as to the sick and the well; and returning a few minutes later, followed
by several workmen with the loads, I advanced as if by some occult means
I knew exactly the degree of sincerity or insincerity on the part of
each, and placed the heaviest load in front of a certain man, saying
quietly: “You will carry this load.” Now it happened that this was the
only sick man in the crowd and he was quite unfit to carry anything. The
truth is that the man, being really sick, did not call in the assistance
of dramatic art, and he made less fuss than any of the others. We were
not many hours on the way before I discovered the mistake I had made.
It is very difficult to make any change on the road, and is regarded as
something less than fair. To accomplish it without a mutiny one must
assume a terrifying countenance of the utmost ferocity and cannibalism.
In this I was evidently successful; for late in the afternoon I suddenly
called a halt, waited until all the men came up, and then ordered a man
to take the load off the back of the sick man and put it on the man who
that morning had been seized with a fit at my approach. This I did with
the more relish because I had heard him chuckling about it along the way
and telling the joke on the white man.
We seldom saw an animal in the forest, although we knew they were there.
The only monkey that we saw on our first journey Mr. Kerr shot and gave
to the carriers who ate every part of it, inside and out, including the
skin—after burning off the hair. We sometimes heard the blood-curdling
night-cry of the leopard; but we never saw one. On several occasions
when I was alone I heard elephants plunging along the path before me, or
suddenly discovered their tracks at my feet, so fresh that the water was
still trickling into them. The elephant is not dangerous unless one comes
upon him suddenly and startles or frightens him; but if he “charges,”
he is terrible. A chief near Efulen was one day walking in the forest at
the head of a hunting party. At a point where the path suddenly swerved
around the upturned root of a tree, he found himself face to face with
an elephant. Before he had time to fire the elephant instantly charged.
It put its tusk through his body and then trampled him to death under
its feet. The natives taught me, when I heard elephants ahead, to stop
and shout until there was complete silence; which meant that they had
hidden in the forest and I could pass along the path in perfect safety,
no matter how near they might be. But the first time that this occurred,
and the second time, I made the natives prove their advice by going ahead
themselves, which they never hesitated to do.
In the wet season I always walked in company with the caravan; but in the
dry season I preferred to walk alone, and often left the carriers far
behind me, scattered along the road in different groups. At a fork in
the road I always threw a handful of fresh leaves upon the road that I
followed, as a sign to the carriers that they might be sure to take the
same way. Never but once did they fail to follow me. On that occasion
some of the carriers were boys of a strange tribe, the Galway, more used
to waterways than to bush roads. Until the last evening they had walked
behind others who were familiar with bush travel and whom they could
follow heedlessly. But that evening it happened that the Galway were
ahead and they took the wrong road, not observing my sign of the leaves
on the path, and the whole caravan went astray except two carriers who
were far behind and separated from the others. To follow their misfortune
to the issue, the Galway got separated from the rest of the caravan and
arrived at Batanga two days late, famished with hunger and frightened
half to death.
Meanwhile, I had walked on far ahead until I thought that the carriers
might require all the daylight that was left to catch me, and then I
stopped and waited for them; though I had not yet reached the camp. As
time passed and no carriers appeared I began to feel uneasy. The chill
of the evening was approaching, and I had not even a coat; so I began to
walk back and forth rapidly to keep warm. Finally, two carriers arrived.
One of them had my food, which was fortunate; but the other had nothing
that I wanted on the road. The lost Galway had my bed and extra clothing,
and even the matches. We waited for them anxiously and called loudly,
but there was no answer. Then swiftly, as always in the forest of the
tropics, the day turned into night: “At one stride comes the dark.” A
heavy, palpable darkness, like smoke, enshrouded us and rose higher till
it blotted out the leafy canopy and blackened the very sky. The opacity
of the darkness was such that we could not see each other, nor could I
see my hand when I placed it before my eyes.
