This is chanted by an individual, or a succession of individuals, and
is not the usual wail in which all join, though it is much like it.
African music is not always based upon harmony; nor does harmony
always improve it.
]
VI
PESTS
It is part of the squalid commonplace of life in Africa that the most
exciting adventures are not with elephants but with ants, and our worst
danger is not the leopard but the mosquito. And this struggle against
minute enemies requires more patience than the fight with beasts, both
because it is not occasional, but an unremitting warfare, and because it
does not appeal to our love of the heroic, nor stimulate with the
promise of praise. When Paul tells us that he fought with beasts at
Ephesus, our hearts swell with admiration; but if he had said: “I have
fought with the mosquitoes in Africa,” he would have elicited no
sympathy and some ridicule; although the latter is also a fight for
life, and attended by greater danger and weariness and pain.
It is significant that it was in Africa that Moses summoned the ten
plagues to his aid in humbling the haughty Pharaoh. If ten had not been
sufficient he might have summoned ten times ten, and without exhausting
the domestic resources.
We are grateful that common houseflies are not sufficiently numerous to
constitute a pest, except where cattle are bred in large numbers. In
Gaboon there was no need for screens on doors and windows.
But there are many kinds of flies, and the natives who have not learned
to wear clothing commonly carry a fly-brush made of a bunch of stiff
grass about two feet long, that they may defend the whole area of the
back, where the fly usually makes its attack. When one sees a fly on a
neighbour’s back it is regarded as a duty of friendship to come up
behind that neighbour slowly and stealthily, giving the fly full time to
bite his worst and so be deserving of death, then to strike an awful
blow on the neighbour’s back, fit to bring him to his feet with a yell.
It seldom harms the fly, but it expresses great indignation, and, by
implication, sympathy with your neighbour. The habit of killing flies,
or attempting to kill them when they alight, is an obsession with the
native, and it seems a physical impossibility for him to resist. He does
it in church. When I first preached in Batanga, to a large congregation,
I was very much disturbed by this unlooked-for and constant slapping on
bare backs. And whenever I saw a man creep quietly across the aisle or
forward several seats to perform this friendly office, I could not help
watching until I heard the slap, when I always felt like stopping the
discourse long enough to ask: “Did you kill it?” For in the mind of all
those around there seemed to be nothing else going on in that church but
this exhibition of applied Christianity.
Forgetting that the white man is protected by his clothing, they vie
with each other in the discharge of this courtesy; and the exasperating
blows that the white man receives from his black friends are the chief
discomfort that he suffers from the larger flies. One day shortly before
leaving Africa I was riding in an open boat when a native man sitting
behind me suddenly gave me a slap on the back that actually hurt, and so
startled me that I did some fool thing a little short of leaping into
the sea. I turned around and asked the man in a tone of cold politeness
whether he was trying to make my back the same colour as his.
“Why, no,” said he, “I am killing flies.”
“I’m no fly,” I replied frigidly.
A few minutes later, when I was indulging in a somnolent reverie, he
struck me again—I think it must have been in the same place, it hurt so
much worse than the first time; whereupon I turned about and, striking a
very dangerous attitude (for a missionary), I threatened that if he did
it again I would land him a blow in the stomach whether there was a fly
there or not. My boat-boys, who knew the uses of clothing and
appreciated the immunity of my back from fly-bites as well as the
greater tenderness and sensitiveness of the white man’s body, laughed at
this interesting diversion. Then they undertook to enlighten their
friend from the bush as to the white man’s view-point, combining
theoretical instruction with practical sense by removing him to another
seat: for they well knew that if he should see another fly on my back,
even while they were talking, he would strike again. He cannot help it:
the habit is coercive.
Among the worst pests, and peculiar to Africa, is the driver ant. They
go together in countless and incomprehensible numbers. The first sight
that one gets of them is a glistening black, rapid-running stream about
two inches wide crossing the path before him. Upon closer inspection he
finds that the stream is composed of ants; and recognizing the driver
ant of which he has heard many incredible stories on the way to Africa,
he feels like shouting “Fire!” and running for his life. But as a matter
of fact he may with impunity examine them as closely as he pleases so
long as he does not touch them. They are so occupied with their own
serious purpose that they will take no notice of him.
In the middle of the black stream are the females, about the size of our
common, black wood-ant, while along the sides run the soldiers guarding
from attack, and these are about four times the size of the others. The
defense of the females is no matter of necessity, but rather gallantry,
for those female viragoes are abundantly able to defend themselves. No
creature so small ever had such a bite. They are all provided with jaws
and with stings and they know how to work both vigorously. Some fine day
as the newcomer saunters along, his eyes engaged with the beauty of the
landscape, he walks into the ants. It may be one minute, perhaps two,
and possibly five, before he knows anything of the serious mistake he
has made. Then suddenly he experiences a sensation which is usually
compared to numerous red-hot pincers applied implacably; for these ants
do not let go. If he follows the course prescribed by ardent advisers,
he will do either of two things: he will instantly strip off his
clothing, even if he should be in the governor’s courtyard, yelling the
while at the top of his voice so that those who object may go some other
way; or he will make a dash for the nearest rain-barrel and tumble into
it. Fortunately, their bite is not poisonous and leaves no bad effects
afterwards. After this experience he will never allow more than one eye
to dwell upon the charm of the landscape; the other will be directed to
the path before him. If a man must go out at night he always carries a
lantern.
When these ants come to a place where there is food to their liking,
they scatter and spread out over a large area. Then, of course, they are
not so quickly discovered, and one may easily walk into them. They are
one of the trials of bush-travel, and the worst living nuisance of the
bush, where the undergrowth hides them even from the keen eye of the
native. There is seldom a day on a bush journey that the caravan does
not march into the drivers. Then there is some wild yelling by those in
the lead; the cry, “Drivers!” goes all along the line and each man as he
comes to them makes a lively dash through them, stamping heavily as he
runs; for it is possible thus to keep them off or to shake them off
before they get a hold. All other insects and animals flee before them,
including the python and the leopard.
Travellers have frequently told how that the silent, sleeping forest has
suddenly become all astir and vocal, the angry boom of the gorilla or
the frightened bleat of the gazelle alternating with a cry of the
leopard and the scream of the elephant; all forgetful of their mutual
hostility and vying with one another in the speed of their escape from
the driver ant, abroad on a foraging expedition, to the number of
infinity.
They make frequent visits to the native villages and the white man’s
premises, usually in the night, spreading over the whole place,—the
ground, the houses, inside and out, and through the roofs. Here they act
as scavengers, driving before them all other insect nuisances, such as
the cockroaches and centipedes, which especially infest the thatched
roofs. Nevertheless, if one should hear the language of the average
white man, upon the occasion of one of these nocturnal visitations, when
the drivers have wakened him rudely and driven him headlong out into the
dark, and perhaps the rain, there to shiver during this untimely
house-cleaning, one would not for a moment mistake it for an expression
of gratitude.
Setting hens must be kept carefully out of their way. In one instance I
knew of the drivers visiting a nest one night when the young chickens
were just coming out of the shells. The empty shells were there in the
morning, but no chickens. If they should gain undiscovered access to a
chicken-house in the night, they would leave nothing but bones and
feathers. At Efulen we built our chicken-house against the workmen’s
house, on the side away from the bush, so that the drivers on their
approach should first visit the workmen and we should be warned in time
to save our chickens.
We had been there only a short time when we were awakened one night by
the familiar outcry as the men were driven out of their house. But the
drivers had come from a different direction that night, and when we went
to the chicken-house we found it already in their possession. It was but
the work of a minute or two to tuck our pajamas inside our socks, bind
our sleeves with handkerchiefs around the wrists, tie another
handkerchief around the neck and pull a cap down over the head. Thus
prepared I entered the chicken-house, the ground and walls of which were
a glistening black mass. Stamping my feet all the time, I snatched the
chickens one by one from the roost, stripped the handful of loose ants
from their legs and handed them out to Dr. Good and Mr. Kerr, who picked
off the remaining ants, after which we brought the chickens into our
house and put them on the pantry shelves until morning, meanwhile
building a line of fire around the house to keep the drivers back.
