited on the occasion of a feast or a dance. As a rule, the hair of both men and women is kept quite short, and not infrequently is very closely shorn, the principal exceptions being found in the south, where the habits of the Niam-Niam have extended their influence into the Bongo territory, and both men and women wear tufts and braids of a length approximating to that of their neighbors. Very few are the people of Central Africa amongst whom the partiality for finery and orna- ments is so strongly shown as with these. The women wear on their necks an accumulation of cods and beads, and, not being fastidious like their neighbors, will put on, without regard to shape or color, whatever the market of Khartoum can provide. The men do not care much for this particular decoration, but prefer necklaces, on which they string some of those remarkable little fragments of wood which are so constantly found in every region of Africa. With the bits of wood hang fragments of roots, which are in form something like the mandrake which, in Southern Europe, has been the subject of so strange a superstition. Alternating with the roots and wood are the talons of owls and eagles, the teeth of dogs, crocodiles and jackals, little tortoise-shells, the claws of the earth-pig, and, in short, any of those objects which we are accustomed to collect in the cabinets of the naturalist. They appear to supply the place of the extracts from the Koran which, wrapped in leathern sheaths, the Nubians wear by dozens about their persons; anything in the shape of an amulet being eagerly craved by everA' African. Not infrequently the men deck themselves out in females' ornaments. Many cover the rims of their ears with copper rings and crescents; others pierce the upper lip like the women, and insert ^^..^.8 ^^ 5'B55'tSiailii|||ii|ilili||!l!ll!|lii!i AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 171 either a round-headed copper nail or a copper plate, or, what is still more general, some rings or a bit of straw. The skin of the stomach above the waist is often pierced bj' the men, and the incision filled up with a bit of wood, or occasionally by a good-sized peg. The women delight in distinguishing themselves by an adornment which, to our notions, is nothing less than a hideous mutilation. As soon as a woman is married the operation commences of extending her lower lip. This, at first only slightly bored, is widened by inserting into the orifice plugs of wood, gradually increasing in size, until at length the entire feature is enlarged to five or six times its original proportions. The plugs are cylindrical in form, and not less than an inch thick. By this means the lower lip is extended horizontally till it projects far beyond the upper, which is also bored and fitted with a copper plate or nail, and now and then by a little ring, and sometimes by a bit of straw about as thick as a lucifer match. Nor do they leave the nose intact; similar bits of straw are inserted into the edges of the nostrils, sometimes as many as three on either side. A very favorite ornament for the cartilage between the nostrils is a copper ring, just like those that we place in the noses of buffaloes and other bea.sts of burden for the purpose of rendering them more tractable. The greatest fcoquettes among the ladies wear a clasp or cramp at the corners of the mouth, as though they wanted to contract the orifice, and, literally, to put a curb upon its capabilities. According to the custom of the people, there need only be a trifling projection of the skin, so as to form a flap or a fold, to be at once the excuse for boring a hole. The ears are perforated more than any other part, both the outer and the inner auricle being profusely pierced; the tip of the ear alone is frequently made to carry half a dozen little iron rings. There are women in the country whose bodies are pierced, in one way or another, in nearly a hundred different places. They limit their tattooing to the upper part of the arm. Zigzag or parallel lines, or rows of dots, often brought into relief by the production of proud flesh after the operation has been accomplished, are the three forms which, in different combinations, serve as marks of individual distinction. The men tattoo themselves differently, and some of them abstain from the operation altogether. At one time the lines run across the breast and stomach to one side of the body; at another, they are limited to the top of the arm, whilst it is not at all unusual for the neck and shoulder-blades to be tattooed. Besides the ornaments already mentioned, the toilette of a Bongo lady is incomplete without the masses of iron and copper rings that she is accustomed to wear on her wrists and arms, and, more especially, on her ankles. These rings clank like fetters as she walks, and even from a distance the two sexes can be distinguished by the character of the sound that accompanies their movements. "It may possibly be imagined," says Schweinfurth, "that the extremely primitive co\ering of the Bongo women irradiates them with something of the charm of Paradise; but a very limited acquaintance will soon dispel the rapture of any illusion of the kind. All full-grown women attain such an astounding girth of body, and acquire such a cumbrous superabundance of flesh, that it is quite impossible to look at them without observing their disproportion to the men. Their thighs are very often as large as a man's chest, and their measurement across the hips can hardly fail to recall the picture in Cuvier's Atlas of the now famous ' Hottentot Venus.' Shapes developed to this magnitude are no longer the exclusive privilege of the Hottentots; day after day I saw them among the Bongo, and they may well demand to be technically described as 'Steatopyga.' In certain attitudes, as, for instance, when they are carrying their heavy water- jars upon their heads, they seem to assume the shape of an inverted S. To their singular appear- ance their long switch tail of bast very much contributes, and altogether the profile of a fat Bongo woman is not unlike that of a dancing baboon. I can vouch for it that women who weigh twenty stone are far from scarce. ' ' Dr. Livingstone, however, has a good word to say for the Bushmen; "they are the only true nomads to be found in the country'," he writes; "they never cultivate the soil and have no domestic animals with the exception of some miserable dogs. But, on the other hand, they are so well acquainted with the habits of the wild animals that they are able to follow them in their migrations, to surprise them, and to always find sustenance for themselves in the hunting-field, keeping within bounds, like other carniverous animals, the otherwise excessive multiplication of the game. To this flesh, which forms their principal food, they add roots, beans and wild fruits which the women gather. Those who inhabit the sandy and burning plains of the desert 172 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. are generally drv and nervous in body, capable of supporting great fatigue and of enduring excessive privations. Many of them are short of stature, without, however, displaying the deformity of the dwarfs. Those which have been brought to Europe have been chosen for their extreme ugliness, like the dogs of certain peddlers, and the notion that the typical Bushmen have been seen in England is about as exact as it would be to judge the English race if the ugliest specimens had been selected and transported to Africa as specimens." It was during these first travels of the stout-hearted Scotchman that he arrived, January i6, 1854, at the court of King Shinto, on the Liba River, where he was courteously received by that chief, and where, as he records, he saw for the first time in Africa women assisting at a public assembh-. These were the ladies of the court; they applauded the orators by clapping their hands, they smiled on them, and King Shinto himself repeatedly turned to converse with them. Livingstone adds, ' ' I hope to be of some service to the artistes coiffeurs of Paris and London, Boys' Sports, Central Africa. and to their fair clients, by reproducing here some specimens of the styles of hair-dressing in favor among the beauties of the court of H. M. Shinte. " The very effective mode affected by the standing lady in this illustration is only a variation of one to be seen elsewhere in Africa — ■ the hair divided into little tresses, which are each carried out to a hoop which encircles the head something like the halo of a mediaeval saint. That of the seated figure is somewhat more con- ventional, a species of diadem, in copper or some other metal, from beneath which the hair falls on the shoulders in carefully curled and greased ringlets. The Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, discovered by Livingstone on this expedition, fonn one of the most striking scenes in the physical geography of the universe. They are called by the natives, Mosiotunga, or "Smoke sounds there." A few miles to the east of where the Chobe joins the Zambesi, the latter — a stream of a thousand yards in width — plunges down a chasm, more than a hundred feet deep, formed by an immense crack in the basaltic rock, at right angles AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. i73 to its course, and is then carried along in a narrow channel, some thirty miles in the same direction, between steep basaltic rocks, scarce a hundred feet apart from each other. Livmgstone savs " \fter havin- proceeded some twenty minutes after leavmg Kalai, we perceived the columns of vapor, very justly called smoke, and which, at the distance we then were-five or six miles-recalled those vast conflagrations of pasture-lands so common m Africa. These columns were five in number and were moved by the wind; they seemed to be m front of a ridce, not very high, and of which the summit was wooded. From the place where we were the t^ps of these columns seemed to be lost in the clouds; they were white at the base and darkened as thev ascended, which tended to increase their resemblance to smoke ansmg froin the earth. All the surrounding landscape was of an indescribable beauty; great trees of varied colors and forms fringed the banks of the stream and the islands, each with its peculiar characteristic and manv of them covered with flowers Some of these trees resembled our great oaks; there were others like elms and old chestnut trees But no one can imagine the beautv of this scene, judging from what he has seen in England. Never before had t leen seen bv Europeans; but the angels might arrest their flight to contemplate its beauti^s^ Hills from a hundred to a hundred and thirty yards in height, covered with trees which fp ned at intervals to reveal the golden color of the soil, bounded the ^-w on three sides. All that was needed more was a range of snowy peaks losing themselves on ^^e far hon „ Althou<.h the lower region of the Zambesi, for a distance of at least three hundred miles front Its n^uth, has been In the possession nominally of the Portuguese since the beginning of re Sixteenth century, forming the captaincies of Rios di Senna, Tete -f Q^^-^^^^ 'f^ it is onlv within the last few years, through the explorations of Dr. Livingstone, Mr. Oswell, Dr kS, Mr. T. Baines, Mr. }ames Chapman, Charles Andersson and "f ^.