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Updated: May 11, 2025
Other notices proclaimed the unequalled opportunity of beholding "The Dahomey Warriors of Savage South Africa; a Rare and Peculiar Race of People; all there is Left of them" as, indeed, it might well be. Another called on the public "not to fail to see the Coloured Beauties of the Voluptuous Harem," no doubt also the product of Savage South Africa.
If Dahomey is not a large country, it is often talked about. It is celebrated for the frightful cruelties which signalize its annual festivals, and by its human sacrifices fearful hecatombs intended to honor the sovereign it has lost and the sovereign who has succeeded him.
If we succeed, and there is no doubt about that I should hope, we shall preserve Abeokuta, and enable the Christian missionaries to labour on without interruption; we shall punish the usurper, and restore the right man to his government; we shall rout out a nest of slave-dealers, and put a stop to slave-dealing in Lagos; and we shall teach the King of Dahomey to be cautious, lest the same punishment we inflict on his friend there may overtake him.
Not often did such great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in 1726 and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734 to glut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes.
You may affirm that an absolute despotism is the only government fit for Dahomey, and I may not disallow it; but when you go on and say that Dahomey is the happiest country in the world, why I refer you to Dogberry. Now the parents of a child are, from the nature of the case, absolute despots.
Still more barbarous is the notion of enjoying the gratification of trampling on the heads of their enemies; and, in order to do this, the King of Dahomey has the passage leading to his bedchamber paved with the skulls of his enemies!" EMMA. "O cruel murderous people! Sail on, Charles, and leave them far behind. Is not the next coast Ashantee?"
These last take place annually, or even more often. Sometimes as many as a thousand captives are slain on these occasions. In almost all the pagan nations of Africa human sacrifices are perpetrated, just as they were by the Druids and Egyptians of old. Nowhere, however, are they carried to such a terrible extent as in Dahomey.
Those I saw appeared to be half-caste Jamaicans, but there may have been something more savage inside, and certainly a Dahomey warrior from South Africa would have to be ferocious indeed if his fierceness was to equal his rarity. But the particular race did not matter.
First comes ancient Guinea, then, modern Sierra Leone and Liberia; then follow the various "coasts" of ancient traffic the grain, ivory, gold, and slave coasts with the adjoining territories of Ashanti, Dahomey, Lagos, and Benin, and farther back such tribal and territorial names as those of the Mandingoes, Yorubas, the Mossi, Nupe, Borgu, and others.
Why, we seemed to be a-journeyin' through foreign countries, a-carryin' the thought with us that we took our breakfast in our own hum, and that we should sleep there that night, but for all that we wuz in Turkey, and Japan, and Dahomey, and Lapland, etc., etc., etc.
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