I seized a Kruman firmly by the hair with both my hands, and leaped
upon him, astride his neck with my legs over his shoulders. I had put
on a fresh white suit for the occasion, notwithstanding that I had been
instructed by the Old Coasters that the Kruman, with his unique sense of
humour, makes it a point to drop the new comer into the surf and present
him to his friends ashore as much bedraggled and beflustered as possible.
I also had on the inevitable cork helmet, so bulky, and drooping over
the eyes. Most men unaccustomed to them feel as awkward as they would in
a Gainsborough hat. The Kruman, I am glad to report, did not drop me;
perhaps because I kept so firm a hold on his hair that he did not know
how much of it he might lose by a sudden or unexpected separation from
me. It was probably my own fault, and not his, that when he stooped to
deposit me, I missed the trick of lighting on my feet, which I afterwards
learned. I reached the ground on all fours, in the wet sand. The white
helmet fell from my head and rolled off towards the sea and I followed
it, running quadrupedal fashion, and snatched it from an approaching wave.
A moment later I was exchanging greetings with a group of missionaries
who had gathered on the beach.
At this landing on the beach I observed that we were standing under a
cocoa-palm. I looked up, and lo, there was no snake hanging from it.
Now, the most vivid impression—in fact the only impression of Africa
that I had carried thus far through life, except that of sunny fountains
rolling down golden strands, was made by a picture in the old-fashioned
geography; in which there were crowded together, with contempt of
perspective, an elephant, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, a lion, a
leopard, a gorilla, a chimpanzee, several other monkeys, and a python
hanging from a tree.
“They are all here,” said some one, in explanation; “but they are not so
thick on the ground as you may have supposed.”
[Illustration: REV. A. C. GOOD, Ph.D.
_Dr. Good died at Efulen at the age of thirty-seven. He was a man of the
Livingstone type._]
III
BUSH TRAVEL
Upon our arrival at Batanga we at once commenced the preparations for
a journey into the bush, than which nothing could have been a greater
contrast to the long, idle voyage on the sea; for our physical strength
and powers of endurance were to be taxed more than ever before.
There were two others besides myself, Mr. Kerr, a new arrival, and the
Rev. A. C. Good, an intrepid and consecrated missionary whose name was
already known throughout the United States. Dr. Good had been twelve
years in Africa, working most of the time among the Fang of the Ogowé
River, but had lately come to Batanga for the purpose of opening the Bulu
interior. The language of the Fang was so much like the Bulu that Dr.
Good could converse with the latter from the first. Before the arrival of
Mr. Kerr and myself Dr. Good had already made one journey into the Bulu
country to a distance of seventy-five miles, where he chose the site of
the first station, afterwards named Efulen.
In those days nearly all the distance between Efulen and the beach was
covered with dense unbroken forest. None of the Bulu as far as we knew
had ever been to the coast; and no white man had ever entered that part
of the interior. The Mabeya tribe, living immediately behind the coast
tribe, were already in trade relations with the Bulu; so that there were
roads, that is, foot-paths, through the forest. But they were seldom
used, and were only a little better than none at all. The present good
bush-road from Batanga to Efulen did not exist in those days. We made it
ourselves after we had been there nearly a year, and it has been greatly
improved from time to time. The first road which we followed made a great
detour to the south, and we walked, according to Dr. Good’s calculation,
seventy-five miles from Batanga to Efulen, although the distance by the
present straight road is less than sixty miles.
And, by the way, before we enter the forest, bidding a temporary farewell
to civilization, we do well to take leave of this highly civilized term,
“mile.” It is more than superfluous in such a forest: it is positively
misleading. Such roads are not measured in terms of linear distance, but
only in measures of time. To say that a place is distant half a day’s
journey, or five hours, is to speak intelligibly; but to say that a place
is five miles distant is to give not the slightest information as to the
time it will take to reach it. On the few good roads which in recent
years have been improved by the government one might perhaps walk thirty
miles a day: on the worst roads that I have attempted I could not walk
five miles a day with equal labour.
