THE BENIN MASSACRE OF 1897
By
Captain Alain Boisragon
(one of the survivors)
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
In March 1892, Captain Gallwey,
the British vice-Consul of Oil Rivers Protectorate (later Niger Coast
Protectorate), visited Benin City hoping to annex Benin kingdom and make it a
British Protectorate. Although the king of Benin, Omo n’Oba Ovonramwen, was
skeptical of the British motives he was willing to endorse what he believed was
a friendship and trade agreement. The Benin king refrained from endorsing Gallwey’s treaty when it became apparent that the document
was a deceptive ploy intended to make Benin kingdom a British colony.
Consequently the Benin king issued an edict barring all British officials and
traders from entering Benin territories. Since Major (later Sir) Claude Maxwell
Macdonald, the Consul General of the Oil River Protectorate authorities
considered the ‘Treaty’ legal and binding, he deemed the Benin king’s reaction
a violation of the accord and thus a hostile act.
In 1894 after the invasion and destruction of Brohimie, the trading town of Nana, the leading Itsekiri trader in the Benin River District by a combined
British Royal Navy and Niger Coast Protectorate forces, Benin kingdom increased
her military presence on her southern borders. This vigilance, and the Colonial
Office refusal to grant approval for an invasion of Benin City scuttled the
expedition the Protectorate had planned for early 1895. Even so between
September 1895 and mid 1896 three attempts were made by the Protectorate to
enforce the Gallwey ‘Treaty’. Major P.
Copland-Crawford, vice-Consul of the Benin district, made the first attempt,
Mr. Locke, the vice-Consul assistant, made a second one and the third one was
made by Captain Arthur Maling, the commandant of the
Niger Coast Protectorate Force detachment based in Sapele.
In March 1896, following price fixing and refusal by Itsekiri middle men to pay the required tributes, the Benin
king ordered a cessation of the supply of oil palm produce to them. The trade
embargo brought trade in the Benin River region to a standstill, and the
British traders and agents of the British trading firms quickly appealed to
Protectorate’s Consul-General to ‘open up’ Benin territories, and send the
Benin king (whom they claimed was an ‘obstruction’) into exile. In October 1896
Lieutenant James Robert Phillips (RN), the Acting Consul-General visited the
Benin River District and had meetings with the agents and traders. In the end
the agents and traders were able to convince him that ‘there is a future on the
Benin River if Benin territories were opened’.
In November Phillips made a formal request to his
superiors in England for permission to invade Benin City, and in late December
1896 without waiting for a reply or approval from London Phillips embarked on a
military expedition with a Niger Coast Protectorate Force consisting of 250
African soldiers and five British officers, a trader and an interpreter. His
mission was to depose the king of Benin City, replace him with a Native Council
and pay for the invasion with the ‘ivory’ he hoped to find in the Benin king’s
palace. Unfortunately for Phillips, some Itsekiri trading chiefs sent a message to the Benin king that ‘the white man is bringing
war’. On receiving the news the Benin king quickly summoned the city’s
high-ranking nobles for an emergency meeting, and during the discussions the Iyase, the commander in chief of the Benin Army argued that
the white men were on a hostile visit and hence they must be confronted and
killed. The Benin king however argued that the white men should be allowed to
enter the city so that it can be ascertained whether or not the visit was a friendly
one. The Iyase ignored the king’s views, and ordered
the formation of a strike force that was commanded by the Ologbose,
a senior army commander, which was sent to Gwato to
destroy the invaders.
On 4 January 1897, the Benin strike force composed
mainly of border guards and servants of some chiefs caught Phillips' army
totally unprepared at Ugbine village near Gwato. Since Phillips was not expecting any opposition and
was unaware that his operation had lost its element of surprise, the
contingent’s weapons were locked up in the head packs of the African soldiers
who were posing as carriers. Only two British officers survived the
annihilation of Phillips' invasion force, which became known as the ‘Benin
Preemptive Strike’.
CHAPTER I
HISTORY OF BENIN
BENIN seems to have been a kingdom from time
immemorial, anyway from before its first discovery by the Portuguese, somewhere
at the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century. By their
discoveries, the Portuguese for a long time had all the benefits of the trade
to be obtained from West Africa. They were followed some
time after by the Dutch and Swedes. It was not till the year 1552 that
the English began to visit these parts; and in 1588 Queen Elizabeth granted a
charter to an African Company of English Merchants, who thereupon started
trading all over the West Coast of Africa, much to the annoyance of the Dutch
and Portuguese.
The first English expedition to visit Benin City
started in two ships and a pinnace from Bristol in
1553, under the command of two captains, Windham and Antonio Anes Pinteado. The latter, as his
name indicates, was a Portuguese, and seems to have been a most excellent man
as well as a skilled navigator. At one time he was in such favour with the King of Portugal that he was appointed to take care of the Coasts of
Brazil and Guinea against the French, “to whom”, as his old biographer says,
“he was a terror in these seas”. This expedition never promised to be much of a
success, as from the very first Captain Windham seems to have been “a terror
to” the worthy Pinteado, and treated him infamously
through the whole voyage,— amongst other things, threatening to cut off the
ears of “this rascally Jew”, as he called him, and nail them to the mast. They
seem to have been about six months in arriving at the mouth of the Benin River,
from whence they sent up the pinnace as near as they
could get to Benin City. Here Captain Pinteado with
an English gentleman called Nicholas Lambert and other merchants landed, and
were conducted to the King’s Court, ten leagues from the river. They seem to
have had a most friendly reception from His Majesty, “a black moor or negro”,
who spoke to them in Portuguese, which he had learnt when a child. After
discovering that they had come for purposes of trading, the King not only
promised to fill their ships with pepper, which seems to have been the great
article of trade at that time, but also, in case they had not enough
merchandise to pay for the pepper the King actually proposed to give them credit
for it till next season, which, considering all things, seems to have been
confiding in him. They were in Benin City for thirty days, but during this time
their men, from drinking palm-wine and other causes, were dying at the rate of
four and five a day. This made Captain Windham send to tell them to return at
once; but as they wished to wait longer till they had collected all their
pepper, Windham sent them a second message to say that if they did not return
at once he would sail away and leave them. Whereupon Pinteado returned with the intention of trying to persuade Captain Windham to stop.
Windham, however, before this, in his rage against Pinteado, had broken open the latter’s cabin and spoiled
all the “cordials and sweet-meats he had provided for his health”, and taken
away all his clothes. “After which strange procedure”, Eden says, “he [Windham]
fell sick and died”. Pinteado also, after mourning
for Windham as if he had been his dearest friend, and after having been still
worse treated by the rest of the mariners and officers, fell sick and died
likewise. Then this unfortunate expedition had to sink one of their ships for
want of hands to navigate her, and eventually returned to England with scarcely
forty out of the original 140 able-bodied men who had started in it. Poor
Captain Pinteado must have been unlucky most of his
life, for before leaving Portugal he seems to have suffered long imprisonment
on a false charge. Amongst his papers was a quaint one, a Royal Patent
appointing him one of the Knights of the Royal Household of Portugal, with a
salary of ten shillings a month, and half a bushel of barley every day so long
as he should keep a horse; but with an injunction not to marry for six years,
lest he might have children to succeed in this allowance.
After this, though there were several English
expeditions to the Coast of Guinea, none seemed to have reached Benin until
1589, or over thirty years afterwards. In 1588, the charter I have spoken of
was granted by Queen Elizabeth to certain merchants of Devon, to trade between
the Rivers Senegal and Gambia, or, as they were called then. Senega and Gambra. At the end of
1588 two worthy merchants of London, Bird and Newton by name, fitted out
another expedition to Benin, consisting of one ship of one hundred tons and a pinnace, under the chief command of a Captain James Welsh,
who made two voyages in succession to these parts and wrote the account of
them. This expedition of one 100-ton ship and one pinnace seems rather small in these days, especially after the late Punitive
Expedition, which consisted of two first-class cruisers of 12,000 tons, one
second-class, three third-class, and three gunboats. Captain Welsh’s expedition
eventually left Plymouth on the 14th December 1588, and reached the mouth of the
Benin River on the 14th February 1589. Here Anthony Ingram, the chief factor,
and several of the others got into the pinnace and
ship’s boats and proceeded to Benin City. Gwatto, or, as they called it, Goto, seems to have been then, as now, the landing-place
for Benin City, and there accordingly the party landed. They also seem to have
been well treated by the reigning monarch, who promised them all the pepper,
etc., they wanted. This was not the same king that received Captain Pinteado, for the present one stated that during his reign
no Christians had traded for pepper in his country, consequently that there
wasn’t much ready, but that he would have plenty of it ready for them when they
returned next year. This expedition also suffered badly from fever, losing many
men, including the son of one of the owners of the ship and the captain, Hempsteed. They got back again to Plymouth in September the
same year.
Captain Welsh started off again in September the next
year, 1590, with the same ship and under the same owners. This time they
reached the mouth of the Benin River about the 15th January 1591, and the
captain and merchants went up the river as before in the small boats. They got
all their cargo on board and sailed away for England by the 28th April, reaching
England only on the 13th December. Each time the cargo they brought back was
much the same,— elephants’ teeth, bags of pepper, and barrels of palm-oil;
while the “commodities” they took out are not so very dissimilar to those used
in trade nowadays, namely, “broad cloth, kersies,
bays [whatever they may be], linen cloth, unwrought iron, copper bracelet
[called manillas, and used now by certain tribes in
the Protectorate], coral [which is still much worn, and tremendously sought
after by the chiefs and rich men of the Benin River], hawks’ bells, horses’
tails, hats, and the like”.
In none of the accounts of these voyages is there any
description of Benin City itself, but from a Dutch account written a few years
later it appears to have been quite a magnificent city. The narrator talks of
entering the city on horseback through a gate where there was a very thick high
earthen bulwark, with a deep broad ditch, which, however, was dry and full of
high trees. Later writers also speak of Benin City being surrounded by a high
wall, but it seems to have disappeared long ago. The Dutch explorer quoted
above, whose name, I believe, was Dantsic, also
speaks of an enormous broad street running through the city, and other great
streets running off it — so long that it was impossible to see to the end of
them. He also gives a description of the King’s Court, which seems to have been
very grand, of the number of horses the King possessed (nowadays no Benin City
man has ever seen a horse, or scarcely heard of one, as there are none anywhere
near it). The King also had many soldiers, many gentlemen, many slaves, and
many wives— only about six hundred! Twice a year the King of those days went
out of his Court and visited the town, accompanied by his six hundred wives.
The gentlemen of Benin also had many wives — some eighty, some ninety, some
more. These gentlemen seem to have been the aristocracy of Benin, and used to
come to the Court riding on a horse, with a man on each side, to hold them on I
suppose, and other slaves carrying big shields, to keep the sun off the
gentlemen’s heads, whilst yet more slaves made music for them, playing on
drums, “hornes and flints, — some have a hollow iron
whereon they strike”. As all this music came immediately after the gentleman on
his horse, it is no wonder that he had to be held on his horse, or, as the
narrative puts it, “having on each side a man, on whom they hold fast”.
Even in those days, though sacrifices are not
mentioned, the chief executioner seems to have been a most important personage.
After this, Benin City was visited frequently by
explorers and traders of all nationalities. And though at first the Portuguese
seem to have been the paramount European Power, their language and names being
used for a long time by the Benin people, they seem to have gradually
disappeared from Benin City in the same way as they left all their places on
the Gold Coast and other parts of the Central West African coast-line. The
Dutch seem to have succeeded them; and a most interesting account of a visit to
Benin City about the year 1700 by a Dutchman called David Van Nyendaeel is given by one William Bossman,
a most worthy person, chief factor of the Dutch possessions in West Africa at
that time, and the leading authority on that part of the world. Van Nyendaeel speaks in admiration of Benin City and its great
long and broad streets, and also makes mention of human sacrifices. In his days
the Benin men were great makers of ornamental brass-work, which they seem to
have learned from the Portuguese. Amongst other notable travellers of later days who visited Benin City were Belzoni, the great Egyptian
traveller, who died at Gwatto in 1823, and also Sir Richard Burton, who seems
to have gone to every place in that part of the world that was worth seeing and
at all hard to get at. Captain H. L. Gallwey, D.S.O.,
of the East Lancashire Regiment, who had been appointed Vice-Consul of the
Benin River District, visited the city in 1892, and from his account Benin City
was only the ruins of its former greatness; no fine broad roads, nothing but
collections of houses here and there.
Of course, in the slave-trading era, Benin City, like
all the big towns in the Protectorate, was a great centre for obtaining slaves, and I believe that Captain Gallwey’s party saw the remains of an old slave barracoon close
outside the city. With the abolition of the slave trade one great source of
wealth disappeared, and by the stupidity of the King in stopping all his people
from trading every now and then, most of the others disappeared also, till the
once great Benin City became what the Punitive Expedition found it, namely, a
very large collection of scattered huts scarcely superior to any ordinary
village of those parts. The country in itself is rich enough in trade produce, such
as palm-oil, kernels, etc., and about ten years ago there were several
factories on the Benin River doing an excellent trade with the Benin City
Country, but in the last few years the amount of trade has dwindled down to
almost nil, and now the different firms have built fresh factories at Sapele, some fifty miles up the Benin River, at the
junction of the Jamieson and Ethiope Rivers, where
three-quarters of the trade of the Benin River District now goes to.
Another source of wealth to the King of Benin used to
be the Benin Juju. Juju in this case meant a very powerful spirit or god that
lived in Benin City, and was represented by the King. So powerful was it that
until about three or four years ago some of the big chiefs close behind Lagos,
who, one would have thought, were civilized enough to know better, used to send
an annual subsidy or tribute on account of the Juju. The Benin River chiefs did
the same, but their tribute was partly to induce the King to keep the trade
open.
Then, again, the King was supposed to be very rich in
ivory, as he received, or was supposed to receive, one tusk of every elephant
shot in his dominions; but this ivory he seems to have stacked in his houses
instead of selling. His slaves also, owing to the amount of wretched human
sacrifices perpetrated every year, must have been an expensive item in his
accounts. Both slaves and ivory came from the Sobo and Abracca countries to the east of the Benin City
Country proper, but which were part of the Benin Kingdom. It is to be hoped
when the country has got settled down after the late expedition that the trade
will revive again, for the country, as I have said, is rich in all kinds of
produce, palm-oil, kernels, rubber, kola nut etc. etc., and I fancy the people
will be only too willing to open up trade when they find they can do it for
themselves, and without let or hindrance from the King of Benin and his Juju
men. Of course this will take some time, for, being so absolutely steeped in
superstition, and having had so little intercourse with white men, it will be
hard to make the people realize that their all-powerful Juju is a thing of the
past, and no longer has any power over them. By their old Juju they were
forbidden to leave their country or to cross water, consequently no Benin men
could ever get into canoes, and in the days of trade had to rely on the Jakris and Ejaws, the two great
trading tribes of this district. These two tribes act as middlemen between the
English merchants and the tribes dwelling farther inland, and from whose
country the palm-oil and other trade-stuffs come, and are very anxious to
prevent the two — the white man and the oil -producer — from meeting. However,
as year by year the country is getting gradually opened up, the part of
middleman will be done away with to a great extent, especially in the case of
the Benin City Country.
Of the farther parts of the Benin Kingdom in the Sobo plains and Abracca country
not much is known, as, by the King of Benin’s orders, no white man has been
allowed to go any distance away from the Ethiope River, on the right bank of which it lies. A great deal has been done in the
last few years towards exploring and opening up the country on the left bank of
the Ethiope, and beyond that again by the
Protectorate officials, notably Captain Gallwey,
Major Crawford, and Mr. Locke; and now the opening up of the country on the
right bank is only a matter of time. I believe that it was somewhere in the
direction of this country that the King of Benin and his counselors fled after
the taking of Benin City by the Punitive Expedition. By this capture was ended
the ancient kingdom of Benin; and it is curious to think that a people who seem
to have been more or less civilized in the sixteenth century, with a city that
excited the admiration of all the Europeans of that date, should at the end of
this nineteenth century have relapsed into a state of absolute savagedom, inferior to most of the peoples round them,
whilst the wonderful city became a collection of half-ruined mud houses, not
much better than the huts in an ordinary native village. The same has been the
case with other West African kingdoms which have been once famous, such as Dahomey and Ashanti, the rulers of which, having been more
or less spoiled by the deference and attention shown them by the various white
men who have visited their countries, have gradually become far too big for
their boots; and, imagining they were more powerful than any European nation,
have by degrees and their conceited behaviour stopped
the white men visiting them, and by so doing have become almost as pure savages
as they were before their first contact with Europeans. Wherefrom anyone can
deduce a moral to suit whatever his private opinion may be.
I was in Coomassie, the
capital of Ashanti, for a short time in April 1892, in command of the escort of
a small expedition under Captain J. I. Lang, R.E., who was British Commissioner
for settling the western boundary of the Gold Coast with the French. We had
expected to find a respectable town, but saw nothing but a collection of small
villages, the huts of which were nearly all in a half-ruinous condition. The
huts that had been told off to us looked like sieves, and were altogether in a
very tumble-down state. The King’s palace was a good deal better, and he was
building himself a palaver-house that was supposed to be something very grand,
but after all it was nothing more than an extra-large mud hut with the walls
more carefully smoothed than usual. This king was of course King Prempeh, who was taken prisoner by our expedition in 1896.
The only glory of Coomassie was in the remains of the
stone wall of the old palace, which was knocked down by our troops under Lord Wolseley in the war of 1875. Each of these stones had been
brought from a distance of one hundred miles on the heads of natives, as there
is no stone in the country, which made it of course extra valuable.
We certainly had a grand reception from some 12,000 to
14,000 men, and the King alone was a sight to see, being a mass of gold from a
kind of fireman’s helmet he had on to the tips of his sandals, which alone must
have been worth some hundreds of pounds. Still, with all this reception there
were no signs of any civilization, and the Coomassies had relapsed into most of the usual customs of savages, which had at one time
been stopped — particularly of human sacrifices, which led to the last
expedition of 1896. A peculiar thing happened during the latter part of this
ceremony. The King, who at that time was a boy under twenty, I should think,
and fat enough to have posed as a fat woman in a fair, condescended to dance
before us, to the extreme and almost delirious joy of his people, who get such
a treat but rarely. In this dance he went through various actions with a toy
bow and arrow, a toy gun, and other things, which actions represented that he
was the best shot in the world with a bow and arrow, a gun, the strongest man
in the world, and so on. Suddenly a Mr. Vroon, now a
C.M.G., and one of the District Commissioners of the Gold Coast, who was with us,
and who knew more about the manners and customs of the Ashantis than most people, held up two fingers, upon which the King more or less
collapsed. Mr. Vroon explained to us afterwards that
the King had been doing something which meant that the Ashantis were the most powerful nation in the world; the two fingers held up meant that
England was more powerful, as shown in the '75 war, up to which date the Ashantis really believed that they could “lick creation”.
This 1875 war had never been forgotten by either the Ashantis or by the many tribes released from their objectionable rule as the effects of
that war; so, naturally, the King collapsed.
However, I am afraid I have wandered some way from the
kingdom of Benin. Let its ashes rest in peace, so that there may be no more
peaceful expeditions to it like our fatal one.
