In which is given some account of the episode of the Hippopotame,
and of the voyager's attempts at controlling an Ogowe canoe; and
also of the Igalwa tribe.
I say good-bye to Talagouga with much regret, and go on board the
Eclaireur, when she returns from Njole, with all my bottles and
belongings. On board I find no other passenger; the Captain's
English has widened out considerably; and he is as pleasant, cheery,
and spoiling for a fight as ever; but he has a preoccupied manner,
and a most peculiar set of new habits, which I find are shared by
the Engineer. Both of them make rapid dashes to the rail, and
nervously scan the river for a minute and then return to some
occupation, only to dash from it to the rail again. During
breakfast their conduct is nerve-shaking. Hastily taking a few
mouthfuls, the Captain drops his knife and fork and simply hurls his
seamanlike form through the nearest door out on to the deck. In
another minute he is back again, and with just a shake of his head
to the Engineer, continues his meal. The Engineer shortly
afterwards flies from his seat, and being far thinner than the
Captain, goes through his nearest door with even greater rapidity;
returns, and shakes his head at the Captain, and continues his meal.
Excitement of this kind is infectious, and I also wonder whether I
ought not to show a sympathetic friendliness by flying from my seat
and hurling myself on to the deck through my nearest door, too. But
although there are plenty of doors, as four enter the saloon from
the deck, I do not see my way to doing this performance aimlessly,
and what in this world they are both after I cannot think. So I
confine myself to woman's true sphere, and assist in a humble way by
catching the wine and Vichy water bottles, glasses, and plates of
food, which at every performance are jeopardised by the members of
the nobler sex starting off with a considerable quantity of the
ample table cloth wrapped round their legs. At last I can stand it
no longer, so ask the Captain point-blank what is the matter.
"Nothing," says he, bounding out of his chair and flying out of his
doorway; but on his return he tells me he has got a bet on of two
bottles of champagne with Woermann's Agent for Njole, as to who
shall reach Lembarene first, and the German agent has started off
some time before the Eclaireur in his little steam launch.
During the afternoon we run smoothly along; the free pulsations of
the engines telling what a very different thing coming down the
Ogowe is to going up against its terrific current. Every now and
again we stop to pick up cargo, or discharge over-carried cargo, and
the Captain's mind becomes lulled by getting no news of the
Woermann's launch having passed down. He communicates this to the
Engineer; it is impossible she could have passed the Eclaireur since
they started, therefore she must be some where behind at a
subfactory, "N'est-ce pas?" "Oui, oui, certainement," says the
Engineer. The Engineer is, by these considerations, also lulled,
and feels he may do something else but scan the river a la sister
Ann. What that something is puzzles me; it evidently requires
secrecy, and he shrinks from detection. First he looks down one
side of the deck, no one there; then he looks down the other, no one
there; good so far. I then see he has put his head through one of
the saloon portholes; no one there; he hesitates a few seconds until
I begin to wonder whether his head will suddenly appear through my
port; but he regards this as an unnecessary precaution, and I hear
him enter his cabin which abuts on mine and there is silence for
some minutes. Writing home to his mother, think I, as I go on
putting a new braid round the bottom of a worn skirt. Almost
immediately after follows the sound of a little click from the next
cabin, and then apparently one of the denizens of the infernal
regions has got its tail smashed in a door and the heavy hot
afternoon air is reft by an inchoate howl of agony. I drop my
needlework and take to the deck; but it is after all only that shy
retiring young man practising secretly on his clarionet.
The Captain is drowsily looking down the river. But repose is not
long allowed to that active spirit; he sees something in the water--
what? "Hippopotame," he ejaculates. Now both he and the Engineer
frequently do this thing, and then fly off to their guns--bang,
bang, finish; but this time he does not dash for his gun, nor does
the Engineer, who flies out of his cabin at the sound of the war
shout "Hippopotame." In vain I look across the broad river with its
stretches of yellow sandbanks, where the "hippopotame" should be,
but I can see nothing but four black stumps sticking up in the water
away to the right. Meanwhile the Captain and the Engineer are
flying about getting off a crew of blacks into the canoe we are
towing alongside. This being done the Captain explains to me that
on the voyage up "the Engineer had fired at, and hit a hippopotamus,
and without doubt this was its body floating." We are now close
enough even for me to recognise the four stumps as the deceased's
legs, and soon the canoe is alongside them and makes fast to one,
and then starts to paddle back, hippo and all, to the Eclaireur.
But no such thing; let them paddle and shout as hard as they like,
the hippo's weight simply anchors them. The Eclaireur by now has
dropped down the river past them, and has to sweep round and run
back. Recognising promptly what the trouble is, the energetic
Captain grabs up a broom, ties a light cord belonging to the
leadline to it, and holding the broom by the end of its handle,
swings it round his head and hurls it at the canoe. The arm of a
merciful Providence being interposed, the broom-tomahawk does not
hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed
some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current,
well out of reach of the canoe. The Captain seeing this gross
dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Reunis broom, hauls it in hand
over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other end of its line
to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the broom into
the water, about ten yards above the canoe, and it drifts towards
it. Breathless excitement! surely they will get it now. Alas, no!
Just when it is within reach of the canoe, a fearful shudder runs
through the broom. It throws up its head and sinks beneath the
tide. A sensation of stun comes over all of us. The crew of the
canoe, ready and eager to grasp the approaching aid, gaze blankly at
the circling ripples round where it sank. In a second the Captain
knows what has happened. That heavy hawser which has been paid out
after it has dragged it down, so he hauls it on board again.
The Eclaireur goes now close enough to the hippo-anchored canoe for
a rope to be flung to the man in her bows; he catches it and freezes
on gallantly. Saved! No! Oh horror! The lower deck hums with
fear that after all it will not taste that toothsome hippo chop, for
the man who has caught the rope is as nearly as possible jerked
flying out of the canoe when the strain of the Eclaireur contending
with the hippo's inertia flies along it, but his companion behind
him grips him by the legs and is in his turn grabbed, and the crew
holding on to each other with their hands, and on to their craft
with their feet, save the man holding on to the rope and the whole
situation; and slowly bobbing towards us comes the hippopotamus, who
is shortly hauled on board by the winners in triumph.
My esteemed friends, the Captain and the Engineer, who of course
have been below during this hauling, now rush on to the upper deck,
each coatless, and carrying an enormous butcher's knife. They dash
into the saloon, where a terrific sharpening of these instruments
takes place on the steel belonging to the saloon carving-knife, and
down stairs again. By looking down the ladder, I can see the pink,
pig-like hippo, whose colour has been soaked out by the water, lying
on the lower deck and the Captain and Engineer slitting down the
skin intent on gralloching operations. Providentially, my prophetic
soul induces me to leave the top of the ladder and go forward--"run
to win'ard," as Captain Murray would say--for within two minutes the
Captain and Engineer are up the ladder as if they had been blown up
by the boilers bursting, and go as one man for the brandy bottle;
and they wanted it if ever man did; for remember that hippo had been
dead and in the warm river-water for more than a week.
