The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-19 00:00:00

A" .REP.RISAL EXECUTION" IN BONNY

Mr. Hutchinson, in his work on Africa, just
published, described as follows a dreadful scene he
witnessed in Bonny :
" As I looked through the slit in the wall on the
space between my place of concealment and the
juju house, I observed no change from its appear-
ance the evening before. No gibbet, nor axe, nor
gallows, nor rope, no kind of preparation, nothing
significant of death, save the skulls in the pillars of
the ju-j a house, that seemed leering at me with
an expression at once strange and vacant. It
would have been a relief, in the awful
stillness of the place, to have heard something
of what I had read of the preparations for an
execution in Liverpool or London—of the ham-
mering suggestive of driving nails into scaffold,
drop, or coffin—of a crowd gathering round the
place before early dawn—and of the solemn tolling
of the bell that chimed another soul into eternity.
Everything seemed as if nothing beyond the routine
of daily life were to take place. Could it be that
I had been misinformed—that the ceremony
owasut or was to be carried
elsewhere adjourned ?to another
N o
A time,
distant murmur of gab-
bling voices was heard approaching nearer and
nearer, till passing the corner house on my left,
I saw a group of negroes. An indiscriminate
crowd of all ages and both sexes, so huddled
together that no person whom I could particu-
larly distinguish as either an executioner or culprit
was visible amongst them. But above their clatter-
ing talk came the sound of a clanking chain that
made me shudder. They stopped in the middle of
the square, opposite the ju-ju house, and ceased
talking.
One commanding voice uttered a single
word, and down they sat upon the grass, forming
a circle round two figures, standing upright in
the centre—the executioner and the man about
to be killed. The former was remarkable only
by the black skull-cap which he had on him,
a%d by a common cutlass which he held In his
hand. The latter had chains round his neck,
his wrists, and his ankles. There was' no sign
of fear or cowardice about him—no
_seeming
consciousness of the dreadful fate before him—no
evidence even upon his face of that dogged stub-
bornness which is said to be exhibited by some per-
sons about to undergo an ignominous death. Save
that he stood upright, one would scarcely have
known he was alive. Amongst the spectators, too,
there was a silent impassiveness which was appal-
ling. Not a word, nor gesture, nor glance of sym-
pathy, that could make me believe I looked at
" beings who had a vestige of humanity amongst
them. As the juju butcher stepped back and mea-
sured his distance to make an effectual swoop at his
victim's neck the man moved not a muscle,
but stood as it were unconscious—till—Chop !
the first blow felled him to the ground. The
noise of a chopper falling on meat is familiar to
most people. No other sound was here—none
from the man, nor a whisper nor a murinnr from
those who were seated about. I was nearly crying
out in mental agony, and the sound of that first
- stroke will haunt my ears to my dying day. How I
wished some one to talk or scream, to destroy
the impression of that fearful hough, and the still
more awful silence that followed it. Again the
weapon was raised to continue the -decapitation—
another blow as the man lay prostrate, and then a
sound broke the silence. But, oh, Father of Mercy !
of what a kind was that noise —a \ gurgle and
gasp accompanying the dying spasm of the
struck-down man. Once snore the weapon was lifted
—I saw the blood flow in gory horror down the
blade to the butcher's hand, and there it was visible
in God's bright sunshine to the whole host of
heaven. Not a word had yet been uttered by the
crowd. More chopping and cleaving, and tbe head,
severed from the body, was put, by the j.u-ju exe-
cutioner, into a calabash, which was carried off by
one of his women to be cooked. He then re-
peated another cabalistic word, or perhaps the
same as at first, and directly all who were
seated rose up, whilst he walked away. A
yell, such as reminded me of a company of tigers,
arose from the multitude—cutlasses were flourished
as they crowded round the body of the dead man-
- sounds of cutting and chopping rose amidst the
clamour of the voices, and I began to question
myself whether, if I were on the other side of the
river Styx, I should see what I was looking at
here through the little slit in the wall of my
hiding-place ? A crowd of human vultures gloat-
ing over the headless corse of a murdered brother
negro—boys and girls walking away from the
crowd, holding pieces of bleeding flesh in their
hands, while the dripping life fluid marked their
road as they went along; and one woman snap-
ping from the hands of another—both of them
raising their voices in clamour—a part of the body
of this poor man. in whom the breath of life was
vigorous not a quarter of an hour ago ! The whole
of the body was at last divided, and nothing left
behind but the blood. The intestines were taken
away to be given to an iguana—the Bonnyman's
tutelary guardian. But the blood was still
there, in glistening pools, though no more notice
was taken of it by the gradually-dispersing crowd,
than if it were a thing as common in that town as
Heaven's bright dew is elsewhere. A few dogs
were on the spot, who devoured the fragments.
Two men arrived to spread sand ever the place,
and there was no interruption to the familiar
sound of coopers' hammering, just beginning in the
cask-houses, or to the daily work of hoisting palm-
oil puncheons on board the ships."

THE WEATHER.

METEOROLOGICAL REPORTS.

TifT Day,
between 8 and
9 a.m.

Nairn
Aberdeen ....
Leith ......
Berwick
Ardrossan
Portrush
Shields
Galway
Scarborough
Liverpool
Valentia. I
Queenstown
Yarmouth
London
rover
Portsmouth
Portland
Plymouth
Penzance

C. i I.

EXPLANATION.—B. Barometer, corrected and reduced
to 32 deg at mean sea level ; each 10 feet of vertical rise
causing about 1-100th of an inch diminution, and each 10
deg above 32 deg causing nearly 3-100ths increase. E.
Exposed thermometer in shade. M. Moistened bulb (for
evaporation and dew-point). D. Direction of wind (true—
not magnetic). F. Force (1 to 12—estimated). C. Cloud
(1 to 9). I. Initials :—b,, blue sky; c., clouds (detached) ;
1., fog. ' • h., hail ; 1.,. lightning ; m., misty (hazy) ; 0.,
overcast (dull) ; r., rain ; s., snow • t., thunder. A letter
repeated augments—thus, r,r., much rain, S. Sea disturb-
ance! (1 to 9),