Loango

“ In his Origin of Civilization the fact is noted that in Guinea, when a wealthy man dies, his property passes by inheritance, not to his sons, but to the children of his sister. He quotes also from Pinkerton’s Voyages to show that the town of Loango is governed by four chiefs who are sons of the king’s sisters, and from Caillie who observes that in Central Africa the sovereignty remains always in the same family, but that the son never succeeds to his father’s position. ”

“ Paul de Loanda, announcing the fact that Oscard had agreed to join the expedition, and that Durnovo and he might be expected at Msala in one month from that time. It was not without a vague feeling of regret that Jack Meredith read this telegram. To be at Msala in a month with forty men and a vast load of provisions meant leaving Loango almost at once. And, strange though it may seem, he had become somewhat attached to the dreary West African town. The singular cosmopolitan society was entirely new to him; the life, taken as a life, almost unique. ”

“ The barbarous Bissagos and Fellups of North Western Guinea make cuts on the prepuce without amputating it; while the Baquens and Papels circumcise like Moslems. The blacks of Loango are all “verpæ,” otherwise they would be rejected by the women. The Bantu or Caffre tribes are circumcised between the ages of fifteen and eighteen; the “Fetish boys,” as we call them, are chalked white and wear only grass belts; they live outside the villages in special houses under an old “medicine-man,” who teaches them not only virile arts but also to rob and fight. ”

“ And in like manner among these people, with whom the potters are women, nobody dares to filch anything from a potter; for next time she heated her wares the potter would curse him, saying, “Burst like a pot, and may thy house become red,” and the thief so cursed would die.41.1 Charms to protect property in West Africa. In Loango, when a man is about to absent himself from home for a considerable time he protects his hut by placing a charm or fetish before it, consisting perhaps of a branch with some bits of broken pots or trash of that sort ”

“ At last night came ‘at one stride,’ and the vast ocean plain was only illuminated by the pale claritude that falls from the stars. Logan and Bude (they had not dressed for dinner, but wore yachting suits) were smoking on deck, when, quite suddenly, a loud, almost musical, roar or hum was heard from the direction of the distant island.
‘What’s that?’ asked Logan, leaping up and looking towards Cagayan Sulu.
‘The Berbalangs,’ said Bude coolly. ‘You are wearing the ring I gave you?’
‘Yes, always do,’ said Logan, looking at his hand.
‘All the men have their pearls; I saw to that,’ said Bude. ”

“ How small the world is, how brief are the ages! Our ancestors, Mr. Logan, were very intimate long ago.’
‘Indeed?’ said Logan.
‘Yes. I would not speak of it to everybody; in fact, I have spoken of it to no one; but recently, examining some documents in my muniment-room, I made a discovery as interesting to me as it must be to you. Our ancestors three hundred years ago—in 1600, to be exact—were fellow conspirators.’
‘Ah, the old Gowrie game, to capture the King?’ asked Logan, who had once kidnapped a cat. ”

“ Logan stated that they had no jurisdiction to try him; that he owed no allegiance to the King of England, being an Indian Chief, independent of every nation. In answer to their inquiries as to his motives for taking up arms against the English, he thus addressed the Assembly. “I appeal to any white man, to say if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and I gave him not meat; if ever he came cold or naked, and I gave him not clothing. During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his tent, an advocate for peace ”

“ Logan was called a Mingo chief, or Mengwe, whose father was chief of the Cayugas, whom he succeeded. His parent being attached, in a remarkable degree, to the benevolent James Logan, after whom he named his son. The name is still perpetuated among the Indians. For magnanimity in war, and greatness of soul in peace, few, in any nation, ever surpassed Logan. He was inclined to friendship with the whites; nothing but aggravated wrongs succeeded in making him their enemy. ”

“ Smiles from old Laurence Logan, the Seceder, were like rare sun-glimpses in the gloom—and made the hush of his house pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through the restraint laid on reverent youth by feeling akin to fear, the heart ever and anon bounded with freedom in the smile of the old man's eyes. Plain was his own apparel—a suit of the hodden-grey. His wife, when in full dress, did not remind us of a Quakeress, for a Quakeress then had we never seen—but we often think now, when in company with a still, sensible, cheerful, and comely-visaged matron of that sect, of her of Logan Braes. ”