The Captain had had enough of it, he said, but the Engineer stuck to
the job with a courage I profoundly admire, and he saw it through
and then retired to his cabin; sand-and-canvassed himself first, and
then soaked and saturated himself in Florida water. The flesh
gladdened the hearts of the crew and lower-deck passengers and also
of the inhabitants of Lembarene, who got dashes of it on our arrival
there. Hippo flesh is not to be despised by black man or white; I
have enjoyed it far more than the stringy beef or vapid goat's flesh
one gets down here.
I stayed on board the Eclaireur all night; for it was dark when we
reached Lembarene, too dark to go round to Kangwe; and next morning,
after taking a farewell of her--I hope not a final one, for she is a
most luxurious little vessel for the Coast, and the feeding on board
is excellent and the society varied and charming--I went round to
Kangwe.
I remained some time in the Lembarene district and saw and learnt
many things; I owe most of what I learnt to M. and Mme. Jacot, who
knew a great deal about both the natives and the district, and I owe
much of what I saw to having acquired the art of managing by myself
a native canoe. This "recklessness" of mine I am sure did not merit
the severe criticism it has been subjected to, for my performances
gave immense amusement to others (I can hear Lembarene's shrieks of
laughter now) and to myself they gave great pleasure.
My first attempt was made at Talagouga one very hot afternoon. M.
and Mme. Forget were, I thought, safe having their siestas, Oranie
was with Mme. Gacon. I knew where Mme. Gacon was for certain; she
was with M. Gacon; and I knew he was up in the sawmill shed, out of
sight of the river, because of the soft thump, thump, thump of the
big water-wheel. There was therefore no one to keep me out of
mischief, and I was too frightened to go into the forest that
afternoon, because on the previous afternoon I had been stalked as a
wild beast by a cannibal savage, and I am nervous. Besides, and
above all, it is quite impossible to see other people, even if they
are only black, naked savages, gliding about in canoes, without
wishing to go and glide about yourself. So I went down to where the
canoes were tied by their noses to the steep bank, and finding a
paddle, a broken one, I unloosed the smallest canoe. Unfortunately
this was fifteen feet or so long, but I did not know the
disadvantage of having, as it were, a long-tailed canoe then--I did
shortly afterwards.
The promontories running out into the river on each side of the
mission beach give a little stretch of slack water between the bank
and the mill-race-like current of the Ogowe, and I wisely decided to
keep in the slack water, until I had found out how to steer--most
important thing steering. I got into the bow of the canoe, and
shoved off from the bank all right; then I knelt down--learn how to
paddle standing up by and by--good so far. I rapidly learnt how to
steer from the bow, but I could not get up any pace. Intent on
acquiring pace, I got to the edge of the slack water; and then
displaying more wisdom, I turned round to avoid it, proud as a
peacock, you understand, at having found out how to turn round. At
this moment, the current of "the greatest equatorial river in the
world," grabbed my canoe by its tail. We spun round and round for a
few seconds, like a teetotum, I steering the whole time for all I
was worth, and then the current dragged the canoe ignominiously down
river, tail foremost.
Fortunately a big tree was at that time temporarily hanging against
the rock in the river, just below the sawmill beach. Into that tree
the canoe shot with a crash, and I hung on, and shipping my paddle,
pulled the canoe into the slack water again, by the aid of the
branches of the tree, which I was in mortal terror would come off
the rock, and insist on accompanying me and the canoe, via Kama
country, to the Atlantic Ocean; but it held, and when I had got safe
against the side of the pinnacle-rock I wiped a perspiring brow, and
searched in my mind for a piece of information regarding Navigation
that would be applicable to the management of long-tailed Adooma
canoes. I could not think of one for some minutes. Captain Murray
has imparted to me at one time and another an enormous mass of hints
as to the management of vessels, but those vessels were all pre-
supposed to have steam power. But he having been the first man to
take an ocean-going steamer up to Matadi on the Congo, through the
terrific currents that whirl and fly in Hell's Cauldron, knew about
currents, and I remembered he had said regarding taking vessels
through them, "Keep all the headway you can on her." Good! that
hint inverted will fit this situation like a glove, and I'll keep
all the tailway I can off her. Feeling now as safe as only a human
being can feel who is backed up by a sound principle, I was
cautiously crawling to the tail-end of the canoe, intent on kneeling
in it to look after it, when I heard a dreadful outcry on the bank.
Looking there I saw Mme. Forget, Mme. Gacon, M. Gacon, and their
attributive crowd of mission children all in a state of frenzy.
They said lots of things in chorus. "What?" said I. They said some
more and added gesticulations. Seeing I was wasting their time as I
could not hear, I drove the canoe from the rock and made my way,
mostly by steering, to the bank close by; and then tying the canoe
firmly up I walked over the mill stream and divers other things
towards my anxious friends. "You'll be drowned," they said.
"Gracious goodness!" said I, "I thought that half an hour ago, but
it's all right now; I can steer." After much conversation I lulled
their fears regarding me, and having received strict orders to keep
in the stern of the canoe, because that is the proper place when you
are managing a canoe single-handed, I returned to my studies. I had
not however lulled my friends' interest regarding me, and they
stayed on the bank watching.
I found first, that my education in steering from the bow was of no
avail; second, that it was all right if you reversed it. For
instance, when you are in the bow, and make an inward stroke with
the paddle on the right-hand side, the bow goes to the right;
whereas, if you make an inward stroke on the right-hand side, when
you are sitting in the stern, the bow then goes to the left.
Understand? Having grasped this law, I crept along up river; and,
by Allah! before I had gone twenty yards, if that wretch, the
current of the greatest, etc., did not grab hold of the nose of my
canoe, and we teetotummed round again as merrily as ever. My
audience screamed. I knew what they were saying, "You'll be
drowned! Come back! Come back!" but I heard them and I heeded not.
If you attend to advice in a crisis you're lost; besides, I couldn't
"Come back" just then. However, I got into the slack water again,
by some very showy, high-class steering. Still steering, fine as it
is, is not all you require and hanker after. You want pace as well,
and pace, except when in the clutches of the current, I had not so
far attained. Perchance, thought I, the pace region in a canoe may
be in its centre; so I got along on my knees into the centre to
experiment. Bitter failure; the canoe took to sidling down river
broadside on, like Mr. Winkle's horse. Shouts of laughter from the
bank. Both bow and stern education utterly inapplicable to centre;
and so, seeing I was utterly thrown away there, I crept into the
bows, and in a few more minutes I steered my canoe, perfectly, in
among its fellows by the bank and secured it there. Mme. Forget ran
down to meet me and assured me she had not laughed so much since she
had been in Africa, although she was frightened at the time lest I
should get capsized and drowned. I believe it, for she is a sweet
and gracious lady; and I quite see, as she demonstrated, that the
sight of me, teetotumming about, steering in an elaborate and showy
way all the time, was irresistibly comic. And she gave a most
amusing account of how, when she started looking for me to give me
tea, a charming habit of hers, she could not see me in among my
bottles, and so asked the little black boy where I was. "There,"
said he, pointing to the tree hanging against the rock out in the
river; and she, seeing me hitched with a canoe against the rock, and
knowing the danger and depth of the river, got alarmed.
