History of the Negro Race in America Volume I Part 12

"'Can a man contend with G.o.d? Who fears death? Let us die undisturbed, and be at rest forever,' they answered.

"Brave, faithful, loyal souls! They were, poor fellows, surrendering themselves to the benumbing influences of a listlessness and fatal indifference to life! Four of them died in consequence of this strange malady at Loanda, three more on board her Majesty's s.h.i.+p Industry, and one woman breathed her last the day after we arrived at Zanzibar. But in their sad death they had one consolation, in the words which they kept constantly repeating to themselves--

"'We have brought our master to the great sea, and he has seen his white brothers. La il Allah, il Allah! There is no G.o.d but G.o.d!' they said--and died.

"It is not without an overwhelming sense of grief, a choking in the throat, and swimming eyes, that I write of those days; for my memory is still busy with the worth and virtues of the dead. In a thousand fields of incident, adventure, and bitter trials, they had proved their stanch heroism and their fort.i.tude; they had lived and endured n.o.bly. I remember the enthusiasm with which they responded to my appeals; I remember their bold bearing during the darkest days; I remember the Spartan pluck, the indomitable courage, with which they suffered in the days of our adversity. Their voices again loyally answer me, and again I hear them address each other upon the necessity of standing by the 'master.' Their boat-song, which contained sentiments similar to the following:--

'The pale-faced stranger, lonely here, In cities afar, where his name is dear, Your Arab truth and strength shall show; He trusts in us, row, Arabs, row'--

despite all the sounds which now surround me, still charms my listening ear.[94] ...

"They were sweet and sad moments, those of parting. What a long, long, and true friends.h.i.+p was here sundered! Through what strange vicissitudes of life had they not followed me!

What wild and varied scenes had we not seen together! What a n.o.ble fidelity these untutored souls had exhibited! The chiefs were those who had followed me to Ujiji in 1871; they had been witnesses of the joy of Livingstone at the sight of me; they were the men to whom I intrusted the safe-guard of Livingstone on his last and fatal journey, who had mourned by his corpse at Muilala, and borne the ill.u.s.trious dead to the Indian Ocean.

"And in a flood of sudden recollection, all the stormy period here ended rushed in upon my mind; the whole panorama of danger and tempest through which these gallant fellows had so stanchly stood by me--these gallant fellows now parting from me. Rapidly, as in some apocalyptic vision, every scene of strife with Man and Nature, through which these poor men and women had borne me company, and solaced me by the simple sympathy of common suffering, came hurrying across my memory; for each face before me was a.s.sociated with some adventure or some peril, reminded me of some triumph or of some loss. What a wild, weird retrospect it was,--that mind's flash over the troubled past! so like a troublous dream!

"And for years and years to come, in many homes in Zanzibar, there will be told the great story of our journey, and the actors in it will be heroes among their kilt and kin. For me too they are heroes, these poor, ignorant children of Africa, for, from the first deadly struggle in savage Ituru to the last staggering rush into Embomma, they had rallied to my voice like veterans, and in the hour of need they had never failed me. And thus, aided by their willing hands and by their loyal hearts, the expedition had been successful, and the three great problems of the Dark Continent's geography had been fairly settled."[95]

How many times we have read this marvellous narrative of Stanley's march through the Dark Continent, we do not know; but we do know that every time we have read it with tears and emotion, have blessed the n.o.ble Stanley, and thanked G.o.d for the grand character of his black followers! There is no romance equal to these two volumes. The trip was one awful tragedy from beginning to end, and the immortal deeds of his untutored guards are worthy of the famous _Light Brigade_.

On the fourth day of August, 1877, Henry M. Stanley arrived at the village of Nsanda on his way to the ocean. He had in his command one hundred and fifteen souls. Foot-sore, travel-soiled, and hungry, his people sank down exhausted. He tried to buy food from the natives; but they, with an indifference that was painful, told them to wait until market-day. A foraging party scoured the district for food, but found none. Starvation was imminent. The feeble travellers lay upon the ground in the camp, with death pictured on their dusky features.

Stanley called his boat-captains to his tent, and explained the situation. He knew that he was within a few days march of Embomma, and that here were located one Englishman, one Frenchman, one Spaniard, and one Portuguese. He told the captains that he had addressed a letter to these persons for aid; and that resolute, swift, and courageous volunteers were needed to go for the relief,--without which the whole camp would be transformed into a common graveyard. We will now quote from Mr. Stanley again in proof of the n.o.ble nature of the Negro:--

"The response was not long coming; for Uledi sprang up and said, 'O master, don't talk more! I am ready now. See, I will only buckle on my belt, and I shall start at once, and nothing will stop me. I will follow on the track like a leopard.'