^^^P/^^^^";- travellers that we have obtained anything like an accurate or scientific idea of this vas etion which extends from 8° to 2i° of S. lat., and from 14° to 37 of E. long. The otd kith oT what maybe considered the main stream (called Leambye m its upper course) from " mouth t the point where the Leeba River, which proceeds from Lake Dilolo, joins 1 canrt be less than twelve hundred miles. The Zambesi is one of the three great river ha Ifford a water-way into the heart of Africa from each of the three solid sides of that Irelt trSitle On the north is the river of the past, flowing through Ep'pt, the Nile; on fie I that of the possible future, the Congo; and on the east, the htt e-known Zambe^^ Soutlof the great fresh-water lakes of the Victoria -^^^^.''''Tfif v milef loutW Tancanvika four hundred and fifty miles long; two hundred and fift> miles south ol lis Sn another Lake Nvassa, discovered by Livingstone, three hundred and fifty miles m eSth Lake Nvassa discharges its waters through the river Shir^, flowing south into the Zambesi and thi^s bv ascending the latter river it is possible to reach the sources of the nIic'' with less fatigue, less risk, and not less speed, than by the overland trail from Zanzibar A :ne"so, along this lin, one is within a short march of that o^her J- -te which must ever be re-arded as the trunk-line of the African continent. The water-sUea ?onlo"Ss on UirNvassa-Tanganyika plateau. This is the stupendous natural highway on which so much of the future of East Central Africa must yet depend. Tust above the <.reat Victoria Falls Livingstone found the Makolos, with whom he dwelt '74 The Queen Moeri. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. i/S fevers to some persons, and very painful wounds to all The house ^eing thus floo^^ construction of the roof is next in order. The diameter of this is much greater than t at of the wal o the tower; it is constructed on the ground, and then elevated to its place by the aid of Trknds and nei^hb^rs. A palisade of reeds, also rough-cast, is constriicted around the walls of the tower at the distance of three feet, reaching to the roof, thus providing a covered galler>- all ui d he 1 ou"e It was in this gallery that the travellers slept, and not in the l-^se proper. The doo wavof the latter was somewhat restricted in its dimensions.-eighteen inches high, Sint'^w; wide afthe base, seventeen in the middle and twelve at the top^ It was difficult to It thVonch and there being no other opening the chamber was without light or air ^ rlT&l^V^Z^ among themselves, very much as they do in other parts of the world^ A little "rl would be 'carried on the shoulders of two others, spreading her arms. She would be flwS b^a trani of others, clapping their hands, stopping now and then before the ^^^^^^ t^.rLrents and sin-in-. Some of them beat time on a piece of stretched calf-skm, others nroducTa curious sort ofhnmming which served as a ritornello to the song. Sometimes th^ produced a curious boi « pleasure seemed to consist m imitating the works plaved at jumping ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^STL^^L little pots, had little feasts among them- is attached to the girdle and forms the petticoat The ^^^trons add to t.i^ p ^^ of .he Si.„ple „fe of '^ ^^;y^:^X^,^t::£^t^ ^^J^, I sa«.„. was in the region west of Lake Tanganyika, in ear ^ country life is a little boys shooting at grasshoppers with their small '^l^f^'^^ZT.LsfZTl.rs^^^^^^^ con- serious matter, and the play of the children is an ^!"'^^;^;;^°^ *^^^^^ ,,d teadi them to struct little houses, make little gardens, catch --J; J^f j^^f^^^^; ^^''.^Litate the fire-arms eL^o-^:e^;:^:-aSTi^^ they bombard the little birds." , ^c ,u^ southern extremity of Lake Tanganyika- South of the Lake Moero-which lies west of the ^""^J™;^ J ^^^ Livingstone stopped was situated the court of a chief with the general ^f^ ^^^^'^^^^^^^^^^^^ promises and on the 2ist of November, 1867, and the 5th of ^^^y ^ ^^^^^.^J^'f^^l^^^^^ of the king's appar- fair words, but finding always some inexplicable obstacle th -- k,_^_ ^^^^^^^^ ^ ^ ^ entlv friendly desires. On the 24th of May he records in ^^^ joiirn ^^^^^ hea^t-breaking length of time to furnish us ^f ;fl--"f;^Xa:tlriJtic^^^ One of the davs of postponement!" Then he proceeds to narrate a ^l'^^^^^^'^ ^^ ^^, ^ense that chiefs, an old' man named Kapika, had just sold ^^^ y^^^^^^^^'^^ ZlLr. aflonted at the she hid been unfaithful to hhn. AH t^e women of '^l^^^^l^Zln.M side^ to assure them- . idea of a lady of her rank being reduced ^° ^"^^ J^; > ^^^'^^ both hands in token of their selves of the fact, and, when convinced, f^^Velcied the liveliest svmpathy; she received indignation and sorrow. The -f ^^^^ ^jtuXrs o K^^ many presents of food and ^^^^f ^^^f^;^ ^^ ^fpr ^ o^ two'slaves; another offered the price and bananas. One man offered to bu> her at the pr ^ ^^^ ^^^ accused- of three, but Casemb6-who was very severe towards the crime 176 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. declared that the price of ten slaves should not purchase her, and that she must be sent away. Livingstone adds, that he probably feared to condone the offense on account of his own wife, the handsome Moeri. This queen occupied herself much of the time in the cultivation of tapioca, sorghum, potatoes and other vegetables, and frequently went to her plantations. "This morning," says Living- stone, "she passed close by us, on her way to construct a hut in one of her fields. She was carried as usual by a dozen men in a species of palanquin, and preceded by a number of servants running before her and brandishing sabres and hatchets, these preceded in their turn by a sort of drummer, striking on his hollow instrument to clear the way. Queen Moeri has an agreeable coun- tenance, quite European; the skin is fine, clear brown in color; a joyous laugh — in fact, she would be admired anywhere. Two enormous pipes lay beside her ready for smoking. I stopped for the purpose of seeing her; when she was near, she turned her umbrella and commenced laughing, in remembrance of our first interview, and she laughed, not only with her lips, but also with her eyes and her cheeks. ' Yammbof she said to me, — ' How do you do?' ' Yammbo sana^^ ' Verj- well, thank you,' I replied. Being somewhat lower than she, I was able to see that she had a small hole in the cartilage of the point of the nose, which was delicately aquiline, and the two incisors of the middle of the upper jaw filed in such a manner as to leave a tri- angular space between them." East of Lake Tanganyika, about halfway between it and the coast, Stanley — in his search for Living- stone — found another of these supe- rior races that excite the admiration of the explorer. Physically and mor- ally', he thought, the Ugogo were superior to all the tribes that he had seen; they had in their aspect even something leoiiine, their counten- ances were intelligent, their eyes large and widely open. Though their noses were flat and their lips thick, they were not of the gross formation of these features in the ordinary negro. Though he be violent, capable of any excess when under the dominion of passion, there is still something attractive in the Ugogo, — "he is proud of his chief, proud of his arid and unbeautiful country, proud of himself, of his arms, of his exploits, of all that appertains to him. He is vain, swaggering, egotistical, domineering, but capable of affection and devotion. He will give himself great trouble to oblige his friend; yet the trait of his character which places him in the most unfavorable aspect, in the eyes of the traveller, is his eagerness for gain." His arms are made with a great deal of skill. They consist of a bow and sharp arrows, skilfully barbed, of a couple of assegais, of a lance, the iron of which, more than two feet in length, resembles the blade of a sabre, of a war-hatchet and of a small mace, called roungoii. Exercised in the use of these arms from infancy, at the age of fifteen he is an accomplished warrior. The habitations of the Ugogo, like those of many of the surrounding tribes, are disposed around the four sides of an area which they completely enclose, and on which all the doors open — this is the tembt. On-the terrace, which forms the roof, are disposed the grain, the hay, the tobacco, the pumpkins and other stores. In the exterior wall are small openings which serve at once for peep-holes and for loop-holes. Among the Ugogo this building is very fragile; it is only a basket-work, covered with a species of clay, with three or four stakes sustaining the small beams on which are supported the rafters that carry the roof. A musket-ball would pierce clear through these frail walls; but among the Uhyanzi they are of much greater solidity and become a veritable defense. Each apartment, separated from its neighbor by a partition, The Tembe, seen from above. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 177 shelters a household in which the children sleep on skins, placed on the floor, and the parents on a bed made of ox-hide or of the bark of a tree stretched on a frame and which is called Kitamba. A species of brown rats, having singularly long heads, infest these tembes. Among the domestic animals, cats, cows and sheep are only allowed within the enclosure, the dogs and bulls are compelled to keep outside. It was in 1875 that Stanley first visited, on the north shore of Lake Victoria N'yanza, King Mtesa, whom he found a dignified, comparatively civilized monarch, totally different from the frivolous, sanguinary despot which Speke had pictured him. "I see in IMtesa," he wrote in his journal, the evening of his presentation to the king, "a prince worthy of the sympathies of Europe." And he describes him in these terms: "Mtesa is of tall stature, six feet and an inch, I should think. He is slender ; his skin is of a reddish brown and of extraordinary fineness. His countenance breathes intelligence ; his features, which are agreeable, remind me of those of the colossus of Thebes and of the statues which are in the museum of Cairo. There is the same fulness of the lip, but relieved by the expression of the visage, at once affable and dignified, and by the strange beauty of the large eyes, at once brilliant and soft, characteristic of the race from which I believe him sprung." The capital of this admirable monarch is thus described: "We saw, crowning the rounded summit of a hill, a considerable group of large habitations, in the midst of which appeared a vast building resembling a granary. The hill was called Roubaga; the vast edifice was the palace ; the group of houses, the capital of Mtesa. From the high palisade of reeds, which surrounded the city, radiated great avenues of an imperial width. Arrived at the foot of Roubaga, and crossing b)' means of a causeway formed of trunks of trees, a marshy space, we came out upon one of these avenues, of which the soil was composed of a reddish clay, mixed with the detritus of hematites. This avenue, a hundred feet in width, conducted us by a gentle incline to the circular way which followed the exterior of the enclosure. There we saw that our great street was only a secondary approach. In front of us opened the avenue of honor between two lines of habitations appertaining to the grandees of state, and buried in groves of bananas and fig trees. It was on this side that opened the throne-room, and from which could be