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After the Avogal's visit I went to pay one in my turn to a strange individual, more of a king in Widah than the King of Dahomey himself, who could not do without him, for he supplied him with guns and gunpowder for his wars, and brandy wherewith to intoxicate his Amazons.
They were ready to face death with courage, nay, with gaiety, on a field of battle. But the dull, squalid, barbarous life, which they had now been leading during several months, was more than they could bear. They were as much out of the pale of the civilised world as if they had been banished to Dahomey or Spitzbergen. The climate affected their health and spirits.
As queer a sight as I ever see, and here it wuz agin, my Josiah and me a-journeyin' way off in Lapland the idee! The Dahomey Village come next. This shows the homes and customs of that country where the wimmen do all the fightin'. I sez to Josiah, "What a curiosity that wuz!" And he sez, "I d'no about the curiosity on't.
We read what travellers tell us about the King of Dahomey, or the Fejee Island people, or the short and simple annals of the celebrities recorded in the Newgate Calendar, and do not know just what to make of these brothers and sisters of the race; but I do not suppose an intelligence even as high as the angelic beings, to stop short there, would see anything very peculiar or wonderful about them, except as everything is wonderful and unlike everything else.
Merensky says that in Basutoland the elder women begin to practice labial manipulation on their female children shortly after infancy, and Adams has found this custom to prevail in Dahomey; he says that the King's seraglio includes 3000 members, the elect of his female subjects, all of whom have labia up to the standard of recognized length.
Dahomey was the last word in a series of human disasters which began with the defeat of the Askias at Tenkadibou. From the middle of the fifteenth to the last half of the nineteenth centuries the American slave trade centered in Guinea and devastated the coast morally, socially, and physically.
In their persons, they are much more agreeable, than those who reside near the sea. European goods are brought hither from Dahomey and Badagry, but more especially from Lagos, and are daily exposed for sale in the markets of Jadoo and Egga.
"The signification, perhaps, pleased him," says Southey; "Duke of Thunder was what in Dahomey would have been called a strong name; it was to a sailor's taste, and certainly to no man could it be more applicable."
Lagos, one of the chief strongholds of the slave-dealers, which the Yorubans most had to fear, has since been taken possession of by the British, and has been declared an English colony or settlement; but Dahomey, governed by its bloodthirsty monarch, with his army of six thousand Amazons and five thousand male warriors, still exists as a terrible scourge to the surrounding territories.
When the "Albatross" came flying over Dahomey, the old King Bahadou had just died, and the whole population was proceeding to the enthronization of his successor. Hence there was great agitation all over the country, and it did not escape Robur that everybody was on the move. Long lines of Dahomians were hurrying along the roads from the country into the capital, Abomey.
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