UP THE KWILU RIVER
A stay of about ten days in Dima, coupled with the luxury of regular
meals and a plentiful supply of fresh vegetables, soon put us upon the
highroad to recovery from the feeling of lassitude naturally resulting
from the period of semi-starvation through which we had passed at the
Mushenge, and the return to strength, together with the knowledge that we
were about to embark upon an interesting and possibly exciting journey,
soon filled us with eagerness to be up and doing. We accordingly hurried
forward the packing and despatch of a goodly number of cases for the
British Museum, and rearranged the provisions which had been waiting
for us in Dima, and were still in perfect condition, ready for a start
to the Kwilu. This time we included in our baggage a box of toys which
had recently arrived from Europe. Among these were “Zulu” dolls with
movable arms and legs, golliwog dolls, china animals, and last, but not
least, two clockwork elephants which would walk and move their trunks;
one of these two latter was destined to play an important part in our
passage from the Kwilu to the Kasai. Dima itself, as I have already
mentioned, had considerably improved since our arrival in November 1907.
The Government had recently come to the conclusion that the place was
sufficiently important to render the establishment of a post-office
desirable, and the official in charge of it, a native of Lagos, arrived
during our stay there. This was of considerable convenience to us, as we
were able, with some frequency, to replenish our stock of stamps and also
to despatch registered letters, containing the ethnographical information
collected, far more easily than was the case when we had to send all
such to Leopoldville for registration. During this visit to Dima we saw
a great deal of Colonel Chaltin, who showed us great hospitality. With
his wide experience of life in almost every part of the Congo State, he
had naturally much information to impart concerning the opening up of
many districts, of the earlier days of the State, and particularly of the
Arab wars, in which he had served with much distinction, and in which he
had been seriously wounded. The Colonel, however, was by no means ready
to tell stories of the past or to relate his own experiences upon his
expedition to the Nile at the time of the Mahdist rising, when directly
asked to do so; often, however, the mention of some place or of some
man’s name would recall old memories to him and lead him to recount some
of his adventures. He has a splendid way of telling his stories, simply
yet clearly, and with so much feeling that one can almost imagine oneself
taking part in the stirring incidents which he describes. It is far from
my purpose to relate any of his stories here; we suggested to him that he
should some day publish an account of what he has done and seen. Should
he not do so the history of the advance of European influence in Central
Africa will lose a most important chapter, for few men have travelled so
widely in the Congo as Colonel Chaltin, and very few men are now living
who have personally known, as he has, so many of the early pioneers.
Having been quartered upon the Nile, the Colonel has met many British
officers, travellers, and officials, of whose exploits he has much to
tell, and among whom he has many friends. The men who served in the
Congo in the early nineties have many of them succumbed to the climatic
conditions and the privations which their work entailed; in fact, when,
in recalling his adventures in the past, the Colonel mentioned names of
Europeans quite eight times out of ten, he would remark parenthetically,
“he is dead now.” In the old days the death-rate among the Europeans
must have been far greater than it is now, for they had none of the
advantages of regular steamship service nor the many little luxuries and
conveniences in the way of stores and equipment which now render the life
of an African traveller a comparatively easy one. One important point I
noticed when Colonel Chaltin was relating his experiences, upon almost
every occasion, and they were many, when he mentioned a deed performed
by some native soldier, he gave not only the rank, but also the name
and tribe of the man; it seems to me that to be served well by African
natives, were one to be an officer in command of troops or merely a
traveller, it is essential that one should personally know and be known
by one’s men. The importance of this is, I have thought, often overlooked.
Our plans for the remainder of our journey now began to take a definite
shape. Before recommencing our ethnographical work we decided to take a
three weeks’ rest cure in the form of shooting on the lower Kwilu; after
this we should ascend that river as far as Kikwit. At Dima we met an
agent of the Kasai Company named M. Gentil, who had recently founded a
factory called Kandale upon the upper Kwilu, about six days south-east of
Kikwit. He had travelled a good distance to the south of his post, and
had produced some excellent plane-table maps of his region. In the course
of his wanderings in the south he had come into contact with a number of
Badjok traders from near the Angola frontier with whom he had established
most friendly relations. Some of these people had informed him that they
were in the habit of proceeding to the upper Kasai to Mai Monene, and
also further north in the direction of Bena Makima and Luebo, the point
at which we hoped to end our overland journey; and he was of the opinion
that should we succeed in meeting with a party of these people travelling
eastwards we should have little difficulty in persuading them to take us
across the country of the Bakongo and Bashilele; and as he knew it always
suited the purpose of the Badjok to remain on friendly terms with the
tribes whose country they passed through, he considered that there would
be little risk in such an undertaking. He assured us that he had found
the natives around Kandale quite peaceful, and that he had much enjoyed
his life among them. The country, he said, was healthy, consisting of
great open plains, and he had no difficulty at all in supplying his
factory with food. In short, he believed that we should reach the Kasai
with few difficulties, and little if any danger.
These opinions, however, were not shared by one or two men of
considerable experience; they asserted that it would be madness to
attempt the passage of the unknown country between the Loange and the
Kasai without an armed escort consisting of natives well used to the
service of the white man, and a very considerable number of porters to
be recruited preferably from among the people from the upper Kasai or
Sankuru. Such men, they said, could easily be found, many of them would
be accustomed to the use of muzzle-loading guns, and therefore would be
able to handle our Albini rifles, in case of attack, more effectually
than the primitive people of the Kwilu; and finally, as they would be
working at a great distance from their homes, they would be unlikely
to desert for fear of the surrounding tribes with whom they would have
nothing in common. The men who put forward these arguments had some of
them resided upon the upper Kasai in the country of the warlike Zappo
Zap or of the Bena Lulua, who though under-sized, weakly-looking people,
are noted for their courage. Good men selected from one of these two
tribes might very likely have formed a useful escort in the event of any
hostilities, but it is more than probable that their domineering ways
would have caused us considerable difficulty when travelling among the
people of the Kwilu; and of course it was most important for us to gain
the friendship of the local natives wherever we went. Besides this, it
would have been impossible to get such picked men together, and had we
decided to take with us an escort and porters of the people of the Kasai,
we should have had to be content with the sweepings of the Baluba workmen
whose demerits I have discussed before.
Torday, from his previous wanderings among them, knew well the people
of Kwilu; he liked them, and, which is more important, those he had met
liked him. He was, therefore, sure of being able to get as many men as
he wanted from villages which he had previously known. In reply to the
statement that the Kwilu country was dangerous, more white men having
been killed there than in any other part of the Kasai district, he
pointed out that as often as not the cause of the trouble had been the
white man’s Baluba followers, and that in such fighting as had occurred
in the Kwilu the Baluba had almost invariably run away, leaving their
master to be defended by the local natives. In one instance a factory had
been attacked and the Baluba had bolted, when a number of local Bayanzi
workmen employed in the post had repulsed the attack, armed with nothing
but their machettes or long knives. No one, I think, casts a slur upon
the courage of the natives of the Kwilu. In addition to being brave,
Torday knew them to be just as quiet and friendly when staying in the
villages of another tribe as the Baluba are domineering and offensive,
therefore he decided to be accompanied only by natives of the Kwilu.
We did not succeed, at this time, in convincing the supporters of the
Baluba. “You will never get across without an escort from the Kasai,”
they said. “We shall certainly have trouble if we take any Baluba,” was
the reply. Another of our plans was regarded as foolish in the extreme
by the pessimists. Our ten Albini rifles, which up to this moment had
remained in the packing in which they had come from Europe, and which
had never accompanied us upon our journeys, were packed with the ninety
rounds of ammunition, which was all we had, in two stout wooden cases,
each forming a load for two men. It was considered that the weapons would
not be sufficiently get-at-able in case of need, but we were convinced
that the need for them would be far less likely to arise if the natives
did not know that we were travelling through their country more or less
equipped for war, and until almost the end of our journey even our own
men, who daily carried the boxes, had no idea what they contained. The
plans we ultimately formed for our journey were briefly as follows: We
were to ascend the Kwilu River as far as a village named M’Bei on the
right bank, not far from the spot where the Inzia flows into the Kwilu;
from here we were to proceed up the Kwilu to Kikwit, leaving a message
at the Kasai Company’s factory of Luano (about half-way to Kikwit) that
Torday would be requiring a few men to accompany him upon our journey.