But it was not long after this that they found the house unguarded one
morning just at daylight when I was alone at Efulen. I was awake but not
yet ready to rise when I heard a low, rustling sound upon the floor of
my room. After a few minutes, observing that it was becoming more
distinct, I drew back my mosquito-net and looked out. Almost the entire
floor was black with the drivers, and they were close to the bed. From
the foot of the bed towards the door it was still possible for me to
escape by a good jump; and in a moment I found myself shivering out in
the yard while my clothes were still in the house.
One day, as Dr. Good and I were entering a native village, Dr. Good
walked through some stray drivers. He began to preach to the people, who
as it happened were already gathered in the street where they had been
taking a palaver. Before he had been preaching more than a minute I
observed that his gestures were more animated than I had ever seen
before. Soon they became violent, noticeably irrelevant and even of
questionable propriety. It was a little like Brer Rabbit, one evening
when the mosquitoes were bad, telling the wolf about his grandfather’s
spots. I looked on with increasing amazement and consternation, until at
last even Dr. Good’s indomitable will was overborne, and he shouted:
“Drivers!” and bolted abruptly for the bush. I tried to go on with the
service, but it was almost impossible because of the laughter of the
audience. Each one insisted upon telling his neighbours all about it, to
the accompaniment of a broad caricature of Dr. Good’s gestures.
There was once a native man in Gaboon who was slightly deranged in his
mind. The government advised, and at last insisted, that he should not
be allowed at large. His family, being averse to confining him, chiefly,
I imagine, because of the care it would entail upon them, sent him to a
village of their relations across the river ten miles distant. There he
remained for some time. The people there bound him at night lest he
might set fire to the town while they slept. He objected to this and at
last became troublesome by calling out continually during the night.
Then they improvised a rude shelter back a short distance from the town,
where they placed him at night and as usual bound him. One night he was
more noisy than ever before, yelling and screaming hideously so that he
wakened the people. They thought that he had become demented but no one
went to him until morning, and then they made the horrible discovery
that the drivers had attacked and devoured him.
In some tribes criminals are sometimes punished by being bound to the
ground in the track of the drivers. One can hardly conceive of anything
more horrible; for they would enter ears and eyes and nostrils. But I
believe this is very rarely done. When death is decided upon, the
Africans usually accomplish it by quick means.
There is another ant which I would say is worse than the driver, were it
not that as yet its distribution is limited and it may be only
transient. It is a very small red ant difficult to see with the naked
eye except in a good light and on a white surface. It takes to dark
closets, upholstered furniture, hair mattresses and those who would
sleep upon them. It has not been long known in those portions of West
Africa that are familiar to the white man. It has come from the
southeast towards the coast. In 1900 it took possession of our
mission-house at Angom, which was not occupied at that time.
It is doubtful whether this ant would be likely to infest a house when
the grass around it is kept closely cut and the house well opened to the
light and air; but when once infested it is not clear that these
precautions would drive it out. One of Woermann’s trading-houses on the
Ogowè had to be abandoned because of it.
My first experience with it was in 1900 when I visited Angom and slept
in the mission-house that had been occupied only occasionally for more
than a year. I was no sooner asleep than I was awakened by an extremely
painful sensation, as if red-hot pepper had been sprinkled all over me.
I felt no sharp bite, but only this intolerable smarting pain. It
occurred to me that I might have been poisoned during the day by some
violently poisonous herb in the bush or the overgrown garden; but I
remained in bed never thinking that the cause of it was there. The
natives told me in the morning what it was. My flesh was badly inflamed
and I had fever all that day. After that I always slept in the boat, or
in later years, the launch, when I visited Angom.
Among African pests there is another red ant, very small, though not so
small as the last. It does not bite nor attack the person, but is
nevertheless a great nuisance, particularly to housekeepers. All table
food must be kept out of its way. Any food remaining on the table even
an hour is covered with them. They are especially fond of sugar; and if
it is left on the table or unprotected from one meal to the next, it is
found a living red mass. By what powerful instinct they immediately
discover the place where food is, and where they come from in such
numbers, are among the mysteries that the white man will often ponder.
Most of our food is imported, in tins, and once a tin is opened it is
kept away from these ants by being placed in a safe suspended from the
ceiling by tarred rope. The safe is a light frame of wood covered with
wire screen or netting.
Besides these, there are numerous other varieties of ants, less harmful,
or altogether harmless. The ground is so infested with them that neither
white man nor native ever thinks of sitting down upon it, as we might
sit upon the grass in this country. Altogether, more than five thousand
varieties of ants have been described and classified; and most of these
are found in Africa.
Among the worst of the African pests is the _jigger_. Those who are most
sensitive to it would without doubt call it the worst of all. If the
pest of the small ant travels from the interior towards the coast, this
pest began at the coast and is extending towards the interior. It has
evidently been imported—tradition says from Brazil, in the cargo and
sand ballast of sailing vessels. The older inhabitants along the coast
remember when it first became known, and I am sure that it made itself
known very soon after it arrived. The jigger is a tiny species of flea,
so small that the naked eye sees it with difficulty. It has all the
reprehensible habits of its kind. The males hop all over one’s person in
a playful manner, giving him a nip here and a nip there; but the females
burrow beneath the skin. The favourite place is the feet, especially
under the nails, but they are frequently found also under the finger
nails and sometimes in the elbows and knees. Here the female, unless
discovered and removed, forms a sac which expands to the size of a small
pea, and which contains hundreds of little jiggers who soon begin to
“jig” for themselves, and burrow again in the same flesh. Many of them
however are scattered on the ground; those that remain keep multiplying,
until if neglected the whole foot becomes a festering sore.
To the African child the jigger is the occasion of its worst suffering.
I have seen children who could not walk, some with toes eaten away, and
several with nearly the whole foot gone. For, to the African and to some
white men, they are not irritating while boring beneath the skin, and
afterwards they are very hard to see, especially in the black skin of
the native. One may know nothing of their presence for several days,
after which they are so hard to remove that the native child will bear
the irritating itch that they first occasion rather than submit to the
pain of removing them; and when the itch has become a painful sore, no
child could remove them. Some African mothers watch their children’s
feet closely but others neglect them cruelly. I am glad to say that
those who allow their feet to get full of jiggers, or mothers who
neglect the care of their children’s feet, are looked down upon, as
lousy persons would be among us, though not to the same extent.
The jiggers are less troublesome in the wet season. But with the dry
season their numbers increase rapidly, and towards the close of the
season the soil and the sand are fairly alive with them. If possible,
missionary boarding-schools ought to have vacation at this time; for the
white missionary is sure to get them in the schoolroom; and the
dormitories, which usually have only earthen floors, become so infested
with them that even native children are often kept awake at night, and
the amount of discipline necessary to make them keep their feet in order
may demoralize the school. There are always children, large and small,
who need no supervision, and are sufficiently self-respecting to keep
their feet clean; but their task is made exceedingly difficult by the
presence in the same dormitory of those who breed jiggers by thousands.
As a rule, with but few exceptions, the children who keep their feet
clean are those who have been in the school before and are known as
mission-boys and mission-girls.
In my boys’ boarding-school of later years one would see a strange sight
each day during the dry season. The whole school filed out at recess and
sat down along either side of the path leading to the mission-house. A
committee of boys examined the feet of the others and reported to me the
name of every boy who had jiggers in his feet; while I stood with
note-book in hand and wrote down their names. Then when the food was
given out at noon these boys were left without food until their feet
were pronounced clean. The larger boys were responsible for those of
their own town or family who were too small to attend to their own feet.
