eone, a party from the garrison used to be admitted to the
Liberated African Yard for the purpose of seeking recruits amongst the
slaves. Many of the latter, pleased with the brilliant uniform, and
talked over by the recruiting party, who were men specially selected for
this duty on account of their knowledge of African languages, offered
themselves as recruits. If medically fit, they were invariably accepted,
though it must have been well known that they could not possibly have
had any idea of the nature of the engagement into which they were
entering. Some fifteen or twenty recruits being thus obtained, they were
given high-sounding names, such as Mark Antony, Scipio Africanus, etc.,
their own barbaric appellations being too unpronounceable, and then
marched down in a body to the cathedral to be baptised. Some might be
Mohammedans, and the majority certainly believers in fetish, but the
form of requiring their assent to a change in their religion was never
gone through; and the following Sunday they were marched into church as
a matter of course, along with their Christian comrades. Although thus
nominally christianised, they still remained at heart believers in
fetish, for it is a remarkable fact that no adult West African has ever
become a bona-fide convert, and the missionaries have long since given
up attempting to proselytise grown persons, reserving all their efforts
for children. Holding, as they did, in great dread all fetish, or obeah,
practices; usually someone amongst them, more cunning than the rest,
professed an acquaintance with the supposed diabolical ritual; and
gained influence with, and extorted money from, his more timid comrades.
Officers now in the 1st West India Regiment can remember the time when,
there being many Africans in the regiment, the feathers of parrots or
scraps of rags might be found in the neighbourhood of the orderly room.
Whenever this was the case, it was known that an African was about to be
brought before his commanding officer for some neglect of duty or breach
of discipline; and these fetishes had been placed there to induce the
colonel to deal leniently with the offender. Ridiculous as this practice
must seem to every educated person, it sometimes produced the most
serious effects upon the credulous Africans; and I have heard old
officers speak of instances, which came within their own knowledge, of
soldiers who, having found old bones, broken pieces of calabashes, or
glass, p