A DESERTED VILLAGE.—FEAR OF DEATH.—WARS BETWEEN VILLAGES.—AFRICAN WILD
BOAR.—THE HUNT.
I have just arrived in a deserted village; there was not a soul to be
seen. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to remind us of living man
except the abandoned huts. How sad every thing looked all around! The
plantain-trees were growing back of the huts, and young bunches of
plantains were gracefully hanging down from them.
Even the little Sycobii birds had left, and only their deserted nests on
the trees testified that once they had built their homes there.
What had become of the people? They had left: they had abandoned their
village. How often I have met these abandoned villages in the forests of
Africa, but especially in the regions inhabited by the Bakalais, the
Mbondemos, the Mbishos, the Shekianis.
This village was situated on the broad waters of the River Ovenga, about
90 miles south of the equator. As I was not afraid of evil spirits, I
concluded I should use the huts to sleep in at night; but there was
tremendous opposition at first, for the men who were with me said it was
a bewitched village; two people had died there within a few days of each
other; the place was not good to live in; some of us would die if we
remained. Poor creatures, though daring and brave in the hunt, how
afraid they are of death! Hence if a man dies in a village there is a
great commotion, if another dies the village must be abandoned.
A village is scarce built, often the plantations have not borne fruit
for the first time, when they feel impelled to move. Then every thing is
abandoned; they gather up what few stores of provisions they may have,
and start off, often for great distances, to make, with tedious labor, a
new settlement, which will be abandoned in turn after a few months.
Sometimes, however, they remain for two or even three months more in the
same place.
Many things contribute to their roving habits, but first of all I have
said is their great fear of death. They dread to see a dead person.
Their sick, unless they have good and near friends, are often driven out
of the village to die in loneliness in the forest. Those Bakalai have no
burying-ground. After a man is dead the body is thrown anywhere in the
forest, and no more attention is paid to it.
The people of these tribes are very superstitious, and often after the
death of a man several friendless creatures are accused and condemned in
a breath, and murdered in cold blood. Afterward the village is broken
up, the people set up again after their wanderings, and fix upon some
lonely spot for a new plantation and a new home.
What a life this must be, to be all the while vainly fleeing from the
dread face of death, as if such a thing were possible. What can stand
still in the world? Nothing; absolutely nothing; constant changes are
taking place.
[Sidenote: _WARS BETWEEN VILLAGES._]
These people are of a treacherous disposition, and are constantly
quarrelling among their neighbors. They are most barbarous in their mode
of warfare, in which women, children, and even babies are killed. Once
while staying in a Bakalai village there were two women, who were
quietly washing, and were killed and left there, until the people,
wondering at their disappearance, looked for them, and found them dead.
When war has once really broken out in the country there is no rest or
safety. No man or woman in any village can take a step in any direction,
day or night, without fear of death. They lie in ambush to surprise each
other’s villages. If they have guns, they come on the sly and shoot
through the bark of which their houses are made, and kill sleeping
persons; hence no one could sleep for two consecutive nights at the same
place. In passing a tree, sometimes the enemy steals in behind, and will
spear the poor luckless man, woman, or child. They use every unfair
means of warfare; and the meaner the attack, and the greater the
treachery, the more glory they have won. In such times of war the fires
are put out after dark, because they give light to the enemy, and the
glare of the fire makes blind those near it, while those who come
through the darkness can see well. The people keep a dead silence, lest
their voices should betray their whereabouts; the hunters are loth to
hunt, for fear of falling into an ambush of some hidden enemies; the
women and slaves fear to plant, and therefore every body approaches a
condition of semi-starvation. This sometimes lasts for months. At last
whole districts are depopulated; those who are not killed desert their
villages to seek safety in some remote and unknown spot of the forest
where they think they may be safer; hence very often I felt quite
astonished to meet little villages far off. Many of their villages are
palisaded, and their dogs keep watch.
Yes, among such people I have lived for a long time when there was war
in the country, and I never knew if by mistake they might not kill me.
Now I have given you a slight idea of these warlike and treacherous
Bakalai. I am happy to say that on the right bank of the Ovenga
Quengueza has succeeded in preventing these wild men from making war
upon each other’s villages.
We have come to shoot wild boar. It is the season when they are very
fat, for we are in the month of March, and I tell you these wild boars
of Equatorial Africa are glorious eating, and are magnificent beasts to
bag.
Do not think they look like the wild boars they have in Europe. Nothing
of the kind. It is no easy matter to come near enough to have a shot at
these wild beasts, for they are exceedingly shy.
Night came, and my fellows were so afraid of evil spirits that they kept
tremendous fires and kept talking all night, and when daylight came they
felt so tired that they all went to sleep. This will never do, I said to
myself, for if a man does not sleep at night he certainly can not work
hard in the day.
