tracking was easy and the speed good. All were hungering for meat. What
an appalling spectacle we would have been, as we raced along, for wise,
calm, judicious eyes not out for blood—the natives all eager, searching
the ground for tracks here and there like hounds on the trail. Some,
more enterprising, chancing ahead to find the trail. A slap on the thigh
signals this to the more tardy, while the pale-skinned man rests at the
checks, the better to carry out his deadly work when that should begin.
Watch him peering furtively through the bush in all directions, for human
eye cannot pierce the dense foliage. Far better good ears than good
eyes in this kind of country. Watch him during the checks listening. He
imagines that those terrific vibrations his dull ears faintly gather
may be caused by his quarry. How stupid he is to continue thinking so
when surrounded by living evidence that it is not so, for not one of the
native men has paused even for a second; they know monkeys when they hear
them.
All the same, these were not ordinary “monks,” they were chimpanzee,
a whole colony of them. They were very busy gathering fruit, and I
pointed my rifle at one huge old man “chimp.” Like a flash my natives
disappeared, and with such a clatter that the chimps heard and also
disappeared. I had had no intention of firing, but I almost began to
believe that I must have done it, so rapidly had the stage cleared.
However, up came the headman, relieved that the chimps had gone. I asked
him what was the matter. He told me then that chimps when in bands will
attack if fired at. I don’t believe it, but I am glad to say I have never
tested it. They looked such jolly old hairy people.
After this we pushed along faster than ever, for the day was getting on.
The quarry led us in every conceivable direction. Had I got lost or had
my natives deserted me, I could not have found my way back to the village
at all. The sun’s position did not help, it being invisible. A compass
would not have helped unless a kind of rough course had been jotted down
with the distances travelled between changes of direction.
[Illustration: A COLONY OF “CHIMPS” FRUIT-GATHERING.]
[Illustration: SMALL ELEPHANT OF LIBERIA.]
Towards evening I began to think that it was a rum go. I could see no
reason why the elephant should travel so: food appeared to be plentiful.
There were no signs of man anywhere. But the fact remains that their
signs showed that we had gained but little on them during our nine hours’
march. We had to camp for the night.
Rain during the night obliterated the tracks to some extent and made
trekking slower. We had not gone far when the unexpected happened. The
natives all stopped, listening. “Only monks,” I thought. Wrong again,
for it was elephant this time. They must have wandered round back on to
their tracks, and we happened along just in the nick of time to hear them
crossing. Had we been a few minutes earlier we should probably have had
another day’s hard going for nothing.
Some of them were quite close, making all the usual sounds of feeding
elephant. The sighs, the intestinal rumbles, the cracks, the r-r-r-r-ips
as they stripped branches, the little short suppressed trumpet notes, the
wind noises and the thuds of flapping ears—all were there.
Now, leaving the boys, I approached alone. It was astonishing how thick
the stuff seemed. I was certainly very close indeed to elephant, but
nothing could I see. I started through some bush, came out sure of seeing
something—and did so _when I lowered my eyes_. I had completely forgotten
my idea about these being dwarf elephants, and had been unconsciously
peering about for a sight at the elevation of an ordinary elephant’s top
parts; whereas here I was looking straight into the face of an elephant
_on a level with mine_ and only a matter of feet between us. At first
I thought it was a calf, and was about to withdraw when I noticed a
number of animals beyond the near one. All were the same height. None
stood over 7 ft. at the shoulder. Their ivory was minute. I withdrew to
think it over calmly. I met the headman, much too close in, and cursed
him soundly. I said there was no ivory and that I was going to look for
a bull among the main body, and that he had better keep well back. I
was intensely annoyed at his pressing up like that and also with the
appearance of the elephant. I was not so interested in the natural
history point of view then as I would be now, and the fact that these
elephant were as out of proportion to the ordinary elephant as the pigmy
hippo is to the ordinary hippo merely irritated me.
Circling round the lot I had first seen, I got up to the bigger herd,
searching vainly for a bull. I had now more leisure to examine the beasts
and to compare them one with another. I soon spotted what should have
been a fair herd bull, judging by the width of his forehead and the
taper of his tusks, but he stood scarcely 6 ins. higher than the cows
about him. His tusks were minute, but yet he had lost his baby forehead
and ears, and looked, what in fact he was, a full-blown blood. I shot
him. But here again I was at fault. I took a calm, deliberate shot at
his brain, or rather where I thought his brain ought to be, and where it
would have been in any decent elephant. But it was not there. Whether or
not he was a brainless elephant I cannot positively say, for I killed
him with the heart shot. But I am inclined to give him the benefit of
the doubt, because I subsequently found out where others of his race
kept their brains, and their situation in the head was not that of an
ordinary elephant’s. The ears were also different, although this is a
poor distinction upon which to found a pretension to difference of race,
for ears differ all over Africa. Then, the tail hairs were almost as fine
as those of giraffe. As regards bulk, I should say it would take six of
them to balance a big Lakka elephant.
