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PRINCETON, N. J. 


Purchased by the Hammill Missionary Fund. 




Division f\ Q. . A.^C. • 




Section 




Number 






Sc-B 

7 




i 





APR 171973 



^icc;c,u 



MAWEDO, 



THE PALM-LAND MAIDEN. 



BY 

REY. R. H. NASSAU, M. D., 

AUTHOR OF “CROWNED IN PALM-LAND.” 




AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, \ 

150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



COPYRIGHT, 1882, 



BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



In this story I have gathered many of the 
habits and customs of Equatorial Africa, and 
some of the scenes occurring in the lives of ordi- 
nary African women, into an account of the life 
of one actual family. 

Mawedo was a real being ; but in her story 
I include events taken from the lives of several 
other women. 

Almost all the incidents here narrated oc- 
curred under my own observation, or were 
related to me by reliable informants. I have 
invented very little. But, in order to cover up 
the identity of persons still living, I have 
introduced anachronisms, have suppressed and 
changed names of persons, and have inter- 
changed names of places. r. h. n. 



Contents 



I. In the Sunset * page 7 

II. Ayenwe, a Slave 15 

III. The Plantation — 22 

IV. Village Scenes 41 

V. Children’s Plays 54 

VI. Fishing 59 

VII. Hunting 66 

VIII. Rubber Gathering 77 

IX. The Capture-- 86 

X. Death of the Chief 92 

XI. In a Slave Canoe 99 

XII. At the Seaside 114 

XIII. A Little Witch 125 

XIV. Light in a Dark Place 137 

XV. Tempted and Tried 148 

XVI. A Revelation 158 

XVII. Baby Fingers 169 

XVIII. A Witchcraft Murder 176 

XIX. A New Path 186 

XX. A Brother Indeed - 190 

XXI. Carrying the Light — — 197 

XXII. Into the Sunrise - 203 



NOTE. 



In the pronunciation of the dialects of 
Equatorial Africa, 

1. Give the English sounds to all the conso- 
nants except g , which is always hard. 

2. The letter y is always a consonant. 

3. Give to the vowel a the force of a in ah! 
or father, e. g., “Baraka,” “inwanga.” 

To the vowel a, the force of a in law , e. g . , 
“malanga,” “tandaka.” 

To the vowel e the force of e in they , or of a 
in fate, e. g., “ Nengenenge,” “ejaka.” 

To the vowel e the force of e in met , e. g . , 
‘ ‘ Mbade, ” “ nyengele. ’ ’ 

To the vowel i the force of i in machine , e. g . , 
‘ ‘ Benita, ” “ ikenga. ’ ’ 

To the vowel 0 the force of 0 in bone , e. g . , 
‘ ‘ Alongo, ” “ kongongo. ’ ’ 

To the vowel u the force of u in rule , or of 00 
in moon , e. g. , “ Uj ij i, ” “ uhaka. 



MAWEDO, 

THE PALM-LAND MAIDEN. 



I. IK THE SUNSET. 

A little four years-old girl stood on the 
bank of the Ogowe river, in childish glee 
plucking the red and white corollas of the 
clerodendron that clambered over the dense 
bushes lining the path to the water-side. 
Aimlessly she flung from her the crushed 
petals into the swift stream that whirled and 
foamed, vexed in the rocky chasm to which 
it was confined. Then she laughed as the 
swirling eddies snatched, as if hungry, the 
broken flowers, and swallowed them in their 
vortex, or carried them around the short 
turn of the river out of her sight. 



8 



MA WEDO. 



On a gnarled root of the wild man^o-tree 
that leaned out over the stream, whose waters 
had undermined its hold on the steep clay 
bank, sat the little girl's brother, two years 
older than she, dangling his bare legs in the 
air as he pretended to fish. His extempo- 
rized rod was a young palm-frond divested 
of its leaflets, and the line was the strong 
fibre of pine-apple leaves. Civilized pins had 
indeed been heard of in that interior part of 
Africa, but they were spoken of as part of the 
White Man’s wealth, and were too rare to be 
used by small boys as hooks. A thorn 
served as fish-hook on that dav. Had the 
boy been really fishing, roughly-made iron 
hooks could have been procured in the vil- 
lage smithy, forged from iron smelted in 
rude furnaces from native ores, whose seams 
are found cropping out occasionally on the 
surface of the ground. The secret of his 
angling in a locality where the most skilful 
fishermen would have had to seek in vain, 



was to be read in the actual fish which his 
mother was then cleaning by the little rivulet 
that there joined the larger stream. That 
fish had been caught, by one of their village 
men, a half-mile distant ; as the woman and 
her two children were emerging from the 
village on their way to her plantation, the 
boy’s hungry eyes had seen a basket full of 
fishes lying in the street, and his quick 
fingers had stolen one and slipped it among 
the plantain leaves of his own basket. Safely 
out of the village, he had shown it to his 
mother, and at her bidding he was going 
through the piscatory motions on which to 
base the claim that he himself had caught 
the fish, if suspicion for its loss should hap- 
pen to fall on him. 

And now the scraping of the fish-scales 
was done, and the mother, looking up, saw 
that the day was passing, for the sun had 
sunk below the tree-tops. All animated 
nature was hasting to prepare for the rapid- 



Mawedo. 



2 



IO 



MA WE DO. 



ly falling night. The blue kingfisher, with 
quick dart and petulant cry, left his perch 
on a dead branch to seek his well-concealed 
nest. The flock of pelicans lifted their un- 
wieldy bodies, and on wide-spread white 
wings slowly sailed away for their ragged 
nests in the dead tree-tops. The great blue 
heron gathered up his long legs, and with 
low flight, slowly flapping his long, curved 
wings, sank among the tall, thick-stemmed 
grasses that fringed a quieter reach of water 
up stream. Overhead, above the forest, 
hasted hundreds of red-tailed gray parrots, 
screaming their harsh note, as with quick, 
labored stroke they winged their way to 
where their ever open-mouthed young 
squawked in their nests in the hollow trees. 
The evening breeze came with refreshing 
breath to cool the woman’s face, vexed with 
the hot day ; and its dampness extracted the 
fragrance of the parti-colored flowers that 
hung from vines, and of the pea-shaped bios- 



IN THE SUNSET 



1 1 



soms of the many pod-bearing trees that 
lined the banks. 

Not all native Africans have the typical 
thick, out-turned lips, and flat, coarse nose 
that we are accustomed to associate with the 
negro. This woman, still quite young, had 
been graceful in form ; her thin nostrils were 
dilating in the scented wind, and her features, 
“dark but comely,” lost for a moment the 
imbruted expression that oppression and 
sorrow had marked on her youth. To her, 
life was all sunset in its shadows. 

Was it a stirring of some gift which 
under the fostering hand of Christian civili- 
zation might have made her an artist, that 
caused her eye to rest, with sad questioning, 
on the mysterious glory of the clouds, blazing 
in red and gold between the green setting of 
the forest below and the blue vault above? 
While everything in and about her life only 
crushed out whatever was beautiful and good, 
she seldom thought of looking at the rare 



JlIA WE DO. 



12 

glories of the tropical sunset. A handful of 
red beads would sooner have elicited her 
admiration. But to-day the village life had 
been especially cruel ; and, gazing still at the 
flaming furnace of the west, she found a 
strange rest in the unrest of the constantly 
varying shapes that to a civilized eye might 
have seemed domes and pillars, but to this 
woman, knowing nothing of domes and pil- 
lars, resembled so many gigantic elephants, 
white and golden trunked, under enormous 
palm-fronds tinted red and gray, by rivers 
that flowed like molten brass between deep, 
violet-hued banks flecked with ferns. Stream- 
ing out over all, burnishing, dissolving, re-crea- 
ting, fading, were the wands of light that 
arm-like shot from the sunk magician of day. 
They glanced on the lower line of clouds, 
but those clouds had faded out their brilliant 
life, and lay in misty grayness, only their 
edges responding, as with electric flash, to 
the magician’s touch. They reached into 



IN THE SUNSET. 



>3 



the darkening zenith, and spread their weird 
fingers, flinging warm, rosy light to the por- 
tals of the north and the south. But the 
mystic arms were drawn back no longer with 
fingers rosy and warm, but weary with their 
wild play, and bruised and broken and dark- 
ened ; even as this woman’s heart had reached 
out with affection, and had recoiled broken, 
bitter, and hateful. 

She was startled by the fierce snort and 
deep bellow of the river-horse from the pool 
down river, where he had spent the day in 
stupid and sleepy repose beneath the water, 
only lifting his great head above the surface 
every few minutes to breathe and spout. He 
was now leading his herd up the bank for 
their nightly raid on the plantations, and the 
realization of this fact brought back life’s 
hard lines and cares to the cloud-watcher. 
Thinking of her own patch of cassava and 
plantain, she laughed a short bitter laugh as 
she derisively shouted to the huge brutes, 



14 



M.A IVEDO. 



“Are you going to my garden?” Then she 
stooped to chide to quietness her little girl, 
who, having a while before stopped pelting 
the water with flowers, had been sitting by her 
brother, who had descended from his perch 
on the gnarled root. The little girl, fright- 
ened by the snort of the hippopotamus that 
had startled her mother, had left her brother 
and was grasping her mother’s knee for pro- 
tection. 

Warned by the coming darkness, the 
woman now snatched up her basket, said to 
the children, “Yogoni” (come), and hastily 
gathered her burdens for the remainder of 
the walk to her plantation. 



A YEN WE, A SLAVE. 



*5 



II. AYENWE, A SIlAYE. 

A-ye-nwe was a slave. But she had once 
been free. Six years before, she was living, a 
young wife, in a large town of her own Ba-te-ke 
tribe beyond the head of the Ogowe river, on 
the sources of the Alima, one of the affluents 
of the Congo-Livingstone, flowing into that 
mighty river near Stanley Pool. Her family 
was poor, and she and her young husband 
were accorded but slight position in the 
strife for honor in the town talks, or when 
decisions about quarrels were rendered in 
the public waiting-house. To their poverty 
was added the disadvantage of belonging to 
the weaker branch of the family. The hus- 
band, indeed, deserved very little considera- 
tion, for he was indolent and disinclined to 
physical exertion, and had little intelligence 
or force of character, while he made up in 
arrogant violence what he lacked in actual 



i6 



MA WEDO. 



power. He was disliked by his superiors, 
and feared by his equals or inferiors. 

Ayenwe’s grace and good looks would 
have won her favor, and her quick intelli- 
ligence and commendable energy might 
have commanded respect, had she been pru- 
dent and patient. But her pride resented 
the slights put on her family, and her sharp 
tongue was too fond of sarcasm, and became 
wreckless in scattering the fire-brands of slan- 
der, and bitter in curses and insults when 
engaged in a wordy quarrel. 

No wonder, then, that when an evil day 
came, as come many evil days in the lawless- 
ness of that country, and a stronger faction 
of the tribe pressed the chief of the village 
for the payment of an old heavy debt, the 
chief sold his own flesh and blood into slavery. 
A convenient charge, based on some threat 
of Ayenwe’s and some violent act of her 
husband's, was laid against them in village 
council, and condemnation to loss of freedom, 



A YEN WE, A SEA YE. 



J 7 



the common punishment for other than cap- 
ital crimes, was denounced against them. 
Such prisoners are held in servitude, not in 
the limits of their own tribe, nor in the 
hands of a more interior (and therefore 
inferior) tribe, but by any tribe “down river” 
on the way to the Great Sea, where were 
reported to live the White Spirits who bought, 
and were believed to eat, the thousands of 
slaves that yearly were carried thither. 

So Ayenwe and her husband were handed 
over to the creditor, who, as he would have 
found them a turbulent possession in his or 
their own tribe, quickly disposed of them to 
an adjacent tribe on the western side of the 
watershed of the Ogowe. There they were 
separated, the husband being passed on and 
on, Ayenwe never knew to where ; and she 
herself fell into the hands of a rich old man 
of the Okota tribe living near Aduma, south 
of the upper portion of the Ogowe, by whom 
she was added to the company of his other 

filuwetlo. 



O 



MAWEDO. 



18 

wives, all of whom, whether bond or free, 
were in effect slaves, having been bought 
either with a dowry ( ivule ) as a wife, or with 
a price ( ihambe ) as a slave. Favoritism on 
the part of their master made servitude less 
heavy for some than for others. But on this 
newest slave fell the heaviest lot; for her 
fellow-slaves, women though they were, in 
the selfishness and cruelty bred of oppres- 
sion, practised on her the despotism of which 
they themselves were victims, and shirked off 
on her as large as possible a share of their 
own burdens. 

Such treatment of a new-comer is not 
confined to human nature in a state of sla- 
very. The latest member of the herd or the 
flock, as every country lad knows, has to 
fight the old leader, and every new pupil has 
to square off with the school bully, before the 
status is determined for the steer in the pas- 
ture, the cock in the hennery, or the boy on 
the play-ground. 



A YEN WE, A SLAVE. 



I 9 



But Ayenwe’s life might have gradually 
become easier, and her burdens would per- 
haps have been shared by new male and fe- 
male slaves added from time to time, had not 
her temper ill brooked her new degradation. 
She threw herself into a posture of antago- 
nism that unwisely resisted where resistance 
was vain, and thus drew on herself the objur- 
gation not only of the favorites of the house- 
hold but even of the old man himself. He 
wasted few words in rebuke ; lashes soon left 
their bloody marks on her back. The inch- 
thick hide of the hippopotamus and of the 
manatee, or sea-cow, cut into long whips with 
two or more tails at the end, makes a knout 
(Kasa-nguvu) that every Guinea negro hangs 
on the wall of his home, ready for use on any 
obstinate member of his harem. Then in 
vain Aye n we would scream, and implore, and 
protest, and roll in the dust at the old man’s 
feet, and hold up her hands to ward off the 
blows. They fell, all the same, on face, on 



20 



MA IVEDO. 



arm, or whatever was exposed, till his fury 
was spent, and she limped, bleeding, crushed, 
spirit-broken, not conquered, but embittered, 
to the poor refuge of her smoky hut, where 
her wounds would be bathed by some fellow- 
slave. But the kasa-nguvu made her no 
more tractable, for the rod nowhere teaches 
a good lesson when wielded by other than 
love. Ayenwe would sob out her paroxysm 
of ill-will, pain, and shame, and then find her 
only comfort in fondling her little baby 
boy. 

Though actually born in slavery, and 
therefore himself a slave, he was to her a me- 
mento of her life as a Bateke free-woman, and 
at his birth she had named him O-va-nga 
(Ransom) as if with a vague hope that he 
would some day be her rescuer. This was 
her one hope, cherished secretly, her conso- 
lation in grief. 

When, two years later, a little girl baby 
came to her, she turned her face away from 



A YEN WE, A SLAVE. 



21 



it, and called it Ma-we-do (Death’s), finding 
in its slave life only aggravated affliction for 
herself, knowing that as soon as the child 
should be serviceable for any work, it would 
be separated from her and made a servant to 
others. 



22 



MA IVEDO. 



Ill THE PLANTATION. 

When Ayemve turned from the sunset to 
go to her garden, she hastily stepped to the 
rivulet where she had washed the fish, and 
filled an earthen jug, containing several gal- 
lons, with the fresh spring-water. 

Filthy as most natives are as to what they 
eat and drink, of decaying flesh, and from 
unwashed vessels, yet they are disgusted 
with river-water, because the corpses of slaves 
and other despised persons are not buried, 
but flung into the rivers. The sight of these 
bodies, carried down stream, causes boat- 
crews to throw aside their paddles and cover 
their eyes, and go thirsty for a long while, ra- 
ther than drink from a wave that bears to 
their superstitious thought the memory of 
the rigid form that has floated by them. 
Crews will stop their boats to drink at the 



THE PLANTATION. 



23 



mouths of small affluents, and village women 
go a long way into the forest to find spring- 
water. 

The water-jug was put in Ayenwe’s large 
basket, and surrounded by her other and 
smaller burdens; the roll of mosquito-netting 
(na-go-mbo), made of a coarse cloth woven 
from the soft unexpanded leaves of a certain 
palm-tree, was packed around the jug, with a 
few extra yards of waist-cloth of the same 
material for a covering at night ; the little 
bundle of salt (izanga), a few leaves of native- 
grown tobacco, a pipe, and a cutlass were se- 
curely placed. Then, stooping down, Ayen- 
we adjusted the basket to the curve of her 
back, holding it in position by a strap made 
of wood-fibre, that passed around the lower 
part of the basket and over her forehead, or 
the top of her head where the thick mat of 
braided hair acted as a cushion to support 
the weight. 

The rivulet was crossed by a narrow 



24 



M A WE DO. 



bridge made of a fallen tree, whose diameter 
constituted the entire width. Strong vines 
had been tied, by some one of those who had 
more frequent occasion to traverse the bridge, 
from the tree’s uptorn roots on one bank to 
the remains of its branches on the other 
bank, thus affording a slight railing. Rude 
bridges of this kind are the common means 
for crossing narrow streams. Sometimes, 
when a single felled tree does not in its fall 
reach the opposite side, a corresponding tree 
on that opposite side is cut down so as, in 
falling, to mingle its top with the top already 
in mid-stream. Vines are then fastened as a 
railing from one side to the other, being 
braced by other vines to the upright branches, 
and guyed to other trees ashore. These 
braces are from time to time renewed. As 
the tree-trunks gradually sink into thfe river- 
bed, the vines stretched from shore to shore 
remain, and are themselves used as a tight- 
rope, having much the appearance of a sus- 



THE PLANTATION. 



*5 



pension-bridge; but they are less dangerous 
than a tight-rope in that a rest for the hands 
is afforded. 

When the three were safely across the 
bridge, little Mawedo, who was still fretting at 
her mother’s side, began to cry, saying, “ Oh, 
my mother, I am tired.” And her mother 
added her to her other burdens by seating her 
astride of her hip, the child clinging to the 
shoulder of the left arm that was thrown 
around her back. 

Ayenwe had need to accelerate her pace, 
for the shadows over the narrow forest-path 
were now fully deepened into darkness. The 
forest-sounds about her were alarming to a 
superstitious mind. Blundering beetles and 
moths seemed, though desperately trying to 
avoid her face, to viciously dash themselves 
against her. Enormous bats, pursuing their 
search for food, fluttered their clammy wings 
wildly across the path, or, in zigzag ascent 
and descent, barely escaped fastening their 

4 



Mawedo. 



26 



MA WEDO. 



claws and rat-like mouths on her bare shoul- 
ders. Night-hawks, wheeling rapidly after 
their insect prey, startled her with their sharp 
whir. The fireflies glinted from bush to 
bush, and Ovanga, more daring than herself, 
caught them and, with a boy’s cruelty, waved 
them on the end of a stick, in imitation of 
the resinous torch (otya) that his mother car- 
ried in her right hand, lighted from the dead- 
wood brand that she had brought from the 
village. She regarded with more than half 
belief the story of some of her people that 
those flitting fireflies were transmigrated spir- 
its lost on their way to the unknown fu- 
turity. 

She threw the fitful light of the torch be- 
fore her on the path. Perhaps the dreaded 
“ pe,” or horned-viper (Echidna Gabonica) 
might be lying sluggishly in the way. For 
the bite of other snakes native skill professes 
to have efficient medicines; but so deadly is 
this one considered that no effort is made to 



THE PLANTATION. 



*1 



cure, and the bitten one dies. This reptile is 
only a few feet in length — not nearly as long 
as several others, but in proportion thicker 
than they ; two short cartilaginous horns 
stand erect between its eyes, and its diamond- 
shaped head and broad back are covered with 
beautiful, velvety, yellow and black scales. 
When a native is bitten by this snake, his 
only hope of relief is to conceal its name and 
report that he was bitten by some other ser- 
pent. Then the native doctor, in his empiri- 
cal efforts at medication, may stumble on a 
cure. But if the sufferer reports that he was 
bitten by a “pe,” the doctor, hopeless of suc- 
cess, will not even make an attempt to save. 

Or perhaps the light of the torch on the 
path would reveal the black line of “ Driver ” 
ants, crossing it in their march as scaven- 
gers to some cast-away corpse, or the body 
of some wild animal dead of wounds or sick- 
ness. These wonderful insects, organized in 
an army of millions, march rapidly in ranks 



28 



MA WEDO. 



of five or six abreast. On each side of the 
line, at close intervals, are pickets of a size 
larger than the common race ; and up and 
down the line rush enormous fellows who 
seem to act as captains. This army eats 
nothing but animal tissue or its products — 
dead bodies in the forest, or any living rep- 
tile or animal that cannot or does not get out 
of the way. Fortunately, the ants do not de- 
flect from the line of march in order offen- 
sively to attack or pursue. Only when any 
animal stubbornly stands in their chosen 
way, or heedlessly treads on them, do they 
attack. When they come to human habita- 
tions, the insects in the walls, the food in the 
pantry, and the dwellers themselves, are by 
the army assumed to be in their way; insects 
and animal food are entirely cleared away, 
and the human occupants must retreat from 
room to room, or sometimes actually desert 
the house, until, in an hour or two, the inva- 
ding army, which on entering had broken 



THE PLANTATION. 