I once kept a boy more than a day without food until he removed his
jiggers, and one hopeless boy I at last expelled from the school for the
offense. For rigid insistence upon this discipline, I felt, lay close to
moral instruction.
The white man of course suffers from jiggers, but not so much as the
native, because of his shoes, his cleaner house, and because his feet
are more sensitive, so that he becomes aware of them after several days
at the most, when they can be removed without injury, if it is very
carefully done. After one has been in Africa a length of time he will
detect their presence as soon as they begin to burrow. Some white men
have a native boy examine their feet every night or morning; for the boy
has very sharp eyes, and he removes the jigger with surprising skill. It
can be done with a pin; a needle is better and a pair of tweezers is
still better. If the sac that is formed after several days be broken in
the removal, it may cause a sore that will take some time to heal.
Indeed, if one be greatly reduced in health and the blood in bad
condition, it may not heal at all until he leaves the country on
furlough. I have known men who for weeks were not able to wear a shoe
because of jigger sores.
After I had been a few months in Africa, one day, while in bed with
fever, I said to a friend that in allowing my feet to touch the floor
beside the bed where natives had been standing, I must have caught the
itch; for a most irritating itch had been troubling me for several days.
My friend at once suggested jiggers as the cause. I answered with great
assurance that it certainly was not jiggers, for I had watched my feet
very closely, having determined from the first that I should get no
jiggers—which of course was true, but I suppose I had been watching for
creatures the size of potato-bugs crawling over my feet I at once called
a native boy, however, wishing perhaps to assure my friend, and the boy
found seven colonies of jiggers. It took my feet a long time to heal.
But it never happened again.
The male jigger, as I have said, does not burrow in the flesh, but
disports himself upon the surface and makes himself very numerous. He is
one of the great variety of influences that keep the white man
constantly scratching. The native scratches too, scratches most of the
time, and often with both hands, but he does not get excited about it,
nor attract so much attention. But the habit is disgusting in the white
man, and after all it is a habit rather than a necessity. A minority
exercise the strongest self-restraint, a larger number exercise
restraint sometimes; many white men, however, exercise no restraint at
all, but scratch continually, regardless of the occasion.
The sandfly, or _midge_, not known at the coast, but widely distributed
in the interior, must be counted among the worst of African pests. They
also are exceedingly small. They do their utmost to make life
intolerable in the early morning hours after daylight, and again in the
evening before dark. Some are more sensitive to them than others. When I
was living in the interior, I bathed my hands and face in kerosene or
turpentine each morning and evening as their hour approached and
sometimes repeated it once or twice before they retired.
The mosquitoes are so bad, especially in the low places along the coast,
that even the natives must sleep under mosquito nets.
In the song of our childhood we were impressed with the possibilities of
such minutiæ—as little drops of water, little grains of sand and little
moments of time, when these are multiplied by infinity. But infinity is
the status of all insect life in Africa. In order to realize the pest of
the mosquito in towns adjacent to mangrove swamps one must multiply the
insect until it seems to compose about fifty per cent. of the
atmosphere. Its music too is impressive.
Wherever possible the white man builds his house upon a well-cleared
hill and so escapes them, sometimes almost entirely as at Baraka. But
this is not always possible. Many missionaries have told of writing
letters while sitting cross-legged on their beds with the mosquito-net
drawn down around the bed.
The centipede is common, especially in those houses that have thatch
roofs. The African centipede is very large, and its bite is poisonous,
though rarely fatal. My first experience with it was one morning, in my
bedroom, when I took a bouquet of flowers off the table and held them to
my face. A large centipede glided out of the flowers, and running
swiftly across my hand and along my arm to the elbow, dropped to the
floor. Fortunately, my sleeve was short, else I should have been bitten.
But one morning that I shall not forget I put on a sock, and there was a
centipede in the toe of it. Unfortunately the sock was in a state of
good repair; there was no hole in the toe. I was badly bitten, for it
was some time before I could get the sock off; and the sickening feeling
of repulsion was worse than the bite. I afterwards acquired the habit of
shaking socks and shoes and clothing before putting them on. It is well
worth while; for if one is disappointed in the matter of centipedes, one
may perhaps shed a scorpion or several roaches, or sometimes even a
snake. There are scorpions in all parts of Africa and in some places
they abound. Their bite is always bad, and that of some varieties is
dangerous.
But if I were asked my opinion as to the very worst pest in Africa, I
would name the roach, or _cockroach_, and I think that the majority of
white men would agree with me. My aversion to this creature is so strong
that I do not pretend to be able to give a dispassionate judgment. It is
a _beast_ of an insect. It is much larger than the familiar cockroach of
this country and is often two inches long; and all its powers and
qualities of disposition are proportionately developed. It multiplies
with amazing rapidity. It has an odour that for real nastiness takes
preëminent rank even in malodorous Africa. It has a voracious appetite,
eats almost everything and seems to get fat on arsenic, which I have fed
to it in large quantities; though some persons declare that it thrives
on arsenic by not eating it and by detecting it even when mixed with
sugar or anything else. It is found in the pantry, in clothing, in the
library, in furniture, in every drawer and every corner, and a thatch
roof is soon full of them. Even in bed one is not always free from them,
for during sleep they often nibble one’s nails and hair. The only way to
kill the cockroach is to crush it, and the result is so disgusting that
one will feel that it has more than avenged its death. Once in a while
in the evening all the cockroaches take to flying, as if seized with a
panic or madness. And when they do this they make one forget all the
other pests of Africa.
If the least bit of butter or grease should touch a suit, one may depend
upon it that unless it is put in a roach-proof trunk the roach will find
that spot, and in the morning a hole will be eaten through. They devour
wool as a horse eats hay; but they will leave both wool and grease for
the starch contained in cloth bookbindings. They show a decided
preference for new books, the starch being softer in these. If, in a
moment of supreme folly, one should leave a book uncovered on a table
over night, he will find it in the morning with several spots upon it
the size of a dime, where the starch and colour are eaten out and the
bare gray threads exposed. This happened to my _Memoirs of Tennyson_;
both volumes were badly defaced in one night. Of course one will cover
with heavy paper—when he _has_ the paper—every book in his library, or,
at least, those that are not already spoiled by the time he gets round
to them; but books so covered lose their identity, like friends in
masquerade. Besides, books thus kept in paper in that damp atmosphere
will soon be covered with mould. If one adds to this that while roaches
or mould are destroying the outside of his books white ants are doing
their best to get at the inside, he will see that the obstacles incident
to literary pursuits in Africa are well-nigh insuperable.
I cannot dismiss the white ant with this passing notice, for it also is
one of the pests of Africa; indeed, there are many who regard it as the
worst of the African pests. It is characteristic of the impudent
hypocrisy of this stealthy insect that it should somehow get itself
called a _white ant_, when, as a matter of fact, it is not an ant at
all, and is not white. It is a dirty-yellow _termite_, a soft-bodied
insect, in appearance like a very small piece of impure tallow. It is
commonest in Africa, but is also found in South America, India and
Ceylon, and one species, it is said, is even found as far north as
Bordeaux.
The admirable and interesting features of the white ant (and it has
some) have nowhere been better described than in Henry Drummond’s
charming chapter in _Tropical Africa_.
The white ant lives underground in colonies of enormous numbers. It
feeds chiefly on dead wood, and its presence is the explanation of the
noticeable fact that there is very little dead wood—rotting logs or
fallen branches—in an African forest. It does not wait until dead
branches fall, but climbs the trees in search of them. But as its body
is choice food for birds and other insects, and as it is defenseless and
even blind, it protects itself whenever it comes above ground by
building an earthen tunnel over itself as it climbs. This yellowish
brown tunnel, a half tube in form, and half an inch wide, one will see
running up trees and posts everywhere in Africa. In building it they
carry the earth in grains or little pellets from below the ground
through the tunnel to the open end of it; then having covered the pellet
thoroughly with a sticky secretion they place it firmly in its proper
position and hurry away for another. The soldiers of the colony, which
are very few comparatively, are armed with formidable jaws. Two or three
of these guard the open end of the tunnel where the work is being done.