CHAPTER II
THE ROYAL NIGER COMPANY AND H.B.M.’S NIGER COAST
PROTECTORATE
THERE seems to be a good deal of confusion at home
between the Royal Niger Company and the Niger Coast Protectorate, so some
explanation may be acceptable. The Royal Niger Company, a chartered company,
started about 1885 by buying out — or amalgamating in itself — all the
different companies, English and foreign, then trading on the Lower Niger. In
the next year, 1886, they obtained their charter, and also the right to
administer the country from the Nun mouth of the Niger as far as a place called
Say, which was supposed to be the boundary between the Company’s and French
spheres of influence. Since then they have gone ahead rapidly, somewhat on the
lines of the old East India Company, making treaties with all the big chiefs
within their sphere, and by so doing stopping the advance of the French on the
one side and the Germans on the other. Within their territory lie the great
Hausa States, Sokoto, Gando,
etc. These Hausa States are the result of a great Mohammedan invasion from the
north some very long time ago, and the inhabitants are a very civilized race.
They are all Mohammedans, and some of them can still write and read Arabic. The
Hausas are supposed to be the best-fighting race in this part of the world, and
the Niger Company’s constabulary are recruited nearly entirely from them. The
principal stations of the Company, all of them on the Niger itself, are Lokoja, at the junction of the Benué with the Niger, and the headquarters of the troops; Asaba,
the administrative headquarters; and Akassa, at the
mouth of the Great River, and which was the scene of the attack on the Niger
Company by the natives from Brass in January 1895. The coast-line of the
Company lies between the Forcados and Brass Rivers.
The Niger Coast Protectorate, formerly called the Oil
Rivers Protectorate, lies between our own colony of Lagos on one side, and the
German colony of the Cameroons on the other, with the exception of the bit I
have mentioned as belonging to the Royal Niger Company. The Protectorate is one
mass of rivers large and small, and creeks by the thousand break the
coast-line. The principal big ones are the Benin River, the Forcados,
Brass, — one of the many offshoots of the Niger, — New Calabar,
and Bonny, which are virtually offshoots of the Niger also, as they come from
the Oguta lake, which is connected with the Niger, Opobo, Qua, Ibo, Cross, and Old Calabar Rivers. Between these are many small rivers useless for navigation, the mouths
being too shallow to allow ships of any size to cross, and in addition for some
thirty to forty miles inland the country is simply, one network of creeks which
join river to river. These creeks are more or less navigable for small
steam-launches, so that it is very nearly possible to get from one end of the
Protectorate to the other by water, land communication near the sea being
practically nil.
The Protectorate of the Niger Coast was formally
assumed in 1884, and was originally called the Oil Rivers Protectorate, from
the fact of these rivers supplying the main part of the palm-oil exported from
West Africa. At first it was administered by one consul, whose headquarters
were at Old Calabar, and who had to do everything
himself. In 1891 a proper Government was formed under an Imperial Commissioner,
the first being Major (now Sir Claude) MacDonald, K.CM.G., H.M.'s Minister at
Peking. A vice-consul was placed in charge of all the important districts —
Benin, Brass, Bonny, Opobo, and Old Calabar — with consular agents at those and other stations.
A small force of soldiers was raised in 1891, 350 strong, afterwards raised to
450, whose headquarters are at Old Calabar, also the
headquarters of the Government, with detachments at Sapele,
Brass, and Degamah. The men are mostly Yorubas, with a fair-sized minority of Hausas. Yorubas are supposed generally to be individually inferior
to the Hausas in the way of pluck, but, personally, I don't think there is much
difference; and as a body of men I prefer the Yorubas,
as they are steadier and more easily kept in hand, and consequently men better
suited to the close bush-fighting of the country than the merry Hausa, who is
apt to get a bit out of hand at close quarters and delights in charging in with
his knife individually. From the large amount of country it is supposed to
protect, and the number of different tribes to be dealt with, this small force
sees a good deal of active service each year. Apart from numerous small
expeditions, in one of which Captain Price, the late Commandant of the Force,
was killed, it has taken part in conjunction with a Naval Brigade in three
larger ones. The first against Nanna, the head chief
of the Benin River, in 1894, in which it lost another officer, Captain Lawlor, R. M. L. I.; the second against the Brass natives,
who had attacked and looted the Royal Niger Company’s station at Akassa; and lastly in the late Punitive Expedition to Benin
City, in which, being in front the whole time, they had most of the fighting,
and in which, I am glad to say, Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, K.C.B., Colonel Bruce
Hamilton, who commanded them, and everyone who saw them, spoke most highly of
them. It is a most compact little force, too, possessing four 7-pounder field
guns and three Maxims, one or other of which accompany every expedition. The
7-pounders are most excellent guns, as they are made to stand any amount of
knocking about, and also to be mounted and dismounted in a very short space of
time. They are much disliked by the natives of the country, who call them “them
gun that shoot twice”, referring to the explosion of the shells, which they
consider distinctly unfair, taking place as it does so far away from the gun,
and mostly unpleasantly close to themselves, when they are, as they fondly
imagine, out of range. Another thing they object to strongly is the war rocket,
which they look on as an invention of the devil, and cannot understand how the
wretched thing keeps on working its way through the thickest of forest, looking
for them everywhere, as it were.
It is a peculiar country to deal with, the
Protectorate, so far as its inhabitants are concerned, there being so many and
various tribes with all their different languages and dialects. Thus a Jakri from the Benin River would be almost as much a
stranger amongst the Old Calabar people as a white
man. Then again, since King Jaja of Opobo was deported many years ago, and now that His Majesty
of Benin has had to fly, there are no big chiefs by dealing with whom one could
settle big tracts of country. It is a case of dealing with chief by chief,
village by village, and it has often happened to officials trying to get
through the country, exploring and opening it up, that though one village of a
tribe might be most friendly and do everything in their power to help the white
man, their own brethren of the next village would be the very reverse, and make
him turn back again.
In the olden days of slave-trading, the Rivers, as the
present Protectorate used to be called, was one of the great centres of that trade, and the big chiefs of Bonny, Opobo, and Old Calabar, the
easiest places to get at, amassed much wealth in consequence. At such places,
which are the headquarters of the district, and where they have been in touch
with white men for some time, the natives are fairly civilized, especially now
when many of the jeunesse dorée come to
England to complete their education, but the people living in between the
rivers and farther inland are still savages pure and simple. As in the Benin
River, so with all the other rivers, the natives living hear the sea and near
the various factories are the middlemen traders between the English merchants
and the tribes living farther inland, who are the oil-producers. As it would
mean the loss of their commission, the middlemen are very keen to prevent the
white men trading with the actual oil-producers, and have been successful in
doing so for many years by spreading such evil reports about the white man and
what he will do, that the inland tribes are very shy about letting the white
man come into their country. However, this is gradually coming to an end, as
the country gets more opened up each year.
Although the languages are different, the manners and
customs of the different tribes in the Protectorate are much the same. The
great Mohammedan invasion, which came down from the north and founded the Hausa
States, stopped short at the River Benué, the big
confluent of the Niger, and never reached the country now under the
Protectorate, so that it is still the land of Juju. Juju here is everything,
religion, superstition, custom, anything. And with it go such gentle customs as
human sacrifices, cannibalism, twin-killing, and others. Of course all these
customs are being abolished as fast as possible, and every year sees law and
order brought into fresh big tracts of country where before all these brutalities
used to take place. As far as human sacrifices are concerned, life in these
parts, anyway the life of a slave, is not valued at much, and the gentle savage
cannot understand why we should object to a few men being killed for a big
man’s funeral, or for some similar purpose, when such has been the custom of
the country ever since there were people in it. Then the big man who is about
to die also objects strongly, for he says that no one in the other world will
believe that he has been a big man in this, unless he brings a certain amount
of slaves with him to show what he can do in that line. He also thinks it is
very hard lines that, after having spent so much money in celebrating his
relative’s funeral and in purchasing slaves for his own, he cannot do what he
likes with his own goods and chattels. It is the anniversary of the death of
the chiefs grandmother’s aunt, up go a few slaves; a new market is to be
opened, up goes a wretched slave; nothing seemed to be celebrated properly in
this Juju land unless it was accompanied by the death of some unfortunates. Of
course I am talking about Benin City and such-like places, where the rule of
the Protectorate had not yet reached, for if we could get at them there was
always punishment for any town or village committing human sacrifices after
having been warned not to.
Cannibalism was also one of the sweet things of the
past all over the Protectorate. Even the Brass natives, who were a fairly
civilized people, most of whom could talk English, and in whose town, Nimbe, there was a mission-station, with a sweet little
church, were not beyond it. And after their successful raid on Akassa, mentioned above, most of them killed and ate the Kroo boy prisoners they had taken there. There was one
brilliant exception. Chief Warri, now the head chief of that part of the world,
who kept his prisoners, treated them exceedingly well, and sent them all down
to the Vice-Consulate afterwards. Amongst the cannibals was the son of a chief
just returned from England, where he had been for some years being educated in
a missionary college. There happened to be a French father from the Roman
Catholic Mission at Onicha on the Niger, in Nimbe, the capital of the Brassmen,
at the time, who of course wasn’t allowed to go away, but was otherwise well
treated. This educated, civilized chiefs son, waltzing about the town with a Kroo boy’s leg over his shoulder, came across the father,
and said, “Father, have a bit”. Civilization had not gone very deep.
The killing of twins is another wretched, insane
custom that seems to have been in force for centuries, but which is also being
stopped all over the Protectorate. The usual thing was when a wretched woman
gave birth to twins for the babies to be killed or thrown into the bush to die,
and the unfortunate mother to be driven away, never allowed to come near any
town or village, and most probably to die of starvation in the bush. The house
in which the twins were born, and everything in it, was destroyed, and the
father had to pay sacrifices of sheep and fowls by way of purifying the village
again. After that he could take another wife, but could never have his former
wife back, or even see her again. Now villages, called twin villages, have been
made in several places, where the unfortunate mothers can go and live, while
the babies are saved and brought up by someone else.
By far the best work in this line has been done by a
Miss Slessor, one of the lady missionaries from the
Scotch Mission at Old Calabar. She has settled
herself in a district called Okoyon, some way inland
from the Old Calabar River, of which district she is
virtually queen, as in it her word is law, and the natives, who adore her, do
nothing without consulting her. She has taught herself to speak the language of
the country as well as any native, and knows far more about the history and
relationship of all the different chiefs of that part of the world than any one
of the natives themselves. She has got such a hold over the people that all
killing of twins and such-like evil customs have been absolutely stopped. When
twins are born, Ma, as Miss Slessor is called by her
people, is at once sent for. By washing the house and all its contents herself
she is considered to have re-purified it, and is allowed to save the woman and
take the twins back to her own house, — a house, by the way, that she has more
or less built with her own hands. All this she has done entirely by herself in
a very large district where, not many years ago, there was nothing but disorder
and trouble. However, these things are nearly all things of the past so far as
the Government of the Protectorate has been able to reach, and the natives are
beginning to understand that it is better to live under law and order than in
the old days when might was right.
Besides the various Consular Courts at the different
Vice-Consulates, native Courts have been established over all the lower part of
the Protectorate, presided over by the chiefs themselves. In fact, life
altogether in the Protectorate has changed entirely in the last six years. In
olden days the traders, who were, with the missionaries, the sole white
inhabitants of the Rivers, used to live in hulks moored near the banks of the
river. Now both traders and officials live in comfortable wooden houses, and,
instead of the hard drinking carousals that one hears of in the past, every
river has its cricket and tennis club.
One thing that has not changed is the climate. The
Rivers was supposed to be the most unhealthy place in West Africa, which is
saying a good deal. According to the old saying —
The Bights of Benin, the Bights of Benin,
Where few come out though many go in.
But I believe that by late statistics the average
death-rate of the Protectorate is not nearly so high as those of our own
colonies of the Gold Coast and Lagos. Of course the malarial fever of the
country is bad, very bad, and seems to attack all sorts and conditions of men,
temperate or intemperate, active or otherwise, which is not surprising to
anyone who has been in a mangrove country, for at low tide the swamps of black
mud that are left seem to pour out malaria. No one seems to have discovered yet
what the mangrove is good for beyond making a dismal swamp and breeding
malaria. The wood is so hard that it blunts the sharpest axe, neither will it
float. It certainly is the home of the mangrove oyster, for at low water one
can gather any number of oysters off the mangrove roots; but then no one will
eat them, as there is a general idea that the mangrove oyster is teeming with
malaria.
Up country it is very different, great forests with
magnificent trees, silk, cotton, mahogany, what is called false mahogany, canwood, and others, making a glorious sight, especially
when one comes to the high land up the Cross River, where one can get
magnificent views over miles and miles of the surrounding country. Inside the
forest, or bush as it is called, it is not quite so pleasant, the bush being so
thick that one can see nothing, but has to stick to the native paths. However,
I have tried to describe the West African bush elsewhere, so will not say
anything more about it here. It is owing to this dense bush that one can get no
big game shooting. There are plenty of elephants in different parts of the
Protectorate, but one only comes across them accidentally. There might be
elephants within a quarter of a mile of one, but, thanks to the dense bush they
might just as well be five hundred miles off in regard to discovering their
presence. There are also hippopotami on some of the rivers, a place called Itu being always a sure find, as there is always a herd of
hippo there ready to be shot at, who seem to say, !It amuses them and doesn’t
hurt us”, as they are invariably in the same place; and though many shots have
been fired at them, I have only known of one being shot in the last three
years. Plenty of ammunition, too, can be wasted on crocodiles, which abound in
every river. They are not very satisfactory shooting, however, as they have a
mean way, when hit, of struggling into the water and disappearing. After being
dead for two days, and if not eaten by their brethren, people say the bodies
rise again and float on the surface, but whether this is true or not I know
not. At Old Calabar these brutes have got so tame, as
it were, that they have several times taken away a person bathing amongst a
crowd of others in water scarcely knee-deep.
Talking of Old Calabar reminds one that in this, the headquarters or capital of the Protectorate, has
been the greatest change. Six years ago, beyond the traders' houses on the bank
of the river and the missionary settlement on what is now called Mission Hill,
there were few signs of civilization beyond a barn-like building, which was the
Consul’s residence. Now it is admired by all visitors, for what is called the
Consulate Hill has been cleared of all bush, excellent wooden double-storeyed houses built for the officials, and properly
drained roads made in all directions. In addition it boasts of a European
hospital, to which all white men, officials or traders, are taken when seriously
ill, and presided over by four English lady nurses, who by their presence and
their great care have already saved many a white man’s life who in days gone by
would have left his bones in West Africa, although the hospital has been in
existence barely three years. There are also the headquarter barracks of the
Protectorate Force, making a most picturesque little square, and as clean as
any British regiment could keep them, while behind them is a native village
built by the soldiers themselves for the accommodation of the ladies and
children of the regiment, called Soldier Town. Every recruit, when he has
joined long enough to save sufficient money, starts a wife, who is the reverse
of an expense to him, as in addition to cooking his “chop” (Anglice, food), the women,
especially Yorubas, who are born traders, generally
manage to make some money for their husbands by trading, but also often manage
to get those same husbands into trouble, for “Cherchez la femme” is not seldom
the solution of a row, and many black Mulvaneys have,
like him, got into trouble by not keeping out of the married quarters. The
barrack square is also the cricket ground, and, though the boundaries are a
little close for big hitters, an excellent ground it makes. There is generally
a cricket match every Saturday, when the band plays, tea is dispensed, and the
ladies from the mission and hospital come and keep the rude man from forgetting
his manners and politeness. In addition, the hard-working and weary official
can generally get a game of lawn tennis or quoits every evening; while the
magic game of golf has not failed to make its appearance here, and the ardent
and hot followers of the game use just as many bad words and grumble just as
much at their exceptional bad luck as their brethren of the club at home.
Another of the glories of Old Calabar is the brass band of the Force, which they own in addition to the usual drum
and fife band. The instruments for this brass band arrived about the end of
March 1894, but at the end of 1896 they were able to play selections from the
Gaiety Girl and other comic operas, in addition to enough dance music for the programmes for two balls which took place in Calabar at the beginning of January 1897. Not half of the
bandsmen could make themselves understood in English, but all of them now read
music, and after not much more than a week’s practice will be able to play the
very latest selection received by the last mail. This excellence, for
excellence it is, is owing to their having had a most enthusiastic
band-president in Captain Searle, one of the officers of the Force, and an
equally enthusiastic and hardworking bandmaster in Mr. Lipman,
a West Indian, who for some years was in the band of one of the West India
Regiments, and has been trained at Kneller Hall, the Military College of Music
in London. So much for playtime at Old Calabar.
On the different rivers it is much the same as at Old Calabar, but as a rule most of the officials are going the
rounds of their respective districts, and always trying to get farther into the
interior each time. This is especially so in the dry season, when the ground is
no longer one continued swamp and each little streamlet not swollen up by the
rain. The rainy season generally commences about March or April with a succession
of thunder-storms, called tornadoes in West Africa, and lasts till about the
end of October or the beginning of November, finishing up with another
succession of tornadoes. Between November and March is the dry season, when,
with the exception of a few storms, no rain falls. The dry season is also the
hot season of this part of the world, and as a rule the end of it is the most
unhealthy part of the year for Europeans. The rainy season is a bit cooler, but
there is no doubt about its being a rainy season, for as a rule the rain comes
down in seas from the sky, and I should be called a speaker of untruths if I
mentioned the number of inches that have fallen in some periods of twenty-four
hours. Anyway, the total rainfall is supposed to be the heaviest in the world.
There yet remains a certain amount of country in the
interior of the Protectorate and west of the Cross River to be opened up, and
at present the natives are very suspicious of the white man, and will not allow
any white man through their various districts. At the end of last year, 1896,
two of the Protectorate officials, Major Leonard and Captain James, managed to
reach a place called Bende, some sixty miles into the
interior from the head of the Opobo River, which no
white man had been able to get to before. But their success was to a certain
degree due to their having with them several chiefs of the Opobo River tribes who trade with Bende, and also to their
being supposed to be the possessors of “big Juju” (powerful magic) in the shape
of soda-water, the natives being much impressed with the corks popping out of
the bottles with no apparent effort. It sounds silly, of course, but trifles
like these often lead to the success of an expedition. And often in similar
ones, unless one has a fairly strong force with which to impress awe and
respect, to be successful one has to go through, according to the manners and
customs of the country, what we consider all sorts of childishness; for one man
alone, even though he be a white man, and in consequence a curiosity, is but a
small man unless he has a big expedition at his back. When this interior
country has been opened up and settled, the Protectorate will be in touch with
the Royal Niger Company’s stations on the Benué River, the great branch of the Niger, and in not many years to come will be, it
is hoped, one of Her Majesty's richest and most valuable colonies in West
Africa.
CHAPTER III
POSITION OF BENIN
THE kingdom of Benin lies somewhere between the
latitudes of 5º to 6º N. and the longitudes 5º to 6" E. In olden days it
used to reach right down to the coast-line, but how far inland to the north and
east it is almost impossible to tell. Lately none of the Benin City Country
touched the Benin River, but was bounded on the west and south by the Gwatto
and Ilogi Creeks. Consequently, anyone who has not
been there is apt to get somewhat confused in hearing of the different Benins. First of all there is Benin City and the Benin
Kingdom, then the Benin River, near the mouth of which is what is called New
Benin, consisting of the different factories and the old Vice-Consulate House,
now only used as a Custom and Post office, and finally what is known as the Benin
District, under a Vice-Consul, which comprises all the country around and
between Sapele and Warri.
