Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative by Verney Lovett Cameron;Sir Richard Francis Burton
page 13 of 310 (04%)
bury him').

The Ibos, or 'Eboes' of American tales, are even more divided; still they
feel and act upon the principle 'Union is strength.' This large and savage
tribe, whose headquarters are at Abo, about the head of the Nigerian
delta, musters strong at Sá Leone; here they are the Swiss of the
community; the Kruboys, and further south the Kabenda-men being the
'Paddies.' It is popularly said that while the Aku will do anything for
money, the Ibo will do anything for revenge. Both races are astute in the
extreme and intelligent enough to work harm. Unhappily, their talents
rarely take the other direction. In former days they had faction-fights:
the second eastern district witnessed the last serious disturbance in
1834. Now they do battle under the shadow of the law. 'Aku constables will
not, unless in extreme cases, take up their delinquent countrymen, nor
will an Ebo constable apprehend an Ebo thief; and so on through all the
different tribes,' says the lady 'Resident of Sierra Leone.' If the
majority of the jury be Akus, they will unhesitatingly find the worst of
Aku criminals innocent, and the most innocent of whites, Ibos, or Timnis
guilty. The Government has done its best to weld all those races into one,
and has failed. Many, however, are becoming Moslems, as at Lagos, and this
change may have a happier effect by introducing the civilisation of
El-Islam.

Trial by jury has proved the reverse of a blessing to most non-English
lands; in Africa it is simply a curse. The model institution becomes here,
as in the United States, a better machine for tyranny than any tyrant,
except a free people, ever invented. The British Constitution determines
that a man shall be tried by his peers. Half a dozen of his peers at Sá
Leone may be full-blooded blacks, liberated slaves, half-reformed
fetish-worshippers, sometimes with a sneaking fondness for Shángo, the
DigitalOcean Referral Badge