2 9 



ranks and deployed in every direction over 
the house, re-forms, and the entire line moves 
away, each mouth laden with plunder of in- 
sect wings and legs and bodies, and morsels 
of meat. In crossing a path the ranks close 
up densely, and the pickets, crowding to- 
gether, climb, one from each side, over the 
back of a comrade, and, joining their anten- 
nae in an arch above, form a living tunnel, 
under which the army rushes. So obvious 
does this thick black tunnel make itself to 
the sight of passing animals that none will 
tread on it ; even the ponderous elephant 
lifts his broad feet above it, and a dog stops 
and carefully leaps over it. An unwary trav- 
eller who may heedlessly tread on the line is 
instantly covered with hundreds of angry 
ants which bury their mandibles in his flesh. 
The bite, though not at all poisonous, is vi- 
ciously sharp, and on sensitive parts of the 
body exquisitely painful, and so unendurable 
as to make the sufferer regardless of any- 



3 ° 



MA WED O. 



thing except the immediate tearing off of 
clothing and the extraction of the pugna- 
cious fangs. Yet, annoying as this little in- 
sect is at times, it performs a valuable service 
in destroying dead animal matter, and in rid- 
ding human habitations of vermin, such as 
other insects, and even rats, mice and rep- 
tiles. 

But more than from dread of beast, or 
reptile, or insect, Ayenwe’s heart beat with 
fear, and she hastened Ovanga’s errant steps 
into an actual trot as she thought of the 
ghosts (abambo) that almost every adult na- 
tive declares he or she has seen in the forest 
at night, and which the magicians, in their 
frenzied incantations, declare they see and 
communicate with. Doubtless their imagi- 
nations, aroused by expectation, wild with 
drum and dance, and crazed by hasheesh 
(Cannabis indica) or other drugs, do see fright- 
ful shapes that have to them the force of 
reality. 



THE PLANTA IT ON. 



3i 



The little party were relieved when they 
came in sisrht of the collection of three or 

O 

four bamboo and bark huts, built around a 
square in the centre of a plantation of sev- 
eral acres of plantain (Musa sapientum), cas- 
sava or manioc (Jatropha manihot), yams, ed- 
doefe (Arum esculentum), maize, squashes, su- 
gar-cane, okra, and other vegetables. 

The villages, consisting of low, square, ga- 
ble-roofed huts, ranged on both sides of one 
or more broad streets, are built always on the 
banks of streams, for those natural highways 
are the only roads of the country ; in the 
rear of each house there is a small kitchen- 
garden (behu), but there is not room enough 
in the vicinity of the village for each woman 
to have her several acres of plantation. The 
women, therefore, who perform the agricul- 
tural labor, all join in little bands to make 
their plantation farms a mile or so distant, in 
the roomy, uninhabited forest wilderness. 
And there they take turns, as Ayenwe was 



32 



A/A WED O. 



now doing, in guarding those farms at night 
from the depredations of wild beasts. When 
Ayenwe saw the light of the camp-fire throw- 
ing its welcome towards her over the broad 
plantain leaves in which the huts were em- 
bowered, and heard the animated voices of 
the few other male and female slaves who had 
preceded her, she and Ovanga, with the mer- 
curiality of their race, forgot their recent for- 
est dreads, and broke out into a shrill song 
which notified the others of their coming. 

They joined the women cooking around 
the fires, and began to prepare their own sup- 
per. This consisted ordinarily of roasted 
ears of maize, yams, or other vegetables, cas- 
sava-bread (iguma), or boiled plantains ; to- 
night the fish which Ovanga had stolen made 
a welcome addition to the meal. 

The evening passed pleasantly. All were 
slaves together, and had a common sympa- 
thy. It was night, the day’s work was done, 
and the necessity for the night-watch would 



THE PLANTATION. 



33 



not come for several hours yet. Together, 
but each family forming a company of two 
or three, they sat down in the open air, 
either on low stools or on the ground, around 
a basin of vegetables and the little iron pot in 
which was the fish, swimming in its own soup 
or nut gravy. The camp-fires flashed in the 
evening breeze and sent a cheerful light over 
the bamboo or bark walls of the huts, and on 
the broad, pea-green ragged leaves of the 
plantains; and nearer to the faces of the 
group, torches of the gum of the okumi-tree 
flared, with incense-like odor and sooty 
smoke. For plates there were squares of 
smooth fleshy plantain leaves, which, when 
the repast was done, needed no washing, but, 
flung on the waste-heap at the end of the 
street, would be replaced next day by fresh 
ones. 

Very little water is drunk during eating, 
but at the end of the meal a copious draught is 
taken from jug, or gourd, or possibly a for- 

5 



Mawedo. 



34 



MA WE BO. 



eign-trade pitcher and mug. Mouth and teeth 
are scrupulously rinsed, and cleansed with 
the fingers, after the latter have been wiped 
on the one soiled garment that serves as 
dress, apron, handkerchief, and sheet. 

Then came the evening dances and song. 
The few utensils and stools were cleared 
away from the middle of the street, and one 
of the men got out the tom-tom drums ; these 
are hollowed logs, several feet long, but only 
from six to ten inches in diameter, with a 
goat-skin or monkey-skin head, on which the 
performer thumps with the knuckles and 
finger-tips, as he holds the drum between his 
knees. Another took a rudely made in- 
strument, constructed like a xylophone, of 
resonant wood arranged in parallel bars of 
regularly increasing length and thickness. 
Seated on either side of the street were 
the rest of the men and all the women. 
Singly, or in pairs, they would step in front 
of the musicians and move about in harmo- 



THE PLANTATION. 



35 



ny with the perfect time of the unmelodious 
music, accompanying the same with a weird 
melody, their voices varying from low rich 
tones to a high-strained falsetto, and the notes 
ranging through every register of the human 
voice. Their comrades on the seats joined 
in a chorus to the song whose words were 
improvised by the dancers, and added to the 
din by steadily beating their hands together 
or on their naked thighs, in unison with the 
perfectly kept time. The music, in triple 
time, gradually accelerated its movement as 
the dancers became excited, the men hopping 
and jumping about rather clumsily, but the 
women moving with graceful, languid sway- 
ing of arm and foot. The children ran in 
and out among the dancers, imitating their 
elders, or playing at hide and seek, and finally, 
wearied, lay down to sleep near the camp- 
fire. As one set of dancers tired, others 
stepped into their places ; the drumming 
grew more furious, the palm-wine (alugu) was 



36 



MA WE DO. 



drunk more freely, the song, steps, and ges- 
tures of the dancers became wilder, and what 
had been a harmonious combination of sound 
and movement degenerated into a rude revel- 
ry. The slaves’ masters were probably en- 
joying the same kind of revelry in the village 
by the river, and as no necessity existed there 
for a night-guard requiring constant vigilance, 
they could keep up their dance until early 
morning hours and then sink into heavy 
sleep. But these plantation slaves, needing 
to be awake in the hours of darkness usually 
taken by the wild beasts for feeding on the 
gardens, voluntarily stopped at a certain time, 
marked by a few known constellations; part 
lay down to sleep, and the remainder sat up, 
smoking their pipes and engaging in snatches 
of conversation, agreeing to take their own 
sleep when they should exchange, some hours 
later, with the others. Those who were to 
take the second watch entered their huts, 
whose low eaves required a visitor to stoop, 



THE PLANTATION. 



37 



while a person standing erect inside could 
touch the low thatch roof. Sleep was taken 
under mosquito-netting made of a cloth wo- 
ven from the unexpanded and tender young 
leaves of a bamboo-palm. 

The watchers outside lounge by their 
fires, vainly seeking, by sitting in the smoke, 
to partially escape the attacks of the mosqui- 
toes. But the hours drag wearily. The 
excitement of the dance subsides into a quiet 
reaction ; but with the stimulus of the tobac- 
co pipe, and spasmodic conversation, they sit 
listening for sounds that indicate the coming 
of the wild beasts. If it is moonlight, the 
watchers relax their vigilance, for the wary 
animals prefer darker nights ; some of the 
party doze, leaving a single sentinel standing 
in the broad sheen of the bright moonlight. 
But in the darker nights various beasts go 
prowling about; monkeys seeking ripe ba- 
nanas, wild pigs rooting for manioc tubers, 
wild cattle browsing on the maize and mani- 



38 



MA WE DO. 



oc shrubs, gorillas and chimpanzees feeding on 
the sugar-cane and plantains, elephants and 
hippopotami ready to tear up and tread down 
all these fruits and plants. When any are 
recognized — monkeys by their chattering, 
the chimpanzee by its bark, the gorilla by its 
howl, the hippopotamus by its snort, the ele- 
phant by its trumpeting, or by the snapping 
of the plantain stalks — the watchers quickly 
arouse the sleepers, and all, yelling, beating 
brass vessels, flaring firebrands, or aimless- 
ly blazing away with guns, frighten off even 
the larger beasts. Rarely do any of these 
animals assault a human being except when 
they are wounded, or suddenly met and 
enraged. 

But there might be real danger from the 
occasional attack of a leopard driven desper- 
ate by hunger. Leopards are numerous in the 
forests, and find as their prey the antelopes 
and gazelles. But they also daringly venture 
to the villages, and carry off sheep and goats 



THE PLANTATION. 39 

that have not been housed in the little 
stockade enclosures built for their protection 
at night. The small mongrel dogs of the 
country are also seized and carried off. Oc- 
casionally, the impunity with which these 
leopards thus enter the villages makes them 
audacious, and they attempt the weak bam- 
boo or bark walls of the huts, and attack 
human beings. 

But the great dread with which leopards 
are regarded is mixed with a superstition 
which teaches that an evil disposed person 
can at will assume the form of a leopard, and, 
retaining all the intelligence and volition of 
a human being, may thus be able to wreak 
spite against an enemy. Persons are found 
murdered in lonely places with the marks of 
leopard’s paws impressed on the sand or mud 
in the vicinity. Obviously, these marks are 
the work of the knuckles and fists of some 
murderer, who escapes detection under the 
prevalent belief that a “man-leopard” has 



40 



M A WE DO. 



done the deed. Fear of these brutal mur- 
ders prevents natives from going alone or 
without a firebrand on a dark night. Lone- 
ly watchers at the plantation huts, particular- 
ly defenceless women, are frequent victims 
of such assaults. Constant quarrels and 
jealousies leave scarcely any one without an 
enemy ; and as if the poison of the many 
deadly fruits, leaves, and barks, known to the 
native magic-doctors and capable of being 
secretly infused into an enemy’s food or 
drink, were not a sufficiently safe or reliable 
instrument of vengeance, the pretence of the 
“ man-leopard ” is sometimes used to cover 
up a human being’s crime. 

But that night, in Ayenwe’s garden, the 
clear moonlight gave no cover of approach 
for either devastating beast or murderous man, 
and when the hours for attack were past, she 
sank into a short sleep before the morning 
star should herald the coming day. 



VILLAGE SCENES. 



4i 



IV. VILLAGE SCENES. 

When the morning came, and cooing, 
twittering, cawing, screaming birds, with their 
sudden sharp or united cries, startled the 
sleepers in the plantation huts, Ayenwe 
awoke to her daily work. Not briskly, as 
from a refreshing sleep, or, like the rising 
sun, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, 
but wearily, from her short, troubled slumber, 
and oppressed with the thought of the work 
that lay before her in the village, and the pre- 
parations to be made before her return 
thither, Ayenwe rose. 

The native toilet is soon performed. 
There was to be flung aside and rolled up 
the coarse “grass-cloth” mosquito-net. The 
few yards of the same kind of cloth, that had 
been Ayenwe’s day dress and night covering, 
were again to be tied about her waist. A few 

Mawedo. 6 



42 



MAWEDO. 



handfuls of water were dashed over her own 
face and the faces of her two children, and 
then all were wiped with an end of the waist- 
cloth, used as a towel. Limbs, stiff with ly- 
ing on the hard clay floor or bamboo-split 
settee, were stretched, with yawns; the em- 
bers of the smouldering fire were raked and 
enlivened, the inevitable tobacco-pipe was 
lighted, and, after a few whiffs, the remains 
of the last night’s supper were divided with 
the children, as a slight morning lunch. 
Then Aeynwe gathered together the articles 
necessary for her day’s work in the village. 

Cassava shrubs were to be uprooted in 
order to break off their enormous tubers, that 
grow just beneath the surface of the ground, 
and are a very important article of food in 
Africa. The cassava or manioc is easily cul- 
tivated. Pieces of stalk are planted, four feet 
apart, in oblong beds of earth about three 
feet broad and one foot high. Between the 
manioc beds beans or ground-nuts are often 



VILLAGE SCENES. 



43 



sown, and when the bean or nut crop is 
reaped, the earth around the manioc is 
weeded, one weeding being all that is re- 
quired. The plant bears drought well, but 
matures more rapidly when well supplied with 
moisture. In from ten to twenty-four months, 
according to the variety of manioc and the 
nature of the soil, the tubers, which are three 
or four inches in diameter and from twelve 
to eighteen inches long, are ready to be 
eaten; but it is not necessary to remove 
them immediately, as they remain in good 
condition for three years. When a tuber is 
taken up, a new crop is provided for by 
thrusting a piece of the upper stalks into the 
hole and closing up the earth around it 
again. In rich soil the manioc attains a 
height of six feet. The tubers are not the 
only useful part ; the stalks make good fuel, 
and the leaves, when boiled, are used as a 
vegetable: There are two varieties of mani- 

oc, one being sweet and wholesome, while 



44 



MAWEDO. 



the other, which matures more rapidly, and 
for that reason is extensively cultivated, con- 
tains a bitter and poisonous juice which needs 
to be extracted. 

In Angola tapioca is prepared from the 
manioc in the following manner. The tu- 
bers are rasped, and the resultant soft mass is 
spread on a cloth, and rubbed with the hands, 
while water is poured on it. The starchy, 
glutinous matter thus obtained is left to set- 
tle in a vessel ; when the settling is com- 
pleted the water is poured off from the 
starch, which is exposed to the sun until 
nearly dry. It is then spread on an iron 
plate and stirred while the drying is com- 
pleted over a slow fire, the little agglutinated 
globules thus formed being the tapioca with 
which we are familiar. 

Ayenwe’s next business was to cut a 
bunch of plantains from one of the huge, grass- 
like stalks, which, crowned with long droop- 
ing leaves, and supporting heavy bunches of 



VILLAGE SCENES. 



45 



fruit, rose to a height of from fifteen to twen- 
ty feet. The plantain is larger, coarser, 
yellower and less sweet than the ordinary 
banana, of which it is a variety, and unlike 
the latter it is rarely eaten raw. 

There were to be plucked bright red pods 
of the Cayenne pepper, growing abundantly 
on the luxuriant bushes that propagate them- 
selves in the gardens. Gourds were to be 
gathered, whose hard ripe rinds are used for 
cups and bowls, and of whose seeds a rich 
pudding is made. A roll of plantain leaves 
and a bundle of pineapple leaves were to be 
cut, and the jug was to be filled with water 
from the spring. 

All these different articles were crowded 
into Ayenwe’s basket, which was strapped to 
her shoulders by a broad band passing over 
her forehead. And, finally, a log of wood 
which she had lifted to her head was bal- 
anced with one hand, while the other was 
left free for emergencies. 



46 



MA WEDO. 



Laden thus, Aye n we, with her two chil- 
dren, returned to the village. There, her 
day’s work was the common lot of woman’s 
household cares. 

The manioc tubers, after being gathered, 
are set, in a basket, in a running stream, and 
left there from two to four days, that the bit- 
ter, poisonous juice may be dissolved out. 
The tubers, thus macerated, and already be- 
ginning to sour, are then thrown into a large 
wooden trough, and beaten with a wooden 
pestle, whose heavy thump is one of the most 
common sounds heard in native huts. The 
white starchy mass, with the broken woody 
fibres mixed through it, looks like dough. It 
is fashioned rapidly by the women’s fingers 
into rolls a foot or more in length and two 
inches in diameter; these are neatly rolled 
within plantain leaves, and the leaves are se- 
curely tied. Then the rolls are piled in a 
large brass or iron kettle, into which a little 
water has been first poured, and the kettle is 



VILLAGE SCENES. 



47 



tightly covered with plantain leaves. The 
kettle being set on a hot fire, the water is 
converted into steam, which, unable to escape, 
goes through the mass of the rolls, bursting 
the starch grains, as when hot water is 
poured on our tapioca. This completes the 
cooking of the rolls, and they are ready to be 
eaten with salt, pepper, and the soup of any 
fish or wild meat. Cassava, which is some- 
what insipid, is not a perfect food by itself; 
it does not contain all the constituents neces- 
sary for the proper nourishment of mart 
When eaten alone for any considerable time 
it produces dyspepsia, and sometimes dim- 
ness of sight, effects which are avoided when 
this starchy substance is combined with oily 
food, such as ground-nuts, for instance. 

Plantains are peeled, washed, cut into 
pieces, and boiled, like potatoes, under cover. 
Plucked before they are ripe, their starch has 
not become converted into sugar, and being 
therefore more nourishing than ripe raw ban- 



4 8 



MAWEDO. 



anas, they are the principal article of food of 
most natives. The leaves of the banana or 
plantain, which when full grown are some- 
times ten feet long and two feet broad, afford 
a delightful shade, and are used not only as 
cooking cloths and wrappers for parcels, but 
also for thatching huts; of the stems fences 
are sometimes made, and the fibres of the 
stalk are used for cord. Mr. Stanley tells us 
that the Waganda, or people of Uganda, on 
the nothern shore of the Victoria Nyanza 
Lake, form the scraped pith of the stalk into 
cakes which they use as sponges, for wash- 
ing:. The fishermen of the lake also make 
large shade hats of the stalk, and the poor 
peasants make shields of it. From another 
variety of the banana, which has a rather bit- 
ter taste and is unfit for food, wine and beer 
are made. 

The seeds of gourds are shelled with the 
aid of a knife, or often only by the skilful 
use of a sharp finger-nail, or even with the 



VILLAGE SCENES. 



49 



teeth ; they are pounded in a mortar, or 
pressed under a roller, and a rich oily pud- 
ding is made from the soft mass, fish being 
incorporated in it, after the manner of straw- 
berries in short-cake. 

Cayenne pepper enters largely into every 
native dish, being mixed with salt and lime- 
juice. The African plant that yields it is one 
of the several varieties of the genus Capsi- 
cum, from which cayenne pepper is manufac- 
tured by drying the ripe pods and pounding 
them fine ; frequently the ground pods are 
mixed with wheat flour and made into cakes 
with yeast ; these cakes are first baked until 
they are hard, and then ground and sifted. 
The cayenne pepper or capsicum belongs to 
the natural order Solanacccs , the same which 
includes the potato and tomato among its 
genera, while the true or black pepper is a 
member of the entirely different order — the 
Piperacccs, whose fruit is a berry, instead of 
a pod. 



Mawedo. 



7 



5 ° 



MAWEDO. 



A favorite way of preparing fish, and in- 
deed any meat, is to cut it into pieces and 
securely enclose it in several thicknesses of 
plantain leaf, with salt, pepper, bruised oily 
nuts, and a little water. This bundle (jom- 
ba) is laid on a bed of hot coals. Before the 
heat has burned through the many folds of 
green fleshy leaves, the water, steaming and 
unable to escape, permeates the pieces of 
flesh, cooking them thoroughly, and carrying 
the aroma of the seasoning to the inner 
fibres, without burning or scorching. The 
oily nuts, melting with the heat, make an 
agreeable gravy. 

Sewing is another of the village occupa- 
tions. Sometimes the cloth is of irregularly 
shaped pieces of beaten bark fibre, derived 
from a species of fig-tree ; but when it is of 
woven bamboo-leaf “grass-cloth,” or imported 
cotton from England and America, the 
women bind the few yards they may possess 
with bright-colored edging (mekolwe). Thread 



VILLAGE SCENES. 51 

is obtained from the fibre of the pineapple 
leaf. The leaves, gathered from the plant, 
which grows wild, are slit lengthwise, and 
then, seized in the left hand, are drawn 
rapidly between a knife-edge and the thumb 
of the right hand. The fleshy part of the 
leaf is scraped away by the knife ; and there 
remain in the left hand the thin, strong, white 
fibres. These fibres are used not only for 
sewing, but also for making fish-nets. 

Weaving mats is another occupation. 
They are made from certain rushes, and 
from the long, lance-shaped leaves of the 
palm-like pandanus, or “ screw-pine,” so called 
from the spiral arrangement of its branches 
around the trunk. In a rude loom, and with- 
out any shuttle, the women, by hand, weave 
mats some three feet in width by five or six 
feet in length, making intricate designs of 
straight-lined figures, skilfully carrying the 
plan in their minds, without the aid of a 
pattern before them. 



52 



MA WEDO. 



One of the two rooms of which an ordi- 
nary hut consists is occupied as the kitchen 
and common sitting-room, the other serving 
as a sleeping-room. In the middle of the 
former, elevated above the clay floor, is the 
household fireplace, whose smoke, having no 
escape save by the low door and perhaps a 
window aperture or two, blackens the roof and 
walls. From morning to night some process 
of cooking is carried on by the adults, either 
steaming cassava, boiling or roasting plan- 
tains, or stewing fish or wild meat. And 
children generally have some little lunch of 
their own to cook — perhaps an ear of maize, 
or some minnows they have caught in the 
river. 

