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Soon after the founding of the Society Burton, accompanied by his wife, took a trip to Madeira and then proceeded to Teneriffe, where they parted, he going on to Fernando Po and she returning to England; but during the next few years she made several journeys to Teneriffe, where, by arrangement, they periodically met. Bibliography: 23. A Mission to the King of Dahome. 2 vols., 1864. 24.
With all our descriptions of the wonderful temple of Karnac, it is remarkable that all mention of its association with sex worship should be omitted by many writers. A number of travellers in Africa, even in comparatively modern times, have observed evidences of sex worship among the primitive races of that continent. Captain Burton speaks of this custom with the Dahome tribe.
By night we also passed Cape Apollonia and its four hummocks, which are faintly visible from Axim. The name has nothing to do, I need hardly say, with Apollo or his feasts, the Apolloniæ, nor has it any relationship with the admirable 'Apollinaris water. It was given by the Portuguese from the saint [Footnote: Butler's Lives gives 'S. Apollonia (not Appolonia, as the miners have it), v.m. February 9. This admirable old maid leaped into the fire prepared for her by the heathen populace of Alexandria when she refused to worship their 'execrable divinity. There are also an Apollonius (March 5), 'a zealous holy anchorite' of Egyptian Antinous; and Apollinaris, who about A.D. 376 began to 'broach his heresy, denying in Christ a human soul.] who presided over the day of discovery. In the early half of the present century the King of Apollonia ruled the coast from the Assini to the Ancobra Rivers; the English built a fort by permission at his head-quarters, and carried on a large trade in gold-dust. Meredith tells us that, when his Majesty deceased, some twenty men were sacrificed on every Saturday till the 'great customs' took place six months afterwards. The underlying idea was, doubtless, that of Dahome: the potentate must not go, like a 'small boy, alone and unattended to the shadowy realm. The 'African Cruiser' [Footnote: Journal of an African Cruiser, by an officer of the U.S. navy. Edited by Nathaniel Hawthorn. Aberdeen: Clark and Son, 1848.] speaks of the royal palace being sumptuously furnished in European style; of gold cups, pitchers, and plates, and of vast treasures in bullion. When the King died sixty victims were slain and buried with their liege lord; besides a knife, plate, and cup; swords, guns, cloths, and goods of various kinds. The corpse, smeared with oil and powdered cap-
The caboceer had a house and a stock of provisions ready for his guests, put many questions, and earnestly pressed them to rest for two or three days. The next eye-witness is Mr. John Duncan, who visited Dahome in 1845.
Men still wasted their vigour upon the Nigritis Palus, the Chelonides waters, the Mount Caphas, and the lakes of Wangara, variously written Vancara and Vongara, not to mention other ways. Maps place "Wangara"to the north-west of Dahome, where the natives utterly ignore the name. Thus the lakes of Wangara would be the lagoons of the Slave-coast, in which the Niger may truly be said to lose itself.
The peoples, who, like those of Dahome, have a distinct future world, have borrowed it, I cannot help thinking, from Egypt. And when an African chief said in my presence to a Yahoo-like naval officer, "When so be I die, I come up for white man! When so be you die, you come up for monkey!" my suspicion is that he had distorted the doctrine of some missionary.
The stranger in Africa marvels why men, who, as Dahome shows, can affect a tasteful simplicity, will make themselves such "guys." But the negro combines with inordinate love of finery the true savage taste an imitative nature, and where he cannot copy the Asiatic he must ape the European; only in the former pursuit he rises above, in the latter he sinks below his own proper standard.
It vetoed her raids and forays upon neighbouring peoples; like Dahome she had her annual slave-hunts and the captives were sold for gold-dust to the inner tribes. The young officers who replaced the veterans of the war would naturally desire, in Kafir parlance, to 'wash their spears. Nor are they satisfied with the defeats sustained by their sires.
Then we struck the valley of 'Ebumesu, winding water, whose approach, rank with mire and corded with roots, is the Great Dismal Swamp of Dahome in miniature. Here, seven and a quarter miles from the mouth, the stream measures about twenty yards broad, the thalweg is deep and navigable, and the water, bitumen-coloured with vegetable matter, tastes brackish.
Like the chiefs of Porto Novo, the despot of Dahome, the rulers of many Nigerian tribes, and even the Fernandian "Bube," these potentates may not look at the sea nor at the river. The linguist becomes more powerful than the chief, who is wholly in his power, and always receives the best presents.
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