For a while I forgot the loss of the other carriers in thankfulness for
the company of these two men. For, however kindly the mood of the forest
by day, or however joyful the camp-fire by night in congenial company,
yet, to one alone through the night, without comfort or means of rest,
and with the possibility of being lost, the forest is truly dreadful. One
in such a plight interprets the forest through the medium of his misery
and his fear. The intolerable vastness of his prison dungeon suggests the
“outer darkness,” and the experience of a soul forsaken. I was miserably
cold and had nothing to protect me; nor had I a bed except a rubber
blanket. I kept walking back and forth on a bit of path a few yards long,
notwithstanding that I had walked all day. There was but little rest.
Occasionally I threw myself down on the rubber blanket but was so cold
that before long I rose again and began walking. Fortunately I was in
unusually good health, for Africa, or the exposure might have resulted
even more seriously than it did. My cook, Eyambe, a Batanga man, who
had worked for us at Efulen for several months, possessed the remnant
of a shirt, so much prized that he had carried it with him to the bush,
lest his numerous relatives, male and female, should wear it out in his
absence. He came to me in the darkness feeling his way, and said, “Mr.
Milligan, my shirt, you must take him and wear him, please. This bush he
no be too bad for we black man; but my heart cry for white man.”
I took it, of course, and wore it. But the cheer that I derived from the
kindness of his heart was greater than the poor comfort of the shirt.
I thanked God when morning dawned at last; but it is unnecessary to say
that I was in poor condition for walking next day, the last day of the
journey. I knew that the exposure would bring on fever and I walked
more rapidly than usual so as to reach Batanga as soon as possible. I
sometimes even ran, as if in precipitate flight from a pursuing beast.
The part of the road over which I passed that day was quite new and
poorly cleared. My clothing may not have been stout enough to withstand
the thorns and briers which I encountered; or else, in my hurry, I was
reckless. At any rate, when I emerged from the forest, behind Mr. Gault’s
house, one leg of my trousers was gone from above the knee, and the
other leg was also exposed through several rents, the remainder of the
trousers being fastened with numerous safety-pins. I was also scratched
and bleeding more than on any previous trip.
As I turned and looked back from the beach towards the gloomy and sullen
forest, in the vivid realization of the exposure of that long night and
the fever which I knew was imminent, I had the feeling which Stanley
describes when he and his long caravan emerged from the dark prison
forest after the immurement of several months, in which scores of their
comrades had died by the way, the whole caravan now enfeebled and wasted
with hunger, the black, glossy skin turned an ashen gray. They ascended
a hill and first looking up yearningly towards the bright blue sky, they
then turned with a sigh and looked back over the sable forest that heaved
away to the infinity of the west. In their sudden exaltation they shook
their clenched fists at it, uttering imprecations, and with gestures of
defiance and hate. They apostrophized it for its cruelty to themselves
and their kinsmen; they compared it to hell, and accused it of the
murder of a hundred of their comrades. But the forest which lay vast as
a continent before them, and drowsy, like a great beast, answered not a
word, but rested in its infinite sullenness, remorseless and implacable.
I was not mistaken in my apprehension of fever. I did not return to
Efulen again. One fever followed another in quick succession, becoming at
length so serious that my fellow missionaries at Batanga united in urging
me not to risk another attack. An English steamer on the outward voyage
called just at that time and I went south to Gaboon, where I sailed on a
French steamer for Marseilles and thence home.
Little did I think when I was leaving Efulen for a few days, as I
supposed, that I was really taking a long leave of Efulen and Africa,
not again to see either for four years, and never again to see Dr. Good.
That last morning, when I was setting out for the beach, he walked with
me down the long Efulen hill to the foot, where we stood perhaps half an
hour, formulating our expectations and making the clearest-cut plans,
none of which were realized, although they pertained to the immediate
future.
The element of accident is a constant factor in Africa, that continually
changes the course of our reckoning and overturns our surest
calculations. Accidents are no more numerous there than elsewhere, but
they are more serious. Climbing a mountainside, a slip of the foot is
fraught with more danger than on a level road. In the hostile climate of
Africa, the smallest accident, a moment’s incaution or forgetfulness on
your own part or on the part of others, may change the entire future.
Elsewhere the best-laid plans of men have about an equal chance with the
best-laid plans of mice, if the observation of Burns is to be trusted.
