Georg August Schweinfurth

“ It is ever the delight of African potentates on occasions of unusual pomp to present themselves to their subjects in some new aspect. Munza’s opportunities in this way were almost unlimited, as he had a house full of skins and feathers of every variety: he had now attired his head in the skin of a great black baboon, giving him the appearance of wearing a grenadier’s bearskin; the peak of this was dressed up with a plume of waving feathers. Hanging from his arms were the tails of genets, and his wrists were encircled by great bundles of tails of the guinea-hog. ”

“ To the same degree as its waters were enlivened by fish and hippopotamuses, were the banks of the Dyoor animated by birds and many varieties of animals. The forests were denizened by several species of the monkey family, that during the winter months found there an abundant harvest of ripened fruit. The grotesque form of the red-billed Nashorr-bird rocked to and fro on the half-bare branches, and one of the most splendid of African birds, the sky-blue Elminia, was especially frequent. The bare sand-flats in the half dry river-bed were the favourite resorts of the water-birds. ”

“ The assault had been made at a spot about a day’s journey to the north of the residence of Ndoruma, the son of Ezo, just as the caravan with all the baggage was entering the obscure gallery of a bank-forest, and after the two leaders, Aboo Guroon and Ahmed Awat, on their mules at the head of the procession, had already emerged from the farther end. To the consternation of the Nubians, the attack was rendered doubly formidable by the skilful use of the firearms which the Niam-niam employed against them from behind the massive tree-stems. ”

“ Another plant, one of the Araliaceæ, the Cussonia, which is usually only a low shrub, here attained quite the dimensions of a tree, and its fan-shaped foliage crowned a stem little less than thirty feet in height. In the damp grass near the brooks flourished a number of ground orchids with remarkably fine blossoms.
A yet richer booty, however, was in store for me. A few miles to the south of the Seriba, jutting up like an island from the surrounding plain, and visible from afar, rose the massy heights of Mount Baginze. ”

“ That Islamism is capable of progress is merely a supposition that has been hatched up from books, and has no foundation; there is likewise nothing to prove that it has fallen to decay; its condition appears to be that of one perpetual childhood. Its votaries are like the germs of vegetation that slumber in the sands of desert valleys; a drop of rain, a mere nothing, may call them to a transitory life; the plants bear their flowers, produce their fruit, then die away, and all becomes once more buried in a long deep sleep. ”

“ Both nations have many points of resemblance in dress and customs: alike they file their teeth to sharp points; they dress themselves in a material made from bark, and stain their bodies with red wood; the chiefs wear leopard skins as an emblem of their rank; and all the people lavish the same elaborate care upon the arrangement of their tresses. The complexion of the Fan is of the same copper-brown as that of the Niam-niam, and they indulge in similar orgies and wild dances at the period of every full moon; they moreover pursue the same restless hunter life. ”

“ Many a time, under the consciousness that alone I was utterly powerless as a vindicator of humanity, I have restrained myself from the temptation to rescue slaves with my own hands. Once, between Khartoom and Berber, a lot of slaves was being brought from Kordofan, and I cut in two the leather thongs that bound them to their sheyba; but an ugly squabble was all that resulted from my interference. At other times I have vehemently remonstrated with the slave-dealers, when I have been a witness of any cruelty in their treatment of their property ”

“ There were delicious places where, encircled by the luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, the clear and sparkling pools invited me to the enjoyment of a safe and refreshing bath, an irresistible attraction after the numberless mud baths of the Niam-niam country. Everything seemed to conspire to render the scenery perfect in its bewitching grace; each winding of the brook would be overarched by a magnificent canopy of gorgeous foliage; the waving pendants of the blooming shrubs would shadow the secluded stream ”

“ I hardly know why the Nubians should have drawn my attention, as though to something quite new, to the wooden Monbuttoo scimitar that he wore in his girdle. His jokes and pranks seemed never-ending, and he was permitted to take liberties with every one, not excepting even Munza himself; and amongst other tricks he would approach the king with his right hand extended, and just as Munza had got hold of it, would start backwards and make off with a bound. A short time before he appeared, some freshly baked ears of maize, the first of the season, had been laid before me ”

“ Whilst the Dinka women, leaving perfect nudity as the prerogative of their husbands, are modestly clothed with skins—​whilst the Mittoo and Bongo women wear their girdle of foliage, and the Niam-niam women their apron of hides, the women of the Monbuttoo—​where the men are more scrupulously and fully clothed than any of the nations that I came across throughout my journey—​go almost entirely naked.
Whenever the women go out, they carry across their arm a strap which they lay across their laps on sitting down. ”

“ The little Seriba Moody, together with all its huts, was overshadowed by a single fig-tree, of such enormous growth that it was quite a magnificent example of the development which that tree may attain. It belonged to the species [Pg 406] named the Ficus lutea, the mbehry of the Bongo. It was not that the height of the stem of this giant of Moody was very excessive; the remarkable growth displayed itself rather in the prodigious thickness and spreading habits of the powerful arms, every one of which was so massive that it might stand a comparison with the stoutest of our pines and firs. ”

