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dent, therefore, that their separation had taken place since the beds of shells and bones were deposited. This circumstance afforded evidence of two points of interest: first, that the site of the ancient occupation must have been anterior to the period when the land was swept away; and, secondly, that in extent it must have been much greater than it at present exists. From one extreme point to the opposite these mounds continue for half a mile along the coast, taking into consideration that portion which has been washed away. The author thought that we could not fail to recognise this old shellmound as being the site of a very extensive village of pre-historic

man.

Mr. BATE's second paper referred to a mound in the same locality as Constantine Bay, in which, when opened, was found an irregularly shaped stone, about twenty inches deep, and fifteen in diameter. Within this was a rough earthen vase, containing a quantity of bones. The bones and the pot were all much broken; the former were undoubtedly human remains. All the bones, except the spongy parts of the vertebræ, were silicified.

BURTON'S MISSION TO DAHOME.*

By W. WINWOOD READE, Esq., F.A.S.L., F.R.G.S.

IN studying the literature of Western Africa, one is much impressed with the productions of the early voyagers. After wading through the coast experiences of traders, missionaries, or officials, who for the most part repeat one another, only varying the purely personal details, one opens Hakluyt, Purchas, Pinkerton, or Churchill, and plunges immediately into a perfect sea of facts. And these are applicable to the present time; for the last three centuries, which have transformed Europe, have passed, for Africa, like three days. It is true that, since the days of Elizabeth, there has germinated on the sea-board a spurious race, the parasites, and to a great extent the offspring, of the white colonists. It is true that the importation of foreign goods has almost stifled native industry; and this is one cause of the errors of our Anglo-African authors to-day. Formerly the trader, as soon as he went on shore, saw the genuine African moulding his own earthenware, smelting his own spear-head, and weaving his own garment of cotton or of grass. But now-a-days the coast native wears Manchester cloth, sends his slaves out shooting with Birmingham guns, considers it low to drink palm-wine, dishes up his dinner in a

A Mission to Dahome. By Capt. Richard F. Burton. 2 vols. London: Tinsley Brothers. 1864.

wash-hand basin, and eats it off a willow pattern plate. Works are not uncommonly written upon West Africa, by people who have never come in contact with a bona fide savage at all. Now-a-days, one must visit the interior in order to find him; but, having done so, one remembers having read his portrait in Bosman or in Barbot, and discovers that he has not changed in character or customs since they

wrote.

With a few exceptions, however, these works, so rich for the student, are quite impregnable to the ordinary reader. They are, indeed, mere catalogues of observations and events; and their authors describe what they see and do with a charming simplicity, which, in this delicate age, would cause them to be generally tabooed. One naturally looks for a medium between these two extremes; one desires to find some traveller with sufficient courage, experience, and industry to collect a good stock of raw material, and with sufficient skill of pen to spin it out to the best advantage. The work which is before me, A Mission to Dahome, would alone prove that Captain Burton possesses all the qualities required for such a task. It is so minute in details, that it might serve as a Handbook of Dahome; and yet it is so charming as a narrative, that it reminds one of Defoe. Those also who study this work as anthropologists, may accept its statements with perfect assurance; its author has studied the physical sciences, and these have perhaps made him (that which he certainly is) the one of all African explorers who is the most careful of truth.

In the first chapter of his work, Captain Burton corrects a very important error, into which all African travellers have hitherto fallen, respecting the natives of Fernando Po. "No white man", he says, "has lived long enough amongst this exceptional race of Fernandians to describe them minutely; as a rule, they have been grossly and unjustly abused." This is a mistake which I must own that I committed in common with the others. I visited only Banapa, which Captain Burton asserts to be "one of the worst specimens of a Bubé village." As it was under the direct supervision of a Christian mission, I had been simple enough to believe that it was one of the best, and described the Fernandians from it accordingly; calling them also Adiyah, a name which I had copied from Baikie, which Baikie had copied from Allen and Thompson, and which is "probably derived from adios arios aros, the salutation borrowed from the old Spanish colony long extinct." I remember that these natives were friendly, and even polite; but there was scarcely a woman among them who was not suffering from some hideous disease of the skin. The men whom I saw were by no means unlike the Fans of the Gaboon; and in the Gaboon I heard a tradition which related how the Bubé had

originally lived on the mainland, and had been compelled by an invading enemy to cross over to Fernando Po; which might very possibly have been the case. If so, however, the mountain air must have purified the race. "Brightest of all," writes our author, "is his moral character; you may safely deposit rum and tobacco-that is to say, gold and silver-in his street; and he will pay his debt as surely as the Bank of England." That there should exist a tribe of honest Africans is a most significant and startling fact, and one which separates the Bubé most completely from all the tribes which have as yet been visited by travellers.

In this chapter on Fernando Po, Captain Burton adds one last word in favour of a sanitarium upon the coast. In spite of all that he has written, nothing has been done, or appears likely to be done. Our troops are sent to a pestilential station; when they fall ill, they are sent to hospitals which are not malaria-proof, and which therefore become mere dead-houses. Throughout the whole of our possessions upon the coast of Western Africa, there is not a single healthy spot.

"As far back as 1848, the late Capt. Wm. Allen and Dr. Thomson, of the Niger expedition, proposed a sanitary settlement at Victoria, on the sea-board below the Cameroons Mountains, a site far superior to Fernando Po. Since their time, the measure has been constantly advocated by the late Mr. Laird. E pur non si muove-Britannia. She allows her 'sentimental squadron' to droop and die without opposing the least obstacle between it and climate. A few thousands spent at Cameroons or Fernando Po would, calculating merely the market value of seamen's lives, repay themselves in as many years. Yet, not a word from the Great Mother."

