Part 57

The carnival season was being enjoyed by the masqueraders, but the balls and costumes were rather sorry affairs in comparison with those of Madrid, and other large cities of Spain.

Gibraltar is a free port, and gives employment to merchants and traders, who are celebrated for their sharp and acute transactions. The captains of vessels whom I met, who had put in for repairs or in distress, say they are worse than Key West wreckers. Smuggling and contraband trade with Spain has fallen off, however, with lower duties and the close of civil wars.

The weather was cool for the season. Snow was seen upon the African mountains, and bad reports of cholera came in from Tetuan; large numbers were dying among troops and residents. I had seen sufficient evidence of its existence, and concluded it was safest to be out of the district.

The American gunboat Iroquois came into Gibraltar and took our consul, Mr. Brown, to Tangiers, being the first consular return to Morocco since the war began, when those of all nations, with their families, decamped, and all the subjects of foreign governments who could, did likewise. The only consul in the whole of Morocco who remained, was the English, Mr. Hay, at Tangiers, who received express orders, and was protected by war vessels from Gibraltar, that port being considered blockaded.

Finding our steamer was going all along the Moorish coast, and thence to the Canary Islands, I concluded to embark. Our first stopping place was in thirty-six hours, at Casa Blanca, where we landed the French and Portuguese consuls, who were old residents, but, like all others, had abandoned their posts, fearing the fanaticism of the Moors, and the loss of their heads, as the wild Arabs don’t distinguish among Christians as to what race they belong. We remained a day. The Moors had heard of the taking of Tetuan, and were uneasy, and less sanguine. These two gentlemen we left, but the thought was painful, that they were running the risk of losing their lives in their own houses.

We next proceeded to Mazagan, an old fortified city of six thousand inhabitants. It is of square form, with strong walls and ramparts, situated upon an iron-bound coast. It was built some centuries since by the Portuguese, who protected it by cannon on the land side as well as the sea, and occupied it for a long time during the height of the commercial prosperity of Portugal. At length, from the encroachments of the Moors, however, they were obliged to abandon it. Before leaving, they mined it in every direction, and then by stipulation removed their population and supplies. The keys of the city having been given up, the wild Arabs rushed in, and filled up the deserted streets and houses. While looking for booty, a doubloon was discovered, and eagerly seized, which was attached by a thread to a concealed pistol, which exploded the mine, and blew up the greater part of the city, causing great destruction of life, and satisfying the vengeance of the Portuguese.

The old subterranean cisterns, or reservoirs, still exist, and are worthy of their authors, reminding one of the old Roman and Carthaginian masonry. The city is now mostly of one story buildings, with flat roofs, except consular and a few other private houses and magazines. Europeans make themselves as comfortable as possible amidst the filth which prevails ankle-deep in the narrow streets, and smells, badly suited to the olfactories, from dead dogs and cats. The English consul being absent, I noticed a dead donkey lying near his house. Himself and his colleagues had all fled the country, and cleanliness was out of the question.

The Jews from all these points along the coast had been removed, or made their escape as far as possible. Outside the walls of Gibraltar, I saw some five hundred tents, furnished by the English government, where about thirty-five hundred had congregated, and some eighteen hundred still remained. The government had given rations daily, and the French government made liberal allowances for such subjects as were under the protection of its consuls. It was a curious sight, reminding one of the descriptions of the camp of Israel. Men, women, and children, in the African Jewish costume, were performing the culinary operations of the separate households. The canvas streets had their names. The ground floors were whitewashed, or limed against infection. English sentries were on patrol, and all well regulated.

The country about Casa Blanca and Mazagan is fertile, but badly cultivated, and produces wheat and barley of excellent quality. Cattle, sheep, horses, and donkeys are kept, but the camel is the principal beast of burden. The export of horses is prohibited; other animals pay a considerable head tax. Poultry and eggs are abundant and cheap; gum, wool, and grain were the chief articles of export before the war.

We left two European merchants who had their houses there, and proceeded to this place, Mogadore, the farthest point on the Morocco coast, at which a steamer lands, and which is the chief city for the trade of the capital, Morocco, that lies one hundred and ten miles in the interior.

This is, for a Moorish city, strongly built, and is surrounded with walls. The houses are one or two stories high, and well whitewashed. The bastions and fortifications are upon a rocky shore. The small island of Mogadore forms a breakwater against the northerly storms; but like all African harbors, this is only a roadstead. The vicinity consists of desert for some miles, and then agricultural and grazing country. The town is dry and clean, reminding me of Tripoli, on the Barbary coast, for cleanliness, as Mazagan and Casa Blanca compare with Tunis for filth.