Well, when I got down to Lembarene I naturally went on with my
canoeing studies, in pursuit of the attainment of pace. Success
crowned my efforts, and I can honestly and truly say that there are
only two things I am proud of--one is that Doctor Gunther has
approved of my fishes, and the other is that I can paddle an Ogowe
canoe. Pace, style, steering and all, "All same for one" as if I
were an Ogowe African. A strange, incongruous pair of things: but
I often wonder what are the things other people are really most
proud of; it would be a quaint and repaying subject for
investigation.
Mme. Jacot gave me every help in canoeing, for she is a remarkably
clear-headed woman, and recognised that, as I was always getting
soaked, anyhow, I ran no extra danger in getting soaked in a canoe;
and then, it being the dry season, there was an immense stretch of
water opposite Andande beach, which was quite shallow. So she saw
no need of my getting drowned.
The sandbanks were showing their yellow heads in all directions when
I came down from Talagouga, and just opposite Andande there was
sticking up out of the water a great, graceful, palm frond. It had
been stuck into the head of the pet sandbank, and every day was
visited by the boys and girls in canoes to see how much longer they
would have to wait for the sandbank's appearance. A few days after
my return it showed, and in two days more there it was, acres and
acres of it, looking like a great, golden carpet spread on the
surface of the centre of the clear water--clear here, down this side
of Lembarene Island, because the river runs fairly quietly, and has
time to deposit its mud. Dark brown the Ogowe flies past the other
side of the island, the main current being deflected that way by a
bend, just below the entrance of the Nguni.
There was great rejoicing. Canoe-load after canoe-load of boys and
girls went to the sandbank, some doing a little fishing round its
rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing.
Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those on that sandbank--
the merry brown forms dancing or lying stretched on it: the gaudy-
coloured patchwork quilts and chintz mosquito-bars that have been
washed, spread out drying, looking from Kangwe on the hill above,
like beds of bright flowers. By night when it was moonlight there
would be bands of dancers on it with bush-light torches, gyrating,
intermingling and separating till you could think you were looking
at a dance of stars.
They commenced affairs very early on that sandbank, and they kept
them up very late; and all the time there came from it a soft murmur
of laughter and song. Ah me! if the aim of life were happiness and
pleasure, Africa should send us missionaries instead of our sending
them to her--but, fortunately for the work of the world, happiness
is not. One thing I remember which struck me very much regarding
the sandbank, and this was that Mme. Jacot found such pleasure in
taking her work on to the verandah, where she could see it. I knew
she did not care for the songs and the dancing. One day she said to
me, "It is such a relief." "A relief?" I said. "Yes, do you not
see that until it shows there is nothing but forest, forest, forest,
and that still stretch of river? That bank is the only piece of
clear ground I see in the year, and that only lasts a few weeks
until the wet season comes, and then it goes, and there is nothing
but forest, forest, forest, for another year. It is two years now
since I came to this place; it may be I know not how many more
before we go home again." I grieve to say, for my poor friend's
sake, that her life at Kangwe was nearly at its end. Soon after my
return to England I heard of the death of her husband from malignant
fever. M. Jacot was a fine, powerful, energetic man, in the prime
of life. He was a teetotaler and a vegetarian; and although
constantly travelling to and fro in his district on his evangelising
work, he had no foolish recklessness in him. No one would have
thought that he would have been the first to go of us who used to
sit round his hospitable table. His delicate wife, his two young
children or I would have seemed far more likely. His loss will be a
lasting one to the people he risked his life to (what he regarded)
save. The natives held him in the greatest affection and respect,
and his influence over them was considerable, far more profound than
that of any other missionary I have ever seen. His loss is also
great to those students of Africa who are working on the culture or
on the languages; his knowledge of both was extensive, particularly
of the little known languages of the Ogowe district. He was, when I
left, busily employed in compiling a dictionary of the Fan tongue,
and had many other works on language in contemplation. His work in
this sphere would have had a high value, for he was a man with a
University education and well grounded in Latin and Greek, and
thoroughly acquainted with both English and French literature, for
although born a Frenchman, he had been brought up in America. He
was also a cultivated musician, and he and Mme. Jacot in the
evenings would sing old French songs, Swiss songs, English songs, in
their rich full voices; and then if you stole softly out on to the
verandah, you would often find it crowded with a silent, black
audience, listening intently.
The amount of work M. and Mme. Jacot used to get through was, to me,
amazing, and I think the Ogowe Protestant mission sadly short-
handed--its missionaries not being content to follow the usual
Protestant plan out in West Africa, namely, quietly sitting down and
keeping house, with just a few native children indoors to do the
housework, and close by a school and a little church where a service
is held on Sundays. The representatives of the Mission Evangelique
go to and fro throughout the district round each station on
evangelising work, among some of the most dangerous and uncivilised
tribes in Africa, frequently spending a fortnight at a time away
from their homes, on the waterways of a wild and dangerous country.
In addition to going themselves, they send trained natives as
evangelists and Bible-readers, and keep a keen eye on the trained
native, which means a considerable amount of worry and strain too.
The work on the stations is heavy in Ogowe districts, because when
you have got a clearing made and all the buildings up, you have by
no means finished with the affair, for you have to fight the Ogowe
forest back, as a Dutchman fights the sea. But the main cause of
work is the store, which in this exhausting climate is more than
enough work for one man alone.
Payments on the Ogowe are made in goods; the natives do not use any
coinage-equivalent, save in the strange case of the Fans, which does
not touch general trade and which I will speak of later. They have
not even the brass bars and cheetems that are in us in Calabar, or
cowries as in Lagos. In order to expedite and simplify this goods
traffic, a written or printed piece of paper is employed--
practically a cheque, which is called a "bon" or "book," and these
"bons" are cashed--i.e. gooded, at the store. They are for three
amounts. Five fura = a dollar. One fura = a franc. Desu = fifty
centimes = half a fura. The value given for these "bons" is the
same from Government, Trade, and Mission. Although the Mission
Evangelique does not trade--i.e. buy produce and sell it at a
profit, its representatives have a great deal of business to attend
to through the store, which is practically a bank. All the native
evangelists, black teachers, Bible-readers and labourers on the
stations are paid off in these bons; and when any representative of
the mission is away on a journey, food bought for themselves and
their canoe crews is paid for in bons, which are brought in by the
natives at their convenience, and changed for goods at the store.
Therefore for several hours every weekday the missionary has to
devote himself to store work, and store work out here is by no means
playing at shop. It is very hard, tiring, exasperating work when
you have to deal with it in full, as a trader, when it is necessary
for you to purchase produce at a price that will give you a
reasonable margin of profit over storing, customs' duties, shipping
expenses, etc., etc. But it is quite enough to try the patience of
any Saint when you are only keeping store to pay on bons, a la
missionary; for each class of article used in trade--and there are
some hundreds of them--has a definite and acknowledged value, but
where the trouble comes in is that different articles have the same
value; for example, six fish hooks and one pocket-handkerchief have
the same value, or you can make up that value in lucifer matches,
pomatum, a mirror, a hair comb, tobacco, or scent in bottles.