"'And I am one,' said Kacheche. 'Leave us alone, master. If there are white men at Embomma, we will find them out. We will walk and walk, and when we cannot walk we will crawl.'

"'Leave off talking men,' said Muini Pembe, 'and allow others to speak, won't you? Hear me, my master. I am your servant. I will outwalk the two. I will carry the letter, and plant it before the eyes of the white men.'

"'I will go too, sir,' said Robert.

"'Good! It is just as I should wish it; but, Robert, you cannot follow these three men. You will break down, my boy.'

"'Oh, we will carry him if he breaks down,' said Uledi.

'Won't we, Kacheche?"

"'_Inshallah_!' responded Kacheche decisively. 'We must have Robert along with us, otherwise the white men won't understand us.'"

What wonderful devotion! What sublime self-forgetfulness! The world has wept over such stories as Bianca and Heloise, and has built monuments that will stand,--

"_While Fame her record keeps, Or Homer paints the hallowed spot Where Valor proudly sleeps_,"--

and yet these black heroes are unremembered. "I will follow the track like a leopard," gives but a faint idea of the strong will of Uledi; and Kacheche's brave words are endowed with all the attributes of that heroic _abandon_ with which a devoted general hurls the last fragment of wasting strength against a stubborn enemy. And besides, there is something so tender in these words that they seem to melt the heart.

"We will walk and walk, and when we cannot walk we will crawl!" We have never read but one story that approaches this narrative of Mr.

Stanley, and that was the tender devotion of Ruth to her mother-in-law. We read it in the Hebrew to Dr. O.S. Stearns of Newton, Ma.s.s.; and confess that, though it has been many years since, the blessed impression still remains, and our confidence in humanity is strengthened thereby.

Here are a few white men in the wilds of Africa, surrounded by the uncivilized children of the desert. They have money and valuable instruments, a large variety of gewgaws that possessed the power of charming the fancy of the average savage; and therefore the whites would have been a tempting prey to the blacks. But not a hair of their head was harmed. The white men had geographical fame to encourage them in the struggle,--friends and loved ones far away beyond the beautiful blue sea. These poor savages had nothing to steady their purposes save a paltry sum of money as day-wages,--no home, no friends; and yet they were as loyal as if a throne were awaiting them.

No, no! nothing waited on their heroic devotion to a magnificent cause but a lonely death when they had brought the "master" to the sea. When their stomachs, pinched by hunger; when their limbs, stiff from travel; when their eyes, dim with the mists of death; when every vital force was slain by an heroic ambition to serve the great Stanley; when the fires of endeavor were burnt to feeble embers,--then, and only then, would these faithful Negroes fail in the fulfilment of their mission, so full of peril, and yet so grateful to them, because it was in the line of _duty_.

Cicero urged virtue as necessary to effective oratory. The great majority of Negroes in Africa are both orators and logicians. A people who have such n.o.ble qualities as this race seems to possess has, as a logical necessity, the poetic element in a large degree.

In speaking of Negro poetry, we shall do so under three different heads; viz., the _Epic_, _Idyllic_, _Religious_, or miscellaneous.

_The epic poetry_ of Africa, so far as known, is certainly worthy of careful study. The child must babble before it can talk, and all barbarians have a sense of the sublime in speech. Mr. Taine, in his "History of English Literature," speaking of early Saxon poetry, says,--

"One poem nearly whole, and two or three fragments, are all that remain of this lay-poetry of England. The rest of the pagan current, German and barbarian, was arrested or overwhelmed, first by the influx of the Christian religion, then by the conquest of the Norman-French. But what remains more than suffices to show the strange and powerful poetic genius of the race, and to exhibit beforehand the flower in the bud.

"If there has ever been anywhere a deep and serious poetic sentiment, it is here. They do not speak: they sing, or rather they shout. Each little verse is an acclamation, which breaks forth like a growl; their strong b.r.e.a.s.t.s heave with a groan of anger or enthusiasm, and a vehement or indistinct phrase or expression rises suddenly, almost in spite of them, to their lips. There is no art, no natural talent, for describing, singly and in order, the different parts of an object or an event. The fifty rays of light which every phenomenon emits in succession to a regular and well-directed intellect, come to them at once in a glowing and confused ma.s.s, disabling them by their force and convergence. Listen to their genuine war-chants, unchecked and violent, as became their terrible voices! To this day, at this distance of time, separated as they are by manners, speech, ten centuries, we seem to hear them still."[96]

This glowing description of the poetry of the primitive and hardy Saxon gives the reader an excellent idea of the vigorous, earnest, and gorgeous effusions of the African. Panda was king of the Kaffirs. He was considered quite a great warrior. It took a great many _isi-bongas_ to describe his virtues. His chief _isi-bongas_ was "O-Elephant." This was chosen to describe his strength and greatness.