But in Africa the probability of the future is entirely with the mice.
While I was in Africa a second time and living in Gaboon, two hundred
miles further south on the coast, I visited Efulen once more. The road
was much more improved than when I had seen it last. The sun shone
through the arcade of vines and branches and formed upon the pathway
a filigree of gold and silver light. The mode of travel was different
accordingly. It was the best time of the year and there was a happy party
of eleven, so that the journey was like a continuous picnic. Four of the
party were ladies, three of whom were carried in hammocks and one rode
a donkey. Besides, and chiefly, there was a very sweet little girl, two
years old—a little splash of golden sunshine in the gray forest light, a
dream of home, a fragment of a song⸺ Ah me! how lonely one becomes for
the sight of a white child when he has lived some years in the jungles!
Much of the time the ladies were walking and the hammocks empty. The
hammock is suspended from a long bamboo pole borne upon the shoulders of
two carriers. But the carriers must be relieved frequently, for it is
dreadfully hard work. Six of the strongest native men are required for
one hammock. Little Lois also had her special hammock, with a firm floor
in it, so that she could sit upright, and she was perfectly happy when
riding through the forest.
[Illustration: LITTLE FRANCES, BORN IN AFRICA.
_Ah me, how lonely one becomes for the sight of a white child when he has
lived some years in the jungles!_]
Several towns had been built along the way and in one of them we stopped
each night, where we occupied native houses and slept on native beds of
straight bamboo poles covered with armfuls of grass—as good a bed as
one could desire. The numerous ticks in the grass were converted into
bed-ticks—such was our resourcefulness of expedient. The only dislikable
part of the journey was rising so early in the morning when we could have
slept on for hours, after the walk of the preceding day. But an incident
of that journey impressed it distinctly upon my mind that there is some
advantage in eating breakfast before daylight. One morning we had an
oatmeal breakfast. The day dawned upon two tardy boarders before they
had eaten and they were horrified at discovering that the oatmeal was
full of vermiform animalcules. Of course, they could not eat it and had
the poorer breakfast in consequence, and the other nine thought that it
served them quite right for being so late. A doubt has always lurked in
the recesses of my mind as to whether the joke was really on the two or
on the nine.
We did not, as in former days, keep steadily to a regular pace without
stopping, even for hours at a time, and walking in comparative quiet.
For the hammock carriers go very rapidly, on a dog-trot, continually
shouting, and a white man follows immediately behind each hammock. They
repeat a regular call and response, half song, half shout, as if to
sustain their animation and courage. What wonderful voices they have! The
forest, startled from her deep repose as we pass along, rebounds with
shout and answering echo, while we dash on over height and depth, over
rock and stream and mire, for an hour. Then, out of breath and in copious
perspiration, we sit down for fifteen or twenty minutes, and at the word
of command we are off again with a dash and a shout. It is all very
pleasant and a great improvement on the old way, although one pays very
little attention to the forest and is wholly oblivious to its moods. But
the old way is still the regular way on all roads except those few which
the white man has undertaken to improve.
And this disposition to “improve” everything he puts his hand to is a
radical difference between the native and the white man. The mental
habit of the native is contentment with things as they are; in which
he is far more happy than fortunate. He would let this old world, or
this old “bush” as he calls it, stay as it is to the end of time. The
unhappy restlessness of the white man, his dissatisfaction with what he
has and his longing for what he has not, his eagerness for change and
“improvement,” the native is sometimes disposed to regard as a morbid
mental disease. But the greatest wonder of it is that the white man
includes the native himself in his program of improvement. He finds him a
denizen of the forest, his mental habitudes like her changing moods, now
sullen and cruel, now gentle and cheerful for a little while, partaking
of her darkness mingled here and there with broken beams of light; and as
he clears a way through the deep forest making the darkness light, so he
labours that a gleam of heaven’s light may shine down into the benighted
native soul; that it may lighten the path of his destiny more and more,
and lead him on, in ways of purity and peace, till the gleam become the
“perfect day.”