seen the most beautiful views of the capital, so rich in splendid distances." After a brief visit at this court, Stanley completed his voyage on Lake Victoria and explored the coiuitry lying immediately west of it, in the vicinity of the great West Lake, due north of Lake Tanganyika, and within sight of the loft}- triple peaks of Mount Ufumbiro. Rumors had reached him of the celebrated hot springs of Mtagata, and he secured the sersnces of some of the natives as guides to the locality. At nine o'clock one morning their route terminated by a gentle descent into the gorge in which these springs were situated, a gorge shaded b>- gigantic trees. The thick foliage, joined to the multitude of shrubs, bushes and lianes, com- pletely shut out the rays of the sun, and produced a strange twilight. Troops of large baboons and of long-tailed monkeys bellowed and chattered in these shades, agitating the trees and shaking down the leaves as they pursued each other from branch to branch. The basins, which are from ten to twelve feet in diameter, and from two to five in depth, are six in number; their temperature is 110° Fahr. They were surrounded by bathers from all the surrounding country, who arrive daily in crowds, and who fill the air with songs, music and shouts of laughter from morning to night. Those affected with skin diseases find themselves promptly benefited, but Stanley thought that the amelioration probably proceeded from the exceptional cleanliness resulting from the bath, rather than from any medicinal virtue in the waters. As for himself, he records that he drank of the water, and bathed in it himself with delight, but experienced no other result than an access of his fever, which he attributed to tlie humidity of the atmosphere. On his southward march the explorer devoted con.siderable time to the circumnavigation of Lake Tanganyika, the immense fresh-water sheet discovered by Speke and Burnton in 1858, when they arrived on its eastern shore at Ujiji, about lat. 5° S. Stanley found the shores generally picturesque, wooded and mountainous, and the water very deep. All the southern shore, from Mommb^te to Roufouvon, is regarded by the natives as sacred soil. Each of its reefs, its woods, its frowning capes, each one of its gorges, is haunted by a spirit. Indescribable beings, engenrl^red by fear, govern all the scene. Every accident that happens in the neighbor- AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 179 hood of these shores is accepted as an additional proof of the malice and power of these evil genii. The three table-mountain^ shown in the engraving, which rise a little to the north of the terminal south-west bay of the lake, are the residences of three momimous^ more powerful than any of the others. These strange mountains, which were formerly part of the > plateau, lift themselves to the height of twelve hundred feet above the lake. They are separated from each other by a space of about two miles. The first is known as Mtommboua, the second as Kateye, the third as Kapemmboua. The spirits which inhabit the summits are united by close ties of relationship; Katdye is the son of Kapemmboua and Mtommboua, the Jupiter and Juno of the region. All three of them rule over the winds and the waves. In passing by their bases the voyagers were struck with the grandeur of their perpendicular cliffs, each terrace of which is marked by a line of foliage. From Kapemmboua, the most elevated of the three, and the most massive, to Cape Polommboue, farther north on the western shore, the edge of the plateau, cumbered with great rocks half buried in foliage, rises in a rapid ascent to the height of thirteen hundred feet above the lake, and terminates in a perpendicular cliff two hundred feet high. Notwithstanding the steepness of these hills, they are cultivated up to a very considerable height. From Tanganyika Stanley struck westward, after long hesitation, into a perfectly unknown country, and came out after traversing an almost impassable forest on the upper waters of the Congo, or Livingstone River, which he at first was inclined to think was possibly the Nile. But the volume of its waters seemed to contradict this supposition. The descent of the river to its mouth was attended with innumerable obstacles, cataracts to pass, portages to make, and the almost unvarying hostility of the natives. On the 19th of January, 1877, the expedition reached the fifth cataract, at 23' south of the Equator, the river flowing due north in its general direction. On the Equator it turns to the north-west. A few hours later, on the scarped bank of the left shore, they arrived at a cavern a hundred feet in depth, a natural grotto, hollowed in a rock of porphyry by the action of the water. On the exterior were various figures traced by the natives, and, following their example, Stanley engraved upon the rock the name of the expedition and the date of its passage. At the distance of two miles from this cavern were the ten islands of Kabommbo, and two miles farther still could be discerned the distant sound of a cataract, of which their prisoners had informed them. The camp was established on the right bank, at the distance of two hundred fathoms from a populous island inhabited by the Vouana-Roukouar. Very soon the war-cry, mingled with the sound of horns and drums, announced the approach of the natives, and it required an hour's hard fighting to beat them off. After them came the islanders, in their turn, and when they were repulsed also, the work of preparing the route for carrying the canoes overland was begun. Four days afterwards, they were below the sixth cataract, and four miles north of the Equator. The next day, following the course of a narrow canal which separated an extremely picturesque island from a low shore covered with mangroves, the noise of the seventh falls was heard, mingled as before with the sound of drums and trumpets. Then followed new combats, new land transportation. Here the shores of the river are not farther apart than twelve hundred metres, of which nearly seven hundred are occupied by an island. Thus contracted, the stream runs furiously between its abrupt boundaries, and the rocky cliffs of the island detach boulders which roll with an irresistible velocity into the water, forming waves that surge one after the other upon the shore with a veritable rage. The issue of the Nile, at the Ripon Falls, is a tame affair to these rapids in which a river with ten times the volume is restrained in the same place. ' The middle of the stream is absolutely unnavigable; but on each shore, to the width of some twentv-five yards, the Vou^nya have succeeded in planting some very strong piles to which they have attached enormous weirs in basket-work. Every day sixty or seventy of these baskets are set on the borders of the cataract, and not without benefit, as some of Stanley's men, having taken up some half a dozen of them, captured no less than twenty-eight big fish, one of which weighed seventeen pounds. On the 26th, there was more drawing of the canoes overland; on the day after, three combats. Finally, on the 28th, at ten o'clock in the mornmg, the last of the Stanley Falls was passed, and the wears' voyagers found themselves afloat on a macrnificent stream, whose calm waters seemed to invite them to follow its mysterious course. 1 80 The Hot Springs of Mtagata. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. i»i But if the river was eugaging, the inhabitants of the country continued to be hostile. When the expedition wished to land, the natives opposed them; they reached the island of Ukioba, where they were again attacked and obliged to defend themselves. The day after, the combat had continued four hours, when, having succeeded in landing, they saw the Itouka "throw themselves like buffaloes" on their stockade, where, luckily, they were in safety. The river was here four miles in width ; its banks being still extremely populous. The middle of the stream was taken to avoid the inhabitants, but the islands became numerous, and from each of them arose the "infernal din" that announced the pursuit. "We commenced to get weary of this chase," says the leader; "weary of being bayed each day by these ghouls, of having to sacrifice some of our number to their monstrous appetite or to bum our cartridges; our anger mounted. " We arrived in this way, the ist of February, at an outlandish place near which was a group of small canoes, which did not hesitate to attack us. They retreated at the first shots, but the drums alarmed the whole country. We were then at 50' 17" north of the equator. Two hours later we ascended the mouth of a stream eighteen hundred metres in width, that of the Arou- houimi. Scarcely had we entered when we perceived a great number of canoes around the islands which studded the river. We steered in all haste for the right bank; a flotilla of canoes, which, in their dimensions, exceeded anything that we had yet seen, bore down upon us. I immediately caused all our boats to be ranged in line, two by two, each couple at about nine yards from the others, and I directed them all to anchor. The number of the enemy's canoes was fifty-four. One of them had on each side forty rowers, who paddled standing, to the sound of a barbaric chant, — it was this one which led the fleet. At the bow was a platform on which were ten young warriors wearing crimson plumes of the red-tailed parrot; at the stern were eight men who directed the course of the vessel by means of long paddles. Between these two groups, ten personages, who seemed to be chiefs, were executing a war-dance. All the paddles were surmounted with ivory balls; all the arms were adorned with rings of ivorj-, which each move- ment made to glisten; all the heads were crowned with plumes. "The deafening noise of the drums, of the hundred trumpets of ivory, the chant of two thousand savage voices, were not altogether calculated to quiet our nerves, — but we had not leisure to consider them. The great canoe headed straight for us, and the others, following hard, made the foam fly before their bows. " 'Steady, boys! Wait for the first shot, and, after that, aim straight! "The monster canoe rushed for the ' Lady Alice,' as though she wished to run her down, but at the distance of twenty-five fathoms she veered, and poured in a volley of lances. All the other noises were drowned in the reports of the fire-arms. Absorbed in the great canoe we could not know what was taking place elsewhere, but at the end of five minutes we saw the enemy draw otf, and re-form his line at the distance of a hundred fathoms up the river. By this time our blood was up; we lifted our anchors and pursued them. At a turn of the river we saw their village, where they had landed; we gained the shore in our turn; there was a fight in the streets, from which we drove them furiously, and it was not until they had disappeared in the woods that we sounded the retreat. "While I was calling the roll of my men, one of them came to me and said that there was a church of \\ory in the village, and that everywhere ivory seemed to be as plentiful as wood. A moment later I was in front of the church, a simple shed, of which the tall conical roof was supported by thirty-three elephants' tusks, and shaded a large statue, four feet in height. The idol was painted of a lively red, and had black eyes, a beard and hair. My Vouangouana received permission to carry away the pillars of ivory, and they gathered up, in addition, more than a hundred pieces in the shape of coins, trumpets, drum-sticks, mallets, bowls, armlets, etc. The number of carved paddle-handles, of superb daggers with elaborate scabbards, of waist-belts of buffalo or antelope skin, of lances, barbed and otherwise, the pinchers, hammers, hatchets, bodkins, hoes, hair-pins, bells, bracelets and iron beads, proved that the inhabitants of the shores of the Arouhouimi were more advanced in the arts than any that we had yet encountered along the Livingstone. Idols, both large and small, double benches, stools of a most ingenious form, the ornamentation of canes, paddles, handles, flutes, drums, mortars, mallets, trays, spoons, gourds, revealed a decided talent for sculpture. The pottery was of a superior order, the pipes of a model unknown to us; everything in this village testified to the prosperity and the remark- ,82 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. able intelligence of the inhabitants. On the other hand, the proofs of cannibalism were numerous; human skulls grimaced from a number of perches, and fragments of human bones were to be seen among the debris of the cooking, even down to the banks of the river. " Reembarked at five o'clock, we were soon again in the main stream, where we anchored at fiftv yards from the shore. But whatever was our need of repose, prudence recommended that we should not delay too long in the neighborhood of the Arouhouimi, and we started again. .