Torday knew well the natives in the vicinity of Luano, and he was
convinced that should they become aware that we were waiting at Kikwit
for porters, a large number of them (many more than we should require)
would immediately volunteer for service, and go up to Kikwit to join us
next time the Company’s steamer passed.
At Kikwit Torday would be able to renew his acquaintance with the
southern Bambala people, among whom he had previously spent a
considerable time, and, as soon as the men from Luano joined us, we were
to go on to the factory of Athenes to the south-south-east, near the
head waters of the Kancha River. In the country round Athenes we should
have an opportunity of studying the Babunda tribe and the neighbouring
Bapinji, and we might get some information about the Hungarian explorer,
Magyar, who lost his life about fifty years ago in the country of the
Babunda, and possibly recover some of his records. From Athenes we were
to proceed either to Kandale, as had been suggested by M. Gentil, or to
the factory of Dumba upon the Lubue River, from either of which places
we could commence our final journey towards the Kasai. With this end in
view we sent on a good supply of provisions to Dumba, where we could pick
them up, or whence they could readily be sent to Kandale. The number of
permanent porters who were to be recruited at Luano was not to exceed
twenty-five. Considering that we had a large number of provisions and a
good deal of impedimenta in the way of camp equipment, trade goods, &c.,
to carry with us, this number may seem ridiculously small, but as we knew
we were attempting to enter a country of very suspicious and probably
hostile people, we knew that it would be useless to try to penetrate that
country with a large following of men, as any such attempt would only
be regarded by the natives as a warlike invasion of their territory;
therefore we decided to take just sufficient men to carry the bare
necessities of life in case we were forced to retreat hurriedly from the
country, and to rely entirely upon establishing such friendly relations
with the natives as to enable us to obtain local porters to carry us
from village to village. Of personal servants we had but two, our cook
Luchima, who was at this time in a very poor state of health, and my boy
Sam. Among the Bambala people we intended to obtain another boy or two,
of whom or of whose parents Torday had known something in the past.
We were to start from Dima on the 24th January on board the Company’s
steamer _St. Antoine_, and had slept the night of the 23rd on board. On
the afternoon of the 23rd, however, a Government steamer descending the
Kasai had landed a passenger suffering from a bad attack of black-water
fever, to be looked after by the Company’s doctor resident at Dima. In
the night he died, and early next morning the _St. Antoine_ was sent to
fetch the Jesuit missionary from Wombali to perform the burial service.
The funeral took place at two o’clock in the afternoon; the coffin,
carried by a number of retired soldiers now working at Dima and preceded
by a bugler, was borne to the little cemetery just outside the post. The
priest was accompanied by diminutive black acolytes clothed in red, their
ebony faces gleaming as the result of an unwonted application of soap.
The service was short, and at the conclusion of it Colonel Chaltin, who
acted as chief mourner, made a brief speech. The unfortunate officer had
been landed at Dima in an absolutely hopeless condition, and had died
without any one he knew beside him. Next morning, however, when viewing
the body, one of the Company’s agents resident in Dima recognised the
face of a schoolfellow. As soon as possible after the ceremony we boarded
the steamer, accompanied by the priest, and started off for Wombali. At
its mouth, where it is some five hundred yards wide, the Kwango flows
through low lying country, its right bank bordered by papyrus swamps and
marshes which stretch away eastwards to the forest. The left bank is
slightly less swampy than the right, and upon this shore, some two miles
from the mouth, is situated the Jesuit mission of Wombali. As it was
already late the steamer was to stop for the night at the mission, and
the priest in charge, Father Van Tilborg, asked the captain and ourselves
to dine with him on shore. As soon as the ship was made fast Torday and
I went ashore with the priest, taking with us our shot guns in the hope
of coming across some duck, which are numerous in the neighbourhood.
Accompanied by one of the lay brothers, a farmer who superintended the
plantations at Wombali and instructed the natives of the mission in
agriculture, we proceeded about a mile inland to some damp low-lying
fields whither the duck return every evening from the sandbanks of the
river. We saw a fair number of ducks, but they, perceiving us, did not
give us a chance to shoot, and having secured a francolin or two we
returned to the mission just as the sun was setting. The house in which
the missionaries lived at the time of our visit was an old one made of
plaster, but a new house of brick was in course of construction under the
guidance of the other lay brother, who had been educated as a builder. A
neat brick chapel has already been erected. As the native population of
Wombali is by no means dense, the missionaries have extended the field
of their labours some distance up the Kwilu and Inzia rivers, at various
places on the shores of which they have established _fermes chapelles_,
each one looked after by a Christian native who has been educated by the
Jesuit missionaries. In these _fermes chapelles_ the younger children
receive their earliest instructions at the hands of the catechist, and
when they have learnt as much as he can teach them they are passed on to
Wombali to complete their education. The missionaries possess a small
steamer, by means of which Father Van Tilborg and his two subordinates
frequently visit these detached posts. The whole of the Jesuit missionary
enterprise in this region is, I understand, under the control of the
Jesuit headquarters of Kisantu, on the railway between Stanley Pool and
the coast. After an excellent dinner the conversation turned upon our
proposed shooting trip, and after admiring one or two fine buffalo skulls
hanging up on the verandah, we asked the missionaries for any information
they could give us with regard to the haunts of the buffalo, elephants,
and other animals that we should be likely to meet with. Upon hearing
that we intended to stay at M’Bei, the farmer informed us that he had
heard that game was plentiful there, but that he knew from personal
experience that buffalo were to be met with in large numbers near the
_ferme chapelle_ of Pana, some few miles higher up the Kwilu; here, too,
he informed us, elephants are frequently to be seen, and such small
antelopes as exist in this part of Africa are also to be found in fair
numbers. Father Van Tilborg kindly asked us to make what use we liked of
the _ferme chapelle_, and to request the catechist and the children there
to show us the haunts of the game, which he was confident they would be
well able to do. We determined, therefore, to stop at M’Bei on the morrow
and try our luck, and to proceed to Pana by the next steamer should we
not be enjoying sufficient sport at M’Bei.
The Kwango, up to the point where it is joined by its tributary the
Kwilu, maintains a width of about six hundred yards, flowing through
level plains, often swampy in the immediate vicinity of the river. The
trade upon the Kwango River itself, which does not fall within the
concession of the Kasai Company, is carried on by the Credit Commercial
Company, which has one factory on the right bank but a short distance
above Wombali. Up to its confluence with the Inzia the Kwilu is but
little narrower than the Kwango. It flows through a country consisting
of great grassy plains, interspersed with a fair amount of woodland,
very much resembling, in the distance, a view over an English woodland
country, the woods in no case being sufficiently continuous to be
dignified with the name of forest. For many miles up the river from its
mouth the banks are not even fringed with trees, and higher up still,
even near to its tributary the Kwengo, frequent gaps in the narrow forest
belt enable one to see from the deck of a steamer the real open nature of
the country. A recent traveller has described the basin of the Kwilu as
one great virgin forest. A greater mistake could not possibly be made.
In no case does the forest belt exceed a width of about twenty-five
miles, and it is rarely more than a mile or two from the water’s edge
to the plains. In many maps this river is marked “Kwilu,” or “Djuma”;
but although Torday during his previous journeys in this district has
constantly inquired of the natives what they call the river, and during
our sojourn there we many times repeated the question, no native with
whom we came into contact had ever heard of the second name. Many people,
however, called it “Kilu.”
