at first. One day a Bukora boy came to camp and while in conversation
with some of my people casually told them that he had recently returned
from no man’s land, where he and some friends of his had been looking for
Kumamma. The Kumamma were their neighbours to the west. They had been
looking for them in order to spear them, should things be right—that
meaning should the enemy be in sufficiently small force for them to
easily overcome. When the numbers are at all equal, both sides retire
smartly to the rear. This is the normal kind of state in which these
tribes live. It leads to a few deaths certainly, but it keeps the young
men fit and out of other mischief. Every young man goes looking for
blood frequently, and as they carry no food except a few handfuls of
unground millet simply soaked in water, and as they never dare to sleep
while in the neutral zone, it acts as a kind of field training.
This youth, then, had seen no Kumamma but had seen elephant. My boys
told me this and I tried to get the lad to go with us to hunt. He said
he would come back and let me know. He did so and brought a friend. This
friend of his was a most remarkable-looking man. Strange as it may seem,
he had a most intellectual head. He was a man of perhaps thirty-five
years of age, most beautifully made and tattooed for men victims only,
I was relieved to see. Pyjalé was his name, and now began a firm and
long friendship between this distinguished savage and myself. I cannot
say that I have ever had the same feelings for any man as I came to have
for Pyjalé. He was, I found, a thorough man, courageous, quiet, modest,
with a horror of humbug and untiring in our common pact, the pursuit of
elephant. He was with me during the greater part of my time in Karamojo,
and although surrounded by people who clothed themselves, never would
he wear a rag even. Nor would he sleep comfortably as we did on grass
and blankets. The bare hard ground out by the camp fire with a hole dug
for his hip bone and his little wooden pillow had been good enough for
him before and was good enough now. No one poked fun at Pyjalé for his
nakedness; he was the kind who do not get fun poked at them.
Pyjalé was game to show us elephants, but said we would have to travel
far. His intelligence was at once apparent by his saying that we ought to
take tents as the rains might come any day. He was right, for come they
did while we were hunting.
I took to Pyjalé right at the start and asked him what I should do
about the main safari. He said I could leave it where it was; no one
would interfere with it. If I liked I could leave the ivory in one of
the villages. This I gathered was equivalent to putting one’s silver in
the bank at home. And so it is, bizarre as it may seem. You may leave
anything with natives—ivory, beads, which are money, trade goods, stock,
anything—and not one thing will they take provided you place it in their
care. But if you leave your own people to look after it they will steal
it, given the chance.
Thinking that it might save trouble I put all my trade goods and ivory
in a village, and leaving the safari with plenty of rations, I left for
a few days’ hunting, taking a sufficient number of porters to bring home
any ivory we were likely to get. This was necessary at this time as the
natives did not yet follow me in hundreds wherever I went, as they did
later on.
We trekked hard for three days and came once more in sight of the
Debasien range, but on its other side. On the night of the third day the
rains burst upon us. The light calico bush tents were hastily erected in
a perfect gale and downpour. Even Pyjalé had to shelter.
In the morning Pyjalé said we were certain to see elephant if we could
only cross a river which lay ahead of us. When we reached its banks it
was a raging torrent, red with mud and covered with patches of white
froth. There was nothing for it but to camp and wait until the spate
subsided.
While this was being done I saw a snake being carried down by the swollen
river. Then I saw another and another. Evidently banks were being washed
away somewhere.
A boy pointed to my shorts and said that a _doodoo_ (insect) had crawled
up the inside of one of my legs. Thinking, perhaps, it was a fly, or not
thinking at all, perhaps, I slapped my leg hard with open hand and got a
most frightful sting, while a huge scorpion dropped half crushed to the
ground. But not before he had injected quite sufficient poison into me.
“Insect,” indeed! how I cursed that boy. And then, by way of helping me,
he said that when people were stung by these big black scorpions—like
mine—they always died. He was in a frightful state. And then another
fool boy said: “Yes, no one ever recovered from that kind.” I shouted
for whisky, for you certainly could feel the poison going through the
circulation. I knew that what the boys said was bunkum, but still I drank
a lot of whisky. My leg swelled and I could not sleep that night, but I
was quite all right next day.