\lmost immediately the shore was again covered with savages, uttering their war-cries, beating drums and indulging in frantic gestures. We hastened onwards at our utmost speed — like the stag, who, having distanced the pack, exhausted, at the end of his courage, hears the dreadful voice of the bloodhounds who have regained his scent. We had fought night and day, dispersed the enemy, escaped his blows by our vigilance; we had delivered our twenty-eighth combat, and not yet recovered our breath, and from every curve of the river issued anew the menaces of death in every form. We were completely exhausted; there were not amongst us thirty who were not at least wounded. To continue this life was impossible; some day we shall lie down offering our throats to the cannibals, like sheep to the butcher." In this perilous fashion the descent of the river continued; the number of battles amounted to thirty-two, and to the losses in killed and wounded were added the perils of starvation and the incessant pangs of hunger. Fortunately, at the last moment, when the supplies of the expedi- tion were quite exhausted, some more peaceable tribes -would be met, which, in consideration of the offer of various tempting presents, and the most ingenious pantomime suggestive of hunger, would consent to sell food to the strangers. After the hostility of the natives ceased, that of the river commenced; the region of the great cataracts was only passed with infinite labor and danger, and with the entire loss of one boat and its occupants. Some idea of the difficulties attending these portages may be obtained from the engraving representing that around the falls of Innkissi. The natives were a tribe of the Babonennde, fortunately friendly, living on the shores of the little bay of Nkennke. In thirty-seven days the expedition had made twenty- four miles. The inhabitants declared that the river had only one more cataract, but that that one was frightful. In these Innkissi Falls, the stream does not leap from one height, but, restrained within a narrow gorge, not more than four hundred and fifty yards in width, it torments itself into a fury of whirlpools, breakers and rapids over a space of two miles. The friendly Babonennde, curious to see what the strangers were going to do, crowded about them asking questions. " Take the canoes out of the water, and carry them up on the plateau," Stanley answered. "On the plateau!" thev repeated, in amazement, lifting their eyes to the steep sides of the mountain covered with trees and bristling with rocks; and, clambering hastily up the twelve hundred feet of height, they proceeded to gather into their enclosure their domestic animals, black pigs, goats and chickens, repeating everywhere among themselves that the white man was going to make his boats fl\- over the mountain. By the evening of the next day a road of fourteen hundred yards in length was opened through the forest; the next day the " Lady Alice" and a little canoe had reached the summit of the mountain. This was accomplished without much difficulty, and the native chiefs, filled with admiration, consented to furnish six hundred men to aid in the work of pulling up the others. In ten days after entering the bay of Nkennk(!, the entire fleet was on the summit. On the 9th of August, 1877, nine hundred and ninety-nine days after leaving Zanzibar, the expedition, reduced by losses, starvation and fatigue, set out on its last march towards M'Bomnia, near the mouth of the Congo. On the way they encountered a line of hammocks and four Europeans, who were coming to meet them in response to Stanley's appeal for help, which he had sent on to the coast a few davs before. The wearv travellers were welcomed, fed and clothed; but their leader records that the strange lassitude which fell on them all, now that all need for exertion was over, was almost as fatal as the perils of the march. His faithful followers could not be roused even by the hope of returning to their far-distant homes in Zanzi- bar; eight of them died of this weariness, four at Loanda, three on board the vessel which carried them to the Cape, the eight on arriving at Zanzibar. But even in their last moments they were consoled by the thought of what they had done; they repeated incessantly, even in dying, "We have brought the Master to the great ocean; he has seen again his white brothers. La il Allah il Allah!" Mounts Mtommboua, Kateye and Kapehmboua, Lake Tanganyi: 1 84 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. Stanley's Fight at the Junction of the Congo with the Arouhouimi. This intrepid explorer, who has gained new laurels by his second journey across the African continent, this time from west to east and by a more northerly route than that of the tremendous march just sketched, is by birth a Welshman, and was baptized John Rowlands. From a recent biography of him we learn that "when he was thirteen years old he was turned loose to take care of himself. Young though he was, he was ambitious and well-informed. As a lad he taught school in the village of Mold, Flintshire. Getting tired of this, he made his way to Liverpool, when he was about fourteen years of age, and there shipped as cabin-boy on board a sailing-vessel bound to New Orleans. There he fell in with a kindly merchant, a Mr. Stanley, who adopted him and gave him his name. Mr. Stanley died before Henry came of age, leaving no will, and the lad was again left to shift for himself. He lived in New Orleans until 1861, when he was twenty-one years of age. Then the civil war broke out and he went into the Confederate army." The year before Stanley arrived on the west coast, another Englishman had succeeded in crossing the continent, starting likewise from Zanzibar, but coming out farther south, at Benguela. This was Lieut. Verney Hovett Cameron, an officer in H. M. S. Star, cruising on the eastern coast of Africa, and whose desire to be- of some service in suppressing the odious slave traffic first led his thoughts to the possibility of visiting the interior. He left England the 30th of November, 1872; started on his long march from Bagamoyo, on the Zanzibar coast, and proceeded nearly due west to Lake Tanganyika, which he struck among the Ujiji, on the fifth degree of south latitude. All the southern and middle shores of this sheet of water were visited by his boats, and leaving the western side of the lake at Kasemdje he proceeded north-westerly to Nyangwe, on the upper Congo. Instead of embarking on this river to follow it down to its mouth, as Stanley did later, Cameron then directed his course due south to Lake Kassali, the southernmost and largest of the chain of small lakes that extend north-east and south-west about two hundred miles west of Tanganyika. From here his course lay south-west to the Benguela coast. It was while still east of Lake Tanganyika that he received news of the death of Livingstone, the search for whom was one of the objects of his expedition. Cameron was at that time suffering with the African fever, and he relate.' & AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 185 that when the letter containing the fatal news was brought to him, his mind was so much affected by his illness that he was unable to understand its contents. His companion, Dr. Dillon, to whom he showed the message, was in no better condition, and after perusing it several times, the only conclusion they could arrive at was that their father was dead. Dr. Dillon, not long afterwards, committed suicide with his own pistol, while in the delirium of this fever. He was then on his return to the coast, Cameron having concluded to prosecute the enterprise which Livingstone had hoped to carry out, and to proceed westward. His experiences of the Manyema, on the Upper Congo, were much those of Stanley. His description of one of their settlements is worth quoting. "In all the Manyema villages, the houses, of a rectangular shape, form long parallel streets, or sometimes radiate from a central point. At each end of the public way, facing on the middle of the street, is a larger building, where are held the public assemblies which discuss municipal affairs; the palm trees and the granaries are arranged along the median line of the street. Handsome villages; but before almost every house there is a pig attached to one of the door-posts, and the smell of these animals, of the filth, the decayed fish, etc., etc., combined to form an African odor that may be imagined." Proceeding southwards from the country of the Mam-ema, the route of the expedition led first through a hilly and thickly wooded country, where the villages, large in size, were yet almost hidden in the dense jungles, and were attained only by traversing a long, narrow tunnel, cut through the brushwood, and so low that it could only be passed on hands and knees. This path ends at a species of fortification, formed by the trunks of trees arranged in the shape of a V, the point towards the visitors. In case of hostilities this narrow opening is closed by a heavy portcullis, so that the enemy may not force the entrance. These villages, nevertheless, are frequently surprised by their neighbors, or by the slave traders, during the absence of their warriors; for although all the tribes of the Urua are nominally under the authority of a chief named Kassonngo, they are very often in a state of war with each other. The third stage of the journey, that of the first of November, 1873, brought the expedition in view of Lake Mohrya. There Cameron had a dispute with a native guide who had been furnished him. He had been supplied with a quantity of glass beads to purchase necessary food from the inhabitants, but, having been attached to the court, he considered himself entitled to certain prerogatives, and when the natives arrived with their