Now, if you are a trader, certain of these articles cost you more
than others, although they have an identical value to the native,
and so it is to your advantage to pay what we should call, in
Cameroons, "a Kru, cheap copper," and you have a lot of worry to
effect this. To the missionary this does not so much matter. It
makes absolutely no difference to the native, mind you; so he is by
no means done by the trader. Take powder for an example. There is
no profit on powder for the trader in Congo Francais, but the native
always wants it because he can get a tremendous profit on it from
his black brethren in the bush; hence it pays the trader to give him
his bon out in Boma check, etc., better than in gunpowder. This is
a fruitful spring of argument and persuasion. However, whether the
native is passing in a bundle of rubber or a tooth of ivory, or
merely cashing a bon for a week's bush catering, he is in Congo
Francais incapable of deciding what he will have when it comes to
the point. He comes into the shop with a bon in his hand, and we
will say, for example, the idea in his head that he wants fish-
hooks--"jupes," he calls them--but, confronted with the visible
temptation of pomatum, he hesitates, and scratches his head
violently. Surrounding him there are ten or twenty other natives
with their minds in a similar wavering state, but yet anxious to be
served forthwith. In consequence of the stimulating scratch, he
remembers that one of his wives said he was to bring some Lucifer
matches, another wanted cloth for herself, and another knew of some
rubber she could buy very cheap, in tobacco, of a Fan woman who had
stolen it. This rubber he knows he can take to the trader's store
and sell for pocket-handkerchiefs of a superior pattern, or
gunpowder, or rum, which he cannot get at the mission store. He
finally gets something and takes it home, and likely enough brings
it back, in a day or so, somewhat damaged, desirous of changing it
for some other article or articles. Remember also that these Bantu,
like the Negroes, think externally, in a loud voice; like Mr.
Kipling's 'oont, "'e smells most awful vile," and, if he be a Fan,
he accompanies his observations with violent dramatic gestures, and
let the customer's tribe or sex be what it may, the customer is
sadly, sadly liable to pick up any portable object within reach,
under the shadow of his companions' uproar, and stow it away in his
armpits, between his legs, or, if his cloth be large enough, in
that. Picture to yourself the perplexities of a Christian minister,
engaged in such an occupation as storekeeping under these
circumstances, with, likely enough, a touch of fever on him and
jiggers in his feet; and when the store is closed the goods in it
requiring constant vigilance to keep them free from mildew and white
ants.
Then in addition to the store work, a fruitful source of work and
worry are the schools, for both boys and girls. It is regarded as
futile to attempt to get any real hold over the children unless they
are removed from the influence of the country fashions that surround
them in their village homes; therefore the schools are boarding;
hence the entire care of the children, including feeding and
clothing, falls on the missionary.
The instruction given in the Mission Evangelique Schools does not
include teaching the boys trades. The girls fare somewhat better,
as they get instruction in sewing and washing and ironing, but I
think in this district the young ladies would be all the better for
being taught cooking.
It is strange that all the cooks employed by the Europeans should be
men, yet all the cooking among the natives themselves is done by
women, and done abominably badly in all the Bantu tribes I have ever
come across; and the Bantu are in this particular, and indeed in
most particulars, far inferior to the true Negro; though I must say
this is not the orthodox view. The Negroes cook uniformly very
well, and at moments are inspired in the direction of palm-oil chop
and fish cooking. Not so the Bantu, whose methods cry aloud for
improvement, they having just the very easiest and laziest way
possible of dealing with food. The food supply consists of
plantain, yam, koko, sweet potatoes, maize, pumpkin, pineapple, and
ochres, fish both wet and smoked, and flesh of many kinds--including
human in certain districts--snails, snakes, and crayfish, and big
maggot-like pupae of the rhinoceros beetle and the Rhyncophorus
palmatorum. For sweetmeats the sugar-cane abounds, but it is only
used chewed au naturel. For seasoning there is that bark that
tastes like an onion, an onion distinctly passe, but powerful and
permanent, particularly if it has been used in one of the native-
made, rough earthen pots. These pots have a very cave-man look
about them; they are unglazed, unlidded bowls. They stand the fire
wonderfully well, and you have got to stand, as well as you can, the
taste of the aforesaid bark that clings to them, and that of the
smoke which gets into them during cooking operations over an open
wood fire, as well as the soot-like colour they impart to even your
own white rice. Out of all this varied material the natives of the
Congo Francais forests produce, dirtily, carelessly and wastefully,
a dull, indigestible diet. Yam, sweet potatoes, ochres, and maize
are not so much cultivated or used as among the Negroes, and the
daily food is practically plantain--picked while green and the rind
pulled off, and the tasteless woolly interior baked or boiled and
the widely distributed manioc treated in the usual way. The sweet
or non-poisonous manioc I have rarely seen cultivated, because it
gives a much smaller yield, and is much longer coming to perfection.
The poisonous kind is that in general use; its great dahlia-like
roots are soaked in water to remove the poisonous principle, and
then dried and grated up, or more commonly beaten up into a kind of
dough in a wooden trough that looks like a model canoe, with wooden
clubs, which I have seen the curiosity hunter happily taking home as
war clubs to alarm his family with. The thump, thump, thump of this
manioc beating is one of the most familiar sounds in a bush village.
The meal, when beaten up, is used for thickening broths, and rolled
up into bolsters about a foot long and two inches in diameter, and
then wrapped in plantain leaves, and tied round with tie-tie and
boiled, or more properly speaking steamed, for a lot of the rolls
are arranged in a brass skillet. A small quantity of water is
poured over the rolls of plantain, a plantain leaf is tucked in over
the top tightly, so as to prevent the steam from escaping, and the
whole affair is poised on the three cooking-stones over a wood fire,
and left there until the contents are done, or more properly
speaking, until the lady in charge of it has delusions on the point,
and the bottom rolls are a trifle burnt or the whole insufficiently
cooked.
This manioc meal is the staple food, the bread equivalent, all along
the coast. As you pass along you are perpetually meeting with a new
named food, fou-fou on the Leeward, kank on the Windward, m'vada in
Corisco, ogooma in the Ogowe; but acquaintance with it demonstrates
that it is all the same--manioc.
It is a good food when it is properly prepared; but when a village
has soaked its soil-laden manioc tubers in one and the same pool of
water for years, the water in that pool becomes a trifle strong, and
both it and the manioc get a smell which once smelt is never to be
forgotten; it is something like that resulting from bad paste with a
dash of vinegar, but fit to pass all these things, and has qualities
of its own that have no civilised equivalent.
I believe that this way of preparing the staple article of diet is
largely responsible for that dire and frequent disease "cut him
belly," and several other quaint disorders, possibly even for the
sleep disease. The natives themselves say that a diet too
exclusively maniocan produces dimness of vision, ending in blindness
if the food is not varied; the poisonous principle cannot be
anything like soaked out in the surcharged water, and the meal when
it is made up and cooked has just the same sour, acrid taste you
would expect it to have from the smell.
The fish is boiled, or wrapped in leaves and baked. The dried fish,
very properly known as stink-fish, is much preferred; this is either
eaten as it is, or put into stews as seasoning, as also are the
snails. The meat is eaten either fresh or smoked, boiled or baked.
