THE GREAT CENTRAL AFRICAN FOREST.
Professor Drummond’s statements respecting Africa--Dimensions of
the great forest--Vegetation--Insect life--Description of the
trees, &c.--Tribes and their food--The primæval forest--The bush
proper--The clearings: wonders of vegetable life--The queer feeling
of loneliness--A forest tempest--Tropical vegetation along the
banks of the Aruwimi--Wasps’ nests--The forest typical of human
life--A few secrets of the woods--Game in the forest--Reasons why
we did not hunt the animals--Birds--The Simian tribe--Reptiles and
insects--The small bees and the beetles--The “jigger”--Night
disturbances by falling trees, &c.--The Chimpanzee--The rainiest
zone of the earth--The Ituri or Upper Aruwimi--The different tribes
and their languages--Their features and customs--Their
complexion--Conversation with some captives at Engweddé--The
Wambutti dwarfs: their dwellings and mode of living--The Batwa
dwarfs--Life in the forest villages--Two Egyptians captured by the
dwarfs at Fort Bodo--The poisons used for the arrows--Our treatment
for wounds by the arrows--The wild fruits of the forest--Domestic
animals--Ailments of the Madis and Zanzibaris--The Congo Railway
and the forest products.
[Sidenote: 1888.
Dec.
Forest.]
An English Professor, qualified to write F.R.S.E., F.G.S., after his
name, who is a talented writer, and gifted with first-class descriptive
powers, while confessing that he was but a “minor traveller, possessing
but few assets,” ventured upon the following bold statements respecting
Africa:--
“Cover the coast belt with rank yellow grass, dot here and there a palm,
scatter through it a few demoralised villages, and stock it with the
leopard, the hyena, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus; clothe the
mountainous plateaux next, both of them with endless forest, not grand
umbrageous forest, like the forests of South America, nor matted jungle
like the forests of India, but with thin, rather weak forest, with
forest of low trees, whose half-grown trunks and scanty leaves offer no
shade from the tropical sun,”--but you will find nothing in all these
trees to remind you that you are in the tropics. “Day after day you may
wander through these forests with nothing except the climate to remind
you where you are * * * * *.” “The fairy labyrinth of ferns and palms,
the festoons of climbing plants blocking the paths and scenting the
forests with their resplendent flowers, the gorgeous clouds of insects,
the gaily plumaged birds, the parraquets, the monkey swinging from his
trapeze in the shaded bowers--these are unknown to Africa.”
“Once a week you will see a palm; once in three months the monkeys will
cross your path; the flowers on the whole are few, the trees are poor,
and, to be honest”--but enough; if this is honest description, the
reader had better toss my books aside, for this chapter goes to prove
that I differ in toto with the learned Professor’s views respecting
tropical Africa.
We have travelled together thus far 1670 miles through the great central
African forest, and we can vouch that the above description by Professor
Drummond bears no more resemblance to tropical Africa than the tors of
Devon, or the moors of Yorkshire, or the downs of Dover represent the
smiling scenes of England, of leafy Warwickshire, the gardens of Kent,
and the glorious vales of the isle. Nyassaland is not Africa, but
itself. Neither can we call the wilderness of Masai Land, or the
scrub-covered deserts of Kalahari, or the rolling grass land of Usukuma,
or the thin forests of Unyamwezi, or, the ochreous acacia-covered area
of Ugogo, anything but sections of a continent that boasts many zones.
Africa is about three times greater than Europe in its extent, and is
infinitely more varied. You have the desert of deserts in the Sahara,
you have the steppes of Eastern Russia in Masai Land and parts of South
Africa, you have the Castilian uplands in Unyamwezi, you have the best
parts of France represented by Egypt, you have Switzerland in Ukonju and
Toro, the Alps in Ruwenzori--you have Brazil in the Congo basin, the
Amazon in the Congo River, and its immense forests rivalled by the
Central African forest which I am about to describe.
The greatest length of this forest, that is from near Kabambarré in
South Manyuema to Bagbomo on the Welle-Makua in West Niam-niam, is 621
miles; its average breadth is 517 miles, which makes a compact square
area of 321,057 square miles. This is exclusive of the forest areas
separated or penetrated into by campo-like reaches of grass land, or of
the broad belts of timber which fill the lower levels of each great
river basin like the Lumani, Lulungu, Welle-Mubangi, and the parent
river from Bolobo to the Loika River.
The Congo and the Aruwimi rivers enabled us to penetrate this vast area
of primeval woods a considerable length. I only mean to treat,
therefore, of that portion which extends from Yambuya in 25° 3½′ E. L.
to Indesura, 29° 59′ = 326½ English miles in a straight line.
Now let us look at this great forest, not for a scientific analysis of
its woods and productions, but to get a real idea of what it is like. It
covers such a vast area, it is so varied and yet so uniform in its
features, that it would require many books to treat of it properly. Nay,
if we regard it too closely, a legion of specialists would be needed. We
have no time to examine the buds and the flowers or the fruit, and the
many marvels of vegetation, or to regard the fine differences between
bark and leaf in the various towering trees around us, or to compare the
different exudations in the viscous or vitrified gums, or which drip in
milky tears or amber globules, or opaline pastils, or to observe the
industrious ants which ascend and descend up and down the tree shafts,
whose deep wrinkles of bark are as valleys and ridges to the insect
armies, or to wait for the furious struggle which will surely ensue
between them and yonder army of red ants. Nor at this time do we care to
probe into that mighty mass of dead tree, brown and porous as a sponge,
for already it is a mere semblance of a prostrate log. Within it is
alive with minute tribes. It would charm an entomologist. Put your ear
to it, and you hear a distinct murmurous hum. It is the stir and
movement of insect life in many forms, matchless in size, glorious in
colour, radiant in livery, rejoicing in their occupations, exultant in
their fierce but brief life, most insatiate of their kind, ravaging,
foraging, fighting, destroying, building, and swarming everywhere and
exploring everything. Lean but your hand on a tree, measure but your
length on the ground, seat yourself on a fallen branch, and you will
then understand what venom, fury, voracity, and activity breathes around
you. Open your notebook, the page attracts a dozen butterflies, a
honey-bee hovers over your hand; other forms of bees dash for your eyes;
a wasp buzzes in your ear, a huge hornet menaces your face, an army of
pismires come marching to your feet. Some are already crawling up, and
will presently be digging their scissor-like mandibles in your neck.
Woe! woe!
And yet it is all beautiful--but there must be no sitting or lying down
on this seething earth. It is not like your pine groves and your dainty
woods in England. It is a tropic world, and to enjoy it you must keep
slowly moving.
