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Updated: May 28, 2025
In Eastern Africa I know but one people, the Wanyika near Mombasah, who have certain images called "Kisukas;" they declare that this great medicine, never shown to Europeans, came from the West, and Andrew Battel found idols amongst the people whom he calls Giagas or Jagas, meaning Congoese chiefs. Moreover, the Gaboon pagans lodge their idols.
M. Malte- Brun supposes the Congoese dialects to indicate "a meditative genius foreign to the habitual condition of these people," ignoring the fact that the most complicated and laborious tongues are those of barbarous nations, whilst modern civilization in variably labours to simplify.
I agreed the more willingly to the suggestion of a cruize, as my Mpongwe fashionables, like the Congoese, and unlike the Yorubans, proved to be bad and untrained walkers; they complained of sore feet, and they were always anticipating attacks of fever.
Had we known then what we learned afterwards that the word "Ngandu" is Congoese for "crocodile," and that it was uttered as an intimation to us that the river and its creeks literally swarm with these reptiles, it is possible that our swim, short though it was, would not have been undertaken with quite so much composure.
The second is the "Itsena," evidently the Njina, Nji, Nguyla, or gorilla; and thirdly is the "Chimpenza," our Chimpanzee, a word corrupted from the Congoese Kampenzy, including the Nchigo, the Kulu-Kamba, and other Troglodytes.
Although eight feet long by five broad, the coffin was said to be quite full. The immense respect which the Congoese bear to their rulers, dead as well as alive, prevented my verifying the accounts of the slave dealers.
Father Merolla tells us that the Congoese girls are locked up in pairs for two or three months out of the sight of man, bathing several times a day, and applying "taculla," the moistened dust of a red wood; without this "casket of water" or "of fire," as they call it, barrenness would be their lot.
The costume of a Congoese belle, according to her rendering of it, was a petticoat of parti-coloured bead fringe about twelve inches deep, depending loosely from the hips; the rest of her clothing consisting entirely as Mike Flanaghan would have said of jewellery, of which she wore a considerable quantity.
There lingers, it is true, amongst the Congoese of the coast-regions a something derived from the olden age, still distinguishing them from the wild people of the interior, and at times they break out naturally in the tongue of their conquerors. But it requires a practised eye to mark these minutiae.
She was a fore-and-aft schooner of twenty tons, measuring 42 feet 6 inches over all and put up at Bonny Town by Captain Birkett. She had two masts, and oars in case of calms; her crew was of six hands, including one Fernando, a Congoese, who could actually box the compass. No outfit was this time necessary, beyond a letter to Mr. Tippet, who had charge of the highest establishments up stream.
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