provisions, he proceeded to pillage them of whatever he thought fit. On being remonstrated with, he replied that when travelling, it was the custom of Kassonngo and his followers to take whatever they wanted, and he did not propose to renounce any of his right. "If you think these things are stolen," he added, "you can pay for them." This little misunderstanding having been arranged, the camp was pitched near a large village situated near the western end of the lake. This piece of water occupies the bottom of a small basin, surrounded by low and woody hills. The surface of the lake occupies an oval space about two miles in length by one in width. Its surface was dotted with the houses of the natives, three long straggling villages and some scattered huts, built on piles. Cameron had been informed of these lacustrine habitations, and he requested the chief of the land village to procure him a boat in which he might visit them. The chief replied, how- ever, that he would endeavor to obtain one from the lake inhabitants, having none of his own, but that he doubted his success, the people of the lake not being ver>' fond of visitors. In this supposition he proved to be correct, and Cameron was forced to content himself with a view through the telescope. With this instrument he was enabled to distinguish the manner of the construction of these dwellings, and to make a sketch of them. Each house had for its base a platform elevated on piles some six feet above the surface of the water; some of them were oblong and others circular in shape. The walls and the roofs seemed to be similar in construc- tion to those on the land. Under the platforms the canoes were kept, attached by cords. Although it was said that in the lake were found enormous serpents whose bite was fatal, the natives could be seen going from one house to another by swimming. These people have no other habitations than these; in these they live with their goats and their poultr}', only leaving them to go ashore to cultivate their fields and to conduct the goats to pasture. Their boats are a kind of pirogue, from twenty to twenty-five feet in length; they are managed by means of paddles with long handles, and the blades of which are hollowed, large i86 Portage Around the Falls of Innkissi. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 187 and circular. Not being able to come at the natives by water, Cameron attempted to converse with some of them who were cultivating their fields on the shores; but as soon as he approached them they fled to their pirogues which were near, and put out into the lake. He attempted to lure them back by showing them pearls and pieces of stuff, but quite without avail, and he was forced to renounce all hopes of a closer acquaintance. All the region is divided into a great number of districts, governed each one by a kilolo or captain. Some of these governors have a hereditary power; others are appointed for a term of four years. At the expiration of this term, if they have well fulfilled their functions, they may be reappointed, either for the same district or for another; but if Kassonngo is not content with them, he cuts oflF their noses, their ears or their hands. The social hierarchy is strongly established, and a great amount of deference is exacted of inferiors. Cameron relates one of the numerous examples of this which fell under his own observation. A man of good standing in talking with him one day, seated himself, forgetting that one of his superiors was present; he was immediately taken to one side and severely lectured on the enormity of his offense. The Englishman was afterwards informed that if it had not been himself who had been the culprit's interlocutor, he would have paid with his two ears for his fault. Among the Urua there are but two punishments known — mutilation and death; both of them are ven,- freely employed, especially the first. For the least peccadillo the chief or his lieutenants cause a finger to be cut off, a lip, a piece of the ear, or of the nose. For graver offenses, they take the hands, the ears, the nose, the great toes, and often all of them together. Kassonngo, like his predecessors, lays claim to divine power and honors; he pretends to be above the necessities of life, and that he has no need of nourishment — if he eats, drinks or smokes, it is only because he finds pleasure in those occupations. In addition to his first wife and the rest of his harem, he has the right to the possession of any woman whom he may see in his travels, and who pleases him. If one of these women should become the mother of a son, he presents her with a monkey-skin in which to envelop the child; this skin confers the right to take possession of food, stuffs, etc., in any house excepting those occupied by members of the royal family. From sunset to sunrise, no man excepting the king may enter the royal harem under pain of death, and if a child is born in the seraglio during the night, the mother and the infant are immediately driven out. The five or six first wives are all of royal blood, being the sisters and the first cousins of the king. Among the others are his mothers-in-law, his aimts, his nieces, and even his own daughters. Kassonngo was said to have no other furniture for his bed- chamber than his wives. Some of them, posed upon their hands and knees, formed at once bed- stead and mattress; others lying on the beaten earth floor, supplied the carpet. As might be supposed from these royal manners, those of his subjects are not extremely refined. Among the Urua the wife who forgets her marriage vows is not very seriously con- sidered — the most that can happen to her is a beating from her husband, and he is not apt to make this very severe, from fear of damaging a valuable piece of property. All the men of this country make their fire and do their cooking for themselves, Kassonngo being the only one exempted from this rule, and even he is obliged to conform to it whenever the royal cook happens to absent himself He also is in the habit of taking his repast in privacy, and all the natives have the peculiarity of permitting no one to see them either eat or drink. Cameron relates that when he has seen beer offered to them, they would invariably request a piece of stuff to be held in front of them to conceal them while they drank. Especially is this the case when there are women present. Their religion is a mixture of fetishism and idolatry. In all the villages there are little huts devoted to the idols, and offerings of grain, meat and other food are made before them. Nearly all the men wear suspended to their arms or necks little figures which are talismans; and there are numerous magicians who carry about with them the idols, which they pretend to consult for the benefit of their clients. Some of these magicians are skilful ventriloquists, an accomplish- ment which is naturally of great ser\'ice to them. All these images are venerated, but the most .sacred of them all, the grand fetish, is the Koungoid a Bandza, an all-powerful idol, which represents the founder of the reigning dynasty of the Urua. This idol is kept in the back of a hut situated in a small clearing in the heart of an impenetrable jungle. His wife is always a O < < > z < 00 00 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 189 sister of the reigning chief, and she bears the title of Motiale a Pannga. Aronnd the jungle are the habitations of numerous priests, who protect the sacred wood against the intrusion of the profane, and receive the offerings of the believers. But, despite their official position, and although they are initiated into all the ceremonies of the religion, these priests are not permitted to see the idol. This privilege is reserved exclusively for the bride of the fetish and for the king; the latter comes to consnlt it in great affairs, and always laden with gifts. The day of his accession to power he presents his offerings; he renews them at each victory gained over an enemy; his fears, his hopes, his joys, his evils, his triumphs and his reverses, all serve to bring fresh gifts to this oracle. To pronounce the name of " Koungone a Bandza " before a native has always the efiFect of making him start with terror, and look fearfully around him, as if he expected to find himself in the grasp of the supernatural power. The inhabitants of the Urua tattoo themselves in the same manner as the Vouagouaha, but their mode of wearing the hair is different. The greater number draw their locks backward, and twist them together into a sort of pigtail that stands out horizontally behind, like the handle of a frying-pan. The men decorate this handle with a bunch of feathers, frequently of the red plumes of the gray parrot. The size and the height of this plumage vary with the rank of the wearer. They make for themselves large aprons of the skins of animals; each tribe having a distinctive skin, which is carried before the chief Having, with much difficulty, secured the services of some native guides, Cameron resumed his march towards Lake Kassali, and on the second day arrived at Kibeyaeli, a large village, well-shaded and traversed by a clear-running stream. Unfortunately, for his comfort, he hap- pened to arrive in the midst of the festivities attending a native wedding, and, as the bride was the niece of a chief and the groom a man of importance, the affair was being celebrated with exceptionable pomp — that is to say, night and day, with an uproar that rendered all sleep impos- sible. Two drums, beaten vigorously, were accompanied by a dozen pipers furnished with large instruments, from which they extracted the most piercing sounds. An enthusiastic crowd surrounded these performers, contributing to the din a variety of discordant cries and the inces- sant clapping of hands; when one dancer became fatigued, another took his place. On the afternoon of the second day, the bridegroom made his appearance; he executed 2i pas seul, which lasted for a half hour. At the moment when this performance terminated, a young girl, of nine or ten years of age, arra)'ed in the greatest finer\- that the country could afford, approached the dancers, mounted astride the shoulders of a stout godmother, and supported behind by another. This was the bride; the crowd immediately surrounded her, and the two supporters took to dancing frantically in their turn, the body and arms of the poor girl swaying helplessh- with their movements. When she had been sufficiently shaken up, the bridegroom gave her a num- ber of small pearls and pieces of leaf-tobacco, which she proceeded to throw, with her eyes closed, among the dancers. This occasioned a frantic struggle, everybody endeavoring to secure one of these donations, the possession of which insured certain happiness. The bride was then set down on her feet, and danced with her new husband some ten minutes, when he suddenly took her under his arm, and whisked her off to his house. The dancing, the cries, the drumming, the piping, however, went on all the same, and were still going on when the travellers left the village. On the borders of Lake Kassali Cameron witnessed another incident of the manners and customs of the natives. Aroused by the sound of a number of cracked little bells in the street of the village, he went out of his house and saw a mgannga — that is to sa)', a magician, making the tour of the place, followed