Journal of an African Cruiser: Comprising Sketches of the Canaries, the Cape De Verds, Liberia, Madeira, Sierra Leone, and Other Places of Interest on the West Coast of AfricaBridge, Horatio
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Journal of an African Cruiser: Comprising Sketches of the Canaries, the Cape De Verds, Liberia, Madeira, Sierra Leone, and Other Places of Interest on the West Coast of Africa
Bridge, Horatio
Africa, West -- Description and travel; Bridge, Horatio, 1806-1893
The present King of Appollonia deposited six hundred ounces of gold (about
ten thousand dollars) with the Governor of Cape Coast Castle, as security
for his good behavior. His cellar is well supplied with rare wines, which
he offers liberally to strangers who land at his residence. All these
circumstances, and this barbaric magnificence, indicate a far different
condition from that of the native Kings in the vicinity of Liberia, who
live simply, like their subjects, on vegetables and fish, and one of whom
was proud to array himself in a cast-off garment of my own. Their wealth
consists not in gold, plate, or bullion, but in crockery and earthenware.
Not only the Kings, but all the rich natives, accumulate articles of this
kind, until their dwellings resemble warehouses of crockery. Perhaps fifty
white wash-bowls, with as many pitchers, mugs, and plates, may be seen
around the room; and when these utensils become so numerous as to excite
the envy of the tribe, the owners are said to bury them in the earth. In
the house of King Glass (so named, I presume, from the transparency of his
character), I noticed the first indications of a taste for the Fine Arts.
Seventy coarse colored engravings, glazed and framed, were suspended on
the wall; and, what was most curious, nearly all of them were copies of
the same print, a portrait of King William the Fourth.
It is to be desired that some missionary should give an account of the
degree and kind of natural religion among the native tribes. Their belief
in the efficacy of sassy-wood to discover guilt or innocence, indicates a
faith in an invisible Equity. Some of them, however, select the most
ridiculous of animals, the monkey, as their visible symbol of the Deity;
or, as appears more probable, they stand in spiritual awe of him, from an
idea that the souls of the dead are again embodied in this shape. Under
this impression, they pay a kind of worship to the monkey, and never kill
him near a burial-place; and though, in other situations, they kill and
eat him, they endeavor to propitiate his favor by respectful language, and
the use of charms. Other natives, in the neighborhood of Gaboon, worship
the shark, and throw slaves to him to be devoured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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