To take the river first, which is only called the
Benin River for about fifty miles, as above Sapele,
which is about that distance from the sea, two smaller streams join, one of
which flows from the north, being called the Jamieson, and the other from the
east, the Ethiope. The Jamieson is navigable for
steam launches for about thirty miles to a place called Sapobah;
from there small canoes can get up only a little farther, as the river becomes
but a small stream too narrow for any navigation, and overgrown with big forest
trees. The Ethiope comes into Sapele from the east, and was the south-east boundary of the Benin Kingdom. On the
left bank are another tribe called the Sobos, who are
the great oil-producers of this part of the world, and who also used to produce
the majority of slaves for the Benin City people. Sapele has now become the headquarters of the government and trade of the Benin River,
the Consulate and several factories having been moved there. It is a lovely
place to look at, as there is a magnificent background of huge forest trees to
all the different clearings, while on the other bank is one dense mass of
foliage, the forest reaching right down to the water-side. Here, too, the water
begins to become beautifully clear, and is studded every here and there with
masses of water-lilies and small green islands made of water plants just
peeping above the surface of the water. However lovely to look at, it is not
quite so pleasant to live in, being, like all this part of West Africa, more or
less unhealthy.
From Sapele a good road has
been made across to Warri, about twenty-five miles distant, where is the other
Protectorate Government Vice-Consulate of this part of the world. From Warri
the great Niger River can be reached by water through what is called the Warri
branch of the Niger, one of its numberless offshoots, and, in the event of the
Niger River and Niger Coast Protectorate ever coming under the same government,
would be a place of great importance, as the big main line steamers can get up
easily to Warri from the Forcados River, while at
present they have a little difficulty sometimes in reaching the Royal Niger
Company’s depôts at Boruta,
situated on the left bank of the Forcados River, and Akassa, at the mouth of the river Nun entrance of the
Niger.
To return to Sapele : about
eight miles below is Warrigi, where the main column
of the Naval Brigade was concentrated before the advance on Benin City. Seven
miles north from Warrigi is Ciri on the Ilogi Creek, where the Niger Coast
Protectorate troops were, and close to Ilogbo, a town
on the other bank, and which was first attacked on the advance. The Ilogi Creek here was the southern boundary of the Benin
Kingdom, and running up first east and then northwards comes from close to
Benin City, and was the creek from which the inhabitants got their water. From Ciri it runs in a south-westerly direction, and eventually
joins the Benin River about twenty-five miles lower down from Sapele.
As one goes down the Benin River all the forest land
and high banks gradually disappear, and the melancholy mangrove takes the place
of everything. Some twenty miles from the sea is the entrance to what is called
the Forcados or Nanna’s Creek, the latter after Nanna, who until 1894, when
he was smashed up and his town of Brohoemi burnt by a
combined force of Naval Brigade and Niger Coast Protectorate Force, under
Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, K.C.B., was the head Jakri chief of the Benin River. This Forcados Creek is the
waterway for steamers coming from the Forcados River
and the sea, the bar of the Benin River being too shallow to let anything but
small steamers come across it. Opposite the entrance to the Forcados Creek, which is on the left bank of the Benin River, is the entrance to the
Gwatto Creek.
Farther down the river, on the same side as the Gwatto
Creek, i.e. the right bank of the river, are two big creeks called respectively Adabrassi and Lagos Creeks, and amongst many others
one important small one leading to Brohoemi, the town
of Nanna, the chief mentioned above, and, as he
thought, the only way of arriving at his town, surrounded by swamps as it was,
— in fact, it was actually built on a swamp. Consequently, this creek was
defended by a battery of big guns mounted behind a hidden stockade, most
artistically screened so as not to be seen from the creek. This battery fired
on H.M.S. Alecto’s steam pinnace,
which was reconnoitring up the creek, and very nearly
sank her, the pinnace only reaching the Alecto in a sinking condition, and with everyone on board
her, some six or seven, with the exception of her commander. Captain J. Heugh, badly wounded. Amongst these was Major Crawford, who
was killed in the last fatal expedition to Benin City. Unfortunately for Nanna, the force, when they eventually attacked Brohoemi, waded through the swamp, generally waist-deep in
mud, and attacked from the side Nanna least expected,
and on which he had got but few of his guns trained.
To return to the Benin River: on the left bank, nearly
opposite the entrance to the Lagos Creek, is the Deli Creek, the route that
steam launches take going to the Forcados River, but
which is too narrow for steamers. Passing the Lagos Creek, and on the same
bank, we come very soon to the factories and the old Vice-Consulate, which are
about six miles from the mouth of the river, and which are called, as I have
said, New Benin. The Government House is only a Customs and Post-office
station, part of the house and most of the outbuildings having been removed to Sapele; while, of the many factories that there used to be
here, only four remain used, the rest being represented by a few remains, as
trade at the mouth of the river has year by year sunk to something very small.
On the opposite side of the river to New Benin, and
some way from the river bank up a small creek, is the town of Baterri, where Chief Dore, the head chief of the river
since Nanna's downfall, lives. It is built on one of
the few patches of solid ground to be found hereabouts, for the whole country
near the coast-line is simply a network of creeks and mangrove swamp, any
villages that there are being hidden some distance away from the banks of the
river, or creek, and the only entrance to which is usually some
insignificant-looking little creek. It is melancholy work sometimes steering
through these creeks from station to station in a launch, going hours together
without seeing a sign of a human being, and nothing to look at but the
depressing mangrove and swamp, and smelling nothing but the still more
depressing effluvia of the mud.
For many years past the only way of reaching Benin
City was by Gwatto, which is about forty-five miles up the Gwatto Creek from
its entrance into the Benin River. There the Gwatto Creek is about
three-quarters of a mile wide, and surrounded by mangrove, but gradually one leaves
that behind as the creek narrows, and when one gets to the Benin Country at
Gwatto, or at Gilli Gilli,
which is two or three miles nearer, one reaches once more the high banks, good
solid ground, and forest country. At Gwatto the creek is only about forty or
fifty yards wide, and comes down from the northwards, narrowing and narrowing
the farther one gets up, till it dwindles away from the source, wherever that
may be.
The Gwatto Creek might be called the western boundary
of the late Benin Kingdom. The boundaries on the north and east I do not know,
except that somewhere to the north are a tribe called Mahins,
who were supposed to be enemies of the Benins, but
toward the north-east, in which direction the King must have fled, the country
was open to him, being part of the possessions of the late Benin Kingdom. Away
beyond is the great Yoruba land, and plenty of the Yorubas,
who are great traders, and semi-Mohammedans, used to trade in the Benin
Country, and I believe the Yoruba language is more or less understood in Benin
City. When this part of the Protectorate has been opened up and settled, it
will join the hinterland of the Lagos Colony on one side, and the possessions
of the Royal Niger Company on the other
CHAPTER IV
OUR EXPEDITION
AFTER 1892 no white man, with the exception of Mr. M’Taggart of the Niger Company, has been allowed to visit
Benin City. After the expedition against Nanna in
September 1894 there was some chance of another expedition being sent to Benin
City in the dry season of 1895, which falls in about February or March, but
owing to many causes this could not be done.
Nanna was the head chief of the Benin River natives, a Jakri, and an extremely powerful and rich man. His town, Brohoemi, made by his father Alluma,
was a most wonderful sight, the ground on which the greater part of it was
built having been reclaimed from the mangrove swamp by millions of canoe-loads
of sand poured on it. The whole place was kept extremely clean, and the houses
built in streets running at right angles to the main road, broad as Piccadilly,
which connected Nannas own part of the town with his
fathers, Alluma, which lay some half-mile distant.
Brohoemi was approached by a narrow winding creek from the
Benin River, which was some three-quarters of a mile distant. It is not
necessary here to describe how the place was captured and destroyed by a naval
and military expedition under Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, K.C.B., and
Consul-General Moor, K.M.G. Nanna before this
expedition was the greatest and most powerful of all the trading chiefs in the
Benin River, and his canoes used to visit all the different markets of the
Benin City Country itself, and also those of the farther parts of it which were
situated between the Jamieson and Ethiope Rivers, and
as a consequence his name and prestige were well known to the King of Benin.
Still, strong though he was, Nanna always paid the
King of Benin a yearly tribute, partly on account of the powerful Juju of Benin
City, and partly for trade to be kept open; and neither he nor his Jakris would have dared to attack the King of Benin, for
whom, and for whose men, the Jakris, like the Ejaws, and other trading tribes in that part of the World,
have always had a most wholesome dread.
After Nannas fall, the Benin
City people were in much fear that they would be attacked in their turn, and, I
believe, began making preparations accordingly. After some time the King began
“putting Juju on”, and closing all his markets, that is, preventing his people
from bringing palm-oil and other trade produce down to the waterside villages,
where the Jakris and others used to collect it. In
answer to remonstrances from the Consul-General, the
King of Benin consented to open a few markets, but demanded extra tribute from
the Jakri chiefs of the Benin River, from Chief Dore,
now the head of the River Dudu, and others, before he
would allow all the markets to be open as before. His latest demand at the end
of 1896, soon after Mr. Phillips had arrived in the Protectorate, was for some
twenty thousand sheets of corrugated iron roofing for his houses.
At a meeting of the chiefs of the Benin River in
November 1896, Mr. Phillips advised them to refuse to comply with this
exorbitant demand. In 1894 Mr. M’Taggart, an official
of the Royal Niger Company, visited Benin City unintentionally, so I was told.
He was accompanied by a detachment of some forty soldiers and carriers from the
Niger, and, according to repute, was misled by his guides to Benin City. He
was, I believe, kindly received by the King of Benin, but I know no more about
his visit than that he came back by way of Sapobah on
the Jamieson River. From there. Captain Gallwey, at
that time Vice-Consul of the Benin River, brought him and his men down by
launch to the Vice-Consulate at Benin, and from that place the Protectorate
yacht Ivy took him to Forcados, where he was put on
board one of the Royal Niger Company’s steamers.
During 1895 and 1896 several attempts had been made by
Major Copland Crawford, the Vice-Consul of the district; Mr. Locke, who acted
for him during his leave; Captain Maling, who was in
command of a detachment of troops at Sapele, and
others, to get to Benin City. They made their attempts from Gwatto and Ilogbo, the two main routes from the Protectorate, but all
were in vain, as each time they were stopped by Benin City soldiers. By
“stopping” is meant that they could go no farther without the certainty of
fighting, which, of course, they were not allowed to do by very strict orders
from the Consul-General. On one of these expeditions Major Crawford and Captain Maling landed at Gwatto with a detachment of twenty
soldiers and some Jakri carriers. The white men and
the soldiers were allowed to come into the town, but any wretched Jakri who showed himself was chased by the Benin City men,
and hunted back to the waterside again.
During these years every opportunity was taken by the
Protectorate officials of getting every information from natives about the
Benin Country roads, creeks, water supply, etc.; but as all this came, of
course, from native sources only, nothing reliable was known about the country
except from Captain Gallwey’s report of his visit in
1892. When Mr. Phillips, who had been appointed Acting Consul-General some six
months before, arrived in the Protectorate about the end of November 1896, he
held the meeting with the Benin River chiefs already referred to, and at the
same time sent a letter to the King of Benin saying that he would be returning
to that part of the Protectorate about the beginning of the New Year, and would
much like to pay him a visit, as he was the most powerful king in the
Protectorate. The object of the expedition was to try and persuade the King to
let white men come up to his city whenever they wanted to. All their horrible
customs could not be put down at once, except by a strong-armed expedition; but
could be stamped out gradually by officials continually going up. Trade would
also be opened up.
The expedition was arranged to start shortly after the
New Year; and, to give notice of it, messengers were sent to the King of Benin
a short time before that date, to carry him a small present (or, in West
African phraseology, a “dash”), and to tell him that the Acting Consul-General
(Phillips) was coming to visit the King, and would bring eight or nine other
white men with him. The answer received to this message, which arrived after we
had actually started from Sapele for Gwatto, was to the
effect that “the King was extremely pleased at receiving the present, which he
did not expect; but, at the same time, could not see any white men just then,
as he was celebrating the custom [West African for festival] of his father’s death”. This meant that he was
engaged in sacrificing some hundreds of unfortunate slaves. “But”, the message
went on, “in one or two months’ time he would send down, and let the
Consul-General know when he was ready to see him; at which time he hoped that
he [the Consul-General] would come, accompanied by one Jakri chief and by no other white me”."
However, more of this message later on. All
arrangements for the expedition had been made by the officials at Sapele; and most excellent arrangements they were,
especially on the part of poor Kenneth Campbell, who was in charge of the
carriers, and had worked like a slave at setting everything in perfect order.
In consequence of the number of white men going, — each of whom had three
carriers; two to carry baggage, and one for camp bed, and the extra food wanted
for their maintenance, — the necessity of having to carry water for everyone,
rations for carriers themselves, and for the drum and fife band of the Niger
Coast Protectorate Force, which Phillips intended taking with him to make some
sort of show, the number of carriers mounted up to some two hundred and forty.
One hundred and eighty of these were Jakris, supplied
by the different chiefs in the Benin and Warri Districts, and about sixty Kroo boys, supplied, some from the Government Consulate at Sapele and Warri, and the rest kindly lent from the
different factories at both places.
These Kroo boys are the labourers of nearly all West Africa, and leave their
country in thousands yearly to go and work at different places, returning after
twelve months with their year’s wages in the shape of clothes, singlets, hats of many and wonderful shapes, and other
such-like articles calculated to rouse the admiration of their
fellow-countrymen, and so useful for trade, money being absolutely useless on
the Kroo Coast. They are a wonderfully cheery,
hard-working race these Kroo boys, and very fairly
honest, and the white men in West Africa would find it hard to do without them.
The other natives of that part of the world have a very small relish for hard
work.
All these two hundred and forty men we found that
Campbell, with the help of Lyon (another Assistant District Commissioner of Sapele), had numbered and told off, each to the charge of
his particular head man and load; in fact, Campbell had made all his
arrangements as nearly perfect as possible. If it had been only on poor Kenneth
Campbell's account, the expedition deserved to have succeeded.
Phillips left Old Calabar in
the Protectorate yacht Ivy on Sunday
morning, 27th December, accompanied by Captains Searle and Ringer of the Niger
Coast Protectorate Force, who were going on a military expedition in the Isokpo Country up the New Calabar River, myself, and Mr. Powis, one of Messrs. Miller
Brothers’ agents at Old Calabar, who had lived at
Gwatto for some time, and had been to Benin City on two or three occasions a
few years previously. We left the military expedition at Degamah on the 28th December, returning ourselves to Bonny the same day. There we saw
Captain Gallwey, who was at that time Vice-Consul of
the district. It has been stated by several newspapers that if Captain Gallwey, with his knowledge of the Benin City Country and
people, had known about this expedition, he would have persuaded Phillips not
to go. Of course Gallwey did not hear the message
received by Phillips afterwards; but at the time we met him he, like all the
rest of us, never dreamt of anything serious happening, and thought we should
be entirely successful.
Personally, from what I had gathered in long talks with
Captain Maling about the Benin City people, I thought
all along we should be stopped, most probably at Gwatto. That is, I expected we
should be met by a body of Benin soldiers, and told we could get no farther. I
had said so about a month previous to this to Phillips, and had bet him the
large sum of £i that we would not reach Benin City.
He, poor old fellow, was most sanguine about our success. Of course if we had
been stopped, it would have meant that, when sanctioned by the Foreign Office,
the next expedition to Benin City would be an armed one, and we should have
gone up with as many of the Force as could be spared from the different posts
we had to keep up, and been prepared to fight if received with opposition. The
King of Benin, in the treaty he signed with Captain Gallwey,
had agreed to place himself and his country under H.M. Protectorate, and it was
becoming a perfect disgrace that in the Protectorate, particularly in a part so
close to one of our vice-consular districts, so terrible a state of affairs as
that in, what was not very improperly called, The City of Blood should
continue.
As regards my opinion about being stopped, I learnt
afterwards that this was shared by both Crawford and Locke. However, I fancy
they, like myself, were only too ready to try any chance of getting up, none of
us ever dreaming of anything so treacherously cruel as the massacre that took
place. So absolutely treacherous was it, that it horrified all the surrounding
tribes, who said, “It be monkey palaver, it no be man palaver”, meaning that
they never thought that any men could have behaved so treacherously.
We called in at Brass on the 29th December to land
some troops to relieve a detachment there, leaving again the next day. From
Brass also we took on board Captain Maling, who had
been on detachment for a short time there, and also Dr. D'Arcy Irvine, whose
time for going home on leave had arrived, and who came round with us as far as Sapele. As Dr. Elliot was going up on the expedition, Dr.
Irvine took over his duties at Sapele temporarily,
and consequently was the doctor who tended Locke and myself when we arrived
back from the expedition as wounded fugitives. Irvine waited on afterwards for
the Punitive Expedition, a division of which he accompanied up the Jamieson River.
The Ivy arrived at New Benin on the 30th of December,
and at Sapele on New Year’s Day. As Phillips was very
anxious that some member of each of the big trading firms should come with us,
he invited Mr. Gordon of the African Association, and Mr. Swainson of Mr. Pinnock’s firm, both of whom accepted the
invitation gladly. Mr. Swainson had visited Benin
City several times already, once with Captain Gallwey;
and had we been successful in getting there, his knowledge and information
would have been of immense value to us. However, luckily for himself, though he
didn't think so at the time, he was suffering so badly from rheumatism that he
was unable to accompany us.
All the Jakri carriers were
sent off on the 1st in their canoes, with all our stores, etc., with orders to
meet us at Gwatto the next day. There were Phillips, the Acting Consul-General;
Major Copland Crawford, Vice-Consul of the Benin and Warri District; Mr. Locke,
District Commissioner of Warri, and who acted as Vice- Consul for Crawford when
the latter was away on leave; Captain Maling, of the
16th Lancers, and of the Niger Coast Protectorate Force; Mr. Kenneth Campbell,
a District Commissioner at Sapele; Dr. Elliot, the
medical officer of Sapele and Benin District; Mr.
Lyon, also Assistant District Commissioner at Sapele,
who accompanied us as far as Gwatto; Messrs. Powis and Gordon, and myself; and, leaving out the last mentioned, I think it would
be hard to find a better lot of men the wide world over. Every one of them was
fit and ready to go anywhere, and do anything. All of them were men, in polo
language, “hard to hustle off the Ball”. One thinks to oneself that the whole
continent of Africa is hardly worth one of such men’s lives. However, I suppose
plenty of men quite as good have lost their lives for as little, and they died
doing their duty ; so what more can one say?
To continue the story: we had also with us two
Government interpreters; both were coloured men. One
of them, Herbert Clarke, afterwards escaped, and the other was Towey, who had been with Nanna when Brohoemi was taken. He was then taken to Old Calabar, and educated by the Protectorate Government for
interpreter’s work. He turned out exceedingly well afterwards. Both of these
men went up in a kind of bicycling costume — blue knicker-bockers,
stockings, and cloth tennis shoes. Poor Towey! His
swagger clothes were the cause of his death; as we heard afterwards that he was
captured by the Benin men, who said they would have let him go if he had been
dressed like a native; but being like a white man, he must be killed. We had
also a guide, — a Benin City man, called Basilli, —
who had fled from Benin City some years before, and who, I believe, was a
scoundrel, as he must have known something of what was going on.
About 10.30 am., as we were steaming down the Benin
River, we met Chief Dore, the head chief of the Benin River, in a canoe, with
the messengers that had been sent to the King of Benin a few days before. They
brought back the message already mentioned, namely, that the King of Benin was
extremely grateful for the unexpected present he had received; but, owing to
the annual “customs” being in the process of celebration, he hoped the
Consul-General would defer his visit for one or two months, until he (the King)
sent to tell him that he was ready to receive him. The King hoped he would come
then, accompanied only by one Jakri chief and no
white men. The messenger added, that as they were leaving Benin City they heard
orders given for parties of soldiers to be sent to all the waterside towns; but
as this was usually done whenever any white men arrived in the Benin City
Country, no one thought any more of it. However, it made both Crawford and
myself suggest that it would be advisable to send back the drum and fife band,
as, owing to their uniform, the Benin people might think we were bringing
soldiers, and this might well lead to a collision straight away. Phillips
agreed to this, and accordingly the band was sent back in Chief Dore’s canoe,
luckily for them, as their only arms consisted of bandsmen’s swords, and they
could not have done much in the way of resisting men armed with guns.
