The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) ๐
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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and shells. Property is ill defined among them; if a man makes a canoe
the others use it when they please; if he builds a better house than his
neighbours they pull it down. Others, though still in the hunting
condition, have gardens of plantains and cassada. In this condition the
headman of the village has little power, but property is secured by law.
Other tribes are pastoral, and resemble the Arabs in their laws and
customs; the patriarchal system prevails among them. There are regions
in which the federal system prevails; many villages are leagued together;
and the headmen, acting as deputies of their respective boroughs, meet in
congress to debate questions of foreign policy and to enact laws. Large
empires exist in the Sudan. In some of these the king is a despot who
possesses a powerful bodyguard equivalent to a standing army, a court
with its regulations of etiquette, and a well-ordered system of patronage
and surveillance. In others he is merely an instrument in the hands of
priests or military nobles, and is kept concealed, giving audience from
behind a curtain to excite the veneration of the vulgar. There are also
thousands of large walled cities resembling those of Europe in the Middle
Ages, or of ancient Greece, or of Italy before the supremacy of Rome,
encircled by pastures and by arable estates, and by farming villages to
which the citizens repair at harvest-time to superintend the labour of their
slaves. But such cities, with their villeggiatura, their municipal
government, their agora or forum, their fortified houses, their feuds and
street frays of Capulet and Montague, are not indigenous in Africa; their
existence is comparatively modern and is due to the influence of religion.
An African village (old style) is usually a street of huts, with walls like
hurdles, and the thatch projecting so that its owner may sit beneath it in
sun or rain. The door is lowโone has to crawl in order to go in. There
are no windows. The house is a single room. In its midst burns a fire
which is never suffered to go out, for it is a light in darkness, a servant, a
companion, and a guardian angel; it purifies the miasmatic air. The roof
and walls are smoke-dried but clean; in one corner is a pile of wood
neatly cut up into billets, and in another is a large earthen jar filled with
water on which floats a gourd or calabash, a vegetable bowl. Spears,
bows, quivers, and nets hang from pegs upon the walls. Let us suppose
that it is night; four or five black forms are lying in a circle with their feet
toward the fire, and two dogs with pricked-up ears creep close to the
ashes which are becoming grey and cold.
The day dawns; a dim light appears through the crevices and crannies of
the walls. The sleepers rise and roll up their mats, which are their beds,
and place on one side the round logs of wood which are their pillows.
The man takes down his bow and arrows from the wall, fastens wooden
rattles round his dogsโ necks, and goes out into the bush. The women
replenish the fire, and lift up an inverted basket whence sally forth a hen
and her chickens which make at once for the open door to find their daily
bread for themselves outside. The women take hoes and go to the
plantation, or they take pitchers to fill at the brook. They wear round the
waist, before and behind, two little aprons made from a certain bark,
soaked and beaten until it is as flexible as leather. Every man has a
plantation of these cloth-trees round his hut. The unmarried girls wear no
clothes at all, but they are allowed to decorate themselves with bracelets
and anklets of iron, flowers in their ears, necklaces of red berries like
coral, girdles of white shells, hair oiled and padded out with the chignon,
and sometimes white ashes along the parting.
The ladies fill their pitchers and take their morning bath, discussing the
merits or demerits of their husbands. The air is damp and cold, and the
trees and grass are heavy with dew; but presently the sun begins to shine,
the dewdrops fall heavy and large as drops of rain; the birds chirp; the
flowers expand their drowsy leaves and receive the morning calls of
butterflies and bees. The forest begins to buzz and hum like a great
factory awaking to its work.
When the sun is high, boys come from the bush with vegetable bottles
frothing over with palm wine. The cellar of the African, and his glass and
china shop, and his clothing warehouse, are in the trees. In the midst of
the village is a kind of shed, a roof supported on bare poles. It is the
palaver house, in which at this hour the old men sit and debate the affairs
of state or decide law suits, each orator holding a spear when he is
speaking, and planting it in the ground before him as he resumes his seat.
Oratory is the Africanโs one fine art. His delivery is fluent; his
harangues, though diffuse, are adorned with phrases of wild poetry. That
building is also the club house of the elders, and there, when business is
over, they pass the heat of the day, seated on logs which are smooth and
shiny from use. At the hour of noon their wives or children bring them
palm wine, and present it on their knees, clapping their hands in a token
of respect. And then all is still; it is the hour of silence and tranquillity,
the hour which the Portuguese call โ the calm.โ The sun sits enthroned
on the summit of the sky; its white light is poured upon the earth; the
straw thatch shines like snow. The forest is silent; all nature sleeps.