Beyond the regular morning and even- 
ing meals of the villagers themselves, there 
is irregular cooking for visitors from other 
villages, and especially for travellers from 
other friendly tribes. The host of the village 
is proud to set before his guest all his re- 



VILLAGE SCENES. 



S3 



sources of table furniture, in the shape of 
foreign-imported plates and cups, obtained in 
exchange for ivory and ebony; and all the 
service of his house, his fire, and his women, 
is employed to make the guest feel, literally, 
that the home is his. But the entire labor 
of such entertainment falls on the women, 
the master of the house taking the glory of 
it in indolent dignity, sitting and smoking 
with his guest in the public room of the 
village. Every woman in his house feels 
herself, for all purposes of hospitality, a slave. 



54 



MA WEDO. 



Y. CHIDDREH’S PRAYS. 

Days passed by at Aduma, and Ayenwe 
lost none of her restive sense of servitude. 
Whatever variety the seasons brought of 
scene, or food, or even amusement, for her, 
the short-lived pleasure was mixed with a 
memory of pain that kept too clearly in view 
the fact that pain was to return after the 
pleasure. 

But for Ovanga the time passed pleasant- 
ly enough. His mother’s master reckoned 
him as one of his own children, and though 
there was always a possibility that, in any 
emergency, he might be sent away as a slave 
in payment of debt, he was relieved from 
most of the actual labors of a slave. The 
master’s eldest son treated him as a younger 
brother, and took him, as his little valet, on 
most of his hunting and fishing, and other 



CHILDREN'S PL A VS. 



55 

excursions into the forest. The labor that 
Ovanga had to perform on these expeditions 
was slight, and the free camp-life was attrac- 
tive to him. Such occasions he regarded 
as holidays. Indeed, for him every day was 
a play-day, even in the village. Aside from 
the lighting of his master’s pipe, waiting on 
his master’s table, and other slight services, 
much of the time was spent in play with the 
other boys, slave and free, in the village 
street. There were bows and arrows, and 
tops, and boats, and bowling of wheels, to 
interest them. 

Bows are made from any elastic stick, 
the string being cither the strong fibres of 
the pineapple leaf,, or the rattan-like inner 
bark of a palm that grows as a vine, running 
for hundreds of feet over the tree-tops. Ar- 
rows are splints of the common bamboo-palm 
like those used by the boys’ fathers and bro- 
thers. The men use powerful cross-bows, dif- 
ficult to bend, and their arrows, in hunting 



56 



MA WEDO. 



wild animals, are tipped with poison. But 
the bows and arrows of the boys’ play are 
harmless against life, though, in their mis- 
chief, they torture the goats and fowls in 
the streets by launching their random shots 
at them. Against the small birds that ap- 
proach the banana stalks in the little gardens 
in the rear of the houses, even the small 
bamboo arrows are likely to be fatal. The 
practice thus obtained is a good education 
for the use of the more powerful bows which 
the boys have to handle when they become 
men. 

Tops are frequently made from soft fruits 
by simply thrusting a stick through them ; 
they are twirled by the thumb and finger. In 
the season of a certain nut, however, the 
“kula” tops are played by both men and 
boys, and great excitement often attends the 
game. A mat is spread on the ground, and 
the players, in pairs, pitted against each other 
like gamesters, fling the round nuts on the 



CHILDREN'S PLAYS. 



57 



mat, the revolution being given by a peculiar 
twist of both thumbs and forefingers. As 
the two balls whirl around in curves whose 
orbits intersect each other, the excited play- 
ers call to their respective tops, as though 
they were living creatures. And when one 
of the two balls finally strikes the other and 
puts it out of its course, the successful colli- 
sion is hailed with a shout. 

A wheel, from six to twelve inches in di- 
ameter, and three inches in thickness, is 
carved out of the enormous turnip-shaped tu- 
ber of a certain convolvulus. Then the boys 
arrange themselves in line along a level piece 
of ground, holding in their hands long, thin, 
pointed sticks, poised as spears. One of the 
company bowls the wheel past the line, and 
as it rolls along, each one hurls his spear at 
its centre. It rolls on with the spears stick- 
ing out from its centre as a hub. The game 
is exciting; and it gives accuracy of aim, 

promptness, and agility, which come into re- 

8 



Maweilo. 



53 



MA WEDO. 



quisition in after life, in the use of the spear 
against elephants in the forests, and of the 
harpoon against the hippopotami in the riv- 
ers. 

Boats are carved by the boys with their 
knives from a wood that, when fresh, is very 
soft, but which hardens in drying. As the 
villages are situated on the very edge of 
streams, at almost any hour of the day boys 
may be seen wading in the shallows, with 
their tiny canoes or boats floating down the 
current. Occasionally an eddy will carry a 
vessel out into deep water, when the owner 
swims to the rescue. The boys’ eyes and 
hands, in thus fashioning the outlines of toy 
canoes, obtain a degree of accuracy and skill 
for making the larger vessels which they are 
to navigate in adult years. 



FISHING . 



59 



VI. FISHING. 

Fishing was daily carried on in Ayenwe’s 
village by both men and women. For daily 
necessities a few stray fish were caught by 
hook, or dip-net, or speared at night by the 
light of a torch. But the great supply, which 
taxed the labor and skill of the entire village 
in catching and drying, was obtained in the 
three months of the cool dry season. 

The central belt of Africa, comprising 
the region included between ten degrees 
north and ten degrees south of the equator, 
has, generally, two rainy and two dry sea- 
sons. The heavy rains of the wet months 
swell all rivers and streams beyond their 
bounds, and flood the low grounds. Back, 
up into the lagoons and ravines among the 
hills, the waters rise, and the fish from the 
main streams congregate in these new open- 



6o 



MAWEDO. 



ings to feast on the fresh grasses and the 
abundant insect life. As the waters begin to 
recede, the women build barriers across the 
mouths of the rivers and lagoons. These 
barriers are skilfully made of a light fence- 
work of saplings thrust into the bottom of 
the stream, and strengthened by intertwined 
vines. Over these is tied a matting of bam- 
boo leaves, or the broader, but less durable 
leaf of the Phrynium. This temporary dam 
is too weak to resist the rush or sudden pres- 
sure of a body of water. But in this weak- 
ness consists the dam’s usefulness, for the 
waters, in subsiding, find no difficulty in per- 
colating through the leafy wall, which yet 
presents no aperture large enough for the es- 
cape of the fish. 

Such occasions, laborious as they are to 
a few who have charge of the dam building, 
bring, in the end, a time of riotous enjoyment 
for them and for the many who come in at 
the lighter end of the work — a time of 



FISHING. 



61 



hilarity for the whole village, and especially 
for the children, to whom it is a long feast. 

An advanced party of women and a few 
men having built the dam, the rains having 
finally ceased, and the waters beginning to 
subside, the entire village of men, women, and 
children, leaving only two or three to guard 
the premises, temporarily emigrate to the for- 
est, near the body of water enclosed by the 
dam. They carry with them their cooking 
utensils, mat-bedding, mosquito-nets, guns, 
and other implements of camp-life. There 
being no danger of drenching rains, the oc- 
casional slight dry-season drizzles (menyenge) 
call for no better protection than is afforded 
by the green branches of trees, cut daily and 
spread as roofing over the booths (maka) that 
are hastily erected in the camps (ulaks). 
The huts are literally booths, the sides being 
entirely unclosed, open to the cool night air, 
and with no privacy other than that afforded 
by the thin walls of the mosquito-nets. The 



62 



MA WE DO. 



constant camp-fires at night keep away wild 
beasts. 

When the waters sink so low that they 
can no longer drain themselves off, but stand, 
a motionless pond, all the women, with ket- 
tles and gourds and baling vessels of any 
description, wade into the pool and labo- 
riously bail out as much water as they can, 
throwing it over the dam. This is a pain- 
ful and sometimes dangerous operation. The 
heads of the workers are exposed to a broil- 
ing sun, while their lower limbs are im- 
mersed in cold water; their feet are cut by 
sharp sticks or stones, or stunned by electric 
fish, or wounded by fish-spines; and their 
backs are wearied with bending backwards 
and forwards as they dip out the water. The 
quantity of water having thus been reduced, 
the entire camp — men, women, and children — 
rush in, and with scoops, hand-nets, and bas- 
kets lift out the fish, which are crowded to- 
gether in an excited, helpless mass in the 



FISHING. 



63 



contracted pools. This work is carried al- 
most to the point of exterminating the entire 
stock of fish in that part of the river. In 
the case of small branches of rivers, they are 
readily and naturally re-stocked a few months 
later by the streams rising with returning 
rains. But in the case of lakes and small 
ponds, the natives observe the necessity, after 
such destructive draughts, of not draining 
the same water in successive years, but allow 
the stock to increase undisturbed each alter- 
nate year. 

As each mother or sister returns ashore 
with bag, or pan, or basket full of struggling 
fish, she is met by the little boys and girls, 
who, at the edges of the pond, have been 
snatching at isolated fish which, hunted in 
the centre, had fled towards the shore. All 
this is play to the children, and they join the 
successful parent or sister, aid in carrying 
her burdens, quickly open and clean the fish, 
and gather wood for the fires over which the 



6 4 



MA WEDO. 



fish are to be dried. Light scaffolds are 
erected on which the fish are spread out, and 
underneath is kindled a fire of wood whose 
state of half-decay prevents its blazing, but 
keeps up that constant smoke best suited for 
a drying-place. 

It is a most animated scene, resounding 
with the shouts of the women in the deeper 
parts of the pond, as they excitedly thrust 
their baskets among the massed fishes, the 
splashing of the water by the cordon of men, 
who beat fugitive fish back to the centre, 
and the songs of rejoicing children ; and all 
this varied by the screams of shore-parties 
disputing over the division of the spoil. 

At night the work ceases, except around 
the numerous drying-places, whose dull fires 
weirdly light up the surrounding forest. 
When all have feasted on the evening meal, 
the usual dance begins, and women who in 
the day seem unable to work through excess 
of fatigue, forget their weariness in the ex- 



FISHING. 65 

citement and revelry of the favorite amuse- 
ment. 

At these semi-annual dryings a whole 
week is spent at the camp, and thousands of 
fish are dried and stored in crates, which, 
being taken to the village, are suspended 
from the roofs of the huts, over the fireplaces, 
for use during the subsequent rainy season. 



Mawedo. 



9 



66 



MA WEDO. 



YII. HUNTING. 

A native African occupation in which 
the men are leaders, but in which women 
participate and children find an excitement, 
is the hunting of wild animals. This is ac-. 
complished by entangling the smaller ones in 
nets, and enclosing the larger ones, such as 
elephants, in a fence. 

Elephants, like other wild animals, large 
and small, are hunted singly or in companies. 
But the capture of an entire herd is a won- 
derful feat whose initial step is an accident. 
The women, in regularly guarding their plan- 
tations at night, and in occasionally weeding 
them by day, may come suddenly on a troop 
of five, ten, twenty or more elephants feeding 
on the succulent cassava. Without alarming 
the animals the women hastily flee to the vil- 
lages, and, summoning the men, return with 



HUNTING. 



67 



other women, bearing flaming torches. These 
torch-bearers surround the quietly feeding 
troop of elephants, which, dazed by the 
lights, do not attempt to flee, but with amaz- 
ing stupidity stand and look at the fiery bar- 
rier. The men meanwhile rapidly cut down 
vines and llianes, which grow in profusion 
everywhere, and, tying them from tree to 
tree at a distance from the animals, enclose 
them in a circle embracing several acres of 
ground. Messengers have promptly been 
sent to all the adjacent villages, whose every 
available inhabitant, young and old, male and 
female, hastes to the scene. After a few par- 
allel rows of vines, like telegraph lines, have 
encircled the space, from four to eight feet 
above the ground, the anxious cordon of 
torch-bearers retire from their dangerous po- 
sition, and scatter through the crowd of new- 
comers, now gathered all around the circum- 
ference of the circle, which hastily added par- 
allel lines of vines are making every moment 



68 



MAWEDO. 



more distinctly an enclosure. But however 
closely the lines of vines may be tied, the bar- 
rier would be but a spider’s web to the great 
brutes now wandering anxiously around in- 
side, if they only knew their own strength. 
Intelligent as the elephant is known to be, it 
is possible that the African species may not 
be equal to his Asiatic brother, or that there 
may be a difference in the three African va- 
rieties. At all events, all elephants are wary 
of signs of pitfalls, or any other strategem, 
and, mystified by the sight of the network 
around them, they avoid it, as if it were a 
trap; or if they approach it too closely, they 
are driven back by the shouts and missiles of 
the crowd outside. If in retreating from any 
point, they rush across the area too near to 
the enclosure on the opposite side, the crowd 
there also drive them back. 

All this while men, with hatchets and 
axes and swords and knives, are cutting 
down saplings and thrusting them into the 



HUNTING . 



69 



ground along the enclosing lines. Thicker 
and stronger pickets and posts and but- 
tresses are added daily and nightly by relays 
of working parties, until so stout a fence is 
built that only a violent rush of the animals 
can break it down. Any such rush is 
guarded against by chosen watchers ; and 
hundreds of loaded muskets are ready at a 
warning to repel such an attempt at escape. 
These muskets are very cheap flint-locks, im- 
ported from England and bartered for ivory, 
ebony and other exports. Though loaded 
with broken pieces of iron, brass, and other 
slugs, their aim is so inaccurate, and the 
powder used is so weak, that they are incapa- 
ble of killing an elephant at a single shot. 
Lest, therefore, the animals become infuriated 
by wounds, and break away, the crowd out- 
side of the enclosure refrain from firing on 
them until certain superstitious ceremonies 
of the native magic-doctor are completed, by 
which, it is claimed, accuracy and efficiency 



7 ° 



MA IVEDO. 



will be secured for the guns when, on a given 
day, the entire crowd shall be ordered to 
shoot down their prisoners. The necessity 
for despatching all the animals on that given 
day rests on the custom that forbids any one 
of the slaughtered beasts to be cut to pieces 
and divided until the whole troop has been 
killed. This is to prevent quarrels and in- 
equality in the distribution. Every pound of 
the flesh that is not needed immediately for 
food is dried for future use. And the ivory 
is exchanged for the wealth of foreign arti- 
cles with which women and slaves may be 
bought. 

During the interim of sometimes two 
■weeks, while the doctor is making his incan- 
tations, the elephants feed on the herbage 
and branches of trees included in the enclo- 
sure. And if none of the frequent forest 
springs and rivulets happen to be in its 
limits, water is brought. Also fresh grasses 
are supplied ; and plantains and bananas, 



HUNTING. 



7i 

soaked in a certain poisonous drug, are 
thrown to the elephants, which seem to be 
stupefied by the drug, so that during their 
confinement they wander docilely and quietly 
until the day appointed for their slaughter. 
During all this delay the crowd of men, 
women, and children come and go to and 
from their villages, where they procure their 
food ; they sleep around the enclosure in 
temporary booths. It is a time for excited 
watching, idle waiting, family intrigues, in- 
creased labor for the women in preparing 
food for the unusual crowd, and unrestricted 
freedom for the children in the liberty of the 
forest. 

On the appointed day daring hunters, 
who have previously availed themselves of 
favorable opportunities for entering the en- 
closure, and, climbing suitable trees, have 
tied comfortable rests for themselves in 
crotches of the branches, take their positions. 
The crowd outside open fire on the now half- 



72 MA WE DO. 

famished and weakened beasts, which, as 
they flee from point to point, pass under or 
near the hunters’ trees, and are fired on by 
them from above, fatal points in the back of 
the skull and nape of the neck being thus 
attainable. 

In this wild slaughter sometimes a fren- 
zied male, desperate with wounds, bursts 
through every barrier, and, treading down 
the opposing crowd, escapes into the forest, 
leaving the crushed forms of human beings 
in his path. 

Notwithstanding the dangers connected 
with this mode of hunting elephants, the en- 
tire population of a neighborhood gravitates 
to any such enclosure to share in the final 
feast, which is held the day after the last ani- 
mal falls. As it falls, wild shouts of victory 
are sent out, the gates of the enclosure are 
thrown open, the multitudes surge in, and 
dance in exultation around the fallen beasts. 
The doctor, with the chiefs, and the family 



HUNTING. 



73 



on whose ground the enclosure was built, 
and especially the household whose women 
first discovered the animals, in council decide 
as to the division of the tusks, and the share 
of the flesh to be given to the crowd of out- 
siders. The next day the tusks are removed, 
and each family represented in the assem- 
blage cuts up and distributes the flesh. Then 
follows a busy scene. Those members of 
the tribe who come from a distance, hasten 
away with their share to their villages. 
Those living near sit down to feast to their 
satisfaction, drying, for future use, what is 
left. 

Less dangerous, and therefore less exci- 
ting, but more remunerative, as a constancy, 
because a more frequently practicable mode 
of hunting, is the use of nets for gazelles, 
porcupines, and other small animals. Men 
with their guns, and women bearing great 
bundles of coarse nets made from the soft 
inner bark of a certain tree, go out into the 



Mawedo. 



io 



74 



MA IVEDO. 



forest at favorable hours, accompanied by 
small mongrel dogs. The nets having been 
tied upright to trees in two long lines which 
converge to an acute angle, the men form a 
line subtending this angle, and, hanging little 
bells to the dogs’ necks, systematically beat 
the low bushes. As the hunters advance, 
any enclosed small animals are driven to- 
wards the angle, behind which women are 
waiting to intercept attempts at escape, and 
where the dogs finally run the affrighted lit- 
tle creatures down. The men close in upon 
them, and secure their struggling victims. 

A trap similar to this, and called “ hopo,” 
is described by Dr. Livingstone as in use 
among the Bale wains, twenty-five degrees 
south of the equator. It is employed by 
them for the destruction of such large game 
as the larger antelopes, zebras, buffaloes, 
giraffes, and even rhinoceroses. The hedges 
are made about a mile long, and the same 
distance apart at the wider extremity; in- 



HUNTING. 



75 



stead of joining at the angle, they terminate 
in a line fifty yards long, at the end of which 
a large pit, six or eight feet deep, and twelve 
or fifteen in length and breadth, is securely 
bordered by overlapping trunks of trees, and 
covered with rushes. The hunters make a 
circle three or four miles around the country, 
and generally enclose and drive between the 
hedges a great number of animals, many of 
which, falling into the pit at the end of the 
lane, are smothered, or pierced by the hun- 
ters’ javelins, though some make their escape 
by running over their heaped -up com- 
rades. 

Another mode of hunting, less frequently 
practised, is to dig pitfalls, the earth being 
carefully carried away to a distance, to avoid 
arousing the suspicions of the wild animals, 
and the pit being covered with light branch- 
es, over which dead forest leaves are natu- 
rally spread. In these pits are caught ante- 
lopes, hippopotami, and even elephants — the 



7 6 



MA WE DO. 



narrow space not giving them room to extri- 
cate themselves. 

Daring hunters also sometimes lie in wait 
near the path that the hippopotami regularly 
tread for themselves in coming out of the 
river for their nightly forage on the grasses 
and gardens ashore. 

After all such successful hunts the voices 
of the children in the Aduma village sounded 
highest in the loud and long songs of joy and 
triumph that welcomed home the women, 
bringing the butchered animals in baskets on 
their backs, or, if small, suspended from a 
pole carried on the shoulders of two. 



RUBBER GATHERING. 



77 



YIII. RUBBER GATHERING. 

One of the important products of the 
Ogowe country is the caoutchouc, gathered 
in the forests, and given in exchange for the 
foreign hardware, crockery, cloth, guns and 
powder, that reach the interior, after being 
passed from hand to hand by the native com- 
mission traders, who deal with the white men 
hundreds of miles down the river. 

It is a day of great rejoicing when a com- 
pany of A-ka-nda, or other lower-river people, 
come semi-annually with bundles of these 
goods, which they have received through the 
hands of, successively, Ga-lwas and Mpo- 
ngwes, who themselves received them direct- 
ly from the hands of the white clerk at the 
trading-house or “ Factory ” near the seaside. 
Each of the parties through whose hands the 
goods pass retains a portion as a “ nyeno,” or 



7 s 



MAWEDO. 



commission. Only a small portion of the 
goods finally reaches the terminus of the in- 
terior tribe which actually does the work of 
collecting the rubber. The percentage that 
is added to the price of the goods every time 
they change hands causes them to represent 
a quantity of rubber great inversely as the 
goods themselves become fewer. 

Such a day came to the inhabitants of 
Aduma. A company of Akanda people, 
after being riotously welcomed at the water- 
side, marched up the long street of the vil- 
lage, bearing bundles and wooden chests to 
the house of the native chief. The visitors 
brought gin and rum among their foreign 
treasures, and these were at once distributed 
by the chief to the gathered crowd of his 
people, and the evening and most of the 
night was spent in dances and songs of wel- 
come. 

Next day, before admiring and covetous 
eyes, the chests and bundles were opened, 



RUBBER GATHERING. 79 

and the chief, appropriating them as his per- 
sonal property, divided them out on shares to 
his principal men. One of these, his eldest 
son, who exercised special control of Ova- 
nga, gathered his share, and advancing, as 
part payment, rubber that he had collected 
on a previous journey, made preparations for 
another excursion into the forest. 