We left Wombali early in the morning, and turning up the mouth of the
Kwilu we proceeded on our way to M’Bei. There are a considerable number
of sandbanks, with their usual complement of crocodiles and aquatic
birds, and wooded islands in this part of the river, and in the stiller
water among these small herds of hippopotami were to be seen lying almost
submerged, waiting till the cool of the evening should tempt them to
their feeding grounds upon the banks. Although we rarely saw a village
there were plenty of signs of human life, groups of canoes moored by
the bank, fish traps and spear traps for hippopotami were numerous, and
here and there small quantities of wood chopped up into lengths suitable
for burning on the steamer stood in conspicuous places where they would
catch the captain’s eye. As a rule there would be no natives watching
over these; the people in this part of the world are quite content to cut
wood and leave it there for the captain of the passing steamer to take,
trusting him to leave the payment for it upon the spot. In this way the
Kwilu steamers have often habitually taken fuel at certain spots without
ever seeing the people who supply it. The captains, of course, must have
been scrupulously honest in paying for what they took or the natives
would discontinue the supply. As a rule, wood is obtained at the _fermes
chapelle_ of the Jesuit mission. I believe that the Company has made an
agreement with the missionaries to take their wood in preference to any
other, for the priests realise that the children in their outposts have
very little to do to keep their plantations in order, and are accordingly
glad for them to have the occupation of felling and chopping up the wood.
Our captain did not know exactly where the village of M’Bei was situated,
but one of the helmsmen, who was a native of the country, undertook to
find the spot. On our arrival, however, we found that the right bank
of the river, upon which the village was situated, was unapproachable
owing to the shallow water; we therefore took the advice given us at
Wombali and continued our journey, stopping next day at Pana. We passed
the night alongside a low-lying plain on the right bank, in the midst of
which was situated a small village of the Bayanzi; this we visited, and
made inquiries as to the game in the country. Buffalo, we were told, were
very numerous here, and elephants frequently visited the plain in which
the village stood; indeed, we ourselves saw their tracks. The natives
here were confident that we could not do better than proceed to Pana,
where they said we should find abundance of game. The following afternoon
we passed the mouth of the Inzia. Upon this river are situated several
factories belonging to the Kasai Company, and a good deal of rubber and
ivory is exported from it. Although the stream is narrow, only some
one hundred and fifty yards wide at the mouth, there is at all times
of the year a sufficient depth of water to admit of the passage of a
small steamer. The banks of the Kwilu just above the Inzia rise abruptly
from the water to a height of some fifty feet, and a few miles above
the confluence, on the right shore of the Kwilu, stands the Government
post of Pana. Until quite recently no troops had been stationed in this
district, but several of its agents having been murdered, the Kasai
Company prevailed upon the Government to establish a garrison there,
paying, I understand, a large amount yearly for this protection, which
one would have thought it was the duty of the Government to supply,
especially when one considers the vast amount paid annually by the
Company in taxes, export duties, &c. At the time we passed both the
commandant in command of the station and his subordinate, a white N.C.O.,
were absent upon a long journey to the south, so we did not go ashore,
but continued our journey for about a mile to the _ferme chapelle_ of
Pana, which lies on the opposite shore. The place consists of a group
of plaster huts forming three sides of a square situated upon the bank,
which here rises to a height of some twenty-five feet above the water.
At the sound of the steamer’s whistle all the inhabitants, from the
catechist and his wife down to the youngest child, aged probably about
three, hurried down to the water’s edge. Visitors are rare at Pana; in
fact, I very much doubt if any one except the missionaries have ever
slept there before: accordingly the removal of our belongings from the
steamer occasioned no little excitement among the children. The catechist
hastened forward to greet us; he was attired in a pair of white duck
trousers, a frock coat, and a grey felt hat; he was polite, rather too
polite, and, although his appearance suggested the utmost respectability,
we did not anticipate that we should obtain much sport through any
assistance of his. He had a smugness of manner which led us to imagine
at once that here was one of those natives who, in becoming a Christian,
had forgotten that he was primarily a man, and we felt that this was the
last person in the world with whom one could wish to hunt dangerous game.
Subsequent events, however, proved to us how false the hastily-formed
opinion was.
The _ferme chapelle_ at Pana consists of a plaster building used both
as a schoolroom and a chapel, and, with one or two small huts, forms
one side of the post. Opposite to this is situated the house of the
catechist, while between the two, lying some fifty yards back from the
bank, is a row of huts inhabited by the children resident at the mission;
there are one or two other houses for the children lying just outside the
three sides of a rectangle thus formed. The catechist, who rejoices in
the name of Louis, and his wife Marie are in command of the post, sharing
the labours of teaching, and superintending the cultivation of crops and
instructing the very small children, some of whom cannot exceed three
years of age, in the rudiments of cooking and other household duties.
There are not many children actually resident in the mission—at the
outside they cannot exceed twenty—but there are a fair number of Bayanzi
villages scattered about in the neighbourhood, from which the children
arrive early in the morning, returning home at sunset. Short services
are held two or three times a day, the congregation being summoned by
the beating of an old tin, for the _ferme chapelle_ of Pana cannot yet
boast of a bell. After the early morning service the children receive
instruction in the principles of the Roman Catholic faith, while a
few of the elder ones, who have commenced learning to read and write,
spend some time sitting about with pencil and paper copying down the
alphabet and short sentences from a very elementary “reader,” their
work being overlooked by Louis when his class teaching is at an end.
In the afternoon all the children work in the fields, or, if a steamer
is expected, fell and cut up timber ready for fuel. Louis appeared to
us to fulfil his task remarkably well. I do not know exactly what his
qualifications as a teacher were, but he certainly kept his post neat and
tidy and maintained perfect order amongst his pupils, to whom I think he
was greatly attached, and who certainly seemed devoted to him.
[Illustration: A CHILD FROM THE MISSION AT PANA.]
[Illustration: BOS CAFFER SIMPSONI: A COW.]
We had brought with us from Dima a native, who had been employed there
as a buffalo hunter, to act as tracker and gun-bearer. With this man,
and a child or two from the mission, I went out on the evening of our
arrival to have a look round for tracks of buffalo, which were said to
come close up to the post after nightfall, and, sure enough, within
five hundred yards of the houses we came upon the spoor of a herd of
some half-dozen of these beasts which clearly showed that they had been
feeding upon the borders of the plantation. Indeed, Louis had found it
necessary to have a rough fence erected beside his fields to keep the
animals out. Next morning, accompanied by the tracker and two boys of
about twelve and fourteen years of age, I attempted to work up to this
herd as they wallowed in the forest swamp close by the river bank, half
a mile or so below the post. The amount of water in the swamp, and
frequent slipping about upon submerged sticks as we followed the path
by which the buffaloes had gone, caused us to make so much noise as to
disturb the animals before I could get a shot, and I returned to Pana
unsuccessful. One thing, however, about this preliminary effort was
satisfactory. I had found out that, although the tracker from Dima was
undoubtedly good at his job, the two mission children were in no way
his inferiors at finding out and following up tracks, and that, despite
their youth, they had not the slightest hesitation in entering the thick
cover where the beasts were known to be, in addition to which, of course,
they possessed an excellent knowledge of the country round, and were
evidently as keen as I was upon the business. When I returned I found
that Louis had suggested to Torday that that evening we might try for
a shot near the post by moonlight, for the moon was now full. This we
decided to do, and one or two children were posted in the plantations to
listen for the approach of the beasts. Just as we had finished dinner,
the catechist came to say that the animals had been heard. When we turned
to look at him our surprise was great. The white trousers, frock coat
and grey felt hat had disappeared; the smug schoolmaster, to whom we had
taken an instinctive dislike on the previous day, was transformed into a
native hunter, who, clad only in a very scanty loin cloth and grasping
a light spear, was eagerly beckoning us to follow him. We started off
at once, but although we were able to get quite close to the animals we
could never see them. The catechist proved himself to be an excellent
stalker, as were also the one or two children who accompanied him. We
learned subsequently that this man would frequently chase the buffaloes
out of the plantations at night, and that on one occasion during the
dry season when some elephants had threatened his crops he and a few
of his elder pupils had succeeded in driving them away. On one or two
occasions he accompanied us to look for buffalo by night, and I am sure
that he would have taken part in our shooting expeditions by daylight
to the detriment of his children’s studies, had he not been laid up with
a bad attack of fever during the greater part of our stay at Pana. These
evenings spent with him in the bush completely altered the opinion we had
at first formed of the man. We never succeeded in obtaining a beast from
the herd which fed so close to the mission; the passage of the children
to and from the villages at sunrise and sunset prevented their leaving
the forest during the hours of daylight, but with the buffaloes further
to the west we were more fortunate.