By baked I always mean just buried in the ground and a fire lighted
on top, or wrapped in leaves and buried in hot embers.
The smoked meat is badly prepared, just hung up in the smoke of the
fires, which hardens it, blackening the outside quickly; but when
the lumps are taken out of the smoke, in a short time cracks occur
in them, and the interior part proceeds to go bad, and needless to
say maggoty. If it is kept in the smoke, as it often is to keep it
out of the way of dogs and driver ants, it acquires the toothsome
taste and texture of a piece of old tarpaulin.
Now I will ask the surviving reader who has waded through this
dissertation on cookery if something should not be done to improve
the degraded condition of the Bantu cooking culture? Not for his
physical delectation only, but because his present methods are bad
for his morals, and drive the man to drink, let alone assisting in
riveting him in the practice of polygamy, which the missionary party
say is an exceedingly bad practice for him to follow. The inter-
relationship of these two subjects may not seem on the face of it
very clear, but inter-relationships of customs very rarely are; I
well remember M. Jacot coming home one day at Kangwe from an
evangelising visit to some adjacent Fan towns, and saying he had had
given to him that afternoon a new reason for polygamy, which was
that it enabled a man to get enough to eat. This sounds sinister
from a notoriously cannibal tribe; but the explanation is that the
Fans are an exceedingly hungry tribe, and require a great deal of
providing for. It is their custom to eat about ten times a day when
in village, and the men spend most of their time in the palaver-
houses at each end of the street, the women bringing them bowls of
food of one kind or another all day long. When the men are away in
the forest rubber or elephant-hunting, and have to cook their own
food, they cannot get quite so much; but when I have come across
them on these expeditions, they halted pretty regularly every two
hours and had a substantial snack, and the gorge they all go in for
after a successful elephant hunt is a thing to see--once.
There are other reasons which lead to the prevalence of this custom,
beside the cooking. One is that it is totally impossible for one
woman to do the whole work of a house--look after the children,
prepare and cook the food, prepare the rubber, carry the same to the
markets, fetch the daily supply of water from the stream, cultivate
the plantation, etc., etc. Perhaps I should say it is impossible
for the dilatory African woman, for I once had an Irish charwoman,
who drank, who would have done the whole week's work of an African
village in an afternoon, and then been quite fresh enough to knock
some of the nonsense out of her husband's head with that of the
broom, and throw a kettle of boiling water or a paraffin lamp at
him, if she suspected him of flirting with other ladies. That
woman, who deserves fame in the annals of her country, was named
Harragan. She has attained immortality some years since, by falling
down stairs one Saturday night from excitement arising from "the
Image's" (Mr. Harragan) conduct; but we have no Mrs. Harragan in
Africa. The African lady does not care a travelling whitesmith's
execration if her husband does flirt, so long as he does not go and
give to other women the cloth, etc., that she should have. The more
wives the less work, says the African lady; and I have known men who
would rather have had one wife and spent the rest of the money on
themselves, in a civilised way, driven into polygamy by the women;
and of course this state of affairs is most common in nonslave-
holding tribes like the Fan.
Mission work was first opened upon the Ogowe by Dr. Nassau, the
great pioneer and explorer of these regions. He was acting for the
American Presbyterian Society; but when the French Government
demanded education in French in the schools, the stations on the
Ogowe, Lembarene (Kangwe), and Talagouga were handed over to the
Mission Evangelique of Paris, and have been carried on by its
representatives with great devotion and energy. I am unsympathetic,
in some particulars, for reasons of my own, with Christian missions,
so my admiration for this one does not arise from the usual ground
of admiration for missions, namely, that however they may be carried
on, they are engaged in a great and holy work; but I regard the
Mission Evangelique, judging from the results I have seen, as the
perfection of what one may call a purely spiritual mission.
Lembarene is strictly speaking a district which includes Adanlinan
langa and the Island, but the name is locally used to denote the
great island in the Ogowe, whose native name is Nenge Ezangy; but
for the sake of the general reader I will keep to the everyday term
of Lembarene Island.
Lembarene Island is the largest of the islands on the Ogowe. It is
some fifteen miles long, east and west, and a mile to a mile and a
half wide. It is hilly and rocky, uniformly clad with forest, and
several little permanent streams run from it on both sides into the
Ogowe. It is situated 130 miles from the sea, at the point, just
below the entrance of the N'guni, where the Ogowe commences to
divide up into that network of channels by which, like all great
West African rivers save the Congo, it chooses to enter the Ocean.
The island, as we mainlanders at Kangwe used to call it, was a great
haunt of mine, particularly after I came down from Talagouga and saw
fit to regard myself as competent to control a canoe.
From Andande, the beach of Kangwe, the breadth of the arm of the
Ogowe to the nearest village on the island, was about that of the
Thames at Blackwall. One half of the way was slack water, the other
half was broadside on to a stiff current. Now my pet canoe at
Andande was about six feet long, pointed at both ends, flat
bottomed, so that it floated on the top of the water; its freeboard
was, when nothing was in it, some three inches, and the poor thing
had seen trouble in its time, for it had a hole you could put your
hand in at one end; so in order to navigate it successfully, you had
to squat in the other, which immersed that to the water level but
safely elevated the damaged end in the air. Of course you had to
stop in your end firmly, because if you went forward the hole went
down into the water, and the water went into the hole, and forthwith
you foundered with all hands--i.e., you and the paddle and the
calabash baler. This craft also had a strong weather helm, owing to
a warp in the tree of which it had been made. I learnt all these
things one afternoon, paddling round the sandbank; and the next
afternoon, feeling confident in the merits of my vessel, I started
for the island, and I actually got there, and associated with the
natives, but feeling my arms were permanently worn out by paddling
against the current, I availed myself of the offer of a gentleman to
paddle me back in his canoe. He introduced himself as Samuel, and
volunteered the statement that he was "a very good man." We duly
settled ourselves in the canoe, he occupying the bow, I sitting in
the middle, and a Mrs. Samuel sitting in the stern. Mrs. Samuel was
a powerful, pretty lady, and a conscientious and continuous paddler.
Mr. S. was none of these things, but an ex-Bible reader, with an
amazing knowledge of English, which he spoke in a quaint, falsetto,
far-away sort of voice, and that man's besetting sin was curiosity.
"You be Christian, ma?" said he. I asked him if he had ever met a
white man who was not. "Yes, ma," says Samuel. I said "You must
have been associating with people whom you ought not to know."
Samuel fortunately not having a repartee for this, paddled on with
his long paddle for a few seconds. "Where be your husband, ma?" was
the next conversational bomb he hurled at me. "I no got one," I
answer. "No got," says Samuel, paralysed with astonishment; and as
Mrs. S., who did not know English, gave one of her vigorous drives
with her paddle at this moment, Samuel as near as possible got
jerked head first into the Ogowe, and we took on board about two
bucketfuls of water. He recovered himself, however and returned to
his charge. "No got one, ma?" "No," say I furiously. "Do you get
much rubber round here?" "I no be trade man," says Samuel, refusing
to fall into my trap for changing conversation. "Why you no got
one?" The remainder of the conversation is unreportable, but he
landed me at Andande all right, and got his dollar.