They take no part in the work of construction. But if an enemy, usually
in the form of an ant, draw near with the object of capturing a worker,
the soldier in an instant will be upon him. He may pound him to death,
or thrust him through, or using his mandibles like a pair of scissors
may cut him in two, or hurl him from the battlement as with a catapult;
these different methods representing different species. After this the
workers again proceed with the building of the tunnel. These tunnels are
for temporary use and are not nearly as substantial as the nests. They
crumble into dust after a few weeks and are blown away by the wind or
washed down by the rain.
The ant-hills and the ground below are filled with an intricate network
of tunnels. Professor Drummond tells us that in the elevated plains of
Central Africa these ant-hills are mounds ten or fifteen feet high and
thirty or forty feet in diameter, and even then the greater part of the
ant habitation is underground; and that the amount of reddish-brown
earth plastered upon the trees is sufficient to give tone to the
landscape. And this he says is the great agricultural process of the
tropics, which in temperate zones is accomplished by the earthworm
carrying the under soil to the surface, transposing the upper and the
lower layers, doing thoroughly what man does rudely with the plough. In
the lower plains of West Africa, the white ant is not so abundant, nor
the ant-hills nearly so large as those which Professor Drummond saw. Nor
is there any such need of them, for the earthworm is common enough. The
more numerous ant-hills are two or three feet high and are often shaped
like a series of bowls turned upside down one on top of another; but the
shape varies. A good way to provide for young chickens is to send a boy
to the bush to get an ant-hill, then break off several small pieces at a
time and give to the chickens. It will be full of ants, and the
happiness of the chickens will be ample reward: there is nothing that
they like better.
And that reminds me that Schweinfurth, in _The Heart of Africa_, relates
that he himself ate white ants in unlimited quantities. He says they are
especially good with corn. And then he recommends them as best when they
are “partly boiled and partly fried.” I never tried them that way.
The most painstaking study and the most elaborate description of the
white ant that has ever been made is probably that of Karl Escherich,
whose book, _Termitenleben auf Ceylon_, has recently been published.
Escherich spent three months in Ceylon studying the white ant. He
describes thirty-five species of termite existing in Ceylon.
In the nest (the _termetarium_) of many of the species of white ants
there are tunnels and chambers devoted to the growing of a certain
fungus—real fungus gardens. Sometimes two different species of termite
inhabit the same nest, or termites and ants. They live in different
galleries which intermingle but never open into each other. If by the
breaking of a wall they should come together fierce battles ensue.
Sometimes other insects, certain beetles, for instance, live with the
termites as guests, to whom they even feed the larvæ. Their presence is
probably a protection against their enemies; and they seem to have many.
An army of marauding ants will sometimes invade the nest and seek to
carry off the occupants.
There are several distinct castes in the social organization of the
termites; the queen, the males, the soldiers, the workers and the larvæ.
The queen is enormous in size as compared with the workers; sometimes
three inches long. And exalted to the throne she never moves again, but
confines her activities to the laying of eggs, which she deposits at the
rate of several thousand a day. But more remarkable than either her size
or her ugliness is the fact (stated by Escherich) that she sweats out to
the surface of her body a substance which is eagerly devoured by the
workers. It is this “exudate” which binds them to her and for which they
feed and cherish her. The workers are continually licking her and
Escherich declares that he saw one worker tear out a piece of the
mother’s hide and eagerly drink the liquid which flowed from the wound.
And as her body was scarred in many places it would seem that this was
not uncommon.
A certain “ant-exterminator” has been used successfully in destroying
the white ant. It consists of a charcoal stove on one side of which is a
hand-pump and on the other a hose. A powder of eighty-five parts of
arsenic and fifteen parts of sulphur is thrown upon the glowing charcoal
and by means of the pump and the hose the fumes are forced into the
nest. Then the entrance is plugged and the nest is left thus for several
days.
But perhaps somebody is asking why an insect so wonderful and
interesting should be destroyed at all. And that reminds me that I
classified the white ant as a pest—and one of the worst pests in Africa.
When the white ant devours an object, a dead branch, for instance, it
works inside, consumes the whole interior and leaves the thinnest shell
of an exterior, an empty shape, which yields at a touch and falls into
dust or nothing. And unless one watches very closely, or provides some
special protection, it will do this same thing with his house or the
furniture in it, or the wooden posts under it. White men’s houses are
built upon posts and elevated several feet from the ground. A post
beneath the house, though of the hardest wood, and appearing to the eye
to be quite sound, may in fact be a hollow cylinder which will collapse
at a kick. Iron pillars are now generally used instead of wood, iron
being about the only substance which the white ant cannot eat. But one
must watch the iron pillars closely for the earthen tunnel leading from
the ground to the wooden beams above; for once they get into a house
they can never be gotten out. A board in the floor will collapse, or a
trunk, of which they have left only a shell. They are very fond of
paper; so one must especially watch his library, or some day he will
take down his favourite poet only to find that there is nothing of it
but cover and the edges of the leaves. I know this very thing to have
happened.
I contracted a special prejudice against them when they came out of the
floor into my barrel of sermons—and I remembered the particular quality
of food they are supposed to relish. I was not using those sermons in
Africa and it is not likely I should ever have used them again anywhere;
neither am I the victim of any delusion in regard to the loss that the
world sustained in their destruction. The loss was mine alone, and was
chiefly sentimental. But a minister usually has a unique regard for his
sermons, a regard proportioned to the extent that they represent the
sweat of the brain and the heart. In this instance the destruction was
only partial; for by a mere accident I discovered them before they had
entirely chewed and digested all my sermons.
These are a few of the most troublesome insect pests, and there are
others.
There is the big flying beetle, purblind and stupid, that comes in the
evening and looks the size of a bat; that circles around the table
several times, with a noisy boom, tumbles at length into the gravy and
then flops into your face. There is the hippo fly, like an enormous
horsefly, that thrusts a stiletto into one through his clothing. In the
upper part of the Gaboon River, where navigation with a launch was
dangerous and I stood constantly by the engine, I had a boy, sometimes
two boys, standing beside me with fly-brushes to keep them off.
There are caterpillars the very touch of whose hair is poisonous and
produces an irritation of the skin. There are wasps that daub nests of
mud on frames and furniture and even on clothing if it is left hanging
for a while without being disturbed. In many parts there are myriads of
may-flies that swarm about sunset, that is, about dinnertime. Sir Harry
Johnston complains that these may-flies give soup an aromatic flavour.
There is the boring beetle that burrows into the rafters, reducing them
to dust. There is the _walking-stick_, a slender dead twig, six or eight
inches long, with lateral stems, which you sometimes find hanging to
your curtains or mosquito-net, and which, when you take it in your
fingers to throw it out, suddenly spreads aborted wings, nearly
transparent and of purple hue, and flies around you, a creature of only
one magnitude—length without breadth; a conglomeration of dark lines
plunging through the air. Then, startled out of your wits, you think you
have seen the devil for sure.
I have not touched upon the numerous internal parasites that prey upon
humanity. Only a scientific expert ought to risk telling extensively of
these incredibilities. Among them is the _eye-worm_, one of the
_Filaria_, which in spite of its euphonious name is an abomination. It
is a white, thread-like worm, an inch long, that goes all through the
body beneath the epidermis. It becomes visible only in the white of the
eye, and while there a doctor can remove it. But it must be done, not
only with extreme care, but promptly, for it does not stay long in one
place. It is extremely irritating in the eye, but in other parts of the
body, although it causes distressful itching, it is not so irritating as
one would expect. It sometimes causes swelling, especially in the back
of the hand. Every few days my forearm or my hand was swollen from the
presence of this worm. I have seen a ridge across the nose where a
colony was passing. I have been told that the eye-worm and the worm that
circulates beneath the epidermis are not identical. I am not sure about
it; but I hope there are not two of them.
