To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. IBurton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. I
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Ghana -- Description and travel; Gold mines and mining -- Ghana
We then turned our attention from the town to the townspeople. They have
not improved in demeanour during the last twenty years. Even then the
'liberateds' and 'recaptives,' chiefly Akus and Ibos, had begun the
'high jinks,' which we shall find at their highest in Sierra Leone. They
had organised 'Companies,' the worst of trade-unions, elected headmen,
indulged in strikes, and more than once had come into serious collision
with the military. The Mandengas, whom Mungo Park calls Mandingoes and
characterises as a 'wild, sociable, and obliging people,' soon waxed
turbulent and unruly. This is to be expected; a race of warriors must be
governed by the sword. They would prefer for themselves military law to
all the blessings of a constitution or a plébiscite. But philanthropy
wills otherwise, and in these days the English authorities do not keep
up that state whose show secures the respect of barbarians. Where the
Governor walks about escortless, like a private individual, he must
expect to be 'treated as such.'
There is no difficulty in distinguishing at first sight Moslem from
Kafir. Besides the gypsy-like Pulo, the 'brown race,' our older Fúlahs
and Fellalahs, whose tongue is said to be a congener of the Nubian; and
the wild, half-naked pagan Jolu, the principal tribes, are two, the
Mandengas and the Wólofs. The former, whom Europeans divide into the
Marabút, who does not drink, and the Soninki, who does, inhabit a
triangle, its base being the line from the south of the Senegal to the
Gambia River, and its apex the Niger; it has even extended to near
Tin-Bukhtu (the Well of Bukhtu), our Timbuctoo. In old Mohammedan works
their territory is called Wángara. This race of warmen and horsemen
surprisingly resembles the Somal, who hold the same parallels of
latitude in Eastern Africa, as to small heads, semi-Caucasian features,
Asiatic above the nose-tip and African below; tall lithe figures, high
shoulders, and long limbs, especially the forearm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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