Note 17 — CHAP. XIX. THE CHARACTER AND RELIGION OF THE EAST AFRICANS; THEIR GOVERNMENT, AND SLAVERY.
Reading edition
That the Western African negro resembles in this point his negroid brother, the following extract from an amusing and truthful little volume, entitled “Trade and Travels in the Gulf of Guinea and Western Africa” (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1851), will prove:—
Always anxious,—says Mr. J. Smith, the author,—to get any of them (the Western Africans) to talk about God and religion, I said, “What have you been doing King Pepple?”
“All the same as you do,—I tank God.”
“For what?”
“Every good ting God sends me.”
“Have you seen God?”
“Chi! no;—suppose man see God, he must die one minute.” (He would die in a moment.)
“When you die won’t you see God?”
With great warmth, “I know no savvy. (I don’t know.) How should I know? Never mind. I no want to hear more for that palaver.” (I want no more talk on that subject.)
“What way?” (Why?)
“It no be your business, you come here for trade palaver.”
I knew—resumes Mr. Smith—it would be of no use pursuing the subject at that time, so I was silent, and it dropped for the moment.
In speaking of him dying, I had touched a very tender and disagreeable chord, for he looked very savage and sulky, and I saw by the rapid changes in his countenance that he was the subject of some intense internal emotion. At length he broke out, using most violent gesticulations, and exhibiting a most inhuman expression of countenance, “Suppose God was here, I must kill him, one minute!”
“You what? you kill God?” followed I, quite taken aback, and almost breathless with the novel and diabolical notion; “You kill God? why, you talk all some fool” (like a fool); “you cannot kill God; and suppose it possible that God could die, everything would cease to exist. He is the Spirit of the universe. But he can kill you.”
“I know I cannot kill him; but suppose I could kill him, I would.”
“Where does God live?”
“For top.”
“How?” He pointed to the zenith.
“And suppose you could, why would you kill him?”
“Because he makes men to die.”
“Why, my friend,” in a conciliatory manner, “you would not wish to live for ever, would you?”
“Yes, I want to stand” (remain for ever).
“But you will be old by and by, and if you live long enough, will become very infirm, like that old man,” pointing to a man very old for an African and thin, and lame, and almost blind, who had come into the court during the foregoing conversation, to ask for some favour (I wonder he had not been destroyed),—“and like him you will become lame, and deaf, and blind, and will be able to take no pleasure; would it not be better, then, for you to die when this takes place, and you are in pain and trouble, and so make room for your son, as your father did for you?”
“No, it would not; I want to stand all same I stand now.”
“But supposing you should go to a place of happiness after death and——”
“I no savvy nothing about that, I know that I now live, and have too many wives, and niggers (slaves), and canoes,” (he did not mean what he said, in saying he had too many wives, &c., it is their way of expressing a great number,) “and that I am king, and plenty of ships come to my country. I know no other ting, and I want to stand.”
I offered a reply, but he would hear no more, and so the conversation on that subject ceased; and we proceeded to discuss one not much more agreeable to him—the payment of a very considerable debt which he owed me.