Imagine the whole of France and the Iberian peninsula closely packed
with trees varying from 20 to 180 feet high, whose crowns of foliage
interlace and prevent any view of sky and sun, and each tree from a few
inches to four feet in diameter. Then from tree to tree run cables from
two inches to fifteen inches in diameter, up and down in loops and
festoons and W’s and badly-formed M’s; fold them round the trees in
great tight coils, until they have run up the entire height, like
endless anacondas; let them flower and leaf luxuriantly, and mix up
above with the foliage of the trees to hide the sun, then from the
highest branches let fall the ends of the cables reaching near to the
ground by hundreds with frayed extremities, for these represent the air
roots of the Epiphytes; let slender cords hang down also in tassels
with open thread-work at the ends. Work others through and through these
as confusedly as possible, and pendent from branch to branch--with
absolute disregard of material, and at every fork and on every
horizontal branch plant cabbage-like lichens of the largest kind, and
broad spear-leaved plants--these would represent the elephant-eared
plant--and orchids and clusters of vegetable marvels, and a drapery of
delicate ferns which abound. Now cover tree, branch, twig, and creeper
with a thick moss like a green fur. Where the forest is compact as
described above, we may not do more than cover the ground closely with a
thick crop of phrynia, and amoma, and dwarf bush; but if the lightning,
as frequently happens, has severed the crown of a proud tree, and let in
the sunlight, or split a giant down to its roots, or scorched it dead,
or a tornado has been uprooting a few trees, then the race for air and
light has caused a multitude of baby trees to rush upward--crowded,
crushing, and treading upon and strangling one another, until the whole
is one impervious bush.
But the average forest is a mixture of these scenes. There will probably
be groups of fifty trees standing like columns of a cathedral, grey and
solemn in the twilight, and in the midst there will be a naked and gaunt
patriarch, bleached white, and around it will have grown a young
community, each young tree clambering upward to become heir to the area
of light and sunshine once occupied by the sire. The law of
primogeniture reigns here also.
There is also death from wounds, sickness, decay, hereditary disease and
old age, and various accidents thinning the forest, removing the unfit,
the weakly, the unadaptable, as among humanity. Let us suppose a tall
chief among the giants, like an insolent son of Anak. By a head he lifts
himself above his fellows--the monarch of all he surveys; but his pride
attracts the lightning, and he becomes shivered to the roots, he
topples, declines, and wounds half a dozen other trees in his fall. This
is why we see so many tumorous excrescences, great goitrous swellings,
and deformed trunks. The parasites again have frequently been outlived
by the trees they had half strangled, and the deep marks of their
forceful pressure may be traced up to the forks. Some have sickened by
intense rivalry of other kinds, and have perished at an immature age;
some have grown with a deep crook in their stems, by a prostrate log
which had fallen and pressed them obliquely. Some have been injured by
branches, fallen during a storm, and dwarfed untimely. Some have been
gnawed by rodents, or have been sprained by elephants leaning on them to
rub their prurient hides, and ants of all kinds have done infinite
mischief. Some have been pecked at by birds, until we see ulcerous sores
exuding great globules of gum, and frequently tall and short nomads have
tried their axes, spears, and knives, on the trees, and hence we see
that decay and death are busy here as with us.
To complete the mental picture of this ruthless forest, the ground
should be strewn thickly with half formed humus of rotting twigs,
leaves, branches; every few yards there should be a prostrate giant, a
reeking compost of rotten fibres, and departed generations of insects,
and colonies of ants, half veiled with masses of vines and shrouded by
the leafage of a multitude of baby saplings, lengthy briars and calamus
in many fathom lengths, and every mile or so there should be muddy
streams, stagnant creeks, and shallow pools, green with duckweed, leaves
of lotus and lilies, and a greasy green scum composed of millions of
finite growths. Then people this vast region of woods with numberless
fragments of tribes, who are at war with each other and who live apart
from ten to fifty miles in the midst of a prostrate forest, amongst
whose ruins they have planted the plantain, banana, manioc, beans,
tobacco, colocassia, gourds, melons, &c., and who, in order to make
their villages inaccessible, have resorted to every means of defence
suggested to wild men by the nature of their lives. They have planted
skewers along their paths, and cunningly hidden them under an apparently
stray leaf, or on the lee side of a log, by striding over which the
naked foot is pierced, and the intruder is either killed from the poison
smeared on the tops of the skewers, or lamed for months. They have piled
up branches, and have formed abattis of great trees, and they lie in
wait behind with sheaves of poisoned arrows, wooden spears hardened in
fire, and smeared with poison.
The primeval forest, that is that old growth untouched by man, and left
since the earliest time to thrive and die, one age after another, is
easily distinguishable from that part which at some time or another
afforded shelter for man. The trees are taller and straighter, and of
more colossal girth. It has frequently glades presenting little
difficulty for travel, the invariable obstructions being the arum,
phrynia, and amoma. The ground is firmer and more compact, and the
favourite camping ground for the pigmy nomads are located in such
places. When the plants and small bushes are cut down, we have an airy,
sylvan, and cool temple, delightful for a dwelling.
Then comes the forest which during a few generations has obliterated all
evidences of former husbandry. A few of the trees, especially of the
soft-wooded kind, have grown to equal height with the ancient
patriarchs, but as soon as man abandoned the clearing, hosts of nameless
trees, shrubs, and plants have riotously hastened to avail themselves of
his absence, and the race for air and light is continued for many years;
consequently the undergrowth by the larger quantity of sunshine becomes
luxuriant, and there are few places penetrable in it without infinite
labour. Among these a variety of palms will be found, especially the
Elais and Raphia vinifera.
And after this comes the bush proper, the growth of a few years, which
admits no ingress whatever within its shade. We are therefore obliged to
tunnel through stifling masses of young vegetation, so matted and
tangled together that one fancies it would be easier to travel over the
top were it of equal and consistent thickness and level. Vigorous young
trees are found imbedded in these solid and compact masses of
vegetation, and these support the climbing plants, the vines, and
creepers. Under these, after a pathway has been scooped out, the unshod
feet are in danger from the thorns, and the sharp cut stalks, which are
apt to pierce the feet and lacerate the legs.
This last was the character of the bush mostly near the river. Both
banks presented numberless old clearings and abandoned sites; and as the
stream was the only means of communication employed by the tribes, the
only way of effecting any progress was by laborious cutting.
The clearings which had been abandoned within a year exhibited veritable
wonders of vegetable life, of unsurpassed fecundity, and bewildering
variety of species. The charred poles of the huts became the supports of
climbers whose vivid green leaves soon shrouded the ugliness of
desolation, and every upright and stump assumed the appearance of a
miniature bower, or a massive piece of columned ruin. As the stumps were
frequently twenty feet high, and were often seen in twins, the plants
had gravitated across the space between, and after embracing had
continued their growth along the length of one another, and had formed
in this manner an umbrageous arch, and had twisted themselves in endless
lengths around the supports until it became difficult to find what
supported such masses of delicate vines. In some instances they had
formed lofty twin towers with an arched gateway between, resembling a
great ruin of an old castle, and the whole was gay with purple and white
flowers. The silvered boles of ancient primeval giants long ago ringed
by the axe and doomed to canker and decay, and the great gaunt
far-spreading arms and branchlets had been clothed by vines a
hundred-fold until they seemed like clouds of vivid green, which, under
the influence of sudden gusts, streamed with countless tendrils, or
swayed like immense curtains.