by his suite. His garment was composed of an ample skirt of grass stuff, and he had around his neck an enormous necklace, consisting of pieces of gourds, skulls of birds, and imitations of these skulls coarsely carved in wood. A large band, composed of split ' pearls, and surmounted by a large plume, decorated his head. In place of girdle, he wore several strings of iron bells, which jingled as he moved, and his face, his arms and his legs were whitened with pipe-clay. Behind him came a woman, carrying in a calabash, the idol of which he was the priest. Then came another woman carr^ang a mat, and two little boys, bear- ing various objects, completed the procession. At his approach, all the women quitted their houses; many of them followed him to the fetish-house, which they surrounded, and seemed to be absorbed in their devotions, clapping their hands with an absorbed air, inclining themselves and uttering strange sighs. Presently, there arrived another magician, then another and another igo AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. to the number of five, all wearing the same costume and followed by similar attendants. When they were asseiiibled, they all went ofiF in a procession to choose in the village a suitable place. There they arranged themselves in a row, squatting on the ground, spread their mats before them, and placed upon them their idols and other appurtenances. The chief among them, seeing Cameron seated on a chair, conceived that his dignity required him to have at least as lofty a seat, and sent for one of the large mortars used in crushing grain. This he turned upside down, and sat on the bottom ; but his elevation proved to be but a tottering one, and after two or three falls, the pontiff concluded that securit\- was to be preferred before honor, and squatted again on the ground alongside of his companions. The proceedings were opened by the wife of the chief of the village, who presented the chapter with six pullets, and presently went away filled with joy. The high-priest had done her the honor to spit in her face, and presented her with a pot of filth, a precious talisman, which she hastened to put in a secure place. After her departure the assembly devoted itself to the affairs of the public; some of them were promptlv settled, but t)iere were others that presented various knotty points that required much discussion and many gestures to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. When the magicians were unable to solve these questions, the idols before them were consulted. One of the priests was a good ventriloquist, and the worshippers thought the answers proceeded directly from the mouth of the image. The larger the offering, the more favorable the response, and this day of divination was so profitable that two of the practitioners returned on the morrow; but the faithful had not suf- ficient means to enable the idols to speak two days in succession, and the results of the second sitting were highly unsatis- factory. One of Kassonngo' s lieutenants, whom Cameron pronounced the completest scoundrel of them all, was named Louren^o Souza Coimbra, and many of the explorer's vexations and delays were attributable to this slave hunter. His demands for presents were constant and importunate; his habitual state was that of semi-intoxication, and his appear- ance was as prepossessing as his character. His head was covered with an old hat, so torn, dirty and shapeless, that a rag-picker would have scorned it; his shirt was equally filthy, and a long skirt of grass stuff, which descended to his heels, completed his attire. His hair was short and woolly; his face was nearly beardless, and the skin, of a dirty yellow, was smeared with grease and filth. The cruelty of this pleasant personage was only equalled by his other accomplish- ments. One of his slave caravans is described by Cameron. These captives were all women, fifty-two in number, chained together in groups of seventeen or eighteen. All of them were charged with heavy burdens, the plunder acquired on the march; some of them, in addition, carried their infants and some of them were enceinte. Sinking with fatigue, their feet and legs covered with wounds, the poor creatures were scarcely able to drag themselves along. "The amount of misery and the number of deaths which the capture of these women had produced is beyond anything that can be imagined. It is necessar}' to have seen it to be able to judge of it. The crimes perpetrated in Central Africa would seem' incredible to the inhabitants of a civilized country. In order to obtain these fifty women, ten villages had been destroyed; ten villages having each from a hundred to two hundred inhabitants— a total of fifteen hundred souls. Some of them may have been able to escape, but by far the greater number— nearly all, in fact— had eitlier perished in the flames, been killed in defending their families, or perished of hunger in the jungle, if, indeed, the beasts of prey had not contributed to their more speedy end. "The band, in addition to the fifty-two women, included two men belonging to Coimbra, House in Lake Mohrya. AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 191 two of his wives, given to him by Kassonngo, and perfectly adapted to their task, which was that of watching the slaves, and three children, one of which carried an idol, also presented by Kassonngo to Coimbra, and which the latter considered as good a divinity as any other, although he made the pretense of being a Christian. Like the greater number of the Bihe half-breeds, his Christianity consisted entirely in having received baptism at the hands of some blackguard calling himself a priest, and who, too much of a criminal to be tolerated in Loando or Benguela, had sought refuge in the interior where he baptized for hire all the infants that were brought to him." It was in this most unpleasant company that Cameron continued his course towards the sea- coast, alternately disputing with the petty chiefs whom they met on the route and with the greater savages who constituted his travelling companions. On the 28th of August, the caravan arrived at the capital of Katennd^, a great chief of one of the sections of the Lovale people, who formerly composed only one state, but are now divided into two or three governments. The next day a visit of ceremony was made to Katennde. He was seated in great state under a tree, and surrounded by his council. On each side of the tree was a little shed containing fetishes; one of these contained representations of some unknown animal, the other, caricatures of a man and a woman. A goat's horn, suspended as a talisman from a branch of the tree, hung within a few feet of the monarch. The latter, who was in grand costume, wore a felt hat, a shirt of printed calico, and a long skirt composed of colored handkerchiefs. He had a pipe in his mouth, and did not cease smoking during the interview. His provision of tobacco being nearly exhausted, Cameron won his gratitude by presenting him with some from his own stock, in i^eturn for which he received a fowl and some eggs. When questioned concerning lyivingstone, who had passed through his countr}- in 1854, the only circumstance the potentate could recall was, the great missionary was mounted upon an ox, a detail which seemed to have impressed itself strongly on his memor3^ Since that date, Katennd6 had twice changed his capital. In the afternoon of that day many of his subjects visited the camp of the travellers, and one of them, whom Cameron questioned concerning Lake Dilolo, related a story concerning it. This lake, though so far to the westward of the centre of the continent, is on the stream of the Leeba River, one of the head-waters of the Zambesi. Its site was formerly occupied by a large town, the inhabitants of which lived in great abundance and happiness. Ever}' one was rich in goats, pigs and fowls. Grain and tapioca grew in profusion. The natives passed their lives in eating and drinking, without thought for the morrow. One day a very aged man appeared in the village, exhausted and half famished. To his appeals for food and lodging, the villagers replied only by mocking him, and by encouraging the children to pelt him with stones and mud. The stranger was turning wearily away when one man, more kind-hearted than his neighbors, took pity upon him, invited him into his hut, killed a goat and soon spread a plentiful repast before him, and then gave him his own bed to rest in. In the middle of the night, the old man roused his host, and said to him, ' ' You have been very kind to me ; I wish in my turn to do you a service, but what I say to you must be kept a profound secret." The other promised, and the stranger continued. "Before long, there will be here in the night a great storm. As soon as }ou hear the wind and the rain, arise instantly, take with you all that you can carry and flee." Then he departed. Two nights later the citizen was awakened by such a storm as he had never before heard; recalling the words of his strange guest, he gathered up his wives, his slaves, his goats, and all that he could transport, and fled to the hills. When morning broke, the site of the village was occupied by the Lake Dilolo. Since then, all travellers who cross the lake at night, or who even camp on its shores, hear issuing from the bottom of the waters, the sound of pestles bruising grain, the sound of women singing, of cocks crowing, of goats bleating. Two or three marches farther westward, in the country of Mona Peho, there came into the camp, one day, an individual entirely covered with a native woven stuff", striped with black and white; the gloves and the shoes attached by thongs, the junction of the leggings and the body garment hidden by a fringe of grass stuff". The face was covered with a wooden mask, painted in grotesque resemblance to an old man's countenance with enormous spectacles, and the back of the head by a wig of gray fur. This strange figure carried iu one hand a long stick and in the other, a bell which he rang unceasingly; behind him a boy carried a sack destined to receive contributions. To their inquiries concerning him the travellers received reply that this was a 192 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. false devil who was to chase away the evil spirits that sought refuge in the adjoining forest; the svlvan demons of Kibokone being as numerous as they were powerful. Each one of them has his own district, of which he is so jealous tliat when he encounters another trespassing in it, he immediately leaves and seeks another asylum. The false demon resembles the true ones so closely that on encountering him these will immediately take themselves off. The masker who renders this service to the community is naturally well paid for his trouble; and as he is also the fetisher of the district, he contrives to live in comparative ease. On the iithof October they reached the town of another chief, Kagnommb^, the largest they had yet seen, being three miles in circumference. Within this enclosure, however, were certain districts pertaining to particular chiefs, in which they resided when they came to pay homage to their suzerain. Parks for the cattle and the pigs and fields of tobacco also took up considerable of this space, and still more was occupied by three large ravines, through which flowed streams