After the visitors had gone, the chief’s 
son, taking his gun, and laying in the hands 
of Ovanga, now about seven years old, a lit- 
tle bundle of food, burdened his own women 
and adult slaves with a week’s provisions, 
and, accompanied by a few men, his chosen 
companions of the village, started on a day’s 
journey into the heart of the forest, to camp 
in some new spot where the rubber had not 
been cut over. 

Rubber camps involve more labor and 
are less safe than fish camps. In the former 
the party often sleep out in the open air, 
sharing with myriad forms of busy insect and 



8o 



MAWEDO. 



loathsome reptile life the shelter afforded by 
the dense vegetation of the tropical forest, 
into which the rays of sunlight penetrate but 
dimly. Far from a base of supplies, food is 
rationed out; and, as the days are spent in 
roaming the forest and collecting the white 
rubber-milk, there is not the time for play 
that children generally find about other 
camps. 

India-rubber, or caoutchouc, so called 
from the name, cahoutchou , given to it by 
the South American Indians in Guiana, is 
the coagulated milky juice of a number of 
trees and shrubs found in Mexico, Central 
and South America, the East Indies, Africa, 
and Australia, and belonging chiefly to the 
natural orders Euphorbiacecz , Moracece, Ar- 
tocavpacecz , and Apocynacece. The juice is 
contained chiefly in a network of minute ves- 
sels in the middle bark of the plants, though 
in the last-named order it is found in the 
inner bark also. The minute, transparent 



RUBBER GATHERING. 81 

caoutchouc globules appear to be held in 
suspension in the juice by means of ammo- 
nia, for the fresh juice yields in many cases a 
strong ammoniacal odor, and ammonia add- 
ed to the juice will keep it from coagulating 
when it is necessary to transport it undried 
for any distance. The best rubber is ob- 
tained from recently-strained juice that is 
carefully evaporated at a moderate heat. 
Besides the elastic substance the milk con- 
tains an oxydized, viscid, resinous substance, 
which, unlike the former, is soluble in alco- 
hol. The caoutchouc is valuable in propor- 
tion to the small quantity of the resinous 
substance contained in it, and rapid evapora- 
tion tends to prevent its formation. The 
rubber which comes from Para in Brazil 
being freest from it, partly, it is probable, 
because most carefully prepared, is esteemed 
the best, while the African varieties, which 
generally contain more of it, are less valuable. 

In Africa, which, next to South America, 
1 1 



Blaweilo. 



82 



MA IVEDO. 



exports the greatest quantity of rubber, caout- 
chouc-producing plants are found throughout 
the equatorial regions, the rubber being ex- 
ported chiefly from the Gaboon, Congo, and 
Benguela on the west coast, and Madagascar, 
Mozambique, and Mauritius on the east. 
Climbing plants of several species and gene- 
ra are the chief sources of its supply, though 
in Liberia the finest rubber is obtained from 
a tall tree. 

The presence of caoutchouc in a plant is 
shown by an incision in the bark yielding a 
milky juice which coagulates into elastic fibre 
on being rubbed with the fingers. The dried 
bark of rubber-yielding plants will show, 
when broken, silky fibres uniting the frac- 
tured surfaces ; these fibres can be stretched 
for some distance without breaking. 

India-rubber was long ago applied by the 
natives of the West Indies to one of the uses 
for which it is now in greatest demand. A 
Spaniard, named Herrera, who accompanied 



RUBBER GATHERING. 83 

Columbus on his second voyage to the New 
World, mentions, in a book written in the 
early part of the sixteenth century, that he 
saw the people of Hayti playing with balls 
made of the gum of a tree, and that, though 
the balls were large, they were lighter and 
bounced better than “ the wind-balls of Cas- 
tile.” This is the earliest notice of india- 
rubber on record. Another Spaniard, Tor- 
quemada, in a book published at Madrid in 
1615, speaks of a tree called by the Mexican 
Indians Ulequahuitt, valued for the gum 
which it yielded, and which the Spaniards 
applied to their cloaks to render them water- 
proof, though the substance apparently at- 
tracted no attention in Europe. French sci- 
entists in the eighteenth century drew the 
attention of Europe to the South American 
caoutchouc-trees, and pieces of rubber, sold 
at three shillings a cubical half-inch, began 
to be used in England for erasing pencil- 
marks in the latter part of that century; but 



8 4 



MAWEDO. 



it was not until the beginning of the present 
century that the india-rubber industry really 
commenced. Since then it has grown so 
rapidly that the demand for the best kinds of 
rubber is in excess of the supply, though 
caoutchouc plants are found throughout a 
vast belt of the earth, embracing at least five 
hundred miles on both sides the equator. 

The caoutchouc-vine of the Ogowe coun- 
try is sometimes several inches thick at its 
base, and runs for hundreds of feet up trees 
and over tree-tops. The collectors climb the 
trees, tear down the vines, and then ruthlessly 
cut them off at their base, close to the earth. 
This reckless process kills them from the 
root. The whole length of the vine is cut 
into pieces about sixteen inches long, and 
these are stood leaning in troughs, that the 
white viscous sap may more rapidly bleed 
out. This milky sap is then slightly boiled, 
a little salt being cast into it, to assist in the 
separation of the gummy and watery por- 



RUBBER GATHERING. 85 

tions. The gum precipitates as a thick 
cream, and the supernatant water is drawn 
off. The gum is then poured out into 
moulds, a few inches long, or is, by hand, 
rolled into balls two inches in diameter. It 
soon hardens sufficiently to bear handling. 
It is kept wet, water being daily thrown over 
it, as it lies in a pile, or buried in a hole in 
the ground, or tied up in light rattan crates. 
There are several plants, besides the proper 
vines, that exude a viscous juice with which 
the caoutchouc is adulterated. The gum, as 
it is finally brought to the villages, paid to 
the Akanda or other visitors at their next 
semi-annual trip, and by them passed on to 
the coast by the same Galwa and Mpongwe 
hands through which the white man’s goods 
are transmitted, has lost its original white- 
ness, being mixed with sand and sticks, and 
blackened with the smoke of the huts in 
which the crates have been hanging. 



86 



MA IVEDO. 



IX. THE CAPTURE. 

In the enjoyment of childish pastimes 
and the performance of such light labors as 
devolve upon children in connection with the 
securing of fish and wild animals, and the 
gathering of rubber, Ovanga passed a com- 
paratively happy time. 

One day, however, his young master took 
him on a rubber-gathering expedition from 
which they never returned. 

The interior of Africa is filled with petty 
wars and quarrels, and seizures and reprisals 
for debt, theft, and other crimes. There is 
no central authority, as of a king, even in 
any one tribe ; much less is there any gen- 
eral rule over the numerous small tribes into 
which the people of the region are divided. 
Only in the separate villages is there any 
recognized power, namely, that of the “chief,” 



THE CAPTURE. 



87 



one whom years and wisdom and strength of 
character raise in the estimation of his own 
immediate family and slaves, and thus give 
him a certain degree of authority. But no 
one chief has authority over other chiefs. 
One of them may have influence over the 
others simply by reason of personal magnet- 
ism, but not because of any real right that 
is vested in him by election, appointment, or 
heredity. Thus might makes right, and who- 
ever has a strong arm and imperious will 
pushes his ideas of right to their extremity. 
When the strong arm and will happen to 
belong to a bad heart, the exercise of power 
does not stop short of the commission of 
gross injustice, but the man does literally 
w T hat is right in his own eyes. 

This general anarchy is made worse by a 
singular custom that prevails in regard to 
reprisals. If only the guilty were caught and 
punished, however violently and without pro- 
cess of law, there would be comparative quiet, 



88 



MA WE DO. 



for those peaceably disposed and innocent of 
overt crimes would feel safe. But, in reality, 
suffering is just as likely to fall on the inno- 
cent as on the guilty. Indeed, more likely. 
For any man who has committed a crime is 
sure to flee promptly to a distant part of the 
tribe, or to maternal relatives in another 
tribe, and is safe. There is no military or 
police force to pursue him, and the one whom 
he has injured will not, single-handed, dare 
invade the village where the offender is being 
protected, or demand his extradition from it. 
The injured person thenceforward looks out 
for any members, however innocent, of the 
offender’s family connections who may, in 
ignorance of their relative’s crime, come, in 
the course of a journey, to a village where 
the injured person happens to be staying. 
Custom then allows the injured one to seize 
and retain as hostage for the surrender of 
the offender, or for payment of a fine, the 
innocent brother, or sister, or other relative. 



THE CAPTURE. 



89 



In the case of high crimes, the innocent cap- 
tives are not retained simply as hostages, but 
are either promptly killed on the spot, or sold 
away into slavery. 

On this occasion, as before related, Ova- 
nga’s young master took him and a company 
of five others on a camping party in the rub- 
ber-forest. Unknown to the chief’s son there 
was, in that same forest, another party be- 
longing to a tribe hostile to his own, by rea- 
son of a quarrel that had been carried on for 
many years, with a succession of murders on 
both sides. Ovanga’s master’s party, in their 
search for rubber-vines, and in gathering the 
sap of such sticks as had been set up for 
drainage, had been observed and recognized, 
and as they returned, late in the afternoon, 
to their camp, had been secretly followed by 
one of their hereditary enemies. Returning 
to his own camp, the spy told his people of 
the proximity of the others, and armed a 
number of hfs men with their flint-lock guns 

Wawtilo, 1 2 



go 



MAW EDO. 



and rude swords. They came back stealthily 
through the thick forest shades — shades too 
dark for one to have ventured alone through 
them, and that perhaps covered the forms of 
leopards, deterred by the numbers of the 
party from leaping on them, as they would 
have leaped upon a lonely traveller. Ovanga 
and his master, with three men, an old wo- 
man, and a lad, were sitting about their camp- 
fire, smoking and chatting, thoughtless of 
danger. Their enemies, firing suddenly and 
at close quarters, killed instantly, or wound- 
ed, the young master and three others. The 
two wounded ones were promptly stabbed to 
death by the assailants, and the old woman 
and Ovanga were seized. Only one man es- 
caped to tell the story. The little camp was 
plundered of its few weapons, tools, and 
accumulated rubber, the corpses were left 
stripped and unburied, and the two captives 
were led away. Slaves still, they were sent 
by their captors “down river,” "towards the 



THE CAPTURE. 



9 * 



sea, to be sold either directly as slaves, or to 
be given in payment of debt for goods already 
received from the sub-traders of white men, 
who were not themselves directly interested 
in slavery, but whose negro agents misappro- 
priated for their own purposes moneys en- 
trusted to them for legitimate commerce. 
The boy and the old woman were separated. 
We lose sight of her. The boy passed into 
the hands of a young man of the Nka-mi 
tribe, a trader at the Camma seaside, south 
of Cape Lopez. 



92 



MA WE DO. 



X. DEATH OF THE CHIEF. 

When the news of the disaster to the 
party of rubber-hunters reached the Aduma 
village, Ayenwe mourned less for the murder 
of her master’s son than she did for the loss 
of her Ovanga, forgetting that others had 
ceased to regard the boy as her child, and 
had looked on him only as their servant. 
Her sorrow mattered little to them. They 
gathered around the grief of the old chief, 
mourning for the death of the young man, 
his son, on whom he had centred his hopes 
for carrying on the honor of his family name. 
For Ayenwe to have sunk her own grief, and 
to have made her voice prominent in wailing 
for the young master, would have been poli- 
tic. But, instead of so doing, she raved for 
Ovanga, and said bitter things against the 
old man for having allowed the boy to go on 



DEATH OF THE CHIEF. 



93 



that fatal rubber-expedition. Though an- 
other baby boy had recently been added to 
her, she was not comforted by the child any 
more than she had been by little Mawedo 
five years before. 

Her bitter words were treasured up against 
her, and bore almost fatal fruit a few years 
later. 

The common belief in witchcraft as the 
cause of death gathers about any native Afri- 
can death-bed surroundings that shock a civ- 
ilized and Christian heart. African ideas of 
witchcraft suggest that the patient is dying 
from the malignant effects of an incantation 
made by some enemy, either a disobedient 
child, a fractious wife, a covetous brother, a 
revengeful slave, a spiteful opponent, or an 
envious neighbor. And if the patient dies, 
the cause of his death will be sought, not in 
natural grounds, but in the supposed adverse 
influence of some such enemy. So far is 
this belief carried that even when death has 



94 



MAIVEDO. 



been caused by an obvious accident, for in- 
stance, by the swamping of a canoe, the fall 
of a tree in clearing the forest, an uninten- 
tional gun-shot or knife wound, or the attack 
of a wild beast, the event is not accepted as 
a natural, inevitable result, but investigation 
is made for the apprehension of the crim- 
inal who has “ bewitched ” the canoe, tree, 
gun, or beast, so as to make the accident 
fatal. 

Investigation is made by the oganga or 
“fetish doctor,” a magician who, with various 
arts, fixes on some person who has in time 
past made himself obnoxious to the deceased, 
or whose apparent indifference to the death 
may be regarded as indicating satisfaction or 
gratification. Sometimes the dying man 
himself accuses some one or more persons 
against whom he cherishes resentment. Im- 
mediately, therefore, on the death of any one, 
or even before life is extinct, the crowd of 
relations, however distant, friends, acquaint- 



DEATH OF THE CHIEF. 95 

ances, slaves, and any who may think that 
accusation might possibly be lodged against 
themselves by the oganga, begin a most de- 
monstrative wailing. The utter abandon of 
this grief strikes an observer, not aware of its 
insincerity, most painfully. Voices are lifted 
in extravagant praises of the dead. The in- 
tense sadness that is thrown into the long- 
drawn-out wails of sorrow, especially if heard 
on the night air, leaves an impress on mem- 
ory that no subsequent conviction of the un- 
reality of the grief removes. 

About four years after the capture of 
Ovanga the old chief died of the dropsy that 
had for years been slowly dragging him to 
the grave. A terrible fear fell on the tribe, 
and especially on his own village. The en- 
tire population of the place gave themselves 
up to the most violent demonstrations of 
grief. Every known funeral ceremony was 
practised. Men wore but the scantiest and 
most soiled and ragged garments ; women, 



9 6 



MA WE BO. 



and especially his widows, were divested not 
only of ornament, but of all dress ; all par- 
ties, with shaven heads, sat literally in the 
ashes; at sunset and sunrise, and at intervals 
during the day, all wailed, praising the dead, 
and uttering their own hopelessness of ever 
again seeing any joy. The oganga was called 
by the dead man’s brothers and mother, and 
secretly they mentioned the names of certain 
of the slaves and wives who had, during the 
life of the old man, rendered themselves ob- 
noxious to him, or of others who were late in 
coming to the mourning, or who seemed to 
show little grief. With these names as a 
clew in the pretended search for the house 
in which dwelt the supposed witch or wizard, 
the magician, painted with colored chalk, with 
fantastic garb of palm leaflets, and loaded 
with amulet charms, raced in well-feigned 
frenzy, ringing a little bell, up and down the 
village street, and in and out and around the 
houses. People sat in awe as they waited, 



DEATH OF THE CHIEF. 97 

dreading, each one, lest the lightning of his 
accusation should strike their houses and 
names. Acute in observation, he noted, as 
he passed them successively, those of the 
number whose names the secret council had 
denounced to him. He marked those whose 
excess of fear gave to their faces a look of 
guilt. Suddenly his bell stopped ringing, 
and his palm-wand struck a house, and in an 
oracular manner he described a person whom 
he claimed to have seen in a trance, and 
whose description tallied with the appearance 
of the occupant of the house. This person 
the oganga declared to be the wizard. The 
man was seized, and beaten and tortured. 
As usual, innocent though he was, he sought 
to lessen his supposed guilt by implicating 
others, and charged Ayenwe and three others 
with being his accomplices. Those three 
and the man himself were put to death. Cap- 
ital punishment is often inflicted with torture, 
the condemned being either slowly roasted 

Alawedo, J T. 



98 MAWEDO. 

alive, or mutilated, before the throat is finally 
cut. 

The only ground of the accusation against 
Ayenwe was found in those treasured-up bit- 
ter words of four years before. These would 
have been enough to condemn her had she 
made herself otherwise obnoxious to her 
master’s relations. But, fortunately, she had 
been, though an unwilling, an efficient ser- 
vant ; her still-retained youthful good looks 
appealed for her, and her life was spared. 
But the chief’s family feared to retain in 
their community one accused of witchcraft, 
lest she should actually do, some day, what 
she was charged with at that time. The 
death-punishment was therefore commuted 
to sale into down-river slavery. So she and 
Mawedo and the little boy were sold. 



IN A SLAVE CANOE. 



99 



XI. IN A SLAVE CANOE. 

It was not long after Ayenwe’s condem- 
nation to sale away from what — house of 
bondage though it was — had been a home to 
her in Aduma, that a party of men, led by 
an emissary of the Oru-ngu coast tribe, ap- 
peared in the village, where, in the mean- 
while, she had been kept in “ the stocks.” 

Stocks are more or less severe, according 
to the offence with which a criminal is 
charged. Sometimes both feet and both 
hands are hampered ; sometimes, only one 
foot. A hole is cut in a log of wood large 
enough to conveniently admit a hand or foot, 
which, being thrust into the hole, is pre- 
vented from being withdrawn by an iron 
spike driven through the log and through 
the side of the opening, thus closing the 
space to the actual size of the wrist or ankle. 



IOO 



MAWEDO. 



To this log is padlocked a chain, by which 
the prisoner is fastened at night During 
the day he can engage in various sedentary 
works, being at liberty to walk about, carry- 
ing his chain and log, somewhat as convicts 
in America carry their ball and chain, though 
they are less hampered than the African 
prisoner. 

Ayenwe ’s free hands were busy, though 
one foot thus weighted made it impossible 
for her to escape. Even had she escaped, 
before she could have found her way back to 
her own Bateke tribe, she would have been 
picked up as a waif and re-enslaved. 

Slaves and prisoners in that country gen- 
erally accept servitude where the lot falls to 
them, knowing that escape elsewhere would 
be, not to freedom, but only to some other 
master. Only in the face of death does the 
instinct of self-preservation lead to flight, in 
the hope that some new master’s treatment 
may be less than death. 



IN A SLAVE CANOE. 



IOI 



Ayenwe’s life having been spared, she 
awaited with some indifference the expected 
journey down river. Her chief cause of anx- 
iety was in the uncertainty as to whether she 
would be handed over to slavery in some 
coast tribe, or, as was possible, passed on to 
that White Man’s Land of which she had 
heard vague accounts — extravagant stories of 
its wealth, and a horrid report that slaves 
were the food of the white spirits. This 
latter report seemed quite credible to Aye- 
nwe because of the fact that some negro 
tribes near the Aduma were cannibals; and 
nothing in her idea of spiritual existence 
made it appear improbable that white spirits 
needed food. 

The Orungu fleet consisted of five ca- 
noes; long, narrow vessels dug out of single 
trees, and capable, each of them, of carrying 
twenty people, besides the goods needed for 
purchase of food, and the luggage of cooking 
utensils and tents. It had not been a sue- 



102 



MAWEDO. 



cessful trip for the slave-trader. He was con- 
stantly expending goods for the food of his 
crews, had obtained only some thirty slaves, 
consisting of men, women and children, and 
the favorable season for descending the river 
was passing. So, filling up most of the un- 
occupied space in his fleet with goats and 
rubber-gum, he led the chained Ayenwe, with 
Mawedo and the little boy, to the water-side, 
and placed them in one of the canoes. The 
mother’s desire to retain her children, little 
as was her love for them as compared with 
her love for the lost Ovanga, was quickened 
by the possibility that she might be sold 
away from them ; and she pleaded to be al- 
lowed to take them with her. .Her wish 
would not have had the slightest weight 
either with her former owners or the new, if 
their own interests had not pointed in the 
same direction. The Aduma, taking advan- 
tage of their opportunity, asked an unusually 
large price for the two children, which the 



IN A SLAVE CANOE. 



103 



Orungu was not unwilling to give, as his 
stock of slaves was small, and as he had 
given but a low price for the mother, the 
taint of a witchcraft charge diminishing her 
value. 

Seated in the bottom of the canoes, the 
slaves floated down the river, on what might 
have been a pleasant journey if the chains 
had not chafed on wrists and ankles; if the 
stick that fastened back their arms had not 
made lying down impossible for the backs 
that soon became so weary; if they had had 
free hands, to hold up some broad leaf to 
shade them from the sun; if the crowded 
condition of the canoes, packed with boxes, 
goats, gum, and other articles, had not made 
any change of position difficult. 

They floated down past the mountains 
that Ayenwe had always known, past the 
open prairie uplands of Akanda and Okota. 
They shot dangerous rapids. Sometimes, 
when the rapids, like falls, were too violent 



io4 



MAWEDO . 



to be passed, the canoes were carefully un- 
loaded, and canoes and goods were all car- 
ried around the rocky ravines of the falls to 
the smooth water below, the captives slowly 
marching. 

Past all these rapids, they came to the 
smooth wide reaches of the river in the Ake- 
le tribe. Then Ayenwe heard it whispered 
that they were not far from a white man’s 
house. 

They stopped one day, in the burning 
noon, to cook their mid-day meal. Instead 
of resting under the shade of trees on either 
bank, the Orungu drew up to a dry sandbar 
that extended out into the river. The ab- 
sence of trees there obviated the possibility 
of ambuscade by any enemy. This was such 
a common danger among the native tribes 
that the crews of travelling canoes chose to 
lose the comfort of the cool dense shades on 
the river banks, rather than expose them- 
selves to a possible ambush in those shades. 



