THE STRING OF BEADS
There was great chattering in the village over the unloading of the
packs with the various wares brought from the market. The marketing
arrangements of wild Africa are very curious. There are four days in a
Congo week,--Konzo, Nkenge, Nsona, and Nkandu,--and on at least one of
the four days a market is held somewhere near every important village.
All markets held on Konzo are called Konzo markets, those held on
Nkenge are called Nkenge markets, and so on. Each of the four kinds of
markets is in a different place, but there is one of the four within
five miles of every town. In the village where Mpoko and Nkunda lived,
the people had to go four miles to the Konzo market, nine to the Nkenge
market, sixteen to the Nsona and twenty to the Nkandu, but this last
market was quite near the next village downstream.
Some of these markets were noted for certain goods. Mpoko’s mother
could always depend on pigs being on sale at the Nkenge market, and
whoever had a pig to sell would be likely to take it there. At
the Konzo market, four miles away, were good pots, calabashes, and
saucepans, some of which were made by women in their village, for
one of the old grandmothers was rather famous for her pottery. Other
markets were known for palm wine, iron work, oil, or some other
specialty, and besides these things cassava roots, peanuts, kwanga
(native bread), palm oil, beans and other vegetables, grains and fowls
were generally sold in all markets.
[Illustration]
Besides these markets, larger markets were held occasionally, from one
to another of which the traders traveled with things not made in the
country. Besides the brass rods, blue beads were sometimes used as a
kind of money, a farthing string of a hundred beads being passed from
hand to hand; or it might be used to buy food in small quantities,
ten or fifteen blue beads three eighths of an inch long and about a
quarter of an inch thick being used as small change.
A great deal of produce was simply swapped from one person to another.
A man might gather a quantity of some produce like tobacco, rubber,
raffia, palm oil, or grain, at one market and another, and take it
finally to the great market to exchange for beads, brass, calico, or
whatever else he found there. Salt is so rare in some parts of Africa
that it is used for money, and a man will work as a porter so many days
for so many bags of salt. When the people make salt on the shores of
an inland lake, they have to gather the salty sand and wash it out in
pots specially made, with little holes in the bottom into which the
salt water runs; then the water is dried away over slow fires and the
salt scraped off the sides of the kettle. It takes less time and labor
to earn salt ready made than to make it in this way. Salt is also made
from grass ashes.
The packs of the village men had in them not only salt, but many pieces
of gay-colored cloth, beads, and wire. Nkunda felt that hers was the
best share of all, when her mother called her to have hung round her
neck a string of bright red coral beads. No other little girl had
a string half so pretty, Nkunda thought. The more she fingered the
little, smooth, scarlet drops of her necklace, the more she admired
them.
Seeing her delight, the Alo Man grinned and showed all his white teeth.
“Perhaps they will bring you luck,” he said, “as the youngest sister’s
beads did in the story.”
Of course, after that, every one wanted to hear the story.
The Alo Man settled himself cross-legged on a mat, all the listeners
squatted down within easy hearing distance, and he began the story of
the String of Beads.
* * * * *
I often am reminded [he said] of the three sisters who lived in a land
many days’ journey from here. Each of them had a string of beads, but
the youngest sister, her beads were of red coral, and the others, their
beads were only common cowrie shells. Naturally, they hated her, and
one day when they had all been bathing in the river, the older sisters
hid their beads in the sand.
“See,” said the eldest sister as the youngest sister came out of the
water, “we have thrown our beads into the river, where there is a
strong water-goblin who will give us back twice as many. Throw your own
beads into the river and then you will have two strings of coral beads,
and two is always better than one.”
“Except when you have a lame foot,” said the other sister, giggling.
The youngest sister believed what they said, and threw her beads into
the river, and they went down, down, down to the bottom of the deepest
pool and did not come up again.
Then the two elder sisters laughed and took their own beads and hung
them round their necks, and filled their water jars and went home.
“How foolish I was,” said the youngest sister, sadly. “I wonder if the
river would not give them back to me if I should ask very politely?”
She began to walk along the bank, saying, “Water, water, please give me
back my beads, my pretty beads!” And the water answered, “Go down the
stream! Go down the stream!”
[The Alo Man made his voice sound exactly like the gurgle and splash of
the ripples.]
She went on a little way and asked the river again to give back her
beads. And again the river answered, “Go down the stream! Go down the
stream!”
The youngest sister went along the river bank until she could no longer
see the village. She had never been so far away from it before. At last
she came to a place where the river leaped over a great cliff. Under
the waterfall was a hut with an old woman sitting at the door. She
was bent and wrinkled and very, very ugly, and she looked up as the
youngest sister looked down at her from the bank.
“Do not laugh at me!” said the old woman. “I am ugly now, but once I
was beautiful as you are.”
