Нигерия: народы и проблемы. Эдмунд Дене Морель

as a billiard ball at that) as you watch the Euphædra, and absorb the countless other delights the forest contains, foremost amongst them silence, silence from humans at least. “These are the best days of my life. These are my golden days.”

      The floods have fallen and a thousand dark forms are building up the muddy, slippery banks against the next invasion, with saplings rough hewn in the forest; the men chopping and adjusting these defences, the women carrying up earth from below in baskets. Beneath, the fishermen are making fast their canoes and spreading out their nets to dry—all kinds of nets, ordinary cast nets, nets resembling gigantic hoops, stiff nets encased in wood somewhat after the pattern of the coracle. The broad river fades away into the evening haze. For the swift wings of night are already felt, and the sun has just dropped behind the curtain of implacable forest.

      One by one, in twos and threes, in struggling groups, the workers scramble up the slope on to the path—or what remains of it from the floods—which skirts the village. It grows dark. One is vaguely aware of many naked, shadowy, mostly silent figures on every side of one; wending their way along the path, or flitting in and out among the houses. Eyes flash out of the semi-obscurity which is replete with the heavy, dank odour of African humanity when African humanity has been busily at work. In the open doorways a multitude of little fires spring into life, and with them the smell of aromatic wood. The evening meal is in preparation, and presently tired and naked limbs will stretch themselves to the warmth with a sense of comfort. The lament of a child serves to remind you how seldom these Niger babies cry.

      And now it is the turn of the fireflies to glow forth. Thick as bees, they carpet the ground on every marshy spot where the reeds grow—vivid, sentient gems. Patches of emeralds: but emeralds endowed with life; emeralds with an ambient flame lighting them from within. They hover above the ground like delicate will-o’-the-wisps. They float impalpable, illusive, unearthly beautiful in the still night air, as some rare and fleeting dream of immortality, some incarnation of transcendent joy towards which dull clay stretches forth arms everlastingly impotent.

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      CHAPTER VII

      THE SALLAH AT ZARIA

      All Zaria is astir, for this is December, the sacred month, the month when the pilgrims to Mecca are offering sacrifices, and to-day the Sallah celebrations begin. At an early hour masses of men began to swarm out of the great Hausa city, dressed in their best gowns, driving before them bullocks, sheep, and goats to be sacrificed on the hill—even Kofena, the hill of many legends, the old centre of Hausa “rock worship,” beyond the city walls—to the sound of invocations to Almighty God. For days beforehand people have been pouring in from the villages in the surrounding plain. Long files of oxen, sheep, and goats have been passing through the gates. Every household has been busy getting together presents for friends, making provision for poor relations, bringing forth the finest contents of their wardrobes, preparing succulent dishes for entertainment. Every class of the population has been filled with eager anticipation, agriculturists and weavers, blacksmiths and tanners, dyers and shoemakers. The barbers have plied an active trade, and the butchers likewise. Every face has worn a smile, and the hum of human life has been more insistent than usual. A city of great antiquity this, boasting a long line of fifty-eight Hausa kings before the Fulani dynasty arose, and thirteen since that event early in last century. It rises out of an enormous plain, cultivated for many miles around, dotted here and there with fantastic piles of granite, resembling mediæval castles. Its reddish clay walls, crumbling in parts, twenty to thirty feet high in others, and many feet in thickness at the base, enclose a sea of compounds and tortuous picturesque streets, above which wave the fan-palms, the paw-paw, the beautiful locust-bean tree, and the graceful tamarind. In the plain itself the gigantic rimi, or cotton tree, is a conspicuous landmark, and its rugged staunchness is the subject of a legend uncomplimentary to the ladies of Zaria: Rimayin Zaria sun fi matan Zaria alkawali, meaning that the old rimi trees are more dependable than the fickle beauties of the town.