The river had gone down somewhat, so I proposed to cross. No one was very
eager to go across with a rope. A rope was necessary, as some of the boys
could not swim and the current was running too strong for them to walk
across the bottom under water, carrying stones to keep them down, as they
usually did.
I carried at that time a Mexican raw hide lariat and thought that this
stretched across would do nicely for the boys to haul themselves over by.
So I took one end to the other side and made it fast, when the safari
began to come over. Once the plunge had been taken I found that more of
them could swim than they had led me to believe. Then the inevitable—when
raw hide gets wet—happened and the rope parted. As luck would have it
there was a boy about mid-stream at the instant. The slippery end slid
through his fingers and he went rapidly down-stream. His head kept going
under and reappearing I noticed, but thought that, as he had a smile on
his face each time he came up, he was another humbug pretending to be
unable to swim. His friends, who knew perfectly well that he could not
swim a yard, said, of course, not a word. And it was not until he gushed
water at the mouth instead of air that I realised he was drowning. I
ran down the bank while another boy plunged in at the crossing place. I
reached the boy first by a second and we soon had him towing to bank.
Black men are good to save, they never seem to realise their close call
and do not clutch and try to climb out on you. While towing to the bank I
felt something on my head and put up a hand to brush it off. Horrors, a
snake! It was merely trying to save itself on anything above water level,
but I did not realise this. Whenever I knocked it off it seemed to come
again. Luckily we just then reached the bank or in another instant I
would have abandoned my drowning porter to save myself from that beastly
serpent. It was all very silly, and the snake was nearly at its last
gasp, but I did not see the humour at the moment. Needless to say, the
boy was perfectly all right in ten minutes after vomiting up a bucket or
two of water.
While we were getting ready again for the march we heard elephant. To my
inexperienced ear the sound seemed to come from some bush 400 yds. or 500
yds. away. But Pyjalé said, to my astonishment, that they were a long way
off and that unless we hurried we should not see them before sundown.
As the sun then indicated about one o’clock, I thought he was wrong.
But he was not; for it was half an hour from sunset when we saw them,
still far away. I remember looking industriously about all those miles
expecting momentarily to see elephant, while Pyjalé soaked along ahead
of me without a glance aside. The only explanation of this extraordinary
sound-carrying that has ever occurred to me is humidity of atmosphere.
During the dry season the earth becomes so hot that when the first rains
fall much is evaporated in steam and the humidity is remarkable.
Here we were face to face with such a gathering of elephant as I had
never dared to dream of even. The whole country was black with them, and
what lay beyond them one could not see as the country was dead flat. Some
of them were up to their knees in water, and when we reached their tracks
the going became very bad. The water was so opaque with mud as to quite
hide the huge pot-holes made by the heavy animals. You were in and out
the whole time. As we drew nearer I thought that we ought to go decently
and quietly, at any rate make some pretence of stalking them, if only out
of respect to them. But no, that awful Pyjalé rushed me, splashing and
squelching right up to them. He was awfully good, and I began to learn a
lot from him. He treated elephant with complete indifference. If he were
moved at all, and that was seldom, he would smile.
I was for treating them as dangerous animals, especially when we trod
on the heels of small bogged-down calves and their mothers came rushing
back at us in the most alarming fashion, but Pyjalé would have none
of it. Up to the big bulls would he have me go, even if we had to go
under infuriated cows. He made me kill seven before sundown stopped the
bloodshed.
With great difficulty we found a spot a little higher than the
surrounding country and fairly dry. As usual at these flood times the
little island was crawling with ants of every description. How comes it
that ants do not drown, although they cannot swim? They appear to be
covered with something which repels water.
Scorpions and all kinds of other horrors were there also. One of the boys
was bitten and made a fearful fuss all night about it.
I expected to do well on the morrow, but when it came, behold, not an
elephant in sight. Such are the surprises of elephant hunting. Yesterday
when light failed hundreds upon hundreds in sight and now an empty
wilderness.
We had not alarmed them, as I noticed that when a shot was fired only the
animals in the vicinity ran and that for a short distance only. There
were too many to stampede even had they been familiar with firearms. And
the noise was such as to drown the crack of a ·303 almost immediately.