“ By degrees the anger of Lonegon was allayed, and he seated himself growling at the table, and wiped the blood from his torn wrist on his sleeve, and drawing forth a dirty and tattered red kerchief, bound it round the bruised and wounded joint. The man, Bideabout, did not concern himself with the wrath or the anguish of the man. He rubbed his hands together, and clapped a palm on each knee, and looked into the fire with a smirk on his face, but with an eye on the alert lest his adversary should attempt to steal an advantage on him. ”

“ Trains do not stop at the little Rookchester station except when the high and puissant prince the Earl of Embleton or his visitors, or his ministers, servants, solicitors, and agents of all kinds, are bound for that haven. When Logan arrived at the station, a bowery, flowery, amateur-looking depot, like one of the p. 121‘model villages’ that we sometimes see off the stage, he was met by the Earl, his son Lord Scremerston, and Miss Willoughby. Logan’s baggage was spirited away by menials, who doubtless bore it to the house in some ordinary conveyance, and by the vulgar road. ”

“ To whom they constantly answered, “He is dead:” which rejoiced the Spaniards, who made bonfires, and, knowing nothing to the contrary, gave thanks to God for their deliverance from such a cruel pirate. Lolonois, having seen these rejoicings for his death, made haste to escape, with the slaves above-mentioned, and came safe to Tortuga, the common refuge of all sorts of wickedness, and the seminary, as it were, of pirates and thieves. Though now his fortune was low, yet he got another ship with craft and subtlety, and in it twenty-one men. ”

“ But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." Tah-gah-jute, or Logan, so named after James Logan, the secretary of Pennsylvania, was the son of Shikellamy, a celebrated Cayuga chief, who dwelt at Shamokin, on the picturesque banks of the Susquehanna. When Logan grew to man's estate, living in the vicinity of the white settlers, he appears, about the year 1767, to have found the means of his livelihood in hunting deer, dressing their skins, and selling them. ”

“ This brief sketch of a turbulent life is derived from Logan’s own letters to Archibald Douglas, now among the Cecil Papers at Hatfield; from the ‘Papers relating to the Master of Gray,’ in which we find Logan, under a cypher name, betraying the Master, his cousin and ally, and from the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, in which all that dead world, from the King to the crofter, may be traced, often in circumstances peculiarly private. ”

“ Lohengrin, the son of Parcival, the royal guardian of the Holy Grail, who represents the ideal in humanity, although he was probably originally identical with the German Sun-god, who longs to rest in the arms of night—this Lohengrin seeks the wife that believes in him, who will not ask who he is and whence he came, but will love him as he is, and simply as he appears to her. He sought the wife, to whom he need not declare himself, need not justify himself, but who will love him without question. ”

“ Nothing makes one so gay as happiness; and, though this grotesque figure appeared at a very unseasonable moment, it was received with frank laughter from the blooming lips of Rose and Blanche. Having made the marshal’s daughters laugh, after their long sadness, Loony at once acquired a claim to the indulgence of the marshal, who said to him, good humoredly: “What do you want, my lad?”
“It’s not me, my lord duke!” answered Loony, laying his hand on his breast, as if it were taking a vow, so that his feather-brush fell down from under his arm. ”

“ Logan, Hogs’ Bristles and Lard. And a Straddle!’
‘Lucky devil, Scremerston,’ thought Logan, for Scremerston was the only son of Lord Embleton, and he, as it seemed, had secured that coveted prize of the youth of England, the heart of the opulent Miss Bangs. But Logan only sighed and stared at the wall as one who hears of an irremediable disaster.
‘If they really were betrothed,’ said Lord Embleton, ‘I would have nothing to say or do in the way of terminating the connection, however unwelcome. A man’s word is his word. ”

“ Shaking Bude, he offered him the beaker; the earl drained it at a draught. He shuddered, but rose to his feet.
‘Not a man alive on that doomed vessel,’ he was saying, when anew the still air was rent by the raucous notes of a megalophone:
‘Is your exhibit all right?’
‘Fit as a fiddle,’ answered Logan through a similar instrument.
‘Our exhibits are gone bust,’ answered Captain Noah Funkal. ‘Our professors are in fits. Our darkeys are all dead. Can your skipper come aboard?’
‘Just launching a boat,’ cried Logan. ”

