Note 62 — Chapter III

Much nonsense is afloat touching these ‘Amazons.’ They are simply, like the Urdubegani of the Deccan and of other Asiatic courts, the slaves of the palace organized as royal property, and weaponed by the late King Gezo—who feared treason from the men. Most of them are women taken in adultery or too shrewish to live with their husbands, who ‘dash’ them to the king, instead of killing them. Once, however, royal slaves they become vestals. They are bound, like the female priests of Grewhe, under penalty of death, to chastity and celibacy, and this naturally communicates a certain amount of ferocity to their minds—‘horrors’ are, with the eunuch, their succedaneum for love. Upon this subject I am tempted to quote a few lines from Captain John Adams (p. 74), who says of Dahome: ‘One of the conditions by which a female is admitted into the order of priesthood, is that of leading a life of celibacy, and renouncing the pleasures of the world; and but few are admitted to enter it at all; for during a residence of many months at Grewhe, one ceremony only of this kind was performed, at which I was present.

‘There is a striking similarity in the conditions imposed on those poor deluded African women who are admitted into the priesthood, and many of those nuns who in Catholic Europe are forced to take the veil; only the former are instruments in the hands of fraud and oppression, while the others are too often the victims of domestic tyranny and ambition. But the lot of the savage African is far superior to that of the civilized European. For the former, notwithstanding the restraints imposed on her, can enjoy the sweets of personal liberty, and has some scope for the play of her natural affections; whereas the latter is shut within the gloomy walls of a prison, where her short life is passed away in vain regret, and in the society of immolated beings who are as melancholy and desponding as herself.’

To which we may add, another advantage to the African woman, that her feelings, like those of barbarians and the uncivilized generally, are by no means so highly developed as amongst Europeans. A scanty diet, a life of toil, and the petty cares of domestic duties, blunt, if they do not destroy, the besoin d’amour. She is not even—

‘Commanded

By such poor passion as the maid that milks,

And does the meanest chares.’

Female soldiery, as a rule, is a failure; or rather, like female labour in all departments of industry, it produces a worse article at a cheaper rate. The Amazons, I believe, are no exception. They cannot be estimated at more than 2000, although many travellers—Dalziell, Cruickshanks, Winniett, Duncan, and Forbes—have raised the number to 4000, and even 6000. In the case of Messrs. Duncan and Forbes, the Amazons were marched round the palace yard, in at one and out at the other gate, like the commissariat cattle in Afghanistan. Captain John Adams (p. 93) mentions the same manœuvre on the part of the King of Hio (Yoruba), adding, ‘This was a political stratagem that would hardly have been expected from an African savage.’