Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66 No.406, August 1849

"The Gerboo Blanda, I found, was a name given to their country by the Jagas, that its true name was Framazugda, and that the people were called Framazugs. That it was situated at a great distance in the interior, in a direction west by north, and that it was surrounded by negro and savage nations, through whom a trade was carried on with people at the north-west and east, none of whom, however, were ever seen at Framazugda, as the trade had to pass through a number of hands. Enphadde represented the country to be of considerable extent, consisting mostly of a lofty plateau or elevated plain, and exceedingly populous, containing numerous large cities, surrounded by high walls, and filled with houses of stone. Several large streams and lakes watered the soil, which, according to his account, was closely cultivated, and produced in abundance the greatest variety of trees, fruits, flowers, and grain. Over this country ruled Selha Shounsé, the father of Enphadde and Kaloolah, as king. It was in going from the capital to one of the royal gardens that their escort was attacked by a party of blacks from the lowlands, the attendants killed or dispersed, and the young prince and princess carried off."

Thirty dollars could hardly be deemed a heavy price for the son and daughter of the great Shounsé, and Jonathan was well pleased with his bargain, although it was not yet clear how he should realise a profit; but meanwhile it was something to be the proprietor of their royal highnesses of Framazugda; something too to gaze into Kaloolah's bright black eyes, and listen to her dulcet tones, as she warbled one of her country's ditties about the Fultul, a sweet-scented lily flourishing beside the rivulets of her native mountains. The verses, by the bye, are not to be commended in Mr Romer's version; they perhaps sounded better in the original Framazug, and when issuing from the sweet lips of Kaloolah.

Instead of a week, the Bonito was month absent, having been caught in a calm. Captain Pedro Garbez promised the Virgin Mary the value of a young negro in wax-lights for a capful of wind, but in vain; and he was fain to tear the hair from his head with impatience. Meanwhile Jonathan had caught a fever in the swamps of Congo, and Kaloolah had made his chicken-broth, and tended him tenderly, and restored him to health, although he was still so altered in appearance that Garbez knew him not when he mounted the side of the slaver. All speed was now made to buy and ship a cargo. The account of the latter process is interesting, and, we have no doubt, perfectly authentic; for although the author of Kaloolah has chosen to interlard, and perhaps deteriorate his book by strange stories of imaginary countries, animals, flowers, &c., it is not difficult to distinguish between his fact and his fiction, and to recognise the internal evidence of veracity and personal observation. A short extract may here with propriety be made, for the benefit of anti-slavery philanthropists.

"The first slaves that came on board were taken below the berth-deck, and arranged upon a temporary slave-deck placed over the water-casks, and at a distance of not more than three feet and a half from the deck overhead… The slaves were arranged in four ranks. When lying down, the heads of the two outer ranks touched the sides of the ship, their feet pointing inboard or athwart the vessel. They, of course, occupied a space fore and aft the ship, of about six feet on either side, or twelve feet of the whole breadth. At the feet of the outside rank came the heads of the inner row. They took up a space of six feet more on either side, or together twelve feet. There was still left a space running up and down the centre of the deck, two or three feet in breadth; along this were stretched single slaves, between the feet of the two inner rows, so that, when all were lying down, almost every square foot of the deck was covered with a mass of human flesh. Not the slightest space was allowed between the individuals of the ranks, but the whole were packed as closely as they could be, each slave having just room enough to stretch himself out flat upon his back, and no more. In this way about two hundred and fifty were crowded upon the slave-deck, and as many more upon the berth-deck. Horrible as this may seem, it was nothing compared to the 'packing' generally practised by slavers. Captain Garbez boasted that he had tried both systems, tight packing and loose packing, thoroughly, and found the latter the best.

"'If you call this loose packing,' I replied, 'have the goodness to explain what you mean by tight packing?'

"'Why, tight packing consists in making a row sit with their legs stretched apart, and then another row is placed between their legs, and so on, until the whole deck is filled. In the one case each slave has as much room as he can cover lying; in the other only as much room as he can occupy sitting. With tight packing this craft ought to stow fifteen hundred.'"

The Bonito was not above three hundred tons. Such are the blessings for which the negroes are indebted to the tender-mercied emancipators who have ruined our West Indian colonies.