Then down, down, down sinks the sun, and its rays shoot slantwise
through the trees. The hunters return, and their friends run out and greet
them as if they had been gone for years, murmuring to them in a kind of
baby language, calling them by their names of love, shaking their right
hands, caressing their faces, patting them upon their breasts, embracing
them in all ways except with the lipsโfor the kiss is unknown among the
Africans. And so they toy and babble and laugh with one another till the
sun turns red, and the air turns dusky, and the giant trees cast deep
shadows across the street. Strange perfumes arise from the earth; fireflies
sparkle; grey parrots come forth from the forest, and fly screaming round
intending to roost in the neighbourhood of man. The women bring their
husbands the gourd-dish of boiled plantains or bush-yams, made hot with
red pepper, seasoned with fish or venison sauce. And when this simple
meal is ended, boom! boom! Goes the big drum; the sweet reed flute
pipes forth; the girls and lads begin to sing. In a broad, clean swept place
they gather together, jumping up and down with glee; the young men
form in one row, the women in another, and dance in two long lines,
retreating and advancing with graceful undulations of their bodies and
arms waving in the air. And now there is a squealing, wailing, unearthly
sound, and out of the wood, with a hop, skip, and jump, comes Mumbo
Jumbo, a hideous mask on his face and a scourge in his hand. Woe to the
wife who would not cook her husbandโs dinner, or who gave him saucy
words, for Mumbo Jumbo is the censor of female morals. Well the guilty
ones know him as they run screaming to their huts. Then again the dance
goes on, and if there is a moon it does not cease throughout the night.
Such is the picturesque part of savage life. But it is not savage lifeโit
merely lies upon the surface as paint lies upon the skin. Let us take a
walk through that same village on another day. Here in a hut is a young
man with one leg in the stocks, and with his right hand bound to his neck
by a cord. The palm wine, and the midnight dance, and the furtive
caresses of Asua overpowered his discretion; he was detected, and now
he is โput in log.โ If his relations do not pay the fine he will be sold as a
slave; or if there is no demand for slaves in that country he will be killed.
His friends reprove him for trying to steal what the husband was willing
to sell; and might he not have guessed that Asua was a decoy?
Another day the palaver-house has the aspect of a Crockfordโs. An old
man who is one of the village grandees is spinning nuts for high stakes,
and has drunk too much to see that he is overmatched. He loses his mats,
his weapons, his goats, his fowls, his plantation, his house, his slaves
whom he took prisoners in his young and warlike days, his wives, his
children, and his aged mother who fed him at her breastโall are lost, all
are gone. And then, with flushed eyes and trembling hand, he begins to
gamble for himself. He stakes his right leg and loses it. He may not
move it until he has won it back or until it is redeemed. He loses both
legs; he stakes his body and loses that also, and becomes a bond-servant,
or is sold as a slave.
Let us give another scene. A young man of family has died; the whole
village is convulsed with grief and fear. It does not appear natural to
them that a man should die before he has grown old. Some malignant
power is at work among them. Is it an evil spirit whom they have
unwittingly offended and who is taking its revenge, or is it a witch? The
great fetish-man has been sent for, and soon he arrives, followed by his
disciples. He wears a cap waving with feathers and a parti-coloured
garment covered with charmsโhorns of gazelles, shells of snails, and a
piece of leopardsโs liver wrapped up in the leaves of a poison-giving tree.
His face is stained with the white juice from a dead manโs brain. He rings
an iron bell as he enters the town, and at the same time the drum begins to
beat. The drum has its language, so that those who are distant from the
village understand what it is saying. With short, lively sounds it
summons to the dance; it thunders forth the alarm of fire or war, loudly
and quickly with no interval between the beats; and now it tolls the hour
of judgment and the day of death. The fetish-man examines the dead man
and says it is the work of a witch. He casts lots with knotted cords; he
mutters incantations; he passes round the villagers and points out the
guilty person, who is usually some old woman whom popular opinion has
previously suspected and is ready to condemn. She is, however, allowed
the benefit of an ordeal: a gourd filled with the โred waterโ is given her to
drink. If she is innocent it acts as an emetic; if she is guilty it makes her
fall senseless to the ground. She is then put to death with a variety of
torturesโburnt alive or torn limb from limb; tied on the beach at low
water to be drowned by the rising tide; rubbed with honey and laid out in
the sun; or buried in an ant-hill, the most horrible death of all.
These examples are sufficient to show that the life of the savage is not a
happy one, and the existence of each clan
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