[Illustration: AN INCIDENT AT PANA.]
[Illustration: BOS CAFFER SIMPSONI: OUR BEST BULL.]
The country between the Kwilu and the Inzia at this point consists of
gently undulating grassy plains, entirely devoid of bushes, in which are
situated many pools and swamps where buffalo drink and linger long after
sunrise to crop the sweet grass. There is also a good deal of woodland
such as I have described before, consisting rather of small dense covers
than of continuous forest, parts of which are usually swampy, and here
the beasts wallow in the shade during the fierce midday heat. The soil
of the plains is sandy and the grass is rarely very thick, resembling a
thin English crop of hay about five feet high. We usually had to go some
distance towards the Inzia before we found our buffalo, the likely spots
being shown to us by children from the mission. There is another _ferme
chapelle_ on the Inzia, about five hours’ march from Pana, and as the
children from Pana frequently visit it, they had often seen buffalo on
the way and were consequently able to take us to their favourite feeding
grounds. I do not think that we ever went out with these children without
finding a beast of some sort. We saw buffaloes in herds numbering from
three to fifteen heads, and have counted as many as twenty-seven in one
day. To find them, however, one must leave Pana long before daylight,
or the increasing heat of the sun will have driven them into the forest
swamps before one reaches the pastures. I think that the buffalo in this
part of the world are larger than those I had come into contact with near
the Mushenge and those whose tracks I saw in the equatorial forest. They
also seem to me to be considerably darker than those around the Mushenge.
This applies not only to the aged bulls, some of which are almost black,
but also to the adult cows, which are of a dark chocolate-brown colour
all over. Quite half the animals in any given herd on the Kwilu would be
as dark or darker than the bull I have seen east of the Kasai. The horns,
too, of both bulls and cows appear to be larger, as a rule, than the
specimens I had previously seen. We secured some really fine specimens
of both male and female of the buffaloes around Pana, and Mr. Lyddekker,
to whom we submitted them, has found that they represent a species of
small buffalo hitherto unknown to science, which he has described under
the name of _bos caffer simpsoni_. A mounted head of a female, the sex
which displays the most marked difference in colouring from the buffaloes
around the Mushenge, is now exhibited in the Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road. As I have already remarked in Chapter V., I cannot help
thinking that there must at least be three species of buffalo in the
parts of the Kasai district we visited: the buffalo of the Kwilu, that
of the Mushenge, and the small animals of the southern portion of the
equatorial forest. Whether or not the buffaloes I shot during my trip
from the Mushenge are really of the _bos caffer nanus_ variety I am not
in a position to state, for their head skins were unfortunately spoilt
by the climate, but I know that the males of that district are darker
in colour than the mounted specimen of _nanus_ from Nigeria exhibited
in the Natural History Museum, whereas the females appear to be of
about the same colour but rather larger than the female there shown.
Possibly, therefore, the buffaloes from the country around the Mushenge
may constitute a different species, as may those of the great forest.
I have no right to advance any theory with regard to these latter for,
as I have said, I never set eyes on one of them; but to judge by their
tracks they appear to be smaller than either of the buffaloes I shot.
I was told by a Belgian gentleman who has done a good deal of shooting
that two kinds of buffalo exist near Kanda-Kanda, where, I suppose, the
dwarf buffalo may be merging into the well-known “Cape” species, but I
saw no horns from this part of Africa. Although the buffalo from the
Kwilu lacks the enormous strength of his cousin the Cape buffalo, he
is nevertheless very tenacious of life, and when wounded is capable of
making a most vicious and determined charge. Although I used a powerful
rifle I, on one occasion, only just managed to stop the rush of an animal
which had previously received two bullets so placed that the wounds that
they inflicted must have proved fatal in a few moments. Torday also had
an experience with one which might have ended in an accident. We had been
trying to secure a couple of animals for the steamer, which was expected
that evening, to carry on to Dima. We came across a herd, and singling
out the biggest beast I fired at him with my Express; on being struck,
the animal turned off into a very small but dense cover, the rest of the
herd making off across the plain. When we reached the edge of the little
wood in which the wounded animal was, we could hear the beast giving
vent to those moaning sounds which a buffalo frequently makes when at
the point of death, and which, I think, must always make the sportsman
half regret that he had not stayed his hand. Concluding that it would
be only a few minutes before the end came, Torday whispered to me to
hurry on after the herd with one child from the mission in the hope of
securing a second beast, while he waited with another child until the
animal was dead. Accordingly I followed the animals across the plain, but
being unable to come up with them I returned to Torday, who had waited
outside the wood until the moaning had ceased, and then, concluding that
the animal was dead, he had gone round to the other side of the cover to
take a look at it. He was armed with his 256 Mannlicher, for which he had
but two cartridges left. Now if one attempts to load a Mannlicher with
a clip containing but two cartridges there is often a chance that the
action of the rifle will jam after the first shot has been fired when
endeavouring to insert the second cartridge into the chamber, therefore
Torday loaded one cartridge by hand and gave the second one to the small
boy who accompanied him, telling him to follow closely on his heels, and
thrust the cartridge into his hand should he have to fire a shot and
reach back for it. All was silent as he entered the wood. Going on a few
yards he made out the form of the buffalo lying down; he was not sure
if it was dead, so he fired at it in the hope of finishing it off; on
being struck the animal slowly rose to its feet and turned to face him.
It was but a very few yards distant; Torday put his hand back for the
spare cartridge, and the little Bayanzi handed it to him as coolly as if
there were no dangerous beasts within twenty miles of him. With this shot
Torday finished off the buffalo. This is but one example out of many that
came to our notice of the great courage and coolness which the mission
children displayed in hunting the buffalo with us. If it requires nerve
to follow the wounded animals into the dense forest when armed with a
good rifle, I always think that it must require at least twice as much to
go in armed with nothing at all, relying solely on another man’s accuracy
of aim. I will not weary the reader with the details of our daily hunting
experiences; suffice it to say that we kept ourselves and the mission
children supplied with fresh meat, and secured some excellent heads of
buffalo. We were also able to add duiker and a reed buck (which are by
no means common here) to our bag, while in the evenings, if we cared to
take a stroll for an hour or so round the post, we could provide for our
supper with francolins or guinea-fowls. We were at Pana during the rainy
season, and, as at this time there is a great deal of water in the woods
inland, elephants do not, as a rule, find it necessary to come down to
the Kwilu to drink; in the dry season, however, when their favourite
swamps have dried up, the animals are often to be seen quite close to
the _ferme chapelle_. We stayed nearly three weeks at Pana, spending the
whole of our time in hunting, and then prepared to go on up river when
the steamer should pass our camp on its way to Kikwit.
[Illustration: CUTTING UP A BUFFALO AT PANA.]