V
THE CAMP-FIRE
If it is dreadful to be overtaken in the forest by the punctual night of
the tropics, while unprepared, without camp or comfort, yet, to the weary
man, after a good bath and a good supper, and with a good bed awaiting
him, the brief period of the departing day and the increasing camp-fire
glow, the smell of wood smoke and the crackle of the burning log, are a
delightful experience.
The camp is usually an open glade, where the night is not so sudden in
its fall. The shadows grow longer in the evening light, and the gray
twilight deepens till the stars shine through. Then in the red glow
of the camp-fire, phantom shadows and eerie forms flit to and fro,
approaching towards us and receding into the darkness like spirits
impelled by curiosity, and planning either play or mischief according to
the mood of the observer. In the day the man is properly the master of
his mood, but in this hour it is pleasant to relax and let the mood be
master of the man, giving a free rein to fancy.
Immediately after supper it was my custom to hold prayers with the
carriers. Then, if the labour of the day has been easy, or a Sunday rest
has intervened, they become more sociable and communicative than usual,
and often prolong the evening with camp-fire stories. They are born
orators and can tell a story to perfection, whether it be a fable handed
down from others, or a narrative from their own experience. The knowledge
of the native may be ever so limited and his thought meagre, but he
can always give it appropriate and striking form and express himself
in forceful and sometimes beautiful language. He never hesitates nor
becomes incoherent; his words flow like a river and keep well within the
course of his purpose. His gestures are animated and infinitely varied,
sometimes grotesque, more often graceful, and always expressive.
He has also a faculty of imitation beyond all men. For instance, two
schoolboys (if we may leave the camp-fire for a while to digress upon
this native talent for imitation)—two schoolboys sit talking together,
myself paying no attention, when one of them imitates the clicking of my
typewriter so that I immediately recognize it. A new clock has recently
been placed in the school, and I recognize their imitation of its stroke.
Again, I recognize the noise of the gasoline engine of the launch,
_Dorothy_, now at half speed, now full speed, now running smoothly and
now with the peculiar omission followed by a heavier stroke, due to a
weak battery.
A boy in talking to me refers to another boy by a name that I do not
know, one with rather a peculiar countenance.
I say: “I do not know of whom you are speaking.”
He replies: “He looks like this”—slightly twisting his face into an
exaggerated and ludicrous likeness of the other boy, which I instantly
recognize.
One day at Efulen the body of a very large monkey, killed by Mr. Kerr or
Dr. Good, hung suspended from the roof of our back porch. The expression
of the monkey’s face was fearfully human. It did not look dead, but
rather as if it had been very drunk the night before and was sleeping off
the effects. I heard our two house-boys giggling and chuckling on the
porch, and looking out I saw them standing in front of the monkey trying
to look just like him, which they did with such startling success that
I complimented them by telling them that either of them might exchange
places with the monkey without Dr. Good ever knowing the difference.
On one occasion a party of white men and native boys were travelling on
a river launch for several days. Four of the white men occupied their
spare time in playing a certain game with dominoes. One day when they had
left the cabin, four native boys sat down in their places and taking the
dominoes, began to imitate the white men. They were absolutely ignorant
of the game, and did not know the white men’s language, and yet they
presented the semblance of the whole performance, each boy impersonating
an individual white man—his exclamations, manner, and general behaviour
during the progress of the game, from the deal to the last trick and the
noisy conclusion.
This art of imitation is useful to the natives in hunting. For instance,
a deer hunter in the forest will imitate the noise of two fighting
bush-deer, and he will do it so well that any deer within hearing will
come running to the spot. In reciting their numerous fables, in which
animals are made to talk and act so as to teach lessons of prudence and
goodness, the native will imitate the noise or the movements of each
animal, and some of these stories one might almost follow without knowing
the language.
