- I wish the black sympathisers in
England could see Africa's inmost heart as I do, much of their sympathy
would subside.
Human nature viewed in its crude state as pictured
amongst African savages is quite on a level with that of the brute, and
not to be compared with the noble character of the dog. There is neither
gratitude, pity, love, nor self-denial; no idea of duty; no religion;
but covetousness, ingratitude, selfishness and cruelty. All are thieves,
idle, envious, and ready to plunder and enslave their weaker
neighbours."
CHAPTER VI.
THE FUNERAL DANCE.
Drums were beating, horns blowing, and people were seen all running in
one direction; - the cause was a funeral dance, and I joined the crowd,
and soon found myself in the midst of the entertainment. The dancers
were most grotesquely got up. About a dozen huge ostrich feathers
adorned their helmets; either leopard or the black and white monkey
skins were suspended from their shoulders, and a leather tied round the
waist covered a large iron bell which was strapped upon the loins of
each dancer, like a woman's old-fashioned bustle: this they rung to the
time of the dance by jerking their posteriors in the most absurd manner.
A large crowd got up in this style created an indescribable hubbub,
heightened by the blowing of horns and the beating of seven nogaras of
various notes. Every dancer wore an antelope's horn suspended round the
neck, which he blew occasionally in the height of his excitement. These
instruments produced a sound partaking of the braying of a donkey and
the screech of an owl. Crowds of men rushed round and round in a sort of
"galop infernel," brandishing their lances and iron-headed maces, and
keeping tolerably in line five or six deep, following the leader who
headed them, dancing backwards. The women kept outside the line, dancing
a slow stupid step, and screaming a wild and most inharmonious chant;
while a long string of young girls and small children, their heads and
necks rubbed with red ochre and grease, and prettily ornamented with
strings of beads around their loins, kept a very good line, beating the
time with their feet, and jingling the numerous iron rings which adorned
their ankles to keep time with the drums. One woman attended upon the
men, running through the crowd with a gourd full of wood-ashes, handfuls
of which she showered over their heads, powdering them like millers; the
object of the operation I could not understand. The "premiere danseuse"
was immensely fat; she had passed the bloom of youth, but, "malgre" her
unwieldy state, she kept up the pace to the last, quite unconscious of
her general appearance, and absorbed with the excitement of the dance.
These festivities were to be continued in honour of the dead; and as
many friends had recently been killed, music and dancing would be in
fashion for some weeks.
There was an excellent interpreter belonging to Ibrahim's party - a Bari
lad of about eighteen.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 116 of 343
Words from 59897 to 60405
of 178435