Men can now walk to Efulen in three days over the present road, and
I with others have done it in that time, although in greatly reduced
health; yet I was not nearly so tired as when I used to walk it in five
days over the road that we first followed. The greater distance was by
no means the only difference; the chief difference was in the quality
of the road. The first road was so obscure that in many places we could
scarcely follow it; and in some places it was so completely overgrown
that we had to cut our way through, making the road as we went, for which
reason we always kept men with cutlasses ahead of the caravan. Much also
depends upon the season. A road might be very good and easy to travel in
the dry season, but almost, or quite, impassable in the wet season, when
the forest is flooded, when the streams have become rivers and the rivers
have far overspread their banks, so that the traveller is wading in water
much of the time. In opening a new station we could not choose our time
for travel, and it so happened that in my year and a half at Efulen I
only made two round trips in the dry season.
The African forest is the greatest in the world, both in the area covered
and in the density of growth. The tribes with whom I am familiar conceive
of the whole world as a vast bush intersected with rivers. The tribes
are moving ever from the interior towards the sea; and some of those who
have long been coast tribes still retain in the idiom of their language
the record of their former ignorance. The word for “river” is used to
designate the sea, and “the whole world” is “the whole bush.” A man will
speak of his country as his “bush,” and the white man’s country he calls
“the white man’s bush.” God, they say, loves “the whole bush.” Heaven, or
the other world, is “the other bush,” and in singing “I have a Father in
the promised land,” they say: “I have a Father in the bush beyond.”
One who is accustomed to the maple, beech, oak and pine, finds the
African forest strangely unfamiliar. There are extremes of soft and hard
woods; and one will soon observe that as a rule the soft woods have large
leaves, while most of the hard woods have small leaves. Teak, mahogany,
lignum vitæ, ebony and camwood are characteristic. The most striking and
beautiful tree of the forest is a species of cotton wood. It grows an
enormous height, with a silver-gray trunk like a column of granite, and
is supported by immense buttresses. In the primeval forest, that which
has not at any time been cut down for man’s habitation, the foliage is
very high and the gray trunks suggest the columns of a cathedral. The
branches above interlace, forming a canopy of foliage and excluding the
sun. Cable vines of various sizes, many of them six or eight inches in
diameter, lash the trees together, ascending the tree trunks in a spiral
coil like an endless python and sometimes strangling them to death, then
swinging from tree to tree in loops and coils, gnarled and twisted. The
foliage and flowers of these spread through the tree tops, making the
dim light below more dim, and from the swinging cables an undisciplined
profusion of other vines and various hanging plants depend in festoons
and draperies, all interwoven in bewildering confusion. The ground is
covered with a thick compost of rotting leaves and branches and insects.
Every few yards a giant tree trunk lies prostrate and is filled with
myriad insects that will soon devour it.
Lightning sometimes strikes the tallest trees, which come crashing down
bringing half a dozen others with them. Then in this open place where
the sunlight reaches the ground there shoots up with amazing rapidity
a tangled undergrowth, from which young trees race upwards to secure
the light and air in such rivalry and struggle that the weak are soon
strangled or crowded to death, and the battle is to the swift.
The poet William Watson in melodious verses prays for—
“The advent of that morn divine
When nations may as forests grow,
Wherein the oak hates not the pine,
Nor beeches wish the cedars woe,
But all in their unlikeness blend
Confederate to one golden end.”
No one will deny that this is beautiful poetry; but it is deplorably
false science. Nothing could be more untrue to the facts. The oak, the
pine and the cedar, considered as living things with conscious aims and
individual interests (for that is how the poet would have us consider
them), do hate each other with a hatred to which there is no parallel in
human society. Men sacrifice for each other, and we even have martyrs.
But in the forest there is no sacrifice, no martyrdom, nor do trees
ever confederate; but each fights for itself in a ceaseless and savage
struggle. And nowhere else in the forest world is the struggle for
existence so remorseless as in the tropic zone of Africa; for nowhere
else is variety so profuse and growth so rapid.