The next voyage I made, which was on the next day, I decided to go
by myself to the factory, which is on the other side of the island,
and did so. I got some goods to buy fish with, and heard from Mr.
Cockshut that the poor boy-agent at Osoamokita, had committed
suicide. It was a grievous thing. He was, as I have said, a
bright, intelligent young Frenchman; but living in the isolation,
surrounded by savage, tiresome tribes, the strain of his
responsibility had been too much for him. He had had a good deal of
fever, and the very kindly head agent for Woermann's had sent Dr.
Pelessier to see if he had not better be invalided home; but he told
the Doctor he was much better, and as he had no one at home to go to
he begged him not to send him, and the Doctor, to his subsequent
regret, gave in. No one knows, who has not been to West Africa, how
terrible is the life of a white man in one of these out-of-the-way
factories, with no white society, and with nothing to look at, day
out and day in, but the one set of objects--the forest, the river,
and the beach, which in a place like Osoamokita you cannot leave for
months at a time, and of which you soon know every plank and stone.
I felt utterly wretched as I started home again to come up to the
end of the island, and go round it and down to Andande; and paddled
on for some little time, before I noticed that I was making
absolutely no progress. I redoubled my exertions, and crept slowly
up to some rocks projecting above the water; but pass them I could
not, as the main current of the Ogowe flew in hollow swirls round
them against my canoe. Several passing canoefuls of natives gave me
good advice in Igalwa; but facts were facts, and the Ogowe was too
strong for me. After about twenty minutes an old Fan gentleman came
down river in a canoe and gave me good advice in Fan, and I got him
to take me in tow--that is to say, he got into my canoe and I held
on to his and we went back down river. I then saw his intention was
to take me across to that disreputable village, half Fan, half
Bakele, which is situated on the main bank of the river opposite the
island; this I disapproved of, because I had heard that some Senegal
soldiers who had gone over there, had been stripped of every rag
they had on, and maltreated; besides, it was growing very late, and
I wanted to get home to dinner. I communicated my feelings to my
pilot, who did not seem to understand at first, so I feared I should
have to knock them into him with the paddle; but at last he
understood I wanted to be landed on the island and duly landed me,
when he seemed much surprised at the reward I gave him in pocket-
handkerchiefs. Then I got a powerful young Igalwa dandy to paddle
me home.
I did not go to the island next day, but down below Fula, watching
the fish playing in the clear water, and the lizards and birds on
the rocky high banks; but on my next journey round to the factories
I got into another and a worse disaster. I went off there early one
morning; and thinking the only trouble lay in getting back up the
Ogowe, and having developed a theory that this might be minimised by
keeping very close to the island bank, I never gave a thought to
dangers attributive to going down river; so, having by now acquired
pace, my canoe shot out beyond the end rocks of the island into the
main stream. It took me a second to realise what had happened, and
another to find out I could not get the canoe out of the current
without upsetting it, and that I could not force her back up the
current, so there was nothing for it but to keep her head straight
now she had bolted. A group of native ladies, who had followed my
proceedings with much interest, shouted observations which I believe
to have been "Come back, come back; you'll be drowned." "Good-bye,
Susannah, don't you weep for me," I courteously retorted; and flew
past them and the factory beaches and things in general, keenly
watching for my chance to run my canoe up a siding, as it were, off
the current main line. I got it at last--a projecting spit of land
from the island with rocks projecting out of the water in front of
it bothered the current, and after a wild turn round or so, and a
near call from my terrified canoe trying to climb up a rock, I got
into slack water and took a pause in life's pleasures for a few
minutes. Knowing I must be near the end of the island, I went on
pretty close to the bank, finally got round into the Kangwe branch
of the Ogowe by a connecting creek, and after an hour's steady
paddling I fell in with three big canoes going up river; they took
me home as far as Fula, whence a short paddle landed me at Andande
only slightly late for supper, convinced that it was almost as safe
and far more amusing to be born lucky than wise.
Now I have described my circumnavigation of the island, I will
proceed to describe its inhabitants. The up-river end of Lembarene
Island is the most inhabited. A path round the upper part of the
island passes through a succession of Igalwa villages and by the
Roman Catholic missionary station. The slave villages belonging to
these Igalwas are away down the north face of the island, opposite
the Fan town of Fula, which I have mentioned. It strikes me as
remarkable that the Igalwa, like the Dualla of Cameroons, have their
slaves in separate villages; but this is the case, though I do not
know the reason of it. These Igalwa slaves cultivate the
plantations, and bring up the vegetables and fruit to their owners'
villages and do the housework daily.
The interior of the island is composed of high, rocky, heavily
forested hills, with here and there a stream, and here and there a
swamp; the higher land is towards the up-river end; down river there
is a lower strip of land with hillocks. This is, I fancy, formed by
deposits of sand, etc., catching in among the rocks, and connecting
what were at one time several isolated islands. There are no big
game or gorillas on the island, but it has a peculiar and awful
house ant, much smaller than the driver ant, but with a venomous,
bad bite; its only good point is that its chief food is the white
ants, which are therefore kept in abeyance on Lembarene Island,
although flourishing destructively on the mainland banks of the
river in this locality. I was never tired of going and watching
those Igalwa villagers, nor were, I think, the Igalwa villagers ever
tired of observing me. Although the physical conditions of life
were practically identical with those of the mainland, the way in
which the Igalwas dealt with them, i.e. the culture, was distinct
from the culture of the mainland Fans.
The Igalwas are a tribe very nearly akin, if not ethnically
identical with, the M'pongwe, and the culture of these two tribes is
on a level with the highest native African culture. African
culture, I may remark, varies just the same as European in this,
that there is as much difference in the manners of life between,
say, an Igalwa and a Bubi of Fernando Po, as there is between a
Londoner and a Laplander.
The Igalwa builds his house like that of the M'pongwe, of bamboo,
and he surrounds himself with European-made articles. The neat
houses, fitted with windows, with wooden shutters to close at night,
and with a deal door--a carpenter-made door--are in sharp contrast
with the ragged ant-hill looking performances of the Akkas, or the
bark huts of the Fan, with no windows, and just an extra broad bit
of bark to slip across the hole that serves as a door. On going
into an Igalwa house you will see a four-legged table, often covered
with a bright-coloured tablecloth, on which stands a water bottle,
with two clean glasses, and round about you will see chairs--Windsor
chairs. These houses have usually three, sometimes more rooms, and
a separate closed-in little kitchen, built apart, wherein you may
observe European-made saucepans, in addition to the ubiquitous
skillet. Outside, all along the clean sandy streets, the
inhabitants are seated. The Igalwa is truly great at sitting, the
men pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity, broken occasionally by
leisurely netting a fishing net, the end of the netting hitched up
on to the roof thatch, and not held by a stirrup. The ladies are
employed in the manufacture of articles pertaining to a higher
culture--I allude, as Mr. Micawber would say, to bed-quilts and
pillow-cases--the most gorgeous bed-quilts and pillow-cases--made of
patchwork, and now and again you will see a mosquito-bar in course
of construction, of course not made of net or muslin because of the
awesome strength and ferocity of the Lembarene strain of mosquitoes,
but of stout, fair-flowered and besprigged chintzes; and you will
observe these things are often being sewn with a sewing machine.