Mr. Wood gives an account of the song in honor of Panda:--

"1. Thou brother of the Tchaks, _considerate forder_, 2. A _swallow which fled in the sky_; 3. A swallow with a whiskered breast; 4. Whose cattle was ever in so huddled a crowd, 5. They stumble for room when they ran.

6. Thou false adorer of the valor of another, 7. That valor thou tookest at the battle of Makonko.

8. Of the stock of N'dabazita, _ramrod of bra.s.s_, 9. _Survivor alone of all other rods_; 10. Others they broke and left this in the soot, 11. Thinking to burn at some rainy cold day.

12. _Thigh of the bullock of Inkakavini_, 13. Always delicious if only 'tis roasted, 14. It will always be tasteless if boiled.

15. The woman from Mankeba is delighted; 16. She has seen the leopards of Jama, 17. Fighting together between the Makonko.

18. He pa.s.sed between the Jutuma and Ihliza, 19. The Celestial who thundered between the Makonko.

20. I praisethee, O King! son of Jokwane, the son of Undaba, 21. The merciless opponent of every conspiracy.

22. Thou art an _elephant_, an _elephant_, an _elephant_.

23. All glory to thee, thou _monarch who art black_."

"The first _isi-bonga_, in line 1, alludes to the ingenuity with which Panda succeeded in crossing the river so as to escape out of the district where Dingan exercised authority.

In the second line, 'swallow which fled in the sky' is another allusion to the secrecy with which he managed his flight, which left no more track than the pa.s.sage of a swallow through the air. Lines 4 and 5 allude to the wealth, i.e., the abundance of cattle, possessed by Panda. Line 6 a.s.serts that Panda was too humble minded, and thought more of the power of Dingan than it deserved; while line 7 offers as proof of this a.s.sertion, that, when they came to fight, Panda conquered Dingan. Lines 8 to 11 all relate to the custom of seasoning sticks by hanging them over the fireplaces in Kaffir huts. Line 14 alludes to the fact that meat is very seldom roasted by the Kaffirs, but is almost invariably boiled, or rather stewed, in closed vessels. In line 15 the 'woman from Mankebe' is Panda's favorite wife.

In line 19 'The Celestial' alludes to the name of the great Zulu tribe over which Panda reigned; the word 'Zulu' meaning celestial, and having much the same import as the same word when employed by the Chinese to denote their origin. Line 21 refers to the attempts of Panda's rivals to dethrone him, and the ingenious manner in which he contrived to defeat their plans by forming judicious alliances."

There is a daring insolence, morbid vanity, and huge description in this song of Panda, that make one feel like admitting that the sable bard did his work of flattery quite cleverly. It should not be forgotten by the reader, that, in the translation of these songs, much is lost of their original beauty and perspicuity. The following song was composed to celebrate the war triumphs of Dinga, and is, withal, exciting, and possessed of good movement. It is, in some instances, much like the one quoted above:--

"Thou needy offspring of Umpikazi, Eyer of the cattle of men; Bird of Maube, fleet as a bullet, Sleek, erect, of beautiful parts; Thy cattle like the comb of the bees; O head too large, too huddled to move; Devourer of Moselekatze, son of Machobana; Devourer of 'Swazi, son of Sobuza; Breaker of the gates of Machobana; Devourer of Gundave of Machobana; A monster in size, of mighty power; Devourer of Ungwati of ancient race; Devourer of the kingly Uomape; Like heaven above, raining and s.h.i.+ning."

The poet has seen fit to refer to the early life of his hero, to call attention to his boundless riches, and, finally, to celebrate his war achievements. It is highly descriptive, and in the Kaffir language is quite beautiful.

Tchaka sings a song himself, the ambitious sentiments of which would have been worthy of Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte. He had carried victory on his spear throughout all Kaffir-land. Everywhere the tribes had bowed their submissive necks to his yoke; everywhere he was hailed as king. But out of employment he was not happy. He sighed for more tribes to conquer, and thus delivered himself:--

"Thou hast finished, finished the nations!

Where will you go out to battle now?

Hey! where will you go out to battle now?

Thou hast conquered kings!

Where are you going to battle now?

Thou hast finished, finished the nations!

Where are you going to battle now?

Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!

Where are you going to battle now?"

There is really something modern in this deep lament of the n.o.ble savage!

The following war song of the Wollof, though it lacks the sonorous and metrical elements of real poetry, contains true military aggressiveness, mixed with the theology of the fatalist.