When marching along with the column, or encamped for the night, the
murmur of voices was not congenial to nourishing any fine sentiments
about the forest. We suffered too much hunger, and sustained such
protracted misery; we were preyed upon too often in patience, and
temper, and forbearance. Our clothes, suited well enough for open
country, were no protection against the hostilities of the bush. But if
once we absented ourselves from camp, and the voices of the men died
away, and we forgot our miseries, and were not absorbed by the sense of
the many inconveniences, an awe of the forest rushed upon the soul and
filled the mind. The voice sounded with rolling echoes, as in a
cathedral. One became conscious of its eerie strangeness, the absence of
sunshine, its subdued light, and marvelled at the queer feeling of
loneliness, while inquiringly looking around to be assured that this
loneliness was no delusion. It was as if one stood amid the inhabitants
of another world. We enjoyed life--the one vegetable, the other human.
Standing there so massive and colossal, so silent and still, and yet
with such solemn severity of majesty, it did seem curious that the two
lives, so like in some sense, were yet so incommunicable. It would have
suited the fitness of things, I thought, had a wrinkled old patriarch
addressed me with the gravity and seriousness of a Methuselah, or an
Achillean and powerful bombax, with his buttressed feet planted firm in
the ground, had disdainfully demanded my business in that assembly of
stately forest kings.
But what thoughts were kindled as we peeped out from an opening in the
woods and looked across the darkening river which reflected the
advancing tempest, and caught a view of the mighty army of trees--their
heights as various as their kind, all rigid in the gloaming, awaiting in
stern array the war with the storm. The coming wind has concentrated its
terrors for destruction, the forked lightning is seen darting its spears
of white flame across the front of infinite hosts of clouds. Out of
their depths issues the thunderbolt, and the march of the winds is heard
coming to the onset. Suddenly the trees, which have stood still--as in
a painted canvas--awaiting the shock with secure tranquillity, are seen
to bow their tops in unison, followed by universal swaying and straining
as though a wild panic had seized them. They reel this way and that, but
they are restrained from flight by sturdy stems and fixed roots, and the
strong buttresses which maintain them upright. Pressed backward to a
perilous length they recover from the first blow, and dart their heads
in furious waves forward, and the glory of the war between the forest
and the storm is at its height. Legion after legion of clouds ride over
the wind-tost crests, there is a crashing and roaring, a loud soughing
and moaning, shrill screaming of squalls, and groaning of countless
woods. There are mighty sweeps from the great tree-kings, as though
mighty strokes were being dealt; there is a world-wide rustling of
foliage, as though in gleeful approval of the vast strength of their
sires; there are flashes of pale green light, as the lesser battalions
are roused up to the fight by the example of their brave ancients. Our
own spirits are aroused by the grand conflict--the Berserker rage is
contagious. In our souls we applaud the rush and levelling force of the
wind, and for a second are ready to hail the victor; but the magnificent
array of the forest champions, with streaming locks, the firmness with
which the vast army of trees rise in unison with their leaders, the
rapturous quiver of the bush below inspire a belief that they will win
if they but persevere. The lightning darts here and there with splendour
of light and scathing flame, the thunders explode with deafening
crashes, reverberating with terrible sounds among the army of woods, the
black clouds roll over and darken the prospect; and as cloud becomes
involved within cloud, in the shifting pale light, we have a last view
of the wild war, we are stunned by the fury of the tempest, and the
royal rage of the forest, when down comes the deluge of tropic
rain--which in a short time extinguishes the white heat wrath of the
elements, and soothes to stillness the noble anger of the woods.
Along the banks of the Aruwimi, a better idea of tropical vegetation
may be obtained than in any part of Africa, outside of the eastern half
of the Congo basin. The banks are for the most part low, though no one
could guess what height they were, because of the lofty hedges of
creeping plants, which cover every inch of ground from the water’s edge
to as high as fifty feet above in some places, while immediately behind
them rises the black-green forest to the towering height of from 150 to
200 feet above the river. The aspects of the banks vary considerably
however. Abandoned sites of human dwellings possess their own peculiar
wilderness appearance, the virgin forest its own, and as the soil varies
so do its growths.
Lately abandoned clearings will show, besides inordinate density of
vegetation, gorgeous flowering sections. Above these will probably rise
a few trees with masses of thick, shining leaves, and a profusion of
blood-red flowers, whose petals have been showered on the impervious
mass of leguminous vines of creepers and shrubs below, and strongly
contrast to their own light purple, yellow, or white flowerets. The
amoma show snowy flower-goblets, edged with pink; a wild vine will have
its light purple; a creeper, with pinnate leaves, though flowerless at
the time, will have its foliage tinted auburn; a pepper bush with its
red pods, or a wild mango, attracts attention by myriads of bead-like
flowerets; or an acacia effuses overpowering fragrance from its snowy
buds, or a mimosa with its sweet-smelling yellow blossoms. Different
shades of green are presented by ferns, protruding leaves of sword
grass, a young Elais palm, or the broad and useful leaf of the phrynium.
A young fig-tree, with silver stem, and branching widely, mixes its
leaves with those of the tender leaflets of the sensitive plant and the
palmate calamus; below is a multitude of nettles, and nettle-leafed
plants with stalks and leaves, making a mass of vegetation at once
curious and delightful. Perhaps the base of all this intricate and
inextricable confusion of plants and impervious hill of verdure and
beauty, is a prostrate tree, long ago fallen, fast decaying, black with
mould, spread thinly with humus, fungous parasites abounding, and every
crack, cranny, and flaw in it nesting all kinds of insatiable insects,
from the tiny termite to the black centipede or mammoth beetle.
Further on we see something different. Numberless giant trees, pressing
right up to the edge of the river bank, have caused some to grow
horizontally to the length of fifty feet over the river. Under their
shade a hundred canoes find shelter from a scorching sun. The wood is
yellow and hard as iron. To cut one of these trees would require a score
of American axes. It bears clusters of fruit which when unripe are
russet, and afterwards resemble beautiful damsons. Others of the same
species produce a fruit like ripe dates, but neither are edible.
These widely-spreading trees are favourites with the black wasps, to
which they attach their pensile nests. Externally the nests are like
fancifully cut brown-paper sacks, or a series of such sacks arranged one
above another, with frills and ornate cuttings, like the fancy paper
grate-covers in English parlours in summer time.
We avoided such trees religiously, and when there was no such terror as
a big nest of wasps near, we could rest in comfort and examine the
forest at leisure. We first saw besides countless grey columns,
thousands of pendent slender threads and wavy lines, loops, festoons,
clustered groups and broad breadths of grey mingled with more than
studied disorder with darkest depths of green, lightened only by broad
damp leaves reflecting stray glints of sunshine or sprays, and a magic
dust of softened light perpetually shifting and playing, profound spaces
of darkness relieved by a breadth of grey tree trunk, silvered rods of
parasites, or fancy grey filigree of vine stems. As we surveyed the
whole, the eye caught various crimson dots of phrynia berries, or red
knots of amoma fruit, outer fringes of auburn leaves, a cap of a
mushroom staring white out of a loose sheaf of delicate ferns, or snowy
bits of hard fungi clinging like barnacles to a deeply-wrinkled log; the
bright green of orchid leaves, the grey green face of a pendent leaf of
an elephant-eared plant--films of moss, tumorous lumps on trees exuding
tears of gum, which swarmed with ants, length after length of whiplike
calamus--squirming and twisting lianes, and great serpent-like
convolvuli, winding in and out by mazy galleries of dark shadows, and
emerging triumphant far above to lean their weight on branches, running
coils at one place, forming loops at another place, and then stretching
loosely their interminable lengths out of sight.
