The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, And Explorations of the Nile SourcesBaker, Samuel White, Sir
History
The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, And Explorations of the Nile Sources
Baker, Samuel White, Sir
Albert, Lake (Congo and Uganda); Nile River; Sudan
He was an excellent example of the natural instincts of the negro
remaining intact under all circumstances. Although remarkably superior
to his associates, his small stock of knowledge was combined with such
an exaggerated conceit, that he was to me a perpetual source of
amusement, while he was positively hated by his comrades, both by Arabs
and blacks, for his overbearing behaviour. Having seen many countries,
he was excessively fond of recounting his adventures, all of which had
so strong a colouring of the "Arabian Nights," that he might have been
the original "Sinbad the Sailor." His natural talent for geography was
really extraordinary; he would frequently pay me a visit, and spend
hours in drawing maps with a stick upon the sand, of the countries he
had visited, and especially of the Mediterranean, and the course from
Egypt and Constantinople to England. Unfortunately, some long story was
attached to every principal point of the voyage. The descriptions most
interesting to me were those connected with the west bank of the White
Nile, as he had served some years with the trading party, and had
penetrated through the Makkarika, a cannibal tribe, to about two hundred
miles west of Gondokoro. Both he and many of Ibrahim's party had been
frequent witnesses to acts of cannibalism, during their residence among
the Makkarikas. They described these cannibals as remarkably good
people, but possessing a peculiar taste for dogs and human flesh. They
accompanied the trading party in their razzias, and invariably ate the
bodies of the slain. The traders complained that they were bad
associates, as they insisted upon killing and eating the children which
the party wished to secure as slaves: their custom was to catch a child
by its ankles, and to dash its head against the ground; thus killed,
they opened the abdomen, extracted the stomach and intestines, and tying
the two ankles to the neck they carried the body by slinging it over the
shoulder, and thus returned to camp, where they divided it by
quartering, and boiled it in a large pot. Another man in my own service
had been a witness to a horrible act of cannibalism at Gondokoro.
The traders had arrived with their ivory from the West, together with a
great number of slaves; the porters who carried the ivory being
Makkarikas. One of the slave girls attempted to escape, and her
proprietor immediately fired at her with his musket, and she fell
wounded; the ball had struck her in the side. The girl was remarkably
fat, and from the wound, a large lump of yellow fat exuded. No sooner
had she fallen, than the Makkarikas rushed upon her in a crowd, and
seizing the fat, they tore it from the wound in handfuls, the girl being
still alive, while the crowd were quarrelling for the disgusting prize.
Others killed her with a lance, and at once divided her by cutting off
the head, and splitting the body with their lances, used as knives,
cutting longitudinally from between the legs along the spine to the
neck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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