In the centre of this market-place rose a pyramid some twenty feet high, formed entirely of human skulls, bleached white as snow by the alternate rain and sun--a ghastly and terrible trophy of barbarism and cruelty, which reminded me of stories I had read of old Mexico, where similar monuments adorned the cities of the Incas; or of the tower formed of the skulls of slaughtered Christians, now standing in the Mohammedan isle of Gerba.
Fascinated by this revolting spectacle, I passed on with the dusky multitude; and Amoo informed me (while all prostrated their ugly faces in the dust) that we stood at the gate of the king's palace!
It was a vast collection of rambling wooden houses, which formed the dwellings of the sovereign, his wives, fiadoors, or officials, stables for his horses and dromedaries, dens for slaves or prisoners (a commodity with which he seldom troubled himself), magazines for stores and plunder. These edifices extended for nearly a mile before us; and on all those quaint buildings, which were barbarously adorned with the bones and horns of animals, a grinning human skull was the chief ornament.
Through a barrier _manned_ by a motley multitude of female guards, many of whom were armed with bayonets and old brass-butted Tower muskets, which may have done service under Moore and Wellington, we were conducted into a court surrounded by copper figures, so monstrous in aspect and conception, that the eye laboured in vain to discover whether they were meant to represent men, beasts, or birds.
The crowd who followed were all well armed with spears, bows and arrows, which, as Amoo informed me, were duly poisoned by the _fetishers_, or priests. Many of the fiadoors wore gay dresses of Dutch scarlet cloth, caps edged with civet fur, and necklaces of jasper and fine coral, or rings of yellow copper, bracelets of lions' teeth, and bucklers of rhinoceros hide.
Round this court were wooden pillars, curiously carved and painted, and, in some instances, covered with plates of engraved copper--the hieroglyphical records of battles, victories, and massacres--the edifices were roofed with palm canes, and had many fantastic pinnacles, surmounted by human skulls, or birds dried and prepared, with their pinions outspread.