The women who may not be busy sewing are busy doing each other's
hair. Hair-dressing is quite an art among the Igalwa and M'pongwe
women, and their hair is very beautiful; very crinkly, but fine. It
is plaited up, close to the head, partings between the plaits making
elaborate parterres. Into the beds of plaited hair are stuck long
pins of river ivory (hippo), decorated with black tracery and
openwork, and made by their good men. A lady will stick as many of
these into her hair as she can get, but the prevailing mode is to
have one stuck in behind each ear, showing their broad, long heads
above like two horns; they are exceedingly becoming to these black
but comely ladies, verily, I think, the comeliest ladies I have ever
seen on the Coast. Very black they are, blacker than many of their
neighbours, always blacker than the Fans, and although their skin
lacks that velvety pile of the true negro, it is not too shiny, but
it is fine and usually unblemished, and their figures are charmingly
rounded, their hands and feet small, almost as small as a high-class
Calabar woman's, and their eyes large, lustrous, soft and brown, and
their teeth as white as the sea surf and undisfigured by filing.
The native dress for men and women alike is the cloth or paun. The
men wear it by rolling the upper line round the waist, and in
addition they frequently wear a singlet or a flannel shirt worn MORE
AFRICANO, flowing free. Rich men will mount a European coat and
hat, and men connected with the mission or trading stations
occasionally wear trousers. The personal appearance of the men does
not amount to much when all's done, so we will return to the ladies.
They wrap the upper hem of these cloths round under the armpits, a
graceful form of drapery, but one which requires continual
readjustment. The cloth is about four yards long and two deep, and
there is always round the hem a border, or false hem, of turkey red
twill, or some other coloured cotton cloth to the main body of the
paun. In addition to the cloth there is worn, when possible, a
European shawl, either one of those thick cotton cloth ones printed
with Chinese-looking patterns in dull red on a dark ground, this
sort is wrapped round the upper part of the body: or what is more
highly esteemed is a bright, light-coloured, fancy wool shawl, pink
or pale blue preferred, which being carefully folded into a roll is
placed over one shoulder, and is entirely for dandy. I am thankful
to say they do not go in for hats; when they wear anything on their
heads it is a handkerchief folded shawl-wise; the base of the
triangle is bound round the forehead just above the eyebrows, the
ends carried round over the ears and tied behind over the apex of
the triangle of the handkerchief, the three ends being then arranged
fan-wise at the back. Add to this costume a sober-coloured silk
parasol, not one of your green or red young tent-like, brutally
masculine, knobby-sticked umbrellas, but a fair, lady-like parasol,
which, being carefully rolled up, is carried handle foremost right
in the middle of the head, also for dandy. Then a few strings of
turquoise-blue beads, or imitation gold ones, worn round the shapely
throat; and I will back my Igalwa or M'pongwe belle against any of
those South Sea Island young ladies we nowadays hear so much about,
thanks to Mr. Stevenson, yea, even though these may be wreathed with
fragrant flowers, and the African lady very rarely goes in for
flowers. The only time I have seen the African ladies wearing them
for ornament has been among these Igalwas, who now and again stud
their night-black hair with pretty little round vividly red blossoms
in a most fetching way. I wonder the Africans do not wear flowers
more frequently, for they are devoted to scent, both men and women.
The Igalwas are a proud race, one of the noble tribes, like the
M'pongwe and the Ajumba. The women do not intermarry with lower-
class tribes, and in their own tribe they are much restricted, owing
to all relations on the mother's side being forbidden to intermarry.
This well-known form of accounting relationships only through the
mother (Mutterrecht) is in a more perfected and elaborated form
among the Igalwa than among any other tribe I am personally
acquainted with; brothers and cousins on the mother's side being in
one class of relationship.
The father's responsibility, as regards authority over his own
children, is very slight. The really responsible male relative is
the mother's elder brother. From him must leave to marry be
obtained for either girl, or boy; to him and the mother must the
present be taken which is exacted on the marriage of a girl; and
should the mother die, on him and not on the father, lies the
responsibility of rearing the children; they go to his house, and he
treats and regards them as nearer and dearer to himself than his own
children, and at his death, after his own brothers by the same
mother, they become his heirs.
Marriage among the Igalwa and M'pongwe is not direct marriage by
purchase, but a certain fixed price present is made to the mother
and uncle of the girl. Other propitiatory presents (Kueliki) are
made, but do not count legally, and have not necessarily to be
returned in case of post-nuptial differences arising leading to a
divorce--a very frequent catastrophe in the social circle; for the
Igalwa ladies are spirited, and devoted to personal adornment, and
they are naggers at their husbands. Many times when walking on
Lembarene Island, have I seen a lady stand in the street and let her
husband, who had taken shelter inside the house, know what she
thought of him, in a way that reminded me of some London slum
scenes. When the husband loses his temper, as he surely does sooner
or later, being a man, he whacks his wife--or wives, if they have
been at him in a body. He may whack with impunity so long as he
does not draw blood; if he does, be it never so little, his wife is
off to her relations, the present he has given for her is returned,
the marriage is annulled, and she can re-marry as soon as she is
able.
Her relations are only too glad to get her, because, although the
present has to be returned, yet the propitiatory offerings remain
theirs, and they know more propitiatory offerings as well as another
present will accrue with the next set of suitors. This of course is
only the case with the younger women; the older women for one thing
do not nag so much, and moreover they have usually children willing
and able to support them. If they have not, their state is, like
that of all old childless women in Africa, a very desolate one.
Infant marriage is now in vogue among the Igalwa, and to my surprise
I find it is of quite recent introduction and adoption. Their own
account of this retrograde movement in culture is that in the last
generation--some of the old people indeed claim to have known him--
there was an exceedingly ugly and deformed man who could not get a
wife, the women being then, as the men are now, great admirers of
physical beauty. So this man, being very cunning, hit on the idea
of becoming betrothed to one before she could exercise her own
choice in the matter; and knowing a family in which an interesting
event was likely to occur, he made heavy presents in the proper
quarters and bespoke the coming infant if it should be a girl. A
girl it was, and thus, say the Igalwa, arose the custom; and
nowadays, although they do not engage their wives so early as did
the founder of the custom, they adopt infant marriage as an
institution.
I inquired carefully, in the interests of ethnology, as to what
methods of courting were in vogue previously. They said people
married each other because they loved each other. I hope other
ethnologists will follow this inquiry up, for we may here find a
real golden age, which in other races of humanity lies away in the
mists of the ages behind the kitchen middens and the Cambrian rocks.
My own opinion in this matter is that the earlier courting methods
of the Igalwa involved a certain amount of effort on the man's part,
a thing abhorrent to an Igalwa. It necessitated his dressing
himself up, and likely enough fighting that impudent scoundrel who
was engaged in courting her too; and above all serenading her at
night on the native harp, with its strings made from the tendrils of
a certain orchid, or on the marimba, amongst crowds of mosquitoes.
