Volume I Part 2 (1/2)

And now the scene improved. The hat-palm, a brab or wild date, the spine-palm (Ph?nix spinosa), and the Ok.u.meh or cotton-tree disputed the ground with the foul Rhizophora. Then clearings appeared. At Ejene, the second of two landing-places evidently leading to farms, we transferred ourselves to canoes, our boat being arrested by a fallen tree. Advancing a few yards, all disembarked upon trampled mud, and, ascending the bank, left the creek which supplies baths and drinking water to our destination.

Striking a fair pathway, we pa.s.sed westward over a low wave of ground, sandy and mouldy, and traversed a fern field surrounded by a forest of secular trees; some parasite-grown from twig to root, others blanched and scathed by the fires of heaven; these roped and corded with runners and llianas, those naked and clothed in motley patches. At 6.30 A.M., after an hour's work, probably representing a mile, and a total of 7 h. 30 m., or six miles in a south-south-west direction from Le Plateau, we left the ugly cul de sac of a creek, and entered Mbata, which the French call ”La Plantation.”

Women and children fled in terror at our approach--and no wonder: eyes like hunted boars, haggard faces, yellow as the sails at the Cape Verdes, and beards two days long, act very unlike cosmetics.

A house was cleared for us by Hotaloya, alias ”Andrew,” of the Baraka Mission, the lord of the village, who, poor fellow! has only two wives; he is much ashamed of himself, but his excuse is, ”I be boy now,” meaning about twenty-two. After breakfast we prepared for a sleep, but the popular excitement forbade it; the villagers had heard that a white greenhorn was coming to bag and to buy gorillas, and they resolved to make hay whilst the sun shone.

Prince Paul at once gathered together a goodly crowd of fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, cousins and connections. A large and loud-voiced dame, ”Gozeli,” swore that she was his ”proper Ngwe,” being one of his numerous step mas, and she would not move without a head, or three leaves, of tobacco. Hotaloya was his brother; Mesdames Azizeh and Asunye declared themselves his sisters, and so all. My little stock of goods began visibly to shrink, when I informed the greedy applicants that nothing beyond a leaf of tobacco and a demi verre of tafia would be given until I had seen my way to work.

Presently appeared the chief huntsman appointed by Roi Denis to take charge of me, he was named Fortuna, a Spanish name corrupted to Forteune. A dash was then prepared for his majesty and for Prince Paul. I regret to say that this young n.o.bleman ended his leave-taking by introducing a pretty woman, with very neat hands and ankles and a most mutine physiognomy, as his sister, informing me that she was also my wife pro temp. She did not seem likely to coiffer Sainte Catherine, and here she is.

The last thing the prince did was to carry off, without a word of leave, the mission boat and the three Kru-boys, whom he kept two days. I was uneasy about these fellows, who, hating and fearing the Gaboon ”bush,” are ever ready to bolt.

Forteune and Hotaloya personally knew Mpolo (Paul du Chaillu), and often spoke to me of his prowess as a cha.s.seur and his knowledge of their tongue. But reputation as a linguist is easily made in these regions by speaking a few common sentences. The gorilla-hunter evidently had only a colloquial acquaintance with the half-dozen various idioms of the Mpongwe and Mpangwe (Fan) Bakele, Shekyani, and Cape Lopez people. Yet, despite verbal inaccuracies, his facility of talking gave him immense advantages over other whites, chiefly in this, that the natives would deem it useless to try the usual tricks upon travellers.

Forteune is black, short, and ”trapu;” curls of the jettiest lanugo invest all his outward man; bunches of muscle stand out from his frame like the statues of Crotonian Milo; his legs are bandy; his hands and feet are large and patulous, and he wants only a hunch to make an admirable Quasimodo. He has the frank and open countenance of a sportsman--I had been particularly warned by the Plateau folk about his skill in cheating and lying.

Formerly a cook at the Gaboon, he is a man of note in his tribe, as the hunter always is; he holds the position of a country gentleman, who can afford to write himself M.F.H.; he is looked upon as a man of valour; he is admired by the people, and he is adored by his wives--one of them at once took up her station upon the marital knee. Perhaps the Nimrod of Mbata is just a little henpecked--the Mpongwe mostly are--and I soon found out that soigner les femmes is the royal road to getting on with the men.

He supplies the village with ”beef,” here meaning not the roast of Old England, but any meat, from a field-rat to a hippopotamus.

He boasts that he has slain with his own hand upwards of a hundred gorillas and anthropoid apes, and, since the demand arose in Europe, he has supplied Mr. R.B.N. Walker and others with an average of one per month, including a live youngster; probably most, if not all, of them were killed by his ”bushmen,” of whom he can command about a dozen.

Forteune began by receiving his ”dash,” six fathoms of ”satin cloth,” tobacco, and pipes. After inspecting my battery, he particularly approved of a smooth-bored double-barrel (Beattie of Regent Street) carrying six to the pound. Like all these people, he uses an old and rickety trade-musket, and, when lead is wanting, he loads it with a bit of tile: as many gorillas are killed with tools which would hardly bring down a wild cat, it is evident that their vital power cannot be great. He owned to preferring a charge of twenty buckshot to a single ball, and he received with joy a little fine gunpowder, which he compared complimentarily with the blasting article, half charcoal withal, to which he was accustomed.