The guinea worm belongs to the same family, with the beautiful name, the
_Filaria_. The larva enters the human body in drinking-water and makes
its way to the subcutaneous tissue of its host’s leg, where it often
causes serious abscesses. It grows rapidly, curling round and round and
raising the skin. It often reaches a length of ten feet and sometimes
more.
All African houses are infested with rats and mice. The white man has
introduced the cat. But there are still very few and they are so highly
valued that among the Fang in late years a cat has been made a part of
the dowry which a man pays for his wife. It was several months after our
first house was built at Efulen before we were able to procure a cat
from the coast. In that time the rats had full possession of the house
and merely tolerated us. They gambolled all night over the beds in which
we were sleeping, and over ourselves, sometimes even getting under the
cover. I had always abhorred them, and I was led to use a mosquito-net,
not for mosquitoes, but to keep the rats out. I never got so used to
them but that I sprang out of bed whenever they got into it. Finding
that the mosquito-net did not altogether suffice, I hit upon the happy
expedient of keeping a lamp lighted in my room all night. This was
effective to some extent, but only by driving them into the rooms
occupied by my fellow missionaries, Dr. Good and Mr. Kerr, whose
abhorrence of them, however, was not equal to mine. They wondered why I
kept the lamp burning, but I did not tell them; for if we all had lamps
the rats would have no choice of room, and surely a man has some right
to profit by his own discovery. I desisted from this practice as soon as
Dr. Good solved my purpose, which he did one night after he had gone to
bed, and instantly announced it with a shout.
But at last a new missionary arrived in the shape of a gray cat, and we
welcomed her with a lavish entertainment of sport and feast, delicately
adapted to the instinct and the palate of her feline ladyship. All that
night there was wild riot in the pantry where we had put her. In the
morning that cat was the shape of a beer-barrel; and, besides, there lay
on the pantry floor nine dead rats.
When I slept in native houses I always wore socks at night. The natives
declare that the rats attack them during sleep, especially their feet.
And they say that the rat blows upon the wound that it makes so that the
sleeper will not feel it. From this belief there is a current proverb
which they apply to a flatterer, or to one who, while using smooth
words, would inflict an injury: “He blows upon the wound that he makes.”
The natives are perhaps more afraid of snakes than anything else, and
with good reason. Africa is the home of deadly snakes. Most of them are
nocturnal, and as the white man stays within doors at night, he may be
in Africa many months before he realizes how abundant they are. Whenever
it was necessary to go out at night, I always carried a long staff which
I pushed along the path ahead of me.
One of our schoolboys at Gaboon, one night about eight o’clock, was
walking down towards the beach in the middle of a wide road, when he
stepped on a small snake. It bit him, and in about half an hour he died
in great agony. At Batanga a woman one night, stepping out of her door,
placed her foot on a snake that was coiled upon the door-step. She was
bitten and died immediately. Sometimes they get into the thatch roofs of
the houses, and between the bamboo walls; but this rarely happens in the
better houses in which the white man lives. One of our missionary ladies
at Benito, while she was sick in bed with fever, found a snake coiled
under her pillow.
The natives upon being bitten by a snake immediately cauterize the wound
with a red-hot iron; or, when that is not procurable, they will cut out
a piece of the flesh around it, often cutting off a finger or a toe to
save a life. They seem to have the idea that all snakes are deadly, and
if one ask, in regard to a particular snake, whether it is poisonous,
the certain response will be an exclamation of astonishment at his
ignorance. They solemnly declare in regard to many varieties that they
will spring at a man and go straight through his body. This is a strange
delusion, considering their usual accuracy of observation and knowledge
in regard to animals. It is probably accounted for by the superstitions
that attach to snakes. In many African tribes the snake is sacred. In
those tribes they are frequently used by the priests as an ordeal in
discovering criminals. The people are ranged about the priest, who is a
snake-charmer. He passes around bringing the snake into contact with
each person. The person whom it bites is adjudged guilty.
The characteristic snakes, especially the deadly vipers which abound,
are of bright and variegated colours, green, red, yellow and black. Some
call them beautiful, but in most of us the association of ideas makes it
impossible for us to see any beauty in a snake. Their colours are the
very colours of nature around them; and therefore, instead of making
them conspicuous, are really an approximation to invisibility—though I
believe that the protective colouration of animals, as a principle, has
been exaggerated.
A recent traveller says that in crossing the entire continent of Africa
he saw only two snakes, and he adds that since he succeeded in killing
both of them there are now no snakes in Africa, so far as he knows. I am
reminded of a vivid experience when an American friend, Mr. Northam,
stayed some months in Gaboon and collected biological specimens. Mr.
Northam asked me whether there were many snakes around Gaboon. I told
him that there were very few. At his suggestion I told my schoolboys
that he wished to collect snakes and would give them something for all
the valuable snakes they would bring to him. The immediate result was
enough to make a man think that he had been suddenly precipitated into a
state of delirium tremens. I had not supposed that there were so many
snakes in all Africa. A continual procession of boys passed my door,
each with some horrible kind of snake dangling from a stick, or dragging
along the ground. And I had said there were but few snakes in Gaboon!
The explanation is that I kept to the paths while abroad, and snakes are
seldom found in the paths in the daytime; for they are mostly nocturnal
in their habits, and I was not. But the boys know where to find them at
any time.
After all, life in Africa is quite tolerable. As I think back over this
formidable array of pests, I am somewhat surprised that I was not more
conscious of them while in Africa, and that I had leisure to do anything
else but fight them. The explanation is that, although one is fighting
some of them all the time, one is never fighting them all at the same
time.
VII
THE “CANNIBAL” FANG
“The Mpongwe have plenty of salt in them,” said one of my boat-boys. He
was a Fang, and he was speaking of the coast tribe.
“The Mpongwe have plenty of salt,” he repeated. I drew out my note-book
and credited the boy with a very interesting and expressive designation
of a moral quality. Such an improvement on our word _sand_! It was not
less interesting, however, when I found that he meant it not morally,
but literally—that he was speaking not metaphorically, but
gastronomically. As a matter of fact, not one of these boat-boys had
ever tasted human flesh, and they would have been insulted at the
imputation of cannibalism; but it is not long since their fathers
emerged from cannibalism, and tradition still distinguishes the flesh of
the various surrounding tribes, ascribing a preferable flavour to this
or that tribe. It is generally understood that the coast tribes are
better flavoured than those of the interior.
The Fang are nearly always referred to as the _cannibal_ Fang; and the
casual reader might suppose that they were the worst cannibals in
Africa. But the cannibalism of the Fang does not compare, either in
extent or hideousness, with that of the Congo tribes, as we shall see.
[Illustration:
A FANG FAMILY.
]
The Fang is one of the largest and most important of the West African
tribes. For many years they have been moving from the far interior
towards the coast, burning, killing and even eating their way through
the older coast tribes. They have now emerged at many points along the
coast, of which Gaboon was probably the first. The tributaries of the
Gaboon form a network of waterways, which are also the highways. There
are but few bush roads in this part of the jungle and they are of the
worst kind; in the wet season mud to the knees alternating with water to
the waist, and deeper. Along the rivers and streams the Fang have built
their towns. The population of a town varies from fifty to two hundred.
Most of my work was done among the Fang. From Baraka I reached their
towns by boat and canoe, in later years by the launch _Dorothy_.