I was thoroughly disgusted, but the boys were jubilant. _They_ thought
he was enormous. I said that I could not think of hunting such stuff.
The tusks looked about 10 lb.—when weighed afterwards they scaled 15
lb. each, being shorter in the hollow than I had guessed them. “Well,”
I said, “if all your elephant are like this, I shall have to pull out.”
Then came some more surprises. They said all the “red” elephant were the
size of the one I had just killed, but that the “blue” elephant were
much bigger. “And where were the ‘blue’ elephant to be found?” I asked
sarcastically; for I thought all this just the usual bosh. “There were
not many,” they said, “and they never mixed with the ‘red’ ones, but they
were huge.”
“And how big were they?” I asked. “As high as that,” pointing with their
spears to a height of about 11 ft. or 12 ft. After all, I thought, it
might be so, more especially as I had seen a pair of tusks of about 25
lb. each on the “beach”—as a shipping port is always called in West
Africa—which were reputed to have come from this country. We then camped
by the dead elephant, and the business of cutting and drying meat on
fires began.
In a way, the smallness of the elephant helped me, for the meat was soon
all cut into strips and hanging over fires, and the boys were eager for
more. Therefore I had no difficulty in getting some of them to go with me
the next day to look for the so-called “blue” elephant. I thought that
if these were as big as the natives said they were, they were probably
wanderers from the interior, where I knew normal-sized elephant lived,
having hunted them in the hinterland of the Ivory Coast.
We hunted all that day without success, but I saw the old tracks of an
ordinary elephant. These the boys said were made by a “blue” elephant.
We returned, after a long day, to the meat camp. The headman announced
his intention of accompanying me on the morrow, as his women would arrive
that evening and would take charge of the meat. Now, here is a curious
thing about Africans. If one acquires, say, a lot of meat, he tries to
get it into the charge of his wives as soon as possible. While he remains
in possession everybody cadges from him: friends, relations, everybody of
similar age, the merest acquaintances, all seem to think that he should
share the meat with them. But once the meat is handed over to his wife it
is secure. Whenever anyone asks for some he refers them to his wife. That
ends it, for nobody will cadge from a woman, knowing, I suppose, that it
would be hopeless, for if the wife were to part with any she would be
severely beaten by the husband. Yet that same husband, while still in
charge of the meat, cannot refuse to share it.
With this in view, the headman had sent a runner to the village to bring
his women to the elephant shortly after death, and in the night of the
second day they arrived. Our rather dismal little camp became quite
lively. Fires were lit all over the place, and everyone was extremely
animated. When natives have recovered from the effects of their first
gorge of meat they become very lively indeed. If they have a large
quantity of meat, requiring several days to smoke and dry it, they dance
all night. The conventional morality of their village life is cast off,
and they thoroughly enjoy themselves.
Early on the following day we were off for the big elephant. About twenty
natives attached themselves to us. We wandered about, crossing numerous
streams, until someone found tracks. If they were small I flatly refused
to follow them. Late in the afternoon a real big track of a single bull
was found. It was quite fresh and absurdly easy to follow. We soon heard
him, and nothing untoward took place. The brain was where it ought to be,
and he fell. As I anticipated, he was a normal elephant, about 10 ft. 10
ins. at the shoulder, with quite ordinary tusks weighing 31 lb. or 32 lb.
The boys thought him a monster, and asked me what I thought of “blue”
elephant. He certainly was much more nearly blue than the little red-mud
coloured ones of the day before.
As it was too late for anyone to return to the village that night we
all camped by the elephant. Being dissatisfied with the numbers of
warrantable bulls about, I decided to return to the village with the
boys. So off we set across country. We travelled and travelled, as I
imagined, straight towards the village. This was far from being the case,
as I discovered when we all stopped to examine a man-trail. It was ours.
We had been slogging it in a huge circle, and here we were back again. I
had often admired and envied the Africans for their wonderful faculty for
finding their way where apparently there was nothing to indicate it. I
have never yet been able to exactly “place” this extraordinary faculty.
They cannot explain it themselves. They simply _know_ the direction
without taking bearings or doing anything consciously. Always puzzling
over this sense which we whites have to such a poor degree, I have
watched closely leading natives scores of times. The only thing they
do, as far as I could observe, is to look at trees. Occasionally they
recognise one, _but they are not looking for landmarks_. They are quite
indifferent about the matter. Something, which we have probably lost,
leads them straight on, _even in pitch darkness_.