[Illustration: A HIPPOPOTAMUS FROM THE KWILU.]
Upon the arrival of the _St. Antoine_ we left the little mission after
spending there perhaps the pleasantest time we enjoyed during the whole
of our journey, and proceeded up the Kwilu to Luano, among the natives
from which neighbourhood Torday intended to recruit our porters. The
northern Bambala from the country around Luano are born farmers, and it
is mainly from their extensive plantations that the large quantity of
food-stuffs required at Dima is brought down the river every ten days
on board the _St. Antoine_. They are cannibals, but unlike the fierce
and treacherous Bankutu of the great forest, whose terrible man-eating
propensities I have already described, they only partake of human
flesh at rare intervals upon the occasion of some ceremony, and they
never deliberately hunt men to serve as food. As my narrative of our
wanderings in the unknown country will show, these Bambala are as quiet
and peaceable a people as one could wish for to accompany one upon a
journey in the course of which it is absolutely necessary to maintain
friendly relations with the natives through whose villages one passes.
A youth came up to Torday as soon as we landed at Luano and inquired if
it was true that he was undertaking a journey and would be requiring
porters, and upon Torday replying in the affirmative he at once announced
his intention of accompanying us. Torday refused his services, for he
considered that the lad was not sufficiently strong for the work which
lay before us, and we saw no more of him that evening. Next morning,
however, after our steamer had started we found him seated with the
crew, having firmly determined to accompany us whether we liked it or
not. After this we could not very well send him back, so we enlisted
this lad, Moamba, as a member of our expedition. We had left a message
for the people around Luano that we should require about twenty men to
accompany us, and we had requested the Kasai Company’s agent to tell any
one who should volunteer for such service that they might come on by the
next steamer and join us at Kikwit, where we intended staying a few days
amongst their kinsmen the southern Bambala. Upon the third day after
leaving Luano we arrived at Kikwit; and here I was immediately struck by
the personal appearance of the natives, who are quite unlike any I have
previously seen. They cover themselves—hair, body and loin-cloth,—with a
reddish-coloured clay which, although it may seem disgusting to European
ideas of cleanliness, is so neatly and so regularly applied that one
soon ceases to regard the custom as dirty. They are particularly careful
about the dressing of their hair, which is rolled up into plaits caked
with clay running backwards from the forehead, in which they often fix
little brass-headed nails purchased from the white man. These plaits
hang like tails behind the neck, and it is by no means uncommon to see a
man wearing a skewer in one of them, so that it sticks out behind him at
right angles to his neck. These southern Bambala are extraordinarily vain
people, and upon several occasions Torday has had two of them come to him
to settle a dispute as to which of them was the better looking, a rather
difficult question to decide, for, had he shown any preference, the man
whose appearance had been thus insulted would have been mortally offended.
We did not do any serious ethnographical work among the Bambala, for
Torday had already made a detailed study of their manners and customs,
but we paid several visits to their beautiful villages, with their
rectangular grass-built huts dotted about under the shade of the
palm-trees, and I had ample opportunity of making the acquaintance of
many natives who came in to Kikwit to see Torday, who during his previous
stay in the country had evidently made himself extremely popular.
Literally hundreds of men turned up to talk to him, and I am in no way
exaggerating when I say that two or three whole villages offered to
escort us to the Kasai. This struck Torday as rather remarkable, for the
Bambala had always been averse to travelling, and it is perhaps a sign
that the arrival of the European has given the natives a desire to see
more of the world than they cared to do when in a more primitive state.
The Bambala are really good singers, and it is very striking to hear a
number of them singing, in harmony, a chant composed in honour of the
white man to whom it is sung. Whenever a party of porters arrives to
carry loads they always sing in this way, and their well-groomed persons,
their smiling countenances and their songs combine to make one think that
the Bambala must be a singularly happy and contented race. There are two
rather curious musical instruments in use among these people. One is a
nose flute. Ordinary wooden flutes played with the mouth are used by the
boys, but the girls perform upon a flute which is played by the nose.
Needless to say this latter flute does not produce much melody. The other
curious instrument, and one which is found among several of the peoples
visited, is the friction drum. This consists of a cylinder of wood
covered at one end with leather; through this leather is passed a stick
running through the wooden cylinder, so fastened that it can be moved an
inch or two, to and fro through the leather. Having heated the membrane
of the drum to draw it tight, the stick is vigorously rubbed with wet
leaves and it produces a weird growling noise which can be heard at a
great distance, and which has earned for the friction drum among some
tribes the title of the “village leopard.” Torday has placed specimens of
this instrument, collected in various localities, and also of the nose
flute in the British Museum.
[Illustration: A BAMBALA GIRL PLAYING A NOSE FLUTE.]
[Illustration: A BAMBALA BOY WITH AN ORDINARY FLUTE.]
Like their cousins from Luano the Bambala around Kikwit are very
peaceable and are chivalrous even in their methods of war. They have a
curious habit of holding a sort of tournament, a different affair to
serious warfare. Should two villages have a dispute a day and place is
appointed for a battle. The bush is cleared to give a fair and open
field, and the warriors of each side turn out to settle the matter in the
lists. Torday has witnessed some of these encounters. The proceedings
commence with a good deal of bombastic speech, and the champions of
either village hurl insults at the heads of their opponents. “Ah, you,
there, with the ugly face, I’ll give you something in a minute,” and
other similar remarks are bandied about. Then the arrows begin to fly
(at very long ranges) and the battle is in full swing. Very little damage
is done in these encounters. Occasionally one or more of the warriors
receive scratches, but it is very rare for any one to be seriously
hurt, and at the conclusion of the engagement, that is to say when the
combatants are weary, there is no ill-feeling between the opposing sides.
If a man should happen to be killed the affair becomes much more serious
and will perhaps develop into a serious war, in which the conflicting
armies will attack one another whenever they meet, and which will
certainly be stubbornly fought out with considerable losses on either
side.
The gentle, cheery, happy-go-lucky Bambala are the only people we met
with among whom such feats of arms as these tournaments take place.
Although a more friendly and pleasant people to deal with than the
Bambala it would be difficult to imagine, they have a besetting sin—that
of gambling. At all hours of the day groups of men may be seen squatting
on the ground in the village street playing a game more or less closely
resembling dice, in which small pieces of ivory are shaken up in a cup
and thrown. The stakes are often high, so high that a man will sometimes
lose not only the whole of his property and his wives but even his own
liberty, becoming the slave of the winner. It is a pity that this vice
should have such a hold upon the Bambala, who are in every other respect
a delightful, and, furthermore, a promising people; but gambling is
their curse, as hemp smoking is the curse of the Batetela. During the
few days we spent at Kikwit we engaged a few servants locally, and
enlisted some of the northern Bambala who came on by the steamer from
Luano to volunteer for service with us. As I shall have to say something
of our men and their behaviour during our journey from the Loange to the
Kasai, I may here give some description of the people who constituted our
party.
[Illustration: THE FRICTION-DRUM.]
[Illustration: BAMBALA GAMBLING.]
My little Baluba boy, Sam, had now become the major-domo of our servants,
and since the departure of Jones he had been the only native regularly
in our employ with the exception of our cook. Our cook, Luchima, who had
served us faithfully and well during the whole of our journey up to this
time, was taken so ill at Kikwit that it became apparent that he would
be quite unfit for the hard work of marching by day and attending to
his other duties in the evenings for many months to come. We therefore
determined that he should return by steamer to Dima, and thence be
conveyed to his home at Batempa, and arranged for another cook to be sent
on to us from Dima, where there are always large numbers of servants of
all kinds waiting to obtain employment. This man, Mabruki, was really
an Akela, but in his early youth he had been sold as a slave to the
Batetela, and to all intents and purposes belonged to this latter tribe.