The Fang are brown, not black in colour, and are several shades lighter
than the coast tribes. Their colour is quite to their liking. They
regard themselves as far better looking than white people. The men are
usually tall, athletic and remarkably well formed, though not as full in
the chest as a perfect physique would require. Most of the younger men
are fairly good looking. Many of the younger women have pretty faces,
but they are not nearly as intelligent looking as the men. Many of the
children are beautiful, with sweet faces and lovely eyes.
“They think they are better looking than white people.” And why not? I
myself do not so regard them; but I may be wrong. Questions of beauty
are decided by reference to some standard in the mind; but whether the
standard depends upon custom, and varies with it, is a matter of doubt
and dispute. My own judgment, like that of others, was modified as I
lived among the black people. Sir Joshua Reynolds advanced the notion,
according to Hazlitt, that beauty was entirely dependent on custom. I
feel, with Hazlitt himself, that custom, though powerful, is not the
only principle of our preference for the appearance of certain objects
more than others; that what constitutes beauty is in some way inherent
in the object, and that “if custom is a second nature there is another
nature which ranks above it.” Hazlitt in his argument contrasts the
Greek and the African face, doing injustice, I believe, to the latter.
Yet in general one must admit that Hazlitt is right. In the Greek face
he finds a conformity to itself, a symmetry of feature with feature and
a subtle, involuted harmony of lines, which he says is wholly wanting in
the African face. The Greek face is beautiful, “because it is made up of
lines corresponding with or melting into each other;” the African face
is not so, “because it is made up almost entirely of contradictory lines
and sharp angular projections.”
“The general principle of difference between the two heads is this: The
forehead of the Greek is square and upright, and, as it were, overhangs
the rest of the face, except the nose, which is a continuation of it
almost in an even line. In the Negro, or African, the tip of the nose is
the most projected part of the face; and from that point the features
retreat back, both upwards towards the forehead, and downwards towards
the chin. This last form is an approximation to the shape of the head of
the animal, as the former bears the strongest stamp of humanity.”
The African physiognomy, he further observes, is made up of jagged,
cross-grained lines, starting out in every oblique direction, and in
fact appears “splitting in pieces.”
But the African physiognomy is also consistent with itself; its
abruptness is uniform. There is regularity in the violence of its
changes; and may not this also constitute beauty to an accustomed eye?
It is certain that there is in such a face the possibility of an
extraordinary expression of grandeur and moral force; and these also are
aspects of beauty, as well as the intellectual and affectional elements
that constitute the expression of the Greek face. There is a beauty of
mountains as well as of meadows.
However it may be, we who have lived long among the Africans, and
without the distemper of racial prejudice, do invariably find that our
ideas, or our standards, gradually undergo such a change that the
African face appears to us in varying degrees of beauty, much as that of
the white; beauty which at first we did not see. Even the nose, which
bears a striking resemblance to the ace of clubs, at length, with
custom, ceases to appear ugly, and seems the absolutely proper nose for
the African physiognomy. And they surely have beautiful eyes.
Yet one must admit that it is not eyes, nor noses, nor even faces, but
legs, that are most in evidence in African society. I suppose it is
because we are not used to seeing those honourable and useful members
exposed that they are so conspicuous. Looking at an African crowd,
especially when seated on the ground as in a village service or
listening to a native “palaver,” with their knees elevated in front of
them, there seems to be ten times as many legs as people. Their variety
also commands attention. There are long legs and short legs, lean legs
and fat legs, straight legs and crooked legs, gnarled legs, knotted
legs, brown legs and black legs.
Probably nowhere in the world is life more primitive. How little a man
can live on! How much he can do without! An African can be happy with a
pot, a pipe and a tom-tom. I have shown some of them a wheel for the
first time, making use of a toy, and have explained its use while they
wondered. At Vivi, on the Congo, they tell that when they began to build
the railroad they unloaded a shipment of wheelbarrows and ordered the
workmen to use them in removing the débris. A little later they observed
the workmen marching in single file with the loaded wheelbarrows on
their heads. They have only the vaguest idea of passing time. They never
know their own ages, of course; neither can they understand why anybody
should want to know. A man of middle age makes a serious guess that he
is ten years old. A French judge in Senegal tells how that a man,
brought before him, gave his age as five years—when he had been weaned
at least twenty-five.
The Fang when they first come from the interior go almost entirely
naked. The men wear a bit of bark-cloth, the women a few leaves,
children to the age of nine or ten years wear nothing. But as soon as
they come in contact with coast people they all begin to wear imported
cloth. A chief soon attains the dignity of a shirt. If they have little
use for clothes they are passionately fond of ornamentation. When they
first come from the interior they are fairly loaded with beads and
brass, the latter made into heavy arm-rings, leg-rings, neck-rings and
coiled bracelets which cover the entire forearm. At first they regard
clothes also as ornamentation and they think that white people, in
comparison with them, are exceedingly vain.
I was holding a service in a Bulu town when a woman entered and
immediately engaged the attention of the feminine portion of the
audience. On the preceding day she had visited the mission and I had
dressed and bandaged an ulcer on her leg. The white bandage had caught
her fancy and she removed it that she might keep it clean; and now she
came to the service with it round her neck. The women looked at her,
drew a long loud breath and nudged their neighbours. It was very plain
that in their opinion she was much overdressed. And, strange to say, she
impressed me in that same way. At least, compared with the others, she
looked as if she might be dressed for a sleigh-ride.
The staple food of the Fang is cassava—that which Stanley calls
_manioc_—which is the root of a shrub, a little like our elder in
appearance, from which our tapioca is prepared. They use it however in a
much coarser form than tapioca. The root is left macerating in water for
several days which has the effect of removing certain poisonous
principles. Then it is placed in a wooden trough and beaten into a mass
with a wooden pestle. After this it is made into straight slender rolls
a foot long, wrapped in plantain leaves, bound around with fibre and
boiled. It tastes a little like boiled tapioca. But whereas we are
accustomed to eat the tasteless tapioca with cream and sugar, the native
has neither of these and thinks himself very fortunate if he has a
little salt to season it. Sometimes in travelling I have used it for
several days; but I have improved it by frying it in butter. The cassava
when properly prepared is evidently wholesome; but one may frequently
see it soaking in a dirty, stagnant pool, the same pool that the whole
town has used, for that and other purposes, week after week and month
after month. No one can imagine the variety of germs that it may soak up
during the several days that it lies in such a pool. The native is
chronically full of worms. He knows it and attributes most pain to their
presence. In declaring that he has a headache he places his hand on his
forehead and says: “Worms are biting me.” A little kind teaching in the
better preparation of their food would be good missionary employment.
Besides cassava, they have plantains, bananas, sweet potatoes, corn,
groundnuts and a few other foods that are less common. None of these
food products are indigenous. Most of them, including even cassava, it
is said, were introduced by the Portuguese, at intervals within the last
three hundred years. Meat is not regarded as a necessity, although there
is a chronic hunger for it, to which some have attributed their practice
of cannibalism. In most towns there are a few goats and sheep and
chickens; but they are reserved for feasts and festive occasions. They
hunt and trap all the wild animals of the forest and are not averse to
eating any of them, including snakes, even in an advanced stage of
decomposition. On the lower Gaboon they have abundance of fish, which
they catch with various baskets, nets, and seines. There are certain
insects, grubs and caterpillars which they also eat. One day a boy
reported to me that the natives of a near-by town had found a bee-tree,
and they wished to know whether I would buy the honey. Buy it? I should
think so! I could scarcely wait for it. They brought it at length; but
instead of smoking the bees _out_, they had smoked them _in_; they
offered me a great mass of honey and grubs and dead bees.
They do not eat eggs; neither do they ever drink milk or use it in any
form and our use of it is somewhat disgusting to them. A friend once
offered milk to a Kru-boy just to try him, and he replied
contemptuously: “Milk be fit only for piccaninny; I no be piccaninny.”
