legend of the origin of this sound; a legend familiar to all the tribes
of West Africa, and illustrating a rare interpretative faculty of the
native mind. This is the camp-fire story:
“There was once a wayward and wilful son who lived alone with his mother.
One day coming home hungry he ordered her to gather some greens and
cook them for him. The mother, who never resisted his wishes, went out
and gathered plenty of greens and cooked them. But in the cooking they
shrivelled up as greens always do. Then the mother presented the greens
to her son; but the son looking at them accused his mother of having
eaten the greens herself. This she denied; but the son would not believe
her, and in his anger he struck her a blow on the head, and the mother
fell dead at his feet. Then he cried out in anguish and sorrow; long and
bitterly did he cry, but in vain. She was dead! She was dead! He had
killed his own mother. From that day, all the days he mourned, saying
always: ‘I killed my mother; I killed my mother;’ and all the nights he
sobbed and moaned: ‘I killed my mother.’
“Then the spirits seeing his sorrow, that it was very great, and
hearing him cry always day and night, at last were moved with pity, and
turned him into a snail, which cannot suffer like a man. But though the
snail does not weep in the daytime, yet at night it mourns and cries:
‘I—killed—my—mother;’ and so it will keep on crying until the end of the
world.”
The reader will of course understand that the note of the snail is single
and bears no resemblance to these articulate words of the son’s sorrow.
The interpretation is purely spiritual, and poetic genius could scarcely
improve upon it as an expression of the unending remorse which the sound
conveys to sensitive and susceptive minds.
Sitting around the camp-fire they listen to the story as interested as if
they had never heard it before, as children listen to the repetition of
fables and nursery tales. Then remarks are made upon a son’s duty towards
his mother, and some of them tell what good mothers they have; for this
is the deepest reverence and highest sentiment of the African mind.
“Whatever other estimate we may form of the African,” wrote Leighton
Wilson, than whom no one has ever known the African better, “we may not
doubt his love for his mother. Her name, whether she be dead or alive, is
always on his lips and in his heart. She is the first being he thinks of
when awakening from his slumbers and the last he remembers when closing
his eyes in sleep; to her he confides secrets which he would reveal to
no other human being on the face of the earth. He cares for no one else
in time of sickness; she alone must prepare his food, administer his
medicine, perform his ablutions and spread his mat for him. He flies to
her in the hour of his distress, for he well knows if all the rest of the
world turn against him she will be steadfast in her love, whether he be
right or wrong.
“If there be any cause which justifies a man in using violence towards
one of his fellow men it would be to resent an insult offered to his
mother. More fights are occasioned among boys by hearing something said
in disparagement of their mothers than all other causes put together. It
is a common saying among them that if a man’s mother and his wife are
both on the point of being drowned, and he can save only one of them, he
must save his mother, for the avowed reason that if the wife is lost he
may marry another, but he will never find a second mother.”
Following the legend of the snail, several fables are told as we sit
by the camp-fire. There is a fable called, _The Chimpanzee and the
Ungrateful Man_:
“There was once a poor man who had but one wife and one child, and they
lived in a small house in a far-away bush town near which was a stream
with fish. The man was a hunter, and with his spear he hunted game in the
forest, but the woman made fish-traps of basketwork and caught fish in
the stream.
“One day when the man was hunting in the forest the woman took her babe
and went to look at her fish-traps. She put her babe on the bank and
herself went down into the water. Soon the babe began to cry; but the
mother heard not for the noise of the running water. Now there was a
mother chimpanzee in the top of a great tree near by. The chimpanzee had
her home there in a safe place; but when she heard the babe she felt pity
and she came down to the ground and taking the child in her arms, nursed
it to sleep.
“The mother, having removed the fish from the traps, came up the bank
to get her babe, and lo! there sat a great monkey and the babe sleeping
upon its breast. She screamed with fright, and screamed again, so that
the chimpanzee, afraid lest the hunter might come, put the babe down and
ran into the forest. The woman snatched her babe and ran home very much
frightened. She told the story to her husband but he only laughed.