I asked Pyjalé what he thought about it. He said that at the beginning
of the rains elephant wandered all over the country. You could never
tell where they might be. With water and mud and green food springing
up everywhere they were under no necessity to frequent any one district
more than another. Pyjalé’s advice was to get the ivory out and take it
home, and then he would show me a country where we were certain to get
big bulls. Accordingly the boys set about chopping out while I went for a
cruise around to make certain there was nothing about.
I saw nothing but ostrich, giraffe and great herds of common and Topi
haartebeeste. On crossing some black-cotton soil I noticed that it clung
to the boots in a very tiresome way. Each time you lifted a foot, 10 lb.
or 15 lb. of sticky mud came with it. At this stage the ground was still
dry underneath, only the top few inches being wet. From the big lumps
lying about where antelope had passed it was obvious that they had, too,
the same trouble as I was having, _i.e._, mud clinging to the feet.
But on watching Pyjalé it appeared that it did not stick to naked human
feet to anything like the same extent. Pyjalé told me, and I afterwards
saw it actually done, that it was possible to run down ostrich and the
heavy antelope, such as eland, when the ground was in this state.
Returning we found the boys well on with their chopping out. Towards
evening we started for home, being much troubled with swollen rivers.
Most of the boys walked through the rivers when we could find a place
where the current was not too strong. The heavy tusks, of course, kept
them on the bottom. But it was a curious sight to see them calmly
marching in deeper and deeper until their heads went right under,
reappearing again close to the other bank. Of course, the distance they
thus traversed was only a few yards, but for fellows who cannot swim it
was not bad.
One camp from home (the safari) we slept near some flooded wells. The
boys took their tusks to scrub them with sand and water, the better to
make an appearance on the morrow when we should rejoin the safari. This
is always a source of joy to Wanyamwezi, to carry ivory to the base. When
allowed to do so they will spend hours dancing and singing their way into
the camp. The women turn out, everybody makes a noise of some kind, from
blowing a reed pipe, to trumpeting on a water buck horn or beating a drum
or a tin, in fact anything so that it produces noise.
While they were scrubbing the tusks one of these slipped from the boy’s
hands into a well. I heard of it and went to see what could be done. To
test the depth I tried one of Pyjalé’s 9 ft. spears. No good. Then I tied
another to it, but even then I could not touch bottom. Pyjalé said the
bottom was very far. Then I looked at one of my boys squatting on the
edge of the well. He had been a coast canoe-man shark-fisher—than whom no
finer watermen exist—and knew what I meant without a word passing. He
tied his cloth between his legs and stripped his upper body. Then jumping
into the air he twisted half round and went down head first into the very
middle of the well. It seemed ages before his head reappeared. At last it
did so, but only for an instant. Down again; apparently he had not found
it the first time. After another long wait he came up with the tusk and
swimming or treading water. Eager hands clutched the tusk and drew it
out, the boy crawled out himself. This particular tusk weighed 65 lb.,
the length being almost the diameter of the well, so it had to be brought
up end on. How he did it I cannot imagine. The water was the colour of
pea-soup, and a scrubbed tusk is like a greasy pole to hold. Of course,
it would not weigh 65 lb. when submerged, but it was a pretty good effort
I thought. I know I would not have gone 20 ft. or 30 ft. down that well
for any number of tusks.
These boys have the most extraordinary lungs. I once sent one of them
down to disentangle the anchor of a motor launch, which had got foul of
something. There were about four fathoms of chain and the boy went down
this hand over hand. I only wanted him to clear the anchor, when we would
heave it up in the ordinary way. But presently up the chain came the boy
and the anchor.
On the morrow we entered Bukora again, with fourteen fine white tusks.
We had a great reception at our camp. The natives, too, were rather
astonished at our rapid success. Pyjalé stalked along without any show of
feeling.
The boys who had stayed behind had nothing to report except the loss of
three of our sheep by theft. Now it was essential to nip this kind of
thing in the bud. I did nothing that day, merely sending Pyjalé to his
home with a handsome present. I knew he would put it round as to the kind
of people we were. Natives always exaggerate enormously when back from
a scurry in the bush, and his account of our doings would probably have
made me blush had I heard it.