We took the messengers with us in the Primrose, and
the chief one of them, a Jakri, — whose name I am
sorry to say I have forgotten, a most intelligent man, — informed Phillips
afterwards, that just as he was leaving the King’s house, the King had spoken
to him very privately, and had told him that if the white men really were
coming up, he (the messenger) was to come back as quickly as possible and
inform him. This we took to mean that the King understood that we really meant
coming to Benin City this time, and wanted to make preparations for receiving
us.
The guess turned out more or less true, but the
preparations he made (namely, those for the ambush and massacre) were hardly
those we thought of. This man I met afterwards, when we were escaping in a
canoe on the 9th January, and he told me that after he had taken Phillips’ last
message to the King he had to run away, as the Benin men wanted to catch and
kill him; he certainly looked nearly as much of a wreck as we did that day, and
we were fairly miserable-looking objects.
Chief Dore before he left us told us the Benin men
meant to stop our getting to Benin City, and tried to persuade Phillips not to
go on; but, as I have said before, all the Jakris fear the Benin City men so much that we thought nothing of his advice or
warning. Chief Dore told me afterwards that though he advised us not to go on
at the time he never dreamt of such cruel treachery as the Benin men showed. He
only meant that he thought we should be fired on if we insisted on going any
farther than Gwatto. It was he that first used the words I have already quoted:
“ It be monkey palaver, it no be man palaver”.
CHAPTER V
OUR EXPEDITION (continued)
ON leaving us Chief Dore went on to Sapele, taking the drums and fifes back with him, while we
proceeded on in the two launches down the Benin River as far as the entrance to
the Gwatto Creek, reaching there about midday. Another of the big chiefs of the
Benin River District, Chief Dudu by name, lives about
four miles up the Gwatto Creek, but, like all the towns of the district, his
has to be approached by a small creek leading out of the Gwatto Creek. Phillips
wanted to see Chief Dudu, but as it was very low tide
when we arrived at the entrance of the narrow creek, at which time only the
smallest canoes can get up, and as we hadn’t any time to spare, a message was
left for Chief Dudu to follow us up and come on to
Gwatto.
Starting off again, we arrived at 4 p.m. at Gilli Gilli, the first Benin village
on the Gwatto Creek, which is about one and a half mile from Gwatto itself, and
about thirty-five miles from the Benin River. The Gwatto Creek, which at its
entrance to the Benin River is some three-quarters of a mile or more wide, at Gilli Gilli narrows down to about
fifty yards wide, but with plenty of water, eight to ten feet or more, for
launches.
Immediately on our arrival at Gilli Gilli, the first thing done was to send the same
messengers back to the King of Benin with the following reply from Phillips: —
“The Acting Consul - General had received the King’s message, and was very
pleased to hear that his friend, the King of Benin, had been gratified with the
present sent up to him. As he had accepted this present, it proved the King was
the white man’s friend, and he [the Acting Consul-General] was now coming to
visit the King with nine other white men, and was bringing a much larger present
with him. He regretted he could not wait two months, as the King suggested, but
he had so much work to do in other parts of the Protectorate that he was
obliged to come up now, as there were several matters he wished to talk over
with the King”.
As soon as a canoe had been obtained for them the
messengers left at once, i.e. about five o'clock, and were to reach Benin City
the next day. Another message was sent for a man called Dudu Jerri to come down and see the Acting Consul-General. This Dudu Jerri was the head man of a big village of Jakris settled at the waterside below the Benin town of Gwatto, and was a great friend
of the Benin City people. In fact, he was supposed to be too much so at times,
as he was suspected of giving them information of every expedition that left
the Benin River with the object of trying to get to Benin City. This
information he would get from his people when they were trading at the
different factories on the river.
Dudu Jerri turned up soon after, and he was also full of warnings
and forebodings, all of which we laughed at at the
time. He declared that Gwatto was full of Benin soldiers, who wouldn’t let us
land there, and would fire on us if we attempted to do so. However, he was sent
back to Gwatto to tell the chief of the town and his people that “we were
coming entirely on a peace palaver; that the King of Benin was our very good
friend, having just accepted a present from us; that we were bringing him a
still bigger dash, and that we were
only going to Benin City to see the King in an entirely friendly way”. He was
also bidden to tell them to have some quarters ready for us on the next day.
At Gilli Gilli we found all our Jakri carriers had arrived with
their canoes and our stores, etc.; and soon after we arrived, three or four of
us, including Phillips, Crawford, and myself, landed to look at the place. We
found it was only a very small village of about ten half-ruined huts, deserted
entirely except for an elderly female, who received us in the most friendly
way. She informed us that all the men had gone away, as they were frightened.
It was suggested at one time, by Crawford I think, that we should land our
carriers and stores here, and let them march round to Gwatto, so as to avoid
the trouble which would be caused by the ladder at Gwatto, which we had heard
such a lot about from Crawford and Maling. However,
the suggestion was not carried out.
By the way, while on the launch, we had all been busy
learning from the messengers who had been up to Benin the proper form of salutation.
This consisted of making three circles with the right hand closed, thumb
pointing upwards over the palm of the left hand held open, then rubbing the two
open palms together, and at the same time nodding slowly and gravely like a
Chinese mandarin. Poor Crawford tried this salutation on the Benin men when
they were shooting at us, but, alas, it was of no avail.
We had a very cheery dinner that night, all the ten of
us dining together on the steam launch Daisy.
On the morning of the 3rd of January Dudu Jerri came back from Gwatto to say that the Gwatto
Chief had got a house ready for us to sleep in, and was very glad to hear we
were coming. We didn’t leave Gilli Gilli till about midday ourselves, but our Jakri carriers were employed clearing the creek of weeds
and cutting down branches which were likely to interfere with the launches, as
about here the creek became very narrow. It was only about twenty minutes’
steaming to Gwatto, but on arriving there Phillips decided not to land till
about 4 p.m., when it would be cooler.
At Gwatto, as at all other Benin cities situated on
the waterside, there are two villages of the same name, one being that of the
Benin City men, built some little distance away from the creek on the top of
the bank, which averages, I should think, from twenty to thirty feet high, and
the other being a water- side village of the same name, which consists of a few
huts occupied by the Jakris and Ejaws trading at that place. As I have said before, these trading tribes have a most
wholesome dread of the Benin City men, and always make their big and more
permanent villages on the other side of the creek, a few men only living on the
Benin side to collect the oil, etc. that is brought down, and to take it over
to their brethren on the other side, who paddle it down to the factories on the
river. A few years ago there were two factories at Gwatto, the agent for one of
which had been Mr. Powis, who was with us now; but in
consequence of the King of Benin stopping trade, both of the factories had to
be given up, and when we went into Gwatto itself we saw not a vestige of either
of them, not even a signboard that Mr. Powis expected
to see, announcing that it (the signboard) was Messrs. A. Miller Brothers’
factory.
The carriers arrived very soon after the launches, and
Campbell at once proceeded to get all the stores, etc. landed. Meanwhile some
of our demon photographers — I believe there were six or seven cameras amongst
our party of nine — began taking photos of everything they could get within
range of. Amongst our photographers was a Mr. Baddoo,
a man from Accra, on the Gold Coast, the Consul-General’s chief clerk, and
quite one of the nicest and most civil educated West Africans I have ever met.
Poor chap! I don't know what his fate was, but he will be a great loss to the
Protectorate. All the cameras fell into the King of Benin’s hands with the rest
of all our stores and baggage, and must have greatly exercised His Majesty’s
mind as to what they could be for. However, I suppose it was put down to “white
man’s Juju”, like everything else the West African can’t understand the use of.
Before we landed, Phillips issued a few orders, the
first being that the Acting Consul-General would invariably march first,
preceded by the guide and an interpreter. The other interpreter was to remain
with Campbell, who, having his long line of carriers to look after, would be
generally in the rear.
Another order was to the effect that officers might
carry revolvers, but must not show them, for fear of frightening the natives.
As it is, to put it mildly, rather warm work walking
in the middle of the day in that part of the world, one generally marches with
one’s coat off, and consequently one has no chance of hiding a revolver. This
is why none of us had our revolvers out the next day. I have mentioned this
detail here, as more people have asked questions about the matter than about
anything else. Whether we could have fought our way back or not had we had them
out, is a matter of opinion, and one that need not be argued out here.
We landed soon after 4 p.m., leaving Campbell and Lyon
to bring up the carriers later on, and started for Gwatto proper not half a
mile off. The path goes along the bed of a stream, at that time of the year
nearly dry, with perpendicular walls of clay about fourteen to fifteen feet
high on each side. After three hundred yards of this, one is stopped by the
path ending in another perpendicular wall. To get on this is a ladder made very
roughly out of branches of trees, by way of steps, fastened to two strong
uprights.
The whole approach to Gwatto would make an excellent
defensive position, as any force, before they got out of the path leading up to
the ladder, would have little or no chance of returning any fire from men
ambushed on the banks, and again would have a very hot time of it while
climbing up the ladder. After which it would be ordinary bush-fighting.
However, this advantage was all counter-acted when the
Naval Brigade attacked the place during the late Punitive Expedition, by a
judicious use of shells and rockets searching through the bush. Rockets
especially are things the West African cannot stand.
On arriving at the top of the ladder we had, to some
of us, our first meeting with Benin City men. These men were all Juju priests,
and seemed extremely pleased to see us. They then proceeded to give us the
“freedom of the country” (much freedom we got out of the country) by washing
our boots. Phillips asked if they would prefer to wash our bare feet, and being
told they would, we all, with the exception of Powis,
who had received the “freedom of the country” some years before, proceeded to
take off our boots and socks and have our feet washed. This interesting
ceremony concluded, the Juju men asked for the customary dash (present), or perhaps backsheesh would describe it better, but were informed they
could not get it until our boxes arrived.
After passing under another Juju in the shape of a
newly-killed fowl, we arrived at Gwatto. In the old days, when white traders
lived here, I believe it had been quite a flourishing place, but now it looked
very deserted. It consisted merely of some forty or fifty dilapidated-looking
huts made of red clay with bush growing up between them.
The Chief of Gwatto’s house,
where we slept that night, was very much superior, the walls, which were very
thick, being polished till they were nearly as smooth and shiny as glass.
Crawford and Maling, who had been here two or three
times before, found several friends in the place, including a Benin City chief
called Mary Boma, a young man about twenty-five. He
and another Benin City chief had to live at Gwatto permanently to see the chief
of the place didn’t do any trading on his own account, and they stopped trade
whenever they were ordered to do so by the King. Mary Boma,
if he is ever caught, should be hung, as he pretended to be a great friend of
the white men, especially Crawford, whom he had told that he wanted to run away
from his own country and come to live with him at Warri. Mary Boma must, of course, like all the rest, have known of all
the preparations being made for us on the next day; but in spite of all his
protestations of friendship he couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t, give his old
friends one word of warning.
As soon as we arrived in Gwatto, we were taken to the
Chief’s house. The Chief himself was away at Benin City, to which place he had
been sent for by the King. But he was represented by his son, rather a
nice-looking youth about seventeen or eighteen, who received us extremely well,
welcomed us most warmly, and informed us that we could have his house to sleep
in that night, and that he and his people would do everything for ourselves and
our carriers that lay in their power. By the way, during our stay in Gwatto we
saw absolutely nothing of the soldiers that Dudu Jerri informed us were swarming in the town, and this made us believe that that
gentleman had been lying on his own account to try and stop us from making
friends with the Benin people, and also, coupled with several other circumstances,
made us believe that they really did mean to be friendly.
After having talked some time with the young Chief of
Gwatto, he informed us that the King of Benin had sent down three big men of
Benin City to escort us there. These three gentlemen were then introduced to
us, and, though very like monkeys in personal appearance, they looked quite a
superior class of animal to the Gwatto people. They were all three rather
elderly, grave, and most respectable looking men. They informed Phillips that
the King had sent them down to escort us up to Benin City, but hoped that we
would wait at Gwatto for two days, so that they could send up and let the King
know in time for him to make his preparations for receiving us. If we could
only have known what preparations they meant, all those valuable lives might
not have been thrown away.
Phillips in his answer said the same as in all his
speeches, to the effect that the King of Benin was the good friend of our great
white Queen, in consequence of the treaty he had made with her five years
before; that he was also his (Phillips) good friend, having just accepted a
present from him; and consequently that in visiting his friend, the King of
Benin, he had brought no soldiers, but was bringing him a much bigger present, and
that he felt sure that once the King had seen and talked with the white men, he
would like to have them in his city and his country. He (Phillips) regretted
much that he couldn’t wait at Gwatto for two days as he had been asked to do,
but he had so much work to do elsewhere that he couldn’t afford to lose a day,
and so must start early the next morning.
After a little argument between the King’s messengers
and Phillips, the former trying to persuade him to stop another day, and the
latter trying to make them understand that that was impossible, the messengers
at last agreed to come with us the next morning, and to send off a messenger at
once to Benin City to say we were starting the next day. As it was then about
5.30 or later, this messenger had to be provided with a lamp, a bottle of gin,
a piece of cloth (these two latter being the usual “dash”), and one of our
walking-sticks as a sign we were really coming. Phillips offered his ring at
first, but the messenger wanted something bigger than that, and accepted the
offer of my Malacca stick that I had had since 1885, — needless to relate, I
have not seen that stick since.
After this we were all introduced by Phillips to the
messengers with the titles of our various offices. Soon after this the palaver
ended, and we parted from the King's messengers apparently on the most peaceful
terms. The Chief of Gwatto was as good as his word; and when our carriers
arrived, his people showed them where to get wood, water, etc., and did
anything they could for them. We had another very cheery dinner that night, the
last for all the poor fellows who were killed. Oh, if we could only have
guessed or been told what was to happen the next day, and gone back then, and
so saved all those good lives! But everything seemed so peaceful, and
everything seemed to point out that the King had resigned himself to the
necessity of allowing white men to come up to his city. None of us had the
slightest suspicion of anything being wrong.
Personally I still had doubts as to whether the King’s
messengers would turn up the next morning to escort us; but when they did, and
we were received in such a friendly way at all the different villages we
passed, all doubts vanished, and I thought we were really going to get to Benin
City. As for anyone giving us a hint, certainly Dudu Jerri had done so; but as the hundreds of soldiers he spoke about in Gwatto had
apparently turned out such a myth, the rest of his warnings were taken to be of
the same description.
The one man who might and ought to have guessed there
was something wrong about the whole business, was Basilli,
our guide, and who, as I have said before, was a Benin City man. He had run
away from them some years ago to Sapele, where he had
been taken on and given some sort of employment. When Gallwey visited Benin City in 1892, Basilli went with him,
and from all accounts seems to have behaved none too well that trip. There was
some reason for his not talking to his own people except when interpreting for
Phillips, as they were apparently none too fond of him, seeing that he was a
man who had left his country, consequently, according to their ideas, was more
or less of a spy. Anyway, we never saw him talking to the Benin people; but it
seems almost impossible to believe that, when the whole countryside knew about
the ambuscade arranged for the next day (and they undoubtedly did know), Basilli could have failed to guess from signs and words
that something was wrong. All he did was to take every opportunity of sitting
at Phillips’ feet, whispering yarns about Benin manners, customs, etc
It was a picturesque scene that last dinner of ours, —
ten of us seated at a table brought from one of the launches and placed on
boxes, lit by some tiny lamps Campbell had brought up for the purpose, and
placed just outside the entrance to the King’s house. Behind us was a goodly
pile of our stores lit up by native oil- lamps supplied by the Chief. These
consisted of flat brass and clay dishes, containing palm-oil, in which a strip
of cloth well saturated with oil lying anywhere in the dish performed the
duties of wick. In front of us were ranged all our carriers, each gang
rejoicing over a big wood fire. The multitude of these fires made the dark
night as clear as day.
It happened then to be what is called in West Africa
the Harmattan season, when a cold dry wind blows
strongly at night. The Harmattan wind, cold as it is,
is reported to blow down from the great Sahara, and brings clouds of dust, or
rather sand, with it, and makes one feel very dry and cracked about the cheeks
and lips in the early morning. Old coasters, i.e. white men who have been out on the West Coast for many years,
will tell you that the effect of the dryness is such that when the Harmattan has been blowing particularly strongly they have
seen cane chairs and sofas get up and dance about the room, — but old coasters,
like other travellers, see various and wonderful
sights at times. In consequence of the Harmattan we
all turned into bed fairly early in the Chief’s house.
CHAPTER VI
OUR ESCAPE
WE were all ready to start at 7 a.m. on the 4th of
January, and said good-bye to Lyon, who, luckily for himself, but much against
his wish, had to return to Sapele. He went back in
the launch Daisy, leaving the Primrose behind at Gwatto waterside, in
case she was wanted to take any messages. The Daisy was to return in about a week, as we hoped to be back in
about seven or eight days, which would have given us three or four days at
Benin City.
It is worthwhile relating here that on the evening of
this day, and after the massacre had taken place, some Benin men came down to
the waterside, and, calling out to the engineer of the Primrose, told him that the white men who had gone up had sent them
down to tell him to go back and bring back the other white man, as they wanted
him. Though unaware that any disaster had happened, the engineer said his
orders were to stop for the white men, and he could take no different orders
from anyone else; and stop he did until some unfortunate carriers came down who
had escaped, and told him that all the white men and nearly all the carriers
had been killed. Even then I believe all he did was to get up steam and keep
cruising about in case anyone came down, until he was ordered back to Sapele. It is curious that the Benin City men didn’t fire
on the launch, as it was anchored only about fifteen yards away from the
landing-place, but they didn’t.
Before we left Gwatto, Phillips had received many
petitions from the Gwatto people for “dash” for all they had done for us. The
Juju men who had washed our feet the day before were especially anxious for
their fee. But in each case he answered that they would all get it when we came
back. They looked rather blue at this, but daren’t say anything. They knew what
was in the wind, and expected that their share of booty from our stores would
be a very small one, as nearly everything was going to Benin City.
Having then paraded our carriers, and being joined by
the Benin City messengers, we left Gwatto about 7.30 a.m., amongst others who
came with us being Crawford’s friend Mary Boma, who
was in the highest of spirits all day, and seemed to display tremendous
friendship for Crawford and Maling. He came up,
laughing and joking with them every time we halted. Unfortunately I lost the
few notes I made during the morning, and cannot name the different villages we
passed by. The road, or rather path, we went along was rather broader than the
usual West African bush path, but only fit for marching in single file. It was
the dry season, and, being still fairly cool during the day, it made walking
much more pleasant
Our order of march was as follows : — First came our
guide Basilli, the Benin City man. Then followed
Jumbo, a civil policeman who was Phillips’ orderly, in blue uniform. He carried
the Consul-Generals flag, a blue ensign with the Protectorate crest in the
corner. After him came Herbert Clarke, the interpreter I have already spoken
of. Then came Phillips, Crawford, myself, Maling, who
was making a survey of the road, Locke, and Elliot. Powis and Gordon during the morning were some way back at the head of the line of
carriers, with Kenneth Campbell, who kept walking up and down the long line of
men to see they kept up. Hard work it was for him too, I expect, for with the
gaps opening up between them they must have taken up nearly a mile of road.