“However, the next time the woman went to work at her fish-traps the man
followed her and hid in the thicket. Again the woman laid down her babe
and waded into the stream and again the babe began to cry and again at
length the kind chimpanzee ventured down the tree and quieted the babe
on her breast. Then the man thinking only of procuring a big feast of
meat drew stealthily near with spear in hand and aiming it right at the
heart of the chimpanzee suddenly hurled it with all his might. But the
chimpanzee, seeing him just in time, held out the babe to receive the
flying spear which pierced through its body. The horrified father had
slain his own child.
“The chimpanzee laid the dead babe on the ground with the spear still
sticking in it, and fled to the forest. But before disappearing it turned
and said: ‘I was doing you a kindness in taking care of your babe.
Therefore the evil that you would have done me has fallen upon yourself.’”
There is a very common fable in which the turtle teaches the wisdom and
prudence of not interfering in other people’s palavers. The leopard and
the python had a quarrel. The leopard visits the turtle and asks his
help against the python. The turtle says to the leopard: “Come again
to-morrow evening.”
Then the python comes to the turtle and asks his help against the
leopard, and the turtle says to the python: “Come again to-morrow
evening.”
The next evening the python comes again to the turtle and asks his help
against the leopard. The turtle says to the python: “Go hide in the
thicket and keep still for a while.”
Then the leopard comes to the turtle and asks his help against the
python. “Go hide in the thicket,” says the turtle.
Then the leopard ran into the thicket and walked on top of the python.
“Now,” says the turtle to the python and the leopard, “you can settle
your own palaver.”
Another man tells why it is that the leopard has no friend among all the
animals, but walks always alone in the forest. Once upon a time a chief
made a great trap to catch animals. First a gazelle fell into the trap.
Then he cried and cried to his companion (the story-teller imitates
the cry of this and the following animals to a critical but delighted
audience) but the gazelle’s companion did not hear and he died there, for
the chief was away on a journey. Then a wild boar came and was caught and
he also cried to his companion. Then an antelope came and was caught.
They all died in the trap. Then came a leopard and was caught, but before
the leopard died a turtle came; and the turtle felt pity for the leopard
and released him. Then the leopard wanted to kill the turtle which had
released him. So the turtle crawled inside of a hollow tree. The leopard
followed the turtle into the tree, but he got fast in the tree and could
not get out.
Now this was a tree that bears fruit upon which monkeys feed. So after a
while there came a blue-nosed monkey to eat the fruit of the tree. Then
there came a white-nosed monkey; then a red-headed monkey; then a black
monkey. When the leopard heard the noise of the monkeys he begged them
to come and release him. Then the monkeys all came and got the leopard
out of the tree. But no sooner did the leopard find himself safe than he
fought with the monkeys, and he killed the white-nosed monkey and the
red-headed monkey and ate them. Then the black-haired monkey, who had
escaped up a tree, said to the leopard: “You leopards are rogues and
treacherous. We helped you and saved your life, and as soon as you were
helped you turned on us and began to kill us.” So the leopard to this day
has no friends, but walks alone in the forest, for he cannot be trusted.
And there are men who cannot be trusted any more than the leopard;
therefore they live without friends.
“Oh,” cried the audience, “men do not know the language of the leopard
and the language of the monkey.” “No,” replies the story-teller, “men
cannot speak the language of either of these animals; but some men have
fetishes by which they can understand the language of all animals when
they hear them talk.”
A man tells “a true story” about a slave who lives in his town, and who
frequently turns himself into a leopard and eats the sheep of the town.
He has also, in the form of a leopard, attacked men and women of the
town, who had offended him. Everybody in the town knows this to be true.