Next day when Pyjalé came with a pot of fresh cow’s milk as a present, I
asked him if he had heard anything about our sheep. He said no. I asked
him to point me out the village which had stolen them. He said they would
kill him if he did so. Therefore he knew. I then said that he need not go
with me, if only he would indicate it. He said the village with the three
tamarind trees was where the thieves lived.
I went over quietly, as if looking for guinea-fowl, in the evening. The
village was quite close to our camp. When their stock began to come in I
signalled up some boys. We walked up deliberately to the herds, no one
taking any great notice of us. I separated out a mob of sheep and goats
and we started driving them towards camp, but very quietly and calmly. It
is wonderful how imitative Africans are. If you are excited they at once
become so. If you are calm and deliberate, so are they.
A more dramatic thing would have been to take the cattle. But these
native cattle are not used to boys wearing clothes, as mine did, and
we found at Mani-Mani that they became excited and difficult to handle
unless they see their black naked owners about. Pyjalé I had carefully
left out of this business.
As soon as our object dawned upon the Karamojans there was the usual
commotion. Women wha! wha! wha-ed while rushing from the huts with
shields; warriors seized these and rushed with prodigious speed directly
away from us; while we pushed our two or three hundred hostages slowly
along.
Arrived at camp we just managed to squeeze them all into the bullock
boma. There were noises all round us now. The boys were uneasy; there
is always something in the alarm note when issued by hundreds of human
throats. Dark was soon on us and we sat up by the camp fires till fairly
late. Nothing happened, as I anticipated. Discretion had won. They hated
that little bom-bom so.
What I wanted now was that they should come. I wanted to tell them why I
had taken their sheep. No one appeared, but I consoled myself with the
thought that they jolly well knew why I had taken them.
Presently there appeared to be great signs of activity in one of the
nearer villages. Native men kept coming from all directions. My boys were
all eyes for this, to them, impending attack. I thought they must be born
fools to try anything of that sort in broad daylight. Night was their
best chance.
Pyjalé had been absent, so I hoped that he was at the meeting. Presently
he appeared. He said they had had a discussion and had concluded not to
attack us. I told him to go straight back and invite them all to come;
I wanted to be attacked. And moreover, if my sheep were not instantly
brought I would proceed to kill the hostage sheep we held, and that then
I would proceed to hunt the thieves.
This acted like magic; I suppose they thought that as I had known the
village of the thieves, I also probably knew the actual men themselves.
Our sheep were very soon brought and the hostages released.
I took the opportunity when the natives were there to impress upon them
that we did not want anything from them. All we wanted was to hunt
elephant in peace, but at the same time I hinted that we could be very
terrible indeed. I got some of the older men to dry up and sit down, in a
friendly way, and we had a good talk together. I now brought out the card
to which I owed all my success in killing elephant in Karamojo. I offered
a cow as reward for information leading to my killing five or more bull
elephant. This was an unheard of reward. There a cow of breeding age is
simply priceless. Normally natives never kill or sell she-stock of any
kind and cows could only be obtained by successful raiding. Now among
Africans there are numbers of young men who just lack the quality which
brings success to its lucky owner, just as there are in every community,
and to these young men my offer appealed tremendously. That they believed
in my promise from the very start was, I thought, a great compliment,
not only to me, but to their astuteness in perceiving that there was a
difference between white men and Swahilis.
When my offer had gone the rounds the whole country for many miles round
was scoured for elephant, with the result that I never could have a day’s
rest. Everyone was looking for elephant. But had the reward been trade
goods scarcely a soul would have bothered about it.
The first man to come was remarkable looking enough to satisfy anybody.
A terrible looking man. A grotesquely hideous face above a very broad
and deep chest, all mounted on the spindliest of knock-kneed legs.
Chest, arms, shoulders, stomach and back heavily tattooed, denoting much
killing. By reputation a terrific fighter, and very wealthy.