"'When it comes to closing the hatches,' (in the event of a gale) said Captain Pedro, 'it is all up with the voyage. You can hardly save enough to pay expenses. They die like leeches in a thunderstorm. I was once in a little schooner with three hundred on board, and we were compelled to lie-to for three days. It was the worst sea I ever saw, and came near swamping us several times. We lost two hundred and fifty slaves in that gale. We couldn't get at the dead ones to throw them overboard very handily, and so those that didn't die from want of air were killed by the rolling and tumbling about of the corpses. Of the living ones some had their limbs broken, and every one had the flesh of his leg worn to the bone, by the shackle irons.'

"'Good God! and you still pursue the horrible trade?'

"'Certainly; why not? Despite of accidents the trade is profitable, and, for the cruelty of it, no one is to blame except the English. Were it not for them, large and roomy vessels would be employed, and it would be an object to bring the slaves over with every comfort, and in as good condition as possible. Now, every consideration must be sacrificed to the one great object – escape from capture by the British cruisers.'

"I had no wish to reply to the captain's argument. One might as well reply to a defence of blasphemy or murder. Giddy, faint, and sick, I turned with loathing from the fiends in human guise, and sought the more genial companionship of the inmates of my state-room."

These were Kaloolah and Enphadde. To conceal the beauty of the former, perilous amidst the lawless crew of the slaver, Jonathan had marked her face with caustic, producing black spots which had the appearance of disease. This temporary disfigurement secured her from licentious outrage, but not from harsh treatment. Monte, second captain of the Bonito, was an ex-pirate, whose vessel had been destroyed by Yankee cruisers. To spite Romer, whom he detested as an American, he threatened to send Kaloolah and her brother amongst the slaves, and took every opportunity of abusing them. Chapter xxi. passes wholly on board the slaver, and is excellent of its kind. The Bonito is chased by a man-of-war, but escapes. At daybreak, whilst lying in his berth, Romer hears a bustle on deck, followed by shrill cries and plunges in the water. The following is good: —

"I jumped from my berth and stepped out upon deck. A dense fog brooded upon the surface of the ocean, and closely enveloped the ship – standing up on either side, like huge perpendicular walls of granite, and leaving a comparatively clear space – the area of the deck and the height of the main-topmast crosstrees. Inboard, the sight ranged nearly free fore-and-aft the ship, but seaward no eye could penetrate, more than a yard or two, the solid-looking barrier of vapour. A man standing on the taffrail might have seen the catheads the whole length of the deck, whilst at the same time, behind him, the end of the spanker boom, projecting over the water, was lost in the mist. I looked up at the perpendicular walls and the lofty arch overhead with feelings of awe, and, I may add, fear. Cursed, indeed, must be our craft, when the genius of the mist so carefully avoided the pollution of actual contact. His rolling legions were close around us, but vapoury horse and misty foot shrank back affrighted from the horrors of our blood-stained decks."