This suggests to another the story of a magic fight. A certain stranger
coming into a town walked rudely against a man, wishing to quarrel with
him that he might get his goods. The man said nothing, but expecting that
the stranger would return and try to provoke a fight he prepared himself
by making medicine; for he had great knowledge of medicine and magic,
though he never used his knowledge except in self-defense. The stranger
returned as he expected and again walked rudely against him. The man said
to the stranger: “Do you want to fight with me?”
“Yes,” replied the stranger, and he cursed the man’s mother, at which the
man struck him.
Now the stranger was a powerful witch, and immediately he turned into
a leopard; but to his great surprise his opponent also turned into a
leopard. Then a terrible fight took place between the two leopards. They
leaped and sprang upon each other and howled so frightfully that the
women of the town fell down with fear; but the men all gathered around
the fighting leopards. Then suddenly the stranger turned himself into
a python and springing upon the leopard threw a deadly coil around its
neck; but the other leopard also turned into a python, and the pythons
fought together, coiling about each other, hissing, and biting. Then
the stranger turned into a gorilla that he might seize the python and
choke it in his terrible hands, but the other python also turned into
a gorilla, and the gorillas fought and tried to squeeze each other to
death. At last the stranger, getting exhausted, turned into an eagle that
he might fly away, but the other also turned into an eagle, and pursuing
him dealt him a fatal blow. The dying eagle changed again into a man and
begged the other man for mercy, which was refused. He would not make
medicine for him, and so the stranger died.
On one of these camp-fire occasions a coast man who had been employed
at Efulen tells how he recovered certain goods that a Bulu workman had
stolen from him. He called together all the workmen, both Bulu and coast
men, and after telling them that his goods had been stolen he proposed
to discover the thief by ordeal. He told them of an ordeal that was well
known in his town, and that never failed. Then he produced a dish of
medicine he had made, which he said he would squirt into the eye of each
man. In the eye of an innocent person it would be harmless as water, but
it would burn the eye of the guilty one. From the first he had suspected
a certain Bulu man, but he wanted formal evidence and the best evidence
would be the man’s confession, which he determined to obtain. He stood
the men in a row, with the suspected Bulu man near the last. Then he
began squirting a copious dose of medicine into an eye of each man in
turn. It did not hurt in the least, for the very good reason that it was
nothing but water—which nobody knew but himself. Then when he came to
the suspected man, he slipped a handful of red pepper into the water,
and squirted it into the man’s eye. A sudden scream, a full confession,
and the goods restored were some of the more important effects of this
wonderful ordeal. And many African ordeals are useful for discovering a
criminal when you happen to know who he is.
One man tells “a true story” of an evil spirit who hates people and
who spreads disease and death. He once appeared in the forest near a
town, in the form of a little child, evidently lost and hungry, and
crying bitterly. Some kind-hearted woman finding him took pity on him
and carried him to the town in her arms. But she was soon smitten
with smallpox, which spread from her to others and the whole town was
destroyed.
However the evening may begin with fable and fiction, it usually ends
with narratives of fact and experience. But their facts are as fabulous
as their fables and there is no distinct line between. One may listen to
a story that is a tissue of impossibilities, and may suppose that the
native is repeating a myth or a legend to which the imagination of at
least several generations has contributed fantastic details, only to find
that the purport of the story is a narrative of fact which the native
solemnly believes. For they know little of nature’s laws and nothing of
their uniformity.
Therefore “miracles” are always happening. The miracles of the New
Testament, as a display of supernatural power, do not at first impress
the native mind; not because he cannot believe them, but because he
believes them too easily, and believes that miracles more wonderful take
place in his own town every day. But the moral quality—the benevolence
and mercy—of the New Testament miracles impresses him deeply, and this
to him is their wonder. For, among his people, men and women who possess
supernatural power wield it to an evil purpose, or at best, in their own
interest.