IN A SLA VE CANOE. 



io 5 

The Orungu and his companions relieved 
their limbs by walking about on the sands, 
or lolling in the shadow of a cloth hung up 
as a rude tent, while their servants of the 
party stewed fish and roasted cassava that 
they had bought on the way. Driftwood on 
the sandbar supplied the little fuel that was 
needed, and the iron pot and brass kettle 
gained in ivory-trade were the only needed 
utensils ; river-water was at hand, and fire 
was soon gotten from the universally carried 
flint and steel. 

A mile distant, on the same side of the 
river, on a beautifully sloping hillside that 
commanded an extensive view, was a trading- 
house, named “Aguma,” because of two tall 
cotton-wood trees that stood at the water- 
side. It was occupied by a Scotch gentle- 
man and his white clerk, with their army of 
native servants, and sub-traders, and their 
assistants, whose bamboo-hut quarters sur- 
rounded the imposing “ Factory,” like a vil- 

D 



Mawedo. 



io6 



MAWEDO. 



lage in extent. This gentleman was on the 
very outpost of the civilization of the river, 
he and his clerk being the two white men 
farthest advanced towards the interior. Their 
life was sometimes overburdened with a rush 
of work, when the little steamer belonging to 
their Liverpool employers’ firm came, quar- 
terly, to carry away the rubber, etc., that 
they had accumulated. At such times all 
the native sub-traders were called in to settle 
accounts. Each of these had his boat’s crew 
of from twelve to twenty men and boys. 
The combined crews amounted to as many 
as two hundred people, who, with drunken- 
ness and quarrels and strikes for higher 
wages, sometimes made the white man’s life 
unsafe. When the steamer left, and the 
boats’ crews departed to their outposts, quiet 
came, with an easy daily routine of buying 
and selling that made life monotonous after 
the supply of newspapers had been read. 

That day, while the blue smoke was curl- 



IN A SLAVE CANOE. 107 

ing from the noon camp-fire of the Orungu 
slave-trader on the sandbar, Mr. Dunbar 
was sitting on the veranda, under the broad 
eaves of the trading-house, the blue smoke of 
his pipe circling over his head as he rested 
after his own meal, and looked across the 
shimmering water and the rich green islands 
to the hazy distant hills of the Ngu-nye river 
eastward. Looking up stream he saw with 
his glass the collection of canoes on the 
sandbar, and, suspecting they might belong 
to some of his own people, coming with a 
supply of rubber, he started for a stroll, to 
satisfy his curiosity. There followed him his 
negro valet, carrying his extra pipe and to- 
bacco, another attendant with his gun, and 
others still who fell into line in idle expecta- 
tion, each having, as was customary, his own 
gun. The trader also ordered along, for 
company, a handsome Nkami man, one of his 
sub-traders, who had with him his own slave 
valet, a little boy of about eleven years of 



io8 



MAWEDO. 



age. They strolled out over the sandbar to 
the Orungu, who rose to scan their approach. 
Mr. Dunbar saw that the new-comers were 
not his people, and the Orungus saw that the 
guns meant nothing hostile. 

The customary salutations were ex- 
changed. Mr. Dunbar took in the situation, 
and his kind heart pitied the chained slaves; 
but he had no authority to interfere. He 
saw them eating their food unrelieved from 
their cramped positions, and some let their 
morsel lie untouched. Weariness and sick- 
ness and fear had taken away their appetite. 
One form particularly attracted his attention. 
It was that of a woman still young-looking, 
whose lighter color and more regular fea- 
tures would have made her noticeable even 
if a look of terror had not come over her 
face as she saw the white man coming to- 
wards the canoe in which she was sitting, with 
a little girl at her feet and a boy of four or 
five years in her arms. It was Ayenwe, who 



IN A SLAVE CANOE. 



iog 



now, for the first time, found herself looking 
on a white man. Chained, there was no 
chance of flight; crowded by other slaves, 
and by the goods, she could not move; terror 
riveted her gaze on the tall form, and on the 
face, flushed with heat and bent, from under 
the broad hat, inquiringly towards her. Was 
this, she thought, one of those white spirits 
of whom she had heard? And had she al- 
ready met her fate, as a cannibal’s victim? 
But no; his tones of voice were those of gen- 
tleness and kindness, such as she had not 
heard for many a day. And she overheard 
him talking to the Orungus in their own 
language, of which she had already picked 
up a little on the way down. He was asking 
the Orungu leader why he did not feed his 
people better, and why he did not ease their 
positions in the canoes. 

The look of terror left her face, and, as 
she looked towards the other forms of negroes, 
her eyes fell on the Nkumi and his well- 



1 10 



At A IVEDO. 



dressed valet. Suddenly her body, hitherto 
crouched over her little boy in weariness, 
weakness, and dread, drew itself up as high 
and straight as chain and bar would permit ; 
her hands were withdrawn from her boy, and 
she strained herself over the canoe’s side to 
stare at the well-dressed lad. Her lips were 
working convulsively with words that could 
not form themselves. Her eyeballs, as if 
they would start from their sockets to go 
where her fettered feet would have carried 
her, were telling what her lips had failed to 
speak. Surely she knew that boy’s face ! 
Surely she recognized that voice, that, slightly 
changed since she last heard it, was chatting 
with a fellow-lad, though the words spoken 
were in the same Orungu dialect that her 
new masters had been speaking to her! 
Surely he was not an Orungu ! And yet, he 
was dressed like the Nkami and the white 
man. Had he lived with them always? 
She knew better than that. Those limbs 



IN A SLAVE CANOE. 



hi 



she had fondled in childhood; she had built 
her hopes of restoration to freedom on the 
love of that heart and the labor of those 
hands. It was her own Ovanga ! She 
screamed, in the Aduma dialect, “ My child ! 
my child ! Come to me, Ovanga, come !” 
The eyes of all had been drawn to her by 
her strange actions. And now, at her call, 
the Orungu and Mr. Dunbar and the Nkami 
drew near. She still beat her chained hands 
against her breast in dumb show towards 
Ovanga, protesting her relationship to him. 

The lad recognized the woman’s dialect, 
and, bidden by his Nkami master, advanced, 
startled and somewhat unwilling. He re- 
membered that, about four years before, his 
name had been “ Ovanga but his master 
had called him by a new name. He had 
been treated kindly. Slavery had been to 
him easy in its lines. He had abundance of 
food and fine clothes, and a constant share in 
the wonderful sights of white men’s homes. 



T 12 



MAWEDO. 



He had readily forgotten his slave-mother; 
and that scarred, wearied face and form, that 
struggled frantically in the canoe, failed to 
recall to him any memory of her. He almost 
shrank from her attempt to embrace him — 
her hands having been temporarily untied — 
for he regarded himself as free, and scorned 
the miserable slaves around him. 

Ayenwe pleaded with the white man, in 
whose eye she read kindness, to buy her, that 
she might be near her boy. But he declined 
to deal in slaves. She pleaded with the 
Nkami to buy her ; but his pecuniary indebt- 
edness to Mr. Dunbar, rather than any anti- 
slavery principle, made him refuse. She 
pleaded with the Orungu to buy Ovanga of 
the Nkami; but the latter refused to part 
with his slave except at a price too high for 
the Orungu’s projects of speculation. 

Ovanga approached Ayenwe ; his filial 
feeling had at last aroused itself as she cried 
in agony, “Oh, have you forgotten me? You 



IN A SLA VE CANOE. 



JI 3 



are mine! I am your mother!” She drew 
him down to her, in the wet and reek of the 
canoe, and rained tears on his loved face ; 
and he, in childish sympathy, gave tears in 
return ; for amid all the kindness he had re- 
ceived in slavery, he had met with no love, 
and his young heart responded to that. 

The Orungu became impatient. The 
Nkami had no interest in the scene. Mr. 
Dunbar turned away, sad for the pain that 
he could not relieve. Some rough hands 
flung Ovanga aside, and fastened the bar 
again on Ayenwe’s impatiently -resisting 
arms. The Orungus reembarked ; and Aye- 
nwe, screaming, floated away from the view 
of Ovanga, who, weeping subduedly, followed 
his Nkami master. 



Mitwerto. 



15 



MAIVEDO. 



114 



XII. AT THE SEASIDE. 

Ayenwe’s screams fell more and more 
faintly on the ears of the crowd ashore who 
stood watching the receding fleet of canoes 
as the rapid current swept them around the 
river’s bend, and no longer heard by Ovanga, 
she passed for ever from his sight. 

A two days’ journey, down the long 
reaches of the island-studded delta of the 
Ogowe, past herds of hippopotami basking 
on the barely submerged sandbars, past the 
papyrus-lined banks, through the narrow 
channels choked with Pandanus (screw-pine), 
whose numerous strong outer roots, branch- 
ing closely downwards from the lower part 
of the trunk and entering the ground on 
all sides, give the tree a partially uprooted 
look, by floating islands, among the curiously 
rooted mangroves, and out to the wonderful 



AT THE SEASIDE. 



"5 



expanse of the sea, brought the company of 
slaves to an Orungu king’s town at Cape 
Lopez. Most of them, though scarcely able 
to move their stiff limbs, were marched to a 
slave-pen. A few, Ayenwe among the num- 
ber, too weak to attempt to escape, were 
loosed from their chains, and, no longer ra- 
tioned, were fed with comparative abundance. 
To attempt to return interior-ward would be 
useless. What home was there there to 
reach? Wearied with the journey, and 
dazed with the sight of the great sea and the 
winged boats, of which inland report had 
often told by the camp-fire, the slaves were 
satisfied to sit down in the present abun- 
dance, and commend themselves to their new 
masters by services performed at first in the 
village limits, and afterwards, as their liberty 
was cautiously extended, in the plantations 
across the adjacent prairie. On the prairie 
those of the men-slaves who were intrusted 
with guns made themselves useful by hunt- 



1 1 6 



MAWEDO. 



ing antelopes and other wild animals. Some 
were taken by their masters and initiated in 
the art of sailing and fishing on Cape Lopez 
Bay, which they found more difficult than 
paddling on smooth river-water. 

Ayenwe began to enjoy her seaside life. 
Her dread of being made, by white spirits, a 
victim of cannibalism had passed away, for 
she had learned the falsehood of that report. 

One day, shortly after her arrival at Cape 
Lopez, a small vessel ran, under the strong 
sea breeze, into the shelter of one of the 
many creeks of the mangrove islands. 
Strange men came ashore in a boat, and it 
was said that these were white spirits. 
Ayenwe observed that they had not the fair 
skin and light hair of the Mr. Dunbar whom 
she had seen up the river. They were 
swarthy, almost as dark as some of her own 
people, but with long black hair. She heard 
them called “ Putu,” heard that they were 
the men who carried away slaves in their 



AT THE SEAS/DE. 



117 

white-winged ships to islands out in the 
great sea. She saw these strangers received 
as visitors, and eating and acting as other 
human beings ; and Mawedo, who was rap- 
idly gathering up the language, informed 
her that the free children, with whom she 
played in the streets, had told her that they 
had come, not for food, but to buy slaves to 
work in their coffee plantations. She saw 
the round pieces of metal, which she after- 
wards learned was silver, paid by handfuls to 
the king of the town ; and the slave-pen was 
emptied, and its living contents were packed 
in the vessel anchored in the creek. With 
the darkness of night — to escape the vigil- 
ance of British cruisers — and with fresh land- 
wind and swiftly flowing ebb-tide, the vessel 
spread her sails and sped westward to St. 
Thomas and Prince’s Islands, possessions of 
Portugal, about one hundred and eighty 
miles out at sea. 

Relieved of fear, Ayenwe, with Mawedo, 



MA IVEDO. 



118 

now a helpful child of ten years, settled them- 
selves to their recently shown tasks, and 
found an animal satisfaction in the abun- 
dance of fish that sported in the bay, and 
which, with little exertion on the part of the 
men, were caught in tens of thousands. The 
work of drying them, for sale to tribes far- 
ther north, was a constant but not oppressive 
labor. Sometimes when the tide was out, 
Mawedo, with other children, would paddle 
some old canoe among the many inlets of the 
lagoon, and gather from the roots and hangers 
of the mangrove-trees the oysters clustering 
on them. 

Members of the Mangrove tribe are 
found on the marshy seacoasts of most trop- 
ical countries, and by their dense vegetation, 
intercepting the rays of the sun and promo- 
ting the exhalation of noxious vapors from 
about their roots, apparently are responsible 
for much of the unwholesomeness which dis- 

i 

tinguishes most localities in which they are 



AT THE SEASIDE . 



"9 



abundant. The mangroves belong to the 
natural Order Rhizophorea , which contains 
four genera. The genus Rhizophora in- 
cludes three species, two of which, the Rhi- 
zophora Mangle, and the R. Racemosa, are 
abundant on the West African coast from 
Senegambia to Guinea, both inclusive. The 
R. Candel abounds on the western coast of 
Hindostan. Both of the former are also 
found in the West Indies and South Amer- 
ica, and the mangrove extends even into our 
own Florida and Louisiana. Most of the 
species are remarkable for the peculiarity of 
their rooting and germination. Many wide- 
spreading roots shoot out from the base of 
the trunk and extend over and into a large 
surface of the mud in which the tree grows, 
and the upper trunk and branches also send 
down hangers which, like those of the ban- 
yan, themselves take root and spread. The 
The seed begins to germinate before it is de- 
tached from the seed-vessel, the radicle, or 



120 



MA WEDO. 



root-end, of the seed elongating into a slen- 
der thread which often reaches and enters 
the ground from a considerable height, or if 
the elevation is too great the seed drops and 
immediately strikes root and develops leaves. 

The spawn of oysters at high tide at- 
taches itself to the hangers, and even to the 
branches, of the mangroves. Clinging there 
the young oysters grow, being, at each risen 
tide, submerged; and when they are finally 
grown they are easily gathered, with the 
water at half-tide. 

This life of comparative comfort did not 
last long. One day there came a large boat, 
not like white men’s boats, but made out of a 
single tree trunk, and governed by tall, stout, 
fierce-looking people of Ayenwe’s own color, 
whom her Orungu masters received as visit- 
ors from the Be-nga tribe, one hundred and 
twenty miles northward. They came to buy 
slaves, and Mawedo and her mother and lit- 
tle brother were sold to them. Ayenwe’s 



AT THE SEASIDE. 



121 



natural good looks, improved by the good 
food and easier life of Cape Lopez, made her 
a desirable object. The Benga visitors 
treated her with some care, but she dreaded 
their harsh looks and manners, fiercer and 
ruder than those of the more enervate Oru- 
ngus. 

She would have preferred remaining in 
the vicinity of the Ogowe, for did not she 
remember that Ovanga was somewhere on 
its waters, only a few days’ journey away ? 
She had eagerly scanned many boats’ crews 
that, coming down river, had stopped at the 
king’s town, for she had hoped that Ovanga 
might possibly be in their company. If she 
had only known that his master was a Nka- 
mi, or what that master’s name was, or that 
Ovanga was now called by a new name, she 
would have had clews that could have led to 
the boy’s identification, though she would 
have been powerless to convey herself to him. 

It was true that Ovanga and his master, with 

16 



M iw^Uo. 



122 



MAIVEDO. 



the Nkami’s boat and crew, did travel the 
waters of that lagoon, on their way to the 
sea, while Ayenwe was there ; but there were 
too many outlets and creeks for her to know 
or see all who were passing ; and she never 
saw them. 

Mawedo, with her mother and brother, for 
the first time passed out into the rough sea, 
the Benga boat barely keeping in sight of 
the shore. Mawedo looked in terror on the 
white-tipped waves that seemed like living 
creatures trying to grasp at her over the 
gunwale. And then the terror yielded to 
the deathly sea-sickness that laid its limp vic- 
tims in the boat’s bottom, regardless of dis- 
comfort, decency, or life. She knew not 
whither they went, but only heard enough to 
understand that they were going northward 
to some river. At night the Benga masters 
landed to rest and eat at Sangatanga. Next 
day, with the same terror and the same sick- 
ness, the slaves were brought to Gaboon 



AT THE SEAS/HE. 



123 



Point. And a third day of worse experience 
over the rough waves of Corisco Bay, brought 
them, weak from hunger, to the white beach 
of an island that afterwards Mawedo learned 
to regard as beautiful. There, on that same 
Ka-mba beach, the girl soon learned to romp, 
gathering shells; and there, years later, was 
to be enacted for her mother and brother a 
fearful tragedy. Most welcome to the anx- 
ious eyes of Ayenwe and her children was 
the land as they stepped ashore, glad to 
accept anything in exchange for the living 
torture of the sea. 

Ayenwe passed into the hands of O-so- 
ngo, chief of Kamba village, her looks com- 
mending her to him as one of his slave-wives. 
He appropriated Mawedo, at the same time, 
as his child. Giving her the position of a 
free-woman, he sold her in marriage dowry a 
year later, when she was nearly twelve years 
of age, to a friend, of the Mbi-ko tribe, on 
the adjacent mainland shore of the bay. 



124 



MAIVEDO. 



Mawedo cared nothing for the man into 
whose hands she thus passed, but was pleased 
with the free position given her, though to 
be a slave of the aristocratic Benga tribe, 
who looked down upon the Mbikos, was 
almost equal to being a free Mbiko. 

Thus Ayenwe was again left with but 
one child, the little boy, now nearly seven 
years old. 



A LITTLE WITCH. 



125 



XIII. A LITTLE WITCH. 

On Corisco Island, where Ayenwe con- 
tinued to live and work after Mawedo had 
gone to Mbiko, there were three mission 
houses, at intervals of two or three miles 
apart, in which were gathered boys and girls 
from the island, and from the mainland dis- 
tant from fifteen to twenty miles. At two of 
those houses preaching was held on the Sab- 
bath. The island itself had been selected as 
a desirable mission location in the hope that 
it would be more exempt from the common 
fevers of the country than the mainland. It 
is beautifully situated in the centre of Co- 
risco Bay. On the west is the open expanse 
of the Atlantic, whose mighty waves thunder 
over the long reefs that stretch seaward, and 
fling on the snow-white, dazzling beach beau- 
tiful treasures of shells. Southward the view 



126 



M AWE DO . 



is varied by little gems of islands, Le-va and 
Mba-nye ; and northward are the bold out- 
lines of Cape St. John. Eastward, like a set- 
ting to this central brilliant and its islet gems, 
lie the green Mbiko shores, through which, 
into the bay, empty the waters of the rivers 
Munda and Muni (Rio d’Angra) ; the latter 
is miscalled by the white sailors of the E-lo- 
bi trade islands, “ River Danger.” 

Though a year had passed, after Mawe- 
do’s arrival on Corisco, before she was mar- 
ried to one of the Mbiko people who lived at 
the mouth of the Munda, and though Kamba, 
the town of Osongo, her Benga master, was 
only a mile from one of the three mission 
houses, where were a Girls’ School and a 
church, neither she nor her mother had ever 
been allowed to go to church. In their rapid 
transit from the Ogowe to Orungu, and 
thence to Corisco, they had met only with 
heathen like themselves ; not with native 
Christians, or even with those who in mis- 



A LITTLE WITCH. 



127 



sion houses had heard of the gospel. At 
Corisco, in Kumba village, they saw a few 
men and women, differing in dress and man- 
ner of life from the rest of the natives, and 
whom they had heard called “ Klisani.” By 
them they had directly been told of sin and 
salvation, and a Saviour Jesus. And the 
missionary, or two missionary ladies from the 
Girls’ School, visited the village occasionally, 
paid their respects to Ayenwe’s master, and 
held religious services. But slaves were not 
often allowed to come very near to the chief’s 
white visitors ; they were kept at their labors 
in the hut, or the plantation, or fishing. 

So Mawedo knew very little of the gos- 
pel. And in Mbiko there was still less 
chance of her being taught any truth, except 
for the possibility that, at long intervals, 
some one of the Corisco missionaries, on an 
itineration to the mainland north or east, in- 
cluding the Munda in his route, might come 
to the village where Mawedo was living. 



128 



MA WEDO. 



One bright day, when the fresh rains had 
brought out new, soft leaves, and the fleecy 
clouds lay white against the blue sky, and 
the birds rejoiced with man in their return- 
ing freedom from the dull, leaden skies and 
chill winds of the long dry season, a scene 
was being enacted on the Munda beach that 
was not at all in consonance with the loveli- 
ness of forest and sky and air. A stout 
young girl of twelve years of age, stripped of 
her clothing, her face and back and limbs 
torn with thorns and seamed with stripes, lay 
chained to a tree at the head of the beach. 
She was silent and tearless, partly from ex- 
haustion, and partly from desperation. She 
had exhausted herself in vain, frantic strug- 
gles of resistance to the forceful hands that 
had beaten and bound her. Hope of escape 
or release was dead. For there was no pity 
or mercy in any of the many eyes of men 
and women who surrounded her. They 
were quarrelling among themselves, not as to 



A LITTLE WITCH. 