He was by no means an ideal cook, and, unfortunately, his health broke
down just when we most needed every man that we could obtain. Torday
engaged as “boy” a very small member of the Bayanzi tribe, who could
not have been more than eight years old at the most. This child, Buya,
was to learn his duties from Sam, and he displayed an enthusiasm for
his work and an intelligence which showed that in time he would become
a most valuable servant; but at the time when he entered our employ
he was absolutely ignorant of the white man and his ways, and thereby
caused us sometimes no little amusement. He used to linger much longer
than was necessary in Torday’s tent every morning when making the bed,
and we discovered he used to spend many happy minutes in admiring his
countenance in Torday’s shaving-glass, an object the like of which he
had never seen before. I remember, too, that he was always getting lost
during our stay in Kikwit, for frequently when we sent him upon an
errand he would find something going on in the factory which amused or
interested him, and he would forget to come back after delivering his
message. All the same he was extremely useful and absolutely honest, the
only thing that we ever found him to steal being the dog’s dinner; for
although he had plenty to eat himself, being a Bayanzi, and therefore
gluttonous, he could not resist the temptation to purloin a piece of
meat. We also engaged another youth of about twelve years of age, named
Benga. This lad was rather a useless person, but he used to amuse us by
his frequent disputes with Buya. The Bayanzi tribe are cannibals; the
Bapende, to which Benga belonged, are not; and we once overheard the
following conversation on the subject of cannibalism. “You Bapende,”
scornfully remarked Buya, “you kill dogs to eat them.” “Well,” replied
Benga, “you Bayanzi can’t talk; you eat men.” This remark caused an
outburst of indignation on the part of the little cannibal. “It is all
very well to eat your enemies when you have killed them in battle—is not
that quite a natural thing to do?—but no decent person would think of
eating his friend. You Bapende think nothing of eating dogs, the greatest
friend of man.” Buya, I am afraid, was so disgusted at the idea of eating
dogs, that he flavoured his remarks about the Bapende tribe with a good
many expressions such as a European lad of his age might well be expected
not to know the use of. We engaged four of the southern Bambala from the
neighbourhood of Kikwit to accompany us as body-servants to carry our
guns when out shooting, and our cameras, water-bottles, &c. when on the
march. Torday had the greatest difficulty in preventing large numbers
of these people from joining our expedition, for, as I have said, whole
villages of them desired to go with us to the Kasai, so that when we
left Kikwit we had to start some few days earlier than the date upon
which we had told the local natives we should commence our journey. The
four men whom we took with us were extremely useful followers during the
months they were in our employ, and as I shall have occasion frequently
to refer to them, I must give their names. Mayuyu, a fine tall young man
of about twenty-two years old, habitually carried Torday’s gun. This man
was perhaps the most intelligent of our servants, and, as my narrative
will show, his popularity with the people in whose country we passed
through contributed largely to the success of our journey. Mokenye, my
own gun-bearer, though not so tall as Mayuyu, was a splendid specimen of
a man. Very powerfully built and possessed of great endurance, he never
seemed to feel fatigue, and his obliging and cheerful disposition made
him one of our most valuable servants. The other two were named Molele
and Moame. From among the northern Bambala of Luana we selected eighteen
men, all of whom Torday had previously known. These eighteen we hoped
would be just sufficient to carry the absolute necessities of life and
some of the objects we were going to collect for the Museum in case we
should be obliged to retreat hurriedly from the unknown country of the
Bakongo and Bashilele. We appointed one of these men, by name Kimbangala,
to act as headman or capita. The factory of Kikwit made an excellent
starting-point for a journey eastwards towards the Kasai. A steamer comes
up the Kwilu every ten days from Dima, and deposits at Kikwit the stores
and merchandise required for several other factories within a radius of
about five or six days’ journey. Between the Kwilu and the Loange rivers
are situated three factories belonging to the Kasai Company: Athenes (or
Alela, as it is called by the natives) lies in the country of the Babunda
tribe, near to the upper waters of the Kancha River; Dumba and Bienge
are factories situated upon the Lubue. Caravans are frequently sent
from Kikwit to each of these three factories. Our plan was to proceed
to Alela, where Torday could carry on the study of the Babunda people,
commenced years ago by his compatriot, the Hungarian Ladislaus Magyar,
and from thence we intended to proceed to Dumba, where we should find the
stores sent on from Dima, and where we hoped to obtain some information
concerning the Bakongo people which would enable us to definitely fix
upon some plan for crossing the Loange and entering their territory.
Both at Alela and at Dumba we could keep in touch with the outside
world by sending messengers to Kikwit. Before leaving the Kwilu we gave
an exhibition to a large number of Bambala of one of the clockwork
elephants which we had recently received from London. Torday had ordered
these toys partly in the hope that some chief would covet them so much
as to exchange curios for them which otherwise we should not be able to
obtain, and partly because he thought it quite likely that the natives,
who, of course, had never seen an automatic toy before, might attribute
magical powers to the elephants, which they would most probably regard as
the charm or fetish which watched over and protected us. The reception
which the elephant met with at Kikwit certainly showed us that we had
done well to have it sent out. The people were simply amazed at it. As
the little toy, only some eight inches in height, having secretly been
wound up in the seclusion of the tent, walked along the smooth top of a
provision-box waving its trunk, the natives shrank away from it, holding
their hands over their mouths and gasping with astonishment. Immediately
after seeing it several people desired to purchase it, but there was not
one man in the crowd who could be induced to touch it. Evidently the
Bambala believed that it was the most potent fetish they had ever seen.
We did not display the elephant to every one who came to see us in the
hope of getting a glimpse of it, for we were afraid that the awe which
it inspired might be lessened if we allowed it to become too common a
spectacle. We therefore showed it only upon one or two occasions, and
made a great favour of letting it walk at all. We were now confident
that we had a powerful ally in the elephant, which might very likely
prove more useful in the event of trouble with the natives than the ten
military rifles which had not been unpacked during the earlier part of
our journey, and which we now left at Kikwit to be forwarded to us at
Dumba should we send for them.
[Illustration: A BABUNDA HUT.]
[Illustration: BABUNDA PORTERS ENTERING ATHENES.]