The occasion of which I am writing is the exception which proves the
rule, for it is the only instance of natives getting seriously lost which
has come under my observation, and that is more than twenty years of
hunting. For seriously lost we were. We wandered about in that forest
for three days. Leader after leader was tried, only to end up on our
old tracks. Food ran out. The boys had eaten all the elephant meat they
brought with them. My food was finished, but the cartridges were not,
thank goodness. I remember ordering a cartridge belt from Rigby to hold
fifty rounds. He asked me what on earth I wanted with so many on it.
I said I liked them, and here was the time when it paid to have them.
For now we lived entirely on monkeys, and horrible things they are.
Tasting as they smell, with burning and singeing added, they are the most
revolting food it has ever been my bad luck to have eaten.
At the end of the third day I thought to myself that something would have
to be done. This kind of thing would end in someone getting “done in”
with exhaustion. As it seemed to me that I should be the first to drop
out, it appeared to be up to me to do something. But what? I had not the
foggiest notion where we were. But one thing I knew: water runs downhill.
Brooklets run down into streams, streams down into rivers, rivers to
seas. Next morning I took a hand. I made the boys follow scrupulously the
winding bed of the first stream we came to. It joined a larger one; we
followed that. Not a word of remonstrance would I listen to, nor would
I tolerate any short cuts. At length we reached a large river, and I
was relieved to see that they all recognised it. Did they “savvy” it?
I asked. Yes, rather. So I sat down for a rest. The boys were having a
fearful argument about something. It appeared that some held that our
village lay up-stream, others that it was down-stream. They came to me
to settle it. I asked the up-streamers to come out; they numbered seven.
I counted the down-streamers; they numbered nine. I said: “The village
lies down-stream”; and by the merest hazard it did.
The village from which I had done so much hunting and where I was so
profusely “fêted” had acquired great riches with the meat I had given the
people. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of this, they showed great
opposition to my going. At first I paid no attention to their protests,
continuing calmly my preparations for departure, weighing and marking my
ivory, etc. When my loads were ready I announced my intention of leaving
on the morrow. This was wrong. What I should have done was to have kept
my intention entirely to myself, then suddenly to have fallen in the
boys, shouldered the loads and marched off. All would then have been well.
As it was, when the morrow came the boys did not. They could not be
found. I could not move my loads without them.
I found the headman, accused him of playing this mean trick, and demanded
the boys. He then tried all the persuasions he could think of to get me
to stay. He offered me any women I fancied. That is always the first
inducement in the African mind. Slaves, food, anything I wanted if I
would only stay.
I got angry and cursed him and threatened to shoot up the town. He said
quietly that the king was coming and I could talk to him.
[Illustration: THE PALAVER WITH THE KING.
_The boy in the foreground, interpreting, was nearly eaten by the
natives, who pleaded, in excuse, that it was their custom to eat all of
that tribe that they came across._]
Meanwhile I had to wait. I was simply furious. The suspicion that they
were after my ivory kept poisoning my mind. I argued with myself that
they knew the value of ivory; that they knew what a lot of gin and
“trade” they would get if they took my tusks to the coast. And a white
man, a hunter of elephants, “done in,” what would it matter? People would
say: “Serve him right,” probably. Then they wanted my rifle. They had
seen it kill elephant with one shot. It had wonderful medicine. Curious
how near we are to the primitive. I thought of shooting someone; I
actually wished to shoot someone. But that would not have helped matters.
Then sense and experience came to help me and—I laughed. As soon as I
laughed they laughed. I felt master of the situation.
Where was the king? Drinking beer. Let me talk to him.
I sat down in front of my hut. In a short time the king arrived with an
escort of some forty guns. He seated himself in front of a hut directly
across the street from me. I wanted to shake hands with him, but I did
not wish to take my rifle with me, nor did I wish to leave it behind me,
as it was to play a part in the comedy I had thought out.
No one could reach me from the back, as I leant against the wall of the
hut. Therefore I assumed a belligerent attitude from the first, demanding
to know why all my boys had been taken. The old king was, luckily, still
sober—it being early in the day—and very calm and dignified. When I
had stated my demand he started. He said that his people had shown me
elephant; that without them I could not have found them. He said his
people had treated me well. They had offered me wives of my own choosing.
Food I had never lacked. Elephant were still numerous in the bush. Why
should I wish to desert them in this manner?
I admitted that all he had said was true, but begged to point out that I
was not a black man. I could not live always there among them. White men
died when they lived too long in hot countries, and so on. Then I pointed
to the fact that I had never sold the meat of the elephant I had killed,
although I might have done so and bought slaves and guns with it. I had
given it all freely away to him among others; and now when I wanted to go
they seized my porters.
Then he tried another line. He said I could go freely if I gave him my
rifle. He said I could easily get another in my country.
I turned this down so emphatically that he switched to another line.
He said, when black men went to the coast they had to pay custom dues on
everything they took to or brought away from it. As this was entirely
a white man’s custom and yet they enforced it upon black men, putting
them in prison if they did not pay, he would be obliged to make me pay
customs on my ivory. He thought that if he and I divided it equally it
would be a fair thing. At this I could not help laughing. The king smiled
and everyone smiled. I suppose they thought I was going to pay.