In the primeval forest the undergrowth is not dense and travel is not
so difficult. But as the natives are always moving their towns and
abandoning old sites, a considerable portion of the forest is the growth
of a few years; and here the undergrowth is so dense and matted that
there is no possibility of passing through it except as one tunnels his
way with the cutlass, and the jungle closes on both sides of the path
like a wall. This is the usual character of the bush along the rivers.
There are not many flowers in the forest. The most common is the orchid.
But flowers are numerous in the clearings and more open places. In
particular there is a lovely convolvulus of delicate lavender that climbs
over all the lower growth of the clearing and blooms in such profusion
as to give its colour to the landscape. The impression of the beauty or
the ugliness of the forest depends largely upon whether one sees it in
the wet or the dry season. In the dry season, travelling on a fairly good
road, the idea of the cathedral with its solemn majesty was often present
with me; I was impressed with its beauty and enjoyed the solitude. But in
the wet season I loathed it. Who could enjoy, or even recognize, beauty
while standing knee-deep in mud? Its stillness is not the stillness that
speaks to the mind and heart. It is dull and dead.
We had twenty-eight native carriers (whom we must call _porters_ when
speaking to Englishmen) each with a load of about forty pounds. They
often carry more than twice that weight over the present road to
Efulen; seventy pounds is the standard load. But besides the better
roads there is also this great difference that the natives were at that
time new to the work of carrying heavy loads, to which they have since
become accustomed. The present young men have grown up in the work.
Besides our personal effects and food supplies we carried trade-goods,
with which to buy food and building material from the natives, and to
pay native workmen. There was no currency in that interior tribe. We
paid out principally salt, beads, and brass rods, the latter used for
ornaments for the legs and arms. After a year there was some demand for
cloth—highly coloured prints—and other articles for which there was no
use at first.
We were dressed in suits of denim or other cheap material. I bought my
suit at a trading-house in Batanga for two dollars, and packed away all
my better clothing. Beneath the coat I wore a heavy woollen undershirt,
the only proper kind for the tropics, and proper all the time, no matter
what else one may choose or discard. We were glad to discard the helmet
while travelling in the forest, and to substitute a felt hat. Tastes
differ widely as to the best footwear; but I like best for such a road a
pair of canvas shoes with rubber soles, alternating with stout leather
shoes every second or third day. Each man carries a wooden stick or
staff about five feet in length. When a man has chosen and trimmed for
himself a stick that exactly suits him, he becomes attached to it with a
sentimental regard, according to the distance he has travelled with it
and the journeys he has made. He is sensitive to any criticism passed
upon it; and no experienced bush-traveller will make disparaging remarks
about another man’s staff, but around the camp-fire they will vie with
each other in praising each his own. I remember mine very well and I
would give much to have it now.
Perhaps this attachment is the stronger because, as a rule, we do not
carry watches in that country. Most watches will run only for a short
time. A fine gold watch is the most useless of all; the very cheapest
will run longest. When I began to tell this in America, I found that
I was sacrificing my reputation for accuracy of statement: whereupon
I stated the facts to a jeweller who, after consideration, said there
was a very plain explanation, namely, that the hair-spring of the more
expensive movements is usually finer and more closely coiled than that of
the cheaper watches, so fine that the least rust upon it would interfere
with its motion.
Our outfit for the road was very light. This was Dr. Good’s habit and
with me it was a kind of instinct. We were measuring our strength against
the forces of the forest, testing our ability to endure and to wrest from
the forest itself the means of enduring. Having this feeling, to carry
along the ready-made comforts of civilization seems like taking a mean
advantage of nature. Some few things must be taken. But the opinions of
the wisest differ as to what those few things should be, and each man
ardently believes in, and advocates his own outfit. The explanation is
that nothing of the outfit except food is an absolute necessity. Other
things, however important, are of the nature of comforts; and what is
necessary to one man’s comfort, another can often do without.
