VAN BEULINGH AND THE CANIBAL FEAST

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1676, 13 April 1904, Page 72 (Supplement)

VAN BEULINGH AND THE CANIBAL FEAST

<By Sir' H. H. Johnston, K. 0.8., fctc., author of f Th© Uganda Protectorate/' etc.)

’ ! [All Rights Reserved.] Van Beulingli was, I believe, bom on the Gold Coast when portions of thalt colony were in the possession, of Holland. His father was a Dutchman, his mother a half-caste. There are not a few of these rather yellow-tinted Hollanders in the British colonies on the West Coast of Africa, the descendants with or without negro' intermixture of the Dutch traders and Government officials who for something like four centuries visited the West Coast of Africa. These men with Dutch surnames are among the most Useful members of the scanty (European population of West Africa. They have become inured to the climate, they are generally sober, and almost always well conducted and! industrious. |A REPRESENTATIVE DUTCHMAN. Van Beulingh, however, was not always, I fear, a model representative of this Dutch element in West Africa. Ho Was very far from being a teetotaler, and had no morals at all in the conventional sense of the word, except that he was honest Tn lxis dealings with black and whine, and nobody’s enemy but his own. In appearance he,was a curiously yellow main, uo doubt owing to the slight proportion of negro blood in bis veins. His ejyles ware somewhat prominent, with very yellow whites, and pale, greyish blue iris. He had,a fierce black moustache, and a stubbly head of hair constantly kept close-cropped, but out by acme very imperfect means. For the rest, he was of stalwart appearance, and Ijjotwover rough (the life he lived bis hands wore always beautifully kept, with well-'trimmed nails. He was geniera)lly dressed in a white tunic and white trousers with absolutely no other clothing. ' He went about very often with bane feet until the jigger plague compelled him to take very reluctantly to boots and. socks. If Van Beudingli’s stories are to be believed he had traversed repeatedly all the “Juju/' country between the lower Niger and the upper Cross River, which Until the Are Expedition was absolutely a terra incognita to white men, a land in which it was supposed that no white man could penetrate and return alive. STRANGER THAN FICTION.

Without attempting to imitate Van Beulingk’s picturesque but discursive and disjointed style, here, as near as I Can remember it, is ocne of th© stories he told me, though I decline te vofuch for its accuracy:—“ln 1884 I went up the Oro&s River in a long Oalabar canoe for the purpose of obtaining natural history Specimens. I wanted to get skins and skulls of chimpanzees, of that curious Oalabar Potto (a kind of tailless Lemur), and borne interesting nar tive ‘fetishes’ T had heard of. I also wans bed to stee for myself if the natives of the Enjok River really were the thor-oiugh-goiing cannibals they were said to be by the Efik people of Old Calabar. The chief Asibon had filled 1 me up with stories about them, and had promised to send a guide wilth me who would take me to the chief town of the Gdipup oil markets on the upper waters of the Enjok River. Without some such introduction as this my life would' nob have been altogether safe. I can go almost anywhere in West Africa, but just on the edge of that great J»uju country the people were much excited at that time • because of ithe attempts on the part of

Germans. French and English 'to con- * dude treaties, and bag the oil markets. Well, r g ot up to Odipup, and an extraordinary place it was. The people were evidently very rich. Nearly every house was no common hut, but a dwelling built in the form of a hollow square—nice, well thatbohed houses on raised daises of hard mpd. The streets were broad, and had elephant’s skulls dotted at intervals o,n either side. There were splendid oil-palms and flourishing-looking gardens. Well, I found here that there was a tremendous market for slaves, which generally came from, the lands to the north, in the direettion. of the Benue. The slaves were an awfully wild looking people, as low a race as I have ever seen . —stunted, short-necked, and with prognathous jaws. ' THE -HORRORS OF THE FEAST. Some of the children among these slaves were shut up in pans, made of stopt poles close together—prisons. in fact,- but nicely thatched, with good dry floors and kept very clean. Here >■■■ they were stuffed as hard' as they could eat with yams and pahn-oil ‘chop’ and other fattening diet. Every now and then the owners.would come and oast a glaiKM rwxr them, and point out such and such & baiild to be taken out. Then the boy—it was . generally a boy, the girls being sent : off to the chief’s harems —was led'away} wall out of sight of the pen, into the compound inside the heddib sqjoare of his owner’s house. Here he waa suddenly thrown down and his. throat was out, some of his blood being poured out as a libation into the clay tub in the middle of the compound fjrom which * fetish tree grows. All

•U-. ~ , V >;v v - • ' -- sbrds of devil were played with the ohild’s head after it had been cut off, though in tbs case of quite a small one it was often left oh, and the body was cooked whole for .eating- 1 was. asked one day to a big palm-oil ‘chop’ at the house of the principal chief; I tell you., although I am used to most things, I felt pretty sick when the principal dish was brought on. This was an enormous

f platter o?’ tin, oms- of i4ic\/higgo:t Vo I ever got out for the trade, and on this j platter was the body of a. small chi id that had been bakijfl in a clay oven, with, a lot of yams round it. . . I did not want much more evidence for the Consul on cannibalism in this direction, and it was not a good country for collecting, as if was well populated and thoroughly cultivated, most of the wild beasts being driven away. So. I descended the Enjok River again, joined the Cross river, and ascended this stream as far as the Atam country. I landed at a friendly town on the south bank. It seemed a splendid point /from which to explore the dense tropical forests that lie between the upper bend of the Cross river and the Cameroons. I was warned by the Muriong natives —a very friendly though rather excitable tribe of cannibals—that in the forest lands behind them there was a race of cannibals with whom even I could nos make friends. However. I set out in a south-soutli-easterly direction, hoping to be able to do an absolutely new bit of African exploration from the upper Cross River to the Cameroons. I sent my borrowed canoes back to Old Calabar in charge of the Eifik boys, and took with me only miy two Accra bird skinners, my cook and general factotum, (also from the Gold Coast), and ten of m.y canoe men wpo were Akwas from the back of Old Calabar, and who would aot as porters to carry my necessary loads. I also carried with me some tinned provisions, cartridges, and trade goods amounting in all to another twenty loads, and these with some difficulty I persuaded the Muriong people to carry for me at least three days’ jaumey into tho interior, where I had heard of a large native town of the Rabonn people. Here I thought 1 would: settle down for a time to collect and make friends with the people, who would uo doubt furnish me with carriers to send me through towards the Cameroons.”