The phenomenon was doubtless attributable to the hot air generated in the crowded 'tween-decks. The cries and plashings that had startled Jonathan were soon explained. Virulent ophthalmia raged on board, and Monte was drowning the blind, whose value of course departed with their eyesight. A blind slave was "an encumbrance, an unsaleable article, a useless expense. Pitch him overboard! Twenty-five to-day, and a dozen more to-morrow!" But retribution was at hand, threatened, at least, by a British brig-of-war, which appeared when the fog cleared, at about a mile and a half to windward. During the chase, Monte, casually jostled by Kaloolah, struck her to the deck, and a furious scuffle ensued between him and Jonathan, who at last, seeing some of the crew approaching, knife in hand, leaped overboard, dragging his antagonist with him, and followed by Enphadde and Kaloolah. After a deep dive, during which Monte's tenacious grasp was at last relaxed, the intrepid Jonathan regained the surface, where he and his friends and enemy easily supported themselves till picked up by the brig. The swift slaver escaped. Monte was put in irons, Romer and his Framazugdan friends were made much of by Captain Halsey and the officers of her Majesty's brig Flyaway, and landed in the picturesque but pestilent shores of Sierra Leone. Then Kaloolah and her brother propose to seek their way homewards, and Jonathan takes ship for Liverpool. Previously to his departure, there are some love passages between the Yankee and the Princess of Framazugda. These are not particularly successful. Sentiment is not Dr Mayo's forte: he is much happier in scenes of bustle and adventure – when urging his weary dromedary across boundless tracts of sand, or waging deadly combat with the fierce inmates of African jungles. His book will delight Mr Van Amburgh. There is a duel between a lion and a boa that we make no doubt of seeing dramatised at Astley's, as soon as a serpent can be tamed sufficiently for the performance. That Dr Mayo's lions are of the very first magnitude, the following description shows: – "His body was hardly less in size than that of a dray-horse; his paw as large as the foot of an elephant; while his head! – what can be said of such a head? Concentrate the fury, the power, the capacity, and the disposition for evil of a dozen thunderstorms into a round globe about two feet in diameter, and one would then be able to get an idea of the terrible expression of that head and face, enveloped and set off as it was by the dark framework of bristling mane!" This pleasing quadruped, disturbed in its forest solitude by the advent of Jonathan and the fair Kaloolah, who have wandered, lover-like, to some distance from their bivouac, at once prepares to breakfast upon them. Jonathan had imprudently laid down his gun to pluck wild honeysuckles for his mistress, when the lion, stepping in, cuts him off from his weapon. Suddenly "the light figure of Kaloolah rushed past me: 'Fly, fly, Jon'than!' she wildly exclaimed, as she dashed forward directly towards the lion. Quick as thought, I divined her purpose, and sprang after her, grasping her dress, and pulling her forcibly back, almost from within those formidable jaws. The astonished animal gave several jumps sideways and backwards, and stopped, crouching to the ground, and growling and lashing his sides with renewed fury. It was clearly taken aback by our unexpected charge upon him, but yet was not to be frightened into abandoning his prey. His mouth was made up for us, and there could be no doubt, if his motions were a little slow, that he considered us as good as gorged." Pulling back Kaloolah, and drawing his knife, Romer awaits, with desperate determination, the monster's terrible onslaught, when an unexpected ally arrives to the rescue. "It seemed as if one of the gigantic creepers I have mentioned had suddenly quitted the canopy above, and, endowed with life and a huge pair of widely distended jaws, had darted with the rapidity of lightning upon the crouching beast. There was a tremendous shaking of the treetops, and a confused wrestling and jumping and whirling over and about, amid a cloud of upturned roots and earth and leaves, accompanied with the most terrific roars and groans. As I looked again, vision grew more distinct. An immense body, gleaming with purple, green, and gold, appeared convoluted around the majestic branches overhead, and, stretching down, was turned two or three times around the struggling lion, whose head and neck were almost concealed from sight within the cavity of a pair of jaws still more capacious than his own." A full-grown boa, whose length is estimated by Mr Romer at about a hundred feet, (much less than many he subsequently saw, but still "a very respectable-sized snake,") had dropped a few fathoms of coil from the gigantic tree around which he was twined, and enveloped the lion, who soon was crushed to death in the scaly embrace. Jonathan makes no doubt that the serpent was about to swallow his victim whole, according to the custom of his kind; and it is certainly to be regretted that the entreaties of Kaloolah, combined with the "strong sickly odour" diffused by the boa, prevented his remaining to witness a process of deglutition which, considering the dimensions of the morsel to be swallowed, could not have been otherwise than curious.

Wrecked a second time, Romer again reaches the coast of Africa, in company with an old sailor named Jack Thompson. They fall into the hands of the Bedouins, and suffer much ill treatment, an account of which, and of various adventures and escapes, occupy many chapters, and would have borne a little curtailment. Romer is wandering about with a tribe, upon whom he has passed himself off as an Arab from a distant region, when he is compelled to join in an attack on a caravan. Kaloolah is amongst the prisoners. She has been captured by a party of slave-hunters, and is on her way to Morocco, where her master hopes her beauty will fetch a good price from the Emperor Muley Abderrahman. In the partition of the spoil, she falls to the share of an old Arab, who is ill satisfied with the acquisition. "He was extremely chagrined at the turn of fortune which threatened to throw into the wrangling elements of his domestic felicity a feminine superfluity – or, as he expressed it, 'another tongue in his tent.'