They have seen white men milk the goat, which always requires a number
of natives to hold the animal. And once when Mr. Gault of Batanga was
explaining to a group of natives about the cow, which gives the milk
that we import in tins, describing her size and her great horns, one of
the natives suddenly turning to the others exclaimed: “Say, he is lying.
How could they hold her?” Since that time most of them have seen cattle.
The Fang wife prepares the food for her husband and sets it in the
_palaver-house_, or public-house of the town, where he eats with the
other men. She does not eat with them. There is no regular time in the
day for eating; and when they have begun to eat there is no regular time
for stopping. The quantity of food is the only limit. On a journey they
can go without food a very long time, far surpassing the endurance of
the white man. And they are often compelled to travel with empty
stomachs from their habit of eating all their food the first day. But
afterwards they will make up for this abstinence, however prolonged.
Indeed, it is by their gluttony, rather than in other ways, that they
first exhibit their degradation to the white man. I have said that the
children were usually pretty; but sometimes they are dreadfully
misshapen by a distended stomach. The last mail brought me a charming
picture of a little three-year-old missionary boy of Gaboon, prodding
the stomach of a native child with his finger, and with eyes of wonder,
asking: “Is dat your tummy?”
One of their first efforts, after coming in contact with the white man,
is an attempt to acquire the noble art of eating with a spoon. But in
the first practice of it if they forget themselves for a moment they are
very likely to put the hand to the mouth in the old way and drive the
spoon round to the ear. Considering their ignorance they are
surprisingly cleanly in their persons and their habits. After eating
they invariably rinse their mouths with water and they regularly brush
their teeth. For the latter purpose they commonly use a brush of soft
wood with transverse ridges. They are very particular about this. Often
a carrier in the bush will carry his brush along with him. Sometimes it
is the sum-total of his personal effects. Everybody knows that the
African has beautiful teeth. But in some tribes, and even among the Fang
of the far interior, they often file the front teeth to a point,
thinking to add to their beauty, but in fact adding greatly to their
ugliness.
I have said that the Fang are cannibals. But this loathsome custom is
not as common among them as travellers have generally reported. I doubt
whether the Fang eat any but their enemies—captives taken in war. And
their chronic meat-hunger is not the only reason for eating their
enemies. It is done as an insult to the enemy, the most deadly insult
that can be offered, and means that the war will be fought to a finish,
or at least until the other side has eaten one of the enemy. But the
practice of cannibalism in war is intimately related to fetishism. It is
believed that after eating one of the enemy, the latter can do them no
harm. Their bullets will glance harmlessly off their bodies, or will
even go through them without hurting, if indeed they hit them at all.
Cannibalism affords them the strongest possible fetish protection.
The cannibalism of the Upper Congo tribes is much worse than this and is
almost indescribable. Some of them eat their own dead. Sir Harry
Johnston tells us that the Basoko tribe bury none but their chiefs.
Others, who would not eat their own dead, exchange them for the dead of
a neighbouring clan.
This vicious taste often becomes a mania with the African, an obsession,
like the ungovernable appetite for rum, until he thinks of man chiefly
as food to satisfy this craving. Among such tribes raids are made on
their neighbours for the express purpose of cannibalism. Sir Harry
Johnston speaks of the son of a celebrated chief who once exclaimed:
“Ah! I wish I could eat everybody on earth!” and also of a Bangala chief
who ate his seven wives in succession, inviting his friends and close
associates to the feast. It is more than possible that these lowest
forms of cannibalism are due to the demoralization incident to the
slave-raids of the Arabs. The Arabs were succeeded by the Belgians; but
some of those who are best qualified to judge think that the régime of
the Belgians has been worse than that of the Arabs.
Among tribes to whom such forms of cannibalism would be revolting, there
are probably individual inhuman ghouls, who exhume the bodies of the
dead in the night and eat them. And it may be from this fact that
witches are always accused of eating people.
If it be true, then, throughout the entire Fang tribe, that they eat
only their enemies it will be seen that their cannibalism is very
different in extent and even in loathsomeness from that of some other
tribes. It is a fact, however, that the cannibal tribes are not
necessarily lower than the others, but may be quite as gentle and
tractable and quite as capable. And from this some have argued that,
after all, our horror of cannibalism is purely conventional, due to
custom and training; and that there is no essential difference between
eating human flesh and that of the lower animals, except in imagination.
But the readiness with which whole tribes renounce the custom, become
ashamed of it, and contract the white man’s abhorrence for it, confirms
the belief that it is never legitimate and must always be regarded as a
vice. In such matters imagination may be closer to our moral natures
than we know.
A certain town on the Gaboon named _Alum_—when I left Africa I knew
personally most of the men, women and children of the town—is populated
by one of the most intractable clans of the Fang. Though peculiarly
fierce in war, they are otherwise gentle and courteous. The venerable
chief I regarded as a particular friend. He had a long beard—somewhat
rare among the Fang and highly esteemed. It was braided tightly and tied
on the end with a string as venerable as the beard itself. The braid was
not for fashion or beauty. It was intended to prevent the possible loss
of stray hairs that might fall into the hands of an enemy and be used as
a powerful fetish against him. Upon my leaving the town at the
conclusion of a visit it was in accord with custom for him to express
his personal regard for me by taking my hand in his and spitting in it.
In order to appreciate this beautiful custom one must regard it
spiritually—if he can. It is called “blowing a blessing.” The blessing
is blown with the breath and the spitting is a trivial accessory.
It was when these people first migrated from the interior bush that the
following incident occurred—which was told to me by Sonia of Gaboon who
knew all the persons concerned. A certain man’s wife having several
times eloped with a man of another town and having caused the husband
much trouble and humiliation, he at last became so enraged that instead
of seeking to procure her return he determined upon a bloody revenge.
With several companions he immediately started in a canoe for the town
where her father and mother lived, arriving before they had heard the
news of their daughter’s latest elopement. At some distance from the
town they left the canoe and entered the forest. All the others of the
party hid themselves near the path while the man himself went on to the
town and professed to have come just to make his mother-in-law a
friendly visit. Addressing her as _Mother_, he told her that he had
killed a bush-pig in the forest and that he had come to ask her to go
with him to get some of it before he should take it home. The woman,
without doubting, followed him along the path.
After a while she said: “Son, it is far and I am old.”
He told her that it was only a short distance ahead; so she went on.
Soon again she exclaimed: “Ah, son, it is very far and I am old.”
He replied that it was now very near, thus enticing her far from town.
At last he exclaimed: “Mother, here it is!”
At his word the party in ambush sprang upon her and with their swords
killed her. They then cut from her body one entire leg, which they took
to their town and ate. He had avenged his injured dignity and had
removed his shame. He had no longer any reason to feel ashamed!
He sent a brief message to the unfaithful wife: “Stay where you are; the
palaver is finished.”
I must say that this incident is not fairly representative of the
African savage. Not that it exaggerates his brutality, when he is
enraged; but there is in it an element of treachery which is oriental
rather than African. He does not usually conceal his anger, but hastens
to express it in passionate words. And when one has succeeded in
allaying his passion and soothing his feelings, and he has again smiled
and sworn friendship, one may reckon assuredly that the palaver is ended
and that the smile does not conceal malice nor intent of revenge. He is
passionate but not vindictive, cruel but not treacherous.
A few years have made such changes that the Fang of the Gaboon, instead
of boasting of cannibalism, would indignantly deny it. In the interior
they still practice it as an insult to the enemy. But on the Gaboon they
insult the enemy by charging it against them.