129 



whether she should live or die, but as to the 
mode by which her death should be accom- 
plished under her sentence of condemnation 
as a witch. They were taxing their ingenu- 
ity in selecting from the modes of torture 
the one that should most gratify their cru- 
elty. Some, the most violent, demanded 
that she should be instantly hurried to the 
water-side, and have her throat cut. Others, 
less violent, but more cruel, wanted to make 
a bedstead-like frame of wood, to which she 
should be tied in a reclining posture, and then 
slowly roasted to death by a small fire kept 
burning beneath the frame. Others would 
have tied her to a convenient post and grad- 
ually let out her life by the amputation of 
her joints one after another. All these were 
modes that were practised in witchcraft exe- 
cutions. 

But the majority finally chose a death 
less painful, but more lingering in its ap- 
proach. The tide was out of the river, and 

17 



M a we do. 



130 



MA WEDO. 



down near the water’s edge was a stake, to 
which the fishermen were accustomed to tie 
their canoes. To this the girl was led and 
securely fastened, a heavy stone being tied to 
her ankles, which were secured to the base of 
the stake ; another rope was tied around her 
waist, and her wrists were tied to the top of 
the stake above her head. The crowd sat 
down at the head of the beach to watch the 
waters, which, when the tide should return 
from the bay, would flow up over the muddy 
shores of the river. As they sat there, gloat- 
ing over the expected fears of the poor girl 
when finally the flood should reach her face, 
they sharpened her dread by calling up to 
her pictures of it in anticipation, and by 
taunting her with the acts that had led to 
her present fate. She very well remembered 
those acts. They had been intentional ; she 
had pursued them systematically with an ob- 
ject in view. During the less than six hours 
that were to elapse before the waters would 



A LITTLE WITCH. 



J 3 l 

rise over her head, the events of the past year 
came vividly to her remembrance. 

When first she had been brought from 
Corisco Island to be married to the Mbiko, 
who already had a number of wives, the 
change to a new place, and a slight pride of 
position as the new household pet, had 
pleased her. But she was only a child, and 
the husband’s older wives were jealous be- 
cause she accepted the petting without doing 
any service. And the husband so soon 
showed himself arbitrary and tyrannical that 
she, never having had any love for him, or 
interest in him, deliberately undertook to 
make herself as disagreeable as possible, in 
the hope that he, wearied with her, would 
take her back to Osongo, on Corisco, as an 
unsatisfactory piece of goods. All this she 
had time to remember as the tide began to 
lap against her feet. She remembered how, 
when the other women had secured a beating 
for her by telling some lie about her, she had 



132 



MAWEDO. 



avenged herself by getting them and other 
women into trouble ; how she had secretly, 
when they were making their cassava-bread, 
thrown into it sand, which, as it gritted 
against the teeth of those who ate it, had 
aroused their anger against the women for 
their supposed carelessness. She remem- 
bered how she had introduced thorns into 
the bedding of those who maltreated her, and 
how she exulted to herself as she overheard 
their sharp cry of pain as they laid them- 
selves to rest for the night. 

The waters rose towards her knees, and 
the crowd ashore reminded her that she 
could not run away from the hungry waves 
as she had sometimes played truant from the 
kitchen, making searchers weary themselves 
in calling for her, while she was hidden in 
some nook near them. She remembered the 
quarrels she had produced among them by 
telling lies about one to another, and thus 
literally “ setting households by the ears.” 



A LITTLE WITCH. 



133 



The salt waters startled her as they 
clasped her hips, and the crowd ashore re- 
minded her how she had gathered chips of a 
fetid tree, and, laying them on their fires, 
had spoiled their food and driven them in 
disgust out of their huts. And then she re- 
membered how, prompted by a hasty temper 
inherited from her mother, or by her over- 
flowing spirits, she had done everything pos- 
sible to make herself hated by her husband. 
Even while he was living, the towns-people 
had called her a witch; and she had well 
earned the name. 

As the chill waters rose to her waist, she 
struggled with the bitter reflection that be- 
fore her husband had been actually driven to 
the point of sending her away, her plan had 
failed by his sudden death from injuries re-^ 
ceived in an elephant hunt, and all her accu- 
mulated ill deeds were what had fixed on her 
the charge of being the witch who had caused 
those injuries and his death. 



134 



MAWEDO. 



The cold salt waters laved her breast. 
But the people ashore were not now jeering 
her as they had been. She saw their eyes 
turned farther out on the bay behind her. 
She could not see what they were looking 
at. She observed that their curiosity became 
excited. She heard the words “ elende ” 
(boat), and “ ikuku ” (sail), and “ utangani ” 
(white man). Presently, from a side angle of 
vision, she saw, rapidly approaching under 
the strong, fresh sea-breeze, a white-sailed 
boat, which, as it came clearly into view, she 
recognized as the mission-cutter that, from 
Kamba beach on Corisco, she had often seen 
passing on the sea to the A-lo-ngo house. 

The missionary was on one of his monthly 
trips, itinerating, preaching, and collecting 
pupils, and in the usual routine was making a 
semi-annual visit to the Munda. 

Mawedo turned her face upward from the 
steady, cold, salt wave that was gripping her 
throat, and screamed out the missionary’s 



A LITTLE WITCH. 135 

name, calling him, in native custom, “ My 
father ! my father ! I am dying ! help me.” 

The boat, which was advancing directly 
towards the alarmed crowd ashore, deflected 
from its course, and anchored near her. A 
few words to the mission-crew explained to 
them her condition. A man with a kindly 
face leaped overboard, and, diving for a mo- 
ment, with a sharp knife severed the cords at 
the girl’s feet and waist. Then, loosing her 
hands, he lifted her into the boat, just as a 
fleet of canoes, manned by the more daring 
of her enemies, paddled from shore to protest 
against the rescue of their victim. 

Flinging her a few yards of cloth to wrap 
around her, the missionary, whose kindly face 
and voice now changed their look and tone, 
turned to the would-be murderers. Meeting 
them with indignation and firmness, he pro- 
tected the girl from their grasp, quieted their 
fury, deliberately bargained with them for her 
life, and paid them, in cloth, beads, and other 



J 3 6 



MAWEDO. 



trade-goods, the ransom which they demand- 
ed. Then, after preaching them a sermon 
while standing, like Jesus, in the boat, he 
took the girl away to Corisco Island and 
safety. Mawedo sat in the boat grateful for 
rescue ; and with eyes, ears, and heart opened, 
she listened that night, as she had never lis- 
tened before, to a Book from which her res- 
cuer read to her a strangely beautiful story. 



LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE. 



*37 



XIY. LIGHT IK A DARK PLACE. 

Mawedo was brought by her rescuer to 
the Mission Girls’ School on Corisco. It was 
a new scene to her. Though she had often 
passed by the house, and had even sold eggs 
and vegetables at its door, had seen the mis- 
sionary ladies in their visits to Kamba and 
other villages, and had heard some of the 
schoolgirls, in their vacations, tell of their 
school-life, the whole was so outside of her 
life and knowledge, and her previous igno- 
rance was so great, that she had failed utterly 
to comprehend any part of it. She under- 
stood only that schoolgirls were fed regu- 
larly, and dressed fully, and made to obey 
certain rules, which she thought restrictive, 
and taught about God, of whom she knew 
nothing. But she had been pleased with the 

sight of the pretty dresses, and she liked to 

18 



maweilo. 



MA IVEDO. 



138 

hear the hymns, some of whose tunes she 
had overheard in the town, though she did 
not know the meaning: of the words. 

So it was with a mixture of trepidation, 
pleasure, and curiosity that she entered the 
one little room of the Mission House that 
made any pretensions to being a parlor, and 
where the two ladies had come to receive 
her and her rescuer. The trepidation gave 
way before the kindly smiles of the younger 
lady, Miss Helen Cameron, who drew her to 
her side, and the motherly look of the more 
elderly lady, who made a record of the girl’s 
age, tribe, and antecedents. 

A group of scholars had gathered about 
the hall-door, curious to see and criticise the 
appearance of the new pupil. As Miss Helen 
led her away to the schoolroom, to dress her, 
and introduce her to the other pupils, Ma- 
wedo heard the girls repeating among them- 
selves part of the story of her rescue, to which 
they had listened at the parlor-door; and she 



LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE. 



J 39 



saw looks of repulsion and gestures of scorn, 
and heard the words, “ oshaka ” (slave) and 
“nyemba” (witch). Such was her reception 
by her schoolmates. The resentment that it 
raised in her heart obscured the first pleas- 
ant impression received from Miss Helen’s 
kindly touch and loving words. And an 
hour had not passed, after Mawedo had been 
left with the other girls, to play in their com- 
pound, before her resentment at the taunts 
and insults that were put upon her by them, 
led her into a quarrel that compelled Miss 
Helen to a troublesome investigation. 

O 

The history of that day was repeated on 
many days during the next few years. Ma- 
wedo felt herself an Ishmaelite amon^ the 
other girls. All the tricks and pranks that 
she had played in the Mbiko village, she prac- 
tised on her unloving schoolmates. Not sat- 
isfied with avenging herself for actual wrongs 
received from them, she was ingenious in 
devising plans to annoy them, until her pres- 



140 



MA IVEDO. 



ence in the school became an affliction, and 
the patient ladies were forced to admit to 
themselves that she had well earned her 
name of witch. However excusable her 
pranks on her schoolmates might have 
seemed to her when viewed in connection 
with the provocation which they gave her, 
she was greatly at fault in not restraining 
herself by some thought of the trouble, an- 
noyance, and sorrow that she caused the 
missionary ladies. Yet she really loved 
them ; they were justified by her even when 
they had to punish her. And she loved the 
school. It was her home. She could have 
run away, as some pupils did. But in Mbiko 
she was a witch ; and in Kamba she was at 
best only a freed slave. 

Miss Helen’s heart warmed towards the 
friendless one, and her own natural vivacity 
enabled her to look with some leniency on 
the girl’s love of mischief, which would have 
been less censurable if it had not been direct- 



LIGHT IN A DARK PL A CE. 1 4 1 

ed by revenge. Mawedo was affectionate, 
and with tears would promise amendment 
when her gentle teacher persuaded her to 
kneel in prayer for Divine Help to overcome 
resentful feeling. She learned her lessons 
readily, and was, by her quickness, age, and 
size, rapidly advanced to the list of “ big 
girls,” in whom certain trusts and confiden- 
ces were reposed. When, by some outburst 
of mischief or anger, she degraded herself 
from honorable position and from Miss Hel- 
en’s favor, she felt her punishment keenly. 
She would go to her teacher’s room, and, 
flinonnor herself at her feet in a burst of tears, 
would passionately embrace her knees, and, 
rapidly repeating one word, “sasa! sasa!” 
(please ! please !) a score of times, till she 
was almost breathless, would promise, for the 
hundredth time, to behave properly, if only 
she were “this once” forgiven and restored 
to favor. 

Miss Helen’s human pity, that had re- 



142 



MA IVEDO. 



peatedly touched Mawedo’s heart, her Chris- 
tian firmness that rebuked and punished, and 
the self-denying love for others that, as Ma- 
wedo could not but see, pervaded her daily 
life, made a parallel by which the girl could 
understand the stories that she read and was 
taught of divine pity, and divine punishment 
of sin, and opened her heart to the divine 
love of Calvary. God revealed himself to 
our race in the person of the man Christ 
Jesus, and Jesus revealed himself to Mawedo 
in the life of a consecrated woman. The 
girl’s eyes saw dimly at first. But by degrees 
she grew to love and obey the great Exem- 
plar himself, as he is revealed in his Word, 
and as the Spirit increasingly revealed him 
to her heart. 

Before she had been four years in the 
school, she had asked for baptism, and was 
received at Christ’s table. Really a child of 
God, she tried to be consistent, though often 
her old temper would vent itself ; but for 



LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE. 143 

such outbursts she always rebuked herself 
more severely than her teachers rebuked her. 
Her worst fault was the untruthfulness that 
had been her constant practice from child- 
hood. To lie was actually easier to her than 
to tell the truth. She had been accustomed 
to lie for no apparent reason ; and the sin 
still clung to her, and gained an advantage 
when sudden temptation assailed her. But 
she generally repented before the untruth 
was discovered, and, coming to her teacher 
with humiliation, would say, “ Mamma, I told 
you a lie that time.” 

As she grew older she became skilful in 
braiding the strands of beads of various 
colors and sizes with which the girls amused 
part of their play hours, and which their 
teachers encouraged them to wear as orna- 
ments, instead of the heavy brass leg-rings 
and arm-rings required by native heathen 
fashion. 

She was also skilful in braiding the hair 



144 



MAWEDO. 



of the younger girls, an art that is practised 
by every native woman for her special 
friends, the style of braiding being such that 
no one can do it for herself. In school the 
larger girls often found it an irksome task 
when required to do it for the little ones. 

During Mawedo’s four years at school, 
she had little to do with her mother and bro- 
ther, and the little sister who had been born 
about the time of her entrance into the 
school. The school routine purposely kept 
the children away from the vicious sights 
and sounds of the villages, but it did not at 
all forbid visits to the school by the heathen 
parents and relatives of the pupils. Rather, 
such visits were encouraged, in order that 
the children’s relatives might see something 
of Christian home-life. But Mawedo’s mo- 
ther was so engaged with her plantation 
work several miles away, that any intimacy 
between her and her child was not encour- 
aged by Osongo and his people. They pre- 



LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE. 



*45 

ferred that, as Osongo had called Mawedo 
his adopted daughter, he should be kept on 
the school records as “ father ” and patron, 
and receive from the missionary ladies what- 
ever advantage their words or their gifts 
might confer. Legally, he had no claim on 
her, nor did the mission, which held her as 
its ward, wish him to have any influence over 
her, or allow him any authority about her. 
As to Mawedo herself, she knew why her 
mother had so named her in her infancy; 
she felt that the best love she had ever 
known was that of her missionary rescuer 
and teachers; and she was satisfied. Her 
teacher took her sometimes to visit her mo- 
ther and little sister, and sometimes she saw 
the latter in her mother’s arms on the Mis- 
sion veranda, where native women brought 
food for sale. On those village visitations, 
Mawedo, in her Christian zeal, sang to the 
baby some of the pretty hymns that she had 
learned. And she tried to lighten the hard 

Mawedo, I Q 



146 



MA WE no. 



lot of her mother by a Christian filial interest 
more faithful than the slight maternal love 
she had herself received. 

Ayenwe’s pride was gratified by the sight 
of the well-dressed, handsomely-grown young 
woman, who was not ashamed to call her 
“ my mother but she listened to the 
prayer that her daughter made in the low 
smoky hut more to please the child, in re- 
turn for the little present of soap, needles, 
or other small commodity that was regularly 
placed in her hand, than for any understand- 
ing her own dark heart had of that prayer’s 
blessed truth. Nevertheless, she could not 
fail to see, and to consider, while at her gar- 
dening or fishing, that the white man’s God 
was worth serving, if only he made the life of 
his servants, like Mawedo’s, lovelier than her 
own. Yet, if she had had the power, she 
would selfishly have dragged Mawedo down, 
by taking her to help her in her tasks as a 
fellow-slave. And Osongo’s people often 



LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE. 147 

troubled the Mission by trying to draw Ma- 
wedo away, notwithstanding that her Mbiko 
husband’s payment of the full marriage 
dowry had extinguished any Benga right to 
her, and the payment of the witch-ransom to 
her Mbiko persecutors had left the Mission 
her indisputable guardian. 



148 



MA WEDO. 



XV. TEMPTED AND TRIED. 

There were other influences at work to 
draw Mawedo away from the Mission House, 
besides those that came from her mother’s 
selfishness and her former master’s cupidity. 

By her four years’ stay in the school she 
had grown to be sixteen years of age; a pe- 
riod, at the equator, which, in development of 
feeling and capability, contains more than 
those same years commonly represent in ex- 
tra-tropical countries. She was a young wo- 
man, handsome, intelligent, educated, viva- 
cious, with a full flow of spirits that made 
her enjoy life. The restrictions of school 
which as a child she had submitted to, she 
felt that at her present age she might be ex- 
cused from. She was no longer simply a pu- 
pil, but was often employed as a monitress, 
or assistant teacher. But she murmured 



TEMPTED AND TRIED. 



149 



that no salary was given her. She forgot 
that all that she was she owed to the Mis- 
sion’s care, and that the service she gave 
might, for a while, well be an unpaid one. 
A spirit of independence echoed the taunts 
of the Kamba people, who declared that in 
rendering a service for which she received 
nothing but food, clothing, and love, she was 
becoming the “missionary’s slave.” 

It may be that her mission friends were 
not wise in failing to recognize sooner that 
she was no longer a child, and in not giving 
her a satisfactory work and position. She 
had skill with her needle, at the wash-tub 
and ironing-board. Despising the small com- 
pensation which the Mission felt able to give 
her for this, as compared with what white 
traders paid for such labor, she began to 
work, at first, unwillingly, then disobediently, 
then angrily ; and finally, in an unfortunate 
hour, impatient of control by a new mission- 
ary, who had recently become connected 



MA WE no. 



*s° 

with the school, she broke away, and, leaving 
the school, went to Kamba village. There, 
left to herself, she would soon have repented 
of her hasty step. But, imagining that her 
first visit to the mission home, which she in- 
tended as an advance towards return, was re- 
ceived with coldness — a coldness which was 
really only a just rebuke — the breach widened 
between herself and her Christian friends. 
The heathen of the village took care to en- 
large the breach still farther by reporting un- 
kind remarks which they falsely said the mis- 
sionaries had made about her, and with a 
reckless feeling Mawedo allowed herself to 
be led by her companions into undesirable 
society, among which were some members of 
the foreign white community. 

Not only does every native man consider 
one or more wives as an indispensable accom- 
paniment of existence, but every native wo- 
man looks to marriage as the goal of her life. 
Mawedo, at school, had seen that others were 



TEMP 1 ED AND TRIED. 15 1 

given away in marriage, while no arrange- 
ments of that kind had been suggested for 
her by her mission guardians. She felt this 
as a slight. When her heathen friends sug- 
gested alliance with different white men, and 
brought her presents from them, she felt flat- 
tered and was not averse. She had been 
born and reared in vice; and while it was 
true that, under the Christian teachings of 
the missionary ladies, made effective by the 
influences of the Spirit, Mawedo’s heart had 
grown purer, and faith in Christ was refining 
and sanctifying it, she still looked on mar- 
riage from a low point, and appreciated little 
of its sanctity as an institution of divine ap- 
pointment, guarded by divine regulations. 
Thus weak in principle, insidious advances 
of a tempter would not have startled her, had 
one come to her in attractive guise. But 
she was true enough to herself to be above 
mercenary purchase. So, when a brutal cap- 
tain of a trading vessel, in imitation of hea- 



MA IVEDO. 



*52 

then custom, without the excuse of heathen 
ignorance of the law of God, literally bought 
her in a pecuniary transaction with Osongo’s 
people, and came to take her away as his 
temporary wife, she recoiled from his touch, 
and fled into an adjacent village. Osongo’s 
people followed her with threats, saying that 
she must go with the white man, since the 
money had been paid for her. When they 
attempted to drag her away, she escaped 
from them, and, like a frightened deer, fled 
to the Mission House, where, bursting into 
the study of the good old missionary as he 
sat at his desk translating the Bible, she 
threw herself at his feet, exclaiming, “ My fa- 
ther! my father! save me!” 

The surprised old man could scarcely get 
an intelligible story from her lips, so exci- 
tedly did she speak, between hysteric sobs 
and tears. By the time he fully understood, 
and had assured her of her safety, a note was 
handed him, ungrammatical, coarsely worded, 



TEMPTED AND TRIED. 



*53 



and in barely legible writing, signed by the 
white man, and demanding her instant deliv- 
ery, on the ground of “country marriage” in 
right of dowry paid to her professed relatives. 
Two of his boat crew, powerful men, mem- 
bers of the Kroo tribe, which furnishes por- 
ters and boatmen to all the West Coast Afri- 
can trade, had brought the note, and stood 
ready to enforce its demand. 

The missionary’s house was partly occu- 
pied as a Consulate, and he himself was Act- 
ing U. S. Consul. Stepping quietly into his 
study, which he had left that he might speak 
with the Kroomen, he brought out an Amer- 
ican flag, and significantly flung it over the 
veranda railing. As the starred and striped 
folds floated in the breeze fresh from the sea, 
he indignantly bade the two men tell their 
master to “come and take the girl.” They 
understood. The enraged captain under- 
stood also, when the message was reported to 
him, and he dared carry his violence no farther. 



JJawedo. 



20 



I 54 



MA WE DO. 



Warned by this experience, Mavvedo 
would have done well to return to her em- 
ployments at the Mission House. But, after 
a few days of protection, when her perse- 
cutor had gone, the same influences that 
had originally made her dissatisfied with re- 
straints led her to leave them again, saying 
that God was in the villages, and she could 
serve him there also. This was true, and 
she had not fallen into overt sin, nor ne- 
glected the duties of her Christian profession. 
But she was walking in slippery places. 

Her skill in sewing, washing and ironing 
obtained her remunerative employment from 
the trading-houses, nearer to which she re- 
moved for the more convenient performance 
of her work. Thus she came daily into the 
presence of unscrupulous sailors, shipping 
men, and young clerks, who amused them- 
selves in their leisure moments by conversing 
with the bright young African. Having 
heard of the repulse which she had given to 



TEMPTED AND TRIED. 155 

the rough captain, these others approached 
her courteously, in the guise of respectful ad- 
miration. She was gratified by their atten- 
tions, their compliments flattered her, and 
their presents of dresses were not offensive 
to her, in her stage of civilization. 