"'Bismillah!' he exclaimed; 'God is great, but this is a small thing! She is not a man; she is not a black – she cannot work; but won't she eat and talk! They all eat and talk. I take a club sometimes, and knock them down; beat them; break their bones; but they still eat and talk! God's will be done! but it is too much to put such a thing upon me for my share! She is good for nothing: I cannot sell her.'"

The grumbling old Bedouin did sell her, however, to Jonathan, for three or four cotton shirts. Flight now becomes necessary, for Hassan, son of the chief of the tribe, seeks Jonathan's life, and Mrs Ali, the chief's wife, persecutes him with her misplaced affection, and is spiteful to Kaloolah, whom she looks upon as the chief obstacle to its requital. Upon this head our Yankee is rather good: "Respect for the sex," he says, "and a sentiment of gentlemanly delicacy, which the reader will appreciate, prevents me from dwelling upon the story at length. It was wrong, undoubtedly, in Seffora to love any other than her old, rugose-faced, white-bearded husband; but it is not for me to blame her. One thing, however, in her conduct can hardly be excused. True, I might have treated her affection with more tenderness; I might have nursed the gentle flowers of passion, instead of turning away from their fragrance; I might have responded to that 'yearning of the soul for sympathy' – have relieved, with the food of love, 'the mighty hunger of the heart;' but all this, and more that I might have done, but did not do, gave her no right to throw stones at Kaloolah." To avoid the pelting and other disagreeables, the lovers take themselves off in the night-time, mounted on heiries– camels of a peculiar breed and excellence, famed in the desert for endurance and speed. On their road they pick up, in a Moorish village, an Irish renegade; at some salt-works, they find Jack Thompson working as a slave; and soon afterwards their party is increased to five persons, by the addition of Hassan, a runaway negro. With this motley tail, Mr Romer pushes on in the direction of Framazugda. Here the editor very judiciously epitomises six long chapters in as many pages; and, immediately after this compressed portion, there begins what may be strictly termed the fabulous, or almost the supernatural part of the book. Previously to this there have been not a few rather startling incidents, but now the author throws the rein on the neck of his imagination, and scours away into the realms of the extravagant; still striving, however, by circumstantial detail, to give an appearance of probability to his astounding and ingenious inventions. Some of the descriptions of scenery and savage life in the wilderness are vivid and striking, and show power which might be better applied. Of the fabulous animals, the following account of an amiable reptile, peculiar to central Africa, will serve as a sufficient specimen of Yankee natural history: —

"It is an amphibious polypus. If the reader will conceive a large cart-wheel, the hub will represent the body of the animal, and the spokes the long arms, about the size and shape of a full-grown kangaroo's tail, and twenty in number, that project from it. When the animal moves upon land, it stiffens these radii, and rolls over upon the points like a wheel without a felloe. These arms have also the capability of a lateral prehensile contraction in curves, perpendicular to its plane of revolution, and enable the animal to grasp its prey, and draw it into its voracious mouth. It attacks the largest animals, and even man itself; but, if dangerous upon land, it is still more formidable in the water, where it has been known to attack and kill an alligator. This horrible monster is known by the name of the Sempersough or 'snake-star,' and is more dreaded than any other animal of Framazugda, inasmuch as the natives have no way of destroying it, except by catching it when young, in cane traps sunk in the water, and baited with hippopotamus cubs(!) Fortunately it is not very prolific; and its increase is further prevented by the furious contests that these animals have among themselves. Sometimes twenty or thirty will grasp each other with their long arms, and twist themselves up into a hard and intricate knot. In this situation they remain, hugging and gnawing each other to death; and never relaxing their grasp until their arms are so firmly intertwined that, when life is extinct, and the huge mass floats, they cannot be separated. The natives now draw the ball ashore, cut it up with axes, and make it into a compost for their land." (!!)

