The Gambia boasts of a local corps of militia. It is not often called out, principally because there is no particular uniform for it, no officers, except two unmilitary Colonial officials, and no arms, except old trade muskets, for the men. As the latter are mostly decrepid old pensioners and discharged men, all Africans, from the disbanded West India regiments, it is not a very formidable body. It is a curious fact that Africans cannot, as a rule, be taught to shoot straight: the practice of the Houssa Constabulary on the Gold Coast is deplorable, and it is well known that it is the bad shooting of the few Africans who still remain in the existing West Indian Regiments that pulls down the figure of merit in those corps. There is no such difficulty with West Indian negroes, for the average recruit from the West Indies is as good a shot as the British recruit, and this almost seems to show that a certain amount of cultivation and civilisation is necessary for making a marksman. In these days of long-range firing it is fortunate that recruiting in Africa has ceased.
Should any of my readers feel tempted to visit the Gambia, I believe that they would find a hitherto unopened field for sport at the upper waters of that river. Certain it is that elephants abound some distance above the falls of Barraconda, the river is full of hippopotami and crocodiles; while leopards, hyænas, antelopes, and civet-cats are easily found, by any one who knows how and where to look, in the vicinity of Bathurst itself. Of the feathered tribes, quail, curlew, snipe, duck, and the usual varieties of cranes and parrots, are common; while the valuable marabout bird and the ostrich are frequently bagged by the badly-armed and worse-shooting Mandingos and Jolloffs.
The Slave Coast--Whydah--The Dahoman Palaver of 1876--The Dahoman Army--An Unpleasant Bedfellow--The Snake House--Dahoman Fetishism--Various Gods--A Curious Ceremony--Importunate Relatives--The Dahoman Priesthood.
Towards the end of the year 1879 I visited Whydah, the seaport of Dahomey, on the Slave Coast. Between Whydah and the boundary of the Gold Coast Colony, now advanced to Flohow, about two miles beyond the old smuggling port of Danoe, are the ancient slave stations of Porto Seguro, Bageida, Little Popo, and Grand Popo; and the lagoon system, which commences with the Quittah Lagoon to the east of the river Volta, extends along the whole of this coast as far as Lagos. These lagoons are however gradually silting up, and this movement is proceeding so rapidly that already canoes can only pass from Elmina Chica to Porto Seguro during the rainy season, the old bed of the lagoon being a vast arid plain during the summer.