The sight of a steamer, being the first for six weeks, brought the whole population out. The walls and battlements were crowded with Arabs from the country, there being twelve hundred who had come in to protect the city from an expected attack of the Spaniards. The long white woollen mantles, or cloaks, and red caps, covering their swarthy bodies, the natural growth of black beard, and the long carabines, presented a strange aspect, as they looked grim and surly upon the Christians, and wondered what business we had there.

The women, with their heads covered with white veils, and feet with yellow boots, looked slyly at us out of one or both eyes, or were peeping through the blinds as the strangers passed.

Here we have a Jewish quarter, also, which is locked at night. The daughters of Israel are very fair, and some of them beautiful; they don’t hide their faces like the Moorish women. Some disorders had occurred, and some of their houses been broken open and pillaged, for which they had no redress, as all foreign consuls were absent.

The climate here is delightful, being from seventy to seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, and never varying more than ten degrees throughout the year.

One of our passengers, an English merchant long in this country, had left his house in possession of a trusty Moor, and found all satisfactory. Indeed, the residents among the Moors have more to apprehend from pillage on the part of the wild hordes of the country, than from those of the city. My friend, at whose house I am, will not remain, although he speaks Arabic, but will go on to the Canary Islands with us, with the intention of returning when the war is over. Another of our passengers, a merchant, who was born in a Mohammedan city, will remain and take his chance.

No sooner had we landed than we were surrounded and followed by groups of friends and listeners, who followed close on our heels to the house, which was closed by main force to prevent intrusion. Soon after, the familiar and monotonous songs of the Arabs, accompanied by primitive violins, reached my ears from the gallery. There sat five musicians, whose music and song was spiced from time to time with a peculiar howl or whistle from two blind women, which I at first took for the escape of steam from the steamer.

To my surprise the health officer, when he came off, spoke English and French. He looks the Moor in costume, with his patriarchal white beard, and is now seventy-six years of age. I have been to his house to-day, and found him squatted, legs crossed, upon a divan, taking his repast of tea, instead of coffee, with oranges, dates, raisins, pomegranates, and a liquor which he offered us, made from figs, from his little table about two feet high. His father was an Englishman and his mother a Spanish woman. He has been forty-six years in Morocco, having come as interpreter to an English gentleman who wanted to travel in the interior, and was there murdered. His speaking Arabic saved him from the same fate. When the war broke out he sent his family to Gibraltar, and is now quite alone.

CLVI.

BATHURST, RIVER GAMBIA, WEST COAST OF AFRICA, _March 10, 1860_.

From Mogadore we proceeded to the island of Lancerota, one of the group of Canary Islands, landing and spending part of a day at the principal town, Arecife, whence the island of Forteventura is in plain view.

The product of these islands, since the failure of the grape crop, consists mostly of cochineal, as the salubrity and uniformity of the climate are admirably adapted to the raising of the cactus plant upon which the insect feeds. The principal islands, Lancerota, Teneriffe, Gomera, and Palma, contain some one hundred and eighty thousand population.

My immediate destination was Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe, the capital of the Canary Islands, and the seat of the Spanish Governor. The approach to the well whitewashed town, with its large roadstead, backed by high mountains of hard basalt and soft pumice stone, of which it is built, is very picturesque. In the distance looms up the Peak of Teneriffe, said to be fifteen thousand feet high. The atmosphere was clear and soft, and overcoats and cloaks were no longer needed. They have had an unusually wet season, and apprehend a loss from excess of humidity in a climate where it rains usually so little.

Here I found several Germans, who had spent most of the winter in Madeira, four degrees further north, and give the preference to this climate. The accommodations, apartments, and society I have found better there than here.

The town is clean and well paved, with good roads, and a fair hotel. The island is evidently volcanic, as the wild and irregular masses of rock around the town testify.

Camels are here used as beasts of burden, showing conclusively they can be employed over similar roads on the overland routes in the United States, as well as on the sands of the desert.

My intention was, if I arrived in time at Santa Cruz, which I had before visited some years since, to take the West African Coast steamer for the Gambia river, and from thence down to Sierra Leone. In this I was not disappointed; after a few days’ delay I embarked. The steamer from Fernando Po, on her return touched at all the ports along the Grain, Ivory, and Gold Coasts of Guinea, and several passengers were landed and lodged at our hotel. They reported the season as being most favorable for a visit; the fevers, which had desolated the settlements, existed no longer: but their yellow and jaundiced appearance was not encouraging for the traveller. Having been so much in tropical climates, and having had much experience in fevers, I hope to pass unscathed.