Any institution that involved being out at night amongst crowds of
those Lembarene mosquitoes would have to disappear, let that
institution be what it might.
The Igalwa are one of the dying-out coast tribes. As well as on
Lembarene Island, their villages are scattered along the banks of
the Lower Ogowe, and on the shores and islands of Eliva Z'Onlange.
On the island they are, so far, undisturbed by the Fan invasion, and
laze their lives away like lotus-eaters. Their slaves work their
large plantations, and bring up to them magnificent yams, ready
prepared ogooma, sweet-potatoes, papaw, etc., not forgetting that
delicacy Odeaka cheese; this is not an exclusive inspiration of
theirs, for the M'pongwe and the Benga use it as well. It is made
from the kernel of the wild mango, a singularly beautiful tree of
great size and stately spread of foliage. I can compare it only in
appearance and habit of growth to our Irish, or evergreen, oak, but
it is an idealisation of that fine tree. Its leaves are a softer,
brighter, deeper green, and in due season (August) it is covered--
not ostentatiously like the real mango, with great spikes of bloom,
looking each like a gigantic head of mignonette--but with small
yellow-green flowers tucked away under the leaves, filling the air
with a soft sweet perfume, and then falling on to the bare shaded
ground beneath to make a deep-piled carpet. I do not know whether
it is a mango tree at all, for I am no botanist: but anyhow the
fruit is rather like that of the mango in external appearance, and
in internal still more so, for it has a disproportionately large
stone. These stones are cracked, and the kernel taken out. The
kernels are spread a short time in the shade to dry; then they are
beaten up into a pulp with a wooden pestle, and the pulp put into a
basket lined carefully with plantain leaves and placed in the sun,
which melts it up into a stiff mass. The basket is then removed
from the sun and stood aside to cool. When cool, the cheese can be
turned out in shape, and can be kept a long time if it is wrapped
round with leaves and a cloth, and hung up inside the house. Its
appearance is that of almond rock, and it is cut easily with a
knife; but at any period of its existence, if it is left in the sun
it melts again rapidly into an oily mass.
The natives use it as a seasoning in their cookery, stuffing fish
and plantains with it and so on, using it also in the preparation of
a sort of sea-pie they make with meat and fish. To make this, a
thing well worth doing, particularly with hippo or other coarse
meat, reduce the wood fire to embers, and make plantain leaves into
a sort of bag, or cup; small pieces of the meat should then be
packed in layers with red pepper and odeaka in between. The tops of
the leaves are then tied together with fine tie-tie, and the bundle,
without any saucepan of any kind, stood on the glowing embers, the
cook taking care there is no flame. The meat is done, and a superb
gravy formed, before the containing plantain leaves are burnt
through--plantain leaves will stand an amazing lot in the way of
fire. This dish is really excellent, even when made with python,
hippo, or crocodile. It makes the former most palatable; but of
course it does not remove the musky taste from crocodile; nothing I
know of will.
The great and important difference between the M'pongwe, {167}
Igalwa, and Ajumba fetish, and the Fetish of those tribes round
them, consists in their conception of a certain spirit called O
Mbuiri. They have, as is constant among the Bantu races of South-
West Africa, a great god--the creator, a god who has made all
things, and who now no longer takes any interest in the things he
has created. Their name for this god is Anyambie, which when
pronounced sounds to my ears like anlynlae--the l's being very
weak,--the derivation of this name, however, is from Anyima a
spirit, and Mbia, good. This god, unlike other forms of the
creating god in Fetish, has a viceroy or minister who is a god he
has created, and to whom he leaves the government of affairs. This
god is O Mbuiri or O Mbwiri, and this O Mbwiri is of very high
interest to the student of comparative fetish. He has never been,
nor can he ever become, a man, i.e. be born as a man, but he can
transfuse with his own personality that of human beings, and also
the souls of all those things we white men regard as inanimate, such
as rocks, trees, etc., in a similar manner.
The M'pongwe know that his residence is in the sea, and some of them
have seen him as an old white man, not flesh-colour white, but chalk
white. There is another important point here, but it wants a volume
to itself, so I must pass it. O Mbuiri's appearance in a corporeal
form denotes ill luck, not death to the seer, but misfortune of a
severe and diffused character. The ruin of a trading enterprise,
the destruction of a village or a family, are put down to O Mbuiri's
action. Yet he is not regarded as a malevolent god, a devil, but as
an avenger, or punisher of sin; and the M'pongwe look on him as the
Being to whom they primarily owe the good things and fortunes of
this life, and as the Being who alone has power to govern the host
of truly malevolent spirits that exist in nature.
The different instruments with which he works in the shaping of
human destiny bear his name when in his employ. When acting by
means of water, he is O Mbuiri Aningo; when in the weather, O Mbuiri
Ngali; when in the forests, O Mbuiri Ibaka; when in the form of a
dwarf, O Mbuiri Akoa, and so on.
The great difference between O Mbuiri and the lesser spirits is
this: --the lesser spirits cannot incarnate themselves except
through extraneous things; O Mbuiri can, he can become visible
without anything beyond his own will to do so. The other spirits
must be in something to become visible. This is an extremely
delicate piece of Fetish which it took me weeks to work out. I
think I may say another thing about O Mbuiri, though I say it
carefully, and that is, that among the M'pongwe and the tribe who
are the parent tribe of the M'pongwe--the now rapidly dying out
Ajumba, and their allied tribe the Igalwa--O Mbuiri is a distinct
entity, while among the neighbouring tribes he is a class, i.e.
there are hundreds of O Mbuiri or Ibwiri, one for every remarkable
place or thing, such as rock, tree, or forest thicket, and for every
dangerous place in a river. Had I not observed a similar state of
affairs regarding Sasabonsum, a totally different kind of spirit on
the Windward coast, I should have had even greater trouble than I
had, in finding a key to what seemed at first a mass of conflicting
details regarding this important spirit O Mbuiri.
There is one other very important point in M'pongwe Fetish; and that
is that the souls of men exist before birth as well as after death.
This is indeed, as far as I have been able to find out, a doctrine
universally held by the West African tribes, but among the M'pongwe
there is this modification in it, which agrees strangely well with
the idea I found regarding reincarnated diseases, existent among the
Okyon tribes (pure negroes). The malevolent minor spirits are
capable of being born with, what we will call, a man's soul, as well
as going in with the man's soul during sleep. For example, an Olaga
may be born with a man and that man will thereby be born mad; he may
at any period of his life, given certain conditions, become
possessed by an evil spirit, Onlogho Abambo, Injembe, Nkandada, and
become mad, or ill; but if he is born mad, or sickly, one of the
evil spirits such as an Olaga or an Obambo, the soul of a man that
has not been buried properly, has been born with him.
The rest of the M'pongwe Fetish is on broad lines common to other
tribes, so I relegate it to the general collection of notes on
Fetish. M'pongwe jurisprudence is founded on the same ideas as
those on which West African jurisprudence at large is founded, but
it is so elaborated that it would be desecration to sketch it. It
requires a massive monograph.