Poor girl! she was only a foolish fly, 
being meshed in a web that would soon prove 
too strong for her. 

She had indeed tried to guard herself. 
But all her associations were such as inevita- 
bly weakened principle and slackened her 
sense of duty. Excuses for absence from 
church were more frequently made by her ; 
her Bible lay scarcely used ; and she sup- 
pressed prayer in the presence of those who 
sneered at both Bible and prayer. Around 
her were other women who were leading a 
life of indolence, in the enjoyment of pretty 
ornaments and bright-colored garments, and 
the tempter in her heart asked, “ Why might 
not you have the like ?” and assured her that 



156 MAWEDO. 

she might have them if she would consent to 
follow one young man who had lately be- 
come more open in his professions of devo- 
tion, and for whom she felt an increasing 
attachment. 

A marriage ceremony meant but little to 
her, for she had seen native men who had 
been married in the Mission House by Chris- 
tian ceremony become polygamists by adding 
heathen wives, in native custom, and the 
Christian wife was then in no better case 
than one of the others. 

Poor Mawedo’s slight appreciation of 
what was due to and from womanly and 
wifely dignity, made her willing to dispense 
with a ceremony, if there were given and 
received undivided affection. 

So when, some months later, the hand- 
some blue eyes that had pleased her with 
their admiration, and that looked so true, 
pleaded warmly while their owner promised 
to love only her if she would follow him, she 



TEMPTED AND TRIED. 



J 57 

followed. But, because there was no mar- 
riage ceremony, she knew that her friends of 
the Mission House condemned her. She 
stayed away from church, for she knew her 
name was suspended. And she feared to 
meet again Miss Helen’s sad eyes, that had 
looked at her so reprovingly one day when 
they passed each other on the beach. 

In a very little while Mawedo found that 
the undivided love she had trusted in so con- 
fidingly was not given to her. Bitterly re- 
penting her mistake, and the heartlessness of 
the love for the sake of which she had chosen 
sin and disgrace, and alienation from her 
God and her true friends, wounded, and with 
a truer sense of what Christian marriage 
might be, she again, broken and humbled in 
Spirit, sought the Mission House, craving for- 
giveness and any position, however menial, if 
only the sheltering arms of human and divine 
pity might again be about her. 



*58 



MAWEDO. 



XYI. A REVELATION. 

Humble as Mawedo was in seeking a 
home in the Mission House, she could not 
again be received into the same relations 
there as when she was a pupil. Nor was it 
desirable that she, now seventeen years of 
age and a woman in growth and feeling, 
should be put on the same footing as little 
girls. Miss Helen took her under her own 
care, treating her as a friend, and paying her 
as her personal servant. Mawedo waited on 
her when she was sick, assisted her when she 
cut out and basted the clothing of the school- 
girls, and accompanied her in her walks to 
the villages. This association convinced 
Miss Helen of the sincerity of Mawedo’s 
repentance, and restored her former trust in 
the girl. 

The Sabbath services of the mission 



A REVELATION. 



*59 



churcn were attended by most of the foreign 
resident merchants. Even those who made 
no profession of personal interest in religion 
came for the sake of good habits formed in 
their early homes, or in pursuance of kindly 
invitations from the missionary in charge. 

There came to that region occasionally, 
as guests of these merchants, scientific men, 
sent out by foreign Societies to investigate 
the rare fauna and flora of Equatorial Africa. 

One day there stepped reverently into 
the church a young man who, after the ser- 
vices, as the preacher stopped at the door to 
greet strangers, was introduced as Dr. Nel- 
son, a botanist from England. His open 
face, shaded by a brown beard, his frank eye, 
intelligent conversation, and courteous man- 
ner, impressed all in his favor, and he was 
soon welcomed as a visitor in the little circle 
at the Mission House. He gladly availed 
himself of the liberty thus extended. For as 
he had sat that first day in the plain bamboo 



i6o 



M A WE DO. 



church, his eye had fallen on the sweet, up- 
turned face of Miss Helen, pale with a recent 
illness that had left her dark eyes more lus- 
trous, and her brow fairer, under the brown 
hair that shaded it. A strong, rich contralto, 
that worked itself in and out among the har- 
monies of the tune, forced itself on his ear as 
coming from her lips. And this young man, 
who until now had been wholly devoted to 
his chosen science, had to confess to himself 
that no English cathedral walls had ever 
seemed so attractive as those unadorned 
bamboo walls that enclosed this lady’s purity 
and beauty. 

Acquaintance with her in the mission 
parlor only assured him that she was as in- 
telligent and amiable as she was beautiful. 
When he wished for song, she kindly joined 
his clear tenor, to the accompaniment of the 
parlor organ. She responded gratifyingly to 
his interest in the botany of the region, as 
from time to time he brought her fresh speci- 



A REVELATION. 



161 



mens of flowers. To his manifest though 
delicately-expressed appreciation she gave 
only a dignified acknowledgment, though in 
her secret heart she felt that this noble stran- 
ger was not unworthy of a woman’s trust. 
His invitations for a stroll along the beach 
or to some forest scene were decorously 
declined, she instinctively feeling that, in 
that strange land and amid a strange multi- 
tude of witnesses, her feet should not go 
where her heart was not prepared to follow. 
That decision meant a great deal. Though 
he was a respecter of religion, she knew that 
to follow him would be to leave the special 
service to which she had consecrated her 
life. The reserve that she felt it necessary 
to begin to exercise towards him was main- 
tained with a sense of pain, which increased 
as his love became less disguised. 

Mawedo’s keen eyes had, from the first, 
observed the doctor’s admiration for her mis- 
tress, and her daily and nightly association 

21 



MawcUo, 



162 



MA WEDO. 



with Miss Helen made her more than sus- 
pect a reciprocal interest on her part in the 
visitor. The latter had not been slow to 
observe that the young native woman was 
the white lady’s constant attendant. Ma- 
wedo, enlisted in his behalf by the charm of 
his unfailing courtesy, and a peculiar respect- 
fulness which he naturally extended to her- 
self, as one whose worth he thought demon- 
strated by her admission to constant inter- 
course with Miss Helen, was becoming curi- 
ous to see how the more-than-suspected inter- 
est of the latter would manifest itself. She 
knew how heathen acted in their loves ; she 
had sadly seen how some white men loved ; 
she knew of missionaries’ loving only by 
those who came to Africa already married. 
Here was something new. She said to her- 
self, “ This man and this woman love each 
other, but they act towards and speak about 
each other differently from any other man 
and woman whom I have ever seen eivinsr 



A REVELATION. 163 

love to each other.” Were there, then, two 
kinds of love? She had, when a schoolgirl, 
been gently whispered to about such words 
as prudence and purity. But she had not 
seen those words exemplified in the lives of 
other natives; she had failed to realize them 
in her own. She thought that perhaps she 
had not understood what had been described. 
But here was a revelation. Miss Helen was 
exemplifying what she had often inculcated. 
And from that time no spy ever watched more 
closely than Mawedo. She even watched 
dishonorably. 

The doctor, unable to secure, in the par- 
lor conversation, the private interview that 
he desired, and his respectful requests for a 
seaside walk being gently refused, was com- 
pelled to use his pen, and employed Mawedo 
as his postal messenger. His manner in 
handing the note to her somewhat revealed 
its character, and her curiosity led her to 
open it on the way. It read as follows : 



164 



M A WE DO. 



“ Miss Cameron : The guise of simple 
friendship under which I entered the Mis- 
sion House I can no longer maintain. I 
pray you, grant me an hour when I may 
come to you for an interview. I wish to 
offer what any Christian gentleman would 
have the right to ask acceptance for of a lady 
the fascination of whose presence compelled 
his love even before he knew her name. 
Assent, please, to this my petition ; and if 
you shall then deem it duty to return me 
these lines, and all else, unaccepted, I' will 
not say that the assent compromised in the 
least your right to do so. 

“With the respectful admiration of 

“HUGH M. NELSON.” 
Mawedo’s eyes glowed as she read the 
words. She had heard of many native love 
messages. But this was so utterly unlike 
them. So respectful, yet self-respecting. So 
complete in what it offered, yet so contained 
in what it plead for. 




Page 165. 



A REVELATION. 



i6 5 

She stood by, as Miss Helen read it, and 
watched the flush that came over the pale 
cheek, which the next instant became paler 
than before, as she rose and requested Ma- 
wedo to leave her alone for a while. 

When, a few hours afterwards, she called 
Mawedo and put into her hand a letter ad- 
dressed to the doctor, Mawedo was startled 
by the intense calmness with which Miss 
Helen spoke, and by the far-away look of her 
sad eyes, and the pained expression of the 
firm mouth, whose lips locked themselves 
after the necessary words of direction. 

Mawedo, as she turned on her errand, 
had not the heart to prove traitress to the 
trust of the mistress whose look of distress 
had so touched her; she dared not open and 
read this missive as she had read the doc- 
tor's. She judged of its contents only from 
the doctor’s note, which, when he had fin- 
ished slowly reading the letter, he hastily 
penned and sent back by her. He wrote : 



MAWEDO. 



1 66 

“ Miss Cameron’s decision that further 
pleading would be useless almost makes my 
pleading further unmanly. Yet I unhesita- 
tingly avail myself of the permission for to- 
morrow afternoon — if for no other reason, to 
thank her for the nobility that knew how to 
be generous even while it bade me be hope- 
less. None the less admiringly and respect- 
fully yours, 

“H. M. N.” 

Mawedo read the note with a guilty feel- 
ing. It was a part of that new revelation to 
her; but there was still a mystery. Thought 
she, “ This white woman loves this white 
man, but she does not accept him, or even 
permit him to plead.” 

The next afternoon the doctor called, and 
Miss Helen accompanied him in a short walk 
around the premises. Then he left, slowly 
and dejectedly, and she shut herself up in 
her room. 

Mawedo, with a watchfulness that in its 




Page 175. 



A REVELATION. 



167 



closeness could be excused only by her de- 
voted love for her mistress, saw Miss Helen 
sink in tears by the bedside, heard her plead- 
ing tones, and caught occasional words, as 
the lady asked God’s blessing on what she 
had done, laid herself again a living sacrifice 
on the Saviour’s altar, and sought the peace 
of the blessed Spirit. 

Peace came. When again she stepped 
from her room, and took up the burden of 
life among her pupils, it was with her accus- 
tomed smile and cheerful words. 

Did Miss Helen ever know that in that 
hour when she thought she was alone with 
her God, she had, in her Christian heroism, 
given the key to the mystery of a new revela- 
tion to an erring native sister, who, crouched 
against the chinks of the bamboo walls of an 
adjoining room, had, from very sympathy, 
joined her in her tears, and, witness of her 
conflict, had shared with her in her victory ? 
Mawedo thenceforth carried in her heart and 



i68 



A/A WEDO. 



copied more and more in her life a model of 
womanly love and purity, and devotion to 
Christ. She learned from Miss Helen’s 
prayer of self-consecration why this white 
lady could give neither her love nor herself 
to a man whose honorable love was a temp- 
tation to forsake the path that she believed 
God called her to walk in. She began to 
appreciate that there was an earthward love 
that for the sake of the higher Godward love 
could deny itself, and, though suffering, be 
strong in the grace given by Him who point- 
ed out the way. 

Mawedo saw the handsome stranger visit 
the Mission House only once more, when he 
called to say good-by before sailing away to 
bury his sorrow in the pursuits of his profes- 
sion, as Miss Helen buried hers in her school 
work. 



BABY FINGERS. 



169 



XYII. BABY FINGERS. 

“ And a little child shall lead them.” 

Very few of the white men trading on 
the coast were married, or, if married, they 
had left their wives in their far-away homes. 
But the captains of vessels trading in some 
of the more frequented waters occasionally 
brought with them an invalid wife or child, 
for the sake of the benefit hoped for from the 
sea- voyage. 

Captain Holbrook was thus situated, and 
sought, among the mission girls on Corisco 
Island, an attendant fitted to be a nurse to 
his little two-years-old baby Alice, and also a 
companion for his gentle Christian wife. 

The vessel was on its way to a port a 
hundred miles distant, where it was to lie 
trading for a year or two. Captain Hol- 
brook, though not a professing Christian, 

22 



Mawedo. 



170 



MA WEDO. 



was honorable and kind, and the situation 
was a good one for Mawedo, financially in 
her favor, and comparatively safe for her 
Christian life. 

So she sailed away, sad and yet glad, for 
she was going with the consent and blessing 
of her pastor, and was in the line of duty. 

Not only were her busy hands serviceable 
with the needle and in washing and ironing, 
but her mind, well-informed, as compared 
with other natives’ minds, made her an appre- 
ciative listener when Mrs. Holbrook read 
aloud, or described civilized lands. Her 
manners, refined by association with her 
loved teacher, made her acceptable to the 
gentle lady whom she was now serving. Her 
strong arms were not tired in nursing baby 
Alice, who, not being a very vigorous child, 
had wearied her delicate mother in her desire 
to be carried. And her vivacity found con- 
stant call for exercise in efforts to amuse the 
child so that the unquiet sleep of the mother 



BAB Y FINGERS. 



171 

might not be broken by her cries. Her 
ardent, impulsive, affectionate nature devo- 
ted itself to the little one and to the invalid 
mother. The sea air benefited the latter, but 
the warm climate, despite the aid of the sea 
air, tired the child, and she grew weaker and 
paler. 

In her devotion to little Alice Mawedo 
found a protection. 

In the trading community whose mem- 
bers were coming and going among the ship- 
ping, were young men, who, misjudging Ma- 
wedo, offered her attentions which were to 
her no longer temptations, but persecutions. 
The captain was too busy for her to appeal 
to him for protection against his own em- 
ployes ; she wished not to distress Mrs. Hol- 
brook by complaints to her against men who 
in that lady’s presence were apparently per- 
fect gentlemen ; and her position as a servant 
had not the defences which civilized lands 
afford. In indignant silence she turned away 



172 



MAIVEDO. 



from unbecoming professions of friendship, 
and, clasping more tightly to her bosom the 
little white-faced Alice, said in her heart, “ O 
Miss Helen, if you were here, he would not 
dare to speak before you, a white woman, in 
that way ; you would be my guard. And 
you, baby Alice, your face is white like his 
own ; if he touches me, put out your little 
hand against him ; perhaps he will fear your 
innocence even if he has no respect for me.” 

Strong now in the right where she alone 
was concerned, Mawedo, in her intense devo- 
tion to the child and her mother, might still 
have been tempted to do wrong for their 
sake, might have stolen, or told an untruth, 
if she had thought they would be benefited 
thereby. 

Part of the year was spent in the cabin 
of the captain’s vessel at anchor in the har- 
bor, and part in the trading-house ashore. 
Once, when thus living ashore, a favorite 
dog with her litter of pups spent each night 



BABY FINGERS. 



J 73 



in the open space under the house. The 
yelping of the little dogs, afflicted with mos- 
quitoes, was more noticeable at night than 
during the day, and disturbed Mrs. Hol- 
brook’s sleep. Too kind to express a wish 
for their destruction, she could not refrain 
one night from saying, 

“ Oh, I wish those dogs were away.” 

Her husband replied, “Certainly; I’ll 
attend to it to-morrow.” 

“ But do n’t have the poor little things 
killed.” 

“ Oh, no ; I ’ll only have them sent to 
town.” 

But the next day the captain, ready to 
promise at night, was too busy to remember 
to fulfil his promise. And when several 
nights had thus passed, and the lady became 
nervous with the annoyance, Mawedo could 
restrain herself no longer. So, secretly 
going to the captain’s medicine chest, she 
took thence the bottle of chloroform, which 



i74 



MA IVEDO. 



she had seen him use for suffocating the 
moths and butterflies and beetles that he 
was in the habit of collecting. Slipping 
quietly under the house, she chloroformed 
the entire litter of pups, and flung them into 
an adjacent reedy marsh. As she returned 
to her bed she overheard Mrs. Holbrook ex- 
press to her husband her relief that at last 
the dogs had “ gone to sleep.” But the inno- 
cent lady never knew what had put them to 
.sleep. Nor did anybody know next day 
where the pups were, as poor Flora went 
around wistfully whining for her progeny. 

Little Alice grew paler and weaker. The 
slender limbs, that had successfully essayed 
to walk, ceased to venture to put forward the 
tiny feet from chair to chair. She wished 
often to be in her mother’s arms, where she 
lay satisfied, one hand playing with the but- 
tons of the lady’s dress, and the other grasp- 
ing the chestnut curls that fell forward as 
the mother leaned over her baby’s face. Ma- 



BABY FINGERS. 



I 75 



wedo, standing by, and ready — more than 
ready — to relieve Mrs. Holbrook of the loved 
weight that each day seemed to grow lighter, 
was glad to get the little one in her arms. 
Her position in her employer’s family and in 
the community was now assured by her own 
good conduct, and she kissed devotedly the 
baby hands that God had given to be with 
her as unconscious but potent guides and 
safeguards in time of distress. When finally 
Alice expired in her mother’s arms, with her 
thin fingers twined in the favorite curl, none 
wept wore sadly than Mawedo. And 
scarcely did the Christian mother, in her 
submission, give more grateful thanks to the 
loving Father above than did Mawedo, for 
the blessing that he had conferred in the 
brief earthly life of the little one. 



176 



MAWEDO. 



XYIII. A WITCHCRAFT MURDER. 

It was well for Mawedo’s happiness that 
she was away from Corisco Island at her ser- 
vice as child’s nurse. For at the same time 
that the events of the last chapter were trans- 
piring, there was being enacted on the Island 
a scene that would have torn her heart not 
only with grief, but with humiliation, had 
she been a witness. 

Osongo, the chief of Kamba village, after 
an illness of a few weeks, had finally died 
suddenly. It was believed by the mission- 
aries and other white residents that his bro- 
ther Ajai, covetous of Osongo ’s possessions, 
and desirous of the chieftainship, had se- 
cretly poisoned him. But Ajai was the 
loudest mourner, and long before the act- 
ual death had been the most vindictive in 
searching for a victim on whom to lay a 



A WITCHCRAFT MURDER. 



*77 



charge of witchcraft. And he selected Aye- 
nwe. 

Since her arrival on Corisco, nine years 
before, she had led a patient, laborious life — 
not sullen or spiteful as at Aduma, not rest- 
less as at Orungu. Escape from the island 
was almost impossible, or, if possible, would 
have secured nothing better than immediate 
re-enslavement on the adjacent mainland. 
Conviction of this had induced quiet sub- 
mission, and withheld occasion for those pas- 
sionate outbursts of temper that had pre- 
viously brought only harsh treatment. There 
was, therefore, no reason why Ayenwe should 
be charged with bewitching, other than that 
the knowledge that twice before in her life 
the charge had been laid against her else- 
where made her a convenient victim. More- 
over there was not one belonging to the fam- 
ily of the sick man to gainsay her accusers, 
or defend her, if the former chose to sacri- 
fice her. 



Mawedo. 



23 



i 7 8 



MAIVEDO. 



Ayenwe heard from her fellow-slaves of 
the intention of Ajai towards her, and, with 
futile hope, she secretly fled one night to the 
forest thickets of the Girls’ School premises, 
which, not being constantly traversed by the 
public, had grown dense. She expected to 
find some safety in the right of asylum 
which, even by the heathen, had been ac- 
corded to all refugees, from whatever cause, 
on the mission premises. For two weeks 
she lived a wretched life, hiding by day, and 
at night stealthily coming to out-houses 
near the school, where lived two mission em- 
ployes, who though themselves relatives of 
Osongo, as Christians harbored and fed her. 
But they told her not to reveal herself to the 
missionary, lest the public effort he would 
then probably make to defend her should 
drag him into a personal conflict with her 
masters. 

Search for the fugitive, who by the very 
act of flight had, according to native reason- 



A WITCHCRAFT MURDER. 



179 



ing, indisputably fixed criminality on her- 
self, was diligently kept up by her enemies. 
Having allied with themselves all the super- 
stition of the whole island, they had actively 
been aided in traversing every probable nook 
in the entire forest, excepting the Mission 
Grounds, which hitherto they had not dared 
invade. 

One day, just after Osongo’s death, near 
the noon school-recess, as the native assis- 
tant teacher was with the girls in the school- 
house, one of the children, sitting by an open 
window, spied a crouching female form ma- 
king its way to the kitchen shed. The star- 
tled child cried to the teacher, “ Moto! moto!” 

(A person! a person!) The form retreated 

% 

into the bushes, and at recess the teacher re- 
ported the occurrence to the missionary, who 
with a heavy heart guessed too well who it 
was. He feared that Ayenwe’s unwise act 
in seeking for a firebrand with which to 
make a fire to cook the snails she had 



M A WE DO. 



180 

picked up in the thicket, would shortly lead 
to her discovery. 

It was so. Ajai soon called alone at the 
school, and respectfully requested to see the 
missionary privately in his study. With 
well-simulated grief for his brother’s death, 
and politic allusions to the missionary’s for- 
mal friendship for Osongo as one of the pa- 
trons of the school, he humbly asked for a 
white shirt in which to array his brother for 
the grave, promising to pay for it in a few 
days. This being given, he went on to beg 
permission to search the mission compound 
for the alleged murderess of Osongo. The 
permission was promptly refused; but Ajai, 
on grounds that the missionary himself 
would have admitted in case of actual mur- 
der, deferentially continued to argue for per- 
mission. 