On board of the good screw steamer Athenian, with favorable breezes and increasing heat, in four days we made Bathurst, near the mouth of the Gambia River, one thousand miles from Teneriffe. The approach to this English colony up the broad serpentine river is directed by a negro pilot.

The public and private buildings are well and substantially built. The beach on one side is sandy, and the tide leaves a road bed for equestrians at the ebb. The date, mango, and other tropical trees give the place a picturesque appearance. The garrison is composed of English officers, and native black soldiery. The epidemic has made sad work among the whites; out of seventy-one, twenty-one died.

The negro population is upwards of five thousand, who live in reed huts, upon streets laid out at right angles, the different tribes in their respective quarters. They present a curious sight for the European, a fair proportion requiring only the garments of our first parents, Adam and Eve. Mothers carry their young, not unlike the squaws of our Indian tribes, upon their backs, but with this difference, that the little black urchin is nestled in the folds of a cotton shawl or girdle around the waist, the child being in the hollow of the back. The little boys and girls instead of clothing are supplied with strings of beads and amulets, as ornaments, and to keep away the evil spirit.

The river is navigable beyond Macarthy island to the cataracts, which are some one hundred and eighty miles from its mouth, and trading stations are found as high up. There are some thirteen tribes under different chiefs, and several different languages and dialects are spoken. The country is unsafe to travel in without a sufficient force for protection. It was here that Mungo Park, the renowned traveller, commenced his explorations, and it is supposed that he was killed on the Niger, after losing his soldiers and marines by fever and exhaustion. One of our fellow passengers, a colonel in the service, owned a farm ten miles from the town; his house was attacked, several killed, and he had a narrow escape.

I find much hospitality on the part of the inhabitants, which is quite natural when they have a steamer from Europe at long intervals. The Governor of Gambia, Col. D’Arcy, and his interesting wife, to whom I was recommended, offered me their house. I dined with them and passed an evening; breakfasted with our consul, a Brazilian by birth; visited several other of the prominent residents; and rode some miles along the coast, passing by the English burying ground, which seemed fast filling up. The government house belongs to the crown. It is a fine mansion, pleasantly situated among tropical trees and flowering plants. Negro soldiers as sentinels at the gate reminded me in this particular of the entrance to Soulouque’s palace in the island of Hayti.

A number of French vessels are in port loading with ground nuts for making oil; many dry hides are also shipped. The trade of Senegal, the French colony, lying farther north, is of considerable importance. I find here a small vessel loading with peanuts, or ground nuts, for Boston; she hails from Salem. The down-easters are the most enterprising mariners in the world. They are met with in the most remote quarters of the globe. I have found them where I thought no trade could be furnished--up the Red Sea, the Island of Sumatra, Zanzibar, and other places, picking up coffee, spices, gums, and all sorts of products, in exchange for hard biscuits, coarse cotton cloth, lumber, wooden clocks, and an infinity of Yankee notions. The captain of this small vessel is quite a youth; he had his head cut and his nose broken by a mutinous sailor, but he came off victorious.

While at Teneriffe, the war steamer San Jacinto, belonging to the American squadron, watching the African slave coast, came in port. She was proceeding to Cadiz for repairs, as her machinery was out of order, and the nearest point was Spain. Capt. Armstrong was in command. Several of the officers were from our state. They had been cruising eight months, and, as you can imagine, were pleased to meet with one who could give direct news from Europe and the United States.

CLVII.

SIERRA LEONE, WEST COAST OF AFRICA, _March 14, 1860_.

Two days’ steaming brought us from Bathurst, Gambia river, to this, the oldest English settlement on the west coast of Africa. It is situated upon a broad bay at the entrance of the Sierra Leone river, with high hills and peaks in the distance. The soil looks reddish, like that of New Jersey, but is thoroughly charged with iron. The vegetation is decidedly tropical, producing palm oil, ginger, spices, gum, bread-fruit, oranges, bananas, pineapples, etc. The heat is oppressive.

The fever epidemic has destroyed fifty-eight out of ninety-eight white residents within thirty days. The Catholic mission is closed, the bishop and the priests under his charge having died. The other missions also suffered, but not to the same extent. One of the prominent colored missionaries of the English Episcopal church I found to be a native of Charleston, South Carolina. He had lost his white German wife by fever.