When we crossed the Kwilu and started off towards Alela our way lay for
some miles in a southerly direction almost parallel to the river, and
accordingly we marched for a considerable distance through the forest
which borders the stream, but which is really only about ten miles in
width opposite to Kikwit, and gives place to a very hilly grass country,
plentifully studded with trees. We passed through several villages
occupied by Bambala, in one or two of which we exhibited the “elephant,”
always producing the greatest astonishment among the natives; but the
territory of the Babunda begins at no great distance from the Kwilu, and
after two very easy stages we arrived in their country. There we found
villages very different from any that we had yet visited. Instead of
building their huts in a group, the Babunda live in the midst of their
plantations, and accordingly the villages cover a great many acres of
ground, some even extending to a couple of miles in length. They are
usually situated in a valley, and seen from a distance nestling at the
foot of grassy slopes, which are here quite devoid of trees, they almost
remind one of a village of the Sussex Downs. The huts themselves, dotted
about with their fowl-houses and granaries in the millet fields, are
square, and they have their doors so high above the ground that a little
platform is built outside the entrance, by means of which the occupants
can climb into the hut, and upon which the people sit and smoke their
pipes in the evenings. The Babunda have enormous plantations, so that
food is easily and cheaply obtainable in the country. We were welcomed
cordially in every village, crowds of people meeting us on the road and
accompanying us to our camping ground, singing in low and quite musical
voices, for, like the neighbouring Bambala, the Babunda sing very well
indeed. On our way we passed through two villages, between which a state
of war existed, and we spent a night in one of them. One might have
expected that one would find excitement raging in these villages, and to
find some evidence of recent fighting. As a matter of fact, we noticed
very little out of the common taking place in either village; all the
men carried bows, but that is usual with the Babunda, so that it need
not indicate that any hostilities were contemplated. When we arrived at
the second of the two villages the chief welcomed us and conducted us
to a shed beneath which we could rest, and then asked us to excuse him
from entertaining us, as he was extremely busy making arrangements for
a war! The last thing that he appeared to be preparing for was a breach
of the peace. He seemed to be going round collecting quantities of the
salt, neatly wrapped up in banana leaves, which is used so largely
as currency in this district, and handing them over to a woman. We
discovered, upon questioning the natives, that a man of this place had
been killed in quarrel by a native from the neighbouring village through
which we had passed. As is usual in such cases, no immediate attempt at
reprisals had been made, but the chief of the murdered man’s village
had demanded the payment of a heavy indemnity for the slaying of his
subject, threatening, in case the damage should not be forthcoming, to
declare war. The sum demanded had not been paid, and accordingly the
chief in whose village we were staying was obliged himself to pay damages
to the relatives of the murdered man, and had told his warriors to hold
themselves in readiness to commence hostilities with the offending
village. At the time of our arrival the dead man had not been buried, and
a number of women were singing a funeral dirge around the hut in which
the body was laid. During the evening and the night which followed we
observed no posting of sentries or any other similar indication that a
state of war existed, and we subsequently learned that the affair had
been settled by the ultimate payment of the indemnity by the village of
the murderer. Little inter-village disputes such as these are of frequent
occurrence, but they rarely lead to serious fighting, and any casual
traveller passing through the belligerent villages might usually fail
to notice that anything extraordinary was going on. White men or their
servants are, as a rule, allowed to travel through districts where a
state of war exists without any molestation whatever, for the natives
are quite content to keep their differences to themselves, and strictly
respect the neutrality of the white man. Some days after we had passed
through this district, a new European agent of the Kasai Company followed
in our footsteps to commence his work at Alela. This young man had not
been long enough in Africa to learn anything of a native language, and
when his boy attempted to explain to him that there was trouble between
the two villages which I have mentioned, he failed to understand what
he was told. The boy thereupon resorted to signs, and, taking a bow, he
tried to explain to the white man that fighting was likely to take place;
the young man, however, imagined from his gesticulations that some attack
might be contemplated upon himself and his caravan. He therefore passed
an anxious and, I believe, a sleepless night, and fully believed when we
met him some days later that he had had a very fortunate escape from a
dangerous situation.
We arrived at Alela, which lies about seventy miles to the
south-south-east of Kikwit, upon the fifth day after crossing the Kwilu.
The country around the village is entirely devoid of trees, except for
a number of palms in the Babunda villages, and consists of a plateau
between the hilly country which we passed through after crossing the
Kwilu, and the even more hilly district to the eastwards through which
the river Lubue flows. In this part of the world there is practically no
game whatsoever; the elephants which are to be found near the Kwilu do
not forsake the woodlands which surround that river; buffaloes do not
exist between the Loange and the Kwilu, and antelopes, even the almost
ubiquitous duiker, are very rarely seen. The country therefore around
Alela is by no means a sportsman’s paradise. The Kasai Company’s factory,
Athenes, is situated only two or three hundred yards from the Babunda
village of Alela, and, the European agent having allowed us the use of
an empty building in which we could develop photographs, &c., we pitched
our camp in the factory, going over daily to the native village to carry
on our work among the people. The Babunda are a fine stalwart race of
men; they are the blackest of any of the negroes with whom we have come
in contact, and they do not cover their persons with any kind of dye.
The most remarkable thing about their appearance is the quantity of hair
which the men possess (the women cut their hair short), and the great
variety of ways in which they dress it. Sometimes it hangs in a great
plaited mass down the back of their necks, at others it is arranged in
tufts running backwards from the forehead suggestive of the comb of a
cock, but always it is dressed and oiled with the greatest care; many of
the young Babunda dandies make caps of palm cloth to fit their head-dress
in order that their hair may not become ruffled by the wind. Although we
were very well received by the Babunda, we found them extremely reticent
upon all matters connected with their tribal customs or beliefs, and they
were by no means so anxious to sell us objects for the Museum as we could
wish. Many of them offered to sell us rubber, and one man remarked that
if we would not buy rubber we were no friends of the people. The rubber
trade is carried on in this district in rather a peculiar manner. In most
other places the native, when he requires any of the commodities that
the white man sells, collects some rubber and takes it to a factory; but
among the Babunda, however, and their neighbours the Bapindji, rubber is
used as a currency, and a weekly market is held out in the open plains
to the west of Alela, where the natives exchange rubber for other goods
or food-stuffs among themselves. The rubber therefore is not, as a
rule, brought to the white man by the native who has collected it, and
the greatest care is taken by the people that the European should not
be allowed to attend one of these markets and so ascertain the price
at which it there changes hands. It would be extremely dangerous for
a white man to attempt to intrude at one of these gatherings, for the
Babunda are a warlike race, and they would be very likely to attack the
trader if they thought he was spying upon them in order to find out how
cheaply they sold the rubber among themselves. During a journey of a
week’s duration which we made to the west of Alela, we passed by one of
these markets. The crowds of people were scattered about in little groups
over an extensive area of the plain, but when we attempted to approach
them we were peremptorily told that we were not wanted. We were anxious,
of course, to avoid any dispute with the Babunda, with whom we were
endeavouring to become friendly, and we accordingly passed on without
appearing to take any notice of the market. We subsequently learned that
fighting between the members of the various villages is by no means rare
at these gatherings.
During our week’s journey to the west we visited a number of Babunda
villages, one of which, a very large one, had been the scene some few
years before of some trouble between the natives and a European. Owing
to some misunderstanding, which arose, I believe, from the fact that the
white man was accompanied by a large number of followers, the people
of this village, Mokulu, were under the impression that the traveller
intended to attack them, and accordingly they had commenced hostilities
by attacking him. The white man, although he had a number of rifles with
him, had to give way before the warlike Babunda; and although, I believe,
there were few, if any, casualties on either side, the Babunda were
certainly under the impression that they gained a glorious victory. The
chief, Mokulu, therefore possesses a very high idea of his own importance
and military strength. We visited this man in the hope that he would
use his influence, which was undoubtedly great, to induce the natives
to sell us a number of objects for the British Museum. When we arrived
in the village he welcomed us cordially, but very quickly broached the
subject of an exchange of presents, mentioning the fact that he was a
very important personage, and that he hoped we would remember this in
selecting the present we should give him in exchange for the goat and
chickens which he offered us. We gave him a pretty substantial present,
and then began to discuss the purchase of curios. Mokulu assured us that
there were many of the objects we required, such as carved wooden cups,
embroidered cloth, weapons, &c., in the village, and that if we would
give him a further present he would certainly be able to secure us a
great many of them. We therefore promised him a present, and he departed
into the village ostensibly with the purpose of requesting his subjects
to deal with us. Shortly afterwards he returned, but no one brought us
any curios for sale, and upon our inquiring if he had been unable to find
any, he simply laughed and said, “O yes; the objects are coming now,” and
left us. After this had happened three or four times he asked us to give
him a present in advance, and having received it he again returned to the
village, but came back empty-handed. Whenever we mentioned the subject
of curios to him, he simply laughed and looked at us with a twinkle in
his eye, and not one object could we buy in his village. The fact is
he had not the slightest intention of helping us in any way, and he
had certainly swindled us of the goods we had given him. As a rule, of
course, it is far wiser never to give a present to a chief until one is
quite certain what one will get in exchange for it, but in this case we
knew that if we did not treat Mokulu handsomely we should stand no chance
whatever of obtaining anything from him. We therefore speculated, and
lost; and I think that Mokulu was far more pleased at the knowledge that
he had cheated us than he was with the goods we had given him.
[Illustration: THE KWILU VALLEY AT BONDO.]
[Illustration: A VIEW FROM THE FACTORY OF ATHENES.]