Suddenly, a loud shout was set up in the 
public path near the school, and Ajai, recog- 
nizing certain words, jumped up — all his de- 



A WITCHCRAFT MURDER. 181 

ferential manner gone — and seizing the shirt 
went away with it out of the house, exclaim- 
ing, 

“We ’ve got the witch now without your 
permission ; and I ’ve got the shirt, and you 
sha’n’t see any pay for it!” 

One of the schoolgirls, a niece of his, 
had at recess told Matoku, a Kamba, slave 
employed on the premises, where the fugitive 
was secreted. And Matoku, with the trai- 
torous cowardice that makes most slaves 
informers on each other, as a means of en- 
hancing their own safety with their masters, 
had given the information that had brought 

O O 

Ajai and a retinue of servants. The former 
had hypocritically detained the missionary 
by the private interview in the study while 
the servants broke into the mission premi- 
ses, and, led by Matoku, made the seizure of 
the half-dazed fugitive. Their shout was the 
understood signal that had led Ajai to so 
suddenly close the interview in the study. 



MAIVEDO. 



182 

The missionary saw Ayenwe being 
dragged away, tormentors beating her with 
thorns as she stumbled along. The dis- 
charge of Matoku from employment at the 
Mission House and the dismissal of Ajai’s 
niece from school, the heathen regarded as 
but a slight punishment. The missionary’s 
attempts to plead with Ajai for Ayenwe’s life 
were met with undisguised admissions of 
Ajai’s fixed purpose to kill her. With a 
family as prominent on the Island and as 
wedded to heathenism as was Osongo’s, and 
in the face of the current that set against 
Ayenwe, the influences that the missionary 
was able to employ, and which had at other 
times resulted in saving the lives of those 
accused of witchcraft, proved ineffectual, and 
he sadly returned to his house, baffled. A 
Christian native told him that Ayenwe was 
to be put in a boat and murdered at sea, so 
as to prevent any interference that it was 
thought the white man might possibly attempt. 



A WITCHCRAFT MURDER. 183 

With a spy-glass, the missionary saw a 
native boat shoot rapidly out from beyond a 
point of land half a mile distant. The 
rowers rested on their oars when they had 
reached deep water, and he saw poor Aye- 
nwe cast lifeless into the sea. 

He did not see another tragedy that at 
the same time was being enacted on the 
beach behind the point. Ayenwe’s son was 
now a stout lad of fourteen, and Ajai, fear- 
ing that he would live to avenge his mo- 
ther’s murder, had ordered him also to be 
killed as an accomplice with her. The lad 
was seized, his hands and limbs were tied, 
and he too was cruelly put to death on the 
beach. 

His little sister, seven years old, was not 
a witness of her brother’s or her mother’s 
death. Treated with some degree of kind- 
ness, but carefully guarded by an old woman, 
who thenceforth was accepted as her adop- 
tive mother, the child was allowed to live, 



184 



MA WED O. 



her sex making her valuable as a servant and 
available as a future wife. 

A native Christian, who stood, a pitying 
but helpless eye-witness of the scene, after- 
wards told the missionary that Ayenwe, as 
she walked to the boat, led and forced for- 
ward by strong arms, seeing his merciful eye, 
cried to him by name, saying, 

“I am dying! What shall I do?” 

Perhaps her question was an aimless one, 
uttered at random. Perhaps she thought 
only of her earthly life. The Christian had 
time only to say, as she was hurried past, 
“Call on Jesus!” 

Ayenwe, though all her life a believer in 
feticism,* had never practised witchcraft and 

* Feticism lias been briefly defined as the doctrine that 
spirits are “embodied in, or attached to, or convey influence 
through, certain material objects,” which may be either nat- 
ural, as, for instance, a particular tree or animal or stone, or 
artificial. A Guinea negro, when about to enter upon some 
undertaking, will generally choose some object upon which 
his eye first rests on starting forth, and vow to worship it 
as his god if he be successful; if he fail, he rejects the 



A WITCHCRAFT MURDER. 185 

was innocent of any attempt at murder. 
She knew who Jesus was. She had heard 
Mawedo tell of his birth and life and death. 
As the poor woman stood by the water’s 
edge while her ankles were being bound, she 
tore away with her yet free hands the only 
fetish that was hanging about her neck, and 
having flung it into the sea, extended her 
arms in prayer heavenward, saying with 
streaming eyes, 

“ This thing is of no use. I walk in 
darkness. O Jesus, God of my child, if thou 
canst help me, help me!” 

God hears prayer. Did he not hear ? 
Did he not answer ? Did he not save ? 

chosen object with abuse. Fetishes which in the owner’s 
view have proved propitious and efficacious are cherished 
with devotion. 



Mawedo 



24 



i86 



MAWEDO. 



XIX. A NEW PATH. 

The two years’ cruise, on which Ma- 
wedo’s English employer was engaged, was 
about to close, and she was soon to part 
from the lady who had been so truly a friend, 
and who, since the death of little Alice, had 
treated the child’s devoted nurse almost as 
an adopted daughter. 

Mrs. Holbrook wished to arrange com- 
fortably for Mawedo’s future, who, now about 
twenty-one years of age, could not expect to 
go back to her Mission House friends for 
support. The lady therefore judiciously and 
delicately encouraged a growing tenderness 
which, she was pleased to observe, Mawedo 
manifested to the honorable advances of one 
of the captain’s native traders, a young man 
who, though not a professing Christian, had 
been to some extent educated in the Gaboon 



A NEW PATH. 



187 



Boys’ School, and who by his good conduct 
commended himself to the esteem of all with 
whom he dealt. 

Mawedo’s experience and strengthened 
principles made her shun attentions from 
any man, until she had, with a filial feeling, 
referred him for endorsement to the captain 
and his wife. These two, satisfied of the 
young man's sincerity and business ability, 
heartily recommended him. Mawedo’s affec- 
tionate nature was then ready to respond to 
his earnest and manly proposal. 

Her prospect of marriage led her over a 
very new path. Never before had she felt 
the self-respect or been treated with the 
esteem that came to her in the path that led 
to Christian marriage. She seemed to her- 
self to be invested with something like the 
dignity that belonged to married missionary 
ladies, but which Mawedo had imagined per- 
tained to them as white women, members of 
a race different from hers. Her eyes were 



MAIVEDO. 



1 88 



now fully opened to the fact that that 
dignity could be hers as well, in right of her 
Christian womanhood, and regardless of 
race. 

The services of an adjacent missionary 
were engaged, and Mawedo, adorned, and 
furnished, as to her well-filled travelling chest, 
by the generosity of the captain and his 
wife, sat down as a bride to an abundant 
feast, provided by the same kind patrons. 
Appreciation of the higher social level to 
which she saw her new position lifted her 
made her more deeply grateful for the Chris- 
tianity that had ennobled her life, more 
earnest in her secret prayer for strength to 
serve the divine Redeemer who had called 
her out of heathen bondage. This gratitude 
and loyalty to Christ, irrespective of the love 
and admiration that her husband inspired, 
were enough to make sure the vows she had 
taken of fidelity as a wife. 

When, shortly afterwards, the captain 






A NEW PATH. 



189 



closed his trade and returned to England, 
Mawedo’s husband took her with him to the 
Gaboon, to seek employment in some of 
the avenues of commerce up the many new 
rivers that were being opened along that 
estuary, and in the delta of the Ogowe. 



MAWEDO. 



190 



XX. A BROTHER INDEED. 

The Mission Church at Gaboon had its 
religious meetings at different hours, to suit 
the convenience of different classes of the 
congregation. Some of the prayer-meetings 
were conducted by missionaries, and others 
only by native members. At those attended 
only by native Christians there was less re- 
striction in the range of topics discussed, 
and more readiness to speak, on the part of 
both men and women. 

Mawedo, living in an adjacent village 
during the year that her husband was em- 
ployed in one of the trading-houses, was a 
regular attendant at these meetings. What- 
ever her own origin might have been, the 
position of her husband’s family insured her 
a cordial reception in the community. And 
in the narrow limits of the church brother- 



A BROTHER INDEED. 



I 9 I 

hood very little time was required to make 
acquaintance, especially for one who, like 
herself, had been a pupil in another part 
of that mission field. Missionaries and 
church members all heartily welcomed her, 
and invited her to visit at their houses as a 
sister. 

Conversations in the different homes, and 
the revelations of personal experiences in the 
prayer-meetings, often brought out strange 
histories and remarkable providential deal- 
ings. A man about twenty-four years of age, 
an assistant in the school, spoke one evening 
on the value of Christian fellowship, particu- 
larly for those who, like himself, were with- 
out known relatives in the world. He ad- 
mitted a fact that he did not like to speak of 
in the presence of strangers, who supposed 
him a born member of the proud Mpongwe 
tribe — namely, that he was a Mpongwe only 
by adoption. He could remember coming, 
as a child, from a tribe on the Ogowe river, 



ig2 



MAIVEDO. 



and regretted that he had no knowledge of 
what had become of his mother and little 
sister, whom he could barely recall. 

Mawedo’s curiosity was aroused, for she 
herself remembered the Ogowe river, and 
had heard her mother speak of a lost elder 
son. After the meeting Mawedo asked the 
man his mother’s name, and was startled 
when he said, “ Ayenwe.” It was not proof 
positive of the identity of their family that 
the name was the same as that of her mo- 
ther, nor did it argue against identity that 
the man’s name was not Ovanga, for natives 
often change their given names several times 
between infancy and old age. Under the 
impulse of something better than mere curi- 
osity, the two, looking into each other’s eyes 
with a new hope, sat down in a hut, and, 
around the night fire, with a few friends, 
gathered up the threads of their personal 
history from childhood. The man told of 
childhood’s plays far up the Ogowe ; he 



A BROTHER INDEED. 



J 9 3 



scarcely could remember whether his mo- 
ther’s husband was his father or his master. 
He said that his young master had been 
murdered, and that he himself had been sold 
into captivity down river to a man of the 
Nkami tribe ; that one day he had seen a 
fleet of slave canoes, and in one of them a 
chained woman whom he with difficulty re- 
cognized as his mother; with a little girl and 
boy she had soon been carried on down river, 
and he had known nothing further of them; 
that the Nk'ami man had left him as a 
“pawn” in the hands of a white man on the 
Fernando Vaz mouth of the Ogowe, in pay- 
ment for a trade debt; that he had never 
been redeemed by the Nkami, and that the 
white man, not liking to seem to hold slaves, 
had placed him and other pawns at school as 
wards of the Mission, which, to justify itself 
before the public, had had free papers 
made for them by the French government; 
that he had grown up as a pupil, was con- 

25 



Mawedo. 



194 



MA WED O. 



verted, and now served as assistant in the 
school. 

Mawedo barely waited for the close of 
the recital to throw herself into her brother’s 
arms, and there, while with fraternal feeling 
he responded to her affectionate embrace, 
she added, from her own childhood’s mem- 
ories, links to his chain of identity. She 
told him that her mother had spoken to her 
of an older brother who had gone out hunt- 
ing with his master and had never come 
back ; that while sitting with her mother and 
infant brother in a slave canoe by a sandbar 
in the Ogowe river, she had seen her mother 
weep over a boy whom she claimed as her 
lost child; and that they had passed on, and 
had never heard of him again. Mawedo’s 
own years, calculated at about twenty-two, 
coincided with the age of the little girl whom 
Ovanga remembered. Reciprocally assured 
that they were the children of poor Ayenwe, 
they claimed each other as brother and sis- 



A BROTHER INDEED. 



r 95 



ter — the more gladly because each had sup- 
posed that the other was dead, and the more 
thankfully because they found each other 
alive in Christ. Tearfully they went over 
afterwards, when they were by themselves, 
what they had heard from others of the 
tragic fate of their mother and younger bro- 
ther, comforting themselves with the hope 
that sprang from Ayenwe’s dying prayer. 

The brother and sister visited Corisco 
and made inquiry for their ten-years-old little 
sister. But they almost regretted that they 
had followed her up, for they returned from 
their errand saddened by finding that the 
child made no response to their offered love, 
was estranged from their mother’s memory, 
regarded herself as a native Benga, and 
seemed satisfied with her surroundings. The 
Kamba women had wisely treated the child 
as their own after Ayenwe’s murder, and the 
poor mother was remembered by the daugh- 
ter — if indeed she thought of her at all — as a 



196 MAWEDO. 

criminal, connection with whom was dis- 
graceful. She willingly found escape from 
unkind taunts of playmates in accepting the 
claim of the old Benga woman with whom 
she lived, that she was her real mother. Un- 
der the inspiration of this Benga guardian’s 
jealousy the girl did not respond to her sis- 
ter’s kindly messages, sent from time to time. 
Mawedo therefore ceased to send them, but 
clung the more closely to the brother who 
was so truly hers. 



CARRYING THE LIGHT. 



1 97 



XXI. CARRYING THE LIGHT. 

Mawedo’s husband was commissioned by 
his employer to travel up the Ogowe river 
with a large stock of goods, for carrying on a 
trade with the villages located on the banks 
of the numerous affluents to the main stream. 
Establishing himself at a certain place, and 
building a comfortable bamboo house there, 
he thence journeyed all through the region, 
within a radius of fifty miles, in a large canoe 
manned by a dozen stout young men. En- 
livening was the sight of the long, sharp- 
bowed canoe working its way slowly against 
the current, or flying down with it, propelled 
by the regular strokes of a half-dozen pairs 
of paddles moving in unison with the boat- 
songs of the crew. Sometimes the music 
echoed through the solemn forests on the 
banks, or floated over wide reaches of the 



198 MAWEDO. 

island-studded river, where for miles there 
were no witnesses or listeners other than the 
hippopotami snorting defiance, or the wild 
fowl screaming, or the monkeys chattering — 
all of them startled at the report of guns that 
sought among; them a feast. The stern of 
the canoe was well roofed over, so as to form 
a small bamboo-thatch house that protected 
the trader and his especial friends, and the 
French flag fluttered before the admiring 
eyes of the villagers on the banks. 

Mawedo had followed her husband in his 
river-life, and often accompanied him on 
these journeys, though generally she was left 
in charge of his house and goods during his 
absence. No other professing Christian was 
near her, but she had a calendar of the days, 
checked off each day as it passed, and kept 
the Sabbaths as they came around. She 
alone made the little centre of Sabbath air 
and Sabbath influence wherever she hap- 
pened to be. The heathen knew of no such 



CARR YING THE LIGHT. 



199 



day, and hunted and fished and worked on 
it as on all other days. But her influence 
induced her husband to close his storeroom 
on that day ; and, dressed in clean clothing, 
they sat under the broad eaves of the house, 
or in the shade of the trees on the river 
bank, with books or pictures or conversa- 
tion. It was a lonely, tempted life. She 
could not always govern the character of her 
husband’s amusements or conversation. But 
she did induce a Sabbath quiet. And she 
persuaded some of the village children to 
intermit their plays long enough to listen to 
her descriptions of the Bible pictures she had 
brought with her. These, with readings from 
the Bible and the singing of Christian hymns, 
every Sabbath told the story of Jesus in an 
impromptu Sabbath-school. If Mawedo was 
on a journey with her husband, and he re- 
frained, at her wish, from travelling on the 
Sabbath, remaining over at whatever village 
they had come to on Saturday evening, she 



2 00 



MAWEDO. 



let her light shine by some Bible reading or 
story of pictures, that relieved the tedium of 
idly waiting, and left in the memory of the 
children, and even of the adults of the vil- 
lage, some impress of the name of Jesus. 

That which her husband at first assented 
to under constraint of the memory of what 
he himself had been taught in the Mission 
School, and also for the sake of her wish, in 
regard to the outward observance of the Sab- 
bath and other Christian proprieties, he was 
in time impelled, by the winning consistency 
of Mawedo’s life, to choose as in itself pref- 
erable. 

He was but an indifferent reader of Eng- 
lish, having been only a comparatively short 
while in school, during which time he had 
been taught through the medium of native 
translations. Influenced by the native view 
of the relations of the sexes, many men, desi- 
rous. of being taught, would have felt it a dis- 
c-race to submit to a wife as a teacher. But 



I 



CARRYING THE LIGHT. 



201 



Mawedo’s husband had risen above such low 
views sufficiently to place himself before her 
as a pupil ; and he found in her a loving and 
capable teacher. He had left off the habit 
of prayer which school custom had estab- 
lished ; but Mawedo, regular in her morning 
and evening devotions, led him to kneel with 
her at their little family altar every night. 

His good principles, inculcated at school, 
together with his manly self-respect, had kept 
him from heathenish vices. But in prosecu- 
ting his business he dealt in — though rarely 
himself drinking — the intoxicating liquors 
imported by his employer, which the competi- 
tion of others seemed to him to require that 
he also should furnish in trade. This dis- 
tressed Mawedo. It was nothing new to 
her. Captain Holbrook had used liquor in 
his trade, and she had known that her hus- 
band used it when she married him ; but it 
troubled her that she and her husband should 

share such a responsibility. Leading him 

26 



Mawedo. 



202 



MAWEDO . 



gradually further into the light, she induced 
him to take employment elsewhere, where he 
was not required to deal in the evil thing, 
whose baleful effects she had seen fully exem- 
plified. His change of employment removed 
her from the little bamboo trading-house up 
among the untaught “ bushmen ” of the river, 
back to the more civilized villages of the 
coast, and nearer to fellow-Christians and to 
the sound of the church-bell. 

The regrets of the villagers whom they 
left were, naturally, mostly selfish, for the loss 
of her husband’s trade-goods. -But in some 
hearts there was pain for the loss of Mawe- 
do’s kindly aid with her needle, her example 
of civilized dress and manner that suarerested 
possibilities for themselves, and a memory — 
vague, but, under the Spirit’s impress, dis- 
tinct enough for salvation — of her teachings 
about the Law of God and the Life of our 
Redeemer. 



INTO THE SUNRISE. 



203 



XXII. INTO THE SUNRISE. 

Two years had passed over Mawedo while 
up the Ogowe with her husband, and another 
year with him in his new service was bring- 
ing her to the close of her fourth year of 
marriage and the twenty-fifth of her life. 
That life, that had been so checkered in 
childhood and youth, had in womanhood 
been marked by Christian usefulness and 
growth. And as during the past few years 
Mawedo had become less selfish in her aims, 
nobility had brought its own reward of hap- 
piness. Her married life had not been with- 
out the occasional clouds that, incident to 
human imperfection, blur the glad light from 
heaven for even loving hearts. But those 
clouds, quickly passing by, had cast only 
shadows, like the shadows that flit over 
waving summer fields. Yet the ripe grain- 



204 



M A WE DO. 



heads beneath do not therefore cease their 
waving. 

Only one regret for herself lay in the fact 
that no babe had been laid in her arms to 
gratify a desire that is prominent in the heart 
of every native African family. When the 
long-deferred wish was realized, and life be- 
came more than ever attractive, because of 
the associated life that was to make her hus- 
band more her own, her own life began to 
fade, and the mother's grave was soon made 
near that of her short-lived babe. 

Mawedo’s life faded away, but not in lone- 
liness, or darkness, or sadness. Around her 
were interested connections of her husband’s 
family, and kind fellow-Christians, and ten- 
der hands and voices of missionary friends. 
Their voices blended with the voice of her 
own nature, intensifying the wish that she 
might longer live on an earth that, in spite 
of its sinfulness, God was making lovely to 
her. But these utterances of human nature 



INTO THE SUNRISE. 



205 



Mawedo filially hushed as she marked the 
still, small voice of God’s providence that 
said, “ Come up higher.” And grace was 
given her to gladly say, “ I come.” She 
knew the path on which her steps had en- 
tered, and her eyes looked not into an un- 
known distance. A light, more bright and 
beautiful than that of star or moon or sun, 
shed rays through the clouds that hung 
around and above that path. Faith saw the 
central Sun whence came the blessed rays; 
and Hope, that entered within the veil, saw 
in the gilding of those clouds the foretoken 
and earnest of a glory which no human fancy 
could paint or even conceive. Walls and 
domes and pillars, more real than the struc- 
tures that the setting sun’s changeful rays 
can build through the rainbow’s drops, grew 
before her closing eyes. And her lips, in 
humble, trustful, truthful assurance, forbade 
the imputation of doubt or fear to her own 
heart, and strove to check the repining of 



2o6 



MAWEDO. 



some who, weeping for themselves, would 
fain have kept her with them. To her hus- 
band, whom often she had “ almost persua- 
ded,” she held out her hand’s last affection- 
ate touch as she stepped into the Light. 

And he was persuaded. In view of Ma- 
wedo’s departure, Christian faith triumphed. 
Heathen stood, not in dread, as at the death- 
bed of one of thqir own people, but awed and 
attracted by the solemn yet peaceful dignity 
of the scene. Where, to them, had always 
been darkness, seemed to shine a light that, 
beaming on the dusky face of their friend, 
irradiated it. And the dead lips of the wife 
and mother spoke a psalm of praise for the 
Gospel, that, taught by “ all waters” — in hut, 
at school, through forest, on river; preached 
in the ear of the ignorant slave-mother, and 
practised in the life of the daughter — had 
shown its saving power for that mother and 
daughter, for the husband, and the brother. 




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