A man tells of a murderer in his town who was suspected of having killed
a number of persons who had died a mysterious death, after having first
lost their shadows. The suspected man was closely watched, and, sure
enough, one day they caught him in the very act of driving a nail into
another man’s shadow. Everybody knows that a man’s shadow is his spirit,
or at least _one_ of his spirits, and if it be mortally wounded, or in
any way induced to leave him, he will die. No man will long survive the
loss of his shadow. But while witches and other murderers commit their
evil deeds under cover of night, the shadow-slayer chooses the day and
often the noonday. Many a man has lost his shadow at noonday—not so
difficult to understand if it be remembered that we are speaking of
the tropics, where, at certain seasons, the sun at noonday is directly
overhead.
The people were so enraged at this murderer who was caught driving
the nail into a man’s shadow—was caught only after the deed was done,
making death certain—and who must have been the cause of all the recent
unaccountable deaths in the town, that they carried him into the forest
and bound him to the ground in the track of the driver ants, which
immediately covered his whole body and devoured him, leaving nothing but
the bones. But in the night-time his screams were still heard, even after
his death, and the people were sore afraid. His spirit haunted the town,
until at length the people deserted it and built in another place. And
even yet the belated traveller passing that way hears the screams of the
dead man.
But the greatest fear in all Africa is the witch. The witch’s soul is
“loose from her body,” and at night she leaves her body and goes about
the town, an unseen enemy, doing mischief and wickedness. A young man by
the camp fire tells of a witch in his town who for some time had been
“eating” the children of the town. It is not the body, but the spirit,
that she eats, after which the child sickens, and gradually becoming
worse, at length dies.
The discovery of witchcraft was made in a peculiar way. A certain man
who was sick and lying awake at night with pain, thought one night that
he heard a sound in the street. He crawled close to the wall and peering
through a crack he beheld in the street the phantom form of a woman
carrying the form of a child. She laid the child down in the street. Then
she drew the form of a knife with the evident intention of cutting the
child to pieces and eating it. But the knife was powerless to cut because
of the bodily eyes of the man who was a spectator. Again and again the
woman tried to dissect the child and still the knife refused to cut. At
length it occurred to her that she was probably being watched. Then,
taking the child up quickly, she returned it to the house whence she had
stolen it, restored it to its body, and fled, without being recognized by
the man who had seen her. In the morning he reported to the town all he
had seen. The wildest excitement ensued. The mothers of the town were in
terror, not knowing who the witch was that was eating their children.
But one of the women was taken suddenly ill and they became suspicious,
though they said nothing. She grew rapidly worse until she was seized
with a convulsion and foam appeared at her mouth, a certain sign of
witchcraft and that her own witch inside had rebelled and was eating her.
Then they all reviled and cursed her, gave her no food, threw cold water
on her, mocked her agony, and exulted in her pain until she died.
A deep, resonant, hungry roar of a leopard arrests the attention of the
company around the camp-fire. It is at a pretty safe distance, however,
and the white man having given orders to keep the fire burning retires to
his hammock a little apart, but takes his rifle with him.
The effect of these last stories is sobering and saddening, especially
to a mind not yet accustomed to such tales. A shadow lies across the
white man’s heart. And that same shadow lies across every charm in Africa
and mars every beauty—the reflection of the cruel ignorance and awful
sufferings of its people. The observer who does not see the shadow must
never have entered into the mind-life and the heart-life of the people.
The vast forest darkness, and the weird night-sounds that befit the
darkness, deepen the impression of the camp-fire stories.
That piercing cry of the lemur, how it suggests the terror of the
wretched man devoured by driver ants! And that other mournful note
is surely the remorse of spirits in the other world for cruel deeds
committed here.
There is now something awful in the darkness. One feels with the _Ancient
Mariner_—
“Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
Sleep does not come quickly to a mind depressed. As I lie awake and
listen, the noises of the night reverberating through the forest, with
the rush of the wind in the tree tops, blend together in one vast chorus,
whose music is a funeral march.