“The African,” says Booker T. Washington, “lives like a child, in the
realm of emotion and feeling.” And a white man among Africans lives much
in that same realm. His experience is largely a succession of
contrasting emotions. Sick with disgust and hopelessness, when brought
into contact with such loathsome features of degradation as we have been
considering, he consigns the whole black race to perdition, and anon
some pathetic circumstance reveals a wealth of moral possibilities,
which touches the heart and makes him ashamed; some unconscious action
of real friendship and confidence in the white man, it may be; some
expression of the profound affection on the part of a savage towards his
mother and children; or some rude work of art which he displays with
pride, something upon which he has expended astonishing labour for
beauty’s sake alone—crude enough, to be sure, but giving “thoughts that
do often lie too deep for tears.” He has a shapely stool which he cuts
out of a solid block of light mahogany, with only one tool, a rude adz
of his own making. He has absolutely no knowledge of joinery, so he cuts
it out of the solid block, expending upon it an amount of patient labour
of which he is usually considered incapable. He also pyrographs it with
artistic decorations. Why all this labour when the solid block itself is
quite as serviceable, and far more stable? He has an inward sense of
beauty to which he must make it conform, an ideal which commands him and
which he strives to execute. The brass handle of his sword he decorates
by ingenious and not unskillful repoussé designs. The mats that the
women weave are decorated with patterns in colours, requiring care and
skill in their making.
The curiosity of those who have not seen a white man before, or are not
used to seeing him, is unbounded and at first attaches to everything
that he possesses. Magic is their easy explanation of everything they do
not understand. A match (until they become accustomed to it) will
scatter a crowd as quickly as a Gatling gun. It is the supernatural of
which they are most afraid; as with us, those who believe in ghosts are
more afraid of them than the worst of living enemies.
Nothing of ours is more wonderful or more desired than the
looking-glass. Yet they are not always conceited in regard to their
appearance. One poor interior woman, seeing her face in the
looking-glass for the first time, sank to the ground with a little cry,
and said: “I did not think I was so ugly.”
Their wonder is not always directed as we would expect. It is not the
greatest achievement that excites the greatest wonder. One day, after my
return to America, in company with a friend I was passing one of the
greatest buildings of Chicago, when the friend said: “What would your
Africans think of such a building?”
“My Africans,” I replied (pointing to a man on the corner with a tin
monkey climbing a string), “would be so entirely occupied with that tin
monkey climbing a string that you could not get them to look at the
building.”
In the invention of the monkey they would have some comprehension of the
difficulties to be overcome, while not knowing how it had been
accomplished; hence the mystery. But in the case of the great building
they have no present knowledge which would enable them in any measure to
realize the difficulties, or the principles involved. The African
wonders most at those things which bear some relation to his present
knowledge. For wonder is not exactly an expression of ignorance, as it
has been called, but rather an expression of imperfect knowledge.
All things in our possession of which they did not know the use were
regarded as fetishes. I wore glasses when studying. One day at Efulen I
came out of the house with the glasses on. A group of women were
standing in front of the house; and several of them, seeing me look at
them through the glasses, fell flat on the ground; whereupon I
discovered that they supposed my glasses were a fetish by which I might
(as one of them said) turn them into monkeys. They supposed that we were
“spirits,” and so they called us. Looking at my black shoes one of them
exclaimed: “The spirit’s hands and face are white, but his feet are
black, and I suppose the rest of his body is black.”
Another said: “The spirit has feet, but he has no toes.”
Another said: “What an ugly colour! But he would be a beauty if he were
black.”
Dear reader: Were you ever an object of curiosity? Of course you have
been on some single occasion—for a passing moment, or even a whole
evening. But I mean day after day, and all the time, for an indefinite
period. If so, you have my profound sympathy.
VIII
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
The Fang is a resourceful man, though he has no genius for mechanical
invention. He wrests from nature all that he needs and does not depend
upon his neighbour.
He lives in a house of bark or bamboo with a roof of thatch, for which
he gathers the materials, and builds it all himself. In his primitive
condition his only clothing is bark-cloth which he skillfully hammers
out of fibrous bark. With the fibre of the pineapple, he weaves a
powder-pouch, or other similar convenience. He makes himself an
excellent canoe and is scarcely surpassed as an expert in its
management. He is also a fisherman; and he knits his own fish-net. For
the latter he now uses imported string; but without the imported string
he could use some vegetable fibre. If he wishes to improve his primitive
bed of poles he makes a grass mat. An old woman one day taught me the
art of mat-making. I sat beside her at the loom, in the street, and
worked under her supervision until she declared me quite proficient—so
much so, she said with some anxiety, that there was no need of my doing
any more. The African’s knowledge, too, however meagre, is as varied as
his skill. As he becomes civilized he will specialize. There will be
division of labour in the community and mutual dependence upon one
another. No doubt he will gain much; but he will also lose something, he
will lose in resourcefulness; he will lose something of freedom and the
spirit of independence. And unless he gain much in that which is moral
and spiritual, his loss will be a misfortune wholly grievous.
I venture the statement that the African is not lazy—at least not _very_
lazy. He is idle not so much because he hates work, but rather because
he is unambitious and the unfortunate victim of a habit of content. He
will not work for the sake of working, because, unlike the white man, he
can be supremely content in idleness. But offer him something that he
really desires or deems worth while and he will work amazingly. There
are only one or two things that the African will work for; that is to
say there are only one or two things that he wants.
He will work to earn a dowry in order to marry; especially if he has in
mind some particular woman as the prospective wife. Month after month he
will labour and even for a year or two he will engage in the hardest
work. But just as the white master is about to reverse his opinion of
the whole black race and proclaim that they are the greatest workers in
the world the man completes the amount of the dowry, and immediately he
quits. No inducement will tempt him to continue. To offer him double
wages would only lower his estimate of your intelligence. He will work
for an end that he desires; but the ordinary motives of the white man do
not appeal to him at all. He will never work for the mere sake of
accumulating wealth.
The men do all the building, and when a new garden is made the men cut
down the trees. Their hardest work is incident to war or hunting, but it
is occasional, and most of their time is spent in absolute idleness. The
regular work is done by the women. It is chiefly that of caring for the
gardens (which are sometimes far from the town), carrying home the
produce, gathering wood and carrying it from the forest, and cooking the
food. They rise at daylight and start for the gardens, leaving the care
of the babies to older children or to their husbands. I have seen the
husband of six wives taking care of several hungry babies whose mothers
have been long in the gardens; and it seemed to me that he, rather than
the wives, had the heavier end of the domestic responsibilities.
There is one other instinct besides that of matrimony that will stir the
dormant energy of the native, and that is the love of driving a bargain.
He is a born trader. But if prices, however high, should become
hopelessly fixed, and shrewdness have no advantage, I am not sure that
he would care any more for the trade.
Wherever a foreign government has not interfered with African custom the
produce of the interior, chiefly rubber and ivory, is carried from the
far interior, in brief stages, by successive caravans. The original
owners of the ivory start coastward in a company. Beyond a certain limit
they cannot go, as the people will not allow them to pass. They must
give over the ivory to others who will carry it over the next stage and
in turn deliver it to others. There may be five or six stages in the
journey to the coast. The first company when they deliver the produce to
the next do not return home but remain in the town of the second company
until their return, often assuming their marital relations in their
absence. The second company does the same in regard to the third, and
the others likewise. Since the goods received in payment must come from
the coast, no bargain is made until the return journey. The last company
carries the ivory to the coast and obtains goods in payment, returning
to their town, where the preceding company is waiting. Then follows a
great palaver and oceans of oratory. The company in possession seek to
keep as large a portion as possible of the goods and to give as little
as possible to the interior people. The palaver at last being settled,
this company starts for home and again, after an exciting palaver,
divides the goods with the next company, whom they find still waiting
for them. This is repeated with each successive stage until at last the
original owners, after weeks of waiting, get a small remainder of the
goods, or at least a souvenir, for their ivory. The principal
satisfaction is perhaps not the actual amount of the goods, but the big
palaver, and the driving of a shrewd bargain.