Our escort of Benin City messengers soon disappeared
in front, as we walked slowly, to prevent as much as possible straggling
amongst the carriers. The road was an excellent one, smooth, level, free from
creepers and roots, and quite unlike the ordinary run of bush paths in West
Africa, which are generally overgrown top, bottom, and both sides, so that
while you are trying to prevent a twig from putting your eye out, you run hard
up against a sharp stick, or perhaps, while you are dodging something else, an
unseen creeper or root in the path will catch your foot and send you head
foremost into the bush. Let me mention here that “bush” is West African for
dense forest, a broad belt of which runs down a large part of the West African
Coast close to the sea. It is a hard thing to describe for one who has no gifts
of description; but if one tries to imagine a thick wood in which big and
little trees all intermingle their branches, with a tremendous dense undergrowth
of shrubbery of all sorts, with brambles and various other evildoing thorns,
all woven together into a maze so thick that neither man nor beast can press
through it, one comes somewhere near the idea.
We passed three villages during that morning’s march,
halting at each, or rather at the place where the road to the villages joined
ours, so as to let the carriers close up. All of these roads were fine clean
paths, broad enough for two coaches abreast, and the villages were generally
about four hundred yards away down them through the forest. All the streamlets,
if there were any, being dry, the water supply of the villages consisted of
reservoirs of rain water, made out of smooth hard-beaten clay. If we had had to
depend on these villages for our water supply we should have drunk the whole
countryside dry in a day; but we had brought enough water with us to last the
whole of the expedition, ten days. It meant of course an extra number of
carriers, but was quite necessary. At each village, as we halted, some of the
men came out to welcome us, grinned all round their black faces, and seemed
very pleased to see us, — knowing as they did what was in store for us, for I
suppose they all expected to get a share of the forthcoming loot.
In nearly all the approaches to the villages we
noticed a few kola trees growing. There is a tremendously large trade in
kola-nuts over all West Central Africa, especially among the Hailsas and other Mohammedan tribes of the interior, who
value it especially for its endurance-making qualities. However, it is not
necessary to say any more about it, as the kola-nut and its virtues have
already been described many times by men who have studied the subject
scientifically, and know a lot about it.
During our march in the morning we had met several men
going and returning along the road, but of course we thought nothing of it at
the time. One whom we especially noticed was the Chief of the second village,
as he had on an old red tunic with white metal buttons, with South Cork Militia,
I think, on them. We noticed also that a couple of big patches close to the
road had been cleared, i.e. cut down, why or wherefore we couldn’t then guess;
nor can I now, unless the Benin men proposed making their ambush there, and
altered their plans afterwards. These places couldn’t have been cleared for the
purpose of making plantations, as the West African of that district never by
any chance makes his plantation or farm so close by a road. It is always some
way off, and approached by very narrow paths.
As it was about II a.m. when we reached the third
village, we decided to halt and have breakfast, having marched only about seven
and a half or seven and three-quarter miles by Maling’s calculations. Here we were joined by the three Benin City messengers and also
by Mary Boma, the latter of whom, I noticed on his
arrival, was led away by the men of the village for a very secret mysterious
talk. Though I told Phillips of it at the time, neither of us thought of
anything suspicious about the incident, for everything had seemed so absolutely
peaceful, and we had been so warmly welcomed everywhere along the road.
But again at this place, Basilli,
our guide, must have heard something of the talk, for the meeting of these men
was not very far from where we were sitting, and Basilli was as usual squatting at Phillips’ feet, telling him about Benin “customs”.
We had a great crowd to look at us here, including
some of the ladies of the village. Any empty bottles, cigarettes, and pinches
of tobacco seemed to be most welcome presents and thankfully received. We did
not move on again till I p.m., having had the last meal for so many of us, —
worse luck, — and the last drink for Locke and myself for five weary days.
Our Benin City messengers, with Mary Boma and others who had escorted us from Gwatto, had
already gone on, giving as an excuse for not waiting for us, that we walked
quicker than they did, and would catch them up. We passed two more villages, at
the second of which we halted for a couple of minutes to let the carriers close
up, and soon after that we must have walked past nearly a mile of Benin City
warriors in ambush. A very well-arranged ambush, from their point of view, it
must have been too, for, though they were scarcely twenty yards from the road
on our right-hand side as we advanced behind a bank, we never saw or suspected
anything of their presence.
About here the bush was much thinner. I don’t think it
had been cleared lately, as I saw no signs of recent cutting, but some time
before, and the path was rather deeper, that is, the banks on each side of the
path were a little higher. We had done, according to Maling,
something over six miles since lunch, or about fourteen miles altogether from
Gwatto, and were very nearly half-way to Benin City. Phillips intended halting
for ten minutes to rest at the next village, and it was arranged that we were
to sleep at the one beyond that. I am sorry to say that I have forgotten all
the names of these villages, as I was relying on filling up my diary from Maling’s sketch that night.
By this time, I fancy, we were all certain that we
were going to get to Benin City, and just before the attack began we had been
talking about celebrating poor old Crawford’s birthday, which was to be on the
6th, two days hence, in Benin City; and we talked of how we would first drink
Her Majesty’s health, the first time it would have been drunk by such a large
party of white men in Benin City, if not the first time altogether in that
place; then Crawford’s health, and so on.
It was then about 3 p.m., and we were walking in much
the same order as when we started, except that Locke had stopped behind to tie
up his bootlace, when suddenly a shot rang out a few yards behind us, to be
followed immediately by a fusilade, that seemed to go
back almost to the last village we had passed.
I have already explained how it was that we were not
carrying revolvers, because we had orders not to show them; and as it was hot
work walking in the middle of the day, we had our coats off, and were marching
in shirt sleeves, which made it impossible to conceal a big weapon,
consequently our revolvers were all locked up in our boxes. It is strange that
the Benin men should have let the first lot of white men pass, and opened fire
on the head of the carrier column; and what their idea was I do not know, for
they showed no hesitation in firing at the white men afterwards.
At the first shot we couldn’t believe that the firing
was in earnest, and thought, as someone suggested, that it was only a salute in
our honor. However, that idea was soon exploded by the cries from our wretched
carriers, and yells from the Benin men. As soon as we were certain what it was,
I sang out that I was going back to get my revolver, and Crawford said he would
do the same, but poor old Phillips, for some reason of his own, said, “No
revolvers, gentlemen”. Crawford accordingly stopped with him, but I insisted on
going back. I called out for my boy Jim, who had been a very short distance
behind carrying my coat and keys, but I am afraid he must have bolted at the
first shot and got caught and killed by the Benin brutes, for I never saw or
heard of him again, and his body wasn’t one of those killed by the first
volley, for I searched for him. Poor Jim! about one of the best servants I have
ever had, black or white. He was a Kroo boy, a
perfectly honest fellow, quiet, and always present when you wanted him (except
this time, of course), and never in the way when you didn’t want him. As I
couldn’t find Jim or my keys, I went farther down the path to try and find the
box with my revolver in it, with the idea of breaking it open.
Turning a corner, I came on the effects of the first
volley. On a strip of road about fifteen yards long were the bodies of some six
or seven of our unfortunate carriers lying on the road. They must have been
shot dead by the first discharge. Their heads had been cut off at once by the
Benin men with machetes, which are pronounced matchets (not hatchets, as the papers would have it.) These are long knives about two
feet in length, and sent out from England as articles of trade.
Impossible as it sounds, one poor chap was sitting on
the ground straight up, but with no head.
It was more or less impossible to find my box now, so
I turned back to rejoin the others.
I hadn’t gone far when I met them all coming back my
way. Not seeing Phillips, I asked where he was, and was told by Crawford, and
then by Jumbo, Phillips’ orderly, that he had been shot dead. We decided to try
and get back along the fourteen miles of road to Gwatto— a, hopeless scheme, as
one can see now, as these Benin warriors would have been able to keep in the
bush parallel with us, shooting us down as we went along.
However, there was mighty little time for thinking
what to do, and it seemed to us the best plan which offered. With us now were a
whole lot of our servants, though my boy Jim unfortunately wasn’t one. Baddoo, the chief clerk I have already mentioned, was there
also, with another Baddoo, the Consul-General’s cook,
and Joe, Phillips’ servant, all three of them being Gold Coast men. Herbert
Clarke, the interpreter, and Jumbo, the orderly, also joined, and as we went
back along the road several of our poor carriers who had bolted into the bush
at the first volley kept picking us up. I saw one of them, quite a small lad
too, hoist a “pal” of his on his back who had been wounded in the leg, and take
him along — a plucky thing of the boy, for, besides being quite a youngster, he
was a Jakri, and belonged to the tribe who funk the
Benin men badly. Moreover, these same Benin men were shooting at him and all of
us at the time.
There were three of the white men missing; poor old
Phillips, who had been killed already, together with Mr. Gordon and Kenneth
Campbell, neither of whom I had seen since breakfast-time, as Campbell was, as
usual, looking after his carriers, and Gordon had, I think, been walking with
him. I may mention here that there is no doubt that poor Kenneth Campbell was
killed at once, and that all the various reports that were spread about his
being captured and killed after two days, and some of which unfortunately got
into the newspapers, were absolutely untrue, and nothing more than what we call
“steamer yarns”, which is West African for false reports and such-like.
As we went along, the Benin fiends kept up a running
fire at us, and we kept on rushing up to them, trying to stop them by saying, “Adoo, adoo?” which is Beninese
for “How do you do?” “Don't fire, you silly fools; it’s all a mistake; it’s a
peace palaver”, and other similar expressions; and it was about here that poor
Crawford tried to stop them firing by going through the form of the Benin
salutation.
I can see the dear old man now standing some way in
the bush, nodding his head like an old Chinese mandarin, and rubbing his hands
slowly up and down. A silly lot of fools we must have looked in their eyes.
Mr. Powis was the most
successful of us, as he could talk some of the Benin City language, and at
first they seemed to want to let him alone. However, nothing we could do was of
any good, so we tried using our sticks, with much more success. Although the
Benin men, from all accounts, fought really pluckily against the Punitive
Expedition a few weeks later, here they behaved like veritable curs, and ran
away every time we charged them with our sticks. I fancy this was due to the
bush being so thin that they wouldn’t face us in the open.
It was hereabouts that I last saw Mr. Basilli, our Benin City guide. He was one of the crowd
following us, and certainly was not wounded then. I saw him go up to one of the
Benin City men who was shooting at us and say something in his ear, at which
the Benin man nodded, but fired off his gun at us. We heard afterwards that Basilli had been wounded and taken prisoner, and also that
he had told his people that if they opened any of our boxes they would all die,
as there was a very powerful Juju in them. I doubt much whether Mr. Basilli ever said this, but suspect he got the message sent
down to tell in his favor with the Protectorate authorities if he should ever
come back again.
We all kept on charging into the bush whenever we saw
any Benin men going to fire at us, and they invariably ran away. I came
suddenly on one warrior who must have been chasing some of our wretched
carriers into the bush on the other side, and collared his gun and machête. Our people set on him in a regular mob, but before
we could do anything to him he managed to get away. The gun I gave to poor Baddoo, the chief clerk, and the machête to Herbert Clarke, the interpreter.
Soon after I came on one of our grave and reverend
escort, one of the Benin messengers, shouting and yelling like a lunatic and
waving a machête round his head. I chased him for all
I was worth into the bush, and would have given a lot to be able to get my
cane, a thin Neilgherry cane, and which would bend
like a cutting whip, across his back, but he had too long legs and ran too fast
for me.
All this time we were making our way along the road
back to Gwatto, and no one had been badly hit except poor Elliot, who was
bleeding badly from a wound in his head, round which he had wound his
handkerchief. Most of us had been hit by small pellets, but none of the rest of
us were damaged seriously. Though they fired a few rough round bullets, their
favorite ammunition, as it is always in this part of West Africa, was what is
called pot-leg, which is made by breaking up the small iron cooking-pots they
get in trade into small jagged pieces. Poor old Crawford soon got a whole
charge of pot-leg into his groin, and fell. As it was fired from a very short
distance off, only about ten yards I think, the wound must have been a mortal
one.
We picked the dear old man up and began carrying him,
though he told us he was done for, and implored us to leave him. He was
perfectly calm and cool about it all the time, and seemed quite to expect that
we should leave him behind, which of course was out of the question. Locke and
Crawford s orderly, another civil policeman, carried him on the one side, Maling and myself on the other.
We, of course, had to go much slower now, so all our
followers, servants, carriers, etc, went on in front
of us with Mr. Powis. The last I saw of him was
driving several Benin men, who had come out on the road, in front of him like a
flock of sheep. From the very beginning they had seemed to recognize him, and
appeared to be more unwilling to shoot him than the rest of us, and we hoped he
might be allowed to get away; but, alas, no! for we heard from one of his own
boys who escaped afterwards that he had seen his master lying dead on the road.
Such a good chap he was too, and one of the most popular men at Old Calabar with everyone.
While we were carrying Crawford we suddenly heard the
sound of a big drum being beaten somewhere or other in the bush. Although we
knew perfectly well that it was only a drum, yet it sounded most mysterious and
weird, the noise seeming to come from all parts of the bush at the same time.
It was too much for Herbert Clarke, the interpreter, who had stopped behind
with us, for as soon as he heard it he clapped his hands to his ears, saying,
“My God, the war drum!” and bolted down the road as fast as he could to pick up
the others. Just at this time, too, Locke heard a big gun go off far away down
the road in front of us.
Dr. Elliot remained behind with us, and if any man
ever deserved a V.C. he certainly did. As we could only go slowly, and afforded
such a large mass to aim at, we gave the Benin men excellent chances for
killing us all; but whenever he saw a man with a gun up, off would go Elliot
into the bush and charge him out of it. If it hadn’t been for his pluck and nerve,
I am perfectly certain they would have killed us all at that time, for they
would have had every opportunity of creeping up close to us and then firing at
any or all of us. All the time, it must be remembered, he was bleeding
profusely from the wound in his head
How far we carried Crawford I don’t know, perhaps a
couple of hundred yards or so, but it seemed to me like a good mile. As we were
going along I saw another Benin man behind a tree on the road exactly in front
of us, and about fifteen yards off, aiming at us; so I told the others to put
Crawford down on the bank while I charged the man out. As I was rushing at him
I got another whole charge of pot-leg in the inside of my right arm, and fired
by a man not much more than five yards off.
It was a piece of the most marvelous luck that it
missed the bone of the arm and also my body, which it must have gone close to.
If it had hit my body, it would have been in almost the same place poor
Crawford was hit in, the left groin. The force of the blow was so great that it
knocked me over like a shot rabbit.
However, the wound didn’t hurt a bit, nor had it the
slightest effect at the time on my arm, for I got up, picked up my cane in my
right hand again, and chased the man from behind the tree before he had time to
fire. He promptly ran away into the bush, so I went back to the others.
When I got there I found four out of the five of them
dead and only Locke left alive, and he had a marvelous shave of it. Some of the
Benin men had crept up behind them and shot them all in the back, and killed
them all except poor Maling, who was just alive, and
died in a few seconds. Crawford had been hit twice again, which made three big
wounds altogether. Maling was hit twice, Elliot
twice, and Crawford’s orderly was also killed. Locke had been hit four times in
the arm and once in the hip, but luckily none of the wounds was serious enough
to stop him.
CHAPTER VII
OUR ESCAPE (continued)
BEING the only two left alive, and as the Benin men
were now all round us, we decided to make a bolt into the bush towards the
north, on the far side of the ambush, as we had realized by this time that it
was hopeless to try and get to Gwatto back along the road we had come. Before
leaving I told Locke to pick up the compass Maling had been using, for I had been told by some of the natives at Gwatto that the
Gwatto Creek bent round to the right, eastward, after leaving that place, which
would bring it nearer where we were. So we thought that by steering a course
about N.W. we should reach the creek sooner. Also we did not want to go south,
for that would have brought us down towards Gwatto, and knowing, from what we
had been told by Crawford and Maling, that Benin
soldiers were always sent to guard all the waterside towns in the event of any
excitement, we fancied there was likely to be less excitement higher up the
creek, where it was more improbable any refugees would appear than farther down
the Gwatto Creek, which was better known, nearer the limits of the Benin
Country, and more likely for refugees to make for.
We were pretty well right too, especially about the
distance, for from a survey of the creek done afterwards by Captain Burrows, it
could not have been much more than seven miles from where we left the road. Of
course we actually walked much more, perhaps seventeen miles altogether, but
those seven miles took us five days to do.
Of course it is absolutely impossible to walk three
yards in one direction in the bush unless one has a machête,
or axe, or something to clear the way with; and as all our implements consisted
of Locke’s pocket-knife, we had to wander in all directions, though never
backwards, if we could possibly avoid it
I often wonder now how we managed to get through some
of the places we did, some of which I can picture vividly to myself yet. They
were places which looked as difficult to get through as a thick wall. However,
one can do wonderful things to save one’s own life, and we scrambled through,
sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes at full length, dragging ourselves
painfully along like sick worms. Sometimes when we came across a fallen tree,
which made the bush clear up above, but a tremendous dense mass of undergrowth
underneath, we managed to get along by jumping as far as possible into the
middle of it, and getting out the other side as best we could. At other times,
when we were very done and came to a particularly bad place, we would have a
short rest first, and then tackle it
It was always forward in a N.W. line as much as we
could, or as near to N.W. as possible. Our worst times were on the edge of
plantations, for all the stuff that had been cleared to make the plantation was
heaped together at the edge, and, with the bush already there, made an almost
impenetrable black wall of undergrowth.
Then the thorns! when we eventually got out, there
wasn’t a space on any part of our heads or bodies as big as one’s little finger
free from those thorns.
The whole bush seemed to be full of thorns, for in
addition to the palm-tree thorns, which were everywhere, there was a sweet
creeper that straggled all over the place and had thorns like the barbs of a
fish-hook. If it isn’t called the “wait a bit” thorn, it ought to be, for it
was useless going forward against it. One had to go backward and pick the
thorns off like one would a fish-hook.
Locke had on, unfortunately for him, a pair of thin
serge trousers, and when we eventually arrived at the waterside, those trousers
were a picture. They were a mass of tears in every direction. The torn pieces
were tied together with pieces of bush straw, and joined in other places with
thorns: the poorest beggar that ever lived never had a more disreputable pair.
I was luckier, as I had been walking in Khaki riding breeches, shooting boots,
and gaiters, which saved me below the knee. Up above that I wasn’t much better
off than he was. To start with, my breeches had been cut across the right knee
by a pellet, which had luckily only grazed the knee; and in addition to being
torn, the right leg, after the third day, might have been made of corrugated
iron instead of Khaki cloth, as it was perfectly stiff and hard from the blood
that had come from my arm, which never stopped bleeding until it began to get rotten
on the fourth day.
The thing that helped to our getting out at all was
that there were two of us, both pretty hard and fit, for I don’t believe one
man by himself could have stood it, because thinking of all that he had left
behind him, added to the apparent hopelessness of his position, would have been
too much for any man’s brain. With us we could help each other much, for when
the leader arrived at some place he considered almost hopeless, the other would
take the lead in his turn.
However, to continue the story. It must have been
between 3.30 p.m. and 3.45 p.m. when Locke and myself left the scene of the
massacre. We ran down the path for a few yards, and then plunged into the north
side of the bush, the general bearing of the road towards Benin City being a
very little north of east. At first the bush was comparatively thin, so we
could manage to run for a bit; but very soon it began to get thick, and this
reduced our pace to a walk, and not a fast one either. At first we could hear
the yells of the Benin men close behind us, as if they were following us; but
if they were, they must have given it up pretty soon, as the yells began to get
fainter and fainter, and I fancy each man was anxious to stop close to the road
and get his share of the loot from our boxes. Every now and then we heard fresh
volleys, with more yelling and squealing, which betokened that more of our
wretched people had been discovered and murdered.