After they awoke they came in a body, friend Malaouen leading, saying
that we had better go and make our camp far away in the forest, for the
place where we were was not good at all. I thought some of them might
get ill through fear, so I concluded I had better move, for the people
would lay the blame upon me. People have to be very prudent in such a
wild country.
[Sidenote: _AFRICAN WILD BOAR._]
So we moved our traps a few miles off and built our camp; this was
hardly done when a storm burst upon us, and the rain poured down by
bucketsful, and the thunder and the lightning was something terrific. It
was a good thing that our shades were right, for we should have been wet
to the skin.
Early the next morning I shouldered my rifle and set off for the wildest
part of the wood with friends Malaouen and Querlaouen, who now felt
quite happy since we had left the abandoned village. The woods were
pretty hard to go through, for the hunting-paths had not been used
often, for fear of the Bakalai living in the Ashankolo.
In this gigantic forest there is a most extraordinary kind of wild boar,
its body being of a bright red-yellow color, somewhat like that of an
orange. How strange they look as they wander through the forest,
sometimes a few together, at other times twenty or thirty, or even
larger numbers!
That morning we got into new and fresh tracks of the wild boars; the
earth was all uprooted by their snouts. I am sure they had not come to
the place a half-hour before we did, and what a havoc they had made! We
followed the tracks in hot haste; soon we could hear their grunts, and
we thought they must be numerous by the noise they made.
How to approach them was the difficult question; for if there is any
wild game, this is certainly one of the wildest sort I know. If there
had been two or three of them together we might not have had so much
difficulty in approaching them; but how were we to approach so many
without being detected?
So we concluded to go by a roundabout way and try to get ahead of them,
and then lay in ambush, waiting for them to pass.
The wild boars were in a valley, where the ground was somewhat soft, and
they would, I thought, continue to follow it. In the midst of this
valley there was a beautiful little rivulet of clear water meandering
crookedly on in the same uneven manner as the narrow valley itself,
which was flanked on each side by tremendous high hills, covered like
the valley and all the country round with gigantic trees, which bore
different kinds of fruits and nuts.
Then we concluded to ascend a hill close by and descend in as swift a
manner as we could into the valley on the other side, which was the same
one in which we were standing: by doing so, we could make a short cut
and get ahead of the wild boars, and then choose our ground and wait for
them.
The plan succeeded perfectly. After crossing, we found a huge dead tree
fallen on the ground, and behind it we hid ourselves.
Soon we heard the grunts of the wild boars coming; we were delighted; we
looked at our guns, then fixed the barrels on the trunk of the tree,
raised our heads hardly above it, and only so high that our eyes could
get a glimpse at the wild boars.
[Sidenote: _A PIECE OF STRATEGY._]
Here they come! I can see them through the jungle, snorting
unconsciously and eating what they have uprooted. How little do they
think there are such formidable enemies close at hand! They came nearer
and nearer. Then after looking at each other, as if to say, Is it time?
we took steady aim, put our fingers on the triggers, and bang! bang!
bang! our three guns went off at the same time, three wild boars biting
the ground, and the others giving tremendous leaps. Four of them, crazy
with fright, came rushing along, leaping over the trunk of the trees
behind which we were hidden, and right above our heads. My goodness! if
they had come down upon us they would have completely smashed us. I
turned round, fired my second shot, and bagged another.
“Four wild boars are killed!” we shouted with frantic joy!
[Illustration: KILLING FOUR WILD BOARS.]
What splendid animals two of them were! How big! The wild boars of the
black forest in Germany could not have compared with them.
This wild boar is a new species, and I have called it _Potamochœrus
albifrons_: that is to say, white-fronted.
What strange-looking animals! They had a long muzzle, and on each side
there was a large warty protuberance half-way between the nose and the
eyes. These, and a singular sort of bristle, surround the eyes. The
ears, which are long and ended in tufts of coarse hair, give the animal
a strange expression. The bodies of the boars were of the color I have
mentioned.
On my return to the United States, in 1860, I gave a full description of
this curious animal, and of many others I discovered, before the Boston
Society of Natural History. I have always retained a pleasant
recollection of my visit to that society, of its president, Professor
Jeffries Wyman, of its secretary, my friend Dr. Kneeland, and of many
other members, who were very kind to me.
But how to take away that meat? We could by no possible means carry the
meat of four wild boars. So myself and Malaouen were to keep watch and
sleep in the forest while Querlaouen would go and fetch the people to
assist us.
This _Potamochœrus albifrons_ is a great jumper. I have seen no antelope
that could leap as it does; one day I saw three of them leap over the
Ovenga River, the distance being thirty or forty yards. It was the dry
season, and one of them fell into the water. The bank from which they
sprung was much higher than the opposite one.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]