The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
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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extreme. They are like the wild animals, engaged from day to night in
seeking food, and ever watchful against the foes by whom they are
surrounded. The men who go out hunting, the girls who go with their
pitchers to the village brook, are never sure that they will return, for there
is always war with some neighbouring village, and their method of
making war is by ambuscade. But besides these real and ordinary
dangers, the savage believes himself to be encompassed by evil spirits
who may at any moment spring upon him in the guise of a leopard, or
cast down upon him the dead branch of a tree. In order to propitiate these
invisible beings, his life is entangled with intricate rites; it is turned this
way and that way as oracles are delivered or as omens appear. It is
impossible to describe, or even to imagine, the tremulous condition of the
savage mind, yet the traveller can see from their aspect and manners that
they dwell in a state of never-ceasing dread.
Let us now suppose that a hundred years have passed, and let us visit the
village again. The place itself and the whole country around have been
transformed. The forest has disappeared, and in its stead are fields
covered with the glossy blades of the young rice, with the tall red tufted
maize, with the millet and the Guinea corn, with the yellow flowers of the
tobacco plant growing in wide fields, and with large shrubberies of
cotton, the snowy wool peeping forth from the expanding leaves. Before
us stands a great town surrounded by walls of red clay flanked by towers,
and with heavy wooden gates. Day dawns, and the women come forth to
the brook decorously dressed in blue cotton robes passed over the hair as
a hood. Men ride forth on horseback, wearing white turbans and swords
suspended on their right shoulders by a crimson sash. They are the
unmixed descendants of the forest savage; their faces are those of pure
negroes, but the expression is not the same. Their manners are grave and
composed; they salute one another, saying in the Arabic βPeace be with
you.β The palaver-house or town-hall is also the mosque; the
parliamentary debates and the law trials which are there held have all the
dignity of a religious service; they are opened with prayer, and the name
of the creator is often solemnly invoked by the orator or advocate, while
all the elders touch their foreheads with their hands and murmur in
response, Amina! Amina! (Amen! Amen!). The town is pervaded by a
bovine smell, sweet to the nostrils of those who have travelled long in the
beefless lands of the people of the forest. Sounds of industry may also be
heardβnot only the clinking of the blacksmithβs hammer, but also the
rattling of the loom, the thumping of the cloth-maker, and the song of the
cordwainer as he sits cross-legged making saddles or shoes. The women,
with bow and distaff and spindle, are turning the soft tree-wool into
thread; the work in the fields is done by slaves. The elders smoke or take
snuff in their verandahs, and sometimes study a page of the Koran. When
the evening draws on there is no sound of flute and drum. A bonfire of
brushwood is lighted in the market-place, and the boys of the town collect
around it with wooden boards in their hands, and bawl their lessons,
swaying their bodies to and fro, by which movement they imagine the
memory is assisted. Then rises a long, loud, harmonious cry, βCome to
prayers, come to prayers! Come to security! God is great! He liveth and
he dieth not! Come to prayers! O thou Bountiful!β
La ilah illa Allah: Mohammed Rasul Allah.
Allahu Akbaru. Allahu Akbar.
Such towns as these may be less interesting to the traveller than the pagan
villagesβhe finds them merely a second-hand copy of Eastern life. But
though they are not so picturesque, their inhabitants are happier and better
men. Violent and dishonest deeds are no longer arranged by pecuniary
compensation. Husbands can no longer set wife-traps for their friends;
adultery is treated as a criminal offence. Men can no longer squander
away their relations at the gaming table, and stake their own bodies on a
throw. Men can no longer be tempted to vice and crime under the
influence of palm wine. Women can no longer be married by a great
chief in herds, and treated like beasts of burden and like slaves. Each wife
has an equal part of her husbandβs love by law; it is not permitted to
forsake and degrade the old wife for the sake of the young. Each wife has
her own house, and the husband may not enter until he has knocked at the
door and received the answer, Bismillah! (In the name of God!) Every
boy is taught to read and write in Arabic, which is the religious and
official language in the Sudan, as Latin was in Europe in the Middle
Ages; he also writes his own language with the Arabic character, as we
write ours with the Roman letter. In such countries the policy of isolation
is at an end; they are open to all the Moslems in the world, and are thus
connected with the lands of the East. Here there is a remarkable change,
and one that deserves a place in history. It is a movement the more
interesting since it is still actively going on. The Mohammedan religion
has already overspread a region of Negroland as large as Europe. It is
firmly established not only in the Africa of the Mediterranean and the
Nile and in the oases of the Sahara, but also throughout that part of the
continent which we have termed the platform of the Niger.