One may suggest for such a journey a good water-proof bag containing a
sweater, extra socks and pajamas, and two blankets. A good rubber blanket
is a necessity if one expects to sleep in the open forest. Canned foods,
of course, are used, and for cooking utensils, a frying-pan and a
sauce-pan will suffice for three, and a cup, tin plate, knife, fork and
spoon for each. Several cutlasses are necessary for clearing the road,
preparing beds, cutting fire-wood and other uses. Matches also must be
taken and kept in a dry place. A few towels and toilet articles complete
the necessary outfit. On our first journey we took camp-beds, but only
because we had need of them at Efulen. I never carried one again.
Besides this general and common outfit each man nearly always has some
one article that nobody else carries but himself, and that, in his mind,
is more important than anything else. I do not remember what Mr. Kerr’s
_indispensable_ was, for we never walked together except this once, it
being necessary that either one of us should stay at the station. Mine,
however, was a pair of leather gloves, at which Dr. Good used to laugh;
for we travelled often together. But they saved me much loss of blood and
the pain of torn hands from the brambles and long briers that stretched
across the path, and they also enabled me to protect my face from them
by pushing them aside better than I could have done with bare hands. Dr.
Good’s indispensable was a mosquito-net with canopy and sides which he
also urged upon me as a necessity and which I insisted was a superfluity.
There were no mosquitoes in our camping-places in the forest; but he used
the net to protect against damp and against any slight motion of the air,
for one takes cold very easily and the least cold is liable to induce
fever. We had many a good-natured “scrap” over these hobbies; but neither
of us ever converted the other. There was, however, one article with
which I was always well supplied and for which Dr. Good himself usually
thanked me before the end of a journey, and that was the indispensable
safety-pin. I never foresaw any particular use for it, but many uses
unforeseen invariably emerged as we travelled. Some travellers carry
a piece of oiled baize in a convenient and accessible place. It can be
used to sit down on; for one can never sit on the ground, even if it is
dry, because of insects. But its special use is for an apron, which is
attached with safety-pins and worn in the morning through the dripping
shrubbery. If one is wearing high shoes he can even keep his feet dry by
this means.
The road that threads the forest from Batanga to Efulen was a narrow
foot-path twelve inches wide and poorly beaten. The wet season had begun
and the rains had been falling two or three weeks. The road was not even
as good as we had expected; for Dr. Good, who had fully described it,
had passed over it at the end of the dry season, when the road was at
the best. The typical African road is a contorted line that vacillates
and swerves to right and left, turning and twisting at acute angles
continually, and often for no apparent reason, as if it had been made by
some crazy person. But in such cases there was always an original reason
even when it no longer exists. For instance, the native carrying a load
finds a tree fallen across the path. It is easier for him with his load
to go around it than to climb over it. But a log does not remain long
in an African forest. Between insects and rot it is soon demolished.
Meantime, along its length there has grown up a dense undergrowth; and
rather than cut through this the native keeps to the path, now beaten,
which passed around the log; and the new traveller wonders why the path
should not be straight. It is estimated that an African road is a third
longer in each mile by reason of its crookedness. But this is not the
only peculiarity of a forest path. African trees have enormous roots, and
much of them is above ground. This is the chief obstruction, and there
are many others.
No two successive steps are the same length, nor upon the same level.
If the attention is diverted for a moment, one may stumble and fall. The
road carefully avoids the hills and keeps down in the lowest parts. The
natives, carrying loads, dislike climbing, but they have not the least
aversion to mud; indeed, it has some advantages for their bare feet.
One passes through every variety of it and every depth. The road often
follows the bed of a stream for a distance, a foot or more under water
or in mud, according to the season. Meanwhile, the part of the traveller
that is above ground is kept moist by the dripping shrubbery that meets
across the path. Many of the shrubs are covered with thorns, spines and
hooks. One of the worst of these, armed with sharp spikes and not easy
to see because it bears but little foliage, sprawls across the path just
high enough to catch the average man under the chin, where it leaves
a mark that looks as if it might have been made with a cross-cut saw.
Then, again, there are long stretches of road that are not any worse than
crossing a ploughed field after a rain. Every day, and sometimes several
times a day, we forded streams, often wading to the waist, and we rather
enjoyed it after the mud.