After leaving Mokulu’s village we came once more to the banks of the
Kwilu where dwell the Bapindji tribe, and stayed at a village called
Bondo. The scenery here is remarkably fine; the Kwilu, which is at this
point not more than one hundred yards wide, rushes swiftly through a
cleft or ravine in the plateau about nine hundred feet in depth and a
mile and a half to two miles at the summit. The surrounding country
consists of grass land thickly studded with stunted trees, and only upon
the very banks of the river is there any woodland. Here, however, there
is a mass of luxuriant vegetation, and the stream rushes violently over a
rocky bed beneath the shade of numbers of palm-trees. Just at Bondo the
rocks practically put the course of the river into a series of rapids
or falls, the roar of which can be heard at some miles’ distance in
the calm of the tropical evening. We strolled down from the village to
photograph some of these falls in the company of one or two native lads.
When we reached the water’s edge these boys stepped into the river with,
as we thought, the object of washing their feet. Suddenly one of them
sprang into the stream with a cry, was caught by the rush of water, and
swept downwards towards some rocks at a terrific pace. The whole thing
happened in a moment, and we thought that the boy was drowned before
either of us had time to do anything; but when he neared the rocks the
current turned him towards the slack water near the banks, and with a few
powerful strokes he swam out of the stream into the still waters, and
thence calmly walked ashore. Seeing our look of astonishment at his safe
return, the lad merely laughed and remarked that if one knew the currents
one could always allow oneself to be swept downwards in the rapids with a
certainty of regaining the still waters a little lower down, and he told
us that the practice of this swimming feat was one of the pastimes of the
boys of Bondo. To show us that he was not exaggerating he went through
the performance two or three times, and I have never seen any feat which
it appeared must so certainly end in destruction, and yet which, the
native informed us, is in reality remarkably easy. Whether or not it is
easy the Bapindji must be distinctly fine swimmers to attempt it. The
chief of Bondo, which, by the way, is an extremely beautiful village
with its picturesque grass huts and their little granaries suspended
upon poles to keep the food-stuffs safe from the attacks of mice, was an
old and very decrepit man with a remarkably suspicious nature. He was
much impressed with the exhibition that we gave him of our fetish, the
walking elephant, and in the evening he came privately to us and offered
to buy it. He told us that owing to his infirmities he was unable to go
about his village as much as he should wish, and he had no doubt that
many things were said about him behind his back which he would like to
overhear, and which would not be said if he were able to go about more
among his subjects. If he possessed the elephant he could send it out
in the evenings to walk around the village, where it could spy upon his
people, and upon its return could report to him any plots against his
authority which might be hatched. As we possessed two of these elephants,
Torday thought it just possible there might at Bondo be some strange
fetish or other object which we had not yet seen, and which we should
like to secure for the British Museum. He therefore told the chief that
he might possibly be induced to part with the elephant if anything that
he specially desired was offered in exchange for it. The chief thereupon
commenced to offer us all manner of objects, none of which were of
sufficient interest to induce us to part with the toy, and finally he
said he would give us quite a large quantity of ivory or one or two
slaves in exchange for it. No doubt we should have been commercially the
gainers had we accepted the offer of the tusks, but we had not come to
Africa to trade in ivory, and we did not wish to compete with the Kasai
Company in this matter; so we decided not to sell the elephant at Bondo,
and it turned out lucky for us that we retained both the toys until we
reached the unknown country. The Bapindji, who in appearance closely
resemble the clay-covered Bambala, are, as a rule, a very peaceful
people, but not long before our visit they had played a joke upon a
trader who had, it appears, shown some nervousness in visiting them.
They had crowded round him in the village, and had commenced to touch
and examine his baggage, thinking that he was afraid of them because he
did not object to their doing so. They quickly passed on from touching
his clothing, and finally when the five armed men who accompanied him
had thrown down their rifles and fled, the natives proceeded to remove
his hat and pull his hair! After this they stole all his belongings and
ordered him out of the village. Two or three days later they returned
to him everything that they had stolen in perfect safety, for they had
only purloined the goods to frighten him, and had doubtless thoroughly
enjoyed what they regarded as an excellent joke. The natives of this part
of Africa are rather partial to practical jokes, sometimes of rather
a grim character. I have heard a story of a certain powerful chief,
Yongo, threatening two white men, whose followers had deserted them,
with instant death if they did not retire into a hut in his village and
remain there as his prisoners. All day long this hut was closely guarded
by armed warriors, but in the night when the travellers cautiously peered
from the doorway they discovered that all the guards had been removed,
leaving them free to escape, but that over the doorway was suspended
a human ham, left there, doubtless, to give them one more unpleasant
surprise before they made the escape which no one hindered them from
attempting.
Upon our return to Alela after our trip in the Bapindji country, we had
to wait for several days for the arrival of stores which we had left
at Kikwit, and during this time we did all the work we could among the
local Babunda, but owing to their extraordinary reticence, the results of
Torday’s researches among them are meagre compared with those obtained
among the Bushongo. Although almost every evening singing in the village
told us that some ceremony was in progress, we could see very little of
what was going on, and the only event of any particular interest which
we witnessed was a funeral. The body, wrapped from head to foot in palm
cloth, was laid out in a hut, around which the mourners were wailing and
playing small rattles, the men covered with a red dye and the women with
ashes. After some hours of weeping, in which a great number of persons
took part, the corpse was carried out of the village and buried in the
plains, where nothing but an old cooking-pot was left to mark the last
resting-place of the dead. While waiting at Alela we were able to form
some estimate of the skill which our followers possessed in the use of
bows and arrows. We invited a few Babunda who happened to be passing to
take part in a shooting contest, and the rivalry between the various
tribes of which our caravan contained representatives and the local
marksmen became extremely keen. We found that all our people, including
little Buya, were remarkably good shots, and the rapidity with which they
could loose off their arrows was extraordinary. We noticed that some
of the Babunda shot in a kneeling position, and that our four southern
Bambala possessed a curious method of defence, in which they used their
bows as shields. Torday had previously noticed this custom, and, taking
a blunt arrow, we put it to the test. My gun-bearer, Mokenye, gave us a
demonstration of it. We threw the arrow at him, and, as it approached,
with a sharp turn of the wrist he struck it aside with his bow, and so
skilful was he in warding off the missile that only once did we succeed
in getting an arrow through his guard. Of course this method of defence
would be by no means certain against an arrow which, having been shot at
a short range, was travelling at a great pace; but the Bambala assured
us that they could really be sure of defending themselves from arrows
which were moving less swiftly at the end of a long flight. The result
of our shooting competition was that we learned we could depend upon our
followers to at least hold their own with their national weapons should
we have the misfortune to be attacked by the Bakongo or Bashilele. Alela,
like the whole of the Kwilu region, is a comparatively healthy spot. In
this district there are few mosquitos (upon the shores of the Kwilu there
are practically none), and the tsetse fly appears to be so rare that we
often wondered whether the great plains around Alela could not be turned
into a pasturage for domestic cattle if the beasts could be brought into
the country without bringing the fly with them. In the whole of the
country we visited during our two years’ journey domestic cattle are not
to be found, with the exception of a few head imported by the white man
at Lusambo and Dima. Further to the south, however, near the Portuguese
frontier, the natives breed a certain number of these animals, and also
sheep. At the present moment the only domestic creatures which the
natives keep in those parts of the Kasai which we visited are chickens
and goats, although a few sheep, which have been imported from the south,
are here and there to be found. Although, owing to the lack of shade, the
sun at Alela can be very trying, there is often a cooling breeze sweeping
over the plateau which serves to temper the fierce heat, and at the time
we left Alela—that is to say, at the end of April 1909—rainstorms and
tornadoes were of frequent occurrence, the rainy season having continued,
so we were informed, rather later than usual.