Just Realise This, And That Your Government Says That
Whenever Native Law Is Not Blood-Stained It Must Be Supported,
And
you may be able to realise the giddy mazes of a native palaver,
which if you conscientiously attempt to
Follow with the
determination that justice shall be duly administered, will for
certain lay you low with an attack of fever.
The law of ownership is not all in favour of the owner, masters
being responsible for damage done by their slaves, and this law
falls very heavily and expensively on the owner of a bad slave.
Indeed, when one lives out here and sees the surrounding conditions
of this state of culture, the conviction grows on you that, morally
speaking, the African is far from being the brutal fiend he is often
painted, a creature that loves cruelty and blood for their own sake.
The African does not; and though his culture does not contain our
institutions, lunatic asylums, prisons, workhouses, hospitals, etc.,
he has to deal with the same classes of people who require these
things. So with them he deals by means of his equivalent
institutions, slavery, the lash, and death. You have just as much
right, my logical friend, to call the West Coast Chief hard names
for his habit of using brass bars, heads of tobacco, and so on, in
place of sixpenny pieces, as you have to abuse him for clubbing an
inveterate thief. It's deplorably low of him, I own, but by what
alternative plan of government his can be replaced I do not quite
see, under existing conditions. In religious affairs, the affairs
which lead him into the majority of his iniquities, his real sin
consists in believing too much. In his witchcraft, the sin is the
same. Toleration means indifference, I believe, among all men. The
African is not indifferent on the subject of witchcraft, and I do
not see how one can expect him to be. Put yourself in his place and
imagine you have got hold of a man or woman who has been placing a
live crocodile or a catawumpus of some kind into your own or a
valued relative's, or fellow-townsman's inside, so that it may eat
up valuable viscera, and cause you or your friend suffering and
death. How would you feel? A little like lynching your captive, I
fancy.
I confess that the more I know of the West Coast Africans the more I
like them. I own I think them fools of the first water for their
power of believing in things; but I fancy I have analogous feelings
towards even my fellow-countrymen when they go and violently believe
in something that I cannot quite swallow.
CHAPTER XV. FETISH - (continued).
In which the Voyager complains of the inconveniences arising from
the method of African thought, and discourses on apparitions and
Deities.
However much some of the African's mental attributes get under-
rated, I am sure there are others of them for which he gets more
credit than he deserves. One of these is his imagination. It
strikes the new-comer with awe, and frequently fills him with rage,
when he first meets it; but as he matures and gets used to the
African, he sees the string. For the African fancy is not the
"aerial fancy flying free," mentioned by our poets, but merely the
aerial of the theatre suspended by a wire or cord. The wire that
supports the African's fancy may be a very thin, small fact indeed,
or in some cases merely his incapacity to distinguish between
animate and inanimate objects, which give rise to his idea that
everything is possessed of a soul. Everything has a soul to him,
and to make confusion worse confounded, he usually believes in the
existence of matter apart from its soul. But there is little he
won't believe in, if it comes to that; and I have a feeling of
thankfulness that Buddhism, Theosophy, and above all Atheism, which
chases its tail and proves that nothing can be proved, have not yet
been given the African to believe in.
The African's want of making it clear in his language whether he is
referring to an animate or inanimate thing, has landed me in many a
dilemma, and his foolishness in not having a male and female gender
in his languages amounts to a nuisance. For example, I am a most
ladylike old person and yet get constantly called "Sir." The other
day, circumstances having got beyond my control during the
afternoon, I arrived in the evening in a saturated condition at a
white settlement, and wishing to get accommodation for myself and my
men, I made my way to the factory of a firm from whose
representatives I have always received great and most courteous
help. The agent in charge was not at home, and his steward-boy
said, "Massa live for Mr. B.'s house." "Go tell him I live for come
from," etc., said I, and "I fit for want place for my men." I had
nothing to write on, or with, and I thought the steward-boy could
carry this little message to its destination without dropping any of
it, as Mr. B.'s house was close by; but I was wrong. Off he went,
and soon returned with the note I here give a copy of: -
"DEAR OLD MAN,
"You must be in a deuce of a mess after the tornado. Just help
yourself to a set of my dry things. The shirts are in the bottom
drawer, the trousers are in the box under the bed, and then come
over here to the sing-song. My leg is dickey or I'd come across. -
Yours," etc.
Had there been any smelling salts or sal volatile in this
subdivision of the Ethiopian region, I should have forthwith fainted
on reading this, but I well knew there was not, so I blushed until
the steam from my soaking clothes (for I truly was "in a deuce of a
mess") went up in a cloud and then, just as I was, I went "across"
and appeared before the author of that awful note.
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