“ No fighting on the premises. Stand up, you rascal. What have you done with the pewter? Ah, crushed out of all shape and use. That's what Molly Luff sed of her new bonnet when she sat down on it—Lawk, a biddy! Who'd ha' thought it?"
Lonegon staggered to his feet, and burst into a torrent of recrimination against the man whom the boy had called Bideabout.
"I don't care where the rights are, or where be the wrongs. An addled egg be nasty eating whether you tackle it one end or 'tother. All I sez is—I won't have it. But what I will have is—I'll be paid for that there tankard. ”

“ As he said this, the big Loon strutted back and forth in the space between the throne of King Bal and the prisoners, and the other Loons seemed much impressed by his defiance. But suddenly there came a sharp report and Panta Loon instantly disappeared, to the great astonishment of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and Woot the Wanderer, who saw on the spot where the big fellow had stood a little heap of flabby, wrinkled skin that looked like a collapsed rubber balloon. ”

“ The secret of the Emu’s feathers involved the father of Lady Fastcastle, of his old friend’s wife, in a very distasteful way. Logan, since his marriage, had never shown any curiosity in the matter. His was a joyous nature; no one was less of a self-tormentor.
‘Well, old fellow,’ said Merton, ‘keep your dragon, and I’ll keep my Emu.’
‘I won’t keep him long, I assure you,’ said Logan. ‘Only for a day or two, I dare say; then you’ll know; sooner perhaps. But, for excellent reasons, I asked Bude and Lady Bude to say nothing about the hallucination of these second-sighted Highland fishers. ”

“ Logan, did I not regret the choice of that port when the news reached us in New Zealand?’
Logan nodded. ‘You funked it,’ he said.
‘When I was at Cagayan Sulu in 1897 I heard from the natives of a singular tribe in the centre of the island. This tribe is the Berbalangs.’
‘That’s what Professor Jenkins called them,’ said the captain.
‘The Berbalangs are subject to neither of the chiefs in the island. No native will approach their village. They are cannibals. The story is that they can throw themselves into a kind of trance. ”

“ Lolonois had got great repute at Tortuga by this last voyage, because he brought home such considerable profit; and now he need take no great care to gather men to serve under him, more coming in voluntarily than he could employ; every one reposing such confidence in his conduct that they judged it very safe to expose themselves, in his company, to the greatest dangers. He resolved therefore a second voyage to the parts of Nicaragua, to pillage there as many towns as he could. ”

“ Poor little Scremerston!
Logan ‘breasted the brae’ from the riverside to the house. His wading-boots were heavy, for he had twice got in over the tops thereof; heavy was his basket that Fenwick carried behind him, but light was Logan’s heart, for the bustard had slain its dozens of good trout. He and the keeper emerged from the wood on the level of the lawn. All the great mass of the house lay dark before them. Logan was to let himself in by the locked French window; for it was very late—about two in the morning. p. 142He had the key of the window-door in his pocket. ”

“ But they also contain many peculiarities of spelling which are not Logan’s, but are Sprot’s. The very dotting of the ‘i’s’ is Sprot’s, not Logan’s. The long ‘s’ of Logan is heavily and clumsily imitated. There is a distinct set of peculiarities never found in Logan’s undisputed letters: in Sprot’s own letters always found. The hand is more rapid and flowing than that of Logan. Not being myself familiar with the Scottish handwriting of the period, my own opinion is of no weight, but I conceive that the general effect of Logan’s hand, in 1586, is not precisely like that of the plot-letters. ”

“ In the "American Pioneer" an old hunter is quoted as saying that he considered "Logan the best specimen of humanity he ever met with, either white or red."
Logan was never tempted to touch a drop of "fire-water" until after his great wrongs kindled revenge in his soul. He adopted few of the customs and rejected all the vices of civilization. Such was Logan before the evil days came upon him and his heart was fired with the passion for revenge. And such, indeed, would have been recorded of many other Indians had they received the same kind treatment they extended to the whites. ”