We went on some distance, but it is impossible to
calculate distance even fairly accurately when one is going through the bush.
But I should say in nearly two miles we came upon a plantation, which meant
open ground, with every chance of being seen, and certain death if we were
noticed. We thought at first of going round it, but soon settled to chance it,
and run across the open as quick as we could. On the other side we met one of
those black walls of undergrowth, and looked about for some gap or easy place
to get through, but it all appeared much the same, so we simply charged the nearest
point, and got through somehow or other with only the loss of my shirt, which,
being a thin flannel, was torn to ribbons on my back and arms.
We went on through the bush as long as we could, but
at last, about five o'clock, we sat down to rest, tired, hot and thirsty, for
we had been going our best pace for about two hours. We had been sitting less
than a minute when we suddenly heard two men talking to each other not twenty
yards away from us. They appeared to be on the edge of another plantation, but
fortunately there was another thick wall of undergrowth between us and them,
and they were on slightly higher ground. Beyond a doubt, they were Benin men.
This was shock number one, and we had scarcely got
accustomed to that when we got shock number two. This came from hearing a party
of men cutting their way through the bush with machêtes from the direction in which we wanted to go, and coming, as we thought,
straight for us. We shook hands with each other, saying “Good-bye, old chap”,
for we thought our turn had come, and envied all our poor friends lying dead on
the road, for they had got over the worst of it.
One thing we determined was, not to be taken prisoners,
but to make the brutes shoot us by trying to kill some of them, throttling them
with our hands or anything we could do. However, to our intense relief, the
party turned off at an angle and passed by us, some fifteen yards or so
distant. We were crouching on the ground as low as we could, and could see
about twenty men, all armed, some with boxes on their heads, — our boxes, of
course, — cutting their way through the bush.
Our relief didn’t last long, as we saw them leave one
man, evidently a sentry, right opposite to us, and barely fifteen yards away.
Luckily it was getting dark, and would soon be quite so, which gave us a better
chance of getting off, for in broad daylight our white shirts must have been
noticed at that distance off. When we had crouched down to avoid being seen, I
had got into a most uncomfortable position, lying on my left side with all the
weight of my body on my left elbow and my knees tucked well up, and I soon
began to get cramp from it. I stood it as long as I could, — till long after
dark, in fact, — and then tried to change my position. But each time I tried I
felt a warning pinch on my boot from Locke to be quiet. He was far better off.
He was lying full length on his chest, with a white pith solah topee under his chest, and his head supported by both
elbows.
At last I couldn’t stand the cramp any longer, and
shifted my position to a sitting one as quietly as I could. Quietly as I tried
to do it, it seemed as if every twig and leaf within miles crackled. The sentry
right in front of course heard me, and calling to another man on his right, and
of whose presence we had been unaware up to then, they both began searching
through the bush in the dark.
It wasn’t pleasant sitting there listening to these
men advancing through the bush for a few yards, then stopping for what seemed
to us an interminable time to listen, then advancing again, and so on. At last
they began to go back again in the same manner, and we breathed rather more
freely when they stopped altogether. Our friend opposite, however, didn't seem
to be quite satisfied, and made one or two more searches in the bush. Once he
came so near us that we held our breath, expecting that the next second he was
bound to step on to one or the other of us. Luckily he didn’t, and went back as
before, and after a bit he seemed satisfied and kept quiet.
Being now in a sitting position, with my elbows on my
knees, head on my elbows, and being very tired, I could not help dropping off
to sleep, hard as I tried not to, and, much to Locke's annoyance (and my own
too, for that matter), kept on waking up and saying something out loud. It was
very annoying, and I really could not help it. Sometime after this I wakened
up, quietly this time, and felt a hand on my boot, then creeping up my gaiter.
I thought it couldn’t be Locke, who had been behind me, and must be of course a
Benin man who had found us while I was sleeping. So I collared the hand and
arm, intending to try and choke the man before he could give the alarm, but
spoilt all this brilliant idea, and gave the alarm myself by yelling out in a
loud tone, “Locke, I have got this brute!”
It turned out to be no brute of a Benin man, but Locke
himself, who had shifted his position very quietly, and was trying to find out
mine. Of course my shout was heard by the Benin men; and as we imagined trying
to conceal ourselves further was useless, Locke suggested we might as well try
and have a decent sleep, which we did.
It must have been somewhere about four o'clock a.m.
that we made out three men doing regular sentry-go round and round us. We could
hear one man coming from a certain direction, and when he had got a certain
distance round us there was a second, and eventually a third. I mean that we
could hear three men walking round and round us.
We had given up all hopes of escaping long ago, so,
being frightfully thirsty, we kept on calling to them for “oomi”,
water. “Oomi” is really a Yoruba word, but I believe
the Benin City language is something like it, and there being many Yorubas trading regularly through the Benin Country, the
people are bound to know words like “oomi”. The men,
however, took no notice of us, but kept on doing their round till nearly seven
o'clock a.m., and long after daylight. Even in the light they kept so far away
from us that we could not see them, and could only place them by the noise, and
occasionally by seeing a piece of bush move.
Then by some miracle which I have never been able to
account for to this day, they left us. Whether they thought we were dying and couldn’t
move, and so went off to get their food, expecting to find us there when they
came back, or what was their reason for leaving, neither of us could guess. But
leave us they did, which was the main point, and so ended the most awful day
and night I have ever passed in my life.
At first we thought they had some sporting ideas about
not shooting us while on the ground, but only when moving. So we remained some time after they had stopped walking round us. Hardly
had they stopped when another man made his appearance, who turned out to be one
of our runaway Jakri carriers, and belonging to Chief
Dore. We spoke with him. He said he had seen no Benin men near us, and knew of
no water, which was what we wanted most, but gave us a dry hard ship’s biscuit
each, which he had got as part of his rations, and which had been soaked in
rank palm-oil to give it flavor.
We couldn’t eat any of the biscuits in our thirsty
state, and put them away in our pockets to be kept until we got to water. Mine
unfortunately I put into my right-hand pocket, so it got soaked in blood also;
and when I pulled it out four days afterwards at the waterside the smell of it
was something awful. The carrier who had joined us preferred going on by
himself to being accompanied by two clumsy white men with boots which made such
a noise going through the bush; and very naturally too, for at that time there
seemed to be many more chances in favor of his getting out safely than in ours.
However, we did manage to escape, and he, poor beggar, did not, for we told
Chief Dore about him, and he said that the man had never come back.
Soon after the carrier left, we started, quite
expecting every second to hear shots ring out of the bush, for we fully thought
that some of our Benin friends of the night before were still watching us from
the bush, and would fire on us as soon as they saw us moving off. However,
nothing happened, and we got away in the most absolutely miraculous manner.
We were frightfully thirsty, for we had had nothing to
drink, not even dew, since I p.m. the day before; and as we thought we were
close to the creek then, and might get there any minute, we never thought of
sipping the dew that morning. Locke and myself were counting up afterwards, and
found that we had been forty-one hours without even a drop of dew to quench our
horrible thirst. Another thing which disappointed us badly and frequently at
first, and until we became weaker and more callous, I suppose, was that we kept
on thinking that we had at last reached the creek. As one comes through the
bush and approaches a plantation, one sees over the top of the bush, all the
tall trees suddenly ending. Then will come a gap, then the tall trees beginning
again; and each time we came to a place like this, we fondly imagined we had at
last reached the creek and water. Many and bitter were our disappointments in
consequence. Immediately after we had left our sleeping-place, we came on the
track which we had seen and heard the Benin men cutting the evening before.
Unfortunately it was of no use to us, as it led in the wrong direction. So bang
into the thick bush we had to go again, trying to keep our direction as much as
possible. With a few short halts we struggled on to 11.30 am. or so, and then
lay down and had a real good sleep till about 3 p.m., when we went on again. We
came on one of the Benin men’s roads a little before dusk, and followed it for
some distance, until we fancied we were coming close to a village. We then
struck off into the bush once more, and lay down for the night amidst the roots
of a large tree, about twenty yards away from the road. Hardly had we sat down
when we heard two somethings or somebodies moving
about the bush near us, which was no imagination; and close behind me I could
detect distinctly the smell of a native who had been eating strong meat, which
was also no imagination, for there is no mistaking that smell when one has once
experienced it.
After that Locke saw two men near him, and I saw, or
thought I saw, most distinctly, a little old man sitting down about a couple of
yards away from Locke, and looking at us hard. This little old man corresponded
exactly with one of the men Locke saw; but as they vanished most mysteriously
and silently some time afterwards, we put our visions down to imagination, which
most probably they were. However, before the little old man vanished, we kept
up, or tried to keep up, a most animated conversation with him, in which of
course the principal word was “oomi”, water, and we
offered him several most valuable articles, such as Locke’s tie, pocket-knife,
etc. etc., if he would only bring us some water.
However, real or unreal, the little old man never said
a word to us, nor did he produce any water. While we were in the middle of this
conversation with him, we heard a man and a child talking to each other as they
went along the road. To him we also called out “Oomi, oomi”. He at any rate was a reality, for he answered
back at once, “Oomi nahun”,
or some word like it, which we took to mean that he could give us no water; after
this our old gentleman vanished.
As it was cold at night, Locke, who was the lucky
possessor of a shirt and singlet, lent me the latter, as my shirt had been torn
to ribbons the day before. However, the shirt came in useful after all, part of
it acting as a bandage for my arm, and the rest of it as a pillow by night, and
a turban by day, when we were exposed to the sun in plantations and such-like.
I had left my hat, shot off by a pellet, at the scene of the massacre.
It was so cold at night that I used to spread a small
silk handkerchief I had over my chest, fold my arms underneath it, and try to
imagine it was a sheet. Perhaps, thanks to a powerful imagination, I felt a bit
warmer after it.
We slept fairly well that night under the big tree.
About 6 a.m. on the 6th January we got our first sip of dew, and the first
moisture — one can’t call it drink — we had had since before one o clock p.m.
two days previously, forty-one hours in all. At first we were very ignorant
beginners at this kind of drink, but by the time we got to the water we were
quite connoisseurs, knew which leaves held the biggest drops, how to circumvent
those big drops, and so on, and so on. However, the dew wasn’t very satisfying,
as even on our best day, if we had been able to collect all the dew we drank, I
don’t suppose it would have amounted to more than a table- spoonful. If we
could feel even a small drop of liquid trickling down our throats, we
considered ourselves lucky, for as a rule the drops we drank, or rather sipped,
were only enough to moisten the tongue and perhaps the back of the throat. All
this sounds very exaggerated, but it is so in no way at all.
Soon after starting we got into a plantation, and did
better in the dew line, for the big plantain leaves held many more and much
bigger drops of dew than any of the bush plants. Plantains were the only fruit
we came across, except a sort of wild cherry, which was of no use, for, in
addition to our being uncertain about it being poisonous, it had no moisture
inside. The plantains also were useless to us, for they were unripe, bitter and
quite dry, so that with our parched throats we were quite unable to swallow
them.
We never came across any fruit we wanted to find, such
as bananas, pine-apples, or papaws, and we were unfortunately too ignorant to
make use of any roots or such-like that might have done us some good. Having
nothing but dew to drink, we used to pray for a shower of rain every night, so
that we could take off our boots and get them filled, and have a real fair and
square drink. But luckily for us no rain came, for if we had been drenched in
addition to all our other woes, we would have been certain to have had a bad go
of fever when we got down to Benin River, if not before.
CHAPTER VIII
OUR ESCAPE (continued)
THE story of this and the following day, the 7th, is
much the same. It was one continual hard struggle through the bush, our bodies
getting weaker each day and more torn, and more and more in want of water.
Occasionally we found paths through the bush which are called hunters’ paths,
and which are merely tracks through the bush, but they were joy to us when they
led us in the direction we wanted to go for some distance; but as a rule they
went the wrong way, and back again we would have to go into that wretched bush.
Although sometimes very close to people and villages,
we met no more men face to face. On the third day of our escape, Locke lost the
big compass out of his pocket, and we had to rely on a very small, almost toy
compass I had fastened on to my watch chain. By the way, I kept that watch, a
small gun-metal one, wound up and going the whole time, so that, even if we had
had no compass, we could have guessed our way fairly well by the time of day
and the direction of the sun.
We kept on wondering when, if ever, we were going to
reach the water; and although we knew that by keeping on in the same direction
we must get to the Gwatto Creek some time or other, after this continual
struggle we began to feel a bit hopeless. If we were moving, we were so tired
we wanted to be resting; if we were resting, we wanted to be moving, as we
couldn’t get to the waterside by resting. If we were asleep, we wanted to be
awake, to escape the visions of numberless long drinks we were just on the
point of drinking, but never succeeded in getting hold of; and if we were
awake, we wanted to be asleep, to escape the horrible thoughts of all our dear
old pals left murdered on the roadside.
The only hours we looked forward to at all were from
six o'clock to ten o'clock a.m., which were the dew times. For after that all
dew had disappeared. Luckily we both slept well, and above all we both started
pretty hard and fit, for if one of us had got seedy, neither of us would have
escaped.
Luckily, too, for me, I couldn’t have had a better or
pluckier companion than Locke. Always cheery, never beaten, and (to use a very
vulgar expression) always with his tail up, he was always ready to get along
somehow or somewhere, when I couldn’t see any possible means of pushing
farther. He had been out about thirteen months in the country already, myself
not six, yet it wasn’t until our last day in the bush that he began to show any
signs of our hard work telling on him, and that, I fancy, was mostly my fault,
or rather my arm’s fault. It had begun to get bad then, and smelt so much that
it made Locke very nearly sick, and forced him to get away as far from me as he
could, and made me wish I could get away the same distance from it.
To continue. We were unlucky on Friday the 8th in not
getting so much dew as usual, as we did not find a plantation till about 10
a.m., when most of the dew had disappeared. However, I discovered that each of
the plantain branches had a small reservoir of dew mixed with ants and dirt,
though that didn’t matter as long as we got the liquid. We had to tread
carefully in this plantation, as we had seen an old woman at the other end of
it, and also had heard people talking not far away, and it was only after a
good deal of trouble that about 10.30 a.m. we found a good place to lie down
in.
We were both frightfully tired and done up, and
personally I believe I was asleep before my head touched the ground. We slept
on and off till about 3.30 p.m., when I suggested to Locke that it was time for
us to be on the tramp again. He said, “Oh, let’s stop here for the night” — a
proposition I was only too ready to agree to, being so tired. Here again our
marvelous luck, or rather more than luck, showed itself, for if we had gone on
that afternoon we must have struck the waterside before dark and found Benin
soldiers waiting for us.
By this time my wound had got very bad, and was oozing
with a kind of red mud. Locke had made his holes healthier by employing his
spare time in squeezing them dry, but the holes in my arm were too big to do the
same to. Part of the charge had come out on the other side of my arm, but the
biggest hole was on the inside, where the whole charge had gone in. The
ubiquitous flies evidently thought I was carrion, for they appeared as if by
magic and settled in hundreds on the shirt round my arm, which smelt so much
now that poor old Locke was nearly made sick by it, and had to get as far away
from me as our shelter would allow.
Several times during the day I had noticed kingfishers
flying about, which made me hope we were getting near water at last, and before
night came on we were attacked by swarms of a brand of mosquito I have never
seen before, — and I know a good many types of that furious animal. These were
little red furry beggars, and regular tigers for blood. What with the
mosquitoes, and the long sleep we had had in the middle of the day, neither of
us had a second’s sleep that night. Most of my time was employed in taking off
the ooze, that was coming out of my arm, with big leaves, for it was coming out
faster and the arm was getting worse every hour; and towards morning the stuff
was coming out as fast as I could scrape it off. We had recognized, a long time
ago that we were within a quarter of a mile of a village, and we were getting
so thirsty and done up that we very nearly settled to go straight in, ask for
water, and take our chance of being shot. Thank God, we didn’t, but decided to
give the Gwatto Creek another day before we tried the mercy of the Benin men.
We were up trying to sip dew long before daylight the
next morning, but it hadn’t fallen properly by then, so we had to sit and wait
My arm by this time was perfectly loathsome, and anyone could easily have
tracked us by the droppings off it. We had our best drink of dew that morning,
for having slept in the plantation we were ready on the spot, and had great
times as we worked our way across it.
We had to keep to one side a good deal, the side
nearest to the village, as we saw smoke coming from the opposite end of the
plantation. When we got across the plantation to the bush on the other side, we
saw that the ground suddenly sloped down at a very steep angle, and if we had
not been so dry, in spite of our “big drink” of dew, I believe we would have
yelled with delight, for it meant that at last we were really near water.
We must have gone down nearly two hundred feet before
we reached a small dry creek at the bottom; and when I say dry, I mean not
running. But to our intense joy there was a small pool of water close to where
we reached the bottom. It had evidently been scooped out, and was used by the
people of the village near, which we had been so close to the previous night.
However, all we cared about at that moment was that
there was a real good honest drink at last. I was first down the hill, and so
first at the waterside, poor old Locke growling away that it was his turn long
before I was nearly ready to stop drinking. How we enjoyed that drink too! The
creek, like all the little ones that run into the Gwatto Creek, was so far dry
at this season that there was no running water, but water is obtained by the
Benin people by digging small pools like the one we had been drinking at.
We knew now that we must be close to the Gwatto Creek,
and that this little one would lead us into it. So we tried to follow it down,
but had to give that up pretty soon, as it was all overgrown with bush. So we
climbed up the bank again, and found a path which led in the proper direction.
After about a quarter of a mile we saw some huts in
front. We knew well enough it was risky work entering a village, for we
expected that at all the waterside villages there would be Benin soldiers
watching for us; but we had settled to chance it, and, if they produced their
guns, to make a rush for the waterside and try and swim over to the other bank,
where we should be comparatively safe, it being part of the Benin men’s Juju
not to get into a canoe and cross water.
Consequently we walked straight on into the village,
which consisted only of about four or five huts, and we met four men, all
unarmed. They turned out to be Jakris from a bigger
trading village on the opposite side of the creek, and were on this side for
the purpose of taking any trade-stuff the Benin people brought down; but of
course we didn’t know this at the time. We promptly began our old cry of “Oomi, Oomi”, but, instead of
giving us any water, they hurried us away towards the stream, two of them
running on in front and getting a small dugout of a canoe ready.
There was a small creek here, which, after turning a
corner, led us into the Gwatto Creek. As soon as we had got into the canoe, the
two men paddled hard until we were round a corner, and then stopped and let us
have another drink. Lovely clear light green water flowing above a sandy
bottom. As soon as we had got into the canoe, I let my wretched arm trail along
in the water, the first wash it had had since I was hit; and when the canoe stopped
for us to drink, poor old Locke first of all put his head over on the same side
as my arm, but very soon altered to the other side, as he had had about enough
of it by this time.
When we had drank our fill, which took some time, our
two friendly paddlers went on and took us across the Gwatto Creek to a larger
village of about twenty-five or thirty huts, which was called Aketti, and was inhabited by Jakris.
Here Locke recognized and was recognized by the head man, who had traded to
Warri, the Vice-Consulate of Locke’s district; and so now we knew that we were
more or less safe. They told us here that the reason the men had hurried us out
so quick from the small village opposite, was because there were some Benin
soldiers living there, watching for refugees, and these had left the village
only about twenty minutes before we arrived, to get yams for their breakfast.