As I have already said, the forest is typical of the life of humanity.
No single glance can be taken of it without becoming conscious that
decay, and death, and life, are at work there as with us. I never could
cast a leisurely look at it but I found myself, unconsciously, wondering
at some feature which reminded me of some scene in the civilised world.
It has suggested a morning when I went to see the human tide flowing
into the city over London Bridge between half-past seven and half-past
eight, where I saw the pale, overworked, dwarfed, stoop-shouldered, on
their way to their dismal struggle for existence. They were represented
here faithfully, in all their youth, vigour, and decrepitude; one is
prematurely aged and blanched, another is goitrous, another is
organically weak, another is a hunchback, another suffers from poor
nutrition, many are pallid from want of air and sunshine, many are
supported by their neighbours because of constitutional infirmity, many
of them are toppling one over another, as though they were the
incurables of a hospital, and you wonder how they exist at all. Some are
already dead, and lie buried under heaps of leaves, or are nurseries of
bush families and parasites, or are colonised by hordes of destructive
insects; some are bleached white by the palsying thunderbolt, or
shivered by the levin brand, or quite decapitated; or some old veteran,
centuries old, which was born before ever a Christian sailed south of
the Equator, is decaying in core and vitals; but the majority have the
assurance of insolent youth, with all its grace and elegance of form,
the mighty strength of prime life, and the tranquil and silent pride of
hoary old aristocrats; and you gather from a view of the whole one
indisputable fact--that they are resolved to struggle for existence as
long as they may. We see all characters of humanity here, except the
martyr and suicide. For sacrifice is not within tree nature, and it may
be that they only heard two precepts, “Obedience is better than
sacrifice,” and “Live and multiply.”
And as there is nothing so ugly and distasteful to me as the mob of a
Derby day, so there is nothing so ugly in forest nature as when I am
reminded of it by the visible selfish rush towards the sky in a
clearing, after it has been abandoned a few years. Hark! the bell
strikes, the race is about to begin. I seem to hear the uproar of the
rush, the fierce, heartless jostling and trampling, the cry, “Self for
self, the devil take the weakest!” To see the white-hot excitement, the
noisy fume and flutter, the curious inequalities of vigour, and the
shameless disregard for order and decency!
It is worth pausing also to ask why small incidents in such an out of
the way place as the trackless depths of a primeval forest should remind
one of thoughts of friends and their homes in England. The melancholy
sound of the wind fluttering the leafy world aloft, and the sad rustle
of the foliage reminded me vividly of a night spent at--- House, where I
passed half the time listening to the dreadful sighing of the rooky
grove, which filled my mind with forlornness and discomfort. Here again,
as I lay in my tent, were suggested memories of ocean gales, and general
cold, pitiful wretchedness, and when the rain fell in an earnest shower
and the heavy fall of raindrops roused the deep and funereal dirge that
sounded round about me, it seemed to me I heard sad and doleful echoes
of sad and unsatisfied longings, and crowds of unworded thoughts, and
past aspirations, unbreathed sentiments of love, friendship, and
unuttered sympathies advancing with awful distinctness to the sharpened
imagination, until one seemed ready to dissolve in tears and gasp
sobbingly, “Oh, my friends, the good God is above all, and knows all
things!”
These are a few secrets of the woods that one learns in time, even
without a mentor in forestry. To know that the Elais palm while
requiring moisture requires plenty of sunshine to flourish, that the
Raphia palm flourishes best by the sedge-lined swamp and stenchful
sewery ooze, that the Calamus palm requires a thick bush for its
support, that the Phœnix spinosa thrives best by the waterside, and that
the Fan palm is killed by excessive moisture, is not difficult to learn.
But for a stranger in tropic woods, accustomed to oak, beech, poplar,
and pine, he is somewhat mazed at the unfamiliar leafage above him.
By-and-by, however, he can tell at a glance which are the soft and hard
woods. There are several families of soft woods, which stand in place of
the pine and fir in the tropics, and these have invariably large leaves.
It seems to be a rule that the soft woods shall have large leaves, and
the hard woods shall have smaller leaves, though they vary according to
their degrees of strength and durability. The trees of the Rubiaceæ
order, for instance, have leaves almost similar in form and size to the
castor-oil plant. The wood is most useful and workable, fit to build
fleets of wooden vessels, or to be turned into beautiful domestic
utensils--trays, benches, stools, troughs, wooden milk-pots, platters,
mugs, spoons, drums, &c. It serves for boarding, ceiling, doors, fences,
and palisades. Though it is brittle as cedar it will stand any amount of
weather without splitting. There are more than one species of what is
known as cotton-wood, but you may know them all by the magnificent
buttresses, and their unsurpassed height, by the silver grey of their
bark, and by the stiff thorns on their stems, by the white floss of
their flowering and grey-green leaves.
Then there is the strong African teak, the camwood, the African
mahogany, the green-heart, the lignum vitæ, the everlasting iron-wood,
the no less hard yellow wood by the riverside, infinitely harder than an
oak; the stink-wood, the ebony, the copal-wood tree with its glossy and
burnished foliage, the arborescent wild mango, the small-leaved wild
orange, the silver-boled wild fig, the butter tree, the acacia tribes,
the stately mpafu, and the thousands of wild fruit-trees, most of which
are unknown to me. Therefore, to understand what this truly tropical
forest is like you must imagine all these confusedly mixed together, and
lashed together by millions of vines, creepers, and giant convolvuli,
until a perfect tangle has been formed, and sunshine quite shut out,
except a little flickering dust of light here and there to tell you that
the sun is out in the sky like a burning lustrous orb.
Considering how many months we were in the forest, the hundreds of miles
we travelled through and through it, it is not the least wonder that an
accident never befell one of the Expedition from the beginning to the
end of our life in it, from the fall of a branch or a tree. Trees have
fallen immediately before the van, and directly after the rear guard had
passed; they have suddenly crashed to the earth on our flanks, and near
the camps, by night as well as by day. The nearest escape we had was
soon after we had landed from our boat one day, when a great ruin
dropped into the river close to the stern, raising the boat up high with
the mound of water raised by it, and spraying the crew who were at work.
Many people have already questioned me respecting the game in the
forest. Elephant, buffalo, wild pig, bush antelopes, coneys, gazelles,
chimpanzees, baboons, monkeys of all kinds, squirrels, civets, wild
cats, genets, zebra--ichneumons, large rodents, are among the few we
know to exist within the woods. The branches swarm with birds and bats,
the air is alive with their sailing and soaring forms, the river teems
with fish and bivalves, oysters and clams; there are few crocodiles and
hippopotami also. But we must remember that all the tribes of the forest
are naturally the most vicious and degraded of the human race on the
face of the earth, though in my opinion they are quite as capable of
improvement as the wild Caledonian, and susceptible of transformation
into orderly and law-abiding peoples. The forest, however, does not
admit of amicable intercourse. Strangers cannot see one another until
they suddenly encounter, and are mutually paralysed with surprise at the
fact. Instinctively they raise their weapons. One has a sheaf of arrows
to kill game, and a poison as deadly as prussic acid; the other has a
gun which sends a bullet with such force that the frontal bone is
instantly smashed. Supposing that one at least of the parties is so
amiable as to allow the other to kill him; his friends would dub him a
fool, and nothing has been gained. The dead man’s friends must feel
called upon to avenge him, and will hunt the murderer too. Fortunately,
these buried peoples contrive to learn news of any strangers, and
disappear generally in time before their villages are reached. But how
far they have retreated, or how near they may be, is unknown;
consequently as they are in the habit of eating what they kill it would
not be safe for a small hunting party to set out to search for game.