that afterwards fell into the Kokema River. Cameron was received on his arrival by the grand chamberlain of Kagnommb^, his chief secretary' and the captain of his guards, and they all three wore red waistcoats in token of their dignity. The second of these functionaries, however, was mainly for ostentation, as he did not know how to write. The business of the sovereign with the establishments on the coast was transacted by a subordinate somewhat better instructed. These three officials conducted the explorer to a house prepared for his reception and without giving him time for refreshment demanded of him what he had brought in the way of gifts for their master. A Snider rifle and a piece of cloth were the donations proposed, but these were declared to be totally insuflicient, and it was necessary to add to them a leopard skin, which had been given to Cameron and which he valued highly himself. All the rest of the day he was surrounded by a curious crowd of the natives, who pushed their inquiries so far that he was forced to defend himself as from mere pickpockets. "The following morning" he says, "about nine o'clock, Kagnommbe w-as ready to receive me and sent me word to that effect. I made myself as handsome as the penury of my wardrobe would permit, and taking with me six of my servants I proceeded to the ravine, on the border of which was situated the residence of the chief Sentinels with red vests, and armed with lances and knives, guarded the entrance. In the courtyard, a double row of small stools were placed for the expected guests. At the end of these two files was the royal seat, adorned with my leopard skin. Not seeing any place assigned for myself, and not being disposed to occupy a seat of the same level as those of my followers, I sent off" for my chair. This the court officers opposed violently, stating that no one had ever presumed to sit in a chair in the presence of Kagnommbe, and that I could not be permitted to introduce such a fashion. To this I replied that I was quite indifferent and that I would take myself off", whereupon my chair was admitted without further trouble. "When everybody was seated, the gate of the inner palisade was opened and the chief appeared. He wore an old pair of black pantaloons and an old black coat, put on any way, and over his shoulders a gray Scotch shawl, the two ends of which, thrown behind him, were held by a little boy entirely naked. A dirty old broad-brimmed hat covered his head, and notwith- standing the early hour of the day, he was already- three parts drunken. "Scarcely was he seated when he began to inform me of his puissance. He was, he said, the greatest of all the kings of Africa, because, in addition to his African name, he bore a European one; he was called Antonio Kagnommbe, and the portrait of the king Antonio had been sent to Lisbon. I was also notified that the extent of his power was not to be measured by the fresh- ness of the garments which he wore on this occasion; that a grand costume, entirely new, had been presented to him by the Portuguese authorities, during his sojourn on the coast. He had passed several years at Loanda, where he had, he said, completed his education; but the only result of his studies, as far as I could perceive, seemed to be to have joined the vices of a semi- civilization to those of a savage state. "After having been informed that I had been travelling for a long time, he was pleased to say that he was gratified with the presents which I had made him; but he took occasion to remind me that if I should ever happen to visit his country again, I would be expected to offer him gifts more in accordance with his grandeur. After this recommendation, which terminated the royal discourse, we entered into the inner enclosure, where an enormous banian tree spread ,94 AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. its shadow, and where there were several female banians, bearing seeds but no fruits. When the stools were replaced in order, Kagnonnnbe entered one of the houses of the enclosure, and reappeared in a little while with a bottle of brandy and a tin-cup. He poured little portions of his liquor all around, then, putting the bottle to his own lips, he proceeded to make so large a vacancy in its contents, that I thought to see him fall blind drunk. The only result, however, was to render him more active, and he set to work to gesticulate and to dance in the most extravao-ant manner, employing the eutr'acts of his ballet in absorbing fresh draughts from his bottle. Finally, he ceased, and we parted." One of the very last of these native courts was that of Konngo, chief of the Bailounda. His capital, Kammbala, was situated on a rocky mountain, which rose in the centre of a wooded plain, surrounded by hills. The entrance of the village was on a level sheet of granite. Passing throuo-h three palisades, the visitors were conducted into an enclosure where were four huts that were placed at their disposal. The houses of the village were grouped on the heights in the most curious fashion; every level place that offered sufficient space was occupied by a dwelling, in such a manner that the door of \our neighbor's house was generally either above your head or under your feet. Great trees grew out of the crevices of the rocks; little patches of tobacco were cultivated near the huts, and the palisades were draped with flowering vines. The visitors were received by some of the councillors of the chief The prime minister being absent, his wife took charge of the preparation of the repast for the guests. She soon brought on a liberal portion of thick milk and dried locusts for the attendants; afterwards appeared several of the great men of the capital, each one of them with a pot of beer. Cameron was very desirous of obtaining an audience and presenting his gift to the king, and it was decided that the affair should take place in the afternoon. At the appointed hour, his introducers came for him, and he was conducted to the summit of the hill, where the king and his principal wife had their residence, built upon a small platform. This, surrounded by a strong palisade, was only acces- sible on one side; to reach it, it was necessary to cross no less than thirteen stockades. At two paces from the royal wall, they were arrested by a shed covering a great bell, which was sounded by the watchmen. Here was a body-guard, so that no one could approach the palace without being heralded. "The permission arrived, and the entrance was opened to us. There we found some stools arranged around an antique arm-chair, which served for a throne; my chair was placed among these stools. As soon as we had entered, Konngo appeared, clad in an old uniform in a very dilapidated state, and crowned with an equally lamentable cocked-hat. As he was, at the same time, very old, and very much under the influence of his potations, two men sustained him, and it was necessary to seat him in his arm-chair. I advanced and shook hands with him; I do not know that he had much idea who was his visitor. Some of his councillors took up the conversa- tion; my gift was oSered in due form, and we retired. "As I went back to my hut I passed a group of women occupied in grinding grain. They did not use pestles and mortars, as is the custom elsewhere, but the polished surface of the granite, and a piece of hard, curved wood, a sort of mallet, of which the long curve constituted the handle." As the expedition drew nearer the coast, the constantly increasing difficulties of the march began to tell more and more on its slender resources. The season of the rains came on, and the fatigues of the daily march were succeeded by a comfortless night, passed in wet and mud. The native porters began to straggle and to die. Finally, at the distance of a hundred and twenty-six geographical miles from the coast, a council of war was called to consider the desperate situation. After a half hour's consideration, it was decided that Cameron should abandon his tent, his boat, his bed, everything but his journal, his instruments and his books, and with five picked men, endeavor to reach the Portuguese settlements by forced marches. From there he could send back help to the rest of the company." For provisions he had the half of a fowl and a little flour. His pecuniary resources were reduced to two yards of stuff In spite of semi-starvation, exhaustion and the development of scurvy in his system, he persevered in this effort, and finally, as he came out half dead in sight of the sea at Catombela, he was met by a small party of Europeans in palanquins, one of whom, a young Frenchman, immediately leaped to the ground, drew a bottle from its case, AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 195 and drank enthusiastically to the health of "the first European who had crossed tropical Africa from east to west." Two or three of the latest developments in the slow progress of African civilization may be briefly considered in conclusion. One of the most important in its connection with the relations between European powers is the presence of the English in Egypt, and the French attitude in regard to this occupancy. The latest development of this hostility of the government of the Republic, its refusal to sanction the advantageous arrangement for the conversion of the Egyp- tian privileged debt, unless the English government agreed to set a not distant date for the evacuation of Egypt by the British forces, is only another incident in a long story. The fine old, unreasoning jealousy of "perfidious Albion" seems really to be largely responsible for what the English consider French stupidity as much as French malice. They claim, with some show of reason, that it is difficult to conceive that the Gallic statesmen seriously believed that Lord Salisbury would consent to any engagement to withdraw the British troops at a moment which would lead to the most disastrous results. The work of jears would be undone in a few months, the finances and credit of the country would be utterly disorganized. The department of public works in Egypt is almost exclusively occupied with the great problem of irrigation — so important a factor in the prosperity of the country. Indeed, we may say, with a recent writer: " The very life of the Egyptian cultivator depends on the engineer." In the matter of the maintenance of public order within the borders of Egypt and the security of the country from external attack, the recent victories of the English army over the fanatical dervishes are sufficient evidences of the good work done, and of the very great importance of that work. The state of affairs which would have ensued if the followers of the Mahdi had been victorious instead of defeated may be only faintly conceived. It is not probable that Europe would permit the country to be exposed to such disaster, and, if the English were to abandon the task, the military force of some other power would be charged with the duty of maintaining public order in the valley of the Nile. The British officials claim that their efforts have been constantly directed towards enabling the Egyptian government to stand alone, and in the reorganization of the army and the police this effort has been attended with serious difficulties. The fellaheen are essentially peaceful by nature, and not personally brave; moreover, they are not sustained by any