If we had arrived at this village on the afternoon before, as we certainly
should have done if we hadn't been too tired to go on, or in fact if we had
arrived at almost any other time except when we did, these Benin men would have
shot us, or done their best to, for a certainty. So here was more marvelous
good luck.
Of course our arrival at Aketti created a tremendous excitement; for the people there had been told that all
the white men had been killed, and certainly never expected to see any of them
nearly five days after the massacre. The head man said he would get a canoe
ready to take us away, and while he was doing so he asked us to sit behind some
huts, so that we shouldn’t be seen from the opposite side, in case any Benin
men were watching. He also produced some excellent palm-wine for us, which is
very good while quite fresh, but beastly afterwards, I think, though the
natives prefer it sour and potent.
We sat down behind the huts, and were the objects of
much interest to the inhabitants, both male and female, of the village. But as
two specimens of the ruling race, we couldn’t have been much of a success, for
there couldn’t have been found two more miserable-looking objects. We were
unshaven and unwashed; our bodies were bloody; our clothes all torn and dirty;
not a square inch of our bodies that wasn’t black with thorns. We must have
been two miserable-looking specimens of humanity.
The first thing we did after having had a drink was to
light cigarettes. I had a case full of Egyptians in my pocket, and wanted often
to smoke one in the bush; but what with Locke stopping me, and also the idea
that it would make my mouth still drier than it was, if possible, I hadn’t done
so. My possessions in my pocket consisted of a box of wooden matches, pipe,
watch, which I had kept going regularly, the small compass which we had used
for the last two days, and two lucky coins fastened on to the ring of the
watch. Locke had lost most of his possessions, as he had trousers on with side
pockets.
We could get little or no information out of the Aketti people. All they could tell us was that they had
heard that all the white men had been killed, and that none except ourselves
have escaped so far. Although they were more or less safe on this side of the
creek, they were packing up their belongings and preparing to leave the place,
as they knew there would be a big war palaver soon, and were frightened at the Benin
men shooting at them across the creek, which was about forty yards wide there.
While our canoe was being got ready, we heard an old hag screaming and yelling,
“fit to bust herself”, as the small Cockney would say, and we were told at the
time that one of her sons was to be one of our paddlers, and she was frightened
that he might be shot by the Benin men as we went down the creek. We thought
this didn’t sound very probable, but it was the only answer we could get at the
time, and were not told till we were safe out of the country that the old hag
was a Benin woman sent across to Aketti as a spy, and
that she was yelling to her people across the creek to come and shoot two white
men who were escaping. Old brute! If we had known, I think we would have had
her smuggled into the canoe and brought her away as a curiosity.
We wanted to go and hurry up the canoe which was being
got ready for us, but our head man implored us not to come down to the bank,
for he said the Benin men had sentries posted all down the opposite bank, and
if they were to see us they would shoot at the canoe.
After what seemed to us a very long time, we were told
that the canoe was ready, and we lay down at full length in the middle of it,
having mats placed over us to hide us from the Benin men. I was on the Benin
side, and could see several places down by the water’s edge, where our head man
told us the Benin sentries were on the watch; but I saw no man.
We had struck the water about eighteen miles above
Gwatto, so it wasn’t till about three o'clock that our head man said we were
out of the Benin Country, and took off the mats. It had been awfully hot
underneath them in the blaze of the sun, and I was most thankful for the
remnants of my shirt to act as a turban. Dear old Locke’s liver had got out of
order, and most of the way down he kept worrying to have the mats removed, and
I only pacified him by saying that, after all we had gone through, it wasn’t
good enough to run the risk of being shot at again when we were so nearly safe.
On the way down, and before passing Gwatto, we met our
former messenger to Benin going back to Aketti to
collect his goods and chattels. In fact, all the Jakris and Ejaws trading up this creek came away in the
course of the next week or so, for they knew it must lead to a big expedition
against the Benin City men, which meant for them no more chance of any trade,
only that of being shot at across the creek by the Beninis.
Our former messenger, poor chap, was nearly as big a wreck as ourselves, and he
told me that he had also had to run for his life, after taking Phillips’ last
message to the King.
We didn’t pass Gwatto itself, as there was another
passage which missed it; and soon after leaving Gilli Gilli we had the mats off, and could breathe more
freely, for we were perfectly safe then. Though scarcely fit enough to realize
all that that meant, it was a most blessed relief to think that we should have
no more crawling about the bush, and no necessity to look for dew. There was
always that dreadful thought, though: “If only we could have had our other dear
old pals with us”.
As soon as our mats were off, the head man produced
some “fu-fu” he had made for us, and very readily we
ate it. That was the first food we had had for over five days. Fu-fu is made either from yams or plantains, the latter, in
this case, by pounding them up until they resemble dough. He also produced a
demijohn, a big trade-bottle, covered with straw, and generally used in trade
for rum. It was filled with fresh palm-wine, of which we had already had a
taste at Aketti.
After this came more relief in taking off our boots
and socks and bathing our feet. My boots hadn’t been off all these five days,
and, as they were old shooting boots, they had got wrinkled up and cut into my
instep. All this time, too, my arm was trailing along in the water, which
washed out all the filth. When the wound was clean it showed things like the
broken ends of lamp-wick, — ligatures, I believe, which had been shot through,
— and the hole was big enough to put two fingers in at one time up to the first
joint. On the other side was a smaller hole, out of which part of the charge
had passed. Locke’s wounds, whether owing to their being smaller ones, or to
his having squeezed them so much, were in a much healthier condition. The worst
he had was on his leg; it had been originally caused by a thorn, and aggravated
by coming suddenly on some of the remaining nails of my boot when I was
entangled and trying to struggle out of a lot of creepers. This wound gave him
no end of trouble afterwards, as it festered and had to be cut open two or
three times, and never got really well till he arrived home in England.
By the way, one of the men who was paddling our canoe
had been one of the carriers on our ill-fated expedition, but could tell us no
fresh news whatever. All he knew was that he suddenly heard a lot of shots
fired, and saw several carriers fall, so promptly chucked his load down, and
ran away into the bush. He arrived at Aketti two or
three days before us.
As there was not time for us to get either to Sapele or New Benin, i.e. any of the factories on the Benin
River, before dark, we settled to go and stop for the night with Chief Dudu, about the next most powerful Jakri chief to Chief Dore. I have already mentioned that his town was situated up a
small creek near the Benin River, and we intended sleeping at his house, and
getting him to send, what is called in those parts, a despatch canoe, to Sapele, where we imagined everyone was
still, to let them know that we had escaped, and wanted a steam launch to come
and fetch us. However, it was very slow work in a canoe with only five
paddlers, and they were getting a bit tired out at the end.
On the way down we met any amount of canoes going up,
nearly all of them being Jakri or Ejaw canoes going up to fetch all their belongings. Amongst other canoes we met one
of Herbert Clarke’s, whose boys were going up to try and find out what had
become of him. We could only tell them what had happened, and that we didn't
know whether he was alive or dead.
At last, just before dusk, we got into the same reach
that Chief Dudu’s creek branched out of, and were
nearly there, when we suddenly saw one of our own Protectorate launches come
round the corner, and drop anchor just off the creek. Our feelings can scarcely
be imagined, and I think both of us felt a bit mad at the sight.
We were very frightened that the launch might only
have a message for Chief Dudu, and might up anchor
and be off before we could get there, for we were still some three hundred
yards away, and they weren’t likely to take much notice of a small canoe like
ours. However, we made the men paddle like demons, and I seized the remains of
Locke’s sun hat, intending to stand up and wave it. Locke vowed I would upset
the canoe, so we made the head man stand up and wave it for all he was worth.
Very soon we could see our signals answered by
handkerchiefs being waved from the bows of the launch, and as we got close we
made out a group of two white men and six or seven black ones crowded on the
bows, waving, yelling, and cheering like anything. The two white men turned out
to be Lyon, one of our Assistant District Commissioners, and Mr. Swainson, Mr. Pinnock’s agent,
both of whom I have mentioned before. They told us afterwards that their
attention was first drawn to the canoe by seeing the hat waving, and that very
soon, though they could scarcely believe their eyes, they made out two white
men. They had given up hope at least two days before of any white men escaping,
and looked on us more as ghosts than anything else at first. I don’t think they
will mind my saying that they were both crying with joy at seeing us when our
canoe got down to the launch.
It was a very choky time for all of us.
CHAPTER IX
OUR ESCAPE (continued)
AS we drew up to the launch, of course they wanted to
help us into it. Locke was the first, but as soon as they touched him he yelled
out that we weren’t to be touched, being such a mess of thorns and prickles and
wounds. They both said afterwards they had never seen two such
miserable-looking scarecrows before. Having got us into the launch, and told
our rescuer, the head man, where to come to, to get the “dash” we had promised
him, we went off full speed ahead for New Benin, where we were told everybody had
gone down to from Sapele.
I won’t try and describe our feelings at finding
ourselves once more on one of our own launches, and away from all the horrors
we had gone through. As we started, a bottle of champagne was produced, and a
glass of it given to us. Another Gold Coast man, Quartey by name, was cook of the launch, and no one seemed more pleased to see us than
he was. He kept standing at the entrance of the cabin, staring at us, and on
every possible occasion produced the following : “God save Her Majesty the
Queen, and to hell” (please forgive the language) “with Abu Binni,
the King of Benin”.
After we had finished our champagne, we were allowed a
whisky and soda, and soon after a cocktail, by which time a plate of most
excellent soup had been got ready for us, which we drank greedily, accompanied
by more champagne. If ever we ought to have been intoxicated, it was that
night, but strange to relate we were not, nor did we suffer any evil effects
afterwards from our libations.
It got dark before we got to New Benin, but as we
passed each factory Lyon yelled out that Locke and myself had escaped, and both
white and black men turned out and cheered till long after we had passed.
It was a veritable resurrection from the dead. We were
to stop at the African Association’s factory, which was next the old Consulate
here. There was a company of my black troops here, and when they heard the
commandant had escaped, and arrived back, they turned out in a mass on to the
boat pier, which they broke down by their weight, with the intention of
carrying us up to the house. It was only after a lot of pain, and by using what
little physical force we had left, that we were able to make them understand
that we were too sore to be carried, and preferred walking.
Our doctor, D’Arcy Irvine, was dining on the Niger
Company steamer Nupe,
which Mr. Flint of the Niger Company had most kindly brought Captain Burrows
round in from the Forcados River. Captain Burrows of
the L. N. L. Regiment had been in the Niger Coast Protectorate Force, but had
been appointed District Commissioner of the Benin and Sapele District, and had just come out after his leave home. He was in the mail
steamer in the Forcados River when the first news of
the disaster came down from Warri, and it was owing to Mr. Flint’s kindness in
bringing him round on the Nupe that he was able to get round so soon.
As soon as D’Arcy Irvine heard of our arrival, he
hurried over, put us into a carbolic bath, to try and get a little of the dirt
off us, and packed us off to bed as soon as possible, after having dressed our
wounds. Personally, I can just remember the satisfaction of feeling a bed
beneath me once more, and dozing off at once, and feeling very badly treated
when I was wakened up to take some meat extract or something of that sort And
so ended one of the very luckiest days of my life.
I was up at 6.30 a.m. next morning, — and oh, the
relief of waking up and finding a roof over one’s head! — after a lovely sleep,
and went to tell Locke to hurry up, as there was a grand collection of dew on
the verandah outside. It was most unfortunate that the Protectorate yacht Ivy
should have left the Benin River only the morning before, and that we should
have missed her by so few hours, for it would have saved our relatives four
terrible days of anxiety, during which they thought we were killed like all the
other poor fellows. All communications from Benin and Sapele to England or any of the cable stations — Brass, Bonny, or Lagos — have to go
to the Forcados River, and thence on by the first
steamer leaving. The Axim, the mail steamer that Captain Burrows came out in,
was lying in Forcados River when the first terrible
news of the massacre came down vid Sapele and Warri.
She promptly went off to Brass, and sent the news from there, while the yacht
Ivy went to Bonny, and cabled from there to England. After this no steamer left Forcados River for four days, and consequently our
telegram announcing our escape didn’t arrive in England till four days after
the first news. Such awful days they were, too, to our nearest and dearest! How
I wish that more of our party, if not all, could have also been able to cable
home their safety.
Burrows came to see us the first thing in the morning,
and immediately sent more canoes up the Gwatto Creek to try and pick up any
more possible survivors. There had been several canoes sent up before. The next
day he himself started up, in one of the launches, to see if he could do any
good by using the steam-launch whistle to let any survivors know that friends
were near. Captain Cockburn, an officer of the Queen’s Bays, and attached to
the Protectorate Force, who was surveying and sounding the Gwatto Creek, also
went up several times.
However, altogether in the end only about fifteen Kroo boys and about forty Jakris escaped, and none of the Gold Coast men. The rest must have been killed or
taken prisoners.
Early in the morning our Chief Tormentor, as we used
to call Dr. D’Arcy Irvine, dressed our wounds, and it was then that he told me
that another day in the bush without water would have made my arm mortify, and
he doubted whether it would have been possible then to have saved my life.
Though we called him our Chief Tormentor in fun, we were exceedingly lucky in
having such a man as D’Arcy Irvine to look after us, for we couldn’t possibly
have had anyone more skillful or more delicate in the way he treated us.
The dressing time for our wounds was generally in the
afternoon; and it was rather an amusing one, for when Irvine called out for
first patient, we each of us tried to get the other taken first. However, the
one who was dressed and bandaged first scored in the end, as he used to go and
jeer at No. 2, when his turn came.
At first my wound hurt a good deal, the probe, by the
way, being able to go through both holes and stick out each side of the arm;
but very soon, thanks to D’Arcy’s wonderful treatment and care, it began to
heal in the most marvelous fashion, and was very nearly entirely closed up in
three weeks. D’Arcy Irvine had of course probed it to see if any of the charge
was left in the arm, but found none. Locke’s worst wound was on his leg, caused
by a thorn, and aggravated by the nails of my shooting boot. It kept on getting
bad and having to be cut open again.
During the next three weeks we got very little news.
Captain Gallwey, now Acting Consul-General, came
round in H. M.S. Widgeon, and we
heard that the Punitive Expedition was to be a very big naval one. We also
heard that our chief, Mr. Moor, had left England for Benin, with most of the
Protectorate officers who were home on leave; but that was about all. During
this time Burrows and Lyon had been very busy surveying and reconnoitering all
the creeks round the Benin Country, and getting all the information they could.
One message was sent up to the King of Benin asking if any white men were still
alive. The answer was “None”, and as a proof of it he sent back two rings that
had belonged to poor old Crawford. I never heard the other gruesome story about
poor Mr. Gordon’s finger and rings, until I saw it in the English papers on my
way homewards. We sent up another message soon after, asking again if any white
men were alive, and got down an answer from the King to the effect that there
were no white men alive in Benin City, and that he (the King) would receive no
more messages from the white men. If they wanted to come and fight, let them
come. He would send down soldiers to the waterside to fight the white men. If
these were killed, he would send down more until all his soldiers were killed;
and then he would run away. “ His Majesty” acted up to his words, too.
About the 28th or 29th January, Locke was fit enough
to go back to Warri, his station, where he was going to wait for a homeward
boat. Having been out already fourteen months, he was a month overdue for
leave. Anyway, he would have had to go home on sick leave, as his leg would
have prevented him joining the Punitive Expedition.
I was ordered home too, but, feeling nearly all right
again, I thought I would stop out and try and go on the Punitive Expedition.
Meanwhile, as I had next to no kit, I thought I might get to Old Calabar and back in time for the expedition, and bring back
some of my kit that I had left behind there. So I went down to Forcados with Locke, and got on board the S.S. Bonny, one of the Old Calabar mail boats. She was discharging cargo for Lagos, so
couldn’t leave for two days. Meanwhile H.M.S. Alecto came in, and the officers
told me that the Punitive Expedition was to start from Sapele about the 1 2th February.
This wouldn’t have given me time to get to Old Calabar and back in time, and as poor Captain Pritchard,
who was killed afterwards, kindly offered to take me back to New Benin, back
again I went.
After stopping at New Benin for three or four days, we
all went to Sapele to wait for the Punitive
Expedition, the main column of which was to start from a place called Warrigi, a few miles below Sapele.
There we found H.M.S. Phoebe. The
Niger Coast Protectorate Force and most of the carriers arrived about 4th
February, the former marching straight on to a place called Ciri,
about seven miles off, and situated on the Ilogi Creek. About one mile farther up the creek, on the Benin side, is Ilogbo, a Benin town, from which Benin City was supposed to
be only about twelve miles distant. It was along this road, which was an
extremely bad one, being very narrow, with thick bush nearly all the way, that
the main column were to go. The Niger Coast Protectorate Force, as soon as they
arrived at Ciri, were set to work making a broad road
back to Warrigi, while as many carriers as could be
spared began at Warrigi, the blue-jackets making the
necessary bridges, one of the St. George’s being indeed a work of art.
The Naval Brigade were taken from the St. George, Admiral Rawson’s flagship, Theseus, Forte (these three being too
big to come through the creek, remained about twenty miles out at sea from Forcados, with the Malacca, the hospital ship), the Philomel, Barrosa, and Widgeon, which formed the Gwatto column, and the Phoebe, Magpie, and Alecto, which formed the Jamieson
River column. Several special service officers had come out to join the force
for the expedition, among them being Colonel Bruce Hamilton of the East
Yorkshire Regiment, in command, and Major Langdon of the Army Service Corps as
second in command; so that, although actually commandant of the Niger Coast Protectorate
Force, I should have had to act as a company officer if I had been able to go
up with the expedition.
As we had all been reported killed, Mr. Moor had
applied to the War Office for two senior officers to command the Force, and the
news of my safety only reached home the day before Mr. Moor and all the special
service officers left England for the expedition, too late to make any change.
Even then they didn’t think I would be fit enough to go up with this
expedition, which eventually turned out to be the case, as after arriving at Ciri on the 9th February and stopping there three days, I
was ordered home on sick leave, neither nerves nor physical condition being in
a fit enough state to allow me to go on with the expedition. It was very hard
luck, for I wanted to go up badly, if it was only to have some revenge for the
murder of so many dear friends.
Thus I can give no eye-witness account of the doings
of the Punitive Expedition; but from the accounts of those who went up, the
state of Benin City when they got in there on the 18th February was something
too awful. The remains of hundreds of human sacrifices were everywhere. Some
were still on the crucifixion trees, others lay in deep pits all over the city,
but especially were there crowds close to the King’s Compound. And these,
together with others in a large open space, where there were thousands of dead
bodies in all stages of decomposition, mixed with skeletons from former
“customs”, made such a terrible effluvium that nearly all the officers and men
suffered badly from nausea when they first arrived in the city.
The pits were about as bad as anything to look upon,
for in them living, dead, and dying were thrown indiscriminately. It is a great
pity that the governors of Benin City, or the head Juju men, escaped, for there
is not much doubt that it was they who were responsible for our massacre, and
for all the abominations that went on in the city.
The King himself, according to native accounts, had
not nearly so much to say towards it, and was more or less a figure-head. He
was supposed to be the impersonation of the Juju or religion of the country,
and was in consequence never allowed to leave the Compound, and only to be seen
by his people once a year. The mere fact of his having had to run away and
leave Benin City ought to destroy to a great extent the belief of the natives
in the power of their Juju.
I left Ciri on the 12th, and
started down from Warrigi in a small German branch
steamer hired from Lagos the same day. The next day I was caught up by another
branch boat, the Ilorin, with Captain Koe of the Force, who had been wounded in the right
arm during the first twenty minutes’ fighting at Ologbo,
and was also going home on sick leave, as the bone in his arm had been
shattered. The Ilorin took us both
out to the hospital ship Malacca, where we spent two days until the 16th
February, when the S.S. Bonny came
and took us on, arriving at Liverpool on the 16th March.