Is Dr Mayo addicted to heavy suppers? We can just fancy an unfortunate individual, after a midnight meal on a shield of brawn and a Brobdingnagian crab, which he has omitted to qualify by a subsequent series of stiff tumblers, sinking into an uneasy slumber, and being rolled over by such an incubus as this vivacious waggon-wheel. Doubtless there is a possibility of a man dieting himself into this style of writing, whereof a short specimen may excite a smile, but whose frequent recurrence is necessarily wearisome, and which obviously escapes criticism. But the author of Kaloolah is not contented with brute monstrosities. He chronicles reports that reach his hero's ears, of nations of human monsters, with teeth filed to a sharp point (no uncommon practice amongst certain negro tribes,) with tusks projecting like those of a wild boar, and with pendant lips that continually drop blood. All this is childish enough; but Jack Thompson, who is a dry dog, caps these astounding fictions with a cannibal yarn from the Southern Hemisphere.

"'I've been among the New Zealanders,' quoth Jack, 'and there they use each other for fresh grub, as regular as boiled duff in a man-of-war's mess. They used to eat their fathers and mothers, when they got too old to take care of themselves; but now they've got to be more civilised, and so they only eat rickety children, and slaves, and enemies taken in battle.'

"'A decided instance of the progress of improvement, and march of mind,' said I.

"'Well, I believe that is what the missionaries call it,' replied Jack; 'but it's a bad thing for the old folks. They don't take to the new fashion – they are in favour of the good old custom. I never see'd the thing myself; but Bill Brown, a messmate of mine once, told me that, when he was at the Bay of Islands, he see'd a great many poor old souls going about with tears in their eyes, trying to get somebody to eat them. One of them came off to the ship, and told them that he couldn't find rest in the stomachs of any of his kindred, and wanted to know if the crew wouldn't take him in. The skipper told him he was on monstrous short allowance, but he couldn't accommodate him. The poor old fellow, Bill said, looked as though his heart would break. There were plenty of sharks round the ship, and the skipper advised him to jump overboard; but he couldn't bear the idea of being eaten raw.'"

The great audacity of Dr Mayo's fictions preclude surprise at the boldness of his tropes and similes. The tails of his lions lash the ground "with a sound like the falling of clods upon a coffin;" their roar is like the boom of a thirty-two pounder, shaking the trees, and rattling the boulders in the bed of the river. Of course, allowance must be made for the vein of humorous rhodomontade peculiar to certain American writers, and into which Dr Mayo sometimes unconsciously glides, and, at others, voluntarily indulges. His description of the conjuring tricks of the Framazugdan jugglers comes under the latter head.

"Some of them were truly wonderful, as, for instance, turning a man into a tree bearing fruit, and with monkeys skipping about in the branches; and another case, where the chief juggler apparently swallowed five men, ten boys, and a jackass, threw them all up again, turned himself inside out, blew himself up like a balloon, and, exploding with a loud report, disappeared in a puff of luminous vapour. I could not but admire the skill with which the tricks were performed, although I was too much of a Yankee to be much astonished at anything in the Hey, Presto! line."

A countryman of Mr Jefferson Davis is not expected to feel surprise at anything in the way of sleight of hand, or "double shuffle;" and there was probably nothing more startling to the senses in the evaporation of King Shounsé's conjuror, than in the natural self-extinction of the Mississippian debt. It is only a pity that Jonathan Romer did not carry his smart fellow-citizen to the country of the Pholdefoos, a class of enthusiasts who devote their lives to a search for the germs of moral, religious, and political truth. Mr Davis would have felt rather out of his element at first, but could not have failed ultimately to have benefited by his sojourn amongst these singular savages.

On coming in sight of her father's capital, Kaloolah is overcome with emotion, and sinks weeping into her brother's arms. "I felt," says Jonathan, "that this was a situation in which even the most sympathising lover would be de trop. There were thronging associations which I could not share, vibrating memories to which my voice was not attuned, bonds of affection which all-powerful love might transcend, and even disrupt, but whose precise nature it could not assume. There are some lovers who are jealous of such things – fellows who like to wholly monopolise a woman, and who are constantly on the watch, seizing and appropriating her every look, thought, and feeling, with somewhat of the same notion of an exclusive right, as that with which they pocket a tooth-pick. I am not of that turn. The female heart is as curiously and as variously stocked as a country dry-goods store. A man may be perhaps allowed to select out, for his own exclusive use, some of the heavier articles, such as sheetings, shirtings, flannels, trace-chains, hobby-horses, and goose-yokes; but that is no reason why the neighbours should be at once cut off from their accustomed supply of small-wares."