But, I said, there is a difference between your country and white man’s
country. When a traveller arrives at the gates of the white man’s country
the very first thing he sees is a long building and on it the magic sign
“Customs.” Now on seeing this sign the traveller knows what lies before
him. If he objects to paying customs, or if he has not the money with
which to pay, he departs without entering that country. But when the
traveller reaches the gates of the king’s country, he looks in vain for
“customs.” Therefore, he says to himself, what a very wise and good king
rules this happy country. I will enter, for there is no “customs.” But
if, having entered the country on this understanding, the king levies
customs without having a Customs House, that traveller will recall what
he said about the king and will depart, cursing that king and spreading
his ill-fame so that no more travellers or elephant hunters will come
near him. Therefore, I ended, the whole matter resolves itself into this:
Have you a Customs House or have you not? Here I peered diligently about
as if searching among the huts. The whole lot, king, court, escort and
mob roared with laughter.
They were not done yet, though. The palaver ran its usual interminable
length. The king accused me of disposing of the pigmy hippo meat in an
illegal manner. Pigmy hippo were royal game, and every bit of it should
have been sent to him. I had him again with the same gag as the customs
one, _i.e._, that when he made a law he should write it down for everyone
to read, or if he could not write he ought to employ some boy who could.
And so on and on.
Wearied to exhaustion, I at length decided to try what a little bluff
would do. I had hoped that I would not have to use it, but it was now or
never. If it came off, and the porters were forthcoming, we could just
make the next village, hostile to the king, before dark.
Suddenly seizing my rifle I covered the king. No one moved. The king
took it very well, I must say. I said I was going to fight for my porters
and begin on the king.
He said that to fight was a silly game. However well I shot, I could not
kill more than ten of them before someone got me. I replied that that was
so, _but that no one knew if he would be among the ten or not_.
I had them. They gave it up. I kept the old king covered and told him not
to move until the porters arrived. He sent off runners at once. They came
on the run, picked up the loads and marched. I stopped a moment to shake
hands. The insatiable old rascal begged for at least some tobacco. I felt
so relieved and pleased at seeing my loads on the road at last that I
promised him some when we had caught up with the caravan.
B. told me on my arrival at the coast that during my absence in the
interior the inspector of his company had come on a visit, straight from
London. He had started from the coast with a caravan of head carriers to
visit another of their depots. He had been promptly arrested, carried
before the magistrate and fined twenty-five dollars for travelling on
the Sabbath. The fine had been demanded at once, and someone sent off to
purchase gin. The magistrate knocked the neck off a bottle, took a pull
and offered it to _the prisoner_!
B. said the inspector had been very haughty with the Liberians and that
they were out to get their own back.
It must not be thought that they are unfriendly towards whites. If
treated politely they are very nice people indeed; they will do anything
to help. But they must be treated just as if they were ordinary white
foreigners. I liked them immensely, and regretted having to leave their
country owing to the smallness of the ivory. And so ended my dealings
with the citizens of Liberia and the natives of the hinterland.
X
BUBA GIDA, THE LAST AFRICAN POTENTATE
Now situated in the French sphere of influence can still be found a
remarkable relic of the old slave-dealing days. The country goes by the
name of its despotic ruler, Buba Rei on maps, Buba Gida to everyone
cognisant of it. The principal town is also so called. And the whole
organisation is an example of what can be done by courage, energy, force
of character and extreme cunning allied to ferocity and cruelty; for the
redoubtable Buba Gida, the owner—body and soul—of tens of thousands of
slaves, is no scion of a kingly race. Mothered by a slave of the Lakka
tribe and fathered by a Scrub Fulani of sorts, everything he has and is
he owes entirely to his own ability.
In early life he left his humble home and started out into the wild no
man’s land with some companions of a like spirit. Slaves at all costs
were what Buba Gida and company were out for. Perhaps it was mere chance
that led them towards the Lakka country, whence Buba Gida’s mother had
been raided, or perhaps it was information from her. However that may be,
in close proximity to the Lakka country they found what they were looking
for—a fine country, well watered and obviously good for cattle. Pagan
Lakkas and other bush tribes were in plenty within raiding distance.
Their first raid set them up in labour. Their tiny camp became a village.
More raids were planned and carried out with invariable success. The
village became a town.
[Illustration: THE SILENT TOWN: VULTURES THE ONLY SCAVENGERS.]
[Illustration: OUTSIDE THE WALLS.]
Buba now ruled supreme. By pursuing the system of “putting away” all
those who obstructed him, judiciously mixed with generous treatment in
the matter of women—to acquire which the African will do anything—he
obtained such a power over his people that none, not even the white man,
has been able to overthrow it.