What renders this phlegm and indifference the more mortifying to those who, unhappily for themselves, have any patriotic amour-propre, is the foresight and activity of Spain, a country to which we profess to be so greatly superior. In 1859 the Spaniards reoccupied Fernando Po, and already they have formed a sanitarium-the first upon the coast-and, as Captain Burton statistically proves, with the hap piest results. But the sloth with which such affairs are considered, is less nauseous than the false sentiment which prevails in England upon many matters connected with Africa and the negro.

This is a subject upon which I shall speak presently at greater length. I will merely observe now, that Captain Burton proposed, in connection with his Cameroons scheme, to make West Africa our penal settlement. No proposal could be more happy, no project more feasible, than this. It can scarcely be viewed as an experiment, for the experiment has been already made. Angola has been for very many years the penal settlement of Portugal; as Cayenne is that of

France. But public opinion would not sanction the exportation of convicts to a land, where our sailors are sent up rivers, and where our soldiers are sent into the bush to make war and to die—for an idea. We have arrived at a curious state of things when we attach a greater value to the lives of our convicts than to those of our soldiers, our sailors, and our civil officers. It may be Christianity, but it can be scarcely regarded as Civilisation.

Captain Burton was sent to the King of Dahome to plead with him on the two old grievances-slave-exports, and human sacrifice. "In enlarging upon these two last paragraphs," he says, "I felt a sense of hopelessness, with which the reader of these pages will perhaps sympathise; it was like talking to the winds." It is, in the first place, quite impossible to make an African understand the philanthropic principle upon which the slave-trade has been given up. The slave-trade was established by the white man: all of a sudden they "turned against it", and had asked for palm-oil and tree-wool instead. If, from the first, white men had displayed a detestation of the man-trade, Dahome might have formed some faint idea of what it meant; but how explain to him that a revolution has taken place in English sentiment during the last hundred years? how explain to him that a traffic which so short a time ago was looked upon by us as just and honourable, we have lately discovered to be forbidden by all laws, human and divine? He can only infer that we have found "tree-wool” and palm-oil to answer our purposes better than slaves; and that, as the sale of slaves to the Portuguese injures the former trade, we send ambassadors to him requesting the abolition of the latter; nor, in drawing such an inference, would he be very far from the truth. Policy as well as philanthropy demand the death of the slave-trade; the interests of Exeter Hall and Downing Street are in this case united; and some day or other this traffic will be effectually put out. But this can only be done by choking the demand, not by futile efforts to intercept the supply. Sir Charles Hotham asserted before Parliament, that the export of slaves from Africa was in no way influenced by the strength of the squadron; and, as for Dahome, so far from yielding to the petition of this great country, and to its bribe of a carriage and horses, he made a counter-complaint, viz., that slave-ships in which he had an interest had been captured by our cruisers off his coast. It would not astonish me, if some day we received a mission from Dahome requesting us to withdraw the squadron from the coast; and people would then understand how ridiculous our mission must appear to them.

"Upon the second subject, human sacrifice, Gelele declared that he slew only malefactors and war-captives, who, if they could, would do

the same to him; that his own subjects were never victims: that in the accounts reported by mutual' enemies, there had been, as he had told Captain Wilmot, a gross numerical exaggeration; in fact, he repeated the statements of a hundred years standing, as the history shows, and his assertions were partially true."

These missions are the offspring of one great error. Diplomatists entirely mistake the nature of African constitutions; they believe that Dahome is a real despot, with no limits to his power, and with no chains to his caprice. But in reality he is like the King of Ashanti; like the Kaffir chieftains; like the Emperor of Morocco; and, I believe, like all so-called despots who have ever lived, himself the slave of prejudice and law. In some parts of Africa, for instance, the king may never be seen; he is therefore a simple slave; a toy in the hands of his priesthood and his ministry. In the same manner, Dahome is compelled by custom to sacrifice human victims at certain religious fêtes; and

"It is evident that to abolish human sacrifice here, is to abolish Dahome. The practice originates from filial piety, it is sanctioned by long use and custom, and it is strenuously upheld by a powerful and interested priesthood. That, as our efforts to abolish the slave export trade are successful, these horrors will greatly increase, there is no room to doubt. Finally, the present king is for the present committed to them; he rose to power by the good-will of the reactionary party, and upon it he depends. There is a report, that his grandsire (Wheenoohew) was poisoned, because he showed a propensity to Christianity, and the greatest despots are in Yoruba easily told to go to sleep,' or are presented with the parrots' eggs. Gelele, I am persuaded, could not abolish human sacrifice if he would, and he would not if he could. The interference of strangers will cause more secrecy and more decorum in the practice; but the remedy must come from the people themselves."

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However, these Foreign Office missions, useless as they are respecting the objects which they have in view, yet contribute their mite to the great treasury of civilisation. They establish relations of a friendly nature between these barbarians and ourselves; they are the means of furnishing the world with such narratives as the one which we are now considering; and they may be made the means of opening up the county behind the regions of the coast, which at present are kept so jealously by Dahome and others under lock and key.

We now come to a sensational topic which Captain Burton has treated in the least possible sensational manner. Those who know West Africa, can very well guess what the Amazons must be without having ever visited Dahome. In Europe, woman is the ornament of society; in Africa, she is its tool. In the agricultural districts, she

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