In 1880 the Timmanees, who had been quiet for some time, began making disturbances; and the inhabitants of the village of Waterloo could not leave their homes without being murdered, or, at all events, fired upon. A handful of men was accordingly sent out from the garrison of Freetown, a few Timmanee villages burned, and order restored. During this small campaign a surgeon who accompanied the force committed a most unheard-of outrage. The bodies of a number of friendly natives, who had been killed by the Timmanees, had been placed in a pit, but not covered with earth, in order that the officers who were sent to restore order might actually see what the Timmanees had done. Upon this pit, about a week after the corpses had been placed in it, the surgeon chanced to light. To the astonishment and disgust of those who were with him he immediately sprang into it, and, drawing his sword, proceeded to hack off three or four heads from the bodies. Some of the relatives of the murdered men came running up, and their indignation and horror at this mutilation can be better imagined than described. Notwithstanding all they could say the surgeon continued his work until he had obtained sufficient specimens. He then clambered out, put the heads in a calabash, and walked off: remarking in a jocular manner that he had fleshed his maiden sword. On arriving at his boat he appeared surprised and annoyed that any one should blame him for what he had done, and when the officer in charge of the boat refused to take his ghastly cargo on board his indignation knew no bounds. Should a Turk impale a Bulgarian, or a Montenegrin cut the ears off a dead Turk, the whole of England is convulsed with horror, and the entire diplomatic machinery of the country set at work to discover and punish the offender; but in West Africa, when a British officer wantonly mutilates the dead, nothing is said about the matter. Can it be a subject for surprise that the natives of this part of the world should be barbarous, when such examples as this are set them by those whom they consider their superiors?
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