That is one reason why there were no animals hunted.
Secondly, it is not every person who has the gift of finding his way in
a forest. A dozen times on a day’s march I had to correct the course of
the van. Even such a grand landmark as a river was not sufficient to
serve as a guide to the course. Within 200 yards any man in the
Expedition, if he were turned about a little, would be bewildered to
find his way back to the place whence he started.
Thirdly, a small party would make too much noise in breaking of twigs,
in treading upon crisp leaves, in brushing against bush, or in cutting a
vine or a creeper to make headway. A wild animal is warned long before
the hunters know that it is near them, and bounds away to distant
coverts. We have suddenly come across elephants, but when they were
within ten yards of us they have crashed their way through a jungle that
was impervious to pursuers. As for buffalo and other game, their tracks
were very common, but it would have been madness to have pursued them
for the above three reasons alone.
Fourthly, we had too serious an object in view, which was to discover
food and where we were most likely to get it--not for a small party, but
for all.
As for birds, they made clatter enough overhead, but we were in the
basement, and they were on the roof of a fifteen-storey house. They
could not be seen at all, though their whistlings, warblings,
screamings, and hootings were heard everywhere. There were parrots,
ibis, touracos, parraquets, sunbirds, swifts, finches, shrikes,
whip-poor-wills, hoopoes, owls, guinea fowl, blackbirds, weavers,
kingfishers, divers, fish eagles, kites, wagtails, bee-eaters, pipits,
sandpipers, cockatoos, hornbills, jays, barbets, woodpeckers, pigeons,
and unknown minute tribes, and millions of large and small bats.
The Simian tribe was well represented. I have caught sight of more than
a dozen species. I have seen the colobus, dark and grey furred baboons,
small black monkeys, galagos and flying squirrels, and others, but not
nearer than a hundred yards. Long before we could reach them they had
been alarmed by the murmur of the caravan, and commenced the retreat.
We came across a number of reptiles. The Ituri swarms with water snakes
of various lengths. They continued to drop frequently very close to our
boat, slender green whip-snakes, others lead colour of formidable size;
others green, gold and black, six feet long. We saw pythons, puff
adders, horned and fanged snakes, while small bush snakes about two feet
long often fell victims during the preparation of camps.
Insects would require a whole book. Never have I seen such countless
armies and species as during my various marches through this forest. I
should consider it _infra dig._ to refer to those minute creatures after
the lavish abuses I, in common with others of the Expedition, have
bestowed on them. I recollect but few hours of daylight that I did not
express myself unkindly towards them. Those bees, large and small, the
wasps, the hordes of moths by night, the house-flies, tsetse, gadflies,
gnats, and butterflies by day, the giant beetles, attracted by the
light in the tent, sailing through the darkness, and dashing frantically
against the canvas, rebounding in their rage from side to side, and all
the time hoarsely booming, finally with roars of fury dashing themselves
against my book or face, as though they would wreak vengeance on me for
some reason; then the swarms of ants peering into my plate, intruding
into my washy soup, crawling over my bananas, the crickets that sprang
like demons, and fixed themselves in my scalp, or on my forehead; the
shrill cicadæ that drove one mad, worse than the peppo-inspired Manyuema
women. The Pasha professes to love these tribes, and I confess I have
done as much mischief to them as possible.
The small bees of the size of gnats were the most tormenting of all the
species; we became acquainted with four. They are of the Mellipona. To
read, write, or eat required the devoted services of an attendant to
drive them away. The eyes were their favourite points of attack; but the
ears and nostrils also were sensitive objects to which they invariably
reverted. The donkeys’ legs were stripped bare of hair, because of these
pests. The death of one left an odour of bitter almonds on the hand.
The beetles, again, varied from the size of a monstrous two-and-a-half
inches in length to an insect that would have bored through the eye of a
tailor’s needle. This last when examined through a magnifying glass
seemed to be efficiently equipped for troubling humanity. It burrowed
into the skin. It could not be discovered by the eyes unless attention
was directed by giving a cross rub with the hand, when a pain like the
prick of a pin was felt. The natives’ huts were infested with three
peculiar species. One burrowed into one’s body, another bored into the
rafters and dropped fine sawdust into the soup, another explored among
the crisp leaves of the roof and gave one a creeping fear that there
were snakes about; a fourth, which was a roaring lion of a beetle,
waited until night and then made it impossible to keep a candle lit for
a quiet pipe and meditation.
[Sidenote: 1888. Dec. Forest.]
Among the minor unpleasantnesses which we had to endure we may mention
the “jigger,” which deposited its eggs under the toenails of the most
active men, but which attacked the body of a “goee-goee” and made him a
mass of living corruption; the little beetle that dived underneath the
skin and pricked one as with a needle; the mellipona bee, that troubled
the eyes, and made one almost frantic some days; the small and large
ticks that insidiously sucked one’s small store of blood; the wasps,
which stung one into a raging fever if some careless idiot touched the
tree, or shouted near their haunts; the wild honey-bees, which one day
scattered two canoe crews, and punished them so that we had to send a
detachment of men to rescue them; the tiger-slug, that dropped from the
branches and left his poisonous fur in the pores of the body until one
raved from the pain; the red ants, that invaded the camp by night and
disturbed our sleep, and attacked the caravan half a score of times on
the march, and made the men run faster than if pursued by so many
pigmies; the black ants, which infested the trumpet tree, and dropped on
us when passing underneath, and gave us all a foretaste of the Inferno;
the small ants that invaded every particle of food, which required great
care lest we might swallow half a dozen inadvertently, and have the
stomach membranes perforated or blistered--small as they were, they were
the most troublesome, for in every tunnel made through the bush
thousands of them housed themselves upon us, and so bit and stung us
that I have seen the pioneers covered with blisters as from nettles;
and, of course, there were our old friends the mosquitos in numbers in
the greater clearings.
But if we were bitten and stung by pismires and numberless tribes of
insects by day, which every one will confess is as bad as being whipped
with nettles, the night had also its alarms, terrors, and anxieties. In
the dead of night, when the entire caravan was wrapped in slumber, a
series of explosions would wake every one. Some tree or another was
nightly struck by lightning, and there was a danger that half the camp
might be mangled by the fall of one; the sound of the branches during a
storm was like the roar of breakers, or the rolling of a surge on the
shore. When the rain fell no voice could be heard in the camp, it was
like a cataract with its din of falling waters. Each night almost a dead
tree fell with startling crackle, and rending and rushing, ending with
the sound which shook the earth.