This talent is also useful to the native in preaching the Gospel, which
they all do, great and small, old and young, as soon as they become
Christians, and often long before. I talked one day to a group of
Christian boys, or young men, on the words: “Now the serpent was more
subtile than any beast of the field,” applying the words obviously to
the subtility of the Evil One in tempting us. Shortly afterwards, one
of those young men, Ndong Koni (whose name I am likely to mention very
frequently in the succeeding chapters) preached to a large audience a
sermon on those words, which put mine to shame:
“You know where you may expect to find other animals,” he said, “and you
also know their times.” And then naming first the leopard, he told them
the kind of place that it frequents, and at what hours it seeks its prey,
while the eager audience roared assent. So he did with the elephant, the
gorilla and others. But the serpent, he told them, is found everywhere,
often in the path before them, even in their houses, and always when
least expected. Then he compared its powers with those of other animals,
describing the leopard’s strength to fight, the fleetness of the deer
in escaping, and how the monkey climbs; but how the serpent outfights
the leopard, outruns the deer, outclimbs the monkey. The audience
knowing well all the habits of the animals of the forest, was wildly
appreciative, and several times took the sermon out of the speaker’s
mouth.
On another occasion, a young man, Amvama, preached on the “Lost Sheep”
of the parable, describing its peculiar helplessness. All the animals of
the forest, however far they wander, can find their way back—but not the
sheep; every other animal has some peculiar defense against its enemies
of the forest, but the sheep is defenseless. The sheep lost in the forest
cannot of itself get back to the town, and it is sure to be devoured
by the wild beasts. Amvama did not fail to apply this to our own moral
plight as lost and helpless.
But, we will return to the camp-fire in the forest, and the dim and dusky
company seated around it, and the larger circle of fitful shadows and
furtive forms that come gliding out, and back again into the forest. The
opaque darkness pours forth such a volume of sound as never was heard in
any forest elsewhere;—a thousand mingled noises of the night, weird, and
difficult to associate with any bodily form, but belonging, one might
easily fancy, to the shadow spirits of the forest, some of them perhaps
the spirits of dead men—of those who, labouring under heavy loads, fell
by the wayside, and died of sickness or fatigue, whose skeletons we
sometimes pass; of those who by the spell of an enemy’s fetish lost their
way, and never saw the face of man again; of those who for some crime
have been driven forth into the forest by their own people, to die of
hunger, or by the beasts.
Above all the myriad noises of the night, and separate from them, at
times there falls upon the ear a prolonged cry of distress, that smites
upon the heart, heard always in the African forest and never afterwards
forgotten. It is a succession of ten or twelve long cries, shrill,
tremulous and piercing; rather low at first, and vague, but gradually
rising to a cry of definite terror, and again descending until it is lost
in the volume of the forest noise.
It is a little disappointing to find the real source of this peculiar
cry; and most people never find it, for it is exceedingly difficult to
locate; whether near or far, whether high or low, one cannot be sure. It
does not proceed as imagination suggested, from the spirits of the dead
at variance and afflicting one another, but from a warm-bodied, innocent
creature, the lemur, which lives in the heights of the trees, feeds
upon insects, birds and reptiles, and seldom comes to the ground. In
appearance it is somewhat like a bulky bear’s cub, but not well armed for
offense or defense, and leading a precarious life among the stronger and
fiercer creatures of the forest.
And now it occurs to me that the _Lemures_ in Roman mythology were the
spirits of those who had died in sin and who could not find rest, for
whom expiatory rites were celebrated in the temple. It is generally
supposed that Linnæus gave the name _lemur_ to this family of animals
because of the pale and strangely ghost-like faces of some of them; but
the peculiar cry of this particular kind of lemur is more sepulchral than
the appearance of any of them, and might well be a reason for the name
they bear.
There is one other characteristic sound in the night-forest, though
personally I have not heard this sound when far from the coast. It is a
single monotonous note, a little like a low tone on a flute, about ten
seconds in duration, and without rise or fall, a doleful sigh or sob of
unending remorse. This sound, although it always seems to be distant, is
even more difficult to locate than the other. It is human more than all
other sounds of the forest, and yet sepulchral, and the superstitious
mind is easily persuaded that it issues from the unseen world. The source
of it is rather extraordinary; for according to native testimony it
proceeds from a certain gigantic snail, as it slowly draws itself into
and out of its shell. This theory is difficult either for white man or
black man to verify; for the sound is heard only at night, and it ceases
as one approaches. But the native is by no means likely to be mistaken.