The deeper ravines we crossed on bridges. Bridge-building in Africa is no
great triumph of mechanical engineering. The bridges which crossed the
narrower ravines and gorges consisted simply of several long, slender
poles laid down side by side. They ought to be on a level but are not.
One is six inches or a foot higher than the other, and there is so
much spring in them that the feat of crossing is equal to a tight-rope
performance. Over extensively flooded areas where the water is too deep
to wade, a bridge of single poles is supported in forked uprights at
intervals of the length of the poles, and above the bridge a rope of vine
is stretched to hold with the hand. It happened more than once that by
some mishap we tumbled into the stream below; but the natives were quick
to fish us out.
The worst part of the journey was on the last day, through the new
clearings which the natives had made for their gardens. In these the
whole forest lay prostrate,—trees great and small, the tangled mass of
vines, and all the débris made by its crashing fall. The whole enormous
mass is left lying until the lighter parts of it dry: then it is burned
over. This burning is repeated at long intervals until at length much of
it is burned away. But by this time the natives are perhaps thinking of
deserting it and making a new garden somewhere else, or they may have
moved their town away. Meanwhile, they somehow reach the ground and plant
their cassava which flourishes in the fresh, rich soil. The difficulty in
an African garden is not to get things to grow, but to keep other things
from growing. They never hesitate to fell the forest thus across the
road, obstructing the caravans and bringing curses on their heads.
One might think on approaching a town through one of these clearings that
it had been made as a formidable defense in time of war. To go through it
is a tedious and exhausting trial. One moment the traveller is crawling
on all fours under a log; then he walks up the inclined trunk of a tree
a distance of fifty feet, then turns and follows one of its branches,
from this leaps to a branch of another tree which he follows down to
the trunk, which is perhaps ten feet above the ground, while below him
are upright sticks or broken branches upon which he may be impaled if
he falls, or at least badly bruised. From this he mounts a cross-log
and proceeds downwards to another which he follows until it brings him
five feet from the ground, when he jumps the rest of the way, crawls
under another log, proceeds a few yards on the ground, mounts another
log, follows it until he finds himself again six feet off the ground
and wondering how he will reach it; but the next moment he has already
reached it and wonders how he got there. Then he does this all over
again, and then again. I never passed through such a clearing without
getting bruised or hurt in some way. The natives with their bare feet
climb over these smooth logs better than the white man with his shoes
unless they have rubber soles; in the morning before the dew has dried
it is especially hard. It is much harder from the fact that we are no
longer in the shade of the forest, but exposed to the fierce tropical sun
unrelieved by the least breeze because of the surrounding forest.
A caravan with their heavy loads, walking through such a forest ruin,
presents a picturesque scene to the spectator. Some are crawling under
logs, some are climbing on top of them, half a dozen are walking in
procession up an inclined trunk, some are walking a log ten feet in the
air, others are twisting their way through a maze of branches and some
have fallen to the ground. With such a clearing in mind, and remembering
what has been said about African bridges, the reader will not be likely
to ask the oft-repeated question, why donkeys and horses are not more
used. The use of either would necessitate the carrying of a derrick with
rope and tackle.
This recalls to my mind an occasion some years afterwards that afforded
high amusement to some friends of mine. I had been home in America
for several years and was about to go to Africa a second time when I
received a visit from Mr. Kerr, who was home on furlough. He gave me
an enthusiastic account of the work done by the German government in
improving the Bulu roads,—although it was perhaps the road to Lolodorf
rather than that to Efulen of which he was speaking. He declared that as
compared with the first roads that he and I had travelled, I would never
recognize it as an African road; for it was “grand,”—“simply grand.”
With an outburst of enthusiasm I replied that since I might be appointed
to that station, and since the road was “simply grand,” I would buy a
pair of donkeys at the Canary Islands and take them with me.
“Man alive!” he exclaimed, “one would think you had never been in Africa;
a donkey couldn’t get over it.”