There were trees parting with a decayed member, and the fall of it made
the forest echo with its crash as though it were a fusillade of
musketry. The night winds swayed the branches and hurled them against
each other, amid a chorus of creaking stems, and swinging cables and
rustle of leaves. Then there was the never-failing crick of the cricket,
and the shriller but not less monotonous piping call of the cicadæ, and
the perpetual chorus of frogs; there was the doleful cry of the lemur to
his mate, a harsh, rasping cry which made night hideous, and loneliness
and darkness repulsive. There was a chimpanzee at solitary exercise
amusing himself with striking upon a tree like the little boys at home
rattle a stick against the area railings. There were the midnight troops
of elephants, who no doubt were only prevented from marching right over
us by the scores of fires scattered about the camp.
Considering the number of sokos or chimpanzees in this great forest, it
is rather a curious fact that not one of the Expedition saw one alive.
My terrier “Randy” hunted them almost every day between Ipoto and
Ibwiri, and one time was severely handled. I have heard their notes four
several times, and have possessed a couple of their skulls, one of which
I gave to the Pasha; the other, that I was obliged to leave at the time,
was monstrously large.
In 1887 rain fell during eight days in July, ten days in August,
fourteen days in September, fifteen days in October, seventeen days in
November, and seven days in December, = seventy-one days. From the 1st
of June, 1887, to the 31st of May, 1888, there were 138 days, or 569
hours of rain. We could not measure the rain in the forest in any other
way than by time. We shall not be far wrong if we estimate this forest
to be the rainiest zone on the earth.
For nine months of the year the winds blow from the South Atlantic along
the course of the Congo, and up the Aruwimi. They bear the moisture of
the sea, and the vapours exhaled by a course of 1400 miles of a river
which spreads from half-a-mile to sixteen miles wide, and meeting on
their easterly course the cold atmosphere prevailing at the high
altitude they descend upon the forest almost every alternate day in
copious showers of rain. This forest is also favourably situated to
receive the vapours exhaled by Lakes Tanganika, the Albert Edward, and
Albert Lakes. While standing in the plain on the verge of the forest, I
have seen the two rain clouds, one from the westward and one from the
eastward, collide and dissolve in a deluge of rain on Pisgah Mount and
the surrounding country. Besides the rains, which lasted ten or twelve
hours at a time during our march from Yambuya to Fort Bodo, we had
frequent local showers of short duration. When these latter fell we were
sure that some lofty hill was in the neighbourhood, which had
intercepted a portion of the vapour drifting easterly, and liquified it
for the benefit of the neighbourhood. The rear-guard of the caravan was
sometimes plunged in misery by a heavy rainfall while the pioneers were
enjoying the effects of sunshine above their heads. It occurred at
Mabengu Rapids, and at Engweddé. Being in the depths of the forest we
could not see any sign of a hill, but such sudden showers betrayed the
presence of one in the vicinity. When well away from these localities we
would sometimes look behind down a straight stretch of river, and hilly
masses 500 feet above the river were revealed to us.
[Illustration: A PAGE FROM MR. STANLEY’S NOTE-BOOK.]
The Ituri or Upper Aruwimi is therefore seldom very low. We have seen it
in July about six feet below high-water mark. In October one night it
rose a foot; it is highest in November, and lowest in December. But
it is a stream that constantly fluctuates, and pours an immense
volume of water into the Congo. In length of course it is about 700
miles, rising to the south of that group of hills known as the
Travellers’ Group, and called Mounts Speke, Schweinfurth, and Junker.
Its basin covers an area of 67,000 square miles.
On the north side of the basin we have heard of the Ababua, Mabodé,
Momvu, and the Balessé, to the south are the Bakumu and Baburu. These
are the principal tribes, which are subdivided into hundreds of smaller
tribes. The language of the Bakumu which is to be found inland east of
Stanley Falls, is known as far as Panga Falls, with slight dialectic
variations among the Baburu. The language of Momvu is spoken between
Panga Falls and the Ngaiyu. East of that we found that the language of
the Balessé took us as far as Indenduru, beyond that was a separate and
distinct language spoken by the Babusessé. But we found sub-tribes in
each section who professed not to understand what was said to them from
natives two camps removed from them.
All the tribes from the Atlantic Ocean to East Longitude 30° in the
Equatorial region have a distant resemblance of features and customs,
but I should place East Longitude 18° as the divisional line of
longitude between two families of one original parent race. Across
twelve degrees of longitude, we have hundreds of tribes bearing a most
close resemblance to one another. What Schweinfurth and Junker, Emin and
Casati, have said about the Monbuttu, Niam Niam, and Momvu, may with a
few fine shades of difference, be said about the Bangala, the Wyyanzi,
the Batomba, the Basoko, the Baburu, the Bakumu, and Balessé. One tribe
more compact in organisation may possess a few superior characteristics
to one which has suffered misfortunes, and been oppressed by more
powerful neighbours, but in the main I see no difference whatever. They
own no cattle, but possess sheep, goats, and domestic fowls. One tribe
may be more partial to manioc, but they all cultivate the plantain and
banana. Their dresses all alike are of bark cloth, their headdresses
are nearly similar, though one tribe may be more elaborate in the mode
of dressing theirs than another. Some of them practise circumcision, and
they are addicted to eating the flesh of their enemies. Their weapons
are nearly the same--the broad razor-sharp spear, the double-edged and
pointed knife, the curious two-or four-bladed knives, their curved
swords; their small bows and short arrows; their stools, benches, and
back-rests; their ear-rings, bracelets, armlets and leglets; their great
war-drums and little tom-toms, their war-horns; their blacksmiths’ and
carpenters’ tools.
In the architecture of their houses there is a great difference; in the
tattooing, facial marks, and their upper lip ornaments they also differ;
but these are often due to the desire to distinguish tribes, though they
do not show a difference of race. If one could travel in a steamer from
Equatorville on the Congo to Indesura on the Upper Ituri, and see the
various communities on the river banks from the deck, the passengers
would be struck, not only by the similarity of dress and equipments, but
also of complexion; whereas were a colony of Soudanese, Zanzibaris,
Wanyamwezi to be seen accidentally among those communities, the stranger
might easily distinguish them as being foreign to the soil.
This region, which embraces twelve degrees of longitude, is mainly
forest, though to the west it has several reaches of grass-land, and
this fact modifies the complexion considerably. The inhabitants of the
true forest are much lighter in colour than those of the grass-land.
They are inclined normally to be coppery, while some are as light as
Arabs, and others are dark brown, but they are all purely negroid in
character. Probably this lightness of colour may be due to a long
residence through generations in the forest shades, though it is likely
to have been the result of an amalgamation of an originally black and
light coloured race. When we cross the limits of the forest and enter
the grass-land we at once remark, however, that the tribes are much
darker in colour.
[Illustration: SPEARS.]
[Illustration: POT.]
[Illustration: STOOL.]
[Illustration: PLAY-TABLE.]
[Illustration: STOOL.]
Among these forest tribes we have observed some singularly prepossessing
faces, and we have observed others uncommonly low and degraded. However
incorrigibly fierce in temper, detestable in their disposition, and
bestial in habits these wild tribes may be to-day, there is not one of
them which does not contain germs, and by whose means at some future
date civilisation may spread, and with it those manifold blessings
inseparable from it. I was much struck with the personal appearance and
replies of some captives of Engweddé, with whom, as they knew the
language of Momvu, I was able to converse. I asked them if they were in
the habit of fighting strangers always. Said they, “What do strangers
want from us? we have nothing. We have only plantains, palms, and fish.”