      But the outstanding feature of the day approaches. It is ten o’clock, and the procession from Kofena hill is winding its way back again to the city. Here the Emir will arrive in state after the performance of his religious devoirs, and will address his people. Here, in the great open square flanking the mosque, the district chiefs and notables will charge down upon him in the traditional “jaffi,” or mounted salute. As we enter the gates of the city, after a two miles canter from the Residency down a long and dusty road, we find almost deserted streets. Every one is congregating in the square. Soon we enter into it, to see a vast concourse of people clothed in white and blue. They form a living foreground to the walls on either side of the Emir’s residence, which stands at one extremity of the square. Around the mosque, on the left, they are as thick as bees, and, opposite the mosque, some broken hillocky ground is covered with a multitude. At its further extremity the square narrows into the road leading through the city to Kofena, and towards the opening of this road as it debouches into the square all eyes are directed. The brilliant sun of tropical Africa smites downwards, giving a hard line to lights and shadows, and throwing everything into bold relief. With the exception of a few denationalised Hausa wives of our own soldiers, the crowd is exclusively one of men and youths, for, according to custom, the women will not put in an appearance until later in the day. We three White men,—the Resident, much respected, and wise with the wisdom which comes of long years of experience of this fascinating country, and with a knowledge of Mohammedan law which fills the wisest mallams with astonishment—his assistant, and the writer take our stand on the right of the Emir’s residence. Behind us a few mounted men in gallant array, and immediately on our left a charming group of the Emir’s sons, or some of them, in costly robes of satin. One little fellow, eight years old, perhaps, with a light olive complexion, glances rather bored looks from under a snow-white turban. Another rather bigger boy, clad in dark yellow satin, is an imposing figure.

      A deep “Ah” comes from the throats of the assembled thousands as the blare of trumpets resounds faintly in the distance, and a cloud of dust rises from the road. From out of it there emerge a dozen horsemen charging down the square at break-neck speed, their right arms raised, their multi-coloured robes flying out behind them. With a shout they rein up their steeds in front of the Emir’s residence, then wheel swiftly, and are off again whence they came—the avant-garde of the procession. The sound of drums and trumpets gets louder. The head of the procession comes in sight, or, to be more accurate, the dust solidifies itself into a compact mass, flashing and glittering with a thousand shades. First, many hundreds walking on foot, who, as they enter the square, deploy right and left and mingle with the waiting crowd. Behind them more horsemen detach themselves and gallop towards us, backwards and forwards. Each man is dressed according to his own particular fancy. Some in red, some in blue, some in white, some in green, others in vivid yellows, but most of them, it would seem, wearing half a dozen different colours at the same time, both as to robes and turbans. Their leather boots, thrust into shovel-headed stirrups, are embroidered with red and green; their saddle-cloths and bridles are also richly embroidered and tasselled. The majority, we observe, wear long cross-handled swords in leather scabbards. Some carry thin spears in their hands; one fierce-looking warrior a battle-axe. He seems to have stepped out of the Middle Ages does this particular chief, his horse wearing a metalled protection as in the old days of the Crusaders. But the heart of the procession, moving up slowly, puts an end to these evolutions, and the horsemen range themselves up on either side of the Emir’s residence, their gallant beasts, curvetting and prancing as the “Ah” of the crowd changes into a great roar of sound. As a trial of patience I commend the effort to take a photograph over the ears of a horse who is making strenuous efforts to stand up on its hind legs, while a fine and smarting white dust rises in clouds, entering eyes and mouth, and all round you are people in a fine frenzy of excitement, mingled with apprehension, lest your mount takes it into his head to ride amuck in the midst of them, which he has every appearance of wishing to do.

      Rattle, rattle, come the drums, mingled with the long-drawn-out notes of the tin or silver trumpets. Suddenly a loud shout arises, a shout of merriment, as a monstrous figure, clad in skins of beasts, and, apparently, hung round with bladders, in his hand a long stick, dashes out of the advancing throng, clearing the intervening space between it and the Emir’s residence in a succession of frantic bounds. This is the Court fool, and his appearance is quite in setting with the piece. For this whole scene is a scene out