At first I thought that he was come to show me elephant. That was his
intention, he said, but first he wanted to become my blood-brother. He
said he could see that I was a kindred spirit and that we two should
be friends. He said he had no friends. How was that? I asked. Pyjalé
answered in a whisper that the lion never made friends of jackals
and hyenas. And so we became friends. I was not going through the
blood-brotherhood business, with its eating of bits of toasted meat
smeared with each other’s blood, sawing in two of living dogs or nonsense
of that kind. I took his hand and wrung it hard, and had it explained to
him that among us that was an extraordinarily potent way of doing it.
That seemed to satisfy the old boy, for the act of shaking hands was as
strange to him as the act of eating each other’s blood is to us.
He started off then and I said: “What about those elephant?” “Wait,” was
the answer, and off he went, to return shortly with a fat bullock. And
then I found that my friend was the wealthiest cattle owner anywhere
about—a kind of multi-millionaire. I thought to myself, well, he will not
look for elephant. Nor did he; but he had sons without number, being much
married, whom he scattered far and wide to look for them. He had arranged
the thing most perfectly. We went with food for a few days and returned
laden with ivory. Besides which we had some of the jolliest nights in the
bush.
[Illustration: LONGELLY-NYMUNG, THE AUTHOR’S BLOOD BROTHER.
_One of the best spear-fighters and therefore wealthy in cattle. He was
an exceptional man, would accept no gifts, but took Mr. Bell’s native
name and also called his male children by it._]
[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE SAFARI.]
This great man being now my friend, our troubles were at an end. Wherever
we went we were followed by scores of the young unmarried girls and
one old maid—the only one I have come across in Karamojo. She was so
outstandingly above the average in good looks, so beautifully made and
so obviously still quite young, that I often asked why she should remain
a spinster. They told me that no man would marry her because she was so
beautiful. But why should that be a bar? we white men like our wives to
be beautiful. They thought this strange, even for white men. They said
they never married very beautiful women as all men wanted them. They also
gave as another reason that these very attractive women wanted all men.
And I must say that our camp beauty gave decided colour to this latter
statement.
No sooner were we arrived back with our imposing line of beautiful tusks
than other natives clamoured to take us to elephant. They wanted me to go
there and then, but I needed a rest.
In the evening I presented my friend with a heifer, when to my
astonishment he refused it. He said he wanted nothing from his friend. I
was rather suspicious about this at first, but I need not have been, as
I subsequently found this man to be thoroughly genuine. I am convinced
that he would have given me anything. It is a big affair in their lives,
this blood-brotherhood. Apparently we now owned everything in common. He
offered me any of his daughters in marriage, and, thank goodness, never
asked me for my rifle. From now on he followed me about like a faithful
dog, some of his young wives attending to his commissariat arrangements
wherever he was. He even took my name, which was Longelly-nymung or Red
Man. And he began now to call his young male children, of whom he was
very fond, by the same name. He was a delightfully simple fellow at heart
and as courageous as a lion, as I had proof later.
After a few more journeys to the bush lasting from four to ten days, I
found suddenly that I had as much ivory as I could possibly move. And
this, while still on the fringe of Karamojo. I decided to return to
Mumias, sell my ivory, fit out a real good expedition capable of moving
several tons of ivory, and return to Karamojo fitted out for several
years in the bush.
VI
DABOSSA
Having now the wherewithal to fit out a real good safari from the sale of
my ivory, I proceeded to discharge my Baganda porters and to engage in
their place Wanyamweze. Bagandas being banana-eaters had shown themselves
to be good lads enough, but poor “doers” on ground millet, flour and
elephant meat. Dysentery was their trouble. Whereas Wanyamweze seemed
capable of keeping their condition indefinitely under severe safari
conditions. All my former boys had a good pay-day coming to them, as,
of course, they had been unable to spend anything while in Karamojo.
Consequently they one and all went on the burst. A few new clothes from
the Indian shops and the rest on native beer was the rule. When drinking
largely of native beer no other food is required as the whole grain is
contained in it. My two Nandi cowherds spent hardly anything of their
wages. The only things I ever saw them buy were a fat sheep and two tins
of sweet condensed milk. They rendered down about two quarts of fat from
the tail of the sheep, poured in the contents of the milk tins, stirred
it well and drank it off.