“But supposing strangers wished to buy plantains, palm oil, and fish
from you, would you sell them?” “We have never seen any strangers
before. Each tribe keeps to its own place until it comes to fight with
us for some reason.” “Do you always fight your neighbours?” “No; some of
our young men go into the woods to hunt game, and they are surprised by
our neighbours; then we go to them, and they come to fight us until one
party is tired, or one is beaten.” “Well, will you be friends with me if
I send you back to your village?” They looked incredulous, and when they
were actually escorted out of the camp with cowries in their hands, they
simply stood still and refused to go fearing some trap. It seemed
incredible to them that they should not be sacrificed. One returned to
my tent, and was greeted kindly as an old acquaintance, received a few
bananas, deliberately went to a fire and roasted them, weighing in his
mind, I suppose, meanwhile, what it all meant; after refreshing himself,
he lit his pipe, and walked away with an assumed composure. Three trips
past that settlement, and their confidence would have been gained for
ever.
Scattered among the Balessé, between Ipoto and Mount Pisgah, and
inhabiting the land situated between the Ngaiyu and Ituri Rivers, a
region equal in area to about two-thirds of Scotland, are the Wambutti,
variously called Batwa, Akka, and Bazungu. These people are undersized
nomads, dwarfs, or pigmies, who live in the uncleared virgin forest, and
support themselves on game, which they are very expert in catching. They
vary in height from three feet to four feet six inches. A full-grown
adult male may weigh ninety pounds. They plant their village camps at a
distance of from two to three miles around a tribe of agricultural
aborigines, the majority of whom are fine stalwart people. A large
clearing may have as many as eight, ten, or twelve separate communities
of these little people settled around them, numbering in the aggregate
from 2,000 to 2,500 souls. With their weapons, little bows and arrows,
the points of which are covered thickly with poison, and spears, they
kill elephants, buffalo, and antelope. They sink pits, and cunningly
cover them with light sticks and leaves, over which they sprinkle earth
to disguise from the unsuspecting animals the danger below them. They
build a shed-like structure, the roof being suspended with a vine, and
spread nuts or ripe plantains underneath, to tempt the chimpanzees,
baboons, and other simians within, and by a slight movement, the shed
falls, and the animals are captured. Along the tracks of civets,
mephitis, ichneumons, and rodents are bow traps fixed, which, in the
scurry of the little animals, are snapped and strangle them. Besides the
meat and hides to make shields, and furs, and ivory of the slaughtered
game, they catch birds to obtain their feathers; they collect honey from
the woods, and make poison, all of which they sell to the larger
aborigines for plantains, potatoes, tobacco, spears, knives, and arrows.
The forest would soon be denuded of game if the pigmies confined
themselves to the few square miles around a clearing; they are therefore
compelled to move, as soon as it becomes scarce, to other settlements.
[Illustration: ARROWS OF THE DWARFS.]
[Illustration: ELEPHANT TRAP.]
They perform other services to the agricultural and larger class of
aborigines. They are perfect scouts, and contrive, by their better
knowledge of the intricacies of the forest, to obtain early intelligence
of the coming of strangers, and to send information to their settled
friends. They are thus like voluntary picquets guarding the clearings
and settlements. Every road from any direction runs through their camps.
Their villages command every cross-way. Against any strange natives,
disposed to be aggressive, they would combine with their taller
neighbours, and they are by no means despicable allies. When arrows are
arrayed against arrows, poison against poison, and craft against craft,
probably the party assisted by the pigmies would prevail. Their
diminutive size, superior wood-craft, their greater malice, would make
formidable opponents. This the agricultural natives thoroughly
understand. They would no doubt wish on many occasions that the little
people would betake themselves elsewhere, for the settlements are
frequently outnumbered by the nomad communities. For small and often
inadequate returns of fur and meat, they must allow the pigmies free
access to their plantains, groves, and gardens. In a word, no nation on
the earth is free from human parasites, and the tribes of the Central
African forest have much to bear from these little fierce people who
glue themselves to their clearings, flatter them when well fed, but
oppress them with their extortions and robberies.
The pigmies arrange their dwellings--low structures of the shape of an
oval figure cut lengthways; the doors are from two feet to three feet
high, placed at the ends--in a rough circle, the centre of which is left
cleared for the residence of the chief and his family, and as a common.
About 100 yards in advance of the camp, along every track leading out of
it, is placed the sentry-house, just large enough for two little men,
with the doorway looking up the track. If we assumed that native
caravans ever travelled between Ipoto and Ibwiri, for instance, we
should imagine, from our knowledge of these forest people, that the
caravan would be mulcted of much of its property by these nomads, whom
they would meet in front and rear of each settlement, and as there are
ten settlements between the two points, they would have to pay toll
twenty times, in tobacco, salt, iron, and rattan, cane ornaments, axes,
knives, spears, arrows, adzes, rings, &c. We therefore see how utterly
impossible it would be for the Ipoto people to have even heard of
Ibwiri, owing to the heavy turnpike tolls and octroi duties that would
be demanded of them if they ventured to undertake a long journey of
eighty miles. It will also be seen why there is such a diversity of
dialects, why captives were utterly ignorant of settlements only twenty
miles away from them.
As I have said, there are two species of these pigmies, utterly
dissimilar in complexion, conformation of the head, and facial
characteristics. Whether Batwa forms one nation and Wambutti another we
do not know, but they differ as much from each other as a Turk would
from a Scandinavian. The Batwa have longish heads and long narrow faces,
reddish, small eyes, set close together, which give them a somewhat
ferrety look, sour, anxious, and querulous. The Wambutti have round
faces, gazelle-like eyes, set far apart, open foreheads, which give one
an impression of undisguised frankness, and are of a rich yellow, ivory
complexion. The Wambutti occupy the southern half of the district
described, the Batwa the northern, and extend south-easterly to the
Awamba forests on both banks of the Semliki River, and east of the
Ituri.
The life in their forest villages partakes of the character of the
agricultural classes. The women perform all the work of collecting fuel
and provisions, and cooking, and the transport of the goods of the
community. The men hunt, and fight, and smoke, and conduct the tribal
politics. There is always some game in the camp, besides furs and
feathers and hides. They have nets for fish and traps for small game to
make. The youngsters must always be practising with the bow and arrow,
for we have never come across one of their villages without finding
several miniature bows and blunt-headed arrows. There must be free use
of axes also, for the trees about bear many a mark which could only have
been done to try their edge. In every camp we have seen deep incisions
in a tree several inches deep, and perhaps 500 yards from the camp a
series of diamond cuttings in a root of a tree across the track, which,
when seen, informed us that we were approaching a village of the
Wambutti pigmies.
[Illustration: A DWARF VILLAGE.]
Two Egyptians, a corporal and a Cairo boy of fifteen, both light
complexioned, were captured near Fort Bodo during my absence, and no
one discovered what became of them. It is supposed they were made
prisoners, like young Nassamonians of old. I have often wondered what
was done to them, and what the feelings of both were--they were devout
Mussulmans--after they were taken to the Wambutti’s camp. I fancy they
must have been something similar to those of Robert Baker, a sailor, in
1562--
“If cannibals they be
In kind, we do not know,
But if they be, then welcome we,
To pot straightway we goe.