“ On the border of the wood, close to the pathway as it emerged, some of the more courageous of the natives made a stand and received our people with gestures of defiance, brandishing their weapons, and tossing their plumed heads. From the thickets beyond, the war-cries of those who were less venturesome could be distinctly heard, and from the distance, beyond again, resounded the clang of the kettledrums. One of the savages sprang forward towards us, and holding up his shield denounced us with a volley of maddened imprecations. ”

“ A great revolution has already begun, and although at present it affects only the surface, there is scarcely any reason to doubt that progress, alike spiritual and humane, will ultimately claim the victory. But the task is gigantic, and no one can be more sensible of this than the traveller who has lingered at any of the sources of the slave-trade. One point there is in which all are unanimous—​that from Islamism no help can be expected, and that with Islamism no compact can be made. ”

“ To expect that these slave-traders should renounce of their own accord the business which suits them so completely, and for which they will endure any amount of hardship, would be almost as unreasonable as to expect Esquimaux to grow melons.
All trade is undeniably in a very stagnant condition in the Egyptian Soudan; the rich man gives nothing away, but lives like a dog, and has no desire beyond that of privately amassing wealth; of domestic comfort, or luxury even on the limited Oriental scale, he has not the faintest conception. ”

“ I retain the most vivid recollection of the last evening that I spent upon the banks of the Keebaly, when both time and place contributed to provoke a geographical discussion. The Nubians are always ready to talk about rivers. They will enlarge freely upon their source, their aspect, and their connection; but, carried away by their imagination, they never fail to represent their own incomparable Nile as par excellence the river of rivers, the very spring and reservoir of all the goodliest waters of the earth. ”

“ The dread with which they inspire their subjects is incredible: it is said that for the purpose of exhibiting their power over life and death they will occasionally feign fits of passion, and that, singling out a victim from the crowd, they will throw a rope about his neck, and with their own hands cut his throat with one stroke of their jagged scimitar. This species of African “Cæsarism” vividly recalls the last days of Theodore, King of Abyssinia. ”

“ As the Egyptian Government itself was the first to teach its subjects to kidnap slaves, it behoves it now in these more humane times to make amends for all its past delinquencies, [Pg 432] and I most cordially acknowledge that the present ruler, with all the resources at his command, is striving most honourably to accomplish the task.
Slavery, with its inseparable adjunct the slave-trade, is almost as old as the world in which we dwell; there is not a page of history that does not bear its traces, and not a climate nor a people in which it has not made good its hold. ”

“ The kind treatment of slaves, and the comfortable lot that they enjoy, in comparison to the hardships of their rude, rough homes, are pleas that have often been urged in extenuation of slavery in the East. It is certainly true that the contrast in slave-labour is very great, and whilst Europeans have looked upon their slaves as little better than useful domestic animals, the Oriental slave is a mere object of luxury. ”

“ Whenever a Niam-niam has lost any very near relative the first token of his bereavement is shown by his shaving his head. His elaborate coiffure—​that which had been his pride and his delight, the labour of devoted conjugal hands—​is all ruthlessly destroyed, the tufts, the braids, the tresses being scattered far and wide about the roads in the recesses of the wilderness.
A corpse is ordinarily adorned, as if for a festival, with skins and feathers. ”

“ Whenever I was beginning to feel more than ordinarily disconsolate I would hurry off to the thickets, and there amongst the splendid and luxuriant vegetation I was sure to find an engagement which would, at least for a time, draw away my thoughts even from the appeal of hunger. In hardly any portion of the world ought an enthusiastic botanist to suffer ennui; wherever there exists a germ of life, there is also a stimulant to his spirit ”

“ I had repeated opportunities of observing that the ivory-expeditions of the Khartoomers, although actuated by a certain spirit of enterprise, did not at all contribute to any propagation of Islamism. Negro nations once converted to Mohammedanism are no longer considered as slaves, but are esteemed as brothers. For this reason it was inexplicable to me how Islamism had spread so far in other parts of Central Africa; for although, on the one hand, Islamism is a faith that puts a pressure upon its converts by compelling them to submit to its external prescriptions, such as circumcision ”

“ The single slave of the poorer soldiers is a regular drudge, or maid-of-all work: she has to bring water from the well in great pitchers, which she carries on her head; she does all the washing, if there is anything to wash; she grinds the corn upon the murhaga, makes the dough, roasts the kissere on the doka, and finally prepares the melah, a horrible greasy concoction of water, sesame-oil or pounded sesame, bamia-pods, and corchorus leaves, beautifully seasoned with cayenne pepper and alkali. ”

“ No one is ready for his own part to run the risk of his own being the life that must be sacrificed; and thus it happens that the prospect of a few deaths is sufficient to deter them, though they might be reckoned by thousands, from making that outbreak which their numerical strength might guarantee would be finally successful.
As soon as Mohammed became aware that he had got to the end of the king’s store of ivory he began to think of his ways and means, and contemplated pushing on farther to the south and opening a new market for himself. ”