I visited the schools for the education of the young males and females, and found them getting on very well in their studies. The sons of negroes who have been slaves in other countries, and who are traders and general dealers, appreciate the importance of education; but those of the villages and in the suburbs live in that listless manner characteristic of the negro. They perform but little labor, sufficient only to procure rum and tobacco as luxuries, for nature furnishes yams and other necessaries of life without much effort, preferring to bask and sleep in the rays of the broiling sun, which are death to the white man.

The French consul, to whom I had a letter and with whom I dined, drove me to his villa on the shore, some miles from town, a beautiful spot, where nature appeared in all her loveliness; but the insidious fever had closed the mission edifice in the neighborhood. We drove through villages at different times and in different directions up and down the coast, among hedges of lime trees twenty feet high, filled with fruit, resembling the wild vegetation of Venezuela. The umbrella-topped palm grows in profusion. The oleander and other hot-house plants with us, standing fifteen feet high, in bloom, as in the West Indies; pine-apple bushes laden with fruit are growing in a wild state; and the wide-spreading branches of the mango offer opportunity for repose, but the threatened fever for the white man breaks the charm.

The African fever this year has carried off thousands of the negroes also. The present population, mostly black, is computed to be forty thousand. The garrison is English, but the officers only are white, the soldiery consisting of natives and captured slaves, who are apprenticed. The vessels in the harbor during the epidemic, a few months since, lost in some cases captains, officers, crews, and even the cats on board, leaving the vessel riding alone at anchor. We don’t sleep ashore as yet on any occasion.

The few white residents left are most hospitable, and my letters were such as to furnish all the civilities the settlement can afford. A wealthy German merchant, who has a native wife, as most persons have on the African coast, did all the honors for the Vaterland, a German missionary, whom I knew at Teneriffe, and who had left for his health, having given me letters.

The thermometer stands at from eighty-eight to ninety-seven in the shade, so that a piece of ice from the steamer, sent as a present by the officers of our ship to their friends and acquaintances, is esteemed a great luxury. White umbrellas are in vogue.

The next steamer will bring out the new Governor and English Bishop, his predecessor being dead. The Spanish consul and vice-consul both died, and the acting French consul has just been decorated by the Spanish Queen for services rendered during the crisis.

The English steamer Pluto is in port, having just returned from St. Helena after the capture of the American bark Orion with eight hundred and fifty slaves. These are apprenticed for a number of years, and a bounty of five pounds or twenty-five dollars her head is paid to the officers of the ship by the English government in addition to the thirty-five shillings per ton upon the hull. The vessels are then condemned and sawn in two. Several such half hulks lie on the beach here. I noticed two American schooners in port, fine rakish looking vessels, appearing as if they were for what they call here the “black-bird trade.” Our American officers, whom I met in the Canary islands, complain that they cannot get prizes, as the English have spies all along the coast and get information, which they can afford to pay for, as John Bull pays such large prize money, while our people pay only in sympathy.

An amusing incident has just occurred. A negro soldier came on deck and handed me a note. I found he spoke but little English jargon, which the negroes use, and I asked him where he came from. He said he was a captured slave, and now received half-pay for military service. At that moment he recognised a Portuguese passenger as the man who had sold him on the coast. His eye glistened with anger as he spoke to the person, and said, “You sold me.” The Portuguese could not recollect him, as he was one out of one hundred and sixty which he admitted he bought, and sold at a profit of twenty-eight dollars per head. On further conversation, the negro admitted that he was now very glad of the change.

The brig Harris, an American, has lately been taken. The English had watched the vessel for a long time as suspicious, and, in fact, knew what it was up to, but it is policy for them to wait until the negroes are on board; thus they get apprentices and the bounty money. In the evening the Englishman visited the ship, the cargo was already on board, the hatches closed, and some negroes lying on deck, who were reported as native sailors of the coast. The crew were pulling the tails of pigs to make them squeal, to prevent the hearing of noise from the hold, where officers stood with revolvers, threatening the negroes if they did not keep quiet. The hatches were down twenty minutes. The commander left, satisfied that the game was not yet bagged, and went away, when an English captain informed him that he had seen the negroes going on board. Had it not been for this information the American would have been off. He was watched, boarded, and commanded to haul down his flag and give up his papers. The American denied the right to board him, according to treaty. Then, said the commander, I will detain you until I find an American cruizer, and you will be delivered up and tried as a pirate. The effect was produced, and a compromise took place. The Englishman turned his back, the flag was hauled down, and the papers were thrown overboard, officers and men permitted to leave with their effects, and the vessel seized as a prize, without nationality of papers, or flag.

CLVIII.

CAPE COAST CASTLE, WEST COAST OP AFRICA, _March 18, 1860_.