The doctors who said I would break down if I went on
with the expedition were perfectly correct, for I more or less did so when I
got on board the Bonny, and, writing
this account now, nearly two months after I arrived home, am still suffering
from the effects of all we went through.
CHAPTER X
THE PUNITIVE EXPEDITION
AS soon as the news of the massacre of our expedition
arrived at home, i.e. on the 11th
January, telegrams were sent at once to Admiral Rawson, C.B., commanding the
Naval Squadron at the Cape, to organize a Punitive Expedition as soon as
possible, the expedition, of course, being almost entirely a naval one, with
the assistance of the Niger Coast Protectorate Force. This expedition took
Benin City on the 18th February, — only about five weeks after the first
telegrams. Marvelously smart work, especially when one considers the distances
most of the expedition had to come, the extraordinary arrangements that had to
be made for it in the shape of carriers from all parts of West Africa (between
three and four thousand being employed), stores, etc. etc., and last, but not
least, the nature of the country through which they had to fight their way.
As I have said before, the naval force was taken from
H.M. Ships Theseus, Forte, St. George, Phoebe, Philomel, Barrosa, Widgeon, Magpie, and Alecto, whilst an
additional force of marines was sent out in the P. & O. S.S. Malacca, which was to act as, and had
been fitted up as hospital ship. The first two ships, H.M.S. Theseus and Forte, came from the Mediterranean Squadron, while the remainder
belonged to the Cape Squadron. As I have already mentioned, the Theseus, Forte, and St. George being too large to come over the bar of the Forcados River, anchored off its mouth, but the rest came up the Benin River through the Forcados River and Nanna Creek.
The main column was to advance on Benin City by what
is called the Ilogbo route, — Ilogbo being a Benin village on the Ilogi Creek and supposed
to be only about twelve or fourteen miles from Benin City. The distance turned
out to be about twenty-two miles. The Ilogi Creek is
the creek from which the Benin City people used to get their water, and at that
place was called the Ikpoba Creek. Unfortunately for
the expedition, it soon got too shallow and full of snags and obstructions to
allow of any steam-launches or boats going up it, and being of any use to the
marching column. To reach Ilogbo the force landed at
a place called Warrigi, a few miles below Sapele on the Benin River, and marched about seven miles
across to Ciri, a friendly village on one side of the Ilogi Creek and about one mile below Ilogbo. When the advance began it had been the Admiral's
intention to throw a wire suspension bridge across the Ilogi Creek, but unfortunately the bridge could not be used owing to swamps. The
Protectorate troops arrived at Ciri about the 4th of
February, and started cutting a road back to Warrigi,
while a party of carriers, with the help of some bluejackets, began the road
from the other end, and a very good road was ready for the Admiral’s inspection
when he came to visit Ciri on the 9th February.
Meanwhile there was a lot of work going on at Warrigi organizing the great number of carriers that were
to accompany the expedition. These men came from Sierra Leone and the Gold
Coast, and some, of course, were supplied by the Jakri Chiefs of the Benin River, and belonged to many and various tribes of West
Africa. In addition there was a force of some hundred or more scouts raised in
Lagos by Mr. Turner, a travelling commissioner of the Niger Coast Protectorate,
and officered by him and Lieutenant Erskine, R.N. They looked a very brave
sight in red shirts and fezes, and I believe did very
fairly well afterwards, especially considering that it had only been possible
to give them a very few days’ drill.
On the 10th February the remainder of the bluejackets
and marines forming the main column landed at Warrigi,
and marched across to Ciri the next day, so that the
advance on Benin City began on the 12th February. The Protectorate Force was
under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Hamilton of the East Yorkshire
Regiment, who had been sent out by the War Office with the following special
service officers, Major Langdon, A.S.C., as second in command. Captains Walker,
Scottish Rifles, and O’Shee, R.E. The officers
actually belonging to the Force present were Major Searle, the permanent second
in command, Captains Ringer Koe, late of the Royal
Irish, Carter of the Black Watch, Lieutenant Cockburn of the Queen’s Bays, and
Lieutenant Daniels, a native officer, and as plucky as any white man.
Before the main column advanced two flanking columns
had been sent by the Admiral for the purpose of drawing away the enemy’s
attention from the main attack, and also to try and stop any fugitives escaping
from Benin City. Unfortunately they were not successful in stopping the King
and his Juju men when they fled. One of these columns went up the Jamieson
River under the command of Captain M’Gill, R.N., and
the other, under Captain O'Callaghan, R.N., went up the Gwatto Creek.
Captain M’Gill’s force,
which was made up from men of the Phoebe, Magpie, and Alecto, proceeded up the Jamieson
River as far as Sapobah, landed there and marched to
a place some four miles north of Sapobah where there
were cross-roads from Benin City. There they built a stockade. On the 11th
February this stockade was attacked by the Benin men from the dense bush which
surrounded it, and Lieutenant-Commander Pritchard of the Alecto and one bluejacket were
killed. After this the stockade was reinforced and strengthened. The Benin men
again attacked on the 20th, but, as they did not seem to care about coming to
close quarters, there were no casualties. However, the same day they attacked a
column proceeding back to Sapobah, and killed one
marine and wounded two others. Captain M’Gill’s column returned to Warrigi on the 24th February,
having previously burnt the stockade. This, of course, was after Benin City had
been taken, and when the naval force was leaving the country.
The men forming the Gwatto column, under Captain
O’Callaghan, came from the Philomel, Barrosa, and Widgeon. On the 10th February Captain
O’Callaghan burnt Gilli-Gilli, the frontier Benin
City village on that side, and then proceeded on to Gwatto. After searching the
bush with volleys and some rounds from a quick-firing gun, Captain O’Callaghan
landed with a force of about eighty men. While they were engaged in burning the
town they were attacked by a strong force of Benin men, who fought most
pluckily from the bush for nearly an hour, although a number of them were seen
to fall. Then they had had about enough of it, and retired. Captain 0’Callaghan
having blown up two big houses with gun-cotton and burnt the remainder of the
town, then retired to his boats at the water-side without being attacked again.
None of the force were killed, but Lieutenant - Commander Hunt of the Widgeon and two bluejackets were
severely wounded, whilst Captain O’Callaghan himself and some others were
slightly wounded.
On the 14th February the column went back to Gilli-Gilli, where they made a zereba.
However, being reinforced, they advanced again to Gwatto once more and occupied
it. For two days the Benin men attacked them from the bush, but with little
success, as only three men were slightly wounded, whilst the Benis lost several, and eventually never attacked at all
after the 18th. On the 25th February, a company of the Protectorate Force,
under Captain Gallwey, D.S.O., arrived at Gwatto from
Benin City without having been once attacked, which showed that the taking of
Benin City had a great effect on the Benis. On the
way down. Captain Gallwey came across the scene of
the massacre of our expedition, and buried the remains of our dear comrades
that he found there, reading the Funeral Service over them. Captain O’Callaghan
embarked his force, and left Gwatto on the 27th February.
To return to the main column: but before starting an
account of the march and taking of Benin City, it may be as well to explain
that this column had to fight its way through twenty-two miles of dense bush
country, along a narrow uncleared path that only
admitted of marching single file, and almost unceasingly attacked by an unseen
enemy, who used to creep up within twenty yards of the path before firing. Add
to this no water to be found on the march and the excessive heat of the
country, and some idea can be conceived of the work the column had to do. Of
course the Admiral, now Sir Harry Rawson, K.C.B., was in supreme command, and
the Consul-General of the Protectorate, now Sir Ralph Moor, K.C.M.G.,
accompanied him.
The advance on Ilogbo began
at daylight on the 12th February, and owing to the impossibility of using the
wire suspension bridge, on account of the swamps opposite Ilogbo,
the force had to be conveyed by water. Though others came up later, there was
only one steam-launch at Ilogbo at the commencement
of the attack, which towed two surf-boats and some canoes. This was worked by
that indefatigable officer Captain Child, R.N., Superintendent of the Marine
Department of the Protectorate. Owing to these circumstances only a
comparatively small number of men could be taken to Ilogbo at one time, and Captain Child and his launch were at work almost continuously
for two days. The first detachment to start were one company of blue-jackets
and two companies of the Protectorate troops, under Colonel Bruce Hamilton, who
commanded the advance-guard the whole way to Benin City. As soon as this
detachment landed they were at once attacked by the Benis from the bush, and Captain Koe of the Protectorate
Force was severely wounded, and Lieutenant Daniels, the native officer, and one
private of the Force slightly wounded. As the successive detachments arrived,
Colonel Hamilton pushed on, driving the enemy back, and soon occupied the Benin
village of Ilogbo, which, as usual, was some distance
away from the landing-place, about one thousand yards.
The 13th February was occupied in getting over the
whole of the column, with its supplies and water. The advance-guard started off
again at daybreak on the 14th, and after proceeding some distance, met with a
strong resistance from the enemy until they reached a place where there were
cross-roads, and where the enemy had apparently made their main camp. This day
the Protectorate Force had one company sergeant-major and two privates severely
wounded.
From Ilogbo as far as a
place called Agagi, the enemy had cut a path in the
bush parallel to the main path, to be used as an ambush path. They evidently
were under the impression that our force would get no farther than Agagi, as the ambush path ceased there. This ambush path
was an excellent thing for our Force, as it enabled two columns to proceed at
the same time, and only necessitated the guarding of one flank by each column.
On the 1 5th February the advance-guard did not start
till noon, but soon after starting they were again attacked from both sides,
the attack gradually extending the whole length of the column. This went on
till they reached the enemy’s camp at Agagi village soon
after three o'clock p.m. Here the Force had another private killed, and some of
the scouts and carriers were wounded. It had been expected that some water
would be found at Agagi, but all the wells were found
to be dry, so now every drop of water had to be brought up from Ilogbo, some ten miles away. In consequence of this the
Admiral decided to leave the Second Division of the Naval Brigade at Cross
Roads Camp, while he with the advance-guard and First Division of the Naval
Brigade made a dash on Benin City.
This flying column were to take with them the
necessary ammunition, four days’ provisions and three days’ water (at the rate
of two quarts for each officer or man and one quart for each carrier per day),
— a terribly small quantity considering the work to be done and the excessive
heat. However, it was all that could be allowed.
The advance-guard halted at Agagi on the 1 6th February, which place the Admiral with the Consul-General and
First Division Naval Brigade reached on the afternoon of that date. This flying
column started again at daybreak on the 17th, and only reached another village
called Awoko, seven miles off, about two o'clock p,m., having had a running fight nearly all the way and
taken en route three camps of the enemy and one village. Luckily the casualties
this day were small; one scout killed, one scout and one carrier severely
wounded (the carrier died next day), and one bluejacket slightly wounded.
On the 18th February the column started for its final
dash on Benin City, now only eight miles off. As soon as the advance-guard
started they were met with a heavy fire from the back, and this continued more
or less the whole day. About 10.30 a.m., Chief Petty Officer Ansell of the Navy
was shot through the head from a distance about six yards off, and killed at
once. About 1. p.m. the column came across a stockade which commanded a narrow
causeway with a deep ravine on each side and had a few guns in it. This
stockade was immediately taken and blown up with gun-cotton. About three hundred
yards farther on a small village was reached, and as Benin City was reported as
being near, some shells from the seven-pounders and rockets were fired in the
direction the city was supposed to be. So good was the direction that next day
some of the rocket-heads and the effects of the explosion of the shells were
found in the city close to the King’s Compound. I was also told by an officer
who was present that it was reported that the King and his Juju men had
actually remained in Benin City up to this time, but that a rocket coming
fairly near them made them decide to quit. And quit they did, worse luck.
About one and a half miles from Benin City the column
had their first experience of the sights of Benin City, for they came across
two human sacrifices in the path, made most probably as Juju to stop the white
men from entering the city. The wretched beings had had their arms tied behind
their backs, their mouths gagged with pieces of stick, and had then been cut
down and across their chests and stomachs, so that their entrails were hanging
out.
Some distance after this the bush path opened up into
a broad road leading to the city, which was only about a thousand yards away
now. Here the enemy made a determined stand, and here for the first time were
any of them seen — a party of them actually trying to charge the head of the
column as it arrived at the open broad road. On arriving at the broad road the
advance-guard, consisting of the Protectorate Force, bluejackets from the St. George, and the marine battalion,
formed into square. As the square advanced it was met with a tremendously hot
fire from both sides, and it was during this time that poor Captain Byrne,
R.M.L. I., who only reached England to die from the effect of his wounds, was
hit badly. Here also Dr. Fyfe, R.N., who had been attending to Captain Byrne,
was killed, also several marines.
The enemy took every advantage of their cover from the
bush, and some of them actually climbed trees to enable them to get a better
chance of firing at the column. However, some of the officers of the Force made
capital “rook – shooting”, and killed several of the enemy in the trees. The
enemy also had several old cannon firing from the direction of what was
afterwards found to be the King’s house. Two hundred yards from the city the
column broke into a cheer and charged; the enemy fled, and Benin City was taken
about two o'clock p.m. After six days’ hard marching and fighting in the most
extreme heat the men were naturally much exhausted.
The King’s Compound was occupied by the troops for the
night, and the rearguard, which had been left on the bush path, was brought up.
Water was also issued to the men, leaving only one quart per man as a reserve.
The casualties this day had been very heavy. Dr. Fyfe, R.N., Chief Petty
Officer Ansell, R.N., and two marines had been killed; Captain Byrne, R.M.L.I.,
eight of the Naval Brigade and marines, three of the Protectorate Force, one
scout, one native interpreter, and six carriers seriously wounded, and six of
the Naval Brigade slightly wounded. I believe, also, that some of the officers
were slightly wounded, but being only hit by pellets, did not return themselves
as so. Major Searle of the Protectorate Force also had a narrow escape, as he
twice got bullets through his helmet while working the Force seven-pounders.
On the 19th February two-thirds of the column with all
the carriers were sent off to get water. They found the Ikpoba Creek (called the Ilogi Creek farther down) some two
miles off, from which a plentiful supply was obtained. In fact, it was from
this Creek the inhabitants of Benin City used to get all their water. Nearly
all the boxes and stores of our unfortunate expedition were found almost intact
in the King’s Palace, but unluckily were all burned by a fire which broke out
on the 21st February and burned most of the town. In this fire the house used
for a hospital was burned, but, thanks to the promptitude of Captain Campbell,
R.N., all the wounded and sick were got out safely. Many of the officers of the
expedition lost all their kits in this fire.
The Naval Brigade was to have left Benin for their
ships on the 20th February, but as the Protectorate Force, who were to remain
in Benin, were short of ammunition and stores, Admiral Rawson decided to remain
till the 22nd. The whole Force was engaged for the remainder of the 19th, 20th,
and 21st February, in clearing the town as much as possible, making a
defensible camp for the Protectorate Force, and destroying chiefs’ houses,
sacrificial and crucifixion trees, and the whole of the Juju houses.
On the 19th February three of the Jakri carriers of our ill-fated expedition came in from the bush terribly mutilated.
They reported that as our troops approached the city all the other wretched
carriers of our expedition who had been brought there alive were at once
killed, but that no white men had been brought there. All had been killed at
the massacre. One of poor Mr. Gordon’s boys was also found alive at the bottom
of one of the deep pits amongst a lot of dead bodies. Six Accra men from the
Gold Coast also came in from the bush heavily ironed. They had been captured
while they were collecting rubber in the Mahin Country to the north of Benin City.
On the 21St February a carrier column, escorted by men
of the Naval Brigade, arrived with stores and ammunition. The whole of the
Naval Brigade left Benin City on the 22nd February, and arrived at Warrigi on the 24th, meeting with no more opposition; the
flanking columns also returned soon afterwards, and the whole embarked on their
ships on the 27th. This ended the Punitive Expedition. Though they did not
suffer much at the time, one regrets extremely to hear that the Naval Brigade
suffered badly from fever and malaria afterwards, the Cape Squadron having a
very heavy sick-list from these causes, including the Admiral.
I suppose some short description of the horrors of
Benin City must be given, though they are almost too dreadful to be described.
Benin City was a large rambling town divided by a
broad avenue, on the south side of which were the King’s and big Chiefs’
Compounds, and on the north those of the lesser Chiefs and people. All these
houses were built of red mud and thatched with palm leaves, part of the Kings
own house and the Palaver House having iron roofs.
In the Kin’s part of the town were his own house and
those of his own people, the Palaver House, Juju houses, and their Compounds,
together with several old ruined houses where former kings and chiefs were
supposed to be buried
Close to the King’s house were seven large Juju
Compounds, each two to three acres in extent, in which most of the sacrifices
were performed, and in which the people used to sit while the priest performed
the sacrifices. These were large grassy enclosures, surrounded by mud walls. At
one end of each, under a roof, were the sacrificial altars, on which were
placed the gods — carved ivory tusks, standing upright, on hideous bronze
heads. In front of each ivory god was a small earthen mound on which the
wretched victim’s forehead was placed. On the altars were several rudely-carved
maces for killing the unfortunate victims. When the expedition took Benin City
they found these altars covered with streams of dried human blood, the stench
of which was too awful, the whole grass portion of the Compounds simply reeking
with it.
In the corners of these Compounds huge pits, 40 to 50
feet deep, were found filled with human bodies, dead and dying, and a few
wretched captives were rescued alive.
The Palaver House, which was about 100 feet long and
about 50 or 60 feet broad, had an iron roof over the side walls but was open to
the air in the middle. The doors were covered with embossed brass. On the roof
on one side was a huge bronze snake with a large head, and in the center of the
yard a bronze crocodile’s head. The King’s house was much the same. Amongst its
decorations were several square patches of glass let into the beams over the
King’s bed.
Outside, in the open space, the state of things was
almost more frightful than in the Juju Compounds — everywhere sacrificial trees
on which were the corpses of the latest victims — everywhere, on each path,
were newly-sacrificed corpses. On the principal sacrificial tree facing the
main gate of the King’s Compound there were two crucified bodies, at the foot
of the tree seventeen newly-decapitated bodies, and forty-three more in various
stages of decomposition. On another tree a wretched woman was found crucified,
while at its foot were four more decapitated bodies. To the westward of the
King’s house was a large open space, about 300 yards in length, simply covered
with the remains of some hundreds of human sacrifices in all stages of
decomposition. The same sights were met with all over the city. Such was the
state of Benin City, well named the City of Blood, on the 18th January 1897.
Such had been the state of the city for years, and it was by trying to see if
he couldn’t put a stop to such a state of things by peaceful measures, first of
all, that poor Phillips and all our dear comrades lost their lives.
In conclusion, I should like to quote an extract from
a letter of a comrade of the late Mr. Phillips : — “It was the disaster which
befell, on 4th January, the ill-fated pacific mission, headed by Mr. Phillips,
which led to the dispatch of an armed expedition under Admiral Rawson, the
members of which displaying gallantry and endurance beyond all praise,
successfully accomplished its object and drove the monster from his throne and
country.
“The loss which the British nation has sustained
during the last sixty years, through the deaths of so many brave soldiers,
bluejackets, and civilians in the glorious work of rescuing the native races in
West Africa from the horrors of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and the tortures
of fetish worship, must ever be a matter of deep regret and sadness to all; but
it cannot fail to make us proud of our country-men who have nobly and
courageously done their duty with the greatest enthusiasm, undergoing hardship
and privation inseparable from the trying climate of the West African Coast,
and exhibiting in their conduct an entire disregard of personal danger”.
THE END