They naked goe likewise,
For shame, we cannot so;
We cannot live after their guise,
Thus naked for to go.
By roots and leaves they live,
As beasts do in the wood:
Among these heathen who can thrive,
On this so wilde a food?”
One of the poisons employed by the tribes of the forest to smear their
weapons, in order to make them more deadly, is a dark substance of the
colour and consistency of pitch. It is supposed--if native women may be
trusted--to be made out of a species of arum, a very common plant, with
large leaves, found in any quantity between Fort Bodo and Indesura. Its
smell, when fresh, reminds one of the old blister plaster. That it is
deadly there can be no doubt. They kill the elephants and other big game
with it, as certainly as these animals could be slain with bone-crushing
rifles. That they do kill elephants is proved by the vast stores of
ivory collected by Ugarrowwa, Kilonga-Longa, and Tippu-Tib, and each
adult warrior has a waist-belt, or a shoulder-belt, to suspend his
dagger and skinning-knife, and every mother who carries her child and
every wife who carries a basket has need of broad forehead-straps, made
out of buffalo hide, to bear her load on her back.
[Sidenote: 1888. Dec. Forest.]
The poison is not permitted to be manufactured in a village. It seems to
be a necessity, to prevent fatal accidents, that the poison should be
prepared in the bush. It is then laid on the iron arrows thickly, and
into the splints of the hard wooden arrows.
Another poison is of a pale gluey colour. At Avisibba we discovered
several baskets of dried red ants among the rafters, and I conjectured,
from their resemblance in colour to the deadly poison which the
Avisibbas used, that it must have been made by crushing them into a fine
powder, and mixing it with palm oil. If one of these insects can raise a
blister on the skin of the size of a groat, what may not the powder of
mummied insects of the same species effect? If this pale poison be of
this material, one must confess that, in the forest, they possess
endless supplies of other insects still worse, such as the long black
ants which infest the trumpet tree, a bite from one of which can only be
compared to cautery from a red hot iron. But whatever it be, we have
great faith in a strong hypodermic injection of carbonate of ammonium,
and it may be that stronger doses of morphia than any that I ventured
upon might succeed in conquering the fatal tetanic spasms which followed
every puncture and preceded death.
When one of these poisons is fresh its consequences are rapid. There is
excessive faintness, palpitation of the heart, nausea, pallor, and beads
of perspiration break out over the body, and death ensues. One man died
within one minute from a mere pin-hole, which pierced the right arm and
right breast. A headman died within an hour and a quarter after being
shot. A woman died during the time that she was carried a distance of
one hundred paces; another woman died within twenty minutes; one man
died within three hours; two others died after one hundred hours had
elapsed. These various periods indicate that some poisons were fresh and
others had become dry. Most of these wounds were sucked and washed and
syringed, but evidently some of the poison was left, and caused death.
To render the poison ineffective, a strong emetic should be given,
sucking and syringing should be resorted to, and a heavy solution of
carbonate of ammonium should be injected into the wound, assuming that
the native antidote was unknown.
As there is no grass throughout the forest region, the natives would be
put to hard shifts to cover their houses were it not for the invaluable
phrynia leaves, which grow everywhere, but most abundantly in the
primeval woods. These leaves are from a foot to twenty inches in
diameter, are attached to slender straight stalks from three to seven
feet high. Both stalks and leaves are useful in the construction of
native huts and camps. The fruit is like red cherries, but the rinds are
not eaten, though the kernels are often eaten to “deceive the stomach.”
The wild fruits of the forest are various, and having been sustained
through so many days of awful famine, it would be well to describe such
as we found useful. We owe most to a fine stately tree with small
leaves, which grows in large numbers along the south banks of the Ituri
between East Long. 28° and 29°. Its fruit lies in pods about ten inches
long, and which contain four heart-shaped beans called “makwemé,” an
inch and a quarter long by an inch broad and half an inch thick. It has
a tough dove-coloured skin which when cut shows a reddish inner skin.
When this latter is scraped away the bean may be bruised, mashed, or
boiled whole. It is better bruised, because, as the bean is rather
leathery, it has a better chance of being cooked to be digestible. The
pigmies taught us the art, and it may be well conceived that they have
had often need of it to support life during their forest wanderings.
In the neighbourhood of these wood-bean trees grew a bastard bread-fruit
called _fenessi_ by the Zanzibaris, the fruit of which is as large as a
water-melon. When ripe we found it delightful and wholesome.
On a higher level, as we followed the Ituri up from 1° 6′ to Lat. 1°
47′, we found the _spondia_ or hog-plums, a yellow, fragrant fruit with
a large stone. An india-rubber vine produced a pear-shaped fruit which,
though of delicious odour, was the cause of much nausea; a fruit also of
the size of a crab-apple, with an insipid sweetness about it, assisted
to maintain life. Then there were some nuts like horse-chestnuts which
we found the pigmies partial to, but we cannot speak very highly of
them. Besides the cherry-like berries of the phrynia, the kernels of
which were industriously sought after, were the rich red fruit of the
amoma, within whose husks is found an acid sweet pulp, and the grains of
paradise which were first introduced to England in the year 1815. The
berries of the calamus, or rattan, were also eaten, but they were
difficult to get. Figs also were tried, but they were not very tempting,
though anything to disguise hunger and to “deceive the stomach” found
favour. Even the cola nuts were eaten, but more for the sake of
expectoration than for the sake of pandering to the digestive organs.
Among other articles to which we were reduced were white ants,
slugs--not the tiger-slug--snails, crabs, tortoises, roast field-rats,
and the siluroids of the streams.
The domestic animals of the natives were principally confined to a fine
breed of goats, dogs--of the usual pariah order, but vari-coloured. We
saw only one domestic cat, and that was a brindled animal, and very
tame, but kept in a cage.
It struck me as curious that while nearly all the Madis were attacked
with guinea worms, which rendered them utterly unfit for work, not one
Zanzibari suffered from them. The Madis’ medicine for these was simply
oil or fat rubbed over the inflammation, which served to cause the worm
to withdraw from the leg. At one time, however, we had fifteen cases of
mumps among the Zanzibaris, but they used no medicine except rubbing the
swollen face with flour and water. Numbers of Manyuema, natives, and
Madis, unvaccinated and uninoculated, fell victims to variola; but only
four Zanzibaris were attacked with the disease, only one of which was
fatal, and two of them were not so much indisposed as to plead being
relieved from duties.
Respecting the productions of the forest I have written at such length
in “The Congo and the Founding of its Free State” that it is unnecessary
to add any more here. I will only say that when the Congo Railway has
been constructed, the products of the great forest will not be the
least valuable of the exports of the Congo Independent State. The
natives, beginning at Yambuya, will easily be induced to collect the
rubber, and when one sensible European has succeeded in teaching them
what the countless vines, creepers, and tendrils of their forest can
produce, it will not be long before other competitors will invade the
silent river, and invoke the aid of other tribes to follow the example
of the Baburu.