public sentiment nor any fear of public opinion — "if a man is afraid, he says so, as if it were the most natural thing in the world." Exemption from military service was formerly considered cheaply purchased by the loss of a finger or an eye, and even under the English rule these voluntary mutilations are not uncommon. The zeal of the English officers has, however, accomplished wonders, and behind breastworks, and even in the open, the Egyp- tian has proved himself a good soldier. The Egyptian army is now composed of 11,719 men and 542 officers; of whom 63 are English. An increase of some 2000 men has been made in 1889. The police is a semi- military force, and, though the native policeman is very patient and timid rather than truculent, the number of offenses are shown by statistics to be steadily decreasing. The so-called brigandage, which is mainly burglary, has been entirely suppressed. The condition of the fellaheen is by no means so abject as a superficial view of his situ- ation would seem to indicate. Though he works hard, wears very few clothes, eats no meat and lives in a house with mud walls, it is not true — even in his darkest days under Ismail Pasha and his predecessors— that he lives in constant hopes of translation to a less miserable world by death. All things are relative and comparative, and it has been boldly declared that many of the lower classes in Europe suffer greater privations and live more cheerless lives than do the tillers of Egyptian soil. The mud-walled, partially roofed cottage of the fellaheen furnishes sufficient shelter in the mild and dry climate ; neither a meat diet nor an abundance of clothing is necessary to their physical comfort or strength. Their ambitions are as limited as their wants— so long as they are not unduly taxed, imprisoned unjustly, dragged away to forced labor or conscripted, their share of happiness in this world is much greater than that of some of their social superiors. The abuses under which these simple people suffered have been very generally done away with under the present administration. Their liabilities to the money-lenders of the villages, which in 1883 were enormous, have been so greatly reduced that Sir E. Vincent reported, AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 197 in 1888, that these village money-lenders were rapidly disappearing. Notwithstanding the land-tax and other fixed charges frequently amount to as much as $30 or $35 an acre, the general value of the land and the status of its proprietors is far from being desperate, as the following incident will testify: "In 1887 the Nile rose too high, and a cry was raised that there was great devastation in Upper Egypt, and danger of famine. The Khedive at once instituted a commission, charged to assess the damage done to crops, to remit taxation accordingly, and to give relief to those in need. The commissioners were amply supplied with funds, but returned to Cairo with an almost intact treasury, as they found it unneces- sary, and well-nigh impossible to distribute more than a few hundred pounds. The distress was imaginary, and the flood had been turned to account in order to obtain remission of taxes, the ideal of the fellah. The commissioners related many interesting anecdotes as to the ingenuity of the peasantry. One man appeared before the commission as if in the most abject misery, and related a harrowing tale of how the mighty river had swallowed up his crop of corn, his only subsistence, so that starvation now stared him in the face. Inquiry was made, however, before granting him relief and remission of taxes. He had valued his lost corn crop at $15 an acre ; but it was found that the poor man had already let the land, which had been flooded and co\ered with rich mud, at the rate of $70 for tobacco planting! When it is considered that the special tax on land planted with tobacco is $150 an acre, that the fixed charges on the land, including the rent, would in this case amount to $250, and that the incoming tenant was a shrewd Greek, it will be acknowledged that it is diflScult to over-estimate the value of an acre of Nile deposit." A very different condition is that of another British settlement — that of the little garrison which holds the country against the Arab slave traders north of Lake Nyassa in Central Africa. In the early summer of 1889 a movement was set on foot in England to send them relief, letters appeared in the Times, the position was even compared with that of General Gordon at Khartoum, and Commander Cameron canva.ssed the country and addressed meet- ings in the endeavor to raise funds for a relief expedition, of which he offered to take command himself The cost of this expedition he estimated at $75,000; but after several mouths of continued effort he had only succeeded in collecting some $6,000. The fighting has been going on with varying success for two years, and the end is not yet as we goto press. The so-called "Arab" slave dealers first appeared in theWankonde country, north and north-east of Lake Nyassa, some eight years ago. The Wankonde were a peaceful, agricultural and cattle-breeding people, armed only with spears; intelligent, and in many respects in advance of the general savage tribes of Africa. The country was densely populated, and the tribe owned allegiance to four powerful chiefs. One of these, "'the Chungoo," died, and his followers, left without a head, became divided up into many small, weak communities. The Arabs, who arrived about this time and obtained permission to settle and trade, were mostly Swahili-speaking, woolly-headed coast men, with but little Arab blood in their veins. They owned allegiance to the powerful "White Arabs" of the Senga countrs-. Their chief was a man named Mlozi, purer-blooded, and with considerable ability joined to great ambition. Settling on the British made road from Nyassa to Tanganyika, he commanded the Mpata pass, while his subordinates, lower down, fixed on the ford of the Rikura River. The caravans from the interior, from the Senga country and from Kabanda and other powerful Arabs at the south of Tanganyika, had to pass his way to the ferry at Deep Bay, where they crossed the lake to communicate with the Arabs on its eastern shore, and proceed onward to the coast, and the ferry was thus under his control. The small village was soon surrounded b\- a palisade and thorn zareeba, nominally against hyenas, and this soon grew into a strong stockade, and Mlozi then called himself "Sultan of Mkonde," and was in a position to make his village a resting- place for caravans and levy dues on them. The necessary quarrel with the inoffensive Wankonde was soon afterwards picked, their villages burned, the men massacred, and the women and children carried off" for slaves. The remnant of the unhappy people fled to their friends north of the Songwe, or crowded around the little British station at Karonga. This usual proceeding was the prelude to a most unusual one— an attack upon the English station. At this time there were two traders there, both Scotchmen, of the African Lakes AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. 199 Women of Kammbala Breaking Grain. Company, one of whom was generally away on caravan work. There was no fort or stockade, and only some sixty natives, or "station boys," a few miscellaneous rifles and a very few rounds of ammunition. The only whites within a hundred and fifty miles were two mission- aries at Chirenji. Some thirty-five miles along the Tanganyika road, Mr. Monteith, who happened to be alone at this time, hurriedly began a rough brick wall as a defense, and sent messages asking the advice and help of the missionaries. One of them immediately came to his assistance; the steamer arrived and was sent south for ammunition and help. At the south of the lake she found Mr. O'Neill, consul at Mozambique, his brother-in-law and a Mr. Sharpe, who was hunting in the neighborhood. These at once started for Karonga, and arrived just in time. From insults the Arabs proceeded to open violence, and finally opened the fight with a volley of bullets. For fi^e days and nights the garrison held out, till almost the last round of ammunition was expended. Fifteen hundred refugees were crowded on the lake shore, in rear of the stockade. Mr. Nicoll had marched in before hostilities were opened, and then succeeded in running the gauntlet, and reaching the friendly Wankonde, north of the Songwe. With five thousand of these spearmen he came down upon the besiegers just as the garrison had abandoned hope. The Arabs fled, but the whites were compelled to evacuate Karonga, which was razed to the ground b)- the returning slave drivers, as soon as the garrison was at a safe distance. In South Africa, also, the rule of the English has not been crowned with unvarying success and the doings of the "Aborigines Protection Society" furnish subject for bitter discussion among those interested in the welfare of the Cape colonies. The policy of this society, as defined by one of its defenders, "includes in the first place, opposition to the wrong-doing of the home authorities as regards native races, and in the second place, such opposition as it can ofier with hope of success to the wrong-doing of colonists in the same direction." This function was recognized and commended by the Marquis of Salisbury in August, 1875, when, as 20O AFRICA ILLUSTRATED. Secretan- of State for India, he declared that "in all matters where conflicting interests" — between colonists or officials and natives — "had to be reconciled, the operation of a society like the Aborigines Protection Society mnst prove beneficial, by disseminating sound principles and streno-thenincr the hands of the authorities who had to deal with people in distant parts whose interests came sharply into conflict." Within the last ten years, however, the criticisms of the action of this society have been the most severe, till one of its latest assailants avers that "it would be no misdescription to change its name to that of the Colonists' Calumniation Society." To its influences he ascribes the most serious Kaffir wars of recent years ; he blames it for seeking and obtaining the partial release of Cetewayo ; he declares that "the crowning disaster of the Zulu tragedv was brought about b\ the \-ehenient opposition to annexation offered by the society," etc., etc. Between such differences of opinion it is difficult for those not on the spot to arrive at just conclusions. The conflicts between the English and the Germans on the east coast of Africa are more recent and much better known, and here the former have contrived to more than hold their own — probably because of the conclusion of the German Chancellor that the game was not worth the candle. On the west coast, also, the British seem to be bettering their new rivals in the field of colonial extension — the possessions claimed by the latter, south of the Equator, are in Namaqua Land and Damara Land, the two provinces which occupy the coast between Cape Colony and the Portuguese possessions. A few months ago, it was reported that they were preparing to sell out all their rights and interests on the south-west coast to the British ; now, however, it is asserted that the head chief of Damara has given them notice to quit the country and go back to Namaqua. 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