The materialistic modern mind calls the universe a machine. But the old
Norsemen of the forest said that it is a tree, the tree _Igdrasil_,
that lured the mind of a great modern mystic. Often in the night-forest
have I recalled the Norse legend of the tree _Igdrasil_, the tree of
_existence_. It is watered by three streams, the past, the present and
the future. The branches are human history, the leaves are the actions
and the words of men; the wind sighing through it is the sobbing of men’s
sorrows.
But the forest is as variable in her moods as the mind of a man. Stern
at times and sometimes awful, yet again she loves to soothe the mind and
impart a gentle cheer. If you would know the charm of the night-forest in
her most intimate and communicative mood you must wait until some time,
as if in response to an inaudible summons, you waken after several hours
of deep, restful sleep that is one of the secrets of the forest. Under a
roof and between close walls a wakeful hour is monotonous and miserable
and the habit of wakefulness is a malady that were fit penance for mortal
sins. But in the open forest, especially when there is a glimmer of stars
shining through the screen of dark foliage, a wakeful hour passes easily.
One is never lonely in such an hour, for a mystic life pervades the
night-forest, and one realizes that it is something more and greater than
the definite forms which the eye sees by day. When these are dissolved in
darkness one is more sensible of the underlying, mysterious life, as of a
spiritual presence. Forms, whether material or creedal, sometimes conceal
the reality which they represent. The noises of the night-forest, the
mingled voices of innumerable crickets, tree-toads, frogs and croaking
night-birds, the chatter of the stream over the stones, the rushing
of the wind above the trees, with many unfamiliar sounds, each almost
indistinguishable in the thrilling volume, seem but the sights of the
silent day transformed into sound, and one feels that the interpretation
of the sound would be also the interpretation of the forms and shapes, of
colours, of shadows and broken light-beams.
This illusion may be promotive of the native belief in animistic nature.
For the eye does not see those animate creatures in the day, and to the
child-mind it might easily seem that the myriad noises of the night issue
from rock and hill and stream and tree.
Lying thus awake but restful, the blended noises of the resounding forest
fall upon the passive ear like the confused echo of some world-orchestra,
or a broken strain from the music of the planets and the stars as they
sweep through vast orbits, on and on forever. For the night-forest,
unlike the day, speaks always musically to the ear that is attuned to
hear it.
The soft sound of the wind among the leaves of the highest branches again
lulls the wakeful listener into sleep; and he enjoys it the more because
of the brief disturbance.
VI
A HOME IN THE BUSH
Efulen, my first African home, I saw for the first time in July 1893.
It is in Cameroon, among the Bulu people, directly behind Batanga, less
than sixty miles from the coast, and about two hundred miles north of the
equator.
Efulen is situated upon a hill two hundred and fifty feet high and
nearly two thousand feet above the sea-level, and is surrounded by
mountains. The scenery is beautiful and magnificent and resembles the
mountainous parts of Pennsylvania; but in that tropical climate there are
atmospheric effects seldom seen in the colder latitudes. Mountain and
valley are covered with a forest of green with here and there a tree of
red or scarlet, and so dense that one might think he could walk on it.
From the top of Efulen hill one looks out on a rolling plain of foliage
that stretches away over valley and hill, until it becomes extinct in
the dim distance of the empurpled hills. Often in the morning, when the
atmosphere of the valleys is clear, an overhanging mist cuts off the tops
of the mountains, which appear as elevated table-lands, all of the same
height, and precisely level. A few minutes later the scene is magically
transformed. The mist has descended and filled the valleys as if all the
clouds of the heavens had fallen down, while the mountain-peaks, radiant
with the sunlight, rise out of the mist like islands out of a deep sea.
I have said that Dr. Good had already made one journey into this
interior. He chose Efulen for the site of the new mission station, and
set natives to work cutting down trees and clearing the top of the hill.
The name _Efulen_, which we afterwards gave it, was first used by the
natives themselves. It is from a Bulu word, _fula_, which means to mix;
for they never had seen such a mingling of people, of different towns and
even hostile tribes, as they saw daily on our hill, where all could come
with safety.