“I am not laughing at you, good mother,” said the youngest sister. “I
should like to do something to help you.”
“You are very kind, my child,” said the old woman. “Will you be so good
as to bind up my wounds and give me water to drink?”
[Illustration]
The youngest sister took a strip of her garment and bound up the old
woman’s wounds and fed and comforted her as if she had been the old
woman’s own daughter. Scarcely had she done this when the old woman
caught her by the arm. “My child,” she said, “you have come to a place
where a terrible giant lives. Every one who comes down the river is in
danger of falling into his hands. But do not be afraid; he shall not
hurt you. Hark! there he comes now, like a great wind that brings the
rain.”
Sure enough, the wind began to blow, and the rain poured, and the
lightning flashed, and it grew very cold. The old woman hid the
youngest sister behind a wall.
Then the giant came to the bank of the river.
“Some one has come to the hut,” said he, in a great roaring voice. “I
am hungry. Bring her out and let me have her for my supper.”
“But you must have your sleep first,” said the old woman.
“Yes,” said the giant, “it is true; I am very weary.”
Then the giant lay down and went to sleep.
When he was sound asleep the old woman led the youngest sister out
from behind the wall, and hung round her neck a string of beads more
beautiful than any she had ever seen, and put rings of gold on her arms
and on her ankles. Around her waist she hung a kirtle of the softest
and finest kidskin, with copper fringe, and over her shoulders she
threw a silver jackal skin. In her hand she placed a magic stone.
“When you reach the river bank,” said the old woman, “press the stone
to your lips. Then throw it over your shoulder, and it will return to
me.”
The youngest sister did as the old woman told her, and very soon she
reached the place where she lived with her two sisters. They looked
with the greatest surprise at her beautiful dress and ornaments and
asked where she had found them. When she told them an old woman had
given them to her, they said, without waiting to hear the story, “We
too will go to the old woman,” and throwing their beads into the river
they ran along the banks, calling to the waters to return them.
After so long a time they came to the hut where the old woman sat. The
giant was no longer there, and the old woman was sitting crouched in
the doorway as before.
“Do not laugh at me,” said the old woman. “I am ugly now, but once I
was young and beautiful as you are.”
The two sisters laughed at this, and ridiculed the old woman, and
called her all the jeering names they could think of.
“Will you not bind up my wounds and give me water to drink?” asked the
old woman.
But the sisters said that they had never heard of such impudence.
“Where are the bracelets and beads you have to give away?” asked the
elder sister.
“Where are your mantles and kirtles with fringe?” asked the younger.
“We come for these, not to waste our time on you. We must make haste
and go home.”
“Indeed, I think you must,” said the old woman, “for this place is the
home of a giant who comes in the form of wind and rain, and I hear him
coming now!”
Then the hut sank under the waters, and the maidens found themselves
standing on the bank without even their own beads to deck themselves
with. That very moment they heard the wind and the rain sweeping
through the trees, and they turned and ran as fast as their feet would
carry them, back to their own village, while the wind and the rain
howled behind them and the giant pelted them with stones.
[Illustration]
All the people laughed and shouted over the ill fortune of the two
selfish sisters. Nkunda, where she lay curled up at her mother’s side,
fingered her beads and wondered if the youngest sister’s beads from
beneath the waterfall could have been any prettier than these. In the
part where the giant came in, the story sent delightful shivers down
all their backs, for they could every one remember storms in which the
great wind had shaken the trees like an invisible giant and the rain
had come pelting down like stones. Sometimes, after a storm, the path
of the wind through the forest looked like the track of a huge giant
who had gone walking up and down, twisting off boughs and rooting up
trees merely to show what he could do. During one of these storms the
temperature often falls from thirty to forty degrees in half an hour.
Nkunda had seen a silvery jackal skin and a copper-fringed robe among
her mother’s treasures, but one thing in the story puzzled her.
“Mother,” she said softly, “what is gold?”
The Alo Man heard her and smiled. “Have you never seen gold?” he asked.
The children shook their heads. Gold was not found in that part of the
country.
Then the Alo Man explained that in the streams of other parts of the
country the people found lumps of a shining yellow metal softer and
more beautiful than iron, for which the traders would pay much cloth
and many brass rods. When the headman heard what they were talking
about, he showed the children a little bright round bangle on his arm,
and told them that that was gold. It was really, though no one there
knew it, a half-sovereign lost by some trader, or perhaps given in
mistake for a sixpence, which is exactly the same size. The headman had
kept it, first because of its beauty, and then because a trader had
told him that it was worth as much as ten pounds of rubber, or more
than a hundred pounds of palm kernels, or a load of palm oil, or about
thirty-five pounds of coffee. Nkunda thought that the little piece of
gold was rather like a magic stone.