Presently a decently dressed, white-bearded man of light complexion announced himself, with a flourish and a loud call for a chair, as Prince Koyala, alias ”Young Prince,” father to Forteune and Hotaloya and brother to Roi Denis,--here all tribesmen are of course brethren. This being equivalent to ”asking for more,” it drove me to the limits of my patience. It was evidently now necessary to a.s.sume wrath, and to raise my voice to a roar.

”My hands dey be empty! I see nuffin, I hear nuffin! What for I make more dash?”

Allow me, parenthetically, to observe that the African, like the Scotch Highlander, will interpose the personal or demonstrative p.r.o.noun between noun and verb: ”sun he go down,” means ”the sun sets” and, as genders do not exist, you must be careful to say, ”This woman he cry too much.”

The justice of my remark was owned by all; had it been the height of tyranny, the supple knaves would have agreed with me quite as politely. They only replied that ”Young Prince,” being a man of years and dignity, would be dishonoured by dismissal empty- handed, and they represented him as my future host when we moved nearer the bush.

”Now lookee here. This he be bad plabba (palaver). This he be bob! I come up for white man, you come up for black man. All white man he no be fool, 'cos he no got black face!”

Ensued a chorus of complimentary palaver touching the infinite superiority of the Aryan over the Semite, but the point was in no wise yielded. At last Young Prince subsided into a request for a gla.s.s of rum, which being given ”cut the palaver” (i.e. ended the business). I soon resolved to show my hosts, by threatening to leave them, the difference between traders and travellers. Barbot relates that the Mpongwe of olden time demanded his ”da.s.sy”

before he consented to ”liquor up,” and boldly asked, ”If he was expected to drink gratis?” The impertinence was humoured, otherwise not an ivory would have found its way to the factory.

But the traveller is not bound to endure these whimsy-whamsies; and the sooner he declares his independence the better. Many monkeys' skins were brought to me for sale, but I refused to buy, lest the people might think it my object to make money; moreover, all were spoilt for specimens by the ”points” being snipped off.

I happened during the first afternoon to show my hosts a picture of the bald-headed chimpanzee, Nchigo Mbuwwe (Troglodytes calvus), here more generally called Nchigo Mpolo, ”large chimpanzee,” or Nchigo Njue, ”white-haired chimpanzee.” They recognized it at once; but when I turned over to the cottage (”Adventures,” &c., p. 423), with its neat parachute-like roof, all burst out laughing.

”You want to look him Nago (house)?” asked Hotaloya.

”Yes, for sure,” I replied.

Forteune set out at once, carrying my gun, Selim followed me, and the rear was brought up by a couple of little p.r.i.c.k-eared curs with a dash of the pointer, probably from St. Helena: the people will pay as much as ten dollars for a good dog. They are never used in hunting apes, as they start the game; on this occasion they nearly ran down a small antelope.

The path led through a new clearing; a field of fern and some patches of gra.s.s breaking the forest, which, almost clear of thicket and undergrowth, was a charming place for deer. The soil, thin sand overlying humus, suggested rich crops of ground-nuts; its surface was everywhere cut by nullahs, now dry, and by brooks, running crystal streams; these, when deep, are crossed by tree-trunks, the Brazilian ”pingela.” After twenty minutes or so we left the ”picada” (foot-path) and struck into a thin bush, till we had walked about a mile.

”Look him house, Nchigo house!” said Hotaloya, standing under a tall tree.

I saw to my surprise two heaps of dry sticks, which a schoolboy might have taken for birds' nests; the rude beds, boughs, torn off from the tree, not gathered, were built in forks, one ten and the other twenty feet above ground, and both were canopied by the tufted tops. Every hunter consulted upon the subject ridiculed the branchy roof tied with vines, and declared that the Nchigo's industry is confined to a place for sitting, not for shelter; that he fas.h.i.+ons no other dwelling; that a couple generally occupies the same or some neighbouring tree, each sitting upon its own nest; that the Nchigo is not a ”hermit” nor a rare, nor even a very timid animal; that it dwells, as I saw, near villages, and that its cry, ”Aoo! Aoo! Aoo!” is often heard by them in the mornings and evenings. During my subsequent wanderings in Gorilla land, I often observed tall and mushroom- shaped trees standing singly, and wearing the semblance of the umbrella roof. What most puzzles me is, that M. du Chaillu (”Second Expedition,” chap, iii.) ”had two of the bowers cut down and sent to the British Museum.” He adds, ”They are formed at a height of twenty to thirty feet in the trees, by the animals bending over and intertwining a number of the weaker boughs, so as to form bowers, under which they can sit, protected from the rains by the ma.s.ses of foliage thus entangled together, some of the boughs being so bent that they form convenient seats.” Surely M. du Chaillu must have been deceived by some vagary of nature.