In 1797 Mungo Park discovered the Niger in the heart of Africa, at a
point where it is as broad as the Thames at Westminster; in 1817 Rene
Caillie crossed it at a point considerably higher up; in 1822 Major Laing
attempted to reach it by striking inland from Sierra Leone, but was forced
by the natives to return when he was only fifty miles distant from the
river; and in 1869 I made the same attempt, was turned back at the same
place, but made a fresh expedition, and reached the river at a higher point
than Caillie and Park. But my success also was incomplete, for native
wars made it impossible for me to reach the source, though it was near at
hand; and that still remains a splendid prize for one who will walk in my
footsteps as I walked in those of Laing. The source of the Niger, as given
in the maps; was fixed by Laing from native information which I
ascertained to be correct. There is no doubt that this river rises in the
backwoods of Sierra Leone, at a distance of only two hundred miles from
the coast. It runs for some time as a foaming hill-torrent bearing obscure
and barbarous names, and at the point where I found it glides into the
broad, calm breast of the plateau, and receives its illustrious name of the
Joliba,or Great River.
It flows north-east, and enters the Sahara as if intending, like the Nile, to
pour its waters into the Mediterranean Sea. But suddenly it turns towards
the east, so that Herodotus, who heard of it when he was at Memphis,
supposed that it joined the Nile; and such was the prevailing opinion not
only among the Greeks but also among the Arabs in the Middle Ages.
They did not know that the eccentric river again wheels round, flows
towards the sea near which it rose, passes through the latitude of its birth,
and, having thus described three quarters of a circle, debouches by many
mouths into the Bight of Benin. So singular a course might well baffle
the speculations of geographers and the investigations of explorers. The
people who dwell on the banks of the river do not know where it ends. I
was told by some that it went to Mecca, by others that it went to
Jerusalem. Mungo Parkβs own theory was ludicrously incorrectβhe
believed that the Congo was its mouth. Others declared that it never
reached the sea at all. It was Lander who discovered the mouth of the
Niger, at one time as mysterious as the sources of the Nile, and so
established the hypothesis which Reichard had advanced and which
Mannert had declared to be βcontrary to nature.β
The Niger platform or basin is flat, with here and there a line of rolling
hills containing gold. The vegetation consists of high, coarse grass and
trees of small stature, except on the banks of streams, where they grow to
a larger size. The palm-oil tree is not found on this plateau, but the shea-butter or tallow tree abounds in natural plantations which will some day
prove a source of enormous wealth. As the river flows on, these trees
disappear; the plains widen and are smoothed out, and the country
assumes the character of the Sahara.
The negroes who inhabited the platform of the Niger lived chiefly on the
banks of the river, subsisting on lotus root and fish. Like all savages,
they were jealous and distrustful; their intercourse was that of war. But
nature, by means of a curious contrivance, has rendered it impossible for
men to remain eternally apart. Common salt is one of the mineral
constituents of the human body, and savages, who live chiefly on
vegetable food, are dependent upon it for their life. In Africa children
may be seen sucking it like sugar. βCome and eat with us today,β says
the hospitable African; βwe are going to have salt for dinner.β It is not in
all countries that this mineral food is to be found, but the saltless lands in
the Sudan contain gold dust, ivory, and slaves, and so a system of barter
is arranged, and isolated tribes are brought into contact with one another.
The two great magazines are the desert and the ocean. At the present day
the white, powdery English salt is carried on donkeys and slaves to the
upper waters of the Niger, and is driving back the crystalline salt of the
Sahara. In the ancient days the salt of the plateau came entirely from the
mines of Bilma and Toudeyni, in the desert, which were occupied and
worked by negro tribes. But at a period far remote, before the
foundations of Carthage were laid, a Berber nation, now called the
Tuaricks, overspread the desert and conquered the oases and the mines.
This terrible people are yet the scourge of the peaceful farmer and the
passing caravan. They camp in leather tents; they are armed with lance
and sword, and with shields on which is painted the image of a cross.
The Arabs call them βthe muffled ones,β for their mouths and noses are
covered with a bandage, sometimes black, sometimes white, above which
sit in deep sockets, like antlions in their pits, a pair of dark, cruel,
sinister
looking eyes. They levy tolls on all travellers, and murder those who
have the reputation of unusual wealthβas they did Miss Tinne, whose
iron water-tanks they imagined to be filled with gold. When they poured
down on the Sahara they were soon attracted by the rich pastures and
alluvial plains of the black country. In course of time their raids were
converted into conquests, and they established a line of kingdoms from
the Niger to the Nile, in the borderland between the Sahara and the
parallel 10ΒΊ N. Timbuktu, Haoussa, Bornu, Bagirmi, Waday, Darfur, and
Kordofan were the names of these kingdoms; in all of them Islam is now
the religion of the state; all of them belong to the Asiatic
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